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It's been ten years since The House on Mango Street was first published. I began writing it in graduate school, the spring of 1977, in Iowa City. I was twenty-two years old. I'm thirty-eight now, far from that time and place, but the questions from readers remain, Are these stories true? Are you Esperanza? When I began The House on Mango Street, I thought I was writing a memoir. By the time I finished it, my memoir was no longer memoir, no longer autobiographical. It had evolved into a collective story peopled with several lives from my past and present, placed in one fictional time and neighborhood — Mango Street. A story is like a Giacometti sculpture. The farther away it is from you, the clearer you can see it. In Iowa City, I was undergoing several changes of identity. For the first time I was living alone, in a community very different in class and culture from the one where I was raised. This caused so much unrest I could barely speak, let alone write about it. The story I was living at twenty-two would have to wait, but I could take the story of an earlier place, an earlier voice, and record that on paper. The voice of Mango Street and all my work was born at one moment, when I realized I was different. This sounds absurd and simple, but until Iowa City, I assumed the world was like Chicago, made up of people of many cultures all living together — albeit not happily at times but still coexisting. In Iowa, I was suddenly aware of feeling odd when I spoke, as if I were a foreigner. But this was my land too. This is not to say I hadn't felt this "otherness" before in Chicago, but I hadn't felt it quite as keenly as I did in graduate school. I couldn't articulate what it was that was happening, except I knew I felt ashamed when I spoke in class, so I chose not to speak. I can say my political consciousness began the moment I recognized my otherness. I was in a graduate seminar on memory and the imagination. The books required were Vladimir Nabokov's Speak Memory, Isak Dinesen's Out of Africa, and Gaston Bachelard's Poetics of Space. I had enjoyed the first two, but as usual I said nothing, just listened to the dialogue around me, too afraid to speak. The third book, though, left me baffled. I assumed I just didn't get it because I wasn't as smart as everyone else, and if I didn't say anything, maybe no one else would notice. The conversation, I remember, was about the house of memory — the attic, the stairwells, the cellar. Attic? My family lived in third-floor flats for the most part, because noise traveled down. Stairwells reeked of Pine Sol from the Saturday scrubbing. We shared them with the people downstairs; they were public zones no one except us thought to clean. We mopped them all right, but not without resentment for cleaning up some other people's trash. And as for cellars, we had a basement, but who'd want to hide in there? Basements were filled with urban fauna. Everyone was scared to go in there including the meter reader and the landlord. What was this guy Bachelard talking about when he mentioned the familiar and comforting house of memory? It was obvious he never had to clean one or pay the landlord rent for one like ours. Then it occurred to me that none of the books in this class or in any of my classes, in all the years of my education, had ever discussed a house like mine. Not in books or magazines or films. My classmates had come from real houses, real neighborhoods, ones they could point to, but what did I know? |
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I remember I was trying to write something that was a cross between fiction and poetry — like Jorge Luis Borges' Dream Tigers, a book whose stories read like fables, but with the lyricism and succinctness of poetry. I finished writing my book in November 1982, miles from the Iowa cornfields. I had traveled a great distance both physically and mentally from the book's inception. And in the meantime, lots of things happened to me. I taught Latino high-school dropouts and counseled Latina students. Because I often felt helpless as a teacher and counselor to alter their lives, their stories began to surface in my "memoir"; then Mango Street ceased to be my story. I arranged and diminished events on Mango Street to speak a message, to take from different parts of other people's lives and create a story like a collage. I merged characters from my twenties with characters from my teens and childhood. I edited, changed, shifted the past to fit the present. I asked questions I didn't know to ask when I was an adolescent. But best of all, writing in a younger voice allowed me to name that thing without a name, that shame of being poor, of being female, of being not quite good enough, and examine where it had come from and why, so I could exchange shame for celebration. I had never been trained to think of poems or stories as something that could change someone's life. I had been trained to think about where a line ended or how best to work a metaphor. It was always the "how" and not the "what" we talked about in class. Even while I was teaching in the Chicago community, the two halves of my life were at odds with each other — the half that wanted to roll up my sleeves and do something for the community, and the half that wanted to retreat to my kitchen and write. I still believed my writing couldn't save anyone's life but my own. In the ten years since Mango Street has been published those two halves of my life have met and merged. I believe this because I've witnessed families buying my book for themselves and for family members, families for whom spending money on a book can be a sacrifice. Often they bring a mother, father, sibling, or cousin along to my readings, or I am introduced to someone who says their son or daughter read my book in a class and brought it home for them. And there are the letters from readers of all ages and colors who write to say I have written their story. The raggedy state of my books that some readers and educators hand me to sign is the best compliment of all. These are my affirmations and blessings. Am I Esperanza? Yes. And no. And then again, perhaps maybe. One thing I know for certain, you, the reader, are Esperanza. So I should ask, What happened to you? Did you stay in school? Did you go to college? Did you have that baby? Were you a victim? Did you tell anyone about it or did you keep it inside? Did you let it overpower and eat you? Did you wind up in jail? Did someone harm you? Did you hurt someone? What happened to Margarita, Fat Boy, Gizmo, Angelica, Leticia, Maria, Ruben, Silvia, JosE, Dagoberto, Refugia, Bobby? Will you go back to school, find somebody to take care of the baby while you're finishing your diploma, go to college, work two jobs so you can do it, get help from the substance-abuse people, walk out of a bad marriage, send paychecks to the woman who bore your child, learn to be the human being you are not ashamed of? Did you run away from home? Did you join a gang? Did you get fired? Did you give up? |
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He doesn't need to comb it. Nenny's hair is slippery — slides out of your hand. And Kiki, who is the youngest, has hair like fur. But my mother's hair, my mother's hair, like little rosettes, like little candy circles all curly and pretty because she pinned it in pincurls all day, sweet to put your nose into when she is holding you, holding you and you feel safe, is the warm smell of bread before you bake it, is the smell when she makes room for you on her side of the bed still warm with her skin, and you sleep near her, the rain outside falling and Papa snoring. The snoring, the rain, and Mama's hair that smells like bread. Boys & Girls The boys and the girls live in separate worlds. The boys in their universe and we in ours. My brothers for example. They've got plenty to say to me and Nenny inside the house. But outside they can't be seen talking to girls. Carlos and Kiki are each other's best friend ... not ours. Nenny is too young to be my friend. She's just my sister and that was not my fault. You don't pick your sisters, you just get them and sometimes they come like Nenny. She can't play with those Vargas kids or she'll turn out just like them. And since she comes right after me, she is my responsibility. Someday I will have a best friend all my own. One I can tell my secrets to. One who will understand my jokes without my having to explain them. Until then I am a red balloon, a balloon tied to an anchor. My Name In English my name means hope. In Spanish it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting. It is like the number nine. A muddy color. It is the Mexican records my father plays on Sunday mornings when he is shaving, songs like sobbing. It was my great-grandmother's name and now it is mine. She was a horse woman too, born like me in the Chinese year of the horse — which is supposed to be bad luck if you're born female — but I think this is a Chinese lie because the Chinese, like the Mexicans, don't like their women strong. My great-grandmother. I would've liked to have known her, a wild horse of a woman, so wild she wouldn't marry. Until my great-grandfather threw a sack over her head and carried her off. Just like that, as if she were a fancy chandelier. That's the way he did it. And the story goes she never forgave him. She looked out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow. I wonder if she made the best with what she got or was she sorry because she couldn't be all the things she wanted to be. Esperanza. I have inherited her name, but I don't want to inherit her place by the window. At school they say my name funny as if the syllables were made out of tin and hurt the roof of your mouth. But in Spanish my name is made out of a softer something, like silver, not quite as thick as sister's name — Magdalena — which is uglier than mine. Magdalena who at least can come home and become Nenny. But I am always Esperanza. I would like to baptize myself under a new name, a name more like the real me, the one nobody sees. Esperanza as Lisandra or Maritza or Zeze the X. Yes. Something like Zeze the X will do. Cathy Queen of Cats She says, I am the great great grand cousin of the queen of France. She lives upstairs, over there, next door to Joe the baby-grabber. Keep away from him, she says. He is full of danger. Benny and Blanca own the corner store. They're okay except don't lean on the candy counter. Two girls raggedy as rats live across the street. You don't want to know them. |
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Edna is the lady who owns the building next to you. She used to own a building big as a whale, but her brother sold it. Their mother said no, no, don't ever sell it. I won't. And then she closed her eyes and he sold it. Alicia is stuck-up ever since she went to college. She used to like me but now she doesn't. Cathy who is queen of cats has cats and cats and cats. Baby cats, big cats, skinny cats, sick cats. Cats asleep like little donuts. Cats on top of the refrigerator. Cats taking a walk on the dinner table. Her house is like cat heaven. You want a friend, she says. Okay, I'll be your friend. But only till next Tuesday. That's when we move away. Got to. Then as if she forgot I just moved in, she says the neighborhood is getting bad. Cathy's father will have to fly to France one day and find her great great distant grand cousin on her father's side and inherit the family house. How do I know this is so? She told me so. In the meantime they'll just have to move a little farther north from Mango Street, a little farther away every time people like us keep moving in. Our Good Day If you give me five dollars I will be your friend forever. That's what the little one tells me. Five dollars is cheap since I don't have any friends except Cathy who is only my friend till Tuesday. Five dollars, five dollars. She is trying to get somebody to chip in so they can buy a bicycle from this kid named Tito. They already have ten dollars and all they need is five more. Only five dollars, she says. Don't talk to them, says Cathy. Can't you see they smell like a broom. But I like them. Their clothes are crooked and old. They are wearing shiny Sunday shoes without socks. It makes their bald ankles all red, but I like them. Especially the big one who laughs with all her teeth. I like her even though she lets the little one do all the talking. Five dollars, the little one says, only five. Cathy is tugging my arm and I know whatever I do next will make her mad forever. Wait a minute, I say, and run inside to get the five dollars. I have three dollars saved and I take two of Nenny's. She's not home, but I'm sure she'll be glad when she finds out we own a bike. When I get back, Cathy is gone like I knew she would be, but I don't care. I have two new friends and a bike too. My name is Lucy, the big one says. This here is Rachel my sister. I'm her sister, says Rachel. Who are you? And I wish my name was Cassandra or Alexis or Maritza — anything but Esperanza — but when I tell them my name they don't laugh. We come from Texas, Lucy says and grins. Her was born here, but me I'm Texas. You mean she, I say. No, I'm from Texas, and doesn't get it. This bike is three ways ours, says Rachel who is thinking ahead already. Mine today, Lucy's tomorrow and yours day after. But everybody wants to ride it today because the bike is new, so we decide to take turns after tomorrow. Today it belongs to all of us. I don't tell them about Nenny just yet. It's too complicated. Especially since Rachel almost put out Lucy's eye about who was going to get to ride it first. But finally we agree to ride it together. Why not? Because Lucy has long legs she pedals. I sit on the back seat and Rachel is skinny enough to get up on the handlebars which makes the bike all wobbly as if the wheels are spaghetti, but after a bit you get used to it. We ride fast and faster. Past my house, sad and red and crumbly in places, past Mr. Benny's grocery on the corner, and down the avenue which is dangerous. |
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Laundromat, junk store, drugstore, windows and cars and more cars, and around the block back to Mango. People on the bus wave. A very fat lady crossing the street says, You sure got quite a load there. Rachel shouts, You got quite a load there too. She is very sassy. Down, down Mango Street we go. Rachel, Lucy, me. Our new bicycle. Laughing the crooked ride back. Laughter Nenny and I don't look like sisters ... not right away. Not the way you can tell with Rachel and Lucy who have the same fat popsicle lips like everybody else in their family. But me and Nenny, we are more alike than you would know. Our laughter for example. Not the shy ice cream bells' giggle of Rachel and Lucy's family, but all of a sudden and surprised like a pile of dishes breaking. And other things I can't explain. One day we were passing a house that looked, in my mind, like houses I had seen in Mexico. I don't know why. There was nothing about the house that looked exactly like the houses I remembered. I'm not even sure why I thought it, but it seemed to feel right. Look at that house, I said, it looks like Mexico. Rachel and Lucy look at me like I'm crazy, but before they can let out a laugh, Nenny says: Yes, that's Mexico all right. That's what I was thinking exactly. Gil's Furniture Bought & Sold There is a junk store. An old man owns it. We bought a used refrigerator from him once, and Carlos sold a box of magazines for a dollar. The store is small with just a dirty window for light. He doesn't turn the lights on unless you got money to buy things with, so in the dark we look and see all kinds of things, me and Nenny. Tables with their feet upside-down and rows and rows of refrigerators with round corners and couches that spin dust in the air when you punch them and a hundred TV's that don't work probably. Everything is on top of everything so the whole store has skinny aisles to walk through. You can get lost easy. The owner, he is a black man who doesn't talk much and sometimes if you didn't know better you could be in there a long time before your eyes notice a pair of gold glasses floating in the dark. Nenny who thinks she is smart and talks to any old man, asks lots of questions. Me, I never said nothing to him except once when I bought the Statue of Liberty for a dime. But Nenny, I hear her asking one time how's this here and the man says, This, this is a music box, and I turn around quick thinking he means a pretty box with flowers painted on it, with a ballerina inside. Only there's nothing like that where this old man is pointing, just a wood box that's old and got a big brass record in it with holes. Then he starts it up and all sorts of things start happening. It's like all of a sudden he let go a million moths all over the dusty furniture and swan-neck shadows and in our bones. It's like drops of water. Or like marimbas only with a funny little plucked sound to it like if you were running your fingers across the teeth of a metal comb. And then I don't know why, but I have to turn around and pretend I don't care about the box so Nenny won't see how stupid I am. But Nenny, who is stupider, already is asking how much and I can see her fingers going for the quarters in her pants pocket. This, the old man says shutting the lid, this ain't for sale. Meme Ortiz Meme Ortiz moved into Cathy's house after her family moved away. His name isn't really Meme. His name is Juan. But when we asked him what his name was he said Meme, and that's what everybody calls him except his mother. |
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Meme has a dog with gray eyes, a sheepdog with two names, one in English and one in Spanish. The dog is big, like a man dressed in a dog suit, and runs the same way its owner does, clumsy and wild and with the limbs flopping all over the place like untied shoes. Cathy's father built the house Meme moved into. It is wooden. Inside the floors slant. Some rooms uphill. Some down. And there are no closets. Out front there are twenty-one steps, all lopsided and jutting like crooked teeth (made that way on purpose, Cathy said, so the rain will slide off), and when Meme's mama calls from the doorway, Meme goes scrambling up the twenty-one wooden stairs with the dog with two names scrambling after him. Around the back is a yard, mostly dirt, and a greasy bunch of boards that used to be a garage. But what you remember most is this tree, huge, with fat arms and mighty families of squirrels in the higher branches. All around, the neighborhood of roofs, black-tarred and A-framed, and in their gutters, the balls that never came back down to earth. Down at the base of the tree, the dog with two names barks into the empty air, and there at the end of the block, looking smaller still, our house with its feet tucked under like a cat. This is the tree we chose for the First Annual Tarzan Jumping Contest. Meme won. And broke both arms. Louie, His Cousin & His Other Cousin Downstairs from Meme's is a basement apartment that Meme's mother fixed up and rented to a Puerto Rican family. Louie's family. Louie is the oldest in a family of little sisters. He is my brother's friend really, but I know he has two cousins and that his T-shirts never stay tucked in his pants. Louie's girl cousin is older than us. She lives with Louie's family because her own family is in Puerto Rico. Her name is Marin or Maris or something like that, and she wears dark nylons all the time and lots of makeup she gets free from selling Avon. She can't come out — gotta baby-sit with Louie's sisters — but she stands in the doorway a lot, all the time singing, clicking her fingers, the same song: Apples, peaches, pumpkin pah-ay. You're in love and so am ah-ay. Louie has another cousin. We only saw him once, but it was important. We were playing volleyball in the alley when he drove up in this great big yellow Cadillac with whitewalls and a yellow scarf tied around the mirror. Louie's cousin had his arm out the window. He honked a couple of times and a lot of faces looked out from Louie's back window and then a lot of people came out — Louie, Marin and all the little sisters. Everybody looked inside the car and asked where he got it. There were white rugs and white leather seats. We all asked for a ride and asked where he got it. Louie's cousin said get in. We each had to sit with one of Louie's little sisters on our lap, but that was okay. The seats were big and soft like a sofa, and there was a little white cat in the back window whose eyes lit up when the car stopped or turned. The windows didn't roll up like in ordinary cars. Instead there was a button that did it for you automatically. We rode up the alley and around the block six times, but Louie's cousin said he was going to make us walk home if we didn't stop playing with the windows or touching the FM radio. The seventh time we drove into the alley we heard sirens ... real quiet at first, but then louder. Louie's cousin stopped the car right where we were and said, Everybody out of the car. Then he took off flooring that car into a yellow blur. |
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The kids bend trees and bounce between cars and dangle upside down from knees and almost break like fancy museum vases you can't replace. They think it's funny. They are without respect for all things living, including themselves. But after a while you get tired of being worried about kids who aren't even yours. One day they are playing chicken on Mr. Benny's roof. Mr. Benny says, Hey ain't you kids know better than to be swinging up there? Come down, you come down right now, and then they just spit. See. That's what I mean. No wonder everybody gave up. Just stopped looking out when little Efren chipped his buck tooth on a parking meter and didn't even stop Refugia from getting her head stuck between two slats in the back gate and nobody looked up not once the day Angel Vargas learned to fly and dropped from the sky like a sugar donut, just like a falling star, and exploded down to earth without even an "Oh." Alicia Who Sees Mice Close your eyes and they'll go away, her father says, or You're just imagining. And anyway, a woman's place is sleeping so she can wake up early with the tortilla star, the one that appears early just in time to rise and catch the hind legs hide behind the sink, beneath the four-clawed tub, under the swollen floorboards nobody fixes, in the corner of your eyes. Alicia, whose mama died, is sorry there is no one older to rise and make the lunchbox tortillas. Alicia, who inherited her mama's rolling pin and sleepiness, is young and smart and studies for the first time at the university. Two trains and a bus, because she doesn't want to spend her whole life in a factory or behind a rolling pin. Is a good girl, my friend, studies all night and sees the mice, the ones her father says do not exist. Is afraid of nothing except four-legged fur. And fathers. Darius & the Clouds You can never have too much sky. You can fall asleep and wake up drunk on sky, and sky can keep you safe when you are sad. Here there is too much sadness and not enough sky. Butterflies too are few and so are flowers and most things that are beautiful. Still, we take what we can get and make the best of it. Darius, who doesn't like school, who is sometimes stupid and mostly a fool, said something wise today, though most days he says nothing. Darius, who chases girls with firecrackers or a stick that touched a rat and thinks he's tough, today pointed up because the world was full of clouds, the kind like pillows. You all see that cloud, that fat one there? Darius said, See that? Where? That one next to the one that look like popcorn. That one there. See that. That's God, Darius said. God? somebody little asked. God, he said, and made it simple. And Some More The Eskimos got thirty different names for snow, I say. I read it in a book. I got a cousin, Rachel says, she got three different names. There ain't thirty different kinds of snow, Lucy says. There are two kinds. The clean kind and the dirty kind, clean and dirty. Only two. There are a million zillion kinds, says Nenny. No two exactly alike. Only how do you remember which one is which? She got three last names and, let me see, two first names. One in English and one in Spanish ... And clouds got at least ten different names, I say. Names for clouds? Nenny asks. Names just like you and me? That up there, that's cumulus, and everybody looks up. Cumulus are cute, Rachel says. She would say something like that. What's that one there? Nenny asks, pointing a finger. That's cumulus too. They're all cumulus today. |
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Do you like these shoes? But the truth is it is scary to look down at your foot that is no longer yours and see attached a long long leg. Everybody wants to trade. The lemon shoes for the red shoes, the red for the pair that were once white but are now pale blue, the pale blue for the lemon, and take them off and put them back on and keep on like this a long time until we are tired. Then Lucy screams to take our socks off and yes, it's true. We have legs. Skinny and spotted with satin scars where scabs were picked, but legs, all our own, good to look at, and long. It's Rachel who learns to walk the best all strutted in those magic high heels. She teaches us to cross and uncross our legs, and to run like a double-dutch rope, and how to walk down to the corner so that the shoes talk back to you with every step. Lucy, Rachel, me tee-tottering like so. Down to the corner where the men can't take their eyes off us. We must be Christmas. Mr. Benny at the corner grocery puts down his important cigar: Your mother know you got shoes like that? Who give you those? Nobody. Them are dangerous, he says. You girls too young to be wearing shoes like that. Take them shoes off before I call the cops, but we just run. On the avenue a boy on a homemade bicycle calls out: Ladies, lead me to heaven. But there is nobody around but us. Do you like these shoes? Rachel says yes, and Lucy says yes, and yes I say, these are the best shoes. We will never go back to wearing the other kind again. Do you like these shoes? In front of the laundromat six girls with the same fat face pretend we are invisible. They are the cousins, Lucy says, and always jealous. We just keep strutting. Across the street in front of the tavern a bum man on the stoop. Do you like these shoes? Bum man says, Yes, little girl. Your little lemon shoes are so beautiful. But come closer. I can't see very well. Come closer. Please. You are a pretty girl, bum man continues. What's your name, pretty girl? And Rachel says Rachel, just like that. Now you know to talk to drunks is crazy and to tell them your name is worse, but who can blame her. She is young and dizzy to hear so many sweet things in one day, even if it is a bum man's whiskey words saying them. Rachel, you are prettier than a yellow taxicab. You know that? But we don't like it. We got to go, Lucy says. If I give you a dollar will you kiss me? How about a dollar. I give you a dollar, and he looks in his pocket for wrinkled money. We have to go right now, Lucy says taking Rachel's hand because she looks like she's thinking about that dollar. Bum man is yelling something to the air but by now we are running fast and far away, our high heel shoes taking us all the way down the avenue and around the block, past the ugly cousins, past Mr. Benny's, up Mango Street, the back way, just in case. We are tired of being beautiful. Lucy hides the lemon shoes and the red shoes and the shoes that used to be white but are now pale blue under a powerful bushel basket on the back porch, until one Tuesday her mother, who is very clean, throws them away. But no one complains. A Rice Sandwich The special kids, the ones who wear keys around their necks, get to eat in the canteen. The canteen! Even the name sounds important. And these kids at lunch time go there because their mothers aren't home or home is too far away to get to. My home isn't far but it's not close either, and somehow I got it in my head one day to ask my mother to make me a sandwich and write a note to the principal so I could eat in the canteen too. |
| 9 |
Oh no, she says pointing the butter knife at me as if I'm starting trouble, no sir. Next thing you know everybody will be wanting a bag lunch — I'll be up all night cutting bread into little triangles, this one with mayonnaise, this one with mustard, no pickles on mine, but mustard on one side please. You kids just like to invent more work for me. But Nenny says she doesn't want to eat at school — ever — because she likes to go home with her best friend Gloria who lives across the schoolyard. Gloria's mama has a big color TV and all they do is watch cartoons. Kiki and Carlos, on the other hand, are patrol boys. They don't want to eat at school either. They like to stand out in the cold especially if it's raining. They think suffering is good for you ever since they saw that movie 300 Spartans. I'm no Spartan and hold up an anemic wrist to prove it. I can't even blow up a balloon without getting dizzy. And besides, I know how to make my own lunch. If I ate at school there'd be less dishes to wash. You would see me less and less and like me better. Everyday at noon my chair would be empty. Where is my favorite daughter you would cry, and when I came home finally at three p. m. you would appreciate me. Okay, okay, my mother says after three days of this. And the following morning I get to go to school with my mother's letter and a rice sandwich because we don't have lunch meat. Mondays or Fridays, it doesn't matter, mornings always go by slow and this day especially. But lunchtime came finally and I got to get in line with the stay-at-school kids. Everything is fine until the nun who knows all the canteen kids by heart looks at me and says: You, who sent you here? And since I am shy, I don't say anything, just hold out my hand with the letter. This is no good, she says, till Sister Superior gives the okay. Go upstairs and see her. And so I went. I had to wait for two kids in front of me to get hollered at, one because he did something in class, the other because he didn't. My turn came and I stood in front of the big desk with holy pictures under the glass while the Sister Superior read my letter. It went like this: Dear Sister Superior, Please let Esperanza eat in the lunchroom because she lives too far away and she gets tired. As you can see she is very skinny. I hope to God she does not faint. Thanking you, Mrs. E. Cordero You don't live far, she says. You live across the boulevard. That's only four blocks. Not even. Three maybe. Three long blocks away from here. I bet I can see your house from my window. Which one? Come here. Which one is your house? And then she made me stand up on a box of books and point. That one? she said, pointing to a row of ugly three-flats, the ones even the raggedy men are ashamed to go into. Yes, I nodded even though I knew that wasn't my house and started to cry. I always cry when nuns yell at me, even if they're not yelling. Then she was sorry and said I could stay — just for today, not tomorrow or the day after — you go home. And I said yes and could I please have a Kleenex — I had to blow my nose. In the canteen, which was nothing special, lots of boys and girls watched while I cried and ate my sandwich, the bread already greasy and the rice cold. Chanclas It's me — Mama, Mama said. I open up and she's there with bags and big boxes, the new clothes and, yes, she's got the socks and a new slip with a little rose on it and a pink-and-white striped dress. What about the shoes? I forgot. Too late now. I'm tired. |
| 10 |
Whew! Six-thirty already and my little cousin's baptism is over. All day waiting, the door locked, don't open up for nobody, and I don't till Mama gets back and buys everything except the shoes. Now Uncle Nacho is coming in his car, and we have to hurry to get to Precious Blood Church quick because that's where the baptism party is, in the basement rented for today for dancing and tamales and everyone's kids running all over the place. Mama dances, laughs, dances. All of a sudden, Mama is sick. I fan her hot face with a paper plate. Too many tamales, but Uncle Nacho says too many this and tilts his thumb to his lips. Everybody laughing except me, because I'm wearing the new dress, pink and white with stripes, and new underclothes and new socks and the old saddle shoes I wear to school, brown and white, the kind I get every September because they last long and they do. My feet scuffed and round, and the heels all crooked that look dumb with this dress, so I just sit. Meanwhile that boy who is my cousin by first communion or something asks me to dance and I can't. Just stuff my feet under the metal folding chair stamped Precious Blood and pick on a wad of brown gum that's stuck beneath the seat. I shake my head no. My feet growing bigger and bigger. Then Uncle Nacho is pulling and pulling my arm and it doesn't matter how new the dress Mama bought is because my feet are ugly until my uncle who is a liar says, You are the prettiest girl here, will you dance, but I believe him, and yes, we are dancing, my Uncle Nacho and me, only I don't want to at first. My feet swell big and heavy like plungers, but I drag them across the linoleum floor straight center where Uncle wants to show off the new dance we learned. And Uncle spins me, and my skinny arms bend the way he taught me, and my mother watches, and my little cousins watch, and the boy who is my cousin by first communion watches, and everyone says, wow, who are those two who dance like in the movies, until I forget that I am wearing only ordinary shoes, brown and white, the kind my mother buys each year for school. And all I hear is the clapping when the music stops. My uncle and me bow and he walks me back in my thick shoes to my mother who is proud to be my mother. All night the boy who is a man watches me dance. He watched me dance. Hips I like coffee, I like tea. I like the boys and the boys like me. Yes, no, maybe so. Yes, no, maybe so ... One day you wake up and they are there. Ready and waiting like a new Buick with the keys in the ignition. Ready to take you where? They're good for holding a baby when you're cooking, Rachel says, turning the jump rope a little quicker. She has no imagination. You need them to dance, says Lucy. If you don't get them you may turn into a man. Nenny says this and she believes it. She is this way because of her age. That's right, I add before Lucy or Rachel can make fun of her. She is stupid alright, but she is my sister. But most important, hips are scientific, I say repeating what Alicia already told me. It's the bones that let you know which skeleton was a man's when it was a man and which a woman's. They bloom like roses, I continue because it's obvious I'm the only one who can speak with any authority; I have science on my side. The bones just one day open. Just like that. One day you might decide to have kids, and then where are you going to put them? Got to have room. Bones got to give. But don't have too many or your behind will spread. That's how it is, says Rachel whose mama is as wide as a boat. |
| 11 |
Aunt Lala said she had found a job for me at the Peter Pan Photo Finishers on North Broadway where she worked, and how old was I, and to show up tomorrow saying I was one year older, and that was that. So the next morning I put on the navy blue dress that made me look older and borrowed money for lunch and bus fare because Aunt Lala said I wouldn't get paid till the next Friday, and I went in and saw the boss of the Peter Pan Photo Finishers on North Broadway where Aunt Lala worked and lied about my age like she told me to and sure enough, I started that same day. In my job I had to wear white gloves. I was supposed to match negatives with their prints, just look at the picture and look for the same one on the negative strip, put it in the envelope, and do the next one. That's all. I didn't know where these envelopes were coming from or where they were going. I just did what I was told. It was real easy, and I guess I wouldn't have minded it except that you got tired after a while and I didn't know if I could sit down or not, and then I started sitting down only when the two ladies next to me did. After a while they started to laugh and came up to me and said I could sit when I wanted to, and I said I knew. When lunchtime came, I was scared to eat alone in the company lunchroom with all those men and ladies looking, so I ate real fast standing in one of the washroom stalls and had lots of time left over, so I went back to work early. But then break time came, and not knowing where else to go, I went into the coatroom because there was a bench there. I guess it was the time for the night shift or middle shift to arrive because a few people came in and punched the time clock, and an older Oriental man said hello and we talked for a while about my just starting, and he said we could be friends and next time to go in the lunchroom and sit with him, and I felt better. He had nice eyes and I didn't feel so nervous anymore. Then he asked if I knew what day it was, and when I said I didn't, he said it was his birthday and would I please give him a birthday kiss. I thought I would because he was so old and just as I was about to put my lips on his cheek, he grabs my face with both hands and kisses me hard on the mouth and doesn't let go. Papa Who Wakes Up Tired in the Dark Your abuelito is dead, Papa says early one morning in my room. Esta muerto, and then as if he just heard the news himself, crumples like a coat and cries, my brave Papa cries. I have never seen my Papa cry and don't know what to do. I know he will have to go away, that he will take a plane to Mexico, all the uncles and aunts will be there, and they will have a black-and-white photo taken in front of the tomb with flowers shaped like spears in a white vase because this is how they send the dead away in that country. Because I am the oldest, my father has told me first, and now it is my turn to tell the others. I will have to explain why we can't play. I will have to tell them to be quiet today. My Papa, his thick hands and thick shoes, who wakes up tired in the dark, who combs his hair with water, drinks his coffee, and is gone before we wake, today is sitting on my bed. And I think if my own Papa died what would I do. I hold my Papa in my arms. I hold and hold and hold him. Born Bad Most likely I will go to hell and most likely I deserve to be there. My mother says I was born on an evil day and prays for me. Lucy and Rachel pray too. For ourselves and for each other ... because of what we did to Aunt Lupe. |
| 12 |
Her name was Guadalupe and she was pretty like my mother. Dark. Good to look at. In her Joan Crawford dress and swimmer's legs. Aunt Lupe of the photographs. But I knew her sick from the disease that would not go, her legs bunched under the yellow sheets, the bones gone limp as worms. The yellow pillow, the yellow smell, the bottles and spoons. Her head thrown back like a thirsty lady. My aunt, the swimmer. Hard to imagine her legs once strong, the bones hard and parting water, clean sharp strokes, not bent and wrinkled like a baby, not drowning under the sticky yellow light. Second-floor rear apartment. The naked light bulb. The high ceilings. The light bulb always burning. I don't know who decides who deserves to go bad. There was no evil in her birth. No wicked curse. One day I believe she was swimming, and the next day she was sick. It might have been the day that gray photograph was taken. It might have been the day she was holding cousin Totchy and baby Frank. It might have been the moment she pointed to the camera for the kids to look and they wouldn't. Maybe the sky didn't look the day she fell down. Maybe God was busy. It could be true she didn't dive right one day and hurt her spine. Or maybe the story that she fell very hard from a high step stool, like Totchy said, is true. But I think diseases have no eyes. They pick with a dizzy finger anyone, just anyone. Like my aunt who happened to be walking down the street one day in her Joan Crawford dress, in her funny felt hat with the black feather, cousin Totchy in one hand, baby Frank in the other. Sometimes you get used to the sick and sometimes the sickness, if it is there too long, gets to seem normal. This is how it was with her, and maybe this is why we chose her. It was a game, that's all. It was the game we played every afternoon ever since that day one of us invented it — I can't remember who — I think it was me. You had to pick somebody. You had to think of someone everybody knew. Someone you could imitate and everyone else would have to guess who it was. It started out with famous people: Wonder Woman, the Beatles, Marilyn Monroe... . But then somebody thought it'd be better if we changed the game a little, if we pretended we were Mr. Benny, or his wife Blanca, or Ruthie, or anybody we knew. I don't know why we picked her. Maybe we were bored that day. Maybe we got tired. We liked my aunt. She listened to our stories. She always asked us to come back. Lucy, me, Rachel. I hated to go there alone. The six blocks to the dark apartment, second-floor rear building where sunlight never came, and what did it matter? My aunt was blind by then. She never saw the dirty dishes in the sink. She couldn't see the ceilings dusty with flies, the ugly maroon walls, the bottles and sticky spoons. I can't forget the smell. Like sticky capsules filled with jelly. My aunt, a little oyster, a little piece of meat on an open shell for us to look at. Hello, hello. As if she had fallen into a well. I took my library books to her house. I read her stories. I liked the book The Waterbabies. She liked it too. I never knew how sick she was until that day I tried to show her one of the pictures in the book, a beautiful color picture of the water babies swimming in the sea. I held the book up to her face. I can't see it, she said, I'm blind. And then I was ashamed. She listened to every book, every poem I read her. One day I read her one of my own. I came very close. I whispered it into the pillow: I want to be like the waves on the sea, like the clouds in the wind, but I'm me. |
| 13 |
One day I'll jump out of my skin. I'll shake the sky like a hundred violins. That's nice. That's very good, she said in her tired voice. You just remember to keep writing, Esperanza. You must keep writing. It will keep you free, and I said yes, but at that time I didn't know what she meant. The day we played the game, we didn't know she was going to die. We pretended with our heads thrown back, our arms limp and useless, dangling like the dead. We laughed the way she did. We talked the way she talked, the way blind people talk without moving their head. We imitated the way you had to lift her head a little so she could drink water, she sucked it up slow out of a green tin cup. The water was warm and tasted like metal. Lucy laughed. Rachel too. We took turns being her. We screamed in the weak voice of a parrot for Totchy to come and wash those dishes. It was easy. We didn't know. She had been dying such a long time, we forgot. Maybe she was ashamed. Maybe she was embarrassed it took so many years. The kids who wanted to be kids instead of washing dishes and ironing their papa's shirts, and the husband who wanted a wife again. And then she died, my aunt who listened to my poems. And then we began to dream the dreams. Elenita, Cards, Palm, Water Elenita, witch woman, wipes the table with a rag because Ernie who is feeding the baby spilled Kool-Aid. She says: Take that crazy baby out of here and drink your Kool-Aid in the living room. Can't you see I'm busy? Ernie takes the baby into the living room where Bugs Bunny is on TV. Good lucky you didn't come yesterday, she says. The planets were all mixed up yesterday. Her TV is color and big and all her pretty furniture made out of red fur like the teddy bears they give away in carnivals. She has them covered with plastic. I think this is on account of the baby. Yes, it's a good thing, I say. But we stay in the kitchen because this is where she works. The top of the refrigerator busy with holy candles, some lit, some not, red and green and blue, a plaster saint and a dusty Palm Sunday cross, and a picture of the voodoo hand taped to the wall. Get the water, she says. I go to the sink and pick the only clean glass there, a beer mug that says the beer that made Milwaukee famous, and fill it up with hot water from the tap, then put the glass of water on the center of the table, the way she taught me. Look in it, do you see anything? But all I see are bubbles. You see anybody's face? Nope, just bubbles, I say. That's okay, and she makes the sign of the cross over the water three times and then begins to cut the cards. They're not like ordinary playing cards, these cards. They're strange, with blond men on horses and crazy baseball bats with thorns. Golden goblets, sad-looking women dressed in old-fashioned dresses, and roses that cry. There is a good Bugs Bunny cartoon on TV. I know, I saw it before and recognize the music and wish I could go sit on the plastic couch with Ernie and the baby, but now my fortune begins. My whole life on that kitchen table: past, present, future. Then she takes my hand and looks into my palm. Closes it. Closes her eyes too. Do you feel it, feel the cold? Yes, I lie, but only a little. Good, she says, los espiritus are here. And begins. This card, the one with the dark man on a dark horse, this means jealousy, and this one, sorrow. Here a pillar of bees and this a mattress of luxury. You will go to a wedding soon and did you lose an anchor of arms, yes, an anchor of arms? |
| 14 |
It's clear that's what that means. What about a house, I say, because that's what I came for. Ah, yes, a home in the heart. I see a home in the heart. Is that it? That's what I see, she says, then gets up because the kids are fighting. Elenita gets up to hit and then hug them. She really does love them, only sometimes they are rude. She comes back and can tell I'm disappointed. She's a witch woman and knows many things. If you got a headache, rub a cold egg across your face. Need to forget an old romance? Take a chicken's foot, tie it with red string, spin it over your head three times, then burn it. Bad spirits keeping you awake? Sleep next to a holy candle for seven days, then on the eighth day, spit. And lots of other stuff. Only now she can tell I'm sad. Baby, I'll look again if you want me to. And she looks again into the cards, palm, water, and says uh-huh. A home in the heart, I was right. Only I don't get it. A new house, a house made of heart. I'll light a candle for you. All this for five dollars I give her. Thank you and goodbye and be careful of the evil eye. Come back again on a Thursday when the stars are stronger. And may the Virgin bless you. And shuts the door. Geraldo No Last Name She met him at a dance. Pretty too, and young. Said he worked in a restaurant, but she can't remember which one. Geraldo. That's all. Green pants and Saturday shirt. Geraldo. That's what he told her. And how was she to know she'd be the last one to see him alive. An accident, don't you know. Hit-and-run. Marin, she goes to all those dances. Uptown. Logan. Embassy. Palmer. Aragon. Fontana. The Manor. She likes to dance. She knows how to do cumbias and salsas and rancheras even. And he was just someone she danced with. Somebody she met that night. That's right. That's the story. That's what she said again and again. Once to the hospital people and twice to the police. No address. No name. Nothing in his pockets. Ain't it a shame. Only Marin can't explain why it mattered, the hours and hours, for somebody she didn't even know. The hospital emergency room. Nobody but an intern working all alone. And maybe if the surgeon would've come, maybe if he hadn't lost so much blood, if the surgeon had only come, they would know who to notify and where. But what difference does it make? He wasn't anything to her. He wasn't her boyfriend or anything like that. Just another brazer who didn't speak English. Just another wetback. You know the kind. The ones who always look ashamed. And what was she doing out at three a. m. anyway? Marin who was sent home with her coat and some aspirin. How does she explain? She met him at a dance. Geraldo in his shiny shirt and green pants. Geraldo going to a dance. What does it matter? They never saw the kitchenettes. They never knew about the two-room flats and sleeping rooms he rented, the weekly money orders sent home, the currency exchange. How could they? His name was Geraldo. And his home is in another country. The ones he left behind are far away, will wonder, shrug, remember. Geraldo — he went north ... we never heard from him again. Edna's Ruthie Ruthie, tall skinny lady with red lipstick and blue babushka, one blue sock and one green because she forgot, is the only grown-up we know who likes to play. She takes her dog Bobo for a walk and laughs all by herself, that Ruthie. She doesn't need anybody to laugh with, she just laughs. She is Edna's daughter, the lady who owns the big building next door, three apartments front and back. |
| 15 |
Earl works nights. His blinds are always closed during the day. Sometimes he comes out and tells us to keep quiet. The little wooden door that has wedged shut the dark for so long opens with a sigh and lets out a breath of mold and dampness, like books that have been left out in the rain. This is the only time we see Earl except for when he comes and goes to work. He has two little black dogs that go everywhere with him. They don't walk like ordinary dogs, but leap and somersault like an apostrophe and comma. At night Nenny and I can hear when Earl comes home from work. First the click and whine of the car door opening, then the scrape of concrete, the excited tinkling of dog tags, followed by the heavy jingling of keys, and finally the moan of the wooden door as it opens and lets loose its sigh of dampness. Earl is a jukebox repairman. He learned his trade in the South, he says. He speaks with a Southern accent, smokes fat cigars and wears a felt hat — winter or summer, hot or cold, don't matter — a felt hat. In his apartment are boxes and boxes of 45 records, moldy and damp like the smell that comes out of his apartment whenever he opens the door. He gives the records away to us — all except the country and western. The word is that Earl is married and has a wife somewhere. Edna says she saw her once when Earl brought her to the apartment. Mama says she is a skinny thing, blond and pale like salamanders that have never seen the sun. But I saw her once too and she's not that way at all. And the boys across the street say she is a tall red-headed lady who wears tight pink pants and green glasses. We never agree on what she looks like, but we do know this. Whenever she arrives, he holds her tight by the crook of the arm. They walk fast into the apartment, lock the door behind them and never stay long. Sire I don't remember when I first noticed him looking at me — Sire. But I knew he was looking. Every time. All the time I walked past his house. Him and his friends sitting on their bikes in front of the house, pitching pennies. They didn't scare me. They did, but I wouldn't let them know. I don't cross the street like other girls. Straight ahead, straight eyes. I walked past. I knew he was looking. I had to prove to me I wasn't scared of nobody's eyes, not even his. I had to look back hard, just once, like he was glass. And I did. I did once. But I looked too long when he rode his bike past me. I looked because I wanted to be brave, straight into the dusty cat fur of his eyes and the bike stopped and he bumped into a parked car, bumped, and I walked fast. It made your blood freeze to have somebody look at you like that. Somebody looked at me. Somebody looked. But his kind, his ways. He is a punk, Papa says, and Mama says not to talk to him. And then his girlfriend came. Lois I heard him call her. She is tiny and pretty and smells like baby's skin. I see her sometimes running to the store for him. And once when she was standing next to me at Mr. Benny's grocery she was barefoot, and I saw her barefoot baby toenails all painted pale pale pink, like little pink seashells, and she smells pink like babies do. She's got big girl hands, and her bones are long like ladies' bones, and she wears makeup too. But she doesn't know how to tie her shoes. I do. Sometimes I hear them laughing late, beer cans and cats and the trees talking to themselves: wait, wait, wait. Sire lets Lois ride his bike around the block, or they take walks together. I watch them. |
| 16 |
She holds his hand, and he stops sometimes to tie her shoes. But Mama says those kinds of girls, those girls are the ones that go into alleys. Lois who can't tie her shoes. Where does he take her? Everything is holding its breath inside me. Everything is waiting to explode like Christmas. I want to be all new and shiny. I want to sit out bad at night, a boy around my neck and the wind under my skirt. Not this way, every evening talking to the trees, leaning out my window, imagining what I can't see. A boy held me once so hard, I swear, I felt the grip and weight of his arms, but it was a dream. Sire. How did you hold her? Was it? Like this? And when you kissed her? Like this? Four Skinny Trees They are the only ones who understand me. I am the only one who understands them. Four skinny trees with skinny necks and pointy elbows like mine. Four who do not belong here but are here. Four raggedy excuses planted by the city. From our room we can hear them, but Nenny just sleeps and doesn't appreciate these things. Their strength is secret. They send ferocious roots beneath the ground. They grow up and they grow down and grab the earth between their hairy toes and bite the sky with violent teeth and never quit their anger. This is how they keep. Let one forget his reason for being, they'd all droop like tulips in a glass, each with their arms around the other. Keep, keep, keep, trees say when I sleep. They teach. When I am too sad and too skinny to keep keeping, when I am a tiny thing against so many bricks, then it is I look at trees. When there is nothing left to look at on this street. Four who grew despite concrete. Four who reach and do not forget to reach. Four whose only reason is to be and be. No Speak English Mamacita is the big mama of the man across the street, third-floor front. Rachel says her name ought to be Mamasota, but I think that's mean. The man saved his money to bring her here. He saved and saved because she was alone with the baby boy in that country. He worked two jobs. He came home late and he left early. Every day. Then one day Mamacita and the baby boy arrived in a yellow taxi. The taxi door opened like a waiter's arm. Out stepped a tiny pink shoe, a foot soft as a rabbit's ear, then the thick ankle, a flutter of hips, fuchsia roses and green perfume. The man had to pull her, the taxicab driver had to push. Push, pull. Push, pull. Poof! All at once she bloomed. Huge, enormous, beautiful to look at, from the salmon-pink feather on the tip of her hat down to the little rosebuds of her toes. I couldn't take my eyes off her tiny shoes. Up, up, up the stairs she went with the baby boy in a blue blanket, the man carrying her suitcases, her lavender hatboxes, a dozen boxes of satin high heels. Then we didn't see her. Somebody said because she's too fat, somebody because of the three flights of stairs, but I believe she doesn't come out because she is afraid to speak English, and maybe this is so since she only knows eight words. She knows to say: He not here for when the landlord comes, No speak English if anybody else comes, and Holy smokes. I don't know where she learned this, but I heard her say it one time and it surprised me. My father says when he came to this country he ate hamandeggs for three months. Breakfast, lunch and dinner. Hamandeggs. That was the only word he knew. He doesn't eat hamandeggs anymore. Whatever her reasons, whether she is fat, or can't climb the stairs, or is afraid of English, she won't come down. |
| 17 |
There is no one to lend you her hairbrush. The stories the boys tell in the coatroom, they're not true. You lean against the schoolyard fence alone with your eyes closed as if no one was watching, as if no one could see you standing there, Sally. What do you think about when you close your eyes like that? And why do you always have to go straight home after school? You become a different Sally. You pull your skirt straight, you rub the blue paint off your eyelids. You don't laugh, Sally. You look at your feet and walk fast to the house you can't come out from. Sally, do you sometimes wish you didn't have to go home? Do you wish your feet would one day keep walking and take you far away from Mango Street, far away and maybe your feet would stop in front of a house, a nice one with flowers and big windows and steps for you to climb up two by two upstairs to where a room is waiting for you. And if you opened the little window latch and gave it a shove, the windows would swing open, all the sky would come in. There'd be no nosy neighbors watching, no motorcycles and cars, no sheets and towels and laundry. Only trees and more trees and plenty of blue sky. And you could laugh, Sally. You could go to sleep and wake up and never have to think who likes and doesn't like you. You could close your eyes and you wouldn't have to worry what people said because you never belonged here anyway and nobody could make you sad and nobody would think you're strange because you like to dream and dream. And no one could yell at you if they saw you out in the dark leaning against a car, leaning against somebody without someone thinking you are bad, without somebody saying it is wrong, without the whole world waiting for you to make a mistake when all you wanted, all you wanted, Sally, was to love and to love and to love and to love, and no one could call that crazy. Minerva Writes Poems Minerva is only a little bit older than me but already she has two kids and a husband who left. Her mother raised her kids alone and it looks like her daughters will go that way too. Minerva cries because her luck is unlucky. Every night and every day. And prays. But when the kids are asleep after she's fed them their pancake dinner, she writes poems on little pieces of paper that she folds over and over and holds in her hands a long time, little pieces of paper that smell like a dime. She lets me read her poems. I let her read mine. She is always sad like a house on fire — always something wrong. She has many troubles, but the big one is her husband who left and keeps leaving. One day she is through and lets him know enough is enough. Out the door he goes. Clothes, records, shoes. Out the window and the door locked. But that night he comes back and sends a big rock through the window. Then he is sorry and she opens the door again. Same story. Next week she comes over black and blue and asks what can she do? Minerva. I don't know which way she'll go. There is nothing I can do. Bums in the Attic I want a house on a hill like the ones with the gardens where Papa works. We go on Sundays, Papa's day off. I used to go. I don't anymore. You don't like to go out with us, Papa says. Getting too old? Getting too stuck-up, says Nenny. I don't tell them I am ashamed — all of us staring out the window like the hungry. I am tired of looking at what we can't have. When we win the lottery ... Mama begins, and then I stop listening. People who live on hills sleep so close to the stars they forget those of us who live too much on earth. |
| 18 |
They don't look down at all except to be content to live on hills. They have nothing to do with last week's garbage or fear of rats. Night comes. Nothing wakes them but the wind. One day I'll own my own house, but I won't forget who I am or where I came from. Passing bums will ask, Can I come in? I'll offer them the attic, ask them to stay, because I know how it is to be without a house. Some days after dinner, guests and I will sit in front of a fire. Floorboards will squeak upstairs. The attic grumble. Rats? they'll ask. Bums, I'll say, and I'll be happy. Beautiful & Cruel I am an ugly daughter. I am the one nobody comes for. Nenny says she won't wait her whole life for a husband to come and get her, that Minerva's sister left her mother's house by having a baby, but she doesn't want to go that way either. She wants things all her own, to pick and choose. Nenny has pretty eyes and it's easy to talk that way if you are pretty. My mother says when I get older my dusty hair will settle and my blouse will learn to stay clean, but I have decided not to grow up tame like the others who lay their necks on the threshold waiting for the ball and chain. In the movies there is always one with red red lips who is beautiful and cruel. She is the one who drives the men crazy and laughs them all away. Her power is her own. She will not give it away. I have begun my own quiet war. Simple. Sure. I am one who leaves the table like a man, without putting back the chair or picking up the plate. A Smart Cookie I could've been somebody, you know? my mother says and sighs. She has lived in this city her whole life. She can speak two languages. She can sing an opera. She knows how to fix a TV. But she doesn't know which subway train to take to get downtown. I hold her hand very tight while we wait for the right train to arrive. She used to draw when she had time. Now she draws with a needle and thread, little knotted rosebuds, tulips made of silk thread. Someday she would like to go to the ballet. Someday she would like to see a play. She borrows opera records from the public library and sings with velvety lungs powerful as morning glories. Today while cooking oatmeal she is Madame Butterfly until she sighs and points the wooden spoon at me. I could've been somebody, you know? Esperanza, you go to school. Study hard. That Madame Butterfly was a fool. She stirs the oatmeal. Look at my comadres. She means Izaura whose husband left and Yolanda whose husband is dead. Got to take care all your own, she says shaking her head. Then out of nowhere: Shame is a bad thing, you know? It keeps you down. You want to know why I quit school? Because I didn't have nice clothes. No clothes, but I had brains. Yup, she says disgusted, stirring again. I was a smart cookie then. What Sally Said He never hits me hard. She said her mama rubs lard on all the places where it hurts. Then at school she'd say she fell. That's where all the blue places come from. That's why her skin is always scarred. But who believes her. A girl that big, a girl who comes in with her pretty face all beaten and black can't be falling off the stairs. He never hits me hard. But Sally doesn't tell about that time he hit her with his hands just like a dog, she said, like if I was an animal. He thinks I'm going to run away like his sisters who made the family ashamed. Just because I'm a daughter, and then she doesn't say. Sally was going to get permission to stay with us a little and one Thursday she came finally with a sack full of clothes and a paper bag of sweetbread her mama sent. |
| 19 |
And would've stayed too except when the dark came her father, whose eyes were little from crying, knocked on the door and said please come back, this is the last time. And she said Daddy and went home. Then we didn't need to worry. Until one day Sally's father catches her talking to a boy and the next day she doesn't come to school. And the next. Until the way Sally tells it, he just went crazy, he just forgot he was her father between the buckle and the belt. You're not my daughter, you're not my daughter. And then he broke into his hands. The Monkey Garden The monkey doesn't live there anymore. The monkey moved — to Kentucky — and took his people with him. And I was glad because I couldn't listen anymore to his wild screaming at night, the twangy yakkety-yak of the people who owned him. The green metal cage, the porcelain tabletop, the family that spoke like guitars. Monkey, family, table. All gone. And it was then we took over the garden we had been afraid to go into when the monkey screamed and showed its yellow teeth. There were sunflowers big as flowers on Mars and thick cockscombs bleeding the deep red fringe of theater curtains. There were dizzy bees and bow-tied fruit flies turning somersaults and humming in the air. Sweet sweet peach trees. Thorn roses and thistle and pears. Weeds like so many squinty-eyed stars and brush that made your ankles itch and itch until you washed with soap and water. There were big green apples hard as knees. And everywhere the sleepy smell of rotting wood, damp earth and dusty hollyhocks thick and perfumy like the blue-blond hair of the dead. Yellow spiders ran when we turned rocks over and pale worms blind and afraid of light rolled over in their sleep. Poke a stick in the sandy soil and a few blue-skinned beetles would appear, an avenue of ants, so many crusty ladybugs. This was a garden, a wonderful thing to look at in the spring. But bit by bit, after the monkey left, the garden began to take over itself. Flowers stopped obeying the little bricks that kept them from growing beyond their paths. Weeds mixed in. Dead cars appeared overnight like mushrooms. First one and then another and then a pale blue pickup with the front windshield missing. Before you knew it, the monkey garden became filled with sleepy cars. Things had a way of disappearing in the garden, as if the garden itself ate them, or, as if with its old-man memory, it put them away and forgot them. Nenny found a dollar and a dead mouse between two rocks in the stone wall where the morning glories climbed, and once when we were playing hide-and-seek, Eddie Vargas laid his head beneath a hibiscus tree and fell asleep there like a Rip Van Winkle until somebody remembered he was in the game and went back to look for him. This, I suppose, was the reason why we went there. Far away from where our mothers could find us. We and a few old dogs who lived inside the empty cars. We made a clubhouse once on the back of that old blue pickup. And besides, we liked to jump from the roof of one car to another and pretend they were giant mushrooms. Somebody started the lie that the monkey garden had been there before anything. We liked to think the garden could hide things for a thousand years. There beneath the roots of soggy flowers were the bones of murdered pirates and dinosaurs, the eye of a unicorn turned to coal. This is where I wanted to die and where I tried one day but not even the monkey garden would have me. It was the last day I would go there. |
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Who was it that said I was getting too old to play the games? Who was it I didn't listen to? I only remember that when the others ran, I wanted to run too, up and down and through the monkey garden, fast as the boys, not like Sally who screamed if she got her stockings muddy. I said, Sally, come on, but she wouldn't. She stayed by the curb talking to Tito and his friends. Play with the kids if you want, she said, I'm staying here. She could be stuck-up like that if she wanted to, so I just left. It was her own fault too. When I got back Sally was pretending to be mad... something about the boys having stolen her keys. Please give them back to me, she said punching the nearest one with a soft fist. They were laughing. She was too. It was a joke I didn't get. I wanted to go back with the other kids who were still jumping on cars, still chasing each other through the garden, but Sally had her own game. One of the boys invented the rules. One of Tito's friends said you can't get the keys back unless you kiss us and Sally pretended to be mad at first but she said yes. It was that simple. I don't know why, but something inside me wanted to throw a stick. Something wanted to say no when I watched Sally going into the garden with Tito's buddies all grinning. It was just a kiss, that's all. A kiss for each one. So what, she said. Only how come I felt angry inside. Like something wasn't right. Sally went behind that old blue pickup to kiss the boys and get her keys back, and I ran up three flights of stairs to where Tito lived. His mother was ironing shirts. She was sprinkling water on them from an empty pop bottle and smoking a cigarette. Your son and his friends stole Sally's keys and now they won't give them back unless she kisses them and right now they're making her kiss them, I said all out of breath from the three flights of stairs. Those kids, she said, not looking up from her ironing. That's all? What do you want me to do, she said, call the cops? And kept on ironing. I looked at her a long time, but couldn't think of anything to say, and ran back down the three flights to the garden where Sally needed to be saved. I took three big sticks and a brick and figured this was enough. But when I got there Sally said go home. Those boys said leave us alone. I felt stupid with my brick. They all looked at me as if I was the one that was crazy and made me feel ashamed. And then I don't know why but I had to run away. I had to hide myself at the other end of the garden, in the jungle part, under a tree that wouldn't mind if I lay down and cried a long time. I closed my eyes like tight stars so that I wouldn't, but I did. My face felt hot. Everything inside hiccupped. I read somewhere in India there are priests who can will their heart to stop beating. I wanted to will my blood to stop, my heart to quit its pumping. I wanted to be dead, to turn into the rain, my eyes melt into the ground like two black snails. I wished and wished. I closed my eyes and willed it, but when I got up my dress was green and I had a headache. I looked at my feet in their white socks and ugly round shoes. They seemed far away. They didn't seem to be my feet anymore. And the garden that had been such a good place to play didn't seem mine either. Red Clowns Sally, you lied. It wasn't what you said at all. What he did. Where he touched me. I didn't want it, Sally. The way they said it, the way it's supposed to be, all the storybooks and movies, why did you lie to me? I was waiting by the red clowns. |
| 21 |
I was standing by the tilt-a-whirl where you said. And anyway I don't like carnivals. I went to be with you because you laugh on the tilt-a-whirl, you throw your head back and laugh. I hold your change, wave, count how many times you go by. Those boys that look at you because you're pretty. I like to be with you, Sally. You're my friend. But that big boy, where did he take you? I waited such a long time. I waited by the red clowns, just like you said, but you never came, you never came for me. Sally Sally a hundred times. Why didn't you hear me when I called? Why didn't you tell them to leave me alone? The one who grabbed me by the arm, he wouldn't let me go. He said I love you, Spanish girl, I love you, and pressed his sour mouth to mine. Sally, make him stop. I couldn't make them go away. I couldn't do anything but cry. I don't remember. It was dark. I don't remember. I don't remember. Please don't make me tell it all. Why did you leave me all alone? I waited my whole life. You're a liar. They all lied. All the books and magazines, everything that told it wrong. Only his dirty fingernails against my skin, only his sour smell again. The moon that watched. The tilt-a-whirl. The red clowns laughing their thick-tongue laugh. Then the colors began to whirl. Sky tipped. Their high black gym shoes ran. Sally, you lied, you lied. He wouldn't let me go. He said I love you, I love you, Spanish girl. Linoleum Roses Sally got married like we knew she would, young and not ready but married just the same. She met a marshmallow salesman at a school bazaar, and she married him in another state where it's legal to get married before eighth grade. She has her husband and her house now, her pillowcases and her plates. She says she is in love, but I think she did it to escape. Sally says she likes being married because now she gets to buy her own things when her husband gives her money. She is happy, except sometimes her husband gets angry and once he broke the door where his foot went through, though most days he is okay. Except he won't let her talk on the telephone. And he doesn't let her look out the window. And he doesn't like her friends, so nobody gets to visit her unless he is working. She sits at home because she is afraid to go outside without his permission. She looks at all the things they own: the towels and the toaster, the alarm clock and the drapes. She likes looking at the walls, at how neatly their corners meet, the linoleum roses on the floor, the ceiling smooth as wedding cake. The Three Sisters They came with the wind that blows in August, thin as a spider web and barely noticed. Three who did not seem to be related to anything but the moon. One with laughter like tin and one with eyes of a cat and one with hands like porcelain. The aunts, the three sisters, las comadres, they said. The baby died. Lucy and Rachel's sister. One night a dog cried, and the next day a yellow bird flew in through an open window. Before the week was over, the baby's fever was worse. Then Jesus came and took the baby with him far away. That's what their mother said. Then the visitors came ... in and out of the little house. It was hard to keep the floors clean. Anybody who had ever wondered what color the walls were came and came to look at that little thumb of a human in a box like candy. I had never seen the dead before, not for real, not in somebody's living room for people to kiss and bless themselves and light a candle for. Not in a house. It seemed strange. |
| 22 |
Other than that, he seemed in good enough shape for a man of his years. He was a tall, one might even say an elongated, man, of the sort one encounters in the gaunt paintings of El Greco and the narrow sculptures of Alberto Giacometti, and although such men are (for the most part) of a melancholy disposition, he was blessed with a cheerful smile and the charming manner of a gentleman of the old school, both valuable assets for a commercial traveler, which, in these his golden years, he became for a lengthy time. In addition, his name itself was cheerful: It was Smile. Mr Ismail Smile, Sales Executive, Smile Pharmaceuticals Inc., Atlanta, GA, it said on his business card. As a salesman he had always been proud that his name was the same as the name of the corporation whose representative he was. The family name. It lent him a certain gravitas, or so he believed. This was not, however, the name by which he chose to be known during his last, most foolish adventure. (The unusual surname Smile, by the by, was the Americanized version of Ismail, so the old traveling salesman was really Mr. Ismail Ismail, or, alternatively, Mr. Smile Smile. He was a brown man in America longing for a brown woman, but he did not see his story in racial terms. He had become, one might say, detached from his skin. This was one of the many things his quest would put in question, and change.) The more he thought about the woman he professed to love, the clearer it became to him that so magnificent a personage would not simply keel over with joy at the first declaration of amour fou from a total stranger. (He wasn't as crazy as that.) Therefore it would be necessary for him to prove himself worthy of her, and the provision of such proofs would henceforth be his only concern. Yes! He would amply demonstrate his worth! It would be necessary, as he began his quest, to keep the object of his affections fully informed of his doings, and so he proposed to begin a correspondence with her, a sequence of letters which would reveal his sincerity, the depth of his affections, and the lengths to which he was ready to go to gain her hand. It was at this point in his reflections that a kind of shyness overtook him. Were he to reveal to her how humble his station in life truly was, she might toss his letter in the trash with a pretty laugh and be done with him forever. Were he to disclose his age or give her details of his appearance, she might recoil from the information with a mixture of amusement and horror. Were he to offer her his name, the admittedly august name of Smile, a name with big money attached to it, she might, in the grip of a bad mood, alert the authorities, and to be hunted down like a dog at the behest of the object of his adorations would break his heart, and he would surely die. Therefore he would for the moment keep his true identity a secret, and would reveal it only when his letters, and the deeds they described, had softened her attitude toward him and made her receptive to his advances. How would he know when that moment arrived? That was a question to be answered later. Right now the important thing was to begin. And one day the proper name to use, the best of all identities to assume, came to him in that moment between waking and sleeping when the imagined world behind our eyelids can drip its magic into the world we see when we open our eyes. That morning he seemed to see himself in a dream addressing himself awake. "Look at yourself," his half-sleeping self murmured to his half-waking self. |
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"So tall, so skinny, so ancient, and yet you can't grow anything better than the straggliest of beards, as if you were a teenager with spots. And yes, admit it, maybe a little cracked in the head, one of those head-in-the-clouds fellows who mistakes cumulus, or cumulonimbus, or even cirrostratus formations for solid ground. Just think back to your favorite piece of music when you were a boy! I know, these days you prefer the warblings you hear on American Idol or The Voice. But back in the day, you liked what your artistic father liked, you adopted his musical taste as your own. Do you remember his favorite record?" Whereupon the half-dream-Smile produced, with a flourish, a vinyl LP which half-awake-Smile recognized at once. It was a recording of the opera Don Quichotte by Jules Massenet. "Only loosely based on the great masterpiece of Cervantes, isn't it," mused the phantom. "And as for you, it seems you're a little loosely based yourself." It was settled. He climbed out of bed in his striped pajamas — more quickly than was his won't — and actually clapped his hands. Yes! This would be the pseudonym he would use in his love letters. He would be her ingenious gentleman, Quichotte. He would be Lancelot to her Guinevere, and carry her away to Joyous Gard. He would be — to quote Chaucer's Canterbury Tales — her verray, parfit, gentil knyght. It was the Age of Anything-Can-Happen, he reminded himself. He had heard many people say that on TV and on the outrE video clips floating in cyberspace, which added a further, new-technology depth to his addiction. There were no rules anymore. And in the Age of Anything-Can-Happen, well, anything could happen. Old friends could become new enemies and traditional enemies could be your new besties or even lovers. It was no longer possible to predict the weather, or the likelihood of war, or the outcome of elections. A woman might fall in love with a piglet, or a man start living with an owl. A beauty might fall asleep and, when kissed, wake up speaking a different language and in that new language reveal a completely altered character. A flood might drown your city. A tornado might carry your house to a faraway land where, upon landing, it would squash a witch. Criminals could become kings and kings be unmasked as criminals. A man might discover that the woman he lived with was his father's illegitimate child. A whole nation might jump off a cliff like swarming lemmings. Men who played presidents on TV could become presidents. The water might run out. A woman might bear a baby who was found to be a revenant god. Words could lose their meanings and acquire new ones. The world might end, as at least one prominent scientist-entrepreneur had begun repeatedly to predict. An evil scent would hang over the ending. And a TV star might miraculously return the love of a foolish old coot, giving him an unlikely romantic triumph which would redeem a long, small life, bestowing upon it, at the last, the radiance of majesty. Quichotte's great decision was made at the Red Roof Inn in Gallup, New Mexico (pop. 21,678). The traveling salesman looked with desire and envy upon Gallup's historic El Rancho Hotel, which in the heyday of the Western had hosted many of the movie stars filming in the area, from John Wayne and Humphrey Bogart to Katharine Hepburn and Mae West. The El Rancho was out of his price range, and so he drove by it to the humbler Red Roof, which suited him just fine. He was a man who had learned to accept his lot in life without complaint. |
| 24 |
He knew that without these sacred objects placed in their proper places his life would lack equilibrium and he might surrender to panic, inertia, and finally death. These objects were life itself. As long as they were with him, the road held no terrors. It was his special place. He was lucky that the Interior Event had not reduced him to complete idiocy, like a stumbling, damaged fellow he had once seen who was incapable of anything more demanding than gathering fallen leaves in a park. He had worked as a commercial traveler in pharmaceuticals for many years, and continued to do so in spite of his postretirement age and his incipiently unstable, unpredictably capricious, increasingly erratic, and mulishly obsessional cast of mind, because of the kindliness of the aforementioned wealthy cousin, R. K. Smile, M. D., a successful entrepreneur, who, after seeing a production of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman on TV, had refused to fire his relative, fearing that to do so would hasten the old fellow's demise.* Dr. Smile's pharmaceutical business, always prosperous, had recently catapulted him to billionaire status because of his Georgia laboratories' perfection of a sublingual spray application of the pain medication fentanyl. Spraying the powerful opioid under the tongue brought faster relief to terminal cancer patients suffering from what the medical community euphemistically called breakthrough pain. Breakthrough pain was unbearable pain. The new spray made it bearable, at least for an hour. The instant success of this spray, patented and brand-named as InSmile, allowed Dr. R. K. Smile the luxury of carrying his elderly poor relation without worrying unduly about his productivity. Strangely, as it happened, Quichotte's descent toward lunacy — of which one definition is the inability to separate what-is-so from what-is-not-so — for a time did not materially affect his ability to perform his professional duties. In fact, his condition proved to be a positive boon, helping him to present, with absolute sincerity, the shaky case for many of his company's offerings, believing wholeheartedly in their advertised efficacy and superiority over all their rivals, even though the advertising campaigns were decidedly slanted, and in many cases the products were no better than many similar brands, and in some cases decidedly inferior to the market in general. Because of his blurry uncertainty about the location of the truth-lie frontier, and his personal charm and pleasant manner, he inspired confidence and came across as the perfect promoter of his cousin's wares. The day inevitably came, however, as the full extent of his cousin's delusions became known to him, when Dr. Smile finally put him out to pasture. He gave Quichotte the news in the kindest possible way, flying out personally from General Aviation at Hartsfield-Jackson Airport in his new G650ER to meet Quichotte in Flagstaff, Arizona (pop. 70,320), after receiving a worried call from the director of West Flagstaff Family Medicine, D. F. Winona, D. O., M. B. A., F. A. C. O. F. P., to whom Quichotte had improbably confided during their appointment that he was thinking of escorting the delectable Miss Salma R to the next Vanity Fair Oscars party, after which their clandestine romance would finally become public knowledge. Quichotte and Dr. Smile met at the Relax Inn on Historic Route 66, just four miles from Pulliam Airport. They were an odd couple, Quichotte tall, slow, leg-dragging, and Dr. |
| 25 |
He knew himself to be a man with a true capacity for adoration, an area in which most of his fellow men, being uncivilized ignorant brutes, were sorely deficient. It had therefore been painful to him that almost all the women he pursued had, quite quickly after his pursuit began, done their best to run away. And he had quarreled with the Human Trampoline. Whoever had done what to whom, they had not parted on friendly terms. But maybe he could make amends, if he could remember his sins. This he would try to do. But the "romantic" associations — those ladies were gone for good, and were they even real? Now, as he dedicated himself to the quest for the hand of Miss Salma R, it seemed to him that a small corner of the veil obscuring the past lifted up and reminded him of the consequences of lost love. He saw them pass before his inward eye, the horticulturist, the advertising executive, the public relations dazzler, the antipodean adventuress, the American liar, the English rose, the ruthless Asian beauty. No, it was impossible even to think about them again. They were gone and he was well rid of them and he could not have his heart broken by them anymore. What had happened had happened — or, he was almost sure it had happened — and it was right to bury them deeper than the deepest memory, to place their stories on the funeral pyres of his hopes, to seal them up in the pyramid of his regret; to forget, to forget, to forget. Yes, he had forgotten them, placing them in a lead-lined casket of forgetting far beneath the bed of the remembering ocean within him, an unmarked sarcophagus impenetrable even by the X-ray vision of a Superman, and along with them he had buried the man he had been then, and the things he had done, the failures, the failures, the failures. He had eschewed all thoughts of love for what seemed like an eternity, until Miss Salma R reawakened feelings and desires in his breast which he had thought he had suppressed or even destroyed along with his destroyed liaisons — if indeed they were real, from the real world, and not echoes of the greater reality of women on the screen? — whereupon he recognized a grand passion as it was born in him one last time, and he ceased being an ordinary nobody and became, at long last, the great man he had it within him to be, which was to say, Quichotte. He was childless, and his line would end with him, unless he asked for and received a miracle. Maybe he could find a wishing well. He clung to this idea: that if he acted according to the occult principles of the Wish, then miracles were possible. Such was his tenuous grasp on sanity that he had become a student of the arts of wishing; as well as wishing wells, he pursued wishing trees, wishing stones, and, with more and more seriousness, wishing stars. After he completed his investigations, both in dusty library books specializing in astro-arcana and on a number of admittedly dubious websites, several of which triggered an ominous dialog box reading Warning: this site may damage your computer, he grew convinced that meteor showers were the best things to wish upon, and 11:11 P. M. the best time, and that he would need a quantity of wishbones. There were seven meteor showers a year, in January, April, May, August, October, November, and December: the Quadrantids, Lyrids, Eta Aquarids, Perseids, Orionids, Leonids, and Geminids. Over the years he had hunted them down one by one, to catch a falling star with a good timepiece on his wrist and a generous supply of chicken bones in his pocket. |
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He could be determined when he wanted to be. He had already, in years past, chased down the Quadrantids near Muncie, Indiana (pop. 68,625), the Lyrids in Monument Valley, and the Eta Aquarids in the Rincon Mountain District of the Sonoran Desert in Arizona. So far these expeditions had failed to bear fruit. Never mind! he told himself. One day soon, Salma R would bear him three, no! five, or why not? seven magnificent sons and daughters. He was sure of it. But, having the impatience of his gray hairs, he decided to continue his pursuits of meteor showers, for which he had more time now that his cousin had relieved him of his duties. The heavenly bodies must have been impressed by his persistence, because that August, on a hot night in the desert beyond Santa Fe, the Perseids granted his wish at the Devils Tower near Moorcroft, Wyoming (pop. 1,063). At 11:11 P. M. precisely he snapped seven wishbones while fire rained down from the skies from the direction of the constellation Perseus — Perseus the warrior, Zeus and DanaE's son, the Gorgonslayer! — and the miracle occurred. The longed-for son, who looked to be about fifteen years old, materialized in the Cruze's passenger seat. The Age of Anything-Can-Happen! How overjoyed he was, Quichotte exclaimed inwardly, how grateful he was to live in such a time! The magic child manifested himself in black-and-white, his natural colors desaturated in the manner that has become fashionable in much modern cinema. Perhaps, Quichotte surmised, the boy was astrologically related to the monochrome inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego. Or perhaps he had been seized long ago and now returned by the aliens in the mothership hiding in the sky above the meteors illuminating the Devils Tower, after many years during which he had been studied, drained of color by their experiments, and somehow failed to age. Certainly, as Quichotte came to know the boy, he seemed much older than his years. He strongly resembled the boy in the photographs Quichotte had saved of his own childhood far away across the world. In one of those pictures, Quichotte aged nine or ten was seen in a white kurta-pajama wearing his father's sunglasses. In another an older Quichotte, about the same age as the apparition, had a faint mustache on his upper lip and was standing in a garden with his promiscuous Alsatian bitch. Quichotte when young had been a little short, a little chubby compared to other boys his age. Then, in late adolescence, as if an invisible divine hand had grabbed him and squeezed him in the middle like a tube of toothpaste, he shot up to his present height and became as skinny as a shadow. This monochrome boy was evidently at the post-toothpaste-tube-squeezing phase, as long and narrow a fellow as his father, and he was wearing the sunglasses Quichotte had worn all those years ago. He was not wearing a kurta-pajama, however, but was dressed like a good all-American boy, in a checked lumberjack shirt and denim jeans with turn-ups. After a moment he began singing an old advertising jingle. His voice was cracking. A new Adam's apple bobbed in his throat. We love baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet, baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet... A broad smile broke out across Quichotte's long face. It was as if his miraculous son, born out of his father's dream like Athena bursting fully formed from the head of Zeus, was singing a song of arrival, a love song to his father. The traveler joyously raised his own voice and sang along with his boy. |
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Then in a surprising change of direction he conceived the idea of telling the story of the lunatic Quichotte and his doomed pursuit of the gorgeous Miss Salma R, in a book radically unlike any other he had ever attempted. No sooner had he conceived this idea than he became afraid of it. He could not at first fathom how such an eccentric notion had lodged in his brain, and why it insisted so vehemently on being written that he had no choice but to start work. Then as he thought about it further, he began to understand that in some fashion that he did not as yet fully grasp, Quichotte — the loner in search of love, the loser-nobody who believed himself capable of winning the heart of a queen — had been with him all his life, a shadow-self he had glimpsed from time to time in the corner of his eye, but had not had the courage to confront. Instead he had written his commonplace fictions of the secret world, disguised as someone else. He now saw that this had been a way of avoiding the story that revealed itself to him in the mirror every day, even if only in the corner of his eye. His next thought was even more alarming: To make sense of the life of the strange man whose latter days he was setting out to chronicle, he would have to reveal himself alongside his subject, for the tale and the teller were yoked together by race, place, generation, and circumstance. Perhaps this bizarre story was a metamorphosed version of his own. Quichotte himself might say, if he were aware of Brother (which was impossible, naturally), that in fact the writer's tale was the altered version of his history, rather than the other way around, and might have argued that his "imaginary" life added up to the more authentic narrative of the two. So, in brief: They were both Indian-American men, one real, one fictional, both born long ago in what was then Bombay, in neighboring apartment blocks, both real. Their parents would have known each other (except that one set of parents was imaginary), and would perhaps have played golf and badminton together at the Willingdon Club and sipped sunset cocktails at the Bombay Gym (both real-world locations). They were about the same age, at which almost everyone is an orphan, and their generation, having made a royal mess of the planet, was on its way out. They both suffered from physical complaints: Brother's aching back, Quichotte's dragging leg. They met friends (real, fictional) and acquaintances (fictional, real) in the obituary columns with increasing frequency. There would not be less of all this in the days to come. And there were deeper echoes. If Quichotte had been driven mad by his desire for the people behind the TV screen, then he, Brother, had perhaps also been deranged by proximity to another veiled reality, in which nothing was reliable, treachery was everywhere, identities were slippery and mutable, democracy was corruptible, the two-faced double agent and the three-faced triple agent were everyday monsters, love placed the loved one in danger, allies could not be trusted, information was as often fool's gold as golden, and patriotism was a virtue for which there would never be any recognition or reward. Brother was agitated about many things. Like Quichotte, he was alone and childless, except that he had once had a son. This child had vanished long ago like a ghost, and must be a young man by now, and Brother thought about him every day and was dismayed by his absence. His wife was also long gone, and his financial situation bordered on the precarious. |
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Amitabh Bachchan bought emerald necklaces for his wife, Jaya, at Zayvar, Mario Miranda and R. K. Laxman offered Ma their original cartoons in return for her chocolate cakes, and "Busybee," Behram Contractor, the chronicler of everyday life for le tout Bombay, loitered around both stores watching the cream of the city come and go, listening for the latest gossip. Ma and Pa's home, too, was full of the artistic and famous. Creative people of all sorts passed through their storied drawing room. The great playback singers Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle were there in person (though never at the same time!). Also cricketers — Vinoo Mankad and Pankaj Roy, the heroes who in January 1956 shared a world-record opening partnership of 413 runs against New Zealand in Madras! The poet Nissim Ezekiel came to call — the bard of Bombay, the island city he deemed "unsuitable for song as well as sense." Even the great painter Aurora Zogoiby herself came over, along with that no-talent buffoon hanger-on of hers, Vasco Miranda, but that's another story. And, it being Bombay, also movie people, inevitably. Talent, talent everywhere, lubricated by whisky-sodas and lust. There were political arguments, aesthetic disputes, sexual hijinks, and martinis. And towering over it all like the still-mostly-in-the-future skyscrapers that would arrive soon enough to change the city forever, were tall Ma and even taller Pa, twirling together slowly, sipping their drinks, she so graceful, he so handsome, and both of them deeply in love. And because of such intensive and prolonged childhood overexposure to creative genius of all types, Brother too, like his incipiently crazy Quichotte, fell victim to a rare form of mental disorder — his first, paranoia being the second — in the grip of which the boundary between art and life became blurred and permeable, so that at times he was incapable of distinguishing where one ended and the other began, and, even worse, was possessed of the fool's conviction that the imaginings of creative people could spill over beyond the boundaries of the works themselves, that they possessed the power to enter and transform and even improve the real world. Most of his fellow humans, past and present, treated this proposition with scorn and continued down their personal paths in the pragmatic, ideological, religious, self-serving, venal spheres in which, for the most part, the real life of the world was lived. Brother, however — thanks to his parents' circle — was incurable. Even though he afterwards grew up to earn a living in the lowbrow world of genre fiction, his respect for those with higher foreheads remained undimmed. Many years later, the writing of Quichotte would be his belated, end-of-life attempt to cross the frontier separating low culture from high. He stopped the film. That wasn't true. That was a fairy tale. That culture- and love-blessed boho infancy. Parents like his were mysteries to their children in those days. They didn't spend much time with their offspring, they employed domestic staff to do that, and they didn't tell the little creatures much about their lives or answer any how or why questions, and only a few inquiries that began what, when, or where. The how and why questions were the big ones, and on those matters their lips were sealed. They married young and had two children: Brother and Sister, whom Pa nicknamed Tweety Pie because she was the canary of the family, the only one who could sing. Then — this was where the fairy tale broke down — when Brother was ten years old and Sister was five, Ma and Pa separated. |
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Ma was the one to move out, and after that there was a second apartment in the children's lives, in Soona Mahal (real name), on the corner of Marine Drive and Churchgate (now officially Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose Road and Veer Nariman Road, or VN Road). It was rumored that both Ma and Pa had been multiply unfaithful to each other — oh, the lives of the bohemians, those wild, crazy folks! — but the children never saw any Other Woman in Pa's bedroom, nor, at Ma's new place, where Brother and Sister mostly lived during the Separation, did they meet any Other Man. If the parents had committed or were committing the bruited indiscretions, they did so in the most discreet fashion. Pa continued to do his work at Zayvar Brother, and Ma was a few steps away at Cake & Antiques, and life went on as normal, in spite of the crackle of things unsaid, audible to all who visited either location, in spite of the hum of the little wall-hung electric fans. And then, almost ten years later, just like that!, they reunited, and the Soona Mahal apartment went poof! even though it had come to feel like home to both children, and then they were back in Noor Ville, and the parents resumed their martini-hour dancing, as if the long years of the Separation were the fantasy, and not this reinvented idyll. Further corrections: By the time of his parents' reunion Brother was twenty and at university in Cambridge, so he wasn't around to watch them begin to dance again. And neither Soona Mahal nor Noor Ville felt like home anymore to a young man intoxicated by the sixties in the West. Meanwhile Sister, at fifteen, stayed in Bombay. At first, the siblings tried to preserve some sort of relationship by playing long-distance chess with each other like good smart Indian children, sending postcards with their moves written in the old descriptive notation, P-K4, P-K4, P-Q4, PxP. But eventually a rift cracked open between the two of them. He was older but she was better than him, and he, a bad loser, stopped wanting to play. Meanwhile Sister, stuck at home watching the nightly parental twirling, grew resentful, understanding that in spite of her academic brilliance Ma and Pa were not inclined to lavish a foreign education on her. Feeling (quite rightly) like the less-loved child, she saw Brother (quite rightly) as the unjustly favored son, and her rage at her parents expanded like an exploding star to engulf her sibling as well. The rift deepened and by now had lasted a lifetime. They had fought, stopped speaking, lived in different cities — he in New York, she in London (after she fought her way out of the cage of her family) — and no longer met. Decades passed. They were trapped in the drama from which their parents had escaped. Pa and Ma performed The Grand Reconciliation until the end of their lives. That was their happy-ending script. Sister and Brother, silently, and far apart, enacted The Death of Love. Seventeen years ago, their mother had died peacefully in her sleep after a last day in which she drove her car, visited friends, and dined out. She came home from her perfect day, lay down, and flew away. Sister had caught a plane home immediately, but by the time her flight landed Pa was dead as well, unable to live without Ma. There was an empty bottle of sleeping pills on his nightstand by the bed in which he had been slain by her unbearable absence. Sister called Brother in New York to tell him about the double tragedy. After that there was only one further telephone conversation, a conversation which killed whatever sibling affection remained. |
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Then, nothing. An empty cloud filled the space where family should have been. Brother hadn't met Sister's fashionista daughter, Daughter; she hadn't met his dropout son, Son. Son was his lost child. His only child, who had broken up with him, too, who had broken up with both his parents, and disappeared. (And now here was Quichotte, his invention, inventing a child for himself and bringing him to life. There wasn't much doubt about where that idea had originated.) There were times when Brother thought of himself as an only child as well. No doubt Sister often felt the same way. But only children don't have, in the shadows of their souls, a deep wound where once there had been a younger sister's kiss, an older brother's safe embrace. Only children don't, in their old age, have to listen to their inner voice asking accusatory questions, how can you treat your sister like this, your own sister, don't you want to fix things, don't you see that you should. So he had been thinking about her, about everyone he had lost but mainly about her, weighing the benefits of putting down the burden of their quarrel and making peace before it was too late against the risk of triggering one of her nuclear rages, and unsure if he possessed the courage to make some sort of approach. If he was honest with himself he knew it was up to him to make the first move, because she had a deeper grievance than he did. In a quarrel that had lasted for decades neither party could claim to be innocent. But the simple truth was that, in plain language, he had done her wrong. * This is partly because his relationship with his estranged sibling, Sister, will be central to his story; but also for another reason, which will be given on this page. Miss Salma R, the exceptional woman (and total stranger) to whom Quichotte had declared his undying devotion, came from a dynasty of adored ladies. Think of her family this way: Granny R was Greta Garbo, a great actress who for unexplained reasons abruptly retreated from the world, declaring that she disliked people and open spaces and wanted to be alone. Mummy R was Marilyn Monroe, very sexy and very fragile, and she stole the sportsman prince (a real honest-to-goodness prince) whom Grace Kelly wanted to marry and that became Daddy, who left Mummy for an English photographer smack in the middle of her last movie shoot, and after that Mummy entered a long decline and was eventually found dead in her bedroom, fatally echoing Marilyn's destiny with bottles of pills lying open and empty on her nightstand. And Miss Salma R? She did not inherit Granny's acting genius or Mummy's super sexiness, everyone agreed on that, but her genes did grant her considerable beauty, ease in front of the cameras, as well as violent mood swings and a fondness for recreational and mind-soothing painkillers. As a result, unsurprisingly, she ended up in Hollywood. That was her Bombay history briefly translated into American. The official version could be summarized in the following few words: "She had led a charmed life. She came from fame and money and made even more money and achieved even greater fame on her own, becoming the first Indian actress to make it big (very big) in America, to cross what might be called the -wood bridge from Bolly- to Holly-, and then transcended even Hollywood to become a brand, a television talk-show superstar and titanic cultural influencer, in America and India too." The truth was more complex. So then, a longer version: Yes, she was Indian movie royalty, a third-generation member of a family of female legends. |
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It occurred to nobody to attach any blame to the prince, who had deserted two women and who, in time, would desert the photographer as well and return to his deeply cushioned and intricately brocaded princely seat to pass the remainder of his days in a happy opium haze. The closest he came to being criticized was when Filmfare magazine ran a photo-story about him titled "Someday My Prince Will Run." But even in this story the (female) writer took the attitude that boys would be boys, and what man would not follow in the Raj's wood-leg-real-leg footsteps if he only could? However, Miss Anisa R was devastated by her very public humiliation. In the words of Nargis Kumari, who was happy to gloat publicly over her former friend's distress, Anisa had "been shown the power of Muslim kismet and of Hindu karma, both of which exact bitter poetic justice upon traitors and wrongdoers." The words hit their mark. Miss Anisa R gave up her acting career and focused on doing charity work with impoverished widows and deserted women as an act of atonement for the crime of stealing a man from a woman who loved him and for the even more shameful error of being incapable of holding on to her husband. She let herself go physically: That has to be said. She became — there is not a polite way of putting this — blowsy. She sagged; for all her good works, her body became the emblem and manifestation of her grief. She wasn't a good mother — too self-absorbed for that — but Miss Salma R grew up perfectly anyway. She was a studious, upright, composed, idealistic, blameless young girl, and as her mother entered her last decline toward second childhood, it was the daughter who played the adult. More than one person reported seeing Salma following her drunk mother around at glitzy fundraising events for her women's charities, literally taking glasses of Scotch whisky out of Anisa's hands and pouring the contents into plant pots. "Without the daughter's care," people noted, "the mother would never have lasted as long as she did." Even that daughterly protectiveness proved not to be enough. They had moved into the Juhu mansion after Dina's death and maybe that was a bad move. Babajan still haunted the house, and now it was Anisa who ignored him as her mother had done before her. Miss Salma R had been fond of her grandfather as a child, and at first she tried to mend fences between her mother and Babajan, but it was too late. The darkness that had swallowed Dina R came for Anisa as well. She saved countless women from the gutter but the lower depths claimed her in the end. Miss Salma R was the one who found her mother in what had formerly been Dina's bedroom, cold and overdosed with the lights on in the same bed in which her mother had died, similarly illuminated. There was a cockroach crawling up her dangling arm. Miss Salma R, by this time a nineteen-year-old who had just starred in her first film, did not cry out. She turned and left the room, leaving the lights on, carefully made the phone calls that needed to be made, went to her own room and packed a bag, drove away, and never set foot in that house of death again, leaving to others the task of cataloguing and selling the furniture, the furnishings, the movie memorabilia, and the personal effects — the gowns, the love letters, the photograph albums in which her mother's life lay embalmed. She wanted none of it, and listened to nobody who told her that she was in the grip of traumatic grief and would regret her decisions later. |
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It fell to her to comfort America's anguish, to calm its rages, to celebrate its loves. She had a special soft spot for the stories of recent immigrants and showcased them, from time to time, in a special feature called "Immigreat!" Her audiences were the letters made flesh. She caressed their pets, ate their cuisine, congratulated them on their successful gender reassignments and exam results, praised their gods with them, and introduced them to the celebrities who came smiling and telling funny stories through all her studio days. The letters showed her that the material success of America had impoverished the spiritual lives of Americans, but she also saw that that success was by no means evenly distributed across the broad populous nation, and the absence of material well-being was spiritually impoverishing also. She was a hugger and a kisser and in spite of her youth she quickly came to be thought of as wise, and the America of the letters was a place in constant search of a wise woman to listen to, always looking for the new voice that would make its lives feel rich once again. Times were hard all over, and she was the bringer of joy. The avalanche of the letters gave her a belief in her own bounty. There was enough love and care in her to encompass them all. Her arms would reach out to soothe the totality of America's pain. Her bosom would be America's pillow. The letters allowed her to become the most that she had it in her to be. (She had her own demons to deal with, of course, but when she was preoccupied with the demons of America, her own seemed to recede, at least for a while. About her demons there will be more to say presently.) The two categories of letters which were unlike all the others were the love letters and the letters of hate. Of these, the poison-pen letters were more straightforward and bothered her less. Crazy people, religious nuts, envious people, people who made her the incarnation of their discontents, racists, misogynists, the usual crew. She passed them on to her security team and put them out of her mind. Her distant lovers were more upsetting. Many of them were actually in love with themselves and gave her to understand that they were doing her a kindness by bestowing their love upon her. Others simply assumed their approach would be met with a favorable response. And then there were those who begged. When photographs were included, it was usually an unwise move. When the pictures were pornographic, it was especially unwise. The cascades of boasts, assumptions, and hopeless pleas depressed her because of the image of herself she saw reflected in these obsessive gazes. Was she so shallow that these nonswimmers thought they could paddle their feet in her waters? Was she so two-dimensional that they thought they could fold her up and put her in their pockets? She wanted to know how she was seen by others, but this aspect of the knowledge she acquired gave her a heavy heart. Some of the love letters were still addressed to her Five Eyes character, Salma C. These were the letters whose authors seemed to have sunk most deeply into fantasy, identifying themselves as secret, double, or triple agents, or would-be members of the secret world, offering, as their qualifications, details of their patriotism, their skills with guns, and their ability to pass unnoticed in a crowd. She should love them, the Five Eyes guys (and women) said, because who could understand her the way they could? "We are the same," these lovers declared. |
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"I am just like you." The messages arriving via her Twitter feed were mostly pseudonymous, the work of pimply fifteen- or forty-five-year-old male virgins living with their parents in Woop Woop, Arkansas, or Podunk, Illinois. All of them were on or over the edge of illiteracy. America no longer taught its lovers how to spell. Nor did it teach joined-up writing. Cursive script was becoming obsolete, like typewriters and carbon paper. These lovers who wrote in block capitals would not be able to read the love letters of earlier generations. Cursive might as well be Martian, or Greek. For such correspondents Miss Salma R, whose stock-in-trade was empathy, was guilty of feeling just a scintilla of contempt. Very, very occasionally, a letter arrived which was not like the others, like an odd-one-out category on Sesame Street. When this happened, Miss Salma R (perhaps only for a moment) gave the thing her full attention. The first letter from the person signing himself "Quichotte" was one such missive. The thing that leapt out at Miss Salma R immediately was the beautiful penmanship. The pen that wrote these words was a thick-nibbed instrument, a pen to respect, which allowed the author to create perfect copperplate lettering, as if he were making a wedding announcement or inviting her to a debutante ball. The text, too, was unusual. It was one of the rare love letters that were neither bombastic nor wheedling, and it made no assumptions about her. My dear Miss Salma R, With this note I introduce myself to you. With this hand I declare my love. In time to come as I move ever closer you will come to see that I am true and that you must be mine. You are my Grail and this is my quest. I bow my head before your beauty. I am and will ever remain your knight. Sent by a smile, Quichotte The paper on which this message was written in such a fine hand was the vulgar antithesis of the writing, a cheap motel-room scrap with the address torn off. From these few clues Miss Salma R deduced that this was an older man, a man from the age of handwriting, the owner of a good fountain pen, who had fallen upon hard times and, being lonely, watched too much TV. From his choice of alias she further deduced an education, which in all probability, judging by the phrasing, had not been an American schooling. She even went so far as to surmise that the writer had this in common with herself: that English had not been his mother tongue, not something heard in the cradle but something learned afterwards. This was suggested by both the syntax (American English was far more informal in its construction) and the spelling (which was improbably perfect). The only puzzlement was the sign-off, sent by a smile, with its imperfect command of English grammar. It would have both gratified and shocked our fool of a protagonist to know that these seventy-two words, seventy-three including his pseudonymous signature, which he believed preserved around him the cloak of invisibility within which, for the moment, he preferred to remain concealed, had revealed so much about him. She had noticed him and was focused on his letter: that was good. But it was as if she saw him standing naked and scrawny before her: not so good. At any rate, he had no knowledge of any of this, and so we may leave him for now in his state of innocence, hoping for favor and believing himself unknown. We can also protect him from the knowledge of what Miss Salma R said next. "Keep this where we can get at it," she said to the intern on whose desk the Quichotte letter had landed. |
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Regarding Mariska, I see here a gateway to the dark material. On that Pinterest page of his memory there's a comment pinned. His mother passed when he was three years old, just like Mariska when her mom Jayne Mansfield died. But not in a horrible car accident. Cancer is all. I can say things like that, it was only cancer, because being a figment such as I am I assume I'm immune to sickness. Therefore I snap my fingers at cancer. I bite my thumb at it. Still, tough for Mariska age three and Jayne age thirty-four. On U. S. Highway 90 just west of the Rigolets Bridge, and future-Olivia was even in the fucking car. That's tough. I see that. And for him too. He was in the hospital room just like future-Olivia in the back seat of the car. Or not just like. But similar. When his mother died he was holding her hand. Three years old and the moment she passed he dropped that hand and ran out of the room crying, That's not her. I see him. He's a boy on a hill in Bombay. What do I know about this city? Less than nothing except what he sees. His mother's death, his father the painter weeping, himself stunned into dry-eyed silence. And then he loses his home as well as his mother, there's no more Bombay, the painter father can't bear to be home anymore, he goes west, so now there's Paris. The boy is homesick. He's literally sick. He has heart palpitations, arrhythmia. He doesn't want Paris. He wants his mother. He wants, what's the word. Kulfi. From a stall near where is it. Chowpatty. He wants to play in the Old Woman's Shoe in, what's its name, Kamala Nehru Park. Those places are gone. He's what now, French? In an apartment near the Luxembourg Gardens listening to Don Quichotte on his father's record player? He doesn't feel French. His father can't handle the sadness — can't handle his son's sadness or his own — and sends him to boarding school in England. I see him. He's a boy from the tropics trapped in the cold Midlands. He's looking at racist words scrawled on the wall of his little study room, wogs go home. He's looking at the perpetrator who's standing there with the crayon in his hand, caught in the act. Then an act of violence. He grabs the little perp, grabs him by the collar of his shirt and the waistband of his pants, swings him off his feet, and battering-rams him headfirst into his racist words. K. O. He thinks he's killed the little shit but he hasn't, no such luck. He wakes up and skulks off, he won't do that again in a hurry. But there are others to take the little perp's place. So: he's capable of sudden violence. Or he was, once. I see him. He's looking at his carefully written history essay. Somebody came in when he wasn't here and ripped it into tiny pieces and left them neatly piled up on his prep board. I see him writing letters to his father, letters filled with fictions. I scored thirty-seven runs today and took three catches in the slips. He can't play cricket but in his letters he's a star. Here's what he never tells his father: There are three crimes you can commit at an English boarding school. If you're foreign, that's one. Being clever is two. And being bad at sports, that's three strikes, you're out. You can get away with two of the three but not all three. If you're foreign and clever but you're a fine cricketer, if you can score thirty-seven runs and take three catches in the slips, you're okay. If you're bad at sports and clever but you're not foreign, you're forgiven. If you're foreign and bad at sports but you're not that smart, you're excused, you'll do. |
| 35 |
She had begun to suffer from acute levels of anxiety and at such times she took refuge in a suite at the Mandarin Oriental hotel on Columbus Circle and made a phone call to Anderson Thayer. "Come here, Rumpelstiltskin," she said, and he came, and she lay in his arms, wondering if this was the right time to fire him, or maybe she'd wait until tomorrow. If she fired him now he'd get angry, and when he got angry he might take hold of his left foot and rip himself in two, right up the middle. He was the man who knew too much. He had helped her cover up a scandal that could have derailed her career. There had been a third man after the two husbands. This man — she never used his real name, not even in the most private moments, agreeing always to call him by the fake name he told her he preferred, "Gary Reynolds" — was a political lobbyist and covert operator, an improbable partner for her, a man who claimed to have undertaken black ops projects for successive Republican administrations and to have destabilized and even overthrown three separate governments in Africa. "Gary Reynolds" was like the world of her old TV series come to life. Maybe that was why she fell for him, in spite of his politics. He was a glamorous, dangerous, exciting fiction become fact. She didn't even care that he told her he "identified as promiscuous." She didn't need him around every day, but when he showed up, he was real fun. The Mandarin Oriental suite was their pleasure dome. Yosemite Sam knew about his rival, and Salma could see it irked him, but he said nothing and did his job. Then one night she went to the hotel to meet "Gary," who had texted her to say he was already there waiting for her, and when she got there he was in bed, naked, and really very dead, indisputably dead, the most dead a dead person could be. On this occasion the suite was booked in his fake name, as it always was for their assignations, backed up by a "Gary Reynolds" credit card, but there were members of staff who recognized her, who knew she was the one who came to see him there. She stayed calm, held it together, just about, and called Anderson Thayer. Rumpelstiltskin, I need you. He came over and she kissed him, once, properly. I need you to fix this, she said. Don't tell me how, just fix it so it stays fixed. I don't want to know about it. I just want it done. Do this for me. He fixed it. Nothing connecting Salma to the death at the Mandarin ever became public. "Gary Reynolds" was buried at Mount Zion Cemetery in Queens beneath a stone bearing his real name, which there is no need to record here, and at once it was as if he had been erased from history. She began to feel a great sense of relief. The scandal had passed her by, like the thunderstorms that skirted Manhattan and did their worst to New Jersey. This was when she first thought of firing Anderson Thayer. The fact that he literally knew where the body was buried, so that firing him from her bed as well as his job could have catastrophic consequences, made it necessary to find a way to do it. Nobody was allowed to have that kind of power over her. She would not permit it. She thought of Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith's memory-eraser sticks, their neuralyzers, in the Men in Black movies. She needed one of those. Or some real-life equivalent. She looked into the subject and found that researchers at UC Davis had successfully erased memories from the brains of mice by using beams of light, just as the neuralyzers had in the movies. |
| 36 |
Then they were there, the human beings, on the higher ground above the water, looking down at the baleful mastodons, some in suits, others not, and their weapons were aimed, and Quichotte's dart gun was raised along with the others, and Sancho suddenly understood that they were somehow being tested, who knew by whom or why, and he cried out to Quichotte, "Don't shoot!" At which point all hell broke loose, the mastodons saw that they were under attack and charged, and the humans of Berenger began to fire their dart guns, panickily, some in the air, some in the direction of the mastodons, and in every other direction as well, and they were yelling and running, and the mastodons were charging, the ones in the green suits as well as the ones on all fours, and Quichotte and Sancho, rooted to the spot, found themselves in a kind of no-man's-land between the charging tuskers and the screaming humans, and there somehow was Mr. JonEsco pointing at them and laughing an insane laugh, and this is it, Sancho thought, looks like it all ends right here, and then a sort of cloud or fog descended suddenly over the scene, and when it dispersed the battle of Berenger had vanished, as had Berenger itself, and they were back in the Cruze turning off the turnpike, and Quichotte was saying slash had just said that "we ought to be fresh and perky for our entrance into the great city where Destiny lies." The fog dispersed quickly and there was a sign pointing to the town of Weehawken, New Jersey (pop. 12,554, reflecting a decline of seven percent from the 13,501 counted in the 2000 census), and the mastodon-benighted town of Berenger, New Jersey, was nowhere to be seen, not then, not later, never. Quichotte somehow managed to guide the car down the exit ramp and then pulled over onto the hard shoulder, perspiring and panting. Sancho, wide-eyed, uncomprehending, shook in the seat beside him. "What just happened to us?" Sancho finally asked. Quichotte shook his head. "Now that we have passed through the veil," he said finally, in a weak voice, "I surmise that visions and other phantasmagoria are to be expected." Quichotte, driving the Cruze out of the Lincoln Tunnel into Manhattan, felt like a snail coming out of its shell. Here was bustle and thrum, hustle and flow, everything he had run from, had spent the better part of his life recoiling from, concealing himself in the heart of the country, leading a small life among other small lives. And now he was back on the main stage, on which the headliner acts performed, he was at the high rollers' table, betting the farm on love. "The fifth valley," he said quietly, and Sancho looked at him for elucidation, but for the moment he said no more. The city (pop. 8,623,000) greeted them with a sudden autumn storm: thunder that said I see you, and who do you think you are?, lightning that said I will fry the flesh off your bodies and your skeletons will dance to my tune, rain that said I will wash you away like the rats on the sidewalk and the bugs in the gutters, and like all the other fools who came here on quests in search of glory, salvation, or love. They took shelter in the Blue Yorker hotel, which stood conveniently just a couple of blocks from the tunnel exit, $103 including parking, excellent value, no ID demanded, no questions asked, cash money required per night in advance, and only when they entered their Oriental Delightsthemed room did they understand that they were in one of the city's numerous no-tell motels, with six free porno stations on the TV. |
| 37 |
And then within twenty-four hours he'll step on some invisible land mine and the monster will come out of her, and she'll yell at him, scream abuse at him, and tell him to get out and never darken her doorstep again, and he'll end up broken into pieces in the gutter outside her building. He's afraid of her half-sisterly half-love. She's a cancer survivor, he did hear that, breast cancer, around ten years ago, double mastectomy, looks like she beat it, she has been in full remission for a long time. He's frightened of seeing the marks of her life on her face and of her seeing the marks of his life on his. After their father died they were briefly close. She called him Smile-Smile, he called her H. T. or Trampoline. They shared an interest in good food and they went out dining together. But there would be fights. At the end of all the warmth and laughter something he said, some innuendo she thought she heard in his voice, something that hadn't been there at all, would get her goat and she would start shouting. In public places, yes. It shocked him and made him retreat. So there were fewer dinners together, and then none. And at one of them he had done the unforgivable thing. Did you hit her? I asked him. Is that it? You hit her across the face with an open hand and a trickle of blood came down from her ear, and she spent the rest of her life campaigning against violent men? No. The memory came out of him with difficulty. The chronology was a particular problem. There were parts of their story that were lost to him now. He had accused her of having swindled him out of his inheritance. That was it. She had been the one dealing with lawyers on probate issues after their father's death, and he told her he knew that she had taken far more than her share. He went further and accused her of falsifying or even forging the will. He threatened her with public denunciation, a press conference. What he couldn't explain, because of the holes in his memory which were like rifts in the universe, areas of nonexistence in the middle of existence, was why he had done it, and he had done it, he thought he remembered, years after the event. She had retaliated against his threats, sending him a lawyer's letter saying that he should be in no doubt that she would do everything in her power to defend her good name. She pointed out that he had signed off on their father's will, and there were legal documents in the public record which proved his acceptance of it. His accusation was a major defamation, and if he made it public she would sue him for every penny he possessed. It was a letter designed to scare him into silence and it succeeded. They stopped talking and since then years had passed and both of them had gone through many changes: her sainthood, his increasingly isolated personality, her public persona, his private slide toward what he's become, which I prefer not to put into words right now. But whoa, this is what I said to him. Inheritance? You have an actual inheritance? Yes. All this time, you've actually had — what — a lot of money in the bank? Some money, yes. But we still end up sharing a room in the Blue Yorker motel? That's fucked up. This was our dialogue. He tells me for the one millionth time that he's going through these valleys of purification so that he can "merit the love of the Beloved," and that extravagance and love of material things is the opposite of the Way. And I say, would it be too much of a fucking extravagance for me to get my own fucking room? |
| 38 |
At the new subway station, giant mosaic portraits of artists and musicians — Kara Walker, Philip Glass, Cecily Brown, Lou Reed, Chuck Close — stared at him, judging him and finding him wanting. He would never be canonic. He was no longer even admissible into the canon of good fathers. Bad writer, bad father. Two strikes. He went down below the earth and took the Q downtown. And so, now, Sancho. Brother hadn't expected an imaginary child to show up on the page, but Sancho had brought himself into being, and insisted on remaining. Brother's own Son had dematerialized and ceased to exist by an act of will, for his parents, at least. Quichotte, contrariwise, had made a son appear through the force of his desire and by the kindness of the stars. If I could make Son reappear by praying to meteor showers, Brother thought, I'd be at every meteor shower in America. But that would require Ex-Wife to be there, too, as she had been way back when. He understood some of what he was doing, what material his unconscious was throwing up, transmuted, and splattering all over his pages. "The Human Trampoline"? Really? If Sister ever read what he was writing, she probably wouldn't like that. She would probably be disturbed, too, by the fact that Quichotte's financial complaints against the Trampoline were an echo of his own accusations against her. And then this sweet-easy reconciliation between Quichotte and H. T. on the phone, that's all it took?, as Sancho asked Quichotte disbelievingly. Well, if only, Brother thought. I'm on the same side as Sancho here. Real life isn't as easy as that. But he saw why it came out that way on the page. Like Sancho himself, H. T.'s welcome was born out of need, her own need as well as Quichotte's. Salma was all fiction. These days the only women in his life were ones he made up in his head. Or, yes, admit it, as with Quichotte, sometimes women he saw on a screen — in his own case, more often at the movies than on television or one of the streaming services. Fantasy women. The real thing seemed now well beyond his reach. And Dr. Smile? Well, Brother was a writer who believed in doing his research. Sadly, there were many real-life candidates who could fill the crooked doctor's boots. And, yes, his prescriptions too. If you wanted to say that the bizarre story he was telling, unlike any story he had ever told, had deep roots in personal necessity and pain, then yes, he would concede the point. But the old fool? He resisted the idea that Quichotte was just his Author with a pasteboard helmet on his head and his great-grandfather's rusted sword in his hand. Quichotte was somebody he had made up with a nod (okay, more than a nod) to the great Spaniard who had made him up first. Granted: his creation and he were approximately the same age, they had near-identical old roots, uprooted roots, not only in the same city but in the same neighborhood of that city, and their parents' lives paralleled each other, so much so that he, Brother, on some days had difficulty remembering which history was his own and which Quichotte's. Their families often blurred together in his mind. And yet he insisted: no, he is not I, he is a thing I have made in order to tell the tale I want to tell. Brother — to be clear about this — watched relatively little TV. He was a member of the last cinema generation. On TV, he watched the news (as little as possible, it being presently close to unbearable), and in the baseball season he watched the Yankees' games, and sometimes, when he was able to stay up that late, he watched the late-night comedy shows. |
| 39 |
That was more or less it. TV had ruined America's thinking processes as it had ruined Quichotte's. He had no intention of allowing it to ruin his mind as well. So, no, he insisted, not I. However: if he was so certain of the divide between character and Author, why had he so often been afraid that his spy novels had attracted the interest of real spies who were now spying on him? Why had he seen shadows in the shadows, lurking, shadowing him? It was an irrational fear (but then, fear is irrational). He neither knew nor had he leaked any official secrets, he reminded himself. He was not a player in the game. To believe otherwise was vanity. His paranoia was a form of narcissism. He needed to let it go, especially while he was absorbed by this, the most peculiar of all his stories, which for some reason was making him smile happily at his computer screen, allowing him to forsake all thoughts of giving up his chosen profession. Sometimes the story being told was wiser than the teller. He was learning, for example, that just as a real son could become unreal, so also an imaginary child could become an actual one, while, moving in the opposite direction, a whole, real country could turn into a "reality"-like unreality. He was also getting up his courage and planning a trip to London. Maybe peacemaking would work out for him as it seemed to be working out for Quichotte. The olive branch would readily be accepted and they would have each other once again. Yes, replied the more cynical voice in his head, and maybe pigs would fly. But he found himself feeling optimistic. Very well, he thought, London. It was a long time since he had crossed the ocean. He would have to buy a new carry-on bag. He would need some advice about which airline to use. Such were Brother's more or less cheerful thoughts when he returned to his apartment in Kips Bay from an evening stroll along Second Avenue, holding a paper bag containing a six-pack of Corona Light, and dreaming, as he often did, about moving to Tribeca, perhaps into a loft conversion in the Gould Industries building, one hundred years old and formerly a printing house and steel wool manufactory, which stood at the corner of Greenwich and Beach with the arrogance of its double affluence, the history of past industrial successes within its walls yoked to the two-thousand-dollars-per-square-foot eminence of its desirable present, and which was his fairy-tale residence of choice. When in Tribeca he always tried to walk past it even though it made him feel down at heel. He shook off the fantasy and turned his key in his door, to be greeted in his darkened apartment by the bright light from the illuminated iMac screen, which he had left in Flurry screensaver mode, and which was password-protected, but which had somehow been opened. By the light of his hacked desktop he then perceived, seated in the Aeron office chair at the computer station, a large Japanese-American gentleman, who was probably six foot three, six foot four inches in his socks, Brother estimated, and his weight might be what? Two hundred and sixty, two hundred and seventy pounds. The Japanese-American gentleman was wearing an expensive dark blue silk suit with a pale blue silk pocket square, a white shirt with a high thread count, a red HermEs tie in which a small golden cat was chasing a smaller golden wind-up mouse, and a small button badge on his left lapel bearing a miniature image of the Great Seal of the United States. There was writing on the button badge which was too small to read. |
| 40 |
This eccentricity was popular in their circle, but word of it reached ears in the American embassy in Delhi, which caused foreheads in that embassy to frown and heads in that embassy to be scratched, and as a result, one fine afternoon, there arrived at the gate of the crumbling old Parsi mansion, asking to speak with the owner slash residents, a Japanese-American gentleman in a blue silk suit, an imposing figure of a man, perhaps six foot three or six foot four in height, and weighing, what?, two hundred and sixty, two hundred and seventy pounds. He introduced himself to the two photographers as Trip Mizoguchi, and said that the ambassador would be grateful if they agreed to answer a few questions; which, instantly understanding that they were in the presence of U. S. intelligence, they immediately agreed to do. They had purchased the cockpit of a decommissioned old 747 and installed it in these premises, was that information correct? It was. They had further purchased computer programs and ancillary equipment to create an advanced flight simulation system, was that information correct? It was. They utilized these materials purely for the amusement of themselves and their associates, was that information correct? It was. One such session was scheduled for that very evening, was that so? It was. Would there be any objection to himself, Trip Mizoguchi, being present at that session? There would not. He would be most welcome. Did they understand that airplanes had been flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City several years previously, and that therefore this elaborate and costly piece of eccentric private amusement might strike certain persons as highly suspicious, and if, in fact, it were to be found to be nefarious in intent, certain persons might wish to put a damn great fist right into the middle of it? Very reasonable. Yes, they perfectly well understood. After Mr. Trip Mizoguchi left the premises, promising to return at the appointed hour that evening, the two photographers, whose mobiles, it should be admitted, were being listened in on, telephoned the forty most beautiful fashion models in Mumbai and said, please come over tonight, there's a person we would like you to charm. When Trip Mizoguchi returned, there was music playing, and drinks were flowing, and the forty most beautiful fashion models in Mumbai were telling him how much they liked a man of such imposing size, how much they liked his suit, his pocket square, his HermEs tie, his square jaw, his smile. At the end of the evening, Trip Mizoguchi thumped the two photographers on their backs, saying, "You guys sure know how to throw a party. Let me know the next time you're having one of these affairs. I'll come down from Delhi to be here. And don't worry about anything. I can see you gentlemen are on the up-and-up. You'll have no difficulty from us." With that, he took his leave, and neither the two photographers nor the forty most beautiful fashion models in Mumbai noticed that at one point in the evening Trip Mizoguchi had briefly been in conversation with one of the male guests, an unimpressive, tall, skinny, nerdy, bespectacled fellow, a recent arrival in Mumbai whom the two photographers had befriended at a nightclub and invited along so that he could make some friends. What was the young fellow's name? The two photographers had trouble remembering. It was like the name of a famous artist. Picabia, something like that. But maybe young Picabia hadn't had a very enjoyable evening, and maybe Trip Mizoguchi got transferred out of India. |
| 41 |
There was a sort of explosion between his ears. He lost his balance, fell forward onto the floor, and blacked out. When consciousness returned — a moment or an age later, he couldn't tell — it occurred to him that he was not dead. At some point after that realization, he also understood that he could not move. His cellphone was on the nightstand and so was the landline phone he was old-fashioned enough to have kept, but he was on the floor facing away from them. So he was helpless. It took him two days to turn around and drag himself to the nightstand. For another whole day and night he tried to strike the table in such a way that one of phones fell off within his reach. On the fourth day he got hold of his cellphone and began to try to make a call. "Who did he call?" Sancho wanted to know. "He called me," the Trampoline said. "Who else would he call?" The call finally went through and she answered it but he was unable to speak. He lay there on the bedroom floor with the phone by his ear while her voice shouted Hello. Understanding that something was wrong, she had come quickly to his building, found the super, had the front door opened, found him on the floor, called the emergency services. He survived. He was a lucky man. This was America, and a stroke required long and careful treatment, and he was covered, because he had recently applied for and won a teaching position at a journalism school downtown, a tenure-track professorship that came with excellent health insurance. He endured a long period of rehabilitation, and after perhaps two years he was back in something like full working order, though his speech had slowed and he dragged his right leg. But the man who emerged from the Interior Event was not the same person as before. For a time he suffered some expected aftereffects. He cried at random moments, without apparent cause. He suffered from stress, depression, anxiety. But beneath these alterations lay a deeper change. There were deep gashes in his memory and those did not mend. He became less gregarious, more silent, much more withdrawn. Also, the journalist, the professor: he was gone. Physically, he had clearly made a miraculous recovery. The lasting damage was not to his body but to his character. He did not return to the teaching position that had given him the insurance coverage he had needed. He distanced himself from old and new colleagues, new and old friends, and withdrew into himself, retreating so far, so deep, that nobody could follow him. For a long time he hardly spoke, and watched TV all day, sitting upright on the edge of his bed at home with his hands folded in his lap. This was when he began to speak in TV references, and his grasp on reality loosened. It also became clear that he no longer felt at home in the big city. The multiplicity, the everything of everything, the roar of narratives, the endless transformation, the myth factory lost in the myth of itself: it unsettled him. The absences in his mind needed to be soothed by absenting himself from his previous life, and by television, being absorbed by which was another kind of absenting. The day he told the Trampoline that he needed to leave town — that he had reached out to their cousin Dr. Smile in the pharma world and asked if he could work for him as a traveling salesman somewhere far from New York — was also the day on which he first made the money accusation. The third unforgivable thing. That he accused her of stealing his money was bad enough. That he did it after her solicitude during the past two years was worse. |
| 42 |
And in spite of that there had been times — so many times! — when she had told herself, Yes! You can do the impossible, you can forgive the unforgivable, only let him ask, let him come to my door and bow his head and say, at last, after so long, after the years of blindness which were caused by my stupidity, I recognize the wrongs I did, I feel the pain you felt at their injustice, I see the truth, and the truth is that I have been guilty of arseholery, and so, at your door, with head bowed low, this arsehole asks to be forgiven. That was all he had to say and do. And now here he was doing and saying it, but he had left it so late, he had been so stupid for so long, that her rage could not be quenched. He should hang up and go away, take his voice out of her ear, let the silence between them be resumed, for she was accustomed to that silence and it was too late for peace. — No. — That was not how she had meant to end. — He should call her again tomorrow. There was no more to be said today. Words to that effect. And after the tirade, she was spent. "I have to go," she said faintly, and hung up. Brother had the impression that she had used up every ounce of her strength — her remaining strength — and had been brought to the point of collapse. He sat quietly with his thoughts for a long time after the end of the phone call. He tried not to allow the Shadow to become real. But he was becoming more and more certain that she was very sick. There were no calls for a few days following the explosion. When she finally did call him she was calmer and quieter. She asked him more questions about his writing and he found himself willingly doing what he never did, which was, to talk about a work in progress. He was not a particularly superstitious man, but he did have this one superstition: don't let the work come out of your mouth or it will never come out through your fingers. But he answered Sister's questions willingly enough, and was encouraged by her interest in what he had to say. He talked about wanting to take on the destructive, mind-numbing junk culture of his time just as Cervantes had gone to war with the junk culture of his own age. He said he was trying also to write about impossible, obsessional love, father-son relationships, sibling quarrels, and yes, unforgivable things; about Indian immigrants, racism toward them, crooks among them; about cyber-spies, science fiction, the intertwining of fictional and "real" realities, the death of the author, the end of the world. He told her he wanted to incorporate elements of the parodic, and of satire and pastiche. Nothing very ambitious, then, she said. And it's about opioid addiction, too, he added. That was when her defenses dropped. When he described to her his research into the American opioid epidemic and the scams associated with it, he felt her attention intensify, and when he talked about his character Dr. Smile, the devious fentanyl spray entrepreneur, and his unscrupulous willingness to allow his product to get into the hands of people who didn't need it, or not for medical reasons, he had her full attention. By the time he finished, she had made a decision. "I have something to tell you about my condition," she said, and in a flash of clarity he remembered his encounter with the man who had called himself Lance Makioka, among other names. "Your estranged lady overseas," Makioka had said. "How much do you know about her present condition?" And when Brother had asked him what he meant, he had backed away from the usage. |
| 43 |
Crowds spilled everywhere with fear in their eyes. Maybe the last New Year's. Nobody looked at anyone, everyone was shouting, but these were soliloquies. A city of Hamlets howling their anguish at the traitorous skies. And yes, broken windows, upturned cars. She felt as if she were in one of those Will Smith movies in which Manhattan was destroyed. Hollywood destroyed Manhattan regularly. It was a perverted expression of love. Her thoughts were all over the place. Where was Anderson. How could he leave her now. Where was Hoke. Why in the midst of the apocalypse was she going to meet a fentanyl pusher in the park. Why was she going to meet her stalker without anyone to take care of her in case he, in case he, what? He was a hundred years old and harmless. His face had a certain charm and there was education in his voice. Why was she talking to herself like this, she must have lost her mind like everyone else. He was a person to be careful of. Of whom to be careful. She had taken her bipolarity meds but she could feel the upswing toward hysteria in her blood. Her mother had given her many presents. A one-legged father who vanished. This bipolar disorder which she had to fight every day. And alcoholism which she had sublimated into drugs. One drug in particular. One version of that drug. The spray that went under your tongue, below language and therefore below argument and disorder, and brought you peace. Thank you, my mother. My life is your fault. If anything happens to me today, I blame you. Things started crumbling for me a while ago. I felt that. Okay, the overdose was stupid. I'm lucky to be here, lucky to be functional, lucky to be walking to Central Park up literally Mad Ave, but the network totally didn't have my back. If they put their people on it they could have squashed the story, made it much smaller than it was, just a minor health issue, but they let it blow up as big as the sky. I've been outspoken on the show, I get that, in these days anyone who gets even a little political has a target on their back, and a brown person, a brown woman? I had enemies I guess. I should have seen it coming. Instead I OD'd and put the knife to stab me with in their hands. Maybe I should go home. I miss Bombay. But the Bombay I miss isn't there to go home to anymore. This is who we are. We sail away from the place we love and then because we aren't there to love it people go with axes and burning torches and smash and burn and then we say, Oh, too sad. But we abandoned it, left it to our barbarian successors to destroy. Can I blame my mother for that too? Why not. What's a dead mother for. I can't look up. Up there, what is that. Like a colossus with a huge blaster blew a hole in the air. You look at it, you want to die. This can't be fixed. I don't believe there's anyone in DC or Canaveral who knows what the fuck to do about this. Is anyone even at their desks or is everyone just running up and down in the street the way people are here, charging around Dupont Circle and up and down the Mall and up and down Pennsylvania Avenue going aaaaaaaaa. And in the Oval Office maybe some oval charging. Aaaaaaaaa. That's all we've got. Oval charging. That's what the human race comes down to after all these years. Shakespeare Newton Einstein Gandhi Mandela Obama Oprah and in the end it's just an impotent scream. Aaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaa aaaaaaaa. Yes, Salma, I hear myself, yes I do. I know I sound high and wild and this part isn't much better, talking to myself as if I'm someone else. |
| 44 |
If that was the plan, it worked. Almost immediately upon occupying the country, the legendary Soviet Fortieth Army found itself neck deep in an unexpectedly vicious guerrilla war that would keep its forces entangled in Afghanistan for the next nine years. Before the Soviet invasion, Afghanistan was riven by so many intransigent political and tribal factions that the nation had been for all intents and purposes ungovernable. In reflexive opposition to the Soviet occupation, virtually the entire country spontaneously united — a degree of cohesion no modern Afghan leader had ever come close to achieving. This newly unified opposition was characterized by extraordinary violence. The mujahideen seldom took prisoners in their skirmishes with the invaders. They made a habit of mutilating the bodies of the Soviets they killed in creatively gruesome ways in order to instill terror in those sent to recover the bodies. When the mujahideen did take prisoners, according to Soviet survivors, the infidel soldiers were often gang-raped and tortured. The Afghans quickly figured out that fighting the Soviets by conventional means was a recipe for certain defeat. Instead of confronting Soviet forces directly with large numbers of fighters, the mujahideen adopted the classic stratagems of insurgent warfare, employing small bands of ten or fifteen men to ambush the enemy and then vanish back into the landscape before the Soviets could launch counterattacks. Soviet soldiers began to refer to the mujahideen as dukhi, Russian for "ghosts." The Afghans took brilliant advantage of the mountainous terrain to stage devastating ambushes from the high ground as Soviet convoys moved through the confines of the valley bottoms. The Soviet cause wasn't helped by a policy designated as "Limited Contingent": Moscow decided to cap the number of Fortieth Army troops in Afghanistan at 115,000, despite the fact that before the invasion Soviet generals had warned that as many as 650,000 soldiers would be needed to secure the country.* The pitiless style of guerrilla combat waged by the Afghans had an unnerving effect on the Soviets sent to fight them. Morale plummeted, especially as the conflict dragged on year after year. Because opium and hashish were readily available everywhere, drug addiction among the Soviet conscripts was rife. Their numbers were further ravaged by malaria, dysentery, hepatitis, tetanus, and meningitis. Although there were never more than 120,000 Soviet troops in Afghanistan at any given time, a total of 642,000 soldiers served there throughout the course of the war — 470,000 of whom were debilitated by disease, addicted to heroin, wounded in battle, or killed. The tenacity and brutality of the mujahideen prompted the Soviets to adopt ruthless tactics of their own. As they came to realize that it was much easier to kill unarmed civilians than to hunt down the fearsome and elusive mujahideen, the Soviets increasingly focused their attacks on the rural tribespeople who sometimes harbored combatants but didn't shoot back, rather than assaulting the mujahideen directly. Jet aircraft bombed whole valleys with napalm, laying waste to farmland, orchards, and settlements. Helicopter gunships not only targeted villagers but massacred their herds of livestock as well. These calculated acts of genocide went virtually unnoticed outside of Afghanistan. The shift toward scorched-earth tactics intensified after Konstantin Chernenko became the Soviet general secretary in February 1984 and initiated a campaign of high-altitude carpet bombing. |
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Thanks to the serenity of the setting and the proximity of so much open space, New Almaden still feels like it's at a distant remove from the hyperthyroidal sprawl of greater San Jose, even though the latter begins less than two miles down the valley. The hills immediately west of the Tillman abode are honeycombed with mine shafts that once yielded a bounty of mercury ore. It was the most valuable mine in California during the latter half of the nineteenth century, but the diggings were shut down in 1975, after which the site was designated a forty-two-hundred-acre recreational area and thirty-five miles of hiking trails were built across its sun-parched ridges. Mary Lydanne Tillman — known as Dannie to her friends and close acquaintances — spent countless hours walking these trails with Pat on her back when he was a baby. In her book, Boots on the Ground by Dusk: My Tribute to Pat Tillman, Dannie acknowledged that her eldest son "was not a cuddly infant." Animated and adventurous right out of the womb, Pat started walking at eight and a half months, and when he was awake he was constantly in motion. The Tillmans owned a television, but the walls of the Alamitos canyon restricted reception to a single channel, and sometimes not even that, so Pat and his younger brothers, Kevin and Richard, almost never watched TV as children. Instead, they spent most of their free time playing outdoors, scrambling up the ravines and outcrops of the Almaden Quicksilver County Park, where they acquired a lasting appreciation of untamed landscapes. When the boys had to be indoors, they engaged in clamorous discussions about current events, history, and politics with their parents and each other. Almost no subject was off-limits. Encouraged to think critically and be skeptical of conventional wisdom, Pat learned to trust in himself and be unafraid to buck the herd. From the time he was two years old, Pat was a nonstop talker, yakking all the time, and this verbosity — his insatiable appetite for spirited dialogue — would, like his confidence and the immutability of his will, turn out to be one of his signature traits. When Pat was in middle school, according to Boots on the Ground by Dusk, he was "conscientious about learning and generally well-behaved in class," but Dannie regularly received calls from administrators concerned about Pat's roughhousing between classes: "He was getting referrals for chasing people, wrestling in the quad, climbing on the bleachers, and talking while walking to assembly." He was a loud, happy, rambunctious youth whose exuberance could not be contained. Pat inherited superlative athletic genes, as did his brothers, and he began playing in an organized soccer league at the age of four. Thereafter, Tillman family life was organized to no small extent around the sports played by Pat, Kevin, and Richard. In Pat's case, by the time he was in high school, the sport that he cared most passionately about was football. For reasons having to do with safety and liability, students were not allowed to play on the varsity football team until they were fifteen years old, so Pat didn't join the varsity squad until November 1991, when he was added to the roster for the playoffs during his sophomore year. By the time the 1992 football season got under way he had become Leland's star player. Despite his diminutive size, the coach used him on offense as a running back and wide receiver; on defense as a linebacker and strong safety; and on special teams as a punter, punt returner, and kick returner. |
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The religious leaders decided to start small by pooling their weapons, forming a militia of their own, and forcefully removing a single checkpoint — the one nearest to Sanghisar. It was taken for granted that blood would be spilled, but they believed their cause was righteous and saw no other option, in any case. On the appointed day they approached the checkpoint warily with their rifles locked and loaded, prepared for a firefight, but as they drew near, a surprising thing happened: the hooligans manning the checkpoint fled without firing a shot. Encouraged, the mullahs turned their attention to the next checkpoint several miles down the road, and the outcome was similar. Before the week was out, they succeeded in removing every roadblock between Sanghisar and Kandahar. And thus was the Taliban created. The name — a Pashto word meaning "students of Islam" — was bestowed by Omar. The warlords of the day, unrestrained by any law or governing body, committed reprehensible acts with impunity. Seizing young boys and girls and forcing them into sexual slavery were routine occurrences. According to Ahmed Rashid's book Taliban, soon after the Taliban was founded, Sanghisar residents alerted Omar that a local commander had abducted two teenage girls, their heads had been shaved and they had been taken to a military camp and repeatedly raped. Omar enlisted some 30 Talibs who had only 16 rifles between them and attacked the base, freeing the girls and hanging the commander from the barrel of a tank... A few months later two commanders confronted each other in Kandahar, in a dispute over a young boy whom both men wanted to sodomize. In the fight that followed civilians were killed. Omar's group freed the boy and public appeals started coming in for the Taliban to help out in other local disputes. Omar had emerged as a Robin Hood figure, helping the poor against the rapacious commanders. His prestige grew because he asked for no reward or credit from those he helped, only demanding that they follow him to set up a just Islamic system. Tall and sinewy, Omar is a shy, uncharismatic man who lost his right eye to shrapnel while fighting Najibullah's communist forces during the mujahideen's failed assault on Jalalabad in 1989. Although a lifelong scholar of Islam, he possesses a plodding, narrow intellect and has little knowledge of, or interest in, worldly affairs. His interpretation of the Quran is stringently literal. But at some point during 1994 the Prophet Muhammad came to this humble village mullah in the form of a vision, in which it was revealed to Omar that Allah had chosen him to undertake the task of bringing peace to Afghanistan. Omar, who placed great stock in dreams and apparitions, resolved to obey the Prophet's commandment. Toward that end he began recruiting students from madrassas — religious schools — to join his cause. Although he was not a dynamic speaker, Mullah Omar made up for his lack of personal charm with earnestness and unwavering piety. His pitch to the students was well received, particularly in the numerous madrassas that had sprung up in the Pashtun tribal districts that lay just across the border in Pakistan. For nearly fifteen years more than two million Afghan refugees had been subsisting in squalid refugee camps on the Pakistan side of the frontier, and the madrassas there were teeming with the sons of these refugees — young men indoctrinated by fire-breathing Saudi clerics preaching the fundamentalist Wahhabi doctrine. |
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By early 1996, the Taliban had reached the margins of Kabul, threatening to overrun the nation's capital. Until then, the main mujahideen factions — led by Massoud, Hekmatyar, and Dostum — had continued to fight one another for control of Kabul, inflicting an appalling toll on the city and its inhabitants. But the arrival of Mullah Omar's army on Kabul's outskirts frightened the mujahideen commanders into calling a hasty truce and joining forces against the Taliban — a coalition dubbed the Northern Alliance. Through most of the spring and summer the struggle for the capital degenerated into a bloody stalemate in which several thousand civilians were killed by Taliban rocket attacks. Then, in August, Omar persuaded Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to increase their support in order to provide the Taliban with the means to launch a decisive offensive. In a shrewd tactical move, this offensive was not directed at Kabul itself. Instead, the Taliban skirted the capital and attacked important Northern Alliance bases to the north and east, which were captured with ease. The Taliban were fortified in these battles by swarms of fresh recruits from madrassas across the border, whose arrival at the front lines was expedited by Pakistan. By late September the Taliban had surrounded Kabul, and had severed all lines of supply to the Northern Alliance. Ceding to the inevitable, under the cover of darkness Massoud pulled back all the way to his redoubt in the Panjshir Valley, deep in the mountains of the Hindu Kush, leaving Kabul virtually undefended. On the night of September 26, 1996, Mullah Omar's fighters rolled into the capital without resistance, wearing their trademark black turbans and flying the white Taliban flag from their Toyota Hilux pickup trucks. The first thing they did was search out the ex-president and Soviet puppet, Mohammed Najibullah. He was found around 1:00 a. m. at his residence inside a United Nations diplomatic compound, where he had been living under house arrest since being forced from office in 1992, spending his days lifting weights, watching satellite television, and translating an English history of Afghanistan into his native Pashto. The five men who found him were led by the commander of the assault on Kabul, a Talib named Mullah Abdul Razaq. During the Najibullah regime, the Soviets had killed several members of Razaq's family, and he'd been waiting to exact revenge on Najibullah ever since. After brutally beating Najibullah and his brother, Shahpur, Razaq and his men drove them to the Presidential Palace, where Najibullah was castrated and then dragged through the streets around the palace behind a truck, still alive. Finally he was shot to death, Shahpur was strangled, and wire nooses were twisted around the necks of both brothers. They were then strung up from a police watchtower above a traffic circle in the middle of Kabul. A mob formed around the dead men, beat their bodies with sticks, and shoved rolled-up rupees into their nostrils. This was not the sort of "order" that had been envisioned by Western governments when they expressed the hope that Mullah Omar would prove to be the Pashtun equivalent of George Washington and become the savior of his nation — a nation that Omar had recently renamed the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. The Taliban now governed the country, nevertheless. The administration of President Bill Clinton issued contradictory statements about this turn of events, muddying the waters about whether the United States approved of the country's new leadership or opposed it. |
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In other words, without Nader on the ballot, Gore would have beaten Bush by nearly thirteen thousand votes and become president of the United States by a comfortable margin. But Nader of course was on the ballot, and on November 8 the Florida vote was therefore too close to call. When November gave way to December, it remained that way, despite the ongoing recounts. The waters were muddied by several contradictory rulings from various Florida courts, some of which favored Gore, others of which favored Bush. Complicating matters even further, federal law stipulated that in order to preclude a possible congressional challenge to the legitimacy of the representatives Florida appointed to the electoral college, the state's vote count had to be completed and certified by midnight on December 12. Missing this deadline, as it turned out, would not have invalidated the Florida election results: more than a third of the fifty states failed to meet the December 12 target without incident. The crucial deadline for certifying Florida's vote count didn't actually fall until January 6, 2001. But if the December 12 deadline wasn't particularly important, it was widely perceived to be, and therefore infused the ongoing drama with an added measure of tension. On December 8, Gore appeared to have prevailed in the legal arena when he won a key ruling by the Florida Supreme Court, which ordered yet another manual recount of some forty-five thousand disputed ballots throughout the state. As this recount got under way, Bush's lead rapidly diminished. On December 9, however, before the tally could be completed, the U. S. Supreme Court voted 54 to issue an injunction that halted the recount in response to an emergency plea filed by Bush's attorneys. At the time this stay was granted, Bush's lead had dwindled to 154 votes and appeared to be fast on its way to vanishing altogether. The December 9 injunction provoked furious protests from Democrats and was derided by legal scholars as a transparently partisan attempt by the Rehnquist Court to hand the election to Bush. Unmoved by the firestorm of criticism, the Supreme Court justices issued their momentous decision in Bush v. Gore three days later, at 10:00 p. m. on December 12. Again by a vote of 54, the Court ruled that the December 12 deadline for certifying the vote count would in fact be binding, and because completing a constitutionally valid recount would be impossible within the two hours that remained before the clock struck midnight, there would be no further reckoning of Florida's disputed votes. Incensed Gore supporters quickly pointed out that just six paragraphs earlier in the text of the same ruling the Court had declared, "The press of time does not diminish the constitutional concern. A desire for speed is not a general excuse for ignoring equal protection guarantees." Furthermore, the Gore camp argued, the only reason a recount couldn't be completed by the court-mandated deadline was that the same five-justice majority had stopped the recount three days previously with their December 9 injunction, predetermining the outcome of their December 12 ruling. Critics found numerous other reasons to cry foul over the Court's hastily rendered decision. Among the most compelling were allegations that two of the five justices who voted with the majority in favor of Bush — Antonin Scalia and Sandra Day O'Connor — unequivocally violated the federal judicial conflict-of-interest statute by participating in Bush v. |
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These carefully targeted actions are designed to disrupt the use of Afghanistan as a terrorist base of operations, and to attack the military capability of the Taliban regime... More than two weeks ago, I gave Taliban leaders a series of clear and specific demands: Close terrorist training camps; hand over leaders of the al-Qaeda network; and return all foreign nationals, including American citizens, unjustly detained in your country. None of these demands were met. And now the Taliban will pay a price. By destroying camps and disrupting communications, we will make it more difficult for the terror network to train new recruits and coordinate their evil plans. Initially, the terrorists may burrow deeper into caves and other entrenched hiding places. Our military action is also designed to clear the way for sustained, comprehensive and relentless operations to drive them out and bring them to justice... We did not ask for this mission, but we will fulfill it. The name of today's military operation is Enduring Freedom. We defend not only our precious freedoms, but also the freedom of people everywhere to live and raise their children free from fear... In the months ahead, our patience will be one of our strengths — patience with the long waits that will result from tighter security; patience and understanding that it will take time to achieve our goals; patience in all the sacrifices that may come. Today, those sacrifices are being made by members of our Armed Forces who now defend us so far from home, and by their proud and worried families. A Commander-in-Chief sends America's sons and daughters into a battle in a foreign land only after the greatest care and a lot of prayer. We ask a lot of those who wear our uniform. We ask them to leave their loved ones, to travel great distances, to risk injury, even to be prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice of their lives. They are dedicated, they are honorable; they represent the best of our country. And we are grateful. To all the men and women in our military — every sailor, every soldier, every airman, every coastguardsman, every Marine — I say this: Your mission is defined; your objectives are clear; your goal is just. You have my full confidence, and you will have every tool you need to carry out your duty. I recently received a touching letter that says a lot about the state of America in these difficult times — a letter from a 4th-grade girl, with a father in the military: "As much as I don't want my Dad to fight," she wrote, "I'm willing to give him to you." This is a precious gift, the greatest she could give. This young girl knows what America is all about. Since September 11, an entire generation of young Americans has gained new understanding of the value of freedom, and its cost in duty and in sacrifice. The battle is now joined on many fronts. We will not waver; we will not tire; we will not falter; and we will not fail. Peace and freedom will prevail. Thank you. May God continue to bless America. Tillman stared up at the towering video screen alongside his teammates and pondered the president's words. The strikes against bin Laden, al-Qaeda, and the Taliban of which Bush had spoken had commenced exactly two hours earlier when four American ships, an American submarine, and a British submarine launched a synchronized barrage of cruise missiles toward Afghanistan. The first of these fifty missiles had exploded into their targets just thirty-three minutes before Bush had begun his address to the nation. |
| 50 |
I always knew he would stop playing football before they had to kick him off the field. It was just a matter of time... I mean, Pat could have played for years, retired, then golfed for the rest of his life. But I knew he was never going to do that." After carefully weighing all the factors, Pat sat down at his computer and typed a document titled "Decision," dated April 8, 2002: Many decisions are made in our lifetime, most relatively insignificant while others life altering. Tonight's topic ... the latter. It must be said that my mind, for the most part, is made up. More to the point, I know what decision I must make. It seems that more often than not we know the right decision long before it's actually made. Somewhere inside, we hear a voice, and intuitively know the answer to any problem or situation we encounter. Our voice leads us in the direction of the person we wish to become, but it is up to us whether or not to follow. More times than not we are pointed in a predictable, straightforward, and seemingly positive direction. However, occasionally we are directed down a different path entirely. Not necessarily a bad path, but a more difficult one. In my case, a path that many will disagree with, and more significantly, one that may cause a great deal of inconvenience to those I love. My life at this point is relatively easy. It is my belief that I could continue to play football for the next seven or eight years and create a very comfortable lifestyle for not only Marie and myself, but be afforded the luxury of helping out family and friends should a need ever arise. The coaches and players I work with treat me well and the environment has become familiar and pleasing. My job is challenging, enjoyable, and strokes my vanity enough to fool me into thinking it's important. This all aside from the fact that I only work six months a year, the rest of the time is mine. For more reasons than I care to list, my job is remarkable. On a personal note, Marie and I are getting married a month from today. We have friends and family we care a great deal about and the time and means to see them regularly. In the last couple of months we've been skiing in Tahoe, ice climbing in Utah, perusing through Santa Fe, visiting in California, and will be sipping Mai Tais in Bora Bora in a little over a month. We are both able to pursue any interests that strike our fancy and down the road, any vocation or calling. We even have two cats that make our house feel like a home. In short, we have a great life with nothing to look forward to but more of the same. However, it is not enough. For much of my life I've tried to follow a path I believed important. Sports embodied many of the qualities I deem meaningful: courage, toughness, strength, etc., while at the same time, the attention I received reinforced its seeming importance. In the pursuit of athletics I have picked up a college degree, learned invaluable lessons, met incredible people, and made my journey much more valuable than any destination. However, these last few years, and especially after recent events, I've come to appreciate just how shallow and insignificant my role is. I'm no longer satisfied with the path I've been following ... it's no longer important. I'm not sure where this new direction will take my life though I am positive it will include its share of sacrifice and difficulty, most of which falling squarely on Marie's shoulders. Despite this, however, I am equally positive that this new direction will, in the end, make our lives fuller, richer, and more meaningful. |
| 51 |
There were chunks of time when they were gone to Ranger School or overseas or whatever, but then they would come home, and it was like they had never left. The three of us were away from everything and everybody, and for Kevin and me both, we had all that we needed, which was for Pat to be there." The already strong bond among the three of them grew even stronger. When Pat and Kevin weren't on the base, they were usually with Marie; they didn't socialize much with others, and Pat drank very little alcohol. He regarded being a Ranger as one of the most serious challenges he'd ever undertaken, and he didn't want to do anything that might dull his focus on the task at hand. When they enlisted, the Tillman brothers assumed they would be deployed to Afghanistan to fight Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda, and the Taliban — a war that seemed vital to protecting national security. During the 2000 presidential campaign, Bush had repeatedly promised that if he was elected, his administration would promote a "humble" foreign policy. "I'm going to be judicious as to how to use the military," he pledged during his second debate with Al Gore. "It needs to be in our vital interest, the mission needs to be clear, and the exit strategy obvious... I think the United States must be ... humble in how we treat nations that are figuring out how to chart their own course." The Tillmans, like most Americans, therefore had no reason to suspect that in November 2001, President Bush and Vice President Cheney had instructed Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to secretly create a detailed plan for the invasion of Iraq. Scarcely two months after the 911 attacks, even though bin Laden was still at large in Afghanistan, the president and his most influential advisers regarded the Afghan campaign as a mere sideshow, almost a diversion. Truth be told, the primary focus of the Bush administration had always been taking down Saddam Hussein. On February 5, 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell went before the United Nations to make the president's argument for invading Iraq, presenting satellite photos and other evidence in a PowerPoint presentation that persuasively — but erroneously — indicated Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction and had conspired with al-Qaeda to carry out terrorist attacks against Americans. When Powell finished his spiel, it was plain to the world that the United States would be invading Iraq in the immediate future. Pat was very disturbed. By the time it became clear that war with Iraq was imminent, Pat and Kevin had been training at Fort Lewis for just over a month. Seventeen days after Powell addressed the United Nations, Pat wrote in his journal, It may be very soon that Nub & I will be called upon to take part in something I see no clear purpose for... Were our case for war even somewhat justifiable, no doubt many of our traditional allies ... would be praising our initiative... However, every leader in the world, with a few exceptions, is crying foul, as is the voice of much of the people. This ... leads me to believe that we have little or no justification other than our imperial whim. Of course Nub & I have ... willingly allowed ourselves to be pawns in this game and will do our job whether we agree with it or not. All we ask is that it is duly noted that we harbor no illusions of virtue. At the beginning of March, Pat, Kevin, and the other Rangers of Alpha Company were flown to a small airfield in the desert outside of Ar'ar, Saudi Arabia. |
| 52 |
"There was shooting going in, there was some shooting going out," said one military officer briefed on the operation. "It was not intensive. There was no shooting in the building, but it was hairy, because no one knew what to expect..." The officer said that Special Operations forces found what looked like a "prototype" Iraqi torture chamber in the hospital's basement, with batteries and metal prods... Thanks largely to details first revealed in this article, as well as dramatic video of the rescue distributed to the media by the Army, Jessica Lynch dominated the news for weeks. The details of the incident provided by military public affairs officers made for an absolutely riveting story that television, radio, and print journalists found irresistible: a petite blond supply clerk from a flea-speck burg in West Virginia is ambushed in Iraq and fearlessly mows down masked Fedayeen terrorists with her M16 until she runs out of ammo, whereupon she is shot, stabbed, captured, tortured, and raped before finally being snatched from her barbaric Iraqi captors during a daring raid by American commandos. The story was so gripping that little heed was paid to a paragraph near the beginning of the aforementioned Washington Post article, which stated, Several officials cautioned that the precise sequence of events is still being determined, and that further information will emerge as Lynch is debriefed. Reports thus far are based on battlefield intelligence, they said, which comes from monitored communications and from Iraqi sources in Nasiriyah whose reliability has yet to be assessed. Pentagon officials said they had heard "rumors" of Lynch's heroics but had no confirmation. Over the following weeks, months, and years, subsequent reporting by investigative journalists revealed that most of the details of Lynch's ordeal were extravagantly embellished, and much of the rest was invented from whole cloth. Because her rifle had jammed, she hadn't fired a single round. Although her injuries had indeed been life threatening, they were exclusively the result of her Humvee smashing into Hernandez's tractor trailer; she was never shot, stabbed, tortured, or raped. After she had been transferred to Saddam Hussein General Hospital, her captors treated her with kindness and special care. And when the American commandos arrived at the hospital to rescue Lynch, they met no significant resistance. The spurious particulars did not come from Private Lynch. The bogus story was based on information fed to gullible reporters by anonymous military sources. The government official who arranged for reporters to interview these sources — the guy who deserves top billing for creating the myth of Jessica Lynch, in other words — was a White House apparatchik named Jim Wilkinson. Although his official job description was director of strategic communications for General Tommy Franks (the commander of all U. S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan), actually Wilkinson served as the Bush administration's top "perception manager" for the Iraq War. As Ben Smith noted in an article published in the New York Observer in October 2003, Wilkinson has gone from politics to war and back since he worked for George W. Bush in Florida during the 2000 election, and his journey is a mark of the administration's utilitarian approach to marketing war, politics and the presidency... He's also got as pure a Republican pedigree as you can wish, and an edge honed in the bitter partisan wars between Bill Clinton and the Republican House leadership. |
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Unbeknownst to Bravo Company, however, the salt flat was actually a swamp where the city's sewage accumulated beneath a carapace of sunbaked mud. Two tanks attached to the company suddenly broke through the crust and plunged four feet into smelly quicksand. The more they spun their treads trying to crawl free, the deeper the immense vehicles wallowed. A moment later one of the amphibious assault vehicles broke through the crust and became stuck as well, and then another. Within minutes, three tanks, three Humvees, and three tracs were sucked down into the bog. One of the hopelessly mired tracs served as the mobile command post for Lieutenant Colonel Rick Grabowski, the First Battalion commander, who was directing the mission. Containing all of Grabowski's communications equipment, the trac had become trapped near the edge of the salt flat beneath an overhead power line, which seemed to interfere with radio transmissions, making it nearly impossible for the commander to communicate with either headquarters or his other units, Alpha and Charlie companies. Upon seeing that the American vehicles were immobilized, swarms of Iraqi fighters materialized and began shooting at them from nearby rooftops as scores of local residents simultaneously emerged from their homes and hurried out of the city, fleeing the battle that they knew would soon commence in earnest. Grabowski ordered his men to dismount from their tracs and form a defensive perimeter. Most of them were young recruits who had never seen combat. As they exited the vehicles, many of the Marines appeared scared and confused. Barely under way, the mission was already "Charlie Fox-trot" — a total clusterfuck. Even before Bravo Company had blundered into the sewage, Grabowski had been feeling a lot of heat from his boss, the Marine brigadier general Rich Natonski. Three hours earlier, shortly after the rescue of the survivors from Jessica Lynch's convoy, Grabowski's men were moving north through the outskirts of Nasiriyah, clearing buildings and skirmishing with the enemy, when the general had helicoptered in from his command post specifically to admonish Grabowski for the sluggish pace of his advance. Donald Rumsfeld's strategy for the entire invasion — for the entire war — was predicated on speed, and officers on the ground were under unrelenting pressure to keep pushing rapidly toward Baghdad, no matter what. Natonski took Grabowski aside, got in his face, and told him, "I need you to fucking get up there and seize the bridges." Adding to the sense of urgency, Natonski explained, twelve Army soldiers from Lynch's convoy were still missing somewhere in the city, and Grabowski's Marines should "be looking for those individuals" as they moved toward the bridges. Not long past noon, while Grabowski and Bravo Company were struggling to extricate themselves from the reeking bog on the eastern edge of Nasiriyah, Charlie Company moved north across the Euphrates River Bridge, expecting to rendezvous with Bravo Company and then follow them to the Saddam Canal Bridge. Seeing no sign of Bravo Company, and unable to raise them on the radio, Captain Dan Wittnam, the commander of Charlie Company, assumed that Bravo Company must have already gone on ahead. So Wittnam, on his own initiative, ordered his men to proceed directly up Ambush Alley to the Saddam Canal Bridge. Sergeant William Schaefer, commanding Charlie Company's lead trac, was incredulous. "Say again," he radioed back, requesting confirmation of the orders. |
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After the truth of Pat's death was partially revealed, Pat was no longer of use as a sales asset, and became strictly the Army's problem. They were now left with the task of briefing our family and answering our questions. With any luck, our family would sink quietly into our grief, and the whole unsavory episode would be swept under the rug. However, they miscalculated our family's reaction. Through the amazing strength and perseverance of my mother, the most amazing woman on Earth, our family has managed to have multiple investigations conducted. However, while each investigation gathered more information, the mountain of evidence was never used to arrive at an honest or even sensible conclusion... The handling of the situation after the firefight was described as a compilation of "missteps, inaccuracies, and errors in judgment which created the perception of concealment."... Writing a Silver Star award before a single eyewitness account is taken is not a misstep. Falsifying soldier witness statements for a Silver Star is not a misstep. These are intentional falsehoods that meet the legal definition for fraud. Delivering false information at a nationally televised memorial service is not an error in judgment. Discarding an investigation Scott's 156 that does not fit a preordained conclusion is not an error in judgment. These are deliberate acts of deceit. This is not the perception of concealment. This is concealment. Pat is, of course, not the only soldier where battlefield reality has reached the family and the public in the form of a false narrative... Our family has relentlessly pursued the truth on this matter for three years. We have now concluded that our efforts are being actively thwarted by powers that are more ... interested in protecting a narrative than getting at the truth or seeing that justice is served. That is why we ask Congress, as a sovereign representative of the whole people, to exercise its power to investigate the inconsistencies in Pat's death and the aftermath and all the other soldiers that were betrayed by this system. The one bit of truth that did survive these manipulations is that Pat was, and still is, a great man... But the fact that the Army, and what appears to be others, attempted to hijack his virtue and his legacy is simply horrific. The least this country can do for him in return is to uncover who is responsible for his death, who lied and who covered it up, and who instigated those lies and benefited from them. Then ensure that justice is meted out to the culpable. Pat and these other soldiers volunteered to put their lives on the line for this country. Anything less than the truth is a betrayal of those values that all soldiers who have fought for this nation have sought to uphold. Waxman, the oversight committee chairman, observed, The Tillman family wants to know how all of this could have happened... One of the things that make the Afghanistan and Iraq wars so different from previous wars is the glaring disparity of sacrifice. For the overwhelming number of Americans, this war has brought no sacrifice and no inconvenience, but for a small number of Americans, the war has demanded incredible and constant sacrifice. Those soldiers and their families pay that price proudly and without complaint. This is what Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman did, and it is what their families have done, but our government failed them... The least we owe to courageous men and women who are fighting for our freedom is the truth. |
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But the most divine dessert of all was Momma's Caramel Cake. Momma would labor prayerfully over her selection, because she knew but would never admit that she and all the women were in hot competition over whose culinary masterpiece was the finest. Momma could bake all the other women's dishes and often made them for the family, but not one of the other cooks would even dare the Caramel Cake (always to be spoken of in capital letters). Since she didn't have brown sugar, she had to make her own caramel syrup. Making her caramel cake took four to five hours, but the result was worthy of the labor. The salty sweetness of the caramel frosting along with the richness of the batter made the dessert soften and liquefy on the tongue and slip quietly down the throat almost without notice. Save that it left a memory of heaven itself in the mouth. Of course Bailey and I were a little biased in Momma's favor, but who could have resisted the bighearted woman who was taller and bigger than most men yet who spoke in a voice a little above a whisper? Her hands were so large one could span my entire head, but they were so gentle that when she rubbed my legs and arms and face with blue-seal Vaseline every morning, I felt as if an angel had just approved of me. I not only loved her, I liked her. So I followed her around. People began calling me her shadow. "Hello, Sister Henderson, I see you got your shadow with you as usual." She would smile and answer, "I guess you got that right. If I go, she goes. If I stop, she stops. Yes, sir, I have me two shadows. Well, three by rights. My own and my two grandbabies." I only saw Momma's anger become physical once. The incident alarmed me, but at the same time it assured me that I had great protection. Because of a horrible sexual violence I experienced when I was seven, I stopped talking to everyone but Bailey. All teachers who came to Stamps to work at Lafayette County Training School had to find room and board with black families, for there were no boarding houses where they could gain admittance. All renting families acted as individual chambers of commerce for the newcomers. Each teacher was told of the churches and the preachers, of the hairdressers and barbers, of the white store downtown and the Wm. Johnson General Merchandise Store where they were likely to get accounts to tide them over between paychecks. The new teachers were also alerted to Mrs. Henderson's mute granddaughter and her grandson who stuttered seriously. Summer was over and we returned to school with all the other children. I looked forward to meeting the new teacher of the fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade classes. I was really happy because for the first time Bailey and I were in the same classroom. Miss Williams was small and perky. She reminded me of a young chicken pecking in the yard. Her voice was high-pitched. She separated the classes by row. Sixth-graders sat near the windows, fifth-graders were in the middle rows, and fourth-graders were near the door. Miss Williams said she wanted each student to stand up and say his or her name and what grades they received at the end of the last semester. She started with the sixth-graders. I looked at Bailey when he stood and said, "Bailey Johnson, Jr." At home he would make me fall out laughing when he said what he wished his whole name was: "Bailey James Jester Jonathan Johnson, Jr." Because I didn't talk I had developed a pattern of behavior in classrooms. Whenever I was questioned, I wrote my answer on the blackboard. |
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The pompous Presiding Elder who served our region would arrive in town on horseback or, on the rare occasion, in a car, always with someone else driving. He would stay with other parishioners, but at every three-month visit he told Bailey and me that until our arrival he was always put up by Mother Henderson and Superintendent Johnson. (Uncle Willie was superintendent of the Sunday school.) We never knew what to say. Did he think we should get back on the train and return to parents who obviously had no place for us in their lives? To say Bailey and I hated the Presiding Elder could not describe our bitter loathing for the puffed-up man who had no sensitivity to two wayfaring motherless and fatherless children. He didn't sleep at Momma's house, but he took every meal there, and took is the correct word. Because of him, Bailey and I spent the most embarrassing hour of our lives, and to add insult to injury we became very sick. Piss Ant, as Bailey called him, came round as usual after Sunday services. I brought him a face basin with water from the well so he could wash, but he hardly dipped his hand in the water, nor did he say thank you. I turned to go in the kitchen to help Momma, but I saw Bailey had seen Piss Ant's behavior. Momma sent me to the garden to pick and wash lettuce. She had made her delicious potato salad. She chipped off a corner from a block of ice and pulverized it with a hammer. She put the lettuce in a pretty dish and laid crushed ice between the leaves. When Momma called everyone in for Sunday dinner, the table was powerful with her delectables spread from end to end. There was the most golden-brown fried chicken, string beans with little potatoes, dark green turnip leaves with snow-white turnips, pickled peaches, and a platter of her buttermilk biscuits called cat heads because of their size. But the star of that show was the potato salad. Momma had mixed all the ingredients, then mounded the salad high above the top of the bowl. She had hard-boiled four double-yolk eggs and cut them in half and pushed them down into the potato mixture; then she placed crisp cucumber circles around the inside edges of the bowl. Each person was supposed to pick up the fork in the lettuce bowl and take one leaf up, let it drip in the bowl, then place it on the salad plate just to the left of the dinner plate. Then a spoon of potato salad would be placed on the lettuce leaf. That was how we did it, how everybody did it except for the Presiding Elder. He glanced at the chicken and immediately took the three largest pieces. Then he used his own fork to serve himself potato salad. Bailey cleared his throat and asked, "Would you like some lettuce?" Piss Ant was so used to ignoring children that he didn't even look at Bailey. He picked up the potato salad and fished out three of the halves of double-yolk eggs and put them on his plate beside the chicken. Then he completed filling his plate with the salad. His mouth was so stuffed we could hardly understand him. "Save me some greens, sure have a soft spot for greens." Bailey's face was a mask of angry disgust, and I knew he was going to do something. Just what, I wasn't sure. When Momma looked at her grandson, she also had a premonition. Bailey hesitated only a second. Using the lettuce fork, he speared every leaf in the bowl, held it up to drip, and then put the whole thing on his plate. Momma reared back and pursed her lips. She didn't speak. She turned and started to prepare Uncle Willie's plate. |
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They also drank their portion of gin martinis, Black & White scotch, and Jack Daniel's whiskey. Miss Ross played no games, nor did she drink or smoke. Until she was called on stage she sat closed inside her wall of niceness looking lost and very sad. I was twenty-six years old, and because I doted on my grandmother who doted on me I had a tender feeling for older women, the grandmotherly type. Porgy and Bess was appearing at the Teatre Wagram in Paris, and I was the principal dancer and sang the role of Ruby. I doubled singing blues and calypso in nightclubs after the curtain fell at the opera. I watched Miss Ross and wondered how I could raise her spirits. One early evening I went to Fouquets Restaurant on the Champs ElysEes. I asked to speak to the maitre d'hotel. My presence shocked him. He had not been summoned by many six-foot-tall African American girls. He asked me in French if I had ever visited a first-class restaurant. I replied, "No, but I am young and certainly I will do so in my life." He nodded. I told him about Miss Ross. I described her age and her loneliness. I said I didn't have much money but that I'd like to bring her to his restaurant for one great dinner. It might be her first and last time to have a superb French meal. His countenance softened and he called two waiters and repeated my story. I was invited inside to a table where the four of us sat down and pored over the menu. The experts chose a pate to start, then molded eggs polignac for our second course. We would be served veal medallions for our entree. A waiter showed me my bill. I was amazed at how little I was charged. Then I realized the maitre d' had reduced the price because of my story. On the designated night, Miss Ross and I got out of a taxi. We had dressed in our best and made ourselves up to go out for a fancy Parisian evening. We were greeted at the door as if we were royalty. Every waiter made his way by to say hello. Obviously our tale had been told to the entire staff. The maitre d' seated us and within seconds there was a crowd of waiters around the table bringing still and carbonated water, serving bread and butter, and placing salt and pepper and mustard. To my surprise, Miss Ross was a refreshing dinner guest. She told charming stories and had a ready repartee. When the meal was served, I sat at attention to observe how she would enjoy her two-star dinner. She tasted the pate. She said she really liked that. She had long been partial to liverwurst but preferred it on white bread with a thick slab of raw onions and lots of mayonnaise. The molded eggs polignac also delighted Miss Ross. The staff sent approving nods around the room as the veal was served because Miss Ross made a slight smacking sound and rubbed her hands together. She tasted the meat. "Now this is good." She took another bite of the medallions. The nearest waiter recorded her approval and sent her reaction to his colleagues. Miss Ross said, "This is close to perfect. These people can truly cook." I was reminded of my mother's actions in restaurants. When she was particularly pleased with a dinner, she would send a glass of wine to the chef. I didn't think I had enough money for that gesture, but I was floating in self-admiration until I heard Miss Ross say, "All this needs is a little Tabasco." I looked at her, knowing that I had to dissuade her from asking the waiter to bring her the spicy sauce. But as I turned, Miss Ross was extricating a slim bottle of Tabasco from her purse. |
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"What do you think?" "I brought my Tums." "I brought Alka-Seltzer for everybody." When we emerged from the elevator on her floor, the hall was redolent of mouthwatering aromas. "At least somebody on her floor knows how to cook." "Or maybe just someone in the building." We laughed as Bebe opened the door, but our laughter ended when we entered her apartment. As we followed her to the living room, we knew that the aromas emanated from her kitchen. We were stunned. Her son, Bo, brought out a tray of drinks with a filled ice bucket, tongs, olives, and slices of lemon. We were invited to make our own drinks as Bebe disappeared into the kitchen. We could find nothing to say, so we offered blank faces to each other as we helped ourselves to libation. Bo emerged from the kitchen again, with a larger tray, which held oversized cups. He said "Gazpacho, please take one." The Spanish tomato soup was as cold as it should have been and rich with bite sizes of cucumber and finely chopped onion. Many would-be cooks attempt to make gazpacho but conclude with horrific nonedible, nonpotable results. This one was as perfect a blend as any I had ever tasted. Bebe stayed in the kitchen as we chewed the crunchy vegetables and drank the beautifully flavored cold tomato soup. Bo collected the empty cups and asked if we would sit to table. There were place cards. We knew Bebe hadn't been brought up in a barn, but nothing about her prepared us for this sophistication. After we were seated, she stepped into the dining room and announced, "Dinner is served." When she turned back into the kitchen, the smile on her face was sweet enough to rot teeth. She and Bo returned, placing on the table petit pois with pearl onions in a cream sauce, haricots verts in vinaigrette, and twice-baked potatoes and mushroom gravy. The piece de resistance was a beef Wellington. We stood and applauded and she joined in the admiring laughter. Each of us knew the complexity of building a beef Wellington. How the duxelles must be prepared while the loin is in the oven. How the loin must be cooling as the short pastry rests in the refrigerator. How the pate must be at a spreadable consistency before the duxelles is patted in place. Bebe said she would love to tell us when we finished eating how a noncook had managed to bring off a four-star dinner. We sat with small bowls of good commercial ice cream for dessert and she described her day. At 10 A. M., she telephoned The New York Times and asked to speak to food editor Craig Claiborne. She would not be pacified by his assistant. When Mr. Claiborne answered, Bebe accented her already heavy accent and, with her flair for dramatics, began to cry. "Mr. Claiborne, I am the wife of the Uruguay ambassador and I have invited eight couples of diplomats and two foreign vice presidents with their wives for dinner. This morning" — here a loud outburst of sobs — "my cook and his staff walked out in a huff. Oh my, Mr. Claiborne, I fear an international incident. I had the cook send out the menu, and I cannot possibly deliver." According to Bebe, Craig Claiborne asked what the menu was. She replied, "Gazpacho, beef Wellington, petit pois, twice-baked potatoes, and haricots verts." She told him she had all the ingredients and a grown daughter who could help her. He assured her that he would keep the telephone open all day and would walk her through each dish. All she had to do was follow his instructions to the letter. According to her, he did keep the telephone open, and from the success of the dinner, she certainly followed his instructions. |
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These then were the offspring of Nyx and Erebus, who even now were shrouding the earth in the darkness of night as Gaia lay waiting for her husband for what she hoped would be the last time and Kronos lurked in the shadows of that recess in Mount Othrys, keeping a firm grip on his great scythe. Ouranos Gelded At last, Gaia and Kronos heard from the west the sound of a great stamping and shaking. The leaves on the trees shivered. Kronos, standing silently in his hiding place, did not tremble. He was ready. 'Gaia!' roared Ouranos as he approached. 'Prepare yourself. Tonight we shall breed something better than hundred-handed mutants and one-eyed freaks ...' 'Come to me, glorious son, divine husband!' called Gaia, with what Kronos thought a distastefully convincing show of eagerness. The horrible sounds of a lustful deity slobbering, slapping and grunting suggested to him that his father was attempting some kind of foreplay. In his alcove Kronos breathed in and out five times. Never for a second did he weigh the moral good of what he was about to do, his thoughts were only for tactics and timing. With a deep inhalation he raised the great sickle and stepped swiftly sideways from his hiding place. Ouranos, who had been preparing to lie on top of Gaia, sprang to his feet with an angry snarl of surprise. Walking calmly forward, Kronos swung the scythe back and swept it down in a great arc. The blade, hissing through the air, sliced Ouranos's genitals clean from his body. All Cosmos could hear Ouranos's maddened scream of pain, anguish and rage. Never in creation's short history had there been a sound so loud or so dreadful. All living things heard it and were afraid. Kronos leapt forward with an obscene cry of triumph, catching the dripping trophy in his hands before it could reach the ground. Ouranos fell writhing in immortal agony and howled out these words: 'Kronos, vilest of my brood and vilest in all creation. Worst of all beings, fouler than the ugly Cyclopes and the loathsome Hecatonchires, with these words I curse you. May your children destroy you as you destroyed me.' Kronos looked down at Ouranos. His black eyes showed nothing, but his mouth curved into a dark smile. 'You have no power to curse, daddy. Your power is in my hands.' He juggled before his father's eyes his grisly spoils of victory, burst and slimy with blood, oozing and slippery with seed. Laughing, he pulled back his arm and hurled the package of genitals far, far from sight. Across the plains of Greece they flew and out over the darkening sea. All three watched as Ouranos's organs of generation vanished from sight across the waters. Kronos was surprised, when he turned to look at her, that his mother had covered her mouth in what appeared to be horror. Tears were leaking from Gaia's eyes. He shrugged. As if she cared. Erinyes, Gigantes and Meliae Creation at this time, peopled as it was by primal deities whose whole energy and purpose seems to have been directed towards reproduction, was endowed with an astonishing fertility. The soil was blessed with such a fecund richness that one could almost believe that if you planted a pencil it would burst into flower. Where divine blood fell, life could not help but spring from the earth. So no matter how murderous, cruel, rapacious and destructive the character of Ouranos, he had been the ruler of creation after all. For his son to have mutilated and emasculated him constituted a most terrible crime against Cosmos. Perhaps what happened next is not so surprising. |
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It is time you were properly schooled. You are sixteen now and soon we must make our move.' 'Yes, mother.' The Oceanid and the Potion Rhea asked her friend Metis, wise and beautiful daughter of Tethys and Oceanus, to prepare her son for what was to come. 'He is clever, but wayward and rash. Teach him patience, craft and guile.' Zeus was captivated by Metis from the start. He had never seen such beauty. The Titaness was a little smaller than most of her race, but endowed with a grace and gravity that made her shine. The step of a deer and the guile of a fox, the power of a lion, the softness of a dove, all allied to a presence and force of mind that sent the boy dizzy. 'Lie down with me.' 'No. We shall go for a walk. I have many things to say to you.' 'Here. On the grass.' Metis smiled and took his hand. 'We have work to do, Zeus.' 'But I love you.' 'Then you will do as I say. When we love someone, we always want to please them do we not?' 'Don't you love me?' Metis laughed, though in truth she was astounded by the halo of glamour and charisma that radiated from this bold and handsome youth. But her friend Rhea had asked her to undertake his education and Metis was never one to betray a trust. For a year she taught him how to look into the hearts and judge the intentions of others. How to imagine and how to reason. How to find the strength to let passions cool before acting. How to make a plan and how to know when a plan needed to be changed or abandoned. How to let the head rule the heart and the heart win the affection of others. Her refusal to allow their relationship to take on a physical dimension only made Zeus love her more. Although she never told him so, Metis returned the love. As a result there existed a kind of crackle in the air whenever the two were close. One day Zeus saw Metis standing over a large boulder and bashing its flat surface with a small round-ended stone. 'What on earth are you doing?' 'Crushing mustard seeds and crystals of salt.' 'Of course you are.' 'Today,' said Metis, 'is your seventeenth birthday. You are ready to go to Othrys and fulfil your destiny. Rhea will be here soon, but first I must finish a little preparation of my own devising.' 'What's in that jar?' 'In here there is a mixture of poppy juice and copper sulphate, sweetened with a syrup of manna provided by the Meliae, our friends of the ash tree. I'll put all the ingredients together and shake them up. Like so.' 'I don't understand.' 'Look, here is your mother. She will explain.' As Metis looked on, Rhea outlined the plan to Zeus. Mother and son gazed deep into each other's eyes, took a deep breath and swore an oath, son to mother, mother to son. They were ready. Rebirth of the Five Midnight. The thick cloth that Erebus and Nyx threw across earth, sea and sky to mark the end of Hemera's and Aether's diurnal round blanketed the world. In a valley high up on Mount Othrys, the Lord of All paced alone, banging his chest, restless and miserable. Kronos had grown into the most foul-tempered and discontented Titan of all. Power over everything gave him no satisfaction. Since Rhea had without explanation banned him from the conjugal bed, sleep had been a stranger to him too. Denied its healing balm his mood and digestion, neither good at the best of times, had worsened. The last of the babies he had swallowed seemed to have provoked a sharp acid reflux that the previous five had not. Where was the joy in omnipotence when his stomach griped and his thoughts stumbled blindly in the thick fog of insomnia? |
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Such outcasts seemed always to survive and return to fulfil the prophecy or win back their birthright. Hephaestus longed to come back to Olympus, which he knew to be his home by right, but he was aware that he could not do so without bitterness or on proper terms unless he allowed himself one measured act of revenge, which would prove his strength of personality, his right to divinity and serve as his calling card to heaven. So, as Hephaestus learned his trade and worked his bellows, his quick and clever mind devised the plan that his quick and clever fingers would turn into startling reality. The Hand of Aphrodite Bound fast on the golden throne, Hera howled with rage and frustration. Neither her power, nor even that of Zeus himself had been able to release her from its curse. How could she invite the immortal world to a feast in which she sat pinioned like a criminal in the stocks? It would be grotesque and undignified. She would be laughed at. What magic was at work here? Who had done this to her? How could she be released from the spell? The hapless Zeus, bombarded by a shrieked fusillade of questions and complaints, turned to the other gods for help. Whoever managed to release Hera, he proclaimed, could take Aphrodite's hand in marriage, the greatest matrimonial prize there was. Ares was loudly annoyed by this peremptory decree. Was it not understood that he was to wed Aphrodite? 'Calm yourself,' said Zeus. 'You are stronger than all the other gods put together. Your union is safe.' Aphrodite was confident too and pushed her lover forward with encouraging words. But none of Ares' pulling and pushing and kicking and swearing had the slightest effect. If anything, it seemed that the more he strained, the tighter the throne's hold on Hera became. Poseidon (despite already having Amphitrite as his consort) made a spirited attempt that likewise came to nothing. Even Hades rose up from the underworld to try his hand at freeing Hera from her increasingly embarrassing predicament. All to no avail. As Zeus himself tugged frantically and uselessly at the arms of the throne, enduring yet more insults from the humiliated and enraged Hera, a polite but insistent cough cut through the commotion. The assembled gods turned. In the very hall of heaven, a gentle smile on his lopsided face, stood Hephaestus. 'Hello, mother,' he said. 'Having problems?' 'Hephaestus!' He limped forward. 'I understand that there is some sort of reward ...?' Aphrodite looked at the ground, chewing her lip. Ares growled and started forward, but Zeus held him back. The other gods parted to let the ugly little creature hobble through to where Hera sat imprisoned in her throne of gold. At one touch of his fingers the arms of the golden throne swung open and Hera was free. fn13 She rose to her feet, adjusted her gown and straightened herself in a manner that told the world the whole situation had been under control the whole time. Colour flew to Aphrodite's cheek. This could not be! It was a moment of sweet revenge for Hephaestus, but his essential good nature kept him from gloating. Despite or perhaps because of the pangs of rejection he had endured all his life, he was motivated not by anger or resentment but only by a desire to please, to make himself useful and give delight. He knew that he was ugly and he knew Aphrodite did not love him. He knew that if he claimed her as his prize she would betray him and slip often into the bed of his brother Ares. But he was simply happy to be home. |
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Not a hangover from the wedding feast, nor a headache in the sense of an annoying problem that needed solving as a leader he always had plenty of those but a headache in the sense of a real ache in the head. And what an ache. Each day the pain grew until Zeus was in the most acute, searing, blinding, pounding agony that had ever been suffered in the history of anything. Gods may be immune from death, ageing and many of the other horrors that afflict and affright mortals, but they are not immune from pain. Zeus's roars, howls and screams filled the valleys, canyons and caves of mainland Greece. They rang around the grottoes, cliffs and coves of the islands until the world wondered if the Hecatonchires had come up from Tartarus and the Titanomachy had started all over again. Zeus's brothers, sisters and other family members clustered concernedly about him on the seashore, where they had found him begging his nephew Triton, Poseidon's eldest, to drown him in seawater. Triton declined to do any such thing, so everyone racked their brains and tried to think of another solution while poor Zeus stamped and yelled in torment, squeezing his head in his hands as if trying to crush it. Then Prometheus, Zeus's favourite young Titan, came up with an idea which he whispered to Hephaestus, who nodded eagerly before limping back to his smithy as fast as his imperfect legs could carry him. What was happening inside Zeus's head was rather interesting. It was no wonder that he was suffering such excruciating pain, for crafty Metis was hard at work inside his skull, smelting, firing and hammering out armour and weaponry. There was enough iron and other metals, minerals, rare earths and trace elements in the god's varied, healthy and balanced diet to allow her to find in his blood and bones all the ingredients, all the ores and compounds, she needed. Hephaestus, who would have approved of her rudimentary but effective metalworking, returned to the crowded beach carrying a huge axe, double-bladed in the Minoan style. Prometheus now persuaded Zeus that the only way to alleviate his agony was to take his hands away from his temples, kneel down and have faith. Zeus muttered something about the trouble with being the King of the Gods was that there was no one higher to pray to, but he dropped obediently to his knees and awaited his fate. Hephaestus spat cheerfully and confidently on his hands, gripped the thick wooden haft and as the hushed crowd looked on brought it down in one swift swinging movement clean through the very centre of Zeus's skull, splitting it neatly in two. There was a terrible silence as everyone stared in stunned horror. The stunned horror turned to wild disbelief and the wild disbelief to bewildered amazement as they now witnessed, rising up from inside Zeus's opened head, the tip of a spear. It was followed by the topmost plumes of a russet crest. The onlookers held their breaths as slowly there arose into view a female figure dressed in full armour. Zeus lowered his head whether in pain, relief, submission or sheer awe nobody could be certain and, as if his bowed head had been a ramp or gangway let down for her convenience the glorious being stepped calmly onto the sand and turned to face him. Equipped with plated armour, shield, spear and plumed helmet, she gazed at her father with eyes of a matchless and wonderful grey. A grey that seemed to radiate one quality above all others infinite wisdom. From one of the pines that fringed the shoreline an owl flew out and perched on the shining she-warrior's shoulder. |
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'Come here,' he commanded. The cows stared for a while then lowered their heads and continued to graze. 'Hm. So it's like that is it?' Hermes thought quickly and gathered up long blades of grass which he plaited together into something like a bovine version of horseshoes, attaching one to each hoof of every cow. Around his own tiny plump feet he wrapped laurel leaves. Finally he snapped off a branch of young willow and stripped it down into a long switch with which he easily and expertly tickled and stung the cows into a tight and manoeuvrable herd. As an extra precaution he drove them backwards, all the way up the slope and back to the mouth of the cave, where his astonished and alarmed mother had been worriedly standing ever since he had wandered so very calmly away. Maia had had no experience of motherhood before this, but she was certain that the striking style and eccentric behaviour of her son were not usual even amongst gods. Apollo, she knew, had defeated Pytho while still an infant, and Athena of course had been born fully armed, but creating fire out of nothing but stones? Driving cattle? And what was this he was dangling before her eyes a tortoise? Was she dreaming? 'Now, mother,' said Hermes. 'Listen. I've had an idea. I'd like you to stun the tortoise, scoop out the flesh and cook it. I expect it will make a delicious soup. I'd recommend adding plenty of wild garlic if I were you and perhaps a suspicion of fennel? And then there'll be beef for mains, which I shall see to now. I'll just borrow this knife and be with you again before you know it.' With those words he disappeared to the back of the cave, off whose stone walls rang the appalling screams of a cow having its throat cut by a plump-fisted baby. After what Maia had to confess was a truly delicious supper she summoned up the courage to ask her son what he might be up to now, for he was hanging out stringy lines of cow gut in front of the fire. While he waited for these foul-smelling strips to dry he busied himself with boring little holes along the edges of the tortoiseshell. 'I've had an idea,' was all he would tell her. Apollo Reads the Signs Hermes may or may not have known it, but on his first night on earth he had travelled quite a distance. All the way from his birthplace on Mount Cyllene north through the fields of Thessaly and as far as Pieria, where he had found and rustled the cattle. And back again. In baby steps that is quite a distance. What Hermes certainly could not have known was that the white cattle belonged to Apollo, who prized them highly. When news reached the god of their disappearance he set off in fury to Pieria in order to follow what he assumed was a vicious gang of thieves to their lair. Wild dryads or fauns gone to the bad, he imagined. They would regret taking property from the god of arrows. He lay down in the cattle's field to examine the ground with all the thoroughness of an experienced tracker. To his astonishment the brigands had left no useful traces at all. All he could see were random brush marks, meaningless whorls and swirls and unless he was going mad one tiny infant footprint. Any impressions that might have been formed by cow's hoofs seemed to be heading, not away from the field, but towards it! Whoever had stolen the cattle was mocking Apollo. They were practised and expert thieves, that much was clear. His sister Artemis was the most skilled hunter he knew: would she dare? Perhaps she had devised some cunning way to conceal her tracks. |
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The later Greeks certainly believed that the Golden Age had truly existed. It was ever present in their thinking and poetry and gave them a dream of perfection to aspire to, a vision more concrete and realized than our own vague ideas of early man grunting in caves. Platonic ideals and perfect forms were perhaps the intellectual expression of that wistful race memory. It was natural that, of all the immortals, the one who loved humankind best should be their artist-creator Prometheus. He and his brother Epimetheus now spent more time living with man than they spent on Olympus in the company of their fellow immortals. It saddened Prometheus that he had only been allowed to create male people, for he felt that this cloned single-sex race lacked variety both in its outlook, disposition and character and in its inability to breed and create new types. His humans were happy, yes; but to Prometheus such a safe, unchallenged and unchallenging existence had no zest to it. To approach the godlike status that his creation deserved, mankind needed something more. They needed fire. Real hot, fierce, flickering, flaming fire to enable them to melt, smelt, roast, toast, boil, broil, fashion and forge; and they needed an inner creative fire too, a divine fire, to enable them to think, imagine, dare and do. The more he watched over and mingled with his creation, the more Prometheus became convinced that fire was exactly what they needed. And he knew where to find it. The Fennel Stalk Prometheus surveyed the twin crowns of Olympus towering above him. The tallest peak, Mytikos, reached nearly ten thousand podes high into the clouds. Next to it, two or three hundred or so feet lower but much harder to climb, reared the rocky face of Stefani. To the west loomed the heights of Skolio. Prometheus knew that the dying rays of the evening sun would shield that climb the toughest of all from the gods enthroned above, and so he began the perilous ascent confident that he could reach the summit unseen. Prometheus had never disobeyed Zeus before. Not in anything big. In games and races and wrestling matches and competitions to win the hearts of nymphs he had freely teased and taunted his friend, but he had never defied him outright. The hierarchy of the pantheon was not something any being could disrupt without real consequences. Zeus was a beloved friend, but he was, above all, Zeus. Yet Prometheus was determined on his course of action. Much as he had always loved Zeus, he found that he loved mankind more. The excitement and resolution he felt were stronger than any fear of divine wrath. He hated to cross his friend, but when it came to a choice, there was no choice. By the time he had scaled Skolio's sheer wall, the western gates had closed upon Apollo's chariot of the sun and the whole mountain was shrouded in darkness. Crouching low, Prometheus made his way around the jagged outcrop that crested the bowl-like amphitheatre of Megala Kazania. Looking ahead he could see the Plateau of the Muses beyond, flickering with dancing licks of light thrown by the fires of Hephaestus's forge several hundred podes or so further off. Around the other side of Olympus the gods were supping. Prometheus could hear Apollo's lyre, Hermes' fluting syrinx, the raucous laugh of Ares and the snarling of Artemis's hounds. Hugging the outer walls of the forge the Titan edged along to its forecourt. He was startled, as he rounded the corner, to see stretched out naked on the ground the huge figure of Brontes snoring by the fire. |
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Prometheus hung back in the shadows. He knew that the Cyclopes assisted Hephaestus, but that they might sleep on the premises was more than he had bargained for. At the very mouth of the forge he saw a narthex plant, sometimes called the laserwort or giant fennel (Ferula communis) not quite the same bulbous vegetable we use today to impart a pleasant aniseedy flavour to fish, but a near enough relation. Prometheus leaned forward and picked a long, vigorous specimen. Tightly packed within there was a thick, lint-like pith. Stripping the stem of its outer leaves Prometheus stretched out and pushed the stalk across the forecourt, over Brontes' slumbering, mumbling form and towards the fire. The heat emanating from the furnace was enough to cause the end of the stalk to catch at once. Prometheus pulled it back in with as much care as he could, but he could not prevent a spark from falling from its sputtering end straight down onto Brontes' torso. The skin on the Cyclops's chest sizzled and hissed and he awoke with a roar of pain. As Brontes looked groggily down at his chest, trying to understand where this pain was coming from and what it could mean, Prometheus hauled in the stalk and fled. The Gift of Fire Prometheus clambered back down Olympus, the fennel stalk clenched between his teeth, its pith burning slowly. Every five minutes or so he would take it from his mouth and blow gently, nursing its glow. When he at last reached the safety of the valley floor he made his way to the human settlement where he and his brother had made their home. You may say that Prometheus could surely have had the wit to teach man to strike stones together, or rub sticks, but we have to remember that what Prometheus stole was fire from heaven, divine fire. Perhaps he took the inner spark that ignited in man the curiosity to rub sticks and strike flints in the first place. When he showed men the leaping, dancing darting demon they initially cried out in fear and backed away from its flames. But their curiosity soon overcame their fear and they began to delight in this magical new toy, substance, phenomenon call it what you will. They learned from Prometheus that fire was not their enemy but a powerful friend which, once tamed, had ten thousand thousand uses. Prometheus moved from village to village demonstrating techniques for the fashioning of tools and weapons, the firing of earthen pots, the cooking of meat and the baking of cereal doughs, all of which quickly let loose an avalanche of advantages, raising man above the animal prey that had no answer to metal-tipped spears and arrows. It was not long before Zeus chanced to look down from Olympus and saw points of dancing orange light dotting the landscape all around. He knew at once what had happened. Nor did he need to be told who was responsible. His anger was swift and terrible. Never had such almighty, such tumultuous, such apocalyptic fury been witnessed. Not even Ouranos in his mutilated agony had been so filled with vengeful rage. Ouranos was brought low by a son he had no regard for, but Zeus had been betrayed by the friend he loved most. No betrayal could be more terrible. The Punishments The Gift Zeus's wrath was so overwhelming that all Olympus feared Prometheus would be blasted with such power that his atoms would never reassemble. It is possible that just such a fate might have befallen the once-favoured Titan had not the wise and stabilizing presence of Metis inside Zeus's head counselled a subtler and more dignified revenge. |
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Epimetheus, who always acted first and considered the consequences later, promised to obey his more perspicacious brother. Nothing could prepare him for Zeus's gift, however. Epimetheus answered a knock at the door one morning to see the cheerful smiling face of the messengers of the gods. 'May we come in?' Hermes stepped nimbly aside to reveal, cradling a stoneware jar in her arms, the most beautiful creature Epimetheus had ever seen. Aphrodite was beautiful, of course she was, but too remote and ethereal to be considered as anything other than a subject of veneration and distant awe. Likewise Demeter, Artemis, Athena, Hestia and Hera. Their loveliness was majestic and unattainable. The prettiness of nymphs, oreads and Oceanids, while enchanting enough, seemed shallow and childish next to the blushing sweetness of the vision that looked up at him so shyly, so winningly, so adorably. 'May we?' repeated Hermes. Epimetheus gulped, swallowed and stepped backwards, opening the door wide. 'Meet your wife to be,' said Hermes. 'Her name is Pandora.' When It's a Jar Epimetheus and Pandora were soon married. Epimetheus had an inkling that Prometheus who was far away teaching the art of casting in bronze to the people of Varanasi would not approve of Pandora. A quick wedding before his brother returned seemed a good idea. Epimetheus and Pandora were very much in love. That could not be denied. Pandora's beauty and attainments were such as to delight him every day, and in return his facile ability to live always for the moment and never to fret about the future gave her a sense of life as a light and lovely adventure. But one little itch tickled her, one little fly buzzed around her, one little worm burrowed inside. That jar. She kept it on a shelf in their bedroom. When Epimetheus had asked about it she laughed. 'Just a silly thing that Hephaestus made to remind me of Olympus. It's of no value.' 'Pretty though,' said Epimetheus, giving it no further thought. One afternoon, when her husband was away practising the discus with his friends, Pandora approached the jar and ran her finger round the rim of its sealed lid. Why had Zeus even mentioned that there was nothing interesting inside it? He would never have said such a thing if truly there weren't. She pieced the logic of it together in her mind. If you give a friend an empty jar you would never concern yourself with mentioning that the jar was empty. Your friend might look inside one day and see that for themselves. So why should Zeus take the trouble to repeat that this jar contained nothing of any interest? There could be only one explanation. There was something of great interest inside. Something of value or power. Something either enchanting or enchanted. But, no she had sworn never to open it. 'A promise is a promise,' she told herself, and straight away felt very virtuous. She believed it her duty to resist the spell of the jar which now, really, seemed almost to be singing out to her in the most alluring way. It was excessively vexing to have an object so bewitching in her bedroom where it could taunt and tempt her every morning and every night. Temptation loses much of its power when removed from sight. Pandora went to the small back garden and next to a sundial that a neighbour had given them as a wedding gift she dug a hole and buried the jar deep in the ground. She patted the earth flat and wheeled the heavy sundial on its plinth over the hiding place. There! For the next week she was as gay and skittish and happy as a person had ever been. |
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'O Themis, Mother of Justice, Peace and Order, instruct us, we beseech you,' they cried. 'We are alone in the world now and too advanced in years to fill this empty world with offspring.' 'Children of Prometheus and Epimetheus,' the oracle intoned. 'Hear my voice and do as I command. Cover your head and throw the bones of your mother over your shoulder.' Not a word more could the perplexed couple induce the oracle to utter. 'My mother was Pandora,' said Pyrrha, sitting on the ground. 'And I must presume she is drowned. Where could I find her bones?' 'My mother is Clymene,' said Deucalion. 'Or, if you believe variant sources, she is the Oceanid Hesione. In either case they are both immortals and therefore alive and surely unwilling to give up their bones.' 'We must think,' said Pyrrha. 'The bones of our mother. Can that have another meaning? Our mother's bones. Maternal bones ... Think, Deucalion, think!' Deucalion covered his head with a folded cloth, sat down next to his wife, whose head was already covered, and pondered the problem with creased brow. Oracles. They always paltered and prevaricated. Moodily he picked up a rock and sent it rolling down the hillside. Pyrrha grabbed his arm. 'Our mother!' Deucalion stared at her. She had started slapping the ground with the palms of her hands. 'Gaia! Gaia is mother of us all,' she cried. 'Our Mother Earth! These are the bones of our mother, look ...' She started to gather up rocks from the ground. 'Come on!' Deucalion got to his feet and scrabbled around, collecting rocks and stones. They made their way across the fields below Delphi, casting them over their shoulders as instructed, but not daring to look back until they had covered many stadia. When they turned the sight that greeted them filled their hearts with joy. From out of the ground where Pyrrha's stones had landed sprang girls and women, hundreds of them, smiling and healthy and fully formed. From the earth where Deucalion's stones had fallen boys and men grew up. So it was that the old Pelasgians drowned in the Great Deluge, and the Mediterranean world was repopulated by a new race descended through Deucalion and Pyrrha from Prometheus, Epimetheus, Pandora and most importantly of course from Gaia. fn7 And that is who we are, a compound of foresight and impulse, of all gifts and of the earth. Death Our human race, now satisfactorily comprised equally of males and females, bred and spread about the world building cities and establishing nation states. Ships and chariots, cottages and castles, culture and commerce, merchants and markets, farming and finance, weapons and wheat. In short, civilization began. It was an age of kings, queens, princes and princesses, of hunters, warriors, shepherds, potters and poets. An age of empires, slaves, warfare, trade and treaties. An age of votive offerings, sacrifices and worship. Towns and villages chose their favourite gods and goddesses to be guardian deities, patrons and protectors. The immortals themselves were not shy to come down in their own forms, or in the forms of humans and animals, to have their way with such humans as appealed to them or to punish those that aggravated them and reward those that most fawned on them. The gods never tired of flattery. Perhaps most importantly the plague of sorrows that had flown from Pandora's jar ensured that from this point onwards humanity would have to face the inevitability of death in all its forms. Sudden death, slow lingering death, death by violence, death by disease, death by accident, death by murder and death by divine decree. |
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fn2 'Persephone? Oh, I saw what happened to her. I see everything.' 'You saw? Then why didn't you say something?' demanded Zeus. 'Demeter has been dementedly wandering the earth looking for her, frantic with worry and the world is turning into a desert. Why the hell didn't you speak up?' 'No one asked me! No one ever asks me anything. But I know a lot. The eye of the sun sees all,' said Helios, repeating a line that Apollo had often used during his days in charge of the sun-chariot. 'What happened to her?' 'The earth opened and who should come out in his chariot and seize her but ... Hades!' 'Hades!' chorused the gods. The Pomegranate Seeds Zeus immediately went down to the underworld to fetch Persephone back. But the King of the Underworld was in no mood to take orders from the King of the Overworld. 'She stays. She is my queen.' 'You dare to defy me?' 'You are my younger brother,' said Hades. 'My youngest brother in fact. You have always had everything you've ever wanted. I demand the right to keep the girl I love. You cannot deny me.' 'Oh, can't I?' said Zeus. 'The world is in famine. The cries of starving mortals keep us awake. Refuse to return Persephone and you will soon discover the force and reach of my will. Hermes will bring no more spirits of the dead to you. Not one single soul shall ever be sent here. All will be despatched to a new paradise, or perhaps never even die. Hades will become an empty realm drained of all power, influence or majesty. Your name will become a laughing stock.' The brothers glared at each other. Hades was the first to blink. 'Damn you,' he growled. 'Give me one more day with her and then send Hermes to fetch her.' Zeus travelled back up to Olympus well pleased. The next day Hades knocked on the door of Persephone's chamber. You might be surprised that he knocked, but the fact is, in her dignified and assured presence, even such a power as Hades found himself uncertain and shy. He loved her with all his heart, and although he had lost the battle of wills with Zeus he was sure that he could not let her go. Besides, he detected in her something ... something that gave him hope. A small flicker of returned love? 'My dear,' he said with a gentleness that would have astonished anyone who knew him. 'Zeus has prevailed upon me to send you back into the world of light.' Persephone raised her pale face and gazed steadily at him. Hades gazed earnestly back. 'I hope you do not think ill of me?' She did not reply, but Hades thought he could detect a little colour flushing her cheeks and throat. 'Share some pomegranate seeds with me to show there is no ill-feeling?' Listlessly Persephone took six seeds from his outstretched hand and sucked slowly at their sharp sweetness. When Hermes arrived the trickster god found that he and Zeus had themselves been tricked. 'Persephone has eaten fruit from my kingdom,' said Hades. 'It is ordained that all who have tasted the food of hell must return. She has tasted six pomegranate seeds so she must come back to me for six months of every year.' Hermes bowed. He knew that this was so. Taking Persephone by the hand he led her up out of the underworld. Demeter was so overjoyed to see her daughter that the world immediately began to spring into bloom. It was a joy that was to last for half the length of the year, for six months later, in accordance with ineluctable divine law, Persephone was forced to return to the underworld. Demeter's distress at this parting caused the trees to shed their leaves and a dead time to creep over the world. |
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But here Eros comes out of the story rather well. So real, pure and absolute was his love that he could not think of cheating Psyche out of her own choice. He took one last longing look at her, turned and leapt out of the window and back into the night. Psyche saw the pig running round in wild, snuffling circles on her bedroom floor, concluded that she must be dreaming, blew out the candle and went back to sleep. Prophecy and Abandonment The next morning King Aristides was alarmed to be told by a servant that his youngest daughter seemed to have turned her bedroom into some kind of piggery. He and Queen Damaris had been worried enough already that, unlike her sisters Calanthe and Zona who had allied themselves to rich landowners, Psyche had stubbornly refused to marry. The news that she was now consorting with pigs made up his mind. He travelled to the oracle of Apollo to find out what the girl's future might be. After the correct sacrifices and prayers had been offered up, the Sibyl made this answer. 'Garland your child with flowers and carry her to a high place. Lay her on a rock. The one that will come to take her for its bride is the most dangerous being of earth, sky or water. All the gods of Olympus fear its power. So it is ordained, so it must be. Fail in this and the creature will lay waste all your kingdom and discord and despair shall come in its train. You, Aristides, will be called the destroyer of your people's happiness.' Ten days later a strange procession wound its way out of the town. Carried high on a litter, festooned with flowers and dressed in the purest white, sat a gloomy but resigned Psyche. She had been told of the oracle's pronouncement and had accepted it. Her so-called beauty had always been a source of irritation to her. She hated the fuss and stir it caused, how oddly it made people behave in her presence and how freakish and set apart it made her feel. She had planned never to marry, but if she had to then a rapacious beast would be no worse than a tedious fawning prince with mooncalf eyes. The agony of its attentions would at least be over quickly. With piteous wails of grief and sorrow the crowd laboured up the mountainside until they came to the great basalt rock on which Psyche was to be laid for sacrifice. Her mother Damaris howled, shrieked and sobbed. King Aristides patted her hand and wished himself elsewhere. Calanthe and Zona, their dull, elderly but rich husbands at their sides, each tried their best to conceal the deep satisfaction they felt at the knowledge that they were soon to be the unchallenged fairest in the land. As she was bound to the rock Psyche closed her eyes and breathed deeply, waiting for everyone to have done with indulging in their lamentations and shows of grief. Soon all suffering and pain would be over. Singing hymns to Apollo the crowd wound its way down the hill, leaving Psyche alone on the rock. The sun shone down upon her. Larks called in the blue sky. She had pictured boiling clouds, shrieking winds, lashing rain and dreadful thunder as accompaniments to her violation and death, not this glorious idyll of late-spring sunshine and rippling birdsong. Who or what could this creature be? If her father had reported the oracle correctly then even the high Olympians feared it. But she had heard of no such terrible monster in all the legends and rumours of legends on which she had been raised. Not even Typhon or Echidna had the power to alarm the mighty gods. Suddenly a warm breath of wind ruffled her white ceremonial robes. |
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That night, in pitch darkness, the beautiful young man came to her bed again. She tried to speak to him, but he placed a finger to her lips and a voice sounded inside her head. 'Hush, Psyche. Ask no questions. Love me as I love you.' And slowly, as the days passed, she realized that she did love this unseen man very much. Every night they made love. Every morning she awoke to find him gone. The palace was glorious and there was nothing Psyche's handmaidens would not do for her. She had everything she could ever want, the best to eat or drink and music to accompany her everywhere. But what long, lonely days stretched out between the evenings of delicious love, how hard she found it to pass the time. The 'monster' with whom she slept every night was, you will have guessed, the god Eros whose self-inflicted dart had caused him to fall in love with Psyche, a love now magnified by their repeated nights of mutual bliss. The oracle had been right to say that Eros was a being whose powers frightened all the gods, for there was not one Olympian who had not been conquered by Eros at some time. Perhaps he was a monster after all. But he could be sensitive and sweet as well as capricious and cruel. He saw that Psyche was not entirely happy and one night, as they lay together in the darkness, he quizzed her tenderly. 'What ails you, beloved wife?' 'I hate to say this when you have given me so much, but I get lonely during the day. I miss my sisters.' 'Your sisters?' 'Calanthe and Zona. They believe me to be dead.' 'Only unhappiness can come from consorting with them. Misery and despair for them and for you.' 'But I love them ...' 'Misery and despair, I tell you.' Psyche sighed. 'Please believe me,' he said. 'It is for the best that you do not see them.' 'What about you? May I not see you? May I never look into the face of the one I love so well?' 'You must not ask me that. Never ask me that.' The days passed and Eros saw that Psyche for all the wine and food, for all the music and magical fountains and enchanted voices was pining. 'Cheer up, beloved! Tomorrow is our anniversary,' he said. A year! Had a whole year passed already? 'My present to you is to grant your wish. Tomorrow morning my friend Zephyrus will await you outside the palace and take you where you need to be. But please be careful. Do not allow yourself to become too involved in the lives of your family. And you must promise never to tell them about me. Not one word about me.' Psyche promised and they fell into each others arms for a night of anniversary love. Never had she felt more passionate adoration or physical delight, and she sensed equal feelings of ardour and love in him too. The next morning she awoke, as ever, to an empty bed. In a great fever of impatience she allowed herself to be dressed and served breakfast by the handmaidens before running excitedly to the great gate at the front of the palace. She had barely stepped out before Zephyrus swept down and flew her away in his strong, supportive arms. Sisters Meanwhile, back in the land of Psyche's birth, the populace had been marking the anniversary of her capture by the fabled unseen monster. King Aristides and Queen Damaris had led the procession of mourning up the hillside to the basalt slab on which their daughter had been bound since named 'the Rock of Psyche' in her honour. Now there remained at the monument only the two princesses, Calanthe and Zona, who had loudly made it known to all that they wished to stay behind and lament in private. |
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Once the crowd died away they pulled back their mourning veils and began to laugh. 'Imagine what sort of creature it was that took her away,' said Zona. 'Winged like a Fury ...' suggested Calanthe. 'With iron claws ...' 'And fiery breath ...' 'Great yellow fangs ...' 'Snakes for hair ...' 'A great tail that What was that?' A sudden gust of wind made them turn round. What they saw made them shout in fright. Their sister Psyche was standing before them, radiant in a shimmering white gown edged with gold. She looked appallingly beautiful. 'But ...' began Calanthe 'We thought ...' stammered Zona. And then both together: 'Sister!' Psyche came towards them, her hands held out and the sweetest smile of tender sisterly love lighting up her face. Calanthe and Zona each took a hand to kiss. 'You are alive!' 'And so ... so ...' 'This dress it must have cost, that is to say it looks ...' 'And you look ...' said Zona, 'so ... so ... Calanthe, whatever is the word?' 'Happy?' suggested Psyche. 'Something,' her sisters agreed. 'You definitely look something.' 'But tell us, Psyche, dearest ...' 'What happened to you?' 'Here we are mourning, sobbing our hearts out for you.' 'Who gave you that dress?' 'How did you get off the rock?' 'Is it real gold?' 'Did a monster come for you? A beast? An ogre?' 'And that material.' 'A dragon perhaps?' 'How do you keep it from creasing?' 'Did it take you to its den?' 'Who does your hair?' 'Did it try to chew your bones?' 'That can't be a real emerald can it?' Laughing, Psyche held up a hand. 'Dear sisters! I will tell you everything. Better, I will show you everything. Come, wind, take us there!' Before the sisters knew what was happening the three of them were lifted from their feet and were travelling swiftly through the air, safe in the arms of the West Wind. 'Don't fight it. Relax into it,' said Psyche as Zephyrus swept them up over the mountain. Zona's howls began to subside and Calanthe's muffled sobs softened to a whimper. Before long they were even able to open their eyes for a few seconds without screaming. When the wind finally set them down on the grass in front of the enchanted palace Calanthe had decided that this was the only way to travel. 'Who needs a stupid horse pulling a rickety rackety old chariot?' she said. 'From now on I catch the wind ...' But Zona wasn't listening. She was staring transfixed at the walls, the turrets and the silver studded door of the palace, all glittering in the morning sun. 'Come in,' said Psyche. What an exciting feeling, to show her dear sisters around her new home. It was a pity they couldn't meet her darling husband. To say that the girls were impressed would be criminally to understate the matter. Naturally therefore they sniffed, yawned, tittered, shook their heads and generally tut-tutted their way from golden apartment to golden apartment by silver-panelled corridors and jewel-encrusted passageways. Their tilted, wrinkled noses seemed to suggest that they were used to better. 'Just a little vulgar, don't we feel, darling?' Zona suggested. Inside she said to herself, 'This is the home of a god!' Calanthe was thinking, 'If I just stop and pretend to fix the laces of my sandals I could break off one of the rubies encrusting that chair ...' When the invisible staff of stewards, footmen and handmaidens began serving lunch the sisters found it harder to mask their wonder and astonishment. Afterwards they each took turns to be oiled, bathed and massaged. Pressed for details of the castle's lord, Psyche remembered her promise and hastily made something up. |
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'He's a handsome huntsman and local landowner.' 'What's his name?' 'The kindest eyes.' 'And his name is ...?' 'He's so sorry to miss you. I'm afraid he always takes to the field with his hounds by day. He wanted so much to greet you personally. Perhaps another time.' 'Yes, but what's he called?' 'He he doesn't really have a name.' 'What?' 'Well, he has a name. Obviously he has a name, everyone has a name, Zona, I mean really! But he doesn't use it.' 'But what is it?' 'Oh my goodness, quick! It'll be dark soon. Zephyrus won't fly you at night ... Come, dear sisters, help yourselves to some little things to take home. Here's a handful of amethysts. These are sapphires. There's gold, silver ... Be sure to take gifts for mother and father too.' Loaded with precious treasures the sisters allowed themselves to be transported back to the rock. Psyche, who had stood and waved them off, was both relieved and sorry to see them go. While she welcomed their company and the chance to show them round and give them presents, her determination to keep the promise she had made to her husband had made the evasion of all their questions an exhausting business. Back home the sisters despite the fabulous treasures they now possessed were eaten up with envy, resentment and fury. How could their younger sister, the stupid, selfish Psyche, now find herself in the position more or less of a goddess? It was so appallingly unfair. Spoiled, vain, ugly creature! Well, not ugly, perhaps. Possessed of a certain obvious and rather vulgar prettiness, but scarcely a match for their queenly beauty. It was all too monstrously unjust: there was almost certainly witchcraft and wickedness at the bottom of it. How could she not even know the name of her lord and master? 'My husband Sato's rheumatism,' said Calanthe, 'is getting so bad that every night I have to rub his fingers one by one, then apply plasters and poultices. It's disgusting and demeaning.' 'You think your life is hell?' said Zona. 'My Charion is as bald as an onion, his breath stinks and he has all the sex drive of a dead pig. While Psyche ...' 'That selfish slut ...' The sisters clung to each other and sobbed their hearts out. That night Psyche's lover Eros had momentous news for her. She was pouring out all her gratitude to him, and explaining how well she had managed to avoid describing him to her sisters, when he placed his finger on her lips. 'Sweet, trusting child. I fear those sisters and what they may do to you. But I am glad you are happy. Let me make you happier still.' She felt his warm hand slide down her front and gently stroke her belly. 'Our child is growing there.' Psyche gasped and hugged him close, stunned with joy. 'If you keep this secret,' he said, 'the child will be a god. If you tell a living soul, it will be mortal.' 'I will keep the secret,' said Psyche. 'But before my condition becomes obvious let me at least see Calanthe and Zona one more time and say goodbye to them.' Eros was troubled but could not see how he might deny so decent and sisterly a request, and so he assented. 'Zephyrus will send them a sign and they will come,' he said, leaning forward to kiss her. 'But remember, not a word about me or about our baby.' A Drop of Oil The next morning Calanthe and Zona awoke to feel the breath of Zephyrus ruffling at them like a hungry pet dog panting and pawing at the bedclothes. When they opened their eyes and sat up the wind departed, but their instinct, greed and inborn cunning told them what the signal meant, and they hurried to the rock to await their transport. |
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With a cry inaudible to human ears he summoned his great family of brother and sisters, and together they set about sorting the seeds. With the tears drying on her cheeks Psyche watched in amazement as ten thousand cheerful ants shuttled and scuttled back and forth, sifting and separating the seeds with military precision. Well before rosy-fingered Eos had cast open the gates of dawn, the job was done and seven neat and perfect piles awaited Aphrodite's inspection. The frustrated fury of the goddess was something to behold. Another impossible chore was instantly devised. 'You see the grove yonder, on the other side of the river?' said Aphrodite, yanking Psyche by the hair and forcing her to look out of the window. 'There are sheep there, grazing and wandering unguarded. Special sheep with fleeces of gold. Go there at once and bring me back a tuft of their wool.' Psyche made her way out to the grove willingly enough, but with no intention of carrying out this second task. She resolved to use her freedom to escape not just the prison of Aphrodite's hateful curse but the prison of hateful life itself. She would throw herself into the river and drown. But as she stood on the bank, breathing hard and summoning up the courage to dive in, one of the reeds nodded although there wasn't a breath of breeze and whispered to her. 'Psyche, sweet Psyche. Harrowed by great trials as you are, do not pollute my clean waters with your death. There is a way through your troubles. The sheep here are wild and violent, guarded by the most ferocious ram, whose horns could tear you open like a ripe fruit. You see them grazing there under that plane tree on the further bank? To approach them now would mean a swift and painful death. But if you lie down to sleep, by evening they will have moved to new pastures and you will be able to swim across to the tree where you will find tangles of golden wool clinging to its lower branches.' That night an enraged and baffled Aphrodite cast the golden wool aside and insisted that Psyche descend to the underworld to beg a sample of beauty cream from Persephone. Since she had thought of little else but death since Eros had left her, the poor girl consented willingly and followed Aphrodite's directions to Hades, where she fully intended to stay and see out a miserable, lonely and loveless eternity. The Union of Love and Soul One day a garrulous swallow told Eros about the tasks which Psyche had been set by his jealous and intemperate mother. Trying to ignore the still agonizing pain of his wound, he rose up and with a mighty effort opened his wings. He flew straight to Olympus, where he demanded an immediate audience with Zeus. Eros told his story to an enraptured audience of fascinated Olympians. His mother had always hated Psyche. Aphrodite's dignity and honour as an Olympian had been threatened by the girl's beauty and the willingness of a handful of foolish humans to venerate the mortal maiden ahead of the immortal goddess. And so she had sent Eros to cause Psyche to fall in love with a pig. He put his case well. Zeus sent Hermes down to the underworld to fetch Psyche and an eagle to summon Aphrodite. When they were present before the heavenly company, Zeus spoke. 'This has been an extraordinary and undignified entanglement. Aphrodite, beloved one. Your position is not threatened; it never can be. Look down at the earth and see how your name is everywhere sanctified and praised. Eros, you have too long been a foolish, impudent and irresponsible boy. |
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The short flush of dawn is over and the day has begun. The Drive Apollo's horses charged upwards, pawing the air. All was well. They knew what they were doing. They reached a certain height, levelled out and charged forward. This was easy. Phaeton pulled himself upright, careful not to strain the traces, and looked around. He could see the curve that marked the separation of blue sky and star-filled darkness. He could see the effect of the light blazing out from the chariot. He was insulated, somehow magically safe from its heat and glare, but great clouds melted and fizzed into vapour as they approached. He looked down and saw the long shadows of mountains and trees contract as they flew forward. He saw the wrinkled sea send back a million scintillations of light, and he saw the sparkle of dew rising into a shimmering mist as they neared the coast of Africa. Somewhere, just west of Nilus, Epaphus would be holidaying on the beach. Oh, this was going to be the greatest triumph ever! As the coastline swung more clearly into view Phaeton pulled at the reins, trying to nose down Aeos, the lead horse on his left hand side. Aeos had perhaps been thinking of other things, of golden straw or pretty mares, he had certainly not been imagining a tug to pull him off course. In a panic he shied and dived, pulling the other horses with him. The chariot bucked in the air and plummeted straight for the earth. In vain Phaeton tugged the reins, which had somehow become tangled in his hands. The green earth screamed towards him and he saw his certain death. He took one final desperate yank at the reins, and at the very last minute either in response to that pull or as an instinctive move to save themselves the four steeds swooped upwards and galloped blindly north. But not before Phaeton saw with terror and dismay that the terrible heat of the sun-chariot had set the earth on fire. As they flew on, a raging curtain of flame swept across the land below, burning everything and everyone upon it to a crisp. The whole strip of Africa below the northern coast was laid waste. To this day most of the land is a great parched desert, which we call the Sahara, but which to the Greeks was the Land that Phaeton Scorched. He was now terribly out of control. The horses knew for certain that the familiar firm hand of Apollo was not there to guide them. Was it wild joy at their freedom or panic at the lack of control that maddened the four? Having plunged down close enough to make the earth catch fire now they leapt up so far towards the purple curve that separated the sky from the stars that the world below grew cold and dark. The sea itself froze and the land turned to ice. Thrashing, swaying, swooping and careering onwards, without any control or sense of direction, the chariot bounced and bucketed in the air like a leaf in a storm. Far below, the people of the earth looked up in wonder and alarm. Phaeton was screaming at the horses, begging them, threatening them, jerking at the reins ... but all in vain. The Fallout On Olympus news of the devastation being wrought upon the surface of the earth reached the gods and, at last, the ears of Zeus himself. 'Look what's happening,' cried a distraught Demeter. 'The crops are being sun-burned or frost-bitten. It's a disaster.' 'The people are afraid,' said Athena. 'Please, father. Something must be done.' With a sigh Zeus reached for a thunderbolt. He looked where the chariot of the sun was now plunging in a mad tumble towards Italy. |
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But divine instructions are divine instructions, however odd. In fact the odder, Cadmus was becoming aware, the more likely to be divine. First he carved a ploughshare from holm oak wood. Then, since no draught animals were available, he harnessed a willing team of his most loyal attendants. They would have laid down their lives for this charismatic Prince of Tyre, so pulling a plough was nothing to them. It was late spring and the soil of the plain was free-moving enough to be pulled into shallow but straight and well-marked furrows without too terrible an effort from the straining Tyrians. The field ploughed, Cadmus now set to dibbling the furrows an inch or two deep with the blunt end of a spear. Into each dibbled hole he dropped a dragon's tooth. As we all know, humans have thirty-two teeth. Water dragons have rows and rows of them, like sharks, each ready to advance when the row in front has been worn down with too much grinding of men's bones. Five hundred and twelve teeth Cadmus planted in all. When he had finished he stood back to survey the field. A light wind blew across the plain, catching the crests of the furrows and sending up powdery flurries of soil. Dust devils whipped and whirled around. A great hush descended. Harmonia was the first to see the earth in one of the furrows shift. She pointed and all eyes followed. A gasp and a muffled cry went up from the watching crowd. The tip of a spear was pushing through, then a helmet appeared, followed by shoulders, a breastplate, leathern-greaved legs ... until a fully armed soldier rose up, wild and fierce, stamping his feet. Then another, and another, until the field was filled with fighting men, marching on the spot in furrowed lines. The clanging and banging of their armour, the clashing and bashing of their buckles, belts and boots, the clamour and smacking of the metal and leather of their cuirasses, greaves and shields, their rhythmic grunting and martial shouts all built into a great and horrid din that filled the onlookers with fear. All but Cadmus, who stepped boldly forward and raised a hand. 'Spartoi!' he called out across the plain, giving them a name that means 'sown men'. 'My Spartoi! I am Prince Cadmus, your general. At ease.' Perhaps because they were born of dragon's teeth pulled from the jaws of a creature sacred to the god of war, these soldiers were filled from the first with extraordinary aggression. In reply to Cadmus's command they simply clattered and rattled their shields and spears. 'Silence!' yelled Cadmus. The warriors paid no attention. Their marching on the spot turned into a slow march forward. In exasperation Cadmus picked up a rock which, with his customary skill and strength, he hurled into their ranks. It struck one of the soldiers on the shoulder. The man looked at the soldier next to him and, taking him to be the aggressor, lunged at him with a mighty roar, sword drawn. Within moments blood-curdling battle-cries were heard all around the field as the soldiers fell upon each other. 'Stop! Stop! I command you to stop!' yelled Cadmus like a frantic parent on the touchline watching their son being squashed in a scrum. Stamping the ground in frustration he turned to Harmonia. 'What is the point of Athena taking all this trouble to force me to create a race of men, only for them to destroy each other? Look at this violence, this bloodlust. What does it mean?' But even as he spoke, Harmonia was pointing to the centre of the fray. Five of Cadmus's Spartoi stood in a circle, the sole survivors. |
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Let it be so.'fn13 No sooner were those words out of his mouth than his unhappy prayer became an unhappy reality. His body began to shrink sideways and stretch lengthways, his skin to blister and form smooth scales, and his head to flatten into a diamond shape. The tongue that had shouted that dreadful wish to the heavens now flicked and darted out from between two fangs. The man who was once Cadmus, Prince of Tyre and King of Thebes, fell writhing to the ground, a common snake. Harmonia let out a great howl of despair. 'Gods have pity!' she cried. 'Aphrodite, if you are my mother show love now and let me join upon the earth the one I love. The fruits of the world are dust to me. Ares, if you are my father show mercy. Zeus if, as some say, you are my father then, in the name of all creation, take pity, I beg you.' It was, however, none of those three who heard her prayers, but merciful Athena who transformed her into a snake. Harmonia glided through the dust after her serpent-husband and they coiled about each other with love. The pair lived out their days in the shadows of a temple sacred to Athena, only showing themselves when they needed to heat their blood in the noonday sun. When the end came, Zeus returned them to their human shapes in time to die. Their bodies were taken to be buried with great ceremony in Thebes, and Zeus sent two great serpents to guard their tombs for eternity. We will leave Cadmus and Harmonia to their everlasting rest. They died quite unaware that their youngest daughter, Semele, had, in their absence, unleashed a force into the world that would change it for ever. Twice Born The Eagle Lands After Cadmus and Harmonia departed on their travels, their son-in-law Pentheus reigned in Thebes. fn1 He was not a strong king, but he was honest and did the best he could with the limited store of character and cunning on which he was able to call. While the city-state flourished well enough under him, he needed always to look over his shoulder to the children of Cadmus, his brothers- and sisters-in-law, whose greed and ambition posed a constant threat. Even his wife Agave seemed contemptuous of him and anxious for him to fail. His youngest sister-in-law, Semele, was the only one with whom he felt at all at ease, in truth because she was less worldly than her brothers Polydorus and Illyrius, and nothing like as ambitious for wealth and position as her sisters Agave, AutonoE and Ino. Semele was a beautiful, kindly and generous girl, content with her life as a priestess at the great temple of Zeus. One day she sacrificed to Zeus a bull of especially impressive size and vigour. The offering complete, she took herself off to the River Asopos to wash the blood from her. It so happened that Zeus, pleased with the sacrifice and intending anyway to look in on Thebes to see how the city prospered, was flying over the river at the time in his favourite guise of an eagle. The sight of Semele's naked body glistening in the water excited him hugely and he landed, turning himself quickly back into his proper form. I say 'proper form', for when the gods chose to reveal themselves to humans they presented themselves in a reduced, manageable guise that did not dazzle or overawe. Thus the figure that stood on the riverbank smiling at Semele appeared human. Large, stunningly handsome, powerfully built and possessed of an unusual radiance, but human all the same. Crossing her arms over her breasts Semele called out, 'Who are you? How dare you sneak up upon a priestess of Zeus?' 'A priestess of Zeus, are you?' 'I am. |
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If you mean any harm to me I will cry out to the King of the Gods and he will rush to my aid.' 'You don't say so?' 'You may be sure of it. Now leave.' But the stranger came closer. 'I am well pleased with you, Semele,' he said. Semele backed away. 'You know my name?' 'I know many things, loyal priestess. For I am the god you serve. I am the Sky Father, the King of Olympus. Zeus, the all-powerful.' Semele, still half in the river, gasped and fell to her knees. 'Come now,' said Zeus, striding through the water towards her, 'let me look into your eyes.' It was splashy, frenzied and wet, but it was real love-making. When it was over Semele smiled, blushed, laughed and then wept, leaning her head on Zeus's chest and sobbing without cease. 'Don't cry, dearest Semele,' said Zeus, running his fingers through her hair. 'You have pleased me.' 'I'm sorry, my lord. But I love you and I know all too well that you can never love a mortal.' Zeus gazed down at her. The eruption of lust he had felt was all over, but he was surprised to feel the stirrings of something deeper, glowing like embers in his heart. A god who operated in vertical moments with no real thought for consequences along the line, he really did experience just then a great wellspring of love for the beautiful Semele, and he told her so. 'Semele, I do love you! I love you sincerely. Believe me now when I swear by the waters of this river that I will always look after you, care for you, protect you, honour you.' He cupped her face in his hands and bent forward to bestow a tender kiss on her soft, receptive lips. 'Now, farewell, my sweet. Once every new moon I will come.' Dressed in her gown, her hair still damp and her whole being warm and bright with love and happiness, Semele walked back across the fields towards the temple. Looking up, a hand shading her eyes, she saw an eagle sweep and soar through the sky, seemingly into the sun itself, until the dazzle of it made her eyes water and she was forced to look away. The Eagle's Wife Zeus meant well. Those three words so often presaged disaster for some poor demigod, nymph or mortal. The King of the Gods did love Semele and he really meant to do his best by her. In the fervour of his new infatuation he managed conveniently to forget the torments Io had endured, maddened by the gadfly sent by his vengeful wife. Alas, Hera may no longer have had Argus of the hundred eyes to gather intelligence for her, but she had thousands of eyes in other places. Whether it was one of the jealous sisters, Agave, AutonoE or Ino, who spied on Semele and whispered to Hera the story of the love-making in the river, or whether it was one of the Queen of Heaven's own priestesses, is not known. But find out Hera did. So it was that, one afternoon, Semele, returning with romantic sentiment to the place of her regular amorous encounters with Zeus, encountered a stooping old woman leaning on a stick. 'My, what a pretty girl,' croaked the old woman, slightly overdoing the cracked and cackling voice of a miserable crone. 'Why thank you,' said the unsuspicious Semele with a friendly smile. 'Walk with me,' said the hag, pulling Semele towards her with her cane. 'Let me lean upon you.' Semele was polite and considerate by nature in a culture where the elderly were in any case accorded the greatest attention and respect, so she accompanied the old woman and endured her roughness without complaint. 'My name is BeroE,' said the old woman. 'And I am Semele.' 'What a pretty name! |
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'Excellent,' he cried. 'Swing your axes, boys.' But his men drew back muttering and shaking their heads. Erysichthon turned to his foreman. 'What's the matter with them?' 'These trees are sacred to Demeter, sire.' 'Nonsense. She has more than she knows what to do with. Bring them down.' More muttering. Erysichthon snatched the foreman's whip, which its owner only ever really waved for show, and cracked it menacingly over the heads of the foresters. 'Chop those trees down, or feel its sting!' he cried. With their king cracking the whip and urging them on, the men reluctantly chopped down the trees. But when they came to a giant oak that stood alone at the end of the grove they stopped again. 'Why, this is the tallest and broadest of them all!' said Erysichthon. 'That alone will provide the timber for the rafters and columns of my throne room and still leave enough over for a great bed for me.' The foreman pointed a trembling finger at the oak's branches, which were hung with garlands. The king was unimpressed. 'And?' 'My lord,' whispered the foreman, 'each wreath stands for a prayer that the goddess has answered.' 'If the prayers have already been answered she will have no need of flower arrangements. Cut it down.' But seeing that the foreman and his team were too afraid to proceed, the impetuous Erysichthon snatched up an axe and set about it himself. He was a strong man and, like most rulers, he loved to show off his will, skill and sinew. It was not long before the trunk creaked and the mighty oak began to sway. Did Erysichthon hear the plaintive cries of a hamadryad in the boughs? If he did he paid no heed but swung his axe again and again, until down crashed the tree branches, votive wreaths, garlands, hamadryad and all. As the oak died, so died its hamadryad. With her last breath she cursed Erysichthon for his crime. Demeter heard of Erysichthon's sacrilege and sent word to Limos. Limos was one of the vile creatures that had flown from Pandora's jar. She was a demon of famine who might be regarded as Demeter's inverse, the goddess's necessary opposite in the mortal world. One the fecund and bountiful herald of the harvest, the other the mercilessly cruel harbinger of hunger and blight. Since the two existed in an irreconcilable matterantimatter relationship, they could never meet in person, so Demeter sent a nymph of the mountains as her envoy, to urge Limos to deliver the hamadryad's curse on Erysichthon, a task the malevolent demon was only too happy to undertake. Limos had, according to Ovid, rather let herself go. With sagging, withered breasts, an empty space for a stomach, exposed rotten bowels, sunken eyes, crusted lips, scaly skin, lank, scurfy hair and swollen pustular ankles, the figure and face of Famine presented a haunting and dreadful spectacle. She stole that night into Erysichthon's bedroom, took the sleeping king in her arms and breathed her foul breath into him. Her poison fumes seeped into his mouth, throat and lungs. Through his veins and into every cell of his body slid the terrible, insatiable worm of hunger. Erysichthon awoke from strange dreams feeling very, very peckish. He surprised his kitchen staff with an enormous breakfast order. He consumed every morsel, yet still his appetite was unsated. All day he found that the more he ate the more ravenous he became. As days and then weeks passed, the pangs of hunger gnawed deeper and deeper. No matter how much he consumed he could never be satisfied, nor gain so much as an ounce of weight. |
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At exactly the same time, Tyro set out from the palace with a maid, the two boys now aged five and three and a hamper of food and wine, with the idea of surprising Sisyphus with a family picnic. Back on the riverbank, Melops and Sisyphus talked lazily about horses, women, sport and war. Tyro's group made their way across the fields. 'Tell me, sire,' said Melops, 'it has always surprised me that despite your bitter feud with King Salmoneus, you chose to marry his daughter. For all that I can tell, you still dislike him as much as ever.' 'Dislike him? I abominate, loathe, despise and abhor him,' said Sisyphus with a loud laugh. A laugh that allowed the approaching Tyro to draw a bead on his exact position. As her party drew nearer she could now hear every word her husband spoke. 'I only married that bitch Tyro because I hate Salmoneus so much,' he was saying. 'You see, the oracle at Delphi told me that if I had sons by her they would grow up to kill him. So when he dies by the hand of his own grandchildren I will be rid of my vile pig of a brother without fear of the pursuit of the Erinyes.' 'That is ...' Melops tried to find the word. 'Brilliant? Cunning? Ingenious?' Tyro checked her sons, who were about to run to the spot from which they could hear their father's voice. Turning them round she pushed them at speed towards a bend in the river, the maid following behind. Tyro had swallowed Sisyphus's charm whole, but she loved her father Salmoneus with a loyalty that overrode any other consideration. The idea of allowing her sons to grow up to kill their grandfather was out of the question. She knew how to defy the oracle's prophecy. 'Come child,' she said to the eldest, 'look down at the stream. Can you see any little fishes?' The small boy knelt on the riverbank and looked down. Tyro put a hand to his neck and pushed him under. When he had stopped struggling she did the same to the youngest. 'Now,' she said quite calmly to the traumatized maid, 'this is what you will do ...' Sisyphus and Melops caught plenty of fish that afternoon. Just as the light was fading and they had started to pack up for the day, Tyro's maidservant appeared before them, bobbing a nervous curtsey. 'Beg pardon, majesty, but the Queen asks that you might greet the princes. They are by the riverbank, awaiting your majesty. Just behind the willow tree, sire.' Sisyphus went to the place indicated to find his two sons lying stretched out on the grass, pale and lifeless. The maid ran for her life and was never heard of again. Tyro, by the time the enraged Sisyphus had reached the palace with drawn sword, was safely on her way to her father's kingdom of Elis. On her arrival home Salmoneus married her to his brother Cretheus, with whom she was deeply unhappy. Salmoneus himself, quite as proud and vainglorious as his hated brother, had set himself up in Elis as a kind of god. Claiming to equal Zeus's power to summon storms, he'd ordered the construction of a brass bridge over which he liked to ride his chariot at breakneck speed, trailing kettles, cauldrons and iron pots to mimic the sound of thunder. Flaming torches would be thrown skywards at the same time to imitate lightning. Such blasphemous impertinence caught the eye of Zeus, who ended the farrago with a real thunderbolt. The king, his chariot, brass bridge, cooking utensils and all were blasted to atoms and the shade of Salmoneus cast down to eternal damnation in the darkest depths of Tartarus. Sisyphean Tasks Sisyphus held a great feast to celebrate the death of his preposterous thunder-making brother. |
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'I thought you'd be taller.' 'Sisyphus, son of Aeolus,' Thanatos intoned in quelling accents, 'King of Corinth, Lord of ...' 'Yes, yes, I know who I am. You're the one who seems to have trouble remembering his name. Sit down, why don't you? Take the weight off your feet.' 'My weight is not on my feet. I am hovering.' Sisyphus looked down at the floor. 'Oh yes, so you are. And you've come for me have you?' Not confident that any words of his would be received with the respect and awe they deserved, Thanatos showed Sisyphus his manacles and shook them threateningly in his face. 'So you've brought shackles along. Iron?' 'Steel. Unbreakable steel. Fetters forged in the fires of Hephaestus by Steropes the Cyclops. Enchanted by my lord Hades. Whomsoever they bind cannot be unbound save by the god himself.' 'Impressive,' Sisyphus conceded. 'But in my experience nothing is unbreakable. Besides, there isn't even a lock or catch.' 'The hasp and spring are too cunningly contrived to be seen by mortal eyes.' 'So you say. I don't believe for a second that they work. I bet you can't close them round even your skinny arm. Go on, try.' Such open ridicule of his prized manacles could not be borne. 'Foolish man!' cried Thanatos. 'Such intricate devices are beyond the understanding of a mortal. See here! Round my back once and pass in front. Easy. Bring my wrists together, then close up the bracelets. And if you would be good enough to press just here, to engage the clasp, there's an invisible panel and ... behold!' 'Yes, I see,' said Sisyphus thoughtfully. 'I do see. I was wrong, quite wrong. What superb workmanship.' 'Oh.' Thanatos tried to wave the manacles, but his whole upper body was now constrained and immobile. 'Er ... help?' Sisyphus sprang from his bed and opened the door of a large wardrobe at the end of the room. It was the simplest thing in the world to send the hovering, tightly bound Thanatos across the room. With one push he had glided in and bumped his nose on the back of the closet. Turning the key on him Sisyphus called out cheerily. 'The lock to this wardrobe may be cheap and manmade, but I can assure you that it works as well as any fetters forged in the fires of Hephaestus.' Muffled despairing cries came, begging to be let out, but with a hearty 'Mwahahaha' Sisyphus skipped away, deaf to Death's entreaties. Life without Death The first few days of Thanatos's imprisonment passed without incident. Neither Zeus nor Hermes nor even Hades himself thought to verify that Sisyphus had been checked in to the infernal regions as arranged. But when a whole week passed without the arrival of any new dead souls, the spirits and demons of the underworld began to murmur. Another week went by and not a single departed shade had been admitted for processing, save one venerable priestess of Artemis, whose blameless life merited the honour of a personal escort to Elysium by Hermes, the Psychopomp. This sudden stemming of the flow of souls quite perplexed the denizens of Hades, until someone remarked that they hadn't seen Thanatos in days. Search parties were sent out, but Death could not be found. Such a thing had never happened before. Without Thanatos the whole system collapsed. In Olympus opinion was divided. Dionysus found the whole situation hilarious and drank a toast to the end of lethal cirrhosis of the liver. Apollo, Artemis and Poseidon were more or less neutral on the subject. Demeter feared that Persephone's authority as Queen of the Underworld was being flouted. |
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The seasons over which mother and daughter had dominion required that life be constantly ended and begun again, and only the presence of death could achieve this. The impropriety of such a scandal made Hera quite indignant, which made Zeus restive in turn. The usually merry and irrepressible Hermes was anxious too, for the smooth running of the underworld was partly his responsibility. But it was Ares who found the situation most intolerable. He was outraged. He looked down and saw battles being fought in the human realm with their customary ferocity, yet no one was dying. Warriors were being run through with javelins, trampled by horses, gutted by chariot wheels and beheaded by swords but they would not die. It made a mockery of combat. If soldiers and civilians did not die, why then war had no point. It settled nothing. It achieved nothing. Neither side in a battle could ever win. Lesser deities were as divided over the issue as the Olympians. The Keres continued to drink the blood of those felled in battle and could not care less what happened to their souls. Two of the Horai, DikE and Eunomia, agreed with Demeter that the absence of death upset the natural order of things. Their sister Eirene, the goddess of peace, could barely contain her delight. If the absence of Death meant the absence of war then surely her time had come? Ares nagged his parents Hera and Zeus with such incessant clamour that at last they could bear it no longer. They declared that Thanatos must be found. Hera demanded to know when he had last been seen. 'Surely, Hermes,' said Zeus, 'it wasn't so long ago that you sent him to fetch the soul of that black-hearted villain Sisyphus?' 'Damn!' Hermes slapped his thigh in annoyance. 'Of course! Sisyphus. We sent Thanatos to chain him up and escort him to Hades. Wait here.' The wings at Hermes' heels fluttered, flickered and hummed and he was gone. He returned in the blink of an eye. 'Sisyphus never reached the underworld. Thanatos was sent to Corinth to fetch him half a moon ago and neither has been seen since.' 'Corinth!' roared Ares. 'What are we waiting for?' The locked wardrobe in the bedchamber was soon found and wrenched open, revealing a humiliated Thanatos sitting tearfully in the corner under some cloaks. Hermes took him to the infernal regions where Hades waved his hand to release the enchanted manacles. 'We will speak about this later, Thanatos,' he said. 'For the moment a logjam of souls awaits you.' 'First let me fetch that villain Sisyphus, sire,' pleaded Thanatos. 'He won't be able to trick me twice.' Hermes arched an eyebrow, but Hades looked across to Persephone, sitting in her throne next to his. She nodded. Thanatos was her favourite amongst all the servants of the underworld. 'Just make sure you don't foul it up,' grunted Hades, dismissing him with a wave of the hand. Burial Rites We have established that Sisyphus was no fool. He did not imagine for a second that Thanatos would stay locked in his closet for eternity. Sooner or later Death would be released and set upon his trail once more. In the town villa in which he had made temporary lodging, Sisyphus addressed his wife. After his niece Tyro drowned his sons and left him he had married again. His new young queen was as kindly and obedient as Tyro had been wilful and contrary. 'My dear,' he said, drawing her to him, 'I feel that soon I shall die. When I have breathed my last and my soul has fled what will you do?' 'I will do what must be done, my lord. |
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'In a fair contest,' he declared with a burst of bravado, 'I can certainly outplay you.' Apollo's smile widened. 'Excellent. Join me up on the stage here. I shall start. Here is a little air. See if you can reply to it.' Marsyas took up a position next to Apollo, who bent to tune his lyre. When this was done he gently strummed and delicately plucked. The most beautiful melody emerged subtle, sweet and seductive. It came in four phrases, and as the last one sounded, Marsyas's followers broke into appreciative applause. Immediately Marsyas put the aulos to his mouth and repeated the phrases. But he gave each a little tweak and modulation a shower of grace notes here, a riffle of accidentals there. A gasp of admiration from his followers and even a nod from Calliope herself encouraged him to end with a flourish. Apollo replied at once with a variation on the phrases in double time. The complexity of his picking and strumming was marvellous to the ear, but Marsyas responded with even greater speed, the melody bubbling and singing from his pipes with a magical splendour that provoked yet more applause from the audience. Now Apollo did something extraordinary. He turned his lyre upside down and played the phrases backwards they still held up as a tune, but now they were imbued with a mystery and a strangeness that enthralled all who heard. When he finished Apollo nodded to Marsyas. Marsyas had an excellent ear and he started to play the inverted tunes just as Apollo had, but the god interrupted him with a sneer. 'No, no, satyr! You must turn your instrument upside down as I did mine.' 'But that's ... that's not fair!' Marsyas protested. 'How about this then?' Apollo played on his lyre and sang, 'Marsyas can blow down the infernal thing. But while he does it, can he sing?' Infuriated, Marsyas played for all he was worth. His face purple with the effort and his cheeks swollen so that it looked as if they must rupture, hundreds of notes exploded in a volley of quarter notes, eighth notes, sixteenth notes filling the air with a music that the world had never heard before. But Apollo's divine voice, the chords and arpeggios that flew from the golden strings of his lyre how could Marsyas's pipes compete with such a sound? Panting with exhaustion, sobbing with frustration, Marsyas cried aloud, 'Not fair! My voice and breath sing into my aulos just as much as your voice sings out into the air. Of course I cannot turn the instrument upside down, but any unbiased judge can tell that my skill is the greater.' Judgement With a final glissando of triumph Apollo turned to the jury of Muses. 'Sweet sisters, it is not for me to say, it is of course for you to decide. To whom do you award the palm of victory?' Marsyas was out of control now. Humiliation and a burning sense of injustice drove him to turn on the judges. 'They can't be impartial, they are your aunts or your step-sisters or some such incestuous thing. They are family. They will never dare to ...' 'Hush, Marsyas!' pleaded a Maenad. 'Don't listen to him, great god Apollo!' urged another. 'He's hysterical.' 'He's good and honourable.' 'He means well.' It did not take the Muses long to confer and to announce the results. 'We unanimously declare,' said Euterpe, 'that Apollo is the winner.' Apollo bowed and smiled sweetly. But what he did next might make you for ever think less of this golden and beautiful god, the melodious Apollo of reason, charm and harmony. He took Marsyas and flayed the skin off him. |
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But she did value her talent and believed that in rating it at its proper worth she was simply being honest. 'Yes,' she murmured, gazing down at her work one fateful afternoon, 'I truly think if Pallas Athena herself were to sit down and spin with me she would find herself unable to match my skill. After all, I do this every day and she only weaves once in a while, for amusement. It's no wonder I am so far her superior.' With so many nymphs present in the front room of Idmon's cottage you can be sure that news soon got back to Athena of Arachne's ill-chosen words. The Weave-Off A week or so later, the usual crowd gathered round her, Arachne sat at the loom completing a tapestry that represented the founding of Thebes. Gasps and moans of appreciation greeted her depiction of the dragon-tooth warriors rising from the earth, but the oohs and aahs of her admirers were interrupted by a loud knocking on the cottage door. It was opened to reveal a bent and wrinkled old woman. 'I do hope I've come to the right place,' she wheezed, dragging in a great sack. 'I'm told a wonderful weaver lives here. Ariadne, is it?' She was invited inside. 'Her name is Arachne,' they told her, pointing to the girl herself seated at her loom. 'Arachne. I see. May I look? My dear, these are your own? How superb.' Arachne nodded complacently. The old woman plucked at the weave. 'Hard to believe that a mortal could do such work. Surely Athena herself had a hand in this?' 'I hardly think,' Arachne said with a touch of impatience, 'that Athena could do anything half so fine. Now, please don't unpick it.' 'Oh, you think Athena inferior to you?' 'In the matter of weaving it's hardly a matter of opinion.' 'What would you say to her if she was here now, I wonder?' 'I would urge her to confess that I am the better weaver.' 'Then urge away, foolish mortal!' With these words the wrinkles on the ancient face smoothed away, the dull, clouded eyes cleared to a shining grey and the bent old woman straightened herself into the magnificent form of Athena herself. The crowd of onlookers fell back in stunned surprise. The nymphs in particular shrank into the corners, ashamed and frightened to be seen wasting their time admiring the work of a mortal. Arachne went very pale and her heart thudded within her, yet outwardly she managed to keep her composure. It was disconcerting to have those grey eyes fixed upon her but all their wisdom and steadiness of gaze could not alter the plain truth. 'Well,' said she with as much calmness in her voice as she could manage, 'I've no wish to offend, but it is, I think, undoubtedly true that as an artist of the loom I have no rival, on earth or on Olympus.' 'Really?' Athena arched an eyebrow. 'Let's discover then. Would you like to go first?' 'No, please ...' Arachne vacated her seat and pointed to the loom. 'After you.' Athena examined the frame. 'Yes, this will do,' she said. 'Phocaean purple, I see. Not bad, but I prefer Tyrian.' So saying she pulled from her sack a quantity of coloured wools. 'Now then ...' Within seconds she was at work. The boxwood shuttle flew back and forth and, magically, wonderful images began to appear. The crowd of people pressed forward. They saw that Athena was bringing to life nothing less than the story of the gods themselves. There was the gelding of Ouranos in all its gory detail; how sticky the blood looked. There the birth of Aphrodite; how fresh and damp the ocean spray. Here was a panel that showed Kronos swallowing Rhea's children, and here another of the infant Zeus being suckled by the she-goat Amalthea. |
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Their mouths would go dry and they found themselves stammering foolish nonsense and saying anything to try to please him or attract his attention. When they got home they wrote and instantly tore up poems that rhymed 'thighs' with 'eyes', 'hips' with 'lips', 'youth' with 'truth', 'boy' with 'joy' and 'desire' with 'fire'. Unlike many born with the awful privilege of beauty, Ganymede was not sulky, petulant or spoiled. His manners were charming and unaffected. When he smiled the smile was kind and his amber eyes were lit with a friendly warmth. Those who knew him best said that his inner beauty matched or even exceeded his outer. Had he not been a prince it is likely that more fuss would have been made of his startling looks and his life would have been made impossible. But because he was the favoured son of a great ruler no one dared try to seduce him, and he lived a blameless life of horses, music, sport and friends. It was supposed that one day King Tros would pair him off with a Grecian princess and he would grow into a handsome and virile man. Youth is a fleeting thing after all. They had reckoned without the King of the Gods. Whether Zeus had heard rumours of this shining beacon of youthful beauty or whether he accidentally caught sight of him isn't known. What is a matter of record is that the god became simply maddened with desire. Despite the royal lineage of this important mortal, despite the scandal it would cause, despite the certain fury and jealous rage of Hera, Zeus turned himself into an eagle, swooped down, seized the boy in his talons and flew him up to Olympus. It was a terrible thing to do, but surprisingly enough it turned out to be more than an act of wanton lust. It really did seem to have something to do with real love. Zeus adored the boy and wanted to be with him always. Their acts of physical love only reinforced his adoration. He gave him the gift of immortality and eternal youth and appointed him to be his cupbearer. From now until the end of time he would always be the Ganymede whose beauty of form and soul had so smitten the god. All the other gods, with the inevitable exception of Hera, welcomed the youth to heaven. It was impossible not to like him: his presence lit up Olympus. Zeus despatched Hermes to King Tros with a gift of divine horses to recompense the family for their loss. 'Your son is a welcome and beloved addition to Olympus,' Hermes told him. 'He will never die and, unlike any mortal, his outward beauty will always match his inner which means that he will always be content. The Sky Father loves him completely.' Well, the King and Queen of Troy had two other sons and they really were the finest gift horses in all the world, not to be looked in the mouth, and if their Ganymede were to be a permanent member of the immortal Olympian company and if Zeus really did love him ... But did the boy adore Zeus? That is so hard to know. The ancients believed he did. He is usually represented as smiling and happy. He became a symbol of that particular kind of same-sex love which was to become so central a part of Greek life. His name, it seems, was a kind of deliberate word play, deriving as it did from ganumai 'gladdening' and medon 'prince' andor medeon 'genitals'. 'Ganymede', the gladdening prince with the gladdening genitals became twisted over time into the word 'catamite'. Zeus and Ganymede stayed together as a happy couple for a very long time. Of course the god was as unfaithful to Ganymede as he was to his own wife, but they became almost a fixture nonetheless. |
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Narcissus had replied, as kindly as he could, that he did not return his love. But Ameinias would not accept 'no' for an answer and took to haunting Narcissus's every step. He joined him on his morning walk to school, tagging along and gazing at him like a lost and adoring puppy until Narcissus could stand it no longer and yelled at him to go away and never come near him again. That night Narcissus had been awoken by a strange sound outside his bedroom. He looked out of his window and saw in the moonlight Ameinias hanging from a pear tree, a rope around his neck. He choked out a curse before he died. 'May you be as unlucky in love as I have been, beautiful Narcissus!'fn4 Since then Narcissus had got into the habit of keeping his head down, covering his body as much as possible and being short and gruff to strangers, never meeting them in the eye. But now, as he looked about him, he saw that the rest of the hunting party had gone and that he was splendidly alone. He decided to take advantage of the cool waters of the stream and its inviting mossy banks. He slipped out of his clothes and plunged into the water. As soon as she caught sight of that lissom and golden form, half sunlit, half dappled by the shade and all streaming with water, Echo caught her breath. And when, peeping through the leaves she saw the face, the beautiful, beautiful face of Narcissus, she could no longer control her senses. Were it not for Hera's curse she would have cried out there and then. Instead she gazed in silent wonder as the naked youth laid his clothes and bow and arrows on the grass and stretched himself out to sleep. When love comes late it comes like a tornado. Poor Echo's whole being was swept up by her feelings for this impossibly beautiful youth. Nothing, not even the horror of Hera's curse, had ever caused her heart to hammer so violently inside her. The blood pounded and surged in her ears. It was as if she was swirling in the centre of a great cyclone. She simply had to take a closer look at this lovely youth. If she felt such tumultuous passions swirling inside her at the sight of him, then perhaps it was in the nature of things that he would feel the same at the sight of her? Surely that must be so? She crept forward, hardly daring to breathe. With each step she found herself more and more thrilled until she was quivering and trembling all over with excitement. The stories of love at first sight that she had heard sung all her life were true after all! This beautiful boy would be bound to return her love. Cosmos and creation would not make sense otherwise. Of course, you and I know that Cosmos and creation make no sense at all and never have. Poor Echo was about to discover the truth of this. Whether it was her pounding heart or the cry of a bird, something made the sleeping Narcissus open his eyes just as Echo drew near. His eyes met hers. Echo was a pretty nymph, lovely in fact. But it was only her eyes that Narcissus saw. That look again! That haggard, hungry, haunted look. Those needing, pleading eyes. Ugh! 'Who are you?' he said, turning away. 'Who are you?' 'Never you mind. That's my business.' 'That's my business!' 'No it isn't. You woke me.' 'You woke me!' 'I suppose like all the others you've fallen in love with me.' 'Love with me!' 'Love! I'm fed up with love.' 'Up with love!' 'It'll never happen. Never. Go away!' 'Never go away!' 'I don't care how much you wail at me. I hate the sight of you.' 'The sight of you!' 'Stop it, will you? Just don't!' cried Narcissus. |
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'Go away!' 'Don't go away!' 'You're driving me crazy.' 'Driving me crazy!' 'Go away before I do something so desperate ...' 'So desperate!' 'Don't tempt me, now.' 'Tempt me now!' Narcissus picked up his hunting sling and loaded it with a stone. 'Go. Just go. I'll hurt you if you don't. Understand?' 'You don't understand.' The first stone missed her, but Echo turned and fled before Narcissus could reload and try again. As she ran he called out after her. 'And never come back!' 'Never come back,' she cried. She ran from him and kept running until she fell weeping to the ground, her heart bursting with grief and shame. The Boy in the Water Narcissus watched her go. He shook his head angrily. Would he never be free of these silly wailing people and their whining, clutching madness? Love and beauty! Words, just words. Hot and thirsty from all the stress and drama he knelt down to drink from the stream. He caught his breath in astonishment when in its waters, he saw the loveliest face he had ever laid eyes upon, the sweet and surprised face of a most beautiful young man. He had golden hair and soft red lips. Narcissus recognized with a thrill that the youth's beguiling and loving eyes had the hungry, needy look he had always found so repellent in others. But the very same expression on the gorgeous face of this mysterious stranger made Narcissus's chest swell and heart thump with joy. It must mean that the glorious creature in the river felt the same way as he did! Narcissus leaned down to kiss the lovely lips and the lovely lips came up to kiss his, but just as Narcissus lowered his face, the stranger's features broke into a thousand dancing, rippling pieces until he could see them no longer and Narcissus found he was kissing nothing but cold water. 'Stay still, lovely one,' he breathed, and the boy seemed to whisper the same to him. Narcissus raised a hand. The boy raised his hand in reply. Narcissus wanted to stroke the boy's lovely cheek and the boy wanted to do the same. But the face fractured and dissolved the moment Narcissus got close. Again and again each one tried. Meanwhile, in the bushes behind them, Echo fired and strengthened by her great love had returned to try her luck again. Her heart skipped a beat when she heard him say: 'I love you!' 'I love you!' she called back. 'Stay with me!' 'Stay with me!' 'Never leave me!' 'Never leave me!' But when she came closer Narcissus turned with a snarl and hissed at her 'Go away! Leave us alone. Never come back! Never, never, never!' 'Never, never, never!' wailed Echo. With a savage roar Narcissus picked up a stone and hurled it at her. Echo ran and tripped. Narcissus then grabbed his bow and would surely have shot her dead had she not scrambled to her feet and disappeared into the wood. Narcissus looked anxiously back to the stream, frightened that perhaps the marvellous boy had gone. But there he was a worried and flushed look on his face but as beautiful and loving as ever and with a wonderful gleam in his deep blue eyes. Narcissus lay down again and brought his face closer to the water ... The Gods Take Pity Echo ran and ran up the hillside, sobbing with grief and desolation. She hid in a cave high above the river by whose banks the lovely Narcissus lay. Inside her head Echo framed the words of a prayer to her favourite goddess, Aphrodite. In mute despair she begged to be relieved of the pain of love and the intolerable burden of her cursed existence. Aphrodite answered the nymph's prayers as best she could. |
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A distinctly feminine beauty at that. Picking up a chisel, Pygmalion ran his artist's eye over the work and knew that with some merciless and well-aimed blows he could easily enough get back on course and not waste the valuable block of marble for which he had paid a month's income. Crack, crack, crack! This was more like it. Tap, tap, tap! Must have been some weird subconscious urge. Chip, chip, chip! Or indigestion perhaps. Now, let's step back again and see ... No!!! Far from rescuing the work and bringing the general's masculine and martial glare back to the face of his sculpture he had somehow managed only to amplify its soft femininity, grace, sensuality and goddammit sexiness. He was in a fever now. Deep inside he knew he was no longer rescuing the general. He was on a mission to see through to the end the madness that had seized him. The madness was of course the work of Aphrodite. She had not been pleased when one of the handsomest and most eligible young men of her island had chosen to turn his back on love. A young man moreover, whose seaside dwelling happened to be exactly where Aphrodite had made landfall after her birth in the waves and, she reasoned, ought therefore to vibrate with a special intensity of amorousness. Love and beauty, as most of us find out in the course of our lives, are remorseless, relentless and ruthless. For days and nights Pygmalion laboured on in a frenzy of creativity, of literal enthusiasm. Generations of artists in all media since might have recognized the agonized, breathless ecstasy of inspiration that had seized him. No thought of food or drink no conscious thought at all came into his mind, as he tapped, hammered and hummed. At last, as the pink flush of Eos and a nacreous flash of light from the east betokened the beginning of his fifth continuous day of work, he stepped back with the miraculous knowledge that only true artists understand: somehow, yes certainly, at last it was finished. He hardly dared raise his eyes. All his work thus far had been up close, detailed the lineaments of the complete figure existed only in some dark inaccessible corner of his mind. For the first time he could take it all in. He took a deep breath and looked. He cried out in shock and dropped his chisel. From its exquisitely rendered toes to the perfectly worked flowers that wreathed the hair on its head the sculpture was far and away the best thing he had ever done. More than that, it was surely the most absolutely beautiful work of art that had ever been seen in the world. To a true artist like Pygmalion this meant it was more beautiful than any person that had ever been seen on earth, for he knew that art always exceeds the best that nature can manage. Yet he saw that the figure he had rendered in marble from his enraptured imagination was even more than the most absolutely beautiful thing now in the world. She was real. To Pygmalion she was more real than the ceiling above his head and the floor beneath his feet. His heart was beating fast, his pupils had dilated, his breath was short and the very core of his being stirred in the most powerful and disturbing manner. It was joy and pain all at once. It was love. The expression and posture of the girl whose name he knew should be Galatea, for her marble loveliness was white as milk were caught in a moment of sublime hesitation, between awakening and wonder. She seemed a little surprised, as if on the verge of gasping. At what? At the beauty of the world? |
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The dolphin did not mind, indeed it bucked a little, as if in approval, and increased its speed through the water. Arion slowly reached for the strap of his kithara and swung the instrument behind him so that he could enjoy the ride with two hands on the fin. The brig was out of sight now. The sun shone down, dolphin and man ploughed furrows through the sea, sending up plumes of iridescent spray. Where were they going? Did the dolphin know? 'Hey, dolphin. Set your course for the Gulf of Corinth. I'll direct you when we get there.' The dolphin gave a series of squeaks and clicks that seemed to indicate understanding and Arion laughed. On and on they went, chasing the never-nearing horizon. Arion, confident of his balance now, pulled his kithara back round and sang the song of Arion and the Dolphin. It is lost to us, but they say it was the most beautiful song ever composed. At length they reached the gulf. The dolphin negotiated this busy shipping lane with graceful, zipping ease. Sailors on the busy barques, barges and small boats turned to stare at the remarkable sight of a young man riding a dolphin. Arion steered on the fins with gentle tugs this way and that and they did not stop until they had reached the royal docks. 'Send word to King Periander,' he said, stepping from the dolphin onto the quay. 'His minstrel is returned. And feed my dolphin.' The Monument Periander was overjoyed by the homecoming of the musician he loved. The story of his rescue filled the court with wonder and amazement. They feasted all night and into the morning. It was evening by the time they set out to see, praise and pet the heroic dolphin. But a sad sight met their eyes. Ignorant dock workers had brought the animal ashore to be fed. It had languished overnight without any water to keep its skin moist and then lay all morning and afternoon on the quayside, surrounded by inquisitive children, the hot sun burning down and drying it up. Arion knelt on the ground and whispered into its ear. The dolphin rippled an affectionate reply, heaved a shuddering sigh and died. Arion recriminated himself bitterly and even Periander's instructions that a high tower be constructed to commemorate the dolphin and glorify its memory failed to raise his spirits. For the next month all his songs were sad ones and the palace mourned along with him. Then came news that the brig crewed by the nine sailors and its villainous captain had been blown by a storm into Corinth. Periander sent messengers to command the crew to come before him, bidding Arion to stay away while he questioned them. 'You were supposed to be conveying my bard Arion back from Tarentum,' he said. 'Where is he?' 'Alas, dread majesty,' said the captain. 'So very sad. The poor boy was swept overboard in the storm. We recovered the body and gave him a most respectful burial at sea. Great pity. Charming lad, popular with all the crew.' 'Aye. Indeed. Pleasant fellow. Terrible loss ...' muttered the sailors. 'Be that as it may,' said Periander, 'news reaches me that he won his singing competition and came to you with a treasure chest, half of which is my property.' 'As to that ...' the captain spread his hands. 'The chest was lost during the violent pitching of the storm. It opened as it slid down the deck and into the sea and we managed to recover some small bits and pieces. A silver lyre of some kind, an aulos one or two trinkets. I wish it had been more, sire, really I do.' 'I see ...' Periander frowned. 'Assemble tomorrow morning by the new monument at the royal docks. |
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You can't miss it. There's a carved dolphin on top. Bring what treasure remains and perhaps I will allow you to keep Arion's share, now that the poor boy is dead. You are free to go.' 'Have no fear,' said Periander to Arion as he related to him all that had been said. 'Justice will be done.' Next morning, the sea-captain and his nine men arrived early at the monument. They were laughing and relaxed, amused that they had to return only a small amount of Arion's treasure and might even expect to be given a share of that by the gullible tyrant. Periander arrived with his palace guards at precisely the appointed hour. 'Good morning, captain. Ah, the treasure. That's all you managed to save? Yes, I see what you mean, not much at all, is it? Now, remind me what befell Arion?' The captain repeated his story fluently and easily, every word exactly the same as it had been the day before. 'So he really is dead? You really did recover the body, prepare it for burial and then return it to the waves?' 'Absolutely.' 'And these trinkets are all that remain of the prize treasure?' 'It grieves me to say so, majesty, but yes.' 'How then,' Periander asked, 'do you account for the discovery of all this hidden in the hollow of your ship's timbers? At a sign, some guards came forward bearing a litter on which was disposed the bulk of the treasure. 'Ah. Yes. Well ...' the captain gave a winning smile. 'Foolish of us to attempt to deceive you, dread lord. The poor boy died, as I said, and there was his treasure. We are but poor working sailors, sire. Your cunning and wisdom has found us out.' 'That is handsome of you,' said Periander. 'But I am still puzzled. I had a kithara made for Arion in silver, gold and ivory. He never went anywhere without it. Why is it not here amongst the other things?' 'Well now,' said the captain. 'I told you how fond we were of young Arion. Like a younger brother to us, isn't that right, lads?' 'Aye, aye ...' muttered the sailors. 'We knew what his kithara meant to him. We included it with him in his shroud before committing his body to the waves. How could we have done otherwise?' Periander smiled. The captain smiled. But suddenly his smile disappeared. From the mouth of the golden dolphin at the top of the column emerged the sound of a kithara. The captain and his men stared in amazement. Arion's voice joined the notes of the kithara and these were the words that came from out of the carved dolphin's mouth: 'Kill him, men,' the captain said. 'Kill him now and seize his gold.' 'We'll kill him now,' the sailors cried, 'And throw him to the sharks.' 'But stop,' the minstrel said. 'Only let me sing One final farewell song.' One of the sailors let out a scream of fear. The others fell quaking to their knees. Only the captain, white-faced, stayed upright. A door opened in the plinth and Arion himself stepped from the monument, strumming his kithara and singing: But the dolphin came and saved him. He rode it on the rolling waves. They crossed the sea to Corinth, The dolphin and the bard. The sailors began to weep and blubber, begging forgiveness. They blamed each other and most especially they blamed the captain. 'Too late,' said Periander, turning on his heel. 'Kill them all. Now, come with me, Arion and sing me a song of love and wine.' At the end of the musician's long and successful life, Apollo, to whom dolphins and music were sacred, set Arion and his rescuer amongst the stars between Sagittarius and Aquarius as the constellation Delphinus, the Dolphin. |
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They looked at one another in great surprise, each unable to remember the last time anyone had come calling. Two strangers stood on the threshold, a bearded man and his younger, smooth-faced companion. His son perhaps. 'Hello,' said Philemon. 'How may we help you?' The younger man smiled and removed his hat, a strange round cap with a shallow brim. 'Good afternoon sir,' he said. 'We are a pair of hungry travellers, new to this part of the world. I wonder if we might trespass upon your good nature ...' 'Come in, come in!' said Baucis, bustling up behind her husband. 'It's chilly to be out at this time of year. We are higher up than the rest of the town you know and feel the cold a little more. Philemon, why don't you scare up the fire so that our guests might warm themselves?' 'Of course, my love, of course. Where are my manners?' Philemon stooped down and blew into the hearth, awakening the embers. 'Let me take your cloaks,' said Baucis. 'Have a seat, sir, by the fire. And you, sir, I beg.' 'That is most kind,' said the older of the two. 'My name is Astrapos, and this is my son Arguros.' The younger man bowed at the mention of his name with something of a flourish and seated himself beside the fire. 'We are very thirsty,' he said, with a loud yawn. 'You must have something to drink,' said Baucis. 'Husband, you fetch the wine jug and I shall bring dried figs and pine nuts. I hope you gentlemen will consent to dine with us. We can't offer rich fare, but you would be most welcome.' 'Don't mind if we do,' said Arguros. 'Let me take your hat and staff ...' 'No, no. They stay with me.' The young man pulled the staff close to him. It was of a most curious design. Was it a vine that was carved all around it, Baucis wondered? He was twisting it so deftly that the whole thing seemed alive. 'I'm afraid,' said Philemon coming forward with a jug of wine, 'that you may find our local wine a little thin and perhaps a little ... sharp. People from neighbouring regions mock us for it, but I assure you that once you are used to the taste it can be really quite drinkable. We think so at least.' 'Not bad,' said Arguros after a sip. 'How did you get the cat to sit on the jug?' 'Ignore him,' said Astrapos. 'He thinks he's amusing.' 'Well, I have to admit that was rather funny,' said Baucis, approaching with fruit and nuts on a wooden plate. 'I hate to think, young sir, what you're going to say about the appearance of my dried figs.' 'You're wearing a blouse so I can't see them. But the preserved fruit on this plate looks pleasant enough.' 'Sir!' Baucis slapped him playfully and went very pink. What a strange young man. The slight awkwardness that usually attends the drink and nibbles phase of an evening was quickly mellowed by the cheek and cheerfulness of Arguros and the ready laughter of their hosts. Astrapos seemed to be of a gloomier disposition, and as they went to the table Philemon put a hand on his shoulder. 'I hope you will forgive the inquisitiveness of a foolish old man, sir,' he said, 'but you seem a little distracted. Is there anything we can help you with?' 'Oh, ignore him. He's always down in the dumps,' said Arguros. 'That's where he gets his clothes from, haha! But, in truth, there's nothing wrong with him that a good meal won't put right.' Baucis met Philemon's eyes for a brief instant. There was so little in the larder. A side of salted bacon that they had been saving for the midwinter feast, some preserved fruit and black bread, half a cabbage. |
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They knew they would go hungry for a week if they fed so much as half the appetites of two such hearty men. But hospitality was a sacred thing and the needs of guests must always come first. 'Another glass of that wine wouldn't hurt,' said Arguros. 'Oh dear,' said Philemon, looking at the jug, 'I fear that there isn't any more ...' 'Nonsense,' said Arguros snatching it away, 'plenty left.' He filled his cup and then Astrapos's too. 'How strange,' said Philemon. 'I could have sworn the pitcher was only a quarter full.' 'Where are your cups?' asked Arguros. 'Oh please, we don't need any ...' 'Nonsense,' Arguros leaned back in his chair and reached for two wooden beakers on the side-table behind him. 'Now then ... Let's have a toast.' Philemon and Baucis were amazed, not only that there was enough wine in the pitcher to fill their beakers to the brim, but that its quality was so much better than either of them remembered. In fact, unless they were dreaming, it was the most delicious wine they had ever tasted. In something of a daze, Baucis wiped the table down with mint leaves. 'Darling,' Philemon whispered in her ear, 'that goose that we were going to sacrifice to Hestia next month. It's surely more important to feed our guests. Hestia will understand.' Baucis agreed. 'I'll go out and wring its neck. See if you can get the fire hot enough to give it a fine roasting.' The goose, however, would not be caught. No matter how carefully Baucis waited and pounced, it leapt honking from her grasp every time. She returned to the cottage in a state of agitated disappointment. 'Gentlemen I am so very sorry,' she said, and there were tears in her eyes. 'I'm afraid your meal will be crude and disagreeable.' 'Tush, lady,' said Arguros, pouring more wine for everyone. 'I've never partaken of a finer feast.' 'Sir!' 'It's true. Tell them, father.' Astrapos gave a grim smile. 'We have been turned away from every house in Eumeneia. Some of the townspeople swore at us. Some spat at us. Some threw stones at us. Some set dogs on us. Yours was the last house we tried and you have shown us nothing but kindness and a spirit of xenia that I was beginning to fear was vanished from the world.' 'Sir,' said Baucis, feeling for Philemon's hand under the table and squeezing it. 'We can only apologize for the behaviour of our neighbours. Life is hard and they have not always been brought up to venerate the laws of hospitality as they should.' 'There is no need to make excuses for them. I am angry,' said Astrapos, and as he spoke a rumble of thunder could be heard. Baucis looked across into the eyes of Astrapos and saw something that frightened her. Arguros laughed. 'Don't be alarmed,' he said. 'My father is not angry with you. He is pleased with you.' 'Leave the cottage and climb the hill,' said Astrapos, rising. 'Do not look back. Whatever happens do not look back. You have earned your reward and your neighbours have earned their punishment.' Philemon and Baucis stood, holding hands. They knew now that their visitors were something more than ordinary travellers. 'There is no need to bow,' said Arguros. His father pointed to the door. 'To the top of the hill.' 'Remember,' Arguros called after them, 'no looking back.' Hand in hand Philemon and Baucis walked up the hill. 'You know who that young man was?' said Philemon. 'Hermes,' said Baucis. 'When he opened the door to let us go, I saw the snakes twined around his staff. They were alive!' 'Then the man he called his father was ... |
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He ran up and down around the garden in a whooping frenzy, brushing his hands along the bushes until every one had been frozen into hard shining precious, priceless, glorious, golden gold. Skipping and shouting with joy Midas beheld what had once been a garden of rare roses and was now the most valuable treasure in all the world. He was rich! He was insanely, monumentally rich! No man on earth had ever been richer. The sound of his exultant shouts attracted his wife, who came out of the palace doors and stood looking down, their infant daughter in her arms. 'Darling, why are you shouting?' Midas ran up to her and encircled mother and child in a tight hug of excited joy. 'You won't believe it!' he said. 'Everything I touch turns to gold! Look! All I have to do is oh!' He stepped back to see that his wife and infant girl were now one fused golden statue, glittering in the morning sun, a frozen mother and child group that any sculptor would have been proud of. 'I'll attend to that later,' Midas said to himself. 'There must be a way to recover them ... Dionysus wouldn't be so ... meanwhile Zim! Zam! Zoo!' A guard on sentry, the great side-door to the palace and his favourite throne were now entirely gold. 'Vim! Vam! Voo!' The side-table, his goblet, his cutlery solid gold! But what was this? Crack! His teeth almost broke on a hard golden peach. Tunk! His lips met metallic wine. Thwop! A heavy gold nugget that had once been a linen napkin crushed and bruised his lips. The unbounded delight began to fade as Midas realized the full import of his gift. You may imagine the rest. All at once the thrill and pleasure of his ownership of gold were changed to dread and fear. All Midas touched turned to gold, but his heart turned to lead. No words of his, no shrieks of imprecation to the heavens could return his cold solidified wife and daughter to quick warm life. The sight of his beloved roses dropping their heavy heads caused his own to bow in misery. Everything around him glinted and glittered, gleamed and glimmered with a gorgeous gaudy golden glow but his heart was as grim and grey as granite. And the hunger and thirst! After three days of food and drink turning to inedible gold the moment it touched him, Midas felt ready for death. Atop his golden bed, whose hard heavy sheets offered no warmth or comfort, he fell into a fevered sleep. He dreamed of his flowers blooming back into soft, delicate life his roses, yes, but most of all the flowers that he now understood mattered most, his wife and child. In the wild, contorted dream he saw the soft colours returning to their cheeks and the light shining once more in their eyes. As these beguiling images danced and flickered in his mind the voice of Dionysus boomed inside him. 'Foolish man! It is fortunate for you that Silenus is so fond of you. Only for his sake do I show you mercy. When you awaken in the morning, betake yourself to the River Pactolus. Plunge your hands in its waters and your enchantment will be dissolved. Whatever you wash in the fast-flowing stream will be restored to you.' The next morning Midas did what the voice in his dream had instructed. As promised, contact with the waters of the river relieved him of his golden touch. Mad with joy, he spent a good week shuttling back and forth immersing his wife, his daughter, his guards, servants, roses and all of his possessions in the river and clapping his hands in delight as they returned to their valueless but priceless original state. |
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'Midas has ass's ears ...' The susurration of rushes and the hiss of sedges was swept on by the grasses and leaves of the trees and swiftly the soughing of cypresses and sallows sent the sound through the breeze. 'Midas has ass's ears,' sighed the branches. 'Midas has ass's ears,' sang the birds. And at last the news reached the city. 'Midas has ass's ears!' King Midas woke with a start. There was laughter and shouting in the street outside the palace. He crept to the window, crouched down and listened. The humiliation was too much for him to bear. Without stopping to wreak his vengeance on the barber and the barber's family, he mixed a poisonous draught of ox-blood, raised his eyes heavenwards, gave a bitter laugh and a shrug, drained the drink and died. Poor Midas. His name will always mean someone fortunate and rich, but truly he was unlucky and poor. If only he had kept to his roses. Green fingers are better than gold. Afterword I have assembled below a few thoughts on the nature of myth and a brief outline of some of the sources I have had recourse to in the writing of this book. I cannot repeat too often that it has never been my aim to interpret or explain the myths, only to tell them. I have, of course, had to play about with timelines in order to attempt a coherent narrative. My version of the 'ages of man', for example, varies from the well-known one by the poet Hesiod in order more clearly to separate the eras of the rule of Kronos and the creation of humans. So energetic was the explosion of stories in Greece almost three thousand years ago that necessarily all sorts of events seemed to happen at once. If anyone tells me that I have got the stories 'wrong' I believe I am justified in replying that they are, after all, fictions. In tinkering with the details I am doing what people have always done with myths. In that sense I feel that I am doing my bit to keep them alive. Myth v. Legend v. Religion Much as a pearl is formed around grit, so a legend is taken to have been built up around a grain of truth. The legend of Robin Hood, for example, seems to have derived from a real historical figure. fn1 The narrative substance that accretes as the story is handed down over the generations, embellished and exaggerated on the way, at some point takes on the properties of legend. It is likely to be written down, for the word derives from the gerundive of the Latin legere, meaning 'to be read'. fn2 Myths, however, are imaginative, symbolic constructs. No one believes that Hephaestus ever truly existed. He stands as a representation of the arts of metalwork, manufacture and craftsmanship. That such a figuration is portrayed as swarthy, ugly and hobbling tempts us to interpret and explain. Perhaps we noticed that real blacksmiths, while strong, are often dark, scarred and so muscle-bound as to be bunched and alarming to look upon. Perhaps cultures required that the fit, tall and whole always be taken into the ranks of fighting men and that, from the first, the halt, lame and shorter male children might be trained in the forges and workshops rather than drilled for battle. Any god of blacksmiths that the collective culture imagined, therefore, would be likely to reflect the human archetype they already knew. Gods of this kind are created in our image, not the other way round. Symbolical rather than historical in origin as myths and mythical figures might be, they underwent the same fictional remodelling and embellishments as more factually rooted legends. |
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Kleberg and Boxerbaum were confused by only one significant difference in the two descriptions. The first man was described as having a full, neatly trimmed mustache. The second was described as having a three-day growth of beard but no mustache. Boxerbaum smiled. "I guess between the first time and the second he shaved it off." At the Central Police Station in downtown Columbus, Detective Nikki Miller, assigned to the Sexual Assault Squad, checked in for the second shift at three o'clock. Wednesday, October 26. She had just returned from a two-week vacation in Las Vegas, feeling and looking refreshed, her tan complementing her brown eyes and feathercut sandy hair. Detective Gram-lich of the first shift told her he was transporting a young rape victim to University Hospital. Since it would be Millers case, Gramlich gave her the few details he had. Polly Newton, a twenty-one-year-old student at Ohio State, had been abducted behind her apartment near the university campus at about eight o'clock that morning. After she parked her boyfriend's blue Corvette, she was forced back inside and told to drive out to an isolated area in the countryside, where she was raped. Her assailant then made her drive back to Columbus to cash two checks, before having her drive him back to the campus area. Then he suggested that she cash another check, stop payment, and keep the money herself. Because Nikki Miller had been on vacation, she hadn't read of the university Campus Rapist or seen the composites. Detectives on the first shift filled her in on the details. "The facts of this case," Miller noted in her report, "are similar to those of two rapeabductions ... being handled by the Ohio State University Police, that occurred in their jurisdiction." Nikki Miller and her partner, Officer A. J. Bessell, drove to University Hospital to interview Polly Newton, an auburnhaired girl. The man who abducted her, Polly said, had told her that he was a member of the Weathermen, but that he also had another identity — as a businessman — and drove a Maserati. After Polly was treated at the hospital, she agreed to accompany Miller and Bessell to search for the place she'd been forced to drive to. But it was getting dark and she was becoming confused. She agreed to try again the following morning. The Crime Scene Search Unit dusted her car for fingerprints. They found three partial prints with sufficient ridge detail to be used for comparison with any future suspects. Miller and Bessell drove Polly back to the Detective Bureau to work with the department artist at making a composite drawing. Then Miller asked Polly to look through photographs of white male sex offenders. She studied three trays of mug shots, a hundred to a tray, with no success. At ten that evening, exhausted after seven hours with the police, she stopped. At ten-fifteen the next morning, detectives of the Assault Squad morning shift picked up Polly Newton and drove her to Delaware County. In the daylight she was able to lead them to the scene of the rape, where they found 9-millimeter bullet casings near the edge of the pond. That, she told one of the detectives, was where the man had fired his gun at some beer bottles he had tossed into the water. When they returned to headquarters, Nikki Miller had just arrived on duty. She sat Polly in a small room directly opposite the receptionists desk and brought in another tray of mug shots. She left Polly alone and shut the door. A few minutes later, Eliot Boxerbaum arrived at the Detective Bureau with Donna West, the nurse who had been the second victim. |
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Miller drove back to the Channingway apartment complex through the fog, which had gotten even worse. Miller than phoned the mobile Crime Scene Search Unit. At two-fifteen, when they arrived at the apartment, she presented the warrants and they made the search. They listed the items removed from the suspects apartment: dresser — cash $343.00, sunglasses, handcuffs and key, wallet, I. D. for William Simms and William Milligan, charge slip to Donna West. closet — Master Charge cards to Donna West and Carrie Dryer, Clinic Card for Donna West, photograph of Polly Newton, .25 calibre Tanfoglio Giuseppe A. R. M. I. sic automatic pistol with five live rounds. vanity — 3 12 x 11 piece of paper with name and address of Polly Newton. Page from her address book. headboard — Switchblade knife, two packets of powder. chest of drawers — phone bill for Milligan, S & W holster. under red chair — Smith & Wesson 9mm with clip and six live rounds. under seat of brown chair — clip with fifteen live rounds and a plastic bag containing fifteen live rounds. Back at the Central Police Station, Nikki Miller took the evidence to the clerk of courts, had it notarized and turned it over to the property room. "There's enough here to go to trial with," she said. Milligan cringed in the corner of the tiny cell, shaking violently. Suddenly, after a slight choking sound, he fainted. A minute later, he opened his eyes and stared around in astonishment at the walls, the toilet, the bunk. "Oh God, no!" he shouted. "Not again!" He sat on the floor, staring dully into space. Then he saw cockroaches in the corner and his expression blanked and changed. Crossing his legs, he hunched up close, his chin cupped in his hands, and smiled childishly as he studied them running in circles. ( 2 ) Milligan was awake a few hours later when they came to transfer him. He was handcuffed to a huge black man in a line of prisoners, which was led out of the lobby, down the stairs and out the back door to the parking area. They marched to the van bound for the Franklin County Jail. The van drove to the center of the Columbus shopping area, to a futuristic fortress in the heart of the city. Its concrete walls jutted up two stories at an inward slope, massive and window-less. Above the second story, it loomed upward as a modem office building. The patio of the Franklin County Jail was presided over by a statue of Benjamin Franklin. The van turned into an alleyway behind the jail and paused in front of the corrugated-steel garage door. From this angle, the jail stood in the shadow of the taller building it was attached to — the Franklin County Hall of Justice. The steel door cranked upward. The van drove in and the door came down behind it. The handcuffed prisoners were led out of the van into the sally port, the area between the two steel drop doors beside the prison — that is, all except one. Milligan had slipped out of the handcuffs and was still in the van. "Get down outta there, Milligan!" the officer shouted. "You goddamned sonofabitchin' rapist. What do you think is going on here?" The black man to whom Milligan had been manacled said, "I didn't have nothin' to do with it. I swears to God he just flipped 'em off." The jail door hissed open, and the six prisoners were herded into the passageway between the outer door and the barred area. Through the bars they could see the control center — TV monitors, computer terminals and dozens of officers, men and women in gray trousers or skirts and black shirts. |
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We call that co-consciousness. Finally, you work at bringing the different people together. That's fusion." "When you gonna do this?" "Dr. Wilbur is coming to see you the day after tomorrow, and we're going to have a presentation and a discussion with most of the hospital staff who work with you. We'll show the videotapes to help some of our staff — who have never experienced this mental condition — to help them understand you better so that they can help you." Billy nodded. And then his eyes went wide as his attention turned inward. He nodded several times, and then he looked up at Dr. George in astonishment. "What is it, Billy?" "Arthur says to tell you he wants to approve who can come to see me at the meeting." ( 6 ) Harding Hospital was abuzz with excitement. Dr. Cornelia Wilbur had lectured there in the summer of 1955, but this was different. Now they had a notorious patient, the first multiple personality to be observed around the clock in a mental hospital. The staff was still divided in their belief about the diagnosis, but everyone wanted to be in that room to hear Dr. Wilbur talk about Billy Milligan. Though the Wakefield staff had been led to believe that ten or fifteen people would be present, the room in the basement of the administration building was packed with nearly a hundred. Doctors and administrators brought their wives; staff members from other branches of the hospital — who had nothing to do with Milligan s treatment — crowded into the back of the room, sitting on the floor, lining the walls and standing out in the nearby lounge. Dr. George showed the audience the recent videotapes of himself and Dorothy Turner working with different personalities. Arthur and Ragen stirred interest, since no one on the staff outside of Wakefield had ever seen them. Adalana, whom no one but Dorothy Turner had ever met before, caused some awe, some scoffing. But when the core Billy came on the video monitor, there was rapt silence. And when he cried out, "Who are these people? Why don't they let me stay awake?," Rosalie Drake, among others, had to fight back tears. When the viewing was finished, Dr. Wilbur brought Billy into the room and interviewed him briefly. She spoke with Arthur, Ragen* Danny and David. They answered questions, but Rosalie could see how upset they were. When the session was over, Rosalie realized from the buzz of conversation that everyone on the Wakefield staff was annoyed. Nurse Adrienne McCann and Nurse Laura Fisher complained that once again Milligan was being made to feel special and had another chance to be in the spotlight. Rosalie, Nick Cicco and Donna Egar were angry that Billy had been put on display. After Dr. Wilburs visit, the therapy strategy changed again, and Dr. George concentrated on fusing the personalities. Dr. Marlene Kocan set up regular sessions, and the personalities began to recall their memories of abuse and torture, working them through and reliving the anguish that led to the major dissociation at the age of eight. Dr. Kocan disagreed with the plan of fusion. She said she knew it had been Dr. Wilburs method with Sybil, and in other circumstances it might be the right thing. But they had to consider what would happen if Ragen was fused with the others and Milligan was then sent to prison. In a hostile environment, he'd have no way of defending himselE and with his only defense removed, he might be killed. "He survived in prison before," someone said. "Yes, but Ragen was around to protect him. |
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George Harding, Jr., now found himself struggling with his conscience. There was no doubt in his mind that Billy was fused or close to fusion now and probably could be fused enough to stand trial. That wasn't the problem. As Dr. George lay awake nights in late August, going over the material for the report to Judge Flowers, he wondered if it was morally right to use the diagnosis of multiple personality as a defense against these major crimes. He was deeply concerned with the issue of criminal responsibility. It troubled him that his words might be misused, bringing discredit to the multiple personality diagnosis, to other patients who had this syndrome, to the profession and to psychiatric testimony. If Judge Flowers accepted his judgment that this dissociative disorder, classified thus far as a neurosis, was reason to find a patient not guilty by reason of insanity, he knew it would set legal precedent in Ohio, and perhaps in the country. Dr. George believed Billy Milligan had not had control over his actions on those three fateful days last October. It was his job to learn more and to push into new areas. It was his responsibility to understand this case, to understand Billy in a way that would be useful to society in dealing with similar problems. He again phoned other professionals for advice and guidance, conferred with his staff, and then on September 12, 1978, he sat down and wrote his nine-page report to Judge Flowers, in which he described Billy Milligans medical, social and psychiatric history. "The patient reports," he wrote, "that the mother and children were subject to physical abuse and that he suffered sadistic and sexual abuse including anal intercourse from Mr. Milligan. According to the patient this occurred when he was eight or nine over the course of a year, generally on a farm where he would be alone with the stepfather. He indicates that he was afraid that the stepfather would kill him insomuch as he threatened to 'bury him in the barn and tell the mother that he had run away.'" In analyzing the psychodynamics of the case, Harding pointed out that Milligans natural fathers suicide had deprived him of a fathers involvement and attention, and left him with "a feeling of irrational power and overwhelming guilt leading to anxiety, conflict and increased fantasy formulation." He was thus "vulnerable to exploitation by the stepfather Chalmer Milligan, who preyed upon his needs for closeness and caring to satisfy his own frustrations through sexual and sadistic exploitation ..." Since young Milligan identified with his mother, when she was beaten by her husband, it caused young Milligan to "experience her terror and pain ..." It also led to a "kind of separation anxiety which left him in an unstable fantasy world with all the unpredictable and unintelligible characteristics of a dream. This along with the stepfathers put-downs, sadistic abuses and sexual exploitation led to recurrent dissociations ..." Dr. George Harding concluded: "It is now my opinion that the patient is competent to stand trial having accomplished a fusion of his multiple personalities ... it is also my opinion that the patient is mentally ill and that as a result of his mental illness he was not responsible for his criminal conduct at the time the criminal conduct did occur in the last half of October 1977." On September 19, Judy Stevenson filed a motion to amend the defendants plea to "not guilty, and not guilty by reason of insanity." Up to this point in Milligans case, the multiple personality diagnosis had not been made public. |
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On November 15, Marion J. Koloski, director of the Court Assistance Program of Southwest's Forensic Psychiatric Center, reported that when Dr. Stella Karolin and Dorothy Turner last saw him, they had found Milligan competent to stand trial and capable of assisting his attorney in his defense, but added: "His mental condition is viewed as being very fragile, however, and it is possible that at any given time there could be a disintegration of the present fused personality into the dissociated personalities which have been evidenced previously." On November 29, the Dayton Daily News and the Columbus Dispatch published Chalmer Milligan's denials of the widely circulated report that he had sexually abused his stepson. The following Associated Press story appeared in the Columbus Dispatch: Stepfather Says He Didn't Abuse Young Milligan Chalmers sic Milligan says he has become "very upset" by published reports that he physically and sexually abused his stepson William S. Milligan, whom doctors say has 10 personalities. "Nobody has talked to me," complains Milligan, who asserts the abuse claims by his stepson are "completely false. ..." According to a report signed by Dr. George T. Harding, the psychiatrists also concluded that Milligan exhibited multiple personality behavior and that he had personalities unaware of the actions of others. They blamed his condition partly on abuse he suffered as a child... . Chalmer Milligan said he has suffered considerable hardship as a result of the published reports. "You always have the misunderstanding bunch. It's very upsetting," he said. He said he particularly was upset by published accounts that failed to attribute the abuse claim to William or the psychiatrists. "It ah goes back to the boy," Milligan said. "All they're (the publications) doing is repeating what they (the psychiatrists and young Milligan) said," he added. He would not say whether he planned any legal action regarding the abuse claims. Feeling increasingly confident that Billy would be found not guilty by reason of insanity, Judy and Gary realized there was still another hurdle. Up to this time, ah such verdicts resulted in the defendant being sent to Lima. But within three days, on December 1, a new Ohio law dealing with mentally ill patients would go into effect, requiring that someone found not guilty by reason of insanity be treated as a mentally ill patient and not as a criminal. The new law would require that he be sent to the least restrictive environment consistent with safety to himself and others, and his commitment to a state mental institution would come under the jurisdiction of the probate court. Since the trial date was set for December 4 and Billy would be the first to come under the new Ohio law, there was a good chance that after the trial, the probate court would agree to send him to a place other than Lima if the defense could demonstrate an alternative where he would receive proper treatment. Harding Hospital was out of the question because of the expense. It would have to be a state hospital where someone could be found who knew about and could treat a multiple personality. Dr. Cornelia Wilbur mentioned that at a state mental hospital less than seventy-five miles from Columbus, there was a physician who had treated several multiple personalities and who was recognized as being skilled in the field. She recommended Dr. David Caul, medical director of the Athens Mental Health Center in Athens, Ohio. The prosecutors office requested a pretrial meeting with Probate Judge Richard B. |
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What was it? Why was it broken? Why was he here? A pretty lady came in, glared at him and moved her mouth, but he heard no sounds. She shook him hard, again and again, and jabbed her forefinger into his chest, her face red, her mouth still moving. He had no idea why she was angry with him. She dragged him to a room, pushed him in and closed the door. He sat there in the dead silence, wondering what was going to happen next. Then he went to sleep. When Billy opened his eyes, he cringed, expecting to be hit for breaking the cookie jar, but the blows didn't come. How had he gotten back into his room? Well, he was getting used to being somewhere, then closing his eyes and opening them to find himself somewhere else at a different time. He supposed it was that way with everyone. Up to now, he would find himself in a situation where he would be called a liar and punished for something he hadn't done. This was the first time he had done something and waked to find nothing had happened to him. He wondered when his mom was going to punish him for the broken cookie jar. It made him nervous, and he spent the rest of the day alone in his room. He wished Jimbo would come home from school, or that he could see the little dark-haired boy who used to play with his soldiers and trucks. Billy squeezed his eyes closed, hoping the little boy would be there. But nothing. The strange thing was, he never felt lonely anymore. Whenever he would start to feel lonely or bored or sad, he would just close his eyes. When he opened them, he would be in a different place and everything would be changed. Sometimes he would close his eyes when the sun was shining brightly outside, and when he opened them again, it would be nighttime. Sometimes it would be the opposite. Other times he would be playing with Kathy or Jimbo, and when he blinked he would be sitting on the floor alone. Sometimes when this happened he would have red marks on his arms or an ache in his behind, as if he had been spanked. But he never got spanked or shaken again. He was glad no one punished him anymore. ( 4 ) Dorothy stayed with Dick Jonas for a year. Then the situation became too much for her, and she left him for the second time. She supported herself and her children as a waitress at the Lancaster Country Club and by singing in cocktail lounges like the Continental and the Top Hat. She placed the children in St. Josephs School in Circleville, Ohio. Billy got along well in first grade. The nuns praised him for his drawing ability. He could sketch quickly, and his use of light and shadow was uncanny for a six-year-old. But in second grade, Sister Jane Stephens was determined he would use only his right hand for writing and drawing. "The devil is in your left hand, William. We have to force him out." He saw her pick up her ruler, and he closed his eyes... Shawn looked around and saw the lady with the black dress and the starched white bib coming toward him with the ruler. He knew he was here to be punished for something. But what? She moved her mouth, but he couldn't hear what she was saying. He just cringed and stared at her red, angry face. She grabbed his left hand, lifted her ruler and brought it down on his palm silently over and over again. Tears rolled down his cheeks, and again he wondered why he was here to be punished for something he hadn't done. It wasn't fair. When Shawn left, Billy opened his eyes and saw Sister Stephens walking away. He looked at his left hand and saw the red welts, felt the burning. |
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They had to move fast, he explained. She should take the children to Florida to look over a couple of places. He would stay here in Circleville, sell her interest in the bar and then join her. All she had to do was sign her share over to him. She did what he suggested, took the children to her sisters place in Florida, checked out some clubs for sale and waited a month. He never showed up. Realizing she had been taken by a con man, she came back to Circleville again — broke. In 1962, while she was singing at a lounge of a bowling alley, Dorothy met Chalmer Milligan, a widower. He now lived with his daughter, Challa, who was the same age as Billy, and he had a grown daughter who was a nurse. He began to date Dorothy and got her a job at the company where he was a job steward on press machines, molding parts for telephones. From the beginning, Billy didn't like him. He told Jimbo, "I don't trust him." The Pumpkin Festival in Circleville, famous throughout the Midwest, was the annual highlight of the town. In addition to parades and floats, the streets were turned into a pumpkin fair, vendors in their booths selling pumpkin donuts, pumpkin candies and even pumpkin hamburgers. The city was transformed into a pumpkin fairyland of lights and streamers and carnival rides. The Pumpkin Festival of October 1963 was a happy time. Dorothy felt her life had taken a good turn. She had met a man with a steady job who would be able to take care of her and who said he would adopt her three children. He would, she felt, be a good father, and she would be a good mother to Challa. On October 27, 1963, Dorothy married Chalmer Milligan. Three weeks after their marriage, on a Sunday in mid-November, he took them out to visit his fathers small farm in Bremen, Ohio, just fifteen minutes away. It was exciting to the children to go through the white farmhouse, swing on the porch swing, poke around the springhouse out back and the old red bam a little ways down the hill. The boys would have to come out weekends, Chalmer said, to work on the place. There was a lot to do to get the soil ready for planting vegetables. Billy looked at the rotting pumpkins in the fields and fixed the bam and the landscape in his mind. He decided that when he got home, he would draw a picture of it as a present for his new Daddy Chal. * * * The following Friday, Mother Superior and Father Mason came into the third-grade room and whispered quietly to Sister Jane Stephens. "Will all you children please stand and bow your heads?" Sister Stephens said, tears running down her face. The children, puzzled at the solemnity in Father Masons voice, listened as he spoke, his voice trembling: "Children, you may not understand the way the world situation is going. I don't expect you to. But I must tell you that our President, John F. Kennedy, was assassinated this morning. We will now say a prayer." After he said the Lords Prayer, the children were sent outside to wait for the buses to take them home. Sensing the awesome sadness of the adults, the children stood and waited silently. That weekend, as the family watched the news and the funeral procession on TV, Billy saw that his mother was crying. It pained him. He couldn't stand to see her that way or hear her sobbing, so he closed his eyes ... Shawn came and stared at the silent pictures on the TV screen and at everybody watching it. He went up to the set and put his face close to it, feeling the vibrations. Challa pushed him out of the way. Shawn went to his room and sat on the bed. |
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When he came to understand that he was different from other people, that not everyone lost time, that everyone around him agreed he had done and said things he, and he alone, couldn't recall, he assumed he was insane. He hid it. Somehow he kept the secret. It was in the spring of 1969, the Teacher recalled, when Billy was fourteen and in eighth grade, that Chalmer took him to the farm, out beyond the cornfield, handed him a shovel and told him to start digging ... Dr. Stella Karolin was later to describe this alleged event in her statement read into the court record: "His stepfather abused Billy sexually and threatened to bury him alive if he told his mother. He even buried the child, leaving a pipe over his face for air ... Before he shoveled the dirt off the child, he urinated through the pipe onto the child's face" (Newsweek, December 18, 1978). ... from that day, Danny feared the earth. He would never again lie in the grass, touch the ground or paint a landscape. ( 5 ) Several days later Billy went into his room and reached over to switch on his bedside lamp. Nothing happened. He clicked it again and again. Still nothing. He shuffled out to the kitchen, got a new bulb and came back to change it as he had seen his mother do. He got a shock that sent him back against the wall... "Tommy" opened his eyes and looked around, not knowing what to expect. He saw the light bulb on the bed, picked it up, peered under the lampshade and started to screw it in. As he touched the metal collar he got a shock. Son of a bitch! What the hell was that? He pulled off the lampshade and looked into the hole. He touched it and felt the shock again. He sat there trying to puzzle it out. Where was this shit coming from? He followed the electric cord to where it plugged into the wall. He pulled out the plug and touched the collar again. Nothing. So the goddamned shock was coming from the wall. He stared into the two little holes, then jumped up and ran downstairs. He followed the wires from the ceiling to the fuse box, followed the cable from the fuse box outside the house, and stopped in amazement as he saw the lines leading to the telephone poles along the streets. So that's what those goddamned things were for! Tommy followed the poles to see where they led to. It was nearly dark when he found himself outside the building with the wire fence around it and the sign ohio power. Okay, he thought, so where do they get the stuff that lights the lights and shocks the shit out of you? Back home he got out the phone book, looked up Ohio Power and wrote down the address. It was too dark now, but tomorrow morning he would go there and see where the power came from. The next day Tommy went downtown to Ohio Power. He walked inside and stared, dumfounded. Just a lot of people sitting at desks, answering telephones and typing. A business office! Jesus Christ, struck out again! As he wandered along Main Street trying to figure out how he was going to find out where this junk came from, he passed the library sign in front of the Municipal Building. Okay, he'd go look it up in the books. He went up to the second floor, searched the card catalog under "power," found the books and began to read. It astonished him to learn about dams, hydroelectric power and the burning of coal and other combustible fuels to create energy to work machinery and light the lights. He read until dark. Then he wandered the streets of Lancaster, looking at all the lights that had been turned on, excited that now he knew where the power was coming from. |
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After reading of African monkey traps — used to capture the animals when they reached through narrow slots for food and were then unable to pull their fists free because they wouldn't let go — Tommy began to think about the structure of the human hand. He studied the encyclopedia pictures of bone structure, and it occurred to him that if the hand could be compressed smaller than the wrist, it could always get free. He measured his own hands and wrists and began a series of exercises, squeezing and conditioning his bones and joints. When he finally reached the point of being able to compress his hands smaller than his wrists, he knew that nothing could ever again keep him in harness or chains. Tommy decided he also needed to know how to get out of locked rooms. When Billy's mother was out and he was alone in the house, he got a screwdriver and unscrewed the lock plate of the door, studying the mechanism to see how it worked. He drew a picture of the inside of the lock and memorized the shapes. Whenever he saw a different lock, he would take it apart, study it and put it back together. One day he wandered downtown into the shop of a locksmith. The old man let him look at the different kinds of locks to memorize how they worked. He even lent Tommy a book about magnetic-invoked tumblers, spinner-type tumblers and different kinds of vaults. Tommy studied hard, testing himself constantly. At the sporting goods store he saw handcuffs and decided that as soon as he had the money he would get a pair to learn how to unlock those as well. One evening when Chalmer was particularly nasty at dinner, Tommy searched for a way he could hurt him without getting caught. He had an idea. He got a file from the toolbox, took the cover off Chalmers electric rotary razor and carefully filed all three rotary blades dull. Then he put the cover back on and went out. Next morning he stood outside the bathroom while Chalmer was shaving. He heard the click of the razor and then the shouts of pain as the dull blades yanked at the hairs instead of cutting them. Chalmer raced out of the bathroom. "What're you looking at, you stupid bastard? Don't stand there like a goddamned moron!" Tommy shoved his hands into his pockets and walked off turning his head away so Chalmer wouldn't see him smiling. "Allen's" first time out on the spot was when he tried to talk some neighborhood tough guys out of throwing him down into a construetion-site hole dug for the foundation of a building. He argued with them, using all of his con-man abilities, but it didn't work. They tossed him down into the pit anyway and threw rocks at him. Well, he figured, no use in sticking around ... Danny heard the clunk of the rock hitting the ground in front of him. Then another one and another. He looked up to see the gang of boys at the top of the excavation tossing rocks at him. One hit him in the leg and another hit his side. Danny ran to the far end, going in circles, trying to find a way out. Finally, realizing the sides were too steep for him to climb, he sat down in the dirt and crossed his legs ... Tommy looked up when a rock hit him in the back. Quickly sizing up the situation, he realized an escape was called for. He had been practicing picking locks and untying ropes, but this was a different kind of escape. This needed strength ... Ragen got to his feet, pulled out his pocket knife and stormed up the incline toward the boys, flicking open the knife, looking from one of the bullies to the other; holding his anger in control, waiting to see which one would jump him. |
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But he could haear Chalmer popping the top of a can of beer, and as he smelled it, a cold fear went through him. When they got to the farm, Danny was relieved that he was put right to work raking leaves. Chalmer mowed and Danny was afraid when the tractor came too close to him. He'd been terrorized by tractors before. Chalmers new yellow one frightened him. He switched to David and then to Shawn, switching back and forth until the work was done and Chalmer finally shouted, "Get them boards outta the truck. Let's go!" Danny stumbled forward, still terrified of the tractor, and used all his strength to pull the heavy planks out of the truck. With the planks in place, Chalmer backed the tractor up onto the truck bed. After he hauled the planks back in, Danny waited while Chalmer popped another can of beer, finishing it before he was ready to take off. Tommy, who had seen what happened, took the spot. That sonofabitchin' tractor frightened Danny. That tractor had to go. Quickly, while Chalmers head was turned, Tommy climbed up into the truck bed, pulled the U-pin out and popped the clutch into neutral. As Chalmer went around to the driver's seat, Tommy jumped down and flipped the U-pin into the bushes. Then he got in the front, stared straight ahead and waited. He knew the minute Chalmer made one of his jack-rabbit starts, that new yellow tractor of his would be gone. Chalmer started out slowly and drove without a stop into Bremen. Nothing happened. Tommy thought it would go after they stopped in front of the General Mills plant. But Chalmer pulled away real easy and drove all the way into Lancaster. All right, thought Tommy, it'll happen the first time he stops for a red light. It happened in Lancaster. When the light turned green, Chalmer took off squealing his tires, and Tommy knew the tractor was gone. He tried to keep his face straight, but he couldn't. He looked away, toward the window, so the old fart wouldn't see his grin. When he glanced back, he saw the little yellow tractor tumbling back down the street, end over end. Then he saw Chalmer looking in his rear-view mirror, his mouth wide open. He jammed the brakes, stopped the truck, jumped out and started running back, picking up pieces of metal scattered on the street. Tommy broke up with laughter. "Goddamn you," he said. "That tractor'll never hurt Danny or David again." Double revenge with one blow. He had gotten the machine, and at the same time he got Chalmer. Most of the grades sent home on Billy's report cards were C s, D's and F's. In all his school years he got an A only once: the third quarter in tenth-grade biology. Arthur, who had developed an interest in the subject, started paying attention in class and doing the homework. Knowing people would laugh if he spoke, he had Allen answer for him. He amazed the teacher by his sudden change, his brilliance. Though Arthur never lost his interest in biology, things at home got so bad that the spot kept changing. Much to the regret of the biology teacher, the flame died out and the last two quarters were failures. Arthur drifted off to study on his own, and the final report card registered a D. Arthur was having his hands full with the others coming and going on and off the spot more and more frequently. He diagnosed this period of mental instability as "a mix-up time." When the school had to be evacuated because of a bomb scare, everyone suspected it was Billy Milligan, though no one could prove it. Tommy denied making the bomb. |
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Ragen was to take karate and judo lessons, to jog and to keep the body in perfect physical condition. With Arthurs help and direction, Ragen would learn to control his adrenaline flow so as to focus all his energies in times of stress or danger. He was to continue to study munitions and demolition. Part of the next paycheck would go toward buying him a gun for target practice. Allen was to practice his verbal skills, to concentrate on painting portraits. He would play the drums to help release excess tension. He would generally be the front man to help manipulate others when it was necessary. As the most sociable one, it was important for him to get out and meet people. Adalana was to continue writing her poetry and perfecting her cooking skills for the time when they would, be leaving home and getting their own apartment. Danny would concentrate on still lifes and learn to master the airbrush. Since he was a teen-ager, he would baby-sit and help care for the younger children. Arthur would concentrate on his scientific studies, ex-pecially those in the medical arts. He had already sent for a mail-order study course in the fundamentals of clinical hematology. He would also use his logic and clear reasoning to study law. All the others were made aware of the need to use every moment of their time to improve themselves and expand their knowledge. They must never be still, Arthur warned, never waste time, never allow their minds to stagnate. Each member of the family must strive to achieve his or her own goals, and at the same time be educated and cultured. They should think of these things even while off the spot and practice them intensively when they were holding the consciousness. The young ones were never to drive a car. If any of them found himself on the spot behind the steering wheel, he was to slide over to the passenger's side and wait for someone older to come and do the driving. Everyone agreed that Arthur had been very thorough and had thought things out logically. "Samuel" read the Old Testament, ate only kosher food and loved to sculpt sandstone and carve wood. He took the spot on September 27, Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and said a prayer in memory of Billy's Jewish father. Samuel knew of Arthur's strict rule concerning the selling of paintings, but one day when he needed money and no one from the family was around to give him advice or to tell him what was going on, he sold a nude signed by Allen. Nudes offended his religious sensibilities, and he did not want it where he could see it. He told the purchaser, "I am not the artist, but I know the artist." Then he sold Tommy's painting of a bam, a painting that clearly had fear surrounding it. When Arthur learned what Samuel had d. one, he was outraged. Samuel should have realized he was selling paintings the others held dear to themselves, paintings so personal they were never meant for the eyes of strangers. He ordered Tommy to find Samuel's favorite creation — a draped Venus surrounded by cupids, done in plaster. "Destroy it," Arthur said. Tommy took it out back and smashed it with a hammer. "For this terrible crime of selling other people's art, Samuel is henceforth an undesirable. He is hereby banished from the spot." Samuel argued his fate. He pointed out to Arthur that he should not be banished, since he was the only one among all of them who believed in God. "God was invented by those who are afraid of the unknown," Arthur said. "People worship figures like Jesus Christ only because they fear what might happen to them after they die." "Exactly," Samuel said. |
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Allen took the gun out to the car and put it under the seat... Ragen reached down and took the .38 into his hand. He'd wanted Allen to buy it. Not his favorite weapon. He would have preferred a 9-millimeter. But it would be a good one to add to his weapons collection. Allen decided to move out of the crummy apartment. Looking through the apartment ads in the Lancaster Eagle-Gazette, he saw a familiar phone number. He searched through his address book until he found it and the name that went with it: George Kellner, the lawyer who had plea-bargained him into Zanesville. Allen had Dorothy call him about renting the apartment to her son. Kellner agreed to let him have it for eighty dollars a month. The apartment at 803 12 Roosevelt Avenue was a clean one-bedroom second-floor apartment in a white house set back from the street behind another building. Allen moved in a week later and fixed up the place comfortably. No more messing around with drugs, he decided. We've got to keep away from those people. He was astonished when Marlene, whom he had not seen since the night of Barry Hart's party, came in one day and made herself at home. He had no idea which of the others was dating her, but he decided she was not his type and he wanted nothing to do with her. She would come in after work, make his dinner, spend part of the evening, then go home to her parents' house. She was practically living there, and it made everything a lot more complicated than Allen liked. Whenever she started to get affectionate, he'd leave the spot. He didn't know who came on and he didn't really give a damn. Marlene thought the apartment was great. Billy's periodic shifts into foul language and his explosions of rage shocked her at first, but she got used to his changing moods — one minute tender and affectionate, the next minute angry and storming all over the place, then funny, clever and articulate. Without warning sometimes, he'd become clumsy and pathetic, like a little boy who didn't know which foot to put his shoe on. She knew he surely needed someone to look after him. It was all the drugs he was doing and the crowd he was hanging out with. If she could convince him that Barry Hart's friends were just using him, maybe he would see that he didn't need them at all. At times the things he did frightened her. He talked about being worried that some other people would show up and cause trouble if they found her there. He hinted it was "the family," and she assumed he was being a big shot and boasting that he was working with the Mafia. But when he went to all the trouble to devise a signal, she found herself believing it was the Mafia. Whenever she was in the apartment, he would put a painting in the window. That, he said, would be a message to the "others" that she was there and that they should stay away. When he made love to her, what often started with foul language and rough talk would always turn into tender caresses and softness. But something bothered her about his love-making. Though he was strong and manly, she had the feeling he was only pretending his passion, that he never really climaxed. She wasn't sure, but she knew she loved him and decided all it would take was time and understanding. One evening Adalana slipped away and David found himself on the spot, frightened and sobbing. "I've never seen a man cry," Marlene whispered. "Whats wrong?" David curled up like a baby, tears rolling down his cheeks. She felt touched and close to him when he was so vulnerable like this. |
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The car hit the guardrail and went into the ditch end over end. Arthur pulled quickly off onto the berm. He got out calmly and climbed down. A woman was moving, crawling out of the car. "I say, don't move any more," he said. "Let me help you." She was bleeding, and he used direct pressure to stop it. She began to gag — he could see her teeth had been knocked out and she was choking. Discarding the idea of performing a tracheotomy, he decided to create an airway instead. Searching through his pockets, he found a plastic bail-point pen. He pulled out the ink sheath and, using his pipe lighter, softened the plastic shell and bent it. Then he slipped it into her throat to help her breathe, turning her head to the side to allow the blood to run out of her mouth. A brief examination tpld him that her jaw was broken, as was her wrist. Her side was lacerated and he suspected her ribs were crushed. She must have hit the steering wheel when she went forward. When the ambulance arrived, he quickly told the driver what had happened and what he had done. Then he walked off into the gathering crowd. He discarded the idea of going to the Hoover Dam. It was getting rather late, and he really should be getting home before dark. He did not like the idea of driving on the wrong side of the road at night. Arthur found himself growing increasingly irritated with the way things were going. Allen had been fired from his latest job — filling invoices and loading trucks at the J. C. Penney distribution center — when David came on the spot unexpectedly and crashed a forklift into a steel pillar. Tommy wandered around Lancaster and Columbus looking, unsuccessfully, for a new j, ob. Ragen was working for Foley on a regular basis — guarding shipments of guns and drugs — and was drinking too much vodka and smoking too much marijuana. After Ragen had spent four days in Indianapolis tracing a confiscated shipment of guns, he ended up in Dayton. Someone took too many downers and Tommy, finding himself on Interstate 70 feeling dizzy and sick to his stomach, gave up the spot to David, who was arrested on a complaint from a motel owner. At the hospital, they pumped Davids stomach and treated him for an overdose, but the police let him go when the motel owner decided not to sign the complaint. When Allen got back to Lancaster, Marlene stayed with him. Then one of the undesirables — the Brooklyn accent revealed it to be Philip — took an overdose of red capsules. Marlene called the emergency squad and went along to the hospital. After they pumped his stomach again, she stayed and comforted him. She told him she knew he was mixed up with some bad people and she was afraid he was going to get into deep trouble, but even if he did, she was going to stand by him. Arthur was annoyed at the thought and knew that finding one of them helpless and vulnerable like this aroused the maternal instinct in her. He couldn't tolerate it. Marlene began spending more and more time at the apartment, making life very difficult. Arthur had to be constantly vigilant to make certain she did not discover the secret. Increasingly, there was lost time he couldn't account for. He was certain that someone was dealing drugs — he had discovered a bail receipt in a pocket — and he learned that one of them had been arrested for filling illegal drug prescriptions. He was also quite certain that someone was having sex with Marlene. Arthur decided he needed to get away from Ohio, and this would be the right time to use a passport he had asked Ragen to purchase through one of his underworld connections. |
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They'd been arguing. He was acting weird and she thought he was on drugs. He was lying on the floor, really mad at her about something — she had no idea what it was. He had his gun in his hand, turning it on his finger, pointing it at his head. He never pointed the gun at her and she wasn't frightened for herself, only for him. She saw him staring at a fish-cord lamp he had brought home one evening; then he jumped up, fired at the lamp, and it exploded. There was a hole in the wall. He put the gun down on the bar, and when he turned away, she grabbed it, running out of the apartment. She got down the stairs and into the car before he caught up to her. Just as she pulled away from the curb, he jumped on the hood and glared at her through the windshield with a look of rage in his face. He had what looked like a screwdriver in his hand, and he was banging it on the glass. She stopped the car, got out and gave him the gun back. He took it and went back inside without a word. She drove home, assuming it was over between them. Later that evening, Allen went to Grilli s and ordered a hot "Stromboli hero" sandwich — Italian sausage, provolone cheese and extra tomato sauce — to go. He watched the counter man wrap it, steaming hot, in aluminum foil and put it into a white paper bag. Back at the apartment, he set the paper bag on the counter and went to the bedroom to change his clothes. He felt like painting tonight. He kicked his shoes off and walked into the closet, bending over to find his slippers. As he stood up, he banged his head on the shelf and slumped down, angry and dazed. The closet door had swung shut behind him. He tried to push the door open, but it was stuck. "Oh, Christ!" he muttered as he jumped up and hit his head again ... Ragen opened his eyes to find himself holding his head and sitting on the floor amid a pile of shoes. He rose, kicked the door open and looked around. He was annoyed. These mix-up times were becoming more upsetting and confusing every day. At least he had gotten rid of that woman. He wandered through the apartment, trying to sort things out. If he could only reach Arthur, perhaps he could find out what was going on. Well, what he did need was a drink. He walked into the kitchen and noticed the white paper bag on the counter. He didn't remember seeing it there before. He glared at the bag suspiciously and pulled out a bottle of vodka from under the bar. While he was pouring it over ice, he heard an odd noise coming from the bag. He backed away and stared as it moved gently, leaning to one side. When the bag moved again, he let out his breath slowly and backed up. He remembered a defanged cobra he had once left in a paper bag in front of a slumlords door as a warning. Perhaps this one was not defanged. He put his hand up to the top of the refrigerator behind him and felt for his gun. He pulled it down quickly, took aim and fired. The paper bag flew off the counter against the wall. He ducked behind the bar and peered over it cautiously, keeping the gun trained on the bag. It lay on the floor. Very carefiilly, he walked around the bar and used the barrel of the gun to rip open the top of the bag. There he saw the bloody mess, jumped back and fired a second time, yelling, "I shoot you again, you bastard!" He kicked it a few times, but when it didn't move, he opened it and stared inside in disbelief at the tomato-sauce-and-cheese sandwich with a big hole in it. Then he laughed. He realized that the heat of the Stromboli in the aluminum foil had made it move. |
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He had decided how to handle Messrs. Kelly and Lemmon. He would let them keep sending eviction notices. When they took him to court, Allen would tell the judge that these people had made him quit his job, move into their apartment complex as a requirement for the maintenance job, and just as he was settling in with new furniture on credit, they fired him and attempted to put him out on the street. The judge, he knew, would give him ninety days to move. Even after the final eviction notice, he would still have three days to get out. That should give Allen enough time to get a new job, save a few dollars and find a new apartment. That night Adalana shaved off the mustache. She'd always hated hair on her face. Tommy had promised Billy's sister he would spend Saturday, the last day of the Fairfield County Fair, with her in Lancaster. Dorothy and Del were running a restaurant concession, and they might need help closing things down. He took the money he saw on the dresser — there wasn't much — and told Allen to drive him to Lancaster. He spent a wonderful day with Kathy at the fair, going on the rides, playing the games, eating hot dogs and drinking root beer. They talked over old times, speculating how Jim was doing with his new rock group in western Canada and how Challa was doing in the Air Force. Kathy told him she was glad he'd shaved off his mustache. When they came back to the concession, where Dorothy was working over the grill, Tommy slipped up behind her and handcuffed her to the pipe. "If you're going to slave over a hot stove all day," he said, "you might as well be chained to it." She laughed. He stayed at the fair with Kathy until it closed; then Allen drove back to Channingway. Arthur spent a quiet Sunday reading his medical books, and Monday morning Allen set out to look for a new job. He made phone calls and filled out job applications for the rest of the week, but no one was hiring. ( 2 ) Friday evening, Ragen jumped out of bed, thinking he had just gone to sleep. He went to the dresser. The money — money he didn't even remember stealing — was gone. He ran to the closet, pulled out a .25-caliber automatic and searched the apartment, kicking open doors, looking for the burglar who had broken in while he was asleep. But the apartment was empty. He tried to reach Arthur. When he got no response, he angrily broke open the piggy bank, took out twelve dollars and left to buy a bottle of vodka. He came back, drank and smoked a joint. Still worried about the bills, he realized that whatever he had done to get that money, he had to do it again. Ragen took a few amphetamines, strapped on his gun, put on his jogging top and a windbreaker. Again he jogged west to Columbus, reaching the Ohio State University Wiseman parking lot at about seven-thirty in the morning. Off in the distance, he recognized the horeshoe-shaped football stadium of the Buckeyes. Behind him, he noticed the sign on the modem concrete-and-glass building opposite the lot — upham hall. A short, chubby nurse stepped through the doorway. She had an olive complexion and high cheekbones and wore her black hair braided in a long ponytail down her back. As she walked toward a white Datsun, he had the odd impression that he recognized her. Someone — Allen, he thought — had seen her a long time ago in a student hangout called the Castle. Ragen turned away, but before he could leave, Adalana wished him off the spot... Donna West felt exhausted after her eleven-to-seven shift at the university psychaitric hospital. |
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The day of her operation when she started to come out of it, still under the anesthetic, she thought I was somebody else. Her admissions were sickening, it was like a degeneration of an unknown class — I tried to stop her by telling her it was me (she was in a ward) but again it didn't quite penetrate, and she started boasting how she played me for a "sucker" all these years — I never mentioned this to her because of the children, and I begged the *** Well, when she started to get better, I mentioned the marriage again and she said she had talked to a priest and she claimed he said "you don't have to worry about that." They are "Children of God" — this to me does not sound plausible, but as I have aforementioned she wants to build this into a "gimmick." She went so far as to sue me for divorce so it would hit the papers & without warning had a "peace bond" which she tried to have served on Xmas day so I could not be with the children — and on New Year's Eve my little girl was celebrating her second birthday she refused to let me see her & then called me on the phone to tell me what a wonderful time they were having at her party — Mr. Rau, You can inquire of the show people in M B. as to my sincerity & loyalty to this woman, but it is more than I can shoulder — You know the Nite Club business down here is a woman's world & she has been instrumental in causing me to lose 2 jobs — You can guess how, she has continually bragged if I fight for the children she can have me run out of Miami — She has disappeared from 1 to 3 days at a time — and I am at the point where I can't face life & see what these children will face — I tried this once before & failed, but this time I hope it will be a success. In order to protect the children I would have to put up with her and I would rather pay for my sin with the Almighty than go through that. As a last request, please have this looked into by the various agencys that can protect my children. And may God Have Mercy on my Soul Johnny Morrison Billy was stunned by his fathers suicide letter. He read it over and over, trying to be skeptical about it, but the more he read it, the more he wanted to know Billy later told the writer of his attempt to check it out. Before he left his sisters house in Logan, Billy phoned the Florida Bar Association to track down Johnny Morrison's lawyer, only to discover that the lawyer was dead. He called the hall of records and found there was no record of a marriage license for Johnny Morrison or Johnny Sohraner. He kept making calls until he reached the former owner of a nightclub at which Johnny had worked. The man was retired now but had a boat in Key Biscayne and still brought seafood to the club. He said he had known that someday one of Johnny's kids would be asking about him. He'd fired Billy's mother from the nightclub, he said, because of the caliber of people she was bringing in. Johnny had tried to keep her away from the people she was associating with, but it was an impossible task. He said he had never seen a woman push a man around like that. Billy said he found somebody else — a man who had worked at the Midget Motel and who remembered his father. He recalled that the phone calls during that Christmas holiday had depressed Johnny. It seemed to fit with Johnny's claim in the note that Dorothy had been calling him, taunting him. When he returned to the hospital, he began to lose time again. Monday morning he called the writer to ask that their appointment be postponed. |
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When he got back it was dark, but the argument was over, and Dorothy and Chalmer were sitting in the kitchen, drinking coffee by candlelight. That's what had made him want to do it again now. He'd heard from Kathy that Dorothy had been having some bad arguments with Del. Billy smiled as he looked up at the power xansformer. Just a case of sociopathic deja vu. He also suspected there was something else wrong with him iow, because he had little interest in sex. He'd had opportunities. Twice when he was supposed to be on leave at his sister's louse, he had checked into motels in Athens with young vomen who had shown interest in him, but both times, seeing fie police cars watching him from the road, he had given it up. He felt like a guilty kid anyway. He intensified his study of himself watching the phases of the )thers inside him, and he knew their influence was getting milder. He had bought a drum set during the weekend, after playing on it n the store and being amazed at his skill. Allen used to play the drums, but the ability now belonged to the Teacher and even the unfused Billy. He also played the tenor sax and the piano, but the drums gave him a more powerful emotional release than any of the other instruments. They stirred him. When the news reached Columbus that Milligans treatment plan once again included furloughs, the attacks against Dr. David Caul were renewed. The Ohio Ethics Commission was instructed to begin an investigation with a view to pressing charges against Caul for improper conduct in the performance of his duties. It was alleged that Milligan was receiving special privileges because Caul was secretly writing a book about him. Since the law required that a complaint be lodged before such an investigation could take place, the Ohio Ethics Commission had one of its own attorneys file the complaint. Finding himself now attacked from another quarter, his efforts to treat his patient compromised and his reputation and medical career threatened, Dr. Caul filed an affidavit on July 17, 1979: Events of the past several months concerning the Billy Milligan case have created issues and upheavals that reach proportions beyond appropriateness and beyond what I believe to be within the bounds of logic, reason and even the law ... My clinical decision as to how the patient was treated is the thing that generated most if not all of the controversy. My clinical decision was supported by all the professionals who are knowledgeable on this subject... It is my belief that I have been abused and attacked for some very base motives, the least of which is publicity for a legislator and material for some very questionable journalism ... Later, after many months of complex and expensive legal manuevering, including subpoenas, depositions and countersuits, Dr. Caul was unanimously cleared of any wrongdoing. But during this period, he found that more and more of his time and energy had to go into protecting himself his reputation and his family. He knew what everyone wanted, and that he could stop the threats by keeping Billy locked away, but he refused to give in to the emotional demands of the legislators and the newspapers when he knew Billy's therapy demanded that he treat him as he would any other patient. * * * (5) . On Friday, July 3, Billy was given permission to carry some of his paintings to the Athens National Bank, which had agreed to display his art in the lobby for the month of August. Billy worked happily, preparing new work, mounting canvases, painting and framing. |
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The elevator was stuck between the third and fourth floors. A mentally retarded young girl was trapped inside. Billy could see the sparking and hear the crackling and sputtering and humming of the outer electrical box, and he realized there must have been a short circuit. As several of the patients gathered in the hallway, the girl began screaming inside the elevator and banging on the panels. Billy shouted for help, and with the assistance of one of the workmen, he pried the outer door open. Katherine Gillott and Pat Perry came out to see what the commotion was about. They watched as Billy went down into the elevator shaft, squeezing through the overhead trap door. Billy dropped down beside the girl and began talking to keep her calm. They waited while an elevator serviceman was called. Billy worked on the electrical box from the inside. "Do you know any poems?" he asked her. "I know the Bible." "Recite some psalms for me," he said. They talked about the Bible fur nearly half an hour. When the elevator maintenance man finally got it moving, and they came out on the third floor, the girl looked up at Billy and said, "Can I have a can of pop now?" The following Saturday, Billy rose early. Though he felt good about his art exhibit, he was upset about the Dispatch article that described the exhibit, rehashing — as they always did — the ten personalities and calling him a "multi-personality rapist." He had to get used to handling mixed emotions. It was a new kind of feeling — confusing but necessary to his mental stability. This morning he decided to jog to the Ohio University Inn, adjacent to the hospital grounds, and get a pack of cigarettes. He knew he shouldn't be smoking. In the old days only Allen had smoked cigarettes. But he needed it. There would be time enough to give up the habit when he was cured. He walked down the front steps of the hospital and noticed two men in a car parked opposite the entrance. He assumed they were visiting someone. But when he crossed the road, the car passed him. Coming around the building to a secondary road, he saw it again. He cut across the freshly mowed field, walked toward the footbridge over the creek that bordered the hospital property, and saw the car for the fourth time, turning up Dairy Lane, the road between the creek and the inn, the road he would have to pass after he crossed the footbridge. As he stepped on the bridge, the car window rolled down. A hand held a gun. Someone yelled, "Milligan!" He froze. He defused. The shot missed Ragen as he turned and jumped into the k creek. The second shot also missed. Then another. Ragen grabbed a broken branch from the creek bed, scrambled up the bank and, using the branch as a club, shattered the rear window of the car before it sped off. He stood there for a long time, trembling with rage. The Teacher had frozen on that bridge — weak and indecisive. If not for his own quick action on the spot, they would all have been dead. Ragen walked back slowly to the hospital, discussing with Allen and Arthur what to do. Dr. Caul had to be told. Here in the hospital, they were an easy target. They could be found and killed anytime. Allen told Dr. Caul about it. Furloughs from the hospital were now more important than ever, he argued, because he had to find a place that would be safe until his hearing in Lancaster to vacate his guilty plea. Then he could arrange to leave Ohio and go to Kentucky to be treated by Dr. Cornelia Wilbur. "It is important," Arthur told Allen, "not to release word of this attack. |
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The judge ordered that Billy remain at Lima. During most of 1979, the Ohio legislature had been considering changes in the existing laws regarding persons found lot guilty by reason of insanity. Before such an individual : ould be transferred to a less restrictive environment (as the aw required), the county prosecutor would have the right to lemand a hearing in the jurisdiction in which the crime had ieen committed. The patients right to a review would be banged from every 90 days to every 180 days, and would also )e open to the public, the press and TV. This soon came to be : alled by many, "the Columbus Dispatch law" or "the Milligan aw." Bernie Yavitch, who had been the prosecutor on the Milligan case, later told me he had worked on the subcommittee of he Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association that drafted the lew law. Yavitch said: "The group was meeting, I guess, in esponse to the outcry that was going on over the Milligan ituation 55 The new law, Senate Bill 297, was passed, effective May 20, .980. Judge Flowers told me that the new law had been passed pecause of Billy. * * * On July 1, 1980,1 received a letter postmarked Lima, with the word Urgent printed on the back of the envelope. When I opened it, I discovered a three-page letter written in flowing Arabic script. According to the translator, it was in perfect, fluent Arabic. It read, in part: Sometimes I do not know who I am or what I am. And sometimes I do not even know the other people surrounding me. The echo of the voices are still in my mind, but they have no meaning at all. Several faces appear to me, as if from a darkness, but I am feeling very fearful because my mind is totally divided. My internal family, in fact, is not in continuous contact with me at all, and have not been for a long time... . The events here in the last weeks were not very good. I am not responsible for it at all. I hate everything that transpires around me, but I can't stop it, and I can't alter it... . It was signed "Billy Milligan." A few days later I received another letter, explaining who had written the first one. Again I am sorry for the non English letters. It really embarrasses me to do everything wrong. Arthur knows you don't speak Arabic but he sends you a dumb letter like that. Arthur has never tried to impress anyone so he must be getting mixed up and just forgot. Samuel was taught by Arthur about Arabic, but he never writes letters. Arthur says it is bad tc boast. I wish he would talk to me. Bad things are happening and I don't know why. Arthur also speaks Swahili. Arthur read many books in Lebanor prison about the fundamentals of Arabic. He wanted to explore the pyramids and the Egyptian culture. He had to learn their language and to know what they wrote on the wall. I asked Arthur one day why he was interested in that big pile of tri angled rocks. He told me that he was not as interested in wha was in the tomb, but it might give a key to how the tomb go there. He said something about how it defies a law of physic' and he was looking for the answer. He even made little card board pyramids, but David smashed them. signed Billy U During this period at the hospital, according to Billy, there was much harassment and beatings of patients by attendants, but besides Ragen, only Kevin, of all the personalities, stood up to the attendants. In recognition of this, Arthur removed him from the list of undesirables. Kevin wrote to me on March 28, 1980: Something very bad has happened but I don't know what. |
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I did know it would be only a matter of time before total unfusion and Billy would go to sleep for good. Arthur said Billy had only a small taste of conscious life but unfortunately the taste was a bitter one. Day by day he grew weaker in this place. He could not understand the hate and jealousy displayed by the authority figures of this institution. They also provoked the patients to hurt him and make Ragen fight, but Billy could hold Ragen back ... but not anymore. The doctors say bad things about us, and what hurts the most is they are right. We, I, am a freak, a misfit, a biological error. We all hate this place but it is where we belong. We weren't accepted very well, were we? Ragen is stopping everything for good. He has to. He said if you do not speak, you do no damage to anyone on the outside or inside. No one can blame us for anything. Ragen stopped the hearing. The span of attention will be turned inward and it will enforce the total block. By shutting out the real world we can live peacefully in ours. We know that a world without pain is a world without feeling ... but a world without feeling is a world without pain. Kevin In October 1980, the State Department of Mental Health released the news that Lima was to be phased out as a state hospital for the criminally insane and would become a prison under the Department of Correction. Once again the issue of where Milligan might be transferred made headlines. The possibility that he might be sent back to 1 Athens or to another minimum-security hospital led Prosecutor Jim O'Grady to demand that under the new law, Billy be sent back to Columbus for his sanity review hearing. Judge I Flowers agreed to hear his case. Originally scheduled to take place on October 31, 1980, the hearing was postponed by mutual agreement to November 7, after election day. To avoid having the politicians and the press make the Milligan hearing a political issue, a delay was desirable. But officials of the state Department of Mental Health used this delay to take action on their own. They informed Prosecutor O'Grady that the decision had been made to send Milligan to the new Dayton Forensic Center, which had opened in April. This new maximum-security facility was surrounded by double fences, topped by rolls of razor-ribbon concertina wire wrapped around barbed wire, and had a security system more stringent than most prisons. The prosecutors office dropped its demand for a hearing. On November 19, 1980, Billy Milligan was moved to the Dayton Forensic Center. Arthur and Ragen, sensing Billy-U's despair and afraid he might try to kill himself, put him to sleep again. When he wasn't in the visiting room, he spent his time reading, writing and sketching. He was not allowed to paint He had visits from Mary, a young outpatient he had met during his first months in Athens. She moved to Dayton so that she could see him daily. Billy was well behaved, and he told me he looked forward to his 180-day hearing, hoping that Judge Flowers would decide he didn't need a maximum security institution and would send him back to Athens. He knew that Dr. Caul could treat him, fuse him again and bring back the Teacher. With Billy-U asleep, he said, things were now as they had been before Dr. Cornelia Wilbur wakened him. I could see that he was deteriorating. Several times during my visits, he would tell me he didn't know who he was. When there was a partial fusion, he became a person with no name. Ragen, he reported, had lost the ability to speak English. |
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About a week later, I got a call from him, saying "Hi, I hear you've been wanting to talk to 99 me. It was the first time I had spoken to the Teacher since we had gone over the manuscript of the book together, in Lima. Now we talked for a long time, and he was able to fill in some of the gaps that the others had no knowledge of. One day the Teacher called and said, "I've got to tell someone. I'm in love with Tanda, and she's in love with me. We want to get married." They planned the wedding for December 15th so that Dr. Box could attend before she went on her month long vacation to her native Australia. As part of the treatment plan, Dr. Box moved Milligan onto a new ward, along with three other patients she had tentatively diagnosed as multiples. Since multiple personalities required specialized treatment and attention, she felt it might be best to have them together. Dr. Box was not prepared for the criticism by Columbus politicians which followed, two weeks before election day. The Columbus Dispatch reported on October 17, 1981, that State Representative Don Gilmore, R-Columbus, had charged that Billy Milligan was receiving preferential treatment at the Columbus hospital, including: "Allowing Milligan to choose the patients who will live with him on the ward." Though hospital administrators denied that Milligan was getting any preferential treatment, Gilmore continued to press his accusations. The Columbus Citizen-Journal of November 19, reported: Despite assurances that William Milligan is receiving no extra privileges at the Central Ohio Psychiatric Hospital, a state representative has asked for another investigation into the possibility... . One of Gilmore s concerns centered around an incident several weeks ago when Milligan ... reportedly ordered a bologna sandwich at 2:30 a. m. He said the hospital staff then had to prepare sandwiches for everyone in Milligans ward ... Tanda tried for weeks to find a preacher, minister, priest, or judge who would perform the ceremony. Finally, she found a young Methodist minister, director of the city's new transient "open shelter," who agreed to marry them. Gary Witte had hoped to remain anonymous, fearing that the publicity might harm his work at the shelter. However, a Columbus Dispatch reporter recognized and identified him. "My personal philosophy," the young minister told him, "is that I've always been for the underdog. ... I did the ceremony because nobody else would do it..." The marriage took place on December 22, 1981, with only the minister, an officer of the probate court who had brought the marriage license, and myself present. Dr. Box had already left for Australia. It was the Teacher who placed the ring on Tanda's finger, and kissed her. Since Ohio does not have conjugal visits, there would be no possibility for them to be alone together unless he was transferred to a minimum security or a civil-mental hospital. After the wedding, Tanda faced the dozens of waiting reporters, photographers, and TV cameramen at a brief press conference. She told them she had met most of the personalities and they had accepted her. She said a day would come when they would live a normal life. Soon afterward, the Teacher and Tanda began to notice ominous changes. The Teacher was taken off all medication. Security began a pattern of shaking down his room, and strip-searching him before and after each visitor. Even Tanda was strip-searched on occasion when she came to visit. Both of them found it humiliating and felt it was calculated harassment. |
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Snatching them up, she ran into the hotel and almost fell going upstairs. She sat in the room. The magazines were piled on each side of her and in a circle at her feet. She had made a little castle with portcullises of words and into this she was withdrawn. All about her were the magazines she had bought and bought and looked at and looked at on other days, and these were the outer barrier, and upon the inside of the barrier, upon her lap, as yet unopened, but her hands were trembling to open them and read and read and read again with hungry eyes, were the three battered Post magazines. She opened the first page. She would go through them page by page, line by line, she decided. Not a line would go unnoticed, a comma unread, every little ad and every color would be fixed by her. And — she smiled with discovery — in those other magazines at her feet were still advertisements and cartoons she had neglected — there would be little morsels of stuff for her to reclaim and utilize later. She would read this first Post tonight, yes tonight she would read this first delicious Post. Page on page she would eat it and tomorrow night, if there was going to be a tomorrow night, but maybe there wouldn't be a tomorrow night here, maybe the motor would start and there'd be odors of exhaust and round hum of rubber tire on road and wind riding in the window and pennanting her hair — but, suppose, just suppose there would Be a tomorrow night here, in this room. Well, then, there would be two more Posts, one for tomorrow night, and the next for the next night. How neatly she said it to herself with her mind's tongue. She turned the first page. She turned the second page. Her eyes moved over it and over it and her fingers unknown to her slipped under the next page and flickered it in preparation for turning, and the watch ticked on her wrist, and time passed and she sat turning pages, turning pages, hungrily seeing the framed people in the pictures, people who lived in another land in another world where neons bravely held off the night with crimson bars and the smells were home smells and the people talked good fine words and here she was turning the pages, and all the lines went across and down and the pages flew under her hands, making a fan. She threw down the first Post, seized on and riffled through the second in half an hour, threw that down, took up the third, threw that down a good fifteen minutes later and found herself breathing, breathing stiffly and swiftly in her body and out of her mouth. She put her hand up to the back of her neck. Somewhere, a soft breeze was blowing. The hairs along the back of her neck slowly stood upright. She touched them with one pale hand as one touches the nape of a dandelion. Outside, in the plaza, the street lights rocked like crazy flashlights on a wind. Papers ran through the gutters in sheep flocks. Shadows penciled and slashed under the bucketing lamps now this way, now that, here a shadow one instant, there a shadow next, now no shadows, all cold light, now no light, all cold blue-black shadow. The lamps creaked on their high metal hasps. In the room her hands began to tremble. She saw them tremble. Her body began to tremble. Under the bright bright print of the brightest, loudest skirt she could find to put on especially for tonight, in which she had whirled and cavorted feverishly before the coffin-sized mirror, beneath the rayon skirt the body was all wire and tendon and excitation. Her teeth chattered and fused and chattered. |
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Harris sorted out the sizes, shapes, and construction of various bones in his body with displeasure. At ten A. M. he asked to feel Mr. Smith's elbow one moment. Mr. Smith obliged, but scowled suspiciously. And after lunch Mr. Harris asked to touch Miss Laurel's shoulder blade and she immediately pushed herself back against him, purring like a kitten and shutting her eyes. "Miss Laurel!" he snapped. "Stop that!" Alone, he pondered his neuroses. The war was just over, the pressure of his work, the uncertainty of the future, probably had much to do with his mental outlook. He wanted to leave the office, get into business for himself. He had more than a little talent for ceramics and sculpture. As soon as possible he'd head for Arizona, borrow that money from Mr. Creldon, build a kiln and set up shop. It was a worry. What a case he was. But luckily he had contacted M. Munigant, who seemed eager to understand and help him. He would fight it out with himself, not go back to either Munigant or Dr. Burleigh unless he was forced to. The alien feeling would pass. He sat staring into space. The alien feeling did not pass. It grew. On Tuesday and Wednesday it bothered him terrifically that his epidermis, hair and other appendages were of a high disorder, while his integumented skeleton of himself was a slick clean structure of efficient organization. Sometimes, in certain lights with his lips drawn morosely down, weighted with melancholy, he imagined he saw his skull grinning at him behind the flesh. Let go! he cried. Let go of me! My lungs! Stop! He gasped convulsively, as if his ribs were crushing the breath from him. My brain — stop squeezing it! And terrifying headaches burnt his brain to a blind cinder. My insides, let them be, for God's sake! Stay away from my heart! His heart cringed from the fanning motion of ribs like pale spiders crouched and fiddling with their prey. Drenched with sweat, he lay upon the bed one night while Clarisse was out attending a Red Cross meeting. He tried to gather his wits but only grew more aware of the conflict between his dirty exterior and this beautiful cool clean calciumed thing inside. His complexion: wasn't it oily and lined with worry? Observe the flawless, snow-white perfection of the skull. His nose: wasn't it too large? Then observe the tiny bones of the skull's nose before that monstrous nasal cartilage begins forming the lopsided proboscis. His body: wasn't it plump? Well, consider the skeleton; slender, svelte, economical of line and contour. Exquisitely carved oriental ivory! Perfect, thin as a white praying mantis! His eyes: weren't they protuberant, ordinary, numb-looking? Be so kind as to note the eye-sockets of the skull; so deep and rounded, somber, quiet pools, all-knowing, eternal. Gaze deep and you never touch the bottom of their dark understanding. All irony, all life, all everything is there in the cupped darkness. Compare. Compare Compare. He raged for hours. And the skeleton, ever the frail and solemn philosopher, hung quietly inside, saying not a word, suspended like a delicate insect within a chrysalis, waiting and waiting. Harris sat slowly up. "Wait a minute. Hold on!" he exclaimed. "You're helpless, too. I've got you, too. I can make you do anything I want! You can't prevent it! I say move your carpales, metacarpales, and phalanges and — sswtt — up they go, as I wave to someone!" He laughed "I order the fibula and femur to locomote and Hunn two three four, Hunn two three four — we walk around the block. |
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All of the hot-dog stands were boarded up with strips of golden planking, sealing in all the mustard, onion, meat odors of the long, joyful summer. It was like nailing summer into a series of coffins. One by one the places slammed their covers down, padlocked their doors, and the wind came and touched the sand, blowing away all of the million footprints of July and August. It got so that now, in September, there was nothing but the mark of my rubber tennis shoes and Donald and Delaus Arnold's feet, down by the water curve. Sand blew up in curtains on the sidewalks, and the merry-go-round was hidden with canvas, all of the horses frozen in mid-air on their brass poles, showing teeth, galloping on. With only the wind for music, slipping through canvas. I stood there. Everyone else was in school. I was not. Tomorrow I would be on my way west across the United States on a train. Mom and I had come to the beach for one last brief moment. There was something about the loneliness that made me want to get away by myself. "Mama, I want to run up the beach aways," I said. "All right, but hurry back, and don't go near the water." I ran. Sand spun under me and the wind lifted me. You know how it is, running, arms out so you feel veils from your fingers, caused by wind. Like wings. Mama withdrew into the distance, sitting. Soon she was only a brown speck and I was all alone. Being alone is a newness to a twelve-year-old child. He is so used to people about. The only way he can be alone is in his mind. There are so many real people around, telling children what and how to do, that a boy has to run off down a beach, even if it's only in his head, to get by himself in his own world. So now I was really alone. I went down to the water and let it cool up to my stomach. Always before, with the crowd, I hadn't dared to look, to come to this spot and search around in the water and call a certain name. But now — Water is like a magician. Sawing you in half. It feels as if you were cut in two, part of you, the lower part, sugar, melting, dissolving away. Cool water, and once in a while a very elegantly stumbling wave that fell with a flourish of lace. I called her name. A dozen times I called it. "Tally! Tally! Oh, Tally!" You really expect answers to your calling when you are young. You feel that whatever you may think can be real. And some times maybe that is not so wrong. I thought of Tally, swimming out into the water last May, with her pigtails trailing, blond. She went laughing, and the sun was on her small twelve-year-old shoulders. I thought of the water settling quiet, of the life guard leaping into it, of Tally's mother screaming, and of how Tally never came out... . The life guard tried to persuade her to come out, but she did not. He came back with only bits of water-weed in his big-knuckled fingers, and Tally was gone. She would not sit across from me at school any longer, or chase indoor balls on the brick streets on summer nights. She had gone too far out, and the lake would not let her return. And now in the lonely autumn when the sky was huge and the water was huge and the beach was so very long, I had come down for the last time, alone. I called her name again and again. Tally, oh, Tally! The wind blew so very softly over my ears, the way wind blows over the mouths of sea-shells to set them whispering. The water rose, embraced my chest, then my knees, up and down, one way and another, sucking under my heels. "Tally! Come back, Tally!" I was only twelve. |
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But I know how much I loved her. It was that love that comes before all significance of body and morals. It was that love that is no more bad than wind and sea and sand lying side by side forever. It was made of all the warm long days together at the beach, and the humming quiet days of droning education at the school. All the long autumn days of the years past when I had carried her books home from school. Tally! I called her name for the last time. I shivered. I felt water on my face and did not know how it got there. The waves had not splashed that high. Turning, I retreated to the sand and stood there for half an hour, hoping for one glimpse, one sign, one little bit of Tally to remember. Then, I knelt and built a sand castle, shaping it fine, building it as Tally and I had built so many of them. But this time, I only built half of it. Then I got up. "Tally, if you hear me, come in and build the rest." I walked off toward that far-away speck that was Mama. The water came in, blended the sand-castle circle by circle, mashing it down little by little into the original smoothness. Silently, I walked along the shore. Far away, a merry-go-round jangled faintly, but it was only the wind. The next day, I went away on the train. A train has a poor memory; it soon puts all behind it. It forgets the cornlands of Illinois, the rivers of childhood, the bridges, the lakes, the valleys, the cottages, the hurts and the joys. It spreads them out behind and they drop back of a horizon. I lengthened my bones, put flesh on them, changed my young mind for an older one, threw away clothes as they no longer fitted, shifted from grammar to high-school, to college. And then there was a young woman in Sacramento. I knew her for a time, and we were married. By the time I was twenty-two, I had almost forgotten what the East was like. Margaret suggested that our delayed honeymoon be taken back in that direction. Like a memory, a train works both ways. A train can bring rushing back all those things you left behind so many years before. Lake Bluff, population 10,000, came up over the sky. Margaret looked so handsome in her fine new clothes. She watched me as I felt my old world gather me back into its living. She held my arm as the train slid into Bluff Station and our baggage was escorted out. So many years, and the things they do to people's faces and bodies. When we walked through the town together I saw no one I recognized. There were faces with echoes in them. Echoes of hikes on ravine trails. Faces with small laughter in them from closed grammar schools and swinging on metal-linked swings and going up and down on teeter-totters. But I didn't speak. I walked and looked and filled up inside with all those memories, like leaves stacked for autumn burning. We stayed on two weeks in all, revisiting all the places together. The days were happy. I thought I loved Margaret well. At least I thought I did. It was on one of the last days that we walked down by the shore. It was not quite as late in the year as that day so many years before, but the first evidences of desertion were coming upon the beach. People were thinning out, several of the hot-dog stands had been shuttered and nailed, and the wind, as always, waited there to sing for us. I almost saw Mama sitting on the sand as she used to sit. I had that feeling again of wanting to be alone. But I could not force myself to speak of this to Margaret. I only held onto her and waited. It got late in the day. Most of the children had gone home and only a few men and women remained basking in the windy sun. |
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Each night he returned later, with no one following. Each night, Martin sank deeper and deeper in his pillow. "Well, people are busy," said Mother. "They haven't time to notice the tag Dog carries. Or they mean to come visit, but forget." But there was more to it than that. There was the fevered shining in Dog's eyes, and his whimpering tic late at night, in some private dream. His shivering in the dark, under the bed. The way he sometimes stood half the night, looking at Martin as if some great and impossible secret was his and he knew no way to tell it save by savagely thumping his tail, or turning in endless circles, never to lie down, spinning and spinning again. On October thirtieth, Dog ran out and didn't come back at all, even when after supper Martin heard his parents call and call. The hour grew late, the streets and sidewalks stood empty, the air moved cold about the house and there was nothing, nothing. Long after midnight, Martin lay watching the world beyond the cool, clear glass windows. Now there was not even autumn, for there was no Do g to fetch it in. There would be no winter, for who could bring the snow to melt in your hands? Father, Mother? No, not the same. They couldn't play the game with its special secrets and rules, its sounds and pantomimes. No more seasons. No more time. The go-between, the emissary, was lost to the wild throngings of civilization, poisoned, stolen, hit by a car, left somewhere in a culvert... . Sobbing, Martin turned his face to his pillow. The world was a picture under glass, untouchable. The world was dead. Martin twisted in bed and in three days the last Hallowe'en pumpkins were rotting in trash cans, papier-mache skulls and witches were burnt on bonfires, and ghosts were stacked on shelves with other linens until next year. To martin, Hallowe'en had been nothing more than one evening when tin horns cried off in the cold autumn stars, children blew like goblin leaves along the flinty walks, flinging their heads, or cabbages, at porches, soap-writing names or similar magic symbols on icy windows. All of it as distant, unfathomable, and nightmarish as a puppet show seen from so many miles away that there is no sound or meaning. For three days in November, Martin watched alternate light and shadow sift across his ceiling. The fire-pageant was over forever; autumn lay in cold ashes. Martin sank deeper, yet deeper in white marble layers of bed, motionless, listening always listening... . Friday evening, his parents kissed him good-night and walked out of the house into the hushed cathedral weather toward a motion-picture show. Miss Tarkins from next door stayed on in the parlor below until Martin called down he was sleepy, then took her knitting off home. In silence, Martin lay following the great move of stars down a clear and moonlit sky, remembering nights such as this when he'd spanned the town with Dog ahead, behind, around about, tracking the green-plush ravine, lapping slumbrous streams gone milky with the fullness of the moon, leaping cemetery tombstones while whispering the marble names; on, quickly on, through shaved meadows where the only motion was the off-on quivering of stars, to streets where shadows would not stand aside for you but crowded all the sidewalks for mile on mile. Run now run! chasing, being chased by bitter smoke, fog, mist, wind, ghost of mind, fright of memory; home, safe, sound, snug-warm, asleep... . Nine o'clock. Chime. The drowsy clock in the deep stairwell below. |
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Don't be afraid. My telling can't hurt you in spite of what I have done and I promise to lie quietly in the dark — weeping perhaps or occasionally seeing the blood once more — but I will never again unfold my limbs to rise up and bare teeth. I explain. You can think what I tell you a confession, if you like, but one full of curiosities familiar only in dreams and during those moments when a dog's profile plays in the steam of a kettle. Or when a corn-husk doll sitting on a shelf is soon splaying in the corner of a room and the wicked of how it got there is plain. Stranger things happen all the time everywhere. You know. I know you know. One question is who is responsible? Another is can you read? If a pea hen refuses to brood I read it quickly and, sure enough, that night I see a minha mae standing hand in hand with her little boy, my shoes jamming the pocket of her apron. Other signs need more time to understand. Often there are too many signs, or a bright omen clouds up too fast. I sort them and try to recall, yet I know I am missing much, like not reading the garden snake crawling up to the door saddle to die. Let me start with what I know for certain. The beginning begins with the shoes. When a child I am never able to abide being barefoot and always beg for shoes, anybody's shoes, even on the hottest days. My mother, a minha mae, is frowning, is angry at what she says are my prettify ways. Only bad women wear high heels. I am dangerous, she says, and wild but she relents and lets me wear the throwaway shoes from Senhora's house, pointy-toe, one raised heel broke, the other worn and a buckle on top. As a result, Lina says, my feet are useless, will always be too tender for life and never have the strong soles, tougher than leather, that life requires. Lina is correct. Florens, she says, it's 1690. Who else these days has the hands of a slave and the feet of a Portuguese lady? So when I set out to find you, she and Mistress give me Sir's boots that fit a man not a girl. They stuff them with hay and oily corn husks and tell me to hide the letter inside my stocking — no matter the itch of the sealing wax. I am lettered but I do not read what Mistress writes and Lina and Sorrow cannot. But I know what it means to say to any who stop me. My head is light with the confusion of two things, hunger for you and scare if I am lost. Nothing frights me more than this errand and nothing is more temptation. From the day you disappear I dream and plot. To learn where you are and how to be there. I want to run across the trail through the beech and white pine but I am asking myself which way? Who will tell me? Who lives in the wilderness between this farm and you and will they help me or harm me? What about the boneless bears in the valley? Remember? How when they move their pelts sway as though there is nothing underneath? Their smell belying their beauty, their eyes knowing us from when we are beasts also. You telling me that is why it is fatal to look them in the eye. They will approach, run to us to love and play which we misread and give back fear and anger. Giant birds also are nesting out there bigger than cows, Lina says, and not all natives are like her, she says, so watch out. A praying savage, neighbors call her, because she is once churchgoing yet she bathes herself every day and Christians never do. Underneath she wears bright blue beads and dances in secret at first light when the moon is small. More than fear of loving bears or birds bigger than cows, I fear pathless night. |
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How, I wonder, can I find you in the dark? Now at last there is a way. I have orders. It is arranged. I will see your mouth and trail my fingers down. You will rest your chin in my hair again while I breathe into your shoulder in and out, in and out. I am happy the world is breaking open for us, yet its newness trembles me. To get to you I must leave the only home, the only people I know. Lina says from the state of my teeth I am maybe seven or eight when I am brought here. We boil wild plums for jam and cake eight times since then, so I must be sixteen. Before this place I spend my days picking okra and sweeping tobacco sheds, my nights on the floor of the cookhouse with a minha mae. We are baptized and can have happiness when this life is done. The Reverend Father tells us that. Once every seven days we learn to read and write. We are forbidden to leave the place so the four of us hide near the marsh. My mother, me, her little boy and Reverend Father. He is forbidden to do this but he teaches us anyway watching out for wicked Virginians and Protestants who want to catch him. If they do he will be in prison or pay money or both. He has two books and a slate. We have sticks to draw through sand, pebbles to shape words on smooth flat rock. When the letters are memory we make whole words. I am faster than my mother and her baby boy is no good at all. Very quickly I can write from memory the Nicene Creed including all of the commas. Confession we tell not write as I am doing now. I forget almost all of it until now. I like talk. Lina talk, stone talk, even Sorrow talk. Best of all is your talk. At first when I am brought here I don't talk any word. All of what I hear is different from what words mean to a minha mae and me. Lina's words say nothing I know. Nor Mistress's. Slowly a little talk is in my mouth and not on stone. Lina says the place of my talking on stone is Mary's Land where Sir does business. So that is where my mother and her baby boy are buried. Or will be if they ever decide to rest. Sleeping on the cookhouse floor with them is not as nice as sleeping in the broken sleigh with Lina. In cold weather we put planks around our part of the cowshed and wrap our arms together under pelts. We don't smell the cow flops because they are frozen and we are deep under fur. In summer if our hammocks are hit by mosquitoes Lina makes a cool place to sleep out of branches. You never like a hammock and prefer the ground even in rain when Sir offers you the storehouse. Sorrow no more sleeps near the fireplace. The men helping you, Will and Scully, never live the night here because their master does not allow it. You remember them, how they would not take orders from you until Sir makes them? He could do that since they are exchange for land under lease from Sir. Lina says Sir has a clever way of getting without giving. I know it is true because I see it forever and ever. Me watching, my mother listening, her baby boy on her hip. Senhor is not paying the whole amount he owes to Sir. Sir saying he will take instead the woman and the girl, not the baby boy and the debt is gone. A minha mae begs no. Her baby boy is still at her breast. Take the girl, she says, my daughter, she says. Me. Me. Sir agrees and changes the balance due. As soon as tobacco leaf is hanging to dry Reverend Father takes me on a ferry, then a ketch, then a boat and bundles me between his boxes of books and food. The second day it becomes hurting cold and I am happy I have a cloak however thin. |
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Reverend Father excuses himself to go elsewhere on the boat and tells me to stay exact where I am. A woman comes to me and says stand up. I do and she takes my cloak from my shoulders. Then my wooden shoes. She walks away. Reverend Father turns a pale red color when he returns and learns what happens. He rushes all about asking where and who but can find no answer. Finally he takes rags, strips of sailcloth lying about and wraps my feet. Now I am knowing that unlike with Senhor, priests are unlove here. A sailor spits into the sea when Reverend Father asks him for help. Reverend Father is the only kind man I ever see. When I arrive here I believe it is the place he warns against. The freezing in hell that comes before the everlasting fire where sinners bubble and singe forever. But the ice comes first, he says. And when I see knives of it hanging from the houses and trees and feel the white air burn my face I am certain the fire is coming. Then Lina smiles when she looks at me and wraps me for warmth. Mistress looks away. Nor is Sorrow happy to see me. She flaps her hand in front of her face as though bees are bothering her. She is ever strange and Lina says she is once more with child. Father still not clear and Sorrow does not say. Will and Scully laugh and deny. Lina believes it is Sir's. Says she has her reason for thinking so. When I ask what reason she says he is a man. Mistress says nothing. Neither do I. But I have a worry. Not because our work is more, but because mothers nursing greedy babies scare me. I know how their eyes go when they choose. How they raise them to look at me hard, saying something I cannot hear. Saying something important to me, but holding the little boy's hand. The man moved through the surf, stepping carefully over pebbles and sand to shore. Fog, Atlantic and reeking of plant life, blanketed the bay and slowed him. He could see his boots sloshing but not his satchel nor his hands. When the surf was behind him and his soles sank in mud, he turned to wave to the sloopmen, but because the mast had disappeared in the fog he could not tell whether they remained anchored or risked sailing on — hugging the shore and approximating the location of wharves and docks. Unlike the English fogs he had known since he could walk, or those way north where he lived now, this one was sun fired, turning the world into thick, hot gold. Penetrating it was like struggling through a dream. As mud became swamp grass, he turned left, stepping gingerly until he stumbled against wooden planks leading up beach toward the village. Other than his own breath and tread, the world was soundless. It was only after he reached the live oak trees that the fog wavered and split. He moved faster then, more in control but missing, too, the blinding gold he had come through. Picking his way with growing confidence, he arrived in the ramshackle village sleeping between two huge riverside plantations. There the hostler was persuaded to forgo a deposit if the man signed a note: Jacob Vaark. The saddle was poorly made but the horse, Regina, was a fine one. Mounted, he felt better and rode carefree and a little too fast along beach fronts until he entered an old Lenape trail. Here there was reason to be cautious and he slowed Regina down. In this territory he could not be sure of friend or foe. Half a dozen years ago an army of blacks, natives, whites, mulattoes — freedmen, slaves and indentured — had waged war against local gentry led by members of that very class. |
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When that "people's war" lost its hopes to the hangman, the work it had done — which included the slaughter of opposing tribes and running the Carolinas off their land — spawned a thicket of new laws authorizing chaos in defense of order. By eliminating manumission, gatherings, travel and bearing arms for black people only; by granting license to any white to kill any black for any reason; by compensating owners for a slave's maiming or death, they separated and protected all whites from all others forever. Any social ease between gentry and laborers, forged before and during that rebellion, crumbled beneath a hammer wielded in the interests of the gentry's profits. In Jacob Vaark's view, these were lawless laws encouraging cruelty in exchange for common cause, if not common virtue. In short, 1682 and Virginia was still a mess. Who could keep up with the pitched battles for God, king and land? Even with the relative safety of his skin, solitary traveling required prudence. He knew he might ride for hours with no company but geese flying over inland waterways, and suddenly, from behind felled trees a starving deserter with a pistol might emerge, or in a hollow a family of runaways might cower, or an armed felon might threaten. Carrying several kinds of specie and a single knife, he was a juicy target. Eager to be out of this colony into a less precarious but personally more repellent one, Jacob urged the mare to a faster pace. He dismounted twice, the second time to free the bloody hindleg of a young raccoon stuck in a tree break. Regina munched trail-side grass while he tried to be as gentle as possible, avoiding the claws and teeth of the frightened animal. Once he succeeded, the raccoon limped off, perhaps to the mother forced to abandon it or more likely into other claws. Galloping along, he was sweating so heavily his eyes salted and his hair matted on his shoulders. Already October and Regina was drenched and snorting. No such thing as winter down here, he thought, and he might as well have been in Barbados, which he had considered once, although its heat was rumored to be more lethal than this. But that was years ago and the decision was null before he could act on it. An uncle he had never met from the side of his family that had abandoned him died and left him one hundred and twenty acres of a dormant patroonship in a climate he much preferred. One with four distinct seasons. Yet this mist, hot and rife with gnats, did not dampen his spirits. Despite the long sail in three vessels down three different bodies of water, and now the hard ride over the Lenape trail, he took delight in the journey. Breathing the air of a world so new, almost alarming in rawness and temptation, never failed to invigorate him. Once beyond the warm gold of the bay, he saw forests untouched since Noah, shorelines beautiful enough to bring tears, wild food for the taking. The lies of the Company about the easy profit awaiting all comers did not surprise or discourage him. In fact it was hardship, adventure, that attracted him. His whole life had been a mix of confrontation, risk and placating. Now here he was, a ratty orphan become landowner, making a place out of no place, a temperate living from raw life. He relished never knowing what lay in his path, who might approach with what intention. A quick thinker, he flushed with pleasure when a crisis, large or small, needed invention and fast action. Rocking in the poorly made saddle, he faced forward while his eyes swept the surroundings. |
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He knew the landscape intimately from years ago when it was still the old Swedish Nation and, later, when he was an agent for the Company. Still later when the Dutch took control. During and after that contest, there had never been much point in knowing who claimed this or that terrain; this or another outpost. Other than certain natives, to whom it all belonged, from one year to another any stretch might be claimed by a church, controlled by a Company or become the private property of a royal's gift to a son or a favorite. Since land claims were always fluid, except for notations on bills of sale, he paid scant attention to old or new names of towns or forts: Fort Orange; Cape Henry; Nieuw Amsterdam; Wiltwyck. In his own geography he was moving from Algonquin to Sesquehanna via Chesapeake on through Lenape since turtles had a life span longer than towns. When he sailed the South River into the Chesapeake Bay, he disembarked, found a village and negotiated native trails on horseback, mindful of their fields of maize, careful through their hunting grounds, politely asking permission to enter a small village here, a larger one there. He watered his horse at a particular stream and avoided threatening marshland fronting the pines. Recognizing the slope of certain hills, a copse of oak, an abandoned den, the sudden odor of pine sap — all of that was more than valuable; it was essential. In such ad hoc territory, Jacob simply knew that when he came out of that forest of pine skirting the marshes, he was, at last, in Maryland which, at the moment, belonged to the king. Entirely. Upon entering this privately owned country, his feelings fought one another to a draw. Unlike colonies up and down the coast — disputed, fought over and regularly renamed; their trade limited to whatever nation was victor — the province of Maryland allowed trade to foreign markets. Good for planters, better for merchants, best for brokers. But the palatinate was Romish to the core. Priests strode openly in its towns; their temples menaced its squares; their sinister missions cropped up at the edge of native villages. Law, courts and trade were their exclusive domain and overdressed women in raised heels rode in carts driven by ten-year-old Negroes. He was offended by the lax, flashy cunning of the Papists. "Abhor that arrant whore of Rome." The entire class in the children's quarter of the poorhouse had memorized those lines from their primer. "And all her blasphemies Drink not of her cursed cup Obey not her decrees." Which did not mean you could not do business with them, and he had out-dealt them often enough, especially here where tobacco and slaves were married, each currency clutching its partner's elbow. By sustained violence or sudden disease, either one was subject to collapse, inconveniencing everybody but the lender. Disdain, however difficult to cloak, must be put aside. His previous dealings with this estate had been with the owner's clerk while sitting on alehouse stools. Now, for some reason, he had been invited, summoned rather, to the planter's house — a plantation called Jublio. A trader asked to dine with a gentleman? On a Sunday? So there must be trouble, he thought. Finally, swatting mosquitoes and on the watch for mud snakes that startled the horse, he glimpsed the wide iron gates of Jublio and guided Regina through them. He had heard how grand it was, but could not have been prepared for what lay before him. The house, honey-colored stone, was in truth more like a place where one held court. |
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Thus, tamping envy as taught in the poorhouse, Jacob entertained himself by conjuring up flaws in the couple's marriage. They seemed well suited to each other: vain, voluptuous, prouder of their pewter and porcelain than of their sons. It was abundantly clear why D'Ortega was in serious debt. Turning profit into useless baubles, unembarrassed by sumptuary, silk stockings and an overdressed wife, wasting candles in midday, he would always be unable to ride out any setback, whether it be lost ship or ruined crop. Watching the couple, Jacob noticed that husband and wife never looked at each other, except for a stolen glance when the other looked elsewhere. He could not tell what was in those surreptitious peeks, but it amused him to divine the worst while he endured the foolish, incomprehensible talk and inedible dishes. They did not smile, they sneered; did not laugh, giggled. He imagined them vicious with servants and obsequious to priests. His initial embarrassment about the unavoidable consequences of his long journey — muddy boots, soiled hands, perspiration and its odor — was dimmed by Mistress D'Ortega's loud perfume and heavily powdered face. The only, if minor, relief came from the clove-smelling woman who brought the food. His own Rebekka seemed ever more valuable to him the rare times he was in the company of these rich men's wives, women who changed frocks every day and dressed their servants in sacking. From the moment he saw his bride-to-be struggling down the gangplank with bedding, two boxes and a heavy satchel, he knew his good fortune. He had been willing to accept a bag of bones or an ugly maiden — in fact expected one, since a pretty one would have had several local opportunities to wed. But the young woman who answered his shout in the crowd was plump, comely and capable. Worth every day of the long search made necessary because taking over the patroonship required a wife, and because he wanted a certain kind of mate: an unchurched woman of childbearing age, obedient but not groveling, literate but not proud, independent but nurturing. And he would accept no scold. Just as the first mate's report described her, Rebekka was ideal. There was not a shrewish bone in her body. She never raised her voice in anger. Saw to his needs, made the tenderest dumplings, took to chores in a land completely strange to her with enthusiasm and invention, cheerful as a bluebird. Or used to be. Three dead infants in a row, followed by the accidental death of Patrician, their five-year-old, had unleavened her. A kind of invisible ash had settled over her which vigils at the small graves in the meadow did nothing to wipe away. Yet she neither complained nor shirked her duties. If anything, she threw herself more vigorously into the farmwork, and when he traveled, as now, on business, trading, collecting, lending, he had no doubts about how his home was being managed. Rebekka and her two helpers were as reliable as sunrise and strong as posts. Besides, time and health were on their side. He was confident she would bear more children and at least one, a boy, would live to thrive. Dessert, applesauce and pecans, was an improvement, and when he accompanied D'Ortega on the impossible-to-refuse tour of the place, his mood had lifted slightly, enough to admire the estate honestly. The mist had cleared and he was able to see in detail the workmanship and care of the tobacco sheds, wagons, row after row of barrels — orderly and nicely kept — the well-made meat house, milk house, laundry, cookhouse. |
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"Africans are as interested in selling slaves to the Dutch as an English planter is in buying them. Rum rules, no matter who does the trading. Laws? What laws? Look," he went on, "Massachusetts has already tried laws against rum selling and failed to stop one dram. The sale of molasses to northern colonies is brisker than ever. More steady profit in it than fur, tobacco, lumber, anything — except gold, I reckon. As long as the fuel is replenished, vats simmer and money heaps. Kill-devil, sugar — there will never be enough. A trade for lifetimes to come." "Still," Jacob said, "it's a degraded business. And hard." "Think of it this way. Fur you need to hunt it, kill it, skin it, carry it and probably fight some natives for the rights. Tobacco needs nurture, harvest, drying, packing, toting, but mostly time and ever-fresh soil. Sugar? Rum? Cane grows. You can't stop it; its soil never dies out. You just cut it, cook it, ship it." Downes slapped his palms together. "That simple, eh?" "More or less. But the point is this. No loss of investment. None. Ever. No crop failure. No wiped-out beaver or fox. No war to interfere. Crop plentiful, eternal. Slave workers, same. Buyers, eager. Product, heavenly. In a month, the time of the journey from mill to Boston, a man can turn fifty pounds into five times as much. Think of it. Each and every month five times the investment. For certain." Jacob had to laugh. He recognized the manner: hawker turned middle man eliminating all hesitations and closing all arguments with promises of profit quickly. From Downes' clothes and his apparent unwillingness so far to stand the drinks, Jacob suspected he had not reaped the easy profit he described. Nevertheless, Jacob decided he would look into it. After a leisurely meal of oysters, veal, pigeon, parsnips and suet pudding restored his taste buds, he reserved bed space with just one man in it and, strolling outside, thought about the disappointing day and the humiliation of having accepted the girl as part payment. He knew he would never see another farthing from D'Ortega. One day — soon, maybe — to everyone's relief the Stuarts would lose the throne, and a Protestant rule. Then, he thought, a case against D'Ortega would succeed and he would not be forced to settle for a child as a percentage of what was due him. He knew he had excused the bargain by thinking Rebekka would be eager to have her, but what was truer than that was another thing. From his own childhood he knew there was no good place in the world for waifs and whelps other than the generosity of strangers. Even if bartered, given away, apprenticed, sold, swapped, seduced, tricked for food, labored for shelter or stolen, they were less doomed under adult control. Even if they mattered less than a milch cow to a parent or master, without an adult they were more likely to freeze to death on stone steps, float facedown in canals, or wash up on banks and shoals. He refused to be sentimental about his own orphan status, the years spent with children of all shades, stealing food and cadging gratuities for errands. His mother, he was told, was a girl of no consequence who died in childbirth. His father, who hailed from Amsterdam, left him with a name easily punned and a cause of deep suspicion. The shame the Dutch had visited on the English was everywhere, especially during his stint in a poorhouse before the luck of being taken on as a runner for a law firm. The job required literacy and led to his being signed up by the Company. |
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Inheriting land softened the chagrin of being both misborn and disowned. Yet he continued to feel a disturbing pulse of pity for orphans and strays, remembering well their and his own sad teeming in the markets, lanes, alleyways and ports of every region he traveled. Once before he found it hard to refuse when called on to rescue an unmoored, unwanted child. A decade ago now, a sawyer asked him to take off his hands a sullen, curly-headed girl he had found half dead on a riverbank. Jacob agreed to do it, provided the sawyer forgive the cost of the lumber he was buying. Unlike now, at that time his farm really did need more help. Rebekka was pregnant then, but no previous sons had lived. His farm was sixty cultivated acres out of one hundred and twenty of woodland that was located some seven miles from a hamlet founded by Separatists. The patroonship had lain dormant for years when so many Dutch (except for the powerful and wealthy ones) left or were expelled from the region. The land was still isolated except for the Separatists. Jacob soon learned that they had bolted from their brethren over the question of the Chosen versus the universal nature of salvation. His neighbors favored the first and situated themselves inland beyond fur posts and wars. When Jacob, a small-scale trader for the Company with a side line in fur and lumber, found himself an heir of sorts, he relished the thought of becoming a landowning, independent farmer. He didn't change his mind about that. He did what was necessary: secured a wife, someone to help her, planted, built, fathered... He had simply added the trading life. Otherwise he would have to prefer settled farm life and communion with people whose religion dumbfounded him although the seven-mile distance made their blasphemy irrelevant. Yet his land belonged to a traveling man who knew very well that it was not wise to have male labor all over the place during his long absences. His preference for steady female labor over dodgy males was based on his own experience as a youth. A frequently absent master was invitation and temptation — to escape, rape or rob. The two men he used as occasional help presented no threat at all. In the right environment, women were naturally reliable. He believed it now with this ill-shod child that the mother was throwing away, just as he believed it a decade earlier with the curly-haired goose girl, the one they called Sorrow. And the acquisition of both could be seen as rescue. Only Lina had been purchased outright and deliberately, but she was a woman, not a child. Walking in the warm night air, he went as far as possible, until the alehouse lights were gem stones fighting darkness and the voices of carousing men were lost to the silk-rustle of surf. The sky had forgotten completely its morning fire and was tricked out in cool stars on a canvas smooth and dark as Regina's hide. He gazed at the occasional dapple of starlight on the water, then bent down and placed his hands in it. Sand moved under his palms; infant waves died above his wrists, soaking the cuffs of his sleeves. By and by the detritus of the day washed off, including the faint trace of coon's blood. As he walked back to the inn, nothing was in his way. There was the heat, of course, but no fog, gold or gray, impeded him. Besides, a plan was taking shape. Knowing full well his shortcomings as a farmer — in fact his boredom with its confinement and routine — he had found commerce more to his taste. Now he fondled the idea of an even more satisfying enterprise. |
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And the plan was as sweet as the sugar on which it was based. And there was a profound difference between the intimacy of slave bodies at Jublio and a remote labor force in Barbados. Right? Right, he thought, looking at a sky vulgar with stars. Clear and right. The silver that glittered there was not at all unreachable. And that wide swath of cream pouring through the stars was his for the tasting. The heat was still pressing, his bed partner overactive, yet he slept well enough. Probably because his dreams were of a grand house of many rooms rising on a hill above the fog. Since your leaving with no goodbye, summer passes, then autumn, and with the waning of winter the sickness comes back. Not like before with Sorrow but now with Sir. When he returns this time he is different, slow and hard to please. He is short with Mistress. He sweats and wants cider all the time and no one believes the blisters are going to be Sorrow's old sickness. He vomits at night and curses in the day. Then he is too weak to do either. He reminds us that he has chosen help, including me, who are survivors of measles, so how is this happening to him? He cannot help envying our health and feeling the cheat of his new house. I can tell you that even yet it is not complete though your ironwork is wondrous to see. The glittering cobras still kiss at the gate's crown. The house is mighty, waiting only for a glazier. Sir wants to be taken there even though there is no furniture. He tells Mistress to hurry hurry never mind the spring rain pouring down for days. The sickness alters his mind as well as his face. Will and Scully are gone and when we women each holding a corner of a blanket carry him into the house he is sleeping with his mouth wide open and never wakes. Neither Mistress nor we know if he is alive for even one minute to smell the new cherrywood floors he lies on. We are alone. No one to shroud or mourn Sir but us. Will and Scully must sneak to dig the grave. They are warn to stay away. I don't think they wish to. I think their master makes them, because of the sickness. The deacon does not come even though he is a friend who likes Sorrow. Neither do any of the congregation. Still, we do not say the word aloud until we bury him next to his children and Mistress notices two in her mouth. That is the one time we whisper it. Pox. After we say it the next morning, the two on her tongue are joined by twenty-three on her face. Twenty-five in all. She wants you here as much as I do. For her it is to save her life. For me it is to have one. You probably don't know anything at all about what your back looks like whatever the sky holds: sunlight, moonrise. I rest there. My hand, my eyes, my mouth. The first time I see it you are shaping fire with bellows. The shine of water runs down your spine and I have shock at myself for wanting to lick there. I run away into the cowshed to stop this thing from happening inside me. Nothing stops it. There is only you. Nothing outside of you. My eyes not my stomach are the hungry parts of me. There will never be enough time to look how you move. Your arm goes up to strike iron. You drop to one knee. You bend. You stop to pour water first on the iron then down your throat. Before you know I am in the world I am already kill by you. My mouth is open, my legs go softly and the heart is stretching to break. Night comes and I steal a candle. I carry an ember in a pot to light it. To see more of you. When it is lit I shield the flame with my hand. |
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I watch you sleeping. I watch too long. Am careless. The flame burns my palm. I think if you wake and see me seeing you I will die. I run away not knowing then you are seeing me seeing you. And when at last our eyes hit I am not dead. For the first time I am live. Lina twitchy as fresh-hook salmon waits with me in the village. The wagon of the Ney brothers does not come. Hours we stand then sit roadside. A boy and a dog drive goats past us. He raises his hat. That is the first time any male does it to me. I like it. A good sign I am thinking but Lina is warning me of many things, saying if you are not in your place I must not tarry. I must return at once. I cannot handle a horse so I must seek return on the next day's horse cart, the one that hauls fresh milk and eggs to market. Some people go by and look but do not speak. We are female so they have no fright. They know who is Lina yet look as if we are strange to them. We wait more and so long that I do not save my bread and codfish. I eat all the cod. Lina holds her forehead in her hand, her elbow on her knee. She gives off a bad feeling so I keep my thoughts on the goatherd's hat. The wind is chill and smells of snow. At last the wagon is here. I climb up. The driver helps me, stays his hand hard and long on my back parts. I feel shame. We are seven, apart from the brothers Ney, and the horses are not the only ones made nervous by snowflakes in springtime. Their haunches tremble, they shake their manes. We are nervous also but we sit still as the flakes come down and stick to our shawls and hats, sugaring our eyelashes and flouring the men's woolly beards. Two women face into the wind that whips their hair like corn tassel, their eyes slits of shine. The other one covers her mouth with her cloak and leans against a man. A boy with a yellow pigtail sits on the wagon floor, his hands tied to his ankles. He and I are the only ones without rugs or blankets covering our feet. Sudden snowfall on tender leaves is pretty. Perhaps it will last long enough on the ground to make animal tracking easy. Men are always happy in the snow where killing is best. Sir says no one can starve if there is snow. Nor in spring because even before berries are out and vegetables ready to eat the river is full of spawn and the air of fowl. But this snow will not last, although it is heavy, wet and thick. I draw my feet under my skirt, not for warmth, but to protect the letter. The cloth of bread I clutch on my lap. Mistress makes me memorize the way to get to you. I am to board the Ney brothers' wagon in the morning as it travels north on the post road. After one stop at a tavern, the wagon will arrive at a place she calls Hartkill just after midday where I disembark. I am to walk left, westward on the Abenaki trail which I will know by the sapling bent into the earth with one sprout growing skyward. But the Ney brothers' wagon is too much late. By the time I climb aboard and take a place at the tail behind the others it is already late afternoon. The others do not ask me where I am heading but after a while are pleasing themselves to whisper where they once live. By the sea, the women say, they cleaning ships, the men caulking them and repairing docks. They are certain their years of debt are over but the master says no. He sends them away, north, to another place, a tannery, for more years. I don't understand why they are sad. Everyone has to work. I ask are you leaving someone dear behind? All heads turn toward me and the wind dies. |
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Daft, a man says. A woman across from me says, young. The man says, same. Another woman raises her voice to say leave her be. Too loud. Settle down back there, the driver is shouting. The one who says I am daft bends down to scratch his ankle, scratching for a long time while the others cough and scrape their shoes as if to defy the driver's command. The woman next to me whispers, there are no coffins in a tannery, only fast death in acid. The tavern needs lamplight when we reach it. At first I don't see it, but one of us points and then we all do. A light winking through the trees. The Neys go in. We wait. They come out to water the horses and us and go in again. After that there are scuffling sounds again. I look down and see the rope that falls from their ankles twist along the wagon bed. The snow ends and the sun is gone. Quiet, quiet six drop down, the men catching the women in their arms. The boy jumps alone. The three women motion to me. My heart turns over and I drop down too. They move off back down where we are coming from, stepping as best they can figure in tree shelter at roadside, places where the snow is small. I don't follow. Neither can I stay in the wagon. I have a cold stone in my chest. I don't need Lina to warn me that I must not be alone with strange men with slow hands when in liquor and anger they discover their cargo is lost. I have to choose quick. I choose you. I go west into the trees. Everything I want is west. You. Your talk. The medicine you know that will make Mistress well. You will hear what I have to say and come back with me. I have only to go west. One day? Two nights? I am walking among chestnut trees lining the road. Some already showing leaf hold their breath until the snow melts. The silly ones let their buds drop to the ground like dry peas. I am moving north where the sapling bends into the earth with a sprout that points to the sky. Then west to you. I am hurrying to gain ground before all light is over. The land slopes sharply and I have no way to go but down as well. Hard as I try I lose the road. Tree leaves are too new for shelter, so everywhere the ground is slop with snow and my footprints slide and pool. The sky is the color of currants. Can I go more, I wonder. Should I. Two hares freeze before bounding away. I don't know how to read that. I hear water running and move in the dark toward the sound. The moonlight is young. I hold one arm out in front and go slow to not stumble and fall. But the sound is pines dripping and there is no brook or stream. I make a cup of my hand to get a little fallen snow to swallow. I do not hear the paws or see any shape. It is the smell of wet fur that stops me. If I am smelling it, it is smelling me, because there is nothing with odor left in my food cloth, only bread. I cannot tell if it is bigger than me or smaller or if it is alone. I decide for stillness. I never hear it go but the odor fades at last. I think it is better to climb a tree. The old pines are very big. Any one is good cover even though it tears and fights me. Its branches sway but do not break under me. I hide from everything of creep and slouch. I know sleep will not claim me because I have too much fear. The branches creak and bend. My plan for this night is not good. I need Lina to say how to shelter in wilderness. Lina was unimpressed by the festive mood, the jittery satisfaction of everyone involved, and had refused to enter or go near it. That third and presumably final house that Sir insisted on building distorted sunlight and required the death of fifty trees. |
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It was not true, then, what she had heard; that for them only children and loved ones could be looked in the eye; for all others it was disrespect or a threat. In the town Lina had been taken to, after the conflagration had wiped away her village, that kind of boldness from any African was legitimate cause for a whip. An unfathomable puzzle. Europes could calmly cut mothers down, blast old men in the face with muskets louder than moose calls, but were enraged if a not-Europe looked a Europe in the eye. On the one hand they would torch your home; on the other they would feed, nurse and bless you. Best to judge them one at a time, proof being that one, at least, could become your friend, which is why she slept on the floor beside Mistress' bed and kept watch in case Sorrow came close or Mistress needed something. Once, long ago, had Lina been older or tutored in healing, she might have eased the pain of her family and all the others dying around her: on mats of rush, lapping at the lake's shore, curled in paths within the village and in the forest beyond, but most tearing at blankets they could neither abide nor abandon. Infants fell silent first, and even as their mothers heaped earth over their bones, they too were pouring sweat and limp as maize hair. At first they fought off the crows, she and two young boys, but they were no match for the birds or the smell, and when the wolves arrived, all three scrambled as high into a beech tree as they could. They stayed there all night listening to gnawing, baying, growling, fighting and worst of all the quiet of animals sated at last. At dawn none of them dared to apply a name to the pieces hauled away from a body or left to insect life. By noon, just as they had decided to make a run for one of the canoes moored in the lake, men in blue uniforms came, their faces wrapped in rags. News of the deaths that had swept her village had reached out. Lina's joy at being rescued collapsed when the soldiers, having taken one look at the crows and vultures feeding on the corpses strewn about, shot the wolves then circled the whole village with fire. As the carrion flew off she did not know whether to stay hidden or risk being shot as well. But the boys screamed from the branches until the men heard them and caught each in their arms as they jumped, saying "Calme, mes petits. Calme." If they worried that the little survivors would infect them, they chose to ignore it, being true soldiers, unwilling to slaughter small children. She never learned where they took the boys, but she was taken to live among kindly Presbyterians. They were pleased to have her, they said, because they admired native women who, they said, worked as hard as they themselves did, but scorned native men who simply fished and hunted like gentry all day. Impoverished gentry, that is, since they owned nothing, certainly not the land they slept on, preferring to live as entitled paupers. And since some of the church elders had heard horrible tales of, or witnessed themselves, God's wrath toward the idle and profane — flinging black death followed by raging fire on the proud and blasphemous city of their birth — they could only pray that Lina's people understood before they died that what had befallen them was merely the first sign of His displeasure: a pouring out of one of the seven vials, the final one of which would announce His arrival and the birth of young Jerusalem. They named her Messalina, just in case, but shortened it to Lina to signal a sliver of hope. |
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Afraid of once more losing shelter, terrified of being alone in the world without family, Lina acknowledged her status as heathen and let herself be purified by these worthies. She learned that bathing naked in the river was a sin; that plucking cherries from a tree burdened with them was theft; that to eat corn mush with one's fingers was perverse. That God hated idleness most of all, so staring off into space to weep for a mother or a playmate was to court damnation. Covering oneself in the skin of beasts offended God, so they burned her deerskin dress and gave her a good duffel cloth one. They clipped the beads from her arms and scissored inches from her hair. Although they would not permit her to accompany them to either of the Sunday services they attended, she was included in the daily prayers before breakfast, midmorning and evening. But none of the surrender, begging, imploring or praising on her knees took hold because, hard as she fought, the Messalina part erupted anyway and the Presbyterians abandoned her without so much as a murmur of fare well. It was some time afterward while branch-sweeping Sir's dirt floor, being careful to avoid the hen nesting in the corner, lonely, angry and hurting, that she decided to fortify herself by piecing together scraps of what her mother had taught her before dying in agony. Relying on memory and her own resources, she cobbled together neglected rites, merged Europe medicine with native, scripture with lore, and recalled or invented the hidden meaning of things. Found, in other words, a way to be in the world. There was no comfort or place for her in the village; Sir was there and not there. Solitude would have crushed her had she not fallen into hermit skills and become one more thing that moved in the natural world. She cawed with birds, chatted with plants, spoke to squirrels, sang to the cow and opened her mouth to rain. The shame of having survived the destruction of her families shrank with her vow never to betray or abandon anyone she cherished. Memories of her village peopled by the dead turned slowly to ash and in their place a single image arose. Fire. How quick. How purposefully it ate what had been built, what had been life. Cleansing somehow and scandalous in beauty. Even before a simple hearth or encouraging a flame to boil water she felt a sweet twinge of agitation. Waiting for the arrival of a wife, Sir was a hurricane of activity laboring to bring nature under his control. More than once when Lina brought his dinner to whatever field or woodlot he was working in, she found him, head thrown back, staring at the sky as if in wondering despair at the land's refusal to obey his will. Together they minded the fowl and starter stock; planted corn and vegetables. But it was she who taught him how to dry the fish they caught; to anticipate spawning and how to protect a crop from night creatures. Yet neither of them knew what to do about fourteen days of rain or fifty-five of none. They were helpless when black flies descended in scarves, disabling cattle, the horse, and forcing them to take refuge indoors. Lina didn't know too much herself, but she did know what a poor farmer he was. At least she was able to distinguish weed from seedling. Without patience, the lifeblood of farming, and reluctant to seek advice from villagers nearby, he was forever unprepared for violent, mocking changes in weather and for the fact that common predators neither knew nor cared to whom their prey belonged. |
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He ignored her warning of using alewives as fertilizer only to see his plots of tender vegetables torn up by foragers attracted by the smell. Nor would he plant squash among the corn. Though he allowed that the vines kept weeds away, he did not like the look of disorder. Yet he was good with animals and building things. It was an unrewarding life. Unless the weather was dangerous, she nested with the chickens until, just before the wife arrived, he threw up a cowshed in one day. During all that time Lina must have said fifty words other than "Yes, Sir." Solitude, regret and fury would have broken her had she not erased those six years preceding the death of the world. The company of other children, industrious mothers in beautiful jewelry, the majestic plan of life: when to vacate, to harvest, to burn, to hunt; ceremonies of death, birth and worship. She sorted and stored what she dared to recall and eliminated the rest, an activity which shaped her inside and out. By the time Mistress came, her self-invention was almost perfected. Soon it was irresistible. Lina placed magic pebbles under Mistress' pillow; kept the room fresh with mint and forced angelica root in her patient's festering mouth to pull bad spirits from her body. She prepared the most powerful remedy she knew: devil's bit, mugwort, Saint-John's-wort, maidenhair and periwinkle; boiled it, strained it and spooned it between Mistress' teeth. She considered repeating some of the prayers she learned among the Presbyterians, but since none had saved Sir, she thought not. He went quickly. Screaming at Mistress. Then whispering, begging to be taken to his third house. The big one, useless now that there were no children or children's children to live in it. No one to stand in awe at its size or to admire the sinister gate that the smithy took two months to make. Two copper snakes met at the top. When they parted it for Sir's last wish, Lina felt as though she were entering the world of the damned. But if the blacksmith's work was a frivolous waste of a grown man's time, his presence was not. He brought one girl to womanhood and saved the life of another. Sorrow. Vixen-eyed Sorrow with black teeth and a head of never groomed woolly hair the color of a setting sun. Accepted, not bought, by Sir, she joined the household after Lina but before Florens and still had no memory of her past life except being dragged ashore by whales. "Not whales," Mistress had said. "Certainly not. She was treading water in the North River in Mohawk country, half drowned, when two young sawyers trawled her in. They threw a blanket over her and brought their father to the riverbank where she lay. It's said she had been living alone on a foundered ship. They thought she was a boy." Not then, not ever, had she spoken of how she got there or where she had been. The sawyer's wife named her Sorrow, for good reason, thought Lina, and following a winter of feeding the daft girl who kept wandering off getting lost, who knew nothing and worked less, a strange melancholy girl to whom her sons were paying very close attention, the sawyer's wife asked her husband to get quit of her. He obliged and offered her to the care of a customer he trusted to do her no harm. Sir. When Sorrow arrived, trailing Sir's horse, Mistress barely hid her annoyance but admitted the place could use the help. If Sir was bent on travel, two female farmers and a four-year-old daughter were not enough. Lina had been a tall fourteen-year-old when Sir bought her from the Presbyterians. |
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He had searched the advertisements posted at the printer's in town. "A likely woman who has had small pox and measles... A likely Negro about 9 years... Girl or woman that is handy in the kitchen sensible, speaks good English, complexion between yellow and black... Five years time of a white woman that understands Country work, with a child upwards of two years old... Mulatto Fellow very much pitted with small pox, honest and sober... White lad fit to serve... Wanted a servant able to drive a carriage, white or black... Sober and prudent woman who... Likely wench, white, 29 years with child... Healthy Deutsch woman for rent ... stout healthy, healthy strong, strong healthy likely sober sober sober ..." until he got to "Hardy female, Christianized and capable in all matters domestic available for exchange of goods or specie." A bachelor expecting the arrival of a new wife, he required precisely that kind of female on his land. By then Lina's swollen eye had calmed and the lash cuts on her face, arms and legs had healed and were barely noticeable. The Presbyterians, recalling perhaps their own foresight in the name they had given her, never asked what had happened to her and there was no point in telling them. She had no standing in law, no surname and no one would take her word against a Europe. What they did was consult with the printer about the wording of an advertisement. "Hardy female ..." When the Europe wife stepped down from the cart, hostility between them was instant. The health and beauty of a young female already in charge annoyed the new wife; while the assumption of authority from the awkward Europe girl infuriated Lina. Yet the animosity, utterly useless in the wild, died in the womb. Even before Lina midwifed Mistress' first child, neither one could keep the coolness. The fraudulent competition was worth nothing on land that demanding. Besides they were company for each other and by and by discovered something much more interesting than status. Rebekka laughed out loud at her own mistakes; was unembarrassed to ask for help. Lina slapped her own forehead when she forgot the berries rotting in the straw. They became friends. Not only because somebody had to pull the wasp sting from the other's arm. Not only because it took two to push the cow away from the fence. Not only because one had to hold the head while the other one tied the trotters. Mostly because neither knew precisely what they were doing or how. Together, by trial and error they learned: what kept the foxes away; how and when to handle and spread manure; the difference between lethal and edible and the sweet taste of timothy grass; the features of measled swine; what turned the baby's stool liquid and what hardened it into pain. For her Mistress, farmwork was more adventure than drudgery. Then again, thought Lina, she had Sir who pleased her more and more and soon a daughter, Patrician, both of whom dulled the regret of the short-lived infants Lina delivered and buried each subsequent year. By the time Sir brought Sorrow home, the resident women were a united front in dismay. To Mistress she was useless. To Lina she was bad luck in the flesh. Red hair, black teeth, recurring neck boils and a look in those over-lashed silver-gray eyes that raised Lina's nape hair. She watched while Mistress trained Sorrow to sewing, the one task she liked and was good at, and said nothing when, to stop her roaming, he said, Sir made the girl sleep by the fireplace all seasons. A comfort Lina was suspicious of but did not envy even in bad weather. |
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Lina pushed a large jar closer and the two of them spooned the mixture into it. Then Lina filled the jar to the top with brandy and sealed it. Four weeks or more outside and it would be ready for a crust at Christmas. Meantime, Mistress dropped the brain and heart of a calf into a pot of boiling seasoned water. Such a supper, fried in butter and garnished with egg slices, would be a treat. Now, more than unreliable, more than wandering off to talk to grass and grapevines, Sorrow was pregnant and soon there would be another virgin birth and, perhaps, unfortunately, this one would not die. But if Mistress died, what then? To whom could they turn? Although the Baptists once freely helped Sir build the second house, the outhouses, and happily joined him in felling white pine for the post fence, a cooling had risen between them and his family. Partly because Mistress hated them for shutting her children out of heaven, but also, thought Lina, because Sorrow's lurking frightened them. Years past, the Baptists might bring a brace of salmon or offer a no-longer-needed cradle for Mistress' baby. And the deacon could be counted on for baskets of strawberries and blue, all manner of nuts and once a whole haunch of venison. Now, of course, nobody, Baptist or any other, would come to a poxed house. Neither Willard nor Scully came, which should not have disappointed her, but did. Both were Europes, after all. Willard was getting on in years and was still working off his passage. The original seven years stretched to twenty-some, he said, and he had long ago forgotten most of the mischief that kept extending his bondage. The ones he remembered with a smile involved rum; the others were attempts to run away. Scully, young, fine-boned, with light scars tracing his back, had plans. He was finishing his mother's contract. True, he didn't know how long it would take but, he boasted, unlike Willard's or Lina's, his enslavement would end before death. He was the son of a woman sent off to the colonies for "lewdness and disobedience," neither of which according to him was quelled. Her death transferred her contract to her son. Then a man claiming to be Scully's father settled the balance owed and recuperated certain expenses by leasing the boy to his current master for a span of time soon to end, although Scully was not privy to exactly when. There was a legal paper, he had told Lina, that said it. Lina guessed he had not seen it and could not cipher it if he had. All he knew for certain was that the freedom fee would be generous enough to purchase a horse or set him up in a trade. What trade, wondered Lina. If that glorious day of freedom fees did not arrive soon, he too, she thought, will run away, and maybe have the good fortune denied Willard. Cleverer than the older man, and sober, he might succeed. Still, she doubted it; thought his dreams of selling his labor were only that. She knew he did not object to lying with Willard when sleep was not the point. No wonder Sir, without kin or sons to count on, had no males on his property. It made good sense, except when it didn't. As now with two lamenting women, one confined to bed, the other heavily pregnant; a love-broken girl on the loose and herself unsure of everything including moonrise. Don't die, Miss. Don't. Herself, Sorrow, a newborn and maybe Florens — three unmastered women and an infant out here, alone, belonging to no one, became wild game for anyone. None of them could inherit; none was attached to a church or recorded in its books. |
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Female and illegal, they would be interlopers, squatters, if they stayed on after Mistress died, subject to purchase, hire, assault, abduction, exile. The farm could be claimed by or auctioned off to the Baptists. Lina had relished her place in this small, tight family, but now saw its folly. Sir and Mistress believed they could have honest free-thinking lives, yet without heirs, all their work meant less than a swallow's nest. Their drift away from others produced a selfish privacy and they had lost the refuge and the consolation of a clan. Baptists, Presbyterians, tribe, army, family, some encircling outside thing was needed. Pride, she thought. Pride alone made them think that they needed only themselves, could shape life that way, like Adam and Eve, like gods from nowhere beholden to nothing except their own creations. She should have warned them, but her devotion cautioned against impertinence. As long as Sir was alive it was easy to veil the truth: that they were not a family — not even a like-minded group. They were orphans, each and all. Lina gazed through the wavy pane of the tiny window where a flirtatious sun poured soft yellow light toward the foot of Mistress' bed. Beyond on the far side of the trail stood a forest of beech. As was often the case, she spoke to them. "You and I, this land is our home," she whispered, "but unlike you I am exile here." Lina's mistress is mumbling now, telling Lina or herself some tale, some matter of grave importance as the dart of her eyes showed. What was so vital, Lina wondered, that she uses an unworkable tongue in a mouth lined with sores? Her wrapped hands lift and wave. Lina turns to look where the eyes focus. A trunk where Mistress kept pretty things, treasured unused gifts from Sir. A lace collar, a hat no decent woman would be seen in, its peacock feather already broken in the press. On top of a few lengths of silk lay a small mirror set in an elaborate frame, its silver tarnished to soot. "Gi' me," said Mistress. Lina picked up the mirror thinking, No, please. Don't look. Never seek out your own face even when well, lest the reflection drink your soul. "Hur-ee," moaned Mistress, her tone pleading like a child's. Helpless to disobey, Lina brought it to the lady. She placed it between the mittened hands, certain now that her mistress will die. And the certainty was a kind of death for herself as well, since her own life, everything, depended on Mistress' survival, which depended on Florens' success. Lina had fallen in love with her right away, as soon as she saw her shivering in the snow. A frightened, long-necked child who did not speak for weeks but when she did her light, singsong voice was lovely to hear. Some how, some way, the child assuaged the tiny yet eternal yearning for the home Lina once knew where everyone had anything and no one had everything. Perhaps her own barrenness sharpened her devotion. In any case, she wanted to protect her, keep her away from the corruption so natural to someone like Sorrow, and, most recently, she was determined to be the wall between Florens and the blacksmith. Since his coming, there was an appetite in the girl that Lina recognized as once her own. A bleating desire beyond sense, without conscience. The young body speaking in its only language its sole reason for life on earth. When he arrived — too shiny, way too tall, both arrogant and skilled — Lina alone saw the peril, but there was no one to complain to. Mistress was silly with happiness because her husband was home and Sir behaved as though the blacksmith was his brother. |
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Lina had seen them bending their heads over lines drawn in dirt. Another time she saw Sir slice a green apple, his left boot raised on a rock, his mouth working along with his hands; the smithy nodding, looking intently at his employer. Then Sir, as nonchalantly as you please, tipped a slice of apple on his knife and offered it to the blacksmith who, just as nonchalantly, took it and put it in his mouth. So Lina knew she was the only one alert to the breakdown stealing toward them. The only one who foresaw the disruption, the shattering a free black man would cause. He had already ruined Florens, since she refused to see that she hankered after a man that had not troubled to tell her goodbye. When Lina tried to enlighten her, saying, "You are one leaf on his tree," Florens shook her head, closed her eyes and replied, "No. I am his tree." A sea change that Lina could only hope was not final. Florens had been a quiet, timid version of herself at the time of her own displacement. Before destruction. Before sin. Before men. Lina had hovered over Patrician, competing with Mistress for the little girl's affection, but this one, coming on the heels of Patrician's death, could be, would be, her own. And she would be the opposite of incorrigible Sorrow. Already Florens could read, write. Already she did not have to be told repeatedly how to complete a chore. Not only was she consistently trustworthy, she was deeply grateful for every shred of affection, any pat on the head, any smile of approval. They had memorable nights, lying together, when Florens listened in rigid delight to Lina's stories. Stories of wicked men who chopped off the heads of devoted wives; of cardinals who carried the souls of good children to a place where time itself was a baby. Especially called for were stories of mothers fighting to save their children from wolves and natural disasters. Close to heartbreak, Lina recalled a favorite and the whispered conversation that always followed it. One day, ran the story, an eagle laid her eggs in a nest far above and far beyond the snakes and paws that hunted them. Her eyes are midnight black and shiny as she watches over them. At the tremble of a leaf, the scent of any other life, her frown deepens, her head jerks and her feathers quietly lift. Her talons are sharpened on rock; her beak is like the scythe of a war god. She is fierce, protecting her borning young. But one thing she cannot defend against: the evil thoughts of man. One day a traveler climbs a mountain nearby. He stands at its summit admiring all he sees below him. The turquoise lake, the eternal hemlocks, the starlings sailing into clouds cut by rainbow. The traveler laughs at the beauty saying, "This is perfect. This is mine." And the word swells, booming like thunder into valleys, over acres of primrose and mallow. Creatures come out of caves wondering what it means. Mine. Mine. Mine. The shells of the eagle's eggs quiver and one even cracks. The eagle swivels her head to find the source of the strange, meaningless thunder, the incomprehensible sound. Spotting the traveler, she swoops down to claw away his laugh and his unnatural sound. But the traveler, under attack, raises his stick and strikes her wing with all his strength. Screaming she falls and falls. Over the turquoise lake, beyond the eternal hemlocks, down through the clouds cut by rainbow. Screaming, screaming she is carried away by wind instead of wing. Then Florens would whisper, "Where is she now?" "Still falling," Lina would answer, "she is falling forever." Florens barely breathes. |
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"Fare well," said Lina. "Goodbye. Bless you." Then the first man turned back. "You never saw us, did you, Ma'am?" "No. I never did." "Much obliged," he said and tipped his hat. Walking back toward the house, taking pains to avoid even looking at the new one, Lina was relieved that so far nothing bad had happened to Florens, and more frightened than ever that something would. The runaways had one purpose; Florens had another. Instead of entering the house, Lina wandered to the road, looked both ways, then lifted her head to smell oncoming weather. Spring, as usual, was skittish. Five days ago the rain she smelled coming was longer and harder than it had been in some time; a downpour she thought hastened Sir's death. Then a day of hot, bright sun that freshened and tinted trees into pale green mist. The sudden snow that followed surprised and alarmed her since Florens would be traveling through it. Now, knowing Florens had pressed on, she tried to learn what the sky, the breezes, had in store. Calm, she decided; spring was settling itself into growing season. Reassured, she went back into the sickroom where she heard Mistress mumbling. More self-pity? No, not an apology to her own face this time. Now, amazingly, she was praying. For what, to what, Lina did not know. She was both startled and embarrassed, since she had always thought Mistress polite to the Christian god, but indifferent, if not hostile, to religion. Well, Lina mused, deathbreath was a prime creator, a great changer of minds and collector of hearts. Any decision made while inhaling it was as unreliable as it was fierce. Reason in moments of crisis was rare. Yet, what about Florens? Look what she did when things changed abruptly: chose to go her own route once the others had crept away. Correctly. Bravely. But could she manage? Alone? She had Sir's boots, the letter, food and a desperate need to see the blacksmith. But will she return, with him, after him, without him, or not at all? Night is thick no stars anyplace but sudden the moon moves. The chafe of needles is too much hurt and there is no resting there at all. I get down and look for a better place. By moonlight I am happy to find a hollow log, but it is wavy with ants. I break off twigs and small branches from a young fir, pile them and crawl under. The needle prick is smaller and there is no danger of falling. The ground is damp, chill. Night voles come close, sniff me then dart away. I am watchful for snakes that ease down trees and over ground, although Lina says they do not prefer to bite us or swallow us whole. I lie still and try not to think of water. Thinking instead of another night, another place of wet ground. But it is summer then and the damp is from dew not snow. You are telling me about the making of iron things. How happy you are to find easy ore so close to the surface of the earth. The glory of shaping metal. Your father doing it and his father before him back and back for a thousand years. With furnaces from termite mounds. And you know the ancestors approve when two owls appear at the very instant you say their names so you understand they are showing themselves to bless you. See, you say, see how they swivel their heads. They approve you also, you tell me. Do they bless me too, I ask. Wait, you say. Wait and see. I think they do, because I am coming now. I am coming to you. Lina says there are some spirits who look after warriors and hunters and there are others who guard virgins and mothers. I am none of those. |
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Reverend Father says communion is the best hope, prayer the next. There is no communion hereabouts and I feel shame to speak to the Virgin when all I am asking for is not to her liking. I think Mistress has nothing to say on the matter. She avoids the Baptists and the village women who go to the meetinghouse. They annoy her as when we three, Mistress, Sorrow and me, go to sell two calves. They are trotting behind us on rope to the cart we ride in. We wait while Mistress does the selling talk. Sorrow jumps down and goes behind the trader's post where a village woman slaps her face many times and screams at her. When Mistress discovers what is happening, both her face and the village woman's burn in anger. Sorrow is relieving herself in the yard without care for the eyes of others. The argue is done and Mistress drives us away. After a while she pulls the horse to a stop. She turns to Sorrow and slaps her face more, saying Fool. I am shock. Mistress never strikes us. Sorrow does not cry or answer. I think Mistress says other words to her, softer ones, but I am only seeing how her eyes go. Their look is close to the way of the women who stare at Lina and me as we wait for the Ney brothers. Neither look scares, but it is a hurting thing. But I know Mistress has a sweeter heart. On a winter day when I am still small Lina asks her if she can give me the dead daughter's shoes. They are black with six buttons each. Mistress agrees but when she sees me in them she sudden sits down in the snow and cries. Sir comes and picks her up in his arms and carries her into the house. I never cry. Even when the woman steals my cloak and shoes and I am freezing on the boat no tears come. These thoughts are sad in me, so I make me think of you instead. How you say your work in the world is strong and beautiful. I think you are also. No holy spirits are my need. No communion or prayer. You are my protection. Only you. You can be it because you say you are a free man from New Amsterdam and always are that. Not like Will or Scully but like Sir. I don't know the feeling of or what it means, free and not free. But I have a memory. When Sir's gate is done and you are away so long, I walk sometimes to search you. Behind the new house, the rise, over the hill beyond. I see a path between rows of elm trees and enter it. Underfoot is weed and soil. In a while the path turns away from the elms and to my right is land dropping away in rocks. To my left is a hill. High, very high. Climbing over it all, up up, are scarlet flowers I never see before. Everywhere choking their own leaves. The scent is sweet. I put my hand in to gather a few blossoms. I hear something behind me and turn to see a stag moving up the rock side. He is great. And grand. Standing there between the beckoning wall of perfume and the stag I wonder what else the world may show me. It is as though I am loose to do what I choose, the stag, the wall of flowers. I am a little scare of this looseness. Is that how free feels? I don't like it. I don't want to be free of you because I am live only with you. When I choose and say good morning, the stag bounds away. Now I am thinking of another thing. Another animal that shapes choice. Sir bathes every May. We pour buckets of hot water into the washtub and gather wintergreen to sprinkle in. He sits awhile. His knees poke up, his hair is flat and wet over the edge. Soon Mistress is there with first a rock of soap, then a short broom. After he is rosy with scrubbing he stands. |
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America. Whatever the danger, how could it possibly be worse? Early on when she settled on Jacob's land, she visited the local church some seven miles away and met a few vaguely suspicious villagers. They had removed themselves from a larger sect in order to practice a purer form of their Separatist religion, one truer and more acceptable to God. Among them she was deliberately soft-spoken. In their meetinghouse she was accommodating and when they explained their beliefs she did not roll her eyes. It was when they refused to baptize her firstborn, her exquisite daughter, that Rebekka turned away. Weak as her faith was, there was no excuse for not protecting the soul of an infant from eternal perdition. More and more it was in Lina's company that she let the misery seep out. "I chastised her for a torn shift, Lina, and the next thing I know she is lying in the snow. Her little head cracked like an egg." It would have embarrassed her to mention personal sorrow in prayer; to be other than stalwart in grief; to let God know she was less than thankful for His watch. But she had delivered four healthy babies, watched three surrender at a different age to one or another illness, and then watched Patrician, her firstborn, who reached the age of five and provided a happiness Rebekka could not believe, lie in her arms for two days before dying from a broken crown. And then to bury her twice. First in a fur-sheltered coffin because the ground could not accept the little box Jacob built, so they had to leave her to freeze in it and, second, in late spring when they could place her among her brothers with the Anabaptists attending. Weak, pustulate, with not even a full day to mourn Jacob, her grief was fresh cut, like hay in famine. Her own death was what she should be concentrating on. She could hear its hooves clacking on the roof, could see the cloaked figure on horseback. But whenever the immediate torment subsided, her thoughts left Jacob and traveled to Patrician's matted hair, the hard, dark lump of soap she used to clean it, the rinses over and over to free every honey-brown strand from the awful blood darkening, like her mind, to black. Rebekka never looked at the coffin waiting under pelts for thaw. But when finally the earth softened, when Jacob could get traction with the spade and they let the coffin down, she sat on the ground holding on to her elbows, oblivious of the damp, and gazed at every clod and clump that fell. She stayed there all day and through the night. No one, not Jacob, Sorrow or Lina, could get her up. And not the Pastor either, since he and his flock had been the ones whose beliefs stripped her children of redemption. She growled when they touched her; threw the blanket from her shoulders. They left her alone then, shaking their heads, muttering prayers for her forgiveness. At dawn in a light snowfall Lina came and arranged jewelry and food on the grave, along with scented leaves, telling her that the boys and Patrician were stars now, or something equally lovely: yellow and green birds, playful foxes or the rose-tinted clouds collecting at the edge of the sky. Pagan stuff, true, but more satisfying than the I-accept-and-will-see-you-at-Judgment-Day prayers Rebekka had been taught and heard repeated by the Baptist congregation. There had been a summer day once when she sat in front of the house sewing and talking profanely while Lina stirred linen boiling in a kettle at her side. I don't think God knows who we are. I think He would like us, if He knew us, but I don't think He knows about us. |
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But He made us, Miss. No? He did. But he made the tails of peacocks too. That must have been harder. Oh, but, Miss, we sing and talk. Peacocks do not. We need to. Peacocks don't. What else do we have? Thoughts. Hands to make things. All well and good. But that's our business. Not God's. He's doing something else in the world. We are not on His mind. What is He doing then, if not watching over us? Lord knows. And they sputtered with laughter, like little girls hiding behind the stable loving the danger of their talk. She could not decide if Patrician's accident by a cloven hoof was rebuke or proof of the pudding. Now here in bed, her deft, industrious hands wrapped in cloth lest she claw herself bloody, she could not tell if she was speaking aloud or simply thinking. "I shat in a tub ... strangers ..." Sometimes they circled her bed, these strangers who were not, who had become the kind of family sea journeys create. Delirium or Lina's medicine, she supposed. But they came and offered her advice, gossiped, laughed or simply stared at her with pity. There were seven other women assigned to steerage on the Angelus. Waiting to board, their backs turned against the breeze that cut from sea to port, they shivered among boxes, bailiffs, upper-deck passengers, carts, horses, guards, satchels and weeping children. Finally, when lower-deck passengers were called to board, and their name, home county and occupation were recorded, four or five women said they were servants. Rebekka learned otherwise soon enough, soon as they were separated from males and the better-classed women and led to a dark space below next to the animal stalls. Light and weather streamed from a hatch; a tub for waste sat beside a keg of cider; a basket and a rope where food could be let down and the basket retrieved. Anyone taller than five feet hunched and lowered her head to move around. Crawling was easier once, like street vagrants, they partitioned off their personal space. The range of baggage, clothes, speech and attitude spoke clearly of who they were long before their confessions. One, Anne, had been sent away in disgrace by her family. Two, Judith and Lydia, were prostitutes ordered to choose between prison or exile. Lydia was accompanied by her daughter, Patty, a ten-year-old thief. Elizabeth was the daughter, or so she said, of an important Company agent. Another, Abigail, was quickly transferred to the captain's cabin and one other, Dorothea, was a cutpurse whose sentence was the same as the prostitutes'. Rebekka alone, her passage prepaid, was to be married. The rest were being met by relatives or craftsmen who would pay their passage — except the cutpurse and the whores whose costs and keep were to be borne by years and years of unpaid labor. Only Rebekka was none of these. It was later, huddled 'tween decks and walls made of trunks, boxes, blankets hanging from hammocks, that Rebekka learned more about them. The prepubescent girl thief-in-training had the singing voice of an angel. The agent's "daughter" was born in France. By the time they were fourteen the two mature prostitutes had been turned out of their family homes for lewd behavior. And the cutpurse was the niece of another one who taught and refined her skills. Together they lightened the journey; made it less hideous than it surely would have been without them. Their alehouse wit, their know-how laced with their low expectations of others and high levels of self-approval, their quick laughter, amused and encouraged Rebekka. |
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After some initial visits and Rebekka choosing not to continue, his satisfaction was plain. They leaned on each other root and crown. Needing no one outside their sufficiency. Or so they believed. For there would be children, of course. And there were. Following Patrician, each time Rebekka gave birth, she forgot the previous nursing interrupted long before weaning time. Forgot breasts still leaking, or nipples prematurely caked and too tender for underclothes. Forgot, too, how rapid the trip from crib to coffin could be. As the sons died and the years passed, Jacob became convinced the farm was sustainable but not profitable. He began to trade and travel. His returns, however, were joyful times, full of news and amazing sights: the anger, loud and lethal, of townspeople when a pastor was shot dead off his horse by warriors of a local tribe; a shop's shelves stacked with bolts of silk in colors he saw only in nature; a freebooter tied to a plank on his way to the gallows cursing his captors in three languages; a butcher thrashed for selling diseased meat; the eerie sounds of choirs drifting in Sunday rain. Tales of his journeys excited her, but also intensified her view of a disorderly, threatening world out there, protection from which he alone could provide. If on occasion he brought her young, untrained help, he also brought home gifts. A better chopping knife, a hobbyhorse for Patrician. It was some time before she noticed how the tales were fewer and the gifts increasing, gifts that were becoming less practical, even whimsical. A silver tea service which was put away immediately; a porcelain chamber pot quickly chipped by indiscriminate use; a heavily worked hairbrush for hair he only saw in bed. A hat here, a lace collar there. Four yards of silk. Rebekka swallowed her questions and smiled. When finally she did ask him where this money was coming from, he said, "New arrangements," and handed her a mirror framed in silver. Having seen come and go a glint in his eye as he unpacked these treasures so useless on a farm, she should have anticipated the day he hired men to help clear trees from a wide swath of land at the foot of a rise. A new house he was building. Something befitting not a farmer, not even a trader, but a squire. We are good, common people, she thought, in a place where that claim was not merely enough, but prized, even a boast. "We don't need another house," she told him. "Certainly not one of such size." She was shaving him and spoke as she finished. "Need is not the reason, wife." "What is, pray?" Rebekka cleared off the last dollop of lather from the blade. "What a man leaves behind is what a man is." "Jacob, a man is only his reputation." "Understand me." He took the cloth from her hands and wiped his chin. "I will have it." And so it was. Men, barrows, a blacksmith, lumber, twine, pots of pitch, hammers and pull horses, one of which once kicked her daughter in the head. The fever of building was so intense she missed the real fever, the one that put him in the grave. As soon as he collapsed, word went out to the Baptists, and no one from the farm, especially Sorrow, was allowed among them. The laborers left with their horses and tools. The blacksmith was long gone, his ironwork aglitter like a gate to heaven. Rebekka did what Jacob ordered her to do: gathered the women and struggled with them to lift him from the bed and lower him onto a blanket. All the while he croaked, hurry, hurry. Unable to summon muscle strength to aid them, he was deadweight before he was dead. |
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No. Better false comfort than none, thought Rebekka, and listened carefully to her shipmates. "He knifed me, blood everywhere. I grabbed my waist and thought, No! No swooning, my girl. Steady..." When the women faded, it was the moon that stared back like a worried friend in a sky the texture of a fine lady's ball gown. Lina snored lightly on the floor at the foot of the bed. At some point, long before Jacob's death, the wide untrammeled space that once thrilled her became vacancy. A commanding and oppressive absence. She learned the intricacy of loneliness: the horror of color, the roar of soundlessness and the menace of familiar objects lying still. When Jacob was away. When neither Patrician nor Lina was enough. When the local Baptists tired her out with talk that never extended beyond their fences unless it went all the way to heaven. Those women seemed flat to her, convinced they were innocent and therefore free; safe because churched; tough because still alive. A new people remade in vessels old as time. Children, in other words, without the joy or the curiosity of a child. They had even narrower definitions of God's preferences than her parents. Other than themselves (and those of their kind who agreed), no one was saved. The possibility was open to most, however, except children of Ham. In addition there were Papists and the tribes of Judah to whom redemption was denied along with a variety of others living willfully in error. Dismissing these exclusions as the familiar restrictions of all religions, Rebekka held a more personal grudge against them. Their children. Each time one of hers died, she told herself it was anti-baptism that enraged her. But the truth was she could not bear to be around their undead, healthy children. More than envy she felt that each laughing red-cheeked child of theirs was an accusation of failure, a mockery of her own. Anyway, they were poor company and of no help to her with the solitude without prelude that could rise up and take her prisoner when Jacob was away. She might be bending in a patch of radishes, tossing weeds with the skill of a pub matron dropping coins into her apron. Weeds for the stock. Then as she stood in molten sunlight, pulling the corners of her apron together, the comfortable sounds of the farm would drop. Silence would fall like snow floating around her head and shoulders, spreading outward to wind-driven yet quiet leaves, dangling cowbells, the whack of Lina's axe chopping firewood nearby. Her skin would flush, then chill. Sound would return eventually, but the loneliness might remain for days. Until, in the middle of it, he would ride up shouting, "Where's my star?" "Here in the north," she'd reply and he would toss a bolt of calico at her feet or hand her a packet of needles. Best of all were the times when he would take out his pipe and embarrass the songbirds who believed they owned twilight. A still living baby would be on her lap. Patrician would be on the floor, mouth agape, eyes aglow, as he summoned rose gardens and shepherds neither had seen or would ever know. With him, the cost of a solitary, unchurched life was not high. Once, feeling fat with contentment, she curbed her generosity, her sense of excessive well-being, enough to pity Lina. "You have never known a man, have you?" They were sitting in the brook, Lina holding the baby, splashing his back to hear him laugh. In frying August heat they had taken the washing down to a part of the brook that swarming flies and vicious mosquitoes ignored. |
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Pregnant stupid Sorrow could not have. Rebekka had confidence in Florens because she was clever and because she had a strong reason to succeed. And she felt a lot of affection for her, although it took some time to develop. Jacob probably believed giving her a girl close to Patrician's age would please her. In fact, it insulted her. Nothing could replace the original and nothing should. So she barely glanced at her when she came and had no need to later because Lina took the child so completely under her wing. In time, Rebekka thawed, relaxed, was even amused by Florens' eagerness for approval. "Well done." "It's fine." However slight, any kindness shown her she munched like a rabbit. Jacob said the mother had no use for her which, Rebekka decided, explained her need to please. Explained also her attachment to the blacksmith, trotting up to him for any reason, panicked to get his food to him on time. Jacob dismissed Lina's glower and Florens' shine: the blacksmith would soon be gone, he said. No need to worry, besides the man was too skilled and valuable to let go, certainly not because a girl was mooning over him. Jacob was right, of course. The smithy's value was without price when he cured Sorrow of whatever had struck her down. Pray to God he could repeat that miracle. Pray also Florens could persuade him. They'd stuffed her feet in good strong boots. Jacob's. And folded a clarifying letter of authority inside. And her traveling instructions were clear. It would all be all right. Just as the pall of childlessness coupled with bouts of loneliness had disappeared, melted like the snow showers that signaled it. Just as Jacob's determination to rise up in the world had ceased to trouble her. She decided that the satisfaction of having more and more was not greed, was not in the things themselves, but in the pleasure of the process. Whatever the truth, however driven he seemed, Jacob was there. With her. Breathing next to her in bed. Reaching for her even as he slept. Then suddenly, he was not. Were the Anabaptists right? Was happiness Satan's allure, his tantalizing deceit? Was her devotion so frail it was merely bait? Her stubborn self-sufficiency outright blasphemy? Is that why at the height of her contentedness, once again death turned to look her way? And smile? Well, her shipmates, it seemed, had got on with it. As she knew from their visits, whatever life threw up, whatever obstacles they faced, they manipulated the circumstances to their advantage and trusted their own imagination. The Baptist women trusted elsewhere. Unlike her shipmates, they neither dared nor stood up to the fickleness of life. On the contrary, they dared death. Dared it to erase them, to pretend this earthly life was all; that beyond it was nothing; that there was no acknowledgment of suffering and certainly no reward; they refused meaninglessness and the random. What excited and challenged her shipmates horrified the churched women and each set believed the other deeply, dangerously flawed. Although they had nothing in common with the views of each other, they had everything in common with one thing: the promise and threat of men. Here, they agreed, was where security and risk lay. And both had come to terms. Some, like Lina, who had experienced both deliverance and destruction at their hands, withdrew. Some, like Sorrow, who apparently was never coached by other females, became their play. Some like her shipmates fought them. Others, the pious, obeyed them. |
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And a few, like herself, after a mutually loving relationship, became like children when the man was gone. Without the status or shoulder of a man, without the support of family or well-wishers, a widow was in practice illegal. But was that not the way it should be? Adam first, Eve next, and also, confused about her role, the first outlaw? The Anabaptists were not confused about any of this. Adam (like Jacob) was a good man but (unlike Jacob) he had been goaded and undermined by his mate. They understood, also, that there were lines of acceptable behavior and righteous thought. Levels of sin, in other words, and lesser peoples. Natives and Africans, for instance, had access to grace but not to heaven — a heaven they knew as intimately as they knew their own gardens. Afterlife was more than Divine; it was thrill-soaked. Not a blue and gold paradise of twenty-four-hour praise song, but an adventurous real life, where all choices were perfect and perfectly executed. How had the churchwoman she spoke to described it? There would be music and feasts; picnics and hayrides. Frolicking. Dreams come true. And perhaps if one was truly committed, consistently devout, God would take pity and allow her children, though too young for a baptism of full immersion, entrance to His sphere. But of greatest importance, there was time. All of it. Time to converse with the saved, laugh with them. Skate, even, on icy ponds with a crackling fire ashore to warm one's hands. Sleighs jingled and children made snow houses and played with hoops in the meadow because the weather would be whatever you wanted it to be. Think of it. Just imagine. No illness. Ever. No pain. No aging or frailty of any kind. No loss or grief or tears. And obviously no more dying, not even if the stars shattered into motes and the moon disintegrated like a corpse beneath the sea. She had only to stop thinking and believe. The dry tongue in Rebekka's mouth behaved like a small animal that had lost its way. And though she understood that her thoughts were disorganized, she was also convinced of their clarity. That she and Jacob could once talk and argue about these things made his loss intolerable. Whatever his mood or disposition, he had been the true meaning of mate. Now, she thought, there is no one except servants. The best husband gone and buried by the women he left behind; children rose-tinted clouds in the sky. Sorrow frightened for her own future if I die, as she should be, a slow-witted girl warped from living on a ghost ship. Only Lina was steady, unmoved by any catastrophe as though she has seen and survived everything. As in that second year when Jacob was away, caught in an off-season blizzard, and she, Lina and Patrician after two days were close to starvation. No trail or road passable. Patrician turning blue in spite of the miserable dung fire sputtering in a hole in the dirt floor. It was Lina who dressed herself in hides, carried a basket and an axe, braved the thigh-high drifts, the mind-numbing wind, to get to the river. There she pulled from below the ice enough broken salmon to bring back and feed them. She filled her basket with all she could snare; tied the basket handle to her braid to keep her hands from freezing on the trek back. That was Lina. Or was it God? Here in an abyss of loss, she wondered if the journey to this land, the dying off of her family, her whole life, in fact, were way-stations marking a road to revelation. Or perdition? How would she know? And now with death's lips calling her name, to whom should she turn? |
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A blacksmith? Florens? How long will it take will he be there will she get lost will someone assault her will she return will he and is it already too late? For salvation. I sleep then wake to any sound. Then I am dreaming cherry trees walking toward me. I know it is dreaming because they are full in leaves and fruit. I don't know what they want. To look? To touch? One bends down and I wake with a little scream in my mouth. Nothing is different. The trees are not heavy with cherries nor nearer to me. I quiet down. That is a better dream than a minha mae standing near with her little boy. In those dreams she is always wanting to tell me something. Is stretching her eyes. Is working her mouth. I look away from her. My next sleeping is deep. Not birdsong but sunlight wakes me. All snow is gone. Relieving myself is troublesome. Then I am going north I think but maybe west also. No, north until I come to where the brush does not let me through without clutching me and taking hold. Brambles spread among saplings are wide and tall to my waist. I press through and through for a long time which is good since in front of me sudden is an open meadow wild with sunshine and smelling of fire. This is a place that remembers the burning of itself. New grass is underfoot, deep, thick, tender as lamb's wool. I stoop to touch it and remember how Lina loves to unravel my hair. It makes her laugh, saying it is proof I am in truth a lamb. And you, I ask her. A horse she answers and tosses her mane. It is hours I walk this sunny field, my thirst so loud I am faint. Beyond I see a light wood of birch and apple trees. The shade in there is green with young leaves. Bird talk is everyplace. I am eager to enter because water may be there. I stop. I hear hoofbeats. From among the trees riders clop toward me. All male, all native, all young. Some look younger than me. None have saddles on their horses. None. I marvel at that and the glare of their skin but I have fear of them too. They rein in close. They circle. They smile. I am shaking. They wear soft shoes but their horses are not shod and the hair of both boys and horses is long and free like Lina's. They talk words I don't know and laugh. One pokes his fingers in his mouth, in out, in out. Others laugh more. Him too. Then he lifts his head high, opens wide his mouth and directs his thumb to his lips. I drop to my knees in misery and fright. He dismounts and comes close. I smell the perfume of his hair. His eyes are slant, not big and round like Lina's. He grins while removing a pouch hanging from a cord across his chest. He holds it out to me but I am too trembling to reach so he drinks from it and offers it again. I want it am dying for it but I cannot move. What I am able to do is make my mouth wide. He steps closer and pours the water as I gulp it. One of the others says baa baa baa like a goat kid and they all laugh and slap their legs. The one pouring closes his pouch and after watching me wipe my chin returns it to his shoulder. Then he reaches into a belt hanging from his waist and draws out a dark strip, hands it to me, chomping his teeth. It looks like leather but I take it. As soon as I do he runs and leaps on his horse. I am shock. Can you believe this. He runs on grass and flies up to sit astride his horse. I blink and they all disappear. Where they once are is nothing. Only apple trees aching to bud and an echo of laughing boys. I put the dark strip on my tongue and I am correct. It is leather. Yet salty and spicy giving much comfort to your girl. |
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Once more I aim north through the wood following at a distance the hoofprints of the boys' horses. It is warm and becoming warmer. Yet the earth is ever moist with cool dew. I make me forget how we are on wet ground and think instead of fireflies in tall dry grass. There are so many stars it is like the day. You hold your hand over my mouth so no one can hear my pleasure startling hens from their sleep. Quiet. Quiet. No one must know but Lina does. Beware she tells me. We are lying in hammocks. I am just come from you aching with sin and looking forward to more. I ask her meaning. She says there is only one fool in this place and she is not it so beware. I am too sleepy to answer and not wanting to. I prefer thoughts of that place under your jaw where your neck meets bone, a small curve deep enough for a tongue tip but no bigger than a quail's egg. I am sinking into sleep when I hear her say, rum I told myself it was rum. Only rum the first time because a man of his learning and position in the town would never dishonor himself so if sober. I understand, she is saying, I understand and obey the need for secrecy and when he comes to the house I never look him in the eye. I only look for the straw in his mouth, she is saying, or the stick he places in the gate hinge as the sign of our meeting that night. Sleepiness is leaving me. I sit up and dangle my legs over the hammock. The ropes creak and sway. There is something in her voice that pricks me. Something old. Something cutting. I look at her. Brightness of stars, moon glow, both are enough to see her face but neither is enough to know her expression. Her braid is loose, strands of it escaping the hammock's weave. She is saying that she is without clan and under a Europe's rule. There is no rum the second time nor the next, she is saying, but those times he uses the flat of his hand when he has anger, when she spills lamp oil on his breeches or he finds a tiny worm in the stew. Then comes a day when he uses first his fist and then a whip. The Spanish coin is lost through a worn place in her apron pocket and is never found. He cannot forgive this. I am already fourteen and ought to know better, she is saying. And now, she is saying, I do. She tells me how it is to walk town lanes wiping blood from her nose with her fingers, that because her eyes are closing she stumbles and people believe she is in liquor like so many natives and tell her so. The Presbyterians stare at her face and the blood wipes on her clothes but say nothing. They visit the printer and offer her up for sale. They no longer let her inside their house so for weeks she sleeps where she can and eats from the bowl they leave for her on the porch. Like a dog, she says. Like a dog. Then Sir makes the purchase but not before she slips away and breaks the necks of two roosters and places a head in each of her lover's shoes. Every step he takes from then on will bring him closer to perpetual ruin. Listen to me, she is saying. I am your age when flesh is my only hunger. Men have two hungers. The beak that grooms also bites. Tell me, she says, what will it be when his work here is done. I wonder she says will he take you with him? I am not wondering this. Not then, not ever. I know you cannot steal me nor wedding me. Neither one is lawful. What I know is that I wilt when you go and am straight when Mistress sends me to you. Being on an errand is not running away. Thinking these things keeps me walking and not lying down on the ground and allowing myself to sleep. |
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I am greatly tired and long for water. I come into a part where cows are grazing among the trees. If cows are in the woods a farm or village is near. Neither Sir nor Mistress will let their few heads loose like that. They fence the meadow because they want the manure and not a quarrel with neighbors. Mistress says Sir says grazing will soon die in the meadow so he has other business because farming will never be enough in these parts. Black flies alone will kill all hope for it if marauding wildlife does not. Farms live or die by the desire of insects or on the whim of weather. I see a path and enter. It leads to a narrow bridge past a mill wheel poised in a stream. The creaking wheel and rushing water are what shape the quiet. Hens sleep and dogs forbidden. I hurry down the bank and lap from the stream. The water tastes like candle wax. I spit out the bits of straw that come with each swallow and make my way back to the path. I need shelter. The sun is setting itself. I notice two cottages. Both have windows but no lamp shines through. There are more that resemble small barns that can accept the day's light only through open doors. None is open. There is no cooksmoke in the air. I am thinking everyone has gone off. Then I see a tiny steeple on a hill beyond the village and am certain the people are at evening prayer. I decide to knock on the door of the largest house, the one that will have a servant inside. Moving toward it I look over my shoulder and see a light farther on. It is in the single lit house in the village so I choose to go there. Stones interfere at each step rubbing the sealing wax hard into my sole. Rain starts. Soft. It should smell sweet with the flavor of the sycamores it has crossed, but it has a burn smell, like pinfeathers singed before boiling a fowl. Soon as I knock a woman opens the door. She is much taller than Mistress or Lina and has green eyes. The rest of her is a brown frock and a white cap. Red hair edges it. She is suspicious and holds up her hand, palm out, as though I might force my way in. Who hath sent you she asks. I say please. I say I am alone. No one sends me. Shelter calls me here. She looks behind me left and right and asks if I have no protection, no companion? I say No Madam. She narrows her eyes and asks if I am of this earth or elsewhere? Her face is hard. I say this earth Madam I know no other. Christian or heathen, she asks. Never heathen I say. I say although I hear my father may be. And where doth he abide, she asks. The rain is getting bigger. Hunger wobbles me. I say I do not know him and my mother is dead. Her face softens and she nods saying, orphan, step in. She tells me her name, Widow Ealing, but does not ask mine. You must excuse me, she says, but there is some danger about. What danger I ask. Evil, she says, but you must never mind. I try to eat slowly and fail. Sopping hard bread into lovely, warm barley porridge, I don't lift my head except to say thank you when she ladles more into my bowl. She places a handful of raisins next to it. We are in a good-size room with fireplace, table, stools and two sleeping places, a box bed and a pallet. There are two closed doors to other parts and a closet-looking place, a niche, at the rear where jugs and bowls are. When my hunger is quiet enough I notice a girl lying in the straw of the box bed. Under her head is a blanket roll. One of her eyes looks away, the other is as straight and unwavering as a she-wolf's. Both are black as coal, not at all like the Widow's. |
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I don't think I should begin any words so I keep eating and wait for the girl or the Widow to say something. At the foot of her bed is a basket. A kid lies there too sick to raise its head or make a sound. When I finish the food down to the last raisin the Widow asks what is my purpose traveling alone. I tell her my mistress is sending me on an errand. She turns her lips down saying it must be vital to risk a female's life in these parts. My mistress is dying I say. My errand can save her. She frowns and looks toward the fireplace. Not from the first death, she says. Perhaps from the second. I don't understand her meaning. I know there is only one death not two and many lives beyond it. Remember the owls in daylight? We know right away who they are. You know the pale one is your father. I think I know who the other ones may be. The girl lying in straw raises up on her elbow. This be the death we have come here to die, she says. Her voice is deep, like a man's, though she looks to have my age. Widow Ealing doesn't reply and I do not want to look at those eyes anymore. The girl speaks again. No thrashing, she says, can change it, though my flesh is cut to ribbons. She stands then and limps to the table where the lamp burns. Holding it waist high she lifts her skirts. I see dark blood beetling down her legs. In the light pouring over her pale skin her wounds look like live jewels. This is my daughter Jane, the Widow says. Those lashes may save her life. It is late, Widow Ealing is saying. They will not come until morning. She closes the shutters, blows out the lamp and kneels by the pallet. Daughter Jane returns to her straw. The Widow whispers in prayer. The dark in here is greater than the cowshed, thicker than the forest. No moonlight seeps through a single crack. I lie near the sick kid and the fireplace and my sleep breaks into pieces from their voices. Silence is long and then they talk. I can tell who it is not only by the direction of the sound but also because Widow Ealing says words in a way different from her daughter. A more singing way. So I know it is Daughter Jane who says how can I prove I am not a demon and it is the Widow who says sssst it is they who will decide. Silence. Silence. Then back and forth they talk. It is the pasture they crave, Mother. Then why not me? You may be next. At least two say they have seen the Black Man and that he ... Widow Ealing stops and does not say more for a while and then she says we will know comes the morning. They will allow that I am, says Daughter Jane. They talk fast to each other. The knowing is theirs, the truth is mine, truth is God's, then what mortal can judge me, you talk like a Spaniard, listen, please listen, be still lest He hear you, He will not abandon me, nor will I, yet you bloodied my flesh, how many times do you have to hear it demons do not bleed. You never tell me that and it is a good thing to know. If my mother is not dead she can be teaching me these things. I believe I am the only one who falls asleep and I wake in shame because outside the animals are already lowing. Tiny baas come from the kid as the Widow picks it up in her arms and takes it outside to nurse the dam. When she returns she unshutters both windows and leaves the door wide open. Two geese waddle in followed by a strutting hen. Another flies through a window joining the search for scraps. I ask permission to use the commode behind a hempen curtain. As I finish and step out I see Daughter Jane holding her face in her hands while the Widow freshens the leg wounds. |
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New strips of blood gleam among the dry ones. A goat steps in and moves toward the straw nibbling nibbling while Daughter Jane whimpers. After the bloodwork is done to her satisfaction the Widow pushes the goat out the door. At table for a breakfast of clabber and bread the Widow and Daughter Jane put their palms together, bow their heads and murmur. I do likewise, whispering the prayer Reverend Father taught me to say morning and night my mother repeating with me. Pater Noster... At the end I raise my hand to touch my forehead and catch Daughter Jane's frown. She shakes her head meaning no. So I pretend I am adjusting my cap. The Widow spoons jam onto the clabber and we two eat. Daughter Jane refuses so we eat what she will not. Afterwards the Widow goes to the fireplace and swings the kettle over the fire. I take the bowls and spoons from the table to the closet where a basin of water sits on a narrow bench. I rinse and wipe each piece carefully. The air is tight. Water rises to a boil in the kettle hanging in the fireplace. I turn and see its steam forming shapes as it curls against the stone. One shape looks like the head of a dog. We all hear footsteps climbing the path. I am still busy in the closet, and although I cannot see who enters, I hear the talk. The Widow offers the visitors seating. They refuse. A man's voice says this is preliminary yet witnesses are several. Widow interrupts him saying her daughter's eye is askew as God made it and it has no special powers. And look, she says, look at her wounds. God's son bleeds. We bleed. Demons never. I step into the room. Standing there are a man, three women and a little girl who reminds me of myself when my mother sends me away. I am thinking how sweet she seems when she screams and hides behind the skirts of one of the women. Then each visitor turns to look at me. The women gasp. The man's walking stick clatters to the floor causing the remaining hen to squawk and flutter. He retrieves his stick, points it at me saying who be this? One of the women covers her eyes saying God help us. The little girl wails and rocks back and forth. The Widow waves both hands saying she is a guest seeking shelter from the night. We accept her how could we not and feed her. Which night the man asks. This one past she answers. One woman speaks saying I have never seen any human this black. I have says another, this one is as black as others I have seen. She is Afric. Afric and much more, says another. Just look at this child says the first woman. She points to the little girl shaking and moaning by her side. Hear her. Hear her. It is true then says another. The Black Man is among us. This is his minion. The little girl is inconsolable. The woman whose skirts she clings to takes her outside where she is quickly quiet. I am not understanding anything except that I am in danger as the dog's head shows and Mistress is my only defense. I shout, wait. I shout, please sir. I think they have shock that I can talk. Let me show you my letter I say quieter. It proves I am nobody's minion but my Mistress. As fast as I can I remove my boot and roll down my stocking. The women stretch their mouths, the man looks away and then slowly back. I pull out Mistress' letter and offer it but no one will touch it. The man orders me to place it on the table but he is afraid to break the seal. He tells the Widow to do it. She picks at the wax with her fingernails. When it falls away she unfolds the paper. It is too thick to stay flat by itself. |
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Everyone including Daughter Jane who rises from her bed stares at the markings upside down and it is clear only the man is lettered. Holding the tip of his walking stick down on the paper he turns it right side up and holds it there as if the letter can fly away or turn into ashes without flame before his eyes. He leans low and examines it closely. Then he picks it up and reads aloud. The signatory of this letter, Mistress Rebekka Vaark of Milton vouches for the female person into whose hands it has been placed. She is owned by me and can be knowne by a burne mark in the palm of her left hand. Allow her the courtesie of safe passage and witherall she may need to complete her errand. Our life, my life, on this earthe depends on her speedy return. Signed Rebekka Vaark, Mistress, Milton 18 May 1690 Other than a small sound from Daughter Jane all is quiet. The man looks at me, looks again at the letter, back at me back at the letter. Again at me, once more at the letter. You see, says the Widow. He ignores her and turns to two women whispering to them. They point me to a door that opens onto a storeroom and there, standing among carriage boxes and a spinning wheel, they tell me to take off my clothes. Without touching they tell me what to do. To show them my teeth, my tongue. They frown at the candle burn on my palm, the one you kissed to cool. They look under my arms, between my legs. They circle me, lean down to inspect my feet. Naked under their examination I watch for what is in their eyes. No hate is there or scare or disgust but they are looking at me my body across distances without recognition. Swine look at me with more connection when they raise their heads from the trough. The women look away from my eyes the way you say I am to do with the bears so they will not come close to love and play. Finally they tell me to dress and leave the room shutting the door behind them. I put on my clothes. I hear the quarreling. The little girl is back, not sobbing now but saying it scares me it scares me. A woman's voice asks would Satan write a letter. Lucifer is all deceit and trickery says another. But a woman's life is at stake says the Widow, who will the Lord punish then? The man's voice booms. We will relay this to the others he says. We will study on it, consult and pray and return with our answer. It is not clear it seems whether or no I am the Black Man's minion. I step into the room and the little girl screams and flails her arms. The women surround her and rush out. The man says not to leave the house. He takes the letter with him. The Widow follows him down the path pleading, pleading. She returns to say they are wanting time to discuss more among themselves. She has hope because of the letter. Daughter Jane laughs. Widow Ealing kneels to pray. She prays a long time then stands saying I have to see someone. I need his witness and his help. Who, asks Daughter Jane. The sheriff says the Widow. Daughter Jane curls her mouth behind her mother's back as she leaves. I am hung with fear watching Daughter Jane attend her leg wounds. The sun is high and still the Widow does not return. We wait. By and by the sun slows down. Daughter Jane boils duck eggs and when cool wraps them in a square of cloth. She folds a blanket and hands it to me, motions with one finger to follow. We leave the house, scurry around to the back. All manner of fowl cluck and fly from our feet. We run through the pasture. The nanny goat turns to look. The billy does not. |
| 152 |
Even the trace of Captain was dim. After searching for survivors and food, fingering spilt molasses from the deck straight into her mouth, nights listening to cold wind and lapping sea, Twin joined her under the hammock and they have been together ever since. Both skinned down the broken mast and started walking a rocky shoreline. The bits of dead fish they ate intensified their thirst which they forgot at the sight of two bodies rocking in the surf. It was the bloat and sway that made them incautious enough to wade away from the rocks into a lagoon just when the tide was coming in. Both were swept out to deep water; both treaded as long as they could until the cold overcame their senses and they swam not landward, but toward the horizon. Very good luck, for they entered a neap rushing headlong toward shore and into a river beyond. Sorrow woke up naked under a blanket, with a warm wet cloth on her forehead. The smell of milled wood was overwhelming. A woman with white hair was watching her. "Such a sight," said the woman, shaking her head. "Such a dismal sight you are. Yet strong, I think, for a maid." She pulled the blanket up to the castaway's chin. "We thought from your clothes you were a lad. However, you're not dead." That was good news, because Sorrow thought she was until Twin appeared at the foot of the pallet, grinning, holding her face in her hands. Comforted, Sorrow slept again, but easy now with Twin nestling near. The next morning she woke to the grating of saws and the even thicker odor of wood chips. The sawyer's wife came in holding a man's shirt and a boy's breeches. "These will have to do for now," she said. "I'll have to make you something more fitting for there is nothing to borrow in the village. And there won't be any shoes for a while." Light-headed and wobbly, Sorrow put on the dry boy clothes, then followed a scent of food. Once fed an extravagant breakfast, she was alert enough to say things but not recall things. When they asked her name, Twin whispered NO, so she shrugged her shoulders and found that a convenient gesture for the other information she could not or pretended not to remember. Where do you live? On the ship. Yes, but not always. Always. Where is your family? Shoulders lifted. Who else was on the ship? Gulls. What people, girl? Shrug. Who was the captain? Shrug. Well, how did you get to land? Mermaids. I mean whales. That was when the housewife named her. Next day she gave her a shift of sacking, a clean cap to cover her unbelievable and slightly threatening hair, and told her to mind the geese. Toss their grain, herd them to water and keep them from waddling off. Sorrow's bare feet fought with the distressing gravity of land. She stumbled and tripped so much on that first day at the pond that when two goslings were attacked by a dog and chaos followed, it took forever to regroup the flock. She kept at it a few more days, until the housewife threw up her hands and put her to simple cleaning tasks — none of which proved satisfactory. But the pleasure of upbraiding an incompetent servant outweighed any satisfaction of a chore well done and the housewife raged happily at every unswept corner, poorly made fire, imperfectly scrubbed pot, carelessly weeded garden row and badly plucked bird. Sorrow concentrated on mealtimes and the art of escape for short walks with Twin, playtimes between or instead of her tasks. On occasion she had secret company other than Twin, but not better than Twin, who was her safety, her entertainment, her guide. |
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How their teeth glittered more than the whitecaps under their feet. How, as the sky darkened and the moon rose, the edges of their night-black skin silvered. How the smell of land, ripe and loamy, brightened the eyes of the crew but made the sea walkers cry. Soothed by Twin's voice and the animal fat Lina had spread on her lower parts, Sorrow fell into the first sweet sleep she had had in months. Still, that first morning, she threw up her breakfast as soon as she swallowed. Mistress gave her yarrow tea and put her to work in the vegetable garden. Prying late turnips from the ground, she could hear Sir breaking rocks in a far-off field. Patrician squatted at the edge of the garden eating a yellow apple and watching her. Sorrow waved. Patrician waved back. Lina appeared and hurried the little girl away. From then on it was clear to Twin, if not to Sorrow, that Lina ruled and decided everything Sir and Mistress did not. Her eye was everywhere even when she was nowhere. She rose before cock crow, entered the house in darkness, touched a sleeping Sorrow with the toe of her moccasin and lingered while refreshing the embers. She examined baskets, looked under the lids of jars. Checking the stores, thought Sorrow. No, said Twin, checking you for food theft. Lina spoke very little to her, not even "good morning," and only when the content of what she had to say was urgent. Therefore it was she who told Sorrow she was pregnant. Lina had removed a basket of millet from Sorrow's hands. Looked her dead in the eye and said, "Do you know you are with child, child?" Sorrow's jaw dropped. Then she flushed with pleasure at the thought of a real person, a person of her own, growing inside her. "What should I do?" she asked. Lina simply stared at her and, hoisting the basket on her hip, walked away. If Mistress knew, she never said, perhaps because she was pregnant herself. Sorrow's birthing came too soon, Lina told her, for the infant to survive, but Mistress delivered a fat boy who cheered everybody up — for six months anyway. They put him with his brother at the bottom of the rise behind the house and said prayers. Although Sorrow thought she saw her own newborn yawn, Lina wrapped it in a piece of sacking and set it a-sail in the widest part of the stream and far below the beavers' dam. It had no name. Sorrow wept, but Twin told her not to. "I am always with you," she said. That was some consolation, but it took years for Sorrow's steady thoughts of her baby breathing water under Lina's palm to recede. With no one to talk to, she relied on Twin more and more. With her, Sorrow never wanted for friendship or conversation. Even if they made her sleep inside, there were stories to listen to and they could steal away together during the day for strolls and larks in the forest. There were cherries, too, and walnuts from the deacon. But she had to be quiet. Once he brought her a neckerchief which she filled with stones and threw in the stream, knowing such finery would raise Lina's anger as well as alert Mistress. And although another of Mistress' baby boys perished, Patrician stayed healthy. For a little while Lina seemed to be persuaded that the boys' deaths were not Sorrow's fault, but when a horse broke Patrician's crown, she changed her mind. Then came Florens. Then came the blacksmith. Twice. When Florens arrived that bitter winter, Sorrow, curious and happy to see someone new, smiled and was about to step forward just to touch one of the little girl's fat braids. |
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But Twin stopped her, leaning close to Sorrow's face, crying, "Don't! Don't!" Sorrow recognized Twin's jealousy and waved her face away, but not quickly enough. Lina, having taken off her shawl and wrapped it around the child's shoulders, picked her up and carried her into the cowshed. Thereafter, the girl belonged to Lina. They slept together, bathed together, ate together. Lina made clothes for her and tiny shoes from rabbit skin. Whenever Sorrow came near, Lina said "Scat," or sent her on some task that needed doing immediately, all the while making certain everyone else shared the distrust that sparkled in her own eyes. Sorrow remembered how they narrowed, gleamed, when Sir made her sleep inside. And although Lina helped her through childbirth, Sorrow never forgot the baby breathing water every day, every night, down all the streams of the world. Kept as distant from the new girl as she had been from Patrician, Sorrow behaved thereafter the way she always had — with placid indifference to anyone, except Twin. Years later, when the blacksmith came, the weather of the place changed. Forever. Twin noticed it first, saying Lina was afraid of the smithy and tried to warn Mistress about him, but the warning was fruitless. Mistress paid it no attention. She was too happy for guardedness because Sir was not traveling anymore. He was always there working on the new house, managing deliveries, laying string from angle to angle and in close conversation with the smithy about the gate's design. Lina dreading; Mistress humming with contentment; Sir in high spirits. Florens, of course, was the most distracted. Neither Sorrow nor Twin had settled on exactly what to think of the blacksmith. He seemed complete, unaware of his effect. Was he the danger Lina saw in him or was her fear mere jealousy? Was he Sir's perfect building partner or a curse on Florens, altering her behavior from open to furtive? They had yet to make up their minds when Sorrow, returning from the stream with a bucket of water, collapsed, burning and shaking, near the building site. It was pure luck that the smithy was right there and saw her fall. He picked her up and laid her down on the pallet where he slept. Sorrow's face and arms were welting. The smithy touched her neck boils, then shouted. Sir poked his head out of the door frame and Florens came running. Mistress arrived and the smithy called for vinegar. Lina went to fetch it, and when it came, he doused Sorrow's boils and the skin of her face and arms, sending her into spasms of pain. While the women sucked air and Sir frowned, the blacksmith heated a knife and slit open one of the swellings. They watched in silence as he tipped Sorrow's own blood drops between her lips. All of them thought it better not to have her in the house, so Sorrow lay sweltering in a hammock all day, all night — permitted no food or water — as the women took turns fanning her. The constant breeze of their fans summoned sail wind and Captain, the tiller in his hand. She heard him before she saw him. Laughing. Loud, raucous. No. Not laughing. Screaming. Along with the others. High-pitched and low, the screams were far away, on the other side of the white clouds surrounding her. Horses, too. Pounding hooves. Freed from below. Leaping over sacks of grain and kicking barrels until the staves broke and a thick sweet blackness poured out. Still, she could not move or tear through the clouds. Pushing, pushing, she fell to the floor while the clouds covered and smothered her whole self, convincing her the screams belonged to gulls. |
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When she came to, eyes, the shape and color of her own, greeted her. The puffy clouds, mere threads now, drifted away. "I'm here," said the girl with a face matching her own exactly. "I'm always here." With Twin she was less afraid and the two began to search the silent, listing ship. Slowly, slowly. Peeking here, listening there, finding nothing except a bonnet and seagulls pecking the remains of a colt. Under the waving fan, drenched in sweat, Sorrow remembered freezing day after day on the ship. Other than icy wind, nothing stirred. Aft was the sea, fore a rocky beach below a cliff of stone and brush. Sorrow had never set foot on land and was terrified of leaving ship for shore. It was as foreign to her as ocean was to sheep. Twin made it possible. When they descended, the earth — mean, hard, thick, hateful — shocked her. That's when she understood Captain's choice to keep her aboard. He reared her not as a daughter but as a sort of crewman-to-be. Dirty, trousered, both wild and obedient with one important skill, patching and sewing sailcloth. Mistress and Lina quarreled with the blacksmith about whether she should be forced to eat or drink, but he ruled, insisting she have nothing. Riveted by that hot knife and blood medicine, they deferred. Fanning and vinegar-soaked boils only. At the close of the third day, Sorrow's fever broke and she begged for water. The smithy held her head as she sipped from a dried squash gourd. Raising her eyes, she saw Twin seated in the branches above the hammock, smiling. Soon Sorrow said she was hungry. Bit by bit, under the smithy's care and Florens' nursing, the boils shriveled, the welts disappeared and her strength returned. Now their judgment was clear: the blacksmith was a savior. Lina, however, became truly ugly in her efforts to keep Florens away from the patient and the healer, muttering that she had seen this sickness before when she was a child, and that it would spread like mold to them all. But she lost the battle with Florens. By the time Sorrow recovered, Florens was struck down with another sickness much longer lasting and far more lethal. It was while lying in the meadow at the forest's edge, listening to Twin tell a favorite story, the one about a school of fish girls with pearls for eyes and green-black locks of seaweed hair racing one another, riding the backs of a fleet of whales, that Sorrow first saw the smithy and Florens coiled around each other. Twin had just gotten to the part where seabirds, excited by the foam trailing the fleet like shooting stars, were joining the race, when Sorrow put a finger to her lips and pointed with another. Twin stopped speaking and looked. The blacksmith and Florens were rocking and, unlike female farm animals in heat, she was not standing quietly under the weight and thrust of the male. What Sorrow saw yonder in the grass under a hickory tree was not the silent submission to the slow goings behind a pile of wood or a hurried one in a church pew that Sorrow knew. This here female stretched, kicked her heels and whipped her head left, right, to, fro. It was a dancing. Florens rolled and twisted from her back to his. He hoisted her up against the hickory; she bent her head into his shoulder. A dancing. Horizontal one minute, another minute vertical. Sorrow watched until it was over; until, stumbling like tired old people, they dressed themselves. It all ended when the blacksmith grabbed Florens' hair, yanked her head back to put his mouth on hers. Then they went off in different directions. |
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It was soon clear, however, that Lina remained in despair. The questions plaguing her lodged in her eyes: What was really happening to Florens? Was she coming back? Was the blacksmith truthful? For all his kindness and healing powers, Sorrow wondered if she had been wrong about him and Lina right all along. Suffused with the deep insight mothers-to-be claim, Sorrow doubted it. He had saved her life with vinegar and her own blood; had known right away Mistress' state and what solvent to prescribe to lessen the scarring. Lina was simply wary of anyone who came between herself and Florens. Between tending Mistress' new requirements and scanning the path for Florens, Lina had little time or inclination for anything else. Sorrow herself, unable to bend down, lift anything weighty or even walk a hundred yards without heavy breathing, was equally to blame for what was happening to the farm. Goats wandered from village yards and tore up both newly planted gardens. Layers of insects floated in the water barrel no one had remembered to cover. Damp laundry left too long in the basket began to mold and neither of them returned to the river to wash it again. Everything was in disarray. The weather was warming, and as a result of the canceled visit of a neighbor's bull, no cow foaled. Acres and acres needed turning; milk became clabber in the pan. A fox pawed the hen yard whenever she liked and rats ate the eggs. Mistress would not recover soon enough to catch the heap the farm was falling into. And without her pet, Lina, the silent workhorse, seemed to have lost interest in everything, including feeding herself. Ten days' neglect and collapse was everywhere. So it was in the afternoon silence of a cool day in May, on an untended farm recently swathed in smallpox, that Sorrow's water broke, unleashing her panic. Mistress was not well enough to help her, and remembering the yawn, she did not trust Lina. Forbidden to enter the village, she had no choice. Twin was absent, strangely silent or hostile when Sorrow tried to discuss what to do, where to go. With a frail hope that Will and Scully would be stationed as usual on their fishing raft, she took a knife and a blanket to the riverbank the moment the first pain hit. She stayed there, alone, screeching when she had to, sleeping in between, until the next brute tear of body and breath. Hours, minutes, days — Sorrow could not tell how much time passed before the men heard her moans and poled their raft to the river's edge. They both understood Sorrow's plight as quickly as they would any creature about to foal. Clumsy a bit, their purpose confined to the survival of the newborn, they set to work. Kneeling in water as Sorrow pushed, they pulled, eased and turned the tiny form stuck between her legs. Blood and more swirled down to the river attracting young cod. When the baby, a girl, whimpered, Scully knifed the cord, then handed her to the mother who rinsed her, dabbing her mouth, ears and unfocused eyes. The men congratulated themselves and offered to carry mother and child back to the farmhouse. Sorrow, repeating "thank you" with every breath, declined. She wanted to rest and would make her own way. Willard slapped Scully on the back of his head, laughing. "Right fine midwife, I'd say." "No question," answered Scully as they waded back to their raft. Following the expulsion of afterbirth, Sorrow wrapped her infant in the blanket and dozed off and on for hours. At some point before sunset she roused to a cry and squeezed her breasts until one delivered. |
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Although all her life she had been saved by men — Captain, the sawyers' sons, Sir and now Will and Scully — she was convinced that this time she had done something, something important, by herself. Twin's absence was hardly noticed as she concentrated on her daughter. Instantly, she knew what to name her. Knew also what to name herself. Two days came and went. Lina hid her disgust with Sorrow and her anxiety about Florens under a mask of calm. Mistress said nothing about the baby, but sent for a Bible and forbade anyone to enter the new house. At one point, Sorrow, prompted by the legitimacy of her new status as a mother, was bold enough to remark to her Mistress, "It was good that the blacksmith came to help when you were dying." Mistress stared at her. "Ninny," she answered. "God alone cures. No man has such power." There had always been tangled strings among them. Now they were cut. Each woman embargoed herself; spun her own web of thoughts unavailable to anyone else. It was as though, with or without Florens, they were falling away from one another. Twin was gone, traceless and unmissed by the only person who knew her. Sorrow's wandering stopped too. Now she attended routine duties, organizing them around her infant's needs, impervious to the complaints of others. She had looked into her daughter's eyes; saw in them the gray glisten of a winter sea while a ship sailed by-the-lee. "I am your mother," she said. "My name is Complete." My journey to you is hard and long and the hurt of it is gone as soon as I see the yard, the forge, the little cabin where you are. I lose the fear that I may never again in this world know the sight of your welcoming smile or taste the sugar of your shoulder as you take me in your arms. The smell of fire and ash trembles me but it is the glee in your eyes that kicks my heart over. You are asking me how and how long and laughing at my clothes and the scratches everyplace. But when I answer your why, you frown. We settle, you do, and I agree because there is no other way. You will ride at once to Mistress but alone. I am to wait here you say. I cannot join you because it is faster without me. And there is another reason, you say. You turn your head. My eyes follow where you look. This happens twice before. The first time it is me peering around my mother's dress hoping for her hand that is only for her little boy. The second time it is a pointing screaming little girl hiding behind her mother and clinging to her skirts. Both times are full of danger and I am expel. Now I am seeing a little boy come in holding a corn-husk doll. He is younger than everybody I know. You reach out your forefinger toward him and he takes hold of it. You say this is why I cannot travel with you. The child you call Malaik is not to be left alone. He is a foundling. His father is leaning over the reins and the horse is continuing until it stops and eats grass in the lane. People from the village come, learn he is dead and find the boy sitting quietly in the cart. No one knows who is the dead man and nothing in his belongings can tell. You accept him until a future when a townsman or magistrate places him, which may be never because although the dead man's skin is rosy the boy's is not. So maybe he is not a son at all. My mouth goes dry as I wonder if you want him to be yours. I worry as the boy steps closer to you. How you offer and he owns your forefinger. As if he is your future. Not me. I am not liking how his eyes go when you send him to play in the yard. |
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But then you bathe my journey from my face and arms and give me stew. It needs salt. The pieces of rabbit are thick and tender. My hunger is sharp but my happiness is more. I cannot eat much. We talk of many things and I don't say what I am thinking. That I will stay. That when you return from healing Mistress whether she is live or no I am here with you always. Never never without you. Here I am not the one to throw out. No one steals my warmth and shoes because I am small. No one handles my backside. No one whinnies like sheep or goat because I drop in fear and weakness. No one screams at the sight of me. No one watches my body for how it is unseemly. With you my body is pleasure is safe is belonging. I can never not have you have me. I am calm when you leave although you do not touch me close. Or put your mouth to mine. You saddle up and ask me to water the bean shoots and collect the eggs. I go there but the hens make nothing so I know a minha mae is coming soon. The boy Malaik is near. He sleeps behind the door to where you do. I am calm, quiet, knowing you are very soon here again. I take off Sir's boots and lie on your cot trying to catch the fire smell of you. Slices of starlight cut through the shutters. A minha mae leans at the door holding her little boy's hand, my shoes in her pocket. As always she is trying to tell me something. I tell her to go and when she fades I hear a small creaking. In the dark I know he is there. Eyes big, wondering and cold. I rise and come to him and ask what. What Malaik, what. He is silent but the hate in his eyes is loud. He wants my leaving. This cannot happen. I feel the clutch inside. This expel can never happen again. I dream a dream that dreams back at me. I am on my knees in soft grass with white clover breaking through. There is a sweet smell and I lean close to get it. But the perfume goes away. I notice I am at the edge of a lake. The blue of it is more than sky, more than any blue I know. More than Lina's beads or the heads of chicory. I am loving it so, I can't stop. I want to put my face deep there. I want to. What is making me hesitate, making me not get the beautiful blue of what I want? I make me go nearer, lean over, clutching the grass for balance. Grass that is glossy, long and wet. Right away I take fright when I see my face is not there. Where my face should be is nothing. I put a finger in and watch the water circle. I put my mouth close enough to drink or kiss but I am not even a shadow there. Where is it hiding? Why is it? Soon Daughter Jane is kneeling next to me. She too looks in the water. Oh, Precious, don't fret, she is saying, you will find it. Where I ask, where is my face, but she is no more beside me. When I wake a minha mae is standing by your cot and this time her baby boy is Malaik. He is holding her hand. She is moving her lips at me but she is holding Malaik's hand in her own. I hide my head in your blanket. I know you will come but morning does and you do not. All day. Malaik and me wait. He stays as far from me as he can. I am inside, sometimes in the garden but never in the lane where he is. I am making me quiet but I am loose inside not knowing how to be. Horses move in someone's pasture beyond. The colts are tippy-toe and never still. Never still. I watch until it is too black to see. No dream comes that night. Neither does a minha mae. I lie where you sleep. Along with the sound of blowing wind there is the thump of my heart. It is louder than the wind. |
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The fire smell of you is leaving the pallet. Where does it go I wonder. The wind dies down. My heartbeat joins the sound of mice feet. In the morning the boy is not here but I prepare porridge for us two. Again he is standing in the lane holding tight the corn-husk doll and looking toward where you ride away. Sudden looking at him I am remembering the dog's profile rising from Widow Ealing's kettle. Then I cannot read its full meaning. Now I know how. I am guarding. Otherwise I am missing all understanding of how to protect myself. First I notice Sir's boots are gone. I look all around, stepping through the cabin, the forge, in cinder and in pain of my tender feet. Bits of metal score and bite them. I look and see the curl of a garden snake edging toward the threshold. I watch its slow crawl until it is dead in the sunlight. I touch your anvil. It is cool and scraped smooth but it sings the heat it lives for. I never find Sir's boots. Carefully, on my toes I go back into the cabin and wait. The boy quits the lane. He comes in but will neither eat nor talk. We stare at each other across the table. He does not blink. Nor me. I know he steals Sir's boots that belong to me. His fingers cling the doll. I think that must be where his power is. I take it away and place it on a shelf too high for him to reach. He screams screams. Tears falling. On bleeding feet I run outside to keep from hearing. He is not stopping. Is not. A cart goes by. The couple in it glance but do not greet or pause. Finally the boy is silent and I go back in. The doll is not on the shelf. It is abandon in a corner like a precious child no person wants. Or no. Maybe the doll is sitting there hiding. Hiding from me. Afraid. Which? Which is the true reading? Porridge drips from the table. The stool is on its side. Seeing me the boy returns to screaming and that is when I clutch him. I am trying to stop him not hurt him. That is why I pull his arm. To make him stop. Stop it. And yes I do hear the shoulder crack but the sound is small, no more than the crack a wing of roast grouse makes when you tear it, warm and tender, from its breast. He screams screams then faints. A little blood comes from his mouth hitting the table corner. Only a little. He drops into fainting just as I hear you shout. I don't hear your horse only your shout and know I am lost because your shout is not my name. Not me. Him. Malaik you shout. Malaik. Seeing him still and limp on the floor with that trickle of red from his mouth your face breaks down. You knock me away shouting what are you doing? shouting where is your ruth? With such tenderness you lift him, the boy. When you see the angle of his arm you cry out. The boy opens his eyes then faints once more when you twist it back into its proper place. Yes, there is blood. A little. But you are not there when it comes, so how do you know I am the reason? Why do you knock me away without certainty of what is true? You see the boy down and believe bad about me without question. You are correct but why no question of it? I am first to get the knocking away. The back of your hand strikes my face. I fall and curl up on the floor. Tight. No question. You choose the boy. You call his name first. You take him to lie down with the doll and return to me your broken face, eyes without glee, rope pumps in your neck. I am lost. No word of sorrow for knocking me off my feet. No tender fingers to touch where you hurt me. I cower. I hold down the feathers lifting. Your Mistress recovers you say. |
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You say you will hire someone to take me to her. Away from you. Each word that follows cuts. Why are you killing me I ask you. I want you to go. Let me explain. No. Now. Why? Why? Because you are a slave. What? You heard me. Sir makes me that. I don't mean him. Then who? You. What is your meaning? I am a slave because Sir trades for me. No. You have become one. How? Your head is empty and your body is wild. I am adoring you. And a slave to that too. You alone own me. Own yourself, woman, and leave us be. You could have killed this child. No. Wait. You put me in misery. You are nothing but wilderness. No constraint. No mind. You shout the word — mind, mind, mind — over and over and then you laugh, saying as I live and breathe, a slave by choice. On my knees I reach for you. Crawl to you. You step back saying get away from me. I have shock. Are you meaning I am nothing to you? That I have no consequence in your world? My face absent in blue water you find only to crush it? Now I am living the dying inside. No. Not again. Not ever. Feathers lifting, I unfold. The claws scratch and scratch until the hammer is in my hand. Jacob Vaark climbed out of his grave to visit his beautiful house. "As well he should," said Willard. "I sure would," answered Scully. It was still the grandest house in the whole region and why not spend eternity there? When they first noticed the shadow, Scully, not sure it was truly Vaark, thought they should creep closer. Willard, on the other hand, knowledgeable about spirits, warned him of the consequences of disturbing the risen dead. Night after night they watched, until they convinced themselves that no one other than Jacob Vaark would spend haunting time there: it had no previous tenants and the Mistress forbade anyone to enter. Both men respected, if they did not understand, her reasoning. For years the neighboring farm population made up the closest either man would know of family. A goodhearted couple (parents), and three female servants (sisters, say) and them helpful sons. Each member dependent on them, none cruel, all kind. Especially the master who, unlike their more-or-less absent owner, never cursed or threatened them. He even gave them gifts of rum during Christmastide and once he and Willard shared a tipple straight from the bottle. His death had saddened them enough to disobey their owner's command to avoid the poxed place; they volunteered to dig the last, if not the final, grave his widow would need. In dousing rain they removed five feet of mud and hurried to get the body down before the hole filled with water. Now, thirteen days later, the dead man had left it, escaped his own grave. Very like the way he used to reappear following weeks of traveling. They did not see him — his definitive shape or face — but they did see his ghostly blaze. His glow began near midnight, floated for a while on the second story, disappeared, then moved ever so slowly from window to window. With Master Vaark content to roam his house and not appear anywhere else, scaring or rattling anybody, Willard felt it safe and appropriate for him and Scully to stay loyal and help the Mistress repair the farm; prepare it also, for nothing much had been tended to after she fell ill. June on its way and not a furrow plowed. The shillings she offered was the first money they had ever been paid, raising their work from duty to dedication, from pity to profit. There was much to be done because, hardy as the women had always been, they seemed distracted, slower, now. |
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Before and after the blacksmith healed Mistress and the girl, Florens, was back where she belonged, a pall had descended. Still, Willard said, Lina continued to do her work carefully, calmly, but Scully disagreed, said she was simmering. Like green apples trembling in boiling water too long, the skin near to breaking, needing quick removal, cooling before mashed into sauce. And Scully should know since he had wasted hours over the years secretly watching her river baths. Unfettered glimpses of her buttocks, that waist, those syrup-colored breasts, were no longer available. Mainly he missed what he never saw elsewhere: uncovered female hair, aggressive, seductive, black as witchcraft. Seeing its wet cling and sway on her back was a quiet joy. Now, no more. Wherever, if ever, she bathed he was convinced she was about to burst. Mistress had changed as well. The mourning, said Willard, the illness — the effects of all of that were plain as daylight. Her hair, the brassy strands that once refused her cap, had become pale strings drifting at her temples, adding melancholy to her newly stern features. Rising from her sickbed, she had taken control, in a manner of speaking, but avoided as too tiring tasks she used to undertake with gusto. She laundered nothing, planted nothing, weeded never. She cooked and mended. Otherwise her time was spent reading a Bible or entertaining one or two people from the village. "She'll marry again, I reckon," said Willard. "Soon." "Why soon?" "She's a woman. How else keep the farm?" "Who to?" Willard closed one eye. "The village will provide." He coughed up a laugh recalling the friendliness of the deacon. Sorrow's change alone seemed to them an improvement; she was less addle-headed, more capable of handling chores. But her baby came first and she would postpone egg-gathering, delay milking, interrupt any field chore if she heard a whimper from the infant always somewhere nearby. Having helped with her delivery, they assumed godfather status, even offering to mind the baby if Sorrow needed them to. She declined, not because she did not trust them; she did, but out of a need to trust herself. Strangest was Florens. The docile creature they knew had turned feral. When they saw her stomping down the road two days after the smithy had visited Mistress' sickbed and gone, they were slow to recognize her as a living person. First because she was so blood-spattered and bedraggled and, second, because she passed right by them. Surely a sudden burst of sweating men out of roadside trees would have startled a human, any human, especially a female. But this one neither glanced their way nor altered her pace. Both men, breathless and still spooked from a narrow escape, leaped out of her path. In their frightened minds anything could be anything. Both were running as fast as they could back to the livestock under their care before the hogs ate their litter. Much of the morning they had spent hiding from an insulted bear, a harrowing incident they agreed was primarily Willard's fault. The netted partridge hanging from the older man's waist was supplement enough for two meals each. It was reckless to press their good fortune and linger just so he could rest beneath a beech and puff his pipe. Both knew what a whiff of smoke could do in woods where odor was decisive: to flee, attack, hide or, as in the case of a sow bear, investigate. When the laurel hell that had yielded the partridges suddenly crackled, Willard stood up, holding his hand out to Scully for silence. |
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Scully touched his knife and stood also. After a moment of uncanny quiet — no birdcalls or squirrel chatter — the smell washed over them at the same moment the sow crashed through the laurel clicking her teeth. Not knowing which of them she would select, they separated, each running man hoping he had made the correct choice, since play possum was not an option. Willard ducked behind an outcropping, thumb tamped his pipe and prayed the ledge of slate would disable the wind's direction. Scully, certain he felt hot breath on his nape, leaped for the lowest branch and swung up onto it. Unwise. Herself a tree climber, the bear had merely to stand up to clamp his foot in her jaws. Scully's fear was not craven, however, so he determined to make at least one powerful gesture of defense no matter how hopeless. He snatched out his knife, turned and, without even aiming, rammed it at the head of the agile black hulk below. For once desperation was a gift. The blade hit, slid like a needle into the bear's eye. The roar was terrible as, clawing bark, she tumbled to the ground on her haunches. A ring of baying dogs could not have enraged her more. Snarling, standing straight up, she slapped at the stuck blade until it fell out. Then down on all fours she rolled her shoulders and wagged her head from side to side. It seemed to Scully a very long time before the grunt of a cub got her attention and, off balance by the blinding that diminished her naturally poor sight, she lumbered away to locate her young. Scully and Willard waited, one treed like a caught bear himself, the other hugging rock, both afraid she would return. Convinced finally that she would not, cautiously sniffing for the smell of fur, listening for a grunt, the movement of the other, or a return of birdcall, they emerged. Slowly, slowly. Then raced. It was when they shot from the wood onto the road that they saw the female-looking shape marching toward them. Later, when they discussed it, Scully decided she looked less like a visitation than a wounded redcoat, barefoot, bloody but proud. Sold for seven years to a Virginia planter, young Willard Bond expected to be freed at age twenty-one. But three years were added onto his term for infractions — theft and assault — and he was re-leased to a wheat farmer far up north. Following two harvests, the wheat succumbed to blast and the owner turned his property over to mixed livestock. Eventually, as overgrazing demanded more and more pasture, the owner made a land-for-toil trade with his neighbor, Jacob Vaark. Still, one man could not handle all that stock. The addition of a boy helped. Before Scully's arrival, Willard had suffered hard and lonesome days watching cattle munch and mate, his only solace in remembering harder but more satisfying days in Virginia. Brutal though that work was, the days were not flat and he had company. There he was one of twenty-three men working tobacco fields. Six English, one native, twelve from Africa by way of Barbados. No women anywhere. The camaraderie among them was sealed by their shared hatred of the overseer and the master's odious son. It was upon the latter that the assault was made. Theft of a shoat was invented and thrown in just to increase Willard's indebtedness. He had trouble getting used to the rougher, colder region he was moved into. At night in his hammock, trapped in wide, animated darkness, he braced himself against the living and the dead. The glittering eyes of an elk could easily be a demon, just as the howls of tortured souls might be the call of happy wolves. |
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The dread of those solitary nights gripped his days. Swine, sheep and cattle were his sole companions, until the owner returned and carted away the best for slaughter. Scully's arrival was met with welcome and relief. And when their duties expanded to occasional help on the Vaark place, and they developed an easy relationship with its people, there were just a few times Willard overdrank and misbehaved. Early on in his post, he had run away twice, only to be caught in a tavern yard and given a further extension of his term. An even greater improvement in his social life began when Vaark decided to build a great house. Again, he was part of a crew of laborers, skilled and not, and when the blacksmith came, things got more and more interesting. Not only was the house grand and its enclosure impressive, its gate was spectacular. Sir wanted fancy work on both panels, but the smithy persuaded him no. The result was three-foot-high lines of vertical bars capped with a simple pyramid shape. Neatly these iron bars led to the gate each side of which was crowned by a flourish of thick vines. Or so he thought. Looking more closely he saw the gilded vines were actually serpents, scales and all, but ending not in fangs but flowers. When the gate was opened, each one separated its petals from the other. When closed, the blossoms merged. He admired the smith and his craft. A view that lasted until the day he saw money pass from Vaark's hand to the blacksmith's. The clink of silver was as unmistakable as its gleam. He knew Vaark was getting rich from rum investments, but learning the blacksmith was being paid for his work, like the men who delivered building materials, unlike the men he worked with in Virginia, roiled Willard, and he, encouraging Scully, refused any request the black man made. Refused to chop chestnut, haul charcoal or work bellows and "forgot" to shield green lumber from rain. Vaark chastised them both into sullen accommodation, but it was the smithy himself who calmed Willard down. Willard had two shirts, one with a collar, the other more of a rag. On the morning he slipped in fresh dung and split the shirt all the way down its back, he changed into the good collared one. Arriving at the site, he caught the blacksmith's eye, then his nod, then his thumb pointing straight up as if to signal approval. Willard never knew whether he was being made fun of or complimented. But when the smithy said, "Mr. Bond. Good morning," it tickled him. Virginia bailiffs, constables, small children, preachers — none had ever considered calling him mister, nor did he expect them to. He knew his rank, but did not know the lift that small courtesy allowed him. Joke or not, that first time was not the last because the smithy never failed to address him so. Although he was still rankled by the status of a free African versus himself, there was nothing he could do about it. No law existed to defend indentured labor against them. Yet the smithy had charm and he did so enjoy being called mister. Chuckling to himself, Willard understood why the girl, Florens, was struck silly by the man. He probably called her miss or lady when they met in the wood for suppertime foolery. That would excite her, he thought, if she needed any more than just the black man's grin. "In all my born days," he told Scully, "I never saw anything like it. He takes her when and where he wants and she hunts him like a she-wolf if he's not in her eye. If he's off at his bloomery for a day or two, she sulks till he comes back hauling the blooms of ore. |
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Scully never blamed the curate for betrayal nor for the flogging that followed, since the curate had to turn the circumstances of their being caught into the boy's lasciviousness, otherwise he would be not just defrocked but executed. Agreeing that Scully was too young to be permanently incorrigible, the elders passed him along to a landowner who needed a hand to work with a herdsman far away. A rural area, barely populated, where, they hoped, the boy might at best mend his ways or at worst have no opportunity to corrupt others. Scully anticipated running away as soon as he arrived in the region. But on the third day a violent winter storm froze and covered the land in three feet of snow. Cows died standing. Ice-coated starlings clung to branches drooping with snow. Willard and he slept in the barn among the sheep and cattle housed there, leaving the ones they could not rescue on their own. There in the warmth of animals, their own bodies clinging together, Scully altered his plans and Willard didn't mind at all. Although the older man liked drink, Scully, having slept beneath the bar of a tavern his whole childhood and seen its effects on his mother, avoided it. He decided to bide his time until, given the freedom fee, he was able to buy a horse. The carriage or cart or wagon drawn were not superior to the horse mounted. Anyone limited to walking everywhere never seemed to get anywhere. As the years slid by he remained mentally feisty while practicing patience, even as his hopes were beginning to dim. Then Jacob Vaark died and his widow relied on himself and Willard so much, she paid them. In four months he had already accumulated sixteen shillings. Four pounds, maybe less, would secure a horse. And when the freedom fee — goods or crop or coin equaling twenty-five pounds (or was it ten?) — was added on, the years of peonage would have been worth it. He did not want to spend his life just searching for something to eat and love. Meanwhile he did nothing to disturb Mistress Vaark or give her any cause to dismiss him. He was unnerved when Willard prophesied quick marriage for her. A new husband handling the farm could make very different arrangements, arrangements that did not include him. The opportunity to work for and among women gave both him and Willard advantage. However many females there were, however diligent, they did not fell sixty-foot trees, build pens, repair saddles, slaughter or butcher beef, shoe a horse or hunt. So while he watched the disaffection Mistress spread, he did all he could to please her. When she beat Sorrow, had Lina's hammock taken down, advertised the sale of Florens, he cringed inside but said nothing. Not only because it was not his place, but also because he was determined to be quit of servitude forever, and for that, money was a guarantee. Yet, when possible and in secret, he tried to soften or erase the hurt Mistress inflicted. He prepared a box for Sorrow's baby, lined it with sheepskin. He even tore down the advertisement posted in the village (but missed the one in the meetinghouse). Lina, however, was unapproachable, asking nothing and reluctant to accept whatever was offered. The hogshead cheese he and Willard had made was still wrapped in cloth in the toolshed where she now slept. Such were the ravages of Vaark's death. And the consequences of women in thrall to men or pointedly without them. Or so he concluded. He had no proof of what was in their minds, but based on his own experience he was certain betrayal was the poison of the day. |
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Sad. They once thought they were a kind of family because together they had carved companionship out of isolation. But the family they imagined they had become was false. Whatever each one loved, sought or escaped, their futures were separate and anyone's guess. One thing was certain, courage alone would not be enough. Minus bloodlines, he saw nothing yet on the horizon to unite them. Nevertheless, remembering how the curate described what existed before Creation, Scully saw dark matter out there, thick, unknowable, aching to be made into a world. Perhaps their wages were not as much as the blacksmith's, but for Scully and Mr. Bond it was enough to imagine a future. I walk the night through. Alone. It is hard without Sir's boots. Wearing them I could cross a stony riverbed. Move quickly through forests and down hills of nettles. What I read or cipher is useless now. Heads of dogs, garden snakes, all that is pointless. But my way is clear after losing you who I am thinking always as my life and my security from harm, from any who look closely at me only to throw me away. From all those who believe they have claim and rule over me. I am nothing to you. You say I am wilderness. I am. Is that a tremble on your mouth, in your eye? Are you afraid? You should be. The hammer strikes air many times before it gets to you where it dies in weakness. You wrestle it from me and toss it away. Our clashing is long. I bare my teeth to bite you, to tear you open. Malaik is screaming. You pull my arms behind me. I twist away and escape you. The tongs are there, close by. Close by. I am swinging and swinging hard. Seeing you stagger and bleed I run. Then walk. Then float. An ice floe cut away from the riverbank in deep winter. I have no shoes. I have no kicking heart no home no tomorrow. I walk the day. I walk the night. The feathers close. For now. It is three months since I run from you and I never before see leaves make this much blood and brass. Color so loud it hurts the eye and for relief I must stare at the heavens high above the tree line. At night when day-bright gives way to stars jeweling the cold black sky, I leave Lina sleeping and come to this room. If you are live or ever you heal you will have to bend down to read my telling, crawl perhaps in a few places. I apologize for the discomfort. Sometimes the tip of the nail skates away and the forming of words is disorderly. Reverend Father never likes that. He raps our fingers and makes us do it over. In the beginning when I come to this room I am certain the telling will give me the tears I never have. I am wrong. Eyes dry, I stop telling only when the lamp burns down. Then I sleep among my words. The telling goes on without dream and when I wake it takes time to pull away, leave this room and do chores. Chores that are making no sense. We clean the chamber pot but are never to use it. We build tall crosses for the graves in the meadow then remove them, cut them shorter and put them back. We clean where Sir dies but cannot be anywhere else in this house. Spiders reign in comfort here and robins make nests in peace. All manner of small life enters the windows along with cutting wind. I shelter lamp flame with my body and bear the wind's cold teeth biting as though winter cannot wait to bury us. Mistress is not mindful of how cold the outhouses are nor is she remembering what night chill does to an infant. Mistress has cure but she is not well. Her heart is infidel. All smiles are gone. Each time she returns from the meetinghouse her eyes are nowhere and have no inside. |
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Like the eyes of the women who examine me behind the closet door, Mistress' eyes only look out and what she is seeing is not to her liking. Her dress is dark and quiet. She prays much. She makes us all, Lina, Sorrow, Sorrow's daughter and me, no matter the weather, sleep either in the cowshed or the storeroom where bricks rope tools all manner of building waste are. Outside sleeping is for savages she says, so no more hammocks under trees for Lina and me even in fine weather. And no more fireplace for Sorrow and her baby girl because Mistress does not like the baby. One night of ice-cold rain Sorrow shelters herself and the baby here, downstairs behind the door in the room where Sir dies. Mistress slaps her face. Many times. She does not know I am here every night else she will whip me too as she believes her piety demands. Her churchgoing alters her but I don't believe they tell her to behave that way. These rules are her own and she is not the same. Scully and Willard say she is putting me up for sale. But not Lina. Sorrow she wants to give away but no one offers to take her. Sorrow is a mother. Nothing more nothing less. I like her devotion to her baby girl. She will not be called Sorrow. She has changed her name and is planning escape. She wants me to go with her but I have a thing to finish here. Worse is how Mistress is to Lina. She requires her company on the way to church but sits her by the road in all weather because she cannot enter. Lina can no longer bathe in the river and must cultivate alone. I am never hearing how they once talk and laugh together while tending garden. Lina is wanting to tell me, remind me that she early warns me about you. But her reasons for the warning make the warning itself wrong. I am remembering what you tell me from long ago when Sir is not dead. You say you see slaves freer than free men. One is a lion in the skin of an ass. The other is an ass in the skin of a lion. That it is the withering inside that enslaves and opens the door for what is wild. I know my withering is born in the Widow's closet. I know the claws of the feathered thing did break out on you because I cannot stop them wanting to tear you open the way you tear me. Still, there is another thing. A lion who thinks his mane is all. A she-lion who does not. I learn this from Daughter Jane. Her bloody legs do not stop her. She risks. Risks all to save the slave you throw out. There is no more room in this room. These words cover the floor. From now you will stand to hear me. The walls make trouble because lamplight is too small to see by. I am holding light in one hand and carving letters with the other. My arms ache but I have need to tell you this. I cannot tell it to anyone but you. I am near the door and at the closing now. What will I do with my nights when the telling stops? Dreaming will not come again. Sudden I am remembering. You won't read my telling. You read the world but not the letters of talk. You don't know how to. Maybe one day you will learn. If so, come to this farm again, part the snakes in the gate you made, enter this big, awing house, climb the stairs and come inside this talking room in daylight. If you never read this, no one will. These careful words, closed up and wide open, will talk to themselves. Round and round, side to side, bottom to top, top to bottom all across the room. Or. Or perhaps no. Perhaps these words need the air that is out in the world. Need to fly up then fall, fall like ash over acres of primrose and mallow. |
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Over a turquoise lake, beyond the eternal hemlocks, through clouds cut by rainbow and flavor the soil of the earth. Lina will help. She finds horror in this house and much as she needs to be Mistress' need I know she loves fire more. See? You are correct. A minha mae too. I am become wilderness but I am also Florens. In full. Unforgiven. Unforgiving. No ruth, my love. None. Hear me? Slave. Free. I last. I will keep one sadness. That all this time I cannot know what my mother is telling me. Nor can she know what I am wanting to tell her. Mae, you can have pleasure now because the soles of my feet are hard as cypress. Neither one will want your brother. I know their tastes. Breasts provide the pleasure more than simpler things. Yours are rising too soon and are becoming irritated by the cloth covering your little girl chest. And they see and I see them see. No good follows even if I offered you to one of the boys in the quarter. Figo. You remember him. He was the gentle one with the horses and played with you in the yard. I saved the rinds for him and sweet bread to take to the others. Bess, his mother, knew my mind and did not disagree. She watched over her son like a hawk as I did over you. But it never does any lasting good, my love. There was no protection. None. Certainly not with your vice for shoes. It was as though you were hurrying up your breasts and hurrying also the lips of an old married couple. Understand me. There was no protection and nothing in the catechism to tell them no. I tried to tell Reverend Father. I hoped if we could learn letters somehow someday you could make your way. Reverend Father was full of kindness and bravery and said it was what God wanted no matter if they fined him, imprisoned him or hunted him down with gunfire for it as they did other priests who taught we to read. He believed we would love God more if we knew the letters to read by. I don't know that. What I know is there is magic in learning. When the tall man with yellow hair came to dine, I saw he hated the food and I saw things in his eyes that said he did not trust Senhor, Senhora or their sons. His way, I thought, is another way. His country far from here. There was no animal in his heart. He never looked at me the way Senhor does. He did not want. I don't know who is your father. It was too dark to see any of them. They came at night and took we three including Bess to a curing shed. Shadows of men sat on barrels, then stood. They said they were told to break we in. There is no protection. To be female in this place is to be an open wound that cannot heal. Even if scars form, the festering is ever below. Insults had been moving back and forth to and fro for many seasons between the king of we families and the king of others. I think men thrive on insults over cattle, women, water, crops. Everything heats up and finally the men of their families burn we houses and collect those they cannot kill or find for trade. Bound with vine one to another we are moved four times, each time more trading, more culling, more dying. We increase in number or we decrease in number until maybe seven times ten or ten times ten of we are driven into a holding pen. There we see men we believe are ill or dead. We soon learn they are neither. Their skin was confusing. The men guarding we and selling we are black. Two have hats and strange pieces of cloth at their throats. They assure we that the whitened men do not want to eat we. Still it is the continue of all misery. |
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for ever. As far as anyone knew. He lived somewhere in the insanitary bowels of the old wooden-house quarter and his wife grew lotus-roots and other curious vegetables on one of the many "floating gardens" lilting on the surface of the spring and summer water. Tai himself cheerily admitted he had no idea of his age. Neither did his wife — he was, she said, already leathery when they married. His face was a sculpture of wind on water: ripples made of hide. He had two golden teeth and no others. In the town, he had few friends. Few boatmen or traders invited him to share a hookah when he floated past the shikara moorings or one of the lakes' many ramshackle, waterside provision-stores and tea-shops. The general opinion of Tai had been voiced long ago by Aadam Aziz's father the gemstone merchant: "His brain fell out with his teeth." (But now old Aziz Sahib sat lost in bird tweets while Tai simply, grandly, continued.) It was an impression the boatman fostered by his chatter, which was fantastic, grandiloquent and ceaseless, and as often as not addressed only to himself. Sound carries over water, and the lake people giggled at his monologues; but with undertones of awe, and even fear. Awe, because the old half-wit knew the lakes and hills better than any of his detractors; fear, because of his claim to an antiquity so immense it defied numbering, and moreover hung so lightly round his chicken's neck that it hadn't prevented him from winning a highly desirable wife and fathering four sons upon her ... and a few more, the story went, on other lakeside wives. The young bucks at the shikara moorings were convinced he had a pile of money hidden away somewhere — a hoard, perhaps, of priceless golden teeth, rattling in a sack like walnuts. Years later, when Uncle Puffs tried to sell me his daughter by offering to have her teeth drawn and replaced in gold, I thought of Tai's forgotten treasure ... and, as a child, Aadam Aziz had loved him. He made his living as a simple ferryman, despite all the rumors of wealth, taking hay and goats and vegetables and wood across the lakes for cash; people, too. When he was running his taxi-service he erected a pavilion in the center of the shikara, a gay affair of flowered-patterned curtains and canopy, with cushions to match; and deodorized his boat with incense. The sight of Tai's shikara approaching, curtains flying, had always been for Doctor Aziz one of the defining images of the coming of spring. Soon the English sahibs would arrive and Tai would ferry them to the Shalimar Gardens and the King's Spring, chattering and pointy and stooped. He was the living antithesis of Oskar-Ilse-Ingrid's belief in the inevitability of change ... a quirky, enduring familiar spirit of the valley. A watery Caliban, rather too fond of cheap Kashmiri brandy. Memory of my blue bedroom wall: on which, next to the P. M.'s letter, the Boy Raleigh hung for many years, gazing rapturously at an old fisherman in what looked like a red dhoti, who sat on — what? — driftwood? — and pointed out to sea as he told his fishy tales ... and the Boy Aadam, my grandfather-to-be, fell in love with the boatman Tai precisely because of the endless verbiage which made others think him cracked. It was magical talk, words pouring from him like fools' money, past his two gold teeth, laced with hiccups and brandy, soaring up to the most remote Himalayas of the past, then swooping shrewdly on some present detail, Aadam's nose for instance, to vivisect its meaning like a mouse. |
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They tell me there are dynasties waiting in it ..." And he bit his tongue because he had been about to add, "... like snot." And Ghani, who had stood blindly beside the sheet for three long years, smiling and smiling and smiling, began once again to smile his secret smile, which was mirrored in the lips of the wrestlers. Meanwhile, the boatman, Tai, had taken his unexplained decision to give up washing. In a valley drenched in freshwater lakes, where even the very poorest people could (and did) pride themselves on their cleanliness, Tai chose to stink. For three years now, he had neither bathed nor washed himself after answering calls of nature. He wore the same clothes, unwashed, year in, year out; his one concession to winter was to put his chugha-coat over his putrescent pajamas. The little basket of hot coals which he carried inside the chugha, in the Kashmiri fashion, to keep him warm in the bitter cold, only animated and accentuated his evil odors. He took to drifting slowly past the Aziz household, releasing the dreadful fumes of his body across the small garden and into the house. Flowers died; birds fled from the ledge outside old Father Aziz's window. Naturally, Tai lost work; the English in particular were reluctant to be ferried about by a human cesspit. The story went around the lake that Tai's wife, driven to distraction by the old man's sudden filthiness, pleaded for a reason. He had answered: "Ask our foreign-returned doctor, ask that nakkoo, that German Aziz." Was it, then, an attempt to offend the Doctor's hypersensitive nostrils (in which the itch of danger had subsided somewhat under the anaesthetizing ministrations of love)? Or a gesture of unchangingness in defiance of the invasion of the doctori-attachE from Heidelberg? Once Aziz asked the ancient, straight out, what it was all for; but Tai only breathed on him and rowed away. The breath nearly felled Aziz; it was sharp as an axe. In 1918, Doctor Aziz's father, deprived of his birds, died in his sleep; and at once his mother, who had been able to sell the gemstone business thanks to the success of Aziz's practice, and who now saw her husband's death as a merciful release for her from a life filled with responsibilities, took to her own deathbed and followed her man before the end of his own forty-day mourning period. By the time the Indian regiments returned at the end of the war, Doctor Aziz was an orphan, and a free man — except that his heart had fallen through a hole some seven inches across. Desolating effect of Tai's behavior: it ruined Doctor Aziz's good relations with the lake's floating population. He, who as a child had chatted freely with fishwives and flower-sellers, found himself looked at askance. "Ask that nakkoo, that German Aziz." Tai had branded him as an alien, and therefore a person not completely to be trusted. They didn't like the boatman, but they found the transformation which the Doctor had evidently worked upon him even more disturbing. Aziz found himself suspected, even ostracized, by the poor; and it hurt him badly. Now he understood what Tai was up to: the man was trying to chase him out of the valley. The story of the perforated sheet got out, too. The lady wrestlers were evidently less discreet than they looked. Aziz began to notice people pointing at him. Women giggled behind their palms ... "I've decided to give Tai his victory," he said. The three lady wrestlers, two holding up the sheet, the third hovering near the door, strained to hear him through the cotton wool in their ears. |
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Accordingly — and surreptitiously so as to preserve the secrets of the forthcoming theatricals — I am ransacking the house for a spectral disguise. My grandfather is out and about his rounds. I am in his room. And here on top of this cupboard is an old trunk, covered in dust and spiders, but unlocked. And here, inside it, is the answer to my prayers. Not just a sheet, but one with a hole already cut in it! Here it is, inside this leather bag inside this trunk, right beneath an old stethoscope and a tube of mildewed Vick's Inhaler ... the sheet's appearance in our show was nothing less than a sensation. My grandfather took one look at it and rose roaring to his feet. He strode up on stage and unghosted me right in front of everyone. My grandmother's lips were so tightly pursed they seemed to disappear. Between them, the one booming at me in the voice of a forgotten boatman, the other conveying her fury through vanished lips, they reduced the awesome ghost to a weeping wreck. I fled, took to my heels and ran into the little cornfield, not knowing what had happened. I sat there — perhaps on the very spot on which Nadir Khan had sat! — for several hours, swearing over and over that I would never again open a forbidden trunk, and feeling vaguely resentful that it had not been locked in the first place. But I knew, from their rage, that the sheet was somehow very important indeed.) I have been interrupted by Padma, who brought me my dinner and then withheld it, blackmailing me: "So if you're going to spend all your time wrecking your eyes with that scribbling, at least you must read it to me." I have been singing for my supper — but perhaps our Padma will be useful, because it's impossible to stop her being a critic. She is particularly angry with my remarks about her name. "What do you know, city boy?" she cried — hand slicing the air. "In my village there is no shame in being named for the Dung Goddess. Write at once that you are wrong, completely." In accordance with my lotus's wishes, I insert, forthwith, a brief paean to Dung. Dung, that fertilizes and causes the crops to grow! Dung, which is patted into thin chapati-like cakes when still fresh and moist, and is sold to the village builders, who use it to secure and strengthen the walls of kachcha buildings made of mud! Dung, whose arrival from the nether end of cattle goes a long way towards explaining their divine and sacred status! Oh, yes, I was wrong, I admit I was prejudiced, no doubt because its unfortunate odors do have a way of offending my sensitive nose — how wonderful, how ineffably lovely it must be to be named for the Purveyor of Dung! ... On April 6th, 1919, the holy city of Amritsar smelled (gloriously, Padma, celestially!) of excrement. And perhaps the (beauteous!) reek did not offend the Nose on my grandfather's face — after all, Kashmiri peasants used it, as described above, for a kind of plaster. Even in Srinagar, hawkers with barrows of round dung-cakes were not an uncommon sight. But then the stuff was drying, muted, useful. Amritsar dung was fresh and (worse) redundant. Nor was it all bovine. It issued from the rumps of the horses between the shafts of the city's many tongas, ikkas and gharries; and mules and men and dogs attended nature's calls, mingling in a brotherhood of shit. But there were cows, too: sacred kine roaming the dusty streets, each patrolling its own territory, staking its claims in excrement. And flies! Public Enemy Number One, buzzing gaily from turd to steaming turd, celebrated and cross-pollinated these freely-given offerings. |
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The old men at the paan-shop at the top of Cornwallis Road chewed betel and suspected a trick. "I have lived twice as long as I should have," the oldest one said, his voice crackling like an old radio because decades were rubbing up against each other around his vocal chords, "and I've never seen so many people so cheerful in such a bad time. It is the Devil's work." It was, indeed, a resilient virus — the weather alone should have discouraged such germs from breeding, since it had become clear that the rains had failed. The earth was cracking. Dust ate the edges of roads, and on some days huge gaping fissures appeared in the midst of macadamed intersections. The betel-chewers at the paan-shop had begun to talk about omens; calming themselves with their game of hit-the-spittoon, they speculated upon the numberless nameless Godknowswhats that might now issue from the Assuring earth. Apparently a Sikh from the bicycle-repair shop had had his turban pushed off his head in the heat of one afternoon, when his hair, without any reason, had suddenly stood on end. And, more prosaically, the water shortage had reached the point where milkmen could no longer find clean water with which to adulterate the milk ... Far away, there was a World War in progress once again. In Agra, the heat mounted. But still my grandfather whistled. The old men at the paan-shop found his whistling in rather poor taste, given the circumstances. (And I, like them, expectorate and rise above fissures.) Astride his bicycle, leather attachE attached to carrier, my grandfather whistled. Despite irritations of the nose, his lips pursed. Despite a bruise on his chest which had refused to fade for twenty-three years, his good humor was unimpaired. Air passed his lips and was transmuted into sound. He whistled an old German tune: Tannenbaum. The optimism epidemic had been caused by one single human being, whose name, Mian Abdullah, was only used by newspapermen. To everyone else, he was the Hummingbird, a creature which would be impossible if it did not exist. "Magician turned conjurer," the newspapermen wrote, "Mian Abdullah rose from the famous magicians' ghetto in Delhi to become the hope of India's hundred million Muslims." The Hummingbird was the founder, chairman, unifier and moving spirit of the Free Islam Convocation; and in 1942, marquees and rostrums were being erected on the Agra maidan, where the Convocation's second annual assembly was about to take place. My grandfather, fifty-two-years-old, his hair turned white by the years and other afflictions, had begun whistling as he passed the maidan. Now he leaned round corners on his bicycle, taking them at a jaunty angle, threading his way between cowpats and children ... and, in another time and place, told his friend the Rani of Cooch Naheen: "I started off as a Kashmiri and not much of a Muslim. Then I got a bruise on the chest that turned me into an Indian. I'm still not much of a Muslim, but I'm all for Abdullah. He's fighting my fight." His eyes were still the blue of Kashmiri sky ... he arrived home, and although his eyes retained a glimmer of contentment, the whistling stopped; because waiting for him in the courtyard filled with malevolent geese were the disapproving features of my grandmama, Naseem Aziz, whom he had made the mistake of loving in fragments, and who was now unified and transmuted into the formidable figure she would always remain, and who was always known by the curious title of Reverend Mother. |
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Say about two thousand of these; that left six thousand four hundred and twenty of the curs, and all of these turned and ran for the University, many of them rushing across the railway tracks from the wrong side of town. It is well known that this is true. Everyone in town saw it, except those who were asleep. They went noisily, like an army, and afterwards their trail was littered with bones and dung and bits of hair ... and all the time Abdullahji was humming, humming-humming, and the knives were singing. And know this: suddenly one of the killers' eyes cracked and fell out of its socket. Afterwards the pieces of glass were found, ground into the carpet!" They say, "When the dogs came Abdullah was nearly dead and the knives were blunt ... they came like wild things, leaping through the window, which had no glass because Abdullah's hum had shattered it ... they thudded against the door until the wood broke ... and then they were everywhere, baba! ... some without legs, others lacking hair, but most of them had some teeth at least, and some of these were sharp ... And now see this: the assassins cannot have feared interruption, because they had posted no guards; so the dogs got them by surprise ... the two men holding Nadir Khan, that spineless one, fell beneath the weight of the beasts, with maybe sixty-eight dogs on their necks ... afterwards the killers were so badly damaged that nobody could say who they were." "At some point," they say, "Nadir dived out of the window and ran. The dogs and assassins were too busy to follow him." Dogs? Assassins? ... If you don't believe me, check. Find out about Mian Abdullah and his Convocations. Discover how we've swept his story under the carpet ... then let me tell how Nadir Khan, his lieutenant, spent three years under my family's rugs. As a young man he had shared a room with a painter whose paintings had grown larger and larger as he tried to get the whole of life into his art. "Look at me," he said before he killed himself, "I wanted to be a miniaturist and I've got elephantiasis instead!" The swollen events of the night of the crescent knives reminded Nadir Khan of his room-mate, because life had once again, perversely, refused to remain lifesized. It had turned melodramatic: and that embarrassed him. How did Nadir Khan run across the night town without being noticed? I put it down to his being a bad poet, and as such, a born survivor. As he ran, there was a self-consciousness about him, his body appearing to apologize for behaving as if it were in a cheap thriller, of the sort hawkers sell on railway stations, or give away free with bottles of green medicine that can cure colds, typhoid, impotence, homesickness and poverty ... On Cornwallis Road, it was a warm night. A coal-brazier stood empty by the deserted rickshaw rank. The paan-shop was closed and the old men were asleep on the roof, dreaming of tomorrow's game. An insomniac cow, idly chewing a Red and White cigarette packet, strolled by a bundled street-sleeper, which meant he would wake in the morning, because a cow will ignore a sleeping man unless he's about to die. Then it nuzzles at him thoughtfully. Sacred cows eat anything. My grandfather's large old stone house, bought from the proceeds of the gemstone shops and blind Ghani's dowry settlement, stood in the darkness, set back a dignified distance from the road. There was a walled-in garden at the rear and by the garden door was the low outhouse rented cheaply to the family of old Hamdard and his son Rashid the rickshaw boy. |
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The man needs our shelter; he will stay." Whereupon an implacable perfume, a hard cloud of determination settles upon my grandmother, who says, "Very well. You ask me, whatsitsname, for silence. So not one word, whatsitsname, will pass my lips from now on." And Aziz, groaning, "Oh, damnation, woman, spare us your crazy oaths!" But Reverend Mother's lips were sealed, and silence descended. The smell of silence, like a rotting goose-egg, fills my nostrils; overpowering everything else, it possesses the earth ... While Nadir Khan hid in his half-lit underworld, his hostess hid, too, behind a deafening wall of soundlessness. At first my grandfather probed the wall, looking for chinks; he found none. At last he gave up, and waited for her sentences to offer up their glimpses of her self, just as once he had lusted after the brief fragments of her body he had seen through a perforated sheet; and the silence filled the house, from wall to wall, from floor to ceiling, so that the flies seemed to give up buzzing, and mosquitoes refrained from humming before they bit; silence stilling the hissing of geese in the courtyard. The children spoke in whispers at first, and then fell quiet: while in the cornfield, Rashid the rickshaw boy yelled his silent "yell of hate," and kept his own vow of silence, which he had sworn upon his mother's hairs. Into this bog of muteness there came, one evening, a short man whose head was as flat as the cap upon it; whose legs were as bowed as reeds in the wind; whose nose nearly touched his up-curving chin; and whose voice, as a result, was thin and sharp — it had to be, to squeeze through the narrow gap between his breathing apparatus and his jaw ... a man whose short sight obliged him to take life one step at a time, which gained him a reputation for thoroughness and dullness, and endeared him to his superiors by enabling them to feel well-served without feeling threatened; a man whose starched, pressed uniform reeked of Blanco and rectitude, and about whom, despite his appearance of a character out of a puppet-show, there hung the unmistakable scent of success: Major Zulfikar, a man with a future, came to call, as he had promised, to tie up a few loose ends. Abdullah's murder, and Nadir Khan's suspicious disappearance, were much on his mind, and since he knew about Aadam Aziz's infection by the optimism bug, he mistook the silence in the house for a hush of mourning, and did not stay for long. (In the cellar, Nadir huddled with cockroaches.) Sitting quietly in the drawing-room with the five children, his hat and stick beside him on the Telefunken radiogram, the life-size images of the young Azizes staring at him from the walls, Major Zulfikar fell in love. He was short-sighted, but he wasn't blind, and in the impossibly adult gaze of young Emerald, the brightest of the "three bright lights," he saw that she had understood his future, and forgiven him, because of it, for his appearance; and before he left, he had decided to marry her after a decent interval. ("Her?" Padma guesses. "That hussy is your mother?" But there are other mothers-to-be, other future fathers, wafting in and out through the silence.) In that marshy time without words the emotional life of grave Alia, the eldest, was also developing; and Reverend Mother, locked up in the pantry and kitchen, sealed behind her lips, was incapable — because of her vow — of expressing her distrust of the young merchant in reccine and leathercloth who came to visit her daughter. |
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Yes, maybe he's not such a fool." My grandfather tried hard to persuade Nadir Khan that he was no longer in danger; the assassins were dead, and Mian Abdullah had been their real target; but Nadir Khan still dreamed about the singing knives, and begged, "Not yet, Doctor Sahib; please, some more time." So that one night in the late summer of 1943 — the rains had failed again — my grandfather, his voice sounding distant and eerie in that house in which so few words were spoken, assembled his children in the drawing-room where their portraits hung. When they entered they discovered that their mother was absent, having chosen to remain immured in her room with her web of silence; but present were a lawyer and (despite Aziz's reluctance, he had complied with Mumtaz's wishes) a mullah, both provided by the ailing Rani of Cooch Naheen, both "utterly discreet." And their sister Mumtaz was there in bridal finery, and beside her in a chair set in front of the radiogram was the lank-haired, overweight, embarrassed figure of Nadir Khan. So it was that the first wedding in the house was one at which there were no tents, no singers, no sweetmeats and only a minimum of guests; and after the rites were over and Nadir Khan lifted his bride's veil — giving Aziz a sudden shock, making him young for a moment, and in Kashmir again, sitting on a dais while people put rupees in his lap — my grandfather made them all swear an oath not to reveal the presence in their cellar of their new brother-in-law. Emerald, reluctantly, gave her promise last of all. After that Aadam Aziz made his sons help him carry all manner of furnishings down through the trap-door in the drawing-room floor: draperies and cushions and lamps and a big comfortable bed. And at last Nadir and Mumtaz stepped down into the vaults; the trap-door was shut and the carpet rolled into place and Nadir Khan, who loved his wife as delicately as a man ever had, had taken her into his underworld. Mumtaz Aziz began to lead a double life. By day she was a single girl, living chastely with her parents, studying mediocrely at the university, cultivating those gifts of assiduity, nobility and forbearance which were to be her hallmarks throughout her life, up to and including the time when she was assailed by the talking washing-chests of her past and then squashed flat as a rice pancake; but at night, descending through a trap-door, she entered a lamplit, secluded marriage chamber which her secret husband had taken to calling the Taj Mahal, because Taj Bibi was the name by which people had called an earlier Mumtaz — Mumtaz Mahal, wife of Emperor Shah Jehan, whose name meant "king of the world." When she died he built her that mausoleum which has been immortalized on postcards and chocolate boxes and whose outdoor corridors stink of urine and whose walls are covered in graffiti and whose echoes are tested for visitors by guides although there are signs in three languages pleading for silence. Like Shah Jehan and his Mumtaz, Nadir and his dark lady lay side by side, and lapis lazuli inlay work was their companion, because the bedridden, dying Rani of Cooch Naheen had sent them, as a wedding gift, a wondrously-carved, lapis-inlaid, gemstone-crusted silver spittoon. In their comfortable lamplit seclusion, husband and wife played the old men's game. Mumtaz made the paans for Nadir but did not like the taste herself. She spat streams of nibu-pani. His jets were red and hers were lime. It was the happiest time of her life. |
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Nowadays, the cities are full of modern, fashionable, dupatta-less misses; but back then the old men clicked their tongues in sorrow, because a woman without a dupatta was a woman without honor, and why had Emerald Bibi chosen to leave her honor at home? The old ones were baffled, but Emerald knew. She saw, clearly, freshly in the after-the-rain air, that the fountainhead of her family's troubles was that cowardly plumpie (yes, Padma) who lived underground. If she could get rid of him everyone would be happy again ... Emerald ran without pausing to the Cantonment district. The Cantt, where the army was based; where Major Zulfikar would be! Breaking her oath, my aunt arrived at his office. Zulfikar is a famous name amongst Muslims. It was the name of the two-pronged sword carried by Ali, the nephew of the prophet Muhammad. It was a weapon such as the world had never seen. Oh, yes: something else was happening in the world that day. A weapon such as the world had never seen was being dropped on yellow people in Japan. But in Agra, Emerald was using a secret weapon of her own. It was bandylegged, short, flat-headed; its nose almost touched its chin; it dreamed of a big modern house with a plumbed-in bath right beside the bed. Major Zulfikar had never been absolutely sure whether or not he believed Nadir Khan to have been behind the Hummingbird's murder; but he itched for the chance to find out. When Emerald told him about Agra's subterranean Taj, he became so excited that he forgot to be angry, and rushed to Cornwallis Road with a force of fifteen men. They arrived in the drawing-room with Emerald at their head. My aunt: treason with a beautiful face, no dupatta and pink loose-pajamas. Aziz watched dumbly as the soldiers rolled back the drawing-room carpet and opened the big trap-door as my grandmother attempted to console Mumtaz. "Women must marry men," she said. "Not mice, whatsitsname! There is no shame in leaving that, whatsitsname, worm." But her daughter continued to cry. Absence of Nadir in his underworld! Warned by Aziz's first roar, overcome by the embarrassment which flooded over him more easily than monsoon rain, he vanished. A trap-door flung open in one of the toilets — yes, the very one, why not, in which he had spoken to Doctor Aziz from the sanctuary of a washing-chest. A wooden "thunderbox" — a "throne" — lay on one side, empty enamel pot rolling on coir matting. The toilet had an outside door giving out on to the gully by the cornfield; the door was open. It had been locked from the outside, but only with an Indian-made lock, so it had been easy to force ... and in the soft lamplit seclusion of the Taj Mahal, a shining spittoon, and a note, addressed to Mumtaz, signed by her husband, three words long, six syllables, three exclamation marks: Talaaq! Talaaq! Talaaq! The English lacks the thunderclap sound of the Urdu, and anyway you know what it means. I divorce thee. I divorce thee. I divorce thee. Nadir Khan had done the decent thing. O awesome rage of Major Zulfy when he found the bird had flown! This was the color he saw: red. O anger fully comparable to my grandfather's fury, though expressed in petty gestures! Major Zulfy, at first, hopped up and down in helpless fits of temper; controlled himself at last; and rushed out through bathroom, past throne, alongside cornfield, through perimeter gate. No sign of a running, plump, longhair, rhymeless poet. Looking left: nothing. And right: zero. Enraged Zulfy made his choice, pelted past the cycle-rickshaw rank. |
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he walked (with his own feet) along the platform as the train began to move. A relay runner at the end of his lap, he stood wreathed in smoke and comic-book vendors and the confusion of peacock-feather fans and hot snacks and the whole lethargic hullabaloo of squatting porters and plaster animals on trolleys as the train picked up speed and headed for the capital city, accelerating into the next lap of the race. In the compartment the new Amina Sinai sat (in mint condition) with her feet on the green tin trunk which had been an inch too high to fit under the seat. With her sandals bearing down on the locked museum of her father's achievements she sped away into her new life, leaving Aadam Aziz behind to dedicate himself to an attempt to fuse the skills of Western and hakimi medicine, an attempt which would gradually wear him down, convincing him that the hegemony of superstition, mumbo-jumbo and all things magical would never be broken in India, because the hakims refused to co-operate; and as he aged and the world became less real he began to doubt his own beliefs, so that by the time he saw the God in whom he had never been able to believe or disbelieve he was probably expecting to do so. As the train pulled out of the station Ahmed Sinai jumped up and bolted the compartment door and pulled down the shutters, much to Amina's amazement; but then suddenly there were thumps outside and hands moving the doorknobs and voices saying, "Let us in, maharaj! Maharajin, are you there, ask your husband to open." And always, in all the trains in this story, there were these voices and these fists banging and pleading; in the Frontier Mail to Bombay and in all the expresses of the years; and it was always frightening, until at last I was the one on the outside, hanging on for dear life, and begging, "Hey, maharaj! Let me in, great sir." "Fare-dodgers," Ahmed Sinai said, but they were more than that. They were a prophecy. There were to be others soon. ... And now the sun was in the wrong place. She, my mother, lay in bed and felt ill-at-ease; but also excited by the thing that had happened inside her and which, for the moment, was her secret. At her side, Ahmed Sinai snored richly. No insomnia for him; none, despite the troubles which had made him bring a gray bag full of money and hide it under his bed when he thought Amina wasn't looking. My father slept soundly, wrapped in the soothing envelope of my mother's greatest gift, which turned out to be worth a good deal more than the contents of the green tin trunk: Amina Sinai gave Ahmed the gift of her inexhaustible assiduity. Nobody ever took pains the way Amina did. Dark of skin, glowing of eye, my mother was by nature the most meticulous person on earth. Assiduously, she arranged flowers in the corridors and rooms of the Old Delhi house; carpets were selected with infinite care. She could spend twenty-five minutes worrying at the positioning of a chair. By the time she'd finished with her home-making, adding tiny touches here, making fractional alterations there, Ahmed Sinai found his orphan's dwelling transformed into something gentle and loving. Amina would rise before he did, her assiduity driving her to dust everything, even the cane chick-blinds (until he agreed to employ a hamal for the purpose); but what Ahmed never knew was that his wife's talents were most dedicatedly, most determinedly applied not to the externals of their lives, but to the matter of Ahmed Sinai himself. Why had she married him? |
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Lifafa Das was rattling his drum and calling: "Come see everything, come see everything, come see! Come see Delhi, come see India, come see! Come see, come see!" But Ahmed Sinai had other things to look at. The children of the muhalla had their own names for most of the local inhabitants. One group of three neighbors was known as the "fighting-cock people," because they comprised one Sindhi and one Bengali householder whose homes were separated by one of the muhalla's few Hindu residences. The Sindhi and the Bengali had very little in common — they didn't speak the same language or cook the same food; but they were both Muslims, and they both detested the interposed Hindu. They dropped garbage on his house from their rooftops. They hurled multi-lingual abuse at him from their windows. They flung scraps of meat at his door ... while he, in turn, paid urchins to throw stones at their windows, stones with messages wrapped round them: "Wait," the messages said, "Your turn will come" ... the children of the muhalla did not call my father by his right name. They knew him as "the man who can't follow his nose." Ahmed Sinai was the possessor of a sense of direction so inept that, left to his own devices, he could even get lost in the winding gullies of his own neighborhood. Many times the street-arabs in the lanes had come across him, wandering forlornly, and been offered a four-anna chavanni piece to escort him home. I mention this because I believe that my father's gift for taking wrong turnings did not simply afflict him throughout his life; it was also a reason for his attraction to Amina Sinai (because thanks to Nadir Khan, she had shown that she could take wrong turnings, too); and, what's more, his inability to follow his own nose dripped into me, to some extent clouding the nasal inheritance I received from other places, and making me, for year after year, incapable of sniffing out true road ... But that's enough for now, because I've given the three businessmen enough time to get to the industrial estate. I shall add only that (in my opinion as a direct consequence of his lack of a sense of direction) my father was a man over whom, even in his moments of triumph, there hung the stink of future failure, the odor of a wrong turning that was just around the corner, an aroma which could not be washed away by his frequent baths. Mr. Kemal, who smelled it, would say privately to S. P. Butt, "These Kashmiri types, old boy: well-known fact they never wash." This slander connects my father to the boatman Tai ... to Tai in the grip of the self-destructive rage which made him give up being clean. At the industrial estate, night-watchmen were sleeping peacefully through the noise of the fire-engines. Why? How? Because they had made a deal with the Ravana mob, and, when tipped off about the gang's impending arrival, would take sleeping draughts and pull their charpoy beds away from the buildings of the estate. In this way the gang avoided violence, and the night-watchmen augmented their meager wages. It was an amicable and not unintelligent arrangement. Amid sleeping night-watchmen, Mr. Kemal, my father and S. P. Butt watched cremated bicycles rise up into the sky in thick black clouds. Butt father Kemal stood alongside fire-engines, as relief flooded through them, because it was the Arjuna Indiabike godown that was burning — the Arjuna brand-name, taken from a hero of Hindu mythology, had failed to disguise the fact that the company was Muslim-owned. |
| 178 |
"Give something for my shame." Tugging at her arm. Lifafa Das tugging at the other, whispering Hijra, transvestite, come away, Begum Sahiba; and Amina standing still as she is tugged in opposite directions wants to say Wait, white woman, just let me finish my business, I will take you home, feed you clothe you, send you back into your own world; but just then the woman shrugs and walks off empty-handed down the narrowing street, shrinking to a point until she vanishes — now! — into the distant meanness of the lane. And now Lifafa Das, with a curious expression on his face, says, "They're funtoosh! All finished! Soon they will all go; and then we'll be free to kill each other." Touching her belly with one light hand, she follows him into a darkened doorway while her face bursts into flames. ... While at the Old Fort, Ahmed Sinai waits for Ravana. My father in the sunset: standing in the darkened doorway of what was once a room in the ruined walls of the fort, lower lip protruding fleshily, hands clasped behind his back, head full of money worries. He was never a happy man. He smelled faintly of future failure; he mistreated servants; perhaps he wished that, instead of following his late father into the leathercloth business, he had had the strength to pursue his original ambition, the rearrangement of the Quran in accurately chronological order. (He once told me: "When Muhammed prophesied, people wrote down what he said on palm leaves, which were kept any old how in a box. After he died, Abubakr and the others tried to remember the correct sequence; but they didn't have very good memories." Another wrong turning: instead of rewriting a sacred book, my father lurked in a ruin, awaiting demons. It's no wonder he wasn't happy; and I would be no help. When I was born, I broke his big toe.) ... My unhappy father, I repeat, thinks bad-temperedly about cash. About his wife, who wheedles rupees out of him and picks his pockets at night. And his ex-wife (who eventually died in an accident, when she argued with a camel-cart driver and was bitten in the neck by the camel), who writes him endless begging letters, despite the divorce settlement. And his distant cousin Zohra, who needs dowry money from him, so that she can raise children to marry his and so get her hooks into even more of his cash. And then there are Major Zulfikar's promises of money (at this stage, Major Zulfy and my father got on very well). The Major had been writing letters saying, "You must decide for Pakistan when it comes, as it surely will. It's certain to be a goldmine for men like us. Please let me introduce you to M. A. J. himself ..." but Ahmed Sinai distrusted Muhammad Ali Jinnah, and never accepted Zulfy's offer; so when Jinnah became President of Pakistan, there would be another wrong turning to think about. And, finally, there were letters from my father's old friend, the gynecologist Doctor Narlikar, in Bombay. "The British are leaving in droves, Sinai bhai. Property is dirt cheap! Sell up; come here; buy; live the rest of your life in luxury!" Verses of the Quran had no place in a head so full of cash ... and, in the meantime, here he is, alongside S. P. Butt who will die in a train to Pakistan, and Mustapha Kemal who will be murdered by goondas in his grand Flagstaff Road house and have the words "mother-sleeping hoarder" written on his chest in his own blood ... alongside these two doomed men, waiting in the secret shadow of a ruin to spy on a black-mailer coming for his money. |
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Long-tailed and black-faced, the monkeys are possessed of an overriding sense of mission. Upupup they clamber, leaping to the topmost heights of the ruin, staking out territories, and thereafter dedicating themselves to the dismemberment, stone by stone, of the entire fortress. Padma, it's true: you've never been there, never stood in the twilight watching straining, resolute, furry creatures working at the stones, pulling and rocking, rocking and pulling, working the stones loose one at a time ... every day the monkeys send stones rolling down the walls, bouncing off angles and outcrops, crashing down into the ditches below. One day there will be no Old Fort; in the end, nothing but a pile of rubble surmounted by monkeys screaming in triumph ... and here is one monkey, scurrying along the ramparts — I shall call him Hanuman, after the monkey god who helped Prince Rama defeat the original Ravana, Hanuman of the flying chariots ... Watch him now as he arrives at this turret — his territory; as he hops chatters runs from corner to corner of his kingdom, rubbing his rear on the stones; and then pauses, sniffs something that should not be here ... Hanuman races to the alcove here, on the topmost landing, in which the three men have left three soft gray alien things. And, while monkeys dance on a roof behind the post office, Hanuman the monkey dances with rage. Pounces on the gray things. Yes, they are loose enough, won't take much rocking and pulling, pulling and rocking ... watch Hanuman now, dragging the soft gray stones to the edge of the long drop of the outside wall of the Fort. See him tear at them: rip! rap! rop! ... Look how deftly he scoops paper from the insides of the gray things, sending it down like floating rain to bathe the fallen stones in the ditch! ... Paper falling with lazy, reluctant grace, sinking like a beautiful memory into the maw of the darkness; and now, kick! thump! and again kick! the three soft gray stones go over the edge, downdown into the dark, and at last there comes a soft disconsolate plop. Hanuman, his work done, loses interest, scurries away to some distant pinnacle of his kingdom, begins to rock on a stone. ... While, down below, my father has seen a grotesque figure emerging from the gloom. Not knowing a thing about the disaster which has taken place above, he observes the monster from the shadow of his ruined room: a ragged-pajama'd creature in the headdress of a demon, a papier-machE devil-top which has faces grinning on every side of it ... the appointed representative of the Ravana gang. The collector. Hearts thumping, the three businessman watch this specter out of a peasant's nightmare vanish into the stairwell leading to the landing; and after a moment, in the stillness of the empty night, hear the devil's perfectly human oaths. "Mother-sleepers! Eunuchs from somewhere!" ... Uncomprehending, they see their bizarre tormentor emerge, rush away into the darkness, vanish. His imprecations ... "Sodomizers of asses! Sons of pigs! Eaters of their own excrement!" ... linger on the breeze. And up they go now, confusion addling their spirits; Butt finds a torn fragment of gray cloth; Mustapha Kemal stoops over a crumpled rupee; and maybe, yes, why not, my father sees a dark flurry of monkey out of the corner of an eye ... and they guess. And now their groans and Mr. Butt's shrill curses, which are echoes of the devil's oaths; and there's a battle raging, unspoken, in all their heads: money or godown or godown or money? |
| 180 |
After that, it wasn't long until September 21st, 1668, when the Company at last got its hands on the island ... and then off they went, with their Fort and land-reclamation, and before you could blink there was a city here, Bombay, of which the old tune sang: Prima in Indis, Gateway to India, Star of the East With her face to the West. Our Bombay, Padma! It was very different then, there were no night-clubs or pickle factories or Oberoi-Sheraton Hotels or movie studios; but the city grew at breakneck speed, acquiring a cathedral and an equestrian statue of the Mahratta warrior-king Sivaji which (we used to think) came to life at night and galloped awesomely through the city streets — right along Marine Drive! On Chowpatty sands! Past the great houses on Malabar Hill, round Kemp's Corner, giddily along the sea to Scandal Point! And yes, why not, on and on, down my very own Warden Road, right alongside the segregated swimming pools at Breach Candy, right up to huge Mahalaxmi Temple and the old Willingdon Club ... Throughout my childhood, whenever bad times came to Bombay, some insomniac night-walker would report that he had seen the statue moving; disasters, in the city of my youth, danced to the occult music of a horse's gray, stone hooves. And where are they now, the first inhabitants? Coconuts have done best of all. Coconuts are still beheaded daily on Chowpatty Beach; while on Juhu Beach, under the languid gaze of film stars at the Sun 'n' Sand hotel, small boys still shin up coconut palms and bring down the bearded fruit. Coconuts even have their own festival, Coconut Day, which was celebrated a few days before my synchronistic birth. You may feel reassured about coconuts. Rice has not been so lucky; rice-paddies lie under concrete now; tenements tower where once rice wallowed within sight of the sea. But still, in the city, we are great rice-eaters. Patna rice, Basmati, Kashmiri rice travels to the metropolis daily; so the original, ur-rice has left its mark upon us all, and cannot be said to have died in vain. As for Mumbadevi — she's not so popular these days, having been replaced by elephant-headed Ganesh in the people's affections. The calendar of festivals reveals her decline: Ganesh — "Ganpati Baba" — has his day of Ganesh Chaturthi, when huge processions are "taken out" and march to Chowpatty bearing plaster effigies of the god, which they hurl into the sea. Ganesh's day is a rain-making ceremony, it makes the monsoon possible, and it, too, was celebrated in the days before my arrival at the end of the ticktock countdown — but where is Mumbadevi's day? It is not on the calendar. Where the prayers of pomfret folk, the devotions of crab-catchers? ... Of all the first inhabitants, the Koli fishermen have come off worst of all. Squashed now into a tiny village in the thumb of the hand-like peninsula, they have admittedly given their name to a district — Colaba. But follow Colaba Causeway to its tip — past cheap clothes shops and Irani restaurants and the second-rate flats of teachers, journalists and clerks — and you'll find them, trapped between the naval base and the sea. And sometimes Koli women, their hands stinking of pomfret guts and crabmeat, jostle arrogantly to the head of a Colaba bus-queue, with their crimson (or purple) saris hitched brazenly up between their legs, and a smarting glint of old defeats and dispossessions in their bulging and somewhat fishy eyes. A fort, and afterwards a city, took their land; pile-drivers stole (tetrapods would steal) pieces of their sea. |
| 181 |
Look, Begum: moth-eaten! You forgot to put in any naphthalene balls!" But now the countdown will not be denied ... eighteen hours; seventeen; sixteen ... and already, at Doctor Narlikar's Nursing Home, it is possible to hear the shrieks of a woman in labor. Wee Willie Winkie is here; and his wife Vanita; she had been in a protracted, unproductive labor for eight hours now. The first pangs hit her just as, hundreds of miles away, M. A. Jinnah announced the midnight birth of a Muslim nation ... but still she writhes on a bed in the Narlikar Home's "charity ward" (reserved for the babies of the poor) ... her eyes are standing half-way out of her head, her body glistens with sweat, but the baby shows no signs of coming, nor is its father present; it is eight o'clock in the morning, but there is still the possibility that, given the circumstances, the baby could be waiting for midnight. Rumors in the city: "The statue galloped last night!" ... "And the stars are unfavorable!" ... But despite these signs of ill-omen, the city was poised, with a new myth glinting in the corners of its eyes. August in Bombay: a month of festivals, the month of Krishna's birthday and Coconut Day; and this year — fourteen hours to go, thirteen, twelve — there was an extra festival on the calendar, a new myth to celebrate, because a nation which had never previously existed was about to win its freedom, catapulting us into a world which, although it had five thousand years of history, although it had invented the game of chess and traded with Middle Kingdom Egypt, was nevertheless quite imaginary; into a mythical land, a country which would never exist except by the efforts of a phenomenal collective will — except in a dream we all agreed to dream; it was a mass fantasy shared in varying degrees by Bengali and Punjabi, Madrasi and Jat, and would periodically need the sanctification and renewal which can only be provided by rituals of blood. India, the new myth — a collective fiction in which anything was possible, a fable rivalled only by the two other mighty fantasies: money and God. I have been, in my time, the living proof of the fabulous nature of this collective dream; but for the moment, I shall turn away from these generalized, macrocosmic notions to concentrate upon a more private ritual; I shall not describe the mass blood-letting in progress on the frontiers of the divided Punjab (where the partitioned nations are washing themselves in one another's blood, and a certain Punchinello-faced Major Zulfikar is buying refugee property at absurdly low prices, laying the foundations of a fortune that will rival the Nizam of Hyderabad's); I shall avert my eyes from the violence in Bengal and the long pacifying walk of Mahatma Gandhi. Selfish? Narrow-minded? Well, perhaps; but excusably so, in my opinion. After all, one is not born every day. Twelve hours to go. Amina Sinai, having awakened from her flypaper nightmare, will not sleep again until after ... Ramram Seth is filling her head, she is adrift in a turbulent sea in which waves of excitement alternate with deep, giddying, dark, watery hollows of fear. But something else is in operation, too. Watch her hands — as, without any conscious instructions, they press down, hard, upon her womb; watch her lips, muttering without her knowledge: "Come on, slowpoke, you don't want to be late for the newspapers!" Eight hours to go ... at four o'clock that afternoon, William Methwold drives up the two-storey hillock in his black 1946 Rover. |
| 182 |
The monster in the streets has already begun to celebrate; the new myth courses through its veins, replacing its blood with corpuscles of saffron and green. And in Delhi, a wiry serious man sits in the Assembly Hall and prepares to make a speech. At Methwold's Estate goldfish hang stilly in ponds while the residents go from house to house bearing pistachio sweetmeats, embracing and kissing one another — green pistachio is eaten, and saffron laddoo-balls. Two children move down secret passages while in Agra an ageing doctor sits with his wife, who has two moles on her face like witchnipples, and in the midst of sleeping geese and motheaten memories they are somehow struck silent, and can find nothing to say. And in all the cities all the towns all the villages the little dia-lamps burn on window-sills porches verandahs, while trains burn in the Punjab, with the green flames of blistering paint and the glaring saffron of fired fuel, like the biggest dias in the world. And the city of Lahore, too, is burning. The wiry serious man is getting to his feet. Anointed with holy water from the Tanjore River, he rises; his forehead smeared with sanctified ash, he clears his throat. Without written speech in hand, without having memorized any prepared words, Jawaharlal Nehru begins: "... Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny; and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge — not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially ..." It is two minutes to twelve. At Doctor Narlikar's Nursing Home, the dark glowing doctor, accompanied by a midwife called Flory, a thin kind lady of no importance, encourages Amina Sinai: "Push! Harder! ... I can see the head! ..." while in the neighboring room one Doctor Bose — with Miss Mary Pereira by his side — presides over the terminal stages of Vanita's twenty-four-hour labor ... "Yes; now; just one last try, come on; at last, and then it will be over! ..." Women wail and shriek while in another room men are silent. Wee Willie Winkie — incapable of song — squats in a corner, rocking back and forth, back and forth ... and Ahmed Sinai is looking for a chair. But there are no chairs in this room; it is a room designated for pacing; so Ahmed Sinai opens a door, finds a chair at a deserted receptionist's desk, lifts it, carries it back into the pacing room, where Wee Willie Winkie rocks, rocks, his eyes as empty as a blind man's ... will she live? won't she? ... and now, at last, it is midnight. The monster in the streets has begun to roar, while in Delhi a wiry man is saying, "... At the stroke of the midnight hour, while the world sleeps, India awakens to life and freedom ..." And beneath the roar of the monster there are two more yells, cries, bellows, the howls of children arriving in the world, their unavailing protests mingling with the din of independence which hangs saffron-and-green in the night sky — "A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new; when an age ends; and when the soul of a nation long suppressed finds utterance ..." while in a room with saffron-and-green carpet Ahmed Sinai is still clutching a chair when Doctor Narlikar enters to inform him: "On the stroke of midnight, Sinai brother, your Begum Sahiba gave birth to a large, healthy child: a son!" Now my father began to think about me (not knowing ...); with the image of my face filling his thoughts he forgot about the chair; possessed by the love of me (even though ...), filled with it from top of head to fingertips, he let the chair fall. |
| 183 |
Did somebody see? ... As for me, as I grew up, I didn't quite accept my mother's explanation, either; but it lulled me into a sense of false security; so that, even though something of Mary's suspicions had leaked into me, I was still taken by surprise when ... Perhaps the fisherman's finger was not pointing at the letter in the frame; because if one followed it even further, it led one out through the window, down the two-storey hillock, across Warden Road, beyond Breach Candy Pools, and out to another sea which was not the sea in the picture; a sea on which the sails of Koli dhows glowed scarlet in the setting sun ... an accusing finger, then, which obliged us to look at the city's dispossessed. Or maybe — and this idea makes me feel a little shivery despite the heat — it was a finger of warning, its purpose to draw attention to itself; yes, it could have been, why not, a prophecy of another finger, a finger not dissimilar from itself, whose entry into my story would release the dreadful logic of Alpha and Omega ... my God, what a notion! How much of my future hung above my crib, just waiting for me to understand it? How many warnings was I given — how many did I ignore? ... But no. I will not be a "madman from somewhere," to use Padma's eloquent phrase. I will not succumb to cracked digressions; not while I have the strength to resist the cracks. When Amina Sinai and Baby Saleem arrived home in a borrowed Studebaker, Ahmed Sinai brought a manila envelope along for the ride. Inside the envelope: a pickle-jar, emptied of lime kasaundy, washed, boiled, purified — and now, refilled. A well-sealed jar, with a rubber diaphragm stretched over its tin lid and held in place by a twisted rubber band. What was sealed beneath rubber, preserved in glass, concealed in manila? This: travelling home with father, mother and baby was a quantity of briny water in which, floating gently, hung an umbilical cord. (But was it mine or the Other's? That's something I can't tell you.) While the newly-hired ayah, Mary Pereira, made her way to Methwold's Estate by bus, an umbilical cord travelled in state in the glove compartment of a film magnate's Studey. While Baby Saleem grew towards manhood, umbilical tissue hung unchanging in bottled brine, at the back of a teak almirah. And when, years later, our family entered its exile in the Land of the Pure, when I was struggling towards purity, umbilical cords would briefly have their day. Nothing was thrown away; baby and afterbirth were both retained; both arrived at Methwold's Estate; both awaited their time. I was not a beautiful baby. Baby-snaps reveal that my large moon-face was too large; too perfectly round. Something lacking in the region of the chin. Fair skin curved across my features — but birthmarks disfigured it; dark stains spread down my western hairline, a dark patch colored my eastern ear. And my temples: too prominent: bulbous Byzantine domes. (Sonny Ibrahim and I were born to be friends — when we bumped our foreheads, Sonny's forcep-hollows permitted my bulby temples to nestle within them, as snugly as carpenter's joints.) Amina Sinai, immeasurably relieved by my single head, gazed upon it with redoubled maternal fondness, seeing it through a beautifying mist, ignoring the ice-like eccentricity of my sky-blue eyes, the temples like stunted horns, even the rampant cucumber of the nose. Baby Saleem's nose: it was monstrous; and it ran. Intriguing features of my early life: large and unbeautiful as I was, it appears I was not content. |
| 184 |
Winkie and the fisherman's finger were two of the few survivals of the days of William Methwold, because after the Englishman's disappearance his successors emptied his palaces of their abandoned contents. Lila Sabarmati preserved her pianola; Ahmed Sinai kept his whisky-cabinet; old man Ibrahim came to terms with ceiling-fans; but the goldfish died, some from starvation, others as a result of being so colossally overfed that they exploded in little clouds of scales and undigested fish-food; the dogs ran wild, and eventually ceased to roam the Estate; and the fading clothes in the old almirahs were distributed amongst the sweeper-women and other servants on the Estate, so that for years afterwards the heirs of William Methwold were cared for by men and women wearing the increasingly ragged shirts and cotton print dresses of their erstwhile masters. But Winkie and the picture on my wall survived; singer and fisherman became institutions of our lives, like the cocktail hour, which was already a habit too powerful to be broken. "Each little tear and sorrow," Winkie sang, "only brings you closer to me ..." And his voice grew worse and worse, until it sounded like a sitar whose resonating drum, made out of lacquered pumpkin, had been eaten away by mice; "It's asthma," he insisted stubbornly. Before he died he lost his voice completely; doctors revised his diagnosis to throat cancer; but they were wrong, too, because Winkie died of no disease but of the bitterness of losing a wife whose infidelity he never suspected. His son, named Shiva after the god of procreation and destruction, sat at his feet in those early days, silently bearing the burden of being the cause (or so he thought) of his father's slow decline; and gradually, down the years, we watched his eyes filling with an anger which could not be spoken; we watched his fists close around pebbles and hurl them, ineffectually at first, more dangerously as he grew, into the surrounding emptiness. When Lila Sabarmati's elder son was eight, he took it upon himself to tease young Shiva about his surliness, his unstarched shorts, his knobbly knees; whereupon the boy whom Mary's crime had doomed to poverty and accordions hurled a sharp flat stone, with a cutting edge like a razor, and blinded his tormentor in the right eye. After Eyeslice's accident, Wee Willie Winkie came to Methwold's Estate alone, leaving his son to enter the dark labyrinths from which only a war would save him. Why Methwold's Estate continued to tolerate Wee Willie Winkie despite the decay of his voice and the violence of his son: he had, once, given them an important clue about their lives. "The first birth," he had said, "will make you real." As a direct result of Winkie's clue, I was, in my early days, highly in demand. Amina and Mary vied for my attention; but in every house on the Estate, there were people who wanted to know me; and eventually Amina, allowing her pride in my popularity to overcome her reluctance to let me out of her sight, agreed to lend me, on a kind of rota basis, to the various families on the hill. Pushed by Mary Pereira in a sky-blue pram, I began a triumphal progress around the red-tiled palaces, gracing each in turn with my presence, and making them seem real to their owners. And so, looking back now through the eyes of Baby Saleem, I can reveal most of the secrets of my neighborhood, because the grown-ups lived their lives in my presence without fear of being observed, not knowing that, years later, someone would look back through baby-eyes and decide to let the cats out of their bags. |
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So here is old man Ibrahim, dying with worry because, back in Africa, governments are nationalizing his sisal plantations; here is his elder son Ishaq fretting over his hotel business, which is running into debt, so that he is obliged to borrow money from local gangsters; here are Ishaq's eyes, coveting his brother's wife, though why Nussie-the-duck should have aroused sexual interest in anyone is a mystery to me; and here is Nussie's husband, Ismail the lawyer, who has learned an important lesson from his son's forcep-birth: "Nothing comes out right in life," he tells his duck of a wife, "unless it's forced out." Applying this philosophy to his legal career, he embarks on a career of bribing judges and fixing juries; all children have the power to change their parents, and Sonny turned his father into a highly successful crook. And, moving across to Versailles Villa, here is Mrs. Dubash with her shrine to the god Ganesh, stuck in the corner of an apartment of such supernatural untidiness that, in our house, the word "dubash" became a verb meaning "to make a mess" ... "Oh, Saleem you've dubashed your room again, you black man!" Mary would cry. And now the cause of the mess, leaning over the hood of my pram to chuck me under the chin: Adi Dubash, the physicist, genius of atoms and litter. His wife, who is already carrying Cyrus-the-great within her, hangs back, growing her child, with something fanatical gleaming in the inner corners of her eyes, biding its time; it will not emerge until Mr. Dubash, whose daily life was spent working with the most dangerous substances in the world, dies by choking on an orange from which his wife forgot to remove the pips. I was never invited into the flat of Doctor Narlikar, the child-hating gynecologist; but in the homes of Lila Sabarmati and Homi Catrack I became a voyeur, a tiny party to Lila's thousand and one infidelities, and eventually a witness to the beginnings of the liaison between the naval officer's wife and the film-magnate-and-racehorse-owner; which, all in good time, would serve me well when I planned a certain act of revenge. Even a baby is faced with the problem of defining itself; and I'm bound to say that my early popularity had its problematic aspects, because I was bombarded with a confusing multiplicity of views on the subject, being a Blessed One to a guru under a tap, a voyeur to Lila Sabarmati; in the eyes of Nussie-the-duck I was a rival, and a more successful rival, to her own Sonny (although, to her credit, she never showed her resentment, and asked to borrow me just like everyone else); to my two-headed mother I was all kinds of babyish things — they called me joonoo-moonoo, and putch-putch, and little-piece-of-the-moon. But what, after all, can a baby do except swallow all of it and hope to make sense of it later? Patiently, dry-eyed, I imbibed Nehru-letter and Winkie's prophecy; but the deepest impression of all was made on the day when Homi Catrack's idiot daughter sent her thoughts across the circus-ring and into my infant head. Toxy Catrack, of the outsize head and dribbling mouth; Toxy, who stood at a barred top-floor window, stark naked, masturbating with motions of consummate self-disgust; who spat hard and often through her bars, and sometimes hit us on the head ... she was twenty-one years old, a gibbering half-wit, the product of years of inbreeding; but inside my head she was beautiful, because she had not lost the gifts with which every baby is born and which life proceeds to erode. |
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O perfect balance of rewards and penalties! O seemingly random choices made by tumbling dice! Clambering up ladders, slithering down snakes, I spent some of the happiest days of my life. When, in my time of trial, my father challenged me to master the game of shatranj, I infuriated him by preferring to invite him, instead, to chance his fortune among the ladders and nibbling snakes. All games have morals; and the game of Snakes and Ladders captures, as no other activity can hope to do, the eternal truth that for every ladder you climb, a snake is waiting just around the corner; and for every snake, a ladder will compensate. But it's more than that; no mere carrot-and-stick affair; because implicit in the game is the unchanging twoness of things, the duality of up against down, good against evil; the solid rationality of ladders balances the occult sinuosities of the serpent; in the opposition of staircase and cobra we can see, metaphorically, all conceivable oppositions, Alpha against Omega, father against mother; here is the war of Mary and Musa, and the polarities of knees and nose ... but I found, very early in my life, that the game lacked one crucial dimension, that of ambiguity — because, as events are about to show, it is also possible to slither down a ladder and climb to triumph on the venom of a snake ... Keeping things simple for the moment, however, I record that no sooner had my mother discovered the ladder to victory represented by her racecourse luck than she was reminded that the gutters of the country were still teeming with snakes. Amina's brother Hanif had not gone to Pakistan. Following the childhood dream which he had whispered to Rashid the rickshaw-boy in an Agra cornfield, he had arrived in Bombay and sought employment in the great film studios. Precociously confident, he had not only succeeded in becoming the youngest man ever to be given a film to direct in the history of the Indian cinema; he had also wooed and married one of the brightest stars of that celluloid heaven, the divine Pia, whose face was her fortune, and whose saris were made of fabrics whose designers had clearly set out to prove that it was possible to incorporate every color known to man in a single pattern. Reverend Mother did not approve of the divine Pia, but Hanif of all my family was the one who was free of her confining influence; a jolly, burly man with the booming laugh of the boatman Tai and the explosive, innocent anger of his father Aadam Aziz, he took her to live simply in a small, un-filmi apartment on Marine Drive, telling her, "Plenty of time to live like Emperors after I've made my name." She acquiesced; she starred in his first feature, which was partly financed by Homi Catrack and partly by D. W. Rama Studios (Pvt.) Ltd — it was called The Lovers of Kashmir; and one evening in the midst of her racing days Amina Sinai went to the premiere. Her parents did not come, thanks to Reverend Mother's loathing of the cinema, against which Aadam Aziz no longer had the strength to struggle — just as he, who had fought with Mian Abdullah against Pakistan, no longer argued with her when she praised the country, retaining just enough strength to dig in his heels and refuse to emigrate; but Ahmed Sinai, revived by his mother-in-law's cookery, but resentful of her continued presence, got to his feet and accompanied his wife. They took their seats, next to Hanif and Pia and the male star of the film, one of India's most successful "lover-boys," I. |
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S. Nayyar. And, although they didn't know it, a serpent waited in the wings ... but in the meanwhile, let us permit Hanif Aziz to have his moment; because The Lovers of Kashmir contained a notion which was to provide my uncle with a spectacular, though brief, period of triumph. In those days it was not permitted for lover-boys and their leading ladies to touch one another on screen, for fear that their osculations might corrupt the nation's youth ... but thirty-three minutes after the beginning of The Lovers, the premiEre audience began to give off a low buzz of shock, because Pia and Nayyar had begun to kiss — not one another — but things. Pia kissed an apple, sensuously, with all the rich fullness of her painted lips; then passed it to Nayyar; who planted, upon its opposite face, a virilely passionate mouth. This was the birth of what came to be known as the indirect kiss — and how much more sophisticated a notion it was than anything in our current cinema; how pregnant with longing and eroticism! The cinema audience (which would, nowadays, cheer raucously at the sight of a young couple diving behind a bush, which would then begin to shake ridiculously — so low have we sunk in our ability to suggest) watched, riveted to the screen, as the love of Pia and Nayyar, against a background of Dal Lake and ice-blue Kashmiri sky, expressed itself in kisses applied to cups of pink Kashmiri tea; by the foundations of Shalimar they pressed their lips to a sword ... but now, at the height of Hanif Aziz's triumph, the serpent refused to wait; under its influence, the house-lights came up. Against the larger-than-life figures of Pia and Nayyar, kissing mangoes as they mouthed to playback music, the figure of a timorous, inadequately bearded man was seen, marching on to the stage beneath the screen, microphone in hand. The Serpent can take most unexpected forms; now, in the guise of this ineffectual house-manager, it unleashed its venom. Pia and Nayyar faded and died; and the amplified voice of the bearded man said: "Ladies and gents, your pardon; but there is terrible news." His voice broke — a sob from the Serpent, to lend power to its teeth! — and then continued. "This afternoon, at Birla House in Delhi, our beloved Mahatma was killed. Some madman shot him in the stomach, ladies and gentlemen — our Bapu is gone!" The audience had begun to scream before he finished; the poison of his words entered their veins — there were grown men rolling in the aisles clutching their bellies, not laughing but crying, Hai Ram! Hai Ram! — and women tearing their hair: the city's finest coiffures tumbling around the ears of the poisoned ladies — there were film-stars yelling like fishwives and something terrible to smell in the air — and Hanif whispered, "Get out of here, big sister — if a Muslim did this thing there will be hell to pay." For every ladder, there is a snake ... and for forty-eight hours after the abortive end of The Lovers of Kashmir, our family remained within the walls of Buckingham Villa ("Put furniture against the doors, whatsitsname!" Reverend Mother ordered. "If there are Hindu servants, let them go home!"); and Amina did not dare to visit the racetrack. But for every snake, there is a ladder: and finally the radio gave us a name. Nathuram Godse. "Thank God," Amina burst out, "it's not a Muslim name!" And Aadam, upon whom the news of Gandhi's death had placed a new burden of age: "This Godse is nothing to be grateful for!" Amina, however, was full of the light-headedness of relief, she was rushing dizzily up the long ladder of relief ... |
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"Why not, after all? By being Godse he has saved our lives!" Ahmed Sinai, after rising from his supposed sickbed, continued to behave like an invalid. In a voice like cloudy glass he told Amina, "So, you have told Ismail to go to court; very well, good; but we will lose. In these courts you have to buy judges ..." And Amina, rushing to Ismail, "Never — never under any circumstances — must you tell Ahmed about the money. A man must keep his pride." And, later on, "No, janum, I'm not going anywhere; no, the baby is not being tiring at all; you rest, I must just go to shop — maybe I will visit Hanif — we women, you know, must fill up our days!" And coming home with envelopes brimming with rupee-notes ... "Take, Ismail, now that he's up we have to be quick and careful!" And sitting dutifully beside her mother in the evenings, "Yes, of course you're right, and Ahmed will be getting so rich soon, you'll just see!" And endless delays in court; and envelopes, emptying; and the growing baby, nearing the point at which Amina will not be able to insert herself behind the driving-wheel of the 1946 Rover; and can her luck hold?; and Musa and Mary, quarrelling like aged tigers. What starts fights? What remnants of guilt fear shame, pickled by time in Mary's intestines, led her willingly? unwillingly? to provoke the aged bearer in a dozen different ways — by a tilt of the nose to indicate her superior status; by aggressive counting of rosary beads under the nose of the devout Muslim; by acceptance of the title mausi, little mother, bestowed upon her by the other Estate servants, which Musa saw as a threat to his status; by excessive familiarity with the Begum Sahiba — little giggled whispers in corners, just loud enough for formal, stiff, correct Musa to hear and feel somehow cheated? What tiny grain of grit, in the sea of old age now washing over the old bearer, lodged between his lips to fatten into the dark pearl of hatred — into what unaccustomed torpors did Musa fall, becoming leaden of hand and foot, so that vases were broken, ashtrays spilled, and a veiled hint of forthcoming dismissal — from Mary's conscious or unconscious lips? — grew into an obsessive fear, which rebounded upon the person who started it off? And (not to omit social factors) what was the brutalizing effect of servant status, of a servants' room behind a black-stoved kitchen, in which Musa was obliged to sleep along with gardener, odd-job boy, and hamal — while Mary slept in style on a rush mat beside a new-born child? And was Mary blameless or not? Did her inability to go to church — because in churches you found confessionals, and in confessionals secrets could not be kept — turn sour inside her and make her a little sharp, a little hurtful? Or must we look beyond psychology — seeking our answer in statements such as, there was a snake lying in wait for Mary, and Musa was doomed to learn about the ambiguity of ladders? Or further still, beyond snake-and-ladder, should we see the Hand of Fate in the quarrel — and say, in order for Musa to return as explosive ghost, in order for him to adopt the role of Bomb-in-Bombay, it was necessary to engineer a departure ... or, descending from such sublimities to the ridiculous, could it be that Ahmed Sinai — whom whisky provoked, whom djinns goaded into excesses of rudeness — had so incensed the aged bearer that his crime, with which he equalled Mary's record, was committed out of the injured pride of an abused old servitor — and was nothing to do with Mary at all? |
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His nostrils were assailed by the unprecedented odor of ignited boot-leather, mingled with Cherry Blossom boot-polish and a little Three-In-One oil ... "Look, Abba!" the Monkey said charmingly, "Look how pretty — just the exact color of my hair!" Despite all precautions, the merry red flowers of my sister's obsession blossomed all over the Estate that summer, blooming in the sandals of Nussie-the-duck and the film-magnate footwear of Homi Catrack; hair-colored flames licked at Mr. Dubash's down-at-heel suedes and at Lila Sabarmati's stiletto heels. Despite the concealment of matches and the vigilance of servants, the Brass Monkey found her ways, undeterred by punishment and threats. For one year, on and off, Methwold's Estate was assailed by the fumes of incendiarized shoes; until her hair darkened into anonymous brown, and she seemed to lose interest in matches. Amina Sinai, abhorring the idea of beating her children, temperamentally incapable of raising her voice, came close to her wits' end; and the Monkey was sentenced, for day after day, to silence. This was my mother's chosen disciplinary method: unable to strike us, she ordered us to seal our lips. Some echo, no doubt, of the great silence with which her own mother had tormented Aadam Aziz lingered in her ears — because silence, too, has an echo, hollower and longer-lasting than the reverberations of any sound — and with an emphatic "Chup!" she would place a finger across her lips and command our tongues to be still. It was a punishment which never failed to cow me into submission; the Brass Monkey, however, was made of less pliant stuff. Soundlessly, behind lips clamped tight as her grandmother's, she plotted the incineration of leather — just as once, long ago, another monkey in another city had performed the act which made inevitable the burning of a leathercloth godown ... She was as beautiful (if somewhat scrawny) as I was ugly; but she was from the first, mischievous as a whirlwind and noisy as a crowd. Count the windows and vases, broken accidentally-on-purpose; number, if you can, the meals that somehow flew off her treacherous dinner-plates, to stain valuable Persian rugs! Silence was, indeed the worst punishment she could have been given; but she bore it cheerfully, standing innocently amid the ruins of broken chairs and shattered ornaments. Mary Pereira said, "That one! That Monkey! Should have been born with four legs!" But Amina, in whose mind the memory of her narrow escape from giving birth to a two-headed son had obstinately refused to fade, cried, "Mary! What are you saying? Don't even think such things!" ... Despite my mother's protestations, it was true that the Brass Monkey was as much animal as human; and, as all the servants and children on Methwold's Estate knew, she had the gift of talking to birds, and to cats. Dogs, too: but after she was bitten, at the age of six, by a supposedly rabid stray, and had to be dragged kicking and screaming to Breach Candy Hospital, every afternoon for three weeks, to be given an injection in the stomach, it seems she either forgot their language or else refused to have any further dealings with them. From birds she learned how to sing; from cats she learned a form of dangerous independence. The Brass Monkey was never so furious as when anyone spoke to her in words of love; desperate for affection, deprived of it by my overpowering shadow, she had a tendency to turn upon anyone who gave her what she wanted, as if she were defending herself against the possibility of being tricked. |
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She was already trying to put out of her mind her adventure at the racetrack; but the sense of sin which her mother's cooking had given her could not be escaped; so it was not difficult for her to think of the verrucas as a punishment ... not only for the years-ago escapade at Mahalaxmi, but for failing to save her husband from the pink chitties of alcoholism; for the Brass Monkey's untamed, unfeminine ways; and for the size of her only son's nose. Looking back at her now, it seems to me that a fog of guilt had begun to form around her head — her black skin exuding black clouds which hung before her eyes. (Padma would believe it; Padma would know what I mean!) And as her guilt grew, the fog thickened — yes, why not? — there were days when you could hardly see her head above her neck! ... Amina had become one of those rare people who take the burdens of the world upon their own backs; she began to exude the magnetism of the willingly guilty; and from then on everyone who came into contact with her felt the most powerful of urges to confess their own, private guilts. When they succumbed to my mother's powers, she would smile at them with a sweet sad foggy smile and they would go away, lightened, leaving their burdens on her shoulders; and the fog of guilt thickened. Amina heard about servants being beaten and officials being bribed; when my uncle Hanif and his wife the divine Pia came to call they related their quarrels in minute detail; Lila Sabarmati confided her infidelities to my mother's graceful, inclined, long-suffering ear; and Mary Pereira had to fight constantly against the almost-irresistible temptation to confess her crime. Faced with the guilts of the world, my mother smiled foggily and shut her eyes tight; and by the time the roof fell in on her head her eyesight was badly impaired; but she could still see the washing-chest. What was really at the bottom of my mother's guilt? I mean really, beneath verrucas and djinns and confessions? It was an unspeakable malaise, an affliction which could not even be named, and which no longer confined itself to dreams of an underworld husband ... my mother had fallen (as my father would soon fall) under the spell of the telephone. * * * In the afternoons of that summer, afternoons as hot as towels, the telephone would ring. When Ahmed Sinai was asleep in his room, with his keys under his pillow and umbilical cords in his almirah, telephonic shrilling penetrated the buzzing of the heat insects; and my mother, verruca-hobbled, came into the hall to answer. And now, what expression is this, staining her face the color of drying blood? ... Not knowing that she's being observed, what fish-like flutterings of lips are these, what strangulated mouthings? ... And why, after listening for a full five minutes, does my mother say, in a voice like broken glass, "Sorry: wrong number"? Why are diamonds glistening on her eyelids? ... The Brass Monkey whispered to me, "Next time it rings, let's find out." Five days later. Once more it is afternoon; but today Amina is away, visiting Nussie-the-duck, when the telephone demands attention. "Quick! Quick or it'll wake him!" The Monkey, agile as her name, picks up the receiver before Ahmed Sinai has even changed the pattern of his snoring ... "Hullo? Yaas? This is seven zero five six one; hullo?" We listen, every nerve on edge; but for a moment there is nothing at all. Then, when we're about to give up, the voice comes. "... Oh ... yes ... hullo ..." And the Monkey, shouting almost, "Hullo? |
| 191 |
The assassination of Mahatma Gandhi occurs, in these pages, on the wrong date. But I cannot say, now, what the actual sequence of events might have been; in my India, Gandhi will continue to die at the wrong time. Does one error invalidate the entire fabric? Am I so far gone, in my desperate need for meaning, that I'm prepared to distort everything — to re-write the whole history of my times purely in order to place myself in a central role? Today, in my confusion, I can't judge. I'll have to leave it to others. For me, there can be no going back; I must finish what I've started, even if, inevitably, what I finish turns out not to be what I began ... YE Akashvani hai. This is All-India Radio. Having gone out into the boiling streets for a quick meal at a nearby Irani cafE, I have returned to sit in my nocturnal pool of Anglepoised light with only a cheap transistor for company. A hot night; bubbling air filled with the lingering scents of the silenced pickle-vats; voices in the dark. Pickle-fames, heavily oppressive in the heat, stimulate the juices of memory, accentuating similarities and differences between now and then ... it was hot then; it is (unseasonably) hot now. Then as now, someone was awake in the dark, hearing disembodied tongues. Then as now, the one deafened ear. And fear, thriving in the heat ... it was not the voices (then or now) which were frightening. He, young-Saleem-then, was afraid of an idea — the idea that his parents' outrage might lead to a withdrawal of their love; that even if they began to believe him, they would see his gift as a kind of shameful deformity ... while I, now, Padma-less, send these words into the darkness and am afraid of being disbelieved. He and I, I and he ... I no longer have his gift; he never had mine. There are times when he seems a stranger, almost ... he had no cracks. No spiders' webs spread through him in the heat. Padma would believe me; but there is no Padma. Then as now, there is hunger. But of a different kind: not, now, the then-hunger of being denied my dinner, but that of having lost my cook. And another, more obvious difference: then, the voices did not arrive through the oscillating valves of a transistor (which will never cease, in our part of the world, to symbolize impotence — ever since the notorious free-transistor sterilization bribe, the squawking machine has represented what men could do before scissors snipped and knots were tied) ... then, the nearlynineyearold in his midnight bed had no need of machines. Different and similar, we are joined by heat. A shimmering heat-haze, then and now, blurs his then-time into mine ... my confusion, travelling across the heat-waves, is also his. What grows best in the heat: cane-sugar; the coconut palm; certain millets such as bajra, ragi and jowar; linseed, and (given water) tea and rice. . Our hot land is also the world's second largest producer of cotton — at least, it was when I learned geography under the mad eye of Mr. Emil Zagallo, and the steelier gaze of a framed Spanish conquistador. But the tropical summer grows stranger fruit as well: the exotic flowers of the imagination blossom, to fill the close perspiring nights with odors as heavy as musk, which give men dark dreams of discontent ... then as now, unease was in the air. Language marchers demanded the partition of the state of Bombay along linguistic boundaries — the dream of Maharashtra was at the head of some processions, the mirage of Gujarat led the others forward. |
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You — and, may I add, myself — yes, you and I, Sinai bhai, are persons of rare spiritual worth! Not for us the panting humiliations of the flesh — is it not a finer thing, I ask you, to eschew procreation — to avoid adding one more miserable human life to the vast multitudes which are presently beggaring our country — and, instead, to bend our energies to the task of giving them more land to stand on? I tell you, my friend: you and I and our tetrapods: from the very oceans we shall bring forth soil!" To consecrate this oration, Ahmed Sinai poured drinks; my father and Doctor Narlikar drank a toast to their four-legged concrete dream. "Land, yes! Love, no!" Doctor Narlikar said, a little unsteadily; my father refilled his glass. By the last days of 1956, the dream of reclaiming land from the sea with the aid of thousands upon thousands of large concrete tetrapods — that same dream which had been the cause of the freeze — and which was now, for my father, a sort of surrogate for the sexual activity which the aftermath of the freeze denied him — actually seemed to be coming close to fruition. This time, however, Ahmed Sinai was spending money cautiously; this time he remained hidden in the background, and his name appeared on no documents; this time, he had learned the lessons of the freeze and was determined to draw as little attention to himself as possible; so that when Doctor Narlikar betrayed him by dying, leaving behind him no record of my father's involvement in the tetrapod scheme, Ahmed Sinai (who was prone, as we have seen, to react badly in the face of disaster) was swallowed up by the mouth of a long, snaking decline from which he would not emerge until, at the very end of his days, he at last fell in love with his wife. This is the story that got back to Methwold's Estate: Doctor Narlikar had been visiting friends near Marine Drive; at the end of the visit, he had resolved to stroll down to Chowpatty Beach and buy himself some bhel-puri and a little coconut milk. As he strolled briskly along the pavement by the sea-wall, he overtook the tail-end of a language march, which moved slowly along, chanting peacefully. Doctor Narlikar neared the place where, with the Municipal Corporation's permission, he had arranged for a single, symbolic tetrapod to be placed upon the sea-wall, as a kind of icon pointing the way to the future; and here he noticed a thing which made him lose his reason. A group of beggar-women had clustered around the tetrapod and were performing the rite of puja. They had lighted oil-lamps at the base of the object; one of them had painted the OM-symbol on its upraised tip; they were chanting prayers as they gave the tetrapod a thorough and worshipful wash. Technological miracle had been transformed into Shiva-lingam; Doctor Narlikar, the opponent of fertility, was driven wild at this vision, in which it seemed to him that all the old dark priapic forces of ancient, procreative India had been unleashed upon the beauty of sterile twentieth-century concrete ... sprinting along, he shouted his abuse at the worshipping women, gleaming fiercely in his rage; reaching them, he kicked away their little dia-lamps; it is said he even tried to push the women. And he was seen by the eyes of the language marchers. The ears of the language marchers heard the roughness of his tongue; the marchers' feet paused, their voices rose in rebuke. Fists were shaken; oaths were oathed. Whereupon the good doctor, made incautious by anger, turned upon the crowd and denigrated its cause, its breeding and its sisters. |
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A silence fell and exerted its powers. Silence guided marcher-feet towards the gleaming gynecologist, who stood between the tetrapod and the wailing women. In silence the marchers' hands reached out towards Narlikar and in a deep hush he clung to four-legged concrete as they attempted to pull him towards them. In absolute soundlessness, fear gave Doctor Narlikar the strength of limpets; his arms stuck to the tetrapod and would not be detached. The marchers applied themselves to the tetrapod ... silently they began to rock it; mutely the force of their numbers overcame its weight. In an evening seized by a demonic quietness the tetrapod tilted, preparing to become the first of its kind to enter the waters and begin the great work of land reclamation. Doctor Suresh Narlikar, his mouth opening in a voiceless A, clung to it like a phosphorescent mollusc ... man and four-legged concrete fell without a sound. The splash of the waters broke the spell. It was said that when Doctor Narlikar fell and was crushed into death by the weight of his beloved obsession, nobody had any trouble locating the body because it sent light glowing upwards through the waters like a fire. "Do you know what's happening?" "Hey, man, what gives?" — children, myself included, clustered around the garden hedge of Escorial Villa, in which was Doctor Narlikar's bachelor apartment; and a hamal of Lila Sabarmati's, taking on an air of grave dignity, informed us, "They have brought his death home, wrapped in silk." I was not allowed to see the death of Doctor Narlikar as it lay wreathed in saffron flowers on his hard, single bed; but I got to know all about it anyway, because the news of it spread far beyond the confines of his room. Mostly, I heard about it from the Estate servants, who found it quite natural to speak openly of a death, but rarely said much about life, because in life everything was obvious. From Doctor Narlikar's own bearer I learned that the death had, by swallowing large quantities of the sea, taken on the qualities of water: it had become a fluid thing, and looked happy, sad or indifferent according to how the light hit it. Homi Catrack's gardener interjected: "It is dangerous to look too long at death; otherwise you come away with a little of it inside you, and there are effects." We asked: effects? what effects? which effects? how? And Purushottam the sadhu, who had left his place under the Buckingham Villa garden tap for the first time in years, said: "A death makes the living see themselves too clearly; after they have been in its presence, they become exaggerated." This extraordinary claim was, in fact, borne out by events, because afterwards Toxy Catrack's nurse Bi-Appah, who had helped to clean up the body, became shriller, more shrewish, more terrifying than ever; and it seemed that everyone who saw the death of Doctor Narlikar as it lay in state was affected, Nussie Ibrahim became even sillier and more of a duck, and Lila Sabarmati, who lived upstairs from the death and had helped to arrange its room, afterwards gave in to a promiscuity which had always been lurking within her, and set herself on a road at whose end there would be bullets, and her husband Commander Sabarmati conducting the Colaba traffic with a most unusual baton ... Our family, however, stayed away from the death. My father refused to go and pay his respects, and would never refer to his late friend by name, calling him simply: "that traitor." Two days later, when the news had been in the papers, Doctor Narlikar suddenly acquired an enormous family of female relations. |
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Having been a bachelor and misogynist all his life, he was engulfed, in death, by a sea of giant, noisy, omnicompetent women, who came crawling out from strange corners of the city, from milking jobs at Amul Dairies and from the box-offices of cinemas, from street-side soda-fountains and unhappy marriages; in a year of processions the Narlikar women formed their own parade, an enormous stream of outsize womanhood flowing up our two-storey hillock to fill Doctor Narlikar's apartment so full that from the road below you could see their elbows sticking out of the windows and their behinds overflowing on to the verandah. For a week nobody got any sleep because the wailing of the Narlikar women filled the air; but beneath their howls the women were proving as competent as they looked. They took over the running of the Nursing Home; they investigated all of Narlikar's business deals; and they cut my father out of the tetrapod deal just as coolly as you please. After all those years my father was left with nothing but a hole in his pocket, while the women took Narlikar's body to Benares to have it cremated, and the Estate servants whispered to me that they had heard how the Doctor's ashes were sprinkled on the waters of Holy Ganga at Manikarnika-ghat at dusk, and they did not sink, but floated on the surface of the water like tiny glowing firebugs, and were washed out to sea where their strange luminosity must have frightened the captains of ships. As for Ahmed Sinai: I swear that it was after Narlikar's death and arrival of the women that he began, literally, to fade ... gradually his skin paled, his hair lost its color, until within a few months he had become entirely white except for the darkness of his eyes. (Mary Pereira told Amina: "That man is cold in the blood; so now his skin has made ice, white ice like a fridge.") I should say, in all honesty, that although he pretended to be worried by his transformation into a white man, and went to see doctors and so forth, he was secretly rather pleased when they failed to explain the problem or prescribe a cure, because he had long envied Europeans their pigmentation. One day, when it was permissible to make jokes again (a decent interval had been allowed to elapse after Doctor Narlikar's death), he told Lila Sabarmati at the cocktail hour: "All the best people are white under the skin; I have merely given up pretending." His neighbors, all of whom were darker than he, laughed politely and felt curiously ashamed. Circumstantial evidence indicates that the shock of Narlikar's death was responsible for giving me a snow-white father to set beside my ebony mother; but (although I don't know how much you're prepared to swallow) I shall risk giving an alternative explanation, a theory developed in the abstract privacy of my clocktower ... because during my frequent psychic travels, I discovered something rather odd: during the first nine years after Independence, a similar pigmentation disorder (whose first recorded victim may well have been the Rani of Cooch Naheen) afflicted large numbers of the nation's business community. All over India, I stumbled across good Indian businessmen, their fortunes thriving thanks to the first Five Year Plan, which had concentrated on building up commerce ... businessmen who had become or were becoming very, very pale indeed! It seems that the gargantuan (even heroic) efforts involved in taking over from the British and becoming masters of their own destinies had drained the color from their cheeks ... |
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and a Goanese girl with the gift of multiplying fish ... and children with powers of transformation: a werewolf from the Nilgiri Hills, and from the great watershed of the Vindhyas, a boy who could increase or reduce his size at will, and had already (mischievously) been the cause of wild panic and rumors of the return of Giants ... from Kashmir, there was a blue-eyed child of whose original sex I was never certain, since by immersing herself in water he (or she) could alter it as she (or he) pleased. Some of us called this child Narada, others Markandaya, depending on which old fairy story of sexual change we had heard ... near Jalna in the heart of the parched Deccan I found a water-divining youth, and at Budge-Budge outside Calcutta a sharp-tongued girl whose words already had the power of inflicting physical wounds, so that after a few adults had found themselves bleeding freely as a result of some barb flung casually from her lips, they had decided to lock her in a bamboo cage and float her off down the Ganges to the Sundarbans jungles (which are the rightful home of monsters and phantasms); but nobody dared approach her, and she moved through the town surrounded by a vacuum of fear; nobody had the courage to deny her food. There was a boy who could eat metal and a girl whose fingers were so green that she could grow prize aubergines in the Thar desert; and more and more and more ... overwhelmed by their numbers, and by the exotic multiplicity of their gifts, I paid little attention, in those early days, to their ordinary selves; but inevitably our problems, when they arose, were the everyday, human problems which arise from character-and-environment; in our quarrels, we were just a bunch of kids. One remarkable fact: the closer to midnight our birth-times were, the greater were our gifts. Those children born in the last seconds of the hour were (to be frank) little more than circus freaks: bearded girls, a boy with the full-operative gills of a freshwater mahaseer trout, Siamese twins with two bodies dangling off a single head and neck — the head could speak in two voices, one male, one female, and every language and dialect spoken in the subcontinent; but for all their marvelousness, these were the unfortunates, the living casualties of that numinous hour. Towards the half-hour came more interesting and useful faculties — in the Gir Forest lived a witch-girl with the power of healing by the laying-on of hands, and there was a wealthy tea-planter's son in Shillong who had the blessing (or possibly the curse) of being incapable of forgetting anything he ever saw or heard. But the children born in the first minute of all — for these children the hour had reserved the highest talents of which men had ever dreamed. If you, Padma, happened to possess a register of births in which times were noted down to the exact second, you, too, would know what scion of a great Lucknow family (born at twenty-one seconds past midnight) had completely mastered, by the age of ten, the lost arts of alchemy, with which he regenerated the fortunes of his ancient but dissipated house; and which dhobi's daughter from Madras (seventeen seconds past) could fly higher than any bird simply by closing her eyes; and to which Benarsi silversmith's son (twelve seconds after midnight) was given the gift of travelling in time and thus prophesying the future as well as clarifying the past ... a gift which, children that we were, we trusted implicitly when it dealt with things gone and forgotten, but derided when he warned us of our own ends ... |
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fortunately, no such records exist; and, for my part, I shall not reveal — or else, in appearing to reveal, shall falsify — their names and even their locations; because, although such evidence would provide absolute proof of my claims, still the children of midnight deserve, now, after everything, to be left alone; perhaps to forget; but I hope (against hope) to remember ... Parvati-the-witch was born in Old Delhi in a slum which clustered around the steps of the Friday mosque. No ordinary slum, this, although the huts built out of old packing-cases and pieces of corrugated tin and shreds of jute sacking which stood higgledy-piggledy in the shadow of the mosque looked no different from any other shanty-town ... because this was the ghetto of the magicians, yes, the very same place which had once spawned a Hummingbird whom knives had pierced and pie-dogs had failed to save ... the conjurers' slum, to which the greatest fakirs and prestidigitators and illusionists in the land continually flocked, to seek their fortune in the capital city. They found tin huts, and police harassment, and rats ... Parvati's father had once been the greatest conjurer in Oudh; she had grown up amid ventriloquists who could make stones tell jokes and contortionists who could swallow their own legs and fire-eaters who exhaled flames from their arseholes and tragic clowns who could extract glass tears from the corners of their eyes; she had stood mildly amid gasping crowds while her father drove spikes through her neck; and all the time she had guarded her own secret, which was greater than any of the illusionist flummeries surrounding her; because to Parvati-the-witch, born a mere seven seconds after midnight on August 15th, had been given the powers of the true adept, the illuminatus, the genuine gifts of conjuration and sorcery, the art which required no artifice. So among the midnight children were infants with powers of transmutation, flight, prophecy and wizardry ... but two of us were born on the stroke of midnight. Saleem and Shiva, Shiva and Saleem, nose and knees and knees and nose ... to Shiva, the hour had given the gifts of war (of Rama, who could draw the undrawable bow; of Arjuna and Bhima; the ancient prowess of Kurus and Pandavas united, unstoppably, in him!) ... and to me, the greatest talent of all — the ability to look into the hearts and minds of men. But it is Kali-Yuga; the children of the hour of darkness were born, I'm afraid, in the midst of the age of darkness; so that although we found it easy to be brilliant, we were always confused about being good. There; now I've said it. That is who I was — who we were. Padma is looking as if her mother had died — her face, with its opening-shutting mouth, is the face of a beached pomfret. "O baba!" she says at last. "O baba! You are sick; what have you said?" No, that would be too easy. I refuse to take refuge in illness. Don't make the mistake of dismissing what I've unveiled as mere delirium; or even as the insanely exaggerated fantasies of a lonely, ugly child. I have stated before that I am not speaking metaphorically; what I have just written (and read aloud to stunned Padma) is nothing less than the literal, by-the-hairs-of-my-mother's-head truth. Reality can have metaphorical content; that does not make it less real. A thousand and one children were born; there were a thousand and one possibilities which had never been present in one place at one time before; and there were a thousand and one dead ends. |
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We had no pets after that. My father was not the only one to approach my tenth birthday with his head lost in the clouds of his private dreams; because here is Mary Pereira, indulging in her fondness for making chutneys, kasaundies and pickles of all descriptions, and despite the cheery presence of her sister Alice there is something haunted in her face. "Hullo, Mary!" Padma — who seems to have developed a soft spot for my criminal ayah — greets her return to center-stage. "So what's eating her?" This, Padma: plagued by her nightmares of assaults by Joseph D'Costa, Mary was finding it harder and harder to get sleep. Knowing what dreams had in store for her, she forced herself to stay awake; dark rings appeared under her eyes, which were covered in a thin, filmy glaze; and gradually the blurriness of her perceptions merged waking and dreaming into something very like each other ... a dangerous condition to get into, Padma. Not only does your work suffer but things start escaping from your dreams ... Joseph D'Costa had, in fact, managed to cross the blurred frontier, and now appeared in Buckingham Villa not as a nightmare, but as a full-fledged ghost. Visible (at this time) only to Mary Pereira, he began haunting her in all the rooms of our home, which, to her horror and shame, he treated as casually as if it were his own. She saw him in the drawing-room amongst cut-glass vases and Dresden figurines and the rotating shadows of ceiling-fans, lounging in soft armchairs with his long raggedy legs sprawling over the arms; his eyes were filled up with egg-whites and there were holes in his feet where the snake had bitten him. Once she saw him in Amina Begum's bed in the afternoon, lying down cool as a cucumber right next to my sleeping mother, and she burst out, "Hey, you! Go on out from there! What do you think, you're some sort of lord?" — but she only succeeded in awaking my puzzled mother. Joseph's ghost plagued Mary wordlessly; and the worst of it was that she found herself growing accustomed to him, she found forgotten sensations of fondness nudging at her insides, and although she told herself it was a crazy thing to do she began to be filled with a kind of nostalgic love for the spirit of the dead hospital porter. But the love was not returned; Joseph's egg-white eyes remained expressionless; his lips remained set in an accusing, sardonic grin; and at last she realized that this new manifestation was no different from her old dream-Joseph (although it never assaulted her), and that if she was ever to be free of him she would have to do the unthinkable thing and confess her crime to the world. But she didn't confess, which was probably my fault — because Mary loved me like her own unconceived and inconceivable son, and to make her confession would have hurt me badly, so for my sake she suffered the ghost of her conscience and stood haunted in the kitchen (my father had sacked the cook one djinn-soaked evening) cooking our dinner and becoming, accidentally, the embodiment of the opening line of my Latin textbook, Ora Maritima: "By the side of the sea, the ayah cooked the meal." Ora Maritima, ancilla cenam parat. Look into the eyes of a cooking ayah, and you will see more than textbooks ever know. On my tenth birthday, many chickens were coming home to roost. On my tenth birthday, it was clear that the freak weather — storms, floods, hailstones from a cloudless sky — which had succeeded the intolerable heat of 1956, had managed to wreck the second Five Year Plan. |
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someone, who founded this pickle-factory and its ancillary bottling works, who has been looking after my impenetrable child, just as once ... wait on! She nearly wormed it out of me then, but fortunately I've still got my wits about me, fever or no fever! Someone will just have to step back and remain cloaked in anonymity until it's her turn; and that won't be until the very end. I turn my eyes away from her to look at Padma. "Do not think," I admonish her, "that because I had a fever, the things I told you were not completely true. Everything happened just as I described." "Oh God, you and your stories," she cries, "all day, all night — you have made yourself sick! Stop some time, na, what will it hurt?" I set my lips obstinately; and now she, with a sudden change of mood: "So, tell me now, mister: is there anything you want?" "Green chutney," I request, "Bright green — green as grasshoppers." And someone who cannot be named remembers and tells Padma (speaking in the soft voice which is only used at sickbeds and funerals), "I know what he means." ... Why, at this crucial instant, when all manner of things were waiting to be described — when the Pioneer CafE was so close, and the rivalry of knees and nose — did I introduce a mere condiment into the conversation? (Why do I waste time, in this account, on a humble preserve, when I could be describing the elections of 1957 — when all India is waiting, twenty-one years ago, to vote?) Because I sniffed the air; and scented, behind the solicitous expressions of my visitors, a sharp whiff of danger. I intended to defend myself; but I required the assistance of chutney ... I have not shown you the factory in daylight until now. This is what has remained undescribed: through green-tinged glass windows, my room looks out on to an iron catwalk and then down to the cooking-floor, where copper vats bubble and seethe, where strong-armed women stand atop wooden steps, working long-handled ladles through the knife-tang of pickle fumes; while (looking the other way, through a green-tinged window on the world) railway tracks shine dully in morning sun, bridged over at regular intervals by the messy gantries of the electrification system. In daylight, our saffron-and-green neon goddess does not dance above the factory doors; we switch her off to save power. But electric trains are using power: yellow-and-brown local trains clatter south towards Churchgate Station from Dadar and Borivli, from Kurla and Bassein Road. Human flies hang in thick white-trousered clusters from the trains; I do not deny that, within the factory walls, you may also see some flies. But there are also compensating lizards, hanging stilly upside-down on the ceiling, their jowls reminiscent of the Kathiawar peninsula ... sounds, too have been waiting to be heard: bubbling of vats, loud singing, coarse imprecations, bawdy humor of fuzz-armed women; the sharp-nosed, thin-lipped admonitions of overseers; the all-pervasive clank of pickle-jars from the adjacent bottling-works; and rush of trains, and the buzzing (infrequent, but inevitable) of flies ... while grasshopper-green chutney is being extracted from its vat, to be brought on a wiped-clean plate with saffron and green stripes around the rim, along with another plate piled high with snacks from the local Irani shop; while what-has-now-been-shown goes on as usual, and what-can-now-be-heard fills the air (to say nothing of what can be smelled), I, alone in bed in my office, realize with a start of alarm that outings are being suggested. |
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My mother was a cautious driver; she went slowly, and turned corners with care; but afterwards I was bruised black and blue and Mary Pereira berated me soundly for getting into fights: "ArrE God what a thing it's a wonder they didn't smash you to pieces completely my God what will you grow up into you bad black boy you haddi-phaelwan you skin-and-bone wrestler!" To take my mind off the jolting darkness I entered, with extreme caution, that part of my mother's mind which was in charge of driving operations, and as a result was able to follow our route. (And, also, to discern in my mother's habitually tidy mind an alarming degree of disorder. I was already beginning, in those days, to classify people by their degree of internal tidiness, and to discover that I preferred the messier type, whose thoughts, spilling constantly into one another so that anticipatory images of food interfered with the serious business of earning a living and sexual fantasies were superimposed upon their political musings, bore a closer relationship to my own pell-mell tumble of a brain, in which everything ran into everything else and the white dot of consciousness jumped about like a wild flea from one thing to the next ... Amina Sinai, whose assiduous ordering-instincts had provided her with a brain of almost abnormal neatness, was a curious recruit to the ranks of confusion.) We headed north, past Breach Candy Hospital and Mahalaxmi Temple, north along Hornby Vellard past Vallabhbhai Patel Stadium and Haji Ali's island tomb, north off what had once been (before the dream of the first William Methwold became a reality) the island of Bombay. We were heading towards the anonymous mass of tenements and fishing-villages and textile-plants and film-studios that the city became in these northern zones (not far from here! Not at all far from where I sit within view of local trains!) ... an area which was, in those days, utterly unknown to me; I rapidly became disoriented and was then obliged to admit to myself that I was lost. At last, down an unprepossessing side-street full of drainpipe-sleepers and bicycle-repair shops and tattered men and boys, we stopped. Clusters of children assailed my mother as she descended; she, who could never shoo away a fly, handed out small coins, thus enlarging the crowd enormously. Eventually, she struggled away from them and headed down the street; there was a boy pleading, "Gib the car poliss, Begum? Number one A-class poliss, Begum? I watch car until you come, Begum? I very fine watchman, ask anyone!" ... In some panic, I listened in for her reply. How could I get out of this boot under the eyes of a guardian-urchin? There was the embarrassment of it; and besides, my emergence would have created a sensation in the street ... my mother said, "No." She was disappearing down the street; the would-be polisher and watchman gave up eventually; there was a moment when all eyes turned to watch the passing of a second car, just in case it, too, stopped to disgorge a lady who gave away coins as if they were nuts; and in that instant (I had been looking through several pairs of eyes to help me choose my moment) I performed my trick with the pink plastic and was out in the street beside a closed car-boot in a flash. Setting my lips grimly, and ignoring all outstretched palms, I set off in the direction my mother had taken, a pocket-sized sleuth with the nose of a bloodhound and a loud drum pounding in the place where my heart should have been ... |
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On the reccine-topped table, a packet of cigarettes: State Express 555. Numbers, too, have significance: 420, the name given to frauds; 1001, the number of night, of magic, of alternative realities — a number beloved of poets and detested by politicians, for whom all alternative versions of the world are threats; and 555, which for years I believed to be the most sinister of numbers, the cipher of the Devil, the Great Beast, Shaitan himself. (Cyrus-the-great told me so, and I didn't contemplate the possibility of his being wrong. But he was: the true demonic number is not 555, but 666: yet, in my mind, a dark aura hangs around the three fives to this day.) ... But I am getting carried away. Suffice to say that Nadir-Qasim's preferred brand was the aforesaid State Express; that the figure five was repeated three times on the packet; and that its manufacturers were W. D. & H. O. Wills. Unable to look into my mother's face, I concentrated on the cigarette-packet, cutting from two-shot of lovers to this extreme close-up of nicotine. But now hands enter the frame — first the hands of Nadir-Qasim, their poetic softness somewhat callused these days; hands flickering like candle-flames, creeping forward across reccine, then jerking back; next a woman's hands, black as jet, inching forwards like elegant spiders; hands lifting up, off reccine tabletop, hands hovering above three fives, beginning the strangest of dances, rising, falling, circling one another, weaving in and out between each other, hands longing for touch, hands outstretching tensing quivering demanding to be — but always at last jerking back, fingertips avoiding fingertips, because what I'm watching here on my dirty glass cinema-screen is, after all, an Indian movie, in which physical contact is forbidden lest it corrupt the watching flower of Indian youth; and there are feet beneath the table and faces above it, feet advancing towards feet, faces tumbling softly towards faces, but jerking away all of a sudden in a cruel censor's cut ... two strangers, each bearing a screen-name which is not the name of their birth, act out their half-unwanted roles. I left the movie before the end, to slip back into the boot of the unpolished unwatched Rover, wishing I hadn't gone to see it, unable to resist wanting to watch it all over again. What I saw at the very end: my mother's hands raising a half-empty glass of Lovely Lassi; my mother's lips pressing gently, nostalgically against the mottled glass; my mother's hands handing the glass to her Nadir-Qasim; who also applied, to the opposite side of the glass, his own, poetic mouth. So it was that life imitated bad art, and my uncle Hanif's sister brought the eroticism of the indirect kiss into the green neon dinginess of the Pioneer CafE. To sum up: in the high summer of 1957, at the peak of an election campaign, Amina Sinai blushed inexplicably at a chance mention of the Communist Party of India. Her son — in whose turbulent thoughts there was still room for one more obsession, because a ten-year-old brain can accommodate any number of fixations — followed her into the north of the city, and spied on a pain-filled scene of impotent love. (Now that Ahmed Sinai was frozen up, Nadir-Qasim didn't even have a sexual disadvantage; torn between a husband who locked himself in an office and cursed mongrels, and an ex-husband who had once, lovingly, played games of hit-the-spittoon, Amina Sinai was reduced to glass-kissery and hand-dances.) Questions: did I ever, after that time, employ the services of pink plastic? |
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The newspapers were full of talk of saboteurs; speculation over the criminals' identities and political affiliation jostled for space against reports of the continuing wave of whore-murders. (I was particularly interested to learn that the murderer had his own curious "signature." The corpses of the ladies of the night were all strangled to death; there were bruises on their necks, bruises too large to be thumbprints, but wholly consistent with the marks which would be left by a pair of giant, preternaturally powerful knees.) But I digress. What, Padma's frown demands, does all this have to do with Evelyn Lilith Burns? Instantly, leaping to attention, as it were, I provide the answer: in the days after the destruction of the city's fresh-water supply, the stray cats of Bombay began to congregate in those areas of the city where water was still relatively plentiful; that is to say, the better-off areas, in which each house owned its own overhead or underground water-tank. And, as a result, the two-storey hillock of Methwold's Estate was invaded by an army of thirsting felines; cats swarming all over the circus-ring, cats climbing bougainvillaea creepers and leaping into sitting-rooms, cats knocking over flower-vases to drink the plant-stale water, cats bivouacked in bathrooms, slurping liquid out of water-closets, cats rampant in the kitchens of the palaces of William Methwold. The Estate's servants were vanquished in their attempts to repel the great cat invasion; the ladies of the Estate were reduced to helpless exclamations of horror. Hard dry worms of cat-excrement were everywhere; gardens were ruined by sheer feline force of numbers; and at night sleep became an impossibility as the army found voice, and sang its thirst at the moon. (The Baroness Simki von der Heiden refused to fight the cats; she was already showing signs of the disease which would shortly lead to her extermination.) Nussie Ibrahim rang my mother to announce, "Amina sister, it is the end of the world." She was wrong; because on the third day after the great cat invasion, Evelyn Lilith Burns visited each Estate household in turn, carrying her Daisy air-gun casually in one hand, and offered, in return for bounty money, to end the plague of pussies double-quick. All that day, Methwold's Estate echoed with the sounds of Evie's air-gun and the agonized wauls of the cats, as Evie stalked the entire army one by one and made herself rich. But (as history so often demonstrates) the moment of one's greatest triumph also contains the seeds of one's final downfall; and so it proved, because Evie's persecution of the cats, was as far as the Brass Monkey was concerned, absolutely the last straw. "Brother," the Monkey told me grimly, "I told you I'd get that girl; now, right now, the time has come." Unanswerable questions: was it true that my sister had acquired the languages of cats as well as birds? Was it her fondness for feline life which pushed her over the brink? ... by the time of the great cat invasion, the Monkey's hair had faded into brown; she had broken her habit of burning shoes; but still, and for whatever reason, there was a fierceness in her which none of the rest of us ever possessed; and she went down into the circus-ring and yelled at the top of her voice: "Evie! Evie Burns! You come out here, this minute, wherever you are!" Surrounded by fleeing cats, the Monkey awaited Evelyn Burns. I went out on to the first-floor verandah to watch; from their verandahs, Sonny and Eyeslice and Hairoil and Cyrus were watching too. |
| 202 |
(But there were exceptions. In particular, there was Shiva; and there was Parvati-the-witch.) ... Destiny, historical role, numen: these were mouthfuls too large for ten-year-old gullets. Even, perhaps, for mine; despite the ever-present admonitions of the fisherman's pointing finger and the Prime Minister's letter, I was constantly distracted from my sniff-given marvels by the tiny occurrences of everyday life, by feeling hungry or sleepy, by monkeying around with the Monkey, or going to the cinema to see Cobra Woman or Vera Cruz, by my growing longing for long trousers and by the inexplicable below-the-belt heat engendered by the approaching School Social at which we, the boys of the Cathedral and John Connon Boys' High School, would be permitted to dance the box-step and the Mexican Hat Dance with the girls from our sister institution — such as Masha Miovic the champion breast-stroker ("Hee hee," said Glandy Keith Colaco) and Elizabeth Purkiss and Janey Jackson — European girls, my God, with loose skirts and kissing ways! — in short, my attention was continually seized by the painful, engrossing torture of growing up. Even a symbolic gander must come down, at last, to earth; so it isn't nearly enough for me now (as it was not then) to confine my story to its miraculous aspects; I must return (as I used to return) to the quotidian; I must permit blood to spill. The first mutilation of Saleem Sinai, which was rapidly followed by the second, took place one Wednesday early in 1958 — the Wednesday of the much-anticipated Social — under the auspices of the Anglo-Scottish Education Society. That is, it happened at school. Saleem's assailant: handsome, frenetic, with a barbarian's shaggy moustache: I present the leaping, hair-tearing figure of Mr. Emil Zagallo, who taught us geography and gymnastics, and who, that morning, unintentionally precipitated the crisis of my life. Zagallo claimed to be Peruvian, and was fond of calling us jungle-Indians, bead-lovers; he hung a print of a stern, sweaty soldier in a pointy tin hat and metal pantaloons above his blackboard and had a way of stabbing a finger at it in times of stress and shouting, "You see heem, you savages? Thees man eez civilization! You show heem respect: he's got a sword!" And he'd swish his cane through the stone-walled air. We called him Pagal-Zagal, crazy Zagallo, because for all his talk of llamas and conquistadores and the Pacific Ocean we knew, with the absolute certainty of rumor, that he'd been in a Mazagaon tenement and his Goanese mother had been abandoned by a decamped shipping agent; so he was not only an "Anglo" but probably a bastard as well. Knowing this, we understood why Zagallo affected his Latin accent, and also why he was always in a fury, why he beat his fists against the stone walls of the classroom; but the knowledge didn't stop us being afraid. And this Wednesday morning, we knew we were in for trouble, because Optional Cathedral had been cancelled. The Wednesday morning double period was Zagallo's geography class; but only idiots and boys with bigoted parents attended it, because it was also the time when we could choose to troop off to St. Thomas's Cathedral in crocodile formation, a long line of boys of every conceivable religious denomination, escaping from school into the bosom of the Christians' considerately optional God. It drove Zagallo wild, but he was helpless; today, however, there was a dark glint in his eye, because the Croaker had announced at morning Assembly that Cathedral was cancelled. |
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I was altering physically; too early, soft fuzz was appearing on my chin, and my voice swooped, out of control, up and down the vocal register. I had a strong sense of absurdity: my lengthening limbs were making me clumsy, and I must have cut a clownish figure, as I outgrew shirts and trousers and stuck gawkily and too far out of the ends of my clothes. I felt somehow conspired against, by these garments which flapped comically around my ankles and wrists; and even when I turned inwards to my secret Children, I found change, and didn't like it. The gradual disintegration of the Midnight Children's Conference — which finally fell apart on the day the Chinese armies came down over the Himalayas to humiliate the Indian fauj — was already well under way. When novelty wears off, boredom, and then dissension, must inevitably ensue. Or (to put it another way) when a finger is mutilated, and fountains of blood flow out, all manner of vilenesses become possible ... whether or not the cracks in the Conference were the (active-metaphorical) result of my finger-loss, they were certainly widening. Up in Kashmir, Narada-Markandaya was falling into the solipsistic dreams of the true narcissist, concerned only with the erotic pleasures of constant sexual alterations; while Soumitra the time-traveler, wounded by our refusal to listen to his descriptions of a future in which (he said) the country would be governed by a urine-drinking dotard who refused to die, and people would forget everything they had ever learned, and Pakistan would split like an amoeba, and the prime ministers of each half would be assassinated by their successors, both of whom — he swore despite our disbelief — would be called by the same name ... wounded Soumitra became a regular absentee from our nightly meetings, disappearing for long periods into the spidery labyrinths of Time. And the sisters from Baud were content with their ability to bewitch fools young and old. "What can this Conference help?" they inquired. "We already have too many lovers." And our alchemist member was busying himself in a laboratory built for him by his father (to whom he had revealed his secret); preoccupied with the Philosopher's Stone, he had very little time for us. We had lost him to the lure of gold. And there were other factors at work as well. Children, however magical, are not immune to their parents; and as the prejudices and world-views of adults began to take over their minds, I found children from Maharashtra loathing Gujaratis, and fair-skinned northerners reviling Dravidian "blackies"; there were religious rivalries; and class entered our councils. The rich children turned up their noses at being in such lowly company; Brahmins began to feel uneasy at permitting even their thoughts to touch the thoughts of untouchables; while, among the low-born, the pressures of poverty and Communism were becoming evident ... and, on top of all this, there were clashes of personality, and the hundred squalling rows which are unavoidable in a parliament composed entirely of half-grown brats. In this way the Midnight Children's Conference fulfilled the prophecy of the Prime Minister and became, in truth, a mirror of the nation; the passive-literal mode was at work, although I railed against it, with increasing desperation, and finally with growing resignation ... "Brothers, sisters!" I broadcast, with a mental voice as uncontrollable as its physical counterpart, "Do not let this happen! Do not permit the endless duality of masses-and-classes, capital-and-labor, them-and-us to come between us! |
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Schaapsteker, from the depths of his senility, instructed me in life. "Be wise, child. Imitate the action of the snake. Be secret; strike from the cover of a bush." Once he said: "You must think of me as another father. Did I not give you your life when it was lost?" With this statement he proved that he was as much under my spell as I under his; he had accepted that he, too, was one of that endless series of parents to whom I alone had the power of giving birth. And although, after a time, I found the air in his chambers too oppressive, and left him once more to the isolation from which he would never again be disturbed, he had shown me how to proceed. Consumed by the two-headed demon of revenge, I used my telepathic powers (for the first time) as a weapon; and in this way I discovered the details of the relationship between Homi Catrack and Lila Sabarmati. Lila and Pia were always rivals in beauty; it was the wife of the heir-apparent to the title of Admiral of the Fleet who had become the film magnate's new fancy-woman. While Commander Sabarmati was at sea on manoeuvres, Lila and Homi were performing certain maneuvers of their own; while the lion of the seas awaited the death of the then-Admiral, Homi and Lila, too, were making an appointment with the Reaper. (With my help.) "Be secret," said Sharpsticker Sahib; secretly, I spied on my enemy Homi, and on the promiscuous mother of Eyeslice and Hairoil (who were very full of themselves of late, ever since, in fact, the papers announced that Commander Sabarmati's promotion was a mere formality. Only a matter of time ...). "Loose woman," the demon within me whispered silently, "Perpetrator of the worst of maternal perfidies! We shall turn you into an awful example; through you we shall demonstrate the fate which awaits the lascivious. O unobservant adulteress! Did you not see what sleeping around did to the illustrious Baroness Simki von der Heiden? — who was, not to put too fine a point upon it, a bitch, just like yourself." My view of Lila Sabarmati has mellowed with age; after all, she and I had one thing in common — her nose, like mine, possessed tremendous powers. Hers, however, was a purely worldly magic: a wrinkle of nasal skin could charm the steeliest of Admirals; a tiny flare of the nostrils ignited strange fires in the hearts of film magnates. I am a little regretful about betraying that nose; it was a little like stabbing a cousin in the back. What I discovered: every Sunday morning at ten a. m., Lila Sabarmati drove Eyeslice and Hairoil to the Metro cinema for the weekly meetings of the Metro Cub Club. (She volunteered to take the rest of us, too; Sonny and Cyrus, the Monkey and I piled into her Indian-made Hindustan car.) And while we drove towards Lana Turner or Robert Taylor or Sandra Dee, Mr. Homi Catrack was also preparing himself for a weekly rendezvous. While Lila's Hindustan puttered along beside railway-lines, Homi was knotting a cream silk scarf around his throat; while she halted at red lights, he donned a Technicolored bush-coat; when she was ushering us into the darkness of the auditorium, he was putting on gold-rimmed sunglasses; and when she left us to watch our film, he, too, was abandoning a child. Toxy Catrack never failed to react to his departures by wailing kicking thrashing-of-legs; she knew what was going on, and not even Bi-Appah could restrain her. Once upon a time there were Radha and Krishna, and Rama and Sita, and Laila and Majnu; also (because we are not unaffected by the West) Romeo and Juliet, and Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. |
| 205 |
Nodding signboards had scarcely been taken down when the demolition crews of the Narlikar women moved in; Buckingham Villa was enveloped in the tumultuous dust of the dying palaces of William Methwold. Concealed by dust from Warden Road below, we were nevertheless still vulnerable to telephones; and it was the telephone which informed us, in the tremulous voice of my aunt Pia, of the suicide of my beloved uncle Hanif. Deprived of the income he had received from Homi Catrack, my uncle had taken his booming voice and his obsessions with hearts and reality up to the roof of his Marine Drive apartment block; he had stepped out into the evening sea-breeze, frightening the beggars so much (when he fell) that they gave up pretending to be blind and ran away yelling ... in death as in life, Hanif Aziz espoused the cause of truth and put illusion to flight. He was nearly thirty-four years old. Murder breeds death; by killing Homi Catrack, I had killed my uncle, too. It was my fault; and the dying wasn't over yet. The family gathered at Buckingham Villa: from Agra, Aadam Aziz and Reverend Mother; from Delhi, my uncle Mustapha, the Civil Servant who had polished the art of agreeing with his superiors to the point at which they had stopped hearing him, which is why he never got promoted; and his half-Irani wife Sonia and their children who had been so thoroughly beaten into insignificance that I can't even remember how many of them there were; and from Pakistan, bitter Alia, and even General Zulfikar and my aunt Emerald, who brought twenty-seven pieces of luggage and two servants, and never stopped looking at their watches and inquiring about the date. Their son Zafar also came. And, to complete the circle, my mother brought Pia to stay in our house, "at least for the forty-day mourning period, my sister." For forty days, we were besieged by the dust; dust creeping under the wet towels we placed around all the windows, dust slyly following in each mourning arrival, dust filtering through the very walls to hang like a shapeless wraith in the air, dust deadening the sounds of formal ululation and also the deadly sniping of grieving kinsfolk; the remnants of Methwold's Estate settled on my grandmother and goaded her towards a great fury; they irritated the pinched nostrils of Punchinello-faced General Zulfikar and forced him to sneeze on to his chin. In the ghost-haze of the dust it sometimes seemed we could discern the shapes of the past, the mirage of Lila Sabarmati's pulverized pianola or the prison bars at the window of Toxy Catrack's cell; Dubash's nude statuette danced in dust-form through our chambers, and Sonny Ibrahim's bullfight-posters visited us as clouds. The Narlikar women had moved away while bulldozers did their work; we were alone inside the dust-storm, which gave us all the appearance of neglected furniture, as if we were chairs and tables which had been abandoned for decades without covering-sheets; we looked like the ghosts of ourselves. We were a dynasty born out of a nose, the aquiline monster on the face of Aadam Aziz, and the dust, entering our nostrils in our time of grief, broke down our reserve, eroded the barriers which permit families to survive; in the dust storm of the dying palaces things were said and seen and done from which none of us ever recovered. It was started by Reverend Mother, perhaps because the years had filled her out until she resembled the Sankara Acharya mountain in her native Srinagar, so that she presented the dust with the largest surface area to attack. |
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Rumbling up from her mountainous body came a noise like an avalanche, which, when it turned into words, became a fierce attack on Aunt Pia, the bereaved widow. We had all noticed that my mumani was behaving unusually. There was an unspoken feeling that an actress of her standing should have risen to the challenge of widowhood in high style; we had unconsciously been eager to see her grieving, looking forward to watching an accomplished tragedienne orchestrate her own calamity, anticipating a forty-day raga in which bravura and gentleness, howling pain and soft despond would all be blended in the exact proportions of art; but Pia remained still, dry-eyed, and anticlimactically composed. Amina Sinai and Emerald Zulfikar wept and rent their hair, trying to spark off Pia's talents; but finally, when it seemed nothing would move Pia, Reverend Mother lost patience. The dust entered her disappointed fury and increased its bitterness. "That woman, whatsitsname," Reverend Mother rumbled, "didn't I tell you about her? My son, Allah, he could have been anything, but no, whatsitsname, she must make him ruin his life; he must jump off a roof, whatsitsname, to be free of her." It was said; could not be unsaid. Pia sat like stone; my insides shook like cornflour pudding. Reverend Mother went grimly on; she swore an oath upon the hairs of her dead son's head. "Until that woman shows my son's memory some respect, whatsitsname, until she takes out a wife's true tears, no food will pass my lips. It is shame and scandal, whatsitsname, how she sits with antimony instead of tears in her eyes!" The house resounded with this echo of her old wars with Aadam Aziz. And until the twentieth day of the forty, we were all afraid that my grandmother would die of starvation and the forty days would have to start all over again. She lay dustily on her bed; we waited and feared. I broke the stalemate between grandmother and aunt; so at least I can legitimately claim to have saved one life. On the twentieth day, I sought out Pia Aziz who sat in her groundfloor room like a blind woman; as an excuse for my visit, I apologized clumsily for my indiscretions in the Marine Drive apartment. Pia spoke, after a distant silence: "Always melodrama," she said, flatly, "In his family members, in his work. He died for his hate of melodrama; it is why I would not cry." At the time I did not understand; now I'm sure that Pia Aziz was exactly right. Deprived of a livelihood by spurning the cheap-thrill style of the Bombay cinema, my uncle strolled off the edge of a roof; melodrama inspired (and perhaps tainted) his final dive to earth. Pia's refusal to weep was in honor of his memory ... but the effort of admitting it breached the walls of her self-control. Dust made her sneeze; the sneeze brought tears to her eyes; and now the tears would not stop, and we all witnessed our hoped-for performance after all, because once they fell they fell like Flora Fountain, and she was unable to resist her own talent; she shaped the flood like the performer she was, introducing dominant themes and subsidiary motifs, beating her astonishing breasts in a manner genuinely painful to observe, now squeezing, now pummelling ... she tore her garments and her hair. It was an exaltation of tears, and it persuaded Reverend Mother to eat. Dal and pistachio-nuts poured into my grandmother while salt water flooded from my aunt. Now Naseem Aziz descended upon Pia, embracing her, turning the solo into a duet, mingling the music of reconciliation with the unbearably beautiful tunes of grief. |
| 207 |
Late in September 1958, the mourning period of my uncle Hanif Aziz came to an end; and, miraculously, the dust-cloud which had enveloped us was settled by a merciful shower of rain. When we had bathed and put on newly-washed clothes and switched on the ceiling-fans, we emerged from bathrooms filled, briefly, with the illusory optimism of freshly-soaped cleanliness; to discover a dusty, unwashed Ahmed Sinai, whisky-bottle in his hand, his eyes rimmed with blood, swaying upstairs from his office in the manic grip of djinns. He had been wrestling, in his private world of abstraction, with the unthinkable realities which Mary's revelations had unleashed; and owing to some cockeyed functioning of the alcohol, had been seized by an indescribable rage which he directed, neither at Mary's departed back, nor at the changeling in his midst, but at my mother — at, I should say, Amina Sinai. Perhaps because he knew he should beg her forgiveness, and would not, Ahmed ranted at her for hours within the shocked hearing of her family; I will not repeat the names he called her, nor the vile courses of action he recommended she should take with her life. But in the end it was Reverend Mother who intervened. "Once before, my daughter," she said, ignoring Ahmed's continuing ravings, "your father and I, whatsitsname, said there was no shame in leaving an inadequate husband. Now I say again: you have, whatsitsname, a man of unspeakable vileness. Go from him; go today, and take your children, whatsitsname, away from these oaths which he spews from his lips like an animal, whatsitsname, of the gutter. Take your children, I say, whatsitsname — both your children," she said, clutching me to her bosom. Once Reverend Mother had legitimized me, there was no one to oppose her; it seems to me now, across the years, that even my cursing father was affected by her support of the eleven-year-old snotnosed child. Reverend Mother fixed everything; my mother was like putty — like potter's clay! — in her omnipotent hands. At that time, my grandmother (I must continue to call her that) still believed that she and Aadam Aziz would shortly be emigrating to Pakistan; so she instructed my aunt Emerald to take us all with her — Amina, the Monkey, myself, even my aunty Pia — and await her coming. "Sisters must care for sisters, whatsitsname," Reverend Mother said, "in times of trouble." My aunt Emerald looked highly displeased; but both she and General Zulfikar acquiesced. And, since my father was in a lunatic temper which made us fear for our safety, and the Zulfikars had already booked themselves on a ship which was to sail that night, I left my life-long home that very day, leaving Ahmed Sinai alone with Alice Pereira; because when my mother left her second husband, all the other servants walked out, too. In Pakistan, my second period of hurtling growth came to an end. And, in Pakistan, I discovered that somehow the existence of a frontier "jammed" my thought-transmissions to the more-than-five-hundred; so that, exiled once more from my home, I was also exiled from the gift which was my truest birthright: the gift of the midnight children. We lay anchored off the Rann of Kutch on a heat-soaked afternoon. Heat buzzed in my bad left ear; but I chose to remain on deck, watching as small, vaguely ominous rowing boats and fishermen's dhows ran a ferry service between our ship and the Rann, transporting objects veiled in canvas back and forth, back and forth. Below decks, the adults were playing housie-housie; I had no idea where the Monkey was. |
| 208 |
But nothing else. Four years away from the midnight children; four years without Warden Road and Breach Candy and Scandal Point and the lures of One Yard of Chocolates; away from the Cathedral School and the equestrian statue of Sivaji and melon-sellers at the Gateway of India: away from Divali and Ganesh Chaturthi and Coconut Day; four years of separation from a father who sat alone in a house he would not sell; alone, except for Professor Schaapsteker, who stayed in his apartment and shunned the company of men. Can nothing really happen for four years? Obviously, not quite. My cousin Zafar, who had never been forgiven by his father for wetting his pants in the presence of history, was given to understand that he would be joining the Army as soon as he was of age. "I want to see you prove you're not a woman," his father told him. And Bonzo died; General Zulfikar shed manly tears. And Mary's confession faded until, because nobody spoke of it, it came to feel like a bad dream; to everyone except me. And (without any assistance from me) relations between India and Pakistan grew worse; entirely without my help, India conquered Goa — "the Portuguese pimple on the face of Mother India"; I sat on the sidelines and played no part in the acquisition of large-scale U. S. aid for Pakistan, nor was I to blame for Sino-India border skirmishes in the Aksai Chin region of Ladakh; the Indian census of 1961 revealed a literacy level of 23.7 percent, but I was not entered in its records. The untouchable problem remained acute; I did nothing to alleviate it; and in the elections of 1962, the All-India Congress won 361 out of 494 seats in the Lok Sabha, and over 61 per cent of all State Assembly seats. Not even in this could my unseen hand be said to have moved; except, perhaps, metaphorically: the status quo was preserved in India; in my life, nothing changed either. Then, on September 1st, 1962, we celebrated the Monkey's fourteenth birthday. By this time (and despite my uncle's continued fondness for me) we were well-established as social inferiors, the hapless poor relations of the great Zulfikars; so the party was a skimpy affair. The Monkey, however, gave every appearance of enjoying herself. "It's my duty, brother," she told me. I could hardly believe my ears ... but perhaps my sister had an intuition of her fate; perhaps she knew the transformation which lay in store for her; why should I assume that I alone have had the powers of secret knowledge? Perhaps, then, she guessed that when the hired musicians began to play (shehnai and vina were present; sarangi and sarod had their turns; tabla and sitar performed their virtuosic cross-examinations), Emerald Zulfikar would descend on her with callous elegance, demanding, "Come on, Jamila, don't sit there like a melon, sing us a song like any good girl would!" And that with this sentence my emerald-icy aunt would have begun, quite unwittingly, my sister's transformation from monkey into Singer; because although she protested with the sullen clumsiness of fourteen-year-olds, she was hauled unceremoniously on to the musicians' dais by my organizing aunt; and although she looked as if she wished the floor would open up beneath her feet, she clasped her hands together; seeing no escape, the Monkey began to sing. I have not, I think, been good at describing emotions — believing my audience to be capable of joining in; of imagining for themselves what I have been unable to re-imagine, so that my story becomes yours as well ... |
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On my sixteenth birthday, I was given a Lambretta motor-scooter; riding the city streets on my windowless vehicle, I breathed in the fatalistic hopelessness of the slum dwellers and the smug defensiveness of the rich; I was sucked along the smell-trails of dispossession and also fanaticism, lured down a long underworld corridor at whose end was the door to Tai Bibi, the oldest whore in the world ... but I'm running away with myself. At the heart of my Karachi was Alia Aziz's house, a large old building on Clayton Road (she must have wandered in it for years like a ghost with nobody to haunt), a place of shadows and yellowed paint, across which there fell, every afternoon, the long accusing shadow of the minaret of the local mosque. Even when, years later in the magicians' ghetto, I lived in another mosque's shade, a shade which was, at least for a time, a protective, unmenacing penumbra, I never lost my Karachi-born view of mosque-shadows, in which, it seemed to me, I could sniff the narrow, clutching, accusative odor of my aunt. Who bided her time; but whose vengeance, when it came, was crushing. It was, in those days, a city of mirages; hewn from the desert, it had not wholly succeeded in destroying the desert's power. Oases shone in the tarmac of Elphinstone Street, caravanserais were glimpsed shimmering amongst the hovels around the black bridge, the Kala Pul. In the rainless city (whose only common factor with the city of my birth was that it, too, had started life as a fishing village), the hidden desert retained its ancient powers of apparition-mongering, with the result that Karachiites had only the slipperiest of grasps on reality, and were therefore willing to turn to their leaders for advice on what was real and what was not. Beset by illusionary sand-dunes and the ghosts of ancient kings, and also by the knowledge that the name of the faith upon which the city stood meant "submission," my new fellow-citizens exuded the flat boiled odors of acquiescence, which were depressing to a nose which had smelt — at the very last, and however briefly — the highly-spiced nonconformity of Bombay. Soon after our arrival — and, perhaps, oppressed by the mosque-shadowed air of the Clayton Road house — my father resolved to build us a new home. He bought a plot of land in the smartest of the "societies," the new housing development zones; and on my sixteenth birthday, Saleem acquired more than a Lambretta — I learned the occult powers of umbilical cords. What, pickled in brine, sat for sixteen years in my father's almirah, awaiting just such a day? What, floating like a water-snake in an old pickle-jar, accompanied us on our sea-journey and ended up buried in hard, barren Karachi-earth? What had once nourished life in a womb — what now infused earth with miraculous life, and gave birth to a split-level, American-style modern bungalow? ... Eschewing these cryptic questions, I explain that, on my sixteenth birthday, my family (including Alia Aunty) assembled on our plot of Korangi Road earth; watched by the eyes of a team of laborers and the beard of a mullah, Ahmed handed Saleem a pickaxe; I drove it inaugurally into the ground. "A new beginning," Amina said, "Inshallah, we shall all be new people now." Spurred on by her noble and unattainable desire, a workman rapidly enlarged my hole; and now a pickle-jar was produced. Brine was discarded on the thirsty ground; and what-was-left-inside received the mullah's blessings. After which, an umbilical cord — was it mine? |
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Or Shiva's? — was implanted in the earth; and at once, a house began to grow. There were sweetmeats and soft drinks; the mullah, displaying remarkable hunger, consumed thirty-nine laddoos; and Ahmed Sinai did not once complain of the expense. The spirit of the buried cord inspired the workmen; but although the foundations were dug very deep, they would not prevent the house from failing down before we ever lived in it. What I surmised about umbilical cords: although they possessed the power of growing houses, some were evidently better at the job than others. The city of Karachi proved my point; clearly constructed on top of entirely unsuitable cords, it was full of deformed houses, the stunted hunchback children of deficient life-lines, houses growing mysteriously blind, with no visible windows, houses which looked like radios or air-conditioners or jail-cells, crazy top-heavy edifices which fell over with monotonous regularity, like drunks; a wild proliferation of mad houses, whose inadequacies as living quarters were exceeded only by their quite exceptional ugliness. The city obscured the desert; but either the cords, or the infertility of the soil, made it grow into something grotesque. Capable of smelling sadness and joy, of sniffing out intelligence and stupidity with my eyes closed, I arrived at Karachi, and adolescence — understanding, of course, that the subcontinent's new nations and I had all left childhood behind; that growing pains and strange awkward alterations of voice were in store for us all. Drainage censored my inner life; my sense of connection remained undrained. Saleem invaded Pakistan armed only with a hypersensitive nose; but, worst of all, he invaded from the wrong direction! All successful conquests of that part of the world have begun in the north; all conquerors have come by land. Sailing ignorantly against the winds of history, I reached Karachi from the south-east, and by sea. What followed should not, I suppose, have surprised me. With hindsight, the advantages of sweeping down from the north are self-evident. From the north came the Umayyad generals, Hajjaj bin Yusuf and Muhammad bin Qasim; also the Ismailis. (Honeymoon Lodge, where it is said Aly Khan sojourned with Rita Hayworth, overlooked our plot of umbilicized earth; rumor has it that the film-star created much scandal by wandering in the grounds dressed in a series of fabulous, gauzy, Hollywood negligEes.) O ineluctable superiority of northernness! From which direction did Mahmud of Ghazni descend upon these Indus plains, bringing with him a language boasting no fewer than three forms of the letter S? The inescapable answer: sE, sin and swad were northern intruders. And Muhammad bin Sam Ghuri, who overthrew the Ghaznavids and established the Delhi Caliphate? Sam Ghuri's son, too, moved southwards on his progress. And Tughlaq, and the Mughal Emperors ... but I've made my point. It remains only to add that ideas, as well as armies, swept south south south from the northern heights: the legend of Sikandar But-Shikan, the Iconoclast of Kashmir, who at the end of the fourteenth century destroyed every Hindu temple in the Valley (establishing a precedent for my grandfather), travelled down from the hills to the river-plains; and five hundred years later the mujahideen movement of Syed Ahmad Barilwi followed the well-trodden trail. Barilwi's ideas: self-denial, hatred-of-Hindus, holy war ... philosophies as well as kings (to cut this short) came from the opposite direction to me. |
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The Kifis added new, more scandalous pictures to the one on the poster; and then the Nawab, who was a good man but not one of infinite patience, actually did as he threatened. When the famous singer Jamila arrived with her family and impresario to sing at her cousin's engagement ceremony, the car drove her without trouble from border to palace; and the Nawab said proudly, "No trouble; the car is respected now. Progress has occurred." The Nawab's son Mutasim, who had travelled abroad and wore his hair in something called a "beetle-cut," was a source of worry to his father; because although he was so good-looking that, whenever he travelled around Kif, girls with silver nose-jewelery fainted in the heat of his beauty, he seemed to take no interest in such matters, being content with his polo-ponies and the guitar on which he picked out strange Western songs. He wore bush-shirts on which musical notation and foreign street-signs jostled against the half-clad bodies of pink-skinned girls. But when Jamila Singer, concealed within a gold-brocaded burqa, arrived at the palace, Mutasim the Handsome — who owing to his foreign travels had never heard the rumors of her disfigurement — became obsessed with the idea of seeing her face; he fell head-over-heels with the glimpses of her demure eyes he saw through her perforated sheet. In those days, the President of Pakistan had decreed an election; it was to take place on the day after the engagement ceremony, under a form of suffrage called Basic Democracy. The hundred million people of Pakistan had been divided up into a hundred and twenty thousand approximately equal parts, and each part was represented by one Basic Democrat. The electoral college of one hundred and twenty thousand "B. D. s" were to elect the President. In Kif, the 420 Basic Democrats included mullahs, road-sweepers, the Nawab's chauffeur, numerous men who sharecropped hashish on the Nawab's estate, and other loyal citizens; the Nawab had invited all of these to his daughter's hennaing ceremony. He had, however, also been obliged to invite two real badmaashes, the returning officers of the Combined Opposition Party. These badmaashes quarrelled constantly amongst themselves, but the Nawab was courteous and welcoming. "Tonight you are my honored friends," he told them, "and tomorrow is another day." The badmaashes ate and drank as if they had never seen food before, but everybody — even Mutasim the Handsome, whose patience was shorter than his father's — was told to treat them well. The Combined Opposition Party, you will not be surprised to hear, was a collection of rogues and scoundrels of the first water, united only in their determination to unseat the President and return to the bad old days in which civilians, and not soldiers, lined their pockets from the public exchequer; but for some reason they had acquired a formidable leader. This was Mistress Fatima Jinnah, the sister of the founder of the nation, a woman of such desiccated antiquity that the Nawab suspected she had died long ago and been stuffed by a master taxidermist — a notion supported by his son, who had seen a movie called El Cid in which a dead man led an army into battle ... but there she was nevertheless, goaded into electioneering by the President's failure to complete the marbling of her brother's mausoleum; a terrible foe, above slander and suspicion. It was even said that her opposition to the President had shaken the people's faith in him — was he not, after all, the reincarnation of the great Islamic heroes of yesteryear? |
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Purity — that highest of ideals! — that angelic virtue for which Pakistan was named, and which dripped from every note of my sister's songs! — seemed very far away; how could I have known that history — which has the power of pardoning sinners — was at that moment counting down towards a moment in which it would manage, at one stroke, to cleanse me from head to foot? In the meantime, other forces were spending themselves; Alia Aziz had begun to wreak her awful spinster's revenge. Guru Mandir days: paan-smells, cooking-smells, the langorous odor of the shadow of the minaret, the mosque's long pointing finger: while my aunt Alia's hatred of the man who had abandoned her and of the sister who had married him grew into a tangible, visible thing, it sat on her living-room rug like a great gecko, reeking of vomit; but it seemed I was the only one to smell it, because Alia's skill at dissimulation had grown as rapidly as the hairiness of her chin and her adeptness with the plasters with which, each evening, she ripped her beard out by the roots. My aunt Alia's contribution to the fate of nations — through her school and college — must not be minimized. Having allowed her old-maid frustrations to leak into the curricula, the bricks and also the students at her twin educational establishments, she had raised a tribe of children and young adults who felt themselves possessed by an ancient vengefulness, without fully knowing why. O omnipresent aridity of maiden aunts! It soured the paintwork of her home; her furniture was made lumpy by the harsh stuffing of bitterness; old-maid repressions were sewn into curtain-seams. As once long ago into baby-things of. Bitterness, issuing through the fissures of the earth. What my aunt Alia took pleasure in: cooking. What she had, during the lonely madness of the years, raised to the level of an art-form: the impregnation of food with emotions. To whom she remained second in her achievements in this field: my old ayah, Mary Pereira. By whom, today, both old cooks have been outdone: Saleem Sinai, pickler-in-chief at the Braganza pickle works ... nevertheless, while we lived in her Guru Mandir mansion, she fed us the birianis of dissension and the nargisi koftas of discord; and little by little, even the harmonies of my parents' autumnal love went out of tune. But good things must also be said about my aunt. In politics, she spoke out vociferously against government-by-military-say-so; if she had not had a General for a brother-in-law, her school and college might well have been taken out of her hands. Let me not show her entirely through the dark glass of my private despondency: she had given lecture-tours in the Soviet Union and America. Also, her food tasted good. (Despite its hidden content.) But the air and the food in that mosque-shadowed house began to take its toll ... Saleem, under the doubly dislocating influence of his awful love and Alia's food, began to blush like a beetroot whenever his sister appeared in his thoughts; while Jamila, unconsciously seized by a longing for fresh air and food unseasoned by dark emotions, began to spend less and less time there, travelling instead up and down the country (but never to the East Wing) to give her concerts. On those increasingly rare occasions when brother and sister found themselves in the same room they would jump, startled, half an inch off the floor, and then, landing, stare furiously at the spot over which they had leaped, as if it had suddenly become as hot as a bread-oven. |
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As the child of those confused days grew within her, the contrast between its youth and her age increased; it was at this point that she collapsed into an old cane chair and received visits from the specters of her past. The disintegration of my mother was appalling in its suddenness; Ahmed Sinai, observing helplessly, found himself, all of a sudden, unnerved, adrift, unmanned. Even now, I find it hard to write about those days of the end of possibility, when my father found his towel factory crumbling in his hands. The effects of Alia's culinary witchcraft (which operated both through his stomach, when he ate, and his eyes, when he saw his wife) were now all too apparent in him: he became slack at factory management, and irritable with his work-force. To sum up the ruination of Amina Brand Towels: Ahmed Sinai began treating his workers as peremptorily as once, in Bombay, he had mistreated servants, and sought to inculcate, in master weavers and assistant packers alike, the eternal verities of the master-servant relationship. As a result his work-force walked out on him in droves, explaining, for instance, "I am not your latrine-cleaner, sahib; I am qualified Grade One weaver," and in general refusing to show proper gratitude for his beneficence in having employed them. In the grip of the befuddling wrath of my aunt's packed lunches, he let them all go, and hired a bunch of ill-favored slackers who pilfered cotton spools and machine parts but were willing to bow and scrape whenever required to do so; and the percentage of defective towels rocketed alarmingly, contracts were not fulfilled, re-orders shrank alarmingly. Ahmed Sinai began bringing home mountains — Himalayas! — of reject towelling, because the factory warehouse was full to overflowing of the sub-standard product of his mismanagement; he took to drink again; and by the summer of that year the house in Guru Mandir was awash in the old obscenities of his battle against the djinns, and we had to squeeze sideways past the Everest and Nanga-Parbats of badly-made terry-cloth which lined the passages and hall. We had delivered ourselves into the lap of my fat aunt's long-simmered wrath; with the single exception of Jamila, who was least affected owing to her long absences, we all ended up with our geese well and truly cooked. It was a painful and bewildering time, in which the love of my parents disintegrated under the joint weight of their new baby and of my aunt's age-old grievances; and gradually the confusion and ruin seeped out through the windows of the house and took over the hearts and minds of the nation, so that war, when it came, was wrapped in the same fuddled haze of unreality in which we had begun to live. My father was heading steadily towards his stroke; but before the bomb went off in his brain, another fuse was lit: in April 1965, we heard about the peculiar incidents in the Rann of Kutch. While we thrashed like flies in the webs of my aunt's revenge, the mill of history continued to grind. President Ayub's reputation was in decline: rumors of malpractice in the 1964 election buzzed about, refusing to be swatted. There was, too, the matter of the President's son: Gauhar Ayub, whose enigmatic Gandhara Industries made him a "multi-multi" overnight. O endless sequence of nefarious sons-of-the-great! Gauhar, with his bullyings and rantings; and later, in India, Sanjay Gandhi and his Maruti Car Company and his Congress Youth; and most recently of all, Kanti Lal Desai ... |
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Commander Sabarmati came to see her with his curious baton in his hand, and Nussie-the-duck whispered, "The end, Amina sister! The end of the world!" in my mother's withering ear ... and now, having fought my way through the diseased reality of my Pakistan years, having struggled to make a little sense out of what seemed (through the mist of my aunt Alia's revenge) like a terrible, occult series of reprisals for tearing up our Bombay roots, I have reached the point at which I must tell you about ends. Let me state this quite unequivocally: it is my firm conviction that the hidden purpose of the Indo-Pakistani war of 1965 was nothing more nor less than the elimination of my benighted family from the face of the earth. In order to understand the recent history of our times, it is only necessary to examine the bombing-pattern of that war with an analytical, unprejudiced eye. Even ends have beginnings; everything must be told in sequence. (I have Padma, after all, squashing all my attempts to put the cart before the bullock.) By August 8th, 1965, my family history had got itself into a condition from which what-was-achieved-by-bombing-patterns provided a merciful relief. No: let me use the important word: if we were to be purified, something on the scale of what followed was probably necessary. Alia Aziz, sated with her terrible revenge; my aunt Emerald, widowed and awaiting exile; the hollow lasciviousness of my aunt Pia and the glass-boothed withdrawal of my grandmother Naseem Aziz; my cousin Zafar, with his eternally pre-pubertal princess and his future of wetting mattresses in jail-cells; the retreat into childishness of my father and the haunted, accelerated ageing of pregnant Amina Sinai ... all these terrible conditions were to be cured as a result of the adoption, by the Government, of my dream of visiting Kashmir. In the meantime, the flinty refusals of my sister to countenance my love had driven me into a deeply fatalistic frame of mind; in the grip of my new carelessness about my future I told Uncle Puffs that I was willing to marry any one of the Puffias he chose for me. (By doing so, I doomed them all; everyone who attempts to forge ties with our household ends up by sharing our fate.) I am trying to stop being mystifying. Important to concentrate on good hard facts. But which facts? One week before my eighteenth birthday, on August 8th, did Pakistani troops in civilian clothing cross the cease-fire line in Kashmir and infiltrate the Indian sector, or did they not? In Delhi, Prime Minister Shastri announced "massive infiltration ... to subvert the state"; but here is Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan's Foreign Minister, with his riposte: "We categorically deny any involvement in the rising against tyranny by the indigenous people of Kashmir." If it happened, what were the motives? Again, a rash of possible explanations: the continuing anger which had been stirred up by the Rann of Kutch; the desire to settle, once-and-for-all, the old issue of who-should-possess-the-Perfect-Valley? ... Or one which didn't get into the papers: the pressures of internal political troubles in Pakistan — Ayub's government was tottering, and a war works wonders at such times. This reason or that or the other? To simplify matters, I present two of my own: the war happened because I dreamed Kashmir into the fantasies of our rulers; furthermore, I remained impure, and the war was to separate me from my sins. Jehad, Padma! Holy war! But who attacked? Who defended? |
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On my eighteenth birthday, reality took another terrible beating. From the ramparts of the Red Fort in Delhi, an Indian prime minister (not the same one who wrote me a long-ago letter) sent me this birthday greeting: "We promise that force will be met with force, and aggression against us will never be allowed to succeed!" While jeeps with loud-hailers saluted me in Guru Mandir, reassuring me: "The Indian aggressors will be utterly overthrown! We are a race of warriors! One Pathan; one Punjabi Muslim is worth ten of those babus-in-arms!" Jamila Singer was called north, to serenade our worth-ten jawans. A servant paints blackout on the windows; at night, my father, in the stupidity of his second childhood, opens the windows and turns on the lights. Bricks and stones fly through the apertures: my eighteenth-birthday presents. And still events grow more and more confused: on August 30th, did Indian troops cross the cease-fire line near Uri to "chase out the Pakistan raiders" — or to initiate an attack? When, on September 1st, our ten-times-better soldiers crossed the line at Chhamb, were they aggressors or were they not? Some certainties: that the voice of Jamila Singer sang Pakistani troops to their deaths; and that muezzins from their minarets — yes, even on Clayton Road — promised us that anyone who died in battle went straight to the camphor garden. The mujahid philosophy of Syed Ahmad Barilwi ruled the air; we were invited to make sacrifices "as never before." And on the radio, what destruction, what mayhem! In the first five days of the war Voice of Pakistan announced the destruction of more aircraft than Indian had ever possessed; in eight days, All-India Radio massacred the Pakistan Army down to, and considerably beyond, the last man. Utterly distracted by the double insanity of the war and my private life, I began to think desperate thoughts ... Great sacrifices: for instance, at the battle for Lahore? — On September 6th, Indian troops crossed the Wagah border, thus hugely broadening the front of the war, which was no longer limited to Kashmir; and did great sacrifices take place, or not? Was it true that the city was virtually defenseless, because the Pak Army and Air Force were all in the Kashmir sector? Voice of Pakistan said: O memorable day! O unarguable lesson in the fatality of delay! The Indians, confident of capturing the city, stopped for breakfast. All-India Radio announced the fall of Lahore; meanwhile, a private aircraft spotted the breakfasting invaders. While the B. B. C. picked up the A. I. R. story, the Lahore militia was mobilized. Hear the Voice of Pakistan! — old men, young boys, irate grandmothers fought the Indian Army; bridge by bridge they battled, with any available weapons! Lame men loaded their pockets with grenades, pulled out the pins, flung themselves beneath advancing Indian tanks; toothless old ladies disembowelled Indian babus with pitch-forks! Down to the last man and child, they died; but they saved the city, holding off the Indians until air support arrived! Martyrs, Padma! Heroes, bound for the perfumed garden! Where the men would be given four beauteous houris, untouched by man or djinn; and the women, four equally virile males! Which of your Lord's blessings would you deny? What a thing this holy war is, in which with one supreme sacrifice men may atone for all their evils! No wonder Lahore was defended; what did the Indians have to look forward to? Only reincarnation — as cockroaches, maybe, or scorpions, or green-medicine-wallahs — there's really no comparison. |
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And Ayooba Shaheed Farooq? Our boys in green? How did they take to battling against fellow meat-eaters? Did they mutiny? Were officers — Iskandar, Najmuddin, even Lala Moin — riddled with nauseated bullets? They were not. Innocence had been lost; but despite a new grimness about the eyes, despite the irrevocable loss of certainty, despite the eroding of moral absolutes, the unit went on with its work. The buddha was not the only one who did as he was told ... while somewhere high above the struggle, the voice of Jamila Singer fought anonymous voices singing the lyrics of R. Tagore: "My life passes in the shady village homes filled with rice from your fields; they madden my heart with delight." Their hearts maddened, but not with delight, Ayooba and company followed orders; the buddha followed scent-trails. Into the heart of the city, which has turned violent maddened bloodsoaked as the West Wing soldiers react badly to their knowledge-of-wrongdoing, goes Number 22 Unit; through the blackened streets, the buddha concentrates on the ground, sniffing out trails, ignoring the ground-level chaos of cigarette-packs cow-dung fallen-bicycles abandoned-shoes; and then on other assignments, out into the countryside, where entire villages are being burned owing to their collective responsibility for harboring Mukti Bahini, the buddha and three boys track down minor Awami League officials and well-known Communist types. Past migrating villagers with bundled possessions on their heads; past torn-up railway tracks and burnt-out trees; and always, as though some invisible force were directing their footsteps, drawing them into a darker heart of madness, their missions send them south south south, always nearer to the sea, to the mouths of the Ganges and the sea. And at last — who were they following then? Did names matter any more? — they were given a quarry whose skills must have been the equal-and-opposite of the buddha's own, otherwise why did it take so long to catch him? At last — unable to escape their training, pursue-relentlessly-arrest-remorselessly, they are in the midst of a mission without an end, pursuing a foe who endlessly eludes them, but they cannot report back to base empty-handed, and on they go, south south south, drawn by eternally-receding scent-trail; and perhaps by something more: because, in my life, fate has never been unwilling to lend a hand. They have commandeered a boat, because the buddha said the trail led down the river; hungry unslept exhausted in a universe of abandoned rice-paddies, they row after their unseen prey; down the great brown river they go, until the war is too far away to remember, but still the scent leads them on. The river here has a familiar name: Padma. But the name is a local deception; in reality the river is still Her, the mother-water, goddess Ganga streaming down to earth through Shiva's hair. The buddha has not spoken for days; he just points, there, that way, and on they go, south south south to the sea. A nameless morning. Ayooba Shaheed Farooq awaking in the boat of their absurd pursuit, moored by the bank of Padma-Ganga — to find him gone. "Allah-Allah," Farooq yelps, "Grab your ears and pray for pity, he's brought us to this drowned place and run off, it's all your fault, you Ayooba, that trick with the jump-leads and this is his revenge!" ... The sun, climbing. Strange alien birds in the sky. Hunger and fear like mice in their bellies: and whatif, whatif the Mukti Bahini ... parents are invoked. |
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But one night Ayooba awoke in the dark to find the translucent figure of a peasant with a bullet-hole in his heart and a scythe in his hand staring mournfully down at him, and as he struggled to get out of the boat (which they had pulled in, under the cover of their primitive shelter) the peasant leaked a colorless fluid which flowed out of the hole in his heart and on to Ayooba's gun arm. The next morning Ayooba's right arm refused to move; it hung rigidly by his side as if it had been set in plaster. Although Farooq Rashid offered help and sympathy, it was no use; the arm was held immovably in the invisible fluid of the ghost. After this first apparition, they fell into a state of mind in which they would have believed the forest capable of anything; each night it sent them new punishments, the accusing eyes of the wives of men they had tracked down and seized, the screaming and monkey-gibbering of children left fatherless by their work ... and in this first time, the time of punishment, even the impassive buddha with his citified voice was obliged to confess that he, too, had taken to waking up at night to find the forest closing in upon him like a vice, so that he felt unable to breathe. When it had punished them enough — when they were all trembling shadows of the people they had once been — the jungle permitted them the double-edged luxury of nostalgia. One night Ayooba, who was regressing towards infancy faster than any of them, and had begun to suck his one moveable thumb, saw his mother looking down at him, offering him the delicate rice-based sweets of her love; but at the same moment as he reached out for the laddoos, she scurried away, and he saw her climb a giant sundri-tree to sit swinging from a high branch by her tail: a white wraith-like monkey with the face of his mother visited Ayooba night after night, so that after a time he was obliged to remember more about her than her sweets: how she had liked to sit among the boxes of her dowry, as though she, too, were simply some sort of thing, simply one of the gifts her father gave to her husband; in the heart of the Sundarbans, Ayooba Baloch understood his mother for the first time, and stopped sucking his thumb. Farooq Rashid, too, was given a vision. At dusk one day he thought he saw his brother running wildly through the forest, and became convinced that his father had died. He remembered a forgotten day when his peasant father had told him and his fleet-footed brother that the local landlord, who lent money at 300 per cent, had agreed to buy his soul in return for the latest loan. "When I die," old Rashid told Farooq's brother, "you must open your mouth and my spirit will fly inside it; then run run run, because the zamindar will be after you!" Farooq, who had also started regressing alarmingly, found in the knowledge of his father's death and the flight of his brother the strength to give up the childish habits which the jungle had at first re-created in him; he stopped crying when he was hungry and asking Why. Shaheed Dar, too, was visited by a monkey with the face of an ancestor; but all he saw was a father who had instructed him to earn his name. This, however, also helped to restore in him the sense of responsibility which the just-following-orders requirements of war had sapped; so it seemed that the magical jungle, having tormented them with their misdeeds, was leading them by the hand towards a new adulthood. And flitting through the night-forest went the wraiths of their hopes; these, however, they were unable to see clearly, or to grasp. |
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After that night, they were unable to tear themselves away from the temple, except to forage for food, and every night the soft women of their most contented dreams returned in silence, never speaking, always neat and tidy with their saris, and invariably bringing the lost quartet to an incredible united peak of delight. None of them knew how long this period lasted, because in the Sundarban time followed unknown laws, but at last the day came when they looked at each other and realized they were becoming transparent, that it was possible to see through their bodies, not clearly as yet, but cloudily, like staring through mango-juice. In their alarm they understood that this was the last and worst of the jungle's tricks, that by giving them their heart's desire it was fooling them into using up their dreams, so that as their dream-life seeped out of them they became as hollow and translucent as glass. The buddha saw now that the colorlessness of insects and leeches and snakes might have more to do with the depredations worked on their insectly, leechy, snakish imaginations than with the absence of sunlight ... awakened as if for the first time by the shock of translucency, they looked at the temple with new eyes, seeing the great gaping cracks in the solid rock, realizing that vast segments could come detached and crash down upon them at any moment; and then, in a murky corner of the abandoned shrine, they saw the remnants of what might have been four small fires — ancient ashes, scorch-marks on stone — or perhaps four funeral pyres; and in the center of each of the four, a small, blackened, fire-eaten heap of uncrushed bones. How the buddha left the Sundarbans: the forest of illusions unleashed upon them, as they fled from temple towards boat, its last and most terrifying trick; they had barely reached the boat when it came towards them, at first a rumble in the far distance, then a roar which could penetrate even mud-deafened ears, they had untied the boat and leaped wildly into it when the wave came, and now they were at the mercy of the waters, which could have crushed them effortlessly against sundri or mangrove or nipa, but instead the tidal wave bore them down turbulent brown channels as the forest of their torment blurred past them like a great green wall, it seemed as if the jungle, having tired of its playthings, were ejecting them unceremoniously from its territory; waterborne, impelled forwards and still forwards by the unimaginable power of the wave, they bobbed pitifully amongst fallen branches and the sloughed-off skins of water-snakes, until finally they were hurled from the boat as the ebbing wave broke it against a tree-stump, they were left sitting in a drowned rice-paddy as the wave receded, in water up to their waists, but alive, borne out of the heart of the jungle of dreams, into which I had fled in the hope of peace and found both less and more, and back once more in the world armies and dates. When they emerged from the jungle, it was October 1971. And I am bound to admit (but, in my opinion, the fact only reinforces my wonder at the time-shifting sorcery of the forest) that there was no tidal wave recorded that month, although, over a year previously, floods had indeed devastated the region. In the aftermath of the Sundarbans, my old life was waiting to reclaim me. I should have known: no escape from past acquaintance. What you were is forever who you are. For seven months during the course of the year 1971, three soldiers and their tracker vanished off the face of the war. |
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There was no second shot; perhaps the sniper, not knowing the size of the force hidden inside the mud-walled hut, had simply shot and run. The three of us remained inside the hut for a night and a day, until the body of Ayooba Baloch began to demand attention. Before we left, we found pickaxes, and buried him ... And afterwards, when the Indian Army did come, there was no Ayooba Baloch to greet them with his theories of the superiority of meat over vegetables; no Ayooba went into action, yelling, "Ka-dang! Ka-blam! Ka-pow!!" Perhaps it was just as well. ... And sometime in December the three of us, riding on stolen bicycles, arrived at a field from which the city of Dacca could be seen against the horizon; a field in which grew crops so strange, with so nauseous an aroma, that we found ourselves incapable of remaining on our bicycles. Dismounting before we fell off, we entered the terrible field. There was a scavenging peasant moving about, whistling as he worked, with an outsize gunny sack on his back. The whitened knuckles of the hand which gripped the sack revealed his determined frame of mind; the whistling, which was piercing but tuneful, showed that he was keeping his spirits up. The whistle echoed around the field, bouncing off fallen helmets, resounding hollowly from the barrels of mud-blocked rifles, sinking without trace into the fallen boots of the strange, strange crops, whose smell, like the smell of unfairness, was capable of bringing tears to the buddha's eyes. The crops were dead, having been hit by some unknown blight ... and most of them, but not all, wore the uniforms of the West Pakistani Army. Apart from the whistling, the only noises to be heard were the sounds of objects dropping into the peasant's treasure-sack: leather belts, watches, gold tooth-fillings, spectacle frames, tiffin-carriers, water flasks, boots. The peasant saw them and came running towards them, smiling ingratiatingly, talking rapidly in a wheedling voice that only the buddha was obliged to hear. Farooq and Shaheed stared glassily at the field while the peasant began his explanations. "Plenty shooting! Thaii! Thaii!" He made a pistol with his right hand. He was speaking bad, stilted Hindi. "Ho sirs! India has come, my sirs! Ho yes! Ho yes." — And all over the field, the crops were leaking nourishing bone-marrow into the soil while he, "No shoot I, my sirs. Ho no. I have news — ho, such news! India comes! Jessore is fall, my sirs; in one-four days, Dacca, also, yes-no?" The buddha listened; the buddha's eyes looked beyond the peasant to the field. "Such a things, my sir! India! They have one mighty soldier fellow, he can kill six persons at one time, break necks khrikk-khrikk between his knees, my sirs? Knees — is right words?" He tapped his own. "I see, my sirs. With these eyes, ho yes! He fights with not guns, not swords. With knees, and six necks go khrikk-khrikk. Ho God." Shaheed was vomiting in the field. Farooq Rashid had wandered to the far edge and stood staring into a copse of mango trees. "In one-two weeks is over the war, my sirs! Everybody come back. Just now all gone, but I not, my sirs. Soldiers came looking for Bahini and killed many many, also my son. Ho yes, sirs, ho yes indeed." The buddha's eyes had become clouded and dull. In the distance he could hear the crump of heavy artillery. Columns of smoke trailed up into the colorless December sky. The strange crops lay still, unruffled by the breeze ... "I say, my sirs. Here I know names of birds and plants. |
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What I held on to in that ghostly time-and-space: a silver spittoon. Which, transformed like myself by Parvati-whispered words, was nevertheless a reminder of the outside ... clutching finely-wrought silver, which glittered even in that nameless dark, I survived. Despite head-to-toe numbness, I was saved, perhaps, by the glints of my precious souvenir. No — there was more to it than spittoons: for, as we all know by now, our hero is greatly affected by being shut up in confined spaces. Transformations spring upon him in the enclosed dark. As a mere embryo in the secrecy of a womb (not his mother's), did he not grow into the incarnation of the new myth of August 15th, the child of ticktock — did he not emerge as the Mubarak, the Blessed Child? In a cramped wash-room, were name-tags not switched around? Alone in a washing-chest with a drawstring up one nostril, did he not glimpse a Black Mango and sniff too hard, turning himself and his upper cucumber into a kind of supernatural ham radio? Hemmed in by doctors, nurses and anesthetic masks, did he not succumb to numbers and, having suffered drainage-above, move into a second phase, that of nasal philosopher and (later) tracker supreme? Squashed, in a small abandoned hut, beneath the body of Ayooba Baloch, did he not learn the meaning of fair-and-unfair? Well, then — trapped in the occult peril of the basket of invisibility, I was saved, not only by the glints of a spittoon, but also by another transformation: in the grip of that awful disembodied loneliness, whose smell was the smell of graveyards, I discovered anger. Something was fading in Saleem and something was being born. Fading: an old pride in baby-snaps and framed Nehru-letter; an old determination to espouse, willingly, a prophesied historical role; and also a willingness to make allowances, to understand how parents and strangers might legitimately despise or exile him for his ugliness; mutilated fingers and monks' tonsures no longer seemed like good enough excuses for the way in which he, I, had been treated. The object of my wrath was, in fact, everything which I had, until then, blindly accepted: my parents' desire that I should repay their investment in me by becoming great; genius-like-a-shawl; the modes of connection themselves inspired in me a blind, lunging fury. Why me? Why, owing to accidents of birth prophecy etcetera, must I be responsible for language riots and after-Nehru-who, for pepperpot-revolutions and bombs which annihilated my family? Why should I, Saleem Snotnose, Sniffer, Mapface, Piece-of-the-Moon, accept the blame for what-was-not-done by Pakistani troops in Dacca? ... Why, alone of all the more-than-five-hundred-million, should I have to bear the burden of history? What my discovery of unfairness (smelling of onions) had begun, my invisible rage completed. Wrath enabled me to survive the soft siren temptations of invisibility; anger made me determined, after I was released from vanishment in the shadow of a Friday Mosque, to begin, from that moment forth, to choose my own, undestined future. And there, in the silence of graveyard-reeking isolation, I heard the long-ago voice of the virginal Mary Pereira, singing: Anything you want to be, you kin be, You kin be just what-all you want. Tonight, as I recall my rage, I remain perfectly calm; the Widow drained anger out of me along with everything else. Remembering my basket-born rebellion against inevitability, I even permit myself a wry, understanding smile. |
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(And I, with my distances and self-absorption, like a husband?) Of late, in spite of my stoic fatalism about the spreading cracks, I have smelled, on Padma's breath, the dream of an alternative (but impossible) future; ignoring the implacable finalities of inner fissures, she has begun to exude the bitter-sweet fragrance of hope-for-marriage. My dung-lotus, who remained impervious for so long to the sneer-lipped barbs hurled by our workforce of downy-forearmed women; who placed her cohabitation with me outside and above all codes of social propriety, has seemingly succumbed to a desire for legitimacy ... in short, although she has not said a word on the subject, she is waiting for me to make an honest woman of her. The perfume of her sad hopefulness permeates her most innocently solicitous remarks — even at this very moment, as she, "Hey, mister, why not — finish your writery and then take rest; go to Kashmir, sit quietly for some time — and maybe you will take your Padma also, and she can look after ... ?" Behind this burgeoning dream of a Kashmiri holiday (which was once also the dream of Jehangir, the Mughal Emperor; of poor forgotten Ilse Lubin; and, perhaps, of Christ himself), I nose out the presence of another dream; but neither this nor that can be fulfilled. Because now the cracks, the cracks and always the cracks are narrowing my future towards its single inescapable fullpoint; and even Padma must take a back seat if I'm to finish my tales. Today, the papers are talking about the supposed political rebirth of Mrs. Indira Gandhi; but when I returned to India, concealed in a wicker basket, "The Madam" was basking in the fullness of her glory. Today, perhaps, we are already forgetting, sinking willingly into the insidious clouds of amnesia; but I remember, and will set down, how I — how she — how it happened that — no, I can't say it, I must tell it in the proper order, until there is no option but to reveal ... On December 16th, 1971,1 tumbled out of a basket into an India in which Mrs. Gandhi's New Congress Party held a more-than-two-thirds majority in the National Assembly. In the basket of invisibility, a sense of unfairness turned into anger; and something else besides — transformed by rage, I had also been overwhelmed by an agonizing feeling of sympathy for the country which was not only my twin-in-birth but also joined to me (so to speak) at the hip, so that what happened to either of us, happened to us both. If I, snot-nosed stain-faced etcetera, had had a hard time of it, then so had she, my subcontinental twin sister; and now that I had given myself the right to choose a better future, I was resolved that the nation should share it, too. I think that when I tumbled out into dust, shadow and amused cheers, I had already decided to save the country. (But there are cracks and gaps ... had I, by then, begun to see that my love for Jamila Singer had been, in a sense, a mistake? Had I already understood how I had simply transferred on to her shoulders the adoration which I now perceived to be a vaulting, all-encompassing love of country? When was it that I realized that my truly-incestuous feelings were for my true birth-sister, India herself, and not for that trollop of a crooner who had so callously shed me, like a used snake-skin, and dropped me into the metaphorical waste-basket of Army life? When when when? ... Admitting defeat, I am forced to record that I cannot remember for sure.) ... Saleem sat blinking in the dust in the shadow of the mosque. |
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The plain, unadorned truth is that, in those days, the ghetto illusionists and other artistes began to hit new peaks of achievement — jugglers managed to keep one thousand and one balls in the air at a time, and a fakir's as-yet-untrained protegEe strayed on to a bed of hot coals, only to stroll across it unconcerned, as though she had acquired her mentor's gifts by osmosis; I was told that the rope-trick had been successfully performed. Also, the police failed to make their monthly raid on the ghetto, which had not happened within living memory; and the camp received a constant stream of visitors, the servants of the rich, requesting the professional services of one or more of the colony at this or that gala evening's entertainment ... it seemed, in fact, as though Resham Bibi had got things the wrong way round, and I rapidly became very popular in the ghetto. I was dubbed Saleem Kismeti, Lucky Saleem; Parvati was congratulated on having brought me to the slum. And finally Picture Singh brought Resham Bibi to apologize. "Pol'gize," Resham said toothlessly and fled; Picture Singh added, "It is hard for the old ones; their brains go raw and remember upside down. Captain, here everyone is saying you are our luck; but will you go from us soon?" — And Parvati, staring dumbly with saucer eyes which begged no no no; but I was obliged to answer in the affirmative. Saleem, today, is certain that he answered, "Yes"; that on the selfsame morning, still dressed in shapeless robe, still inseparable from a silver spittoon, he walked away, without looking back at a girl who followed him with eyes moistened with accusations; that, strolling hastily past practising jugglers and sweetmeat-stalls which filled his nostrils with the temptations of rasgullas, past barbers offering shaves for ten paisa, past the derelict maunderings of crones and the American-accented caterwauls of shoe-shine boys who importuned bus-loads of Japanese tourists in identical blue suits and incongruous saffron turbans which had been tied around their heads by obsequiously mischievous guides, past the towering flight of stairs to the Friday Mosque, past vendors of notions and itr-essences and plaster-of-Paris replicas of the Qutb Minar and painted toy horses and fluttering unslaughtered chickens, past invitations to cockfights and empty-eyed games of cards, he emerged from the ghetto of the illusionists and found himself on Faiz Bazar, facing the infinitely-extending walls of a Red Fort from whose ramparts a prime minister had once announced independence, and in whose shadow a woman had been met by a peepshow-merchant, a Dilli-dekho man who had taken her into narrowing lanes to hear her son's future foretold amongst mongeese and vultures and broken men with leaves bandaged around their arms; that, to be brief, he turned to his right and walked away from the Old City towards the roseate palaces built by pink-skinned conquerors long ago: abandoning my saviors, I went into New Delhi on foot. Why? Why, ungratefully spurning the nostalgic grief of Parvati-the-witch, did I set my face against the old and journey into newness? Why, when for so many years I had found her my staunchest ally in the nocturnal congresses of my mind, did I leave her so lightly in the morning? Fighting past fissured blanks, I am able to remember two reasons; but am unable to say which was paramount, or if a third ... firstly, at any rate, I had been taking stock. Saleem, analysing his prospects, had had no option but to admit to himself that they were not good. |
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I was passport-less; in law an illegal immigrant (having once been a legal emigrant); P. O. W. camps were waiting for me everywhere. And even after setting aside my status as defeated-soldier-on-the-run, the list of my disadvantages remained formidable: I had neither funds nor a change of clothes; nor qualifications — having neither completed my education nor distinguished myself in that part of it which I had undergone; how was I to embark on my ambitious project of nation-saving without a roof over my head or a family to protect support assist ... it struck me like a thunderclap that I was wrong; that here, in this very city, I had relatives — and not only relatives, but influential ones! My uncle Mustapha Aziz, a senior Civil Servant, who when last heard of had been number two in his Department; what better patron than he for my Messianic ambitions? Under his roof, I could acquire contacts as well as new clothes; under his auspices, I would seek preferment in the Administration, and, as I studied the realities of government, would certainly find the keys of national salvation; and I would have the ears of Ministers, I would perhaps be on first-name terms with the great ...! It was in the clutches of this magnificent fantasy that I told Parvati-the-witch, "I must be off; great matters are afoot!" And, seeing the hurt in her suddenly-inflamed cheeks, consoled her: "I will come and see you often. Often often." But she was not consoled ... high-mindedness, then, was one motive for abandoning those who had helped me; but was there not something meaner, lowlier, more personal? There was. Parvati had drawn me secretly aside behind a tin-and-cratewood shack; where cockroaches spawned, where rats made love, where flies gorged themselves on pie-dog dung, she clutched me by the wrist and became incandescent of eye and sibilant of tongue; hidden in the putrid underbelly of the ghetto, she confessed that I was not the first of the midnight children to have crossed her path! And now there was a story of a Dacca procession, and magicians marching alongside heroes; there was Parvati looking up at a tank, and there were Parvati-eyes alighting on a pair of gigantic, prehensile knees ... knees bulging proudly through starched-pressed uniform; there was Parvati crying, "O you! O you ..." and then the unspeakable name, the name of my guilt, of someone who should have led my life but for a crime in a nursing home; Parvati and Shiva, Shiva and Parvati, fated to meet by the divine destiny of their names, were united in the moment of victory. "A hero, man!" she hissed proudly behind the shack. "They will make him a big officer and all!" And now what was produced from a fold of her ragged attire? What once grew proudly on a hero's head and now nestled against a sorceress's breasts? "I asked and he gave," said Parvati-the-witch, and showed me a lock of his hair. Did I run from that lock of fateful hair? Did Saleem, fearing a reunion with his alter ego, whom he had so-long-ago banned from the councils of the night, flee back into the bosom of that family whose comforts had been denied the war-hero? Was it high-mindedness or guilt? I can no longer say; I set down only what I remember, namely that Parvati-the-witch whispered, "Maybe he will come when he has time; and then we will be three!" And another, repeated phrase: "Midnight's children, yaar ... that's something, no?" Parvati-the-witch reminded me of things I had tried to put out of my mind; and I walked away from her, to the home of Mustapha Aziz. |
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Don't you have a brain to think with? You come to a Senior Civil Servant's house — an escaped war criminal, Allah! You want to lose your uncle his job? You want to put us all out on the street? Catch your ears for shame, boy! Go — go, get out, or better, we should call the police and hand you over just now! Go, be a prisoner of war, why should we care, you are not even our departed sister's true-born son ..." Thunderbolts, one after the other: Saleem fears for his safety, and simultaneously learns the inescapable truth about his mother's death, and also that his position is weaker than he thought, because in this part of his family the act of acceptance has not been made; Sonia, knowing what Mary Pereira confessed, is capable of anything! ... And I, feebly, "My mother? Departed?" And now Uncle Mustapha, perhaps feeling that his wife has gone too far, says reluctantly, "Never mind, Saleem, of course you must stay — he must, wife, what else to do? — and poor fellow doesn't even know ..." Then they told me. It occurred to me, in the heart of that crazy Fly, that I owed the dead a number of mourning periods; after I learned of the demise of my mother and father and aunts Alia and Pia and Emerald, of cousin Zafar and his Kifi princess, of Reverend Mother and my distant relative Zohra and her husband, I resolved to spend the next four hundred days in mourning, as was right and proper: ten mourning periods, of forty days each. And then, and then, there was the matter of Jamila Singer ... She had heard about my disappearance in the turmoil of the war in Bangladesh; she, who always showed her love when it was too late, had perhaps been driven a little crazy by the news. Jamila, the Voice of Pakistan, Bulbul-of-the-Faith, had spoken out against the new rulers of truncated, moth-eaten, war-divided Pakistan; while Mr. Bhutto was telling the U. N. Security Council, "We will build a new Pakistan! A better Pakistan! My country hearkens for me!", my sister was reviling him in public; she, purest of the pure, most patriotic of patriots, turned rebel when she heard about my death. (That, at least, is how I see it; all I heard from my uncle were the bald facts; he had heard them through diplomatic channels, which do not go in for psychological theorizing.) Two days after her tirade against the perpetrators of the war, my sister had vanished off the face of the earth. Uncle Mustapha tried to speak gently: "Very bad things are happening over there, Saleem; people disappearing all the time; we must fear the worst." No! No no no! Padma: he was wrong! Jamila did not disappear into the clutches of the State; because that same night, I dreamed that she, in the shadows of darkness and the secrecy of a simple veil, not the instantly recognizable gold-brocade tent of Uncle Puffs but a common black burqa, fled by air from the capital city; and here she is, arriving in Karachi, unquestioned unarrested free, she is taking a taxi into the depths of the city, and now there is a high wall with bolted doors and a hatch through which, once, long ago, I received bread, the leavened bread of my sister's weakness, she is asking to be let in, nuns are opening doors as she cries sanctuary, yes, there she is, safely inside, doors being bolted behind her, exchanging one kind of invisibility for another, there is another Reverend Mother now, as Jamila Singer who once, as the Brass Monkey, flirted with Christianity, finds safety shelter peace in the midst of the hidden order of Santa Ignacia ... |
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yes, she is there, safe, not vanished, not in the grip of police who kick beat starve, but at rest, not in an unmarked grave by the side of the Indus, but alive, baking bread, singing sweetly to the secret nuns; I know, I know, I know. How do I know? A brother knows; that's all. Responsibility, assaulting me yet again: because there is no way out of it — Jamila's fall was, as usual, all my fault. I lived in the home of Mr. Mustapha Aziz for four hundred and twenty days ... Saleem was in belated mourning for his dead; but do not think for one moment that my ears were closed! Don't assume I didn't hear what was being said around me, the repeated quarrels between uncle and aunt (which may have helped him decide to consign her to the insane asylum): Sonia Aziz yelling, "That bhangi — that dirtyfilthy fellow, not even your nephew, I don't know what's got into you, we should throw him out on his ear!" And Mustapha, quietly, replying: "Poor chap is stricken with grief, so how can we, you just have to look to see, he is not quite right in the head, has suffered many bad things." Not quite right in the head! That was tremendous, coming from them — from that family beside which a tribe of gibbering cannibals would have seemed calm and civilized! Why did I put up with it? Because I was a man with a dream. But for four hundred and twenty days, it was a dream which failed to come true. Droopy-moustachioed, tall-but-stooped, an eternal number-two: my uncle Mustapha was not my uncle Hanif. He was the head of the family now, the only one of his generation to survive the holocaust of 1965; but he gave me no help at all ... I bearded him in his genealogy-filled study one bitter evening and explained — with proper solemnity and humble but resolute gestures — my historic mission to rescue the nation from her fate; but he sighed deeply and said, "Listen, Saleem, what would you have me do? I keep you in my house; you eat my bread and do nothing — but that is all right, you are from my dead sister's house, and I must look after — so stay, rest, get well in yourself; then let us see. You want a clerkship or so, maybe it can be fixed; but leave these dreams of God-knows-what. Our country is in safe hands. Already Indiraji is making radical reforms — land reforms, tax structures, education, birth control — you can leave it to her and her sarkar." Patronizing me, Padma! As if I were a foolish child! O the shame of it, the humiliating shame of being condescended to by dolts! At every turn I am thwarted; a prophet in the wilderness, like Maslama, like ibn Sinan! No matter how I try, the desert is my lot. O vile unhelpfulness of lickspittle uncles! O fettering of ambitions by second-best toadying relatives! My uncle's rejection of my pleas for preferment had one grave effect: the more he praised his Indira, the more deeply I detested her. He was, in fact, preparing me for my return to the magicians' ghetto, and for ... for her ... the Widow. Jealousy: that was it. The green jealousy of my mad aunt Sonia, dripping like poison into my uncle's ears, prevented him from doing a single thing to get me started on my chosen career. The great are eternally at the mercy of tiny men. And also: tiny madwomen. On the four hundred and eighteenth day of my stay, there was a change in the atmosphere of the madhouse. Someone came to dinner: someone with a plump stomach, a tapering head covered with oily curls and a mouth as fleshy as a woman's labia. I thought I recognized him from newspaper photographs. |
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And as for Mustapha, well, my indiscretion with Parvati may also have been, in his eyes, no more than a useful pretext for getting rid of me; but that must remain in doubt, because the black folder was locked — all I have to go on is a look in his eye, a smell of fear, three initials on a label — because afterwards, when everything was finished, a fallen lady and her labia-lipped son spent two days behind locked doors, burning files; and how can we know whether-or-not one of them was labelled M. C. C.? I didn't want to stay, anyway. Family: an overrated idea. Don't think I was sad! Never for a moment imagine that lumps arose in my throat at my expulsion from the last gracious home open to me! I tell you — I was in fine spirits when I left ... maybe there is something unnatural about me, some fundamental lack of emotional response; but my thoughts have always aspired to higher things. Hence my resilience. Hit me: I bounce back. (But no resistance is of any use against the cracks.) To sum up: forsaking my earlier, naive hopes of preferment in public service, I returned to the magicians' slum and the chaya of the Friday Mosque. Like Gautama, the first and true Buddha, I left my life of comfort and went like a beggar into the world. The date was February 23 rd, 1973; coal-mines and the wheat market were being nationalized, the price of oil had begun to spiral up up up, would quadruple in a year, and in the Communist Party of India, the split between Dange's Moscow faction and Namboodiripad's C. P. I.(M.) had become unbridgeable; and I, Saleem Sinai, like India, was twenty-five years, six months and eight days old. The magicians were Communists, almost to a man. That's right: reds! Insurrectionists, public menaces, the scum of the earth — a community of the godless living blasphemously in the very shadow of the house of God! Shameless, what's more; innocently scarlet; born with the bloody taint upon their souls! And let me say at once that no sooner had I discovered this than I, who had been raised in India's other true faith, which we may term Businessism, and who had abandoned-been-abandoned-by its practitioners, felt instantly and comfortingly at home. A renegade Businessist, I began zealously to turn red and then redder, as surely and completely as my father had once turned white, so that now my mission of saving-the-country could be seen in a new light; more revolutionary methodologies suggested themselves. Down with the rule of uncooperative box-wallah uncles and their beloved leaders! Full of thoughts of direct-communication-with-the-masses, I settled into the magicians' colony, scraping a living by amusing foreign and native tourists with the marvellous perspicacities of my nose, which enabled me to smell out their simple, touristy secrets. Picture Singh asked me to share his shack. I slept on tattered sackcloth amongst baskets sibilant with snakes; but I did not mind, just as I found myself capable of tolerating hunger thirst mosquitoes and (in the beginning) the bitter cold of a Delhi winter. This Picture Singh, the Most Charming Man In The World, was also the ghetto's unquestioned chieftain; squabbles and problems were resolved beneath the shade of his ubiquitous and enormous black umbrella; and I, who could read and write as well as smell, became a sort of aide-de-camp to this monumental man who invariably added a lecture on socialism to his serpentine performances, and who was famous in the main streets and alleys of the city for more than his snake-charmer's skills. |
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What follows is a reconstruction of the recent career of Major Shiva; I pieced the story together from Parvati's accounts, which I got out of her after our marriage. It seems my arch-rival was fond of boasting to her about his exploits, so you may wish to make allowances for the distortions of truth which such chest-beating creates; however, there seems no reason to believe that what he told Parvati and she repeated to me was very far removed from what-was-the-case. At the end of the war in the East, the legends of Shiva's awful exploits buzzed through the streets of the cities, leaped on to newspaper and into magazines, and thus insinuated themselves into the salons of the well-to-do, settling in clouds as thick as flies upon the eardrums of the country's hostesses, so that Shiva found himself elevated in social status as well as military rank, and was invited to a thousand and one different gatherings — banquets, musical soirees, bridge parties, diplomatic receptions, party political conferences, great melas and also smaller, local fetes, school sports days and fashionable balls — to be applauded and monopolized by the noblest and fairest in the land, to all of whom the legends of his exploits clung like flies, walking over their eyeballs so that they saw the young man through the mist of his legend, coating their fingertips so that they touched him through the magical film of his myth, settling on their tongues so that they could not speak to him as they would to an ordinary human being. The Indian Army, which was at that time fighting a political battle against proposed expenditure cuts, understood the value of so charismatic an ambassador, and permitted the hero to circulate amongst his influential admirers; Shiva espoused his new life with a will. He grew a luxuriant moustache to which his personal batman applied a daily pomade of linseed-oil spiced with coriander; always elegantly turned out in the drawing-rooms of the mighty, he engaged in political chit-chat, and declared himself a firm admirer of Mrs. Gandhi, largely because of his hatred for her opponent Morarji Desai, who was intolerably ancient, drank his own urine, had skin which rustled like rice-paper, and, as Chief Minister of Bombay, had once been responsible for the banning of alcohol and the persecution of young goondas, that is to say hooligans or apaches, or, in other words, of the child Shiva himself ... but such idle chatter occupied a mere fraction of his thoughts, the rest of which were entirely taken up with the ladies. Shiva, too, was besotted by too-much-women, and in those heady days after the military victory acquired a secret reputation which (he boasted to Parvati) rapidly grew to rival his official, public fame — a "black" legend to set beside the "white" one. What was whispered at the hen-parties and canasta-evenings of the land? What was hissed through giggles wherever two or three glittering ladies got together? This: Major Shiva was becoming a notorious seducer; a ladies'-man; a cuckolder of the rich; in short, a stud. There were women — he told Parvati — wherever he went: their curving bird-soft bodies quaking beneath the weight of their jewelery and lust, their eyes misted over by his legend; it would have been difficult to refuse them even had he wanted to. But Major Shiva had no intention of refusing. He listened sympathetically to their little tragedies — impotent husbands, beatings, lack-of-attention — to whatever excuses the lovely creatures wished to offer. |
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Gandhi that she need not resign until her appeal, but must neither vote in the Lok Sabha nor draw a salary, and while the Prime Minister in her exultation at this partial victory began to abuse her opponents in language of which a Koli fishwife would have been proud, my Parvati's labor entered a phase in which despite her utter exhaustion she found the energy to issue a string of foul-smelling oaths from her color-drained lips, so that the cesspit stink of her obscenities filled our nostrils and made us retch, and the three contortionists fled from the hut crying that she had become so stretched, so colorless that you could almost see through her, and she would surely die if the baby did not come now, and in my ears ticktock the pounding ticktock until I was sure, yes, soon soon soon, and when the triplets returned to her bedside in the evening of the thirteenth day they screamed Yes yes she has begun to push, come on Parvati, push push push, and while Parvati pushed in the ghetto, J. P Narayan and Morarji Desai were also goading Indira Gandhi, while triplets yelled push push push the leaders of the Janata Morcha urged the police and Army to disobey the illegal orders of the disqualified Prime Minister, so in a sense they were forcing Mrs. Gandhi to push, and as the night darkened towards the midnight hour, because nothing ever happens at any other time, triplets began to screech it's coming coming coming, and elsewhere the Prime Minister was giving birth to a child of her own ... in the ghetto, in the hut beside which I sat cross-legged and starving to death, my son was coming coming coming, the head is out, the triplets screeched, while members of the Central Reserve Police arrested the heads of the Janata Morcha, including the impossibly ancient and almost mythological figures of Morarji Desai and J. P. Narayan, push push push, and in the heart of that terrible midnight while ticktock pounded in my ears a child was born, a ten-chip whopper all right, popping out so easily in the end that it was impossible to understand what all the trouble had been. Parvati gave a final pitiable little yelp and out he popped, while all over India policemen were arresting people, all opposition leaders except members of the pro-Moscow Communists, and also schoolteachers lawyers poets newspapermen trade-unionists, in fact anyone who had ever made the mistake of sneezing during the Madam's speeches, and when the three contortionists had washed the baby and wrapped it in an old sari and brought it out for its father to see, at exactly the same moment, the word Emergency was being heard for the first time, and suspension-of-civil rights, and censorship-of-the-press, and armored-units-on-special-alert, and arrest-of-subversive-elements; something was ending, something was being born, and at the precise instant of the birth of the new India and the beginning of a continuous midnight which would not end for two long years, my son, the child of the renewed ticktock, came out into the world. And there is more: because when, in the murky half-light of that endlessly prolonged midnight, Saleem Sinai saw his son for the first time, he began to laugh helplessly, his brain ravaged by hunger, yes, but also by the knowledge that his relentless destiny had played yet another of its grotesque little jokes, and although Picture Singh, scandalized by my laughter which in my weakness was like the giggling of a schoolgirl, cried repeatedly, "Come on, captain! Don't behave mad now! |
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It is a son, captain, be happy!", Saleem Sinai continued to acknowledge the birth by tittering hysterically at fate, because the boy, the baby boy, the-boy-my-son Aadam, Aadam Sinai was perfectly formed — except, that is, for his ears. On either side of his head flapped audient protuberances like sails, ears so colossally huge that the triplets afterwards revealed that when his head popped out they had thought, for one bad moment, that it was the head of a tiny elephant. ... "Captain, Saleem captain," Picture Singh was begging, "be nice now! Ears are not anything to go crazy for!" He was born in Old Delhi ... once upon a time. No, that won't do, there's no getting away from the date: Aadam Sinai arrived at a night-shadowed slum on June 25th, 1975. And the time? The time matters, too. As I said: at night. No, it's important to be more ... On the stroke of midnight, as a matter of fact. Clock-hands joined palms. Oh, spell it out, spell it out: at the precise instant of India's arrival at Emergency, he emerged. There were gasps; and, across the country, silences and fears. And owing to the occult tyrannies of that benighted hour, he was mysteriously handcuffed to history, his destinies indissolubly chained to those of his country. Unprophesied, uncelebrated, he came; no prime ministers wrote him letters; but, just the same, as my time of connection neared its end, his began. He, of course, was left entirely without a say in the matter; after all, he couldn't even wipe his own nose at the time. He was the child of a father who was not his father; but also the child of a time which damaged reality so badly that nobody ever managed to put it together again; He was the true great-grandson of his great-grandfather, but elephantiasis attacked him in the ears instead of the nose — because he was also the true son of Shiva-and-Parvati; he was elephant-headed Ganesh; He was born with ears which flapped so high and wide that they must have heard the shootings in Bihar and the screams of lathi-charged dock-workers in Bombay ... a child who heard too much, and as a result never spoke, rendered dumb by a surfeit of sound, so that between then-and-now, from slum to pickle-factory, I have never heard him utter a single word; He was the possessor of a navel which chose to stick out instead of in, so that Picture Singh, aghast, cried, "His bimbi, captain! His bimbi, look!", and he became, from the first days, the gracious recipient of our awe; A child of such grave good nature that his absolute refusal to cry or whimper utterly won over his adoptive father, who gave up laughing hysterically at the grotesque ears and began to rock the silent infant gently in his arms; A child who heard a song as he rocked in arms, a song sung in the historical accents of a disgraced ayah: "Anything you want to be, you kin be; you kin be just what-all you want." But now that I've given birth to my flap-eared, silent son — there are questions to be answered about that other, synchronous birth. Unpalatable, awkward queries: did Saleem's dream of saving the nation leak, through the osmotic tissues of history, into the thoughts of the Prime Minister herself? Was my life-long belief in the equation between the State and myself transmuted, in "the Madam's" mind, into that in-those-days-famous phrase: India is Indira and Indira is India? Were we competitors for centrality — was she gripped by a lust for meaning as profound as my own — and was that, was that why ... ? Influence of hair-styles on the course of history: there's another ticklish business. |
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Once, in a blue room overlooking the sea, beneath the pointing finger of a fisherman, I fought typhoid and was rescued by snake-poison; now, trapped in the dynastic webs of recurrence by my recognition of his sonship, our Aadam Sinai was also obliged to spend his early months battling the invisible snakes of a disease. The serpents of tuberculosis wound themselves around his neck and made him gasp for air ... but he was a child of ears and silence, and when he spluttered, there were no sounds; when he wheezed, no raspings issued from his throat. In short, my son fell ill, and although his mother, Parvati or Laylah, went in search of the herbs of her magical gift — although infusions of herbs in well-boiled water were constantly administered, the wraith-like worms of tuberculosis refused to be driven away. I suspected, from the first, something darkly metaphorical in this illness — believing that, in those midnight months when the age of my connection-to-history overlapped with his, our private emergency was not unconnected with the larger, macrocosmic disease, under whose influence the sun had become as pallid and diseased as our son. Parvati-then (like Padma-now) dismissed these abstract ruminations, attacking as mere folly my growing obsession with light, in whose grip I began lighting little dia-lamps in the shack of my son's illness, filling our hut with candle-flames at noon ... but I insist on the accuracy of my diagnosis; "I tell you," I insisted then, "while the Emergency lasts, he will never become well." Driven to distraction by her failure to cure that grave child who never cried, my Parvati-Laylah refused to believe my pessimistic theories; but she became vulnerable to every other cockeyed notion. When one of the older women in the colony of the magicians told her — as Resham Bibi might have — that the illness could not come out while the child remained dumb, Parvati seemed to find that plausible. "Sickness is a grief of the body," she lectured me, "It must be shaken off in tears and groans." That night, she returned to the hut clutching a little bundle of green powder, wrapped in newspaper and tied up with pale pink string, and told me that this was a preparation of such power that it would oblige even a stone to shriek. When she administered the medicine the child's cheeks began to bulge, as though his mouth were full of food; the long-suppressed sounds of his babyhood flooded up behind his lips, and he jammed his mouth shut in fury. It became clear that the infant was close to choking as he tried to swallow back the torrential vomit of pent-up sound which the green powder had stirred up; and this was when we realized that we were in the presence of one of the earth's most implacable wills. At the end of an hour during which my son turned first saffron, then saffron-and-green, and finally the color of grass, I could not stand it any more and bellowed, "Woman, if the little fellow wants so much to stay quiet, we mustn't kill him for it!" I picked up Aadam to rock him, and felt his little body becoming rigid, his knee-joints elbows neck were filling up with the held-back tumult of unexpressed sounds, and at last Parvati relented and prepared an antidote by mashing arrowroot and camomile in a tin bowl while muttering strange imprecations under her breath. After that, nobody ever tried to make Aadam Sinai do anything he did not wish to do; we watched him battling against tuberculosis and tried to find reassurance in the idea that a will so steely would surely refuse to be defeated by any mere disease. |
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(Whose Conference had, of course, been disbanded years before; but the mere possibility of our reunification was enough to trigger off the red alert.) Astrologers — I have no doubt — sounded the alarums; in a black folder labelled M. C. C., names were gathered from extant records; but there was more to it than that. There were also betrayals and confessions; there were knees and a nose — a nose, and also knees. Scraps, shreds, fragments: it seems to me that, immediately before I awoke with the scent of danger in my nostrils, I had dreamed that I was sleeping. I awoke, in this most unnerving of dreams, to find a stranger in my shack: a poetic-looking fellow with lank hair that wormed over his ears (but who was very thin on top). Yes: during my last sleep before what-has-to-be-described, I was visited by the shade of Nadir Khan, who was staring perplexedly at a silver spittoon, inlaid with lapis lazuli, asking absurdly, "Did you steal this? — Because otherwise, you must be — is it possible? — my Mumtaz's little boy?" And when I confirmed, "Yes, none other, I am he — ," the dream-specter of Nadir-Qasim issued a warning: "Hide. There is little time. Hide while you can." Nadir, who had hidden under my grandfather's carpet, came to advise me to do likewise; but too late, too late, because now I came properly awake, and smelled the scent of danger blaring like trumpets in my nose ... afraid without knowing why, I got to my feet; and is it my imagination or did Aadam Sinai open blue eyes to stare gravely into mine? Were my son's eyes also filled with alarm? Had flap-ears heard what a nose had sniffed out? Did father and son commune wordlessly in that instant before it all began? I must leave the question-marks hanging, unanswered; but what is certain is that Parvati, my Laylah Sinai, awoke also and asked, "What's up, mister? What's got your goat?" — And I, without fully knowing the reason: "Hide, stay in here and don't come out." Then I went outside. It must have been morning, although the gloom of the endless midnight hung over the ghetto like a fog ... through the murky light of the Emergency, I saw children playing seven-tiles, and Picture Singh, with his umbrella folded under his left armpit, urinating against the walls of the Friday Mosque; a tiny bald illusionist was practicing driving knives through the neck of his ten-year-old apprentice, and already a conjurer had found an audience, and was persuading large woollen balls to drop from the armpits of strangers; while in another corner of the ghetto, Chand Sahib the musician was practicing his trumpet-playing, placing the ancient mouthpiece of a battered horn against his neck and playing it simply by exercising his throat-muscles ... there, over there, were the three contortionist triplets, balancing surahis of water on their heads as they returned to their huts from the colony's single stand-pipe ... in short, everything seemed to be in order. I began to chide myself for my dreams and nasal alarums; but then it started. The vans and bulldozers came first, rumbling along the main road; they stopped opposite the ghetto of the magicians. A loudspeaker began to blare: "Civic beautification program ... authorized operation of Sanjay Youth Central Committee ... prepare instantly for evacuation to new site ... this slum is a public eyesore, can no longer be tolerated ... all persons will follow orders without dissent." And while a loudspeaker blared, there were figures descending from vans: a brightly-colored tent was being hastily erected, and there were camp beds and surgical equipment ... |
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and now from the vans there poured a stream of finely-dressed young ladies of high birth and foreign education, and then a second river of equally-well-dressed young men: volunteers, Sanjay Youth volunteers, doing their bit for society ... but then I realized no, not volunteers, because all the men had the same curly hair and lips-like-women's-labia, and the elegant ladies were all identical, too, their features corresponding precisely to those of Sanjay's Menaka, whom news-scraps had described as a "lanky beauty," and who had once modeled nighties for a mattress company ... standing in the chaos of the slum clearance program, I was shown once again that the ruling dynasty of India had learned how to replicate itself; but then there was no time to think, the numberless labia-lips and lanky-beauties were seizing magicians and old beggars, people were being dragged towards the vans, and now a rumor spread through the colony of magicians: "They are doing nasbandi — sterilization is being performed!" — And a second cry: "Save your women and children!" — And a riot is beginning, children who were just now playing seven-tiles are hurling stones at the elegant invaders, and here is Picture Singh rallying the magicians to his side, waving a furious umbrella, which had once been a creator of harmony but was now transmuted into a weapon, a flapping quixotic lance, and the magicians have become a defending army, Molotov cocktails are magically produced and hurled, bricks are drawn out of conjurers' bags, the air is thick with yells and missiles and the elegant labia-lips and lanky-beauties are retreating before the harsh fury of the illusionists; and there goes Picture Singh, leading the assault against the tent of vasectomy ... Parvati or Laylah, disobeying orders, is at my side now, saying, "My God, what are they — ," and at this moment a new and more formidable assault is unleashed upon the slum: troops are sent in against magicians, women and children. Once, conjurers card-tricksters puppeteers and mesmerists marched triumphantly beside a conquering army; but all that is forgotten now, and Russian guns are trained on the inhabitants of the ghetto. What chance do Communist wizards have against socialist rifles? They, we, are running now, every which way, Parvati and I are separated as the soldiers charge, I lose sight of Picture Singh, there are rifle-butts beating pounding, I see one of the contortionist triplets fall beneath the fury of the guns, people are being pulled by the hair towards the waiting yawning vans; and I, too, am running, too late, looking over my shoulder, stumbling on Dalda-cans empty crates and the abandoned sacks of the terrified illusionists, and over my shoulder through the murky night of the Emergency I see that all of this has been a smoke-screen, a side-issue, because hurtling through the confusion of the riot comes a mythical figure, an incarnation of destiny and destruction: Major Shiva has joined the fray, and he is looking only for me. Behind me, as I run, come the pumping knees of my doom ... ... The picture of a hovel comes into my mind: my son! And not only my son: a silver spittoon, inlaid with lapis lazuli! Somewhere in the confusion of the ghetto a child has been left alone ... somewhere a talisman, guarded for so long, has been abandoned. The Friday Mosque watches impassively as I swerve duck run between the tilting shacks, my feet leading me towards flap-eared son and spittoon ... but what chance did I have against those knees? |
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and now it becomes audible, a strange sound, like the baying of distant hounds ... follow follow follow the sound, and it takes shape, you understand that it is a mighty, ceaseless wailing, emanating from the blinded windows of a riverside palace: the Widows' Hostel! Once upon a time, it was a maharajah's residence; but India today is a modern country, and such places have been expropriated by the State. The palace is a home for bereaved women now; they, understanding that their true lives ended with the death of their husbands, but no longer permitted to seek the release of sati, come to the holy city to pass their worthless days in heartfelt ululations. In the palace of the widows lives a tribe of women whose chests are irremediably bruised by the power of their continual pummellings, whose hair is torn beyond repair, and whose voices are shredded by the constant, keening expressions of their grief. It is a vast building, a labyrinth of tiny rooms on the upper storeys giving way to the great halls of lamentation below; and yes, that was where it happened, the Widow sucked me into the private heart of her terrible empire, I was locked away in a tiny upper room and the bereaved women brought me prison food. But I also had other visitors: the war hero invited two of his colleagues along, for purposes of conversation. In other words: I was encouraged to talk. By an ill-matched duo, one fat, one thin, whom I named Abbott-and-Costello because they never succeeded in making me laugh. Here I record a merciful blank in my memory. Nothing can induce me to remember the conversational techniques of that humorless, uniformed pair; there is no chutney or pickle capable of unlocking the doors behind which I have locked those days! No, I have forgotten, I cannot will not say how they made me spill the beans — but I cannot escape the shameful heart of the matter, which is that despite absence-of-jokes and the generally unsympathetic manner of my two-headed inquisitor, I did most certainly talk. And more than talk: under the influence of their unnamable — forgotten — pressures, I became loquacious in the extreme. What poured, blubbering, from my lips (and will not do so now): names addresses physical descriptions. Yes, I told them everything, I named all five hundred and seventy-eight (because Parvati, they informed me courteously, was dead, and Shiva gone over to the enemy, and the five-hundred-and-eighty-first was doing the talking ...) — forced into treachery by the treason of another, I betrayed the children of midnight. I, the Founder of the Conference, presided over its end, while Abbott-and-Costello, unsmilingly, interjected from time to time: "Aha! Very good! Didn't know about her!" or, "You are being most co-operative; this fellow is a new one on us!" Such things happen. Statistics may set my arrest in context; although there is considerable disagreement about the number of "political" prisoners taken during the Emergency, either thirty thousand or a quarter of a million persons certainly lost their freedom. The Widow said: "It is only a small percentage of the population of India." All sorts of things happen during an Emergency: trains run on time, black-money hoarders are frightened into paying taxes, even the weather is brought to heel, and bumper harvests are reaped; there is, I repeat, a white part as well as a black. But in the black part, I sat bar-fettered in a tiny room, on a straw palliasse which was the only article of furniture I was permitted, sharing my daily bowl of rice with cockroaches and ants. |
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One of us can eat metal; his head is jammed in a brace, unlocked only at mealtimes ... what is being prepared for us? Something bad, children. I don't know what as yet, but it's coming. Children: we, too, must prepare. Pass it on: some of us have escaped. I sniff absences through the walls. Good news, children! They cannot get us all. Soumitra, the time-traveler, for instance — O youthful folly! O stupid we, to disbelieve him so! — is not here; wandering, perhaps, in some happier time of his life, he has eluded search-parties for ever. No, do not envy him; although I, too, long on occasion to escape backwards, perhaps to the time when I, the apple of the universal eye, made a triumphant tour as a baby of the palaces of William Methwold — O insidious nostalgia for times of greater possibility, before history, like a street behind the General Post Office in Delhi, narrowed down to this final full point! — but we are here now; such retrospection saps the spirit; rejoice, simply, that some of us are free! And some of us are dead. They told me about my Parvati. Across whose features, to the last, there fell the crumbling ghost-face of. No, we are no longer five hundred and eighty-one. Shivering in the December cold, how many of us sit walled-in and waiting? I ask my nose; it replies, four hundred and twenty, the number of trickery and fraud. Four hundred and twenty, imprisoned by widows; and there is one more, who struts booted around the Hostel — I smell his stink approaching receding, the spoor of treachery! — Major Shiva, war hero, Shiva-of-the-knees, supervises our captivity. Will they be content with four hundred and twenty? Children: I don't know how long they'll wait. ... No, you're making fun of me, stop, do not joke. Why whence how-on-earth this good nature, this bonhomie in your passed-on whisperings? No, you must condemn me, out of hand and without appeal — do not torture me with your cheery greetings as one-by-one you are locked in cells; what kind of time or place is this for salaams, namaskars, how-you-beens? — Children, don't you understand, they could do anything to us, anything — no, how can you say that, what do you mean with your what-could-they-do? Let me tell you, my friends, steel rods are painful when applied to the ankles; rifle-butts leave bruises on foreheads. What could they do? Live electric wires up your anuses, children; and that's not the only possibility, there is also hanging-by-the-feet, and a candle — ah, the sweet romantic glow of candlelight! — is less than comfortable when applied, lit, to the skin! Stop it now, cease all this friendship, aren't you afraid! Don't you want to kick stamp trample me to smithereens? Why these constant whispered reminiscences, this nostalgia for old quarrels, for the war of ideas and things, why are you taunting me with your calmness, your normality, your powers of rising-above-the-crisis? Frankly, I'm puzzled children: how can you, aged twenty-nine, sit whispering flirtatiously to each other in your cells? Goddamnit, this is not a social reunion! Children, children, I'm sorry. I admit openly I have not been myself of late. I have been a buddha, and a basketed ghost, and a would-be-savior of the nation ... Saleem has been rushing down blind alleys, has had considerable problems with reality, ever since a spittoon fell like a piece-of-the- ... pity me: I've even lost my spittoon. But I'm going wrong again, I wasn't intending to ask for pity, I was going to say that perhaps I see — it was I, not you, who failed to understand what is happening. |
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Drainage below: it was not a reversible operation Who were we? Broken promises; made to be broken. And now I must tell you about the smell. Yes, you must have all of it: however overblown, however Bombay-talkie-melodramatic, you must let it sink in, you must see! What Saleem smelled in the evening of January 18th, 1977: something frying in an iron skillet, soft unspeakable somethings spiced with turmeric coriander cumin and fenugreek ... the pungent inescapable fumes of what-had-been-excised, cooking over a low, slow fire. When four-hundred-and-twenty suffered ectomies, an avenging Goddess ensured that certain ectomized parts were curried with onions and green chillies, and fed to the pie-dogs of Benares. (There were four hundred and twenty-one ectomies performed: because one of us, whom we called Narada or Markandaya, had the ability of changing sex; he, or she, had to be operated on twice.) No, I can't prove it, not any of it. Evidence went up in smoke: some was fed to pie-dogs, and later, on March 20th, files were burned by a mother with particolored hair and her beloved son. But Padma knows what I can no longer do; Padma, who once, in her anger, cried out: "But what use are you, my God, as a lover?" That part, at least, can be verified: in the hovel of Picture Singh, I cursed myself with the lie of impotence; I cannot say I was not warned, because he told me: "Anything could happen, captain." It did. Sometimes I feel a thousand years old: or (because I cannot, even now, abandon form), to be exact, a thousand and one. The Widow's Hand had rolling hips and once owned a jewelery boutique. I began among jewels: in Kashmir, in 1915, there were rubies and diamonds. My great-grandparents ran a gemstone store. Form — once again, recurrence and shape! — no escape from it. In the walls, the hopeless whispers of the stunned four-hundred-and-nineteen; while the four-hundred-and-twentieth gives vent — just once; one moment of ranting is permissible — to the following petulant question ... at the top of my voice, I shriek: "What about him? Major Shiva, the traitor? Don't you care about him?" And the reply, from gorgeous-with-big-rolling-hips: "The Major has undergone voluntary vasectomy." And now, in his sightless cell, Saleem begins to laugh, wholeheartedly, without stinting: no, I was not laughing cruelly at my archrival, nor was I cynically translating the word "voluntary" into another word; no, I was remembering stories told me by Parvati or Laylah, the legendary tales of the war hero's philandering, of the legions of bastards swelling in the unectomied bellies of great ladies and whores; I laughed because Shiva, destroyer of the midnight children, had also fulfilled the other role lurking in his name, the function of Shivalingam, of Shiva-the-procreator, so that at this very moment, in the boudoirs and hovels of the nation, a new generation of children, begotten by midnight's darkest child, was being raised towards the future. Every Widow manages to forget something important. Late in March 1977, I was unexpectedly released from the palace of the howling widows, and stood blinking like an owl in the sunlight, not knowing how what why. Afterwards, when I had remembered how to ask questions, I discovered that on January 18th (the very day of the end of snip-snip, and of substances fried in an iron skillet: what further proof would you like that we, the four hundred and twenty, were what the Widow feared most of all?) the Prime Minister had, to the astonishment of all, called a general election. |
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(But now that you know about us, you may find it easier to understand her over-confidence.) But on that day, I knew nothing about her crushing defeat, nor about burning files; it was only later that I learned how the tattered hopes of the nation had been placed in the custody of an ancient dotard who ate pistachios and cashews and daily took a glass of "his own water." Urine-drinkers had come to power. The Janata Party, with one of its leaders trapped in a kidney-machine, did not seem to me (when I heard about it) to represent a new dawn; but maybe I'd managed to cure myself of the optimism virus at last — maybe others, with the disease still in their blood, felt otherwise. At any rate, I've had — I had had, on that March day — enough, more than enough of politics. Four hundred and twenty stood blinking in the sunlight and tumult of the gullies of Benares; four hundred and twenty looked at one another and saw in each other's eyes the memory of their gelding, and then, unable to bear the sight, mumbled farewells and dispersed, for the last time, into the healing privacy of the crowds. What of Shiva? Major Shiva was placed under military detention by the new rEgime; but he did not remain there long, because he was permitted to receive one visit: Roshanara Shetty bribed coquetted wormed her way into his cell, the same Roshanara who had poured poison into his ears at Mahalaxmi Racecourse and who had since been driven crazy by a bastard son who refused to speak and did nothing he did not wish to do. The steel magnate's wife drew from her handbag the enormous German pistol owned by her husband, and shot the war hero through the heart. Death, as they say, was instantaneous. The Major died without knowing that once, in a saffron-and-green nursing home amid the mythological chaos of an unforgettable midnight, a tiny distraught women had changed baby-tags and denied him his birthright, which was that hillock-top world cocooned in money and starched white clothes and things things things — a world he would dearly have loved to possess. And Saleem? No longer connected to history, drained above-and-below, I made my way back to the capital, conscious that an age, which had begun on that long-ago midnight, had come to a sort of end. How I traveled: I waited beyond the platform at Benares or Varanasi station with nothing but a platform-ticket in my hand, and leaped on to the step of a first-class compartment as the mail-train pulled out, heading west. And now, at least, I knew how it felt to clutch on for dear life, while particles of soot dust ash gritted in your eyes, and you were obliged to bang on the door and yell, "OhE, maharaj! Open up! Let me in, great sir, maharaj!" While inside, a voice uttered familiar words: "On no account is anyone to open. Just fare-dodgers, that's all." In Delhi: Saleem asks questions. Have you seen where? Do you know if the magicians? Are you acquainted with Picture Singh? A postman with the memory of snake-charmers fading in his eyes points north. And, later, a black-tongued paanwallah sends me back the way I came. Then, at last, the trail ceases meandering; street-entertainers put me on the scent. A Dilli-dekho man with a peepshow machine, a mongoose-and-cobra trainer wearing a paper hat like a child's sailboat, a girl in a cinema box-office who retains her nostalgia for her childhood as a sorcerer's apprentice ... like fishermen, they point with fingers. West west west, until at last Saleem arrives at the Shadipur bus depot on the western outskirts of the city. |
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?" But Padma, her jaw set in the concrete of a majestically unshakeable resolve, replied: "You listen to me, mister — but me no buts! Never mind all that fancy talk any more. There is the future to think of." The honeymoon is to be in Kashmir. In the burning heat of Padma's determination, I am assailed by the demented notion that it might be possible, after all, that she may be capable of altering the ending of my story by the phenomenal force of her will, that cracks — and death itself — might yield to the power of her unquenchable solicitude ... "There is the future to think of," she warned me — and maybe (I permit myself to think for the first time since I began this narrative) — maybe there is! An infinity of new endings clusters around my head, buzzing like heat-insects ... "Let us be married, mister," she proposed, and moths of excitement stirred in my guts, as if she had spoken some cabbalistic formula, some awesome abracadabra, and released me from my fate — but reality is nagging at me. Love does not conquer all, except in the Bombay talkies; rip tear crunch will not be defeated by a mere ceremony; and optimism is a disease. "On your birthday, how about?" she is suggesting. "At thirty-one, a man is a man, and is supposed to have a wife." How am I to tell her? How can I say, there are other plans for that day, I am have always been in the grip of a form-crazy destiny which enjoys wreaking its havoc on numinous days ... in short, how am I to tell her about death? I cannot; instead, meekly and with every appearance of gratitude, I accept her proposal. I am, this evening, a man newly affianced; let no one think harshly of me for permitting myself — and my betrothed lotus — this last, vain, inconsequential pleasure. Padma, by proposing a marriage, revealed her willingness to dismiss everything I've told her about my past as just so much "fancy talk"; and when I returned to find Picture Singh beaming in the shadow of a railway bridge, it rapidly became clear that the magicians, too, were losing their memories. Somewhere in the many moves of the peripatetic slum, they had mislaid their powers of retention, so that now they had become incapable of judgment, having forgotten everything to which they could compare anything that happened. Even the Emergency was rapidly being consigned to the oblivion of the past, and the magicians concentrated upon the present with the monomania of snails. Nor did they notice that they had changed; they had forgotten that they had ever been otherwise. Communism had seeped out of them and been gulped down by the thirsty, lizard-quick earth; they were beginning to forget their skills in the confusion of hunger, disease, thirst and police harrassment which constituted (as usual) the present. To me, however, this change in my old companions seemed nothing short of obscene. Saleem had come through amnesia and been shown the extent of its immorality; in his mind, the past grew daily more vivid while the present (from which knives had disconnected him for ever) seemed colorless, confused, a thing of no consequence; I, who could remember every hair on the heads of jailers and surgeons, was deeply shocked by the magicians' unwillingness to look behind them. "People are like cats," I told my son, "you can't teach them anything." He looked suitably grave, but held his tongue. My son Aadam Sinai had, when I rediscovered the phantom colony of the illusionists, lost all traces of the tuberculosis which had afflicted his earliest days. |
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I wondered if all over the country the bastard sons of Shiva were exerting similar tyrannies upon hapless adults, and envisaged for the second time that tribe of fearsomely potent kiddies, growing waiting listening, rehearsing the moment when the world would become their plaything. (How these children may, in the future, be identified: their bimbis stick out instead of in.) But it's time to get things moving: a taunt, a last railway-train heading south south south, a final battle ... on the day following the weaning of Aadam, Saleem accompanied Picture Singh to Connaught Place, to assist him in his snake-charming. Durga the dhoban agreed to take my son with her to the dhobighat: Aadam spent the day observing how power was thrashed out of the clothes of the well-to-do and absorbed by the succubus-woman. On that fateful day, when the warm weather was returning to the city like a swarm of bees, I was consumed by nostalgia for my bulldozed silver spittoon. Picture Singh had provided me with a spittoon-surrogate, an empty Dalda Vanaspati can, but although I used this to entertain my son with my expertise in the gentle art of spittoon-hittery, sending long jets of betel-juice across the grimy air of the magicians' colony, I was not consoled. A question: why such grief over a mere receptacle of juices? My reply is that you should never underestimate a spittoon. Elegant in the salon of the Rani of Cooch Naheen, it permitted intellectuals to practice the artforms of the masses; gleaming in a cellar, it transformed Nadir Khan's underworld into a second Taj Majal; gathering dust in an old tin trunk, it was nevertheless present throughout my history, covertly assimilating incidents in washing-chests, ghost-visions, freeze-unfreeze, drainage, exiles; falling from the sky like a piece of the moon, it perpetrated a transformation. O talismanic spittoon! O beauteous lost receptacle of memories as well as spittle-juice! What sensitive person could fail to sympathize with me in my nostalgic agony at its loss? ... Beside me at the back of a bus bulging with humanity, Picture Singh sat with snake-baskets coiled innocently on his lap. As we rattled and banged through that city which was also filled with the resurgent ghosts of earlier, mythological Delhis, the Most Charming Man In The World wore an air of faded despondency, as if a battle in a distant darkroom were already over ... until my return, nobody had understood that Pictureji's real and unvoiced fear was that he was growing old, that his powers were dimming, that he would soon be adrift and incompetent in a world he did not understand: like me, Picture Singh clung to the presence of Baby Aadam as if the child were a torch in a long dark tunnel. "A fine child, captain," he told me, "a child of dignity: you hardly notice his ears." That day, however, my son was not with us. New Delhi smells assailed me in Connaught Place — the biscuity perfume of the J. B. Mangharam advertisement, the mournful chalkiness of crumbling plaster; and there was also the tragic spoor of the auto-rickshaw drivers, starved into fatalism by rising petrol costs; and green-grass-smells from the circular park in the middle of the whirling traffic, mingled with the fragrance of con-men persuading foreigners to change money on the black market in shadowy archways. From the India Coffee House, under whose marquees could be heard the endless babbling of gossips, there came the less pleasant aroma of new stories beginning: intrigues marriages quarrels, whose smells were all mixed up with those of tea and chili-pakoras. |
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Mary, with her ancient hatred of "the mens," admits no males except myself into her new, comfortable universe ... myself, and of course my son. Alice, I suspect, still has her little liaisons; and Padma fell for me from the first, seeing in me an outlet for her vast reservoir of pent-up solicitude; I cannot answer for the rest of them, but the formidable competence of the Narlikar females is reflected, on this factory floor, in the strong-armed dedication of the vat-stirrers. What is required for chutnification? Raw materials, obviously — fruit, vegetables, fish, vinegar, spices. Daily visits from Koli women with their saris hitched up between their legs. Cucumbers aubergines mint. But also: eyes, blue as ice, which are undeceived by the superficial blandishments of fruit — which can see corruption beneath citrus-skin; fingers which, with featheriest touch, can probe the secret inconstant hearts of green tomatoes; and above all a nose capable of discerning the hidden languages of what-must-be-pickled, its humors and messages and emotions ... at Braganza Pickles, I supervise the production of Mary's legendary recipes; but there are also my special blends, in which, thanks to the powers of my drained nasal passages, I am able to include memories, dreams, ideas, so that once they enter mass-production all who consume them will know what pepperpots achieved in Pakistan, or how it felt to be in the Sundarbans ... believe don't believe but it's true. Thirty jars stand upon a shelf, waiting to be unleashed upon the amnesiac nation. (And beside them, one jar stands empty.) The process of revision should be constant and endless; don't think I'm satisfied with what I've done! Among my unhappinesses: an overly-harsh taste from those jars containing memories of my father; a certain ambiguity in the love-flavor of "Jamila Singer" (Special Formula No. 22), which might lead the unperceptive to conclude that I've invented the whole story of the baby-swap to justify an incestuous love; vague implausibilities in the jar labeled "Accident in a Washing-chest" — the pickle raises questions which are not fully answered, such as: Why did Saleem need an accident to acquire his powers? Most of the other children didn't ... Or again, in "All-India Radio" and others, a discordant note in the orchestrated flavors: would Mary's confession have come as a shock to a true telepath? Sometimes, in the pickles' version of history, Saleem appears to have known too little; at other times, too much ... yes, I should revise and revise, improve and improve; but there is neither the time nor the energy. I am obliged to offer no more than this stubborn sentence: It happened that way because that's how it happened. There is also the matter of the spice bases. The intricacies of turmeric and cumin, the subtlety of fenugreek, when to use large (and when small) cardamoms; the myriad possible effects of garlic, garam masala, stick cinnamon, coriander, ginger ... not to mention the flavorful contributions of the occasional speck of dirt. (Saleem is no longer obsessed with purity.) In the spice bases, I reconcile myself to the inevitable distortions of the pickling process. To pickle is to give immortality, after all: fish, vegetables, fruit hang embalmed in spice-and-vinegar; a certain alteration, a slight intensification of taste, is a small matter, surely? The art is to change the flavor in degree, but not in kind; and above all (in my thirty jars and a jar) to give it shape and form — that is to say, meaning. |
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She was taken to hear mass in Notre Dame, told that this ceremony had been a basis of European culture for centuries, and she should at least know about it — and she dutifully sat through it, rather as she might a tea ceremony in Japan, and afterwards enquired,"Are these people some kind of cannibal then?" So much for what seems enduring. There is a new kind of educated person, who may be at school and university for twenty, twenty-five years, who knows everything about a specialty (computers, the law, economics, politics) but knows about nothing else — no literature, art, history — and may be heard enquiring, "But what was the Renaissance, then?" "What was the French Revolution?" Even fifty years ago this person would have been seen as a barbarian. To have acquired an education with nothing of the old humanist background — impossi-ble. To call oneself educated without a background of reading — impossible. Reading, books, the literary culture, was respected, desired, for centuries. Reading was and still is in what we call the Third World, a kind of parallel education, which once everyone had, or aspired to. Nuns and monks in their convents and monasteries, aristocrats at their meals, women at their looms and their sewing, were read to, and the poor people, even if all they had was a Bible, respected those who read. In Britain until quite recently trade unions and workers' movements fought for libraries, and perhaps the best example of the pervasiveness of the love for reading is that of the workers in the tobacco and cigar factories of Cuba whose trade unions demanded that the workers should be read to as they worked. The material was agreed to by the workers, and included politics and history, novels and poetry. A favorite of their books was The Count of Monte Christo. A group of workers wrote to Dumas and asked if they might use the name of his hero for one of their cigars. Perhaps there is no need to labor this point to anyone present here, but I do feel we have not yet grasped that we are living in a fast fragmenting culture. Pockets of the old excellences remain, in a university, a school, the classroom of an old-fashioned teacher in love with books, perhaps a newspaper or a journal. But a culture that once united Europe and its overseas offshoots has gone. We may get some idea of the speed with which cultures may change by looking at how languages change. English as spoken in America or the West Indies is not the English of England. Spanish is not the same in Argentina and in Spain. The Portuguese of Brazil is not the Portuguese of Portugal. Italian, Spanish, French, grew out of Latin not in thousands of years but in hundreds. It is a very short time since the Roman world disappeared, leaving behind its legacy of our languages. One interesting little irony about the present situation is that a lot of the criticism of the old culture was in the name of Elitism, but what is happening is that everywhere are enclaves, pockets, of the old kind of reader and reading and it is easy to imagine one of the new barbarians walking by chance into a library of the old kind, in all its richness and variety and understanding suddenly what has been lost, what he — or she — has been deprived of. So what is going to happen next in this tumultuously changing world? I think we are all of us fastening our seat belts and holding on tight. I drafted what I have just read before the events of the 11th September. We are in for a war, it seems, a long one, which by its nature cannot have an easy end. |
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We all know that enemies exchange more than gunfire and insults. In this country, Spain, you know this better perhaps than anyone. When feeling gloomy about the world I often think about that time here, in Spain, in the early Middle Ages — in Cordova, in Toledo, in Granada, in other southern cities — Christians, Moslems, Jews, lived harmoniously together: poets, musicians, writers, sages, all together, admiring each other, helping each other. It went on for three centuries. This wonderful culture went on for three centuries. Has anything like it been seen in the world? What has been, can be again. I think the educated person of the future will have a wider basis than anything we can imagine now. — Doris Lessing The Sweetest Dream 'And people leave who were warm children.' An early evening in autumn, and the street below was a scene of small yellow lights that suggested intimacy, and people already bundled up for winter. Behind her the room was filling with a chilly dark, but nothing could dismay her: she was floating, as high as a summer cloud, as happy as a child who had just learned to walk. The reason for this uncharacteristic lightness ofheart was a telegram from her former husband, Johnny Lennox Comrade Johnny three days ago. signed contract for fidel film all arrears and current payment to you Sunday. Today was Sunday. The 'all arrears' had been due, she knew, to something like the fever of elation she was feeling now: there was no question of his paying 'all' which by now must amount to so much money she no longer bothered to keep an account. But he surely must be expecting a really big sum to sound so confident. Here a little breeze apprehension? did reach her. Confidence was his no, she must not say stock-in-trade, even if she had often in her life felt that, but could she remember him ever being outfaced by circumstances, even discomfited? On a desk behind her two letters lay side by side, like a lesson in life's improbable but so frequent dramatic juxtapositions. One offered her a part in a play. Frances Lennox was a minor, steady, reliable actress, and had never been asked for anything more. This part was in a brilliant new play, a two-hander, and the male part would be taken by Tony Wilde who until now had seemed so far above her she would never have had the ambition to think of her name and his side by side on a poster. And he had asked for her to be offered the part. Two years ago they had been in the same play, she as usual in a serviceable smaller role. At the end of a short run the play had not been a success she had heard on the closing night as they tripped back and forth taking curtain calls, 'Well done, that was very good.' Smiles from Olympus, she had thought that, while knowing he had shown signs of being interested in her. But now she had been watching herself burst into all kinds of feverish dreams, not exactly taking herself by surprise, since she knew only too well how battened down she was, how well under control was her erotic self, but she could not prevent herself imagining her talent for fun (she supposed she still had it?) even for reckless enjoyment, being given room, while at the same time showing what she could do on the stage, if given a chance. But she would not be earning much money, in a small theatre, with a play that was a gamble. Without that telegram from Johnny she could not have afforded to say yes. The other letter offered her a niche as Agony Aunt (name still to be chosen) on The Defender, well paid, and safe. |
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Like all girls taught to be conscious of their bodies, because of the frightful dangers of immodesty, her eyes spoke for her, could strike to the heart with a glance, and when she lowered delicate eyelids over blue invitations to love he felt he was being rejected. He had sisters, whom he had seen a few days ago in Sussex, jolly tomboys enjoying the exemplary summer that has been celebrated in so many memoirs and novels. A sister's friend, Betty, had been teased because she came to supper with solid brown arms where white scratches showed how she had been playing in the hay with the dogs. His family had watched him to see if he fancied this girl, who would make a suitable wife, and he had been prepared to consider her. This little German miss seemed to him as glamorous as a beauty glimpsed in a harem, all promise and hidden bliss, and he fancied that if a sunbeam did strike her she would melt like a snowflake. She gave him a red rose from the garden, and he knew she was offering him her heart. He declared his love in the moonlight, and next day spoke to her father. Yes, he knew that fourteen was too young, but he was asking for formal permission to propose when she was sixteen. And so they parted, in 1914, while war was coming to a boil, but like many liberal well-adjusted people it seemed to both the von Arnes and the Lennoxes that it was ridiculous Germany and England could go to war. When war was declared, Philip had left his love in tears just two weeks before. In those days governments seemed compelled to announce that wars must be over by Christmas, and the lovers were sure they would see each other soon. Almost at once xenophobia was poisoning Julia's love. Her family did not mind her loving her Englishman did not their respective Emperors call themselves cousins? but the neighbours commented, and servants whispered and gossiped. During the years of the war rumours followed Julia and her family too. Her three brothers were fighting in the Trenches, her father was in the War Office, and her mother did war work, but those few days of fever in July 1914 marked them all for comment and suspicion. Julia never lost her faith in her love and in Philip. He was wounded, twice, and in devious ways she heard about it and wept for him. It did not matter, cried Julia's heart, how badly he was wounded, she would love him for ever. He was demobbed in 1919. She was waiting for him, knowing he was coming to claim her, when into the room where five years before they had flirted came a man she felt she ought to know. An empty sleeve was pinned up on his chest, and his face was taut and lined. She was now nearly twenty. He saw a tall young woman she had grown some inches with fair hair piled on top of her head, held with a big jet arrow, and wearing heavy black for two dead brothers. A third brother, a boy he was not yet twenty had been wounded and sat, still in his uniform, a stiff leg propped before him on a stool. The two so recent enemies, stared at each other. Then Philip, not smiling, went forward with an outstretched hand. The youth made an involuntary movement of turning away, with a grimace, but he recovered himself and civilisation was reinstated as he smiled, and the two men shook hands. This scene, which after all has repeated itself in various forms since then, did not then have as much weight on it as it would now. Irony, which celebrates that element which we persist in excluding from our vision of things, would have been too much for them to bear: we have become coarser-fibred. |
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And now these two lovers who would not have recognised each other passing in a street, had to decide whether their dreams of each other for all those terrible years were strong enough to carry them through into marriage. Nothing was left of the enchanting prim little girl, nor of the sentimental man who had, until it crumbled away, carried a dead red rose next to his heart. The great blue eyes were sad, and he tended to lapse into silences, just like her younger brother, when remembering things that could be understood only by other soldiers. These two married quietly: hardly the time for a big German-English wedding. In London war fever was abating, though people still talked about the Boche and the Hun. People were polite to Julia. For the first time she wondered if choosing Philip had not been a mistake, yet she believed they loved each other, and both were pretending they were serious people by nature and not saddened beyond curing. And yet the war did recede and the worst of the war hatreds passed. Julia, who had suffered in Germany for her English love, now tried to become English, in an act of will. She had spoken English well enough, but took lessons again, and soon spoke as no English person ever did, an exquisite perfect English, every word separate. She knew her manners were formal, and tried to become more casual. Her clothes: they were perfect too, but after all, she was a diplomat's wife and had to keep up appearances. As the English put it. They started married life in a little house in Mayfair, and there she entertained, as was expected of her, with the aid of a cook and a maid, and achieved something like the standards she remembered from her home. Meanwhile Philip had discovered that to marry a German woman had not been the best prescription for an unclouded career. Discussions with his superiors revealed that certain posts would be barred to him, in Germany, for instance, and he might find himself edged out of the straight highway to the top, and find himself in places like South Africa or Argentina. He decided to avoid disappointments, and switched to administration. He would have a fine career, but nothing of the glamour of foreign ministries. Sometimes he met in a sister's house the Betty whom he could have married and who was still unwed, because of so many men being killed and wondered how different life could have been. When Jolyon Meredith Wilhelm Lennox was born in 1920 he had a nurse and then a nanny. He was a long thin child, with golden curls and combative critical blue eyes, often directed at his mother. He had soon learned from his nanny that she was a German: he had a little tantrum and was difficult for a few days. He was taken to visit his German family, but this was not a success: he disliked the place, and the different manners he was expected to sit at mealtimes with his hands beside him on either side of his plate when not actually eating, speak when spoken to, and to click his heels when he made a request. He refused to go back. Julia argued with Philip about her child being sent off at seven to school. This is not unusual now, but then Julia was being brave. Philip told her that everyone of their class did this, and anyway look at him! he had gone to boarding school at seven. Yes, he did remember he had been a bit homesick... never mind, it wore off. That argument, 'Look at me!', expected to cast down opposition because of the speaker's conviction of his superiority or at least rightness, did not convince Julia. |
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Any shreds of illusion had dissolved away, leaving a residue of unresolvable exasperation about him, the comrades, the Revolution, Stalin, Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all. But what was in question here was not Johnny, it was herself, a small, threatened sense of identity and of independence. That was why Julia's Think of the children went home like a poisoned bullet. What right did she, Frances, have to fight for her independence, her own self at the cost of... but they were not suffering, they were not. She knew they were not. Julia went away, reported back to Philip, and tried not to think of those rooms in Notting Hill. Later, when Julia heard that Frances had gone to work in a theatre, Julia thought, A theatre! Of course, it would be! Then Frances was acting and Julia thought, Is she acting servants' parts then? She went to the theatre, sat well back where she could not be seen, she hoped, and watched Frances in a small part in a quite nice little comedy. Frances was thinner, though still solid, and her fair hair was in frilly waves. She was a hotel owner, in Brighton. Julia could not see anything of that pre-war giggler in her tight uniform, but still, she was doing the part well enough, and Julia felt encouraged. Frances knew that Julia had been to watch her, because it was a small theatre, and Julia was wearing one of her inimitable hats, with a veil, and her gloved hands were on her lap. Not another woman in the audience wore a hat. Those gloves, oh those gloves, what a laugh. All through the war, particularly at bad moments, Philip had kept the memory of a certain little glove, in Swiss muslin, and those dots, white on white, and the tiny frill at the wrist, seemed to him a delicious frivolity, laughing at itself, and a promise that civilisation would return. Soon Philip died of a heart attack, and Julia was not surprised. The war had been hard on him. He had worked to all hours and brought home work at nights. She knew he had been involved in all kinds of daring and dangerous ventures, and that he grieved for men he had sent into danger, sometimes to their deaths. He had become an old man, during the war. And, like her, this war was forcing him to relive the last one: she knew this, from the small dry remarks he did allow himself to drop. These two people, who had been so fatally in love, had lived always in patient tenderness, as ifthey had decided to protect their memories, like a bruise, from any harsh touch, refusing ever to look too closely at them. Now there was Julia alone in the big house, and Johnny came and said he wanted the house, and she should move out into a flat. For the first time in her life Julia stood her ground and said No. She was going to live here, and she did not expect Johnny or anyone else to understand her. Her own home, the von Arne house, had been lost. Her young brother had been killed in the Second World War. The house had been sold and the proceeds had come to her. This house, where she had been so reluctant to live, was now her home, the only link with that Julia who had a home, who expected to have one, who was defined by a place, with memories. She was Julia Lennox, and this was her home. 'You are selfish and greedy, like all your class,' said Johnny. 'You and Frances may come and live here, but I shall be here.' 'Thank you so much, Mutti, but we shall decline.' 'Why Mutti? You never called me that when you were a child.' 'Are you trying to conceal the fact that you are a German, Mutti?' 'No, I don't think I am doing that. |
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One cafe in particular served goulash and dumplings and heavy soups and other filling items to these storm-tossed immigrants who would soon would be adding value and lustre in so many ways to native culture. By the late Fifties, early Sixties, they were editors, writers, journalists, artists, a Nobel Prize winner, and a stranger walking into the Cosmo would judge that this must be the trendiest place in north London, for everyone was in the current uniform of non-conformity, polo necks and expensive jeans, Mao jackets and leather jackets, shaggy hair or the ever-popular Roman Emperor haircut. There were women there, a few, in mini-skirts, mostly girlfriends, absorbing attractive foreign ways as they drank the best coffee in London and ate cream cakes inspired by Vienna. Frances had taken to dropping in to the Cosmo, to work. In the layer of the house she had thought of as hers, safe from invasion, she now sat listening for Julia's footsteps, or Andrew's, for they both visited Sylvia, to give her cups of this or that, and insisted that her door must be kept open because the girl feared a door that was shut on her. And Rose crept about the house. Once Frances had found her nosing through papers on her desk, and Rose had giggled and said brightly, 'Oh, Frances,' and run out. She had been caught in Julia's rooms, by Julia. She did not steal, or not much, but she was by nature a spy. Julia told Andrew that Rose should be asked to leave; Andrew told Frances that this was what Julia had said; and Frances, relieved, because she disliked the girl, told Rose that it was time she returned to her family. Collapse of Rose. Reports were brought up from the basement where Rose hung out ('It's my pad') that Rose was in bed crying, and that she seemed to be ill. Things had drifted, and Rose appeared again at the supper table, defiant, angry, and placatory. It could be argued that to complain about these minor disruptions at home, and then choose to sit in a corner at the Cosmo, which always reverberated with debate and discussion was surely a little perverse. Particularly as the overheard talk was bound to be revolutionary. All these people were types of revolutionary, even if the results of revolution were what they had fled from. They were mostly representatives of some phase of the Dream, and might argue for hours about what happened in such and such a meeting in 1905 in Russia, or in 1917, or in Berchtesgaden, or when German troops invaded the Soviet Union, or the state of affairs in the Rumanian oilfields in 1940. They argued about Freud, and Jung, about Trotsky, Bukarin, about Arthur Koestler and the Spanish Civil War. And Frances, whose ears shut tight when Johnny began on one ofhis harangues, found it all rather restful, though she did not actively listen. It is true that a noisy cafe full of cigarette smoke (then an indispensable accompaniment to intellectual activity) is more private than a home where individuals drop in for a chat. Andrew liked it there. So did Colin: they said it had good energy, not to mention positive vibes. Johnny used it a lot, but then he was in Cuba, so she was safe. Frances was not the only one from The Defender. A man was there who wrote political articles, to whom she had been introduced by Julie Hackett thus, 'This is our chief politico, Rupert Boland. He's an egghead but he's not a bad sort of person, even if he is a man.' He was not a person you would notice at once, normally, but here he did stand out, because he wore a rather dull brown suit and a tie. |
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Daniel would because Geoffrey did, but he wasn't clever, like his idol. Jill was more often here than at school. Lucy, from Darting-ton, would sit exams and do brilliantly, that was evident. Frances herself, obedient girl, had gone to school, was punctual, sat exams, and would have gone to university if the war and Johnny had not intervened. She could not understand what the problem was. She had not much enjoyed school, but had seen the process as something that had to be undergone. She would have to earn her living, that was the point. These youngsters never seemed to think about that. Now she wrote down the letter she would like to send, but of course would not. Dear Mrs Jackson, I haven't the faintest idea what to advise. We seem to have bred a generation that expects food simply to fall into their mouths without their working for it. With sincere regrets, Aunt Vera. Julia was getting up. She gathered up her bag, her gloves, a newspaper, and as she came past Frances, nodded. Frances, too late, got up to push a chair towards her, but Julia was already gone. If she had handled it properly, Julia would have sat down — there had been a little moment of hesitation. And then at last she might have become friends with her mother-in-law. Frances sat on, ordered more coffee, then soup. Andrew had said that if one was lucky with one's timing and ordered goulash soup, you got the thick part at the bottom of the pot, like stew, very good. Her goulash when it came was evidently from the middle of the pot. She did not know what to write for her third piece. The second had been on marijuana, and it was easy. The article had been cool and informative, that was all, and many letters came in response. What an attractive crowd this was, the Cosmo crowd, these people from all over Europe, and of course, by now, the kind of British attracted by them. Many of them Jews. Not all. Julia had remarked, in front of 'the kids' when one of them asked if she had been a refugee, 'I am in the unfortunate situation of being a German who is not a Jew.' Shock and outrage. Julia's fascist status had been confirmed: though they all used the word fascist as easily as they said fuck, or shit, not necessarily meaning much more than this was somebody they disapproved of. Sophie had wailed that Julia gave her the creeps, all Germans did. Of Sophie, Julia had remarked, 'She has the Jewish young girl's beauty, but she'll end up an old hag, just like the rest of us.' If Sylvia-Tilly was coming down to supper then the food had to be right for her. She could not be given a dish different from the others, and yet she did not eat anything but potato. Very well, Frances would cook a big shepherd's pie, and the girls who were slimming could leave the mash and eat the rest. There would be vegetables. Rose would not eat vegetables, but would salad. Geoffrey never ate fish or vegetables: she had been worrying about Geoffrey's diet for years, and he was not even her child. What did his parents think, when he hardly ever went home, was always coming to them rather, to Colin? She asked him and he said that they were quite pleased he had somewhere to go. It seemed they both worked hard. Quakers. Religious. A dull household, it seemed. She had become fond of Geoffrey but was damned if she was going to spend time worrying about Rose. Careful, Frances: if there was one thing she had learned, it was not to say what one will accept or refuse from Fate, which had its own ideas. But perhaps one's fate is just one's temperament, invisibly attracting people and events. |
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They were in possession of some bank of knowledge: it didn't matter what one asked, they knew it all. Rose had taken books off the shelves, but she did not enjoy them. It was not that she read slowly, she did: but she was nothing if not persevering, and she stuck at it. A kind of rage filled her as she read, getting between her and the story or the facts she was trying to absorb. It was because these people had all this as a kind of inheritance, and she, Rose... When Franklin had arrived, and found himself in the complex richnesses of London, he had had days of panic, wishing he had said no to the scholarship. It was too much to expect of him. His father had been a teacher of the lower grades in a Catholic mission school. The priests, seeing that the boy was clever, had encouraged and supported, and the point came when they asked a rich person Franklin would never know who it was if he would add this promising boy to his list of beneficiaries. An expensive undertaking: two years at St Joseph's and then, with luck, university. When Franklin went from his mission school back to the village, he was secretly ashamed of what his parents' background had been. Still was. A few grass huts in the bush, no electricity, no telephone, no running water, no toilet. The shop was five miles away. In comparison the mission school with its amenities had seemed a rich place. Now, in London, there was a violent dislocation: he was surrounded by such wealth, such wonders, that the mission had to seem paltry, poor. He had stayed for the first days in London with a kindly priest, a friend of those at the mission, who knew that the boy would be in a state of shock, and took him on buses, on the Underground, to the parks, to the markets, to the big shops, the supermarkets, the bank, to eat in restaurants. All this to accustom him, but then he had to go to St Joseph's, a place that seemed like heaven, buildings like illustrations in a picture book scattered about in green fields, and the boys and girls, all white except for two Nigerians who were as strange to him as the whites were, and the teachers, quite different from the Catholic fathers, all so friendly, so kind... he had not had kindness from white people outside the mission school. Colin was in a room along the corridor two doors from his own. To Franklin the little room was fitted out with everything anyone could wish for, including a telephone. It was a little paradise, but he had heard Colin complaining that it was too small. The food the variety of it, the plenty, every meal like a feast, but he had heard grumbles that the food was monotonous. At the mission he had had little to eat but maize porridge and relishes. Slowly grew inside him a powerful feeling that sometimes threatened to come hot out ofhis mouth in insults and accusations, while he smiled and was pleasant and compliant. It's not fair, it's not right, why do you have so much and you take it all for granted. It was that which ached in him, hurt, stung: they had no idea at all of their good fortune. And when he came home with Colin to the big house that seemed to him must be a palace (so he thought at first), it was crammed with beautiful things, and he found himself sitting in silence while they all joked and teased. He watched the older brother, Andrew, and his tenderness to the girl who had been sick, and in his mind he was in her place, sitting there between Frances and Andrew, both so kind to her, so gentle. After that first visit it was the same as when he first heard about the scholarship. |
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She had forgotten him, and now her heart reminded her of her terrible, inadmissible unhappiness. Wilhelm had told her, not so long ago, that Sylvia would marry, and that she, Julia, mustn't mind it. So that's all he thinks of me, Julia had complained to herself, but knew he was right. Sylvia must marry, though probably not this man. Otherwise wouldn't he be beside her on the bed? It seemed to Julia terrible that any young man, 'a colleague', should come home with Sylvia and sleep in her room. They are like puppies in a basket, Julia thought, they lick each other and fall off to sleep just anyhow. It should matter that a man was in a young woman's room. It should mean something. Julia sat herself carefully in the chair where but that seemed an age ago she had coaxed little Sylvia to eat. Now she could see Sylvia's face clearly, and as the moonlight moved over the floor, the young man's. Well, if it wasn't going to be him, this quite pleasant-looking youth, it would be another one. It seemed to her that she had never cared for anyone in her life but Sylvia, that the girl had been the great passion of her life oh, yes, she knew she loved Sylvia because she had not been allowed to love Johnny. But that was nonsense, because she knew with her mind how much she had longed for Philip all through that old war, and then how much she had loved him. The beams of light on the bed and the floor resembled the arbitrariness of memory, emphasising this and then that. When she looked back along the path of her life, periods of years that had had a sharp and distinct flavour of their own reduced themselves to something like a formula: that was the five years of the First World War. That little slice there was the Second World War. But, immersed in those five years, loyal in her mind and emotions to an enemy soldier, they were endless. The Second World War, which was now like an uneasy shadow in her memory, when she had lost her husband to his fatigue and to the fact he could tell her nothing of what he did, was an awful time and she had often thought that she could not bear it. She had lain at nights beside a man who was preoccupied with how to destroy her country, and she had to be glad it was being destroyed and she was, but sometimes it seemed the bombs were tearing at her own heart. And yet now she could say to Wilhelm, who had been a refugee from that monstrous regime which she refused to think of as German, 'That was during the war no, the second one.' As if talking about an item on a list that had to be kept up to date and accurate, events one after another, or perhaps like moonlight and shadows falling across a path, each having a sharp validity as you moved through them, but then when you looked back there was a dark streak through a forest with splashes of thin light across it. Ich habe gelebt und geliebt, she murmured, the fragment of Schiller that still stayed in her mind after sixty-five years, but it was a question: Have I lived and loved? The moonlight had reached Julia's feet. She had been sitting here for some time, then. Not once had Sylvia so much as stirred. They seemed not to breathe: she could easily believe them lying there dead. She found herself thinking, If you were dead, Sylvia, then you' d not be missing much, you'll only end up like me, an old woman with my life behind me, dwindling into a mess of memories, that hurt. Julia dozed off, the valium at last sinking her into a sleep so deep that she was limp in the hands of Sylvia, who was shaking her. |
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She was even prepared to contemplate cuddles and bedtime conversations in her once connubial bed. But she had only shared her bed with one man in her long life: too much was being asked of her wasn't it? Wilhelm's reproaches became accusations and Julia cried and Wilhelm was remorseful. Frances was planning to leave Julia's. At last she would have her own place. Now that there were no school or university fees, she was actually saving money. Her own place, not Johnny's, or Julia's. And it would have to accommodate all her research materials and her books, now divided between The Defender and Julia's. A large flat. What a pleasant thing it is to have a regular salary: only someone who has not enjoyed one can say this with the heartfelt feeling it deserves. Frances remembered freelancing and precarious little jobs in the theatre. But when she had achieved enough money for the substantial down-payment, then she would resign from what she felt as an increasingly false position at The Defender, and that would be the end of regular sums arriving in her bank account. She had always done most of her work at home, had never felt herself to be part of the newspaper. That she just came and went was her colleagues' complaint about her, as if her behaviour was a criticism of The Defender. It was. She was an outsider in an institution that saw itself as beleaguered, and by hostile hordes, reactionary forces, as if nothing had changed from the great days of the last century when The Defender stood almost alone as a bastion of wholesome open-hearted values: there had been no honest good cause The Defender had not defended. These days the newspaper championed the insulted and the injured, but behaved as if these were minority issues, instead of on the whole -'received opinions'. Frances was no longer Aunt Vera (My little boy wets his bed, what shall I do?), but wrote solid, well-researched articles on issues like the discrepancy between women's pay and men's, unequal employment possibilities, nursery schools: nearly everything she wrote was to do with the difference between men's situation and women's. The women journalists of The Defender were known in some quarters, mostly male (who saw themselves increasingly as beleaguered by hostile female hordes), as a kind of mafia, heavy, humourless, obsessed, but worthy. Frances was certainly worthy: all her articles had a second life as pamphlets and even as books, third lives as radio or television programmes. She secretly concurred with the view that her female colleagues were heavy-going, but suspected she could be accused of the same. She certainly felt heavy, weighed down with the wrongs of the world: Colin's accusation had been true enough: she did believe in progress, and that a stubborn application in attacking unfairness would put things right. Well, didn't it? At least sometimes? She had small triumphs to be proud of. But at least she had never flown off into the windy skies of the so fashionable feminism: she had never been capable, like Julie Hackett, of a fit of tearful rage when hearing on the radio that it was the female mosquito that is responsible for malaria. 'The shits. The bloody fascist shits.'When at last persuaded by Frances that this was a fact and not a slander invented by male scientists to put down the female sex — 'Sorry, gender' she quietened into hysterical tears and said, 'It's all so bloody unfair.' Julie Hackett continued dedicated to The Defender. At home she wore The Defender aprons, drank from The Defender mugs, used The Defender drying-up cloths. |
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The two black youths went off to the hospital, and said, 'See you by and by.'Which sounded relaxed enough but the sick one's face was a plea for immediacy. Sylvia went on to a tiny verandah, of polished green cement, with her cases. Then into a smallish room that had in it a table made of stained planks, chairs seated with strips of hide, shelves of books filling all one wall, and some pictures, all but one of Jesus, that one being a misty sunset view of the Mountains of Mourne. A thin little black woman appeared, all welcoming smiles, said she was Rebecca, and that she would show Sylvia her room. Her room, off the main one, was large enough for a narrow iron bed, a small table, a couple of hard chairs, and some wall shelves for books. There were nails and hangers on the walls for her clothes. A little chest of drawers, of the kind that once hotels all had, had washed up here. Above her bed was a small crucifix. The walls were of brick, the floors of brick, and the ceiling of split cane. Rebecca said she would bring tea, and went off. Sylvia sank on to a chair, in the grip of a feeling she did not know how to identify. Yes, new impressions: yes, she had expected them, had known she would feel alien, out of place. But what was this? waves of bitter emptiness attacked her, and when she looked at the crucifix, to get her bearings, felt only that Christ Himself must be surprised to find Himself there. But surely she Sylvia was not surprised to find Christ in a place of such poverty? What was it then? Outside doves cooed, and chickens kept up their talk. I'm just a spoiled brat, Sylvia told herself the word surfacing from somewhere deep in her childhood. Westminster Cathedral yes; a brick shack, apparently, no. Dust was blowing past the window. Judging from her outside view of it, this house could not have more than three or four rooms. Where was Father McGuire's room? Where did Rebecca sleep? She could make no sense of anything, and when Rebecca brought the tea, Sylvia said she had a headache, and would lie down. 'Yes, doctor, you lie down, and you'll be better soon,' said Rebecca, her cheerfulness recognisable as Christian: the children of God smile and are ready for anything. (Like Flower Children.) Rebecca was drawing the curtains, of black and white mattress ticking, which Sylvia suspected would be found the last word in chic in certain circles in London. 'I'll call you for lunch.' Lunch. Sylvia felt that it must be already evening, the day had been going on for so long. It was only just eleven. She lay, her hand over her eyes, saw the light define her thin fingers, fell asleep, and was woken by Rebecca half an hour later with more tea and an apology from Father McGuire who said he was detained at the school, and would see her for lunch, and he suggested she should take it easy till tomorrow. This counsel having been transmitted, Rebecca remarked that the patient from the Pyne farm was waiting to see the doctor, and there were other people waiting, and perhaps the doctor could... Sylvia was putting on a white overall, which action Rebeccca seemed merely to be observing, but in a way that made Sylvia ask, 'What should I wear, then?' Rebecca at once said that the overall wouldn't stay white long and perhaps the doctor had an old dress she could wear. Sylvia did not wear dresses. She had on her oldest jeans, for travelling. She tied her hair back in a scarf, which made her like Rebecca, in her kerchief. She went down a path indicated by Rebecca, who retired to her kitchen. |
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There was a spell on the cases she used the English word, and then added, 'The n'ganga said bad things would happen to anyone who stole anything from the hospital. 'And now she got up, and said it was time to get Father McGuire's lunch, and she hoped Sylvia was hungry, because she had cooked some special rice pudding. While Rebecca had sat opposite, and in their minds had been Tenderai and the other children, dead and living, between the two women had been an absolute openness and trust. But now Sylvia knew that Rebecca would not tell her more, for on this subject Rebecca knew she would not understand. Sylvia sat on her bed surrounded by brick walls, and looked at the Leonardo women, whom she felt were welcoming her home. Then she turned to the crucifix behind her bed, with a deliberate intention of affirming certain ideas that had been growing clamorous in her mind. Someone subscribing to the miracles of the Roman Catholic Church should not accuse others of superstition: this was her train ofthought, and it was far from a criticism of the religion. On Sundays the congregations that came to take the Eucharist with Father McGuire were told that they drank the blood and ate the flesh of Christ. She had slowly come to understand how deeply the lives of the black people she lived among were embedded in superstition, and what she wanted was to understand it all, not to make what she thought of as 'clever intellectual remarks'. Of the kind Colin and Andrew would make, she told herself. But the fact remained: there was an area where she, Sylvia, could not go, and must not criticise, in Rebecca just as much as any black casual worker, although Rebecca was her good friend. She would have to go over to the Pynes, if Father McGuire would not help. At lunch she brought the subject up, while Rebecca stood by the sideboard listening, and adding when the priest appealed to her for confirmation, 'Okay. It is true. And now the people who took the things are falling ill and people are saying it is because of what the n'ganga said.' Father McGuire did not look well. He was yellow and the hectic patches on his broad Irish cheekbones flared. He was impatient and cross. This was the second time in five years he was having to teach twice his normal hours. And the school was falling apart and Mr Mandizi only repeated that he had informed Senga of the situation. The priest went back to the school without taking his usual nap, and Sylvia and Rebecca unpacked the books, and made shelves from planks and bricks and soon all of one wall, on either side of the little dressing-table, was covered with books. Rebecca had wept to hear the sewing machines had been impounded she had hoped to make a little extra money sewing on hers, but her tears when looking at and touching the books were from joy. She even kissed the books. 'Oh, Sylvia, it was so wonderful you thought of us and brought us the books.' Sylvia went down to the hospital, where Joshua sat dozing under his tree, as if he had not left it in her absence, and where the little boys clamorously welcomed her, and she attended to her patients, many because of the coughs and colds that come with the sudden changes of temperature at the start of the rains. Then she took the car and went over to the Pynes, who filled a precise place in her life: when she needed information, that is where she went. The Pynes had bought their farm, after the Second World War, in the Fifties, on that late wave of white immigration. They grew mostly tobacco and had been successful. |
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She knew who he was, had known, had laid her plans, and expected it would be a walkover as it was. Close to, she fascinated, every little thing about her enthralled him. She had a certain way of moving her lips, as if she was crushing fruit with them, and her eyes were soft and they laughed not at him, he was making sure of that, so convinced was he that people did. And she was so at ease where he was not, in the flesh, in that magnificent body of hers, in movement and in pleasure in movement, and in food, and in her own beauty. He felt that he was being liberated simply by standing next to her. She told him he needed a woman like her, and he knew it was true. He was in awe of her too because of her sophistication. She had been in university in America and in England, she had friends everywhere among the famous because of her nature, not because of politics. She talked of politics with a laughing cynicism that shocked him, though he tried to match her. In short, it was inevitable that soon there would be a brilliant wedding, and he lived dissolved in pleasure. Everything was easy where it had been difficult no, often impossible. She said he was sexually repressed, and cured him of that in so far as his nature permitted. She said he needed more fun, had never known how to live. When he told her of his meagre much-punished childhood she kissed him with great smacking kisses and pulled his head down into her massive breasts and cuddled it. She laughed at him for everything. Now, Matthew had at the start of his rule discouraged the comrades, his associates, the leadership, from indulging their greed. He forbade them to enrich themselves. This was the last of the influences from his childhood, and then the Jesuits, who had taught him that poverty was next to Godliness: whatever else the Fathers might have been, they were poor and did not indulge themselves. Now Gloria told him he was mad, and that she should buy this big house, that farm, then wanted another farm, and some hotels that were coming on to the market as the whites left. She told him he must have a Swiss bank account and make sure there was money in it. What money? he wanted to know, and she scorned him for his naivety. But when she talked of money he still saw in his mother's thin hands the pitiful notes and coins put there by his father at the month's end, and at first, when he voted himself a salary, he had been careful it should be no higher than a top civil servant's. All this Gloria changed, brushing it away with her scorn, her laughter, her caresses and her practicality, for she had taken over his life and as the Mother of the Country could easily see to it that money flowed her way. It was she who quietly diverted big sums that flowed in from charities and benefactors into her own accounts. 'Oh, be a fool then,' she cried when he protested. 'It's in my name. It's not your responsibility.' Battles for someone's soul are seldom as clear and easy to see and as short as the one where the devil battled for Comrade Matthew's. And Zimlia, ill-governed before on ill-digested Marxism and tigs and tags of dogma, or remembered sentences from textbooks on economics, now rapidly plunged into corruption. Immediately the currency began its steady, but rapid devaluation. In Senga the fat cats got fatter every day, and out in places like Kwadere money that had descended in a trickle now dried up altogether. Gloria grew more fascinating, more beautiful, and richer, acquiring another farm, a forest, hotels, restaurants and wore them like necklaces. |
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She met only people like herself, frequenting certain pubs and clubs, and they had no idea that they were a new phenomenon, something that earlier generations would have despised, and dismissed as the gutter press, fit only for the lowest depths of society. But the phrase now seemed to her something vaguely complimentary, a guarantee of bravery in the pursuit of truth. But how could she, or they, know? They scorned history because they had learned none. Only once in her life she had written with approval, admiration, it was about Comrade President Matthew Mungozi, and then, more recently, Comrade Gloria, whom she adored because of her ruthlessness. Only once had her pen not dripped poison. And she read the article by The Monitors stringer with fury, and, too, with something like the beginnings of fear. Meeting a journalist who worked on The Monitor she heard that it was Colin Lennox who had prompted it. And who the hell was Colin to have an opinion about Africa? She hated Colin. She had always seen novelists and poets as something like counterfeiters, making something out of nothing and getting away with it. She had been too early on the scene for his first novel, but she had rubbished his second and the Lennoxes, and his third had caused her paroxysms of rage. It was about two people, apparently unlike each other, who had for each other a tender and almost freakish love that it continued at all seemed to both of them a jest of Fate. While involved with other partners, other adventures, they met like conspirators, to share this feeling they had, that they understood each other as no one else ever could. Reviewers on the whole liked it and said it was poetic and evocative. One said it was 'elliptical', a word that goaded Rose to extra frenzy: she had to look it up in the dictionary. She read the novel, or tried to: but really she could not read anything more difficult than a newspaper article. Of course it was about Sophie, that stuck-up bitch. Well, let them both watch out, that's all. Rose had a file on the Lennoxes, all kinds of bits and pieces, some stolen from them long ago, when she went sniffing about the house for what she could find. She planned to 'get them' one day. She would sit leafing through the file, a rather fat woman now, her face permanently set in a malicious smile which, when she knew she had found the word or phrase that could really hurt, became a jeering laugh. On the plane to Senga she was next to a bulky man who took up too much room. She asked for a change of seat, but the plane was full. He shifted about in his seat in a way that she decided was aggressive and against her, and he gave her sideways looks full of male dishonesty. His arm was on the rest between them, no room for hers. She put her forearm beside his, to claim her rights, but he did not budge, and to keep her arm there meant she had to concentrate, or it would slide off. He did remove it when he demanded from the attendant who was offering drinks a whisky, threw it to the back of his throat at once, asked for another. Rose admired his authoritative handling of the attendant, whose smiles were false, Rose knew. She asked for a whisky and took it in a swallow, not to be outdone, and sat with the glass in her hand, waiting for a refill. 'Bloody skivers,' said this man, whom Rose knew was her enemy as a woman. 'They think they can get away with murder.' Rose did not know what he was complaining of, and only said, in an all-purpose formula, 'They're all the same.' 'Right on. |
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I had a test today. I think I faled it and I think mabye now they won't use me. "What happind is I went to Prof Nemurs office on my lunch time like they said and his secertery took me to a place that said psych dept on the door with a long hall and alot of littel rooms with onley a desk and chares. And a nice man was in one of the rooms and he had some wite cards with ink spilld all over them. He sed sit down Charlie and make yourself cunfortible and rilax. He had a wite coat like a docter but I don't think he was no docter because he dint tell me to opin my mouth and sav ah. All he had was those wite cards. His name is Burt. I fer-got his last name because I don't remembir so good. I dint know what he was gonna do and I was holding on tite to the chair like sometimes when I go to a dentist onley Burt aint no dentist neither but he kept telling me to rilax and that gets me skared because it always means its gonna hert. So Burt sed Charlie what do you see on this card. I saw the spilld ink and I was very skared even tho I got my rabits foot in my pockit because when I was a kid I always faled tests in school and I spilld ink to. I tolld Burt I saw ink spilld on a wite card. Burt said yes and he smild and that maid me feel good. He kept terning all the cards and I tolld him somebody spilld ink on all of them red and black. I thot that was a easy test but when I got up to go Burt stoppd me and said now sit down Charlie we are not thru yet. Theres more we got to do with these cards. I dint understand about it but I remembir Dr Strauss said do anything the testor telld me even if it don't make no sense because that's testing. I don't remembir so good what Burt said but I remembir he wantid me to say what was in the ink. I dint see nothing in the ink but Burt sed there was picturs there. I coudnt see no picturs. I reely tryed to see. I holded the card up close and then far away. Then I said if I had my eye glassis I coud probaly see better I usully only ware my eye-glassis in the movies or to watch TV but I sed maybe they will help me see the picturs in the ink. I put them on and I said now let me see the card agan I bet I find it now. I tryed hard but I still coudnt find the picturs I only saw the ink. I tolld Burt mabey I need new glassis. He rote somthing down on a paper and I got skared of faling the test. So I tolld him it was a very nice pictur of ink with pritty points all around the eges but he shaked his head so that wasnt it neither. I asked him if other pepul saw things in the ink and he sed yes they imagen picturs in the inkblot. He tolld me the ink on the card was calld inkblot. Burt is very nice and he talks slow like Miss Kinnian dose in her class where I go to lern reeding for slow adults. He explaned me it was a raw shok test. He sed pepul see things in the ink. I said show me where. He dint show me he just kept saying think imagen theres something on the card. I tolld him I imaggen a inkblot. He shaked his head so that wasnt rite eather. He said what does it remind you of pretend its something. I dosd my eyes for a long time to pretend and then I said I pretend a bottel of ink spilld all over a wite card. And that's when the point on his pencel broke and then we got up and went out. I don't think I passd the raw shok test. 3d progris riport martch 5 Dr Strauss and prof Nemur say it don't matter about the ink on the cards. I tolld them I dint spill the ink on them and I coudnt see anything in the ink They said maybe they will still use me. |
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I tolld Dr Strauss that Miss Kinnian never gave me tests like that only riting and reeding. He said Miss Kinnian tolld him I was her bestist pupil in the Beekman School for retarted adults and I tryed the hardist becaus I reely wantd to lern I wantid it more even then pepul who are smarter even then me. Dr Strauss askd me how come you went to the Beekman School all by yourself Charlie. How did you find out about it. I said I don't remembir. Prof Nemur said but why did you want to lern to reed and spell in the frist place. I tolld him because all my life I wantid to be smart and not dumb and my mom always tolld me to try and lern just like Miss Kinnian tells me but its very hard to be smart and even when I lern something in Miss Kinnians class at the school I ferget alot. Dr Strauss rote some things on a peice of paper and prof Nemur talkd to me very sereus. He said you know Charlie we are not shure how this experamint will werk on pepul because we onley tried it up to now on animils. I said that's what Miss Kinnian tolld me but I don't even care if it herts or anything because I'm strong and I will werk hard. I want to get smart if they will let me. They said they got to get permissen from my familie but my uncle Herman who use to take care of me is ded and I don't rimember about my familie. I dint see my mother or father or my littel sister Norma for a long long long time. Mabye their ded to. Dr. Strauss askd me where they use to live. I think in brooklin. He sed they will see if mabye they can find them. I hope I don't have to rite to much of these progris ri-ports because it takes along time and I get to sleep very late and I'm tired at werk in the morning. Gimpy hollered at me because I droppd a tray full of rolles I was carrying over to the oven. They got derty and he had to wipe them off before he put them in to bake. Gimpy hollers at me all the time when I do something rong, but he reely likes me because he's my frend. Boy if I get smart won't he be serprised. progris riport 4 mar6 "I had more crazy tests today in case they use me. That same place but a differnt littel testing room. The nice lady who give it to me tolld me the name and I askd her how do you spell it so I can put it down rite in my progis riport, thematic appercepton test. I don't know the frist 2 werds but I know what test means. You got to pass it or you get bad marks. This test lookd easy because I coud see the picturs. Only this time she dint want me to tell what I saw in the picturs. That mixd me up. I tolld her yesterday Burt said I shoud tell what I saw in the ink. She said that don't make a difrence because this test is something else. Now you got to make up storys about the pepul in the picturs. I said how can I tell storys about pepul I don't know. She said make beleeve but I tolld her that's lies. I never tell lies any more because when I was a kid I made lies and I always got hit. I got a pictur in my walet of me and Norma with Uncle Herman who got me the job to be janiter at Donners bakery before he dyed. I said I coud make storys about them because I livd with Uncle Herman along time but the lady dint want to hear about them. She said this test and the other one the raw shok was for getting persinality. I laffd. I tolld her how can you get that thing from cards that sombody spilld ink on and fotos of pepul you don't even no. She lookd angrey and took the picturs away. I don't care. I gess I faled that test too. Then I drawed some picturs for her but I don't drawer so good. |
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Later the other testor Burt in the wite coat came back his name is Burt Selden and he took me to a diferent place on the same 4th floor in the Beekman University that said Psychology Laboratory on the door. Burt said psychology means minds and laboratory meens a place where they make spearamints. I thot he ment like where they made the chooing gum but now I think its puzzels and games because that's what we did. I coudnt werk the puzzels so good because it was all broke and the peices coudnt fit in the holes. One game was a paper with lines in all derections and lots of boxs. On one side it said start and on the other end it said finish. He tolld me that game was amazed and I shoud take the pencil and go from where it said start to where it said finish withowt crossing over any of the lines. I dint understand the amazed and we used up a lot of papers. Then Burt said look I'll show you something let's go to the sperimental lab mabye you'll get the idea. We went up to the 5th floor to another room with lots of cages and animils they had monkys and some mouses. It had a funny smel like old garbidge. And there was other pepul in wite coats playing with the animils so I thot it was like a pet store but their wasnt no customers. Burt took a wite mouse out of the cage and showd him to me. Burt said that's Algernon and he can do this amazed very good. I tolld him you show me how he does that. Well do you know he put Algernon in a box like a big tabel with alot of twists and terns like all kinds of walls and a start and a finish like the paper had. Only their was a skreen over the big tabel. And Burt took out his clock and lifted up a slidding door and said let's go Algernon and the mouse sniffd 2 or 3 times and startid to run. First he ran down one long row and then when he saw he coudnt go no more he came back where he startid from and he just stood there a minit wiggeling his wiskers. Then he went off in the other derection and startid to run again. It was just like he was doing the same thing Burt wanted me to do with the lines on the paper. I was laffing because I thot it was going to be a hard thing for a mouse to do. But then Algernon kept going all the way threw that thing all the rite ways till he came out where it said finish and he made a squeek. Burt says that means he was happy because he did the thing rite. Boy I said that's a smart mouse. Burt said woud you like to race against Algernon. I said sure and he said he had a differnt kind of amaze made of wood with rows skratched in it and an electrik stick like a pencil. And he coud fix up Algernons amaze to be the same like that one so we could both be doing the same kind. He moved all the bords around on Algernons tabel because they come apart and he could put them together in differnt ways. And then he put the skreen back on top so Algernon woudnt jump over any rows to get to the finish. Then he gave me the electrik stick and showd me how to put it in between the rows and I'm not suppose to lift it off the bord just follow the little skratches until the pencil cant move any more or I get a little shock. He took out his clock and he was trying to hide it. So I tryed not to look at him and that made me very nervus. When he said go I tryed to go but I dint know where to go. I didn't know the way to take. Then I herd Algernon squeeking from the box on the tabel and his feet skratch-ing like he was runing alredy. I startid to go but I went in the rong way and got stuck and a littel shock in my fingers so I went back to the start but evertime I went a differnt way I got stuck and a shock. |
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It didn't hert or anything just made me jump a littel and Burt said it was to show me I did the wrong thing. I was haffway on the bord when I herd Algernon squeek like he was happy again and that means he won the race. And the other ten times we did it over Algernon won evry time because I coudnt find the right rows to get to where it says finish. I dint feel bad because I watched Algernon and I lernd how to finish the amaze even if it takes me along time. I dint know mice were so smart. progris riport 5 mar 6 They found my sister Norma who lives with my mother in Brooklin and she gave permissen for the operashun. So their going to use me. I'm so exited I can hardley rite it down. But then Prof Nemur and Dr Strauss had a arga-ment about it frist. I was sitting in Prof Nemurs office when Dr Strauss and Burt Selden came in. Prof Nemur was worryed about using me but Dr Strauss tolld him I looked like the best one they testid so far. Burt tolld him Miss Kinnian rekemmended me the best from all the people who she was teaching at the center for retarted adults. Where I go. Dr Strauss said I had something that was very good. He said I had a good motor-vation. I never even knowed I had that. I felt good when he said not everbody with an eye-Q of 68 had that thing like I had it. I don't know what it is or where I got it but he said Algernon had it too. Algernons motor-vation is the chees they put in his box. But it cant be only that because I dint have no chees this week. Prof Nemur was worryd about my eye-Q getting too high from mine that was too low and I woud get sick from it. And Dr Strauss tolld Prof Nemur somthing I dint understand so wile they was talking I rote down some of the words in my notebook for keeping my progris riports. He said Harold that's Prof Nemurs frist name I know Charlie is not what you had in mind as the frist of your new breed of intelek** coudnt get the word *** superman. But most people of his low ment** are host** and uncoop** they are usally dull and apathet** and hard to reach. Charlie has a good natcher and he's intristed and eeger to pleese. Then prof Nemur said remembir he will be the first human beeing ever to have his intelijence increesd by sergery. Dr Strauss said that's exakly what I ment. Where will we find another retarted adult with this tremendus motor-vation to lern. Look how well he has lerned to reed and rite for his low mentel age. A tremen** achev** I dint get all the werds and they were talking to fast but it sounded like Dr Strauss and Burt was on my side and Prof Nemur wasnt. Burt kept saying Alice Kinnian feels he has an overwhelm** desir to lern. He aktually beggd to be used. And that's true because I wantid to be smart. Dr Strauss got up and walkd around and said I say we use Charlie. And Burt noded. Prof Nemur skratchd his head and rubbd his nose with his thum and said mabye your rite. We will use Charlie. But weve got to make him understand that a lot of things can go wrong with the experamint. When he said that I got so happy and exited I jumpd up and shaked his hand for being so good to me. I think he got skared when I did that. He said Charlie we werked on this for a long time but only on animils like Algernon. We are sure thers no fisical danger for you but there are other things we cant tell until we try it. I want you to understand this mite fale and then nothing woud happen at all. Or it mite even sucseed tem-perary and leeve you werse off then you are now. Do you understand what that meens. |
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The skinny nerse who wached me riting says I spelld progress rong and she tolld me how to spell it and report to and march. I got to remembir that. I have a very bad memary for speling. Anyway they took off the bandiges from my eyes today so I can make a progress report now. But there is still some bandigis on my head. I was skared when they came in and tolld me it was time to go for the operashun. They maid me get out of the bed and on another bed that has weels on it and they rolld me out of the room and down the hall to the door that says sergery. Boy was I serprised that it was a big room with green walls and lots of docters sitting around up high all around the room waching the operashun. I dint no it was going to be like a show. A man came up to the tabel all in wite and with a wite cloth on his face like in TV shows and rubber glovs and he said rilax Charlie its me Dr Strauss. I said hi doc I'm skared. He said theres nothing to be skared about Charlie he said you'll just go to sleep. I said that's what I'm skared about. He patted my head and then 2 other men waring wite masks too came and straped my arms and legs down so I coudnt move them and that maid me very skared and my stomack feeled the like I was gone to make all over but I dint only wet a littel and I was gone to cry but they put a rubber thing on my face for me to breeth in and it smelld funny. All the time I herd Dr Strauss talking out loud about the operashun telling evrybody what he was gonna do. But I dint understand anything about it and I was thinking mabye after the operashun I'll be smart and I'll understand all the things he's talking about. So I breethed deep and then I gess I was very tired becase I went to sleep. When I waked up I was back in my bed and it was very dark I coudnt see nothing but I herd some talking. It was the nerse and Burt and I said whats the matter why don't you put on the lites and when are they gonna operate. And they laffed and Burt said Charlie its all over. And its dark because you got bandijis over your eyes. Its a funny thing. They did it while I was sleeping. Burt comes in to see me evry day to rite down all the things like my tempertur and my blud preshur and the other things about me. He says its on acount of the sientific methid. They got to keep reckerds about what happins so they can do it agen when they want to. Not to me but to the other pepul like me who aint smart. that's why I got to do these ptegs- progress reports. Burt says its part of the esperimint and they will make fo-tastats of the rip8 reports to study them so they will know what is going on in my mind. I don't see how they will know what is going on in my mind by looking at these reports. I read them over and over a lot of times to see what I rote and I don't no whats going on in my mind so how are they going to. But anyway that's sience and I got to try to be smart like other pepul. Then when I am smart they will talk to me and I can sit with them and listen like Joe Carp and Frank and Gimpy do when they talk and have a discushen about importent things. While their werking they start talking about things like about god or about the truble with all the mony the presedint is spending or about the ripublicans and demicrats. And they get all excited like their gonna have a fite so Mr Donner got to come in and tell them to get back to baking or they'll all get canned union or no union. I want to talk about things like that. If your smart you can have lots of frends to talk to and you never get lonley by yourself all the time. |
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Prof Nemur says its ok to tell about all the things that happin to me in the progress reports but he says I shoud rite more about what I feel and what I think and remembir about the past. I tolld him I don't know how to think or remembir and he said just try. All the time the bandiges were on my eyes I tryed to think and remembir but nothing happined. I don't know what to think or remembir about. Maybe if I ask him he will tell me how I can think now that I'm suppose to get smart. What do smart pepul think about or remembir. Fancy things I bet. I wish I new some fancy things alredy. March 12 I don't have to rite progress report on top evry day just when I start a new batch after Prof Nemur takes the old ones away. I just have to put the date on top. That saves time. Its a good idea. I can sit up in bed and look out the window at the gras and trees outside. The skinney nerses name is Hilda and she is very good to me. She brings me things to eat and she fixes my bed and she says I was a very brave man to let them do things to my hed. She says she woud never let them do things to her branes for all the tea in china. I tolld her it wasnt for tea in china. It was to make me smart. And she said mabey they got no rite to make me smart because if god wantid me to be smart he would have made me born that way. And what about Adem and Eev and the sin with the tree of nowlege and eating the appel and the fall. And mabey Prof Nemur and Dr Strauss was tampiring with things they got no rite to tampir with. She's very skinney and when she talks her face gets all red. She says mabey I better prey to god to ask him to forgiv what they done to me. I dint eat no appels or do nodi-ing sinful. And now I'm skared. Mabey I shoudnt of let them oparate on my branes like she said if its agenst god. I don't want to make god angrey. March 13 They changed my nerse today. This one is pritty. Her name is Lucille she showd me how to spell it for my progress report and she got yellow hair and blew eyes. I askd her where was Hilda and she said Hilda wasnt werking in that part of the hospitil no more. Only in the matirnity ward by the babys where it don't matter if she talks too much. When I askd her about what was matirnity she said its about having babys but when I askd her how they have them she got red in the face just the same like Hilda and she said she got to take sombodys temperchure. Nobody ever tells me about the babys. Mabye if this thing werks and I get smart I'll find out. Miss Kinnian came to see me today and she said Charlie you look wonderful. I tolld her I feel fine but I don't feel smart yet. I thot that when the operashun was over and they took the bandijis off my eyes I'd be smart and no a lot of things so I coud read and talk about im-portent things like evryebody else. She said that's not the way it werks Charlie. It comes slowley and you have to werk very hard to get smart. I dint no that. If I got to werk hard anyway what did I have to have the operashun for. She said she wasnt sure but the operashun was to make it so that when I did werk hard to get smart it woud stick with me and not be like it was before when it dint stick so good. Well I tolld her that made me kind of feel bad because I thot I was going to be smart rite away and I coud go back to show the guys at the bakery how smart I am and talk with them about things and mabye even get to be an as-sistint baker. Then I was gone to try and find my mom and dad. They woud be serprised to see how smart I got because my mom always wanted me too be smart to. |
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All about art and politiks and god. March 17 When I waked up this morning rite away I thot I was gone to be smart but I'm not. Evry morning I think I'm gone to be smart but nothing happins. Mabye the experimint dint werk. Maby I won't get smart and I'll have to go live at the Warren home. I hate the tests and I hate the amazeds and I hate Algernon. I never new before that I was dumber than a mouse. I don't feel like riting any more progress reports. I forget things and even when I rite them in my notbook sometimes I cant reed my own riting and its very hard. Miss Kinnian says have pashents but I feel sick and tired. And I get headakes all the time. I want to go back to werk in the bakery and not rite ftega& progress reports any more. March 20 I'm going back to werk at the bakery. Dr Strauss told Prof Nemur it was better I shoud go back to werk but I still cant tell anyone what the operashun was for and I have to come to the lab for 2 hrs evry nite after werk for my tests and keep riting these dumb reports. They are going to pay me evry week like for a part time job because that was part of the arraingment when they got the mony from the Welberg foundashun. I still don't know what that Welberg thing is. Miss Kinnian explaned me but I still don't get it. So if I dint get smart why are they paying me to rite these dumb things. If their gonna pay me I'll do it. But its very hard to rite. I'm glad I'm going back to werk because I miss my job at the bakery and all my frends and all the fun we have. Dr. Strauss says I shoud keep a notbook in my pockit for things I remembir. And I don't have to do the progress reports every day just when I think of somthing or somthing speshul happins. I told him nothing speshul ever happins to me and it don't look like this speshul experimint is going to happin neither. He says don't get discouriged Charlie because it takes a long time and it happins slow and you cant notise it rite away. He explaned how it took a long time with Algernon before he got 3 times smarter then he was before. that's why Algernon beats me all the time in that amaze race because he had that operashun too. he's a speshul mouse the 1st animil to stay smart so long after the operashun. I dint know he was a speshul mouse. That makes it diffrint. I coud probaly do that amazed fester then a reglar mouse. Maybe some day I'll beat Algernon. Boy woud that be somthing. Dr Strauss says that so far Algernon looks like he mite be smart permanint and he says that's a good sine becaus we both had the same kind of operashun. March 21 We had a lot of fun at the bakery today. Joe Carp said hey look where Charlie had his operashun what did they do Charlie put some brains in. I was going to tell him about me getting smart but I remembered Prof Nemur said no. Then Frank Reilly said what did you do Charlie open a door the hard way. That made me laff. Their my frends and they really like me. Their is a lot of werk to catch up. They dint have anyone to clean out the place because that was my job but they got a new boy Ernie to do the diliveries that I always done. Mr. Donner said he decided not to fire him for a while to give me a chanse to rest up and not werk so hard. I told him I was alright and I can make my diliveries and clean up like I always done but Mr. Donner says we will keep the boy. I said so what am I gonna do. And Mr. Donner patted me on the shoulder and says Charlie how old are you. I told him 32 years going on 33 my next brithday. And how long you been here he said. |
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I told him I dint know. He said you came here seventeen years ago. Your Uncle Herman god rest his sole was my best frend. He brout you in here and he askd me to let you werk here and look after you as best I coud. And when he died 2 years later and your mother had you comited to the Warren home I got them to releese you on outside werk placmint. Seventeen years its been Charlie and I want you to know that the bakery bisness is not so good but like I always said you got a job here for the rest of your life. So don't worry about me bringing in somebody to take your place. you'll never have to go back to that Warren home. I aint worryd only what does he need Ernie for to diliver and werk around here when I was always deliviring the packiges good. He says the boy needs the mony Charlie so I'm going to keep him on as an aprentise to lern him to be a baker. You can be his asistent and help him out on diliverys when he needs it. I never was a asistent before. Ernie is very smart but the other pepul in the bakery don't like him so much. Their all my good frends and we have lots of jokes and laffs here. Some times somebody will say hey lookit Frank, or Joe or even Gimpy. He really pulled a Charlie Gordon that time. I don't know why they say it but they always laff and I laff too. This morning Gimpy he's the head baker and he has a bad foot and he limps he used my name when he shouted at Ernie because Ernie losst a birthday cake. He said Ernie for godsake you trying to be a Charlie Gordon. I don't know why he said that. I never lost any packiges. I askd Mr Donner if I coud lern to be an aprentise baker like Ernie. I told him I coud lern it if he gave me a chanse. Mr Donner looked at me for a long time funny because I gess I don't talk so much most of the time. And Frank herd me and he laffed and laffed until Mr Donner told him to shut up and go tend to his oven. Then Mr Donner said to me theirs lots of time for that Charlie. A bakers werk is very importint and very complikated and you shoudnt worry about things like that. I wish I coud tell him and all the other people about my real operashun. I wish it woud reely work alredy so I coud get smart like evrybody else. March 24 Prof Nemur and Dr Strauss came to my room tonight to see why I don't come in to the lab like I am suppose to. I told them I don't want to race with Algernon no more. Prof Nemur said I don't have to for a while but I shoud come in any way. He brout me a presint only it wasnt a presint but just for lend. He said its a teeching mashine that werks like TV. It talks and makes picturs and I got to tern it on just before I go to sleep. I said your kidding. Why shoud I tern on a TV before I go to sleep. But Prof Nemur said if I want to get smart I got to do what he says. So I told him I dint think I was goin to get smart anyway. Then Dr. Strauss came over and put his hand on my sholder and said Charlie you don't know it yet but your getting smarter all the time. You won't notise it for a while like you don't notise how the hour hand on a clock moves. that's the way it is with the changes in you. They are hap-pining so slow you cant tell. But we can follow it from the tests and the way you act and talk and your progress reports. He said Charlie youve got to have fayth in us and in yourself. We cant be sure it will be permanint but we are confidant that soon your going to be a very intellijent young man. I said okay and Prof Nemur showed me how to werk the TV that reely wasnt a TV. I askd him what did it do. |
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I said Miss Kinnian always told me Charlie be proud of the work you do because you do your job good. Everybody laffed and Frank said that Miss Kinnian must be some cracked up piece if she goes for Charlie and Joe said hey Charlie are you making out with her. I said I dint know what that meens. They gave me lots of drinks and Joe said Charlie is a card when he's potted. I think that means they like me. We have some good times but I cant wait to be smart like my best frends Joe Carp and Frank Reilly. I don't remember how the party was over but they asked me to go around the corner to see if it was raining and when I came back there was no one their. Maybe they went to find me. I looked for them all over till it was late. But I got lost and I felt bad at myself for getting lost because I bet Algernon coud go up and down those streets a hundrid times and not get lost like I did. Then I don't remember so good but Mrs Flynn says a nice poleecman brought me back home. That same nite I dreamed about my mother and father only I coudnt see her face it was all wite and she was blurry. I was crying because we were in a big departmint store and I was losst and I coudnt find them and I ran up and down the rows around all the big cownters in the store. Then a man came and took me in a big room with benches and gave me a lolypop and tolld me a big boy like me shoudnt cry because my mother and father woud come to find me. Anyway that's the dream and I got a headake and a big lump on my head and black and blue marks all over. Joe Carp says mabye I got rolled or the cop let me have it. I don't think poleecmen do things like that. But anyway I don't think I'll drink wiskey anymore. March 29 I beet Algernon. I dint even know I beet him until Burt Selden told me. Then the second time I lost because I got so exited. But after that I beet him 8 more times. I must be getting smart to beat a smart mouse like Algernon. But I don't feel smarter. I wanted to race some more but Burt said that's enough for one day. He let me hold Algernon for a minit. Algernon is a nice mouse. Soft like cotton. He blinks and when he opens his eyes their black and pink on the eges. I asked can I feed him because I felt bad to beat him and I wanted to be nice and make frends. Burt said no Algernon is a very speshul mouse with an operashun like mine. He was the first of all the animals to stay smart so long and he said that Algernon is so smart he has to solve a problem with a lock that changes every time he goes in to eat so he has to lern something new to get his food. That made me sad because if he coudnt lern he woudnt be able to eat and he would be hungry. I don't think its right to make you pass a test to eat. How woud Burt like to have to pass a test every time he wants to eat. I think I'll be frends with Algernon. That reminds me. Dr Strauss says I shoud write down all my dreams and the things I think so when I come to his office I can tell them. I tolld him I don't know how to think yet but he says he means more things like what I wrote about my mom and dad and about when I started school at Miss Kinnians or anything that happened before the operation is thinking and I wrote them in my progress report. I didn't know I was thinking and remembering. Maybe that means something is happining to me. I don't feel different but I'm so exited I cant sleep. Dr Strauss gave me some pink pills to make me sleep good. He says I got to get lots of sleep because that's when most of the changes happin in my brane. |
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Nobody laffed. When Gimpy came back and Fanny told him he got sore at me for working on the mixer. But she said watch him and see how he does it. They were playing him for an April Fool joke and he foold them instead. Gimpy watched and I knew he was sore at me because he don't like when people don't do what he tells them just like Prof Nemur. But he saw how I worked the mixer and he skratched his head and said I see it but I don't believe it. Then he called Mr Donner and told me to work it again so Mr Donner could see it. I was scared he was going to be angry and holler at me so after I was finished I said can I go back to my own job now. I got to sweep out the front of the bakery behind the counter. Mr Donner looked at me funny for a long time. Then he said this must be some kind of April fools joke you guys are playing on me. Whats the catch. Gimpy said that's what I thought it was some kind of a gag. He limped all around the mashine and he said to Mr Donner I don't understand it either but Charlie knows how to handle it and I got to admit it he does a better job then Oliver. Everybody was crowded around and talking about it and I got scared because they all looked at me funny and they were exited. Frank said I told you there is something peculier lately about Charlie. And Joe Carp says yeah I know what you mean. Mr Donner sent everybody back to work and he took me out to the front of the store with him. He said Charlie I don't know how you done it but it looks like you finally learned something. I want you to be carefull and do the best you can do. You got yourself a new job with a 5 doller raise. I said I don't want a new job because I like to clean up and sweep and deliver and do things for my friends but Mr Donner said never mind your friends I need you for this job. I don't think much of a man who don't want to advance. I said whats advance mean. He scratched his head and looked at me over his glasses. Never mind that Charlie. From now on you work that mixer. that's advance. So now instead of delivering packiges and washing out the toilets and dumping the garbage. I'm the new mixer. that's advance. Tomorrow I will tell Miss Kinnian. I think she will be happy but I don't know why Frank and Joe are mad at me. I asked Fanny and she said never mind those fools. This is April Fools day and the joke backfired and made them the fools instead of you. I asked Joe to tell me what was the joke that backfired and he said go jump in the lake. I guess their mad at me because I worked the mashine but they didn't get the day off like they thought. Does that mean I'm getting smarter. April 3 Finished robinson crusoe. i want to find out more about what happens to him but Miss Kinnian says that's all there is. why. April 4 Miss Kinnian says I'm learning fast. She read some of my progress reports and she looked at me kind of funny. She says I'm a fine person and I'll show them all. I asked her why. She said never mind but I shouldn't feel bad if I find out that everybody isn't nice like I think. She said for a person who God gave so little to you did more than a lot of people with brains they never even used. I said that all my friends are smart people and their good. They like me and they never did anything that wasnt nice. Then she got something in her eye and she had to run out to the ladys room. While I was sitting in the teaching room waiting for her I was wondering about how Miss Kinnian was a nice lady like my mother use to be. I think I remember my mother told me to be good and always be friendly to people. |
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She said but always be careful because some people don't understand and they might think you are trying to make trouble. That makes me remember when mom had to go away and they put me to stay in Mrs Leroys house who lived next door. Mom went to the hospital. Dad said she wasnt sick or nothing but she went to the hospital to bring me back a baby sister or a brother. (I still don't know how they do that) I told them I want a baby brother to play with and I don't know why they got me a sister instead but she was nice like a doll. Only she cryd all the time. I never hurt her or nothing. They put her in a crib in their room and once I heard Dad say don't worry Charlie wouldn't harm her. She was like a bundle all pink and screaming sometimes that I couldn't sleep. And when I went to sleep she woke me up in the nighttime. One time when they were in the kitchen and I was in my bed she was crying. I got up to pick her up and hold her to get quiet the way mom does. But then Mom came in yelling and took her away. And she slapped me so hard I fell on the bed. Then she startid screaming. don't you ever touch her again. you'll hurt her. she's a baby. You got no business touching her. I dint know it then but I guess I know it now that she thought I was going to hurt the baby because I was too dumb to know what I was doing. Now that makes me feel bad because I would never of hurt the baby. When I go to Dr Straus office I got to tell him about that. April 6 Today, I learned, the comma, this is, a, comma (,) a period, with, a tail, Miss Kinnian, says its, importent, because, it makes writing, better, she said, somebody, could lose, a lot, of money, if a comma, isn't in, the right, place, I got, some money, that I, saved from, my job, and what, the foundation, pays me, but not, much and, I don't, see how, a comma, keeps, you from, losing it, But, she says, everybody, uses commas, so Ill, use them, too,,,, April 7 I used the comma wrong. its punctuation. Miss Kinnian told me to look up long words in the dictionary to learn to spell them. I said whats the difference if you can read it anyway. She said its part of your education so from now on I'll look up all the words I'm not sure how to spell. It takes a long time to write that way but I think I'm remembering more and more. Anyway that's how come I got the word punctuation right. Its that way in the dictionary. Miss Kinnian says a period is punctuation too, and there are lots of other marks to learn. I told her I thought she meant all the periods had to have tails and be called commas. But she said no. She said; You, got. to-mix? them! up: She showd? me" how, to mix! them; up, and now! I can. mix (up all? kinds of punctuation — in, my. writing! There" are lots, of rules; to learn? but. Im' get'ting them in my head: One thing? I, like: about, Dear Miss Kinnian: (thats, the way? it goes; in a business, letter (if I ever go! into business?) is that, she: always; gives me' a reason" when — I ask. She"s a gen'ius! I wish? I coud be smart-like-her; Punctuation, is? fun! April 8 What a dope I am! I didn't even understand what she was talking about. I read the grammar book last night and it explains the whole thing. Then I saw it was the same way as Miss Kinnian was trying to tell me, but I didn't get it. I got up in the middle of the night and the whole thing straightened out in my mind. Miss Kinnian said that the TV working, just before I fell asleep and during the night, helped out. She said I reached a. plateau. That's like the flat top of a hill. |
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It's all about me when I was a boy and I've got to remember what happened. I never knew about these things before. It's like if I get intelligent enough I'll understand all the words in my mind, and I'll know about those boys standing in the hallway, and about my Uncle Herman and my parents. But what he means is then I'm going to feel bad about it all and I might get sick in my mind. So I've got to come into his office twice a week now to talk about the things that bother me. We just sit there, and I talk, and Dr. Strauss listens. It's called therapy, and that means talking about things will make me feel better. I told him one of the things that bothers me is about women. Like dancing with that girl Ellen got me all excited. So we talked about it and I got a funny feeling while I was talking, cold and sweaty, and a buzzing inside my head and I thought I was going to throw up. Maybe because I always thought it was dirty and bad to talk about that. But Dr. Strauss said what happened to me after the party was a wet dream, and it's a natural thing that happens to boys. So even if I'm getting intelligent and learning a lot of new things, he thinks I'm still a boy about women. It's confusing, but I'm going to find out all about my life. April 15 I'm reading a lot these days and almost everything is staying in my mind. Besides history and geography and arithmetic, Miss Kinnian says I should start learning foreign languages. Prof. Nemur gave me some more tapes to play while I sleep. I still don't know how the conscious and unconscious mind works, but Dr. Strauss says not to worry yet. He made me promise that when I start learning college subjects in a couple of weeks I won't read any books on psychology — that is, until he gives me permission. He says it will confuse me and make me think about psychological theories instead of about my own ideas and feelings. But it's okay to read novels. This week I read The Great Gatsby, An American Tragedy, and Look Homeward, Angel. I never knew about men and women doing things like that. April 16 I feel a lot better today, but I'm still angry that all the time people were laughing and making fun of me. When I become intelligent the way Prof. Nemur says, with much more than twice my I. Q. of 70, then maybe people will like me and be my friends. I'm not sure what I. Q. is anyway. Prof. Nemur said it was something that measured how intelligent you were — like a scale in the drugstore weighs pounds. But Dr. Strauss had a big argument with him and said an I. Q. didn't weigh intelligence at all. He said an I. Q. showed how much intelligence you could get, like the numbers on the outside of a measuring cup. You still had to fill the cup up with stuff. When I asked Burt Seldon, who gives me my intelligence tests and works with Algernon, he said that some people would say both of them were wrong and according to the things he's been reading up on, the I. Q. measures a lot of different things including some of the things you learned already and it really isn't a good measure of intelligence at all. So I still don't know what I. Q. is, and everybody says it's something different. Mine is about a hundred now, and it's going to be over a hundred and fifty soon, but they'll still have to fill me up with the stuff. I didn't want to say anything, but I don't see how if they don't know what'll is, or where it is — how they know how much of it you've got. Prof Nemur says I have to take a Rorschach Test the day after tomorrow. |
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I wonder what that is. April 17 I had a nightmare last night, and this morning, after I woke up, I free-associated the way Dr. Strauss told me to do when I remember my dreams. Think about the dream and just let my mind wander until other thoughts come up in my mind. I keep on doing that until my mind goes blank. Dr. Strauss says that it means I've reached a point where my subconscious is trying to block my conscious from remembering. It's a wall between the present and the past. Sometimes the wall stays up and sometimes it breaks down and I can remember what's behind it. Like this morning. The dream was about Miss Kinnian reading my progress reports. In the dream I sit down to write but I can't write or read any more. It's all gone. I get frightened so I ask Gimpy at the bakery to write for me. But when Miss Kinnian reads the report she gets angry and tears the pages up because they've got dirty words in them. When I get home Prof. Nemur and Dr. Strauss are waiting for me and they give me a beating for writing dirty things in the progress report. When they leave me I pick up the torn pages but they turn into lace valentines with blood all over them. It was a horrible dream but I got out of bed and wrote it all down and then I started to free associate. Bakery... baking... the urn... someone kicking me... fall down... bloody all over... writing... big pencil on a red valentine... a little gold heart... a locket... a chain... all covered with blood... and he's laughing at me... The chain is from a locket... spinning around... flashing the sunlight into my eyes. And I like to watch it spin... watch the chain... all bunched up and twisting and spinning... and a little girl is watching me. Her name is Miss Kin — I mean Harriet. "Harriet. .. Harriet... we all love Harriet." And then there's nothing. It's blank again. Miss Kinnian reading my progress reports over my shoulder. Then we're at the Adult Center for the Retarded, and she's reading over my shoulder as I write my composishuns compositions. School changes into P. S. 13 and I'm eleven years old and Miss Kinnian is eleven years old too, but now she's not Miss Kinnian. She's a little girl with dimples and long curls and her name is Harriet. We all love Harriet. It's Valentines Day. I remember... I remember what happened at P. S. 13 and why they had to change my school and send me to P. S. 222. It was because of Harriet. I see Charlie — eleven years old. He has a little gold-color locket he once found in the street. There's no chain, but he has it on a string, and he likes to twirl the locket so that it bunches up the string, and then watch it unwind, spinning around with the sun flicking into his eyes. Sometimes when the kids play catch they let him play in the middle and he tries to get the ball before one of them catches it. He likes to be in the middle — even if he never catches the ball — and once when Hymie Roth dropped the ball by mistake and he picked it up they wouldn't let him throw it but he had to go in the middle again. When Harriet passes by, the boys stop playing and look at her. All the boys love Harriet. When she shakes her head her curls bounce up and down, and she has dimples. Charlie doesn't know why they make such a fuss about a girl and why they always want to talk to her (he'd rather play ball or kick-the-can, or ringo-levio than talk to a girl) but all the boys are in love with Harriet so he is in love with her too. She never teases him like the other kids, and he does tricks for her. |
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See how they run! They all run after the farmer s wife, She cut off their tails with. a carving knife, Did you ever see such a sight in your life, As three... blind... mice? Charlie, alone in the kitchen early in the morning. Everyone else asleep, and he amuses himself playing with his spinner. One of the buttons pops off his shirt as he bends over, and it rolls across the intricate line-pattern of the kitchen linoleum. It rolls towards the bathroom and he follows, but then he loses it. Where is the button? He goes into the bathroom to find it. There is a closet in the bathroom where the clothes hamper is, and he likes to take out all the clothes and look at them. His father's things and his mother's... and Norma's dresses. He would like to try them on and make believe he is Norma, but once when he did that his mother spanked him for it. There in the clothes hamper he finds Norma's underwear with dried blood. What had she done wrong? He was terrified. Whoever had done it might come looking for him... Why does a memory like that from childhood remain with me so strongly, and why does it frighten me now? Is it because of my feelings for Alice? Thinking about it now, I can understand why I was taught to keep away from women. It was wrong for me to express my feelings to Alice. I have no right to think of a woman that way — not yet. But even as I write these words, something inside shouts that there is more. I'm a person. I was somebody before I went under the surgeon's knife. And I have to love someone. May 8 Even now that I have learned what has been going on behind Mr. Donner's back, I find it hard to believe. I first noticed something was wrong during the rush hour two days ago. Gimpy was behind the counter wrapping a birthday cake for one of our regular customers — a cake that sells for $3.95. But when Gimpy rang up the sale the register showed only $2.95. I started to tell him he had made a mistake, but in the mirror behind the counter I saw a wink and smile that passed from the customer to Gimpy and the answering smile on Gimpy's face. And when the man took his change, I saw the flash of a large silver coin left behind in Gimpy's hand, before his fingers closed on it, and the quick movement with which he slipped the half-dollar into his pocket. "Charlie," said a woman behind me, "are there any more of those cream-filled eclairs?" "I'll go back and find out." I was glad of the interruption because it gave me time to think about what I had seen. Certainly, Gimpy had not made a mistake. He had deliberately undercharged the customer, and there had been an understanding between them. I leaned limply against the wall not knowing what to do. Gimpy had worked for Mr. Donner for over fifteen years. Donner — who always treated his workers like close friends, like relatives — had invited Gimpy's family to his house for dinner more than once. He often put Gimpy in charge of the shop when he had to go out, and I had heard stories of the times Donner gave Gimpy money to pay his wife's hospital bills. It was incredible that anyone would steal from such a man. There had to be some other explanation. Gimpy had really made a mistake in ringing up the sale, and the half-dollar was a tip. Or perhaps Mr. Donner had made some special arrangement for this one customer who regularly bought cream cakes. Anything rather than believe that Gimpy was stealing. Gimpy had always been so nice to me. I no longer wanted to know. I kept my eyes averted from the register as I brought out the tray of eclairs and sorted out the cookies, buns, and cakes. |
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How can I make him understand that he did not create me? He makes the same mistake as the others when they look at a feeble-minded person and laugh because they don't understand there are human feelings involved. He doesn't realize that I was a person before I came here. I am learning to control my resentment, not to be so impatient, to wait for things. I guess I'm growing up. Each day I learn more and more about myself, and the memories that began as ripples now wash over me in high-breaking waves... June 11 The confusion began from the moment we arrived at the Chalmers Hotel in Chicago and discovered that by error our rooms would not be vacant until the next night and until then we would have to stay at the nearby Independence Hotel. Nemur was furious. He took it as a personal affront and quarrelled with everyone in the line of hotel command from the bellhop to the manager. We waited in the lobby as each hotel official went off in search of his superior to see what could be done. In the midst of all the confusion — luggage drifting in and piling up all around the lobby, bellboys hustling back and forth with their little baggage carts, members who hadn't seen each other in a year, recognizing and greeting each other — we stood there feeling increasingly embarrassed as Nemur tried to collar officials connected with the International Psychological Association. Finally, when it became apparent that nothing could be done about it, he accepted the fact that we would have to spend our first night in Chicago at the Independence. As it turned out, most of the younger psychologists were staying at the Independence, and that was where the big first-night parties were. Here, people had heard about the experiment, and most of them knew who I was. Wherever we went, someone came up and asked my opinions on everything from the effects of the new tax to the latest archaeological discoveries in Finland. It was challenging, and my storehouse of general knowledge made it easy for me to talk about almost anything. But after a while I could see that Nemur was annoyed at all the attention I was getting. When an attractive young clinician from Falmouth College asked me if I could explain some of the causes of my own retardation, I told her that Professor Nemur was the man to answer that. It was the chance he had been waiting for to show his authority, and for the first time since we'd known each other he put his hand on my shoulder. "We don't know exactly what causes the type of phenylketonuria that Charlie was suffering from as a child — some unusual biochemical or genetic situation, possibly ionizing radiation or natural radiation or even a virus attack on the fetus — whatever it was resulted in a defective gene which produces a, shall we say, 'maverick enzyme' that creates defective biochemical reactions. And, of course, newly produced amino acids compete with the normal enzymes causing brain damage." The girl frowned. She had not expected a lecture, but Nemur had seized the floor and he went on in the same vein. "I call it competitive inhibition of enzymes. Let me give you an example of how it works. Think of the enzyme produced by the defective gene as a wrong key which fits into the chemical lock of the central nervous system — but won't turn. Because it's there, the true key — the right enzyme — can't even enter the lock It's blocked. Result? Irreversible destruction of proteins in the brain tissue." "But if it is irreversible," intruded one of the other psychologists who had joined the little audience, "how is it possible that Mr. |
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He explained the enzyme-block theory and went on to describe my physical condition before and after surgery. Photographs (I didn't know they had been taken) were passed around and commented on, and I could see by the nods and smiles that most people there agreed with him that the "dull, vacuous facial expression" had been transformed into an "alert, intelligent appearance." He also discussed in detail the pertinent aspects of our therapy sessions — especially my changing attitudes toward free association on the couch. I had come there as part of a scientific presentation, and I had expected to be put on exhibition, but everyone kept talking about me as if I were some kind of newly created thing they were presenting to the scientific world. No one in this room considered me an individual — a human being. The constant juxtaposition of "Algernon and Charlie," and "Charlie and Algernon," made it clear that they thought of both of us as a couple of experimental animals who had no existence outside the laboratory. But, aside from my anger, I couldn't get it out of my mind that something was wrong. Finally, it was Nemur's turn to speak — to sum it all up as the head of the project — to take the spotlight as the author of a brilliant experiment. This was the day he had been waiting for. He was impressive as he stood up there on the platform, and, as he spoke, I found myself nodding with him, agreeing with things I knew to be true. The testing, the experiment, the surgery, and my subsequent mental development were described at length, and his talk was enlivened by quotations from my progress reports. More than once I found myself hearing something personal or foolish read to this audience. Thank God I had been careful to keep most of the details about Alice and myself in my private file. Then, at one point in his summary, he said it: "We who have worked on this project at Beekman University have the satisfaction of knowing we have taken one of nature's mistakes and by our new techniques created a superior human being. When Charlie came to us he was outside of society, alone in a great city without friends or relatives to care about him, without the mental equipment to live a normal life. No past, no contact with the present, no hope for the future. It might be said that Charlie Gordon did not really exist before this experiment..." I don't know why I resented it so intensely to have them think of me as something newly minted in their private treasury, but it was — I am certain — echoes of that idea that had been sounding in the chambers of my mind from the time we had arrived in Chicago. I wanted to get up and show everyone what a fool he was, to shout at him: I'm a human being, a person — with parents and memories and a history — and I was before you ever wheeled me into that operating room! At the same time deep in the heat of my anger there was forged an overwhelming insight into the thing that had disturbed me when Strauss spoke and again when Nemur amplified his data. They had made a mistake — of course! The statistical evaluation of the waiting period necessary to prove the permanence of the change had been based on earlier experiments in the field of mental development and learning, on waiting periods with normally dull or normally intelligent animals. But it was obvious that the waiting period would have to be extended in those cases where an animals intelligence had been increased two or three times. Nemur's conclusions had been premature. |
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Yours truly, Charles Gordon end: report copy: Dr. Strauss The Welberg Foundation September 1 I must not panic. soon there will be signs of emotional instability and forgetfulness, the first symptoms of the burnout. Will I recognize these in myself? All I can do now is keep recording my mental state as objectively as possible, remembering that this psychological journal will be the first of its kind, and possibly the last. This morning Nemur had Burt take my report and the statistical data down to Hallston University to have some of the top men in the field verify my results and the application of my formulas. All last week they had Burt going over my experiments and methodological charts. I shouldn't really be annoyed by their precautions. After all, I'm just a Charlie-come-lately, and it is difficult for Nemur to accept the fact that my work might be beyond him. He had come to believe in the myth of his own authority, and after all I am an outsider. I don't really care any more what he thinks, or what any of them think for that matter. There isn't time. The work is done, the data is in, and all that remains is to see whether I have accurately projected the curve on the Algernon figures as a prediction of what will happen to me. Alice cried when I told her the news. Then she ran out. I've got to impress on her that there is no reason for her to feel guilty about this. September 2 Nothing definite yet. I move in a silence of clear white light. Everything around me is waiting. I dream of being alone on the top of a mountain, surveying the land around me, greens and yellows — and the sun directly above, pressing my shadow into a tight ball around my legs. As the sun drops into the afternoon sky, the shadow undrapes itself and stretches out toward the horizon, long and thin, and far behind me... I want to say here again what I've said already to Dr. Strauss. No one is in any way to blame for what has happened. This experiment was carefully prepared, extensively tested on animals, and statistically validated. When they decided to use me as the first human test, they were reasonably certain that there was no physical danger involved. There was no way to foresee the psychological pitfalls. I don't want anyone to suffer because of what happens to me. The only question now is: How much can I hang on to? September 15 Nemur says my results have been confirmed. It means that the flaw is central and brings the entire hypothesis into question. Someday there might be a way to overcome this problem, but that time is not yet. I have recommended that no further tests be made on human beings until these things are clarified by additional research on animals. It is my own feeling that the most successful line of research will be that taken by the men studying enzyme imbalances. As with so many other things, time is the key factor — speed in discovering the deficiency, and speed in administering hormonal substitutes. I would like to help in that area of research, and in the search for radioisotopes that may be used in local cortical control, but I know now that I won't have the time. September 17 Becoming absent minded. Put things away on my desk or in the drawers of the lab tables, and when I can't find them I lose my temper and flare up at everyone. First signs? Algernon died two days ago. I found him at four thirty in the morning when I came back to the lab after wandering around down at the waterfront — on his side, stretched out in the corner of his cage. |
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As if he were running in his sleep. Dissection shows that my predictions were right. Compared to the normal brain, Algernon's had decreased in weight and there was a general smoothing out of the cerebral convolutions as well as a deepening and broadening of brain fissures. It's frightening to think that the same thing might be happening to me right now. Seeing it happen to Algernon makes it real. For the first time, I'm afraid of the future. I put Algernon's body into a small metal container and took him home with me. I wasn't going to let them dump him into the incinerator. It's foolish and sentimental, but late last night I buried him in the back yard. I wept as I put a bunch of wild flowers on the grave. September 21 I'm going to Marks Street to visit my mother tomorrow. A dream last night triggered off a sequence of memories, lit up a whole slice of the past and the important thing is to get it down on paper quickly before I forget it because I seem to forget things sooner now. It has to do with my mother, and now — more than ever — I want to understand her, to know what she was like and why she acted the way she did. I mustn't hate her. I've got to come to terms with her before I see her so that I won't act harshly or foolishly. September 27 I should have written this down right away, because it's important to make this record complete. I went to see Rose three days ago. Finally, I forced myself to borrow Burt's car again. I was afraid, and yet I knew I had to go. At first when I got to Marks Street I thought I had made a mistake. It wasn't the way I remembered it at all. It was a filthy street. Vacant lots where many of the houses had been torn down. On the sidewalk, a discarded refrigerator with its face ripped off, and on the curb an old mattress with wire intestines hanging out of its belly. Some houses had boarded up windows, and others looked more like patched-up shanties than homes. I parked the car a block away from the house and walked. There were no children playing on Marks Street — not at all like the mental picture I had brought with me of children everywhere, and Charlie watching them through the front window (strange that most of my memories of the street are framed by the window, with me always inside watching the children play). Now there were only old people standing in the shade of tired porches. As I approached the house, I had a second shock. My mother was on the front stoop, in an old brown sweater, washing the ground floor windows from the outside even though it was cold and windy. Always working to show the neighbors what a good wife and mother she was. The most important thing had always been what other people thought — appearances before herself or her family. And righteous about it. Time and again Matt had insisted that what others thought about you wasn't the only thing in life. But it did no good. Norma had to dress well; the house had to have fine furniture; Charlie had to be kept inside so that other people wouldn't know any-thing was wrong. At the gate, I paused to watch as she straightened up to catch her breath. Seeing her face made me tremble, but it was not the face I had struggled so hard to recall. Her hair had become white and streaked with iron, and the flesh of her thin cheeks was wrinkled. Perspiration made her forehead glisten. She caught sight of me and stared back. I wanted to look away, to turn back down the street, but I couldn't — not after having come so far. I would just ask directions, pretending I was lost in a strange neighborhood. |
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Light and unfeeling. Drifting and expanding through time and space. And then, as I know I am about to pierce the crust of existence, like a flying fish leaping out of the sea, I feel the pull from below. It annoys me. I want to shake it off. On the verge of blending with the universe I hear the whispers around the ridges of consciousness. And that ever-so-slight tug holds me to the finite and mortal world below. Slowly, as waves recede, my expanding spirit shrinks back into earthly dimensions — not voluntarily, because I would prefer to lose myself, but I am pulled from below, back to myself, into myself, so that for just one moment I am on the couch again, fitting the fingers of my awareness into the glove of my flesh. And I know I can move this finger or wink that eye — if I want to. But I don't want to move. I will not move! I wait, and leave myself open, passive, to whatever this experience means. Charlie doesn't want me to pierce the upper curtain of the mind. Charlie doesn't want to know what lies beyond. Does he fear seeing God? Or seeing nothing? As I lie here waiting, the moment passes during which I am myself in myself, and again I lose all feeling of body or sensation. Charlie is drawing me down into myself. I stare inward in the center of my unseeing eye at the red spot that transforms itself into a multipetaled flower — the shimmering, swirling, luminescent flower that lies deep in the core of my unconscious. I am shrinking. Not in the sense of the atoms of my body becoming closer and more dense, but a fusion — as the atoms of my-self merge into microcosm. There will be great heat and unbearable light — the hell within hell — . but I don't look at the light, only at the flower, unmulti-plying, undividing itself back from the many toward one. And for an instant the shimmering flower turns into the golden disk twirling on a string, and then to the bubble of swirling rainbows, and finally I am back in the cave where everything is quiet and dark and I swim the wet labyrinth searching for one to receive me... embrace me... absorb me... into itself. That I may begin. In the core I see the light again, an opening in the darkest of caves, now tiny and far away — through the wrong end of a telescope — brilliant, blinding, shimmering, and once again the multipetaled flower (swirling lotus — that floats near the entrance of the unconscious). At the entrance of that cave I will find the answer, if I dare go back and plunge through it into the grotto of light beyond. Not yet! I am afraid. Not of life, or death, or nothingness, but of wasting it as if I had never been. And as I start through the opening, I feel the pressure around me, propelling me in violent wavelike motions toward the mouth of the cave. It's too small! I can't get through! And suddenly I am hurled against the walls, again and again, and forced through the opening where the light threatens to burst my eyes. Again, I know I will pierce the crust into that holy light. More than I can bear. Pain as I have never known, and coldness, and nausea, and the great buzzing over my head flapping like a thousand wings. I open my eyes, blinded by the intense light. And flail the air and tremble and scream. I came out of it at the insistence of a hand shaking me roughly. Dr. Strauss. "Thank God," he said, when I looked into his eyes. "You had me worried." I shook my head. "I'm all right." "I think maybe that's all for today." I got up and swayed as I regained my perspective. The room seemed very small. |
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Alice was a woman, but perhaps now Charlie would understand that she wasn't his mother or his sister. With the relief of knowing I had passed through a crisis, I sighed because there was nothing to hold me back It was no time for fear or pretense, because it could never be this way with anyone else. All the barriers were gone. I had unwound the string she had given me, and found my way out of the labyrinth to where she was waiting. I loved her with more than my body. I don't pretend to understand the mystery of love, but this time it was more than sex, more than using a woman's body. It was being lifted off the earth, outside fear and torment, being part of something greater than myself. I was lifted out of the dark cell of my own mind, to become part of someone else — just as I had experienced it that day on the couch in therapy. It was the first step outward to the universe — beyond the universe — because in it and with it we merged to recreate and perpetuate the human spirit. Expanding and bursting outward, and contracting and forming inward, it was the rhythm of being — of breathing, of heartbeat, of day and night — and the rhythm of our bodies set off an echo in my mind. It was the way it had been back there in that strange vision. The gray murk lifted from my mind, and through it the light pierced into my brain (how strange that light should blind!), and my body was absorbed back into a great sea of space, washed under in a strange baptism. My body shuddered with giving, and her body shuddered its acceptance. This was the way we loved, until the night became a silent day. And as I lay there with her I could see how important physical love was, how necessary it was for us to be in each other's arms, giving and taking. The universe was exploding, each particle away from the next, hurtling us into dark and lonely space, eternally tearing us away from each other — child out of the womb, friend away from friend, moving from each other, each through his own pathway toward the goal-box of solitary death. But this was the counterweight, the act of binding and holding. As when men to keep from being swept overboard in the storm clutch at each other's hands to resist being torn apart, so our bodies fused a link in the human chain that kept us from being swept into nothing. And in the moment before I fell off into sleep, I remembered the way it had been between Fay and myself, and I smiled. No wonder that had been easy. It had been only physical. This with Alice was a mystery. I leaned over and kissed her eyes. Alice knows everything about me now, and accepts the fact that we can be together for only a short while. She has agreed to go away when I tell her to go. It's painful to think about that, but what we have, I suspect, is more than most people find in a lifetime. October 14 I wake up in the morning and don't know where I am or what I'm doing here, and then I see her beside me and I remember. She senses when something is happening to me, and she moves quietly around the apartment, making breakfast, cleaning up the place, or going out and leaving me to myself, without any questions. We went to a concert this evening, but I got bored and we left in the middle. Can't seem to pay much attention any more. I went because I know I used to like Stravinsky but somehow I no longer have the patience for it. The only bad thing about having Alice here with me is that now I feel I should fight this thing. I want to stop time, freeze myself at this level and never let go of her. |
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I read a book about a man who thought he was a knight and went out on an old horse with his friend. But no matter what he did he always ended up getting beaten and hurt. Like when he thought the windmills were dragons. At first I thought it was a silly book because if he wasnt crazy he could see that windmills werent dragons and there is no such thing as sorcerers and enchanted castles but then I re-memberd that there was something else it was all supposed to mean — something the story didn't say but only hinted at. Like there was other meanings. But I don't know what. That made me angry because I think I used to know. But I'm keeping up with my reading and learning new things every day and I know its going to help me. I know I should have written some progress reports before this so they will know whats happening to me. But writing is harder. I have to look up even simple words in the dictionary now and it makes me angry with myself. November 2 I forgot to write in yesterdays report about the woman from the building across the alley one floor down. I saw her through my kitchen window last week. I don't know her name, or even what her top part looks like but every night about eleven oclock she goes into her bathroom to take a bath. She never pulls her shade down and thru my window when I put out my lights I can see her from the neck down when she comes out of the bath to dry herself. It makes me excited, but when the lady turns out the light I feel let down and lonely. I wish I could see what she looks like sometimes, whether she's pretty or what. I know its not nice to watch a woman when she's like that but I cant help it. Anyway what difference does it make to her if she doesn't know I'm watching. Its nearly eleven oclock now. Time for her bath. So I'd better go see... Nov 5 Mrs Mooney is very worried about me. She says the way I lay around all day and don't do anything I remind her of her son before she threw him out of the house. She said she don't like loafters. If I'm sick its one thing but if I'm a loafter that's another thing and she has no use for me. I told her I think I'm sick. I try to read a little bit every day mostly stories but sometimes I have to read the same thing over and over again because I don't know what it means. And its hard to write. I know I should look up all the words in the dictionary but I'm so tired all the time. Then I got the idea that I would only use the easy words instead of the long hard ones. That saves time. Its getting chilly out but I still put flowers on Algernons grave. Mrs Mooney thinks I'm silly to put flowers on a mouses grave but I told her that Algernon was a special mouse. I went over to visit Fay across the hall. But she told me to go away and not come back. She put a new lock on her door. Nov 9 Sunday again. I don't have anything to do to keep me busy now because the TV is broke and I keep forgetting to get it fixed. I think I lost this months check from the college. I don't remember. I get awful headaches and asperin doesn't help much. Mrs. Mooney believes now that I'm really sick and she feels very sory for me. She's a wonderful woman whenever someone is sick. Its getting so cold out now that I've got to wear two sweaters. The lady across the way pulls down her windowshade now, so I can't watch any more. My lousy luck. Nov 10 Mrs Mooney called a strange doctor to see me. She was afraid I was going to the. I told the doctor I wasnt to sick and that I only forget sometimes. He asked me did I have any friends or relatives and I said no I don't have any. |
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I told him I had a friend called Algernon once but he was a mouse and we use to run races together. He looked at me kind of funny like he thot I was crazy. He smiled when I told him I use to be a genius. He talked to me like I was a baby and he winked at Mrs Mooney. I got mad because he was making fun of me and laughing and I chased him out and locked the door. I think I know why I been haveing bad luck. Because I lost my rabits foot and my horshoe. I got to get another rabits foot fast. Nov 11 Dr Strauss came to the door today and Alice to but I didn't let them come in. I told them I didn't want anyone to see me. I want to be left alone. Later Mrs Mooney came up with some food and she told me they paid the rent and left money for her to buy food and anything I need. I told her I don't want to use there money any more. She said moneys money and someone has to pay or I have to put you out. Then she said why don't I get some job instead of just hanging around. I don't know any work but the job I use to do at the bakery. I don't want to go back their because they all knew me when I was smart and maybe they'll laff at me. But I don't know what else to do to get money. And I want to pay for everything myself. I am strong and I can werk. If I cant take care of myself I'll go to Warren. I won't take charety from anybody. Nov 15 I was looking at some of my old progress reports and its very strange but I cant read what I wrote. I can make out some of the words but they don't make sense. I think I wrote them but I don't remember so good. I get tired very fast when I try to read some of the books I baught in the drugstore. Exept the ones with the picturs of the pretty girls. I like to look at them but I have funny dreams about them. Its not nice. I won't buy them any more. I saw in one of those books they got magic powder that can make you strong and smart and do lots of things. I think mayby I'll send away and by some for myself. Nov 16 Alice came to the door again but I said go away I don't want to see you. She cryed and I cryed to but I woudnt let her in because I didn't want her to laff at me. I told her I didn't like her any more and I didn't want to be smart any more either. that's not true but. I still love her and I still want to be smart but I had to say that so she woud go away. Mrs Mooney told me Alice brout some more money to look after me and for the rent. I don't want that. I got to get a job. Please... please... don't let me forget how to reed and rite... Nov 18 Mr Donner was very nice when I came back and askd him for my old job at the bakery. Frist he was very suspicius but I told him what happened to me and then he looked very sad and put his hand on my shoulder and said Charlie you got guts. Evrybody looked at me when I came downstairs and started working in the toilet sweeping it out like I use to do. I said to myself Charlie if they make fun of you don't get sore because you remember their not so smart like you once thot they were. And besides they were once your frends and if they laffed at you that don't mean anything because they liked you to. One of the new men who came to werk their after I went away his name is Meyer Klaus did a bad thing to me. He came up to me when I was loading the sacks of flower and he said hey Charlie I hear your a very smart fella — a real quiz kid. Say something inteligent. I felt bad because I could tell by the way he said it he was making fun of me. So I kept on with my werk. But then he came over and grabed me by the arm real hard and shouted at me. |
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A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green. The water is warm too, for it has slipped twinkling over the yellow sands in the sunlight before reaching the narrow pool. On one side of the river the golden foothill slopes curve up to the strong and rocky Gabilan Mountains, but on the valley side the water is lined with trees — willows fresh and green with every spring, carrying in their lower leaf junctures the debris of the winter's flooding; and sycamores with mottled, white, recumbent limbs and branches that arch over the pool. On the sandy bank under the trees the leaves lie deep and so crisp that a lizard makes a great skittering if he runs among them. Rabbits come out of the brush to sit on the sand in the evening, and the damp flats are covered with the night tracks of 'coons, and with the spreadpads of dogs from the ranches, and with the split-wedge tracks of deer that come to drink in the dark. There is a path through the willows and among the sycamores, a path beaten hard by boys coming down from the ranches to swim in the deep pool, and beaten hard by tramps who come wearily down from the highway in the evening to jungle-up near water. In front of the low horizontal limb of a giant sycamore there is an ash pile made by many fires; the limb is worn smooth by men who have sat on it. Evening of a hot day started the little wind to moving among the leaves. The shade climbed up the hills toward the top. On the sand banks the rabbits sat as quietly as little gray sculptured stones. And then from the direction of the state highway came the sound of footsteps on crisp sycamore leaves. The rabbits hurried noiselessly for cover. A stilted heron labored up into the air and pounded down river. For a moment the place was lifeless, and then two men emerged from the path and came into the opening by the green pool. They had walked in single file down the path, and even in the open one stayed behind the other. Both were dressed in denim trousers and in denim coats with brass buttons. Both wore black, shapeless hats and both carried tight blanket rolls slung over their shoulders. The first man was small and quick, dark of face, with restless eyes and sharp, strong features. Every part of him was defined: small, strong hands, slender arms, a thin and bony nose. Behind him walked his opposite, a huge man, shapeless of face, with large, pale eyes, and wide, sloping shoulders; and he walked heavily, dragging his feet a little, the way a bear drags his paws. His arms did not swing at his sides, but hung loosely. The first man stopped short in the clearing, and the follower nearly ran over him. He took off his hat and wiped the sweat-band with his forefinger and snapped the moisture off. His huge companion dropped his blankets and flung himself down and drank from the surface of the green pool; drank with long gulps, snorting into the water like a horse. The small man stepped nervously beside him. "Lennie!" he said sharply. "Lennie, for God' sakes don't drink so much." Lennie continued to snort into the pool. The small man leaned over and shook him by the shoulder. "Lennie. You gonna be sick like you was last night." Lennie dipped his whole head under, hat and all, and then he sat up on the bank and his hat dripped down on his blue coat and ran down his back. "That's good," he said. "You drink some, George. You take a good big drink." He smiled happily. George unslung his bindle and dropped it gently on the bank. |
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One question that has always intrigued me is what happens to demonic beings when immigrants move from their homelands. Irish-Americans remember the fairies, Norwegian-Americans the nisser, Greek-Americans the vrykolakas, but only in relation to the events remembered in the old country. When once I asked why such demons are not seen in America, my informants giggled confusedly and saidyou're scared to pass the ocean, its too far, pointing out that Christ and the apostles never came to America. Richard Dorson, A Theory for American Folklore, American Folklore and the Historian (University of Chicago Press, 1971) Caveat, and Warning for Travelers This is a work of fiction, not a guidebook. While the geography of the United States of America in this tale is not entirely imaginary-many of the landmarks in this book can be visited, paths can be followed, ways can be mapped-I have taken liberties. Fewer liberties than you might imagine, but liberties nonetheless. Permission has neither been asked nor given for the use of real places in this story when they appears, I expect that the owners of Rock City or the House on the Rock, and the hunters who own the motel in the center of America, are as perplexed as anyone would be to find their properties in here. I have obscured the location of several of the places in this book: the town of Lakeside, for example, and the farm with the ash tree an hour south of Blacksburg. You may look for them if you wish. You might even find them. Furthermore, it goes without saying that all of the people, living, dead, and otherwise in this story are fictional or used in a fictional context. Only the gods are real. Part One. Shadows The boundaries of our country, sir? Why sir, on the north we are bounded by the Aurora Borealis, on the east we are bounded by the rising sun, on the south we are bounded by the procession of the Equinoxes, and on the west by the Day of Judgment. The American Joe Millers Jest Book Shadow had done three years in prison. He was big enough and looked don't-fuck-with-me enough that his biggest problem was killing time. So he kept himself in shape, and taught himself coin tricks, and thought a lot about how much he loved his wife. The best thingin Shadows opinion, perhaps the only good thingabout being in prison was a feeling of relief. The feeling that hed plunged as low as he could plunge and hed hit bottom. He didn't worry that the man was going to get him, because the man had got him. He was no longer scared of what tomorrow might bring, because yesterday had brought it. It did not matter, Shadow decided, if you had done what you had been convicted of or not. In his experience everyone he met in prison was aggrieved about something: there was always something the authorities had got wrong, something they said you did when you didn'tor you didn't do quite like they said you did. What was important was that they had gotten you. He had noticed it in the first few days, when everything, from the slang to the bad food, was new. Despite the misery and the utter skin-crawling horror of incarceration, he was breathing relief. Shadow tried not to talk too much. Somewhere around the middle of year two he mentioned his theory to Low Key Lyesmith, his cellmate. Low Key, who was a grifter from Minnesota, smiled his scarred smile. Yeah, he said. that's true. Its even better when youve been sentenced to death. that's when you remember the jokes about the guys who kicked their boots off as the noose flipped around their necks, because their friends always told them theyd die with their boots on. |
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Is that a joke? asked Shadow. Damn right. Gallows humor. Best kind there is. When did they last hang a man in this state? asked Shadow. How the hell should I know? Lyesmith kept his orange-blond hair pretty much shaved. You could see the lines of his skull. Tell you what, though. This country started going to hell when they stopped hanging folks. No gallows dirt. No gallows deals. Shadow shrugged. He could see nothing romantic in a death sentence. If you didn't have a death sentence, he decided, then prison was, at best, only a temporary reprieve from life, for two reasons. First, life creeps back into prison. There are always places to go further down. Life goes on. And second, if you just hang in there, somedayyou're going to have to let you out. In the beginning it was too far away for Shadow to focus on. Then it became a distant beam of hope, and he learned how to tell himself this too shall pass when the prison shit went down, as prison shit always did. One day the magic door would open and hed walk through it. So he marked off the days on his Songbirds of North America calendar, which was the only calendar they sold in the prison commissary, and the sun went down and he didn't see it and the sun came up and he didn't see it. He practiced coin tricks from a book he found in the wasteland of the prison library; and he worked out; and he made lists in his head of what hed do when he got out of prison. Shadows lists got shorter and shorter. After two years he had it down to three things. First, he was going to take a bath. A real, long, serious soak, in a tub with bubbles. Maybe read the paper, maybe not. Some days he thought one way, some days the other. Second, he was going to towel himself off, put on a robe. Maybe slippers. He liked the idea of slippers. If he smoked he would be smoking a pipe about now, but he didn't smoke. He would pick up his wife in his arms (Puppy, she would squeal in mock horror and real delight, what are you doing?). He would carry her into the bedroom, and close the door. Theyd call out for pizzas if they got hungry. Third, after he and Laura had come out of the bedroom, maybe a couple of days later, he was going to keep his head down and stay out of trouble for the rest of his life. And then you'll be happy? asked Low Key Lyesmith. That day they were working in the prison shop, assembling bird feeders, which was barely more interesting than stamping out license plates. Call no man happy, said Shadow, until he is dead. Herodotus, said Low Key. Hey. you're learning. Who the fucks Herodotus? asked the Iceman, slotting together the sides of a bird feeder and passing it to Shadow, who bolted and screwed it tight. Dead Greek, said Shadow. My last girlfriend was Greek, said the Iceman. The shit her family ate. You would not believe. Like rice wrapped in leaves. Shit like that. The Iceman was the same size and shape as a Coke machine, with blue eyes and hair so blond it was almost white. He had beaten the crap out of some guy who had made the mistake of copping a feel off his girlfriend in the bar where she danced and the Iceman bounced. The guys friends had called the police, who arrested the Iceman and ran a check on him which revealed that the Iceman had walked from a work-release program eighteen months earlier. So what was I supposed to do? asked the Iceman, aggrieved, when he had told Shadow the whole sad tale. I'd told him she was my girlfriend. Was I supposed to let him disrespect me like that? Was I? I mean, he had his hands all over her. |
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Shadow had said, You tell em, and left it at that. One thing he had learned early, you do your own time in prison. You don't do anyone elses time for them. Keep your head down. Do your own time. Lyesmith had loaned Shadow a battered paperback copy of Herodotuss Histories several months earlier. Its not boring. Its cool, he said, when Shadow protested that he didn't read books. Read it first, then tell me its cool. Shadow had made a face, but he had started to read, and had found himself hooked against his will. Greeks, said the Iceman, with disgust. And it aint true what they say about them, neither. I tried giving it to my girlfriend in the ass, she almost clawed my eyes out. Lyesmith was transferred one day, without warning. He left Shadow his copy of Herodotus. There was a nickel hidden in the pages. Coins were contraband: you can sharpen the edges against a stone, slice open someones face in a fight. Shadow didn't want a weapon; Shadow just wanted something to do with his hands. Shadow was not superstitious. He did not believe in anything he could not see. Still, he could feel disaster hovering above the prison in those final weeks, just as he had felt it in the days before the robbery. There was a hollowness in the pit of his stomach that he told himself was simply a fear of going back to the world on the outside. But he could not be sure. He was more paranoid than usual, and in prison usual is very, and is a survival skill. Shadow became more quiet, more shadowy, than ever. He found himself watching the body language of the guards, of the other inmates, searching for a clue to the bad thing that was going to happen, as he was certain that it would. A month before he was due to be released. Shadow sat in a chilly office, facing a short man with a port-wine birthmark on his forehead. They sat across a desk from each other; the man had Shadows file open in front of him, and was holding a ballpoint pen. The end of the pen was badly chewed. You cold, Shadow? Yes, said Shadow. A little. The man shrugged. that's the system, he said. Furnaces don't go on until December the first. Then they go off March the first. I don't make the rules. He ran his forefinger down the sheet of paper stapled to the inside left of the folder. you're thirty-two years old? Yes, sir. You look younger. Clean living. Says here youve been a model inmate. I learned my lesson, sir. Did you really? He looked at Shadow intently, the birthmark on his forehead lowering. Shadow thought about telling the man some of his theories about prison, but he said nothing. He nodded instead, and concentrated on appearing properly remorseful. Says here youve got a wife, Shadow. Her names Laura. Hows everything there? Pretty good. she's come down to see me as much as she couldits a long way to travel. We write and I call her when I can. What does your wife do? she's a travel agent. Sends people all over the world. Howd you meet her? Shadow could not decide why the man was asking. He considered telling him it was none of his business, then said, She was my best buddys wifes best friend. They set us up on a blind date. We hit it off. And youve got a job waiting for you? Yessir. My buddy, Robbie, the one I just told you about, he owns the Muscle Farm, the place I used to train. He says my old job is waiting for me. An eyebrow raised. Really? Says he figures I'll be a big draw. Bring back some old-timers, and pull in the tough crowd who want to be tougher. The man seemed satisfied. He chewed the end of his ballpoint pen, then turned over the sheet of paper. |
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How do you feel about your offense? Shadow shrugged. I was stupid, he said, and meant it. The man with the birthmark sighed. He ticked off a number of items on a checklist. Then he riffled through the papers in Shadows file. Howre you getting home from here? he asked. Greyhound? Flying home. Its good to have a wife whos a travel agent. The man frowned, and the birthmark creased. She sent you a ticket? didn't need to. Just sent me a confirmation number. Electronic ticket. All I have to do is turn up at the airport in a month and show em my ID, and I'm outta here. The man nodded, scribbled one final note, then he closed the file and put down the ballpoint pen. Two pale hands rested on the gray desk like pink animals. He brought his hands close together, made a steeple of his forefingers, and stared at Shadow with watery hazel eyes. you're lucky, he said. You have someone to go back to, you got a job waiting. You can put all this behind you. You got a second chance. Make the most of it. The man did not offer to shake Shadows hand as he rose to leave, nor did Shadow expect him to. The last week was the worst. In some ways it was worse than the whole three years put together. Shadow wondered if it was the weather: oppressive, still, and cold. It felt as if a storm was on the way, but the storm never came. He had the jitters and the heebie-jeebies, a feeling deep in his stomach that something was entirely wrong. In the exercise yard the wind gusted. Shadow imagined that he could smell snow on the air. He called his wife collect. Shadow knew that the phone companies whacked a three-dollar surcharge on every call made from a prison phone. That was why operators are always real polite to people calling from prisons, Shadow had decided: they knew that he paid their wages. Something feels weird, he told Laura. That wasnt the first thing he said to her. The first thing was I love you, because its a good thing to say if you can mean it, and Shadow did. Hello, said Laura. I love you too. What feels weird? I don't know, he said. Maybe the weather. It feels like if we could only get a storm, everything would be okay. Its nice here, she said. The last of the leaves haven't quite fallen. If we don't get a storm, you'll be able to see them when you get home. Five days, said Shadow. A hundred and twenty hours, and then you come home, she said. Everything okay there? Nothing wrong? Everythings fine. I'm seeing Robbie tonight. Were planning your surprise welcome-home party. Surprise party? Of course. You don't know anything about it, do you? Not a thing. that's my husband, she said. Shadow realized that he was smiling. He had been inside for three years, but she could still make him smile. Love you, babes, said Shadow. Love you, puppy, said Laura. Shadow put down the phone. When they got married Laura told Shadow that she wanted a puppy, but their landlord had pointed out they werent allowed pets under the terms of their lease. Hey, Shadow had said, I'll be your puppy. What do you want me to do? Chew your slippers? Piss on the kitchen floor? Lick your nose? Sniff your crotch? I bet theres nothing a puppy can do I cant do! And he picked her up as if she weighed nothing at all and began to lick her nose while she giggled and shrieked, and then he carried her to the bed. In the food hall Sam Fetisher sidled over to Shadow and smiled, showing his old teeth. He sat down beside Shadow and began to eat his macaroni and cheese. We got to talk, said Sam Fetisher. Sam Fetisher was one of the blackest men that Shadow had ever seen. |
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He might have been sixty. He might have been eighty. Then again, Shadow had met thirty-year-old crackheads who looked older than Sam Fetisher. Mm? said Shadow. Storms on the way, said Sam. Feels like it, said Shadow. Maybe itll snow soon. Not that kind of storm. Bigger storm than that coming. I tell you, boy, you're better off in here than out on the street when the big storm comes. Done my time, said Shadow. Friday, I'm gone. Sam Fetisher stared at Shadow. Where you from? he asked. Eagle Point. Indiana. you're a lying fuck, said Sam Fetisher. I mean originally. Where are your folks from? Chicago, said Shadow. His mother had lived in Chicago as a girl, and she had died there, half a lifetime ago. Like I said. Big storm coming. Keep your head down, Shadow-boy. Its like what do they call those things continents ride around on? Some kind of plates? Tectonic plates? Shadow hazarded. that's it. Tectonic plates. Its like when they go riding, when North America goes skidding into South America, you don't want to be in the middle. You dig me? Not even a little. One brown eye closed in a slow wink. Hell, don't say I didn't warn you, said Sam Fetisher, and he spooned a trembling lump of orange Jell-O into his mouth. I wont. Shadow spent the night half-awake, drifting in and out of sleep, listening to his new cellmate grunt and snore in the bunk below him. Several cells away a man whined and howled and sobbed like an animal, and from time to time someone would scream at him to shut the fuck up. Shadow tried not to hear. He let the empty minutes wash over him, lonely and slow. Two days to go. Forty-eight hours, starting with oatmeal and prison coffee, and a guard named Wilson who tapped Shadow harder than he had to on the shoulder and said, Shadow? This way. Shadow checked his conscience. It was quiet, which did not, he had observed, in a prison, mean that he was not in deep shit. The two men walked more or less side by side, feet echoing on metal and concrete. Shadow tasted fear in the back of his throat, bitter as old coffee. The bad thing was happening There was a voice in the back of his head whispering that they were going to slap another year onto his sentence, drop him into solitary, cut off his hands, cut off his head. He told himself he was being stupid, but his heart was pounding fit to burst out of his chest. I don't get you, Shadow, said Wilson, as they walked. Whats not to get, sir? You. you're too fucking quiet. Too polite. You wait like the old guys, butyou're what? Twenty-five? Twenty-eight? Thirty-two, sir. And what are you? A spic? A gypsy? Not that I know of, sir. Maybe. Maybe you got nigger blood in you. You got nigger blood in you, Shadow? Could be, sir. Shadow stood tall and looked straight ahead, and concentrated on not allowing himself to be riled by this man. Yeah? Well, all I know is, you fucking spook me. Wilson had sandy blond hair and a sandy blond face and a sandy blond smile. You leaving us soon. Hope so, sir. They walked through a couple of checkpoints. Wilson showed his ID each time. Up a set of stairs, and they were standing outside the prison wardens office. It had the prison wardens nameG. Pattersonon the door in black letters, and beside the door, a miniature traffic light. The top light burned red. Wilson pressed a button below the traffic light. They stood there in silence for a couple of minutes. Shadow tried to tell himself that everything was all right, that on Friday morning hed be on the plane up to Eagle Point, but he did not believe it himself. |
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The red light went out and the green light went on, and Wilson opened the door. They went inside. Shadow had seen the warden a handful of times in the last three years. Once he had been showing a politician around. Once, during a lockdown, the warden had spoken to them in groups of a hundred, telling them that the prison was overcrowded, and that, since it would remain overcrowded, they had better get used to it. Up close, Patterson looked worse. His face was oblong, with gray hair cut into a military bristle cut. He smelled of Old Spice. Behind him was a shelf of books, each with the word Prison in the title; his desk was perfectly clean, empty but for a telephone and a tear-off-the-pages Far Side calendar. He had a hearing aid in his right ear. Please, sit down. Shadow sat down. Wilson stood behind him. The warden opened a desk drawer and took out a file, placed it on his desk. Says here you were sentenced to six years for aggravated assault and battery. Youve served three years. You were due to be released on Friday. Were? Shadow felt his stomach lurch inside him. He wondered how much longer he was going to have to serveanother year? Two years? All three? All he said was Yes, sir. The warden licked his lips. What did you say? I said, Yes, sir. Shadow, were going to be releasing you later this afternoon. you'll be getting out a couple of days early. Shadow nodded, and he waited for the other shoe to drop. The warden looked down at the paper on his desk. This came from the Johnson Memorial Hospital in Eagle Point Your wife. She died in the early hours of this morning. It was an automobile accident. I'm sorry. Shadow nodded once more. Wilson walked him back to his cell, not saying anything. He unlocked the cell door and let Shadow in. Then he said, Its like one of them good news, bad news jokes, isn't it? Good news, were letting you out early, bad news, your wife is dead. He laughed, as if it were genuinely funny. Shadow said nothing at all. * * * Numbly, he packed up his possessions, gave most of them away. He left behind Low Keys Herodotus and the book of coin tricks, and, with a momentary pang, he abandoned the blank metal disks be had smuggled out of the workshop, which had served him for coins. There would be coins, real coins, on the outside. He shaved. He dressed in civilian clothes. He walked through door after door, knowing that he would never walk back through them again, feeling empty inside. The rain had started to gust from the gray sky, a freezing rain. Pellets of ice stung Shadows face, while the rain soaked the thin overcoat and they walked toward the yellow ex-school bus that would take them to the nearest city. By the time they got to the bus they were soaked. Eight of them were leaving. Fifteen hundred still inside. Shadow sat on the bus and shivered until the heaters started working, wondering what he was doing, where he would go now. Ghost images filled his head, unbidden. In his imagination he was leaving another prison, long ago. He had been imprisoned in a lightless room for far too long: his beard was wild and his hair was a tangle. The guards had walked him down a gray stone stairway and out into a plaza filled with brightly colored things, with people and with objects. It was a market day and he was dazzled by the noise and the color, squinting at the sunlight that filled the square, smelling the salt-wet air and all the good things of the market, and on his left the sun glittered from the water The bus shuddered to a halt at a red light. |
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The wind howled about the bus, and the wipers slooshed heavily back and forth across the windshield, smearing the city into a red and yellow neon wetness. It was early afternoon, but it looked like night through the glass. Shit, said the man in the seat behind Shadow, rubbing the condensation from the window with his hand, staring at a wet figure hurrying down the sidewalk. Theres pussy out there. Shadow swallowed. It occurred to him that he had not cried yethad in fact felt nothing at all. No tears. No sorrow. Nothing. He found himself thinking about a guy named Johnnie Larch hed shared a cell with when hed first been put inside, who told Shadow how hed once got out after five years behind bars with one hundred dollars and a ticket to Seattle, where his sister lived. Johnnie Larch had got to the airport, and he handed his ticket to the woman on the counter, and she asked to see his drivers license. He showed it to her. It had expired a couple of years earlier. She told him it was not valid as ID. He told her it might not be valid as a drivers license, but it sure as hell was fine identification, and damn it, who else did she think he was, if he wasnt him? She said shed thank him to keep his voice down. He told her to give him a fucking boarding pass, or she was going to regret it, and that he wasnt going to be disrespected. You don't let people disrespect you in prison. Then she pressed a button, and a few moments later the airport security showed up, and they tried to persuade Johnnie Larch to leave the airport quietly, and he did not wish to leave, and there was something of an altercation. The upshot of it all was that Johnnie Larch never actually made it to Seattle, and he spent the next couple of days in town in bars, and when his one hundred dollars was gone he held up a gas station with a toy gun for money to keep drinking, and the police finally picked him up for pissing in the street. Pretty soon he was back inside serving the rest of his sentence and a little extra for the gas station job. And the moral of this story, according to Johnnie Larch, was this: don't piss off people who work in airports. Are you sure its not something like The kind of behavior that works in a specialized environment, such as prison, can fail to work and in fact become harmful when used outside such an environment? said Shadow, when Johnnie Larch told him the story. No, listen to me, I'm telling you, man, said Johnnie Larch, don't piss off those bitches in airports. Shadow half smiled at the memory. His own drivers license had several months still to go before it expired. Bus station! Everybody out! The building stank of piss and sour beer. Shadow climbed into a taxi and told the driver to take him to the airport. He told him that there was an extra five dollars if he could do it in silence. They made it in twenty minutes and the driver never said a word. Then Shadow was stumbling through the brightly lit airport terminal. Shadow worried about the whole e-ticket business. He knew he had a ticket for a flight on Friday, but he didn't know if it would work today. Anything electronic seemed fundamentally magical to Shadow, and liable to evaporate at any moment. Still, he had his wallet, back in his possession for the first time in three years, containing several expired credit cards and one Visa card, which, he was pleasantly surprised to discover, didn't expire until the end of January. He had a reservation number. And, he realized, he had the certainty that once he got home everything would, somehow, be okay. |
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Laura would be fine again. Maybe it was some kind of scam to spring him a few days early. Or perhaps it was a simple mix-up: some other Laura Moons body had been dragged from the highway wreckage. Lightning flickered outside the airport, through the windows-walls. Shadow realized he was holding his breath, waiting for something. A distant boom of thunder. He exhaled. A tired white woman stared at him from behind the counter. Hello, said Shadow. you're the first strange woman I've spoken to, in the flesh, in three years. I've got an e-ticket number. I was supposed to be traveling on Friday but I have to go today. There was a death in my family. Mm. I'm sorry to hear that. She tapped at the keyboard, stared at the screen, tapped again. No problem. I've put you on the three-thirty. It may be delayed because of the storm, so keep an eye on the screens. Checking any baggage? He held up a shoulder bag. I don't need to check this, do I? No, she said. Its fine. Do you have any picture ID? Shadow showed her his drivers license. It was not a big airport, but the number of people wandering, just wandering, amazed him. He watched people put down bags casually, observed wallets stuffed into back pockets, saw purses put down, unwatched, under chairs. That was when he realized he was no longer in prison. Thirty minutes to wait until boarding. Shadow bought a slice of pizza and burned his lip on the hot cheese. He took his change and went to the phones. Called Robbie at the Muscle Farm, but the machine picked up. Hey Robbie, said Shadow. They tell me that Lauras dead. They let me out early. I'm coming home. Then, because people do make mistakes, hed seen it happen, he called home, and listened to Lauras voice. Hi, she said. I'm not here or I cant come to the phone. Leave a message and I'll get back to you. And have a good day. Shadow couldn't bring himself to leave a message. He sat in a plastic chair by the gate, and held his bag so tight he hurt his hand. He was thinking about the first time he had ever seen Laura. He hadn't even known her name then. She was Audrey Burtons friend. He had been sitting with Robbie in a booth at Chi-Chis when Laura had walked in a pace or so behind Audrey, and Shadow had found himself staring. She had long, chestnut hair and eyes so blue Shadow mistakenly thought she was wearing tinted contact lenses. She had ordered a strawberry daiquiri, and insisted that Shadow taste it, and laughed delightedly when he did. Laura loved people to taste what she tasted. He had kissed her good night that night, and she had tasted like strawberry daiquiris, and he had never wanted to kiss anyone else again. A woman announced that his plane was boarding, and Shadows row was the first to be called. He was in the very back, an empty seat beside him. The rain pattered continually against the side of the plane: he imagined small children tossing down dried peas by the handful from the skies. As the plane took off he fell asleep. Shadow was in a dark place, and the thing staring at him wore a buffalos head, rank and furry with huge wet eyes. Its body was a mans body, oiled and slick. Changes are coming, said the buffalo without moving its lips. There are certain decisions that will have to be made. Firelight flickered from wet cave walls. Where am I? Shadow asked. In the earth and under the earth, said the buffalo man. You are where the forgotten wait. His eyes were liquid black marbles, and his voice was a rumble from beneath the world. He smelled like wet cow. |
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Believe, said the rumbling voice. If you are to survive, you must believe. Believe what? asked Shadow. What should I believe? He stared at Shadow, the buffalo man, and he drew himself up huge, and his eyes filled with fire. He opened his spit-flecked buffalo mouth and it was red inside with the flames that burned inside him, under the earth. Everything, roared the buffalo man. The world tipped and spun, and Shadow was on the plane once more; but the tipping continued. In the front of the plane a woman screamed halfheartedly. Lightning burst in blinding flashes around the plane. The captain came on the intercom to tell them that he was going to try and gain some altitude, to get away from the storm. The plane shook and shuddered, and Shadow wondered, coldly and idly, if he was going to die. It seemed possible, he decided, but unlikely. He stared out of the window and watched the lightning illuminate the horizon. Then he dozed once more, and dreamed he was back in prison and that Low Key had whispered to him in the food line that someone had put out a contract on his life, but that Shadow could not find out who or why; and when he woke up they were coming in for a landing. He stumbled off the plane, blinking into wakefulness. All airports, he thought, look very much the same. It doesn't actually matter where you are, you are in an airport: tiles and walkways and restrooms, gates and newsstands and fluorescent lights. This airport looked like an airport. The trouble is, this wasnt the airport he was going to. This was a big airport, with way too many people, and way too many gates. Excuse me, maam? The woman looked at him over the clipboard. Yes? What airport is this? She looked at him, puzzled, trying to decide whether or not he was joking, then she said, St. Louis. I thought this was the plane to Eagle Point. It was. They redirected it here because of the storms. didn't they make an announcement? Probably. I fell asleep. you'll need to talk to that man over there, in the red coat. The man was almost as tall as Shadow: he looked like the father from a seventies sitcom, and he tapped something into a computer and told Shadow to runrun! to a gate on the far side of the terminal. Shadow ran through the airport, but the doors were already closed when he got to the gate. He watched the plane pull away from the gate, through the plate glass. The woman at the passenger assistance desk (short and brown, with a mole on the side of her nose) consulted with another woman and made a phone call (Nope, that ones out. Theyve just cancelled it.), then she printed out another boarding card. This will get you there, she told him. Well call ahead to the gate and tell themyou're coming. Shadow felt like a pea being flicked between three cups, or a card being shuffled through a deck. Again he ran through the airport, ending up near where he had gotten off originally. A small man at the gate took his boarding pass. Weve been waiting for you, he confided, tearing off the stub of the boarding pass, with Shadows seat assignment17Don it. Shadow hurried onto the plane, and they closed the door behind him. He walked through first classthere were only four first-class seats, three of which were occupied. The bearded man in a pale suit seated next to the unoccupied seat at the very front grinned at Shadow as he got onto the plane, then raised his wrist and tapped his watch as Shadow walked past. Yeah, yeah, I'm making you late, thought Shadow. Let that be the worst of your worries. |
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The plane seemed pretty full, as he made his way down toward the back. Actually, Shadow found, it was completely full, and there was a middle-aged woman sitting in seat 17D. Shadow showed her his boarding card stub, and she showed him hers: they matched. Can you take your seat, please? asked the flight attendant. No, he said, I'm afraid I cant. She clicked her tongue and checked their boarding cards, then she led him back up to the front of the plane and pointed him to the empty seat in first class. Looks like its your lucky day, she told him. Can I bring you something to drink? Well just have time before we take off. And I'm sure you need one after that. I'd like a beer, please, said Shadow. Whatever youve got. The flight attendant went away. The man in the pale suit in the seat beside Shadow tapped his watch with his fingernail. It was a black Rolex. you're late, said the man, and he grinned a huge grin with no warmth in it at all. Sorry? I said, you're late. The flight attendant handed Shadow a glass of beer. For one moment, he wondered if the man was crazy, and then he decided he must have been referring to the plane, waiting for one last passenger. Sorry if I held you up, he said, politely. You in a hurry? The plane backed away from the gate. The flight attendant came back and took away Shadows beer. The man in the pale suit grinned at her and said, don't worry, I'll hold onto this tightly, and she let him keep his glass of Jack Daniels, while protesting, weakly, that it violated airline regulations. (Let me be the judge of that, mdear.) Time is certainly of the essence, said the man. But no. I was merely concerned that you would not make the plane. That was kind of you. The plane sat restlessly on the ground, engines throbbing, aching to be off. Kind my ass, said the man in the pale suit. I've got a job for you, Shadow. A roar of engines. The little plane jerked forward, pushing Shadow back into his seat. Then they were airborne, and the airport lights were falling away below them. Shadow looked at the man in the seat next to him. His hair was a reddish gray; his beard, little more than stubble, was grayish red. A craggy, square face with pale gray eyes. The suit looked expensive, and was the color of melted vanilla ice cream. His tie was dark gray silk, and the tie pin was a tree, worked in silver: trunk, branches, and deep roots. He held his glass of Jack Daniels as they took off, and did not spill a drop. Arent you going to ask me what kind of job? he asked. How do you know who I am? The man chuckled. Oh, its the easiest thing in the world to know what people call themselves. A little thought, a little luck, a little memory. Ask me what kind of job. No, said Shadow. The attendant brought him another glass of beer, and he sipped at it. Why not? I'm going home. I've got a job waiting for me there. I don't want any other job. The mans craggy smile did not change, outwardly, but now he seemed, actually, amused. You don't have a job waiting for you at home, he said. You have nothing waiting for you there. Meanwhile, I am offering you a perfectly legal jobgood money, limited security, remarkable fringe benefits. Hell, if you live that long, I could throw in a pension plan. You think maybe youd like one of them? Shadow said, You must have seen my name on the side of my bag. The man said nothing. Whoever you are, said Shadow, you couldn't have known I was going to be on this plane. I didn't know I was going to be on this plane, and if my plane hadn't been diverted to St. |
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Her black hair is piled high and knotted on top of her head. Standing beside her is a short man wearing an olive T-shirt and expensive blue jeans. He is holding, in his right hand, a wallet and a Nokia mobile phone with a red-white-and-blue faceplate. The red room contains a bed, upon which are white satin-style sheets and an oxblood bedspread. At the foot of the bed is a small wooden table, upon which is a small stone statue of a woman with enormous hips, and a candleholder. The woman hands the man a small red candle. Here, she says. Light it. Me? Yes, she says. If you want to have me. I shoulda just got you to suck me off in the car. Perhaps, she says. don't you want me? Her hand runs up her body from thigh to breast, a gesture of presentation, as if she were demonstrating a new product. Red silk scarves over the lamp in the corner of the room make the light red. The man looks at her hungrily, then he takes the candle from her and pushes it into the candleholder. You got a light? She passes him a book of matches. He tears off a match, lights the wick: it flickers and then burns with a steady flame, which gives the illusion of motion to the faceless statue beside it, all hips and breasts. Put the money beneath the statue. Fifty bucks. Yes, she says. Now, come love me. He unbuttons his blue jeans and removes his olive T-shirt. She massages his white shoulders with her brown fingers; then she turns him over and begins to make love to him with her hands, and her fingers, and her tongue. It seems to him that the lights in the red room have been dimmed, and the sole illumination comes from the candle, which burns with a bright flame. Whats your name? he asks her. Bilquis, she tells him, raising her head. With a Q. A what? Never mind. He is gasping now. Let me fuck you, he says. I have to fuck you. Okay, hon, she says. Well do it. But will you do something for me, whileyou're doing it? Hey, he says, suddenly tetchy, I'm paying you, you know. She straddles him, in one smooth movement, whispering, I know, honey, I know, you're paying me, and I mean, look at you, I should be paying you, I'm so lucky He purses his lips, trying to show that her hooker talk is having no effect on him, he cant be taken; that she's a street whore, for Chrissakes, while he's practically a producer, and he knows all about last-minute ripoffs, but she doesn't ask for money. Instead she says, Honey, whileyou're giving it to me, whileyou're pushing that big hard thing inside of me, will you worship me? Will I what? She is rocking back and forth on him: the engorged head of his penis is being rubbed against the wet lips of her vulva. Will you call me goddess? Will you pray to me? Will you worship me with your body? He smiles. Is that all she wants? Weve all got our kinks, at the end of the day. Sure, he says. She reaches her hand between her legs and slips him inside her. Is that good, is it, goddess? he asks, gasping. Worship me, honey, says Bilquis, the hooker. Yes, he says. I worship your breasts and your hair and your cunt. I worship your thighs and your eyes and your cherry-red lips Yes she croons, riding him. I worship your nipples, from which the milk of life flows. Your kiss is honey and your touch scorches like fire, and I worship it. His words are becoming more rhythmic now, keeping pace with the thrust and roll of their bodies. Bring me your lust in the morning, and bring me relief and your blessing in the evening. Let me walk in dark places unharmed and let me come to you once more and sleep beside you and make love with you again. |
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I worship you with everything that is within me, and everything inside my mind, with everywhere I've been and my dreams and my he breaks off, panting for breath. What are you doing? That feels amazing. So amazing and he looks down at his hips, at the place where the two of them conjoin, but her forefinger touches his chin and pushes his head back, so he is looking only at her face and at the ceiling once again. Keep talking, honey, she says. don't stop. doesn't it feel good? It feels better than anything has ever felt, he tells her, meaning it as he says it. Your eyes are stars, burning in the, shit, the firmament, and your lips are gentle waves that lick the sand, and I worship them, and now he's thrusting deeper and deeper inside her: he feels electric, as if his whole lower body has become sexually charged: priapic, engorged, blissful. Bring me your gift, he mutters, no longer knowing what he is saying, your one true gift, and make me always this always so I pray I And then the pleasure crests into orgasm, blasting his mind into void, his head and self and entire being a perfect blank as he thrusts deeper into her and deeper still Eyes closed, spasming, he luxuriates in the moment; and then he feels a lurch, and it seems to him that he is hanging, head down, although the pleasure continues. He opens his eyes. He thinks, grasping for thought and reason again, of birth, and wonders, without fear, in a moment of perfect postcoital clarity, whether what he sees is some kind of illusion. This is what he sees: He is inside her to the chest, and as he stares at this in disbelief and wonder she rests both hands upon his shoulders and puts gentle pressure on his body. He slipslides further inside her. How are you doing this to me? he asks, or he thinks he asks, but perhaps it is only in his head. you're doing it, honey, she whispers. He feels the lips of her vulva tight around his upper chest and back, constricting and enveloping him. He wonders what this would look like to somebody watching them. He wonders why he is not scared. And then he knows. I worship you with my body, he whispers, as she pushes him inside her. Her labia pull slickly across his face, and his eyes slip into darkness. She stretches on the bed, like a huge cat, and then she yawns. Yes, she says. You do. The Nokia phone plays a high, electrical transposition of the Ode to Joy. She picks it up, and thumbs a key, and puts the telephone to her ear. Her belly is flat, her labia small and closed. A sheen of sweat glistens on her forehead and on her upper lip. Yeah? she says. And then she says, No, honey, he's not here. he's gone away. She turns the telephone off before she flops out on the bed in the dark red room, then she stretches once more and she closes her eyes, and she sleeps. They took her to the cemetry In a big ol Cadillac They took her to the cemetry But they did not bring her back. Old Song I have taken the liberty, said Mr. Wednesday, washing his hands in the mens room of Jacks Crocodile Bar, of ordering food for myself, to be delivered to your table. We have much to discuss, after all. I don't think so, said Shadow. He dried his own hands on a paper towel and crumpled it, and dropped it into the bin. You need a job, said Wednesday. People don't hire ex-cons. You folk make them uncomfortable. I have a job waiting. A good job. Would that be the job at the Muscle Farm? Maybe, said Shadow. Nope. You don't. Robbie Burtons dead. Without him the Muscle Farms dead too. you're a liar. |
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Of course. And a good one. The best you will ever meet. But, I'm afraid, I'm not lying to you about this. He reached into his pocket, produced a folded newspaper, and handed it to Shadow. Page seven, he said. Come on back to the bar. You can read it at the table. Shadow pushed open the door, back into the bar. The air was blue with smoke, and the Dixie Cups were on the jukebox singing Iko Iko. Shadow smiled, slightly, in recognition of the old childrens song. The barman pointed to a table in the corner. There was a bowl of chili and a burger at one side of the table, a rare steak and a bowl of fries laid in the place across from it. Look at my king all dressed in red, Iko Iko all day, I bet you five dollars hell kill you dead, Jockamo-feena-nay Shadow took his seat at the table. He put the newspaper down. This is my first meal as a free man. I'll wait until after I've eaten to read your page seven. Shadow ate his hamburger. It was better than prison hamburgers. The chili was good but, he decided, after a couple of mouthfuls, not the best in the state. Laura made a great chili. She used lean meat, dark kidney beans, carrots cut small, a bottle or so of dark beer, and freshly sliced hot peppers. She would let the chili cook for a while, then add red wine, lemon juice and a pitch of fresh dill, and, finally, measure out and add her chili powders. On more than one occasion Shadow had tried to get her to show him how she made it: he would watch everything she did, from slicing the onions and dropping them into the olive oil at the bottom of the pot. He had even written down the recipe, ingredient by ingredient, and he had once made Lauras chili for himself on a weekend when she had been out of town. It had tasted okay-it was certainly edible, but it had not been Lauras chili. The news item on page seven was the first account of his wifes death that Shadow had read. Laura Moon, whose age was given in the article as twenty-seven, and Robbie Burton, thirty-nine, were in Robbies car on the interstate when they swerved into the path of a thirty-two-wheeler. The truck brushed Robbies car and sent it spinning off the side of the road. Rescue crews pulled Robbie and Laura from the wreckage. They were both dead by the time they arrived at the hospital. Shadow folded the newspaper up once more and slid it back across the table, toward Wednesday, who was gorging himself on a steak so bloody and so blue it might never have been introduced to a kitchen flame. Here. Take it back, said Shadow. Robbie had been driving. He must have been drunk, although the newspaper account said nothing about this. Shadow found himself imagining Lauras face when she realized that Robbie was too drunk to drive. The scenario unfolded in Shadows mind, and there was nothing he could do to stop it: Laura shouting at Robbieshouting at him to pull off the road, then the thud of car against truck, and the steering wheel wrenching over the car on the side of the road, broken glass glittering like ice and diamonds in the headlights, blood pooling in rubies on the road beside them. Two bodies being carried from the wreck, or laid neatly by the side of the road. Well? asked Mr. Wednesday. He had finished his steak, devoured it like a starving man. Now he was munching the french fries, spearing them with his fork. you're right, said Shadow. I don't have a job. Shadow took a quarter from his pocket, tails up. He flicked it up in the air, knocking it against his finger as it left his hand, giving it a wobble as if it were turning, caught it, slapped it down on the back of his hand. |
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We haven't made a bargain. Sure we have. You work for me now. You protect me. You transport me from place to place. You run errands. In an emergency, but only in an emergency, you hurt people who need to be hurt. In the unlikely event of my death, you will hold my vigil. And in return I shall make sure that your needs are adequately taken care of. he's hustling you, said Mad Sweeney, rubbing his bristly ginger beard. he's a hustler. Damn straight I'm a hustler, said Wednesday. that's why I need someone to look out for my best interests. The song on the jukebox ended, and for a moment, the bar fell quiet, every conversation at a lull. Someone once told me that you only get those everybody-shuts-up-at-once moments at twenty past or twenty to the hour, said Shadow. Sweeney pointed to the clock above the bar, held in the massive and indifferent jaws of a stuffed alligator head. The time was 11:20. There, said Shadow. Damned if I know why that happens. I know why, said Wednesday. Drink your mead. Shadow knocked the rest of the mead back in one long gulp. It might be better over ice, he said. Or it might not, said Wednesday. Its terrible stuff. That it is, agreed Mad Sweeney. you'll excuse me for a moment, gentlemen, but I find myself in deep and urgent need of a lengthy piss. He stood up and walked away, an impossibly tall man. He had to be almost seven feet tall, decided Shadow. A waitress wiped a cloth across the table and took their empty plates. Wednesday told her to bring the same again for everyone, although this time Shadows mead was to be on the rocks. Anyway, said Wednesday, that's what I need of you. Would you like to know what I want? asked Shadow. Nothing could make me happier. The waitress brought the drink. Shadow sipped his mead on the rocks. The ice did not helpif anything it sharpened the sourness, and made the taste linger in the mouth after the mead was swallowed. However, Shadow consoled himself, it did not taste particularly alcoholic. He was not ready to be drunk. Not yet. He took a deep breath. Okay, said Shadow. My life, which for three years has been a long way from being the greatest life there has ever been, just took a distinct and sudden turn for the worse. Now there are a few things I need to do. I want to go to Lauras funeral. I want to say goodbye. I should wind up her stuff. If you still need me, I want to start at five hundred dollars a week. The figure was a stab in the dark. Wednesdays eyes revealed nothing. If were happy working together, in six months time you raise it to a thousand a week. He paused. It was the longest speech hed made in years. You say you may need people to be hurt. Well, I'll hurt people ifyou're trying to hurt you. But I don't hurt people for fun or for profit. I won't go back to prison. Once was enough. You won't have to, said Wednesday. No, said Shadow. I wont. He finished the last of the mead. He wondered, suddenly, somewhere in the back of his head, whether the mead was responsible for loosening his tongue. But the words were coming out of him like the water spraying from a broken fire hydrant in summer, and he could not have stopped them if he had tried. I don't like you, Mister Wednesday, or whatever your real name may be. We are not friends. I don't know how you got off that plane without me seeing you, or how you trailed me here. But I'm at a loose end right now. When were done, I'll be gone. And if you piss me off, I'll be gone too. Until then, I'll work for you. Very good, said Wednesday. |
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Then we have a compact. And we are agreed. What the hell, said Shadow. Across the room, Mad Sweeney was feeding quarters into the jukebox. Wednesday spat in his hand and extended it. Shadow shrugged. He spat in his own palm. They clasped hands. Wednesday began to squeeze. Shadow squeezed back. After a few seconds his hand began to hurt. Wednesday held the grip a little longer, and then he let go. Good, he said. Good. Very good. So, one last glass of evil, vile fucking mead to seal our deal, and then we are done. Itll be a Southern Comfort and Coke for me, said Sweeney, lurching back from the jukebox. The jukebox began to play the Velvet Undergrounds Who Loves the Sun? Shadow thought it a strange song to find on a jukebox. It seemed very unlikely. But then, this whole evening had become increasingly unlikely. Shadow took the quarter he had used for the coin toss from the table, enjoying the sensation of a freshly milled coin against his fingers, producing it in his right hand between forefinger and thumb. He appeared to take it into his left hand in one smooth movement, while casually finger-palming it. He closed his left hand on the imaginary quarter. Then he took a second quarter in his right hand, between finger and thumb, and, as he pretended to drop that coin into the left hand, he let the palmed quarter fall into his right hand, striking the quarter he held there on the way. The chink confirmed the illusion that both coins were in his left hand, while they were now both held safely in his right. Coin tricks is it? asked Sweeney, his chin raising, his scruffy beard bristling. Why, if its coin tricks were doing, watch this. He took an empty glass from the table. Then he reached out and took a large coin, golden and shining, from the air. He dropped it into the glass. He took another gold coin from the air and tossed it into the glass, where it clinked against the first. He took a coin from the candle flame of a candle on the wall, another from his beard, a third from Shadows empty left hand, and dropped them, one by one, into the glass. Then he curled his fingers over the glass, and blew hard, and several more golden coins dropped into the glass from his hand. He tipped the glass of sticky coins into his jacket pocket, and then tapped the pocket to show, unmistakably, that it was empty. There, he said. that's a coin trick for you. Shadow, who had been watching closely, put his head on one side. I need to know how you did it. I did it, said Sweeney, with the air of one confiding a huge secret, with panache and style. that's how I did it. He laughed, silently, rocking on his heels, his gappy teeth bared. Yes, said Shadow. That is how you did it. Youve got to teach me. All the ways of doing the Misers Dream that I've read, youd be hiding the coins in the hand that holds the glass, and dropping them in while you produce and vanish the coin in your right hand. Sounds like a hell of a lot of work to me, said Mad Sweeney. Its easier just to pick them out of the air. Wednesday said, Mead for you, Shadow. I'll stick with Mister Jack Daniels, and for the freeloading Irishman? A bottled beer, something dark for preference, said Sweeney. Freeloader, is it? He picked up what was left of his drink, and raised it to Wednesday in a toast. May the storm pass over us, and leave us hale and unharmed, he said, and knocked the drink back. A fine toast, said Wednesday. But it wont. Another mead was placed in front of Shadow. Do I have to drink this? I'm afraid you do. |
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It seals our deal. Third times the charm, eh? Shit, said Shadow. He swallowed the mead in two large gulps. The pickled-honey taste filled his mouth. There, said Mr. Wednesday. you're my man, now. So, said Sweeney, you want to know the trick of how its done? Yes, said Shadow. Were you loading them in your sleeve? They were never in my sleeve, said Sweeney. He chortled to himself, rocking and bouncing as if he were a lanky, bearded volcano preparing to erupt with delight at his own brilliance. Its the simplest trick in the world. I'll fight you for it. Shadow shook his head. I'll pass. Now theres a fine thing, said Sweeney to the room. Old Wednesday gets himself a bodyguard, and the fellers too scared to put up his fists, even. I won't fight you, agreed Shadow. Sweeney swayed and sweated. He fiddled with the peak of his baseball cap. Then he pulled one of his coins out of the air and placed it on the table. Real gold, if you were wondering, said Sweeney. Win or lose and you'll loseits yours if you fight me. A big fellow like youwhoda thought youd be a fucken coward? he's already said he won't fight you, said Wednesday. Go away, Mad Sweeney. Take your beer and leave us in peace. Sweeney took a step closer to Wednesday. Call me a freeloader, will you, you doomed old creature? You coldblooded, heartless old tree-hanger. His face was turning a deep, angry red. Wednesday put out his hands, palms up, pacific. Foolishness, Sweeney. Watch where you put your words. Sweeney glared at him. Then he said, with the gravity of the very drunk, Youve hired a coward. What would he do if I hurt you, do you think? Wednesday turned to Shadow. I've had enough of this, he said. Deal with it. Shadow got to his feet and looked up into Mad Sweeneys face: how tall was the man? he wondered. you're bothering us, he said. you're drunk. I think you ought to leave now. A slow smile spread over Sweeneys face. There, now, he said. He swung a huge fist at Shadow. Shadow jerked back: Sweeneys hand caught him beneath the right eye. He saw blotches of light, and felt pain. And with that, the fight began. Sweeney fought without style, without science, with nothing but enthusiasm for the fight itself: huge, barreling roundhouse blows that missed as often as they connected. Shadow fought defensively, carefully, blocking Sweeneys blows or avoiding them. He became very aware of the audience around them. Tables were pulled out of the way with protesting groans, making a space for the men to spar. Shadow was aware at all times of Wednesdays eyes upon him, of Wednesdays humorless grin. It was a test, that was obvious, but what kind of a test? In prison Shadow had learned there were two kinds of fights: don't fuck with me fights, where you made it as showy and impressive as you could, and private fights, real fights, which were fast and hard and nasty, and always over in seconds. Hey, Sweeney, said Shadow, breathless, why are we fighting? For the joy of it, said Sweeney, sober now, or at least, no longer visibly drunk. For the sheer unholy fucken delight of it. Cant you feel the joy in your own veins, rising like the sap in the springtime? His lip was bleeding. So was Shadows knuckle. So howd you do the coin production? asked Shadow. He swayed back and twisted, took a blow on his shoulder intended for his face. I told you how I did it when first we spoke, grunted Sweeney. But theres none so blindow! Good one! as those who will not listen. Shadow jabbed at Sweeney, forcing him back into a table; empty glasses and ashtrays crashed to the floor. |
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Shadow could have finished him off then. Shadow glanced at Wednesday, who nodded. Shadow looked down at Mad Sweeney. Are we done? he asked. Mad Sweeney hesitated, then nodded. Shadow let go of him, and took several steps backward. Sweeney, panting, pushed himself back up to a standing position. Not on yer ass! he shouted. It aint over till I say it is! Then he grinned, and threw himself forward, swinging at Shadow. He stepped onto a fallen ice cube, and his grin turned to openmouthed dismay as his feet went out from under him, and he fell backward. The back of his head hit the barroom floor with a definite thud. Shadow put his knee into Mad Sweeneys chest. For the second time, are we done fighting? he asked. We may as well be, at that, said Sweeney, raising his head from the floor, for the joys gone out of me now, like the pee from a small boy in a swimming pool on a hot day. And he spat the blood from his mouth and closed his eyes and began to snore, in deep and magnificent snores. Somebody clapped Shadow on the back. Wednesday put a bottle of beer into his hand. It tasted better than mead. * * * Shadow woke up stretched out in the back of a sedan. The morning sun was dazzling, and his head hurt. He sat up awkwardly, rubbing his eyes. Wednesday was driving. He was humming tunelessly as he drove. He had a paper cup of coffee in the cup holder. They were heading along an interstate highway. The passenger seat was empty. How are you feeling, this fine morning? asked Wednesday, without turning around. What happened to my car? asked Shadow. It was a rental. Mad Sweeney took it back for you. It was part of the deal the two of you cut last night. After the fight. Conversations from the night before began to jostle uncomfortably in Shadows head. You got anymore of that coffee? The big man reached beneath the passenger seat and passed back an unopened bottle of water. Here. you'll be dehydrated. This will help more than coffee, for the moment. Well stop at the next gas station and get you some breakfast. you'll need to clean yourself up, too. You look like something the goat dragged in. Cat dragged in, said Shadow. Goat, said Wednesday. Huge rank stinking goat with big teeth. Shadow unscrewed the top of the water and drank. Something clinked heavily in his jacket pocket. He put his hand into the pocket and pulled out a coin the size of a half-dollar. It was heavy, and a deep yellow in color. * * * In the gas station Shadow bought a Clean-U-Up Kit, which contained a razor, a packet of shaving cream, a comb, and a disposable toothbrush packed with a tiny tube of toothpaste. Then he walked into the mens rest room and looked at himself in the mirror. He had a bruise under one eyewhen he prodded it, experimentally, with one finger, he found it hurt deeply and a swollen lower lip. Shadow washed his face with the rest rooms liquid soap, then he lathered his face and shaved. He cleaned his teeth. He wet his hair and combed it back. He still looked rough. He wondered what Laura would say when she saw him, and then he remembered that Laura wouldn't say anything ever again and he saw his face, in the mirror, tremble, but only for a moment. He went out. I look like shit, said Shadow. Of course you do, agreed Wednesday. Wednesday took an assortment of snack food up to the cash register and paid for that and their gas, changing his mind twice about whether he was doing it with plastic or with cash, to the irritation of the gum-chewing young lady behind the till. |
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There was something he wanted to say to Laura, and he was prepared to wait until he knew what it was. The world slowly began to lose light and color. Shadows feet were going numb, while his hands and face hurt from the cold. He burrowed his hands into his pockets for warmth, and his fingers closed about the gold coin. He walked over to the grave. This is for you, he said. Several shovels of earth had been emptied onto the casket, but the hole was far from full. He threw the gold coin into the grave with Laura, then he pushed more earth into the hole, to hide the coin from acquisitive grave diggers. He brushed the earth from his hands and said, Good night, Laura. Then he said, I'm sorry. He turned his face toward the lights of the town, and began to walk back into Eagle Point. His motel was a good two miles away, but after spending three years in prison he was relishing the idea that he could simply walk and walk, forever if need be. He could keep walking north, and wind up in Alaska, or head south, to Mexico and beyond. He could walk to Patagonia, or to Tierra del Fuego. A car drew up beside him. The window hummed down. You want a lift, Shadow? asked Audrey Burton. No, he said. And not from you. He continued to walk. Audrey drove beside him at three miles an hour. Snowflakes danced in the beams of her headlights. I thought she was my best friend, said Audrey. Wed talk every day. When Robbie and I had a fight, shed be the first one to knowwed go down to Chi-Chis for margaritas and to talk about what scumpots men can be. And all the time she was fucking him behind my back. Please go away, Audrey. I just want you to know I had good reason for what I did. He said nothing. Hey! she shouted. Hey! I'm talking to you! Shadow turned. Do you want me to tell you that you were right when you spit in Lauras face? Do you want me to say it didn't hurt? Or that what you told me made me hate her more than I miss her? Its not going to happen, Audrey. She drove beside him for another minute, not saying anything. Then she said, So, how was prison, Shadow? It was fine, said Shadow. You would have felt right at home. She put her foot down on the gas then, making the engine roar, and drove on and away. With the headlights gone, the world was dark. Twilight faded into night. Shadow kept expecting the act of walking to warm him, to spread warmth through his icy hands and feet. It didn't happen. Back in prison, Low Key Lyesmith had once referred to the little prison cemetery out behind the infirmary as the Bone Orchard, and the image had taken root in Shadows mind. That night he had dreamed of an orchard under the moonlight, of skeletal white trees, their branches ending in bony hands, their roots going deep down into the graves. There was fruit that grew upon the trees in the bone orchard, in his dream, and there was something very disturbing about the fruit in the dream, but on waking he could no longer remember what strange fruit grew oh the trees, nor why he found it so repellent. Cars passed him. Shadow wished that there was a sidewalk. He tripped on something that he could not see in the dark and sprawled into the ditch on the side of the road, his right hand sinking into several inches of cold mud. He climbed to his feet and wiped his hands on the leg of his pants. He stood there, awkwardly. He had only enough time to observe that there was someone beside him before something wet was forced over his nose and mouth, and he tasted harsh, chemical fumes. This time the ditch seemed warm and comforting. |
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Tell him that or I'll fucking kill you, said the young man mildly, from the smoke. Got it, said Shadow. You can let me out here. I can walk the rest of the way. The young man nodded. Good talking to you, he said. The smoke had mellowed him. You should know that if we do fucking kill you, then well just delete you. You got that? One click andyou're overwritten with random ones and zeros. Undelete is not an option. He tapped on the window behind him. he's getting off here, he said. Then he turned back to Shadow, pointed to his cigarette. Synthetic toad skins, he said. You know they can synthesize bufotenin now? The car stopped, and the door was opened. Shadow climbed out awkwardly. His bonds were cut. Shadow turned around. The inside of the car had become one writhing cloud of smoke in which two lights glinted, now copper-colored, like the beautiful eyes of a toad. Its all about the dominant fucking paradigm, Shadow. Nothing else is important. And hey, sorry to hear about your old lady. The door closed, and the stretch limo drove off, quietly. Shadow was a couple of hundred yards away from his motel, and he walked there, breathing the cold air, past red and yellow and blue lights advertising every kind of fast food a man could imagine, as long as it was a hamburger; and he reached the Motel America without incident. Every hour wounds. The last one kills. Old Saying There was a thin young woman behind the counter at the Motel America. She told Shadow he had already been checked in by his friend, and gave him his rectangular plastic room key. She had pale blonde hair and a rodentlike quality to her face that was most apparent when she looked suspicious, and eased when she smiled. She refused to tell him Wednesdays room number, and insisted on telephoning Wednesday on the house phone to let him know his guest was here. Wednesday came out of a room down the hall, and beckoned to Shadow. How was the funeral? he asked. Its over, said Shadow. You want to talk about it? No, said Shadow. Good. Wednesday grinned. Too much talking these days. Talk talk talk. This country would get along much better if people learned how to suffer in silence. Wednesday led the way back to his room, which was across the hall from Shadows. There were maps all over the room, unfolded, spread out on the bed, taped to the walls. Wednesday had drawn all over the maps in bright marking pens, fluorescent greens and painful pinks and vivid oranges. I got hijacked by a fat kid, said Shadow. He says to tell you that you have been consigned to the dungheap of history while people like him ride in their limos down the superhighways of life. Something like that. Little snot, said Wednesday. You know him? Wednesday shrugged. I know who he is. He sat down, heavily, on the rooms only chair. They don't have a clue, he said. They don't have a fucking clue. How much longer do you need to stay in town? I don't know. Maybe another week. I guess I need to wrap up Lauras affairs. Take care of the apartment, get rid of her clothes, all that. Itll drive her mother nuts, but the woman deserves it. Wednesday nodded his huge head. Well, the sooneryou're done, the sooner we can move out of Eagle Point. Goodnight. Shadow walked across the hall. His room was a duplicate of Wednesdays room, down to the print of a bloody sunset on the wall above the bed. He ordered a cheese and meatball pizza, then he ran a bath, pouring all the motels little plastic bottles of shampoo into the water, making it foam. |
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Next to that were three women, each carved from the same granite boulder, joined at the waist: their faces had an unfinished, hasty look to them, although their breasts and genitalia had been carved with elaborate care; and there was a flightless bird which Shadow did not recognize, twice his height, with a beak like a vultures, but with human arms: and on, and on. The voice spoke once more, as if it were addressing a class, saying, These are the gods who have passed out of memory. Even their names are lost. The people who worshiped them are as forgotten as their gods. Their totems are long since broken and cast down. Their last priests died without passing on their secrets. Gods die. And when they truly die they are unmourned and unremembered. Ideas are more difficult to kill than people, but they can be killed, in the end. There was a whispering noise that began then to run through the hall, a low susurrus that caused Shadow, in his dream, to experience a chilling and inexplicable fear. An all-engulfing panic took him, there in the halls of the gods whose very existence had been forgottenoctopus-faced gods and gods who were only mummified hands or falling rocks or forest fires Shadow woke with his heart jackhammering in his chest, his forehead clammy, entirely awake. The red numerals on the bedside clock told him the time was 1:03 A. M. The light of the Motel America sign outside shone through his bedroom window. Disoriented, Shadow got up and walked into the tiny motel bathroom. He pissed without turning on the lights, and returned to the bedroom. The dream was still fresh and vivid in his minds eye, but he could not explain to himself why it had scared him so. The light that came into the room from outside was not bright, but Shadows eyes had become used to the dark. There was a woman sitting on the side of his bed. He knew her. He would have known her in a crowd of a thousand, or of a hundred thousand. She was still wearing the navy blue suit they had buried her in. Her voice was a whisper, but a familiar line. I guess, said Laura, you're going to ask what I'm doing here. Shadow said nothing. He sat down on the rooms only chair and, finally, asked, Is that you? Yes, she said. I'm cold, puppy. you're dead, babe. Yes, she said. Yes. I am. She patted the bed next to her. Come and sit by me, she said. No, said Shadow. I think I'll stay right here for now. We have some unresolved issues to address. Like me being dead? Possibly, but I was thinking more of how you died. You and Robbie. Oh, she said. That. Shadow could smellor perhaps, he thought, he simply imagined that he smelledan odor of rot, of flowers and preservatives. His wifehis ex-wife no, he corrected himself, his late wifesat on the bed and stared at him, unblinking. Puppy, she said. Could youdo you think you could possibly get mea cigarette? I thought you gave them up. I did, she said. But I'm no longer concerned about the health risks. And I think it would calm my nerves. Theres a machine in the lobby. Shadow pulled on his jeans and a T-shirt and went, barefoot, into the lobby. The night clerk was a middle-aged man, reading a book by John Grisham. Shadow bought a pack of Virginia Slims from the machine. He asked the night clerk for a book of matches. you're in a nonsmoking room, said the clerk. You make sure you open the window, now. He passed Shadow a book of matches and a plastic ashtray with the Motel America logo on it. Got it, said Shadow. He went back into his bedroom. She had stretched out now, on top of his rumpled covers. |
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Shadow opened the window and then passed her the cigarettes and the matches. Her fingers were cold. She lit a match and he saw that her nails, usually pristine, were battered and chewed, and there was mud under them. Laura lit the cigarette, inhaled, blew out the match. She took another puff. I cant taste it, she said. I don't think this is doing anything. I'm sorry, he said. Me too, said Laura. When she inhaled the cigarette tip glowed, and he was able to see her face. So, she said. They let you out. Yes. The tip of the cigarette glowed orange. I'm still grateful. I should never have got you mixed up in it. Well, he said, I agreed to do it. I could have said no. He wondered why he wasnt scared of her: why a dream of a museum could leave him terrified, while he seemed to be coping with a walking corpse without fear. Yes, she said. You could have. You big galoot. Smoke wreathed her face. She was very beautiful in the dim light. You want to know about me and Robbie? I guess. She stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray. You were in prison, she said. And I needed someone to talk to. I needed a shoulder to cry on. You werent there. I was upset. I'm sorry. Shadow realized something was different about her voice, and he tried to figure out what it was. I know. So wed meet for coffee. Talk about what wed do when you got out of prison. How good it would be to see you again. He really liked you, you know. He was looking forward to giving you back your old job. Yes. And then Audrey went to visit her sister for a week. This was, oh, a year, thirteen months after youd gone away. Her voice lacked expression; each word was flat and dull, like pebbles dropped, one by one, into a deep well. Robbie came over. We got drunk together. We did it on the floor of the bedroom. It was good. It was really good. I didn't need to hear that. No? I'm sorry. Its harder to pick and choose whenyou're dead. Its like a photograph, you know. It doesn't matter as much. It matters to me. Laura lit another cigarette. Her movements were fluid and competent, not stiff. Shadow wondered, for a moment, if she was dead at all. Perhaps this was some kind of elaborate trick. Yes, she said. I see that. Well, we carried on our affairalthough we didn't call it that, we did not call it anythingfor most of the last two years. Were you going to leave me for him? Why would I do that? you're my big bear. you're my puppy. You did what you did for me. I waited three years for you to come back to me. I love you. He stopped himself from saying I love you, too. He wasnt going to say that. Not anymore. So what happened the other night? The night I was killed? Yes. Well, Robbie and I went out to talk about your welcome-back surprise party. It would have been so good. And I told him that we were done. Finished. That now that you were back that was the way it had to be. Mm. Thank you, babe. you're welcome, darling. The ghost of a smile crossed her face. We got maudlin. It was sweet. We got stupid. I got very drunk. He didn't. He had to drive. We were driving home and I announced that I was going to give him a goodbye blowjob, one last time with feeling, and I unzipped his pants, and I did. Big mistake. Tell me about it. I knocked the gearshift with my shoulder, and then Robbie was trying to push me out of the way to put the car back in gear, and we were swerving, and there was a loud crunch and I remember the world started to roll and to spin, and I thought, I'm going to die. It was very dispassionate. |
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I remember that. I wasnt scared. And then I don't remember anything more. There was a smell like burning plastic. It was the cigarette, Shadow realized: it had burned down to the filter. Laura did not seem to have noticed. What are you doing here, Laura? Cant a wife come and see her husband? you're dead. I went to your funeral this afternoon. Yes. She stopped talking, stared into nothing. Shadow stood up and walked over to her. He took the smoldering cigarette butt from her fingers and threw it out of the window. Well? Her eyes sought his. I don't know much more than I did when I was alive. Most of the stuff I know now that I didn't know then I cant put into words. Normally people who die stay in their graves, said Shadow. Do they? Do they really, puppy? I used to think they did too. Now I'm not so sure. Perhaps. She climbed off the bed and walked over to the window. Her face, in the light of the motel sign, was as beautiful as it had ever been. The face of the woman he had gone to prison for. His heart hurt in his chest as if someone had taken it in a fist and squeezed. Laura? She did not look at him. Youve gotten yourself mixed up in some bad things, Shadow. you're going to screw it up, if someone isn't there to watch out for you. I'm watching out for you. And thank you for my present. What present? She reached into the pocket of her blouse, and pulled out the gold coin he had thrown into the grave earlier that day. There was still black dirt on it. I may have it put on a chain. It was very sweet of you. you're welcome. She turned then and looked at him with eyes that seemed both to see and not to see him. I think there are several aspects of our marriage were going to have to work on. Babes, he told her. you're dead. that's one of those aspects, obviously. She paused. Okay, she said. I'm going now. It will be better if I go. And, naturally and easily, she turned and put her hands on Shadows shoulders, and went up on tiptoes to kiss him goodbye, as she had always kissed him goodbye. Awkwardly he bent to kiss her on the cheek, but she moved her mouth as he did so and pushed her lips against his. Her breath smelled, faintly, of mothballs. Lauras tongue flickered into Shadows mouth. It was cold, and dry, and it tasted of cigarettes and of bile. If Shadow had had any doubts as to whether his wife was dead or not, they ended then. He pulled back. I love you, she said, simply. I'll be looking out for you. She walked over to the motel room door. There was a strange taste in his mouth. Get some sleep, puppy, she told him. And stay out of trouble. She opened the door to the hall. The fluorescent light in the hallway was not kind: beneath it, Laura looked dead, but then, it did that to everyone. You could have asked me to stay the night, she said, in her cold-stone voice. I don't think I could, said Shadow. You will, hon, she said. Before all this is over. You will. She turned away from him, and walked down the corridor. Shadow looked out of the doorway. The night clerk kept on reading his John Grisham novel, and barely looked up as she walked past him. There was thick graveyard mud clinging to her shoes. And then she was gone. Shadow breathed out, a slow sigh. His heart was pounding arrhythmically in his chest. He walked across the hall and knocked on Wednesdays door. As he knocked he got the weirdest notion, that he was being buffeted by black wings, as if an enormous crow was flying through him, out into the hall and the world beyond. Wednesday opened the door. |
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He had a white motel towel wrapped around his waist, but was otherwise naked. What the hell do you want? he asked. Something you should know, said Shadow. Maybe it was a dreambut it wasntor maybe I inhaled some of the fat kids synthetic toad-skin smoke, or probably I'm just going mad Yeah, yeah. Spit it out, said Wednesday. I'm kind of in the middle of something here. Shadow glanced into the room. He could see that there was someone in the bed, watching him. A sheet pulled up over small breasts. Pale blonde hair, something rattish about the face. He lowered his voice. I just saw my wife, he said. She was in my room. A ghost, you mean? You saw a ghost? No. Not a ghost. She was solid. It was her. she's dead all right, but it wasnt any kind of a ghost. I touched her. She kissed me. I see. Wednesday darted a look at the woman in the bed. Be right back, mdear, he said. They crossed the hall to Shadows room. Wednesday turned on the lamps. He looked at the cigarette butt in the ashtray. He scratched his chest. His nipples were dark, old-man nipples, and his chest hair was grizzled. There was a white scar down one side of his torso. He sniffed the air. Then he shrugged. Okay, he said. So your dead wife showed up. You scared? A little. Very wise. The dead always give me the screaming mimis. Anything else? I'm ready to leave Eagle Point. Lauras mother can sort out the apartment, all that. She hates me anyway. I'm ready to go when you are. Wednesday smiled. Good news, my boy. Well leave in the morning. Now, you should get some sleep. I have some scotch in my room, if you need help sleeping. Yes? No. I'll be fine. Then do not disturb me further. I have a long night ahead of me. Good night, said Shadow. Exactly, said Wednesday, and he closed the door as he went out. Shadow sat down on the bed. The smell of cigarettes and preservatives lingered in the air. He wished that he were mourning Laura: it seemed more appropriate than being troubled by her or, he admitted it to himself now that she had gone, just a little scared by her. It was time to mourn. He turned the lights out, and lay on the bed, and thought of Laura as she was before he went to prison. He remembered their marriage when they were young and happy and stupid and unable to keep their hands off each other. It had been a very long time since Shadow had cried, so long he thought he had forgotten how. He had not even wept when his mother died. But he began to cry now, in painful, lurching sobs, and for the first time since he was a small boy, Shadow cried himself to sleep. Coming To America A. D. 813 They navigated the green sea by the stars and by the shore, and when the shore was only a memory and the night sky was overcast and dark they navigated by faith, and they called on the All-Father to bring them safely to land once more. A bad journey they had of it, their fingers numb and with a shiver in their bones that not even wine could burn off. They would wake in the morning to see that the hoarfrost had touched their beards, and, until the sun warmed them, they looked like old men, white-bearded before their time. Teeth were loosening and eyes were deep-sunken in their sockets when they made landfall on the green land to the west. The men said, We are far, far from our homes and our hearths, far from the seas we know and the lands we love. Here on the edge of the world we will be forgotten by our gods. Their leader clambered to the top of a great rock, and he mocked them for their lack of faith. |
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As the weather became colder, and the days became shorter, some of the men took to searching for the scraeling village, hoping to find food, and women. They found nothing, save for the places where fires had been, where small encampments had been abandoned. One midwinters day, when the sun was as distant and cold as a dull silver coin, they saw that the remains of the scraelings body had been removed from the ash tree. That afternoon it began to snow, in huge, slow flakes. The men from the northlands closed the gates of their encampment, retreated behind their wooden wall. The scraeling war party fell upon them that night: five hundred men to thirty. They climbed the wall, and over the following seven days, they killed each of the thirty men, in thirty different ways. And the sailors were forgotten, by history and their people. The wall they tore down, the war party, and the village they burned. The longboat, upside down and pulled high on the shingle, they also burned, hoping that the pale strangers had but one boat, and that by burning it they were ensuring that no other Northmen would come to their shores. It was more than a hundred years before Leif the Fortunate, son of Erik the Red, rediscovered that land, which he would call Vineland. His gods were already waiting for him when he arrived: Tyr, one-handed, and gray Odin gallows-god, and Thor of the thunders. They were there. They were waiting. Let the Midnight Special Shine its light on me Let the Midnight Special Shine its ever-lovin light on me. The Midnight Special, Traditional Shadow and Wednesday ate breakfast at a Country Kitchen across the street from their motel. It was eight in the morning, and the world was misty and chill. You still ready to leave Eagle Point? asked Wednesday. I have some calls to make, if you are. Friday today. Fridays a free day. A womans day. Saturday tomorrow. Much to do on Saturday. I'm ready, said Shadow. Nothing keeping me here. Wednesday heaped his plate high with several kinds of breakfast meats. Shadow took some melon, a bagel, and a packet of cream cheese. They went and sat down in a booth. That was some dream you had last night, said Wednesday. Yes, said Shadow. It was. Lauras muddy footprints had been visible on the motel carpet when he got up that morning, leading from his bedroom to the lobby and out the door. So, said Wednesday. Whyd they call you Shadow? Shadow shrugged. Its a name, he said. Outside the plate glass the world in the mist had become a pencil drawing executed in a dozen different grays with, here and there, a smudge of electric red or pure white. Howd you lose your eye? Wednesday shoveled half a dozen pieces of bacon into his mouth, chewed, wiped the fat from his lips with the back of his hand. didn't lose it, he said. I still know exactly where it is. So whats the plan? Wednesday looked thoughtful. He ate several vivid pink slices of ham, picked a fragment of meat from his beard, dropped it onto his plate. Plan is as follows. Tomorrow night we shall be meeting with a number of persons preeminent in their respective fieldsdo not let their demeanor intimidate you. We shall meet at one of the most important places in the entire country. Afterward we shall wine and dine them. I need to enlist them in my current enterprise. And where is this most important place? you'll see, mboy. I said one of them. Opinions are justifiably divided. I have sent word to my colleagues. Well stop off in Chicago on the way, as I need to pick up some money. |
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Entertaining, in the manner we shall need to entertain, will take more ready cash than I currently have available. Then on to Madison. Wednesday paid and they left, walked back across the road to the motel parking lot. Wednesday tossed Shadow the car keys. He drove down to the freeway and out of town. You going to miss it? asked Wednesday. He was sorting through a folder filled with maps. The town? No. I didn't really ever have a life here. I was never in one place too long as a kid, and I didn't get here until I was in my twenties. So this town is Lauras. Lets hope she stays here, said Wednesday. It was a dream, said Shadow. Remember. that's good, said Wednesday. Healthy attitude to have. Did you fuck her last night? Shadow took a breath. Then, That is none of your damn business. And no. Did you want to? Shadow said nothing at all. He drove north, toward Chicago. Wednesday chuckled, and began to pore over his maps, unfolding and refolding them, making occasional notes on a yellow legal pad with a large silver ballpoint pen. Eventually he was finished. He put his pen away, put the folder on the backseat. The best thing about the states were heading for, said Wednesday, Minnesota, Wisconsin, all around there, is they have the kind of women I liked when I was younger. Pale-skinned and blue-eyed, hair so fair its almost white, wine-colored lips, and round, full breasts with the veins running through them like a good cheese. Only when you were younger? asked Shadow. Looked like you were doing pretty good last night. Yes. Wednesday smiled. Would you like to know the secret of my success? You pay them? Nothing so crude. No, the secret is charm. Pure and simple. Charm, huh? Well, like they say, you either got it or you aint. Charms can be learned, said Wednesday. Shadow tuned the radio to an oldies station, and listened to songs that were current before he was born. Bob Dylan sang about a hard rain that was going to fall, and Shadow wondered if that rain had fallen yet, or if it was something that was still going to happen. The road ahead of them was empty and the ice crystals on the asphalt glittered like diamonds in the morning sun. * * * Chicago happened slowly, like a migraine. First they were driving through countryside, then, imperceptibly, the occasional town became a low suburban sprawl, and the sprawl became the city. They parked outside a squat black brownstone. The sidewalk was clear of snow. They walked to the lobby. Wednesday pressed the top button on the gouged metal intercom box. Nothing happened. He pressed it again. Then, experimentally, he began to press the other buttons, for other tenants, with no response. Its dead, said a gaunt old woman, coming down the steps. doesn't work. We call the super, ask him when he going to fix, when he going to mend the heating, he does not care, goes to Arizona for the winter for his chest. Her accent was thick, Eastern European, Shadow guessed. Wednesday bowed low. Zorya, my dear, may I say how unutterably beautiful you look? A radiant creature. You have not aged. The old woman glared at him. He don't want to see you. I don't want to see you neither. You bad news. that's because I don't come if it isn't important. The woman sniffed. She carried an empty string shopping bag, and wore an old red coat, buttoned up to her chin. She looked at Shadow suspiciously. Who is the big man? she asked Wednesday. Another one of your murderers? You do me a deep disservice, good lady. This gentleman is called Shadow. |
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He is working for me, yes, but on your behalf. Shadow, may I introduce you to the lovely Miss Zorya Vechernyaya. Good to meet you, said Shadow. Birdlike, the old woman peered up at him. Shadow, she said. A good name. When the shadows are long, that is my time. And you are the long shadow. She looked him up and down, then she smiled. You may kiss my hand, she said, and extended a cold hand to him. Shadow bent down and kissed her thin hand. She had a large amber ring on her middle finger. Good boy, she said. I am going to buy groceries. You see, I am the only one of us who brings in any money. The other two cannot make money fortune-telling. This is because they only tell the truth, and the truth is not what people want to hear. It is a bad thing, and it troubles people, so they do not come back. But I can lie to them, tell them what they want to hear. So I bring home the bread. Do you think you will be here for supper? I would hope so, said Wednesday. Then you had better give me some money to buy more food, she said. I am proud, but I am not stupid. The others are prouder than I am, and he is the proudest of all. So give me money and do not tell them that you give me money. Wednesday opened his wallet, and reached in. He took out a twenty. Zorya Vechernyaya plucked it from his fingers, and waited. He took out another twenty and gave it to her. Is good, she said. We will feed you like princes. Now, go up the stairs to the top. Zorya Utrennyaya is awake, but our other sister is still asleep, so do not be making too much noise. Shadow and Wednesday climbed the dark stairs. The landing two stories up was half filled with black plastic garbage bags and it smelled of rotting vegetables. Are they gypsies? asked Shadow. Zorya and her family? Not at all. you're not Rom. you're Russian. Slavs, I believe. But she does fortune-telling. Lots of people do fortune-telling. I dabble in it myself. Wednesday was panting as they went up the final flight of stairs. I'm out of shape. The landing at the top of the stairs ended in a single door painted red, with a peephole in it. Wednesday knocked at the door. There was no response. He knocked again, louder this time. Okay! Okay! I heard you! I heard you! The sound of locks being undone, of bolts being pulled, the rattle of a chain. The red door opened a crack. Who is it? A mans voice, old and cigarette-roughened. An old friend, Czernobog. With an associate. The door opened as far as the security chain would allow. Shadow could see a gray face, in the shadows, peering out at them. What do you want, Votan? Initially, simply the pleasure of your company. And I have information to share. Whats that phrase? Oh yes. You may learn something to your advantage. The door opened all the way. The man in the dusty bathrobe was short, with iron-gray hair and craggy features. He wore gray pinstripe pants, shiny from age, and slippers. He held an unfiltered cigarette with square-tipped fingers, sucking the tip while keeping it cupped in his fistlike a convict, thought Shadow, or a soldier. He extended his left hand to Wednesday. Welcome then, Votan. They call me Wednesday these days, he said, shaking the old mans hand. A narrow smile; a flash of yellow teeth. Yes, he said. Very funny. And this is? This is my associate. Shadow, meet Mr. Czernobog. Well met, said Czernobog. He shook Shadows left hand with his own. His hands were rough and callused, and the tips of his fingers were as yellow as if they had been dipped in iodine. |
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I do not tell good lies, so I am a poor fortune-teller. And our sister, Zorya Polunochnaya, she cant tell no lies at all. The coffee was even sweeter and stronger than Shadow had expected. Shadow excused himself to use the bathrooma closet-like room, hung with several brown-spotted framed photographs of men and women in stiff Victorian poses. It was early afternoon, but already the daylight was beginning to fade. He heard voices raised from down the hall. He washed his hands in icy-cold water with a sickly-smelling sliver of pink soap. Czernobog was standing in the hall as Shadow came out. You bring trouble! he was shouting. Nothing but trouble! I will not listen! You will get out of my house! Wednesday was still sitting on the sofa, sipping his coffee, stroking the gray cat. Zorya Utrennyaya stood on the thin carpet, one hand nervously twining in and out of her long yellow hair. Is there a problem? asked Shadow. He is the problem! shouted Czernobog. He is! You tell him that there is nothing will make me help him! I want him to go! I want him out of here! Both of you go! Please, said Zorya Utrennyaya. Please be quiet, you wake up Zorya Polunochnaya. You are like him, you want me to join his madness! shouted Czernobog. He looked as if he was on the verge of tears. A pillar of ash tumbled from his cigarette onto the threadbare hall carpet. Wednesday stood up, walked over to Czernobog. He rested his hand on Czernobogs shoulder. Listen, he said, peaceably. Firstly, its not madness. Its the only way. Secondly, everyone will be there. You would not want to be left out, would you? You know who I am, said Czernobog. You know what these hands have done. You want my brother, not me. And he's gone. A door in the hallway opened, and a sleepy female voice said, Is something wrong? Nothing is wrong, my sister, said Zorya Utrennyaya. Go back to sleep. Then she turned to Czernobog. See? See what you do with all your shouting? You go back in there and sit down. Sit! Czernobog looked as if he were about to protest; and then the fight went out of him. He looked frail, suddenly: frail, and lonely. The three men went back into the shabby sitting room. There was a brown nicotine ring around that room that ended about a foot from the ceiling, like the tide line in an old bathtub. It doesn't have to be for you, said Wednesday to Czernobog, unfazed. If it is for your brother, its for you as well. that's one place you dualistic types have it over the rest of us, eh? Czernobog said nothing. Speaking of Bielebog, have you heard anything from him? Czernobog shook his head. He looked up at Shadow. Do you have a brother? No, said Shadow. Not that I know of. I have a brother. They say, you put us together, we are like one person, you know? When we are young, his hair, it is very blond, very light, his eyes are blue, and people say, he is the good one. And my hair it is very dark, darker than yours even, and people say I am the rogue, you know? I am the bad one. And now time passes, and my hair is gray. His hair, too, I think, is gray. And you look at us, you would not know who was light, who was dark. Were you close? asked Shadow. Close? asked Czernobog. No. How could we be? We cared about such different things. There was a clatter from the end of the hall, and Zorya Vechemyaya came in. Supper in one hour, she said. Then she went out. Czernobog sighed. She thinks she is a good cook, he said. She was brought up, there were servants to cook. Now, there are no servants. There is nothing. |
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Not nothing, said Wednesday. Never nothing. You, said Czernobog. I shall not listen to you. He turned to Shadow. Do you play checkers? he asked. Yes, said Shadow. Good. You shall play checkers with me, he said, taking a wooden box of pieces from the mantelpiece and shaking them out onto the table. I shall play black. Wednesday touched Shadows arm. You don't have to do this, you know, he said. Not a problem. I want to, said Shadow. Wednesday shrugged, and picked up an old copy of Readers Digest from a small pile of yellowing magazines on the windowsill. Czernobogs brown fingers finished arranging the pieces on the squares, and the game began. * * * In the days that were to come, Shadow often found himself remembering that game. Some nights he dreamed of it. His flat, round pieces were the color of old, dirty wood, nominally white. Czernobogs were a dull, faded black. Shadow was the first to move. In his dreams, there was no conversation as they played, just the loud click as the pieces were put down, or the hiss of wood against wood as they were slid from square to adjoining square. For the first half dozen moves each of the men slipped pieces out onto the board, into the center, leaving the back rows untouched. There were pauses between the moves, long, chesslike pauses, while each man watched, and thought. Shadow had played checkers in prison: it passed the time. He had played chess, too, but he was not temperamentally suited to planning ahead. He preferred picking the perfect move for the moment. You could win in checkers like that, sometimes. There was a click as Czernobog picked up a black piece and jumped it over one of Shadows white pieces. The old man picked up Shadows white piece and put it on the table at the side of the board. First blood. You have lost, said Czernobog. The game is done. No, said Shadow. Games got a long way to go yet. Then would you care for a wager? A little side bet, to make it more interesting? No, said Wednesday, without looking up from a Humor in Uniform column. He wouldnt. I am not playing with you, old man. I play with him. So, you want to bet on the game, Mister Shadow? What were you two arguing about, before? asked Shadow. Czernobog raised a craggy eyebrow. Your master wants me to come with him. To help him with his nonsense. I would rather die. You want to bet? Okay. If I win, you come with us. The old man pursed his lips. Perhaps, he said. But only if you take my forfeit, when you lose. And that would be? There was no change in Czernobogs expression. If I win, I get to knock your brains out. With the sledgehammer. First you go down on your knees. Then I hit you a blow with it, so you don't get up again. Shadow looked at the mans old face, trying to read him. He was not joking, Shadow was certain of that: there was a hunger there for something, for pain, or death, or retribution. Wednesday closed the Readers Digest. This is ridiculous, he said. I was wrong to come here. Shadow, were leaving. The gray cat, disturbed, got to its feet and stepped onto the table beside the checkers game. It stared at the pieces, then leapt down onto the floor and, tail held high, it stalked from the room. No, said Shadow. He was not scared of dying. After all, it was not as if he had anything to live for. Its fine. I accept. If you win the game, you get the chance to knock my brains out with one blow of your sledgehammer, and he moved his next white piece to the adjoining square on the edge of the board. Nothing more was said, but Wednesday did not pick up his Readers Digest again. |
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He watched the game with his glass eye and his true eye, with an expression that betrayed nothing. Czernobog took another of Shadows pieces. Shadow took two of Czernobogs. From the corridor came the smell of unfamiliar foods cooking. While not all of the smells were appetizing, Shadow realized suddenly how hungry he was. The two men moved their pieces, black and white, turn and turnabout. A flurry of pieces taken, a blossoming of two-piece-high kings: no longer forced to move only forward on the board, a sideways slip at a time, the kings could move forward or back, which made them doubly dangerous. They had reached the farthest row, and could go where they wanted. Czernobog had three kings, Shadow had two. Czernobog moved one of his kings around the board, eliminating Shadows remaining pieces, while using the other two kings to keep Shadows kings pinned down. And then Czernobog made a fourth king, and returned down the board to Shadows two kings, and, unsmiling, took them both. And that was that. So, said Czernobog. I get to knock out your brains. And you will go on your knees willingly. Is good. He reached out an old hand, and patted Shadows arm with it. Weve still got time before dinners ready, said Shadow. You want another game? Same terms? Czernobog lit another cigarette, from a kitchen box of matches. How can it be same terms? You want I should kill you twice? Right now, you have one blow, that's all. You told me yourself that its not just strength, its skill too. This way, if you win this game, you get two blows to my head. Czernobog glowered. One blow is all it takes, one blow. That is the art. He patted his upper right arm, where the muscles were, with his left, scattering gray ash from the cigarette in his left hand. Its been a long time. If youve lost your skill you might simply bruise me. How long has it been since you swung a killing hammer in the stockyards? Thirty years? Forty? Czernobog said nothing. His closed mouth was a gray slash across his face. He tapped his fingers on the wooden table, drumming out a rhythm with them. Then he pushed the twenty-four checkers back to their home squares on the board. Play, he said. Again, you are light. I am dark. Shadow pushed his first piece out. Czernobog pushed one of his own pieces forward. And it occurred to Shadow that Czernobog was going to try to play the same game again, the one that he had just won, that this would be his limitation. This time Shadow played recklessly. He snatched tiny opportunities, moved without thinking, without a pause to consider. And this time, as he played, Shadow smiled; and whenever Czernobog moved a piece, Shadow smiled wider. Soon, Czernobog was slamming his pieces down as he moved them, banging them down on the wooden table so hard that the remaining pieces shivered on their black squares. There, said Czernobog, taking one of Shadows men with a crash, slamming the black piece down. There. What do you say to that? Shadow said nothing: he simply smiled, and jumped the piece that Czernobog had put down, and another, and another, and a fourth, clearing the center of the board of black pieces. He took a white piece from the pile beside the board and kinged his man. After that, it was just a mopping-up exercise: another handful of moves, and the game was done. Shadow said, Best of three? Czernobog simply stared at him, his gray eyes like points of steel. And then he laughed, clapped his hands on Shadows shoulders. I like you! he exclaimed. You have balls. |
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Then Zorya Utrennyaya put her head around the door to tell them that dinner was ready, and they should clear their game away and put the tablecloth down on the table. We have no dining room, she said, I am sorry. We eat in here. Serving dishes were placed on the table. Each of the diners was given a small painted tray on which was some tarnished cutlery, to hold on his or her lap. Zorya Vechernyaya took five wooden bowls and placed an unpeeled boiled potato in each, then ladled in a healthy serving of a ferociously crimson borscht. She plopped a spoonful of white sour cream in, and handed the bowls to each of them. I thought there were six of us, said Shadow. Zorya Polunochnaya is still asleep, said Zorya Vechernyaya. We keep her food in the refrigerator. When she wakes, she will eat. The borscht was vinegary, and tasted like pickled beets. The boiled potato was mealy. The next course was a leathery pot roast, accompanied by greens of some descriptionalthough they had been boiled so long and so thoroughly that they were no longer, by any stretch of the imagination, greens, and were well on their way to becoming browns. Then there were cabbage leaves stuffed with ground meat and rice, cabbage leaves of such a toughness that they were almost impossible to cut without spattering ground meat and rice all over the carpet. Shadow pushed his around his plate. We played checkers, said Czernobog, hacking himself another lump of pot roast. The young man and me. He won a game, I won a game. Because he won a game, I have agreed to go with him and Wednesday, and help them in their madness. And because I won a game, when this is all done, I get to kill the young man, with a blow of a hammer. The two Zoryas nodded gravely. Such a pity, Zorya Vechernyaya told Shadow. In my fortune for you, I should have said you would have a long life and a happy one, with many children. That is why you are a good fortune-teller, said Zorya Utrennyaya. She looked sleepy, as if it were an effort for her to be up so late. You tell the best lies. At the end of the meal, Shadow was still hungry. Prison food had been pretty bad, and prison food was better than this. Good food, said Wednesday, who had cleaned his plate with every evidence of enjoyment. I thank you ladies. And now, I am afraid that it is incumbent upon us to ask you to recommend to us a fine hotel in the neighborhood. Zorya Vechernyaya looked offended at this. Why should you go to a hotel? she said. We are not your friends? I couldn't put you to any trouble said Wednesday. Is no trouble, said Zorya Utrennyaya, one hand playing with her incongruously golden hair, and she yawned. You can sleep in Bielebogs room, said Zorya Vechernyaya, pointing to Wednesday. Is empty. And for you, young man, I make up a bed on sofa. You will be more comfortable than in feather bed. I swear. That would be really kind of you, said Wednesday. We accept. And you pay me only no more than what you pay for hotel, said Zorya Vechernyaya, with a triumphant toss of her head. A hundred dollars. Thirty said Wednesday. Fifty. Thirty-five. Forty-five. Forty. Is good. Forty-five dollar. Zorya Vechernyaya reached across the table and shook Wednesdays hand. Then she began to clean the pots off the table. Zorya Utrennyaya yawned so hugely Shadow worried that she might dislocate her jaw, and announced that she was going to bed before she fell asleep with her head in the pie, and she said good night to them all. Shadow helped Zorya Vechernyaya to take the plates and dishes into the little kitchen. |
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To his surprise there was an elderly dishwashing machine beneath the sink, and he filled it. Zorya Vechernyaya looked over his shoulder, tutted, and removed the wooden borscht bowls. Those, in the sink, she told him. Sorry. Is not to worry. Now, back in there, we have pie, she said. The pieit was an apple piehad been bought in a store and oven-warmed, and was very, very good. The four of them ate it with ice cream, and then Zorya Vechernyaya made everyone go out of the sitting room, and made up a very fine-looking bed on the sofa for Shadow. Wednesday spoke to Shadow as they stood in the corridor. What you did in there, with the checkers game, he said. Yes? That was good. Very, very stupid of you. But good. Sleep safe. Shadow brushed his teeth and washed his face in the cold water of the little bathroom, and then walked back down the hall to the sitting room, turned out the light, and was asleep before his head touched the pillow. * * * There were explosions in Shadows dream: he was driving a truck through a minefield, and bombs were going off on each side of him. The windshield shattered and he felt warm blood running down his face. Someone was shooting at him. A bullet punctured his lung, a bullet shattered his spine, another hit his shoulder. He felt each bullet strike. He collapsed across the steering wheel. The last explosion ended in darkness. I must be dreaming, thought Shadow, alone in the darkness. I think I just died. He remembered hearing and believing, as a child, that if you died in your dreams, you would die in real life. He did not feel dead. He opened his eyes, experimentally. There was a woman in the little sitting room, standing against the window, with her back to him. His heart missed a half-beat, and he said, Laura? She turned, framed by the moonlight. I'm sorry, she said. I did not mean to wake you. She had a soft, Eastern European accent. I will go. No, its okay, said Shadow. You didn't wake me. I had a dream. Yes, she said. You were crying out, and moaning. Part of me wanted to wake you, but I thought, no, I should leave him. Her hair was pale and colorless in the moons thin light. She wore a white cotton nightgown, with a high lace neck and a hem that swept the ground. Shadow sat up, entirely awake. You are Zorya Polu, he hesitated. The sister who was asleep. I am Zorya Polunochnaya, yes. And you are called Shadow, yes? That was what Zorya Vechernyaya told me, when I woke. Yes. What were you looking at, out there? She looked at him, then she beckoned him to join her by the window. She turned her back while he pulled on his jeans. He walked over to her. It seemed a long walk, for such a small room. He could not tell her age. Her skin was unlined, her eyes were dark, her lashes were long, her hair was to her waist and white. The moonlight drained colors into ghosts of themselves. She was taller than either of her sisters. She pointed up into the night sky. I was looking at that, she said, pointing to the Big Dipper. See? Ursa Major, he said. The Great Bear. That is one way of looking at it, she said. But it is not the way from where I come from. I am going to sit on the roof. Would you like to come with me? She lifted the window and clambered, barefoot, out onto the fire escape. A freezing wind blew through the window. Something was bothering Shadow, but he did not know what it was; he hesitated, then pulled on his sweater, stocks, and shoes and followed her out onto the rusting fire escape. She was waiting for him. |
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His breath steamed in the chilly air. He watched her bare feet pad up the icy metal steps, and followed her up to the roof. The wind gusted cold, flattening her nightgown against her body, and Shadow became uncomfortably aware that Zorya Polunochnaya was wearing nothing at all underneath. You don't mind the cold? he said, as they reached the top of the fire escape, and the wind whipped his words away. Sorry? She bent her face close to his. Her breath was sweet. I said, doesn't the cold bother you? In reply, she held up a finger: wait. She stepped, lightly, over the side of the building and onto the flat roof. Shadow stepped over a little more clumsily, and followed her across the roof, to the shadow of the water tower. There was a wooden bench waiting for them there, and she sat down on it, and he sat down beside her. The water tower acted as a windbreak, for which Shadow was grateful. No, she said. The cold does not bother me. This time is my time: I could no more feel uncomfortable in the night than a fish could feel uncomfortable in the deep water. You must like the night, said Shadow, wishing that he had said something wiser, more profound. My sisters are of their times. Zorya Utrennyaya is of the dawn. In the old country she would wake to open the gates, and let our father drive hisuhm, I forget the word, like a car but with horses? Chariot? His chariot. Our father would ride it out. And Zorya Vechernyaya, she would open the gates for him at dusk, when he returned to us. And you? She paused. Her lips were full, but very pale, I never saw our father. I was asleep. Is it a medical condition? She did not answer. The shrug, if she shrugged, was imperceptible. So. You wanted to know what I was looking at. The Big Dipper. She raised an arm to point to it, and the wind flattened her nightgown against her body. Her nipples, every goose-bump on the areolae, were visible momentarily, dark against the white cotton. Shadow shivered. Odins Wain, they call it. And the Great Bear. Where we come from, we believe that is a, a thing, a, not a god, but like a god, a bad thing, chained up in those stars. If it escapes, it will eat the whole of everything. And there are three sisters who must watch the sky, all the day, all the night. If he escapes, the thing in the stars, the world is over. Pf!, like that. And people believe that? They did. A long time ago. And you were looking to see if you could see the monster in the stars? Something like that. Yes. He smiled. If it were not for the cold, he decided, he would have thought he was dreaming. Everything felt so much like a dream. Can I ask how old you are? Your sisters seem so much older. She nodded her head. I am the youngest. Zorya Utrennyaya was born in the morning, and Zorya Vechernyaya was born in the evening, and I was born at midnight. I am the midnight sister: Zorya Polunochnaya. Are you married? My wife is dead. She died last week in a car accident. It was her funeral yesterday. I'm so sorry. She came to see me last night. It was not hard to say, in the darkness and the moonlight; it was not as unthinkable as it was by daylight. Did you ask her what she wanted? No. Not really. Perhaps you should. It is the wisest thing to ask the dead. Sometimes they will tell you. Zorya Vechernyaya tells me that you played checkers with Czernobog. Yes. He won the right to knock in my skull with a sledge. In the old days, they would take people up to the top of the mountains. To the high places. They would smash the back of their skulls with a rock. |
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Transportation, it was called: for five years, for ten years, for life. That was the sentence. You were sold to a captain, and would ride in his ship, crowded tight as a slavers, to the colonies or to the West Indies; off the boat the captain would sell you on as an indentured servant to one who would take the cost of your skin out in your labor until the years of your indenture were done. But at least you were not waiting to hang in an English prison (for in those days prisons were places where you stayed until you were freed, transported, or hanged: you were not sentenced there for a term), and you were free to make the best of your new world. You were also free to bribe a sea captain to return you to England before the terms of your transportation were over and done. People did. And if the authorities caught you returning from transportationif an old enemy, or an old friend with a score to settle, saw you and peached on youthen you were hanged without a blink. I am reminded, he continued, after a short pause, during which he refilled the inkwell on his desk from the bottle of umber ink from the closet and dipped his pen once more, of the life of Essie Tregowan, who came from a chilly little cliff-top village in Cornwall, in the southwest of England, where her family had lived from time out of mind. Her father was a fisherman, and it was rumored that he was one of the wreckersthose who would hang their lamps high on the dangerous cliffs when the storm winds raged, luring ships onto the rocks, for the goods on shipboard. Essies mother was in service as a cook at the squires house, and at the age of twelve Essie began to work there, in the scullery. She was a thin little thing, with wide brown eyes and dark brown hair; and she was not a hard worker but was forever slipping off and away to listen to stories and tales, if there was anyone who would tell them: tales of the piskies and the spriggans, of the black dogs of the moors and the seal-women of the Channel. And, though the squire laughed at such things, the kitchen-folk always put out a china saucer of the creamiest milk at night, put it outside the kitchen door, for the piskies. Several years passed, and Essie was no longer a thin little thing: now she curved and billowed like the swell of the green sea, and her brown eyes laughed, and her chestnut hair tossed and curled. Essies eyes lighted on Bartholomew, the squires eighteen-year-old son, home from Rugby, and she went at night to the standing stone on the edge of the woodland, and she put some bread that Bartholomew had been eating but had left unfinished on the stone, wrapped in a cut strand of her own hair. And on the very next day Bartholomew came and talked to her, and looked on her approvingly with his own eyes, the dangerous blue of a sky when a storm is coming, while she was cleaning out the grate in his bedroom. He had such dangerous eyes, said Essie Tregowan. Soon enough Bartholomew went up to Oxford, and, when Essies condition became apparent, she was dismissed. But the babe was stillborn, and as a favor to Essies mother, who was a very fine cook, the squires wife prevailed upon her husband to return the former maiden to her former position in the scullery. But Essies love for Bartholomew had turned to hatred for his family, and within the year she took for her new beau a man from a neighboring village, with a bad reputation, who went by the name of Josiah Horner. And one night, when the family slept, Essie arose in the night and unbolted the side door, to let her lover in. |
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She loved those children as if they were her own flesh and blood, although sometimes she would call them by the names of those long dead. It was May, and she took her chair out into the kitchen garden to pick peas and to shuck them in the sunlight, for even in the lush heat of Virginia the cold had entered her bones as the frost had entered her hair, and a little warmth was a fine thing. As the widow Richardson shucked the peas with her old hands, she got to thinking about how fine it would be to walk once more on the moors and the salty cliffs of her native Cornwall, and she thought of sitting on the shingle as a little girl, waiting for her fathers ship to return from the gray seas. Her hands, blue-knuckled and clumsy, opened the pea pods, forced the full peas into an earthenware bowl, and dropped the empty pea pods onto her aproned lap. And then she found herself remembering, as she had not remembered for a long time, a life well lost: how she had twitched purses and filched silks with her clever fingers; and now she remembers the warden of Newgate telling her that it will be a good twelve weeks before her case would be heard, and that she could escape the gallows if she could plead her belly, and what a pretty thing she was and how she had turned to the wall and bravely lifted her skirts, hating herself and hating him, but knowing he was right; and the feel of the life quickening inside her that meant that she could cheat death for a little longer Essie Tregowan? said the stranger. The widow Richardson looked up, shading her eyes in the May sunshine. Do I know you? she asked. She had not heard him approach. The man was dressed all in green: dusty green trews, green jacket, and a dark green coat. His hair was a carroty red, and he grinned at her all lopsided. There was something about the man that made her happy to look at him, and something else that whispered of danger. You might say that you know me, he said. He squinted down at her, and she squinted right back up at him, searching his moon-face for a clue to his identity. He looked as young as one of her own grandchildren, yet he had called her by her old name, and there was a burr in his voice she knew from her childhood, from the rocks and the moors of her home. you're a Cornishman? she asked. That I am, a Cousin Jack, said the red-haired man. Or rather, that I was, but now I'm here in this new world, where nobody puts out ale or milk for an honest fellow, or a loaf of bread come harvest time. The old woman steadied the bowl of peas upon her lap. Ifyou're who I think you are, she said, then I've no quarrel with you. In the house, she could hear Phyllida grumbling to the housekeeper. Nor I with you, said the red-haired fellow, a little sadly, although it was you that brought me here, you and a few like you, into this land with no time for magic and no place for piskies and such folk. Youve done me many a good turn, she said. Good and ill, said the squinting stranger. Were like the wind. We blows both ways. Essie nodded. Will you take my hand, Essie Tregowan? And he reached out a hand to her. Freckled it was, and although Essies eyesight was going she could see each orange hair on the back of his hand, glowing golden in the afternoon sunlight. She bit her lip. Then, hesitantly, she placed her blue-knotted hand in his. She was still warm when they found her, although the life had fled her body and only half the peas were shelled. Madam Lifes a piece in bloom Death goes dogging everywhere: she's the tenant of the room, he's the ruffian on the stair. |
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W. E. Henley, Madam Lifes a Piece in Bloom Only Zorya Utrennyaya was awake to say goodbye to them, that Saturday morning. She took Wednesdays forty-five dollars and insisted on writing him out a receipt for it in wide, looping handwriting, on the back of an expired soft-drink coupon. She looked quite doll-like in the morning light, with her old face carefully made up and her golden hair piled high upon her head. Wednesday kissed her hand. Thank you for your hospitality, dear lady, he said. You and your lively sisters remain as radiant as the sky itself. You are a bad old man, she told him, and shook a finger at him. Then she hugged him. Keep safe, she told him. I would not like to hear that you were gone for good. It would distress me equally, my dear. She shook hands with Shadow. Zorya Polunochnaya thinks very highly of you, she said. I also. Thank you, said Shadow. Thanks for the dinner. She raised an eyebrow at him. You liked? You must come again. Wednesday and Shadow walked down the stairs. Shadow put his hands in his jacket pocket. The silver dollar was cold in his hand. It was bigger and heavier than any coins hed used so far. He classic-palmed it, let his hand hang by his side naturally, then straightened his hand as the coin slipped down to a front-palm position. It felt natural there, held between his forefinger and his little finger by the slightest of pressure. Smoothly done, said Wednesday. I'm just learning, said Shadow. I can do a lot of the technical stuff. The hardest part is making people look at the wrong hand. Is that so? Yes, said Shadow. Its called misdirection. He slipped his middle fingers under the coin, pushing it into a back palm, and fumbled his grip on it, ever so slightly. The coin dropped from his hand to the stairwell with a clatter and bounced down half a flight of stairs. Wednesday reached down and picked it up. You cannot afford to be careless with peoples gifts, said Wednesday. Something like this, you need to hang onto it. don't go throwing it about. He examined the coin, looking first at the eagle side, then at the face of Liberty on the obverse. Ah, Lady Liberty. Beautiful, is she not? He tossed the coin to Shadow, who picked it from the air, did a slide vanishseeming to drop it into his left hand while actually keeping it in his right and then appeared to pocket it with his left hand. The coin sat in the palm of his right hand, in plain view. It felt comforting there. Lady Liberty, said Wednesday. Like so many of the gods that Americans hold dear, a foreigner. In this case, a Frenchwoman, although, in deference to American sensibilities, the French covered up her magnificent bosom on that statue they presented to New York. Liberty, he continued, wrinkling his nose at the used condom that lay on the bottom flight of steps, toeing it to the side of the stairs with distasteSomeone could slip on that. Break his neck, he muttered, interrupting himself. Like a banana peel, only with bad taste and irony thrown in. He pushed open the door, and the sunlight hit them. Liberty, boomed Wednesday, as they walked to the car, is a bitch who must be bedded on a mattress of corpses. Yeah? said Shadow. Quoting, said Wednesday. Quoting someone French. that's who they have a statue to, in their New York harbor: a bitch who liked to be fucked on the refuse from the tumbrel. Hold your torch as high as you want to, mdear, theres still rats in your dress and cold jism dripping down your leg. He unlocked the car, and pointed Shadow to the passenger seat. |
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I'm sorry? said Shadow. I said were here, said Wednesday. You were somewhere else. I was thinking about snow, said Shadow. In Kinkos, Wednesday set about photocopying the deposit slips from the bank. He had the clerk instant-print him two sets of ten business cards. Shadows head had begun to ache, and there was an uncomfortable feeling between his shoulder blades; he wondered if he had slept wrong, if the headache was an awkward legacy of the night befores sofa. Wednesday sat at the computer terminal, composing a letter, and, with the clerks help, making several large-sized signs. Snow, thought Shadow. High in the atmosphere, perfect, tiny crystals that form about a minute piece of dust, each a lacelike work of fractal art. And the snow crystals clump together into flakes as they fall, covering Chicago in their white plenty, inch upon inch Here, said Wednesday. He handed Shadow a cup of Kinkos coffee, a half-dissolved lump of nondairy creamer powder floating on the top, I think that's enough, don't you? Enough what? Enough snow. don't want to immobilize the city, do we? The sky was a uniform battleship gray. Snow was coming. Yes. I didn't really do that? said Shadow. I mean, I didn't. Did I? Drink the coffee, said Wednesday. Its foul stuff, but it will ease the headache. Then he said, Good work. Wednesday paid the Kinkos clerk, and he carried his signs and letters and cards outside. He opened the trunk of his car, put the papers in a large black metal case of the kind carried by payroll guards, and closed the trunk. He passed Shadow a business card. Who, said Shadow, is A. Haddock, Director of Security, A1 Security Services? You are. A. Haddock? Yes. What does the A. stand for? Alfredo? Alphonse? Augustine? Ambrose? Your call entirely. Oh. I see. I'm James OGorman, said Wednesday. Jimmy to my friends. See? I've got a card too. They got back in the car. Wednesday said, If you can think A. Haddock as well as you thought snow, we should have plenty of lovely money with which to wine and dine my friends of tonight. I'm not going back to prison. You won't be. I thought we had agreed that I wouldn't be doing anything illegal. You arent. Possibly aiding and abetting, a little conspiracy to commit, followed of course by receiving stolen money, but, trust me, you'll come out of this smelling like a rose. Is that before or after your elderly Slavic Charles Atlas crushes my skull with one blow? His eyesights going, said Wednesday. Hell probably miss you entirely. Now, we still have a little time to killthe bank closes at midday on Saturdays, after all. Would you like lunch? Yes, said Shadow. I'm starving. I know just the place, said Wednesday. He hummed as he drove, some cheerful song that Shadow could not identify. Snowflakes began to fall, just as Shadow had imagined them, and he felt strangely proud. He knew, rationally, that he had nothing to do with the snow, just as he knew the silver dollar he carried in his pocket was not and never had been the moon. But still They stopped outside a large shedlike building. A sign said that the all-U-can-eat lunch buffet was $4.99. I love this place, said Wednesday. Good food? asked Shadow. Not particularly, said Wednesday. But the ambience is unmissable. The ambience that Wednesday loved, it turned out, once lunch had been eatenShadow had the fried chicken, and enjoyed itwas the business that took up the rear of the shed: it was, the hanging flag across the center of the room announced, a Bankrupt and Liquidated Stock Clearance Depot. |
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he's doing a fine job. Were just concerned because something like this really ought to be done by two personnel. Its risky, having one unarmed guard dealing with such large amounts of money. Tell me about it. Or more to the point, you tell those cheapskates down at the First Illinois about it. These are my men I'm putting on the line, officer. Good men. Men like you. Shadow found himself warming to this identity. He could feel himself becoming Andy Haddock, chewed cheap cigar in his ashtray, a stack of paperwork to get to this Saturday afternoon, a home in Schaumburg and a mistress in a little apartment on Lake Shore Drive. Yknow, you sound like a bright young man, officer, uh Myerson. Officer Myerson. You need a little weekend work, or you wind up leaving the force, any reason, you give us a call. We always need good men. You got my card? Yes sir. You hang onto it, said Andy Haddock. You call me. The police car drove off, and Wednesday shuffled back through the snow to deal with the small line of people who were waiting to give him their money. She okay? asked the manager, putting his head around the door. Your girlfriend? It was the battery, said Shadow. Now I just got to wait. Women, said the manager. I hope yours is worth waiting for. Winter darkness descended, the afternoon slowly graying into night. Lights went on. More people gave Wednesday their money. Suddenly, as if at some signal Shadow could not see, Wednesday walked over to the wall, removed the out-of-order signs, and trudged across the slushy road, heading for the parking lot. Shadow waited a minute, then followed him. Wednesday was sitting in the back of the car. He had opened the metal case, and was methodically laying everything he had been given out on the backseat in neat piles. Drive, he said. Were heading for the First Illinois Bank over on State Street. Repeat performance? asked Shadow. isn't that kind of pushing your luck? Not at all, said Wednesday. Were going to do a little banking. While Shadow drove, Wednesday sat in the backseat and removed the bills from the deposit bags in handfuls, leaving the checks and the credit card slips, and taking the cash from some, although not all, of the envelopes. He dropped the cash back into the metal case. Shadow pulled up outside the bank, stopping the car about fifty yards down the road, well out of camera range. Wednesday got out of the car and pushed the envelopes through the night deposit slot. Then he opened the night safe, and dropped in the gray bags. He closed it again. He climbed into the passenger seat. you're heading for I-90, said Wednesday. Follow the signs west for Madison. Shadow began to drive. Wednesday looked back at the bank they were leaving. There, my boy, he said, cheerfully, that will confuse everything. Now, to get the really big money, you need to do that at about four-thirty on a Sunday morning, when the clubs and the bars drop off their Saturday nights takings. Hit the right bank, the right guy making the drop-offthey tend to pick them big and honest, and sometimes have a couple of bouncers accompany them, but they arent necessarily smart and you can walk away with a quarter of a million dollars for an evenings work. If its that easy, said Shadow, how come everybody doesn't do it? Its not an entirely risk-free occupation, said Wednesday, especially not at four-thirty in the morning. You mean the cops are more suspicious at four-thirty in the morning? Not at all. But the bouncers are. And things can get awkward. |
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He flicked through a sheaf of fifties, added a smaller stack of twenties, weighed them in his hand, then passed them over to Shadow. Here, he said. Your first weeks wages. Shadow pocketed the money without counting it. So, that's what you do? he asked. To make money? Rarely. Only when a great deal of cash is needed fast. On the whole, I make my money from people who never know theyve been taken, and who never complain, and who will frequently line up to be taken when I come back that way again. That Sweeney guy said you were a hustler. He was right. But that is the least of what I am. And the least of what I need you for, Shadow. * * * Snow spun through their headlights and into the windshield as they drove through the darkness. The effect was almost hypnotic. This is the only country in the world, said Wednesday, into the stillness, that worries about what it is. What? The rest of them know what they are. No one ever needs to go searching for the heart of Norway. Or looks for the soul of Mozambique. They know what they are. And? Just thinking out loud. So youve been to lots of other countries, then? Wednesday said nothing. Shadow glanced at him. No, said Wednesday, with a sigh. No. I never have. They stopped for gas, and Wednesday went into the rest room in his security guard jacket and his suitcase, and came out in a crisp, pale suit, brown shoes, and a knee-length brown coat that looked like it might be Italian. So when we get to Madison, what then? Take Highway Fourteen west to Spring Green. Well be meeting everyone at a place called the House on the Rock. You been there? No, said Shadow. But I've seen the signs. The signs for the House on the Rock were all around that part of the world: oblique, ambiguous signs all across Illinois and Minnesota and Wisconsin, probably as far away as Iowa, Shadow suspected, signs alerting you to the existence of the House on the Rock. Shadow had seen the signs, and wondered about them. Did the House balance perilously upon the Rock? What was so interesting about the Rock? About the House? He had given it a passing thought, but then forgotten it. Shadow was not in the habit of visiting roadside attractions. They left the interstate at Madison, and drove past the dome of the capitol building, another perfect snow-globe scene in the falling snow, and then they were off the interstate and driving down country roads. After almost an hour of driving through towns with names like Black Earth, they turned down a narrow driveway, past several enormous, snow-dusted flower pots entwined with lizardlike dragons. The tree-lined parking lot was almost empty. they'll be closing soon, said Wednesday. So what is this place? asked Shadow, as they walked through the parking lot toward a low, unimpressive wooden building. This is a roadside attraction, said Wednesday. One of the finest. Which means it is a place of power. Come again? Its perfectly simple, said Wednesday. In other countries, over the years, people recognized the places of power. Sometimes it would be a natural formation, sometimes it would just be a place that was, somehow, special. They knew that something important was happening there, that there was some focusing point, some channel, some window to the Immanent. And so they would build temples or cathedrals, or erect stone circles, orwell, you get the idea. There are churches all across the States, though, said Shadow. In every town. Sometimes on every block. And about as significant, in this context, as dentists offices. |
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He was a small man, the kind of little old man who looked as if the passing of the years had shrunk him, eating an enormous, many-scooped ice-cream sundae, drinking a supersized mug of coffee. A black cigarillo was burning in the ashtray in front of him. Three coffees, said Wednesday to Shadow. He went to the rest room. Shadow bought the coffees and took them over to Czernobog, who was sitting with the old black man and was smoking a cigarette surreptitiously, as if he were scared of being caught. The other man, happily toying with his sundae, mostly ignored his cigarillo, but as Shadow approached he picked it up, inhaled deeply, and blew two smoke ringsfirst one large one, then another, smaller one, which passed neatly through the first and he grinned, as if he were astonishingly pleased with himself. Shadow, this is Mister Nancy, said Czernobog. The old man got to his feet and thrust out his yellow-gloved right hand. Good to meet you, he said with a dazzling smile. I know who you must be. you're workin for the old one-eye bastard, arent you? There was a faint twang in his voice, a hint of a patois that might have been West Indian. I work for Mister Wednesday, said Shadow. Yes. Please, sit down. Czernobog inhaled on his cigarette. I think, he pronounced, gloomily, that our kind, we like the cigarettes so much because they remind us of the offerings that once they burned for us, the smoke rising up as they sought our approval or our favor. They never gave me nothin like that, said Nancy. Best I could hope for was a pile of fruit to eat, maybe curried goat, something slow and cold and tall to drink, and a big old high-titty woman to keep me company. He grinned white teeth, and winked at Shadow. These days, said Czernobog, his expression unchanged, we have nothing. Well, I don't get anywhere near as much fruit as I used to, said Mr. Nancy, his eyes shining. But there still aint nothin out there in the world for my money that can beat a big old high-titty woman. Some folk you talk to, they say its the booty you got to inspect at first, but I'm here to tell you that its the titties that still crank my engine on a cold mornin. Nancy began to laugh, a wheezing, rattling, good-natured laugh, and Shadow found himself liking the old man despite himself. Wednesday returned from the rest room, and shook hands with Nancy. Shadow, you want something to eat? A slice of pizza? Or a sandwich? I'm not hungry, said Shadow. Let me tell you somethin, said Mr. Nancy. It can be a long time between meals. Someone offers you food, you say yes. I'm no longer young as I was, but I can tell you this, you never say no to the opportunity to piss, to eat, or to get half an hours shut-eye. You follow me? Yes. But I'm really not hungry. you're a big one, said Nancy, staring into Shadows light gray eyes with old eyes the color of mahogany, a tall drink of water, but I got to tell you, you don't look too bright. I got a son, stupid as a man who bought his stupid at a two-for-one sale, and you remind me of him. If you don't mind, I'll take that as a compliment, said Shadow. Being called dumb as a man who slept late the mornin they handed out brains? Being compared to a member of your family. Mr. Nancy stubbed out his cigarillo, then he flicked an imaginary speck of ash off his yellow gloves. You may not be the worst choice old One-Eye could have made, come to that. He looked up at Wednesday. You got any idea how many of us theres goin to be here tonight? I sent the message out to everyone I could find, said Wednesday. |
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Obviously not everyone is going to be able to come. And some of them, with a pointed look at Czernobog, might not want to. But I think we can confidently expect several dozen of us. And the word will travel. They made their way past a display of suits of armor (Victorian fake, pronounced Wednesday as they passed the glassed-in display, modern fake, twelfth-century helm on a seventeenth-century reproduction, fifteenth-century left gauntlet) and then Wednesday pushed through an exit door, circled them around the outside of the building (I cant be doin with all these ins and outs, said Nancy, I'm not as young as I used to be, and I come from warmer climes) along a covered walkway, in through another exit door, and they were in the carousel room. Calliope music played: a Strauss waltz, stirring and occasionally discordant. The wall as they entered was hung with antique carousel horses, hundreds of them, some in need of a lick of paint, others in need of a good dusting; above them hung dozens of winged angels constructed rather obviously from female store-window mannequins; some of them bared their sexless breasts; some had lost their wigs and stared baldly and blindly down from the darkness. And then there was the carousel. A sign proclaimed it was the largest in the world, said how much it weighed, how many thousand lightbulbs were to be found in the chandeliers that hung from it in Gothic profusion, and forbade anyone from climbing on it or from riding on the animals. And such animals! Shadow stared, impressed in spite of himself, at the hundreds of full-sized creatures who circled on the platform of the carousel. Real creatures, imaginary creatures, and transformations of the two: each creature was different. He saw mermaid and merman, centaur and unicorn, elephants (one huge, one tiny), bulldog, frog and phoenix, zebra, tiger, manticore and basilisk, swans pulling a carriage, a white ox, a fox, twin walruses, even a sea serpent, all of them brightly colored and more than real: each rode the platform as the waltz came to an end and a new waltz began. The carousel did not even slow down. Whats it for? asked Shadow. I mean, okay, worlds biggest, hundreds of animals, thousands of lightbulbs, and it goes around all the time, and no one ever rides it. Its not there to be ridden, not by people, said Wednesday. Its there to be admired. Its there to be. Like a prayer wheel goin around and round, said Mr. Nancy. Accumulating power. So where are we meeting everyone? asked Shadow. I thought you said that we were meeting them here. But the place is empty. Wednesday grinned his scary grin. Shadow, he said. you're asking too many questions. You are not paid to ask questions. Sorry. Now, stand over here and help us up, said Wednesday, and he walked over to the platform on one side, with a description of the carousel on it, and a warning that the carousel was not to be ridden. Shadow thought of saying something, but instead he helped them, one by one, up onto the ledge. Wednesday seemed profoundly heavy, Czernobog climbed up himself, only using Shadows shoulder to steady himself, Nancy seemed to weigh nothing at all. Each of the old men climbed out onto the ledge, and then, with a step and a hop, they walked out onto the circling carousel platform. Well? barked Wednesday. Arent you coming? Shadow, not without a certain amount of hesitation, and a hasty look around for any House on the Rock personnel who might be watching, swung himself up onto the ledge beside the Worlds Largest Carousel. |
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Old Monkey he laughs fit to bust, holding his side and shakin, and stampin, then he starts singin Tigers balls, I ate Tigers balls, snappin his fingers, spinnin around on his two feet. that's a fine song, he says, I'm goin to sing it to all my friends. You do that, I tell him, and I head back to the water hole. Theres Tiger, down by the water hole, walkin up and down, with his tail switchin and swishin and his ears and the fur on his neck up as far as they can go, and he's snappin at every insect comes by with his huge old saber teeth, and his eyes flashin orange fire. He looks mean and scary and big, but danglin between his legs, the littlest balls in the littlest blackest most wrinkledy ball-sack you ever did see. Hey, Anansi, he says, when he sees me, you were supposed to be guarding my balls while I went swimming. But when I got out of the swimming hole, there was nothing on the side of the bank but these little black shriveled-up good-for-nothing spider balls I'm wearing. I done my best, I tells him, but it was those monkeys, they come by and eat your balls all up, and when I tell them off, then they pulled off my own little balls. And I was so ashamed I ran away. You a liar, Anansi, says Tiger. I'm going to eat your liver. But then he hears the monkeys coming from their town to the water hole. A dozen happy monkeys, boppin down the path, clickin their fingers and singin as loud as they could sing, Tigers balls, yeah, I ate Tigers balls Now aint nobody gonna stop me ever at all Nobody put me up against the big black wall Cos I ate that Tigers testimonials I ate Tigers balls. And Tiger, he growls, and he roars and he's off into the forest after them, and the monkeys screech and head for the highest trees. And I scratch my nice new big balls, and damn they felt good hangin between my skinny legs, and I walk on home. And even today, Tiger keeps chasin monkeys. So you all remember: just becauseyou're small, doesn't mean you got no power. Mr. Nancy smiled, and bowed his head, and spread his hands, accepting the applause and laughter like a pro, and then he turned and walked back to where Shadow and Czernobog were standing. I thought I said no stories, said Wednesday. You call that a story? said Nancy. I barely cleared my throat. Just warmed them up for you. Go knock them dead. Wednesday walked out into the firelight, a big old man with a glass eye in a brown suit and an old Armani coat. He stood there, looking at the people on the wooden benches, saying nothing for longer than Shadow could believe someone could comfortably say nothing. And, finally, he spoke. You know me, he said. You all know me. Some of you have no cause to love me, but love me or not, you know me. There was a rustling, a stir among the people on the benches. I've been here longer than most of you. Like the rest of you, I figured we could get by on what we got. Not enough to make us happy, but enough to keep going. That may not be the case anymore. Theres a storm coming, and its not a storm of our making. He paused. Now he stepped forward, and folded his arms across his chest. When the people came to America they brought us with them. They brought me, and Loki and Thor, Anansi and the Lion-God, Leprechauns and Kobolds and Banshees, Kubera and Frau Holle and Ashtaroth, and they brought you. We rode here in their minds, and we took root. We traveled with the settlers to the new lands across the ocean. The land is vast. Soon enough, our people abandoned us, remembered us only as creatures of the old land, as things that had not come with them to the new. |
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Our true believers passed on, or stopped believing, and we were left, lost and scared and dispossessed, only what little smidgens of worship or belief we could find. And to get by as best we could. So that's what weve done, gotten by out on the edges of things, where no one was watching us too closely. We have, let us face it and admit it, little influence. We prey on them, and we take from them, and we get by; we strip and we whore and we drink too much; we pump gas and we steal and we cheat and we exist in the cracks at the edges of society. Old gods, here in this new land without gods. Wednesday paused. He looked from one to another of his listeners, grave and statesmanlike. They stared back at him impassively, their faces masklike and unreadable. Wednesday cleared his throat, and he spat, hard into the fire. It flared and flamed, illuminating the inside of the hall. Now, as all of you will have had reason aplenty to discover for yourselves, there are new gods growing in America, clinging to growing knots of belief: gods of credit card and freeway, of Internet and telephone, of radio and hospital and television, gods of plastic and of beeper and of neon. Proud gods, fat and foolish creatures, puffed up with their own newness and importance. They are aware of us, and they fear us, and they hate us, said Odin. You are fooling yourselves if you believe otherwise. They will destroy us, if they can. It is time for us to band together. It is time for us to act. The old woman in the red sari stepped into the firelight. On her forehead was a small dark blue jewel. She said, You called us here for this nonsense? And then she snorted, a snort of mingled amusement and irritation. Wednesdays brows lowered. I called you here, yes. But this is sense, Mama-ji, not nonsense. Even a child could see that. So I am a child, am I? She wagged a finger at him. I was old in Kalighat before you were dreamed of, you foolish man. I am a child? Then I am a child, for there is nothing in your foolish talk to see. Again, a moment of double vision; Shadow saw the old woman, her dark face pinched with age and disapproval, but behind her he saw something huge, a naked woman with skin as black as a new leather jacket, and lips and tongue the bright red of arterial blood. Around her neck were skulls, and her many hands held knives, and swords, and severed heads. I did not call you a child, Mama-ji, said Wednesday, peaceably. But it seems self-evident The only thing that seems self-evident, said the old woman, pointing (as behind her, through her, above her, a black finger, sharp-taloned, pointed in echo), is your own desire for glory. Weve lived in peace in this country for a long time. Some of us do better than others, I agree. I do well. Back in India, there is an incarnation of me who does much better, but so be it. I am not envious. I've watched the new ones rise, and I've watched them fall again. Her hand fell to her side. Shadow saw that the others were looking at her: a mixture of expressionsrespect, amusement, embarrassmentin their eyes. They worshiped the railroads here, only a blink of an eye ago. And now the iron gods are as forgotten as the emerald hunters Make your point, Mama-ji, said Wednesday. My point? Her nostrils flared. The corners of her mouth turned down. I and I am obviously only a childsay that we wait. We do nothing. We don't know that they mean us harm. And will you still counsel waiting when they come in the night and they kill you, or they take you away? |
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Shadow wondered how they had gotten to the House on the Rock in the first place, without their own transportation, and how they were going to get away again, but he said nothing. It seemed the smartest thing to say. Shadow had a carful of Wednesdays guests to ferry to the restaurant: the woman in the red sari sat in the front seat beside him. There were two men in the backseat: the squat, peculiar-looking young man whose name Shadow had not properly caught, but which sounded like Elvis and another man, in a dark suit, who Shadow could not remember. He had stood beside the man as he got into the car, had opened and closed the door for him, and was unable to remember anything about him. He turned around in the drivers seat and looked at him, carefully noting his face, his hair, his clothes, making certain he would know him if he met him again, and turned back to start the car, to find that the man had slipped from his mind. An impression of wealth was left behind, but nothing more. I'm tired, thought Shadow. He glanced to his right and snuck a glance at the Indian woman. He noted the tiny silver necklace of skulls that circled her neck; her charm bracelet of heads and hands that jangled, like tiny bells, when she moved; the dark blue jewel on her forehead. She smelled of spices, of cardamom and nutmeg and flowers. Her hair was pepper-and-salt, and she smiled when she saw him look at her. You call me Mama-ji, she said. I am Shadow, Mama-ji, said Shadow. And what do you think of your employers plans, Mister Shadow? He slowed, as a large black truck sped past, overtaking them with a spray of slush. I don't ask, he don't tell, he said. If you ask me, he wants a last stand. He wants us to go out in a blaze of glory. that's what he wants. And we are old enough, or stupid enough, that maybe some of us will say yes. Its not my job to ask questions, Mama-ji, said Shadow. The inside of the car filled with her tinkling laughter. The man in the backseatnot the peculiar-looking young man, the other onesaid something, and Shadow replied to him, but a moment later he was damned if he could remember what had been said. The peculiar-looking young man had said nothing, but now he started to hum to himself, a deep, melodic bass humming that made the interior of the car vibrate and rattle and buzz. The peculiar-looking man was of average height, but of an odd shape: Shadow had heard of men who were barrel-chested before, but had no image to accompany the metaphor. This man was barrel-chested, and he had legs like, yes, like tree trunks, and hands like, exactly, ham hocks. He wore a black parka with a hood, several sweaters, thick dungarees, and, incongruously, in the winter and with those clothes, a pair of white tennis shoes, which were the same size and shape as shoeboxes. His fingers resembled sausages, with flat, squared-off fingertips. that's some hum you got, said Shadow from the drivers seat. Sorry, said the peculiar young man, in a deep, deep voice, embarrassed. He stopped humming. No, I enjoyed it, said Shadow. don't stop. The peculiar young man hesitated, then commenced to hum once more, his voice as deep and reverberant as before. This time there were words interspersed in the humming. Down down down, he sang, so deeply that the windows rattled. Down down down, down down, down down. Christmas lights were draped across the eaves of every house and building that they drove past. They ranged from discreet golden lights that dripped twinkles to giant displays of snowmen and teddy bears and multicolored stars. |
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Shadow pulled up at the restaurant, a big, barnlike structure, and he let his passengers off by the front door. He drove the car to the back of the parking lot. He wanted to make the short walk back to the restaurant alone, in the cold, to clear his head. He parked the car beside a black truck. He wondered if it was the same one that had sped past him earlier. He closed the car door, and stood there in the parking lot, his breath steaming. Inside the restaurant, Shadow could imagine Wednesday already sitting all his guests down around a big table, working the room. Shadow wondered whether he had really had Kali in the front of his car, wondered what he had been driving in the back Hey bud, you got a match? said a voice that was half familiar, and Shadow turned to apologize and say no, he didn't, but the gun barrel hit him over the left eye, and he started to fall. He put out an arm to steady himself as he went down. Someone pushed something soft into his mouth, to stop him from crying out, and taped it into position: easy, practiced moves, like a butcher gutting a chicken. Shadow tried to shout, to warn Wednesday, to warn them all, but nothing came out of his mouth but a muffled noise. The quarry are all inside, said the half-familiar voice. Everyone in position? A crackle of a voice, half audible through a radio. Lets move in and round them all up. What about the big guy? said another voice. Package him up, take him out, said the first voice. They put a baglike hood over Shadows head, and bound his wrists and ankles with tape, and put him in the back of a truck, and drove him away. * * * There were no windows in the tiny room in which they had locked Shadow. There was a plastic chair, a lightweight folding table, and a bucket with a cover on it, which served Shadow as a makeshift toilet. There was also a six-foot-long strip of yellow foam on the floor, and a thin blanket with a long-since-crusted brown stain in the center: blood or shit or food, Shadow didn't know, and didn't care to investigate. There was a naked bulb behind a metal grille high in the room, but no light switch that Shadow had been able to find. The light was always on. There was no door handle on his side of the door. He was hungry. The first thing he had done, when the spooks had pushed him into the room, after theyd ripped off the tape from his ankles and wrists and mouth and left him alone, was to walk around the room and inspect it, carefully. He tapped the walls. They sounded dully metallic. There was a small ventilation grid at the top of the room. The door was soundly locked. He was bleeding above the left eyebrow in a slow ooze. His head ached. The floor was uncarpeted. He tapped it. It was made of the same metal as the walls. He took the top off the bucket, pissed in it, and covered it once more. According to his watch only four hours had passed since the raid on the restaurant. His wallet was gone, but they had left him his coins. He sat on the chair, at the card table. The table was covered with a cigarette-burned green baize. Shadow practiced appearing to push coins through the table. Then he took two quarters and made up a Pointless Coin Trick. He concealed a quarter in his right palm, and openly displayed the other quarter in his left hand, between finger and thumb. Then he appeared to take the quarter from his left hand, while actually letting it drop back into his left hand. He opened his right hand to display the quarter that had been there all along. |
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The thing about coin manipulation was that it took all Shadows head to do it; or rather, he could not do it if he was angry or upset, so the action of practicing an illusion, even one with, on its own, no possible usefor he had expended an enormous amount of effort and skill to make it appear that he had moved a quarter from one hand to the other, something that it takes no skill whatever to do for realcalmed him, cleared his mind of turmoil and fear. He began a trick even more pointless: a one-handed half-dollar-to-penny transformation, but with his two quarters. Each of the coins was alternately concealed and revealed as the trick progressed: he began with one quarter visible, the other hidden. He raised his hand to his mouth and blew on the visible coin, while slipping it into a classic palm, as the first two fingers took the hidden quarter out and presented it. The effect was that he displayed a quarter in his hand, raised it to his mouth, blew on it, and lowered it again, displaying the same quarter all the while. He did it over and over and over again. He wondered if they were going to kill him, and his hand trembled, just a little, and one of the quarters dropped from his fingertip onto the stained green baize of the card table. And then, because he just couldn't do it anymore, he put the coins away, and took out the Liberty-head dollar that Zorya Polunochnaya had given him, and held onto it tightly, and waited. * * * At three in the morning, by his watch, the spooks returned to interrogate him. Two men in dark suits, with dark hair and shiny black shoes. Spooks. One was square-jawed, wide-shouldered, had great hair, looked like he had played football in high school, badly bitten fingernails; the other had a receding hairline, silver-rimmed round glasses, manicured nails. While they looked nothing alike, Shadow found himself suspecting that on some level, possibly cellular, the two men were identical. They stood on each side of the card table, looking down at him. How long have you been working for Cargo, sir? asked one. I don't know what that is, said Shadow. He calls himself Wednesday. Grimm. Olfather. Old guy. Youve been seen with him, sir. I've been working for him for a couple of days. don't lie to us, sir, said the spook with the glasses. Okay, said Shadow. I wont. But its still a couple of days. The square-jawed spook reached down and twisted Shadows ear between finger and thumb. He squeezed as he twisted. The pain was intense. We told you not to lie to us, sir, he said, mildly. Then he let go. Each of the spooks had a gun bulge under his jacket. Shadow did not try to retaliate. He pretended he was back in prison. Do your own time, thought Shadow. don't tell them anything they don't know already. don't ask questions. These are dangerous peopleyou're palling around with, sir, said the spook with glasses. You will be doing your country a service by turning states evidence. He smiled, sympathetically: I'm the good cop, said the smile. I see, said Shadow. And if you don't want to help us, sir, said the square-jawed spook, you can see what were like when were not happy. He hit Shadow an openhanded blow across the stomach, knocking the breath from him. It wasnt torture, Shadow thought, just punctuation: I'm the bad cop. He retched. I would like to make you happy, said Shadow, as soon as he could speak. All we ask is your cooperation, sir. Can I ask gasped Shadow (dont ask questions, he thought, but it was too late, the words were already spoken), can I ask who I'll be cooperating with? |
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He hoped that they were. The silver dollar remained cold in his left hand. He could feel it there, as it had been during the beating. He wondered idly why it did not warm to his body temperature. Half asleep, now, and half delirious, the coin, and the idea of Liberty, and the moon, and Zorya Polunochnaya somehow became intertwined in one woven beam of silver light that shone from the depths to the heavens, and he rode the silver beam up and away from the pain and the heartache and the fear, away from the pain and, blessedly, back into dreams. From far away he could hear some kind of noise, but it was too late to think about it: he belonged to sleep now. A half-thought: he hoped it was not people coming to wake him up, to hit him or to shout at him. And then, he noticed with pleasure, he was really asleep, and no longer cold. * * * Somebody somewhere was calling for help, loudly, in his dream or out of it. Shadow rolled over on the foam rubber, in his sleep, finding new places that hurt as he rolled. Someone was shaking his shoulder. He wanted to ask them not to wake him, to let him sleep and leave him be, but it came out as a grunt. Puppy? said Laura. You have to wake up. Please wake up, hon. And there was a moments gentle relief. He had had such a strange dream, of prisons and con men and down-at-heel gods, and now Laura was waking him to tell him it was time for work, and perhaps there would be time enough before work to steal some coffee and a kiss, or more than a kiss; and he put out his hand to touch her. Her flesh was cold as ice, and sticky. Shadow opened his eyes. Where did all the blood come from? he asked. Other people, she said. Its not mine. I'm filled with formaldehyde, mixed with glycerin and lanolin. Which other people? he asked. The guards, she said. Its okay. I killed them. You better move. I don't think I gave anyone a chance to raise the alarm. Take a coat from out there, or you'll freeze your butt off. You killed them? She shrugged, and half smiled, awkwardly. Her hands looked as if she had been finger-painting, composing a picture that had been executed solely in crimsons, and there were splashes and spatters on her face and clothes (the same blue suit in which she had been buried) that made Shadow think of Jackson Pollock, because it was less problematic to think of Jackson Pollock than to accept the alternative. Its easier to kill people, whenyou're dead yourself, she told him. I mean, its not such a big deal. you're not so prejudiced anymore. Its still a big deal to me, said Shadow. You want to stay here until the morning crew comes? she said. You can if you like. I thought youd like to get out of here. they'll think I did it, he said, stupidly. Maybe, she said. Put on a coat, hon. you'll freeze. He walked out into the corridor. At the end of the corridor was a guardroom. In the guardroom were four dead men: three guards, and the man who had called himself Stone. His friend was nowhere to be seen. From the blood-colored skid marks on the floor, two of them had been dragged into the guardroom and dropped onto the floor. His own coat was hanging from the coat rack. His wallet was still in the inside pocket, apparently untouched. Laura pulled open a couple of cardboard boxes filled with candy bars. The guards, now he could see them properly, were wearing dark camouflage uniforms, but there were no official tags on them, nothing to say who they were working for. They might have been weekend duck hunters, dressed for the shoot. |
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Laura reached out her cold hand and squeezed Shadows hand in hers. She had the gold coin he had given her around her neck, on a golden chain. That looks nice, he said. Thanks. She smiled, prettily. What about the others, he asked. Wednesday, and the rest of them? Where are they? Laura passed him a handful of candy bars, and he filled his pockets with them. There wasnt anybody else here. A lot of empty cells, and one with you in it. Oh, and one of the men had gone into the cell down there to jack off with a magazine. He got such a shock. You killed him while he was jerking himself off? She shrugged. I guess, she said, uncomfortably. I was worried they were hurting you. Someone has to watch out for you, and I told you I would, didn't I? Here, take these. They were chemical hand and foot warmers: thin padsyou broke the seal and they heated up and stayed that way for hours. Shadow pocketed them. Look out for me? Yes, he said, you did. She reached out a finger, stroked him above his left eyebrow. you're hurt, she said. I'm okay, he said. He opened a metal door in the wall. It swung open slowly. There was a four-foot drop to the ground, and he swung himself down to what felt like gravel. He picked up Laura by the waist, swung her down, as he used to swing her, easily, without a second thought The moon came out from behind a thick cloud. It was low on the horizon, ready to set, but the light it cast onto the snow was enough to see by. They had emerged from what turned out to be the black-painted metal car of a long freight train, parked or abandoned in a woodland siding. The series of wagon cars went on as far as he could see, into the trees and away. He had been on a train. He should have known. How the hell did you find me here? he asked his dead wife. She shook her head slowly, amused. You shine like a beacon in a dark world, she told him. It wasnt that hard. Now, just go. Go as far and as fast as you can. don't use your credit cards and you should be fine. Where should I go? She pushed a hand through her matted hair, flicking it back out of her eyes. The roads that way, she told him. Do whatever you can. Steal a car if you have to. Go south. Laura, he said, and hesitated. Do you know whats going on? Do you know who these people are? Who you killed? Yeah, she said. I think I do know. I owe you, said Shadow. I'd still be in there if it wasnt for you. I don't think they had anything good planned for me. No, she said. I don't think they did. They walked away from the empty train cars. Shadow wondered about the other trains hed seen, blank window-less metal cars that went on for mile after mile, hooting their lonely way through the night. His fingers closed around the Liberty dollar in his pocket, and he remembered Zorya Polunochnaya, and the way she had looked at him in the moonlight. Did you ask her what she wanted? It is the wisest thing to ask the dead. Sometimes they will tell you. LauraWhat do you want? he asked. You really want to know? Yes. Please. Laura looked up at him with dead blue eyes. I want to be alive again, she said. Not in this half-life, I want to be really alive. I want to feel my heart pumping in my chest again. I want to feel blood moving through mehot, and salty, and real. Its weird, you don't think you can feel it, the blood, but believe me, when it stops flowing, you'll know. She rubbed her eyes, smudging her face with red from the mess on her hands. Look, its hard. You know why dead people only go out at night, puppy? Because its easier to pass for real, in the dark. |
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And I don't want to have to pass. I want to be alive. I don't understand what you want me to do. Make it happen, hon. you'll figure it out. I know you will. Okay, he said. I'll try. And if I do figure it out, how do I find you? But she was gone, and there was nothing left in the woodland but a gentle gray in the sky to show him where east was, and on the bitter December wind a lonely wail that might have been the cry of the last nightbird or the call of the first bird of dawn. Shadow set his face to the south, and he began to walk. As the Hindu gods are immortal only in a very particular sensefor they are born and they diethey experience most of the great human dilemmas and often seem to differ from mortals in a few trivial details and from demons even less. Yet they are regarded by the Hindus as a class of beings by definition totally different from any other; they are symbols in a way that no human being, however archetypal his life story, can ever be. They are actors playing parts that are real only for us; they are the masks behind which we see our own faces. Wendy Doniger OFlaherty, Introduction, Hindu Myths (Penguin Books, 1975) Shadow had been walking south, or what he hoped was more or less south, for several hours, heading along a narrow and unmarked road through the woods somewhere in, he imagined, southern Wisconsin. A couple of jeeps came down the road toward him at one point, headlights blazing, and he ducked into the trees until they had passed. The early morning mist hung at waist level. The cars were black. When, thirty minutes later, he heard the noise of distant helicopters coming from the west, he struck out away from the timber trail and into the woods. There were two helicopters, and he lay crouched in a hollow beneath a fallen tree and listened to them pass over. As they moved away, he looked out and looked up for one hasty glance at the gray winter sky. He was satisfied to observe that the helicopters were painted a matte black. He waited beneath the tree until the noise of the helicopters was completely gone. Under the trees the snow was little more than a dusting, which crunched underfoot. He was deeply grateful for the chemical hand and feet warmers, which kept his extremities from freezing. Beyond that, he was numb: heart-numb, mind-numb, soul-numb. And the, numbness, he realized, went a long way down, and a long way back. So what do I want? he asked himself. He couldn't answer, so he just kept on walking, a step at a time, on and on through the woods. Trees looked familiar, moments of landscape were perfectly deja-vued. Could he be walking in circles? Maybe he would just walk and walk and walk until the warmers and the candy bars ran out and then sit down and never get up again. He reached a large stream, of the kind the locals called a creek and pronounced crick, and decided to follow it. Streams led to rivers, rivers all led to the Mississippi, and if he kept walking, or stole a boat or built a raft, eventually hed get to New Orleans, where it was warm, an idea that seemed both comforting and unlikely. There were no more helicopters. He had the feeling that the ones that had passed overhead had been cleaning up the mess at the freight train siding, not hunting for him, otherwise they would have returned; there would have been tracker dogs and sirens and the whole paraphernalia of pursuit. Instead, there was nothing. What did he want? Not to get caught. Not to get blamed for the deaths of the men on the train. |
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It wasnt me, he heard himself saying, it was my dead wife. He could imagine the expressions on the faces of the law officers. Then people could argue about whether he was crazy or not while he went to the chair He wondered whether Wisconsin had the death penalty. He wondered whether that would matter. He wanted to understand what was going on and to find out how it was all going to end. And finally, producing a half-rueful grin, he realized that most of all he wanted everything to be normal. He wanted never to have gone to prison, for Laura still to be alive, for none of this ever to have happened. I'm afraid that's not exactly an option, mboy, he thought to himself, in Wednesdays gruff voice, and he nodded agreement. Not an option. You burned your bridges. So keep walking. Do your own time A distant woodpecker drummed against a rotten tree. Shadow became aware of eyes on him: a handful of red cardinals stared at him from a skeletal elder bush, then returned to pecking at the clusters of black elderberries. They looked like the illustrations in the Songbirds of North America calendar. He heard the birds video-arcade trills and zaps and whoops follow him along the side of the creek. Eventually, they faded away. The dead fawn lay in a glade in the shadow of a hill, and a black bird the size of a small dog was picking at its side with a large, wicked beak, rending and tearing gobbets of red meat from the corpse. The animals eyes were gone, but its head was untouched, and white fawn spots were visible on its rump. Shadow wondered how it had died. The black bird cocked its head onto one side, and then said, in a voice like stones being struck, You shadow man. I'm Shadow, said Shadow. The bird hopped up onto the fawns rump, raised its head, ruffled its crown and neck feathers. It was enormous and its eyes were black beads. There was something intimidating about a bird that size, this close. Says he will see you in Kay-ro, tokked the raven. Shadow wondered which of Odins ravens this was: Huginn or Muninn, Memory or Thought. Kay-ro? he asked. In Egypt. How am I going to go to Egypt? Follow Mississippi. Go south. Find Jackal. Look, said Shadow, I don't want to seem like I'm Jesus, look he paused. Regrouped. He was cold, standing in a wood, talking to a big black bird who was currently brunching on Bambi. Okay. What I'm trying to say is I don't want mysteries. Mysteries, agreed the bird, helpfully. What I want is explanations. Jackal in Kay-ro. This does not help me. Its a line from a bad spy thriller. Jackal. Friend. Tok. Kay-ro. So you said. I'd like a little more information than that. The bird half turned, and pulled another strip of raw venison from the fawns ribs. Then it flew off into the trees, the red strip dangling from its beak like a long, bloody worm. Hey! Can you at least get me back to a real road? called Shadow. The raven flew up and away. Shadow looked at the corpse of the baby deer. He decided that if he were a real woodsman, he would slice off a steak and grill it over a wood fire. Instead, he sat on a fallen tree and ate a Snickers bar and knew that he really wasnt a real woodsman. The raven cawed from the edge of the clearing. You want me to follow you? asked Shadow. Or has Timmy fallen down another well? The bird cawed again, impatiently. Shadow started walking toward it. It waited until he was close, then flapped heavily into another tree, heading somewhat to the left of the way Shadow had originally been going. Hey, said Shadow. |
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Huginn or Muninn, or whoever you are. The bird turned, head tipped, suspiciously, on one side, and it stared at him with bright eyes. Say Nevermore, said Shadow. Fuck you, said the raven. It said nothing else as they went through the woodland together. In half an hour they reached a blacktop road on the edge of a town, and the raven flew back into the wood. Shadow observed a Culvers Frozen Custard Butterburgers sign, and, next to it, a gas station. He went into the Culvers, which was empty of customers. There was a keen young man with a shaven head behind the cash register. Shadow ordered two butterburgers and french fries. Then he went into the rest room to clean up. He looked a real mess. He did an inventory of the contents of his pockets: he had a few coins, including the silver Liberty dollar, a disposable toothbrush and toothpaste, three Snickers bars, five chemical heater pads, a wallet (with nothing more in it than his drivers license and a credit cardhe wondered how much longer the credit card had to live), and in the coats inside pocket, a thousand dollars in fifties and twenties, his take from yesterdays bank job. He washed his face and hands in hot water, slicked down his dark hair, then went back into the restaurant and ate his burgers and fries and drank his coffee. He went back to the counter. You want frozen custard? asked the keen young man. No. No thanks. Is there anywhere around here I could rent a car? My car died, back down the road a way. The young man scratched his head-stubbled. Not around here, Mister. If your car died you could call Triple-A. Or talk to the gas station next door about a tow. A fine idea, said Shadow. Thanks. He walked across the melting snow, from the Culvers parking lot to the gas station. He bought candy bars and beef jerky sticks and more chemical hand and feet warmers. Anywhere hereabouts I could rent a car? he asked the woman behind the cash register. She was immensely plump, and bespectacled, and was delighted to have someone to talk to. Let me think, she said. Were kind of out of the way here. They do that kind of thing over in Madison. Where you going? Kay-ro, he said. Wherever that is. I know where that is, she said. Hand me an Illinois map from that rack over there. Shadow passed her a plastic-coated map. She unfolded it, then pointed in triumph to the bottom-most corner of the state. There it is. Cairo? that's how they pronounce the one in Egypt. But the one in Little Egypt, they call that one Kayro. They got a Thebes down there, all sorts. My sister-in-law comes from Thebes. I asked her about the one in Egypt, she looked at me as if I had a screw loose. The woman chuckled like a drain. Any pyramids? The city was five hundred miles away, almost directly south. Not that they ever told me. They call it Little Egypt because back, oh, mebbe a hundred, hundred and fifty years back, there was a famine all over. Crops failed. But they didn't fail down there. So everyone went there to buy food. Like in the Bible. Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat. Off we go to Egypt, bad-a-boom. So if you were me, and you needed to get there, how would you go? asked Shadow. Drive. Car died a few miles down the road. It was a pieceashit if you'll pardon my language, said Shadow. Pee-Oh-Esses, she said. Yup. that's what my brother-in-law calls em. He buys and sells cars in a small way. Hell call me up, say Mattie, I just sold another Pee-Oh-Ess. Say, maybe hed be interested in your old car. For scrap or something. |
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The buffalo-headed man reached a hand into the fire, stirring the embers and the broken branches into a blaze. The storm is coming, he said. Now there was ash on his hands, and he wiped it onto his hairless chest, leaving soot-black streaks. So you people keep telling me. Can I ask you a question? There was a pause. A fly settled on the furry forehead. The buffalo man flicked it away. Ask. Is this true? Are these people really gods? Its all so He paused. Then he said, impossible, which was not exactly the word he had been going for but seemed to be the best he could do. What are gods? asked the buffalo man. I don't know, said Shadow. There was a tapping, relentless and dull. Shadow waited for the buffalo man to say something more, to explain what gods were, to explain the whole tangled nightmare that his life seemed to have become. He was cold. Tap. Tap. Tap. Shadow opened his eyes, and, groggily, sat up. He was freezing, and the sky outside the car was the deep luminescent purple that divides the dusk from the night. Tap. Tap. Someone said, Hey, mister,, and Shadow turned his head. The someone was standing beside the car, no more than a darker shape against the darkling sky. Shadow reached out a hand and cranked down the window a few inches. He made some waking-up noises, and then he said, Hi. You all right? You sick? You been drinking? The voice was higha womans or a boys. I'm fine, said Shadow. Hold on. He opened the door, and got out, stretching his aching limbs and neck as he did so. Then he rubbed his hands together, to get the blood circulating and to warm them up. Whoa. you're pretty big. that's what they tell me, said Shadow. Who are you? I'm Sam, said the voice. Boy Sam or girl Sam? Girl Sam. I used to be Sammi with an i, and I'd do a smiley face over the i, but then I got completely sick of it because like absolutely everybody was doing it, so I stopped. Okay, girl Sam. You go over there, and look out at the road. Why? Are you a crazed killer or something? No, said Shadow, I need to take a leak and I'd like just the smallest amount of privacy. Oh. Right. Okay. Got it. No problem. I am so with you. I cant even pee if theres someone in the next stall. Major shy bladder syndrome. Now, please. She walked to the far side of the car, and Shadow took a few steps closer to the field, unzipped his jeans, and pissed against a fence post for a very long time. He walked back to the car. The last of the gloaming had become night. You still there? he asked. Yes, she said. You must have a bladder like Lake Erie. I think empires rose and fell in the time it took you to pee. I could hear it the whole time. Thank you. Do you want something? Well, I wanted to see if you were okay. I mean, if you were dead or something I would have called the cops. But the windows were kind of fogged up so I thought, well, he's probably still alive. You live around here? Nope. Hitchhiking down from Madison. that's not safe. I've done it five times a year for three years now. I'm still alive. Where are you headed? I'm going as far as Cairo. Thank you, she said. I'm going to El Paso. Staying with my aunt for the holidays. I cant take you all the way, said Shadow. Not El Paso, Texas. The other one, in Illinois. Its a few hours south. You know where you are now? No, said Shadow. I have no idea. Somewhere on Highway Fifty-two? The next towns Peru, said Sam. Not the one in Peru. The one in Illinois. Let me smell you. Bend down. Shadow bent down, and the girl sniffed his face. |
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Okay. I don't smell booze. You can drive. Let's go. What makes you think I'm giving you a ride? Because I'm a damsel in distress, she said. And you are a knight in whatever. A really dirty car. You know someone wrote Wash me! on your rear window? Shadow got into the car and opened the passenger door. The light that goes on in cars when the front door is opened did not go on in this car. No, he said, I didn't. She climbed in. It was me, she said. I wrote it. While there was still enough light to see. Shadow started the car, turned on the headlights, and headed back onto the road. Left, said Sam helpfully. Shadow turned left, and he drove. After several minutes the heater started to work, and blessed warmth filled the car. You haven't said anything yet, said Sam. Say something. Are you human? asked Shadow. An honest-to-goodness, born-of-man-and-woman, living, breathing human being? Sure, she said. Okay. Just checking. So what would you like me to say? Something to reassure me, at this point. I suddenly have that oh shit I'm in the wrong car with a crazy man feeling. Yeah, he said. I've had that one. What would you find reassuring? Just tell meyou're not an escaped convict or a mass murderer or something. He thought for a moment. You know, I'm really not. You had to think about it though, didn't you? Done my time. Never killed anybody. Oh. They entered a small town, lit up by streetlights and blinking Christmas decorations, and Shadow glanced to his right. The girl had a tangle of short dark hair and a face that was both attractive and, he decided, faintly mannish: her features might have been chiseled out of rock. She was looking at him. What were you in prison for? I hurt a couple of people real bad. I got angry. Did they deserve it? Shadow thought for a moment. I thought so at the time. Would you do it again? Hell, no. I lost three years of my life in there. Mm. You got Indian blood in you? Not that I know of. You looked like it, was all. Sorry to disappoint you. Sokay. You hungry? Shadow nodded. I could eat, he said. Theres a good place just past the next set of lights. Good food. Cheap, too. Shadow pulled up in the parking lot. They got out of the car. He didn't bother to lock it, although he pocketed the keys. He pulled out some coins to buy a newspaper. Can you afford to eat here? he asked. Yeah, she said, raising her chin. I can pay for myself. Shadow nodded. Tell you what. I'll toss you for it, he said. Heads you pay for my dinner, tails, I pay for yours. Let me see the coin first, she said, suspiciously. I had an uncle had a double-headed quarter. She inspected it, satisfied herself there was nothing strange about the quarter. Shadow placed the coin head up on his thumb and cheated the toss, so it wobbled and looked like it was spinning, then he caught it and flipped it over onto the back of his left hand, and uncovered it with his right, in front of her. Tails, she said, happily. Dinners on you. Yup, he said. You cant win them all. Shadow ordered the meat loaf, Sam ordered lasagna. Shadow flipped through the newspaper to see if there was anything in it about dead men in a freight train. There wasnt. The only story of interest was on the cover: crows in record numbers were infesting the town. Local farmers wanted to hang dead crows around the town on public buildings to frighten the others away; ornithologists said that it wouldn't work, that the living crows would simply eat the dead ones. The locals were implacable. When they see the corpses of their friends, said a spokesman, they'll know that we don't want them here. |
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I thought that was the Devil. Yeah, him too. But they were talking about Herodotus saying there were giant ants and gryphons guarding gold mines, and how he made this stuff up. I don't think so. He wrote what hed been told. Its like, he's writing these histories. Andyou're mostly pretty good histories. Loads of weird little detailslike, did you know, in Egypt, if a particularly beautiful girl or the wife of a lord or whatever died, they wouldn't send her to the embalmer for three days? Theyd let her body spoil in the heat first. Why? Oh, hold on. Okay, I think I know why. Oh, that's disgusting. And therere battles in there, all sorts of normal things. And then there are the gods. Some guy is running back to report on the outcome of a battle and he's running and running, and he sees Pan in a glade. And Pan says, Tell them to build me a temple here. So he says okay, and runs the rest of the way back. And he reports the battle news, and then says, Oh, and by the way, Pan wants you to build him a temple. Its really matter-of-fact, you know? So there are stories with gods in them. What are you trying to say? That these guys had hallucinations? No, said Shadow. that's not it. She chewed a hangnail. I read some book about brains, she said. My roommate had it and she kept waving it around. It was like, how five thousand years ago the lobes of the brain fused and before that people thought when the right lobe of the brain said anything it was the voice of some god telling them what to do. Its just brains. I like my theory better, said Shadow. Whats your theory? That back then people used to run into the gods from time to time. Oh. Silence: only the rattling of the car, the roar of the engine, the growling of the mufflerwhich did not sound healthy. Then, Do you thinkyou're still there? Where? Greece. Egypt. The islands. Those places. Do you think if you walked where those people walked youd see the gods? Maybe. But I don't think peopled know that was what theyd seen. I bet its like space aliens, she said. These days, people see space aliens. Back then they saw gods. Maybe the space aliens come from the right side of the brain. I don't think the gods ever gave rectal probes, said Shadow. And they didn't mutilate cattle themselves. They got people to do it for them. She chuckled. They drove in silence for a few minutes, and then she said, Hey, that reminds me of my favorite god story, from Comparative Religion One-oh-one. You want to hear it? Sure, said Shadow. Okay. This is one about Odin. The Norse god. You know? There was some Viking king on a Viking shipthis was back in the Viking times, obviously and they were becalmed, so he says hell sacrifice one of his men to Odin if Odin will send them a wind and get them to land. Okay. The wind comes up, and they get to land. So, on land, they draw lots to figure out who gets sacrificed and its the king himself. Well, he's not happy about this, but they figure out that they can hang him in effigy and not hurt him. They take a calfs intestines and loop them loosely around the guys neck, and they tie the other end to a thin branch, and they take a reed instead of a spear and poke him with it and go Okay, youve been hunghanged? whateveryouve been sacrificed to Odin. The road curved: Another Town (pop. 300), home of the runner-up to the state under-12s speed-skating championship, two huge giant-economy-sized funeral parlors on each side of the road, and how many funeral parlors do you need, Shadow wondered, when you only have three hundred people? |
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Okay. As soon as they say Odins name, the reed transforms into a spear and stabs the guy in the side, the calf intestines become a thick rope, the branch becomes the bough of a tree, and the tree pulls up, and the ground drops away, and the king is left hanging there to die with a wound in his side and his face going black. End of story. White people have some fucked-up gods, Mister Shadow. Yes, said Shadow. you're not white? I'm Cherokee, she said. Full-blooded? Nope. Only four pints. My mom was white. My dad was a real reservation Indian. He came out this way, eventually married my mom, had me, then when they split he went back to Oklahoma. He went back to the reservation? No. He borrowed money and opened a Taco Bell knock-off called Taco Bills. He does okay. He doesn't like me. Says I'm half-breed. I'm sorry. he's a jerk. I'm proud of my Indian blood. It helps pay my college tuition. Hell, one day itll probably help get me a job, if I cant sell my bronzes. Theres always that, said Shadow. He stopped in El Paso, Illinois (pop. 2500), to let Sam out at a down-at-heel house on the edge of the town. A large wire-framed model of a reindeer covered in twinkling lights stood in the front yard. You want to come in? she asked. My aunt would give you a coffee. No, he said. I've got to keep moving. She smiled at him, looking suddenly, and for the first time, vulnerable. She patted him on the arm. you're fucked up, Mister. Butyou're cool. I believe that's what they call the human condition, said Shadow. Thanks for the company. No problem, she said. If you see any gods on the road to Cairo, you make sure and say hi to them from me. She got out of the car, and went to the door of the house. She pressed a doorbell and stood there at the door without looking back. Shadow waited until the door was opened and she was safely inside before he put his foot down and headed back for the highway. He passed through Normal, and Bloomington, and Lawndale. At eleven that night Shadow started shaking. He was just entering Middletown. He decided he needed sleep, or just not to drive any longer, and he pulled up in front of a Nights Inn, paid thirty-five dollars, cash in advance, for his ground-floor room, and went into the bathroom. A sad cockroach lay on its back in the middle of the tiled floor. Shadow took a towel and cleaned off the inside of the tub, then ran the water. In the main room he took off his clothes and put them on the bed. The bruises on his torso were dark and vivid. He sat in the tub, watching the color of the bathwater change. Then, naked, he washed his socks and briefs and T-shirt in the basin, wrung them out, and hung them on the clothesline that pulled out from the wall above the bathtub. He left the cockroach where it was, out of respect for the dead. Shadow climbed into the bed. He wondered about watching an adult movie, but the pay-per-view device by the phone needed a credit card, and it was too risky. Then again, he was not convinced that it would make him feel any better to watch other people have sex that he wasnt having. He turned on the TV for company, pressed the sleep button on the remote three times, which would make the TV set turn itself off automatically in forty-five minutes. It was a quarter to midnight. The picture was motel-fuzzy, and the colors swam across the screen. He flipped from late show to late show in the televisual wasteland, unable to focus. Someone was demonstrating something that did something in the kitchen, and replaced a dozen other kitchen utensils, none of which Shadow possessed. |
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Flip. A man in a suit explained that these were the end times and that Jesusa four or five-syllable word the way the man pronounced itwould make Shadows business prosper and thrive if Shadow sent him money. Flip. An episode of M*A*S*H ended and a Dick Van Dyke Show began. Shadow hadn't seen an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show for years, but there was something comforting about the 1965 black-and-white world it painted, and he put the channel changer down beside the bed, and turned off the bedside light. He watched the show, eyes slowly closing, aware that something was odd. He had not seen many episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show, so he was not surprised that it was an episode he could not remember seeing before. What he found strange was the tone. All the regulars were concerned about Robs drinking. He was missing days at work. They went to his home: he had locked himself in the bedroom, and had to be persuaded to come out. He was staggering drunk, but still pretty funny. His friends, played by Morey Amsterdam and Rose Marie, left after getting some good gags in. Then, when Robs wife went to remonstrate with him, he hit her, hard, in the face. She sat down on the floor and began to cry, not in that famous Mary Tyler Moore wail, but in small, helpless sobs, hugging herself and whispering, don't hit me, please, I'll do anything, just don't hit me anymore. What the fuck is this? said Shadow, aloud. The picture dissolved into phosphor-dot fuzz. When it came back, The Dick Van Dyke Show had, inexplicably, become I Love Lucy. Lucy was trying to persuade Ricky to let her replace their old icebox with a new refrigerator. When he left, however, she walked over to the couch and sat down, crossing her ankles, resting her hands in her lap, and staring out patiently in black and white across the years. Shadow? she said. We need to talk. Shadow said nothing. She opened her purse and took out a cigarette, lit it with an expensive silver lighter, put the lighter away. I'm talking to you, she said. Well? This is crazy, said Shadow. Like the rest of your life is sane? Give me a fucking break. Whatever. Lucille Ball talking to me from the TV is weirder by several orders of magnitude than anything that's happened to me so far, said Shadow. Its not Lucille Ball. Its Lucy Ricardo. And you know somethingI'm not even her. Its just an easy way to look, given the context. that's all. She shifted uncomfortably on the sofa. Who are you? asked Shadow. Okay, she said. Good question. I'm the idiot box. I'm the TV. I'm the all-seeing eye and the world of the cathode ray: I'm the boob tube. I'm the little shrine the family gathers to adore. you're the television? Or someone in the television? The TVs the altar. I'm what people are sacrificing to. What do they sacrifice? asked Shadow. Their time, mostly, said Lucy. Sometimes each other. She raised two fingers, blew imaginary gunsmoke from the tips. Then she winked, a big old I Love Lucy wink. you're a god? said Shadow. Lucy smirked, and took a ladylike puff of her cigarette. You could say that, she said. Sam says hi, said Shadow. What? Whos Sam? What are you talking about? Shadow looked at his watch. It was twenty-five past twelve. doesn't matter, he said. So, Lucy-on-the-TV. What do we need to talk about? Too many people have needed to talk recently. Normally it ends with someone hitting me. The camera moved in for a close-up: Lucy looked concerned, her lips pursed. I hate that. I hate that people were hurting you, Shadow. |
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He finds it confusing, claustrophobic, expensive, alien. Fuad is Salims sisters husband. He is not a rich man, but he is the co-owner of a small trinket factory. Everything is made for export, to other Arab countries, to Europe, to America. Salim has been working for Fuad for six months. Fuad scares him a little. The tone of Fuads faxes is becoming harsher. In the evening, Salim sits in his hotel room, reading his Quran, telling himself that this will pass, that his stay in this strange world is limited and finite. His brother-in-law gave him a thousand dollars for miscellaneous traveling expenses and the money, which seemed so huge a sum when first he saw it, is evaporating faster than Salim can believe. When he first arrived, scared of being seen as a cheap Arab, he tipped everyone, handing extra dollar bills to everyone he encountered; and then he decided that he was being taken advantage of, that perhaps they were even laughing at him, and he stopped tipping entirely. On his first and only journey by subway he got lost and confused, and missed his appointment; now he takes taxis only when he has to, and the rest of the time he walks. He stumbles into overheated offices, his cheeks numb from the cold outside, sweating beneath his coat, shoes soaked by slush; and when the winds blow down the avenues (which run from north to south, as the streets run west to east, all so simple, and Salim always knows where to face Mecca) he feels a cold on his exposed skin that is so intense it is like being struck. He never eats at the hotel (for while the hotel bill is being covered by Fuads business partners, he must pay for his own food); instead he buys food at falafel houses and at little food stores, smuggles it up to the hotel beneath his coat for days before he realizes that no one cares. And even then he feels strange about carrying the bags of food into the dimly lit elevators (Salim always has to bend and squint to find the button to press to take him to his floor) and up to the tiny white room in which he stays. Salim is upset. The fax that was waiting for him when he woke this morning was curt, and alternately chiding, stem, and disappointed: Salim was letting them downhis sister, Fuad, Fuads business partners, the Sultanate of Oman, the whole Arab world. Unless he was able to get the orders, Fuad would no longer consider it his obligation to employ Salim. They depended upon him. His hotel was too expensive. What was Salim doing with their money, living like a sultan in America? Salim read the fax in his room (which has always been too hot and stifling, so last night he opened a window, and was now too cold) and sat there for a time, his face frozen into an expression of complete misery. Then Salim walks downtown, holding his sample case as if it contained diamonds and rubies, trudging through the cold for block after block until, on Broadway and 19th Street, he finds a squat building over a deli. He walks up the stairs to the fourth floor, to the office of Panglobal Imports. The office is dingy, but he knows that Panglobal handles almost half of the ornamental souvenirs that enter the U. S. from the Far East. A real order, a significant order from Panglobal, could redeem Salims journey, could make the difference between failure and success, so Salim sits on an uncomfortable wooden chair in an outer office, his sample case balanced on his lap, staring at the middle-aged woman with her hair dyed too bright a red who sits behind the desk, blowing her nose on Kleenex after Kleenex. |
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A battered yellow taxi draws up beside him and, grateful to be able to abandon his train of thought, Salim gets in. The backseat is patched with gray duct tape; the half-open Plexiglas barrier is covered with notices warning him not to smoke, telling him how much to pay to get to the various airports. The recorded voice of somebody famous he has never heard of tells him to remember to wear his seat belt. The Paramount Hotel, please, says Salim. The cabdriver grunts and pulls away from the curb, into the traffic. He is unshaven, and he wears a thick, dust-colored sweater and black plastic sunglasses. The weather is gray, and night is falling: Salim wonders if the man has a problem with his eyes. The wipers smear the street scene into grays and smudged lights. From nowhere, a truck pulls out in front of them, and the cabdriver swears, by the beard of the prophet. Salim stares at the name on the dashboard, but he cannot make it out from here. How long have you been driving a cab, my friend? he asks the man, in his own language. Ten years, says the driver, in the same tongue. Where are you from? Muscat, says Salim. In Oman. From Oman. I have been in Oman. It was a long time ago. Have you heard of the city of Ubar? asks the taxi driver. Indeed I have, says Salim. The Lost City of Towers. They found it in the desert five, ten years ago, I do not remember exactly. Were you with the expedition that excavated it? Something like that. It was a good city, says the taxi driver. On most nights there would be three, maybe four thousand people camped there: every traveler would rest at Ubar, and the music would play, and the wine would flow like water and the water would flow as well, which was why the city existed. That is what I have heard, says Salim. And it perished, what, a thousand years ago? Two thousand? The taxi driver says nothing. They are stopped at a red traffic light. The light turns green, but the driver does not move, despite the immediate discordant blare of horns behind them. Hesitantly, Salim reaches through the hole in the Plexiglas and he touches the driver on the shoulder. The mans head jerks up, with a start, and he puts his foot down on the gas, lurching them across the intersection. Fuckshitfuckfuck, he says, in English. You must be very tired, my friend, says Salim. I have been driving this Allah-forgotten taxi for thirty hours, says the driver. It is too much. Before that, I sleep for five hours, and I drove fourteen hours before that. We are shorthanded, before Christmas. I hope you have made a lot of money, says Salim. The driver sighs. Not much. This morning I drove a man from Fifty-first Street to Newark Airport. When we got there, he ran off into the airport, and I could not find him again. A fifty-dollar fare gone, and I had to pay the tolls on the way back myself. Salim nods. I had to spend today waiting to see a man who will not see me. My brother-in-law hates me. I have been in America for a week, and it has done nothing but eat my money. I sell nothing. What do you sell? Shit, says Salim. Worthless gewgaws and baubles and tourist trinkets. Horrible, cheap, foolish, ugly shit. The taxi driver wrenches the wheel to the right, swings around something, drives on. Salim wonders how he can see to drive, between the rain, the night, and the thick sunglasses. You try to sell shit? Yes, says Salim, thrilled and horrified that he has spoken the truth about his brother-in-laws samples. And they will not buy it? No. Strange. You look at the stores here, that is all they sell. |
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Salim smiles nervously. A truck is blocking the street in front of them: a red-faced cop standing in front of it waves and shouts and points them down the nearest street. We will go over to Eighth Avenue, come uptown that way, says the taxi driver. They turn onto the street, where the traffic has stopped completely. There is a cacophony of horns, but the cars do not move. The driver sways in his seat. His chin begins to descend to his chest, one, two, three times. Then he begins, gently, to snore. Salim reaches out to wake the man, hoping that he is doing the right thing. As he shakes his shoulder, the driver moves, and Salims hand brushes the mans face, knocking the sunglasses from his face into his lap. The taxi driver opens his eyes, reaches for and replaces the black plastic sunglasses, but it is too late. Salim has seen his eyes. The car crawls forward in the rain. The numbers on the meter increase. Are you going to kill me? asks Salim. The taxi drivers lips are pressed together. Salim watches his face in the drivers mirror. No, says the driver, very quietly. The car stops again. The rain patters on the roof. Salim begins to speak. My grandmother swore that she had seen an ifrit, or perhaps a marid, late one evening, on the edge of the desert. We told her that it was just a sandstorm, a little wind, but she said no, she saw its face, and its eyes, like yours, were burning flames. The driver smiles, but his eyes are hidden behind the black plastic glasses, and Salim cannot tell whether there is any humor in that smile or not. The grandmothers came here too, he says. Are there many jinn in New York? asks Salim. No. Not many of us. There are the angels, and there are men, who Allah made from mud, and then there are the people of the fire, the jinn, says Salim. People know nothing about my people here, says the driver. They think we grant wishes. If I could grant wishes do you think I would be driving a cab? I do not understand. The taxi driver seems gloomy. Salim stares at his face in the mirror as he speaks, watching the ifrits dark lips. They believe that we grant wishes. Why do they believe that? I sleep in one stinking room in Brooklyn. I drive this taxi for any stinking freak who has the money to ride in it, and for some who don't. I drive them where they need to go, and sometimes they tip me. Sometimes they pay me. His lower lip began to tremble. The ifrit seemed on edge. One of them shat on the backseat once. I had to clean it before I could take the cab back. How could he do that? I had to clean the wet shit from the seat. Is that right? Salim puts out a hand, pats the ifrits shoulder. He can feel solid flesh through the wool of the sweater. The ifrit raises his hand from the wheel, rests it on Salims hand for a moment. Salim thinks of the desert then: red sands blow a dust storm through his thoughts, and the scarlet silks of the tents that surrounded the lost city of Ubar flap and billow through his mind. They drive up Eighth Avenue. The old believe. They do not piss into holes, because the Prophet told them that jinn live in holes. They know that the angels throw flaming stars at us when we try to listen to their conversations. But even for the old, when they come to this country we are very, very far away. Back there, I did not have to drive a cab. I am sorry, says Salim. It is a bad time, says the driver. A storm is coming. It scares me. I would do anything to get away. The two of them say nothing more on their way back to the hotel. |
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I do not grant wishes, says Salim, tasting the way the words shape themselves in his mouth. He feels strangely light-headed as he dresses. New York is very simple: the avenues run north to south, the streets run west to east. How hard can it be? he asks himself. He tosses the car keys into the air and catches them. Then he puts on the black plastic sunglasses he found in the pockets, and leaves the hotel room to go and look for his cab. He said the dead had souls, but when I asked him How that could beI thought the dead were souls, he broke my trance. don't that make you suspicious That theres something the dead are keeping back? Yes, theres something the dead are keeping back. Robert Frost, Two Witches The week before Christmas is often a quiet one in a funeral parlor, Shadow learned, over supper. They were sitting in a small restaurant, two blocks from Ibis and Jacquels Funeral Parlor. Shadows meal consisted of an all-day full breakfastit came with hush puppieswhile Mr. Ibis picked and pecked at a slice of coffee cake. Mr. Ibis explained it to him. The lingering ones are holding on for one final Christmas, said Mr. Ibis, or even for New Years, while the others, the ones for whom other peoples jollity and celebration will prove too painful, have not yet been tipped over the edge by that last showing of Its a Wonderful Life, have not quite encountered the final straw, or should I say, the final sprig of holly that breaks not the camels but the reindeers back. And he made a little noise as he said it, half smirk, half snort, which suggested that he had just uttered a well-honed phrase of which he was particularly fond. Ibis and Jacquel was a small, family-owned funeral home: one of the last truly independent funeral homes in the area, or so Mr. Ibis maintained. Most fields of human merchandising value nationwide brand identities, he said. Mr. Ibis spoke in explanations: a gentle, earnest lecturing that put Shadow in mind of a college professor who used to work out at the Muscle Farm and who could not talk, could only discourse, expound, explain. Shadow had figured out within the first few minutes of meeting Mr. Ibis that his expected part in any conversation with the funeral director was to say as little as possible. This, I believe, is because people like to know what they are getting ahead of time. Thus, McDonalds, Wal-Mart, F. W. Woolworth (of blessed memory): store brands maintained and visible across the entire country. Wherever you go, you will get something that is, with small regional variations, the same. In the field of funeral homes, however, things are, perforce, different. You need to feel that you are getting smalltown personal service from someone who has a calling to the profession. You want personal attention to you and your loved one in a time of great loss. You wish to know that your grief is happening on a local level, not on a national one. But in all branches of industry and death is an industry, my young friend, make no mistake about thatone makes ones money from operating in bulk, from buying in quantity, from centralizing ones operations. Its not pretty, but its true. Trouble is, no one wants to know that their loved ones are traveling in a cooler-van to some big old converted warehouse where they may have twenty, fifty, a hundred cadavers on the go. No, sir. Folks want to thinkyou're going to a family concern, somewhere they'll be treated with respect by someone wholl tip his hat to them if he sees them in the street. |
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Mr. Ibis wore a hat. It was a sober brown hat that matched his sober brown blazer and his sober brown face. Small gold-rimmed glasses perched on his nose. In Shadows memory Mr. Ibis was a short man; whenever he would stand beside him, Shadow would rediscover that Mr. Ibis was well over six feet in height, with a cranelike stoop. Sitting opposite him now, across the shiny red table, Shadow found himself staring into the mans face. So when the big companies come in they buy the name of the company, they pay the funeral directors to stay on, they create the apparency of diversity. But that is merely the tip of the gravestone. In reality, they are as local as Burger King. Now, for our own reasons, we are truly an independent. We do all our own embalming, and its the finest embalming in the country, although nobody knows it but us. We don't do cremations, though. We could make more money if we had our own crematorium, but it goes against what were good at. What my business partner says is, if the Lord gives you a talent or a skill, you have an obligation to use it as best you can. don't you agree? Sounds good to me, said Shadow. The Lord gave my business partner dominion over the dead, just as he gave me skill with words. Fine things, words. I write books of tales, you know. Nothing literary. Just for my own amusement. Accounts of lives. He paused. By the time Shadow realized that he should have asked if he might be allowed to read one, the moment had passed. Anyway, what we give them here is continuity: theres been an Ibis and Jacquel in business here for almost two hundred years. We werent always funeral directors, though. We used to be morticians, and before that, undertakers. And before that? Well, said Mr. Ibis, smiling just a little smugly, we go back a very long way. Of course, it wasnt until after the War Between the States that we found our niche here. That was when we became the funeral parlor for the colored folks hereabouts. Before that no one thought of us as coloredforeign maybe, exotic and dark, but not colored. Once the war was done, pretty soon, no one could remember a time when we werent perceived as black. My business partner, he's always had darker skin than mine. It was an easy transition. Mostly you are what they think you are. Its just strange when they talk about African-Americans. Makes me think of the people from Punt, Ophir, Nubia. We never thought of ourselves as Africanswe were the people of the Nile. So you were Egyptians, said Shadow. Mr. Ibis pushed his lower lip upward, then let his head bob from side to side, as if it were on a spring, weighing the pluses and minuses, seeing things from both points of view. Well, yes and no. Egyptians makes me think of the folk who live there now. The ones who built their cities over our graveyards and palaces. Do they look like me? Shadow shrugged. Hed seen black guys who looked like Mr. Ibis. Hed seen white guys with tans who looked like Mr. Ibis. Hows your coffee cake? asked the waitress, refilling their coffees. Best I ever had, said Mr. Ibis. You give my best to your ma. I'll do that, she said, and bustled away. You don't want to ask after the health of anyone, ifyou're a funeral director. They think maybeyou're scouting for business, said Mr. Ibis, in an undertone. Shall we see if your room is ready? Their breath steamed in the night air. Christmas lights twinkled in the windows of the stores they passed. Its good of you, putting me up, said Shadow. I appreciate it. We owe your employer a number of favors. |
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And Lord knows, we have the room. Its a big old house. There used to be more of us, you know. Now its just the three of us. You won't be in the way. Any idea how long I'm meant to stay with you? Mr. Ibis shook his head. He didn't say. But we are happy to have you here, and we can find you work. If you are not squeamish. If you treat the dead with respect. So, asked Shadow, what are you people doing here in Cairo? Was it just the name or something? No. Not at all. Actually this region takes its name from us, although people barely know it. It was a trading post back in the old days. Frontier times? You might call it that, said Mr. Ibis. Evening Miz Simmons! And a Merry Christmas to you too! The folk who brought me here came up the Mississippi a long time back. Shadow stopped in the street, and stared. Are you trying to tell me that ancient Egyptians came here to trade five thousand years ago? Mr. Ibis said nothing, but he smirked loudly. Then he said, Three thousand five hundred and thirty years ago. Give or take. Okay, said Shadow. I'll buy it, I guess. What were they trading? Not much, said Mr. Ibis. Animal skins. Some food. Copper from the mines in what would now be Michigans upper peninsula. The whole thing was rather a disappointment. Not worth the effort. They stayed here long enough to believe in us, to sacrifice to us, and for a handful of the traders to die of fever and be buried here, leaving us behind them. He stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk, turned around slowly, arms extended. This country has been Grand Central for ten thousand years or more. You say to me, what about Columbus? Sure, said Shadow, obligingly. What about him? Columbus did what people had been doing for thousands of years. Theres nothing special about coming to America. I've been writing stories about it, from time to time. They began to walk again. True stories? Up to a point, yes. I'll let you read one or two, if you like. Its all there for anyone who has eyes to see it. Personally and this is speaking as a subscriber to Scientific American, hereI feel very sorry for the professionals whenever they find another confusing skull, something that belonged to the wrong sort of people, or whenever they find statues or artifacts that confuse themfor they'll talk about the odd, but they won't talk about the impossible, which is where I feel sorry for them, for as soon as something becomes impossible it slipslides out of belief entirely, whether its true or not. I mean, heres a skull that shows the Ainu, the Japanese aboriginal race, were in America nine thousand years ago. Heres another that shows there were Polynesians in California nearly two thousand years later. And all the scientists mutter and puzzle over whos descended from whom, missing the point entirely. Heaven knows whatll happen if they ever actually find the Hopi emergence tunnels. Thatll shake a few things up, you just wait. Did the Irish come to America in the dark ages, you ask me? Of course they did, and the Welsh, and the Vikings, while the Africans from the West Coastwhat in later days they called the Slave Coast or the Ivory Coastthey were trading with South America, and the Chinese visited Oregon a couple of timesthey called it Fu Sang. The Basque established their secret sacred fishing grounds off the coast of Newfoundland twelve hundred years back. Now, I supposeyou're going to say, but Mister Ibis, these people were primitives, they didn't have radio controls and vitamin pills and jet airplanes. |
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Shadow hadn't said anything, and hadn't planned to say anything, but he felt it was required of him, so he said, Well, werent they? The last dead leaves of fall crackled underfoot, winter-crisp. The misconception is that men didn't travel long distances in boats before the days of Columbus. Yet New Zealand and Tahiti and countless Pacific Islands were settled by people in boats whose navigation skills would have put Columbus to shame; and the wealth of Africa was from trading, although that was mostly to the east, to India and China. My people, the Nile folk, we discovered early on that a reed boat will take you around the world, if you have the patience and enough jars of sweet water. You see, the biggest problem with coming to America in the old days was that there wasnt a lot here that anyone wanted to trade, and it was much too far away. They had reached a large house, built in the style people called Queen Anne. Shadow wondered who Queen Anne was, and why she had been so fond of Addams Family-style houses. It was the only building on the block that wasnt locked up with boarded-over windows. They went through the gate and walked around the back of the building. Through large double doors, which Mr. Ibis unlocked with a key from his key chain, and they were in a large, unheated room, occupied by two people. They were a very tall, dark-skinned man, holding a large metal scalpel, and a dead girl in her late teens, lying on a long, porcelain table that resembled both a slab and a sink. There were several photographs of the dead girl pinned up on a corkboard on the wall above the body. She was smiling in one, a high school head shot. In another she was standing in a line with three other girls; they were wearing what might have been prom dresses, and her black hair was tied above her head in an intricate knotwork. Cold on the porcelain, her hair was down, loose around her shoulders, and matted with dried blood. This is my partner, Mister Jacquel, said Ibis. We met already, said Jacquel. Forgive me if I don't shake hands. Shadow looked down at the girl on the table. What happened to her? he asked. Poor taste in boyfriends, said Jacquel. Its not always fatal, said Mr. Ibis, with a sigh. This time it was. He was drunk, and he had a knife, and she told him that she thought she was pregnant. He didn't believe it was his. She was stabbed said Mr. Jacquel, and he counted. There was a click as he stepped on a foot switch, turning on a small Dictaphone on a nearby table, Five times. There are three knife wounds in the left anterior chest wall. The first is between the fourth and fifth intercostal spaces at the medial border of the left breast, two point two centimeters in length; the second and third are through the inferior portion of the left mid-breast penetrating at the sixth interspace, overlapping, and measuring three centimeters. There is one wound two centimeters long in the upper anterior left chest in the second interspace, and one wound five centimeters long and a maximum of one point six centimeters deep in the anteromedial left deltoid, a slashing injury. All the chest wounds are deep penetrating injuries. There are no other visible wounds externally. He released pressure from the foot switch. Shadow noticed a small microphone dangling above the embalming table by its cord. Soyou're the coroner as well? asked Shadow. Coroners a political appointment around here, said Ibis. His job is to kick the corpse. If it doesn't kick him back, he signs the death certificate. |
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Jacquels what they call a prosector. He works for the county medical examiner. He does autopsies and saves tissue samples for analysis. he's already photographed her wounds. Jacquel ignored them. He took a big scalpel and made a deep incision in a large V that began at both collarbones and met at the bottom of her breastbone, and then he turned the V into a Y, another deep incision that continued from her breastbone to her pubis. He picked up what looked like a small, heavy chrome drill with a medallion-sized round saw blade at the business end. He turned it on, and cut through the ribs at both sides of her breastbone. The girl opened like a purse. Shadow suddenly was aware of a mild but unpleasantly penetrating, pungent, meaty smell. I thought it would smell worse, said Shadow. she's pretty fresh, said Jacquel. And the intestines werent pierced, so it doesn't smell of shit. Shadow found himself looking away, not from revulsion, as he would have expected, but from a strange desire to give the girl some privacy. It would be hard to be nakeder than this open thing. Jacquel tied off the intestines, glistening and snakelike in her belly, below the stomach and deep in the pelvis. He ran them through his fingers, foot after foot of them, described them as normal to the microphone, put them in a bucket on the floor. He sucked all the blood out of her chest with a vacuum pump, and measured the volume. Then he inspected the inside of her chest. He said to the microphone, There are three lacerations in the pericardium, which is filled with clotted and liquefying blood. Jacquel grasped her heart, cut it at its top, turned it about in his hand, examining it. He stepped on his switch and said, There are two lacerations of the myocardium; a one-point-five-centimeter laceration in the right ventricle and a one-point-eight-centimeter laceration penetrating the left ventricle. Jacquel removed each lung. The left lung had been stabbed and was half collapsed. He weighed them, and the heart, and he photographed the wounds. From each lung he sliced a small piece of tissue, which he placed into ajar. Formaldehyde, whispered Mr. Ibis helpfully. Jacquel continued to talk to the microphone, describing what he was doing, what he saw, as he removed the girls liver, the stomach, spleen, pancreas, both kidneys, the uterus and the ovaries. He weighed each organ, reported them as normal and uninjured. From each organ he took a small slice and put it into a jar of formaldehyde. From the heart, the liver, and from one of the kidneys, he cut an additional slice. These pieces he chewed, slowly, making them last, while he worked. Somehow it seemed to Shadow a good thing for him to do: respectful, not obscene. So you want to stay here with us for a spell? said Jacquel, masticating the slice of the girls heart. If you'll have me, said Shadow. Certainly well have you, said Mr. Ibis. No reasons why not and plenty of reasons why. you'll be under our protection as long asyou're here. I hope you don't mind sleeping under the same roof as the dead, said Jacquel. Shadow thought of the touch of Lauras lips, bitter and cold. No, he said. Not as long as they stay dead, anyhow. Jacquel turned and looked at him with dark brown eyes as quizzical and cold as a desert dogs. They stay dead here was all he said. Seems to me, said Shadow, seems to me that the dead come back pretty easy. Not at all, said Ibis. Even zombies, they make them out of the living, you know. A little powder, a little chanting, a little push, and you have a zombie. |
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They live, but they believe they are dead. But to truly bring the dead back to life, in their bodies. That takes power. He hesitated, then, In the old land, in the old days, it was easier then. You could bind the ka of a man to his body for five thousand years, said Jacquel. Binding or loosing. But that was a long time ago. He took all the organs that he had removed and replaced them, respectfully, in the body cavity. He replaced the intestines and the breastbone and pulled the skin edges near each other. Then he took a thick needle and thread and, with deft, quick strokes, he sewed it up, like a man stitching a baseball: the cadaver transformed from meat into girl once again. I need a beer, said Jacquel. He pulled off his rubber gloves and dropped them into the bin. He dropped his dark brown overalls into a hamper. Then he took the cardboard tray of jars filled with little red and brown and purple slices of the organs. Coming? They walked up the back stairs to the kitchen. It was brown and white, a sober and respectable room that looked to Shadow as if it had last been decorated in 1920. There was a huge Kelvinator rattling to itself by one wall. Jacquel opened the Kelvinator door, put the plastic jars with their slivers of spleen, of kidney, of liver, of heart, inside. He took out three brown bottles. Ibis opened a glass-fronted cupboard, removed three tall glasses. Then he gestured for Shadow to sit down at the kitchen table. Ibis poured the beer and passed a glass to Shadow, a glass to Jacquel. It was a fine beer, bitter and dark. Good beer, said Shadow. We brew it ourselves, said Ibis. In the old days the women did the brewing. They were better brewers than we are. But now it is only the three of us here. Me, him, and her. He gestured toward the small brown cat, fast asleep in a cat-basket in the corner of the room. There were more of us, in the beginning. But Set left us to explore, what, two hundred years ago? Must be, by now. We got a postcard from him from San Francisco in 1905, 1906. Then nothing. While poor Horus he trailed off, in a sigh, and shook his head. I still see him, on occasion, said Jacquel. On my way to a pickup. He sipped his beer. I'll work for my keep, said Shadow. While I'm here. You tell me what you need doing, and I'll do it. Well find work for you, agreed Jacquel. The small brown cat opened her eyes and stretched to her feet. She padded across the kitchen floor and pushed at Shadows boot with her head. He put down his left hand and scratched her forehead and the back of her ears and the scruff of her neck. She arched, ecstatically, then sprang into his lap, pushed herself up against his chest, and touched her cold nose to his. Then she curled up in his lap and went back to sleep. He put his hand down to stroke her: her fur was soft, and she was warm and pleasant in his lap; she acted like she was in the safest place in the world, and Shadow felt comforted. The beer left a pleasant buzz in Shadows head. Your room is at the top of the stairs, by the bathroom, said Jacquel. Your work clothes will be hanging in the closetyoull see. you'll want to wash up and shave first, I guess. Shadow did. He showered standing in the cast-iron tub and he shaved, very nervously, with a straight razor that Jacquel loaned him. It was obscenely sharp, and had a mother-of-pearl handle, and Shadow suspected it was usually used to give dead men their final shave. He had never used a straight razor before, but he did not cut himself. He washed off the shaving cream, looked at himself naked in the fly-specked bathroom mirror. |
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He was bruised: fresh bruises on his chest and arms overlaying the fading bruises that Mad Sweeney had left him. His eyes looked back mistrustfully from the mirror at him. And then, as if someone else were holding his hand, he raised the straight razor, placed it, blade open, against his throat. It would be a way out, he thought. An easy way out. And if theres anyone whod simply take it in their stride, whod just clean up the mess and get on with things, its the two guys sitting downstairs at the kitchen table drinking their beer. No more worries. No more Laura. No more mysteries and conspiracies. No more bad dreams. Just peace and quiet and rest forever. One clean slash, ear to ear. that's all itll take. He stood there with the razor against his throat. A tiny smudge of blood came from the place where the blade touched the skin. He had not even noticed a cut. See, he told himself, and he could almost hear the words being whispered in his ear. Its painless. Too sharp to hurt. I'll be gone before I know it. Then the door to the bathroom swung open, just a few inches, enough for the little brown cat to put her head around the door frame and Mrr? up at him curiously. Hey, he said to the cat. I thought I locked that door. He closed the cutthroat razor, put it down on the side of the sink, dabbed at his tiny cut with a toilet paper swab. Then he wrapped a towel around his waist and went into the bedroom next door. His bedroom, like the kitchen, seemed to have been decorated some time in the 1920s: there was a washstand and a pitcher beside the chest of drawers and mirror. Someone had already laid out clothes for him on the bed: a black suit, white shirt, black tie, white undershirt and underpants, black socks. Black shoes sat on the worn Persian carpet beside the bed. He dressed himself. The clothes were of good quality, although none of them was new. He wondered who they had belonged to. Was he wearing a dead mans socks? Would he be stepping into a dead mans shoes? He adjusted the tie in the mirror and now it seemed to him that his reflection was smiling at him, sardonically. Now it seemed inconceivable to him that he had ever thought of cutting his throat. His reflection continued to smile as he adjusted his tie. Hey, he said to it. You know something that I don't? and immediately felt foolish. The door creaked open and the cat slipped between the doorpost and the door and padded across the room, then up on the windowsill. Hey, he said to the cat. I did shut that door. I know I shut that door. She looked at him, interested. Her eyes were dark yellow, the color of amber. Then she jumped down from the sill onto the bed, where she wrapped herself into a curl of fur and went back to sleep, a circle of cat upon the old counterpane. Shadow left the bedroom door open, so the cat could leave and the room air a little, and he walked downstairs. The stairs creaked and grumbled as he walked down them, protesting his weight, as if they just wanted to be left in peace. Damn, you look good, said Jacquel. He was waiting at the bottom of the stairs, and was now himself dressed in a black suit similar to Shadows. You ever driven a hearse? No. First time for everything, then, said Jacquel. Its parked out front. * * * An old woman had died. Her name had been Lila Goodchild. At Mr. Jacquels direction, Shadow carried the folded aluminum gurney up the narrow stairs to her bedroom and unfolded it next to her bed. He took out a translucent blue plastic body bag, laid it next to the dead woman on the bed, and unzipped it open. |
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She wore a pink nightgown and a quilted robe. Shadow lifted her and wrapped her, fragile and almost weightless, in a blanket, and placed it onto the bag. He zipped the bag shut and put it on the gurney. While Shadow did this, Jacquel talked to a very old man who had, when she was alive, been married to Lila Goodchild. Or rather, Jacquel listened while the old man talked. As Shadow had zipped Mrs. Goodchild away, the old man had been explaining how ungrateful his children had been, and grandchildren too, though that wasnt their fault, that was their parents, the apple didn't fall far from the tree, and he thought hed raised them better than that. Shadow and Jacquel wheeled the loaded gurney to the narrow flight of stairs. The old man followed them, still talking, mostly about money, and greed, and ingratitude. He wore bedroom slippers. Shadow carried the heavier bottom end of the gurney down the stairs and out onto the street, then he wheeled it along the icy sidewalk to the hearse. Jacquel opened the hearses rear door. Shadow hesitated, and Jacquel said, Just push it on in there. The supportsll fold up out of the way. Shadow pushed the gurney, and the supports snapped up, the wheels rotated, and the gurney rolled right onto the floor of the hearse. Jacquel showed him how to strap it in securely, and Shadow closed up the hearse while Jacquel listened to the old man who had been married to Lila Goodchild, unmindful of the cold, an old man in his slippers and his bathrobe out on the wintry sidewalk telling Jacquel how his children were vultures, no better than hovering vultures, waiting to take what little he and Lila had scraped together, and how the two of them had fled to St. Louis, to Memphis, to Miami, and how they wound up in Cairo, and how relieved he was that Lila had not died in a nursing home, how scared he was that he would. They walked the old man back into the house, up the stairs to his room. A small TV set droned from one corner of the couples bedroom. As Shadow passed it he noticed that the newsreader was grinning and winking at him. When he was sure that no one was looking in his direction he gave the set the finger. Theyve got no money, said Jacquel when they were back in the hearse. Hell come in to see Ibis tomorrow. Hell choose the cheapest funeral. Her friends will persuade him to do her right, give her a proper send-off in the front room, I expect. But hell grumble. Got no money. Nobody around heres got money these days. Anyway, hell be dead in six months. A year at the outside. Snowflakes tumbled and drifted in front of the headlights. The snow was coming south. Shadow said, Is he sick? It aint that. Women survive their men. Menmen like himdont live long when their women are gone. you'll seehell just start wandering, all the familiar things are going to be gone with her. He gets tired and he fades and then he gives up and then he's gone. Maybe pneumonia will take him or maybe itll be cancer, or maybe his heart will stop. Old age, and all the fight gone out of you. Then you die. Shadow thought. Hey, Jacquel? Yeah. Do you believe in the soul? It wasnt quite the question he had been going to ask, and it took him by surprise to hear it coming from his mouth. He had intended to say something less direct, but there was nothing less direct that he could say. Depends. Back in my day, we had it all set up. You lined up when you died, and youd answer for your evil deeds and for your good deeds, and if your evil deeds outweighed a feather, wed feed your soul and your heart to Ammet, the Eater of Souls. |
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He must have eaten a lot of people. Not as many as youd think. It was a really heavy feather. We had it made special. You had to be pretty damn evil to tip the scales on that baby. Stop here, that gas station. Well put in a few gallons. The streets were quiet, in the way that streets only are when the first snow falls. Its going to be a white Christmas, said Shadow as he pumped the gas. Yup. Shit. That boy was one lucky son of a virgin. Jesus? Lucky, lucky guy. He could fall in a cesspit and come up smelling like roses. Hell, its not even his birthday, you know that? He took it from Mithras. You run into Mithras yet? Red cap. Nice kid. No, I don't think so. WellI've never seen Mithras around here. He was an army brat. Maybe he's back in the Middle East, taking it easy, but I expect he's probably gone by now. It happens. One day every soldier in the empire has to shower in the blood of your sacrificial bull. The next they don't even remember your birthday. Swish went the windshield wipers, pushing the snow to the side, bunching the flakes up into knots and swirls of clear ice. A traffic light turned momentarily yellow and then red, and Shadow put his foot on the brake. The hearse fishtailed and swung around on the empty road before it stopped. The light turned green. Shadow took the hearse up to ten miles per hour, which seemed enough on the slippery roads. It was perfectly happy cruising in second gear: he guessed it must have spent a lot of its time at that speed, holding up traffic. that's good, said Jacquel. So, yeah, Jesus does pretty good over here. But I met a guy who said he saw him hitchhiking by the side of the road in Afghanistan and nobody was stopping to give him a ride. You know? It all depends on where you are. I think a real storms coming, said Shadow. He was talking about the weather. Jacquel, when, eventually, he began to answer, wasnt talking about the weather at all. You look at me and Ibis, he said. Well be out of business in a few years. We got savings put aside for the lean years, but the lean years have been here for a long while, and every year they just get leaner. Horus is crazy, really bugfuck crazy, spends all his time as a hawk, eats roadkill, what kind of a life is that? Youve seen Bast. And were in better shape than most of them. At least weve got a little belief to be going along with. Most of the suckers out there have barely got that. Its like the funeral businessthe big guys are going to buy you up one day, like it or not, becauseyou're bigger and more efficient and because they work. Fightings not going to change a damned thing, because we lost this particular battle when we came to this green land a hundred years ago or a thousand or ten thousand. We arrived and America just didn't care that wed arrived. We get bought out, or we press on, or we hit the road. So, yes. you're right. The storms coming. Shadow turned onto the street where the houses were, all but one of them, dead, their windows blind and boarded. Take the back alley, said Jacquel. He backed the hearse up until it was almost touching the double doors at the rear of the house. Ibis opened the hearse, and the mortuary doors, and Shadow unbuckled the gurney and pulled it out. The wheeled supports rotated and dropped as they cleared the bumper. He wheeled the gurney to the embalming table. He picked up Lila Goodchild, cradling her in her opaque bag like a sleeping child, and placed her carefully on the table in the chilly mortuary, as if he were afraid to wake her. |
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The woman purred against him ecstatically, her hand moving down to the hardness of him and squeezing it. He pushed the bedsheets away and rolled on top of her, his hand parting her thighs, her hand guiding him between her legs, where one thrust, one magical push Now he was back in his old prison cell with her, and he was kissing her deeply. She wrapped her arms tightly around him, clamped her legs about his legs to hold him tight, so he could not pull out, not even if he wanted to. Never had he kissed lips so soft. He had not known that there were lips so soft in the whole world. Her tongue, though, was sandpaper-rough as it slipped against his. Who are you? he asked. She made no answer, just pushed him onto his back and, in one lithe movement, straddled him and began to ride him. No, not to ride him: to insinuate herself against him in a series of silken-smooth waves, each more powerful than the one before, strokes and beats and rhythms that crashed against his mind and his body just as the wind-waves on the lake splashed against the shore. Her nails were needle-sharp and they pierced his sides, raking them, but he felt no pain, only pleasure, everything was transmuted by some alchemy into moments of utter pleasure. He struggled to find himself, struggled to talk, his head now filled with sand dunes and desert winds. Who are you? he asked again, gasping for the words. She stared at him with eyes the color of dark amber, then lowered her mouth to his and kissed him with a passion, kissed him so completely and so deeply that there, on the bridge over the lake, in his prison cell, in the bed in the Cairo funeral home, he almost came. He rode the sensation like a kite riding a hurricane, willing it not to crest, not to explode, wanting it never to end. He pulled it under control. He had to warn her. My wife, Laura. She will kill you. Not me, she said. A fragment of nonsense bubbled up from somewhere in his mind: In medieval days it was said that a woman on top during coitus would conceive a bishop. That was what they called it: trying for a bishop He wanted to know her name, but he dared not ask her a third time, and she pushed her chest against his, and he could feel the hard nubs of her nipples against his chest, and she was squeezing him, somehow squeezing him down there deep inside her and this time he could not ride it or surf it, this time it picked him up and spun and tumbled him away, and he was arching up, pushing into her as deeply as he could imagine, as if they were, in some way, part of the same creature, tasting, drinking, holding, wanting Let it happen, she said, her voice a throaty feline growl. Give it to me. Let it happen. And he came, spasming and dissolving, the back of his mind itself liquefying, then sublimating slowly from one state to the next. Somewhere in there, at the end of it, he took a breath, a clear draught of air he felt all the way down to the depths of his lungs, and he knew that he had been holding his breath for a long time now. Three years, at least. Perhaps even longer. Now rest, she said, and she kissed his eyelids with her soft lips. Let it go. Let it all go. The sleep he slept after that was deep and dreamless and comforting, and Shadow dived deep and embraced it. * * * The light was strange. It was, he checked his watch, 6:45 A. M., and still dark outside, although the room was filled with a pale blue dimness. He climbed out of bed. He was certain that he had been wearing pajamas when he went to bed, but now he was naked, and the air was cold on his skin. |
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He walked to the window and closed it. There had been a snowstorm in the night: six inches had fallen, perhaps more. The corner of the town that Shadow could see from his window, dirty and run-down, had been transformed into somewhere clean and different: these houses were not abandoned and forgotten, they were frosted into elegance. The streets had vanished completely, lost beneath a white field of snow. There was an idea that hovered at the edge of his perception. Something about transience. It flickered and was gone. He could see as well as if it were full daylight. In the mirror, Shadow noticed something strange. He stepped closer, and stared, puzzled. All his bruises had vanished. He touched his side, pressing firmly with his fingertips, feeling for one of the deep pains that told him he had encountered Mr. Stone and Mr. Wood, hunting for the greening blossoms of bruise that Mad Sweeney had gifted him with, and finding nothing. His face was clear and unmarked. His sides, however, and his back (he twisted to examine it) were scratched with what looked like claw marks. He hadn't dreamed it, then. Not entirely. Shadow opened the drawers, and put on what he found: an ancient pair of blue-denim Levis, a shirt, a thick blue sweater, and a black undertakers coat he found hanging in the wardrobe at the back of the room. He wore his own old shoes. The house was still asleep. He crept through it, willing the floorboards not to creak, and then he was outside, and he walked through the snow, his feet leaving deep prints on the sidewalk. It was lighter out than it had seemed from inside the house, and the snow reflected the light from the sky. After fifteen minutes of walking, Shadow came to a bridge with a big sign on the side of it warning him he was now leaving historical Cairo. A man stood under the bridge, tall and gangling, sucking on a cigarette and shivering continually. Shadow thought he recognized the man. And then, under the bridge in the winter darkness, he was close enough to see the purple smudge of bruise around the mans eye, and he said, Good morning, Mad Sweeney. The world was so quiet. Not even cars disturbed the snowbound silence. Hey, man, said Mad Sweeney. He did not look up. The cigarette had been rolled by hand. You keep hanging out under bridges, Mad Sweeney, said Shadow, people gonna thinkyou're a troll. This time Mad Sweeney looked up. Shadow could see the whites of his eyes all around his irises. The man looked scared. I was lookin for you, he said. You gotta help me, man. I fucked up big time. He sucked on his hand-rolled cigarette, pulled it away from his mouth. The cigarette paper stuck to his lower lip, and the cigarette fell apart, spilling its contents onto his ginger beard and down the front of his filthy T-shirt. Mad Sweeney brushed it off, convulsively, with blackened hands, as if it were a dangerous insect. My resources are pretty much tapped out, Mad Sweeney, said Shadow. But why don't you tell me what it is you need. You want me to get you a coffee? Mad Sweeney shook his head. He took out a tobacco pouch and papers from the pocket of his denim jacket and began to roll himself another cigarette. His beard bristled and his mouth moved as he did this, although no words were said aloud. He licked the adhesive side of the cigarette paper and rolled it between his fingers. The result looked only distantly like a cigarette. Then he said, M not a troll. Shit. Those bastardsre fucken mean. I knowyou're not a troll, Sweeney, said Shadow, gently. |
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How can I help you? Mad Sweeney flicked his brass Zippo, and the first inch of his cigarette flamed and then subsided to ash. You remember I showed you how to get a coin? You remember? Yes, said Shadow. He saw the gold coin in his minds eye, watched it tumble into Lauras casket, saw it glitter around her neck. I remember. You took the wrong coin, man. A car approached the gloom under the bridge, blinding them with its lights. It slowed as it passed them, then stopped, and a window slid down. Everything okay here, gentlemen? Everythings just peachy, thank you, officer, said Shadow. Were just out for a morning walk. Okay now, said the cop. He did not look as if he believed that everything was okay. He waited. Shadow put a hand on Mad Sweeneys shoulder, and walked him forward, out of town, away from the police car. He heard the window hum closed, but the car remained where it was. Shadow walked. Mad Sweeney walked, and sometimes he staggered. The police car cruised past them slowly, then turned and went back into the city, accelerating down the snowy road. Now, why don't you tell me whats troubling you, said Shadow. I did it like he said. I did it all like he said, but I gave you the wrong coin. It wasnt meant to be that coin. that's for royalty. You see? I shouldn't even have been able to take it. that's the coin youd give to the king of America himself. Not some pissant bastard like you or me. And now I'm in big trouble. Just give me the coin back, man. you'll never see me again, if you do, I sweartofuckenBran, okay? I swear by the years I spent in the fucken trees. You did it like who said, Sweeney? Grimnir. The dude you call Wednesday, You know who he is? Who he really is? Yeah. I guess. There was a panicked look in the Irishmans crazy blue eyes. It was nothing bad. Nothing you cannothing bad. He just told me to be there at that bar and to pick a fight with you. He said he wanted to see what you were made of. He tell you to do anything else? Sweeney shivered and twitched; Shadow thought it was the cold for a moment, then knew where hed seen that shuddering shiver before. In prison: it was a junkie shiver. Sweeney was in withdrawal from something, and Shadow would have been willing to bet it was heroin. A junkie leprechaun? Mad Sweeney pinched off the burning head of his cigarette, dropped it on the ground, put the unfinished yellowing rest of it into his pocket. He rubbed his dirt-black fingers together, breathed on them to try and rub warmth into them. His voice was a whine now, Listen, just give me the fucken coin, man. I'll give you another, just as good. Hell, I'll give you a shitload of the fuckers. He took off his greasy baseball cap, then, with his right hand, he stroked the air, producing a large golden coin. He dropped it into his cap. And then he took another from a wisp of breath steam, and another, catching and grabbing them from the still morning air until the baseball cap was brimming with them and Sweeney was forced to hold it with both hands. He extended the baseball cap filled with gold to Shadow. Here, he said. Take them, man. Just give me back the coin I gave to you. Shadow looked down at the cap, wondered how much its contents would be worth. Where am I going to spend those coins, Mad Sweeney? Shadow asked. Are there a lot of places you can turn your gold into cash? He thought the Irishman was going to hit him for a moment, but the moment passed and Mad Sweeney just stood there, holding out his gold-filled cap with both hands like Oliver Twist. |
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And then tears swelled in his blue eyes and began to spill down his cheeks. He took the cap and put itnow empty of everything except a greasy sweatbandback over his thinning scalp. You gotta, man, he was saying. didn't I show you how to do it? I showed you how to take coins from the hoard. I showed you where the hoard was. Just give me that first coin back. It didn't belong to me. I don't have it anymore. Mad Sweeneys tears stopped, and spots of color appeared in his cheeks. You, you fucken he said, and then the words failed him and his mouth opened and closed, wordlessly. I'm telling you the truth, said Shadow. I'm sorry. If I had it I'd give it back to you. But I gave it away. Sweeneys grimy hands clamped on Shadows shoulders, and the pale blue eyes stared into his. The tears had made streaks in the dirt on Mad Sweeneys face. Shit, he said. Shadow could smell tobacco and stale beer and whiskey-sweat. you're telling the truth, you fucker. Gave it away and freely and of your own will. Damn your dark eyes, you gave it a-fucken-way. I'm sorry. Shadow remembered the whispering thump the coin had made as it landed on Lauras casket. Sorry or not, I'm damned and I'm doomed. He wiped his nose and his eyes on his sleeves, muddying his face into strange patterns. Shadow squeezed Mad Sweeneys upper arm in an awkward male gesture. Twere better I had never been conceived, said Mad Sweeney, at length. Then he looked up. The fellow you gave it to. Would he give it back? Its a woman. And I don't know where she is. But no, I don't believe she would. Sweeney sighed, mournfully. When I was but a young pup, he said, there was a woman I met, under the stars, who let me play with her bubbies, and she told me my fortune. She told me that I would be undone and abandoned west of the sunset, and that a dead womans bauble would seal my fate. And I laughed and poured more barley wine and played with her bubbies some more, and I kissed her full on her pretty lips. Those were the good daysthe first of the gray monks had not yet come to our land, nor had they ridden the green sea to westward. And now. He stopped, midsentence. His head turned and he focused on Shadow. You shouldn't trust him, he said, reproachfully. Who? Wednesday. You mustn't trust him. I don't have to trust him. I work for him. Do you remember how to do it? What? Shadow felt he was having a conversation with half a dozen different people. The self-styled leprechaun sputtered and jumped from persona to persona, from theme to theme, as if the remaining clusters of brain cells were igniting, flaming, and then going out for good. The coins, man. The coins. I showed you, remember? He raised two fingers to his face, stared at them, then pulled a gold coin from his mouth. He tossed the coin to Shadow, who stretched out a hand to catch it, but no coin reached him. I was drunk, said Shadow. I don't remember. Sweeney stumbled across the road. It was light now and the world was white and gray. Shadow followed him. Sweeney walked in a long, loping stride, as if he were always falling, but his legs were there to stop him, to propel him into another stumble. When they reached the bridge, he held onto the bricks with one hand, and turned and said, You got a few bucks? I don't need much. Just enough for a ticket out of this place. Twenty bucks will do me fine. Just a lousy twenty? Where can you go on a twenty dollar bus ticket? asked Shadow. I can get out of here, said Sweeney. I can get away before the storm hits. Away from a world in which opiates have become the religion of the masses. |
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Ibis had told him that they move the dead about in some hospitals on the lower level of apparently empty covered gurneys, the deceased traveling their own paths in their own covered ways. A dark blue police cruiser was parked on a side street, and Shadow pulled up the hearse behind it. There were two cops inside the cruiser, drinking their coffee from thermos tops. They had the engine running to keep warm. Shadow tapped on the side window. Yeah? I'm from the funeral home, said Shadow. Were waiting for the medical examiner, said the cop. Shadow wondered if it was the same man who had spoken to him under the bridge. The cop, who was black, got out of the car, leaving his colleague in the drivers seat, and walked Shadow back to a Dumpster. Mad Sweeney was sitting in the snow beside the Dumpster. There was an empty green bottle in his lap, a dusting of snow and ice on his face and baseball cap and shoulders. He didn't blink. Dead wino, said the cop. Looks like it, said Shadow. don't touch anything yet, said the cop. Medical examiner should be here any time now. You ask me, the guy drank himself into a stupor and froze his ass. Yes, agreed Shadow. that's certainly what it looks like. He squatted down and looked at the bottle in Mad Sweeneys lap. Jameson Irish whiskey: a twenty-dollar ticket out of this place. A small green Nissan pulled up, and a harassed middle-aged man with sandy hair and a sandy mustache got out, walked over. He touched the corpses neck. He kicks the corpse, thought Shadow, and if it doesn't kick him back he's dead, said the medical examiner. Any ID? he's a John Doe, said the cop. The medical examiner looked at Shadow. You working for Jacquel and Ibis? he asked. Yes, said Shadow. Tell Jacquel to get dentals and prints for ID and identity photos. We don't need a post. He should just draw blood for toxicology. Got that? Do you want me to write it down for you? No, said Shadow. Its fine. I can remember. The man scowled fleetingly, then pulled a business card from his wallet, scribbled on it, and gave it to Shadow, saying, Give this to Jacquel. Then the medical examiner said Merry Christmas to everyone, and was on his way. The cops kept the empty bottle. Shadow signed for the John Doe and put it on the gurney. The body was pretty stiff, and Shadow couldn't get it out of a sitting position. He fiddled with the gurney, and found out that he could prop up one end. He strapped John Doe, sitting, to the gurney and put him in the back of the hearse, facing forward. Might as well give him a good ride. He closed the rear curtains. Then he drove back to the funeral home. The hearse was stopped at a traffic light when Shadow heard a voice croak, And its a fine wake I'll be wanting, with the best of everything, and beautiful women shedding tears and their clothes in their distress, and brave men lamenting and telling fine tales of me in my great days. you're dead, Mad Sweeney, said Shadow. You take whatyou're given whenyou're dead. Aye, that I shall, sighed the dead man sitting in the back of the hearse. The junkie whine had vanished from his voice now, replaced with a resigned flatness, as if the words were being broadcast from a long, long way away, dead words being sent out on a dead frequency. The light turned green and Shadow put his foot gently down on the gas. But give me a wake, nonetheless, said Mad Sweeney. Set me a place at table and give me a stinking drunk wake tonight. You killed me, Shadow. You owe me that much. I never killed you, Mad Sweeney, said Shadow. |
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Its twenty dollars, he thought, for a ticket out of here. It was the drink and the cold killed you, not me. There was no reply, and there was silence in the car for the rest of the journey. After he parked at the back, Shadow wheeled the gurney out of the hearse and into the mortuary. He manhandled Mad Sweeney onto the embalming table as if he were hauling a side of beef. He covered the John Doe with a sheet and left him there, with the paperwork beside him. As he went up the back stairs he thought he heard a voice, quiet and muted, like a radio playing in a distant room, which said, And what would drink or cold be doing killing me, a leprechaun of the blood? No, it was you losing the little golden sun killed me, Shadow, killed me dead, as sure as waters wet and days are long and a friend will always disappoint you in the end. Shadow wanted to point out to Mad Sweeney that that was a kind of bitter philosophy, but he suspected it was the being dead that made you bitter. He went upstairs to the main house, where a number of middle-aged women were putting Saran Wrap on casserole dishes, popping the Tupperware tops onto plastic pots of cooling fried potatoes and macaroni and cheese. Mr. Goodchild, the husband of the deceased, had Mr. Ibis against a wall, and was telling him how he knew none of his children would come out to pay their respects to their mother. The apple don't fall far from the tree, he told anyone who would listen to him. The apple don't fall far from the tree. * * * That evening Shadow laid an extra place at the table. He put a glass at each place, and a bottle of Jameson Gold in the middle of the table. It was the most expensive Irish whiskey they sold at the liquor store. After they ate (a large platter of leftovers left for them by the women) Shadow poured a generous tot into each glasshis, Ibiss, Jacques, and, Mad Sweeneys. So what if he's sitting on a gurney in the cellar, said Shadow, as he poured, on his way to a paupers grave. Tonight well toast him, and give him the wake he wanted. Shadow raised his glass to the empty place at the table. I only met Mad Sweeney twice, alive, he said. The first time I thought he was a world-class jerk with the devil in him. The second time I thought he was a major fuckup and I gave him the money to kill himself. He showed me a coin trick I don't remember how to do, gave me some bruises, and claimed he was a leprechaun. Rest in peace, Mad Sweeney. He sipped the whiskey, letting the smoky taste evaporate in his mouth. The other two drank, toasting the empty chair along with him. Mr. Ibis reached into an inside pocket and pulled out a notebook, which he flipped through until he found the appropriate page, and he read out a summarized version of Mad Sweeneys life. According to Mr. Ibis, Mad Sweeney had started his life as the guardian of a sacred rock in a small Irish glade, over three thousand years ago. Mr. Ibis told them of Mad Sweeneys love affairs, his enmities, the madness that gave him his power (a later version of the tale is still told, although the sacred nature, and the antiquity, of much of the verse has long been forgotten), the worship and adoration in his own land that slowly transmuted into a guarded respect and then, finally into amusement; he told them the story of the girl from Bantry who came to the New World, and who brought her belief in Mad Sweeney the leprechaun with her, for hadn't she seen him of a night, down by the pool, and hadn't he smiled at her and called her by her own true name? |
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She had become a refugee, in the hold of a ship of people who had watched their potatoes turn to black sludge in the ground, who had watched friends and lovers die of hunger, who dreamed of a land of full stomachs. The girl from Bantry Bay dreamed, specifically, of a city where a girl would be able to earn enough to bring her family over to the New World. Many of the Irish coming into America thought of themselves as Catholics, even if they knew nothing of the catechism, even if all they knew of religion was the Bean Sidhe, the banshee, who came to wail at the walls of a house where death soon would be, and Saint Bride, who was once Bridget of the two sisters (each of the three was a Brigid, each was the same woman), and tales of Finn, of Ofsin, of Conan the Baldeven of the leprechauns, the little people (and was that not the biggest joke of the Irish, for the leprechauns in their day were the tallest of the mound folk) All this and more Mr. Ibis told them in the kitchen that night. His shadow on the wall was stretched and birdlike, and as the whiskey flowed Shadow imagined it head of a huge waterfowl, beak long and curved, and it was somewhere in the middle of the second glass that Mad Sweeney himself began to throw both details and irrelevancies into Ibiss narrative (such a girl she was, with breasts cream-colored and spackled with freckles, with the tips of them the rich reddish pink of the sunrise on a day when itll be bucketing down before noon but glorious again by supper) and then Sweeney was trying, with both hands, to explain the history of the gods in Ireland, wave after wave of them as they came in from Gaul and from Spain and from every damn place, each wave of them transforming the last gods into trolls and fairies and every damn creature until Holy Mother Church herself arrived and every god in Ireland was transformed into a fairy or a saint or a dead King without so much as a by-your-leave Mr. Ibis polished his gold-rimmed spectacles and explainedenunciating even more clearly and precisely than usual, so Shadow knew he was drunk (his words, and the sweat that beaded on his forehead in that chilly house, were the only indications of this)with forefinger wagging, that he was an artist and that his tales should not be seen as literal constructs but as imaginative re-creations, truer than the truth, and Mad Sweeney said, I'll show you an imaginative re-creation, my fist imaginatively re-creating your fucken face for starters, and Mr. Jacquel bared his teeth and growled at Sweeney, the growl of a huge dog whos not looking for a fight but can always finish one by ripping out your throat, and Sweeney took the message and sat down and poured himself another glass of whiskey. Have you remembered how I do my little coin trick? he asked Shadow with a grin. I have not. If you can guess how I did it, said Mad Sweeney, his lips purple, his blue eyes beclouded, I'll tell you if you get warm. Its not a palm is it? asked Shadow. It is not. Is it a gadget of some kind? Something up your sleeve or elsewhere that shoots the coins up for you to catch? It is not that neither. More whiskey, anybody? I read in a book about a way of doing the misers dream with latex covering the palm of your hand, making a skin-colored pouch for the coins to hide behind. This is a sad wake for Great Sweeney who flew like a bird across all of Ireland and ate watercress in his madness: to be dead and unmourned save for a bird, a dog, and an idiot. No, it is not a pouch. |
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Well, that's pretty much it for ideas, said Shadow. I expect you just take them out of nowhere. It was meant to be sarcasm, but then he saw the expression on Sweeneys face. You do, he said. You do take them from nowhere. Well, not exactly nowhere, said Mad Sweeney. But nowyou're getting the idea. You take them from the hoard. The hoard, said Shadow, starting to remember. Yes. You just have to hold it in your mind, and its yours to take from. The suns treasure. Its there in those moments when the world makes a rainbow. Its there in the moment of eclipse and the moment of the storm. And he showed Shadow how to do the thing. This time Shadow got it. * * * Shadows head ached and pounded, and his tongue tasted and felt like flypaper. He squinted at the glare of the daylight. He had fallen asleep with his head on the kitchen table. He was fully dressed, although he had at some point taken off his black tie. He walked downstairs, to the mortuary, and was relieved but unsurprised to see that John Doe was still on the embalming table. Shadow pried the empty bottle of Jameson Gold from the corpses rigor-mortised fingers and threw it away. He could hear someone moving about in the house above. Mr. Wednesday was sitting at the kitchen table when Shadow went upstairs. He was eating leftover potato salad from a Tupperware container with a plastic spoon. He wore a dark gray suit, a white shirt, and a deep gray tie: the morning sun glittered on the silver tie pin in the shape of a tree. He smiled at Shadow when he saw him. Ah, Shadow mboy, good to seeyou're up. I thought you were going to sleep forever. Mad Sweeneys dead, said Shadow. So I heard, said Wednesday. A great pity. Of course it will come to all of us, in the end. He tugged on an imaginary rope, somewhere on the level of his ear, and then jerked his neck to one side, tongue protruding, eyes bulging. As quick pantomimes went, it was disturbing. And then he let go of the rope and smiled his familiar grin. Would you like some potato salad? I would not. Shadow darted a look around the kitchen and out into the hall. Do you know where Ibis and Jacquel are? Indeed I do. They are burying Mrs. Lila Goodchildsomething that they would probably have liked your help in doing, but I asked them not to wake you. You have a long drive ahead of you. Were leaving? Within the hour. I should say goodbye. Goodbyes are overrated. you'll see them again, I have no doubt, before this affair is done. For the first time since that first night, Shadow observed, the small brown cat was curled up in her basket. She opened her incurious amber eyes and watched him go. So Shadow left the house of the dead. Ice sheathed the winter-black bushes and trees as if theyd been insulated, made into dreams. The path was slippery. Wednesday led the way to Shadows white Chevy Nova, parked out on the road. It had been recently cleaned, and the Wisconsin plates had been removed, replaced with Minnesota plates. Wednesdays luggage was already stacked in the backseat. Wednesday unlocked the car with keys that were duplicates of the ones Shadow had in his own pocket. I'll drive, said Wednesday. Itll be at least an hour beforeyou're good for anything. They drove north, the Mississippi on their left, a wide silver stream beneath a gray sky. Shadow saw, perched on a leafless gray tree beside the road, a huge brown-and-white hawk, which stared down at them with mad eyes as they drove toward it, then took to the wing and rose in slow and powerful circles. |
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People, howeverpeople stay the same. Some gifts last forever, others are swallowed soon enough by time and by the world. My favorite gift of all is no longer practical. Still, a surprising number of gifts are timelessthe Spanish Prisoner, the Pigeon Drop, the Fawney Rig (thats the Pigeon Drop but with a gold ring instead of a wallet), the Fiddle Game I've never heard of the Fiddle Game, said Shadow. I think I've heard of the others. My old cellmate said hed actually done the Spanish Prisoner. He was a grifter. Ah, said Wednesday, and his left eye sparkled. The Fiddle Game was a fine and wonderful con. In its purest form it is a two-man grift. It trades on cupidity and greed, as all great grifts do. You can always cheat an honest man, but it takes more work. So. We are in a hotel or an inn or a fine restaurant, and, dining there, we find a manshabby, but shabby genteel, not down-at-heel but certainly down on his luck. We shall call him Abraham. And when the time comes to settle his billnot a huge bill, you understand, fifty, seventy-five dollarsan embarrassment! Where is his wallet? Good Lord, he must have left it at a friends, not far away. He shall go and obtain his wallet forthwith! But here, mine host, says Abraham, take this old fiddle of mine for security. Its old, as you can see, but its how I make my living. Wednesdays smile when he saw the waitress approaching was huge and predatory. Ah, the hot chocolate! Brought to me by my Christmas Angel! Tell me my dear, could I have some more of your delicious bread when you get a moment? The waitresswhat was she, Shadow wondered: sixteen, seventeen? looked at the floor and her cheeks flushed crimson. She put down the chocolate with shaking, hands and retreated to the edge of the room, by the slowly rotating display of pies, where she stopped and stared at Wednesday. Then she slipped into the kitchen to fetch Wednesday his bread. So. The violinold, unquestionably, perhaps even a little batteredis placed away in its case, and our temporarily impecunious Abraham sets off in search of his wallet. But a well-dressed gentleman, only just done with his own dinner, has been observing this exchange, and now he approaches our host: could he, perchance, inspect the violin that honest Abraham left behind? Certainly he can. Our host hands it over, and the well-dressed manlet us call him Barringtonopens his mouth wide, then remembers himself and closes it, examines the violin reverentially, like a man who has been permitted into a holy sanctum to examine the bones of a prophet. Why! he says, this isit must beno, it cannot bebut yes, there it ismy lord! But this is unbelievable! and he points to the makers mark, on a strip of browning paper inside the violinbut still, he says, even without it he would have known it by the color of the varnish, by the scroll, by the shape. Now Barrington reaches inside his pocket and produces an engraved business card, proclaiming him to be a preeminent dealer in rare and antique musical instruments. So this violin is rare? asks mine host. Indeed it is, says Barrington, still admiring it with awe, and worth in excess of a hundred thousand dollars, unless I miss my guess. Even as a dealer in such things I would pay fiftyno, seventy-five thousand dollars, good cash money, for such an exquisite piece. I have a man on the West Coast who would buy it tomorrow, sight unseen, with one telegram, and pay whatever I asked for it. And then he consults his watch, and his face falls. |
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My train he says. I have scarcely enough time to catch my train! Good sir, when the owner of this inestimable instrument should return, please give him my card, for, alas, I must be away. And with that, Barrington leaves, a man who knows that time and the train wait for no man. Mine host examines the violin, curiosity mingling with cupidity in his veins, and a plan begins to bubble up through his mind. But the minutes go by, and Abraham does not return. And now it is late, and through the door, shabby but proud, comes our Abraham, our fiddle player, and he holds in his hands a wallet, a wallet that has seen better days, a wallet that has never contained more than a hundred dollars on its best day, and from it he takes the money to pay for his meal or his stay, and he asks for the return of his violin. Mine host puts the fiddle in its case on the counter, and Abraham takes it like a mother cradling her child. Tell me, says the host (with the engraved card of a man wholl pay fifty thousand dollars, good cash money, burning his inside breast pocket), how much is a violin like this worth? For my niece has a yearning on her to play the fiddle, and its her birthday coming up in a week or so. Sell this fiddle? says Abraham. I could never sell her. I've had her for twenty years, I have, fiddled in every state of the union with her. And to tell the truth, she cost me all of five hundred dollars back when I bought her. Mine host keeps the smile from his face. Five hundred dollars? What if I were to offer you a thousand dollars for it, here and now? The fiddle player looks delighted, then crestfallen, and he says, But lordy, I'm a fiddle player, sir, its all I know how to do. This fiddle knows me and she loves me, and my fingers know her so well I could play an air upon her in the dark. Where will I find another that sounds so fine? A thousand dollars is good money, but this is my livelihood. Not a thousand dollars, not for five thousand. Mine host sees his profits shrinking, but this is business, and you must spend money to make money. Eight thousand dollars, he says. Its not worth that, but I've taken a fancy to it, and I do love and indulge my niece. Abraham is almost in tears at the thought of losing his beloved fiddle, but how can he say no to eight thousand dollars? especially when mine host goes to the wall safe and removes not eight but nine thousand dollars, all neatly banded and ready to be slipped into the fiddle players threadbare pocket. you're a good man, he tells his host. you're a saint! But you must swear to take care of my girl! and, reluctantly, he hands over his violin. But what if mine host simply hands over Barringtons card and tells Abraham that he's come into some good fortune? asked Shadow. Then were out the cost of two dinners, said Wednesday. He wiped the remaining gravy and leftovers from his plate with a slice of bread, which he ate with lip-smacking relish. Let me see if I've got it straight, said Shadow. So Abraham leaves, nine thousand dollars the richer, and in the parking lot by the train station he and Barrington meet up. They split the money, get into Barringtons Model A Ford, and head for the next town. I guess in the trunk of that car they must have a box filled with hundred-dollar violins. I personally made it a point of honor never to pay more than five dollars for any of them, said Wednesday. Then he turned to the hovering waitress. Now, my dear, regale us with your description of the sumptuous desserts available to us on this, our Lords natal day. |
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Louis. And with that he reaches into the bishops pocket and pulls out the necklace. Twelve hundred dollars worth of diamonds and pearls in exchange for fifty cents worth of paper and ink, says the policeman, who is obviously a philosopher at heart. And passing yourself off as a man of the church. You should be ashamed, he says, as he claps the handcuffs on the bishop, who is obviously no bishop, and he marches him away, but not before he gives the jeweler a receipt for both the necklace and the twelve hundred counterfeit dollars. Its evidence, after all. Was it really counterfeit? asked Shadow. Of course not! Fresh banknotes, straight from the bank, only with a thumbprint and a smudge of green ink on a couple of them to make them a little more interesting. Shadow sipped his coffee. It was worse than prison coffee. So the cop was obviously no cop. And the necklace? Evidence, said Wednesday. He unscrewed the top from the salt shaker, poured a little heap of salt on the table. But the jeweler gets a receipt, and assurance that hell get the necklace straight back as soon as Soapy comes to trial. He is congratulated on being a good citizen, and he watches proudly, already thinking of the tale hell have to tell at the next meeting of the Oddfellows tomorrow night, as the policeman marches the man pretending to be a bishop out of the store, twelve-hundred-dollars in one pocket, a twelve hundred dollar diamond necklace in the other, on their way to a police station thatll never see hide nor hair of either of them. The waitress had returned to clear the table. Tell me my dear, said Wednesday. Are you married? She shook her head. Astonishing that a young lady of such loveliness has not yet been snapped up. He was doodling with his fingernail in the spilled salt, making squat, blocky, runelike shapes. The waitress stood passively beside him, reminding Shadow less of a fawn and more of a young rabbit caught in an eighteen-wheelers headlights, frozen in fear and indecision. Wednesday lowered his voice, so much so that Shadow, only across the table, could barely hear him. What time do you get off work? Nine, she said, and swallowed. Nine-thirty latest. And what is the finest motel in this area? Theres a Motel 6, she said. Its not much. Wednesday touched the back of her hand, fleetingly, with the tips of his fingers, leaving crumbs of salt on her skin. She made no attempt to wipe them off. To us, he said, his voice an almost inaudible rumble, it shall be a pleasure palace. The waitress looked at him. She bit her thin lips, hesitated, then nodded and fled for the kitchen. Cmon, said Shadow. She looks barely legal. I've never been overly concerned about legality, Wednesday told him. And I need her, not as an end in herself, but to wake me up a little. Even King David knew that there is one easy prescription to get warm blood flowing through an old frame: take one virgin, call me in the morning. Shadow caught himself wondering if the girl on night duty in the hotel back in Eagle Point had been a virgin. don't you ever worry about disease? he asked. What if you knock her up? What if she's got a brother? No, said Wednesday. I don't worry about diseases. I don't catch them. Unfortunatelyfor the most partpeople like me fire blanks, so theres not a great deal of interbreeding. It used to happen in the old days. Nowadays, its possible, but so unlikely as to be almost unimaginable. So no worries there. And many girls have brothers, and fathers. Its not my problem. |
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All is well, and all is well, and all shall be well. Shadow showed his ticket to the driver. Hell of a day to be traveling, she said. And then she added, with a certain grim satisfaction, Merry Christmas. The bus was almost empty. When will we get into Lakeside? asked Shadow. Two hours. Maybe a bit more, said the driver. They say theres a cold snap coming. She thumbed a switch and the doors closed with a hiss and a thump. Shadow walked halfway down the bus, put the seat back as far as it would go, and he started to think. The motion of the bus and the warmth combined to lull him, and before he was aware that he was becoming sleepy, he was asleep. * * * In the earth, and under the earth. The marks on the wall were the red of wet clay: handprints, fingermarks, and, here and there, crude representations of animals and people and birds. The fire still burned and the buffalo man still sat on the other side of the fire, staring at Shadow with huge eyes, eyes like pools of dark mud. The buffalo lips, fringed with matted brown hair, did not move as the buffalo voice said, Well, Shadow? Do you believe yet? I don't know, said Shadow. His mouth had not moved either, he observed. Whatever words were passing between the two of them were not being spoken, not in any way that Shadow understood speech. Are you real? Believe, said the buffalo man. Are you Shadow hesitated, and then he asked, Are you a god too? The buffalo man reached one hand into the flames of the fire and he pulled out a burning brand. He held the brand in the middle. Blue and yellow flames licked his red hand, but they did not burn. This is not a land for gods, said the buffalo man. But it was not the buffalo man talking anymore, Shadow knew, in his dream: it was the fire speaking, the crackling and the burning of the flame itself that spoke to Shadow in the dark place under the earth. This land was brought up from the depths of the ocean by a diver, said the fire. It was spun from its own substance by a spider. It was shat by a raven. It is the body of a fallen father, whose bones are mountains, whose eyes are lakes. This is a land of dreams and fire, said the flame. The buffalo man put the brand back on the fire. Why are you telling me this stuff? said Shadow. I'm not important. I'm not anything. I was an okay physical trainer, a really lousy small-time crook, and maybe not so good a husband as I thought I was He trailed off. How do I help Laura? Shadow asked the buffalo man. She wants to be alive again. I said I'd help her. I owe her that. The buffalo man said nothing. He pointed up toward the roof of the cave. Shadows eyes followed. There was a thin, wintery light coming from a tiny opening far above. Up there? asked Shadow, wishing that one of his questions would be answered. I'm supposed to go up there? The dream took him then, the idea becoming the thing itself, and Shadow was crushed into the rock and earth. He was like a mole, trying to push through the earth, like a badger, climbing through the earth, like a groundhog, pushing the earth out of his way, like a bear, but the earth was too hard, too dense, and his breath was coming in gasps, and soon he could go no farther, dig and climb no more, and he knew then that he would die somewhere in the deep place beneath the world. His own strength was not enough. His efforts became weaker. He knew that though his body was riding in a hot bus through cold woods if he stopped breathing here, beneath the world, he would stop breathing there as well, that even now his breath was coming in shallow panting gasps. |
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He struggled and he pushed, ever more weakly, each movement using precious air. He was trapped: could go no farther, and could not return the way that he had come. Now bargain, said a voice in his mind. What do I have to bargain with? Shadow asked. I have nothing. He could taste the clay now, thick and mud-gritty in his mouth. And then Shadow said, Except myself. I have myself, don't I? It seemed as if everything was holding its breath. I offer myself, he said. The response was immediate. The rocks and the earth that had surrounded him began to push down on Shadow, squeezed him so hard that the last ounce of air in his lungs was crushed out of him. The pressure became pain, pushing him on every side. He reached the zenith of pain and hung there, cresting, knowing that he could take no more, at that moment the spasm eased and Shadow could breathe again. The light above him had grown larger. He was being pushed toward the surface. As the next earth-spasm hit, Shadow tried to ride with it. This time he felt himself being pushed upward. The pain, on that last awful contraction, was impossible to believe, as he felt himself being squeezed, crushed, and pushed through an unyielding rock gap, his bones shattering, his flesh becoming something shapeless. As his mouth and ruined head cleared the hole he began to scream, in fear and pain. He wondered, as he screamed, whether, back in the waking world, he was also screamingif he was screaming in his sleep back on the darkened bus. And as that final spasm ended Shadow was on the ground, his fingers clutching the red earth. He pulled himself into a sitting position, wiped the earth from his face with his hand and looked up at the sky. It was twilight, a long, purple twilight, and the stars were coming out, one by one, stars so much brighter and more vivid than any stars he had ever seen or imagined. Soon, said the crackling voice of the flame, coming from behind him, they will fall. Soon they will fall and the star people will meet the earth people. There will be heroes among them, and men who will slay monsters and bring knowledge, but none of them will be gods. This is a poor place for gods. A blast of air, shocking in its coldness, touched his face. It was like being doused in ice water. He could hear the drivers voice saying that they were in Pinewood, anyone who needs a cigarette or wants to stretch their legs, well be stopping here for ten minutes, then well be back on the road. Shadow stumbled off the bus. They were parked outside another rural gas station, almost identical to the one they had left. The driver was helping a couple of teenage girls onto the bus, putting their suitcases away in the luggage compartment. Hey, the driver said, when she saw Shadow. you're getting off at Lakeside, right? Shadow agreed, sleepily, that he was. Heck, that's a good town, said the bus driver. I think sometimes that if I were just going to pack it all in, I'd move to Lakeside. Prettiest town I've ever seen. Youve lived there long? My first visit. You have a pasty at Mabels for me, you hear? Shadow decided not to ask for clarification. Tell me, said Shadow, was I talking in my sleep? If you were, I didn't hear you. She looked at her watch. Back on the bus. I'll call you when we get to Lakeside. The two girlshe doubted that either of them was much more than fourteen years oldwho had got on in Pinewood were now in the seat in front of him. They were friends, Shadow decided, eavesdropping without meaning to, not sisters. |
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One of them knew almost nothing about sex, but knew a lot about animals, helped out or spent a lot of time at some kind of animal shelter, while the other was not interested in animals, but, armed with a hundred tidbits gleaned from the Internet and from daytime television, thought she knew a great deal about human sexuality. Shadow listened with a horrified and amused fascination to the one who thought she was wise in the ways of the world detail the precise mechanics of using Alka-Seltzer tablets to enhance oral sex. Shadow started to tune them out, blanked everything except the noise of the road, and now only fragments of conversation would come back every now and again. Goldie is, like, such a good dog, and he was a purebred retriever, if only my dad would say okay, he wags his tail whenever he sees me. Its Christmas, he has to let me use the snowmobile. You can write your name with your tongue on the side of his thing. I miss Sandy. Yeah, I miss Sandy too. Six inches tonight they said, but they just make it up, they make up the weather and nobody ever calls them on it And then the brakes of the bus were hissing and the driver was shouting Lakeside! and the doors clunked open. Shadow followed the girls out into the floodlit parking lot of a video store and tanning salon that functioned, Shadow guessed, as Lakesides Greyhound station. The air was dreadfully cold, but it was a fresh cold. It woke him up. He stared at the lights of the town to the south and the west, and pale expanse of a frozen lake to the east. The girls were standing in the lot, stamping and blowing on their hands dramatically. One of them, the younger one, snuck a look at Shadow, smiled awkwardly when she realized that he had seen her do so. Merry Christmas, said Shadow. Yeah, said the other girl, perhaps a year or so older than the first, Merry Christmas to you too. She had carroty red hair and a snub nose covered with a hundred thousand freckles. Nice town you got here, said Shadow. We like it, said the younger one. She was the one who liked animals. She gave Shadow a shy grin, revealing blue rubber-band braces stretching across her front teeth. You look like somebody, she told him, gravely. Are you somebodys brother or somebodys son or something? You are such a spaz, Alison, said her friend. Everybodys somebodys son or brother or something. That wasnt what I meant, said Alison. Headlights framed them all for one brilliant white moment. Behind the headlights was a station wagon with a mother in it, and in moments it took the girls and their bags away, leaving Shadow standing alone in the parking lot. Young man? Anything I can do for you? The old man was locking up the video store. He pocketed his keys. Store aint open Christmas, he told Shadow cheerfully. But I come down to meet the bus. Make sure everything was okay. couldn't live with myself if some poor sould found emselves stranded on Christmas Day. He was close enough that Shadow could see his face: old but contented, the face of a man who had sipped lifes vinegar and found it, by and large, to be mostly whiskey, and good whiskey at that. Well, you could give me the number of the local taxi company, said Shadow. I could, said the old man, doubtfully, but Tomll be in his bed this time of night, and even if you could rouse him you'll get no satisfaction I saw him down at the Buck Stops Here earlier this evening, and he was very merry. Very merry indeed. Where is ityou're aiming to go? Shadow showed him the address tag on the door key. |
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Well, he said, that's a ten-, mebbe a twenty-minute walk over the bridge and around. But its no fun when its this cold, and when you don't know whereyou're going it always seems longeryou ever notice that? First time takes forever, and then ever after its over in a flash? Yes, said Shadow. I've never thought of it like that. But I guess its true. The old man nodded. His face cracked into a grin. What the heck, its Christmas. I'll run you over there in Tessie. Shadow followed the old man to the road, where a huge old roadster was parked. It looked like something that gangsters might have been proud to drive in the Roaring Twenties, running boards and all. It was a deep dark color under the sodium lights that might have been red and might have been green. This is Tessie, the old man said. Aint she a beaut? He patted her proprietorially, where the hood curved up and arched over the front nearside wheel. What make is she? asked Shadow. she's a Wendt Phoenix. Wendt went under in 31, name was bought by Chrysler, but they never made any more Wendts. Harvey Wendt, who founded the company, was a local boy. Went out to California, killed himself in, oh, 1941, 42. Great tragedy. The car smelled of leather and old cigarette smokenot a fresh smell, but as if enough people had smoked enough cigarettes and cigars in the car over the years that the smell of burning tobacco had become part of the fabric of the car. The old man turned the key in the ignition and Tessie started first time. Tomorrow, he told Shadow, she goes into the garage. I'll cover her with a dust sheet, and that's where shell stay until spring. Truth of the matter is I shouldn't be driving her right now, with the snow on the ground. doesn't she ride well in snow? Rides just fine. Its the salt they put on the roads. Rusts these old beauties faster than you could believe. You want to go door to door, or would you like the moonlight grand tour of the town? I don't want to trouble you Its no trouble. You get to be my age, you're grateful for the least wink of sleep. I'm lucky if I get five hours a night nowadayswake up and my mind is just turning and turning. Where are my manners? My names Hinzelmann. I'd say, call me Richie, but around here folks who know me just call me plain Hinzelmann. I'd shake your hand, but I need two hands to drive Tessie. She knows when I'm not paying attention. Mike Ainsel, said Shadow. Pleased to meet you, Hinzelmann. So well go around the lake. Grand tour, said Hinzelmann. Main Street, which they were on, was a pretty street, even at night, and it looked old-fashioned in the best sense of the wordas if, for a hundred years, people had been caring for that street and they had not been in a hurry to lose anything they liked. Hinzelmann pointed out the towns two restaurants as they passed them (a German restaurant and what he described as part Greek, part Norwegian, and a popover at every plate); he pointed out the bakery and the bookstore (What I say is, a town isn't a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless its got a bookstore, it knows its not fooling a soul). He slowed Tessie as they passed the library so Shadow could get a good look at it. Antique gaslights flickered over the doorwayHinzelmann proudly called Shadows attention to them. Built in the 1870s by John Henning, local lumber baron. He wanted it called the Henning Memorial Library, but when he died they started calling it the Lakeside Library, and I guess itll be the Lakeside Library now until the end of time. |
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Isnt it a dream? He couldn't have been prouder of it if he had built it himself. The building reminded Shadow of a castle, and he said so. that's right, agreed Hinzelmann. Turrets and all. Henning wanted it to look like that on the outside. Inside they still have all the original pine shelving. Miriam Shultz wants to tear the insides out and modernize, but its on some register of historic places, and theres not a damn thing she can do. They drove around the south side of the lake. The town circled the lake, which was a thirty-foot drop below the level of the road. Shadow could see the patches of white ice dulling the surface of the lake with, here and there, a shiny patch of water reflecting the lights of the town. Looks like its freezing over, he said. Its been frozen over for a month now, said Hinzelmann. The dull spots are snowdrifts and the shiny spots are ice. It froze just after Thanksgiving in one cold night, froze smooth as glass. You do much ice-fishing, Mr. Ainsel? Never. Best thing a man can do. Its not the fish you catch, its the peace of mind that you take home at the end of the day. I'll remember that. Shadow peered down at the lake through Tessies window. Can you actually walk on it already? You can walk on it. Drive on it too, but I wouldn't want to risk it yet. Its been cold up here for six weeks, said Hinzelmann. But you also got to allow that things freeze harder and faster up here in northern Wisconsin than they do most anyplace else there is. I was out hunting oncehunting for deer, and this was oh, thirty, forty years back, and I shot at a buck, missed him, and sent him running off through the woodsthis was over acrost the north end of the lake, up near where you'll be living, Mike. Now he was the finest buck I ever did see, twenty point, big as a small horse, no lie. Now, I'm younger and feistier back then than I am now, and though it had started snowing before Halloween that year, now it was Thanksgiving and there was clean snow on the ground, fresh as anything, and I could see the bucks footprints. It looked to me like the big fellow was heading for the lake in a panic. Well, only a damn fool tries to run down a buck, but there am I, a damn fool, running after him, and there he is, standing in the lake, in oh, eight, nine inches of water, and he's just looking at me. That very moment, the sun goes behind a cloud, and the freeze comestemperature must have fallen thirty degrees in ten minutes, not a word of a lie. And that old stag, he gets ready to run, and he cant move! he's frozen into the ice. Me, I just walk over to him slowly. You can see he wants to run, but he's iced in and it just isn't going to happen. But theres no way I can bring myself to shoot a defenseless critter when he cant get awaywhat kind of man would I be if I done that, heh? So I takes my shotgun and I fires off one shell, straight up into the air. Well, the noise and the shock is enough to make that buck just about jump out of his skin, and seein that his legs are iced in, that's just what he proceeds to do. He leaves his hide and his antlers stuck to the ice, while he charges back into the woods, pink as a newborn mouse and shivering fit to bust. I felt bad enough for that old buck that I talked the Lakeside Ladies Knitting Circle into making him something warm to wear all the winter, and they knitted him an all-over one-piece woolen suit, so he wouldn't freeze to death. Course, the joke was on us, because they knitted him a suit of bright orange wool, so no hunter ever shot at it. |
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I never met him. You met him. Please don't make the mistake of thinking were stupid. We arent stupid. Mm. I meet a lot of people. Maybe I met him and forgot already. Maam, it really is to your advantage to cooperate with us. Otherwise, you'll have to introduce me to your friends Mister Thumbscrews and Mister Pentothal? Maam, you arent making this any easier on yourself. Gee. I'm sorry. Now, is there anything else? Cos I'm going to say Buh-bye now and close the door and I figure you two are going to go and get into Mister Car and drive away. Your lack of cooperation has been noted, maam. Buh-bye now. Click. I'll tell you all my secrets But I lie about my past So send me off to bed forevermore. Tom Waits, Tango Tillyou're Sore A whole life in darkness, surrounded by filth, that was what Shadow dreamed, his first night in Lakeside. A childs life, long ago and far away, in a land across the ocean, in the lands where the sun rose. But this life contained no sunrises, only dimness by day and blindness by night. Nobody spoke to him. He heard human voices, from outside, but could understand human speech no better than he understood the howling of the owls or the yelps of dogs. He remembered, or thought he remembered, one night, half a lifetime ago, when one of the big people had entered, quietly, and had not cuffed him or fed him, but had picked him up to her breast and embraced him. She smelled good. Hot drops of water had fallen from her face to his. He had been scared, and had wailed loudly in his fear. She put him down on the straw, hurriedly, and left the hut, fastening the door behind her. He remembered that moment, and he treasured it, just as he remembered the sweetness of a cabbage heart, the tart taste of plums, the crunch of apples, the greasy delight of roasted fish. And now he saw the faces in the firelight, all of them looking at him as he was led out from the hut for the first time, which was the only time. So that was what people looked like. Raised in darkness, he had never seen faces. Everything was so new. So strange. The bonfire light hurt his eyes. They pulled on the rope around his neck, to lead him to the place where the man waited for him. And when the first blade was raised in the firelight, what a cheer went up from the crowd. The child from the darkness began to laugh with them, in delight and in freedom. And then the blade came down. Shadow opened his eyes and realized that he was hungry and cold, in an apartment with a layer of ice clouding the inside of the window glass. His frozen breath, he thought. He got out of bed, pleased he did not have to get dressed. He scraped at a window with a fingernail as he passed, felt the ice collect under the nail, then melt to water. He tried to remember his dream, but remembered nothing but misery and darkness. He put on his shoes. He figured he would walk into the town center, walk across the bridge across the northern end of the lake, if he had the geography of the town right. He put on his thin jacket, remembering his promise to himself that he would buy himself a warm winter coat, opened the apartment door, and stepped out onto the wooden deck. The cold took his breath away: he breathed in, and felt every hair in his nostrils freeze into rigidity. The deck gave him a fine view of the lake, irregular patches of gray surrounded by an expanse of white. The cold snap had come, that was for sure. It could not be much above zero, and it would not be a pleasant walk, but he was certain he could make it into town without too much trouble. |
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The pasty remained good as Shadow chewed his way through it. It was astonishingly filling. Stick-to-your-ribs food, as his mother would have said. Sticks to your sides. So, said Chief of Police Chad Mulligan, wiping the hot-chocolate foam from around his lips. I figure we stop off next at Hennings Farm and Home Supplies, get you a real winter wardrobe, swing by Daves Finest Food so you can fill your larder, then I'll drop you up by Lakeside Realty. If you can put down a thousand up front for the car they'll be happy, otherwise five hundred a month for four months should see them okay. Its an ugly car, like I said, but if the kid hadn't painted it purple itd be a ten-thousand-dollar car, and reliable, and you'll need something like that to get around this winter, you ask me. This is very good of you, said Shadow. But shouldn't you be out catching criminals, not helping newcomers? Not that I'm complaining, you understand. Mabel chuckled. We all tell him that, she said. Mulligan shrugged. Its a good town, he said, simply. Not much trouble. you'll always get someone speeding within city limitswhich is a good thing, as traffic tickets pay my wages. Friday, Saturday nights you get some jerk who gets drunk and beats on a spouse and that one can go both ways, believe me. Men and women. But out here things are quiet. They call me out when someones locked their keys in their vehicle. Barking dogs. Every year theres a couple of high school kids caught with weed behind the bleachers. Biggest police case weve had here in five years was when Dan Schwartz got drunk and shot up his own trailer, then he went on the run, down Main Street, in his wheelchair, waving this darn shotgun, shouting that he would shoot anyone who got in his way, that no one would stop him from getting to the interstate. I think he was on his way to Washington to shoot the president. I still laugh whenever I think of Dan heading down the interstate in that wheelchair of his with the bumper sticker on the back. My Juvenile Delinquent is Screwing Your Honor Student. You remember, Mabel? She nodded, lips pursed. She did not seem to find it as funny as Mulligan did. What did you do? asked Shadow. I talked to him. He gave me the shotgun. Slept it off down at the jail. Dans not a bad guy, he was just drunk and upset. Shadow paid for his own breakfast and, over Chad Mulligans halfhearted protests, both hot chocolates. Hennings Farm and Home Supplies was a warehouse-sized building on the south of the town that sold everything from tractors to toys (the toys, along with the Christmas ornaments, were already on sale). The store was bustling with post-Christmas shoppers. Shadow recognized the younger of the girls who had sat in front of him on the bus. She was trailing after her parents. He waved at her and she gave him a hesitant, blue-rubber-banded smile. Shadow wondered idly what shed look like in ten years time. Probably as beautiful as the girl at the Hennings Farm and Home checkout counter, who scanned in his purchases with a chattering hand-held gun, capable, Shaded had no doubt, of ringing up a tractor if someone drove it through. Ten pairs of long underwear? said the girl. Stocking up, huh? She looked like a movie starlet. Shadow felt fourteen again, and tongue-tied and foolish. He said nothing while she rang up the thermal boots, the gloves, the sweaters, and the goose-down-filled coat. He had no wish to put the credit card that Wednesday had given him to the test, not with Chief of Police Mulligan standing helpfully beside him, so he paid for everything in cash. |
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Still, the car started up on the first try, and the heater worked, although it took almost ten minutes of running the engine with the heater on full before the interior of the car changed from unbearably cold to merely chilly. While this was happening, Missy Gunther took Shadow into her kitchenexcuse the mess, but the little ones just leave their toys all over after Christmas and she just didn't have the heart, would he care for some leftover turkey dinner? Well, coffee then, won't take a moment to brew a fresh pot and Shadow took a large red toy car off a window seat and sat down, while Missy Gunther asked if he had met his neighbors yet, and Shadow confessed that he hadnt. There were, he was informed while the coffee dripped, four other inhabitants of his apartment buildingback when it was the Pilsen place the Pilsens lived in the downstairs flat and rented out the upper two flats, now their apartment, which was taken by a couple of young men, Mr. Holz and Mr. Neiman, they actually are a couple and when she said couple, Mr. Ainsel, Heavens, we have all kinds here, more than one kind of tree in the forest, although mostly those kind of people wind up in Madison or the Twin Cities, but truth to tell, nobody here gives it a second thought. you're in Key West for the winter, they'll be back in April, hell meet them then. The thing about Lakeside is that its a good town. Now next door to Mr. Ainsel, that's Marguerite Olsen and her little boy, a sweet lady, sweet, sweet lady, but she's had a hard life, still sweet as pie, and she works for the Lakeside News. Not the most exciting newspaper in the world, but truth to tell Missy Gunther thought that was probably the way most folk around here liked it. Oh, she said, and poured him coffee, she just wished that Mr. Ainsel could see the town in the summer or late in the spring, when the lilacs and the apple and the cherry blossoms were out, she thought there was nothing like it for beauty, nothing like it anywhere in the world. Shadow gave her a five-hundred-dollar deposit, and he climbed up into the car and started to back it up, out of her front yard and onto the driveway proper. Missy Gunther tapped on his front window. This is for you, she said. I nearly forgot. She handed him a buff envelope. Its kind of a gag. We had them printed up a few years back. You don't have to look at it now. He thanked her, and drove, cautiously, back into the town. He took the road that ran around the lake. He wished he could see it in the spring, or the summer, or the fall: it would be very beautiful, he had no doubt of that. In ten minutes he was home. He parked the car out on the street and walked up the outside steps to his cold apartment. He unpacked his shopping, put the food into the cupboards and the fridge, and then he opened the envelope Missy Gunther had given him. It contained a passport. Blue, plasticated cover and, inside, a proclamation that Michael Ainsel (his name handwritten in Missy Gunthers precise handwriting) was a citizen of Lakeside. There was a map of the town on the next page. The rest of it was filled with discount coupons for various local stores. I think I may like it here, said Shadow, aloud. He looked out of the icy window at the frozen lake. If it ever warms up. There was a bang at the front door at around 2:00 P. M. Shadow had been practicing the Sucker Vanish with a quarter, tossing it from one hand to the other undetectably. His hands were cold enough and clumsy enough that he kept dropping the coin onto the tabletop, and the knock at the door made him drop it again. |
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You get too bored up here, you just come down to the store and ask for me. I'll show you my collection of hand-tied fishing flies. Bore you so much that getting back here will be a relief. His voice was muffled, but audible. I'll do that, said Shadow with a smile. Hows Tessie? Hibernating. Shell be out in the spring. You take care now, Mr. Ainsel. And he closed the door behind him as he left. The apartment grew ever colder. Shadow put on his coat and his gloves. Then he put on his boots. He could hardly see through the windows now for the ice on the inside of the panes which turned the view of the lake into an abstract image. His breath was clouding in the air. He went out of his apartment onto the wooden deck and knocked on the door next door. He heard a womans voice shouting at someone to for heavens sake shut up and turn that television downa kid, he thought, adults don't shout like that at other adults. The door opened and a tired woman with very long, very black hair was staring at him warily. Yes? How do you do, maam. I'm Mike Ainsel. I'm your next-door neighbor. Her expression did not change, not by a hair. Yes? Maam. Its freezing in my apartment. Theres a little heat coming out of the grate, but its not warming the place up, not at all. She looked him up and down, then a ghost of a smile touched the edges of her lips and she said, Come in, then. If you don't therell be no heat in here, either. He stepped inside her apartment. Plastic, multicolored toys were strewn all over the floor. There were small heaps of torn Christmas wrapping paper by the wall. A small boy sat inches away from the television set, a video of the Disney Hercules playing, an animated satyr stomping and shouting his way across the screen. Shadow kept his back to the TV set. Okay, she said. This is what you do. First you seal the windows, you can buy the stuff down at Hennings, its just like Saran Wrap but for windows. Tape it to windows, then if you want to get fancy you run a blow-dryer on it, it stays there the whole winter. That stops the heat leaving through the windows. Then you buy a space heater or two. The buildings furnace is old, and it cant cope with the real cold. Weve had some easy winters recently, I suppose we should be grateful. Then she put out her hand. Marguerite Olsen. Good to meet you, said Shadow. He pulled off a glove and they shook hands. You know, maam, I'd always thought of Olsens as being blonder than you. My ex-husband was as blond as they come. Pink and blond. couldn't tan at gunpoint. Missy Gunther told me you write for the local paper. Missy Gunther tells everybody everything. I don't see why we need a local paper with Missy Gunther around. She nodded. Yes. Some news reporting here and there, but my editor writes most of the news. I write the nature column, the gardening column, an opinion column every Sunday and the News from the Community column, which tells, in mind-numbing detail, who went to dinner with who for fifteen miles around. Or is that whom? Whom, said Shadow, before he could stop himself. Its the objective case. She looked at him with her black eyes, and Shadow experienced a moment of pure deja vu. I've been here before, he thought. No, she reminds me of someone. Anyway, that's how you heat up your apartment, she said. Thank you, said Shadow. When its warm you and your little one must come over. His names Leon, she said. Good meeting you, MisterI'm sorry Ainsel, said Shadow. Mike Ainsel. And what sort of a name is Ainsel? |
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she asked. Shadow had no idea. My name, he said. I'm afraid I was never very interested in family history. Norwegian, maybe? she said. We were never close, he said. Then he remembered Uncle Emerson Borson, and added, On that side, anyway. * * * By the time Mr. Wednesday arrived, Shadow had put clear plastic sheeting across all the windows, and had one space heater running in the main room and one in the bedroom at the back. It was practically cozy. What the hell is that purple piece of shityou're driving? asked Wednesday, by way of greeting. Well, said Shadow, you drove off with my white piece of shit. Where is it, by the way? I traded it in in Duluth, said Wednesday. You cant be too careful. don't worryyoull get your share when all this is done. What am I doing here? asked Shadow. In Lakeside, I mean. Not in the world. Wednesday smiled his smile, the one that made Shadow want to hit him. you're living here because its the last place they'll look for you. I can keep you out of sight here. By they you mean the black hats? Exactly. I'm afraid the House on the Rock is now out of bounds. Its a little difficult, but well cope. Now its just stamping our feet and flag-waving, caracole and saunter until the action startsa little later than any of us expected. I think they'll hold off until spring. Nothing big can happen until then. How come? Because they may babble on about micromilliseconds and virtual worlds and paradigm shifts and what-have-you, but they still inhabit this planet and are still bound by the cycle of the year. These are the dead months. A victory in these months is a dead victory. I have no idea whatyou're talking about, said Shadow. That was not entirely true. He had a vague idea, and he hoped it was wrong. Its going to be a bad winter, and you and I are going to use our time as wisely as we can. We shall rally our troops and pick our battleground. Okay, said Shadow. He knew that Wednesday was telling him the truth, or a part of a truth. War was coming. No, that was not it: the war had already begun. The battle was coming. Mad Sweeney said that he was working for you when we met him that first night. He said that before he died. And would I have wanted to employ someone who could not even best a sad case like that in a bar fight? But never fear, youve repaid my faith in you a dozen times over. Have you ever been to Las Vegas? Las Vegas, Nevada? that's the one. No. Were flying in there from Madison later tonight, on a gentlemans red-eye, a charter plane for high rollers. I've convinced them that we should be on it. don't you ever get tired of lying? asked Shadow. He said it gently, curiously. Not in the slightest. Anyway, its true. We are playing for the highest stakes of all. It shouldn't take us more than a couple of hours to get to Madison, the roads are clear. So lock your door and turn off the heaters. It would be a terrible thing if you burned down the house in your absence. Who are we going to see in Las Vegas? Wednesday told him. Shadow turned off the heaters, packed some clothes into an overnight bag, then turned back to Wednesday and said, Look, I feel kind of stupid. I know you just told me who were going to see, but I dunno. I just had a brain-fart or something. Its gone. Who is it again? Wednesday told him once more. This time Shadow almost had it. The name was there on the tip of his mind. He wished hed been paying closer attention when Wednesday told him. He let it go. Whos driving? he asked Wednesday. You are, said Wednesday. |
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They walked out of the house, down the wooden stairs and the icy path to where a black Lincoln Town Car was parked. Shadow drove. * * * Entering the casino, one is beset at every side by invitationinvitations such that it would take a man of stone, heartless, mindless, and curiously devoid of avarice, to decline them. Listen: a machine-gun rattle of silver coins as they tumble and spurt down into a slot machine tray and overflow onto monogrammed carpets is replaced by the siren clangor of the slots, the jangling, blippeting chorus swallowed by the huge room, muted to a comforting background chatter by the time one reaches the card tables, the distant sounds only loud enough to keep the adrenaline flowing through the gamblers veins. There is a secret that the casinos possess, a secret they hold and guard and prize, the holiest of their mysteries. For most people do not gamble to win money, after all, although that is what is advertised, sold, claimed, and dreamed. But that is merely the easy lie that gets them through the enormous, ever-open, welcoming doors. The secret is this: people gamble to lose money. They come to the casinos for the moment in which they feel alive, to ride the spinning wheel and turn with the cards and lose themselves, with the coins, in the slots. They may brag about the nights they won, the money they took from the casino, but they treasure, secretly treasure, the times they lost. Its a sacrifice, of sorts. The money flows through the casino in an uninterrupted stream of green and silver, streaming from hand to hand, from gambler to croupier to cashier to the management to security, finally ending up in the Holy of Holies, the innermost sanctum, the Counting Room. And it is here, in the counting room of this casino, that you come to rest, here, where the greenbacks are sorted, stacked, indexed, here in a space that is slowly becoming redundant as more and more of the money that flows through the casino is imaginary: an electrical sequence of ons and offs, sequences that flow down telephone lines. In the counting room you see three men, counting money under the glassy stare of the cameras they can see, the insectile gazes of the tiny cameras they cannot see. During the course of one shift each of the men counts more money than he will see in all the pay packets of his life. Each man, when he sleeps, dreams of counting money, of stacks and paper bands and numbers that climb inevitably, that are sorted and lost. Each of the three men has idly wondered, not less than once a week, how to evade the casinos security systems and run off with as much money as he could haul; and, reluctantly, each man has inspected the dream and found it impractical, has settled for a steady paycheck, avoided the twin specters of prison and an unmarked grave. And here, in the sanctum sanctorum, there are the three men who count the money, and there are the guards who watch and who bring money and take it away; and then there is another person. His charcoal-gray suit is immaculate, his hair is dark, he is clean-shaven, and his face and his demeanor are, in every sense, forgettable. None of the other men has even observed that he is there, or if they have noticed him, they have forgotten him on the instant. As the shift ends the doors are opened, and the man in the charcoal suit leaves the room and walks, with the guards, through the corridors, their feet shushing along the monogrammed carpets. The money, in strongboxes, is wheeled to an interior loading bay, where it is loaded into armored cars. |
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And Canada Bill sighed, and shrugged his shoulders, and said I know. But its the only game in town. And he went back to the game. Dark eyes stare at the man in the light gray suit mistrustfully. The man in the charcoal suit says something in reply. The man in the light suit, who has a graying reddish beard, shakes his head. Look, he says, I'm sorry about what went down in Wisconsin. But I got you all out safely, didn't I? No one was hurt. The man in the dark suit sips his Laphroaig and water, savoring the marshy taste, the body-in-the-bog quality of the whiskey. He asks a question. I don't know. Everythings moving faster than I expected. Everyones got a hard-on for the kid I hired to run errandsI've got him outside, waiting in the taxi. Are you still in? The man in the dark suit replies. The bearded man shakes his head. she's not been seen for two hundred years. If she isn't dead she's taken herself out of the picture. Something else is said. Look, says the bearded man, knocking back his Jack Daniels. You come in, be there when we need you, and I'll take care of you. Whaddayou want? Soma? I can get you a bottle of Soma. The real stuff. The man in the dark suit stares. Then he nods his head, reluctantly, and makes a comment. Of course I am, says the bearded man, smiling like a knife. What do you expect? But look at it this way: its the only game in town. He reaches out a paw like hand and shakes the other mans well-manicured hand. Then he walks away. The thin waitress comes over, puzzled: theres now only one man at the corner table, a sharply dressed man with dark hair in a charcoal-gray suit. You doing okay? she asks. Is your friend coming back? The man with the dark hair sighs, and explains that his friend won't be coming back, and thus she won't be paid for her time, or for her trouble. And then, seeing the hurt in her eyes, and taking pity on her, he examines the golden threads in his mind, watches the matrix, follows the money until he spots a node, and tells her that if she's outside Treasure Island at 6:00 A. M., thirty minutes after she gets off work, shell meet an oncologist from Denver who will just have won forty-thousand dollars at a craps table, and will need a mentor, a partner, someone to help him dispose of it all in the forty-eight hours before he gets on the plane home. The words evaporate in the waitresss mind, but they leave her happy. She sighs and notes that the guys in the corner have done a runner, and have not even tipped her; and it occurs to her that, instead of driving straight home when she gets off shift, she's going to drive over to Treasure Island; but she would never, if you asked her, be able to tell you why. So who was that guy you were seeing? asked Shadow as they walked back down the Las Vegas concourse. There were slot machines in the airport. Even at this time of the morning people stood in front of them, feeding them coins. Shadow wondered if there were those who never left the airport, who got off their planes, walked along the jetway into the airport building, and stopped there, trapped by the spinning images and the flashing lights until they had fed their last quarter to the machines, and then, with nothing left, just turned around and got onto the plane back home. And then he realized that he had zoned out just as Wednesday had been telling him who the man in the dark suit they had followed in the taxi had been, and he had missed it. So he's in, said Wednesday. Itll cost me a bottle of Soma, though. |
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He sighed, and then stopped talking. Shadow could feel his skin crawl. It was as if he had just seen a door open to another place, somewhere worlds away where hanged men blew in the wind at every crossroads, where witches shrieked overhead in the night. Laura, was all he said. Wednesday turned his head, stared into Shadows pale gray eyes with his own. I cant make her live again, he said. I don't even know why she isn't as dead as she ought to be. I think I did it, said Shadow. It was my fault. Wednesday raised an eyebrow. Mad Sweeney gave me a golden coin, back when he showed me how to do that trick. From what he said, he gave me the wrong coin. What he gave me was something more powerful than what he thought he was giving me. I passed it on to Laura. Wednesday grunted, lowered his chin to his chest, frowned. Then he sat back. That could do it, he said. And no, I cant help you. What you do in your own time is your own affair, of course. What, asked Shadow, is that supposed to mean? It means that I cant stop you from hunting eagle stones and thunderbirds. But I would infinitely prefer that you spend your days quietly sequestered in Lakeside, out of sight, and, I hope, out of mind. When things get hairy well need all hands to the wheel. He looked very old as he said this, and fragile, and his skin seemed almost transparent, and the flesh beneath was gray. Shadow wanted, wanted very much, to reach out and put his hand over Wednesdays gray hand. He wanted to tell him that everything would be okaysomething that Shadow did not feel, but that he knew had to be said. There were men in black trains out there. There was a fat kid in a stretch limo and there were people in the television who did not mean them well. He did not touch Wednesday. He did not say anything. Later, he wondered if he could have changed things, if that gesture would have done any good, if it could have averted any of the harm that was to come. He told himself it wouldnt. He knew it wouldnt. But still, afterward, he wished that, just for a moment on that slow flight home, he had touched Wednesdays hand. * * * The brief winter daylight was already fading when Wednesday dropped Shadow outside his apartment. The freezing temperature when Shadow opened the car door felt even more science fictional when compared to Las Vegas. don't get into any trouble, said Wednesday. Keep your head below the parapet. Make no waves. All at the same time? don't get smart with me, mboy. You can keep out of sight in Lakeside. I pulled in a big favor to keep you here, safe and sound. If you were in a city theyd get your scent in minutes. I'll stay put and keep out of trouble. Shadow meant it as he said it. Hed had a lifetime of trouble and he was ready to let it go forever. When are you coming back? he asked. Soon, said Wednesday, and he gunned the Lincolns engine, slid up the window, and drove off into the frigid night. Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead. Ben Franklin, Poor Richards Almanack Three cold days passed. The thermometer never made it up to the zero mark, not even at midday. Shadow wondered how people had survived this weather in the days before electricity, before thermal face masks and lightweight thermal underwear, before easy travel. He was down at the video, tanning, bait and tackle store, being shown Hinzelmanns hand-tied trout flies. They were more interesting than he had expected: colorful fakes of life, made of feather and thread, each with a hook hidden inside it. He asked Hinzelmann. |
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I wasnt planning on it. Well, you should. Its for a good cause. I'll make a point of getting down there. Head out into the hall and then go downstairs. Good seeing you, Mister Ainsel. Call me Mike, he said. She said nothing, just took Leons hand and walked the boy over to the childrens section. But Mom, Shadow heard Leon say, It wasnt pressed igitation. It wasnt. I saw it vanish and then it fell out of his nose. I saw it. An oil portrait of Abraham Lincoln gazed down from the wall at him. Shadow walked down the marble and oak steps to the library basement, through a door into a large room filled with tables, each table covered with books of all kinds, indiscriminately assorted and promiscuously arranged: paperbacks and hardcovers, fiction and nonfiction, periodicals and encyclopedias all side by side upon the tables, spines up or spines out. Shadow wandered to the back of the room where there was a table covered with old-looking leather-bound books, each with a catalog number painted in white on the spine. you're the first person over in that corner all day, said the man sitting by the stack of empty boxes and bags and the small, open metal cashbox. Mostly folk just take the thrillers and the childrens books and the Harlequin romances. Jenny Kerton, Danielle Steel, all that. The man was reading Agatha Christies The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Everything on the tables is fifty cents a book, or you can take three for a dollar. Shadow thanked him and continued to browse. He found a copy of Herodotuss Histories bound in peeling brown leather. It made him think of the paperback copy he had left behind in prison. There was a book called Perplexing Parlour Illusions, which looked like it might have some coin effects. He carried both the books over to the man with the cashbox. Buy one more, its still a dollar, said the man. And if you take another book away, you'll be doing us a favor. We need the shelf-space. Shadow walked back to the old leather-bound books. He decided to liberate the book that was least likely to be bought by anyone else, and found himself unable to decide between Common Diseases of the Urinary Tract with Illustrations by a Medical Doctor and Minutes of the LakesideCity Council 18721884. He looked at the illustrations in the medical book and decided that somewhere in the town there was a teenage boy who could use the book to gross out his friends. He took the Minutes to the man on the door, who took his dollar and put all the books into a Daves Finest Food brown paper sack. Shadow left the library. He had a clear view of the lake, all the way back. He could even see his apartment building, like a dolls house, up past the bridge. And there were men on the ice near the bridge, four or five of them, pushing a dark green car into the center of the white lake. March the twenty-third, Shadow said to the lake, under his breath. Nine A. M. to nine-thirty A. M. He wondered if the lake or the klunker could hear him and if they would pay any attention to him, even if they could. He doubted it. The wind blew bitter against his face. Officer Chad Mulligan was waiting outside Shadows apartment when he got back. Shadows heart began to pound when he saw the police car, to relax a little when he observed that the policeman was doing paperwork in the front seat. He walked over to the car, carrying his paper sack of books. Mulligan lowered his window. Library sale? he said. Yes. I bought a box of Robert Ludlum books there two, three years back. Keep meaning to read them. |
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My cousin swears by the guy. These days I figure if I ever get marooned on a desert island and I got my box of Robert Ludlum books with me, I can catch up on my reading. Something particular I can do for you, Chief? Not a darn thing, pal. Thought I'd stop by and see how you were settling in. You remember that Chinese saying, you save a mans life, you're responsible for him. Well, I'm not saying I saved your life last week. But I still thought I should check in. Hows the Purple Gunther-mobile doing? Good, said Shadow. Its good. Running fine. Pleased to hear it. I saw my next-door neighbor in the library, said Shadow. Miz Olsen. I was wondering What crawled up her butt and died? If you want to put it like that. Long story. You want to ride along for a spell, I'll tell you all about it. Shadow thought about it for a moment. Okay, he said. He got into the car, sat in the front passenger seat. Mulligan drove north of town. Then he turned off his lights and parked beside the road. Darren Olsen met Marge at U. W. Stevens Point and he brought her back north to Lakeside. She was a journalism major. He was studying, shit, hotel management, something like that. When they got here, jaws dropped. This was, what, thirteen, fourteen years ago. She was so beautifulthat black hair he paused. Darren managed the Motel America over in Camden, twenty miles west of here. Except nobody ever seemed to want to stop in Camden and eventually the motel closed. They had two boys. At that time Sandy was eleven. The little oneLeon, is it? was just a babe in arms. Darren Olsen wasnt a brave man. Hed been a good high school football player, but that was the last time he was flying high. Whatever. He couldn't find the courage to tell Margie that hed lost his job. So for a month, maybe for two months, hed drive off early in the morning, come home late in the evening complaining about the hard day hed had at the motel. What was he doing? asked Shadow. Mm. couldn't say for certain. I reckon he was driving up to Ironwood, maybe down to Green Bay. Guess he started out as a job hunter. Pretty soon he was drinking the time away, getting stoned, more than probably meeting the occasional working girl for a little instant gratification. He could have been gambling. What I do know for certain is that he emptied out their joint account in about ten weeks. It was only a matter of time before Margie figured outthere we go! He swung the car out, flicked on the siren and the lights, and scared the daylights out of a small man in a car with Iowa plates who had just come down the hill at seventy. The rogue lowan ticketed, Mulligan returned to his story. Where was I? Okay. So Margie kicks him out, sues for divorce. It turned into a vicious custody battle. that's what they call em when they get into People magazine. Vicious Custody Battle. She got the kids. Darren got visitation rights and precious little else. Now, back then Leon was pretty small. Sandy was older, a good kid, the kind of boy who worships his daddy. wouldn't let Margie say nothing bad about him. They lost the househad a nice place down on Daniels Road. She moved into the apartment. He left town. Came back every six months to make everybody miserable. This went on for a few years. Hed come back, spend money on the kids, leave Margie in tears. Most of us just started wishing hed never come back at all. His mom and pop had moved to Florida when they retired, said they couldn't take another Wisconsin winter. So last year he came out, said he wanted to take the boys to Florida for Christmas. |
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Margie said not a hope, told him to get lost. It got pretty unpleasantat one point I had to go over there. Domestic dispute. By the time I got there Darren was standing in the front yard shouting stuff, the boys were barely holding it together, Margie was crying. I told Darren he was shaping up for a night in the cells. I thought for a moment he was going to hit me, but he was sober enough not to do that. I gave him a ride down to the trailer park south of town, told him to shape up. That hed hurt her enough Next day he left town. Two weeks later, Sandy vanished. didn't get onto the school bus. Told his best friend that hed be seeing his dad soon, that Darren was bringing him a specially cool present to make up for having missed Christmas in Florida. Nobodys seen him since. Noncustodial kidnappings are the hardest. Its tough to find a kid who doesn't want to be found, ysee? Shadow said that he did. He saw something else as well. Chad Mulligan was in love with Marguerite Olsen himself. He wondered if the man knew how obvious it was. Mulligan pulled out once more, lights flashing, and pulled over some teenagers doing sixty. He didn't ticket them, just put the fear of God in them. * * * That evening Shadow sat at the kitchen table trying to figure out how to transform a silver dollar into a penny. It was a trick he had found in Perplexing Parlour Illusions, but the instructions were infuriating, unhelpful and vague. Phrases like then vanish the penny in the usual way, occurred every sentence or so. In this context, Shadow wondered, what was the usual way? A French drop? Sleeving it? Shouting Oh my god, look out! A mountain lion! and dropping the coin into his side pocket while the audiences attention was diverted? He tossed his silver dollar into the air, caught it, remembering the moon and the woman who gave it to him, then he attempted the illusion. It didn't seem to work. He walked into the bathroom and tried it in front of the mirror, and confirmed that he was right. The trick as written simply didn't work. He sighed, dropped the coins in his pocket and sat down on the couch. He spread the cheap throw rug over his legs and flipped open the Minutes of the Lakeside City Council 18721884. The type, in two columns, was so small as to be almost unreadable. He flipped through the book, looking at the reproductions of the photographs of the period, at the several incarnations of the Lakeside City Council therein: long side whiskers and clay pipes and battered hats and shiny hats, worn with faces that were, many of them, peculiarly familiar. He was unsurprised to see that the portly secretary of the 1882 city council was a Patrick Mulligan: shave him, make him lose twenty pounds and hed be a dead ringer for Chad Mulligan, hiswhat, great-great-grandson? He wondered if Hinzelmanns pioneer grandfather was in the photographs, but it did not appear that he had been city council material. Shadow thought he had seen a reference to a Hinzelmann in the text, while flipping from photograph to photograph, but it eluded him when he leafed back for it, and the tiny type made Shadows eyes ache. He put the book down on his chest and realized his head was nodding. It would be foolish to fall asleep on the couch, he decided soberly. The bedroom was only a few feet away. On the other hand, the bedroom and the bed would still be there in five minutes, and anyway, he was not going to go to sleep, only to close his eyes for a moment Darkness roared. He stood on an open plain. |
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Beside him was the place from which he had once emerged, from which the earth had squeezed him. Stars were still falling from the sky and each star that touched the red earth became a man or a woman. The men had long black hair and high cheekbones. The women all looked like Marguerite Olsen. These were the star people. They looked at him with dark, proud eyes. Tell me about the thunderbirds, said Shadow. Please. Its not for me. Its for my wife. One by one they turned their backs on him, and as he lost their faces they were gone, one with the landscape. But the last of them, her hair streaked white on dark gray, pointed before she turned away, pointed into the wine-colored sky. Ask them yourself, she said. Summer lightning flickered, momentarily illuminating the landscape from horizon to horizon. There were high rocks near him, peaks and spires of sandstone, and Shadow began to climb the nearest. The spire was the color of old ivory. He grabbed at a handhold and felt it slice into his hand. Its bone, thought Shadow. Not stone. Its old dry bone. It was a dream, and in dreams you have no choices: either there are no decisions to be made, or they were made for you long before ever the dream began. Shadow continued to climb. His hands hurt. Bone popped and crushed and fragmented under his bare feet. The wind tugged at him, and he pressed himself to the spire, and he continued to climb the tower. It was made of only one kind of bone, he realized, repeated over and over. Each of the bones was dry and ball-like. He imagined that they might be the eggshells of some huge bird. But another flare of lightning told him differently: they had holes for eyes, and they had teeth, which grinned without humor. Somewhere birds were calling. Rain spattered his face. He was hundreds of feet above the ground, clinging to the side of the tower of skulls, while flashes of lightning burned in the wings of the shadowy birds who circled the spireenormous, black, condorlike birds, each with a ruff of white at its neck. They were huge, graceful birds, and the beats of their wings crashed like thunder on the night air. They were circling the spire. They must be fifteen, twenty feet from wingtip to wingtip, thought Shadow. Then the first bird swung out of its glide toward him, blue lightning crackling in its wings. He pushed himself into a crevice of skulls, hollow eye-holes stared at him, a clutter of ivory teeth smiled at him, but he kept climbing, pulling himself up the mountain of skulls, every sharp edge cutting into his skin, feeling revulsion and terror and awe. Another bird came at him, and one hand-sized talon sank into his arm. He reached out and tried to grasp a feather from its wingfor if he returned to his tribe without a thunderbirds feather he would be disgraced, he would never be a manbut the bird pulled up, so that he could not grasp a feather. The thunderbird loosened its grip and swung back onto the wind. Shadow continued to climb. There must be a thousand skulls, thought Shadow. A thousand thousand. And not all of them are human. He stood at last on the top of the spire, the great birds, the thunderbirds, circling him slowly, navigating the gusts of the storm with tiny flicks of their wings. He heard a voice, the voice of the buffalo man, calling to him on the wind, telling him who the skulls belonged to The tower began to tumble, and the biggest bird, its eyes the blinding blue-white of forked lightning, plummeted down toward him in a rush of thunder, and Shadow was falling, tumbling down the tower of skulls The telephone shrilled. |
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Shadow had not even known that it was connected. Groggy, shaken, he picked it up. What the fuck, shouted Wednesday, angrier than Shadow had ever heard him, what the almighty flying fuck do you think you are playing at? I was asleep, said Shadow into the receiver, stupidly. What do you think is the fucking point of stashing you in a hiding place like Lakeside, ifyou're going to raise such a ruckus that not even a dead man could miss it? I dreamed of thunderbirds said Shadow. And a tower. Skulls It seemed to him very important to recount his dream. I know what you were dreaming. Everybody damn well knows what you were dreaming. Christ almighty. Whats the point in hiding you, ifyou're going to start to fucking advertise? Shadow said nothing. There was a pause at the other end of the telephone. I'll be there in the morning, said Wednesday. It sounded like the anger had died down. Were going to San Francisco. The flowers in your hair are optional. And the line went dead. Shadow put the telephone down on the carpet, and sat up, stiffly. It was 6:00 A. M. and still night-dark outside. He got up from the sofa, shivering. He could hear the wind as it screamed across the frozen lake. And he could hear somebody nearby crying, only the thickness of a wall away. He was certain it was Marguerite Olsen, and her sobbing was insistent and low and heartbreaking. Shadow walked into the bathroom and pissed, then went into his bedroom and closed the door, blocking off the sound of the crying woman. Outside the wind howled and wailed as if it, too, was seeking a lost child. * * * San Francisco in January was unseasonably warm, warm enough that the sweat prickled on the back of Shadows neck. Wednesday was wearing a deep blue suit, and a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles that made him look like an entertainment lawyer. They were walking along Haight Street. The street people and the hustlers and the moochers watched them go by, and no one shook a paper cup of change at them, no one asked them for anything at all. Wednesdays jaw was set. Shadow had seen immediately that the man was still angry, and had asked no questions when the black Lincoln Town Car had pulled up outside the apartment that morning. They had not talked on the way to the airport. He had been relieved that Wednesday was in first class and he was back in coach. Now it was late in the afternoon. Shadow, who had not been in San Francisco since he was a boy, who had only seen it since then as a background to movies, was astonished at how familiar it was, how colorful and unique the wooden houses, how steep the hills, how very much it didn't feel like anywhere else. Its almost hard to believe that this is in the same country as Lakeside, he said. Wednesday glared at him. Then he said, Its not. San Francisco isn't in the same country as Lakeside anymore than New Orleans is in the same country as New York or Miami is in the same country as Minneapolis. Is that so? said Shadow, mildly. Indeed it is. They may share certain cultural signifiersmoney, a federal government, entertainmentits the same land, obviouslybut the only things that give it the illusion of being one country are the greenback, The Tonight Show, and McDonalds. They were approaching a park at the end of the road. Be nice to the lady we are visiting. But not too nice. I'll be cool, said Shadow. They stepped onto the grass. A young girl, no older than fourteen, her hair dyed green and orange and pink, stared at them as they went by. She sat beside a dog, a mongrel, with a piece of string for a collar and a leash. |
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She looked hungrier than the dog did. The dog yapped at them, then wagged its tail. Shadow gave the girl a dollar bill. She stared at it as if she was not sure what it was. Buy dog food with it, Shadow suggested. She nodded, and smiled. Let me put it bluntly, said Wednesday. You must be very cautious around the lady we are visiting. She might take a fancy to you, and that would be bad. Is she your girlfriend or something? Not for all the little plastic toys in China, said Wednesday, agreeably. His anger seemed to have dissipated, or perhaps to have been invested for the future. Shadow suspected that anger was the engine that made Wednesday run. There was a woman sitting on the grass, under a tree, with a paper tablecloth spread in front of her, and a variety of Tupperware dishes on the cloth. She wasnot fat, no, far from fat: what she was, a word that Shadow had never had cause to use until now, was curvaceous. Her hair was so fair that it was white, the kind of platinum-blonde tresses that should have belonged to a long-dead movie starlet, her lips were painted crimson, and she looked to be somewhere between twenty-five and fifty. As they reached her she was selecting from a plate of deviled eggs. She looked up as Wednesday approached her, put down the egg she had chosen, and wiped her hand. Hello, you old fraud, she said, but she smiled as she said it, and Wednesday bowed low, took her hand, and raised it to his lips. He said, You look divine. How the hell else should I look? she demanded, sweetly. Anyway, you're a liar. New Orleans was such a mistakeI put on, what, thirty pounds there? I swear. I knew I had to leave when I started to waddle. The tops of my thighs rub together when I walk now, can you believe that? This last was addressed to Shadow. He had no idea what to say in reply, and felt a hot flush suffuse his face. The woman laughed delightedly. he's blushing! Wednesday, my sweet, you brought me a blusher. How perfectly wonderful of you. Whats he called? This is Shadow, said Wednesday. He seemed to be enjoying Shadows discomfort. Shadow, say hello to Easter. Shadow said something that might have been Hello, and the woman smiled at him again. He felt like he was caught in headlightsthe blinding kind that poachers use to freeze deer before they shoot them. He could smell her perfume from where he was standing, an intoxicating mixture of jasmine and honeysuckle, of sweet milk and female skin. So, hows tricks? asked Wednesday. The womanEasterlaughed a deep and throaty laugh, full-bodied and joyous. How could you not like someone who laughed like that? Everythings fine, she said. How about you, you old wolf? I was hoping to enlist your assistance. Wasting your time. At least hear me out before dismissing me. No point. don't even bother. She looked at Shadow. Please, sit down here and help yourself to some of this food. Here, take a plate and pile it high. Its all good. Eggs, roast chicken, chicken curry, chicken salad, and over here is lapinrabbit, actually, but cold rabbit is a delight, and in that bowl over there is the jugged harewell, why don't I just fill a plate for you? And she did, taking a plastic plate, piling it high with food, and passing it to him. Then she looked at Wednesday. Are you eating? she asked. I am at your disposal, my dear, said Wednesday. You, she told him, are so full of shit its a wonder your eyes don't turn brown. She passed him an empty plate. Help yourself, she said. The afternoon sun at her back burned her hair into a platinum aura. |
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Then she said, I don't know about any of that Christian stuff. I'm a pagan. The woman behind the counter said, I think its like Latin or something for Christ has risen, maybe. Really? said Wednesday. Yeah, sure, said the woman. Easter. Just like the sun rises in the east, you know. The risen son. Of coursea most logical supposition. The woman smiled and returned to her coffee grinder. Wednesday looked up at their waitress. I think I shall have another espresso, if you do not mind. And tell me, as a pagan, who do you worship? Worship? that's right. I imagine you must have a pretty wide-open field. So to whom do you set up your household altar? To whom do you bow down? To whom do you pray at dawn and at dusk? Her lips described several shapes without saying anything before she said, The female principle. Its an empowerment thing. You know? Indeed. And this female principle of yours. Does she have a name? she's the goddess within us all, said the girl with the eyebrow ring, color rising to her cheek. She doesn't need a name. Ah, said Wednesday, with a wide monkey grin, so do you have mighty bacchanals in her honor? Do you drink blood wine under the full moon while scarlet candles burn in silver candleholders? Do you step naked into the seafoam, chanting ecstatically to your nameless goddess while the waves lick at your legs, lapping your thighs like the tongues of a thousand leopards? you're making fun of me, she said. We don't do any of that stuff you were saying. She took a deep breath. Shadow suspected she was counting to ten. Any more coffees here? Another mochaccino for you, maam? Her smile was a lot like the one she had greeted them with when they had entered. They shook their heads, and the waitress turned to greet another customer. There, said Wednesday, is one who does not have the faith and will not have the fun, Chesterton. Pagan indeed. So. Shall we go out onto the street, Easter my dear, and repeat the exercise? Find out how many passers by know that their Easter festival takes its name from Eostre of the Dawn? Lets see I have it. We shall ask a hundred people. For every one that knows the truth, you may cut off one of my fingers, and when I run out of them, toes; for every twenty who don't know, you spend a night making love to me. And the odds are certainly in your favor herethis is San Francisco, after all. There are heathens and pagans and Wiccans aplenty on these precipitous streets. Her green eyes looked at Wednesday. They were, Shadow decided, the exact same color as a leaf in spring with the sun shining through it. She said nothing. We could try it, continued Wednesday. But I would end up with ten fingers, ten toes, and five nights in your bed. So don't tell me they worship you and keep your festival day. They mouth your name, but it has no meaning to them. Nothing at all. Tears stood out in her eyes. I know that, she said, quietly. I'm not a fool. No, said Wednesday. you're not. he's pushed her too far, thought Shadow. Wednesday looked down, ashamed. I'm sorry, he said. Shadow could hear the real sincerity in his voice. We need you. We need your energy. We need your power. Will you fight beside us when the storm comes? She hesitated. She had a chain of blue forget-me-nots tattooed around her left wrist. Yes, she said, after a while. I guess I will. I guess its true what they say, thought Shadow. If you can fake sincerity, youve got it made. Then he felt guilty for thinking it. Wednesday kissed his finger, touched it to Easters cheek. |
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He called their waitress over and paid for their coffees, counting out the money carefully, folding it over with the check and presenting it to her. As she walked away, Shadow said, Maam? Excuse me? I think you dropped this. He picked up a ten-dollar bill from the floor. No, she said, looking at the wrapped bills in her hand. I saw it fall, maam, said Shadow, politely. You should count them. She counted the money in her hand, looked puzzled, and said, Jesus. you're right. I'm sorry. She took the ten-dollar bill from Shadow, and walked away. Easter walked out onto the sidewalk with them. The light was just starting to fade. She nodded to Wednesday, then she touched Shadows hand and said, What did you dream about, last night? Thunderbirds, he said. A mountain of skulls. She nodded. And do you know whose skulls they were? There was a voice, he said. In my dream. It told me. She nodded and waited. He said, It said they were mine. Old skulls of mine. Thousands and thousands of them. She looked at Wednesday, and said, I think this ones a keeper. She smiled her bright smile. Then she patted Shadows arm and walked away down the sidewalk. He watched her go, trying and failingnot to think of her thighs rubbing together as she walked. In the taxi on the way to the airport, Wednesday turned to Shadow. What the hell was that business with the ten dollars about? You shortchanged her. It comes out of her wages if she's short. What the hell do you care? Wednesday seemed genuinely irate. Shadow thought for a moment. Then he said, Well, I wouldn't want anyone to do it to me. She hadn't done anything wrong. No? Wednesday stared off into the middle distance, and said, When she was seven years old she shut a kitten in a closet. She listened to it mew for several days. When it ceased to mew, she took it out of the closet, put it into a shoebox, and buried it in the backyard. She wanted to bury something. She consistently steals from everywhere she works. Small amounts, usually. Last year she visited her grandmother in the nursing home to which the old woman is confined. She took an antique gold watch from her grandmothers bedside table, and then went prowling through several of the other rooms, stealing small quantities of money and personal effects from the twilight folk in their golden years. When she got home she did not know what to do with her spoils, scared someone would come after her, so she threw everything away except the cash. I get the idea, said Shadow. She also has asymptomatic gonorrhea, said Wednesday. She suspects she might be infected but does nothing about it. When her last boyfriend accused her of having given him a disease she was hurt, offended, and refused to see him again. This isn't necessary, said Shadow. I said I get the idea. You could do this to anyone, couldn't you? Tell me bad things about them. Of course, agreed Wednesday. They all do the same things. They may think their sins are original, but for the most part they are petty and repetitive. And that makes it okay for you to steal ten bucks from her? Wednesday paid the taxi and the two men walked into the airport, wandered up to their gate. Boarding had not yet begun. Wednesday said, What the hell else can I do? They don't sacrifice rams or bulls to me. They don't send me the souls of killers and slaves, gallows-hung and raven-picked. They made me. They forgot me. Now I take a little back from them. isn't that fair? My mom used to say, Life isn't fair, said Shadow. Of course she did, said Wednesday. |
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Its one of those things that moms say, right up there with If all your friends jumped off a cliff would you do it too? You stiffed that girl for ten bucks, I slipped her ten bucks, said Shadow, doggedly. It was the right thing to do. Someone announced that their plane was boarding. Wednesday stood up. May your choices always be so clear, he said. * * * The cold snap was easing when Wednesday dropped Shadow off in the small hours of the morning. It was still obscenely cold in Lakeside, but it was no longer impossibly cold. The lighted sign on the side of the M&I Bank flashed alternately 3:30 A. M. and -5F as they drove through the town. It was 9:30 A. M. when Chief of Police Chad Mulligan knocked on the apartment door and asked Shadow if he knew a girl named Alison McGovern. I don't think so, said Shadow, sleepily. This is her picture, said Mulligan. It was a high school photograph. Shadow recognized the person in the picture immediately: the girl with the blue rubber-band braces on her teeth, the one who had been learning all about the oral uses of Alka-Seltzer from her friend. Oh, yeah. Okay. She was on the bus when I came into town. Where were you yesterday, Mister Ainsel? Shadow felt his world begin to spin away from him. He knew he had nothing to feel guilty about (Youre a parole-violating felon living under an assumed name, whispered a calm voice in his mind. isn't that enough?). San Francisco, he said. California. Helping my uncle transport a four-poster bed. You got any ticket stubs? Anything like that? Sure. He had both his boarding pass stubs in his back pocket, pulled them out. Whats going on? Chad Mulligan examined the boarding passes. Alison McGoverns vanished. She helped out up at the Lakeside Humane Society. Feed animals, walk dogs. Shed come out for a few hours after school. So. Dolly Knopf, who runs the Humane Society, shed always run her home when they closed up for the night. Yesterday Alison never got there. she's vanished. Yup. Her parents called us last night. Silly kid used to hitchhike up to the Humane Society. Its out on County W, pretty isolated. Her parents told her not to, but this isn't the kind of place where things happenpeople here don't lock their doors, you know? And you cant tell kids. So, look at the photo again. Alison McGovern was smiling. The rubber bands on her teeth in the photograph were red, not blue. You can honestly say you didn't kidnap her, rape her, murder her, anything like that? I was in San Francisco. And I wouldn't do that shit. That was what I figured, pal. So you want to come help us look for her? Me? You. Weve had the K-9 guys out this morningnothing so far. He sighed. Heck, Mike. I just hope she turns up in the Twin Cities with some dopey boyfriend. You think its likely? I think its possible. You want to join the hunting party? Shadow remembered seeing the girl in Hennings Farm and Home Supplies, the flash of a shy blue-braced smile, how beautiful he had known she was going to be, one day. I'll come, he said. There were two dozen men and women waiting in the lobby of the fire station. Shadow recognized Hinzelmann, and several other faces looked familiar. There were police officers, and some men and women in the brown uniforms of the Lumber County Sheriffs department. Chad Mulligan told them what Alison was wearing when she vanished (a scarlet snowsuit, green gloves, blue woollen hat under the hood of her snowsuit) and divided the volunteers into groups of three. Shadow, Hinzelmann, and a man named Brogan comprised one of the groups. |
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They were reminded how short the daylight period was, told that if, God forbid, they found Alisons body they were not repeat not to disturb anything, just to radio back for help, but that if she was alive they were to keep her warm until help came. They were dropped off out on County W. Hinzelmann, Brogan, and Shadow walked along the edge of a frozen creek. Each group of three had been issued a small handheld walkie-talkie before they left. The cloud cover was low, and the world was gray. No snow had fallen in the last thirty-six hours. Footprints stood out in the glittering crust of the crisp snow. Brogan looked like a retired army colonel, with his slim mustache and white temples. He told Shadow he was a retired high school principal. I wasnt getting any younger. These days I still teach a little, do the school playthat was always the high point of the year anyhow and now I hunt a little and have a cabin down on Pike Lake, spend too much time there. As they set out Brogan said, On the one hand, I hope we find her. On the other, if she's going to be found, I'd be very grateful if it was someone else who got to find her, and not us. You know what I mean? Shadow knew exactly what he meant. The three men did not talk much. They walked, looking for a red snowsuit, or green gloves, or a blue hat, or a white body. Now and again Brogan, who had the walkie-talkie, would check in with Chad Mulligan. At lunchtime they sat with the rest of the search party on a commandeered school bus and ate hot dogs and drank hot soup. Someone pointed out a red-tailed hawk in a bare tree, and someone else said that it looked more like a falcon, but it flew away and the argument was abandoned. Hinzelmann told them a story about his grandfathers trumpet, and how he tried playing it during a cold snap, and the weather was so cold outside by the barn, where his grandfather had gone to practice, that no music came out. Then after he came inside he put the trumpet down by the woodstove to thaw. Well, the family're all in bed that night and suddenly the unfrozen tunes start coming out of that trumpet. Scared my grandmother so much she nearly had kittens. The afternoon was endless, unfruitful, and depressing. The daylight faded slowly: distances collapsed and the world turned indigo and the wind blew cold enough to burn the skin on your face. When it was too dark to continue, Mulligan radioed to them to call it off for the evening, and they were picked up and driven back to the fire station. In the block next to the fire station was the Buck Stops Here Tavern, and that was where most of the searchers wound up. They were exhausted and dispirited, talking to each other of how cold it had become, how more than likely Alison would show up in a day or so, no idea of how much trouble shed caused everyone. You shouldn't think badly of the town because of this, said Brogan. It is a good town. Lakeside, said a trim woman whose name Shadow had forgotten, if ever theyd been introduced, is the best town in the North Woods. You know how many people are unemployed in Lakeside? No, said Shadow. Less than twenty, she said. Theres over five thousand people live in and around this town. We may not be rich, but everyones working. Its not like the mining towns up in the northeastmost of them are ghost towns now. There were farming towns that were killed by the falling cost of milk, or the low price of hogs. You know what the biggest cause of unnatural death is among farmers in the Midwest? Suicide? |
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And what will they do to us there? demanded Wututu. The man said nothing. Well? asked Wututu. Agasu tried to dart a glance over his shoulder. They were not allowed to talk or sing as they walked. It is possible they will eat us, said the man. That is what I have been told. That is why they need so many slaves. It is because they are always hungry. Wututu began to cry as she walked. Agasu said, Do not cry, my sister. They will not eat you. I shall protect you. Our gods will protect you. But Wututu continued to cry, walking with a heavy heart, feeling pain and anger and fear as only a child can feel it: raw and overwhelming. She was unable to tell Agasu that she was not worried about the white devils eating her. She would survive, she was certain of it. She cried because she was scared that they would eat her brother, and she was not certain that she could protect him. They reached a trading post, and they were kept there for ten days. On the morning of the tenth day they were taken from the hut in which they had been imprisoned (it had become very crowded in the final days, as men arrived from far away bringing their own strings and skeins of slaves). They were marched to the harbor, and Wututu saw the ship that was to take them away. Her first thought was how big a ship it was, her second that it was too small for all of them to fit inside. It sat lightly on the water. The ships boat came back and forth, ferrying the captives to the ship, where they were manacled and arranged in low decks by sailors, some of whom were brick red or tan-skinned, with strange pointy noses and beards that made them look like beasts. Several of the sailors looked like her own people, like the men who had marched her to the coast. The men and the women and the children were separated, forced into different areas on the slave deck. There were too many slaves for the ship to hold easily, so another dozen men were chained up on the deck in the open, beneath the places where the crew would sling their hammocks. Wututu was put in with the children, not with the women; and she was not chained, merely locked in. Agasu, her brother, was forced in with the men, in chains, packed like herrings. It stank under that deck, although the crew had scrubbed it down since their last cargo. It was a stink that had entered the wood: the smell of fear and bile and diarrhea and death, of fever and madness and hate. Wututu sat in the hot hold with the other children. She could feel the children on each side of her sweating. A wave tumbled a small boy into her, hard, and he apologized in a tongue that Wututu did not recognize. She tried to smile at him in the semidarkness. The ship set sail. Now it rode heavy in the water. Wututu wondered about the place the white men came from (although none of them was truly white: sea-burned and sunburned they were, and their skins were dark). Were they so short of food that they had to send all the way to her land for people to eat? Or was it that she was to be a delicacy, a rare treat for a people who had eaten so many things that only black-skinned flesh in their cookpots made their mouths water? On the second day out of port the ship hit a squall, not a bad one, but the ships decks lurched and tumbled, and the smell of vomit joined the mixed smells of urine and liquid feces and fear-sweat. Rain poured down on them in bucket-loads from the air gratings set in the ceiling of the slave deck. A week into the voyage, and well out of sight of land, the slaves were allowed out of irons. |
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They were warned that any disobedience, any trouble, and they would be punished more than they had ever imagined. In the morning the captives were fed beans and ships biscuits, and a mouthful each of vinegared lime juice, harsh enough that their faces would twist, and they would cough and splutter, and some of them would moan and wail as the lime juice was spooned out. They could not spit it out, though: if they were caught spitting or dribbling it out they were lashed or beaten. The night brought them salted beef. It tasted unpleasant, and there was a rainbow sheen to the gray surface of the meat. That was at the start of the voyage. As the voyage continued, the meat grew worse. When they could, Wututu and Agasu would huddle together, talking of their mother and their home and their playfellows. Sometimes Wututu would tell Agasu the stories their mother had told them, like those of Elegba, the trickiest of the gods, who was Great Mawus eyes and ears in the world, who took messages to Mawu and brought back Mawus replies. In the evenings, to while away the monotony of the voyage, the sailors would make the slaves sing for them and dance the dances of their native lands. Wututu was lucky that she had been put in with the children. The children were packed in tightly and ignored; the women were not always so fortunate. On some slave ships the female slaves were raped repeatedly by the crew, simply as an unspoken perquisite of the voyage. This was not one of those ships, which is not to say that there were no rapes. A hundred men, women, and children died on that voyage and were dropped over the side; and some of the captives who were dropped over the side had not yet died, but the green chill of the ocean cooled their final fever and they went down flailing, choking, lost. Wututu and Agasu were traveling on a Dutch ship, but they did not know this, and it might as easily have been British, or Portuguese, or Spanish, or French. The black crewmen on the ship, their skins even darker than Wututus, told the captives where to go, what to do, when to dance. One morning Wututu caught one of the black guards staring at her. When she was eating, the man came over to her and stared down at her, without saying anything. Why do you do this? she asked the man. Why do you serve the white devils? He grinned at her as if her question was the funniest thing he had ever heard. Then he leaned over, so his lips were almost brushing her ears, so his hot breath on her ear made her suddenly feel sick. If you were older, he told her, I would make you scream with happiness from my penis. Perhaps I will do it tonight. I have seen how well you dance. She looked at him with her nut-brown eyes and she said, unflinching, smiling even, If you put it in me down there I will bite it off with my teeth down there. I am a witch girl, and I have very sharp teeth down there. She took pleasure in watching his expression change. He said nothing and walked away. The words had come out of her mouth, but they had not been her words: she had not thought them or made them. No, she realized, those were the words of Elegba the trickster. Mawu had made the world and then, thanks to Elegbas trickery, had lost interest in it. It was Elegba of the clever ways and the iron-hard erection who had spoken through her, who had ridden her for a moment, and that night before she slept she gave thanks to Elegba. Several of the captives refused to eat. They were whipped until they put food into their mouths and swallowed, although the whipping was severe enough that two men died of it. |
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Still, no one else on the ship tried to starve themselves to freedom. A man and a woman tried to kill themselves by leaping over the side. The woman succeeded. The man was rescued and he was tied to the mast and lashed for the better part of a day, until his back ran with blood, and he was left there as the day became night. He was given no food to eat, and nothing to drink but his own piss. By the third day he was raving, and his head had swollen and grown soft, like an old melon. When he stopped raving they threw him over the side. Also, for five days following the escape attempt the captives were returned to their manacles and chains. It was a long journey and a bad one for the captives, and it was not pleasant for the crew, although they had learned to harden their hearts to the business, and pretended to themselves that they were no more than farmers, taking their livestock to the market. They made harbor on a pleasant, balmy day in Bridgeport, Barbados, and the captives were carried from the ship to the shore in low boats sent out from the dock, and taken to the market square where they were, by dint of a certain amount of shouting, and blows from cudgels, arranged into lines. A whistle blew, and the market square filled with men: poking, prodding, red-faced men, shouting, inspecting, calling, appraising, grumbling. Wututu and Agasu were separated then. It happened so fasta big man forced open Agasus mouth, looked at his teeth, felt his arm muscles, nodded, and two other men hauled Agasu away. He did not fight them. He looked at Wututu and called, Be brave, to her. She nodded, and then her vision smeared and blurred with tears, and she wailed. Together they were twins, magical, powerful. Apart they were two children in pain. She never saw him again but once, and never in life. This is what happened to Agasu. First they took him to a seasoning farm, where they whipped him daily for the things he did and didn't do, they taught him a smattering of English and they gave him the name of Inky Jack, for the darkness of his skin. When he ran away they hunted him down with dogs and brought him back, and cut off a toe with a chisel, to teach him a lesson he would not forget. He would have starved himself to death, but when he refused to eat his front teeth were broken and thin gruel was forced into his mouth, until he had no choice but to swallow or to choke. Even in those times they preferred slaves born into captivity to those brought over from Africa. The free-born slaves tried to run, or they tried to die, and either way, there went the profits. When Inky Jack was sixteen he was sold, with several other slaves, to a sugar plantation on the island of St. Domingue. They called him Hyacinth, the big, broken-toothed slave. He met an old woman from his own village on that plantationshe had been a house slave before her fingers became too gnarled and arthriticwho told him that the whites intentionally split up captives from the same towns and villages and regions, to avoid insurrection and revolts. They did not like it when slaves spoke to each other in their own languages. Hyacinth learned some French, and was taught a few of the teachings of the Catholic Church. Each day he cut sugar-cane from well before the sun rose until after the sun had set. He fathered several children. He went with the other slaves, in the small hours of the night, to the woods, although it was forbidden, to dance the Calinda, to sing to Damballa-Wedo, the serpent god, in the form of a black snake. |
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He sang to Elegba, to Ogu, Shango, Zaka, and to many others, all the gods the captives had brought with them to the island, brought in their minds and their secret hearts. The slaves on the sugar plantations of St. Domingue rarely lived more than a decade. The free time they were giventwo hours in the heat of noon and five hours in the dark of the night (from eleven until four)was also the only time they had to grow and tend the food they would eat (for they were not fed by their masters, merely given small plots of land to cultivate, with which to feed themselves), and it was also the time they had to sleep and to dream. Even so, they would take that time and they would gather and dance, and sing and worship. The soil of St. Domingue was a fertile soil and the gods of Dahomey and the Congo and the Niger put down thick roots there and grew lush and huge and deep, and they promised freedom to those who worshiped them at night in the groves. Hyacinth was twenty-five years of age when a spider bit the back of his right hand. The bite became infected and the flesh on the back of his hand was necrotic: soon enough his whole arm was swollen and purple, and the hand stank. It throbbed and it burned. They gave him crude rum to drink, and they heated the blade of a machete in the fire until it glowed red and white. They cut his arm off at the shoulder with a saw, and they cauterized it with the burning blade. He lay in a fever for a week. Then he returned to work. The one-armed slave called Hyacinth took part in the slave revolt of 1791. Elegba himself took possession of Hyacinth in the grove, riding him as a white man rode a horse, and spoke through him. He remembered little of what was said, but the others who were with him told him that he had promised them freedom from their captivity. He remembered only his erection, rodlike and painful; and raising both handsthe one he had, and the one he no longer possessedto the moon. A pig was killed, and the men and the women of that plantation drank the hot blood of the pig, pledging themselves and binding themselves into a brotherhood. They swore that they were an army of freedom, pledged themselves once more to the gods of all the lands from which they had been dragged as plunder. If we die in battle with the whites, they told each other, we will be reborn in Africa, in our homes, in our own tribes. There was another Hyacinth in the uprising, so they now called Agasu by the name of Big One-Arm. He fought, he worshiped, he sacrificed, he planned. He saw his friends and his lovers killed, and he kept fighting. They fought for twelve years, a maddening, bloody struggle with the plantation owners, with the troops brought over from France. They fought, and they kept fighting, and, impossibly, they won. On January 1, 1804, the independence of St. Domingue, soon to be known to the world as the Republic of Haiti, was declared. Big One-Arm did not live to see it. He had died in August 1802, bayoneted by a French soldier. At the precise moment of the death of Big One-Arm (who had once been called Hyacinth, and before that, Inky Jack, and who was forever in his heart Agasu), his sister, whom he had known as Wututu, who had been called Mary on her first plantation in the Carolinas, and Daisy when she had become a house slave, and Sukey when she was sold to the Lavere family down the river to New Orleans, felt the cold bayonet slide between her ribs and started to scream and weep uncontrollably. Her twin daughters woke and began to howl. |
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They were cream-and-coffee colored, her new babies, not like the black children she had borne when she was on the plantation and little more than a girl herselfchildren she had not seen since they were fifteen and ten years old. The middle girl had been dead for a year, when she was sold away from them. Sukey had been whipped many times since she had come ashoreonce, salt had been rubbed into the wounds, on another occasion she had been whipped so hard and for so long that she could not sit, or allow anything to touch her back, for several days. She had been raped a number of times when younger: by black men who had been ordered to share her wooden palette, and by white men. She had been chained. She had not wept then, though. Since her brother had been taken from her she had only wept once. It was in North Carolina, when she had seen the food for the slave children and the dogs poured into the same trough, and she had seen her little children scrabbling with the dogs for the scraps. She saw that happen one day and she had seen it before, every day on that plantation, and she would see it again many times before she leftshe saw it that one day and it broke her heart. She had been beautiful for a while. Then the years of pain had taken their toll, and she was no longer beautiful. Her face was lined, and there was too much pain in those brown eyes. Eleven years earlier, when she was twenty-five, her right arm had withered. None of the white folk had known what to make of it. The flesh seemed to melt from the bones, and now her right arm hung by her side, little more than a skeletal arm covered in skin, and almost immobile. After this she had become a house slave. The Casterton family, who had owned the plantation, were impressed by her cooking and house skills, but Mrs. Casterton found the withered arm unsettling, and so she was sold to the Lavere family, who were out for a year from Louisiana: M. Lavere was a fat, cheerful man who was in need of a cook and a maid of all work, and who was not in the slightest repulsed by the slave Daisys withered arm. When, a year later, they returned to Louisiana, slave Sukey went with them. In New Orleans the women came to her, and the men also, to buy cures and love charms and little fetishes, black folks, yes, of course, but white folks too. The Lavere family turned a blind eye to it. Perhaps they enjoyed the prestige of having a slave who was feared and respected. They would not, however, sell her her freedom. Sukey went into the bayou late at night, and she danced the Calinda and the Bamboula. Like the dancers of St. Domingue and the dancers of her native land, true dancers in the bayou had a black snake as their voudon; even so, the gods of her homeland and of the other African nations did not possess her people as they had possessed her brother and the folk of St. Domingue. She would still invoke them and call their names, to beg them for favors. She listened when the white folk spoke of the revolt in St. Domingo (as they called it), and how it was doomed to failThink of it! A cannibal land! and then she observed that they no longer spoke of it. Soon, it seemed to her that they pretended that there never had been a place called St. Domingo, and as for Haiti, the word was never mentioned. It was as if the whole American nation had decided that they could, by an effort of belief, command a good-sized Caribbean island to no longer exist merely by willing it so. A generation of Lavere children grew up under Sukeys watchful eye. |
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Mama Zouzou showed the Widow Paris the World Wonder Root, the great and the little roots of John the Conqueror, she showed her dragons blood, and valerian and five-finger grass. She showed her how to brew waste-away tea, and follow-me-water and faire-Shingo water. All these things and more Mama Zouzou showed the Widow Paris. Still, it was disappointing for the old woman. She did her best to teach her the hidden truths, the deep knowledge, to tell her of Papa Legba, of Mawu, of Aido-Hwedo the voudon serpent, and the rest, but the Widow Paris (I shall now tell you the name she was born with, and the name she later made famous: it was Marie Laveau. But this was not the great Marie Laveau, the one you have heard of, this was her mother, who eventually became the Widow Glapion), she had no interest in the gods of the distant land. If St. Domingo had been a lush black earth for the African gods to grow in, this land, with its corn and its melons, its crawfish and its cotton, was barren and infertile. She does not want to know, complained Mama Zouzou to Clementine, her confidante, who took in the washing for many of the houses in that district, washing their curtains and coverlets. Clementine had a blossom of burns on her cheek, and one of her children had been scalded to death when a copper overturned. Then do not teach her, says Clementine. I teach her, but she does not see what is valuableall she sees is what she can do with it. I give her diamonds, but she cares only for pretty glass. I give her a demi-bouteille of the best claret and she drinks river water. I give her quail and she wishes to eat only rat. Then why do you persist? asks Clementine. Mama Zouzou shrugs her thin shoulders, causing her withered arm to shake. She cannot answer. She could say that she teaches because she is grateful to be alive, and she is: she has seen too many die. She could say that she dreams that one day the slaves will rise, as they rose (and were defeated) in LaPlace, but that she knows in her heart that without the gods of Africa, without the favor of Legba and Mawu, they will never overcome their white captors, will never return to their homelands. When she woke, on that terrible night almost twenty years earlier, and felt the cold steel between her ribs, that was when Mama Zouzous life had ended. Now she was someone who did not live, who simply hated. If you asked her about the hate she would have been unable to tell you about a twelve-year-old girl on a stinking ship: that had scabbed over in her mindthere had been too many whippings and beatings, too many nights in manacles, too many partings, too much pain. She could have told you about her son, though, and how his thumb had been cut off when their master discovered the boy was able to read and to write. She could have told you of her daughter, twelve years old and already eight months pregnant by an overseer, and how they dug a hole in the red earth to take her daughters pregnant belly, and then they whipped her until her back had bled. Despite the carefully dug hole, her daughter had lost her baby and her life on a Sunday morning, when all the white folks were in church Too much pain. Worship them, Mama Zouzou told the young Widow Paris in the bayou, one hour after midnight. They were both naked to the waist, sweating in the humid night, their skins given accents by the white moonlight. The Widow Pariss husband, Jacques (whose own death, three years later, would have several remarkable features), had told Marie a little about the gods of St. |
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Domingo, but she did not care. Power came from the rituals, not from the gods. Together Mama Zouzou and the Widow Paris crooned and stamped and keened in the swamp. They were singing in the blacksnakes, the free woman of color and the slave woman with the withered arm. There is more to it than just you prosper, your enemies fail, said Mama Zouzou. Many of the words of the ceremonies, words she knew once, words her brother had also known, these words had fled from her memory. She told pretty Marie Laveau that the words did not matter, only the tunes and the beats, and there, singing and tapping in the blacksnakes, in the swamp, she has an odd vision. She sees the beats of the songs, the Calinda beat, the Bamboula beat, all the rhythms of equatorial Africa spreading slowly across this midnight land until the whole country shivers and swings to the beats of the old gods whose realms she had left. And even that, she understands somehow, in the swamp, even that will not be enough. She turns to pretty Marie and sees herself through Maries eyes, a black-skinned old woman, her face lined, her bony arm hanging stiffly by her side, her eyes the eyes of one who has seen her children fight in the trough for food from the dogs. She saw herself, and she knew then for the first time the revulsion and the fear the younger woman had for her. Then she laughed, and crouched, and picked up in her good hand a blacksnake as tall as a sapling and as thick as a ships rope. Here, she said. Here will be our voudon. She dropped the unresisting snake into a basket that yellow Marie was carrying. And then, in the moonlight, the second sight possessed her for a final time, and she saw her brother Agasu. He was not the twelve-year-old boy she had last seen in the Bridgeport market, but a huge man, bald and grinning with broken teeth, his back lined with deep scars. In one hand he held a machete. His right arm was barely a stump. She reached out her own good left hand. Stay, stay awhile, she whispered. I will be there. I will be with you soon. And Marie Paris thought the old woman was speaking to her. America has invested her religion as well as her morality in sound income-paying securities. She has adopted the unassailable position of a nation blessed because it deserves to be blessed; and her sons, whatever other theologies they may affect or disregard, subscribe unreservedly to this national creed. Agnes Repplier, Times and Tendencies Shadow drove west, across Wisconsin and Minnesota and into North Dakota, where the snow-covered hills looked like huge sleeping buffalo, and he and Wednesday saw nothing but nothing and plenty of it for mile after mile. They went south, then, into South Dakota, heading for reservation country. Wednesday had traded the Lincoln Town Car, which Shadow had liked to drive, for a lumbering and ancient Winnebago, which smelled pervasively and unmistakably of male cat, which he didn't enjoy driving at all. As they passed their first signpost for Mount Rushmore, still several hundred miles away, Wednesday grunted. Now that, he said, is a holy place. Shadow had thought Wednesday was asleep. He said, I know it used to be sacred to the Indians. Its a holy place, said Wednesday. that's the American Waythey need to give people an excuse to come and worship. These days, people cant just go and see a mountain. Thus, Mister Gutzon Borglums tremendous presidential faces. Once they were carved, permission was granted, and now the people drive out in their multitudes to see something in the flesh that theyve already seen on a thousand postcards. |
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I thought it was maybe like an X-Files kinda thing, he says. Nothing so exciting, I'm afraid. He suffers from occasional hemorrhoids and his ass has just started itching in the way that signals that a flare-up is on the way. He wants to be back inside the Beltway. He wishes there was a tree to go and stand behind: the urge to piss is getting worse. He drops the cigarette and steps on it. Local Law Enforcement walks over to one of the police cars and says something to the driver. They both shake their heads. He pulls out his telephone, touches the menu, pages down and finds the address entry marked Laundry, which had amused him so much when he typed it ina reference to The Man from U. N. C. L. E., and as he looks at it he realizes that its not from that at all, that was a tailors, he's thinking of Get Smart, and he still feels weird and slightly embarrassed after all those years about not realizing it was a comedy when he was a kid, and just wanting a shoephone A womans voice on the phone. Yes? This is Mister Town, for Mister World. There is silence. Town crosses his legs, tugs his belt higher on his bellygot to lose those last ten pounds and away from his bladder. Then an urbane voice says, Hello, Mister Town. We lost them, says Town. He feels a knot of frustration in his gut: these were the bastards, the lousy dirty sons of bitches who killed Woody and Stone, for Chrissakes. Good men. Good men. He badly wants to fuck Mrs. Wood, but knows its still too soon after Woodys death to make a move. So he is taking her out for dinner every couple of weeks, an investment in the future, she's just grateful for the attention How? I don't know. We set up a roadblock, there was nowhere they could have gone and they went there anyway. Just another one of lifes little mysteries. don't worry. Have you calmed the locals? Told em it was an optical illusion. They buy it? Probably. There was something very familiar about Mr. Worlds voicewhich was a strange thing to think, hed been working for him directly for two years now, spoken to him every day, of course there was something familiar about his voice. they'll be far away by now. Should we send people down to the rez to intercept them? Not worth the aggravation. Too many jurisdictional issues, and there are only so many strings I can pull in a morning. We have plenty of time. Just get back here. I've got my hands full at this end trying to organize the policy meeting. Trouble? Its a pissing contest. I've proposed that we have it out here. The techies want it in Austin, or maybe San Jose, the players want it in Hollywood, the intangibles want it on Wall Street. Everybody wants it in their own backyard. Nobodys going to give. You need me to do anything? Not yet. I'll growl at some of them, stroke others. You know the routine. Yes, sir. Carry on, Town. The connection is broken. Town thinks he should have had a S. W. A. T. team to pick off that fucking Winnebago, or land mines on the road, or a tactical friggin nukuler device, that would have showed those bastards they meant business. It was like Mr. World had once said to him, We are writing the future in Letters of Fire and Mr. Town thinks that Jesus Christ, if he doesn't piss now hell lose a kidney, itll just burst, and it was like his pop had said when they were on long journeys, when Town was a kid, out on the interstate, his pop would always say, My back teeth are afloat, and Mr. Town could hear that voice even now, that sharp Yankee accent saying I got to take a leak soon. |
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My back teeth are afloat and it was then that Shadow felt a hand opening his own hand, prising it open one finger at a time, off the thighbone it was clutching. He no longer needed to urinate; that was someone else. He was standing under the stars on a glassy rock plain. Wednesday made the signal for silence again. Then he began to walk, and Shadow followed. There was a creak from the mechanical spider, and Wednesday froze. Shadow stopped and waited with him. Green lights flickered and ran up and along its side in clusters. Shadow tried not to breathe too loudly. He thought about what had just happened. It had been like looking through a window into someone elses mind. And then he thought, Mr. World. It was me who thought his voice sounded familiar. That was my thought, notTowns. That was why that seemed so strange. He tried to identify the voice in his mind, to put it into the category in which it belonged, but it eluded him. Itll come to me, thought Shadow. Sooner or later, itll come to me. The green lights went blue, then red, then faded to a dull red, and the spider settled down on its metallic haunches. Wednesday began to walk forward, a lonely figure beneath the stars, in a broad-brimmed hat, his frayed dark cloak gusting randomly in the nowhere wind, his staff tapping on the glassy rock floor. When the metallic spider was only a distant glint in the starlight, far back on the plain, Wednesday said, It should be safe to speak, now. Where are we? Behind the scenes, said Wednesday. Sorry? Think of it as being behind the scenes. Like in a theater or something. I just pulled us out of the audience and now were walking about backstage. Its a shortcut. When I touched that bone, I was in the mind of a guy named Town. he's with that spook show. He hates us. Yes. he's got a boss named Mister World. He reminds me of someone, but I don't know who. I was looking into Towns heador maybe I was in his head. I'm not certain. Do they know where were headed? I thinkyou're calling off the hunt right now. They didn't want to follow us to the reservation. Are we going to a reservation? Maybe. Wednesday leaned on his staff for a moment, then continued to walk. What was that spider thing? A pattern manifestation. A search engine. Are they dangerous? You only get to be my age by assuming the worst. Shadow smiled. And how old would that be? Old as my tongue, said Wednesday. And a few months older than my teeth. You play your cards so close to your chest, said Shadow, that I'm not even sure thatyou're really cards at all. Wednesday only grunted. Each hill they came to was harder to climb. Shadow began to feel headachy. There was a pounding quality to the starlight, something that resonated with the pulse in his temples and his chest. At the bottom of the next hill he stumbled, opened his mouth to say something and, without warning, he vomited. Wednesday reached into an inside pocket, and produced a small hip flask. Take a sip of this, he said. Only a sip. The liquid was pungent, and it evaporated in his mouth like a good brandy, although it did not taste like alcohol. Wednesday took the flask away, and pocketed it. Its not good for the audience to find themselves walking about backstage. that's whyyou're feeling sick. We need to hurry to get you out of here. They walked faster, Wednesday at a solid trudge, Shadow stumbling from time to time, but feeling better for the drink, which had left his mouth tasting of orange peel, of rosemary oil and peppermint and cloves. |
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Wednesday took his arm. There, he said, pointing to two identical hillocks of frozen rock-glass to their left. Walk between those two mounds. Walk beside me. They walked, and the cold air and bright daylight smashed into Shadows face at the same time. They were standing halfway up a gentle hill. The mist had gone, the day was sunny and chill, the sky was a perfect blue. At the bottom of the hill was a gravel road, and a red station wagon bounced along it like a childs toy car. A gust of wood smoke came from a building nearby. It looked as if someone had picked up a mobile home and dropped it on the side of the hill thirty years ago. The home was much repaired, patched, and, in places, added onto. As they reached the door it opened, and a middle-aged man with sharp eyes and a mouth like a knife slash looked down at them and said, Eyah, I heard that there were two white men on their way to see me. Two whites in a Winnebago. And I heard that they got lost, like white men always get lost if they don't put up their signs everywhere. And now look at these two sorry beasts at the door. You knowyou're on Lakota land? His hair was gray, and long. Since when were you Lakota, you old fraud? said Wednesday. He was wearing a coat and a flap-eared cap, and already it seemed to Shadow unlikely that only a few moments ago under the stars he had been wearing a broad-brimmed hat and a tattered cloak. So, Whiskey Jack. I'm starving, and my friend here just threw up his breakfast. Are you going to invite us in? Whiskey Jack scratched an armpit. He was wearing blue jeans, and an undershirt the gray of his hair. He wore moccasins, and he seemed not to notice the cold. Then he said, I like it here. Come in, white men who lost their Winnebago. There was more wood smoke in the air inside the trailer, and there was another man in there, sitting at a table. The man wore stained buckskins, and was barefoot. His skin was the color of bark. Wednesday seemed delighted. Well, he said, it seems our delay was fortuitous. Whiskey Jack and Apple Johnny. Two birds with one stone. The man at the table, Apple Johnny, stared at Wednesday, then he reached down a hand to his crotch, cupped it and said, Wrong again. I jes checked and I got both of my stones, jes where they oughtta be. He looked up at Shadow, raised his hand, palm out. I'm John Chapman. You don't mind anything your boss says about me. he's an asshole. Always was an asshole. Always goin to be an asshole. Some people is jes assholes, and that's an end of it. Mike Ainsel, said Shadow. Chapman rubbed his stubbly chin. Ainsel, he said. that's not a name. But itll do at a pinch. What do they call you? Shadow. I'll call you Shadow, then. Hey, Whiskey Jackbut it wasnt really Whiskey Jack he was saying, Shadow realized. Too many syllables. Hows the food looking? Whiskey Jack took a wooden spoon and lifted the lid off a black iron pot, bubbling away on the range of the wood-burning stove. Its ready for eating, he said. He took four plastic bowls and spooned the contents of the pot into the bowls, put them down on the table. Then he opened the door, stepped out into the snow, and pulled a plastic gallon jug from the snowbank. He brought it inside, and poured four large glasses of a cloudy yellow-brown liquid, which he put beside each bowl. Last of all, he found four spoons. He sat down at the table with the other men. Wednesday raised his glass suspiciously. Looks like piss, he said. You still drinking that stuff? asked Whiskey Jack. |
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You white men are crazy. This is better. Then, to Shadow, The stew is mostly wild turkey. John here brought the applejack. Its a soft apple cider, said John Chapman. I never believed in hard liquor. Makes men mad. The stew was delicious, and it was very good apple cider. Shadow forced himself to slow down, to chew his food, not to gulp it, but he was more hungry than he would have believed. He helped himself to a second bowl of the stew and a second glass of the cider. Dame Rumor says that youve been out talking to all manner of folk, offering them all manner of things. Saysyou're takin the old folks on the warpath, said John Chapman. Shadow and Whiskey Jack were washing up, putting the leftover stew into Tupperware bowls. Whiskey Jack put the bowls into the snowdrifts outside his front door, and put a milk crate on top of the place hed pushed them, so he could find them again. I think that's a fair and judicious summary of events, said Wednesday. they'll win, said Whiskey Jack flatly. They won already. You lost already. Like the white man and my people. Mostly they won. And when they lost, they made treaties. Then they broke the treaties. So they won again. I'm not fighting for another lost cause. And its no use you lookin at me, said John Chapman, for even if I fought for youwhichn I wontI'm no use to you. Mangy rat-tailed bastards jes picked me off and clean forgot me. He stopped. Then he said, Paul Bunyan. He shook his head slowly and he said it again. Paul Bunyan. Shadow had never heard two such innocuous words made to sound so damning. Paul Bunyan? Shadow said. What did he ever do? He took up head space, said Whiskey Jack. He bummed a cigarette from Wednesday and the two men sat and smoked. Its like the idiots who figure that hummingbirds worry about their weight or tooth decay or some such nonsense, maybe they just want to spare hummingbirds the evils of sugar, explained Wednesday. So they fill the hummingbird feeders with fucking NutraSweet. The birds come to the feeders and they drink it. Then they die, because their food contains no calories even though their little tummies are full. that's Paul Bunyan for you. Nobody ever told Paul Bunyan stories. Nobody ever believed in Paul Bunyan. He came staggering out of a New York ad agency in 1910 and filled the nations myth stomach with empty calories. I like Paul Bunyan, said Whiskey Jack. I went on his ride at the Mall of America, few years back. You see big old Paul Bunyan at the top, then you come crashing down. Splash! he's okay by me. I don't mind that he never existed, means he never cut down any trees. Not as good as planting trees though. that's better. You said a mouthful, said Johnny Chapman. Wednesday blew a smoke ring. It hung in the air, dissipating slowly in wisps and curls. Damn it, Whiskey Jack, that's not the point and you know it. I'm not going to help you, said Whiskey Jack. When you get your ass kicked, you can come back here and if I'm still here I'll feed you again. You get the best food in the fall. Wednesday said, All the alternatives are worse. You have no idea what the alternatives are, said Whiskey Jack. Then he looked at Shadow. You are hunting, he said. His voice was roughened by wood smoke and cigarettes. I'm working, said Shadow. Whiskey Jack shook his head. You are also hunting something, he said. There is a debt that you wish to pay. Shadow thought of Lauras blue lips and the blood on her hands, and he nodded. Listen. Fox was here first, and his brother was the wolf. |
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Fox said, people will live forever. If they die they will not die for long. Wolf said, no, people will die, people must die, all things that live must die, or they will spread and cover the world, and eat all the salmon and the caribou and the buffalo, eat all the squash and all the corn. Now one day Wolf died, and he said to the fox, quick, bring me back to life. And Fox said, No, the dead must stay dead. You convinced me. And he wept as he said this. But he said it, and it was final. Now Wolf rules the world of the dead and Fox lives always under the sun and the moon, and he still mourns his brother. Wednesday said, If you won't play, you won't play. Well be moving on. Whiskey Jacks face was impassive. I'm talking to this young man, he said. You are beyond help. He is not. He turned back to Shadow. Tell me your dream, said Whiskey Jack. Shadow said, I was climbing a tower of skulls. There were huge birds flying around it. They had lightning in their wings. They were attacking me. The tower fell. Everybody dreams, said Wednesday. Can we hit the road? Not everybody dreams of the Wakinyau, the thunder-bird, said Whiskey Jack. We felt the echoes of it here. I told you, said Wednesday. Jesus. Theres a clutch of thunderbirds in West Virginia, said Chapman, idly. A couple of hens and an old cock-bird at least. Theres also a breeding pair in the land, they used to call it the State of Franklin, but old Ben never got his state, up between Kentucky and Tennessee. Course, there was never a great number of them, even at the best of times. Whiskey Jack reached out a hand the color of red clay and touched Shadows face, gently. Eyah, he said. Its true. If you hunt the thunderbird you could bring your woman back. But she belongs to the wolf, in the dead places, not walking the land. How do you know? asked Shadow. Whiskey Jacks lips did not move. What did the buffalo tell you? To believe. Good advice. Are you going to follow it? Kind of. I guess. They were talking without words, without mouths, without sound. Shadow wondered if, for the other two men in the room, they were standing, unmoving, for a heartbeat or for a fraction of a heartbeat. When you find your tribe, come back and see me, said Whiskey Jack. I can help. I shall. Whiskey Jack lowered his hand. Then he turned to Wednesday. Are you going to fetch your Ho Chunk? My what? Ho Chunk. Its what the Winnebago call themselves. Wednesday shook his head. Its too risky. Retrieving it could be problematic. they'll be looking for it. Is it stolen? Wednesday looked affronted. Not a bit of it. The papers are in the glove compartment. And the keys? I've got them, said Shadow. My nephew, Harry Bluejay, has an 81 Buick. Why don't you give me the keys to your camper? You can take his car. Wednesday bristled. What kind of trade is that? Whiskey Jack shrugged. You know how hard it will be to bring back your camper from where you abandoned it? I'm doing you a favor. Take it or leave it. I don't care. He closed his knife-wound mouth. Wednesday looked angry, and then the anger became rue, and he said, Shadow, give the man the keys to the Winnebago. Shadow passed the car keys to Whiskey Jack. Johnny, said Whiskey Jack, will you take these men down to find Harry Bluejay? Tell him I said for him to give them his car. Be my pleasure, said John Chapman. He got up and walked to the door, picked up a small burlap sack sitting next to it, opened the door, and walked outside. Shadow and Wednesday followed him. Whiskey Jack waited in the doorway. |
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Hey, he said to Wednesday. don't come back here, you. You are not welcome. Wednesday extended his finger heavenward. Rotate on this, he said affably. They walked downhill through the snow, pushing their way through the drifts. Chapman walked in front, his bare feet red against the crust-topped snow. Arent you cold? asked Shadow. My wife was Choctaw, said Chapman. And she taught you mystical ways to keep out the cold? Nope. She thought I was crazy, said Chapman. She used tsay, Johnny, why don't you jes put on boots? The slope of the hill became steeper, and they were forced to stop talking. The three men stumbled and slipped on the snow, using the trunks of birch trees on the hillside to steady themselves, and to stop themselves from falling. When the ground became slightly more level, Chapman said, she's dead now, acourse. When she died I guess maybe I went a mite crazy. It could happen to anyone. It could happen to you. He clapped Shadow on the arm. By Jesus and Jehosophat, you're a big man. So they tell me, said Shadow. They trudged down that hill for about half an hour, until they reached the gravel road that wound around the base of it, and the three men began to walk along it, toward the cluster of buildings they had seen from high on the hill. A car slowed and stopped. The woman driving it reached over, wound down the passenger window, and said, You bozos need a ride? You are very gracious, madam, said Wednesday. Were looking for a Mister Harry Bluejay. Hell be down at the rec hall, said the woman. She was in her forties, Shadow guessed. Get in. They got in. Wednesday took the passenger seat, John Chapman and Shadow climbed into the back. Shadows legs were too long to sit in the back comfortably, but he did the best he could. The car jolted forward, down the gravel road. So where did you three come from? asked the driver. Just visiting with a friend, said Wednesday. Lives on the hill back there, said Shadow. What hill? she asked. Shadow looked back through the dusty rear window, looking back at the hill. But there was no high hill back there; nothing but clouds on the plains. Whiskey Jack, he said. Ah, she said. We call him Inktomi here. I think its the same guy. My grandfather used to tell some pretty good stories about him. Of course, all the best of them were kind of dirty. They hit a bump in the road, and the woman swore. You okay back there? Yes maam, said Johnny Chapman. He was holding onto the backseat with both hands. Rez roads, she said. You get used to them. Are they all like this? asked Shadow. Pretty much, said the woman. All the ones around here. And don't you go asking about all the money from casinos, because who in their right mind wants to come all the way out here to go to a casino? We don't see none of that money out here. I'm sorry. don't be. She changed gear with a crash and a groan. You know the white population all around here is falling? You go out there, you find ghost towns. How you going to keep them down on the farm, after they seen the world on their television screens? And its not worth anyones while to farm the Badlands anyhow. They took our lands, they settled here, nowyou're leaving. They go south. They go west. Maybe if we wait for enough of them to move to New York and Miami and L. A. we can take the whole of the middle back without a fight. Good luck, said Shadow. They found Harry Bluejay in the rec hall, at the pool table, doing trick shots to impress a group of several girls. He had a blue jay tattooed on the back of his right hand, and multiple piercings in his right ear. |
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Ho hoka, Harry Bluejay, said John Chapman. Fuck off, you crazy barefoot white ghost, said Harry Bluejay, conversationally. You give me the creeps. There were older men at the far end of the room, some of them playing cards, some of them talking. There were other men, younger men of about Harry Bluejays age, waiting for their turn at the pool table. It was a full-sized pool table, and a rip in the green baize on one side had been repaired with silver-gray duct tape. I got a message from your uncle, said Chapman, un-fazed. He saysyou're to give these two your car. There must have been thirty, maybe even forty people in that hall, and now they were every one of them looking intently at their playing cards, or their feet, or their fingernails, and pretending as hard as they could not to be listening. he's not my uncle. A cigarette-smoke fug hung over the hall. Chapman smiled widely, displaying the worst set of teeth that Shadow had seen in a human mouth. You want to tell your uncle that? He saysyou're the only reason he stays among the Lakota. Whiskey Jack says a lot of things, said Harry Bluejay, petulantly. But he did not say Whiskey Jack either. It sounded almost the same, to Shadows ear, but not quite: Wisakedjak, he thought. that's whatyou're saying. Not Whiskey Jack at all. Shadow said, Yeah. And one of the things he said was that were trading our Winnebago for your Buick. I don't see a Winnebago. Hell bring you the Winnebago, said John Chapman. You know he will. Harry Bluejay attempted a trick shot and missed. His hand was not steady enough. I'm not the old foxs nephew, said Harry Bluejay. I wish he wouldn't say that to people. Better a live fox than a dead wolf, said Wednesday, in a voice so deep it was almost a growl. Now, will you sell us your car? Harry Bluejay shivered, visibly and violently. Sure, he said. Sure. I was only kidding. I kid a lot, me. He put down the pool cue on the pool table, and took a thick jacket, pulling it out from a cluster of similar jackets hanging from pegs by the door. Let me get my shit out of the car first, he said. He kept darting glances at Wednesday, as if he were concerned that the older man were about to explode. Harry Bluejays car was parked a hundred yards away. As they walked toward it, they passed a small whitewashed Catholic church, and a man in a priests collar who stared at them from the doorway as they went past. He was sucking on a cigarette as if he did not enjoy smoking it. Good day to you, father! called Johnny Chapman, but the man in the collar made no reply; he crushed his cigarette under his heel, picked up the butt and dropped it into the bin beside the door, and went inside. Harry Bluejays car was missing its wing mirrors, and its tires were the baldest Shadow had ever seen: perfectly smooth black rubber. Harry Bluejay told them the car drank oil, but as long as you kept pouring oil in, it would just keep running forever, unless it stopped. Harry Bluejay filled a black garbage bag with shit from the car (said shit including several screw-top bottles of cheap beer, unfinished, a small packet of cannabis resin wrapped in silver foil and badly hidden in the cars ashtray, a skunk tail, two dozen country-and-western cassettes and a battered, yellowing copy of Stranger in a Strange Land). Sorry I was jerking your chain before, said Harry Bluejay to Wednesday, passing him the car keys. You know when I'll get the Winnebago? Ask your uncle. he's the fucking used-car dealer, growled Wednesday. |
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Wisakedjak is not my uncle, said Harry Bluejay. He took his black garbage bag and went into the nearest house, and closed the door behind him. They dropped Johnny Chapman in Sioux Falls, outside a whole-food store. Wednesday said nothing on the drive. He was in a black sulk, as he had been since they left Whiskey Jacks place. In a family restaurant just outside St. Paul, Shadow picked up a newspaper someone else had put down. He looked at it once, then again, then he showed it to Wednesday, Look at that, said Shadow. Wednesday sighed, and looked down at the paper. I am, he said, delighted that the air-traffic controllers dispute has been resolved without recourse to industrial action. Not that, said Shadow. Look. It says its the fourteenth of February. Happy Valentines Day. So we set out January the what, twentieth, twenty-first. I wasnt keeping track of the dates, but it was the third week of January. We were three days on the road, all told. So how is it the fourteenth of February? Because we walked for almost a month, said Wednesday. In the Badlands. Backstage. Hell of a shortcut, said Shadow. Wednesday pushed the paper away. Fucking Johnny Appleseed, always going on about Paul Bunyan. In real life Chapman owned fourteen apple orchards. He farmed thousands of acres. Yes, he kept pace with the western frontier, but theres not a story out there about him with a word of truth in it, save that he went a little crazy once. But it doesn't matter. Like the newspapers used to say, if the truth isn't big enough, you print the legend. This country needs its legends. And even the legends don't believe it anymore. But you see it. I'm a has-been. Who the fuck cares about me? Shadow said softly, you're a god. Wednesday looked at him sharply. He seemed to be about to say something, and then he slumped back in his seat, and looked down at the menu, and said, So? Its a good thing to be a god, said Shadow. Is it? asked Wednesday, and this time it was Shadow who looked away. In a gas station twenty-five miles outside Lakeside, on the wall by the rest rooms, Shadow saw a homemade photocopied notice: a black-and-white photo of Alison McGovern and the handwritten question Have You Seen Me? above it. Same yearbook photograph: smiling confidently, a girl with rubber-band braces on her top teeth who wants to work with animals when she grows up. Have you seen me? Shadow bought a Snickers bar, a bottle of water, and a copy of the Lakeside News. The above-the-fold story, written by Marguerite Olsen, our Lakeside Reporter, showed a photograph of a boy and an older man, out on the frozen lake, standing by an outhouselike ice-fishing shack, and between them they were holding a big fish. They were smiling. Father and Son Catch Local Record Northern Pike. Full story inside. Wednesday was driving. He said, Read me anything interesting you find in the paper. Shadow looked carefully, and he turned the pages slowly, but he couldn't find anything. Wednesday dropped him off in the driveway outside his apartment. A smoke-colored cat stared at him from the driveway, then fled when he bent to stroke it. Shadow stopped on the wooden deck outside his apartment and looked out at the lake, dotted here and there with green and brown ice-fishing huts. Many of them had cars parked beside them. On the ice nearer the bridge sat the old green klunker, just as it had sat in the newspaper. March twenty-third, said Shadow, encouragingly. Round nine-fifteen in the morning. You can do it. Not a chance, said a womans voice. |
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April third. Six P. M. That way the day warms up the ice. Shadow smiled. Marguerite Olsen was wearing a ski suit. She was at the far end of the deck, refilling the bird feeder. I read your article in the Lakeside News on the Town Record Northern Pike. Exciting, huh? Well, educational, maybe. I thought you werent coming back to us, she said. You were gone for a while, huh? My uncle needed me, said Shadow. The time kind of got away from us. She placed the last suet brick in its cage, and began to fill a net sock with thistle seeds from a plastic milk jug. Several goldfinches, olive in their winter coats, twitted impatiently from a nearby fir tree. I didn't see anything in the paper about Alison McGovern. There wasnt anything to report. she's still missing. There was a rumor that someone had seen her in Detroit, but it turned out to be a false alarm. Poor kid. Marguerite Olsen screwed the top back onto the gallon jug. I hope she's dead, she said, matter-of-factly. Shadow was shocked. Why? Because the alternatives are worse. The goldfinches hopped frantically from branch to branch of the fir tree, impatient for the people to be gone. You arent thinking about Alison, thought Shadow. you're thinking of your son. you're thinking of Sandy. He remembered someone saying I miss Sandy. Who was that? Good talking to you, he said. Yeah, she said. You too. * * * February passed in a succession of short, gray days. Some days the snow fell, most days it didn't. The weather warmed up, and on the good days it got above freezing. Shadow stayed in his apartment until it began to feel like a prison cell, and then, on the days that Wednesday did not need him to travel, he began to walk. He would walk for much of the day, long trudges out of the town. He walked, alone, until he reached the national forest to the north and the west, or the cornfields and cow pastures to the south. He walked the Lumber County Wilderness Trail, and he walked along the old railroad tracks, and he walked the back roads. A couple of times he even walked along the frozen lake, from north to south. Sometimes hed see locals or winter tourists or joggers, and hed wave and say hi. Mostly he saw nobody at all, just crows and finches, and a few times he spotted a hawk feasting on a roadkill possum or raccoon. On one memorable occasion he watched an eagle snatch a silver fish from the middle of the White Pine River, the water frozen at the edges, but still rushing and flowing at the center. The fish wriggled and jerked in the eagles talons, glittering in the midday sun; Shadow imagined the fish freeing itself and swimming off across the sky, and he smiled, grimly. If he walked, he discovered, he did not have to think, and that was just the way he liked it; when he thought, his mind went to places he could not control, places that made him feel uncomfortable. Exhaustion was the best thing. When he was exhausted, his thoughts did not wander to Laura, or to the strange dreams, or to things that were not and could not be. He would return home from walking, and sleep without difficulty and without dreaming. He ran into Police Chief Chad Mulligan in Georges Barber Shop in the town square. Shadow always had high hopes for haircuts, but they never lived up to his expectations. After every haircut he looked more or less the same, only with shorter hair. Chad, seated in the barbers chair beside Shadows, seemed surprisingly concerned about his own appearance. When his haircut was finished he gazed grimly at his reflection, as if he were preparing to give it a speeding ticket. |
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It looks good, Shadow told him. Would it look good to you if you were a woman? I guess. They went across the square to Mabels together, ordered mugs of hot chocolate. Chad said, Hey. Mike. Have you ever thought about a career in law enforcement? Shadow shrugged. I cant say I have, he said. Seems like theres a whole lot of things you got to know. Chad shook his head. You know the main part of police work, somewhere like this? Its just keeping your head. Something happens, somebodys screaming at you, screaming blue murder, you simply have to be able to say thatyou're sure that its all a mistake, and you'll just sort it all out if they just step outside quietly. And you have to be able to mean it. And then you sort it out? Mostly, that's when you put handcuffs on them. But yeah, you do what you can to sort it out. Let me know if you want a job. Were hiring. Andyou're the kind of guy we want. I'll keep that in mind, if the thing with my uncle falls through. They sipped their hot chocolate. Mulligan said, Say, Mike, what would you do if you had a cousin. Like a widow. And she started calling you? Calling you how? On the phone. Long distance. She lives out of state. His cheeks crimsoned. I saw her last year at a family wedding. She was married, back then, though, I mean, her husband was still alive, and she's family. Not a first cousin. Pretty distant. You got a thing for her? Blush. I don't know about that. Well then, put it another way. Does she have a thing for you? Well, she's said a few things, when she called. she's a very fine-looking woman. Sowhat are you going to do about it? I could ask her out here. I could do that, couldn't I? she's kind of said shed like to come up here. you're both adults; I'd say go for it. Chad nodded, and blushed, and nodded again. The telephone in Shadows apartment was silent and dead. He thought about getting it connected, but could think of no one he wanted to call. Late one night he picked it up and listened, and was convinced that he could hear a wind blowing and a distant conversation between a group of people talking in voices too low to properly make out. He said, Hello? and Whos there? but there was no reply, only a sudden silence and then the faraway sound of laughter, so faint he was not certain he was not imagining it. * * * Shadow made more journeys with Wednesday in the weeks that followed. He waited in the kitchen of a Rhode Island cottage, and listened while Wednesday sat in a darkened bedroom and argued with a woman who would not get out of bed, nor would she let Wednesday or Shadow look at her face. In the refrigerator was a plastic bag filled with crickets, and another filled with the corpses of baby mice. In a rock club in Seattle, Shadow watched Wednesday shout his greeting, over the noise of the band, to a young woman with short red hair and blue-spiral tattoos. That talk must have gone well, for Wednesday came away from it grinning delightedly. Five days later Shadow was waiting in the rental when Wednesday walked, scowling, from the lobby of an office building in Dallas. Wednesday slammed the car door when he got in, and sat there in silence, his face red with rage. He said, Drive. Then he said, Fucking Albanians. Like anybody cares. Three days after that they flew to Boulder, where they had a pleasant lunch with five young Japanese women. It was a meal of pleasantries and politeness, and Shadow walked away from it unsure of whether anything had been agreed to or decided. Wednesday, though, seemed happy enough. |
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He stood up and tipped the crumbs out of the paper bag, then folded it up and put it back into his pocket. The time he had spent in the funeral home in Cairo made it easier somehow for him to be in her presence. He did not know what to say to her. Her cold hand sought his, and he squeezed it gently. He could feel his heart beating in his chest. He was scared, and what scared him was the normality of the moment. He felt so comfortable with her at his side that he would have been willing to stand there forever. I miss you, he admitted. I'm here, she said. that's when I miss you most. Whenyou're here. When you arent here, whenyou're just a ghost from the past or a dream from another life, its easier then. She squeezed his fingers. So, he asked. Hows death? Hard, she said. It just keeps going. She rested her head on his shoulder, and it almost undid him. He said, You want to walk for a bit? Sure. She smiled up at him, a nervous, crooked smile in a dead face. They walked out of the little graveyard, and made their way back down the road, toward the town, hand in hand. Where have you been? she asked. Here, he said. Mostly. Since Christmas, she said, I kind of lost you. Sometimes I would know where you were, for a few hours, for a few days. Youd be all over. Then youd fade away again. I was in this town, he said. Lakeside. Its a good little town. Oh, she said. She no longer wore the blue suit in which she had been buried. Now she wore several sweaters, a long, dark skirt, and high, burgundy boots. Shadow commented on them. Laura ducked her head. She smiled. Arent they great boots? I found them in this great shoe store in Chicago. So what made you decide to come up from Chicago? Oh, I've not been in Chicago for a while, puppy. I was heading south. The cold was bothering me. Youd think I'd welcome it. But its something to do with being dead, I guess. You don't feel it as cold. You feel it as a sort of nothing, and whenyou're dead I guess the only thing thatyou're scared of is nothing. I was going to go to Texas. I planned to spend the winter in Galveston. I think I used to winter in Galveston, when I was a kid. I don't think you did, said Shadow. Youve never mentioned it before. No? Maybe it was someone else, then. I don't know. I remember seagullsthrowing bread in the air for seagulls, hundreds of them, the whole sky becoming nothing but seagulls as they flapped their wings and snatched the bread from the air. She paused. If I didn't see it, I guess someone else did. A car came around the corner. The driver waved them hello. Shadow waved back. It felt wonderfully normal to walk with his wife. This feels good, said Laura, as if she was reading his mind. Yes, said Shadow. When the call came I had to hurry back. I was barely into Texas. Call? She looked up at him. Around her neck the gold coin glinted. It felt like a call, she said. I started to think about you. About how much I needed to see you. It was like a hunger. You knew I was here, then? Yes. She stopped. She frowned, and her upper teeth pressed into her blue lower lip, biting it gently. She put her head on one side and said, I did. Suddenly, I did. I thought you were calling me, but it wasnt you, was it? No. You didn't want to see me. It wasnt that. He hesitated. No. I didn't want to see you. It hurts too much. The snow crunched beneath their feet and it glittered diamonds as the sunlight caught it. It must be hard, said Laura, not being alive. You mean its hard for you to be dead? Look, I'm still going to figure out how to bring you back, properly. |
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What you call me? Bilquis, he says, again. And then he sings, in a voice not made for singing, You are an immaterial girl living in a material world. There is something rehearsed about his words, as if he's practiced this exchange in front of a mirror. She stops smiling, and her face changes, becomes wiser, sharper, harder. What do you want? I told you. Sweet loving. I'll give you whatever you want, she says. She needs to get out of the limo. Its moving too fast for her to throw herself from the car, she figures, but shell do it if she cant talk her way out of this. Whatevers happening here, she doesn't like it. What I want. Yes. He pauses. His tongue runs over his lips. I want a clean world. I want to own tomorrow. I want evolution, devolution, and revolution. I want to move our kind from the fringes of the slipstream to the higher ground of the mainstream. You people are underground. that's wrong. We need to take the spotlight and shine. Front and center. You people have been so far underground for so long youve lost the use of your eyes. My names Ayesha, she says. I don't know whatyou're talking about. Theres another girl on that corner, her names Bilquis. We could go back to Sunset, you could have both of us Oh, Bilquis, he says, and he sighs, theatrically. Theres only so much belief to go around. you're reaching the end of what they can give us. The credibility gap. And then he sings, once again, in his tuneless nasal voice, You are an analog girl, living in a digital world. The limo takes a corner too fast, and he tumbles across the seat into her. The driver of the car is hidden behind tinted glass. An irrational conviction strikes her, that nobody is driving the car, that the white limo is driving through Beverly Hills like Herbie the Love Bug, under its own power. Then the John reaches out his hand and taps on the tinted glass. The car slows, and before it has stopped moving Bilquis has pushed open the door and she half jumps, half falls out onto the blacktop. she's on a hillside road. To the left of her is a steep hill, to the right is a sheer drop. She starts to run down the road. The limo sits there, unmoving. It starts to rain, and her high heels slip and twist beneath her. She kicks them off, and runs, soaked to the skin, looking for somewhere she can get off the road. she's scared. She has power, true, but its hunger-magic, cunt-magic. It has kept her alive in this land for so long, but for everything else she uses her sharp eyes and her mind, her height and her presence. Theres a metal guardrail at knee height on her right, to stop cars from tumbling over the side of the hill, and now the rain is running down the hill road turning it into a river, and the soles of her feet have started to bleed. The lights of L. A. are spread out in front of her, a twinkling electrical map of an imaginary kingdom, the heavens laid out right here on earth, and she knows that all she needs to be safe is to get off the road. I am black but comely, she mouths to the night and the rain. I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys. Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love. A fork of lightning burns greenly across the night sky. She loses her footing, slides several feet, skinning her leg and elbow, and she is getting to her feet when she sees the lights of the car descending the hill toward her. Its coming down too fast for safety and she wonders whether to throw herself to the right, where it could crush her against the hillside, or the left, where she might tumble down the gully. |
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If were still loved and remembered, something else a whole lot like us comes along and takes our place and the whole damn thing starts all over again. And if were forgotten, were done. Shadow did not know what to say. He said, So where are you calling from? None of your goddamn business. Are you drunk? Not yet. I just keep thinking about Thor. You never knew him. Big guy, like you. Good-hearted. Not bright, but hed give you the goddamned shirt off his back if you asked him. And he killed himself. He put a gun in his mouth and blew his head off in Philadelphia in 1932. What kind of a way is that for a god to die? I'm sorry. You don't give two fucking cents, son. He was a whole lot like you. Big and dumb. Wednesday stopped talking. He coughed. Whats wrong? said Shadow, for the second time. They got in touch. Who did? The opposition. And? They want to discuss a truce. Peace talks. Live and let fucking live. So what happens now? Now I go and drink bad coffee with the modern assholes in a Kansas City Masonic Hall. Okay. You going to pick me up, or shall I meet you somewhere? You stay there and you keep your head down. don't get into any trouble. You hear me? But There was a click, and the line went dead and stayed dead. There was no dial tone, but then, there never had been. Nothing but time to kill. The conversation with Wednesday had left Shadow with a sense of disquiet. He got up, intending to go for a walk, but already the light was fading, and he sat back down again. Shadow picked up the Minutes of the LakesideCity Council 18721884 and turned the pages, his eyes scanning the tiny print, not actually reading it, occasionally stopping to scan something that caught his eye. In July 1874, Shadow learned, the city council was concerned about the number of itinerant foreign loggers arriving in the town. An opera house was to be built on the corner of Third Street and Broadway. It was to be expected that the nuisances attendant to the damming of the Mill-Creek would abate once the mill-pond had become a lake. The council authorized the payment of seventy dollars to Mr. Samuel Samuels, and of eighty-five dollars to Mr. Heikki Salminen, in compensation for their land and for the expenses incurred in moving their domiciles out of the area to be flooded. It had never occurred to Shadow before that the lake was manmade. Why call a town Lakeside, when the lake had begun as a dammed mill-pond? He read on, to discover that a Mr. Hinzelmann, originally of Hildemuhlen in Bavaria, was in charge of the lake-building project, and that the city council had granted him the sum of $370 toward the project, any shortfall to be made up by public subscription. Shadow tore off a strip of a paper towel and placed it into the book as a bookmark. He could imagine Hinzelmanns pleasure in seeing the reference to his grandfather. He wondered if the old man knew that his family had been instrumental in building the lake. Shadow flipped forward through the book, scanning for more references to the lake-building project. They had dedicated the lake in a ceremony in the spring of 1876, as a precursor to the towns centennial celebrations. A vote of thanks to Mr. Hinzelmann was taken by the council. Shadow checked his watch. It was five-thirty. He went into the bathroom, shaved, combed his hair. He changed his clothes. Somehow the final fifteen minutes passed. He got the wine and the plant, arid he walked next door. The door opened as he knocked. Marguerite Olsen looked almost as nervous as he felt. |
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She took the wine bottle and the potted plant, and said thank you. The television was on, The Wizard of Oz on video. It was still in sepia, and Dorothy was still in Kansas, sitting with her eyes closed in Professor Marvels wagon as the old fraud pretended to read her mind, and the twister-wind that would tear her away from her life was approaching. Leon sat in front of the screen, playing with a toy fire truck. When he saw Shadow an expression of delight touched his face; he stood up and ran, tripping over his feet in his excitement, into a back bedroom, from which he emerged a moment later triumphantly waving a quarter. Watch, Mike Ainsel! he shouted. Then closed both his hands and he pretended to take the coin into his right hand, which he opened wide. I made it disappear, Mike Ainsel! You did, agreed Shadow. After weve eaten, if its okay with your mom, I'll show you how to do it even smoother than that. Do it now if you want, said Marguerite. Were still waiting for Samantha. I sent her out for sour cream. I don't know whats taking her so long. And, as if that was her cue, footsteps sounded on the wooden deck, and somebody shouldered open the front door. Shadow did not recognize her at first, then she said, I didn't know if you wanted the kind with calories or the kind that tastes like wallpaper paste so I went for the kind with calories, and he knew her then: the girl from the road to Cairo. that's fine, said Marguerite. Sam, this is my neighbor, Mike Ainsel. Mike, this is Samantha Black Crow, my sister. I don't know you, thought Shadow desperately. Youve never met me before. Were total strangers. He tried to remember how he had thought snow, how easy and light that had been: this was desperate. He put out his hand and said, Pleased to meetcha. She blinked, looked up at his face. A moment of puzzlement, then recognition entered her eyes and curved the corners of her mouth into a grin. Hello, she said. I'll see how the food is doing, said Marguerite, in the taut voice of someone who burns things in kitchens if they leave them alone and unwatched even for a moment. Sam took off her puffy coat and her hat. Soyou're the melancholy but mysterious neighbor, she said. Whoda thunk it? She kept her voice down. And you, he said, are girl Sam. Can we talk about this later? If you promise to tell me whats going on. Deal. Leon tugged at the leg of Shadows pants. Will you show me now? he asked, and held out his quarter. Okay, said Shadow. But if I show you, you have to remember that a master magician never tells anyone how its done. I promise, said Leon, gravely. Shadow took the coin in his left hand, then moved Leons right hand, showing him how to appear to take the coin in his right hand while actually leaving it in Shadows left hand. Then he made Leon repeat the movements on his own. After several attempts the boy mastered the move. Now you know half of it, said Shadow. The other half is this: put your attention on the place where the coin ought to be. Look at the place its meant to be. If you act like its in your right hand, no one will even look at your left hand, no matter how clumsy you are. Sam watched all this with her head tipped slightly on one side, saying nothing. Dinner! called Marguerite, pushing her way in from the kitchen with a steaming bowl of spaghetti in her hands. Leon, go wash your hands. There was crusty garlic bread, thick red sauce, good spicy meatballs. Shadow complimented Marguerite on it. Old family recipe, she told him, from the Corsican side of the family. |
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I thought you were Native American. Dads Cherokee, said Sam. Mags moms father came from Corsica. Sam was the only person in the room who was actually drinking the cabernet. Dad left her when Mags was ten and he moved across town. Six months after that, I was born. Mom and Dad got married when the divorce came through. When I was ten he went away. I think he has a ten-year attention span. Well, he's been out in Oklahoma for ten years, said Marguerite. Now, my moms family were European Jewish, continued Sam, from one of those places that used to be communist and now are just chaos. I think she liked the idea of being married to a Cherokee. Fry bread and chopped liver. She took another sip of the red wine. Sams moms a wild woman, said Marguerite, semi-approvingly. You know where she is now? asked Sam. Shadow shook his head. she's in Australia. She met a guy on the Internet who lived in Hobart. When they met in the flesh she decided he was actually kind of icky. But she really liked Tasmania. So she's living down there, with a womans group, teaching them to batik cloth and things like that. isn't that cool? At her age? Shadow agreed that it was, and helped himself to more meatballs. Sam told them how all the aboriginal natives of Tasmania had been wiped out by the British, and about the human chain they made across the island to catch them which trapped only an old man and a sick boy. She told him how the thylacinesthe Tasmanian tigershad been killed by farmers, scared for their sheep, how the politicians in the 1930s noticed that the thylacines should be protected only after the last of them was dead. She finished her second glass of wine, poured her third. So, Mike, said Sam, suddenly, her cheeks reddening, tell us about your family. What are the Ainsels like? She was smiling, and there was mischief in that smile. Were real dull, said Shadow. None of us ever got as far as Tasmania. Soyou're at school in Madison. Whats that like? You know, she said. I'm studying art history, womens studies, and casting my own bronzes. When I grow up, said Leon, I'm going to do magic. Poof. Will you teach me, Mike Ainsel? Sure, said Shadow. If your mom doesn't mind. Sam said, After weve eaten, whileyou're putting Leon to bed, Mags, I think I'm going to get Mike to take me to the Buck Stops Here for an hour or so. Marguerite did not shrug. Her head moved, her eyebrow raised slightly. I think he's interesting, said Sam. And we have lots to talk about. Marguerite looked at Shadow, who busied himself in dabbing an imaginary blob of red sauce from his chin with a paper napkin. Well, you're grownups, she said, in a tone of voice that implied that they werent, and that even if they were they shouldn't be. After dinner Shadow helped Sam with the washing uphe dried and then he did a trick for Leon, counting pennies into Leons palm: each time Leon opened his hand and counted them there was one less coin than he had counted in. And as for the final pennyAre you squeezing it? Tightly? when Leon opened his hand he found it had transformed into a dime. Leons plaintive cries of Howd you do that? Momma, howd he do that? followed him out into the hall. Sam handed him his coat. Come on, she said. Her cheeks were flushed from the wine. Outside it was cold. Shadow stopped in his apartment, tossed the Minutes of the Lakeside City Council into a plastic grocery bag, and brought it along. Hinzelmann might be down at the Buck, and he wanted to show him the mention of his grandfather. |
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I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day well all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankinds destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that its aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that theres a cat in a box somewhere whos alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it itll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasnt done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know whats going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a womans right to choose, a babys right to live, that while all human life is sacred theres nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens whenyou're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it. She stopped, out of breath. Shadow almost took his hands off the wheel to applaud. Instead he said, Okay. So if I tell you what I've learned you won't think that I'm a nut. Maybe, she said. Try me. Would you believe that all the gods that people have ever imagined are still with us today? Maybe. And that there are new gods out there, gods of computers and telephones and whatever, and that they all seem to think there isn't room for them both in the world. And that some kind of war is kind of likely. And these gods killed those two men? No, my wife killed those two men. I thought you said your wife was dead. She is. She killed them before she died, then? After. don't ask. She reached up a hand and flicked her hair from her forehead. They pulled up on Main Street, outside the Buck Stops Here. The sign over the window showed a surprised-looking stag standing on its hind legs holding a glass of beer. Shadow grabbed the bag with the book in it and got out. Why would they have a war? asked Sam. It seems kind of redundant. What is there to win? I don't know, admitted Shadow. Its easier to believe in aliens than in gods, said Sam. Maybe Mister Town and Mister Whatever were Men in Black, only the alien kind. They were standing on the sidewalk outside the Buck Stops Here and Sam stopped. She looked up at Shadow, and her breath hung on the night air like a faint cloud. She said, Just tell meyou're one of the good guys. |
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I cant, said Shadow. I wish I could. But I'm doing my best. She looked up at him, and bit her lower lip. Then she nodded. Good enough, she said. I won't turn you in. You can buy me a beer. Shadow pushed the door open for her, and they were hit by a blast of heat and music. They went inside. Sam waved at some friends. Shadow nodded to a handful of people whose facesalthough not their nameshe remembered from the day he had spent searching for Alison McGovern, or who he had met in Mabels in the morning. Chad Mulligan was standing at the bar, with his arm around the shoulders of a small red-haired womanthe kissing cousin, Shadow figured. He wondered what she looked like, but she had her back to him. Chads hand raised in a mock salute when he saw Shadow. Shadow grinned, and waved back at him. Shadow looked around for Hinzelmann, but the old man did not seem to be there this evening. He spied a free table at the back and started walking toward it. Then somebody began to scream. It was a bad scream, a full-throated, seen-a-ghost hysterical scream, which silenced all conversation. Shadow looked around, certain somebody was being murdered, and then he realized that all the faces in the bar were turning toward him. Even the black cat, who slept in the window during the day, was standing up on top of the jukebox with its tail high and its back arched and was staring at Shadow. Time slowed. Get him! shouted a womans voice, parked on the verge of hysteria. Oh for Gods sake, somebody stop him! don't let him get away! Please! It was a voice he knew. Nobody moved. They stared at Shadow. He stared back at them. Chad Mulligan stepped forward, walking through the people. The small woman walked behind him warily, her eyes wide, as if she was preparing to start screaming once more. Shadow knew her. Of course he knew her. Chad was still holding his beer, which he put down on a nearby table. He said, Mike. Shadow said, Chad. Audrey Burton took hold of Chads sleeve. Her face was white, and there were tears in her eyes. Shadow, she said. You bastard. You murderous evil bastard. Are you sure that you know this man, hon? said Chad. He looked uncomfortable. Audrey Burton looked at him incredulously. Are you crazy? He worked for Robbie for years. His slutty wife was my best friend. he's wanted for murder. I had to answer questions. he's an escaped convict. She was way over the top, her voice trembling with suppressed hysteria, sobbing out her words like a soap actress going for a daytime Emmy. Kissing cousins, thought Shadow, unimpressed. Nobody in the bar said a word. Chad Mulligan looked up at Shadow. Its probably a mistake. I'm sure we can sort this all out, he said. Then he said, to the bar, Its all fine. Nothing to worry about. We can sort this out. Everythings fine. Then, to Shadow, Lets step outside, Mike. Quiet competence. Shadow was impressed. Sure, said Shadow. He felt a hand touch his hand, and he turned to see Sam staring at him. He smiled down at her as reassuringly as he could. Sam looked at Shadow, then she looked around the bar at the faces staring at them. She said to Audrey Burton, I don't know who you are. But. You. Are such. A cunt. Then she went up on tiptoes and pulled Shadow down to her, and kissed him hard on the lips, pushing her mouth against his for what felt to Shadow like several minutes, and might have been as long as five seconds in real, clock-ticking time. It was a strange kiss, Shadow thought, as her lips pressed against his: it wasnt intended for him. |
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Maybe I can make a break for itin hobbles and cuffs and lightweight orange clothes, out into the snow, and even as he thought it he knew how stupid and hopeless it was. Chad walked him out into the office. Liz had turned the TV off now. The black deputy looked him over. he's a big guy, he said to Chad. Liz passed the new deputy the paper bag with Shadows possessions in it, and he signed for it. Chad looked at Shadow, then at the deputy. He said to the deputy, quietly, but loudly enough for Shadow to hear, Look. I just want to say, I'm not comfortable with the way this is happening. The deputy nodded. you'll have to take it up with the appropriate authorities, sir. Our job is simply to bring him in. Chad made a sour face. He turned to Shadow. Okay, said Chad. Through that door and into the sally port. What? Out there. Where the car is. Liz unlocked the doors. You make sure that orange uniform comes right back here, she said to the deputy. The last felon we sent down to Lafayette, we never saw the uniform again. They cost the county money. They walked Shadow out to the sally port, where a car sat idling. It wasnt a sheriffs department car. It was a black town car. Another deputy, a grizzled white guy with a mustache, stood by the car, smoking a cigarette. He crushed it out underfoot as they came close, and opened the back door for Shadow. Shadow sat down, awkwardly, his movements hampered by the cuffs and the hobble. There was no grille between the back and the front of the car. The two deputies climbed into the front of the car. The black deputy started the motor. They waited for the sally port door to open. Come on, come on, said the black deputy, his fingers drumming against the steering wheel. Chad Mulligan tapped on the side window. The white deputy glanced at the driver, then he lowered the window. This is wrong, said Chad. I just wanted to say that. Your comments have been noted, and will be conveyed to the appropriate authorities, said the driver. The doors to the outside world opened. The snow was still falling, dizzying into the cars headlights. The driver put his foot on the gas, and they were heading back down the street and on to Main Street. You heard about Wednesday? said the driver. His voice sounded different, now, older, and familiar. he's dead. Yeah. I know, said Shadow. I saw it on TV. Those fuckers, said the white officer. It was the first thing he had said, and his voice was rough and accented and, like the drivers, it was a voice that Shadow knew. I tell you, they are fuckers, those fuckers. Thanks for coming to get me, said Shadow. don't mention it, said the driver. In the light of an oncoming car his face already seemed to look older. He looked smaller, too. The last time Shadow had seen him he had been wearing lemon-yellow gloves and a check jacket. We were in Milwaukee. Had to drive like demons when Ibis called. You think we let them lock you up and send you to the chair, when I'm still waiting to break your head with my hammer? asked the white deputy gloomily, fumbling in his pocket for a pack of cigarettes. His accent was Eastern European. The real shit will hit the fan in an hour or less, said Mr. Nancy, looking more like himself with each moment, when they really turn up to collect you. Well pull over before we get to Highway 53 and get you out of those shackles and back into your own clothes. Czernobog held up a handcuff key and smiled. I like the mustache, said Shadow. Suits you. Czernobog stroked it with a yellowed finger. |
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It is not the slavers, said Nunyunnini, old stone-hide. It is not the great wolves. Is it a famine? Is a famine coming? asked Gugwei. Nunyunnini was silent. Kalanu came out of the skull and waited with the rest of them. Gugwei put on the mammoth-hide cloak and put his head inside the skull. It is not a famine as you know it, said Nunyunnini, through Gugweis mouth, although a famine will follow. Then what is it? asked Yanu. I am not afraid. I will stand against it. We have spears, and we have throwing rocks. Let a hundred mighty warriors come against us, still we shall prevail. We shall lead them into the marshes, and split their skulls with our flints. It is not a man thing, said Nunyunnini, in Gugweis old voice. It will come from the skies, and none of your spears or your rocks will protect you. How can we protect ourselves? asked Atsula. I have seen flames in the skies. I have heard a noise louder than ten thunderbolts. I have seen forests flattened and rivers boil. Ai, said Nunyunnini, but he said no more. Gugwei came out of the skull, bending stiffly, for he was an old man, and his knuckles were swollen and knotted. There was silence. Atsula threw more leaves on the fire, and the smoke made their eyes tear. Then Yanu strode to the mammoth head, put the cloak about his broad shoulders, put his head inside the skull. His voice boomed. You must journey, said Nunyunnini. You must travel to sunward. Where the sun rises, there you will find a new land, where you will be safe. It will be a long journey: the moon will swell and empty, die and live, twice, and there will be slavers and beasts, but I shall guide you and keep you safe, if you travel toward the sunrise. Atsula spat on the mud of the floor, and said, No. She could feel the god staring at her. No, she said. You are a bad god to tell us this. We will die. We will all die, and then who will be left to carry you from high place to high place, to raise your tent, to oil your great tusks with fat? The god said nothing. Atsula and Yanu exchanged places. Atsulas face stared out through the yellowed mammoth bone. Atsula has no faith, said Nunyunnini in Atsulas voice. Atsula shall die before the rest of you enter the new land, but the rest of you shall live. Trust me: there is a land to the east that is manless. This land shall be your land and the land of your children and your childrens children, for seven generations, and seven sevens. But for Atsulas faithlessness, you would have kept it forever. In the morning, pack your tents and your possessions, and walk toward the sunrise. And Gugwei and Yanu and Kalanu bowed their heads and exclaimed at the power and wisdom of Nunyunnini. The moon swelled and waned and swelled and waned once more. The people of the tribe walked east, toward the sunrise, struggling through the icy winds, which numbed their exposed skin. Nunyunnini had promised them truly: they lost no one from the tribe on the journey, save for a woman in childbirth, and women in childbirth belong to the moon, not to Nunyunnini. They crossed the land bridge. Kalanu had left them at first light to scout the way. Now the sky was dark, and Kalanu had not returned, but the night sky was alive with lights, knotting and flickering and winding, flux and pulse, white and green and violet and red. Atsula and her people had seen the northern lights before, but they were still frightened by them, and this was a display like they had never seen before. Kalanu returned to them, as the lights in the sky formed and flowed. |
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Sometimes, she said to Atsula, I feel that I could simply spread my arms and fall into the sky. That is because you are a scout, said Atsula, the priestess. When you die, you shall fall into the sky and become a star, to guide us as you guide us in life. There are cliffs of ice to the east, high cliffs, said Kalanu, her raven-black hair worn long, as a man would wear it. We can climb them, but it will take many days. You shall lead us safely, said Atsula. I shall die at the foot of the cliff, and that shall be the sacrifice that takes you into the new lands. To the west of them, back in the lands from which they had come, where the sun had set hours before, there was a flash of sickly yellow light, brighter than lightning, brighter than daylight. It was a burst of pure brilliance that forced the folk on the land bridge to cover their eyes and spit and exclaim. Children began to wail. That is the doom that Nunyunnini warned us of, said Gugwei the old. Surely he is a wise god and a mighty one. He is the best of all gods, said Kalanu. In our new land we shall raise him up on high, and we shall polish his tusks and skull with fish oil and animal fat, and we shall tell our children, and our childrens children and our seventh childrens children, that Nunyunnini is the mightiest of all gods, and shall never be forgotten. Gods are great, said Atsula, slowly, as if she were imparting a great secret. But the heart is greater. For it is from our hearts they come, and to our hearts they shall return And there is no telling how long she might have continued in this blasphemy, had it not been interrupted in a manner that brooked no argument. The roar that erupted from the west was so loud that ears bled, that the people could hear nothing for some time, temporarily blinded and deafened but alive, knowing that they were luckier than the tribes to the west of them. It is good, said Atsula, but she could not hear the words inside her head. Atsula died at the foot of the cliffs when the spring sun was at its zenith. She did not live to see the New World, and the tribe walked into those lands with no holy woman. They scaled the cliffs, and they went south and west, until they found a valley with fresh water, and rivers that teemed with silver fish, and deer that had never seen man before and were so tame it was necessary to spit and to apologize to their spirits before killing them. Dalani gave birth to three boys, and some said that Kalanu had performed the final magic and could do the man-thing with her bride; while others said that old Gugwei was not too old to keep a young bride company when her husband was away; and certainly once Gugwei died, Dalani had no more children. And the ice times came and the ice times went, and the people spread out across the land, and formed new tribes and chose new totems: ravens and foxes and ground sloths and great cats and buffalo, each a beast that marked a tribes identity, each beast a god. The mammoths of the new lands were bigger, and slower, and more foolish than the mammoth of the Siberian plains, and the pungh mushrooms, with their seven spots, were not to be found in the new lands, and Nunyunnini did not speak to the tribe any longer. And in the days of the grandchildren of Dalani and Kalanus grandchildren, a band of warriors, members of a big and prosperous tribe, returning from a slaving expedition in the north to their home in the south, found the valley of the first people: they killed most of the men, and they took the women and many of the children captive. |
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One of the children, hoping for clemency, took them to a cave in the hills in which they found a mammoth skull, the tattered remnants of a mammoth-skin cloak, a wooden cup, and the preserved head of Atsula the oracle. While some of the warriors of the new tribe were for taking the sacred objects away with them, stealing the gods of the first people and owning their power, others counseled against it, saying that they would bring nothing but ill luck and the malice of their own god (for these were the people of a raven tribe, and ravens are jealous gods). So they threw the objects down the side of the hill, into a deep ravine, and took the survivors of the first people with them on their long journey south. And the raven tribes, and the fox tribes, grew more powerful in the land, and soon Nunyunnini was entirely forgotten. Part Three. The Moment of the Storm People are in the dark, they don't know what to do I had a little lantern, oh but it got blown out too. I'm reaching out my hand. I hope you are too. I just want to be in the dark with you. Greg Brown, In the Dark with You They changed cars at five in the morning, in Minneapolis, in the airports long-term parking lot. They drove to the top floor, where the parking building was open to the sky. Shadow took the orange uniform and the handcuffs and leg hobbles, put them in the brown paper bag that had briefly held his possessions, folded the whole thing up, and dropped it into a garbage can. They had been waiting for ten minutes when a barrel-chested young man came out of an airport door and walked over to them. He was eating a packet of Burger King french fries. Shadow recognized him immediately: he had sat in the back of the car, when they had left the House on the Rock, and hummed so deeply the car had vibrated. He now sported a white-streaked winter beard he had not had before. It made him look older. The man wiped the grease from his hands onto his jeans, extended one huge hand to Shadow. I heard of the All-Fathers death, he said. They will pay, and they will pay dearly. Wednesday was your father? asked Shadow. He was the All-Father, said the man. His deep voice caught in his throat. You tell them, tell them all, that when we are needed, my people will be there. Czernobog picked at a flake of tobacco from between his teeth and spat it out onto the frozen slush. And how many of you is that? Ten? Twenty? The barrel-chested mans beard bristled. And arent ten of us worth a hundred of them? Who would stand against even one of my folk, in a battle? But there are more of us than that, at the edge of the cities. There are a few in the mountains. Some in the Catskills, a few living in the carny towns in Florida. They keep their axes sharp. They will come if I call them. You do that, Elvis, said Mr. Nancy. Shadow thought he said Elvis, anyway. Nancy had exchanged the deputys uniform for a thick brown cardigan, corduroy trousers, and brown loafers. You call them. Its what the old bastard would have wanted. They betrayed him. They killed him. I laughed at Wednesday, but I was wrong. None of us are safe any longer, said the man whose name sounded like Elvis. But you can rely on us. He gently patted Shadow on the back and almost sent him sprawling. It was like being gently patted on the back by a wrecking ball. Czernobog had been looking around the parking lot. Now he said, You will pardon me asking, but our new vehicle is which? The barrel-chested man pointed. There she is, he said. Czernobog snorted. |
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That? It was a 1970 VW bus. There was a rainbow decal in the rear window. Its a fine vehicle. And its the last thing that they'll be expecting you to be driving. Czernobog walked around the vehicle. Then he started to cough, a lung-rumbling, old-man, five-in-the-morning smokers cough. He hawked, and spat, and put his hand to his chest, massaging away the pain. Yes. The last car they will suspect. So what happens when the police pull us over, looking for the hippies and the dope? Eh? We are not here to ride the magic bus. We are to blend in. The bearded man unlocked the door of the bus. So they take a look at you, they see you arent hippies, they wave you goodbye. Its the perfect disguise. And its all I could find at no notice. Czernobog seemed to be ready to argue it further, but Mr. Nancy intervened smoothly. Elvis, you came through for us. We are very grateful. Now, that car needs to get back to Chicago. Well leave it in Bloomington, said the bearded man. The wolves will take care of it. don't give it another thought. He turned back to Shadow. Again, you have my sympathy and I share your pain. Good luck. And if the vigil falls to you, my admiration, and my sympathy. He squeezed Shadows hand with his own catchers-mitt fist. It hurt. You tell his corpse when you see it. Tell him that Alviss son of Vindalf will keep the faith. The VW bus smelled of patchouli, of old incense and rolling tobacco. There was a faded pink carpet glued to the floor and to the walls. Who was that? asked Shadow, as he drove them down the ramp, grinding the gears. Just like he said, Alviss son of Vindalf. he's the king of the dwarfs. The biggest, mightiest, greatest of all the dwarf folk. But he's not a dwarf, pointed out Shadow. he's what, five-eight? Five-nine? Which makes him a giant among dwarfs, said Czernobog from behind him. Tallest dwarf in America. What was that about the vigil? asked Shadow. The two old men said nothing. Shadow glanced at Mr. Nancy, who was staring out of the window. Well? He was talking about a vigil. You heard him. Czernobog spoke up from the backseat. You will not have to do it, he said. Do what? The vigil. He talks too much. All the dwarfs talk and talk. Is nothing to think of. Better you put it out of your mind. * * * Driving south was like driving forward in time. The snows erased, slowly, and were completely gone by the following morning when the bus reached Kentucky. Winter was already over in Kentucky, and spring was on its way. Shadow began to wonder if there were some kind of equation to explain itperhaps every fifty miles he drove south he was driving a day into the future. He would have mentioned his idea to somebody, but Mr. Nancy was asleep in the passenger seat in the front, while Czernobog snored unceasingly in the back. Time seemed a flexible construct at that moment, an illusion he was imagining as he drove. He found himself becoming painfully aware of birds and animals: he saw the crows on the side of the road, or in the buss path, picking at roadkill; flights of birds wheeled across the skies in patterns that almost made sense; cats stared at them from front lawns and fence posts. Czernobog snorted and woke, sitting up slowly. I dreamed a strange dream, he said. I dreamed that I am truly Bielebog. That forever the world imagines that there are two of us, the light god and the dark, but that now we are both old, I find it was only me all the time, giving them gifts, taking my gifts away. He broke the filter from a Lucky Strike, put the cigarette between his lips and lit it. |
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They built a park, and a stone monument to go in the park, and a brass plaque on the monument. They blacktopped the road from the town, and, certain of the influx of tourists waiting to arrive, they even built a motel by the monument. Then they waited. The tourists did not come. Nobody came. Its a sad little park, now, with a mobile chapel in it that wouldn't fit a small funeral party, and a motel whose windows look like dead eyes. Which is why, concluded Mr. Nancy, as they drove into Humansville, Missouri (pop. 1084), the exact center of America is a tiny run-down park, an empty church, a pile of stones, and a derelict motel. Hog farm, said Czernobog. You just said that the real center of America was a hog farm. This isn't about what is, said Mr. Nancy. Its about what people think is. Its all imaginary anyway. that's why its important. People only fight over imaginary things. My kind of people? asked Shadow. Or your kind of people? Nancy said nothing. Czernobog made a noise that might have been a chuckle, might have been a snort. Shadow tried to get comfortable in the back of the bus. He had only slept a little. He had a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. Worse than the feeling he had had in prison, worse than the feeling he had had back when Laura had come to him and told him about the robbery. This was bad. The back of his neck prickled, he felt sick and, several times, in waves, he felt scared. Mr. Nancy pulled over in Humansville, parked outside a supermarket. Mr. Nancy went inside, and Shadow followed him in. Czernobog waited in the parking lot, smoking his cigarette. There was a young fair-haired man, little more than a boy, restocking the breakfast cereal shelves. Hey, said Mr. Nancy. Hey, said the young man. Its true, isn't it? They killed him? Yes, said Mr. Nancy. They killed him. The young man banged several boxes of Capn Crunch down on the shelf. They think they can crush us like cockroaches, he said. He had a tarnished silver bracelet circling his wrist. We don't crush that easy, do we? No, said Mr. Nancy. We don't. I'll be there, sir, said the young man, his pale blue eyes blazing. I know you will, Gwydion, said Mr. Nancy. Mr. Nancy bought several large bottles of RC Cola, a six-pack of toilet paper, a pack of evil-looking black cigarillos, a bunch of bananas, and a pack of Doublemint chewing gum. he's a good boy. Came over in the seventh century. Welsh. The bus meandered first to the west and then to the north. Spring faded back into the dead end of winter. Kansas was the cheerless gray of lonesome clouds, empty windows, and lost hearts. Shadow had become adept at hunting for radio stations, negotiating between Mr. Nancy, who liked talk radio and dance music, and Czernobog, who favored classical music, the gloomier the better, leavened with the more extreme evangelical religious stations. For himself, Shadow liked oldies. Toward the end of the afternoon they stopped, at Czernobogs request, on the outskirts of Cherryvale, Kansas (pop. 2,464). Czernobog led them to a meadow outside the town. There were still traces of snow in the shadows of the trees, and the grass was the color of dirt. Wait here, said Czernobog. He walked, alone, to the center of the meadow. He stood there, in the winds of the end of February, for some time. At first he hung his head, then he began gesticulating. He looks like he's talking to someone, said Shadow. Ghosts, said Mr. Nancy. They worshiped him here, over a hundred years ago. They made blood sacrifice to him, libations spilled with the hammer. |
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After a time, the townsfolk figured out why so many of the strangers who passed through the town didn't ever come back. This was where they hid some of the bodies. Czernobog came back from the middle of the field. His mustache seemed darker now, and there were streaks of black in his gray hair. He smiled, showing his iron tooth. I feel good, now. Ahh. Some things linger, and blood lingers longest. They walked back across the meadow to where they had parked the VW bus. Czernobog lit a cigarette, but did not cough. They did it with the hammer, he said. Votan, he would talk of the gallows and the spear, but for me, it is one thing He reached out a nicotine-colored finger and tapped it, hard, in the center of Shadows forehead. Please don't do that, said Shadow, politely. Please don't do that, mimicked Czernobog. One day I will take my hammer and do much worse than that to you, my friend, remember? Yes, said Shadow. But if you tap my head again, I'll break your hand. Czernobog snorted. Then he said, They should be grateful, the people here. There was such power raised. Even thirty years after they forced my people into hiding, this land, this very land, gave us the greatest movie star of all time. She was the greatest there ever was. Judy Garland? asked Shadow. Czernobog shook his head curtly. he's talking about Louise Brooks, said Mr. Nancy. Shadow decided not to ask who Louise Brooks was. Instead he said, So, look, when Wednesday went to talk to them, he did it under a truce. Yes. And now were going to get Wednesdays body from them, as a truce. Yes. And we know that they want me dead or out of the way. They want all of us dead, said Nancy. So what I don't get is, why do we think they'll play fair this time, when they didn't for Wednesday? That, said Czernobog, is why we are meeting at the center. Is He frowned. What is the word for it? The opposite of sacred? Profane, said Shadow, without thinking. No, said Czernobog. I mean, when a place is less sacred than any other place. Of negative sacredness. Places where they can build no temples. Places where people will not come, and will leave as soon as they can. Places where gods only walk if they are forced to. I don't know, said Shadow. I don't think there is a word for it. All of America has it, a little, said Czernobog. That is why we are not welcome here. But the center, said Czernobog. The center is worst. Is like a minefield. We all tread too carefully there to dare break the truce. They had reached the bus. Czernobog patted Shadows upper arm. You don't worry, he said, with gloomy reassurance. Nobody else is going to kill you. Nobody but me. * * * Shadow found the center of America at evening that same day, before it was fully dark. It was on a slight hill to the northwest of Lebanon. He drove around the little hillside park, past the tiny mobile chapel and the stone monument, and when Shadow saw the one-story 1950s motel at the edge of the park his heart sank. There was a black Humvee parked in front of itit looked like a jeep reflected in a fun-house mirror, as squat and pointless and ugly as an armored car. There were no lights on inside the building. They parked beside the motel, and as they did so, a man in a chauffeurs uniform and cap walked out of the motel and was illuminated by the headlights of the bus. He touched his cap to them, politely, got into the Humvee, and drove off. Big car, tiny dick, said Mr. Nancy. Do you think they'll even have beds here? asked Shadow. Its been days since I slept in a bed. |
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This place looks like its just waiting to be demolished. Its owned by hunters from Texas, said Mr. Nancy. Come up here once a year. Damned if I know whatyou're huntin. It stops the place being condemned and destroyed. They climbed out of the bus. Waiting for them in front of the motel was a woman Shadow did not recognize. She was perfectly made-up, perfectly coiffed. She reminded him of every newscaster hed ever seen on morning television sitting in a studio that didn't really resemble a living room. Lovely to see you, she said. Now, you must be Czernobog. I've heard a lot about you. Andyou're Anansi, always up to mischief, eh? You jolly old man. And you, you must be Shadow. Youve certainly led us a merry chase, haven't you? A hand took his, pressed it firmly, looked him straight in the eye. I'm Media. Good to meet you. I hope we can get this evenings business done as pleasantly as possible. The main doors opened. Somehow, Toto, said the fat kid Shadow had last seen sitting in a limo, I don't believe were in Kansas anymore. Were in Kansas, said Mr. Nancy. I think we must have drove through most of it today. Damn but this country is flat. This place has no lights, no power, and no hot water, said the fat kid. And, no offense, you people really need the hot water. You just smell like youve been in that bus for a week. I don't think theres any need to go there, said the woman, smoothly. Were all friends here. Come on in. Well show you to your rooms. We took the first four rooms. Your late friend is in the fifth. All the ones beyond room five are emptyyou can take your pick. I'm afraid its not the Four Seasons, but then, what is? She opened the door to the motel lobby for them. It smelled of mildew, of damp and dust and decay. There was a man sitting in the lobby, in the near darkness. You people hungry? he asked. I can always eat, said Mr. Nancy. Drivers gone out for a sack of hamburgers, said the man. Hell be back soon. He looked up. It was too dark to see faces, but he said, Big guy. you're Shadow, huh? The asshole who killed Woody and Stone? No, said Shadow. That was someone else. And I know who you are. He did. He had been inside the mans head. you're Town. Have you slept with Woods widow yet? Mr. Town fell off his chair. In a movie, it would have been funny; in real life it was simply clumsy. He stood up quickly, came toward Shadow. Shadow looked down at him and said, don't start anythingyou're not prepared to finish. Mr. Nancy rested his hand on Shadows upper arm. Truce, remember? he said. Were at the center. Mr. Town turned away, leaned over to the counter, and picked up three keys. you're down at the end of the hall, he said. Here. He handed the keys to Mr. Nancy and walked away, into the shadows of the corridor. They heard a motel room door open, and they heard it slam. Mr. Nancy passed a key to Shadow, another to Czernobog. Is there a flashlight on the bus? asked Shadow. No, said Mr. Nancy. But its just dark. You mustn't be afraid of the dark. I'm not, said Shadow. I'm afraid of the people in the dark. Dark is good, said Czernobog. He seemed to have no difficulty seeing where he was going, leading them down the darkened corridor, putting the keys into the locks without fumbling. I will be in room ten, he told them. And then he said, Media. I think I have heard of her. isn't she the one who killed her children? Different woman, said Mr. Nancy. Same deal. Mr. Nancy was in room 8, and Shadow opposite the two of them, in room 9. The room smelled damp, and dusty, and deserted. |
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There was a bed frame in there, with a mattress on it, but no sheets. A little light entered the room from the gloaming outside the window. Shadow sat down on the mattress, pulled off his shoes, and stretched out at full length. He had driven too much in the last few days. Perhaps he slept. * * * He was walking. A cold wind tugged at his clothes. The tiny snowflakes were little more than a crystalline dust that gusted and flurried in the wind. There were trees, bare of leaves in the winter. There were high hills on each side of him. It was late on a winters afternoon: the sky and the snow had attained the same deep shade of purple. Somewhere ahead of himin this light, distances were impossible to judgethe flames of a bonfire flickered, yellow and orange. A gray wolf padded through the snow before him. Shadow stopped. The wolf stopped also, and turned, and waited. One of its eyes glinted yellowish-green. Shadow shrugged and walked toward the flames and the wolf ambled ahead of him. The bonfire burned in the middle of a grove of trees. There must have been a hundred trees, planted in the rows. There were shapes hanging from the trees. At the end of the rows was a building that looked a little like an overturned boat. It was carved of wood, and it crawled with wooden creatures and wooden facesdragons, gryphons, trolls, and boarsall of them dancing in the flickering light of the fire. The bonfire was so high that Shadow could barely approach it. The wolf padded around the crackling fire. In place of the wolf a man came out on the other side of the fire. He was leaning on a tall stick. You are in Uppsala, in Sweden, said the man, in a familiar, gravelly voice. About a thousand years ago. Wednesday? said Shadow. The man continued to talk, as if Shadow were not there. First every year, then, later, when the rot set in, and they became lax, every nine years, they would sacrifice here. A sacrifice of nines. Each day, for nine days, they would hang nine animals from trees in the grove. One of those animals was always a man. He strode away from the firelight, toward the trees, and Shadow followed him. As he approached the trees the shapes that hung from them resolved: legs and eyes and tongues and heads. Shadow shook his head: there was something about seeing a bull hanging by its neck from a tree that was darkly sad, and at the same time surreal enough almost to be funny. Shadow passed a hanging stag, a wolfhound, a brown bear, and a chestnut horse with a white mane, little bigger than a pony. The dog was still alive: every few seconds it would kick spasmodically, and it was making a strained whimpering noise as it dangled from the rope. The man he was following took his long stick, which Shadow realized now, as it moved, was actually a spear, and he slashed at the dogs stomach with it, in one knifelike cut downward. Steaming entrails tumbled onto the snow. I dedicate this death to Odin, said the man, formally. It is only a gesture, he said, turning back to Shadow. But gestures mean everything. The death of one dog symbolizes the death of all dogs. Nine men they gave to me, but they stood for all the men, all the blood, all the power. It just wasnt enough. One day, the blood stopped flowing. Belief without blood only takes us so far. The blood must flow. I saw you die, said Shadow. In the god business, said the figure and now Shadow was certain it was Wednesday, nobody else had that rasp, that deep cynical joy in words, its not the death that matters. |
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Its the opportunity for resurrection. And when the blood flows He gestured at the animals, at the people, hanging from the trees. Shadow could not decide whether the dead humans they walked past were more or less horrifying than the animals: at least the humans had known the fate they were going to. There was a deep, boozy smell about the men that suggested that they had been allowed to anesthetize themselves on their way to the gallows, while the animals would simply have been lynched, hauled up alive and terrified. The faces of the men looked so young: none of them was older than twenty. Who am I? asked Shadow. You? said the man. You were an opportunity. You were part of a grand tradition. Although both of us are committed enough to the affair to die for it. Eh? Who are you? asked Shadow. The hardest part is simply surviving, said the man. The bonfire and Shadow realized with a strange horror that it truly was a bone-fire: rib cages and fire-eyed skulls stared and stuck and jutted from the flames, sputtering trace-element colors into the night, greens and yellows and blueswas flaring and crackling and burning hotly. Three days of the tree, three days in the underworld, three days to find my way back. The flames sputtered and flamed too brightly for Shadow to look at directly. He looked down into the darkness beneath the trees. A knock on the door and now there was moonlight coming in the window. Shadow sat up with a start. Dinners served, said Medias voice. Shadow put his shoes back on, walked over to the door, went out into the corridor. Someone had found some candles, and a dim yellow light illuminated the reception hall. The driver of the Humvee came in holding a cardboard tray and a paper sack. He wore a long black coat and a peaked chauffeurs cap. Sorry about the delay, he said, hoarsely. I got everybody the same: a couple of burgers, large fries, large Coke, and apple pie. I'll eat mine out in the car. He put the food down, then walked back outside. The smell of fast food filled the lobby. Shadow took the paper bag and passed out the food, the napkins, the packets of ketchup. They ate in silence while the candles flickered and the burning wax hissed. Shadow noticed that Town was glaring at him. He turned his chair a little, so his back was to the wall. Media ate her burger with a napkin poised by her lips to remove crumbs. Oh. Great. These burgers are nearly cold, said the fat kid. He was still wearing his shades, which Shadow thought pointless and foolish, given the darkness of the room. Sorry about that, said Town. The nearest McDonalds is in Nebraska. They finished their lukewarm hamburgers and cold fries. The fat kid bit into his single-person apple pie, and the filling spurted down his chin. Unexpectedly, the filling was still hot. Ow, he said. He wiped at it with his hand, licking his fingers to get them clean. That stuff burns! he said. Those pies are a class-action suit waiting to fucking happen. Shadow wanted to hit the kid. Hed wanted to hit him since the kid had his goons hurt him in the limo, after Lauras funeral. He pushed the thought away. Cant we just take Wednesdays body and get out of here? he asked. Midnight, said Mr. Nancy and the fat kid, at the same time. These things must be done by the rules, said Czernobog. Yeah, said Shadow. But nobody tells me what they are. You keep talking about the goddamn rules, I don't even know what game you people are playing. Its like breaking the street date, said Media, brightly. |
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You know. When things are allowed to be on sale. Town said, I think the whole things a crock of shit. But if their rules make them happy, then my agency is happy and everybodys happy. He slurped his Coke. Roll on midnight. You take the body, you go away. Were all lovey-fucking-dovey and we wave you goodbye. And then we can get on with hunting you down like the rats you are. Hey, said the fat kid to Shadow. Reminds me. I told you to tell your boss he was history. Did you ever tell him? I told him, said Shadow. And you know what he said to me? He said to tell the little snot, if ever I saw him again, to remember that todays future is tomorrows yesterday. Wednesday had never said any such thing. Still, these people seemed to like cliches. The black sunglasses reflected the flickering candle flames back at him, like eyes. The fat kid said, This place is such a fucking dump. No power. Out of wireless range. I mean, when you got to be wired, you're already back in the stone age. He sucked the last of his Coke through the straw, dropped the cup on the table, and walked away down the corridor. Shadow reached over and placed the fat kids garbage back into the paper sack. I'm going to see the center of America, he announced. He got up and walked outside, into the night. Mr. Nancy followed him. They strolled together, across the little park, saying nothing until they reached the stone monument. The wind gusted at them, fitfully, first from one direction, then from another. So, he said. Now what? The half-moon hung pale in the dark sky. Now, said Nancy, you should go back to your room. Lock the door. You try to get some more sleep. At midnight they give us the body. And then we get the hell out of here. The center is not a stable place for anybody. If you say so. Mr. Nancy inhaled on his cigarillo. This should never have happened, he said. None of this should have happened. Our kind of people, we are He waved the cigarillo about, as if using it to hunt for a word, then stabbing forward with it. exclusive. Were not social. Not even me. Not even Bacchus. Not for long. We walk by ourselves or we stay in our own little groups. We do not play well with others. We like to be adored and respected and worshipedme, I like them to be tellin tales about me, tales showing my cleverness. Its a fault, I know, but its the way I am. We like to be big. Now, in these shabby days, we are small. The new gods rise and fall and rise again. But this is not a country that tolerates gods for long. Brahma creates, Vishnu preserves, Shiva destroys, and the ground is clear for Brahma to create once more. So what are you saying? asked Shadow. The fightings over, now? The battles done? Mr. Nancy snorted. Are you out of your mind? They killed Wednesday. They killed him and they bragged about it. They spread the word. Theyve showed it on every channel to those with eyes to see it. No, Shadow. Its only just begun. He bent down at the foot of the stone monument, stubbed out his cigarillo on the earth, and left it there, like an offering. You used to make jokes, said Shadow. You don't anymore. Its hard to find the jokes these days. Wednesdays dead. Are you comin inside? Soon. Nancy walked away, toward the motel. Shadow reached out his hand and touched the monuments stones. He dragged his big fingers across the cold brass plate. Then he turned and walked over to the tiny white chapel, walked through the open doorway, into the darkness. He sat down in the nearest pew and closed his eyes and lowered his head, and thought about Laura, and about Wednesday, and about being alive. |
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And then he heard her words, and they hurt every time. you're not dead, said Laura in her quiet voice, in his head. But I'm not sure thatyou're alive, either. There was a knock. Shadow got up and opened the door. It was the fat kid. Those hamburgers, he said. They were just icky. Can you believe it? Fifty miles from McDonalds. I didn't think there was anywhere in the world that was fifty miles from McDonalds. This place is turning into Grand Central Station, said Shadow. Okay, so I guessyou're here to offer me the freedom of the Internet if I come over to your side of the fence. Right? The fat kid was shivering. No. you're already dead meat, he said. Youyoure a fucking illuminated Gothic black-letter manuscript. You couldn't be hypertext if you tried. ImI'm synaptic, while, whileyou're synoptic He smelled strange, Shadow realized. There was a guy in the cell across the way, whose name Shadow had never known. He had taken off all his clothes in the middle of the day and told everyone that he had been sent to take them away, the truly good ones, like him, in a silver spaceship to a perfect place. That had been the last time Shadow had seen him. The fat kid smelled like that guy. Are you here for a reason? Just wanted to talk, said the fat kid. There was a whine in his voice. Its creepy in my room. that's all. Its creepy in there. Fifty miles to a McDonalds, can you believe that? Maybe I could stay in here with you. What about your friends from the limo? The ones who hit me? shouldn't you ask them to stay with you? The children wouldn't operate out here. Were in a dead zone. Shadow said, Its a while until midnight, and its longer to dawn. I think maybe you need rest. I know I do. The fat kid said nothing for a moment, then he nodded, and walked out of the room. Shadow closed his door, and locked it with the key. He lay back on the mattress. After a few moments the noise began. It took him a few moments to figure out what it had to be, then he unlocked his door and walked out into the hallway. It was the fat kid, now back in his own room. It sounded like he was throwing something huge against the walls of the room. From the sounds, Shadow guessed that what he was throwing was himself. Its just me! he was sobbing. Or perhaps, Its just meat. Shadow could not tell. Quiet! came a bellow from Czernobogs room, down the hall. Shadow walked down to the lobby and out of the motel. He was tired. The driver still stood beside the Humvee, a dark shape in a peaked cap. couldn't sleep, sir? he asked. No, said Shadow. Cigarette, sir? No, thank you. You don't mind if I do? Go right ahead. The driver used a Bic disposable lighter, and it was in the yellow light of the flame that Shadow saw the mans face, actually saw it for the first time, and recognized him, and began to understand. Shadow knew that thin face. He knew that there would be close-cropped orange hair beneath the black drivers cap, cut close to the scalp. He knew that when the mans lips smiled they would crease into a network of rough scars. you're looking good, big guy, said the driver. Low Key? Shadow stared at his old cellmate warily. Prison friendships are good things: they get you through bad places and through dark times. But a prison friendship ends at the prison gates, and a prison friend who reappears in your life is at best a mixed blessing. Jesus. Low Key Lyesmith, said Shadow, and then he heard what he was saying and he understood. Loki, he said. Loki Lie-Smith. you're slow, said Loki, but you get there in the end. |
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And his lips twisted into a scarred smile and embers danced in the shadows of his eyes. * * * They sat in Shadows room in the abandoned motel, sitting on the bed, at opposite ends of the mattress. The sounds from the fat kids room had pretty much stopped. You were lucky we were inside together, said Loki. You would never have survived your first year without me. You couldn't have walked out if you wanted? Its easier just to do the time. He paused. Then, You got to understand the god thing. Its not magic. Its about being you, but the you that people believe in. Its about being the concentrated, magnified, essence of you. Its about becoming thunder, or the power of a running horse, or wisdom. You take all the belief and become bigger, cooler, more than human. You crystallize. He paused. And then one day they forget about you, and they don't believe in you, and they don't sacrifice, and they don't care, and the next thing you knowyou're running a three-card monte game on the corner of Broadway and Forty-third. Why were you in my cell? Coincidence. Pure and simple. And nowyou're driving for the opposition. If you want to call them that. It depends whereyou're standing. The way I figure it, I'm driving for the winning team. But you and Wednesday, you were from the same, you're both Norse pantheon. Were both from the Norse pantheon. Is that whatyou're trying to say? Yeah. So? Shadow hesitated. You must have been friends. Once. No. We were never friends. I'm not sorry he's dead. He was just holding the rest of us back. With him gone, the rest of them are going to have to face up to the facts: its change or die, evolve or perish. he's gone. Wars over. Shadow looked at him, puzzled. You arent that stupid, he said. You were always so sharp. Wednesdays death isn't going to end anything. Its just pushed all of the ones who were on the fence over the edge. Mixing metaphors, Shadow. Bad habit. Whatever, said Shadow. Its still true. Jesus. His death did in an instant what hed spent the last few months trying to do. It united them. It gave them something to believe in. Perhaps. Loki shrugged. As far as I know, the thinking on this side of the fence was that with the troublemaker out of the way, the trouble would also be gone. Its not any of my business, though. I just drive. So tell me, said Shadow, why does everyone care about me? They act like I'm important. Why does it matter what I do? Damned if I know. You were important to us because you were important to Wednesday. As for the why of itI guess its just another one of lifes little mysteries. I'm tired of mysteries. Yeah? I think they add a kind of zest to the world. Like salt in a stew. Soyou're their driver. You drive for all of them? Whoever needs me, said Loki. Its a living. He raised his wristwatch to his face, pressed a button: the dial glowed a gentle blue, which illuminated his face, giving it a haunting, haunted appearance. Five to midnight. Time, said Loki. You coming? Shadow took a deep breath. I'm coming, he said. They walked down the dark motel corridor until they reached room 5. Loki took a box of matches from his pocket and thumb-nailed a match into flame. The momentary flare hurt Shadows eyes. A candle wick flickered and caught. And another. Loki lit a new match, and continued to light the candle stubs: they were on the windowsills and on the headboard of the bed and on the sink in the corner of the room. The bed had been hauled from its position against the wall into the middle of the motel room, leaving a few feet of space between the bed and the wall on each side. |
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There were sheets draped over the bed, old motel sheets, moth-holed and stained. On top of the sheets lay Wednesday, perfectly still. He was dressed in the pale suit he had been wearing when he was shot. The right side of his face was untouched, perfect, unmarred by blood. The left side of his face was a ragged mess, and the left shoulder and front of the suit was spattered with dark spots. His hands were at his sides. The expression on that wreck of a face was far from peaceful: it looked hurta soul-hurt, a real down-deep hurt, filled with hatred and anger and raw craziness. And, on some level, it looked satisfied. Shadow imagined Mr. Jacquels practiced hands smoothing that hatred and pain away, rebuilding a face for Wednesday with morticians wax and makeup, giving him a final peace and dignity that even death had denied him. Still, the body seemed no smaller in death. And it still smelled faintly of Jack Daniels. The wind from the plains was rising: he could hear it howling around the old motel at the imaginary center of America. The candles on the windowsill guttered and flickered. He could hear footsteps in the hallway. Someone knocked on a door, called Hurry up please, its time, and they began to shuffle in, heads lowered. Town came in first, followed by Media and Mr. Nancy and Czernobog. Last of all came the fat kid: he had fresh red bruises on his face, and his lips were moving all the time, as if he were reciting some words to himself, but he was making no sound. Shadow found himself feeling sorry for him. Informally, without a word being spoken, they ranged themselves about the body, each an arms length away from the next. The atmosphere in the room was religiousdeeply religious, in a way that Shadow had never previously experienced. There was no sound but the howling of the wind and the crackling of the candles. We are come together, here in this godless place, said Loki, to pass on the body of this individual to those who will dispose of it properly according to the rites. If anyone would like to say something, say it now. Not me, said Town. I never properly met the guy. And this whole thing makes me feel uncomfortable. Czernobog said, These actions will have consequences. You know that? This can only be the start of it all. The fat kid started to giggle, a high-pitched, girlish noise. He said, Okay. Okay, I've got it. And then, all on one note, he recited: * Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the center cannot hold * And then he broke off, his brow creasing. He said, Shit. I used to know the whole thing, and he rubbed his temples and made a face and was quiet. And then they were all looking at Shadow. The wind was screaming now. He didn't know what to say. He said, This whole thing is pitiful. Half of you killed him or had a hand in his death. Nowyou're giving us his body. Great. He was an irascible old fuck but I drank his mead and I'm still working for him. that's all. Media said, In a world where people die every day, I think the important thing to remember is that for each moment of sorrow we get when people leave this world theres a corresponding moment of joy when a new baby comes into this world. That first wail iswell, its magic, isn't it? Perhaps its a hard thing to say, but joy and sorrow are like milk and cookies. that's how well they go together. I think we should all take a moment to meditate on that. And Mr. Nancy cleared his throat and said, So. I got to say it, because nobody else here will. |
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We are at the center of this place: a land that has no time for gods, and here at the center it has less time for us than anywhere. It is a no-mans-land, a place of truce, and we observe our truces, here. We have no choice. So. You give us the body of our friend. We accept it. You will pay for this, murder for murder, blood for blood. Town said, Whatever. You could save yourselves a lot of time and effort by going home and shooting yourselves in the heads. Cut out the middleman. Fuck you, said Czernobog. Fuck you and fuck your mother and fuck the fucking horse you fucking rode in on. You will not even die in battle. No warrior will taste your blood. No one alive will take your life. You will die a soft, poor death. You will die with a kiss on your lips and a lie in your heart. Leave it, old man, said Town. The blood-dimmed tide is loose, said the fat kid. I think that comes next. The wind howled. Okay, said Loki. he's yours. Were done. Take the old bastard away. He made a gesture with his fingers, and Town, Media, and the fat kid left the room. He smiled at Shadow. Call no man happy, huh, kid? he said. And then he, too, walked away. What happens now? asked Shadow. Now we wrap him up, said Anansi. And we take him away from here. They wrapped the body in the motel sheets, wrapped it well in its impromptu shroud, so there was no body to be seen, and they could carry it. The two old men walked to each end of the body, but Shadow said, Let me see something, and he bent his knees and slipped his arms around the white-sheeted figure, pushed him up and over his shoulder. He straightened his knees, until he was standing, more or less easily. Okay, he said. I've got him. Lets put him into the back of the car. Czernobog looked as if he were about to argue, but he closed his mouth. He spat on his forefinger and thumb and began to snuff the candles between his fingertips. Shadow could hear them fizz as he walked from the darkening room. Wednesday was heavy, but Shadow could cope, if he walked steadily. He had no choice. Wednesdays words were in his head with every step he took along the corridor, and he could taste the sour-sweetness of mead in the back of his throat. You protect me. You transport me from place to place. You run errands. In an emergency, but only in an emergency, you hurt people who need to be hurt. In the unlikely event of my death, you will hold my vigil Mr. Nancy opened the motel lobby door for him, then hurried over and opened the back of the bus. The other four were already standing by their Humvee, watching them as if they could not wait to be off. Loki had put his drivers cap back on. The cold wind tugged at Shadow as he walked, whipped at the sheets. He placed Wednesday down as gently as he could in the back of the bus. Someone tapped him on the shoulder. He turned. Town stood there with his hand out. He was holding something. Here, said Mr. Town, Mister World wanted you to have this. It was a glass eye. There was a hairline crack down the middle of it, and a tiny chip gone from the front. We found it in the Masonic Hall, when we were cleaning up. Keep it for luck. God knows you'll need it. Shadow closed his hand around the eye. He wished he could come back with something smart and sharp, but Town was already back at the Humvee, and climbing up into the car; and Shadow still couldn't think of anything clever to say. * * * They drove east. Dawn found them in Princeton, Missouri. Shadow had not slept yet. Nancy said, Anywhere you want us to drop you? |
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If I were you, I'd rustle up some ID and head for Canada. Or Mexico. I'm sticking with you guys, said Shadow. Its what Wednesday would have wanted. You arent working for him anymore. he's dead. Once we drop his body off, you are free to go. And do what? Keep out of the way, while the war is on, said Nancy. He flipped his turn signal, and took a left. Hide yourself, for a little time, said Czernobog. Then, when this is over, you will come back to me, and I will finish the whole thing. Shadow said, Where are we taking the body? Virginia. Theres a tree, said Nancy. A world tree, said Czernobog with gloomy satisfaction. We had one in my part of the world. But ours grew under the world, not above it. We put him at the foot of the tree, said Nancy. We leave him there. We let you go. We drive south. Theres a battle. Blood is shed. Many die. The world changes, a little. You don't want me at your battle? I'm pretty big. I'm good in a fight. Nancy turned his head to Shadow and smiledthe first real smile Shadow had seen on Mr. Nancys face since he had rescued Shadow from the Lumber County Jail. Most of this battle will be fought in a place you cannot go, and you cannot touch. In the hearts and the minds of the people, said Czernobog. Like at the big roundabout. Huh? The carousel, said Mr. Nancy. Oh, said Shadow. Backstage. I got it. Like the desert with the bones in. Mr. Nancy raised his head. Every time I figure you don't have enough sense to bring guts to a bear, you surprise me. Yeah, that's where the real battle will happen. Everythin else will just be flash and thunder. Tell me about the vigil, said Shadow. Someone has to stay with the body. Its a tradition. Well find somebody. He wanted me to do it. No, said Czernobog. It will kill you. Bad, bad, bad idea. Yeah? Itll kill me? To stay with his body? Its not what I'd want at my funeral, said Mr. Nancy. When I die, I just want them to plant me somewhere warm. And then when pretty women walk over my grave I would grab their ankles, like in that movie. I never saw that movie, said Czernobog. Of course you did. Its right at the end. Its the high school movie. All the children goin to the prom. Czernobog shook his head. Shadow said, The films called Carrie, Mr. Czernobog. Okay, one of you tell me about the vigil. Nancy said, You tell him. I'm drivin. I never heard of no film called Carrie. You tell him. Nancy said, The person on the vigilgets tied to the tree. Just like Wednesday was. And then they hang there for nine days and nine nights. No food, no water. All alone. At the end they cut the person down, and if they livedwell, it could happen. And Wednesday will have had his vigil. Czernobog said, Maybe Alviss will send us one of his people. A dwarf could survive it. I'll do it, said Shadow. No, said Mr. Nancy. Yes, said Shadow. The two old men were silent. Then Nancy said, Why? Because its the kind of thing a living person would do, said Shadow. You are crazy, said Czernobog. Maybe. But I'm going to hold Wednesdays vigil. When they stopped for gas Czernobog announced he felt sick and wanted to ride in the front. Shadow didn't mind moving to the back of the bus. He could stretch out more, and sleep. They drove on in silence. Shadow felt that hed made a decision; something big and strange. Hey. Czernobog, said Mr. Nancy, after a while. You check out the technical boy back at the motel? He was not happy. he's been screwin with something that screwed him right back. that's the biggest trouble with the new kidsthey figure they know everythin, and you cant teach them nothin but the hard way. |
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They jolted over a ridge and Shadow saw the tree. It was silver-gray and it was higher than the farmhouse. It was the most beautiful tree Shadow had ever seen: spectral and yet utterly real and almost perfectly symmetrical. It also looked instantly familiar: he wondered if he had dreamed it, then realized that no, he had seen it before, or a representation of it, many times. It was Wednesdays silver tie pin. The VW bus jolted and bumped across the meadow, and came to a stop about twenty feet from the trunk of the tree. There were three women standing by the tree. At first glance Shadow thought that they were the Zorya, but no, they were three women he did not know. They looked tired and bored, as if they had been standing there for a long time. Each of them held a wooden ladder. The biggest also carried a brown sack. They looked like a set of Russian dolls: a tall oneshe was Shadows height, or even tallera middle-sized one, and a woman so short and hunched that at first glance Shadow wrongly supposed her to be a child. They looked so much alike that Shadow was certain that the women must be sisters. The smallest of the women dropped to a curtsy when the bus drew up. The other two just stared. They were sharing a cigarette, and they smoked it down to the filter before one of them stubbed it out against a root. Czernobog opened the back of the bus and the biggest of the women pushed past him, and, as easily as if it were a sack of flour, she lifted Wednesdays body out of the back and carried it to the tree. She laid it in front of the tree, about ten feet from the trunk. She and her sisters unwrapped Wednesdays body. He looked worse by daylight than he had by candlelight in the motel room, and after one quick glance Shadow looked away. The women arranged his clothes, tidied his suit, then placed him at the corner of the sheet and wound it around him once more. Then the women came over to Shadow. You are the one? the biggest of them asked. The one who will mourn the All-Father? asked the middle-sized one. You have chosen to take the vigil? asked the smallest. Shadow nodded. Afterward, he was unable to remember whether he had actually heard their voices. Perhaps he had simply understood what they had meant from their looks and their eyes. Mr. Nancy, who had gone back to the house to use the bathroom, came walking back to the tree. He was smoking a cigarillo. He looked thoughtful. Shadow, he called. You really don't have to do this. We can find somebody more suited. I'm doing it, said Shadow, simply. And if you die? asked Mr. Nancy. If it kills you? Then, said Shadow, it kills me. Mr. Nancy flicked his cigarillo into the meadow, angrily. I said you had shit for brains, and you still have shit for brains. Cant see when somebodys tryin to give you an out? I'm sorry, said Shadow. He didn't say anything else. Nancy walked back to the bus. Czernobog walked over to Shadow. He did not look pleased. You must come through this alive, he said. Come through this safely for me. And then he tapped his knuckle gently against Shadows forehead and said, Bam! He squeezed Shadows shoulder, patted his arm, and went to join Mr. Nancy. The biggest woman, whose name seemed to be Urtha or UrderShadow could not repeat it back to her to her satisfactiontold him, in pantomime, to take off the clothes. All of them? The big woman shrugged. Shadow stripped to his briefs and T-shirt. The women propped the ladders against the tree. One of the laddersit was painted by hand, with little flowers and leaves twining up the strutsthey pointed out to him. |
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He climbed the nine steps. Then, at their urging, he stepped onto a low branch. The middle woman tipped out the contents of the sack onto the meadow-grass. It was filled with a tangle of thin ropes, brown with age and dirt, and the woman began to sort them out into lengths, and to lay them carefully on the ground beside Wednesdays body. They climbed their own ladders now, and they began to knot the ropes, intricate and elegant knots, and they wrapped the ropes first about the tree, and then about Shadow. Unembarrassed, like midwives or nurses or those who lay out corpses, they removed his T-shirt and briefs, then they bound him, never tightly, but firmly and finally. He was amazed at how comfortably the ropes and the knots bore his weight. The ropes went under his arms, between his legs, around his waist, his ankles, his chest, binding him to the tree. The final rope was tied, loosely, about his neck. It was, initially, uncomfortable, but his weight was well distributed, and none of the ropes cut his flesh. His feet were five feet above the ground. The tree was leafless and huge, its branches black against the gray sky, its bark a smooth silvery gray. They took the ladders away. There was a moment of panic as all his weight was taken by the ropes, and he dropped a few inches. Still, he made no sound. The women placed the body, wrapped in its motel-sheet shroud, at the foot of the tree, and they left him there. They left him there alone. Hang me, O hang me, and I'll be dead and gone, Hang me, O hang me, and I'll be dead and gone, I wouldn't mind the hangin, its bein gone so long, Its lyin in the grave so long. Old Song The first day that Shadow hung from the tree he experienced only discomfort that edged slowly into pain, and fear, and, occasionally, an emotion that was somewhere between boredom and apathy: a gray acceptance, a waiting. He hung. The wind was still. After several hours fleeting bursts of color started to explode across his vision in blossoms of crimson and gold, throbbing and pulsing with a life of their own. The pain in his arms and legs became, by degrees, intolerable. If he relaxed them, let his body go slack and dangle, if he flopped forward, then the rope around his neck would take up the slack and the world would shimmer and swim. So he pushed himself back against the trunk of the tree. He could feel his heart laboring in his chest, a pounding arrhythmic tattoo as it pumped the blood through his body Emeralds and sapphires and rubies crystallized and burst in front of his eyes. His breath came in shallow gulps. The bark of the tree was rough against his back. The chill of the afternoon on his naked skin made him shiver, made his flesh prickle and goose. Its easy, said someone in the back of his head. Theres a trick to it. You do it or you die. He was pleased with the thought, and repeated it over and over in the back of his head, part mantra, part nursery rhyme, rattling along to the drumbeat of his heart. Its easy, theres a trick to it, you do it or you die. Its easy, theres a trick to it, you do it or you die. Its easy, theres a trick to it, you do it or you die. Its easy, theres a trick to it, you do it or you die. Time passed. The chanting continued. He could hear it. Someone was repeating the words, only stopping when Shadows mouth began to dry out, when his tongue turned dry and skinlike in his mouth. He pushed himself up and away from the tree with his feet, trying to support his weight in a way that would still allow him to fill his lungs. |
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He breathed until he could hold himself up no more, and then he fell back into the bonds, and hung from the tree. When the chattering startedan angry, laughing chattering noisehe closed his mouth, concerned that it was he himself making it; but the noise continued. Its the world laughing at me, then, thought Shadow. His head lolled to one side. Something ran down the tree trunk beside him, stopping beside his head; It cluttered loudly in his ear, one word, which sounded a lot like ratatosk. Shadow tried to repeat it, but his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He turned, slowly, and stared into the gray-brown face and pointed ears of a squirrel. In close-up, he learned, a squirrel looks a lot less cute than it does from a distance. The creature was ratlike and dangerous, not sweet or charming. And its teeth looked sharp. He hoped that it would not perceive him as a threat, or as a food source. He did not think that squirrels were carnivorousbut then, so many things he had thought were not had turned out to be so He slept. The pain woke him several times in the next few hours. It pulled him from a dark dream in which dead children rose and came to him, their eyes peeling, swollen pearls, and they reproached him for failing them. A spider edged across his face, and he woke. He shook his head, dislodging or frightening it, and returned to his dreams and now an elephant-headed man, potbellied, one tusk broken, was riding toward him on the back of a huge mouse. The elephant-headed man curled his trunk toward Shadow and said, If you had invoked me before you began this journey, perhaps some of your troubles might have been avoided. Then the elephant took the mouse, which had, by some means that Shadow could not perceive, become tiny while not changing in size at all, and passed it from hand to hand to hand, fingers curling about it as the little creature scampered from palm to palm, and Shadow was not at all surprised when the elephant-headed god finally opened all four of his hands to reveal them perfectly empty. He shrugged arm after arm after arm in a peculiar fluid motion, and looked at Shadow, his face unreadable. Its in the trunk, Shadow told the elephant man. He had been watching as the flickering tail vanished. The elephant man nodded his huge head, and said, Yes. In the trunk. You will forget many things. You will give many things away. You will lose many things. But do not lose this, and then the rain began, and Shadow was tumbled, shivering and wet, from deep sleep into full wakefulness. The shivering intensified until it scared Shadow: he was shivering more violently than he had ever imagined possible, a series of convulsive shudders that built upon each other. He willed himself to stop, but still he shivered, his teeth banging together, his limbs twitching and jerking beyond his control. There was real pain there, too, a deep, knifelike pain that covered his body with tiny, invisible wounds, intimate and unbearable. * * * He opened his mouth to catch the rain as it fell, moistening his cracked lips and his dry tongue, wetting the ropes that bound him to the trunk of the tree. There was a flash of lightning so bright it felt like a blow to his eyes, transforming the world into an intense panorama of image and afterimage. Then the thunder, a crack and a boom and a rumble, and, as the thunder echoed, the rain redoubled. In the rain and the night the shivering abated; the knife blades were put away. Shadow no longer felt the cold, or rather, he felt only the cold, but the cold had how become part of himself. |
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The stars wheeled, and he passed his hundred hands over the glittering stars, palming them, switching them, vanishing them * * * A moment of clarity, in the pain and the madness: Shadow felt himself surfacing. He knew it would not be for long. The morning sun was dazzling him. He closed his eyes, wishing he could shade them. There was not long to go. He knew that, too. When he opened his eyes, Shadow saw that there was a young man in the tree with him. His skin was dark brown. His forehead was high and his dark hair was tightly curled. He was sitting on a branch high above Shadows head. Shadow could see him clearly by craning his head. And the man was mad. Shadow could see that at a glance. you're naked, confided the madman, in a cracked voice. I'm naked too. I see that, croaked Shadow. The madman looked at him, then he nodded and twisted his head down and around, as if he were trying to remove a crick from his neck. Eventually he said, Do you know me? No, said Shadow. I know you. I watched you in Cairo. I watched you after. My sister likes you. You are the name escaped him. Eats roadkill. Yes. You are Horus. The madman nodded. Horus, he said. I am the falcon of the morning, the hawk of the afternoon. I am the sun, as you are. And I know the true name of Ra. My mother told me. that's great, said Shadow, politely. The madman stared at the ground below them intently, saying nothing. Then he dropped from the tree. A hawk fell like a stone to the ground, pulled out of its plummet into a swoop, beat its wings heavily and flew back to the tree, a baby rabbit in its talons. It landed on a branch closer to Shadow. Are you hungry? asked the madman. No, said Shadow. I guess I should be, but I'm not. I'm hungry, said the madman. He ate the rabbit rapidly, pulling it apart, sucking, tearing, rending. At he finished with them, he dropped the gnawed bones and the fur to the ground. He walked farther down the branch until he was only an arms length from Shadow. Then he peered at Shadow unselfconsciously, inspecting him with care and caution, from his feet to his head. There was rabbit blood on his chin and his chest, and he wiped it off with the back of his hand. Shadow felt he had to say something. Hey, he said. Hey, said the madman. He stood up on the branch, turned away from Shadow and let a stream of dark urine arc out into the meadow below. It went on for a long time. When he had finished he crouched down again on the branch. What do they call you? asked Horus. Shadow, said Shadow. The madman nodded. You are the shadow. I am the light, he said. Everything that is, casts a shadow. Then he said, They will fight soon. I was watching them as they started to arrive. And then the madman said, You are dying. Arent you? But Shadow could no longer speak. A hawk took wing, and circled slowly upward, riding the updrafts into the morning. * * * Moonlight. A cough shook Shadows frame, a racking painful cough that stabbed his chest and his throat. He gagged for breath. Hey, puppy, called a voice that he knew. He looked down. The moonlight burned whitely through the branches of the tree, bright as day, and there was a woman standing in the moonlight on the ground below him, her face a pale oval. The wind rattled in the branches of the tree. Hi, puppy, she said. He tried to speak, but he coughed instead, deep in his chest, for a long time. You know, she said, helpfully, that doesn't sound good. He croaked, Hello, Laura. She looked up at him with dead eyes, and she smiled. |
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She had taken the moon down from the sky for him. He knew, suddenly, what would happen next. Zorya Polunochnaya would be there. She was waiting for him at the bottom of the steps. There was no moon in the sky, but she was bathed in moonlight nonetheless: her white hair was moon-pale, and she wore the same lace-and-cotton nightdress she had worn that night in Chicago. She smiled when she saw him, and looked down, as if momentarily embarrassed. Hello, she said. Hi, said Shadow. How are you? I don't know, he said. I think this is maybe another strange dream on the tree. I've been having crazy dreams since I got out of prison. Her face was silvered by the moonlight (but no moon hung in that plum-black sky, and now, at the foot of the steps, even the single star was lost to view) and she looked both solemn and vulnerable. She said, All your questions can be answered, if that is what you want. But once you learn your answers, you can never unlearn them. Beyond her, the path forked. He would have to decide which path to take, he knew that. But there was one thing he had to do first. He reached into the pocket of his jeans and was relieved when he felt the familiar weight of the coin at the bottom of the pocket. He eased it out, held it between finger and thumb: a 1922 Liberty dollar. This is yours, he said. He remembered then that his clothes were really at the foot of the tree. The women had placed his clothes in the canvas sack from which they had taken the ropes, and tied the end of the sack, and the biggest of the women had placed a heavy rock on it to stop it from blowing away. And so he knew that, in reality, the Liberty dollar was in a pocket in that sack, beneath the rock. But still, it was heavy in his hand, at the entrance to the underworld. She took it from his palm with her slim fingers. Thank you. It bought you your liberty twice, she said. And now it will light your way into dark places. She closed her hand around the dollar, then she reached up and placed it in the air, as high as she could reach. Then she let go of it. Instead of falling, the coin floated upward until it was a foot or so above Shadows head. It was no longer a silver coin, though. Lady Liberty and her crown of spikes were gone. The face he saw on the coin was the indeterminate face of the moon in the summer sky. Shadow could not decide whether he was looking at a moon the size of a dollar, a foot above his head, or whether he was looking at a moon the size of the Pacific Ocean, many thousands of miles away. Nor whether there was any difference between the two ideas. Perhaps it was all a matter of the way you looked at it. He looked at the forking path ahead of him. Which path should I take? he asked. Which one is safe? Take one, and you cannot take the other, she said. But neither path is safe. Which way would you walkthe way of hard truths or the way of fine lies? Truths, he said. I've come too far for more lies. She looked sad. There, will be a price, then, she said. I'll pay it. Whats the price? Your name, she said. Your real name. You will have to give it to me. How? Like this, she said. She reached a perfect hand toward his head. He felt her fingers brush his skin, then he felt them penetrate his skin, his skull, felt them push deep into his head. Something tickled, in his skull and all down his spine. She pulled her hand out of his head. A flame, like a candle flame but burning with a clear magnesium-white luminance, was flickering on the tip of her forefinger. |
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But he could not touch himself, and he continued to read; and so his mother died while he sat in the chair next to her, reading a fat book. After that he had more or less stopped reading. You could not trust fiction. What good were books, if they couldn't protect you from something like that? Shadow walked away from the hospital room, down the winding corridor, deep into the bowels of the earth. He sees his mother first and he cannot believe how young she is, not yet twenty-five he guesses, before her medical discharge. you're in their apartment, another embassy rental somewhere in Northern Europe. He looks around for something to give him a clue, and he sees himself: a shrimp of a kid, big pale gray eyes and dark hair. They are arguing. Shadow knows without hearing the words whatyou're arguing about: it was the only thing they quarreled about, after all. Tell me about my father. he's dead. don't ask about him. But who was he? Forget him. Dead and gone and you aint missed nothing. I want to see a picture of him. I aint got a picture, shed say, and her voice would get quiet and fierce, and he knew that if he kept asking her questions she would shout, or even hit him, and he knew that he would not stop asking questions, so he turned away and walked on down the tunnel. The path he followed twisted and wound and curled back on itself, and it put him in mind of snakeskins and intestines and of deep, deep tree roots. There was a pool to his left; he heard the drip, drip of water into it somewhere at the back of the tunnel, the falling water barely ruffling the mirrored surface of the pool. He dropped to his knees and drank, using his hand to bring the water to his lips. Then he walked on until he was standing in the floating disco-glitter patterns of a mirror ball. It was like being in the exact center of the universe with all the stars and planets circling him, and he could not hear anything, not the music, nor the shouted conversations over the music, and now Shadow was staring at a woman who looked just like his mother never looked in all the years he knew her, she's little more than a child, after all And she is dancing. Shadow found that he was completely unsurprised when he recognized the man who dances with her. He had not changed that much in thirty-three years. She is drunk: Shadow could see that at a glance. She is not very drunk, but she is unused to drink, and in a week or so she will take a ship to Norway. They have been drinking margaritas, and she has salt on her lips and salt clinging to the back of her hand. Wednesday is not wearing a suit and tie, but the pin in the shape of a silver tree he wears over the pocket of his shirt glitters and glints when the mirror-ball light catches it. They make a fine-looking couple, considering the difference in their ages. There is a lupine grace to Wednesdays movements. A slow dance. He pulls her close to him, and his pawlike hand curves around the seat of her skirt possessively, moving her closer to him. His other hand takes her chin, pushes it upward into his face, and the two of them kiss, there on the floor, as the glitter-ball lights circle them into the center of the universe. Soon after, they leave. She sways against him, and he leads her from the dance hall. Shadow buried his head in his hands, and did not follow them, unable or unwilling to witness his own conception. The mirror lights were gone, and now the only illumination came from the tiny moon that burned high above his head. |
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He walked on. At a bend in the path he stopped for a moment to catch his breath. He felt a hand run gently up his back, and gentle fingers ruffle the hair on the back of his head. Hello, whispered a smoky feline voice, over his shoulder. Hello, he said, turning to face her. She had brown hair and brown skin and her eyes were the deep golden-amber of good honey. Her pupils were vertical slits. Do I know you? he asked, puzzled. Intimately, she said, and she smiled. I used to sleep on your bed. And my people have been keeping their eyes on you, for me. She turned to the path ahead of him, pointed to the three ways he could go. Okay, she said. One way will make you wise. One way will make you whole. And one way will kill you. I'm already dead, I think, said Shadow. I died on the tree. She made a moue. Theres dead, she said, and theres dead, and theres dead. Its a relative thing. Then she smiled again. I could make a joke about that, you know. Something about dead relatives. No, said Shadow. Its okay. So, she said. Which way do you want to go? I don't know, he admitted. She tipped her head on one side, a perfectly feline gesture. Suddenly, Shadow remembered the claw marks on his shoulder. He felt himself beginning to blush. If you trust me, said Bast, I can choose for you. I trust you, he said, without hesitation. Do you want to know what its going to cost you? I've already lost my name, he told her. Names come and names go. Was it worth it? Yes. Maybe. It wasnt easy. As revelations go, it was kind of personal. All revelations are personal, she said. that's why all revelations are suspect. I don't understand. No, she said, you don't. I'll take your heart. Well need it later, and she reached her hand deep inside his chest, and she pulled it out with something ruby and pulsing held between her sharp fingernails. It was the color of pigeons blood, and it was made of pure light. Rhythmically it expanded and contracted. She closed her hand, and it was gone. Take the middle way, she said. Shadow nodded, and walked on. The path was becoming slippery now. There was ice on the rock. The moon above him glittered through the ice crystals in the air: there was a ring about the moon, a moon-bow, diffusing the light. It was beautiful, but it made walking harder. The path was unreliable. He reached the place where the path divided. He looked at the first path with a feeling of recognition. It opened into a vast chamber, or a set of chambers, like a dark museum. He knew it already. He could hear the long echoes of tiny noises. He could hear the noise that the dust makes as it settles. It was the place that he had dreamed of, that first night that Laura had come to him, in the motel so long ago; the endless memorial hall to the gods that were forgotten, and the ones whose very existence had been lost. He took a step backward. He walked to the path on the far side, and looked ahead. There was a Disneyland quality to the corridor: black Plexiglas walls with lights set in them. The colored lights blinked and flashed in the illusion of order, for no particular reason, like the console lights on a television starship. He could hear something there as well: a deep vibrating bass drone, which Shadow could feel in the pit of his stomach. He stopped and looked around. Neither way seemed right. Not any longer. He was done with paths. The middle way, the way the cat-woman had told him to walk, that was his way. He moved toward it. The moon above him was beginning to fade: the edge of it was pinking and going into eclipse. |
| 425 |
The path was framed by a huge doorway. Shadow walked through the arch, in darkness. The air was warm, and it smelled of wet dust, like a city street after the summers first rain. He was not afraid. Not anymore. Fear had died on the tree, as Shadow had died. There was no fear left, no hatred, no pain. Nothing left but essence. Something big splashed, quietly, in the distance, and the splash echoed into the vastness. He squinted, but could see nothing. It was too dark. And then, from the direction of the splashes, a ghost-light glimmered and the world took form: he was in a cavern, and in front of him, mirror-smooth, was water. The splashing noises came closer and the light became brighter, and Shadow waited on the shore. Soon enough a low, flat boat came into sight, a flickering white lantern burning at its raised prow, another reflected in the glassy black water several feet below it. The boat was being poled by a tall figure, and the splashing noise Shadow had heard was the sound of the pole being lifted and moved as it pushed the craft across the waters of the underground lake. Hello there! called Shadow. Echoes of his words suddenly surrounded him: he could imagine that a whole chorus of people were welcoming him and calling to him and each of them had his voice. The person poling the boat made no reply. The boats pilot was tall, and very thin. Heif it was a hewore an unadorned white robe, and the pale head that topped it was so utterly inhuman that Shadow was certain that it had to be a mask of some sort: it was a birds head, small on a long neck, its beak long and high. Shadow was certain he had seen it before, this ghostly, birdlike figure. He grasped at the memory and then, disappointed, realized that he was picturing the clockwork penny-in-the-slot machine in the House on the Rock and the pale, birdlike, half-glimpsed figure that glided out from behind the crypt for the drunkards soul. Water dripped and echoed from the pole and the prow, and the ships wake rippled the glassy waters. The boat was made of reeds, bound and tied. The boat came close to the shore. The pilot leaned on its pole. Its head turned slowly, until it was facing Shadow. Hello, it said, without moving its long beak. The voice was male, and, like everything else in Shadows afterlife so far, familiar. Come on board. you'll get your feet wet, I'm afraid, but theres not a thing can be done about that. These are old boats, and if I come in closer I could rip out the bottom. Shadow took off his shoes and stepped out into the water. It came halfway up his calves, and was, after the initial shock of wetness, surprisingly warm. He reached the boat, and the pilot put down a hand and pulled him aboard. The reed boat rocked a little, and water splashed over the low sides of it, and then it steadied. The pilot poled off away from the shore. Shadow stood there and watched, his pants legs dripping. I know you, he said to the creature at the prow. You do indeed, said the boatman. The oil lamp that hung at the front of the boat burned more fitfully, and the smoke from the lamp made Shadow cough. You worked for me. I'm afraid we had to inter Lila Goodchild without you. The voice was fussy and precise. The smoke stung Shadows eyes. He wiped the tears away with his hand, and, through the smoke, he thought he saw a tall man in a suit, with gold-rimmed spectacles. The smoke cleared and the boatman was once more a half-human creature with the head of a river bird. Mister Ibis? Good to see you, said the creature, with Mr. |
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Ibiss voice. Do you know what a psychopomp is? Shadow thought he knew the word, but it had been a long time. He shook his head. Its a fancy term for an escort, said Mr. Ibis. We all have so many functions, so many ways of existing. In my own vision of myself, I am a scholar who lives quietly, and pens his little tales, and dreams about a past that may or may not ever have existed. And that is true, as far as it goes. But I am also, in one of my capacities, like so many of the people you have chosen to associate with, a psychopomp. I escort the living to the world of the dead. I thought this was the world of the dead, said Shadow. No. Not per se. Its more of a preliminary. The boat slipped and slid across the mirror-surface of the underground pool. And then Mr. Ibis said, without moving its beak, You people talk about the living and the dead as if they were two mutually exclusive categories. As if you cannot have a river that is also a road, or a song that is also a color. You cant, said Shadow. Can you? The echoes whispered his words back at him from across the pool. What you have to remember, said Mr. Ibis, testily, is that life and death are different sides of the same coin. Like the heads and tails of a quarter. And if I had a double-headed quarter? You don't. Shadow had a frisson, then, as they crossed the dark water. He imagined he could see the faces of children staring up at him reproachfully from beneath the waters glassy surface: their faces were waterlogged and softened, their blind eyes clouded. There was no wind in that underground cavern to disturb the black surface of the lake. So I'm dead, said Shadow. He was getting used to the idea. Or I'm going to be dead. We are on our way to the Hall of the Dead. I requested that I be the one to come for you. Why? You were a hard worker. Why not? Because Shadow marshaled his thoughts. Because I never believed in you. Because I don't know much about Egyptian mythology. Because I didn't expect this. What happened to Saint Peter and the Pearly Gates? The long-beaked white head shook from side to side, gravely. It doesn't matter that you didn't believe in us, said Mr. Ibis. We believed in you. The boat touched bottom. Mr. Ibis stepped off the side, into the pool, and told Shadow to do the same. Mr. Ibis took a line from the prow of the boat, and passed Shadow the lantern to carry. It was in the shape of a crescent moon. They walked ashore, and Mr. Ibis tied the boat to a metal ring set in the rock floor. Then he took the lamp from Shadow and walked swiftly forward, holding the lamp high as he walked, throwing vast shadows across the rock floor and the high rock walls. Are you scared? asked Mr. Ibis. Not really. Well, try to cultivate the emotions of true awe and spiritual terror, as we walk. They are the appropriate feelings for the situation at hand. Shadow was not scared. He was interested, and apprehensive, but no more. He was not scared of the shifting darkness, nor of being dead, nor even of the dog-headed creature the size of a grain silo who stared at them as they approached. It growled, deep in its throat, and Shadow felt his neck hairs prickle. Shadow, it said. Now is the time of judgment. Shadow looked up at the creature. Mr. Jacquel? he said. The hands of Anubis came down, huge dark hands, and they picked Shadow up and brought him close. The jackal head examined him with bright and glittering eyes; examined him as dispassionately as Mr. Jacquel had examined the dead girl on the slab. |
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Shadow knew that all his faults, all his failings, all his weaknesses were being taken out and weighed and measured; that he was, in some way, being dissected, and sliced, and tasted. We do not always remember the things that do no credit to us. We justify them, cover them in bright lies or with the thick dust of forgetfulness. All of the things that Shadow had done in his life of which he was not proud, all the things he wished he had done otherwise or left undone, came at him then in a swirling storm of guilt and regret and shame, and he had nowhere to hide from them. He was as naked and as open as a corpse on a table, and dark Anubis the jackal god was his prosector and his prosecutor and his persecutor. Please, said Shadow. Please stop. But the examination did not stop. Every lie he had ever told, every object he had stolen, every hurt he had inflicted on another person, all the little crimes and the tiny murders that make up the day, each of these things and more were extracted and held up to the light by the jackal-headed judge of the dead. Shadow began to weep, painfully, in the palm of the dark gods hand. He was a tiny child again, as helpless and as powerless as he had ever been. And then, without warning, it was over. Shadow panted, and sobbed, and snot streamed from his nose; he still felt helpless, but the hands placed him, carefully, almost tenderly, down on the rock floor. Who has his heart? growled Anubis. I do, purred a womans voice. Shadow looked up. Bast was standing there beside the thing that was no longer Mr. Ibis, and she held Shadows heart in her right hand. It lit her face with a ruby light. Give it to me, said Thoth, the Ibis-headed god, and he took the heart in his hands, which were not human hands, and he glided forward. Anubis placed a pair of golden scales in front of him. So is this where we find out what I get? whispered Shadow to Bast. Heaven? Hell? Purgatory? If the feather balances, she said, you get to choose your own destination. And if not? She shrugged, as if the subject made her uncomfortable. Then she said, Then we feed your heart and your soul to Ammet, the Eater of Souls Maybe, he said. Maybe I can get some kind of a happy ending. Not only are there no happy endings, she told him, there arent even any endings. On one of the pans of the scales, carefully, reverently, Anubis placed a feather. Anubis put Shadows heart on the other pan of the scales. Something moved in the shadows under the scale, something it made Shadow uncomfortable to examine too closely. It was a heavy feather, but Shadow had a heavy heart, and the scales tipped and swung worryingly. But they balanced, in the end, and the creature in the shadows skulked away, unsatisfied. So that's that, said Bast, wistfully. Just another skull for the pile. Its a pity. I had hoped that you would do some good, in the current troubles. Its like watching a slow-motion car crash and being powerless to prevent it. You won't be there? She shook her head. I don't like other people picking my battles for me, she said. There was silence then, in the vast hall of death, where it echoed of water and the dark. Shadow said, So now I get to choose where I go next? Choose, said Thoth. Or we can choose for you. No, said Shadow. Its okay. Its my choice. Well? roared Anubis. I want to rest now, said Shadow. that's what I want. I want nothing. No heaven, no hell, no anything. Just let it end. you're certain? asked Thoth. Yes, said Shadow. Mr. Jacquel opened the last door for Shadow, and behind that door there was nothing. |
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They were not tourists. They came by car and they came by plane and by bus and by railroad and on foot. Some of them flewthey flew low, and they flew only in the dark of the night. Several of them traveled their own ways beneath the earth. Many of them hitchhiked, cadging rides from nervous motorists or from truck drivers. Those who had cars or trucks would see the ones who had not walking beside the roads or at rest stations and in diners on the way, and, recognizing them for what they were, would offer them rides. They arrived dust-stained and weary at the foot of Lookout Mountain. Looking up to the heights of the tree-covered slope they could see, or imagine that they could see, the paths and gardens and waterfall of Rock City. They started arriving early in the morning. A second wave of them arrived at dusk. And for several days they simply kept coming. A battered U-Haul truck pulled up, disgorging several travel-weary vila and rusalka, their makeup smudged, runs in their stockings, their expressions heavy-lidded and tired. In a clump of trees at the bottom of the hill, an elderly wampyr offered a Marlboro to a naked apelike creature covered with a tangle of orange fur. It accepted graciously, and they smoked in silence, side by side. A Toyota Previa pulled over by the side of the road, and seven Chinese men and women got out of it. They looked, above all, clean, and they wore the kind of dark suits that, in some countries, are worn by minor government officials. One of them carried a clipboard, and he checked the inventory as they unloaded large golf bags from the back of the car: the bags contained ornate swords with lacquer handles, and carved sticks, and mirrors. The weapons were distributed, checked off, signed for. A once-famous comedian, believed to have died in the 1920s, climbed out of his rusting car and proceeded to remove his clothing: his legs were goat legs, and his tail was short and goatish. Four Mexicans arrived, all smiles, their hair black and very shiny: they passed among themselves a bottle that they kept out of sight in a brown paper bag, its contents a bitter mixture of powdered chocolate, liquor, and blood. A small, dark-bearded man with a dusty black derby on his head, curling payess at his temples, and a ragged fringed prayer shawl came to them walking across the fields. He was several feet in front of his companion, who was twice his height and was the blank gray color of good Polish clay: the word inscribed on his forehead meant truth. They kept coming. A cab drew up and several Rakshasas, the demons of the Indian subcontinent, climbed out and milled around, staring at the people at the bottom of the hill without speaking, until they found Mama-ji, her eyes closed, her lips moving in prayer. She was the only thing here that was familiar to them, but still, they hesitated to approach her, remembering old battles. Her hands rubbed the necklace of skulls about her neck. Her brown skin became slowly black, the glassy black of jet, of obsidian: her lips curled and her long white teeth were very sharp. She opened all her eyes, beckoned the Rakshasas to her, and greeted them as she would have greeted her own children. The storms of the last few days, to the north and the east, had done nothing to ease the feeling of pressure and discomfort in the air. Local weather forecasters had begun to warn of cells that might spawn tornados, of high-pressure areas that did not move. It was warm by day there, but the nights were cold. |
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They clumped together in informal companies, banding together sometimes by nationality, by race, by temperament, even by species. They looked apprehensive. They looked tired. Some of them were talking. There was laughter, on occasion, but it was muted and sporadic. Six-packs of beer were handed around. Several local men and women came walking over the meadows, their bodies moving in unfamiliar ways: their voices, when they spoke, were the voices of the Loa who rode them: a tall black man spoke in the voice of Papa Legba who opens the gates; while Baron Samedi, the voudon lord of death, had taken over the body of a teenage goth girl from Chattanooga, possibly because she possessed her own black silk top hat, which sat on her dark hair at a jaunty angle. She spoke in the Barons own deep voice, smoked a cigar of enormous size, and commanded three of the Gede, the Loa of the dead. The Gede inhabited the bodies of three middle-aged brothers. They carried shotguns and told jokes of such astounding filthiness that only they were willing to laugh at them, which they did, raucously. Two ageless Chickamauga women, in oil-stained blue jeans and battered leather jackets, walked around, watching the people and the preparations for battle. Sometimes they pointed and shook their heads. They did not intend to take part in the coming conflict. The moon swelled and rose in the east, a day away from full. It seemed half as big as the sky, as it rose, a deep reddish-orange, immediately above the hills. As it crossed the sky it seemed to shrink and pale until it hung high in the sky like a lantern. There were so many of them waiting there, in the moonlight, at the foot of Lookout Mountain. * * * Laura was thirsty. Sometimes living people burned steadily in her mind like candles and sometimes they flamed like torches. It made them easy to avoid, and it made them easy, on occasion, to find. Shadow had burned so strangely, with his own light, up on that tree. She had chided him once, when they had walked and held hands, for not being alive. She had hoped, then, to see a spark of raw emotion. To have seen anything. She remembered walking beside him, wishing that he could understand what she was trying to say. But dying on the tree, Shadow had been utterly alive. She had watched him as the life had faded, and he had been focused and real. And he had asked her to stay with him, to stay the whole night. He had forgiven herperhaps he had forgiven her. It did not matter. He had changed; that was all she knew. Shadow had told her to go to the farmhouse, that they would give her water to drink there. There were no lights burning in the farm building, and she could feel nobody at home. But he had told her that they would care for her. She pushed against the door of the farmhouse and it opened, rusty hinges protesting the whole while. Something moved in her left lung, something that pushed and squirmed and made her cough. She found herself in a narrow hallway, her way almost blocked by a tall and dusty piano. The inside of the building smelled of old damp. She squeezed past the piano, pushed open a door and found herself in a dilapidated drawing room, filled with ramshackle furniture. An oil lamp burned on the mantelpiece. There was a coal fire burning in the fireplace beneath it, although she had neither seen nor smelled smoke outside the house. The coal fire did nothing to lift the chill she felt in that room, although, Laura was willing to concede, that might not be the fault of the room. |
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Death hurt Laura, although the hurt consisted mostly of things that were not there: a parching thirst that drained every cell of her, an absence of heat in her bones that was absolute. Sometimes she would catch herself wondering whether the crisp and crackling flames of a pyre would warm her, or the soft brown blanket of the earth; whether the cold sea would quench her thirst The room, she realized, was not empty. Three women sat on, an elderly couch, as if they had come as a matched set in some peculiar artistic exhibition. The couch was upholstered in threadbare velvet, a faded brown that might, once, a hundred years ago, have been a bright canary yellow. They followed her with their eyes as she entered the room, and they said nothing. Laura had not known they would be there. Something wriggled and fell in her nasal cavity. Laura fumbled in her sleeve for a tissue, and she blew her nose into it. She crumpled the tissue and flung it and its contents onto the coals of the fire, watched it crumple and blacken and become orange lace. She watched the maggots shrivel and brown and burn. This done, she turned back to the women on the couch. They had not moved since she had entered, not a muscle, not a hair. They stared at her. Hello. Is this your farm? she asked. The largest of the women nodded. Her hands were very red, and her expression was impassive. Shadowthats the guy hanging on the tree. he's my husbandhe said I should tell you that he wants you to give me water. Something large shifted in her bowels. It squirmed, and then was still. The smallest woman clambered off the couch. Her feet had not previously reached the floor. She scurried from the room. Laura could hear doors opening and closing, through the farmhouse. Then, from outside, she could hear a series of loud creaks. Each was followed by a splash of water. Soon enough, the small woman returned. She was carrying a brown earthenware jug of water. She put it down, carefully, on the table, and retreated to the couch. She pulled herself up, with a wriggle and a shiver, and was seated beside her sisters once again. Thank you. Laura walked over to the table, looked around for a cup or a glass, but there was nothing like that to be seen. She picked up the jug. It was heavier than it looked. The water in it was perfectly clear. She raised the jug to her lips and began to drink. The water was colder than she had ever imagined liquid water could be. It froze her tongue and her teeth and her gullet. Still, she drank, unable to stop, feeling the water freezing its way into her stomach, her bowels, her heart, her veins. The water flowed into her. It was like liquid ice. She realized that the jug was empty and, surprised, she put it down on the table. The women were observing her, dispassionately. Since her death, Laura had not thought in metaphors: things were, or they were not. But now, as she looked at the women on the sofa, she found herself thinking of juries, of scientists observing a laboratory animal. She shook, suddenly and convulsively. She reached out a hand to the table to steady herself, but the table was slipping and lurching, and it almost avoided her grasp. As she put her hand on the table she began to vomit. She brought up bile and formalin, centipedes, and maggots. And then she felt herself starting to void, and to piss: stuff was being pushed violently, wetly, from her body. She would have screamed if she could; but then the dusty floorboards came up to meet her so fast and so hard that, had she been breathing, they would have knocked the breath from her body. |
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One of them was knitting. One of them was staring directly at him. One of them appeared to be asleep. The woman who was staring at him began to smile, a huge smile that seemed to split her face lengthwise, a smile that crossed from ear to ear. Then she raised a finger and touched it to her neck, and ran it gently from one side of her neck to the other. That was what he thought he saw, all in a moment, in that empty room, which contained, he saw at a second glance, nothing more than old rotting furniture and fly-spotted prints and dry rot. There was nobody there at all. He rubbed his eyes. Town walked back to the brown Ford Explorer and climbed in. He tossed the stick onto the white leather of the passenger seat. He turned the key in the ignition. The dashboard clock said 6:37 A. M. Town frowned, and checked his wristwatch, which blinked that it was 13:58. Great, he thought. I was either up on that tree for eight hours, or for minus a minute. That was what he thought, but what he believed was that both timepieces had, coincidentally, begun to misbehave. On the tree, Shadows body began to bleed. The wound was in his side. The blood that came from it was slow and thick and molasses-black. * * * Clouds covered the top of Lookout Mountain. Easter sat some distance away from the crowd at the bottom of the mountain, watching the dawn over the hills to the east. She had a chain of blue forget-me-nots tattooed around her left wrist, and she rubbed them absently, with her right thumb. Another night had come and gone, and nothing. The folk were still coming, by ones and twos. The last night had brought several creatures from the southwest, including two small boys each the size of an apple tree, and something that she had only glimpsed, but that had looked like a disembodied head the size of a VW bug. They had disappeared into the trees at the base of the mountain. Nobody bothered them. Nobody from the outside world even seemed to have noticed they were there: she imagined the tourists at Rock City staring down at them through their insert-a-quarter binoculars, staring straight at a ramshackle encampment of things and people at the foot of the mountain, and seeing nothing but trees and bushes and rocks. She could smell the smoke from a cooking fire, a smell of burning bacon on the chilly dawn wind. Someone at the far end of the encampment began to play the harmonica, which made her, involuntarily, smile and shiver. She had a paperback book in her backpack, and she waited for the sky to become light enough for her to read. There were two dots in the sky, immediately below the clouds: a small one and a larger one. A spatter of rain brushed her face in the morning wind. A barefoot girl came out from the encampment, walking toward her. She stopped beside a tree, hitched up her skirts, and squatted. When she had finished, Easter hailed her. The girl walked over. Good morning, lady, she said. The battle will start soon now. The tip of her pink tongue touched her scarlet lips. She had a black crows wing tied with leather onto her shoulder, a crows foot on a chain around her neck. Her arms were blue-tattooed with lines and patterns and intricate knots. How do you know? The girl grinned. I am Macha, of the Morrigan. When war comes, I can smell it in the air. I am a war goddess, and I say, blood shall be spilled this day. Oh, said Easter. Well. There you go. She was watching the smaller dot in the sky as it tumbled down toward them, dropping like a rock. And we shall fight them, and we shall kill them, every one, said the girl. |
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Only that was what he had done last time, and now here he was, back at the farm once more. There were heavy storm clouds coming in, it was getting dark fast, it felt like night, not morning, and he had a long drive ahead of him: he would never get to Chattanooga before afternoon at this rate. His cell phone gave him only a No Service message. The fold-out map in the cars glove compartment showed the main roads, all the interstates and the real highways, but as far as it was concerned nothing else existed. Nor was there anyone around that he could ask. The houses were set back from the roads; there were no welcoming lights. Now the fuel gauge was nudging Empty. He heard a rumble of distant thunder, and a single drop of rain splashed heavily onto his windshield. So when Town saw the woman, walking along the side of the road, he found himself smiling, involuntarily. Thank God, he said, aloud, and he drew up beside her. He thumbed down the window. Maam? I'm sorry. I'm kind of lost. Can you tell me how to get to Highway Eighty-one from here? She looked at him through the open passenger-side window and said, You know. I don't think I can explain it. But I can show you, if you like. She was pale, and her wet hair was long and dark. Climb in, said Town. He didn't even hesitate. First thing, we need to buy some gas. Thanks, she said. I needed a ride. She got in. Her eyes were astonishingly blue. Theres a stick here, on the seat, she said, puzzled. Just throw it in the back. Where are you heading? he asked. Lady, if you can get me to a gas station, and back to a freeway, I'll take you all the way to your own front door. She said, Thank you. But I think I'm going farther than you are. If you can get me to the freeway, that will be fine. Maybe a trucker will give me a ride. And she smiled, a crooked, determined smile. It was the smile that did it. Maam, he said, I can give you a finer ride than any trucker. He could smell her perfume. It was heady and heavy, a cloying scent, like magnolias or lilacs, but he did not mind. I'm going to Georgia, she said. Its a long way. I'm going to Chattanooga. I'll take you as far as I can. Mm, she said. Whats your name? They call me Mack, said Mr. Town. When he was talking to women in bars, he would sometimes follow that up with And the ones that know me really well call me Big Mack. That could wait. With a long drive ahead of them, they would have many hours in each others company to get to know each other. Whats yours? Laura, she told him. Well, Laura, he said, I'm sure were going to be great friends. * * * The fat kid found Mr. World in the Rainbow Rooma walled section of the path, its window glass covered in clear plastic sheets of green and red and yellow film. He was walking impatiently from window to window, staring out, in turn, at a golden world, a red world, a green world. His hair was reddish-orange and close-cropped to his skull. He wore a Burberry raincoat. The fat kid coughed. Mr. World looked up. Excuse me? Mister World? Yes? Is everything on schedule? The fat kids mouth was dry. He licked his lips, and said, I've set up everything. I don't have confirmation on the choppers. The helicopters will be here when we need them. Good, said the fat kid. Good. He stood there, not saying anything, not going away. There was a bruise on his forehead. After a while Mr. World said, Is there anything else I can do for you? A pause. The boy swallowed and nodded. Something else, he said. Yes. Would you feel more comfortable discussing it in private? |
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He sipped his beer, reflecting. Hed won a couple of prizes for his poetry. There were people in Minnesota who wanted to put his poems into a book. He was driving to Minnesota in a sports car to talk to them. He had traded your Bago for a yellow Miata. The doctors said they think he went into a coma while he was driving, went off the road, ran the car into one of your road signs. Too lazy to look at where you are, to read the mountains and the clouds, you people need road signs everywhere. And so Henry Bluejay went away forever, went to live with brother Wolf. So I said, nothing keeping me there any longer. I came north. Good fishing up here. I'm sorry about your nephew. Me too. So now I'm living here in the north. Long way from white mans diseases. White mans roads. White mans road signs. White mans yellow Miatas. White mans caramel popcorn. White mans beer? Whiskey Jack looked at the can. When you people finally give up and go home, you can leave us the Budweiser breweries, he said. Where are we? asked Shadow. Am I on the tree? Am I dead? Am I here? I thought everything was finished. Whats real? Yes, said Whiskey Jack. Yes? What kind of an answer is Yes? Its a good answer. True answer, too. Shadow said, Are you a god as well? Whiskey Jack shook his head. I'm a culture hero, he said. We do the same shit gods do, we just screw up more and nobody worships us. They tell stories about us, but they tell the ones that make us look bad along with the ones where we came out fairly okay. I see, said Shadow. And he did see, more or less. Look, said Whiskey Jack. This is not a good country for gods. My people figured that out early on. There are creator spirits who found the earth or made it or shit it out, but you think about it: whos going to worship Coyote? He made love to Porcupine Woman and got his dick shot through with more needles than a pincushion. Hed argue with rocks and the rocks would win. So, yeah, my people figured that maybe theres something at the back of it all, a creator, a great spirit, and so we say thank you to it, because its always good to say thank you. But we never built churches. We didn't need to. The land was the church. The land was the religion. The land was older and wiser than the people who walked on it. It gave us salmon and corn and buffalo and passenger pigeons. It gave us wild rice and walleye. It gave us melon and squash and turkey. And we were the children of the land, just like the porcupine and the skunk and the blue jay. He finished his second beer and gestured toward the river at the bottom of the waterfall. You follow that river for a way, you'll get to the lakes where the wild rice grows. In wild rice time, you go out in your canoe with a friend, and you knock the wild rice into your canoe, and cook it, and store it, and it will keep you for a long time. Different places grow different foods. Go far enough south there are orange trees, lemon trees, and those squashy green guys, look like pears Avocados. Avocados, agreed Whiskey Jack. that's them. They don't grow up this way. This is wild rice country. Moose country. What I'm trying to say is that America is like that. Its not good growing country for gods. They don't grow well here. you're like avocados trying to grow in wild rice country. They may not grow well, said Shadow, remembering, butyou're going to war. That was the only time he ever saw Whiskey Jack laugh. It was almost a bark, and it had little humor in it. Hey Shadow, said Whiskey Jack. If all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you jump off too? |
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Maybe. Shadow felt good. He didn't think it was just the beer. He couldn't remember the last time he had felt so alive, and so together. Its not going to be a war. Then what is it? Whiskey Jack crushed the beer can between his hands, pressing it until it was flat. Look, he said, and pointed to the waterfall. The sun was high enough that it caught the waterfall spray: a rainbow nimbus hung in the air. Shadow thought it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Its going to be a bloodbath, said Whiskey Jack, flatly. Shadow saw it then. He saw it all, stark in its simplicity. He shook his head, then he began to chuckle, and he shook his head some more, and the chuckle became a full-throated laugh. You okay? I'm fine, said Shadow. I just saw the hidden Indians. Not all of them. But I saw them anyhow. Probably Ho Chunk, then. Those guys never could hide worth a damn. He looked up at the sun. Time to go back, he said. He stood up. Its a two-man con, said Shadow. Its not a war at all, is it? Whiskey Jack patted Shadows arm. you're not so dumb, he said. They walked back to Whiskey Jacks shack. He opened the door. Shadow hesitated. I wish I could stay here with you, he said. This seems like a good place. There are a lot of good places, said Whiskey Jack. that's kind of the point. Listen, gods die when they are forgotten. People too. But the lands still here. The good places, and the bad. The land isn't going anywhere. And neither am I. Shadow closed the door. Something was pulling at him. He was alone in the darkness once more, but the darkness became brighter and brighter until it was burning like the sun. And then the pain began. * * * Easter walked through the meadow, and spring flowers blossomed where she had passed. She walked by a place where, long ago, a farmhouse had stood. Even today several walls were still standing, jutting out of the weeds and the meadow grass like rotten teeth. A thin rain was falling. The clouds were dark and low, and it was cold. A little way beyond the place where the farmhouse had been there was a tree, a huge silver-gray tree, winter-dead to all appearances, and leafless, and in front of the tree, on the grass, were frayed clumps of colorless fabric. The woman stopped at the fabric, and bent down, and picked up something brownish-white: it was a much-gnawed fragment of bone which might, once, have been a part of a human skull. She tossed it back down onto the grass. Then she looked at the man on the tree and she smiled wryly. They just arent as interesting naked, she said. Its the unwrapping that's half the fun. Like with gifts, and eggs. The hawk-headed man who walked beside her looked down at his penis and seemed, for the first time; to become aware of his own nakedness. He said, I can look at the sun without even blinking. that's very clever of you, Easter told him, reassuringly. Now, lets get him down from there. The wet ropes that held Shadow to the tree had long ago weathered and rotted, and they parted easily as the two people pulled on them. The body on the tree slipped and slid down toward the roots. They caught him as he fell, and they took him up, carrying him easily, although he was a very big man, and they put him down in the gray meadow. The body on the grass was cold, and it did not breathe. There was a patch of dried black blood on its side, as if it had been stabbed with a spear. What now? Now, she said, we warm him. You know what you have to do. I know. I cannot. If you are not willing to help, then you should not have called me here. |
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Were you friends? Not at all. He should have kept himself alive, if he wanted to keep his job. But you brought his stick. He looked her up and down with eyes that glimmered like the orange embers of a dying fire. I am afraid you have the advantage of me. They call me Mister World, here at the top of the hill. I'm Shadows wife. Of course. The lovely Laura, he said. I should have recognized you. He had several photographs of you up above his bed, in the cell that once we shared. And, if you don't mind my saying so, you are looking lovelier than you have any right to look. shouldn't you be further along on the whole road-to-rot-and-ruin business by now? I was, she said simply. But those women, in the farm, they gave me water from their well. An eyebrow raised. Urds Well? Surely not. She pointed to herself. Her skin was pale, and her eye sockets were dark, but she was manifestly whole: if she was indeed a walking corpse, she was freshly dead. It won't last, said Mr. World. The Norns gave you a little taste of the past. It will dissolve into the present soon enough, and then those pretty blue eyes will roll out of their sockets and ooze down those pretty cheeks, which will, by then, of course, no longer be so pretty. By the way, you have my stick. Can I have it, please? He pulled out a pack of Lucky Strikes, took a cigarette, lit it with a disposable black Bic. She said, Can I have one of those? Sure. I'll give you a cigarette if you give me my stick. If you want it, its worth more than just a cigarette. He said nothing. She said, I want answers. I want to know things. He lit a cigarette and passed it to her. She took it and inhaled. Then she blinked. I can almost taste this one, she said. I think maybe I can. She smiled. Mm. Nicotine. Yes, he said. Why did you go to the women in the farmhouse? Shadow told me to go to them, she said. He said to ask them for water. I wonder if he knew what it would do. Probably not. Still, that's the good thing about having him dead on his tree. I know where he is at all times, now. he's off the board. You set up my husband, she said. You set him up all the way, you people. He has a good heart, you know that? Yes, said Mr. World. I know. When this is all done with, I guess I'll sharpen a stick of mistletoe and go down to the ash tree, and ram it through his eye. Now. My stick, please. Why do you want it? Its a souvenir of this whole sorry mess, said Mr. World. don't worry, its not mistletoe. He flashed a grin. It symbolizes a spear, and in this sorry world, the symbol is the thing. The noises from outside grew louder. Which side are you on? she asked. Its not about sides, he told her. But since you asked, I'm on the winning side. Always. She nodded, and she did not let go of the stick. She turned away from him, and looked out of the cavern door. Far below her, in the rocks, she could see something that glowed and pulsed. It wrapped itself around a thin, mauve-faced bearded man, who was beating at it with a squeegee stick, the kind of squeegee that people like him use to smear across car windshields at traffic lights. There was a scream, and they both disappeared from view. Okay. I'll give you the stick, she said. Mr. Worlds voice came from behind her. Good girl, he said reassuringly, in a way that struck her as being both patronizing and indefinably male. It made her skin crawl. She waited in the rock doorway until she could hear his breath in her ear. She had to wait until he got close enough. She had that much figured out. |
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* * * The ride was more than exhilarating; it was electric. They swept through the storm like jagged bolts of lightning, flashing from cloud to cloud; they moved like the thunders roar, like the swell and rip of the hurricane. It was a crackling, impossible journey. There was no fear: only the power of the storm, unstoppable and all-consuming, and the joy of the flight. Shadow dug his fingers into the thunderbirds feathers, feeling the static prickle on his skin. Blue sparks writhed across his hands like tiny snakes. Rain washed his face. This is the best, he shouted, over the roar of the storm. As if it understood him, the bird began to rise higher, every wing-beat a clap of thunder, and it swooped and dove and tumbled through the dark clouds. In my dream, I was hunting you, said Shadow, his words ripped away by the wind. In my dream, I had to bring back a feather. Yes. The word was a static crackle in the radio of his mind. They came to us for feathers, to prove that they were men; and they came to us to cut the stones from our heads, to gift their dead with our lives. An image filled his mind then: of a thunderbirda female, he assumed, for her plumage was brown, not blacklying freshly dead on the side of a mountain. Beside it was a woman. She was breaking open its skull with a knob of flint. She picked through the wet shards of bone and the brains until she found a smooth clear stone the tawny color of garnet, opalescent fires flickering in its depths. Eagle stones, thought Shadow. She was going to take up her infant son, dead these last three nights, and she would lay it on his cold breast. By the next sunrise the boy would be alive and laughing, and the jewel would be gray and clouded and as dead as the bird it had been stolen from. I understand, he said to the bird. The bird threw back its head and crowed, and its cry was the thunder. The world beneath them flashed past in one strange dream. * * * Laura adjusted her grip on the stick, and she waited for the man she knew as Mr. World to come to her. She was facing away from him, looking out at the storm, and the dark green hills below. In this sorry world, she thought, the symbol is the thing. Yes. She felt his hand close softly onto her right shoulder. Good, she thought. He does not want to alarm me. He is scared that I will throw his stick out into the storm, that it will tumble down the mountainside, and he will lose it. She leaned back, just a little, until she was touching his chest with her back. His left arm curved around her. It was an intimate gesture. His left hand was open in front of her. She closed both of her hands around the top of the stick, exhaled, concentrated. Please. My stick, he said, in her ears. Yes, she said. Its yours. And then, not knowing if it would mean anything, she said, I dedicate this death to Shadow, and she stabbed the stick into her chest, just below the breastbone, felt it writhe and change in her hands as the stick became a spear. The boundary between sensation and pain had diffused since she had died. She felt the spearhead penetrate her chest, felt it push out through her back. A moments resistanceshe pushed harder and the spear pushed into Mr. World. She could feel the warm breath of him on the cool skin of her neck, as he wailed in hurt and surprise, impaled on the spear. She did not recognize the words he spoke, nor the language he said them in. She pushed the shaft of the spear farther in, forcing it through her body, into and through his. |
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She could feel his hot blood spurting onto her back. Bitch, he said, in English. You fucking bitch. There was a wet gurgling quality to his voice. She guessed that the blade of the spear must have sliced a lung. Mr. World was moving now, or trying to move, and every move he made rocked her too: they were joined by the pole, impaled together like two fish on a single spear. He now had a knife in one hand, she saw, and he stabbed her chest and breasts randomly and wildly with the knife, unable to see what he was doing. She did not care. What are knife cuts to a corpse? She brought her fist down, hard, on his waving wrist, and the knife went flying to the floor of the cavern. She kicked it away. And now he was crying and wailing. She could feel him pushing against her, his hands fumbling at her back, his hot tears on her neck. His blood was soaking her back, spurting down the back of her legs. This must look so undignified, she said, in a dead whisper, not without a certain dark amusement. She felt Mr. World stumble behind her, and she stumbled too, and then she slipped in the bloodall of it histhat was puddling on the floor of the cave, and they both went down. * * * The thunderbird landed in the Rock City parking lot. Rain was falling in sheets. Shadow could barely see a dozen feet in front of his face. He let go of the thunderbirds feathers and half slipped, half tumbled to the wet asphalt. Lightning flashed, and the bird was gone. Shadow climbed to his feet. The parking lot was three-quarters empty. Shadow started toward the entrance. He passed a brown Ford Explorer, parked against a rock wall. There was something deeply familiar about the car, and he glanced up at it curiously, noticing the man inside the car, slumped over the steering wheel as if asleep. Shadow pulled open the drivers-side door. He had last seen Mr. Town standing outside the motel in the center of America. The expression on his face was one of surprise. His neck had been expertly broken. Shadow touched the mans face. Still warm. Shadow could smell a scent on the air in the car; it was faint, like the perfume of someone who left a room years before, but Shadow would have known it anywhere. He slammed the door of the Explorer and made his way across the parking lot. As he walked he felt a twinge in his side, a sharp, jabbing pain that lasted for only a second, or less, and then it was gone. There was nobody selling tickets. He walked through the building and out into the gardens of Rock City. Thunder rumbled, and it rattled the branches of the trees and shook deep inside the huge rocks, and the rain fell with cold violence. It was late afternoon, but it was dark as night. A trail of lightning speared across the clouds, and Shadow wondered if that was the thunderbird returning to its high crags, or just an atmospheric discharge, or whether the two ideas were, on some level, the same thing. And of course they were. That was the point, after all. Somewhere a mans voice called out. Shadow heard it. The only words he recognized or thought he recognized were to Odin! Shadow hurried across Seven States Flag Court, the flagstones now running fast with rainwater. Once he slipped on the slick stone. There was a thick layer of cloud surrounding the mountain, and in the gloom and the storm beyond the courtyard he could see no states at all. There was no sound. The place seemed utterly abandoned. He called out, and imagined he heard something answering. He walked toward the place from which he thought the sound had come. |
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Nobody. Nothing. Just a chain marking the entrance to a cave as off-limits to guests. Shadow stepped over the chain. He looked around, peering into the darkness. His skin prickled. A voice from behind him, in the shadows, said, very quietly, You have never disappointed me. Shadow did not turn. that's weird, he said. I disappointed myself all the way. Every time. Not at all, said the voice. You did everything you were intended to do, and more. You took everybodys attention, so they never looked at the hand with the coin in it. Its called misdirection. And theres power in the sacrifice of a sonpower enough, and more than enough, to get the whole ball rolling. To tell the truth, I'm proud of you. It was crooked, said Shadow. All of it. None of it was for real. It was just a setup for a massacre. Exactly, said Wednesdays voice from the shadows. It was crooked. But it was the only game in town. I want Laura, said Shadow. I want Loki. Where are they? There was only silence. A spray of rain gusted at him. Thunder rumbled somewhere close at hand. He walked farther in. Loki Lie-Smith sat on the ground with his back to a metal cage. Inside the cage, drunken pixies tended their still. He was covered with a blanket. Only his face showed, and his hands, white and long, came around the blanket. An electric lantern sat on a chair beside him. The lanterns batteries were close to failing, and the light it cast was faint and yellow. He looked pale, and he looked rough. His eyes, though. His eyes were still fiery, and they glared at Shadow as he walked through the cavern. When Shadow was several paces from Loki, he stopped. You are too late, said Loki. His voice was raspy and wet. I have thrown the spear. I have dedicated the battle. It has begun. No shit, said Shadow. No shit, said Loki. So it does not matter what you do anymore. Shadow stopped and thought. Then he said, The spear you had to throw to kick off the battle. Like the whole Uppsala thing. This is the battle you'll be feeding on. Am I right? Silence. He could hear Loki breathing, a ghastly rattling inhalation. I figured it out, said Shadow. Kind of. I'm not sure when I figured it out. Maybe when I was hanging on the tree. Maybe before. It was from something Wednesday said to me, at Christmas. Loki just stared at him from the floor, saying nothing. Its just a two-man con, said Shadow. Like the bishop with the diamond necklace and the cop who arrests him. Like the guy with the fiddle, and the guy who wants to buy the fiddle. Two men, who appear to be on opposite sides, playing the same game. Loki whispered, You are ridiculous. Why? I liked what you did at the motel. That was smart. You needed to be there, to make sure that everything went according to plan. I saw you. I even realized who you were. And I still never twigged that you were their Mister World. Shadow raised his voice. You can come out, he said, to the cavern. Wherever you are. Show yourself. The wind howled in the opening of the cavern, and it drove a spray of rainwater in toward them. Shadow shivered. I'm tired of being played for a sucker, said Shadow. Just show yourself. Let me see you. There was a change in the shadows at the back of the cave. Something became more solid; something shifted. You know too damned much, mboy, said Wednesdays familiar rumble. So they didn't kill you. They killed me, said Wednesday, from the shadows. None of this would have worked if they hadnt. His voice was faintnot actually quiet, but there was a quality to it that made Shadow think of an old radio not quite tuned in to a distant station. |
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If I hadn't died for real, we could never have got them here, said Wednesday. Kali and the Morrigan and the fucking Albanians andwell, youve seen them all. It was my death that drew them all together. I was the sacrificial lamb. No, said Shadow. You were the Judas Goat. The wraith-shape in the shadows swirled and shifted. Not at all. That implies that I was betraying the old gods for the new. Which was not what we were doing. Not at all, whispered Loki. I can see that, said Shadow. You two werent betraying either side. You were betraying both sides. I guess we were at that, said Wednesday. He sounded pleased with himself. You wanted a massacre. You needed a blood sacrifice. A sacrifice of gods. The wind grew stronger; the howl across the cave door became a screech, as if of something immeasurably huge in pain. And why the hell not? I've been trapped in this damned land for almost twelve hundred years. My blood is thin. I'm hungry. And you two feed on death, said Shadow. He thought he could see Wednesday, now. He was a shape made of darkness, who became more real only when Shadow looked away from him, taking shape in his peripheral vision. I feed on death that is dedicated to me, said Wednesday. Like my death on the tree, said Shadow. That, said Wednesday, was special. And do you also feed on death? asked Shadow, looking at Loki. Loki shook his head, wearily. No, of course not, said Shadow. You feed on chaos. Loki smiled at that, a brief pained smile, and orange flames danced in his eyes, and flickered like burning lace beneath his pale skin. We couldn't have done it without you, said Wednesday, from the corner of Shadows eye. I'd been with so many women You needed a son, said Shadow. Wednesdays ghost-voice echoed. I needed you, my boy. Yes. My own boy. I knew that you had been conceived, but your mother left the country. It took us so long to find you. And when we did find you, you were in prison. We needed to find out what made you tick. What buttons we could press to make you move. Who you were. Loki looked, momentarily, pleased with himself. And you had a wife to go back home to. It was unfortunate, but not insurmountable. She was no good for you, whispered Loki. You were better off without her. If it could have been any other way, said Wednesday, and this time Shadow knew what he meant. And if shed hadthe graceto stay dead, panted Loki. Wood and Stonewere good men. You were goingto be allowed to escapewhen the train crossed the Dakotas Where is she? asked Shadow. Loki reached a pale arm, and pointed to the back of the cavern. She went that-a-way, he said. Then, without warning, he tipped forward, his body collapsing onto the rock floor. Shadow saw what the blanket had hidden from him; the pool of blood, the hole through Lokis back, the fawn raincoat soaked black with blood. What happened? he said. Loki said nothing. Shadow did not think he would be saying anything anymore. Your wife happened to him, mboy, said Wednesdays distant voice. He had become harder to see, as if he was fading back into the ether. But the battle will bring him back. As the battle will bring me back for good. I'm a ghost, and he's a corpse, but weve still won. The game was rigged. Rigged games, said Shadow, remembering, are the easiest to beat. There was no answer. Nothing moved in the shadows. Shadow said, Goodbye, and then he said, Father. But by then there was no trace of anybody else in the cavern. Nobody at all. Shadow walked back up to the Seven States Flag Court, but saw nobody, and heard nothing but the crack and whip of the flags in the storm-wind. |
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There were no people with swords at the Thousand-Ton Balanced Rock, no defenders of the Swing-A-Long bridge. He was alone. There was nothing to see. The place was deserted. It was an empty battlefield. No. Not deserted. Not exactly. This was Rock City. It had been a place of awe and worship for thousands of years; today the millions of tourists who walked through the gardens and swung their way across the Swing-A-Long bridge had the same effect as water turning a million prayer wheels. Reality was thin here. And Shadow knew where the battle must be taking place. With that, he began to walk. He remembered how he had felt on the carousel, tried to feel like that He remembered turning the Winnebago, shifting it at right angles to everything. He tried to capture that sensation And then, easily and perfectly, it happened: It was like pushing through a membrane, like plunging up from deep water into air. With one step he had moved from the tourist path on the mountain to To somewhere real. He was Backstage. He was still on the top of a mountain, that much remained the same. But it was so much more than that. This mountaintop was the quintessence of place, the heart of things as they were. Compared to it, the Lookout Mountain he had left was a painting on a backdrop, or a papier-mache model seen on a TV screenmerely a representation of the thing, not the thing itself. This was the true place. The rock walls formed a natural amphitheater. Paths of stone that wound around and across it, forming twisty natural bridges that Eschered through and across the rock walls. And the sky The sky was dark. It was lit, and the world beneath it was illuminated by a burning greenish-white streak, brighter than the sun, which forked crazily across the sky from, end to end, like a white rip in the darkened sky. It was lightning, Shadow realized. Lightning held in one frozen moment that stretched into forever. The light it cast was harsh and unforgiving: it washed out faces, hollowed eyes into dark pits. This was the moment of the storm. The paradigms were shifting. He could feel it. The old world, a world of infinite vastness and illimitable resources and future, was being confronted by something elsea web of energy, of opinions, of gulfs. People believe, thought Shadow. Its what people do. They believe. And then they will not take responsibility for their beliefs; they conjure things, and do not trust the conjurations. People populate the darkness; with ghosts, with gods, with electrons, with tales. People imagine, and people believe: and it is that belief, that rock-solid belief, that makes things happen. The mountaintop was an arena; he saw that immediately. And on each side of the arena he could see them arrayed. They were too big. Everything was too big in that place. There were old gods in that place: gods with skins the brown of old mushrooms, the pink of chicken flesh, the yellow of autumn leaves. Some were crazy and some were sane. Shadow recognized the old gods. Hed met them already, or hed met others like them. There were ifrits and piskies, giants and dwarfs. He saw the woman he had met in the darkened bedroom in Rhode Island, saw the writhing green snake-coils of her hair. He saw Mama-ji, from the carousel, and there was blood on her hands and a smile on her face. He knew them all. He recognized the new ones, too. There was somebody who had to be a railroad baron, in an antique suit, his watch chain stretched across his vest. He had the air of one who had seen better days. |
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His forehead twitched. There were the great gray gods of the airplanes, heirs to all the dreams of heavier-than-air travel. There were car gods, there: a powerful, serious-faced contingent, with blood on their black gloves and on their chrome teeth: recipients of human sacrifice on a scale undreamed-of since the Aztecs. Even they looked uncomfortable. Worlds change. Others had faces of smudged phosphors; they glowed gently, as if they existed in their own light. Shadow felt sorry for them all. There was an arrogance to the new ones. Shadow could see that. But there was also a fear. They were afraid that unless they kept pace with a changing world, unless they remade and redrew and rebuilt the world in their image, their time would already be over. Each side faced the other with bravery. To each side, the opposition were the demons, the monsters, the damned. Shadow could see an initial skirmish had taken place. There was already blood on the rocks. They were readying themselves for the real battle; for the real war. It was now or never, he thought. If he did not move now, it would be too late. In America everything goes on forever, said a voice in the back of his head. The 1950s lasted for a thousand years. You have all the time in the world. Shadow walked in something that was half stroll, half controlled stumble, into the center of the arena. He could feel eyes on him, eyes and things that were not eyes. He shivered. The buffalo voice said, You are doing just fine. Shadow thought, Damn right. I came back from the dead this morning. After that, everything else should be a piece of cake. You know, said Shadow, to the air, in a conversational voice, this is not a war. This was never intended to be a war. And if any of you think this is a war, you are deluding yourselves. He heard grumbling noises from both sides. He had impressed nobody. We are fighting for our survival, lowed a minotaur from one side of the arena. We are fighting for our existence, shouted a mouth in a pillar of glittering smoke, from the other. This is a bad land for gods, said Shadow. As an opening statement it wasnt Friends, Romans, countrymen, but it would do. Youve probably all learned that, in your own way. The old gods are ignored. The new gods are as quickly taken up as they are abandoned, cast aside for the next big thing. Either youve been forgotten, oryou're scaredyou're going to be rendered obsolete, or maybeyou're just getting tired of existing on the whim of people. The grumbles were fewer now. He had said something they agreed with. Now, while they were listening, he had to tell them the story. There was a god who came here from a far land, and whose power and influence waned as belief in him faded. He was a god who took his power from sacrifice, and from death, and especially from war. The deaths of those who fell in war were dedicated to himwhole battlefields that had given him in the Old Country power and sustenance. Now he was old. He made his living as a grifter, working with another god from his pantheon, a god of chaos and deceit. Together they rooked the gullible. Together they took people for all theyd got. Somewhere in theremaybe fifty years ago, maybe a hundred, they put a plan into motion, a plan to create a reserve of power they could both tap into. Something that would make them stronger than they had ever been. After all, what could be more powerful than a battlefield covered with dead gods? The game they played was called Lets You and Him Fight. |
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Do you see? The battle you came here for isn't something that any of you can win or lose. The winning and the losing are unimportant to him, to them. What matters is that enough of you die. Each of you that falls in battle gives him power. Every one of you that dies, feeds him. Do you understand? The roaring, whoomping sound of something catching fire echoed across the arena. Shadow looked to the place the noise came from. An enormous man, his skin the deep brown of mahogany, his chest naked, wearing a top hat, cigar sticking rakishly from his mouth, spoke in a voice as deep as the grave. Baron Samedi said, Okay. But Odin. He died. At the peace talks. Motherfuckers killed him. He died. I know death. Nobody going to fool me about death. Shadow said, Obviously. He had to die for real. He sacrificed his physical body to make this war happen. After the battle he would have been more powerful than he had ever been. Somebody called, Who are you? I amI wasI am his son. One of the new godsShadow suspected it was a drug from the way it smiled and spangled, said, But Mister World said There was no Mister World. There never was any such person. He was just another one of you bastards trying to feed on the chaos he created. They believed him, and he could see the hurt in their eyes. Shadow shook his head. You know, he said, I think I would rather be a man than a god. We don't need anyone to believe in us. We just keep going anyhow. Its what we do. There was silence, in the high place. And then, with a shocking crack, the lightning bolt frozen in the sky crashed to the mountaintop, and the arena went entirely dark. They glowed, many of those presences, in the darkness. Shadow wondered if they were going to argue with him, to attack him, to try to kill him. He waited for some kind of response. And then Shadow realized that the lights were going out. The gods were leaving that place, first in handfuls, and then by scores, and finally in the hundreds. A spider the size of a rottweiler scuttled heavily toward him, on seven legs; its cluster of eyes glowed faintly. Shadow held his ground, although he felt slightly sick. When the spider got close enough, it said, in Mr. Nancys voice, That was a good job. Proud of you. You done good, kid. Thank you, said Shadow. We should get you back. Too long in this place is goin to mess you up. It rested one brown-haired spider leg on Shadows shoulder * * * and, back on Seven States Flag Court, Mr. Nancy coughed. His right hand rested on Shadows shoulder. The rain had stopped. Mr. Nancy held his left hand across his side, as if it hurt. Shadow asked if he was okay. I'm tough as old nails, said Mr. Nancy. Tougher. He did not sound happy. He sounded like an old man in pain. There were dozens of them, standing or sitting on the ground or on the benches. Some of them looked badly injured. Shadow could hear a rattling noise in the sky, approaching from the south. He looked at Mr. Nancy. Helicopters? Mr. Nancy nodded. don't you worry about them. Not anymore. they'll just clean up the mess, and leave. Got it. Shadow knew that there was one part of the mess he wanted to see for himself, before it was cleaned up. He borrowed a flashlight from a gray-haired man who looked like a retired news anchor and began to hunt. He found Laura stretched out on the ground in a side cavern, beside a diorama of mining gnomes straight out of Snow White. The floor beneath her was sticky with blood. She was on her side, where Loki must have dropped her after he had pulled the spear out of them both. |
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One of Lauras hands clutched her chest. She looked dreadfully vulnerable. She looked dead, but then, Shadow was almost used to that by now. Shadow squatted beside her, and he touched her cheek with his hand, and he said her name. Her eyes opened, and she lifted her head and turned it until she was looking at him. Hello, puppy, she said. Her voice was thin. Hi, Laura. What happened here? Nothing, she said. Just stuff. Did they win? I stopped the battle they were trying to start. My clever puppy, she said. That man, Mister World, he said he was going to put a stick through your eye. I didn't like him at all. he's dead. You killed him, hon. She nodded. She said, that's good. Her eyes closed. Shadows hand found her cold hand, and he held it in his. In time she opened her eyes again. Did you ever figure out how to bring me back from the dead? she asked. I guess, he said. I know one way, anyway. that's good, she said. She squeezed his hand with her cold hand. And then she said, And the opposite? What about that? The opposite? Yes, she whispered. I think I must have earned it. I don't want to do that. She said nothing. She simply waited. Shadow said, Okay. Then he took his hand from hers and put it to her neck. She said, that's my husband. She said it proudly. I love you, babes, said Shadow. Love you, puppy, she whispered. He closed his hand around the golden coin that hung around her neck. He tugged, hard, at the chain, which snapped easily. Then he took the gold coin between his finger and thumb, and blew on it, and opened his hand wide. The coin was gone. Her eyes were still open, but they did not move. He bent down then, and kissed her, gently, on her cold cheek, but she did not respond. He did not expect her to. Then he got up and walked out of the cavern, to stare into the night. The storms had cleared. The air felt fresh and clean and new once more. Tomorrow, he had no doubt, would be one hell of a beautiful day. Part Four. Epilogue: Something That the Dead Are Keeping Back One describes a tale best by telling the tale. You see? The way one describes a story, to oneself or to the world, is by telling the story. It is a balancing act and it is a dream. The more accurate the map, the more it resembles the territory. The most accurate map possible would be the territory, and thus would be perfectly accurate and perfectly useless. The tale is the map that is the territory. You must remember this. From the Notebooks of Mr. Ibis The two of them were in the VW bus, heading down to Florida on I-75. Theyd been driving since dawn; or rather, Shadow had driven, and Mr. Nancy had sat up front in the passenger seat and, from time to time, and with a pained expression on his face, offered to drive. Shadow always said no. Are you happy? asked Mr. Nancy, suddenly. He had been staring at Shadow for several hours. Whenever Shadow glanced over to his right, Mr. Nancy was looking at him with his earth-brown eyes. Not really, said Shadow. But I'm not dead yet. Huh? Call no man happy until he is dead. Herodotus. Mr. Nancy raised a white eyebrow, and he said, I'm not dead yet, and, mostly because I'm not dead yet, I'm happy as a clamboy. The Herodotus thing. It doesn't mean that the dead are happy, said Shadow. It means that you cant judge the shape of someones life until its over and done. I don't even judge then, said Mr. Nancy. And as for happiness, theres a lot of different kinds of happiness, just as theres a hell of a lot of different kinds of dead. Me, I'll just take what I can get when I can get it. |
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Shadow changed the subject. Those helicopters, he said. The ones that took away the bodies, and the injured. What about them? Who sent them? Where did they come from? You shouldn't worry yourself about that. you're like valkyries or buzzards. They come because they have to come. If you say so. The dead and the wounded will be taken care of. You ask me, old Jacquels going to be very busy for the next month or so. Tell me somethin, Shadow-boy. Okay. You learn anythin from all this? Shadow shrugged. I don't know. Most of what I learned on the tree I've already forgotten, he said. I think I met some people. But I'm not certain of anything anymore. Its like one of those dreams that changes you. You keep some of the dream forever, and you know things down deep inside yourself, because it happened to you, but when you go looking for details they kind of just slip out of your head. Yeah, said Mr. Nancy. And then he said, grudgingly, you're not so dumb. Maybe not, said Shadow. But I wish I could have kept more of what passed through my hands, since I got out of prison. I was given so many things, and I lost them again. Maybe, said Mr. Nancy, you kept more than you think. No, said Shadow. They crossed the border into Florida, and Shadow saw his first palm tree. He wondered if theyd planted it there on purpose, at the border, just so that you knew you were in Florida now. Mr. Nancy began to snore, and Shadow glanced over at him. The old man still looked very gray, and his breath was rasping. Shadow wondered, not for the first time, if he had sustained some kind of chest or lung injury in the fight. Nancy had refused any medical attention. Florida went on for longer than Shadow had imagined, and it was late by the time he pulled up outside a small, one-story wooden house, its windows tightly shuttered, on the outskirts of Fort Pierce. Nancy, who had directed him through the last five miles, invited him to stay the night. I can get a room in a motel, said Shadow. Its not a problem, You could do that, and I'd be hurt. Obviously I wouldn't say anythin. But I'd be real hurt, real bad, said Mr. Nancy. So you better stay here, and I'll make you a bed up on the couch. Mr. Nancy unlocked the hurricane shutters, and pulled open the windows. The house smelled musty and damp, and a little sweet, as if it were haunted by the ghosts of long-dead cookies. Shadow agreed, reluctantly, to stay the night there, just as he agreed, even more reluctantly, to walk with Mr. Nancy to the bar at the end of the road, for just one late-night drink while the house aired out. Did you see Czernobog? asked Nancy, as they strolled through the muggy Floridian night. The air was alive with whirring palmetto bugs and the ground crawled with creatures that scuttled and clicked. Mr. Nancy lit a cigarillo, and coughed and choked on it. Still, he kept right on smoking. He was gone when I came out of the cave. He will have headed home. Hell be waitin for you there, you know. Yes. They walked in silence to the end of the road. It wasnt much of a bar, but it was open. I'll buy the first beers, said Mr. Nancy. Were only having one beer, remember, said Shadow. What are you, asked Mr. Nancy. Some kind of cheapskate? Mr. Nancy bought them their first beers, and Shadow bought the second round. He stared in horror as Mr. Nancy talked the barman into turning on the karaoke machine, and then watched in fascinated embarrassment as the old man belted his way through Whats New Pussycat? before crooning out a moving, tuneful version of The Way You Look Tonight. |
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He had a fine voice, and by the end the handful of people still in the bar were cheering and applauding him. When he came back to Shadow at the bar he was looking brighter. The whites of his eyes were clear, and the gray pallor that had touched his skin was gone. Your turn, he said. Absolutely not, said Shadow. But Mr. Nancy had ordered more beers, and was handing Shadow a stained printout of songs from which to choose. Just pick a song you know the words to. This is not funny, said Shadow. The world was beginning to swim, a little, but he couldn't muster the energy to argue, and then Mr. Nancy was putting on the backing tapes to don't Let Me Be Misunderstood, and pushingliterally pushingShadow up onto the tiny makeshift stage at the end of the bar. Shadow held the mike as if it was probably live, and then the backing music started and he croaked out the initial Baby Nobody in the bar threw anything in his direction. And it felt good. Can you understand me now? His voice was rough but melodic, and rough suited the song just fine. Sometimes I feel a little mad. don't you know that no one alive can always be an angel And he was still singing it as they walked home through the busy Florida night, the old man and the young, stumbling and happy. I'm just a soul whose intentions are good, he sang to the crabs and the spiders and the palmetto beetles and the lizards and the night. Oh lord, please don't let me be misunderstood. Mr. Nancy showed him to the couch. It was much smaller than Shadow, who decided to sleep on the floor, but by the time he had finished deciding to sleep on the floor he was already fast asleep, half sitting, half lying on the tiny sofa. At first, he did not dream. There was just the comforting darkness. And then he saw a fire burning in the darkness and he walked toward it. You did well, whispered the buffalo man without moving his lips. I don't know what I did, said Shadow. You made peace, said the buffalo man. You took our words and made them your own. They never understood that they were here and the people who worshiped them were herebecause it suits us that they are here. But we can change our minds. And perhaps we will. Are you a god? asked Shadow. The buffalo-headed man shook his head. Shadow thought, for a moment, that the creature was amused. I am the land, he said. And if there was more to that dream then Shadow did not remember it. He heard something sizzling. His head was aching, and there was a pounding behind his eyes. Mr. Nancy was already cooking breakfast: a towering stack of pancakes, sizzling bacon, perfect eggs, and coffee. He looked in the peak of health. My head hurts, said Shadow. You get a good breakfast inside you, you'll feel like a new man. I'd rather feel like the same man, just with a different head, said Shadow. Eat, said Mr. Nancy. Shadow ate. How do you feel now? Like I've got a headache, only now I've got some food in my stomach and I think I'm going to throw up. Come with me. Beside the sofa, on which Shadow had spent the night, covered with an African blanket, was a trunk, made of some dark wood, which looked like an undersized pirate chest. Mr. Nancy undid the padlock and opened the lid. Inside the trunk there were a number of boxes. Nancy rummaged among the boxes. Its an ancient African herbal remedy, he said. Its made of ground willow bark, things like that. Like aspirin? Yup, said Mr. Nancy. Just like that. From the bottom of the trunk he produced a giant economy-sized bottle of generic aspirin. |
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He sighed. Fished again, slower, more carefully. He could imagine the ice grumbling beneath his feet as he shifted his weight. And slow and He had it. He pulled up on the aerial and the front-door locking mechanism popped up. Shadow reached down one gloved hand and took the door handle, pressed the button, and pulled. The door did not open. Its stuck, he thought, iced up. that's all. He tugged, sliding on the ice, and suddenly the door of the klunker flew open, ice scattering everywhere. The miasma was worse inside the car, a stench of rot and illness. Shadow felt sick. He reached under the dashboard, found the black plastic handle that opened the trunk, and tugged on it, hard. There was a thunk from behind him as the trunk door released. Shadow walked out onto the ice, slipped and splashed around the car, holding on to the side of it as he went. Its in the trunk, he thought. The trunk was open an inch. He reached down and opened it the rest of the way, pulling it up. The smell was bad, but it could have been much worse: the bottom of the trunk was filled with an inch or so of half-melted ice. There was a girl in the trunk. She wore a scarlet snowsuit, now stained, and her mousy hair was long and her mouth was closed, so Shadow could not see the blue rubber-band braces, but he knew that they were there. The cold had preserved her, kept her as fresh as if she had been in a freezer. Her eyes were wide open, and she looked as if she had been crying when she died, and the tears that had frozen on her cheeks had still not melted. You were here all the time, said Shadow to Alison Mc-Governs corpse. Every single person who drove over that bridge saw you. Everyone who drove through the town saw you. The ice fishermen walked past you every day. And nobody knew. And then he realized how foolish that was. Somebody knew. Somebody had put her here. He reached into the trunkto see if he could pull her out. He put his weight on the car, as he leaned in. Maybe that was what did it. The ice beneath the front wheels went at that moment, perhaps from his movements, perhaps not. The front of the car lurched downward several feet into the dark water of the lake. Water began to pour into the car through the open drivers door. Lake water splashed about Shadows ankles, although the ice he stood on was still solid. He looked around urgently, wondering how to get away and then it was too late, and the ice tipped precipitously, throwing him against the car and the dead girl in the trunk; and the back of the car went down, and Shadow went down with it, into the cold waters of the lake. It was ten past nine in the morning on March the twenty-third. He took a deep breath before he went under, closing his eyes, but the cold of the lake water hit him like a wall, knocking the breath from his body. He tumbled downward, into the murky ice water, pulled down by the car. He was under the lake, down in the darkness and the cold, weighed down by his clothes and his gloves and his boots, trapped and swathed in his coat, which seemed to have become heavier and bulkier than he could have imagined. He was falling, still. He tried to push away from the car, but it was pulling him with it, and then there was a bang that he could hear with his whole body, not his ears, and his left foot was wrenched at the ankle, the foot twisted and trapped beneath the car as it settled on the lake bottom, and panic took him. He opened his eyes. He knew it was dark down there: rationally, he knew it was too dark to see anything, but still, he could see; he could see everything. |
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He breathed deep gasps of air, stretched flat out on the creaking ice, and even that would not hold for long, he knew, but it was no good. His thoughts were coming with difficulty, syrupy-slow. Just leave me, he tried to say. I'll be fine. His words were a slur, and everything was drawing to a halt. He just needed to rest for a moment, that was all, just rest, and then he would get up and move on. Obviously he could not just lie there forever. There was a jerk; water splashed his face. His head was lifted up. Shadow felt himself being hauled across the ice, sliding on his back across the slick surface, and he wanted to protest, to explain that he just needed a little restmaybe a little sleep, was that asking for so much? and he would be just fine. If they just left him alone. He did not believe that he had fallen asleep, but he was standing on a vast plain, and there was a man there with the head and shoulders of a buffalo, and a woman with the head of an enormous condor, and there was Whiskey Jack standing between them, looking at him sadly, shaking his head. Whiskey Jack turned and walked slowly away from Shadow. The buffalo man walked away beside him. The thunderbird woman also walked, and then she ducked and kicked and she was gliding out into the skies. Shadow felt a sense of loss. He wanted to call to them, to plead with them to come back, not to give up on him, but everything was becoming formless and without shape: they were gone, and the plains were fading, and everything became void. * * * The pain was intense: it was as if every cell in his body, every nerve, was melting and waking and advertising its presence by burning him and hurting him. There was a hand at the back of his head, gripping it by the hair, and another hand beneath his chin. He opened his eyes, expecting to find himself in some kind of hospital. His feet were bare. He was wearing jeans. He was naked from the waist up. There was steam in the air. He could see a shaving mirror on the wall facing him, and a small basin, and a blue toothbrush in a toothpaste-stained glass. Information was processed slowly, one datum at a time. His fingers burned. His toes burned. He began to whimper from the pain. Easy now, Mike. Easy there, said a voice he knew. What? he said, or tried to say. Whats happening? It sounded strained and strange to his ears. He was in a bathtub. The water was hot. He thought the water was hot, although he could not be certain. The water was up to his neck. Dumbest thing you can do with a fellow freezing to death is to put him in front of a fire. The second dumbest thing you can do is to wrap him in blanketsespecially if he's in cold wet clothes already. Blankets insulate himkeep the cold in. The third dumbest thing and this is my private opinionis to take the fellows blood out, warm it up and put it back. that's what doctors do these days. Complicated, expensive. Dumb. The voice was coming from above and behind his head. The smartest, quickest thing you can do is what sailors have done to men overboard for hundreds of years. You put the fellow in hot water. Not too hot. Just hot. Now, just so you know, you were basically dead when I found you on the ice back there. How are you feeling now, Houdini? It hurts, said Shadow. Everything hurts. You saved my life. I guess maybe I did, at that. Can you hold your head up on your own now? Maybe. I'm going to let you go. If you start sinking below the water I'll pull you back up again. The hands released their grip on his head. |
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I don't understand why you saved my life. Well, said Hinzelmann, the way I was brought up, if you see another fellow in trouble No, said Shadow. that's not what I mean. I mean, you killed all those kids. Every winter. I was the only one to have figured it out. You must have seen me open the trunk. Why didn't you just let me drown? Hinzelmann tipped his head on one side. He scratched his nose, thoughtfully, rocked back and forth as if he were thinking. Well, he said. that's a good question. I guess its because I owed a certain party a debt. And I'm good for my debts. Wednesday? that's the fellow. There was a reason he hid me in Lakeside, wasnt there? There was a reason nobody should have been able to find me here. Hinzelmann said nothing. He unhooked a heavy black poker from its place on the wall, and he prodded at the fire with it, sending up a cloud of orange sparks and smoke. This is my home, he said, petulantly. Its a good town. Shadow finished his coffee. He put the cup down on the floor. The effort was exhausting. How long have you been here? Long enough. And you made the lake? Hinzelmann peered at him, surprised. Yes, he said. I made the lake. They were calling it a lake when I got here, but it werent nothing more than a spring and a mill pond and a creek. He paused. I figured that this country is hell on my kind of folk. It eats us. I didn't want to be eaten. So I made a deal. I gave them a lake, and I gave them prosperity And all it cost them was one child every winter. Good kids, said Hinzelmann, shaking his old head, slowly. They were all good kids. I'd only pick ones I liked. Except for Charlie Nelligan. He was a bad seed, that one. He was, what, 1924? 1925? Yeah. That was the deal. The people of the town, said Shadow. Mabel. Marguerite. Chad Mulligan. Do they know? Hinzelmann said nothing. He pulled the poker from the fire: the first six inches at the tip glowed a dull orange. Shadow knew that the handle of the poker must be too hot to hold, but it did not seem to bother Hinzelmann, and he prodded the fire again. He put the poker back into the fire, tip first, and left it there. Then he said, They know that they live in a good place. While every other town and city in this county, heck, in this part of the state, is crumbling into nothing. They know that. And that's your doing? This town, said Hinzelmann. I care for it. Nothing happens here that I don't want to happen. You understand that? Nobody comes here that I don't want to come here. That was why your father sent you here. He didn't want you out there in the world, attracting attention. that's all. And you betrayed him. I did no such thing. He was a crook. But I always pay my debts. I don't believe you, said Shadow. Hinzelmann looked offended. One hand tugged at the clump of white hair at his temple. I keep my word. No. You don't. Laura came here. She said something was calling her here. And what about the coincidence that brought Sam Black Crow and Audrey Burton here, on the same night? I guess I don't believe in coincidence anymore. Sam Black Crow and Audrey Burton. Two people who both knew who I really was, and that there were people out there looking for me. I guess if one of them failed, there was always the other. And if all of them had failed, who else was on their way to Lakeside, Hinzelmann? My old prison warden, up here for a weekends ice fishing? Lauras mother? Shadow realized that he was angry. You wanted me out of your town. You just didn't want to have to tell Wednesday that was what you were doing. |
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In the firelight, Hinzelmann seemed more like a gargoyle than an imp. This is a good town, he said. Without his smile he looked waxen and corpselike. You could have attracted too much attention. Not good for the town. You should have left me back there on the ice, said Shadow. You should have left me in the lake. I opened the trunk of the klunker. Right now Alison is still iced into the trunk. But the ice will melt, and her body'll float out and up to the surface. And then they'll go down and look and see what else they can find down there. Find your whole stash of kids. I guess some of those bodies are pretty well preserved. Hinzelmann reached down and picked up the poker. He made no pretense of stirring the fire with it any longer; he held it like a sword, or a baton, the glowing orange-white tip of it waving in the air. It smoked. Shadow was very aware that he was next-to-naked, and he was still tired, and clumsy, and far from able to defend himself. You want to kill me? said Shadow. Go ahead. Do it. I'm a dead man anyway. I know you own this townits your little world. But if you think no ones going to come looking for me, you're living in a dream-world. Its over, Hinzelmann. One way or another, its done. Hinzelmann pushed himself to his feet, using the poker as a walking stick. The carpet charred and smoked where he rested the red-hot tip, as he got up. He looked at Shallow and there were tears in his pale blue eyes. I love this town, he said. I really like being a cranky old man, and telling my stories and driving Tessie and ice-fishing. Remember what I told you? Its not the fish you bring home from a days fishing. Its the peace of mind. He extended the tip of the poker in Shadows direction: Shadow could feel the heat of it from a foot away. I could kill you, said Hinzelmann, I could fix it. I've done it before. you're not the first to figure it out. Chad Mulligans father, he figured it out. I fixed him, and I can fix you. Maybe, said Shadow. But for how long, Hinzelmann? Another year? Another decade? They have computers now, Hinzelmann. They arent stupid. They pick up on patterns. Every year a kids going to vanish. Sooner or later they'll come sniffing about here. Just like they'll come looking for me. Tell me-how old are you? He curled his fingers around a sofa cushion, and prepared to pull it over his head: it would deflect a first blow. Hinzelmanns face was expressionless. They were giving their children to me before the Romans came to the Black Forest, he said. I was a god before ever I was a kobold. Maybe its time to move on, said Shadow. He wondered what a kobold was. Hinzelmann stared at him. Then he took the poker, and pushed the tip of it back into the burning embers. Its not that simple. What makes you think I can leave this town, even if I want to, Shadow? I'm part of this town. You going to make me go, Shadow? You ready to kill me? So I can leave? Shadow looked down at the floor. There were still glimmers and sparks in the carpet, where the poker tip had rested. Hinzelmann followed the look with his own, and crushed the embers out with his foot, twisting. In Shadows mind came, unbidden, children, more than a hundred of them, staring at him with bone-blind eyes, the hair twisting slowly around their faces like fronds of seaweed. They were looking at him reproachfully. He knew that he was letting them down. He just didn't know what else to do. Shadow said, I cant kill you. You saved my life. He shook his head. He felt like crap, in every way he could feel like crap. |
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He didn't feel like a hero or a detective anymorejust another fucking sell-out, waving a stern finger at the darkness before turning his back on it. You want to know a secret? asked Hinzelmann. Sure, said Shadow, with a heavy heart. He was ready to be done with secrets. Watch this. Where Hinzelmann had been standing stood a male child, no more than five years old. His hair was dark brown, and long. He was perfectly naked, save for a worn leather band around his neck. He was pierced with two swords, one of them going through his chest, the other entering at his shoulder, with the point coming out beneath the rib-cage. Blood flowed through the wounds without stopping and ran down the childs body to pool and puddle on the floor. The swords looked unimaginably old. The little boy stared up at Shadow with eyes that held only pain. And Shadow thought to himself, of course. that's as good a way as any other of making a tribal god. He did not have to be told. He knew. You take a baby and you bring it up in the darkness, letting it see no one, touch no one, and you feed it well as the years pass, feed it better than any of the villages other children, and then, five winters on, when the night is at its longest, you drag the terrified child out of its hut and into the circle of bonfires, and you pierce it with blades of iron and of bronze. Then you smoke the small body over charcoal fires until it is properly dried, and you wrap it in furs and carry it with you from encampment to encampment, deep in the Black Forest, sacrificing animals and children to it, making it the luck of the tribe. When, eventually, the thing falls apart from age, you place its fragile bones in a box, and you worship the box; until one day the bones are scattered and forgotten, and the tribes who worshipped the child-god of the box are long gone; and the child-god, the luck of the village, will be barely remembered, save as a ghost or a brownie: a kobold. Shadow wondered which of the people who had come to northern Wisconsin 150 years ago, a woodcutter, perhaps, or a mapmaker, had crossed the Atlantic with Hinzelmann living in his head. And then the bloody child was gone, and the blood, and there was only an old man with a fluff of white hair and a goblin smile, his sweater-sleeves still soaked from putting Shadow into the bath that had saved his life. Hinzelmann? the voice came from the doorway of the den. Hinzelmann turned. Shadow turned too. I came over to tell you, said Chad Mulligan, and his voice was strained, that the klunker went through the ice. I saw it had gone down when I drove over that way, and thought I'd come over and let you know, in case youd missed it. He was holding his gun. It was pointed at the floor. Hey, Chad, said Shadow. Hey, pal, said Chad Mulligan. They sent me a note said youd died in custody. Heart attack. How about that? said Shadow. Seems like I'm dying all over the place. He came down here, Chad, said Hinzelmann. He threatened me. No, said Chad Mulligan. He didn't. I've been here for the last ten minutes, Hinzelmann. I heard everything you said. About my old man. About the lake. He walked farther into the den. He did not raise the gun. Jesus, Hinzelmann. You cant drive through this town without seeing that goddamned lake. Its at the center of everything. So what the hell am I supposed to do? You got to arrest him. He said he was going to kill me, said Hinzelmann, a scared old man in a dusty den. Chad, I'm pleasedyou're here. No, said Chad Mulligan. |
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you're not. Hinzelmann sighed. He bent down, as if resigned, and he pulled the poker out from the fire. The tip of it was burning bright orange. Put that down, Hinzelmann. Just put it down slowly, keep your hands in the air where I can see them, and turn and face the wall. There was an expression of pure fear on the old mans face, and Shadow would have felt sorry for him, but he remembered the frozen tears on the cheeks of Alison McGovern. Hinzelmann did not move. He did not put down the poker. He did not turn to the wall. Shadow was about to reach for Hinzelmann, to try to take the poker away from him, when the old man threw the burning poker at Mulligan. Hinzelmann threw it awkwardlylobbing it across the room as if for forms sake and as he threw it he was already hurrying for the door. The poker glanced off Mulligans left arm. The noise of the shot, in the close quarters of the old mans room, was deafening. One shot to the head, and that was all. Mulligan said, Better get your clothes on. His voice was dull and dead. Shadow nodded. He walked to the room next door, opened the door of the clothes drier and pulled out his clothes. The jeans were still damp, but he put them on anyway. By the time he got back to the den, fully dressedexcept for his coat, which was somewhere deep in the freezing mud of the lake, and his boots, which he could not findMulligan had already hauled several smoldering logs out from the fireplace. Mulligan said, Its a bad day for a cop when he has to commit arson, just to cover up a murder. Then he looked up at Shadow. You need boots, he said. I don't know where he put them, said Shadow. Hell, said Mulligan. Then he said, Sorry about this, Hinzelmann, and he picked the old man up by the collar and by the belt buckle, and he swung him forward, dropped the body with its head resting in the open fireplace. The white hair crackled and flared, and the room began to fill with the smell of charring flesh. It wasnt murder. It was self-defense, said Shadow. I know what it was, said Mulligan, flatly. He had already turned his attention to the smoking logs he had scattered about the room. He pushed one of them to the edge of the sofa, picked up an old copy of the Lakeside News and pulled it into its component pages, which he crumpled up and dropped onto the log. The newspaper pages browned and then burst into flame. Get outside, said Chad Mulligan. He opened the windows as they walked out of the house, and he sprang the lock on the front door to lock it before he closed it. Shadow followed him out to the police car in his bare feet. Mulligan opened the front passenger door for him, and Shadow got in and wiped his feet off on the mat. Then he put on his socks, which were pretty much dry by now. We can get you some boots at Hennings Farm and Home, said Chad Mulligan. How much did you hear in there? asked Shadow. Enough, said Mulligan. Then he said, Too much. They drove to Hennings Farm and Home in silence. When they got there the police chief said, What size feet? Shadow told him. Mulligan walked into the store. He returned with a pair of thick woolen socks, and a pair of leather farm-boots. All they had left in your size, he said. Unless you wanted gumboots. I figured you didn't. Shadow pulled on the socks and the boots. They fitted fine. Thanks, he said. You got a car? asked Mulligan. Its parked by the road down to the lake. Near the bridge. Mulligan started the car and pulled out of the Hennings parking lot. What happened to Audrey? |
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The creases in Chads forehead smoothed, and he blinked, sleepily. Go see Margie, said Shadow. Its been good seeing you, Chad. Take care of yourself. Sure, yawned Chad Mulligan. A message crackled over the police radio, and Chad reached out for the handset. Shadow got out of the car. Shadow walked over to his rental car. He could see the gray flatness of the lake at the center of the town. He thought of the dead children who waited at the bottom of the water. Soon, Alison would float to the surface As Shadow drove past Hinzelmanns place he could see the plume of smoke had already turned into a blaze. He could hear a siren wail. He drove south, heading for Highway 51. He was on his way to keep his final appointment. But before that, he thought, he would stop off in Madison, for one last goodbye. * * * Best of everything, Samantha Black Crow liked closing up the Coffee House at night. It was a perfectly calming thing to do: it gave her a feeling that she was putting order back into the world. She would put on an Indigo Girls CD, and she would do her final chores of the night at her own pace and in her own way. First, she would clean the espresso machine. Then she would do the final rounds, ensuring that any missed cups or plates were deposited back in the kitchen, and that the newspapers that were always scattered around the Coffee House by the end of each day were collected together and piled neatly by the front door, all ready for recycling. She loved the Coffee House. It was a long, winding series of rooms filled with armchairs and sofas and low tables, on a street lined with secondhand bookstores. She covered the leftover slices of cheesecake and put them into the large refrigerator for the night, then she took a cloth and wiped the last of the crumbs away. She enjoyed being alone. A tapping on the window jerked her attention from her chores back to the real world. She went to the door and opened it to admit a woman of about Sams age, with pig-tailed magenta hair. Her name was Natalie. Hello, said Natalie. She went up on tiptoes and kissed Sam, depositing the kiss snugly between Sams cheek and the corner of her mouth. You can say a lot of things with a kiss like that. You done? Nearly. You want to see a movie? Sure. Love to. I've got a good five minutes left here, though. Why don't you sit and read the Onion? I saw this weeks already. She sat on a chair near the door, ruffled through the pile of newspapers put aside for recycling until she found something, and read it while Sam bagged up the last of the money in the till and put it in the safe. They had been sleeping together for a week now. Sam wondered if this was it, the relationship shed been waiting for all her life. She told herself that it was just brain chemicals and pheromones that made her happy when she saw Natalie, and perhaps that was what it was; still, all she knew for sure was that she smiled when she saw Natalie, and that when they were together she felt comfortable and comforted. This paper, said Natalie, has another one of those articles in it. Is America Changing? Well, is it? They don't say. They say that maybe it is, but they don't know how and they don't know why, and maybe it isn't happening at all. Sam smiled broadly. Well, she said, that covers every option, doesn't it? I guess. Natalies brow creased and she went back to her newspaper. Sam washed the dishcloth and folded it. I think its just that, despite the government and whatever, everything just feels suddenly good right now. |
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The place closed at eight, and at ten past eight Shadow saw Sam Black Crow walk out of the Coffee House in the company of a smaller woman whose pigtailed hair was a peculiar shade of red. They were holding hands tightly, as if simply holding hands could keep the world at bay, and they were talkingor rather, Sam was doing most of the talking while her friend listened. Shadow wondered what Sam was saying. She smiled as she talked. The two women crossed the road, and they walked past the place where Shadow was standing. The pigtailed girl passed within a foot of him; he could have reached out and touched her, and they didn't see him at all. He watched them walking away from him down the street, and felt a pang, like a minor chord being played inside him. It had been a good kiss, Shadow reflected, but Sam had never looked at him the way she was looking at the pig-tailed girl, and she never would. What the hell. Well always have Peru, he said, under his breath, as Sam walked away from him. And El Paso. Well always have that. Then he ran after her, and put the flowers into Sams hands. He hurried away, so she could not give them back. Then he walked up the hill, back to his car, and he followed the signs to Chicago. He drove at or slightly under the speed limit. It was the last thing he had to do. He was in no hurry. * * * He spent the night in a Motel 6. He got up the next morning and realized his clothes still smelled like the bottom of the lake. He put them on anyway. He figured he wouldn't need them much longer. Shadow paid his bill. He drove to the brownstone apartment building. He found it without any difficulty. It was smaller than he remembered. He walked up the stairs steadilynot fast, that would have meant he was eager to go to his death, and not slow, that would have meant he was afraid. Someone had cleaned the stairwell: the black garbage bags had gone. The place smelled of the chlorine smell of bleach, no longer of rotting vegetables. The red-painted door at the top of the stairs was wide open: the smell of old meals hung in the air. Shadow hesitated, then he pressed the doorbell. I come! called a womans voice, and, dwarf-small and dazzlingly blonde, Zorya Utrennyaya came out of the kitchen and bustled toward him, wiping her hands on her apron. She looked different, Shadow realized. She looked happy. Her cheeks were rouged red, and there was a sparkle in her old eyes. When she saw him her mouth became an O and she called out, Shadow? You came back to us? and she hurried toward him with her arms outstretched. He bent down and embraced her, and she kissed his cheek. So good to see you! she said. Now you must go away. Shadow stepped into the apartment. All the doors in the apartment (except, unsurprisingly, Zorya Polunochnayas) were wide open, and all the windows he could see were open as well. A gentle breeze blew fitfully through the corridor. you're spring cleaning, he said to Zorya Utrennyaya. We have a guest coming, she told him. Now, you must go away. First, you want coffee? I came to see Czernobog, said Shadow. Its time. Zorya Utrennyaya shook her head violently. No, no, she said. You don't want to see him. Not a good idea. I know, said Shadow. But you know, the only thing I've really learned about dealing with gods is that if you make a deal, you keep it. They get to break all the rules they want. We don't. Even if I tried to walk out of here, my feet would just bring me back. She pushed up her bottom lip, then said, Is true. But go today. |
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Come back tomorrow. He will be gone then. Who is it? called a womans voice from farther down the corridor. Zorya Utrennyaya, to who are you talking? This mattress, I cannot turn on my own, you know. Shadow walked down the corridor and said, Good morning, Zorya Vechernyaya. Can I help? which made the woman in the room squeak with surprise and drop her corner of the mattress. The bedroom was thick with dust: it covered every surface, the wood and the glass, and motes of it floated and danced through the beams of sunshine coming through the open window, disturbed by occasional breezes and the lazy flapping of the yellowed lace curtains. He remembered this room. This was the room they had given to Wednesday, that night. Bielebogs room. Zorya Vechernyaya eyed him uncertainly. The mattress, she said. It needs to be turned. Not a problem, said Shadow. He reached out and took the mattress, lifted it with ease, and turned it over. It was an old wooden bed, and the feather mattress weighed almost as much as a man. Dust flew and swirled as the mattress went down. Why are you here? asked Zorya Vechernyaya. It was not a friendly question, the way she asked it. I'm here, said Shadow, because back in December a young man played a game of checkers with an old god, and he lost. The old womans gray hair was up on the top of her head in a tight bun. She pursed her lips. Come back tomorrow, said Zorya Vechernyaya. I cant, he said, simply. Is your funeral. Now, you go and sit down. Zorya Utrennyaya will bring you coffee. Czernobog will be back soon. Shadow walked along the corridor to the sitting room. It was just as he remembered, although now the window was open. The gray cat slept on the arm of the sofa. It opened an eye as Shadow came in and then, unimpressed, it went back to sleep. This was where he had played checkers with Czernobog; this was where he had wagered his life to get the old man to join them on Wednesdays last doomed grift. The fresh air came in through the open window, blowing the stale air away. Zorya Utrennyaya came in with a red wooden tray. A small enameled cup of steaming black coffee sat on the tray, beside a saucer filled with small chocolate-chip cookies. She put it down on the table in front of him. I saw Zorya Polunochnaya again, he said. She came to me under the world, and she gave me the moon to light my way. And she took something from me. But I don't remember what. She likes you, said Zorya Utrennyaya. She dreams so much. And she guards us all. She is so brave. Wheres Czernobog? He says the spring cleaning makes him uncomfortable. He goes out to buy newspaper, sit in the park. Buy cigarettes. Perhaps he will not come back today. You do not have to wait. Why don't you go? Come back tomorrow. I'll wait, said Shadow. There was no magic forcing him to wait, he knew that. This was him. It was one last thing that needed to happen, and if it was the last thing that happened, well, he was going there of his own volition. After this there would be no more obligations, no more mysteries, no more ghosts. He sipped the hot coffee, as black and as sweet as he remembered. He heard a deep male voice in the corridor, and he sat up straighter. He was pleased to see that his hand was not trembling. The door opened. Shadow? Hi, said Shadow. He stayed sitting down. Czernobog walked into the room. He was carrying a folded copy of the Chicago Sun-Times, which he put down on the coffee table. He stared at Shadow, then he put his hand out, tentatively. |
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The two men shook hands. I came, said Shadow. Our deal. You came through with your part of it. This is my part. Czernobog nodded. His brow creased. The sunlight glinted on his gray hair and mustache, making them appear almost golden. Is he frowned. Is not He broke off. Maybe you should go. Is not a good time. Take as long as you need, said Shadow. I'm ready. Czernobog sighed. You are a very stupid boy. You know that? I guess. You are a stupid boy. And on the mountaintop, you did a very good thing. I did what I had to do. Perhaps. Czernobog walked to the old wooden sideboard and, bending down, pulled an attache case from underneath it. He flipped the catches on the case. Each one sprang back with a satisfying thump. He opened the case. He took a hammer out and hefted it experimentally. The hammer looked like a scaled-down sledgehammer; its wooden haft was stained. Then he stood up. He said, I owe you much. More than you know. Because of you, things are changing. This is springtime. The true spring. I know what I did, said Shadow. I didn't have a lot of choice. Czernobog nodded. There was a look in his eyes that Shadow did not remember seeing before. Did I ever tell you about my brother? Bielebog? Shadow walked to the center of the ash-stained carpet. He went down on his knees. You said you hadn't seen him in a long time. Yes, said the old man, raising the hammer. It has been a long winter, boy. A very long winter. But the winter is ending, now. And he shook his head, slowly, as if he were remembering something. And he said, Close your eyes. Shadow closed his eyes and raised his head, and he waited. The head of the sledgehammer was cold, icy cold, and it touched his forehead as gently as a kiss. Pock! There, said Czernobog. Is done. There was a smile on his face that Shadow had never seen before, an easy, comfortable smile, like sunshine on a summers day. The old man walked over to the case, and he put the hammer away, and closed the bag, and pushed it back under the sideboard. Czernobog? asked Shadow. Then, Are you Czernobog? Yes. For today, said the old man. By tomorrow, it will all be Bielebog. But today, is still Czernobog. Then why? Why didn't you kill me when you could? The old man took out an unfiltered cigarette from a packet in his pocket. He took a large box of matches from the mantelpiece and lit the cigarette with a match. He seemed deep in thought. Because, said the old man, after some time, there is blood. But there is also gratitude. And it has been a long, long winter. Shadow got to his feet. There were dusty patches on the knees of his jeans, where he had knelt, and he brushed the dust away. Thanks, he said. you're welcome, said the old man. Next time you want to play checkers, you know where to find me. This time, I play white. Thanks. Maybe I will, said Shadow. But not for a while. He looked into the old mans twinkling eyes, and he wondered if they had always been that cornflower shade of blue. They shook hands, and neither of them said goodbye. Shadow kissed Zorya Utrennyaya on the cheek on his way out, and he kissed Zorya Vechernyaya on the back of her hand, and he took the stairs out of that place two at a time. Postscript Reykjavik, in Iceland, is a strange city, even for those who have seen many strange cities. It is a volcanic citythe heat for the city comes from deep underground. There are tourists, but not as many of them as you might expect, not even in early July. The sun was shining, as it had shone for weeks now: it ceased shining for an hour or two in the small hours of the morning. |
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There would be a dusky dawn of sorts between two and three in the morning, and then the day would begin once more. The big tourist had walked most of Reykjavik that morning, listening to people talk in a language that had changed little in a thousand years. The natives here could read the ancient sagas as easily as they could read a newspaper. There was a sense of continuity on this island that scared him, and that he found desperately reassuring. He was very tired: the unending daylight had made sleep almost impossible, and he had sat in his hotel room through the whole long nightless night alternately reading a guidebook and Bleak House, a novel he had bought in an airport in the last few weeks, but which airport he could no longer remember. Sometimes he had stared out of the window. Finally the clock as well as the sun proclaimed it morning. He bought a bar of chocolate at one of the many candy stores and walked the sidewalk, occasionally finding himself reminded of the volcanic nature of Iceland: he would turn a corner and notice, for a moment, a sulfurous quality to the air. It put him in mind not of Hades but of rotten eggs. Many of the women he passed were very beautiful: slender and pale. The kind of women that Wednesday had liked. Shadow wondered what could have attracted Wednesday to Shadows mother, who had been beautiful, but had been neither of those things. Shadow smiled at the pretty women, because they made him feel pleasantly male, and he smiled at the other women too, because he was having a good time. He was not sure when he became aware that he was being observed. Somewhere on his walk through Reykjavik he became certain that someone was watching him. He would turn, from time to time, trying to get a glimpse of who it was, and he would stare into store windows and out at the reflected street behind him, but he saw no one out of the ordinary, no one who seemed to be observing him. He went into a small restaurant, where he ate smoked puffin and cloudberries and arctic char and boiled potatoes, and he drank Coca-Cola, which tasted sweeter, more sugary than he remembered it tasting back in the States. When the waiter brought his bill, he said, Excuse me. You are American? Yes. Then, happy Fourth of July, said the waiter. He looked pleased with himself. Shadow had not realized that it was the fourth. Independence Day. Yes. He liked the idea of independence. He left the money and a tip on the table, and walked outside. There was a cool breeze coming in off the Atlantic, and he buttoned up his coat. He sat down on a grassy bank and looked at the city that surrounded him, and thought, one day he would have to go home. And one day he would have to make a home to go back to. He wondered whether home was a thing that happened to a place after a while, or if it was something that you found in the end, if you simply walked and waited and willed it long enough. An old man came striding across the hillside toward him: he wore a dark gray cloak, ragged at the bottom, as if he had done a lot of traveling, and he wore a broad-brimmed blue hat, with a seagull feather tucked into the band at a jaunty angle. He looked like an aging hippie, thought Shadow. Or a long-retired gunfighter. The old man was ridiculously tall. The man squatted beside Shadow on the hillside. He nodded, curtly, to Shadow. He had a piratical black eyepatch over one eye, and a jutting white chin-beard. Shadow wondered if the man was going to hit him up for a cigarette. |
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Hvernig gengur? Manst ? u eftir mer? said the old man. I'm sorry, said Shadow. I don't speak Icelandic. Then he said, awkwardly, the phrase he had learned from his phrase book in the daylight of the small hours of that morning: Eg tala bara ensku. I speak only English. And then, American. The old man nodded slowly. He said, My people went from here to America a long time ago. They went there, and then they returned to Iceland. They said it was a good place for men, but a bad place for gods. And without their gods they felt tooalone. His English was fluent, but the pauses and the beats of the sentences were strange. Shadow looked at him: close-up, the man seemed older than Shadow had imagined possible. His skin was lined with tiny wrinkles and cracks, like the cracks in granite. The old man said, I do know you, boy. You do? You and I, we have walked the same path. I also hung on the tree for nine days, a sacrifice of myself to myself. I am the lord of the Aes. I am the god of the gallows. You are Odin, said Shadow. The man nodded thoughtfully, as if weighing up the name. They call me many things, but, yes, I am Odin, Bors son, he said. I saw you die, said Shadow. I stood vigil for your body. You tried to destroy so much for power. You would have sacrificed so much for yourself. You did that. I did not do that. Wednesday did. He was you. He was me, yes. But I am not him. The man scratched the side of his nose. His gull-feather bobbed. Will you go back? asked the Lord of the Gallows. To America? Nothing to go back for, said Shadow, and as he said it he knew it was a lie. Things wait for you there, said the old man. But they will wait until you return. A white butterfly flew crookedly past them. Shadow said nothing. He had had enough of gods and their ways to last him several lifetimes. He would take the bus to the airport, he decided, and change his ticket. Get a plane to somewhere he had never been. He would keep moving. Hey, said Shadow. I have something for you. His hand dipped into his pocket, and palmed the object he needed. Hold your hand out, he said. Odin looked at him strangely and seriously. Then he shrugged, and extended his right hand, palm down. Shadow reached over and turned it so the palm was upward. He opened his own hands, showed them, one after the other, to be completely empty. Then he pushed the glass eye into the leathery palm of the old mans hand and left it there. How did you do that? Magic, said Shadow, without smiling. The old man grinned and laughed and clapped his hands together. He looked at the eye, holding it between finger and thumb, and nodded, as if he knew exactly what it was, and then he slipped it into a leather bag that hung by his waist. Takk k? rlega. I shall take care of this. you're welcome, said Shadow. He stood up, brushed the grass from his jeans. Again, said the Lord of Asgard, with an imperious motion of his head, his voice deep and commanding. More. Do again. You people, said Shadow. you're never satisfied. Okay. This is one I learned from a guy whos dead now. He reached into nowhere, and took a gold coin from the air. It was a normal sort of gold coin. It couldn't bring back the dead or heal the sick, but it was a gold coin sure enough. And that's all there is, he said, displaying it between finger and thumb. that's all she wrote. He tossed the coin into the air with a flick of his thumb. It spun golden at the top of its arc, in the sunlight, and it glittered and glinted and hung there in the midsummer sky as if it was never going to come down. |
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Summer gathered in the weather, the wind had the proper touch, the breathing of the world was long and warm and slow. You had only to rise, lean from your window, and know that this indeed was the first real time of freedom and living, this was the first morning of summer. Douglas Spaulding, twelve, freshly wakened, let summer idle him on its early-morning stream. Lying in his third-story cupola bedroom, he felt the tall power it gave him, riding high in the June wind, the grandest tower in town. At night, when the trees washed together, he flashed his gaze like a beacon from this lighthouse in all directions over swarming seas of elm and oak and maple. Now... Boy, whispered Douglas. A whole summer ahead to cross off the calendar, day by day. Like the goddess Siva in the travel books, he saw his hands jump everywhere, pluck sour apples, peaches, and midnight plums. He would be clothed in trees and bushes and rivers. He would freeze, gladly, in the hoarfrosted icehouse door. He would bake, happily, with ten thousand chickens, in Grandmas kitchen. But nowa familiar task awaited him. One night each week he was allowed to leave his father, his mother, and his younger brother Tom asleep in their small house next door and run here, up the dark spiral stairs to his grandparents cupola, and in this sorcerers tower sleep with thunders and visions, to wake before the crystal jingle of milk bottles and perform his ritual magic. He stood at the open window in the dark, took a deep breath and exhaled. The street lights, like candles on a black cake, went out. He exhaled again and again and the stars began to vanish. Douglas smiled. He pointed a finger. There, and there. Now over here, and here... Yellow squares were cut in the dim morning earth as house lights winked slowly on. A sprinkle of windows came suddenly alight miles off in dawn country. Everyone yawn. Everyone up. The great house stirred below. Grandpa, get your teeth from the water glass! He waited a decent interval. Grandma and Great-grandma, fry hot cakes! The warm scent of fried batter rose in the drafty halls to stir the boarders, the aunts, the uncles, the visiting cousins, in their rooms. Street where all the Old People live, wake up! Miss Helen Loomis, Colonel Freeleigh, Miss Bentley! Cough, get up, take pills, move around! Mr. Jonas, hitch up your horse, get your junk wagon out and around! The bleak mansions across the town ravine opened baleful dragon eyes. Soon, in the morning avenues below, two old women would glide their electric Green Machine, waving at all the dogs. Mr. Tridden, run to the carbarn! Soon, scattering hot blue sparks above it, the town trolley would sail the rivering brick streets. Ready John Huff, Charlie Woodman? whispered Douglas to the Street of Children. Ready! to baseballs sponged deep in wet lawns, to rope swings hung empty in trees. Mom, Dad, Tom, wake up. Clock alarms tinkled faintly. The courthouse clock boomed. Birds leaped from trees like a net thrown by his hand, singing. Douglas, conducting an orchestra, pointed to the eastern sky. The sun began to rise. He folded his arms and smiled a magicians smile. Yes, sir, he thought, everyone jumps, everyone runs when I yell. Itll be a fine season. He gave the town a last snap of his fingers. Doors slammed open; people stepped out. Summer 1928 began. Crossing the lawn that morning, Douglas Spaulding broke a spider web with his face. A single invisible line on the air touched his brow and snapped without a sound. |
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So, with the subtlest of incidents, he knew that this day was going to be different. It would be different also, because, as his father explained, driving Douglas and his ten-year-old brother Tom out of town toward the country, there were some days compounded completely of odor, nothing but the world blowing in one nostril and out the other. And some days, he went on, were days of hearing every trump and trill of the universe. Some days were good for tasting and some for touching. And some days were good for all the senses at once. This day now, he nodded, smelled as if a great and nameless orchard had grown up overnight beyond the hills to fill the entire visible land with its warm freshness. The air felt like rain, but there were no clouds. Momentarily, a stranger might laugh off in the woods, but there was silence... Douglas watched the traveling land. He smelled no orchards and sensed no rain, for without apple trees or clouds he knew neither could exist. And as for that stranger laughing deep in the woods...? Yet the fact remainedDouglas shiveredthis, without reason, was a special day. The car stopped at the very center of the quiet forest. All right, boys, behave. They had been jostling elbows. Yes, sir. They climbed out, carrying the blue tin pails away from the lonely dirt road into the smell of fallen rain. Look for bees, said Father. Bees hang around grapes like boys around kitchens, Doug? Douglas looked up suddenly. you're off a million miles, said Father. Look alive. Walk with us. Yes, sir. And they walked through the forest, Father very tall, Douglas moving in his shadow, and Tom, very small, trotting in his brothers shade. They came to a little rise and looked ahead. Here, here, did they see? Father pointed. Here was where the big summer-quiet winds lived and passed in the green depths, like ghost whales, unseen. Douglas looked quickly, saw nothing, and felt put upon by his father who, like Grandpa, lived on riddles. But... But, still... Douglas paused and listened. Yes, somethings going to happen, he thought, I know it! Heres maidenhair fern, Dad walked, the tin pail belling in his fist. Feel this? He scuffed the earth. A million years of good rich leafmold laid down. Think of the autumns that got by to make this. Boy, I walk like an Indian, said Tom. Not a sound. Douglas felt but did not feel the deep loam, listening, watchful. Were surrounded! he thought. Itll happen! What? He stopped. Come out, wherever you are, whatever you are! he cried silently. Tom and Dad strolled on the hushed earth ahead. Finest lace there is, said Dad quietly. And he was gesturing up through the trees above to show them how it was woven across the sky or how the sky was woven into the trees, he wasnt sure which. But there it was, he smiled, and the weaving went on, green and blue, if you watched and saw the forest shift its humming loom. Dad stood comfortably saying this and that, the words easy in his mouth. He made it easier by laughing at his own declarations just so often. He liked to listen to the silence, he said, if silence could be listened to, for, he went on, in that silence you could hear wildflower pollen sifting down the bee-fried air, by God, the bee-fried air! Listen! the waterfall of birdsong beyond those trees! Now, thought Douglas, here it comes! Running! I don't see it! Running! Almost on me! Fox grapes! said Father. Were in luck, look here! don't! Douglas gasped. But Tom and Dad bent down to shove their hands deep in rattling bush. |
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The spell was shattered. The terrible prowler, the magnificent runner, the leaper, the shaker of souls, vanished. Douglas, lost and empty, fell to his knees. He saw his fingers sink through green shadow and come forth stained with such color that it seemed he had somehow cut the forest and delved his hand in the open wound. Lunch time, boys! With buckets half burdened with fox grapes and wild strawberries, followed by bees which were, no more, no less, said Father, the world humming under its breath, they sat on a green-mossed log, chewing sandwiches and trying to listen to the forest the same way Father did. Douglas felt Dad watching him, quietly amused. Dad started to say something that had crossed his mind, but instead tried another bite of sandwich and mused over it. Sandwich outdoors isn't a sandwich anymore. Tastes different than indoors, notice? Got more spice. Tastes like mint and pinesap. Does wonders for the appetite. Douglass tongue hesitated on the texture of bread and deviled ham. No... no... it was just a sandwich. Tom chewed and nodded. Know just what you mean, Dad! It almost happened, thought Douglas. Whatever it was it was Big, my gosh, it was Big! Something scared it off. Where is it now? Back of that bush! No, behind me! No here... almost here... He kneeded his stomach secretly. If I wait, itll come back. It won't hurt; somehow I know its not here to hurt me. What then? What? What? You know how many baseball games we played this year, last year, year before? said Tom, apropos of nothing. Douglas watched Toms quickly moving lips. Wrote it down! One thousand five hundred sixty-eight games! How many times I brushed my teeth in ten years? Six thousand! Washing my hands: fifteen thousand. Slept: four thousand some-odd times, not counting naps. Ate six hundred peaches, eight hundred apples. Pears: two hundred. I'm not hot for pears. Name a thing, I got the statistics! Runs to the billion millions, things I done, add em up, in ten years. Now, thought Douglas, its coming close again. Why? Tom talking? But why Tom? Tom chatting along, mouth crammed with sandwich, Dad there, alert as a mountain cat on the log, and Tom letting the words rise like quick soda bubbles in his mouth: Books I read: four hundred. Matinees I seen: forty Buck Joneses, thirty Jack Hoxies, forty-five Tom Mixes, thirty-nine Hoot Gibsons, one hundred and ninety-two single and separate Felix-the-Cat cartoons, ten Douglas Fairbankses, eight repeats on Lon Chaney in The Phantom of the Opera, four Milton Sillses, and one Adolph Menjou thing about love where I spent ninety hours in the theater toilet waiting for the mush to be over so I could see The Cat and the Canary or The Bat, where everybody held onto everybody else and screamed for two hours without letting go. During that time I figure four hundred lollipops, three hundred Tootsie Rolls, seven hundred ice-cream cones... Tom rolled quietly along his way for another five minutes and then Dad said, How many berries you picked so far, Tom? Two hundred fifty-six on the nose! said Tom instantly. Dad laughed and lunch was over and they moved again into the shadows to find fox grapes and the tiny wild strawberries, bent down, all three of them, hands coming and going, the pails getting heavy, and Douglas holding his breath, thinking, Yes, yes, its near again! Breathing on my neck, almost! don't look! Work. Just pick, fill up the pail. If you look you'll scare it off. don't lose it this time! But how do you bring it around here where you can see it, stare it right in the eye? |
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How? How? Got a snowflake in a matchbox, said Tom, smiling at the wine-glove on his hand. Shut up! Douglas wanted to yell. But no, the yell would scare the echoes, and run the Thing away! And, wait... the more Tom talked, the closer the great Thing came, it wasnt scared of Tom, Tom drew it with his breath, Tom was part of it! Last February, said Tom, and chuckled. Held a matchbox up in a snowstorm, let one old snowflake fall in, shut it up, ran inside the house, stashed it in the icebox! Close, very close. Douglas stared at Toms flickering lips. He wanted to jump around, for he felt a vast tidal wave lift up behind the forest. In an instant it would smash down, crush them forever... Yes, sir, mused Tom, picking grapes, I'm the only guy in all Illinois whos got a snowflake in summer. Precious as diamonds, by gosh. Tomorrow I'll open it. Doug, you can look, too... Any other day Douglas might have snorted, struck out, denied it all. But now, with the great Thing rushing near, falling down in the clear air above him, he could only nod, eyes shut. Tom, puzzled, stopped picking berries and turned to stare over at his brother. Douglas, hunched over, was an ideal target. Tom leaped, yelling, landed. They fell, thrashed, and rolled. No! Douglas squeezed his mind shut. No! But suddenly... Yes, its all right! Yes! The tangle, the contact of bodies, the falling tumble had not scared off the tidal sea that crashed now, flooding and washing them along the shore of grass deep through the forest. Knuckles struck his mouth. He tasted rusty warm blood, grabbed Tom hard, held him tight, and so in silence they lay, hearts churning, nostrils hissing. And at last, slowly, afraid he would find nothing, Douglas opened one eye. And everything, absolutely everything, was there. The world, like a great iris of an even more gigantic eye, which has also just opened and stretched out to encompass everything, stared back at him. And he knew what it was that had leaped upon him to stay and would not run away now. I'm alive, he thought. His fingers trembled, bright with blood, like the bits of a strange flag now found and before unseen, and him wondering what country and what allegiance he owed to it. Holding Tom, but not knowing him there, he touched his free hand to that blood as if it could be peeled away, held up, turned over. Then he let go of Tom and lay on his back with his hand up in the sky and he was a head from which his eyes peered like sentinels through the portcullis of a strange castle out along a bridge, his arm, to those fingers where the bright pennant of blood quivered in the light. You all right, Doug? asked Tom. His voice was at the bottom of a green moss well somewhere underwater, secret, removed. The grass whispered under his body. He put his arm down, feeling the sheath of fuzz on it, and, far away, below, his toes creaking in his shoes. The wind sighed over his shelled ears. The world slipped bright over the glassy round of his eyeballs like images sparked in a crystal sphere. Flowers were sun and fiery spots of sky strewn through the woodland. Birds flickered like skipped stones across the vast inverted pond of heaven. His breath raked over his teeth, going in ice, coming out fire. Insects shocked the air with electric clearness. Ten thousand individual hairs grew a millionth of an inch on his head. He heard the twin hearts beating in each ear, the third heart beating in his throat, the two hearts throbbing his wrists, the real heart pounding his chest. |
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The million pores on his body opened. I'm really alive! he thought. I never knew it before, or if I did I don't remember! He yelled it loud but silent, a dozen times! Think of it, think of it! Twelve years old and only now! Now discovering this rare timepiece, this clock gold-bright and guaranteed to run threescore and ten, left under a tree and found while wrestling. Doug, you okay? Douglas yelled, grabbed Tom, and rolled. Doug, you're crazy! Crazy! They spilled downhill, the sun in their mouths, in their eyes like shattered lemon glass, gasping like trout thrown out on a bank, laughing till they cried. Doug, you're not mad? No, no, no, no, no! Douglas, eyes shut, saw spotted leopards pad in the dark. Tom! Then quieter. Tom... does everyone in the world... know he's alive? Sure. Heck, yes! The leopards trotted soundlessly off through darker lands where eyeballs could not turn to follow. I hope they do, whispered Douglas. Oh, I sure hope they know. Douglas opened his eyes. Dad was standing high above him there in the green-leaved sky, laughing, hands on hips. Their eyes met. Douglas quickened. Dad knows, he thought. It was all planned. He brought us here on purpose, so this could happen to me! he's in on it, he knows it all. And now he knows that I know. A hand came down and seized him through the air. Swayed on his feet with Tom and Dad, still bruised and rumpled, puzzled and awed, Douglas held his strange-boned elbows tenderly and licked the fine cut lip with satisfaction. Then he looked at Dad and Tom. I'll carry all the pails, he said. This once, let me haul everything. They handed over the pails with quizzical smiles. He stood swaying slightly, the forest collected, full-weighted and heavy with syrup, clenched hard in his down-slung hands. I want to feel all there is to feel, he thought. Let me feel tired, now, let me feel tired. I mustn't forget, I'm alive, I know I'm alive, T mustn't forget it tonight or tomorrow or the day after that. The bees followed and the smell of fox grapes and yellow summer followed as he walked heavy-laden and half drunk, his fingers wonderously callused, arms numb, feet stumbling so his father caught his shoulder. No, mumbled Douglas, I'm all right. I'm fine... It took half an hour for the sense of the grass, the roots, the stones, the bark of the messy log, to fade from where they had patterned his arms and legs and back. While he pondered this, let it slip, slide, dissolve away, his brother and his quiet father followed behind, allowing him to pathfind the forest alone out toward that incredible highway which would take them back to the town... The town, then, later in the day. And yet another harvest. Grandfather stood on the wide front porch like a captain surveying the vast unmotioned calms of a season dead ahead. He questioned the wind and the untouchable sky and the lawn on which stood Douglas and Tom to question only him. Grandpa, are they ready? Now? Grandfather pinched his chin. Five hundred, a thousand, two thousand easy. Yes, yes, a good supply. Pick em easy, pick em all. A dime for every sack delivered to the press! Hey! The boys bent, smiling. They picked the golden flowers. The flowers that flooded the world, dripped off lawns onto brick streets, tapped softly at crystal cellar windows and agitated themselves so that on all sides lay the dazzle and glitter of molten sun. Every year, said Grandfather. They run amuck; I let them. Pride of lions in the yard. Stare, and they burn a hole in your retina. |
| 463 |
It was this then, the mystery of man seizing from the land and the land seizing back, year after year, that drew Douglas, knowing the towns never really won, they merely existed in calm peril, fully accoutered with lawn mower, bug spray and hedge shears, swimming steadily as long as civilization said to swim, but each house ready to sink in green tides, buried forever, when the last man ceased and his trowels and mowers shattered to cereal flakes of rust. The town. The wideness. The houses. The ravine. Douglas blinked back and forth. But how to relate the two, make sense of the interchange when... His eyes moved down to the ground. The first rite of summer, the dandelion picking, the starting of the wine, was over. Now the second rite waited for him to make the motions, but he stood very still. Doug... come on... Doug... ! The running boys faded. I'm alive, said Douglas. But whats the use? you're more alive than me. How come? How come? And standing alone, he knew the answer, staring down at his motionless feet... Late that night, going home from the show with his mother and father and his brother Tom, Douglas saw the tennis shoes in the bright store window. He glanced quickly away, but his ankles were seized, his feet suspended, then rushed. The earth spun; the shop awnings slammed their canvas wings overhead with the thrust of his body running. His mother and father and brother walked quietly on both sides of him. Douglas walked backward, watching the tennis shoes in the midnight window left behind. It was a nice movie, said Mother. Douglas murmured, It was... It was June and long past time for buying the special shoes that were quiet as a summer rain falling on the walks. June and the earth full of raw power and everything everywhere in motion. The grass was still pouring in from the country, surrounding the sidewalks, stranding the houses. Any moment the town would capsize, go down and leave not a stir in the clover and weeds. And here Douglas stood, trapped on the dead cement and the red-brick streets, hardly able to move. Dad! He blurted it out. Back there in that window, those Cream-Sponge Para Litefoot Shoes... His father didn't even turn. Suppose you tell me why you need a new pair of sneakers. Can you do that? Well... It was because they felt the way it feels every summer when you take off your shoes for the first time and run in the grass. They felt like it feels sticking your feet out of the hot covers in wintertime to let the cold wind from the open window blow on them suddenly and you let them stay out a long time until you pull them back in under the covers again to feel them, like packed snow. The tennis shoes felt like it always feels the first time every year wading in the slow waters of the creek and seeing your feet below, half an inch further downstream, with refraction, than the real part of you above water. Dad, said Douglas, its hard to explain. Somehow the people who made tennis shoes knew what boys needed and wanted. They put marshmallows and coiled springs in the soles and they wove the rest out of grasses bleached and fired in the wilderness. Somewhere deep in the soft loam of the shoes the thin hard sinews of the buck deer were hidden. The people that made the shoes must have watched a lot of winds blow the trees and a lot of rivers going down to the lakes. Whatever it was, it was in the shoes, and it was summer. Douglas tried to get all this in words. Yes, said Father, but whats wrong with last years sneakers? |
| 464 |
Why cant you dig them out of the closet? Well, he felt sorry for boys who lived in California where they wore tennis shoes all year and never knew what it was to get winter off your feet, peel off the iron leather shoes all full of snow and rain and run barefoot for a day and then lace on the first new tennis shoes of the season, which was better than barefoot. The magic was always in the new pair of shoes. The magic might die by the first of September, but now in late June there was still plenty of magic, and shoes like these could jump you over trees and rivers and houses. And if you wanted, they could jump you over fences and sidewalks and dogs. don't you see? said Douglas. I just cant use last years pair. For last years pair were dead inside. They had been fine when he started them out, last year. But by the end of summer, every year, you always found out, you always knew, you couldn't really jump over rivers and trees and houses in them, and they were dead. But this was a new year, and he felt that this time, with this new pair of shoes, he could do anything, anything at all. They walked up on the steps to their house. Save your money, said Dad. In five or six weeks Summerll be over! Lights out, with Tom asleep, Douglas lay watching his feet, far away down there at the end of the bed in the moonlight, free of the heavy iron shoes, the big chunks of winter fallen away from them. Reasons. I've got to think of reasons for the shoes. Well, as anyone knew, the hills around town were wild with friends putting cows to riot, playing barometer to the atmospheric changes, taking sun, peeling like calendars each day to take more sun. To catch those friends, you must run much faster than foxes or squirrels. As for the town, it steamed with enemies grown irritable with heat, so remembering every winter argument and insult. Find friends, ditch enemies! That was the Cream-Sponge Para Litefoot motto. Does the world run too fast? Want to catch up? Want to be alert, stay alert? Litefoot, then! Litefoot! He held his coin bank up and heard the faint small tinkling, the airy weight of money there. Whatever you want, he thought, you got to make your own way. During the night now, lets find that path through the forest... Downtown, the store lights went out, one by one. A wind blew in the window. It was like a river going downstream and his feet wanting to go with it. In his dreams he heard a rabbit running running running in the deep warm grass. Old Mr. Sanderson moved through his shoe store as the proprietor of a pet shop must move through his shop where are kenneled animals from everywhere in the world, touching each one briefly along the way. Mr. Sanderson brushed his hands over the shoes in the window, and some of them were like cats to him and some were like dogs; he touched each pair with concern, adjusting laces, fixing tongues. Then he stood in the exact center of the carpet and looked around, nodding. There was a sound of growing thunder. One moment, the door to Sandersons Shoe Emporium was empty. The next, Douglas Spaulding stood clumsily there, staring down at his leather shoes as if these heavy things could not be pulled up out of the cement. The thunder had stopped when his shoes stopped. Now, with painful slowness, daring to look only at the money in his cupped hand, Douglas moved out of the bright sunlight of Saturday noon. He made careful stacks of nickels, dimes, and quarters on the counter, like someone playing chess and worried if the next move carried him out into sun or deep into shadow. |
| 465 |
Always like to start sitting early in the season, said Grandpa, before the mosquitoes thicken. About seven oclock you could hear the chairs scraping back from the tables, someone experimenting with a yellow-toothed piano, if you stood outside the dining-room window and listened. Matches being struck, the first dishes bubbling in the suds and tinkling on the wall racks, somewhere, faintly, a phonograph playing. And then as the evening changed the hour, at house after house on the twilight streets, under the immense oaks and elms, on shady porches, people would begin to appear, like those figures who tell good or bad weather in rain-or-shine clocks. Uncle Bert, perhaps Grandfather, then Father, and some of the cousins; the men all coming out first into the syrupy evening, blowing smoke, leaving the womens voices behind in the cooling-warm kitchen to set their universe aright. Then the first male voices under the porch brim, the feet up, the boys fringed on the worn steps or wooden rails where sometime during the evening something, a boy or a geranium pot, would fall off. At last, like ghosts hovering momentarily behind the door screen, Grandma, Great-grandma, and Mother would appear, and the men would shift, move, and offer seats. The women carried varieties of fans with them, folded newspapers, bamboo whisks, or perfumed kerchiefs, to start the air moving about their faces as they talked. What they talked of all evening long, no one remembered next day. It wasnt important to anyone what the adults talked about; it was only important that the sounds came and went over the delicate ferns that bordered the porch on three sides; it was only important that the darkness filled the town like black water being poured over the houses, and that the cigars glowed and that the conversations went on, and on. The female gossip moved out, disturbing the first mosquitoes so they danced in frenzies on the air. The male voices invaded the old house timbers; if you closed your eyes and put your head down against the floor boards you could hear the mens voices rumbling like a distant, political earthquake, constant, unceasing, rising or falling a pitch. Douglas sprawled back on the dry porch planks, completely contented and reassured by these voices, which would speak on through eternity, flow in a stream of murmurings over his body, over his closed eyelids, into his drowsy ears, for all time. The rocking chairs sounded like crickets, the crickets sounded like rocking chairs, and the moss-covered rain barrel by the dining-room window produced another generation of mosquitoes to provide a topic of conversation through endless summers ahead. Sitting on the summer-night porch was so good, so easy and so reassuring that it could never be done away with. These were rituals that were right and lasting; the lighting of pipes, the pale hands that moved knitting needles in the dimness, the eating of foil-wrapped, chilled Eskimo Pies, the coming and going of all the people. For at some time or other during the evening, everyone visited here; the neighbors down the way, the people across the street; Miss Fern and Miss Roberta humming by in their electric runabout, giving Tom or Douglas a ride around the block and then coming up to sit down and fan away the fever in their cheeks; or Mr. Jonas, the junkman, having left his horse and wagon hidden in the alley, and ripe t, bursting with words, would come up the steps looking as fresh as if his talk had never been said before, and somehow it never had. |
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Papa! His six children, Saul, Marshall, Joseph, Rebecca, Ruth, Naomi, all ages from five to fifteen, came rushing across the lawn to take his bike, each touching him at once. We waited. We got ice cream! Moving toward the porch, he could feel his wifes smile there in the dark. Five minutes passed in comfortable eating silence, then, holding a spoonful of moon-colored ice cream up as if it were the whole secret of the universe to be tasted carefully he said, Lena? What would you think if I tried to invent a Happiness Machine? Somethings wrong? she asked quickly. Grandfather walked Douglas and Tom home. Halfway there, Charlie Woodman and John Huff and some other boys rushed by like a swarm of meteors, their gravity so huge they pulled Douglas away from Grandfather and Tom and swept him off toward the ravine. don't get lost, son! I wont... I wont... The boys plunged into darkness. Tom and Grandfather walked the rest of the way in silence, except when they turned in at home and Tom said, boy, a Happiness Machinehot diggety! don't hold your breath, said Grandpa. The courthouse clock struck eight. The courthouse clock struck nine and it was getting late and it was really night on this small street in a small town in a big state on a large continent on a planet earth hurtling down the pit of space toward nowhere or somewhere and Tom feeling every mile of the long drop. He sat by the front-door screen looking out at that rushing blackness that looked very innocent as if it was holding still. Only when you closed your eyes and lay down could you feel the world spinning under your bed and hollowing your ears with a black sea that came in and broke on cliffs that werent there. There was a smell of rain. Mother was ironing and sprinkling water from a corked ketchup bottle over the crackling dry clothes behind Tom. One store was still open about a block awayMrs. Singers. Finally, just before it was time for Mrs. Singer to close her store, Mother relented and told Tom, Run get a pint of ice cream and be sure she packs it tight. He asked if he could get a scoop of chocolate on top, because he didn't like vanilla, and Mother agreed. He clutched the money and ran barefooted over the warm evening cement sidewalk, under the apple and oak trees, toward the store. The town was so quiet and far off you could hear only the crickets sounding in the spaces beyond the hot indigo trees that hold back the stars. His bare feet slapped the pavement. He crossed the street and found Mrs. Singer moving ponderously about her store, singing Yiddish melodies. Pint ice cream? she said. Chocolate on top? Yes! He watched her fumble the metal top off the ice-cream freezer and manipulate the scoop, packing the cardboard pint chock-full with chocolate on top, yes! He gave the money, received the chill, icy pack, and rubbing it across his brow and cheek, laughing, thumped barefootedly homeward. Behind him the lights of the lonely little store blinked out and there was only a street light shimmering on the corner, and the whole city seemed to be going to sleep. Opening the screen door, he found Mom still ironing. She looked hot and irritated but she smiled just the same. When will Dad be home from lodge meeting? he asked. About eleven or eleven-thirty, Mother replied. She took the ice cream to the kitchen, divided it. Giving him his special portion of chocolate, she dished out some for herself and the rest was put away, for Douglas and your father when they come. They sat enjoying the ice cream, wrapped at the core of the deep quiet summer night. |
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His mother and himself and the night all around their small house on the small street. He licked each spoonful of ice cream thoroughly before digging for another, and Mom put her ironing board away and the hot iron in its open case cooling, and she sat in the armchair by the phonograph, eating her dessert and saying, My land, it was a hot day today. Earth soaks up all the heat and lets it out at night. Itll be soggy sleeping. They both sat listening to the night, pressed down by every window and door and complete silence because the radio needed a new battery, and they had played all the Knickerbocker Quartet records and Al Jolson and Two Black Crows records to exhaustion; so Tom just sat on the hardwood floor and looked out into the dark dark dark, pressing his nose against the screen until the flesh of its tip was molded into small dark squares. I wonder where Doug is? Its almost nine-thirty. Hell be here, Tom said, knowing very well that Douglas would be. He followed Mom out to wash the dishes. Each sound, each rattle of spoon or dish was amplified in the baked evening. Silently they went to the living room, removed the couch cushions and, together, yanked it open and extended it down into the double bed it secretly was. Mother made the bed, punching pillows neatly to flump them up for their heads. Then, as he was unbuttoning his shirt, she said, Wait awhile, Tom. Why? Because I say so. You look funny, Mom. Mom sat down a moment, then stood up, went to the door and called. He listened to her calling and calling, Douglas, Douglas, oh Doug! Douglasssssss! over and over. Her calling floated out into the summer warm dark and never came back. The echoes paid no attention. Douglas. Douglas. Douglas. Douglas! And as he sat on the floor, a coldness that was not ice cream and not winter, and not part of summers heat, went through Tom. He noticed Moms eyes sliding, blinking; the way she stood undecided and was nervous. All of these things. She opened the screen door. Stepping out into the night, she walked down the steps and down the front sidewalk under the lilac bush. He listened to her moving feet. She called again. Silence. She called twice more. Tom sat in the room. Any moment now, Douglas would answer from down the long long narrow street, All right, Mom! All right, Mother! Hey! But he didn't answer. And for two minutes Tom sat looking at the made-up bed, the silent radio, the silent phonograph, at the chandelier with the crystal bobbins gleaming quietly, at the rug with the scarlet and purple curlicues on it. He stubbed his toe on the bed purposely to see if it hurt. It did. Whining, the screen door opened and Mother said, Come on, Tom. Well take a walk. Where to? Just down the block. Come on. He took her hand. Together they walked down St. James Street. Underfoot the concrete was still warm, and the crickets were sounding louder against the darkening dark. They reached a corner, turned, and walked toward the West Ravine. Off somewhere a car floated by, flashing its lights in the distance. There was such a complete lack of life, light, and activity. Here and there, back off from where they were walking, faint squares of light glowed where people were still up. But most of the houses, darkened, were sleeping already, and there were a few lightless places where the occupants of a dwelling sat talking low night talk on their front porches. You heard a porch swing squeaking as you walked by. I wish your father was home, said Mother. Her large hand squeezed around his small one. |
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Even if they were within five hundred yards of him now, and help certainly was, in three seconds a dark tide could rise to take all ten years from him and The essential impact of lifes loneliness crushed his beginning-to-tremble body. Mother was alone, too. She could not look to the sanctity of marriage, the protection of her familys love, she could not look to the United States Constitution or the City Police, she could not look anywhere, in this very instant, save into her heart, and there she would find nothing but uncontrollable repugnance and a will to fear. In this instant it was an individual problem seeking an individual solution. He must accept being alone and work on from there. He swallowed hard, clung to her. Oh, Lord, don't let her die, please, he thought. don't do anything to us. Father will be coming home from lodge meeting in an hour and if the house is empty Mother advanced down the path into the primeval jungle. His voice trembled. Mom, Dougs all right. Dougs all right. he's all right. Dougs all right! Mothers voice was strained, high. He always comes through here. I tell him not to, but those darned kids, they come through here anyway. Some night hell come through and never come out again Never come out again. That could mean anything. Tramps. Criminals. Darkness. Accident. Most of all death! Alone in the universe. There were a million small towns like this all over the world. Each as dark, as lonely, each as removed, as full of shuddering and wonder. The reedy playing of minor-key violins was the small towns music, with no lights, but many shadows. Oh, the vast swelling loneliness of them. The secret damp ravines of them. Life was a horror lived in them at night, when at all sides sanity, marriage, children, happiness, were threatened by an ogre called Death. Mother raised her voice into the dark. Doug! Douglas! Suddenly both of them realized something was wrong. The crickets had stopped chirping. Silence was complete. Never in his life a silence like this one. One so utterly complete. Why should the crickets cease? Why? What reason? Theyd never stopped ever before. Not ever. Unless. Unless Something was going to happen. It was as if the whole ravine was tensing, bunching together its black fibers, drawing in power from sleeping countrysides all about, for miles and miles. From dew-sodden forest and dells and rolling hills where dogs tilted heads to moons, from all around the great silence was sucked into one center, and they were the core of it. In ten seconds now, something would happen, something would happen. The crickets kept their truce, the stars were so low he could almost brush the tinsel. There were swarms of them, hot and sharp. Growing, growing, the silence. Growing, growing, the tenseness. Oh, it was so dark, so far away from everything. Oh, God! And then, way way off across the ravine: Okay, Mom! Coming, Mother! And again: Hi, Mom! Coming, Mom! And then the quick scuttering of tennis shoes padding down through the pit of the ravine as three kids came dashing, giggling. His brother Douglas, Chuck Woodman, and John Huff. Running, giggling... The stars sucked up like the stung antennae of ten million snails. The crickets sang! The darkness pulled back, startled, shocked, angry. Pulled back, losing its appetite at being so rudely interrupted as it prepared to feed. As the dark retreated like a wave on the shore, three children piled out of it, laughing. Hi, Mom! Hi, Tom! Hey! It smelled like Douglas, all right. |
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Sweat and grass and the odor of trees and branches and the creek about him. Young man, you're going to get a licking, declared Mother. She put away her fear instantly. Tom knew she would never tell anyone of it, ever. It would be in her heart, though, for all time, as it was in his heart for all time. They walked home to bed in the late summer night. He was glad Douglas was alive. Very glad. For a moment there he had thought Far off in the dim moonlit country, over a viaduct and down a valley, a train rushed along whistling like a lost metal thing, nameless and running. Tom went to bed shivering, beside his brother, listening to that train whistle, and thinking of a cousin who lived way out in the country where that train ran now; a cousin who died of pneumonia late at night years and years ago He smelled the sweat of Doug beside him. It was magic. Tom stopped trembling. Only two things I know for sure, Doug, he whispered. What? Nighttimes awful darkis one. Whats the other? The ravine at night don't belong in Mr. Auffmanns Happiness Machine, if he ever builds it. Douglas considered this awhile. You can say that again. They stopped talking. Listening, suddenly they heard footsteps coming down the street, under the trees, outside the house now, on the sidewalk. From her bed Mother called quietly, that's your father. It was. Late at night on the bent parch Leo Auffmann wrote a list he could not see in the dark, exclaiming, Ah! or, that's another! when he hit upon a fine component. Then the front-door screen made a moth sound, tapping. Lena? he whispered. She sat down next to him on the swing, in her nightgown, not slim the way girls get when they are not loved at seventeen, not fat the way women get when they are not loved at fifty, but absolutely right, a roundness, a firmness, the way women are at any age, he thought, when there is no question. She was miraculous. Her body, like his, was always thinking for her, but in a different way, shaping the children, or moving ahead of him into any room to change the atmosphere there to fit any particular mood he was in. There seemed no long periods of thought for her; thinking and doing moved from her head to her hand and back in a natural and gentle circuiting he could not and cared not to blueprint. That machine, she said at last, we don't need it. No, he said, but sometimes you got to build for others. I been figuring, what to put in. Motion pictures? Radios? Stereoscopic viewers? All those in one place so any man can run his hand over it and smile and say, Yes, sir, that's happiness. Yes, he thought, to make a contraption that in spite of wet feet, sinus trouble, rumpled beds, and those three-in-the-morning hours when monsters ate your soul, would manufacture happiness, like that magic salt mill that, thrown in the ocean, made salt forever and turned the sea to brine. Who wouldn't sweat his soul out through his pores to invent a machine like that? he asked the world, he asked the town, he asked his wife! In the porch swing beside him, Lenas uneasy silence was an opinion. Silent now, too, head back, he listened to the elm leaves above hissing in the wind. don't forget, he told himself, that sound, too, must be in the machine. A minute later the porch swing, the porch, stood empty in the dark. Grandfather smiled in his sleep. Feeling the smile and wondering why it was there, he awoke. He lay quietly listening, and the smile was explained. For he heard a sound which was far more important than birds or the rustle of new leaves. |
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Once each year he woke this way and lay waiting for the sound which meant that summer had officially begun. And it began on a morning such as this when a boarder, a nephew, a cousin, a son or a grandson came out on the lawn below and moved in consecutively smaller quadrangles north and east and south and west with a clatter of rotating metal through the sweet summer grass. Clover blossoms, the few unharvested dandelion fires, ante, sticks, pebbles, remnants of last years July Fourth squibs and punks, but predominantly clear green, a fount leaped up from the chattering mower. A cool soft fount; Grandfather imagined it tickling his legs, spraying his warm face, filling his nostrils with the timeless scent of a new season begun, with the promise that, yes, well all live another twelve months. God bless the lawn mower, he thought. Who was the fool who made January first New Years Day No, they should set a man to watch the grasses across a million Illinois, Ohio, and Iowa lawns, and on that morning when it was long enough for cutting, instead of rachets and hems and yelling, there should be a great swelling symphony of lawn mowers reaping fresh grass upon the prairie lands. Instead of confetti and serpentine, people should throw grass spray at each other on the one day each year that really represents Beginning! He snorted at his own lengthy discussion of the affair, went to the window and leaned out into the mellow sun shine, and sure enough, there was a boarder, a young newspaperman named Forrester, just finishing a row. Morning, Mr. Spaulding! Give em hell, Bill! cried Grandpa heartily, and soon downstairs eating Grandmas breakfast, with the window open so the rattling buzz of the lawn mower lolled about his eating. It gives you confidence, Grandpa said. That lawn mower. Listen to it! won't be using the lawn mower much longer. Grandma set down a stack of wheat cakes. They got a new kind of grass Bill Forresters putting in this morning, never needs cutting. don't know what they call it, but it just grows so long and no longer. Grandpa stared at the woman. you're finding a poor! way to joke with me. Go look for yourself. Lands sake, said Grandma, it was Bill Forresters idea. The new grass is waiting in little flats by the side of the house. You just dig small holes here and there and put the new grass in spots. By the end of the year the new grass kills off the old, and you sell your lawn mower. Grandpa was up from his chair, through the hall, and out the front door in ten seconds. Bill Forrester left his machine and came over, smiling, squinting in the sun. that's right, he said. Bought the grass yesterday. Thought, while I'm on vacation I'd just plant it for you. Why wasnt I consulted about this? Its my lawn! cried Grandfather. Thought youd appreciate it, Mr. Spaulding. Well, I don't think I do appreciate it. Lets see this confounded grass of yours. They stood by the little square pads of new grass. Grandpa toed at it with one end of his shoe suspiciously. Looks like plain old grass to me. You sure some horse trader didn't catch you early in the morning when you werent fully awake? I've seen the stuff growing in California. Only so high and no higher. If it survives our climate itll save us getting out here next year, once a week, to keep the darned stuff trimmed. that's the trouble with your generation, said Grandpa. Bill, I'm ashamed of you, you a newspaperman All the things in life that were put here to savor, you eliminate. Save time, save work, you say. |
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Bill bent to pick up a flat. Here I go to the ravine. you're a good, understanding young man, and will make a brilliant and sensitive reporter, said Grandfather, helping him. This I predict! The morning passed, noon came on, Grandpa retired after lunch, read a little Whittier, and slept well on through the day. When he awoke at three the sun was streaming through the windows, bright and fresh. He lay in bed and was startled to hear the old, the familiar, the memorable sound. Why, he said, someones using the lawn mower! But the lawn was just cut this morning! He listened again. And yes, there it was, the endless droning chatter up and down, up and down. He leaned out the window and gaped. Why, its Bill. Bill Forrester, you there! Has the sun got you? you're cutting the lawn again! Bill looked up, smiled a white smile, and waved. I know! I think I missed a few spots! And while Grandpa lay in bed for the next five minutes, smiling and at ease, Bill Forrester cut the lawn north, then west, then south, and finally, in a great green spraying fountain, toward the east. On Sunday morning Leo Auffmann moved slowly through his garage, expecting some wood, a curl of wire, a hammer or wrench to leap up crying, Start here! But nothing leaped, nothing cried for a beginning. Should a Happiness Machine, he wondered, be something you can carry in your pocket? Or, he went on, should it be something that carries you in its pocket? One thing I absolutely know, he said aloud. It should be bright! He set a can of orange paint in the center of the workbench, picked up a dictionary, and wandered into the house. Lena? He glanced at the dictionary. Are you pleased, contented, joyful, delighted? Do you feel Lucky, fortunate? Are things clever and fitting, successful and suitable for you? Lena stopped slicing vegetables and closed her eyes. Read me the list again, please, she said. He shut the book. What have I done, you got to stop and think an hour before you can tell me. All I ask is a simple yes or no! you're not contented, delighted, joyful? Cows are contented, babies and old people in second childhood are delighted, God help them, she said. As for joyful, Lee? Look how I laugh scrubbing out the sink... He peered closely at her and his face relaxed. Lena, its true. A man doesn't appreciate. Next month, maybe, well get away. I'm not complaining! she cried. I'm not the one comes in with a list saying, stick out your tongue. Lee, do you ask what makes your heart beat all night? No! Next will you ask, Whats marriage? Who knows, Lee? don't ask. A man who thinks like that, how it runs, how things work, falls off the trapeze in the circus, chokes wondering how the muscles work in the throat. Eat, sleep, breathe, Lee, and stop staring at me like I'm something new in the house! Lena Auffmann froze. She sniffed the air. Oh, my God, look what you done! She yanked the oven door open. A great cloud of smoke poured through the kitchen. Happiness! she wailed. And for the first time in six months we have a fight! Happiness, and for the first time in twenty years its not bread, its charcoal for supper! When the smoke cleared, Leo Auffmann was gone. The fearful clangor, the collision of man and inspiration, the flinging about of metal, lumber, hammer, nails, T square, screwdriver, continued for many days. On occasion, defeated, Leo Auffmann loitered out through the streets, nervous, apprehensive, jerking his head at the slightest sound of distant laughter, listened to childrens jokes, watching what made them smile. |
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At night he sat on neighbors crowded porches, listening to the old folks weigh and balance life, and at each explosion of merriment Leo Auffmann quickened like a general who has seen the forces of darkness routed and whose strategy has been reaffirmed. On his way home he felt triumphant until he was in his garage with the dead tools and the inanimate lumber. Then his bright face fell away in a pale funk, and to cover his sense of failure he banged and crashed the parts of his machine about as if they really did make sense. At last it began to shape itself and at the end of the ten days and nights, trembling with fatigue, self-dedicated, half starved, fumbling and looking as if he had been riven by lightning Leo Auffmann wandered into his house. The children, who had been screaming horribly at each other, fell silent, as if the Red Death had entered at the chiming of the clock. The Happiness Machine, husked Leo Auffmann, is ready. Lee Auffmann, said his wife, has lost fifteen pounds. He hasnt talked to his children in two weeks, they are nervous, they fight, listen! His wife is nervous, she's gained ten pounds, shell need new clothes, look! Surethe machine is ready. But happy? Who can say? Lee, leave off with the clockyou're building. you'll never find a cuckoo big enough to go in it! Man was not made to tamper with such things. Its not against God, no, but it sure looks like its against Leo Auffmann. Another week of this and well bury him in his machine! But Leo Auffmann was too busy noticing that the room was falling swiftly up. How interesting, he thought, lying on the floor. Darkness closed in a great wink on him as someone screamed something about that Happiness Machine, three times. The first thing he noticed the next morning was dozens of birds fluttering around in the air stirring up ripples like colored stones thrown into an incredibly clear stream, gonging the tin roof of the garage softly. A pack of multibred dogs pawfooted one by one into the yard to peer and whine gently through the garage door; four boys, two girls, and some men hesitated in the driveway and then edged along under the cherry trees. Leo Auffmann, listening, knew what it was that had reached out and called them all into the yard. The sound of the Happiness Machine. It was the sort of sound that might be heard coming from a giants kitchen on a summer day. There were all kinds of hummings, low and high, steady and then changing. Incredible foods were being baked there by a host of whirring golden bees as big as teacups. The giantess herself, humming contentedly under her breath, might glide to the door, as vast as all summer, her face a huge peach-colored moon gazing calmly out upon smiling dogs, corn-haired boys and flour-haired old men. Wait, said Leo Auffmann out loud. I didn't turn the machine on this morning! Saul! Saul, standing in the yard below, looked up. Saul, did you turn it on? You told me to warm it up half an hour ago! All right, Saul, I forgot. I'm not awake. He fell back in bed. His wife, bringing his breakfast up, paused by the window, looking down at the garage. Tell me, she said quietly. If that machine is like you say, has it got an answer to making babies in it somewhere? Can that machine make seventy-year-old people twenty? Also, how does death look when you hide in there with all that happiness? Hide! If you died from overwork, what should I do today, climb in that big box down there and be happy? Also tell me, Lee, how is our life? You know how our house is. |
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Seven in the morning, breakfast, the kids; all of you gone by eight thirty and its just me and washing and me and cooking and socks to be darned, weeds to be dug, or I run to the store or polish silver. Whos complaining? I'm just reminding you how the house is put together, Lee, whats in it! So now answer: How do you get all those things I said in one machine? that's not how its built! I'm sorry. I got no time to look, then. And she kissed his cheek and went from the room and he lay smelling the wind that blew from the hidden machine below, rich with the odor of those roasted chestnuts that sold in the autumn streets of a Paris he had never known... A cat moved unseen among the hypnotized dogs and boys to purr against the garage door, in the sound of snow-waves crumbling down a faraway and rhythmically breathing shore. Tomorrow, thought Leo Auffmann, well try the machine, all of us, together. Late that night he awoke and knew something had wakened him. Far away in another room he heard someone crying. Saul? he whispered, getting out of bed. In his room Saul wept, his head buried in his pillow. No... no... he sobbed. Over... over... Saul, you had a nightmare? Tell me about it, son. But the boy only wept. And sitting there on the boys bed, Leo Auffmann suddenly thought to look out the window. Below, the garage doors stood open. He felt the hairs rise along the back of his neck. When Saul slept again, uneasily, whimpering, his father went downstairs and out to the garage where, not breathing, he put his hand out. In the cool night the Happiness Machines metal was too hot to touch. So, he thought, Saul was here tonight. Why? Was Saul unhappy, in need of the machine? No, happy, but wanting to hold onto happiness always. Could you blame a boy wise enough to know his position who tried to keep it that way? No! And yet... Above, quite suddenly, something white was exhaled from Sauls window. Leo Auffmanns heart thundered. Then he realized the window curtain had blown out into the open night. But it had seemed as intimate and shimmering a thing as a boys soul escaping his room. And Leo Auffmann had flung up his hands as if to thwart it, push it back into the sleeping house. Cold, shivering, he moved back into the house and up to Sauls room where he seized the blowing curtain in and locked the window tight so the pale thing could not escape again. Then he sat on the bed and put his hand on Sauls back. A Tale of Two Cities? Mine. The Old Curiosity Shop? Ha, that's Leo Auffmanns all right! Great Expectations? That used to be mine. But let Great Expectations be his, now! Whats this? asked Leo Auffmann, entering. This, said his wife, is sorting out the community property! When a father scares his son at night its time to chop everything in half! Out of the way, Mr. Bleak House, Old Curiosity Shop. In all these books, no mad scientist lives like Leo Auffmann, none! you're leaving, and you haven't even tried the machine! he protested. Try it once, you'll unpack, you'll stay! Tom Swift and His Electric Annihilatorwhose is that? she asked. Must I guess? Snorting, she gave Tom Swift to Leo Auffmann. Very late in the day all the books, dishes, clothes, linens had been stacked one here, one there, four here, four there, ten here, ten there. Lena Auffmann, dizzy with counting, had to sit down. All right, she gasped. Before I go, Lee, prove you don't give nightmares to innocent sons! Silently Leo Auffmann led his wife into the twilight. She stood before the eight-foot-tall, orange-colored box. |
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Thats happiness? she said. Which button do I press to be overjoyed, grateful, contented, and much-obliged? The children had gathered now. Mama, said Saul, don't! I got to know what I'm yelling about, Saul. She got in the machine, sat down, and looked out at her husband, shaking her head. Its not me needs this, its you, a nervous wreck, shouting. Please, he said, you'll see! He shut the door. Press the button! he shouted in at his unseen wife. There was a click. The machine shivered quietly, like a huge dog dreaming in its sleep. Papa! said Saul, worried. Listen! said Leo Auffmann. At first there was nothing but the tremor of the machines own secretly moving cogs and wheels. Is Mama all right? asked Naomi. All right, she's fine! There, now... there! And inside the machine Lena Auffmann could be heard saying, Oh! and then again, Ah! in a startled voice. Look at that! said his hidden wife. Paris! and later, London! There goes Rome! The Pyramids! The Sphinx! The Sphinx, you hear, children? Leo Auffmann whispered and laughed. Perfume! cried Lena Auffmann, surprised. Somewhere a phonograph played The Blue Danube faintly. Music! I'm dancing! Only thinks she's dancing the father confided to the world. Amazing! said the unseen woman. Leo Auffmann blushed. What an understanding wife. And then inside the Happiness Machine, Lena Auffmann began to weep. The inventors smile faded. she's crying said Naomi. She cant be! She is, said Saul. She simply cant be crying! Leo Auffmann, blinking, pressed his ear to the machine. But... yes... like a baby... He could only open the door. Wait. There his wife sat, tears rolling down her cheeks. Let me finish. She cried some more. Leo Auffmann turned off the machine, stunned. Oh, its the saddest thing in the world! she wailed. I feel awful, terrible. She climbed out through the door First, there was Paris... Whats wrong with Paris? I never even thought of being in Paris in my life. But now you got me thinking: Paris! So suddenly I want to be in Paris and I know I'm not! Its almost as good, this machine. No. Sitting in there, I knew. I thought, its not real! Stop crying, Mama. She looked at him with great dark wet eyes. You had me dancing. We haven't danced in twenty years. I'll take you dancing tomorrow night! No, no! Its not important, it shouldn't be important. But your machine says its important! So I believe! Itll be all right, Lee, after I cry some more. What else? What else? The machine says, you're young. I'm not. It lies, that Sadness Machine! Sad in what way? His wife was quieter now. Lee, the mistake you made is you forgot some hour, some day, we all got to climb out of that thing and go back to dirty dishes and the beds not made. Whileyou're in that thing, sure, a sunset lasts forever almost, the air smells good, the temperature is fine. All the things you want to last, last. But outside, the children wait on lunch, the clothes need buttons. And then lets be frank, Lee, how long can you look at a sunset? Who wants a sunset to last? Who wants perfect temperature? Who wants air smelling good always? So after awhile, who would notice? Better, for a minute or two, a sunset. After that, lets have something else. People are like that, Lee. How could you forget? Did I? Sunsets we always liked because they only happen once and go away. But Lena, that's sad. No, if the sunset stayed and we got bored, that would be a real sadness. So two things you did you should never have. You made quick things go slow and stay around. |
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You brought things faraway to our backyard where they don't belong, where they just tell you, No, you'll never travel, Lena Auffmann, Paris you'll never see! Pome you'll never visit. But I always knew that, so why tell me? Better to forget and make do, Lee, make do, eh? Leo Auffmann leaned against the machine for support. He snatched his burned hand away, surprised. So now what, Lena? he said. Its not for me to say. I know only so long as this thing is here I'll want to come out, or Saul will want to come out like he did last night, and against our judgment sit in it and look at all those places so far away and every time we will cry and be no fit family for you. I don't understand, he said, how I could be so wrong. Just let me check to see what you say is true. He sat down inside the machine. You won't go away? His wife nodded. Well wait, Lee. He shut the door. In the warm darkness he hesitated, pressed the button, and was just relaxing back in color and music, when he heard someone screaming. Fire, Papa! The machines on fire! Someone hammered the door. He leaped up, bumped his head, and fell as the door gave way and the boys dragged him out. Behind him he heard a muffled explosion. The entire family was running now. Leo Auffmann turned and gasped, Saul, call the fire department! Lena Auffmann caught Saul as he ran. Saul, she said. Wait. There was a gush of flame, another muffled explosion. When the machine was burning very well indeed, Lena Auffmann nodded. All right, Saul, she said. Run call the fire department. Everybody who was anybody came to the fire. There was Grandpa Spaulding and Douglas and Tom and most of the boarders and some of the old men from across the ravine and all the children from six blocks around. And Leo Auffmanns children stood out front, proud of how fine the flames looked jumping from the garage roof. Grandfather Spaulding studied the smoke ball in the sky and said, quietly, Lee, was that it? Your Happiness Machine? Some year, said Leo Auffmann I'll figure it and tell you. Lena Auffmann, standing in the dark now, watched as the firemen ran in and out of the yard; the garage, roaring, settled upon itself. Leo, she said, it won't take a year to figure. Look around. Think. Keep quiet a little bit. Then come tell me. I'll be in the house, putting books back on shelves, and clothes back in closets, fixing supper, suppers late, look how dark. Come, children, help Mama. When the firemen and the neighbors were gone Leo Auffmann was left with grandfather Spaulding and Douglas and Tom, brooding over the smoldering ruin. He stirred his foot in the wet ashes and slowly said what he had to say. The first thing you learn in life isyou're a fool. The last thing you learn in life isyou're the same fool. In one hour, I've done a lot of thinking. I thought, Leo Auffmann is blind!... You want to see the real Happiness Machine? The one they patented a couple thousand years ago, it still runs, not good all the time, no! but it runs. Its been here all along. But the fire said Douglas. Sure, the fire, the garage! But like Lena said, it don't take a year to figure; what burned in the garage don't count! They followed him up the front-porch steps. Here, whispered Leo Auffmann, the front window. Quiet, and you'll see it. Hesitantly, Grandfather, Douglas, and Tom peered through the large windowpane. And there, in small warm pools of lamplight, you could see what Leo Auffmann wanted you to see. There sat Saul and Marshall, playing chess at the coffee table. |
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In the dining room Rebecca was laying out the silver. Naomi was cutting paper-doll dresses. Ruth was painting water colors. Joseph was running his electric train. Through the kitchen door, Lena Auffmann was sliding a pot roast from the steaming oven. Every hand, every head, every mouth made a big or little motion. You could hear their faraway voices under glass. You could hear someone singing in a high sweet voice. You could smell bread baking, too, and you knew it was real bread that would soon be covered with real butter. Everything was there and it was working. Grandfather, Douglas, and Tom turned to look at Leo Auffmann, who gazed serenely through the window, the pink light on his cheeks. Sure, he murmured. There it is. And he watched with now-gentle sorrow and now-quick delight, and at last quiet acceptance as all the bits and pieces of this house mixed, stirred, settled, poised, and ran steadily again. The Happiness Machine, he said. The Happiness Machine. A moment later he was gone. Inside, Grandfather, Douglas, and Tom saw him tinkering, making a minor adjustment here, eliminate friction there, busy among all those warm, wonderful, infinitely delicate, forever mysterious, and ever-moving parts. Then smiling, they went down the steps into the fresh summer night. Twice a year they brought the big flapping rugs oui into the yard and laid them where they looked out of place and uninhabited, on the lawn. Then Grandma and Mother came from the house with what looked to be the back rungs of those beautiful looped wire chairs downtown in the soda-fountain place. These great wire wands were handed around so they stood, Douglas, Tom, Grandma, Great-grandma, and Mother poised like a collection of witches and familiars over the duty pattens of old Armenia. Then at a signal from Great-grandma, a blink of the eyes or a gumming of the lips, the flails were raised, the harping wires banged down again and again upon the rugs. Take that! And that! said Great-grandma. Get the flies, boys, kill the cooties! Oh, you! said Grandma to her mother. They all laughed. The dust storm puffed up about them. Their laughing became choked. Showers of lint, tides of sand, golden flakes of pipe tobacco fluttered, shivered on the exploded and re-exploded air. Pausing, the boys saw the tread of their shoes and the older peoples shoes pressed a billion times in the warp and woof of this rug, now to be smoothed clean as the tide of their beating swept again and again along the oriental shore. Theres where your husband spilled that coffee! Grandma gave the rug a blow. Heres where you dropped the cream! Great-grandma whacked up a great twister of dust. Look at the scuff marks. Boys, boys! Double-Grandma, heres the ink from your pen! Pshaw! Mine was purple ink. that's common blue! Bang! Look at the path worn from the hall door here to the kitchen door. Food. that's what brings the lions to the water hole. Lets shift it, put it back the other way around. Better yet, lock the men out of the house. Make them leave their shoes outside the door. Bang, bang! They hung the rugs on the wash line now, to finish the job. Tom looked at the intricate scrolls and loops, the flowers, the mysterious figures, the shuttling patterns. Tom, don't stand there. Strike, boy! Its fun, seeing things, said Tom. Douglas glanced up suspiciously. What do you see? The whole dam town, people, houses, heres our house! Bang! Our street! Bang! That black part theres the ravine! Bang! Theres school! Bang! This funny cartoon heres you, Doug! |
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Bang! Heres Great-grandma, Grandma, Mom. Bang! How many years this rug been down? Fifteen. Fifteen years of people stomping across it; I see every shoe print, gasped Tom. Land, boy, you got a tongue, said Great-grandma. I see all the things happened in that house in all those years right here! Bang! All the past, sure, but I can see the future, too. Just squinch up my eyes and peek around at the patterns, there, to see where well be walking, running around, tomorrow. Douglas stopped swinging the beater. What else you see in the rug? Threads mostly, said Great-grandma. Not much left but the underskin. See how the manufacturer wove the thing. Right! said Tom mysteriously. Threads one way, threads another. I see it all. Dire fiends. Deadly sinners. Theres bad weather, theres good. Picnics. Banquets. Strawberry festivals. He tapped the beater from place to place portentously. that's some boardinghouse you got me running, said Grandma, glowing with exertion. Its all there, fuzzylike. Hold your head on one side, Doug, get one eye almost shut. Its better at night, of course, inside, the rug on the floor, lamplight and all. Then you get shadows all shapes, light and dark, and watch the threads running off, feel the nap, run your hand around on the fur. Smells just like a desert, I bet. All hot and sandy, like inside a mummy case, maybe. Look, that red spot, that's the Happiness Machine burning up! Catsup from somebodys sandwich, no doubt, said Mom. No, Happiness Machine, said Douglas, and was sad to see it burning there. He had been counting on Leo Auffmann to keep things in order, keep everybody smiling, keep the small gyroscope he often felt inside himself tilting toward the sun every time the earth tilted toward outer space and darkness. But no, there was Auffmanns folly, ashes and cinders. Bang! Bang! Douglas struck. Look, theres the green electric runabout! Miss Fern! Miss Roberta! said Tom. Honk, Honk! Bang! They all laughed. Theres your life-strings, Doug, running along in knots. Too many sour apples. Pickles at bedtime! Which one, where? cried Douglas, peering. This one, one year from now, this one, two years from now, and this one, three, four, five years from now! Bang! The wire beater hissed like a snake in the blind sky. And one to grow on! said Tom. He hit the rug so hard all the dust of five thousand centuries jumped from the shocked texture, paused on the air a terrible moment, and even as Douglas stood, eyes squinted to see the warp, the woof, the shivering pattern, the Armenian avalanche of dust roared soundless upon, over, down and around, burying him forever before their eyes... How it began with the children, old Mrs. Bentley never knew. She often saw them, like moths and monkeys, at the grocers, among the cabbages and hung bananas, and she smiled at them and they smiled back. Mrs. Bentley watched them making footprints in winter snow, filling their lungs with autumn smoke, shaking down blizzards of spring apple-blossoms, but felt no fear of them. As for herself, her house was in extreme good order, everything set to its station, the floors briskly swept, the foods neatly tinned, the hatpins thrust through cushions, and the drawers of her bedroom bureaus crisply filled with the paraphernalia of years. Mrs. Bentley was a saver. She saved tickets, old theater programs, bits of lace, scarves, rail transfers; all the tags and tokens of existence. I've a stack of records, she often said. Heres Caruso. That was in 1916, in New York; I was sixty and John was still alive. |
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Heres Tune Moon, 1924, I think, right after John died. That was the huge regret of her life, in a way. The one thing she had most enjoyed touching and listening to and looking at she hadn't saved. John was far out in the meadow country, dated and boxed and hidden under grasses, and nothing remained of him but his high silk hat and his cane and his good suit in the closet. So much of the rest of him had been devoured by moths. But what she could keep she had kept. Her pink-flowered dresses crushed among moth balls in vast black trunks, and cut-glass dishes from her childhoodshe had brought them all when she moved to this town five years ago. Her husband had owned rental property in a number of towns, and, like a yellow ivory chess piece, she had moved and sold one after another, until now she was here in a strange town, left with only the trunks and furniture, dark and ugly, crouched about her like the creatures of a primordial zoo. The thing about the children happened in the middle of summer. Mrs. Bentley, coming out to water the ivy upon her front porch, saw two cool-colored sprawling girls and a small boy lying on her lawn, enjoying the immense prickling of the grass. At the very moment Mrs. Bentley was smiling down upon them with her yellow mask face, around a corner like an elfin band came an ice-cream wagon. It jingled out icy melodies, as crisp and rimmed as crystal wineglasses tapped by an expert, summoning all. The children sat up, turning their heads, like sunflowers after the sun. Mrs. Bentley called, Would you like some? Here! The ice-cream wagon stopped and she exchanged money for pieces of the original Ice Age. The children thanked her with snow in their mouths, their eyes darting from her buttoned-up shoes to her white hair. don't you want a bite? said the boy. No, child. I'm old enough and cold enough; the hottest day won't thaw me, laughed Mrs. Bentley. They carried the miniature glaciers up and sat, three in a row, on the shady porch glider. I'm Alice, she's Jane, and that's Tom Spaulding. How nice. And I'm Mrs. Bentley. They called me Helen. They stared at her. don't you believe they called me Helen? said the old lady. I didn't know old ladies had first names, said Tom, blinking. Mrs. Bentley laughed dryly. You never hear them used, he means, said Jane. My dear, when you are as old as I, they won't call you Jane, either. Old age is dreadfully formal. Its always Mrs. Young People don't like to call you Helen. It seems much too flip. How old are you? asked Alice. I remember the pterodactyl. Mrs. Bentley smiled. No, but how old? Seventy-two. They gave their cold sweets an extra long suck, deliberating. that's old, said Tom. I don't feel any different now than when I was your age, said the old lady. Our age? Yes. Once I was a pretty little girl just like you, Jane, and you, Alice. They did not speak. Whats the matter? Nothing. Jane got up. Oh, you don't have to go so soon, I hope. You haven't finished eating... Is something the matter? My mother says it isn't nice to fib, said Jane. Of course it isnt. Its very bad, agreed Mrs. Bentley. And not to listen to fibs. Who was fibbing to you, Jane? Jane looked at her and then glanced nervously away. You were. I? Mrs. Bentley laughed and put her withered claw to her small bosom. About what? About your age. About being a little girl. Mrs. Bentley stiffened. But I was, many years ago, a little girl just like you. Come on, Alice, Tom. Just a moment, said Mrs. Bentley. don't you believe me? |
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I don't know, said Jane. No. But how ridiculous! Its perfectly obvious. Everyone was young once! Not you, whispered Jane, eyes down, almost to herself. Her empty ice stick had fallen in a vanilla puddle on the porch floor. But of course I was eight, nine, ten years old, like all of you. The two girls gave a short, quickly-sealed-up laugh. Mrs. Bentleys eyes glittered. Well, I cant waste a morning arguing with ten-year-olds. Needless to say, I was ten myself once and just as silly. The two girls laughed. Tom looked uneasy. you're joking with us, giggled Jane. You werent really ten ever, were you, Mrs. Bentley? You run on home! the woman cried suddenly, for she could not stand their eyes. I won't have you laughing. And your names not really Helen? Of course its Helen! Good-bye, said the two girls, giggling away across the lawn under the seas of shade, Tom followed them slowly. Thanks for the ice cream! Once I played hopscotch! Mrs. Bentley cried after them, but they were gone. Mrs Bentley spent the rest of the day slamming teakettles about, loudly preparing a meager lunch, and from time to time going to the front door, hoping to catch those insolent fiends on their laughing excursions through the late day. But if they had appeared, what could she say to them, why should she worry about them? The idea! said Mrs. Bentley to her dainty, rose-clustered teacup. No one ever doubted I was a girl before. What a silly, horrible thing to do. I don't mind being oldnot reallybut I do resent having my childhood taken away from me. She could see the children racing off under the cavernous trees with her youth in their frosty fingers, invisible as air. After supper, for no reason at all, with a senseless certainty of motion, she watched her own hands, like a pair of ghostly gloves at a seance, gather together certain items in a perfumed kerchief. Then she went to her front porch and stood there stiffly for half an hour. As suddenly as night birds the children flew by, and Mrs. Bentleys voice brought them to a fluttering rest. Yes, Mrs. Bentley? Come up on this porch! she commanded them, and the girls climbed the steps, Tom trailing after. Yes, Mrs. Bentley? They thumped the Mrs. like a bass piano chord, extra heavily, as if that were her first name. I've some treasures to show you. She opened the perfumed kerchief and peered into it as if she herself might be surprised. She drew forth a hair comb, very small and delicate, its rim twinkling with rhinestones. I wore this when I was nine, she said. Jane turned it in her hand and said, How nice. Lets see! cried Alice. And here is a tiny ring I wore when I was eight, said Mrs. Bentley. It doesn't fit my finger now. You look through it and see the Tower of Pisa ready to fall. Lets see it lean! The girls passed it back and forth between them until Tome fitted it to her hand. Why, its just my size! she exclaimed. And the comb fits my head! gasped Alice. Mrs. Bentley produced some jackstones. Here, she said. I once played with these. She threw them. They made a constellation on the porch. And here! In triumph she flashed her trump card, a postal picture of herself when she was seven years old, in a dress like a yellow butterfly, with her golden curls and blown blue-glass eyes and angelic pouting lips. Whos this little girl? asked Jane. Its me! The two girls held onto it. But it doesn't look like you, said Jane simply. Anybody could get a picture like this, somewhere. They looked at her for a long moment. Any more pictures, Mrs. |
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Those children are right, he would have said. They stole nothing from you, my dear. These things don't belong to you here, you now. They belonged to her, that other you, so long ago. Oh, thought Mrs. Bentley. And then, as though an ancient phonograph record had been set hissing under a steel needle, she remembered a conversation she had once had with Mr. BentleyMr. Bentley, so prim, a pink carnation in his whisk-broomed lapel, saying, My dear, you never will understand time, will you? you're always trying to be the things you were, instead of the person you are tonight. Why do you save those ticket stubs and theater programs? they'll only hurt you later. Throw them away, my dear. But Mrs. Bentley had stubbornly kept them. It won't work, Mr. Bentley continued, sipping his tea. No matter how hard you try to be what you once were, you can only be what you are here and now. Time hypnotizes. Whenyou're nine, you think youve always been nine years old and will always be. Whenyou're thirty, it seems youve always been balanced there on that bright rim of middle life. And then when you turn seventy, you are always and forever seventy. you're in the present, you're trapped in a young now or an old now, but there is no other now to be seen. It had been one of the few, but gentle, disputes of their quiet marriage. He had never approved of her bric-a-brackery. Be what you are, bury what you are not, he had said. Ticket stubs are trickery. Saving things is a magic trick, with mirrors. If he were alive tonight, what would he say? you're saving cocoons. that's what hed say. Corsets, in a way, you can never fit again. So why save them? You cant really prove you were ever young. Pictures? No, they lie. you're not the picture. Affidavits? No, my dear, you're not the dates, or the ink, or the paper. you're not these trunks of junk and dust. you're only you, here, nowthe present you. Mrs. Bentley nodded at the memory, breathing easier. Yes, I see. I see. The gold-feruled cane lay silently on the moonlit rug. In the morning, she said to it, I will do something final about this, and settle down to being only me, and nobody else from any other year. Yes, that's what I'll do. She slept... The morning was bright and green, and there at her door, bumping softly on the screen, were the two girls. Got any more to give us, Mrs. Bentley? More of the little girls things? She led them down the hall to the library. Take this. She gave Jane the dress in which she had played the mandarins daughter at fifteen. And this, and this. A kaleidoscope, a magnifying glass. Pick anything you want, said Mrs. Bentley. Books, skates, dolls, everything- they're yours. Ours? Only yours. And will you help me with a little work in the next hour? I'm building a big fire in my back yard. Im; emptying the trunks, throwing out this trash for the trash-man. It doesn't belong to me. Nothing ever belongs to anybody. Well help, they said. Mrs. Bentley led the procession to the back yard, arms full, a box of matches in her hand. So the rest of the summer you could see the two little girls and Tom like wrens on a wire, on Mrs. Bentleys front porch, waiting. And when the silvery chimes of the icicle man were heard, the front door opened, Mrs. Bentley floated out with her hand deep down the gullet of her silvermouthed purse, and for half an hour you could see them there on the porch, the children and the old lady putting coldness into warmness, eating chocolate icicles, laughing. At last they were good friends. |
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How old are you, Mrs. Bentley? Seventy-two. How old were you fifty years ago? Seventy-two. You werent ever young, were you, and never wore ribbons or dresses like these? No. Have you got a first name? My name is Mrs. Bentley. And youve always lived in this one house? Always. And never were pretty? Never. Never in a million trillion years? The two girls would bend toward the old lady, and wait in the pressed silence of four oclock on a summer afternoon. Never, said Mrs. Bentley, in a million trillion years. You got the nickel tablet ready, Doug? Sure. Doug licked his pencil good. What you got in there so far? All the ceremonies. July Fourth and all that, dandelion-wine making and junk like bringing out the porch swing, huh? Says here, I ate the first Eskimo Pie of the summer season Tune first, 1928. That wasnt summer, that was still spring. It was a first anyway, so I put it down. Bought those new tennis shoes June twenty-fifth. Went barefoot in the grass June twenty-sixth Busy, busy, busy, heck! Well, what you got to report this time, Tom? A new first, a fancy ceremony of some sort to do with vacation like creek-crab catching or water-strider-spider grabbing? Nobody ever grabbed a water-strider-spider in his life. You ever know anybody grabbed a water-strider-spider? Go ahead, think! I'm thinking. Well? you're right. Nobody ever did. Nobody ever will, I guess. you're just too fast. Its not thatyou're fast. They just don't exist, said Tom. He thought about it and nodded. that's right, they just never did exist at all. Well, what I got to report is this. He leaned over and whispered in his brothers ear. Douglas wrote it. They both looked at it. I'll be darned! said Douglas. I never thought of that. that's brilliant! Its true. Old people never were children! And its kind of sad, said Tom, sitting still. Theres nothing we can do to help them. Seems like the town is full of machines... said Douglas, running. Mr. Auffmann and his Happiness Machine, Miss Fern and Miss Roberta and their Green Machine. Now, Charlie, what you handing me? A Time Machine! panted Charlie Woodman, pacing him. Mothers, scouts, Injuns honor! Travels in the past and future? John Huff asked, easily circling them. Only in the past, but you cant have everything. Here we are. Charlie Woodman pulled up at a hedge. Douglas peered in at the old house. Heck, that's Colonel Freeleighs place. Cant be no Time Machine in there. he's no inventor, and if he was, wed known about an important thing like a Time Machine years ago. Charlie and John tiptoed up the front-porch steps. Douglas snorted and shook his head, staying at the bottom of: the steps. Okay, Douglas, said Charlie. Be a knucklehead. Sure, Colonel Freeleigh didn't invent this Time Machine. But he's got a proprietary interest in it, and its been here all the time. We were too darned dumb to notice! So long, Douglas Spaulding, to you! Charlie took Johns elbow as though he was escorting a lady, opened the front-porch screen and went in. The screen door did not slam. Douglas had caught the screen and was following silently. Charlie walked across the enclosed porch, knocked, and opened the inside door. They all peered down a long dark hall toward a room that was lit like an undersea grotto, soft green, dim, and watery. Colonel Freeleigh? Silence. He don't hear so good, whispered Charlie. But he told me to just come on in and yell. Colonel! The only answer was the dust sifting down and around the spiral stairwell from above. Then there was a faint stir in that undersea chamber at the far end of the hall. |
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They moved carefully along and peered into room which contained but two pieces of furniture-an old man and a chair. They resembled each other, both so thin you could see just how they had been put together, ball and socket, sinew and joint. The rest of the room was raw floor boards, naked walls and ceiling, and vast quantities of silent air. He looks dead, whispered Douglas. No, he's just thinking up new places to travel to, said Charlie, very proud and quiet. Colonel? One of the pieces of brown furniture moved and it was the colonel, blinking around, focusing, and smiling a wild and toothless smile. Charlie! Colonel, Doug and John here came to Welcome, boys; sit down, sit down! The boys sat, uneasily, on the floor. But wheres the said Douglas. Charlie jabbed his ribs quickly. Wheres the what? asked Colonel Freeleigh. Wheres the point in us talking, he means. Charlie grimaced at Douglas, then smiled at the old man. We got nothing to say. Colonel, you say something. Beware, Charlie, old men only lie in wait for people to ask them to talk. Then they rattle on like a rusty elevator wheezing up a shaft. Ching Ling Soo, suggested Charlie casually. Eh? said the colonel. Boston, Charlie prompted, 1910. Boston, 1910... The colonel frowned. Why, Ching Ling Soo, of course! Yes, sir, Colonel. Let me see, now... The colonels voice murmured, it drifted away on serene lake waters. Let me see... The boys waited. Colonel Freeleigh closed his eyes. October first, 1910, a calm cool fine autumn night, the Boston Variety Theatre, yes, there it is. Full house, all waiting. Orchestra, fanfare, curtain! Ching Ling Soo, the great Oriental Magician! There he is, on stage! And there I am, front row center! The Bullet Trick! he cries. Volunteers! The man next to me goes up. Examine the rifle! says Ching. Mark the bullet! says he. Now fire this marked bullet from this rifle, using my face for a target, and, says Ching, at the far end of the stage I will catch the bullet in my teeth! Colonel Freeleigh took a deep breath and paused. Douglas was staring at him, half puzzled, half in awe. John Huff and Charlie were completely lost. Now the old man went on, his head and body frozen, only his lips moving. Ready, aim, fire! cries Ching Ling Soo. Bang! The rifle cracks. Bang! Ching Ling Soo shrieks, he staggers, he falls, his face all red. Pandemonium. Audience on its feet. Something wrong with the rifle. Dead, someone says. Andyou're right. Dead. Horrible, horrible... I'll always remember... his face a mask of red, the curtain coming down fast and the women weeping...1910... Boston... Variety Theatre... poor man... Colonel Freeleigh slowly opened his eyes. Boy, Colonel, said Charlie, that was fine. Now how about Pawnee Bill? Pawnee Bill...? And the time you was on the prairie way back in 75. Pawnee Bill... The colonel moved into darkness. Eighteen seventy-five... yes, me and Pawnee Bill on a little rise in the middle of the prairie, waiting. Shh! says Pawnee Bill. Listen. The prairie like a big stage all set for the storm to come. Thunder. Soft. Thunder again. Not so soft. And across that prairie as far as the eye could see this big ominous yellow-dark cloud full of black lightning, somehow sunk to earth, fifty miles wide, fifty miles long, a mile high, and no more than an inch off the ground. Lord! I cried, Lord! from up on my hilllord! the earth pounded like a mad heart, boys, a heart gone to panic. My bones shook fit to break. The earth shook: rat-a-tat rat-a-tat, boom! |
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So you see why the colors run and blend... But you remember which side of hills you fought on? Charlie did not raise his voice. Did the sun rise on your left or right? Did you march toward Canada or Mexico? Seems some mornings the sun rose on my good right hand, some mornings over my left shoulder. We marched all directions. Its most seventy years since. You forget suns and mornings that long past. You remember winning, don't you? A battle won, somewhere? No, said the old man, deep under. I don't remember anyone winning anywhere any time. Wars never a winning thing, Charlie. You just lose all the time, and the one who loses last asks for terms. All I remember is a lot of losing and sadness and nothing good but the end of it. The end of it, Charles, that was a winning all to itself, having nothing to do with guns. But I don't suppose that's the kind of victory you boys mean for me to talk on. Antietam, said John Huff. Ask about Antietam. I was there. The boys eyes grew bright. Bull Run, ask him Bull Run... I was there. Softly. What about Shiloh? Theres never been a year in my life I haven't thought, what a lovely name and what a shame to see it only on battle records. Shiloh, then. Fort Sumter? I saw the first puffs of powder smoke. A dreaming voice. So many things come back, oh, so many things. T remember songs. AUs quiet along the Potomac tonight, where the soldiers lie peacefully dreaming; their tents in the rays of the clear autumn moon, or the light of the watchfire, are gleaming. Remember, remember... AU quiet along the Potomac tonight; no sound save the rush of the river; while soft falls the dew on the face of the deadthe pickets off duty forever!... After the surrender, Mr. Lincoln, on the White House balcony asked the band to play, Look away, look away, look away, Dixie land... And then there was the Boston lady who one night wrote a song will last a thousand years: Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. Late nights I feel my mouth move singing back in another time. Ye Cavaliers of Dixie! Who guard the Southern shores... When the boys come home in triumph, brother, with the laurels they shall gain... So many songs, sung on both sides, blowing north, blowing south on the night winds. We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more... Tenting tonight, tenting tonight, tenting on the old camp ground. Hurrah, hurrah, we bring the Jubilee, hurrah, hurrah, the flag that makes us free... The old mans voice faded. The boys sat for a long while without moving. Then Charlie turned and looked at Douglas and said, Well, is he or isn't he? Douglas breathed twice and said, He sure is. The colonel opened his eyes. I sure am what? he asked. A Time Machine, murmured Douglas. A Time Machine. The colonel looked at the boys for a full five seconds. Now it was his voice that was full of awe. Is that what you boys call me? Yes, sir, Colonel. Yes, sir. The colonel sat slowly back in his chair and looked at the boys and looked at his hands and then looked at the blank wall beyond them steadily. Charlie arose. Well, I guess we better go. So long and thanks, Colonel. What? Oh, so long, boys. Douglas and John and Charlie went on tiptoe out the door. Colonel Freeleigh, though they crossed his line of vision, did not see them go. In the street, the boys were startled when someone shouted from a first-floor window above, Hey! They looked up. Yes, sir, Colonel? The colonel leaned out, waving one arm. |
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I thought about what you said, boys! Yes, sir? And-youre right! Why didn't I think of it before! A Time Machine, by God, a Time Machine! Yes, sir. So long, boys. Come aboard any time! At the end of the street they turned again and the colonel was still waving. They waved back, feeling warm and good, then went on. Chug-a-chug, said John. I can travel twelve years into the past. Wham-chug-ding! Yeah, said Charlie, looking back at that quiet house, but you cant go a hundred years. No, mused John, I cant go a hundred years. that's really traveling. that's really some machine. They walked for a full minute in silence, looking at their feet. They came to a fence. Last one over this fence, said Douglas, is a girl. All the way home they called Douglas Dora. Long after midnight Tom woke to find Douglas scribbling rapidly in the nickel tablet, by flashlight. Doug, whats up? Up? Everythings up! I'm counting my blessings, Tom! Look here; the Happiness Machine didn't work out, did it?. But, who cares! I got the whole year lined up, anyway. Need r to run anywhere on the main streets, I got the Green Town Trolley to look around and spy on the world from. Need to run anywhere off the main streets, I knock on Miss Fern and I Miss Robertas door and they charge up the batteries on their electric runabout and we go sailing down the sidewalks. Need to run down alleys and over fences, to see that part of Green Town you only see around back and behind and creep up on, and I got my brand-new sneakers. Sneakers, runabout, I trolley! I'm set! But even better, Tom, even better, listen! If I want to go where no one else can go becauseyou're not: smart enough to even think of it, if I want to charge back to 1890 and then transfer to 1875 and transfer again crosstown to 1860 I just hop on the old Colonel Freeleigh Express! I'm writing it down here this way: Maybe old people were never children, like we claim with Mrs. Bentley, but, big or little, some of them were standing around at Appomattox the summer of 1865. They got Indian vision and can sight back further than you and me will ever sight ahead. That sounds swell, Doug; what does it mean? Douglas went on writing. It means you and me aint got half the chance to be far-travelers they have. If were lucky well hit forty, forty-five, fifty, that's just a jog around the block to them. Its when you hit ninety, ninety-five, a hundred, thatyou're far-traveling like heck. The flashlight went out. They lay there in the moonlight. Tom, whispered Douglas. I got to travel all those ways. See what I can see. But most of all I got to visit Colonel Freeleigh once, twice, three times a week. he's better than all the other machines. He talks, you listen. And the more he talks the more he gets you to peering around and noticing things. He tells youyou're riding on a very special train, by gosh, and sure enough, its hue. he's been down the track, and knows. And now here we come, you and me, along the same track, but further on, and so much looking and snuffing and handling things to do, you need old Colonel Freeleigh to shove and say look alive so you remember every second! Every darn thing there is to remember! So when kids come around whenyou're real old, you can do for them what the colonel once did for you. that's the way it is, Tom, I got to spend a lot of time visiting him and listening so I can go far-traveling with him as often as he can. Tom was silent a moment. Then he looked over at Douglas there in the dark. Far-traveling. You make that up? |
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It stood, smelling new, in the hot sunlight, waiting for them, a parlor chair comfortably put to wheels. Quiet as a swans feather. They felt him breathe softly in their faces. Listen. They listened. The storage batteries are fully charged and ready now! Listen! Not a tremor, not a sound. Electric, ladies. You recharge it every night in your garage. It couldntthat is The younger sister gulped some iced tea. It couldn't electrocute us accidently? Perish the thought! He vaulted to the machine again, his teeth like those you saw in dental windows, alone, grimacing at you, as you passed by late at night. Tea parties! He waltzed the runabout in a circle. Bridge clubs. Soirees. Galas. Luncheons. Birthday gatherings! D. A. R. breakfasts. He purred away as if running off forever. He returned in a rubber-tired hush. Gold Star Mother suppers. He sat primly, corseted by his supple characterization of a woman. Easy steering. Silent, elegant arrivals and departures. No license needed. On hot daystake the breeze. Ah... He glided by the porch, head back, eyes closed deliciously, hair tousling in the wind thus cleanly sliced through. He trudged reverently up the porch stairs, hat in hand, turning to gaze at the trial model as at the altar of a familiar church. Ladies, he said softly, twenty-five dollars down. Ten dollars a month, for two years. Fern was first down the steps onto the double seat. She sat apprehensively. Her hand itched. She raised it. She dared tweak the rubber bulb horn. A seal barked. Roberta, on the porch, screamed hilariously and leaned over the railing. The salesman joined their hilarity. He escorted the older sister down the steps, roaring, at the same time taking out his pen and searching in his straw hat for some piece of paper or other. And so we bought it! remembered Miss Roberta, in the attic, horrified at their nerve. We shouldve been warned! Always did think it looked like a little car off the carnival roller coaster! Well, said Fern defensively, my hips bothered me for years, and you always get tired walking. It seemed so refined, so regal. Like in the old days when women wore hoop skirts. They sailed! The Green Machine sailed so quietly. Like an excursion boat, wonderfully easy to steer, a baton handle you twitched with your hand, so. Oh, that glorious and enchanted first weekthe magical afternoons of golden light, humming through the shady town on a dreaming, timeless river, seated stiffly, smiling at passing acquaintances, sedately purring out their wrinkled claws at every turn, squeezing a hoarse cry from the black rubber horn at intersections, sometimes letting Douglas or Tom Spaulding or any of the other boys who trotted, chatting, alongside, hitch a little ride. Fifteen slow and pleasurable miles an hour top speed. They came and went through the summer sunlight and shadow, their faces freckled and stained by passing trees, going and coming like an ancient, wheeled vision. And then, whispered Fern, this afternoon! Oh, this afternoon! It was an accident. But we ran away, and that's criminal! This noon. The smell of the leather cushions under their bodies, the gray perfume smell of their own sachets trailing back as they moved in their silent Green Machine through the small, languorous town. It happened quickly. Rolling soft onto the sidewalk at noon, because the streets were blistering and fiery, and the only shade was under the lawn trees, they had glided to a blind comer, bulbing their throaty horn. Suddenly, like a jack-in-the-box, Mister Quartermain had tottered from nowhere! |
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Look out! screamed Miss Fern. Look out! screamed Miss Roberta. Look out! cried Mister Quartermain. The two women grabbed each other instead of the steering stick. There was a terrible thud. The Green Machine sailed on in the hot daylight, under the shady chestnut trees, past the ripening apple trees. Looking back only once, the two old ladies eyes filled with faded horror. The old man lay on the sidewalk, silent. And here we are, mourned Miss Fern in the darkening attic. Oh, why didn't we stop! Why did we run away? Shh! They both listened. The rapping downstairs came again. When it stopped they saw a boy cross the lawn in the dim light. Just Douglas Spaulding come for a ride again. They both sighed. The hours passed; the sun was going down. Weve been up here all afternoon, said Roberta tiredly. We cant stay in the attic three weeks hiding till everybody forgets. Wed starve. Whatll we do, then? Do you think anyone saw and followed us? They looked at each other. No. Nobody saw. The town was silent, all the tiny houses putting on lights. There was a smell of watered grass and cooking suppers from below. Time to put on the meat, said Miss Fern. Frankll be coming home in ten minutes. Do we dare go down? Frankd call the police if he found the house empty. Thatd make things worse. The sun went swiftly. Now they were only two moving things in the musty blackness. Do you, wondered Miss Fern, think he's dead? Mister Quartermain? A pause. Yes. Roberta hesitated. Well check the evening paper. They opened the attic door and looked carefully at the steps leading down. Oh, if Frank hears about this, hell take our Green Machine away from us, and its so lovely and nice riding and getting the cool wind and seeing the town. We won't tell him. won't we? They helped each other down the creaking stairs to the second floor, stopping to listen... In the kitchen they peered at the pantry, peeked out windows with frightened eyes, and finally set to work frying hamburger on the stove. After five minutes of working silence Fern looked sadly over at Roberta and said, I've been thinking. Were old and feeble and don't like to admit it. Were dangerous. We owe a debt to society for running off And? A kind of silence fell on the frying in the kitchen as the two sisters faced each other, nothing in their hands. I think thatFern stared at the wall for a long time-we shouldn't drive the Green Machine ever again. Roberta picked up a plate and held it in her thin hand. Not-ever? she said. No. But, said Roberta, we don't have toto get rid of it, do we? We can keep it, cant we? Fern considered this. Yes, I guess we can keep it. At least thatll be something. I'll go out now and disconnect the batteries. Roberta was leaving just as Frank, their younger brother, only fifty-six years, entered. Hi, sisters! he cried. Roberta brushed past him without a word and walked out into the summer dusk. Frank was carrying a newspaper which Fern immediately snatched from him. Trembling, she looked it through and through, and sighing, gave it back to him. Saw Doug Spaulding outside just now. Said he had a message for you. Said for you not to worryhe saw everything and everythings all right. What did he mean by that? I'm sure I wouldn't know. Fem turned her back and searched for her handkerchief. Oh well, these kids. Frank looked at his sisters back for a long moment, then shrugged. Supper almost ready? he asked pleasantly. Yes. Fern set the kitchen table. There was a bulbing cry from outside. Once, twice, three timesfar away. |
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Here and there creek waters flushed the tracks and sun filtered through trees like green glass. They slid whispering on meadows washed with wild sunflowers past abandoned way stations empty of all save transfer-punched confetti, to follow a forest stream into a summer country, while Douglas talked. Why, just the smell of a trolley, that's different. I been on Chicago buses; they smell funny. Trolleys are too slow, said Mr. Tridden. Going to put busses on. Fusses for people and busses for school. The trolley whined to a stop. From overhead Mr. Tridden reached down huge picnic hampers. Yelling, the children helped him carry the baskets out by a creek that emptied into a silent lake where an ancient bandstand stood crumbling into termite dust. They sat eating ham sandwiches and fresh strawberries and waxy oranges and Mr. Tridden told them how it had been twenty years ago, the band playing on that ornate stand at night, the men pumping air into their brass horns, the plump conductor flinging perspiration from his baton, the children and fireflies running in the deep grass, the ladies with long dresses and high pompadours treading the wooden xylophone walks with men in choking collars. There was the walk now, all softened into a fiber mush by the years. The lake was silent and blue and serene, and fish peacefully threaded the bright reeds, and the motorman murmured on and on, and the children felt it was some other year, with Mr. Tridden looking wonderfully young, his eyes lighted like small bulbs, blue and electric. It was a drifting, easy day, nobody rushing and the forest all about, the sun held in one position, as Mr. Triddens voice rose and fell, and a darning needle sewed along the air, stitching, restitching designs both golden and invisible. A bee settled into, flower, humming and humming. The trolley stood like an enchanted calliope, simmering where the sun fell on it. The trolley was on their hands, a brass smell, as they ate ripe cherries. The bright odor of the trolley blew from their clothes on the summer wind. A loon flew over the sky, crying. Somebody shivered. Mr. Tridden worked on his gloves. Well, time to go. Parentsll think I stole you all for good. The trolley was silent and cool dark, like the inside of an ice-cream drugstore. With a soft green rustling of velvet buff, the seats were turned by the quiet children so they sat with their backs to the silent lake, the deserted bandstand and the wooden planks that made a kind of music if you walked down the shore on them into other lands. Bing! went the soft bell under Mr. Triddens foot and they soared back over sun-abandoned, withered flower meadows, through woods, toward a town that seemed to crush the sides of the trolley with bricks and asphalt and wood when Mr. Tridden stopped to let the children out in shady streets. Charlie and Douglas were the last to stand near the opened tongue of the trolley, the folding step, breathing electricity, watching Mr. Triddens gloves on the brass controls. Douglas ran his fingers on the green creek moss, looked at the silver, the brass, the wine color of the ceiling. Well... so long again, Mr. Tridden. Good-by, boys. See you around, Mr. Tridden. See you around. There was a soft sigh of air; the door collapsed shut, tucking up its corrugated tongue. The trolley sc slowly down the late afternoon, brighter than the sun, tangerine, all flashing gold and lemon, turned a far con wheeling, and vanished, gone away. School busses! Charlie walked to the curb. |
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Won even give us a chance to be late to school. Come get you a your front door. Never be late again in all our lives. Think of that nightmare, Doug, just think it all over. But Douglas, standing on the lawn, was seeing how it would be tomorrow, when the men would pour hot tar over the silver tracks so you would never know a trolley had e run this way. He knew it would take as many years as could think of now to forget the tracks, no matter how deeply buried. Some morning in autumn, spring, or winter he kn hed wake and, if he didn't go near the window, if he just lay deep and snug and warm, in his bed, he would hear it, faint and far away. And around the bend of the morning street, up the avenue, between the even rows of sycamore, elm and maple, it the quietness before the start of living, past his house h would hear the familiar sounds. Like the ticking of a doe the rumble of a dozen metal barrels rolling, the hum of single immense dragonfly at dawn. Like a merry-go-round like a small electrical storm, the color of blue lightning, coming, here, and gone. The trolleys chime! The hiss like a sc fountain spigot as it let down and took up its step, and starting of the dream again, as on it sailed along its way, traveling a hidden and buried track to some hidden and buried destination... Kick-the-can after supper? asked Charlie. Sure, said Douglas. Kick-the-can. The facts about John Huff aged twelve. are simple and soon stated. He could pathfind more trails than any Choctaw or Cherokee since time began, could leap from the sky like a chimpanzee from a vine, could live underwater two minutes and slide fifty yards downstream from where you last saw him. The baseballs you pitched him he hit in the apple trees, knocking down harvests. He could jump six-foot orchard walls, swing up branches faster and come down, fat with peaches, quicker than anyone else in the gang. He ran laughing. He sat easy. He was not a bully. He was kind. His hair was dark and curly and his teeth were white as cream. He remembered the words to all the cowboy songs and would teach you if you asked. He knew the names of all the wild flowers and when the moon would rise and set and when the tides came in or out. He was, in fact, the only god living in the whole of Green Town, Illinois, during the twentieth century that Douglas Spaulding knew of. And right now he and Douglas were hiking out beyond town on another warm and marble-round day, the sky blue blown-glass reaching high, the creeks bright with mirror waters fanning over white stones. It was a day as perfect as the flame of a candle. Douglas walked through it thinking it would go on this way forever. The perfection, the roundness, the grass smell traveled on out ahead as far and fast as the speed of light. The sound of a good friend whistling like an oriole, pegging the softball, as you horse-danced, key-jingled the dusty paths, all of it was complete, everything could be touched; things stayed near, things were at hand and would remain. It was such a fine day and then suddenly a cloud crossed the sky, covered the sun, and did not move again. John Huff had been speaking quietly for several minutes. Now Douglas stopped on the path and looked over at him. John, say that again. You heard me the first time, Doug. Did you say you weregoing away? Got my train ticket here in my pocket. Whoo-whoo, clang! Shush-shush-shush-shush. Whooooooooo... His voice faded. John took the yellow and green train ticket solemnly from his pocket and they both looked at it. |
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Tonight! said Douglas. My gosh! Tonight we were going to play Red Light, Green Light and Statues! How come, all of a sudden? You been here in Green Town all my life. You just don't pick up and leave! Its my father, said John. he's got a job in Milwaukee. We werent sure until today... My gosh, here it is with the Baptist picnic next week and the big carnival Labor Day and Halloweencant your dad wait till then? John shook his head. Good grief! said Douglas. Let me sit down! They sat under an old oak tree on the side of the hill looking back at town, and the sun made large trembling shadows around them; it was cool as a cave in under the tree. Out beyond, in sunlight, the town was painted with heat, the windows all gaping. Douglas wanted to run back in there where the town, by its very weight, its houses, their bulk, might enclose and prevent Johns ever getting up and running off. But were friends, Douglas said helplessly. We always will be, said John. you'll come back to visit every week or so, won't you? Dad says only once or twice a year. Its eighty miles. Eighty miles aint far! shouted Douglas. No, its not far at all, said John. My grandmas got a phone. I'll call you. Or maybe well all visit up your way, too. Thatd be great! John said nothing for a long while. Well, said Douglas, lets talk about something. What? My gosh, ifyou're going away, we got a million things to talk about! All the things we wouldve talked about next: month, the month after! Praying mantises, zeppelins, acrobats, sword swallowers! Go on like you was back there, grasshoppers spitting tobacco! Funny thing is It don't feel like talking about grasshoppers. You always did! Sure. John looked steadily at the town. But It guess this just aint the time. John, whats wrong? You look funny... John had closed his eyes and screwed up his face. Doug, the Terle house, upstairs, you know? Sure. The colored windowpanes on the little round windows, have they always been there? Sure. You positive? Darned old windows been there since before we were born. Why? I never saw them before today, said John. On the way walking through town I looked up and there they were. Doug, what was I doing all these years I didn't see them? You had other things to do. Did I? John turned and looked in a kind of panic at Douglas. Gosh, Doug, why should those dam windows scare me? I mean, that's nothing to be scared of, is it? Its just... He floundered. Its just, if I didn't see these windows until today, what else did I miss? And what about all the things I did see here in town? Will I be able to remember them when I go away? Anything you want to remember, you remember. T went to camp two summers ago. Up there I remembered. No, you didn't! You told me. you woke nights and couldn't remember your mothers face. No! Some nights it happens to me in my own house; scares heck out of me. I got to go in my folks room and look at their faces while they sleep, to be sure! And I go back to my room and lose it again. Gosh, Doug, oh gosh! He held onto his knees tight. Promise me just one thing, Doug. Promise you'll remember me, promise you'll remember my face and everything. Will you promise? Easy as pie. Cot a motion-picture machine in my head. Lying in bed nights I can just turn on a light in my head and out it comes on the wall, clear as heck, and there you'll be, yelling and waving at me. Shut your eyes, Doug. Now, tell me, what color eyes I got? don't peek. What color eyes I got? Douglas began to sweat. His eyelids twitched nervously. |
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Aw heck, John, that's not fair. Tell me! Brown! John turned away. No, sir. What do you mean, no? you're not even close! John closed his eyes. Turn around here, said Douglas. Open up, let me see. Its no use, said John. You forgot already. Just the way I said. Turn around here! Douglas grabbed him by the hair and turned him slowly. Okay, Doug. John opened his eyes. Green. Douglas, dismayed, let his hand drop. Your eyes are green... Well, that's close to brown. Almost hazel! Doug, don't lie to me. All right, said Doug quietly. I wont. They sat there listening to the other boys running up the hill, shrieking and yelling at them. They raced along the railroad tracks, opened their lunch in brown-paper sacks, and sniffed deeply of the wax-wrapped deviled-ham sandwiches and green-sea pickles and colored peppermints. They ran and ran again and Douglas bent to scorch his ear on the hot steel rails, hearing trains so far away they were unseen voyagings in other lands, sending Morse-code messages to him here under the killing sun. Douglas stood up, stunned. John! For John was running, and this was terrible. Because if you ran, time ran. You yelled and screamed and raced and rolled and tumbled and all of a sudden the sun was gone and the whistle was blowing and you were on your long way home to supper. When you werent looking, the sun got around behind you! The only way to keep things slow was to watch everything and do nothing! You could stretch a day to three days, sure, just by watching! John! There was no way to get him to help now, save by a trick. John, ditch, ditch the others! Yelling, Douglas and John sprinted off, kiting the wind downhill, letting gravity work for them, over meadows, around barns until at last the sound of the pursuers faded. John and Douglas climbed into a haystack which was like a great bonfire crisping under them. Lets not do anything, said John. Just what I was going to say, said Douglas. They sat quietly, getting their breath. There was a small sound like an insect in the hay. They both heard it, but they didn't look at the sound. When Douglas moved his wrist the sound ticked in another part of the haystack. When he brought his arm around on his lap the sound ticked in his lap. He let his eyes fall in a brief flicker. The watch said three oclock. Douglas moved his right hand stealthily to the ticking, pulled out the watch stem. He set the hands back. Now they had all the time they would ever need to look long and close at the world, feel the sun move like a fiery wind over the sky. But at last John must have felt the bodiless weight of their shadows shift and lean, and he spoke. Doug, what time is it? Two-thirty. John looked at the sky. don't! thought Douglas. Looks more like three-thirty, four, said John. Boy Scout. You learn them things. Douglas sighed and slowly turned the watch ahead. John watched him do this, silently. Douglas looked up. John punched him, not hard at all, in the arm. With a swift stroke a plunge, a train came and went so quickly the boys all leaped aside, yelling, shaking their fists after it, Douglas and John with them. The train roared down the track, two hundred people in it, gone. The dust followed it a little way toward the south, then settled in the golden silence among the blue rails. The boys were walking home. I'm going to Cincinnati when I'm seventeen and be a railroad fireman, said Charlie Woodman. I got an uncle in New York, said Jim. I'll go there and be a printer. Doug did not ask the others. |
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Already the trains were chanting and he saw their faces drifting off on back observation platforms, or pressed to windows. One by one they slid away. And then the empty track and the summer sky and himself on another train run in another direction. Douglas felt the earth move under his feet and saw their shadows move off the grass and color the air. He swallowed hard, then gave a screaming yell, pulled back his fist, shot the indoor ball whistling in the sky. Last one homes a rhinos behind! They pounded down the tracks, laughing, flailing the air. There went John Huff, not touching the ground at all. And here came Douglas, touching it all the time. It was seven oclock, supper over, and the boys gathering one by one from the sound of their house doors slammed and their parents crying to them not to slam the doors. Douglas and Tom and Charlie and John stood among half a dozen others and it was time for hide-and-seek and Statues. Just one game, said John. Then I got to go home. The train leaves at nine. Whos going to be it? Me, said Douglas. That the first time I ever heard of anybody volunteering to be it, said Tom. Douglas looked at John for a long moment. Start running, he cried. The boys scattered, yelling. John backed away, then turned and began to lope. Douglas counted slowly. He let them run far, spread out, separate each to his own small world. When they had got their momentum up and were almost out of sight he took a deep breath. Statues! Everyone froze. Very quietly Douglas moved across the lawn to where John Huff stood like an iron deer in the twilight. Far away, the other boys stood hands up, faces grimaced, eyes bright as stuffed squirrels. But here was John, alone and motionless and no one rushing or making a great outcry to spoil this moment. Douglas walked around the statue one way, walked around the statue the other way. The statue did not move. It did not speak. It looked at the horizon, its mouth half smiling. It was like that time years ago in Chicago when they had visited a big place where the carved marble figures were, and his walking around them in the silence. So here was John Huff with grass stains on his knees and the seat of his. pants, and cuts on his fingers and scabs on his elbows. Here was John Huff with the quiet tennis shoes, his feet sheathed in silence. There was the mouth that had chewed many an: apricot pie come summer, and said many a quiet thing or: two about life and the lay of the land. And there were the eyes, not blind like statues eyes, but filled with molten green- gold. And there the dark hair blowing now north now south or any direction in the little breeze there was. And there the % hands with all the town on them, dirt from roads and bark-slivers from trees, the fingers that smelled of hemp and vine and green apple, old coins or pickle-green frogs. There were the ears with the sunlight shining through them like bright warm peach wax and here, invisible, his spearmint-breath upon the air. John, now, said Douglas, don't you move so much as an eyelash. I absolutely command you to stay here and not move at all for the next three hours! Doug... Johns lips moved. Freeze! said Douglas. John went back to looking at the sky, but he was not smiling now. I got to go, he whispered. Not a muscle, its the game! I just got to get home now, said John. Now the statue moved, took its hands down out of the air and turned its head to look at Douglas. They stood looking at each other. The other kids were putting their arms down, too. |
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Well play one more round, said John, except this time, I'm it. Run! The boys ran. Freeze! The boys froze, Douglas with them. Not a muscle! shouted John. Not a hair! He came and stood by Douglas. Boy, this is the only way to do it, he said. Douglas looked off at the twilight sky. Frozen statues, every single one of you, the next three minutes! said John. Douglas felt John walking around him even as he had walked around John a moment ago. He felt John sock him on the arm once, not too hard. So long, he said. Then there was a rushing sound and he knew without looking that there was nobody behind him now. Far away, a train whistle sounded. Douglas stood that way for a full minute, waiting for the sound of the running to fade, but it did not stop. he's still running away, but he doesn't sound any further off, thought Douglas. Why doesn't he stop running? And then he realized it was only the sound of his heart in his body. Stop! He jerked his hand to his chest. Stop running! I don't like that sound! And then he felt himself walking across the lawns among all the other statues now, and whether they, too, were coming to life he did not know. They did not seem to be moving at all. For that matter he himself was only moving from the knees down. The rest of him was cold stone, and very heavy. Going up the front porch of his house, he turned suddenly to look at the lawns behind him. The lawns were empty. A series of rifle shots. Screen doors banged one after the . other, a sunset volley, along the street. Statues are best, he thought. you're the only things you can keep on your lawn. don't ever let them move. Once you do, you cant do a thing with them. Suddenly his fist shot out like a piston from his side and it shook itself hard at the lawns and the street and the gathering dusk. His face was choked with blood, his eyes were blazing. John! he cried. You, John! John, you're my enemy, you hear? you're no friend of mine! don't come back now, ever! Get away, you! Enemy, you hear? that's what you are! Its all off between us, you're dirt, that's all, dirt! John, you hear me, John! As if a wick had been turned a little lower in a great clear lamp beyond the town, the sky darkened still more. He stood on the porch, his mouth gasping and working. His fist still thrust straight out at that house across the street and down the way. He looked at the fist and it dissolved, the world dissolved beyond it. Going upstairs, in the dark, where he could only feel his face but see nothing of himself, not even his fists, he told himself over and over, I'm mad, I'm angry, I hate him, I'm mad, I'm angry, I hate him! Ten minutes later, slowly he reached the top of the stairs, in the dark... Tom, said Douglas, just promise me one thing, okay? Its a promise. What? You may be my brother and maybe I hate you sometimes, but stick around, all right? You mean you'll let me follow you and the older guys when you go on hikes? Well... sure... even that. What I mean is, don't go away, huh? don't let any cars run over you or fall off a cliff. I should say not! Whatta you think I am, anyway? Cause if worst comes to worst, and both of us are real oldsay forty or forty-five some daywe can own a gold mine out West and sit there smoking corn silk and growing beards. Growing beards! Boy! Like I say, you stick around and don't let nothing happen. You can depend on me, said Tom. Its not you I worry about, said Douglas. Its the way God runs the world. Tom thought about this for a moment. he's all right, Doug, said Tom. |
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I think its fine for growing boys heads to think about things like this. Now, from the look on your face you don't believe Raoul exists. Well, I'll give you his Springfield address. Yes, said Elmira, and the day I write him you'll take the Springfield bus and go to General Delivery and get my letter and write back to me in a boys hand. I know you! Mrs. Brown, speak upyou want to be president of the Honeysuckle Ladies Lodge, right? You run every year now for ten years. You nominate yourself. And always wind up gettin one vote. Yours. Elmira, if the ladies wanted you theyd landslide you in. But from where I stand looking up the mountain, aint so much as one pebble come rattlin down save yours. Tell you what, I'll nominate and vote for you myself come noon tomorrow, hows that? Damned for sure, then, said Elmira. Last year I got a deathly cold right at election time; couldn't get out and campaign back-fence-to-back-fence. Year before that, broke my leg. Mighty strange. She squinted darkly at the lady behind the screen. that's not all. Last month I cut my finger six times, bruised my knee ten times, fell off my back porch twice, you hear-twice! I broke a window, dropped four dishes, one vase worth a dollar forty-nine at Bixbys, and I'm billin you for every dropped dish from now on in my house and environs! I'll be poor by Christmas, said Mrs. Goodwater. She opened the screen door and came out suddenly and let the door slam. Elmira Brown, how old are you? You probably got it written in one of your black books. Thirty-five! Well, when I think of thirty-five years of your life... Mrs. Goodwater pursed her lips and blinked her eyes, counting. that's about twelve thousand seven hundred and seventy-five days, or counting three of them per day, twelve thousand-odd commotions, twelve thousand much-ados and twelve thousand calamaties. Its a full rich life you lead, Elmira Brown. Shake hands! Get away! Elmira fended her off. Why, lady, you're only the second most clumsy woman in Green Town, Illinois. You cant sit down without playing the chair like an accordion. You cant stand up but what you kick the cat. You cant trot across an open meadow without falling into a well. Your life has been one long decline, Elmira Alice Brown, so why not admit it? It wasnt clumsiness that caused my calamities, but you being within a mile of me at those times when I dropped a pot of beans or juiced my finger in the electric socket at home. Lady, in a town this size, everybodys within a mile of someone at one time or other in the day. You admit being around then? I admit being born here, yes, but I'd give anything right now to have been born in Kenosha or Zion. Elmira, go to your dentist and see what he can do about that serpents tongue in there. Oh! said Elmira. Oh, oh, oh! Youve pushed me too far. I wasnt interested in witchcraft, but I think I'll just look into this business. Listen here! you're invisible right now. While you stood there I put a spell on you. you're clean out of sight. You didn't! Course, admitted the witch, I never could see you, lady. Elmira pulled out her pocket mirror. There I am! She peered closer and gasped. She reached up like someone tuning a harp and plucked a single thread. She held it up, Exhibit A. I never had a gray hair in my life till this second! The witch smiled charmingly. Put it in a jar of still water, be an angleworm come morning. Oh, Elmira, look at yourself at last, won't you? All these years, blaming others for your own mallet feet and floaty ways! |
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asked her husband. Looks like a milk shake been left out in the sun for forty years. Got kind of a fungus on it. Fight magic with magic. You going to drink that? Just before I go up into the Honeysuckle Ladies Lodge for the big doings. Samuel Brown sniffed the concoction. Take my advice. Get up those steps first, then drink it. Whats in it? Snow from angels wings, well, really menthol, to cool hells fires that burn you, it says in this book I got at the library. The juice of a fresh grape off the vine, for thinking clear sweet thoughts in the face of dark visions, it says. Also red rhubarb, cream of tartar, white sugar, white of eggs, spring water and clover buds with the strength of the good earth in them. Oh, I could go on all day. Its here in the list, good against bad, white against black. I cant lose! Oh, you'll win, all right, said her husband. But will you know it? Think good thoughts. I'm on my way to get Tom for my charm. Poor boy, said her husband. Innocent, like you say, and about to be tom limb from limb, bargain-basement day at the Honeysuckle Lodge. Tomll survive, said Elmira, and, taking the bubbling concoction with her, hid inside a Quaker Oats box with the lid on, went out the door without catching her dress or snagging her new ninety-eight-cent stockings. Realizing this, she was smug all the way to Toms house where he waited for her in his white summer suit as she had instructed. Phew! said Tom. What you got in that box? Destiny, said Elmira. I sure hope so, said Tom, walking about two paces ahead of her. The Honeysuckle Ladies Lodge was full of ladies looking in each others mirrors and tugging at their skirts and asking to be sure their slips werent showing. At one oclock Mrs. Elmira Brown came up the steps with a boy in white clothes. He was holding his nose and screwing! up one eye so he could only half see where he was going. Mrs. Brown looked at the crowd and then at the Quaker Oats box and opened the top and looked in and gasped, and put the top back on without drinking any of that stuff in there. She moved inside the hall and with her moved a rustling as of taffeta, all the ladies whispering in a tide after her. She sat down in back with Tom, and Tom looked more, miserable than ever. The one eye he had open looked at the crowd of ladies and shut up for good. Sitting there, Elmira got the potion out and drank it slowly down. At one-thirty, the president, Mrs. Goodwater, banged the gavel and all but two dozen of the ladies quit talking. Ladies, she called out over the summer sea of silks and laces, capped here and there with white or gray, its election time. But before we start, I believe Mrs. Elmira Brown, wife of our eminent graphologist A titter ran through the room. Whats graphologist? Elmira elbowed Tom twice. I don't know, whispered Tom fiercely, eyes shut, feeling that elbow come out of darkness at him. wife, as I say, of our eminent handwriting expert, Samuel Brown...(more laughter)... of the U. S. Postal Service, continued Mrs. Goodwater. Mrs. Brown wants to give us some opinions. Mrs. Brown? Elmira stood up. Her chair fell over backward and snapped shut like a bear trap on itself. She jumped an inch off the floor and teetered on her heels, which gave off cracking sounds like they would fall to dust any moment. I got plenty to say, she said, holding the empty Quaker Oats box in one hand with a Bible. She grabbed Tom with the other and plowed forward, hitting several peoples elbows and muttering to them, Watch whatyou're doing! |
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Elmira Brown made a croaking sound. She put her hand on her throat. She turned and looked dimly at Mrs. Goodwater, who now very casually drew forth from her purse a small wax doll in which were a number of rusted thumbtacks. Tom, said Elmira, show me the way to the ladies room. Yes m. They began to walk and then hurry and then run. Elmira ran on ahead, through the crowd, down the aisle... She reached the door and started left. No, Elmira, right, right! cried Mrs. Goodwater. Elmira turned left and vanished. There was a noise like coal down a chute. Elmira! The ladies ran around like a girls basketball team, colliding with each other. Only Mrs. Goodwater made a straight line. She found Tom looking down the stairwell, his hands clenched to the banister. Forty steps! he moaned. Forty steps to the ground! Later on and for months and years after it was told how like an inebriate Elmira Brown negotiated those steps touching every one on her long way down. It was claimed that when she began the fall she was sick to unconsciousness and that this made her skeleton rubber, so she kind of rolled rather than ricocheted. She landed at the bottom, blinking and feeling better, having left whatever it was that had made her uneasy all along the way. True, she was so badly bruised she looked like a tattooed lady. But, no, not a wrist was sprained or an ankle twisted. She held her head funny for three days, kind of peering out of the sides of her eyeballs instead of turning to look. But the important thing was Mrs. Goodwater at the bottom of the steps, pillowing Elmiras Head on her Lap and dropping tears on her as the ladies gathered Hysterically. Elmira, I promise, Elmira, I swear, if you just live, if you don't die, you hear me, Elmira, listen! I'll use my magic for nothing but good from now on. No more black, nothing but white magic. The rest of your life, if I have my way, no more falling over iron dogs, tripping on sills, cutting fingers, or dropping downstairs for you! Elysium, Elmira, Elysium, I promise! If you just live! Look, I'm pulling the tacks out of the doll! Elmira, speak to me! Speak now and sit up! And come upstairs for another vote. President, I promise, president of the Honeysuckle Ladies Lodge, by acclamation, won't we, ladies? At this all the ladies cried so hard they had to lean on each other. Tom, upstairs, thought this meant death down there. He was halfway down when he met the ladies coming back up, looking like they had just wandered out of a dynamite explosion. Get out of the way, boy! First came Mrs. Goodwater, laughing and crying. Next came Mrs. Elmira Brown, doing the same. And after the two of them came all the one hundred twenty-three members of the lodge, not knowing if theyd just returned from a funeral or were on their way to a ball. He watched them pass and shook his head. don't need me no more, he said. No more at all. So he tiptoed down the stairs before they missed him, holding tight to the rail all the way. For what its worth, said Tom, theres the whole thing in a nutshell. The ladies carrying on like crazy. Everybody standing around blowing their noses. Elmira Brown sitting there at the bottom of the steps, nothing broke, her it bones made out of Jell-O, I suspect, and the witch sobbin on her shoulder, and then all of them goin upstairs suddenly laughing. Cry-yi, you figure it out. I got out of there fast! Tom loosened his shirt and took off his tie. Magic, you say? asked Douglas. Magic six ways from Sunday. You believe it? |
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Yes I do and no I don't. Boy, this town is full of stuff! Douglas peered off at the horizon where clouds filled the sky with immense shapes of old gods and warriors. Spells and wax dolls and needles and elixirs, you said? Wasnt much as an elixir, but awful fine as an upchuck. Blap! Wowie! Tom clutched his stomach and stuck out his tongue. Witches... said Douglas. He squinted his eyes mysteriously. And then there is that day when all around, all around you hear the dropping of the apples, one by one, from the trees. At first it is one here and one there, and then it is three and then it is four and then nine and twenty, until the apples plummet like rain, fall like horse hoofs in the soft, darkening grass, and you are the last apple on the tree; and you wait for the wind to work you slowly free from your hold upon the sky, and drop you down and down. Long before you hit the grass you will have forgotten there ever was a tree, or other apples, or a summer, or green grass below. You will fall in darkness... No! Colonel Freeleigh opened his eyes quickly, sat erect in his wheel chair. He jerked his cold hand out to find the telephone. It was still there! He crushed it against his chest for a moment, blinking. I don't like that dream, he said to his empty room. At last, his fingers trembling, he lifted the receiver and called the long-distance operator and gave her a number and waited, watching the bedroom door as if at any moment a plague of sons, daughters, grandsons, nurses, doctors, might swarm in to seize away this last vital luxury he permitted his failing senses. Many days, or was it years, ago, when his heart had thrust like a dagger through his ribs and flesh, he had heard the boys below... their names what were they? Charles, Charlie, Chuck, yes! And Douglas! And Tom! He remembered! Calling his name far down the hall, but the door being locked in their faces, the boys turned away. You cant be excited, the doctor said. No visitors, no visitors, no It visitors. And he heard the boys moving across the street, he saw them, he waved. And they waved back. Colonel... Colonel... And now he sat alone with the little gray toad of a heart flopping weakly here or there in his chest from time to time. Colonel Freeleigh, said the operator. Heres your call. Mexico City. Erickson 3899. And now the far away but infinitely clear voice: Bueno. Jorge! cried the old man Senor Freeleigh! Again? This costs money. Let it cost! You know what to do. Si. The window? The window, Jorge, if you please. A moment, said the voice. And, thousands of miles away, in a southern land, in an office in a building in that land, there was the sound of footsteps retreating from the phone. The old man leaned forward, gripping the receiver tight to his wrinkled ear that ached with waiting for the next sound. The raising of a window. Ah, sighed the old man. The sounds of Mexico City on a hot yellow noon through the open window into the waiting phone. He c see Jorge standing there holding the mouthpiece out, out the bright day. Senor... No, no, please. Let me listen. He listened to the hooting of many metal horns, squealing of brakes, the calls of vendors selling red-purple bananas and jungle oranges in their stalls. Colonel Freeleighs feet began to move, hanging from the edge of his wheel chair, making the motions of a man walking. His eyes squeezed tight. He gave a series of immense sniffs, as if to gain the odors of meats hung on iron hooks in sunshine, cloaked with flies like a mantle of raisins; the smell of stone alleys wet with morning rain. |
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He could feel the sun bum his spiny-bearded cheek, and he was twenty-five years old again, walking, walking, looking, smiling, happy to be alive, very much alert, drinking in colors and smells. A rap on the door. Quickly he hid the phone under his lap robe. The nurse entered. Hello, she said. Have you been good? Yes. The old mans voice was mechanical. He could hardly see. The shock of a simple rap on the door was such that part of him was still in another city, far removed. He waited for his mind to rush homeit must be here to answer questions, act sane, be polite. I've come to check your pulse. Not now! said the old man. you're not going anywhere, are you? She smiled. He looked at the nurse steadily. He hadn't been anywhere in ten years. Give me your wrist. Her fingers, hard and precise, searched for the sickness in his pulse like a pair of calipers. Whatve you been doing to excite yourself? she demanded. Nothing. Her gaze shifted and stopped on the empty phone table. At that instant a horn sounded faintly, two thousand miles away. She took the receiver from under the lap robe and held it before his face. Why do you do this to yourself? You promised you wouldnt. that's how you hurt yourself in the first place, isn't it? Getting excited, talking too much. Those boys up here jumping around They sat quietly and listened, said the colonel. And I told them things theyd never heard. The buffalo, I told them, the bison. It was worth it. I don't care. I was in a pure fever and I was alive. It doesn't matter if being so alive kills a man; its better to have the quick fever every time. Now give me that phone. If you won't let the boys come up and sit politely I can at least talk to someone outside the room. I'm sorry, Colonel. Your grandson will have to know about this. I prevented his having the phone taken out last week. Now it looks like I'll let him go ahead. This is my house, my phone. I pay your salary! he said. To make you well, not get you excited. She wheeled his chair across the room. To bed with you now, young man! From bed he looked back at the phone and kept looking at it. I'm going to the store for a few minutes, the nurse said. Just to be sure you don't use the phone again, I'm hiding your wheel chair in the hall. She wheeled the empty chair out the door. In the downstairs entry, he heard her pause and dial the extension phone. Was she phoning Mexico City? he wondered. She wouldn't dare! The front door shut. He thought of the last week here, alone, in his room, and the secret, narcotic calls across continents, an isthmus, whole jungle countries of rain forest, blue-orchid plateaus, lakes and hills... talking... talking... to Buenos Aires... and... Lima... Rio de Janeiro... He lifted himself in the cool bed. Tomorrow the telephone gone! What a greedy fool he had been! He slipped his brittle ivory legs down from the bed, marveling at their desiccation. They seemed to be things which had been fastened to his body while he slept one night, while his younger legs were taken off and burned in the cellar furnace. Over the years, they had destroyed all of him, removing hands, arms, and legs and leaving him with substitutes as delicate and useless as chess pieces. And now they were tampering with something more intangiblethe memory; they were trying to cut the wires which led back into another year. He was across the room in a stumbling run. Grasping the phone, he took it with him as he slid down the wall to sit upon the floor. He got the long-distance operator, his heart exploding within him, faster and faster, a blackness in his eyes. |
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Hurry, hurry! He waited. Bueno? Jorge, we were cut off. You must not phone again, Senior, said the faraway voice. Your nurse called me. She says you are very ill. I must hang up. No, Jorge! Please! the old man pleaded. One last time, listen to me. you're taking the phone out tomorrow. I can never call you again. Jorge said nothing. The old man went on. For the love of God, Jorge! For friendship, then, for the old days! You don't know what it means. you're my age, but you can move! I haven't moved anywhere in ten years. He dropped the phone and had trouble picking it up, his chest was so thick with pain. Jorge! You are still there, arent you? This will be the last time? said Jorge. I promise! The phone was laid on a desk thousands of miles away. Once more, with that clear familiarity, the footsteps, the pause, and, at last, the raising of the window. Listen, whispered the old man to himself. And he heard a thousand people in another sunlight, and the faint, tinkling music of an organ grinder playing La Marimbaoh, a lovely, dancing tune. With eyes tight, the old man put up his hand as if to click pictures of an old cathedral, and his body was heavier with flesh, younger, and he felt the hot pavement underfoot. He wanted to say, you're still there, arent you? All of: you people in that city in the time of the early siesta, the shops closing, the little boys crying loteria nacional para hoy! to sell lottery tickets. You are all there, the people in the city. I cant believe I was ever among you. When you are away I: from a city it becomes a fantasy. Any town, New York, Chicago, with its people, becomes improbable with distance. Just as I am improbable here, in Illinois, in a small town by a quiet lake. All of us improbable to one another because we are not present to one another. And it is so good to hear the sounds, and know that Mexico City is still there and the people moving and living... He sat with the receiver tightly pressed to his ear. And at last, the dearest, most improbable sound of allthe sound of a green trolley car going around a comera trolley burdened with brown and alien and beautiful people, and the sound of other people running and calling out with triumph as they leaped up and swung aboard and vanished around a corner on the shrieking rails and were borne away in the sun-blazed distance to leave only the sound of tortillas frying on the market stoves, or was it merely the ever rising and falling hum and burn of static quivering along two thousand miles of copper wire... The old man sat on the floor. Time passed. A downstairs door opened slowly. Light footsteps came in, hesitated, then ventured up the stairs. Voices murmured. We shouldn't be here! He phoned me, I tell you. He needs visitors bad. We cant let him down. he's sick! Sure! But he said to come when the nurses out. Well only stay a second, say hello, and... The door to the bedroom moved wide. The three boys stood looking in at the old man seated there on the floor. Colonel Freeleigh? said Douglas softly. There was something in his silence that made them all shut up their mouths. They approached, almost on tiptoe. Douglas, bent down, disengaged the phone from the old mans now quite cold fingers. Douglas lifted the receiver to his own ear, listened. Above the static he heard a strange, a far, a final sound. Two thousand miles away, the closing of a window. Boom!! said Tom. Boom. Boom. Boom. He sat on the Civil War cannon in the courthouse square. Douglas, in front of the cannon, clutched his heart and fell down on the grass. |
| 499 |
August up ahead, said Douglas. Sure. But the way things are going, therell be no machines, no friends, and dam few dandelions for the last harvest. Doom. Doom. You sound like a funeral bell tolling, said Grandfather. Talk like that is worse than swearing. I won't wash out your mouth with soap, however. A thimbleful of dandelion wine is indicated. Here, now, swig it down. Whats it taste like? I'm a fire-eater! Whoosh! Now upstairs, run three times around the block, do five somersets, six pushups, climb two trees, and you'll be concertmaster instead of chief mourner. Get! On his way, running, Douglas thought, Four pushups, one tree, and two somersets will do it! And out there in the middle of the first day of August just getting into his car, was Bill Forrester, who shouted he Ir was going downtown for some extraordinary ice cream or other and would anyone join him? So, not five minutes later, jiggled and steamed into a better mood, Douglas found himself stepping in off the fiery pavements and moving through the grotto of soda-scented air, of vanilla freshness at the drugstore, to sit at the snow-marble fountain with Bill Forrester. They then asked for a recital of the most unusual ices and when the fountain man said, Old fashioned lime-vanilla ice... that's it! said Bill Forrester. Yes, sir! said Douglas. And, while waiting, they turned slowly on their rotating stools. The silver spigots, the gleaming mirrors, the hushed whirl-around ceiling fans, the green shades over the small windows, the harp-wire chairs, passed under their moving gaze. They stopped turning. Their eyes had touched upon the face and form of Miss Helen Loomis, ninety-five years old, ice-cream spoon in hand, ice cream in mouth. Young man, she said to Bill Forrester, you are a person of taste and imagination. Also, you have the will power of ten men; otherwise you would not dare veer away from the common flavors listed on the menu and order, straight out, without quibble or reservation, such an unheard-of thing as lime-vanilla ice. He bowed his head solemnly to her. Come sit with me, both of you, she said. Well talk of strange ice creams and such things as we seem to have a bent for. don't be afraid; I'll foot the bill. Smiling, they carried their dishes to her table and sat. You look like a Spaulding, she said to the boy. Youve got your grandfathers head. And you, you're William Forrester. You write for the Chronicle, a good enough column. I've heard more about you than I'd care to tell. I know you, said Bill Forrester. you're Helen Loomis. He hesitated, then continued. T was in love with you once, he said. Now that's the way I like a conversation to open. She dug quietly at her ice cream. that's grounds for another meeting. No-dont tell me where or when or how you were in love with me. Well save that for next time. Youve taken away my appetite with your talk. Look there now! Well, I must get home anyway. Sinceyou're a reporter, come for tea tomorrow between three and four; its just possible I can sketch out the history of this town, since it was a trading post, for you. And, so well both have something for our curiosity to chew on, Mr. Forrester, you remind me of a gentleman I went with seventy, yes, seventy years ago. She sat across from them and it was like talking with a gray and lost quivering moth. The voice came from far away inside the grayness and the oldness, wrapped in the powders of pressed flowers and ancient butterflies. Well. She arose. Will you come tomorrow? |
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I most certainly will, said Bill Forrester. And she went off into the town on business, leaving the young boy and the young man there, looking after her, slowly finishing their ice cream. William Forrester spent the next morning checking local news items for the paper, had time after lunch for some local news items for the paper, had time after lunch for some fishing in the river outside town, caught only some small fish which he threw back happily, and, without thinking about it, or at least not noticing that he had thought about it, at three oclock he found his car taking him down a certain street, He watched with interest as his hands turned the steering wheel and motored him up a vast circular drive where he stopped under an ivy-covered entry. Letting himself out, he was conscious of the fact that his car was like his pipe old, chewed-on, unkempt in this huge green garden by this freshly painted, three-story Victorian house. He saw a faint ghostlike movement at the far end of the garden, heard a whispery cry, and saw that Miss Loomis was there, removed: I across time and distance, seated alone, the tea service glittering its soft silver surfaces, waiting for him. This is the first time a woman has ever been ready and, waiting, he said, walking up. It is also, he admitted, the first time in my life I have been on time for an appointment. Why is that? she asked, propped back in her wicker chair. I don't know, he admitted. Well. She started pouring tea. To start things off, what do you think of the world? I don't know anything. The beginning of wisdom, as they say. Whenyou're seventeen you know everything. Whenyou're twenty-seven if you still know everythingyou're still seventeen. You seem to have learned quite a lot over the years. It is the privilege of old people to seem to know everything. But its an act and a mask, like every other act and mask Between ourselves, we old ones wink at each other and smile, saying, How do you like my mask, my act, my certainty? isn't life a play? don't I play it well? They both laughed quietly. He sat back and let the laughter, come naturally from his mouth for the first time in many months. When they quieted she held her teacup in her two hands and looked into it. Do you know, its lucky we met so late. I wouldn't have wanted you to meet me when I was twenty-one and full of foolishness. They have special laws for pretty girls twenty-one. So you think I was pretty? He nodded good-humoredly. But how can you tell? she asked. When you meet a dragon that has eaten a swan, do you guess by the few feathers left around the mouth? that's what it isa body like this is a dragon, all scales and folds. So the dragon ate the white swan. I haven't seen her for years. I cant even remember what she looks like. I feel her, though. she's safe inside, still alive; the essential swan hasnt changed a feather. Do you know, there are some mornings in spring or fall, when I wake and think, I'll run across the fields into the woods and pick wild strawberries! Or I'll swim in the lake, or I'll dance all night tonight until dawn! And then, in a rage, discover I'm in this old and ruined dragon. I'm the princess in the crumbled tower, no way out, waiting for her Prince Charming. You should have written books. My dear boy, I have written. What else was there for an old maid? I was a crazy creature with a headful of carnival spangles until I was thirty, and then the only man I ever really cared for stopped waiting and married someone else. |
| 501 |
So in spite, in anger at myself, I told myself I deserved my: fate for not having married when the best chance was at hand. I started traveling. My luggage was snowed under blizzards of travel stickers. I have been alone in Paris, alone in Vienna, alone in London, and all in all, it is very much like being alone in Green Town, Illinois. It is, in essence, being alone. Oh, you have plenty of time to think, improve your manners, sharpen your conversations. But I sometimes think I could easily trade a verb tense or a curtsy for some company that would stay over for a thirty-year weekend. They drank their tea. Oh, such a rush of self-pity, she said good-naturedly. About yourself, now. you're thirty-one and still not married? Let me put it this way, he said. Women who act and think and talk like you are rare. My, she said seriously, you mustn't expect young women to talk like me. That comes later. you're much too young, first of all. And secondly, the average man runs helter-skelter the moment he finds anything like a brain in a lady. Youve probably met quite a few brainy ones who hid it most successfully from you. you'll have to pry around a bit to find the odd beetle. Lift a few boards. They were laughing again. I shall probably be a meticulous old bachelor, he said. No, no, you mustn't do that. It wouldn't be right. You shouldn't even be here this afternoon. This is a street which ends only in an Egyptian pyramid. Pyramids are all very nice, but mummies are hardly fit companions. Where would you like to go, what would you really like to do with your life? See Istanbul, Port Said, Nairobi, Budapest. Write a book. Smoke too many cigarettes. Fall off a cliff, but get caught in a tree halfway down. Get shot at a few times in a dark alley on a Moroccan midnight. Love a beautiful woman. Well, I don't think I can provide them all, she said. but I've traveled and I can tell you about many of those places. And if youd care to run across my front lawn tonight about eleven and if I'm still awake, I'll fire off a Civil War musket at you Will that satisfy your masculine urge for adventure? That would be just fine. Where would you like to go first? I can take you there, you know. I can weave a spell. Just name it. London? Cairo? Cairo makes your face turn on like a light. So let's go to Cairo. Just relax now. Put some of that nice tobacco in that pipe of yours and sit back. He sat back, lit his pipe, half smiling, relaxing, and listened, and she began to talk. Cairo... she said. The hour passed in jewels and alleys and winds from the Egyptian desert. The sun was golden and the Nile was muddy where it lapped down to the deltas, and there was someone very young and very quick at the top of the pyramid, laughing, calling to him to come on up the shadowy side into the sun, and he was climbing, she putting her hand down to help him up the last step, and then they were laughing on camel back, loping toward the great stretched bulk of the Sphinx, and late at night, in the native quarter, there was the tinkle of small hammers on bronze and silver, and music from some stringed instruments fading away and away and away... William Forrester opened his eyes. Miss Helen Loomis had finished the adventure and they were home again, very familiar to each other, on the best of terms, in the garden, the tea cold in the silver pourer, the biscuits dried in the latened sun. He sighed and stretched and sighed again. I've never been so comfortable in my life. Nor I. I've kept you late. |
| 502 |
I never thought the day would come when I would see him alive again. Butyou're pretty much alive, you spill ashes around like he did, you're clumsy and graceful combined, I know everythingyou're going to do before you do it, but after youve done it I'm always surprised. Reincarnations a lot of milk-mush to me, but the other day I felt, What if I called Robert, Robert, to you on the street, would William Forrester turn around? I don't know, he said. Neither do I. that's what makes life interesting. August was almost over. The first cool touch of autumn moved slowly through the town and there was a softening and the first gradual burning fever of color in every tree, a faint flush and coloring in the hills, and the color of lions in the wheat fields. Now the pattern of days was familiar and repeated like a penman beautifully inscribing again and again, in practice, a series of its and ws and ms, day after day the line repeated in delicate rills. William Forrester walked across the garden one early August afternoon to find Helen Loomis writing with great care at the tea table. She put aside her pen and ink. I've been writing you a letter, she said. Well, my being here saves you the trouble. No, this is a special letter. Look at it. She showed him the blue envelope, which she now sealed and pressed flat. Remember how it looks. When you receive this in the mail, you'll know I'm dead. that's no way to talk, is it? Sit down and listen to me. He sat. My dear William, she said, under the parasol shade. In a few days I will be dead. No. She put up her hand. I don't want you to say a thing. I'm not afraid. When you live as long as I've lived you lose that, too. I never liked lobster in my life, and mainly because I'd never tried it. On my eightieth birthday I tried it. I cant say I'm greatly excited over lobster still, but I have no doubt as to its taste now, and I don't fear it. I dare say death will be a lobster, too, and I can come to terms with it. She motioned with her hands. But enough of that. The important thing is that I shant be seeing you again. There will be no services. I believe that a woman who has passed through that particular door has as much right to privacy as a woman who has retired for the night. You cant predict death, he said at last. For fifty years I've watched the grandfather clock in the hall, William. After it is wound I can predict to the hour when it will stop. Old people are no different. They can feel the machinery slow down and the last weights shift. Oh, please don't look that wayplease don't. I cant help it, he said. Weve had a nice time, haven't we? It has been very special here, talking every day. It was that much-overburdened and worn phrase referred to as a meeting of the minds. She turned the blue envelope in her hands. I've always known that the quality of love was the mind, even though the body sometimes refuses this knowledge. The body lives for itself. It lives only to feed and wait for the night. Its essentially nocturnal. But what of the mind which is born of the sun, William, and must spend thousands of hours of a lifetime awake and aware? Can you balance off the body, that pitiful, selfish thing of night against a whole lifetime of sun and intellect? I don't know. I only know there has been your mind here and my mind here, and the afternoons have been like none I can remember. There is still so much to talk about, but we must save it for another time. We don't seem to have much time now. No, but perhaps there will be another time. |
| 503 |
A voice called from far off, You want an escort, ladies? No, well make it, said Lavinia to nobody, and they walked on. They walked through the nuzzling, whispering ravine, the ravine of whispers and clicks, the little world of investigation growing small behind them with its lights and voices. I've never seen a dead person before, said Francine. Lavinia examined her watch as if it was a thousand miles away on an arm and wrist grown impossibly distant. Its only eight-thirty. Well pick up Helen and get on to the show. The show! Francine jerked. Its what we need. Weve got to forget this. Its not good to remember. If we went home now wed remember. Well go to the show as if nothing happened. Lavinia, you don't mean it! I never meant anything more in my life. We need to laugh now and forget. But Elizabeths back thereyour friend, my friend We cant help her; we can only help ourselves. Come on. They started up the ravine side, on the stony path, in the dark. And suddenly there, barring their way, standing very still in one spot, not seeing them, but looking on down at the moving lights and the body and listening to the official voices, was Douglas Spaulding. He stood there, white as a mushroom, with his hands at his sides, staring down into the ravine. Get home! cried Francine. He did not hear. You! shrieked Francine. Get home, get out of this place, you hear? Get home, get home, get home! Douglas jerked his head, stared at them as if they were I. not there. His mouth moved. He gave a bleating sound. Then, silently, he whirled about and ran. He ran silently up the distant hills into the warm darkness. Francine sobbed and cried again and, doing this, walked on with Lavinia Nebbs. There you are! I thought you ladiesd never come! Helen Greer stood tapping her foot atop her porch steps. you're only an hour late, that's all. What happened? We started Francine. Lavinia clutched her arm tight. There was a commotion. Somebody found Elizabeth Ramsell in the ravine. Dead? Was shedead? Lavinia nodded. Helen gasped and put her hand to her throat. Who found her? Lavinia held Francines wrist firmly. We don't know. The three young women stood in the summer night looking at each other. I've got a notion to go in the house and lock the doors, said Helen at last. But finally she went to get a sweater, for though it was still warm, she, too, complained of the sudden winter night. While she was gone Francine whispered frantically, Why didn't you tell her? Why upset her? said Lavinia. Tomorrow. Tomorrows plenty of time. The three women moved along the street under the black trees, past suddenly locked houses. How soon the news had spread outward from the ravine, from house to house, porch to porch, telephone to telephone. Now, passing, the three women felt eyes looking out at them from curtained windows as locks rattled into place. How strange the popsicle, the vanilla night, the night of close-packed ice cream, of mosquito-lotioned wrists, the night of running children suddenly veered from their games and put away behind glass, behind wood, the popsicles in melting puddles of lime and strawberry where they fell when the children were scooped indoors. Strange the hot rooms with the sweating people pressed tightly back into them behind the bronze knobs and knockers. Baseball bats and balls lay upon the unfootprinted lawns. A half-drawn, white-chalk game of hopscotch lay on the broiled, steamed sidewalk. It was as if someone had predicted freezing weather a moment ago. |
| 504 |
Were crazy being out on a night like this, said Helen. Lonely One won't kill three ladies, said Lavinia. Theres safety in numbers. And besides, its too soon. The killings always come a month separated. A shadow fell across their terrified faces. A figure loomed behind a tree. As if someone had struck an organ a terrible blow with his fist, the three women gave off a scream, in three different shrill notes. Got you! roared a voice. The man plunged at them. He came into the light, laughing. He leaned against a tree, pointing at the ladies weakly, laughing again. Hey! I'm the Lonely One! said Frank Dillon. Frank Dillon! Frank! Frank, said Lavinia, if you ever do a childish thing like that again, may someone riddle you with bullets! What a thing to do! Francine began to cry hysterically. Frank Dillon stopped smiling. Say, I'm sorry. Go away! said Lavinia. haven't you heard about Elizabeth Ramsellfound dead in the ravine? You running around scaring women! don't speak to us again! Aw, now They moved. He moved to follow. Stay right there, Mr. Lonely One, and scare yourself. Go take a look at Elizabeth Ramsells face and see if its funny. Good night! Lavinia took the other two on along the street of trees and stars, Francine holding a kerchief to her face. Francine, it was only a joke. Helen turned to Lavinia. Whys she crying so hard? Well tell you when we get downtown. Were going to the show no matter what! Enoughs enough. Come on now, get your money ready, were almost there! The drugstore was a small pool of sluggish air which the great wooden fans stirred in tides of arnica and tonic and soda-smell out onto the brick streets. I need a nickels worth of green peppermint chews, said Lavinia to the druggist. His face was set and pale, like all the faces they had seen on the half-empty streets. For eating in the show, said Lavinia as the druggist weighed out a nickels worth of the green candy with a silver shovel. You sure look pretty tonight, ladies. You looked cool this afternoon, Miss Lavinia, when you was in for a chocolate soda. So cool and nice that someone asked after you. Oh? Man sitting at the counterwatched you walk out. Said to me, say, whos that? Why, that's Lavinia Nebbs, prettiest maiden lady in town, I said. she's beautiful, he said. Where does she live? Here the druggist paused uncomfortably. You didn't! said Francine. You didn't give him her address, I hope? You didn't! I guess I didn't think. I said, Oh, over on Park Street, you know, near the ravine. A casual remark. But now, tonight, them finding the body, I heard a minute ago, I thought, My God, whatve I done! He handed over the package, much too full. You fool! cried Francine, and tears were in her eyes. I'm sorry. Course, maybe it was nothing. Lavinia stood with the three people looking at her, staring at her. She felt nothing. Except, perhaps, the slightest prickle of excitement in her throat. She held out her money automatically. Theres no charge on those peppermints, said the druggist, turning to shuffle some papers. Well, I know what I'm going to do right now! Helen stalked out of the drugshop. I'm calling a taxi to take us all home. I'll be no part of a hunting party for you, Lavinia. That man was up to no good. Asking about you. You want to be dead in the ravine next? It was just a man, said Lavinia, turning in a slow circle to look at the town. So is Frank Dillon a man, but maybe he's the Lonely One. Francine hadn't come out with them, they noticed, and turning, they found her arriving. |
| 505 |
Do you suppose if we screamed theyd do anything? Who? The dummies, the window people. Oh, Francine. Well... There were a thousand people in the windows, stiff and silent, and three people on the street, the echoes following like gunshots from store fronts across the way when they tapped their heels on the baked pavement. A red neon sign flickered dimly, buzzed like a dying insect, as they passed. Baked and white, the long avenues lay ahead. Blowing and tall in a wind that touched only their leafy summits, the trees stood on either side of the three small women. Seen from the courthouse peak, they appeared like three thistles far away. First, well walk you home, Francine. No, I'll walk you home. don't be silly. You live way out at Electric Park. If you walked me home youd have to come back across the ravine alone, yourself. And if so much as a leaf fell on you, youd drop dead. Francine said, I can stay the night at your house. you're the pretty one! And so they walked, they drifted like three prim clothes forms over a moonlit sea of lawn and concrete, Lavinia watching the black trees Bit by each side of her, listening to the voices of her friends murmuring, trying to laugh; and the night seemed to quicken, they seemed to run while walking slowly, everything seemed fast and the color of hot snow. Lets sing, said Lavinia. They sang, Shine On, Shine On, Harvest Moon... They sang sweetly and quietly, arm in arm, not looking back. They felt the hot sidewalk cooling underfoot, moving, moving. Listen! said Lavinia. They listened to the summer night. The summer-night crickets and the far-off tone of the courthouse clock making I it eleven forty-five. Listen! Lavinia listened. A porch swing creaked in the dark and there was Mr. Terle, not saying anything to anybody, alone on his swing, having a last cigar. They saw the pink ash swinging gently to and fro. Now the lights were going, going, gone. The little house lights and big house lights and yellow lights and green hurricane lights, the candles and oil lamps and porch lights, and everything felt locked up in brass and iron and steel, everything, thought Lavinia, is boxed and locked and wrapped and shaded. She imagined the people in their moonlit beds. And their breathing in the summer-night rooms, safe and together. And here we are, thought Lavinia, our footsteps on along the baked summer evening sidewalk. And above us the 1 lonely street lights shining down, making a drunken shadow. Heres your house, Francine. Good night. Lavinia, Helen, stay here tonight. Its late, almost midnight now. You can sleep in the parlor. I'll make hot chocolateitll be such fun! Francine was holding them both now, close to her. No, thanks, said Lavinia. And Francine began to cry. Oh, not again, Francine, said Lavinia. I don't want you dead, sobbed Francine, the tears running straight down her cheeks. you're so fine and nice, I want you alive. Please, oh, please! Francine, I didn't know how much this has done to you. I promise I'll phone when I get home. Oh, will you? And tell you I'm safe, yes. And tomorrow well have a picnic lunch at Electric Park. With ham sandwiches I'll make myself, hows that? you'll see, I'll live forever! you'll phone, then? I promised, didn't I? Good night, good night! Rushing upstairs, Francine whisked behind a door, which slammed to be snap-bolted tight on the instant. Now, said Lavinia to Helen, I'll walk you home. The courthouse clock struck the hour. The sounds blew across a town that was empty, emptier than it had ever been. |
| 506 |
Over empty streets and empty lots and empty lawns the sound faded. Nine, ten, eleven, twelve, counted Lavinia, with Helen on her arm. don't you feel funny? asked Helen. How do you mean? When you think of us being out here on the sidewalks, under the trees, and all those people safe behind locked doors, lying in their beds. Were practically the only walking people out in the open in a thousand miles, I bet. The sound of the deep warm dark ravine came near. In a minute they stood before Helens house, looking at each other for a long time. The wind blew the odor of cut grass between them. The moon was sinking in a sky that was beginning to cloud. I don't suppose its any use asking you to stay, Lavinia? I'll be going on. Sometimes Sometimes what? Sometimes I think people want to die. Youve acted odd all evening. I'm just not afraid, said Lavinia. And I'm curious, I suppose. And I'm using my head. Logically, the Lonely One cant be around. The police and all. The police are home with their covers up over their ears. Lets just say I'm enjoying myself, precariously, but safely. If there was any real chance of anything happening to me, I'd stay here with you, you can be sure of that. Maybe part of you doesn't want to live anymore. You and Francine. Honestly! I feel so guilty. I'll be drinking some hot cocoa just as you reach the ravine bottom and walk on the bridge. Drink a cup for me. Good night. Lavinia Nebbs walked alone down the midnight street, down the late summer-night silence. She saw houses with the dark windows and far away she heard a dog barking. In five minutes, she thought, I'll be safe at home. In five minutes I'll be phoning silly little Francine. I'll She heard the mans voice. A mans voice singing far away among the trees. Oh, give me a June night, the moonlight and you... She walked a little faster. The voice sang, In my arms... with all your charms... Down the street in the dim moonlight a man walked slowly and casually along. I can run knock on one of these doors, thought Lavinia, if I must. Oh, give me a June night, sang the man, and he carried a long club in his hand. The moonlight and you. Well, look whos here! What a time of night for you to be out, Miss Nebbs! Officer Kennedy! And that's who it was, of course. I'd better see you home! Thanks, I'll make it. But you live across the ravine... Yes, she thought, but I won't walk through the ravine with any man, not even an officer. How do I know who the Lonely One is? No, she said, I'll hurry. I'll wait right here, he said. If you need any help, give a yell. Voices carry good here. I'll come running. Thank you. She went on, leaving him under a light, humming to himself, alone. Here I am, she thought. The ravine. She stood on the edge of the one hundred and thirteen steps that went down the steep hill and then across the bridge seventy yards and up the hills leading to Park Street. And only one lantern to see by. Three minutes from now, she thought, I'll be putting my key in my house door. Nothing can happen in just one hundred eighty seconds. She started down the long dark-green steps into the deep ravine. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten steps, she counted in a whisper. She felt she was running, but she was not running. Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty steps, she breathed. One fifth of the way! she announced to herself. The ravine was deep, black and black, black! And the world was gone behind, the world of safe people in bed, the locked doors, the town, the drugstore, the theater, the lights, everything was gone. |
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he's following, don't turn, don't look, if you see him, you'll not be able to move, you'll be so frightened. Just run, run! She ran across the bridge. Oh, God, God, please, please let me get up the hill! Now up the path, now between the hills, oh God, its dark, and everything so far away. ii I screamed now it wouldn't help; I cant scream anyway. Heres the top of the path, heres the street, oh, God, please let me be safe, if I get home safe I'll never go out alone; I was a fool, let me admit it, I was a fool, I didn't know what terror was, but if you let me get home from this I'll never go without Helen or Francine again! Heres the street. Across the street! She crossed the street and rushed up the sidewalk. Oh God, the porch! My house! Oh God, please give me time to get inside and lock the door and I'll be safe! And theresilly thing to noticewhy did she notice, instantly, no time, no timebut there it was anyway, flashing bythere on the porch rail, the half-filled glass of lemonade she had abandoned a long time, a year, half an evening ago! The lemonade glass sitting calmly, imperturbably there on the rail... and... She heard her clumsy feet on the porch and listened and felt her hands scrabbling and ripping at the lock with the key. She heard her heart. She heard her inner voice screaming. The key fit. Unlock the door, quick, quick! The door opened. Now, inside. Slam it! She slammed the door. Now lock it, bar it, lock it! she gasped wretchedly. Lock it, tight, tight! The door was locked and bolted tight. The music stopped. She listened to her heart again and the sound of it diminishing into silence. Home! Oh God, safe at home! Safe, safe and safe at home! She slumped against the door. Safe, safe. Listen. Not a sound. Safe, safe, oh thank God, safe at home. I'll never go out at night again. I'll stay home. I won't go over that ravine again ever. Safe, oh safe, safe home, so good, so good, safe! Safe inside, the door locked. Wait. Look out the window. She looked. Why, theres no one there at all! Nobody. There was nobody following me at all. Nobody running after me. She got her breath and almost laughed at herself. It stands to reason. If a man had been following me, hed have caught me! I'm not a fast runner... Theres no one on the porch or in the yard. How silly of me. I wasnt running from anything. That ravines as safe as anyplace. Just the same, its nice to be home. Homes the really good warm place, the only place to be. She put her hand out to the light switch and stopped. What? she asked. What, What? Behind her in the living room, someone cleared his throat. Good grief, they ruin everything! don't take it so hard, Charlie. Well, whatre we going to talk about now? Its no use talking the Lonely One if he aint even alive! Its not scary anymore! don't know about you, Charlie, said Tom. I'm going back to Summers Ice House and sit in the door and pretend he's alive and get cold all up and down my spine. that's cheating. You got to take your chills where you can find them, Charlie. Douglas did not listen to Tom and Charlie. He looked at Lavinia Nebbss house and spoke, almost to himself. I was there last night in the ravine. I saw it. I saw everything. On my way home I cut across here. I saw that lemonade glass right on the porch rail, half empty. Thought I'd like to drink it. Like to drink it, I thought. I was in the ravine and I was here, right in the middle of it all. Tom and Charlie, in turn, ignored Douglas. For that matter, said Tom. I don't really think the Lonely One is dead. |
| 508 |
You were here this morning when the ambulance came to bring that man out on the stretcher, werent you? Sure, said Tom. Well, that was the Lonely One, dumb! Read the papers! After ten long years escaping, old Lavinia Nebbs up and stabbed him with a handy pair of sewing scissors. I wish shed minded her own business. You want shed laid down and let him squeeze her windpipe? No, but the least she couldve done is gallop out of the house and down the street screaming Lonely One! Lonely One! long enough to give him a chance to beat it. This town used to have some good stuff in it up until about twelve oclock last night. From here on, were vanilla junket. Let me say it for the last time, Charlie; I figure the Lonely One aint dead. I saw his face, you saw his face, Doug saw his face, didn't you, Doug? What? Yes. I think so. Yes. Everybody saw his face. Answer me this, then: Did it look like the Lonely One to you? I... said Douglas, and stopped. The sun buzzed in the sky for about five seconds. My gosh... whispered Charlie at last. Tom waited, smiling. It didn't look like the Lonely One at all, gasped Charlie. It looked like a man. Right, yes, sir, a plain everyday man, who wouldn't pull the wings off even so much as a fly, Charlie, a fly! The least the Lonely One would do if he was the Lonely One is look like the Lonely One, right? Well, he looked like the candy butcher down front the Elite Theater nights. What you think he was, a tramp coming through town, got in what he thought was an empty house, and got killed by Miss Nebbs? Sure! Hold on, though. None of us know what the Lonely One should look like. Theres no pictures. Only people ever saw him wound up dead. You know and Doug knows and I know what he looks like. he's got to be tall, don't he? Sure... And he's got to be pale, don't he? Pale, that's right. And skinny like a skeleton and have long dark hair, don't he? that's what I always said. And big eyes bulging out, green eyes like a cat? that's him to the t. Well, then. Tom snorted. You saw that poor guy they lugged out of the Nebbss place a couple hours ago. What was he? Little and red-faced and kind of fat and not much hair and what there was was sandy. Tom, you hit on it! Come on! Call the guys! You go tell them like you told me! The Lonely One aint dead. Hell still be out lurkin around tonight. Yeah, said Tom, and stopped, suddenly thoughtful. Tom, you're a pal, you got a real brain. None of us wouldve saved the day this way. The summer was sure going bad up to this very minute. You got your thumb in the dike just in time. August won't be a total loss. Hey, kids! And Charlie was off, waving his arms, yelling. Tom stood on the sidewalk in front of Lavinia Nebbs house, his face pale. My gosh! he whispered. Whatve I gone and done now! He turned to Douglas. I say, Doug, whatve I gone and done now? Douglas was staring at the house. His lips moved. I was there, last night, in the ravine. I saw Elizabeth Ramsell. It came by here last night on the way home. I saw the lemonade glass there on the rail. Just last night it was. I could drink that, I thought... I could drink that... She was a woman with a broom or a dustpan or a washrag or a mixing spoon in her hand. You saw her cutting piecrust in the morning, humming to it, or you saw her setting out the baked pies at noon or taking them in, cool, at dusk. She rang porcelain cups like a Swiss bell ringer, to their place. She glided through the halls as steadily as a vacuum machine, seeking, finding, and setting to rights. |
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She made mirrors of every window, to catch the sun. She strolled but twice through any garden, trowel in hand, and the flowers raised their quivering fires upon the warm air in her wake. She slept quietly and turned no more than three times in a night, as relaxed as a white glove to which, at dawn, a brisk hand will return. Waking, she touched people like pictures, to set their frames straight. But, now...? Grandma, said everyone. Great-grandma. Now it was as if a huge sum in arithmetic were finally drawing to an end. She had stuffed turkeys, chickens, squabs, gentlemen, and boys. She had washed ceilings, walls, invalids, and children. She had laid linoleum, repaired bicycles, wound clocks, stoked furnaces, swabbed iodine on ten thousand grievous wounds. Her hands had flown all around about and down, gentling this, holding that, throwing baseballs, swinging bright croquet mallets, seeding black earth, or fixing covers over dumplings, ragouts, and children wildly strewn by slumber. She had pulled down shades, pinched out candles, turned switches, andgrown old. Looking back on thirty billions of things started, carried, finished and done, it all summed up, totaled out; the last decimal was placed, the final zero swung slowly into line. Now, chalk in hand, she stood back from life a silent hour before reaching for the eraser. Let me see now, said Great-grandma. Let me see... With no fuss or further ado, she traveled the house in an ever-circling inventory, reached the stairs at last, and, making no special announcement, she took herself up three flights to her room where, silently, she laid herself out like a fossil imprint under the snowing cool sheets of her bed and began to die. Again the voices: Grandma! Great-grandma! The rumor of what she was doing dropped down the stairwell, hit, and spread ripples through the rooms, out doors and windows and along the street of elms to the edge of the green ravine. Here now, here! The family surrounded her bed. Just let me lie, she whispered. Her ailment could not be seen in any microscope; it was a mild but ever-deepening tiredness, a dim weighing of her sparrow body; sleepy, sleepier, sleepiest. As for her children and her childrens childrenit seemed impossible that with such a simple act, the most leisurely act in the world, she could cause such apprehension. Great-grandma, now listenwhatyou're doing is no better than breaking a lease. This house will fall down without you. You must give us at least a years notice! Great-grandma opened one eye. Ninety years gazed calmly out at her physicians like a dust-ghost from a high cupola window in a fast-emptying house. Tom...? The boy was sent, alone, to her whispering bed. Tom, she said, faintly, far away, in the Southern Seas theres a day in each mans life when he knows its time to shake hands with all his friends and say good-bye and sail away, and he does, and its naturalits just his time. that's how it is today. I'm so like you sometimes, sitting through Saturday matinees until nine at night when we send your dad to bring you home. Tom, when the time comes that the same cowboys are shooting the same Indians on the same mountaintop, then its best to fold back the seat and head for the door, with no regrets and no walking backward up the aisle. So, I'm leaving while I'm still happy and still entertained Douglas was summoned next to her side. Grandma, wholl shingle the roof next spring? Every April for as far back as there were calendars, you thought you heard woodpeckers tapping the housetop. |
| 510 |
I wont, I won't finish it tonight. He looked over at Tom asleep on his upraised elbow and hand. He touched Toms wrist and Tom collapsed into a sighing ruin, back upon the bed. Douglas picked up the Mason jar with the cold dark lumps in it and the cool lights flicked on again, as if given life by his hand. He lifted the Mason jar to where it shone fitfully on his summing-up. The final words waited to be written. But he went instead to the window and pushed the screen frame out. He unscrewed the top of the jar and tilted the fireflies in a pale shower of sparks down the windless night. They found their wings and flew away. Douglas watched them go. They departed like the pale fragments of a final twilight in the history of a dying world. They went like the few remaining shreds of warm hope from his hand. They left his face and his body and the space inside his body to darkness. They left him empty as the Mason jar which now, without knowing that he did so, he took back into bed with him, when he tried to sleep... There she sat in her glass coffin, night after night, her body melted by the carnival blaze of summer, frozen in the ghost winds of winter, waiting with her sickle smile and carved, hooked, and wax-poured nose hovering above her pale pink and wrinkled wax hands poised forever above the ancient fanned-out deck of cards. The Tarot Witch. A delicious name. The Tarot Witch. You thrust a penny in the silver slot and far away below, behind, inside, machinery groaned and cogged, levers stroked, wheels spun. And in her case the witch raised up her glittery face to blind you with a single needle stare. Her implacable left hand moved down to stroke and fritter enigmatic tarot-card skulls, devils, hanging men, hermits, cardinals and clowns, while her head hung close to delve your misery or murder, hope or health, your rebirths each morning and deaths renewals by night. Then she spidered a calligraphers pen across the back of a single card and let it titter down the chute into your hands. Whereupon the witch, with a last veiled glimmer of her eyes, froze back in her eternal caul for weeks, months, years, awaiting the next copper penny to revive her from oblivion. Now, waxen dead, she suffered the two boys approach. Douglas fingerprinted the glass. There she is. Its a wax dummy, said Tom. Why do you want me to see her? All the time asking why! yelled Douglas. Because, that's why, because! Because... the arcade lights dimmed... because... One day you discover you are alive. Explosion! Concussion! Illumination! Delight! You laugh, you dance around, you shout. But, not long after, the sun goes out. Snow falls, but no one sees it, on an August noon. At the cowboy matinee last Saturday a man had dropped down dead on the white-hot screen. Douglas had cried out. For years he had seen billions of cowboys shot, hung, burned, destroyed. But now, this one particular man... Hell never walk, run, sit, laugh, cry, won't do anything ever, thought Douglas. Now he's turning cold. Douglass teeth chattered, his heart pumped sludge in his chest. He shut his eyes and let the convulsion shake him. He had to get away from these other boys because they werent thinking about death, they just laughed and yelled at the dead man as if he still lived. Douglas and the dead man were on a boat pulling away, with all the others left behind on the bright shore, running, jumping, hilarious with motion, not knowing that the boat, the dead man and Douglas were going, going, and now gone into darkness. |
| 511 |
In the arcade, then, you did this and this, and that and that occurred. You came forth in peace as from a church unknown before. And now? Now? The witch moving but silent, and perhaps soon dead in her crystal coffin. He looked at Mr. Black droning there, defying all worlds, even his own. Someday the fine machinery would rust from lack of loving care, the Keystone Kops freeze forever half in, half out of the lake, half caught, half struck by locomotive; the Wright Brothers never get their kite machine off the ground... Tom, Douglas said, we got to sit in the library and figure this thing out. They moved on down the street, the white unwritten card passing between them. They sat inside the library in the lidded green light and then they sat outside on the carved stone lion, dangling their feet over its back, frowning. Old man Black, all the time screaming at her, threatening to kill her. You cant kill whats never lived, Doug. He treats the witch like she's alive or was once alive, or something. Screaming at her, so maybe she's finally given up. Or maybe she hasnt given up at all, buts taken a secret way to warn us her lifes in danger. Invisible ink. Lemon juice, maybe! Theres a message here she didn't want Mr. Black to see, in case he looked while we were in his arcade. Hold on! I got some matches. Why would she write us, Doug? Hold the card. Here! Douglas struck a match and ran it under the card. Ouch! The words aint on my fingers, Doug, so keep the match away. There! cried Douglas. And there it was, a faint spidery scrawl which began to shape itself in a spiral of incredible corkscrew calligraphers letters, dark on light... a word, two words, three... The card, its on fire! Tom yelled and let it drop. Stomp on it! But by the time they had jumped up to smash their feet on the stony spine of the ancient lion, the card was a black ruin. Doug! Now well never know what it said! Douglas held the flaking warm ashes in the palm of his hand. No, I saw. I remember the words. The ashes blew about in his fingers, whispering. You remember in that Charlie Chase Comedy last spring where the Frenchman was drowning and kept yelling something in French which Charlie Chase couldn't figure. Secours, Secours! And someone told Charlie what it meant and he jumped in and saved the man. Well, on this card, with my own eyes, I saw it. Secours! Why would she write it in French? So Mr. Black wouldn't know, dumb! Doug, it was just an old watermark coming out when you scorched the card... Tom saw Douglass face and stopped. Okay, don't look mad. It was sucker or whatever. But there were other words... Mme. Tarot, it said. Tom, I got it now! Mme. Tarots real, lived a long time ago, told fortunes. I saw her picture once in the encyclopedia. People came from all over Europe to see her. Well, don't you figure it now yourself? Think, Tom, think! Tom sat back down on the lions back, looking along the street to where the arcade lights flickered. that's not the real Mrs. Tarot? Inside that glass box, under all that red and blue silk and all that old half-melted wax, sure! Maybe a long time ago someone got jealous or hated her and poured wax over; j her and kept her prisoner forever and she's passed down the line from villain to villain and wound up here, centuries later, in Green Town, Illinoisworking for Indian-head pennies instead of the crown heads of Europe! Villains? Mr. Black? Names Black, shirts black, pantsre black, ties black. Movie villains wear black, don't they? But why didn't she yell last year, the year before? |
| 512 |
Who knows, every night for a hundred years she's been writing messages in lemon juice on cards, but everybody read her regular message, nobody thought, like us, to run a match over the back to bring out the real message. Lucky I know what secours means. Okay, she said, Help! Now what? We save her, of course. Steal her out from under Mr. Blacks nose, huh? And wind up witches ourselves in glass boxes with wax poured on our faces the next ten thousand years. Tom, the librarys here. Well arm ourselves with spells and magic philters to fight Mr. Black. Theres only one magic philter will fix Mr. Black, said Tom. Soons he gets enough pennies any one evening, hewell, lets see. Tom drew some coins from his pocket. This just might do it. Doug, you go read the books. I'll run back and look at the Keystone Kops fifteen times; I never get tired. By the time you meet me at the arcade, it might be the old philter will be working for us. Tom, I hope you know whatyou're doing. Doug, you want to rescue this princess or not? Douglas whirled and plunged. Tom watched the library doors wham shut and settle. Then he leaped over the lions back and down into the night. On the library steps, the ashes of the tarot card fluttered, blew away. The arcade was dark, inside, the pinball machines lay dim and enigmatic as dust scribblings in a giants cave. The peep shows stood with Teddy Roosevelt and the Wright Brothers faintly smirking or just cranking up a wooden propeller. The witch sat in her case, her waxen eyes cauled. Then, suddenly, one eye glittered. A flashlight bobbed outside through the dusty arcade windows. A heavy figure lurched against the locked door, a key scrabbled into the lock. The door slammed open, stayed open. There was a sound of thick breathing. Its only me, old girl, said Mr. Black, swaying. Outside on the street, coming along with his nose in a book, Douglas found Tom hiding in a door nearby. Shh! said Tom. It worked. The Keystone Kops, fifteen times; and when Mr. Black heard me drop all that money in, his eyes popped, he opened the machine, took out the pennies, threw me out and went across to the speak-easy for the magic philter. Douglas crept up and peered into the shadowy arcade and saw the two gorilla figures there, one not moving at all, the wax heroine in his arms, the other one standing stunned in the middle of the room, weaving slightly from side to side. Oh, Tom, whispered Douglas, you're a genius. he's just full of magic philter, aint he? You can say that again. What did you find out? Douglas tapped the book and talked in a low voice. Mme. Tarot, like I said, told all about death and destiny and stuff in rich folks parlors, but she made one mistake. She predicted Napoleons defeat and death to his face! So... Douglass voice faded as he looked again through the dusty window at that distant figure seated quietly in her crystal case. Secours, murmured Douglas. Old Napoleon just called in Mme. Tussauds waxworks and had them drop the Tarot Witch alive in boiling wax, and now... now... Watch out, Doug, Mr. Black, in there! he's got a club or something! This was true. Inside, cursing horribly, the huge figure of Mr. Black lurched. In his hand a camping knife seethed on the air six inches from the witchs face. he's picking on her because she's the only human-looking thing in the whole darn joint, said Tom. He won't do her no harm. Hell fall over any second and sleep it off. No, sir, said Douglas. He knows she warned us and were coming to rescue her. |
| 513 |
Tom, a couple weeks ago, I found out I was alive. Boy, did I hop around. And then, just last week in the movies, I found out I'd have to die someday. I never thought of that, really. And all of a sudden it was like knowing the Y. M. C. A. was going to be shut up forever or school, which isn't so bad as we like to think, being over for good, and all the peach trees outside town shriveling up and the ravine being filled in and no place to play ever again and me sick in bed for as long as I could think and everything dark, and I got scared. So, I don't know; what I want to do is this: help Mme. Tarot. I'll hide her a few weeks or months while I look up in the black-magic books at the library how to undo spells and get her out of the wax to run around in the world again after all this time. And shell be so grateful, shell lay out the cards with all those devils and cups and swords and bones on them and tell me what sump holes to walk around and when to stay in bed on certain Thursday afternoons. I'll live forever, or next thing to it. You don't believe that. Yes, I do, or most of it. Watch it now, heres the ravine. Well cut down through by the dump heap, and... Tom stopped. Douglas had stopped him. The boys did not turn, but they heard the heavy clubbing blows of feet behind them, each one like a shotgun set off in the bed of a dry lake not far away. Someone was shouting and cursing. Tom, you let him follow you! As they ran a giant hand lifted and tossed them aside, and Mr. Black was there laying to left and right and the boys, crying out, on the grass, saw the raving man, spittle showering the air from his biting teeth and widened lips. He held the witch by her neck and one arm and glared with fiery eyes down on the boys. This is mine! To do with like I want. What you mean, taking her? Caused all my troublemoney, business, everything. Heres what I think of her! No! shouted Douglas. But like a great iron catapult, the huge arms hoisted the figure up against the moon and flourished and wheeled the fragile body upon the stars and let it fly out with a curse and a rustling wind down the air into the ravine to tumble and take avalanches of junk with her into white dust and cinders. No! said Douglas, sitting there, looking down. NO! The big man toppled on the rim of the hill, gasping. You just thank God it wasnt you I did that to! He moved unsteadily away, falling once, getting up, talking to himself, laughing, swearing, then gone. Douglas sat on the edge of the ravine and wept. After a long while he blew his nose. He looked at Tom. Tom, its late. Dadll be out walking, looking for us. We shouldve been home an hour ago. Run back along Washington Street, get Dad and bring him here. you're not going down in that ravine? she's city property now, on the trash dump, and nobody cares what happens, not even Mr. Black. Tell Dad what he's coming here for and he don't have to be seen coming home with me and her. I'll take her the back way around and nobody'll ever know. She won't be no good to you now, her machinery all busted. We cant leave her out in the rain, don't you see, Tom? Sure. Tom moved slowly off. Douglas let himself down the hill, walking in piles of cinder and old paper and tin cans. Halfway down he stopped and listened. He peered at the multicolored dimness, the great landslide below. Mme. Tarot? he almost whispered. Mme. Tarot? At the bottom of the hill in the moonlight he thought he saw her white wax hand move. It was a piece of white paper blowing. |
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But he went toward it anyway... The town dock struck midnight The house Lights around were mostly turned out. In the workshop garage the two boys and the man stood back from the witch, who now sat, rearranged and at peace, in an old wicker chair before an oilcloth-covered card table, upon which were spread, in fantastic fans of popes and clowns and cardinals and deaths and suns and comets, the tarot cards upon which one wax hand touched. Father was speaking. ... know how it is. When I was a boy, when the circus left town I ran around collecting a million posters. Later it was breeding rabbits, and magic. I built illusions in the attic and couldn't get them out. He nodded to the witch. Oh, I remember she told my fortune once, thirty years ago. Well, clean her up good, then come in to bed. Well build her a special case Saturday. He moved out the garage door but stopped when Douglas spoke softly. Dad. Thanks. Thanks for the walk home. Thanks. Heck, said Father, and was gone. The two boys left alone with the witch looked at each other. Gosh, right down the main street we go, all four of us, you, me, Dad, the witch! Dads one in a million! Tomorrow, said Douglas, I go down and buy the rest of the machine from Mr. Black, for ten bucks, or hell throw it out. Sure. Tom looked at the old woman there in the wicker chair. Boy she sure looks alive. I wonder whats inside. Little tiny bird bones. All that's left of Mme. Tarot after Napoleon No machinery at all? Why don't we just cut her open and see? Plenty of time for that, Tom. When? Well, in a year, two years, when I'm fourteen or fifteen, thens the time to do it. Right now I don't want to know nothing except she's here. And tomorrow I get to work on the spells to let her escape forever. Some night you'll hear that a strange, beautiful Italian girl was seen downtown in a summer dress, buying a ticket for the East and everyone saw her at the station and saw her on the train as it pulled out and everyone said she was the prettiest girl they ever saw, and when you hear that, Tom and believe me, the news will get around fast! nobody knowing where she came from or where she wentthen you'll know I worked the spell and set her free. And then, as I said, a year, two years from now, on that night when that train pulls out, itll be the time when we can cut through the wax. With her gone, you're liable to find nothing but little cogs and wheels and stuff inside her. that's how it is. Douglas picked up the witchs hand and moved it over the dance of life, the frolic of bone-white death, the dates and dooms, the fates and follies, tapping, touching, whispering her worn-down fingernails. Her face tilted with some secret equilibrium and looked at the boys and the eyes flashed bright in the raw bulb light, unblinking. Tell your fortune, Tom? asked Douglas quietly. Sure. A card fell from the witchs voluminous sleeve. Tom, you see that? A card, hidden away, and now she throws it out at us! Douglas held the card to the light. Its blank. I'll put it in a matchbox full of chemicals during the night. Tomorrow well open the box and there the messagell be! Whatll it say? Douglas closed his eyes the better to see the words. Itll say, Thanks from your humble servant and grateful friend, Mme. Floristan Mariani Tarot, the Chiromancer, Soul Healer, and Deep-Down Diviner of Fates and Furies. Tom laughed and shook his brothers arm. Go on, Doug, what else, what else? Let me see... And itll say, Hey nonny no!... ist not fine to dance and sing?... |
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For a while you just heard whispering and rattling and tinkling. Mr. Jonas watched, comfortably puffing on his pipe, and the children knew he watched. Sometimes their hands reached out for a game of checkers or a string of beads or an old chair, and just as they touched it they looked up and there were Mr. Jonass eyes gently questioning them. And they pulled their hand away and looked further on. Until at last each of them put their hand on a single item and left it there. Their faces came up and this time their faces were so bright Mr. Jonas had to laugh. He put up his hand as if to fend off the brightness of their faces from his eyes. He covered his eyes for a moment. When he did this, the children yelled their thanks, grabbed their roller skates or clay tiles or bumbershoots and, dropping off, ran. And the children came back in a moment with something of their own in their hands, a doll or a game they had grown tired of, something the fun had gone out of, like the flavor from gum, and now it was time for it to pass on to some other part of town where, seen for the first time, it would be revivified and would revivify others. These tokens of exchange were shyly dropped over the rim of the wagon down into unseen riches and then the wagon was trundling on, flickering light on its great spindling sunflower wheels and Mr... Jonas singing again... Junk! Junk! No, sir, not Junk! No, maam, not Junk! until he was out of sight and only the dogs, in the shadow pools under trees, heard the rabbi in the wilderness, and twitched their tails... ... junk... Fading. ... junk... A whisper. ... junk... Gone. And the dogs asleep. The sidewalks were haunted by dust ghosts all night as the furnace wind summoned them up, swung them about, and gentled them down in a warm spice on the lawns. Trees, shaken by the footsteps of late-night strollers, sifted avalanches of dust. From midnight on, it seemed a volcano beyond the town was showering red-hot ashes everywhere, crusting slumberless night watchmen and irritable dogs. Each house was a yellow attic smoldering with spontaneous combustion at three in the morning. Dawn, then, was a time where things changed element for element. Air ran like hot spring waters nowhere, with no sound. The lake was a quantity of steam very still and deep over valleys of fish and sand held baking under its serene vapors. Tar was poured licorice in the streets, red bricks were brass and gold, roof tops were paved with bronze. The high-tension wires were lightning held forever, blazing, a threat above the unslept houses. The cicadas sang louder and yet louder. The sun did not rise, it overflowed. In his room, his face a bubbled mass of perspiration, Douglas melted on his bed. Wow, said Tom, entering. Come on, Doug. Well drown in the river all day. Douglas breathed out. Douglas breathed in. Sweat trickled down his neck. Doug, you awake? The slightest nod of the head. You don't feel good, huh? Boy, this housell burn down today. He put his hand on Douglass brow. It was like touching a blazing stove lid. He pulled his fingers away, startled. He turned and went downstairs. Mom, he said, Dougs really sick. His mother, taking eggs out of the icebox, stopped, let a quick look of concern cross her face, put the eggs back, and followed Tom upstairs. Douglas had not moved so much as a finger. The cicadas were screaming now. At noon, running as if the sun were after him to smash him to the ground, the doctor pulled up on the front porch, gasping, his eyes weary already, and gave his bag to Tom. |
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At one oclock the doctor came out of the house, shaking his head. Tom and his mother stood behind the screen door, as the doctor talked in a low voice, saying over and over again he didn't know, he didn't know. He put his Panama hat on his head, gazed at the sunlight blistering and shriveling the trees overhead, hesitated like a man plunging into the outer rim of hell, and ran again for his car. The exhaust of the car left a great pall of blue smoke in the pulsing air for five minutes after he was gone. Tom took the ice pick in the kitchen and chipped a pound of ice into prisms which he carried upstairs. Mother was sitting on the bed and the only sound in the room was Douglas breathing in steam and breathing out fire. They put the ice in handkerchiefs on his face and along his body. They drew the shades and made the room like a cave. They sat there until two oclock, bringing up more ice. Then they touched Douglass brow again and it was like a lamp that had burned all night. After touching him you looked at your fingers to make sure they werent seared to the bone. Mother opened her mouth to say something, but the cicadas were so loud now they shook dust down from the ceiling. Inside redness, inside blindness, Douglas lay listening to the dim piston of his heart and the muddy ebb and flow of the blood in his arms and legs. His lips were heavy and would not move. His thoughts were heavy and barely ticked like seed pellets falling in an hourglass slow one by falling one. Tick. Around a bright steel comer of rail a trolley swung, throwing a crumbling wave of sizzling sparks, its clamorous bell knocking ten thousand times until it blended with the cicadas. Mr. Tridden waved. The trolley stormed around a comer like a cannonade and dissolved. Mr. Tridden! Tick. A pellet fell. Tick. Chug-a-chug-ding! Woo-woooo! On the roof top a boy locomoted, pulling an invisible whistle string, then froze into a statue. John! John Huff, you! Hate you, John! John, were pals! don't hate you, no. John fell down the elm-tree corridor like someone falling down an endless summer well, dwindling away. Tick. John Huff. Tick. Sand pellet dropping. Tick. John... Douglas moved his head flat over, crashing on the white white terribly white pillow. The ladies in the Green Machine sailed by in a sound of black seal barking, lifting hands as white as doves. They sank into the lawns deep waters, their gloves still waving to him as the grass closed over... Miss Fern! Miss Roberta! Tick... tick... And quickly then from a window across the way Colonel Freeleigh leaned out with the face of a clock, and buffalo dust sprang up in the street. Colonel Freeleigh spanged and rattled, his jaw fell open, a mainspring shot out and dangled on the air instead of his tongue. He collapsed like a puppet on the sill, one arm still waving... Mr. Auffmann rode by in something that was bright and something like the trolley and the green electric runabout; and it trailed glorious clouds and it put out your eyes like the sun. Mr. Auffmann, did you invent it? he cried. Did you finally build the Happiness Machine? But then he saw there was no bottom to the machine. Mr. Auffmann ran along on the ground, carrying the whole incredible frame from his shoulders. Happiness, Doug, here goes happiness! And he went the way of the trolley, John Huff, and the dove-fingered ladies. Above on the roof a tapping sound. Tap-rap-bang. Pause. Tap-rap-bang. Nail and hammer. Hammer and nail. A bird choir. And an old woman singing in a frail but hearty voice. |
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Yes, well gather at the river... river... river... Yes, well gather at the river... That flows by the throne of God... Grandma! Great-grandma! Tap, softly, tap. Tap, softly, ... river... river... And now it was only the birds picking up their tiny feet and putting them down again on the roof. Rattle-rattle. Scratch. Peep. Peep. Soft. Soft. ... river... Douglas took one breath and let it all out at once, wailing. He did not hear his mother run into the room. A fly, like the burning ash of a cigarette, fell upon his senseless hand, sizzled, and flew away. Four oclock in the afternoon. Flies dead on the pavement. Dogs wet mops in their kennels. Shadows herded under trees. Downtown stores shut up and locked. The lake shore empty. The lake full of thousands of people up to their necks in the warm but soothing water. Four-fifteen. Along the brick streets of town the junk wagon moved, and Mr. Jonas singing on it. Tom, driven out of the house by the scorched look on Douglass face, walked slowly down to the curb as the wagon stopped. Hi, Mr. Jonas. Hello, Tom. Tom and Mr. Jonas were alone on the street with all that beautiful junk in the wagon to look at and neither of them looking at it. Mr. Jonas didn't say anything right away. He lit his pipe and puffed it, nodding his head as if he knew before he asked, that something was wrong. Tom? he said. Its my brother, said Tom. Its Doug. Mr. Jonas looked up at the house. he's sick, said Tom. he's dying! Oh, now, that cant be so, said Mr. Jonas, scowling around at the very real world where nothing that vaguely looked like death could be found on this quiet day. he's dying, said Tom. And the doctor doesn't know whats wrong. The heat, he said, nothing but the heat. Can that be, Mr. Jonas? Can the heat kill people, even in a dark room? Well, said Mr. Jonas and stopped. For Tom was crying now. I always thought I hated him... that's what I thought... we fight half the time... I guess I did hate him... sometimes... but now... now. Oh, Mr. Jonas, if only... If only what, boy? If only you had something in this wagon would help. Something I could pick and take upstairs and make him okay. Tom cried again. Mr. Jonas took out his red bandanna handkerchief and handed it to Tom. Tom wiped his nose and eyes with the handkerchief. Its been a tough summer, Tom said. Lots of things have happened to Doug. Tell me about them, said the junkman. Well, said Tom, gasping for breath, not quite done crying yet, he lost his best aggie for one, a real beaut. And on top of that somebody stole his catchers mitt, it cost a dollar ninety-five. Then there was the bad trade he made of his fossil stones and shell collection with Charlie Woodman for a Tarzan clay statue you got by saving up macaroni box tops. Dropped the Tarzan statue on the sidewalk second day he had it. that's a shame, said the junkman and really saw all the pieces on the cement. Then he didn't get the book of magic tricks he wanted for his birthday, got a pair of pants and a shirt instead. that's enough to ruin the summer right there. Parents sometimes forget how it is, said Mr. Jonas. Sure, Tom continued in a low voice, then Dougs genuine set of Tower-of-London manacles got left out all night and rusted. And worst of all, I grew one inch taller, catching up with him almost. Is that all? asked the junkman quietly. I could think of ten dozen other things, all as bad or worse. Some summers you get a run of luck like that. Its been silverfish getting in his comics collection or mildew in his new tennis shoes ever since Doug got out of school. |
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Now the small print, he said. He squinted. Also containing molecules of vapor from menthol, lime, papaya, and watermelon and all other water-smelling, cool-savored fruits and trees like camphor and herbs like wintergreen and the breath of a rising wind from the Des Plaines River itself. Guaranteed most refreshing and cool. To be taken on summer nights when the heat passes ninety. He picked up the other bottle. This one the same, save I've collected a wind from the Aran Isles and one from off Dublin Bay with salt on it and a strip of flannel fog from the coast of Iceland. He put the two bottles on the bed. One last direction. He stood by the cot and leaned over and spoke quietly. Whenyou're drinking these, remember: It was bottled by a friend. The S. J. Jonas Bottling Company, Green Town, IllinoisAugust, 1928. A vintage year, boy... a vintage year. A moment later there was the sound of reins slapping the back of the horse in the moonlight, and the rumble of the wagon down the street and away. After a moment Douglass eyes twitched and, very slowly, opened. Mother! whispered Tom. Dad! Doug, its Doug! he's going to be well. I just went down to check and come on! Tom ran out of the house. His parents followed. Douglas was asleep as they approached. Tom motioned to his parents, smiling wildly. They bent over the cot. A single exhalation, a pause, a single exhalation, a pause, as the three bent there. Douglass mouth was slightly open and from his lips and from the thin vents of his nostrils, gently there rose a scent of cool night and cool water and cool white snow and cool green moss, and cool moonlight on silver pebbles lying at the bottom of a quiet river and cool clear water at the bottom of a small white stone well. It was like holding their heads down for a brief moment to the pulse of an apple-scented fountain flowing cool up into the air and washing their faces. They could not move for a long time. The next morning was a morning of no caterpillars. The world that had been full to bursting with tiny bundles of black and brown fur trundling on their way to green leaf and tremulous grass blade, was suddenly empty. The sound that was no sound, the billion footfalls of the caterpillars stomping through their own universe, died. Tom, who said he could hear that sound, precious as it was, looked with wonder at a town where not a single birds mouthful stirred. Too, the cicadas had ceased. Then, in the silence, a great sighing rustle began and they knew then why the absence of caterpillar and abrupt silence of cicada. Summer rain. The rain began light, a touch. The rain increased and fell heavily. It played the sidewalks and roofs like great pianos. And upstairs, Douglas, inside again, like a fall of snow in his bed, turned his head and opened his eyes to see the freshly falling sky and slowly slowly twitch his fingers toward his yellow nickel pad and yellow Ticonderoga pencil... There was a great flurry of arrival. Somewhere trumpets were shouting. Somewhere rooms were teeming with boarders and neighbors having afternoon tea. An aunt had arrived and her name was Rose and you could hear her voice clarion clear above the others, and you could imagine her warm and huge as a hothouse rose, exactly like her name, filling any room she sat in. But right now, to Douglas, the voice, the commotion, were nothing at all. He had come from his own house, and now stood outside Grandmas kitchen door just as Grandma, having excused herself from the chicken squabble in the parlor, whisked into her own domain and set about making supper. |
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Her lands then, like the hands of Great-grandma before her, were Grandmas mystery, delight, and life. She looked at them in astonishment, but let them live their life the way they must absolutely lead it. But now for the first time in endless years, here was an upstart, a questioner, a laboratory scientist almost, speaking out where silence could have been a virtue. Yes, yes, but what did you put in this Thursday Special? Why, said Grandma evasively, what does it taste like to you? Aunt Rose sniffed the morsel on the fork. Beef, or is it lamb? Ginger, or is it cinnamon? Ham sauce? Bilberries? Some biscuit thrown in? Chives? Almonds? that's it exactly, said Grandma. Second helpings, everyone? A great uproar ensued, a clashing of plates, a swarming of arms, a rush of voices which hoped to drown blasphemous inquiry forever, Douglas talking louder and making more motions than the rest. But in their faces you could see their world tottering, their happiness in danger. For they were the privileged members of a household which rushed from work or play when the first dinner bell was so much as clapped once in the hall. Their arrival in the dining room had been for countless years a sort of frantic musical chairs, as they shook out napkins in a white fluttering and seized up utensils as if recently starved in solitary confinement, waiting for the summons to fall downstairs in a mass of twitching elbows and overflow themselves at table. Now they clamored nervously, making obvious jokes, darting glances at Aunt Rose as if she concealed a bomb in that ample bosom that was ticking steadily on toward their doom. Aunt Rose, sensing that silence was indeed a blessing devoted herself to three helpings of whatever it was on the plate and went upstairs to unlace her corset. Grandma, said Aunt Rose down again. Oh what a kitchen you keep. Its really a mess, now, you must admit. Bottles and dishes and boxes all over, the labels off most everything, so how do you tell whatyou're using? I'd feel guilty if you didn't let me help you set things to rights while I'm visiting here. Let me roll up my sleeves. No, thank you very much, said Grandma. Douglas heard them through the library walls and his heart thumped. Its like a Turkish bath in here, said Aunt Rose. Lets have some windows open, roll up those shades so we can see what were doing. Light hurts my eyes, said Grandma. I got the broom, I'll wash the dishes and stack them away neat. I got to help, now don't say a word. Go sit down, said Grandma. Why, Grandma, think how itd help your cooking. you're a wonderful cook, its true, but ifyou're this good in all this chaospure chaoswhy, think how fine youd be, once things were put where you could lay hands on them. I never thought of that... said Grandma. Think on it, then. Say, for instance, modern kitchen methods helped you improve your cooking just ten or fifteen per cent. Your menfolk are already pure animal at the table. This time next week they'll be dying like flies from overeating. Food so pretty and fine they won't be able to stop the knife and fork. You really think so? said Grandma, beginning to be interested. Grandma, don't give in! whispered Douglas to the Library wall. But to his horror he heard them sweeping and dusting, throwing out half-empty sacks, pasting new labels on cans, putting dishes and pots and pans in drawers that had stood empty for years. Even the knives, which had lain like a catch of silvery fish on the kitchen tables, were dumped into boxes. |
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Grandfather had been listening behind Douglas for a full five minutes. Somewhat uneasily he scratched his chin. Now that I think of it, that kitchens been a mess right on down the line. Things need a little arrangement, no doubt. And if what Aunt Rose claims is true, Doug boy, itll be a rare experience at supper tomorrow night. Yes, sir, said Douglas. A rare experience. Whats that? asked Grandma. Aunt Rose took a wrapped gift from behind her back. Grandma opened it. A cookbook! she cried. She let it drop on the table. I don't need one of those! A handful of this, a pinch of that, a thimbleful of something else is all I ever use I'll help you market, said Aunt Rose. And while were at it, I been noticing your glasses, Grandma. You mean to say you been going around all these years peering through spectacles like those, with chipped lenses, all kind of bent? How do you see your way around without falling flat in the flour bin? Were taking you right down for new glasses. And off they marched, Grandma bewildered, on Roses elbow, into the summer afternoon. They returned with groceries, new glasses, and a hairdo for Grandma. Grandma looked as if she had been chased around town. She gasped as Rose helped her into the house. There you are, Grandma. Now you got everything where you can find it. Now you can see! Come on, Doug, said Grandfather. Lets take a walk around the block and work up an appetite. This is going to be a night in history. One of the best darned suppers ever served, or I'll eat my vest. Suppertime. Smiling people stopped smiling. Douglas chewed one bit of food for three minutes, and then, pretending to wipe his mouth, lumped it in his napkin. He saw Tom and Dad do the same. People swashed the food together, making roads and patterns, drawing pictures in the gravy, forming castles of the potatoes, secretly passing meat chunks to the dog. Grandfather excused himself early. I'm full, he said. All the boarders were pale and silent. Grandma poked her own plate nervously. isn't it a fine meal? Aunt Rose asked everyone. Got it on the table half an hour early, too! But the others were thinking that Monday followed Sunday, and Tuesday followed Monday, and so on for an entire week of sad breakfasts, melancholy lunches, and funereal dinners. In a few minutes the dining room was empty. Upstairs the boarders brooded in their rooms. Grandma moved slowly, stunned, into her kitchen. This, said Grandfather, has gone far enough! He went to the foot of the stairs and called up into the dusty sunlight: Come on down, everyone! The boarders murmured, all of them, locked in the dim, comfortable library. Grandfather quietly passed a derby hat. For the kitty, he said. Then he put his hand heavily on Douglass shoulder. Douglas, we have a great mission for you, son. Now listen... And he whispered his warm, friendly breath into the boys ear. Douglas found Aunt Rose, alone, cutting flowers in the garden the next afternoon. Aunt Rose, he said gravely, why don't we go for a walk right now? I'll show you the butterfly ravine just down that way. They walked together all around town. Douglas talked swiftly, nervously, not looking at her, listening only to the courthouse clock strike the afternoon hours. Strolling back under the warm summer elms toward the house, Aunt Rose suddenly gasped and put her hand to her throat. There, on the bottom of the porch step, was her luggage, neatly packed. On top of one suitcase, fluttering in the summer breeze, was a pink railroad ticket. |
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Quiet, quiet, the boarders laid the best linens and gleaming silver and lit candles rather than switch on electric lights and snap the spell. Grandfather, arriving home from a late evenings work at the printing office, was startled to hear grace being said in the candlelit dining room. As for the food? The meats were deviled, the sauces curried, the greens mounded with sweet butter, the biscuits splashed with jeweled honey; everything toothsome, luscious, and so miraculously refreshing that a gentle lowing broke out as from a pasturage of beasts gone wild in clover. One and all cried out their gratitude for their loose-fitting night clothes. At three-thirty on Sunday morning, with the house warm with eaten food and friendly spirits, Grandfather pushed back his chair and gestured magnificently. From the library he fetched a copy of Shakespeare. He laid it on a platter, which he presented to his wife. Grandma, he said, I ask only that tomorrow night for supper you cook us this very fine volume. I am certain we all agree that by the time it reaches the table tomorrow at twilight it will be delicate, succulent, brown and tender as the breast of the autumn pheasant. Grandma held the book in her hands and cried happily. They lingered on toward dawn, with brief desserts, wine from those wild flowers growing in the front yard, and then, as the first birds winked to life and the sun threatened the eastern sky, they all crept upstairs. Douglas listened to the stove cooling in the faraway kitchen. He heard Grandma go to bed. Junkman, he thought, Mr. Jonas, wherever you are, you're thanked, you're paid back. I passed it on, I sure did, I think I passed it on... He slept and dreamed. In the dream the bell was ringing and all of them were yelling and rushing down to breakfast. And then, quite suddenly, summer was over. He knew it first when walking downtown. Tom grabbed his arm and pointed gasping, at the dimestore window. They stood there unable to move because of the things from another world displayed so neatly, so innocently, so frighteningly, there. Pencils, Doug, ten thousand pencils! Oh, my gosh! Nickel tablets, dime tablets, notebooks, erasers, water colors, rulers, compasses, a hundred thousand of them! don't look. Maybe its just a mirage. No, moaned Tom in despair. School. School straight on ahead! Why, why do dime stores show things like that in windows before summers even over! Ruin half the vacation! They walked on home and found Grandfather alone on the sere, bald-spotted lawn, plucking the last few dandelions. They worked with him silently for a time and then Douglas, bent in his own shadow, said: Tom, if this years gone like this, what will next year be, better or worse? don't ask me. Tom blew a tune on a dandelion stem. I didn't make the world. He thought about it. Though some days I feel like I did. He spat happily. I got a hunch, said Douglas. What? Next years going to be even bigger, days will be brighter, nights longer and darker, more people dying, more babies born, and me in the middle of it all. You and two zillion other people, Doug, remember. Day like today, murmured Douglas, I feel itll be... just me! Need any help, said Tom, just yell. What could a ten-year-old brother do? A ten-year-old brotherll be eleven next summer. I'll unwind the world like the rubber band on a golf balls insides every morning, put it back together every night. Show you how, if you ask. Crazy. Always was. Tom crossed his eyes, stuck out his tongue. Always will be. |
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Douglas laughed. They went down in the cellar with Grandpa and while he decapitated the flowers they looked at all the summer shelves and glimmering there in the motionless streams, the bottles of dandelion wine. Numbered from one to ninety-odd, there the ketchup bottles, most of them full now, stood burning in the cellar twilight, one for every living summer day. Boy, said Tom, what a swell way to save June, July, and August. Real practical. Grandfather looked up, considered this, and smiled. Better than putting things in the attic you never use again. This way, you get to live the summer over for a minute or two here or there along the way through the winter, and when the bottles are empty the summers gone for good and no regrets and no sentimental trash lying about for you to stumble over forty years from now. Clean, smokeless, efficient, that's dandelion wine. The two boys pointed along the rows of bottles. Theres the first day of summer. Theres the new tennis shoes day. Sure! And theres the Green Machine! Buffalo dust and Ching Ling Soo! The Tarot Witch! The Lonely One! Its not really over, said Tom. Itll never be over. I'll remember what happened on every day of this year, forever. It was over before it began, said Grandpa, unwinding the wine press. I don't remember a thing that happened except some new type of grass that wouldn't need cutting. you're joking! No, sir, Doug, Tom, you'll find as you get older the days kind of blur... cant tell one from the other... But, heck, said Tom. On Monday this week It rollerskated at Electric Park, Tuesday I ate chocolate cake, Wednesday I fell in the crick, Thursday fell off a swinging vine, the weeks been full of things! And today, I'll remember today because the leaves outside are beginning to get all red and yellow. won't be long they'll be all over the lawn and well jump in piles of them and burn them. I'll never forget today! I'll always remember, I know! Grandfather looked up through the cellar window at the late-summer trees stirring in a colder wind. Of course you will, Tom, he said. Of course you will. And they left the mellow light of the dandelion wine and went upstairs to carry out the last few rituals of summer, for they felt that now the final day, the final night had come. As the day grew late they realized that for two or three nights now, porches had emptied early of their inhabitants. The air had a different, drier smell and Grandma was talking of hot coffee instead of iced tea; the open, white-flutter-curtained windows were closing in the great bays; cold cuts were giving way to steamed beef. The mosquitoes were gone from the porch, and surely when they abandoned the conflict the war with Time was really done, there was nothing for it but that humans also forsake the battleground. Now Tom and Douglas and Grandfather stood, as they had stood three months, or was it three long centuries ago, on this front porch which creaked like a ship slumbering at night in growing swells, and they sniffed the air. Inside, the boys bones felt like chalk and ivory instead of green mint sticks and licorice whips as earlier in the year. But the new cold touched Grandfathers skeleton first, like a raw hand chording the yellow bass piano keys in the dining room. As the compass turns, so turned Grandfather, north. I guess, he said, deliberating, we won't be coming out here anymore. And the three of them clanked the chains shaken down from the porch-ceiling eyelets and carried the swing like a weathered bier around to the garage, followed by a blowing of the first dried leaves. |
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History is a nightmare from which none of us can awaken. stephen prometheus in carl jung's Odysseus The majority of Terrans were six-legged. They had territorial squabbles and politics and wars and a caste system. They also had sufficient intelligence to survive on that barren boondocks planet for several billions of years. We are not concerned here with the majority of Terrans. We are concerned with a tiny minority-the domesticated primates who built cities and wrote symphonies and invented things like tic-tac-toe and integral calculus. At the time of our story, these primates regarded themselves as the Terrans. The six-legged majority and other life-forms on that planet hardly entered into their thinking at all, most of the time. The domesticated primates of Terra referred to the six-legged majority by an insulting name. They called them "bugs." There was one species on Terra that lived in very close symbiosis with the domesticated primates. This was a variety of domesticated canines called dogs. The dogs had learned to achieve a rough simulation of guilt and remorse and worry and other domesticated primate characteristics. The domesticated primates had learned how to achieve simulations of loyalty and dignity and cheerfulness and other canine characteristics. The primates claimed that they loved the dogs as much as the dogs loved them. Still, the primates kept the best food for themselves. The dogs noticed this, you can be sure, but they loved the primates so much that they forgave them. One dog became famous. Actually he and she was a group of dogs, but they became renowned collectively as Pavlov's Dog. The thing about Pavlov's Dog is that he or she or they responded mechanically to mechanically administered stimuli. Pavlov's Dog caused some of the domesticated primates, especially the scientists, to think that all dog behavior was equally mechanical. This made them wonder about other mammals, including themselves. Most primates ignored this philosophical challenge. They went about their business assuming that they were not mechanical. The fact that plutonium was missing originally leaked to the press in the mid-1970s. At first there was a minor wave of panic among those given to worrying about such matters, and there was even some churlish grumbling about a government so incompetent that it couldn't keep track of its own weapons of megadeath. But then a year passed, and another, and soon five years had passed, and then nearly a decade; and the missing plutonium was still missing but nothing really drastic had happened. Terran primates, being a simpleminded, sleepful race, simply stopped worrying about the subject. The triggering mechanism of the most destructive weapon ever devised on that backward planet was in unknown hands, true; but that was really not much more unsettling to contemplate than the fact that many of the known hands which had enjoyed access to plutonium belonged to persons who were not in all respects reasonable men. (See Terran Archives: Reagan, Ronald Wilson, career of.) The primate philosophy of that epoch was summed up by one of their popular heroes, Mr. Satchel Paige, in the aphorism, "Don't look back-something might be gaining on you." It was a comfortable philosophy for sleep-loving people. The use of atomic weapons was widely blamed on a primate named Albert Einstein. Even Einstein himself had agreed with this opinion. He was a pacifist and had suffered abominable pangs of conscience over what had been done with his scientific discoveries. |
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When Jung revealed that the fourteen chapters corresponded to the fourteen Stations of the Cross, conservative critics added blasphemy to their charges against him. Later-much later-academic exegetes adopted Odysseus as the very model of a modern novel and wrote endless studies proving that it was an allegory on everything from the evolution of consciousness to the rise and fall of civilizations. Benny couldn't understand much of what these academic critics wrote, but he knew that Odysseus was, to him, the only book that really succeeded in making the daily seem profound. That was enough of an achievement to convince him that Jung was a genius. It also encouraged him to look at everything that happened as being marvelous in one way or another. If Jung's characters, or some of them, happened to defecate, urinate, masturbate, and fornicate during the fourteen hours, that was not because the theologian was trying to write pornography, but because the miracle of daily life could not be shown without all of its daily details. Benny didn't give a flying Philadelphia fuck about the novel's parallels with the Odyssey and the Stations of the Cross, which Jung admitted, or the other correspondences with body organs, colors, Tarot cards, IChing hexagrams, and the romantic triangle in Krazy Kat, which his admirers claimed to have found. The important thing about Odysseus was that it demonstrated, almost scientifically, that no day was a dull day. Jung, who regarded himself as a better psychologist than the psychologists-this was a conceit typical of theologians-claimed to have found three more circuits in the nervous system beyond Freud's oral biosurvival circuit and anal emotional-territorial circuit. Jung said that Odysseus demonstrated also a semantic-hominid circuit which created a veil of words between domesticated primates and their experience, thereby differentiating them from the wild primates. He also claimed a specific socio-sexual circuit created by the process of domestication. And he added a fifth, neurosomatic circuit typical of mysticism and music, which causes primates to feel High and spaced-out. But Benny didn't care about all that. Odysseus, in his mind, was simply the book that described life the way it really is, without sentiment and emotions. The murder changed all that. It showed Benny that every day is also a terrible day, for somebody. On July 23, 1981, Benny's mother, a white-haired old lady of eighty-four, left the Brooklyn Senior Citizen's Home where she lived to walk one block to the supermarket. On the way she had her purse snatched and, according to witnesses, struggled with the thief. She was stabbed seventeen times with a Boy Scout knife. When Benny arrived at the hospital emergency room, she was already dead, but he got a look-a long look-at her crimson, mutilated body before the doctor on duty hustled him out into the hall and shot him full of tranquilizers. Benny was crippled psychologically in a way that he could not perfectly understand. After all, having reached the fifth decade of his life, he was well acquainted with grief: in the past ten years he had experienced the deaths of his father, his older brother, and three close friends. But murder is not just another form of grief: it is a metaphysical message like Fate knocking on the door at the beginning of Beethoven's Fifth. Benny found that the whole world had turned to very fragile glass. Every police siren, every newscast, every angry voice on the street reminded him that he belonged to a dangerously violent species. |
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I might even get you a medical discharge." Case realized that he was talking to a barbarian, but that was normal in the military. He had an intuitive sense that twenty years in the joint, which was what the Judge Adjutant General's office was asking, would be even more redundant, in the S-M dimension, than the war itself. Very well: If a man of esthetic sensibility seemed like a fruitcake to these primitives, so be it. He wanted to go home. Case explained his position to the court-martial with great eloquence (part of what he said he even used later in a critique of The Rocky Horror Show) and they did, indeed, decide he was a fruitcake. They gave him a D. D., but two members of the board, he learned later, had argued vigorously for a medical. The Vietnam War, like most primate squabbles, was about territory. Chinese primates, Unistat primates, the primates of the Bear Totem from the steppes and various local Southeast Asian primates were trying to expand their collective-totem egos (territories) by taking over the turf in Southeast Asia. If they had been wild primates, they would have all excreted in the disputed area and maybe thrown excretions at each other; being domesticated primates, they made ink excretions on paper and threw metal and chemicals at each other. It was one of a series of rumbles over Southeast Asia which had at one time or another involved Dutch primates, French primates, primates of the Rising Sun totem, and various other predator bands. Since the Unistat primates, like other domesticated hominids, did not know they were primates, all this was explained by a ferocious amount of ink excretions invoking Morality and Ideology, the twin gods of domesticated primatedom. Basically, the primates who wanted to claim Southeast Asia said it was "good" to go in shooting and grab whatever was grabable; the primates who didn't give a fuck about Southeast Asia said it was "evil." Justin Case was not verbally oriented; he thought in pictures, as a good film critic should. He never asked whether the war was "good" or "evil." It was unaesthetic. The people who had mined Unistat with nuclear bombs had not regarded the Vietnam War as unaesthetic. They thought it was downright evil. They thought just about everything the Unistat alpha males-in corporations and governments-did was evil. They thought most of their fellow primates were no-good shits. Justin Case had been born blissfully by a joyous mother schooled in the Grantly Dick-Read method of natural childbirth. By the time Justin was thirty-six years old, in 1983, the Dick-Read method was as obsolete as the horse and buggy. Things were moving fast on Terra in that age. Nonetheless, the Dick-Read natural childbirth yoga was good for its time, and Case had a permanent security imprint on the oral biosurvival circuitry of his brain. That was one reason he never worried about ethical issues. When Justin began to crawl about the house and then rose up to walk up and down in it, his father, a former alpha male with a large corporation now on the skids due to booze, found him a pest and a nuisance. Father disappeared rapidly, pursued by lawsuits and child maintenance liens, which harassed him so much that he drank even more, earned less, and was first chronically and then permanently incapable of paying a blessed penny to Justin and Justin's Mommy. Justin was not genetically programmed to be an alpha male, but under the circumstances he learned to do a good imitation of one. "Mommy's Great Big Man," Mommy called him. |
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*Terran Archives 2803: New York was a city-state or island in the midwestem part of the Unistat. It seems to have been a center of religious worship, and many came there to walk about, probably in deep meditation, within an enormous female statue, the goddess of these primitives. Various authorities identify this divinity as Columbia, Marilyn Monroe, Liberty, or Mother Fucker-all of these being names widely recorded in Unistat glyphs: Perhaps her true name will never be known. Benny felt a rush of nostalgia. The jingle had been popular in Brooklyn when he was a schoolboy in the antediluvian era of the 1930s. Back then, in the Dark Ages of Roosevelt II, many Brooklyn peddlers still had horse-drawn carts, and the horses, as is common with their species, left piles of horse shit in the streets as they went about their itineraries. Sparrows would peck in these steaming piles of dung for undigested oats, and a Brooklyn child would exclaim, on seeing this: Benny reflected that this little bit of kidlore had stuck in his memory for nearly half a century and that it must therefore contain some profound Meaning. He began pounding the Mac Plus, offering the birdie-turdie poemlet as a perfect example of an American haiku-the juxtaposition of two images, without comment by the author, in a way that suggested far more than it actually said. "Birds," Benny wrote, "are traditional symbols of beauty, from Bacon's nightingales to Keats's skylark, throughout our whole poetic tradition. Horse manure, on the other hand, is regarded with revulsion and loathing. Yet the sparrows, indifferent to human standards, blithely pick in the manure, seeking the food they know is there. The poem is telling us that human likes and dislikes are arbitrary, squinty-eyed, chauvinistic, and irrelevant to nature's own grand design strategy." Benny went on to assert that he had only been able to see this profundity in the jingle now, after he had spent six months meditating at the Manhattan Zen Center. "This rhyme is the Essence of Zen," he concluded. It was probably the least successful column Benny ever wrote. Virtually nobody understood it and everybody was bored by it. Some readers even wrote protesting letters complaining that the column had been in questionable taste. Benny was depressed by this reaction. He felt it had been a stroke of genius on his part to rescue from oblivion a genuine American haiku; but even more than that, writing the column had triggered a vast stream of recollections about 1930s Brooklyn which gave him a renewed sense of Roots he had hoped to share. Why, how many still alive could remember the procedure when the meter man from Monopolated Edison appeared in a Brooklyn neighborhood in those days? The kids were dispatched as runners, racing from house to house, shouting "Mon Ed! Mon Ed!" Everybody would then remove the bags of salt which they kept over the electric meters to deflect the readings downward and thereby lower the electric bill. It seemed like only yesterday that Benny himself had raced from house to house shouting, "Mon Ed! Mon Ed!" And people had rushed to move the bags of salt to closets where the meter man wouldn't see them. Benny hadn't thought of those days in more than four decades, yet they lived on in Memory Storage and could be activated again by something as simple as the jingle about the pretty little birdies. And Benny's whole attitude toward Mon Edison had been shaped by those experiences; he still regarded the "public" utility with a mixture of fear and loathing. |
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Carol had a great deal of experience at maintaining her cool. Her career had been typical of self-directed Unistat females who matured in the early 1970s: one rape at age fifteen while hitchhiking (she never hitchhiked again); two abortions; husband #1, who turned out to be so free of Macho and the Male Stereotype that even God's Lightning couldn't accuse him of Chauvinism (he wept most pite-ously when Carol got tired of supporting him and threw him out); husband #2, who was brilliant, kind, generous, sensitive, and a junky; a succession of mediocre lovers, with one or two she still treasured in memory but wouldn't want to live with again for all the tea in Acapulco; producers who believed that an actress as gorgeous as she should only be cast in roles that justified getting all her clothes off sometime during the third act and several times in their private offices; husband #3, who had put the goddamned loa on her when they separated; and Ronnie "Ronnie is doing very well for a special child," the doctor had told her the last time she visited the home. That was a hell of an elaborate euphemism for Mongolian idiot, she thought angrily; but the doctor was trying to be kind, and she forgave him. But two nights later she opened in another Off-Off-Off Broadway, Hiroshima Werewolf, and one critic described her as having "a special childlike quality reminiscent of Monroe." She felt a wave of vertigo on reading that: If the doctor and the critic were not in cahoots to drive her over the edge, then those words were the most sinister kind of synchronicity. But she maintained her cool. Now she had a goddamned loa on top of everything else. She maintained. And Justin Case, deeper asleep, dapper as loop, was just waltzing along Owld Broadway with Judge Wish-ingdone, past Punker Hall, and there was a patchy fog and a zoo city zoo, one nixson and a vegetable. And he was blowin to adams and tilling the tyler, Don Judge Lincoln, mercurial and zany and hoppy, that high on the thigh-angle of him, cruising the dollarwars and emanstirpating his sklavs until he was caught with Topsy! in the barn!! on the farce of youlie!!! No martha! that's jokeson's guile for you, toomsayer. But they were in the cherrytreeattric warld, an honest ape, he couldna tell a phone. One nukied individual, with Ma in her gurdjef and Pop in the easel, to the republic for witch's hands, by the Donzerly Light. And who comes up but Indrarambam and Rashowsunnier and Shivabull, loads and toads of them, forty of them, with their fords and hords and their gauchos and cheekos and jumbos and harpoons inem (corpus whalem!) asking about the launches and donors and the thousand and ninety things they ask, irking and rooking and snooping, prying and preying, forty of them, all buyers cotter, infernal reamin you sodage, doubt's eternal fact, by all Chinatown howdials. Justin moans in his sleep as the Iranian Rastuys Shiites close in on him. "Papa Legba, Papa Legba, Papa Legba," Joe Malik chants along with Carol Christmas, while the astral electricalprajnaorgonepsionicbioplasmicodyle energy, or the Power of Imagination, in the room continues to escalate toward quantum wobble. Papa Legba was the Opener of the window, according to the Santaria metaphor. Like Maxwell's Demon, he could increase or decrease entropy at whim, and take you into alternative etgenstates. He was the Boss Honcho on the astral potentia level, the alpha male of the pack. He'd kick the ass of any loa intruding on his good friends, and Carol had learned to be one of his very good friends since living with Hugo de Naranja. |
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Everything in the novel was inevitable, as everything in the supercontinuum containing the novel was inevitable. And yet Simon had escaped from the novel. Although not a member of the Warren Belch Society, Simon Moon was, of course, aware of the theory that there was a universe somewhere in which Bacon's major works were still attributed to somebody else. Simon, naturally, was not imaginative enough to conceive that in that universe Bacon had died of pneumonia while conducting experiments in refrigeration. In Simon's usual universe, the author of Novum Organum, The New Atlantis, King Lear, etc., had lived on to discover the inverse-square law of gravitation, and Isaac Newton was remembered only as a somewhat eccentric astrologer. In another novel, midway between the old universe and the new, Simon himself had been shot dead by a Chicago cop during the Democratic Convention of 1968. Over there, Bacon had been bold enough to admit publicly his high rank in the Invisible College (Illuminati) and had been beheaded by James I for heresy. In that universe, not just civilization, but all life on Terra, came to a very hideous end in 1984, because the President was constipated one day and made the wrong decision. Their technology was so advanced that half the solar system went nova along with Earth. In the next universe Simon explored, we were saved because a red-haired Tantric Engineer named Babs Lashtal gave the Prez a first-class Grade-A blow job in the Oval Room at 10 A. M., relaxed his tense muscles, pacified his glands, soothed his frustrations, and inspired him to act relatively sane for the rest of the day. He did not push the button, thereby preserving millions of species of living forms on Earth and thousands of microscopic species on Venus. Babs Lashtal, of course, was regarded with contempt by all right-thinking people, who had no idea that they owed their lives to her skillful extraction of presidential spermatozoa by means of tender, gentle, gracefully rhythmic kissing, licking, and sucking of the presidential wand. Even if they had known about it, the right-thinking people would still say Babs should be ashamed of herself. The whole novel was rather didactic, Simon decided. It was written only to prove a point: Never underestimate the importance of a blow job. It had been necessary to write such a novel because the people over there were so ignorant and superstitious they still called Tantric Engineers "whores" and other degrading names. Every universe is inevitable; but there are as many universes as there are probability matrices. The Metapro-grammer chooses which universe he will enter. There is a love that binds it all together, and that love is expressed in primate language as the love of a parent for a child, so Simon was not surprised to find Tim Moon pervading everything, or at least a kind of continuous Tim Moon potential that could be encoded again in another book or that could remain latent for long times, vaguely permeating every book. There were hundreds of thousands of other Wobs there, Frank Little and Joe Hill and Pat Murfin and Neal Rest and Big Bill Heywood and they were all singing like an outlaw Hallelujah Chorus: Though cowards cringe and traitors sneer We'll keep the Black Flag flying here and Dad himself spoke to me, I swear it, saying, "Just tell them this, son: Capitalism is still nothing but a shit sandwich. The more bread you have, the less shit you've got to eat, and the less bread you have, the more shit you've got to eat. |
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This ritual, like all rituals and religious visions or ecstasies, is actually a memory of the future, but there is no way for primitives to understand that. Consider the epistemological plight of the Terran primates at the time of this ancient Romance. They knew that they were made of molecules, which were made of atoms, which were made of subatomic particles, which were expressions in space-time of quantum probability matrices. This knowledge, alas, was so recent that it had never been integrated into their philosophies, or into the rules of their social games, like religions, politics, economics, etc. Their whole social reality-tunnel was based on prequantum superstition and ignorance. The sociological nexus was Euclidean-Aristotelian-Newtonian; even Maxwell and Einstein had only been digested by a few. Over twenty-five hundred years earlier, one mutant primate, Lao-Tse, had written: "The greatest is within the smallest." Less than one-one hundredth (0.01) of one percent of the Terran primates were capable of understanding this before 1984. They looked for causality everywhere else: some known as astrologers scanned the distant stars; others known as Marxists scanned economics, etc. They knew that the physicists understood causality better than any other group on their planet, but few of them, even among the physicists, realized how quantum theory applied to their own behavior. Quantum psychology did not begin to emerge until the 1990s. What was known in their planet as Bell's Theorem-an elementary, kindergarten-level discovery routinely divined on every planet at about the same time as atomic energy and space travel are beginning-was only twenty years old among them and barely understood even by the physicists. The few quantum theorists, such as Sarfatti, who dared to speculate about "macrocosmic quantum effects"- large systems engaged in quantum-jumping-were usually dismissed as Romantics by their colleagues, despite the fact that each stage of metamorphosis of every living creature, including the Terran primates themselves, was obviously a quantum leap. The primate Mystics, most of them brain-damaged, endlessly told the other primates to "look within." Most primates assumed, in primitive Aristotelian fashion, that what was within was some gaseous entity which they called "mind" or "soul." Unable to find such an abstraction, they either gave up in despair or took their negative results as a positive revelation and became adherents of the "no-mind" or "no-ego" philosophy of Buddha and David Hume. Of course if they had truly looked within, scientifically, they would have found that their thoughts, percepts, and reality-tunnels were determined by the structure of the primate nervous system, which was determined by the genetic or molecular design of the primate evolutionary script, which was determined by the laws of quantum biophysics. That is concretely, their brains were shaped by cells shaped by molecules shaped by atoms shaped by quantum probabilities. Since the quantum connection is nonlocal, it is inevitable that introspection and meditation could discover no "ego" within; within and without are Euclidean parameters that do not apply to the quantum world. But the primates could not understand this. When, due to trauma, masochistic religious practices, alkaloid herbs, or mere statistical chance, their neuroatomic circuitry propelled them into Quantum Consciousness, they could not conceptualize that they were outside space-time entirely. |
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The stockholders had appointed Case to the editorship, after Malik retreated to the cloister, because Justin had as much righteous indignation as the mad Arab but was not so flaky. By spring 1984, Case had 120 bound volumes of books, articles, and press clippings about the J. F. K. assassination, since he was still Righteously Indignant about the palpably obvious cover-up involved in the Warren Report. The day that pseudo-Sullivan wigged out over Bonny Benedict's contribution to the mythology of the assassination, Case calmly clipped that item and added it to his file. Three-quarters of the other material in Case's file was also fictitious. One-third of this disinformation had been generated by Intelligence Agencies-domestic, foreign, and extraterrestrial-as covers or screens for their own activities in and around Dallas in 1963. Another third had been produced by sincere, dedicated, sometimes avid conspiracy buffs, weaving their own webs of confusion as they searched for the elusive truth. The last third had been created, like the Bonny Benedict item, by journalists following Hearst's advice about what to do when there was no news. Anybody trying to find out "what really happened" from this collection of mythology would be so confused that the significant fact of the extraterrestrial intervention would never be apparent. Case did not suspect any of this. He loved his J. F. K. file. He was convinced that someday the crucial piece would come to him, he would insert it into the file, and the whole jigsaw would make sense. He never realized that the one detail which gave everything away was that while Oswald was firing from the sixth-floor window he was also having a Coke on the second floor and mingling with the crowd in the street. Like most liberals, Justin Case lacked imagination and never took seriously all the evidence of extraterrestrial activity on earth during the past forty years. Case was currently having an affair with the Hollywood actress Carol Christmas. Carol was renowned among the heterosexual male population for having the biggest Brownmillers since Jayne Mansfield; so far only women and a few Gay men had noticed that she could also act. Carol had been married four times. She had had three abortions. Like other famous Beauties, she was always dieting, and hence, a little bit high-strung. She was also a disciple of General E. A. Crowley, the eccentric English explorer who had discovered the North Pole and claimed there was a hole there leading down to the center of the Earth. Carol devoutly believed Crowley's yarn that there was a whole civilization down there, inside the Earth, run by green-skinned women. Carol believed this because she had a great artistic faith in the principle of balance. In her probability continuum-in the series of quantum eigenstates that had crystalized into her universe-the whole outside of the planet seemed to be run by white-skinned males. It was only fair that the inside should be run by green-skinned females. Carol was having three other affairs at the same time as her amour with Justin Case. There was a hairdresser in Hollywood (bi, not Gay) who was very talented at Bryanting and Briggsing-two arts at which totally straight men, in Carol's opinion, were usually a bit clumsy. There was also Fran9ois Loup-Garou, the painter, in Paris, who adored her madly, as only a painter can adore a woman. And there was a bitter but brilliant Black novelist in Chicago named Franklin Stuart. Justin Case knew all about these other amours; after all, he read Bonny Benedict's column every day. |
| 531 |
I already wrote to Ann Lan-ders, but she just told me to take cold showers. My problem is that I am madly, hopelessly, passionately in love with Linda Lovelace. I've actually seen Deep Throat ninety-three times now and nothing can get her out of my mind. Other women leave me cold; I only want Linda, Linda, Linda. She has so much beauty and charm and sweetness and, my God, can she eat Rehnquist! I know this is hopeless because even though I've written a novel about Vlad the Impaler and made lots of money, I'm still very shy with women. (Some of them are extraterrestrials, I have discovered.) Why did God make such an unjust universe? Can you help me? Dr. Dashwood frowned thoughtfully, then scrawled, 'Send this nut the see-a-psychiatrist letter." Dum de dum de dum de. Next! Dr. Orgasm R. Institute Frank Dashwood 666 Malaclypse San Francisco, Calif. Dear Dr. Institute: We are sending you this personalized letter because we know that a man like you, Dr. Institute, cares about his investments and wants to know the facts about Inflation. Next! (And remember: look up that Zelenka.) Dear Dr Dashwood, I am a paraplegic and therefore I am incapable of normal coitus. My sweetheart and I, fortunately, have found that oral sex satisfies us fully-I Marshall her Frankel and then she gives me a Steinem Job. But this creates a terrible legal conundrum, since she lives across the Mississippi River in Iowa and I am a citizen of Illinois. Iowa has a very strict law against oral sex, which they classify as sodomy (due to a mistranslation of the Old Testament, I believe). Thus, we can't have sex in Iowa. Now, Illinois has had no anti-sodomy statutes since the 1960s, so you might think our problem can be solved by having sex in Illinois. Unfortunately, she can't afford to quit her job in Iowa, and thus every time she travels across the river to have sex with me, she is crossing a state line, which makes me vulnerable under the Mann Act. Is there any possible solution to this legal double-bind? Dr. Dashwood was intrigued. He began thinking of topological transformations, non-Euclidean geometries, Wheeler's wormholes in superspace... But then he realized he was Romanticizing, just because the puzzle had sparked his imagination. In ordinary four-dimensional Heisenberg space-time, there was no way out of the paradox: If the writer crossed the river, he and his lady were committing sodomy in Iowa, and if the lady crossed the river, they were violating the Mann Act in Illinois. Logicians dream up such Strange Loops, Dashwood reflected, just to make games for other logicians; but lawyers create them to make more jobs for lawyers. Dashwood scrawled, "Tell him his lady better damned well find a job in Illinois." Next. Dear Dr. Dashwood, Once there was a man who was condemned to live on the moon. He knew the punishment was just, because he hated his father and such a sin deserves an extreme penalty. Nonetheless, his isolation was terrible and there were times when he thought his heart would break, just because he could never hear a human voice again. Well, he made the best of his cruel situation. He began sending messages from the moon, telling everything he knew about life on earth-all the joys and agonies and struggles, "the horror and the boredom and the glory" of the long climb upward from the slime to higher and higher consciousness. The people back on earth loved these signals, which contained so much of life's drama, and they praised him extravagantly, and that gave him some comfort through the long years of his exile. |
| 532 |
Knight knew what most people only vaguely suspected- that Intelligence Agencies engage in both the collection of valid signals (information) and the promiscuous dissemination of fake signals (disinformation). They collected the information so that they could form a fairly accurate picture of what was really going on; they spread the disinformation so that all their competitors would form grossly inaccurate pictures. They did this because they knew that whoever could find out what the hell was really going on possessed an advantage over those who were misinformed, confused, and disoriented. This game had been invented by Joseph Fouche, who was the chief of the secret police under Napoleon. British Intelligence very quickly copied all of Fouche's tactics, and surpassed them, because an intelligent Englishman is always ten times as mad, in a methodical way, than any Frenchman. By the time of the First World War, Intelligence Agencies everywhere had created so much disinformation and confusion that no two historians ever were able to agree about why the war happened, and who double-crossed whom. They couldn't discover whether the war had been plotted or had just resulted from a series of blunders. They couldn't even decide whether the two conspiracies to assassinate Archduke Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary (which triggered the war) had been aware of each other. By the time of the Second World War, the "Double-Cross System" had been invented-by British Intelligence, of course. This was the product of such minds as Alan Turing, a brilliant homosexual mathematician who (when not working on espionage) specialized in creating logical paradoxes other mathematicians couldn't solve, and lan Fleming, whose fantasy life was equally rich (as indicated by his later James Bond books), and Dennis Wheatley, a man of exceptionally high intelligence who happened to believe that an international society of Satanists was behind every conspiracy that he didn't invent himself. By the time Turing, Fleming, Wheatley and kindred British intellects had perfected the Double-Cross System, the science of lying was almost as precise as Euclidean geometry, and nearly as lovely to the detached observer. What the Double-Cross experts had invented was the practical political applications of the Strange Loop. In logic or cybernetics, a Strange Loop is a set of propositions that, while valid at each point, is so constructed that it leads to an unresolvable paradox. The Double-Cross people drove the Germans bonkers by inventing disinformation systems that, if believed, were deceptive, but if doubted led to a second disinformation system. They enjoyed this work so much that, at times, they invented Triple Loops, in which if you believed the surface or cover, you were being fooled; and if you looked deeper, you found a plausible alternative, which seemed like the "hidden facts," but was just another scenario created to fool you; and, if you were persistent enough, you would find beneath that, looking every bit like the Naked Truth, a third layer of deception and masquerade. These Strange Loops functioned especially well because the Double-Cross experts had early on fed the Germans the primordial Strange Loop, "Most of your agents are working for us and feeding you Strange Loops." Many German agents, it later turned out, had managed to collect quite a bit of accurate information about the Normandy invasion; but many others had turned in equally plausible information about a fictitious Norwegian invasion; and all of them were under suspicion, anyway. |
| 533 |
Like all Stephenites, he wrote the familiar lapel button with a photo of Pope Stephen, the famous black patch over his blind eye, and the sainted Pope's famous remark, "What-me infallible?" Pope Stephen had totally revolutionized the Catholic Church during his brief five-year reign. Indeed, as the French feminist Jeanne Paulette Sartre said, "This one man has single-handedly turned the most reactionary church on this planet into the most progressive." It was due to Pope Stephen that the "social gospel," previously preached only by a minority of far-out Jesuits and worker-priests, became the official Vatican policy. By being the first to denounce Hitler and Mussolini, and excommunicating their supporters, Pope Stephen had knowingly risked the biggest rupture within the Church since the time of Luther; but, while nearly 30 percent of the Catholics in Germany and Italy continued to follow their national leaders, over 70 percent obeyed the Pope, and both dictators fell from power. Adolf Hitler became a portrait painter again; and Benito Mussolini, deprived of power, returned to his early belief in anarchism and spent his declining years writing fiery journalism against all those who did manage to achieve and hold on to political power. At the time of Pope Stephen's death in 1940, it was estimated that the wealth of the Vatican was less than 10 percent of what it had been when he took the Chair of Peter, but its prestige about 1,000 percent higher. The Pope had spent 90 percent of the Vatican's wealth in projects for the abolition of poverty, disease, and ignorance. Many regarded him as a saint, but Pope Stephen always tried to discourage that view. He ended every conversation with "I am a sinner, also," which became a habit with Stephenites: Father Starhawk, for instance, ended all his conversations that way, and also used it for the tag line of all his theological articles and his private correspondence. It must be admitted, however, that the first Irish Pope did have his own brand of arrogance: He believed he was the best Latin stylist since Cicero, and was rather vain about his command of English, Italian, French, German, Spanish, Danish, and Hebrew, also. He was also convinced that he was a greater psychologist than James or Jung, and it was only when their names were mentioned that a tinge of uncharitable sarcasm would enter his speech. Pope Stephen, in fact, had a habit of listening far more than he spoke, which led many to regard him as a bit aloof. Actually, he spoke little because he was so busy observing. This passion for studying other human beings had gradually turned him from a disputatious young intellectual into an almost pathologically sensitive middle-aged man, because the more he observed people, the more he liked them, and the more he liked them, the less able he was to bear seeing or hearing of injustice to anyone anywhere. On one occasion a learned and erudite French Cardinal said to the Pope, referring to the steady parade of visitors to the Vatican, "You must find most of these nonentities profoundly boring." He was making the usual mistake of interpreting the Pope's long silence as a sign of ennui. "But-there are no bores," Stephen said, shocked. "You are being paradoxical," the Cardinal chided. "Not at all," the Pope said dogmatically. "I have never met a boring human being." It was the only time anybody ever heard him pontificate. It was due to Pope Stephen that every Catholic priest was not only allowed, but encouraged, to get married. |
| 534 |
The narrow road rising along the side of the plateau that Richard and Kahlan had ridden up after visiting the market was the fastest way up to the People's Palace, but it was narrow and in places treacherous, so the public was not allowed to use it. The main route for visitors, merchants, and workers of every sort was through the great inner doors and up the passageways inside the plateau. Many people never ventured all the way up to the palace at the top, but came to shop at the market that in peaceful times sprang up down on the plain, or to visit some of the hundreds of shops along the way up inside the plateau. The sheer inaccessibility of the city palace, if the drawbridge on the road was raised and the great inner doors were closed, made assaults futile. Throughout history sieges of the palace withered out on the inhospitable Azrith Plain long before the strength of those in the palace began to wane. Many had tried, but there was no practical way to attack the People's Palace. The old woman would have had a hard time making the climb all the way up the inner passageways to the palace proper. Because she was blind, it must have been especially difficult for her. Although there were always people wanting to know what the future held, Richard supposed that she probably found more customers up top willing to pay for her simple fortunes, and that made the climb worth the effort. Richard gazed out at the seemingly endless corridor filled with people and the ever-present whisper of footsteps and conversation. He supposed that the woman, being blind, would be attuned to all the sounds of the people in the corridors and by that judge the enormity of the place. He felt a pang of sorrow for her, as he had when he had first spotted her sitting alone at the side of the hallway, but now because she could not see the splendor all around her, the soaring marble columns, stone benches, and elaborately patterned granite floors that glowed wherever they were touched by the streamers of sunlight coming in from the skylights high overhead. Other than his homeland of the Hartland woods where he had grown up, Richard thought that the palace was just about the most beautiful place he had ever seen. He never failed to be awed by the sheer overwhelming intellect and effort it must have taken to envision and construct such a place. Many times throughout history, as when Richard had first been brought in as a prisoner, the palace had been the seat of power for evil men. Other times, as now, it was the center of peaceful prosperity, a beacon of strength that anchored the D'Haran Empire. "A penny for my future?" Richard asked. "And a worthy bargain it is," the woman said without hesitation. "I hope you aren't saying that my future is worth no more than a penny." The old woman smiled a slow smile. Her clouded eyes stared without seeing. "It is if you don't heed the omen tendered." She blindly held out her hand, a question waiting for his answer. Richard placed a penny on her upturned palm. He imagined that she had no other way to feed herself except by offering to tell people their future. Being blind, though, in a way gave her a certain marketable credibility. People probably expected that, being blind, she had access to some kind of inner vision, and that belief probably helped bring her business. "Ah," she said, nodding knowingly as she tested the weight of the coin he had given her, "silver, not copper. Clearly a man who values his future." "And what would lie in that future, then?" Richard asked. |
| 535 |
Richard let Kahlan assure them that there would be no restrictions on trade, and that they needn't fear special favors to some that would put others at a disadvantage. Many of the people were from the Midlands. She reminded them of her policies when she had ruled the Midlands as the Mother Confessor and assured them that now being part of the D'Haran Empire would not change those matters of fairness. Her calm manner and authoritative demeanor made them confident in the truth of what she said. A number of the officials reminded her that in the Midlands most of the lands were formally represented in Aydindril, sometimes with rulers of the lands spending extended periods of time there, sometimes with emissaries and representatives, but there were always officials of some sort at hand so the different lands could always be involved in the decisions of the council or in matters of setting laws. Kahlan assured them that the People's Palace was now the formal seat of power in the D'Haran Empire, so there would be similar arrangements made for them and their representatives to have permanent quarters from where they could participate in the shaping of their common future. Everyone seemed not merely relieved to hear this, but genuinely pleased. Kahlan was used to being in command and carried her power with an easy grace. She had grown up mostly alone because, as a Confessor, she had grown up being feared. When Richard had first met her he saw people tremble in her presence. In the past people saw only the terrifying power she wielded, not the nature of the woman behind that power, but in the time she and Richard had fought on behalf of these people, she had come to be admired and respected. People had come to look up to her. At the most inopportune moment, in the midst of Kahlan's answers to questions, Nathan marched up behind Richard, took hold of his arm, and pulled him back a little. "I need to speak with you." Kahlan paused in her answer about an ancient boundary dispute. She had been telling people that there was nothing to dispute; they were all now part of the D'Haran Empire and it didn't really matter where a meaningless line was drawn on a map. As she fell silent, every eye went to the tall prophet. They all knew who he was. Richard noticed that Nathan had the book End Notes in hand, with one finger acting as a placeholder in the book. "What is it?" Richard asked in a low voice as he took several steps back from the suddenly silent crowd watching him. Prophecy was apparently of more concern to them than matters of trade or arbitrary boundaries. Nathan leaned in and spoke confidentially. "You told me that the boy you encountered down in the market today told you something about darkness in the palace." Richard straightened and turned back to look around at all the people watching him. "I'm sorry for the interruption. If you will excuse me it will only be a moment." He took Nathan by the arm and moved him back a few more steps toward the double doors all along the wall at the back of the room. Zedd came along, as did Kahlan. Cara and Benjamin, not far away, took the hint in the look Richard gave them and drew the attention of the delegates by asking about how the rebuilding was going in their homelands. Once sure that no one was within earshot, Richard turned back to Nathan. "The boy said that there is darkness in the palace. He said that darkness is seeking darkness." Without a word, Nathan opened the book and handed it to Richard. Richard immediately spotted the line all by itself: Darkness is seeking darkness. |
| 536 |
Richard wondered if he was putting things together too easily, things that didn't really belong together and only sounded like they did because they shared the word "dark." He wondered if he was letting his imagination get the best of him. As he marched along beside Zedd, with Nathan leading the way, he glanced down at the book Nathan was holding and remembered the lines in the book that matched what he'd heard that day about there being darkness in the palace, and decided that he wasn't overreacting. The corridor they passed through was paneled with mahogany that had mellowed with age to a dark, rich tone. Small paintings of country scenes hung in each of the raised panels along the hall. The limestone floor was covered with carpet runners of deep blue and gold. Before long they made their way into the connecting service passageways that provided workers with access to the Lord Rahl's private areas within the palace. The halls were simpler, with plastered, whitewashed walls. In places the hall ran along the outside wall of the palace to their left. Those outside walls were made of tightly fit granite blocks. At regular intervals deep-set windows in the stone wall provided light. They also let in a little of the frigid air each time a gust rattled the panes. Out those windows Richard saw heavy, dark clouds scudding across the sky, brushing towers in the distance. The greenish gray clouds told him that he was right about the coming storm. Snowflakes danced and darted in the gusty wind. He was sure that it wouldn't be long before the Azrith Plain was in the grip of a spring blizzard. They were going to have guests at the palace for a while. "Down this way," Nathan said as he gestured through a double set of doors to the right. They led out of the private areas and into the service passageways used by workers and those who lived at the palace. People in the halls, workers of every sort, moved to the side as they encountered the procession. Everyone, it seemed, gave Richard and the two wizards with him worried looks. No doubt the word of the trouble had already been to every corner of the vast palace and back three times over. Everyone would know about it. By the looks on the somber faces he saw, people were no longer in a celebratory mood. Someone had tried to kill the Mother Confessor, Lord Rahl's wife. Everyone loved Kahlan. Well, he thought, not everyone. But most people sincerely cared about her. They would be horrified by what had happened. Now that peace had returned, people had come to feel an expectant joy about what the future might hold. There was a growing sense of optimism. It seemed like everything was possible and that better days were ahead. This new fixation on prophecy threatened to destroy all that. It had already ended the lives of two children. Richard recalled Zedd's words that there was nothing as dangerous as peacetime. He hoped his grandfather was wrong. Richard and Zedd followed Nathan into a narrow hallway lit by a window at the end. It led them through a section of quarters where many of the palace staff lived. With its whitewashed, plastered walls and a wood plank floor that had been worn down from a millennium of traffic, the passageway was simpler than even the service hallways. Most doors, though, were decorated with painted flowers, or country scenes, or colorful designs, giving each place an individual, homey feel. "Here," Nathan said as he touched a door with a stylized sun painted on it. When Richard nodded, Nathan knocked. |
| 537 |
She didn't want to think about the woman's deluded visions. She had tried very hard to put it all from her mind. The heavy drapes were drawn. There was only one lamp lit in the room and it was turned down low. Sitting on the table before the mirror on the dressing table, the lamp was too weak to chase the darkness from the farthest reaches of the room. Darkness occluded those far corners where the faint shadowy shapes of hulking wardrobes lurked. It couldn't be Richard she sensed. He would have let her know it was him when she sat up. Cara would have as well. Whoever she sensed in the room wasn't saying anything, wasn't moving. But she felt them watching her. At least she thought she did. She knew how easy it was for anyone's imagination, even hers, to get out of hand. Trying to be honest and coldly logical, she couldn't say for sure that it wasn't her imagination, especially after Cara had planted the notion in her mind earlier in the day. But her heart raced as she stared into the dark recesses of the room, watching for any movement. She realized that her fist had tightened around her knife. She pulled the bed throw off and pushed it aside. She was lying on top of the bedspread. Her bare thighs prickled at the touch of chilly air. Carefully, quietly, she slipped her legs over the side of the bed. Without making a sound she stood. She waited, listening, her whole body tense and ready. Kahlan stared so hard into the dark corner at the far end of the room that it made her eyes hurt. It felt like someone was staring back. She tried to tell where it felt like they could be hiding, but she couldn't come up with a direction. If she could sense someone watching, but wasn't able to sense where they were, then it had to be her imagination. "Enough of this," she said under her breath. With deliberate strides she walked to the dressing table. The heel-strikes of the laced boots she hadn't felt like taking off echoed softly back from the dark end of the room. Standing at the dressing table, watching, she turned up the wick on the lamp. It threw mellow light into the darkness. There was no one there. In the mirror she saw only herself standing half naked with a knife gripped in her fist. Just to be sure, she walked resolutely to the end of the room. She found no one there. She looked to the far side of the drapes and glanced behind the big pieces of furniture. There was no one there, either. How could there be? Richard had checked the room before he had taken her in. She had watched as he had looked everywhere while trying not to look like he was looking. Cara and soldiers stood guard as Kahlan had rested. No one could have entered. She turned to the tall, elaborately carved wardrobe and pulled open the heavy doors. Without hesitation she lifted out a clean dress and pulled it on. She didn't know if the other one, the one she had taken off, would ever be clean again. It was hard to get the blood of children off a white dress. At the Confessors' Palace, back in Aydindril, there were people on the staff who knew how to care for the white dresses of the Mother Confessor. She supposed that there would be people at the ancestral home of the Lord Rahl who knew all about cleaning up blood. The thought of where that blood had come from made her angry, made her glad the woman was dead. Kahlan paused to consider again why the woman would have died so abruptly. Kahlan hadn't commanded it. She had intended to have the woman locked up. There were a lot more questions Kahlan had wanted to ask, but not in public. |
| 538 |
There was no answer to madness. The man slid his back up the wall until he was standing. He glared at Richard. "You do not deserve to be the Lord Rahl. Soon, everyone will realize that." Kahlan ingratiated herself with the representatives by first laying out an elaborate midday meal. Tables around the room were covered with platters of meats, fish, fowl, and sweet delights of every sort. Other tables offered a variety of wines. Musicians played soft, soothing music while servers carrying trays of colorful, honeyed nectar drinks threaded their way through the crowds. Guests plucked the heavy-bottomed glasses containing the prized drink from the trays as the servers passed. Gazing out at all those assembled, Kahlan felt a pang of loneliness. She wished that Richard could be there with her. She missed him. But he had work to do. So did she. Circulating among the milling crowd as they sampled food and wine from the different tables and drinks from trays, not taking the time to eat herself, Kahlan smiled and greeted everyone personally, thanking them for attending as she saw to their every pleasure or whim. Staff were at hand to make sure the representatives had everything they wanted. A number of people brought up prophecy, pressing their belief that it was one of their most important tools for guiding them into the future, insisting that she and Richard would do well to be more mindful of what such predictions had to say to them all. Kahlan listened patiently, occasionally gently asking for clarifications of certain assertions. Cara, not trusting anyone, even these leaders from around the D'Haran Empire and allies in the war, was rarely more than an arm's length away. Several times as Kahlan made her way through the room, people stopped her, wondering if the kitchens had this or that. Kahlan indulged them, immediately turning to ask the ever-attentive staff trailing not far behind to see to fulfilling the special requests. When the elaborate luncheon finally drew to a close, she led the representatives into a nearby room where she stepped up onto a broad dais so that everyone could see her. Vanilla-colored walls decorated with intricate molding and blue carpets trimmed in gold gave the room a hushed, intimate feel. Through a wall of double doors that led out to the terrace in the back, Kahlan could see that the storm had turned the world to white. The wind from time to time rattled the glass in the doors. Now that people were fed and relaxed, Kahlan clasped her hands as she stood before them on the elevated platform, waiting patiently for conversations to die out and everyone's attention to turn to her. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Nicci arrive. The sorceress glided to a halt beside a table just behind Kahlan. Tall chairs, their backs carved to look like eagles with their wings spread, chairs Richard and Kahlan had used in the past as they'd greeted petitioners, many of whom now roamed the room, sat in commanding positions behind the table. Cara, in her red leather, stood behind Kahlan to her left. Kahlan took a deep breath and began. "I know that many of you have concerns about the direction of the future. I have heard that you are all interested in what prophecy has to say to us about that future. A number of you have expressed those concerns to me personally in a most direct fashion. Because I recognize that all of us here are interested in insuring our common, successful future, I wanted to give everyone this opportunity to speak and air their concerns." Kahlan waited until everyone was smiling before she went on. |
| 539 |
He was sure that, unlike the last time, this time he not only felt it watching, he could sense its presence in the room. That presence was icy cold and evil. He couldn't begin to imagine what it could be. After all, men of the First File were stationed all up and down the corridors. These were not the kind of men who fell asleep on watch, or got bored and didn't pay attention. These were battle-hardened men who were always ready for any threat. These were the elite of the D'Haran forces. Not one of those men wanted to be the one who let any threat get so much as a glimpse of Richard and Kahlan. What ever it was, it had not skulked in past the guards to get into the bedroom. What ever it was that Richard saw crouched in the alcove was dark and indistinct and not very large. It waited, still and silent, perfectly centered between the two dark forms of the tall wardrobes. Richard wondered what it was waiting for. From outside he could hear the wind howl and moan and occasionally rattle the doors, only to die out and let the room fall silent again. The only sound inside the room that Richard could hear was Kahlan's breathing and the faint hiss of the burning wick of the lamp. Richard couldn't tell if what ever it was he was staring at was nothing more than a murky dark area, or if it only looked that way because it was so dark in the room that it blurred the edges of a shadowed form. What ever it was, it was as dark as pitch. What ever it was, its gaze was unwavering. What ever it was, it was heartless. Richard thought that maybe it looked something like a dog poised there watching them. As he stared, trying to make it out, he realized that, oddly enough, it looked more like a small child, maybe a girl, hunched forward, long hair fallen down around the lowered head as it crouched on the floor. He also knew that it couldn't be real. There was no way that anything could have gotten into the room. At least, he didn't think it could be real. Real or not, Richard knew that Kahlan was seeing the same thing he was seeing. He could feel her heart hammering against his chest. His sword stood leaned up against the nightstand. He was in the middle of the bed, tangled up with Kahlan. The weapon was just beyond an arm's length away, just out of reach. Something, some inner sense, told him not to move. He thought then that maybe it wasn't some inner sense, but rather simply the feeling of alarm at something dark crouched not far away, watching them. Either way, he was afraid to move. The thing, if it was a thing and not simply some trick of the dim light, or even his imagination, remained stone-still. He told himself that if it turned out to be nothing more than a shadow he was going to feel pretty foolish. But shadows didn't watch. This thing was watching. Unable to endure the silent tension any longer, Richard slowly, ever so slowly, started to shift himself off Kahlan in order to reach toward his sword. When he began to move, the thing started to uncurl, to slowly rise as if in response to his movement. A soft sound accompanied the movement, a brittle sound like sticks, muffled in cloth, snapping. Or maybe it sounded more like bones cracking. Richard froze. The thing didn't. As it rose, the head began to turn up. Richard could hear soft riffling pops as if the thing was dead and stiff, and every bone in the spine cracked under the effort of the forced movement. The head continued to lift until Richard finally saw the eyes glaring out at him from under a lowered brow. |
| 540 |
Richard paused at the great doors, momentarily taking in the carvings of rolling hills and forests. The elaborate scene on the doors was sheathed in gold. The Garden of Life had been created as a containment field for any dangerous magic that might need to be unleashed. It also protected those handling such power from any nefarious intervention. Beyond the gold-clad doors some of the most dangerous conjuring ever conceived by the mind of man had been unleashed. The magnificent doors were, like many other things in the palace, meant to be a reminder, when dealing with such potentially deadly things, of the beauty and importance of life itself. The garden was also a touchstone of great events in Richard's life. He had been brought to the garden at the lowest point in his life. It had also been the scene of his greatest triumphs. By the way Kahlan put a hand gently on his back, he knew that she must have realized what he was thinking. Finally, he pulled one of the massive doors open. The guards took up posts up and down the hallway as Richard and Kahlan went into the Garden of Life alone. Once inside, they were enveloped with the heady fragrance of flowers that grew in great swaths beside the walkway that wandered toward the heart of the room. Beyond the flowers small trees created a intimate forest gathered before a vine-covered stone wall. Beyond the wall, the center of the expansive room contained an area of lawn that swept around almost into a circle. The grass ring was broken by a wedge of white stone, upon which sat a slab of granite held up by two short, fluted pedestals. High overhead, a ceiling of leaded windows let light flood the room during the day. At night they offered a view of the stars that always made Richard feel rather small and lonely. This night there was no view out the windowed ceiling. Richard could see that a thick blanket of snow covered the glass. When lightning flashed, he could see that in some places the windblown snow had been reduced to a thin layer that let the lightning show through, but in other areas, on the lee side of the peak, the snow was so thick that not even the flashes of lightning could penetrate the dense covering. Intermittent thunder rumbled through the room, making the ground tremble underfoot. After putting flame to a few torches around the edge of the grassy area, Richard sat with Kahlan on the short stone wall at the edge of the small indoor forest. Together they gazed out across the open area, as if looking out on a meadow. When he took hold of her hand Kahlan flinched. "What's wrong?" She lifted her hand to glance at it briefly. "Just a little tender, that's all." He could see that the scratches on the back of her hand were swollen and had turned to an angry red. The scratches on his own hand were red, too, but not as bad as Kahlan's. Holding her fingers, he turned her hand to inspect it in the torchlight. "It looks worse." She took her hand back. "It will be better soon." She rubbed her arms against the chill and changed the subject. "I don't feel anyone watching us. You?" Richard listened to the torches hissing softly for a time as he looked around the vast room. "No, I don't either." He could see that she was so sleepy she could hardly keep her eyes open. The stress of someone watching them not only kept them awake, but made what sleep they did get fitful. He put his arm around her and drew her close. Kahlan snuggled tight against him and laid her head on his shoulder. Richard thought they ought to lay out their bedrolls and get some sleep. |
| 541 |
No one would ever find you. Why would this place be sealed up like a tomb?" Richard shook his head. He had no answer. He half expected to see bones on the floor, but there were none. There were burial vaults in the lower reaches of the palace, but the Garden of Life was at the top of the palace, and besides, the tombs were grand places meant to revere the dead. None had the forsaken feel of this room. As he looked around more carefully, Richard spotted something low against the far wall. He thought it might be a narrow ledge in the stone, maybe a stone block sticking out a little more than the rest. He held the sphere out to see better as he leaned in. He brushed away a layer of dust and crumbled granite flakes from the surface and saw that it was individual, small strips of metal, piled in tight, neat, orderly stacks. He picked a strip of metal off one of the stacks and turned it in the light, trying to figure out what it was, or its purpose. Each was only a little longer than his longest finger, and soft enough that he could easily bend it. All the strips looked to be identical. Stacked tightly and evenly as they were, and covered in dust and dirt, the mass of them looked like part of the wall, like a ledge in the stone. Kahlan bent close, trying to see it better. "What do you think they are?" Richard straightened the strip of metal and set it back in its resting place atop one of the stacks. "They don't have any markings on them. They seem to be nothing more than simple strips of metal." Kahlan's gaze swept along the wall. "They're stacked all around the edge of the room. There must be tens of thousands of them, maybe hundreds of thousands. What could they be for, and why are they buried in here?" "It seems like they were left and forgotten. Or it could be they were hidden away." Kahlan's nose wrinkled. "Why hide plain strips of metal?" Richard could only shrug as he looked around, trying to see if the room held any other clues to its purpose. The place didn't seem to make any sense. He scuffed the side of his boot across the floor. It was stone, covered with what was probably thousands of years of dust and crumbled, decayed granite from the surface of the walls. Even though he knew from being above the room that it had a vaulted ceiling above, the ceiling down inside the room was flat, a false ceiling, probably plastered over but now the same dark, dingy color as the walls. All in all, other than the stacks of metal and the odd block of stone in the center, it was an unremarkable room. Except, perhaps, that it led to nowhere. Had the floor of the Garden of Life not collapsed, there would have been no way into the buried room. If not for the roof falling in, the room could easily have remained undiscovered for a few thousand more years. As Kahlan trailed her fingers along the wall, looking for any hint of writing carved into the stone, or possibly a hidden passageway, Richard turned his attention to the square block that sat in the center of the dingy room. Oddly enough, the stone floor stopped short of the block, leaving a narrow gutter of dirt all the way around it. The block was slightly more than waist high. If he and Kahlan would have reached across from opposite sides, they wouldn't have been able to touch their fingers. He couldn't imagine what it could be, or what it was doing there. With snowflakes drifting past, he squatted down, holding out the glowing sphere to see better, and brushed the flat of his hand along the surface of the side. |
| 542 |
Kahlan could see the light from inside reflecting in lines that moved parts of symbolic elements over the contours of his face. "I can see a strip of metal being pulled out from the bottom of the stack on the other side. It's being pulled into the machine and going way down inside." Kahlan put her head close to his, trying to see what he was talking about. Then she saw it, way down among the gears, shafts, and levers, being pulled through by a small pincer mechanism holding the front of the metal strip. The pincer was attached to a large wheel that carried the strip of metal up and around with it to place it in a track where a series of levers moved it along different junctions of track until another geared pincer finally picked it up. Kahlan and Richard both turned aside a little as a flash of intense orangish white light ignited deep within. Out of the corner of her eye she could see a bright pinpoint of light dance across the metal strip. The focused beam of light from far below moved with lightning speed but in a tightly controlled manner. The light was so intense that she could see a moving, glowing white-hot spot of light shining through the top of the metal where the beam hit it from underneath. As the strip came around with the wheel, another mechanism took it in turn and rotated it around so that the symbol that had been burned into the underside of the metal was now facing up. At exactly the correct point in the arc of the gear, the pincers opened and a lever on a geared mechanism swung in from the side to push the metal strip through a slot in the side of the machine. She heard it drop into the tray. Richard and Kahlan straightened from the little window and looked at each other. "Did you see that?" he asked. Kahlan nodded. "Pretty hard to miss." Richard pulled the strip of metal out of the tray. He immediately tossed it on top of the machine and shook his hand, then blew on his fingers. He pushed the hot metal strip around with a finger for a moment until it cooled, then gingerly picked it up and studied the single symbol etched into it. "What about that one? Do you recognize it?" Kahlan asked. Richard stared at it with a troubled expression. "I'm not entirely certain. It's not exactly the same, but it's pretty close." "Pretty close to what? What is it?" Richard looked up at her again. "It's the emblematic representation for fire." Outside of the Garden of Life hundreds of heavily armed guards filled the corridor in both directions. They all looked a great deal more than edgy. Kahlan realized that they would have had to have heard the lightning hit the Garden of Life. They probably heard the glass roof breaking and falling as well. They undoubtedly wondered what in the world had been going on beyond the doors. They might even have feared that it was an attack of magic of some sort, and so they were standing ready in case they were called upon to defend the palace. She knew, though, that despite their worry, none of them, not even a Mord-Sith, would dare to enter the Garden of Life while the Lord Rahl was inside unless he invited them in. The grim look on Richard's face and the set of his jaw as he came marching out probably only confirmed to all the men watching him approach that they had made the right decision to remain outside. The only people who regularly went into the garden were the staff assigned to tend the grass, flowers, shrubs, and trees. Only the most highly trusted people on the palace staff were allowed to work in the garden. |
| 543 |
They could seep through any opening, any crack, like vapor rising in the early morning from the stretches of stagnant water that lay in dark swaths through the peat barrens. The open shutters were meant to be a declaration for all to see, including the seven, that Hannis Arc feared nothing. Many people in Saavedra, the ruling city of Fajin Province down in the broad valley below the citadel, shuttered themselves in at night. Everyone out in the Dark Lands did. Shutting in at night for fear of what might be outside was only wise, after all. While that was true for those down in the city, it was doubly true for those who lived out in the more remote areas. There were corporeal dangers in the night, creatures that hunted with fang and claw, worthy of fear. There were other things to fear as well, things one rarely saw coming, if at all, until it was too late. Hannis Arc, though, did not fear the things that came out at night. He bent those elements to his own ends, mastered them, making him the source of fear, not its victim. He banked the hot coals of those fears in the hearts of others so that they would always be ready to roar to life in order to serve him. Hannis Arc wanted people to fear him. If they feared him, they respected him, they obeyed him, they bowed down to him. He made sure that people were never without cause to fear him. No, unlike most people who inhabited the Dark Lands, Hannis Arc was not himself burdened by fears. Instead, he was driven by a ceaseless, smoldering rage, a rage that was like a thing alive within him. That rage left no room for fear to find a foothold. That ever-present rage dwelling within him was a brightly burning star that always guided his way. It was always there to compel him, counsel him, even to chide him, as it drove him to set great wrongs right. Anger was not only his constant companion, it was his trusted friend, his only friend. The glow of the dozens of candles in the stand at the far end of the room wavered as the seven familiars swirled around them on their way by, as if lingering to ride the eddies of heat rising from the flames. Mohler, the old scribe hunched over a massive book laid open on a stand not far away, straightened as if he thought he might have heard something. One of the seven glowing forms glided around him, trailing a tendril hand along his jaw. The man glanced around, seeming to feel the touch, but he couldn't find its source. He couldn't see the familiars. The woman standing guard back near the doors could. With gnarled, arthritic fingers, Mohler touched his cheek, but when he could find no cause for the sensation his hand dropped to his side and he returned his attention to recording the latest prophecies from the abbey while the seven spiraled up toward the vaulted ceiling to glide along the hulking stone arches and skim just beneath the heavy beams, surveying the gloomy, candlelit room. "It's your move," Hannis Arc reminded the hunched scribe. Mohler glanced back momentarily to see his master watching him. "Ah yes, so it is," he said as he laid down his quill and turned from his work at the massive book to shuffle over to the stone pedestal that held the board laid out with carved alabaster and obsidian pieces. He'd had more than enough time to consider his next move. He'd had most of the night, in fact. Hannis Arc hadn't pressed. He had already worked out the array of moves available to the man. None seemed to be good choices, although some were not as swiftly fatal as others. |
| 544 |
Of peeking out again from under the lid of the bench to see the heavily armed soldiers swing up into their saddles and charge away into the night, their assignment of assassination completed. Of hiding in the darkness all night, trembling in fear that they would come back and find him. Of hours later, just after dawn, when Mohler, a new young servant come up from the city to work at the citadel, found him hiding in the bench and lifted him out. All because Panis Rahl believed in striking down any potential challenge to the House of Rahl before it had a chance to develop. He had his soldiers slaughter anyone, real or imagined, who could be a potential threat to his rule. Even the minor ruler of Fajin Province in the distant Dark Lands, who had harbored no particular ill will toward the ruling House of Rahl and had always been loyal, was guilty of possessing the potential to one day be a threat, and so he and his family had to die for the crime of existing. But the cunning folk, as they were called, were not to be trifled with. Even the gifted rightly feared their occult powers. Panis Rahl knew that such powers and abilities as dwelled in the Dark Lands could be a threat, but in striking against the ruler of Fajin Province, he had made a mistake. He had struck a generation too soon. As the fires of rage roared within him, Hannis Arc knew that the threat to the rule of the House of Rahl this time was all too real. He would see to it. He would never again tremble in fear of a Rahl. He would see the wrongs righted. He would have revenge. That this new Rahl ruler, Richard Rahl, was said to be different from Panis Rahl and nothing like Darken Rahl, who had managed to outdo his father in every murderous way, made no difference at all to Hannis Arc. As vicious as Darken Rahl had been, he had also been a man distracted by an obsession. Since Hannis Arc had not yet been ready to strike, he had turned Darken Rahl's attention away with a gift to feed his obsession — he had given Darken Rahl what he wanted more than anything else. He had given him one of the boxes of Orden that had long been hidden away in the Dark Lands. Hannis Arc had no use for a box of Orden, but Darken Rahl had coveted it, and thus the gift had bought Hannis Arc autonomy as well as certain useful favors. As Hannis Arc had heard it, Darken Rahl's obsession had ultimately been his undoing and he had ended up being killed by his son, Richard Rahl. A Rahl killing his father hardly surprised Hannis Arc. It made no difference to Hannis Arc that Richard Rahl had not interfered with the rule of the Dark Lands or made demands for tribute. Being the ruler of D'Hara, he could at any time choose to do so, as had his ancestors. Besides, he was a Rahl, and that alone sealed his fate. This new Lord Rahl had led the D'Haran Empire to a great victory, defeating a tyrannical threat to their very existence. In so doing, he had unwittingly saved Hannis Arc, the man who would now bring him down. The new Lord Rahl, like his father before him, had no idea of the abilities Hannis Arc possessed, or the powers he could command. Hannis Arc could have struck earlier, as Richard Rahl was forging the D'Haran Empire and fighting the war for their survival, but then he would have had a war on his hands. It would have been difficult to survive against the incredible might of the Imperial Order. Instead, he had lain back, saving himself for the right time, working on his abilities, and let Richard Rahl fight the long and difficult war. |
| 545 |
They moved with fluid grace, their robes never still, giving him the impression that he was actually looking in at them in another place, seeing them in an ethereal world of continual gentle breezes. From a distance, each seemed as elegant a creature as ever existed. To all appearances they seemed to be made of air and light as much as flesh and bone. As they glided closer, he fancied that they looked like nothing so much as good spirits. He knew, though, that they were anything but good spirits. Six of them drifted idly together, like corks in a pond, watching from not far away as the seventh floated in close on the other side of the desk. As she leaned in he could finally see beyond the edge of the cowl covering her head, see the wrinkled flesh of her pitted and pockmarked face, the knotted blue veins, the warts and ulcers that ravaged her distorted features, the hanging tags of skin, the eyes the color of rancid egg yolks. She smiled a wicked smile that promised overwhelming pain and suffering should she wish it. Hannis Arc was not in the least bit intimidated. Rather, he was indignant to be shown such little respect. He did not try to keep the displeasure from his voice. "Has Jit completed the tasks I gave her?" The familiar laid a gnarled hand on the desk as she leaned over toward him. With long, curved nails, bunched, callused skin, and knobby joints, her hand looked more like a claw. She was close enough to have rattled most people down to their very soul, close enough to paralyze a victim with fear. Hannis Arc was no more unnerved by her appearance than she appeared to be of his. Her voice came like a hiss across silk. "You dare to demand of us, to demand of our mistress?" Hannis Arc whipped his arm around and slammed his knife down with all the force he could muster, pinning the familiar's disfigured hand to the desktop. She let out a squealing screech that seemed as if it might break the glass in all the display cases and crack the stone walls besides. It was a shriek that he thought must be something like what would come from those dragged down to the darkest depths of the underworld. It was the stuff of nightmares brought to life. The arms of the other six waved in rage, like pennants in a gale. They swooped in around their trapped companion, incredulous to see her stuck fast, clicking their bewilderment to one another in a tongue that sounded like nothing so much as small little bird bones snapping. "Surprised?" He arched an eyebrow. "Surprised that a knife wielded by a mere man could harm you?" She let out another squealing screech that was loud enough to raise the dead as she again tugged and twisted wildly at her hand pinned to the desktop by the knife. Her bluish black lips curled back in a snarl, showing her fangs as she leaned toward him. It did her no good. The heavy desk rattled and wobbled, the feet lifting clear of the floor every time she yanked on her arm, trying without success to free it. The other six snaked through the air around her in sympathetic outrage. When they grabbed at her to try to pull her free they received a lightning jolt from the knife that shot though them, forcing them to release their grip. "What have you done?" the one stuck fast demanded in a screech. "Why, I have pinned you to the desk. Isn't it obvious?" "But how!" "Right now that is really not what should concern you. What should matter most to you now is recognizing that I am no mere man and that it would be in your best interest to show me a great deal of respect. |
| 546 |
There were no hounds, or wolves, or beasts of any kind about. She was safe. The commotion that had awakened her had been the guards opening the double doors into the Garden of Life to make way for someone. The howl had been the hinges on the heavy doors. She pushed her hair back out of her face as she let out a deep sigh. She had to have been dreaming. It had seemed so real, but it was just a dream and its heart-pounding grasp on her quickly loosened. She rubbed her arms as she looked around and sighed again, relieved that it had been only a dream and that it was swiftly evaporating. Overhead, driven by the cycle of the seasons, the barren tree branches were laden with buds. They would soon be in full foliage. After the ceiling had finally been repaired and fully glassed in, the spring sun had, over a period of a few days, gently warmed the Garden of Life, making it once again a cozy refuge and a place where she and Richard could sleep. It wasn't as comfortable as a real bed, but sleep came a lot more easily when they didn't feel unseen eyes watching them. As she wiped the sleep from her eyes, Kahlan had to squint as she looked up at the full moon shining down from overhead. By its position in a black sky she knew that she had been asleep for only a brief time. That meant it was still the dead of night. She was reminded that it was night, too, by the heady fragrance of jasmine that grew at the edge of the small forest and down in front of the short wall. The tiny petals of the delicate white flowers opened only in the night. "Is Richard down there?" Nathan asked on his way past, ignoring both the moonlight and the singular fragrance, gesturing instead toward the dark, gaping hole as he marched down the path through the trees and toward the center of the Garden of Life. He was the one the guards had let in. Kahlan nodded. "Yes, he's with Nicci, watching the machine in case it awakens again. Why? What's wrong?" "We have trouble," he said as he headed for the ladder. Kahlan saw that he had something in his hand. She threw the blanket aside and sprang up to follow after him. The men of the First File, after having closed the door, took up defensive positions. There were a good two dozen of the elite of the elite standing guard inside the Garden of Life. It would have required only two or three of these of men to hold off an army. It was somewhat disconcerting to have them nearby, watching over her, but they didn't watch her the way the thing in the bedrooms had. They were watching out for her safety. She didn't know why the thing in the bedroom had been watching, but she knew that it wasn't to keep them safe. Ever since the machine had given the first of its last two prophecies, the one that said "Pawn takes queen," Richard wasn't taking any chances with her safety. Whenever she left the Garden of Life without him, she left with a small army, Nathan, Zedd, or Nicci, and at least two Mord-Sith. It wasn't that she didn't like having protection from whatever the dark danger was that seemed loose in the palace, it was just that it made it rather awkward when meeting with the representatives. It put people on edge, giving the impression that the palace was under siege. The representatives were aware, though, that something was going on and there had already been an attempt on her life, so there was justification for the protection. But the unknown nature of the threat made them all the more interested in what prophecy might have to say. They felt they were being excluded from vital information. |
| 547 |
Kahlan tried to follow Richard into the room, but Cara, Agiel in hand and bent on protecting him, raced in ahead of her. Before Kahlan could follow, Nicci slipped in front of Kahlan and dashed in with Cara, both women worried about Richard diving headlong into trouble. Kahlan, no less concerned, cut in front of Benjamin and ran into the darkness after them. A frantic King Philippe tried to follow, but soldiers restrained him. Benjamin urged the king to let Lord Rahl and the rest of them find out what was going on, first. Inside, they came to a halt. The room was dead quiet. Kahlan held her breath against the stench of blood. Glancing back over her shoulder, she could see Benjamin silhouetted in the doorway, waiting to see if they needed reinforcements. On the opposite side of the room, to either side of double doors, sheer curtains billowed in a light breeze, looking like ghosts in the moonlight. "I can't see a thing in here," Cara whispered. Nicci ignited a flame that floated in midair above her palm. She quickly found a stand with a few candles still affixed to it and righted it, then sent the flame into the candles. As the level of light rose, Kahlan could at last see more than the mere hints of shapes in the moonlight coming through the open doors on the opposite side of the room. "Dear spirits," she whispered into the terrible quiet. Nicci retrieved a few lamps from the rubble, lit them, and set them on a table that was still upright. In the lamplight they were finally able to see the full extent of the devastation. Splintered furniture lay overturned. Cushions were scattered. The leather chairs were slashed by what looked to be either claws or fangs, Kahlan didn't know which. A nearby couch had been turned red with blood. Blood splatters crisscrossed the walls in swaths, as if flung there in terrible rage. The amount of it everywhere was shocking. At their feet Queen Catherine lay on her back. Her scalp had been partly peeled away. Gouges looking to be left by fangs raked across her exposed skull and cut through the upper part of her face. Her jaw was torn partially away. Her eyes, as if still filled with paralyzing shock, stared unseeing at the ceiling. Since the remnants were so completely soaked in blood, it was impossible to tell what color her dress had once been. Catherine's entire middle was ripped open. She had nearly been torn in two. Her left thigh muscle, stripped off the bone, lay flopped out to the side. Long gouges, also appearing to be left by fangs, raked down the length of the bone. Viscera lay strewn out across the floor. It looked like a pack of wolves had been at her, their fangs ripping her open and pulling her apart. What was left hardly looked human. Kahlan's knees felt weak. She could not help thinking about the woman who had murdered her children, the woman Kahlan had taken with her power. This was what the woman had predicted was going to happen to Kahlan. Then, among the organs and intestines, she saw an umbilical cord snaking its way across the floor. At the end of it were the bloody, pink remains of Catherine's unborn child. Its little toes looked perfect. The top half of the body was gone. From what remained, Kahlan could see that it was a boy. A prince. With a scream of fury, King Philippe finally pulled away from soldiers reluctant to be too forceful with him. He bulled his way into the room. When he reached his wife he froze stiff. Then he screamed, a cold cry such as could only be brought forth by such a horrific sight, a cry that would have made the good spirits weep. |
| 548 |
He spun the reins around his wrists, locked them to his fisted hands with his thumbs, and then thumped the mare's belly with his heels, urging it into an easy gallop. He had hoped to take an extra moment to eat something more than a biscuit and a single piece of dried meat. He was starving. He was thirsty as well, but he'd only had time to lie on his belly and gulp a few swallows of water from the brook before he had sprung up and run back to his horse. He had desperately wanted to eat more, to drink more. But there was no time. The hounds were too close. He had to keep running, keep ahead of them. If they got to him they would tear him apart. He hadn't known where he was going at first. His instinct had made him bolt from his mother's tent and had driven him onward. He knew his mother would want to protect him, but she couldn't. She would have been torn apart and then they would be on him. So he'd had no choice but to run for all he was worth until, exhausted, he had happened upon the horses. They had been in a small corral with some others. He hadn't seen anyone around. He needed to get away, so he snatched up a saddle and took two horses. He was lucky enough to have discovered some traveling food in the saddlebags or he would probably have starved to death by now. He never gave a thought to it being wrong to take the horses; his life was at stake. He simply ran. Who could blame him? Would people really expect him to be torn apart and eaten alive rather than take a couple of horses to get away? What choice did he have? When it grew too dark to see, he was forced to stop for the night. A few times he had come across an abandoned building where he had been able to hole up for the night, safe for a time from the hounds. Then, in the morning, he made a run for it before the hounds knew he was up. Several times he had slept in a tree to be safe from them. The hounds, somewhere down in the darkness, eventually grew tired of barking and took off for the night. He thought that maybe they went off to sleep themselves, or to hunt for food. Other times, when there was no place of safety, he had been able to get a fire started. He huddled close to it, ready to grab a burning branch and brandish it at the dogs if they came close. They never did. They didn't like the fire. They always watched from a distance, their heads lowered, their eyes glowing in the dark, as they paced back and forth, waiting for morning. Sometimes when he woke they were gone and he dared hope they had finally tired of the chase. But it was never long before he would hear them baying in the distance, racing in toward him, and the chase would be on again. He pushed the horses so hard keeping ahead of the hounds that the one he rode at first had given out. He switched the saddle to the second and left the first behind, hoping the hounds would be satisfied with the horse and he could get away. The hounds hadn't taken the horse, though. They'd kept coming for him, instead. They had followed him through the mountains, through the forests, ever onward, ever deeper into a dark, trackless land of immense trees. Now he was beginning to recognize the gloomy wood he was passing through. He had grown up several days' travel to the north, in a small village hard against the hills beside a branch of the Caro-Kann River. He had been in this place, on this trail, before, with his mother. He remembered the towering pines clinging to the rocky slope, the way they closed in overhead, obscuring the heavily overcast sky, making it dark and dreary down among the brush and bramble. |
| 549 |
The horse skidded, trying to find footing on the steep descent down the side of the grade. The woods were too thick and it was too dark in among them to see what lay down ahead. For that matter, he couldn't see far off to the sides, either. But he didn't need to see. He knew what was ahead. After a long descent down the ill-defined, twisting trail, the ground flattened out into a darker place where the trees grew closer together, and the underbrush was thick. There were only rare glimpses of light through the trees. The tangle of shrubs and small trees made it nearly impossible to take any course but the thinned area that served as a trail. When he came to a rocky rim, the horse snorted in protest and refused to go on. There was no place beyond that was safe for a horse. What trail there was made its way down between and over cascading lifts of rock and ledges. Henrik dismounted and peered over the edge down into the misty wilderness below. He remembered that the trail down was narrow, steep, and treacherous. The horse couldn't take him any farther. He looked back over his shoulder, expecting the hounds to come bounding out of the trees at any second. By their growls and yelps, he knew they were getting close again. He quickly unsaddled the horse so that it would at least have a chance to get away. He slipped off the horse's head gear and slapped its flanks. The horse whinnied and bolted back the way they had come. Henrik spotted the big black dog that led the pack as it broke through the trees. It didn't go after the horse. It was coming after him. He turned and without further delay headed down over the edge of the rocks. While the trail was too steep and jagged for the horse, with crags and splits in the sloping rock face, loose scree in some spots, and rugged outcroppings in others, he knew that the hounds would have no trouble following him down through the narrow defiles. He knew, too, that they could probably scramble and bound down the rock faster than he could. He had no time to waste. Henrik didn't question where he was going, or why; for that matter, he didn't even think about it — he simply started down. Since that first day when he had scratched the Lord Rahl and the Mother Confessor and then dashed away, he hadn't questioned what he was doing or the need to run. Crossing the Azrith Plain, he hadn't even questioned where he was running. He had simply run from the hounds. He had instinctively known that if he'd taken another course they would have had him. In his mind, there had been only one possible direction to run and he had taken it. By the time he made it to the bottom his face was covered with sweat and grime. He'd looked back a few times and had seen the short-haired brown dog that was usually near the front of the pack. Both the black and the brown dogs, the two leaders, were powerfully built, with thick necks. Long frothy drool swung from their jowls as they snarled when they caught sight of him. That quick glimpse was all Henrik needed to bound down the trail as fast as he could, slipping downward between rock outcroppings at a reckless rate. In places he had simply let himself slide down the steep funnel of dirt and scree because it was faster. He finally stumbled off the precipitous path onto a flatter area among vines and tangles of brush. The air was oppressive. The place stank with rot. Out under the deep shade of thick growth he could see trees with broad, flaring bottoms that seemed made to help them balance in the soft, boggy areas. |
| 550 |
He wondered if maybe their paws would slip down between the woven mass and get caught. He hoped so. Mist prevented him from seeing very far into the distance among the moss-draped, fat-bottomed trees. As mist closed in behind him, he couldn't see very far back the way he had come, either. Among the snarl of roots snaking out from the nearby trees he could see eyes watching him. He moved toward the center of the stick and vine bridge when he saw something in the water pass close by. What ever it was dragged a torn, fleshy mass behind. There were bite marks all over the pale, decomposing meat. There was no way to tell what animal it had come from, but by the size of the splintered bone hanging from the trailing end, it looked to have once been fairly big. He wondered if it was a human thighbone. Henrik glanced down, nervous about how low the branch bridge rode in the water. It moved and swayed in a sickening way as he raced along it. He didn't know if it was a floating bridge, or if it was supported from underneath. What he did know was that in most places it barely cleared the surface of the water. He worried that something might reach out, grab him by his ankle, and drag him into the murky water. He didn't know if that would be worse than being caught by what pursued him from behind, or worse than what waited for him ahead. He desperately wanted to avoid any of those three fates, but he could think of nothing to do other than to plunge ahead, running from one threat, avoiding the second, and into the arms of the third. His legs grew tired as he raced onward across the endless bridge through the gloomy swamp. Unseen animals called out, their sharp cries echoing through the mist and darkness. It seemed that he was crossing a vast, shallow lake, but since he couldn't see very far, it was hard to tell for sure. Big round leaves, something like lily pads, rode above the surface of the water in places, standing up as high as they could, hoping for a touch of sunlight that probably only penetrated the canopy on brief, rare occasions. Several times Henrik slipped. The railing saved him. By the more distant barking, he judged that the hounds were having trouble keeping up and falling back. Still, they were back there, coming for him, so he dared not slow down. As it grew darker, he was relieved to finally encounter lit candles along the bridge. He didn't know if someone came out to light them at nightfall, or if they were always there and kept burning. They had been lit the last time he had come this way with his mother. As dark as it was in among the looming stands of smooth-barked trees, they would be a help even in the day. The farther he went, the wider and more substantial the bridge of tangled branches and vines became. The trees all around, standing up out of the water on snarls of roots, crowded in closer together. The vines hanging down from the darkness above, too, became thicker, some of them looping between trees and staying above the surface of the water. Many eventually became overgrown and weighted down with plants climbing up from the water or tendrils curling down from above. The growth to each side became so dense that it once again seemed that the bridge tunneled through a rat's nest of branches, vines, and bramble. The one constant was the murky water to each side. All too often he saw shadows move through the depths. The candles become more plentiful as the stick bridge went farther in through the dark tangle of undergrowth. |
| 551 |
The candles were simply placed in crooks in the tangle of branches and sticks. The occasional railings after a time developed into structures curving up from each side that seemed to be protecting the bridge from the encroachment of the thick undergrowth, or maybe from what lurked in the water. The walls, thick at the bottoms, thinner as they went higher, in places topped over the bridge with encircling branches that almost felt like claws closing in from overhead. The candles grew so plentiful that at times it almost felt like passing between walls of fire. Henrik supposed that the bridge didn't catch fire and burn down because it was so wet and slimy. Slick green moss and dark mold covered most of the woven mass of roots, twigs, branches, and vines. It made the footing treacherous. The farther Henrik went, the thicker the mat of woven branches that made up the walls became until they eventually closed in overhead and he felt like he was inside a cocoon of twisted wood. He could see out only through occasional small gaps. It was getting dark, though, so there wasn't much to see. Inside, the flickering glow of hundreds of candles lit the way. When he realized that he didn't hear the hounds anymore, he paused, listening for them. He wondered if they feared to venture out across the twig causeway and so had finally given up the chase. He wondered if maybe he didn't need to go on. Maybe the hounds were gone and he could go back. But even as he thought it, an inner drive compelled him to move onward into the Hedge Maid's refuge. As soon as he took a few steps, it was hard not to take yet a few more into the candlelit tunnel. Finally, with supreme effort, he did force himself to stop. If he was ever to escape, now was the time. He turned and looked back the way he had come. He heard no hounds. Carefully, tentatively, he took a step back toward freedom. Before he could take another, one of the familiars, like a creature made of smoke, drifted through the walls into the tunnel of woven sticks to block his way. Henrik stood frozen in terror, his heart hammering even faster. The glowing form floated closer. "Jit waits for you," she hissed. "Get moving." As Henrik made his way along the causeway made of intertwined vines, sticks, and branches that led him through the gloomy expanse of trackless swamp, the structure of the bridge became more substantial, in places incorporating stringy moss and grasses laced into it to help bind it all together. The floor broadened and walls grew thicker as well. In places the walls curved inward to close completely together overhead, as if it were growing that way naturally and of its own accord. Before long the walls that had gradually grown from their beginnings as railings of sorts became a solid, integrated part of the structure joined all the way around overhead so that what had been a path, then an elevated walkway, then a bridge, had evolved into a tunnel. That tunnel widened into a larger passageway that funneled him into a maze of chambers, all constructed the same way, of the same materials woven snugly together. The same entwined materials that made the floors and walls also made up ceilings just as thick and tightly woven. Living vines, with slender leaves and tiny yellow flowers, coiled up and through the walls, in places making the framework more green than dead brown. Within the silent interior network of cavities created by the mass of woven branches, the outside world seemed a far distant place. Inside was a world unto itself, a strange place without anything perfectly flat or straight. |
| 552 |
There didn't look to be room for many candles in the shadowy room. The place was filled instead with jars and containers. Some of the containers were made of tan clay. The jars were far more plentiful and in colors from tan to green to ruby red. In hundreds of places, the woven sticks and twigs had been pulled apart enough so that jars could be stuck into the knitted stick walls. What was in all the jars, Henrik feared to imagine. From what he could see through the colored glass, most were filled with liquid that was dark and filthy-looking, though a lot of it looked like muddy water. Things floated in the liquid among the dirt and debris. He tried not to look too closely at what those things floating in the jars might be. One jar looked to be filled with human teeth. But the jars and containers were not what frightened him the most. It was what was woven into the twig walls themselves, behind the jars, that had tears of terror running down his cheeks. Woven into the walls were people. He could also see them in the walls of the corridors going out of the room in various directions. At first, he saw dozens and dozens of people cocooned in the fabric of the stick walls. The more he looked, though, the more people he could see entrapped farther back within the walls. Some of the people were desiccated corpses, their mouths gaping open, their eye sockets sunken, the skin of their bare arms and legs leathery and shriveled. Other bloated bodies looked more freshly dead. The gagging stink of death left him hardly able to breathe. But some of the people woven into the walls were not dead. They looked to be in a numb stupor, hardly breathing, only slightly aware of anything going on around them. All were naked, but encased as they were by the weaving of thorny twigs and branches around them, it was hard to see much of them. Henrik could see their eyes roll from time to time, as if trying to make out where they were and what was happening to them. An occasional soft moan escaped a hanging mouth. When he turned from staring at all the dead and the half-dead people laced into the walls, he came face-to-face with the Hedge Maid. Jit sat cross-legged in the middle of the room, nested in a thatch of branches, watching him with unblinking, big round eyes that were so dark they looked black. Her thin hair was only a little more than shoulder length. She wasn't big. In fact, she was not much bigger than he was. Her simple sack dress showed that she had a rather straight torso. Her body looked more boylike than womanly. The skin on her thin arms looked to have seen little sunlight. It was hard for him to tell how old she was, but, despite her pale, smooth skin, he was certain that she was not at all young. Her fingernails and hands appeared to be permanently stained, possibly from handling what was in the jars all around her. He imagined, too, that the dark matter staining her fingernails might be the fluid leaking from the corpses woven into the walls around the room. But what riveted his gaze, what had his heart pounding, what had his knees weak, was her mouth. Her thin lips were sewn shut with strips of leather. The leather thong was stitched right through the flesh of her lips, leaving holes that didn't look like they had ever entirely healed. The stitches weren't even. They looked to have been done haphazardly, with little care. The stitched strips of leather crossed to form "X"s over her mouth. There was only enough slack in the leather to allow her to open her mouth into a narrow slit. |
| 553 |
But even as frightening as the bishop's eyes were, that was not the most disturbing aspect of the man. The most ghastly thing about him, the thing that made Henrik unable to look away, unable to stop his heart from hammering, unable to draw more than short, shallow breaths, was the man's flesh. Every bit of Bishop Arc was covered with tattooed symbols. Not simply covered, but layered over countless times so that the skin looked something other than human. There was no place that Henrik could see that was not tattooed with some part or element of strange circular designs, each one randomly laid over another over another and over yet another, all layer upon layer so that there was no untouched skin visible anywhere. Not one speck. The top layers were the darkest, with those under them lighter, the ones under those lighter yet, and so on, as if they continually absorbed down into his flesh and new ones were constantly being added over the top of those already there. They had an endless, bottomless depth to them, a tangled complexity that was dizzying, as if the symbols were continually seething up from somewhere dark. Looking down through the ever-deeper levels of designs gave the man's skin a three-dimensional appearance. Because the layers made it hard to tell just where the surface of the skin actually was in all the floating elements, it gave Bishop Arc a shadowy, somewhat hazy, somewhat ghostly appearance. Henrik felt sure that if the man wished it, he could vanish at will into the fog of floating symbols. Because of the way the underlayers were lighter than the ones on top of them, each symbol, regardless of how many layers down it was, was distinct and recognizable. The symbols were all different sizes, and from what Henrik could tell, endlessly different designs. Almost all of them seemed to be a collection of smaller symbols assembled into larger, circular elements. The bishop's hands and what Henrik could see of his wrists sticking out from his black coat were completely covered with the designs. Even his fingernails appeared to be tattooed beneath, with the designs visible right through the nail itself. His neck above his tight collar was covered all around, as was his entire throat. His face — every part of his face — was covered with emblems by the hundreds, if not thousands. Even his eyelids were tattooed. Even the man's ears, every fold and as far down inside as Henrik could see, were completely covered in the same kind of strange tattoos of circular symbols on top of circular symbols on top of yet more of the symbols. While the bishop's entire bald head was tattooed over with the designs, one dominated them all. It was larger than all the others. The bottom edge of that large circle crossed over the center of his nose and swept to each side beneath his eyes, going around just above his ears to cover the rest of the crown of the skull. Inside the circle was another, and between them a ring of runes. A triangle sitting within the inner circle crossed horizontally just above the man's brow. Smaller, secondary circular symbols floating outside the points of the triangle that broke the circles covered each temple with the third at the point of the triangle on the back of his head. The way it was laid out made it appear as if the man was glaring out with those haunting red eyes from within the circular symbol, as if he were looking out from the underworld. In the center of the triangle, toward the front of the man's skull, was a backward figure nine. |
| 554 |
That large tattoo covering the top of his bald head was darker than all the others, not just because it looked to be the most recently added, but because the lines composing it were heavier. Even so, lying as it was over layers of hundreds of other random emblems, it was evident that it was merely a part of a much larger purpose. All the tattoos, in all their many different designs, still seemed to be variations of the same basic themes. There were symbols laid out in circles of every size, even circles within circles within circles, with some of the symbols contained within those circles made up of other, smaller designs. Taken in totality, it was a profoundly unsettling sight to see a man so given over to such an occult purpose. It all made him a very dark, living, moving, fluid illustration, with every design down through the countless layers clearly discernible. Henrik imagined that if the bishop were naked, he would still be totally hidden behind the veil of symbols. The only place Henrik could see that was not tattooed with the symbols was the man's eyes, and they were tattooed red. Bishop Arc saw several of the familiars glance nervously behind him, back down the hall. He smiled. "I didn't bring her with me," he said in answer to the unspoken question haunting their eyes. "I sent her on an errand." The familiars bowed their heads in acknowledgment and as if to apologize for being so nosy. The wide eyes of one of the people woven into the wall behind Jit stared fixedly at Bishop Arc. Terror shaped the man's expression and left him unable to look away when the bishop glanced up at him. The man swallowed over and over, as if trying to swallow a scream fighting to make its way out. All the people in the walls seemed incapable of making a sound, though this man clearly seemed like he was about to scream. Bishop Arc lifted a hand toward the man trapped in the wall. It was not an overt motion to point at the man, but a casual gesture, a slack hand held out on a partially raised arm, fingers barely extended. Nonetheless, it was clearly directed at the man encased in the wall and unable to stop staring at the bishop. "Be still," Bishop Arc said in a low voice, hardly more than a whisper, but as deadly as anything Henrik had ever heard. The man gasped, sucking in short, sharp breaths. He pulled in one last, long breath as his eyes rolled back in his head. He shook violently but briefly, then slumped, at least as much as he could slump, woven as he was into the tangle of sticks, twigs, and vines. After a final shiver, his whole body went completely slack. The last breath of air left his lungs in a long, low wheeze. The bishop looked around at other eyes watching him from the walls. "Anyone else?" In the silence, every eye behind layers of twigs and branches turned away. Bishop Arc smirked at the Hedge Maid. "There you go. Freshly dead fluids for your little helpers here to suck out and feed you." The Hedge Maid's big, black eyes revealed nothing. She let out a low, rasping squeal broken by several clicks. One of the familiars, watching Jit speak in the strange language, waited until she was finished and then leaned toward the bishop, showing contempt on behalf of her mistress. "Jit wishes to know why you have come here." "Isn't it obvious?" He lifted his arm out to the side, toward Henrik, as he addressed Jit. "I have come to make sure that you complete the task I gave you." After a long pause, Jit gave him a single nod. The bishop's brow drew down, deforming the symbol on his forehead, pulling the center of it lower with his eyebrows. |
| 555 |
"Now, you have wasted enough of my time. I expect you not to waste any more of it. The boy is finally here. Get on with it." Jit watched him for a moment, then turned her attention to Henrik and motioned for him to come closer. Henrik feared to take a step toward the Hedge Maid. As she made a soft cooing sound while gesturing for him to come closer, he could only stare at the leather cord stitched through her lips keeping her mouth from opening more than a mere slit. Some of the holes where the leather thong penetrated her flesh oozed a pinkish fluid, as if the effort of calling him forward reinjured the wounds. He wondered why her lips were stitched closed. He realized that his feet were shuffling forward, even though he'd had no intention of moving. He found himself helpless to stop himself from inching ever closer to her, closer to her outstretched hands. His own arms lifted of their own accord. No amount of strength on his part could have prevented it. His fists led the way as he moved toward her. Her hands, stained dark — with what he feared to imagine — at last closed tight around his wrists. Closer in to her, he noticed that there was an odd smell about her, a kind of soft but sickening odor that he couldn't identify, but it made his nose wrinkle and his throat try to close off so he couldn't breathe it in. Though she was a small woman, she had powerfully strong fingers. He tried to back away, but he couldn't. He felt trapped in her grip. He had no control, no say in any of it. Jit made another vibrating, clicking, squealing sound. As close as he was to her, Henrik could only stare into her intense black eyes with speechless fright, unable to think of what she wanted from him, what she was going to do to him. She leaned toward him and made the same sound again. He didn't know what she was saying. He only knew that she wanted something. One of the familiars bent toward him over the Hedge Maid's shoulder. "Open your fists," she hissed impatiently. His breaths coming in short, rapid pulls, he tried with all his might to do as he had been told. Despite his best efforts, his hands would not open. He'd held them tightly closed for so long they'd become frozen into tight knots. Despite how much he tried, how much he wanted to obey, he could not will his fingers to uncurl. He stared at them, trying frantically to make them open, fearing what she would do to him if he didn't do as he'd been told. Jit seemed unconcerned. Her strong fingers began peeling his fingers open one at a time. It hurt something fierce to have them move after all the time they been held fisted. Each one tingled with stabbing pains as it was pulled straight. Showing no sympathy for his cries of pain, she did not pause at her work. Before long, she had all his fingers pried open. She flattened his hands out, pressing them between hers, one hand at a time, stroking them for a while as if to soothe away the stiffness and make certain they would remain open before she turned them over, palms down. The Hedge Maid snapped a small twig from the woven mass beside her. He could see that there was a long, wickedly sharp thorn at the end. Not knowing what she intended, he again tried to pull away, but, with his left wrist caught in her iron grip, she easily pulled his hand closer. He felt like an animal in a trap about to be skinned. Holding his hand steady, the Hedge Maid dragged the point of the thorn along the underside of the fingernail of his first finger. She turned the thorn in the light, carefully inspecting it. |
| 556 |
He couldn't imagine what she was doing or what she was looking for. Henrik saw one of the familiars, back at the wall, working at pulling a jar out of its snug place in the weave of branches. With effort, the jar finally came free. She brought it with her to Jit's side and waited patiently as she watched her mistress at work. The Hedge Maid dragged the point of the thorn under the nail of the second finger. She held it up. This time there was a small bit of something stuck on the point. A sound came from deep in her throat that told him she was pleased. She held it up to show her companions. They cooed their satisfaction. Bishop Arc only glared when she showed him. The familiar with the jar, after pulling off the lid, held it out for her mistress. Cockroaches poured out over the sides of the jar and down over the familiar's hands. They made a rattling sound as they fell by the hundreds onto the floor, scattering in every direction before vanishing down into the weave of sticks and branches. In a moment they had all disappeared. Jit, unconcerned, dunked the thorn in the filthy water and swished it around. She pulled it up and saw that what ever had been stuck on it had come off. Satisfied, she returned her attention to Henrik. She repeated the careful cleaning under the nails of the last two fingers and thumb on his left hand. She found more of the tiny treasure she was searching for under the nails of his fingers, but not his thumb. Out of the corner of his eye, Henrik saw a smile come to Bishop Arc's tattooed lips both times the Hedge Maid came up with a little scrap of something on the point of the thorn. Each time, she swished the thorn in the stinking liquid in the jar, leaving what ever it was to disappear down into the murky water. Jit dropped his left hand and moved on to his right. After dragging the thorn under his first finger she brought it up close to her face for a look. There was nothing there. She cast a brief, furtive look up at the bishop and then dragged the thorn under the nail again, but it didn't produce anything the second time, either. She moved to the next finger and did a more careful cleaning under Henrik's nail. The thorn found nothing. She repeated the search, then when it was fruitless, moved on to his third finger. It, too, didn't have what she wanted. She focused on the little finger, as if it were her last hope. When the thorn came up without anything but dirt, her hands dropped into her lap. The symbols all over him seemed to churn as the man leaned down a little. "What's wrong?" The Hedge Maid made a few short sounds from deep in her throat. "Jit says that we have the flesh of the woman," the familiar at her side said. She hesitated before finishing the translation. "But we do not have the flesh of the man." The bishop straightened in a way that caused all seven of the familiars to back up. One of them was not quick enough. He snatched her by the throat and yanked her close. It looked to be a reflex driven purely by emotion. She cried out, thrashing like a snake in a snare, but she could not escape his grip. It was clear that the bishop was in a blind rage. She clawed at his tattooed hands around her throat, but it did her no good. "Tell your mistress that I am not pleased," he said to the others. Several of them urgently leaned in, speaking to the Hedge Maid in her strange language. When the bishop pulled the familiar in his fist close to his face and glared into her eyes, she cried out with a shriek of terrible agony. |
| 557 |
"Back to the grave with you," he said through gritted teeth. As Henrik watched in frozen shock, the familiar lost the bluish glow they all had. Wisps of smoke curled up from under the cowl over her head. The whole creature writhed and withered as if everything was being sucked out of her. The skin on her hands and arms darkened as it drew in around the bones and knuckles until they looked skeletal. The flesh of her face boiled and bubbled and burned to a dark, leathery mask. Blackened skin smoldered as it shrank tighter and tighter around the skull. The eyes sunk back into their sockets. The jaw slackened and lips shriveled back, exposing the familiar's fangs. Bishop Arc tossed the withered remains aside. Seething with anger, he paced back toward the tunnel where he had entered. The candles went out around him as he moved, as if he were dragging a veil of darkness with him. He growled in frustration and rage. Abruptly, he stopped and turned back. He stared at the Hedge Maid a moment, then marched back toward her. The candles behind him came back to life as he moved away from them. "You at least have the flesh of the woman, right?" he asked Jit. With her dark eyes fixed on him, she nodded and then took the jar from the trembling familiar beside her. She held it up a little as if to show him. He stroked the knuckle of his first finger along his gaunt cheek. "Change of plans," he said in a voice like ice. As the Hedge Maid started out toward a shadowy opening at the back of the chamber, her familiars raced around the room, urgently pulling smaller jars from where they were stuck into the weave of the walls or picked up larger ones out of the diverse collections at the edges of the floor. The eyes of those people nearby encased in the walls, the ones who were still alive, watched in desolate agony. Henrik wished he could help them, but he couldn't. He couldn't even help himself. Jit cradled the jar with the filthy brown water containing what had been under Henrik's fingernails in the crook of her arm as she made her way back into the dark opening. The brown water sloshed around as she walked. The lid kept most but not all of the water from spilling over. Henrik saw big brown bugs emerge up out of the weave of the twigs and branches to feed at the drops that did escape, run down the jar, and drip onto the floor. Bishop Arc glared with bloodred eyes as the familiars went about their work of finding the correct containers out of the hundreds hoarded throughout the room. The dark symbols covering his flesh made his obvious rage seem all the more dangerous. The six remaining familiars avoided meeting his gaze as they worked at finding what they needed and pulled them out of the wall or plucked them up from the floor. Each of the familiars collected an unwieldy stash of jars clutched in the crook of their arms. The one without a hand couldn't hold as many but she did the best she could. As soon as they had what they needed, they hurried with their cargo to catch up with their departing mistress. For her part, Jit took a staff that was leaning against the wall as she carried the single jar in her other arm. She looked back over her shoulder at Henrik and let out a series of short commands in her strange, screeching, clicking language. The familiar without a hand circled back and shoved him into line behind the Hedge Maid and in front of the rest of the familiars. "Jit says for you to hurry up and come along." She glanced back briefly at the bishop and then leaned closer. |
| 558 |
"When this is through," she said with venomous delight, "I am going to suck you dry and feed what's left of you to the cockroaches." Henrik froze stiff in terror. With a soft cackle, she shoved him to get him moving again. As he stumbled forward, he thought of how much he missed being with his mother. He wanted to be back with her in their tent making bead goods. He wished that she had never brought him to the Hedge Maid in the first place. Ever since he had realized that he was being chased back into Kharga Trace and that the Hedge Maid was going to have him in her clutches again, he had feared that this time he might not be leaving. The bishop took up a place at the end of the line as they followed the Hedge Maid along the dark passageway lined with hundreds of strips of leather holding everything from small dead animals to empty turtle shells, to the skulls of little creatures with sharp little teeth, all hanging from the walls in layers. Henrik saw the eyes of the people in projecting areas of buttress walls watching them as they passed. When Bishop Arc met their gazes they quickly looked away. Not a peep came from the people in the walls. Henrik imagined that if he was trapped in the walls he would have trouble not crying out for help. But there was no one to help the poor souls trapped in this terrible place. There was no one to help him. Making their way through the labyrinth that was the Hedge Maid's lair, Henrik began to hear insects buzzing, birds calling, and other creatures whistling and chirping. As they reached an opening and emerged out into the night, the swamp creatures abruptly went dead silent. The low clouds gliding swiftly by overhead were lit by the moon from somewhere above them so that they cast a faint glow. The ground all around was elevated enough in the midst of the dense, swampy forest to be bone-dry. The dark shapes of hulking trees surrounding them, trailing long curtains of moss, looked to Henrik like arms of the dead trailing burial shrouds as they gathered around the living. As they crossed the clearing, he saw that the flat rocks lying here and there were not placed randomly, but arranged in circular patterns. Each stone was also placed atop slightly mounded dirt. The mounds with stones appeared to lead to the center of the open area, where the Hedge Maid set about making marks on the ground with her decorated staff. The marks she was scratching in the ground with the point of her staff were not unlike the tattooed designs all over Bishop Arc. Iridescent blue feathers, orange and yellow beads, and a collection of coins with holes in the center hung on buckskin thongs from the middle of the Hedge Maid's staff. Henrik wondered why the Hedge Maid would be so interested in coins that she would use them to adorn such an obviously important object. After all, what good would money do her out in Kharga Trace? Then he realized that it actually wasn't of any value to her as money, the way it was to other people. The coins must have been taken from those poor souls encased in the walls. To the Hedge Maid, shiny coins were merely decorations, like the shiny feathers. Both were tokens of the lives she had taken. As the familiars went about arranging the jars on the ground around the Hedge Maid, Bishop Arc stood to the side, arms folded, his bloodred eyes glaring as he watched the preparations. Every once in a while one of the six familiars glanced his way. Jit did not. She went quietly about her work of drawing designs in the dirt in the center of the ring of jars. |
| 559 |
Henrik had to press his hands over his ears tighter as the sounds Jit was making seemed enough to tear him apart, enough to tear the very air apart. The clouds moved in time with the circling forms. The light in them flickered faster and faster as the symbols on the ground flashed in rhythm with the sounds the Hedge Maid was making and the flickers in the clouds. The sound, the light, the spinning, horrific creatures dancing like demons, were all making Henrik dizzy. His head throbbed with the beat of it all, with the pressure of it all. He squinted, fearing to close his eyes lest he never be able to open them again, yet hardly able to keep his eyes open against the overwhelming sights and sounds. As all this activity whirled around her, Jit reached into various jars, pulling out handfuls of teeth, or what looked to be small finger bones, or human vertebrae, and cast them into the circle. With each addition light flared and danced. The world seemed to be flickering. He saw little flashes of red, yellow, and orange. And then Jit picked up the jar holding the flesh she had taken from under Henrik's fingernails. The forms were rotating so fast that he could hardly make out individuals. It was all becoming a blur of dark, glistening flesh and thrashing limbs. The Hedge Maid abruptly threw the jar she had up into the air above glowing circles and the writhing mass of forms. Henrik saw the glass explode apart. The liquid in the jar seemed to ignite. The world turned so bright that it looked like he could see Jit's bones right through her body. Everything was turned to light and fire. The trees all around burned. Hot glowing embers were drawn off the trees to swirl around the incandescence coming from the contents of the jar above the center of the flaming circle. The Hedge Maid held her hands up, summoning forces he had never imagined. She stood alone against the light, defined by it, holding sway over a world turned to an inferno. In the center of it all, in the heart of the blinding light, standing out like bright stars, there was something brighter yet. Small bits — the bits of flesh Jit had recovered from under his fingernails — were so incandescent that they made the rest of the burning world seem dull in comparison. Her arms raised, Jit seemed to be commanding those bright sparks to pull everything else up with them as they rotated while climbing ever higher into the sky. Alone in the center of the roaring conflagration, Jit lifted her arms higher, commanding it all to come together. The masses of bone men howled as they burned, their bodies coming apart in flaming sparks and smoke that was sucked into the horrific vortex of blinding radiance. Everything around him, all the trees, the vines, the moss, the bushes, even the ground, glowed as it burned and disintegrated into flaming embers and ash, coming off in long whorls that were pulled ever inward to spiral up toward the tiny sparks of blinding light that rose up through the center of the spiraling clouds. The wind roared, the fire roared. Henrik had to squint against the blinding power of it all. He would have covered his eyes but he dared not take his hands away from his ears for fear that he, too, would be summoned by Jit into the inferno. Even when he shut his eyes, he saw the same things as when he'd had his eyes open. It was a night of burning color, of blinding light, of deafening sound ... of madness. Everything was being pulled into the glowing light in the center of the clearing. |
| 560 |
Branches and debris ripped from trees and the entire forest ignited as it was pulled in. Trees and plants disintegrated into a thousand sparks that swirled around and upward, following the radiant sparks of flesh. The bodies of the dead that had risen came apart in crackling, glowing embers like everything else. The howls of terror and agony kept tears running freely down Henrik's face. The Hedge Maid lifted her arms again. The very air in the center of the clearing ignited in a blinding furnace of light. Just when Henrik thought he would surely be pulled into it all to die in the terrible ignition of light, it ended. The sudden silence felt like it might make him fall over. It felt like he had been pushing against the sound, as if he'd been trying to stand in a gale. When the sound abruptly stopped, he almost stumbled forward. His ears throbbed. His head throbbed. His whole body throbbed. But the sound was not the only thing that was gone. Henrik blinked. He couldn't believe what he was seeing. The raging whirlwind of fire and light was gone as well. He looked around and saw that the moss on the nearby trees hung limp in the still, humid air, just as it had before. Every tree was still there. The ground that had broken open as the bone men had erupted out of it looked undisturbed. It was as if none of what Henrik had just seen had actually happened. Except, the jar was gone and tiny bits of glass, like a thousand fallen stars, lay scattered across the bare ground. Henrik couldn't understand what had happened, what he had seen. He couldn't understand if the fire had been real, if the creatures he had seen come up out of the ground were real, if the terrible sound and all the rest of it had been real. Bishop Arc, still standing where he had been in the beginning, looked unharmed, and unmoved. He wore the same glare as he had in the beginning. If he was surprised by the deafening display of fire and light, he didn't show it. In the center of the clearing, the six familiars slowly circled in around Jit, tending to her, fussing over her, touching her protectively, as if to see if she had survived the ordeal. She ignored them as she used a foot to swipe away the marks she had made in the dirt with her staff when she had first come out. The Hedge Maid turned her dark eyes toward Bishop Arc. She let out the squealing clicks that were her way of talking. Henrik could see her straining to open her mouth more as she made the sounds, but the net of leather thongs prevented it. One of the familiars floated a little closer toward the bishop. "Jit says that it is done." His red eyes turned from the familiar to Jit. "See that you do the other things I have asked as well." His brow drew down tight. "Don't give me cause to return." With that he turned and stormed away. The darkness seemed to gather in around him as he went, like a black cape, making him look like a dark shadow moving across the ground. A familiar leaning in made Henrik jump. He hadn't seen her sneaking up behind him. "Now," she hissed, "time for you." Kahlan woke with a start, panting in terror. A blur of images flashed through her mind. Dark arms and claws reached for her. Fangs came out of nowhere, snapping, trying to get at her face. She didn't know where she was or what was happening. She fought frantically, twisting, pushing at what ever it was that was reaching for her, at the same time trying to escape the grip of pain that seared through her. She sat up abruptly, gasping for breath, and saw then that she was in the Garden of Life, that it was night. |
| 561 |
Orneta was gratified that Ludwig had such a responsible position in culling prophecy from every source possible and delivering it to Bishop Arc so that he might use it in guiding his rule of Fajin Province. It now seemed that Bishop Arc would be better suited to a position as Lord Arc in guiding all the lands, rather than just Fajin Province. When Orneta looked up from taking a drink of wine, she saw a Mord-Sith in red leather coming around a corner in the distance. As she marched their way, the Mord-Sith's gaze was fixed on Orneta. The group with Queen Orneta fell silent as the Mord-Sith approached. All eyes were on the tall woman in red as she marched steadily toward them. In light of the gravity of their conversation, worry overcame the small group and none of them could even manage small talk. They were, after all, standing in Lord Rahl's palace, in the ancestral home of the House of Rahl, the seat of power in D'Hara for thousands of years. It seemed somewhat distasteful, if not disrespectful, if not treasonous, to be discussing such matters while in the People's Palace. Yet even though this was Lord Rahl's home, the home of the House of Rahl, it was also the people's house. In that sense, it was a palace belonging to the people, and so the people had every right to discuss and decide matters of relevance to their common future. But the approaching woman in red made all that seem rather academic. The Lord Rahl was the undisputed supreme authority in this place, and in all of D'Hara. The war would have seemed to have settled that issue and only strengthened the Lord Rahl's hold on power. Unless of course Orneta and those of like mind were able, with the help of Abbot Dreier and Bishop Arc, to do something about it. She was adamant, as were a number of other representatives, that prophecy was the rightful guiding authority handed down by the Creator Himself and it had to be obeyed. To obey it, they had to be made aware of it. To allow the Keeper of the dead to subvert the use of prophecy was treason to life. They needed a guiding leader, like Bishop Arc, who would rule as Lord Arc in conjunction with the words of prophecy. In the silence up on the balcony, with all the representatives watching, the Mord-Sith was the center of attention as she went to the railing and glanced down at the people strolling the halls. Soldiers looking up saw her and without pause continued on their way. Other people moving through the halls noticed her as well, but their gazes didn't linger long. Even in the People's Palace, most people had always avoided looking a Mord-Sith in the eye. Of course, since Cara, Lord Rahl's closest bodyguard, had gotten married, that caution had softened somewhat. Somewhat. This particular Mord-Sith's hard edge, however, gave none of them any reason to abandon long-held fears. The Mord-Sith's blond hair was done in the traditional single braid hanging straight down between her broad shoulders to the small of her back. It was impeccably plaited. Not a single hair seemed to be out of place. The sensual mix of muscles and feminine curves filled out her red leather outfit perfectly. A small red rod, her Agiel, hung from a fine gold chain around her right wrist, dangling just beyond the ends of her fingers so that it was always at the ready. As she turned back from surveying the halls below and then the balcony area where the small group of people were gathered, her penetrating blue-eyed gaze finally fixed on Orneta. "Queen Orneta, I have come to speak with you. |
| 562 |
Something slender and hairy. She realized that it could only be the front legs of an animal like a wolf or dog, possibly a coyote. In the dim light of the single lamp on the bedside table, it was hard to tell the color. With that bit of information, the frantic, bewildered confusion began to clear. Her thoughts of what it could possibly be, thankfully, began to coalesce. It was not a person on all fours over her. It was some sort of animal. By the weight of it on the bed, what ever it was had to be rather big, too big, she realized, to be a coyote. And then she heard the distinctive low growl, and felt the hot breath again. By the smell of the thing, the legs she could see, and the panting growl she was pretty sure that it had to be a big dog, possibly a wolf. She was having a great deal of difficulty conceiving of what it could be doing in her bedroom. She recalled, then, the dog that had crashed into their bedroom door, the wildly aggressive dog that the soldiers had been forced to kill. She didn't know how this dog could have gotten into the room. She set aside the effort of trying to figure it out. It didn't matter how it got in. It only mattered that it had, and that the animal was dangerous — she had no doubt of that. With her body pinned under the blanket, there was no hope of leaping up and racing for the door. It was too close to her. She would never make it. As she opened her eyelids just the slightest bit more, she could see the muzzle snarled back, and the long teeth. If she tried to jump up, slowed by being trapped under the blanket as she was, the beast would rip off her face before she had a chance to get her arms up to defend herself. She realized that the animal was standing between her right side and her right arm. Her left arm was trapped close to her body, but her right arm was not; it was outside the animal's legs. She knew that she had only one chance. She also knew that she could not delay. Dogs and wolves both had a predator instinct. They were excited by prey trying to get away, by it running. As she lay perfectly still, the prey drive was being kept in check. But only as long as she was perfectly still, and only for the moment. She knew that the dog could decide to act first. She could hear the low, menacing growl getting deeper, getting a little louder. She could feel the vibration of it in her chest. The dog was deciding to flush its prey. She had no time to waste. She knew that once it sank its teeth into her, there would be no escape. She had to take the initiative. Kahlan slowly pulled in a deep breath, preparing herself. The dog sensed something. The growl rose in power. Suddenly, with all her strength, as fast as she possibly could, she used her right arm to whip the blanket up, over, and around the dog. It began to lunge. In an instant, though, before it could fully react, before it could drive forward and before its teeth could reach her face, she had the beast rolled up in the blanket. The rotating momentum of throwing the blanket over and around it, of enveloping and trapping the animal, rolled them both over the side of the bed. They crashed to the floor, Kahlan on top of the powerful, struggling dog. Its legs, encased in the blanket, kicked frantically to escape. Kahlan knew there were guards right outside the door. She tried to cry out for help, but her throat was so sore that her voice was gone. She couldn't bring forth a scream. Fortunately, she had just missed knocking the bedside lamp off onto the floor with them, so she could see what she was doing. |
| 563 |
From years of experience, Kahlan instinctively reached to the knife at her belt so that she could dispatch the wildly thrashing beast. The knife wasn't there. She was confused at first as to why not, wondering if she had lost it when she rolled off the bed. Almost at the same time, she realized that she didn't usually wear it in the palace. She kept it in her pack, now. As she fought the dog, she looked up in the dimly lit room to see where the door was, hoping that she could try to make an escape. That was when she saw the glowing eyes of three more dogs near the door, heads down, ears back, teeth bared, drool hanging from their mouths. They were big, powerfully built, dark, short-haired dogs with thick, muscular necks. She couldn't imagine how in the world they had managed to get into the room. As she frantically looked around for a way to escape, she saw that one of the double doors at the back of the room was partially opened. It was all she could do to keep the animal wrapped in the blanket under her at bay. Its hind legs kicked as it snapped and tried to bite. She had stuffed a wad of blanket in its mouth. The confusing fight was keeping the other dogs from joining in, at least for the moment. She knew that at any second they would attack. As she looked up again, checking on where the three were, she saw one of them take a step closer. She also saw her backpack not far to the right, near the foot of the bed. Her knife was in her pack. There was no way she could hope to get through a door guarded by the three snarling hounds. Her only chance was to get her knife so she would at least have a fighting chance to defend herself. Without pausing to consider the wisdom of it, she threw a leg over the squirming dog trapped in the blanket and stretched to the right for her pack. She just managed to catch the strap with her fingers. As the lead dog of the three bounded toward her, she swung her pack with all her might. It knocked the dog from its feet and sent it sliding across the floor. Without missing a beat, she sprang to her feet, kicked the dog in the blanket as hard as she could in the ribs, and bolted for the open door at the back of the room. Out of nowhere from the darkness at the sides of the room, other big dogs lunged out at her, just missing her. Kahlan gasped in fright and dove through the open door out to the small balcony. The railing caught her in the middle, driving the wind out of her. She was lucky it did, because she could see that it was quite a drop to the ground, a drop that would have killed her. She spun to shut the door but the dogs were already through. She saw that up against the side of the building, not far from her balcony, there was another balcony. There were several feet of space separating them, and quite a drop between them. There was no time to consider it, and no other option. She put a foot up onto the top of the railing and used it to boost herself across the space toward the other balcony. Teeth snapped closed, just missing her ankle. She landed on the top of the fat railing on the second balcony, but slipped and fell sprawling on the floor. Looking up, she saw that on the far side of the balcony there was a narrow stairway down to the ground. She looked back and saw the dogs stand with their front paws on the balcony of her room, looking to see where she had gone. She looked back at the stairs. This had to be how they had gotten up to her room. They had come up the stairs, leaped across to the balcony outside her room, and gotten in that way. |
| 564 |
She saw the dogs back up on the balcony to her room, getting the space they needed to make the leap. She had no time to stop and think. She was in full terror mode as she jumped up and raced for the stairs. She bounded down the steps three at a time as the first dog made the leap across. She panted, out of breath, as she frantically ran down the steps, hooked a hand on the end cap of the railing to spin herself around for the next flight, and launched herself down those as well. She looked back briefly, reasoning that she could use her backpack to fend them off if they got too close. When she saw the snapping jaws lunging for her, she realized that fending them off with her pack was not going to work. She ran all the faster down the steps, taking each turn by hooking her hand over the newel and spinning around to change directions at each switchback flight of stairs. Having to make those turns slowed the snarling pack of dogs as they slid on the stone, scrambling to gain footing as they turned the corners. Kahlan was able to gain a lead on them. It was not a comfortable lead, but it at least gained her a bit of distance from the teeth. Her head hurt so much that she thought she might simply collapse and then they would have her. She remembered the prediction of the woman who had murdered her children, the woman Kahlan had taken with her power, the prediction that fangs would come for Kahlan and tear her apart. Kahlan ran all the harder. But even as she ran, she knew that she was near the end of her endurance. She could feel her strength waning. As she found herself racing across the ground in the dead of night, she was near to dropping from exhaustion. Behind, the hounds were coming, and they were catching up again. She had no choice but to keep running. The hammering pain in her head was close to overwhelming her. She knew that she would not be able to go on for long, and then the hounds would have her. She remembered the horrific sight of Catherine, killed by animals of some kind. Kahlan was pretty sure that she now knew what had killed the pregnant queen. The same thing had killed Catherine and her unborn child that was now after Kahlan. There was no doubt that if these beasts caught her, they would rip her apart the way they had ripped apart Catherine. That image, that memory, powered her legs. The only chance she had was to run. But even if she hadn't been near to the end of her strength, the dogs were running faster. What distance she had gained on the stairs, they were rapidly making up. Worse, the initial fright that had powered her and carried her on, that burst of fear-driven strength, was expended. She was near to dropping. She had to do something. Kahlan saw a wagon up ahead in the darkness moving away from her. She changed course a little and ran toward it. She was out of breath, but she knew that even a momentary pause in her maximum effort would mean that the hounds would sink their teeth into her and bring her down once and for all — they were that close. Kahlan nearly cried out with giddy joy when she reached the wagon, but she didn't have the voice or the breath. She timed her paces right and leaped up onto the iron rung step hanging down off the back. As the dogs leaped, snapping, trying to get ahold of her leg, she pulled herself up to the second step and, with a final mighty effort, dove up and over into the wagon. As she landed, she cracked her head hard on something dead solid. The pain was stunning. Her world went black. |
| 565 |
"We need to put a stop to it now." Resigned, Zedd motioned for them to step back, ushering Richard and Nicci into the protected landing of the spiral stairs where Cara stood guard. Without further fuss, Zedd turned back to the machine and ignited wizard's fire between his outstretched palms. The room lit with rolling ribbons of orange and yellow light that played off the stone walls. Zedd's white hair was made orange in the light coming from the sinister inferno, which he turned over and over between his hands, working it into a lethal servant. The boiling ball of fire built in intensity, hissing and popping with purpose. Satisfied that it was compacted the way he wanted it, Zedd finally flung the glowing sphere of liquid fire toward the square metal box sitting in the center of the room. The tempestuous inferno cast flickering light across the floor, walls, and ceiling as it flew, all the while hissing with deadly menace. Richard felt the powerful concussion in his chest as the sphere of liquid flame exploded against the unyielding machine. The liquid wizard's fire, one of the most feared substances in existence because it burned so violently, engulfed the machine, crackling as it poured down the sides, burning with white-hot intensity. Wizard's fire unleashed in a confined space was extraordinarily intense and profoundly dangerous. Even though Richard, Nicci, and Cara turned their faces away from the inferno, they still had to put hands up to shield themselves against the brutal heat and light from the concentrated conflagration. The burning roar was thunderous. It felt as if the entire world were being consumed. When the violence of the wizard's fire at last subsided, Richard was finally able to open his eyes and take his hand away from his face. As the last glowing clots of conjured conflagration dripped onto the floor and extinguished with a steamy hiss, and the smoke cleared away, Richard expected to see Regula reduced to a puddle of molten metal. It was not. He saw that the machine was still sitting in the center of the room, looking exactly the same as the first time he had seen it. It looked untouched. He was certain that the outer walls of the machine would be scorching hot, but as he approached it he felt no residual heat radiating from the metal. Richard cautiously reached out, carefully testing, then tentatively touching the metal surface. It was cool to the touch. Richard had seen some of the terrible damage done by wizard's fire, yet it had done nothing to the machine. It hadn't even scoured the patina of corrosion off the surface. The symbols on the sides, the same symbols that appeared in the book Regula, were still in perfect condition. If he hadn't seen the wizard's fire engulfing it with his own eyes, he might not have believed that anything had happened, much less that it had been the target of some of the most powerful conjured magic in existence. Nicci, standing beside Richard, tested the surface with her fingers. "Well, Additive Magic obviously didn't work. Maybe it's time to try something a little more destructive." She motioned for the rest of them to move back. Richard shepherded Zedd and Cara back into the protection of the stairwell. He knew what Nicci was going to do. He could see the aura of power crackling around the sorceress. It gave her a kind of glowing, otherworldly appearance, almost as if she were only there in spirit. The sorceress lifted her hands out toward the machine. The sizzling aura around her flickered with intensity. |
| 566 |
I'm sure you will think of something, my boy." Richard turned away from the machine. "We're not going to find the answers we need tonight. Like Nicci says, we all need to get some rest." Richard wasn't through asking questions of the machine, but it was late, and he wanted to get back to Kahlan. He knew that after he'd slept on it, he would have more questions. Maybe if he could ask them in the right way he would be able to begin to understand why the machine had been created in the first place and what its real purpose was. But those questions would have to wait. As they all headed for the stairs, the machine began to rumble into activity again. As they turned back and stared, it gradually came up to full speed. A strip was pulled off the bottom of the stack and through the inner workings. Richard watched it drop into the slot. He was reluctant to bother to pick this one up and read it. He was tired of the game. He didn't want to play along anymore. He thought that maybe he should leave the strip sitting in the machine until morning. Before Richard could leave, Zedd pulled the metal strip out, glanced at the symbols, and then handed it to Richard. "It's cool. What does it say?" Richard reluctantly took the strip from Zedd and held it up in the light to read the circular symbols. "'Your only chance is to let the truth escape.'" "What in the world could that mean?" Cara asked. Richard clenched the strip in his fist. "It's some kind of riddle. I hate riddles." Kahlan woke, confused at feeling herself rocking. She winced as she pressed a hand over the stunning pain at the top of her head. Her hair felt wet. She pulled her hand away to look at it, but it was too dark to see much other than wetness glistening in the moonlight. She suspected that she knew all too well what it was. As she struggled up onto her knees she touched her tongue to her hand. She was right; it was blood. When she swallowed, her throat was so sore that it made her wince. She ached all over and was shivering with chills even though she was sweating profusely. Her mind raced, trying to put the fragments of memories together, trying to recall exactly what had happened. Images and impressions flashed in sickening snatches. At the same time the whole world felt like it was moving. When she was jolted and then bounced, she lost her balance and fell forward. She had to put a hand down to keep from falling over on her face. She felt rough wood. Looking around she realized that she was in a small open space in the back of a wagon. Both the pain throbbing inside her head and the sharp stinging pain at the top of her head made her woozy. She fought back the urge to be sick. Suddenly, a big dog bounded up out of the darkness, slamming into the side of the wagon, startling her. It dropped back, unable to make it all the way into the wagon, but it hooked its front legs over the side and held on. The dog scrambled, stretching its neck to get its massive head inside, trying to get enough of its weight into the wagon to have the leverage to get all the way in. Strings of frothy drool whipped from side to side as the animal, even while trying to climb into the wagon, growled and snapped at her. Kahlan immediately kicked one of the dog's legs off the edge of the wagon. The dog struggled but couldn't hold on with one paw and fell off into the darkness. The whole nightmare of what had happened up in the bedroom was starting to come back to her — fragments of it, anyway. She remembered, too, what had happened to Queen Catherine, what a pack of dogs had done to her. |
| 567 |
Kahlan also remembered the prophecy given by the woman Kahlan had taken with her power, the woman who had killed her own children to supposedly spare them a worse death. That woman had told Kahlan that she would suffer a grim fate. When Kahlan had asked what she was talking about, the woman had said, "Dark things stalking you, running you down. You won't be able to escape them." Now dark things were stalking her, running her down. Where the hounds had come from and why they were after her was no longer part of Kahlan's thinking. She was simply frantic to escape them. Kahlan squinted in the darkness, trying to see up toward the front of the wagon, hoping to see the driver and get some help, but the wagon was piled high with things covered in a stiff canvas tarp. The only way to get to the front, where the driver would be, was to climb either over or around the load. It looked too high to go over in a rocking, bucking wagon, especially considering how dizzy she felt. She tried to look around the load, but she wasn't able to see anyone. Kahlan called out but her throat was so sore that she could hardly make a sound. No one answered. She thought that over the rumble of the wagon it was probably hard for a driver to hear someone in the back behind his load. More than that, though, her fever was also making her hoarse. She couldn't yell loud enough. She needed to get closer before they would hear her. Kahlan scrambled to her feet. As she put a foot up onto the side wall of the wagon to climb up around the load, a dog came out of the darkness, lunging wildly, trying to grab her ankle. As she jumped back out of the way, she saw the pack of dogs snarling and growling as they ran alongside the wagon. Before she could try again to climb around the load, another dog leaped up, getting its front legs over the side. It sank its teeth into the canvas to help pull itself up. Its back legs scrambled, trying to get purchase on something so that it could climb into the wagon. She kicked at the dog's head. It let go of the canvas and snapped at her, trying to catch her foot even as it tried to clamber up into the wagon, but it fell off. Another big hound jumped up on the other side, almost making it in. A third leaped up beside it. Kahlan kicked at the dogs, knocking one after another off the sideboards of the wagon. As soon as she kicked one off, another to the back or side bounded up and hooked its front legs over the edge. Their eyes glowed red with vicious intent. The wagon wasn't going fast enough to get away from the pack, but it was going fast enough to keep her off balance as it rocked and bucked. When the wagon bounced on a rock, her kick missed and she had to urgently kick again to keep a dog out. Kahlan looked back into the distance. It was dark, but there was enough moonlight that she would have been able to see the plateau with the People's Palace atop it if it had been anywhere near. Even if it was too far in the distance to see the plateau in the moonlight, she would have been able to see the lights of the city palace atop it, but it wasn't there. She didn't know what direction they were headed, but she knew that she was somewhere out on the vast Azrith Plain. Even as she fought off the wild pack of dogs, Kahlan knew that she was losing the battle. As she kicked one off, two more would jump up and get their front legs hooked over the side. With some she was able to dislodge their legs. With others, when they got too far in, she had to kick at their heads to knock them off. |
| 568 |
But she knew that she was losing. With the dogs continually making running jumps at the wagon, she knew that it was only a matter of time until they made it up and in. Once that happened, they would take her down. Kahlan felt a sudden pang of pain for how much she missed Richard. He would't know what had happened. He wouldn't know where she was. He would never know what had happened to her. She had a vision of her own corpse, looking like Queen Catherine after she had been ripped apart by animals. Kahlan swallowed back the grief of never being able to see Richard again. She hoped he never found her body. She didn't want him to find her like that. She spun and kicked the ribs of a dog that had clawed itself halfway into the wagon. As it yelped and fell back, she caught sight of a horse at the end of a long rope tied to the side of the wagon. It was trailing far behind, off in the darkness, staying out to the side as far as it could to keep away from the dogs. Kahlan had no time to consider. It was her only hope to get help or get away. She snatched up her pack and then kicked a dog off the sideboards near the rope. As she leaned over to grab hold of the rope, a dog lunged out of the darkness, snapping, trying to grab her arm. She pulled back in the nick of time and its teeth caught only air. As the dog fell and rolled after missing her, she quickly bent and seized the rope. The horse, frightened by the savage dogs, snorted and resisted Kahlan's efforts to bring it in closer. She put a boot against the sideboard and put her weight into pulling harder. Finally, she managed to drag the skittish animal in a bit closer. It danced and darted, trying to stay away. The dogs didn't seem to care about the horse. They were fixated on Kahlan. The horse didn't know that, though. When she had dragged the horse in as close as she could get it, Kahlan turned and saw two dogs bound up in quick succession and make it in over the other side of the wagon. They fell, their legs splaying out to the sides. As the dogs scrambled to get to their feet, Kahlan hoisted her pack over one shoulder, untied the rope from a wooden cleat, and, holding the rope for balance, sprang up onto the sideboard. She held on to the rope for dear life as she tried to balance on the sideboard of the bouncing wagon. The horse tried to run. As it did, it moved ahead just close enough. Kahlan leaped for all she was worth over the snarling, snapping dogs. She landed sideways, sprawled over the horse's back. Giddy with relief not to have fallen into the fangs of the dogs, Kahlan grabbed the horse's mane with both fists and swung one leg up and over the frightened animal's back. Finally mounted, she thumped the horse's ribs with her heels. She wanted to go ahead to the wagon's driver to get help, but the hounds raced in and blocked the way. Others leaped up, trying to grab her feet and legs and drag her down. The horse, terrified of the dogs, cut a course sharply away from the wagon. With no time to lose, Kahlan leaned over the withers and urged the animal into a gallop. The horse was only too happy to bolt off into the night. The pack of hounds were in hot pursuit. Anything at all?" Richard asked Berdine in a quiet voice. "Dead quiet out here, Lord Rahl." Berdine pointed a thumb back over her shoulder. "I looked in on the Mother Confessor earlier and she was sleeping soundly. After that I took a tour of the area just to satisfy myself that there was no one around and nothing out of the ordinary. |
| 569 |
It was difficult to see in the darkness, but not impossible. He was relieved to see nothing on the ground far below. As he started to turn to go back inside, Richard saw that there was another balcony. It wasn't connected or even all that close, but he went to the railing closest to it anyway for a look. He saw that it had a stairway down on the far side. He saw, then, the scuff mark on the top of the railing where he was standing. It looked to have been made by a boot. Richard hopped up on the railing and leaped across the daunting drop to the other balcony. The doors on the second balcony were locked and it was dark inside. It was possible that Kahlan had gone inside and then locked the doors, but he didn't really believe that. It made no sense. If she feared something, there were guards and Mord-Sith just outside their bedroom door. Instead of breaking in the door, Richard took Kahlan's more likely route. He raced in the darkness down the flights of stairs, eventually reaching the grounds of the palace. The moonlight coming through the thin haze of clouds wasn't bright, but it was bright enough for him to recognize Kahlan's bootprints. With a lifetime of tracking experience, he also recognized her unique gait. He could read the features of the way she walked and the tracks she made nearly as well as he could read the features of her face. There was no doubt about it. Kahlan had come down the stairs outside the palace to the grounds at the top of the plateau. The thing that worried him the most was that he could see by the prints that she had been running as fast as she could. He looked around for other prints, the prints of anyone who might have been chasing her, but there were no other footprints. It didn't make any sense. Richard stood and stared off across the top of the dark plateau. What could she have been running from? In the distance, paths meandered through elaborate gardens, but the grounds closer to the palace, where Richard had come out at the bottom of the stairs, were an open staging and loading area where supplies arrived at the palace. While most visitors to the palace entered up stairways through the interior of the plateau, an imposing portico between the staging area and the gardens welcomed important guests arriving by horse or carriage at the top of the plateau. The entrance there took guests into the grand corridors and the guest areas. Closer to Richard, in a less well lit area, were the stables and service docks. He could see the dark shapes of dozens of wagons and carriages that were either parked or being loaded. Horses were being brought out of the stables and either saddled or hitched to wagons. Even in the middle of the night representatives were packing up and leaving the palace. The place was alive with activity. No one was arriving. All the wagons were leaving. Richard was concerned about all the things that had happened recently and the representatives who had decided that they would rather side with prophecy and those who promised it to them. He wanted to know what could be behind it all, but at the moment his only real focus was on finding Kahlan. Richard followed Kahlan's tracks as they traced her route through the darkness atop the plateau. She had been running as fast as she could. He could see by certain characteristics of the tracks, such as the way a print twisted here and there, that she was looking behind at something chasing her as she ran. If she had been running after someone or something, the prints would have looked different. |
| 570 |
Overwhelming fatigue was the only thing that brought on sleep. At night, when it got dark enough, the hounds would seem to disappear for the night. She thought that maybe they went off at night to search for food and to rest. At first, she had entertained the hope that they had tired of the chase and had given up. The first few nights after leaving the palace, when she had still been out on the Azrith Plain and the hounds had vanished at night, Kahlan had thought that it was her chance to escape, to put distance between her and her pursuers, but no matter how fast she ran, no matter how many hours, no matter if she rode all night without stopping, the hounds were always right there when day broke, and then they would come for her again. Because the sun rose ahead and to the right and set behind her, she knew that she was headed roughly northeast. That told her the direction that the palace would be in. She had tried several times after the hounds had disappeared at night to circle around and head back, but doing so took her back into an ambush by the dogs. She had barely escaped with her life. As they came after her she had to turn back to the northeast, her only thought to outrun them, to put distance between her and her would-be assassins. There were times when she had wanted to give up, to simply quit running and let it end. But the memory of Catherine's gruesome end was too horrifying to allow Kahlan to surrender. She kept telling herself that if she could stay alive, if she could stay ahead of the pack of wild dogs, she had a chance. As long as she could outrun them she would stay alive. As long as she was alive, there was hope. The thought of Richard also kept her from giving up. The thought of him finding her torn apart by the hounds was so crushingly heartbreaking that it made her fight all the harder to stay alive. After she had left the Azrith Plain and had gotten into mountainous terrain, it had become, for the most part, impossible for her to run the horse at night. She was afraid of the animal breaking a leg in the dark. Without the horse, the dogs would easily catch her. The horse was her lifeline. She took good care of it. At least, she took as good care of it as was possible. She knew that if she lost the horse, she would be dead in short order. On the other hand, if she didn't push the horse hard enough, the hounds would pull her down. Kahlan looked down from her place in the branches. The horse was tied to a nearby limb of the tree, but on a long rope so that it could graze on anything it could find close enough. If she needed the horse in a hurry she had the end of the rope at hand so that she could pull the animal in close and climb down onto it. For some reason, the hounds ignored the horse. They wanted Kahlan, not the horse, and they never attacked it. She couldn't understand it. The horse, though, was not comforted by their disinterest. Their mere presence set the horse into a panic. Kahlan looked down, checking where the horse was. Despite how weary she was, she knew that she would have to leave soon lest the dogs arrive and terrify the horse. In its panic, the horse could be hurt. If it broke a leg, she would be done. If she let the hounds somehow trap her up in the tree, she would have trouble getting the horse close enough to the growling, barking, snapping animals. She didn't like the thought of being trapped and risking that the horse would break loose in the confusion and get away without her. Just as soon as there was enough light to see, she would leave. |
| 571 |
She hadn't eaten much other than some travel biscuits, a few nuts from time to time, and bit of dried meat she had in her pack. She still felt sick to her stomach and really didn't want to eat anything at all, but she knew that she needed to keep up her strength, so she forced herself. She had a fever, and her arm throbbed painfully. She was nauseous and constantly feared that she would have to throw up. She remembered waking back in the Garden of Life with the splitting headache and vomiting uncontrollably. While she knew that she had to eat or she would get sicker, she couldn't afford to throw up, so she ate only as much as she thought she had to. As she searched the surrounding area for any sign of the dogs, she thought she spotted something off among the trees. It looked human. Kahlan was about to call out to try to get some help, when she saw the way the thing moved. It didn't walk, exactly. It was more like it glided along through the shadows. She leaned out on the branch, trying to see better. Just then, the first rays of sunlight came through the treetops. Kahlan saw then that what she had thought was a person was actually a dog — a big black dog. It was the leader of the pack, stalking out of the trees. She couldn't grasp how she could have thought it was a person. With the terror of seeing the pack leader, panic welled up in her and all she could think about was getting away. Kahlan leaned down and pulled in the rope hand over hand as fast as she could, drawing the horse close to the tree before the hounds could come in close and spook it away. When the horse was below her, she climbed down to a lower branch of the oak tree and then dropped onto the horse's back. Kahlan looked back and saw the pack of dogs coming through the trees. When they saw her they started in howling. Kahlan leaned forward over the horse's withers as it bolted. The chase was back on. As Kahlan guided her horse among immense pines, she frequently looked back over her shoulder to keep track of how close the dogs had gotten. The colossal trees towering above her cut off almost every bit of sky. The lower branches were far out of reach overhead. Iron gray clouds made it even darker, leaving a gloomy world in the undergrowth for the horse to try to navigate. Drizzle collected on the pine needles until the drops grew fat enough to fall. It was distracting when those fat, random drops splashed against her face. Kahlan was cold, wet, and miserable. She had to concentrate to find the indistinct trail among the nursery of small pines carpeting the lower reaches of the dense forest. In many places they overgrew a trail too seldom used to keep open. In other places, beds of thick ferns covered over any hint of the little-traveled route through the forest wilderness. Having grown up in a palace, Kahlan had never known much about following obscure trails. In her duties as a Confessor, she had always traveled the roads and well-used paths between population centers of the Midlands. She had also always been escorted by a wizard. That seemed so long ago that it felt like another lifetime. To an extent, the hounds helped guide her in the sense that they left her only one real direction she could go. She just had to find enough footing for the horse. Even though the dogs were never far behind, she dared not let the horse panic and run on its own. If they left the trail there was no telling what trouble they could get into. Holes among rocks and fallen timber off the trail could catch and break the horse's legs. |
| 572 |
They might suddenly come to a cliff, or an impassable gorge, or a place so dense as to be impenetrable. If that happened, the pack of wild dogs would have her trapped and it would be all over. She didn't want to die out in the middle of a trackless forest, taken down by dogs, torn apart, devoured and left for scavengers to pick clean. She needed to stay on the relative safety of the trail in order to stay ahead of her pursuers. It was Richard who had taught her about following poorly marked trails that were rarely used and difficult to make out. Besides looking for small indications close by, she continually scanned the broader area ahead, looking for telltale signs of where the trail went. The thought of Richard gave her an agonizing stab of longing. She hadn't thought about him much in recent days. She was so desperate to get away that she was hardly able to think about anything other than running and staying away from the baying pack of dogs. Her arm hurt. Her head throbbed. She was so exhausted that she could hardly sit upright atop the horse anymore. Worse, she was so sick with fever that she feared she might pass out. She supposed that if she was unconscious it might be the best way to die. It might be a blessing to lose consciousness when the pack got to her. With the back of her hand, Kahlan wiped a tear from her cheek. She missed Richard so much. He must be frantic with worry about her being missing for so long. She felt shame for not somehow letting him know what had happened. Several of the dogs suddenly ran in out of the brush at the side, lunging at her legs. In a panic, Kahlan urged the horse into a run. Limbs flashed by. Pine boughs slapped her as she raced headlong through the woods. One branch hit her shoulder, almost knocking her off her horse. Abruptly, the horse skidded to a halt. The ground ahead dropped away over the rim of a rocky ledge. The horse couldn't take the steep, plunging descent. She feared that they had gotten off the trail, and now they were trapped. Kahlan looked back. The hounds were coming. As the dogs started yelping and howling in anticipation of having her cornered, the frightened horse suddenly reared up. Without a saddle there was precious little to hold on to. Kahlan snatched for the mane as she started slipping off the horse's back. She missed. Before she knew it, she landed with a heavy thud. Stunned from hitting the ground so hard, she groaned in pain. She had landed on her infected arm. With her good arm she cradled her sore arm to her abdomen. Before Kahlan could grab the rope, the horse bolted away into the woods. In mere seconds she couldn't see it anymore. But she could see the dogs bounding toward her, the lead dog barking with savage hunger to get at her. Kahlan turned and practically dove down the steep drop. In places she leaped from ledges of rocks above to rocks below in a series of jarring, barely controlled falls from ledge to ledge. She was racing downward so fast that she didn't have time to think about it before each leap. She knew how dangerous it was to descend like that, but she was possessed by the panicked drive to escape the terror coming for her. Kahlan slipped on loose gravel and fell into a slide down a channel of debris and loose ground. Rock and small shrubs flashed by as she slid downward. Behind her the dogs leaped across the rocks as if they were made for it. They were closing on her. With a hard impact she hit the bottom and fell sprawling on her face. Without taking the time to feel sorry for herself she pushed herself up. |
| 573 |
The way ahead looked flatter, but it also looked wet. Mist drifted among the dense trees, so she couldn't see very far ahead in the gloom. What she could see was a thick tangle of growth. Vines trailed down from above. Heavy vegetation blocked the way off to the sides. But she saw that she hadn't lost the trail after all. It was right in front of her, tunneling ahead through the dense underbrush. A short-haired brown dog crashed down from the steep trail, rolling as it landed behind her. As he scrambled to get to his feet, his jaws snapped, trying to get Kahlan's leg in his teeth. Kahlan sprang up and started running headlong into the burrow through the brush. The passage through the undergrowth seemed endless. Vegetation flashed by as she ran. She couldn't see the end up ahead. Dogs barked as they chased her through the tangled green warren. Abruptly, she burst out of the thick underbrush into a more open, swampy area. Trees with smooth gray bark and fat bottoms of tangled, spreading roots stood in stretches of stagnant water. Kahlan's boots sank into mud and she fell. As she struggled to get free, she admonished herself for paying too much attention to the dogs chasing her and inadvertently leaving the trail. The only good thing was that the mud slowed the dogs as well. They circled around behind her, jumping from dry spots to clumps of grasses, looking for a way to come in from the side. Kahlan clambered back onto the trail and raced ahead, trying to jump from root to root in order to stay out of the water and morass of mud. She didn't trust stepping in the water because she feared that she would sink in and get her foot caught in a tangle of roots hidden below. She could even break an ankle. Both thoughts terrified her. As the trail occasionally submerged into the ever-expanding swamp, Kahlan saw places in the path where branches and vines had been placed on the ground to span impassable areas. They provided a welcome way ahead across the patches of water. The farther she went, the more substantial and frequent the knitted-branch path became. It was much easier to run with the woven mat underfoot. As she raced ahead into the thick swamp, through vines and moss hanging in sheets along the way, the walkway became even more substantial, eventually rising up above the surface of the stagnant water. A quick look behind revealed that the dogs were having trouble. Their paws slipped down through gaps in the weaving of the walkway, sometimes becoming caught. The farther in they went, the more difficulty they had negotiating the entwined branches, twigs, and vines. Kahlan was soon so far ahead that she lost sight of them in the swirling fog. The walkway grew strong and solid. In places there were railings made of thick branches. Not long after that, the railings themselves became more sturdy. Kahlan was giddy with relief. She was reaching an inhabited place of some kind. With a walkway this well built, this painstakingly constructed, she was sure it would lead her to salvation. Kahlan was confounded at the construction of the enclosed, candlelit tunnel. Soggy parts of the pathway that at first had been gapped with bits of branches and vines knitted together turned into a continuous mat of woven material, which then became a causeway that rose above the surface of the water into an elevated structure that eventually circled all the way around the walkway and closed in overhead. The floor, walls, and ceiling were all constructed the same way, made entirely of woven branches, twigs, vines, and grasses. |
| 574 |
Will you forgive me then, for what I did to you and the Mother Confessor?" "Of course. It wasn't your fault. You were being used by an evil person. Now, hurry and get going. There isn't a moment to lose." Henrik nodded and raced away back down the woven walk-way. Richard stood and looked at the structure. And then he started climbing up onto the top of it. Crouched low, Richard made his way along the top of the complex that had been constructed entirely of woven branches and vines. Fortunately, it seemed to be strong enough to hold his weight without sagging and was solid enough that it didn't flex and creak when he moved across it. The drizzle was making it slippery, though. Worse, the drizzle made places where moss and mold grew as slick as ice. Fortunately, the rough, jagged nature of the branches provided some grip for his boots. The woven structure was surprisingly large, in places sprawling out through the swamp in several directions, with clusters of larger sections. His problem was to try to figure out where Kahlan was inside the maze of rooms and corridors. He had to get it right the first time. He doubted that once it started he would have a second chance to get her out. All around, smooth-barked trees stood in the murky water on fat, spreading tangles of roots. Their wide-spreading branches held veils of gray-green moss. The water around the trees was in places covered with a thick layer of floating duckweed, making it look like a carpet of lawn. Richard knew that beneath it creatures lurked in the murky depths waiting for the unwary. In places the structure made of the branches and vines was attached to the massive trees for stability and support. So many of the thick, stiff vines hung down from the trees that in spots Richard had difficulty getting through them. In other places he had to duck under low branches. In yet other places he had to brush thick webs of moss out of his way. He wanted to go faster, but as he made his way across the slippery top of the structure he needed to be as quiet as possible so as not to alert anyone down inside. Out in the swamp, the sharp calls of animals echoed across the stretches of dark water. When he glanced over the sloping side of the structure and saw shadows moving beneath the muddy water, Richard reminded himself to be careful. If the fall didn't kill him, something else likely would. In other places, long-legged white egrets stood on roots waiting for unwary fish to pass by. From below the water, other things hunted the egrets. As he moved ahead, he had to carefully skirt a poisonous yellow-and-red-banded snake lying over a branch hanging down in his way. Richard stopped still, listening. In a pause between the hoots, chirps, and calls of animals out in the swamp, he thought he heard chanting. He squatted down, putting one hand to the roof for balance as he leaned forward and listened. Even though he couldn't make out any words he recognized, he was sure that it was some kind of shouting and chanting. It was hard to tell exactly where it was coming from. The strange sounds were unlike anything he had ever heard before. As he crouched down lower, looking under wispy curtains of moss, Richard spotted what looked like trailers of fog. He thought that it could possibly be smoke. He moved ahead past the moss to get a better look and saw that it was definitely smoke. It wasn't billowing smoke, like that from a fire, but rather thin wisps of whitish smoke, possibly the kind used in certain mystic rituals. |
| 575 |
As Richard got closer, he could smell the acrid smoke. It was laced with the stink of something dead. When he reached the broad area where he'd spotted it, there was no chimney. The smoke simply seeped right up through the weaving of branches. He was able to hear the crazy chanting, thumping, and carrying-on right underneath him. Richard slowly, carefully, as quietly as he could, drew his sword. He didn't think they would be able to hear him over all the noise below, but he wasn't taking any chances. The steel hissed softly as it came out into the gloom. He'd already decided, from everything he knew, that nothing going on below him could be anything good. He knew that Henrik had been drawn to this place after having been sent to retrieve Richard's and Kahlan's flesh, and when he escaped he was covered in blood. He knew that Kahlan, through some kind of occult conjuring surrounding the flesh that Henrik had brought back to the Hedge Maid, had also been compelled to come to this place. He had no illusions. This was going to be a fight to the death. The sword's rage stormed through him, mixing with his own anger at Kahlan being taken prisoner. He wasn't even sure that she was still alive. It was all he could do to control the fury pounding through his veins and focus on what he needed to do. Richard remembered all too well Nicci's warnings about Hedge Maids. She'd said that he had no defense against their powers. That meant that his sword would not work against her. He'd had that experience before, so he took Nicci's warning seriously. There wasn't a lot that could be done about it now, though. He had no choice and no time to get help. He had to act. But Nicci's warning didn't mean his sword wouldn't work against others, and he could hear a lot of others below him. His only chance was surprise, swiftness of action, and violence. Richard drew the blade across the inside of his arm, letting it bite through his flesh to have a taste of blood. A crimson drop ran down the fuller and dripped off the tip. Richard lifted the blade stained with blood and touched it to his forehead. "Blade, be true this day," he whispered. Richard knew that he had to be fast. With all his fury and strength, he lifted the sword overhead, pausing for only an instant, and then swept it down between his wide-spread legs, slicing through the web of woven branches, sticks, and vines. The sound of it parting the thick mat of woven material ripped the heavy air of the swamp. He drew his fists in tight to his chest, held the sword upright, put his legs together, and dropped down through the raw opening. He landed in the heart of madness. Richard dropped into a crouch as he landed. Glowing, hooded forms hovered to the side while figures from a nightmare, their gaunt limbs flailing about in the air, danced around the room, high-stepping, slapping their bony feet to the woven floor, making the whole room drum. Their heads thrown back, needle-sharp teeth bared, they all chanted strange guttural sounds in time with their thumping feet. The sound of it lifted the fine hairs at the back of his neck. The sight of it made him grip his sword all the tighter. A haze of acrid smoke hung in the air. The sharp smell of fresh blood overlay even the stench of death. A small woman in the center of the room, surprised by the intruder, turned to stare up at him with big, black eyes. Her lips were sewn closed with strips of leather. Her blackened hands and fingernails were stained with countless layers of filth. |
| 576 |
Her face had a dark patina of grime and gray soot. Fresh, bright red blood glistened on her chin. He saw it sloshing from side to side in the bowl she was holding. In the center of the chaos, he didn't think she could be anyone other than the Hedge Maid. And then, across the room, where glowing figures hovered in a cluster, he spotted Kahlan. It looked like she was trapped behind the very fabric of the thorny wall. All the branches and vines netting her against the wall held her up, but by the way she slumped, she looked to be unconscious. With the heel of his hand to the center of her chest, Richard rammed the small woman back out of his way as he raced toward Kahlan. After Nicci's warning, he didn't want to risk using his sword on the Hedge Maid. The glowing figures turned toward him. Their putrid yellow eyes glared with unbridled hatred. Beyond the edges of their glowing bluish cowls, the wrinkled flesh of their grotesque, pitted and pockmarked faces covered with warts and open ulcers contorted with rage as they howled in fury. With knobby, deformed hands, they all reached for him. The sword's tip whistled through the air as Richard swung at them. The glowing forms faded away as the blade swept through them, only to reappear once it was past. Richard hardly noticed, though. His attention was riveted on Kahlan. The front of her was covered in blood. He could see ripping bite marks on her abdomen, with rows of smaller, needle-sharp punctures on her shoulders and neck. The blood running down her had at first hidden the fact that she was naked. She was also unconscious. At the sight of what they had done to her, Richard went wild with runaway rage, swinging the sword at everything around him. The chanting bony creatures bared their fangs, snapping at him as they abruptly turned from their dancing and charged in, trying to grab him. The sword swept around with bone-shattering force, splintering limbs and skulls of the gaunt creatures. A shower of fragments from hands and arms, heads, and sharp, pointed teeth filled the air of the room. Yet even as he swung at the fiendish figures, taking off arms, legs, and heads, more of them rushed in toward him from the other side. They reached out, their clawlike hands raking his flesh. Richard fought all the harder, without pause. His sword cut down any near enough. Severed limbs and headless bodies lay in piles at his feet. As he stepped into their advancing lines, his sword also slashed through walls, breaking jars and jugs. Glass fragments flew through the air. Pieces of sticks and vine ripped from the walls spun across the room. But the sword didn't seem to diminish the number of bony beings running and dancing around the room, as countless more poured in like ants from the dark passageways at the sides and rear of the room. The glowing figures raced in, tearing at his shirt. They finally snatched his arms, their numbers overpowering him. With his sword stilled, the gathering of gangly creatures scuttled in, their faces thrusting toward him, jaws wide showing their menacing, crowded, sharp little teeth. They darted in, biting him. He reached back and tried to grab one of the glowing figures by the throat, but she cackled with laughter as she evaporated into smoke, only to materialize again inside his reach, close to him, still holding his wrist. Her jaws stretched wide to show her fangs as she abruptly flew in at him. Richard ducked to the side as her jaws snapped closed and she missed. With frantic effort, he spun away from all the hands. |
| 577 |
Jit was suddenly right there in front of him. She threw a handful of what looked like black dust up at him. It hit him like an iron bar across the face. He fell to the ground, the sword slipping from his grasp. With skeletal fingers, the bony creatures dragged the weapon away. Gnarled, clawlike hands reached out, grabbing him again, pinning him down. Sharp little teeth ripped at his shirt, tearing it away in shreds. Yet more of bony creatures crowded in, biting him on the chest and stomach. Richard was having trouble making his arms and legs move. He was dizzy and couldn't seem to make his vision focus. Jit said something in a strange clicking squealing language. The hands all around lifted him and slammed him against the wall beside where Kahlan was encased in the thorny vines. He tried to call out to her, but he couldn't seem to make his voice work. In fact, he realized that he was having trouble breathing. The dust that Jit had thrown at him was burning his lungs. He felt sharp, stabbing pain in his legs as the thorns of the vines the creatures were wrapping around his legs sank into him, helping to keep him from moving. They were going to encase him in the wall like Kahlan, like others he could see woven into the walls all around the room. As one of the demonic creatures, its skin covered with a greenish black sheen of slime, sank its sharp fangs into his stomach, another shoved a bowl against him to collect the blood. When it had enough, it rushed it to Jit. Holding it with both stained hands, the Hedge Maid drank greedily from the bowl. With the leather strips sewing her lips nearly together, keeping her from opening her mouth very far, she had trouble drinking, so blood dribbled down her face and dripped from her chin. The bony creatures looked like they could be servants of the Keeper himself. They moved in a knees-up, high-stepping crouch as they accompanied Jit, crowding in close to her like loyal little lapdogs. Cockroaches emerged at her feet all along the way to drink his blood as it dripped from her chin. Jit spoke in the strange, clicking squealing language. One of the glowing figures in a cowled cloak swept up to him, pointing a finger at his face. "She says that you, too, like the Mother Confessor, will soon be the walking dead." Richard remembered what the soldier back at the palace had told him. He had said that in the Dark Lands the dead walked. Richard knew now that it was not superstition. Richard wondered why the Hedge Maid's mouth was sewn closed. It came to him. Richard understood Regula's last message. He just didn't know if it could do him any good. Though the bottom half of his torso was trapped in the thorny vines, his arms were starting to get their strength back, and they were still free, so he stretched around toward Kahlan, reaching out to touch her face, hoping that somehow she would know that he was there with her. She was unconscious and didn't respond. He had to do something, and fast. The creatures dancing and cavorting through the room, stepping among the shattered bones and limbs of their fellows, seemed to think it was funny to see his affection for Kahlan. They mocked him, mimicking his gestures, reveling in what they knew was to become of them both. Jit turned to her work of adding pinches of this and that from jars to the smoldering fire in the shallow bowl in the center of the room. From time to time she picked up a slender stick decorated with glossy green feathers, snake skins, and shiny coins to draw spells in ash held in flat trays. |
| 578 |
Ghostly forms curled out from the fire as she spoke key words in low, guttural, rasping, clicking sounds. Each wisp of smoke coalesced into a deformed figure looking like it had been freed from the darkest reaches of the underworld to float above them. As Jit worked, and the frolicking creatures taunted him, Richard surreptitiously pulled off small pieces of his shredded shirt and rolled them between his finger and thumb. When he had two of them that he judged to be about the right size, he leaned toward Kahlan to make a show of caressing her face again. Twisting around like that pulled at the thorns sticking in his legs. He had no choice but to endure it. He could hear the grotesque cackles behind him of those watching and waiting for Jit to finish her work. With his left hand, so that it would cover her face and hide what he was doing, Richard slipped one of the rolled-up pieces of cloth into one of Kahlan's ears. With a finger he pushed it firmly into place. Without pause, he did the same with her other ear. A claw seized his left wrist and pulled it back. Other hands wrapped a thorny vine around the arm and pinned it back against the wall. Yet other creatures pulled a strip of thorny vine across his middle. Richard's strength did no good against so many of these undead creatures. Working as fast as he could with his free hand, he stuffed a rolled-up piece of cloth from his shredded shirt into each of his own ears. He remembered what the machine had told him. Your only chance is to let the truth escape. He needed to do something the Hedge Maid wouldn't expect. When Jit turned back toward him, he grinned at her. All the creatures drew back, murmuring to themselves at his puzzling behavior. The unexpected was frightening to them. He again gave the Hedge Maid a very deliberate grin to let her know that he knew something she didn't. He, in fact, knew the truth. The Hedge Maid, her expression darkening dangerously, glared at him. He needed to get her closer. "You have me," he said as he smiled broadly. "Let Kahlan go and I'll cooperate with what ever you want." One of the glowing forms, who was missing a hand, poked him with a finger. "We do not need your cooperation," she said. "Yes you do," Richard said with absolute conviction while he smiled at the Hedge Maid. "You need to know the truth." The cowled figure frowned. "The truth?" She turned and spoke to Jit in her strange language. The Hedge Maid frowned at her companion as she listened, and then stepped up to him. He towered over her, but she did not fear him. She should have. Jit smiled back with as evil a grin as he'd ever seen, her lips parting with the grin as much as the leather sewn through her lips would allow. Richard used his free hand to draw his knife from the sheath at his belt. It felt good to have a blade in his hand. A blade meant salvation. This one was as razor-sharp as truth itself. The Hedge Maid didn't fear his knife, and with good reason. After all, his sword had proven impotent against her. Richard knew that using a blade to try to cut Jit would be not merely futile, but a deadly mistake. Her aura of powers shielded her, protected her from being cut by him. She had proven that his sword could not harm her, so she certainly didn't fear a mere knife. She should have. In a blink, before the Hedge Maid could have second thoughts or guess what he intended, Richard whipped the knife past her face, carefully avoiding cutting her, or even the thought of it, so as not to trigger her occult protection. |
| 579 |
Likely his gentry-girl wasn't half so angelic as she'd looked. Likely she'd had her maiden virtue stolen from her by some good-looking Tennessee beau-trap, long before Raven Houston came along. Men had hard rules for their brides, if never for themselves. Likely Houston had brought it all on himself. Perhaps he had beastly vile ideas about married life, come from living with savages. Or perhaps he'd milled his wife about with his fists — for Sybil fancied he'd be a right bully-rock, in his cups. The kino came alive with harpies, meant to symbolize Houston's slanderers, those who'd smeared his precious honor with the ink of a gutter press. Nasty crooky-back things, crowding the screen in devilish black and red. As the screen whirred steadily, they twitched their cloven hooves. Never had she seen the like, some Manchester punch-card artist having gotten the gin-horrors sure ... Now Houston was ranting about challenges and honor, by which he meant dueling, Americans being most famous duelists, who loved guns and shot each other at the drop of a hat ... He'd have killed some of those newspaper rascals, Houston insisted loudly, if he hadn't been Governor, and on his dignity. So instead he'd thrown in his cards, and gone back to live with his precious Cherokees ... He had a real head of steam up, now; he'd stoked himself so, it was almost frightening to watch. The audience was entertained, their reserve broken by his bulging eyes and veiny Texian neck, but none too far from disgust. Maybe it had been something really dreadful that he'd done, Sybil thought, rubbing her hands together inside her rabbit-skin muff. Maybe it was lady's-fever, that he'd given his own wife a case of the glue. Some types of glue were horrible, and could make you mad, or blind, or crippled. Maybe that was the secret. Mick might know. Very likely Mick knew all about it. Houston explained that he had left the United States in disgust, and gone to Texas, and at the word a map appeared, a sprawl of land in the middle of the continent. Houston claimed he'd gone there seeking land for his poor suffering Cherokee Indians, but it was all a bit confusing. Sybil asked the clerky fellow next to her for the time. Only an hour had passed. The speech was a third gone. Her moment was coming. "You must envision a nation many times the size of your home islands," said Houston, "with no roads greater than the grassy tracks of Indians. Without, at that time, a single mile of British railroad, and lacking the telegraph, or, indeed, Engine resources of any kind. As commander-in-chief of the Texian national forces, my orders had no courier more swift or more reliable than the mounted scout, his way menaced by the Comanche and Karankawa, by Mexican raiding-parties, and by the thousand nameless hazards of the wilderness. Small wonder then that Colonel Travis should receive my orders too late; and place his confidence, tragically, in the reinforcing-party led by Colonel Fannin. Surrounded by an enemy force fifty times his own. Colonel Travis declared his objective to be Victory or Death — knowing full well that the latter was a surely fated outcome. The defenders of the Alamo perished to a man. The noble Travis, the fearless Colonel Bowie, and David Crockett, a very legend among frontiersmen" — Messrs. Travis, Bowie, and Crockett each had a third of the kino screen, their faces gone strangely square with the cramped scale of their depletion — "bought precious time for my Fabian strategy." More soldier talk. |
| 580 |
As the man drew his brake-lever, a bronze bell clanged in the gurney's maroon prow, people scattering sulkily before the vehicle's advance. Above them, passengers lounged in velvet coach-seats, the folding spark-shield accordioned back to admit the sun. A grinning old swell in kid gloves sipped champagne with a pair of young misses, either daughters or mistresses. The gurney's door gleamed with a coat-of-arms, cog-wheel azure and crossed hammers argent. Some Rad's emblem unknown to Mallory, who knew the arms of every savant Lord — though he was weak on the capitalists. The machine was headed east, toward the Derby garages; he fell in behind it, letting it clear his path, easily keeping pace and smiling as draymen struggled with frightened horses. Pulling his notebook from his Docket, stumbling a little in the gouged turf-tracks of the brougham's thick wheels, he thumbed through the colorful pages of his spotter's guide. It was last year's edition; he could not find the coat-of-arms. Pity, but it meant little, when new Lords were ennobled weekly. As a class, the Lordships dearly loved their steam-chariots. The machine set its course for the gouts of greyish vapor rising behind the pillared grandstands of Epsom. It humped slowly up the curb of a paved access-road. Mallory could see the garages now, a long rambling structure in the modern style, girdered in skeletal iron and roofed with bolted sheets of tin-plate, its hard lines broken here and there by bright pennants and tin-capped ventilators. He followed the huffing land-craft until it eased into a stall. The driver popped valves with a steaming gush. Stable-monkeys set to work with greasing-gear as the passengers decamped down a folding gangway, the Lord and his two women passing Mallory on their way toward the grandstand. Britain's self-made elite, they trusted he was watching and ignored him serenely. The driver lugged a massive hamper in their wake. Mallory touched his own striped cap, identical with the driver's, and winked, but the man made no response. Strolling the length of the garages, spotting steamers from his guidebook. Mallory marked each new sighting with his pencil-stub and a small thrill of satisfaction. Here was Faraday, great savant-physicist of the Royal Society, there Colgate the soap magnate, and here a catch indeed, the visionary builder Brunei. A very few machines bore old family arms; landowners, whose fathers had been dukes and earls, when such titles had existed. Some of the fallen old nobility could afford steam; some had more initiative than others, and did what they could to keep up. Arriving at the southern wing. Mallory found it surrounded by a barricade of clean new saw-horses, smelling of pitch. This section, reserved for the racing-steamers, was patrolled by a squad of uniformed foot-police. One of them carried a spring-wind Cutts-Maudslay of a model familiar to Mallory, the Wyoming expedition having been provided with six of them. Though the Cheyenne had regarded the stubby Birmingham-made machine-carbine with a useful awe. Mallory knew that it was temperamental to the point of unreliability. Inaccurate to the point of uselessness as well, unless one were popping off the entire thirty rounds into a pack of pursuers — something Mallory himself had once done from the aft firing-position of the expedition's steam-fortress. Mallory doubted that the fresh-faced young copper had any notion what a Cutts-Maudslay might do if fired into an English crowd. He shook off the dark thought with an effort. |
| 581 |
"Will you accept a check drawn on a City bank?" "Certainly, sir," the clerk replied, raising one eyebrow as if noticing Mallory's cap and coat for the first time, "provided they are imprinted with your citizen-number." "In that case," Mallory said, to his own amazement, "I shall wager an additional forty pounds on the Zephyr." "To win, sir?" "To win." Mallory fancied himself a rather keen observer of his fellow man. He possessed, Gideon Mantell had long ago assured him, the naturalist's requisite eye. Indeed, he owed his current position in the scientific hierarchy to having used that eye along a monotonous stretch of rock-strewn Wyoming riverbank, distinguishing form amid apparent chaos. Now, however, appalled by the recklessness of his wager, by the enormity of the result in the event of his losing, Mallory found no comfort in the presence and variety of the Derby crowd. The eager roaring of massed and passionate greed, as the horses ran their course, was more than he could bear. He left the stands, almost fleeing, hoping to shake the nervous energy from his legs. A dense mass of vehicles and people had congregated on the rails of the run-in, shrieking their enthusiasm as the horses passed in a cloud of dust. The poorer folk, these, mostly those unwilling to put down a shilling fee for admission to the stands, mixed with those who entertained or preyed upon the crowd: thimble-riggers, gypsies, pick-pockets. He began shoving his way through toward the outskirts of the crowd, where he might catch his breath. It occurred to Mallory suddenly that he might have lost one of his betting-slips. The thought almost paralyzed him. He stopped dead, his hands diving into his pockets. No — the blue flimsies were still there, his tickets to disaster ... He was almost trampled by a jostling pair of horses. Shocked and angered, Mallory grabbed at the harness of the nearer horse, caught his balance, shouted a warning. A whip cracked near his head. The driver was trying to fight his way free of the entangling crowd, standing on the box of an open brougham. The fellow was a race-track dandy, gotten up in a suit of the most artificial blue, with a great paste ruby glinting in a cravat of lurid silk. Beneath the pallor of a swelling forehead, accentuated by dark disheveled locks, his bright gaunt eyes moved constantly, so that he seemed to be looking everywhere at once — except at the race-course, which still compelled the attention of everyone, save himself and Mallory. A queer fellow, and part of a queerer trio, for the passengers within the brougham were a pair of women. One, veiled, wore a dark, almost masculine dress; and as the brougham halted she rose unsteadily and groped for its door. She tried to step free, with a drunken wobble, her hands encumbered by a long wooden box, something like an instrument-case. But the second woman made a violent grab for her veiled companion, yanking the gentlewoman back into her seat. Mallory, still holding the leather harness, stared in astonishment. The second woman was a red-haired tart, in the flash garments appropriate to a gin-palace or worse. Her painted, pretty features were marked with a look of grim and utter determination. Mallory saw the red-haired tart strike the veiled gentlewoman. It was a blow both calculated and covert, jabbing her doubled knuckles into the woman's short ribs with a practiced viciousness. The veiled woman doubled over and collapsed back into her seat. Mallory was stung into immediate action. |
| 582 |
The Zephyr rolled in the wake of the greater machines, bumping half-comically in their deep-gouged tracks. It could not seem to get a proper traction. Mallory did not find himself surprised. He was full of fatal resignation. Vulcan and Goliath began to jostle for position at the first turn. The three other gurneys fell into file behind them. The Zephyr, quite absurdly, took the widest possible turn, far outside the tracks of the other craft. Master second-degree Henry Chesterton, at the wheel of the tiny craft, seemed to have gone quite mad. Mallory watched with the numb calm of a ruined man. The Zephyr lurched into an impossible burst of speed. It slipped past the other gurneys with absurd, buttery ease, like a slimy pumpkin-seed squeezed between thumb and forefinger. At the half-mile turn, its velocity quite astonishing, it teetered visibly onto two wheels; at the final lap, it struck a slight rise, the entire vehicle becoming visibly airborne. The great driving-wheels rebounded from earth with a gout of dust and a metallic screech; it was only at that moment that Mallory realized that the great crowd in the stands had fallen into deathly silence. Not a peep rose from them as the Zephyr whizzed across the finish-line. It slithered to a halt then, bumping violently across the gouged tracks left by the competition. A full four seconds passed before the stunned track-man managed to wave his flag. The other gurneys were still rounding a distant bend a full hundred yards behind. The crowd suddenly burst into astonished outcry — not joy so much as utter disbelief, and even a queer sort of anger. Henry Chesterton stepped from the Zephyr. He tossed back a neck-scarf, leaned at his ease against the shining hull of his craft, and watched with cool insolence as the other gurneys labored painfully across the finish line. By the time they arrived, they seemed to have aged centuries. They were, Mallory realized, relics. Mallory reached into his pocket. The blue slips of betting-paper were utterly safe. Their material nature had not changed in the slightest, but now these little blue slips infallibly signified the winning of four hundred pounds. No, five hundred pounds in all — fifty of that to be given to the utterly victorious Mr. Michael Godwin. Mallory heard a voice ring in his ears, amid the growing tumult of the crowd. "I'm rich," the voice remarked calmly. It was his own voice. He was rich. This image is a formal daguerreotype of the sort distributed by the British aristocracy among narrow circles of friendship and acquaintance. The photographer may have been Albert, the Prince Consort, a man whose much-publicized interest in scientific matters had made him an apparently genuine intimate of Britain's Radical elite. The dimensions of the room, and the rich drapery of its back-drop, strongly suggest the photographing salon that Prince Albert maintained at Windsor Palace. The women depicted are Lady Ada Byron and her companion and soi-disant chaperone. Lady Mary Somerville. Lady Somerville, the authoress of 'On the Connection of the Physical Sciences' and the translator of Laplace's 'Celestial Mechanics', has the resigned look of a woman accustomed to the vagaries of her younger companion. Both women wear gilded sandals, and white draperies, somewhat akin to a Greek toga, but strongly influenced by French neoclassicism. They are, in fact, the garments of female adepts of the Society of Light, the secret inner body and international propaganda arm of the Industrial Radical Party. |
| 583 |
"It's been too long since I last came to grips with that worthy craft. It will be a great pleasure to observe the latest advances in technique, in such exemplary surroundings." Huxley smiled, with a hint of dubiousness. "I do hope we can satisfy you, Ned." Mopping the back of his neck with a kerchief. Mallory unhappily contemplated the headquarters of the Central Statistics Bureau. Ancient Egypt had been dead for twenty-five centuries, but Mallory had come to know it well enough to dislike it. The French excavation of the Suez Canal had been an heroic business, so that all things Egyptian had become the Parisian mode. The rage had seized Britain as well, leaving the nation awash with scarab neck-pins, hawk-winged teapots, lurid stereographs of toppled obelisks, and faux-marble miniatures of the noseless Sphinx. Manufacturers had Engine-embroidered that whole beast-headed rabble of pagan godlets on curtains and carpets and carriage-robes, much to Mallory's distaste, and he had come to take an especial dislike to silly maunderings about the Pyramids, ruins which inspired exactly the sort of chuckle-headed wonderment that most revolted his sensibilities. He had, of course, read admiringly of the engineering feats of Suez. Lacking coal, the French had fueled their giant excavators with bitumen-soaked mummies, stacked like cordwood and sold by the ton. Still, he resented the space usurped by Egyptology in the geographical journals. The Central Statistics Bureau, vaguely pyramidal in form and excessively Egyptianate in its ornamental detail, squatted solidly in the governmental heart of Westminster, its uppermost stories slanting to a limestone apex. For the sake of increased space, the building's lower section was swollen out-of-true, like some great stone turnip. Its walls, pierced by towering smokestacks, supported a scattered forest of spinning ventilators, their vanes annoyingly hawk-winged. "The whole vast pile was riddled top to bottom with thick black telegraph-lines, as though individual streams of the Empire's information had bored through solid stone. A dense growth of wiring swooped down, from conduits and brackets, to telegraph-poles crowded thick as the rigging in a busy harbor. Mallory crossed the hot sticky tarmac of Horseferry Road, wary of the droppings of the pigeons clustered in the web-work of cable overhead. The Bureau's fortress-doors, framed by lotus-topped columns and Briticized bronze sphinxes, loomed some twenty feet in height. Smaller, work-a-day doors were set into their corners. Mallory, scowling, strode into cool dimness and the faint but pervasive odors of lye and linseed oil. The simmering London stew was behind him now, but the damned place had no windows. Egyptianate jets lit the darkness, their flames breezily guttering in fan-shaped reflectors of polished tin. He showed his citizen-card at the visitors' desk. The clerk — or perhaps he was some sort of policeman, for he wore a new-fangled Bureau uniform with an oddly military look — made careful note of Mallory's destination. He took an Engine-printed floor-plan of the building from beneath his counter, and marked out Mallory's twisting route in red ink. Mallory, still smarting from the morning's meeting with the Nominations Committee of the Geographical, thanked the man rather too brusquely. Somehow — he didn't know which devious strings had been pulled back-stage, but the plot was clear enough — Foulke had maneuvered his way onto the Geographical's Nominations Committee. |
| 584 |
Foulke, whose aquatic theory of Brontosaurus had been spurned by Huxley's museum, had taken Mallory's arborivore hypothesis as a personal attack, with the result that an ordinarily pleasant formality had become yet another public trial for radical Catastrophism. Mallory had won his Fellowship, in the end, Oliphant having laid the ground too well for Foulke's last minute ambush to succeed, but the business still rankled. He sensed damage to his reputation. Dr. Edward Mallory — "Leviathan Mallory," as the penny-papers insisted on having it — had been made to seem fanatical, even petty. And this in front of dignified geographers of the first rank, men like Button of Mecca and Elliot of the Congo. Mallory followed his map, muttering to himself. The fortunes of scholarly warfare, Mallory thought, had never seemed to favor him as they did Thomas Huxley. Huxley's feuds with the powers-that-be had only distinguished him as a wizard of debate, while Mallory was reduced to trudging this gas-lit mausoleum, where he hoped to identify a despicable race-track pimp. Taking his first turn, he discovered a marble bas-relief depicting the Mosaic Plague of Frogs, which he had always numbered among his favorite Biblical tales. Pausing in admiration, he was very nearly run down by a steel push-cart, stacked to the gunwales with decks of punch-cards. "Gangway!" yelped the carter, in brass-buttoned serge and a messenger's billed cap. Mallory saw with astonishment that the man wore wheeled boots, stout lace-ups fitted with miniature axles and spokeless rounds of rubber. The fellow shot headlong down the hall, expertly steering the heavy cart, and vanished around a corner. Mallory passed a hall, blocked off with striped sawhorses, where two apparent lunatics, in gas-lit gloom, crept slowly about on all fours. Mallory stared. The creepers were plump, middle-aged women, dressed throat-to-foot in spotless white, their hair confined by snug elastic turbans. From a distance their clothing had the eerie look of winding-sheets. As he watched, one of the pair lurched heavily to her feet and began to tenderly wipe the ceiling with a sponge-mop on a telescoping pole. They were charwomen. Following his map to a lift, he was ushered in by a uniformed attendant and carried to another level. The air, here, was dry and static, the corridors busier. There were more of the odd-looking policemen, admixed with serious-looking gentlemen of the capital: barristers perhaps, or attorneys, or the legislative agents of great capitalists, men whose business it was to acquire and retail knowledge of the attitudes and influence of the public. Political men, in short, who dealt entirely in the intangible. And though they presumably had their wives, their children, their brownstone homes, here they struck Mallory as vaguely ghost-like or ecclesiastical. Some yards on. Mallory was forced to abruptly dodge a second wheeled messenger. He caught himself against a decorative cast-iron column. The metal scorched his hands. Despite its lavish ornamentation — lotus blossoms — the column was a smokestack. He could hear it emitting the muffled roar and mutter of a badly adjusted flue. Consulting his map again, he entered a corridor lined left and right with offices. White-coated clerks ducked from door to door, dodging young messenger-boys rolling about with card-laden wheelbarrows. The gas-lights were brighter here, but they fluttered in a steady draft of wind. Mallory glanced over his shoulder. At the end of the hall stood a giant steel-framed ventilator-fan. |
| 585 |
It squealed faintly, on an oiled chain-drive, propelled by an unseen motor in the bowels of the pyramid. Mallory began to feel rather dazed. Likely this had all been a grave mistake. Surely there were better ways to pursue the mystery of Derby Day, than hunting pimps with some bureaucratic crony of Oliphant's. The very air of the place oppressed him, scorched and soapy and lifeless, the floors and walls polished and gleaming ... He'd never before seen a place so utterly free of common dirt ... These halls reminded him of something, another labyrinthine journey ... Lord Darwin. Mallory and the great savant had been walking the leaf-shadowed hedgy lanes of Kent, Darwin poking at the moist black soil with his walking-stick. Darwin talking, on and on, in his endless, methodical, crushingly detailed way, of earthworms. Earthworms, always invisibly busy underfoot, so that even great sarsen-stones slowly sank into the loam. Darwin had measured the process, at Stonehenge, in an attempt to date the ancient monument. Mallory tugged hard at his beard, his map forgotten in his hand. A vision came to him of earthworms churning in catastrophic frenzy, till the soil roiled and bubbled like a witches' brew. In years, mere months perhaps, all the monuments of slower eons would sink shipwrecked to primeval bedrock ... "Sir? May I be of service?" Mallory came to himself with a start. A white-coated clerk was confronting him, staring into his face with bespectacled suspicion. Mallory glared back, confused. For a divine moment he had poised on the brink of revelation, and now it was gone, as miserably inglorious as a failed sneeze. Worse yet. Mallory now realized he had been muttering aloud again. About earthworms, presumably. Gruffly, he proffered his map. "Looking for Level 5, QC-50." "That would be Quantitative Criminology, sir. This is Deterrence Research." The clerk pointed at a shingle hung above a nearby office door. Mallory nodded numbly. "QC is just past Nonlinear Analysis, around the corner to your right," the clerk said. Mallory moved on. He could feel the clerk's skeptical eyes on his back. The QC section was a honeycomb of tiny partitions, the neck-high walls riddled with asbestos-lined cubbyholes. Gloved and aproned clerks sat neatly at their slanted desks, examining and manipulating punch-cards with a variety of specialized clacker's devices: shufflers, pin-mounts, isin-glass color-coders, jeweler's loupes, oiled tissues, and delicate rubber-tipped forceps. Mallory watched the familiar work with a happy lurch of reassurance. QC-50 was the office of the Bureau's Undersecretary for Quantitative Criminology, whose name, Oliphant had said, was Wakefield. Mr. Wakefield possessed no desk, or rather his desk had encompassed and devoured the entirety of his office, and Wakefield worked from within it. Writing-tables sprang from wall-slots on an ingenious system of hinges, then vanished again into an arcane system of specialized cabinetry. There were newspaper-racks, letter-clamps, vast embedded cardfiles, catalogues, code-books, clacker's-guides, an elaborate multi-dialed clock, three telegraph-dials whose gilded needles ticked out the alphabet, and printers busily punching tape. Wakefield himself was a pallid Scot with sandy, receding hair. His glance, if not positively evasive, was extremely mobile. A pronounced overbite dented his lower-lip. He struck Mallory as very young for a man of his position, perhaps only forty. No doubt, like most accomplished clackers, Wakefield had grown up with the Engine trade. |
| 586 |
It was not a gun. It came out in his hand like a long oiled snake. A truncheon, with a braided leather handle and a thick black shaft of India-rubber, flattened at the end to a swollen tip like a shoehorn's. It had a spring-steel whippiness, as if it were built around a coil of iron. Mallory brandished the ugly device, which felt as if it could easily break bones. The Coughing Gent cowered before him. "Answer my questions!" A bolt of wet lightning blasted the back of Mallory's head. His senses almost left him; he felt himself fall, but caught himself against the filthy cobblestones with arms as numb and heavy as legs of mutton. A second blow fell, but glancingly, across his shoulder. He rolled back and snarled — a thick, barking sound, a cry he had never heard from his own throat. He kicked out at his attacker, somehow caught the man's shin. The man hopped back, cursing. Mallory had lost the truncheon. He lurched up, scrambling, into a giddy crouch. The second man was portly and small. He wore a round derby hat, mashed down almost to his eyebrows. He stood over the outstretched legs of the Coughing Gent and made a menacing slash at Mallory with a sausage-like leather cosh. Blood coursed down Mallory's neck as a wave of nauseated dizziness struck. He felt he might faint at any moment, and animal instinct told him that if he fell now, he would surely be beaten to death. He turned and fled the alley on wobbling legs. His head seemed to rattle and squeak, as if the sutures of his skull had ruptured. Red mist swirled like oil before his eyes. He tottered a short way down the street, and rounded a corner, gasping. He propped himself against a wall, hands braced on his knees. A respectable man and woman passed him, and stared in vague distaste. With his nose running, his mouth clogged with nausea, he glared back at them, feebly defiant. He sensed somehow that if the bastards smelled his blood they would surely tear him down. Time passed. More Londoners strolled past him, with looks of indifference, curiosity, faint disapproval, thinking him drunk or sick. Mallory peered through his tears at the building across the street, at the neatly enameled cast-iron sign on its corner. Half-Moon Street. Half-Moon Street, where Oliphant lived. Mallory felt in his pocket for his field-book. It was still there, the familiar touch of its sturdy leather binding like a blessing to him. With trembling fingers, he found Oliphant's card. Once he had reached the address, at the far end of Half-Moon Street, he was no longer weaving on his feet. The ugly giddiness in his skull had changed to a painful throbbing. Oliphant lived in a Georgian mansion, divided for modern renters. The ground floor had an elaborate iron railing and a curtained bay-window commanding the peaceful vista of Green Park. It was altogether a pleasantly civilized place, entirely unsuitable for a man who was aching, stunned, and dripping blood. Mallory pounded fiercely with the elephant-headed knocker. A man-servant opened the door. He looked Mallory up and down. "May I help you ...? Oh, my word." He turned, raised his voice to a shout. "Mr. Oliphant!" Mallory tottered into the entrance hall, all elegant tile and waxed wainscoting. Oliphant appeared almost at once. In spite of the hour, he was formally dressed, with the smallest of bow-ties and a chrysanthemum boutonniere. Oliphant seemed to grasp the situation with a single keen-eyed glance. "Bligh! Go at once to the kitchen; fetch brandy from cook. |
| 587 |
It embarrassed him to appear with his feet and ankles bared before the charwomen. "Kelly, it won't do a dashed bit of good if you flush your pipes straight to Hell. This is metropolitan London, in a wretched hot summer. Even the Thames stinks." "Have to do something, sir," Kelly said. "Our guests are complaining, most vigorously. I can't say as I blame them, sir." The women funneled a jug of the decoction, which was bright purple, into the bowl of Mallory's water-closet. The deodorizer emitted a piercing ammoniacal reek, far more vile in its own way than the lingering taint in his rooms. They scrubbed wearily at the porcelain, sneezing, until Kelly pulled the cistern-chain with a magisterial gesture. Then they left, and Mallory dressed. He checked his notebook. The afternoon's schedule was crowded, but the morning had only a single appointment. Mallory had already learned that Disraeli's tardiness made it best to allot him half the day. With luck, he might find time to take his jacket in for French cleaning, or have a barber trim the clots from his hair. When he went down to the dining-room, two other late breakfasters were chatting over tea. One was a cabinet-man named Belshaw, the other a museum underling whose name might be Sydenham. Mallory couldn't quite recall. Belshaw looked up as Mallory entered the room. Mallory nodded civilly. Belshaw gazed back at him with barely concealed astonishment. Mallory walked past the two men, taking his customary seat beneath the gilt gas chandelier. Belshaw and Sydenham began to talk in low, urgent tones. Mallory was nonplussed. He had never been formally introduced to Belshaw, but could the man possibly resent a simple nod? Now Sydenham, his pudgy face gone pale, was casting sidelong glances at Mallory. Mallory wondered if his fly was open. It was not. But the men's eyes goggled with apparently genuine alarm. Had his wound opened, was his hair dripping blood down his neck? It did not seem so ... Mallory gave his breakfast order to a waiter; the servant's face, too, was wooden, as if the choice of kippers and eggs were a grave indiscretion. Mallory, growing steadily more confused, had a mind to confront Belshaw on the matter, and began to rehearse a little speech. But Belshaw and Sydenham rose suddenly, quitting their tea, and left the dining-room. Mallory ate his breakfast with grim deliberation, determined not to let the incident upset him. He went to the front desk to fetch his basket of mail. The usual desk-clerk was not on duty; taken down with a catarrh of the lungs, his replacement said. Mallory retired with his basket to his customary seat in the library. There were five of his Palace colleagues present, gathered in a corner of the room, where they were anxiously conversing. As Mallory glanced up, he thought he caught them staring at him — but this was nonsense. Mallory sorted through his correspondence with desultory interest, his head aching slightly and his mind already drifting. There was a tedious burden of necessary professional correspondence, and the usual tiresome freight of admiring missives and begging-letters. Perhaps the engagement of a personal secretary might in fact be unavoidable. Struck by an odd inspiration, Mallory wondered if young Mr. Tobias of the Central Statistics Bureau might not be just the man for this post. Perhaps an offer of alternate employment would increase the fellow's daring in the office, for there was much at the Bureau that Mallory longed to peruse. The file on Lady Ada, for instance, should such a fabulous item exist. |
| 588 |
They pranced and staggered like bedlamites, firing their rifles into the empty American heavens, and they fell on the frozen ground in the grip of visions, showing nothing but the whites of eyes. Once they had started, they would go on for hours. Mallory had not wanted to go in to the widow. He had fought the temptation for many days, but the time had finally come when he realized it would do his soul less damage to simply get the business over with. So he had drunk two inches from one of the whiskey bottles, two inches of cheap Birmingham rotgut, shipped over with the rifles. He had gone inside the tent where the widow sat crouched in her blankets and leathers over the dung-fire. The two children left, their round brown faces squinting bleakly against the wind. Mallory showed her a new needle, and did the business with his hands, lewd gestures. The widow nodded, with the exaggerated wobble of someone to whom a nod was a foreign language, and slid back into her nest of hides, and lay on her back with her legs spread, and stretched her arms up. Mallory climbed up over her, got under the blankets with her, pulled his taut and aching member out of his trousers, and forced it between her legs. He had thought it would be over with quickly, and perhaps without much shame, but it was too strange and upsetting to him. The rutting went on for a long time, and finally she began to look at him with a kind of querulous shyness, and plucked curiously at the hair of his beard. And at last the warmth, the sweet friction, the rank animal smell of her, thawed something in him, and he spent long and hard, spent inside her, though he had not meant to do that. The three other times he went to her, later, he withdrew, and did not risk getting the poor creature with child. He was very sorry he had done it even once. But if she was with child when they left, the odds were great that it was not his at all, but one of the other men's. At length Disraeli moved on to other matters and things became more easy. But Mallory left Disraeli's rooms full of bitter confusion. It was not Disraeli's flowery prose that had stirred up the devil in him, but the savage power of his own memories. The vital animus had returned with a vengeance. He was stiff and restless with lust, and felt out of his own command. He had not had a woman since Canada, and the French girl in Toronto had not seemed wholly clean. He needed a woman, badly. An Englishwoman, some country girl with solid white legs and fat fair freckled arms ... Mallory made his way back to Fleet Street. Out in the open air, his eyes began to smart almost at once. There was no sign of Fraser in the hustling crowds. The gloom of the day was truly extraordinary. It was scarcely noon, but the dome of St. Paul's was shrouded in filthy mist. Great rolling wads of oily fog hid the spires and the giant bannered adverts of Ludgate Hill. Fleet Street was a high-piled clattering chaos, all whip-cracking, steam-snorting, shouting. The women on the pavements crouched under soot-stained parasols and walked half-bent, and men and women alike clutched kerchiefs to their eyes and noses. Men and boys lugged family carpetbags and rubber-handled traveling-cases, their cheery straw boaters already speckled with detritus. A crowded excursion-train chugged past on the spidery elevated track of the London, Chatham & Dover, its cloud of cindered exhaust hanging in the sullen air like a banner of filth. Mallory studied the sky. The thready jellyfish mess of rising smoke was gone now, swallowed in a looming opaque fog. |
| 589 |
It was quite calm. No one in the Gardens seemed aware of events beyond, the shock-waves of localized dissolution having not yet permeated the system. And it did not stink so badly here. The Gardens were on the Chelsea Reach, well upstream of the worst of the Thames. There was a faint night-breeze off the river, somewhat fishy but not altogether unpleasant, and the fog was broken by the great leafy boughs of Cremorne's ancient elms. The sun had set, and a thousand cloudy gas-lights twinkled for the pleasure of the public. Mallory could imagine the pastoral charm of the Gardens in happier times. The place had bright geranium-beds, plots of well-rolled lawn, pleasant vine-enshrouded kiosks, whimsical plaster follies, and of course the famous Crystal Circle. And the "monster platform" as well, a great roofed and wall-less ballroom, where thousands might have strolled or waltzed or polkaed on the shoe-streaked wooden deck. There were liquor-stands inside, and food, and a great horse-cranked panmelodium playing a medley of selections from favorite operas. There were not, however, thousands present tonight. Perhaps three hundred people circulated listlessly, and no more than a hundred of these were respectable. This hundred were weary of confinement, Mallory assumed, or courting couples braving all unpleasantness to meet. Of the remainder, two-thirds were men, more or less desperate, and prostitutes, more or less brazen. Mallory had two more whiskeys at the platform's bar. The whiskey was cheap and smelled peculiar, either tainted by the Stink or doctored with hartshorn or potash or quassia. Or perhaps indian-berry, for the stuff had the color of bad stout. The whiskey-shots sat in his stomach like a pair of hot coals. There was only a bit of dancing going on, a few couples attempting a self-conscious waltz. Mallory was not much of a dancer at the best of times. He watched the women. A tall, finely shaped young woman danced with an older, bearded gentleman. The fellow was stout and looked gouty in his knees, but the woman stood tall as a dart and danced with as much grace as a professional, the brass heels of her dolly-boots glinting in the light. The sway of her petticoats suggested the shape and size of the haunches beneath. No padding or whalebone was there. She'd fine ankles in red stockings and her skirts were two inches higher than propriety allowed. He could not see her face. The panmelodium struck up another tune, but the stout gentleman seemed winded. The pair of them stopped and moved off among a group of friends: an older, modest-looking woman in a bonnet, two other young girls who looked like dollymops, and another older gentleman who looked bleak-faced and foreign, from Holland perhaps or one of the Germanies. The dancing girl was talking with the others and tossing her head as if laughing. She had fine brunette hair and a bonnet knotted round her throat and hanging down her back. A fine, solid, womanly back and slim waist. Mallory began walking slowly toward them. The girl talked with seeming earnestness to the foreign man, but his face showed reluctance and a seeming disdain. The girl sketched out something like a half-reluctant curtsey, then turned away from him. Mallory saw her face for the first time. She had a strange long jaw, thick eyebrows, and a broad mobile slash of a mouth, lips edged with rouge. It was not exactly an ugly face, but decidedly plain. Yet there was a sharp, reckless look in her grey eyes and a strangely voluptuous expression that caught him as he stood. |
| 590 |
Hetty watched with hooded eyes, puffing at her cigarette and flicking ashes on the floor, as if her flesh belonged to someone else. After a while, she silently gripped his prick, working it back and forth encouragingly as he wiped at her legs. Mallory put on another sheath, with some clumsy fumbling, almost losing his erection as he did so. To his relief, he managed to enter her, where he soon regained stiffness in her welcoming flesh, and thumped hard at her, tired and drunk, with an ache in his arms and his wrists and his back, and a strange painful tingling at the root of his prick. The glans felt quite sore, almost painfully tender within its sheep-gut armor, and to spend seemed as hard and tricky as pulling a rusty nail. The bed-springs creaked like a field of metal crickets. Halfway through, Mallory felt as if he had run for miles, and Hetty, whose dead cigarette had burnt the bureau, seemed entranced, or perhaps only stunned, or drunk. For a moment he wondered if he should simply stop, quit, tell her somehow that it simply wasn't working, but he could not even begin to find the words that would satisfactorily explain this situation, so he sawed on. His mind wandered, to another woman, a cousin of his, a red-haired girl whom he had seen being shagged behind a Sussex hedgerow, when he had been up a tree as a boy, hunting cuckoo's eggs. The red-haired cousin had married the man, and was forty years old now with grown children, a round little proper woman in a round little proper bonnet, but Mallory never met her without remembering the tortured look of pleasure on her freckled face. He clutched that secret image now like a galley-slave to his oar, and fought his way stubbornly toward a climax. Finally, there was that melting, cresting feeling in his loins that told him that he would, in fact, spend soon, that nothing would hold him back, and he shoved on with a new desperation, panting very hard, and the agonized rush of spending came up his aching spine like a rocket, a surge of shocking pleasure in his arms, in his legs, even in the naked soles of his cramping feet, and he cried out, a loud ecstatic bestial groan that surprised him. "Lordy," Hetty commented. Mallory collapsed off of her and lay blowing like a beached cetacean in the foetid air. His muscles felt like rubber, and he'd half-sweated the whiskey off with the sheer work of it. He felt utterly wonderful. He felt quite willing to die. If the tout had arrived and shot him on the spot he would somehow have welcomed it, welcomed the opportunity never to come back from that plateau of sensibility, the opportunity never to be Edward Mallory again, but only a splendid creature drowned in cunt and tea-rose. But after a moment the feeling was gone and he was Mallory again. Too stupefied for any refinements of guilt or regret. Mallory nevertheless felt ready to leave. Some unspoken crisis had passed, and the episode was finished. He was simply too tired to move just yet, but he knew that he was about to. The whore's bedroom no longer felt like any kind of haven to him. The walls seemed unreal, mere mathematical abstractions, boundaries that could no longer restrain his momentum. "Let's sleep a bit," Hetty said, her words blurred with drink and exhaustion. "All right." He sensibly set the box of lucifers within convenient reach, turned out the lantern, and lay in the hot London dark like a suspended Platonic soul. He rested, eyes open, a flea feasting with leisurely precision on his ankles. |
| 591 |
Now a more cohesive group appeared. Men and young boys, some rolling heaped barrows, though they were clearly not costers. In their masks, they seemed tired, bemused, somber, as though attending a funeral. In their aimless progress they slowed before a sacked cobbler's, picking over the scattered shoes with the limp enthusiasm of scavengers. Mallory realized that he had been a fool. While he had wallowed in mindless dissipation, London had become a locus of anarchy. He should be home in peaceful Sussex now, with the family. He should be readying for little Madeline's wedding, in clean country air, with his brothers and sisters at hand, with decent home-cooked food and decent homely drink. A sudden agony of homesickness struck him, and he wondered what chaotic amalgam of lust and ambition and circumstance had marooned him in this dreadful, vicious place. He wondered what the family were doing at that very moment. What was the time, exactly? With a jolt, Mallory remembered Madeline's clock. His sister's wedding-gift was sitting in its brass-hasped carry-case in the safety-box of the Palace of Paleontology. The lovely fancy clock for dear Madeline, now grotesquely out of his reach. The Palace was seven miles from Whitechapel. Seven miles of roiling chaos. There must be some way back, some way to cross that distance, surely. Mallory wondered if any of the city's trains were running, or the omnibuses. Perhaps a hansom? Horses would choke in this foul mist. He was down to shank's mare. Likely any effort to cross London was foolish, and likely it would be wisest to cower in some quiet cellar like a rat, hoping for Catastrophe to pass him over. And yet Mallory found his shoulders squaring, his legs tramping forward of their own accord. Even the throbbing in his parched head began to pass as his wits focused on a goal. Back to the Palace. Back to his life. "Hullo! Say there! Sir!" The voice echoed over Mallory's head like the cry of a bad conscience. He glanced up, startled. From a third-floor window of Jackson Bros., Furriers & Hatters, protruded the black barrel of a rifle. Behind it, Mallory made out the balding head of a spectacled shopping-clerk, leaning from his open window now to reveal a striped shirt and scarlet braces. "May I be of service?" Mallory called, the phrase emerging out of reflex. "Thank you, sir!" the clerk cried, his voice cracking. "Sir, could you, please, have a look at our door there — just to the side, below the steps? I believe — there may be someone hurt!" Mallory waved one hand in reply, walked to the shop's entrance. Its double-doors were intact but badly battered, dripping splattered eggs. A young man in a sailor's striped blouse and bell-bottomed trousers lay sprawled there, facedown, a pry-bar of forged iron near his hand. Mallory seized the shoulder of the sailor's coarse blouse and turned him over. A bullet had taken him through the throat. He was quite dead, and his nose had been mashed to one side by the pavement, giving his bloodless young face a bizarre cast, so that he seemed to have come from some nameless country of sea-going albinos. Mallory straightened. "You've shot him dead!" he shouted upward. The clerk, seeming rattled, began coughing loudly, and made no reply. Mallory spied the wooden butt of a pistol tucked in the dead sailor's intricately knotted sash; he tugged it out. A revolver of unfamiliar make, its massive cylinder curiously slotted and grooved. The long octagonal barrel, under-hung with a sort of piston, stank of black-powder. |
| 592 |
It was a useless fantasy to imagine confronting the tout — alone, unaided, while the man was miles away, back across the chaos of London. Mallory had almost reached the Palace now, and it had taken well-nigh all he had to manage the trick of it. He forced himself to concentrate on the matters at hand. He would haul the wretched bills to the Palace safety-box. They might prove useful as evidence someday, and they could take the place of Madeline's wedding-clock. He would take up the clock, he would find a way to flee this cursed London, and he would re-join his family, as he should have done. In green Sussex, in the bosom of the good auld clawney, there would be quiet, and sense, and safety. The gears of his life would begin to mesh once more in order. Mallory lost his grip on the rolls of paper and they cascaded violently to the tarmac, one of them hitting him a smart blow across the shins as it bounded free. He gathered them up, groaning, and tried the other shoulder. In the rancid mists down Knightsbridge a procession of some kind was moving steadily across the road. Ghost-like, blurred by distance and the Stink, they appeared to be military gurneys, the squat treaded monsters of the Crimean War. Fog muffled a heavy chugging and the faint repeated clank of jointed iron. One after another they passed, while Mallory peered forward, standing quite still and gripping his burden. Each gurney hauled a linked articulated caisson. These wains appeared to be canvas-shrouded cannon, with men, foot-soldiers in canvas-colored drab, clustered atop the cannons like barnacles, with a sea-urchin bristle of bayoneted rifles. At least a dozen war-gurneys, possible a score. Mallory rubbed his aching eyes in puzzled disbelief. At Brompton Concourse he saw a trio of masked and batted figures scamper off with light-foot tread from a broken doorway; but no one offered trouble to him. Some civil authority had erected saw-horses at the gate of the Palace of Paleontology. But the barricades were not manned; it was a simple matter to slip past them and up the fog-slick stone stairs to the main entrance. The Palace's great double-doors were thickly curtained in a protective shroud of wet canvas, hung from the brick archway down to the very flagstones. The thick damp fabric smelled sharply of chloride of lime. Behind the canvas, the Palace doors were slightly ajar. Mallory eased his way inside. Servants were draping the furniture of lobby and drawing-room with thin white sheets of muslin. Others, a peculiar crowd of them, swept, and mopped, and dabbled earnestly at the cornices with long jointed feather-dusters. London women, and a large number of children of all ages, hustled about wearing borrowed Palace cleaning-aprons, looking anxious but vaguely exalted. Mallory realized at length that these strangers must be the families of the Palace staff, come to seek shelter and security within the grandest public building known to them. And someone — Kelly the major-domo, presumably, with help from whatever savants still remained on the premises — had pluckily organized the refugees. Mallory strode toward the lobby-desk, lugging his paper burden. These were sturdy working-class folk, he realized. Their stations might be humble, but they were Britons through and through. They were not daunted; they had rallied in instinctive defense of their scientific institutions and the civil values of law and property. He realized, with a heart-lifting wash of patriotic relief, that the lurching madness of Chaos had reached its limit. |
| 593 |
Some blocks on, at the corner of Longacre and Drury Lane, the soldiers were actively bullying a small squad of bewildered London police. The coppers milled about like scolded children, feebly clutching their inadequate billy-clubs. Several had lost their helmets, and many bore rude bandages on hands and scalps and shins. Tom stopped the Zephyr for coaling, while Fraser, followed by Mallory, sought intelligence from the London coppers. They were told that the situation south of the river was quite out of control. Pitched battles with brickbats and pistols were raging in Lambeth. Many streets were barricaded by pillaging mobs. Reports had it that the Bedlam Hospital had been thrown open, its unchained lunatics capering the streets in frenzy. The police were sooty-faced, coughing, exhausted. Every able-bodied man in the force was on the streets, the Army had been called in by an emergency committee, and a general curfew declared. Volunteers of the respectable classes were being deputized in the West End, and equipped with batons and rifles. At least, Mallory thought, this litany of disaster crushed any further doubts about the propriety of their own venture. Fraser made no comment; but he returned to the Zephyr with a look of grim resolution. Tom piloted on. Beyond authority's battered boundary, things grew swiftly more grim. It was noonday now, with a ghastly amber glow at the filthy zenith, and crowds were clustering like flies in the crossroads of the city. Clumps of masked Londoners shuffled along, curious, restless, hungry, or desperate — unhurried, and conspiring. The Zephyr, with merry toots of its whistle, passed through the amorphous crowd; they parted for it reflexively. A pair of commandeered omnibuses patrolled Cheapside, crammed with hard-faced bruisers. Men waving pistols hung from the running-boards, and the roofs of both steamers were piled high and bristling with stolen furniture. Thomas easily skirted the wallowing 'buses, glass crunching beneath the Zephyr's wheels. In Whitechapel there were dirty, shoeless children clambering like monkeys, four stories in the air, on the red-painted arm of a great construction-crane. Spies of a sort, Brian opined, for some were waving colored rags and screeching down at people in the street. Mallory thought it more likely that the urchins had clambered up there in hope of fresher air. Four dead and bloating horses, a team of massive Percherons, lay swollen in Stepney. The stiffened carcasses, shot to death, were still in their harness. A few yards on, the dray itself appeared, sacked, its wheels missing. Its dozen great beer-casks had been rolled down the street, then battered open, each site of rapturous looting now surrounded by a pungent, fly-blown stickiness of spillage. There were no revelers left now, their only evidence being shattered pitchers, dirty rags of women's clothing, single shoes. Mallory spotted a leprous plague of bills, slapped-up at the site of this drunken orgy. He hit the top of the Zephyr with a flung lump of coal, and Tom stopped. Tom decamped from the gurney, Fraser following him, stretching cramps from his shoulders and favoring his wounded ribs. "What is it?" "Sedition," Mallory said. The four of them, with a wary eye for interference, marched with interest to the wall, an ancient posting-surface of plastered timber, so thick with old bills that it seemed to be made of cheese-rind. Some two dozen of Captain Swing's best were freshly posted there, copies of the same gaudy, ill-printed broadside. |
| 594 |
More than the Brontosaurs, more than the ceratopsian eggs of the Gobi Desert, it is this astonishing leap of reckless insight that has assured his immortal fame. Mallory, who sleeps little, seats himself at a curvilinear Japanese desk of artificial ivory. Past the open curtains, incandescent bulbs gleam beyond the polychrome, abstractly patterned windows of his nearest neighbor. The neighbor's house, like Mallory's own, is a meticulously orchestrated riot of organic forms, roofed with iridescent ceramic dragon-scales — England's dominant style of modern architecture, though the mode itself has its turn-of-the-century origins in the thriving Republic of Catalonia. Mallory has only recently dismissed a purportedly clandestine meeting of the Society of Light. As the final Hierarch of this dwindling confraternity, tonight he wears the formal robes of office. His woolen chasuble of royal indigo is fringed in scarlet. A floor-length indigo skirt of artificial silk, similarly fringed, is decorated with concentric bands of semiprecious stones. He has set aside a domed crown of beaded gold-plate, with a neck-guard of overlapping gilt scales; this rests now upon a small desk-printer. He dons his spectacles, loads a pipe, fires it. His secretary, Cleveland, is a most punctilious and orderly man, and has left him two sets of documents, neatly squared atop the desk in folders of brass-clasped manila. One folder lies to his right, the other to his left, and it cannot be known which he will choose. He chooses the folder to his left. It is an Engine-printed report from an elderly officer of the Meirokusha, a famous confraternity of Japanese scholars which serves, not incidentally, as the foremost Oriental chapter of the Society of Light. The precise text of the report cannot be found in England, but is preserved in Nagasaki along with an annotation indicating that it was wired to the Hierarch via standard channels on April 11. The text indicates that the Meirokusha, suffering a grave decline in membership and a growing lack of attendance, have voted to indefinitely postpone further meetings. It is accompanied by an itemized bill for refreshments, and rental fees for a small upstairs room in the Seiyoken, a restaurant in the Tsukiji quarter of Tokyo. Lord Mallory, though this news is not unexpected, is filled with a sense of loss and bitterness. His temper, fierce at the best of times, has sharpened with old-age; his indignation swells to helpless rage. An artery fails. That chain of events does not occur. He chooses the folder to his right. It is thicker than the one to his left, and this intrigues him. It contains a detailed field report from a Royal Society paleontological expedition to the Pacific coast of Western Canada. Pleased by an awakened nostalgia for his own expedition days, he studies the report closely. The modern labor of science can scarcely be more different from that of his own day. The British scientists have flown to the mainland from the flourishing metropolis of Victoria, and have motored at their ease into the mountains from a luxurious base in the coastal village of Vancouver. Their leader, if he can be given this title, is a young Cambridge graduate named Morris, whom Mallory remembers as a queer, ringleted fellow, given to wearing velvet capes and elaborate Modernist hats. The strata under examination are Cambrian, dark shale of a near-lithographic quality. And, it seems, they teem with a variety of intricate forms, the paper-thin and thoroughly crushed remnants of an ancient invertebrate fauna. |
| 595 |
Oliphant had suggested that Houston already possessed at least one powerful enemy among the Police des Chateaux, the bodyguard and secret personal agency of the Emperor Napoleon. While the Police des Chateaux were few in number, Oliphant insinuated, they were utterly without legal or constitutional restraint; Radley, at least, in spite of his condition, had obviously taken note of the implied threat. They had been interrupted by a page, who brought a note for Radley. As the door opened to admit the man, Oliphant had glimpsed the anxious face of a young woman. Radley had stated, as he excused himself, that it was necessary that he speak briefly with a journalistic contact. Radley had returned to the smoking-room some ten minutes later. Oliphant then took his leave, having endured an extended and particularly florid tirade from the General, who had consumed the better part of a pint of brandy during Radley's absence. Summoned back to Grand's by telegram in the early hours of dawn, Oliphant had immediately sought out the hotel-detective, a retired Metropolitan named McQueen, who had been called to Houston's room, number 24, by the desk clerk, Mr. Parkes. While Parkes attempted to calm the hysterical wife of a Lancashire paving-contractor, resident in number 25 at the time of the disturbance, McQueen had tried the knob of Houston's door, discovering it to be unlocked. Snow was blowing in through the demolished window, and the air, already chilled, stank of burnt gunpowder, blood, and, as McQueen delicately put it, "the contents of the late gentleman's bowel." Spying the scarlet ruin that was Radley's corpse, all too visible in the cold light of dawn, McQueen had called to Parkes to telegraph the Metropolitans. He then used his passkey to lock the door, lit a lamp, and blocked the view from the street with the remains of one of the window-curtains. The condition of Radley's clothing indicated that the pockets had been gone through. Sundry personal objects lay in the pool of blood and other matter surrounding the corpse: a repeating match, a cigar-case, coins of various denominations. Lamp in hand, the detective surveyed the room, discovering an ivory-handled Leacock & Hutchings pocket-pistol. The weapon's trigger was missing. Three of its five barrels had been discharged — very recently, McQueen judged. Continuing his search, he had discovered the gaudy gilded head of General Houston's stick, awash in splintered glass. Nearby lay a bloodied packet, tightly wrapped in brown paper. It proved to contain a hundred kinotrope-cards, their intricate fretting of punch-holes ruined by the passage of a pair of bullets. The bullets themselves, of soft lead and much distorted, fell into McQueen's palm as he examined the cards. Subsequent examination of the room by specialists from Central Statistics — the attention of the Metropolitan Police, at Oliphant's request, having been swiftly deflected from the matter — added little to what the veteran McQueen had observed. The trigger of the Leacock & Hutchings pepperbox was recovered from beneath an armchair. A more peculiar discovery consisted of a square-cut white diamond, of fifteen carats and very high quality, which was found firmly wedged between two floor-boards. Two men from Criminal Anthropometry, no more than usually cryptic about their purposes, employed large squares of tissue-thin adhesive grid-paper to capture various hairs and bits of fluff from the carpet; they guarded these specimens jealously, and took them away promptly, and nothing was ever heard of them again. |
| 596 |
When I lived in Mexico City at the end of the 1940's, it was a city of one million people, with clear sparkling air and the sky that special shade of blue that goes so well with circling vultures, blood and sand — the raw menacing pitiless Mexican blue. I liked Mexico City from the first day of my first visit there. In 1949, it was a cheap place to live, with a large foreign colony, fabulous whorehouses and restaurants, cockfights and bullfights, and every conceivable diversion. A single man could live well there for two dollars a day. My New Orleans case for heroin and marijuana possession looked so unpromising that I decided not to show up for the court date, and I rented an apartment in a quiet, middle-class neighborhood of Mexico City. I knew that under the statute of limitations I could not return to the United States for five years, so I applied for Mexican citizenship and enrolled in some courses in Mayan and Mexican archaeology at Mexico City College. The G. I. Bill paid for my books and tuition, and a seventy-five-dollar-per-month living allowance. I thought I might go into farming, or perhaps open a bar on the American border. The City appealed to me. The slum areas compared favorably with anything in Asia for sheer filth and poverty. People would shit all over the street, then lie down and sleep in it with the flies crawling in and out of their mouths. Entrepreneurs, not infrequently lepers, built fires on street corners and cooked up hideous, stinking, nameless messes of food, which they dispensed to passersby. Drunks slept right on the sidewalks of the main drag, and no cops bothered them. It seemed to me that everyone in Mexico had mastered the art of minding his own business. If a man wanted to wear a monocle or carry a cane, he did not hesitate to do it, and no one gave him a second glance. Boys and young men walked down the street arm in arm and no one paid them any mind. It wasn't that people didn't care what others thought; it simply would not occur to a Mexican to expect criticism from a stranger, nor to criticize the behavior of others. Mexico was basically an Oriental culture that reflected two thousand years of disease and poverty and degradation and stupidity and slavery and brutality and psychic and physical terrorism. It was sinister and gloomy and chaotic, with the special chaos of a dream. No Mexican really knew any other Mexican, and when a Mexican killed someone (which happened often), it was usually his best friend. Anyone who felt like it carried a gun, and I read of several occasions where drunken cops, shooting at the habitues of a bar, were themselves shot by armed civilians. As authority figures, Mexican cops ranked with streetcar conductors. All officials were corruptible, income tax was very low, and medical treatment was extremely reasonable, because the doctors advertised and cut their prices. You could get a clap cured for $2.40, or buy the penicillin and shoot it yourself. There were no regulations curtailing self-medication, and needles and syringes could be bought anywhere. This was in the time of Aleman, when the mordida was king, and a pyramid of bribes reached from the cop on the beat up to the Presidente. Mexico City was also the murder capital of the world, with the highest per-capita homicide rate. I remember newspaper stories every day, like these: A campesino is in from the country, waiting for a bus: linen pants, sandals made from a tire, a wide sombrero, a machete at his belt. Another man is also waiting, dressed in a suit, looking at his wrist watch, muttering angrily. |
| 597 |
One day there was a knock on my door at eight in the morning. I went to the door in my pyjamas, and there was an inspector from Immigration. "Get your clothes on. You're under arrest." It seemed the woman next door had turned in a long report on my drunk and disorderly behavior, and also there was something wrong with my papers and where was the Mexican wife I was supposed to have? The Immigration officers were all set to throw me in jail to await deportation as an undesirable alien. Of course, everything could be straightened out with some money, but my interviewer was the head of the deporting department and he wouldn't go for peanuts. I finally had to get up off of two hundred dollars. As I walked home from the Immigration Office, I imagined what I might have had to pay if I had really had an investment in Mexico City. I thought of the constant problems the three American owners of the Ship Ahoy encountered. The cops came in all the time for a mordida, and then came the sanitary inspectors, then more cops trying to get something on the joint so they could take a real bite. They took the waiter downtown and beat the shit out of him. They wanted to know where was Kelly's body stashed? How many women been raped in the joint? Who brought in the weed? And so on. Kelly was an American hipster who had been shot in the Ship Ahoy six months before, had recovered, and was now in the U. S. Army. No woman was ever raped there, and no one ever smoked weed there. By now I had entirely abandoned my plans to open a bar in Mexico. An addict has little regard for his image. He wears the dirtiest, shabbiest clothes, and feels no need to call attention to himself. During my period of addiction in Tangiers, I was known as "El Hombre Invisible," The Invisible Man. This disintegration of self-image often results in an indiscriminate image hunger. Billie Holliday said she knew she was off junk when she stopped watching TV. In my first novel, Junky, the protagonist "Lee" comes across as integrated and self-contained, sure of himself and where he is going. In Queer he is disintegrated, desperately in need of contact, completely unsure of himself and of his purpose. The difference of course is simple: Lee on junk is covered, protected and also severely limited. Not only does junk short-circuit the sex drive, it also blunts emotional reactions to the vanishing point, depending on the dosage. Looking back over the action of Queer, that hallucinated month of acute withdrawal takes on a hellish glow of menace and evil drifting out of neon-lit cocktail bars, the ugly violence, the .45 always just under the surface. On junk I was insulated, didn't drink, didn't go out much, just shot up and waited for the next shot. When the cover is removed, everything that has been held in check by junk spills out. The withdrawing addict is subject to the emotional excesses of a child or an adolescent, regardless of his actual age. And the sex drive returns in full force. Men of sixty experience wet dreams and spontaneous orgasms (an extremely unpleasant experience, agacant as the French say, putting the teeth on edge). Unless the reader keeps this in mind, the metamorphosis of Lee's character will appear as inexplicable or psychotic. Also bear in mind that the withdrawal syndrome is self-limiting, lasting no more than a month. And Lee has a phase of excessive drinking, which exacerbates all the worst and most dangerous aspects of the withdrawal sickness: reckless, unseemly, outrageous, maudlin — in a word, appalling — behavior. |
| 598 |
Lee turned down Coahuila, walking with one foot falling directly in front of the other, always fast and purposeful, as if he were leaving the scene of a holdup. He passed a group in expatriate uniform: red-checked shirt outside the belt, blue jeans and beard, and another group of young men in conventional, if shabby, clothes. Among these Lee recognized a boy named Eugene Allerton. Allerton was tall and very thin, with high cheekbones, a small, bright-red mouth, and amber-colored eyes that took on a faint violet flush when he was drunk. His gold-brown hair was differentially bleached by the sun like a sloppy dyeing job. He had straight, black eyebrows and black eyelashes. An equivocal face, very young, clean-cut and boyish, at the same time conveying an impression of makeup, delicate and exotic and Oriental. Allerton was never completely neat or clean, but you did not think of him as being dirty. He was simply careless and lazy to the point of appearing, at times, only half awake. Often he did not hear what someone said a foot from his ear. "Pellagra, I expect," thought Lee sourly. He nodded to Allerton and smiled. Allerton nodded, as if surprised, and did not smile. Lee walked on, a little depressed. "Perhaps I can accomplish something in that direction. Well, a ver... ." He froze in front of a restaurant like a bird dog: "Hungry ... quicker to eat here than buy something and cook it." When Lee was hungry, when he wanted a drink or a shot of morphine, delay was unbearable. He went in, ordered steak a la Mexicana and a glass of milk, and waited with his mouth watering for food. A young man with a round face and a loose mouth came into the restaurant. Lee said, "Hello, Horace," in a clear voice. Horace nodded without speaking and sat down as far from Lee as he could get in the small restaurant. Lee smiled. His food arrived and he ate quickly, like an animal, cramming bread and steak into his mouth and washing it down with gulps of milk. He leaned back in his chair and lit a cigarette. "Un cafe solo," he called to the waitress as she walked by, carrying a pineapple soda to two young Mexicans in double-breasted pinstripe suits. One of the Mexicans had moist brown pop-eyes and a scraggly moustache of greasy black hairs. He looked pointedly at Lee, and Lee looked away. "Careful," he thought, "or he will be over here asking me how I like Mexico." He dropped his half-smoked cigarette into half an inch of cold coffee, walked over to the counter, paid the bill, and was out of the restaurant before the Mexican could formulate an opening sentence. When Lee decided to leave some place, his departure was abrupt. The Ship Ahoy had a few phony hurricane lamps by way of a nautical atmosphere. Two small rooms with tables, the bar in one room, and four high, precarious stools. The place was always dimly lit and sinister-looking. The patrons were tolerant, but in no way bohemian. The bearded set never frequented the Ship Ahoy. The place existed on borrowed time, without a liquor license, under many changes of management. At this time it was run by an American named Tom Weston and an American-born Mexican. Lee walked directly to the bar and ordered a drink. He drank it and ordered a second one before looking around the room to see if Allerton was there. Allerton was alone at a table, tipped back in a chair with one leg crossed over the other, holding a bottle of beer on his knee. He nodded to Lee. Lee tried to achieve a greeting at once friendly and casual, designed to show interest without pushing their short acquaintance. |
| 599 |
Lee knew they had probably gone to the owner's apartment, where they often ate dinner. He went up to Tom Weston's apartment. Mary and Allerton were there. Lee sat down and tried to engage Allerton's interest, but he was too drunk to make sense. His attempt to carry on a casual, humorous conversation was painful to watch. Ale must have slept. Mary and Allerton were gone. Tom Weston brought him some hot coffee. He drank the coffee, got up and staggered out of the apartment. Exhausted, he slept till the following morning. Scenes from the chaotic, drunken month passed before his eyes. There was a face he did not recognize, a good-looking kid with amber eyes, yellow hair and beautiful straight black eyebrows. He saw himself asking someone he barely knew to buy him a beer in a bar on Insurgentes, and getting a nasty brush. He saw himself pull a gun on someone who followed him out of a clip joint on Coahuila and tried to roll him. He felt the friendly, steadying hands of people who had helped him home. "Take it easy, Bill." His childhood friend Rollins standing there, solid and virile, with his elkhound. Carl running for a streetcar. Moor with his malicious hitch smile. The faces blended together in a nightmare, speaking to him in strange moaning idiot voices that he could not understand at first, and finally could not hear. Lee got up and shaved and felt better. He found he could eat a roll and drink some coffee. He smoked and read the paper, trying not to think about Allerton. Presently he went downtown and looked through the gun stores. He found a bargain in a Colt Frontier, which he bought for two hundred pesos. A 32-20 in perfect condition, serial number in the three hundred thousands. Worth at least a hundred dollars Stateside. Lee went to the American bookstore and bought a book on chess. He took the book out to Chapultepec, sat down in a soda stand on the lagoon, and began to read. Directly in front of him was an island with a huge cypress tree growing on it. Hundreds of vultures roosted in the tree. Lee wondered what they ate. He threw a piece of bread, which landed on the island. The vultures paid no attention. Lee was interested in the theory of games and the strategy of random behavior. As he had supposed, the theory of games does not apply to chess, since chess rules out the element of chance and approaches elimination of the unpredictable human factor. If the mechanism of chess were completely understood, the outcome could be predicted after any initial move. "A game for thinking machines," Lee thought. He read on, smiling from time to time. Finally he got up, sailed the book out over the lagoon, and walked away. Lee knew he could not find what he wanted with Allerton. The court of fact had rejected his petition. But Lee could not give up. "Perhaps I can discover a way to change fact," he thought. He was ready to take any risk, to proceed to any extreme of action. Like a saint or a wanted criminal with nothing to lose, Lee had stepped beyond the claims of his nagging, cautious, aging, frightened flesh. He took a taxi to the Ship Ahoy. Allerton was standing in front of the Ship Ahoy, blinking sluggishly in the sunlight. Lee looked at him and smiled. Allerton smiled back. "How are you?" "Sleepy. Just got up." He yawned and started into the Ship Ahoy. He moved one hand — "See you" — and sat down at the bar and ordered tomato juice. Lee went in and sat beside him, and ordered a double rum Coke. Allerton moved and sat down at a table with Tom Weston. |
| 600 |
I say, 'Stick out your tongue,' and you can't keep yourself from obeying. Whatever I say, whatever anyone says, you must do. Get the picture? A pretty picture, isn't it, so long as you are the one giving the orders that are automatically obeyed. Automatic obedience, synthetic schizophrenia, mass-produced to order. That is the Russian dream, and America is not far behind. The bureaucrats of both countries want the same thing: Control. The superego, the controlling agency, gone cancerous and berserk. Incidentally, there is a connection between schizophrenia and telepathy. Schizos are very telepathically sensitive, but are strictly receivers. Dig the tie-in?" "But you wouldn't know Yage if you saw it?" Lee thought a minute. "Much as I dislike the idea, I will have to go back to Quito and talk to a botanist at the Botanical Institute there." "I'm not going back to Quito for anything," said Allerton. "I'm not going right away. I need some rest and I want to kick the Chinaman all the way out. No need for you to go. You stay on the beach. Papa will go and get the info." From Manta they flew on to Guayaquil. The road was flooded, so the only way to get there was by plane or boat. Guayaquil is built along a river, a city with many parks and squares and statues. The parks are full of tropical trees and shrubs and vines. A tree that fans out like an umbrella, as wide as it is tall, shades the stone benches. The people do a great deal of sitting. One day Lee got up early and went to the market. The place was crowded. A curiously mixed populace: Negro, Chinese, Indian, European, Arab, characters difficult to classify. Lee saw some beautiful boys of mixed Chinese and Negro stock, slender and graceful with beautiful white teeth. A hunchback with withered legs was playing crude bamboo panpipes, a mournful Oriental music with the sadness of the high mountains. In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality. It is as final as the mountains: a fact. There it is. When you realize it, you cannot complain. People crowded around the musician, listened a few minutes, and walked on. Lee noticed a young man with the skin tight over his small face, looking exactly like a shrunken head. He could not have weighed more than ninety pounds. The musician coughed from time to time. Once he snarled when someone touched his hump, showing his black rotten teeth. Lee gave the man a few coins. He walked on, looking at every face he passed, looking into doorways and up at the windows of cheap hotels. An iron bedstead painted light pink, a shirt out to dry ... scraps of life. Lee snapped at them hungrily, like a predatory fish cut off from his prey by a glass wall. He could not stop ramming his nose against the glass in the nightmare search of his dream. And at the end he was standing in a dusty room in the late afternoon sun, with an old shoe in his hand. The city, like all Ecuador, produced a curiously baffling impression. Lee felt there was something going on here, some undercurrent of life that was hidden from him. This was the area of the ancient Chimu pottery, where salt shakers and water pitchers were nameless obscenities: two men on all fours engaged in sodomy formed the handle for the top of a kitchen pot. What happens when there is no limit? What is the fate of The Land Where Anything Goes? Men changing into huge centipedes ... centipedes besieging the houses ... a man tied to a couch and a centipede ten feet long rearing up over him. Is this literal? Did some hideous metamorphosis occur? |
| 601 |
What is the meaning of the centipede symbol? Lee got on a bus and rode to the end of the line. He took another bus. He rode out to the river and drank a soda, and watched some boys swimming in the dirty river. The river looked as if nameless monsters might rise from the green-brown water. Lee saw a lizard two feet long run up the opposite bank. He walked back towards town. He passed a group of boys on a corner. One of the boys was so beautiful that the image cut Lee's senses like a wire whip. A slight involuntary sound of pain escaped from Lee's lips. He turned around, as though looking at the street name. The boy was laughing at some joke, a high-pitched laugh, happy and gay. Lee walked on. Six or seven boys, aged twelve to fourteen, were playing in a heap of rubbish on the waterfront. One of the boys was urinating against a post and smiling at the other boys. The boys noticed Lee. Now their play was overtly sexual, with an undercurrent of mockery. They looked at Lee and whispered and laughed. Lee looked at them openly, a cold, hard stare of naked lust. He felt the tearing ache of limitless desire. He focused on one boy, the image sharp and clear, as if seen through a telescope with the other boys and the waterfront blacked out. The boy vibrated with life like a young animal. A wide grin showed sharp, white teeth. Under the torn shirt Lee glimpsed the thin body. He could feel himself in the body of the boy. Fragmentary memories ... the smell of cocoa beans drying in the sun, bamboo tenements, the warm dirty river, the swamps and rubbish heaps on the outskirts of the town. He was with the other boys, sitting on the stone floor of a deserted house. The roof was gone. The stone walls were falling down. Weeds and vines grew over the walls and stretched across the floor. The boys were taking down their torn pants. Lee lifted his thin buttocks to slip down his pants. He could feel the stone floor. He had his pants down to his ankles. His knees were clasped together, and the other boys were trying to pull them apart. He gave in, and they held his knees open. He looked at them and smiled, and slipped his hand down over his stomach. Another boy who was standing up dropped his pants and stood there with his hands on his hips, looking down at his erect organ. A boy sat down by Lee and reached over between his legs. Lee felt the orgasm blackout in the hot sun. He stretched out and threw his arm over his eyes. Another boy rested his head on his stomach. Lee could feel the warmth of the other's head, itching a little where the hair touched Lee's stomach. Now he was in a bamboo tenement. An oil lamp lit a woman's body. Lee could feel desire for the woman through the other's body. "I'm not queer," he thought. "I'm disembodied." Lee walked on, thinking, "What can I do? Take them back to my hotel? They are willing enough. For a few Sucres. ..." He felt a killing hate for the stupid, ordinary, disapproving people who kept him from doing what he wanted to do. "Someday I am going to have things just like I want," he said to himself. "And if any moralizing son of a bitch gives me any static, they will fish him out of the river." Lee's plan involved a river. He lived on the river and ran things to please himself. He grew his own weed and poppies and cocaine, and he had a young native boy for an all-purpose servant. Boats were moored in the dirty river. Great masses of water hyacinths floated by. The river was a good half-mile across. Lee walked up to a little park. |
| 602 |
Cotter looked at him sourly. "I have been out here three years," he said. Lee tried to come on like a scientist. "I want to investigate the properties of this drug," he said. "I am willing to take some as an experiment." Cotter said, "Well, I could take you down to Canela and talk to the Brujo. He will give you some if I say so." "That would be very kind," said Lee. Cotter did not say any more about going to Canela. He did say a lot about how short they were on supplies, and how he had no time to spare from his experiments with a curare substitute. After three days Lee saw he was wasting time, and told Cotter they were leaving. Cotter made no attempt to conceal his relief. Epilogue: Mexico City Return Every time I hit Panama, the place is exactly one month, two months, six months more nowhere, like the course of a degenerative illness. A shift from arithmetical to geometrical progression seems to have occurred. Something ugly and ignoble and subhuman is cooking in this mongrel town of pimps and whores and recessive genes, this degraded leech on the Canal. A smog of bum kicks hangs over Panama in the wet heat. Everyone here is telepathic on the paranoid level. I walked around with my camera and saw a wood and corrugated iron shack on a limestone cliff in Old Panama, like a penthouse. I wanted a picture of this excrescence, with the albatrosses and vultures wheeling over it against the hot gray sky. My hands holding the camera were slippery with sweat, and my shirt stuck to my body like a wet condom. An old hag in the shack saw me taking the picture. They always know when you are taking their picture, especially in Panama. She went into an angry consultation with some other ratty-looking people I could not see clearly. Then she walked to the edge of a perilous balcony and made an ambiguous gesture of hostility. Many so-called primitives are afraid of cameras. There is in fact something obscene and sinister about photography, a desire to imprison, to incorporate, a sexual intensity of pursuit. I walked on and shot some boys — young, alive, unconscious — playing baseball. They never glanced in my direction. Down by the waterfront I saw a dark young Indian on a fishing boat. He knew I wanted to take his picture, and every time I swung the camera into position he would look up with young male sulkiness. I finally caught him leaning against the bow of the boat with languid animal grace, idly scratching one shoulder. A long white scar across right shoulder and collarbone. I put away my camera and leaned over the hot concrete wall, looking at him. In my mind I was running a finger along the scar, down across his naked copper chest and stomach, every cell aching with deprivation. I pushed away from the wall muttering "Oh Jesus" and walked away, looking around for something to photograph. A Negro with a felt hat was leaning on the porch rail of a wooden house built on a dirty limestone foundation. I was across the street under a movie marquee. Every time I prepared my camera he would lift his hat and look at me, muttering insane imprecations. I finally snapped him from behind a pillar. On a balcony over this character a shirtless young man was washing. I could see the Negro and Near Eastern blood in him, the rounded face and cafe-au-lait mulatto skin, the smooth body of undifferentiated flesh with not a muscle showing. He looked up from his washing like an animal scenting danger. I caught him when the five o'clock whistle blew. An old photographer's trick: wait for a distraction. |
| 603 |
He snapped it back and forth angrily and, of course, succeeded in jarring the tumbler out of its pins. The wires shorted and every light in the house went out. "Damn!" said Guy Burckhardt. "Fuse?" His wife shrugged sleepily. "Let it go till the morning, dear." Burckhardt shook his head. "You go back to bed. I'll be right along." It wasn't so much that he cared about fixing the fuse, but he was too restless for sleep. He disconnected the bad switch with a screwdriver, tumbled down into the black kitchen, found the flashlight and climbed gingerly down the cellar stairs. He located a spare fuse, pushed an empty trunk over to the fuse box to stand on and twisted out the old fuse. When the new one was in, he heard the starting click and steady drone of the refrigerator in the kitchen overhead. He headed back to the steps, and stopped. Where the old trunk had been, the cellar floor gleamed oddly bright. He inspected it in the flashlight beam. It was metal! "Son of a gun," said Guy Burckhardt. He shook his head unbelievingly. He peered closer, rubbed the edges of the metallic patch with his thumb and acquired an annoying cut — the edges were sharp. The stained cement floor of the cellar was a thin shell. He found a hammer and cracked it off in a dozen spots — everywhere was metal. The whole cellar was a copper box. Even the cement-brick walls were false fronts over a metal sheath! Baffled, he attacked one of the foundation beams. That, at least, was real wood. The glass in the cellar windows was real glass. He sucked his bleeding thumb and tried the base of the cellar stairs. Real wood. He chipped at the bricks under the oil burner. Real bricks. The retaining walls, the floor — they were faked. It was as though someone had shored up the house with a frame of metal and then laboriously concealed the evidence. The biggest surprise was the upside-down boat hull that blocked the rear half of the cellar, relic of a brief home-workshop period that Burckhardt had gone through a couple of years before. From above, it looked perfectly normal. Inside, though, where there should have been thwarts and seats and lockers, there was a mere tangle of braces, rough and unfinished. "But I built that!" Burckhardt exclaimed, forgetting his thumb. He leaned against the hull dizzily, trying to think this thing through. For reasons beyond his comprehension, someone had taken his boat and his cellar away, maybe his whole house, and replaced them with a clever mock-up of the real thing. "That's crazy," he said to the empty cellar. He stared around in the light of the flash. He whispered, "What in the name of Heaven would anybody do that for?" Reason refused an answer; there wasn't any reasonable answer. For long minutes, Burckhardt contemplated the uncertain picture of his own sanity. He peered under the boat again, hoping to reassure himself that it was a mistake, just his imagination. But the sloppy, unfinished bracing was unchanged. He crawled under for a better look, feeling the rough wood incredulously. Utterly impossible! He switched off the flashlight and started to wriggle out. But he didn't make it. In the moment between the command to his legs to move and the crawling out, he felt a sudden draining weariness flooding through him. Consciousness went — not easily, but as though it were being taken away, and Guy Burckhardt was asleep. On the morning of June 16th, Guy Burckhardt woke up in a cramped position huddled under the hull of the boat in his basement — and raced upstairs to find it was June 15th. |
| 604 |
Burckhardt didn't know the answer, but perhaps it lay beyond the door at the end of the tunnel. They listened carefully and heard distant sounds that could not quite be made out, but nothing that seemed dangerous. They slipped through. And, through a wide chamber and up a flight of steps, they found they were in what Burckhardt recognized as the Contro Chemicals plant. Nobody was in sight. By itself, that was not so very odd; the automatized factory had never had very many persons in it. But Burckhardt remembered, from his single visit, the endless, ceaseless busyness of the plant, the valves that opened and closed, the vats that emptied themselves and filled themselves and stirred and cooked and chemically tasted the bubbling liquids they held inside themselves. The plant was never populated, but it was never still. Only now it was still. Except for the distant sounds, there was no breath of life in it. The captive electronic minds were sending out no commands; the coils and relays were at rest. Burckhardt said, "Come on." Swanson reluctantly followed him through the tangled aisles of stainless steel columns and tanks. They walked as though they were in the presence of the dead. In a way, they were, for what were the automatons that once had run the factory, if not corpses? The machines were controlled by computers that were really not computers at all, but the electronic analogues of living brains. And if they were turned off, were they not dead? For each had once been a human mind. Take a master petroleum chemist, infinitely skilled in the separation of crude oil into its fractions. Strap him down, probe into his brain with searching electronic needles. The machine scans the patterns of the mind, translates what it sees into charts and sine waves. Impress these same waves on a robot computer and you have your chemist. Or a thousand copies of your chemist, if you wish, with all of his knowledge and skill, and no human limitations at all. Put a dozen copies of him into a plant and they will run it all, twenty-four hours a day, seven days of every week, never tiring; never overlooking anything, never forgetting. Swanson stepped up closer to Burckhardt. "I'm scared," he said. They were across the room now and the sounds were louder. They were not machine sounds, but voices; Burckhardt moved cautiously up to a door and dared to peer around it. It was a smaller room, lined with television screens, each one — a dozen or more, at least — with a man or woman sitting before it, staring into the screen and dictating notes into a recorder. The viewers dialed from scene to scene; no two screens ever showed the same picture. The pictures seemed to have little in common. One was a store, where a girl dressed like April Horn was demonstrating home freezers. One was a series of shots of kitchens. Burckhardt caught a glimpse of what looked like the cigar stand in his office building. It was baffling and Burckhardt would have loved to stand there and puzzle it out, but it was too busy a place. There was the chance that someone would look their way or walk out and find them. They found another room. This one was empty. It was an office, large and sumptuous. It had a desk, littered with papers. Burckhardt stared at them, briefly at first — then, as the words on one of them caught his attention, with incredulous fascination. He snatched up the topmost sheet, scanned it, and another, while Swanson was frenziedly searching through the drawers. Burckhardt swore unbelievingly and dropped the papers to the desk. |
| 605 |
I don't believe I was helpful in my answers. Half an hour later, the front door opened and Fitz entered, bearing Karen on his arm. Karen is a lovely young girl, with an enchanting smile and delightful face. And, if I am not mistaken, very fond of Fitz. She greeted me warmly, but I think she was surprised to see Mac; ordinarily, he kept to his room on Fitz's date nights. Mac responded to her greeting with a muffled noise in his sound system, and retreated upstairs. I didn't see Mac the next morning, or even the next afternoon. He seemed to have spent the entire day in the workshop. We were at dinner when Fitz and I saw him first, and when we did, we gasped in surprise. Something had happened to Mac's face, and I knew it was the result of his efforts in the workshop. Instead of the smooth, sculptured mask I had created for him, there was a crudely shaped human face looking at us, a mockery of a human face, with a badly carved nose and cheeks and lips, tinged grotesquely with the colors of the human complexion. Our first reaction was shock, and then, explosively, laughter. When we were calm again, Mac asked us for an explanation of our outburst, and I told him, as gently as possible, that his attempts to humanize himself were far from successful. He went to a mirror and stared for a long while; then he turned without a word and went back to the laboratory. When we saw him again the next morning, he was the old Mac again. I admit I was relieved. Oct. 9, 2020. How lost Mac seems without Fitz! Since his brother's marriage last month, he stalks about the house, lumbering like the robot child of old, clanking as if he still possessed the clumsy metal body of his infancy and adolescence. I have been trying to keep him busy in the laboratory, but I think he knows that I am indulging him rather than truly using his abilities. Not that I don't value his skill. At his young age, my robot son is as skilled a robotics engineer as any man in the country. If only the nation's robotics companies would recognize that, and overlook the fact that his ability stems from a nonhuman brain! I have now written or personally contacted some seventeen major engineering concerns, and each of them, while polite, has turned down my suggestion. This morning, a letter arrived from the Alpha Robotics Corporation that typifies their answers. We are certain that your description of the applicant's engineering abilities is accurate. However, our company has certain personnel standards which must be met. We will keep the application on file... There is mockery in their answer, of course. The very idea of a robot employed in the science of robotics is laughable to them. They cannot really believe that I have raised Mac as a human child would be raised, and that he is anything more than an insensitive piece of mechanism. But if any proof were needed, Mac's present state would serve — the way he is pining for his absent brother, forlorn and lonely and unhappy. I wish I could help him, but I cannot find the key to his emotions. But there is some joy in my life today. Fitz writes me from New York that he has been accepted into a large manufacturing concern that produces small and large electrical appliances. He will become, according to his letter, a "junior executive," and he is already certain that his rise to the presidency is merely a matter of time. I chuckled as I read his letter, but if I know Fitz, there is earnestness behind his humor. My son knows what he wants from this world, and the world is duty-bound to deliver it. |
| 606 |
November 19, 2024. I am frantic with worry, even now that I know Mac is safe. His disappearance from the house three days ago caused me endless consternation, and I was afraid that his lonely life had led him into some tragedy. But yesterday, I received this letter from Fitz: Dear Dad, Don't worry about Mac, he's with me. He showed up at the apartment last night, in pretty bad shape. He must have been knocking around a bit; I'd guess he practically walked all the way into New York. He looked battered and bruised and rather frightening when I answered the door; Karen screamed and almost fainted at the sight of him. I guess she had almost forgotten about my robot brother in the past few years. I hope he wasn't too upset at her reaction; but you know how hard it is to know what Mac is thinking. Anyway, I took him in and got him to tell me the story. It seems he was just plain lonely and wanted to see me; that was his reason for running off that way. I calmed him down as best I could and suggested he stay a day or two. I think he wanted more than that, but, Dad, you know how impossible that is. There isn't a soul here who even knows about Mac's existence, and he can be awfully hard to explain. This is a bad time for me to get mixed up in anything peculiar; as I've written you, the firm is considering me for branch manager of the Cleveland office, and any publicity that doesn't cast a rosy glow on dear old GC company can do me a lot of harm. It's not that I don't want to help Mac, the old rustpot. I still think of him as a brother. But I have to be sensible... I have just finished packing, and will take the copter into New York in the morning. I don't look forward to the trip; I have felt very fatigued lately. There is so much work to be done in my laboratory, and these personal crises are depriving me of time and energy. But I must bring Mac home, before he does any harm to my son's career. March 10, 2026. Now at last it's been explained, the real reason for Mac's endless nights and days in the workshop. It was the Face episode all over again, but much, much worse. In the last year, Mac seems gripped by a strange passion (can there be something organically wrong with his robot's brain?), and the passion is the idea of creating a truly humanoid body for himself. But hard as he has worked, the effect he has gotten is so grotesque that it must be called horrible. Now he truly appears to be a monster, and when I expressed my distaste of what he had done, he fled from the house as if I had struck him. This morning, I learned of his whereabouts, and learned the dreadful story of what had occurred after he left me. The local police discovered him in hiding in the deserted warehouse on Orangetree Road, and, luckily, they called headquarters before taking any drastic action. Captain Ormandy was able to prevent any harm from coming to Mac; the captain has become a friend of mine in the last two years. It was he who told me the story of Mac's escapades after he fled the house. It will take me years to undo the harm. He has terrorized the local residents, and actually struck one man who tried to attack him with a coal shovel. This worries me; Mac had never broken this rule before. He went among the people of the town as if berserk, spreading fear and violence. I thank providence no great harm was done, and that he is safe with me again. But now I must face the future, and it appears bleak. Captain Ormandy has just left me, and his words still buzz in my head. |
| 607 |
I cannot do what he asks; I cannot do away with this child of my own creation. But I am getting older, and very tired. My robot child has become a burden upon me, a burden I can barely sustain. What shall I do? What shall I do? Dec. 8, 2027. It is good to have Fitz home, even if for so short a time, and even if it is my illness which brings him to my side. He looks so well! My heart swells with pride when I look at him. He is doing admirably, he has already earned a vice-presidency in the company that employs him, and he talks as if the future belongs to him. But more than anything, it is wonderful to be able to talk over my problem with him, to have him here to help me make the decision that must be made. Last night, we sat in the study and discussed it for hours. I told him everything, about Mac's ever-increasing melancholy, about his untrustworthy behavior. I have told him about the proposition presented to me by the National Robotics Society, their offer to provide care for Mac. It is not the first time they have made this offer; but now the idea is far more appealing. It was a strain for us both to discuss the matter. Fitz still feels brotherly towards Mac. But he is sensible about it, too; he recognizes the facts. He knows my health problem, he knows what a responsibility Mac is for me. And he, too, knows that Mac would be better off as a charge of the society. They would understand him. They would take good care of him. My head is whirling. Fitz did not summarize his recommendation in so many words, and yet I know what he thinks I must do. Feb. 5, 2027. I am locked out of my own laboratory. My robot child has taken possession, and works without ceasing. Around the clock he works; I hear the machinery grinding and roaring every minute of the day and night. He knows what will happen tomorrow, of course, that they will be coming for him from the society. What is he doing? What madness possesses him now? Feb. 6, 2027. It is allover now, and the quiet, which fills the house lies heavily, as if entombed. In twenty-four hours, I have become the focal point of the world's horrified attention. For I am the father of the Thing which destroyed our town, the terrible metal monster that rampaged and pillaged and killed, in an orgy of insane destruction... But I must be factual, for this, the last page of my journal. Today, the thirtieth anniversary of his creation, Mac, my robot child, awaited the coming of his new captors with a body build for destruction. A monstrous, grotesque, sixty-foot body, engineered for violence and death. This had been his labor for the last two months. If the world would not accept him as human, then he would be truly a robot, the ancient robot of human nightmares, the destroying metal god who shows no mercy to human flesh. I try to strike the pictures from my mind, but they are engraved there. I can see the terror on the faces of the scientists who came from the Robotics Society to claim their prize — I can hear their shrieks as he crushed the life from their bodies. I can see him stalking towards the town with his grim intent clear in every movement — to destroy all, everything, heedlessly. I can see him attacking, smashing, killing — And then, I see the horror end. I see Captain Ormandy, moving swiftly with all the cunning of his strong young body, to fasten the cable about Mac's towering legs. I see him running headlong to the cave where the deadly black box had been planted. I see his hands on the plunger, and the mighty fire that springs from earth to sky, carrying Mac's destruction in its flames... |
| 608 |
From here, Earth-home was an invisible speck. Few ever focused telescopes on the old world. Everyone knew that the future wasn't back there but out here and beyond, with the innumerable stars covering the sky. Gliding slowly across the gulf between the Old Wheel and the Complex, Jason had plenty of time to think. Back when the old slowboats had set forth from here to explore the nearest systems, it had soon became apparent that only mechanicals and cyborgs were suited for interstellar voyages. Asteroid-sized arks — artificial worldlets capable of carrying entire ecospheres — remained a dream out of science fiction, economically beyond reach. Exploration ships could be sent much farther and faster if they did not have to carry the complex artificial environments required by old style human beings. By now ten nearby stellar systems had been explored, all by crews consisting of "robo-humans." There were no plans to send any other kind, even if, or when, Earthlike planets were discovered. It just wouldn't be worth the staggering investment required. That fact, more than anything else, had struck at the morale of biological people in the solar system. The stars, they realized, were not for them. Resignation led to a turning away from science and the future. Earth and the "dirt" colonies were apathetic places, these days. Utilitariansism was the guiding philosophy of the times. Jason hadn't told his wife his biggest reason for volunteering for this mission. He was still uncertain he understood it very well himself. Perhaps he wanted to show people that a biological citizen could still be useful, and contribute to the advance of knowledge. Even if it were by a task so humble as a suicide mission. He saw the lightship ahead, just below the shining spark of Sirius, a jet-black pearl half a kilometer across. Already he could make out the shimmering of its fields as its mighty engines were tuned for the experiment ahead. The technicians were hoping that this time it would work. But even if it failed again, they were determined to go on trying. Faster-than-light travel was not something anyone gave up on easily, even a robot with a life span of five hundred years. The dream, and the obstinacy to pursue it, was a strong inheritance from the parent race. Next to the black experimental probe, with its derricks and workshops, was the towering bulk of the central cooling plant, by far the largest object in the Complex. The cooling plant made even the Old Wheel look like a child's toy hoop. Jason's rickety vac-sled puffed beneath the majestic globe, shining in the sky like a great silvery planet. On this, the side facing the sun, the cooling globe's reflective surface was nearly perfect. On the other side, a giant array of fluid-filled radiators stared out on to intergalactic space, chilling liquid helium down to the basic temperature of the universe — a few degrees above absolute zero. The array had to stare at the blackness between the galaxies. Faint sunlight — even starlight — would heat the cooling fluid too much. That was the reason for the silvery reflective backing. The amount of infrared radiation leaving the finned coolers had to exceed the few photons coming in in order for the temperature of the helium to drop far enough. The new types of citizens might be faster and tougher, and in some ways smarter, than old style humans. They might need neither food nor sleep. But they did require a lot of liquid helium to keep their supercooled, superconducting brains humming. |
| 609 |
He cut down the rate of his running commentary in order to save his voice. Besides, nothing much seemed to be changing. The ship was cruising, now. All the dials and indicators were green and steady. During sleep period he tossed in the sleeping hammock, sharing it with disturbed dreams. He awakened several times impelled by a sense of duty and imminent danger, clutching his recorder tightly. But when he stared about the control room he could find nothing amiss. By the third day he had had enough. "I'm going to poke around in the instruments," he spoke into the microphone. "I know I was told not to. And I'll certainly not touch anything having to do with the functioning of the ship. But I figure I deserve a chance to see what I'm traveling through. Nobody's ever looked out on hyperspace. I'm going to take a look." Jason set about the task with a feeling of exultation. What he was doing wouldn't hurt anything, just alter a few of the sensors. Sure, it was against orders, but if he got back alive he would be famous, too important to bother with charges over such a minor infraction. Not that he believed, for even a moment, that he was coming home alive. It was a fairly intricate task, rearranging a few of the ship's programs so the external cameras — meant to be used at the destination star only — would work in hyperspace. He wondered if it had been some sort of Utilitarian gesture not to include viewing ports, or to do the small modifications of scanning electronics necessary to make the cameras work here. There was no obvious scientific reason to "look at" hyperspace, so perhaps the Utilitarian technicians rejected it as an atavistic desire. Jason finished all but the last adjustments, then took a break to fix himself a meal before turning on the cameras. While he ate he made another recorder entry; there was little to report. A little trouble with the cryogen cooling units; they were laboring a bit. But the efficiency loss didn't seem to be anything critical, yet. After dinner he sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the screen he had commandeered. "Well, now, let's see what this famous hyperspace looks like," he said. "At least the folks back home will know that it was an old style man who first looked out on..." The screen rippled, then suddenly came alight. Light! Jason had to shield his eyes. Hyperspace was ablaze with light! His thoughts whirled. Could this have something to do with the threat? The unknown, malign force that had killed all the previous crews? Jason cracked an eyelid and lowered his arm slightly. The screen was bright, but now that his eyes had adapted, it wasn't painful to look at. He gazed in fascination on a scene of whirling pink and white, as if the ship was hurtling through an endless sky of bright, pastel clouds. It looked rather pleasant, in fact. This is a threat? He wondered, dazedly. How could this soft brilliance kill? Jason's jaw opened as a relay seemed to close in his mind. He stared at the screen for a long moment, wondering if his growing suspicion could be true. He laughed out loud — a hard, ironic laugh, as yet more tense than hopeful. He set to work finding out if his suspicion was right, after all. 6. The lightship cruised on autopilot until at last it came to rest not far from its launching point. Little tugs approached gently and grappled with the black globe, pulling it toward the derricks where the inspection crew waited to swarm aboard. In the station control center, technicians monitored the activity outside. |
| 610 |
And a summer house to build. And there were always the grounds. At one time he had thought he would landscape — a man could do a lot to beautify a place with a few years of spare-time work. But there had been so many other things to do, he had never managed to get around to it. Knight and Anson Lee, his neighbor, had often talked about what could be done to their adjoining acreages if they ever had the time. But Lee, of course, would never get around to anything. He was a lawyer, although he never seemed to work at it too hard. He had a large study filled with stacks of law books and there were times when he would talk quite expansively about his law library, but he never seemed to use the books. Usually he talked that way when he had half a load on, which was fairly often, since he claimed to do a lot of thinking and it was his firm belief that a bottle helped him think. After Stewart finally went back to his desk, there still remained more than an hour before the working day officially ended. Knight sneaked the current issue of a How-2 magazine out of his briefcase and began to leaf through it, keeping a wary eye out so he could hide it quickly if anyone should notice he was loafing. He had read the articles earlier, so now he looked at the ads. It was a pity, he thought, a man didn't have the time to do all there was to do. For example: Fit your own glasses (testing material and lens-grinding equipment included in the kit). Take out your own tonsils (complete directions and all necessary instruments). Fit up an unused room as your private hospital (no sense in leaving home when you're ill, just at the time when you most need its comfort and security). Grow your own medicines and drugs (starts of 50 different herbs and medicinal plants with detailed instructions for their cultivation and processing). Grow your wife's fur coat (a pair of mink, one ton of horse meat, furrier tools). Tailor your own suits and coats (50 yards of wool yardgoods and lining material). Build your own TV set. Bind your own books. Build your own power plant (let the wind work for you). Build your own robot (a jack of all trades, intelligent, obedient, no time off, no overtime, on the job 24 hours a day, never tired, no need for rest or sleep, do any work you wish). Now there, thought Knight, was something a man should try. If a man had one of those robots, it would save a lot of labor. There were all sorts of attachments you could get for it. And the robots, the ad said, could put on and take off all these attachments just as a man puts on a pair of gloves or takes off a pair of shoes. Have one of those robots and, every morning, it would sally out into the garden and pick an the corn and beans and peas and tomatoes and other vegetables ready to be picked and leave them all neatly in a row on the back stoop of the house. Probably would get a lot more out of a garden that way, too, for the grading mechanism would never select a too-green tomato nor allow an ear of corn to go beyond its prime. There were cleaning attachments for the house and snowplowing attachments and housepainting attachments and almost any other kind one could wish. Get a full quota of attachments, then layout a work program and turn the robot loose — you could forget about the place the year around, for the robot would take care of everything. There was only one hitch. The cost of a robot kit came close to ten thousand dollars and all the available attachments could run to another ten. Knight closed the magazine and put it into the briefcase. |
| 611 |
He saw there were only fifteen minutes left until quitting time and that was too short a time to do anything, so Knight just sat and thought about getting home and finding the kit there waiting for him. He had always wanted a dog, but Grace would never let him have one. They were dirty, she said, and tracked up the carpeting, they had fleas and shed hair allover everything — and, besides, they smelled. Well, she wouldn't object to this kind of dog, Knight told himself. It wouldn't smell and it was guaranteed not to shed hair and it would never harbor fleas, for a flea would starve on a half-mechanical, half-biologic dog. He hoped the dog wouldn't be a disappointment, but he'd carefully gone over the literature describing it and he was sure it wouldn't. It would go for a walk with its owner and would chase sticks and smaller animals, and what more could one expect of any dog? To insure realism, it saluted trees and fence-posts, but was guaranteed to leave no stains or spots. The kit was tilted up beside the hangar door when he got home, but at first he didn't see it. When he did, he craned his neck out so far to be sure it was the kit that he almost came a cropper in the hedge. But, with a bit of luck, he brought the flier down neatly on the gravel strip and was out of it before the blades had stopped whirling. It was the kit, all right. The invoice envelope was tacked on top of the crate. But the kit was bigger and heavier than he'd expected and he wondered if they might not have accidentally sent him a bigger dog than the one he'd ordered. He tried to lift the crate, but it was too heavy, so he went around to the back of the house to bring a dolly from the basement. Around the corner of the house, he stopped a moment and looked out across his land. A man could do a lot with it, he thought, if he just had the time and the money to buy the equipment. He could turn the acreage into one vast garden. Ought to have a landscape architect work out a plan for it, of course — although, if he bought some landscaping books and spent some evenings at them, he might be able to figure things out for himself. There was a lake at the north end of the property and the whole landscape, it seemed to him, should focus upon the lake. It was rather a dank bit of scenery at the moment, with straggly marsh surrounding it and unkempt cattails and reeds astir in the summer wind. But with a little drainage and some planting, a system of walks and a picturesque bridge or two, it would be a thing of beauty. He started out across the lake to where the house of Anson Lee sat upon a hill. As soon as he got the dog assembled, he would walk it over to Lee's place, for Lee would be pleased to be visited by a dog. There had been times, Knight felt, when Lee had not been entirely sympathetic with some of the things he'd done. Like that business of helping Grace build the kilns and the few times they'd managed to lure Lee out on a hunt for the proper kinds of clay. "What do you want to make dishes for?" he had asked. "Why go to all the trouble? You can buy all you want for a tenth of the cost of making them." Lee had not been visibly impressed when Grace explained that they weren't dishes. They were ceramics, Grace had said, and a recognized form of art. She got so interested and made so much of it — some of it really good — that Knight had found it necessary to drop his model railroading project and tack another addition on the already sprawling house, for stacking, drying and exhibition. |
| 612 |
In mental institutions, Napoleons, Hitlers and Stalins dropped off amazingly, to be replaced by goose-stepping patients who swore they were robots. The Treasury Department intervened. It prayed the court, on economic grounds, to declare once and for all that robots were property. In case of an adverse ruling, the petition said, robots could not be taxed as property and the various governmental bodies would suffer heavy loss of revenue. The trial ground on. Robots are possessed of free will. An easy one to prove. A robot could carry out a task that was assigned to it, acting correctly in accordance with unforeseen factors that might arise. Robot judgment in most instances, it was shown, was superior to the judgment of a human. Robots had the power of reasoning. Absolutely no question there. Robots could reproduce. That one was a poser. All Albert did, said How-2 Kits, was the job for which he had been fabricated. He reproduced, argued Lee. He made robots in his image. He loved them and thought of them as his family. He had even named all of them after himself — every one of their names began with A. Robots had no spiritual sense, argued the plaintiff. Not relevant, Lee cried. There were agnostics and atheists in the human race and they still were human. Robots had no emotions. Not necessarily so, Lee objected. Albert loved his sons. Robots had a sense of loyalty and justice. If they were lacking in some emotions, perhaps it were better so. Hatred, for one. Greed, for another. Lee spent the better part of an hour telling the court about the dismal record of human hatred and greed. He took another hour to hold forth against the servitude in which rational beings found themselves. The papers ate it up. The plaintiff lawyers squirmed. The court fumed. The trial went on. "Mr. Lee," asked the court, "is all this necessary?" "Your Honor," Lee told him, "I am merely doing my best to prove the point I have set out to prove — that no illegal act exists such as my client is charged with. I am simply trying to prove that the robot is not property and that, if he is not property, he cannot be stolen. I am doing..." "All right," said the court. "All right. Continue, Mr. Lee." How-2 Kits trotted out citations to prove their points. Lee volleyed other citations to disperse and scatter them. Abstruse legal language sprouted in its fullest flowering, obscure rulings and decisions, long forgotten, were argued, haggled over, mangled. And, as the trial progressed, one thing was written clear. Anson Lee, obscure attorney-at-law, had met the battery of legal talent arrayed against him and had won the field. He had the law, the citations, the chapter and the verse, the exact precedents, all the facts and logic which might have bearing on the case, right at hand. Or, rather, his robots had. They scribbled madly and handed him their notes. At the end of each day, the floor around the defendant's table was a sea of paper. The trial ended. The last witness stepped down off the stand. The last lawyer had his say. Lee and the robots remained in town to await the decision of the court, but Knight flew home. It was a relief to know that it was all over and had not come out as badly as he had feared. At least he had not been made to seem a fool and thief. Lee had saved his pride — whether Lee had saved his skin, he would have to wait to see. Flying fairly high, Knight saw his home from quite a distance off and wondered what had happened to it. It was ringed about with what looked like tall poles. |
| 613 |
Nothing effective opposed them. And then the first claws appeared. And overnight the complexion of the war changed. The claws were awkward, at first. Slow. The Ivans knocked them off almost as fast as they crawled out of their underground tunnels. But then they got better, faster and more cunning. Factories all on Terra, turned them out. Factories a long way underground, behind the Soviet lines, factories that had once made atomic projectiles, now almost forgotten. The claws got faster, and they got bigger. New types appeared, some with feelers, some that flew. There were a few jumping kinds. The best technicians on the moon were working on designs, making them more and more intricate, more flexible. They became uncanny; the Ivans were having a lot of trouble with them. Some of the little claws were learning to hide themselves, burrowing down to the ash, lying in wait. And then they started getting into the Russian bunkers, slipping down when the lids were raised for air and a look around. One claw inside a bunker, a churning sphere of blades and metal — that was enough. And when one got in others followed. With a weapon like that the war couldn't go on much longer. Maybe it was already over. Maybe he was going to hear the news. Maybe the Politburo had decided to throw in the sponge. Too bad it had taken so long. Six years. A long time for war like that, the way they had waged it. The automatic retaliation disc, spinning down all over Russia, hundreds of thousands of them. Bacteria crystals. The Soviet guided missiles, whistling through the air. The chain bombs. And now this, the robots, the claws — The claws weren't like other weapons. They were alive, from any practical standpoint, whether the Governments wanted to admit it or not. They were not machines. They were living things, spinning, creeping, shaking themselves up suddenly from the gray ash and darting toward a man, climbing up him, rushing for his throat. And that was what they had been designed to do. Their job. They did their job well. Especially lately, with the new designs coming up. Now they repaired themselves. They were on their own. Radiation tabs protected the UN troops, but if a man lost his tab he was fair game for the claws, no matter what his uniform. Down below the surface automatic machinery stamped them out. Human beings stayed a long way off. It was too risky; nobody wanted to be around them. They were left to themselves. And they seemed to be doing all right. The new designs were faster, more complex. More efficient. Apparently they had won the war. Major Hendricks lit a second cigarette. The landscape depressed him. Nothing but ash and ruins. He seemed to be alone, the only living thing in the whole world. To the right the ruins of a town rose up, a few walls and heaps of debris. He tossed the dead match away, increasing his pace. Suddenly he stopped, jerking up his gun, his body tense. For a minute it looked like — From behind the shell of a ruined building a figure came, walking slowly toward him, walking hesitantly. Hendricks blinked. "Stop!" The boy stopped. Hendricks lowered his gun. The boy stood silently, looking at him. He was small, not very old. Perhaps eight. But it was hard to tell. Most of the kids who remained were stunted. He wore a faded blue sweater, ragged with dirt, and short pants. His hair was long and matted. Brown hair. It hung over his face and around his ears. He held something in his arms. "What's that you have?" Hendricks said sharply. |
| 614 |
In comparison with the fixed ones this fellow had it good, I thought. His official name was Lubro. Or so it said in gay red letters on a shiny metal plate riveted to his rear. The day I watched Lubro they were turning out millions of little metal disks destined for some important places in some important engines, and the machines doing the work were running hot. And here would come Lubro, smooth and docile on his track, until he reached a machine that was running hot turning out the disks. The machines would flip little lids up at Lubro's approach and Lubro in response would whang jointed sections of tubing out of himself and the ends of those tubes would find their way into the holes where the lids had flipped up. And while the machines worked on as though nothing were happening Lubro would stand there vibrating on his track and eject oil into the holes according to some clocklike mechanism in him. And as the tempo of production increased, Lubro ran faster and faster on his track and whanged metal tubing out of himself oftener and oftener and came up to the reload place time and again. But it seemed to me he was happy at his work, although that could have been merely my imagining because of the great contrast between a Lubro and a machine that squatted on the floor hour by hour and turned out the quota time and again with, to console her, nothing but the small diversion of flipping her lids up for Lubro. All in all, everything was going well here at automation it seemed to me, and Lubro was taking care of it, I thought, all right. But maybe he was running hot. At any rate, some Central Brain in the place made the decision and another upright thing with a clocklike mechanism in him and the power to eject flexible tubing out of himself came in to run on the tracks with Lubro. The Oiler, his name was. I guess the Central Brain thought The Oiler and Lubro could stay out of each other's way all right; one could be taking care of it in the south end, say, while the other was over north doing it; or one could be functioning on the west side while the other was shooting for lids in the east section of the work area maybe. But the truth is they didn't — they couldn't — stay out of each other's way for long. In the first place, I think Lubro was a little jealous, or maybe resentful is the better word, of The Oiler. For the very presence of The Oiler made it clear how the Central Brain felt. He felt that Lubro couldn't handle the job. Then too, no getting around it, The Oiler, big dark and cocky, was in Lubro's territory. But as for production, there was an increase in it, no denying that. Especially was there more work done by certain of the newer machines in the central part of the work area. And it was one of these very machines that caused the flare-up. She was a new blonde machine without yet the grime of much servicing on her oil lids. And she squatted there, seemingly as innocent as a piece of the floor, and tooled her disks. But Lubro noticed it, and I noticed it too. Twice within the hour, when Lubro glided up, she kept her oil lids closed as though she were running cool as a bucket of grease. But when The Oiler came in at almost the same time from the opposite side of the work area her lids flew open as though she were filled with fire. And The Oiler ejected the tubes, according to the clocklike mechanism in him, and the tubes found the holes where the quivering lids hovered open, and he oiled the machines that indeed was not running cool; it was his job. |
| 615 |
Nobody else. There was by then no other crime of any importance. It worked very simply. Without warning, a man who thought himself safe would suddenly hear the steady footfalls behind him. He would turn and see the two-handed engine walking toward him, shaped like a man of steel, and more incorruptible than any man not made of steel could be. Only then would the murderer know he had been tried and condemned by the omniscient electronic minds that knew society as no human mind could ever know it. For the rest of his days, the man would hear those footsteps behind him. A moving jail with invisible bars that shut him off from the world. Never in life would he be alone again. And one day — he never knew when — the jailer would turn executioner. Danner leaned back comfortably in his contoured restaurant chair and rolled expensive wine across his tongue, closing his eyes to enjoy the taste of it better. He felt perfectly safe. Oh, perfectly protected. For nearly an hour now he had been sitting here, ordering the most expensive food, enjoying the music breathing softly through the air, the murmurous, well-bred hush of his fellow diners. It was a good place to be. It was very good, having so much money — now. True, he had had to kill to get the money. But no guilt troubled him. There is no guilt if you aren't found out, and Danner had protection. Protection straight from the source, which was something new in the world. Danner knew the consequences of killing. If Hartz hadn't satisfied him that he was perfectly safe, Danner would never have pulled the trigger... The memory of an archaic word flickered through his mind briefly. Sin. It evoked nothing. Once it had something to do with guilt, in an incomprehensible way. Not any more. Mankind had been through too much. Sin was meaningless now. He dismissed the thought and tried the heart-of-palms salad. He found he didn't like it. Oh well, you had to expect things like that. Nothing was perfect. He sipped the wine again, liking the way the glass seemed to vibrate like something faintly alive in his hand. It was good wine. He thought of ordering more, but then he thought no, save it, next time. There was so much before him, waiting to be enjoyed. Any risk was worth it. And of course, in this there had been no risk. Danner was a man born at the wrong time. He was old enough to remember the last days of utopia, young enough to be trapped in the new scarcity economy the machines had clamped down on their makers. In his early youth he'd had access to free luxuries, like everybody else. He could remember the old days when he was an adolescent and the last of the Escape Machines were still operating, the glamorous, bright, impossible, vicarious visions that didn't really exist and never could have. But then the scarcity economy swallowed up pleasure. Now you got necessities but no more. Now you had to work. Danner hated every minute of it. When the swift change came, he'd been too young and unskilled to compete in the scramble. The rich men today were the men who had built fortunes on cornering the few luxuries the machines still produced. All Danner had left were bright memories and a dull, resentful feeling of having been cheated. All he wanted were the bright days back, and he didn't care how he got them. Well, now he had them. He touched the rim of the wine glass with his finger, feeling it sing silently against the touch. Blown glass? he wondered. He was too ignorant of luxury items to understand. But he'd learn. |
| 616 |
He had the rest of his life to learn in, and be happy. He looked up across the restaurant and saw through the transparent dome of the roof the melting towers of the city. They made a stone forest as far as he could see. And this was only one city. When he was tired of it, there were more. Across the country, across the planet the network lay that linked city with city in a webwork like a vast, intricate, half-alive monster. Call it society. He felt it tremble a little beneath him. He reached for the wine glass and drank quickly. The faint uneasiness that seemed to shiver the foundations of the city was something new. It was because — yes, certainly it was because of a new fear. It was because he had not been found out. That made no sense. Of course the city was complex. Of course it operated on a basis of incorruptible machines. They, and only they, kept man from becoming very quickly another extinct animal. And of these the analogue computers, the electronic calculators, were the gyroscope of all living. They made and enforced the laws that were necessary now to keep mankind alive. Danner didn't understand much of the vast changes that had swept over society in his lifetime, but this much even he knew. So perhaps it made sense that he felt society shiver because he sat here luxurious on foam-rubber, sipping wine, hearing soft music, and no Fury standing behind his chair to prove that the calculators were still guardians for mankind... If not even the Furies are incorruptible, what can a man believe in? It was at that exact moment that the Fury arrived. Danner heard every sound suddenly die out around him. His fork was halfway to his lips, but he paused, frozen, and looked up across the table and the restaurant toward the door. The Fury was taller than a man. It stood there for a moment, the afternoon sun striking a blinding spot of brightness from its shoulder. It had no face, but it seemed to scan the restaurant leisurely, table by table. Then it stepped in under the doorframe and the sun-spot slid away and it was like a tall man encased in steel, walking slowly between the tables. Danner said to himself, laying down his untasted food, "Not for me. Everyone else here is wondering. I know." And like a memory in a drowning man's mind, clear, sharp and condensed into a moment, yet every detail clear, he remembered what Hartz had told him. As a drop of water can pull into its reflection a wide panorama condensed into a tiny focus, so time seemed to focus down to a pinpoint the half-hour Danner and Hartz had spent together, in Hartz's office with the walls that could go transparent at the push of a button. He saw Hartz again, plump and blond, with the sad eyebrows. A man who looked relaxed until he began to talk, and then you felt the burning quality about him, the air of driven tension that made even the air around him seem to be restlessly trembling. Danner stood before Hartz's desk again in memory, feeling the floor hum faintly against his soles with the heartbeat of the computers. You could see them through the glass, smooth, shiny things with winking lights in banks like candles burning in colored glass cups. You could hear their faraway chattering as they ingested facts, meditated them, and then spoke in numbers like cryptic oracles. It took men like Hartz to understand what the oracles meant. "I have a job for you," Hartz said. "I want a man killed." "Oh no," Danner said. "What kind of a fool do you think I am?" "Now wait a minute. You can use money, can't you?" "What for?" Danner asked bitterly. |
| 617 |
You got one last glimpse of the man's face, looking strangely stricken, as if his last friend in the world had left him. Hartz switched off the screen. He wiped his forehead again. He went to the glass wall and looked out and down as if he were half afraid the calculators might know what he had done. Looking very small against the background of the metal giants, he said over his shoulder, "Well, Danner?" Was it well? There had been more talk, of course, more persuasion, a raising of the bribe. But Danner knew his mind had been made up from that moment. A calculated risk, and worth it. Well worth it. Except In the deathly silence of the restaurant all motion had stopped. The Fury walked calmly between the tables, threading its shining way, touching no one. Every face blanched, turned toward it. Every mind thought, "Can it be for me?" Even the entirely innocent thought, "This is the first mistake they've ever made, and it's come for me. The first mistake, but there's no appeal and I could never prove a thing." For while guilt had no meaning in this world, punishment did have meaning, and punishment could be blind, striking like the lightning. Danner between set teeth told himself over and over, "Not for me. I'm safe. I'm protected. It hasn't come for me." And yet he thought how strange it was, what a coincidence, wasn't it, that there should be two murderers here under this expensive glass roof today? Himself, and the one the Fury had come for. He released his fork and heard it clink on the plate. He looked down at it and the food, and suddenly his mind rejected everything around him and went diving off on a fugitive tangent like an ostrich into sand. He thought about food. How did asparagus grow? What did raw food look like? He had never seen any. Food came ready-cooked out of restaurant kitchens or automat slots. Potatoes, now. What did they look like? A moist white mash? No, for sometimes they were oval slices, so the thing itself must be oval. But not round. Sometimes you got them in long strips, squared off at the ends. Something quite long and oval, then, chopped into even lengths. And white, of course. And they grew underground, he was almost sure. Long, thin roots twining white arms among the pipes and conduits he had seen laid bare when the streets were under repair. How strange that he should be eating something like thin, ineffectual human arms that embraced the sewers of the city and writhed pallidly where the worms had their being. And where he himself, when the Fury found him, might... He pushed the plate away. An indescribable rustling and murmuring in the room lifted his eyes for him as if he were an automaton. The Fury was halfway across the room now, and it was almost funny to see the relief of those whom it had passed by. Two or three of the women had buried their faces in their hands, and one man had slipped quietly from his chair in a dead faint as the Fury's passing released their private dreads back into their hidden wells. The thing was quite close now. It looked to be about seven feet tall, and its motion was very smooth, which was unexpected when you thought about it. Smoother than human motions. Its feet fell with a heavy, measured tread upon the carpet. Thud, thud, thud. Danner tried impersonally to calculate what it weighed. You always heard that they made no sound except for that terrible tread, but this one creaked very slightly somewhere. It had no features, but the human mind couldn't help sketching in lightly a sort of airy face upon that blank steel surface, with eyes that seemed to search the room. |
| 618 |
"Give me time," Hartz said. "Trust me, Danner." In a way it was worse, having hope. There must until now have been a kind of numbness of despair that had kept him from feeling too much. But now that there was a chance that after all he might escape into the bright and new life he had risked so much for — if Hartz could save him in time. Now, for a period, he began to savor experience again. He bought new clothes. He traveled, though never, of course, alone. He even sought human companionship again and found it — after a fashion. But the kind of people willing to associate with a man under this sort of death sentence was not a very appealing type. He found, for instance, that some women felt strongly attracted to him, not because of himself or his money, but for the sake of his companion. They seemed enthralled by the opportunity for a close, safe brush with the very instrument of destiny. Over his very shoulder, sometimes, he would realize they watched the Fury in an ecstasy of fascinated anticipation. In a strange reaction of jealousy, he dropped such people as soon as he recognized the first coldly flirtatious glance one of them cast at the robot behind him. He tried farther travel. He took the rocket to Africa, and came back by way of the rain-forests of South America, but neither the night clubs nor the exotic newness of strange places seemed to touch him in any way that mattered. The sunlight looked much the same, reflecting from the curved steel surfaces of his follower, whether it shone over lion-covered savannahs or filtered through the hanging gardens of the jungles. All novelty grew dull quickly because of the dreadfully familiar thing that stood forever at his shoulder. He could enjoy nothing at all. And the rhythmic beat of footfalls behind him began to grow unendurable. He used earplugs, but the heavy vibration throbbed through his skull in a constant measure like an eternal headache. Even when the Fury stood still, he could hear in his head the imaginary beating of its steps. He bought weapons and tried to destroy the robot. Of course he failed. And even if he succeeded he knew another would be assigned to him. Liquor and drugs were no good. Suicide came more and more often into his mind, but he postponed that thought, because Hartz had said there was still hope. In the end, he came back to the city to be near Hartz — and hope. Again he found himself spending most of his time in the library, walking no more than he had to because of the footsteps that thudded behind him. And it was here, one morning, that he found the answer... He had gone through all available factual material about the Furies. He had gone through all the literary references collated under that heading, astonished to find how many there were and how apt some of them had become — like Milton's two-handed engine — after the lapse of all these centuries. "Those strong feet that followed, followed after," he read. "... with unhurrying chase, And unperturbed pace, Deliberate speed, majestic instancy..." He turned the page and saw himself and his plight more literally than any allegory: I shook the pillaring hours And pulled my life upon me; grimed with smears, I stand amid the dust of the mounded years — My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap. He let several tears of self-pity fall upon the page that pictured him so clearly. But then he passed on from literary references to the library's store of filmed plays, because some of them were cross-indexed under the heading he sought. |
| 619 |
He sighed with deep content. The only thing was, he found himself thinking a good deal about Danner. Dreaming of him, even. Not with guilt, because guilt implies conscience, and the long schooling in anarchic individualism was still deep in the roots of every man's mind. But with uneasiness, perhaps. Thinking of Danner, he leaned back and unlocked a small drawer which he had transferred from his old desk to the new. He slid his hand in and let his fingers touch the controls lightly, idly. Quite idly. Two movements, and he could save Danner's life. For, of course, he had lied to Danner straight through. He could control the Furies very easily. He could save Danner, but he had never intended to. There was no need. And the thing was dangerous. You tamper once with a mechanism as complex as that which controlled society, and there would be no telling where the maladjustment might end. Chain-reaction, maybe, throwing the whole organization out of kilter. No: He might someday have to use the device in the drawer. He hoped not. He pushed the drawer shut quickly, and heard the soft click of the lock. He was Controller now. Guardian, in a sense, of the machines which were faithful in a way no man could ever be. Quis custodiet, Hartz thought. The old problem. And the answer was: Nobody. Nobody, today. He himself had no superiors and his power was absolute. Because of this little mechanism in the drawer, nobody controlled the Controller. Not an internal conscience, and not an external one. Nothing could touch him... Hearing the footsteps on the stairs, he thought for a moment he must be dreaming. He had sometimes dreamed that he was Danner, with those relentless footfalls thudding after him. But he was awake now. It was strange that he caught the almost subsonic beat of the approaching metal feet before he heard the storming steps of Danner rushing up his private stairs. The whole thing happened so fast that time seemed to have no connection with it. First he heard the heavy, subsonic beat, then the sudden tumult of shouts and banging doors downstairs, and then last of all the thump, thump of Danner charging up the stairs, his steps so perfectly matched by the heavier thud of the robot's that the metal trampling drowned out the tramp of flesh and bone and leather. Then Danner flung the door open with a crash, and the shouts and tramplings from below funneled upward into the quiet office like a cyclone rushing toward the hearer. But a cyclone in a nightmare, because it would never get any nearer. Time had stopped. Time had stopped with Danner in the doorway, his face convulsed, both hands holding the revolver because he shook so badly he could not brace it with one. Hartz acted without any more thought than a robot. He had dreamed of this moment too often, in one form or another. If he could have tampered with the Fury to the extent of hurrying Danner's death, he would have done it. But he didn't know how. He could only wait it out, as anxiously as Danner himself, hoping against hope that the blow would fall and the executioner strike before Danner guessed the truth. Or gave up hope. So Hartz was ready when trouble came. He found his own gun in his hand without the least recollection of having opened the drawer. The trouble was that time had stopped. He knew, in the back of his mind, that the Fury must stop Danner from injuring anybody. But Danner stood in the doorway alone, the revolver in both shaking hands. And farther back, behind the knowledge of the Fury's duty, Hartz's mind held the knowledge that the machines could be stopped. |
| 620 |
The Furies could fail. He dared not trust his life to their incorruptibility, because he himself was the source of a corruption that could stop them in their tracks. The gun was in his hand without his knowledge. The trigger pressed his finger and the revolver kicked back against his palm, and the spurt of the explosion made the air hiss between him and Danner. He heard his bullet clang on metal. Time started again, running double-pace to catch up. The Fury had been no more than a single pace behind Danner after all, because its steel arm encircled him and its steel hand was deflecting Danner's gun. Danner had fired, yes, but not soon enough. Not before the Fury reached him. Hartz's bullet struck first. It struck Danner in the chest, exploding through him, and rang upon the steel chest of the Fury behind him. Danner's face smoothed out into a blankness as complete as the blankness of the mask above his head. He slumped backward, not falling because of the robot's embrace, but slowly slipping to the floor between the Fury's arm and its impervious metal body. His revolver thumped softly to the carpet. Blood welled from his chest and back. The robot stood there impassive, a streak of Danner's blood slanting across its metal chest like a robotic ribbon of honor. The Fury and the Controller of the Furies stood staring at each other. And the Fury could not, of course, speak, but in Hartz's mind it seemed to. "Self-defense is no excuse," the Fury seemed to be saying. "We never punish intent, but we always punish action. Any act of murder. Any act of murder..." Hartz barely had time to drop his revolver in his desk drawer before the first of the clamorous crowd from downstairs came bursting through the door. He barely had the presence of mind to do it, either. He had not really thought the thing through this far. It was, on the surface, a clear case of suicide. In a slightly unsteady voice he heard himself explaining. Everybody had seen the madman rushing through the office, his Fury at his heels. This wouldn't be the first time a killer and his Fury had tried to get at the Controller, begging him to call off the jailer and forestall the executioner. What had happened, Hartz told his underlings calmly enough, was that the Fury had naturally stopped the man from shooting Hartz. And the victim had then turned his gun upon himself. Powder-burns on his clothing showed it. (The desk was very near the door.) Back-blast in the skin of Danner's hands would show he had really fired a gun. Suicide. It would satisfy any human. But it would not satisfy the computers. They carried the dead man out. They left Hartz and the Fury alone, still facing each other across the desk. If anyone thought this was strange, nobody showed it. Hartz himself didn't know if it was strange or not. Nothing like this had ever happened before. Nobody had ever been fool enough to commit murder in the very presence of a Fury. Even the Controller did not know exactly how the computers assessed evidence and fixed guilt. Should this Fury have been recalled, normally? If Danner's death were really suicide, would Hartz stand here alone now? He knew the machines were already processing the evidence of what had really happened here. What he couldn't be sure of was whether this Fury had already received its orders and would follow him wherever he went from now on until the hour of his death. Or whether it simply stood motionless, waiting recall. Well, it didn't matter. This Fury or another was already, in the present moment, in the process of receiving instructions about him. |
| 621 |
There was only one thing to do. Thank God there was something he could do. So Hartz unlocked the desk drawer and slid it open, touched the clicking keys he had never expected to use. Very carefully he fed. the coded information, digit by digit, into the computers. As he did, he looked out through the glass wall and imagined he could see down there in the hidden tapes the units of data fading into blankness and the new, false information flashing into existence. He looked up at the robot. He smiled a little. "Now you'll forget," he said. "You and the computers. You can go now. I won't be seeing you again." Either the computers worked incredibly fast — as of course they did — or pure coincidence took over, because in only a moment or two the Fury moved as if in response to Hartz's dismissal. It had stood quite motionless since Danner slid through its arms. Now new orders animated it, and briefly its motion was almost jerky as it changed from one set of instructions to another. It almost seemed to bow, a stiff little bending motion that brought its head down to a level with Hartz's. He saw his own face reflected in the blank face of the Fury. You could very nearly read an ironic note in that stiff bow, with the diplomat's ribbon of honor across the chest of the creature, symbol of duty discharged honorably. But there was nothing. honorable about this withdrawal. The incorruptible metal was putting on corruption and looking back at Hartz with the reflection of his own face. He watched it stalk toward the door. He heard it go thudding evenly down the stairs. He could feel the thuds vibrate in the floor, and there was a sudden sick dizziness in him when he thought the whole fabric of society was shaking under his feet. The machines were corruptible. Mankind's survival still depended on the computers, and the computers could not be trusted. Hartz looked down and saw that his hands were shaking. He shut the drawer and heard the lock click softly. He gazed at his hands. He felt their shaking echoed in an inner shaking, a terrifying sense of the instability of the world. A sudden, appalling loneliness swept over him like a cold wind. He had never felt before so urgent a need for the companionship of his own kind. No one person, but people. Just people. The sense of human beings all around him, a very primitive need. He got his hat and coat and went downstairs rapidly, hands deep in his pockets because of some inner chill no coat could guard against. Halfway down the stairs he stopped dead still. There were footsteps behind him. He dared not look back at first. He knew those footsteps. But he had two fears and he didn't know which was worse. The fear that a Fury was after him — and the fear that it was not. There would be a sort of insane relief if it really was, because then he could trust the machines after all, and this terrible loneliness might pass over him and go. He took another downward step, not looking back. He heard the ominous footfall behind him, echoing his own. He sighed one deep sigh and looked back. There was nothing on the stairs. He went on down after a timeless pause, watching over his shoulder. He could hear the relentless feet thudding behind him, but no visible Fury followed. No visible Fury. The Erinyes had struck inward again, and an invisible Fury of the mind followed Hartz down the stairs. It was as if sin had come anew into the world, and the first man felt again the first inward guilt. So the computers had not failed, after all. |
| 622 |
Here, in the ship around him, reposed all that was left of the human race, unknown years from the solar system that had been their home! But the old grim struggle must go on. Jorgen turned, swinging his trembling feet down from the table toward the metal floor and shaking his head to clear it. "Dr. Craig?" Hard, cool hands found his shoulder, easing him gently but forcefully back onto the table. The voice that answered was metallic, but soft. "No, Master Jorgen, Dr. Craig is not here. But wait, rest a little longer until the sleep is gone from you; you're not ready yet." But his eyes were clearing then, and he swung them about the room. Five little metal men, four and a half feet tall, waited patiently around him; there was no other present. Thoradson's robots were incapable of expression, except for the dull glow in their eyes, yet the pose of their bodies seemed to convey a sense of uncertainty and discomfort, and Jorgen stirred restlessly, worried vaguely by the impression. Five made an undefined gesture with his arm. "A little longer, master. You must rest!" For a moment longer he lay quietly, letting the last of the stupor creep away from him and trying to force his still-dulled mind into the pattern of leadership that was nominally his. This time, Five made no protest as he reached up to catch the metal shoulder and pull himself to his feet. "You've found a sun with planets, Five! Is that why you wakened me?" Five shuffled his feet in an oddly human gesture, nodding, his words still maddeningly soft and slow. "Yes, master, sooner than we had hoped. Five planetless suns and ninety years of searching are gone, but it might have been thousands. You can see them from the pilot room if you wish." Ninety years that might have been thousands, but they had won! Jorgen nodded eagerly, reaching for his clothes, and Three and Five sprang forward to help, then moved to his side to support him, as the waves of giddiness washed through him, and to lead him slowly forward as some measure of control returned. They passed down the long center hall of the ship, their metal feet and his leather boots ringing dully on the plastic-and-metal floor, and came finally to the control room, where great crystal windows gave a view of the cold black space ahead, sprinkled with bright, tiny stars; stars that were unflickering and inimical as no stars could be through the softening blanket of a planet's atmosphere. Ahead, small but in striking contrast to the others, one point stood out, the size of a dime at ten feet. For a moment, he stood staring at it, then moved almost emotionlessly toward the windows, until Three plucked at his sleeve. "I've mapped the planets already, if you wish to see them, master. We're still far from them, and at this distance, by only reflected light, they are hard to locate, but I think I've found them all." Jorgen swung to the electron screen that began flashing as Three made rapid adjustments on the telescope, counting the globes that appeared on it and gave place to others. Some were sharp and clear, cold and unwavering; others betrayed the welcome haze of atmosphere. Five, the apparent size of Earth, were located beyond the parched and arid inner spheres, and beyond them, larger than Jupiter, a monster world led out to others that grew smaller again. There was no ringed planet to rival Saturn, but most had moons, except for the farthest inner planets, and one was almost a double world, with satellite and primary of nearly equal size. |
| 623 |
He'd read stories of the last human and wondered long before what it would be like. Now that he was playing the part, he still knew no more than before. Perhaps on Earth, among the ruined cities and empty reminders of the past, a man might realize that it was the end of his race. Out here, he could accept the fact, but his emotions refused to credit it; unconsciously, his conditioning made him feel that disaster had struck only a few, leaving a world of others behind. And however much he knew that the world behind was as empty of others as this ship, the feeling was too much a part of his thinking to be fully overcome. Intellectually, the race of man was ended; emotionally, it could never end. Five stirred, touching him diffidently. "We have left Dr. Craig's laboratory, master; if you want to see his notes, they're still there. And he left some message with the brain before he died, I think. The key was open when we found him, at least. We have made no effort to obtain it, waiting for you." "Thank you, Five." But he made no move until the robot touched him again, almost pleadingly. "Perhaps you're right; something to fill my mind seems called for. All right, you can return to your companions unless you want to come with me." "I prefer to come." The little metal man stood up, moving down the hall after Jorgen, back toward the tail of the rocket, the sound of the metal feet matching the dumb regularity of the leather heels on the floor. Once the robot stopped to move into a side chamber and come back with a small bottle of brandy, holding it out questioningly. There was a physical warmth to the liquor, but no relief otherwise, and they continued down the hall to the little room that Craig had chosen. The notes left by the man could raise a faint shadow of curiosity only, and no message from the dead could solve the tragedy of the living now. Still, it was better than doing nothing. Jorgen clumped in, Five shutting the door quietly behind them, and moved listlessly toward the little fabrikoid notebooks. Twice the robot went quietly out to return with food that Jorgen barely tasted. And the account of Craig's useless labors went on and on, until finally he turned the last page to the final entry. "I have done all that I can, and at best my success is only partial. Now I feel that my time grows near, and what can still be done must be left to the robots. Yet, I will not despair. Individual and racial immortality is not composed solely of the continuation from generation to generation, but rather of the continuation of the dreams of all mankind. The dreamers and their progeny may die, but the dream cannot. Such is my faith, and to that I cling. I have no other hope to offer for the unknown future." Jorgen dropped the notebook, dully, rubbing hands across his tired eyes. The words that should have been a ringing challenge to destiny fell flat; the dream could die. He was the last of the dreamers, a blind alley of fate, and beyond lay only oblivion. All the dreams of a thousand generations of men had concentrated into Anna Holt, and were gone with her. "The brain, master," Five suggested softly. "Dr. Craig's last message!" "You operate it, Five." It was a small model, a limited fact analyzer such as most technicians used or had used to help them in their work, voice-operated, its small, basic vocabulary adjusted for the work to be done. He was unfamiliar with the semantics of that vocabulary, but Five had undoubtedly worked with Craig long enough to know it. |
| 624 |
They had come past five suns and through ninety years of travel at nearly the speed of light to a haven beyond their wildest imaginings, where all seemed to be waiting them, untenanted but prepared. Outside, the new world waited expectantly. And inside, to meet that invitation, there were only ghosts and emptied dreams, with one slowly dying man to see and to appreciate. The gods had prepared their grim jest with painful attention to every detail needed to make it complete. A race that had dreamed, and pleasant worlds that awaited beyond the stars, slumbering on until they should come! Almost, they had reached it; and then the Plague had driven them out in dire necessity, instead of the high pioneering spirit they had planned, to conquer the distance but to die in winning. "It had to be a beautiful world, Five," he said, not bitterly, but in numbed fatalism. "Without that, the joke would have been flat." Five's hand touched his arm gently, and the robot sighed again, nodding very slowly. "Two has found the air good for you — slightly rich in oxygen, but good. Will you go out?" He nodded assent, stepping through the locks and out, while the five followed behind him, their heads turning as they inspected the planet, their minds probably in radio communication as they discussed it. Five left the others and approached him, stopping by his side and following his eyes up toward the low hills that began beyond the shore of the sea, cradling the river against them. A wind stirred gently, bringing the clean, familiar smell of growing things, and the air was rich and good. It was a world to lull men to peace from their sorrows, to bring back their star-roving ships from all over the universe, worthy of being called home in any language. Too good a world to provide the hardships needed to shape intelligence, but an Eden for that intelligence, once evolved. Now Jorgen shrugged. This was a world for dreamers, and he wanted only the dreams that may come with the black lotus of forgetfulness. There were too many reminders of what might have been, here. Better to go back to the ship and the useless quest without a goal, until he should die and the ship and robots should run down and stop. He started to turn, as Five began to speak, but halted, not caring enough one way or another to interrupt. The robot's eyes were where his had been, and now swept back down the river and toward the harbor. "Here could have been a city, master, to match all the cities ever planned. Here your people might have found all that was needed to make life good, a harbor to the other continents, a river to the heart of this one, and the flat ground beyond the hills to house the rockets that would carry you to other worlds, so richly scattered about this sun, and probably so like this one. See, a clean white bridge across the river there, the residences stretching out among the hills, factories beyond the river's bend, a great park on that island." "A public square there, schools and university grounds there." Jorgen could see it, and for a moment his eyes lighted, picturing that mighty mother city. Five nodded. "And there, on that little island, centrally located, a statue in commemoration; winged, and with arms — no, one arm stretched upward, the other held down toward the city." For a moment longer, the fire lived in Jorgen's eyes, and then the dead behind rose before his mind, and it was gone. He turned, muffling a choking cry as emotions came suddenly flooding over him, and Five drooped, swinging back with him. |
| 625 |
Therefore the army did nothing but spread the news, and man began to fall back. In a thickening, hastening stream he came back from the hard-won stars, blowing up his homes behind him, stunned and cursing. Most of the colonists got out in time. A few, the farthest and loneliest, died in fire before the army ships could reach them. And the men in those ships, drinkers and gamblers and veterans of nothing, the dregs of a society that had grown beyond them, were for a long while the only defense earth had. This was the message Captain Dylan had brought, come out from earth with a bottle on his hip. An obscenely cheerful expression upon his gaunt, not too well shaven face, Captain Dylan perched himself upon the edge of a table and listened, one long booted leg swinging idly. One by one the colonists were beginning to understand. War is huge and comes with great suddenness and always without reason, and there is inevitably a wait between acts, between the news and the motion, the fear and the rage. Dylan waited. These people were taking it well, much better than those in the cities had taken it. But then, these were pioneers. Dylan grinned. Pioneers. Before you settle a planet you boil it and bake it and purge it of all possible disease. Then you step down gingerly and inflate your plastic houses, which harden and become warm and impregnable; and send your machines out to plant and harvest; and set up automatic factories to transmute dirt into coffee; and, without ever having lifted a finger, you have braved the wilderness, hewed a home out of the living rock, and become a pioneer. Dylan grinned again. But at least this was better than the wailing of the cities. This Dylan thought, although he was himself no fighter, no man at all by any standards. This he thought because he was a soldier and an outcast; to every drunken man the fall of the sober is a happy thing. He stirred restlessly. By this time the colonists had begun to realize that there wasn't much to say, and a tall, handsome woman was murmuring distractedly, "Lupus, Lupus — doesn't that mean wolves of something?" Dylan began to wish they would get moving, these pioneers. It was very possible that the Aliens would be here soon, and there was no need for discussion. There was only one thing to do and that was to clear the hell out, quickly and without argument. They began to see it. But when the fear had died down the resentment came. A number of women began to cluster around Dylan and complain, working up their anger. Dylan said nothing. Then the man Rossel pushed forward and confronted him, speaking with a vast annoyance. "See here, soldier, this is our planet. I mean to say, this is our home. We demand some protection from the fleet. By God, we've been paying the freight for you boys all these years, and it's high time you earned your keep. We demand..." It went on and on, while Dylan looked at the clock and waited. He hoped that he could end this quickly. A big gloomy man was in front of him now and giving him that name of ancient contempt, "soldier boy." The gloomy man wanted to know where the fleet was. "There is no fleet. There are a few hundred half-shot old tubs that were obsolete before you were born. There are four or five new jobs for the brass and the government. That's all the fleet there is." Dylan wanted to go on about that, to remind them that nobody had wanted the army, that the fleet had grown smaller and smaller... but this was not the time. It was ten-thirty already, and the damned aliens might be coming in right now for all he knew, and all they did was talk. |
| 626 |
He had realized a long time ago that no peace-loving nation in the history of earth had ever kept itself strong, and although peace was a noble dream, it was ended now and it was time to move. "We'd better get going," he finally said, and there was quiet. "Lieutenant Bossio has gone on to your sister colony at Planet Three of this system. He'll return to pick me up by nightfall, and I'm instructed to have you gone by then." For a long moment they waited, and then one man abruptly walked off and the rest followed quickly; in a moment they were all gone. One or two stopped long enough to complain about the fleet, and the big gloomy man said he wanted guns, that's all, and there wouldn't nobody get him off his planet. When he left, Dylan breathed with relief and went out to check the bomb, grateful for the action. Most of it had to be done in the open. He found a metal bar in the radio shack and began chopping at the frozen ground, following the wire. It was the first thing he had done with his hands in weeks, and it felt fine. Dylan had been called up out of a bar — he and Bossio — and told what had happened, and in three weeks now they had cleared four colonies. This would be the last, and the tension here was beginning to get to him. After thirty years of hanging around and playing like the town drunk, a man could not be expected to rush out and plug the breach, just like that. It would take time. He rested, sweating, took a pull from the bottle on his hip. Before they sent him out on this trip they had made him a captain. Well, that was nice. After thirty years he was a captain. For thirty years he had bummed all over the west end of space, had scraped his way along the outer edges of mankind, had waited and dozed and patrolled and got drunk, waiting always for something to happen. There were a lot of ways to pass the time while you waited for something to happen, and he had done them all. Once he had even studied military tactics. He could not help smiling at that, even now. Damn it, he'd been green. But he'd been only nineteen when his father died — of a hernia, of a crazy fool thing like a hernia that killed him just because he'd worked too long on a heavy planet — and in those days the anti-war conditioning out on the Rim was not very strong. They talked a lot about guardians of the frontier, and they got him and some other kids and a broken-down doctor. And... now he was a captain. He bent his back savagely, digging at the ground. You wait and you wait and the edge goes off. This thing he had waited for all those damn days was upon him now, and there was nothing he could do but say the hell with it and go home. Somewhere along the line, in some dark corner of the bars or the jails, in one of the million soul-murdering insults which are reserved especially for peacetime soldiers, he had lost the core of himself, and it didn't particularly matter. That was the point: It made no particular difference if he never got it back. He owed nobody. He was tugging at the wire and trying to think of something pleasant from the old days when the wire came loose in his hands. Although he had been, in his cynical way, expecting it, for a moment it threw him and he just stared. The end was clean and bright. The wire had just been cut. Dylan sat for a long while by the radio shack, holding the ends in his hands. He reached almost automatically for the bottle on his hip, and then, for the first time he could remember, let it go. This was real; there was no time for that. |
| 627 |
He had known none of the people on Three, and what he felt now was a much greater urgency to be out of here. He said hopeful things to Rossel and then went out to the ship and joined the men in lightening her. About the ship, at least, he knew something and he was able to tell them what partitions and frames could go and what would have to stay or the ship would never get off the planet. But even stripped down, it couldn't take them all. When he knew that, he realized that he himself would have to stay here, for it was only then that he thought of Bossio. Three was dead. Bossio had gone down there some time ago, and if Three was dead and Bossio had not called, then the fact was that Bossio was gone too. For a long, long moment Dylan stood rooted in the snow. More than the fact that he would have to stay here was the unspoken, unalterable, heart-numbing knowledge that Bossio was dead — the one thing that Dylan could not accept. Bossio was the only friend he had. In all this dog-eared, aimless, ape-run universe Bossio was all his friendship and his trust. He left the ship blindly and went back to the settlement. Now the people were quiet and really frightened, and some of the women were beginning to cry. He noticed now that they had begun to look at him with hope as he passed, and in his own grief, humanly, he swore. Bossio — a big-grinning kid with no parents, no enemies, no grudges — Bossio was already dead because he had come out here and tried to help these people. People who had kicked or ignored him all the days of his life. And, in a short while, Dylan would also stay behind and die to save the life of somebody he never knew and who, twenty-four hours earlier, would have been ashamed to be found in his company. Now, when it was far, far too late, they were coming to the army for help. But in the end, damn it, he could not hate these people. All they had ever wanted was peace, and even though they had never understood that the universe is unknowable and that you must always have big shoulders, still they had always sought only for peace. If peace leads to no conflict at all and then decay, well, that was something that had to be learned. So he could not hate these people. But he could not help them either. He turned from their eyes and went into the radio shack. It had begun to dawn on the women that they might be leaving without their husbands or sons, and he did not want to see the fierce struggle that he was sure would take place. He sat alone and tried, for the last time, to call Bossio. After a while an old woman found him and offered him coffee. It was a very decent thing to do, to think of him at a time like this, and he was so suddenly grateful he could only nod. The woman said that he must be cold in that thin army thing and that she had brought along a mackinaw for him. She poured the coffee and left him alone. They were thinking of him now, he knew, because they were thinking of everyone who had to stay. Throw the dog a bone. Dammit, don't be like that, he told himself. He had not had anything to eat all day, and the coffee was warm and strong. He decided he might be of some help at the ship. It was stripped down now, and they were loading. He was startled to see a great group of them standing in the snow, removing their clothes. Then he understood. The clothes of forty people would change the weight by enough to get a few more aboard. There was no fighting. Some of the women were almost hysterical and a few had refused to go and were still in their cabins, but the process was orderly. |
| 628 |
He slid past the first trunk to the next, moving forward on his elbows with his pistol in his right hand. His elbow struck a rock and it hurt and his face was freezing. Once he rubbed snow from his eyebrows. Then he came through the trees and lay down before a slight rise, thinking. Better to go around than over. But if anything is watching, it is most likely watching from above. Therefore go around and come back up from behind. Yes. His nose had begun to run. With great care he crawled among some large rocks, hoping against hope that he would not sneeze. Why had nothing seen him? Was something following him now? He turned to look behind him, but it was darker now and becoming difficult to see. But he would have to look behind him more often. He was moving down a gorge. There were large trees above him and he needed their shelter, but he could not risk slipping down the sides of the gorge. And far off, weakly, out of the gray cold ahead, he heard a noise. He lay down in the snow, listening. With a slow, thick shuffle, a thing was moving through the trees before him. In a moment he saw that it was not coming toward him. He lifted his head but saw nothing. Much more slowly, now, he crawled again. The thing was moving down the left side of the gorge ahead, coming away from the rise he had circled. It was moving without caution, and he worried that if he did not hurry he would lose it. But for the life of him he couldn't stand up. The soldier went forward on his hands and knees. When his clothes hung down, the freezing cold entered his throat and shocked his body, which was sweating. He shifted his gun to his gloved hand and blew on the bare fingers of his right, still crawling. When he reached the other end of the gorge he stood upright against a rock wall and looked in the direction of the shuffling thing. He saw it just as it turned. It was a great black lump on a platform. The platform had legs, and the thing was plodding methodically upon a path which would bring it past him. It had come down from the rise and was rounding the gorge when Dylan saw it. It did not see him. If he had not ducked quickly and brought up his gun, the monkey would not have seen him either, but there was no time for regret. The monkey was several yards to the right of the lump on the platform when he heard it start running; he had to look up this time, and saw it leaping toward him over the snow. All right, he said to himself. His first shot took the monkey in the head, where the eyes were. As the thing crashed over, there was a hiss and a stench and flame seared into his shoulder and the side of his face. He lurched to the side, trying to see, his gun at arm's length as the lump on the platform spun toward him. He fired four times. Three bolts went home in the lump; the fourth tore a leg off the platform and the whole thing fell over. Dylan crawled painfully behind a rock, his left arm useless. The silence had come back again and he waited, but neither of the Alien things moved. Nothing else moved in the woods around him. He turned his face up to the falling snow and let it come soothingly upon the awful wound in his side. After a while he looked out at the monkey. It had risen to a sitting position but was frozen in the motion of rising. It had ceased to function when he hit the lump. Out of the numbness and the pain he felt a great gladness rising. The guide. He had killed the guide. He would not be cautious any more. Maybe some of the other robots were self-directing and dangerous, but they could be handled. |
| 629 |
The recorded lecture was about to be given. Cliff sighed. He knew the thing by heart; had even been present when the recording was made, and met the speaker, a young chap named Stillwell. "Ladies and gentlemen," began a clear and well-modulated voice — but Cliff was no longer attending. The shadows in the hollows of Gnut's face and figure were deeper; it was almost time for his shot. He picked up and examined the proofs of the pictures he had taken the day before and compared them critically with the subject. As he looked a wrinkle came to his brow. He had not noticed it before, but now, suddenly, he had the feeling that since yesterday something about Gnut was changed. The pose before him was the identical one in the photographs, every detail on comparison seemed the same, but nevertheless the feeling persisted. He took up his viewing glass and more carefully compared subject and photographs, line by line. And then he saw that there was a difference. With sudden excitement, Cliff snapped two pictures at different exposures. He knew he should wait a little and take others, but he was so sure he had stumbled on an important mystery that he had to get going, and quickly folding his accessory equipment he descended the ladder and made his way out. Twenty minutes later, consumed with curiosity, he was developing the new shots in his hotel bedroom. What Cliff saw when he compared the negatives taken yesterday and today caused his scalp to tingle. Here was a slant indeed! And apparently no one but he knew! Still, what he had discovered, though it would have made the front page of every paper in the solar system, was after all only a lead. The story, what really had happened, he knew no better than anyone else. It must be his job to find out. And that meant he would have to secrete himself in the building and stay there all night. That very night; there was still time for him to get back before closing. He would take a small, very fast infrared camera that could see in the dark, and he would get the real picture and the story. He snatched up the little camera, grabbed an aircab, and hurried back to the museum. The place was filled with another section of the ever-present queue, and the lecture was just ending. He thanked Heaven that his arrangement with the museum permitted him to go in and out at will. He had already decided what to do. First he made his way to the "floating" guard and asked a single question, and anticipation broadened on his face as he heard the expected answer. The second thing was to find a spot where he would be safe from the eyes of the men who would close the floor for the night. There was only one possible place, the laboratory set up behind the ship. Boldly he showed his press credentials to the second guard, stationed at the partitioned passageway leading to it, stating that he had come to interview the scientists; and in a moment was at the laboratory door. He had been there a number of times and knew the room well. It was a large area roughly partitioned off for the work of the scientists engaged in breaking their way into the ship and full of a confusion of massive and heavy objects — electric and hot-air ovens, carboys of chemicals, asbestos sheeting, compressors, basins, ladles, a microscope, and a great deal of smaller equipment common to a metallurgical laboratory. Three white-smocked men were deeply engrossed in an experiment at the far end. Cliff, waiting a good moment, slipped inside and hid himself under a table half buried with supplies. |
| 630 |
If Gnut was still alive, or perhaps I had better say functionable, there was no sign. He stood as you see him during the entire ceremony. He stood so while his master was floated out to the mausoleum and given to the centuries with the tragically short sight-and-sound record of his historic visit. And he stood so afterward, day after day, night after night, in fair weather and in rain, never moving or showing by any slightest sign that he was aware of what had gone on. "After the interment, this wing was built out from the museum to cover the traveler and Gnut. Nothing else could very well have been done, it was learned, for both Gnut and the ship were far too heavy to be moved safely by any means at hand. "You have heard about the efforts of our metallurgists since then to break into the ship, and of their complete failure. Behind the ship now, as you can see from either end, a partitioned workroom has been set up where the attempt still goes on. So far its wonderful greenish metal has proved inviolable. Not only are they unable to get in, but they cannot even find the exact place from which Klaatu and Gnut emerged. The chalk marks you see are the best approximation. "Many people have feared that Gnut was only temporarily deranged, and that on return to function might be dangerous, so the scientist have completely destroyed all chance of that. The greenish metal of which he is made seemed to be. the same as that of the ship and could no more be attacked, they found, nor could they find any way to penetrate to his internals; but they had other means. They set electrical currents of tremendous voltages and amperages through him. They applied terrific heat to all parts of his metal shell. They immersed him for days in gases and acids and strongly corroding solutions, and they have bombarded him with every known kind of ray. You need have no fear of him now. He cannot possibly have retained the ability to function in any way. "But — a word of caution. The officials of the government know that visitors will not show any disrespect in this building. It may be that the unknown and unthinkably powerful civilization from which Klaatu and Gnut came may send other emissaries to see what happened to them. Whether or not they do, not one of us must be found amiss in our attitude. None of us could very well anticipate what happened, and we all are immeasurably sorry, but we are still in a sense responsible, and must do what we can to avoid possible retaliations. "You will be allowed to remain five minutes longer, and then, when the gong sounds, you will please leave promptly. The robot attendants along the wall will answer any questions you may have. "Look well, for before you stand stark symbols of the achievement, mystery, and frailty of the human race." The recorded voice ceased speaking. Cliff, carefully moving his cramped limbs, broke out in a wide smile. If they knew what he knew! For his photographs told a slightly different story from that of the lecturer. In yesterday's a line of the figured floor showed clearly at the outer edge of the robot's near foot; in today's, that line was covered. Gnut had moved! Or been moved, though this was very unlikely. Where were the derrick and other evidence of such activity? It could hardly have been done in one night, and all signs so quickly concealed. And why should it be done at all? Still, to make sure, he had asked the guard. He could almost remember verbatim his answer: "No, Gnut has neither moved nor been moved since the death of his master. |
| 631 |
A special point was made of keeping him in the position he assumed at Klaatu's death. The floor was built in under him, and the scientists who completed his derangement erected their apparatus around him, just as he stands. You need have no fears." Cliff smiled again. He did not have any fears. Not yet. 2 A moment later the big gong above the entrance doors rang the closing hour, and immediately following it a voice from the speakers called out, "Five o'clock, ladies and gentlemen. Closing time, ladies and gentlemen." The three scientists, as if surprised it was so late, hurriedly washed their hands, changed to their street clothes and disappeared down the partitioned corridor, oblivious of the young picture man hidden under the table. The slide and scrape of the feet on the exhibition floor rapidly dwindled, until at last there were only the steps of the two guards walking from one point to another, making sure everything was all right for the night. For just a moment one of them glanced in the doorway of the laboratory, then he joined the other at the entrance. Then the great metal doors clanged to, and there was silence. Cliff waited several minutes, then carefully poked his way out from under the table. As he straightened up, a faint tinkling crash sounded at the floor by his feet. Carefully stooping, he found the shattered remains of a thin glass pipette. He had knocked if off the table. That caused him to realize something he had not thought of before: A Gnut who had moved might be a Gnut who could see and hear — and really be dangerous. He would have to be very careful. He looked about him. The room was bounded at the ends by two fiber partitions which at the inner ends followed close under the curving bottom of the ship. The inner side of the room was the ship itself, and the outer was the southern wall of the wing. There were four large high windows. The only entrance was by way of the passage. Without moving, from his knowledge of the building, he made his plan. The wing was connected with the western end of the museum by a doorway, never used, and extended westward toward the Washington Monument. The ship lay nearest the southern wall, and Gnut stood out in front of it, not far from the northeast corner and at the opposite end of the room from the entrance of the building and the passageway leading to the laboratory. By retracing his steps he would come out on the floor at the point farthest removed from the robot. This was just what he wanted, for on the other side of the entrance, on a low platform, stood a paneled table containing the lecture apparatus, and this table was the only object in the room which afforded a place for him to lie concealed while watching what might go on. The only other objects on the floor were the six manlike robot attendants in fixed stations along the northern wall, placed there to answer visitors' questions. He would have to gain the table. He turned and began cautiously tiptoeing out of the laboratory and down the passageway. It was already dark there, for what light still entered the exhibition hall was shut off by the great bulk of the ship. He reached the end of the room without making a sound. Very carefully he edged forward and peered around the bottom of the ship at Gnut. He had a momentary shock. The robot's eyes were right on him! — or so it seemed. Was that only the effect of the set of his eyes, he wondered, or was he already discovered? The position of Gnut's head did not seem to have changed, at any rate. |
| 632 |
Probably everything was all right, but he wished, he did not have to cross that end of the room with the feeling that the robot's eyes were following him. He drew back and sat down and waited. It would have to be totally dark before he essayed the trip to the table. He waited a full hour, until the faint beams from the lamps on the grounds outside began to make the room seem to grow lighter; then he got up and peeped around the ship once more. The robot's eyes seemed to pierce right at him as before, only now, due no doubt to the darkness, the strange internal illumination seemed much brighter. This was a chilling thing. Did Gnut know he was there? What were the thoughts of the robot? What could be the thoughts of a manmade machine, even so wonderful a one as Gnut? It was time for the cross, so Cliff slung his camera around on his back, went down on his hands and knees, and carefully moved to the edge of the entrance hall. There he fitted himself as closely as he could into the angle made by it with the floor and started inching ahead. Never pausing, not risking a glance at Gnut's unnerving red eyes, moving an inch at a time, he snaked along. He took ten minutes to cross the space of a hundred feet, and he was wet with perspiration when his fingers at last touched the one-foot rise of the platform on which the table stood. Still slowly, silently as a shadow, he made his way over the edge and melted behind the protection of the table. At last he was there. He relaxed for a moment, then, anxious to know whether he had been seen, carefully turned and looked around the side of the table. Gnut's eyes were now full on him! Or so it seemed. Against the general darkness, the robot loomed a mysterious and still darker shadow that, for all his being a hundred and fifty feet away, seemed to dominate the room. Cliff could not tell whether the position of his body was changed or not. But if Gnut was looking at him, he at least did nothing else. Not by the slightest motion that Cliff could discern did he appear to move. His position was the one he had maintained these last three months, in the darkness, in the rain, and this last week in the museum. Cliff made up his mind not to give way to fear. He became conscious of his own body. The cautious trip had taken something out of him — his knees and elbows burned and his trousers were no doubt ruined. But these were little things if what he hoped for came to pass. If Gnut so much as moved, and he could catch him with his infrared camera, he would have a story that would buy him fifty suits of clothes. And if on top of that he could learn the purpose of Gnut's moving — provided there was a purpose — that would be a story that would set the world on its ears. He settled down to a period of waiting; there was no telling when Gnut would move, if indeed he would move that night. Cliff's eyes had long been adjusted to the dark and he could make out the larger objects well enough. From time to time he peered out at the robot — peered long and hard, till his outlines wavered and he seemed to move, and he had to blink and rest his eyes to be sure it was only his imagination. Again the minute hand of his watch crept around the dial. The inactivity made Cliff careless, and for longer and longer periods he kept his head back out of sight behind the table. And so it was that when Gnut did move he was scared almost out of his wits. Dull and a little bored, he suddenly found the robot out on the floor, halfway in his direction. |
| 633 |
But that was not the most frightening thing. It was that when he did see Gnut he did not catch him moving! He was stopped as still as a cat in the middle of stalking a mouse. His eyes were now much brighter, and there was no remaining doubt about their direction: he was looking right at Cliff! Scarcely breathing, half hypnotized, Cliff looked back. His thoughts tumbled. What was the robot's intention? Why had he stopped so still? Was he being stalked? How could he move with such silence? In the heavy darkness Gnut's eyes moved nearer. Slowly but in perfect rhythm that almost imperceptible sound of his footsteps beat on Cliffs ears. Cliff, usually resourceful enough, was this time caught flatfooted. Frozen with fear, utterly incapable of fleeing, he lay where he was while the metal monster with the fiery eyes came on. For a moment Cliff all but fainted, and when he recovered, there was Gnut towering over him, legs almost within reach. He was bending slightly, burning his terrible eyes right into his own! Too late to try to think of running now. Trembling like any cornered mouse, Cliff waited for the blow that would crush him. For an eternity, it seemed, Gnut scrutinized him without moving. For each second of that eternity Cliff expected annihilation, sudden, quick, complete. And then suddenly and unexpectedly it was over. Gnut's body straightened and he stepped back. He turned. And then, with the almost jerkless rhythm which only he among robots possessed, he started back toward the place from which he came. Cliff could hardly believe he had been spared. Gnut could have crushed him like a worm — and he had only turned around and gone back. Why? It could not be supposed that a robot was capable of human considerations. Gnut went straight to the other end of the traveler. At a certain place he stopped and made a curious succession of sounds. At once Cliff saw an opening, blacker than the gloom of the building, appear in the ship's side, and it was followed by a slight sliding sound as a ramp slid out and met the floor. Gnut walked up the ramp and, stooping a little, disappeared inside the ship. Then, for the first time, Cliff remembered the picture he had come to get. Gnut had moved, but he had not caught him! But at least now, whatever opportunities there might be later, he could get the shot of the ramp connecting with the opened door; so he twisted his camera into position, set it for the proper exposure, and took a shot. A long time passed and Gnut did not come out. What could he be doing inside? Cliff wondered. Some of his courage returned to him and he toyed with the idea of creeping forward and peeping through the port, but he found he had not the courage for that. Gnut had spared him, at least for the time, but there was no telling how far his tolerance would go. An hour passed, then another, Gnut was doing something inside the ship, but what? Cliff could not imagine. If the robot had been a human being, he knew he would have sneaked a look, but as it was, he was too much of an unknown quantity. Even the simplest of Earth's robots under certain circumstances were inexplicable things; what, then, of this one, come from an unknown and even unthinkable civilization, by far the most wonderful construction ever seen — what superhuman powers might he not possess? All that the scientists of Earth could do had not served to derange him. Acid, heat, rays, terrific crushing blows — he had withstood them all; even his finish had been unmarred. |
| 634 |
He might be able to see perfectly in the dark. And right where he was, he might be able to hear or in some way sense the least change in Cliff's position. More time passed, and then, sometime after two o'clock in the morning, a simple homely thing happened, but a thing so unexpected that for a moment it quite destroyed Cliff's equilibrium. Suddenly, through the dark and silent building, there was a faint whir of wings, soon followed by the piercing, sweet voice of a bird. A mockingbird. Somewhere in this gloom above his head. Clear and full-throated were its notes; a dozen little songs it sang, one after the other without pause between — short insistent calls, twirrings, coaxings, cooings — the spring love song of perhaps the finest singer in the world. Then, as suddenly as it began, the voice was silent. If an invading army had poured out of the traveler, Cliff would have been less surprised. The month was December; even in Florida the mockingbirds had not yet begun their song. How had one gotten into that tight, gloomy museum? How and why was it singing there? He waited, full of curiosity. Then suddenly he was aware of Gnut, standing just outside the port of the ship. He stood quite still, his glowing eyes turned squarely in Cliff's direction. For a moment the hush in the museum seemed to. deepen; then it was broken by a soft thud on the floor near where Cliff was lying. He wondered. The light in Gnut's eyes changed, and he started his almost jerkless walk in Cliff's direction. When only a little away, the robot stopped, bent over, and picked something from the floor. For some time he stood without motion and looked at a little object he held in his hand. Cliff knew, though he could not see, that it was the mockingbird. Its body, for he was sure that it had lost its song forever. Gnut then turned, and without a glance at Cliff, walked back to the ship and again went inside. Hours passed while Cliff waited for some sequel to this surprising happening. Perhaps it was because of his curiosity that his fear of the robot began to lessen. Surely if the mechanism was unfriendly, if he intended him any harm, he would have finished him before, when he had such a perfect opportunity. Cliff began to nerve himself for a quick look inside the port. And a picture; he must remember the picture. He kept forgetting the very reason he was there. It was in the deeper darkness of the false dawn when he got sufficient courage and made the start. He took off his shoes, and in his stockinged feet, his shoes tied together and slung over his shoulder, he moved stiffly but rapidly to a position behind the nearest of the six robot attendants stationed along the wall, then paused for some sign which might indicate that Gnut knew he had moved. Hearing none, he slipped along behind the next robot attendant and paused again. Bolder now, he made in one spurt all the distance to the farthest one, the sixth, fixed just opposite the port of the ship. There he met with a disappointment. No light that he could detect was visible within; there was only darkness and the all-permeating silence. Still, he had better get the picture. He raised his camera, focused it on the dark opening, and gave the film a comparatively long exposure. Then he stood there, at a loss what to do next. As he paused, a peculiar series of muffled noises reached his ears, apparently from within the ship. Animal noises — first scrapings and pantings, punctuated by several sharp clicks, then deep, rough snarls, interrupted by more scrapings and pantings, as if a struggle of some kind were going on. |
| 635 |
Then suddenly, before Cliff could even decide to run back to the table, a low, wide, dark shape bounded out of the port and immediately turned and grew to the height of a man. A terrible fear swept over Cliff, even before he knew what the shape was. In the next second Gnut appeared in the port and stepped unhesitatingly down the ramp toward the shape. As he advanced it backed slowly away for a few feet; but then it stood its ground, and thick arms rose from its sides and began a loud drumming on its chest, while from its throat came a deep roar of defiance. Only one creature in the world beat its chest and made a sound like that. The shape was a gorilla! And a huge one! Gnut kept advancing, and when close, charged forward and grappled with the beast. Cliff would not have guessed that Gnut could move so fast. In the darkness he could not see the details of what happened; all he knew was that the two great shapes, the titanic metal Gnut and the squat but terrifically strong gorilla, merged for a moment with silence on the robot's part and terrible, deep, indescribable roars on the other's; then the two separated, and it was as if the gorilla had been flung back and away. The animal at once rose to its full height and roared deafeningly. Gnut advanced. They closed again, and the separation of before was repeated. The robot continued inexorably, and now the gorilla began to fall back down the building. Suddenly the beast darted at a manlike shape against the wall, and with one rapid side movement dashed the fifth robot attendant to the floor and decapitated it. Tense with fear, Cliff crouched behind his own robot attendant. He thanked Heaven that Gnut was between him and the gorilla and was continuing his advance. The gorilla backed farther, darted suddenly at the next robot in the row, and with strength almost unbelievable picked it from its roots and hurled it at Gnut. With a sharp metallic clang, robot hit robot, and the one of Earth bounced off to one side and rolled to a stop. Cliff cursed himself for it afterward, but again he completely forgot the picture. The gorilla kept falling back down the building, demolishing with terrific bursts of rage every robot attendant that he passed and throwing the pieces at the implacable Gnut. Soon they arrived opposite the table, and Cliff now thanked his stars he had come away. There followed a brief silence. Cliff could not make out what was going on, but he imagined that the gorilla had at last reached the corner of the wing and was trapped. If he was, it was only for a moment. The silence was suddenly shattered by a terrific roar, and the thick, squat shape of the animal came bounding toward Cliff. He came all the way back and turned just between Cliff and the port of the ship. Cliff prayed frantically for Gnut to come back quickly, for there was now only the last remaining robot attendant between him and the madly dangerous brute. Out of the dimness Gnut did appear. The gorilla rose to its full height and again beat its chest and roared its challenge. And then occurred a curious thing. It fell on all fours and slowly rolled over on its side, as if weak or hurt. Then panting, making frightening noises, it forced itself again to its feet and faced the oncoming Gnut. As it waited, its eye was caught by the last robot attendant and perhaps Cliff, shrunk close behind it. With a surge of terrible destructive rage, the gorilla waddled sideward toward Cliff, but this time, even through his panic, he saw that the animal moved with difficulty, again apparently sick o. |
| 636 |
Of what unknown stuff were they made — those materials placed in his eye sockets by one branch of the race of man which all the science of his own could not even serve to disfunction? What was Gnut thinking? What could be the thoughts of a robot — a mechanism of metal poured out of man's clay crucibles? Was he angry at him? Cliff thought not. Gnut had had him, at his mercy — and had walked away. Dared he stay again? Cliff thought perhaps he did. He walked about the room, thinking it over. He felt sure Gnut would move again. A Mikton ray gun would protect him from another gorilla — or fifty of them. He did not yet have the real story. He had come back with two miserable architectural stills! He might have known from the first that he would stay. At dusk that night, armed with his camera and a small Mikton gun, he lay once more under the table of supplies in the laboratory and heard the metal doors of the wing clang to for the night. This time he would get the story — and the pictures. If only no guard was posted inside ! 4 Cliff listened hard for a long time for any sound which might tell him that a guard had been left, but the silence within the wing remained unbroken. He was thankful for that — but not quite completely. The gathering darkness and the realization that he was not irrevocably committed made the thought of a companion not altogether unpleasant. About an hour after it reached maximum darkness he took off his shoes, tied them together and slung them around his neck, down his back, and stole quietly down the passageway to where it opened into the exhibition area. All seemed as it had been the preceding night. Gnut looked an ominous, indistinct shadow at the far end of the room, his glowing red eyes again seemingly right on the spot from which Cliff peeped out. As on the previous night, but even more carefully, Cliff went down on his stomach in the angle of the wall and slowly snaked across to the low platform on which stood the table. Once in its shelter, he fixed his shoes so that they straddled one shoulder, and brought his camera and gun holster around, ready on his breast. This time, he told himself, he would get pictures. He settled down to wait, keeping Gnut, in full sight every minute. His vision reached maximum adjustment to the darkness. Eventually he began to feel lonely and a little afraid. Gnut's red-glowing eyes were getting on his nerves; he had to keep assuring himself that the robot would not harm him. He had little doubt but that he himself was being watched. Hours slowly passed. From time to time he heard slight noises at the entrance, on the outside — a guard, perhaps, or maybe curious visitors. At about nine o'clock he saw Gnut move. First his head alone; it turned so that the eyes burned stronger in the direction where Cliff lay. For a moment that was all; then the dark metal form stirred slightly and began moving forward — straight toward him. Cliff had thought he would not be afraid — much — but now his heart stood still. What would happen this time? With amazing silence, Gnut drew nearer, until he towered an ominous shadow over the spot where Cliff lay. For a long time his red eyes burned down on the prone man. Cliff trembled all over; this was worse than the first time. Without having planned it, he found himself speaking to the creature. "You would not hurt me," he pleaded. "I was only curious to see what's going on. It's my job. Can you understand me? I would not harm or bother you. I... I couldn't if I wanted to! |
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Let me know." Cliff thanked him and hurried out and phoned his syndicate the tip — free — then told them Sanders' proposal. Ten minutes later they called him back, said all was arranged, and told him to catch some sleep. They would cover the pouring. With light heart, Cliff hurried over to the museum. The place was surrounded by thousands of the curious, held far back by a strong cordon of police. For once he could not get through; he was recognized, and the police were still sore. But he did not care much; he suddenly felt very tired and needed that nap. He went back to his hotel, left a call, and went to bed. He had been asleep only a few minutes when his phone rang. Eyes shut, he answered it. It was one of the boys at the syndicate, with peculiar news. Stillwell had just reported, very much alive — the real Stillwell. The two dead ones were some kind of copies; he couldn't imagine how to explain them. He had no brothers. For a moment Cliff came fully awake, then he went back to bed. Nothing was fantastic anymore. 6 At four o'clock, much refreshed and with an infrared viewing magnifier slung over his shoulder, Cliff passed through the cordon and entered the door of the wing. He had been expected and there was no trouble. As his eyes fell on Gnut, an odd feeling went through him, and for some obscure reason he was almost sorry for the giant robot. Gnut stood exactly as he had always stood, the right foot advanced a little, and the same brooding expression on his face; but now there was something more. He was solidly encased in a huge block of transparent glasstex. From the floor on which he stood to the top of his full eight feet, and from there on up for an equal distance, and for about eight feet to the left, right, back, and front, he was immured in a water-clear prison which confined every inch of his surface and would prevent the slightest twitch of even his amazing muscles. It was absurd, no doubt, to feel sorry for a robot, a manmade mechanism, but Cliff had come to think of him as being really alive, as a human is alive. He showed purpose and will; he performed complicated and resourceful acts; his face had twice clearly shown the emotion of sadness, and several times what appeared to be deep thought; he had been ruthless with the gorilla, and gentle with the mockingbird and the other two bodies, and he had twice refrained from crushing Cliff when there seemed every reason that he might. Cliff did not doubt for a minute that he was still alive, whatever "alive" might mean. But outside were waiting the radio and television men; he had work to do. He turned and went to them and all got busy. An hour later Cliff sat alone about fifteen feet above the ground in a big tree which, located just across the walk from the building, commanded through a window a clear view of the upper part of Gnut's body. Strapped to the limbs about him were three instruments — his infrared viewing magnifier, a radio mike, and an infrared television eye with sound pickup. The first, the viewing magnifier, would allow him to see in the dark with his own eyes, as if by daylight, a magnified image of the robot, and the others would pick up any sights and sounds, including his own remarks, and transmit them to the several broadcast studios which would fling them millions of miles in all directions through space. Never before had a picture man had such an important assignment, probably — certainly not one who forgot to take pictures. But now that was forgotten, and Cliff was quite proud, and ready. |
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Far back in a great circle stood a multitude of the curious — and the fearful. Would the plastic glasstex hold Gnut? If it did not, would he come out thirsting for revenge? Would unimaginable beings come out of the traveler and release him, and perhaps exact revenge? Millions at their receivers were jittery; those in the distance hoped nothing awful would happen, yet they hoped something would, and they were prepared to run. In carefully selected spots not far from Cliff on all sides were mobile ray batteries manned by army units, and in a hollow in back of him, well to his right, there was stationed a huge tank with a large gun. Every weapon was trained on the door of the wing. A row of smaller, faster tanks stood ready fifty yards directly north. Their ray projectors were aimed at the door, but not their guns. The grounds about the building contained only one spot — the hollow where the great tank was — where, by close calculation, a shell directed at the doorway would not cause damage and loss of life to some part of the sprawling capital. Dusk fell; out streamed the last of the army officers, politicians, and other privileged ones; the great metal doors of the wing clanged to and were locked for the night. Soon Cliff was alone, except for the watchers at their weapons scattered around him. Hours passed. The moon came out. From time to time Cliff reported to the studio crew that all was quiet. His unaided eyes could now see nothing of Gnut but the two faint red points of his eyes, but through the magnifier he stood out as clearly as if in daylight from an apparent distance of only ten feet. Except for his eyes, there was no evidence that he was anything but dead and unfunctionable metal. Another hour passed. Now and again Cliff thumbed the levels of his tiny radio-television watch — only a few seconds at a time because of its limited battery. The air was full of Gnut and his own face and his own name, and once the tiny screen showed the tree in which he was then sitting and even, minutely, himself. Powerful infrared long-distance television pickups were even then focused on him from nearby points of vantage. It gave him a funny feeling. Then, suddenly, Cliff saw something and quickly bent his eye to the viewing magnifier. Gnut's eyes were moving; at least the intensity of the light emanating from them varied. It was as if two tiny red flashlights were turned from side to side, their beams at each motion crossing Cliffs eyes. Thrilling, Cliff signaled the studios, cut in his pickups, and described the phenomenon. Millions resonated to the excitement in his voice. Could Gnut conceivably break out of that terrible prison ? Minutes passed, the eye flashes continued, but Cliff could discern no movement or attempted movement of the robot's body. In brief snatches he described what he saw. Gnut was clearly alive; there could be no doubt he was straining against the transparent prison in which he had at last been locked fast; but unless he could crack it, no motion should show. Cliff took his eyes from the magnifier — and started. His unaided eye, looking at Gnut shrouded in darkness, saw an astonishing thing not yet visible through his instrument. A faint red glow was spreading over the robot's body. With trembling fingers he readjusted the lens of the television eye, but even as he did so the glow grew in intensity. It looked as if Gnut's body were being heated to incandescence! He described it in excited fragments, for it took most of his attention to keep correcting the lens. |
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It came to a stop about fifty yards off, and few people ventured nearer. Gnut paid them no attention, and he no more noticed his burden than he might a fly. His neck and shoulders made Cliff a seat hard as steel, but with the difference that their underlying muscles with each movement flexed, just as would those of a human being. To Cliff, this metal musculature became a vivid wonder. Straight as the flight of a bee, over paths, across lawns and through thin rows of trees Gnut bore the young man, the roar of thousands of people following close. Above droned copters and darting planes, among them police cars with their nerve-shattering sirens. Just ahead lay the still waters of the Tidal Basin, and in its midst the simple marble tomb of the slain ambassador, Klaatu, gleaming black and cold in the light of the dozen searchlights always trained on it at night. Was this a rendezvous with the dead? Without an instant's hesitation, Gnut strode down the bank and entered the water. It rose to his knees, then above his waist, until Cliff's feet were under. Straight through the dark waters for the tomb of Klaatu the robot made his inevitable way. The dark square mass of gleaming marble rose higher as they neared it. Gnut's body began emerging from the water as the bottom shelved upward, until his dripping feet took the first of the rising pyramid of steps. In a moment they were at the top, on the narrow platform in the middle of which rested the simple oblong tomb. Stark in the blinding searchlights, the giant robot walked once around it, then, bending, he braced himself and gave a mighty push against the top. The marble cracked; the thick cover slipped askew and broke with a loud noise on the far side. Gnut went to his knees and looked within, bringing Cliff well up over the edge. Inside, in sharp shadow against the converging light beams, lay a transparent plastic coffin, thick-walled and sealed against the centuries, and containing all that was mortal of Klaatu, unspoken visitor from the great Unknown. He lay as if asleep, on his face the look of godlike nobility that had caused some of the ignorant to believe him divine. He wore the robe he had arrived in. There were no faded flowers, no jewelry, no ornaments; they would have seemed profane. At the foot of the coffin lay the small sealed box, also of transparent plastic, which contained all of Earth's records of his visit — a description of the events attending his arrival, pictures of Gnut and the traveler, and the little roll of sight-and-sound film which had caught for all time his few brief motions and words. Cliff sat very still, wishing he could see the face of the robot. Gnut, too, did not move from his position of reverent contemplation — not for a long time. There on the brilliantly lighted pyramid, under the eyes of a fearful, tumultuous multitude, Gnut paid final respect to his beautiful and adored master. Suddenly, then, it was over. Gnut reached out and took the little box of records, rose to his feet and started down the steps. Back through the water, straight back to the building, across lawns and paths as before, he made his irresistible way. Before him the chaotic ring of people melted away, behind they followed as close as they dared, trampling each other in their efforts to keep him in sight. There are no television records of his return. Every pickup was damaged on the way to the tomb. As they drew near the building, Cliff saw that the tank's projectile had made a hole twenty feet wide extending from the roof to the ground. |
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2. Eugenia Insigna had grown middle-aged during the trip to Nemesis, and in the course of the long stay after arrival. Over the years she had periodically warned herself: This is for life; and for our children's lives into the unseen future. The thought always weighed her down. Why? She had known this as the inevitable consequence of what they had done from the moment Rotor had left the Solar System. Everyone on Rotor — volunteers all — had known it. Those who had not had the heart for eternal separation had left Rotor before takeoff, and among those who had left was — Eugenia did not finish that thought. It often came, and she tried never to finish it. Now they were here on Rotor, but was Rotor "home"? It was home for Marlene; she had never known anything else. But for herself, for Eugenia? Home was Earth and Moon and Sun and Mars and all the worlds that had accompanied humanity through its history and prehistory. They had accompanied life as long as there had been life. The thought that "home" was not here on Rotor clung to her even now. But, then, she had spent the first twenty-eight years of her life in the Solar System and she had done graduate work on Earth itself in her twenty-first to twenty-third years. Odd how the thought of Earth periodically came to her and lingered. She hadn't liked Earth. She hadn't liked its crowds, its poor organization, its combination of anarchy in the important things and governmental force in the little things. She hadn't liked its assaults of bad weather, its scars over the land, its wasteful ocean. She had returned to Rotor with an overwhelming gratitude, and with a new husband to whom she had tried to sell her dear little turning world — to make its orderly comfort as pleasant to him as it was to her, who had been born into it. But he had only been conscious of its smallness. "You run out of it in six months," he had said. She herself hadn't held his interest for much longer than that. Oh well It would work itself out. Not for her. Eugenia Insigna was lost forever between worlds. But for the children. Eugenia had been born to Rotor and could live without Earth. Marlene had been born — or almost born — to Rotor alone and could live without the Solar System, except for the vague feeling that she had originated there. Her children would not know even that, and would not care. To them, Earth and the Solar System would be a matter of myth, and Erythro would have become a rapidly developing world. She hoped so. Marlene had this odd fixation on Erythro already, though it had only developed in the last few months and might leave just as quickly as it had come. Altogether, it would be the height of ingratitude to complain. No one could possibly have imagined a habitable world in orbit about Nemesis. The conditions that created habitability were remarkable. Estimate those probabilities and throw in the nearness of Nemesis to the Solar System and you would have to deny that it could possibly have happened. She turned to the day's reports, which the computer was waiting, with the infinite patience of its tribe, to give her. Yet before she could ask, her receptionist signaled and a soft voice came from the small button-speaker pinned to the left shoulder of her garment, "Aurinel Pampas wishes to see you. He has no appointment." Insigna grimaced, then remembered that she had sent him after Marlene. She said, "Let him come in." She cast a quick look at the mirror. She could see that her appearance was reasonable. |
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But then she was inexperienced and lacked the wisdom to have kept her abilities hidden until she could use them in a truly devastating fashion. But she would only grow more dangerous as she grew older, so she would have to be stopped now. And she would be stopped by that other monster, Erythro. Pitt gave himself credit. He had recognized Erythro as a monster from the start. It had its own expression to read — the reflection of the bloody light of its star, an expression that was ominous and menacing. When they had reached the asteroid belt, a hundred million miles outside the orbit in which Megas and Erythro circled Nemesis, Pitt had said, with full confidence, "This is the place." He had expected no difficulty. The rational view admitted nothing else. Among the asteroids, Nemesis cast little heat and light. The loss of natural heat and light was nothing, since Rotor had fully functional micro-fusion. In fact, it was actually a benefit. With its red light dimmed to almost nothing, it did not weigh down the heart, darken the mind, and shiver the soul. Then, too, a base in the asteroidal belt would place them in an area where the gravitational effects of Nemesis and Megas would be weak, and where maneuverability would, in consequence, be less energy-expensive. The asteroids would be more easily mined, and considering the feeble light of Nemesis, there should be plenty of volatiles on those little bodies. Ideal! And yet the people of Rotor made it clear that, by an overwhelming majority, they wanted to move the Settlement into orbit around Erythro. Pitt labored to point out that they would be bathed in angrily depressing red light, that they would be held firmly in the grip of Megas as well as Erythro, and that they might still have to go to the asteroids for raw materials. Pitt discussed it angrily with Tambor Brossen, the ex-Commissioner, to whose post he had succeeded. The rather weary Brossen openly enjoyed his new role as elder statesman far more than he had ever enjoyed being Commissioner. (He had been known to say that he lacked Pitt's pleasure in making decisions.) Brossen had laughed at Pitt's concern over the matter of Settlement location — not outright, to be sure, but gently, with his eyes. He said, "There's no need, Janus, to feel that you must educate Rotor into absolute agreement with you. Let the Settlement have its own way once in a while; they will be all the readier to let you have your way at other times. If they want to orbit Erythro, let them orbit Erythro." "But it makes no sense, Tambor. Don't you understand that?" "Of course I understand that. I also understand that Rotor has been in orbit around a sizable world all its existence. That's what seems right to Rotorians and that's what they want to have again." "We were in orbit about Earth. Erythro is not Earth; it is nothing like Earth." "It is a world and is about the same size as Earth. It has land and sea. It has an atmosphere with oxygen in it. We could travel thousands of light-years before finding a world this much like Earth. I tell you again. Let the people have it." Pitt had followed Brossen's advice, though something within him muttered dissension every step of the way. New Rotor was also in orbit around Erythro and so were the two others in process of construction. Of course, Settlements in the asteroid belt were on the drawing boards, but the public clearly lacked eagerness to put them through. Of all that had happened since the discovery of Nemesis, it was this orbiting of Erythro that Pitt considered Rotor's greatest mistake. |
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Something evil, as she says? But what? She said evenly, "We'll come back." He said, "With the news, I hope, that Nemesis will prove harmless — five thousand years from now." "That's for the facts to decide," she said grimly, then left. 24. It was strange, Eugenia Insigna thought. She was over two light-years from the spot in space where she was born and yet she had only been on a spaceship twice and then for the shortest possible journeys — from Rotor to Earth and then back to Rotor again. She still had no great urge to travel in space. It was Marlene who was the driving force behind this trip. It was she who, independently, had seen Pitt and persuaded him to succumb to her strange form of blackmail. And it was she who was truly excited, with this odd compulsion of hers to visit Erythro. Insigna could not understand that compulsion and viewed it as another part of her daughter's unique mental and emotional complexity. Still, whenever Insigna quailed at the thought of leaving safe, small, comfortable Rotor for the vast empty world of Erythro, so strange and menacing, and fully six hundred and fifty thousand kilometers away (nearly twice as far away as Rotor had been from Earth), it was Marlene's excitement that reinvigorated her. The ship that would take them to Erythro was neither graceful nor beautiful. It was serviceable. It was one of a small fleet of rockets that acted as ferries, blasting up from the stodgy gravitational pull of Erythro, or coming down without daring to give in to it by even a trifle, and, either way, working one's way through the cushiony, windy, unpredictability of an untamed atmosphere. Insigna didn't think the trip would be pleasurable. Through most of it they would be weightless and two solid days of weightlessness would, no doubt, be tedious. Marlene's voice broke into her reverie. "Come on, Mother, they're waiting for us. The baggage is all checked and everything." Insigna moved forward. Her last uneasy thought as she passed through the airlock was — predictably — But why was Janus Pitt so willing to let us go? 25. Siever Genarr ruled a world as large as Earth. Or, to be more accurate perhaps, he ruled, directly, a domed region that covered nearly three square kilometers and was slowly growing. The rest of the world, however, nearly five hundred million square kilometers of land and sea, was unoccupied by human beings. It was also occupied by no other living things above the microscopic scale. So if a world is considered as being ruled by the multicellular life-forms that occupied it, the hundreds who lived and worked in the domed region were the rulers, and Siever Genarr ruled over them. Genarr was not a large man, but his strong features gave him an impressive look. When he was young, this had made him look older than his age — but that had evened itself out now that he was nearly fifty. His nose was long and his eyes somewhat pouchy. His hair was in the first stages of grizzle. His voice, however, was a musical and resonant baritone. (He had once thought of the stage as a career, but his appearance doomed him to occasional character roles, and his talents as an administrator took precedence.) It was those talents — partly — that had kept him in the Erythro Dome for ten years, watching it grow from an uncertain three-room structure to the expansive mining and research station it had now become. The Dome had its disadvantages. Few people remained long. There were shifts, since almost all those who came there considered themselves in exile and wished, more or less constantly, to return to Rotor. |
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And most found the pinkish light of Nemesis either threatening or gloomy, even though the light inside the Dome was every bit as bright and homelike as that on Rotor. It had its advantages, too. Genarr was removed from the hurly-burly of Rotorian politics, which seemed more ingrown and meaningless each year. Even more important, he was removed from Janus Pitt, whose views he generally — and uselessly — opposed. Pitt had been strenuously opposed to any settlement on Erythro from the start — even to Rotor orbiting around Erythro. Here, at least, Pitt had been defeated by overwhelming public opinion, but he saw to it that the Dome was generally starved for funds and that its growth was slowed. If Genarr had not successfully developed the Dome as a source of water for Rotor — far cheaper than it could be obtained from the asteroids — Pitt might have crushed it. In general, though, Pitt's principle of ignoring the Dome's existence as far as possible meant that he rarely attempted to interfere with Genarr's administrative procedures — which suited Genarr right down to Erythro's damp soil. It came as a surprise to him, then, that Pitt should have bothered to inform him personally of the arrival of a pair of newcomers, instead of allowing the information to show up in the routine paperwork. Pitt had, indeed, discussed the matter in detail, in his usual clipped and arbitrary manner that invited no discussion, or even comment, and the conversation had been shielded, too. It came as an even greater surprise that one of the people coming to Erythro was Eugenia Insigna. Once, years before the Leaving, they had been friends, but then, after their happy college days (Genarr remembered them wistfully as rather romantic), Eugenia had gone to Earth for her graduate studies and had returned to Rotor with an Earthman. Genarr had scarcely seen her — except once or twice, at a distance — since she had married Crile Fisher. And when she and Fisher had separated, just before the Leaving, Genarr had had work of his own and so had she — and it never occurred to either to renew old ties. Genarr had, perhaps, thought of it occasionally, but Eugenia was quite apparently sunk in sorrow, with an infant daughter to raise, and he was reluctant to intrude. Then he was sent to Erythro and that ended even the possibility of renewal. He had periodic vacation time on Rotor, but he was never at ease there any longer. Some old Rotorian friendships remained, but only in lukewarm fashion. Now Eugenia was coming with her daughter. Genarr, at the moment, didn't remember the girl's name — if he had ever known it. Certainly, he had never seen her. The daughter should be fifteen by now, and he wondered, with a queer little interior tremble, if she was beginning to look anything like the young Eugenia had. Genarr looked out his office window with an almost surreptitious air. He had grown so used to Erythro Dome that he no longer saw it with a critical eye. It was the home of working people of both sexes — adults, no children. Shift workers, signed up for a period of weeks or possibly months, sometimes returning eventually for another shift, sometimes not. Except for himself and four others who, for one reason or another, had learned to prefer the Dome, there were no permanents. There was no one to take pride in it as an ordinary abode. It was kept clean and orderly as a matter of necessity, but there was also an air of artificiality about it. It was too much a matter of lines and arcs, planes and circles. |
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This creates a strain — the amount of strain depending on the size of the object, its physical makeup, its speed of transition, and so on. Even for an object the size of Rotor, the danger involved in a single transition — or a dozen, for that matter — is so small that it can reasonably be ignored. "When the Superluminal will travel, superluminously, to the Neighbor Star, we are liable to make a dozen transitions, or possibly only as few as two. The flight will be a safe one. In a flight with hyper-assistance only, on the other hand, there may be a million transitions in the course of the same trip, you see, and the chances of fatal strain mount up." Fisher looked appalled. "Is the chance of fatal strain certain?" "No, nothing is certain. It's a statistical matter. A ship might undergo a million transitions — or a billion — with nothing happening. It might be destroyed, on the other hand, on the very first transition. The chances, however, increase rapidly with the number of transitions. "I suspect, then, that Rotor embarked on its trip understanding very little about the dangers of transition. Had they known more, they would never have left. There is a very good chance, then, that they experienced some sort of strain that might have been weak enough to allow them to 'limp' to the Neighbor Star or one that was strong enough to blow them completely out of existence. Therefore, we might find a hulk, or we might find nothing at all." "Or we might find a Settlement that has survived," said Fisher rebelliously. "Admitted," said Wendel. "Or we might ourselves be strained against the odds, be destroyed, and, for that reason, find nothing. I ask you not to be prepared for certainties but for probabilities. And remember that those who think about the matter, without some accurate knowledge of hyperspatial theory, are not likely to come to reasonable conclusions." Fisher fell into a profound and clearly depressed silence, while Wendel watched him uneasily. 62. Tessa Wendel found Station Four a weird environment. It was as though someone had built a small Settlement, but fitted it out to be a combination of nothing more than a laboratory, an observatory, and a launching platform. It had no farms, no homes, none of the appurtenances of a Settlement, however small. It was not even equipped with a spin that would set up an adequate pseudo-gravitational field. It was, in fact, nothing but a spaceship with acromegaly. It was clear that, although it could be permanently occupied, provided there was a continuous drizzle of food, air, and water supplies (there was some recycling, but it wasn't efficient), no single individual could remain there for very long. Crile Fisher made the wry comment that Station Four was like an old-fashioned space station from the early days of the Space Age that had unaccountably survived into the twenty-third century. In one respect, though, it was unique. It presented a panoramic view of the Earth-Moon system. From the Settlements that orbited Earth, the two bodies could rarely be seen in their true relationship. From Station Four, however, Earth and Moon were never more than fifteen degrees apart, and as Station Four revolved around the center of gravity of that system (roughly equivalent to revolving about the Earth), the changing pattern of the two worlds, both in position and phase, and the changing size of the Moon (depending on whether it was on the Station's own side of Earth, or on the opposite side) was a never-ending wonder. |
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Afraid of space, clearly degenerate already, and sinking farther into slime and misery as a thousand years passed and the doom of Nemesis became apparent, what would they do? They could not undertake long trips. They were Earthpeople. Surfacebound. They would have to wait for Nemesis to get reasonably close. They could not hope to go anywhere else. Pitt had the vision of a ramshackle world trying to find security in the more tightly held system of Nemesis, trying to find refuge in a star with a system built tightly enough together to hold in place while it was destroying that of the Sun it passed. It was a terrible scenario, and yet inevitable. Why could not Nemesis have been receding from the Sun? How everything would be changed. The discovery of Nemesis would have become somewhat less likely with time and, if the discovery came to pass, Nemesis would become ever less desirable — and less possible — as a place of refuge. If it were receding, Earth would not even need a refuge. But that was not the way it was. The Earthmen would come; ragtag degenerating Earthmen of every variety of makeshift and abnormal culture, flooding in. What could the Rotorians do but destroy them while they were still in space? But would they have a Janus Pitt to show them that there was no choice but that? Would they have Janus Pitts, between now and then, to make sure that Rotor had the weapons and the resolution to prepare for this and to do it when the time came? But the computer's analysis was, after all, a deceitfully optimistic one. The discovery of N emesis by the Solar System must come about within a thousand years, said the computer. But how much within? What if the discovery came tomorrow? What if it had come three years ago? Might some Settlement, groping for the nearest star, knowing nothing useful about farther ones, be following in Rotor's trail now? Each day, Pitt woke up wondering: Is this the day? Why was this misery reserved for him? Why did everyone else sleep quietly in the lap of eternity, while only he himself was left to deal each day with the possibility of a kind of doom? He had done something about it, of course. He had set up a Scanning Service throughout the asteroid belt, a body whose function it was to supervise the automated receptors that constantly swept the sky, and to detect at as great a distance as possible the copious wasteenergy disposal of an approaching Settlement. It had taken some time to set it all up properly, but for a dozen years now, every scrap of dubious information had been followed up, and, every once in a while, something seemed sufficiently questionable to be referred to Pitt. And every time it happened, it set off the clanging of an alarm bell in Pitt's head. It turned out always to be nothing — so far — and the initial relief was always followed by a kind of rage against the Scanners. If anything was uncertain, they washed their hands of it, let it go, turned it over to Pitt. Let him deal with it, let him suffer, let him make the hard decisions. It was at this point that Pitt's self-pity became lachrymose, and he would begin to stir uneasily at the possibility that he might be showing weakness. There was this one, for instance. Pitt fingered the report that his computer had uncoded, and that had inspired this mental self-pitying survey of his own continuous, unbearable, and under-appreciated service to the Rotorian people. This was the first report that had been referred to him in four months, and it seemed to him that it was of minimal importance. |
| 646 |
How odd, thought Marlene. This giant life-form must never, before the coming of Rotor, have known that anything live existed other than itself. Her questions and sensations did not have to exist entirely in her mind. Erythro would rise before her sometimes, like thin gray smoke, consolidating into a wraithlike human figure wavering at the edges. There was always, about it, a flowing feeling. She could not actually see that, but she sensed, beyond doubt, that millions of invisible cells were leaving each second and immediately being replaced by others. No one prokaryote cell could exist for long out of its water film, so that each was only evanescently part of the figure, but the figure itself was as permanent as it wished to be, and never lost its identity. Erythro did not take Aurinel's form again. It had gathered, without being told, that that was disturbing. Its appearance was neutral now, changing slightly with the vagaries of Marlene's own thought. Erythro could follow the delicate changes of her mind pattern far better, she decided, than she herself could, and the figure adjusted to that, looking more like some figure in her mind's eye at one moment, and then as she tried to focus on it and identify it, it would shift gently into something else. Occasionally, she could catch glimpses: the curve of her mother's cheek, Uncle Siever's strong nose, bits of the girls and boys she had met at school. It was an interactive symphony. It was not so much a conversation between them as a mental ballet she could not describe, something that was infinitely soothing, infinite in variety — partly changing appearance — partly changing voice — partly changing thought. It was a conversation in so many dimensions that the possibility of going back to communication that consisted only of speech left her feeling flat, lifeless. Her gift of sensing by body language flowered into something she had never imagined earlier. Thoughts could be exchanged far more swiftly — and deeply — than by the coarse crudeness of speech. Erythro explained — filled her, rather — with the shock of encountering other minds. Minds. Plural. One more might have been grasped easily. Another world. Another mind. But to encounter many minds, crowding on each other, each different, overlapping in small space. Unthinkable. The thoughts that permeated Marlene's mind as Erythro expressed itself could be expressed only distantly and unsatisfactorily in words. Behind those words, overflowing and drowning them, were the emotions, the feelings, the neuronic vibrations that shattered Erythro into a rearrangement of concepts. It had experimented with the minds — felt them. Not felt as human beings would mean "felt," but something else entirely that could be approached very distantly by that human word and concept. And some of the minds crumpled, decayed, became unpleasant. Erythro ceased to feel minds at random, but sought out minds that would withstand the contact. "And you found me?" said Marlene. "I found you." "But why? Why did you look for me?" she asked eagerly. The figure wavered and turned smokier. "Just to find you." It was no answer. "Why do you want me to be with you?" The figure started to fade and the thought was a fugitive one. "Just to be with me." And it was gone. Only its image was gone. Marlene felt its protection still, its warm enclosure. But why had it disappeared? Had she displeased it with her questions? She heard a sound. On an empty world it is possible to catalogue the sounds briefly, for there aren't many. |
| 647 |
Andrew Harlan stepped into the kettle. Its sides were perfectly round and it fit snugly inside a vertical shaft composed of widely spaced rods that shimmered into an unseeable haze six feet above Harlan's head. Harlan set the controls and moved the smoothly working starting lever. The kettle did not move. Harlan did not expect it to. He expected no movement; neither up nor down, left nor right, forth nor back. Yet the spaces between the rods had melted into a gray blankness which was solid to the touch, though nonetheless immaterial for all that. And there was the little stir in his stomach, the faint (psychosomatic?) touch of dizziness, that told him that all the kettle contained, including himself, was rushing upwhen through Eternity. He had boarded the kettle in the 575th Century, the base of operations assigned him two years earlier. At the time the 575th had been the farthest upwhen he had ever traveled. Now he was moving upwhen to the 2456th Century. Under ordinary circumstances he might have felt a little lost at the prospect. His native Century was in the far downwhen, the 95th Century, to be exact. The 95th was a Century stiffly restrictive of atomic power, faintly rustic, fond of natural wood as a structural material, exporters of certain types of distilled potables to nearly everywhen and importers of clover seed. Although Harlan had not been in the 95th since he entered special training and became a Cub at the age of fifteen, there was always that feeling of loss when one moved outwhen from "home." At the 2456th he would be nearly two hundred forty millennia from his birthwhen and that is a sizable distance even for a hardened Eternal. Under ordinary circumstances all this would be so. But right now Harlan was in poor mood to think of anything but the fact that his documents were heavy in his pocket and his plan heavy on his heart. He was a little frightened, a little tense, a little confused. It was his hands acting by themselves that brought the kettle to the proper halt at the proper Century. Strange that a Technician should feel tense or nervous about anything. What was it that Educator Yarrow had once said: "Above all, a Technician must be dispassionate. The Reality Change he initiates may affect the lives of as many as fifty billion people. A million or more of these may be so drastically affected as to be considered new individuals. Under these conditions, an emotional make-up is a distinct handicap." Harlan put the memory of his teacher's dry voice out of his mind with an almost savage shake of his head. In those days he had never imagined that he himself would have the peculiar talent for that very position. But emotion had come upon him after all. Not for fifty billion people. What in Time did he care for fifty billion people? There was just one. One person. He became aware that the kettle was stationary and with the merest pause to pull his thoughts together, put himself into the cold, impersonal frame of mind a Technician must have, he stepped out. The kettle he left, of course, was not the same as the one he had boarded, in the sense that it was not composed of the same atoms. He did not worry about that any more than any Eternal would. To concern oneself with the mystique of Time-travel, rather than with the simple fact of it, was the mark of the Cub and newcomer to Eternity. He paused again at the infinitely thin curtain of non-Space and nonTime which separated him from Eternity in one way and from ordinary Time in another. |
| 648 |
School done, Cubhood over, he was standing with the five who completed training with him, hands clasped in the small of his back, legs a trifle apart, eyes front, listening. Educator Yarrow was at a desk talking to them. Harlan could remember Yarrow well: a small, intense man, with ruddy hair in disarray, freckled forearms, and a look of loss in his eyes. (It wasn't uncommon, this look of loss in the eyes of an Eternal — the loss of home and roots, the unadmitted and unadmittable longing for the one Century he could never see.) Harlan could not remember Yarrow's exact words, of course, but the substance of it remained sharp. Yarrow said, in substance, "You will be Observers now. It isn't a highly regarded position. Specialists look upon it as a boy's job. Maybe you Eternals" (he deliberately paused after that word to give each man a chance to straighten his back and brighten at the glory of it) "think so too. If so, you are fools who don't deserve to be Observers. "The Computers would have no Computing to do, Life-Plotters no lives to Plot, Sociologists no societies to profile; none of the Specialists would have anything to do, if it weren't for the Observer. I know you've heard this said before, but I want you to be very firm and clear in your mind about it. "It will be you youngsters who will go out into Time, under the most strenuous conditions, to bring back facts. Cold, objective facts uncolored by your own opinions and likings, you understand. Facts accurate enough to be fed into Computing machines. Facts definite enough to make the social equations stand up. Facts honest enough to form a basis for Reality Changes. "And remember this, too. Your period as Observer is not something to get through with as quickly and as unobtrusively as possible. It is as an Observer that you will make your mark. Not what you did in school, but what you will do as an Observer will determine your Specialty and how high you will rise in it. This will be your post-graduate course, Eternals, and failure in it, even small failure, will put you into Maintenance no matter how brilliant your potentialities now seem. That is all." He shook hands with each of them, and Harlan, grave, dedicated, proud in his belief that the privileges of being an Eternal contained its greatest privilege in the assumption of responsibility for the happiness of all the human beings who were or ever would be within the reach of Eternity, was deep in self-awe. Harlan's first assignments were small and under close direction, but he sharpened his ability on the honing strap of experience in a dozen Centuries through a dozen Reality Changes. In his fifth year as Observer he was given a Senior's rating in the field and assigned to the 482nd. For the first time he would be working unsupervised, and knowledge of that fact robbed him of some of his self-assurance when he first reported to the Computer in charge of the Section. That was Assistant Computer Hobbe Finge, whose pursed, suspicious mouth and frowning eyes seemed ludicrous in such a face as his. He had a round button of a nose, two larger buttons of cheeks. He needed only a touch of red and a fringe of white hair to be converted into the picture of the Primitive myth of St. Nicholas. ( — or Santa Claus or Kriss Kringle. Harlan knew all three names. He doubted if one Eternal out of a hundred thousand had heard of any one of them. Harlan took a secret, shamefaced pride in this sort of arcane knowledge. From his earliest days in school he had ridden the hobbyhorse of Primitive history, and Educator Yarrow had encouraged it. |
| 649 |
Harlan had grown actually fond of those odd, perverted Centuries that lay, not only before the beginning of Eternity in the 27th, but even before the invention of the Temporal Field, itself, in the 24th. He had used old books and periodicals in his studies. He had even traveled far downwhen to the earliest Centuries of Eternity, when he could get permission, to consult better sources. For over fifteen years he had managed to collect a remarkable library of his own, almost all in print-on-paper. There was a volume by a man called H. G. Wells, another by a man named W. Shakespeare, some tattered histories. Best of all there was a complete set of bound volumes of a Primitive news weekly that took up inordinate space but that he could not, out of sentiment, bear to reduce to micro-film. Occasionally he would lose himself in a world where life was life and death, death; where a man made his decisions irrevocably; where evil could not be prevented, nor good promoted, and the Battle of Waterloo, having been lost, was really lost for good and all. There was even a scrap of poetry he treasured which stated that a moving finger having once written could never be lured back to unwrite. And then it was difficult, almost a shock, to return his thoughts to Eternity, and to a universe where Reality was something flexible and evanescent, something men such as himself could hold in the palms of their hands and shake into better shape.) The illusion of St. Nicholas shattered when Hobbe Finge spoke to him in a brisk, matter-of-fact way. "You can start in tomorrow with a routine screening of current. Reality. I want it good, thorough, and to the point. There will be xio slackness permitted. Your first spatio-temporal chart will be ready for you tomorrow morning. Got it?" "Yes, Computer," said Harlan. He decided as early as that that he and Assistant Computer Hobbe Finge would not get along, and he regretted it. The next morning Harlan got his chart in intricately punched patterns as they emerged from the Computaplex. He used a pocket decoder to translate them into Standard Intertemporal in his anxiety to make not even the smallest mistake at the very beginning. Of course, he had reached the stage where he could read the perforations direct. The chart told him where and when in the world of the 482nd Century he might go and where he might not; what he could do and what be could not; what he must avoid at all costs. His presence must impinge only upon those places and times where it would not endanger Reality. The 482nd was not a comfortable Century for him. It was not like his own austere and conformist homewhen. It was an era without ethics or principles, as he was accustomed to think of such. It was hedonistic, materialistic, more than a little matriarchal. It was the only era (he checked this in the records in the most painstaking way) in which ectogenic birth flourished and, at its peak, 40 per cent of its women gave eventual birth by merely contributing a fertilized ovum to the ovaria. Marriage was made and unmade by mutual consent and was not recognized legally as anything more than a personal agreement without binding force. Union for the sake of childbearing was, of course, carefully differentiated from the social functions of marriage and was arranged on purely eugenic principles. In a hundred ways Harlan thought the society sick and therefore hungered for a Reality Change. More than once it occurred to him that his own presence in the Century, as a man not of that time, could fork its history. |
| 650 |
Surely it was nothing else. 5 Timer Noys Lambent's estate was fairly isolated, yet within easy reach of one of the larger cities of the Century. Harlan knew that city well; he knew it better than any of its inhabitants could. In his exploratory Observations into this Reality he had visited every quarter of the city and every decade within the purview of the Section. He knew the city both in Space and Time. He could piece it together, view it as an organism, living and growing, with its catastrophes and recoveries, its gaieties and troubles. Now he was in a given week of Time in that city, in a moment of suspended animation of its slow life of steel and concrete. More than that, his preliminary explorations had centered themselves more and more closely about the "perioeci," the inhabitants who were the most important of the city, yet who lived outside the city, in room and relative isolation. The 482nd was one of the many Centuries in which wealth was unevenly distributed. The Sociologists had an equation for the phenomenon (which Harlan had seen in print, but which he understood only vaguely). It worked itself out for any given Century to three relationships, and for the 482nd those relationships stood near the limits of what could be permitted. Sociologists shook their heads over it and Harlan had heard one say at one time that any further deterioration with new Reality Changes would require "the closest Observation." Yet there was this to be said for unfavorable relationships in the wealth-distribution equation. It meant the existence of a leisure class and the development of an attractive way of life which, at its best, encouraged culture and grace. As long as the other end of the scale was not too badly off, as long as the leisure classes did not entirely forget their responsibilities while enjoying their privileges, as long as their culture took no obviously unhealthy turn, there was always the tendency in Eternity to forgive the departure from the ideal wealth-distribution pattern and to search for other, less attractive maladjustments. Against his will Harlan began to understand this. Ordinarily his overnight stays in Time involved hotels in the poorer sections, where a man might easily stay anonymous, where strangers were ignored, where one presence more or less was nothing and therefore did not cause the fabric of Reality to do more than tremble. When even that was unsafe, when there was a good chance that the trembling might pass the critical point and bring down a significant part of the card house of Reality, it was not unusual to have to sleep under a particular hedge in the countryside. And it was usual to survey various hedges to see which would be least disturbed by farmers, tramps, even stray dogs, during the night. But now Harlan, at the other end of the scale, slept in a bed with a surface of field-permeated matter, a peculiar welding of matter and energy that entered only the highest economic levels of this society. Throughout Time it was less common than pure matter but more common than pure energy. In any case it molded itself to his body as he lay down, firm when he lay still, yielding when he moved or turned. Reluctantly he confessed the attraction of such things, and he accepted the wisdom which caused each Section of Eternity to live on the median scale of its Century rather than at its most comfortable level. In that way it could maintain contact with the problems and "feel" of the Century, without succumbing to too close an identification with a sociological extreme. |
| 651 |
That moment steadied him. He grasped for it, but it was gone. The peppermint drink? Noys was still closer, her face not quite clear in his gaze. He could feel her hair against his cheek, the warm, light pressure of her breath. He ought to draw away, but — strangely, strangely — he found he did not want to. "If I were made an Eternal ..." she breathed, almost in his ear, though the words were scarcely heard above the beating of his heart. Her lips were moist and parted. "Wouldn't you like to?" He did not know what she meant, but suddenly he didn't care. He seemed in flames. He put out his arms clumsily, gropingly. She did not resist, but melted and coalesced with him. It all happened dreamily, as though it were happening to someone else. It wasn't nearly as repulsive as he had always imagined it must be. It came as a shock to him, a revelation, that it wasn't repulsive at all. Even afterward, when she leaned against him with her eyes all soft and smiling a little, he found he had to reach out and stroke her damp hair with slow and trembling delight. She was entirely different in his eyes now. She was not a woman, not an individual at all. She was suddenly an aspect of himself. She was, in a strange and unexpected way, a part of himself. The spatio-temporal chart said nothing of this, yet Harlan felt no guilt. It was only the thought of Finge that aroused strong emotion in Harlan's breast. And that wasn't guilt. Not at all. It was satisfaction, even triumph! In bed Harlan could not sleep. The lightheadedness had worn off now, but there was still the unusual fact that for the first time in his adult life a grown woman shared his bed. He could hear her soft breathing and in the ultra-dim glow to which the internal light of the walls and ceiling had been reduced he could see her body as the merest shadow next to his. He had only to move his hand to feel the warmth and softness of her flesh, and he dared not do that, lest he wake her out of whatever dreaming she might have. It was as though she were dreaming for the two of them, dreaming herself and himself and all that had happened, and as though her waking would drive it all from existence. It was a thought that seemed a piece of those other queer, unusual thoughts he had experienced just before ... Those had been strange thoughts, coming to him at a moment between sense and nonsense. He tried to recapture them and could not. Yet suddenly it was very important that he recapture them. For although he could not remember the details, he could remember that, for just an instant, he had understood something. He was not certain what that something was, but there had been the unearthly clarity of the half-asleep, when more than mortal eye and mind seems suddenly to come to life. His anxiety grew. Why couldn't he remember? So much had been in his grasp. For the moment even the sleeping girl beside him receded into the hinterland of his thoughts. He thought: If I follow the thread ... I was thinking of Reality and Eternity ... yes, and Mallansohn and the Cub! He stopped there. Why the Cub? Why Cooper? He hadn't thought of him. But if he hadn't, then why should he think of Brinsley Sheridan Cooper now? He frowned! What was the truth that connected all this? What was it he was trying to find? What made him so sure there was something to find? Harlan felt chilled, for with these questions a distant glow of that earlier illumination seemed to break upon the horizons of his mind and he almost knew. He held his breath, did not press for it. |
| 652 |
Let it come. Let it come. And in the quiet of that night, a night already so uniquely significant in his life, an explanation and interpretation of events came to him that at any saner, more normal time he would not have entertained for a moment. He let the thought bud and flower, let it grow until he could see it explain a hundred odd points that otherwise simply remained — odd. He would have to investigate this, check this, back in Eternity, but in his heart he was already convinced that he knew a terrible secret he was not meant to know. A secret that embraced all Eternity! 6 Life-Plotter A month of physiotime had passed since that night in the 482nd, when he grew acquainted with many things. Now, if one calculated by ordinary time, he was nearly 2000 Centuries in Noys Lambent's future, attempting by a mixture of bribery and cajolery to learn what lay in store for her in a new Reality. It was worse than unethical, but he was past caring. In the physiomonth just gone he had, in his own eyes, become a criminal. There was no way of glossing over that fact. He would be no more a criminal by compounding his crime and he had a great deal to gain by doing so. Now, as part of his felonious maneuvering (he made no effort to choose a milder phrase) he stood at the barrier before the 2456th. Entry into Time was much more complicated than mere passage between Eternity and the kettle shafts. In order to enter Time the coordinates fixing the desired region on Earth's surface had painstakingly to be adjusted and the desired moment of Time pin-pointed within the Century. Yet despite inner tension Harlan handled the controls with the ease and quick confidence of a man with much experience and a great talent. Harlan found himself in the engine room he had seen first on the viewing screen within Eternity. At this physiomoment Sociologist Voy would be sitting safely before that screen watching for the Technician's Touch that was to come. Harlan felt no hurry. The room would remain empty for the next 156 minutes. To be sure, the spatio-temporal chart allowed him only 110 minutes, leaving the remaining 46 as the customary 40 per cent "margin." Margin was there in case of necessity, but a Technician was not expected to have to use it. A "margin-eater" did not remain a Specialist long. Harlan, however, expected to use no more than 2 minutes of the iio. Wearing his wrist-borne field generator so that he was surrounded by an aura of physiotime (an effluvium, so to speak, of Eternity) and therefore protected from any of the effects of Reality Change, he took one step toward the wall, lifted a small container from its position on a shelf, and placed it in a carefully adjusted spot on the shelf below. Having done that, he re-entered Eternity in a way that seemed as prosaic to himself as passage through any door might be. Had there been a Timer watching, it would have seemed to him that Harlan had simply disappeared. The small container stayed where he put it. It played no immediate role in world history. A man's hand, hours later, reached for it but did not find it. A search revealed it half an hour later still, but in the interim a force-field had blanked out and a man's temper had been lost. A decision which would have remained unmade in the previous Reality was now made in anger. A meeting did not take place; a man who would have died lived a year longer, under other circumstances; another who would have lived died somewhat sooner. The ripples spread wider, reaching their maxium in the 2481st, which was twenty-five Centuries upwhen from the Touch. |
| 653 |
But why bother with deduction and reasoning? Observe this advertisement! The object of it is only to induce readers to buy the ball, but in so doing we are presented with an excellent close-range portrait of one, with a section cut into it to show its construction." Cooper, coming from an era in which advertisement was not as wildly proliferative as it was in the later Centuries of Primitive times, found all this difficult to appreciate. He said, "Isn't it rather disgusting the way these people blow their own horn? Who would be fool enough to believe a person's boastings about his own products? Would he admit defects? Is he likely to stop at any exaggeration?" Harlan, whose homewhen was middling fruitful in advertisement, raised tolerant eyebrows and merely said, "You'll have to accept that. It's their way and we never quarrel with the ways of any culture as long as it does not seriously harm mankind as a whole." But now Harlan's mind snapped back to his present situation and he was back in the present, staring at the loudmouthed, brassy advertisements in the news magazine. He asked himself in sudden excitement: Were the thoughts he had just experienced really irrelevant? Or was he tortuously finding a way out of the blackness and back to Noys? Advertisement! A device for forcing the unwilling into line. Did it matter to a ground-vehicle manufacturer whether a given individual felt an original or spontaneous desire for his product? If the prospect (that was the word) could be artificially persuaded or cajoled into feeling that desire and acting upon it, would that not be just as well? Then what did it matter if Noys loved him out of passion or out of calculation? Let them but be together long enough and she would grow to love him. He would make her love him and, in the end, love and not its motivation was what counted. He wished now he had read some of the novels out of Time that Finge had mentioned scornfully. Harlan's fists clenched at a sudden thought. If Noys had come to him, to Harlan, for immortality, it could only mean that she had not yet fulfilled the requirement for that gift. She could have made love to no Eternal previously. That meant that her relationship to Finge had been nothing more than that of secretary and employer. Otherwise what need would she have had for Harlan? Yet Finge surely must have tried — must have attempted... (Harlan could not complete the thought even in the secrecy of his own mind.) Finge could have proved the superstition's existence on his own person. Surely he could not have missed the thought with Noys an everpresent temptation. Then she must have refused him. He had had to use Harlan and Harlan had succeeded. It was for that reason that Finge had been driven into the jealous revenge of torturing Harlan with the knowledge that Noys's motivation had been a practical one, and that he could never have her. Yet Noys had refused Finge even with eternal life at stake and had accepted Harlan. She had that much of a choice and she had made it in Harlan's favor. 'So it wasn't calculation entirely. Emotion played a part. Harlan's thoughts were wild and jumbled, and grew more heated with every moment. He must have her, and now. Before any Reality Change. What was it Finge had said to him, jeering: The now does not last, even in Eternity. Doesn't it, though? Doesn't it? Harlan had known exactly what he must do. Finge's angry taunting had goaded him into a frame of mind where he was ready for crime and Finge's final sneer had, at least, inspired him with the nature of the deed he must commit. |
| 654 |
Now he wandered curiously among the other film-racks. For the first time he Observed (in the capital-O sense) the racks devoted to the 575th itself; its geographies, which varied little from Reality to Reality, its histories, which varied more, and its sociologies, which varied still more. These were not the books or reports written about the Century by Observing and Computing Eternals (with those he was familiar), but by the Timers themselves. There were the works of literature of the 575th and these stirred memories of tremendous arguments he had heard of concerning the values of alternate Changes. Would this masterpiece be altered or not? If so, how? How did past Changes affect works of art? For that matter, could there ever be general agreement about art? Could it ever be reduced to quantitative terms amenable to mechanical evaluation by the Computing machines? A Computer named August Sennor was Twissell's chief opponent in these matters. Harlan, stirred by Twissell's feverish denunciations of the man and his views, had read some of Sennor's papers and found them startling. Sennor asked publicly and, to Harlan, disconcertingly, whether a new Reality might not contain a personality within itself analogous to that of a man who had been withdrawn into Eternity in a previous Reality. He analyzed then the possibility of an Eternal meeting his analogue in Time, either with or without knowing it, and speculated on the results in each case. (That came fairly close to one of Eternity's most potent fears, and Harlan shivered and hastened uneasily through the discussion.) And, of course, he discussed at length the fate of literature and art in various types and classifications of Reality Changes. But Twissell would have none of the last. "If the values of art can't be computed," he would shout at Harlan, "then what's the use of arguing about it?" And Twissell's views, Harlan knew, were shared by the large majority of the Allwhen Council. Yet now Harlan stood at the shelves devoted to the novels of Eric Linkollew, usually described as the outstanding writer of the 575th, and wondered. He counted fifteen different "Complete Works" collections, each, undoubtedly, taken out of a different Reality. Each was somewhat different, he was sure. One set was noticeably smaller than all the others, for instance. A hundred Sociologists, he imagined, must have written analyses of the differences between the sets in terms of the sociological background of each Reality, and earned status thereby. Harlan passed on to the wing of the library which was devoted to the devices and instrumentation of the various 575th's. Many of these last, Harlan knew, had been eliminated in Time and remained intact, as a product of human ingenuity, only in Eternity. Man had to be protected from his own too flourishing technical mind. That more than anything else. Not a physioyear passed but that somewhere in Time nuclear technology veered too close to the dangerous and had to be steered away. He returned to the library proper and to the shelves on mathematics and mathematical histories. His fingers skimmed across individual titles, and after some thought he took half a dozen from the shelves and signed them out. Item Five: Noys. That was the really important part of the interlude, and all the idyllic part. In his off-hours, when Cooper was gone, when he might ordinarily have been eating in solitude, reading in solitude, sleeping in solitude, waiting in solitude for the next day — he took to the kettles. |
| 655 |
On the other hand, he had introduced a micro-Change (perhaps not so micro at that) by abstracting Noys. Heart pounding, he forced himself to turn. It seemed to him that the door behind him had just closed, moving the last millimeter required to bring it flush with the wall. He repressed the impulse to open that door, to search the house. With Noys's delicacies in tow he returned to Eternity and waited two full days for repercussions before venturing into the far upwhen. There were none and eventually he forgot the incident. But now, as he adjusted the controls to enter Time this one last time, he thought of it again. Or perhaps it was the thought of the Change, nearly upon him now, that preyed on him. Looking back on the moment later on, he felt that it was one or the other that caused him to misadjust the controls. He could think of no other excuse. The misadjustment was not immediately apparent. It pin-pointed the proper room and Harlan stepped directly into Noys's library. He had become enough of a decadent himself, now, to be not altogether repelled by the workmanship that went into the design of the film-cases. The lettering of the titles blended in with the intricate filigree until they were attractive but nearly unreadable. It was a triumph of aesthetics over utility. Harlan took a few from the shelves at random and was surprised. The title of one was Social and Economic History of our Times. Somehow it was a side of Noys to which he had given little thought. She was certainly not stupid and yet it never occurred to him that she might be interested in weighty things. He had the impulse to scan a bit of the Social and Economic History, but fought it down. He would find it in the Section library of the 482nd, if he ever wanted it. Finge had undoubtedly rifled the libraries of this Reality for Eternity's records months earlier. He put that film to one side, ran through the rest, selected the fiction and some of what seemed light non-fiction. Those and two pocket viewers. He stowed them carefully into a knapsack. It was at that point that, once more, he heard a sound in the house. There was no mistake this time. It was not a short sound of indeterminate origin. It was a langh, a man's laugh. He was not alone in the house. He was unaware that he had dropped the knapsack. For one dizzy second he could think only that he was trapped! 10 Trapped! All at once it had seemed inevitable. It was the rawest dramatic irony. He had entered Time one last time, tweaked Finge's nose one last time, brought the pitcher to the well one last time. It had to be then that he was caught. Was it Finge who laughed? Who else would track him down, lie in wait, stay a room away, and burst into mirth? Well, then, was all lost? And because in that sickening moment he was sure all was lost it did not occur to him to run again or to attempt flight into Eternity once more. He would face Finge. He would kill him, if necessary. Harlan stepped to the door from behind which the laugh had sounded, stepped to it with the soft, firm step of the premeditated murderer. He flicked loose the automatic door signal and opened it by hand. Two inches. Three. It moved without sound. The man in the next room had his back turned. The figure seemed too tall to be Finge and that fact penetrated Harlan's simmering mind and kept him from advancing further. Then, as though the paralysis that seemed to hold both men in rigor was slowly lifting, the other turned, inch by inch. Harlan never witnessed the completion of that turn. |
| 656 |
The other's profile had not yet come into view when Harlan, holding back a sudden gust of terror with a last fragment of moral strength, flung himself back out the door. Its mechanism, not Harlan, closed it soundlessly. Harlan fell back blindly. He could breathe only by struggling violently with the atmosphere, fighting air in and pushing it out, while his heart beat madly as though in an effort to escape his body. Finge, Twissell, all the Council together could not have disconcerted him so much. It was the fear of nothing physical that had unmanned him. Rather it was an almost instinctive loathing for the nature of the accident that had befallen him. He gathered the stack of book-films to himself in a formless lump and managed, after two futile tries, to re-establish the door to Eternity. He stepped through, his legs operating mechanically. Somehow he made his way to the 575th, and then to personal quarters. His Technicianhood, newly valued, newly appreciated, saved him once again. The few Eternals he met turned automatically to one side and looked steadfastly over his head as they did so. That was fortunate, for he lacked any ability to smooth his face out of the death's-head grimace he felt he was wearing, or any power to put the blood back into it. But they didn't look, and he thanked Time and Eternity and whatever blind thing wove Destiny for that. He had not truly recognized the other man in Noys's house by his appearance, yet he knew his identity with a dreadful certainty. The first time Harlan had heard a noise in the house he, Harlan, had been laughing and the sound that interrupted his laugh was of something weighty dropping in the next room. The second time someone had laughed in the next room and he, Harlan, had dropped a knapsack of book-films. The first time he, Harlan, had turned and caught sight of a door closing. The second time he, Harlan, closed a door as a stranger turned. He had met himself! In the same Time and nearly in the same place he and his earlier self by several physiodays had nearly stood face to face. He had misadjusted the controls, set if for an instant in Time which he had already used and he, Harlan, had seen him, Harlan. He had gone about his work with the shadow of horror upon him for days thereafter. He cursed himself for a coward, but that did not help. Indeed from that moment matters took a downward trend. He could put his finger on the Great Divide. The key moment was the instant in which he had adjusted the door controls for his entry into the 482nd for one last time and somehow had adjusted it wrongly. Since then things went badly, badly. The Reality Change in the 482nd went through during that period of despondency and accentuated it. In the past two weeks he had picked up three proposed Reality Changes which contained minor flaws, and now he chose among them, yet could do nothing to move himself to action. He chose Reality Change 2456-2781, V-5 for a number of reasons. Of the three, it was farthest upwhen, the most distant. The error was minute, but was significant in terms of human life. It needed, then, only a quick trip to the 2456th to find out the nature of Noys's analogue in the new Reality, by use of a little blackmailing pressure. But the unmanning of his recent experience betrayed him. It seemed to him no longer a simple thing, this gentle application of threatened exposure. And once he found the nature of Noys's analogue, what then? Put Noys in her place as charwoman, seamstress, laborer, or whatever. |
| 657 |
It remained firmly geared into the upwhen drive. There was no short circuit. All the indicator dials were in the black safety range. There was no power failure. The tiny needle that marked the steady consumption of meg-megcoulombs of power calmly insisted that power was being consumed at the usual rate. What, then, had stopped the kettle? Slowly, and with considerable reluctance, Harlan touched the drivelever, curled his hand about it. He pushed it to neutral, and the needle on the power gauge declined to zero. He twisted the drive-lever back in the other direction. Up went the power gauge again, and this time the temporometer flicked downwhen along the line of Centuries. Downwhen — downwhen — 99,983 — 99,972 — 99,959 — Again Harlan shifted the lever. Upwhen again. Slowly. Very slowly. Then 99,985 — 99,993 — 99,997 — 99,998 — 99,999 — 100,000 — Smash! Nothing past 100,000. The power of Nova Sol was silently being consumed, at an incredible rate, to no purpose. He went downwhen again, farther. He roared upwhen. Smash! His teeth were clenched, his lips drawn back, his breath rasping. He felt like a prisoner hurling himself bloodily against the bars of a prison. When he stopped, a dozen smashes later, the kettle rested firmly at 100,000. Thus far, and no farther. He would change kettles! (But there was not much hope in that thought.) In the empty silence of the 100,000th Century, Andrew Harlan stepped out of one kettle and chose another kettle shaft at random. A minute later, with the drive-lever in his hand, he stared at the marking of 100,000 and knew that here, too, he could not pass. He raged! Now! At this time! When things so unexpectedly had broken in his favor, to come to so sudden a disaster. The curse of that moment of misjudgment in entering the 482nd was still on him. Savagely he spun the lever downwhen, pressing it hard at maximum and keeping it there. At least in one way he was free now, free to do anything he wanted. With Noys cut off behind a barrier and out of his reach, what more could they do to him? What more had he to fear? He carried himself to the 575th and sprang from the kettle with a reckless disregard for his surroundings that he had never felt before. He made his way to the Section library, speaking to no one, regarding no one. He took what he wanted without glancing about to see if he were observed. What did he care? Back to the kettle and downwhen again. He knew exactly what he would do. He looked at the large clock as he passed, measuring off Standard Physiotime, numbering the days and marking off the three coequal work shifts of the physioday. Finge would be at his private quarters now, and that was so much the better. Harlan felt as though he were running a temperature when he arrived at the 482nd. His mouth was dry and cottony. His chest hurt. But he felt the hard shape of the weapon under his shirt as he held it firmly against his side with one elbow and that was the only sensation that counted. Assistant Computer Hobbe Finge looked up at Harlan, and the surprise in his eyes slowly gave way to concern. Harlan watched him silently for a while, letting the concern grow and waiting for it to change to fear. He circled slowly, getting between Finge and the Communiplate. Finge was partly undressed, bare to the waist. His chest was sparsely haired, his breasts puffy and almost womanish. His tubby abdomen lapped over his waistband. He looks undignified, thought Harlan with satisfaction, undignified and unsavory. So much the better. |
| 658 |
The name might not be his, but the man history called Mallansohn was really Brinsley Sheridan Cooper. "Fired with that thought, and with all that implied, anxious that the process of establishing Eternity be somehow quickened, improved, and made more secure, he wrote his memoir and placed it in a cube of Time-stasis in the living room of his house. "And so the circle was closed. Cooper-Mallansohn's intentions in writing the memoir were, of course, disregarded. Cooper must go through his life exactly as he had gone through it. Primitive Reality allows of no changes. At this moment in physiotime, the Cooper you know is unaware of what lies ahead of him. He believes he is only to instruct Mallansohn and to return. He will continue to believe so until the years teach him differently and he sits down to write his memoir. "The intention of the circle in Time is to establish the knowledge of Time-travel and of the nature of Reality, to build Eternity, ahead of its natural Time. Left to itself, mankind would not have learned the truth about Time before their technological advances in other directions had made racial suicide inevitable." Harlan listened intently, caught up in the vision of a mighty circle in Time, closed upon itself, and traversing Eternity in part of its course. He came as close to forgetting Noys, for the moment, as he ever could. He asked, "Then you knew all along everything you were to do, everything I was to do, everything I have done." Twissell, who seemed lost in his own telling of the tale, his eyes peering through a haze of bluish tobacco smoke, came slowly to life. His old, wise eyes fixed themselves on Harlan and he said reproachfully, "No, of course not. There was a lapse of decades of physiotime between Cooper's stay in Eternity and the moment when he wrote his memoir. He could remember only so much, and only what he himself had witnessed. You should realize that." Twissell sighed and he drew a gnarled finger through a line of updrafting smoke, breaking it into little turbulent swirls. "It worked itself out. First, I was found and brought to Eternity. When, in the fullness of physiotime, I became a Senior Computer, I was given the memoir and placed in charge. I had been described as in charge, so I was placed in charge. Again in the fullness of physiotime, you appeared in the changing of a Reality (we had watched your earlier analogues carefully), and then Cooper. "I filled in the details by using my common sense and the services of the Computaplex. How carefully, for instance, we instructed Educator Yarrow in his part while betraying none of the significant truth. How carefully, in his turn, he stimulated your interest in the Primitive. "How carefully we had had to keep Cooper from learning anything he did not prove he had learned by reference in the memoir." Twissell smiled sadly. "Sennor amuses himself with matters such as this. He calls it the reversal of cause and effect. Knowing the effect, one adjusts the cause. Fortunately, I am not the cobweb spinner Sennor is. "I was pleased, boy, to find you so excellent an Observer and Technician. The memoir had not mentioned that since Cooper had no opportunity to observe your work or evaluate it. This suited me. I could use you in a more ordinary task that would make your essential one less noticeable. Even your recent stay with Computer Finge fitted in. Cooper mentioned a period of your absence during which his mathematical studies were so sharpened that he longed for your return. |
| 659 |
Round and ...) Twissell hurried on. "We cannot attempt to counterfeit their medium of exchange of any of their negotiable scrip. You will have gold in the form of small nuggets. You will be able to explain its possession according to your detailed instructions. You will have native clothing to wear or at least clothing that will pass for native." "Right," said Cooper. "Now, remember. Move slowly. Take weeks, if necessary. Work your way into the era, spiritually. Technician Harlan's instructions are a good basis but they are not enough. You will have a wireless receiver built on the principles of the z4th which will enable you to come abreast of the current events and, more important, learn the proper pronunciation and intonation of the language of the times. Do that thoroughly. I'm sure that Harlan's knowledge of English is excellent, but nothing can substitute for native pronunciation on the spot." Cooper said, "What if I don't end up in the right spot? I mean, not in the 23.17?" "Check on that very carefully, of course. But it will be right. It will be right." (Harlan thought: It will be right because it was right. Round ...) Cooper must have looked unconvinced, though, for Twissell said, "The accuracy of focus was carefully worked out. I intended to explain our methods and now is a good time. For one thing, it will help Harlan understand the controls." (Suddenly Harlan turned away from the windows and fixed his gaze on the controls. A corner of the curtain of despair lifted. What if — ) Twissell still lectured Cooper with the anxious overprecise tone of the schoolteacher, and with part of his mind Harlan still listened. Twissell said, "Obviously a serious problem was that of determining how far into the Primitive an object is sent after the application of a given energy thrust. The most direct method would have been to send a man into the downwhen via this kettle using carefully graduated thrust levels. To do that, however, would have meant a certain lapse of time in each case while the man determined the Century to its nearest hundredth through astronomical observation or by obtaining appropriate information over the wireless. That would be slow and also dangerous since the man might well be discovered by the native inhabitants with probably catastrophic effects on our project. "What we did then instead was this: We sent back a known mass of the radioactive isotope, niobium-94, which decays by beta-particle emission to the stable isotope, molybdenum-94. The process has a halflife of almost exactly 500 Centuries. The original radiation intensity of the mass was known. That intensity decreases with time according to the simple relationship involved in first-order kinetics, and, of course, the intensity can be measured with great precision. "When the kettle reaches its destination in Primitive times, the ampule containing the isotope is discharged into the mountainside and the kettle then returns to Eternity. At the moment in physiotime that the ampule is discharged, it simultaneously appears at all future Times growing progressively older. At the place of discharge in the 575th (in actual Time and not in Eternity) a Technician detects the ampule by its radiation and retrieves it. "The radiation intensity is measured, the time it has remained in the mountainside is then known, the Century to which the kettle traveled is also known to two decimal places. Dozens of ampules were thus sent back at various thrust levels and a calibration curve set up. |
| 660 |
Two years went by that way. Periodically, I checked the boy's LifePlot (I was used to breaking that particular rule, by now) and was pleased to find that there were no signs of deleterious effects on the then-current Reality at probability levels over 0.0001. The boy learned to walk and mispronounced a few words. He was not taught to call me "daddy." Whatever speculations the Timed people of the child-care institution might have made concerning me I don't know. They took their money and said nothing. Then, when the two years had passed, the necessities of a Change that included the 575th at one wing was brought up before the Allwhen Council. I, having been lately promoted to Assistant Computer, was placed in charge. It was the first Change ever left to my sole supervision. I was proud, of course, but also apprehensive. My son was an intruder in the Reality. He could scarcely be expected to have analogues. Thought of his passage into nonexistence saddened me. I worked at the Change and I flatter myself even yet that I did a flawless job. My first one. But I succumbed to a temptation. I succumbed to it all the more easily because it was becoming an old story now for me. I was a hardened criminal, a habitat of crime. I worked out a new Life-Plot for my son under the new Reality, certain of what I would find. But then for twenty-four hours, without eating or sleeping, I sat in my office, striving with the completed Life-Plot, tearing at it in a despairing effort to find an error. There was no error. The next day, holding back my solution to the Change, I worked out a spatio-temporal chart, using rough methods of approximation (after all, the Reality was not to last long) and entered Time at a point more than thirty years upwhen from the birth of my child. He was thirty-four years old, as old as I myself. I introduced myself as a distant relation, making use of my knowledge of his mother's family, to do so. He had no knowledge of his father, no memory of my visits to him in his infancy. He was an aeronautical engineer. The 575th was expert in half a dozen varieties of air travel (as it still is in the current Reality), and my son was a happy and successful member of his society. He was married to an ardently enamored girl, but would have no children. Nor would the girl have married at all in the Reality in which my son had not existed. I had known that from the beginning. I had known there would be no deleterious affect on Reality. Otherwise, I might not have found it in my heart to let the boy live. I am not completely abandoned. I spent the day with my son. I spoke to him formally, smiled politely, took my leave coolly when the spatio-temporal chart dictated. But un derneath all that, I watched and absorbed every action, filling myself with him, and trying to live one day at least out of a Reality that the next day (by physiotime) would no longer have existed. How I longed to visit my wife one last time, too, during that portion of Time in which she lived, but I had used every second that had been available to me. I dared not even enter Time to see her, unseen. I returned to Eternity and spent one last horrible night wrestling futilely against what must be. The next morning I handed in my computations together with my recommendations for Change. Twissell's voice had lowered to a whisper and now it stopped. He sat there with his shoulders bent, his eyes fixed on the floor between his knees, and his fingers twisting slowly into and out of a knotted clasp. |
| 661 |
He said, "Talk!" and flushed at the little smile which was her first response to his exclamation. She said, "At a moment in physiotime before Eternity had reached very far upwhen, before it had reached even the 10,000th, we of our Century — and you're right, it was the 111,394th — learned of Eternity's existence. We, toe, had Time-travel, you see, but it was based on a completely different set of postulates than yours, and we preferred to view Time, rather than shifting mass. Furthermore, we dealt with our past only, our downwhen. "We discovered Eternity indirectly. First, we developed the calculus of Realities and tested our own Reality through it. We were amazed to find we lived in a Reality of rather low probability. It was a serious question. Why such an improbable Reality? ... You seem abstracted, Andrew! Are you interested at all?" Harlan heard her say his name with all the intimate tenderness she had used in weeks past. It should grate on him now, anger him with its cynical faithlessness. And yet it didn't. He said desperately, "Go on and get it over with, woman." He tried to balance the warmth of her "Andrew" with the chill anger of his "woman" and yet she only smiled again, pallidly. She said, "We searched back through time and came across the growing Eternity. It seemed obvious to us almost at once that there had been at one point in physiotime (a conception we have also, but under another name) another Reality. The other Reality, the one of maximum probability we call the Basic State. The Basic State had encompassed us once, or had encompassed our analogues, at least. At the time we could not say what the nature of the Basic State was. We could not possibly know. "We did know, however, that some Change initiated by Eternity in the far downwhen had managed, through the workings of statistical chance, to alter the Basic State all the way up to our Century and beyond. We set about determining the nature of the Basic State, intending to undo the evil, if evil it was. First we set up the quarantined area you call the Hidden Centuries, isolating the Eternals on the downwhen side of the 70,000th. This armor of isolation would affect us from all but a vanishingly small percentage of the Changes being made. It wasn't absolute security but it gave us time. "We next did something our culture and ethics did not ordinarily allow us to do. We investigated our own future, our upwhen. We learned the destiny of man in the Reality that actually existed in order that we might compare it eventually with Basic State. Somewhere past the 125,000th, mankind solved the secret of the interstellar drive. They learned how to manage the Jump through hyperspace. Finally, mankind could reach the stars." Harlan was listening in growing absorption to her measured words. How much truth was there in all this? How much was a calculated attempt to deceive him? He tried to break the spell by speaking, by breaking the smooth flow of her sentences. He said: "And once they could reach the stars, they did so and left the Earth. Some of us have guessed that." "Then some of you have guessed wrong. Man tried to leave Earth. Unfortunately, however, we are not alone in the Galaxy. There are other stars with other planets, you know. There are even other intelligences. None, in this Galaxy at least, are as ancient as mankind, but in the 125,000 Centuries man remained on Earth, younger minds caught up and passed us, developed the interstellar drive, and colonized the Galaxy. |
| 662 |
It was part of his job to keep the weather records for them andto watch out for the possibility of unusual events. There wasn't much in the way of weather on the Sagikan Peninsula, normally: the whole place was unthinkably arid, with measurable rainfall no more often than every ten or twenty years. The only unusual climatic event that ever occurred there was a shift in the prevailing pattern of air currents that set cyclonic forces in motion and brought about a sandstorm, and even that didn't happen more than a few times a century. Was Balik's despondent expression a hint of the guilt he must feel for having failed to foresee the coming of the storm? Or did he look so horrified because he was able now to calculate the full extent of the fury that was about to descend? Everything might have been different, Siferra told herself, if they'd had a little more time to prepare for the onslaught. In hindsight, she could see that all the telltale signs had been there for those with the wit to notice them-the burst of fierce dry heat, excruciating even by the standards of the Sagikan Peninsula, and the sudden dead calm that replaced the usual steady breeze from the north, and then the strange moist wind that began to blow from the south. The khalla-birds, those weird scrawny scavengers that haunted the area like ghouls, had all taken wing when that wind started blowing, vanishing into the dune-choked western desert as though demons were on their tails. That should have been the clue, Siferra thought. When the khalla-birds took off and went screaming into the dune country. But they had all been too busy working at the dig to pay attention to what was going on. Sheer denial, most likely. Pretend that you don't notice the signs of an approaching sandstorm and maybe the sandstorm will go somewhere else. And then that little gray cloud appearing out of nowhere in the far north, that dull stain on the fierce shield of the desert sky, which ordinarily was always as clear as glass- Cloud? Do you see a cloud? I don 't see any clouds. Denial again. Now the cloud was an immense black monster filling half the sky. The wind still blew from the south, but it was no longer moist-a searing furnace-blast was what it was, now-and there was another wind, an even stronger one, bearing down from the opposite direction. One wind fed the other. And when they met- "Siferra!" Balik yelled. "Here it comes! Take cover!" "I will! I will!" She didn't want to. What she wanted to do was run from one zone of the dig to another, looking after everything at once, holding the flaps of the tents down, wrapping her arms around the bundles of precious photographic plates, throwing herself against the face of the newly excavated Octagon House to protect the stunning mosaics that they had discovered the month before. But Balik was right. Siferra had done all she could, this frantic morning, to batten down the site. Now the thing to do was to huddle in, down there below the cliff that loomed at the upper edge of the site, and hope that it would be a bulwark for them against the fullest force of the storm. She ran for it. Her sturdy, powerful legs carried her easily over the parched, crackling sand. Siferra was not quite forty years old, a tall, strong woman in the prime of her physical strength, and until this moment she had never felt anything but optimism about any aspect of her existence. But suddenly everything was imperiled now: her academic career, her robust good health, maybe even her life itself. |
| 663 |
The others were crowded together at the base of the cliff, behind a hastily improvised screen of bare wooden poles with tarpaulins lashed to them. "Move over," Siferra said, pushing her way in among them. "Lady," Thuvvik moaned. "Lady, make the storm turn back!" As though she were some sort of goddess with magical powers. Siferra laughed harshly. The foreman made some kind of gesture at her-a holy sign, she imagined. The other workers, all of them men of the little village just east of the ruins, made the same sign and began to mutter at her. Prayers? To her? It was a spooky moment. These men, like their fathers and grandfathers, had been digging at Beklimot all their lives in the employ of one archaeologist or another, patiently uncovering the ancient buildings and sifting through the sand for tiny artifacts. Presumably they had been through bad sandstorms before. Were they always this terrified? Or was this some kind of super storm? "Here it is," Balik said. "This is it." And he covered his face with his hands. The full power of the sandstorm broke over them. Siferra remained standing at first, staring through an opening in the tarpaulins at the monumental cyclopean city wall across the way, as though simply by keeping her gaze fixed on the site she would be able to spare it from harm. But after a moment that became impossible. Gusts of incredible heat came sweeping down, so ferocious that she thought her hair and even her eyebrows would burst into flame. She turned away, raising one arm to shield her face. Then came the sand, and all vision was blotted out. It was like a rainstorm, a downpour of all too solid rain. There was a tremendous thundering sound, not thunder at all but only the drumming of a myriad tiny sand particles against the ground. Within that great sound were other ones, a slithery whispering sound, a jagged scraping sound, a delicate drumming sound. And a terrible howling. Siferra imagined tons of sand cascading down, burying the walls, burying the temples, burying the vast sprawling foundations of the residential zone, burying the camp. And burying all of them. She turned away, face to the wall of the cliff, and waited for the end to come. A little to her surprise and chagrin, she found herself sobbing hysterically, sudden deep wails rising from the core of her body. She didn't want to die. Of course not: who did? But she had never realized until this moment that there might be something worse than dying. Beklimot, the most famous archaeological site in the world, the oldest known city of mankind, the foundation of civilization, was going to be destroyed-purely as a result of her negligence. Generations of Kalgash's great archaeologists had worked here in the century and a half since Beklimot's discovery: first Galdo 221, the greatest of them all, and then Marpin, Stinnupad, Shelbik, Numoin, the whole glorious roster-and now Siferra, who had foolishly left the whole place uncovered while a sandstorm was approaching. So long as Beklimot had been buried beneath the sands, the ruins had slumbered peacefully for thousands of years, preserved as they had been on the day when its last inhabitants finally yielded to the harshness of the changing climate and abandoned the place. Each archaeologist who had worked there since Galdo's day had taken care to expose just a small section of the site, and to put up screens and sand-fences to guard against the unlikely but serious danger of a sandstorm. Until now. She had put up the usual screens and fences too, of course. |
| 664 |
That first one, Harrim, the longshoreman-he looked tough enough to withstand anything. And yet fifteen minutes of Darkness on his trip through the Tunnel of Mystery had reduced him to such a state that merely to relive the trauma in memory sent him into babbling hysteria. How terribly sad that was. And then the other two, in the afternoon-they had been in even worse shape. Gistin 190, the schoolteacher, that lovely frail woman with the dark, intelligent eyes-she hadn't been able to stop sobbing for a moment, and though she was able to speak clearly and well, at least in the beginning, her story had degenerated into mere incoherent blurtings within a few sentences. And Chimmilit 97, the high school athlete, obviously a perfect physical specimen-Sheerin wasn't going quickly to forget how the boy had reacted to the sight of the afternoon sky when Sheerin opened the blinds in his room. There was Onos blazing away in the west, and all that huge handsome boy could manage to say was, "The Darkness-the Darkness-" before he turned away and tried to scuttle down under his bed! The Darkness-the Darkness- And now, Sheerin thought gloomily, it's my turn to take a ride in the Tunnel of Mystery. Of course, he could simply refuse. There was nothing in his consulting contract with the Municipality of Jonglor that required him to risk his sanity. He'd be able to render a valid enough opinion without actually sticking his neck into peril. But something in him rebelled at such timidity. His professional pride, if nothing else, was pushing him toward the Tunnel He was here to study the phenomenon of darkness and to help these people work out ways not only of healing the present victims but of preventing recurrences of these tragedies. How could he deign to explain what had happened to the Tunnel's victims if he didn't make a close study of the cause of their disturbances? He bad to. It would be sheer malfeasance to back out. Nor did he want anyone, not even these strangers here in Jonglor, to be able to accuse him of cowardice. He remembered the taunts of his childhood: "Fatty is a coward! Fatty is a coward!" All because he hadn't wanted to climb a tree that was obviously beyond the capabilities of his heavy, ill-coordinated body. But Fatty wasn't a coward. Sheerin knew that. He was content with himself: a sane, well-balanced man. He simply didn't want other people making incorrect assumptions about him because of his unheroic appearance. Besides, fewer than one out of ten of those who had gone through the Tunnel of Mystery had come out of it showing any symptoms of emotional disturbance. And those people must have been vulnerable in some special way. Precisely because he was so sane, Sheerin told himself, because he was so well balanced, he had nothing to fear. Nothing- Th- Fear- He kept repeating those words to himself until he felt almost calm. Even so, Sheerin was something other than his customary jolly self as he went downstairs to wait for the hospital car to pick him up. Kelaritan was there, and Cubello, and a striking-looking woman named Varitta 312, who was introduced to him as one of the engineers who had designed the Tunnel. Sheerin greeted them all with hearty handshakes and a broad smile that he hoped seemed convincing. "A nice day for a trip to the amusement park," he said, trying to sound jovial. Kelaritan looked at him oddly. "I'm glad you feel that way. Did you sleep well, Dr. Sheerin?" "Very well, thanks. As well as could be expected, I should say. |
| 665 |
We are conditioned to abhor it because we live in a world where darkness is unnatural, where there is always light, the light of the many suns. At any time there might be as many as four suns shining at once; usually there were three in the sky, and at no time were there ever less than two-and the light of any of them was sufficient all by itself to hold back the Darkness. The Darkness- The Darkness- The Darkness! Sheerin was in the Tunnel now. Behind him the last vestige of light disappeared, and he peered into an utter void. There was nothing ahead of him: nothing. A pit. An abyss. A zone of total lightlessness. And he was tumbling headlong into it. He felt sweat breaking out all over him. His knees began to shake. His forehead throbbed. He held up his hand and was unable to see it in front of his face. Abort abort abort abort No. Absolutely not. He sat upright, back rigid, eyes wide open, gazing stolidly into the nothingness through which he plunged. On and on, ever deeper. Primordial fears bubbled and hissed in the depths of his soul, and he forced them back down and away. The suns are still shining outside the Tunnel, he told himself. This is only temporary. In fourteen minutes and thirty seconds I'll be back out there. Fourteen minutes and twenty seconds. Fourteen minutes and ten seconds. Fourteen minutes- Was he moving at all, though? He couldn't tell. Maybe he wasn't. The car's mechanism was silent; and he had no reference points. What if I'm stuck? he wondered. Just sitting here in the dark, no way to tell where I am, what's happening, how much time is passing? Fifteen minutes, twenty, half an hour? Until I've passed whatever limit my sanity can stand, and then- There's always the abort switch, though. But suppose it doesn't work? What if I press it and the lights don't come on? I could test it, I suppose. Just to see- Fatty is a coward! Fatty is a coward! No. No. Don't touch it. Once you turn the lights on you won't be able to turn them off again. You mustn't use the abort switch, or they'll know-they'll all know- Fatty is a coward, Fatty is a coward- Suddenly, astonishingly, he hurled the abort switch into the darkness. There was a tiny sound as it fell-somewhere. Then silence again. His hand felt terribly empty. The Darkness- The Darkness- There was no end to it. He was tumbling through an infinite abyss. Falling and falling and falling into the night, the endless night, the all-devouring black- Breathe deeply. Stay calm. What if there 'c permanent mental damage? Stay calm, he told himself. You'll be all right. You've got maybe eleven minutes more of this at the worst, maybe only six or seven. The suns are shining out there. Six or seven minutes and you'll never be in Darkness again, not if you live to be a thousand. The Darkness- Oh, God, the Darkness- Calm. Calm. You're a very stable man, Sheerin. You're extremely sane. You were sane when you went into this thing and you'll be sane when you come out. Tick. Tick. Tick. Every second gets you closer to the exit. Or does it? This ride may never end. I could be in here forever. Tick. Tick. Tick. Am I moving? Do I have five minutes left, or five seconds, or is this still the first minute? Tick. Tick. Why don t they let me out? Can 't they tell bow I'm suffering in here? They don't want to let you out. They'll never let you out. They're going to Suddenly, a stabbing pain between his eyes. An explosion of agony in his skull. What's that? Light! Could it be? Yes. Yes. Thank God. Light, yes! |
| 666 |
-"First, I want to take a closer look at these calculations of yours," he said. "And then, I suppose, a closer look at my own theory." The headquarters of the Apostles of Flame was a slender but magnificent tower of gleaming golden stone, rising like a shining javelin above the Seppitan River, in the exclusive Birigam quarter of Saro City. That soaring tower, Theremon thought, must be one of the most valuable pieces of real estate in the entire capital. He had never stopped to consider it before, but the Apostles had to be an exceedingly wealthy group. They owned their own radio and television stations, they published magazines and newspapers, they had this tremendous tower. And probably they controlled all sorts of other assets too that were less visibly theirs. He wondered how that was possible. A bunch of fanatic puritan monks? Where would they have managed to get their hands on so many hundreds of millions of credits? But, he realized, such well-known industrialists as Bottiker 888 and Vivin 99 were outspoken adherents of the teachings of Mondior and his Apostles. It wouldn't surprise him to know that men like Bottiker and Vivin, and others like them, were heavy contributors to the Apostles' treasury. And if the organization was even a tenth as old as it claimed to be-ten thousand years, was what they said!-and if it had invested its money wisely over the centuries, there was no telling what the Apostles could have achieved through the miracle of compound interest, Theremon thought. They might be worth billions. They might secretly own half of Saro City. It was worth looking into, he told himself. He entered the vast, echoing entrance hall of the great tower and peered about in awe. Though he had never been here before, he had heard it was an extraordinarily lavish building both inside and out. But nothing he had heard had prepared him for the reality of the cultist's building. A polished marble floor, with inlays in half a dozen brilliant colors, stretched as far as he could see. The walls were covered with glittering golden mosaics in abstract patterns, rising to arched vaults high overhead. Chandeliers of woven gold and silver threw a shimmering shower of brightness over everything. At the opposite end from the entrance Theremon saw what seemed to be a model of the whole universe, fashioned, apparently, entirely of precious metals and gems: immense suspended globes, which seemed to represent the six suns, hung from the ceiling by invisible wires. Each of them cast an eerie light: a golden beam from the largest of them, which must be Onos, and a dim red glow from the Dovim globe, and cold hard blue-white from the Tano-Sitha pair, and a gentler white light from Patru and Trey. A seventh globe that must be Kalgash moved slowly among them like a drifting balloon, its own colors changing as the shifting pattern of the suns' light played over its surface. As Theremon stood gaping in astonishment, a voice coming from nowhere in particular said, "May we have your name?" "I'm Theremon 762. I have an appointment with Mondior." "Yes. Please enter the chamber on your immediate left, Theremon 762." He saw no chamber on his immediate left. But then a segment of the mosaic-covered wall slid noiselessly open, revealing a small oval room, more an antechamber than a chamber. Green velvet hangings covered the walls and a single bar of amber light provided illumination. He shrugged and stepped in. At once the door closed behind him and he felt a distinct sensation of motion. |
| 667 |
This wasn't a room, it was a lift! Yes, he was rising, he was certain of it. Up and up and up he went, in a very unhurried way. It took half an eternity before the lift chamber came to a halt and the door slid open once again. A black-robed figure was waiting for him. "Would you come this way, please?" A narrow hallway led a short distance into a kind of waiting room, where a large portrait of Mondior 71 occupied most of one entire wall. As Theremon entered, the portrait seemed to light up, coming strangely to life and glowing, so that Mondior's dark, intense eyes looked straight at him and the High Apostle's stern face took on a luminous inner radiance that made him seem almost beautiful, in a fierce sort of way. Theremon met the portrait's gaze coolly enough. But even the tough-minded newspaperman found himself ever so slightly unnerved to think that very shortly he would be interviewing this very person. Mondior on radio or television was one thing, just some crazed preacher with an absurd message to peddle. But Mondior in the flesh-awesome, hypnotic, mysterious, if this portrait was any indication-might be something else again. Theremon warned himself to be on his guard. The black-robed monk said, "If you'll step inside, please-" The wall just to the left of the portrait opened. An office became visible within, as sparsely decorated as a cell, nothing in it but a bare desk made of a single slab of polished stone and a low backless chair, cut from a chunk of some unusual red-streaked gray wood, placed in front of it. Behind the desk sat a man of obvious force and authority, wearing the black Apostles' robe with red trim along the hood. He was very impressive. But he wasn't Mondior 71. Mondior, judging by his photographs and the way he seemed on television, had to be a man of sixty-five or seventy, with a kind of intense masculine force about him. His hair was thick and wavy, black with broad streaks of white, and he had a full, fleshy face, a wide mouth, a strong nose, heavy jet-black eyebrows, dark, compelling eyes. But this one was young, surely not yet forty, and though he seemed powerful and highly masculine too, it was in an entirely different way: he was very thin, with a sharp, narrow face and tight, pursed lips. His hair, curling down over his forehead under his hood, was a strange brick-red color, and his eyes were a cold, unrelenting blue. No doubt this man was some high functionary in the organization. But Theremon's appointment was with Mondior. He had decided just this morning, after writing his story on the Apostles' latest fulmination, that he needed to know more about this mysterious cult. Everything they had ever said struck him as nonsense, of course, but it was beginning to seem like interesting nonsense, worth writing about in some detail. How better to learn more about them than to go straight to the top man? Assuming that was possible, that is. But to his surprise they had told him, when he called, that he could have an audience with Mondior 71 that very day. It had seemed too easy. Now he began to realize that it had been too easy. "I am Folimun 66," the sharp-faced man said in a light, flexible voice with none of Mondior's compelling thunder. Yet it was, Theremon suspected, the voice of someone who was accustomed to being obeyed. "I am the public-relations adjutant for the home district of our organization. It will be my pleasure to answer any questions you may have." "My appointment was with Mondior himself," Theremon said. |
| 668 |
His position with the newspaper was an influential one. Everyone wanted to use him. Well, Theremon thought, we'll see who uses whom. His footsteps echoed sharply as he walked at a brisk pace through the immense entrance hall of the Apostles' headquarters and out into the brilliance of a three-sun afternoon. Back to the Chronicle office now. A couple of pious hours devoted to a close study of the Book of Revelations; and then it was time to begin thinking about tomorrow's column. The summer rainy season was in full spate the afternoon Sheenin 501 returned to Saro City. The plump psychologist stepped out of the plane into a stupendous downpour that had turned the airfield into something close to a lake. Gray torrents of rain rode almost horizontally on fierce gusts of wind. Gray-gray-everything gray- The suns had to be up there somewhere in all that murk. That faint glimmer in the west was probably Onos, and there were hints of the chilly light of Tano and Sitha off the other way. But the cloud cover was so thick that the day was disagreeably dark. Uncomfortably dark for Sheerin, who still- despite what he had told his hosts in Jonglor-was troubled by the aftereffects of his fifteen-minute ride through the Tunnel of Mystery. He would have gone on a ten-day fast sooner than he'd admit it to Kelaritan and Cubello and the rest of those people. But he had come perilously close to the danger point in there. For three or four days thereafter Sheerin had experienced a touch, only a touch, of the kind of claustrophobia that had sent so many citizens of Jonglor to the mental hospital. He would be in his hotel room, working on his report, when suddenly he would feel Darkness closing in on him, and he would find it necessary to get up and go out on his terrace, or even to leave the building entirely for a long stroll in the hotel garden. Necessary? Well, maybe not. But preferable. Certainly preferable. And he always felt better for doing it. Or he would be asleep and the Darkness would come to him then. Naturally the godlight would be on in his room when he slept-he always slept with one on, he knew nobody who didn't-and since the Tunnel ride he had taken to using an auxiliary godlight too, in case the battery of the first one should fail, though the indicator clearly said it had six months' power left. Even so, Sheerin's sleeping mind would become convinced that his room had been plunged into the depths of lightlessness, utterly black, the true and complete Darkness. And he would awaken, trembling, sweating, convinced he was in Darkness even though the friendly glow of the two godlights was right there on either side of him to tell him that he was not. So now, to step from his plane into this somber twilight landscape-well, he was glad to be home, but he would have preferred a sunnier arrival. He had to fight off mild distress, or perhaps not so mild, as he entered the flexiglass foul-weather passageway that led from his plane to the terminal. He wished they hadn't put the passageway up. Better not to be enclosed right now, Sheerin thought, even if it did mean getting wet. Better to be out there under the open sky, under the comforting light (however faint just now, however hidden by clouds) of the friendly suns. But the queasiness passed. By the time he had claimed his baggage, the cheering reality of being back home again in Saro City had triumphed over the lingering effects of his brush with Darkness. Liliath 221 was waiting for him outside the baggage pickup area with her car. |
| 669 |
But certainly not now. Trey and Patru and Tano and Sitha? "Another no. The two sets of double suns were on opposite sides of Kalgash; whenever one pair was in the sky, the other one generally was hidden by the planet's own bulk. Now and then the four of them did manage to get together in the sky, but Onos always was visible when such two-pair conjunctions occurred. Those were the famous five-sun days-which produced the equally distinctive Dovim-only days in the opposite hemisphere. They happened only every few years." Trey without Patru? Tano without Sitha? Well, technically, yes. When one of the double-sun pairs was close to the horizon, one sun would be above the horizon and one of them below it for a brief period. But that wasn't really a significant solar event, just a momentary aberration. The double suns were still together, but transiently separated by the line of the horizon. All six suns in the sky at once? Impossible! Worse than that-unthinkable! Yet he had just thought it. Beenay shivered at the idea. If all six of them were above the horizon simultaneously, then there would have to be a region in the other hemisphere where no sunlight whatever could be seen. Darkness! Darkness! But Darkness was unknown everywhere on Kalgash, except as an abstract concept. There could never have been a time when the six suns moved together and a major part of the world was plunged into utter lightlessness. Could there have been? Could there? Beenay pondered the chilling possibility. Once more he heard Theremon's deep voice explaining the theories of the Apostles to him: "-the suns will all disappear-" "-the Stars will shoot flame down out of a black sky-" He shook his head. Everything he knew about the movements of the suns in the heavens rebelled against the idea of the six of them somehow bunching up on one side of Kalgash at the same time. It just couldn't happen, short of a miracle. Beenay didn't believe in miracles. The way the suns were arranged in the sky, there always had to be at least one or two of them shining over every part of Kalgash at any given moment. Forget the six-suns-here, Darkness-there hypothesis. What was left? Dovim alone, he thought. The little red sun all alone in the sky? Well, yes, it did happen, though not often. On those occasional five-sun days when Tano, Sitha, Trey, Patru, and Onos all were in conjunction in the same hemisphere: that left only Dovim for the other side of the world. Beenay wondered whether that might be the moment when the Darkness came. Could it be? Dovim by itself might cast so little light, just its cool and feeble reddish-purple gleam, that people might mistake it for Darkness. But that didn't really make sense. Even little Dovim should be able to provide enough light to keep people from plunging into terror. Besides, Dovim-only days occurred somewhere in the world every few years. They were uncommon, but not all that extraordinary. Surely, if the effects of seeing nothing but a single small dim sun in the sky could cause vast psychological upheavals, then everybody would be worrying about the next Dovim-only event, which was due, as Beenay recalled, in just another year or so. And in fact nobody was thinking about it at all. But if Dovim alone were in the sky, and something happened, some special thing, some truly uncommon thing, to blot out what little light it provided- Thilanda appeared at his shoulder and said sourly, "All right, Beenay, I've got your solar projections all set up. Not just forty-two hundred years, either, but an infinite regression. |
| 670 |
Let everyone actually begin believing that doom would arrive on the evening of Theptar nineteenth, and there would be panic in the streets long before that, universal hysteria, a collapse of law and order, a prolonged period of general instability and troublesome apprehension-followed by the gods only knew what sort of emotional upheavals when the dreaded day came and went harmlessly. It would have to be his task to deflate the fear of Nightfall, of Darkness, of Doomsday, by poking it with the sharp spear of laughter. So when Mondior thundered ferociously that the vengeance of the gods was on the way, Theremon 762 replied with lighthearted sketches of what the world would be like if the Apostles succeeded in "reforming" society as they wanted to-people going to the beach bundled up in ankle-length swimsuits, long sessions of prayer between each bit of action at sports events, all the great books and classic plays and shows rewritten to eliminate the slightest hint of impiety. And when Athor and his group released diagrams showing the movements of the unseen and apparently unseeable Kalgash Two across the sky on its shadowy rendezvous with the pallid red light of Dovim, Theremon made amiable remarks about dragons, invisible giants, and other mythological monsters cavorting through the heavens. When Mondior waved the scientific authority of Athor 77 around as an argument demonstrating secular support of the Apostles' teachings, Theremon responded by asking how seriously anyone could take Athor 77's scientific authority, now that he was obviously just as deranged as Mondior himself. When Athor called for a crash program to store food supplies, scientific and technical information, and everything else that would be needed by mankind after the general insanity broke loose, Theremon suggested that in some quarters the general insanity had already broken loose, and provided his own list of essential items to put away in your basement ("can openers, thumbtacks, copies of the multiplication table, playing cards... . Don't forget to write your name on a tag and tie it around your right wrist, in case you don't remember it after the Darkness comes... . Put a tag on your left wrist that says, To find out your name, see tag on other wrist... By the time Theremon had finished working the story over, it was hard for his readers to decide which group was more absurd-the ripsnorting doomsayers of the Apostles of Flame, or the pathetic, gullible skywatchers of the Saro University Observatory. But one thing was certain: thanks to Theremon, hardly any member of the general public believed that anything out of the ordinary was going to take place on the evening of Theptar nineteenth. Athor thrust out a belligerent lower lip and glared in rage at the man from the Chronicle. He was able to restrain himself only by a supreme effort. "You here? Despite everything I said? Of all the audacity!" Theremon's hand was outstretched in greeting as though he really had expected Athor to accept it. But after a moment he lowered it, and stood regarding the Observatory director with astonishing insouciance. In a voice trembling with barely controlled emotion Athor said, "You display an infernal gall, sir, in coming here this evening. It astounds me that you'd dare to show your face among us." From a corner of the room, Beenay, running the tip of his tongue nervously across his lips, interposed nervously, "Now, sir, after all-" "Did you invite him to be here? When you knew I had expressly forbidden-" "Sir, I-" "It was Dr. |
| 671 |
There were thousands of them, blazing with incredible power, one next to another next to another next to another, an endless wall of them, forming a dazzling shield of terrifying light that filled the entire heavens. Thousands of mighty suns shone down in a soul-searing splendor that was more frighteningly cold in its awful indifference than the bitter wind that shivered across the cold, horribly bleak world. They hammered at the roots of his being. They beat like flails against his brain. Their icy monstrous light was like a million great gongs going off at once. My God, he thought. My God, my God, my God! But he could not tear his eyes away from the hellish sight of them. He looked up through the opening in the dome, every muscle rigid, frozen, and stared in helpless wonder and horror at that shield of fury that filled the sky. He felt his mind shrinking down to a tiny cold point under that unceasing onslaught. His brain was no bigger than a marble, rattling around in the hollow gourd that was his skull. His lungs would not work. His blood ran backward in his veins. At last he was able to close his eyes. He knelt for a time, panting, murmuring to himself, fighting to regain control. Then Theremon staggered to his feet, his throat constricting him to breathlessness, all of the muscles of his body writhing in a tensity of terror and sheer fear beyond bearing. Dimly he was aware of Siferra somewhere near him, but he had to struggle to remember who she was. He had to work at remembering who he was. From below came the sound of a terrible steady pounding, a frightful hammering against the door-some strange wild beast with a thousand heads, struggling to get in- It didn't matter. Nothing mattered. He was going mad, and knew it, and somewhere deep inside a bit of sanity was screaming, struggling to fight off the hopeless flood of black terror. It was very horrible to go mad and know that you were going mad-to know that in a little minute you would be here physically and yet all the real essence that was you would be dead and drowned in the black madness. For this was the Dark-the Dark and the Cold and the Doom. The bright walls of the universe were shattered and their awful black fragments were falling down to crush and squeeze and obliterate, him. Someone came crawling toward him on hands and knees and jostled up against him. Theremon moved aside. He put his hands to his tortured throat and limped toward the flames of the torches that filled all his mad vision. "Light!" he screamed. Athor, somewhere, was crying, whimpering horribly like a terribly frightened child. "Stars-all the Stars-we didn't know at all. We didn't know anything. We thought six stars is a universe is something the Stars didn't notice is Darkness forever and ever and ever and the walls are breaking in and we didn't know we couldn't know and anything-" Someone clawed at the torch, and it fell and snuffed out. In that instant the awful splendor of the indifferent Stars leaped nearer to them. From below came the sound of screams and shouts and breaking glass. The mob, crazed and uncontrollable, had broken into the Observatory. Theremon looked around. By the awful light of the Stars he saw the dumbstruck figures of the scientists lurching about in horror. He made his way into the corridor. A fierce blast of chilly air coming through an open window struck him, and he stood there, letting it hit his face, laughing a little at the arctic intensity of it. "Theremon?" a voice called behind him. |
| 672 |
Unless that one's Trey, and the other one is Patru. Well, he told himself, the names don't matter. Which one is which, unimportant. Together they are Trey and Patru. And the big one is Onos. And the other three suns must be somewhere else right now, because I don't see them. And my name's- Theremon. Yes. That's right. I'm Theremon. But there's a number, too. He stood frowning, thinking about it, his family code, that's what it was, a number he had known all his life, but what was it? What-was-it? 762. Yes. I am Theremon 762. And then another, more complex thought followed smoothly along: I am Theremon 762 of the Saro City Chronicle. Somehow that statement made him feel a little better, though it was full of mysteries for him. Saro City? The Chronicle? He almost knew what those words meant. Almost. He chanted them to himself. Saro saro saro. City city city. Chronicle chronicle chronicle. Saro City Chronicle. Perhaps if I walk a little, he decided. He took a hesitant step, another, another. His legs were a little wobbly. Looking around, he realized that he was on a hillside out in the country somewhere. He saw a road, bushes, trees, a lake off to the left. Some of the bushes and trees seemed to have been ripped and broken, with branches dangling at odd angles or lying on the ground below them, as though giants had come trampling through this countryside recently. Behind him was a huge round-topped building with smoke rising from a hole in its roof. The outside of the building was blackened as if fires had been set all around it, though its stone walls appeared to have withstood the flames well enough. He saw a few people lying scattered on the steps of the building, sprawled like discarded dolls. There were others lying in the bushes, and still others along the path leading down the hill. Some of them were faintly moving. Most were not. He looked the other way. On the horizon he saw the towers of a great city. A heavy pall of smoke hung over them, and when he squinted he imagined that he could see tongues of flame coming from the windows of the tallest buildings, although something rational within his mind told him that it was impossible to make out any such detail at so great a distance. That city had to be miles away. Saro City, he thought suddenly. Where the Chronicle is published. Where I work. Where I live. And I'm Theremon. Yes. Theremon 762. Of the Saro City Chronicle. He shook his head slowly from side to side, as some wounded animal might have done, trying to clear it of the haze and torpor that infested it. It was maddening, not being able to think properly, not being able to move around freely in the storehouse of his own memories. The brilliant light of the Stars lay like a wall across his mind, cutting him off from his own memories. But things were beginning to get through. Colored fragments of the past, sharp-edged, shimmering with manic energy, were dancing around and around in his brain. He struggled to make them hold still long enough for him to comprehend them. The image of a room came to him, then. His room, heaped with papers, magazines, a couple of computer terminals, a box of unanswered mail. Another room: a bed. The small kitchen that he almost never used. This, he thought, is the apartment of Theremon 762, the well-known columnist for the Saro City Chronicle. Theremon himself is not at home at this time, ladies and gentlemen. At the present moment Theremon is standing outside the ruins of the Saro University Observatory, trying to understand- The ruins- Saro University Observatory- "Siferra?" he called. |
| 673 |
"Siferra, where are you?" No answer. He wondered who Siferra was. Someone he must have known before the ruins were ruined, probably. The name had come bubbling up out of the depths of his troubled mind. He took another few uncertain steps. There was a man lying under a bush a short distance downhill. Theremon went to him. His eyes were closed. He held a burned-out torch in his hand. His robe was torn. Sleeping? Or was he dead? Theremon prodded him carefully with his foot. Yes, dead. That was strange, all these dead people lying around. You didn't ordinarily see dead people everywhere like this, did you? And an overturned car over there-it looked dead, too, with its undercarriage turned pathetically toward the sky, and curls of smoke rising sluggishly from its interior. "Siferra?" he called again. Something terrible had happened. That seemed very clear to him, though hardly anything else did. Once again he crouched, and pressed his hands against the sides of his head. The random fragments of memory that had been jigging around in there were moving more slowly now, no longer engaged in a frantic dance: they had begun to float about in a stately fashion, like icebergs drifting in the Great Southern Ocean. If he could only get some of those drifting fragments to come together-force them into a pattern that made a little sense- He reviewed what he had already managed to reconstruct. His name. The name of the city. The names of the six suns. The newspaper. His apartment. Last evening- The Stars- Siferra-Beenay-Sheerin-Athor-names- Abruptly things began to form connections in his mind. The memory-fragments of his immediate past had finally started to reassemble themselves. But at first nothing yet made real sense, because each little cluster of memories was something independent unto itself, and he was unable to put them into any kind of coherent order. The harder he tried, the more confused everything became again. Once he understood that, he gave up the idea of trying to force anything. Just relax, Theremon told himself. Let it happen naturally. He had, he realized, suffered some great wound of the mind. Although he felt no bruises, no lumps on the back of his head, he knew that he must have been injured in some way. All his memories had been cut into a thousand pieces as though by a vengeful sword, and the pieces had been stirred and scattered like the pieces of some baffling puzzle. But he seemed to be healing, moment by moment. Moment by moment, the strength of his mind, the strength of the entity that was Theremon 762 of the Saro City Chronicle, was reasserting itself, putting him back together. Stay calm. Wait. Let it happen naturally. He drew in his breath, held it, slowly released it. Breathed in again. Hold, release. Breathe, hold, release. Breathe, hold, release. In his mind's eye he saw the interior of the Observatory. Remembering, now. It was evening. Only the little red sun was in the sky-Dovim, that was its name. That tall woman: she was Siferra. And the fat man was Sheerin, and the young slender earnest one, he was Beenay, and the fierce old man with the patriarchal mane of white hair was the great famous astronomer, the head of the Observatory-Ithor? Uthor? Athor, yes. Athor. And the eclipse was coming. The Darkness. The Stars. Oh, yes. Yes. It was all flowing together now. The memories returning. The mob outside the Observatory, led by fanatics in black robes: the Apostles of Flame, that's what they were called. And one of the fanatics had been inside the Observatory. |
| 674 |
Folimun, his name was. Folimun 66. He remembered. The moment of totality. The sudden and complete descent of night. The world entering the Cave of Darkness. The Stars- The madness-the screaming-the mob- Theremon winced at the recollection. The hordes of crazed, frightened people from Saro City breaking down the heavy doors, bursting into the Observatory, trampling each other in their rush to destroy the blasphemous scientific instruments and the blasphemous scientists who denied the reality of the gods- Now that the memories came flooding back, he almost wished he had not recaptured them. The shock he had felt at the first moment of seeing the brilliant light of the Stars-the pain that had erupted within his skull-the strange horrific bursts of cold energy racing across his field of vision. And then the coming of the mob-that moment of frenzy-the struggle to escape-Siferra beside him, and Beenay nearby, and then the mob surging around them like a river in full spate, separating them, pulling them in opposite directions- Into his mind came a single last glimpse of old Athor, his eyes bright and glazed with the wildness of utter madness, standing majestically on a chair, furiously ordering the intruders out of his building as though he were not merely the director of the Observatory but its king. And Beenay standing next to him, tugging at Athor's arm, urging the old man to flee. Then the scene dissolved. He was no longer in the great room. Theremon saw himself swept down a corridor, scrambling for a staircase, looking around for Siferra, for anyone he knew- The Apostle, the fanatic, Folimun 66, suddenly appearing before him, blocking his way in the midst of the chaos. Laughing, holding out a hand to him in a mocking gesture of false friendship. Then Folimun too had disappeared from sight, and Theremon continued frantically onward, down the spiral stairs, tumbling and stumbling, clambering over people from the city who were wedged so tightly together on the ground floor that they were unable to move. Out the door, somehow. Into the chill of night. Standing bareheaded, shivering, in the Darkness that was Darkness no longer, for everything was illuminated now by the terrible, hideous, unthinkable cold blaze of those thousands of merciless Stars that filled the sky. There was no hiding from them. Even when you closed your eyes you saw their frightful light. Mere Darkness was nothing, compared with the implacable pressure of that heaven-spanning vault of unthinkable brilliance, a light so bright that it boomed in the sky like thunder. Theremon remembered that he had felt as though the sky, Stars and all, was about to fall on him. He had knelt and covered his head with his hands, futile though he knew that to be. He remembered, too, the terror all about him, people rushing this way and that, the shrieking, the crying. The fires of the blazing city leaping high on the horizon. And above all else those hammering waves of fear descending from the sky, from the remorseless unforgiving Stars that had invaded the world. That was all. Everything after that was blank, utterly blank, until the moment of his awakening, when he looked up to see Onos in the sky once more, and began to put back together the shards and slivers of his mind. I am Theremon 762, he told himself again. I used to live in Saro City and write a column for the newspaper. There was no Saro City any longer. There was no newspaper. The world had come to an end. But he still lived, and his sanity, he hoped, was returning. |
| 675 |
What now? Where to go? "Siferra?" he called. No one answered. Slowly he began to shuffle down the hill once more, past the broken trees, past the burned and overturned cars, past the scattered bodies. If this is what it looks like out here in the country, he thought, what must it be like in the city itself? My God, he thought again. All you gods! What have you done to us? Sometimes cowardice has its advantages, Sheerin told himself, as he unbolted the door of the storeroom in the Observatory basement where he had spent the time of Darkness. He still felt shaky, but he had no doubt that he was still sane. As sane as he had ever been, at any rate. It seemed quiet out there. And although the storeroom had no windows, enough light had managed to make its way through a grating high up along one of its walls so that he was fairly confident that morning had come, that the suns were in the sky again. Perhaps the madness had passed by this time. Perhaps it was safe for him to come out. He poked his nose out into the hallway. Cautiously he looked around. The smell of smoke was the first thing he perceived. But it was a stale, musty, nasty, damp, acrid kind of smoke-smell, the smell of a fire that has been extinguished. The Observatory was not only a building made of stone, but it had a highly efficient sprinkler system, which must have gone into operation as soon as the mob began setting fires. The mob! Sheerin shuddered at the recollection. The rotund psychologist knew that he would never forget the moment when that mob had come bursting into the Observatory. It would haunt him as long as he lived-those twisted, distorted faces, those berserk eyes, those howling cries of rage. These were people who had lost their fragile grip on sanity even before the totality of the eclipse. The deepening Darkness had been enough to push them over the edge-that, and the skillful rabble-rousing of the Apostles of Flame, triumphant now in their moment of fulfilled prophecy. So the mob had come, by the thousands, to root out the despised scientists in their lair; and there they were, now, rushing in, waving torches, clubs, brooms, anything at all with which they could hit, smash, ruin. Paradoxically enough, it was the coming of the mob that had jolted Sheerin into being able to get a grip on himself. He had had a bad moment, back there when he and Theremon first went downstairs to barricade the doors. He had felt all right, even strangely buoyant, on the way down; but then the first reality of the Darkness had hit him, like a whiff of poison gas, and he had folded up completely. Sitting huddled up there on the stairs, cold with panic, remembering his trip through the Tunnel of Mystery and realizing that this time the trip would last not only a few minutes but for hour upon intolerable hour. Well, Theremon had pulled him out of that one, and Sheerin had recovered some of his self-control as they returned to the upper level of the Observatory. But then came totality-and the Stars. Though Sheerin had turned his head away when that ungodly blast of light first came bursting through the opening in the Observatory roof, he had not been able completely to avoid the shattering sight of it. And for an instant he could feel his mind's grip giving way-could feel the delicate thread of sanity beginning to sunder- But then had come the mob, and Sheerin knew that the issue wasn't simply one of preserving his sanity, any more. It was one of saving his life. If he wanted to survive this night he had no choice but to hold himself together and find a place of safety. |
| 676 |
More bodies. Madmen wandering in circles, singing to themselves. Burned-out vehicles by the side of the road. The shrubbery and trees hacked up as though by blind monstrous forces. And, off in the distance, a ghastly pall of brown smoke rising above the spires of Saro City. Chaos, chaos, chaos. "So this is what the end of the world looks like," Sheerin said quietly. "And here we are, you and I. Survivors." He laughed bitterly. "What a pair we are. I'm carrying a hundred pounds too many around my middle and you've got a hundred pounds too few. But we're still here. I wonder if Theremon made it out of there alive. If anyone did, he would have. But I wouldn't have bet very much on you or me. -The Sanctuary's midway between Saro City and the Observatory. We ought to be able to walk it in half an hour or so, if we don't get into any trouble. Here, take this." He scooped up a thick gray billy-club that was lying beside one of the fallen rioters and tossed it to Yimot, who caught it clumsily and stared at it as though he had no idea what it might be. "What will I do with it?" he asked finally. Sheerin said, "Pretend that you'll use it to bash in the skull of anybody that bothers us. Just as I'm pretending that I'd use this hatchet if I needed to defend myself. And if necessary I will. It's a new world out here, Yimot. Come on. And keep your wits about you as we go." The Darkness was still upon the world, the Stars still were flooding Kalgash with their diabolical rivers of light, when Siferra 89 came stumbling out of the gutted Observatory building. But the faint pink glow of dawn was showing on the eastern horizon, the first hopeful sign that the suns might be returning to the heavens. She stood on the Observatory lawn, legs far apart, head thrown back, pulling breath deep down into her lungs. Her mind was numb. She had no idea how many hours had passed since the sky had turned dark and the Stars had erupted into view like the blast of a million trumpets. All the night long she had wandered the corridors of the Observatory in a daze, unable to find her way out, struggling with the madmen who swarmed about her on all sides. That she had gone mad too was not something she stopped to think about. The only thing on her mind was survival: beating back the hands that clutched at her; parrying the swinging clubs with blows of the club that she herself had snatched up from a fallen man; avoiding the screaming, surging stampedes of maniacs who rumbled arm in arm in groups of six or eight through the hallways, trampling everyone in their way. It seemed to her that there were a million townsfolk loose in the Observatory. Wherever she turned she saw distended faces, bulging eyes, gaping mouths, lolling tongues, fingers crooked into monstrous claws. They were smashing everything. She had no idea where Beenay was, or Theremon. She vaguely remembered seeing Athor in the midst of ten or twenty bellowing hoodlums, his thick mane of white hair rising above them-and then seeing him go down, swept under and out of sight. Beyond that Siferra remembered nothing very clearly. For the whole duration of the eclipse she had run back and forth, up one hallway and down the other like a rat caught in a maze. She had never really been familiar with the layout of the Observatory, but getting out of the building should not have been that difficult for her-if she had been sane. Now, though, with the Stars blazing relentlessly at her out of every window, it was as if an icepick had been driven through her brain. |
| 677 |
Ancient things, archaeological things. Very important things. In a place called Thombo. How am I doing? she asked herself. And the answer came: You're doing fine. She smiled. She was feeling better moment by moment. It was the pink light of dawn on the horizon that was healing her, she thought. The morning was coming: the sun, Onos, entering the sky. As Onos rose, the Stars became less bright, less terrifying. They were fading fast. Already those in the east were dimmed by Onos's gathering strength. Even at the opposite end of the sky, where Darkness still reigned and the Stars thronged like minnows in a pool, some of the intensity was starting to go from their formidable gleam. She could look at the sky for several moments at a stretch now without feeling her head begin to throb painfully. And she was feeling less confused. She remembered clearly now where she lived, and where she worked, and what she had been doing the evening before. At the Observatory-with her friends, the astronomers, who had predicted the eclipse- The eclipse- That was what she had been doing, she realized. Waiting for the eclipse. For the Darkness. For the Stars. Yes. For the Flames, Siferra thought. And there they were. Everything had happened right on schedule. The world was burning, as it had burned so many times before-set ablaze not by the hand of the gods, nor by the power of the Stars, but by ordinary men and women, Star-crazed, cast into a desperate panic that urged them to restore the normal light of day by any means they could find. Despite the chaos all around her, though, she remained calm. Her injured mind, numbed, all but stupefied, was unable to respond fully to the cataclysm that Darkness had brought. She walked on and on, down the road, into the main quadrangle of the campus, past scenes of horrifying devastation and destruction, and felt no shock, no regret for what had been lost, no fear of the difficult times that must lie ahead. Not enough of her mind was restored yet for such feelings. She was a pure observer, tranquil, detached. The blazing building over there, she knew, was the new university library that she had helped to plan. But the sight of it stirred no emotion in her. She could just as well have been walking through some two-thousand-year-old site whose doom was a cut-and-dried matter of historical record. It would never have occurred to her to weep for a two-thousand-year-old ruin. It did not occur to her to weep now, as the university went up in flames all around her. She was in the middle of the campus now, retracing familiar paths. Some of the buildings were on fire, some were not. Like a sleepwalker she turned left past the Administration building, right at the Gymnasium, left again at Mathematics, and zigzagged past Geology and Anthropology to her own headquarters, the Hall of Archaeology. The front door stood open. She went in. The building seemed almost untouched. Some of the display cases in the lobby were smashed, but not by looters, since all the artifacts appeared still to be there. The elevator door had been wrenched off its hinges. The bulletin board next to the stairs was on the floor. Otherwise everything apparently was intact. She heard no sounds. The place was empty. Her office was on the second floor. On the way up the stairs she came upon the body of an old man lying face upward at the first-floor landing. "I think I know you," Siferra said. "What's your name?" He didn't answer. "Are you dead? Tell me: yes or no." His eyes were open, but there was no light in them. |
| 678 |
There was a small botanical garden behind it, and an experimental arboretum on the hillside beyond that, at the edge of the forest that encircled the campus. Looking back, Siferra thought she saw the men still pursuing her, though she couldn't be sure. She sprinted past the Botany building and easily leaped the low fence around the botanical garden. A man riding a mowing machine waved at her. He wore the olive-drab uniform of the university gardeners; and he was methodically mowing the bushes, cutting a wide swath of destruction back and forth across the center of the garden. He was chuckling to himself as he worked. Siferra went around him. From there it was a short run into the arboretum. Were they still following her? She didn't want to take the time to glance behind her. Just run, run, run, that was the best idea. Her long, powerful legs carried her easily between the rows of neatly planted trees. She moved in steady strides. It felt good, running like this. Running. Running. Then she came to a rougher zone of the arboretum, all brambles and thorns, everything tightly interwoven. Unhesitatingly Siferra plunged into it, knowing no one would go after her there. The branches clawed at her face, ripped at her clothing. As she pushed her way through one dense patch she lost her grip on the roll of charts, and emerged on the far side without them. Let them go, she thought. They don't mean anything any more anyway. But now she had to rest. Panting, gasping with exhaustion, she vaulted across a little stream at the border of the arboretum and dropped down on a patch of cool green moss. No one had followed her. She was alone. She looked up, through the tops of the trees. The golden light of Onos flooded the sky. The Stars could no longer be seen. The night was over at last, and the nightmare too. No, she thought. The nightmare is just beginning. Waves of shock and nausea rolled through her: The strange numbness that had afflicted her mind all through the night was beginning to lift. After hours of mental dissociation, she was starting to comprehend the patterns of things again, to put one event and another and another together and understand their meaning. She thought of the campus in ruins, and the flames rising above the distant city. The wandering madmen everywhere, the chaos, the devastation. Balik. The ugly grin on his face as he tried to paw her. And the look of amazement on it when she had hit him. I've killed a man today, Siferra thought in astonishment and dismay. Me. How could I ever have done a thing like that? She began to tremble. The horrifying memory seared her mind: the sound the club had made when she hit him, the way Balik had staggered backward, the other blows, the blood, the twisted angle of his head. The man with whom she had worked for a year and a half, patiently digging out the ruins at Beklimot, falling like a slaughtered beast under her deadly bludgeoning. And her utter calmness as she stood over him afterward-her satisfaction at having prevented him from annoying her any more. That was perhaps the ghastliest part of it all. Then Siferra told herself that what she had killed hadn't been Balik, but only a madman inside Balik's body, wild-eyed and drooling as he clawed and fondled her. Nor had she really been Siferra when she wielded that club, but a ghost-Siferra, a dream-Siferra, sleepwalking through the horrors of the dawn. Now, though, sanity was returning. Now the full impact of the night's events was coming home to her. |
| 679 |
Not just Balik's death-she would not let herself feel guilt for that-but the death of an entire civilization. She heard voices in the distance, back in the direction of the campus. Thick, bestial voices, the voices of those whose minds had been destroyed by the Stars and would never again be whole. She searched for her club. Had she lost that too, in her frenzied flight through the arboretum? No. No, here it was. Siferra grasped it and rose to her feet. The forest seemed to beckon to her. She turned and fled into its cool dark groves. And went on running as long as her strength held out. What else was there to do but go on running? Running. Running. It was late afternoon, the third day since the eclipse. Beenay came limping down the quiet country road that led to the Sanctuary, moving slowly and carefully, looking about him in all directions. There were three suns shining in the sky, and the Stars had long since returned to their age-old obscurity. But the world had irrevocably changed in those three days. And so had Beenay. This was the young astronomer's first full day of restored reasoning power. What he had been doing for the two previous days he had no clear idea. The whole period was simply a blur, punctuated by the rising and setting of Onos, with other suns wandering across the sky now and then. If someone had told him that this was the fourth day since the catastrophe, or the fifth or sixth, Beenay would not have been able to disagree. His back was sore, his left leg was a mass of bruises, and there were blood-encrusted scratches along the side of his face. He hurt everywhere, though the pain of the early hours had given way by now to dull aches of half a dozen different kinds radiating from various parts of his body. What had been happening? Where had he been? He remembered the battle in the Observatory. He wished he could forget it. That howling, screaming horde of crazed townspeople breaking down the door-a handful of robed Apostles were with them, but mainly they were just ordinary people, probably good, simple, boring people who had spent their whole lives doing the good, simple, boring things that kept civilization operating. Now, suddenly, civilization had stopped operating and all those pleasant ordinary people had been transformed in the twinkling of an eye into raging beasts. The moment when they came pouring in-how terrible that had been. Smashing the cameras that had just recorded the priceless data of the eclipse, ripping the tube of the great solarscope out of the Observatory roof, raising computer terminals high over their heads and dashing them to the floor- And Athor rising like a demigod above them, ordering them to leave-! One might just as well have ordered the tides of the ocean to turn back. Beenay remembered imploring Athor to come away with him, to flee while there still might be a chance. "Let go of me, young man!" Athor had roared, hardly seeming even to recognize him. "Get your hands off me, sir!" And then Beenay had realized what he should have seen before: that Athor had gone insane, and that the small part of Athor's mind that was still capable of functioning rationally was eager for death. What was left of Athor had lost all will to survive-to go forth into the dreadful new world of the post-eclipse barbarism. That was the most tragic single thing of all, Beenay thought: the destruction of Athor's will to live, the great astronomer's hopeless surrender in the face of this holocaust of civilization. |
| 680 |
But in order to find the Sanctuary, Beenay first had to find out where be was. And he had been wandering randomly in a dismal stupor for at least two days, perhaps more. He could be anywhere. In the early morning hours he found his way out of the forest, almost by accident, stepping forth unexpectedly into what had once been a neatly laid out residential district. It was deserted now, and in frightening disarray, with cars piled up every which way in the streets where their owners had left them when they no longer were capable of driving, and the occasional body lying in the street under a black cluster of flies. There was no sign that anyone was alive here. He spent a long morning trudging along a suburban highway lined by blackened, abandoned homes, without recognizing a single familiar landmark. At midday, as Trey and Patru rose into the sky, he entered a house through its open door and helped himself to whatever food he could find that had not spoiled. No water came out of the kitchen tap; but he found a cache of bottled water in the basement and drank as much of that as he could hold. He bathed himself in the rest. Afterward he proceeded up a winding road to a hilltop cul-de-sac of spacious, imposing dwellings, every one of them burned to a shell. Nothing at all was left of the uppermost house except a hillside patio decorated with pink and blue tiles, no doubt very handsome once, but marred now by thick black lumps of clotted debris scattered along its gleaming surface. With difficulty he made his way out onto it and looked out into the valley beyond. The air was very still. No planes were aloft, there was no sound of ground traffic, a weird silence resounded from every direction. Suddenly Beenay knew where he was, and everything fell into place. The university was visible off to his left, a handsome cluster of brick buildings, many of them now streaked with black smoke-stains and some seeming to be altogether destroyed. Beyond, on its high promontory, was the Observatory. Beenay glanced at it quickly and looked away, glad that at this distance he was unable to make out its condition very clearly. Far away to his right was Saro City, gleaming in the bright sunlight. To his eyes it seemed almost untouched. But he knew that if he had a pair of field glasses he would surely see shattered windows, fallen buildings, still-glowing embers, rising wisps of smoke, all the scars of the conflagration that had broken out at Nightfall. Straight below him, between the city and the campus, was the forest in which he had been wandering during the time of his delirium. The Sanctuary would be just on the far side of that; he might well have passed within a few hundred yards of its entrance a day or so ago, all unknowing. The thought of crossing that forest again did not appeal to him. Surely it was still full of madmen, cutthroats, irate escaped pets, all manner of troublesome things. But from his vantage point on the hilltop he could see the road that cut across the forest, and the pattern of streets that led to the road. Stick to paved routes, he told himself, and you'll be all right. And so he was. Onos was still in the sky when he completed the traversal of the forest highway and turned onto the small rural road that he knew led to the Sanctuary. Afternoon shadows had barely begun to lengthen when he came to the outer gate. Once past that, Beenay knew, he had to go down a long unpaved road that would take him to the second gate, and thence around a couple of outbuildings to the sunken entrance to the Sanctuary itself. |
| 681 |
There once had been a great deal more of it, a vast wilderness sweeping on a great diagonal across the midsection of the province almost to the sea, but most of it had gone to agriculture, much of the remainder had been cut up into suburban residential districts, and the university had taken a goodly nip some fifty years back for what was then its new campus. Unwilling to have itself engulfed by urban development, the university had then agitated to have what was left set aside as a park preserve. And since the rule in Saro City for many years had been that whatever the university wanted the university usually got, the last strip of the old wilderness was left alone. That was where Theremon found himself living now. The first two days had been very bad. His mind was still half fogged by the effects of seeing the Stars, and he was unable to form any clear plan. The main thing was just to stay alive. The city was on fire-smoke was everywhere, the air was scorching hot, from certain vantage points you could even see the leaping flames dancing along the rooftops-so obviously it wasn't a good idea to try to go back there. In the aftermath of the eclipse, once the chaos within his mind had begun to clear a little, he had simply continued downhill from the campus until he found himself entering the forest. Many others plainly had done the same thing. Some of them looked like university people, others were probably remnants of the mob that had come out to storm the Observatory on the night of the eclipse, and the rest, Theremon guessed, were suburbanites driven from their homes when the fires began to break out. Everyone he saw appeared to be at least as unsettled mentally as he was. Most seemed very much worse off-some of them completely unhinged, totally unable to cope. They had not formed any sort of coherent bands. Mainly they were solitaries, moving on mysterious private tracks through the woods, or else groups of two or three; the biggest aggregation Theremon saw was eight people, who from their appearance and dress seemed all to be members of one family. It was horrifying to encounter the truly crazy ones: the vacant eyes, the drooling lips, the slack jaws, the smeared clothing. They plodded through the forest glades like the walking dead, talking to themselves, singing, occasionally dropping to their hands and knees to dig up clumps of sod and munch on them. They were everywhere. The place was like one vast insane asylum, Theremon thought. Probably the whole world was. Those of this sort, the ones who had been most affected by the coming of the Stars, were generally harmless, at least to others. They were too badly deranged to have any interest in being violent, and their bodily coordination was so seriously disrupted that effective violence was impossible for them, anyway. But there were others who were not quite so mad-who at a glance might seem almost normal-who posed very serious dangers indeed. These, Theremon quickly realized, fell into two categories. The first consisted of people who bore no one any ill will but who were hysterically obsessed with the possibility that the Darkness and the Stars might return. These were the fire-lighters. Very likely they were people who had led orderly, settled lives before the catastrophe-family folk, hard workers, pleasant cheerful neighbors. So long as Onos was in the sky they were perfectly calm; but the moment the primary sun began to sink in the west and evening approached, fear of Darkness overcame them, and they looked around desperately for something to burn. |
| 682 |
Anything. Anything at all. Two or three of the other suns might still be overhead when Onos set, but the light of the minor suns did not seem sufficient to soothe the raging dread of Darkness that these people felt. These were the ones who had burned their own city down around themselves. Who, in their desperation, had ignited books, papers, furniture, the roofs of houses. Now, driven into the forest by the holocaust in the city, they were trying to burn that down too. But that was a harder job. The forest was densely wooded, lush, its thick cover of trees well supplied by the myriad streams that flowed into the broad river running along its border. Pulling down green boughs and trying to set them afire did not provide very satisfactory blazes. As for the carpet of dead wood and fallen leaves that lay on the forest floor, it had been pretty well soaked by the recent rains. Such of it that was capable of being burned was quickly found and used for bonfires, without touching off any sort of general conflagration; and by the second day the supply of such debris was very sparse. So the fire-lighter people, hampered as they were by forest conditions and by their own shock-muddled minds, were having little success so far. But they had managed to start a couple of good-sized fires in the forest all the same, which fortunately had burned themselves out in a few hours because they had consumed all the fuel in their vicinity. A few days of hot, dry weather, though, and these people might well be able to set the whole place ablaze, as they had already done in Saro City. The second group of not-quite-stable people roaming the forest seemed to Theremon to be a more immediate menace. These were the ones who had let all social restraints fall away from them. They were the banditti, the hooligans, the cutthroats, the psychopaths, the homicidal maniacs: the ones who moved like unsheathed blades along the quiet forest pathways, striking whenever they pleased, taking whatever they wanted, killing anyone unlucky enough to arouse their irritation. Since everyone had a certain glazed look in his eyes, some merely from fatigue, others from despondency, and others from madness, you could never be sure, whenever you met someone in the forest, how dangerous he was. There was no way of telling at a quick glance whether the person approaching you was merely one of the distraught or bewildered crazies, and therefore basically harmless, or one of the kind who were full of lethal fury and attacked anyone they encountered, with neither rhyme nor reason behind their deeds. So you quickly learned to be on your guard against anyone who came prancing and swaggering through the woods. Any stranger at all could be a menace. You might be talking quite amiably with someone, comparing notes on your experiences since the evening of Nightfall, when abruptly he would take offense at some casual remark of yours, or decide that he admired some article of your clothing, or perhaps merely take a blind unreasoning dislike of your face-and, with an animal-like howl, he would come rushing at you in mindless ferocity. Some of this sort, no doubt, had been criminals to begin with. The sight of society collapsing all around them had freed them of all restraint. But others, Theremon suspected, had been placid enough folk until their minds were shattered by the Stars. Then, suddenly, they found all the inhibitions of civilized life fall away from them. They forgot the rules that made civilized life possible. |
| 683 |
They were like small children again, asocial, concerned only with their own needs-but they had the strength of adults and the will power of the deeply disturbed. The thing to do, if you hoped to survive, was to avoid those whom you knew to be lethally crazy, or suspected of it. The thing to pray for was that they would all kill each other off within the first few days, leaving the world safe for the less predatory. Theremon had three encounters with madmen of this terrifying breed in the first two days. The first one, a tall, rangy man with a weird diabolical grin who was cavorting by the side of a brook that Theremon wanted to cross, demanded that the newspaperman pay him a toll to go past. "Your shoes, let's say. Or how about that wristwatch?" "How about getting out of my way?" Theremon suggested, and the man went berserk. Snatching up a cudgel that Theremon hadn't noticed until that moment, he roared some sort of war-cry and charged. There was no time to take evasive action: the best Theremon could do was duck as the other man swung the cudgel with horrific force at his head. He heard the club go whirring by, missing him by inches. It hit the tree beside him instead, cracking into it with tremendous force-a force so great that the impact of it traveled up the attacker's arm, and he gasped in pain as the cudgel fell from his nerveless fingers. Theremon was on top of him in an instant, seizing the man's injured arm, bringing it sharply upward with merciless force, making him grunt in agony and double up and fall moaning to his knees. Theremon prodded and pushed him down until his face was in the stream, and held him there. And held him there. And held him there. How simple it would be, Theremon thought in wonder, just to go on holding his head under water until he drowned. A part of his mind was actually arguing in favor of it. He would have killed you without even thinking about it. Get rid of him. Otherwise what will you do once you let go of him? Fight him all over again? What f he follows you through the forest to get even with you? Drown him now, Theremon. Drown him. It was a powerful temptation. But only one segment of Theremon's mind was willing to adapt so readily to the world's new jungle morality. The rest of him recoiled at the idea; and finally he released the man's arm and stepped back. He picked up the fallen cudgel and waited. All the fight was gone from the other man now, though. Choking and gasping, he rose from the stream with water flowing from his mouth and nostrils, and sat trembling by the bank, shivering, coughing, struggling for breath. He stared sullenly and fearfully at Theremon, but he made no attempt to get up, let alone to renew the fighting. Theremon stepped around him, crossed the stream in a bound, and trotted off quickly, deeper into the forest. The implications of what he had almost done did not fully strike him for another ten minutes. Then he halted suddenly, in a burst of sweat and nausea, and was swept by a fierce attack of vomiting that racked him so savagely that it was a long while before he could rise. Later that afternoon he realized that his roamings had brought him right to the border of the forest. When he looked out between the trees he saw a highway-utterly deserted- and, on the far side of the road, the ruins of a tall brick building standing in a broad plaza. He recognized the building. It was the Pantheon, the Cathedral of All the Gods. There wasn't much left of it. He walked across the road and stared in disbelief. |
| 684 |
It looked as if a fire had started in the heart of the building-what had they been doing, using the pews for kindling?-and had swept right up the narrow tower over the altar, igniting the wooden beams. The whole tower had toppled, bringing down the walls. Bricks were strewn everywhere about the plaza. He saw bodies jutting out of the wreckage. Theremon had never been a particularly religious man. He didn't know anyone who was. Like everyone else, he said things like "My God!" or "Gods!" or "Great gods!" for emphasis, but the idea that there might actually be a god, or gods, or whatever the current prevailing belief-system asserted, had always been irrelevant to the way he lived his life. Religion seemed like something medieval to him, quaint and archaic. Now and then he would find himself in a church to attend the wedding of a friend-who was as much of a disbeliever as he was, of course-or else he went to cover some official rite as a news item-but he hadn't been inside any kind of holy building for religious purposes since his own confirmation, when he was ten years old. All the same, the sight of the ruined cathedral stirred him profoundly. He had been present at its dedication, a dozen years back, when he was a young reporter. He knew how many millions of credits the building had cost; he had marveled at the splendid works of art it contained; he had been moved by the marvelous music of Ghissimal's Hymn to the Gods as it resounded through the great hall. Even he, who had no belief in the sacred, could not help feeling that if there was any place on Kalgash where the gods truly were present, it must be here. And the gods had let the building be destroyed like this! The gods had sent the Stars, knowing that the madness to follow would wreck even their own Pantheon! What did that mean? What did that say about the unknowability and unfathomability of the gods-assuming they even existed? No one would ever rebuild this cathedral, Theremon knew. Nothing would ever be as it was. "Help me," a voice called. That feeble sound cut into Theremon's meditations. He looked around. "Over here. Here." To his left. Yes. Theremon saw the glint of golden vestments in the sunlight. A man half buried in the rubble, far along down the side of the building-one of the priests, apparently, judging by his rich garb. He was pinned below the waist by a heavy beam and was gesturing with what must be the last of his strength. Theremon started to go toward him. But before he could take more than a dozen steps a second figure appeared at the far end of the fallen building and came running forward: a lean, agile little man who went scrambling over the bricks with animal swiftness, heading for the trapped priest. Good, Theremon thought. Together we ought to be able to pull that beam off him. But when he was still some twenty feet away he halted, horror-stricken. The agile little man had already reached the priest. Bending over him, he had slit the priest's throat with one quick stroke of a small knife, as casually as one might open an envelope; and now he was busily engaged in slicing the cords that fastened the priest's rich vestments. He looked up, glaring, at Theremon. His eyes were fiery and appalling. "Mine," he growled, like a jungle beast. "Mine!" And he flourished the knife. Theremon shivered. For a long moment he stood frozen in his tracks, fascinated in a ghastly way by the efficient manner with which the looter was stripping the dead priest's body. Then, sadly, he turned and hurried away, back across the road, into the forest. |
| 685 |
There was no point in doing anything else. That evening, when Tano and Sitha and Dovim held the sky with their melancholy light, Theremon allowed himself a few hours of fragmentary sleep in a deep thicket; but he awoke again and again, imagining that some madman with a knife was creeping up on him to steal his shoes. Sleep left him long before Onos-rise. It seemed almost surprising to find himself still alive when morning finally came. Half a day later he had his third encounter with one of the new breed of killers. This time he was crossing a grassy meadow close by one of the arms of the river when he caught sight of two men sitting in a shady patch just across the way, playing some sort of game with dice. They looked calm and peaceful enough. But as Theremon came nearer, he realized that an argument had broken out; and then, unthinkably swiftly, one of the men snatched up a bread-knife sitting on a blanket beside him and plunged it with lethal force into the other man's chest. The one who had wielded the knife smiled across at Theremon. "He cheated me. You know how it is. It makes you damned angry. I can't stand it when a guy tries to cheat me." It seemed all very clear-cut to him. He grinned and rattled the dice. "Hey, you want to play?" Theremon stared into the eyes of madness. "Sorry," he said, as casually as he could. "I'm looking for my girlfriend." He kept on walking. "Hey, you can find her later! Come on and play!" "I think I see her," Theremon called, moving faster, and got out of there without looking back. After that he was less cavalier about wandering through the forest. He found a sheltered nook in what seemed like a relatively unoccupied glade and built a tidy little nest for himself under a jutting overhang. There was a berry-bush nearby that was heavily laden with edible red fruits, and when he shook the tree just opposite his shelter it showered him with round yellow nuts that contained a tasty dark kernel. He studied the small stream just beyond, wondering if it contained anything edible that he might catch; but there seemed to be nothing in it except tiny minnows, and he realized that even if he could catch them he would have to eat them raw, for he had nothing to use as fuel for a fire and no way of lighting one, besides. Living on berries and nuts wasn't Theremon's idea of high style, but he could tolerate it for a few days. Already his waistline was shrinking commendably: the only admirable side effect of the whole calamity. Best to stay hidden away back here until things calmed down. He was pretty sure that things would calm down. General sanity was bound to return, sooner or later. Or so he hoped, at least. He knew that he himself had come a long way back from the early moments of chaos that the sight of the Stars had induced in his brain. Every day that went by, he felt more stable, more capable of coping. It seemed to him that he was almost his old self again, still a little shaky, perhaps, a little jumpy, but that was only to be expected. At least he felt fundamentally sane. He realized that very likely he had had less of a jolt during Nightfall than most people: that he was more resilient, more tough-minded, better able to withstand the fearful impact of that shattering experience. But maybe everybody else would start recovering, too, even those who had been much more deeply affected than he had been, and it would be safe to emerge and see what, if anything, was being done about trying to put the world back together. |
| 686 |
The thing to do now, he told himself, was to lay low, to keep from getting yourself murdered by one of those psychopaths running around out there. Let them all do each other in, as fast as they could; and then he would come warily creeping out to find out what was going on. It wasn't a particularly courageous plan. But it seemed like a wise one. He wondered what had happened to the others who had been in the Observatory with him at the moment of Darkness. To Beenay, to Sheerin, to Athor. To Siferra. Especially to Siferra. From time to time Theremon thought of venturing out to look for her. It was an appealing idea. During his long hours of solitude he spun glowing fantasies for himself of what it would be like to hook up with her somewhere in this forest. The two of them, journeying together through this transformed and frightening world, forming an alliance of mutual protection- He had been attracted to her from the first, of course. For all the good that had done him, he might just as well not have bothered, he knew: handsome as she was, she seemed to be the sort of woman who was absolutely self-contained, in no need whatever of any man's company, or any woman's, for that matter. He had maneuvered her into going out with him now and then, but she had efficiently and serenely kept him at a safe distance all the time. Theremon was experienced enough in worldly things to understand that no amount of smooth talk was persuasive enough to break through barriers that were so determinedly maintained. He had long ago decided that no worthwhile woman could ever be seduced; you could present the possibility to them, but you had to leave it ultimately to them to do the seducing for you, and if they weren't so minded, there was very little you could do to change their outlook. And with Siferra, things had been sliding in the wrong direction for him all year long. She had turned on him ferociously-and with some justification, he thought ruefully-once he began his misguided campaign of mockery against Athor and the Observatory group. Somehow right at the end he had felt that she was weakening, that she was becoming interested in him despite herself Why else had she invited him to the Observatory, against Athor's heated orders, on the evening of the eclipse? For a short time that evening there actually had seemed to be real contact blossoming between them But then had come the Darkness, the Stars, the mob, the chaos After that everything had plunged into confusion But if he could find her somehow, now- We'd work well together, he thought We'd be a tremendous team-hard-nosed, competent, survival-oriented. Whatever kind of civilization is going to evolve, we'd find a good place for ourselves in it. And if there had been a little psychological barrier between them before, he was certain it would seem unimportant to her now. It was a brand-new world, and new attitudes were necessary if you were going to survive. But how could he find Siferra No communications circuits were open, so far as he knew. She was just one of millions of people at large in the area. The forest alone probably had a population of many thousands now; and he had no real reason for assuming that she was in the forest. She could be fifty miles from here by this time. She could be dead. Looking for her was a hopeless task: it was worse than trying to find the proverbial needle in a haystack. This haystack was several counties wide, and the needle might well be getting farther away every hour. |
| 687 |
"I've got this, if I need it." Theremon fought back laughter. Sheerin was so absurdly mild-mannered that the thought of him defending himself with a hatchet was impossible to take seriously. He said, after a moment, "Lots of luck." "You really intend to stay?" "Until I find Siferra." Sheerin stared sadly at him. "Keep the luck you just offered me, then. I think you'll need it more than I will." He turned and trudged away without another word. For three days-or perhaps it was four; the time went by like a blur-Siferra moved southward through the forest. She had no plan except to stay alive. There was no point even in trying to get back to her apartment. The city still seemed to be burning. A low curtain of smoke hung in the air wherever she looked, and occasionally she saw a sinuous tongue of red flame licking into the sky on the horizon. It appeared to her as if new fires were being started every day. Which meant that the craziness had not yet begun to abate. She could feel her own mind returning gradually to normal, clearing day by day, blessedly emerging into clarity as though she were awakening from some terrible fever. She was uncomfortably aware that she wasn't fully herself yet-managing any sequence of thoughts was a laborious thing for her, and she lost herself quickly in muddle. But she was on her way back, of that she was sure. Apparently many of the others around her in the forest weren't recovering at all. Though Siferra was trying to keep to herself as much as she could, she encountered people from time to time, and most of them looked pretty badly deranged: sobbing, moaning, laughing wildly, glaring weirdly, rolling over and over on the ground. Just as Sheerin had suggested, some had suffered such mental trauma during the time of the crisis that they might never be sane again. Huge segments of the population must have lapsed into barbarism or worse, Siferra realized. They must be setting fires for the sheer fun of it now. Or killing for the same reason. So she moved carefully. With no particular destination in mind, she drifted more or less southward across the forest, camping wherever she found fresh water. The club that she had picked up on the evening of the eclipse was never very far from her hand. She ate whatever she could find that looked edible-seeds, nuts, fruits, even leaves and bark. It wasn't much of a diet. She knew that she was strong enough physically to endure a week or so on such improvised rations, but after that she'd begin to suffer. Already she could feel what little extra weight she had been carrying dropping away, and her physical resilience beginning little by little to diminish. And the supply of berries and fruits was diminishing too, very rapidly, as the forest's thousands of hungry new inhabitants picked it over. Then, on what she believed was the fourth day, Siferra remembered about the Sanctuary. Her cheeks flamed as she realized that there had been no need for her to have been living this cave-woman life all week. Of course! How could she have been so stupid? Just a few miles from here at this very moment, hundreds of university people were tucked away safe and sound in the old particle accelerator lab, drinking bottled water and dining pleasantly on the canned foods that they had spent the last few months stashing away. How ridiculous to be skulking around in this forest full of madmen, scratching in the dirt for her meager meals and looking hungrily at the little forest creatures that cavorted beyond her reach on the branches of the trees! |
| 688 |
His intelligence and experience told him one thing, his naturally resilient personality told him another. Perhaps Beenay and Athor were wrong and the astronomical cataclysm wouldn't happen at all. No, the cataclysm will definitely happen. Darkness, despite his own disturbing experiences with it at the Tunnel of Mystery two years before, would turn out not to be such a troublesome thing after all, if indeed it did come. Wrong. Darkness will cause universal madness. The madness would be only temporary, a brief period of disorientation. The madness will be permanent, in most people. The world would be disrupted for a few hours and then go back to normal. The world will be destroyed in the chaos following the eclipse. Back and forth, back and forth, up and down, up and down. Twin Sheerins, locked in endless debate. But now he had hit the bottom of the cycle and he seemed to be staying there, unmoving and miserable. His resilience and optimism had evaporated in the glare of what he had seen during his wanderings these past few days. It would be decades, possibly even a century or more, before things returned to normal. The mental trauma had scored too deep a scar, the destruction that had already occurred to the fabric of society was too widespread. The world he had loved had been vanquished by Darkness and smashed beyond repair. That was his professional opinion and he could see no reason to doubt it. This was the third day, now, since Sheerin had parted from Theremon in the forest and gone marching off, in his usual jaunty fashion, toward Amgando. That jauntiness was hard to recapture now. He had managed to get out of the forest in one piece-there had been a couple of bad moments, times when he had had to wave his hatchet around and look menacing and lethal, a total bluff on his part, but it had worked-and for the last day or so he had been moving in a plodding way through the once-pleasant southern suburbs. Everything was burned out around here. Entire neighborhoods had been destroyed and abandoned. Many of the buildings were still smoldering. The main highway running to the southern provinces, Sheerin had believed, began just a few miles below the park-a couple of minutes' drive, if you were driving. But he wasn't driving. He had had to make the horrendous climb up out of the forest to the imposing hill that was Onos Heights practically on hands and knees, clawing his way through the underbrush. It took him half a day just to ascend those few hundred yards. Once he was on top, Sheerin saw that the hill was more like a plateau-but it stretched on endlessly before him, and though he walked and walked and walked he did not come to the highway. Was he going the right way? Yes. Yes, from time to time he saw a road sign at a street corner that told him he was indeed heading toward the Great Southern Highway. How far was it, though? The signs didn't say. Every ten or twelve blocks there was another sign, that was all. He kept going. He had no choice. But reaching the highway was only the first step in getting to Amgando. He would still be in Saro City, essentially, at that point. Then what? Keep on walking? What else? He could hardly hitch a ride with someone. No vehicles seemed to be running anywhere. The public fuel stations must have gone dry days ago, those that had not been burned. How long was it likely to take him, at this pace, to get down to Amgando on foot? Weeks? Months? No-it would take him forever. He'd be dead of starvation long before he came anywhere near the place. |
| 689 |
Even so, he had to go on. Without a sense of purpose, he was finished right now, and he knew it. Something like a week had passed since the eclipse, maybe more. He was beginning to lose track of time. He neither ate regularly nor slept regularly any more, and Sheerin had always been a man of the most punctual habits. Suns came and went in the sky, now, the light brightened or dimmed, the air grew warmer or grew cooler, and time passed: but without the progression of breakfast, lunch, dinner, sleep, Sheerin had no idea of bow it was passing. He knew only that he was rapidly running out of strength. He hadn't eaten properly since the coming of the Nightfall. From that dark moment onward, it had been scraps and shards for him, nothing more-a bit of fruit from some tree when he could find it, any unripe seeds that didn't look as though they'd be poisonous, blades of grass, anything. It wasn't making him sick, somehow, but it wasn't sustaining him very well, either. The nutritional content must have been close to zero. His clothes, worn and tattered, hung from him like a shroud. He didn't dare look underneath them. He imagined that his skin must lie now in loose folds over his jutting bones. His throat was dry all the time, his tongue seemed swollen, there was a frightful pounding behind his eyes. And that dull, numb, hollow sensation in his gut, all the time. Well, he told himself in his more cheerful moments, there must have been some reason why he had devoted himself so assiduously for so many years to building up such an opulent layer of fat, and now he was learning what that reason was. But his cheerful moments were fewer and farther between every day. Hunger was preying on his spirits. And he realized that he couldn't hold out much longer like this. His body was big; it was accustomed to regular feedings, and robust ones; he could live only so long on his accumulated backlog of Sheerin, and then he would be too weak to pull himself onward. Before long it would seem simpler just to curl up behind some bush and rest ... and rest ... and rest... He had to find food. Soon. The neighborhood he was moving through now, though deserted like all the rest, seemed a little less devastated than the areas behind him. There had been fires here too, but not everywhere, and the flames appeared to have jumped randomly past this house and that without harming them. Patiently Sheerin went from one to the next, trying the door of each house that didn't seem to have been seriously damaged. Locked. Every one of them. How fastidious of these people! he thought. How tidy! The world has fallen in around their ears, and they are abandoning their homes in blind terror, running off to the forest, the campus, the city, the gods only knew where-and they take the trouble to lock their houses before they go! As if they mean simply to have a brief holiday during the time of chaos, and then go home to their books and their bric-a-brac, their closets full of nice clothing, their gardens, their patios. Or hadn't they realized that everything was over, that the chaos was going to go on and on and on? Perhaps, Sheerin thought dismally, they aren't gone at all. They're in there hiding behind those locked doors of theirs, huddling in the basement the way I did, waiting for things to get normal again. Or else staring at me from the upstairs windows, hoping I'll go away. He tried another door. Another. Another. All locked. No response. "Hey! Anybody home? Let me in!" Silence. He stared bleakly at the thick wooden door in front of him. |
| 690 |
He envisioned the treasures behind it, the food not yet spoiled and waiting to be eaten, the bathtub, the soft bed. And here he was outside, with no way of getting in. He felt a little like the small boy in the fable who has been given the magic key to the garden of the gods, where fountains of honey flow and gumdrops grow on every bush, but who is too small to reach up and put it in the keyhole. He felt like crying. He realized, then, that he was carrying a hatchet. And he began to laugh. Hunger must have been making him simpleminded! The little boy in the fable perseveres, offering his mittens and his boots and his velvet cap to various animals who are passing by so that they will help him: each one gets on another one's back, and he climbs on the top of the heap and puts the key in the keyhole. And here was not-so-little Sheerin, staring at a locked door, and he was holding a hatchet! Break the door down? Just break it down? It went against everything that he thought was right and proper. Sheerin looked at the hatchet as though it had turned to a serpent in his hand. Breaking in-why, that was burglary! How could he, Sheerin 501, Professor of Psychology at Saro University, simply smash down the door of some law-abiding citizen's house and casually help himself to whatever he found there? Easily, he told himself, laughing even harder at his own foolishness. This is how you do it. He swung the hatchet. But it wasn't all that easy. His starvation-weakened muscles rebelled at the effort. He could lift the hatchet, all right, and he could swing it, but the blow seemed pathetically weak, and a line of fire shot through his arms and back as the blade made contact with the stout wooden door. Had he split the door? No. Cracked it a little? Maybe. Maybe a little chip. He swung again. Again. Harder. There you go, Sheerin. You're getting the hang of it now. Swing! Swing! He scarcely felt the pain, after the first few swings. He closed his eyes, pulled breath deep into his lungs, and swung. And swung again. The door was cracking now. There was a perceptible crevice. Another swing-another-maybe five or six more good blows and it would break in half- Food. Bath. Bed. Swing. And swing. And- And the door opened in his face. He was so astonished that he nearly fell through. He staggered and lurched, braced himself with the haft of the ax against the door-frame, and looked up. Half a dozen fierce wild-eyed faces looked back at him. "You knocked, sir?" a man said, and everyone howled in manic glee. Then they reached out for him, caught him by his arms, pulled him inside. "You won't be needing this," someone said, and effortlessly twisted the hatchet from Sheerin's grasp. "You can only hurt yourself with a thing like that, don't you know?" More laughter-a crazed howling. They pushed him into the center of the room and formed a ring around him. There were seven, eight, maybe nine of them. Men and women both, and one half-grown boy. Sheerin could see at a glance that they weren't the rightful residents of this house, which must have been neat and well maintained before they moved into it. Now there were stains on the wall, half the furniture was overturned, there was a sodden puddle of something-wine?-on the carpet. He knew what these people were. These were squatters, rough and ragged-looking, unshaven, unwashed. They had come drifting in, had taken possession of the place after its owners fled. One of the men was wearing only a shirt. One of the women, hardly more than a girl, was clad just in a pair of shorts. |
| 691 |
He was a killer without motive, a cheerful psychopath, a pure predator. Garpik stood by the mouth of the canyon for a while, humming to himself, fondling one of his knives. He didn't seem to notice the dead animal, or didn't care. Perhaps he was waiting for the boys to come back. But plainly they weren't planning to do that, and after a time Garpik, with a shrug, went slouching off into the forest, most likely in search of something amusing to do with his weapons. Theremon waited an endless moment, making certain Garpik didn't intend to double back and pounce on him. Then-when he could no longer bear the sight of the dead graben lying there on the ground, where some other human or animal predator might suddenly come along to seize it before he did-he rushed forward, circled the lake, snatched the animal up, carried it back to his hiding place. It weighed as much as a small child. It might be good for two or three meals-or more, if he could restrain his hunger and if the meat didn't spoil too quickly. His head was spinning with hunger. He had had nothing but fruits and nuts to eat for more days than he could remember. His skin had drawn tight over his muscles and bones; what little spare fat he had been carrying he had long since absorbed, and now he was consuming his own strength in the struggle to stay alive. But this evening, at last, he would enjoy a little feast. Roast graben! What a treat! he thought bitterly. -And then he thought: Be grateful for small mercies, Theremon. Let's see-to build a fire, now- Fuel, first. Behind his shelter was a flat wall of rock with a deep lateral crack in it, in which a line of weeds was growing. Plenty of them were long dead and withered, and had dried out since the last rainstorm. Quickly Theremon moved along the rock wall, plucking yellowed stems and leaves, assembling a little heap of straw-like material that would catch fire easily. Now some dry twigs. They were harder to find, but he rummaged around the forest floor, looking for dead shrubs or at least shrubs with dead branches. The afternoon was well along by the time he had put together enough of that sort of tinder to matter: Dovim was gone from the sky, and Trey and Patru, which had been low on the horizon when the boys were hunting the graben, now had moved into the center of things, like a pair of glittering eyes watching the sorry events on Kalgash from far overhead. Carefully Theremon arranged his kindling-wood above the dried plants, building a framework as he imagined a real outdoorsman would, the bigger branches along the outside, then the thinner ones crisscrossed over the middle. Not without some difficulty, he skewered the graben on a spit he had made of a sharp, reasonably straight stick, and positioned it a short distance above the woodpile. So far, so good. Just one little thing missing, now. Fire! He had kept his mind away from that problem while assembling his fuel, hoping that it would solve itself somehow without his having to dwell on it. But now it had to be faced. He needed a spark. The old boys'-book trick of rubbing two sticks together was, Theremon was certain, nothing but a myth. He had read that certain primitive tribes had once started their fires by twirling a stick against a board with a little hole in it, but he suspected that the process wasn't all that simple, that it probably took an hour of patient twirling to get anything going. And in any case very likely you had to be initiated into the art by the old man of the tribe when you were a boy, or some such thing, or it wouldn't work. |
| 692 |
"Not yet, anyway. There-look at him run!" The looter had swung around at the sound of the shot, staring in berserk manic astonishment at Theremon and Siferra. His eyes were blank; a trail of spittle dribbled from his lips. He gaped at them for a long moment. Then, dropping his sack of booty, he went scrabbling away in a wild, desperate flight over the tops of the cars and soon was lost from view. They went onward. It was slow, dreadful going. The road-signs that rose high above them on shining stanchions mocked their pitiful progress by telling them what a very small distance from the beginning of the highway they had succeeded in traversing so far. By Onos-set they had gone only a mile and a half. "At this rate," Theremon said somberly, "it'll take us close to a year to reach Amgando." "We'll move faster as we get the knack of it," said Siferra, without much conviction. If only they could have followed along some street parallel to the highway, instead of having to walk on the roadbed itself, it would all have been much simpler for them. But that was impossible. Much of the Great Southern Highway was an elevated road, rising on lofty pillars above wooded tracts, areas of marsh, and the occasional industrial zone. There were places where the highway became a bridge across long open patches of mining scars, or over lakes and streams. For most of the distance they would have no choice but to stick to what had once been the central traffic lanes of the highway itself, difficult as it was to get around the unending array of wreckage. They kept to the edge of the roadbed as much as they could, since the density of wrecked cars was lower there. Looking over into the districts below, they saw signs of continuing chaos everywhere. Burned houses. Fires still raging after all this time, stretching to the horizon. Occasional little bands of forlorn refugees, looking stunned and dazed, straggling bewilderedly through the debris-choked streets bound on some hopeless, desperate migration. Sometimes a larger group, a thousand people or more, camped together in some open place, everyone huddled in a desolate, paralyzed-looking way, scarcely moving, their wills and energies shattered. Siferra pointed to a burned-out church at the crest of a hill just across from the highway. A small group of ragged-looking people were scrambling over its tumbled walls, prying at the remaining blocks of gray stone with crowbars, pulling them loose and hurling them into the courtyard. "It looks as though they're demolishing it," she said. "Why would they do that?" Theremon said, "Because they hate the gods. They blame them for everything that happened. -Do you know the Pantheon, the big Cathedral of All the Gods just at the edge of the forest, with the famous Thamilandi murals? I saw it a couple of days after Nightfall. It had been burned down-just rubble, everything destroyed, and one half-conscious priest sticking out of a pile of bricks. Now I realize that it was no accident that it burned. That fire was deliberately set. And the priest-I saw a crazy kill him right before my eyes, and I thought it was to steal his vestments. Maybe not. Maybe it was out of mere hatred." "But the priests didn't cause-" "Have you forgotten the Apostles so soon? Mondior, telling us for months that what was going to happen was the vengeance of the gods? The priests are the voice of the gods, isn't that so, Siferra? And if they led us into evil, so that we needed to be punished this way, why, the priests themselves must be responsible for the coming of the Stars. |
| 693 |
Most of the Apostles who had surprised them in the field had gone after Theremon. Looking back once, she had seen them surrounding him like hunters' hounds surrounding their prey. They had knocked him down; he would certainly be captured. Only two of the Apostles had split off to pursue her. Siferra had jabbed one in the face, hard, with the flat of her hand at the end of her stiff outstretched arm, and at the speed she was traveling the impact had sent him reeling to the ground. The remaining one was fat and ungainly and slow; in moments Siferra left him far behind. She doubled back the way she and Theremon had come, toward the elevated highway. But it seemed unwise to go up onto it. The highway was too easily blocked, and there was no safe way down from it except at the exit ramps. She would only be putting herself at risk of running into a trap if she went up there. And even if no roadblocks lay ahead, it would be a simple thing for the Apostles to come after her in their trucks and pick her up, a mile or two down the way. No, the thing to do was to run into the woods on the far side of the road. The Apostles' trucks wouldn't be able to follow her there. She could lose herself easily enough in those low shrubby trees, and hide there until she had figured out her next move. And what could that be? she wondered. She had to admit that Theremon's idea, wild as it was, still was their only hope: steal a truck somehow, drive down to Amgando and sound the alarm before the Apostles could get their army on the move again. But Siferra knew there wasn't the remotest chance that she could simply tiptoe up to an empty truck, jump in, and drive it away. The Apostles weren't that stupid. She'd have to order one of them at gunpoint to switch the truck on for her and surrender its controls to her. And that involved carrying out the whole bizarre maneuver of trying to overpower a stray Apostle, getting his robe, slipping into the camp, locating someone who could open up one of the trucks for her- Her heart sank. It was all too implausible. She might just as well consider trying to rescue Theremon while she was at it- go marching in with her needle-gun blazing, take hostages, demand his immediate release-oh, it was absolute foolishness, a silly melodramatic dream, a gaudy maneuver out of some cheap children's adventure book- But what will I do? What will I do? She huddled down in a copse of tightly woven little trees with long feathery leaves and waited for time to pass. The Apostles gave no sign of breaking camp: she could still see the smoke of their bonfire against the twilight sky, and their trucks were still parked where they had been along the road. Evening was coming on. Onos was gone from the sky. Dovim hovered on the horizon. The only suns overhead were her two least favorite ones, bleak and cheerless Tano and Sitha, casting their cold light from their distant location at the edge of the universe. Or what people had thought was the edge of the universe, rather, in those far-off innocent days before the Stars appeared and revealed to them just how immense the universe really was. The hours ticked interminably by. No solution to the situation made sense to her. Amgando seemed lost, unless someone else had managed to get a warning to them-certainly there was no way she was going to get down there ahead of the Apostles. Rescuing Theremon was an absurd idea. Her chances of stealing a truck and getting to Amgando by herself was only slightly less preposterous. |
| 694 |
What then? Simply sit back and watch while the Apostles took command of everything? There seemed to be no alternative. At one point during the evening she thought that the only path open to her was to walk into the Apostles' camp, surrender, and ask to be imprisoned with Theremon. At least they would be together then. It astonished her how much she missed him. They had not been out of each other's company in weeks, she who had never lived with a man in her life. And all during the long journey from Saro City, though they had bickered now and then, even quarreled a little, she had never tired of being with him. Not once. It had seemed the most natural thing in the world for them to be together. And now she was alone again. Go on, she told herself. Give yourself up. Everything's lost anyway, isn't it? It grew darker. Clouds veiled Sitha and Tano's frosty light, and the sky turned so dusky that she half expected the Stars to reappear. Go ahead, she thought bitterly. Come out and shine. Drive everyone crazy all over again. What harm can it do? The world can only be smashed once, and that's been done already. But the Stars, of course, did not appear. Veiled as they were, Tano and Sitha nevertheless afforded enough light to mask the glow of those distant points of mysterious brilliance. And as the hours went by, Siferra found herself swinging completely around from her mood of total defeatism to a new sense of almost reckless hope. When all is lost, she told herself, there's nothing left to lose. Under cover of this evening gloom she would slip into the Apostles' camp and-somehow, somehow-take one of their trucks. And rescue Theremon, too, if she could manage it. And then off to Amgando! By the time Onos was in the sky tomorrow morning, she'd be down there, among her university friends, in plenty of time to let them know that they had to scatter before the enemy army arrived. All right, she thought. Let's go. Slowly-slowly-more cautiously than before, just in case they have sentries hidden in the grass- Out of the woods. A moment of uncertainty, there: she felt tremendously vulnerable, now that she had left the safety of that tangle of shrubbery behind. But the dimness still protected her. Across the cleared place, now, that led from the woods to the elevated highway. Under the great metal legs of the roadbed and into the unkempt field where she and Theremon had been surprised that afternoon. Get down and wriggle, now, the way they had before. Once again across the field-looking this way and that, scanning for sentries who might be on duty at the perimeter of the Apostles' camp- Her needle-gun was in her hand, set for minimum aperture, the sharpest, most highly focused, deadliest beam the gun could produce. If anyone came upon her now, so much the worse for him. There was too much at stake to worry about the niceties of civilized morality. While still half out of her mind she had killed Balik in the Archaeology lab, not meaning to, but he was dead all the same; and, a little to her surprise, she found herself quite ready to kill again, this time intentionally, if circumstances required it of her. The important thing was to get a vehicle and get out of here and carry the news of the Apostles' army's approach to Amgando. Everything else, including considerations of morality, was secondary. Everything. This was war. Onward. Head down, eyes raised, body hunched. She was only a few dozen yards from the camp now. It was very silent over there. Probably most of them were asleep. |
| 695 |
From time to time Andrew, like any machine no matter how well made, was in need of repair — and robot repairs were invariably expensive. Then, too, there were the regular upgrades. Robotics had always been a dynamic industry, rapidly progressing from decade to decade since the days of the first massive, clunky products, which had not even had the ability to speak. Improvements in design, in function, in capabilities, were unending. With the passing years robots constantly became more sleek, ever more versatile, ever more deft of motion and durable of structure. Sir saw to it that Andrew had the advantage of every new device that U. S. Robots developed. When the improved homeostasis circuitry came out, Sir made sure that it was installed in Andrew almost at once. When the new and far more efficient articulation of the leg-joint was perfected, using the latest elastomer technology, Andrew got it. When, a few years later, subtler face-panels — made of carbon fiber set in an epoxy matrix which looked less sketchily human than the old kind — became the rage, Andrew was modified accordingly, to provide him with the serious, sensitive, perceptive, artistic look which Sir — at Little Miss's prompting — had come to believe was appropriate to his nature. Little Miss wanted Andrew to be an absolute paragon of metallic excellence, and Sir felt the same way. Everything was done at Andrew's expense, naturally. Andrew insisted on that. He would not hear of letting Sir pay for any of the costs associated with his upgrades. A steady stream of magnificent work flowed from his little attic shop — one-of-a-kind masterpieces of carved jewelry fashioned from rare woods, sumptuous office furniture, elegant bedroom suites, wondrous lamps, and ornate bookcases. There was no need for a showroom or catalogs, because word of mouth took care of everything and all of Andrew's output was commissioned months and then years in advance. The checks were made payable to Pacific Coast Artifactories, Incorporated, and Andrew Martin was the only officer of Pacific Coast Artifactories who was entitled to draw money from the corporate account. Whenever it was necessary for Andrew to go back to the U. S. Robots factory for maintenance or upgrading, it was a Pacific Coast Artifactories check, signed by Andrew himself, that paid for the work. The one area of Andrew that remained untouched by upgrading of any sort was his positronic pathways. Sir was insistent — extremely insistent — about that. "The new robots aren't nearly as good as you are, Andrew," he said. "The new ones are contemptibly simple-minded creatures, as a matter of fact. The company has succeeded in learning how to make the pathways more precise, more closely on the nose, more deeply on the track, but that is a double-edged kind of improvement. The new robots don't shift. They have no mental agility. There's nothing in the least unpredictable about them. They simply do what they're designed to do and never a smidgeon more. I like you better, Andrew." "Thank you, Sir." "Of course, the company will tell you that their current generation of robots is 99.9% efficient, or maybe they're claiming 100% efficiency this year. Well, good for them. But a robot like you, Andrew — you're 102% efficient; 110%, maybe. That isn't what they want, at U. S. Robots. They're after perfection, and I suppose they've attained it — their idea of perfection, anyway. The perfect servant. The flawlessly functioning mechanical man. But perfection can be a terrible limitation, Andrew. |
| 696 |
Whereas Andrew looked rather better than he had when he first joined the family — quite handsome, in fact, in his robotic way. Time had brought certain other changes to the Martin household, too. Ma'am had decided, after some thirty years of being Mrs. Gerald Martin, that there might be some more fulfilling role in life than simply being the wife of a distinguished member of the Regional Legislature. She had played the part of Mrs. Gerald Martin loyally and uncomplainingly and very well, all that time. But she had played it long enough. And so she had regretfully announced her decision to Sir, and they had amicably separated, and Ma'am had gone off to join an art colony somewhere in Europe — perhaps in southern France, perhaps in Italy. Andrew was never quite sure which it was (or what difference, if any, there might be between France and Italy, which were mere names to him) and the postage stamps on her infrequent letters to Sir were of various kinds. Since both France and Italy were provinces of the European Region, and had been for a long time, Andrew had difficulty understanding why they needed their own postage stamps, either. But apparently they insisted on maintaining certain ancient folkways even though the world had passed beyond the epoch of independent and rival nations. The two girls had finished growing up, too. Miss, who by all reports had become strikingly beautiful, had married and moved to Southern California, and then she had married again and moved to South America, and then had come word of still another marriage and a new home in Australia. But now Miss was living in New York City and had become a poet, and nothing was said about any further new husbands. Andrew suspected that Miss's life had not turned out to be as happy or rewarding as it should have been, and he regretted that. Still, he reminded himself, he had no very clear understanding of what humans meant by "happiness." Perhaps Miss had lived exactly the kind of life that she had wanted to live. He hoped so, anyway. As for Little Miss, she was now a slender, fine-boned woman with high cheekbones and a look of great delicacy backed by extraordinary resilience. Andrew had never heard anyone speak of her unusual beauty in his presence — Miss was always said to be the beautiful sister, and Little Miss was praised more for her forceful character than for her looks. To Andrew's taste golden-haired Little Miss had always seemed far more beautiful than the soft and overly curvy older sister; but his taste was only a robot's taste, after all, and he never ventured to discuss matters of human appearance with anyone. It was hardly an appropriate thing for a robot to do. In fact he had no right even to an opinion in such areas, as he very well knew. Little Miss had married a year or so after finishing college, and was living not far away, just up the coast from the family estate. Her husband, Lloyd Charney, was an architect who had grown up in the East but who was delighted to make his home along the wild Northern California coast that his wife loved so deeply. Little Miss had also made it clear to her husband that she wanted to remain close to her father's robot, Andrew, who had been her guardian and mentor since the early years of her childhood. Perhaps Lloyd Charney was a little taken aback by that, but he raised no objection, and Little Miss remained a frequent visitor at the imposing Martin mansion, which now was occupied only by the aging Sir and the faithful Andrew. |
| 697 |
He never asked Andrew upstairs for any reason, and Andrew would not take it upon himself to intrude on Sir's privacy; and so from that time on Andrew saw Sir only on those infrequent occasions when the old man chose to descend into the main part of the house. Andrew had not lived in the house himself for some time. As his woodworking business had expanded, it had become awkward for him to continue to operate out of the little attic studio that Sir had set aside for him at the beginning. So it had been decided, a few years back, that he would be allowed to set up a little dwelling of his own, a two-story cabin at the edge of the woods that flanked the Martin estate. It was a pleasant, airy cabin, set on a little rise, with ferns and glistening-leaved shrubs all about, and a towering redwood tree just a short distance away. Three robot workmen had built it for him in a matter of a few days, working under the direction of a human foreman. The cabin had no bedroom, of course, nor a kitchen, nor any bathroom facilities. One of the rooms was a library and office where Andrew kept his reference books and sketches and business records, and the other and much larger room was the workshop, where Andrew kept his carpentry equipment and stored the work in progress. A small shed adjoining the building was used to house the assortment of exotic woods that Andrew used in the jewelry-making segment of his enterprise, and the stack of less rare lumber that went into his much-sought-after pieces of furniture. There was never any end of jobs for him to do. The publicity over his attaining free status had generated worldwide interest in the things that Andrew made, and scarcely a morning went by without three or four orders turning up on his computer. He had a backlog of commissions stretching years into the future, now, so that he finally had to set up a waiting list simply for the privilege of placing an order with him. He was working harder now as a free robot than he ever had in the years when he had technically been the property of Sir. It was not at all unusual for Andrew to put in thirty-six or even forty-eight straight hours of work without emerging from his cabin, since he had no need, naturally, for food or sleep or rest of any kind. His bank account swelled and swelled. He insisted on repaying Sir for the entire cost of building his little house, and this time Sir was willing to accept the money, purely for the sake of proper form. Title to the structure was legally transferred to Andrew and he executed a formal lease covering the portion of Gerald Martin's land on which the building stood. Little Miss, who still lived just up the coast in the house she and Lloyd Charney had built long ago when they had first been married, never failed to look in on him whenever she came to Sir's estate to pay a call on her father. As a rule Little Miss would stop off at Andrew's workshop as soon as she arrived, and chat with him awhile and look at his latest projects, before going on into the main house where Sir was. Often she brought Little Sir with her — though Andrew no longer called him that. For Little Sir had ceased to be a boy quite some time back — he was a tall and robust young man now, with a flaring russet-colored mustache nearly as awesome as his grandfather's and an imposing set of side-whiskers as well, and soon after the court decision that made Andrew a free robot he forbade Andrew to use the old nickname. "Does it displease you, Little Sir?" Andrew asked. |
| 698 |
He even indulged in the new style of clothing that some of the best-known video commentators were going in for, the loose, flowing style known as "drapery." Wearing it made him feel like a Greek philosopher, he said, or like a member of the ancient Roman Senate. Paul Charney, who was generally a good deal more conservative in his ways than his father, warned him the first time he saw his father rigged out like that: "Just take care not to trip over it on stage, Dad;" ''I'll try not to," said George. The essence of his pro-robot argument was this: "If, by virtue of the Second Law, we can demand of any robot unlimited obedience in all respects not involving harm to a human being, then any human being, any human being at all, has a fearsome power over any robot, any robot. In particular, since Second Law overrides Third Law, any human being can use the law of obedience to defeat the law of self-protection. He can order the robot to damage itself or even destroy itself for any reason, or for no reason whatsoever — purely on whim alone. "Let us leave the question of property rights out of the discussion here — though it is not a trivial one — and approach the issue simply on the level of sheer human decency. Imagine someone approaching a robot he happens to encounter on the road and ordering it, for no reason other than his own amusement, to remove its own limbs, or to do some other grave injury to itself. Or let us say that the robot's owner himself, in a moment of pique or boredom or frustration, gives such an order. "Is this just? Would we treat an animal like that? And an animal, mind you, might at least have the capacity to defend itself. But we have made our robots inherently unable to lift a hand against a human being. "Even an inanimate object which has given us good service has a claim on our consideration. And a robot is far from insensible; it is not a simple machine and it is not an animal. It can think well enough to enable it to speak with us, reason with us, joke with us. Many of us who have lived and worked with robots all our lives have come to regard them as friends — virtually as members of our families, I dare say. We have deep respect for them, even affection. Is it asking too much to want to give our robot friends the formal protection of law? "If a man has the right to give a robot any order that does not involve doing harm to a human being, he should have the decency never to give a robot any order that involves doing harm to a robot — unless human safety absolutely requires such action. Certainly a robot should not lightly be asked to do purposeless harm to itself. With great power goes great responsibility. If the robots have the Three Laws to protect humans, is it too much to ask that humans subject themselves to a law or two for the sake of protecting robots?" There was, of course, another side to the issue — and the spokesman for that side was none other than James Van Buren, the lawyer who had opposed Andrew's original petition for free-robot status in the Regional Court. He was old, now, but still vigorous, a powerful advocate of traditional social beliefs. In his calm, balanced, reasonable way, Van Buren was once again a forceful speaker on behalf of those who denied that robots could in any way be considered worthy of having "rights." He said, "Of course I hold no brief for vandals who would wantonly destroy a robot that does not belong to them, or order it to destroy itself. That is a civil offense, pure and simple, which can readily be punished through the usual legal channels. |
| 699 |
Yet he felt no despair. Despair was not really a quality that he was capable of, and in any case he knew that these problems were merely temporary. He could feel his brain from the inside. No one else could; and no one else could know as well as he did that his brain was still intact, that it had come through the transfer operation unharmed. His thoughts flowed freely through the neural connections of his new body, even if the body was not yet as swift as it might be in reacting to them. Every parameter checked out perfectly. He was merely having a few interface problems, that was all. But Andrew knew he was fundamentally well and that it would be only a matter of time until he had achieved complete control over his new housing. He had to think of himself as very young, still. Like a child, a newborn child. The months passed. His coordination improved steadily. He moved swiftly toward full positronic interplay. Yet not everything was as he would have wished it. Andrew spent hours before the mirror, evaluating himself as he went through his repertoire of facial expressions and bodily motions. And what he saw fell far short of the expectations he had had for his new body. Not quite human! The face was stiff — too stiff — and he doubted that that was going to improve with time. He would press his finger against his cheek and the flesh would yield, but not in the way that true human flesh would yield. He could smile or scowl or frown, but they were studied, imitative smiles and scowls and frowns. He would give the smile-signal or the frown-signal or whatever, and the muscles of his face would obediently hoist the smile-expression or the frown-expression into view, pulling his features around in accordance with a carefully designed program. He was always conscious of the machinery, organic though it might be, clanking ponderously around beneath his skin to produce the desired effect. That was not how it happened with human beings, Andrew suspected. And his motions were too deliberate. They lacked the careless free flow of the human being. He could hope that that would come after a while — he was already far beyond the first dismal days after the operation, when he had staggered awkwardly about his room like some sort of crude pre-positronic automaton — but something told him that even with this extraordinary new body he was never going to be able to move in the natural way that virtually every human being took for granted. Still, things were not all that bad. The U. S. Robots people had kept their part of the bargain honorably and had carried out the transfer with all the formidable technical skill at their disposal. And Andrew had what he wanted. He might not fool the truly observant onlooker into thinking he was human, but he was far more human-looking than any robot ever had been, and at least he could wear clothes now without the ridiculous anomaly of an expressionless metal face rising up above them. Eventually Andrew declared, "I will be getting back to work now." Paul Charney laughed and said, "Then you must be well. What will you be doing? Another book?" "No," said Andrew seriously. "I live too long for anyone career to seize me by the throat and never let me go. There was a time when I was primarily an artist, and I still dabble in that now and then. And there was a time when I was a historian and I can always write another book or two, if I feel the need for it. But I have to keep moving on. What I want to be now, Paul, is a robobiologist." "A robopsychologist, you mean?" "No. |
| 700 |
He delved deep into the mechanisms of the human body — for Andrew saw that that was every bit as much a mechanism as were the products of U. S. Robots and Mechanical Men. It was an organic mechanism, yes — but a mechanism nevertheless, a beautifully designed one, with its own firm laws of metabolic rhythm, of balance and decay, of breakdown and repair. Years went by, quiet ones not only within Andrew's secluded retreat on the grounds of the old Martin estate, but in the world outside. The Earth's population was stable, held level not only by a low birth rate but by steady emigration to the growing settlements in space. Giant computers controlled most economic fluctuations, keeping supply and demand in balance between one Region and another so that the ancient business cycles of boom and bust were flattened into gentle curves. It was not a challenging, dynamic era; but it was not a turbulent or perilous one, either. Andrew paid next to no attention to developments that might be going on beyond his doorstep. There were more fundamental things that he needed and wanted to explore, and he was exploring them. That was all that mattered to him these days. His income, which came from the invested proceeds of his now terminated career as an artist in wood and from the money that Little Miss had left him, was more than sufficient to take care of his bodily-maintenance needs and to cover the costs of his research. It was a private, hermetic life: precisely what he wanted. He had long since gained complete mastery over his android body, after the awkward early days, and often he took long walks through the forest atop the bluff, or along the lonely, tempestuous beach where once he had gone with Little Miss and her sister. Sometimes he went swimming — the iciness of the water was no problem for him — and even occasionally risked the journey out to the isolated, forlorn cormorant rock that Miss had asked him to undertake when she was a child. It was a difficult swim even for him, and the cormorants did not seem to enjoy his company. But he enjoyed testing his strength against such a challenge, aware that no human, even the strongest of swimmers, could safely manage the trip out and back through that chilly, violent sea. Much of the time, though, Andrew spent at his research. There were frequent periods when he did not go out of his house for weeks on end. Then Paul Charney came to him one day and said, "It's been a long time, Andrew." "Indeed it has." They rarely saw each other now, though there had been no estrangement of any sort. The Charney family still maintained its home along the upper coast of Northern California, but Paul had taken to spending most of his time nearer to San Francisco. "Are you still deep in your program of 'biological research?" Paul asked. "Very much so," Andrew said. He was startled by how much Paul had aged. The phenomenon of human aging was something that Andrew had been studying lately with particular interest, and he thought he had arrived at some understanding of its causes and its processes. And yet — for all his experience of age in the generations of this one family, from Sir down through Little Miss to George and now to Paul — it always came as a surprise to him that humans so swiftly grew gray and withered and bent and old. As Paul had done. His long-limbed frame seemed shorter now, and his shoulders were slumped, and the bony structure of his face had undergone subtle changes so that his chin had begun to jut and his cheekbones were less prominent. |
| 701 |
It was too bold for him, too strange, too great a leap. Even Paul, it seemed, had his limits when it came to the progress of robot design. Even Paul! Perhaps that was one of the side effects of aging, Andrew thought. Challenging new ideas become too challenging for you, no matter how open your mind may have been to dynamic change when you were younger. Everything new comes to seem disturbing and threatening to you. You feel the world rushing past you in a frightening stampede; you want things to slow down, you want the ferocious pace of progress to slacken. Was that how it was? Andrew wondered. Did humans inevitably become more conservative with age? So it would seem. Little Miss had been uneasy about his wearing clothing. George had thought it odd that he would want to write a book. And Paul — Paul — Looking back now, Andrew remembered how startled, even shocked, Paul had been when he learned for the first time, in Smythe-Robertson's office, that what Andrew wanted was to be transferred into an android body. Paul had made a quick enough adaptation to the idea and had fought furiously and brilliantly to make it a reality. But that did not necessarily mean that he thought it was a good idea for Andrew. They have all let me do what I felt I needed to do, Andrew thought, even when they privately disagreed with it. They have granted me my wishes — out of love for me. Yes, love. For a robot. Andrew dwelled on that thought for a while, and sensations of warmth and pleasure went through him. But it was a little troubling, too, to realize that sometimes the Charneys had supported him not out of personal convictions of their own but simply because they so wholeheartedly and unconditionally believed in allowing him to follow his own path, whether or not they thought it was the correct one. So Paul, then, had won him the right to have an android body. But that transformation had taken Paul to his own limit of acceptance of Andrew's upward path. The next step — the metabolic converter — was beyond him. Very well. Paul did not have very much longer to live. Andrew would wait. And so he did; and in time came news of Paul's death, not as soon as Paul had supposed it would be, but very soon, all the same. Andrew was invited to attend Paul's funeral — the public ceremony, he was aware, that marked the end of a human life — but there was scarcely anyone there whom he knew, and he felt ill at ease and out of place, even though everyone was scrupulously polite to him. These young strangers — friends of Paul's, members of his law firm, distant relatives of the Charneys — had no more substance than shadows for Andrew, and he stood among them heavy with the double grief of having lost his good friend Paul and of finding himself bereft of his last real connection with the family that had given him his place in life. In fact there no longer were any humans in the world with whom he had close emotional ties. Andrew had come to realize by this time that he had cared deeply for the Martins and the Charneys in a way that went beyond the robotic — that his devotion to them was not merely a manifestation of the First and Second Laws, but something that might indeed be called love. His love, for them. In his earlier days Andrew would never have admitted such a thing, even to himself; but he was different now. These thoughts led Andrew inevitably, around the time of Paul Charney's death, to a consideration of the entire concept of family ties — the love of parent for child, of child for parent — and how that was related to the inexorable passing of the generations. |
| 702 |
If you are human, Andrew told himself, you are part of a great chain, a chain that hangs suspended across vast spans of time and links you to all those who have come before you and those who follow after. And you understand that individual links of the chain may perish — indeed, must perish — but the chain itself is ever-renewing and will survive. People died, whole families might become extinct — but the human race, the species, went on and on through the centuries and the millennia and the eons, everyone connected through the heritage of blood to those who had gone before. It was a difficult thing for Andrew to understand, that sense of connection, of infinite linkage with intimately related predecessors. He had no predecessors, not really, and he would have no successors, either. He was unique — individual — something that had been brought forth at a certain moment in time out of nothing at all. Andrew found himself wondering what it might be like to have had a parent himself — but all he could come up with was a vague image of assembly-robots weaving his body together in a factory. Or what it was like to have a child — but the best he could manage was to envision a table or desk, something that he had made with his own hands. But human parents were not assembly-mechs, and human children were nothing like tables and desks. He had it all wrong. It was a mystery to him. And very likely always would be. He was not human; why then should he expect human family linkages to be comprehensible to him? Then Andrew thought of Little Miss, of George, of Paul, even of fierce old Sir, and what they had meant to him. And he realized that he was part of a family chain after all, though he had had no parents and was incapable of siring children. The Martins had taken him in and had made him one of them. He was a Martin, indeed. An adopted Martin, yes; but that was the best he could have hoped for. And there were plenty of humans who had not had the comfort of belonging to such a loving family. He had done very well, all things considered. Though only a robot, he had known the continuity and stability of family life; he had known warmth; he had known love. All those whom Andrew had — loved — were gone, though. That was saddening and liberating both. The chain was broken, for him. It could never be restored. But at least he could do as he pleased, now, without fear of troubling those who had been so close to him. Now, with the death of the great-grandson of Sir, Andrew felt free to proceed with his plan for upgrading his android body. That was some sort of partial consolation for his loss. Nevertheless he was alone in the world, or so it seemed to him — not simply because he was a positronic brain in a unique android body, but because he had no affiliations of any sort. And it was a world that had every reason to be hostile to his aspirations. All the more reason, Andrew thought, to continue along the path he had long ago chosen — the path that he hoped would ultimately make him invulnerable to the world into which he had been thrust so impersonally, without his leave, so many years before. In fact Andrew was not quite as alone as he thought. Men and women might die, but corporations lived on just as robots did, and the law firm of Feingold and Charney still functioned even though no Feingolds and no Charneys remained. The firm had its directions and it followed them impeccably and soullessly. By way of the trust that held his investments and through the income that Andrew drew from the firm as Paul Charney's heir, Andrew continued to be wealthy. |
| 703 |
That enabled him to pay a large annual retainer to Feingold and Charney to keep them involved in the legal aspects of his research — in particular, the new combustion chamber. It was time now for Andrew to pay another call on the headquarters of U. S. Robots and Mechanical Men. This would be the third time in his long life that Andrew had had face-to-face dealings with high executives of the powerful robot-manufacturing corporation. On the first occasion, back in the days of Merwin Mansky, Mansky and managing director Elliot Smythe had come out to California to see him. But that was when Sir had still been alive, and imperious old Sir had been able to command even Smythes and Robertsons into his presence. On the next occasion, many years later, Andrew and Paul had been the ones to make the journey to the company — to see Harley Smythe-Robertson and arrange for Andrew's transfer to the android body. Now Andrew would make the journey east a second time, but he would go alone. And this time he would have the visage and bodily frame, if not the inner organs, of a human being. U. S. Robots had changed greatly since Andrew's last visit. The main production factory had been shifted to a large space station, as was the case with many other industrial facilities. Only the research center remained behind on Earth, in a grand and lovely parklike setting of vast green lawns and sturdy wide-spreading leafy trees. The Earth itself, its population long since stabilized at about a billion-plus a robot population about equally large — was becoming parklike virtually everywhere. The terrible damage to the environment that had been perpetrated in the hectic early centuries of the Industrial Revolution was largely only a memory, now. The sins of the past had not exactly been forgotten, but they had come to seem unreal to the inhabitants of the reborn Earth, and with each passing generation it became harder and harder to believe that people once had been willing to commit such monstrous and ultimately self-destructive crimes against their own world. Now that industry had largely moved to space and clean, efficient robot labor served the needs of those humans who had remained behind, the planet's natural healing powers had been allowed to come into play, and the seas were pure again, the skies were clear, the woodlands had reclaimed territory once occupied by dense, grimy cities. A robot greeted Andrew when his aeroflitter landed at the U. S. Robots airstrip. Its face was bland and blank and its red photoelectric eyes were utterly expressionless. Scarcely thirty percent of the robots of Earth, Andrew knew, were still independently brained: this one was an empty creature, nothing more than the mindless metal puppet of some immobile positronic thinking-device housed deep within the U. S. Robots complex. "I am Andrew Martin," Andrew said. "I have an appointment with Director of Research Magdescu." "Yes. You will follow me." Lifeless. Brainless. A mere machine. A thing. The robot greeter led Andrew briskly along a paved path that gleamed with some inner crystalline brightness and up a shining spiral ramp into a domed many-leveled building covered with a glistening and iridescent translucent skin. To Andrew, who had had little experience of modern architecture, it had the look of something out of a storybook — light, airy, shimmering, not entirely real. He was allowed to wait in a broad oval room carpeted with some lustrous synthetic material that emitted a soft glow and a faint, pleasant sort of music whenever Andrew moved about on its surface. |
| 704 |
But the personal risks of which Magdescu had spoken did not materialize. The frequent upgrades which Andrew underwent over the next decade had no harmful effects whatever as they brought his android body closer and closer in its operational systems to the human norm. The Feingold and Charney people had helped him to draft and negotiate the licensing agreement under which all the patent-protected prosthetic devices developed by Andrew Martin Laboratories would be manufactured and marketed by United States Robots and Mechanical Men on a royalty-payment basis. Andrew's patents were air-tight and the contract was a highly favorable one. Whatever irritation or resentment U. S. Robots might have felt all these years over the mere fact of Andrew's existence was forgotten, or at least put aside. Willy-nilly, they had to treat him with respect. He and the company were partners, now. U. S. Robots established a special division to produce Andrew's devices, with factories on several continents and in low orbit. Marketing experts from the parent company were brought in to develop plans for distributing the new products everywhere on Earth and the space settlements. Surgeons, both human and robot, underwent courses of instruction at the U. S. Robots prosthetics facility so that they would be able to carry out the complicated installation procedures. Demand for Andrew's prosthetic devices was immense. The flow of royalties was heavy right from the start and within a few years became overwhelming. Andrew now owned the entire Martin-Charney estate, and much of the surrounding land — a wondrous stretch of clifftop terrain overlooking the Pacific Ocean for eight or ten kilometers. He lived in Sir's big house, but maintained his own old cottage nearby as a sentimental reminder of his early days of independent life after gaining free-robot status. Farther down the property he built the imposing research facilities of Andrew Martin Laboratories. There was a little trouble with the zoning authorities about that, because this was supposed to be a quiet residential area and the research center that Andrew wanted to set up would be the size of a small university campus. There was also, perhaps, some lingering anti-robot feeling at work among the opposition. But when his application came up for approval, Andrew's lawyer simply said, "Andrew Martin has given the world the prosthetic kidney, the prosthetic lung, the prosthetic heart, the prosthetic pancreas. In return all he asks is the right to continue his research in peace on the property where he has lived and worked for well over a hundred years. Who among us would refuse such a small request when it comes from so great a benefactor of mankind?" And after a certain amount of debate the zoning variance was granted and the buildings of the Andrew Martin Laboratories Research Center began to rise amid the somber cypresses and pines of what had, long ago, been the wooded estate of Gerald Martin. Every year or two, Andrew would return to the gleaming operating theater at u. S. Robots for additional prosthetic upgrading of his own. Some of the changes were utterly trivial ones: the new fingernails and toenails, for example, virtually indistinguishable now from those of humans. Some of the changes were major: the new visual system, which although synthetically grown was able to duplicate the human eyeball in virtually every respect. "Don't blame us if you come out of this permanently blind," Magdescu told him sourly, when Andrew went to him for the eye transplant. |
| 705 |
But the man was a bureaucrat first and foremost, and it was his job to see to it that everyone who boarded the ship to the Moon underwent the full and proper decontamination procedures, whether or not that person was capable of becoming contaminated in the first place. Andrew had had enough experience with this variety of humanity by this time to know that it would be a waste of time and breath to raise any objections. And so — patiently, tolerantly — he let himself be put through the entire preposterous series of treatments. They could do him no harm and by accepting them he avoided the dreary endless bureaucratic discussions that his refusal would be likely to provoke. Besides, he took a kind of perverse satisfaction in being treated like everyone else. Then at last he was on board the ship. A steward came by to see to it that Andrew was safely stowed in his gravity sling, and handed him a pamphlet — it was the fourth time he had been given a copy of it in the past two days — on what he was likely to experience during the short journey. It was designed to be reassuring. There would be some mild stress during the initial moments of acceleration, he was told, but nothing that he would have difficulty in handling. Once the ship was in full flight, its gravity-control mechanisms would be brought into play to compensate for the zero gravitational pull that the vessel would be under, so that the passengers would never be exposed to the sensations of free fall. (Unless they wanted to be, in which case they were welcome to enter the zero-grav lounge in the aft compartment.) During the voyage, the simulated gravity aboard ship would steadily but imperceptibly be reduced, so that by the time the ship reached its destination the passengers would be acclimated to the much weaker pull that they would be experiencing during their stay in the lunar settlements. And so on and so on, details of mealtime procedures and exercise programs and other such things, a stream of bland, soothing information. Andrew took it all in stride. His android body had been designed to withstand higher than Earth-norm gravitation from the outset, not by his special request, but simply because it had been relatively easy for the designers, starting from scratch, to build all sorts of little superiorities into the natural human form. How and when he took his meals aboard the ship, and what might be on the menu, were all irrelevant items to him. So was the exercise schedule. Andrew had often found undeniable pleasure in taking a brisk walk along the beach or a stroll through the forest surrounding his property, but his body needed no program of regular exercise to maintain its tone. The voyage, then, became for him mainly a matter of waiting. He anticipated few if any problems of adaptation to space travel and he experienced none. The ship lifted easily from its pad; the ship quickly left Earth's atmosphere behind; the ship arced smoothly through the dark emptiness of space and followed its routine course toward the Moon. Space travel had long since passed out of the stage of being exciting; even for a first-time traveler, it was a humdrum affair these days, which was pretty much the way most people preferred it to be. The one aspect of the voyage that Andrew did find stirring was the view from the ship's observation window. It gave him shivers down his ceramic spine; it sent the blood pulsing faster through his dacron arteries; it set up a tingling of excitement in the synthetic epidermal cells of his fingertips. |
| 706 |
But then he sometimes thought wistfully of the possibility of remaining on the Moon, or even going deeper out into space. On Earth he was Andrew the robot, forced to go into court and do battle every time he wanted one of the rights or privileges that he felt his intelligence and contributions to society entitled him to have. Out here, though, where everything was starting with a fresh slate, it was quite conceivable that he could simply leave his robot identity behind and blend into the human population as Dr. Andrew Martin. Nobody here seemed to be troubled by that possibility. From his very first moments on the Moon they had virtually been inviting him to step across the invisible boundary between human and robot if that was what he wanted to do. It was tempting. It was very tempting indeed. The months turned into years — three of them, now — and Andrew remained on the Moon, working with the lunar prosthetologists, helping them make the adaptations that were necessary in order that the Andrew Martin Laboratories artificial organs could function at perfect efficiency when installed in human beings who lived under low-gravity conditions. It was challenging work, for, though he himself was untroubled by the lower gravity of the lunar environment, humans in whom standard Earth-model prosthetic devices had been installed tended to have a much more difficult time of it. Andrew was able, though, to meet each difficulty with a useful modification, and one by one the problems were resolved. Now and then Andrew missed his estate on the California coast — not so much the grand house itself as the cool fogs of summer, the towering redwood trees, the rugged beach, the crashing surf. But it began to seem to him as though he had settled into permanent residence on the Moon. He stayed on into a fourth year, and a fifth. Then one day he paid a visit to a bubbledome on the lunar surface, and saw the Earth in all its wondrous beauty hanging in the sky — tiny, at this distance, but vivid, glowing, a blue jewel that glistened brilliantly in the night. It is my home, he thought suddenly. The mother world — the fountain of humanity — Andrew felt it pulling him — calling him home. At first it was a pull he could scarcely understand. It seemed wholly irrational to him. And then understanding came. His work on the Moon was done, basically. But he still had unfinished business down there on Earth. The following week, Andrew booked his passage home on a liner that was leaving at the end of the month. And then he called back and arranged to take an even earlier flight. He returned to an Earth that seemed cozy and ordinary and quiet in comparison to the dynamic life of the lunar settlement. Nothing of any significance appeared to have changed in the five years of his absence. As his Moon-ship descended toward it, the Earth seemed to Andrew like a vast placid park, sprinkled here and there with the small settlements and minor cities of the decentralized Third Millennium civilization. One of the first things Andrew did was to visit the offices of Feingold and Charney to announce his return. The current senior partner, Simon DeLong, hurried out to greet him. In Paul Charney's time, DeLong had been a very junior clerk, callow and self-effacing, but that had been a long time ago and he had matured into a powerful, commanding figure whose unchallenged ascent to the top rung of the firm had been inevitable. He was a broad-shouldered man with heavy features, who wore his thick dark hair shaven down the middle in the tonsured style that had lately become popular. |
| 707 |
Instead of walking normally, he lurched and staggered. Often he felt as though the floor before him was rising up to strike him in the face. There were times when his fingers trembled so violently that he had difficulty holding things. His vision, which had always been flawless, suddenly would grow blurry for long minutes at a stretch. Or he would try to remember someone's name, and nothing would come to mind except a tantalizing blankness that glimmered at him from around the corners of his memory. He spent an entire afternoon, the first week after the operation, searching his mind for the full name of the man he had known as Sir. Then, suddenly, the name was there: Gerald Martin. But now Andrew had forgotten the name of Little Miss's dark-haired older sister, and it took him hours more of diligent searching before "Melissa Martin" popped abruptly into his brain. Two hours! It should not have taken him two milliseconds! It was all more or less what Andrew should have expected, and in an abstract way he had expected it. And yet the reality of the feelings themselves was far beyond anything that Andrew had anticipated. Physical weakness was something new to him. So were poor coordination, uncertain reflexes, imperfect eyesight, and episodes of impaired memory. It was humiliating to feel so imperfect — so human No, he thought. There is nothing humiliating about it. You have everything backward. It is human to feel imperfect. That was what you wanted, above all else: to be human. And now that is what you are. The imperfections — the weaknesses — the imprecisions — they are the very things which define humans as human. And which drive them to transcend their own failings. You never had failings before, Andrew told himself. Now you do, and so be it. So be it. You have achieved the thing you set out to accomplish and you must feel no regrets. Gradually, as one day slid into the next, things began to improve. Gradually. Very gradually. The memory functions returned first. Andrew was gratified to discover that he had full access again, instant and complete, to the whole of his past. He sat in the grand high-winged chair by the fireplace in the great living room of what once had been Gerald Martin's house, and let images of years gone by play through his mind: the factory where he had been constructed, and his arrival at the Martin house, and Little Miss and Miss as children, walking with him on the beach. Sir and Ma'am at their dining table; his wooden sculptures and the furniture he had made; the U. S. Robots executives who came west to inspect him; his first visit from Little Sir; the time he had decided at last to begin wearing clothing; Little Sir's marriage and the birth of Paul Charney. Even less pleasant things like the episode of the two louts who had tried to disassemble him while he was on the way to the public library. And much, much more, nearly two hundred years of memory. It was all there. His mind had not been permanently impaired, and he was tremendously relieved. The floor stopped trying to jump up and hit him. His vision stopped playing tricks on him. His hands finally stopped their infuriating shaking. When he walked, he was no longer in danger of stumbling and falling. He was himself again, in most of the essential ways. But a certain sense of weakness still remained with him, or so he thought: a pervasive chronic weariness, a feeling that he needed to sit down and rest awhile before going on to whatever might be his next task. |
| 708 |
If you look up the word 'shoot' in the dictionary, you will see that among its many meanings, ranging from scoring a goal to the growth of a plant, is the phrase 'to photograph, especially for motion pictures'. Thus did this title take shape, for this is a chronicle of the year-long shooting my wife, Lee, and I undertook to complete thirteen half-hour television programmes called The Amateur Naturalist. Some time ago, I was approached with the idea of writing a book to be called (it was suggested) 'The Complete Amateur Naturalist'. I immediately objected to the word 'complete'. I said that anyone writing a guide claiming to be complete was asking for trouble, and that to use that word in connection with the world of nature where we are making discoveries with such rapidity that we scarcely have time to record them would be dangerous, to say the least. So it was decided to call it simply 'The Amateur Naturalist'. To begin with, this book was conceived as a small guide confining itself to the British Isles. Then somebody said, wouldn't it be fun to include Europe; then someone else spoke eloquently of the need for such a book in America, and still another of the awful need for such a book in Australia and New Zealand, South Africa and points north, south, east and west. The whole thing then got out of hand. I knew I could not write such a book and do the research for it, so I suggested to Lee that she should stop being merely decorative and take her PhD (unused since our marriage) out for an airing and superintend the research on the project, which now threatened to exceed in size and scope the Encyclopaedia Britannica. This she dutifully did, and as well as working out the shape of the book (we had to divide it into ecosystems instead of unwieldy and unbiological countries) she started on the mammoth task of combing a thousand books, checking and rechecking (you have no idea how scientists contradict one another) and phoning up a plethora of pundits, seeking advice. As this stream of information landed on my desk, my job was to turn it into what Lee, rather insubordinately, calls my 'purple prose'. The book took a little over two years to complete, and that it did not end in divorce says much for Lee's patience and forbearance. It was an immediate success, and we sat back glowing self-righteously and thought we had earned a holiday. However, everyone was so delighted with the book that before we knew it we had agreed to do a television series based on it; and this, nearly eighteen months later, we have just completed. Our producer for the series was to be Paula Quigley, known to us as Quiggers, whom we knew and loved and had worked with in Mauritius and Madagascar while making the television series Ark on the Move. She is slender, petite, with a mop of dark curly hair, a snub nose like a Pekinese and those curious eyes that can be both blue and green, depending on what she is wearing. She is also possessed of unfairly long eyelashes that can only be equalled by a giraffe. In addition to her normal, very pleasantly feminine soprano speaking voice, she is capable of a bellow that would have won her first prize in any town-crier contest, and it came in extremely useful as we had not budgeted for walkie-talkie or a megaphone. (With Paula as part of the team we did not need either of these adjuncts of communication.) We were to have two directors, Jonathan Harris and Alastair Brown. Alastair was to direct seven of the programmes and Jonathan six. |
| 709 |
At the very last minute, within a few feet of your head, they would veer away, fly round and come in again. Lee had by now caught the baby, so the parents concentrated their attacks on her. As I knew that skuas were capable of knocking a man down with a clout from one of their wings, I relieved her of the baby and the parents turned their attention to me, getting closer and closer with each swoop, the wind purring through their wings as they dived. At first, I instinctively ducked each time, but then I discovered that if you let them get to within a dozen feet or so, and then waved your arms at them, they would sheer off. 'Let us,' said Jonathan, 'do a piece to camera about skuas, with that enchanting baby sitting in your lap.' So the camera was set up and a microphone concealed around my neck. All this activity made the parent skuas twice as distraught as they had been and they redoubled their attacks, dive-bombing now me and then the camera, getting dangerously close. When the camera was ready, I squatted down in the heather and placed the fat baby in my lap. I had just opened my mouth to start on a fascinating lecture about skuas, when the baby stood up suddenly, pecked my thumb unexpectedly, making me lose the thread of my discourse, and then proceeded to defecate loudly and copiously all over my knees. 'Nature white in tooth and claw,' said Jonathan, as I mopped the glutinous, fishy mess off my trousers with my handkerchief. 'I don't think we can use that shot in the film.' 'When you have finished laughing,' I said to Lee, 'you might like to take this damn baby and release it. I think I've been intimate enough with skuas for one day.' She took my fat, fluffy friend and placed him in the heather some twenty feet away. He took off at a spread-legged, crouching, flat-footed run looking remarkably like an elderly fat lady in a fur coat, pursuing a bus. 'He is cute,' said Lee wistfully. 'I wish we could have kept him.' 'I don't,' I said. 'We wouldn't have been able to afford the dry-cleaning bills.' Skuas, of course, are one of the most graceful predators of the sky. Like sun-bronzed pirates, they pursue other birds, harrying them ceaselessly until they are forced to disgorge the fish they have caught. Then the skua swoops and snatches the treasure in mid-air. They are such bold buccaneers that they have even been known to grab a gannet's wing-tip in order to get it to relinquish a fish. Skuas will eat anything and are not at all averse to stealing fish from a parent bird, be it gannet or guillemot, and then feasting on their eggs and young as well. We moved on, the flocks of sheep like clotted cream on the green baize of the turf, the sun brilliant above us. We had come muffled up against the reputedly inclement weather of the Shetland Islands and now found ourselves sweating and discarding coats and pullovers. Presently, the land started to drop away to precipitous cliffs and beyond was the Atlantic, blue as gentian flowers. Wheatears were everywhere, their rumps flashing like little white lights as they danced ahead of us. Two ravens, black as mourning-bands, flew slowly along the edge of the cliffs, cranking at one another dolefully. High in the sky, a lark hung and poured forth its wonderful liquid song. If a shooting star could sing, I believe it would sing like a lark. Soon we came to the cliff-edge. Some six hundred feet below us, the great smooth blue waves shouldered their way in between the rocks in a riot of spray like beds of white chrysanthemums. |
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'Now that I have been almost disembowelled by a puffin,' I said to Jonathan, 'what other treats do you have in store for me?' 'Now we go down the cliff,' said Jonathan. 'Where?' I asked. 'Here,' he said, pointing to the cliff-edge that, as far as I could see, dropped sheer, six hundred feet to the sea below. 'But you said there was a path,' I protested. 'There is,' he said. 'If you go to the edge, you'll see it.' Gingerly, my stomach turning over, I approached the edge. Meandering down among the tussocks of grass and thrift was a faint line that looked as though once, in the dim and distant past, a flock of inebriated goats had staggered down the cliff-face to indulge in God knows what alcoholic orgy. 'Call that a path?' I enquired. 'If I were a chamois, I might agree with you, but no man born of woman could go down that.' As I spoke, Chris, David and Brian, with their heavy back-packs, loaded with equipment, padded past me and disappeared down the shadowy pathway. 'There you are,' said Jonathan. 'Nothing to it. Just take it easy. I'll be waiting at the bottom.' He swaggered nonchalantly down the almost-sheer cliff-face. Lee and I looked at each other. I knew she suffered from vertigo as well, but not in such an acute form as I did. 'Did it say anything in our contract about going down cliffs?' I enquired. 'Probably in the small print,' she said dolefully. Offering up a small prayer, we started downwards. There have been many times, in different parts of the world, when I have been scared, but the descent of that cliff was the most terrifying thing that I have ever undertaken. The others had strolled along the barely discernible path as if it had been a broad, flat highway and here was I, crawling on my stomach, clutching desperately at bits of grass and small plants that would, I knew, part company with the cliff-face if any pressure was brought to bear on them, inching my feet along the six-inch-wide path, trying desperately not to look down the almost sheer drop, my arms and legs trembling violently, my body bathed in sweat. It was a thoroughly despicable performance, and I was ashamed of myself, but I could do nothing about it. The fear of height is impossible to cure. When I reached the bottom, my leg muscles were trembling so violently that I had to sit down for ten minutes before I could walk. I said some harsh things about Jonathan's ancestry and suggested several unfortunately impracticable things that he could do to himself. 'Well, you got down here all right,' he said. 'All you've got to worry about now is getting up.' 'I shan't bother,' I said austerely. 'You may send us down a tent and arrange a supply of food parcels and we'll take up residence the hermits of Unst.' And in all truth it would have been a very wonderful spot to do just that. Where the so-called path ended, there was a flat area of turf, and from it one could look along the cliff-face in two directions. The shoreline was made up of a jumble of huge boulders, some the size of an average room, and among them the deep-blue ruffled sea surged and frothed and roared. As far as the eye could see along the cliff-face the rocky shoreline was alive with birds, and the air was full of them whirling like giant snowflakes above us. The cacophony of cries was tremendous. Everywhere, there were groups of guillemots sitting shoulder to shoulder on their ledges. Many of them had their single, beautifully coloured, speckled egg between their feet. Eggs green, brown, yellow, buff, spotted and blotched like fingerprints, no two alike. |
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The dumpy, dark, chocolate-coloured young crouched in fear as we scrambled over the nesting-sites, but the parents abused us with harsh croaks, open beaks, glaring eyes and erect, tattered crests. It would take a brave man to put his hand into a shag's cave, I decided, for their beaks looked as sharp as knives. On the great rocks, or 'stacks' as they are called, lying out at sea, there were cormorants nesting. Very like the shag to look at, they differed in having shiny bronze plumage and white on the chin and the cheeks. They sat upright on the rock ledges, with their wings spread out in heraldic positions. They looked exactly like the sort of thing you find on giant gateposts that guard the driveways to ancient chateaux in France. I think the cormorant, hanging itself out to dry, as it were, looks strangely prehistoric. Perhaps pterodactyls sat in that strange position. From our vantage-point on the shoreline, we could see just opposite us an enormous stack, shaped like a giant slice of Cheddar cheese, sitting on its broad base a few hundred feet from shore. At first glance, from a distance, it did look rather like a piece of cheese covered with snow; but, when you got closer to it, it resembled much more a many-tiered and extremely untidy mantelpiece, cluttered with dozens of those horrid white pottery ornaments that you used to be able to buy with 'A Present from Bournemouth' written on them. This was the gannets' city, the white rock, on which some ten thousand gannets nested. The screeching conversation from it hit you like an almost tangible wave of sound. To say that Gannet City was busy would be an understatement. New York in the rush-hour would appear immobile in comparison. There were gannets incubating, feeding chicks, flirting, mating, preening, and launching themselves into the air in effortless flight on their six-foot wings. With their creamy-white bodies, wing-tips black as jet and their orange-coloured nape and head they were impressive and immensely handsome. Slightly waddling, slightly awkward on land, as soon as they launched themselves from the rock and slid into the air they became the most elegant and graceful of flying machines. With their long, pointed, black-tipped wings and pointed tails and dagger-shaped blue beaks, they were of a sleek and deadly design. We watched them gliding down through the blue sky with scarcely a wing-beat, using the different air currents, moving smoothly as stones on ice. They would slide up to the rock, wing-tips almost touching it, and then, turning, fold their wings and land with such a quick movement your eye was deceived. One minute they were a great white and black cross in the air, the next minute one of the multitude of noisy, restless inhabitants of the colony. Further out to sea, we watched their incredible fishing technique in operation. They would glide along, a hundred feet or so above the waves, their pale eyes keenly watching. Suddenly, they would twist in mid-air and plummet down, their huge wings stretched out behind them so that they became a living arrowhead. They would hit the water at tremendous speed, ploughing up a bouquet of spray as they disappeared beneath the surface, to reappear a moment or so later with a fish in their beaks. When you got a shoal of fish and you had thirty or forty gannets all diving almost simultaneously, it was a breathtakingly spectacular sight. We worked steadily all day, filming this gigantic concourse of birds, pausing only to have a much-needed picnic lunch. |
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The weather remained brilliant, and the hot sun and the reflection on the water gave us all sunburn. In fact Lee got so red that I told her she looked like a puffin with a wig a description which, for some reason, did not amuse her. By the time evening came, we had filmed seabirds indulging in every kind of activity and it had been an enormous privilege to spend the day within touching distance of so many species who, when they became used to your presence, completely ignored you and went about the all-important business of rearing their young, loving their mates, bickering with their neighbours in a thoroughly human fashion. As the light started to fade and the sky turned from blue to lavender, we packed up and reluctantly left the seabird metropolis. I will draw a veil over my ascent of the cliff; suffice it to say that it was even more gruelling than the descent had been and on reaching the top I crawled across the turf as far away from the cliffs edge as possible and lay on my back, staring up into the pale evening sky while Jonathan, showing a rare Christian instinct, unearthed a bottle of Glenmorangie from his bag and plied me with it. Then we walked back over the velvety turf through the heather now purple-brown in the twilight, the cotton-grass glimmering all around us and the steady whoosh, whoosh of the huge dark skuas dive-bombing us in the gloaming. It seemed incredible that in one day we had managed to obtain all the seabird footage we needed for the programme. There were only a few landscape shots we needed, which we got on the following day. Our filming on the magnificent cliffs of Hermaness was over, and so we returned to Jersey. Here we planned to film the life on the rocky coasts. Although only nine miles by five in size, the island has such an indented coastline that you have, in effect, an enormous stretch of rocky shore for such a small area. Coupled with this is the fact that the seas around the island are comparatively unpolluted and it has a huge 34-foot tide which, when it is out, exposes acres and acres of magnificent rock-pools teeming with marine life of every conceivable sort. The sea is a wonderful world. It is as though we had another planet joined on to this, so diverse and bizarre are its life forms, so vastly rich and colourful. From a naturalist's point of view the lip of the sea is a fascinating ecosystem where many creatures live under the most topsy-turvy conditions, several feet deep in pounding waves for some periods, dry as a bone for others. The adaptations to this strenuous sort of life are, of course, many and various. Take humble limpets, for example, so common that they are generally ignored. They have adapted perfectly to their environment. Their shells, shaped like a tent, are admirably designed to cope with the fierce pounding of the waves. The animal itself has developed a circular muscular foot with which it clings to the rock fiercely. How fiercely, you can find out by trying to dislodge a limpet with your fingers. This muscular foot forms a sort of suction cup which will enable the creature to cling so tenaciously. The limpet has evolved special gills which are like a curtain round its body. If these delicate structures were to dry out at low tide the animal would be unable to breathe and so would die. But the shell fits so beautifully to the rock that it can retain a reservoir of water to keep the gills moist until the tide's return. But it only fits so well because the limpet grinds the rock with its foot and its shell. |
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This has two effects: a circular depression appears in the rock which fits the shell, and the shell itself is ground down to fit more closely into the rock. When limpets graze, they move slowly over the weed-covered rocks, their small heads with a pair of tentacles protruding, and they swing their bodies from side to side. This enables the radula, the creature's tongue, to come into action. This is a strap-like organ, covered with microscopic horny teeth that rasp away the algae and the weeds. Limpets graze in a wide circle round their home depressions. It is of course vital that the animal should be able to get back to its home as the tide goes out, so that it does not become desiccated; so they have developed definite homing instincts, and how these work is still a mystery, for it does not appear to have anything to do with the creature's rather limited powers of sight, smell and touch. It's nice to think that even with a creature as common as a limpet there are still mysteries to be unravelled, that there are still enigmas for the amateur naturalist to study and perhaps solve. The limpet's sex life is confusing to all but a limpet. Like many sea-creatures, they can change their sex with comparative ease, and there is evidence that young limpets are for the most part males while the older ones are mainly females. Many limpets start life and get to be teenagers as males and then turn into females for the rest of their existence. As well as this curious state of affairs, limpets, unlike the bulk of shore snails, simply scatter their future progeny in the sea; these develop into minute, free-swimming plankton before taking life seriously and settling down on the rocks. Limpets share this half-and-half wet-and-dry world with a host of other creatures: topshells, the woodlouse-like Triton, sand-fleas or sand-hoppers, various seaweeds and some sponges, and many of the rock-and wood-borers such as the toredo worms. But it is really in the limpid rock-pools left by the retreating tide that you find the most colourful and extraordinary creatures. Here, as well as strange methods of reproduction, you will find ingenious methods of defence and startling methods of obtaining food. Take the common starfish as an example. This beast not only, by sheer strength, pulls apart the two halves of a mussel (no mean feat, as you will realize if you have ever tried to open an oyster), but also, when the two halves of the shell are far enough apart, proceeds to extrude its stomach, push it into the shell and start the process of digestion. Then there is one of the tunicates with the lovely, slightly oriental-sounding name of Oikopleura, a tiny tadpole-like creature which has a remarkable way of obtaining nourishment. It builds out of mucus a strange plankton-trap, shaped like a minute, fat, transparent airship, in which the Oikopleura sits, wiggling its tail. This creates a current of water through the airship, which has two inhalant orifices, each one of which has a protective screen which only allows the very smallest of particles to enter. Within the airship are further mucous filters which entrap the minute organisms that make up the plankton. Also built into this mucous trap is an emergency exit through which the Oikopleura can escape when threatened by an enemy. If methods of obtaining food are legion, so are the methods of defence and life-saving, from the sea-anemone which spits water into your eye if you prod it, to the shore crab who, if trapped by its leg, can actually amputate the leg by a muscular contraction and then grow another. |
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No visit to the Camargue is complete without witnessing one of these amusing fights. Many bulls make great names for themselves, and their careers are followed by the Provencals as eagerly as if they were boxers or wrestlers or footballers and people will travel many miles to see a specially famous bull appear in the ring. As our little house was still in the hands of plumbers, masons and carpenters, we stayed in a charming hotel in the back streets of Arles, a hotel with a beautiful tree-shaded garden in which we could sit and drink and have script-conferences. A few minutes' drive and we were out in the Camargue itself. The weather was kind to us, as it usually is in the south of France, and to get up early in the morning and know you were going to have endless sunshine all day long was very calming to our director's nerves. Our first task was to visit the various hides which had been constructed in the reserve and try to film the massive waterbird concentrations which had assembled in the marshes, some nesting, some en route to other breeding-grounds. Our guide to this area was one Bob Brittan, a short, slender man, who had a mischievous urchin face and a great fund of knowledge of the Camargue, where he had lived and studied for some years. He was immediately rechristened Britannicus a sobriquet that in a strange way suited him. In its own way, this huge quantity of water and land birds was as impressive as anything we had seen in the Shetland Isles. Sitting in the hot hide, looking out on the acres and acres of glittering water and vivid green marshland covered with an ever-moving multitude of birds, was a great experience. Huge rafts of green-headed mallard, the rusty-headed widgeon or neat, green-eyed teal, shelducks in their carnival colours of greenish-black and rich chestnut, rusty-headed pochard, all these speckling the water or purring through the air as they wheeled in flight from one area of marsh to another. In the shallows, storks fished. Occasionally a pair would face each other, throw back their heads and rattle their red beaks like the crackle of Lilliputian musketry. Snow-white spoonbills with their strange spatula beaks, like deformed ping-pong bats, moved solemnly along, sifting the plankton-rich mud through their beaks. Flamingoes like huge pink rose petals moved along the shallows keeping up a constant garrulous ugly honking out of keeping with their elegance and beauty. Then there were the squacco herons, pale as caramel, blue and black beaks and their legs pink with the excitement of the breeding season. Soberly dressed bitterns, standing in reed-beds, doleful as bank managers contemplating their overdrafts, and rather piratical-looking night herons, with black backs and black caps and debonair, drooping white crests and red all-seeing eyes. Next to them the purple herons seemed sinuous and snake-like, with their long chestnut necks and their harsh cries, a sort of feathered Uriah Heep. Then in complete contrast were the other waders: sandpipers, pattering along the mud like schoolgirls in their first high heels; redshanks and greenshanks; the black-winged stilts with legs like all those lovely girls you see in America, whose shapely legs seem to start immediately under the chin. Then that paragon of all wading birds, the avocet, moving elegantly on stormcloud-blue legs in a black and white suit, obviously designed by the most expensive Paris fashion-house, aristocratic tip-tilted noses being occasionally dipped into the water and moved from side to side like delicate, beautiful metronomes. |
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In the banks along the edges of the marshes, the bee-eaters skimmed in and out of their nestholes, gleaming sea-green and blue, and in the groups of pines that huddled together like crowds of furry green umbrellas the cattle egrets nested, looking like white stars in a green sky. There was so much going on that it was difficult to know what to film. So much courtship and flirting, so much foraging for food, so much bickering and quarrelling, so many whirling flights of birds freckling the sky and splashing back on to the still waters in rose-beds of foam. Even in the hide itself your attention was constantly distracted by now a jewel-eyed wolf spider stalking a mayfly, now a butterfly hatching. In the reed-beds that flanked the hide, choking the ditches with their green stems, there were fat, ornate frogs, shiny as if enamelled, and snakes wriggling in pursuit of them. On each spear-shaped green leaf of the reeds you could see imprinted by the sun, like little black seals, the shadows of the tree-frogs. Turn the leaf over carefully, and there would be the thumbnail-size emerald-green amphibian, moist and sticky as sweets, with huge dark eyes. The great difficulty of filming a programme like this is that your script has to be as flexible as possible. For example, I had suggested that we try to film beavers, since most people think of them as purely Canadian creatures, and do not realise that they exist in Europe. However, the difficulties of doing this were so great that our time-limits would not allow it. And so we had to substitute the more readily accessible coypu instead. Coypu is not of course a native European species. Like so many other creatures that have become pests, like the mink, for example, the coypu was imported from the great river systems of South America to be bred in captivity for its handsome fur, sold under the name of nutria. As always seems to happen, some escaped and, finding the rivers of England and the Continent to their liking, established themselves and flourished in great numbers. They had indeed found a paradise, for in these places there were no natural enemies to keep their numbers down and so they multiplied unchecked. As coypus are large animals (a fully grown male can weigh up to twenty-seven pounds) and make extensive burrows in river and canal banks, they have become a major pest, causing floods and erosion. Coypus are curious and rather endearing creatures, as we found out when we went down to a series of small canals in the Camargue to film them. These canals cut through the flats and are not more than thirty feet wide in places and two or three feet deep. The water is slow-moving, warmed by the sun, and the banks are lined with succulent green vegetation, so they form an ideal habitat for these giant rodents. The tamarisk trees that grew along the banks were all wearing their untidy wigs of pale dusty-pink flowers and in places groups of yellow flags made blazes of colour, looking like huge pats of butter from a distance. Around us the swallows flew ventre-a-terre, gleaning the mass of insect life in the clover meadows, starred with daisies, bright with pimpernels. Huge swallowtails, yellow and black tiger-striped, flew like aerial blossoms over the reed-beds and banks of flowers in the hot sun. We knew we had reached coypu country by their droppings, which were in great profusion floating in the slowly moving canal water and littering the bank, and very distinctive droppings they are, too, each some two and a half inches long, resembling short, blunt cigars in shape and colour. |
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They are finely ribbed like some beetles' wing-cases from stem to stern. We frequently had to cross and recross the canals using primitive bridges which, for the most part, were rotten logs or planks jumbled together and flung haphazardly across the water, and all highly unsafe. So we had to form human chains to make sure the precious and extremely expensive cameras and recording equipment got over safely. This was accomplished with no little noise, although we tried to be as quiet as we could. However, when we arrived at our destination, the coypus, as was inevitable, had heard us and disappeared. 'Damn them,' said Jonathan. 'What do we do now?' 'Wait,' I said succinctly. 'We're losing good filming-time,' Jonathan complained. 'You're filming wild animals, dear boy,' I explained, not for the first time, 'not film stars. Animals don't take direction.' 'What about Lassie and Rin Tin Tin?' he retorted. 'Hollywood products,' I said. 'You'll just have to possess your soul in patience. Look at these very fascinating droppings.' 'I can't make a half-hour programme about a coypu's droppings,' said Jonathan with, I must admit, some justification. 'Patience,' I said soothingly. 'They will return.' But I was wrong. They did not return, and after several hours during which I tried to quieten Jonathan down with a recital of all the poetry and limericks I knew and reminiscences of similar failures in animal photography I had known in my life, none of which appeared to have a calming effect, we decided to take Britannicus's advice and come back in the evening, when the coypus would emerge to feed or so he assured us. So we went away and filmed birds and returned in the late afternoon. Knowing the paths and the bridges, we made better progress and less noise, and were soon ensconced in the tamarisk trees, which grew so thickly that they made an admirable hide. If the coypus appeared, we decided, we would get all the shots of them we needed first and then Lee and I would see how closely we could approach them, for Jonathan was anxious to get a scene with both the talent and the animals in the same shot. 'I am sick to death of those animal series that show the talent peering through binoculars, creeping through the undergrowth, and then you cut to a shot of a penguin doing a Highland fling,' he confided in a hoarse whisper, 'and you know perfectly well that the talent probably never even saw the penguin.' 'They'd be jolly lucky talent if they saw a penguin doing that,' I said judiciously, 'but I do know what you mean.' 'What I mean ...' Jonathan started, and Lee shushed him. 'I think I can see something black in the water over there,' she said, pointing. 'Probably another dropping,' said Jonathan mournfully. We all peered hopefully at the canal and then saw a blunt, bewhiskered head with ridiculously huge yellow teeth break the water and move slowly along the surface, leaving a V-shaped trail of ripples behind it. Frantically, we tried to attract Chris's attention, for he was some distance away, but he had already seen it and was busy filming. The coypu's head reached the bank and the portly animal hauled itself ponderously ashore, displaying a behind of gigantic proportions, like a fat, fur-covered balloon. It had great naked flat feet and a long, thick scaly tail like a rat's. It sat up on its ample backside and sniffed the air suspiciously, its front feet bunched into absurd fists, its enormous protuberant yellow teeth making it look as though it was grinning. |
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All it needed, you felt, was a monocle and an old school tie, and it would be what the average American thinks the average Englishman looks like. Satisfied that there was no danger, it proceeded to groom itself carefully, using its front feet. The coypu has two sebaceous oil-glands situated at the corner of its mouth and near its anus. The fur consists of a thick, rather harsh outer coat and a thin, fine undercoat. When the nutria is used commercially, the harsh outer coat is removed, leaving only the soft undercoat. We were amused to see how assiduously the animal groomed and arranged and oiled its fur, taking immense care and concentrating intently. While it was doing this, several other coypus' heads broke surface, and these other animals of varying sizes from quite young ones to big fat matrons were hauling themselves out on to the bank. Soon there were half a dozen of them mostly sitting on the bank and grooming, while others swam and dived in the canal. As each one finished grooming, it would meander along the bank browsing on the succulent vegetation. They seemed charming, placid and nice-natured beasts, an ornament to any scenery, if only they would stop carrying on like a corps of engineers, undermining every bank they came to. Presently, Chris signalled us that he had obtained all the necessary shots, and suggested in dumb show that Lee and I should approach the disporting coypus to get the shots Jonathan wanted. The evening was so still, we did not have to worry about wind direction. All we had to worry about was not letting our heads show against the skyline. Bent double, like a couple of Red Indian trackers, Lee and I made our way along the canal. We arrived at the tamarisk tree with one broken branch dangling from it that we were using as a marker. We were now opposite the coypu colony. Very slowly we rose to our feet, inch by inch, with frequent pauses. Then we stood upright, and twenty-five feet or so away were the coypus. We stood very still and they seemed unaware of our presence, and went on with the grooming and bathing. Slowly we inched forward. It was rather like playing that ridiculous childhood game of Statues or Grandmother's Footsteps, where a group of you approach a person with his back to you and when he suddenly turns round, you are all supposed to freeze. At the slightest movement, you become 'it'. So Lee and I played Grandmother's Footsteps with the coypus, and by this means succeeded in getting quite close to them, and Chris managed to get both them and us in the same shot. We were standing frozen when the first male who had appeared suddenly turned round and stared across the canal at us, nose whiffling, whiskers bristling, orange teeth like scimitars pointing at us. As we were immobile, we could not see what had alarmed him, but it may have been a tiny breeze from the wrong direction wafting our scent to him. At any rate, he suddenly squatted down on all fours and then ran purposefully down the bank and entered the water, making hardly a ripple for such a large animal. The next minute, panic ensued among all the others and they galloped down and leapt into the canal, churning up the waters as they dived beneath the surface for safety. Later that evening as we sat over drinks in the green twilight under the plane trees in the hotel garden, Jonathan was smug and satisfied after the successful filming. 'That was a good day's work,' he said. 'Now we've only got the pigs and the bulls to do. How's Pig Woman?' 'She'll be there at sunset tomorrow,' said Britannicus. |
| 718 |
'I should bring lots of mosquito repellent if I were you.' 'Oh God, not mosquitoes,' said Brian, rolling his eyes. 'You know how they love me.' 'Highest concentration in Europe, I should think,' said Britannicus mischievously. Brian groaned. 'I don't know why everybody makes such a fuss about a few mosquitoes,' said Jonathan airily, 'they never worry me.' 'I shouldn't think any self-respecting mosquito would want to bite you,' said Chris judiciously, showing the usual cameraman's love and respect for the director. 'Who is Pig Woman?' enquired Paula, who, having succumbed to the rich food and wines of La Belle France and not having a cast-iron stomach like the rest of us, had wisely spent the day in bed, and so had not caught up with events. 'Pig Woman,' explained Jonathan with relish, 'is a young zoology student who is studying the wild boars of the Camargue. She traps them, puts radio collars on them and then rushes about in a van plotting their movements. This we will film.' 'Couldn't she do it in the day when there are no mosquitoes about?' asked Brian hopefully. 'Pigs don't move around in the day much,' said Jonathan, 'so I understand. True, Britannicus?' 'Yes,' said Britannicus, 'to a large extent Sus scrofa feed at night, particularly in the areas where they are liable to be hunted during the day. They are actually being hunted now.' 'Poor things,' said Lee indignantly. 'Why do they have to hunt them?' 'Well, when you think of the damage they can do to crops by their rooting, plus the fact that if the food has been abundant in one year they can have two litters with up to six young, the farmers feel that they must keep the animals under some sort of control,' explained Britannicus. 'Not to overlook the fact that wild boar meat is considered a delicacy,' I said. 'True,' said Britannicus, grinning. 'I am sure there are parts of the Camargue where the damage they do is exaggerated as an excuse to hunt them.' In the late afternoon, we drove out to meet Pig Woman. The dirt roads ran straight as rulers, white with the salt crust on them, between fields of mauve sea-lavender which, from a distance, looked like pale smoke drifting in a carpet two feet high over the ground. Here and there were thick patches of false olive, a silvery-green tree growing some six feet in height and very bushy. The young trees looked from a distance tight and curly as though someone had practised a curious form of topiary on them. After several miles, the false olives grew thicker and we eventually arrived at a glittering white crossroads among huge thickets. The blue sky had a faintly gold wash to it and a few pale clouds like tiny feathers hung immobile in the western horizon, turning from white to gold and then to pink. We parked the cars and waited for Pig Woman. Presently, she arrived, bumping over the dirt roads in a tiny, battered Deux Chevaux van with a long antenna sticking out of the roof, which wriggled and whipped like a fishing-rod with an infuriated marlin on the end. She chugged to a halt, and stopped the van and got out and walked towards us. I don't know why, but the sobriquet 'Pig Woman' had conjured up in my mind something out of a horror story, some snouted, grunting half-pig, half-woman, with huge tusks and slavering jaws and doubtless unpleasant habits like eating its young. So in consequence I was somewhat relieved to find myself being introduced to a slim and handsome young woman who had none of the less attractive attributes of a member of the Suidae. |
| 719 |
OK?' 'OK,' I said. 'I don't mind.' 'OK, so we leave tomorrow. Is that all right by you guys?' 'Sure,' said Lee, and then made the mistake of trying to extract further information from our director. 'What are the San Bias Islands like?' 'Covered in ... you know ... pretty things, palms, that is islands ... um, many of them Indians, government can't control ... women ... gold in nose, so forth. Reef, big ones,' said Alastair, waving his arms excitedly. 'You'll like it... sure to ... Conrad.' 'Haven't you got a book on them?' Lee asked Paula hopefully. As a travel guide, Alastair was obviously not going to be terribly coherent, though obviously enthusiastic. I have often thought that if Martians ever landed it would be just their luck to run into this kindest, most liberal but most incomprehensible of men as their first example of the human race. So the next day we assembled early in the morning at a tiny airfield on the edge of the city. Our cameraman for this shoot was Roger Moride, a tall, handsome Frenchman who looked and sounded like the late Maurice Chevalier. He had a great fund of amusing stories and an avuncular eye for the ladies. We piled our odd assortment of gear into an aircraft designed to hold twelve people and when we had taken our seats we were joined by some fine-looking Indians, stocky, coffee-brown, with very Mongolian-looking features. The men wore shirts and trousers and floppy hats, but the women wore brightly coloured skirts, headscarves and blouses that had been made vivid in reverse appliquE, most beautifully constructed. One elderly lady had a large, flamboyant toucan on her chest, with a roguish look in its eye; another had two huge red fish beaming at each other, face to face in an ultramarine sea; and a third lady's bosom was covered in a spirited scene of several small black fishermen in a canoe trying, with a most fragile and ineffectual fishing-rod, to catch a school of fish the size of sperm whales. All the ladies, gay and gaudy as parakeets in this charming finery, had an additional ornament, gold rings, like wedding rings, implanted through the centre of their noses, and their cheeks were gorgeously made up with cyclamen-pink rouge. These were some of the San Bias islanders and they looked simply splendid. We had a mildly bumpy flight over the centre of Panama and soon we reached the Caribbean coastline and were flying over blue, translucent seas with reefs showing like strange sea-serpents embedded in blue amber. Scattered all around were the hundreds and hundreds of San Bias Islands, each so small and perfect with its wedding-ring of reef around white beaches and shaggy wigs of palm that they looked like manufactured South Sea islands in a toyshop window. Presently, somewhat to my consternation, the pilot flew over the blue waters, dropping lower and lower, and headed for an island of such microscopic dimensions that it seemed impossible that he intended to land on it, except in the direst emergency. By now we were almost skimming the surface of the water, and poor Alastair, who did not like small planes any more than I like heights, was looking distinctly apprehensive. Just as we all thought a crash landing in the sea was unavoidable, we flew over a snow-white beach and immediately beyond it the tarmac started. We touched down in a series of juddering bounces and were then tearing along the tarmac, brakes screaming. It was obvious, when we finally drew to a halt, why this method of landing was necessary. |
| 720 |
The runway exactly fitted the island, so to speak, or the island fitted the runway, no room for error. If you didn't get it exactly right, you landed at one end of the runway and ended up in the sea at the other, and I don't think Alastair was the only one who was glad to quit the plane. We waited some time after our plane had landed, our mountain of luggage smouldering in the sun, covered with brown and green grasshoppers, who appeared to find it irresistible. All our fellow-passengers had been met by canoes and were now dots on the sparkling sea, making towards the scattering of islands across the horizon. Presently, a large, deep-bedded canoe hove into sight and when it pulled up at the jetty out got a stocky little man with bow legs who looked so Tibetan you would have thought he had come straight from Lhasa. He was, it turned out, Israel, the owner of the hotel in which we were going to stay. The shallow sea was blood-hot and as clear as gin, with small flocks of multicoloured fish flipping and trembling over the sandy bottom. We pushed off and presently we were paddling over the still waters towards an island that looked as though it might be about four or five acres in extent, thick with palm trees. We rounded a point and then headed towards a small cement jetty, behind which lay the hotel, an edifice which took my breath away. 'Look at it,' said Lee in delight. 'Isn't it wonderful? I've never seen anything like it.' 'The most extraordinary hotel I've ever seen anywhere in the world,' I said. 'Full marks, Alastair. We're going to enjoy this.' 'It's fun, isn't it?' said Alastair, beaming. He was pretty reliable on short sentences. The hotel was charming. Shaped like a capital L, it was two storeys high, with a palm-thatched roof, and the entire building was made from bamboos lashed intricately together with a sort of raffia. A double veranda ran the full length of the L, and from it on the ground floor and the first floor doorways led into what we presumed were bedrooms. The whole thing was perched over a deep cement pool in which a myriad of coloured fish swam, accompanied by two portly turtles. Next to the hotel was another lopsided bamboo-and-palm-leaf structure with a battered sign saying 'Bar'. Interspersed with all this were tall palm trees curved like bows, rubbing their dark-green leaves together, whispering to the breeze. A riot of hibiscus and other tropical bushes was in full flower. The whole thing in the most brilliant sunshine had an air of unreality. It looked exactly like a Hollywood film-set for a great South Sea epic. One expected (and looked for in vain) a sour-faced Somerset Maugham in immaculate white ducks descending the rickety bamboo stairs. But the closest you got to it were the two turtles whose expressions of disdain were remarkably similar. Our bedroom was, to say the least, a novelty. There was no need for windows since the light streamed through the bedroom walls, and some of the cracks afforded us excellent views over the sea and the islands around us. The beds were enormous and sagged in the middle, having at one time, it was clear, suffered a severe prolapse. The sand on the floor scrunched pleasantly under our feet and gave a special outdoor feeling to the apartment. A small cubicle the size of a coffin led off this honeymoon suite, constructed of beaten-out kerosene-tins covered with peeling oilcloth in a striking tartan pattern. From this Scottish ensemble protruded a small pipe from which, experiment proved, when a tap was turned, a jet of sea-water hit you straight in the eye. |
| 721 |
It was not the Ritz, but you didn't expect it in these idyllic surroundings. We had scarcely unpacked and hung our clothes neatly on the only chair, when looking over the veranda rail we saw a canoe arriving, piloted by a splendidly golden-brown young man accompanied by a young blonde. This proved to be Mark, doing special research on fish at the Smithsonian Institution's research station, a clutter of buildings perched uncomfortably on a reef a quarter of a mile away. Mark had been seconded to us to be our guide and adviser while we were there. He was very attractive, with a slightly oriental cast to his features, and I found out later that his mother was Japanese. Extremely knowledgeable and competent, he immediately became our mentor and friend, as did the student Kathy who was working with him. That afternoon, Mark took us out to the reef a mile or so away, where he was doing his researches, and so knew practically every fish by its Christian name. We anchored the boat in six feet of water over the sandy bottom on the edge of the reef, donned our masks and dropped into the warm water. I can never get over the wonder of that moment when you enter the water and find your face beneath the diamond-bright surface of a tropical sea. The mask is like a magic door, whose opening smooths out the ruffles and pleats of the water, and you slide effortlessly through a fairyland of unimaginable beauty. At first we drifted over the golden sand, patterned with its bright, ever-moving chain mail created by the brilliant sun, and saw the stingrays like strange mottled frying-pans glide out of our way. Here and there were small islands of coral, smouldering like great jewels, clad in multicoloured weeds, decorated with sponges and sea-squirts in vivid colours, each island with its retinue of fish orange, scarlet, blue as a midnight summer sky, yellow as a dandelion, striped, speckled, pleated and ruffed, shapes to defy the imagination. We swam on and presently the reef loomed ahead, an extraordinary area of grottoes, channels, hidden gardens of sponges and intricate corals, great castles of coral with banners of weeds flying from their battlements. There were brain coral like enormous craniums of giants felled in battle who had fallen into the sea and whose bone structure had become part of the reef. All around you there was the click, purr, rasp or squeak of fishy conversation, abuse and feeding. Take one of the winding channels and follow its eel-like wrigglings. One minute the weed would be brushing your shoulders on each side, sea-urchins like marine horse-chestnut husks clinging to the multicoloured walls, the fish darting ahead of you as if enticing you on. The next minute, the narrow channel would suddenly open out into a small area of dazzling filigreed sand covered with the obese black sea-slugs as though some marine delicatessen's delivery-van had dropped a load of saucisson by mistake. Then the narrow channel would become a great fish-filled valley and you could feel the pulse of the sea, the lift and fall, as you drifted like a bird out over the edge of the reef and suddenly below you was nothing but mysterious, menacing blackness as the reef-edge slipped down into the sea's bottom and disappeared into velvety darkness. Mark, over this and other reefs, had the intimate knowledge a man has of his back garden. He would tell you to swim down a certain channel, take the first left, second right, turn left at the big brain coral and twenty feet down the channel you would find the sponge or the coral or the fish that you were looking for. |
| 722 |
'The food,' I said. 'Breakfast is very good.' He beamed. 'Breakfast good, huh?' 'Very good. But we've been here two weeks, Israel, you understand? Two weeks.' 'Yes, two weeks,' he nodded. 'And what do we have for lunch and dinner every day?' I asked. He thought for a moment. 'Lobster,' he said. 'Exactly,' I said. 'Lobster, every day. Lobster for lunch, lobster for dinner.' 'You like lobster,' he pointed out aggrievedly. 'I used to like lobster,' I corrected him. 'Now we would like something else.' 'You want something else?' he asked, to make sure. 'Yes, how about some octopus?' 'You want octopus?' 'Yes.' 'OK. I give you octopus,' he said, shrugging and octopus he gave us, twice a day for the next five days. The day we left, Israel suddenly appeared while we were sipping a farewell drink under the palms. He spouted a stream of his brand of English at me, speaking very rapidly and seeming, for such a normally impassive man, extremely upset. He kept pointing at the canoe that had arrived containing several women and children, bright and colourful as a boatload of orchids, with whom he had been carrying on a lively altercation. I gathered that we were not responsible for his wrath and I persuaded him to slow down and eventually managed to grasp the salient points of his story. The previous evening, an Indian had paddled over from the neighbouring island which lay some three-quarters of a mile away, in order to celebrate some good fortune or other. He drank deep and late and eventually, at about ten o'clock at night, paddled off rather unsteadily in the direction of home. By dawn, as there was no sign of him, his wife borrowed a canoe and, taking her mother and family, went in search of him. All they found was his empty canoe floating over the reefs. Now they had arrived at the hotel to tell Israel he was a murderer for selling the man drink, and that it was his responsibility to find the corpse. Quite simply, Israel now wanted to know if we would go and help him to look for it. Most women would have fainted if asked to do this not my wife. 'How exciting,' she said. 'Do let's. We've got time, haven't we?' 'Yes,' I said, 'it would be nice to have a final swim with a corpse.' As we were preparing to leave, the latest guest at the hotel appeared and approached us. She was a voluptuous, well-rounded lady with glossy black hair, glossy brown body and large quantities of glossy white teeth. Her suntan lotion could be smelt a mile up-wind, and she jangled musically as she moved from the glittering goldmine of ornaments she wore. What she was doing in the primitive San Bias Islands I shall never know. She looked as though she would have been much more at home on the Cote d'Azur or Copacabana Beach. The white bikini she was wearing was so minuscule she might just as well have not worn one at all. 'Excuse, please,' she said, giving us the benefit of all her teeth. 'You are going out swimming?' 'Er ... yes, in a way,' I said. 'Would you mind if I come, too?' she asked beguilingly. 'Not at all,' I said heartily, 'but I must tell you that we are going out to look for a corpse.' 'Yes,' she said, head on one side. 'You don't mind?' 'Well, not if you don't,' I said gallantly, and she entered the boat, almost asphyxiating us with a combination of Chanel No. 5 and Ambre Solaire, tinkling like a musical box. Israel steered us out to a new bit of reef, unfamiliar to us, where the canoe had been found. The bereaved family were already there, cruising up and down, peering hopefully into the water, which was some ten or twelve feet deep and glass-clear. |
| 723 |
This hallucination was brought about by the streams of leaf-cutting ants hurrying back to their nests with their booty, a triangular piece of thumbnail-sized green leaf, slung over their shoulders. From the tree of their choice (which they were busily dissecting) to their nest may be several hundred yards, and so these columns of green wend their way over the dark forest floor, over logs and under bushes in a steady stream that on close inspection looks like a Lilliputian regatta, all the boats having green sails. As we made our way deeper into the forest, we could hear ahead of us the deep, vibrant roar that signalled a troupe of black howler monkeys. It's an impressive sound, somewhere between a howl, a roar and a harsh gurgle, and it shakes and vibrates the forest in a prodigious fashion. Presently we found them, a small family group, black as jet, some slouching nonchalantly through the branches, others lolling back in patches of sunlight, stuffing leaves and buds into their mouths, others simply hanging by their superbly prehensile tails and contemplating their aerial garden. When they caught sight of us, they became very alert, glaring at us suspiciously, and when we moved off the path into the forest so that we were directly underneath them they grew agitated and belligerent and broke off twigs and leaves to throw down at us, and less desirable ammunition as well. 'I say, that's a bit much,' said Alastair, as a large piece of excreta crashed through the leaves a few feet from his head. 'Now, cool your jets, Alastair,' said Paula. 'They're only doing what everyone wants to do to a director.' The monkeys above us, having found that the barrage of twigs and excreta had no effect, now burst into a gigantic chorus to persuade us that this was their territory. It was like standing in the deep end of an empty swimming-pool listening to the Red Army choir, each member singing a different song in Outer Mongolian. 'We've certainly made them lose their cool,' said Paula, raising her voice above the racket. 'We must certainly, you know ... howling, yes ... somewhere high ... trees,' said Alastair. 'There's a tower,' said Paula, doing an instant translation. 'They were telling me that there's a tall tower in the forest that they used to use for studying the forest canopy.' 'Just the thing,' said Alastair. 'About a hundred and fifty feet high,' said Paula enthusiastically. 'How delicious,' I said. 'I shall enjoy watching Alastair go up it.' 'Oh, honey, I forgot you don't like heights,' said Paula. 'Never mind, we'll send the crew up, and you and Lee can stay on the ground.' 'What a lovely producer you are,' I said. We moved on into the forest, stepping carefully over the columns of leaf-cutters. So numerous were they that you wondered why the whole forest was not defoliated. This leaf-gathering is really a form of gardening, for the ants carry the leaves to their vast underground homes (sometimes a quarter of an acre in extent) and here they rot the leaves down into a mulch on which they grow the fungi which is their food. In some way realizing that, if they defoliate all the trees in the immediate vicinity of the nest, they would soon starve, they cull the trees carefully and only gather a certain amount of leaves from each tree. On our second day we came to a clearing in the forest that had been created by the death of one of the giant trees. Growing on a slope, torrential rains had undermined its roots' tenuous hold on the topsoil and a gust of wind had then torn it free, as easily as a dentist wrenches a tooth from a jaw. |
| 724 |
It showed clearly why the tropical forest is so fragile. The topsoil is only a thin layer, so thin that the trees have to grow these giant buttress roots in order to keep upright. These huge trees, in fact, are feeding on themselves, for the moment their leaves fall they decay and become the humus on which the trees feed. So rapid is this process that only a thin topsoil is able to form. So the felling of the forest as is happening at a horrifying rate throughout the world exposes this thin layer, which only lasts a short time as agricultural or grazing land. Then it disappears and leaves erosion in its place. However, a natural tree-fall such as the one we found is a boon to the forest. As the giant crashes to earth, it splinters and fells smaller trees in its line of fall and tears a rent in the thick forest canopy. The sun floods in and the shrubs, creepers and baby trees, who have all been struggling in the gloom of the forest floor, shoot upwards in it. Seeds, which have been lying dormant in the humus for perhaps many years, waiting patiently for such an event, now sprout and start to rocket upwards towards the blue sky before the gap is closed by other plants. Thus the death of one of these forest mammoths is a signal for new life and growth around its huge carcass. On the slopes above the fallen tree we heard a series of squeaks, chatterings and rustlings in the trees. Leaving the path to investigate, we found a group of spider monkeys disporting themselves low down among the trees, feeding on some pink buds. They are aptly named, for with their long, furry, dark limbs and their long tails (so prehensile that they use them as skilfully and as casually as if they were another limb) they did look rather like some strange giant spiders spinning webs among the branches. Unlike the unfriendly reception we received from the howlers, the spider monkeys seemed captivated by us and swung on their wonderful tails closer and closer and lower and lower. One in particular seemed specially fascinated by Lee, for she had just started to eat an orange to quench her thirst. He swung himself down from branch to branch until he was within fifteen feet of her, peering at her with all the dedicated interest of an anthropologist watching the feeding habits of an aborigine. Lee broke off a small piece of orange and held it out to him and, to our astonishment, without hesitation he swung down, grabbed the fruit and stuffed it into his mouth. After that, they followed us through the trees gazing at us wistfully and only going their own way when it became apparent that there were no more oranges forthcoming. Alastair had arranged with one of the hunters attached to the station that he would comb the forest for suitable subjects for us to film, and the next day he came in with the first specimen, one of my favourite animals, the two-toed sloth. They really are enchanting creatures, their small heads, their shaggy bodies, their round, slightly protuberant golden eyes, and their mouths set in a perpetual, dreamy, benevolent smile. Slow and gentle, they will suffer you to hang them wherever you like, as though they were an old coat, and only after half an hour or so of deep meditation will they move perhaps six feet and that in slow motion. Sloths are really fantastic creatures. They are so beautifully adapted for their strange, topsy-turvy life in the tree-tops and, because they spend most of their lives upside-down, and because their diet is highly indigestible leaves, their internal organs are unlike those of any other mammal. |
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Our specimen behaved with great fortitude during the filming and soon became so inured to us that, between takes, he sat quietly clinging on to Lee's forefinger, his tail carefully wound round her thumb or wrist. When the time came to release him, he was reluctant to leave Lee's hand and sat for a long time in the bushes, peering at us pensively, before moving away into the forest. Although we had miles of film of the leaf-cutting ants going about their business of defoliating the forest, carrying their leaves back to their nest, cleaning out the nest and creating huge garbage-heaps, we had to part company with them when they vanished underground. This irked Alastair. 'I want... you know ... I think ... well, gardens,' he said, with his head on one side, revolving slowly, looking like a beaming, benevolent corpse on a gibbet. 'Mushroom-beds, you know ... underground?' 'The only way you'll get them, honey, is by digging the guys out,' said Paula practically. 'Yes,' said Alastair musingly, moving top-like on the nest he was standing on, which covered an area approximately the size of a small ballroom. 'Is possible?' asked Roger. 'Is not too deep?' 'Well, sometimes the mushroom-beds he quite close to the surface,' I said, 'but the ants won't take too kindly to it.' 'Paula, you get some spades and we dig, eh?' said Roger enthusiastically. 'Dig out ze little jardins des champignons, yes?' 'Yes ... spades,' said Alastair, struck by the novel idea. 'Get some spades.' So Paula traipsed back through the forest to the research station and eventually reappeared with a bundle of spades. The word 'producer' means exactly that. They are expected to produce at the drop of a hat anything from a four-wheel-drive truck to a square meal, a motor-launch to a bottle of whisky. 'Just the job,' said Alastair. He and Roger seized spades and started to dig. Having had some experience of leaf-cutting ants, I took Lee and Paula by the arm and led them away from the scene of operations. Leaf-cutters, as a species, are highly successful creatures. The whole colony is founded by the queen, who, on her nuptial flight, carries (in a sort of pouch) a cluster of fungus threads which constitute the food for the future colony, in much the same way that the American pioneers used to take sacks of grain to plant when they eventually settled. When the wedding flight is over, the queen plants the fungus in a brood chamber and looks after it with all the dedication of a horticulturist, manuring it with her excrement. If the fungus dies, the colony fails; when it is successful, the colony expands and grows in proportion to the fungus gardens and may eventually have more than a million individuals to a nest. I had just explained this to Paula when approximately half the million inhabitants of this nest decided that the activities of Roger and Alastair were inimical to their well-being, so they poured forth to remonstrate. One minute Alastair and Roger looked like two earnest gardeners turning over their asparagus-beds in preparation for a new crop and the next minute they were executing leaps and twists and pas de deux that would have been the envy of the Moscow Ballet. This was accompanied by wild, tremulous screams of agony, interspersed in equal parts with blasphemy and procreative oaths. 'Christ,' shrieked Alastair, waltzing around, now of necessity. 'Ouch, ouch; they're biting. Oh, the bloody things!' 'Ouch, ouch, merde alors!' screamed Roger, waltzing, too, and slapping his trousers. |
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'Zey is biting.' The chief problem was that Alastair was wearing shorts and an ancient pair of baseball boots, and this did not give his legs any protection, so the ants swarmed up him as though he were a tree, attempting to tear him to pieces. Roger, if anything, was in worse case, for he was wearing elegant, fairly tight-fitting trousers, up which the ants flowed with speed and precision. Those on the outside bit right through the thin cloth and into his flesh. Those on the inside concentrated on getting as high as possible before beginning their assault, so that Roger was being bitten in the most intimate and tender parts of his anatomy. The ants' jaws, powerful enough to chop up tough leaves, made short work of the thin trouser material and Roger's legs were patched with bloodstains as were Alastair's legs. We got them both away from the immediate scene of battle and de-anted them. Paula then practised first aid with antibiotics, but it was a considerable time before we got all of the ants off them. 'Did you see that?' panted Alastair, his spectacles misted over with emotion. 'The buggers were trying to defoliate me.' 'What about me?' said Roger. 'Me they go for the private parts. Me they try to make eunuch.' Later on, wrapped in so many layers of clothing that they looked like Tweedledum and Tweedledee clad for battle, they succeeded in unearthing a small section of the mushroom-garden and filming it, to the ants' fury. One of the most fantastic pieces of natural history in the forest, one that was in its own way just as difficult to obtain on film as the ants' fungus-garden, was the extraordinary story of the giant fig tree and the minute fig wasp. This strange relationship only recently became unravelled, and it shows part of the enormous complexity of the tropical forest and how any plant or creature is only part of the whole intricate ecosystem, for without the great fig trees the fig wasp would perish and without the fig wasp the fig tree would never reproduce its kind, and its numbers would dwindle and it would eventually become extinct. All figs have a very curious flower structure, resembling, in fact, that of a fruit more than that of a flower. A host of tiny flowers He inside the fig, which is attached to the tree by a stalk at one end; at the other there is a minute opening almost obscured by scales. Figs have male and female flowers and the way the pollen is ferried from one to the other is as enchanting as it is awe-inspiring. This is what happens: In the fig the first to mature are the female flowers, and their scent attracts female fig wasps, who are carrying pollen from other fig trees in the forest. To get at the blooms, the wasp must climb inside the fig using the opening at one end, shouldering the scale 'door' open. This is not an easy process for the door is stiff, and the female wasp is fragile and often loses her wings and antennae when entering the fig. Once she (and other females) has successfully broached the fig, she proceeds to bore down through the styles of the female flowers using her long ovipositor, like someone drilling for oil. The flowers are of two sorts, one with short styles and one with long styles. This design is such that the ovipositor of the wasp can only reach the ovules of the short styled variety to lay the eggs. The long styled ones are only probed, but while being probed they receive the pollen carried by the wasp. So, by this process, the short styled fig flowers produce fig wasp larvae, whilst the long styled flowers produce seed. |
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Prod.' 'Then in the evening,' she went on, 'we will go down to the lake where Alastair wants you to fish for owls.' 'I beg your parden?' I said. 'Fish for owls with a mouse,' explained Paula. 'Quiggers, how much have you had to drink?' I asked. 'No, no, honey, I'm serious. Alastair has read somewhere that scientists fish for owls with dead mice as bait, in order to catch them and ring them or something,' said Paula. 'Never heard such rubbish,' I said, 'and, anyway, why at the lake? I didn't know that Canadian owls were aquatic.' 'No, it's just that there's more space on the lake. In the woods you might get your fishing-line tangled up in the trees.' 'I don't know. It seems mad to me,' I said. 'Can't you control Alastair?' 'No,' said Paula simply. That night, Lee and I had our first experience of the Northern Lights. Because they were so commonplace, as far as Bob and Louise were concerned, they had not thought even to mention them. They had kindly installed us in their own bedroom, and when we got into the large, cosy double bed we found that directly above us was a huge skylight. I switched off the light and was immediately transfixed with astonishment. The large area of sky immediately above our bed appeared to be alive. Against the deep soft blackness of the sky were etched scrolls, curtains, scarves and tangled wisps of pale purple, green, blue, pink and frost-white fronds of what looked like cloud but which seemed to have a life of their own. With each passing second they shifted, separated, merged, broke up and re-formed in a different pattern and always they were floodlit from somewhere in the wings, as it were, and the colours changed with their movements. I was reminded irresistibly of a kaleidoscope that I had been given when I was a child, a triangular tube like a microscope. Beneath the lens you put patterned paper, particularly the garish, glittering paper from chocolates, and as you moved the tube about beneath the lens patterns shifted in a miraculous way. Now it seemed to me that the skylight was like the eyepiece of my old kaleidoscope and without any effort on my part was producing these fantastic effects in the sky, effects far more subtle and miraculous than any that chocolate-paper could have produced. We lay and watched this incredible display for an hour or so, until finally it dwindled and died, just leaving the velvety moleskin sky freckled with stars. It was a good thing it had died away, or we would have watched it until dawn and then been too tired to get up. It was one of the most eerie, delicate and beautiful phenomena I have ever seen. Early next morning, after a gargantuan breakfast, we set off into the forest, muffled up in so many clothes that we felt as awkward moving as moonwalkers without the aid of low gravity. The grey weather that had greeted us had vanished in the night and the sky was flax blue and the faint heat of the sun made great mushroom-tops of snow slide off branches and land with a soft sigh on the carpet of snow beneath the trees. One of the things we wanted to try to film was the extraordinary life that goes on beneath the smooth thick layers of snow. Not long ago it was discovered that the first layer of snow to fall when it is covered by other layers changes composition. The flakes seem to fuse together and produce what are to all intents and purposes icicles or ice crystals, so this layer of snow becomes transformed into tunnels and ice palaces a-glitter with delicate crystals. This is called the pukak. |
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On to the snowfield, white as a banqueting-cloth, he sauntered out, his beard swinging to his rolling walk, his horns sharp-curved as bows, his great forehead and massive shoulders a mass of dark ringlets, the breath from his nostrils making two cumulus clouds of steam ahead of him as he moved. Slowly, like a portly, well-made man of substance taking his constitutional, he moved across the white expanse. Here the snow was not so deep, so it only came up to his knees. He moved ponderously across until he was perhaps two hundred yards from the tree line. Then he paused and mused, his breath forming a cloud around his face, entangling itself in the fur of his forehead and shoulders. Then, in slow motion, as it were, he doubled his feet under him, and lay down in the snow. He lay there for a moment, and then with a vigorous kicking of his legs he rolled over. More kicks rolled him back again and so for the next ten minutes we were privileged to watch him take his snow bath rolling to and fro, grunting with the exertion, his breath spouting silver clouds into the air, the snow flying in white cakes in all directions. Presently, exhausted by his ablutions, he lay on his side for a time, panting, his flanks heaving. Then he hauled his bulk upright, gave a gigantic shuddering shake that made the snow burst from his thick fur in a cloud and then, massively sure of himself, he sauntered after the herd, of which we had no doubt he was king. Slowly, meditatively, like a huge, dark cloud, he moved across the snow and disappeared. We got back to find Alastair, pink with exertion, proudly walking round a five-foot conical mound of snow. 'Quinzhee,' he explained proudly, with his head on one side and contemplating the pile of snow with affection. 'Got to ... you know ... snowshoes and dig it.' So with our snowshoes we patted the snow flat all over the pile and then proceeded to dig a large opening like a small church door on one side. Through this, we dug deeper and deeper until we had hollowed out the whole of the interior. It was interesting to see how the snow on the outside of the quinzhee was just snow, as it were, whereas the layers underneath which we had dug through were already turning crystalline and forming the insulation. Crawling into the quinzhee, Lee found that, although the temperature outside was minus thirty, inside our snowhouse it was one degree above freezing not a great deal in terms of cold, perhaps, but sufficient to save your life if you were marooned overnight in this harsh environment. We had just finished the quinzhee when the various birds arrived to see what we were up to. The first was a group of chickadees, fragile, tit-like birds, so delicate you wondered how they survived the rigours of the winter. They played about in the trees, hanging upside down and chirruping at us, but eventually got bored and flew off. The next to arrive were a group of evening grossbeaks, beautiful, heavy-beaked finches clad in startling gold and greenish-black plumage, flashing in and out of the dark pine branches like little golden lights. They seemed much more nervous than the chickadees and soon flew off into the sombre depths of the forest. Our next bird visitor by contrast was much bolder. It was a whiskyjack, a medium-sized jay, handsomely clad in pale greys and blacks. He suddenly appeared flying out of the forest and alighted on a tree nearby. He hopped from branch to branch, pausing now and then to watch us with his head on one side, reminding us irresistibly of Alastair. |
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Whiskyjacks associate humans with food and therefore are the boldest of the forest birds. A search among all our pockets brought to light the remains of some biscuits and a handful of peanuts. These were held out to the jay, and to our delight he flew down quite confidently and perched on our fingers, stuffing as many morsels into his beak as possible. When he had a beakful he would fly off, and what he did then was extraordinary. Finding a suitable branch, he would stick the food to it using as adhesive his ultra-sticky saliva. In this way he gathered all the peanuts and biscuits we offered him and made perhaps seven or eight caches of the food in various trees larders for the future. He seemed a trifle annoyed when we eventually ran out of foodstuffs, but by that time we reckoned he had stashed away enough food to keep ten jays going for a week. It was getting towards evening when we got back, and Alastair was anxious to film the owl-fishing sequence. Bob had provided a fly-fishing rod and as bait two stuffed mice. Solemnly, we all trooped down to the frozen lake and made our way out on to the ice. Here Bob gave me a swift lesson in casting, since I had never used a fly-rod before. He showed me the wrist action required several times, making the mouse land on the ice some thirty feet away as lightly as a feather. It seemed perfectly simple to me, and I could not see why fly-fishermen made so much fuss over casting. I seized the rod with confidence, pointed the tip skywards and made what I considered to be a perfect cast. Unfortunately, for some reason, the wretched line, instead of unfurling and gently lowering the mouse on to the ice, behaved like a whip, with the result that the mouse snapped in two and half of its body went soaring away across the pond, leaving me with only the head and forelegs still attached to the line. 'Honey,' said Paula, when she had stopped laughing, 'you know the budget can't afford endless mice.' 'Lucky we've got a spare,' said Alastair. 'I think I had better just practise with this half for a bit,' I said. 'I don't want to ruin the other one.' 'I think, when they see this bit of film, they will say that the mouse was miscast,' said Alastair, and went into convulsions of mirth at his own wit. Austerely, I ignored his vulgarity and took myself over to a quiet corner of the pond to practise with my demi-mouse. Once I had mastered the art of casting, we attached the whole mouse to the line and filmed the sequence. Needless to say, not a single owl came anywhere near us. That night, our last in Riding Mountain, we were again treated to a wonderful display of the Northern Lights, and for two or three hours we lay in bed watching the sky above us form ribbons or scrolls or fluted curtains that glowed in pastel shades as though there was a fire within them, merging, parting, disappearing, reappearing, an apparently never-ending and never-repeated pageant. It was quite extraordinarily beautiful, and one longed to be able to paint it, although you knew that a painting could never convey the magical elegant patterns etched in the sky. For the Northern Lights alone, I felt it was worth braving the Canadian winter. Our next visit to Canada was in the summer, when the countryside presented a very different mien, with trees in full leaf and flowers growing everywhere. Our destination was Banff, one of Canada's major national parks, situated in the middle of the Rocky Mountains and so containing some of the most spectacular scenery in the world. |
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Mountain range after mountain range, like a giant stormy sea sculpted in rock. Pine forests like green fur crawling up their flanks and snow glinting on their peaks, with here and there, as though a candle had melted wax down a cliff-face, a baby glacier clinging immobile. The park was wonderful, for each time you rounded a corner a spectacular and lovely vista of mountains regaled your eye and you thought that that must be the most beautiful view of the park, only to be proved wrong when you rounded the next corner and were presented with something more stupendous. Here and there, the mountains rose so sheer that only their feet were tree-covered, but each brown or cinnamon-coloured peak had snow carefully arranged on its valleys and along its ledges like crisp, freshly laundered napkins laid out on the desolate rocks. We paused at a layby for a rest, and found beneath the trees a profusion of tiny wild strawberries, glowing like little lanterns in the darkness of the leaves, on which we gorged ourselves. Apparently the grizzly and black bear, both of which inhabit the park, are inordinately fond of these strawberries and, if you are deep in the woods, it is wise to keep an eye out in case you suddenly find yourself sharing a strawberry-patch with a grizzly. Above us rose two great carunculated axeheads of mountains, and between them lay a valley shaped like the bowl of a spoon, jade-green with vegetation. On this green surface were some white specks, which I at first thought were patches of snow, and then I saw one move and realized it was a small group of an animal I had long wanted to meet the Rocky Mountain goat. Don't be misled by the name. The Rocky Mountain goat is the king of goats; with his soft white coat, softer even than cashmere, and his black hoofs, horns, muzzle and eyes, he is a dandy of a beast. Unlike the other mountain-dwelling ungulates, he is not hurried or panicky in his movements, but sedate and slow and surefooted. So surefooted, in fact, that one was seen to attempt a leap from one narrow shelf on a high cliff to another, which proved to be just too far away. Instead of crashing into the gulf as any other animal would have done, the goat, realizing its mistake, changed its attitude in mid-air, hit the rock-face with all four feet, did a backward somersault and landed safely on the shelf it had just vacated. They have few enemies, and those that they have they seem well able to deal with. One Rocky Mountain goat, beset by hunting dogs, killed two with its horns, pushed another over the cliff to its death, and when the rest of the pack became faint-hearted and retreated the goat sauntered off as if nothing untoward had happened. On another occasion, one was found dead, killed by a grizzly bear. However, near the goat was found the corpse of the grizzly, stabbed twice neatly through the ribs close to the heart. He had obviously just had the stamina to kill the goat before dying of the mortal wounds inflicted on him by the dagger-like horns. With our binoculars, we watched them for some time as they grazed across the brilliant green grass but we saw no exciting incident involving a grizzly. They grazed peacefully, occasionally pausing to stare around them, their long, earnest, pale faces giving them an air of sobriety and respectability, like a flock of vicars in white fur coats. One of the things we were anxious to film was the summer activities of the pikas, strange small rodents that live high up in the alpine meadows. |
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These little animals do not hibernate during the winter months as so many of the mountain creatures do like the fat marmots, for example. Instead they have become farmers, and during the summer months they feverishly collect grass and leaves which they pile into haystacks that dry in the sun. When one side is sufficiently dry, the haystack is carefully turned by the pika, so that all the collected food gets its share of sunshine. These haystacks are put in sheltered places and during the winter months form the larders of the pikas, without which they would starve to death when the valleys are snowbound. At the first sign of rain, the haystack is moved under cover and put out in the sun again when the storm is over. According to Geoff Holroyd, the young man who was acting as our guide to the region, the best place to watch pikas at their farming activities was in an alpine meadow some twenty miles away from the hotel in which we were staying. So early in the morning we set off. When we arrived at the base of the mountain range, we left the car and started up the two-mile, almost vertical climb through the alpine larch and pine woods. As we started to climb, we heard all around us what we took to be the whistling call of some bird which seemed to haunt the forest in profusion, judging by the number of calls we could hear. Presently, however, we came to a small clearing and there, squatting at the mouth of its burrow was the musician responsible for the ringing, flute-like cry a fat ground squirrel, wearing a tasteful suit of rust-red and grey fur. He sat as upright as a guardsman at the entrance to his home and his ribcage pumped in and out as he gave his musical warning cry. His big liquid eyes stared at us with that intense, slightly inane expression that most squirrels wear, and his little paws trembled with his vocal efforts. He was not really all that afraid of us, for he allowed Lee to get within four or five feet of him before he retreated to the safety of his burrow. These were the Columbian ground squirrels and, as Geoff explained, you got different species of squirrel at different levels on the mountainside, so roughly speaking you could tell how high you were by the species of squirrel you were surrounded by. As we climbed higher, the larch and pines started to thin out, and at the timber line, where the forest started to give place to small arctic plants, the trees had become stunted and dwarfed by the freezing winter winds and the savage pruning by knife-edged particles blown by it, turning pine and larch into pygmy trees, resembling the miniature Japanese bonsai. Here and there among these mini-forests were flashes of yellow, tomato pink and deep red where the alpine paintbrush grew, an elegant and beautiful plant, stem and leaves covered with a mist of fine hairs. These hirsute coverings can be found on a lot of alpine plants and, believe it or not, actually help to protect the plant from at least nine months of icy weather in the same way that the thick coat of the grizzly bear protects its body. Here the trees ended and the valley stretched out before us, lush and so green it would have put a mine of emeralds to shame. On the flanks of the mountainside surrounding it you could see the scars of old avalanches, but the bright meadow itself seemed unscathed. Here the rich green grass was spangled with tiny alpine plants, the bright-yellow cinquefoil, the yellow heather, the delicate purple milk vetch, the white sandwort and cushions of bright-pink moss campions. |
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Through the centre of the valley ran a stream chattering and glistening around piles of grey rocks, each so beautifully arranged that it seemed as if the whole valley had just been completed by some alpine Capability Brown. Suddenly our attention was attracted by a shrill whistle that echoed back from the surrounding hills, and on top of a pile of rocks, lolling in the sun, was a fat, brown marmot, looking somewhat like a gigantic guinea-pig, with a long furry tail. I think he gave his alarm cry from force of habit, for he did not seem at all upset by our presence. In fact, after being near to him for a few minutes, he actually allowed me to approach him and scratch his fat neck and tickle his whiskers. It was a marvellous, magical feeling to be in a place where the animals look upon you as being benign and allow you to share, however briefly, a part of their lives. Ahead of us, we could see the valley was divided into two a higher and a lower area, separated by a steep slope of tumbled boulders. Beyond lay a barren hillside of jagged rocks, arranged in piles by past avalanches. These huge boulders were embossed with fossil seashells and coral an indication that in times past these rocks had formed the bed of an ancient sea that had, by a cataclysmic movement of the earth, been lifted up to this high and remote valley. It was here, under a huge tottering fortress of fossil-decorated rocks, that we saw our first pika. It must have been sitting among the rocks and observing us for some time, for its ash-grey fur made it blend in with its surroundings so beautifully that it was quite invisible until it moved. About the size of a guinea-pig, it had a very rabbit-like face, but its eyes were larger and darker and its ears were small and shaped like half a coin. It had no discernible tail and its fur was glossy like satin. It stared at us, uttered a shrill, piping cry of disquiet, leapt down among the rocks and vanished. Investigating, we soon found several haystacks about two feet in diameter and about twelve inches high. Most of them had fresh grass or leaves on top, so it was obvious that the pikas were still in the process of harvesting. Curiously enough, in this lower valley the pikas were very nervous, only showing themselves in flashes when they scuttled from crevice to crevice. When we climbed to the upper valley, however, we found a most amenable and enchanting pika who was far too busy with his farming to take any notice of our presence. Here the stream had carved itself out a bed in the thick, spongy green turf starred with flowers, and it twisted and wriggled its way across the meadow like a plait of grass. In the middle of the turfs, smooth as a billiard-table, a fat little pika was sitting, busily tearing out mouthfuls of grass, which he kept in his mouth. Eventually, when his jaws could hold no more, he sprinted off to his house and haystacks among the rocks, looking incongruously as though he was wearing a large green walrus moustache. We followed him into the scree and found his home was under a gigantic rock the size of a small car, and nearby were two completed haystacks, and a third in the process of construction. He was so busy about his husbandry that I sat on a rock within three feet of his haystacks and he did not even pause in his serious work. As soon as he had arranged the mouthful of grass to his satisfaction with his paws, he was off through the rocks speedily, bouncing like a rubber ball, until he reached the meadow. |
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The forest today covers nearly 38,000 hectares, or about 80,000 acres. The larger part is open forest but there are also ancient and ornamental woodlands as well as grassland, heath and scrub. Originally of course the forest was created as a hunting preserve for royalty, though the local villagers had the right (and still have today) to graze their pigs, cattle, horses and other domestic animals over the forest except for certain enclosures that are created to protect young trees from the destructive attentions of deer and domestic beasts. However, now the forest is no longer a royal hunting preserve but, owing to its great importance and the many rare species that inhabit it, it has the status of a national nature reserve. Our guide to this lovely piece of forest, one of the finest in Europe, was Simon Davy, a tall, handsome young man, who was a great enthusiast and knew the forest intimately. Naturally, Jonathan wanted to be as close to the forest as possible, for nothing is more aggravating or timewasting than having to drive for an hour every morning to get to your location. In this we were lucky, for Jonathan had discovered the Bramble Hill Hotel, lying in the middle of the forest itself. Whether the kindly but unfortunate owner, Captain Prowse, thought himself lucky to have us as guests is a moot point. We must have been a great trial to him, and by the time we left he must have considered that all film crews, if not actually certifiable, at least were considerably more eccentric than a set of village idiots. Certainly, our arrival and the incident of the bedspread got us off to a good start. For some reason, Jonathan was for once considering the talent, and before we arrived he thought he would go up to our room and make sure that it was suitable for the stars. Why he would think that, in such an impeccably run hotel, anything would be amiss, I have no idea. Anyway, he found the double bed covered with a bedspread which, though maybe a trifle gaudy, was in no way offensive, but Jonathan became suddenly convinced that upon sighting this homely article Lee and I would be overcome with artistic rage of the sort that would have been expected from the late Lord Clarke if he had found some graffiti on the wall of Chartres Cathedral. Plucking the offending cover from the bed, he bundled it into the wardrobe. Thus having convinced himself that our delicate aesthetic sensibilities would not be offended, he set off to meet us. While he was so occupied, Captain Prowse whose all-seeing eye was everywhere had checked our rooms himself and finding the bed was, so to speak, naked searched for and found the bedspread and returned it to its rightful place. When we got to the hotel Jonathan, still suffering from that concern for the talent that so rarely afflicts a director, carried some of our bags up to our room ahead of us and saw the offending coverlet glaring at him from the bed. With a moan of anguish, he tore it from the bed and enshrined it once more in the cupboard. He was only just in time, for at that moment Lee and I entered the room accompanied by Captain Prowse. The Captain's eagle eye swept the room and came to rest on the bed. An expression of disbelief crossed his face. 'Why, where's the bedspread?' he enquired. A rhetorical question, but one that Jonathan thought he should respond to. 'Bedspread?' he croaked. 'Yes,' said Captain Prowse tersely, 'there was a bedspread on the bed. I put it there myself. Someone, for some strange reason, had put it in the cupboard. |
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I wonder where it has gone?' 'It's in the cupboard,' said Jonathan in a low voice. 'In the cupboard?' said the Captain. 'Again?' 'Yes,' said Jonathan. 'How do you know?' asked the Captain. 'I put it there,' said Jonathan, with the demeanour of one confessing to infanticide. 'You put it there?' asked the Captain. 'Yes,' said Jonathan miserably. 'Did you put it there the first time?' As a military man, he quite rightly liked to be apprised of all the facts. 'Yes,' said Jonathan. 'Why?' asked the Captain, with ominous calm. There was a long silence while we all looked at Jonathan, who managed to achieve a rich blush that any self-respecting heliotrope would have been proud to wear. 'Because I thought they wouldn't like it,' he said, thus passing the buck to my poor innocent wife and myself. However, the Captain, with experience of slovenly recruits absent without leave and with a fund of plausible stories up their sleeves, was not to be distracted with this prevarication. 'Surely,' he said icily, 'if Mr and Mrs Durrell were in any way dissatisfied with their counterpane or bedspread, it was for them to inform me and not your place to secrete it in the cupboard. However, I have no doubt that Mr and Mrs Durrell will make up their own minds as to the suitability of the bedspread and communicate their displeasure or otherwise to me, without the intervention of a third party.' With that, he inclined his head and left the room not a moment too soon, since Lee and I fell upon the bedspreadless bed in paroxysms of mirth. It was mid-autumn, and the forest, when we started work in the morning, was looking magnificent. Parts of it were still shimmering green-gold, but in other parts the leaves were dying and the great trees stood barley-sugar gold, tawny as sherry or fox red in the fragile early-morning sunlight, with thin wisps of mist moving like kite tails through their branches. The air was cold enough to see one's breath, and everything had a delicate sheen of dew on it. Tiny streams glinted and whispered surreptitiously between the high banks of earth, as black and fragrant as Christmas cake, as they wended their way twisting and turning through the cathedral naves of the giant oaks and beech-trees. Now, with the dampness in the air and the rich, moist layer of dead leaves, this was the time of the fungi and they were everywhere in profusion. Their fantastic shapes were like a Martian world. They seemed endless in form and colour. Mushrooms as pink as sugar icing, mushrooms grey and silky as a seal, mushrooms curved upwards, showing their gills like the leaves of a book, others like umbrellas disembowelled by the wind, some like dainty summer parasols, some like Chinese hats, others crowded together like tables in front of a French cafE or bubbling like waterfalls from the bark of trees. There were some like complex pieces of coral or slivers of orange peel; the sulphur-tufts, yellow as canaries, the grisettes a rich foxy red; parasol mushrooms, pale caramel-coloured with scales on top like tiles on a roof, or the pholiota, pale brown with scales like fur. Then there were the fascinating names they were called. The scientists who collect and classify fungi have obviously a strong poetic streak in them and have given them names like the Shaggy Ink Cap, or Lawyer's Wig, the Weeping Widow, the Penny Bun, Slippery Jack and Dayrads Saddle. Then lurking among the trees you find the Varnished Death Cap and the ivory-white Destroying Angel, its uneven top looking like a tombstone angel's wings. |
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Then there were the huge, flat, plate-like beefsteak fungi, clamped so tightly to the tree trunks it was possible to sit on them as one would sit on a shooting-stick without breaking them off. There were the puffballs, round and soft, which, at the touch of a finger, would give off a puff of minute spores, a silent, mist-like explosion that would send future generations drifting across the forest floor like trails of smoke. In one remote glade in the forest, we came upon the carcass of an immense oak which, at its death, must have been hundreds of years old, for the diameter of its trunk was all of ten feet. This enormous corpse must have been gently decaying there for some time and it had been transformed from a simple tree trunk into a complex fungi-garden. Crowds, consortiums, batches, battalions, clusters and caravanserai made up the biggest collection of different fungi I had ever seen since I was in a forest in Jujuy in northern Argentina many years ago. In fact, in my ignorance, I thought that only the tropics could produce this profusion of species in such a small area. But of all the fungi we saw I think the one that took my fancy the most was the fly agaric, the size of scarlet saucers, lighting up the gloom under the trees. This gaudy thing, flamboyant as a trumpet blast, is poisonous, as has been known since medieval times, when the good housewife in her dairy or kitchen would put down saucers of milk with fragments of the mushroom broken into it to poison flies. Its poisonous properties lie in producing a cataleptic state accompanied by convulsions and a form of intoxication. Curiously enough, reindeer apparently adore it, treating it rather as we would treat a bottle of whisky or gin found under a tree and, I regret to say, when fly agaric is in season lose no opportunity to get plastered. The Lapps, who watched this performance and had seen the reindeer eat the mushrooms and possibly envied their regrettable state of intoxication, by experiment found out two interesting things. You could eat the fly agaric if you swallowed it without chewing, and so this is what they did to get the desired effect. They also found out one shudders to think how that if you imbibe the urine of someone who has been on an agaric bender you can obtain the same effect through this now 'distilled' potion. The Lapps of course, when they are blundering about with colossal hangovers, blame the reindeer for the whole thing. Although to us the forest was ravishing, to Jonathan it represented an implacable enemy who, with its ever-changing moods, was trying to frustrate him. If he wanted sun, there was too much cloud; if he wanted cloud, there was too much sun; if he wanted rain, it remained blissfully clear, and vice versa. To us, the poor forest was doing its best in the only way it knew how. To Jonathan it was behaving with the malicious contrariness of a flibbertigibbet woman in a gown of multicoloured leaves. It was, in fact, the question of leaves that made him almost apoplectic. Since we were purporting to shoot the forest in autumn, Jonathan was not satisfied that there were vast quantities of dead leaves on the ground and an equal quantity up in the trees awaiting their turn to fall. He wanted pictures of leaves actually falling. Here, again, the forest exhibited its maddening, capricious, feminine nature. She provided him with huge piles of fallen leaves and towering tree-top pinnacles of shimmering green-gold, russet and chestnut-coloured leaves, none of which she would allow to fall not to camera, at any rate. |
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Any time the camera was safely packed away they fell in never-ending battalions, but the moment the camera was set up the leaves remained steadfastly glued to their branches. We began to fear for Jonathan's sanity and then the day came when we feared we might have to certify him. 'I've got it,' he barked at Paula. 'I've got it.' 'What, honey?' said Paula, noting the mad glint in his eye. 'Plastic bags,' said Jonathan triumphantly. 'You must go into town and get me several enormous, big, huge plastic bags.' 'Sure, honey,' said Paula soothingly. 'Anything you like but what for?' 'Leaves,' said Jonathan. We all looked at him. He wasn't actually frothing at the mouth, so we decided to humour him. 'What have plastic bags to do with leaves?' I asked, not for a moment expecting a rational answer. I did not get one. 'We collect the leaves in the bags and take them back to the hotel,' said Jonathan. 'What do we do with them when we've got them back at the hotel?' asked Lee, fascinated. 'Dry them.' 'Dry them?' 'Yes, dry them, and then we get a ladder and climb a tree and throw them down,' said Jonathan. 'In that way I can get pictures of falling autumn leaves.' This Napoleonic plan naturally brought us once again into direct conflict with the long-suffering Captain Prowse. Paula was dispatched to the nearest village and returned with four huge, funereal black plastic bags. Urged on by Jonathan, now delirious with excitement, we stuffed these with sodden leaves and returned to the Bramble Hill Hotel carrying with us enough potential humus to succour the world's major botanical gardens. We grouped this largesse in the foyer of the hotel and Jonathan went in search of Captain Prowse. When they returned, he showed the Captain the four huge plastic bags, their shape distorted by their contents, looking like malevolent slug-shaped things from outer space. 'I want your help with these,' said Jonathan simply. The Captain examined the bags with care. 'With these?' he enquired at length. 'You want my help?' 'Yes,' said Jonathan. 'What are they?' enquired the Captain. 'Leaves,' said Jonathan. 'Leaves? What sort of leaves?' asked the Captain. Nothing like this had ever happened to him before. 'Autumn leaves,' said Jonathan triumphantly. 'We got them in the forest.' Captain Prowse looked shattered. Nothing in his previous career had prepared him for a guest suddenly producing four plastic bags full of autumn leaves and demanding his help. 'I see,' he said, moistening his lips; 'And what do you intend to do with them?' 'Dry them,' said Jonathan, puzzled that the Captain could not have worked out this logical progression for himself. 'Dry them?' asked the Captain. 'Dry them?' 'Yes, they're wet,' Jonathan explained. 'But why should you want to dry them?' asked the Captain, fascinated in spite of himself. 'Because they won't fall if they're wet,' said Jonathan, impatient at the Captain's obtuseness. 'But they have already fallen,' the Captain pointed out. 'I know,' said Jonathan, exasperated. 'That is how they got wet and that is why we have to dry them.' Mercifully, at that moment Paula, who had been off making one of her frequent telephone calls, reappeared. She took in the situation in one sweeping glance. 'Captain Prowse, I think perhaps I ought to explain and I am sure you can help us if anyone can,' she said, smiling and turning on the 5,000 candlepower of her charm. 'I would be glad of some clarification,' said the Captain. Simply and concisely, Paula explained the whole drama of the falling leaves. |
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Initially, Captain Prowse had kindly put at our disposal a room (in addition to our bedrooms) in which we could assemble for script conferences, and which would allow us to spread out and maintain the equipment. It was a strange room on the first floor, rather like a Victorian conservatory. Now Paula asked simply if we might also dry half the New Forest in it. It says much for the Captain's good-humour and his firm grasp of being a good hotelier that he did not immediately ask us to leave, Instead, he gave us a huge pile of back copies of The Times on which to spread our largesse of leaves and a large and formidable electric fire, circa 1935, with which to dry them. Soon the fire was throwing out heat like a blast furnace and the leaves were spread out on The Times occupying half the room, while Jonathan crooned over them, stirring them lovingly with his fingers. We all foregathered to drink whisky and watch him. 'It looks like a village-hall setting for a panto,' said Chris. 'Babes in the Wood, perhaps.' 'No,' I said judiciously, 'Harris is too old for a babe. It's more like The Tempest. There's old Caliban, groping about in his spiritual home.' 'You may laugh,' interrupted Jonathan coldly, continuing to stir his leaves with loving fingers, 'but you wait until we have real autumn leaves raining down from the trees.' Two days later, when the leaves were dry, we carried them reverently out into the forest. With them we solemnly transported a ladder and, under Jonathan's direction, propped it against the trunk of a huge oak tree. Brian, who was not doing any sound-recording in this sequence, was detailed to go up the ladder carrying a plastic bag full of leaves, crawl out along the branches and start scattering leaves as though he were Mother Nature. This he dutifully did. 'Throw them more naturally,' Jonathan kept calling. 'How can you throw them naturally out of a plastic bag?' asked Brian aggrievedly from his precarious perch. 'Throw them delicately,' said Jonathan, 'not in great wodges like that.' 'I must say, you chaps go to an awful lot of trouble,' said Simon. 'No expense spared,' I said. 'Erich von Stroheim, when he was filming, once had 35,000 almond blossoms fixed to the trees because he was shooting in winter and the trees were bare.' 'Good God, wasn't that expensive?' asked Simon. 'Yes,' I said, 'very. Harris is related to him, of course, hence this leaves business.' 'Really?' said Simon, interested. 'Yes, his real name is Harris von Stroheim, but he changed it.' 'So that is why he is so keen on the leaves?' asked Simon. 'Yes, well, with our budget you can't run to almond blossom,' I said. As I have said, Jonathan felt that the New Forest was not really co-operating. It deliberately grew its fungi in shady comers with not enough light for photography. It refused to shed its leaves, it got rained on, it got covered in fog, it was recalcitrant to a degree. Then came the final straw, the business of the galls. Each tree in a forest has, of course, an ecosystem of its own. The tree itself, while controlling heat and moisture and so climate, provides an important world for a host of creatures who live on, in or around it or merely visit it for reasons of business, like nesting. It has been estimated that a single oak tree can support well over three hundred species (and goodness knows how many individuals of each species), ranging from birds to moths, from caterpillars to spiders. Among the creatures to which the oak tree is a world in itself are the many species of gall. |
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Galls are some of the most bizarre and decorative things you can find in a forest, and Jonathan had been much struck by what I had written about them in The Amateur Naturalist. I had said: Each gall forms a home for a developing larva. In some the adult insect hatches out in the summer, in others the galls turns brown and the larva hibernates through the winter inside it. But the story of the galls does not end there, because within each gall you will almost certainly find other creatures which are either acting as parasites on the original owner-builder of the gall or who have just taken up residence as unpaying guests. The common oak-apple, a very easy-to-find gall, has been known to give a home to 75 different species of insect as well as the rightful owner, the gall-wasp grub. It was that phrase, 'the common oak-apple, a very easy-to-find gall', that did it. Jonathan was determined to obtain some of the oak-apples and film Lee and myself collecting them and then take them to London Scientific Films (who were doing all our close-up photography for us) and get the galls to hatch out while microphotography captured every one of the seventy-five different species in gigantic close-up. Now, normally, in any good forest, you as it were can't see the wood for the galls, but on this occasion things were different. We set off early one morning on a gall hunt, Jonathan bearing two of his gigantic black plastic bags which only recently had contained leaves. 'Are you sure two will be enough?' I asked. 'You said they were common and easy to find,' he said. 'I want lots of them.' 'Well, that bag will hold two thousand at a rough guess, so the two of them will cope with maybe four or four and a half thousand.' 'I don't care,' said Jonathan stubbornly. 'I'm not taking any chances; I want lots.' So we set off into the forest, like a lot of pigs in search of truffles. First, we started on the baby oaks at the edge of the forest proper. These small trees were always favourites with gall-makers and from our point of view, being small trees, were easier to examine. We must have examined several hundred. Not only were there no oak-apples, there were no galls at all. Jonathan was getting restive, as he always did when nature refused to obey him. 'Hey, guys,' bellowed Paula from about a quarter of a mile away, making one's eardrums vibrate, even at that distance. 'Say again what they're like.' 'Like small brown rotting apples,' I yelled back. We searched on. We left the smaller trees, each glossy and gall-less, and moved into the forest towards the taller trees. We had started at eight and by eleven I began to believe that the forest was bewitched; Jonathan, I decided, had cast a spell on it. In all my experience, I had never come across anything like it. I had never been in an oak forest without finding oak-apples. It was like going to the Sahara and finding no sand. Then at about eleven-thirty Lee gave wild cries of delight. 'I've found one. I've found one,' she yelled. We all converged on her at a run. 'Where, where, where is it?' barked Jonathan hoarsely. Lee pointed. Attached to the branch of an oak-tree she was holding was an oak-apple. It was undeniably an oak-apple but so minuscule, so shrivelled, so pathetic, that it looked like a very old dropping of a Lilliputian elephant. 'Is that an oak-apple?' asked Jonathan suspiciously. 'Yes,' I said, 'but I must admit I've seen healthier specie mens.' 'Well, it's the only one we have,' he said, as he removed it carefully from the tree. |
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'We'd better take it.' As it turned out, it was the only one we did see. It was transported back to London as reverently as if it had been the Crown Jewels (or, rather, Crown Jewel), and people sat around it for weeks, cameras at the ready, like scientists waiting for something to emerge from a flying saucer. Nothing happened. When it became patently obvious that nothing was going to hatch, Jonathan cut it in half with a penknife. Inside was one very small, extremely dead larva of a gall wasp. Filming nature is not easy, especially when you only have a limited time to do it in. The next thing that we had a slight contretemps with were badgers, those magnificent creatures of ancient lineage who have waddled through the English woodland since the days when humans were dressed in woad. It is a swaggering, beguiling, beautifully designed creature of great intelligence and charm which does an enormous amount of good as one of the countryside's major predators, striking terror into the heart of everything from a woodlouse to a baby rabbit, a pheasant chick to a frog, taking in worms, snails, beetles, snakes and hedgehogs on the way. The word 'omnivorous' means 'eating everything', and the badger lives up to this title admirably. Everything is grist to his mill. In spite of this indiscriminately carnivorous approach to life, much of the badger's food consists of roots, mushrooms, berries and seeds. Altogether, it is a handsome and useful addition to the countryside and if it does occasionally wreak havoc in a cornfield or a hop field, or set a henhouse on end, one must overlook these lapses from good manners for the amount of good these creatures contribute. Badger homes, or setts, are enormous complex structures of endless tunnels and chambers. As the sett (like the English country home) is handed down from generation to generation and as each generation enlarges and improves it, the ramifications of an old sett are considerable. It consists of bedrooms, recesses and, where young are being reared, they even excavate special lavatory areas. Badgers mate for life and, being eminently civilized beasts, remain on good terms with all the neighbouring badger couples. Just recently, the badger, who has been shambling through the green twilight of the English woodland for a millennium, has been beset by two separate groups of so-called civilized man. They were accused of carrying bovine TB (which they probably do) by that group of veterinary surgeons employed by the Ministry of Agriculture. Their answer to the problem was 'Kill the Badgers' and so there was a great flurry of badger-gassing under the most unpleasant conditions. It has always seemed to me that veterinary surgeons employed by the Ministry have only one answer to any problem, which is 'destroy it' rather than 'solve it'. Fortunately, this simplistic approach was stopped by public outcry, and the vandalizing of the ancestral homes of the badgers and the destruction of this creature was halted. You would have thought that an official campaign of gassing (macabrely Teutonic in its conception) would have been quite sufficient for the poor badger, but no. Once officialdom had been worsted, the animal was threatened on another front. Badger-baiting with terriers became the lead sport among those members of the human race whose frontal lobes are still Neanderthal. Badgers, who probably do more good per annum to the environment than these gothic human horrors, were dug out and then beset with terriers. |
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We got off to a somewhat wobbly start, as Lee insisted that she knew how to pedal better than I did. Also the bicycle was extremely light and so you had to be very cautious with the turning or the machine folded up its front wheel like the wing of a bird and you found yourself in the ditch. However, we soon mastered it and were whizzing around the forecourt at a rate of knots when, unfortunately, three old ladies accompanied by someone who looked like a brigadier-general of the old school suddenly emerged from the hotel and tottered straight across in front of us. I crammed on the brakes, the tandem skidded on the gravel, the front wheel folded up, and Lee and I fell in a tangled heap, inextricably entwined with our machine. The three old ladies screamed, the Brigadier-General said something that sounded suspiciously like 'By Gad!' and Lee and I, rolling about on the gravel, finally managed to disentangle ourselves and stand up. The Brigadier-General screwed a monocle into one eye and surveyed us from top to toe. We were both wearing our naturalist outfits, which, after a day's filming in the rain, looked extremely scruffy. 'Trippers!' said the Brigadier-General, after surveying us in silence for a moment, packing into that one word all the well-bred scorn that the middle-class Englishman still feels for the proletariat. Then, putting his arms protectively round the old ladies, he ushered them away from contamination. It was not an auspicious start. However, at Freshfield Halt, when the Black Knight, in a cloud of steam, had chuffed away uttering farewell whistles of a piercing clarity, the scents and sounds of the May countryside were wafted to us in the spring sunshine. Everywhere there were larks embroidering the blue sky with their song. Cuckoos called loudly and persistently in the fields and the scent of a hundred spring flowers filled the air. We manoeuvred Daisy, as we had christened our tandem, down the wooden ramp on to the cinder track and then down a narrow slippery path which led finally to a narrow lane with high banks covered with a glittering army of kingcups yellow as saffron, and the bank topped with hedges of hawthorn, their blossom like cumulus clouds. So, mounting Daisy and with the sun hot on our backs and the birdsong ringing in our ears, we set off in search of ancient England. The piece of countryside which Jonathan had chosen could not have been more perfect or, at that time of year, more beautiful. The tall banks and hedges were glowing with a multicoloured embroidery of flowers, the canary yellow of buttercups, red of campion, white stars of stitchwort, the mist of bluebells and the lavender of violets, and the curious flat flower clusters of the cow parsley looking like pale smoke. The meadows between the hedges were huge and lush, sprinkled with flowers and stands of impressive oak and beech trees casting pools of shade with their newly emerging leaves. Where there were cottages or larger houses, these were discreetly hidden in belts and groves of trees, so that they were not obtrusive and one got the impression that the countryside was virtually uninhabited. At last we came to the sunken green lane with its impressive hedgerow shielding it, at one side a thick, almost impenetrable wall of hawthorn interwoven with the odd oak, its roots covered with a web of ivy. Here we met up with Dave Streeter, who was to be our hedgerow guide, and an excellent one he proved to be. Slim and dark, he had the bright sprightliness of a bird, with his dark eyes and inquisitive, beak-like nose. |
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He was as proud of the hedgerows as though he had planted them himself and knew every bird, insect and plant that inhabited them. With his aid, we unravelled the secrets of this ancient living wall. Most hedgerows count their birthdays in centuries but naturalists have evolved a fairly simple method of working out the approximate age of a hedgerow. You measure out and mark thirty paces along it and then retrace your steps and count the number of woody plants growing along its length. Each one of these is the equivalent of a century. This may sound improbable, but it is based on some sound detective work by naturalists. When the hedge is first laid down, the farmer uses one or maybe two kinds of plant. Over the years, other plant species spring up, brought in the form of seeds in the droppings of birds and by squirrels and mice who bury nuts and seeds and then forget where they hid them. By working from hedges of a known age, it became apparent that the rate that woody plants become established is about one species per hundred years. So Lee and I paced out a length of our hedgerow and then collected samples of all the different woody plants. We found over ten different kinds, which meant that, when this hedgerow had been laid down, the Tower of London and Westminster Abbey had still to be built. It is amazing, the reverence which these two buildings are accorded and yet the hedgerows of England which for over a thousand years have been doing so much good for man and nature are being bulldozed out of existence with only the faintest outcry against this unbiological brutality. If anyone suggested clearing away Westminster Abbey to make way for an office block or wiping out the Tower of London to make way for a new Hilton, the outcry would be fantastic, yet in the period of a thousand years that these two buildings have been in existence they have been probably of considerably less use to mankind than the humble hedgerows. Quite apart from the many plants that nestle at its feet or climb up into its spiky canopy, the hedgerow provides a home for a great variety of reptiles, birds and mammals, some of which we managed to film. One of the most attractive from my point of view was the harvest mouse, the most diminutive mammal in the British Isles and one, moreover, who has the distinction of having been discovered by no less an amateur naturalist than the great Gilbert White himself. In his enchanting Natural History of Selborne he notes the harvest mouse's arrival into scientific ken thus: I have procured some of the mice mentioned in my former letters, a young one and a female with young, both of which I have preserved in brandy. From the colour, shape, size, and manner of nesting, I make no doubt but that the species is nondescript. They are much smaller, and more slender, than the Mus domesticus medius of Ray; and have more of the squirrel or dormouse colour; their belly is white, a straight line along their sides divides the shades of their back and belly. They never enter into houses; are carried into ricks and barns with the sheaves; abound in harvest; and build their nests amidst the straws of the corn above the ground, and sometimes in thistles. They breed as many as eight at a litter, in a little round nest composed of the blades of grass or wheat. One of these nests I procured this autumn, most artificially platted, and composed of the blades of wheat, perfectly round, and about the size of a cricket-ball; with the aperture so ingeniously closed, that there was no discovering to what part it belonged. |
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It was so compact and well filled, that it would roll across the table without being discomposed, though it contained eight little mice that were naked and blind. As this nest was perfectly full, how could the dam come at her litter respectively so as to administer a teat to each? Perhaps she opens different places for that purpose, adjusting them again when the business is over; but she could not possibly be contained herself in the ball with her young, which moreover would be daily increasing in bulk. This wonderful procreant cradle, an elegant instance of the efforts of instinct, was found in a wheat-field suspended in the head of a thistle. The harvest mouse has adapted itself to an arboreal life in the same way as many of the New World primates have done. It has agile feet for gripping the grass stalks it lives amongst and has developed a prehensile tail of astonishing power by which it can actually hang from a grass stalk while building its nest. These round nests, roughly the size of a tennis ball, are woven for the most part out of living grass blades, occasionally being reinforced with chewed-off leaves. These nurseries for this is where the female rears her young have two entrances and are lined with finely chewed grass blades to form a soft bed for the young. The babies when they are born weigh about a gram or so; as Gilbert White observed, two would be the weight of a copper halfpenny. A new nest is built for each litter, and in a good year the harvest mouse is capable of giving birth to six fitters of five or six young per fitter. This sounds like gross overpopulation as practised by the human race. However, it must be pointed out that, when there is a glut of harvest mice, the creatures that prey on them, such as foxes, weasels, stoats, owls and so on, have a field day and as a rule increase their own families enormously. When the harvest mice have a bad year and don't overpopulate, the predators have a hard time and so their families are regulated to the mouse supply. It is unfortunate that mankind now only has one predator himself. But his overpopulation is so great that the predation of his own species does not keep the population in balance in the same efficient way that nature does it. Another occupant of the hedgerows is the hedgehog. These have always been favourite animals of mine ever since, during my childhood in Greece, I hand-reared a fitter of four, brought to me by a peasant who had dug them up in their leafy bed at the edge of his field. Newly born hedgehogs are creamy-white in colour and their spines are quite soft, like india-rubber. As my babies grew, they gradually changed colour to brown and their spines became hard and sharp. They were, I found, remarkably intelligent little animals, and I even managed to train mine to stand on their hind legs and beg for scraps of food. I used to take them for long walks in the countryside and they would trot along at my heels in an obedient line. They were incredibly quick, and when I turned over logs or stones in search of specimens for my collection I had to be on the lookout, for they would rush in and scrunch up my coveted insects if I did not watch them. One day, they were foraging around some old vine stumps and I, finding the open vineyard hot, made my way to the cool shade of the olive groves about a hundred yards away and sat down. I could see my hedgehogs but they could not see me. It was some little time before they realized that I had disappeared and they were immediately filled with alarm and consternation. |
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They ran round and round in circles, squeaking plaintively to each other; then one, nose to the ground like a dog, found my scent and set off at a brisk trot, leading the others. That it was undoubtedly my scent they were following became apparent, for I had meandered to and fro to reach my present position and they followed the route I had taken slavishly. There was much excited noise when they discovered me and they clambered squeaking and snorting into my lap. I remember once, when we lived in Hampshire, we had a huge and ancient cooking-apple tree in the garden. One year it had a bumper crop of fruit, more than my mother could utilize in spite of making tons of chutney and jams, so a lot of fruit fell to the ground and we let it rot and manure the earth beneath the tree. One bright moonlight night, I was woken by screams and squeals and grunts and, thinking it was a pair of courting cats, I leant out of the window to give them a piece of my mind and saw to my astonishment that it was a pair of hedgehogs. Wondering what on earth they were doing, I donned my slippers and went down into the moonlit garden. I discovered that they had been feasting on the semi-rotten apples and the fermenting fruit had acted like cider, so now both hedgehogs were appallingly inebriated. They staggered round and round the tree bumping into things, hiccuping, hurling abuse at each other and generally behaving in the most reprehensible manner. For their own good, I had to lock them up in our garage overnight and the next morning it was a very dejected and sorry-looking pair of insectivores I released into the woods at the back of our house. Another creature that we were lucky enough to film was the weasel, the smallest and most delightful of the British predators. Some twenty-eight centimetres in length, including their tails, they are beautiful, swift and slender little creatures how swift we soon discovered when we started to film. In order to get the close-up shots of our weasel hunting, we built a very lifelike set to represent a section of the hedgerow. A film is made at twenty-four frames a second, that is to say that the camera takes twenty-four photographs each second. We found our weasel was moving so fast that he could actually cross the set in between the photographs an absolutely extraordinary feat of agility. I remember when I worked as a student keeper at Whipsnade I used to cycle on my day off across to Tring Museum to take lessons in taxidermy. On the way there was an ancient caravan and in it lived an old gypsy whom I frequently used to visit, since he kept innumerable pets and was always adding to them. My attention was drawn to this old man whom everyone called Jethro when I was cycling past his caravan and was suddenly riveted by the sight of no less than five weasels gambolling about the caravan wheels. I dismounted and watched them playing Catch as Catch Can, their bodies so sinewy they were like furry snakes. Old Jethro appeared out of the woods, a gun under his arm, carrying two dead rabbits. He gave a musical whistle and the weasels stopped their game and rippled across the grass to his feet, standing on their hind legs and uttering little yarring cries. He dropped the rabbits and the weasels, snarling and fighting, dragged the corpses under the caravan and started to feed. How I coveted those sinewy, delicious creatures but, alas, old Jethro would not sell them, even though I offered him my week's salary of 3 pounds. 'No, I won't part, boy,' he said, watching the weasels affectionately with his bright black eyes. |
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'Not with the trouble I had a-rearing of them. No, I wouldn't part, not for all the tea in China, but I tell you what, I'll take 'ee out a-hunting with them. Braw little hunters they be an' all.' So one summer's night, when the moon was as full and white and round as a magnolia blossom, I cycled over to old Jethro's caravan. After a pint of beer (home brewed) and a delicious plate of stew, we set off, the weasels rippling ahead of us along the hedgerows, bathed in moonlight as bright as day. The weasels had evolved their own particular hunting method, old Jethro explained. One or sometimes two of them would enter the rabbit's burrow and the others would wait outside. Presently, panicked by the two weasels underground, the rabbit would bolt out of its burrow and straight into the group of weasels outside. They would converge on it like lightning and one of the three would dispatch it with the characteristic weasel bite at the back of the skull, the lower teeth driving upwards and the upper canines sliding downwards into the brain. Death was instantaneous. It was wonderful to watch the weasels dance snakelike in the moonlight, eyes occasionally gleaming, working as a team, lithe and silent. Whether they hunt like this in the wild is a moot point, but certainly these hand-reared ones had evolved a co-operative hunting method which was as efficient as it was deadly and within two hours old Jethro's poacher bag contained the bodies of seven fat rabbits. Some would be used to feed the weasels and his other meat-eating pets (he had owls and hawks, a badger and a stoat, among others) and the rest he would eat or take to the nearest village and sell. Old Jethro used the hedgerows around his caravan as medieval man used them to provide himself with food in the shape of rabbits or partridges, various herbs and roots to flavour the food, and other herbs which he made up into ointments and salves which he used to peddle in the local market towns; and I knew several people who would not go near a doctor but took all their ailments to him. I had a girlfriend who used to suffer acutely with an unsightly rash which would break out periodically on her forehead and in the palm of her left hand and irritate exceedingly. In spite of her protestations and disbelief, I took her to old Jethro and forced her to use the ointment he gave her. Three applications and the rash vanished, never to reappear. In one of the final scenes of the programme, Jonathan wanted to show an ancient meadow of the sort that hedgerows have guarded for centuries. When he led us to the meadow of his choice we were delighted. It was vast, and guarded on three sides by tall hedgerows and on the fourth side by a dark piece of woodland, glittering with spring leaves. It sloped gently into the sun, with here and there a few oaks that, from their girth, must have been several centuries old, casting pools of bluish shadow. But the real breathtaking thing about the meadow was its colour. The long, lush grass was bejewelled with buttercups of such flamboyant richness it looked as though someone had, from some vast celestial vat, poured molten gold between the wood and the hedgerows. We had to walk to the centre of this field of the cloth of gold to have our picnic and it seemed sacrilege to wade calf-deep through the buttercups, leaving a crushed path behind us across that impeccably unsullied sheet of gold and green. In the final scenes of the programme, in order to show the complex web of hedgerows spreading across the countryside, Jonathan had decided to send us up in a hot-air balloon. |
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Although I had often wanted to try this splendid, archaic form of transport, I was a trifle nervous because of my vertigo. However, this was an opportunity too good to be missed, so I agreed to try to curb my absurd complaint and take to the air. The whole thing had to be planned like a military operation. We were to take two flights; the first day we would be accompanied by Chris and the camera so that he could get all the close-ups of us in the basket, while the others followed us by car and filmed us on the ground. On the second day, Chris and the camera were to follow our flight in a helicopter and a helicopter to be piloted by Captain John Crewdson, no less, who had done all the complex and risky filming for the James Bond films. The pilot of our balloon was Jeff Westley, a skilled balloonist who could virtually land his craft on a sixpence. Ideally, Jonathan would have liked to have had the balloon ascending majestically out of the centre of the buttercup field, but this would have created too much havoc on the flowers and the grass, so we had to choose a much more plebeian and well-grazed pasture for our first ascent. We arrived at the meadow early in the morning to find our balloon awaiting us. It was a gorgeous monster far bigger than I had expected gaily striped in red, yellow and blue. Resting on the grass beneath it was the basket, rather like a giant-sized old-fashioned laundry-basket, which contained the essential canisters of butane gas which made flight possible. We were introduced to Jeff, a stocky, fair-haired man with twinkling blue eyes and a massive air of confidence. He informed us that the weather forecasts were excellent and he looked forward to giving us a splendid flight. In order to get the necessary close-ups of us in the basket, Chris was to travel with us with one camera, but to cover wide-angle shots of the basket the camera had to be some distance away. We solved this problem by mounting a remote-controlled camera on a long aluminium beam, which could be operated from within the basket. Jonathan was anxious to make it appear as though Lee and I were 'driving' the balloon ourselves, so we took with us a large blanket and every time we were shooting Jonathan explained to Jeff he would have to crouch down in the bottom of the basket and we would cover him with the blanket. He agreed to be subjected to this indignity with great good-humour. So, with these last-minute instructions from Jonathan, we scrambled into the basket and prepared for our first ever balloon ascent. The anchor ropes were cast off and the basket shifted slightly, then Jeff pulled the cord and a giant tongue of blue flame above our heads roared into the interior of the balloon with a great blast. It was like Unleashing a dragon. Aided by these deafening blasts, the basket rose smoothly as a lift. We glided up twenty feet, thirty feet and then slid up into the sky above the trees. The sensation was miraculous. When the flame was not roaring the silence was complete, and a thousand feet below you as you wind-drifted smoothly through the sky you could hear people talking. You could hear the clatter of a train, a dog barking, or cattle lowing. I can only compare it to the sensation you get snorkelling on a tropical reef, where you can lie face downwards in the buoyant waters and let the tiny eddies of water drift you over the coral-gardens. Far below us, the patchwork quilt of fields, guarded by their hedgerows, stretched as far as you could see, with here and there a dark reef of woodland and here and there a toy village. |
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Our shadow, like a great blue mushroom, glided over the fields and hedgerows below us, overexciting herds of cattle and making horses behave as if they were in a rodeo. Although you are at the mercy of the wind, there is a lot you can do to help steer the balloon, as Jeff showed us. At one point, the wind velocity dropped and he took the balloon down to tree-top height. We drifted along silently and gently as mist, and at one point the bottom of the basket actually rustled its way through the topmost branches of a gigantic oak tree. We saw a hare and any number of rabbits who found the presence of our fat, highly coloured vehicle alarming. We saw a pair of roe deer, standing prick-eared and tense in a woodland glade, and we were treated with vociferous rage when we slid over a rookery, so indignant were they at this untoward invasion of their airspace. It was fascinating to drift some fifty feet up over the villages and isolated farms and cottages, for you could see everyone's back garden, beautifully tended and with a riot of flowers. The roar of our balloon would set all the dogs barking hysterically and people would run out of their houses to wave to us. As soon as they realized we could hear them quite clearly and reply, they would ask us where we were going, and were vastly amused when we said we did not know. We drifted over a village school, and all the children and their teacher tumbled out into the school yard to watch our progress. Inevitably, the children shouted up to us and asked where we were going. Inevitably, we replied we did not know. The children found this rather funny, one little boy laughing so heartily that he fell down and rolled about on the ground. We slid over an exquisite miniature mansion in red brick, with a charming pink pantile roof. The garden was beautifully laid out with flowers and shrubs, and it looked like something out of a fairy tale. Alerted by our dragon's roar, the owner and his wife came running out into the garden. 'What a beautiful house you have,' I called out to the lady. 'And what a beautiful balloon you have,' she answered. By now it was time to land, for our fuel was running low. As usual when you want to land a balloon, you find all the fields for miles around are either full of barley or corn or flocks of hysterical cows or sheep, who would have a collective nervous breakdown if you landed amongst them, as would the farmers who own them. Finally, however, we spotted a meadow with no crop growing in it and devoid of domestic animals. To get to it, we had to drift over a large field of ripening barley and then over a belt of trees and then do a fairly smart three-point landing, for the meadow we were aiming for was narrow. It was at this point that the wind played us false. We had to come down low over the barley, skip skilfully over the belt of trees and then plummet down into the meadow. As we drifted across the barley, the wind suddenly faded and the balloon dropped earthwards with considerable speed. Jeff gave us a burst of flame to try to gain altitude, but it was no use; the basket crashed into the barley and then progressed across the field in a series of gigantic leaps, like a kangaroo. Three times we bounced, bone-breaking bumps, and then the wind caught the balloon and we were rushed across the barley, six inches from the ground, at breakneck speed, towards the menacing belt of trees, leaving a swathe of damaged crops behind us. The trees, prickly and dangerous, loomed nearer and nearer. |
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He was always smiling, no matter what the difficulties, his eyes screwed up in a way that gave him an almost oriental appearance. His sidekick, Malcolm Cross, was a handsome young man with a luxuriant moustache and an air of being the sort of clean-living, clean-limbed young Englishman who made the Empire what it was. (It was Malcolm who wrote to me at the end of the shoot to say how much he had enjoyed it. He ended his letter by saying 'I came back in such good spirits that my wife is now pregnant.') Ian Hendry was our sound-man, with a wispy beard and soulful eyes that made him look like a middle-aged pixie. But in spite of his forlorn banished-from-fairyland look he took infinite pains with his job. Our first day in the Sonoran Desert was a stunning experience. We had arrived at night and so could form no clear picture of what the desert was like, but at dawn the following morning we piled into the cars and drove out to visit the spots that Alastair had chosen as film-sites. To begin with, the sky was magnificent, a pale rose pink going to blood red where the sun was rising and flecked with lavender and yellow clouds. Against this, an army of giant Saguaro cactus stood silhouetted, like weird, spiky candelabra, some wearing crowns of ivory-white flowers with yellow centres. The Saguaro is probably the most spectacular cactus in the world, for it can grow to a height of fifty feet and they cluster together in forests that stretch for many miles. The cactus is mature when it is only seven or eight feet high, but at this point it is already fifty years old. From a distance, they look pleated, as though they were constructed from thick green corduroy. Along each of the pleats are bunches of stiff black spines some two inches long and as sharp as hypodermic needles. The whole growth process of this prickly giant is a slow one. It starts as a tiny seed and the first few years are precarious, for it has to contend with extremes of temperature from blazing heat to frost, from drought to floods. At this stage, it may be trodden on and killed by deer or partially eaten and stunted by rabbits or pack rats. If it can survive these hazards, then it grows slowly but surely. By the time it is seventy-five to a hundred years old, it is between twelve and twenty feet in height and then starts to develop its arms and its curious candelabra shape. The number and position of these arms vary so that no two Saguaro are alike. Some may have two arms, some twenty or as many as fifty. It is, like all cacti, a succulent, and like a huge prickly barrel it can store a vast quantity of water in its stem and arms. Its skin is thick and waxy, which of course makes it the perfect container for water. Its spines are not only a protection against the attack of animals such as deer or big-horn sheep, but also grow so thickly that they cast quite an appreciable amount of shadow on its trunk and arms, thus helping to keep the cactus cool in the intense heat. When a Saguaro dies, the flesh rots away and leaves a skeleton behind, a woody, basket-like structure that in life helped to support the barrel-like trunk and massive limbs. Inside these skeletons you can find odd wooden structures some ten to twelve inches or more in length that look like misshapen elongated Dutch clogs. These are in fact the remains of birds' nests. Because of its giant size, the interior of the cactus maintains a temperature several degrees cooler than the outside air and this makes it ideal for birds to nest in. |
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You approach your lizard circumspectly, slide the noose gently over its head a quick jerk and he is then yours. In order to demonstrate this technique, we borrowed one of the Desert Museum's oldest inhabitants, a large and venerable chuckwalla. These lizards, which are about two feet long, have fat, gingery-brown bodies, broad heads with a very Churchillian expression (only lacking the cigar) and extremely solid tails. The one we borrowed was called Joe and he gazed at us, plainly hostile, as though he had just finished making a speech of earth-shattering importance. We explained to him carefully what his part consisted of; we said that all he had to do was drape himself over a rock in the sand, wait for Lee to creep up behind him and slide the noose round his fat neck and, when he felt it tighten, he was to kick and struggle like a mad thing, as if he was a demented wild chuckwalla and not one that had been enjoying a privileged life for the last twenty-five years in the Sonora Desert Museum. From his highly intelligent expression we felt sure that he had understood his instructions and, since it was not a speaking part, he would be able to carry them out with aplomb. Alastair was convinced that here we had a star in the making and even went so far as to pat Joe on the head and murmur 'Nice snake' to him. However, as soon as the cameras were set up and Lee, armed with her stick and fishing-line, was waiting in the wings, a strange change came over Joe. Draped on his rock, he ceased to be the agile chuckwalla we knew and loved. Overcome by what appeared to be a form of reptilian stagefright, he sat unmoving on the rock, looking like a splendid example of the taxidermist's art. Unblinking, unmoving, even when lifted off the rock by the noose round his neck, he looked as though he was stuffed to capacity with sawdust. Furthermore, nothing would break his trance-like state. We all shouted at him, waved things at him, threw delicious morsels like beetles in front of his nose, to no avail. Joe remained as immobile as if he had been carved out of rock. He was returned with ignominy to the Museum. We had greater luck with the snakes. Steven Hale, who was our herpetologist guide and snake wrangler, arrived out at the desert location, the back of his truck full of wriggling bags of snakes, a sight which made the more faint-hearted of the crew recoil. The diamond-back rattlesnake he had brought was in a filthy mood and was rattling like volleys of musketry long before it was his turn to be emptied out of his bag to perform. He was a lovely snake, beautifully marked, and he rattled incessantly through his big scene and struck viciously at anything that came within range. A coral snake in pink, red, black and yellow like an excruciatingly gaudy Italian silk tie gave us some trouble because he had a turn of speed that was quite unprecedented and would disappear among the rocks in a twinkling of an eye. But probably the most handsome and certainly the most amenable was a five-foot-long king snake with jet-black, shiny scales, wonderfully marked in stripes of daffodil yellow. He had huge, liquid dark eyes and a most benign expression, for his mouth curved slightly, making him look as though he was smiling shyly at you. Placidly he allowed himself to be caught in Lee's noose, caught with a forked snake stick, to be discovered on rocks and under them, to slither endlessly through the cacti and other plant cover, to be handled endlessly, coiling lovingly round Lee's fingers, round her arms and round her neck. |
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It was only finally, when Alastair said to Lee, 'Now put that lizard down on the rocks there,' that the snake, affronted, turned round and bit her. Fortunately king snakes are not poisonous. One of the high spots of our desert filming, as far as I was concerned, was to see my all-time favourite bird in the wild the road runner. With their wild eyes, their ridiculous unkempt crests and the loping run so reminiscent of all the lanky athletes you have ever seen, the road runner is the most comical and endearing of birds. We captured a curious incident on film which shows how, in the desert, nothing must be wasted in this harsh environment. There was a nest with three baby road runners in it, and one of the chicks had died. To our astonishment, when the mother discovered this, she picked up the dead baby out of the nest and proceeded to feed it to one of the other chicks. When we last saw it, the chick had succeeded in engulfing the head and neck of its dead brother, while the body dangled outside. This, apparently, is quite usual with road runners, for they will sometimes catch and kill snakes that are too large for them to swallow in one go, so they swallow as much as they are able to and leave the rest dangling outside. When half the snake has been digested, they can swallow the other half. It was while we were shooting in the desert that we had one of those awful days that make filming so unpredictable and so irritating for everyone concerned. In an effort to show every aspect of desert conditions, we had filmed cactus desert, scrub desert, stony desert and grassland desert. All that remained was to film what most people consider to be typical desert mile upon mile of rolling sand dunes. Alastair, during his reconnaissance, had found the ideal spot some fifty miles away. Here, three- and four-hundred-foot dunes, beautifully sculpted by the wind and rain, stretched in every direction as far as the eye could see. Moreover, a main highway ran right through the area, thus making access easy. Alastair waxed so lyrical about these dunes that I got the very strong impression that they would make Outer Mongolia, the Gobi and Sahara deserts pale into insignificance. So, thoroughly overexcited at the prospect of shooting scenes that would rival, if not indeed surpass, anything that Hollywood had depicted in Beau Geste, we got up very early and drove off into a dawn that was a blur of golden light with tiny clouds like feathers picked out in scarlet and purple. Alastair had been to see the dunes fifty miles away in California on a weekday, when their silent majesty had so impressed him. This was a Sunday, and after driving for several hours we arrived at the dunes to find a very different set-up from the one Alastair had depicted. True, there were huge, beautifully sculpted dunes; true, they stretched for miles in every direction; true, they looked like a Hollywood desert, so that you expected to see Ramon Navarro gallop over the horizon at any minute. However, instead of the Hollywood heart-throb, what you did have was what appeared to be three-quarters of the Californian population and smelly and extremely noisy dune-buggies ripping the hell out of the dunes. There were hundreds of them, skidding, bouncing, roaring, screaming, making any idea of doing a sound-take impossible. Indeed, one could hardly hear oneself talk, quite apart from the added distraction of having half a dozen dune-buggies waltz across the sand past you, inhabited by a vast selection of scantily clad and very nubile-looking young ladies. |
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You are also vaguely aware that forests must have been felled to create this grassland and you are aware that, while it looks superficially lush and green, it is in fact desiccated and eroded, overgrazed and overpopulated. However, this does not really impinge upon you until you reach Umfolozi. You are driving through these rolling green hills, eroded and sparse, and then suddenly you see ahead of you a fence and beyond that fence is what Africa was like before the advent of the white man and before the Africans had overpopulated. Wonderful rolling acacia scrubland, rich meadows, giant pot-bellied baobab a rich lushness that had to be seen to be believed. Those of my readers who, like me, are tottering on the borders of decrepitude may remember Judy Garland in the film called The Wizard of Oz. They will recall how her house is whirled up over the rainbow by a tornado. Up to that point, the film had been in black and white, but when the house crashes to a standstill and July Garland timidly opens the door everything is in Technicolor of the most flamboyant sort. Arriving at Umfolozi had very much the same effect on me. We had been travelling through a man-made and man-desecrated landscape, but you were not fully aware of what your species had destroyed because there was no contrast in Technicolor, as it were. But arrive at the fence that guards this chunk of original Africa and even someone like myself (who is fairly aware of the world's problems of conservation) is jolted. You suddenly realize that you have been driving through a man-made equivalent of a desert and have arrived at an oasis behind bars. As you enter the park, not only do you have the extreme contrast of vegetation but suddenly the landscape is alive with animals. Zebras, striped like Victorian humbugs, cantered alongside the truck, throwing up their heels skittishly. With them cavorted the brindled wildebeests, or gnus, their curiously twisted horns making them look as though they were peering at you over a pair of spectacles. For such ungainly animals they are astonishingly agile. A herd of gnu taking off is more like a ballet than anything, for they twist and buck and prance, one minute practically standing on their heads and the next minute leaping into the air and executing a complex pirouette. As the zebra and gnu galloped through the undergrowth, they disturbed flocks of plum-purple starlings and groups of ground hornbills with huge curved Fagin-like beaks and scarlet wattles. They paced along as sedately as soldiers on sentry duty and gazed at us out of huge, soulful eyes, framed by thick, extremely sexy eyelashes. We had travelled about a mile through the park when we saw its most important inhabitants a white, or square-lipped, rhinoceros. These huge and magnificent beasts (the largest land mammal next to the elephant) were at one time driven to the edge of extinction. Fortunately, at the eleventh hour, action was taken to preserve this antediluvian giant and so now in Umfolozi and other parts of South Africa they are on the increase. This was a huge male and he moved majestically through the trees, his enormous head with a four-foot horn curved like a scimitar on his square-lipped nose. Several tick birds perched along his back, like ornaments on a mantelpiece. Occasionally, as the rhino's massive legs brushed through the grass, they would disturb small animals or grasshoppers and the tick birds would fly off their, moving perch, catch an insect and then return to the rhino's back to eat it. |
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We stopped the car within thirty feet of him, and he came to a halt and surveyed us calmly. Then, uttering a deep sigh, he crossed the road in front of us and disappeared among the acacias. Not more than half a mile further on, we came upon a group of what I consider to be one of the most beautiful of all mammals, the giraffe. There were five of them; three were quietly browsing on the acacia-tops while the other two, who were obviously on honeymoon, were behaving in the most ludicrously besotted manner. Facing each other, they were managing to entwine their necks in the most astonishing manner, more as though they were swans than giraffes. They were kissing each other rapturously, their long tongues sliding in and out of each other's mouth voluptuously, with the sort of passion you expect from a French film, but somehow don't associate with giraffes. They, like all lovers, were completely oblivious of everything except each other and they took no notice, even when we got out of the car and walked quite close to them. Eventually, we arrived at the singularly unattractive series of cement-block buildings constructed by the South African government to make the tourist feel loved and wanted. It was rather like living in a badly designed public lavatory but was more than compensated for by our surroundings. Our cameraman here was another Rodney Rodney Borland, and his wife Moira. Together they had made some superb wildlife films and so knew the African bush intimately. It was at this time that Alastair was having a prolonged and intense love affair with a mole. Perhaps such a statement needs some elaboration. I had proclaimed that I had no intention of going to South Africa unless I was allowed to meet a creature that had long fascinated me the golden mole. There are several species of this strange beast and, although bearing a strong resemblance to the European mole, they differ from it chiefly in having fur that is extremely silky and that glows like spun gold. Bearing my wishes in mind, Alastair had gone to considerable trouble to get someone in Durban to extract a golden mole from his garden and hand it over to us for the filming. It was an enchanting creature, with eyes so minuscule that it looked like somebody who had mislaid his spectacles. It was about five inches long and looked like a furry ingot, scuttling about in its box of earth. Like most insectivores, of course, it had a voracious and insatiable appetite and required about three hundred yards of worms per day to keep it cheerful. For some reason, Alastair worked up a great affinity with this curious little creature, digging up vast quantities of worms for its breakfast, lunch and dinner and keeping it in his room at night. He did admit that, as McTavish spent the entire night trying to dig his way out of his box, he had known more restful sleeping companions. Although the golden mole bears a superficial resemblance to the European mole, they are not related and the likeness has come about simply because they have both adapted similarly to a fossorial way of life and thus have developed similarities, such as the powerful forefeet for digging, vestigial eyes and strong, bulldozing snouts. McTavish, as I say, looked golden in most lights, but if the sunlight struck his glossy fur at a certain angle he could turn green, violet or purple a really striking display for a mammal. One night, McTavish's nocturnal activities were successful. He found a weak spot in his box and with his powerful forefeet enlarged this to a hole. |
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'Excellent,' said Alastair excitedly. 'Now put that snake thing on the ground and talk about zebra.' So I put the tortoise on the ground, straightened up and spoke long and eloquently about the giraffe and their feeding habits and about the feeding habits of other ungulates. 'And so,' I concluded, 'by grazing in this selective manner the food is evenly distributed from the very tops of the trees to the ground level, where you get grazing animals like this.' I bent down to pick up the tortoise and, to my astonishment, there was no tortoise there. In a burst of speed unprecedented in such a reptile, he had fled and was fifty feet away, making for the peace and tranquillity of the acacia groves. Needless to say, this whole sequence was not a success. Another of Alastair's brilliant ideas was to have me start the programme and set the scene while standing, as it were, hand in hand with a white rhino. So besotted had he become with this idea that we spent three days doing nothing else but driving round looking for white rhinos. We had no difficulty in finding them, since the park was overflowing with them. The difficulty lay in trying to get them to co-operate with Alastair. We found a portly mother and her plump child sitting about in a waterhole that they were companionably sharing with a buffalo. The buffalo had mud all over his back and shoulders which had dried and cracked, so that he looked as if he were wearing a grey jigsaw puzzle. The female rhino and her baby were not aware of our presence and it was possible that I could have got close enough to complete the scene to Alastair's satisfaction if it had not been for the buffalo. He had been standing belly deep in the waterhole, sunk into that bemused state that overcomes all buffalo when they get anywhere near water, and so he woke up with a start when he suddenly saw me getting out of the car. By this time, his massive weight had made him sink so deeply into the mud that, when he tried to vacate the waterhole, his legs stuck and he fell sideways, thrashing about wildly. The rhinos, not unnaturally, took this to be a sign that something was amiss and so, as the buffalo finally righted himself, they all left the waterhole at a brisk run and disappeared into the trees. This sort of thing happened time and again. Rhinos, being shortsighted, make up for this defect by having extremely keen hearing and a good sense of smell. Also they are exceedingly suspicious, probably because of their bad eyesight, although what enemies a creature of such massive proportions could have was a mystery to me. However, all our attempts at getting me and a rhino standing side by side were meeting with failure and it looked as though we were going to have to leave South Africa without this vital opening shot that our director insisted upon. It was our last morning and, amid groans of despair from all of us, Alastair insisted on driving out to have one final attempt to get me and a rhino together. It was very early in the morning and for this reason, I think, we were successful, for the massive old male we finally found looked very bemused, as if he had just that minute got out of bed. Cautiously, we drove the car over the savannah towards him, keeping downwind. When we were within some forty feet of him, we switched off the engine and discussed the situation in hushed whispers, whilst the gigantic creature stood there, flicking his ears to and fro suspiciously. He was dimly aware that something untoward was going on, but was not sure exactly what. |
| 753 |
Paula was in despair for it was her job as producer to keep everyone's spirits up, but climatically speaking this was impossible. In addition, during the course of the various shoots, she and Jonathan had very unwisely fallen deeply in love and had decided to get married when the series was finished, so as a prelude to normal married life what could be more natural than that Jonathan should attribute the prevailing inclement weather conditions to his betrothed. It was a trying time for us all. 'Look, honey,' she said very sensibly, 'why don't we go and film Lee shooting the rapids? In those shots it doesn't matter how muddy the water is.' 'What a good idea,' said Lee, who was dying to have her first try at white-water canoeing. 'Let's do that, Jonathan.' 'It might help you to feel better if you risk my wife's life in the rapids, sadist that you are,' I pointed out. 'Yes,' said Jonathan gloomily, 'I suppose we could do that.' So we packed up and drove away from the mud-coloured pond to where the River Wye rushes and twists through black rocks. Here the dark muscles of water curved round the rocks in great bursts of foam and everything was a roar and chatter of water. Lee, thoroughly excited, was decked out in a scarlet wetsuit and a becoming bright-yellow crash-helmet. Then she was wedged into a slender and fragile-looking canoe and launched into a placid area of the river for her first and only lesson. Such is the perversity of women that within half an hour she was handling the canoe in a manner equally (or more) professional than her instructor. The purpose of all this was to show how a canoeist had to use the strength of the river to his or her advantage, using the force of the water as propulsion, using the current to steer and the curving eddies as placid areas of calm, like water parking-lots. We were then to illustrate it with the creatures that live in these turbulent waters, using exactly the same methods for their survival. So the camera was stationed on the rocks by the white water and Lee, wedged in her canoe, waited a quarter of a mile upstream for the signal to shoot her first rapids. Attached to the bows of the canoe was a tiny camera, and a cord ran along the edge of the craft to a button near where Lee was sitting. The idea was that as she reached white water she was to press the button and then take a close-up film of herself and the canoe zooming through the waves, water splashing over her. Meanwhile, the other camera on the bank would be getting all the wide shots. So her canoe set off, skimming between jagged black rocks, bucking and bouncing on the shining streams of water, the nose of the fragile craft digging into the bursts of foam like a pig searching for truffles in a bouquet of white roses. I must say Lee handled the craft as though she had been doing it all her life, but I watched in some trepidation and heaved a sigh of relief when she could turn into a placid area of water and bring her canoe to a halt. It was then that we discovered that, although she had switched on the little camera in the bows, during her vigorous efforts to avoid being overturned by a rock she must have knocked the button again with the paddle, thus switching the camera off. There was nothing for it but to do the whole thing all over again. So the canoe was carried a quarter of a mile upstream and my wife (by now, of course, considering herself an old sea-dog) incarcerated in it, and once more she shot the rapids, the canoe sliding and leaping like a spawning salmon; and this time, fortunately, the camera worked. |
| 754 |
It is strange to think that all the great rivers of the world, the Amazon, the Nile, the Mississippi, share the same humble beginnings a few teacupfuls of water bubbling out of the ground then as the water hurries down to the sea it gathers momentum and force. It changes from a tiny skein of water into a broad, majestic river. Rivers, whether large or small, are the veins and arteries of the land, and along their glittering lengths they give home and food to a vast band of creatures that live in, on or alongside them. One can understand a host of creatures living in the placid world of a pond but it is more difficult to reconcile yourself to the fact that many creatures have adapted themselves to the more turbulent areas of a river. We had already got film of some of the more extraordinary of these, filmed naturally under controlled conditions, to enable us to get big close-ups of the way they manage to survive in this boiling turmoil of water. Take the common caddis-fly larvae, for example. In any placid pond, you may find those who have spun themselves a silken tube to five in and then camouflaged the outside with sand or tiny bits of vegetable debris. (When I was young, I used somewhat unfairly to remove a larva from its home and then, while it was spinning another, provide it with different-coloured materials, such as brick dust and powdered slate, and thus get multicoloured caddis larvae.) In the still waters of a pond a camouflage of plant debris will suffice, but in a fast-flowing stream or river the larva needs something more substantial to help anchor it and prevent it from being swept away by the current, so it uses tiny pebbles which to the larva are as big as boulders. When you are examining the pebbly bottom of a stream you are sometimes taken aback when what appears to be a small pile of pebbles walks away. Another species of caddis does not build itself a silken caravan but has another method of coping with the current and turning it to its own advantage. It chooses a cave between the pebbles as its home and then over the mouth of this cave it spins a net and sticks stones to the edge of this trap to prevent it from being swept away. Then, like a Victorian spinster lurking behind a lace curtain, it waits patiently for the bountiful river to fill its net with food. Another creature that, though so small and fragile, copes wonderfully with its violent environment (which must be for these little creatures the equivalent of us living under the torrent of Niagara) is the black-fly larva. This curious creature looks like a tiny, elongated caterpillar, with a huge pair of Edwardian walrus moustaches at its head. This creature makes a sort of pin-cushion of mucous on the rocks and then attaches itself to this with a series of sharp hooks at the end of its body. Then it stands up on this cushion and sifts particles of food from the river as it sweeps past. It is a curious sight to see a creature that is apparently feeding itself with its own moustache. Another astonishing beast of this sort of environment is the side-swimming shrimp. It looks not unlike one of the so-called sand-fleas found so commonly on beaches, but one that has been run over by a steamroller and flattened, so it is forced to swim on its side, but in fact this slim, flattened body gives the least resistance to the current and its shape enables it to dart from one slender crevice to another in the stream-bed, wedging itself in firmly so that it avoids being twitched downstream by the thrust of the water. |
| 755 |
There was, for example, the curious little fish called the bitterling that uses the freshwater mussel as a sort of babysitter. In the breeding season, the female bitterling develops an extraordinary long, white, slightly curved ovipositor, which looks as though it has been made out of white plastic; then, accompanied by her husband, she goes in search of her babysitter. The fresh-water mussels, about four or five inches long, lie on their sides in the mud and look very like oval, slightly flattened stones. At one end of the shell there are two siphons one exhalant and one inhalant. The mussel sucks in water through the latter, extracts what food it contains and then expels the water now filtered of its nutrients out of the other siphon. Both these siphons look like little round mouths and are capable of being shut tight by the shell should it become alarmed. The bitterlings seem to realize this and so, having decided which mussel is to become their nanny, they gather round it and repeatedly bump it with their heads. This of course panics the poor bivalve and both siphons are firmly shut against this potential danger. However, the bitterlings continue their battering-ram activities and eventually the mussel decides that this constant knocking on its shell must be harmless so it relaxes and the siphons open and start to act normally. This is what the fish have been waiting for. The female swims over the mussel, stabs her long ovipositor into the exhalant siphon and lays her eggs, which are like small white ping-pong balls. (Until this process was filmed for this programme, it was always assumed that the inhalant siphon was the one used by the fish.) As soon as the egg is laid, the male moves over the siphon and fertilizes it. Occasionally, in jerking out her ovipositor the female pulls the egg out as well. This is promptly eaten by one or other of the parents. 'Waste not, want not' is a law and not just an adage in nature. When the batch of eggs has been installed in the mussel and fertilized, the parents forget about them and the rest of the process is left to the babysitter. It is a very curious process, for what happens now is quite startling. When the bitterling eggs hatch, the mussels spawn and from their eggs come the future generations of mussels, which look at this stage like tiny castanets with hooks on them. These fasten themselves with these hooks on the baby bitterlings and as the young fish leave their shell nursery and swim away into the pond they carry with them a host of baby mussels which eventually drop off to form other mussel-beds far away from their parents. We also filmed the activities of an extraordinary spider. If asked to look for a spider, the last place one might suggest is the bottom of a pond, yet it is here that the extraordinary water spider builds its home. Between fronds of weed, it constructs what is to all intents and purposes a diving bell, a silken bowl upside down, which the spider then fills with bubbles of air carried down to its home on its hairy legs. Around the bowl it spins a web as ordinary spiders do and then it lurks in its submarine home until a tadpole or a waterboatman or some such creature blunders into it, whereupon it rushes out and captures its prey. An early naturalist had described how the spider, when the air in its home grows stale, removes it and replaces it with fresh; but, as this had only been observed once, people thought that maybe the naturalist was mistaken, but we actually filmed this curious piece of behaviour. |
| 756 |
The spider comes to the top of the bell, tears a small rent in the silk, allowing a bubble of air to escape which it catches with its legs and takes to the surface to release; and on its return journey it brings with it a fresh bubble of air to freshen the bell, exactly like a hostess emptying ashtrays and opening windows after a cocktail party. Possibly some of the most fascinating of the pond denizens we got on film were the planarians. The species we filmed were strange, Eclair-shaped creatures that as they glide as smoothly as quicksilver about the mud look as if they were manufactured out of damp black velvet. They are of course flatworms and look vaguely like aquatic slugs. They are hermaphrodite, each animal having both male and female organs and producing both eggs and sperm. However, the eggs from one planarian must be fertilized by the sperms from another. They feed principally on dead matter such as tadpoles or tiny fish, tearing and sucking at the meat and the juices of their prey. They can, however, exist for very long periods without food, but then they gradually get smaller and smaller, since they are literally eating themselves. Another unusual aspect of these curious little creatures is that the mouth is used both to ingest food and to excrete. Their reproduction sounds like something out of science fiction, for not only do they lay eggs but, should one be cut in two by accident, two new planarians grow from the two halves. In some species they normally increase their numbers by having a sort of tug-of-war with themselves, tearing themselves in two to swell the population. There was a fascinating series of experiments conducted on a species of American planarian which proved that they could be taught with the aid of weak electric shocks to select either a black or a white tube as the correct escape route from a maze. Moreover, if the planarian was cut in two both bits could remember this lesson. Even more amazing, it appears (though this has not been thoroughly investigated) that, if a trained planarian is devoured by an untrained one, the untrained one 'inherits' the trained one's knowledge. If this is true, it is surely one of the most remarkable pieces of animal behaviour. It is as though a schoolboy ate suitably roasted his schoolmaster, and thus obtained his knowledge and experience. It is reminiscent, of course, of the human belief that if you ate your vanquished opponent after battle you would inherit his courage and strength. We now came to the two sequences, one involving a boat and the other what were laughingly called watershoes, which we needed for the walking-on-the-water sequence. The shoes were a very strange contraption. If you can imagine two six-foot-long slender canoes, joined together by jointed rods, and each canoe ending in what looked like half a dolphin's tail in rubber or plastic, you have some idea of this curious means of progression. The way you used them was this: you put one foot into each canoe by sticking it into the canvas top, and then you seized hold of the rudder, a long pole that ran to the bows of your craft, then with somebody's assistance you were launched. As soon as you were afloat, you stamped your feet up and down as if marking time in one spot. This movement had the most astonishing effect on the two halves of the dolphin's tail, making each piece flap up and down, thus propelling you through the water. It was quite an exhausting and laborious business and you discovered whole sets of muscles in your legs that you were unaware ever existed. |
| 757 |
I have never actually flipped back the lid of each grave to display life. The whole idea of finding life in a cemetery was a novel one and worthy of Alastair's at times macabre sense of humour, so we went to Calvary cemetery. As a cemetery, it was quite extraordinary: it contained not only ordinary gravestones such as are used for plebeian folk, but monstrous mini-mausoleums looking like crosses and clones of the Acropolis and St Paul's Cathedral, generally, as far as I could judge, sheltering the mortal remains of somebody called Luigi Vermicelli or Guido Parmesan. I think probably the most horrifying thing about this was that it lay on a gentle slope of land, each monument to the dead as white and pure as any ski slope or emergent mushroom you have ever seen, and looking down through the strange vista of monuments to the dead (which made you feel that God must have been a confectioner of some skill) your eyes were rewarded with the New York City skyline mirroring and enlarging the graveyard at your feet. You could be pardoned for asking where the skyscrapers ended and the graves began. In fact, you began to wonder if the skyscrapers were not enormous mausoleums and was it really worth while to use up so much useful land by bringing out your dead. However, I was proved wrong, for we discovered a great deal of life in the cemetery. Not only worms tunnelled assiduously through the soil, turning and aerating it, but pheasants and Canada geese raised broods among the gravestones, racoons and foxes brought up their litters in the shelter of the mausoleums designed for acres of Italian dead. How lovely, I thought, that even here in New York City you could die secure in the comforting knowledge that a racoon, warm and friendly, was going to bring up a family on your chest. It was, I suppose, singularly appropriate that we went from this monstrous cluster of cadavers to the New York City dump. It is a salutary experience to see what a vast quantity of waste is produced by a conglomeration of human animals all living in one spot and being as wasteful as only the human animal can be. This monstrous, simmering, multicoloured pile of garbage lay there, being added to hourly. I have been disgusted by human wastefulness frequently, for I have watched in Africa and South America people use a fragment of a tin can, a tiny length of string and a piece of paper the size of your thumbnail as a means of survival, and yet in these same countries, such as Argentina, I have looked out of my hotel window and seen the refuse-cart passing below, filled with loaves of bread scarcely touched, steaks as thick as a volume of Encyclopaedia Britannica with only just the centre section cut out, piles of beans and vegetables in these trundling carts that could have kept an army of Indian villages functioning for months. I have watched families in North America whom I, in my innocence, thought were suffering from some glandular disease until I discovered that this extraordinary wobbling obesity was due to overeating. What a feast they would have been if they had been Christian missionaries who had wobbled out into the outback. Of course, this gigantic garbage-heap was considered by the seagulls to be the best restaurant in New York and they turned up there in their thousands, wheeling, screaming, fighting each other, diving into the piles of refuse in search of titbits. It was, in a curious sort of way, comforting that such monstrous waste was at least going towards keeping up flying battalions of handsome birds. |
| 758 |
So we continued to film in this, one of the most squalid, repulsive, dirty, beautiful and exciting of cities. We shot, as I have said, the wildlife in cemeteries and in city dumps, we also showed how feral dogs and cats lived in the slums, how pigeons and rats survived in the jungle of concrete, and we even showed how, fifteen or twenty floors up, in an apartment consisting of cement, glass and chromium plate, you could still find firebrats in your television set, cockroaches in your carpet and mice in your wainscoting. Then we came to the great day known as the Battle of Block 87. Among other people helping us, we had a charming lady naturalist called Helen Ross Russell, who had for years studied the flora and fauna of the Big Apple and had written several extremely interesting books on the subject of wildlife in a city. She knew on which skyscrapers peregrine falcons nested, where was the best place to find rats and at which golf course racoons habitually stole all the golf balls. With this fund of esoteric knowledge, her assistance was invaluable. One of the things we wanted to show was the quantity of fife that could be found in what is known in America as a vacant lot and in England would probably be called a bombsite. Even in the midst of great cities, it is astonishing how nature creeps back. Moss and lichens are generally the first to appear, followed by weeds, and then even trees start to sprout between the bricks and rubbish. As the plants get a hold, the invertebrates move in the millipedes, the spiders, the snails and these are closely followed by various birds, mice and in some cases even toads and snakes. Thus, a vacant lot or a bombsite can, to the amateur naturalist, produce an extraordinary variety of flora and fauna. Alastair had discovered the perfect vacant lot for our purpose. It was on the corner of 87th Street, bounded on two sides by the tall walls of buildings and on the other two sides by streets along which moved a steady stream of traffic. The lot itself was used for the most part by dog-owners exercising their pets, so it was, to say the least, well manured. Heaped with rubble, old tin cans and discarded notices one saying 'Police Precinct' it had provided a place for various weeds to flourish and there were even a few quite sizeable trees. There were several areas where puddles had formed and these were used by all the local pigeons and sparrows as a thirst-quenching bar-cum-swimming-pool. So our vacant lot had spiders, snails, millipedes, birds and dogs, and doubtless at night it had mice, rats and cats. It was, however, deficient in one respect it had no tent caterpillars. This was our undoing. Tent caterpillars are one of the major pests in America, but in spite of being such a nuisance are really quite fascinating (in the same way as human beings are). The female moth, after mating, lays an egg mass and the caterpillars form within the egg, but lie in a quiescent state until the following spring. They can endure very low temperatures by replacing some of their body fluids with a substance called glycerol, which is the tent caterpillars' equivalent of anti-freeze. When spring arrives, the tent caterpillars hatch and as a family (for that is what they are) they set about spinning a tent for themselves to live in. These tents are all-important to the caterpillars, for they act in fact like miniature greenhouses. They are oriented in such a way that they obtain maximum sunshine both in the morning and in the afternoon. |
| 759 |
Scientists have recorded that when the outside temperature was only 52degrees the temperature in a cluster of caterpillars residing in their silken dome was 102degrees Fahrenheit. The caterpillars, as they venture from their tent to browse on the leaves of the host trees, leave a trail of silk from the spinaret under their head. As they move about the branches, they thus create little silken highways which are added to and refurbished by their brothers and sisters. However, this is only part of the story. We now come to an extraordinary piece of research, the unravelling of a sort of natural-history detective story. Scientists have stated they discovered that each caterpillar on its silken highway laid a scented trail which told its brethren which were the good routes that led to food, so in fact these silken highways were also scent guides to the best supermarket of leaves, as it were; but what intrigued the scientists was what substance it was that the caterpillars secreted in the tail end of their abdomens that acted as the guiding scent, much as a beautiful woman might leave a trail of Chanel No. 5 as she crosses a room, caterpillars' scent denoting a supply of provender, the woman's scent a possible assignation. The two things were designed along the same lines, but for different purposes. It was then that a lady researcher of great intelligence and perception called Janice Egerley made an extraordinary discovery. She observed that a caterpillar among the multitude she was studying followed a pencil line she had made in her notebook. Was there, then, something in the lead of the pencil that resembled the elusive caterpillar scent? There was, and subsequent investigations of various lead pencils proved that there was some component in the sterated beef fat or the hydrogenated fish oil that some manufacturers use to produce the lead in pencils that so excited the caterpillars with thoughts of succulent green leaves. It was further discovered that, whatever this mysterious substance was, the tent caterpillars were sensitive enough to be able to distinguish between 3B and 4B pencils of a certain brand. The investigations continue, and doubtless other fascinating facts will come to light. However, armed with this knowledge, we felt we could not depict wildlife in a city without showing some of the private life of the tent caterpillars, who are such a part of city life, being such major defoliating pests. But, as I have said, our lovely empty lot, although it contained a young cherry tree, one of the caterpillars' favourite foods, had no caterpillars. A high-level conference divulged the fact that the budget could actually run to the extraordinary extent of getting Helen to import for us some caterpillars from her part of the city (where they were flourishing and hated) to our vacant lot, where we planned to put them on the baby cherry tree so we could film them. They would then be sternly banished back to Helen's part of the city. So we set to work. It was here not for the first time that we became grateful for Paula's ability to roar, for some of the shots had to be done from the roof of a building across the busy road and so Paula's lungs and vocal cords were well exercised in shouting instructions to us and it says much for the force of her voice and clear diction that she was able to instruct us impeccably from five flights up and across an endless stream of juddering, roaring, honking traffic below her. So we finished most of the major scenes and then came to the tent caterpillars. |
| 760 |
With reverence they were removed from the van, each branch of the cherry on which they rested carefully enshrined in muslin. Carefully, we carried them over to where our cherry tree, twisted and deformed like a child in a slum was still making a brave show of defying New York and its attempts to exterminate it. Carefully, the branches with caterpillars on them, their tent and their silken autostradas were taped to the branches of our cherry tree so that the whole thing looked, if anything, slightly more natural than nature. It was at this point that we noticed a lady had joined us and was watching our activities with slightly vacant, open-mouthed interest. 'What are youse all doing?' she asked, shifting her bulk uneasily in her tight pants and denim jacket. Alastair turned and beamed at her benignly, head on one side. Fortunately before he could bemuse still further an already puzzled mind, Paula stepped in. 'We are making a film about wildlife in a city,' she said. 'We want to show how even in the depths of a city like New York nature can still be found.' 'Is that what them bugs is for?' asked the lady. 'Yes,' said Paula kindly. 'They are called tent caterpillars.' 'They don't live here, though,' said the lady. 'You brung 'em.' 'Well, yes. You see, there weren't any here, so we had to bring them for the film,' said Paula, slightly flustered by the Neanderthal stare of the lady, who looked as though she had just returned from sweeping up singlehanded the debris of the May Day celebrations in Red Square. 'If there were none here, why did you brung 'em?' asked the lady. 'For the film,' snapped Alastair, who was trying to concentrate on whether he wanted the caterpillars to walk from right to left or from left to right and whether they would obey him. 'But that's faking,' said the lady, arousing herself out of lethargy into a sort of Middle European position of argumentation, feet slightly apart, hands on hips. 'You brung 'em here, and they don't five here. That's faking. You brung them bugs here deliberate.' 'Of course we brung them here,' said Alastair irritatedly, his train of thought interrupted. 'If we had not brung them, there wouldn't be any for us to film.' 'That's faking,' said the lady. 'That's not true.' 'Do you realize, madam,' I said, in a role of peacemaker, 'that ninety per cent of the films you see on wildlife, like Walt Disney, are faked? The whole process of filming is in a sense a fake. However, no more than a portrait painter or a landscape artist fakes, that is to say he rearranges nature to a better angle for his purposes.' 'Walt Disney doesn't fake,' said the lady, now starting to show all the belligerence of a sabre-toothed tiger immersed in a sort of intellectual tarpit. 'Walt Disney is an American. What youse is doing is faking, and faking on our lot.' 'We have permission from the Mayor's office,' said Paula. 'Have you got permission to fake from the 87th Street Block Association?' asked the lady, swelling as a turkey to a gobble. 'Surely the Mayor's office takes precedence?' asked Paula. 'Nothing takes precedence over the 87th Street Block Association,' said the lady. 'You know ... for some ... skyscrapers ... lots of life ... caterpillars ...' said Alastair, turning in a distraught circle. 'I'll go and see the 87th Street Block Association,' said the lady, 'and find out why you are allowed to fake.' She strode away, as if to relieve Leningrad singlehanded, and we all heaved a sigh of relief. However, our sense of relief was short-lived. |
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'Now I know you have gone round the twist,' I said with conviction. 'I know Corfu is eccentric, but I refuse to believe that even there you can find a herpetologist in charge of one of the best hotels in the island.' 'But it's true,' Ann protested. 'He has got a flat on the top floor of the hotel and he keeps snakes and tortoises and all sorts of lizards up there and moreover he has offered to go out and catch any reptiles we want to film.' I gave up. The island of Corfu was in the past as packed tight with eccentricities and surprises as a magician's trunk and I could see it had not lost its power to surprise. The island lies like a strange, misshapen dagger in the blue Ionian Sea, midway along the Greek and Albanian coastlines. In the past, it has fallen into the hands of a dozen different nations, from all of which it has absorbed what it found good and rejected the rest, thus keeping its individuality. Unlike so many parts of Greece, it is green and lush, for when it was part of the Venetian empire they used it as their oil store, planting thousands of olive trees, so that now the bulk of the island is shaded by these carunculated giants with their wigs of silvery-green leaves. Between them run the admonishing fingers of black-green cypress, many planted in groves as dowries. All this creates a mystical landscape, bathed in sharp brittle sunlight, orchestrated by the knife-grinder song of the cicadas, framed in the blue, still sea. Of all the wonderful and fascinating parts of the planet I have been privileged to visit, Corfu is the nearest approach to home for me, since it was here, nurtured in sunlight, that my fascination for the living world around me came to fruition. Owing to the vagaries of connecting flights, we managed to stay for a few hours in Athens enough time for us to catch a brief glimpse of the Acropolis, a quick peep at the Evzones changing the guard at the royal palace and then some time eating a splendid meal on the waterfront in Pyraeus: seafood as only the Greeks can cook it. Then we flew on to Corfu. When we reached the island, it was dark and a giant yellow moon lit the road so brightly you could see the olive-enshrouded landscape clearly and the moon's reflection on the faint, wind-stirred sea was like a million buttercup petals on the surface. After an excellent bottle of pale amber retsina, tasting of all the pinewoods you had ever visited, and some delicious local fish, we retired to bed and not even the moon perched, it seemed, on our balcony rail could keep us from sleep. The next morning we were having breakfast when Jean-Pierre arrived and was introduced. Short and dark, he had humorous brown eyes and a delightful smile. To the alarm and consternation of the other guests breakfasting among the flowerbeds, he produced out of several cloth bags one of the largest grass snakes I had ever seen in my life, a beautiful glass snake that looked as though it were cast in bronze and then, with a final gesture like a conjuror producing a rabbit out of a hat, he poured out from a bag on to the flagstones of the patio a cascade of European pond terrapins, dark greeny-black, yellow-spotted, with golden eyes like leopards. 'This is all I have caught for you, I'm afraid,' he said apologetically, and the pond terrapins came to life and scuttled off among the tables. After a breathless five minutes, they were rounded up and put back into their bag. 'Where did you catch them?' I asked. 'I got up very early and went to a lake called Scottini,' he replied. |
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Friendship could go no further. So we cluttered up the front of their house as only a film crew can and while the team was setting up we went to have a look at the kayiki to make sure all was ready for our sea trip. Here, to Jonathan's horror, disaster struck. In the opening sequence on the boat, I was to say: 'All of us are born with an interest in the world around us. You watch any young human being or any other young animal, if it comes to that and you'll see that they're investigating and learning the whole time with all their senses. Because from the moment we're born we are explorers in a very complex and fascinating world. Now, as people grow older, they sometimes lose interest in the world around them, but others keep it stimulated the whole time. These are the lucky ones. These are called the amateur naturalists.' In order to make the point more forcefully, Jonathan had decided we needed a child on board with us, so that we could all be examining a big bowl full of sea-creatures. To this end, he had engaged the services of the daughter of the owner of the minute cafE that graces Kouloura harbour, a very pretty little six-year-old. However, just before our arrival she had done something so monstrously naughty (we never found out what) that her mother had taken the unprecedented step (in Greece, that is) of giving her a good slapping. The result may be imagined. Jonathan found his tiny talent in tears, sitting in a mournful heap, refusing to speak, refusing to get into her best dress, refusing everything. In vain did Pam, Ann and I the only three Greek-speakers among us cajole and flatter and beseech. Even Jonathan's munificent offer (with total disregard for the budget) of raising her fee from ten drachmas to twenty had no effect. 'We can't do the scene without a child,' said Jonathan. 'For heaven's sake, do something, Ann.' 'What do you expect me to do?' asked Ann. 'If the child won't do it, you can't make her.' 'Then, find someone who will,' snapped Jonathan. So poor Ann was dispatched to the nearest village as a talent scout. 'Does it have to be a she, or will a he do?' she asked before she left. 'I don't care if it's a hermaphrodite as long as it's a child,' said Jonathan, glowering. For the next half-hour, while we waited for Ann to return, Lee and I investigated the warm shallow water in search of props in the shape of choleric-looking hermit crabs inhabiting brightly coloured topshells, other shells containing their rightful owners and large spiky spider crabs, each wearing its coat of weed and sponges on its back which these creatures plant on themselves to escape detection. The collection of this vast array of living props slightly mollified our director, though he was still twitchy and we awaited Ann's return anxiously. Presently, she came back triumphantly bearing with her a good-looking little boy of about ten. As the car with this male talent drew to a halt, out of the cafE door stepped the little girl wreathed in smiles and wearing her new dress. 'Gee, honey, look,' said Paula excitedly. 'Now you have two children.' 'Do you think the budget will run to two?' I asked Jonathan seriously. He just glowered at me. So we spent the rest of the day filming the caique sequences, which were rather complex, for as well as the shots on board (which were difficult but not too bad) Jonathan wanted to go to a high vantage-point on the mountainside and film a panoramic view of the harbour and Pam and Disney's house with the caique chugging majestically into the harbour. |
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As we had no walkie-talkies, we had to accomplish these shots by Jonathan reaching his vantage-point on the mountain and I watching him carefully through my binoculars while the kayiki went round and round in tight circles awaiting instructions. When Jonathan waved his arms we straightened out and went into harbour. Needless to say, because this was a most complex shot we had to do it several times. Eventually, Jonathan was as satisfied as a director ever is and we got packed up and set off on the long, hot drive back to town, our minds full of thoughts of icy drinks, clean clothes and delicious food. The terrapins were still in the bath. The next day, disaster of another sort struck. Jonathan had tracked down one of the villas that I and my family had lived in when we were in Corfu and had decided that it was most photogenic and suitable for a long sequence in the film. After numerous and complicated telephone calls, Ann had managed to track down the owner in Athens, in order to obtain his permission to film in and around the villa, only to find that the villa was rented to a nightclub owner, whose permission would also be necessary. It was even more difficult to track down the nightclub owner than to track down the real owner of the house since nightclub owners appear to be crepuscular, or at any rate nocturnal, and so during the day they are unavailable and the moment it gets dark (like Dracula) they leave their coffins and flap to and fro around the city, making it exceedingly hard to make contact with them. Finally, Ann managed to find him in some undiscovered tomb, whereupon he said that in no circumstances would he allow us to film in the villa. After prolonged pleading, Ann finally got him to agree to allow us to open up the house, but only if he were there. He told her his date of arrival in Corfu and said that he himself would open up the villa for us. Alas for Jonathan's nerves; the day came and went and the man was conspicuous by his absence. 'Why don't we go up there and you can at least film in the grounds and on the veranda,' Ann suggested sensibly. 'Maybe he will arrive tomorrow.' 'Well, I suppose so,' said Jonathan moodily, 'or we could film at Pot&mos in the hope that he will be on tomorrow's plane.' So we went to Potamos, a charming village, straggling up a hillside, the neat, multicoloured houses with their arched verandas exactly as I remembered them from forty years ago. Under every arch was a swallow's nest full of gaping young and under every nest was a cardboard box to catch the faeces so amply and generously shared with you by the swallows. I was reminded of the Greek saying that a house is not a home until it has a swallow's nest under its eaves. As I watched the parent birds, beaks stuffed to overflowing with insect provender, skimming in to hang on the nest and stuff the gaping mouths of their young, I thought that these were probably the great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great-grandchildren of the swallows I watched under these identical eaves when I was a child. After we had filmed them and some other sequences in the village, we returned to the hotel. The terrapins were still in the bath. The next day dawned bright and clear. The plane from Athens arrived and our man was not on it. 'To Hell with him,' snarled Jonathan. 'We'll go up to the villa and film anyway.' The villa was one I described in the book I wrote about my childhood in Corfu which I had called the Snow White Villa. |
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It lay in a large and ancient olive grove and was shaded by a huge magnolia tree, oleanders with pink and white flowers and a grape vine over the veranda that in season was heavy with bunches of white, banana-shaped grapes. Alas, when we drove up the rock-strewn pot-holed drive and drew to a halt outside, I could see that the villa was snow white no longer. Its once white walls were discoloured with patches of damp, there were huge cracks in the plaster, and the green shutters were faded with the paint peeling off them. In spite of this, the villa still somehow managed to look elegant, even in decay, but I wondered how anyone could treat such a beautiful and charming building in such a brutal way. As the equipment was unpacked, I led Lee around the overgrown garden among the olive trees and indulged in nostalgia. Here was the veranda where, at one of our numerous parties, my various animals had caused havoc; my magpies escaping, getting drunk on spilt wine and then wrecking the carefully arranged table just before the guests arrived, while beneath the table lurked my fearsome gull, Alecko, who bit the guests' legs as they sat down to eat. This was the wall in which my favourite gecko, Geronimo, used to live who fought to the death on my bedroom wall the praying mantis twice his size. About a hundred yards from the villa there stood the family chapel, one of those charming miniature churches that you so frequently find dotted about the Greek countryside, built God knows when and dedicated to some obscure saint who had performed some miracle or other. This one was painted pink outside and was the size of a large room with curious fold-back seats for the congregation and at one end, over the altar, a picture of the Virgin Mary and Child. Now it was all faded and forlorn, and a drift of old winter leaves had half wedged open the doors and spread in piles across the floor. In my day, the floor had been swept and garnished, the seats polished, and two tiny oil-lamps had been constantly burning with just enough light to illuminate the Virgin and Child, and fresh flowers were always kept in a vase below the portrait. Now all smelt of decay and there were no lamps to fight and no flowers. I remember once returning from some expedition of mine after dark and I saw that the doors of the little church had been accidentally left open. Putting down my butterfly-net and collecting-bag, I went to close them and came upon an astonishing sight. It was the season of the fireflies, and when I got to the doors and looked into the little church there was the picture of the Virgin illuminated seeming almost to float in the daffodil-yellow light of the tiny oil-lamps, but as well there were dozens and dozens of fireflies that had flown in through the open doors and now drifted like greeny-white flashing stars around the interior of the church and others crawled over the seats and walls. A few had landed on the Virgin's portrait and decorated it like some pulsating, moving jewels. Enraptured, I watched this beautiful and eerie sight for a long time and then, fearing to lock the fireflies in the church in case they died, I spent an exhausting half-hour catching them with my butterfly-net and releasing them, and as I did so I felt that the portrait of the Virgin must have been sorry to lose such an exquisite decoration to her church. When we returned from the church we found Jonathan wearing a smugly guilty expression, holding a piece of glass in his hands. 'Look,' he said, holding it up. |
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I had informed him that the glass snake or sheltopusik (to give it its European name which slips so easily off the tongue) moved with the speed of light and so should be filmed in an area where recapture was made easy. Jonathan assured me that he had taken that into consideration. To my surprise he had, for when we got to the olive grove we saw running along one side of it a donkey track guarded on each side by a rough dry-stone wall forming, as it were, a meandering trough suitable for the release of snakes, though not having been designed for that purpose. 'Now,' said Jonathan, 'I want you and Lee to start way down there by that olive and when you reach that bush there you suddenly see the glass snake and catch it.' 'Wait a minute,' I protested. 'If we are supposed to walk fifty yards before we get to the creature, it will be about five miles away.' 'Well, what do you suggest?' he asked. 'It must be released just as we reach the bush,' I said. 'How?' asked Jonathan. I gazed down the path at the place where the capture was supposed to take place. At that particular spot, the meandering of the path formed a slight bend and in consequence the wall took a bend that formed a tiny enclave. 'If somebody is concealed there at that point, he can release the creature as we get there,' I said. 'Who?' asked Jonathan. 'I will do it,' said Jean-Pierre, herpetologist manager of the Corfu Palace Hotel, now stripped to the waist and ready for action. 'OK,' said Jonathan. 'Go down there and let's see how it looks.' Obligingly, Jean-Pierre, carrying the bag with the glass snake in it, trotted down to the bend in the path and stood there. 'That's no good. We can see you,' shouted Jonathan. 'Get down a bit.' Obligingly, Jean-Pierre got down on his haunches. 'It's still no good,' shouted Jonathan. 'We can see your head. Lie down.' So the manager of the Corfu Palace stretched himself face downwards in the dust behind the wall. If his clients could have seen him at that moment, it would have given them pause for thought. 'Excellent,' shouted Jonathan. 'Just stay there and release the glass snake just before Gerry and Lee get to you.' So Jean-Pierre lay face downwards in the dust, the sun beating down on him while we had a couple of rehearsals. Then all was ready. At the crucial moment, the glass snake was released and, to my astonishment, behaved in an exemplary manner, speeding across our path and then curling itself up in a clump of grass under the wall where it could be easily captured without risk to its tail. Jean-Pierre rose to his feet, his back covered with sweat and his front covered with fine white dust and a proud grin on his face. After we had taken all the close-ups of the handsome glass snake, his burnished body, his scales like little bronze bricks, his vestigial hind limbs, his handsome head with fine eyes and a mouth set in a broadly benign smile, we set him free and watched him slide off through the bushes as smoothly as oil. By this time we were losing light, so after a pause to eat a refreshing watermelon, pink as a sunset cloud, we packed up and went back to the Corfu Palace, taking with us its manager, hot, tired, dusty but triumphant at this, his first cinematic experience. The terrapins were still in the bath. The next day at breakfast Jonathan was again in a jovial mood as he ploughed his way through his provender. 'Today,' he announced, through a mouthful of sausage and egg, 'today we are going to film at the lake you know, Scottini.' 'What are we going to film there?' I asked. |
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And they liked the fact that there was drink and that I didn't work too hard trying to bed down with them. Of course, after I met Sarah, this part of my lifestyle changed quite a bit. That neighborhood around Carlton Way near Western Avenue was changing too. It had been almost all lower-class white, but political troubles in Central America and other parts of the world had brought a new type of individual to the neighborhood. The male usually was small, a dark or light brown, usually young. There were wives, children, brothers, cousins, friends. They began filling up the apartments and courts. They lived many to an apartment and I was one of the few whites left in the court complex. The children ran up and down, up and down the court walkway. They all seemed to be between two and seven years old. They had no bikes or toys. The wives were seldom seen. They remained inside, hidden. Many of the men also remained inside. It was not wise to let the landlord know how many people were living in a single unit. The few men seen outside were the legal renters. At least they paid the rent. How they survived was unknown. The men were small, thin, silent, unsmiling. Most sat on the porch steps in their undershirts, slumped forward a bit, occasionally smoking a cigarette. They sat on the porch steps for hours, motionless. Sometimes they purchased very old junk automobiles and the men drove them slowly about the neighborhood. They had no auto insurance or driver's licenses and they drove with expired license plates. Most of the cars had defective brakes. The men almost never stopped at the corner stop sign and often failed to heed red lights, but there were few accidents. Something was watching over them. After a while the cars would break down but my new neighbors wouldn't leave them on the street. They would drive them up the walkways and park them directly outside their door. First they would work on the engine. They would take off the hood and the engine would rust in the rain. Then they would put the car on blocks and remove the wheels. They took the wheels inside and kept them there so they wouldn't be stolen at night. While I was living there, there were two rows of cars lined up in the court, just sitting there on blocks. The men sat motionless on their porches in their undershirts. Sometimes I would nod or wave to them. They never responded. Apparently they couldn't understand or read the eviction notices and they tore them up, but I did see them studying the daily L. A. papers. They were stoic and durable because compared to where they had come from, things were now easy. Well, no matter. My tax consultant had suggested I purchase a house, and so for me it wasn't really a matter of "white flight." Although, who knows? I had noticed that each time I had moved in Los Angeles over the years, each move had always been to the North and to the West. Finally, after a few weeks of house hunting, we found the one. After the down payment the monthly payments came to $789.81. There was a huge hedge in front on the street and the yard was also in front so the house sat way back on the lot. It looked like a damned good place to hide. There was even a stairway, an upstairs with a bedroom, bathroom and what was to become my typing room. And there was an old desk left in there, a huge ugly old thing. Now, after decades, I was a writer with a desk. Yes, I felt the fear, the fear of becoming like them. Worse, I had an assignment to write a screenplay. Was I doomed and damned, was I about to be sucked dry? |
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For Mr. Blood had spent a third of his life in the Netherlands, where this same James Scott - who now proclaimed himself James the Second, by the grace of God, King, et cetera - first saw the light some six-and-thirty years ago, and he was acquainted with the story current there of the fellow's real paternity. Far from being legitimate - by virtue of a pretended secret marriage between Charles Stuart and Lucy Walter - it was possible that this Monmouth who now proclaimed himself King of England was not even the illegitimate child of the late sovereign. What but ruin and disaster could be the end of this grotesque pretension? How could it be hoped that England would ever swallow such a Perkin? And it was on his behalf, to uphold his fantastic claim, that these West Country clods, led by a few armigerous Whigs, had been seduced into rebellion! "Quo, quo, scelesti, ruitis?" He laughed and sighed in one; but the laugh dominated the sigh, for Mr. Blood was unsympathetic, as are most self-sufficient men; and he was very self-sufficient; adversity had taught him so to be. A more tender-hearted man, possessing his vision and his knowledge, might have found cause for tears in the contemplation of these ardent, simple, Nonconformist sheep going forth to the shambles - escorted to the rallying ground on Castle Field by wives and daughters, sweethearts and mothers, sustained by the delusion that they were to take the field in defence of Right, of Liberty, and of Religion. For he knew, as all Bridgewater knew and had known now for some hours, that it was Monmouth's intention to deliver battle that same night. The Duke was to lead a surprise attack upon the Royalist army under Feversham that was now encamped on Sedgemoor. Mr. Blood assumed that Lord Feversham would be equally well-informed, and if in this assumption he was wrong, at least he was justified of it. He was not to suppose the Royalist commander so indifferently skilled in the trade he followed. Mr. Blood knocked the ashes from his pipe, and drew back to close his window. As he did so, his glance travelling straight across the street met at last the glance of those hostile eyes that watched him. There were two pairs, and they belonged to the Misses Pitt, two amiable, sentimental maiden ladies who yielded to none in Bridgewater in their worship of the handsome Monmouth. Mr. Blood smiled and inclined his head, for he was on friendly terms with these ladies, one of whom, indeed, had been for a little while his patient. But there was no response to his greeting. Instead, the eyes gave him back a stare of cold disdain. The smile on his thin lips grew a little broader, a little less pleasant. He understood the reason of that hostility, which had been daily growing in this past week since Monmouth had come to turn the brains of women of all ages. The Misses Pitt, he apprehended, contemned him that he, a young and vigorous man, of a military training which might now be valuable to the Cause, should stand aloof; that he should placidly smoke his pipe and tend his geraniums on this evening of all evenings, when men of spirit were rallying to the Protestant Champion, offering their blood to place him on the throne where he belonged. If Mr. Blood had condescended to debate the matter with these ladies, he might have urged that having had his fill of wandering and adventuring, he was now embarked upon the career for which he had been originally intended and for which his studies had equipped him; that he was a man of medicine and not of war; a healer, not a slayer. |
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But they would have answered him, he knew, that in such a cause it behoved every man who deemed himself a man to take up arms. They would have pointed out that their own nephew Jeremiah, who was by trade a sailor, the master of a ship - which by an ill-chance for that young man had come to anchor at this season in Bridgewater Bay - had quitted the helm to snatch up a musket in defence of Right. But Mr. Blood was not of those who argue. As I have said, he was a self-sufficient man. He closed the window, drew the curtains, and turned to the pleasant, candle-lighted room, and the table on which Mrs. Barlow, his housekeeper, was in the very act of spreading supper. To her, however, he spoke aloud his thought. "It's out of favour I am with the vinegary virgins over the way." He had a pleasant, vibrant voice, whose metallic ring was softened and muted by the Irish accent which in all his wanderings he had never lost. It was a voice that could woo seductively and caressingly, or command in such a way as to compel obedience. Indeed, the man's whole nature was in that voice of his. For the rest of him, he was tall and spare, swarthy of tint as a gipsy, with eyes that were startlingly blue in that dark face and under those level black brows. In their glance those eyes, flanking a high-bridged, intrepid nose, were of singular penetration and of a steady haughtiness that went well with his firm lips. Though dressed in black as became his calling, yet it was with an elegance derived from the love of clothes that is peculiar to the adventurer he had been, rather than to the staid medicus he now was. His coat was of fine camlet, and it was laced with silver; there were ruffles of Mechlin at his wrists and a Mechlin cravat encased his throat. His great black periwig was as sedulously curled as any at Whitehall. Seeing him thus, and perceiving his real nature, which was plain upon him, you might have been tempted to speculate how long such a man would be content to lie by in this little backwater of the world into which chance had swept him some six months ago; how long he would continue to pursue the trade for which he had qualified himself before he had begun to live. Difficult of belief though it may be when you know his history, previous and subsequent, yet it is possible that but for the trick that Fate was about to play him, he might have continued this peaceful existence, settling down completely to the life of a doctor in this Somersetshire haven. It is possible, but not probable. He was the son of an Irish medicus, by a Somersetshire lady in whose veins ran the rover blood of the Frobishers, which may account for a certain wildness that had early manifested itself in his disposition. This wildness had profoundly alarmed his father, who for an Irishman was of a singularly peace-loving nature. He had early resolved that the boy should follow his own honourable profession, and Peter Blood, being quick to learn and oddly greedy of knowledge, had satisfied his parent by receiving at the age of twenty the degree of baccalaureus medicinae at Trinity College, Dublin. His father survived that satisfaction by three months only. His mother had then been dead some years already. Thus Peter Blood came into an inheritance of some few hundred pounds, with which he had set out to see the world and give for a season a free rein to that restless spirit by which he was imbued. A set of curious chances led him to take service with the Dutch, then at war with France; and a predilection for the sea made him elect that this service should be upon that element. |
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Eyes glazed with lassitude and fear looked up piteously out of haggard faces at Mr. Blood and his companion as they rode forth; hoarse voices cried a warning that merciless pursuit was not far behind. Undeterred, however, young Pitt rode amain along the dusty road by which these poor fugitives from that swift rout on Sedgemoor came flocking in ever-increasing numbers. Presently he swung aside, and quitting the road took to a pathway that crossed the dewy meadowlands. Even here they met odd groups of these human derelicts, who were scattering in all directions, looking fearfully behind them as they came through the long grass, expecting at every moment to see the red coats of the dragoons. But as Pitt's direction was a southward one, bringing them ever nearer to Feversham's headquarters, they were presently clear of that human flotsam and jetsam of the battle, and riding through the peaceful orchards heavy with the ripening fruit that was soon to make its annual yield of cider. At last they alighted on the kidney stones of the courtyard, and Baynes, the master, of the homestead, grave of countenance and flustered of manner, gave them welcome. In the spacious, stone-flagged hall, the doctor found Lord Gildoy - a very tall and dark young gentleman, prominent of chin and nose - stretched on a cane day-bed under one of the tall mullioned windows, in the care of Mrs. Baynes and her comely daughter. His cheeks were leaden-hued, his eyes closed, and from his blue lips came with each laboured breath a faint, moaning noise. Mr. Blood stood for a moment silently considering his patient. He deplored that a youth with such bright hopes in life as Lord Gildoy's should have risked all, perhaps existence itself, to forward the ambition of a worthless adventurer. Because he had liked and honoured this brave lad he paid his case the tribute of a sigh. Then he knelt to his task, ripped away doublet and underwear to lay bare his lordship's mangled side, and called for water and linen and what else he needed for his work. He was still intent upon it a half-hour later when the dragoons invaded the homestead. The clatter of hooves and hoarse shouts that heralded their approach disturbed him not at all. For one thing, he was not easily disturbed; for another, his task absorbed him. But his lordship, who had now recovered consciousness, showed considerable alarm, and the battle-stained Jeremy Pitt sped to cover in a clothes-press. Baynes was uneasy, and his wife and daughter trembled. Mr. Blood reassured them. "Why, what's to fear?" he said. "It's a Christian country, this, and Christian men do not make war upon the wounded, nor upon those who harbour them." He still had, you see, illusions about Christians. He held a glass of cordial, prepared under his directions, to his lordship's lips. "Give your mind peace, my lord. The worst is done." And then they came rattling and clanking into the stone-flagged hall - a round dozen jack-booted, lobster-coated troopers of the Tangiers Regiment, led by a sturdy, black-browed fellow with a deal of gold lace about the breast of his coat. Baynes stood his ground, his attitude half-defiant, whilst his wife and daughter shrank away in renewed fear. Mr. Blood, at the head of the day-bed, looked over his shoulder to take stock of the invaders. The officer barked an order, which brought his men to an attentive halt, then swaggered forward, his gloved hand bearing down the pummel of his sword, his spurs jingling musically as he moved. |
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At the upper end, on a raised dais, sat the Lords Commissioners, the five judges in their scarlet robes and heavy dark periwigs, Baron Jeffreys of Wem enthroned in the middle place. The prisoners filed in under guard. The crier called for silence under pain of imprisonment, and as the hum of voices gradually became hushed, Mr. Blood considered with interest the twelve good men and true that composed the jury. Neither good nor true did they look. They were scared, uneasy, and hangdog as any set of thieves caught with their hands in the pockets of their neighbours. They were twelve shaken men, each of whom stood between the sword of the Lord Chief Justice's recent bloodthirsty charge and the wall of his own conscience. From them Mr. Blood's calm, deliberate glance passed on to consider the Lords Commissioners, and particularly the presiding Judge, that Lord Jeffreys, whose terrible fame had come ahead of him from Dorchester. He beheld a tall, slight man on the young side of forty, with an oval face that was delicately beautiful. There were dark stains of suffering or sleeplessness under the low-lidded eyes, heightening their brilliance and their gentle melancholy. The face was very pale, save for the vivid colour of the full lips and the hectic flush on the rather high but inconspicuous cheek-bones. It was something in those lips that marred the perfection of that countenance; a fault, elusive but undeniable, lurked there to belie the fine sensitiveness of those nostrils, the tenderness of those dark, liquid eyes and the noble calm of that pale brow. The physician in Mr. Blood regarded the man with peculiar interest knowing as he did the agonizing malady from which his lordship suffered, and the amazingly irregular, debauched life that he led in spite of it - perhaps because of it. "Peter Blood, hold up your hand!" Abruptly he was recalled to his position by the harsh voice of the clerk of arraigns. His obedience was mechanical, and the clerk droned out the wordy indictment which pronounced Peter Blood a false traitor against the Most Illustrious and Most Excellent Prince, James the Second, by the grace of God, of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland King, his supreme and natural lord. It informed him that, having no fear of God in his heart, but being moved and seduced by the instigation of the Devil, he had failed in the love and true and due natural obedience towards his said lord the King, and had moved to disturb the peace and tranquillity of the kingdom and to stir up war and rebellion to depose his said lord the King from the title, honour, and the regal name of the imperial crown and much more of the same kind, at the end of all of which he was invited to say whether he was guilty or not guilty. He answered more than was asked. "It's entirely innocent I am." A small, sharp-faced man at a table before and to the right of him bounced up. It was Mr. Pollexfen, the Judge-Advocate. "Are you guilty or not guilty?" snapped this peppery gentleman. "You must take the words." "Words, is it?" said Peter Blood. "Oh - not guilty." And he went on, addressing himself to the bench. "On this same subject of words, may it please your lordships, I am guilty of nothing to justify any of those words I have heard used to describe me, unless it be of a want of patience at having been closely confined for two months and longer in a foetid gaol with great peril to my health and even life." Being started, he would have added a deal more; but at this point the Lord Chief Justice interposed in a gentle, rather plaintive voice. |
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With any other jury it must have made the impression that he hoped to make. It may even have made its impression upon these poor pusillanimous sheep. But the dread judge was there to efface it. He gasped aloud, then flung himself violently forward. "Lord of Heaven!" he stormed. "Was there ever such a canting, impudent rascal? But I have done with you. I see thee, villain, I see thee already with a halter round thy neck." Having spoken so, gloatingly, evilly, he sank back again, and composed himself. It was as if a curtain fell. All emotion passed again from his pale face. Back to invest it again came that gentle melancholy. Speaking after a moment's pause, his voice was soft, almost tender, yet every word of it carried sharply through that hushed court. "If I know my own heart it is not in my nature to desire the hurt of anybody, much less to delight in his eternal perdition. It is out of compassion for you that I have used all these words - because I would have you have some regard for your immortal soul, and not ensure its damnation by obdurately persisting in falsehood and prevarication. But I see that all the pains in the world, and all compassion and charity are lost upon you, and therefore I will say no more to you." He turned again to the jury that countenance of wistful beauty. "Gentlemen, I must tell you for law, of which we are the judges, and not you, that if any person be in actual rebellion against the King, and another person - who really and actually was not in rebellion - does knowingly receive, harbour, comfort, or succour him, such a person is as much a traitor as he who indeed bore arms. We are bound by our oaths and consciences to declare to you what is law; and you are bound by your oaths and your consciences to deliver and to declare to us by your verdict the truth of the facts." Upon that he proceeded to his summing-up, showing how Baynes and Blood were both guilty of treason, the first for having harboured a traitor, the second for having succoured that traitor by dressing his wounds. He interlarded his address by sycophantic allusions to his natural lord and lawful sovereign, the King, whom God had set over them, and with vituperations of Nonconformity and of Monmouth, of whom - in his own words - he dared boldly affirm that the meanest subject within the kingdom that was of legitimate birth had a better title to the crown. "Jesus God! That ever we should have such a generation of vipers among us," he burst out in rhetorical frenzy. And then he sank back as if exhausted by the violence he had used. A moment he was still, dabbing his lips again; then he moved uneasily; once more his features were twisted by pain, and in a few snarling, almost incoherent words he dismissed the jury to consider the verdict. Peter Blood had listened to the intemperate, the blasphemous, and almost obscene invective of that tirade with a detachment that afterwards, in retrospect, surprised him. He was so amazed by the man, by the reactions taking place in him between mind and body, and by his methods of bullying and coercing the jury into bloodshed, that he almost forgot that his own life was at stake. The absence of that dazed jury was a brief one. The verdict found the three prisoners guilty. Peter Blood looked round the scarlet-hung court. For an instant that foam of white faces seemed to heave before him. Then he was himself again, and a voice was asking him what he had to say for himself, why sentence of death should not be passed upon him, being convicted of high treason. |
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They beheld a town of sufficiently imposing proportions composed of houses built upon European notions of architecture, but without any of the huddle usual in European cities. The spire of a church rose dominantly above the red roofs, a fort guarded the entrance of the wide harbour, with guns thrusting their muzzles between the crenels, and the wide facade of Government House revealed itself dominantly placed on a gentle hill above the town. This hill was vividly green as is an English hill in April, and the day was such a day as April gives to England, the season of heavy rains being newly ended. On a wide cobbled space on the sea front they found a guard of red-coated militia drawn up to receive them, and a crowd - attracted by their arrival - which in dress and manner differed little from a crowd in a seaport at home save that it contained fewer women and a great number of negroes. To inspect them, drawn up there on the mole, came Governor Steed, a short, stout, red-faced gentleman, in blue taffetas burdened by a prodigious amount of gold lace, who limped a little and leaned heavily upon a stout ebony cane. After him, in the uniform of a colonel of the Barbados Militia, rolled a tall, corpulent man who towered head and shoulders above the Governor, with malevolence plainly written on his enormous yellowish countenance. At his side, and contrasting oddly with his grossness, moving with an easy stripling grace, came a slight young lady in a modish riding-gown. The broad brim of a grey hat with scarlet sweep of ostrich plume shaded an oval face upon which the climate of the Tropic of Cancer had made no impression, so delicately fair was its complexion. Ringlets of red-brown hair hung to her shoulders. Frankness looked out from her hazel eyes which were set wide; commiseration repressed now the mischievousness that normally inhabited her fresh young mouth. Peter Blood caught himself staring in a sort of amazement at that piquant face, which seemed here so out of place, and finding his stare returned, he shifted uncomfortably. He grew conscious of the sorry figure that he cut. Unwashed, with rank and matted hair and a disfiguring black beard upon his face, and the erstwhile splendid suit of black camlet in which he had been taken prisoner now reduced to rags that would have disgraced a scarecrow, he was in no case for inspection by such dainty eyes as these. Nevertheless, they continued to inspect him with round-eyed, almost childlike wonder and pity. Their owner put forth a hand to touch the scarlet sleeve of her companion, whereupon with an ill-tempered grunt the man swung his great bulk round so that he directly confronted her. Looking up into his face, she was speaking to him earnestly, but the Colonel plainly gave her no more than the half of his attention. His little beady eyes, closely flanking a fleshly, pendulous nose, had passed from her and were fixed upon fair-haired, sturdy young Pitt, who was standing beside Blood. The Governor had also come to a halt, and for a moment now that little group of three stood in conversation. What the lady said, Peter could not hear at all, for she lowered her voice; the Colonel's reached him in a confused rumble, but the Governor was neither considerate nor indistinct; he had a high-pitched voice which carried far, and believing himself witty, he desired to be heard by all. "But, my dear Colonel Bishop, it is for you to take first choice from this dainty nosegay, and at your own price. After that we'll send the rest to auction." Colonel Bishop nodded his acknowledgment. |
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He raised his voice in answering. "Your excellency is very good. But, faith, they're a weedy lot, not likely to be of much value in the plantation." His beady eyes scanned them again, and his contempt of them deepened the malevolence of his face. It was as if he were annoyed with them for being in no better condition. Then he beckoned forward Captain Gardner, the master of the Jamaica Merchant, and for some minutes stood in talk with him over a list which the latter produced at his request. Presently he waved aside the list and advanced alone towards the rebels-convict, his eyes considering them, his lips pursed. Before the young Somersetshire shipmaster he came to a halt, and stood an instant pondering him. Then he fingered the muscles of the young man's arm, and bade him open his mouth that he might see his teeth. He pursed his coarse lips again and nodded. He spoke to Gardner over his shoulder. "Fifteen pounds for this one." The Captain made a face of dismay. "Fifteen pounds! It isn't half what I meant to ask for him." "It is double what I had meant to give," grunted the Colonel. "But he would be cheap at thirty pounds, your honour." "I can get a negro for that. These white swine don't live. They're not fit for the labour." Gardner broke into protestations of Pitt's health, youth, and vigour. It was not a man he was discussing; it was a beast of burden. Pitt, a sensitive lad, stood mute and unmoving. Only the ebb and flow of colour in his cheeks showed the inward struggle by which he maintained his self-control. Peter Blood was nauseated by the loathsome haggle. In the background, moving slowly away down the line of prisoners, went the lady in conversation with the Governor, who smirked and preened himself as he limped beside her. She was unconscious of the loathly business the Colonel was transacting. Was she, wondered Blood, indifferent to it? Colonel Bishop swung on his heel to pass on. "I'll go as far as twenty pounds. Not a penny more, and it's twice as much as you are like to get from Crabston." Captain Gardner, recognizing the finality of the tone, sighed and yielded. Already Bishop was moving down the line. For Mr. Blood, as for a weedy youth on his left, the Colonel had no more than a glance of contempt. But the next man, a middle-aged Colossus named Wolverstone, who had lost an eye at Sedgemoor, drew his regard, and the haggling was recommenced. Peter Blood stood there in the brilliant sunshine and inhaled the fragrant air, which was unlike any air that he had ever breathed. It was laden with a strange perfume, blend of logwood flower, pimento, and aromatic cedars. He lost himself in unprofitable speculations born of that singular fragrance. He was in no mood for conversation, nor was Pitt, who stood dumbly at his side, and who was afflicted mainly at the moment by the thought that he was at last about to be separated from this man with whom he had stood shoulder to shoulder throughout all these troublous months, and whom he had come to love and depend upon for guidance and sustenance. A sense of loneliness and misery pervaded him by contrast with which all that he had endured seemed as nothing. To Pitt, this separation was the poignant climax of all his sufferings. Other buyers came and stared at them, and passed on. Blood did not heed them. And then at the end of the line there was a movement. Gardner was speaking in a loud voice, making an announcement to the general public of buyers that had waited until Colonel Bishop had taken his choice of that human merchandise. |
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She had been in action off Martinique with two Spanish treasure ships, and although her captain swore that the Spaniards had beset him without provocation, it is difficult to avoid a suspicion that the encounter had been brought about quite otherwise. One of the Spaniards had fled from the combat, and if the Pride of Devon had not given chase it was probably because she was by then in no case to do so. The other had been sunk, but not before the English ship had transferred to her own hold a good deal of the treasure aboard the Spaniard. It was, in fact, one of those piratical affrays which were a perpetual source of trouble between the courts of St. James's and the Escurial, complaints emanating now from one and now from the other side. Steed, however, after the fashion of most Colonial governors, was willing enough to dull his wits to the extent of accepting the English seaman's story, disregarding any evidence that might belie it. He shared the hatred so richly deserved by arrogant, overbearing Spain that was common to men of every other nation from the Bahamas to the Main. Therefore he gave the Pride of Devon the shelter she sought in his harbour and every facility to careen and carry out repairs. But before it came to this, they fetched from her hold over a score of English seamen as battered and broken as the ship herself, and together with these some half-dozen Spaniards in like case, the only survivors of a boarding party from the Spanish galleon that had invaded the English ship and found itself unable to retreat. These wounded men were conveyed to a long shed on the wharf, and the medical skill of Bridgetown was summoned to their aid. Peter Blood was ordered to bear a hand in this work, and partly because he spoke Castilian - and he spoke it as fluently as his own native tongue - partly because of his inferior condition as a slave, he was given the Spaniards for his patients. Now Blood had no cause to love Spaniards. His two years in a Spanish prison and his subsequent campaigning in the Spanish Netherlands had shown him a side of the Spanish character which he had found anything but admirable. Nevertheless he performed his doctor's duties zealously and painstakingly, if emotionlessly, and even with a certain superficial friendliness towards each of his patients. These were so surprised at having their wounds healed instead of being summarily hanged that they manifested a docility very unusual in their kind. They were shunned, however, by all those charitably disposed inhabitants of Bridgetown who flocked to the improvised hospital with gifts of fruit and flowers and delicacies for the injured English seamen. Indeed, had the wishes of some of these inhabitants been regarded, the Spaniards would have been left to die like vermin, and of this Peter Blood had an example almost at the very outset. With the assistance of one of the negroes sent to the shed for the purpose, he was in the act of setting a broken leg, when a deep, gruff voice, that he had come to know and dislike as he had never disliked the voice of living man, abruptly challenged him. "What are you doing there?" Blood did not look up from his task. There was not the need. He knew the voice, as I have said. "I am setting a broken leg," he answered, without pausing in his labours. "I can see that, fool." A bulky body interposed between Peter Blood and the window. The half-naked man on the straw rolled his black eyes to stare up fearfully out of a clay-coloured face at this intruder. |
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"You have opened for me the gates of hope." In that at least he tittered no more than the bare truth, and expressed it very baldly. It was, indeed, as if a door had been suddenly flung open to the sunlight for escape from a dark prison in which a man had thought to spend his life. He was in haste now to be alone, to straighten out his agitated mind and plan coherently what was to be done. Also he must consult another. Already he had hit upon that other. For such a voyage a navigator would be necessary, and a navigator was ready to his hand in Jeremy Pitt. The first thing was to take counsel with the young shipmaster, who must be associated with him in this business if it were to be undertaken. All that day his mind was in turmoil with this new hope, and he was sick with impatience for night and a chance to discuss the matter with his chosen partner. As a result Blood was betimes that evening in the spacious stockade that enclosed the huts of the slaves together with the big white house of the overseer, and he found an opportunity of a few words with Pitt, unobserved by the others. "To-night when all are asleep, come to my cabin. I have something to say to you." The young man stared at him, roused by Blood's pregnant tone out of the mental lethargy into which he had of late been lapsing as a result of the dehumanizing life he lived. Then he nodded understanding and assent, and they moved apart. The six months of plantation life in Barbados had made an almost tragic mark upon the young seaman. His erstwhile bright alertness was all departed. His face was growing vacuous, his eyes were dull and lack-lustre, and he moved in a cringing, furtive manner, like an over-beaten dog. He had survived the ill-nourishment, the excessive work on the sugar plantation under a pitiless sun, the lashes of the overseer's whip when his labours flagged, and the deadly, unrelieved animal life to which he was condemned. But the price he was paying for survival was the usual price. He was in danger of becoming no better than an animal, of sinking to the level of the negroes who sometimes toiled beside him. The man, however, was still there, not yet dormant, but merely torpid from a surfeit of despair; and the man in him promptly shook off that torpidity and awoke at the first words Blood spoke to him that night - awoke and wept. "Escape?" he panted. "O God!" He took his head in his hands, and fell to sobbing like a child. "Sh! Steady now! Steady!" Blood admonished him in a whisper, alarmed by the lad's blubbering. He crossed to Pitt's side, and set a restraining hand upon his shoulder. "For God's sake, command yourself. If we're overheard we shall both be flogged for this." Among the privileges enjoyed by Blood was that of a hut to himself, and they were alone in this. But, after all, it was built of wattles thinly plastered with mud, and its door was composed of bamboos, through which sound passed very easily. Though the stockade was locked for the night, and all within it asleep by now - it was after midnight - yet a prowling overseer was not impossible, and a sound of voices must lead to discovery. Pitt realized this, and controlled his outburst of emotion. Sitting close thereafter they talked in whispers for an hour or more, and all the while those dulled wits of Pitt's were sharpening themselves anew upon this precious whetstone of hope. They would need to recruit others into their enterprise, a half-dozen at least, a half-score if possible, but no more than that. |
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That is your tale if there are questions." He paused, looking hard at Blood. Blood nodded understanding and assent. Relieved, the doctor continued: "But there should be no questions if you go carefully to work. You concert matters With Nuttall. You enlist him as one of your companions and a shipwright should be a very useful member of your crew. You engage him to discover a likely sloop whose owner is disposed to sell. Then let your preparations all be made before the purchase is effected, so that your escape may follow instantly upon it before the inevitable questions come to be asked. You take me?" So well did Blood take him that within an hour he contrived to see Nuttall, and found the fellow as disposed to the business as Dr. Whacker had predicted. When he left the shipwright, it was agreed that Nuttall should seek the boat required, for which Blood would at once produce the money. The quest took longer than was expected by Blood, who waited impatiently with the doctor's gold concealed about his person. But at the end of some three weeks, Nuttall - whom he was now meeting daily - informed him that he had found a serviceable wherry, and that its owner was disposed to sell it for twenty-two pounds. That evening, on the beach, remote from all eyes, Peter Blood handed that sum to his new associate, and Nuttall went off with instructions to complete the purchase late on the following day. He was to bring the boat to the wharf, where under cover of night Blood and his fellow-convicts would join him and make off. Everything was ready. In the shed, from which all the wounded men had now been removed and which had since remained untenanted, Nuttall had concealed the necessary stores: a hundredweight of bread, a quantity of cheese, a cask of water and some few bottles of Canary, a compass, quadrant, chart, half-hour glass, log and line, a tarpaulin, some carpenter's tools, and a lantern and candles. And in the stockade, all was likewise in readiness. Hagthorpe, Dyke, and Ogle had agreed to join the venture, and eight others had been carefully recruited. In Pitt's hut, which he shared with five other rebels-convict, all of whom were to join in this bid for liberty, a ladder had been constructed in secret during those nights of waiting. With this they were to surmount the stockade and gain the open. The risk of detection, so that they made little noise, was negligible. Beyond locking them all into that stockade at night, there was no great precaution taken. Where, after all, could any so foolish as to attempt escape hope to conceal himself in that island? The chief risk lay in discovery by those of their companions who were to be left behind. It was because of these that they must go cautiously and in silence. The day that was to have been their last in Barbados was a day of hope and anxiety to the twelve associates in that enterprise, no less than to Nuttall in the town below. Towards sunset, having seen Nuttall depart to purchase and fetch the sloop to the prearranged moorings at the wharf, Peter Blood came sauntering towards the stockade, just as the slaves were being driven in from the fields. He stood aside at the entrance to let them pass, and beyond the message of hope flashed by his eyes, he held no communication with them. He entered the stockade in their wake, and as they broke their ranks to seek their various respective huts, he beheld Colonel Bishop in talk with Kent, the overseer. The pair were standing by the stocks, planted in the middle of that green space for the punishment of offending slaves. |
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But as he sprang, so also sprang the watchful blacks. Muscular bronze arms coiled crushingly about the frail white body, and in a moment the unfortunate slave stood powerless, his wrists pinioned behind him in a leathern thong. Breathing hard, his face mottled, Bishop pondered him a moment. Then: "Fetch him along," he said. Down the long avenue between those golden walls of cane standing some eight feet high, the wretched Pitt was thrust by his black captors in the Colonel's wake, stared at with fearful eyes by his fellow-slaves at work there. Despair went with him. What torments might immediately await him he cared little, horrible though he knew they would be. The real source of his mental anguish lay in the conviction that the elaborately planned escape from this unutterable hell was frustrated now in the very moment of execution. They came out upon the green plateau and headed for the stockade and the overseer's white house. Pitt's eyes looked out over Carlisle Bay, of which this plateau commanded a clear view from the fort on one side to the long sheds of the wharf on the other. Along this wharf a few shallow boats were moored, and Pitt caught himself wondering which of these was the wherry in which with a little luck they might have been now at sea. Out over that sea his glance ranged miserably. In the roads, standing in for the shore before a gentle breeze that scarcely ruffled the sapphire surface of the Caribbean, came a stately red-hulled frigate, flying the English ensign. Colonel Bishop halted to consider her, shading his eyes with his fleshly hand. Light as was the breeze, the vessel spread no canvas to it beyond that of her foresail. Furled was her every other sail, leaving a clear view of the majestic lines of her hull, from towering stern castle to gilded beakhead that was aflash in the dazzling sunshine. So leisurely an advance argued a master indifferently acquainted with these waters, who preferred to creep forward cautiously, sounding his way. At her present rate of progress it would be an hour, perhaps, before she came to anchorage within the harbour. And whilst the Colonel viewed her, admiring, perhaps, the gracious beauty of her, Pitt was hurried forward into the stockade, and clapped into the stocks that stood there ready for slaves who required correction. Colonel Bishop followed him presently, with leisurely, rolling gait. "A mutinous cur that shows his fangs to his master must learn good manners at the cost of a striped hide," was all he said before setting about his executioner's job. That with his own hands he should do that which most men of his station would, out of self-respect, have relegated to one of the negroes, gives you the measure of the man's beastliness. It was almost as if with relish, as if gratifying some feral instinct of cruelty, that he now lashed his victim about head and shoulders. Soon his cane was reduced, to splinters by his violence. You know, perhaps, the sting of a flexible bamboo cane when it is whole. But do you realize its murderous quality when it has been split into several long lithe blades, each with an edge that is of the keenness of a knife? When, at last, from very weariness, Colonel Bishop flung away the stump and thongs to which his cane had been reduced, the wretched slave's back was bleeding pulp from neck to waist. As long as full sensibility remained, Jeremy Pitt had made no sound. But in a measure as from pain his senses were mercifully dulled, he sank forward in the stocks, and hung there now in a huddled heap, faintly moaning. |
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By sunset two hundred and fifty Spaniards were masters of Bridgetown, the islanders were disarmed, and at Government House, Governor Steed - his gout forgotten in his panic - supported by Colonel Bishop and some lesser officers, was being informed by Don Diego, with an urbanity that was itself a mockery, of the sum that would be required in ransom. For a hundred thousand pieces of eight and fifty head of cattle, Don Diego would forbear from reducing the place to ashes. And what time that suave and courtly commander was settling these details with the apoplectic British Governor, the Spaniards were smashing and looting, feasting, drinking, and ravaging after the hideous manner of their kind. Mr. Blood, greatly daring, ventured down at dusk into the town. What he saw there is recorded by Jeremy Pitt to whom he subsequently related it - in that voluminous log from which the greater part of my narrative is derived. I have no intention of repeating any of it here. It is all too loathsome and nauseating, incredible, indeed, that men however abandoned could ever descend such an abyss of bestial cruelty and lust. What he saw was fetching him in haste and white-faced out of that hell again, when in a narrow street a girl hurtled into him, wild-eyed, her unbound hair streaming behind her as she ran. After her, laughing and cursing in a breath, came a heavy-booted Spaniard. Almost he was upon her, when suddenly Mr. Blood got in his way. The doctor had taken a sword from a dead man's side some little time before and armed himself with it against an emergency. As the Spaniard checked in anger and surprise, he caught in the dusk the livid gleam of that sword which Mr. Blood had quickly unsheathed. "Ah, perro ingles!" he shouted, and flung forward to his death. "It's hoping I am ye're in a fit state to meet your Maker," said Mr. Blood, and ran him through the body. He did the thing skilfully: with the combined skill of swordsman and surgeon. The man sank in a hideous heap without so much as a groan. Mr. Blood swung to the girl, who leaned panting and sobbing against a wall. He caught her by the wrist. "Come!" he said. But she hung back, resisting him by her weight. "Who are you?" she demanded wildly. "Will ye wait to see my credentials?" he snapped. Steps were clattering towards them from beyond the corner round which she had fled from that Spanish ruffian. "Come," he urged again. And this time, reassured perhaps by his clear English speech, she went without further questions. They sped down an alley and then up another, by great good fortune meeting no one, for already they were on the outskirts of the town. They won out of it, and white-faced, physically sick, Mr. Blood dragged her almost at a run up the hill towards Colonel Bishop's house. He told her briefly who and what he was, and thereafter there was no conversation between them until they reached the big white house. It was all in darkness, which at least was reassuring. If the Spaniards had reached it, there would be lights. He knocked, but had to knock again and yet again before he was answered. Then it was by a voice from a window above. "Who is there?" The voice was Miss Bishop's, a little tremulous, but unmistakably her own. Mr. Blood almost fainted in relief. He had been imagining the unimaginable. He had pictured her down in that hell out of which he had just come. He had conceived that she might have followed her uncle into Bridgetown, or committed some other imprudence, and he turned cold from head to foot at the mere thought of what might have happened to her. |
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Blood had so laboriously assembled against the day of escape. The remainder were equipped with knives and cutlasses. In the vessel's waist they hung awhile, until Mr. Blood had satisfied himself that no other sentinel showed above decks but that inconvenient fellow in the prow. Their first attention must be for him. Mr. Blood, himself, crept forward with two companions, leaving the others in the charge of that Nathaniel Hagthorpe whose sometime commission in the King's Navy gave him the best title to this office. Mr. Blood's absence was brief. When he rejoined his comrades there was no watch above the Spaniards' decks. Meanwhile the revellers below continued to make merry at their ease in the conviction of complete security. The garrison of Barbados was overpowered and disarmed, and their companions were ashore in complete possession of the town, glutting themselves hideously upon the fruits of victory. What, then, was there to fear? Even when their quarters were invaded and they found themselves surrounded by a score of wild, hairy, half-naked men, who - save that they appeared once to have been white - looked like a horde of savages, the Spaniards could not believe their eyes. Who could have dreamed that a handful of forgotten plantation-slaves would have dared to take so much upon themselves? The half-drunken Spaniards, their laughter suddenly quenched, the song perishing on their lips, stared, stricken and bewildered at the levelled muskets by which they were checkmated. And then, from out of this uncouth pack of savages that beset them, stepped a slim, tall fellow with light-blue eyes in a tawny face, eyes in which glinted the light of a wicked humour. He addressed them in the purest Castilian. "You will save yourselves pain and trouble by regarding yourselves my prisoners, and suffering yourselves to be quietly bestowed out of harm's way." "Name of God!" swore the gunner, which did no justice at all to an amazement beyond expression. "If you please," said Mr. Blood, and thereupon those gentlemen of Spain were induced without further trouble beyond a musket prod or two to drop through a scuttle to the deck below. After that the rebels-convict refreshed themselves with the good things in the consumption of which they had interrupted the Spaniards. To taste palatable Christian food after months of salt fish and maize dumplings was in itself a feast to these unfortunates. But there were no excesses. Mr. Blood saw to that, although it required all the firmness of which he was capable. Dispositions were to be made without delay against that which must follow before they could abandon themselves fully to the enjoyment of their victory. This, after all, was no more than a preliminary skirmish, although it was one that afforded them the key to the situation. It remained to dispose so that the utmost profit might be drawn from it. Those dispositions occupied some very considerable portion of the night. But, at least, they were complete before the sun peeped over the shoulder of Mount Hilibay to shed his light upon a day of some surprises. It was soon after sunrise that the rebel-convict who paced the quarter-deck in Spanish corselet and headpiece, a Spanish musket on his shoulder, announced the approach of a boat. It was Don Diego de Espinosa y Valdez coming aboard with four great treasure-chests, containing each twenty-five thousand pieces of eight, the ransom delivered to him at dawn by Governor Steed. He was accompanied by his son, Don Esteban, and by six men who took the oars. |
| 780 |
Aboard the frigate all was quiet and orderly as it should be. She rode at anchor, her larboard to the shore, and the main ladder on her starboard side. Round to this came the boat with Don Diego and his treasure. Mr. Blood had disposed effectively. It was not for nothing that he had served under de Ruyter. The swings were waiting, and the windlass manned. Below, a gun-crew held itself in readiness under the command of Ogle, who - as I have said - had been a gunner in the Royal Navy before he went in for politics and followed the fortunes of the Duke of Monmouth. He was a sturdy, resolute fellow who inspired confidence by the very confidence he displayed in himself. Don Diego mounted the ladder and stepped upon the deck, alone, and entirely unsuspicious. What should the poor man suspect? Before he could even look round, and survey this guard drawn up to receive him, a tap over the head with a capstan bar efficiently handled by Hagthorpe put him to sleep without the least fuss. He was carried away to his cabin, whilst the treasure-chests, handled by the men he had left in the boat, were being hauled to the deck. That being satisfactorily accomplished, Don Esteban and the fellows who had manned the boat came up the ladder, one by one, to be handled with the same quiet efficiency. Peter Blood had a genius for these things, and almost, I suspect, an eye for the dramatic. Dramatic, certainly, was the spectacle now offered to the survivors of the raid. With Colonel Bishop at their head, and gout-ridden Governor Steed sitting on the ruins of a wall beside him, they glumly watched the departure of the eight boats containing the weary Spanish ruffians who had glutted themselves with rapine, murder, and violences unspeakable. They looked on, between relief at this departure of their remorseless enemies, and despair at the wild ravages which, temporarily at least, had wrecked the prosperity and happiness of that little colony. The boats pulled away from the shore, with their loads of laughing, jeering Spaniards, who were still flinging taunts across the water at their surviving victims. They had come midway between the wharf and the ship, when suddenly the air was shaken by the boom of a gun. A round shot struck the water within a fathom of the foremost boat, sending a shower of spray over its occupants. They paused at their oars, astounded into silence for a moment. Then speech burst from them like an explosion. Angrily voluble they anathematized this dangerous carelessness on the part of their gunner, who should know better than to fire a salute from a cannon loaded with shot. They were still cursing him when a second shot, better aimed than the first, came to crumple one of the boats into splinters, flinging its crew, dead and living, into the water. But if it silenced these, it gave tongue, still more angry, vehement, and bewildered to the crews of the other seven boats. From each the suspended oars stood out poised over the water, whilst on their feet in the excitement the Spaniards screamed oaths at the ship, begging Heaven and Hell to inform them what madman had been let loose among her guns. Plump into their middle came a third shot, smashing a second boat with fearful execution. Followed again a moment of awful silence, then among those Spanish pirates all was gibbering and jabbering and splashing of oars, as they attempted to pull in every direction at once. Some were for going ashore, others for heading straight to the vessel and there discovering what might be amiss. |
| 781 |
There was a fight in the Windward Passage at the outset with a Spanish galleon, which had resulted in the gutting and finally the sinking of the Spaniard. There was a daring raid effected by means of several appropriated piraguas upon a Spanish pearl fleet in the Rio de la Hacha, from which they had taken a particularly rich haul of pearls. There was an overland expedition to the goldfields of Santa Maria, on the Main, the full tale of which is hardly credible, and there were lesser adventures through all of which the crew of the Arabella came with credit and profit if not entirely unscathed. And so it happened that before the Arabella came homing to Tortuga in the following May to refit and repair - for she was not without scars, as you conceive - the fame of her and of Peter Blood her captain had swept from the Bahamas to the Windward Isles, from New Providence to Trinidad. An echo of it had reached Europe, and at the Court of St. James's angry representations were made by the Ambassador of Spain, to whom it was answered that it must not be supposed that this Captain Blood held any commission from the King of England; that he was, in fact, a proscribed rebel, an escaped slave, and that any measures against him by His Catholic Majesty would receive the cordial approbation of King James II. Don Miguel de Espinosa, the Admiral of Spain in the West Indies, and his nephew Don Esteban who sailed with him, did not lack the will to bring the adventurer to the yardarm. With them this business of capturing Blood, which was now an international affair, was also a family matter. Spain, through the mouth of Don Miguel, did not spare her threats. The report of them reached Tortuga, and with it the assurance that Don Miguel had behind him not only the authority of his own nation, but that of the English King as well. It was a brutum fulmen that inspired no terrors in Captain Blood. Nor was he likely, on account of it, to allow himself to run to rust in the security of Tortuga. For what he had suffered at the hands of Man he had chosen to make Spain the scapegoat. Thus he accounted that he served a twofold purpose: he took compensation and at the same time served, not indeed the Stuart King, whom he despised, but England and, for that matter, all the rest of civilized mankind which cruel, treacherous, greedy, bigoted Castile sought to exclude from intercourse with the New World. One day as he sat with Hagthorpe and Wolverstone over a pipe and a bottle of rum in the stifling reek of tar and stale tobacco of a waterside tavern, he was accosted by a splendid ruffian in a gold-laced coat of dark-blue satin with a crimson sash, a foot wide, about the waist. "C'est vous qu'on appelle Le Sang?" the fellow hailed him. Captain Blood looked up to consider the questioner before replying. The man was tall and built on lines of agile strength, with a swarthy, aquiline face that was brutally handsome. A diamond of great price flamed on the indifferently clean hand resting on the pummel of his long rapier, and there were gold rings in his ears, half-concealed by long ringlets of oily chestnut hair. Captain Blood took the pipe-stem from between his lips. "My name," he said, "is Peter Blood. The Spaniards know me for Don Pedro Sangre and a Frenchman may call me Le Sang if he pleases." "Good," said the gaudy adventurer in English, and without further invitation he drew up a stool and sat down at that greasy table. "My name," he informed the three men, two of whom at least were eyeing him askance, "it is Levasseur. |
| 782 |
You may have heard of me." They had, indeed. He commanded a privateer of twenty guns that had dropped anchor in the bay a week ago, manned by a crew mainly composed of French boucanhunters from Northern Hispaniola, men who had good cause to hate the Spaniard with an intensity exceeding that of the English. Levasseur had brought them back to Tortuga from an indifferently successful cruise. It would need more, however, than lack of success to abate the fellow's monstrous vanity. A roaring, quarrelsome, hard-drinking, hard-gaming scoundrel, his reputation as a buccaneer stood high among the wild Brethren of the Coast. He enjoyed also a reputation of another sort. There was about his gaudy, swaggering raffishness something that the women found singularly alluring. That he should boast openly of his bonnes fortunes did not seem strange to Captain Blood; what he might have found strange was that there appeared to be some measure of justification for these boasts. It was current gossip that even Mademoiselle d'Ogeron, the Governor's daughter, had been caught in the snare of his wild attractiveness, and that Levasseur had gone the length of audacity of asking her hand in marriage of her father. M. d'Ogeron had made him the only possible answer. He had shown him the door. Levasseur had departed in a rage, swearing that he would make mademoiselle his wife in the teeth of all the fathers in Christendom, and that M. d'Ogeron should bitterly rue the affront he had put upon him. This was the man who now thrust himself upon Captain Blood with a proposal of association, offering him not only his sword, but his ship and the men who sailed in her. A dozen years ago, as a lad of barely twenty, Levasseur had sailed with that monster of cruelty L'Ollonais, and his own subsequent exploits bore witness and did credit to the school in which he had been reared. I doubt if in his day there was a greater scoundrel among the Brethren of the Coast than this Levasseur. And yet, repulsive though he found him, Captain Blood could not deny that the fellow's proposals displayed boldness, imagination, and resource, and he was forced to admit that jointly they could undertake operations of a greater magnitude than was possible singly to either of them. The climax of Levasseur's project was to be a raid upon the wealthy mainland city of Maracaybo; but for this, he admitted, six hundred men at the very least would be required, and six hundred men were not to be conveyed in the two bottoms they now commanded. Preliminary cruises must take place, having for one of their objects the capture of further ships. Because he disliked the man, Captain Blood would not commit himself at once. But because he liked the proposal he consented to consider it. Being afterwards pressed by both Hagthorpe and Wolverstone, who did not share his own personal dislike of the Frenchman, the end of the matter was that within a week articles were drawn up between Levasseur and Blood, and signed by them and - as was usual - by the chosen representatives of their followers. These articles contained, inter alia, the common provisions that, should the two vessels separate, a strict account must afterwards be rendered of all prizes severally taken, whilst the vessel taking a prize should retain three fifths of its value, surrendering two fifths to its associate. These shares were subsequently to be subdivided among the crew of each vessel, in accordance with the articles already obtaining between each captain and his own men. |
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For the rest, the articles contained all the clauses that were usual, among which was the clause that any man found guilty of abstracting or concealing any part of a prize, be it of the value of no more than a peso, should be summarily hanged from the yardarm. All being now settled they made ready for sea, and on the very eve of sailing, Levasseur narrowly escaped being shot in a romantic attempt to scale the wall of the Governor's garden, with the object of taking passionate leave of the infatuated Mademoiselle d'Ogeron. He desisted after having been twice fired upon from a fragrant ambush of pimento trees where the Governor's guards were posted, and he departed vowing to take different and very definite measures on his return. That night he slept on board his ship, which with characteristic flamboyance he had named La Foudre, and there on the following day he received a visit from Captain Blood, whom he greeted half-mockingly as his admiral. The Irishman came to settle certain final details of which all that need concern us is an understanding that, in the event of the two vessels becoming separated by accident or design, they should rejoin each other as soon as might be at Tortuga. Thereafter Levasseur entertained his admiral to dinner, and jointly they drank success to the expedition, so copiously on the part of Levasseur that when the time came to separate he was as nearly drunk as it seemed possible for him to be and yet retain his understanding. Finally, towards evening, Captain Blood went over the side and was rowed back to his great ship with her red bulwarks and gilded ports, touched into a lovely thing of flame by the setting sun. He was a little heavy-hearted. I have said that he was a judge of men, and his judgment of Levasseur filled him with misgivings which were growing heavier in a measure as the hour of departure approached. He expressed it to Wolverstone, who met him as he stepped aboard the Arabella: "You over persuaded me into those articles, you blackguard; and it'll surprise me if any good comes of this association." The giant rolled his single bloodthirsty eye, and sneered, thrusting out his heavy jaw. "We'll wring the dog's neck if there's any treachery." "So we will - if we are there to wring it by then." And on that, dismissing the matter: "We sail in the morning, on the first of the ebb," he announced, and went off to his cabin. It would be somewhere about ten o'clock on the following morning, a full hour before the time appointed for sailing, when a canoe brought up alongside La Foudre, and a half-caste Indian stepped out of her and went up the ladder. He was clad in drawers of hairy, untanned hide, and a red blanket served him for a cloak. He was the bearer of a folded scrap of paper for Captain Levasseur. The Captain unfolded the letter, sadly soiled and crumpled by contact with the half-caste's person. Its contents may be roughly translated thus: "My well-beloved - I am in the Dutch brig Jongvrow, which is about to sail. Resolved to separate us for ever, my cruel father is sending me to Europe in my brother's charge. I implore you, come to my rescue. Deliver me, my well-beloved hero! - Your desolated Madeleine, who loves you." The well-beloved hero was moved to the soul of him by that passionate appeal. His scowling glance swept the bay for the Dutch brig, which he knew had been due to sail for Amsterdam with a cargo of hides and tobacco. She was nowhere to be seen among the shipping in that narrow, rock-bound harbour. |
| 784 |
It was some months after the rescue of Mademoiselle d'Ogeron - in August of that year 1687 - that this little fleet, after some minor adventures which I pass over in silence, sailed into the great lake of Maracaybo and effected its raid upon that opulent city of the Main. The affair did not proceed exactly as was hoped, and Blood's force came to find itself in a precarious position. This is best explained in the words employed by Cahusac - which Pitt has carefully recorded - in the course of an altercation that broke out on the steps of the Church of Nuestra Senora del Carmen, which Captain Blood had impiously appropriated for the purpose of a corps-de-garde. I have said already that he was a papist only when it suited him. The dispute was being conducted by Hagthorpe, Wolverstone, and Pitt on the one side, and Cahusac, out of whose uneasiness it all arose, on the other. Behind them in the sun-scorched, dusty square, sparsely fringed by palms, whose fronds drooped listlessly in the quivering heat, surged a couple of hundred wild fellows belonging to both parties, their own excitement momentarily quelled so that they might listen to what passed among their leaders. Cahusac appeared to be having it all his own way, and he raised his harsh, querulous voice so that all might hear his truculent denunciation. He spoke, Pitt tells us, a dreadful kind of English, which the shipmaster, however, makes little attempt to reproduce. His dress was as discordant as his speech. It was of a kind to advertise his trade, and ludicrously in contrast with the sober garb of Hagthorpe and the almost foppish daintiness of Jeremy Pitt. His soiled and blood-stained shirt of blue cotton was open in front, to cool his hairy breast, and the girdle about the waist of his leather breeches carried an arsenal of pistols and a knife, whilst a cutlass hung from a leather baldrick loosely slung about his body; above his countenance, broad and flat as a Mongolian's, a red scarf was swathed, turban-wise, about his head. "Is it that I have not warned you from the beginning that all was too easy?" he demanded between plaintiveness and fury. "I am no fool, my friends. I have eyes, me. And I see. I see an abandoned fort at the entrance of the lake, and nobody there to fire a gun at us when we came in. Then I suspect the trap. Who would not that had eyes and brain? Bah! we come on. What do we find? A city, abandoned like the fort; a city out of which the people have taken all things of value. Again I warn Captain Blood. It is a trap, I say. We are to come on; always to come on, without opposition, until we find that it is too late to go to sea again, that we cannot go back at all. But no one will listen to me. You all know so much more. Name of God! Captain Blood, he will go on, and we go on. We go to Gibraltar. True that at last, after long time, we catch the Deputy-Governor; true, we make him pay big ransom for Gibraltar; true between that ransom and the loot we return here with some two thousand pieces of eight. But what is it, in reality, will you tell me? Or shall I tell you? It is a piece of cheese - a piece of cheese in a mousetrap, and we are the little mice. Goddam! And the cats - oh, the cats they wait for us! The cats are those four Spanish ships of war that have come meantime. And they wait for us outside the bottle-neck of this lagoon. Mort de Dieu! That is what comes of the damned obstinacy of your fine Captain Blood." Wolverstone laughed. Cahusac exploded in fury. |
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This time Captain Blood was put out of temper. "Trouble me no more," he snapped at Cahusac, who came growling to him again. "Send word to Don Miguel that you have seceded from me. He'll give you safe conduct, devil a doubt. Then take one of the sloops, order your men aboard and put to sea, and the devil go with you." Cahusac would certainly have adopted that course if only his men had been unanimous in the matter. They, however, were torn between greed and apprehension. If they went they must abandon their share of the plunder, which was considerable, as well as the slaves and other prisoners they had taken. If they did this, and Captain Blood should afterwards contrive to get away unscathed - and from their knowledge of his resourcefulness, the thing, however unlikely, need not be impossible - he must profit by that which they now relinquished. This was a contingency too bitter for contemplation. And so, in the end, despite all that Cahusac could say, the surrender was not to Don Miguel, but to Peter Blood. They had come into the venture with him, they asserted, and they would go out of it with him or not at all. That was the message he received from them that same evening by the sullen mouth of Cahusac himself. He welcomed it, and invited the Breton to sit down and join the council which was even then deliberating upon the means to be employed. This council occupied the spacious patio of the Governor's house - which Captain Blood had appropriated to his own uses - a cloistered stone quadrangle in the middle of which a fountain played coolly under a trellis of vine. Orange-trees grew on two sides of it, and the still, evening air was heavy with the scent of them. It was one of those pleasant exterior-interiors which Moorish architects had introduced to Spain and the Spaniards had carried with them to the New World. Here that council of war, composed of six men in all, deliberated until late that night upon the plan of action which Captain Blood put forward. The great freshwater lake of Maracaybo, nourished by a score of rivers from the snow-capped ranges that surround it on two sides, is some hundred and twenty miles in length and almost the same distance across at its widest. It is - as has been indicated in the shape of a great bottle having its neck towards the sea at Maracaybo. Beyond this neck it widens again, and then the two long, narrow strips of land known as the islands of Vigilias and Palomas block the channel, standing lengthwise across it. The only passage out to sea for vessels of any draught lies in the narrow strait between these islands. Palomas, which is some ten miles in length, is unapproachable for half a mile on either side by any but the shallowest craft save at its eastern end, where, completely commanding the narrow passage out to sea, stands the massive fort which the buccaneers had found deserted upon their coming. In the broader water between this passage and the bar, the four Spanish ships were at anchor in mid-channel. The Admiral's Encarnacion, which we already know, was a mighty galleon of forty-eight great guns and eight small. Next in importance was the Salvador with thirty-six guns; the other two, the Infanta and the San Felipe, though smaller vessels, were still formidable enough with their twenty guns and a hundred and fifty men apiece. Such was the fleet of which the gauntlet was to be run by Captain Blood with his own Arabella of forty guns, the Elizabeth of twenty-six, and two sloops captured at Gibraltar, which they had indifferently armed with four culverins each. |
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In men they had a bare four hundred survivors of the five hundred-odd that had left Tortuga, to oppose to fully a thousand Spaniards manning the galleons. The plan of action submitted by Captain Blood to that council was a desperate one, as Cahusac uncompromisingly pronounced it. "Why, so it is," said the Captain. "But I've done things more desperate." Complacently he pulled at a pipe that was loaded with that fragrant Sacerdotes tobacco for which Gibraltar was famous, and of which they had brought away some hogsheads. "And what is more, they've succeeded. Audaces fortuna juvat. Bedad, they knew their world, the old Romans." He breathed into his companions and even into Cahusac some of his own spirit of confidence, and in confidence all went busily to work. For three days from sunrise to sunset, the buccaneers laboured and sweated to complete the preparations for the action that was to procure them their deliverance. Time pressed. They must strike before Don Miguel de Espinosa received the reenforcement of that fifth galleon, the Santo Nino, which was coming to join him from La Guayra. Their principal operations were on the larger of the two sloops captured at Gibraltar; to which vessel was assigned the leading part in Captain Blood's scheme. They began by tearing down all bulkheads, until they had reduced her to the merest shell, and in her sides they broke open so many ports that her gunwale was converted into the semblance of a grating. Next they increased by a half-dozen the scuttles in her deck, whilst into her hull they packed all the tar and pitch and brimstone that they could find in the town, to which they added six barrels of gunpowder, placed on end like guns at the open ports on her larboard side. On the evening of the fourth day, everything being now in readiness, all were got aboard, and the empty, pleasant city of Maracaybo was at last abandoned. But they did not weigh anchor until some two hours after midnight. Then, at last, on the first of the ebb, they drifted silently down towards the bar with all canvas furled save only their spiltsails, which, so as to give them steering way, were spread to the faint breeze that stirred through the purple darkness of the tropical night. The order of their going was as follows: Ahead went the improvised fire-ship in charge of Wolverstone, with a crew of six volunteers, each of whom was to have a hundred pieces of eight over and above his share of plunder as a special reward. Next came the Arabella. She was followed at a distance by the Elizabeth, commanded by Hagthorpe, with whom was the now shipless Cahusac and the bulk of his French followers. The rear was brought up by the second sloop and some eight canoes, aboard of which had been shipped the prisoners, the slaves, and most of the captured merchandise. The prisoners were all pinioned, and guarded by four buccaneers with musketoons who manned these boats in addition to the two fellows who were to sail them. Their place was to be in the rear and they were to take no part whatever in the coming fight. As the first glimmerings of opalescent dawn dissolved the darkness, the straining eyes of the buccaneers were able to make out the tall rigging of the Spanish vessels, riding at anchor less than a quarter of a mile ahead. Entirely without suspicion as the Spaniards were, and rendered confident by their own overwhelming strength, it is unlikely that they used a vigilance keener than their careless habit. Certain it is that they did not sight Blood's fleet in that dim light until some time after Blood's fleet had sighted them. |
| 787 |
By the time that they had actively roused themselves, Wolverstone's sloop was almost upon them, speeding under canvas which had been crowded to her yards the moment the galleons had loomed into view. Straight for the Admiral's great ship, the Encarnacion, did Wolverstone head the sloop; then, lashing down the helm, he kindled from a match that hung ready lighted beside him a great torch of thickly plaited straw that had been steeped in bitumen. First it glowed, then as he swung it round his head, it burst into flame, just as the slight vessel went crashing and bumping and scraping against the side of the flagship, whilst rigging became tangled with rigging, to the straining of yards and snapping of spars overhead. His six men stood at their posts on the larboard side, stark naked, each armed with a grapnel, four of them on the gunwale, two of them aloft. At the moment of impact these grapnels were slung to bind the Spaniard to them, those aloft being intended to complete and preserve the entanglement of the rigging. Aboard the rudely awakened galleon all was confused hurrying, scurrying, trumpeting, and shouting. At first there had been a desperately hurried attempt to get up the anchor; but this was abandoned as being already too late; and conceiving themselves on the point of being boarded, the Spaniards stood to arms to ward off the onslaught. Its slowness in coming intrigued them, being so different from the usual tactics of the buccaneers. Further intrigued were they by the sight of the gigantic Wolverstone speeding naked along his deck with a great flaming torch held high. Not until he had completed his work did they begin to suspect the truth - that he was lighting slow-matches - and then one of their officers rendered reckless by panic ordered a boarding-party on to the shop. The order came too late. Wolverstone had seen his six fellows drop overboard after the grapnels were fixed, and then had sped, himself, to the starboard gunwale. Thence he flung his flaming torch down the nearest gaping scuttle into the hold, and thereupon dived overboard in his turn, to be picked up presently by the longboat from the Arabella. But before that happened the sloop was a thing of fire, from which explosions were hurling blazing combustibles aboard the Encarnacion, and long tongues of flame were licking out to consume the galleon, beating back those daring Spaniards who, too late, strove desperately to cut her adrift. And whilst the most formidable vessel of the Spanish fleet was thus being put out of action at the outset, Blood had sailed in to open fire upon the Salvador. First athwart her hawse he had loosed a broadside that had swept her decks with terrific effect, then going on and about, he had put a second broadside into her hull at short range. Leaving her thus half-crippled, temporarily, at least, and keeping to his course, he had bewildered the crew of the Infanta by a couple of shots from the chasers on his beak-head, then crashed alongside to grapple and board her, whilst Hagthorpe was doing the like by the San Felipe. And in all this time not a single shot had the Spaniards contrived to fire, so completely had they been taken by surprise, and so swift and paralyzing had been Blood's stroke. Boarded now and faced by the cold steel of the buccaneers, neither the San Felipe nor the Infanta offered much resistance. The sight of their admiral in flames, and the Salvador drifting crippled from the action, had so utterly disheartened them that they accounted themselves vanquished, and laid down their arms. |
| 788 |
My prisoners, most of whom are persons of consideration, I will retain as hostages until after my departure, sending them back in the canoes which we shall take with us for that purpose. If your excellency should be so ill-advised as to refuse these terms, and thereby impose upon me the necessity of reducing your fort at the cost of some lives, I warn you that you may expect no quarter from us, and that I shall begin by leaving a heap of ashes where this pleasant city of Maracaybo now stands." The letter written, he bade them bring him from among the prisoners the Deputy-Governor of Maracaybo, who had been taken at Gibraltar. Disclosing its contents to him, he despatched him with it to Don Miguel. His choice of a messenger was shrewd. The Deputy-Governor was of all men the most anxious for the deliverance of his city, the one man who on his own account would plead most fervently for its preservation at all costs from the fate with which Captain Blood was threatening it. And as he reckoned so it befell. The Deputy-Governor added his own passionate pleading to the proposals of the letter. But Don Miguel was of stouter heart. True, his fleet had been partly destroyed and partly captured. But then, he argued, he had been taken utterly by surprise. That should not happen again. There should be no surprising the fort. Let Captain Blood do his worst at Maracaybo, there should be a bitter reckoning for him when eventually he decided - as, sooner or later, decide he must - to come forth. The Deputy-Governor was flung into panic. He lost his temper, and said some hard things to the Admiral. But they were not as hard as the thing the Admiral said to him in answer. "Had you been as loyal to your King in hindering the entrance of these cursed pirates as I shall be in hindering their going forth again, we should not now find ourselves in our present straits. So weary me no more with your coward counsels. I make no terms with Captain Blood. I know my duty to my King, and I intend to perform it. I also know my duty to myself. I have a private score with this rascal, and I intend to settle it. Take you that message back." So back to Maracaybo, back to his own handsome house in which Captain Blood had established his quarters, came the Deputy-Governor with the Admiral's answer. And because he had been shamed into a show of spirit by the Admiral's own stout courage in adversity, he delivered it as truculently as the Admiral could have desired. "And is it like that?" said Captain Blood with a quiet smile, though the heart of him sank at this failure of his bluster. "Well, well, it's a pity now that the Admiral's so headstrong. It was that way he lost his fleet, which was his own to lose. This pleasant city of Maracaybo isn't. So no doubt he'll lose it with fewer misgivings. I am sorry. Waste, like bloodshed, is a thing abhorrent to me. But there ye are! I'll have the faggots to the place in the morning, and maybe when he sees the blaze to-morrow night he'll begin to believe that Peter Blood is a man of his word. Ye may go, Don Francisco." The Deputy-Governor went out with dragging feet, followed by guards, his momentary truculence utterly spent. But no sooner had he departed than up leapt Cahusac, who had been of the council assembled to receive the Admiral's answer. His face was white and his hands shook as he held them out in protest. "Death of my life, what have you to say now?" he cried, his voice husky. And without waiting to hear what it might be, he raved on: "I knew you not frighten the Admiral so easy. |
| 789 |
They set themselves to labour like the damned at those ponderous guns emplaced to command the narrow passage out to sea. Groaning and sweating, urged on by the curses and even the whips of their officers, they toiled in a frenzy of panic-stricken haste to shift the greater number and the more powerful of their guns across to the landward side, there to emplace them anew, so that they might be ready to receive the attack which at any moment now might burst upon them from the woods not half a mile away. Thus, when night fell, although in mortal anxiety of the onslaught of those wild devils whose reckless courage was a byword on the seas of the Main, at least the Spaniards were tolerably prepared for it. Waiting, they stood to their guns. And whilst they waited thus, under cover of the darkness and as the tide began to ebb, Captain Blood's fleet weighed anchor quietly; and, as once before, with no more canvas spread than that which their sprits could carry, so as to give them steering way - and even these having been painted black - the four vessels, without a light showing, groped their way by soundings to the channel which led to that narrow passage out to sea. The Elizabeth and the Infanta, leading side by side, were almost abreast of the fort before their shadowy bulks and the soft gurgle of water at their prows were detected by the Spaniards, whose attention until that moment had been all on the other side. And now there arose on the night air such a sound of human baffled fury as may have resounded about Babel at the confusion of tongues. To heighten that confusion, and to scatter disorder among the Spanish soldiery, the Elizabeth emptied her larboard guns into the fort as she was swept past on the swift ebb. At once realizing - though not yet how - he had been duped, and that his prey was in the very act of escaping after all, the Admiral frantically ordered the guns that had been so laboriously moved to be dragged back to their former emplacements, and commanded his gunners meanwhile to the slender batteries that of all his powerful, but now unavailable, armament still remained trained upon the channel. With these, after the loss of some precious moments, the fort at last made fire. It was answered by a terrific broadside from the Arabella, which had now drawn abreast, and was crowding canvas to her yards. The enraged and gibbering Spaniards had a brief vision of her as the line of flame spurted from her red flank, and the thunder of her broadside drowned the noise of the creaking halyards. After that they saw her no more. Assimilated by the friendly darkness which the lesser Spanish guns were speculatively stabbing, the escaping ships fired never another shot that might assist their baffled and bewildered enemies to locate them. Some slight damage was sustained by Blood's fleet. But by the time the Spaniards had resolved their confusion into some order of dangerous offence, that fleet, well served by a southerly breeze, was through the narrows and standing out to sea. Thus was Don Miguel de Espinosa left to chew the bitter cud of a lost opportunity, and to consider in what terms he would acquaint the Supreme Council of the Catholic King that Peter Blood had got away from Maracaybo, taking with him two twenty-gun frigates that were lately the property of Spain, to say nothing of two hundred and fifty thousand pieces of eight and other plunder. And all this in spite of Don Miguel's four galleons and his heavily armed fort that at one time had held the pirates so securely trapped. |
| 790 |
Heavy, indeed, grew the account of Peter Blood, which Don Miguel swore passionately to Heaven should at all costs to himself be paid in full. Nor were the losses already detailed the full total of those suffered on this occasion by the King of Spain. For on the following evening, off the coast of Oruba, at the mouth of the Gulf of Venezuela, Captain Blood's fleet came upon the belated Santo Nino, speeding under full sail to reenforce Don Miguel at Maracaybo. At first the Spaniard had conceived that she was meeting the victorious fleet of Don Miguel, returning from the destruction of the pirates. When at comparatively close quarters the pennon of St. George soared to the Arabella's masthead to disillusion her, the Santo Nino chose the better part of valour, and struck her flag. Captain Blood ordered her crew to take to the boats, and land themselves at Oruba or wherever else they pleased. So considerate was he that to assist them he presented them with several of the piraguas which he still had in tow. "You will find," said he to her captain, "that Don Miguel is in an extremely bad temper. Commend me to him, and say that I venture to remind him that he must blame himself for all the ills that have befallen him. The evil has recoiled upon him which he loosed when he sent his brother unofficially to make a raid upon the island of Barbados. Bid him think twice before he lets his devils loose upon an English settlement again." With that he dismissed the Captain, who went over the side of the Santo Nino, and Captain Blood proceeded to investigate the value of this further prize. When her hatches were removed, a human cargo was disclosed in her hold. "Slaves," said Wolverstone, and persisted in that belief cursing Spanish devilry until Cahusac crawled up out of the dark bowels of the ship, and stood blinking in the sunlight. There was more than sunlight to make the Breton pirate blink. And those that crawled out after him - the remnants of his crew - cursed him horribly for the pusillanimity which had brought them into the ignominy of owing their deliverance to those whom they had deserted as lost beyond hope. Their sloop had encountered and had been sunk three days ago by the Santo Nino, and Cahusac had narrowly escaped hanging merely that for some time he might be a mock among the Brethren of the Coast. For many a month thereafter he was to hear in Tortuga the jeering taunt: "Where do you spend the gold that you brought back from Maracaybo?" The affair at Maracaybo is to be considered as Captain Blood's buccaneering masterpiece. Although there is scarcely one of the many actions that he fought - recorded in such particular detail by Jeremy Pitt - which does not afford some instance of his genius for naval tactics, yet in none is this more shiningly displayed than in those two engagements by which he won out of the trap which Don Miguel de Espinosa had sprung upon him. The fame which he had enjoyed before this, great as it already was, is dwarfed into insignificance by the fame that followed. It was a fame such as no buccaneer - not even Morgan - has ever boasted, before or since. In Tortuga, during the months he spent there refitting the three ships he had captured from the fleet that had gone out to destroy him, he found himself almost an object of worship in the eyes of the wild Brethren of the Coast, all of whom now clamoured for the honour of serving under him. It placed him in the rare position of being able to pick and choose the crews for his augmented fleet, and he chose fastidiously. |
| 791 |
Aboard the Milagrosa sailed the vindictive Don Miguel. The third and last of these ships with which we are at present concerned was an English man-of-war, which on the date I have given was at anchor in the French port of St. Nicholas on the northwest coast of Hispaniola. She was on her way from Plymouth to Jamaica, and carried on board a very distinguished passenger in the person of Lord Julian Wade, who came charged by his kinsman, my Lord Sunderland, with a mission of some consequence and delicacy, directly arising out of that vexatious correspondence between England and Spain. The French Government, like the English, excessively annoyed by the depredations of the buccaneers, and the constant straining of relations with Spain that ensued, had sought in vain to put them down by enjoining the utmost severity against them upon her various overseas governors. But these, either - like the Governor of Tortuga - throve out of a scarcely tacit partnership with the filibusters, or - like the Governor of French Hispaniola - felt that they were to be encouraged as a check upon the power and greed of Spain, which might otherwise be exerted to the disadvantage of the colonies of other nations. They looked, indeed, with apprehension upon recourse to any vigorous measures which must result in driving many of the buccaneers to seek new hunting-grounds in the South Sea. To satisfy King James's anxiety to conciliate Spain, and in response to the Spanish Ambassador's constant and grievous expostulations, my Lord Sunderland, the Secretary of State, had appointed a strong man to the deputy-governorship of Jamaica. This strong man was that Colonel Bishop who for some years now had been the most influential planter in Barbados. Colonel Bishop had accepted the post, and departed from the plantations in which his great wealth was being amassed with an eagerness that had its roots in a desire to pay off a score of his own with Peter Blood. From his first coming to Jamaica, Colonel Bishop had made himself felt by the buccaneers. But do what he might, the one buccaneer whom he made his particular quarry - that Peter Blood who once had been his slave - eluded him ever, and continued undeterred and in great force to harass the Spaniards upon sea and land, and to keep the relations between England and Spain in a state of perpetual ferment, particularly dangerous in those days when the peace of Europe was precariously maintained. Exasperated not only by his own accumulated chagrin, but also by the reproaches for his failure which reached him from London, Colonel Bishop actually went so far as to consider hunting his quarry in Tortuga itself and making an attempt to clear the island of the buccaneers it sheltered. Fortunately for himself, he abandoned the notion of so insane an enterprise, deterred not only by the enormous natural strength of the place, but also by the reflection that a raid upon what was, nominally at least, a French settlement, must be attended by grave offence to France. Yet short of some such measure, it appeared to Colonel Bishop that he was baffled. He confessed as much in a letter to the Secretary of State. This letter and the state of things which it disclosed made my Lord Sunderland despair of solving this vexatious problem by ordinary means. He turned to the consideration of extraordinary ones, and bethought him of the plan adopted with Morgan, who had been enlisted into the King's service under Charles II. It occurred to him that a similar course might be similarly effective with Captain Blood. |
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The friendship, which it was her great gift to command in all she met, grew steadily between those two in the little time remaining, until the event befell that marred what was promising to be the pleasantest stage of his lordship's voyage. The marplot was the mad-dog Spanish Admiral, whom they encountered on the second day out, when halfway across the Gulf of Gonaves. The Captain of the Royal Mary was not disposed to be intimidated even when Don Miguel opened fire on him. Observing the Spaniard's plentiful seaboard towering high above the water and offering him so splendid a mark, the Englishman was moved to scorn. If this Don who flew the banner of Castile wanted a fight, the Royal Mary was just the ship to oblige him. It may be that he was justified of his gallant confidence, and that he would that day have put an end to the wild career of Don Miguel de Espinosa, but that a lucky shot from the Milagrosa got among some powder stored in his forecastle, and blew up half his ship almost before the fight had started. How the powder came there will never now be known, and the gallant Captain himself did not survive to enquire into it. Before the men of the Royal Mary had recovered from their consternation, their captain killed and a third of their number destroyed with him, the ship yawing and rocking helplessly in a crippled state, the Spaniards boarded her. In the Captain's cabin under the poop, to which Miss Bishop had been conducted for safety, Lord Julian was seeking to comfort and encourage her, with assurances that all would yet be well, at the very moment when Don Miguel was stepping aboard. Lord Julian himself was none so steady, and his face was undoubtedly pale. Not that he was by any means a coward. But this cooped-up fighting on an unknown element in a thing of wood that might at any moment founder under his feet into the depths of ocean was disturbing to one who could be brave enough ashore. Fortunately Miss Bishop did not appear to be in desperate need of the poor comfort he was in case to offer. Certainly she, too, was pale, and her hazel eyes may have looked a little larger than usual. But she had herself well in hand. Half sitting, half leaning on the Captain's table, she preserved her courage sufficiently to seek to calm the octoroon waiting-woman who was grovelling at her feet in a state of terror. And then the cabin-door flew open, and Don Miguel himself, tall, sunburned, and aquiline of face, strode in. Lord Julian span round, to face him, and clapped a hand to his sword. The Spaniard was brisk and to the point. "Don't be a fool," he said in his own tongue, "or you'll come by a fool's end. Your ship is sinking." There were three or four men in morions behind Don Miguel, and Lord Julian realized the position. He released his hilt, and a couple of feet or so of steel slid softly back into the scabbard. But Don Miguel smiled, with a flash of white teeth behind his grizzled beard, and held out his hand. "If you please," he said. Lord Julian hesitated. His eyes strayed to Miss Bishop's. "I think you had better," said that composed young lady, whereupon with a shrug his lordship made the required surrender. "Come you - all of you - aboard my ship," Don Miguel invited them, and strode out. They went, of course. For one thing the Spaniard had force to compel them; for another a ship which he announced to be sinking offered them little inducement to remain. They stayed no longer than was necessary to enable Miss Bishop to collect some spare articles of dress and my lord to snatch up his valise. |
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It confirmed the opinion, contemptuously expressed to his lordship by Miss Bishop, that since they were to be held to ransom they need not fear any violence or hurt. A cabin was placed at the disposal of the lady and her terrified woman, and another at Lord Julian's. They were given the freedom of the ship, and bidden to dine at the Admiral's table; nor were his further intentions regarding them mentioned, nor yet his immediate destination. The Milagrosa, with her consort the Hidalga rolling after her, steered a south by westerly course, then veered to the southeast round Cape Tiburon, and thereafter, standing well out to sea, with the land no more than a cloudy outline to larboard, she headed directly east, and so ran straight into the arms of Captain Blood, who was making for the Windward Passage, as we know. That happened early on the following morning. After having systematically hunted his enemy in vain for a year, Don Miguel chanced upon him in this unexpected and entirely fortuitous fashion. But that is the ironic way of Fortune. It was also the way of Fortune that Don Miguel should thus come upon the Arabella at a time when, separated from the rest of the fleet, she was alone and at a disadvantage. It looked to Don Miguel as if the luck which so long had been on Blood's side had at last veered in his own favour. Miss Bishop, newly risen, had come out to take the air on the quarter-deck with his lordship in attendance - as you would expect of so gallant a gentleman - when she beheld the big red ship that had once been the Cinco Llagas out of Cadiz. The vessel was bearing down upon them, her mountains of snowy canvas bellying forward, the long pennon with the cross of St. George fluttering from her main truck in the morning breeze, the gilded portholes in her red hull and the gilded beak-head aflash in the morning sun. Miss Bishop was not to recognize this for that same Cinco Llagas which she had seen once before - on a tragic day in Barbados three years ago. To her it was just a great ship that was heading resolutely, majestically, towards them, and an Englishman to judge by the pennon she was flying. The sight thrilled her curiously; it awoke in her an uplifting sense of pride that took no account of the danger to herself in the encounter that must now be inevitable. Beside her on the poop, whither they had climbed to obtain a better view, and equally arrested and at gaze, stood Lord Julian. But he shared none of her exultation. He had been in his first sea-fight yesterday, and he felt that the experience would suffice him for a very considerable time. This, I insist, is no reflection upon his courage. "Look," said Miss Bishop, pointing; and to his infinite amazement he observed that her eyes were sparkling. Did she realize, he wondered, what was afoot? Her next sentence resolved his doubt. "She is English, and she comes resolutely on. She means to fight." "God help her, then," said his lordship gloomily. "Her captain must be mad. What can he hope to do against two such heavy hulks as these? If they could so easily blow the Royal Mary out of the water, what will they do to this vessel? Look at that devil Don Miguel. He's utterly disgusting in his glee." From the quarter-deck, where he moved amid the frenzy of preparation, the Admiral had turned to flash a backward glance at his prisoners. His eyes were alight, his face transfigured. He flung out an arm to point to the advancing ship, and bawled something in Spanish that was lost to them in the noise of the labouring crew. |
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Don Miguel swore profanely, and then, as the helm was put over to swing her back to her course, his own prow replied. But the aim was too high, and whilst one of the shots tore through the Arabella's shrouds and scarred her mainmast, the other again went wide. And when the smoke of that discharge had lifted, the English ship was found almost between the Spaniards, her bows in line with theirs and coming steadily on into what his lordship deemed a death-trap. Lord Julian held his breath, and Miss Bishop gasped, clutching the rail before her. She had a glimpse of the wickedly grinning face of Don Miguel, and the grinning faces of the men at the guns in the waist. At last the Arabella was right between the Spanish ships prow to poop and poop to prow. Don Miguel spoke to the trumpeter, who had mounted the quarter-deck and stood now at the Admiral's elbow. The man raised the silver bugle that was to give the signal for the broadsides of both ships. But even as he placed it to his lips, the Admiral seized his arm, to arrest him. Only then had he perceived what was so obvious - or should have been to an experienced sea-fighter: he had delayed too long and Captain Blood had outmanoeuvred him. In attempting to fire now upon the Englishman, the Milagrosa and her consort would also be firing into each other. Too late he ordered his helmsman to put the tiller hard over and swing the ship to larboard, as a preliminary to manoeuvring for a less impossible position of attack. At that very moment the Arabella seemed to explode as she swept by. Eighteen guns from each of her flanks emptied themselves at that point-blank range into the hulls of the two Spanish vessels. Half stunned by that reverberating thunder, and thrown off her balance by the sudden lurch of the ship under her feet, Miss Bishop hurtled violently against Lord Julian, who kept his feet only by clutching the rail on which he had been leaning. Billowing clouds of smoke to starboard blotted out everything, and its acrid odour, taking them presently in the throat, set them gasping and coughing. From the grim confusion and turmoil in the waist below arose a clamour of fierce Spanish blasphemies and the screams of maimed men. The Milagrosa staggered slowly ahead, a gaping rent in her bulwarks; her foremast was shattered, fragments of the yards hanging in the netting spread below. Her beak-head was in splinters, and a shot had smashed through into the great cabin, reducing it to wreckage. Don Miguel was bawling orders wildly, and peering ever and anon through the curtain of smoke that was drifting slowly astern, in his anxiety to ascertain how it might have fared with the Hidalga. Suddenly, and ghostly at first through that lifting haze, loomed the outline of a ship; gradually the lines of her red hull became more and more sharply defined as she swept nearer with poles all bare save for the spread of canvas on her sprit. Instead of holding to her course as Don Miguel had expected she would, the Arabella had gone about under cover of the smoke, and sailing now in the same direction as the Milagrosa, was converging sharply upon her across the wind, so sharply that almost before the frenzied Don Miguel had realized the situation, his vessel staggered under the rending impact with which the other came hurtling alongside. There was a rattle and clank of metal as a dozen grapnels fell, and tore and caught in the timbers of the Milagrosa, and the Spaniard was firmly gripped in the tentacles of the English ship. |
| 795 |
Beyond her and now well astern the veil of smoke was rent at last and the Hidalga was revealed in desperate case. She was bilging fast, with an ominous list to larboard, and it could be no more than a question of moments before she settled down. The attention of her hands was being entirely given to a desperate endeavour to launch the boats in time. Of this Don Miguel's anguished eyes had no more than a fleeting but comprehensive glimpse before his own decks were invaded by a wild, yelling swarm of boarders from the grappling ship. Never was confidence so quickly changed into despair, never was hunter more swiftly converted into helpless prey. For helpless the Spaniards were. The swiftly executed boarding manoeuvre had caught them almost unawares in the moment of confusion following the punishing broadside they had sustained at such short range. For a moment there was a valiant effort by some of Don Miguel's officers to rally the men for a stand against these invaders. But the Spaniards, never at their best in close-quarter fighting, were here demoralized by knowledge of the enemies with whom they had to deal. Their hastily formed ranks were smashed before they could be steadied; driven across the waist to the break of the poop on the one side, and up to the forecastle bulkheads on the other, the fighting resolved itself into a series of skirmishes between groups. And whilst this was doing above, another horde of buccaneers swarmed through the hatch to the main deck below to overpower the gun-crews at their stations there. On the quarter deck, towards which an overwhelming wave of buccaneers was sweeping, led by a one-eyed giant, who was naked to the waist, stood Don Miguel, numbed by despair and rage. Above and behind him on the poop, Lord Julian and Miss Bishop looked on, his lordship aghast at the fury of this cooped-up fighting, the lady's brave calm conquered at last by horror so that she reeled there sick and faint. Soon, however, the rage of that brief fight was spent. They saw the banner of Castile come fluttering down from the masthead. A buccaneer had slashed the halyard with his cutlass. The boarders were in possession, and on the upper deck groups of disarmed Spaniards stood huddled now like herded sheep. Suddenly Miss Bishop recovered from her nausea, to lean forward staring wild-eyed, whilst if possible her cheeks turned yet a deadlier hue than they had been already. Picking his way daintily through that shambles in the waist came a tall man with a deeply tanned face that was shaded by a Spanish headpiece. He was armed in back-and-breast of black steel beautifully damascened with golden arabesques. Over this, like a stole, he wore a sling of scarlet silk, from each end of which hung a silver-mounted pistol. Up the broad companion to the quarter-deck he came, toying with easy assurance, until he stood before the Spanish Admiral. Then he bowed stiff and formally. A crisp, metallic voice, speaking perfect Spanish, reached those two spectators on the poop, and increased the admiring wonder in which Lord Julian had observed the man's approach. "We meet again at last, Don Miguel," it said. "I hope you are satisfied. Although the meeting may not be exactly as you pictured it, at least it has been very ardently sought and desired by you." Speechless, livid of face, his mouth distorted and his breathing laboured, Don Miguel de Espinosa received the irony of that man to whom he attributed his ruin and more beside. Then he uttered an inarticulate cry of rage, and his hand swept to his sword. |
| 796 |
It was, you will remember, stipulated in their articles that in these as in other matters they must submit to the commands of their leader. And because of the singular good fortune which had attended his leadership, he had been able to impose that stern condition of a discipline unknown before among buccaneers. How would not these men laugh at him now if he were to tell them that this he had done out of respect for a slip of a girl of whom he had fallen romantically enamoured? How would not that laughter swell if he added that this girl had that day informed him that she did not number thieves and pirates among her acquaintance. Thief and pirate! How the words clung, how they stung and burnt his brain! It did not occur to him, being no psychologist, nor learned in the tortuous workings of the feminine mind, that the fact that she should bestow upon him those epithets in the very moment and circumstance of their meeting was in itself curious. He did not perceive the problem thus presented; therefore he could not probe it. Else he might have concluded that if in a moment in which by delivering her from captivity he deserved her gratitude, yet she expressed herself in bitterness, it must be because that bitterness was anterior to the gratitude and deep-seated. She had been moved to it by hearing of the course he had taken. Why? It was what he did not ask himself, or some ray of light might have come to brighten his dark, his utterly evil despondency. Surely she would never have been so moved had she not cared - had she not felt that in what he did there was a personal wrong to herself. Surely, he might have reasoned, nothing short of this could have moved her to such a degree of bitterness and scorn as that which she had displayed. That is how you will reason. Not so, however, reasoned Captain Blood. Indeed, that night he reasoned not at all. His soul was given up to conflict between the almost sacred love he had borne her in all these years and the evil passion which she had now awakened in him. Extremes touch, and in touching may for a space become confused, indistinguishable. And the extremes of love and hate were to-night so confused in the soul of Captain Blood that in their fusion they made up a monstrous passion. Thief and pirate! That was what she deemed him, without qualification, oblivious of the deep wrongs he had suffered, the desperate case in which he found himself after his escape from Barbados, and all the rest that had gone to make him what he was. That he should have conducted his filibustering with hands as clean as were possible to a man engaged in such undertakings had also not occurred to her as a charitable thought with which to mitigate her judgment of a man she had once esteemed. She had no charity for him, no mercy. She had summed him up, convicted him and sentenced him in that one phrase. He was thief and pirate in her eyes; nothing more, nothing less. What, then, was she? What are those who have no charity? he asked the stars. Well, as she had shaped him hitherto, so let her shape him now. Thief and pirate she had branded him. She should be justified. Thief and pirate should he prove henceforth; no more nor less; as bowelless, as remorseless, as all those others who had deserved those names. He would cast out the maudlin ideals by which he had sought to steer a course; put an end to this idiotic struggle to make the best of two worlds. She had shown him clearly to which world he belonged. Let him now justify her. |
| 797 |
Captain Blood escorted his compulsory guest to the head of the ladder. Colonel Bishop, who for two hours and more had been in a state of mortal anxiety, breathed freely at last; and as the tide of his fears receded, so that of his deep-rooted hate of this audacious buccaneer resumed its normal flow. But he practised circumspection. If in his heart he vowed that once back in Port Royal there was no effort he would spare, no nerve he would not strain, to bring Peter Blood to final moorings in Execution Dock, at least he kept that vow strictly to himself. Peter Blood had no illusions. He was not, and never would be, the complete pirate. There was not another buccaneer in all the Caribbean who would have denied himself the pleasure of stringing Colonel Bishop from the yardarm, and by thus finally stifling the vindictive planter's hatred have increased his own security. But Blood was not of these. Moreover, in the case of Colonel Bishop there was a particular reason for restraint. Because he was Arabella Bishop's uncle, his life must remain sacred to Captain Blood. And so the Captain smiled into the sallow, bloated face and the little eyes that fixed him with a malevolence not to be dissembled. "A safe voyage home to you, Colonel, darling," said he in valediction, and from his easy, smiling manner you would never have dreamt of the pain he carried in his breast. "It's the second time ye've served me for a hostage. Ye'll be well advised to avoid a third. I'm not lucky to you, Colonel, as you should be perceiving." Jeremy Pitt, the master, lounging at Blood's elbow, looked darkly upon the departure of the Deputy-Governor. Behind them a little mob of grim, stalwart, sun-tanned buccaneers were restrained from cracking Bishop like a flea only by their submission to the dominant will of their leader. They had learnt from Pitt while yet in Port Royal of their Captain's danger, and whilst as ready as he to throw over the King's service which had been thrust upon them, yet they resented the manner in which this had been rendered necessary, and they marvelled now at Blood's restraint where Bishop was concerned. The Deputy-Governor looked round and met the lowering hostile glances of those fierce eyes. Instinct warned him that his life at that moment was held precariously, that an injudicious word might precipitate an explosion of hatred from which no human power could save him. Therefore he said nothing. He inclined his head in silence to the Captain, and went blundering and stumbling in his haste down that ladder to the sloop and its waiting negro crew. They pushed off the craft from the red hull of the Arabella, bent to their sweeps, then, hoisting sail, headed back for Port Royal, intent upon reaching it before darkness should come down upon them. And Bishop, the great bulk of him huddled in the stem sheets, sat silent, his black brows knitted, his coarse lips pursed, malevolence and vindictiveness so whelming now his recent panic that he forgot his near escape of the yardarm and the running noose. On the mole at Port Royal, under the low, embattled wall of the fort, Major Mallard and Lord Julian waited to receive him, and it was with infinite relief that they assisted him from the sloop. Major Mallard was disposed to be apologetic. "Glad to see you safe, sir," said he. "I'd have sunk Blood's ship in spite of your excellency's being aboard but for your own orders by Lord Julian, and his lordship's assurance that he had Blood's word for it that no harm should come to you so that no harm came to him. |
| 798 |
He had yet to deliver the message from Captain Blood, and this, he thought, would be his opportunity. But Miss Bishop had retired for the night, and Lord Julian must curb his impatience - it amounted by now to nothing less - until the morrow. Very early next morning, before the heat of the day came to render the open intolerable to his lordship, he espied her from his window moving amid the azaleas in the garden. It was a fitting setting for one who was still as much a delightful novelty to him in womanhood as was the azalea among flowers. He hurried forth to join her, and when, aroused from her pensiveness, she had given him a good-morrow, smiling and frank, he explained himself by the announcement that he bore her a message from Captain Blood. He observed her little start and the slight quiver of her lips, and observed thereafter not only her pallor and the shadowy rings about her eyes, but also that unusually wistful air which last night had escaped his notice. They moved out of the open to one of the terraces, where a pergola of orange-trees provided a shaded sauntering space that was at once cool and fragrant. As they went, he considered her admiringly, and marvelled at himself that it should have taken him so long fully to realize her slim, unusual grace, and to find her, as he now did, so entirely desirable, a woman whose charm must irradiate all the life of a man, and touch its commonplaces into magic. He noted the sheen of her red-brown hair, and how gracefully one of its heavy ringlets coiled upon her slender, milk-white neck. She wore a gown of shimmering grey silk, and a scarlet rose, fresh-gathered, was pinned at her breast like a splash of blood. Always thereafter when he thought of her it was as he saw her at that moment, as never, I think, until that moment had he seen her. In silence they paced on a little way into the green shade. Then she paused and faced him. "You said something of a message, sir," she reminded him, thus betraying some of her impatience. He fingered the ringlets of his periwig, a little embarrassed how to deliver himself, considering how he should begin. "He desired me," he said at last, "to give you a message that should prove to you that there is still something left in him of the unfortunate gentleman that... that.., for which once you knew him." "That is not now necessary," said she very gravely. He misunderstood her, of course, knowing nothing of the enlightenment that yesterday had come to her. "I think..., nay, I know that you do him an injustice," said he. Her hazel eyes continued to regard him. "If you will deliver the message, it may enable me to judge." To him, this was confusing. He did not immediately answer. He found that he had not sufficiently considered the terms he should employ, and the matter, after all, was of an exceeding delicacy, demanding delicate handling. It was not so much that he was concerned to deliver a message as to render it a vehicle by which to plead his own cause. Lord Julian, well versed in the lore of womankind and usually at his ease with ladies of the beau-monde, found himself oddly constrained before this frank and unsophisticated niece of a colonial planter. They moved on in silence and as if by common consent towards the brilliant sunshine where the pergola was intersected by the avenue leading upwards to the house. Across this patch of light fluttered a gorgeous butterfly, that was like black and scarlet velvet and large as a man's hand. His lordship's brooding eyes followed it out of sight before he answered. |
| 799 |
M. de Cussy, in fact, deserves your sympathy. His self-sufficiency was blown from him by the haughty M. de Rivarol, as down from a thistle by the winds of autumn. The General of the King's Armies abused him - this man who was Governor of Hispaniola - as if he were a lackey. M. de Cussy defended himself by urging the thing that Captain Blood had so admirably urged already on his behalf - that if the terms he had made with the buccaneers were not confirmed there was no harm done. M. de Rivarol bullied and browbeat him into silence. Having exhausted abuse, the Baron proceeded to indignities. Since he accounted that M. de Cussy had proved himself unworthy of the post he held, M. de Rivarol took over the responsibilities of that post for as long as he might remain in Hispaniola, and to give effect to this he began by bringing soldiers from his ships, and setting his own guard in M. de Cussy's castle. Out of this, trouble followed quickly. Wolverstone coming ashore next morning in the picturesque garb that he affected, his head swathed in a coloured handkerchief, was jeered at by an officer of the newly landed French troops. Not accustomed to derision, Wolverstone replied in kind and with interest. The officer passed to insult, and Wolverstone struck him a blow that felled him, and left him only the half of his poor senses. Within the hour the matter was reported to M. de Rivarol, and before noon, by M. de Rivarol's orders, Wolverstone was under arrest in the castle. The Baron had just sat down to dinner with M. de Cussy when the negro who waited on them announced Captain Blood. Peevishly M. de Rivarol bade him be admitted, and there entered now into his presence a spruce and modish gentleman, dressed with care and sombre richness in black and silver, his swarthy, clear-cut face scrupulously shaven, his long black hair in ringlets that fell to a collar of fine point. In his right hand the gentleman carried a broad black hat with a scarlet ostrich-plume, in his left hand an ebony cane. His stockings were of silk, a bunch of ribbons masked his garters, and the black rosettes on his shoes were finely edged with gold. For a moment M. de Rivarol did not recognize him. For Blood looked younger by ten years than yesterday. But the vivid blue eyes under their level black brows were not to be forgotten, and they proclaimed him for the man announced even before he had spoken. His resurrected pride had demanded that he should put himself on an equality with the baron and advertise that equality by his exterior. "I come inopportunely," he courteously excused himself. "My apologies. My business could not wait. It concerns, M. de Cussy, Captain Wolverstone of the Lachesis, whom you have placed under arrest." "It was I who placed him under arrest," said M. de Rivarol. "Indeed! But I thought that M. de Cussy was Governor of Hispaniola." "Whilst I am here, monsieur, I am the supreme authority. It is as well that you should understand it." "Perfectly. But it is not possible that you are aware of the mistake that has been made." "Mistake, do you say?" "I say mistake. On the whole, it is polite of me to use that word. Also it is expedient. It will save discussions. Your people have arrested the wrong man, M. de Rivarol. Instead of the French officer, who used the grossest provocation, they have arrested Captain Wolverstone. It is a matter which I beg you to reverse without delay." M. de Rivarol's hawk-face flamed scarlet. His dark eyes bulged. "Sir, you... you are insolent! |
| 800 |
It is worthy of the huckster who sought to haggle with us about our share, and to beat us down after the articles pledging you were already signed. If I am wrong - let M. de Cussy say so. If I am wrong, let me be proven wrong, and I will beg your pardon. Meanwhile, monsieur, I withdraw from this council. I will have no further part in your deliberations. I accepted the service of the King of France with intent to honour that service. I cannot honour that service by lending countenance to a waste of life and resources in raids upon unimportant settlements, with plunder for their only object. The responsibility for such decisions must rest with you, and with you alone. I desire M. de Cussy to report me to the Ministers of France. For the rest, monsieur, it merely remains for you to give me your orders. I await them aboard my ship - and anything else, of a personal nature, that you may feel I have provoked by the terms I have felt compelled to use in this council. M. le Baron, I have the honour to wish you good-day." He stalked out, and his three captains - although they thought him mad - rolled after him in loyal silence. M. de Rivarol was gasping like a landed fish. The stark truth had robbed him of speech. When he recovered, it was to thank Heaven vigorously that the council was relieved by Captain Blood's own act of that gentleman's further participation in its deliberations. Inwardly M. de Rivarol burned with shame and rage. The mask had been plucked from him, and he had been held up to scorn - he, the General of the King's Armies by Sea and Land in America. Nevertheless, it was to Cartagena that they sailed in the middle of March. Volunteers and negroes had brought up the forces directly under M. de Rivarol to twelve hundred men. With these he thought he could keep the buccaneer contingent in order and submissive. They made up an imposing fleet, led by M. de Rivarol's flagship, the Victorieuse, a mighty vessel of eighty guns. Each of the four other French ships was at least as powerful as Blood's Arabella, which was of forty guns. Followed the lesser buccaneer vessels, the Elizabeth, Lachesis, and Atropos, and a dozen frigates laden with stores, besides canoes and small craft in tow. Narrowly they missed the Jamaica fleet with Colonel Bishop, which sailed north for Tortuga two days after the Baron de Rivarol's southward passage. Having crossed the Caribbean in the teeth of contrary winds, it was not until the early days of April that the French fleet hove in sight of Cartagena, and M. de Rivarol summoned a council aboard his flagship to determine the method of assault. "It is of importance, messieurs," he told them, "that we take the city by surprise, not only before it can put itself into a state of defence; but before it can remove its treasures inland. I propose to land a force sufficient to achieve this to the north of the city to-night after dark." And he explained in detail the scheme upon which his wits had laboured. He was heard respectfully and approvingly by his officers, scornfully by Captain Blood, and indifferently by the other buccaneer captains present. For it must be understood that Blood's refusal to attend councils had related only to those concerned with determining the nature of the enterprise to be undertaken. Captain Blood was the only one amongst them who knew exactly what lay ahead. Two years ago he had himself considered a raid upon the place, and he had actually made a survey of it in circumstances which he was presently to disclose. |
| 801 |
The Baron's proposal was one to be expected from a commander whose knowledge of Cartagena was only such as might be derived from maps. Geographically and strategically considered, it is a curious place. It stands almost four-square, screened east and north by hills, and it may be said to face south upon the inner of two harbours by which it is normally approached. The entrance to the outer harbour, which is in reality a lagoon some three miles across, lies through a neck known as the Boca Chica - or Little Mouth - and defended by a fort. A long strip of densely wooded land to westward acts here as a natural breakwater, and as the inner harbour is approached, another strip of land thrusts across at right angles from the first, towards the mainland on the east. Just short of this it ceases, leaving a deep but very narrow channel, a veritable gateway, into the secure and sheltered inner harbour. Another fort defends this second passage. East and north of Cartagena lies the mainland, which may be left out of account. But to the west and northwest this city, so well guarded on every other side, lies directly open to the sea. It stands back beyond a half-mile of beach, and besides this and the stout Walls which fortify it, would appear to have no other defences. But those appearances are deceptive, and they had utterly deceived M. de Rivarol, when he devised his plan. It remained for Captain Blood to explain the difficulties when M. de Rivarol informed him that the honour of opening the assault in the manner which he prescribed was to be accorded to the buccaneers. Captain Blood smiled sardonic appreciation of the honour reserved for his men. It was precisely what he would have expected. For the buccaneers the dangers; for M. de Rivarol the honour, glory and profit of the enterprise. "It is an honour which I must decline," said he quite coldly. Wolverstone grunted approval and Hagthorpe nodded. Yberville, who as much as any of them resented the superciliousness of his noble compatriot, never wavered in loyalty to Captain Blood. The French officers - there were six of them present - stared their haughty surprise at the buccaneer leader, whilst the Baron challengingly fired a question at him. "How? You decline it, 'sir? You decline to obey orders, do you say?" "I understood, M. le Baron, that you summoned us to deliberate upon the means to be adopted." "Then you understood amiss, M. le Capitaine. You are here to receive my commands. I have already deliberated, and I have decided. I hope you understand." "Oh, I understand," laughed Blood. "But, I ask myself, do you?" And without giving the Baron time to set the angry question that was bubbling to his lips, he swept on: "You have deliberated, you say, and you have decided. But unless your decision rests upon a wish to destroy my buccaneers, you will alter it when I tell you something of which I have knowledge. This city of Cartagena looks very vulnerable on the northern side, all open to the sea as it apparently stands. Ask yourself, M. le Baron, how came the Spaniards who built it where it is to have been at such trouble to fortify it to the south, if from the north it is so easily assailable." That gave M. de Rivarol pause. "The Spaniards," Blood pursued, "are not quite the fools you are supposing them. Let me tell you, messieurs, that two years ago I made a survey of Cartagena as a preliminary to raiding it. I came hither with some friendly trading Indians, myself disguised as an Indian, and in that guise I spent a week in the city and studied carefully all its approaches. |
| 802 |
I am being very generous with you, sir." He waved his hand regally. "You have leave to go." It was sheer obstinacy and empty pride that drove him, and he received the lesson he deserved. The fleet stood in during the afternoon to within a mile of the coast, and under cover of darkness three hundred men, of whom two hundred were negroes - the whole of the negro contingent having been pressed into the undertaking - were pulled away for the shore in the canoes, piraguas, and ships' boats. Rivarol's pride compelled him, however much he may have disliked the venture, to lead them in person. The first six boats were caught in the surf, and pounded into fragments before their occupants could extricate themselves. The thunder of the breakers and the cries of the shipwrecked warned those who followed, and thereby saved them from sharing the same fate. By the Baron's urgent orders they pulled away again out of danger, and stood about to pick up such survivors as contrived to battle towards them. Close upon fifty lives were lost in the adventure, together with half-a-dozen boats stored with ammunition and light guns. The Baron went back to his flagship an infuriated, but by no means a wiser man. Wisdom - not even the pungent wisdom experience thrusts upon us - is not for such as M. de Rivarol. His anger embraced all things, but focussed chiefly upon Captain Blood. In some warped process of reasoning he held the buccaneer chiefly responsible for this misadventure. He went to bed considering furiously what he should say to Captain Blood upon the morrow. He was awakened at dawn by the rolling thunder of guns. Emerging upon the poop in nightcap and slippers, he beheld a sight that increased his unreasonable and unreasoning fury. The four buccaneer ships under canvas were going through extraordinary manoeuvre half a mile off the Boca Chica and little more than half a mile away from the remainder of the fleet, and from their flanks flame and smoke were belching each time they swung broadside to the great round fort that guarded that narrow entrance. The fort was returning the fire vigorously and viciously. But the buccaneers timed their broadsides with extraordinary judgment to catch the defending ordnance reloading; then as they drew the Spaniards' fire, they swung away again not only taking care to be ever moving targets, but, further, to present no more than bow or stern to the fort, their masts in line, when the heaviest cannonades were to be expected. Gibbering and cursing, M. de Rivarol stood there and watched this action, so presumptuously undertaken by Blood on his own responsibility. The officers of the Victorieuse crowded round him, but it was not until M. de Cussy came to join the group that he opened the sluices of his rage. And M. de Cussy himself invited the deluge that now caught him. He had come up rubbing his hands and taking a proper satisfaction in the energy of the men whom he had enlisted. "Aha, M. de Rivarol!" he laughed. "He understands his business, eh, this Captain Blood. He'll plant the Lilies of France on that fort before breakfast." The Baron swung upon him snarling. "He understands his business, eh? His business, let me tell you, M. de Cussy, is to obey my orders, and I have not ordered this. Par la Mordieu! When this is over I'll deal with him for his damned insubordination." "Surely, M. le Baron, he will have justified it if he succeeds." "Justified it! Ah, parbleu! Can a soldier ever justify acting without orders?" He raved on furiously, his officers supporting him out of their detestation of Captain Blood. |
| 803 |
Meanwhile the fight went merrily on. The fort was suffering badly. Yet for all their manoeuvring the buccaneers were not escaping punishment. The starboard gunwale of the Atropos had been hammered into splinters, and a shot had caught her astern in the coach. The Elizabeth was badly battered about the forecastle, and the Arabella's maintop had been shot away, whilst' towards the end of that engagement the Lachesis came reeling out of the fight with a shattered rudder, steering herself by sweeps. The absurd Baron's fierce eyes positively gleamed with satisfaction. "I pray Heaven they may sink all his infernal ships!" he cried in his frenzy. But Heaven didn't hear him. Scarcely had he spoken than there was a terrific explosion, and half the fort went up in fragments. A lucky shot from the buccaneers had found the powder magazine. It may have been a couple of hours later, when Captain Blood, as spruce and cool as if he had just come from a levee, stepped upon the quarter-deck of the Victoriense, to confront M. de Rivarol, still in bedgown and nightcap. "I have to report, M. le Baron, that we are in possession of the fort on Boca Chica. The standard of France is flying from what remains of its tower, and the way into the outer harbour is open to your fleet." M. de Rivarol was compelled to swallow his fury, though it choked him. The jubilation among his officers had been such that he could not continue as he had begun. Yet his eyes were malevolent, his face pale with anger. "You are fortunate, M. Blood, that you succeeded," he said. "It would have gone very ill with you had you failed. Another time be so good as to await my orders, lest you should afterwards lack the justification which your good fortune has procured you this morning." Blood smiled with a flash of white teeth, and bowed. "I shall be glad of your orders now, General, for pursuing our advantage. You realize that speed in striking is the first essential." Rivarol was left gaping a moment. Absorbed in his ridiculous anger, he had considered nothing. But he made a quick recovery. "To my cabin, if you please," he commanded peremptorily, and was turning to lead the way, when Blood arrested him. "With submission, my General, we shall be better here. You behold there the scene of our coming action. It is spread before you like a map." He waved his hand towards the lagoon, the country flanking it and the considerable city standing back from the beach. "If it is not a presumption in me to offer a suggestion..." He paused. M. de Rivarol looked at him sharply, suspecting irony. But the swarthy face was bland, the keen eyes steady. "Let us hear your suggestion," he consented. Blood pointed out the fort at the mouth of the inner harbour, which was just barely visible above the waving palms on the intervening tongue of land. He announced that its armament was less formidable than that of the outer fort, which they had reduced; but on the other hand, the passage was very much narrower than the Boca Chica, and before they could attempt to make it in any case, they must dispose of those defences. He proposed that the French ships should enter the outer harbour, and proceed at once to bombardment. Meanwhile, he would land three hundred buccaneers and some artillery on the eastern side of the lagoon, beyond the fragrant garden islands dense with richly bearing fruit-trees, and proceed simultaneously to storm the fort in the rear. Thus beset on both sides at once, and demoralized by the fate of the much stronger outer fort, he did not think the Spaniards would offer a very long resistance. |
| 804 |
Then it would be for M. de Rivarol to garrison the fort, whilst Captain Blood would sweep on with his men, and seize the Church of Nuestra Senora de la Poupa, plainly visible on its hill immediately eastward of the town. Not only did that eminence afford them a valuable and obvious strategic advantage, but it commanded the only road that led from Cartagena to the interior, and once it were held there would be no further question of the Spaniards attempting to remove the wealth of the city. That to M. de Rivarol was - as Captain Blood had judged that it would be - the crowning argument. Supercilious until that moment, and disposed for his own pride's sake to treat the buccaneer's suggestions with cavalier criticism, M. de Rivarol's manner suddenly changed. He became alert and brisk, went so far as tolerantly to commend Captain Blood's plan, and issued orders that action might be taken upon it at once. It is not necessary to follow that action step by step. Blunders on the part of the French marred its smooth execution, and the indifferent handling of their ships led to the sinking of two of them in the course of the afternoon by the fort's gunfire. But by evening, owing largely to the irresistible fury with which the buccaneers stormed the place from the landward side, the fort had surrendered, and before dusk Blood and his men with some ordnance hauled thither by mules dominated the city from the heights of Nuestra Senora de la Poupa. At noon on the morrow, shorn of defences and threatened with bombardment, Cartagena sent offers of surrender to M. de Rivarol. Swollen with pride by a victory for which he took the entire credit to himself, the Baron dictated his terms. He demanded that all public effects and office accounts be delivered up; that the merchants surrender all moneys and goods held by them for their correspondents; the inhabitants could choose whether they would remain in the city or depart; but those who went must first deliver up all their property, and those who elected to remain must surrender half, and become the subjects of France; religious houses and churches should be spared, but they must render accounts of all moneys and valuables in their possession. Cartagena agreed, having no choice in the matter, and on the next day, which was the 5th of April, M. de Rivarol entered the city and proclaimed it now a French colony, appointing M. de Cussy its Governor. Thereafter he proceeded to the Cathedral, where very properly a Te Deum was sung in honour of the conquest. This by way of grace, whereafter M. de Rivarol proceeded to devour the city. The only detail in which the French conquest of Cartagena differed from an ordinary buccaneering raid was that under the severest penalties no soldier was to enter the house of any inhabitant. But this apparent respect for the persons and property of the conquered was based in reality upon M. de Rivarol's anxiety lest a doubloon should be abstracted from all the wealth that was pouring into the treasury opened by the Baron in the name of the King of France. Once the golden stream had ceased, he removed all restrictions and left the city in prey to his men, who proceeded further to pillage it of that part of their property which the inhabitants who became French subjects had been assured should remain inviolate. The plunder was enormous. In the course of four days over a hundred mules laden with gold went out of the city and down to the boats waiting at the beach to convey the treasure aboard the ships. |
| 805 |
The absconding M. de Rivarol had gone off with the treasure, taking with him the troops and mariners he had brought from France. He had left behind him at Cartagena not only the empty-handed buccaneers, whom he had swindled, but also M. de Cussy and the volunteers and negroes from Hispaniola, whom he had swindled no less. The two parties were fused into one by their common fury, and before the exhibition of it the inhabitants of that ill-fated town were stricken with deeper terror than they had yet known since the coming of this expedition. Captain Blood alone kept his head, setting a curb upon his deep chagrin. He had promised himself that before parting from M. de Rivarol he would present a reckoning for all the petty affronts and insults to which that unspeakable fellow - now proved a scoundrel - had subjected him. "We must follow," he declared. "Follow and punish." At first that was the general cry. Then came the consideration that only two of the buccaneer ships were seaworthy - and these could not accommodate the whole force, particularly being at the moment indifferently victualled for a long voyage. The crews of the Lachesis and Atropos and with them their captains, Wolverstone and Yberville, renounced the intention. After all, there would be a deal of treasure still hidden in Cartagena. They would remain behind to extort it whilst fitting their ships for sea. Let Blood and Hagthorpe and those who sailed with them do as they pleased. Then only did Blood realize the rashness of his proposal, and in attempting to draw back he almost precipitated a battle between the two parties into which that same proposal had now divided the buccaneers. And meanwhile those French sails on the horizon were growing less and less. Blood was reduced to despair. If he went off now, Heaven knew what would happen to the town, the temper of those whom he was leaving being what it was. Yet if he remained, it would simply mean that his own and Hagthorpe's crews would join in the saturnalia and increase the hideousness of events now inevitable. Unable to reach a decision, his own men and Hagthorpe's took the matter off his hands, eager to give chase to Rivarol. Not only was a dastardly cheat to be punished but an enormous treasure to be won by treating as an enemy this French commander who, himself, had so villainously broken the alliance. When Blood, torn as he was between conflicting considerations, still hesitated, they bore him almost by main force aboard the Arabella. Within an hour, the water-casks at least replenished and stowed aboard, the Arabella and the Elizabeth put to sea upon that angry chase. "When we were well at sea, and the Arabella's course was laid," writes Pitt, in his log, "I went to seek the Captain, knowing him to be in great trouble of mind over these events. I found him sitting alone in his cabin, his head in his hands, torment in the eyes that stared straight before him, seeing nothing." "What now, Peter?" cried the young Somerset mariner. "Lord, man, what is there here to fret you? Surely 't isn't the thought of Rivarol!" "No," said Blood thickly. And for once he was communicative. It may well be that he must vent the thing that oppressed him or be driven mad by it. And Pitt, after all, was his friend and loved him, and, so, a proper man for confidences. "But if she knew! If she knew! O God! I had thought to have done with piracy; thought to have done with it for ever. Yet here have I been committed by this scoundrel to the worst piracy that ever I was guilty of. |
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Yet before he could move to give an order, before he could well resolve what order to give, a volcano of fire and metal burst upon him from the buccaneers, and his decks were swept by the murderous scythe of the broadside. The Arabella held to her course, giving place to the Elizabeth, which, following closely, executed the same manoeuver. And then whilst still the Frenchmen were confused, panic-stricken by an attack that took them so utterly by surprise, the Arabella had gone about, and was returning in her tracks, presenting now her larboard guns, and loosing her second broadside in the wake of the first. Came yet another broadside from the Elizabeth and then the Arabella's trumpeter sent a call across the water, which Hagthorpe perfectly understood. "On, now, Jeremy!" cried Blood. "Straight into them before they recover their wits. Stand by, there! Prepare to board! Hayton ... the grapnels! And pass the word to the gunner in the prow to fire as fast as he can load." He discarded his feathered hat, and covered himself with a steel head-piece, which a negro lad brought him. He meant to lead this boarding-party in person. Briskly he explained himself to his two guests. "Boarding is our only chance here. We are too heavily outgunned." Of this the fullest demonstration followed quickly. The Frenchmen having recovered their wits at last, both ships swung broadside on, and concentrating upon the Arabella as the nearer and heavier and therefore more immediately dangerous of their two opponents, volleyed upon her jointly at almost the same moment. Unlike the buccaneers, who had fired high to cripple their enemies above decks, the French fifed low to smash the hull of their assailant. The Arabella rocked and staggered under that terrific hammering, although Pitt kept her headed towards the French so that she should offer the narrowest target. For a moment she seemed to hesitate, then she plunged forward again, her beak-head in splinters, her forecastle smashed, and a gaping hole forward, that was only just above the water-line. Indeed, to make her safe from bilging, Blood ordered a prompt jettisoning of the forward guns, anchors, and water-casks and whatever else was moveable. Meanwhile, the Frenchmen going about, gave the like reception to the Elizabeth. The Arabella, indifferently served by the wind, pressed forward to come to grips. But before she could accomplish her object, the Victorieuse had loaded her starboard guns again, and pounded her advancing enemy with a second broadside at close quarters. Amid the thunder of cannon, the rending of timbers, and the screams of maimed men, the half-necked Arabella plunged and reeled into the cloud of smoke that concealed her prey, and then from Hayton went up the cry that she was going down by the head. Blood's heart stood still. And then in that very moment of his despair, the blue and gold flank of the Victorieuse loomed through the smoke. But even as he caught that enheartening glimpse he perceived, too, how sluggish now was their advance, and how with every second it grew more sluggish. They must sink before they reached her. Thus, with an oath, opined the Dutch Admiral, and from Lord Willoughby there was a word of blame for Blood's seamanship in having risked all upon this gambler's throw of boarding. "There was no other chance!" cried Blood, in broken-hearted frenzy. "If ye say it was desperate and foolhardy, why, so it was; but the occasion and the means demanded nothing less. I fail within an ace of victory." But they had not yet completely failed. |
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Hayton himself, and a score of sturdy rogues whom his whistle had summoned, were crouching for shelter amid the wreckage of the forecastle with grapnels ready. Within seven or eight yards of the Victorieuse, when their way seemed spent, and their forward deck already awash under the eyes of the jeering, cheering Frenchmen, those men leapt up and forward, and hurled their grapnels across the chasm. Of the four they flung, two reached the Frenchman's decks, and fastened there. Swift as thought itself, was then the action of those sturdy, experienced buccaneers. Unhesitatingly all threw themselves upon the chain of one of those grapnels, neglecting the other, and heaved upon it with all their might to warp the ships together. Blood, watching from his own quarter-deck, sent out his voice in a clarion call: "Musketeers to the prow!" The musketeers, at their station at the waist, obeyed him with the speed of men who know that in obedience is the only hope of life. Fifty of them dashed forward instantly, and from the ruins of the forecastle they blazed over the heads of Hayton's men, mowing down the French soldiers who, unable to dislodge the irons, firmly held where they had deeply bitten into the timbers of the Victorieuse, were themselves preparing to fire upon the grapnel crew. Starboard to starboard the two ships swung against each other with a jarring thud. By then Blood was down in the waist, judging and acting with the hurricane speed the occasion demanded. Sail had been lowered by slashing away the ropes that held the yards. The advance guard of boarders, a hundred strong, was ordered to the poop, and his grapnel-men were posted, and prompt to obey his command at the very moment of impact. As a result, the foundering Arabella was literally kept afloat by the half-dozen grapnels that in an instant moored her firmly to the Victorieuse. Willoughby and van der Kuylen on the poop had watched in breathless amazement the speed and precision with which Blood and his desperate crew had gone to work. And now he came racing up, his bugler sounding the charge, the main host of the buccaneers following him, whilst the vanguard, led by the gunner Ogle, who had been driven from his guns by water in the gun-deck, leapt shouting to the prow of the Victorieuse, to whose level the high poop of the water-logged Arabella had sunk. Led now by Blood himself, they launched themselves upon the French like hounds upon the stag they have brought to bay. After them went others, until all had gone, and none but Willoughby and the Dutchman were left to watch the fight from the quarter-deck of the abandoned Arabella. For fully half-an-hour that battle raged aboard the Frenchman. Beginning in the prow, it surged through the forecastle to the waist, where it reached a climax of fury. The French resisted stubbornly, and they had the advantage of numbers to encourage them. But for all their stubborn valour, they ended by being pressed back and back across the decks that were dangerously canted to starboard by the pull of the water-logged Arabella. The buccaneers fought with the desperate fury of men who know that retreat is impossible, for there was no ship to which they could retreat, and here they must prevail and make the Victorieuse their own, or perish. And their own they made her in the end, and at a cost of nearly half their numbers. Driven to the quarter-deck, the surviving defenders, urged on by the infuriated Rivarol, maintained awhile their desperate resistance. |
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But in the end, Rivarol went down with a bullet in his head, and the French remnant, numbering scarcely a score of whole men, called for quarter. Even then the labours of Blood's men were not at an end. The Elizabeth and the Medusa were tight-locked, and Hagthorpe's followers were being driven back aboard their own ship for the second time. Prompt measures were demanded. Whilst Pitt and his seamen bore their part with the sails, and Ogle went below with a gun-crew, Blood ordered the grapnels to be loosed at once. Lord Willoughby and the Admiral were already aboard the Victorieuse. As they swung off to the rescue of Hagthorpe, Blood, from the quarter-deck of the conquered vessel, looked his last upon the ship that had served him so well, the ship that had become to him almost as a part of himself. A moment she rocked after her release, then slowly and gradually settled down, the water gurgling and eddying about her topmasts, all that remained visible to mark the spot where she had met her death. As he stood there, above the ghastly shambles in the waist of the Victorieuse, some one spoke behind him. "I think, Captain Blood, that it is necessary I should beg your pardon for the second time. Never before have I seen the impossible made possible by resource and valour, or victory so gallantly snatched from defeat." He turned, and presented to Lord Willoughby a formidable front. His head-piece was gone, his breastplate dinted, his right sleeve a rag hanging from his shoulder about a naked arm. He was splashed from head to foot with blood, and there was blood from a scalp-wound that he had taken matting his hair and mixing with the grime of powder on his face to render him unrecognizable. But from that horrible mask two vivid eyes looked out preternaturally bright, and from those eyes two tears had ploughed each a furrow through the filth of his cheeks. When the cost of that victory came to be counted, it was found that of three hundred and twenty buccaneers who had left Cartagena with Captain Blood, a bare hundred remained sound and whole. The Elizabeth had suffered so seriously that it was doubtful if she could ever again be rendered seaworthy, and Hagthorpe, who had so gallantly commanded her in that last action, was dead. Against this, on the other side of the account, stood the facts that, with a far inferior force and by sheer skill and desperate valour, Blood's buccaneers had saved Jamaica from bombardment and pillage, and they had captured the fleet of M. de Rivarol, and seized for the benefit of King William the splendid treasure which she carried. It was not until the evening of the following day that van der Kuylen's truant fleet of nine ships came to anchor in the harbour of Port Royal, and its officers, Dutch and English, were made acquainted with their Admiral's true opinion of their worth. Six ships of that fleet were instantly refitted for sea. There were other West Indian settlements demanding the visit of inspection of the new Governor-General, and Lord Willoughby was in haste to sail for the Antilles. "And meanwhile," he complained to his Admiral, "I am detained here by the absence of this fool of a Deputy-Governor." "So?" said van der Kuylen. "But vhy should dad dedam you?" "That I may break the dog as he deserves, and appoint his successor in some man gifted with a sense of where his duty lies, and with the ability to perform it." "Aha! But id is not necessary you remain for dat. And he vill require no insdrucshons, dis one. |
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