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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. |
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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? When I went home that evening and realized my education had been a lie — had made presumptions about what was "normal," what was American, what was valuable — I wanted to quit school right then and there, but I didn't. Instead, I got angry, and anger when it is used to act, when it is used nonviolently, has power. I asked myself what I could write about that my classmates could not. I didn't know what I wanted exactly, but I did have enough sense to know what I didn't want. I didn't want to sound like my classmates; I didn't want to keep imitating the writers I had been reading. Their voices were right for them but not for me. Instead, I searched for the "ugliest" subjects I could find, the most un-"poetic" — slang, monologues in which waitresses or kids talked their own lives. I was trying as best I could to write the kind of book I had never seen in a library or in a school, the kind of book not even my professors could write. Each week I ingested the class readings and then went off and did the opposite. It was a quiet revolution, perhaps a reaction taken to extremes, but it was out of this negative experience that I found something positive: my own voice. The language in Mango Street is based on speech. It's very much an antiacademic voice — a child's voice, a girl's voice, a poor girl's voice, a spoken voice, the voice of an American-Mexican. It's in this rebellious realm of antipoetics that I tried to create a poetic text with the most unofficial language I could find. I did it neither ingenuously nor naturally. It was as clear to me as if I were tossing a Molotov. |
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Did you run away from home? Did you join a gang? Did you get fired? Did you give up? Did you get angry? You are Esperanza. You cannot forget who you are. November 16, 1993 San Antonio de Bexar, Texas The House on Mango Street We didn't always live on Mango Street. Before that we lived on Loomis on the third floor, and before that we lived on Keeler. Before Keeler it was Paulina, and before that I can't remember. But what I remember most is moving a lot. Each time it seemed there'd be one more of us. By the time we got to Mango Street we were six — Mama, Papa, Carlos, Kiki, my sister Nenny and me. The house on Mango Street is ours, and we don't have to pay rent to anybody, or share the yard with the people downstairs, or be careful not to make too much noise, and there isn't a landlord banging on the ceiling with a broom. But even so, it's not the house we'd thought we'd get. We had to leave the flat on Loomis quick. The water pipes broke and the landlord wouldn't fix them because the house was too old. We had to leave fast. We were using the washroom next door and carrying water over in empty milk gallons. That's why Mama and Papa looked for a house, and that's why we moved into the house on Mango Street, far away, on the other side of town. They always told us that one day we would move into a house, a real house that would be ours for always so we wouldn't have to move each year. And our house would have running water and pipes that worked. And inside it would have real stairs, not hallway stairs, but stairs inside like the houses on TV. And we'd have a basement and at least three washrooms so when we took a bath we wouldn't have to tell everybody. Our house would be white with trees around it, a great big yard and grass growing without a fence. This was the house Papa talked about when he held a lottery ticket and this was the house Mama dreamed up in the stories she told us before we went to bed. But the house on Mango Street is not the way they told it at all. It's small and red with tight steps in front and windows so small you'd think they were holding their breath. Bricks are crumbling in places, and the front door is so swollen you have to push hard to get in. There is no front yard, only four little elms the city planted by the curb. Out back is a small garage for the car we don't own yet and a small yard that looks smaller between the two buildings on either side. There are stairs in our house, but they're ordinary hallway stairs, and the house has only one washroom. |
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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. 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. |
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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. |
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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. We hardly had time to think when the cop car pulled in the alley going just as fast. We saw the yellow Cadillac at the end of the block trying to make a left-hand turn, but our alley is too skinny and the car crashed into a lamppost. |
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Marin screamed and we ran down the block to where the cop car's siren spun a dizzy blue. The nose of that yellow Cadillac was all pleated like an alligator's, and except for a bloody lip and a bruised forehead, Louie's cousin was okay. They put handcuffs on him and put him in the backseat of the cop car, and we all waved as they drove away. Marin Marin's boyfriend is in Puerto Rico. She shows us his letters and makes us promise not to tell anybody they're getting married when she goes back to P. R. She says he didn't get a job yet, but she's saving the money she gets from selling Avon and taking care of her cousins. Marin says that if she stays here next year, she's going to get a real job downtown because that's where the best jobs are, since you always get to look beautiful and get to wear nice clothes and can meet someone in the subway who might marry you and take you to live in a big house far away. But next year Louie's parents are going to send her back to her mother with a letter saying she's too much trouble, and that is too bad because I like Marin. She is older and knows lots of things. She is the one who told us how Davey the Baby's sister got pregnant and what cream is best for taking off moustache hair and if you count the white flecks on your fingernails you can know how many boys are thinking of you and lots of other things I can't remember now. We never see Marin until her aunt comes home from work, and even then she can only stay out in front. She is there every night with the radio. When the light in her aunt's room goes out, Marin lights a cigarette and it doesn't matter if it's cold out or if the radio doesn't work or if we've got nothing to say to each other. What matters, Marin says, is for the boys to see us and for us to see them. And since Marin's skirts are shorter and since her eyes are pretty, and since Marin is already older than us in many ways, the boys who do pass by say stupid things like I am in love with those two green apples you call eyes, give them to me why don't you. And Marin just looks at them without even blinking and is not afraid. Marin, under the streetlight, dancing by herself, is singing the same song somewhere. I know. Is waiting for a car to stop, a star to fall, someone to change her life. Those Who Don't Those who don't know any better come into our neighborhood scared. They think we're dangerous. They think we will attack them with shiny knives. They are stupid people who are lost and got here by mistake. |
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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. Cumulus, cumulus, cumulus. No, she says. That there is Nancy, otherwise known as Pig-eye. And over there her cousin Mildred, and little Joey, Marco, Nereida and Sue. There are all different kinds of clouds. How many different kinds of clouds can you think of? Well, there's these already that look like shaving cream ... And what about the kind that looks like you combed its hair? Yes, those are clouds too. Phyllis, Ted, Alfredo and Julie ... There are clouds that look like big fields of sheep, Rachel says. Them are my favorite. And don't forget nimbus the rain cloud, I add, that's something. Jose and Dagoberto, Alicia, Raul, Edna, Alma and Rickey... |
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There's that wide puffy cloud that looks like your face when you wake up after falling asleep with all your clothes on. Reynaldo, Angelo, Albert, Armando, Mario ... Not my face. Looks like your fat face. Rita, Margie, Ernie ... Whose fat face? Esperanza's fat face, that's who. Looks like Esperanza's ugly face when she comes to school in the morning. Anita, Stella, Dennis, and Lolo ... Who you calling ugly, ugly? Richie, Yolanda, Hector, Stevie, Vincent... Not you. Your mama, that's who. My mama? You better not be saying that, Lucy Guerrero. You better not be talking like that... else you can say goodbye to being my friend forever. I'm saying your mama's ugly like ... ummm ... ... like bare feet in September! That does it! Both of yous better get out of my yard before I call my brothers. Oh, we're only playing. I can think of thirty Eskimo words for you, Rachel. Thirty words that say what you are. Oh yeah, well I can think of some more. Uh-oh, Nenny. Better get the broom. Too much trash in our yard today. Frankie, Licha, Maria, Pee Wee ... Nenny, you better tell your sister she is really crazy because Lucy and me are never coming back here again. Forever. Reggie, Elizabeth, Lisa, Louie ... You can do what you want to do, Nenny, but you better not talk to Lucy or Rachel if you want to be my sister. You know what you are, Esperanza? You are like the Cream of Wheat cereal. You're like the lumps. Yeah, and you're foot fleas, that's you. Chicken lips. Rosemary, Dalia, Lily... Cockroach jelly. Jean, Geranium and Joe ... Cold frijoles. Mimi, Michael, Moe ... Your mama's frijoles. Your ugly mama's toes. That's stupid. Bebe, Blanca, Benny... Who's stupid? Rachel, Lucy, Esperanza and Nenny. The Family of Little Feet There was a family. All were little. Their arms were little, and their hands were little, and their height was not tall, and their feet very small. The grandpa slept on the living room couch and snored through his teeth. His feet were fat and doughy like thick tamales, and these he powdered and stuffed into white socks and brown leather shoes. The grandma's feet were lovely as pink pearls and dressed in velvety high heels that made her walk with a wobble, but she wore them anyway because they were pretty. The baby's feet had ten tiny toes, pale and see-through like a salamanders, and these he popped into his mouth whenever he was hungry. The mother's feet, plump and polite, descended like white pigeons from the sea of pillow, across the linoleum roses, down down the wooden stairs, over the chalk hopscotch squares, 5, 6, 7, blue sky. |
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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. 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. |
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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. 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. |
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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. |
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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. And we just laugh. What I'm saying is who here is ready? You gotta be able to know what to do with hips when you get them, I say making it up as I go. You gotta know how to walk with hips, practice you know — like if half of you wanted to go one way and the other half the other. That's to lullaby it, Nenny says, that's to rock the baby asleep inside you. And then she begins singing seashells, copper hells, eevy, ivy, over. I'm about to tell her that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard, but the more I think about it.. . You gotta get the rhythm, and Lucy begins to dance. She has the idea, though she's having trouble keeping her end of the double-dutch steady. It's gotta be just so, I say. Not too fast and not too slow. Not too fast and not too slow. We slow the double circles down to a certain speed so Rachel who has just jumped in can practice shaking it. I want to shake like hoochi-coochie, Lucy says. She is crazy. I want to move like heebie-jeebie, I say picking up on the cue. I want to be Tahiti. Or merengue. Or electricity. Or tembleque! Yes, tembleque. That's a good one. And then it's Rachel who starts it: Skip, skip, snake in your hips. Wiggle around and break your lip. Lucy waits a minute before her turn. She is thinking. Then she begins: The waitress with the big fat hips who pays the rent with taxi tips ... says nobody in town will kiss her on the lips because ... because she looks like Christopher Columbus! Yes, no, maybe so. Yes, no, maybe so. She misses on maybe so. I take a little while before my turn, take a breath, and dive in: Some are skinny like chicken lips. Some are baggy like soggy Band-Aids after you get out of the bathtub. I don't care what kind I get. |
| 14 |
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. 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. |
| 15 |
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. 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. |
| 16 |
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? 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. |
| 17 |
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? |
| 18 |
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. Every week Edna is screaming at somebody, and every week somebody has to move away. Once she threw out a pregnant lady just because she owned a duck ... and it was a nice duck too. But Ruthie lives here and Edna can't throw her out because Ruthie is her daughter. Ruthie came one day, it seemed, out of nowhere. Angel Vargas was trying to teach us how to whistle. Then we heard someone whistling — beautiful like the Emperor's nightingale — and when we turned around there was Ruthie. Sometimes we go shopping and take her with us, but she never comes inside the stores and if she does she keeps looking around her like a wild animal in a house for the first time. She likes candy. When we go to Mr. Benny's grocery she gives us money to buy her some. She says make sure it's the soft kind because her teeth hurt. Then she promises to see the dentist next week, but when next week comes, she doesn't go. Ruthie sees lovely things everywhere. I might be telling her a joke and she'll stop and say: The moon is beautiful like a balloon. Or somebody might be singing and she'll point to a few clouds: Look, Marlon Brando. Or a sphinx winking. Or my left shoe. Once some friends of Edna's came to visit and asked Ruthie if she wanted to go with them to play bingo. The car motor was running, and Ruthie stood on the steps wondering whether to go. Should I go, Ma? she asked the gray shadow behind the second-floor screen. I don't care, says the screen, go if you want. Ruthie looked at the ground. What do you think, Ma? Do what you want, how should I know? Ruthie looked at the ground some more. The car with the motor running waited fifteen minutes and then they left. When we brought out the deck of cards that night, we let Ruthie deal. |
| 19 |
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. |
| 20 |
Sire lets Lois ride his bike around the block, or they take walks together. I watch them. 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. |
| 21 |
Rafaela leans out the window and leans on her elbow and dreams her hair is like Rapunzel's. On the corner there is music from the bar, and Rafaela wishes she could go there and dance before she gets old. A long time passes and we forget she is up there watching until she says: Kids, if I give you a dollar will you go to the store and buy me something? She throws a crumpled dollar down and always asks for coconut or sometimes papaya juice, and we send it up to her in a paper shopping bag she lets down with clothesline. Rafaela who drinks and drinks coconut and papaya juice on Tuesdays and wishes there were sweeter drinks, not bitter like an empty room, but sweet sweet like the island, like the dance hall down the street where women much older than her throw green eyes easily like dice and open homes with keys. And always there is someone offering sweeter drinks, someone promising to keep them on a silver string. Sally Sally is the girl with eyes like Egypt and nylons the color of smoke. The boys at school think she's beautiful because her hair is shiny black like raven feathers and when she laughs, she flicks her hair back like a satin shawl over her shoulders and laughs. Her father says to be this beautiful is trouble. They are very strict in his religion. They are not supposed to dance. He remembers his sisters and is sad. Then she can't go out. Sally I mean. Sally, who taught you to paint your eyes like Cleopatra? And if I roll the little brush with my tongue and chew it to a point and dip it in the muddy cake, the one in the little red box, will you teach me? I like your black coat and those shoes you wear, where did you get them? My mother says to wear black so young is dangerous, but I want to buy shoes just like yours, like your black ones made out of suede, just like those. And one day, when my mother's in a good mood, maybe after my next birthday, I'm going to ask to buy the nylons too. Cheryl, who is not your friend anymore, not since last Tuesday before Easter, not since the day you made her ear bleed, not since she called you that name and bit a hole in your arm and you looked as if you were going to cry and everyone was waiting and you didn't, you didn't, Sally, not since then, you don't have a best friend to lean against the schoolyard fence with, to laugh behind your hands at what the boys say. 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. |
| 22 |
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. |
| 23 |
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. 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. |
| 24 |
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. |
| 25 |
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. 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. |
| 26 |
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. 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. |
| 27 |
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. They must've known, the sisters. They had the power and could sense what was what. They said, Come here, and gave me a stick of gum. They smelled like Kleenex or the inside of a satin handbag, and then I didn't feel afraid. What's your name, the cat-eyed one asked. Esperanza, I said. Esperanza, the old blue-veined one repeated in a high thin voice. Esperanza ... a good good name. My knees hurt, the one with the funny laugh complained. |
| 28 |
As time passed and he sank ever deeper into the quicksand of what might be termed the unreal real, he felt himself becoming emotionally involved with many of the inhabitants of that other, brighter world, membership in which he thought of as his to claim by right, like a latter-day Dorothy contemplating a permanent move to Oz; and at an unknown point he developed an unwholesome, because entirely one-sided, passion for a certain television personality, the beautiful, witty, and adored Miss Salma R, an infatuation which he characterized, quite inaccurately, as love. In the name of this so-called love he resolved zealously to pursue his "beloved" right through the television screen into whatever exalted high-definition reality she and her kind inhabited, and, by deeds as well as grace, to win her heart. He spoke slowly and moved slowly too, dragging his right leg a little when he walked — the lasting consequence of a dramatic Interior Event many years earlier, which had also damaged his memory, so that while happenings in the distant past remained vivid, his remembrances of the middle period of his life had become hit-and-miss, with large hiatuses and other gaps which had been filled up, as if by a careless builder in a hurry, with false memories created by things he might have seen on TV. 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. |
| 29 |
He played Holi with the Bhojpuri-speaking descendants of Indian indentured laborers in Mauritius and celebrated Bakr Eid with shawl weavers in the high mountain village of Aru near the Kolahoi glacier in Kashmir. However, at a certain point in early middle age the Interior Event changed everything. When he came to his senses after the Event he had lost all personal ambition and curiosity, found big cities oppressive, and craved only anonymity and solitude. In addition, he had developed an acute fear of flying. He remembered a dream of first falling and then drowning, and was convinced after that that air travel was the most ridiculous of all the fantasies and falsehoods that the comptrollers of the earth tried to inflict on innocent men and women like himself. If an airplane flew, and its passengers reached their destination safely, that was just a question of good luck. It proved nothing. He did not want to die by falling from the sky into water (his dream) or onto land (which would be even less comfortable), and therefore he resolved that if the gods of good health granted him some sort of recovery he would never again board one of those monstrously heavy containers which promised to lift him thirty thousand feet or more above the ground. And he did recover, albeit with a dragging leg, and since then had traveled only by road. He thought sometimes of making a sea journey down the American coast to Brazil or Argentina, or across the Atlantic Ocean to Europe, but he had never made the necessary arrangements, and nowadays his unreliable health and fragile bank account would probably not be able to take the strain of such a voyage. So, a creature of the road he had become, and would remain. In an old knapsack, carefully wrapped in tissue paper and bubble wrap, he carried with him a selection of modestly sized objects gathered on his travels: a polished "found art" Chinese stone whose patterning resembled a landscape of wooded hills in the mist, a Buddha-like Gandharan head, an upraised wooden Cambodian hand with a symbol of peace in the center of its palm, two starlike crystals, one large, the other small, a Victorian locket inside which he had placed photographs of his parents, three other photographs depicting a childhood in a distant tropical city, a brass Edwardian English cigar cutter made to look like a sharp-toothed dragon, an Indian "Cheeta Brand" matchbox bearing the image of a prowling cheetah, a miniature marble hoopoe bird, and a Chinese fan. These thirteen things were numinous for him. |
| 30 |
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. 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. |
| 31 |
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. And — beyond these private matters — he had begun to have a sense of something coming after him, of dark-windowed cars parked on the corner of his block with their motors running, footsteps that stopped when he stopped, then started up again when he walked on, clicking noises on the phone, strange problems with his laptop, telemarketing messages with, he thought, a menace behind the banal words, threats on his Twitter feed, murmurs from his publishing company that mid-list Authors like himself might have difficulty being published in the future. There were issues with his credit cards, and his social media had been hacked too often for it to be a random thing. On one occasion he came home at night and was sure his apartment had been entered even though nothing had been disturbed. If the two guiding principles of the universe were paranoia (the belief that the world had meaning, but that meaning was located at a concealed level, which was very possibly hostile to the overt, absurd level, which meant, in brief, you) and entropy (the belief that life was meaningless, that things fell apart and the heat-death of the universe was inevitable), then he was definitely in the paranoid camp. If Quichotte's craziness was leading him to run toward his doom, then Brother's anxieties were close to triggering a flight response. He wanted to run but didn't know where or how, which made him more fearful still, because he knew that in his spy fiction he had already told himself the answer. You can run but you can't hide. Maybe writing about Quichotte was a way of running away from that truth. It was difficult for him to speak of personal things because he had never been the confessional type. From his boyhood days he had been drawn toward secrecy. As a small child he wore his father's sunglasses to conceal his eyes, which revealed too much. He hid things and watched with glee as his parents searched for them — their wallets, their toothbrushes, their car keys. His friends would confide in him, understanding that his was a serious silence, the silence of a pharaoh in his pyramid; sometimes an innocent confidence, sometimes a not so innocent. |
| 32 |
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. |
| 33 |
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. 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. |
| 34 |
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. 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. |
| 35 |
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. |
| 36 |
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. |
| 37 |
She turned away from the past with all the steely resolve which would take her to the very top of her profession in two continents. Among the elements of the past which she rejected was her aging grandfather. "He's a ghost," she told people. "I won't let any ghosts haunt me now. He needs to find himself alternative accommodation. The house must be sold at once." In one of those extraordinary coincidences that enliven real life but are considered suspect in fiction, she moved into a smart apartment on the very same low hill in Breach Candy where Quichotte had previously been a child, though she was around thirty years younger than her future admirer. Westfield Estate, as this little group of villas and apartment blocks was known — this microscopic urban speck from which the entire universe was born! — was the creation of an Anglophile developer called Suleman Oomer, also the builder of the somewhat similar Oomer Park properties down the road. He gave many of the buildings majestic-sounding English names: Windsor Villa, Glamis Villa, Sandringham Villa, Bal Moral, Devonshire House, and even Christmas Eve. It was in Christmas Eve, the place where Christmas was eternally promised for the next day but never arrived, that Miss Salma R came to roost. And it was there, three days after her mother's death, that she agreed to receive an unexpected guest, her mother's friend-turned-enemy, Nargis Kumari, whose presence allowed Salma finally to grieve for her mother. The veteran actress entered the apartment howling with pain and her voluble sadness overwhelmed the daughter's grim-faced stoicism. "What a fool I have been," Nargis Kumari cried, in full tragic actress mode, "to allow a mere man to destroy my closest friendship. What is a man compared to the love between soul sisters? He is a passing shadow. He is a random sneeze. He is a short rain shower on a sunny day. I should have been beside her every minute, sunshine or rain. Now I am as empty as a bottle from which all the wine has been poured. I am a word in a dictionary whose meaning has been erased. I am as hollow as a rotten tree." Miss Salma R's tears began to flow. "I will do everything for you," Nargis Kumari vowed. "You just sit on here and mourn. All requisite duties and disposals will be handled by myself." A few days later word reached Miss Salma R that Nargis Kumari had been at the Juhu house trying on the dead woman's most expensive garments and taking many of them away with her, plus matching jewelry. |
| 38 |
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. |
| 39 |
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. "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. |
| 40 |
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. "I've got a bad feeling about it. Let me know if he writes again." Then Monday was over, and she walked out of the building into the waiting Maybach, sank down into the back seat, raised to her lips the dirty martini (up, with olives) waiting for her on the armrest, and forgot Quichotte completely. "Evenin', Miss Daisy," her driver greeted her. "Stop saying that, Hoke," she replied. "You're making me mad." England is another country. They do things differently there. |
| 41 |
It wasn't clear to her, these days, which of the alternatives best described her. Sister was an idealist. She believed in the rule of law as one of the two foundations of a free society, along with free expression. (This was the kind of remark you didn't make too often in white society in London for fear of sounding self-righteous, "preachy." It was also a remark which, if made in brown or black circles, might elicit a loud series of disbelieving horse-laughs.) As a result the direction the world had taken in her lifetime was upsetting. Both the law and liberty were everywhere under attack. The thuggish deterioration of Indian society both allowed her to believe ever more fervently that she no longer wanted anything to do with that increasingly horrible country, and hurt more deeply than she cared to admit. The continuing American convulsion disgusted her, and the vulnerability of immigrants to abuse and worse was a growing part of her daily agenda here at home. On a bad (three-martini) day she came close to despair, telling herself that after all these years she was obliged to admit that she had misunderstood the country of which she was now a citizen and which she thought of as her country. She had deeply believed it to be a reasonable place, broad-minded, easygoing, and good to live in, and now she discovered that it was also — or not also, but in fact — narrow-minded, delusional, and, for people lacking the great virtue of acceptable skin color, not comfortable to live in at all. When she entered this kind of mood her husband the judge — the High Court judge Godfrey Simons — was a pillar of strength. Here he was now, coming down the stairs from the upper floor, where he had been getting ready to greet their guests. He was wearing the floor-length Vivienne Westwood gown, the pearls, and the new high heels tonight. It was a big night for his wife and he wanted to look his best for her. She applauded him softly as he descended. "You look resplendent, Jack," she told him. "Dignified, glamorous. And the shoes!" "Thank you, Jack," said the judge. "Glamor and dignity is what we strive for." They called each other "Jack" instead of "dear" or "darling" or "honey." It was their little private thing. They had so much in common. They had the same favorite drink, they always chose the same dishes in restaurants, and when they were asked about their preferred books they answered identically, without conferring. The Magic Mountain, Madame Bovary, Don Quixote. No English books? |
| 42 |
I guess the answer is, I know what he knows. If I listen inside myself I hear his book learning and all his favorite TV shows also — I know them all as if I watched them myself. And if I look I can see his memories as if they were mine, memories of falling out of a tree as a little boy and needing stitches in his head, memories of kissing an Australian girl when he was nine years old and cutting his tongue on the braces on her teeth, memories of bicycle accidents and school detentions and his mother's cooking. All his memories planted in my head. There's something else. It's the strangest thing. Sometimes, when I'm in here, rummaging around in my own head, using the words he gave me and the knowledge he passed down, uncovering my memories which are his memories, his life story which I could claim as my own if I wasn't smart enough to know better... just sometimes, not every time... I get the weirdest sense that there's someone else in here. Crazy, right? I'm as crazy as he is, the old guy. But who or what is this third person? I'm just going to say this the way it comes to me to say it, even though it makes no sense and makes me sound... unreliable. It feels to me, at those moments when I have this sense of a stranger, as if there's somebody under slash behind slash above the old man. Somebody — yes — making him the way he made me. Somebody putting his life, his thoughts, his feelings, his memories into the old man the way the old man put that stuff inside me. In which case whose life am I remembering here? The old man's or the phantom's? This is driving me nuts. Who is that under there slash over there slash in there? Who are you? If you're his Creator, are you mine as well? There's a name for this. For the person behind the story. The old guy, Dad, he has a lot of material on this. He doesn't seem to believe in such an entity, doesn't seem to sense his presence the way I'm doing, but his head is full of thoughts about the entity all the same. His head and therefore my head too. I have to think about this now. I'll just come right out and say it: God. Maybe he and I, God and I, could understand each other, maybe we could have a good discussion, because, you know, both imaginary. If you get imagined into being, does that mean that after that you can just be? If I knew how to reach him, God, I'd ask him that. And also, does he really feel seen? I understand that plenty of people say they talk to him every day, they walk with him, etc., but does he really truly do that? |
| 43 |
OxyContin. Back home it had been easy to get the supplies but even in America there was always a doctor who would bend the rules for a star. She was told she was living dangerously, playing with fire, but the scripts for the time-release drug were written for her nevertheless. To add recreational opioids to the meds she was taking for her mental health was extremely ill-advised, she was advised, but the scripts went on being written. Words like life-threatening, respiratory arrest, and death were used, but the scripts were still written and the pharmacies handed out the painkillers, no problem. As a cursory glance at the contents of her bathroom cabinet would reveal even to the untutored layperson, Miss Salma R was almost as expert in pharmaceuticals as her compliant pharmacist, so she knew about the dangers of misuse. Crushing, chewing, snorting, or injecting the dissolved product will result in the uncontrolled delivery of oxycodone and can result in overdose and death. She knew that. But oh dear she did misuse it. She did not inject the dissolved product, because she was squeamish about needles, plus the tracks would be bad for business. But the uncontrolled delivery of oxycodone was exactly what she wanted. So, regrettably, she crushed, she chewed! Sometimes, it's true, she even snorted! How shocked, how disappointed in her her legion of admirers would have been! Or not, of course. As we have noted, she was explicit about many of her vulnerabilities. Not this one; but maybe her fans would just have added it to the list and loved her even more. At any rate, very few people knew about her habit. Rumpelstiltskin knew. Yosemite Sam knew. Another reason to fire him, though he might try to blackmail her. He would be unwise to try that. She was a powerful woman. He would know it was unwise to try that. He did try, in his newly controlling way, to stop her. She shrugged off his advice. "I've been doing this for so long," she said, "I'm an expert in self-medication." When she said this he had tossed his long red hair. She had never seen a man toss his hair, so this got her attention. "Whenever somebody says that," he told her, as his hair subsided in slow-motion as if he were in a L'OrEal commercial, "I think, there are a lot of dead experts in self-medication. I think, Heath Ledger." "Toss your hair again," she said. "How do you manage to do that slow-motion thing?" He gave up and grinned. "Because I'm worth it," he said. If we must get into the dark details, for some while now it hadn't actually been OxyContin itself. |
| 44 |
There had been a change in the formula which made it harder to use. When she tried to crush the new OxyContin OP tablets, they resisted, becoming a gummy mess that was hard to chew and impossible to snort. She tried burning them in her microwave. She tried soaking them in acetone, baking them, freezing them. It was frustrating. She had turned to Perc30s and Roxies, which were thirty milligrams each of pure oxycodone (you could get OxyContin tablets containing up to eighty milligrams, so she needed larger quantities of these lower-dosage painkillers). Lately there had also been Opana and other, similar versions of oxymorphone. As she said, she had become an expert. None of the replacements were as satisfying as the old Oxys. Why did the world have to change? She needed to find a new solution. There were people who had been driven to heroin by the change in the Oxy tablets, but heroin scared her. The word "heroin" scared her. She wouldn't go there. The things she had now were workable, they would do, but the old stuff was the best. Take me away, she thought when she was alone in her bed at night and the painkillers were easing her spirit's pain, to those old Cotton fields back home. When she told her closest people she was having electroconvulsive shock treatment, they reacted badly. You have to stop, they said. Electricity? You can't do that to yourself, it's like torture. I'm not conscious when they do it, she explained. This isn't mad scientist stuff, it's medicine. But in a way it did feel like the stuff of fantasy. After the sessions she felt clearer, more in control, and kept seeing clear images of tiny evil gremlins in her brain being electrocuted by the voltage, screaming and tossing as they dissolved into puffs of smoke. She saw tiny green goblins and stringlike snakes burning between the spiderwebs of her synapses. She imagined her brain as a clanking malfunctioning machine filled with cogwheels and levers, with, literally, a number of screws loose, and the electricity as a superhero zooming around it, tightening nuts and bolts, adjusting chains, getting everything to pull together. The Incredible Flash, miniaturized and sent in to do the much-needed repair work. It felt like a Christmas visit from Sanity Claus. (She heard Chico Marx laughing, Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! You can't fool me. There ain't no Sanity Claus! But there was, there was. He was a voltage-powered elf who cleaned up your sanity.) She started calling her bipolar friends to recommend the treatment. |
| 45 |
While we are uncovering Salma's dark secrets we should not lose sight of the fact that Salma continued to be the biggest show of its kind. As well as the lighthearted fare that was the show's stock-in-trade, and the emotionalconfessional material, and the debates on women's issues of the moment, she had recently introduced a segment called "While Black" intended to highlight the problems faced by persons of color in America, and this had generated much comment, inevitable controversy, and even higher Nielsen ratings. "While Black" invited onto the show the men who had been arrested at a coffee shop because a white member of staff called the police when they asked to use the restroom while black and waiting for a white friend, and the men on whom a white golfer called the police because they were golfing too slowly while black, and the men at a gym on whom a white man at the gym called the police because, well, because they were exercising while black, and the women on whom the police were called because they were shopping for prom dresses while black, or napping in their own dorm common room at an Ivy League college while black, or renting an Airbnb property while black, or sitting in their own airplane seats while black and a white passenger found them to be "pungent." Such was the power of Salma that the show was able to shame the white accusers who had made the calls to the police into coming along to confess, recognize their own prejudices, apologize, seek forgiveness, hug, and so on. The segment made her a shoo-in for a second Emmy, she was assured, and more importantly was a real contribution to the conversation about race in America. She wanted somebody to hug her when the network bosses told her of their appreciation, someone to take her out for a celebration, to send her flowers and tell her she was wonderful. She wanted love. Instead, she had Anderson Thayer. When she faced the emptiness of her life she knew that the world would have no sympathy for the way she felt. She was a privileged woman complaining about small things. A woman whose life was lived on the surface, who had chosen superficiality, had no right to complain about the absence of depth. Human life was lived between two chasms, a Russian writer had said, the one that preceded our birth, "the cradle rocks above an abyss," and the one we were all "heading for (at some forty-five hundred heartbeats an hour)." She was suffering from some sort of existential panic. She needed to put it away. |
| 46 |
How does this being-a-part-of-him thing actually work? Okay, I'm guessing here, but here's the way I'm looking at it. I see myself as a visitor in his inner world, and I see that world as an actual place, with, like, cities and countryside and lakes and such. With transportation systems. And across a lot of that world I have no obstacles, I can roam about freely and have access to everything he has access to, to episodes in his past, and shows he's watched, and books he's read, and people he has known, and the whole what's the word. Population. Of his memories and knowledge and thoughts and maybe even dreams. But as I see more and more clearly, he isn't well in the head, and I reckon the parts I can't see are the crazy parts, the parts that are so messed up that the gateways to them are blocked, so ruined that the houses in there have fallen down, like what you see on TV about bombed-out war zones, in, like, Syria. Those parts are like scrambled jigsaw puzzles, or fogbound, or just destroyed, there aren't any planes landing there, the roads are fucked, and maybe they're land-mined also, the whole area is sealed off by, for example, let's say, UN peacekeeping forces, the blue helmet dudes, what do they call them. Smurfs. Which means there's no entry. Not unless the Smurfs let you in. I think we're both disturbed by what happened at Lake Capote. Daddy Q looks like his thoughts are whirling around him like windmills. Right now he just seems lost. After the bird splat at the lake I thought, fine, at least now we're going somewhere. New York or bust. Start spreading the news. We're heading there like everyone does, to be loved or broken, to be born again or to die. What else is there to do that's worth doing? Nothing. There's a woman waiting there for him. She doesn't know she's waiting but she is. Or she does know but she isn't waiting, she doesn't care, and when he learns that lesson then that will be the end of him. And meanwhile, if I may what's the word, interject: What about me? Maybe this adventure could have someone in it for me? That's what I'm interested in. I have an imaginary girlfriend in my head and I need to turn her into a real one. She's walking the New York streets and she's lonely just like me, and wait, what do I see? Is she walking back to me?... That's my pretty-woman dream-balloon right there but his behavior is bursting it. After the confrontation at Lake Capote it's like the balance of his mind got disturbed. If he was at least partly clear-minded before, he's all unclear now. |
| 47 |
It's as if we're standing still and the world is traveling past us. Or maybe the world is TV and I don't know who's in charge of the zapper. So maybe there is a God? Is that the third person in here? A God who's fucking with me and with everybody else for that matter, arbitrarily changing the rules? I thought there were rules about changing the rules. I thought, even if I buy the idea that somebody slash something created all this, isn't that something slash somebody bound by the laws of creation once it's slash he's done creating? Or can he slash it just shrug shoulders and say, no more gravity, and goodbye, we all float off into space? And if this entity — let's call it God because why not, it's traditional — can in fact change the rules just because it feels in the mood, let's understand what exactly is the rule that's being changed here. There's a rule that goes, places must remain in the same physical relationship to other places, and if you want to get from one place to the other you've got to travel the same distance, full stop, always and forever. You'd think that was a pretty goddamn immutable rule, otherwise what happens to all the roads and trains and planes? How would it be if, for example, you decided to live as far away from your mother-in-law as possible, and then boom, you wake up and open your door and she's standing on your doorstep with a cake because her house just moved in across the road? How do we even begin to understand what a town is or a city if motels can slide across space and time from one to the other? What happens to population counts and electoral rolls? The whole system collapses, doesn't it? Is that what You're after? You're like the deranged worker with a sledgehammer in the old plumber joke, smashing up company toilets and railway station washrooms and writing up that slogan, how does it go again, if the cistern cannot be changed it must be destroyed. Jesus Christ. It's the end of the fucking world happening right outside my motel door. Today, for example. This morning. Last night I go to sleep in the Drury Inn in Amarillo, Texas (pop. 199,582, if that even means anything anymore), and I dream about yesterday at the Cadillac Ranch art installation out on Route 66, all those fifties Eldorado fins diving into or maybe backing up out of the Texas earth, Cadillac, Cadillac, Long and dark, shiny and black, thank you, Bruce, he's singing to me in my dream, buddy when I die throw my body in the back, and drive me to the junkyard in my Cadillac. |
| 48 |
Reality, that sham, is already ceasing to exist." Sancho did not reply, but privately dissented. Reality was a white lady at Lake Capote, it was what came out of the angry mouths he'd seen at a diner in Oklahoma, it was gunshots in Kansas, two wounded, one dead, a community shaken and in mourning, a beautiful young woman slamming a door in his face. Was that reality likely to dissolve and disappear? Could it really be dismissed as a sham? The Thayers were early Pilgrims, check. Thomas and Richard Thayer, brothers, classified among the Pilgrim Fathers, check. Their descendants married into the Mayflower family descended from John Alden, check. — Regarding the Mayflower itself, however? Were their names on that eminent list? They were aboard, right? — Um, not actually on the Mayflower, no. — Oh. How about on the Fortune, the second ship to make the crossing? — Ah... no, not on the Fortune, either. But they were early settlers. Early was good. Early was impressive. Words had a life of their own, Anderson Thayer believed, they developed meanings that only pedants would argue with, and Mayflower was — at least for him — by now pretty much synonymous with early. Little discrepancies did not make big differences. Small departures from the truth did not add up to lies. Therefore, Anderson Thayer saw no need to correct others when they believed his people to have come over on the fabled ship. He saw no need to correct himself. Small was not big. It was a principle he carried over into other parts of his life. He was a small man, and understood that this was not the same as being a big one. (Big men lumbered. Small men were nimble. This could give them an edge. He had read something once, or maybe seen something on TV, about the defeat of the Spanish Armada. The Spanish galleons were big and slow. The British fleet was little, maneuverable, and fast. The British ships zipped in and out between the big Spanish lumberers, firing their cannons and then sailing away, zap, pow, punch and retreat. That was big versus small. It was David versus Goliath. It was Cassius Clay floating and stinging, Sonny Liston standing there like a big confused bear. His hands can't touch what his eyes can't see.) Small was not big. Small misdemeanors were not big crimes. Small thefts were not grand larceny. Small betrayals were not high treason. During the course of his relationship with Miss Salma R, he had often had recourse to this guiding principle, and it had served him well. He had stolen things from her, sure, but not the big things, the things she cared about. |
| 49 |
An earring here, a bracelet there. She noticed the losses and shrugged them off. "I'm always losing things," she rebuked herself, and the thief laughed along with her. He had stolen her likeness, too, filming her secretly on his smartphone in her low moments, her depressions, her out-of-it hours brought on by her abuse of prescription drugs. This was to give him cards to play, to safeguard him in case she turned against him, which he intuited she was considering doing; but he suspected they would not be of much use, because she was so open about her follies, her unwellnesses and overindulgences, that video evidence of their extent might not damage her much. Still, she probably would not like the studio bosses to see the footage; even though they had heard all her stories, in these sensitive times the evidence of their eyes might be too much for them to take, even if the evidence of their ears could be set aside; so the material was not without value. So he was disloyal in little things, but loyal in the big ones: for he was indeed her protector, her guardian, he would do anything for her, he would clean up her messes, and — again, at least in his own opinion — he truly loved her. She was the giant and he the pygmy and he looked up to her, and adored. He was a student of the world of stardom, and of peripheral figures like himself who modestly played consort to the great. He paid particular attention to young men who were attracted, and attractive, to older women, fading beauties, falling stars. Demi and Ashton, of course, Madonna and that dancer guy, Cher and Tom Cruise, and the present-day gold medalist of this particular sport, the young nightclub king Omar Vitale. Omar and Demi, Omar and Heidi Klum, Omar and Elle "the Body" Macpherson. Respect, Anderson Thayer thought. However, his great role model, only recently deceased, was from the golden age. His name was Robert Wolders and he was a Dutch actor, mainly on TV although he had supporting roles in Beau Geste and Tobruk. His most substantial TV role had been in the cowboy series Laredo in the mid-sixties. But as the real-life leading man to a series of great stars, Wolders had no equal. He married Merle Oberon when she was sixty-four and he was twenty-five years younger, and gave up acting to be with her. She died four years later. The following year he started dating Audrey Hepburn when she was fifty-one and he was about seven years her junior, and he stayed with her for thirteen years, until her death. |
| 50 |
When she ran from him he trotted after her for a few steps, laughing his little laugh, heh-heh-heh, which she had always thought to be his sweet-old-man good-natured giggle but which she now heard as being filled with menace. Then he gave up the chase and, with a shrug and a little dismissive wave of a hand, went upstairs to his quarters. Here is a young girl running toward her mother, crying. Before she reaches her mother's arms, some more must be said about life in that large unhappy home. It should be plain to us, as we look in on these events, that neither Salma's mother Anisa nor her grandmother Dina could have been unaware of Babajan's proclivities. If Anisa as a child had been his victim, too, the mother before the daughter, she never explicitly revealed it to anyone, except possibly to her mother, whose lips remained sealed. But both Dina and Anisa had warned little Salma, more than once, "Don't sit alone in a room with Babajan. Make sure your ayah at least is present. Otherwise it would be improper. You understand." Little Salma knew, had known all her life, that her grandparents were estranged, that there was a negative electricity in the Juhu house which was upsetting, and which, consequently, she tried her best to ignore. She assumed that the instruction regarding her own behavior was born of that same electricity, that she was being told to choose sides, that friendship with her grandfather would be seen as disloyalty to her grandmother. However, fear, at her tender age, had not yet entered her life, and because she possessed the same fierce independence of spirit which drove both her mother and grandmother, she sometimes disregarded their orders and formed a personal opinion of Babajan which was, to be frank, fond. In spite of the frowns and admonitions of the older women of the family, she liked sitting beside him in the garden and listening to his deliciously frightening fairy tales about bhoots and jinn, beasts made of smoke and fire who had a fondness for devouring young girls. She liked it that he encouraged her to ask him questions, even dangerous questions. "Babajan," she once said, alarming herself at her boldness, "what if I told you there is no God?" He roared with laughter. "Who put such a damn fool idea in your head?" he answered without a trace of the anger she feared might be his response. "You should be at least fifteen years old before you take up such a position. Come to me then and I'll reply." This picture of a kindly, giggling, tolerant, broad-minded grandfather became important to her. |
| 51 |
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. There was adjustable mood lighting. There were strategically placed mirrors. The bellhop, a sleazy old Korean gent wearing an ancient pillbox hat, said that for fifteen dollars they could upgrade to the Arabian Nights room with Jacuzzi and steam bath, and if there was anything else they wanted, maybe good massage, deep tissue massage, massage with happy ending, anything, you understand, he could arrange that too. There were twin double beds in the room, for double the action if you want it, the bellhop said, at which they shut the door in his face. |
| 52 |
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. |
| 53 |
These he doled out to Sancho in the first few days, but was very careful about quantities. And the sealed container at the bottom of the bag, the one containing the InSmile sublingual fentanyl spray, he left sealed and in its place. Sancho recovered quickly, as the young do, but his mood remained dark. During these days of Sancho's convalescence, in which they both spent much time in their darkened room, listening to the noises of sexual pleasure filtering through the walls, and, to obscure these noises, turning up the volume while watching (non-pornographic) TV, only to be told by the management that their neighbors were complaining that the high-volume voices of reality stars on the Bravo channel were putting them off, so to speak, their stroke... during these stressful days they didn't speak much, except when Sancho wanted to express a need, and Quichotte did his best to satisfy it. They were both preoccupied by their thoughts. Sancho's thoughts were all of escape. Get me out of here. I don't care if he's my father, and loves me, and would be devastated etc., I need to strike out on my own. Way back when we were on the road I thought I might betray him by stealing his beloved Salma from him. I don't care about that now. The betrayal I need is my freedom. He said none of this aloud, but it bubbled in him like a stew. Quichotte, by contrast, was full of self-reproach. Sancho's injuries had plunged the older man into a condition of profound doubt, in which he questioned everything — how he had led his life, and even the hunger for a child that had brought Sancho into being. He had been something close to homeless for a very long time, living out of the trunk of his car with pit stops in cheap motels... what business did such a person have bringing a child into the world? He felt he should apologize to Sancho, but knew that if he did so Sancho would hear it wrongly, would think his father was wishing that he had never been born. In this way, father caring for son, son receiving his father's ministrations, they grew further and further apart, and the great quest upon which Quichotte had embarked seemed to recede into the distance. Then, in the middle of the night, while the sex shrieks of his neighbors kept him awake, Quichotte arrived at a moment of complete clarity. Enough of these orgasmic motels! His first and only duty was to provide a better life for his child. He would approach his sister, heal that rift, and together they could provide Sancho with the stable family environment he needed. |
| 54 |
To see his real father doing, it had to be admitted, not so well, while his new stepfather went in for expensive automobiles and owned a horse farm upstate, this made the boy feel ashamed, and from shame to anger was a short step. So Son was angry with both Brother and Ex-Wife and retreated from them both into his secret world. Brother didn't know who Son's friends were or where he went when he left his mother's house, and neither apparently did she, so when he disappeared (along with his laptop, tablet, and phone) and the police were alerted, neither parent had any leads to give the searchers. In the weeks that followed he saw a good deal of Ex-Wife as they sat together in sad cafEs and waited for the call that said, we found the body. But that call did not come. Instead there was a visit they didn't expect. The officer in charge of the search asked to see them together, so Brother went up to Ex-Wife's lavish apartment in the nosebleeds. Stepfather had the grace to absent himself but all his possessions were there, his expensive bad-taste art, a lot of it contemporary Chinese for obvious reasons, he had identity issues, Brother thought, and believed he could solve them by paying through the nose for this crap from Beijing and hanging his framed identity on the walls. That was an ungenerous thought. He took it back. No, he didn't. Anyway, it was irrelevant. Here was the officer in charge of the search, and he was not saying what they had feared he would say. They had found Son. He was alive. He was well. He was not drunk, or a drug addict, or kidnapped, or a member of a cult. In short, he was not in danger. He was still in the country, not abroad. And he didn't want to come home or see his parents or be in touch with them. He had disposed of his old cellphone and would prefer them not to have the new number. This was a choice he had made after giving the matter considerable thought. He was an adult now, he had a place to live, he had work, he had some money in the bank (not the bank with which they were familiar). He wanted them to know these things, and asked them to understand, though he knew it would be hard for them to do so. It might be that at some point in the future he might contact one or both of them and wish to reconnect, but at the present time he was doing what was right for him to do. There followed the usual parental cacophony, demands for more information, weeping, etc., but even as he heard the conventional noises issuing from his own mouth as well as Ex-Wife's, Brother was realizing that he was not surprised. |
| 55 |
People left him. That was what they did. If Son was now choosing to resign from the family, he was only the latest, perhaps the last, in a long series of resignations: friends, lovers, and Wife (now Ex-Wife). After what he judged to be the minimum necessary period of hysteria, he stood up, thanked the officer for the kindness with which he had relayed this tough information, excused himself, and left. 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. |
| 56 |
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. On his lap, just lying there, was a high-powered handgun, which looked to Brother (who had to be up on such matters because of the genre of fiction in which he had until recently specialized) like a Gen4 Glock 22. |
| 57 |
And so unjust! — allegations against her, and consequently some people were having second thoughts. She decided on her response more or less instantly. She called her fellow baroness and withdrew her candidacy. "Thank you for your support, Aretta, but there's no need for anyone to be embarrassed by me. I'm not dying to sit on that sack." The loom of life was broken, she thought, that loom upon which we wove the fabric of our days from familiar threads. Work, friendship, health, parenthood, family, love. And yes! Community. For goodness' sake, yes! And race, and history, and struggle, and memory. Yes to all of that. All that was at the heart of the weaving. One made the finest cloth one could with such skills as one had, accompanied by, one hoped, the humility lacked by Arachne when she challenged Athena and insulted the gods. (However, if it was true that Arachne's tapestry, which showed how the gods had abused humans, especially Zeus with all his rapes, was superior to Athena's, then she was all for Arachne, and vengeful Athena, spidering her opponent, didn't come out of the story at all well.) But now, discontinuity ruled. Yesterday meant nothing and could not help you build tomorrow. Life had become a series of vanishing photographs, posted every day, gone the next. One had no story anymore. Character, narrative, history, were all dead. Only the flat caricature of the instant remained, and that was what one was judged by. To have lived long enough to witness the replacement of the depth of her chosen world's culture by its surfaces was a sad thing. The law came to her rescue as it always had, as she had always trusted it to do. Within the walls of that unimportant courtroom during this extremely minor case about noise abatement, certain old values still survived. There was evidence. There were facts which were not merely the assertions of rivaling bigotries. There was truth. Let me live and die here, she thought. This is my true home. She won the case easily. The restaurant's owners were obliged to apologize in open court for violating the terms of their license to operate, and for the defamatory innuendos about Sister. Overnight the troll army vanished, and the culture without memory, which all culture had become, instantly forgot how it had slandered an innocent woman, and moved on. The street quieted down. The late-night revelers went elsewhere to disturb other people, other sleeping children. What passed these days for ordinary life resumed. She was used to the hard knocks of litigation and told herself that these bruises, too, would fade. |
| 58 |
The double mastectomy wasn't the only mutilation. Treatment had also required the removal of a part of an armpit and some of her chest wall muscles, plus very debilitating chemotherapy. Even though the cure was completely successful, according to her doctors, and she was declared to be in full remission, she had assumed that after that no man would desire her and she would live alone in a sort of remission from life as well as death; that her death sentence had been commuted to a life sentence, and loneliness would be her lot, along with the guilt, commonly experienced by cancer sufferers, of having brought the illness upon herself by the choices she had made in her life. Maybe it was the Fates' reward for the way she had discarded Sad-Faced Older Painter and, according to some unkind tongues, helped to drive him into his grave. Then she had met Jack, and he had loved her in spite of it all. There followed the multiple miracles of love, marriage, a brilliant career, and happiness. The birth of a healthy child, Daughter, was the biggest miracle. She had supposed herself sterile as a consequence of the chemotherapy, but her womb had had other ideas. Now, no longer young, she feared that a shadow had returned. Most mornings she woke up with a sense of impending horror. Then she told herself not to be foolish, she was symptom-free, all was well. After that she told herself, if you're so worried, go in for a full checkup. But she had been afraid to do so. The Sancho case had felt, almost, like a welcome distraction. Now that it was over, the angels on her shoulders were whispering in her ear again. You're fine, said the left angel. Get yourself looked at, said the right. She ignored them both and went to work, came back to her neighborhood, stopped by Daughter's showroom to look at the beauty her girl was creating and to swap the day's stories with her, got home and had a glass of wine with Jack in his red dress, or his green or blue dress, and told herself she was living her best life. But still she felt it: the shadow in her blood. I'm not dying, she had said. Also, I'll live. She hoped that wasn't dangerously overconfident, hubristic, of her. Maybe she should have crossed her fingers for luck when she defied the exterminating angel. Some nights she dreamed of Nemesis coming for her in a chariot drawn by griffins, wielding her punishing whip. And then there was the other subject that never completely went away. Brother. The slap on the ear, the accusation, the threat. |
| 59 |
How would her uncle respond to what he would obviously assume was a message from Sister, not from her interfering Daughter? Would he respond, or would her radical, intrusive, borderline-dishonest gesture be in vain? A false move? Here I am, masked again, she thought. She sat staring at the screen for an hour, for ninety minutes, for two hours. Sister and the judge would be home soon. She should just shut down the computer and leave and explain it all to her mother later. Or maybe she should wait and face the music. Ding. There was a message in the inbox. He had replied. Her heart pounded. 1... P-K4. It was her move. A key turned in the lock. She jumped up and went to look and there on the lower floor was her mother, home, holding a sheet of paper and staring up at her with an expression on her face which Daughter had never seen before. She's onto me, Daughter thought. But how could she be? I don't know, but she knows, and she's really angry. "Come downstairs," her mother said. "I have something to say to you." "I have a confession to make," Daughter replied. "Come downstairs," her mother repeated. "You can go first." So Daughter went first, and when she told her mother about the chess moves Sister lost her usual iron self-control and wept. Sister's stoicism was well known. Few people had seen her cry. These huge, shoulder-shaking sobs were shocking to Daughter, greatly increasing her guilt, and her own tears soon mirrored her mother's. After a few moments Sister took several deep breaths and said, laughing bitterly through yet more tears, "Honey, you don't even know what I'm crying about." In fact she had been immediately happy to hear the news about Brother, had already decided she would reply, and was clear about her next move in the chess opening. Daughter's initiative had opened up a healing possibility that felt like a renewal of life. But it was also the day when a routine blood test had produced a result that was anything but routine. She had been right about the shadow within. The contrast between the news of Brother's reentry into her story and the diagnosis of a life-threatening illness which seemed likely to bring that story to a close had been too much for her to bear. She handed the sheet of paper to her daughter and as Daughter read it her tears were replaced by dry-eyed shock and fear. She felt as if a grave had opened in the polished oak floor between them and a hand had reached out from that yawning pit and seized her mother by the ankle. "Cheer up. |
| 60 |
You always liked it. But I'll tell you something about chess. It's not like riding a bicycle. It doesn't all come flooding back. Let's see how much you've forgotten, she wrote. 3. N-KB3. ... P-KN4. How am I doing? 4. P-KR4. 4... P-N5. 5 N-K5. And here, he wrote, is where my head starts hurting. Can we try something else? What would you like to try? "Hello." "Hello, Brother." Time, that lethal chamber of horrors whose walls close slowly in upon the luckless inhabitant until they crush the life out of him, pressed in on Quichotte as he stood gazing up at his half sister's apartment building. He felt a tightness clutching at his chest, a band of pain like a message from the Reaper. How poetic it would be, he thought, if he were to fall down dead on her very doorstep, offering up his life itself on the altar of her temple, by way of making amends. The Gould Industries building (Brother wrote, housing the Trampoline in the apartment of his fantasies), one hundred years old and formerly a printing house and steel wool manufactory, 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. The Human Trampoline owned five thousand of those square feet, with high ceilings and exposed beams, high up at the penthouse level. A liveried doorman stood at that portal, eyeing Quichotte and Sancho suspiciously. Quichotte less than warm in his worn suit and Sancho in distressed denim and the coat that needed dry-cleaning made an unimpressive pair. They faced one another in a motionless standoff, Quichotte and the doorman, the traveler's dilapidated pride offering a silent repudiation of the uniformed flunky's sneer. Then there was a commotion in the lobby, and in a flurry of flying fabric and waving arms a woman with wild black hair — still black, defying the years! — burst out of the building and spread her arms in welcome. It was the Trampoline. She was tall, could perhaps even be called gangling, with a long, bony face, and if it wasn't for the hair and the expensive hoop earrings it would have been like looking in a mirror, thought Quichotte. She took him by the shoulders and leaned in for a kiss. Then she asked him what Sancho thought was an odd question: "What do you remember?" Quichotte seemed bemused all of a sudden. "I remember some of it," he said, defensively. "I remember climbing with our father among the rocks at Scandal Point to look for little crabs in the rock pools. |
| 61 |
In this state of aftermath one craves simple things: sympathy and love. Your father was not good at providing either. "He was some sort of journalist," the Trampoline said, turning back to Sancho. "Freelance. Investigative. He used words like that. Specialist in intelligence. At least in his own opinion. I don't think he did particularly well. But he was a good talker. He said he was delving into the hidden reality of the world, the truth that exists but is buried very deep so that most of us can live among more palatable fictions. The ladies, enough of them, listened. Then they saw through him and walked away. Maybe what's left of him believes he can make this television Salma listen too. "People called him paranoiac and he accepted the label. He had a whole theory of paranoia. I don't think he remembers that now. He said paranoia was to be understood as essentially optimistic, because the paranoid believed that there was a meaning to events, that the world made sense, even though that sense was concealed. Did he ever talk to you about that? No, he has lost that part of himself along with the rest. The opposite of paranoia, he said, was entropy, which was tragic, because it indicated that the universe was absurd. It was good talk. It didn't work so well in print. He had to go on living in that small apartment in Kips Bay. I had already made my money and so there was between us the question of envy. He didn't come here much because he envied me for living here. How ridiculous that was! There was nothing to envy about me at that time. The mutilation, the chemo, the transformation of a woman into an undead entity, a trickster who had somehow gotten away with cheating death. I guess you could envy me for my luck, but he envied me for my apartment. This is the kind of brother he was. Half brother. He wasn't even half a brother to me. "I lifted him up whenever the women left. They always left him, that was a fact. When the gaudy patter ran out they found there wasn't enough of a man there and they excused themselves and exited. He never found anybody to build something real with. But he seemed content in those days just to find the next temporary connection. The next unreal thing. And when they dumped him, he came around. He came to his Trampoline in search of some bounce and that was my fault, I always cheered him up, I didn't say, you asshole, can't you see which of us is more in need of being lifted up right now? I should have said it but I just didn't. Lifting people up, that's my thing. |
| 62 |
So, I didn't complain. "The year of my illness was also the year of the song. The one that gave me my name. "It builds up, the resentment. It piles up like New York garbage. Then something comes along and gives it a shove and after that, get out of the way of the avalanche if you can." The sun sank behind the Hudson and in a moment of silence the three of them stood on the apartment's terrace and watched it go, the light of the fire dying in the water like a dream being forgotten. The Trampoline, however, was unquenched and on fire, had forgotten nothing, and what had been pent up in her during the long years of estrangement was blazing out of her like the flame of a second sun that had no intention of setting, not until its hot work had been done. "Betrayal blindness," she said, and it wasn't clear if she was addressing Quichotte or Sancho or planet Venus glinting in the darkening sky. "Victims of treachery find ways of deluding themselves that they are not being betrayed. Sexually, for example, but I assume in other areas too. Business, politics, friendship. We are good at fooling ourselves in order to preserve our trust. But it isn't only the victims who do it. The traitors, too, convince themselves that they are not committing treason. At the very moment of their deepest betrayals they assure themselves that they are acting well, even that their deeds are in the best interest of the betrayed person, or of some higher cause. They save us from ourselves, or, like Brutus and his gang, they save Rome from Caesar. They are the innocent ones, the good guys, or, at the very least, not so bad." "What did he do?" Sancho asked. "Dad, I mean, not Brutus." The Trampoline crossed her arms and clutched at her shoulders, and breathed deeply, gathering herself, like a storm. It was necessary, she said, by way of a preamble, to tell Sancho something about the problem of South Asian men. She presumed Sancho was not fully briefed on this topic? No, she hadn't thought so. She would not bore him with statistics. But she would ask him to believe that in her field, the microfinancing of poor women to enable them to become economically self-sufficient, she could not count on the backing of the men in their lives. In her work she and her teams in the field subscribed to the so-called sixteen decisions of the Grameen Bank movement, and decision eleven, for example, "We shall not take any dowry at our sons' weddings, nor shall we give away any dowry at our daughters' weddings," was not popular with the patriarchy. |
| 63 |
He was thinking about parallel universes even then. When he started in about his love for science fiction, naming obscure-to-me writers of the old school — I remember the names Simak and Blish and Kornbluth and Sprague de Camp — I glazed over and was about to excuse myself but then he did something actually unpleasant. He grabbed me by my wrist and glared at me with what looked like anger and said, 'You can't leave.' I detached his hand. My secret anger was bigger than his, and I showed him just a flash of it. 'You need to learn how to behave,' I said. 'Let me know if you ever do.' Then I left. I looked back toward him from the doorway. He seemed lost in thought, wrapped up in himself. But he was watching. Afterwards he said to me, 'If you hadn't looked back I would never have spoken to you again. But you did look back. That was very important.' It was, I thought, the remark of a very vain individual. But, again, it was interesting. "I never believed any man would find me attractive after my mutilation, and I had reconciled myself to that. There was, yes, the secret anger. I had a lot of anger about what had happened to me. But I had also learned how to bury it so deep that it didn't know how to get out unless I chose to let it escape. It worked for me now, I told myself. I told myself a lot of things: that I was doing the work I wanted to do, I had loyal friends, a full and comfortable life, and I had cheated death. There was nothing wrong with that picture, nothing that required the presence of a man to put right. These good thoughts prevented the rage from rising up out of its burial ground. But it was there if I needed it. It still is. "This was the china shop in which I lived, into which Evel Cent charged, without a thought for the damage he might cause, talking about the end of the world. The morning after he grabbed my wrist he was standing on the sidewalk down there holding flowers, calling my cell number. I hadn't given it to him, or told him my address, but there he was. Resourceful. Determined. Apologetic. Urgent. I told him to come up and what followed, followed. No, that isn't correct. It was slow. The idea of undressing for a man was horrifying. The idea of being touched. He said, 'I'm in no hurry. The end isn't coming for a while yet.' What? I said. What? Out came his pet theory, the one to which he would devote his billions. The cosmos disintegrating like an oil painting on a fraying canvas, like the ruins of Egypt. The appearance of holes in space-time, the coming victory of Nothing over Everything. |
| 64 |
As also now Quichotte. Quester for love, supplicant for forgiveness, seated in the nightgloom of his half sister's home, while his ghosts, exhumed by her sorcery, walked all about him, including the phantom of himself as he once was. Chinese food was delivered and set upon a table, but Quichotte could not eat, feeling himself lost in darkness, encircled by the sadness of days gone by. Why had he been as he was, consumed by envy, ungenerous, competitive, harsh? He could not say. He had no access to that self. The reason for that was what happened that night in the Kips Bay of the past. It wasn't such a bad apartment. The ceilings were high and the neighbors were quiet and he could work there contentedly enough. On the night in question, however, it almost became his tomb. He had a nightmare that night in which he had awoken, in this his own bedroom, to see a shadowy figure standing at the foot of his bed, looking down at him, saying nothing. He understood, in the dream, that the intruder was both himself, or his shadow, and also Death. He woke up in fear. It was 3 A. M. He sat up in bed and turned on the lamp on his nightstand, his heart beating hard. There was nobody in the room, of course, and to calm himself he drank a glass of water and got out of bed to go to the toilet. That was when the Interior Event happened. 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. |
| 65 |
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. That he ignored the fact that throughout this period she had actually been managing his money for him, making sure it was well cared for, was worse still. |
| 66 |
And the allegation about forging their father's will, or falsifying it in her favor, was the last straw. "He was always the wrong half of a half brother," the Trampoline told Sancho, "but at that point I understood I needed to withdraw from him, just as he needed to withdraw from almost everything. He was damaged, I saw that, he wasn't himself, I had compassion for that, but he had become unbearable. If we had been married we would have had to get divorced. In a way we did get divorced. When he left the city to begin his strange journeyings in the heartland, selling pills to doctors, I thought, okay, that's that, and let him be, let him do what he has to do, and maybe find his way. But guess what? His money is still in good shape. And there's certainly enough of it to mean you guys don't have to stay in the Blue Yorker motel. If he wants to stay in the city he can rent a place. You can both stay here until he does. I have a parking place in the basement garage, but I don't have a car, so he can put his wheels down there." She turned to face him. "Does that work?" Quichotte rose to his feet and cleared his throat. "There is something I first need to say," he stated, formally. "I wish to apologize to you, my sister, for all offenses both remembered and forgotten, both those for which I feel guilt and responsibility and those which were the responsibility of a person who has faded from memory. In my small way I am what your Mr. Cent says the universe has become: a cosmos with holes torn out of it, where nothing remains. I am fraying at the edges and may not survive. Therefore I ask that both kinds of fault, the known and the unknown, be forgiven before we reach our ends, and I am willing to perform whatever deeds you ask for by way of a penalty, in expiation of my misdeeds, both those which I own and those which I can no longer own, as they have left me and gone far away. This is what I have crossed America to set right, for until there is harmony the path to the Beloved, who lies beyond the world and its grief, will not open." At this point, he moved slowly toward the Trampoline, his leg dragging heavily tonight, and when he reached her he fell, shockingly, to his knees and took hold, between his thumb and forefinger, of the hem of her garment. "Forgive me," he said, bowing his head, "and set me free, and yourself as well." Time stood still inside the room. Outside, or so it seemed to Sancho, a week passed, a month, a year, a decade, maybe a century. The sun rose and set, the moon waxed and waned, the seasons fled by. |
| 67 |
The idea of London (pop. 8,136,000) as a clubby, members-only, keep-out zone was probably out of date too. He hadn't been there for many years. These days the clubs were mostly owned by foreigners and it was the English who had to apply for membership. But the new flag-waving go-back-where-you-came-from England-for-the-English white populism was there, too, had risen from its grave in the dead imperial past to haunt the fractured, second-class-nation present. So, then, a plague on both your houses, Brother thought, and asked for another vodka and soda, his third, one over his limit, but he needed it today. (He had not been in an airplane for quite some time. He had given his Quichotte a nightmare which he had had himself, a dream of first falling out of the sky and then drowning, and Quichotte's consequent fear of flying was also Brother's own. On the rare occasions when he had no choice but to fly, he knocked himself out with Xanax and got through the journey that way. This time he had chosen vodka instead of Xanax. So far, it was working well.) Ever since his reunion with his lost child he had been thinking of broken families — of his own broken family — as allegories of larger-scale fragmentations, and of the search for love and healing as a quest in which everyone, not just his mad Quichotte, was involved. He made a note on his phone. Don't forget to resolve Sancho's love interest too. This was the latest addition to a list he had been making since the plane took off. Don't forget Sancho's visions — reality begins to be more phantasmagoric. Don't forget Quichotte's key. What does it open, and what's inside? And one more: Quichotte (sounds like) key shot. A key shot was a tiny bump of cocaine or heroin scooped up on a key. He didn't know how this fitted into Quichotte's story. Maybe there was no place for it. It would remain just a note, to be deleted later. The plane lost altitude suddenly and fast, like one of the balls Galileo imagined dropping from the Leaning Tower of Pisa, like an elevator plunging down its shaft, like a falling man. His drink spilled, but he caught the glass before it fell. The orange breathing masks appeared from above. The captain spoke rapidly over the intercom, trying to reassure passengers while also giving emergency instructions. It was not necessary at present to put on the breathing masks. Stay in your seats with the belts fastened. This was more than rough air, but the aircraft was under the pilots' control, or so the voice insisted, not wholly convincingly. |
| 68 |
The 747 lurched, bumped, slalomed first one way, then the other. Many of the passengers panicked. There was weeping and shrieking. There was vomiting too. Brother, for whom this was a bad dream come true, who had always known in a part of his mind that airplanes were simultaneously too massive to fly and too flimsy to resist the immense forces of nature, was interested to note that he remained calm. He continued to sip at his drink. Was it possible that his fear of flying had been cured at exactly the moment at which it was perfectly rational to feel afraid? I've been writing about the end of the world, he thought, and what I was really doing was imagining death. My own, masquerading as everyone else's. A private ending redescribed as a universal one. I've been thinking about it for so long that this doesn't come as a surprise. He raised his glass and toasted the giant death angel, a bare skull visible within a black hooded robe, standing on the horizon and holding the aircraft in one hand and shaking it. The death angel bowed in recognition of the gesture, and let the jumbo jet go. With a brief final shudder the aircraft settled back into its course. After that the flight went smoothly and the passengers entered a mood of near-hysterical camaraderie. The crew handed out champagne for free, even in coach. Brother suspected that some of the passengers were having mile-high sex with strangers in the washrooms. Things were becoming a little rock and roll. He kept his own counsel, finished his drink slowly, and went on thinking about death. Which had been central to his career as a writer until now. He had always felt that a story didn't come alive for him until at least one character hated someone else, or several someone elses, so much that they were prepared to murder them. Without killing there was no life. He knew that other writers could make masterpieces out of accounts of tea parties (e. g., the Mad Hatter's) or dinner parties (e. g., Mrs. Dalloway's) or, if you were Leopold Bloom, out of a day spent walking around a city while your wife was being unfaithful to you back home, but Brother had always needed blood. It was an age of blood, not of tea, he told himself (and others, from time to time). He was flying toward a deathbed now — or somewhere very close to a deathbed — hoping there would be time for a final scene of reconciliation. Sister was in the angel's fist and he didn't seem inclined to let her go. At the end of most lives, he reminded himself, death did not arrive as a crime, but as the great mystery, which everyone had to solve alone. |
| 69 |
The death angel hovered and then set him free. (Later, when the angel released the plane in which he was crossing the ocean, he thought, that's two lives used up, and I'm not a cat.) His jumbled thoughts about death and Equinox filled the gap between the conclusion of his apology and the beginning of Sister's response, which came after a lengthy pause. When she spoke her words were as measured as a legal deposition. "Remorse and forgiveness are obviously related," she said, "but it's not a cause-and-effect relationship. The connection between them is the act. It is for the actor to decide whether or not he feels regret and remorse for the act, whether or not he is willing and ready to apologize in the hope of making amends. It is for the person acted upon to decide whether or not she feels able to set the act aside and move on, which is to say, to forgive. The decision of the person acted upon is not contingent upon the decision of the actor. One may genuinely feel remorse and make a genuine apology, and still not be forgiven, if the person acted upon is not ready to forgive. Alternatively, one may not feel ready to apologize, and still be forgiven, if the forgiver is ready to let bygones be bygones. You have apologized. That was and is your decision. I accept that it is a genuine apology. Now it is for me to decide whether or not I can forgive what you did. Or maybe I have already decided that. Or perhaps I never will." "I'm glad there's at least one lawyer in the family," Brother replied. "Pa and Ma would have been so proud." Those were their first moves. The purpose of the opening in the game of chess, Brother thought, was to establish command of the center and to give your pieces the greatest possible positional advantage. He had begun with a sacrifice, the unreserved apology, but it wasn't immediately clear if he had improved his position as a result. In the conversations that followed they circled one another, Brother reluctant to abase himself further, Sister playing a cautious game, defensive and slow. They ventured into childhood memories, not very successfully. The past, the peacefully dead mother, the suicide father with the empty bottle of pills by his bedside, Sister's affair with Sad-Faced Older Painter, the slap, all of that felt like treacherous territory, in which one or both could easily make false moves and lose ground that would be hard to recapture. Their few forays into old times led to strained exchanges. "Do you still sing?" "Only in the shower." "That's a shame. |
| 70 |
"Did you ever have any comprehension, did you even possess the capacity to comprehend, what it might have felt like to imagine having an older brother by my side, that I could turn to, on whom, if need be, I could lean? No, never mind, rhetorical question, I already know the answer. Of course you can't bloody imagine it, because you were too busy swanning around bloody New York fantasizing about bloody espionage. You know who the real James Bond was? An expert on Jamaican birds whose name Ian Fleming stole for his 007. That seems to sum you up pretty damn well. As a secret agent — correction, as somebody writing about secret agents — you make an excellent ornithologist. As a human being? Not even as good as that." That was just Sister clearing her throat. The aria followed, a song of accusation to rival the mighty "Abscheulicher!" in Beethoven's Fidelio. He was a heartless monster, she told him; did he not understand — O abominable one! — that human life was short and that each day of love stolen from it was a crime against life itself? No, of course he did not understand, such understanding was beyond the ken of monsters, abominable ones, who rutted and grunted in the mud of ugliness and rose up to murder what was beautiful, or what might, with proper husbandry, become a thing of beauty. They had never been that close, she cried, but if he had shown even the slightest desire to come closer to her she would have responded a thousandfold. But instead, there was his unjust accusation of a financial crime, there was the slap, there were the ensuing years of prideful unrepentant absence, and these were unforgivable things. 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. |
| 71 |
— 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. |
| 72 |
Sublingual fentanyl spray was even more powerful and worked much faster. Medicinal doses of the spray were measured and delivered in micrograms, so to reach the fatal level it was necessary to spray beneath the tongue repeatedly and rapidly. The product packaging carried prominent and strongly worded warnings about overdosing. They had made their plans methodically, Sister and the judge, because they were both diligent people. They knew the required dosages, had calculated the effects of their different body weights (she was down to just under one hundred pounds at this point, while he was closer to two hundred), and had destroyed all identifying marks on the two sprays, scratching away the batch numbers and the address of the manufactory, so that Brother could not later be charged with having supplied the fatal drug off-prescription, and they had left careful instructions — in a letter propped up on a cushion at the foot of Sister's bed — for the disposal of their assets and belongings. They sent their great and apologetic love to Daughter and asked her not to grieve but to rejoice that they left the world as they had lived in it: together. In Sister's hand at the bottom of the letter (the rest of which had been written out by the judge, though clearly conceived jointly by them both) were a couple of lines from Marvell's "On a Drop of Dew." How loose and easy hence to go, How girt and ready to ascend. She was ready and had chosen when and how to give up her flower. They had both chosen, and they had kept their appointment. Brother came awake fast in the dead of night, his thoughts filled with sudden, sad understanding. The disembodied voices of the darkness had fallen silent, as if they, too, understood. He got out of bed in his pajamas and went rapidly toward Sister's room. He stood for a moment listening. Daughter was asleep on the couch downstairs. But the silence behind the closed door of Sister's bedroom was not the silence of sleep. He opened the door and went in. The judge was in a chair by her bedside, still dressed in the silver gown, his chin upon his chest. Sister had been sitting up in bed but had now slumped sideways so that her head rested upon her husband's shoulder. On her nightstand lay two chess pieces, the white king and the black queen, both knocked over, resigning their games. They had changed the rules, Jack and Jack. The queen had resigned as well as the king. There was no victor, or else they had both won. Now Daughter was there, too, opening and reading the letter. |
| 73 |
Can't you hear the angels as they sing? The miracle is upon us, and you are the man who has made it so, and how can I react except with openhearted love? "Tell her," Dr. Smile said, changing the subject, "that we are making product improvements all the time. We will overcome our present obstacles and proceed. Soon we will have a small tablet, only three millimeters diameter, thirty micrograms. It will be ten times more powerful than the InSmile spray. Tell her, if she wishes, this also can be available." Then Quichotte's head swirled, the birds of the park spiraled over him in a phantom dance, and he entered an agon, a great interior struggle, in which his whole being was at war, a battle in which he was at once protagonist and antagonist. The first Quichotte exulted, My love is within my grasp, while the second objected, I am being asked to do a dishonorable thing, and are we not honorable men? The first cried, The miracle is upon me, and I cannot refuse it, and the second replied, She is not sick and this is medicine for the terminally ill. Beside that American oak which was by no means tropical and that Indian cousin who was by no means ethical, a nonsensical verse flowed unbidden through his broken mind. Under the bam Under the boo Under the bamboo tree He understood, to the best of his capacity, his true nature. He was impure. He was the bam and he was also the boo; the flawed as well as the fine, the honorable and the dishonorable too. He was not Sir Galahad, nor was he meant to be. As the realization dawned it was as if the entire structure of his quest fell away, shriveled and dissolved in that light like a night creature that hates the sun. It had been a delusion, the whole business of needing to be worthy, of needing to make himself worthy of her. All that mattered was this opportunity, knocking. This attachE case was all that mattered. Which made him not a knight but an opportunist, and an opportunist was an altogether lower form of life. Altogether unworthy. Then a heretical thought occurred. Was it possible, that she, the Beloved, was unworthy too? What he was being asked to do for her was wrong, yet she was asking it. A goddess or a queen did not ask her knight or her hero, who wore her favor on his helmet, to perform immoral tasks. So if she was asking this, then she was no more a queen or a goddess than he was a hero or a knight. Her request and his fulfillment of that request would topple them both off their pedestals and drag them down into the dirt together. |
| 74 |
All was stagnation. Life, having been rendered meaningless, lost the power of movement. When he turned on the television the images did not change. It seemed that the Earth stood still and the sun neither rose nor set. Were days going by, or weeks, or even months, or had the idea of time passing become meaningless too? A perpetual twilight reigned. The noises of the street were held in stasis, a two-tone siren stuck on one tone, the bleep of a reversing truck sounding continuously like the whining of a mechanical mosquito, the traffic roaring, not as traffic does, but like the low sustained breath of some unknown beast. Quichotte neither ate nor drank and did not know the day from the night. It was as if he were a character in a show on TV and owing to a technical problem the transmission had frozen and he was caught in mid-gesture, trapped in electronic aspic. It was as if he were being written and the author could not turn the page. In that long nothingness it was not difficult to think of the gun as his only friend. He was like the postapocalyptic underground troglodytes he saw in a movie on TV, dependent for everything on the all-powerful Machine, unwilling to brave the surface of the Earth where a few brave souls were still moving, and so doomed when the Machine, without explanation, stopped. The Machine was stopping. The last valley, he remembered, was the Valley of Poverty and Annihilation, where the self disappeared into the universe and the Wayfarer became timeless. At a certain moment, in that moment without moments, he refused this ending, and found the courage to go on. Then with a great grinding noise the world around him began to move again, the cogwheels engaged, the end turned out not to be the end. The sun and moon, the traffic, the TV, here they all were once more, rising, setting, roaring, blaring. Here was the date on the TV screen. It was already December. And the gray-eyed newscaster had more words for him. "Salma R was released from the hospital today and went home. The scandal surrounding her abuse of the opioid fentanyl and her subsequent near-death experience shook the entertainment world. Today, as she left Mount Sinai, she spoke to our cameras." There she was on the front steps of the medical facility, the Beloved, looking better than she had any right to look; looking adorable, irresistible, beginning the process of winning back her fan base. "I'm just so ashamed," she said. "I let the network down, I let everyone working on the show down, I let the fans down, and I let myself down." "Ms. |
| 75 |
The country rolled by outside the windows, unobserved. But now some passengers at least had noticed the disturbance, the feedback loop which had fed them back to where they had been several hours ago, and people were panicking, not helped by the driver, who threw up his hands and said, "Beats me. I just drive the bus, I don't make the roads." "One moment," the sandwich lady said to Sancho. "Let me see what I can do." She stood up in the aisle amid the shrieking of her fellow passengers and closed her eyes. There followed a series of heavy bumps, the kind one might feel on a railway train changing tracks across multiple points, and then she sagged down into her seat, exhausted. "Okay, we're back where we should be," she said to Sancho, "but that was pretty much above my pay grade. I'm going to need to recover before we discuss the second crisis." The noise in the bus subsided as the street signs began to make sense once more. Beautiful wasn't far away now. Some passengers accused others of having mistakenly raised an alarm for which there was no need. The driver shrugged his seen-it-all-before shrug and drove on. The sandwich lady snored gently in her seat. Sancho alone was fully alert. It seemed plain to him that the second crisis might be worse than the first. As he waited he became aware of certain disturbing changes in himself. Like there's bad reception, a bad signal, and you aren't always coming through clearly. That had been the sandwich lady a. k. a. blue fairy's unsentimental diagnosis. Now he was beginning to feel it too. He was experiencing fuzzy spells, when his thoughts became clouded and unclear, the kind of grogginess one might feel if one had a bad case of the flu. There was also a kind of intermittency, a series of very short interruptions during which the stream of consciousness apparently vanished and then returned. Most worrying of all were the visual and aural symptoms. He looked down at his hand and saw it break up before his eyes like a bad TV image, and then re-form. That was impossible. He used the hand to rub his eyes and it worked just like a hand ought to work, which was partially reassuring. Then a few moments later he saw the phenomenon again. He wanted to ask the sandwich lady for help but she was out cold, snoring. He called out to her and to his horror heard his voice crackle and pop like a radio station that wasn't properly tuned in. He was, he reminded himself, misbegotten: born out of the irresistible need and imperishable desire of an old fool whose brain had been addled by television. |
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"Thank you," Sancho said, and felt simultaneously uplifted and afraid. "Thank you, I will." But when he got off the bus in Beautiful, at the depot that was just down the road from the Rey-Nard mall, it was already too late. There were snowflakes gusting in the air, it was six degrees below, and the wind chill made it feel much colder. People were running wild in the streets, screaming The sky is falling. There were cars on fire and broken Best Buy windows, revealing that the desire for meaningless destruction and free TVs survived even at the end of days. This was the twelfth-best city to live in in the United States and its citizens, the twelfth-best citizens in America, were losing their minds. They'll never make the top ten now, Sancho thought, trying to hold it together, trying to keep a hold on sanity, as he began to run. The absences, the holes in time and space which he had seen in the sky, had multiplied rapidly and come down lower, and one of them yawned terrifyingly in the space where the Powers Bar & Grill used to be. Just to look at that thing — that no-thing which was the negation of all things — was to be filled with an incurable dread. Sancho ran from it as one might from the jaws of a man-eating dragon. As he ran he felt himself beginning to splinter too. He looked down at his arms, his hands, his torso, his legs. They were crackling and distorted. The picture quality had become really bad. Was there no Wi-Fi around here? He ran as hard as he could and as he neared the street where she lived he felt a kind of hammer blow fall, and the thought arrived unbidden that his father, Quichotte, who had fashioned him from falling stars, had despaired of him and unwished his mighty wish. Who is Sancho without Quichotte? The answer appeared to be, nobody. A fiction that could not endure. Had he deserved his father's despairing rejection, if that was what had happened? And could it be that his creator could uncreate him after all, that without his father's love he would simply cease to be? Was paternal love the lifeblood he lacked, without which even romantic love could not save him? Had he loved his father? If he was truthful with himself, the answer was, he had not. So, then, these were his just desserts. His deterioration accelerated. He went from high definition to early analog and now his only hope, all his hope, was that the woman he loved would open her arms and heart and love — love itself! — would burst through his body and make him whole. A woman's love could do that. |
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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. |
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Half a mile west of the junction where the convoys had separated and gone in opposite directions, Serial One entered the mouth of a spectacularly narrow canyon. It was 6:10 p. m., and the lower flanks of the gorge already lay in shadow. The afternoon's warmth had been supplanted by the chill of the advancing evening, prompting the Rangers to don Gore-Tex jackets beneath their body armor. The air smelled of sage, dust, and wood smoke rising from cooking fires in a nearby village. Ahead, the route snaked through a deep, crooked slot the river had gouged into the bedrock of the surrounding mountains. In places the passage was only a foot or two wider than the Humvees and was constricted by vertical limestone cliffs that reduced the sky overhead to a pale blue stripe. Only by sharply craning their necks could the soldiers see the canyon rim. Up there on the heights, far above the gloom of the valley floor, the otherwise barren slopes were dotted with graceful Chilgoza pines still washed with sunlight, their silver bark and viridescent needles glowing in the fleeting rays. The magnificence of the setting was not lost on the Rangers as their vehicles lurched over gravel berms and limestone ledges. This canyon was the most dramatic landform they'd seen since arriving in Khost: the sort of geologic wonder one might encounter in Utah's Zion National Park, or the Mogollon Rim of northern Arizona. One soldier remarked that it would be "an awesome place to go rock climbing." But most of the Rangers were less interested in the natural splendors than in the unnatural hazards that might be lurking somewhere above them. Specialist Russell Baer was in the convoy's fourth vehicle, a Toyota Hilux pickup. Turning to Sergeant Bradley Shepherd, who was driving the truck, Baer declared, "This looks like those movies they showed us before we deployed. Back in the 1980s the Afghans used to ambush the Russians in places just like this. They slaughtered them in these canyons from above. It's how they won the war." Shepherd pondered the obvious implications of this comment, nodded soberly, then pulled out his camera and documented their passage through the dirty windshield as he drove. For the next twenty minutes the convoy crept through the claustrophobic rift, forced by the severity of the terrain to move at an excruciatingly slow pace. The slot was so tight that the Humvees' fenders sometimes scraped against its sheer walls. The Rangers remained twitchy and anxious, expecting to be attacked from the high ground at any moment. |
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By loose estimate, some ten thousand Afghans reside in Fremont proper, with another fifty thousand scattered across the rest of the Bay Area. They started showing up in 1978, when their homeland erupted into violence that has yet to abate three decades later. The chaos was sparked by accelerating friction between political groups within Afghanistan, but fuel for the conflagration was supplied in abundance and with great enthusiasm by the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union as each maneuvered to gain advantage in the Cold War. The Soviets had been lavishing billions of rubles in military and economic aid on Afghanistan since the 1950s, and had cultivated close ties with the nation's leaders. Despite this injection of outside capital, by the 1970s Afghanistan remained a tribal society, essentially medieval in character. Ninety percent of its seventeen million residents were illiterate. Eighty-five percent of the population lived in the mountainous, largely roadless countryside, subsisting as farmers, herders, or nomadic traders. The overwhelming majority of these impoverished, uneducated country dwellers answered not to the central government in Kabul, with which they had little contact and from which they received almost no tangible assistance, but rather to local mullahs and tribal elders. Thanks to Moscow's creeping influence, however, a distinctly Marxist brand of modernization had begun to establish a toehold in a few of the nation's largest cities. Afghanistan's cozy relationship with the Soviets originated under the leadership of Prime Minister Mohammed Daoud Khan, a Pashtun with fleshy jowls and a shaved head who was appointed in 1953 by his cousin and brother-in-law, King Mohammed Zahir Shah. Ten years later Daoud was forced to resign from the government after launching a brief but disastrous war against Pakistan. But in 1973 he reclaimed power by means of a nonviolent coup d'Etat, deposing King Zahir and declaring himself the first president of the Republic of Afghanistan. A fervent subculture of Marxist intellectuals, professionals, and students had by this time taken root in Kabul, intent on bringing their country into the twentieth century, kicking and screaming if need be, and President Daoud — who dressed in hand-tailored Italian suits — supported this shift toward secular modernity as long as it didn't threaten his hold on power. Under Daoud, females were given opportunities to be educated and join the professional workforce. |
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Beyond the borders of the United States, a great many people — Haqqani and bin Laden prominent among them — begged to differ with Fukuyama's assertion that the game was over and Western liberal democracy had won. * U. S. defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld received strikingly similar admonitions from American generals during their planning for the invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. * Khost was part of Paktia Province until 1995, when it was split off as a province unto itself. Although Pat Tillman was born in Fremont, for all but two years of his childhood he lived thirty minutes down the freeway in a neighborhood known as New Almaden — a tranquil, closely woven community tucked alongside the narrow seam of Los Alamitos Creek, where the Tillman family occupied a tidy thirteen-hundred-square-foot cottage surrounded by shade trees. The slopes of the Santa Cruz Mountains, redolent of Scotch broom and manzanita, jutted directly from their backyard. 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. |
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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. Pat excelled at every position. Late in a crucial game near the end of the season, he ran the ball ninety yards down the field for a come-from-behind touchdown that earned Leland a berth in the playoffs. Not long after Pat was killed, a remote Army firebase seven miles south of the hillside where he perished was named in his honor: Forward Operating Base Tillman. In the winter of 2007 a small contingent of American soldiers was stationed here, along with a company of Afghan National Army recruits and a handful of fighters from the Afghan Security Guard. |
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The man cries out and staggers, but remains on his feet, which prompts Ghani to grab him by the shoulders, throw him to the muddy ground, and begin cursing at him in Pashto. When the tribesman stands up, Ghani knocks him down again and continues yelling at him. Then the commander turns and walks back toward the base, muttering in English, "I swear, I should go back there right now and really kick his ass." Noticing the shocked expression of the American journalist walking beside him, he bristles at the reproach implied by the reporter's reaction: "That guy, he has done some bad things against me. If someone is bad to me, I must be bad to them. You know why? Because if you didn't, that guy will think you are a pussy guy. And then he will be bothering you all the time. You have to go against him back, you know?" When the journalist expresses skepticism, Ghani only becomes more adamant: "I am telling you, if the guy does something wrong, and you didn't do something back against him, after this he will have no respect for you. He will think you are a pussy motherfucker. And then he will be bothering you. Every time he sees you, he will give you a hard time." Commander Ghani* has just provided a vivid summation of the Pashtun principles of nang (honor), ghairat (pride), and badal (revenge), which — along with a fourth concept, melmastia (hospitality) — account for the most important tenets in an unwritten, overarching code of behavior known as Pashtunwali that has shaped culture and identity in this part of Central Asia for centuries. There are an estimated fifteen million Pashtuns living in Afghanistan's southern and eastern provinces; they constitute that nation's largest ethnic group. Another twenty-six million Pashtuns live just across the border in western Pakistan, and to a great degree Pashtunwali dictates how these forty-one million people conduct their lives. The tenets of Pashtunwali are fluid, highly nuanced, and occasionally contradictory. According to the precept of melmastia, a Pashtun is obligated to show hospitality to all visitors, especially strangers. Guests are to be fed, sheltered, and protected from harm; if they request it, even mortal enemies must be given sanctuary. According to the precept of badal, any injustice — no matter how slight — must be avenged. If a man suffers even the relatively minor insult of a personal taunt, for example, the insulted party must shed the taunter's blood; if the taunter flees before justice can be carried out, the blood of his closest male relative must be shed in his stead. |
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Shi'ite militia fought against Hekmatyar around Kabul's zoo, then switched sides and fought against Massoud. Sayyaf's forces allied with his old Islamic law colleague Burhanuddin Rabbani and hit the Shi'ites with unrestrained fury, beheading old men, women, children, and dogs. Dostum's Uzbek militias carried out a campaign of rapes and executions on Kabul's outskirts. Massoud hunkered down in the tattered defense ministry, a decaying former royal palace, and moved his troops north and south in running battles. The electricity in Kabul failed... Roads closed, food supplies shrank, and disease spread. About ten thousand Afghan civilians died violently by the year's end. At least 40 percent of Kabul was reduced to rubble by the fighting and shelling, but the effects of the civil war extended far beyond the capital. As a bulwark against anarchy, people in the provinces retreated beneath the relatively benign tyranny of their clans, where the mullahs and commanders of local militias provided a semblance of security and order. This atomization of the nation — the hunkering of the population into a thousand premodern fiefs — proved to be ideal conditions for incubating a singularly virulent strain of terrorism that would shortly capture the attention of the world, and most especially the United States. At 9:18 Pacific standard time on the morning of February 26, 1993, as Pat was attending class at Leland High School, a fifteen-hundred-pound bomb improvised from fertilizer, fuel oil, nitroglycerin, sulfuric acid, and sodium cyanide packed into the back of a rented Econoline van was detonated three thousand miles across the country from Almaden, in a parking garage beneath the north tower of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan. The explosion blasted a hundred-foot-wide cavity through six stories of steel-reinforced concrete and created a seismic shock wave felt more than a mile away. Although more than a thousand New Yorkers were injured, only six people (who had the bad luck to be eating lunch in a cafeteria directly above the blast) were killed. Because the death count was relatively low and there was scant visible damage to the exterior of the building, the attack didn't raise a durable concern among most Americans. The bombers were generally portrayed as inept amateurs who had come nowhere close to bringing down the massive tower. Much was made of the fact that one of the perpetrators was so dim-witted that after the attack he attempted to retrieve his deposit for the destroyed van from the Ryder agency in New Jersey where he'd rented it. |
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"Go get Pat!" Hechtle yelled. "Go get Pat!" Unaware that Hechtle had incited the altercation, the kid ducked back inside and shouted to Pat and the rest of the Leland kids that Hechtle was getting beaten up by a mob just outside the restaurant door. Pat was the first of at least ten Leland football players who came bursting out of Round Table Pizza to rescue Hechtle. The instant Rosas, Strong, Hare, and Eastman saw the fury on the faces of Pat and his friends, they bolted across the parking lot, running for their lives. Pat's inner circle at Leland included perhaps a dozen kids. He was extremely close to several of them, but nobody was more important to him than Jeff Hechtle. Moreover, Hechtle had a serious health condition that made Pat feel especially protective: he was born with a rare, poorly understood affliction known as a hairy nevus, which caused immense moles to grow over much of his body. When he was born, his parents were told he wouldn't survive. The largest of the lesions covered most of his head. Hechtle underwent a series of exceedingly complex, very painful surgeries, leaving most of the left side of his head covered in scar tissue. Because it is fragile and lacks the elasticity of normal skin, such tissue is easily torn. Sprinting from the pizza joint into the suburban night, Pat assessed the situation unfolding in front of him, mistakenly concluded that Hechtle was being assaulted by a pack of thugs, and made a split-second decision to right this grievous wrong by taking out the largest of the apparent attackers, who appeared to be a tall guy now fleeing the scene of the fight. The tall guy was Darin Rosas, and Pat, says Erin Clarke, "made a beeline for Darin." "Pat saw Darin running away," Scott Strong speculates, "and probably thought he was running because he'd done something to his friend." "All these guys came rushing out," says Rosas. "I had no idea who any of them were. All I knew is they were football players, and they were big. I was a surfer. I wasn't into contact sports. So I just started running. Others did, too, but I was the one who got caught. I ran probably about six or seven steps before somebody hit me in the back of the head and knocked me out." The blow, which came from one of Tillman's fists, dropped Rosas to the asphalt like a sack of potatoes. Much of Pat's brilliance on the football field derived from his uncanny ability to anticipate the moves of opposing players, react without hesitation, and tackle the ballcarrier with a tooth-rattling hit. |
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And as the opium fields proliferated, militias vied to control the lucrative traffic in "flower oil" — a local euphemism for the gummy brown sap scraped from the plant's seed capsules to produce heroin. Smuggling narcotics was just one among many criminal endeavors pursued by the warlords, whose entrepreneurial instincts had them constantly looking for ways to expand their sources of revenue. So-called checkpoints, for instance, sprouted like noxious weeds along every road in Afghanistan. The major thoroughfares — especially Highway A1, which formed a giant loop around the entire nation to link its principal cities — were plagued by hundreds if not thousands of such checkpoints, typically consisting of a chain or a log pulled across the road, attended by three or four bearded men brandishing AK-47s. Every time a trucker, farmer, or other traveler encountered one of these roadblocks, he would be asked at gunpoint to pay a "road tax." Refusal was not an option. Women were sometimes raped. Sanghisar is linked to Highway A1 via a two-mile maze of crude dirt lanes. After the junction with the paved highway, twenty-three additional miles of potholed macadam lead east to Kandahar City — the provincial capital and second-largest city in Afghanistan. In 1994, during a routine trip to Kandahar, Mullah Omar was stopped and shaken down for cash at five different checkpoints on this one short stretch of highway, which made him so angry that he organized a tribal council — a jirga — of more than fifty mullahs to eradicate the roadblocks and halt the extortion. 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. |
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In Munich, he raved about the spicy Bratwurst and reacted favorably to a Schweinwurst, but upon having his first taste of an almost raw Weisswurst, he observed, "The texture was soft and taste not particularly noteworthy... Before I even left the table my stomach was screaming. Marie had to carry my ass back to our room." Pat's dedication to evaluating the local food and drink was such that he even felt compelled to critique the offerings of a McDonald's they patronized in the Berner Oberland region of Switzerland. After seeing a baffling item called a McFu Burger on the menu, he wrote, "I had to have it." It turned out to be "just your standard quarter-pounder-type burger, minus the cheese, plus oriental sauce with lettuce and crazy carrot pieces and what have you. It was delicious. My hat is off to the McFu." A day later, in Interlaken, he was out on his daily run when he encountered a trail posted with signs warning that the route was closed and access was forbidden — which proved to be an irresistible draw. "Downed trees were all over the path," he wrote, "forcing me to do some nice maneuvers to get through. This of course only enhanced the enjoyment of the run and soon I was off the trail and along the brilliant turquoise river." Pat loved turning encounters with natural obstacles — boulders, rivers, fallen logs — into makeshift sport. "Out of the blue, he would always come up with creative ways to challenge himself," says his friend Alex Garwood, who is married to Marie's older sister, Christine. Garwood remembers once going on a hike with Pat near Sedona when Pat suggested they abandon the trail and instead make their way down the middle of Oak Creek by jumping from rock to rock: Pat wanted to see how far he could go without getting his feet wet. We went at least a couple of miles that way. My feet got very wet, very soon. I slipped and fell in repeatedly. He didn't get his feet wet at all. And it was so fun to watch. He not only demonstrated exceptional athletic ability, but brains to match. It was almost like a chess game to him: thinking it through, planning his moves in advance, jumping from rock to rock, rock to bank, bank to tree branch to log to rock. Making these incredibly long, incredibly graceful jumps. And having the trust that he could do it. He had amazing balance — there was a way he'd move his hands to keep his balance that was distinctively Pat. After Switzerland, Pat and Marie made stops in Venice, Florence, and Rome. On the coast of northern Italy they visited Cinque Terre, where Pat scrambled up the sea cliffs in Monterosso. |
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"Because I hadn't climbed in a while," he admitted, "I felt a bit nervous on some of the rocks." They paused for a couple of days on the French Riviera, which he thought was overrated. In Monaco, he wrote, one could sense the proximity of "big money but you also feel like the party is hidden somewhere... Maybe my blue-collarness is getting the better of me here." Of Cannes, he remarked, "Perhaps I was expecting a bit too much... Was it wrong to expect spectacular beaches? ... Was it wrong to expect hotties everywhere, or at least every now and again?" By March 25, Pat and Marie had returned to Paris to rendezvous with Christine and Alex Garwood, who had flown over from California to accompany them for the final two weeks of the trip. After worrying about how pricey the city was, Pat wrote, "Expensive or not, Marie and I should enjoy Paris with the company of Alex and Chris. Marie and I have done a pretty good job of staying off each other's throats but the extra travelers should give Marie a much needed break from me... Naturally, the trip has a way of bringing us very close together while also getting us ultra pissed-off at one another. Needless to say I have truly enjoyed Marie's company and conversation. Hopefully she feels the same... Hopefully." The next journal entry begins: It wasn't my fault! Blame Alex... Blame Paris... Oh Lord!! I got fucking hammered last night. Beyond hammered ... Because we were in Paris, the ladies wanted a nice dinner. Little did they know what they were in for... The restaurant was small and quaint. Jazz played in the background and the help was real cool. A cheese dish and mushroom concoction made up our appetizers ... the mushroom deal was unbelievable. Unfortunately, with the appetizers came the vino. For dinner I had lamb, which kicked ass. All of our food was excellent with great sauces... Our conversation was humming, and as the wine was poured it got louder and louder. For dessert the ladies had creme brulEe and Alex a brownie. I opted for more wine. Now things start to get hazy. Alex and I are getting obnoxious as we get drunk. Like usual, I am swearing up a storm and as Marie tells it, the people around us are not pleased. We are not kicked out, but were politely cut off and went on our way. They were really cool and didn't get pissed but were happy to see us leave. Remembering that night, Christine Garwood issues a bemused sigh and then elaborates: "A girlfriend of Marie's had been to Paris, and she said we should go to this restaurant. |
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After this fracas Pat wrote in his journal: Coach Vince Tobin kicked my ass out of practice and added insult to injury by making me do the scout stuff. Later on I had to go in and speak to Mr. Tobin, where he said he was "incredibly disappointed" in my play Sunday; I'm "out of control"; and he doesn't think I'm a starter in this league. Pretty much everything I have been working to overcome. This episode really put the cherry atop a fucked-up week. What is the most disappointing is how well my camp had gone, pre-season, even last week's practice, only to be pissed on by a sub-par opening game. From here I've basically realized they will start Tommy Bennett, the strong safety who was injured near the end of 1999 as soon as he's healthy. In order to prevent this I'm going to have to pull something crazy off this weekend against Dallas. Oh well, could be worse. All I can do is keep working. One day after Pat wrote this grim wrap-up of his week, the Cardinals played what would turn out to be their best game of the year, against the Cowboys. Late in the fourth quarter Arizona was backed up to their own fifteen-yard line, trailing the Cowboys by five points, when quarterback Jake Plummer threw the ball to David Boston for a sixty-three-yard gain. Three plays later, with just under two minutes remaining in the game, Plummer passed to Frank Sanders in the end zone for a touchdown. Although the Cowboys only needed a field goal to win the game, Pat and the defense dug in and stopped them cold. When time ran out, Arizona had upset Dallas, 3231. And Tillman had played brilliantly, including some critical tackles of the superstar running back Emmitt Smith. "Sunday was a great day," Pat recorded in his journal. Not only did we beat the Cowboys by one point, but I played, in my estimation, a hell of a game: 7 tackles, 1 quarterback hit, and 3 pass breakups (one of which should have been a pick)... I am overly excited about the game. The whole week I was a fucking mess. Worrying about the future, my ability to play, stuff I never worry about. At least now if they decide to replace me I have a solid reason for saying they're wrong. Most importantly, though, I'm proud of how I came back and played well despite last week's shitty game, the coach telling me I suck, and swimming in my frustration. As Nub so wisely wrote, I showed "the fortitude and savvy of a champion." As for shamelessly throwing these compliments about myself in here, I stand by them. After last week's abortion I need all I can get. |
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The upshot was a series of bitterly disputed recounts that dragged on for weeks, sparking a corresponding flurry of lawsuits and much gnashing of teeth. More than a little of the postelection anguish (on the part of Democrats, at any rate) derived from the fact that 97,421 Floridians had voted for the third-party candidate Ralph Nader. Throughout his campaign, Nader had labeled Bush and Gore "Tweedledum and Tweedledee," insisting there was no real distinction between their positions. At a press conference in September 2000 Nader had proclaimed, "It doesn't matter who is in the White House, Gore or Bush." Now it appeared that enough voters had believed him to skew the outcome of the election. Exit polls indicated that had he not been in the race, 38 percent of his voters would have voted for Gore, 25 percent would have voted for Bush, and the remaining 37 percent wouldn't have bothered to vote at all. 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. |
| 90 |
I'm going to stay with the Cardinals.' "In twenty-seven years," Bauer continues, "I've never had a player turn down that big of a package in the National Football League. I've had players take twenty grand less per year to stay at clubs they really wanted to play for, but turning down nine and a half million? That's unheard of. You just don't see loyalty like that in sports today. Pat Tillman was special. He was a man of principle. He was a once-in-a-lifetime kid." After he declined the Rams' offer, the Cardinals offered Tillman another one-year deal for the 2001 season that would pay him the league minimum for a fourth-year player, $512,000, just as Bauer predicted. Pat signed the contract, provoking expressions of astonishment from players, coaches, and fans around the league. For his part, however, Tillman had no regrets. He was one of those rare individuals who simply can't be bought at any price. Although he had no qualms about making a boatload of money if it happened to mesh with his master plan, Pat was impervious to greed. His belief that other things in life took priority over amassing wealth never faltered. But if Tillman was uncommonly resistant to the temptations of the baser human appetites, and was thereby well defended against attempts by others to manipulate him into doing their bidding with such enticements, he found it nearly impossible to resist appeals to his sense of decency and justice. Paradoxically, this latter trait would ultimately prove to be his downfall. Although Pat spoke self-deprecatingly about his intelligence, and claimed that his academic success in college came from hard work rather than brainpower, his intellectual curiosity was boundless, and he was a compulsive reader who never went anywhere without a book. Pat Murphy, the celebrated Arizona State University baseball coach, remembers seeing Pat in the bleachers during most of the Sun Devils' baseball games when Kevin was on the team. "He always had a book with him," says Murphy. "Between innings, or anytime there was a lull, he'd have it open and he'd be reading something." Because he loved engaging in informed debate, Pat made an effort to study history, economic theory, and world events from a variety of perspectives. Toward that end he read the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Quran, and the works of writers ranging from Adolf Hitler to Henry David Thoreau. Although Tillman held strong opinions on many subjects, he was bracingly open-minded and quick to admit he was wrong when confronted with facts and a persuasive argument. |
| 91 |
On the next play, Griese threw the ball to the fullback Patrick Hape for an easy touchdown, putting the Broncos ahead, 3110. Pat was furious at himself for the rest of the day, but by the time he went to bed that night he had already regained his perspective, and was looking forward to using the episode as a learning experience to improve his performance in the future. "For the most part," Marie explains, "Pat put football in its proper place. If he had a bad game, he would take it hard. It was his job, and he took it seriously. But there were only a handful of instances that I can remember when he was really, really upset about it." The following Sunday, September 30, the Cardinals lost at home again, this time to the Atlanta Falcons, 3414. Only 23,790 spectators had shown up to witness the defeat, Arizona's smallest home crowd in many years. The Sunday after that, the Cardinals flew to Philadelphia to play Donovan McNabb and the red-hot Eagles in Veterans Stadium. Sixty-six thousand three hundred and sixty fans were there, a sellout, to cheer their beloved Eagles. The start of the game was delayed nine minutes, however, so that a speech from the president of the United States could be broadcast live to the crowd. At 1:00 p. m., as the players from both teams stood on the field before the opening kickoff, a surreal image of George W. Bush materialized above them on the stadium's JumboTron. Dressed in a dark suit with a red tie, sitting in the White House Treaty Room with an American flag behind his right shoulder, the president pronounced, "Good afternoon." On my orders, the United States military has begun strikes against al-Qaeda terrorist training camps and military installations of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. 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. |
| 92 |
The first of these fifty missiles had exploded into their targets just thirty-three minutes before Bush had begun his address to the nation. When images of the military action were shown on the JumboTron, the crowd filling the stadium let out a thunderous, cathartic roar. The attacks of 911 were being avenged. The United States was now at war. The game between the Cardinals and the Eagles began immediately after the president's speech. Arizona won it, 2120, when Jake Plummer threw a thirty-five-yard touchdown pass to MarTay Jenkins on fourth down with only nine seconds left on the clock. Tillman had to leave the game in the first quarter, however, with a severe sprain to his right ankle after he received an illegal cut block from the Eagles' Jon Runyan, a six-foot seven-inch, 330-pound offensive tackle. Although Pat hopped off the field on one leg without assistance, the injury turned out to be serious. Other than the broken tibia he suffered when he was twelve years old, it was the only debilitating injury Pat ever received on a football field, despite the fact that he was one of the hardest-hitting and most aggressive players in the league. Immediately after returning to Arizona, ignoring the pain, Pat began working out so he wouldn't lose too much strength or speed as the ankle slowly healed. While his teammates practiced, Pat ran endless laps around the field with an inflatable cast on his foot. And as he continued to rehabilitate the injury over the weeks that followed, he closely followed the war in Afghanistan. On October 19, the first American ground troops — a small contingent of Army Rangers — landed eighty miles south of Kandahar. For the first months of the war, though, the Bush administration was extremely reluctant to involve more than a handful of Special Operations Forces in the conflict, relying instead on air strikes and ex-mujahideen militias whose services were purchased with duffel bags full of hundred-dollar bills. Most of these mercenary fighters (who received some $70 million all told) were Tajiks, Uzbeks, Turkmen, and Hazaras affiliated with the so-called Northern Alliance, which had been battling the Taliban for control of Afghanistan for the better part of a decade. Despite the severity of Pat's injury, he missed only four games before returning to the lineup against the Giants on November 11, a game the Cardinals lost, 1710. Two days later, Northern Alliance fighters, supported by American bombers, took control of Kabul, forcing the Taliban to scatter into the surrounding mountains. |
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'Statistically, I'm more likely to die in a car wreck,' he would say." Exactly five years after the September 11 attacks, staring out a window at throngs of New Yorkers scurrying through lower Manhattan, Marie muses, "I never explicitly asked him, 'Why are you doing this?' Because I understood Pat well enough to already know... If it was the right thing for people to go off and fight a war, he believed he should be part of it. "He saw his life in a much bigger way than simply, 'I am a professional football player, and if I walk away from this, my life is over.' Football was part of who he was, but it wasn't the be-allend-all. He was looking in other directions even prior to 911. 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. |
| 94 |
While playing baseball in college, however, he'd suffered a nagging rotator cuff injury from which he'd never fully recovered, and increasingly he'd been entertaining thoughts of leaving baseball and going down a different road. When Pat told Kevin that he was thinking about enlisting in the military, Kevin decided to enlist along with him, as Marie had predicted. "When they were growing up in New Almaden," Marie explains, "Pat and Kevin were always together. There was never any competition or resentment. Even though they were so close in age, Kevin wasn't bothered by all the attention Pat got. Kevin and Richard were each very talented in their own right, and their parents were careful never to single out Pat, but there's no getting around the fact that Pat was the one who was usually in the limelight — which for a lot of people would be tough to take. But not for Kevin and Richard. All three brothers just loved each other to death." Pat and Marie announced to their families and friends that they would be getting married in San Jose on May 4, 2002. Kevin was then living in North Carolina, playing second base for the Burlington Indians, and he asked his team manager for time off to attend the wedding. When the manager refused, citing club policy, Kevin asked to be released from his contract, the Indians granted his request, and he showed up at Pat and Marie's home in Chandler in mid-April, free from professional obligations. By now both Pat and Kevin were certain they were going to join the military, but they decided not to break the news to anyone until after the wedding, so as not to distract from the festivities. They were leaning toward joining one of the branches of the Special Operations Forces. Shortly after arriving in Arizona, Kevin visited an Army recruiting office in a strip mall off Chandler Boulevard, a few miles east of Pat and Marie's home, to gather some basic information. Soon after this initial visit, Kevin, Pat, and Marie visited the same recruiting office together. "Kevin and I pretended that we were a married couple," Marie says, "and we sat down at a table across from this recruiter to ask him detailed questions. Pat just kind of stayed in the background with his hat pulled down over his eyes, because he didn't want anyone to know who he was." One of the things Pat and Kevin had been undecided about was whether to become officers or go in as enlisted men — ordinary grunts. This meeting with the recruiter convinced them to forgo the officer track. |
| 95 |
I am thirty years old, I quit my job to serve my country, left a wife pregnant with our first child at home, whom I love and miss dearly, and I will be goddamned if I'm gonna let some fucking immature juvenile punks prevent me from getting a good night's sleep! Now, shut the fuck up right now or I'm going to beat you back to your fucking mommies! "All of a sudden the entire bay got quiet," Tulio remembers. And it stayed that way for the remainder of the night, which made an impression on another older recruit who had been trying to sleep nearby. In the morning this guy approached Tulio, introduced himself as Pat Tillman, and thanked him for bringing order to the bay. "We were wondering when somebody was going to speak up," Pat said to the Brazilian, "because these kids are just relentless. They don't let anybody rest." A conversation between the two men followed, during which, Tulio recalls, "Pat told me briefly what was going on and what I needed to do to get into the game. He offered to help me out. Immediately I noticed his appearance. He was quite a large-size man. But it was his vocabulary I noticed most, and his demeanor, and his poise." It was the start of an enduring friendship among Tulio, Pat, and Kevin. "I had no idea who Pat was at the time," Tulio says. "Neither he nor Kevin ever mentioned that he was a professional football player. I found out later from the chatter that he was famous. We ended up going through all of basic training together, and I depended on Pat and Kevin for intelligent conversation. I guess they did the same with me. We counted on each other for support. We had college degrees, which set us apart from almost all the other recruits in our cycle. And Pat and I were both married. We just hit it off." Six days after the Tillmans arrived at Thirtieth AG, some high-ranking officers showed up at their bay for an inspection, and Pat wrote that encountering them was "awkward. Getting used to the idea of saluting to officers constantly ... is odd. Of course I understand and appreciate the point of showing respect to superiors but the caste separation between officers and enlisted men is foreign." This, alas, was only the first of many aspects of military culture that struck Pat as archaic, bizarre, and counterproductive. On July 17, Pat happily noted in his journal: We are leaving this place tomorrow and going down to start bootcamp... It's about time... I've written a few letters to Marie... I miss her more and more and hope she is well. |
| 96 |
The bitter taste came from the fact that Nub & I did awful in our land navigation... The sweet of the day was the fact we went on two long marches with our stuff on. It was nice to move on out of here for a while and meander about. It will probably take me a while to get used to lugging around a sack all day but I only have to look around me to stop feeling sorry for myself... One thing I find myself despising is the sight of all these guns in the hands of children. Of course we all understand the necessity of defense... It doesn't dismiss the fact that a young man I would not trust with my canteen is walking about armed... My moods at this point, with the exception of the constant loneliness & guilt associated with my separation from Marie, vary depending on how I'm doing at my tasks. Blow the land navigation, feel bad for a few hours; do something to help someone or get my marching calls correctly, feel good for a few hours... On the whole, in spite of any worries or fluctuating moods, Nub and I are standing fast and moving right along. How important it has been to have Nub around has been covered but must be reiterated. When Pat left home for the Army, he carried with him a laminated photograph of Marie taken on their wedding day. Unabashedly sentimental, he wrote that this "picture of Marie, outside of my ring, is my most prized possession. It's amazing how beautiful she is in her wedding dress... What a fantastic day that was." Gazing at the little photo in the barracks, he contemplated his marriage and other major milestones. "It is amazing the turns one's life can take," he reflected, then listed a few: Spending time in jail for assaulting Darin Rosas, he wrote, "was huge, drastically changing my mindset and priorities. That experience aged me about ten years and I credit it for my success with academics and football in college." On the next page of his journal he pondered what impact his enlistment would have on his life. Having completed just 3 weeks of his military commitment, with 153 weeks remaining, he wrote: Everything about my life has completely shifted. Everything. I planned on having kids, continuing my football, and enjoying life as always. Now I'm sitting in a fucking barracks with 53 kids. This path needs to hurry itself up and brighten... I do my best to control it, but sometimes I get so incredibly frustrated around here my fucking jaw muscles want to collapse my teeth on themselves. Today Marie's letters came and I needed so badly to be with her, hold her, make love to her... |
| 97 |
Just before it was Kevin's turn to fire it, a recruit opened the weapon's feed tray while a round was still in the chamber, inadvertently released the bolt, and the cartridge exploded. The blast peppered his face, neck, and chest with brass shrapnel, and burned him badly. He could easily have been killed. Chastened by the accident, Pat observed, "You forget, or don't think about, just how incredibly dangerous these weapons are until something like this takes place." A day later the platoon went into the field for an overnight bivouac, during which they engaged in simulated combat with laser-tag gear. After Pat was selected to be one of the team leaders for these exercises, his team of five was ambushed by two snipers as he led them down a hill. During the mock firefight, he wrote, "We were coordinated and the communication was clear," enabling his team to repel the attackers and survive the faux ambush. During a second exercise, however, communication between members of his team broke down, they acted as panicked individuals rather than as a unified team, and in the resulting chaos all the men under his command were "killed" by the snipers. Sobered, Pat remarked that it was a "great learning experience." The worst part of the day, however, had nothing to do with the simulated massacre during the ambush. That evening after returning to the barracks, he confessed to his diary, "Sometimes I'm overwhelmed with an injection of intense sorrow that is difficult to control. An intense need to be close to Marie, surrounded by her touch, smell, sound, beauty, and ease. It's as though one week of pain is condensed into 57 minutes... What have I done?" A day later Pat revisited his roiling feelings: Just when I think my emotions have flat-lined they rear their ugly head. Yesterday, from out of nowhere, I got so fucking madupsetsad that I was having trouble maintaining my cool. It only lasted a short while but it was strong and surprised me. All I wanted was to squeeze Marie, tell her how much I care, give her back all that I've taken... In a way it is refreshing in that this place has yet to callous or numb me. Somehow I enjoyed letting myself long for my wife and the life I left behind. It makes me feel and appreciate and love. It makes me feel very alive, and aware of my struggle. I do not intend to get dramatic, but life is about feeling and emotion... Love, laughter, and joy, as well as pain, longing and sorrow, are all part of the ride. Without the latter you cannot truly appreciate the former, cannot come to understand just how much you truly care... |
| 98 |
"In the days leading up to it everybody was walking on eggshells," Tulio remembers. "The Army hung the idea of the midcycle pass over our heads like a guillotine. If you do anything wrong, so much as breathe incorrectly or stand with an improper posture, they threaten to take it away from you." At 1:00 p. m. on Saturday, when the pass was due to commence, Pat, Kevin, and Tulio gathered with the rest of the recruits in the main assembly area for inspection, attired in their new Class-A dress uniforms and spit-shined boots. Because they would be required to report back at the base at 7:00 p. m. on Sunday, they were desperate not to waste a single minute of freedom. "We had a plan of action how to get out of there as quickly as possible," says Tulio. "As soon as we were dismissed, Kevin ran upstairs to grab our stuff, and I ran to a phone booth to call a cab for the three of us." Kevin, Pat, and Marie had booked rooms at a Days Inn near the gate to the base, and Tulio had reserved a room to meet his wife at a motel right across the street. When the cab pulled up to the Days Inn, Marie was standing in front of the motel waiting for them. "As soon as the cab stops," Tulio remembers, "Pat leaps out the door. Marie runs up and jumps on him, knocking him off balance, and they both fall to the ground. They just lay there, kissing each other and staring at each other — him caressing her face, caressing her hair, telling her how much he missed her, how much he loves her. They stayed there on the ground like that for what seemed like ten minutes, although I'm sure it couldn't have been that long. It was an amazing moment. A demonstration of absolute love. It affected me very strongly." Shortly after returning to his barracks after the visit was over, Pat wrote, What a glorious weekend... What an absolutely glorious weekend. All the build-up and expectation, all the yearning and planning, for a mere 30 hours. For just one night of freedom ... Seeing Marie and spending time with the woman I love was incredible. We said things we longed to say for months, held one another the way we've longed to for months, and enjoyed the company we've been missing for so long... The hours the four of us spent were not in a whirlwind of action, drinking, or traveling. We simply drank loads of coffee, ate numerous coffeehouse treats, had a marvelous dinner, and talked for hours on end. Three hours at one coffee shop, three at another, three in the hotel or car — all we did was yak & yak & yak. |
| 99 |
Every subject was fair game: home, Arizona, Pooh, friends, future, business, our present situations, etc., etc., etc. We just ran for hours without a break, or a dip in its quality... The fact that Hechtle took the time and expense to come out ... Acts like that are never forgotten and sure to be reciprocated. He is an amazing friend and my whole family is fortunate to have him in our life. What a gesture... Jeff Hechtle's willingness to fly all the way across the country just to spend a few hours with him was especially meaningful to Pat because he felt like some of his most valuable friendships had suffered since his enlistment, and he confided in his journal at length about this sense of abandonment. In one entry he wrote, "Because of the lengths I've gone to, and the importance on which I place my relationships, I'm somewhat put off by the lack of letters from my friends at home... No question I am overly sensitive, but ... It's funny, these last 67 years I've noticed some of my close friends putting governors on our relationship. In most cases it is I who calls, I who sets up dinner, I who makes the effort. Why this is the case is not exactly clear... I care about my friends openly and unselfishly and — though realizing I sound like a woman — am bothered by their apparent lack of interest." "I think most of his friends didn't necessarily understand how difficult the Army was for him and Kevin," Marie says. "While they were going through all this crap at boot camp, it seemed to Pat that everyone else was just going about their lives, and had kind of forgotten about them. That's why when Hechtle flew out to Georgia, Pat appreciated it so much." Pat, of course, appreciated Marie's visit even more. She was his crucial source of emotional comfort — a calm, steady force that anchored his life and brought him tremendous joy. "It was so nice to see Marie," Pat wrote, "so incredibly nice... Simply put, the visit allowed me to express to Marie those things that have been burning in my gut. I'm sure she still hates me for everything, but at least she will know how her hate holds nothing to my own self-loathing. This comes across as down, but I assure you the visit was nothing but positive. Around here one is allowed a little self-loathing." By 7:00 on Sunday evening Pat and Kevin had said their good-byes to Marie and Hechtle, and were back in their barracks. When Pat sat down to write in his journal twenty-four hours later, he was still soaring from the visit. "It's funny how quickly things can be put into perspective," he reflected. |
| 100 |
By the end of that day, thanks in no small part to this mistake, twenty-nine American servicemen and servicewomen were dead. It was Wilkinson's job to divert attention from this alarming setback lest it undermine the homeland's overwhelming support for Operation Iraqi Freedom. Several days later, after even more bad news further threatened to erode public support for the war, Wilkinson learned that Jessica Lynch was lying in a hospital bed, guarded haphazardly if at all, just a few miles from an American military outpost. Right away, he knew exactly how to make the most of the opportunity. In the predawn hours of March 23, 2003, as Jessica Lynch's convoy rolled across the Euphrates River and entered An Nasiriyah, Pat Tillman was asleep on his cot in Ar'ar, Saudi Arabia, having stayed up late the previous evening reading The Odyssey, Homer's epic poem about the Greek hero Odysseus and his ten-year effort to make his way home to his wife, Penelope, after the Trojan War. Pat had no knowledge of the tragedy beginning to unfold in Nasiriyah, nor could he have imagined that its aftershocks would one day be a source of unceasing torment to the people he loved. As the sun crested the horizon that morning in southern Iraq, hundreds of Marines were maneuvering into position to invade Nasiriyah and capture the very bridge that Lynch and the Army's 507th Maintenance Company had just driven heedlessly across, which was deemed crucial to the rapid push of American troops to Baghdad. When the First Battalion of the Second Marine Regiment drew to within several miles of this bridge, Iraqi forces responded with fire from small arms, machine guns, mortars, and artillery. Around 7:30 a. m., in the midst of this skirmish, a Humvee came racing toward the Marines from the direction of Nasiriyah and screeched to a stop, riddled with bullet holes and with its tires on fire. An extremely agitated American Army captain named Troy King jumped out in a state of near hysteria, yelling that a convoy he had been leading had suffered catastrophic losses after coming under attack back in the city. This made no sense to Major Bill Peebles, the commander of the tank column leading the Marines' advance into the city. No Army units, or those of any other military branch, were supposed to have preceded the Marines into Nasiriyah. When King, struggling to speak coherently, informed Peebles that most of his company of soldiers remained behind — some already dead, others pinned down by the enemy in different areas of the city — Peebles led his tanks off to look for survivors. |
| 101 |
He therefore flew back around and fired a Maverick missile at the lead vehicle, but it overshot C208 and detonated harmlessly beyond. Although most of the men of Charlie Company understood by now they had been strafed by one or more American A-10 jets, they still didn't realize that the Warthogs were also targeting them with five-hundred-pound bombs and Maverick anti-tank missiles. After Gyrate 74's missile just missed C208, Gyrate 73 rolled into attack position, got a lock on the same trac, and let his first Maverick go. When C208 was about 150 yards past the bridge, the missile struck the left side of the trac's troop compartment and detonated. Trac C201, driven by Edward Castleberry, was fifty feet behind C208 when the missile hit. "I saw a white flash and the trac flew a foot and a half off the ground," he testified to the investigating board. "The side blew out. Everyone in the back blew out of it." Blood spattered Castleberry's windscreen. Body parts were hurled in all directions. Castleberry swerved right to avoid hitting the flaming shell of C208, then swerved back left to try to keep the trac on the road, but the steering wouldn't respond. During Gyrate 74's strafing run, the vehicle's transmission oil cooler had been hit with a 30-millimeter uranium round and the hydraulic fluid leaked out, causing the trac to crash into a telephone pole in front of a two-story cinder-block home. As the Marines scrambled out of the wrecked vehicle and ran inside the building for cover, Iraqis started shooting at them from across the street. When Castleberry had driven past the burning wreckage of C208, he was certain all twelve men inside must be dead. Ten of them were.* But there was an aluminum bulkhead between the troop compartment and the front part of the trac where Elliott and Trevino had been sitting, and it shielded them from the worst of the missile's blast. Trevino had been temporarily blinded. Elliott's lungs had been seared, his face was badly burned, and shrapnel had torn a large chunk from his right leg. Both men were still alive, however. They crawled out of the flaming vehicle as boxes of ammunition inside it began detonating from the intense heat, got to their feet, and helped each other stagger seventy yards down Ambush Alley to the house where the Marines from C201 had taken refuge. Gyrate 74, meanwhile, had wheeled around for another run at the vehicles and targeted trac C206, which had followed C201 across the bridge and was now 250 yards south of Saddam Canal, speeding down Ambush Alley. |
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By sunset the firefight was over, and the Marines held both of the Nasiriyah bridges they'd been told to seize — but at a cost of eighteen dead Marines, at least seventeen of whom were killed by friendly fire. Another seventeen Marines from Charlie Company were wounded, some gravely. The tragedy was caused by a classic snafu — which is a particularly apt acronym. Originally coined by soldiers in the 1940s, it stands for "situation normal: all fucked up." Chaos is indeed the normal state of affairs on the battleground, and no army has figured out a way to plan effectively for, let alone alleviate, the so-called fog of war. When the military is confronted with the fratricidal carnage that predictably results, denial and dissembling are its time-honored responses of first resort. * The missile killed Lance Corporal Thomas A. Blair, Private First Class Tamario D. Burkett, Lance Corporal Donald J. Cline Jr., Corporal Jose A. Garibay, Private Jonathan L. Gifford, Corporal Jorge A. Gonzalez, Private Nolen R. Hutchings, Lance Corporal Patrick R. Nixon, Sergeant Brendon Reiss, and Lance Corporal Michael J. Williams. On March 28, 2003, General Tommy Franks ordered an inquiry into what caused the casualties in Nasiriyah, as was required by Department of Defense regulations for all incidents of friendly fire. By doing so, Franks enabled the Army's information managers to reply to questions from reporters with their standard gambit: earnest assurances that a thorough investigation was under way, and until it was completed, it would be irresponsible to speculate or comment further. The investigation, headed by the Air Force general William F. Hodgkins, was completed exactly one year after it was convened. Like most friendly-fire investigations, it was done more or less according to regulations, but with no enthusiasm for determining what really happened, or who should be held accountable. Important eyewitnesses were never interviewed. Video shot from the cockpits of the A-10 Warthogs recorded every second of the attack, but the videotapes went missing soon after the incident. The pilots known as Gyrate 73 and Gyrate 74 each held the rank of major in the Twenty-third Air Expeditionary Wing, Pennsylvania Air National Guard. Both men had watched the tapes with intelligence officers after returning to their base. Gyrate 73 then turned his tape over to the officer who debriefed him, and the tape vanished, never to be seen again. After watching his tape, Gyrate 74 explained, "I asked Intel, 'Can I keep this and turn it in later? |
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Eventually Wilkinson's rendering of Lynch's ordeal was exposed as propaganda, but by then it had already accomplished what it was meant to accomplish: covering up the truth in order to maintain support for the president's policies. To this day, very few Americans have any inkling that seventeen U. S. Marines were killed by U. S. Air Force jets on the fourth day of the Iraq War. The Jessica Lynch hoax worked so well, in fact, that the White House would recycle the same tactic thirteen months later, almost move for move, when it was confronted with another series of potentially disastrous revelations. Just as before, a fictitious story about a valiant American soldier would be fed to the media in order to divert attention from a rash of disquieting news. On this occasion, however, the soldier cast as the hero of the fable would be a professional football player whose sense of duty had inspired him to enlist in the Rangers after 911. On April 9, 2003, seven days after Jessica Lynch was flown to safety, Pat and Kevin Tillman were helicoptered to Baghdad International Airport with their Ranger cohort, where they took up residence in a cavernous aircraft hangar. As they arrived, Marines were attaching a cable to a forty-foot statue of Saddam Hussein in Al-Firdos Square, twelve miles away in the center of Baghdad, preparing to pull it down for a gaggle of photographers and television crews who had flocked to the scene to record the symbolic moment for posterity. A few hours earlier, the capital had officially fallen to American forces. A few hours later, an orgy of unrestrained looting would commence throughout the city and continue for many days. The Tillmans remained in Baghdad for the next five weeks. Despite the turmoil erupting all around them, their stay was relatively uneventful. Pat fired his weapon only once, on April 21. "Don't get too excited or upset," he wrote in his journal, "they were only warning shots to keep a couple of cars from getting closer and no harm was done." Their duties allowed plenty of time for conversation. "Pat and Kevin were always talking," recalls Russell Baer, a young Ranger who grew up in Livermore, California, thirty-five miles north of New Almaden. "They spent as much time together as they possibly could. They seemed to have an incredibly rare bond." The Tillman brothers welcomed anyone to join their conversations, however. "Pat was nonjudgmental," Baer emphasizes. "He was interested even in the most idiotic person in the group. |
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Their paternal grandfather and two of his brothers were serving in the Navy at Pearl Harbor during the devastating Japanese attack of 1941. Their maternal grandfather had experienced combat as a Marine in the Korean War. One of their uncles had enlisted in the Marines upon graduating from high school and had been stationed in Okinawa during the war in Vietnam. Dannie Tillman had been a history major in college, and when her sons were growing up, family discussions often turned to military history. Pat and Kevin were familiar with the words of Hermann Goring, Hitler's Reichsmarschall, who in 1946, shortly before he was sentenced to death for crimes against humanity, notoriously observed: Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship... Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to greater danger. It works the same way in any country. If anything, Pat was probably even less pleased than Kevin to find himself participating in the invasion of Iraq. Although both brothers were opposed to the war, Kevin was single and not yet on a career path when they enlisted, while Pat had walked away from both a devoted wife and an uncommonly satisfying job in order to help defeat those responsible for 911. He ached constantly for Marie. A homebody at heart who was half the world away from the home she had made for him, he felt the distance between them acutely. It's apparent from his journal that Pat was extremely unhappy to be serving in Iraq, and that throughout his tour of duty there he relied on Kevin for emotional support in a way that he never had before. Pat hadn't sacrificed so much in order to sit on the sidelines of a misguided war that he believed was abetting the enemies of the United States. Paradoxically, though, it's obvious from his diary that some portion of his unhappiness derived from the fact that he hadn't experienced combat yet, and concluded that he probably wouldn't before leaving Baghdad. Part of his rationale for becoming a Ranger was to join the fight. |
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It was like he'd gotten rid of any of his hang-ups. He'd sort of been evolving in this direction ever since he went to juvenile hall after the Round Table fight — resetting his priorities, figuring out what really mattered." Pat confided to Marie that the Army had "been difficult in ways he'd never imagined going into it," but that the experience had caused him to learn a lot about himself. He said the emotional trials he'd endured had made him a better person. He said the Army had humbled him. When Pat's mother came to Puget Sound to visit a week before Pat and Kevin shipped out to Afghanistan, Marie joked to her that Pat had become so sensitive he was starting to grow breasts. On April 7, Marie drove Pat and Kevin to Fort Lewis to catch their flight to Afghanistan, said good-bye, and returned to face their empty house. Shortly thereafter, however, Pat called to say their flight had been delayed two hours, so Marie jumped back in her car and met them at a Starbucks just outside the post's north gate in order to share a few more moments with Pat over a cup of coffee. When he and Kevin eventually filed into an Air Force transport jet and took off, Pat took out a new journal with a black leather cover and began to write. "To my left sits Nub," he inscribed on the first page. We sit inside a C-17 en route to Afghanistan via Germany to refuel. Staring at me, beside my journal, is the laminated picture of Marie in her wedding dress... Undoubtedly she's grown a thick skin these last couple of years and has proven she can weather anything that comes her way. In spite of this I still worry and wish for her happiness while I'm gone. Across from me sits Sergeant Jackson, my new squad leader, Sergeant Godec, Lieutenant Uthlaut, and First Sergeant Fuller — my whole chain of command. I'm not sure what this trip holds in store; in all likelihood we'll patrol around the border without finding shit. However, in the event that more than this transpires, I feel very good about the men seated across from me. This goes for many of the others I see as I look around. The last few months have given me a new perspective on this place and I'd even go so far as to say I care about many of the folks here. In any case, if the opportunity does arise, I feel confident in how we'll react and trust those who are leading us. Besides, I have Nub-piece to my left. Of course it will all work out. Thirty hours after departing Fort Lewis, the C-17 jet carrying Pat, Kevin, and their fellow Rangers landed at Bagram Airfield, twenty-seven miles north of Kabul, the base of operations for the U. |
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S. Armed Forces. Brigadier General McChrystal administered the medal recommendation process, which was expedited so the award could be announced in advance of the memorial service on May 3. According to McChrystal's testimony, he flew from Bagram to Salerno and "sat down with the people who recommended the Silver Star ... and we went over a whiteboard, and we looked at the geometry of the battlefield, and I queried the people to satisfy myself that, in fact, his actions warranted the Silver Star, even though there was a potential that the actual circumstances of death had been friendly fire." This latter clause is a lawyerly flourish on McChrystal's part, intended to suggest that there was still doubt about the cause of Tillman's death, when actually he knew with near certainty that it was fratricide. During the medal-recommendation process, McChrystal was shown the preliminary findings of Captain Scott's Article 156 investigation, which included sworn testimony from more than a dozen soldiers in Tillman's platoon. Included in this testimony were eyewitness accounts describing how Tillman had exposed himself to hundreds of machine-gun rounds in order to protect Private Bryan O'Neal. McChrystal ascertained, correctly, that the valor of Tillman's act was in no way diminished by the incontrovertible fact that that this lethal fusillade had come from his American comrades. "So," McChrystal explained, "I was comfortable recommending, once I believed that the people in the fight were convinced it warranted a Silver Star." On April 28, six days after Tillman's death, McChrystal reviewed the medal recommendation documents assembled by Major Hodne and Lieutenant Colonel Bailey, endorsed the entire package, and e-mailed it up the chain of command to the acting secretary of the Army, R. L. Brownlee. The material received by Brownlee consisted of five documents: an award recommendation form bearing the signatures of McChrystal, Nixon, Bailey, and Captain William Saunders; a one-paragraph "award citation" that summarized Tillman's courageous deed; a five-paragraph "award narrative" that offered a more nuanced account of his actions; and two brief statements from soldiers who witnessed those actions. Astoundingly, none of these documents mentioned anything about friendly fire. Indeed, the award citation alleged, "Corporal* Tillman put himself in the line of devastating enemy fire," even though no effective enemy fire was ever directed at Tillman's position during the incident. |
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When Tillman was killed, White House perception managers saw an opportunity not unlike the one provided by the Jessica Lynch debacle thirteen months earlier. The administration had tried to make Tillman an inspirational emblem for the Global War on Terror when he was alive, but he had rebuffed those efforts by refusing to do any media interviews. If there had been a way to prevent the White House from exploiting him after his death, Tillman would have done that, too, as he made clear to Jade Lane in Iraq. "When we were in Baghdad, our cots were next to each other," Lane remembers. "Pat and I used to talk at night a lot before we'd rack out. I don't know how the conversation got brought up, but one night he said he was afraid that if something were to happen to him, Bush's people would, like, make a big deal out of his death and parade him through the streets. And those were his exact words: 'I don't want them to parade me through the streets.' It just burned into my brain, him saying that." Following Tillman's death, there was nothing to prevent the Bush administration from using his celebrity to advance its political agenda. Jim Wilkinson, the master propagandist who had used the Jessica Lynch rescue to cover up the Nasiriyah catastrophe during the invasion of Iraq, had been appointed by Karl Rove as director of communications for the upcoming Republican National Convention, and was therefore no longer available to orchestrate the Tillman spin. But Wilkinson had trained his successors well. They wasted no time in concocting a narrative about Tillman that they hoped would distract the American public in the same way that Wilkinson's fable about Lynch had. The fact that Tillman had been cut down by his Ranger buddies rather than by the Taliban was potentially problematic for the White House, although there were ways to keep that information from entering the public domain for a while, maybe even a long while. The moment the White House learned of Tillman's death, the president's staff went into overdrive. On April 23, the day after Tillman perished, approximately two hundred e-mails discussing the situation were transmitted or received by White House officials, including staffers from Bush's reelection campaign, who suggested to the president that it would be advantageous for him to respond to Tillman's death as quickly as possible. Jeanie Mamo — Bush's director of media affairs — sent an e-mail to Lawrence Di Rita, Rumsfeld's press secretary, asking for details about the tragedy so she could use them in a White House press release. |
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By 11:40 a. m., a statement about Tillman had been drafted and forwarded to Press Secretary Scott McClellan and Communications Director Dan Bartlett, who immediately approved the statement on behalf of President Bush and then disseminated it to the public, even though doing so violated the Military Family Peace of Mind Act — a policy mandated by Congress and signed into law by the president just five months earlier — which was intended to give families of war casualties twenty-four hours to grieve privately before any public announcement was made about the victim. Because the Tillman family wasn't notified of Pat's death until the evening of April 22, the White House was forbidden to issue its press release before the evening of the twenty-third. Bartlett later explained that he rushed out the statement about Tillman illegally, and with such extraordinary haste, in order to accommodate overwhelming interest from the media, noting that the story (which did not disclose that Tillman had been killed by friendly fire), "made the American people feel good about our country ... and our military." While he was alive, Tillman had been the object of tremendous public fascination, and White House officials guessed that selling him as a fallen war hero would send the media into an orgy of adulatory coverage. They were not disappointed. Thousands of tributes to Tillman appeared in all manner of media over the days and weeks that followed. As with the frenzy that followed the Jessica Lynch rescue, neither the White House nor military perception managers had to do much to sustain the media's focus on Tillman; indeed, they did little more than monitor the coverage and make copies of all the published articles for their files. On April 25, just two days after the initial White House press release, a "Weekend Media Assessment" compiled by the Army chief of staff's Office of Public Affairs reported that stories about Tillman had generated the greatest interest in the Army since the president's "Mission Accomplished" speech on the aircraft carrier the previous May, adding that the Tillman stories "had been extremely positive in all media." Had it been disclosed at the outset that Tillman was killed by friendly fire, the press coverage would have been no less voluminous, but its effect on the nation's mood would have been very different. The Army's announcement on April 30 that Tillman had been awarded the Silver Star prompted another torrent of favorable press. One day later, on May 1, McChrystal was promoted from Brigadier General to Major General. |
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On the morning before the service, an Army representative asked White to announce that Pat had been awarded the Silver Star. In order to do that, White felt that first he needed to get the facts straight, so he requested that somebody in the Second Ranger Battalion provide him with details about the fatal firefight. "I called an enlisted person, whose name I cannot recall," White later testified. After this Ranger read the Silver Star citation to White over the phone, White rephrased the official narrative in his own words and then read it back to the Ranger. According to his sworn testimony, White asked this Ranger "if it was an accurate summarization, and he said it was, and that is what I went with in my speech." White began his encomium to Pat by explaining how they met in Saudi Arabia just before the start of the Iraq War. "Pretty much every night for the next three months if we weren't working," White recalled, we were out drinking coffee and enjoying each other's company out there, getting to know each other... I got the news early on Friday morning about Pat's death. I'd been spending the day flying back home, and I watched the news on every layover, waiting for the word to break. Once I saw that it was out, I contemplated at that point calling Marie. I knew that there was going to be a lot going on and I didn't want to add to it. When my wife picked me up at the airport, she asked if I'd called Marie. I gave her my reason, and she looked at me and said, "If the tables were turned right now, would he have called me?" That's the kind of man Pat was. I immediately picked up the phone... The Silver Star and the Purple Heart that Pat has earned will be given to Marie at a private ceremony. The Silver Star is one of this nation's highest awards; the Purple Heart is rewarded for wounds received in combat. If you're the victim of an ambush, there are very few things that you can do to increase your chances for survival, one of which is to get off that ambush point as fast as you can. One of the vehicles in Pat's convoy could not get off. He made the call; he dismounted his troops, taking the fight to the enemy, uphill, to seize the tactical high ground from the enemy. This gave his brothers in the downed vehicle time to move off that target. He directly saved their lives with that move. Pat sacrificed himself so that his brothers could live. "I, like everyone in the audience, was greatly affected listening to the young Naval officer speak," wrote Dannie Tillman, recalling White's eulogy in Boots on the Ground by Dusk. |
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... I do not think that I should be Released For Standards from the unit that I love, dedicated so much to, and sacrificed so much for... If I am removed from the Regiment for this I do not feel the proper justice will have been done... I am the littlest man in all of this being only 140 pounds soaking wet at 5'5 and if I have to have the largest voice on this then I will because if my chain of command won't support what they have trained me to do then who will? I have not pushed myself to keep up and surpass others around me just to be fired without my honor as a warrior... I gave 100% and then some every time I did anything in this unit... Now someone wants to rip the heart out of me... I hope that after reading this you will take into consideration all that I have stated when it comes time to make your decision. I pray to God almighty that justice will be done and my fate to be an honorable one. Rangers Lead The Way! The thrust of Alders's letter seemed to be that the primary victim of the tragedy was not Pat Tillman or Sayed Farhad but Trevor Alders. On Sunday, September 19, 2004, during halftime of a football game between the New England Patriots and the Arizona Cardinals played in Tempe, the Cardinals honored Pat with a halftime ceremony, during which Marie, Richard, and Pat's parents walked out onto the field and stood on the fifty-yard line. Marie received heartfelt cheers when she expressed thanks to the crowd for the overwhelming support the Tillman family had received from Arizonans. A huge Cardinals jersey imprinted with the number 40 was unfurled in the bleachers. Up on the JumboTron, President George W. Bush delivered a brief video tribute to Pat, but the crowd greeted the canned speech with a loud chorus of boos, apparently believing the gesture was inspired not by any genuine respect for Tillman, but rather because Bush was trailing in most opinion polls and the presidential election was just forty-four days away. Because the Army had betrayed Dannie Tillman's trust so completely, and because she had come to the conclusion that it was more interested in burying the truth than in illuminating it, soon after the Cardinals' tribute she compiled a long list of questions that Lieutenant Colonel Kauzlarich's 156 investigation had failed to answer to her satisfaction. Then she e-mailed the questions to John McCain, the senator representing Pat's home state of Arizona, along with a formal request that he help her receive the information she sought. |
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On April 24, the House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, chaired by Henry Waxman, summoned Gimble to explain the apparent shortcomings of his two-year inquiry at a hearing titled "Misleading Information from the Battlefield." Representative John Sarbanes of Maryland said to Gimble, "You talk about how the first investigation Captain Scott's 156 was deficient. The second investigation Kauzlarich's 156 was deficient. Then there was a third investigation Jones's 156 that was deficient. There was a failure to abide by the protocols that would normally be triggered right away in terms of having a legal investigation into friendly fire death ..., that the Regimental Commander Colonel Nixon failed to notify the Army Safety Center of a suspected friendly fire death as required by Army regulation." Sarbanes was therefore puzzled by Gimble's "strange credulity," pointing out that when Army officers repeatedly violated procedures and protocols, "it makes it hard to believe that after a certain point of time this was accidental — that there wasn't some kind of pressure; maybe not direct, but an atmosphere of indirect pressure being brought to bear." Gimble did not dispute Sarbanes's observation. In addition to Gimble, Jessica Lynch, Kevin Tillman, Dannie Tillman, Bryan O'Neal, and Steve White testified at the hearing. Lynch recalled how her family's home "was under siege by the media, all repeating the story of the little girl from West Virginia who went down fighting. It was not true... The bottom line is the American people are capable of determining their own ideals for heroes. They don't need to be told elaborate lies... The truth of war is not always easy. The truth is always more heroic than the hype." When it was Kevin Tillman's turn to testify, he spoke about his older brother at length, and with electrifying conviction: Revealing that Pat's death was a fratricide would have been yet another political disaster during a month already swollen with political disasters, and a brutal truth that the American public would undoubtedly find unacceptable. So the facts needed to be suppressed. An alternative narrative needed to be constructed... Over a month after Pat's death, when it became clear that it would no longer be possible to pull off this deception, a few of the facts were parceled out to the public and to the family. General Kensinger was ordered to tell the American public ... that Pat died of fratricide, but with a calculated and nefarious twist. |
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He stated, "There was no one specific finding of fault," and that he "probably died of fratricide." But there was specific fault, and there was nothing probable about the facts that led to Pat's death... 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. |
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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. At the end of the hearing, Waxman stated in frustration, "What we have is a very clear, deliberate abuse intentionally done. Why is it so hard to find out who did it?" On July 31, 2007, Secretary of the Army Pete Geren held a press conference at the Pentagon to answer this and other questions about the alleged cover-up, and to announce that the Army had taken action against six of the officers found accountable by Inspector General Thomas Gimble's investigation four months earlier. Such action could have included demotions, courts-martial, dishonorable discharges, incarceration, andor letters of reprimand. But Lieutenant Colonel Bailey and Colonel Nixon received nothing more than mild "memoranda of concern," and Nixon's memorandum of concern wasn't even placed in his military record. The Army, moreover, took no action of any kind against McChrystal, despite his central role in the scandal. The only officer who received anything resembling punishment was Lieutenant General Philip Kensinger Jr., who had retired from the Army eighteen months previously, and was censured for lying under oath to investigators. The Army's leniency was stunning. It prompted a reporter to ask Geren, "You've described a litany of errors and mistakes going more than three years involving a lot of people, yet all the blame falls on General Kensinger... |
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In Pakistan's case, that enemy is India (assisted by its close ally Afghanistan), which Islamabad considers at least as great a threat to its security as the United States viewed the Soviet Union during the Cold War. As long as Pakistan feels imperiled by India, it is unlikely to mount an effective campaign to eradicate the Haqqani Network, al-Qaeda, and the Taliban from its Tribal Areas — an undertaking that would pose staggering challenges and tremendous risks for the current government in Islamabad, which is widely acknowledged to be corrupt and incompetent, and has only a tenuous hold on the reins of power. By staging hit-and-run attacks on targets in Afghanistan from camps across the Zero Line in Pakistan, the Haqqani clan and its ilk are using precisely the same strategy against the United States that they employed twenty years ago to defeat the Soviets at the behest of the United States. And in the long run, the insurgents may emerge just as victorious as they did in 1989, because until Pakistan ceases to give them sanctuary, it will be impossible for the United States and its allies to defeat al-Qaeda and the Taliban by military force, regardless of how many soldiers the United States deploys to Afghanistan — just as it was impossible for the Soviets to defeat the mujahideen despite the overwhelming superiority of the Soviet Army. If staying in Afghanistan is looking more and more like a no-win prospect for the United States, so, too, does pulling out. Both options are fraught with uncertainty, although the strife in South Asia is so incendiary, and so thoroughly entangled with American security interests, that American soldiers are apt to be engaged in Afghanistan for years to come, if not decades. And if recent events are any indication, Americans are likely to be fighting and dying in Pakistan as well. In July 2008, President Bush issued secret orders for U. S. Special Operations Forces to begin carrying out unilateral ground attacks in Pakistani territory without prior approval from Islamabad, marking a drastic shift in American policy and unleashing an outpouring of ferocious anti-American sentiment throughout Pakistan. The rationale for the new strategy was self-evident (the Pakistanis seemed unwilling to andor incapable of eradicating enemy sanctuaries from their territory), but it was a very perilous gamble. Covert American action thirty years ago in this same corner of the world (which seemed then like such a good idea) is still yielding cataclysmic repercussions that were impossible to imagine at the time. |
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Men with modern educations were content to sit at home, congratulating themselves on their broadmindedness and lack of fanaticism. Mocking these contemptible "last men," Nietzsche's Zarathustra famously declares, "Thus you stick out your chests — but alas, they are hollow!" Which prompted Fukuyama to label such milquetoasts "men without chests." Given the current state of turmoil in South Asia, Africa, and the Caucasus, the onset of international peace prophesied by Fukuyama does not seem imminent. But his forecast about the ascendancy of the American wimp remains disturbingly accurate, according to the historian Lee Harris. In a polemic titled The Suicide of Reason, Harris argues, The problem is not that Fukuyama is dead wrong; the problem is that he is half right. Unfortunately for us, the wrong half. In the West, we are perilously getting down to our last man. Liberal democracy, among us, is achieving the goal that Fukuyama predicted for it: It is eliminating the alpha males from our midst, and at a dizzyingly accelerating rate. But in Muslim societies, the alpha male is still alive and well. While we in America are drugging our alpha boys with Ritalin, the Muslims are doing everything in their power to encourage their alpha boys to be tough, aggressive, and ruthless... We are proud if our sons get into a good college; they are proud if their sons die as martyrs. To rid your society of high-testosterone alpha males may bring peace and quiet; but if you have an enemy that is building up an army of alpha boys to hate you fanatically and who have vowed to destroy you, you will be committing suicide... The end of testosterone in the West alone will not culminate in the end of history, but it may well culminate in the end of the West. Harris's dire conjecture certainly grabs one's attention, but it seems at least as far off the mark as Fukuyama's. Anyone who has spent time with American troops in Afghanistan or Iraq is bound to take issue with Harris's contention that the current generation of young men raised in the West suffers from a deficit of testosterone. In truth, our society produces all manner of males, in proportions roughly comparable to those in Muslim (and other) societies: compassionate and cruel; leaders and followers; brainiacs and fuckwits; heroes and cowards; selfless exemplars and narcissistic pretenders. Patriotic zeal runs strong in the United States, and young Americans are no less susceptible to the allure of martial adventure than young males from other cultures, including fanatical tribal cultures. |
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Decades from now, when the president of the United States declares yet another war on some national adversary, a great many men (and more than a few women) will doubtless stream forth to enlist, just as eager to join the fight as the Americans who flocked to recruiting offices during previous armed conflicts — regardless of whether the war in question is a reckless blunder or vital to the survival of the Republic. If the United States' involvement in future wars is inevitable, so, too, is it inevitable that American soldiers will fall victim to friendly fire in those conflicts, for the simple reason that fratricide is part and parcel of every war. While acknowledging that the "statistical dimensions of the friendly fire problem have yet to be defined; reliable data are simply not available in most cases," The Oxford Companion to American Military History estimates that between 2 percent and 25 percent of the casualties in America's wars are attributable to friendly fire. Whatever the statistical likelihood of being killed or wounded by friendly fire, it seems to deter few men and women from enlisting in the Armed Forces. When one talks to soldiers on the front lines, most of them accept that fratricide occasionally comes with the territory; they view it as just one of many occupational hazards in their line of work. As an infantryman, Pat Tillman understood that outside the wire, bad things happen. But he was an optimist. Archetypically American, he was confident that right would usually prevail over wrong. When he swore the oath of enlistment in the summer of 2002, he trusted that those responsible for sending him into battle would do so in good faith. At the time, he didn't envisage that any of them would trifle with his life, or misrepresent the facts of his death, in order to further careers or advance a political agenda. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche introduced the concept of the Ubermensch: an exemplary, transcendent figure who is the polar opposite of "the last man" or "men without chests." The Ubermensch is virtuous, loyal, ambitious and outspoken, disdainful of religious dogma and suspicious of received wisdom, intensely engaged in the hurly-burly of the real world. Above all he is passionate — a connoisseur of both "the highest joys" and "the deepest sorrows." He believes in the moral imperative to defend (with his life, if necessary) ideals such as truth, beauty, honor, and justice. He is self-assured. He is a risk taker. He regards suffering as salutary, and scorns the path of least resistance. |
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Usually cranked by us. Mrs. Sneed, the pastor's wife, would bring sweet potato pie, warm and a little too sweet for Momma's taste but perfect to Bailey and me. Mrs. Miller's coconut cake and Mrs. Kendrick's chocolate fudge were what Adam and Eve ate in the Garden just before the Fall. 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. |
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But in Arkansas, and possibly in all the states, there were Presiding Elders, who were the crEme de la crEme, and they wouldn't have it otherwise. 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. |
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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. Bailey looked at me. I wanted to laugh but didn't dare, but I was pleased that he had the nerve to get that Presiding Elder good. I did give Bailey a little nod and he nodded back. Then he took the whole stack of lettuce and started to put it back into its receptacle. Momma said, "No, sir, little master, you will eat every bit of that lettuce before you get up from this table." Momma didn't like the Presiding Elder either, but she was a stickler for the way to do things and the ways they shouldn't be done. Bailey sat back in his chair and surveyed the situation. Then he pulled up to the table, and taking one forefinger he flicked one of the leaves into his lap, slid it over to me, and got one more himself. He showed me how to roll the leaf like a cigarette and munch it. We ate the entire bowl of lettuce — and only the lettuce — for Sunday dinner. After the Presiding Elder left, Momma and Uncle Willie sat on the porch laughing. They would not admit to us that they had been laughing at Bailey, but Momma called us outside. "Now, young missy and young master, I know your stomachs are upset. I've seen how many times you went out to the little outhouse. You didn't have to make yourselves sick. I have told you never be concerned at how much others may have. I always keep something in the kitchen for Grandma and the children." That evening she gave us chicken from the oven and potato salad from the icebox. |
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We would occasionally encounter an unidentifiable piece of meat floating on the plate. There was no money in my budget to afford restaurant food, so my son and I were often loyal, if unhappy, diners at Chez Jefferson. My mother had moved from Post Street into a fourteen-room Victorian house on Fulton Street, which she had filled with gothic, heavily carved furniture. The upholstery on the sofa and occasional chairs was red-wine-colored mohair. Oriental rugs were placed throughout the house. She had a live-in employee who was a fill-in cook for her and cleaned the house. Mother picked up Guy two or three times a week and took him to her house where she fed him peaches and cream and hot dogs, but I only went to her house when she was expecting me. My mother understood and encouraged my self-reliance. We had a standing appointment, which I looked forward to eagerly. Once a month, she would cook one of my favorite dishes and I would go to her house for lunch. One important date that stands out in my mind I call Vivian's Red Rice Day. When I arrived at the Fulton Street house my mother was dressed beautifully, her makeup was perfect, and she wore good jewelry. After we embraced, I washed my hands and we walked through her formal dark dining room and into the large bright kitchen. Much of lunch was already on the table. Vivian Baxter cooked wonderful meals and was very serious about how to present them. On that long-ago Red Rice Day, my mother had placed on the table a dry, crispy, roasted capon, no dressing or gravy, and a simple lettuce salad, no tomatoes or cucumbers. A widemouthed bowl covered with a platter sat next to her plate. She blessed the table with a fervent but brief prayer and put her left hand on the platter and her right on the bowl and turned the dishes over. She gently loosened the bowl from its contents and revealed a tall mound of glistening red rice (my favorite food in all the world) decorated with finely minced parsley and the green tops of scallions. The chicken and salad do not feature so prominently on my taste buds' memory, but each grain of red rice is emblazoned on the surface of my tongue forever. Gluttonous and greedy negatively describe the hearty eater offered the seduction of her favorite food. Two large portions of rice sated my appetite, but the deliciousness of the dish made me long for a larger stomach so that I could eat two more helpings. My mother had plans for the rest of the afternoon, so she gathered her wraps and we left the house together. |
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The artists were addressed as dottore, which meant that their scholarship was respected. They were told that dinner was formal, and that was an understatement. Dinner was an event of meticulous structure. Guests were expected to dress each night and were directed where to sit by a placement, which lay on a hall table at the door of the drawing room. There must have been an exemplary social statistician in the Center's employ because in the four weeks when I was a resident, no one ever sat twice between the same two people. Jessica Mitford and I were invited and found ourselves to be the only female artists. We had brought along our husbands, Robert Treuhaft and Paul du Feu, but the staff, so unused to female scholars, could not bring themselves to address us as they addressed the thirteen male scholars. So they called us signora and our husbands dottore. One evening during a lull in the ten or twelve conversations plying the table, the director reminded the guests that Thanksgiving was approaching. He then asked if anyone had a good recipe for roast turkey and corn bread dressing. I waited, but no one moved. I said, "I do. I have a recipe." I spoke it before I thought. Everyone beamed at me except my husband, Jessica, and Robert. In a second, their faces told me I had done the wrong thing. Company never volunteers, never offers. Nonetheless, the director said the butler would come to my suite mid-morning to collect the recipe. I broke my writing schedule to recall and write the recipe. I handed the missive to the butler. Within minutes he returned and said the chef wanted to see the dottore who had sent him the recipe. I followed him down a flight of dark stairs and, without a hint of change to come, stepped suddenly into a vast noisy, hot, brightly lit kitchen, where a fleet of white uniformed cooks were stirring steaming pots and sizzling pans. The butler guided me over to meet the head chef, who wore a starched white toque. His surprise at seeing me let me know that he had expected Dottore Angelou to be a white male, and, instead, a six-foot-tall daughter of Africa stood before him ready to answer his questions. He did shake my hand, but he then turned his back rather rudely and shouted to another cook, "Come and talk to this woman. I don't have the time." The second cook tried his English, but I told him we could speak Italian. He said, "Signora, we want to follow your recipe, but we have never made corn bread or corn bread dressing. We need your help." I asked for cornmeal, only to be offered polenta. |
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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. "This is going to make this meat right perfect. I mean perfect." She shook the bottle over the medallions, then she closed the bottle and placed it back in her purse. The waiters were horrified. Although stricken, at least they were able to move around the restaurant. The maitre d'hotel was so shocked, however, that he disappeared from the floor, and I confess I wanted to join him. I have grown a little since that incident. I've come to believe that each diner should be free to flavor her dish as she wants it. |
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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. |
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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. As we left her apartment, she said, "I did this to prove to you unbearable egotists that cooking is no big thing. After we eat up all the leftovers, Bo and I will be back to pizza and salad. I'm not a cook and look what I was able to do." I think Bebe is a great cook. No one knew it then. I believe one can be born a great cook, achieve the status of a great cook, or have the greatness of cooking thrust upon her. Bebe is probably head chef at New York's Four Seasons today. Wherever she is, here are my recipes for beef Wellington, gazpacho, petit pois, twice-baked potatoes, and haricots verts. Scrape and clean pig's feet. Place in large pot, and add boiling water to cover. Cook over medium heat until pig's feet are tender, about 4 hours. Add 1 tablespoon salt, one fourth of teaspoon black pepper, 1 cup vinegar, 3 cloves, a half of tablespoon sugar, and a half of teaspoon red pepper flakes to broth. Cook 1 more hour. Remove pig's feet from hot broth and cool. Make another brine with remaining salt, black pepper, vinegar, cloves, sugar, and red pepper flakes. Boil 15 minutes, then cool. Pour over cooled pig's feet. Place in refrigerator. Add wedges of bell pepper and rings of onion to cold brine. Serve cold. In large pot, place pig's feet, ears, and pork roast in wine and vinegar, and add enough water to cover. Place clove-studded onion, celery, bay leaves, and peppercorns in cheesecloth bag, and add to pot. Mix gelatin in 2 cups cool water, and add to pot along with salt, pepper, and bell peppers. |
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Gaia loved them. Ouranos was revolted by them. Maybe he was most horrified by the thought that he, Lord of the Sky, could have fathered such strange and ugly things, but I think that like most hatred his revulsion was rooted in fear. Filled with disgust, he cursed them: 'For offending my eyes, you shall never see light again!' As he roared these furious words, he pushed them and the Cyclopes back into Gaia's womb. Gaia's Revenge We have good cause to wonder here what 'he pushed them into Gaia's womb' really means. Some people have taken it to indicate that he buried the Hecatonchires in the earth. Divine identity at this early time was fluid, how much a god was a person and how much an attribute is hard to determine. There were no capital letters then. Gaia the Earth Mother was the same as gaia, the earth itself, just as ouranos, the sky, and Ouranos the Sky Father were one and the same. What is certain is that in reacting like this to the three Hecatonchires, his own children, and in treating his wife with such abominable cruelty, Ouranos was committing the first crime. An elemental crime that would not go unpunished. Gaia's agony was unbearable and inside her, alongside the trio of writhing, flailing three-hundred-handed clawing and a hundred-and-fifty-headed butting Hecatonchires, there sprang up a hatred, a most terrible and implacable hatred against Ouranos, the son she had borne and the husband with whom she had given birth to a new generation. And, like ivy twisting round a tree, there grew a plan of revenge. The piercing pain of the Hecatonchires still gnawing at her, Gaia visited Othrys, a great mountain that looks down over what we now call the central Greek region of Phthiotis. From its peak you can see the plain of Magnesia reaching down to the blue waters of the western Aegean as they curl round the Malian Gulf and embrace the sporadic scattering of islands called the Sporades. But Gaia was consumed with too much pain and too much fury to enjoy one of the world's most charming views. On the summit of Mount Othrys she set to work fashioning a most unusual and terrible artefact from its rock. For nine days and nights she laboured until she had produced an object which she then hid in the cleft of the mountain. Next she took herself off to visit her twelve beautiful, strong children. 'Will you kill your father Ouranos and rule the cosmos with me?' she asked each in turn. 'You will inherit the sky from him and together all of creation will be our dominion.' Perhaps we imagine that Gaia Mother Earth is soft, warm, bountiful and kind. |
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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. Great pools of blood formed around the scene of Ouranos's castration. From that blood, the blood which fell from the ruined groin of Ouranos, living beings emerged. |
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He was undergoing the strangest sensations. He frowned and tried to focus. What was Rhea saying? It could not be that she no longer loved him. His mind was even more foggy and his stomach even more turbulent than usual. What was wrong with him? Oh, and there was something else she had said. Something that made no sense at all. 'What do you mean,' he asked in a voice thick with confusion and nausea, 'by saying that I ate "all but one" of your children? I ate all of them. I distinctly remember.' A strong young voice cracked through the night air like a whip. 'Not quite all, father!' Kronos, the nausea rising in an alarming surge, turned in shock to see the young cupbearer step from the shadows. 'Who ... who ... whooooooooo!' Kronos's question turned into a sudden uprush of uncontrollable vomiting. From his gut, in one heaving spasm, erupted a large stone. The linen in which it was once wrapped had long since been dissolved by stomach acid. Kronos gazed at it stupidly, his eyes swimming and his face white. But before he could understand what he was seeing he was assailed by that horrible and unmistakable feeling that tells a vomiter there is more to come. Far more. Zeus leapt fleetly forward, picked up the regurgitated boulder and hurled it far, far away, much as Kronos had once flung Ouranos's genitals far, far away from the exact same spot. We will find out later where it landed and what happened. Inside Kronos the compound of salt, mustard and ipecacuanha continued to do its emetic work. fn19 One by one he spewed up the five children he had swallowed. First out was Hera. fn20 Then came Poseidon, Demeter, Hades and finally Hestia, before the tormented Titan collapsed in a paroxysm of exhausted panting. If you recall, Metis's potion also included a quantity of poppy juice. This immediately began to take somniferous effect. Letting out one last great rumbling groan, Kronos rolled over and fell into a deep, deep sleep. With a cry of exultation Zeus bent over his snoring father to grasp the great sickle and administer the coup de grace. He would sever Kronos's head in one blow and raise it up in triumph before the world, creating a victorious tableau that would never be forgotten and that artists would depict until the end of time. But the scythe, forged by Gaia for Kronos, could not be used against him. Powerful as Zeus was, he was unable even to pick it up. He tried once, but it felt as if it was fixed to the ground. 'Gaia gave it to him and only Gaia can take it away from him,' said Rhea. |
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They were stronger and more remorselessly savage. All but Clymene's sons Prometheus and Epimetheus sided with Kronos, far outnumbering the small group of self-styled gods ranged against them under Zeus's generalship. But just as Ouranos had paid dearly for his crime of imprisoning the Cyclopes and Hecatonchires inside Gaia, so Kronos was about to pay for the blunder of imprisoning them in the caverns of Tartarus. It was the wise and clever Metis who advised Zeus to go down and release his three one-eyed and three hundred-handed brothers. He offered them freedom in perpetuity if they would help him defeat Kronos and the Titans. They needed no further encouragement. The Gigantes too chose to side with Zeus and proved themselves brave and tireless fighters. fn2 In the final decisive battle the pitiless ferocity of the Hecatonchires not to mention their surplus of heads and hands combined quite marvellously with the wild electric power of the Cyclopes whose names were, if you recall, Brightness, Lightning and Thunder: Arges, Steropes and Brontes. These gifted craftsmen hammered their mastery of storms into thunderbolts for Zeus to use as weapons, which he learned to fling with pinpoint accuracy at his enemies, blasting them to atoms. Under his direction the Hecatonchires picked up and hurled rocks at furious speed, while the Cyclopes harried and dazzled the enemy with lightning shows and terrifying peals of thunder. The hundred hands of the Hecatonchires scooped and launched, scooped and launched innumerable rocks at the enemy like so many demented windmilling catapults until, bludgeoned and battered, the Titans called for a ceasefire. We will leave them, their great bloodied heads bowed in full and final surrender, and take a moment to look at what else had been going on in the world while battle raged for those ten terrible years. The Proliferation The fire and fury of war had scorched, enriched and fertilized the earth. New growth burst through to create a fresh, green world for the triumphant gods to inherit. If you remember, Cosmos had once been nothing but Chaos. Then Chaos had spewed up the first forms of life, the primordial beings and the principles of lightness and darkness. As each generation developed and new entities were born and in turn reproduced, so complexity increased. Those old primordial and elemental principles were spun into life-forms of ever greater diversity, variety and richness. The beings that were born became endowed with nuanced and unique personalities and individuality. |
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In computer language, it was as if life went from 2 bit to 4 bit to 8 bit to 16 bit to 32 bit to 64 bit and beyond. Each iteration represented millions and then billions of new permutations of size, form and what you might call resolution. High definition character, such as we pride ourselves in having as modern humans, came into existence and there was an explosion of what biologists call speciation as new forms burst into being. I like to picture the first stage of creation as an old-fashioned TV screen on which a monochrome game of Pong played. You remember Pong? It had two white rectangles for rackets and a square dot for a ball. Existence was a primitive, pixellated form of bouncing tennis. Some thirty-five to forty years later there had evolved ultra hi-res 3-D graphics with virtual and augmented reality. So it was for the Greek cosmos, a creation that began with clunky and elemental lo-res outlines now exploded into rich, varied life. Creatures and gods that were ambiguous, inconsistent, unpredictable, intriguing and unknowable had arrived. To use a distinction made by E. M. Forster when talking about people in novels, the world now went from flat characters to rounded characters to the development of personalities whose actions could surprise. The fun began. The Muses One of the original Titans, Mnemosyne (Memory), was mother by Zeus to nine highly intelligent and creative daughters, the Muses, who lived at various times on Mount Helicon (where the Hippocrene fountain later played), on Mount Parnassus above Delphi, and in Pieria in Thessaly where the Pierian Spring, the metaphorical source of all the arts and sciences, flowed. fn3 We think of the Muses today as patron saints of the arts in general, and private sources of inspiration in particular. 'O for a Muse of fire!' cries the Chorus at the opening of Shakespeare's Henry V. He or she is 'my muse' we might say of those who fire our creativity and spur us on to greatness. The Muses can be found in 'music', 'amusements', 'museums' and general 'musings'. W. H. Auden believed that the image of a capricious goddess whispering ideas in the poet's ear was the best way of accounting for the maddening unreliability of creative inspiration. Sometimes she gives you gold, sometimes you read back what she has dictated and see that it is dross. The Muses' mother might be Memory, but their father is Zeus, whose faithless inconstancy is the subject of many stories yet to come. But let us meet these nine sisters, each of whom represents and stands patron to their own particular art form. |
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He hangs in the sky between his father Uranus and his son Jupiter. fn14 Not all the Titans were banished or punished. To many Zeus showed magnanimity and mercy, while on those few who had sided with him in the war he showered favours. fn15 Atlas's brother Prometheus was chief amongst those who had had the prescience to fight for the gods against their own kind. fn16 Zeus rewarded him with his companionship, taking ever more delight in the young Titan's presence until one day which was to have massive consequences for humankind, consequences we feel even now. The story of that friendship and its tragic end will be told soon. During the war, the Cyclopes had, as mentioned, given Zeus in respectful homage the weapon with which he is always associated: the thunderbolt. Their brothers the Hecatonchires, whose tremendous strength had secured victory, were rewarded by being sent back to Tartarus not as prisoners this time, but as guardians of the gates to those imponderable depths. The Cyclopes' reward was to be appointed by Zeus his personal artificers, armourers and smiths. The Third Order The shattered world was still smoking from the savagery of war. Zeus saw that it needed to heal and he knew that his own generation, the Third Order of divine beings, must manage better than the first two had done. It was time for a new order, an order purged of the wasteful bloodlust and elemental brutality that had marked earlier times. To the victors, the spoils. Like a chief executive who has just completed a hostile takeover, Zeus wanted the old management out and his people in. He allotted each of his siblings their own domain, their areas of divine responsibility. The President of the Immortals chose his cabinet. For himself, he assumed overall command as supreme leader and emperor, lord of the firmament, master of weather and storms: King of the Gods, Sky Father, Cloud-Gatherer. Thunder and lightning were his to command. The eagle and the oak were his emblems, symbols then as now of fierce grace and unopposable might. His word was law, his power formidably great. But he was not perfect. He was very, very far from being perfect. Hestia Of all the gods, Hestia 'First to be devoured and the last to be yielded up again' is probably the least well known to us, perhaps because the realm that Zeus in his wisdom apportioned to her was the hearth. In our less communal age of central heating and separate rooms for each family member, we do not lend the hearth quite the importance that our ancestors did, Greek or otherwise. |
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But, as with Hestia, her domain was of paramount importance to the Greeks; shrines and cults dedicated to her far outlasted those devoted to the more superficially glamorous gods. The one great story devoted to Demeter, her daughter and the god Hades is as beautiful as it is dramatic, far-reaching and true. Hera Hera came out of Rhea second to last. fn8 Words that are still applied to her, and which would have maddened her greatly, include 'proud', 'imperious', 'jealous', 'haughty' and 'vengeful'. In art and common reference she is often saddled with the extra indignity of three upsetting '-esques': statuesque, Rubenesque and courtesy of her Roman appellation Junoesque. Fate and posterity have been unkind to the Queen of Heaven. Unlike Aphrodite or Gaia she has no planet named in her honour, fn9 and she must bear the burden of a reputation that portrays her as more reactive than active reactive always to the errant infidelities of her husband-brother Zeus. It is easy to dismiss Hera as a tyrant and a bore jealous and suspicious, storming and ranting like the very picture of a scorned harridan wife (one imagines her hurling china ornaments at feckless minions), exacting spiteful revenge on nymphs and mortals who have displeased her, failed to burn enough animals on her altars or, most fatally of all, committed the crime of consorting with Zeus (whether they had been willing or unwilling she never forgave them and could hold a grudge for lifetimes). But, ambitious, snobbish, conservatively protective of hierarchy and impatient of originality and flair as she certainly was the archetype of many a literary aunt and cinematic dowager dragon Hera was never a bore. fn10 The force and resolution with which she faced up to a god who could disintegrate her with one thunderbolt shows self-belief as well as courage. I am very fond of her and, while I am sure I would stammer, blush and swallow awkwardly in her presence, she finds in me a devoted admirer. She gave the gods gravity, heft and the immeasurable gift of what the Romans called auctoritis. If that makes her seem a spoilsport, well, sometimes sport needs to be spoiled and the children called in from the playground. Her special province was marriage; the animals associated with her were the peacock and the cow. Over the course of the war against the Titans she and Zeus developed into a natural couple, and it became apparent to him that she was the only one with enough presence, dignity and command to stand as his consort and bear him new gods. |
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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. As for Hera rather than acknowledge that she had been paid back for her cruel and unnatural betrayal of the maternal instinct, she maintained a dignified and frosty silence. |
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You will be queen of a whole colony, a whole swarm of productive subjects. Furthermore, I shall grant you a fatal and painful sting.' Melissa's wings pricked up perkily. 'But,' Zeus continued, 'while it will bring a sharp pain to the one you sting, it is to you and your kind that it will bring death. So let it be.' Another rumble of thunder and the sky began to clear. Immediately Melissa felt a strange movement inside her. She looked down and saw that something long, thin and sharp like a lance was pushing its way out of the end of her abdomen. It was a sting, as finely pointed as a needle but ending in a wicked and terrible barb. With a wild twitch, a buzz and a final droning wail she flew away. Meliss is still the Greek word for the honeybee, and it is true that its sting is a suicide weapon of last resort. If it should try to fly away after the barb has lodged in the pierced skin of its victim, a bee will tug out its own insides in the effort of freeing itself. The much less useful and diligent wasp has no such barb and can administer its sting as many times as it likes without danger to itself. But wasps, annoying as they are, never made selfish, hubristic demands of the gods. It is also true that science calls the order of insects to which the honeybee belongs Hymenoptera, which is Greek for 'wedding wings'. Food of the Gods Perhaps it was more than just temper and impatience that caused Zeus to punish Melissa whose honey really was quite marvellously delicious with such severity. Perhaps it had been policy. The whole assembled world of immortals was there to witness the moment. It had been a lesson for them in the implacability of the King of the Gods. The silence that now fell on the wedding feast was as dark and forbidding as the storm clouds that had massed earlier. Zeus raised the amphora of honey high above his head. 'For my queen and my beloved wife, I bless this amphora. It shall never empty. Eternally shall it feed us. Whosoever tastes its honey shall never grow old or die. It shall be the food of the gods and, when mixed with the juice of fruits, it shall be the drink of the gods.' A great cheer went up, doves flew overhead, the clouds and the silence were dispelled. The Muses Calliope, Euterpe and Terpsichore stepped forward and clapped their hands. Music played, hymns of praise were sung and the dancing began. Many plates were broken in ecstasy, a tradition that is carried on to this day wherever Greeks gather to eat, celebrate and earn tourist money. |
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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. From the dunes an emerald and amethyst snake slid forward and coiled itself about her feet. With a slightly unpleasant slurping sound Zeus's head closed up its wound and healed itself. It was clear at once to all present that this new goddess was endowed with levels of power and personality that raised her above all the immortals. |
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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. Ares didn't have the wit. Poseidon wouldn't be interested. Hephaestus? Unlikely. Who then? |
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He noticed a thrush preening on a branch not far away and in one smooth action drew his bow and brought the creature down. Slitting open its crop the god of oracles and augury peered forward to read the entrails. From the colouration in the lower intestine, the kink in the right kidney and the unusual disposition of the thymus gland it was clear at once that the cattle were somewhere in Arcadia, not far from Corinth. And what was that clot of blood on the liver saying to him? Mount Cyllene. And what else? So! It had been a baby's footprint after all. Apollo's usually smooth brow was drawn into a frown, his blue eyes blazed and his rose-red lips compressed themselves into a grim line. Revenge would be his. Half-Brothers By the time Apollo arrived at the foot of Mount Cyllene his temper had frayed almost to breaking point. The world knew the cows were sacred to him. It was obvious that they were a rare and valuable breed. Who would dare? A hamadryad drooping herself from the branches of her aspen could offer no clue but informed him that further up an assorted gaggle of nymphs had gathered around the mouth of Maia's cave. Maybe he would find his answer there? She would go herself if only she could leave her tree. When Apollo reached the top of the mountain he saw that the whole population of Cyllene had congregated at the cave. As he drew nearer he became aware of a sound emerging from it a sound such as he had never heard before. It was as if sweetness and love and perfection and all that was beautiful had come to life and were gently coursing through his ears and into his very soul. Just as the scent of ambrosia enticed a god to table and made him sigh with glorious anticipation, just as the sight of a comely nymph caused the hot ichor in his veins to sing and fizz until he felt he could burst, just as the warm touch of skin on skin thrilled him to his deeps so now these invisible noises seduced and bewitched the god until he thought he might go mad with joy and desire. If only he could pluck them from the air and absorb them into his breast, if only ... The magical sound abruptly stopped and the spell was broken. The crowd of naiads and dryads and other spirits that had clustered around the cave's entrance now dispersed, shaking their heads in wonder as they went, as if emerging from a trance. Shouldering through them, Apollo saw that, beside the mouth of the cave, on piles of stone, two vast sides of beef were on display, sliced into neat steaks. His furious outrage resurfaced. |
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He was smooth of skin like his favourite half-brother Apollo (they were now the firmest of friends) and like him he was a deity of light. His light was not golden like Apollo's, but silver quicksilver. Indeed the element named 'mercury' after him is still sometimes called 'quicksilver', and all things mercurial remind us of this most delightful of gods. Later, Hermes would take on perhaps his most important divine responsibility, but for the moment we will seat him in the twelfth chair and survey the grandeur of Megala Kazaniafn35, the great stage at the summit of Mount Olympus. The Olympians Two great thrones face ten smaller ones. Each is now occupied by a god or goddess. Zeus reaches out his left hand for Hera to take. Megala Kazania, the amphitheatre scooped out of Olympian rock by the Hecatonchires during their great battering of the Titans, is spread out before the gods. fn36 A great cheer goes up from the crowd of immortals gathered there to witness this great occasion, Zeus's supreme moment. The Queen of Heaven takes his hand. She is content. She and her wayward husband have had a Conversation. There are to be no new gods. There will be no more seduction and impregnation of nymphs or Titanesses. The dodecatheon is complete and Zeus will now turn to the serious business of establishing his rule in perpetuity. She, Hera, will always be there to support and guide him, to uphold order and decorum. As he surveys the ten smiling gods ranged in front of them Zeus feels Hera squeezing his hand and understands just what that firm pressure means. He salutes the crowd of pardoned Titans and swooning nymphs massed below. Cyclopes, Gigantes, Meliae and Oceanids jostle each other to get a good view. The Charites and Horai shimmer shyly. Hades, the Erinyes and other dark creatures of the underworld bow low. The three hundred hands of the Hecatonchires wave their fierce loyalty. Now, to signify the start of the Reign of the Twelve, Hestia steps down from her throne and sets light to the oil in a great gleaming bowl of beaten copper. A huge cheer rings around the mountain. An eagle flies overhead. Thunder rumbles across the sky. Hestia returns to her throne. Zeus watches her calmly smoothing the skirt of her gown and transfers his gaze to the others, one by one Poseidon. Demeter. Aphrodite. Hephaestus. Ares. Athena. Artemis. Apollo. Hermes. These gods and all creation are bowing down before him. All his enemies are scattered, destroyed, imprisoned or tamed. He has created an empire and a rule the like of which the world has never seen. |
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Not that Prometheus was against the idea. It was an exciting experiment, he decided. Playthings for the immortals. When you came to think of it, it was really rather an enchanting notion. Artemis had her hounds, Aphrodite her doves, Athena her owl and serpent, Poseidon and Amphitrite their dolphins and turtles. Even Hades kept a dog albeit a perfectly disgusting one. It was only fitting that the chief of gods should design his own special kind of pet, more intelligent, loyal and endearing than the others. Kneading and Firing History does not agree on exactly where Prometheus and Zeus went to find the best clay for realizing the plan. Early sources, like the traveller Pausanias in the second century AD, claimed that Panopeus in Phocis was the place. Later scholars say that the pair journeyed east of Asia Minor, all the way down to the fertile lands that lie between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates. fn1 The most recent scholarship maintains that the search took them right down past Nilus, crossing the Equator and ending up in East Africa. Wherever it was, they found at last what Prometheus pronounced to be the perfect spot: a river whose slimy banks oozed with just the kind of mud and minerals he wanted for consistency, texture, durability and colour. 'This is good clay,' he told Zeus. 'No, don't settle down. I need to work in peace and free of all distraction. But before you go I shall require some of your saliva.' 'Excuse me?' 'If these creatures are to live and breathe they will need something of you in the composition.' Zeus saw the justice of this and was happy enough to hawk up and fill a dried out waterhole with his divine spittle. 'I'll need to line up my little clay figures one by one on the riverbank to be baked in the heat of the sun,' said Prometheus. 'So be back by evenfall and they should be nicely ready.' Zeus would have liked to watch, but he knew enough about the artistic temperament to leave Prometheus to it. Leaping upwards in the form of an eagle he flew away, leaving his friend alone with his art. Prometheus began tentatively, first rolling out sausages of clay, each roughly four podes long. fn2 On top of these he stuck a ball of spit-moistened clay for a head. It was then a question of teasing, twisting and tweaking, mushing, moulding and massaging, pulling, prising and pinching, until something like a small version of a god or Titan appeared. The more he worked, the more excited he became. Zeus had not been exaggerating when he compared Prometheus to Hephaestus he did possess real skill. |
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He prised these from the mud, the squashed clay still bearing the imprint of Zeus's enormous toes. 'Oh good,' said Zeus cheerfully, 'the rest are fine, that's plenty. Let's get on, shall we?' 'But look at these!' said Prometheus holding up the squashed and ruined statuettes. 'The little green, violet and blue creatures were just about my favourites.' 'We've still got the black, brown, ivory, yellow, reddish and what have you. That's enough, surely?' 'I really loved that shade of cobalt blue.' Athena was looking down at the intact figures which lay glowing in the dying rays of the sun. 'Oh Prometheus, they're perfect,' she said in the mild voice that commanded more attention than the roars and screams of the other Olympians. Prometheus cheered up at once. Praise from Athena meant everything. 'Well, I did pretty much put my heart and soul into them.' 'Fine job, really fine,' said Zeus. 'Formed by a great Titan from Gaia's clay, they are held together by my royal saliva and fired by the sun and shall be brought to life by the gentle breath of my daughter.' It was Metis, always inside Zeus, who had sparked the thought in him that it should be Athena who brought these creatures to life. She would breathe into each one, literally inspiring them with some of her great qualities of wisdom, instinct, craft and sense. A Name Is Found Kneeling down on the bank of the river Athena breathed her warm sweet breath into each of the little statues. When she had finished she stood to join Prometheus and her father, looking on to see what would transpire. It all happened quite slowly. At first one of the darker figures gave a twitch and let out a kind of gasping moan. At the other end of the row a yellow one wriggled, sat up and gave a small cough. Within seconds all the little beings were alive and moving. Just moments later they were trying out their limbs, eyes and other senses, looking at each other, smelling the air, chattering and shouting. Before long they were standing and even taking their first wobbling steps. Zeus took Prometheus by both his hands and danced him round and round. 'Look!' he shouted. 'Look! Aren't they beautiful! They're wonderful, quite wonderful!' Athena raised a finger to her lips. 'Sh! You're frightening them.' She pointed down at the tiny men who were now staring up with looks of fear and consternation on their faces. The tallest of them didn't quite come up to the level of her knees. 'It's alright, little ones,' said Zeus stooping down and addressing them in what he hoped was a soothing voice. |
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'Anthropos.'fn3 He clapped his hands and the huddle of hand-crafted humans became a hundred and the hundred became a horde and the horde, spreading ever outwards, became a multitude, until the human population, numbering now in the hundreds of thousands, was on its way to finding a home in every corner of the world. And so the early race of man came to be. Gaia, Zeus, Apollo and Athena might be said to be its progenitors as much as Prometheus, who fashioned humanity from the four elements: Earth (Gaia's clay), Water (the spittle of Zeus), Fire (the sun of Apollo) and Air (the breath of Athena). They lived and thrived, exemplifying the best of their creators. But something was missing. Something very important. The Golden Age Alma Mater, the bountiful Mother Earth, made fertile and fruitful by Demeter, was a sweet paradise for the first men. They knew no disease, poverty, famine or war. Life was an idyll of innocence and light pastoral duties. It was a time of happy worship of, and familiarity and even friendship with, the deities who moved amongst them in easy, unfrightening shapes and dimensions. It gave Zeus and the other gods, Titans and immortals great pleasure to mingle with the charming, childlike homunculi that Prometheus has shaped from clay. Perhaps we only imagined these first days of beautiful simplicity and universal kindness so that we could have a high point of paradisal sublimity against which to judge the low, degraded times that came after. 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. |
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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. Prometheus hung back in the shadows. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. Epimetheus fell even more in love with her and invited their friends over to feast and hear a song he had written in her honour. It was a happy and successful party. The last festival that the Golden Age was ever to know. That night, perhaps a little flushed with the praise that had flowed so freely in her direction, Pandora found it hard to sleep. Through the window of her bedroom the moonlight shone down on the garden. The sundial's gnomon gleamed like a silver blade and once again she thought she heard the music of the jar. Epimetheus was sleeping happily beside her. The moonbeams danced in the garden. Unable to stand it any longer Pandora leapt from her matrimonial bed and was out in the garden, unrolling the base of the sundial and scrabbling at the earth, before she had time to tell herself that this was the wrong thing to do. She pulled the jar from its hiding place and twisted at the lid. Its waxen seal gave way and she pulled it free. There was a fast fluttering, a furious flapping of wings and a wild wheeling and whirling in her ears. Oh! Glorious flying creatures! But no ... they were not glorious at all. Pandora cried out in pain and fright as she felt something leathery brush her neck, followed by a sharp and terrible prick of pain as some sting or bite pierced her skin. More and more flying shapes buzzed from the mouth of the jar a great cloud of them chattering, screaming and howling in her ears. Through the swirling fog of these dreadful creatures she saw the face of her husband as he came outside to see what was happening. It was white with horror and fright. With a great cry Pandora summoned up the courage and strength to close the lid and seal the jar. On the garden wall, in the shape of a wolf, Zeus looked on, smiling the most terrible and wicked smile as, like a cloud of locusts, the shrieking, wailing creatures clawed the air and circled the garden below them in a great vortex before flying up and away over the town, over the countryside and around the world, settling like a pestilence wherever man had habitation. And what were they, these shapes? |
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'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. |
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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. The god Hades found, to his great delight or the closest to delight that gloomy god could ever manage that the shades of more and more dead humans began to arrive at his subterranean kingdom. Hermes was assigned a new role that of Arch Psychopomp, or 'chief conductor of souls' a duty he discharged with his customary sprightliness and puckish humour. Though, as the human population grew, only the most important dead were granted the honour of a personal escort by Hermes, the rest were taken by Thanatos, the grim, forbidding figure of Death. The instant that human spirits departed their bodies, Hermes or Thanatos would lead them to the underground cavern where the River Styx (Hate) met the River Acheron (Woe). There the grim and silent Charon held out his hand to receive his payment for ferrying the souls across the Styx. If the dead had no payment to offer they would have to wait on the bank a hundred years before the disobliging Charon consented to take them. To avoid this limbo it became a custom amongst the living to place some money, usually an obolus, on the tongue of the dying to pay the ferryman and assure safe and swift passage. fn8 When he had taken his fee, Charon would pull the dead soul aboard and pole his rust-coloured punt or skiff over the black, Stygian waters to the disembarkation stage, hell's muster point. fn9 Once dead, no mortal could go back to the upper world. Immortals, if they tasted so much as a morsel of food or drink in Hades, were fated to return to the infernal kingdom. And what was their final destination? |
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Go to the palace where Psyche lives, shoot your arrow into her and make sure that the pig is the first thing she sees.' Used to his mother's charming ways Eros set off on his errand cheerfully enough. He bought an especially bristly and foul-smelling boar from a swineherd who lived not far from the palace and led it that evening to the window of the room where Psyche slept. More clumsily than you might think of a slim athletic god, he tried to clamber through the window with the pig under his arm without making a noise. A number of things happened very quickly. Eros landed safely in the moonlit room. Psyche slumbered peacefully on. Eros wedged the pig firmly between his legs. Eros reached behind his shoulder to pluck an arrow from his quiver. The pig squealed. A flustered Eros scratched his own arm with the point of his arrow as he drew the bow. Psyche woke up with a start and lit a candle. Eros saw Psyche and fell deeply in love with her. What a business. The god of love himself lovestruck. You might imagine that the next thing he would do is fire an arrow at Psyche and that all would end happily. 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. |
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'This cannot be the beast we are all meant to fear,' she thought to herself. 'This wind must be the beast's messenger and herald. He is taking me to my doom. Well, at least it's a comfortable way to travel.' She looked down on the city in which she had grown up. How small and neat and trim everything looked. So unlike the overgrown, ill-smelling and ramshackle township she knew and hated. Zephyrus gained speed and height and soon they were swooping over hills and along valleys, soaring over the blue ocean and flashing past islands, until they were in a country she did not recognize. It was fertile and densely wooded, and as they made a gradual descent she saw, set in a clearing, a magnificent palace, cornered by round towers and crowned with turrets. Gently and easily Psyche was lowered, until she landed with a gliding step on the flowered grass in front of a pair of golden gates. With a fizz and a sigh the wind flew away and she found herself alone. She heard no growls, roars or rapacious snarls, only a distant music floating from the palace's interior. As she made her tentative approach the gates swung open. The royal palace in which Psyche grew up was to the ordinary citizen of her country ornate, opulent and overwhelming, but next to the gorgeous and fantastical edifice she was entering it was nothing but a crude hovel. As she made her way inside her amazed eyes passed over columns of gold, citron-wood and ivory, silver-relief panels carved with an intricacy and artistry she had never dreamed possible and marble statues so perfectly rendered that they seemed to move and breathe. The light glittered in the shimmering gold halls and passageways, the floor she stepped over was a dancing mosaic of jewels and the mysterious music grew louder and louder as she penetrated deeper inside. She passed fountains where crystal waters played in miraculous arcs, shaping and reshaping and quite defying gravity. She became aware of low female voices. Either she was dreaming or this palace was divine. No mortal, and surely no monster, could have ordained so fabulous a habitation. She had arrived at a square central room whose painted panels showed scenes of the birth of the gods and the war with the Titans. The air was perfumed with sandalwood, roses and warm spices. Voices, Visions and a Visitor The whispers and music seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, but all at once they ceased. In the loud silence left behind, a quiet voice called to her. 'Psyche, Psyche, don't be shy. |
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Napkins flew up to dab her wine-stained lips and food-smeared chin. An invisible choir sang soft ballads and hymns to human love as she gorged and guzzled in ecstasy. Finally she was done. A feeling of great warmth and well-being stole over her. If she was being fattened up for an ogre then so be it. The candles on the table now rose up and led Psyche back to the bedchamber. The flickering torches and soft oil lamps had died down and the room was in almost complete darkness. The unseen hands pushed her gently to the bedside and her chiffon gown lifted up and away. Naked she lay back between the satin sheets and closed her eyes. An instant later she gasped in shock. Someone or something had slipped into bed beside her. She felt her body being gently pulled towards this figure. Sweet warm breath mingled with hers. Her skin met the body, not of a beast, but of a man. He was beardless and she knew this without being able to see him beautiful. She could not see even the outline of him, only feel his heat and youthful firmness. He kissed her lips and they entwined. Next morning the bed was empty and Psyche was bathed once more by the invisible handmaidens. As the long day passed she at last summoned the courage to ask them questions. 'Where am I?' 'Why, you are here, your highness.' 'And where is here?' 'Far from there but close to nearby.' 'Who is the master of this palace.' 'You are the mistress.' Never a straight answer. She did not press. She knew that she was in an enchanted place and could sense that her handmaidens were slaves to its rules and requirements. 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. |
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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. |
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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. '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. |
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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. This time they were determined to get to the bottom of the mystery of their sister's lover. Psyche was there to welcome them when they were set down in front of the palace. Embracing her fondly the sisters hid the furious envy they felt at Psyche's good fortune, presenting instead a flurry of solicitous clucking and tutting, accompanied by much head-shaking. |
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His tousled hair gleamed with a warm colour that lay between the gold of Apollo and the mahogany of Hermes. And those wings! Folded beneath his body they had the fullness and whiteness of a swan's. She reached out a trembling hand and ran her finger down the line of feathers. The soft fluttering whisper they returned hardly made a sound, yet it was enough to cause the sleeping Eros to shift and murmur. Psyche pulled back and shaded the lantern, but within a few moments an even rhythmic breathing reassured her that Eros was still deeply asleep. She unmasked the lantern again and saw that he was now turned away from her. She saw too that his movement had caused a curious object to be brought into view. The lamplight fell on a silver cylinder that lay beneath his wings. His quiver! Hardly daring to breath Psyche leaned forward and pulled out a single arrow. Turning it in her hand she slowly fingered its shaft of shining ebony. The arrowhead itself was affixed by a band of gold ... Holding the lantern high in her left hand she ran her right thumb along the head and then ouch! So sharp was the tip that it drew blood. The moment it did a feeling washed over her, a feeling of such intense love for the sleeping Eros, such heat, passion and desire, such complete and eternal devotion, that she could not refrain from moving to kiss the curls on the nape of his neck. Alas! As she did so, hot oil from the lantern dripped onto his right shoulder. He awoke with a yelp of pain which, when he saw Psyche standing over him, grew into a great roar of disappointment and despair. His wings opened and began to beat the air. As he rose Psyche launched herself forward and clung to his right leg, but his strength was too great and he shook her off without a word and flew away into the night. The moment he left, everything fell apart. The walls of the palace rippled, faded and dissolved into the night air. A despairing Psyche watched the gold columns around her shiver into a dark colonnade of trees and the jewelled mosaic tiles beneath her feet churn into a mess of mud and gravel. Before long, palace, precious metals, precious stones all had vanished. The sweet singing of the handmaidens turned into the howling of wolves and the screeching of owls, and the warm, mysterious perfumes whipped into chill and unrelenting winds. Alone A frightened, unhappy girl stood in a cold and desolate wood. She slipped down the trunk of a tree until she sat on the hard roots. The only thought in her mind was to end her life. |
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Tell her to go to the high rock. Launch herself onto Zephyrus, who will pick her up and bring her to me. Tell the beautiful Calanthe all this, Psyche, I beg." This is his message which I have faithfully relayed.' You can imagine with what speed Calanthe prepared herself. She left a scrawled message for her husband explaining that they were not husband and wife after all, that their marriage had been a calamitous mistake, that the officiant who wed them had been drunk, incapable and unqualified, that she had never loved him anyway and that she was now a free woman, so there. At the high basalt rock she heard the rustle of a breeze and, with a moan of ecstatic joy, launched herself onto what she thought was Zephyrus. But the spirit of the West Wind was nowhere near. With a scream of frustration, rage, disappointment and fear, Calanthe tumbled down the hillside, bouncing from sharp rock to sharp rock until her whole body was turned inside out and she landed at the bottom as dead as a stone. The identical fate befell her sister Zona, to whom Psyche told the same story. The Tasks of Aphrodite With her revenge meted out, Psyche had the rest of her life to consider. Every waking moment was filled with the love and longing she felt for Eros and with the pangs of misery that stabbed her, knowing she was doomed never to see him again. Eros, meanwhile, lay in a secret chamber, racked by the agony of the wound on his shoulder. You and I could endure with ease the slight nuisance of a lamp-oil burn, but for Eros, immortal though he was, this was a hurt inflicted by the one he loved. Such wounds take a very long time to heal, if indeed they ever do. With Eros indisposed the world began to suffer. Youths and maidens stopped falling in love. There were no marriages. The people began to murmur and grumble. Unhappy prayers were raised to Aphrodite. When she heard them, and learned that Eros was hiding away and neglecting his duties, she became vexed. The news that a mortal girl had stolen her son's heart and caused him such harm turned her vexation to anger. But when she discovered that it was the very same mortal girl that she had once commanded Eros to humiliate, she grew livid. How could her plan to make Psyche fall in love with a pig have backfired so terribly? Well, this time she would personally and conclusively ensure the girl's downfall. Through enchantments that she did not know were being worked upon her, Psyche found herself knocking one day on a great palace door. |
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Terrible creatures pulled her in by the hair and cast her into a dungeon. Aphrodite herself visited her, bringing sacks of wheat, barley, millet, poppyseed, chickpeas, lentils and beans, which she emptied onto the stone floor and stirred together. 'If you want your freedom,' she said, 'separate out all the different grains and seeds and sort them into their own heaps. Finish this task before next sunrise and I will free you.' With a laugh that unbecomingly for a goddess of love and beauty fell somewhere between a cackle and a screech, Aphrodite left, slamming the cell door behind her. Psyche fell sobbing to the floor. It would be impossible to separate those seeds, even if she had a month to do it. Just then an ant, making its away across the flagstones, was engulfed by a hot, salt tear falling from Psyche's cheek. 'Watch out!' he cried angrily. 'It may be a little tear to you, but it's a deluge to me.' 'I'm so sorry,' said Psyche. 'I'm afraid I didn't see you. My misery got the better of me.' 'What misery can be so great that it causes you to go about half drowning honest ants?' Psyche explained her plight and the ant, who was of an obliging and forgiving nature, offered to help. 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. |
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'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. That you love and are loved will be the making of you and may save the world from the worst excesses of your mischievous and misdirected arrows. Psyche, come and drink from my cup. This is ambrosia, and now that you have tasted it you are immortal. Here, witnessed by us all, you will for ever be yoked with Eros. |
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'I'll wave as I ride by.' The Palace of the Sun lay, of course, due east; in fact as far east as India. How Phaeton got there isn't agreed upon. I've read that magical sun hawks told Apollo of the boy's slow struggle from mainland Greece across Mesopotamia and the land we would now call Iran, and that the god instructed these splendid birds to bear him up and fly him the rest of the way. However Phaeton got there, he arrived at night and immediately was summoned to the throne room of the palace, where Apollo sat robed in purple in the glimmer that gleamed from the gold, silver and jewels which decorated the chamber. The throne he sat on, that alone was studded with more than ten thousand rubies and emeralds. The youth fell to his knees, quite overpowered by the magnificence of the palace, the dazzle of the gemstones and above all by the radiant glory of his father the god. 'So, you are Clymene's boy, are you? Stand up, let's have a look at you. Yes, I can see that you might be the fruit of my loins. You have the cast of countenance, the colouring. I'm told you travelled a long way to be here. Why?' The question was blunt and Phaeton found himself a little flustered. He managed to stammer out some words about Epaphus and 'the other boys' and was painfully aware that he sounded more like a spoiled child than the proud son of an Olympian. 'Yes, yes. Very mean, very disrespectful. And where do I come in?' 'All my life,' said Phaeton, burning with the pride and resentment that had smouldered inside him for so very long, 'all my life my mother has told me about great and glorious Apollo, the golden god, my shining perfect father. B-b-but you've never visited us! You've never invited us anywhere. You've never even acknowledged me.' 'Well, yes, I'm sorry about that. Remiss of me. I've been a terrible father, I wish I could make it up to you.' Apollo mouthed the words that absent fathers mouth everywhere and every day, but his mind was really on horses, music, drink ... anything but this tedious, sulky and complaining child. 'If you could just grant me one wish. One wish, that's all.' 'Of course, of course. Name it.' 'Really? You mean it?' 'Of course.' 'You swear you'll grant it?' 'I swear,' said Apollo, amused by the boy's extreme earnestness. 'I swear by my lyre. I swear by the cold flowing waters of Styx herself. Name it, I say.' 'I want to drive your horses.' 'My horses?' said Apollo, not quite understanding. 'Drive them? What do you mean?' 'I want to steer the sun-chariot across the sky. |
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'Ah, Helios, there you are,' said Apollo. 'This is Phaeton. My son Phaeton.' 'So?' Phaeton knew that Helios was the brother of Eos and the moon goddess Selene and assisted Apollo in his daily duties with the chariot. Apollo seemed slightly awkward in the Titan's presence. 'Well, the thing is, Phaeton will be driving the chariot today.' 'Excuse me?' 'Well, he might as well learn now, don't you think?' 'You are joking?' 'I sort of promised.' 'Well, sort of unpromise then.' 'Helios, I can't. You know I can't.' Helios stamped his feet and gave a roar that caused the horses to rear and whinny. 'You've never once let me drive, Apollo! Never. How many times have I asked and how many times have you told me I'm not ready? And now you let this ... this shrimp take the reins?' 'Helios, you will do as you're told,' said Apollo. 'I have spoken and so I have ... er, spoken.' Apollo took the four leather traces from Helios and lifted Phaeton up and into the seat of the chariot. Helios gave a shout of laughter as he saw the youth slide back and forth. 'He rolls in it like a little pea!' he said with a surprisingly high-pitched giggle. 'He'll be fine. Now, Phaeton. These reins they are your lines of communication with the horses. They know the way, they run this course every day, but you must show them that you are their master, you understand?' Phaeton nodded eagerly. Something of his nervous excitement and Helios's fury seemed to have been picked up by the horses, who bucked and snorted restlessly. 'The most important thing,' continued Apollo, 'is to fly neither too high nor too low. A middle course between the sky and the earth, yes?' Again Phaeton nodded. 'Oh, I nearly forgot. Hold out your hands ...' Apollo took a jar and poured oil from it into Phaeton's outstretched palms. 'Anoint yourself with that all over. It will protect you from the heat and light generated by the stallions as they gallop through the air. The earth below will be warmed and lit as you go, so keep a straight line westwards towards the Garden of the Hesperides. It's a twelve-hour drive. Be steady. Remember the horses know. Call them by name, Aeos and Aethon, Pyrois and Phlegon.' As Apollo said their names Phaeton saw their ears prick up. 'But it's not too late, boy. You've seen them, you've handled them, I'll give you gold sculptures of them cast by Hephaestus to take home. That should satisfy your school friends.' Another high-pitched titter from Helios sent a flush to Phaeton's cheek. 'No,' he said stiffly. |
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'You gave a promise and so did I.' Daybreak As Phaeton spoke Eos came forward in a bright cloud of pearl and rose. She bowed smilingly to Apollo and Helios, looked a puzzled question at the blushing Phaeton in the chariot and took up her position at the gates of dawn. To a traveller looking eastwards and upwards at the clouds in which the Palace of the Sun was hidden, the first sign that Eos was at work always came in the form of a flush of coral pink that suffused the sky. As she threw the gates wider, that soft pink hardened into a gleam of gold which grew ever brighter and fiercer. To Phaeton, inside the palace, the effect was reversed: the doors opened to reveal the dark world beyond, illumined only by the silver gleam from Eos and Helios's sister, the moon goddess Selene, reaching the end of her nightly course. As Eos pushed the gates further open Phaeton saw pink and gold light radiate outwards, drowning the darkness of the night. As if that were a signal the four horses pricked their ears, shuddered and reared. Phaeton was jerked back and the chariot beneath him began to roll forward. 'Remember, boy,' shouted Apollo, 'don't panic. A firm hand. Don't snatch at the reins. Just let the horses know you're in control. Everything will be fine.' 'After all,' cried Helios as the chariot began to lift from the ground, 'what can possibly go wrong?' His squeals of falsetto laughter stung Phaeton like a lash. Switching points of view again to the traveller looking eastwards from the road below, the gold gleam is now a great ball of fire that is becoming harder and harder to observe without squinting. 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. |
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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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The competition against which Cadmus pitted himself next day consisted chiefly of puny local youths and pot-bellied palace guards. When he sent the discus right out of the palace grounds with his first throw, a servant had to be sent to fetch it and the crowd cheered. By the end of the afternoon Cadmus had won every event. Harmonia glared at the women and girls who blew him kisses and threw flowers at his feet. Pelagon, who was not a rich monarch, sent his chamberlain in search of a suitable prize for his noble victor ludorum. 'People of Phocis,' cried the king, placing a hastily plaited crown of olive leaves on Cadmus's brow, 'behold your champion, our honoured guest Prince Cadmus of Tyre. And here comes a prize worthy of his great speed and strength and grace.' A loud cheer went up, which fell into a puzzled silence as the palace chamberlain came through the crowd driving ahead of him a large cow. The silence bubbled into a titter and the titter burst into outright laughter. The cow chewed its cud, lifted its tail and sent out a liquid spatter of dung from its rear. The crowd hooted with derision. Pelagon turned scarlet. His father Amphidamas said to Cadmus with a wink, 'Oh well. Morpheus can't be right all the time, hey?' But Harmonia nudged Cadmus in great excitement. 'Look,' she breathed, 'look, Cadmus, look!' Cadmus saw at once what had attracted her attention. On the cow's back was a mark in the shape of a half moon. There was no other way to describe it. A clear half moon! Pelagon was murmuring something unconvincing in his ear about the animal's pedigree and high milk yield, but Cadmus interrupted him. 'Your majesty could not have found a more marvellous and welcome prize! I am overcome with delight and gratitude.' 'You are?' said a faintly stunned Pelagon. The chamberlain was so astonished to hear this that he dropped the switch of willow with which he had been slapping the beast towards the winner's rostrum. It took perhaps thirty seconds for the heifer to become aware that the stinging smack was no longer there to force her on, so she turned and started to amble away. 'Indeed,' said Cadmus jumping from the rostrum and helping Harmonia down after him. 'It really is the perfect present. Just exactly what we wanted ...' The cow made its way through the crowd. Cadmus and Harmonia, their backs to the royal party, began to follow. Over his shoulder Cadmus called back to the king, stammering out thanks and incoherent courtesies. 'Your majesty will excuse us ... |
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What could be done? Heroes do not wring their hands and wonder, heroes act. Cadmus hurried to the spring, picking up a heavy boulder on the way. Hiding behind a tree he whistled to attract the dragon's attention, and then threw the boulder at the dragon's head, smashing its skull and killing it outright. 'So much for water snakes,' said Cadmus, looking down at the monster's blood and brains as they mixed with the waters of the spring. A voice sounded out loud and clear. 'Son of Agenor, why do you stare at the snake you have slain? You too shall be a snake and endure the stares of strangers.' Cadmus looked around but could see no one. The voice must have sounded inside him. He shook his head and returned to the camp, delighted alike by the cheers of his supporters and the admiring kisses of Harmonia, to whom he said nothing about the voice he had heard. Far enough away to be able to do so without Cadmus hearing, one of his men was drawing in his breath through his teeth with the irritating relish of those who have bad news to impart. This man came from Boeotia and whispered to his companions with a wise shake of the head that Drakon Ismenios, the Ismenian Dragon, which Cadmus had just slain, was known to be sacred to Ares, the god of war. Indeed, he went on, some believed that the creature was actually a son of Ares! 'No good will come of this deed,' he said, tutting and clicking. 'You do not cross the god of battles with impunity. No, sir. Makes no difference who your grandfather is.' It is worth recognizing here that one of the most burdensome challenges faced by the heroes and mortals of that time concerned their relationships with the different gods. Picking your way around the jealousies and animosities of the Olympians was a delicate business. Show too much loyalty and service to one and you risked provoking the enmity of another. If Poseidon and Athena favoured you, as they did Cadmus and Harmonia, for example, then the chances were that Hera, or Artemis, or Ares, or even Zeus himself would do everything possible to hinder and hamper you. And heaven help anyone foolish enough to kill one of their favourites. All the sacrifices and votive offerings in the world couldn't mollify an affronted god, a vengeful god, a god who had lost face in front of the others. Cadmus, by slaying an Arean favourite, had certainly made an enemy of the most aggressive and remorseless of the gods. fn7 But he knew none of this, for the muttering in the ranks of his retinue had not reached his ears. |
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He blithely lit the incense and completed his sacrifice to Athena, feeling that things were still going very much his way. This feeling was reinforced by Athena's immediate and benign appearance. Pleased by the offering of the heifer, she glided down from the cloud of fragrant smoke that Cadmus had sent up and favoured her humble worshippers with a grave smile. The Dragon's Teeth 'Rise, son of Agenor,' said the goddess, stepping forward and raising the supplicant Cadmus to his feet. 'Your sacrifice was agreeable to us. If you follow my instructions carefully all will be well. Plough the fertile plain. Plough it well. Then sow the furrows with teeth from the dragon you have slain.' With these words she stepped back into the smoke and disappeared. If Cadmus had not the assurance from Harmonia and the others that they had heard just the same words from Athena too, he might have believed that he had dreamed it. 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. |
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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. The rest lay dead, their blood soaking back into the soil from which they had come. Forward came the five, their swords pointing to the ground. They reached Cadmus and knelt down, heads bowed. Great was the relief, great the rejoicing from the Tyrians. The day had been strange, as strange a day as mortals had known in all history. But some kind of order seemed to have emerged. 'What is the name of this place?' Cadmus asked. 'Does anyone here know?' A voice spoke up, the voice of the man who had warned that the Ismenian Dragon was sacred to Ares. 'I'm from hereabouts,' he said. |
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Tiring of kingship, but like so many heroes after him unable to restrain the itchy feet of wanderlust, Cadmus said to Harmonia one day: 'Let us travel. Let us see more of the world. Pentheus is ready to take the throne in our absence.' They saw much. Many towns and many cities. They went as an ordinary middle-aged couple, asking for no great welcome or banquets in their honour. Only a small party of attendants accompanied them. It was unfortunate, though, that Harmonia included the cursed necklace in her luggage. After a great deal of travelling around Greece they determined on a visit to the kingdom up towards the western Adriatic, south of the Balkans and facing the east coast of Italy, that had been established by their youngest boy, Illyrius, and which was unsurprisingly called 'Illyria'. fn12 Once there, Cadmus suddenly fell weary and was filled with an insupportable dread. He called up to the skies. 'For the last thirty years I have known in my heart that in killing that cursed water snake I killed any chance of happiness for me or my wife. Ares is remorseless. He will not rest until I am as flat on the earth as a snake. If it will calm him and bring more peace to my troubled life then let me end my life sliding through the dust. 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. |
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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. 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. |
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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. |
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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! And here is Asopos,' BeroE indicated the clear waters of the river. 'Yes,' assented Semele, 'that is the river's name.' 'I heard tell,' here the old woman's voice lowered into a harsh whisper, 'that a priestess of Zeus was seduced here. Right here in the reeds.' Semele went silent, but the flush that spread instantly up her neck to her cheeks betrayed her as completely as any spoken words. 'Oh, my dear!' screeched the crone. 'It was you! And now that I look, I can see your belly. You are with child!' 'I ... I am ...' said Semele with a becoming mixture of diffidence and pride. 'But ... if you can keep a secret ...?' 'Oh, these old lips never tell tales. You may tell me anything you wish, my dear.' 'Well, the fact is that the father of this child is none other than Zeus himself.' 'No!' said BeroE. 'You don't say so? Really?' Semele gave a very affirmative nod of the head. She did not like the old woman's sceptical tone. 'Truly. The King of the Gods himself.' 'Zeus? The great god Zeus? Well, well. I wonder ... No, I mustn't say.' 'Say what, lady?' 'You seem such a sweet innocent. So trusting. But, my dear, how can you know that it was Zeus? Isn't that exactly what some wicked seducer might say just to win you?' 'Oh no, it was Zeus. I know it was Zeus.' 'Bear with an old woman and describe him to me, my child.' 'Well, he was tall. He had a beard. Strong. Kindly ...' 'Oh no, I'm sorry to say so, but that is hardly the description of a god.' 'But it was Zeus, it was! He turned himself into an eagle. I saw it with my very own eyes.' 'That's a trick that can be taught. Fauns and demigods can do it. Even some mortal men.' 'It was Zeus. I felt it.' 'Hm ...' BeroE sounded doubtful. 'I have lived amongst the gods. My mother is Tethys and my father Oceanus. |
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Oh, how she loved him! He let her stroke his flanks and palm his hot nostrils before he transformed himself into the shape she knew and loved so well. Hugging and holding him hard, she began to cry. 'My darling girl,' said Zeus, his finger running down to her belly, where it traced the outline of their child, 'not weeping again? What am I doing wrong?' 'You really are the god Zeus?' 'I am.' 'Will you promise to grant any wish?' 'Oh, must you really?' said Zeus with a sigh. 'It's nothing not power or wisdom or jewels, or anything like that. And I don't want you to destroy anyone. It's a small thing, really it is.' 'Then,' said Zeus, chucking her affectionately under the chin, 'I will grant your wish.' 'You promise?' 'I promise. I promise by this river no, I've already sworn one thing by it. I shall promise you by the great Stygian stream herself.'fn4 Raising his hand with mock solemnity, he intoned, 'Beloved Semele, I swear by sacred Styx that I will grant your next wish.' 'Then,' said Semele with a deep breath, 'show yourself to me.' 'How's that?' 'I want to see you as you really are. Not as a man, but as a god, in your true divinity.' The smile froze on Zeus's face. 'No!' he cried. 'Anything but that! Do not wish such a thing. No, no, no!' It was the tone of voice that gods often used when they realized they had been trapped into a rash promise. Apollo cried out in the same way, you will remember, when Phaeton called upon him to honour his oath. Suspicion flared up in Semele. 'You promised, you swore by Styx! You swore, you swore an oath!' 'But my darling girl, you don't know what you're asking.' 'You swore!' Semele actually stamped her foot. The god looked up at the sky and groaned. 'I did. I pledged my word and my word is sacred.' As he spoke Zeus began to gather himself into the form of a great thundercloud. From the centre of this dark mass flashed the brightest light imaginable. Semele looked on, her face breaking into a broad and ecstatic smile of joy. Only a god could change like this. Only Zeus himself could grow and grow with such dazzling fire and golden greatness. But the brightness was becoming so fierce, so terrible in the ferocity of its glare, that she threw up an arm to shade her eyes. Yet still the brilliance intensified. With a crack so loud that her ears burst and filled with blood, the radiance exploded in bolts of lightning that instantly struck the girl blind. Deaf and sightless she staggered backwards, but too late to avoid the blazing force of a thunderbolt so powerful that it split her body open, killing her at once. |
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The moment he touched their flesh with the tip of his bony finger there would come a piteous whimper from the soul within them. Thanatos took great delight in watching his victim's skin go pale and the eyes flutter and film over as life was extinguished. Above all he loved the sound of the soul's last shuddering sigh as it emerged from its mortal carcass and submitted itself to his manacles, ready to be led away. Sisyphus, like most wily, ambitious schemers, was a light sleeper. His mind was always turning, and the slightest noise could jerk him awake. Thus it was that even the silent whisper of Death gliding into his bedchamber caused him to sit up. 'Who the hell are you?' 'Who the hell indeed? The Hell is just who I am. Mwahahaha!' Thanatos unloosed the sinister, ghoulish laugh that so often sent dying mortals screaming mad. 'Stop groaning. What's the matter with you? Have you got toothache? Indigestion? And don't talk in riddles. What is your name?' 'My name ...' Thanatos paused for effect. 'My name ...' 'I haven't got all night.' 'My name is ...' 'Have you even got a name?' 'Thanatos.' 'Oh, so you're Death, are you? Hm.' Sisyphus seemed unimpressed. '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. |
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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. 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. |
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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. |
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And thus it was that Sisyphus was led out to the upper world where he and his delighted queen lived happily ever after. His death, when it finally did come, was another matter. Rolling the Rock Zeus, Ares, Hermes and Hades had not been pleased when they found out how Sisyphus had evaded death for a second time. Persephone had made her decision, however, and the ruling of one immortal could not be undone by another. When, after nearly fifty more years of serene and prosperous living, Sisyphus's wife's mortal span came at last to its end, the contract between Persephone and Sisyphus expired with her. Thanatos paid him a third and final visit. This time Sisyphus gave Charon the fee and crossed the Styx in good order. Hermes awaited him on the further bank. 'Well, well, well. King Sisyphus of Corinth. Liar, fraud, rogue and trickster. A man after my own heart. No mortal has managed to cheat death once you contrived to do it twice. Clever you.' Sisyphus bowed. 'Such an achievement deserves a chance at immortality. Follow me.' Hermes led Sisyphus down innumerable passageways and galleries to a vast underground chamber. A great ramp sloped up from the floor to the ceiling. A boulder stood at the bottom, lit by a shaft of light. 'The upper world,' said Hermes indicating the source of the light. Sisyphus saw that the slope led up to a square inlet high in the roof through which a beam of daylight shone. As Hermes pointed the inlet closed up and the shaft of light disappeared. 'Now, all you have to do is roll that boulder up the slope. When you reach the top, that hole will slide open. You will be able to climb out and live for ever as the immortal King Sisyphus. Thanatos will never visit you again.' 'That's it?' 'That's it,' said Hermes. 'Of course, if you don't like the idea I can take you to Elysium, where you will spend a blissful eternity in the company of other souls of the virtuous departed. But if you choose the stone you must keep trying until you have succeeded and won your freedom and immortality. Make your choice. An idyllic afterlife down here or a shot at immortality above.' Sisyphus examined the boulder. It was bulky, but not colossally so. The slope was steep, but not precipitously. Forty-five degrees of gradient, but no more. So. An eternity skipping though the fields of Elysium with the dull and well behaved or eternity up above in the real world of fun, filth, frolic and frenzy? 'No tricks?' 'No tricks, no pressure,' said Hermes, putting his hand on Sisyphus's shoulder and flashing his most dazzling smile. |
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As a follower of Dionysus, Marsyas was gifted with curiosity as well as many more disreputable traits. He dusted the aulos off and blew into it. A small peep was the only result. He laughed and scratched at the tickling buzz in his lips. He puffed and blew hard again until a long, loud musical note was produced. This was fun. He went on his way, blowing and blowing until he could, after a surprisingly short time, play a real tune. Within a month or two his fame had spread around all of Asia Minor and Greece. He became celebrated as 'Marsyas the Musical', whose skill on the aulos could make trees dance and stones sing. He revelled in the fame and adulation that his musicianship brought. Like all satyrs he required little more than wine, women and song to make him happy, and his mastery of the third ensured a ready supply of the other two. One evening, the fire crackling, Maenads at his feet gazing up adoringly at him, he called drunkenly to the heavens. 'Hey there, Apollo! You, god of the lyre! You think you're so musical, but I bet if there was a compishon ... a compention ... a condition ... What's the word?' 'Competition?' suggested a drowsy Maenad. 'One of them, yes. If there was ... what she said ... I'd win. Easy. Hands down. Anyone can strum a lyre. Boring. But my pipes. My pipes beat your strings any day. So there.' The Maenads laughed, Marsyas laughed too, belched and fell into a contented sleep. The Competition The next day Marsyas set off with his many followers to Lake Aulocrene. They had arranged to meet other satyrs there for a great feast at which Marsyas would play wild, corybantic dances of his own composition. He would pluck some reeds from the shores of the lake (whose very name testified to their abundance aulos means 'reed' and krene is 'fountain' or 'spring') and cut himself a new mouthpiece for his aulos. Piping and dancing he led his followers in a merry trail of music until he turned a corner to find his way blocked by a dazzling and disturbing spectacle. In the meadow a stage had been erected on which sat the nine Muses in a broad semicircle. At the centre of the stage, lyre in hand, stood Apollo, a grim smile playing on his beautiful lips. Marsyas skidded to a halt, the assorted satyrs, fauns and Maenads behind bumping into him and each other in a concertina of confusion. 'Well, Marsyas,' said Apollo. 'Are you ready to put your brave words to the test?' 'Words? What words?' Marsyas had forgotten his drunken boast of the night before. |
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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. |
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When she was done she calmly pushed the shuttle to one side and stood up to stretch. The Reward The onlookers drew back horrified, fascinated and disturbed. The girl's audacity was breathtaking, but there could be no denying the supreme skill and artistry with which this bold but blasphemous work had been executed. Athena came forward to examine every inch of the surface and could see no blemish or flaw. It was perfect. Perfect but sacrilegious and impermissible. In silence she ripped the web and tore up every scene. Finally, unable to master her rage, she snatched up the shuttle and hurled it at Arachne's head. The pain of the shuttle striking her brow seemed to waken Arachne from her trance. What had she done? What madness had possessed her? She would never be allowed to weave again. She would be made to pay a terrible price for her insolence. The punishments that had been visited on the girls whose fates she had registered in her tapestry would be as nothing to those visited upon her. She took a length of thick hemp from the floor. 'If I cannot weave I cannot live!' she cried and ran from the cottage before anyone could even think of stopping her. The spectators pressed around the window and the open door and watched in frozen horror as Arachne ran across the grass, swung the rope over the branch of an apple tree and hanged herself. They turned as one to look at Athena. A tear rolled down the goddess's cheek. 'Foolish, foolish girl,' she said. The crowd of onlookers followed her in appalled silence as she made her way out of the cottage and towards the tree. Arachne was swinging at the end of the rope, her dead eyes bulging from her head. 'A talent like yours can never die,' Athena said. 'You shall spin and weave all your days, spin and weave, spin and weave ...' As she spoke Arachne started to shrivel and shrink. The rope she dangled from stretched itself into a thin filament of glistening silk up which she now pulled herself, a girl no longer but a creature destined always busily to spin and weave. This is how the first spider the first arachnid came into being. It was not a punishment as some would have it, but a prize for winning a great competition, a reward for a great artist. The right to work and weave masterpieces in perpetuity. More Metamorphoses We have seen the gods transform men and women into animals out of pity, punishment or jealousy. But, just as they could be as proud and petty as humans, so the gods could be equally motivated by desire. |
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Doesn't bear thinking about.' 'How little you know her!' Cephalus returned with some heat, 'She is as faithful as she is lovely.' 'Ha!' said Selene. 'All it takes is honey and money.' 'What's that?' 'Honeyed words and silver coins turn the most virtuous to treachery.' 'How cynical you are.' 'I ride over the world by night and see what people do in the dark. That's not cynicism, it's realism.' 'But you don't know Procris,' Cephalus insisted. 'She's not like other people. She is faithful and true.' 'Pah! She'd leap into bed with anyone when your back's turned. I tell you what ...' Selene stopped, as if an idea had suddenly struck her. 'If you were to make her acquaintance in disguise, yes? Show yourself willing, shower her with compliments, tell her you love her, offer her a few trinkets I bet she'd be all over you.' 'Never!' 'Up to you, but ...' Selene shrugged and then pointed to the verge along which they had been walking. 'Oh look there's a heap of clothes and a helmet. Imagine if you had a beard too ...' Selene vanished and at that very moment Cephalus found that he was indeed bearded. The change of wardrobe that had inexplicably appeared by the roadside seemed to beckon to him. Despite his protestations to the contrary, Selene's words had planted a seed of doubt. In putting on this absurd costume, Cephalus told himself that he was not yielding to this doubt, but rather setting out to show Selene that her cynicism was misplaced. He and Procris would call up to her that very night as she glided by in her chariot, 'How wrong you were, goddess of the moon!' they would cry, 'how little you understand a loving mortal heart.' Words to that effect. That would show her. A short while later, Procris opened the door to a handsome bearded, helmeted, gowned stranger. She was looking a little haggard and drawn. The sudden and unexplained disappearance of her husband had hit her hard. Before she had time to enquire of her visitor, however, Cephalus shouldered his way into the house and dismissed the servants. 'You are a very beautiful woman,' he said in a thick Thracian accent. Procris blushed. 'Sir, I must ...' 'Come, let us seat ourselves on this couch.' 'Really, I cannot ...' 'Come now, no one's looking.' She knew that it was pushing the boundaries of hospitable xenia a little further than was called for, but Procris complied. The man was so forceful. 'What's a beauty like you doing all alone in such a big house?' Cephalus picked a fig from a copper bowl, took a lascivious bite from it and dangled the soft juicy half that remained in front of Procris. |
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Eos's rosy fingers found ways to drive Tithonus quite mad with joy. For her own part she knew that this time she could make it work. Her coral, pearl, agate, marble and jasper apartments within the Palace of the Sun became their home. Few couples had ever been happier. Their lives were complete. They shared everything. They read poetry to each other, went on long walks, listened to music, danced, rode horses, sat in companionable silence, laughed and made love. Every morning he watched with pride as she threw open the gates to let Helios and his chariot thunder through. The Boon A problem nagged at Eos, however. She knew that one day her beautiful beloved mortal youth must be taken from her, as Cleitus had been. The thought of his death caused her an inner despair that she could not quite conceal. 'What is it my love?' Tithonus asked one evening, surprising her fair countenance in a frown. 'You trust me, don't you, darling boy?' 'Always and entirely.' 'I am going away tomorrow afternoon. I shall return as soon as I can. Do not ask me where or why I go.' Her destination was Olympus and an audience with Zeus. 'Immortal Sky Father, Lord of Olympus, Cloud-Gatherer, Storm-Bringer, King of all the ...' 'Yes, yes, yes. What do you want?' 'I crave a boon, great Zeus.' 'Of course you crave a boon. None of my family visits me for any other reason. It's always boons. Boons, boons, boons and nothing but boons. What is it this time? Something to do with that Trojan boy, I suppose?' A little flustered by this, Eos pressed on. 'Yes, dread lord. You know how it is when we consort with a mortal youth ...' she allowed herself a look towards Ganymede, who was standing behind Zeus's throne, ever ready to refill his cup of nectar. At her glance Ganymede smiled and dropped his gaze, blushing prettily. 'Yes ... and?' Zeus had started drumming his fingers on the arm of his throne. Never a good sign. 'One day Thanatos will come for my Prince Tithonus and that I can not bear. I ask that you grant him immortality.' 'Oh. Do you? Immortality, eh? That's all? Immortality. Hm. Yes, I don't see why not. Immunity from death. That really is all you want for him?' 'Why, yes, lord, that is all.' What else could there be? Had she caught him in a good mood? Her heart began to leap with delight. 'Granted,' said Zeus clapping his hands. 'From this moment on, your Tithonus is immortal.' Eos sprang from her prostrate position of supplication with a squeal of joy and rushed forward to kiss Zeus's hand. |
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'I can't be expected to interpret everyone's requests. He won't die. That's the thing. You'll always be together.' Eos was left alone, her hair wiping the floor as she wept. The Grasshopper The faithful Tithonus and their two bouncing children welcomed Eos back on her return. She did everything she could to hide her woe, but Tithonus sensed something was distressing her. When the boys had been put down to sleep for the night he took her through to the balcony and poured her a cup of wine. They sat and watched the stars for a while before he spoke. 'Eos, my love, my life. I know what it is that you aren't telling me. I can see it for myself. The looking glass tells me every morning.' 'Oh Tithonus!' she buried her head against his chest and sobbed her heart out. Time passed. Each morning Eos did her duty and opened the doors to a new day. The boys grew up and left home. The years succeeded each other with the remorseless inevitability that even gods cannot alter. What scant hair that remained on Tithonus's head was now white. He had become most dreadfully wrinkled, shrunken and weak with extreme old age, yet he could not die. His voice, once so mellow and sweet to the ear had become a harsh, dry scrape of a sound. His skin and frame were so shrivelled that he could barely walk. He followed the beautiful, ever young Eos around as faithfully and lovingly as ever. 'Please, pity me,' he would screech in his hoarse, piping tones. 'Kill me, crush me, let it all end, I beg.' But she could no longer understand him. All she heard were husky cheeps and chirps. Inside, however, she guessed well enough what he was trying to say. Eos may not have had the ability to grant immortality or eternal youth, but she was gifted with enough divine power to do something to end her beloved's misery. One evening, when she felt neither of them could take any more, she closed her eyes, concentrated hard and watched through hot tears as Tithonus's poor shrunken body made the very few changes necessary to turn him from a withered, old man into a grasshopper. fn2 In this new form Tithonus hopped from the cold marble floor onto the ledge of the balcony before leaping out into the night. She saw him in her sister Selene's cold moonlight, clinging to a long blade of grass that swayed in the night breeze. His back legs scraped out a sound that might have been a grateful chirrup of loving farewell. Her tears fell and somewhere, far away, Aphrodite laughed. fn3 The Bloom of Youth The story of Eos and Tithonus can be considered a kind of domestic tragedy. |
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They became lovers. It had been a wild and tortuous path to this coupling: the goddess, in a spirit of malicious revenge, had caused a father to commit a forbidden act with his daughter which brought forth a child whom Aphrodite loved perhaps more completely than any other being. A lifetime of therapy could surely not clear up such a psychic mess as that. They did everything together, Adonis and Aphrodite. She knew that the other gods hated the boy Demeter and Artemis could not bear to see so many girls sickening with love for him, Hera stonily disapproved of the issue of so shamefully and flagrantly indecent an affront to the sacred institutions of marriage and family, while Ares was stormily jealous of his lover's intense infatuation. Aphrodite sensed all this and determined to keep Adonis safe from the harm her resentful family might do him. Because her precious mortal lover, like most Greek boys and men, showed a great passion for hunting, the protective Aphrodite told him that while he was free to chase prey of manageable size and limited ferocity hares, rabbits, doves and pigeons, for example he was absolutely forbidden from pursuing lions, bears, boars and the larger stags. But boys will be boys, and when the girls are away they cannot resist reverting to type and showing off. And so it came about that, one afternoon, Aphrodite's beloved found himself alone on the trail of a great boar (some say the boar was actually Ares himself in disguise). Adonis cornered the beast and was just pulling back his spear ready for the kill when it turned on him with a savage roar, tusks bristling. Adonis dropped his spear in fright as he leapt back, but he was a brave young man and managed to steady himself and plant his feet firmly enough to meet the boar's charge. As it rushed forward, Adonis spun his body round in a graceful turn like a dancer the brute missed him and Adonis seized it by the neck as it passed. But the boar was cunning. It dropped its head to the ground, letting the boy think he had subdued it. Kneeling down Adonis pushed with one hand against the animal's head, feeling with his spare hand for the knife he kept in his belt. The boar sensed its chance and pulled its head up with a snarl, lifting and twisting its great tusks. They tore Adonis's stomach open and he fell, mortally wounded, to the ground. Aphrodite arrived in time to see her lover bleeding to death and the boar or was it Ares? grunting in triumph as it galloped away deep into the forest. |
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I see. Well, I thank you.' Hera nodded curtly and uncomfortably, returned to her chariot and flew off into the clouds. It is mortifying to be witnessed trying to catch your husband out. Echo skipped away, pleased to have been useful to her fellow nymph and to Zeus. In all fairness she would have been just as happy to have been protecting a mortal pair of lovers. It delighted her to ease the path of all lovers everywhere. She had never really felt love herself, except the love of helping others to love, which she felt was the highest love of all. So selfless was she that she never even bothered to tell Zeus or her sister of her useful act, which someone hoping for a reward would most certainly have done. She sang as she gathered flowers and felt that the life of a nymph was a good life. Echolalia The next day, back on Olympus, Hera sent for the chaffinch that had first whispered to her of Zeus's infidelity. 'You lied to me,' she shrieked. 'You made me look a fool!' Hera grasped the bird by the beak so that he could hardly breathe and was about to punish him in some strange and dreadful way that would for ever have altered our conception of chaffinches, when his mate fluttered about her ears and hair bravely calling out. 'But dread queen, he told you true! I saw King Zeus there myself. Even as you were talking to that nymph Echo, he was lying with a naiad not half a mile away. If you don't believe me, the butterflies and herons can tell you. Ask the priestesses at the temple at Thespiae when he last visited them. He hasn't been there for three moons!' Hera relaxed her grip and the bird, who had gone almost scarlet, breathed again, but male chaffinches still sport pink breasts to this very day. Echo was paddling playfully in a stream when Hera and her peacock carriage descended once more. The nymph splashed and skipped her way up the riverbank to greet the goddess, a wide and welcoming grin splitting her perfectly dimpled features. The smile of welcome quickly turned to a rounded 'O' of fear when she saw the look of rage on Hera's face. 'So,' said the goddess, with icy calm. 'You say my husband has not been here. You say he was not here yesterday. You say he was in Thespiae sanctifying a temple.' 'That's that's certainly my understanding,' stammered a frightened Echo. 'You foolish, gossiping, chattering, scheming liar! How dare you try to deceive the Queen of Heaven? Who do you think you are?' 'I ...' For once in her life Echo could think of nothing to say. |
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'Well may you stutter and stammer. You love the sound of your voice, don't you? Hear this ...' Hera drew herself up and raised her arms high. Her eyes seemed to shine with a purple light. Echo quailed before the grandeur of the sight and wished the ground could swallow her up. 'I command your wicked, lying powers of speech to be still. From this moment you will be mute unless spoken to. You will have no power to reply except to repeat the last thing that has been said to you. None can undo this curse. Only I can. Understand?' '... can understand!' cried Echo. 'That's what happens when you disobey the gods.' '... obey the gods!' 'I do not forgive. No mercy.' '... give no mercy!' With a snort and sneer of triumph Hera whisked herself away, leaving the unhappy nymph shivering in fear and frustration. No matter how much she tried to speak, no words would come. Her throat seemed to catch and tighten every time. One of her sisters came upon her wordlessly retching and spluttering. 'Hello, Echo what are you doing?' 'What are you doing?' said Echo. 'I asked first.' 'I asked first.' 'No I did.' 'No I did!' 'Well, if you're going to be like that, go to hell.' 'Go to hell!' Echo cried after her, wild with misery. One by one all her friends and all her family shunned her. The curse inflicted upon one who had lived her life for gleeful gossip, who valued nothing above cheerful chatter and who had derived all her pleasure from prattling repartee was so terrible that Echo now wished for nothing more than to be left alone to welter in silent agony. Echo and Narcissus Into the painful solitude of Echo's private hell there crashed one day all the laughter, shouting and boisterous clamour of a hunt. The youths of Thespiae had chased a boar all the way into the wood, and one of the huntsmen had become separated. He was a youth of such transcendent beauty that Echo, whom the tender passion had passed over all her life, was instantly lovestruck. The youth was Narcissus, now older and more dazzling than ever. He had never fallen victim to the tender passion either. He had become so used to girls and boys, men and women, fauns and satyrs, nymphs and dryads, oreads and centaurs, and all manner of beings, sentient and non-sentient, shrieking and sighing and fainting away in his presence that he thought the whole business of love absurd. It turned sensible people stupid. Narcissus hated being mooned and swooned over. It maddened him to see the unmistakable look of love leaping into the eyes of others. |
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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. '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. |
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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. She freed the nymph of her body and most of her physical self. She did not have the power to lift Hera's curse, so the voice remained. The voice that had got Echo into all that trouble in the first place, the voice that was doomed to repeat and repeat. |
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'Women!' he muttered to himself as he set to work one morning on a commission to render in marble the face and figure of a general from Amanthus. 'You won't find me wasting my time on women. Oh no. Art is enough. Art is all. Love is nothing. Art is everything. Art is ... well now, that's strange ...' Pygmalion stepped back to look at his work and wrinkled his brow in surprise. His general was taking shape in the oddest way. He could have sworn the man had a beard. Furthermore, the old warrior may have been a little on the tubby side, but Pygmalion was sure he didn't sport a pair of swelling breasts. Nor were his neck and throat so slender, smooth and irresistibly ... Pygmalion went out into the yard and dipped his head in the fountain of cold water that played there. Returning refreshed to the studio he looked again at his work in progress and could only shake his head in bewilderment. The general, when Pygmalion had been permitted to go round to his villa to study the great man's features, had struck him as being constructed more on the lines of a warthog than anything human, and yet here he was emerging from the marble as nothing short of a refined and miraculous beauty. 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. |
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Pygmalion walked around her to take in the thrilling generosity of the curve of her buttocks and the glorious fullness of her thighs. Dared he put a hand to that flesh? He reached out gently, so as not to bruise her. But his fingers met cold marble. Hard, unyielding marble. To the eye and through to the depths of her Galatea seemed quick, warm and alive, but to Pygmalion's stroking hands and to the loving cheek he rested on her side she was as cold as death. He felt both sick and supercharged with life at one and the same time. He jumped up and down. He shouted out loud. He groaned. He laughed. He sang. He swore. He exhibited all the wild, deranged, furious, euphoric and despairing behaviours of a young man tempestuously and frighteningly in love. At last he threw himself at his Galatea, encircled her with his arms and with his legs, nuzzled himself against her, kissing and pawing and rubbing until everything inside him exploded. The madness that consumed his soul did not abate after that first frenzy. He now devoted himself to Galatea with all the ardour and attentive tenderness of a true lover. He called her affectionate names. He went out to the market and bought her gowns, garlands and trinkets. He adorned her wrists with bangles and bracelets and her throat with necklaces and pendants of jasper and pearl. He bought a couch that he adorned with silks of Tyrian purple. He lay her upon it and sang ballads to her. Like most great visual artists he was an incompetent musician and a deplorable poet. His love was passionate and generous but except to his fevered imagination in its most optimistic moods wholly unreciprocated. This was a one-way wooing and in the depths of his bursting heart he knew it. The day came for the festival of Aphrodite. Pygmalion kissed the cold but lovely Galatea goodbye and left the house. All of Cyprus and thousands of visitors from the mainland had gathered in Amanthus for this annual holiday. The great square in front of the temple was crowded with pilgrims who came to pray to the goddess of love and beauty for success in matters of the heart. Garlanded heifers were sacrificed, the air was thick with frankincense and every column of the temple had been entwined with flowers. The prayers came thick, fast and loud. 'Send me a wife.' 'Send me a husband.' 'Improve my performance.' 'Slow me down.' 'Take these feelings away from me.' 'Make Menander fall for me.' 'Stop Xanthippe from cheating on me.' Beseeching cries and wails filled the air. |
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Pygmalion shouldered blindly through the press of pedlars and petitioners. He reached the temple steps, bribed the guards, coaxed the priestesses and at last was led into the inner sanctum where only the richest and most influential citizens were allowed to pray directly in front of a great statue of Aphrodite. He fell to his knees before it. 'Great goddess of love,' he whispered. 'It is said that you grant wishes to ardent lovers on this your festal day. Grant the wish of a poor artist who begs that you might ...' At the altar rail important men and women were babbling their imprecations to Aphrodite, and although the chances of Pygmalion being overheard were slim, some kind of modesty or shame stopped him from uttering his real desire. '... poor artist who begs that you might provide him with a real living girl just like the one he fashioned from marble. Grant this, dread goddess, and you will have won a devoted slave whose life and art will be devoted always to the service and praise of love.' An amused Aphrodite saw through the prayer. She knew perfectly well what Pygmalion really wanted. The candles on the altar in front of him flared up and leapt in the air nine times. Pygmalion flew home. To his dying day he could not tell you the way he went or how long he took. He may have knocked over one person or forty as he charged through the crowds. The lifeless statue is lying on its gorgeous couch just as he left it. Never has the carved figure seemed less accessible or more icily remote. Yet, with the faith and demented fury of the lovestruck, Pygmalion kneels down and kisses the cold brow. He kisses it once, twice ... twenty times. Then he kisses its neck, its cheeks ... and, wait! Is it just that the fire of his kisses has warmed the marble, or can he feel a growing heat beneath his hungry lips? He can! Beneath the touch of his mouth the unyielding stone is easing into flesh, into quick, warm delicious flesh! Again and again he kisses, and as the wax from the honeycomb softens and melts in the sun, so the cold ivory of his beloved softens from each gentle caress of mouth and hand. He is amazed. He cannot believe it. He puts a finger to the veins of her arm and feels the surge and pulse of hot human blood! He stands. Can it be true? Can it be true? He cradles Galatea in his arms and feels her frame expanding as she takes in her first breaths of air. It is true! She lives! 'Aphrodite I bless you! Aphrodite greatest of all the gods, I thank you and pledge myself to serve you always!' He bends down to meet warm lips that eagerly return his kisses. |
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Days passed in this sullen and threatening atmosphere and he grew more and more uncomfortable. There was something in the sailors' eyes that resembled lust, but suggested a darker purpose. What could be wrong? Then one hot afternoon, the ugliest and meanest looking of the sailors approached him. 'What you got in that chest you're sitting on, boy?' Of course. Arion's heart sank. That would account for it. The sailors had heard tell of his treasure. He supposed they wanted some of it, but he was damned if he was going to share his hard-won prize with anyone but Periander. He had earlier planned in his mind to tip the crew generously at the end of the voyage, but now his heart hardened. 'My musical instruments,' he replied. 'I am a kitharode.' 'You're a what?' Arion shook his head sorrowfully and repeated slowly, as if to a child. 'I play the kith ara.' Such a mistake. 'Oh do you? Well play us a tune then.' 'I'd rather not, if you don't mind.' 'What's going on here?' The captain of the brig approached. 'Snotty kid says he's a musician but won't play. Says he's got a kithara in that box of his.' 'Well now, I'm sure you won't mind showing it to us, will you, young man?' The full ship's complement had circled round him now. 'I I'm not feeling well enough to play. Perhaps tonight I'll be in better shape.' 'Why don't you go below and rest in the shade?' 'N-no, I prefer the fresh air.' 'Seize him, lads!' Rough hands lifted Arion up as easily as if he were a newborn puppy. 'Let me go! Leave it alone. That's not your property!' 'Where's the key?' 'I've ... I've lost it.' 'Find it, boys.' 'No, no! Please I beg you ...' The key was easily found and wrenched from round Arion's neck. Low whistles and murmurs arose as the captain loosened the latch and raised the lid. Light from the glitter of gold and flash of gemstones danced on the sailors' greedy faces. Arion knew he was lost. 'I am quite p-prepared to sh-share my treasure with you ...' The sailors seemed to find the offer highly amusing and laughed heartily. 'Kill him,' said the captain, taking out a long rope of pearls and holding it up to the light. The ugliest sailor took out a knife and approached Arion with an evil smile. 'Please, please ... may I may I at least sing one last song? My threnody, my own funeral dirge. You owe me that, surely? The gods would punish you if you dared send me to my death without a cathartic obsequy of some kind ...' 'I'll stop you spouting those bloody words,' snarled the ugly sailor, drawing closer. |
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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. |
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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. 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. |
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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. From their position in the heavens, Arion and his rescuer could aid navigators below and remind all of us of the strange and marvellous kinship that exists between mankind and dolphins. Philemon and Baucis, or Hospitality Rewarded In the hills of eastern Phrygia, in Asia Minor, an oak and a linden grow side by side, their branches touching. It is a simple, rural setting, far from any glittering palaces or soaring citadels. Peasant farmers scratch out their livings here, wholly dependent on the clemency of Demeter for the ripening of their crops and the fattening of their pigs. The soil is not rich and it is always a struggle for the people to fill their barns with enough provender to last them through the winter months, when Demeter languishes and mourns the absence from the upper world of her bright daughter Persephone. |
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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. 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. |
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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 ... must have been ...' 'Zeus!' 'Oh my goodness!' Philemon paused on the hillside to catch his breath. 'It's getting so dark, my love. The sound of the thunder is getting closer. I wonder if ...' 'No darling, we mustn't look back. We mustn't.' Disgusted by the hostility and shameless violations of the laws of hospitality shown to him by the townspeople of Eumeneia, Zeus had decided to do for this community what he had done back in the time of Deucalion and the Great Flood. The clouds gathered into a dense mass at his command, lightning flashed, thunder boomed and the rain began to fall. |
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This is what my father means by xenia. Makes my heart burst. Name it.' 'Excuse me?' Midas was keen to leave. Ten days and nights of Silenus had been quite enough. He yearned now to be alone with his flowers. A drunken Dionysus with a full entourage of Maenads and satyrs might just be too much even for his patience. 'Name your reward. Anything. Whatever you hic! desire I will providely divine. Which is to say,' Dionysus amended with dignity, 'I will divinely provide. So there,' he added belligerently, turning suddenly round to face off no one in particular. 'You mean, my lord, that I can ask anything of you?' Which of us has not entertained joyous fantasies of genies and fairies granting us wishes? I am sorry to say that, at this offer from Dionysus, Midas had rather a rush of blood to the head. I have mentioned that Phrygia was one of the poorer kingdoms, and while Midas was not considered by his friends to be rapacious or avaricious, he did long, like any ruler, for more money to spend on his armies, his palace, his subjects and his municipal amenities. The expenses of a royal household mount up and Midas had always been too benevolent a king to burden his people with heavy taxes. And so he found a most extraordinary wish making its way from his fevered brain to his mouth. 'Then I ask this,' he said; 'that everything I touch be turned to gold.' Dionysus smiled a rather diabolical smile. 'Really? That's what you want?' 'That is what I want.' 'Go home,' said the god. 'Bathe yourself in wine and go to bed. When you arise in the morning, your wish will be granted.' Goldfinger It is probable that Midas did not believe that anything would come of this exchange. The gods were notorious for dodging, twisting and sliding out of their obligations. Nevertheless, just in case after all, what harm could it do? I mean, one never knows that night, Midas poured a few hogsheads from his diminishing store of wine into the royal bath. The fumes from it ensured that when he went to bed he enjoyed a deep and untroubled sleep. Midas awoke to a sparkling morning that cast all ideas of wild wishes and drunken gods from his mind. With thoughts only for his flowers, he sprang from bed and hurried to his beloved garden. Never had the roses looked more beautiful. He leaned down and sniffed a pink young hybrid that was in that perfect state midway between bud and full bloom. The exquisite fragrance made him giddy with joy. He lovingly made to unfurl the petals. In an instant the stem and flower had been transformed into gold. |
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Solid gold. Midas stared in disbelief. He touched another rose and then another. The moment his fingers touched them they turned to gold. 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. |
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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. After this, the waters of the Pactolus, which wind around the foothills of Mount Tmolus, became the single greatest source of electrum, a natural alloy of gold and silver, in all the Aegean. King Midas's Ears You would think that Midas had learned his lesson by now. The lesson that repeats and repeats throughout the story of man. Don't mess with the gods. Don't trust the gods. Don't anger the gods. Don't barter with the gods. Don't compete with the gods. Leave the gods well alone. Treat all blessings as a curse and all promises as a trap. Above all, never insult a god. Ever. In one respect Midas had certainly changed. He now spurned not just gold, but all riches and possessions. Shortly after Dionysus lifted the curse, Midas became a devoted follower of Pan, the goat-footed god of nature, fauns, meadows and all the wild things of the world. With flowers in his hair, sandals on his feet and the merest suggestion of clothing covering his modesty, Midas left his wife and daughter in charge of Phrygia and devoted himself to a hippy-happy life of simple bucolic virtue. All might have been well had not his master Pan taken it into his head to challenge Apollo to a competition to determine which was the superior, the lyre or the pipes. One afternoon, in a meadow lying on the slopes of Mount Tmolus, Pan put the syrinx to his lips before an audience of fauns, satyrs, dryads, nymphs, assorted demigods and other lesser immortals. |
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The only person who saw his ass's ears was, necessarily, the servant who cut his hair every month. No one else in Phrygia knew the terrible secret and Midas was determined it should stay that way. 'Here's the deal,' Midas told the barber. 'I give you a bigger salary and a more generous pension than any other member of the palace staff and you keep quiet about what you have seen. If, however, you breathe a word to anyone I will slaughter your family before your eyes, cut out your tongue and leave you to wander the world in mute poverty and exile. Understood?' The frightened barber nodded. For three years each side kept to the bargain. The barber's wife and family waxed fat and happy on the extra money that came in and no one found out about the king's asinine auditory appendages. Turbans in the Midas style caught on throughout Phrygia, Lydia, Thrace and beyond. All was well. But secrets are terrible things to have to keep. Especially such juicy ones as that to which the royal barber was privy. Every day he would wake up and feel that the knowledge was writhing and swelling inside him. The barber loved his wife and family and was in any case loyal enough to his monarch not to have any wish to humiliate or embarrass him. But that bulging, ballooning secret had to be released somehow before he burst. No unmilked cow with swollen udders, no mother of overdue twins, no gut-stuffed gastronome straining on the privy, could ever feel such a desperate need for relief from their agonies than this poor barber. Finally he hit upon a scheme which he felt sure would rid him of his burden without endangering his family. Awaking from a tortured night in which he had dreamed that he revealed the secret to the gaping populace of Gordium from a balcony in the main square, he went out at first light deep into the remote countryside. In a lonely place by a stream he dug a deep trench in the ground. Looking about him in all directions to make sure that he was alone and that there was no possibility of being overheard, he knelt down, cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted these words into the hole: 'Midas has ass's ears!' Scrabbling frantically to close up the hole before the words could escape, he failed to notice one tiny seed floating down and settling at the bottom ... When the backfilling was done, the barber stamped fiercely up and down on the earth to seal in the dreadful secret. He skipped all the way back to Gordium, headed straight for his favourite tavern and ordered a flagon of the house's best wine. |
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He could drink now without fear that the wine might loosen his tongue. It was as if he were Atlas and the sky had finally been lifted from his shoulders. Meanwhile, over the next few weeks, back in the remote field by the stream that tiny seed, warmed by the soft breath of Gaia below, began to germinate. Soon, a delicate little reed was shouldering its way through the topsoil and pushing its delicate head into the air. As the breeze caught the reed it softly whispered 'Midas has ass's ears.' The faint words reached the rushes and sedges that fringed the riverbank. '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. |
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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. They too were written down, and the Greek myths especially, thanks to Homer, Hesiod and those that followed, were chronicled and detailed in ways that have granted us the timelines, genealogies and character histories that allow for story-telling of the kind I have attempted with this book. Myths, to put it simply and obviously, deal with gods and monsters that can't be observed or pointed at. It may be that some members of the ancient Greek population believed in centaurs and water dragons, gods of the sea and goddesses of the hearth, but they would have had a hard time proving their existence and convincing others. Most of those who told and retold the myths would have been aware, I think, at some level of their consciousness, that they were telling fictional tales. They might have thought the world was once peopled with nymphs and monsters, but they could be fairly certain that such beings no longer existed. |
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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. He wanted her to go through the mug shots, too. He and Chief Kleberg had decided to keep the optometry student in reserve for a line-up identification in case the mug-shot evidence didn't hold up in court. Nikki Miller sat Donna West at a table in the corridor alongside the filing cabinets and brought her three trays of mug shots. "My God," she said, "are there that many sex offenders walking the streets?" Boxerbaum and Miller waited nearby as Donna studied face after face. Looking angry and frustrated, she flipped through the photographs. She saw a face she recognized — not the man who'd raped her, but a former classmate, someone she'd seen on the street just the other day. She peeked at the back and saw he'd been arrested for indecent exposure. "Christ," she mumbled, "you never know." Halfway through the tray, Donna hesitated at a picture of a handsome youth with muttonchop whiskers and dull, staring eyes. She jumped up, nearly knocking the chair over. "That's him! That's him! I'm positive!" Miller had her sign her name on the back of the photograph, then got the I. D. number, checked it against the record and wrote down, "William S. Milligan." It was an old mug shot. She then slipped the identified photograph three quarters of the way back in a tray Polly Newton had not yet looked through. She, Boxerbaum, a detective named Brush and Officer Bessell went into the room to join Polly. Nikki Miller felt Polly must have known they were waiting for her to pick out one of the photographs in that tray. |
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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. |
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When he saw it was only an attorney checking to see if the room was occupied, Ragen settled back. Though Gary had expected to spend the usual fifteen minutes or half-hour with his client, positive he would debunk a total fraud, by the time he left five hours later, he was completely convinced that Billy Milligan was a multiple personality. As he walked out with Judy into the cold night, Gary found his mind racing with absurd notions of taking a trip to England or Yugoslavia to see if he could find records 01 Arthurs or Ragens existence. It wasn't that he believed there was anything like reincarnation or possession by the devil, but walking along in a daze, he had to admit that he had met different people today in that little conference room. He glanced at Judy, who was also walking in stunned silence. "Okay," he said. "I have to admit I'm in an intellectual and emotional state of shock. I believe. And I think I can convince Jo Anne when she asks why I missed dinner again. But how the hell are we ever going to convince the prosecutor and the judge?" ( 6 ) On February 21, Du Stella Karolin, a psychiatrist from the Southwest Community Mental Health Center and a colleague of Dr. Turners, informed the public defenders that Dr. Cornelia Wilbur, world famous for having treated Sybil, the woman with sixteen personalities, had agreed to come from Kentucky to see Milligan on March 10. Preparing for Dr. Wilburs visit, Dorothy Turner and Judy Stevenson assumed the task of convincing Arthur, Ragen and the others to allow yet another person to be told the secret. Again they were forced to spend hours convincing each of the personalities one at at a time. They had by now heard nine names — Arthur, Allen, Tommy, Ragen, David, Danny, Christopher, but they had not yet met Christene, Christophers three-year-old sistei; nor nad they met the original or core person, Billy, whom the others were keeping asleep. When they finally received permission to let others in on the secret, they made arrangements for a group, including the prosecutor, to observe the meeting between Dr. Wilbur and Milligan at the Franklin County Jail. Judy and Gary interviewed Milligans mother, Dorothy, his younger sister, Kathy, and older brother, Jim, and though none of them could provide firsthand knowledge of the abuses alleged by Billy, the mother described her own experiences of being beaten by Chalmer Milligan. Teachers, friends and relatives described Billy Milligans strange behavior, his attempts at suicide and his trancelike states. |
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At seven-fifteen, Milligan began pacing. At eight o'clock, Nurse Helen Yaeger went into his room and stayed with him for forty minutes. Her first entry in the nurses' notes was brief: 31678 Mr. Milligan remains in special care — observed closely for special precautions. Spoke of his multiple personalities. "Arthur" did most of the talking — he has an English accent. Stated that one of the persons — namely Billy — is suicidal and he has been asleep since 16 years of age in order to protect the others from harm. Eating well. Voiding well. Taking foods well. Pleasant and cooperative. After Nurse Yaeger left, Arthur silently informed the others that Harding Hospital was a safe and supportive environment. Since it would take insight and logic to assist the physicians in therapy, he, Arthur, would henceforth assume complete domination of the spot. At two twenty-five that morning, Psych-tech Chris Cann heard a loud noise from the room. When he went to check, he saw the patient sitting on the floor. Tommy was upset at having fallen out of bed. Seconds later, he heard the footsteps and saw the eye at the peephole. As soon as the footsteps faded away, Tommy pulled the taped razor blade from the sole of his foot and carefully hid it, retaping it to the underside of one of the bed slats. He would know where to find it when the time came. ( 2 ) On his return from Chicago on March 19, Dr. George Harding, Jr., was annoyed that his careful arrangements had been upset by the early transfer. He had planned to greet Milligan in person. He had gone to a great deal of trouble to assemble a therapy team: psychologist, art therapist, adjunctive therapist, psychiatric social worker, doctors, nurses, psych-techs and the Wakefield unit coordinator. He had discussed with them the complexities of multiple personality. When some of the staff admitted openly that they didn't believe in the diagnosis, he listened to them patiently, spoke of his own skepticism and asked them to assist him in fulfilling the charge of the court. They would ah have to keep open minds and work together to get an insight into William Stanley Milligan. Dr. Perry Ayres gave Milligan a physical examination the day after Dr. Harding returned. Ayres wrote in the medical history that frequently Milligans lips moved and his eyes were diverted to the right, usually before responding to a question. Ayres noted that when he asked the patient why he did that, he responded that he was talking to some of the others, especially Arthur, to get the answers to the questions. |
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Rosalie was struggling hard to keep an open mind. When Milligan seated himself at the end of the table; apart from the others, Rosalie Drake told him that the mini-group patients had decided the day before to make collages that would say something about themselves to someone they loved. "I don't have anyone I love to make one for," he said. "Then do it for us," Rosalie said. "Everyone is doing it." She held up a sheet of construction paper she was working on. "Nick and I are doing them too." Rosalie watched from a distance as Milligan took a sheet of eight-by-eleven construction paper and started cutting photographs from magazines. She had heard of Milligans artistic ability, and now, looking at the shy, quiet patient, she was curious to see what he would do. He worked silently, calmly. When he was done, she walked over and looked at it. His collage startled her. It showed a frightened, tearful child looking out of the center of the page, and beneath him the name morrison. Looming over him was an angry man and, in red, the word danger. In the lower right comer was a skull. She was touched by its simplicity of statement, the depth of emotion. She hadn't asked for anything like this, and it wasn't what she'd expected. It revealed, she felt, a painful history. She shivered when she looked at it, and right then and there she knew she was hooked. No matter what doubts the others in the hospital might have about him, this, she knew, was not the product of an unfeeling sociopath. Nick Cicco agreed. Dr. George (so called by staff and patients to distinguish him from his father, Dr. George Harding, Sr.) began to read the relevant psychiatric journals and discovered that the disease known as multiple personality seemed to be on the increase. The doctor made calls to various psychiatrists, and all of them said much the same thing: "We'll share with you the little we know, but this is an area we don't understand. You'll have to blaze your own trail." It was going to take much more time and effort than Dr. George had first imagined, and he wondered if he had done the right thing accepting this patient in the middle of a fundraising campaign and expansion program for the hospital. He reassured himself that it was important to Billy Milligan, and important to the profession, to help psychiatry probe the limits of knowledge about the human mind. Before he could provide the court with an evaluation, he would have to learn Billy Milligans history. Considering the massive amnesia, that posed a serious problem. |
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Prior to doing this placed around neck. In her testing, Dorothy Turner discovered significant IQ variation among the different personalities: Christene was too young to be tested, Adalana would not come out and Arthur declined to take the IQ portion of the tests, saying it was beneath his dignity. Turner discovered that Dannys Rorschach responses revealed poorly concealed hostility and a need for external support to offset the feelings of inferiority and inadequacy. Tommy showed more maturity than Danny and more potential for acting out. He had the most schizoid characteristics and the least concern for others. Ragen showed the most potential for violent acting out. Arthur she found strongly intellectual, and she felt he relied on this to maintain his position of direction over the others. He also appeared to her to maintain a compensatory feeling of superiority to the world at large, but had feelings of uneasiness and was threatened by emotionally stimulating situations. Emotionally, Allen appeared to be an almost detached personality. She found some things in common: evidence of a feminine identity and of a strong superego, which anger threatened to override. She did not find evidence of psychotic process, nor of schizophrenic thought disorder. When Rosalie Drake and Nick Cicco announced that the mini-group would be doing trust exercises on April 19, Arthur allowed Danny to take the spot. The staff had prepared the rec room with tables, chairs, couches and boards, turning it into an obstacle course. Knowing Milligans fear of men, Nick had suggested that Rosalie blindfold and lead him through. "You've got to work with me, Billy," she said. "It's the only way to build enough confidence in other people so you can live in the real world." He finally allowed her to blindfold him. "Now hold my hand," she said, leading him into the room. "I'm going to take you over and around the obstacle course, and I'll keep you from being hurt." As she led him, she could see and feel his uncontrolled terror at not knowing where he was moving or what he might crash into. They moved slowly at first and then faster, around chairs, under tables, up and down ladders. Seeing his panic, both she and Nick admired him for going through with it. "I didn't let you get hurt, did I, Billy?" Danny shook his head. "You've got to learn that there are some people you can trust. Not everyone, of course, but some." Rosalie noticed that more and more in her presence, he assumed the little-boy role she had come to know as Danny. |
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"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. |
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But Ragen and I have stood apart. As you can see, this is a hostile place and Ragen is dominant. But if Billy isn't moved from here to a hospital, I can't guarantee that he'll stay even partially fused." Franklin County Sheriff Harry Berkemer told a reporter from the Columbus Dispatch that his deputies witnessed an extraordinary feat of strength and endurance when Milligan was in the personality of Ragen. Ragen had been taken to the prisoner recreation area, and he chose to punch a large body bag. "He hit it hard for nineteen and a half minutes straight," Berkemer said. 'An average man can't hit it for more than three minutes straight without becoming exhausted. He hit it so hard we thought he had perhaps broken an arm, and took him to a doctor to have him checked out." But Ragen had not hurt himself. On October 24, Judge Flowers again ordered Southwest Community Mental Health Center to examine Milligan and submit a report on his competency to stand trial. Dr. George Harding, Jr., could, at his discretion, attend the defendant. The judge also ordered Milligan immediately transferred from prison to the Central Ohio Psychiatric Hospital. 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. |
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Gary and Judy decided it was important to know if Dr. Caul would accept Billy as a patient at the Athens Mental Health Center. Though Judy had heard Cauls name before and had written him in July for information about multiple personality, she had not mentioned Billy's name. Now she phoned to ask if he would accept Billy Milligan as a patient and if he could come to Columbus on Friday to attend the meeting. Caul said he would have to check with the hospital superintendent, Sue Foster, who would discuss it with her superiors in the state Department of Mental Health. Caul said he would consider accepting Milligan as a patient, and he agreed to drive to Columbus on Friday to attend the meeting. On December 1, Judy waited impatiently for Dr. Caul. The lobby outside Judge Metcalf's chambers was filling up with the others who had become involved in the case, including Dr. George Harding, Dr. Stella Karolin, Dorothy Turner and Ber-nie Yavitch. Shortly after ten o'clock, she saw the receptionist point her out to a middle-aged, fat little man. His oliveskinned, fleshy face was fringed with gray hair. His fierce, penetrating eyes were the eyes of an eagle. She introduced him to Gary and the others, and led him into Judge Metcalf's chambers. Dr. David Caul settled back in the second row and listened as the attorneys discussed how the new law applied to the Milligan case. A short while later, Judge Flowers entered the chambers and, together with Judge Metcalf, summarized the case and the procedures up to this point. Bemie Yavitch spoke of the professional information that had been assembled and agreed that it would be difficult to refute the evidence regarding Milligans condition at the time of the offenses. He would not challenge the reports by Southwest and Harding. Gary pointed out that the defense had no intention of challenging the prosecutions evidence that Milligan had actually committed the crimes. It dawned on David Caul that they were all talking about what was going to be happening at that trial on Monday. It was his impression that here was a meeting of the minds about the scenario of that trial. Gary and Judy agreed that the victims' names be deleted from the record. What remained was to determine what would happen to Billy if Judge Flowers found him not guilty by reason of insanity. Gary rose and said, "We have Dr. Caul here from Athens. He has had experience in treating patients with multiple personalities at the Athens Mental Health Center, a state facility, and he was highly recommended by both Dr. |
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"No, Your Honor. The prosecution agrees to the evidence presented by Dr. Harding, Dr. Turner, Dr. Karolin and Dr. Wilbur, supporting the defendants mental condition at the time the crimes were committed." Judy Stevenson read the defense testimony, taken by deposition, into the court record. As she read to the hushed courtroom, she glanced at Billy from time to time and saw how pale his face was. She hoped the pain of hearing all this wouldn't make him unfuse. Mrs. Margaret Changett can testify that she saw Billy's mother on several occasions after being beaten by Mr. Milligan. She will testify that on one occasion Bill called her and said his mother was beaten rather badly. Mrs. Changett went to the Milligan house and found Mrs. Moore in bed. Mrs. Moore, according to Mrs. Changett, was in bed, shaking and battered. Mrs. Changett said she called a doctor and priest; she stayed with Mrs. Moore all day. Dorothy Moore, the defendant s mother, will, if called, testify that her ex-husband, Chalmer Milligan, was very abusive to her and would often beat her when he was drinking. He would generally lock the children in their bedroom while he beat her. She will testify that "Chalmer often became sexually aroused" after the beatings. Mrs. Moore said that Mr. Milligan was jealous of Bill and beat him quite often "for punishment." He once tied Bill to a plow and later tied him to a barn door in order to "keep him in line." Mrs. Moore will testify that she was not aware of the severity of the beatings, and sodomy, administered to Bill until the present offense came to light... Gary saw Billy put his hands over his eyes when he heard the testimony. "Got a tissue?" Billy asked. Gary turned and saw a dozen people around him pulling tissues out and handing them over. And Mrs. Moore will testify that on one occasion Bill's effeminate side was displayed when he prepared breakfast for her. She said that Bill was walking like a girl and even talking effeminately. Mrs. Moore will testify that she found Bill on the fire escape of a building in the downtown area of Lancaster, in a "trance like" state. He had left school without permission and the principal called her to inform her that Bill had left school. Mrs. Moore said that she has found Bill in a "trance" on numerous occasions. She will testify that when Bill came out of the "trance" he could not remember anything about what transpired during his "trance." Mrs. Moore will also testify that she did nothing about her marital situation with Mr. |
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Milligan because she wanted to keep the family together. It was only after her children gave her an ultimatum that she divorced Mr. Milligan. The report from Southwest by Karolin and Turner was read into the record. Then came the deposition of Billy's brother, Jim: If James Milligan was called to testify, he would state that on many occasions Chalmers sic Milligan would take James and Bill to family property on which there was a bam. That he, James, would be sent out to the field to hunt rabbits and Bill would always be told to remain with his step-father Chalmers. On all these occasions, when he, James, would return to the bam area, Bill would be crying. On many occasions, Bill told James that his step-father hurt him. Whenever Chalmers saw Bill relating these incidents to James, he, Chalmers Milligan would say to Bill — now nothing happened in the bam did it. Bill who was very afraid of his step-father would say No. Chalmers would further state we don't want to upset your mother do we. He would then take James and Bill to the ice cream store prior to going home. He would also verify all of the home life trauma directed at Billy. At twelve-thirty Judge Flowers asked if either side wished to make closing arguments. Both sides waived the right. The judge dismissed the first count of rape, pointing out the lack of corroborating evidence and the lack of a similar modus operandi. "Now, proceeding as to the defense of insanity," Judge Flowers said, "all of the evidence is stipulated medical evidence, and from that, without question, the doctors all testify that at the time of the acts in question, that the defendant was mentally ill at the time of the offense with which he was charged. That by virtue of his mental illness he was unable to distinguish between right and wrong, and further that he did not have the ability to refrain from doing these acts." Gary held his breath. "Lacking any evidence to the contrary," Flowers continued, "this court has no alternative other than to determine from the evidence before me that as to counts two to ten, inclusive, that the defendant is not guilty by reason of insanity." Judge Flowers placed Billy Milligan under the authority of the probate court of Franklin County, struck his gravel three times and adjourned. Judy felt lie crying, but held it back. She squeezed Billy and pulled him toward the holding cell to avoid the crowd. Dorothy Turner came in to congratulate him, as did Stella Karolin and the others, who Judy could see were crying. |
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That always gave me the creeps, I can tell you that." They stayed for over an hour, and when they left, Billy lay on his bed and stared out the window at the lights from the city of Athens. ( 3 ) In the days that followed, Billy jogged around the hospital grounds, read, watched TV and had therapy sessions. The Columbus newspapers ran stories about him regularly. People magazine published a long article on his life, and his picture appeared on the cover of Columbus Monthly. Calls began to flood the hospital switchboard from people who had read about or seen pictures of his artwork and wanted to buy his paintings. With Dr. Cauls permission, he sent for art supplies, set an easel up in his room and painted dozens of portraits, still lifes and landscapes. Billy told Dr. Caul that a lot of people had contacted Judy and Gary about the rights to his life story, and others wanted him to appear on The Phil Donahue Show, Dinah! and 60 Minutes. "Do you want someone to write about you, Billy?" Caul asked. "I guess I could use the money. When I get better and go out into society, I'll need something to support me. Who would give me a job?" "Aside from the money, how do you think you'd feel about the whole world reading about your life?" Billy frowned. "I think people should know. It could help them understand what child abuse can lead to." "Well, if you really decide you want someone to write your story, you might want to meet a writer I know and trust. He teaches here in Athens, at Ohio University. One of his books was made into a movie. I mention this only so that you can examine all the possibilities." "You think a real writer would want to write a book about me?" "It wouldn't hurt to meet him and see what he thinks." "Okay, that's a good idea. I'd like that." That night Billy tried to imagine what it would be like to talk to an author. He tried to visualize the man. Probably be wearing a tweed jacket and smoking a pipe, like Arthur. How good could he be if he had to teach at a university? An author should be someone who lived in New York or Beverly Hills. And why was Dr. Caul recommending him? He had to be careful. Gary had said there could be a lot of money in a book. And a movie. He wondered who would play his part. He tossed and turned through the night, excited and frightened at the prospect of talking to a real author whose own book had been made into a movie. When he finally fell asleep at dawn, Arthur decided that Billy was incapable of handling the interview with the writer. |
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Most of all, Christene liked to draw pictures for Kathy, but she didn't do it on the walls anymore. Dorothy got her lots of paper and crayons, and everyone said how good Billy was at making pictures. Dorothy was worried when Johnny came home from the hospital. He seemedjme when he played with the children or tried to work up new songs and routines for the show, but when her back was turned, he'd be on the phone with the bookies. She tried to stop him, but he turned on her, cursed her and hit her. He moved out to the Midget Mansions Motel, missing Christmas with the children and Kathy's third birthday on New Year's Eve. On January 18, Dorothy was awakened by a call from the police department. Johnny's body had been found in his station wagon, parked outside the motel, with a hose leading from the tailpipe into the back window. He'd left an eight-page suicide note attacking Dorothy and giving instructions to pay a few personal debts from the insurance money. When Dorothy told the children that Johnny had gone to heaven, Jimbo and Billy went to the window and looked up at the sky. The following week the loan sharks said she'd better pay up Johnny's six-thousand-dollar debt or something would happen to her and the kids. She fled with the children, first to the home of her sister Jo Ann Bussy in Key Largo and then back to Circleville, Ohio. There she met her ex-husband, Dick Jonas, again. After a few dates and promises that he would change, she remarried him. ( 3 ) Billy was almost five when he went into the kitchen one morning and reached on tiptoe to get the dishtowel from the counter. Suddenly the cookie jar standing on it came crashing to the floor. He tried to put the pieces together, but they wouldn't stick. Hearing someone coming, he began trembling. He didn't want to be punished. He didn't want to be hurt. He knew he had done something bad, but he didn't want to know what was going to happen, didn't want to hear Mommy screaming at him. He closed his eyes and went to sleep ... "Shawn" opened his eyes and looked around. He saw the broken jar on the floor and stared at it. 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. |
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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. |
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When they got to Hargis Creek, they saw a rope hanging from a branch over the water. "We can swing across," Billy said. "HI check it out," Jimbo said. "I'm the oldest. I'll go first. Then, if it's safe, you can swing across after me." Jimbo pulled the rope, backed up to get a running start and swung out. Three quarters of the way across, he fell and dropped into mud, which started sucking him down. "Quicksand!" Jimbo shouted. Billy moved fast. He found a large stick and threw it across to him. Shimmying up the tree, Billy climbed out on a branch, down the rope, and pulled his brother to safety. When they were on the bank, Jimbo lay back and looked at him. Billy said nothing, but Jimbo put his arm around his kid brother's shoulder. "You saved my life, Bill. I owe you." Unlike Billy and Jimbo, Kathy loved Catholic shool and admired the sisters. She was, she decided, definitely going to be a nun when she grew up. She adored the memory of her father and tried to find out all she could about Johnny Morrison. Her mother had told the children that their father had been ill, was taken to the hospital, and had died. Now that she was five and in school, whatever she did, Kathy asked herself first, "Is that what Daddy Johnny would want me to do?" It was something she would continue into adulthood. Dorothy saved some money from her singing engagements and bought part interest in the Top Hat Bar. She met a handsome, fast-talking young man who had a wonderful idea about the two of them opening a supper club in Florida. 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. |
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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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He discovered that if he let air out of his mouth slowly, with his feet clenched, it would make the same funny vibrations in his head — something like zzzzzzzz ... He sat and did it alone in his room for a long time. Zzzzzzzz ... Chalmer took the three children out of St. Josephs and enrolled them in the Circleville city school system. As an Irish Protestant, he wasn't having anyone in his family going to Catholic school; they would all have to go to the Methodist Church. The children resented having to change their prayers from the Ave Maria and the Lord's Prayer — grown-up prayers they all were used to by now — to the children's prayers Challa had to say, especially "Now I lay me down to sleep." Billy decided if he was going to change his religion he was going to be what his father, Johnny Morrison, had been — Jewish. Soon after her marriage, when they all moved to the nearby city of Lancaster, Dorothy discovered that Chalmer was unusually strict with the four children. No talking at the dinner table. No laughing. The salt had to be passed clockwise. When company came, the children had to sit up straight, feet flat on the floor, hands on their knees. Kathy was not allowed to sit on her mothers lap. "You're too old for that," Chalmer said to the seven-year-old. Once when Jimbo asked Billy to pass the salt, and Billy, unable to reach that far, slid it over partway, Chalmer shouted at him, "Can't you do anything right? Nine years old, acting like a baby." They became afraid of Daddy Chal. It was even worse when he was drinking beer. Afraid to show his anger, Billy withdrew into himself. He didn't understand the strictness, the hostility, the punishment. Once when Chalmer shouted at him and Billy looked directly into his face, Chalmers tone changed to an icy hiss: "Bend them eyes while I'm talkin' to you." The voice made Billy cringe and look down ... Often when Shawn opened his eyes and looked around, someone was watching him with lips moving, face angry. Sometimes it was the pretty lady. Sometimes it was one of the girls or the boy, who was a little bigger than he was, who would push him or take his toy away. When they moved their lips, he moved his, too, and made the buzzing through his teeth. Then they would laugh when he did that. But not the big angry man. The man would glare at him. Then Shawn would cry, and that would make a funny feeling in his head, too, and Shawn would close his eyes and go away. Kathy later remembered Billy's favorite childhood game. |
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Billy picked up a magazine and glanced through it, but when he looked up he saw Chalmer staring, sitting stone-faced with his hand to his chin, his empty blue-green eyes watching everything he did. Billy got up, put the magazine neatly back on the coffee table and sat on the couch the way he'd been told to, feet flat on the floor, hands on his knees. But Chalmer kept looking at him, so he got up and went out on the back porch. Restless, not knowing what to do, he thought of playing with Blackjack. Everyone said Blackjack was a vicious dog, but Billy got along with him. When he looked up, he saw Chalmer staring at him through the bathroom window. Frightened now, wanting to get away from Chalmers gaze, he went around the house to the front yard and sat there shivering although it was a warm evening. The paper boy tossed the Gazette to him, and he got up and turned to bring it into the house, but there was Chalmer watching him through the front window. All the rest of that Sunday and that evening, Billy felt Chalmers eyes boring into him. He began to tremble, not knowing what Chalmer was going to do. Chalmer didn't say anything, didn't speak, but the eyes were there, following every move. The family watched Walt Disney s Wonderful World of Color, and Billy stretched out on the floor. From time to time, he would look back and see Chalmers cold, empty stare. When he moved to sit close to his mother on the couch, Chalmer got up and stomped out of the room. Billy couldn't sleep much that night. Next morning, before breakfast, Chalmer came into the kitchen, looking as if he hadn't slept much either, and announced that he and Billy were going to the farm. There was a lot to be done. Chalmer drove the back way, the long way, to the farm, never speaking a word the whole trip. He opened the garage and drove the tractor into the bam. Then Billy closed his eyes. He felt pain ... Dr. George Hardings statement to the court recounts the event: "The patient reports ... 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 when he would be alone with his stepfather. He indicates that he was afraid that the stepfather would kill him insomuch as he threatened to 'bury him in the bam and tell the mother that he had run away.'" ... at that moment his mind, his emotions and his soul shattered into twenty-four parts. ( 3 ) Kathy, Jimbo and Challa later confirmed the Teachers memory of their mothers first beating. |
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According to Dorothy, Chalmer had become enraged after he saw her talking to a black coworker on the job at a nearby bench. She had been operating a tape-controlled punch drill, and when she noticed the man was starting to doze on the assembly line, she went over, shook him and told him it was dangerous. He smiled and thanked her. As she went back to her work table, she saw Chalmer glaring at her. All the way home he was silent, sulking. In the house she finally said to him, "Whats the matter? You want to talk about it?" "You and that nigger," Chalmer said. "What's going on?" "Going on? What in God's name are you talking about?" He hit her. The children watched from the living room as he beat her. Billy stood there, terrified, wanting to help her, wanting to stop Chalmer from hurting his mother. But he smelled the liquor and he was afraid Chalmer would kill him and bury him and tell her he ran away. Billy ran to his room, slammed the door shut with his back against it and covered his ears with his hands. But he couldn't shut out his mothers screaming. Crying, he slowly slid down the door until he was sitting on the floor. He closed his eyes tight, and in Shawn's deafness everything went silent... That was the first of the bad mix-up times, the Teacher recalled. Life became tangled as Billy wandered about, losing time, not knowing the day or week or month. His fourth-grade teachers noticed his odd behavior, and when one of the personalities, not knowing what was going on, would say something strange or get up and wander around the room, Billy would be sent to stand in the comer. Three-year-old Christene was the one who kept her face to the wall. She could stay there for a long time and not say anything, keeping Billy out of trouble. Mark, who had a short attention span for anything but manual labor, would have wandered away. Tommy would have rebelled. David would have suffered. "Jason," the pressure valve, would have screamed. "Bobby" would have gotten lost in a fantasy. "Samuel," who was Jewish, like Johnny Morrison, would have prayed. Any one of them or the others might have done something wrong and gotten Billy into a worse mess. Only Christene, who never got older than three, could stand there patiently and say nothing. Christene was the comer child. She was also the first to hear one of the others. She was on the way to school one morning and stopped to pick a bunch of wildflowers in the field. She found sumac and mulberries and tried to put them into a bunch. |
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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. |
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"Adalana" came to do them for him in secret. One evening Chalmer settled down to watch a World War II movie in which a Gestapo interrogator beat his victim with a hose. When the movie was over, Chalmer went out into the yard and cut a four-foot length of garden hose, doubled it and wrapped the cut ends together with black tape for a handle. When he came inside he saw Billy washing the dishes. Before she knew what was happening, Adalana felt a blow in the small of her back that knocked her to the floor Chalmer hung the hose by the looped end on his bedroom door and went to bed. Adalana learned that men were violent and hateful and never to be trusted. She wished Dorothy or one of the girls — Kathy or Challa — would hug her and kiss her and make the fear and the bad feelings go away. But she knew that would cause trouble, so she went to bed and cried herself to sleep. Chalmer used that hose often, mostly on Billy. Dorothy recalled hanging her robe or nightgown over it on the back of the bedroom door, hoping that if Chalmer didn't see it, he wouldn't use it. Then one day, after he hadn't used it for a long time, she threw it away. He never did know what had happened to it. In addition to secretly playing with motors and electrical equipment, Tommy began to study methods of escape. He read about the great escape artists Houdini and Sylvester, and was disappointed to discover that some of their great escapes were tricks. In later years Jimbo remembered his brother telling him to tie his hands tightly with a rope and then to leave. When Tommy was alone he would study the knots and figure out the easiest way to turn his wrists to make them mobile so that the ropes would slide. He practiced tying one wrist with a rope and then untying it with his hand behind his back. 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. |
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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. |
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Arthur wondered if that was a skill that could be developed. He brought up the subject to the one called Allen, the manipulator who was always there to fast-talk himself out of a tight situation. "Allen, next time you are holding the consciousness, I want you to think real hard and tell me everything that's going on around you." Allen agreed to try it, and the next time he found he was out, he told Arthur everything he saw. Arthur visualized it until it came into focus, and then, with a tremendous effort, he was able to see it through Allen's eyes. He discovered, however, that it worked only when he paid attention and when he was awake, even though not out in the consciousness. He had achieved his first intellectual triumph of mind over matter. Arthur realized that because of his knowledge, he had become responsible for a large, diverse family. They were all involved with the same body, and something had to be done to create order out of what was proving to be a chaotic situation. Since he was the only one capable of handling the task unemotionally, he would put his mind to it and come up with something that would be fair, workable and — above all — logical. The kids at school teased Billy when he wandered around the halls in a daze. They saw him talking to himself behaving at times like a little girl, and they picked on him. One cold afternoon during recess, some of the boys started taunting him in the schoolyard. Someone threw a rock at him, hitting him in the side. At first he didn't know what had happened, but he knew he wasn't permitted to show anger or Chalmer would punish him. Ragen turned and glared at the laughing boys. Another boy picked up a rock and threw it, but Ragen caught it and whipped it back swiftly hitting the boy in the head. Astonished, the boys backed off as Ragen pulled a switchblade out of his pocket and approached them. They fled. Ragen stood looking around, trying to understand where he was and how he had come to be there. He closed the knife, put it into his pocket and walked off He had no idea what was going on. But Arthur observed him, his swiftness, his angei; and he deduced why Ragen was there. He realized that Ragens sudden emotional outbursts would have to be dealt with. But it would be necessary to study and understand him before he introduced himself. What surprised him most of all was that Ragen was thinking in a Slavic accent. Arthur felt the Slavs had been the first barbarians. In dealing with Ragen, he was dealing with a barbarian. |
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Placed in seclusion and suicidal precautions. March 26 — Patient has been fairly cooperative. Complains periodically of seeing weird things. Patient, did not participate at recreation. Just sat alone most of the time. April 1 — Patient was screaming that the walls were closing in on him and he didn't want to die. Dr. Raulj took him in seclusion and warned him about having cigarettes and matches. April 12 — Patient starts acting out about bedtime the last few nights. He asks us if he is in a trance. Patient wanted extra medication tonight. I explained to patient he should try to get to bed. Patient became hostile and belligerent. (4) "Jason" threw the temper tantrums. He was the safety valve who could siphon off excess pressure by screaming and shouting. He was introverted until it came time to release tension. Jason was the one put into seclusion in the "quiet room" at Columbus State Hospital. Jason had been created, at the age of eight, ready to explode with emotion, but he was never allowed to come out — if he did, Billy would be punished. Here in the Columbus State Hospital, when the fear and pressure became too strong, Jason cried and screamed and vented his emotions. He did it when he heard on TV about the killing of the four students at Kent State. The attendants locked him up. When Arthur discovered that Jason was locked away whenever he exploded, he decided to take action. It was no different here from home. Showing anger was not permitted; if one did, all of them got punished. So Arthur forced Jason from consciousness, designated him "an undesirable" and informed him that he was never again to hold the consciousness. He would stay in the shadows beyond the spot. The others kept themselves busy with art therapy. When Tommy wasn't unlocking doors, he painted landscapes. Danny painted still lifes. Allen painted portraits. Even Ragen tried his hand at artwork but limited himself to sketching in black and white. That was when Arthur discovered that Ragen was colorblind, and recalling the unmatched socks, deduced that it had been Ragen who put them on. Christene drew pictures of flowers and butterflies for her brother, Christopher. The attendants reported that Billy Milligan seemed calmer and more cooperative. He was given privileges, and when the weather turned warm, he was allowed to go outside to walk and sketch. Some of the others came out, looked around, didn't like what they saw and left. Only Ragen, impressed with Dr. Raulj's Slavic name and accent, took the Thorazine and obeyed his instructions. |
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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. |
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He dragged it along behind him, looking at the store windows, wondering where he was and how he had gotten here. He sat down on a bench, looked around and watched children playing. He wished he could play with them. Then he got up and started pulling the duffel bag again, but it was too heavy, so he just left it and wandered off. He went into an Army and Navy store and looked at the surplus CB's and sirens. He picked up a big plastic bubble and pressed a switch. A siren went off and the red light inside started flashing. Terrified, he dropped the bubble and ran, knocking over an ice cream vendor's bicycle parked outside and scraping his elbow. He kept mnning. When he saw no one coming after him, David stopped running and walked the streets, wondering how he was going to get back to the house. Dorothy was probably worried about him. And he was getting hungry. He wished he had an ice cream. If he could find a policeman, he would ask him how to get home. Arthur always said if he was lost, he should ask the bobbies to help him ... Allen blinked his eyes. He bought an ice cream on a stick from a vendor and started off, unwrapping it, but then he saw a little dirty-faced girl watching him. "Jesus Christ," he said, handing it to her. He was a sucker for kids, especially those with big hungry eyes. He went back to the vendor. "Gimme another one." "Boy, you must be humgry." "Shut up and gimme the ice cream." As he walked, eating his ice cream, he decided he had to do something about letting kids get to him. What kind of con artist lets kids make a sucker of him? He wandered around, looking at the big buildings of what he thought was Chicago, and then took a bus downtown. He knew it was too late to get down to O'Hare Airport tonight. He'd have to spend the night here in Chicago and take the plane to Columbus in the morning. Suddenly he saw an electronic sign on a building that flashed: may 5, temperature 68degrees. May 5? He pulled out his wallet and looked through it. About five hundred dollars' separation pay. His discharge was dated May 1. His plane ticket from Chicago to Columbus was dated May 1. What the hell? Here he'd been wandering around in Chicago for four days since his discharge without knowing it. Where was his duffel bag? He had an empty feeling in his stomach. He looked down at his dress blue uniform. It was filty. The elbows were ripped and his left arm was scraped. All right. He'd get something to eat, get a night's sleep and take the flight back to Columbus in the morning. |
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David Caul." Oil painting by Allen "Landscape." Oil painting by Tommy "The Grace of Cathleen." Oil, painted in Billy's cell at Lebanon prison by Allen and Danny. (Originally signed by Billy, but note the lower right-hand corner where Allen and Danny later signed their names.) Legt to right: Jim, Kathy, Billy. Center bottom: Dorothy Billy in 1965 at age ten Billy at the Dayton Forensic Center, February 20, 1981 Arthur decided that the younger ones should be on the spot at the Zanesville Youth Camp. After all, it would give them experiences every child should have: hiking, swimming, horseback riding, camping, sports. He approved of Dean Hughes, the tall black recreation director with the flattop haircup and the Vandyke beard. He seemed like a sympathetic and trustworthy young man. All in all, there seemed to be no danger here. Ragen agreed. But Tommy bitched about the rules. He didn't like having his hair cut, having to wear state-issue clothing. He didn't like being here with thirty juvenile delinquents. Charlie Jones, the social worker, explained the setup to the new boys. The camp was divided into four progress zones, and they were expected to move through a zone each month. Zones 1 and 2 were the dormitories in the left wing of the T-shaped building. Zones 3 and 4 were in the right wing. Zone 1, he admitted, was "the pits." Everyone dumped on you, and you had to wear your hair cropped close. In zone 2, the boys could wear their hair longer. In zone 3, they could wear their own clothes instead of state-issue clothes after their daily work assignments. In zone 4, instead of living in a dorm, they could have their own private cubicles. Zone 4 boys didn't have to do regularly scheduled events. Most of them were trusties, and they didn't even have to go to the Scioto Village Girls Camp for the dances. The boys laughed at that. They would move through zones 1 to 4, Mr. Jones explained, by the merit system. Each of them started out the month with 120 merits to his credit, but he had to have 130 to move on to the next zone. A boy could earn credits by special work and good behavior, or he could lose them by disobedience or antisocial behavior. Merits could be removed by the staff or by one of the trusties from zone 4. If any of those people said the word "Hey," that cost a merit. If someone said, "Hey, cool it," two merits were lost. "Hey, cool it, bed," meant that in addition to losing two merits, the offender had to stay in bed for two hours. If he left his bed and someone said, "Hey, cool it, bed! |
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It was Tommy who did the boring work as a zinc-tank operator, pulling the cage that hung from the overhead moving chain and lowering it into the acid for the plating. He moved from one square tank to the next; they were lined up the length of a bowling alley. Lower it, wait, raise it, move it, lower it, wait. Sneering at such menial labor, Arthur turned his attention to other matters. He had to prepare his people to move out on their own. All during Zanesville, he had been studying the behavior of those he allowed to come on the spot, and he was beginning to understand that the key to survival in society was self-control. Without rules there would be chaos, endangering them all. It occurred to him that the mles at the youth camp had a salutary effect. The constant threat of being bumped back to zone 1 or 2 had kept all those unruly lads in check. That is what would be needed when they were on their own. He explained his code of behavior to Ragen. "Because someone became involved with women of ill repute," Arthur said, "we were accused of rape by those two women in Pickaway County — a crime we did not commit — and they sent us to prison. It must never happen again." "How you vill prevent it?" Arthur paced. "I can usually prevent someone from taking the spot. And I have observed your ability to bump someone off immediately after the vulnerable moment of switching. Between us, we ought to control the consciousness. I have decided that certain undesirable individuals should be permanently banished from the spot. The rest of us will be required to live by a code of conduct. We are like a family. We must be strict. A single infraction will result in someone being classified as undesirable." With Ragen s agreement, Arthur communicated the rules to all the others: first: Never lie. All their lives they had been accused unjustly of being pathological liars for denying knowledge of things one of the others had done. second: Behave properly to ladies and children. This included avoiding foul language and adhering to proper etiquette, such as opening doors. The children were to sit straight at table, with napkins across laps. Women and children must be protected at all times, and everyone should come to their defense. If any one saw a woman or a child being hurt by a man, he or she must step off the spot immediately and let Ragen deal with the situation. (If one of their own were in personal physical danger, that would not be necessary, since Ragen would take the spot automatically.) third: Be celibate. |
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You vill have to communicate this to the others. I do not yet know all of the — how you say? — the family. They come, they go. I am not sure sometimes if one is outside people or one of ours." "That's natural. It is as it was in the hospital or even in the youth camp. One learns the names of some of the people who live around you and becomes aware of the existence of others. But quite often even outside people don't communicate with each other although they're living in close proximity. I will communicate with each of our people and tell them what they need to know." Ragen mused. "I am strong, but vit all the things you have learned, you have gained much power." Arthur nodded. "And that is why I can still beat you at chess." Arthur reached the others one by one and told each one what was expected of him or her. In addition to the code of behavior, there were other responsibilities for those who were on the spot. Christene had stayed three years old and constantly embarrassed them. Yet Ragen insisted, and it was agreed that since she had been the first and was still "the baby" of the family, she would never be removed or classified as undesirable. She might even prove useful at times when it was necessary to have someone on the spot who couldn't communicate and wouldn't know what was going on. But she, too, was expected to work at her own goals. With Arthurs help, she was to learn to read and write and struggle to overcome her dyslexia. Tommy was to pursue his interest in electronics and strengthen his mechanical abilities. Though he could pick locks and crack vaults, the techniques he had learned were to be used for only one purpose — not to penetrate, but to escape. He was never to aid anyone in stealing. He was not to be a thief. He was to practice the tenor saxophone in his spare time and to perfect his talent in painting landscapes. He was to control his belligerent attitude, but use it to deal with other people when necessary. 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. |
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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. |
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"Painting, painting, that's all you think about is your damned painting. Talk to me, Billy." Remembering Arthur's rule about being polite to women, Tommy put the brush down and sat in the chair across from her. She was beautiful. Though she was fully dressed now, he visualized her slender body, every curve, every hollow. He had never painted a nude before, but he would love to paint her. He knew le wouldn't, though. Allen was the one who painted people. He spoke to her for a while, fascinated by her dark eyes, her Till, pouting lips, her long throat. He knew that whoever she was, whatever had brought her here, he was crazy about her. * * * ( 4 ) No one could understand why Billy Milligan started missing days at work or why he became so clumsy and stupid. Once he climbed up to fix the chain over the tanks and fell into the acid bath. They had to send him home. He walked off the job one day, and on December 21, 1973, he was fired from Lancaster Electro-Plating. He stayed home alone painting for a few days. Then one day Ragen took his guns and drove out into the woods for target practice. By this time Ragen had bought himself quite a few guns. In addition to the .30-caliber carbine, the .25-caliber semiautomatic and the .38 Smith and Wesson, he had a .375 magnum, an M-14, a .44 magnum and an M-16. He liked his Israeli grease gun because of its compactness and quietness. He'd also bought a .45 Thompson barrel clip, which he thought of as a collectors item. When the mix-up time reached its peak, Kevin asked Gordy Kane for an introduction to his connection. Kevin was ready to deal drugs full-time. Kane called an hour later and gave him directions to Blacklick Woods, near Reynoldsburg, east of Columbus. "I told him about you. He wants to see you alone so he can size you up. If he likes you, you've got it made. He goes under the name of Brian Foley." Kevin drove out, following instructions carefully. He had never been in this area, but he reached the appointed location near a culvert ten minutes early. He parked and waited in the car. Nearly a half-hour later, a Mercedes drove up and two men got out. One was tall, with a pitted face and a brown leather jacket. The other was of medium height, with a beard and a pinstriped suit. Someone was watching from the back of the car. Kevin didn't like it — not at all. He sat behind the wheel, sweating, wondering what he had gotten himself into and whether or not he should drive off. The tall guy with the pitted face leaned over and looked at him. |
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He drove tensely at twenty miles an hour. Arthur checked the street signs, and it occurred to him that Sunbury Road might be in the neighborhood of the Hoover Reservoir. He pulled over to the curb, took out the highway map and plotted the coordinates. He was indeed near the dam he had been intending to visit for a long time. He had heard that ever since the Army Corps of Engineers had built the dam, the sludge had accumulated against the structure. He had been wrestling with the question of whether this sludge area, with its varied forms of microscopic life, might turn out to be an ideal breeding ground for mosquitoes. If he discovered this was indeed an infested area, he would inform the authorities that action must be taken. The important thing was for him to take some scrapings of the sludge and examine them under the microscope at home. It was not a major project, he realized, but someone had to do it. He was deep in thought, driving slowly and carefully, when a truck passing him swerved back into the lane, drove a car ahead of him off the road, and kept going. 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. |
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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. He examined the two passports Ragen had bought through Foley, one. in the name of Ragen Vadascovinich and the other in the name of Arthur Smith. They were either stolen and altered or superb forgeries. They would certainly stand up under close scrutiny. He called Pan American Airlines, booked a one-way ticket to London, took what money he could find in closets, drawers and books, and packed his bags. |
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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. |
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There were some things of hers in the apartment, he told her. She ought to come over and get them. She came by after work and they sat and talked through the evening. She started dropping in regularly again. Things were back to what they had been before, and Ragen I blamed it all on Arthur's inability to control the family. "Walter" woke up in the apartment late in the afternoon of December 8, restless to go hunting, longing for the thrill of the chase. He loved being out in the woods alone with a gun. Walter didn't find himself out on the spot very often, and he knew he would be called upon only when his uncanny sense of direction — a special skill he'd acquired from hunting in the bush in his native Australia — was needed. The last time he'd been out was years ago when Billy and his brother, Jim, had been on a summer bivouac with the Civil Air Patrol. Because of Walter's tracking ability, he had been pressed into service as a spotter. But he had not hunted for a very long time. So this afternoon he took it upon himself to borrow Ragens handgun from the top of the refrigerator. Though it was hardly a substitute for a rifle, it was better than nothing. He listened to the weather report; hearing that it was cold, he decided to bring a mackinaw and gloves. Unable to find his Aussie hat with the pinned-up brim, he settled for a ski mask. He packed a lunch and set off south on Route 664. He knew instinctively what direction to follow. South would lead him to wooded areas where he could hunt to his heart's content. He got off the highway and followed the signs to Hocking State Park, wondering what game he would find. He drove into the forest, parked the car and began to walk. As he pressed deeper into the woods, the pine needles felt slippery beneath his feet. He breathed deeply. It was good to be out on the spot, moving through the silence of the wilderness. He walked for nearly an hour. Besides an occasional scurry that told him squirrels were about, there was no sign of game. It was almost dusk. He was growing impatient when he saw a fat black crow on the branch of a spruce. He quickly aimed and fired. The bird fell. Suddenly he felt dizzy and left the spot. . "Barbarian," Arthur said coldly. "Killing animals is against the rules." "Vy he take my gun?" Ragen demanded. "You left it unsecured," Arthur said. "That was against the rules too." "Not true. Ve have agreed one veapon should alvays be available, out of children's reach, in case of intruder. Valter did not have right to take it." Arthur sighed. |
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He didn't know why he had said that. Kevin had been planning to rob the store. He'd gotten together with Wayne Luft and another friend, Roy Bailey, and laid it out for them. They would execute the robbery and get the lion's share of the money and drugs. For the planning, he would get 20 percent. That night, following Kevin's instructions, the two men waited until one-thirty in the morning, forced the pharmacist back into the store at gunpoint, then robbed the safe and the narcotics cabinet. Still following the plan, they drove out into the woods, spray-painted the white Dodge station wagon black and drove out to pick Kevin up. Back at Bailey's place, Kevin checked out the drugs for them: Ritalin, Preludin, Demerol, Seconal, Quaalude, Delaudid and more. He estimated the drugs would bring in thirty to thirty-five thousand on the street, and he saw their faces change from curiosity to greed. As the night wore on, they all got high, and each of the men secretly approached Kevin, suggesting the two of them team up to rip off the third partner. By morning, when both Bailey and Luft were out cold, Kevin stuffed the money and the drugs into two suitcases and took off for Columbus on his own. Neither one, he knew, would have the guts to stand up to him. They were afraid of him. Time and again they had talked about how crazy he was, how he had put his fist through a door and used a Thompson machine gun to shoot up a guy's car. They'd tip off the police. He expected that. But once he got i rid of the dope, there was nothing they could do. The pharmacist had seen their faces, not his. There was nothing to tie him in with the robbery. When Marlene picked up the Lancaster Eagle-Gazette the next day and read of the Gray Drug Store robbery, she had a sinking feeling. A few days later, Tommy came to meet her for lunch. She was surprised to see that he had painted the old Dodge black — and so sloppily. "You did it, didn't you?" she whispered. "What, painted the car?" Tommy asked innocently. "You did the Gray Drug Store robbery." "Oh, for crying out loud! Now you're calling me a criminal? Marlene, I don't know a thing about it. I swear!" She was confused. Something told her he was guilty, but he seemed truly . upset at being accused. Unless he was the worlds greatest actor, his denial had to be real. "I just hope to God you're, not involved in it," she said. After they parted, Allen grew nervous about Marlene's accusations. He had a feeling something was wrong. Driving back to work, he decided he needed help. |
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Several days later, Billy Milligan was fingered by a fence in Columbus who owed a detective on the narcotics squad a favor. The fence reported that a quantity of drugs matching the description of those stolen from the Gray Drug Store had been sold to him by Milligan. The word was passed on to the Lancaster police department. A warrant was issued for Billy's arrest. ( 2 ) When Marlene came to the apartment on Monday after work, Tommy gave her an engagement ring. "I want you to have this, Marveen," Tommy said, calling her by his pet name for her. "And if anything happens to me, I want you to know I'll always love you." She stared in disbelief as he put it on her finger. It was a moment she had dreamed of for a long time, but now it was painful. Had he gone out and bought it because he expected something to happen to him? She felt the tears in her eyes but tried not to show her feelings. No matter what he had done, no matter what they did to him, she would stand by him. In her calendar for January 20, 1975, she wrote: "Got engaged. Really surprised me to death." They arrested Danny the following day. They pushed him into the cruiser and took him down to the Fairfield County Jail. They read him his rights and began questioning him. He had no idea what they were talking about. The questioning went on for hours. From what the detectives said, Danny began to piece together a picture. Wayne Luft had been picked up for drunken driving, and while being questioned, he had said that Milligan and Roy Bailey had robbed the drugstore. Danny looked up at them, dazed. They wanted him to give a voluntary statement. As they asked him questions, he heard Allen's voice in his head, telling him exactly what to answer. When the interrogation was over, Danny was asked to sign his statement. Laboriously, his tongue between his teeth, Danny pressed hard with the pencil as he signed the name "William Stanley Milligan." "Now can I go home?" he asked. "If you can post ten thousand dollars' bail." Danny shook his head, still very confused about all this, and they led him back to his cell. Later that day, Marlene got a bondsman to post bail. Tommy went back to stay with Dorothy and Del, who got in touch with George Kellner, the lawyer who had represented him on the rape case in Pickaway County two years earlier. While awaiting trial, Arthur learned of other charges being brought against Milligan. Two victims had identified him as one of the assailants who had robbed them at a roadside-rest area. |
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He kept pyramiding his barter. Along with what his mother and Marlene sent or brought him, he was able to buy food form the commissary and thus avoid the dining room in the evenings. He would plug his sink with a rubber stopper borrowed from the lab, fill it with hot water and let a can of chicken and dumplings, soup or beef stew heat up until it was warm enough to be palatable. He wore his green uniform proudly, delighted at the privilege of being allowed to walk and even run down the main corridor instead of moving like a cockroach against the walls. He enjoyed being called "Doc," and he sent Marlene the names of some medical books to buy for him. Arthur was serious about studying medicine. When Tommy learned that many of the other prisoners had their girl friends on the visitors' list as common-law wives so they would be allowed to visit the prison, he told Ragen he wanted Marlene down as his wife. Arthur was opposed at first, but Ragen overruled him. As Milligans wife, she could bring things to the prison. "Write to her," Ragen said, "to bring oranges. But first to use hypodermic and inject vodka. Is very good." "Lee" took the spot for the first time in Lebanon. Comedian, wit, practical joker, he exemplified Arthur's theory that laughter was a safety valve appreciated by most inmates. The teasing by other inmates that had a first frightened Danny and angered Ragen was now practiced by Lee. Ragen had heard of Billy's father, the stand-up comic and M. C. who had billed himself as "half music and half wit." Ragen had decided that Lee had a role to play in prison. But Lee went beyond funny stories. He loaded Allens cigarettes by scraping the sulfur off a couple of matches, soaking a matchstick in sugar water, rolling it in sulfur and burying it in the tobacco. He'd carry a couple of these in Allen's pack, and when an inmate would ask for a cigarette, Lee would hand over a loaded one. By the time he was down the corridor or leaving the cafeteria, he could hear the shout of rage from the victim as the cigarette flared. Several of them exploded in Allen's face. One morning when the blood work was done, Arthur, thinking about the incidence of sickle-cell anemia among black inmates, left the spot. Lee, finding himself with nothing to do, decided on some mischief. He opened a jar of onion-oil extract, dipped a swab into it and lined the eyepiece rims of the microscope. "Hey, Stormy," he said, handing the medic a slide, "Dr. Steinberg wants this white-blood-cell count quick. |
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He was put on a Sippy ulcer diet and returned to protective isolation in Lebanon. He learned that he would not be eligible for parole until April 1977 — a year and a half away. Christmas and New Years came and went, and on January 27, 1976, Allen took part with the other inmates in a hunger)! strike. He wrote to his brother: Dear Jim, As I lay here in my cell my thoughts are of you and I as children. I As my own time goes by my soul gains hatred for life. I am sorry for I'm the fault of your family being broken and which family I was hardly a part of. You have a great life ahead of you with many goals. Don't blow it as I. If you hate me for this I'm sorry. But I still respect you as I do the wind and sun. Jim I swear to God as my witness I didn't do what I am accused of. God says everyone has a place and a destiny. I guess this is minel I am sorry of the shame I have caused you and everyone around me. Bill Tommy wrote to Marlene: To My Marvene, OK Marv, there is a hunger strike and big riot starting. I am getting this letter to you in case the inmates take over. No mail will get out if they do. The screaming and glass breaking is getting louder. I would be killed if I try to get food off the cart — Someone started a fire! but they got it put out. Guards are dragging people out right and left. The movement is slow but the inmates will probably take over by the middle of next week. I told you so!!! They are standing outside with shot guns but that still won't stop these guys. I miss you Marvene! I just want to die. Things are getting bad. In the next few days this thing may get on the 6 oclock news. Right now its just on the Cinci radio. If it becomes a full scale don't come around. I know there will be thousands of people out side, you wouldn't get in the front gate. I love you Marvene and miss you. Do me a favor. The guys around me told me to send this to my Home town radio. They need public support to get what they want. Sent it to W. H. O. K. Thank you from all the guys. Well Marv I love you veiry verry verry much take care. Love Bill If things are ok bring cocoa. "Bobby" scratched his name on the steel bunk in solitary confinement. Here he was able to indulge in his fantasies. He saw himself as an actor in a movie or on TV, traveling to far-off places and having heroic adventures. He hated being called "Robert" by the others and would insist, "I'm Bobbyl" He had an inferiority complex, no ambition of his own, and he lived like a sponge, soaking up ideas and thoughts of others, passing them off as his own. |
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Of all the men who answered his help-wanted ad, he found Milligan the most qualified and personable. During the first interview, on August 15, 1977, Milligan assured him he could do grounds-keeping, carpentry, electrical maintenance and plumbing. "If it works electronically or by combustion, I can fix it," he told Wymer. "And if I don't know how, I can figure it out." Wymer said he would get in touch with him after he interviewed the other applicants for the job. Checking Milligan's references later that day, Wymer called the most recent employer listed on Milligan's application, Del Moore. Moore gave him a glowing report — a fine worker and a dependable young man. He had left the job because meat-cutting wasn't really in Bill Milligans line. He would, Del Moore assured Wymer, make an excellent maintenance man. Unable to check the two personal references — Dr. Steinberg and Mr. Reinert — because Milligan had neglected to give their addresses, Wymer let it go. Since the job was limited to outdoor work, he had enough to go on with the excellent reference from his last employer. But he did instruct his secretary to run the standard police check made on all new employees. When Milligan came in for a second interview, Wymer's first impressions were confirmed. He hired him for outdoor maintenance at the Williamsburg Square Apartments, adjacent to the Channingway Apartments, both of which were managed by Kelly and Lemmon. He could begin right away. After Milligan left, Wymer handed his secretary the application and W-2 form to file. He did not notice that on both, Milligan had entered the day and the year — "15-77" and "18-77" — but had left off the month of August. John Wymer had hired him, but Sharon Roth — a young woman with pale skin and long black hair — was Milligans supervisor. She found the new employee an intelligent, handsome fellow. She introduced him to the other "rental girls" and explained the procedure to him. Each day he would come to the office in Williamsburg Square and pick up the work orders filled out by her, Carol or Cathy. When the job was finished, Milligan was to sign the order and return it to Sharon. Milligan worked well the fjrst week, putting up shutters, repairing fences and walks, and doing lawn work. Everyone agreed that he was an eager, ambitious worker. He slept at the Williamsburg Square apartment of Ned Adkins, one of the other young maintenance men. One morning during the second week, Milligan dropped by the personnel office to see John Wymer about renting an apartment. |
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One afternoon as he passed a rundown house with a sagging porch, he saw a beautiful bond-haired child with wide blue eyes sitting in a laundry basket, her withered legs bent at awkward angles. An old lady standing in the doorway came onto the porch, and Ragen asked her, "Vy does child not have leg braces? Or veelchair?" The old lady stared. "Mister, you know what them things cost? I been begging the welfare for two years, and there ain't no way I can get them things for Nancy." Ragen went on his way, deep in thought. That evening he told Arthur to find out which medical-supply warehouse would have childrens wheelchairs and leg braces. Though he was irritated at being distracted from his reading, as well as at Ragens demanding tone, Arthur humored him and made several phone calls to medical-supply distributors. He discovered a company in Kentucky that had the size Ragen describecd. He gave Ragen the model numbers and the warehouse address, but asked, "What do you want this information for?" Ragen didn't bother to answer. That night Ragen took the car, his tools and a nylon rope, and drove south to Louisville. He found the hospital-supply warehouse and waited until he was certain everyone had left. It would not be difficult to break into; he would not even need Tommy's help. Strapping on the tools, Ragen climbed over the wire fence, slipped around to the side of the building hidden from the street and examined the brickwork alongside the drainpipe. In TV shows he had seen, cat burglars always carried grappling hooks to climb up to the roof. Ragen sneered at such devices. He fished a steel shoehorn out of his bag and removed the lace from his left running shoe. With the lace he tied the shoehorn so that its curved end turned downward near the tip of his shoe, creating a hook that served as a crampon. He climbed up to the roof, cut a hole in the skylight, reached in and unlocked it and, using the nylon rope fastened to a bracket, slid down the line into the building. It reminded him of the times he'd gone mountain climbing with Jim years ago. With the model numbers Arthur had supplied, Ragen searched the warehouse for nearly an hour before he found what he wanted — a pair of leg braces for a four-year-old child, and a small collapsible wheelchair. He unlocked a window, lowered the braces and wheelchair to the ground, and climbed out. Then he put everything into the car and drove back to Columbus. It was morning when he pulled up to Nancy's house and knocked on the door. |
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Though hate can conquer much through violence, it is unmanageable. Now, if one wants to keep the physical power of hate but remove its evil side, one will still have hatred* with some bad traits. Our mind wanted to control your violence, to keep the anger selective and manageable. Getting rid of your evil, so that you could be strong without being angry, led to shaving off some of your evil, and thus to the creation of Philip and Kevin." "They-are same as me?" "They are criminals. As long as they have your guns, they would not hesitate to put fear into people to achieve their aims. But only with weapons. Their sense of power derives from weapons. This, they feel, brings them to your level. They're very vengeful people and certainly commit crimes against property. I declared them undesirable after Zanesville because they committed unnecessary crimes. But you know what happens during the mix-up times ... Ragen, though you have shown goodness, you still have an evil aspect to your nature. There is no way to completely cleanse hate. It is the price we pay for maintaining strength and aggressiveness." "Vould not be mix-up times," Ragen said, "if you controlled spot properly. Vas better in prison." "There were mix-up times in prison, even when you were dominant, thought you were often not aware of them until afterward. Philip and Kevin and some of the other undesirables stole time in prison. Its most important now that they not get in touch with their old criminal friends from Columbus or Lancaster. They would violate the terms of parole." "I agree." "Weil have to make new friends, begin a new life. Working here at Channingway is a splendid opportunity. We must fit into society." Arthur looked around. "To begin with, we should really fix up the flat." In September, he bought furniture. The bill came to $1,562.21, and the first payment was due the following month. Things seemed to be going well at first, except that Allen was having problems with Sharon Roth. He didn't know why, but she bothered him. She looked so much like Marlene and she was just as bossy and know-it-all. He sensed she didn't like him. By mid-September, the mix-up time was worse than ever, confusing everyone. Allen would go to the rental office, pick up the work order, drive to the job location and wait at the apartment for Tommy to come and do the work. But more and more frequently, Tommy wouldn't show up. No one could reach him and no one else could handle the job. Allen knew that he himself could never figure out how to do the plumbing or heating repair. |
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"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. She had told her fiance she would call him from the hospital to meet him for breakfast, but she'd worked late this morning after a terrible night, and all she wanted was to get out of there. She'd call Sidney when she got back to her apartment. As she walked toward the parking lot, a friend passed, waved and shouted hello. Donna headed for her car, always carefully parked in the first row facing Upham Hall. "Hey, wait a minute!" someone yelled. She looked up to see a young man in jeans and a wind-breaker waving to her from the other side of the lot. |
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He knew when they were upset, hurting or feeling fear. When one of the young women would leave the open ward in a state of panic or hysteria, Billy could often tell the staff where to find her. "David and Danny are the parts of me that have empathy," the Teacher explained to the writer. "They can feel where the hurt is coming from. When someone leaves and is upset, it's like a beacon around where they are, and Danny or David will just point in the right direction." One evening after dinner, David was sitting in the living room when suddenly he imagined one of the female patients rushing toward the stairway railing outside the ward door — a steep three-floor drop down the center staircase. Ragen, who always thought David was weird for thinking these kinds of things, realized that what David was seeing was probably happening. He took the spot, dashing down the corridor and up the steps, slamming open the door and running out into the hallway. Katherine Gillott, the mental health technician who had been sitting in the office near the exit, jumped up from her desk and ran after him. She reached the corridor in time to see him grab the girl, who had already gone over the railing. He held on and pulled her up. When Gillott brought her back inside, Ragen slipped away ... David felt the pain in his arms. In addition to the general therapy he had been giving Billy from the beginning to strengthen his control of the consciousness, Dr. Caul used hypnotherapy and taught his patient autosuggestion techniques to help alleviate tension. Weekly group therapy sessions with two other multiple personality patients enabled Billy to understand more about his condition by seeing its effects on other people. His switching was less and less frequent, and Caul felt his patient was improving. As Billy the Teacher began chafing at his restrictions, Dr. Caul systematically extended his privileges and freedom, first allowing him to leave the building with an attendant, then letting him sign himself out, as other patients did, for short walks — but only on hospital grounds. Billy used this time to test the pollution levels at various points along the Hocking River. He made plans to attend classes at Ohio University in the spring of 1979, to study physics, biology and art. He began to keep a chart of his moods. In mid-January, Billy pressed Dr. Caul to extend to him the privilege many other patients had — of going into town. He needed to have his hair cut, to go to the bank, to see his lawyer, to buy art supplies and books. |
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Herb Rau of the Miami News was unreadable in spots, indicated here by asterisks: Mr. Herb Rau Miami News Dear Sir: Writing this is not an easy task. It might seem the cowardly way out, but as my entire world has collapsed about me there is nothing left. The only hope for temporary security for my 3 children, James, William and Kathy Jo can be derived from what little insurance I have. If it is possible, can you see that their mother, Dorothy Vincent, does not get her hands on it! She is mixed up with a crowd that hangs around where she works, Place Pigalle on Miami Beach, that will gladly share it with her! Procurers, Shylocks, etc. These are the people she has broken up the home for, and believe me I did all in my power to hold it together. The story is sordid enough — The children I love with all my heart, & the fact that they are bom without the benefit of marriage, is something she wants to use as a "gimmick" to get some publicity she thinks will further her career! As follows — Since before our first child was bom, I tried several times to get her to marry me, (this is after she accused me of making her pregnant when we 1st met,) but she always found one excuse after another to avoid it. (all this and the following can be proven by a deposition given my lawyer M. H. Rosenhaus of Miami) I introduced her to my family as my wife and so that when the baby arrived I had planned to go to some small town, marry her and legitimatize the baby. By this time I was so much in love with the little boy *** Again she found one excuse after another — "Somebody might read the marriage column that knows us" etc — Well eventually the second boy arrived & for the 1st 2 weeks it was touch & go whether he lived or not, but God was with us & he is now fine & healthy — As if that were a warning I suggested marriage again. By this time she had other excuses, and was getting entirely out of line — Drinking continually, disappearing from the club, & when she was in these conditions the children weren't safe with her. More than once when she hit the children it was with her arm instead of the flat of her hand — I had to threaten her with a beating to get her to stop. Believe me my life was a living hell. It began to show up in my work — I was slipping fast — I knew if this kept up I would eventually kill her — I wanted * ** but she begged me to have patience. We put the children in a wonderful nursery in Tampa, Fla. went on the road and agein with me she was able to work decent Night Clubs & Theaters. |
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Frightened readers from Columbus and anxious parents of students at Ohio University in Athens began to call the university president Charles Ping, who then called the hospital requesting clarification. Two state legislators, Claire "Buzz" Ball, Jr., of Athens, and Mike Stinziano, of Columbus, criticized the hospital and Dr. Caul, and began to press for hearings to reconsider the statute under which Milligan had been sent to Athens in the first place. They also demanded a change in the "not guilty by reason of insanity" laws. Some of Billy's enemies on the hospital staff, outraged that he was making money by selling his paintings, leaked stories to the Columbus Dispatch, the Columbus Citizen-Journal and the Dayton Daily News about the large sums of money he had at his disposal. When he used some of the money from the sale of "The Grace of Cathleen" to buy a compact Mazda to help carry his paintings, it hit the headlines. Representatives Stinziano and Ball demanded an investigative hearing at the Athens hospital. Mounting attacks and criticism stirred up by almost daily articles and front-page headlines forced Dr. Caul and Superintendent Sue Foster to ask Milligan to give up his furloughs and his privilege of leaving the grounds unattended until the furor died down. Billy was unprepared for this. He had obeyed the hospital rules, kept his word and broken no laws since his illness had been diagnosed and treated. Yet now his privileges had been taken away. Saddened, the Teacher gave up and left the spot. When Mike Rupe came on duty at eleven o'clock, Milligan was sitting in a brown vinyl chair, huddled and rubbing his hands as if frightened. Mike wondered if he should approach him. He had been warned of Milligan's fear of males, he knew about Ragen, and he had seen Dr. Caul's training tapes about multiple personalities. Up to now, he had just laid back and let the patient be. Unlike a lot of others on the staff who thought Milligan was faking, Mike Rupe believed the diagnosis. After reading the history and nursing notes, he just couldn't imagine that all those professional psychologists and psychiatrists could be taken in by a young man without even a high school education. Milligan usually seemed stable to him, and that was all he really cared about. But for the past week, ever since the Dispatch headlines, he had gotten more and more depressed. Rupe felt bad about those lousy headlines and the fact that Milligan had been shafted by the politicians. Rupe came around from behind the counter and sat on a chair near the terrified boy. |
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The markers had no names — only numbers — and he wondered why. The memory of being buried alive when he was nine years old made him tremble, and he backed away. There would have been neither a name nor a number on his grave. Danny saw that the blossoms were largest at the top of the hill, so he kept climbing until he reached a cliff that dropped off sharply. He moved to the edge and braced himself against a tree as he looked at the road below, the river and the houses. Suddenly he heard cars screeching and saw flashing lights in the curved road beneath him. Looking down made him dizzy. Very dizzy. He started to sway forward when he heard a voice behind him say, "Billy, come down." He looked around. Why were all these people surrounding him? Why wasn't Arthur or Ragen here to protect him? His foot slipped and pebbles under his feet bounced down the cliffside. Then a man reached for his hand. Danny took it and held on as the man pulled him back to safety. The nice man walked back with him to the big building with the pillars on it. "Were you going to jump, Billy?" someone asked him. He looked up at a strange lady. Arthur had told him never to talk to strangers. But he could tell there was a lot of excitement in the ward, and people were looking at him and talking about him, and he decided to go to sleep and let someone else have the spot... Allen walked the ward that evening, wondering what had happened. His digital watch said ten forty-five. He hadn't been out for a long time, satisfied, along with the others, to listen and learn from the Teacher's story of their lives. It was as if each of them had possessed just a few pieces in the giant puzzle of consciousness, but now the Teacher, in trying to make the writer see it clearly by putting it all together, had made all of them aware of the lives they had lived. There were still gaps because the Teacher hadn't told everything, just the memories that would answer the writers questions. But now the Teacher was gone, and the lines of communication between the Teacher and the writer, and between himself and the others, were broken. Allen felt confused and alone. "Whats the matter, Billy?" one of the female patients asked. He looked at her. "I'm kinda groggy. Guess I took too many pills," he said. "I think I'll go to sleep early." A few minutes later Danny woke to see several people rushing into his room, pulling him out of bed. "What'd I do?" he begged. Someone held up a pill bottle, and he saw some had spilled on the floor. |
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"I'll see what I can do." ( 2 ), Continuous information leaks from somewhere in the Athens Mental Health Center kept the headlines sizzling. On April 7, the Columbus Dispatch proclaimed: Milligan in Security Ward After Faked Drug Overdose. The Dispatch's attacks on Milligan were now also directed against the Athens Mental Health Center and Dr. Caul. Caul began to receive abusive telephone calls and threats. One caller shouted, "How could you stand up for that rapist, you jive no-good dope-fiend motherfucker? I'm gonna kill you!" After that, Dr. Caul always looked around carefully before getting into his car, and he slept with a loaded revolver on the bedside table. The following week, the Dispatch reported Stinzianos protests against the attempt by the Athens Mental Health Center and hospital superintendent Sue Foster to find a new hospital for Milligan. Stinziano Doubts Athens Aides on Milligan Transfer State Rep. Mike Stinziano, D-Columbus, is skeptical about efforts by Athens Mental Health Center officials to down play the possibility that William S. Milligan could be transferred to another institution. The Columbus Democrat is convinced that newspaper publicity early last week stopped state officials from quietly transferring the 24-year-old mentally ill rapist and robber. "Frankly, without the publicity, I feel certain he (Milligan) would have been transferred out of state or to Lima (State Hospital)," Stinziano said ... During the Wednesday press conference in Athens, Mrs. Foster said, "Treatment of Billy Milligan has been compromised by the press and his reaction to the press." The superintendent referred to the numerous reports which followed The Dispatch's revelation that Milligan had been allowed on unsupervised leaves from the Athens Hospital. Mrs. Foster's comment brought a rebuff from Stinziano. "Blaming the press for reporting the facts is irresponsible," he said ... When Stinziano and Ball demanded that the Ohio Mental Health Department call in outside experts to evaluate Milligans treatment, Dr. Cornelia Wilbur agreed to come to Athens. Her report praised Dr. Cauls treatment program. Setbacks like this, she explained, occurred often with multiple personalities. The Columbus Dispatch reported on April 28, 1979: Sybil's Psychiatrist Approves of Leaves in Milligan Therapy By Melissa Widner The psychiatrist asked by the Ohio Department of Mental Health ... to consult on the case of mental patient A William Milligan has recommended that no major changes be made in his treatment. |
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In her report to the department, made public Friday, Dr. Cornelia Wilbur supported Milligan's therapy, which until recently included frequent furloughs from the Athens Mental Health Center, where he is a patient. ... Dr. Wilbur said he is no longer dangerous after 13 months of therapy in state and private mental institutions. She suggested his treatment at the Athens facility be continued. She said the unchaperoned leaves as part of his treatment were well conceived, but publicity about those leaves had had a negative effect... The following article appeared in the Columbus Citizen-Journal on May 3, 1979: Milligan Doctor's Objectivity Questioned State Rep. Mike Stinziano, D-Columbus, is questioning the objectivity of a psychiatrist who recommended treatments for William Milligan ... In a letter to Myers Kurtz sic, acting director of the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation, Stinziano said Dr. Cornelia Wilbur should not give advice on the Milligan case "since she was originally responsible for the placement of William Milligan in Athens." Stinziano said the selection of Dr. Wilbur as an outside physician "makes about as much sense as asking Miss Lillian what kind of job Jimmy Carter is doing in the White House." On May 11, the Columbus chapter of the National Organization for Women wrote a three-page letter to Dr. Caul and sent copies to Meyers Kurtz, Mike Stinziano, Phil Donahue, Dinah Shore, Johnny Carson, Dr. Cornelia Wilbur and the Columbus Dispatch. It opened with the following: Dr. Caul, The treatment program you have prescribed for William Milligan, which according to newspaper accounts, includes unsupervised furloughs, unrestricted use of an automobile, and assistance in financial arrangements for books and movie rights, displays a deliberate and flagrant disregard for the safety of women in the surrounding communities. It cannot be tolerated under any circumstances ... The letter went on to say that not only did Dr. Cauls treatment program not teach Milligan that violence and rape are unconscionable, but he was in fact getting positive reinforcement "for his reprehensible actions." It charged that with Cauls collusion, Milligan had learned "the cultures subliminal but actual message — that violence against women is an accepted occurance sic, a commercialized and eroticized commodity..." The letter argued that Cauls "lack of clinical insight is as misogynist as it is predictable. The claim that the rapist personality was a lesbian is a transparent ruse to excuse the patriarchal culture ... |
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I hunt for the meat. I think it's right. So don't start arguing about it." They rode up together in the elevator. Billy went to his room and tore up the sketches for her deer painting. On July 7, 1979, boxed in red on the front page, the Columbus Dispatch ran a banner-headlined story by Robert Ruth: Rapist Milligan Could Be Free Within Few Months Describing the possibility that Milligan might be found sane in three or four months, and that he might be released under U. S. Supreme Court interpretations of federal law, the article concluded: "He Rep. Mike Stinziano predicted Milligan's life might be in danger if some Columbus residents found him wandering in the city." After reading the story, Dr. Caul said, "I'm afraid that newspaper article is going to put ideas into some people's heads." Kathy's fiance, Rob Baumgardt, and his brother Boyce, wearing Army fatigues from work as extras in Robert Redford's movie Brubaker, came to pick Billy up a week later for his chaperoned weekend leave. As he walked down the steps witf the uniformed men Billy saw the officers staring through the window of the security office. He tried to keep from smiling while he was driven off by what must have looked like i military escort. * * * Billy told the writer of disturbing changes he was noticing in himself. Without switching to Tommy, he opened locked doors without keys. He rode his new motorcycle without switching to Ragen, yet he rode it as Ragen would have, up steep hills. He felt the pulsating adrenaline, as Ragen had felt it, physically aware of himself every muscle working well to do the things he was now able to do, though he himself had never been on a bike before. He also found himself becoming antisocial, annoyed at the other inmates, impatient with the staff. He had the strange sense of wanting desperately to get a six-foot metal rod with a hook at the end and go down to the electric terminal. He knew where the U-80 current transformer was. By pulling it down, he could turn the juice off. He argued with himself that it was wrong. If the pole lights went off in the street, someone might have a wreck. But why did he want to do it? Then he remembered one night when his mother and Chalmer had been arguing. Unable to stand it, Tommy had gone off on his bicycle down Spring Street. He'd ridden to the terminal, crawled in and knocked the electricity out. Tommy knew that when the lights went out, people got calmer. They'd have to stop fighting. Three streets had lost power — Hubert Avenue, Methoff Drive and Spring Street. |
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Goldsberry and Thompson had provided the court with depositions from Drs. George Harding, Cornelia Wilbur, Stella Karolin and David Caul, and Psychologist Dorothy Turner, all agreeing that there was "a reasonable medical certainty" that Billy Milligan had been a mentally ill multiple personality when the roadside-rest assaults and the Gray Drug Store robbery were committed in December 1974 and January 1975. They agreed that he had probably not been able, at that time, to assist his attorney, George Kellner, in his own defense. The Fairfield County prosecutor, Mr. Luse, called only Dr. Harold T. Brown, who stated on the witness stand that he had treated Billy at the age of fifteen and had him sent to the Columbus State Hospital for three months. He would, he said, in the light of current knowledge, have changed his diagnosis from hysterical neurosis with passive-aggressive features to a new diagnosis of dissociative disorder with possible multiple personality. However, Brown told the court, he had been sent by the prosecuting attorney to interview Billy in Athens, and during that visit, Billy Milligan seemed to have knowledge of the acts he had committed. Brown said Milligan was probably not really a multiple personality, since multiple personalities were not supposed to have knowledge of the actions of the alter egos. When they left the courtroom, Goldsberry and Thompson were optimistic and Billy was elated. He was sure Judge Jackson would take the testimony of four highly regarded psychiatrists and a psychologist over the testimony of Dr. Brown. The judge told a reporter he would make his decision within two weeks. On September 18, seeing Billy's agitation after his return from Lancaster and aware of his fear of being shot at again, Dr. Caul allowed him a furlough. Since Billy realized he would be a target at his sisters house as well as at the hospital, it was understood he would stay at the Hocking Valley Motor Lodge in nearby Nelsonville. He would take his easel, paints and canvas to work undisturbed. He checked in on Tuesday under a false name and tried to relax, but the tension was too strong. He heard noises while he painted. After searching the room and the hall, he decided it was in his head — his own voices. He tried not to listen, concentrating on his brush strokes, but they were still talking. It wasn't Ragen or Arthur; he'd have recognized their accents immediately. It had to be the undesirables. Now what was wrong with him? He couldn't work, he couldn't sleep, he was afraid to go back to Kathy's or to Athens. |
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Milligan to Lima State Hospital, a maximum security facility, a reliable source reports. The transfer order came after top officials in the Ohio Mental Health and Mental Retardation s Columbus headquarters made several phone calls Wednesday to the Athens Mental Health Center where Milligan had been confined for 10 months, the source said. Mental Health Director Timothy Moritz made at least one of the calls, the source added... . Two state legislators — Reps. Mike Stinziano D-Columbus, and Claire Mr. Ball, Jr., R-Athens — repeatedly have complained about what they charged was lenient treatment given the rapist. Thursday both Stinziano and Ball praised the decision to transfer Milligan to the Lima facility, but Ball added, "I only wonder what took so long?" Stinziano said he will continue to keep a close watch on Milligans case to ensure Milligan is not released from a maximum security facility until he is no longer a threat to society. The day after Milligans transfer, Judge S. Farrell Jackson of the common pleas court in Lancaster filed his ruling on Milligans motion to vacate his guilty plea for the Gray Drug Store robbery: This court is of the opinion that the burden of proof as to the matter of the insanity of William S. Milligan on March 27, 1975, is upon the defendant, William S. Milligan ... After a careful, analysis of all the evidence, this court is not convinced by a preponderance of the evidence that on March 27, 1975 that William Stanley Milligan was insane, was unable to counsel in his own defense or was unable to understanding A enter a plea of guilty to the charges and, therefore, there has been no showing of a manifest injustice arid the motion of William Stanley Milligan to withdraw his pleas of guilty is denied. Goldsberry filed an appeal with the Ohio Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals on the grounds that Judge Jackson had improperly considered the weight of the evidence — balancing the opinions of four eminently qualified psychiatrists and a psychologist against the solitary opinion of Dr. Brown. He also filed a motion in the city of Lima, Ohio, at the Allen County Courthouse, charging that his client had not been given an opportunity to confer with his attorney and that he had been transferred to a more restrictive facility without due process. ( 2 ) A week later, at the Allen County Courthouse, where the referee would hear Goldsberry s motion to return Milligan to Athens, the writer saw Billy in handcuff's for the first time. It was the Teacher, and he smiled sheepishly. |
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Assistant Attorney General Belinky s motion for separation of witnesses was granted. Attorney Steve Thompsons motion for the court to return Billy Milligan to Athens, considering the procedural defects in the transfer to Lima, was denied. With preliminary motions over, the commitment review hearings began. The first witness for the state was sixty-five-year-old Dr. Frederick Milkie, a short, fat psychiatrist with baggy pants and a baggy sweater. His dark hair was slicked down, and he waddled from the table beside Belinky (from which he would later serve as the states technical consultant) to the witness stand. Dr. Milkie testified that he had seen Milligan twice, once briefly on October 24, 1979, when the patient had been transferred to his care at Lima, and then again on October 30, for review of his treatment plan. He had also been allowed to observe Milligan this morning for a half-hour before the hearing, to see if he had changed since a month ago. Referring to hospital records, Dr. Milkie stated that he had diagnosed Milligan as having a personality disorder, that he was antisocial and suffered from psychoneurotic anxiety with depressive and dissociative features. David Belinky, a boyish-faced attorney with frizzy hair, asked his witness, "Is he exactly the same today?" "Yes," said Milkie. "He is mentally ill." "What are his symptoms?" "His behavior is unacceptable," Dr. Milkie said, looking directly at Milligan. "He is a criminal with rape and robbery charges. he's at odds with his environment, the kind of individual who doesn't profit from punishment." Milkie said he had considered the multiple personality diagnosis, but had seen no symptoms of it. In answer to Belinky s questions, Milkie said he considered Milligan a high suicide risk and a danger to others. "There is no improvement in this patient," Milkie said. "He's arrogant, uncooperative. He has an expansive ego. He doesn't accept his milieu." When asked by Belinky how he treated the patient, Milkie answered, "With skillful neglect." Milkie testified that he had prescribed five milligrams of Stelazine. He had seen no ill effects, but since there were also no beneficial effcts, he discontinued the antipsychotic drug. He told the court that in his opinion, Milligan needed a maximum-security facility, and Lima was the only place for him in Ohio. Under cross-examination by Steve Thompson, Goldsberrys lanky young associate, Milkie said he rejected the diagnosis of multiple personality because he had not seen the symptoms. |
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Clank. Edging over to sit on my bed is becoming more of a chore but I did adjust myself on the plastic mattress. With the mass of nothingness I decided to use my imagination on the chipping paint on the opposite wall. I could conjure up silhouette images for my own amusement and try to identify them. Today, only faces, old, ugly and ravaged demonic faces seemed to hallucinate from the chips of an aging institution. It was scary but I allowed it. The wall was laughing at me. I hate that wall. Damn that wall! It wants to come closer and closer and laugh harder. The sweat from my brow was stinging my eyes but I fought to keep them open. I have to guard that wall, or that loud laughing wall will move in on me, invade me, crush me. I will stay frozen and guard the damn loud laughing wall. 410 men declared criminally insane shadow the endless halls of this God forgotten pit. I grow angry at the fact that the State had the gall to call this place a hospital. Lima State Hospital. Clank! Silence fell over Ward 22 except the tinkling and sweeping of the broken window. Someone smashed a small window in the day hall where we sit against the wall in hard, thick wooden chairs. You sit, you may smoke. You do not talk, you have both feet on the floor, or life will get very hard on you. Who broke a window? Now the attendants will be in a bitchy mood because their card game was interrupted and one will be ordered to stay in the dayroom if they will let us out of our little boxes. — I could hear nothing, dazed in my trance-like stupor. My body was numb and hollow. The damn loud laughing wall stopped laughing. The wall was a wall and the chips were chips. My hands were cold but clammy and the thumping of my heart echoes inside my hollow body. The waitful anxiety began to choke me, waiting to come out of my little box, but I remain frozen on my bed staring at the silent, motionless wall. Me, a nothingness zombie in a nothingness box in a nothingness hell. Saliva trying to spill over my dry parched lips was a sure sign that the psychotropic medication was fighting for control of my mind, soul and body. Should I fight it? Declare it the winner? Succumb to the third world to escape the tragic realities that lie beyond my steel door? Is life worth living in the jaws of society's trash can for misfit minds? What can I possibly achieve or contribute to mankind in this steel and concrete box with a damn loud laughing wall that moves? Just give up? More questions raced through my mind like a 33 record set on 78, growing more and more intense. |
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Suddenly a horrifying shock volted through my body that threw my slumped shoulders back and set me even more upright. Reality forcing itself upon me like a vicious slap in the face broke my trance and cracked my frozen joints. Something was crawling up my spine. My imagination? After gathering what few senses I had left I knew it was not. There was something crawling up my spine. I reacted by jerking my shirt over my head ignoring the fact it had buttons. Blind fear has no mercy for material items. 3 buttons popped. Flinging the shirt to the floor the feeling left my back. Peering down at the shirt I saw the invader. A cockroach about 3 centimeters long and black had been tap dancing on my lumbars. The gross insect was harmless but shocking. The rodent did make up my mind for me. I came back to this side of reality but was still thinking about my inner-debate. I did let the hideous little thing go. Secretly I was content with the awareness I had of myself proud of the mental and physical victory. I am not a mental basket case. I still had some fight in me. I have not lost but I have not won. I broke a window and I don't even know why. Hie writer received a letter, dated January 30, from another patient at Lima: Dear Sir, Let me get to the main point. Within twenty four hours of Bill's visit by his attorney, Bill was transferred from I. T. U. 5 to I. T. U. 9. Nine is a stronger ward than five. The decision for the transfer was made by the "team personnel" in the daily team meeting. It came as a surprise and shock for Bill, yet he handled it well... TTie only time Bill and I can converse now is at recreation. This is where I found out that the pressure on him was on full. He says his visits, mail, phone calls are all cut off until he fires his attorneys. He has been told to stop the book, and is harassed by attendants. (I too have been accused of aiding Bill on the book and have realized that these people don't want the book out.) I was told Bill will be staying the remainder of his time here on a strong ward ... name withheld On March 12 the writer received a letter written in Serbo-Croatian, postmarked Lima. The handwriting was unfamiliar. Subata Mart Osmi 1980 Kako ste? Kazma nadamo. Zaluta Vreme. Ne lefienje Billy je spavanje. On je U redu ne brinite. I dem na pega. Uiinicu sve Sta mogu za gaft moiete ra fcunati na mene "Nuzda ne poznaje zakona." Nemojete se Ragen Saturday March 8, 1980 How are you? I hope splendid. I lost time. There is no cure for Billy in sleep. |
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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. 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. |
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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. |
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When there was a partial fusion, he became a person with no name. Ragen, he reported, had lost the ability to speak English. People had stopped communicating with each other. I suggested he keep a daily log so whoever was on the spot could write messages. It worked for a while, but interest flagged and the entries were fewer and fewer. On April 3, 1981, Billy had his 180-dayhearing. Of the foui psychiatrists and two mental health professionals who testified. only Dr. Lewis Lindner of Lima, who had not seen him in five months, testified that he should be kept in maximum security. A letter was introduced by the prosecutor into evidence. In it Milligan was apparently responding to news that another patient at Lima had planned to have Dr. Lindner killed. "Your tactic is completely wrong ... Have you considered the fact that not many doctors would consider taking your case, knowing they may be hit for saying the wrong thing? But in fact, if Lindner has damaged you and your case beyond repair and if you feel your life is over because you're going to spend eternity behind bars, you have my blessing." When Milligan was called to the witness stand and asked his name under oath, he said, "Tommy." Tommy explained that Allen had written the letter in an attempt to talk the other patient out of killing Dr. Lindner. "It's wrong to go around shooting people just because they testify against you in court. Dr. Lindner testified against me today, but I certainly wouldn't shoot him for it." Judge Flowers deferred his decision. The newspapers ran front-page stories, feature articles and editorials opposing any move to Athens. While waiting to hear his fate, Allen spent most of his time at Dayton working on a painting for the cover of this book. He planned to send the editor several sketches to choose from, but one morning he awoke to discover that one of the children had come out while he was asleep and scribbed over the sketches with orange crayon. On the morning of the assigned deadline, Allen worked furiously and finished the desired oil painting on time. On April 21, 1981, the Fourth District Court of Appeals of Ohio ruled on the judgment of the court that had sent Billy to Lima. It found that removing him from a less restrictive setting to the maximum-security mental health facility in Ohio, the Lima State Hospital, "without notice to that person or his family, without allowing the patient to be present, to consult with counsel, to call witnesses, or to in general advise him of or allow him the rights of a full hearing ... |
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is a fatal violation ... and must result in the reversal of the transfer order and the replacement of the patient in his position prior to the unlawful transfer proceeding." Although the appeals court found this judicial error, they decided that the error was not prejudicial, since Milligan had had a hearing in Allen County that "found upon what we must presume to be sufficient and adequate evidence that appellant, due to his mental illness, was a danger to himself and others ..." The appeals court, therefore, disagreed with Judge Jones' actions, but would not return Billy to Athens. Goldsberry and Thompson have since appealed this decision to the supreme court of Ohio. On May 20, 1981, six and a half weeks after the 180-day hearing, Judge Flowers handed down his decision. His court entry gives two explanations: First, "the Court in its decision weighs heavily upon States Exhibit #1 the letter and its interpretation by Dr. Lewis Lindners testimony. The Court finds this persuasive by a clear and convincing standard that William S. Milligan presently lacks accepted moral restraints, shows familiarity with the criminal sub-culture, and shows a disregard for human life." Second, the judge found that Dr. David Cauls testimony, given in a deposition, "that he would be unwilling to accept Court imposed limitations" made the Athens Mental Health Center "less than adequate." Making no references to the other psychologists and psychiatrists who had testified that Milligan was not dangerous, Judge Flowers ordered continued treatment at the Dayton Forensic Hospital "as the least restrictive alternative available consistent with the treatment goals of the defendant and with the public safety." Judge Flowers further authorized Milligan to submit to treatment by a Dayton psychologist (who had informed the judge earlier that she had no experience in the treatment of multiple personality) — "at his Milligans own expense." This decision was handed down three and a half years from the time Billy Milligan had been arrested and brought before Judge Flowers; two years and five months after Judge Flowers had found him not guilty by reason of insanity. Alan Goldsberry immediately filed an appeal and brief with the 10th Appellate District in Franklin County, Ohio, challenging Senate Bill 297 (the Milligan law) as a denial of equal protection of the law and a denial of due process, and therefore unconstitutional. He also argued that its application to Billy Milligan "retroactively" was a violation of the Ohio constitution's protection against retroactive laws. |
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The countersuit was denied. The states suit is still pending. Tanda, eager to be close to him, got a job in Columbus and moved in with his sister, Kathy. She loved him, she said, and wanted to be able to visit him often. Dr. Box began the intensive therapy methods that had earlier been successful in fusing the personalities at the Athens Mental Health Center. She worked with David, Ragen, Arthur, Allen, Kevin, and, finally, was able to reach the Teacher. Each time I visited, Allen or Tommy would tell me I had just missed seeing the Teacher. Finally, I left them instructions to post a message in the room. The next time the Teacher was there, he was to phone me. 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 ... |
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The "Hand" test, a series of pictures of hands in many different positions, about which the patient makes judgments, is a projective technique to evaluate the individual s potential for violent behavior. Eisel testified that none of the personalities he had tested (I later learned they were Philip, Kevin, and Ragen) were dangerous to any significant degree. Although a social worker testified for the prosecutor that Milligan had threatened him and his family, under crossexamination he admitted he was threatened often by mental patients, but that nothing had ever come of them. Dr. Caul testified that he would accept Milligan for treatment and would abide by any restrictions imposed by the court. On April 8, 1982, Judge Jay Flowers ordered the Department of Mental Health to transfer Billy Milligan back to the Athens Mental Health Center. He ordered that the patient be allowed to paint and do woodworking, but he also suggested close supervision off the ward. Before Milligan could be permitted to leave the hospital grounds, the court must be notified. "People say he deserves another chance," Judge Flowers said. "Lets give him another chance." At eleven o'clock, on the morning of April 15, 1982, after two and a half years in three Ohio maximum security hospitals, Billy Milligan was returned to Athens. I visit him regularly, and speak with Tommy or Allen. According to both of them, there has been no coconsciousness among the "people" for a long time. Allen hears the voices in his head — the British and Yugoslav accents — but neither he nor Tommy can get through to them, or to each other. There is no communication inside. There is much lost time. The Teacher has not, at this writing, returned. Tommy is painting landscapes. Danny is painting still lifes. Allen is painting portraits, and making notes of the incredible experiences at Lima, Dayton, and Columbus, and how his people coped and survived. Dr. David Caul has begun the difficult task of undoing the damage of the past two and a half years, and of trying to put pieces back together again. No one knows how long it will take. Although Billy Milligans return to Athens stirred up controversy in Columbus that upset him, he was pleased when he read a copy of the Ohio University student newspaper. The Post had published an editorial on April 12th, anticipating the transfer: "... Milligan, who has certainly not been given a fair shake in life, has come to Athens to be treated by the experts here. And this community, if it does anything at all, should help to give him the supportive atmosphere he needs ... |
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Well, now, how do you do that — homestead an autumn landscape that won't stand still, all whispers, shadows, and dousing rains? It all began the day I was born. Oh my god, I can hear you say, here comes the flim-flam. No, no, I say, here comes a consequential truth: I remember being born. Can't be done, you counter. Never happened. Did, is my response. I found out many, many years later the reason for my remembrance: I was a ten-month baby. Which means what? That snugged away for an extra twenty-eight or thirty days I had a serene opportunity to develop my sight, hearing, and taste. I came forth wide-eyed, aware of everything I saw and felt. Especially the dreadful shock of being propelled out into a cooler environment, leaving my old home forever, to be surrounded by strangers. All because I had lingered for that extra month and sharpened my senses. You must admit that gave me an advantage few other humans have had, to emerge with my retina in full register to recall from Instant One a lifetime of metaphors, large and small. From that moment on I can recollect my life. When I was three my mother, a maniac for silent movies, toted me to the cinema to see The Hunchback of Notre Dame with Lon Chaney riding the bells and raining hot liquid lead on the villains below the church. I did not encounter the Hunchback again until I was seventeen, when some unholy friends took me to a theatre in Hollywood for a late-on-in-life review. Before we entered I told my friends I remembered the entire film, last seen when I was three. They snorted and laughed. I described the most important scenes. We then went in and there were all the scenes I had described. The Phantom of the Opera. Same experience. 1925. Imbedded in the dark place at the back of my head. The Lost World. Same year. The dinosaurs lingered into my thirties when I wrote them down and did a film with the fabulous animator of dinosaurs, Ray Harryhausen, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. Add them all up, being born aware, climbing Notre Dame with the Hunchback, shadowing the Opera with the Phantom, falling off prehistoric cliffs with brontosaurs, and you arrive at the age of twelve to begin writing. Along the way you illustrate skeletons for your school because skeletons are wondrous ramshackle items that birth themselves when the humans they wore go away. Along the way you discover you are alive — age twelve. Discover you can die — age fourteen. Plus the funerals of your grandfather and sister and a few friends, waking you up midnight. |
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There were statues frozen in angelic postures over gravel mounds, and intricately carved stones tall as men with angels spilling all down their rims, and tombs as big and ridiculous as beds put out to dry in the sun after some nocturnal accident. And within the four walls of the yard, inserted into the square mouths and slots, were coffins, walled in, plated in by marble plates and plaster, upon which names were struck and upon which hung tin pictures, cheap peso portraits of the inserted dead. Thumb-tacked to the different pictures were trinkets they'd loved in life, silver charms, silver arms, legs, bodies, silver cups, silver dogs, silver church medallions, bits of red crape and blue ribbon. On some places were painted slats of tin showing the dead rising to heaven in oil-tinted angels' arms. Looking at the graves again, they saw the remnants of the death fiesta. The little tablets of tallow splashed over the stones by the lighted festive candles, the wilted orchid blossoms lying like crushed red-purple tarantulas against the milky stones, some of them looking horridly sexual, limp and withered. There were loop-frames of cactus leaves, bamboo, reeds, and wild, dead morning-glories. There were circles of gardenias and sprigs of bougainvillea, desiccated. The entire floor of the yard seemed a ballroom after a wild dancing, from which the participants have fled; the tables askew, confetti, candles, ribbons and deep dreams left behind. They stood, Marie and Joseph, in the warm silent yard, among the stones, between the walls. Far over in one corner a little man with high cheekbones, the milk color of the Spanish infiltration, thick glasses, a black coat, a gray hat and gray, impressed pants and neatly laced shoes, moved about among the stones, supervising something or other that another man in overalls was doing to a grave with a shovel. The little man with glasses carried a thrice folded newspaper under his left arm and had his hands in his pockets. "Buenos diaz, senora y senor!" he said, when he finally noticed Joseph and Marie and came to see them. "Is this the place of las mommias?" asked Joseph. "They do exist, do they not?" "Si, the mummies," said the man. "They exist and are here. In the catacombs." "For favor," said Joseph. "Yo quiero veo las mommias, si?" "Si, senor." "Me Espanol es mucho estupido, es muy malo," apologized Joseph. "No, no, senor. You speak well! This way, please." He led between the flowered stones to a tomb near the wall shadows. It was a large flat tomb, flush with the gravel, with a thin kindling door flat on it, padlocked. |
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The old man stared at her. "Habla Ingles?" she asked. "No, senorita." She tried to think of the right words. "Quiero — no!" She stopped. She started again. "Americano — uh — maggah-zeenas?" "Oh, no, senorita!" Her hands opened wide at her waist, then closed, like mouths. Her mouth opened and closed. The shop had a veil over it, in her eyes. Here she was and here were these small baked adobe people to whom she could say nothing and from whom she could get no words she understood, and she was in a town of people who said no words to her and she said no words to them except in blushing confusion and bewilderment. And the town was circled by desert and time, and home was far away, far away in another life. She whirled and fled. Shop following shop she found no magazines save those giving bullfights in blood on their covers or murdered people or lace-confection priests. But at last three poor copies of the Post were bought with much display and loud laughter and she gave the vendor of this small shop a handsome tip. Rushing out with the Posts eagerly on her bosom in both hands she hurried along the narrow walk, took a skip over the gutter, ran across the street, sang la-la, jumped onto the further walk, made another little scamper with her feet, smiled an inside smile, moving along swiftly, pressing the magazines tightly to her, half-closing her eyes, breathing the charcoal evening air, feeling the wind watering past her ears. Starlight tinkled in golden nuclei off the highly perched Greek figures atop the State theater. A man shambled by in the shadow, balancing upon his head a basket. The basket contained bread loaves. She saw the man and the balanced basket and suddenly she did not move and there was no inside smile, nor did her hands clasp tight the magazines. She watched the man walk, with one hand of his gently poised up to tap the basket any time it unbalanced, and down the street he dwindled, while the magazines slipped from Marie's fingers and scattered on the walk. 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. |
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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. |
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The lungs did not rest but were exercised as if she were a drowned person and she herself performing artificial respiration to keep the last life going. And all of these things were lubricated by the sweat of her glowing body, and she was glued fast between the heavy blankets like something pressed, smashed, redolently moist between the white pages of a heavy book. And as she lay this way the long hours of midnight came when again she was a child. She lay, now and again thumping her heart in tambourine hysteria, then, quieting, the slow sad thoughts of bronze childhood when everything was sun on green trees and sun on water and sun on blond child hair. Faces flowed by on merry-go-rounds of memory, a face rushing to meet her, facing her, and away to the right; another, whirling in from the left, a quick fragment of lost conversation, and out to the right. Around and round. Oh, the night was very long. She consoled herself by thinking of the car starting tomorrow, the throttling sound and the power sound and the road moving under, and she smiled in the dark with pleasure. But then, suppose the car did not start? She crumpled in the dark, like a burning, withering paper. All the folds and corners of her clenched in about her and tick tick tick went the wristwatch, tick tick tick and another tick to wither on... . Morning. She looked at her husband lying straight and easy on his bed. She let her hand laze down at the cool space between the beds. All night her hand had hung in that cold empty interval between. Once she had put her hand out toward him, stretching, but the space was just a little too long, she couldn't reach him. She had snapped her hand back, hoping he hadn't heard the movement of her silent reaching. There he lay now. His eyes gently closed, the lashes softly interlocked like clasped fingers. Breathing so quietly you could scarce see his ribs move. As usual, by this time of morning, he had worked out of his pajamas. His naked chest was revealed from the waist up. The rest of him lay under cover. His head lay on the pillow, in thoughtful profile. There was a beard stubble on his chin. The morning light showed the white of her eyes. They were the only things in the room in motion, in slow starts and stops, tracing the anatomy of the man across from her. Each little hair was perfect on the chin and cheeks. A tiny hole of sunlight from the window-shade lay on his chin and picked out, like the spikes of a music-box cylinder, each little hair on his face. |
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There was no traffic! He was standing there on purpose, taking his time, not looking back at her. Why didn't he run, lope down the alley, down the hill to the garage, pound on the doors, threaten the mechanics, lift them by their pants, shove them into the car motor! He stood instead, watching the ridiculous traffic pass. A hobbled swine, a man on a bike, a 1927 Ford, and three half-nude children. Go, go, go, she screamed silently, and almost smashed the window. He sauntered across the street. He went around the corner. All the way down to the garage he'd stop at windows, read signs, look at pictures, handle pottery. Maybe he'd stop in for a beer. God, yes, a beer. She walked in the plaza, took the sun, hunted for more magazines. She cleaned her fingernails, burnished them, took a bath, walked again in the plaza, ate very little, and returned to the room to feed upon her magazines. She did not lie down. She was afraid to. Each time she did she fell into a half-dream, half-drowse in which all her childhood was revealed in a helpless melancholy. Old friends, children she hadn't seen or thought of in twenty years filled her mind. And she thought of things she wanted to do and had never done. She had meant to call Lila Holdridge for the past eight years since college, but somehow she never had. What friends they had been! Dear Lila! She thought, when lying down, of all the books, the fine new and old books, she had meant to buy and might never buy now and read. How she loved books and the smell of books. She thought of a thousand old sad things. She'd wanted to own the Oz books all her life, yet had never bought them. Why not? while yet there was life! The first thing she'd do would be to buy them when she got back to New York! And she'd call Lila immediately! And she'd see Bert and Jimmy and Helen and Louise, and go back to Illinois and walk around in her childhood place and see the things to be seen there. If she got back to the States. If. Her heart beat painfully in her, paused, held on to itself, and beat again. If she ever got back. She lay listening to her heart, critically. Thud and a thud and a thud. Pause. Thu d and a thud and a thud. Pause. What if it should stop while she was listening? There! Silence inside her. "Joseph!" She leaped up. She grabbed at her breasts as if to squeeze, to pump to start the silent heart again! It opened in her, closed, rattled and beat nervously, twenty rapid, shot-like times! She sank on to the bed. What if it should stop again and not start? |
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It's been a ball these last months! But their interest is dying. I want company forever! What shall I do?" His subconscious provided shopping lists. Beer. It's unimaginative. Pretzels. Delightfully "passE." Stop by Mother's. Pick up Maxfield Parrish painting, the flyspecked, sunburnt one. Lecture on same tonight. By December Mr. Garvey was really frightened. The Cellar Septet was now quite accustomed to Milton Berle and Guy Lombardo. In fact, they had rationalized themselves into a position where they acclaimed Berle as really too rare for the American public, and Lombardo was twenty years ahead of his time; the nastiest people liked him for the commonest reasons. Garvey's empire trembled. Suddenly he was just another person, no longer diverting the tastes of friends, but frantically pursuing them as they seized at Nora Bayes, the 1917 Knickerbocker Quartette, Al Jolson singing "Where Did Robinson Crusoe Go With Friday on Saturday Night," and Shep Fields and his Rippling Rhythm. Maxfield Parrish's rediscovery left Mr. Garvey in the north pasture. Overnight, everyone agreed, "Beer's intellectual. What a shame so many idiots drink it." In short, his friends vanished. Alexander Pape, it was rumored, for a lark, was even considering hot water for his cold-water flat. This ugly canard was quashed, but not before Alexander Pape suffered a comedown among the cognoscenti. Garvey sweated to anticipate the shifting taste! He increased the free food output, foresaw the swing back to the Roaring Twenties by wearing hairy knickers and displaying his wife in a tube dress and boyish bob long before anyone else. But, the vultures came, ate, and ran. Now that this frightful Giant, TV, strode the world, they were busily re-embracing radio. Bootlegged 1935 transcriptions of Vic and Sade and Pepper Young's Family were fought over at intellectual galas. At long last, Garvey was forced to turn to a series of miraculous tours de force, conceived and carried out by his panic-stricken inner self. The first accident was a slammed car door. Mr. Garvey's little fingertip was neatly cut off! In the resultant chaos, hopping about, Garvey stepped on, then kicked the fingertip into a street drain. By the time they fished it out, no doctor would bother sewing it back on. A happy accident! Next day, strolling by an oriental shop, Garvey spied a beautiful objet d'art. His peppy old subconscious, considering his steadily declining box office and his poor audience-rating among the avant-garde, forced him into the shop and dragged out his wallet. |
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Here, here! The skeleton surprised! Here luminous portraits of the long, the short, the large, the small bones. Mr. Harris must be aware of his position, his problem! M. Munigant's hand tapped, rattled, whispered, scratched at faint nebulae of flesh in which hung ghosts of cranium, spinal-cord, pelvis, lime, calcium, marrow, here, there, this, that, these, those, and others! Look! Harris shuddered. The X-rays and the paintings blew in a green and phosphorescent wind from a land peopled by the monsters of Dali and Fuseli. M. Munigant whistled quietly. Did Mr. Harris wish his bones — treated? "That depends," said Harris. Well, M. Munigant could not help Harris unless Harris was in the proper mood. Psychologically, one had to need help, or the doctor was useless. But (shrugging) M. Munigant would "try." Harris lay on a table with his mouth open. The lights were switched off, the shades drawn. M. Munigant approached his patient. Something touched Harris's tongue. He felt his jawbones forced out. They creaked and made faint cracking noises. One of those skeleton charts on the dim wall seemed to quiver and jump. A violent shudder seized Harris. Involuntarily, his mouth snapped shut. M. Munigant shouted. His nose had almost been bitten off! No use, no use! Now was not the time! M. Munigant whispered the shades up, dreadfully disappointed. When Mr. Harris felt he could cooperate psychologically, when Mr. Harris really needed help and trusted M. Munigant to help him, then maybe something could be done. M. Munigant held out his little hand. In the meantime, the fee was only two dollars. Mr. Harris must begin to think. Here was a sketch for Mr. Harris to take home and study. It would acquaint him with his body. He must be tremblingly aware of himself. He must be on guard. Skeletons were strange, unwieldy things. M. Munigant's eyes glittered. Good day to Mr. Harris. Oh, and would he care for a breadstick? M. Munigant proffered a jar of long hard salty breadsticks to Harris, taking one himself, saying that chewing breadsticks kept him in — ah — practice. Good day, good day, to Mr. Harris! Mr. Harris went home. The next day, Sunday, Mr. Harris discovered innumerable fresh aches and pains in his body. He spent the morning, his eyes fixed staring with new interest at the small, anatomically perfect painting of a skeleton M. Munigant had given him. His wife, Clarisse, startled him at dinner when she cracked her exquisitely thin knuckles, one by one, until he clapped his hands to his ears and cried, "Stop!" The rest of the afternoon he quarantined himself in his room. |
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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. There!" Harris grinned. "It's a fifty-fifty fight. |
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At first nobody would say anything. The first half-hour of such an evening, while people came in and got settled, was spent in carefully rolling cigarettes. Putting tobacco neatly into the rut of brown paper, loading it, tamping it, as they loaded and tamped and rolled their thoughts and fears and amazement for the evening. It gave them time to think. You could see their brains working behind their eyes as they fingered the cigarettes into smoking order. It was kind of a rude church gathering. They sat, squatted, leaned on plaster walls, and one by one, with reverent awe, they stared at the jar upon its shelf. The wouldn't stare sudden-like. No, they kind of did it slow, casual, as if they were glancing around the room — letting their eyes fumble over just any old object that happened into their consciousness. And — just by accident, of course — the focus of their wandering eyes would occur always at the same place. After a while all eyes in the room would be fastened to it, like pins stuck in some incredible pincushion. And the only sound would be someone sucking a corncob. Or the children's barefooted scurry on the porch planks outside. Maybe some woman's voice would come, "You kids git away, now! Git!" And with a giggle like soft, quick water, the bare feet would rush off to scare the bullfrogs. Charlie would be up front, naturally, on his rocking chair, a plaid pillow under his lean rump, rocking slow, enjoying the fame and looked-up-to-ness that came with keeping the jar. Thedy, she'd be seen way back of the room with the womenfolk in a bunch, all gray and quiet, abiding their men. Thedy looked like she was ripe for jealous screaming. But she said nothing, just watched men tromp into her living room and sit at the feet of Charlie, staring at this here Holy Graillike thing, and her lips were set cold and hard and she spoke not a civil word to anybody. After a period of proper silence, someone, maybe old Gramps Medknowe from Crick Road, would clear the phlegm from a deep cave somewhere inside himself, lean forward, blinking, wet his lips, maybe, and there'd be a curious tremble in his calloused fingers. This would cue everyone to get ready for the talking to come. Ears were primed. People settled like sows in the warm mud after a rain. Gramps looked a long while, measured his lips with a lizard tongue, then settled back and said, like always, in a high, thin old-man's tenor: "Wonder what it is? Wonder if it's a he or a she or just a plain old it? Sometimes I wake up nights, twist on my corn-matting, think about that jar settin' here in the long dark. |
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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. 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. |
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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. Chime. Dog, come home, and run the world with you. Dog, bring a thistle with frost on it, or bring nothing else but the wind. Dog, where are you? Oh, listen, now, I'll call. Martin held his breath. Way off somewhere — a sound. Martin rose up, trembling. There, again — the sound. So small a sound, like a sharp needle-point brushing the sky long miles and many miles away. The dreamy echo of a dog — barking. The sound of a dog crossing fields and farms, dirt roads and rabbit paths, running, running, letting out great barks of steam, cracking the night. The sound of a circling dog which came and went, lifted and faded, opened up, shut in, moved forward, went back, as if the animal were kept by someone on a fantastically long chain. As if the dog were running and someone whistled under the chestnut trees, in mold-shadow, tar-shadow, moon-shadow, walking, and the dog circled back and sprang out again toward home. Dog! Martin thought, oh Dog, come home, boy! Listen, oh, listen, where you been? Come on, boy, make tracks! Five, ten, fifteen minutes; near, very near, the bark, the sound. Martin cried out, thrust his feet from the bed, leaned to the window. Dog! Listen, boy! Dog! Dog! He said it over and over. Dog! Dog! Wicked Dog, run off and gone all these days! Bad Dog, good Dog, home, boy, hurry, and bring what you can! Near now, near, up the street, barking, to knock clapboard housefronts with sound, whirl iron cocks on rooftops in the moon, firing off volleys — Dog! now at the door below... . Martin shivered. Should he run — let Dog in, or wait for Mom and Dad? Wait? Oh, God, wait? But what if Dog ran off again? No, he'd go down, snatch the door wide, yell, grab Dog in, and run upstairs so fast, laughing, crying, holding tight, that ... Dog stopped barking. Hey! Martin always broke the window, jerking to it. Silence. As if someone had told Dog to hush now, hush, hush. A full minute passed. Martin clenched his fists. Below, a faint whimpering. Then, slowly, the downstairs front door opened. Someone was kind enough to have opened the door for Dog. of course! Dog had brought Mr. Jacobs or Mr. Gillespie or Miss Tarkins, or ... The downstairs door shut. Dog raced upstairs, whining, flung himself on the bed. "Dog, Dog, where've you been, what've you done! Dog, Dog!" And he crushed Dog hard and long to himself, weeping. |
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I f our business fails we blame the gods, the weather, our luck. All I can tell you is what I told you before. Love her. Finest medicine in the world. Find little ways of showing your affection, give her security. Find ways of showing her how harmless and innocent the child is. Make her feel that the baby was worth the risk. After awhile, she'll settle down, forget about death, and begin to love the child. If she doesn't come around in the next month or so, ask me. I'll recommend a good psychiatrist. Go on along now, and take that look off your face." When summer came, things seemed to settle, become easier. Dave worked, immersed himself in office detail, but found much time for his wife. She, in turn, took long walks, gained strength, played an occasional light game of badminton. She rarely burst out any more. She seemed to have rid herself of her fears. Except on one certain midnight when a sudden summer wind swept around the house, warm and swift, shaking the trees like so many shining tambourines. Alice wakened, trembling, and slid over into her husband's arms, and let him console her, and ask her what was wrong. She said, "Something's here in the room, watching us." He switched on the light. "Dreaming again," he said. 'You're better, though. Haven't been troubled for a long time." She sighed as he clicked off the light again, and suddenly she slept. He held her, considering what a sweet, weird creature she was, for about half an hour. He heard the bedroom door sway open a few inches. There was nobody at the door. No reason for it to come open. The wind had died. He waited. It seemed like an hour he lay silently, in the dark. Then, far away, wailing like some small meteor dying in the vast inky gulf of space, the baby began to cry in his nursery. It was a small, lonely sound in the middle of the stars and the dark and the breathing of this woman in his arms and the wind beginning to sweep through the trees again. Leiber counted to one hundred, slowly. The crying continued. Carefully disengaging Alice's arm he slipped from bed, put on his slippers, robe, and moved quietly from the room. He'd go downstairs, he thought, fix some warm milk, bring it up, and — The blackness dropped out from under him. His foot slipped and plunged. Slipped on something soft. Plunged into nothingness. He thrust his hands out, caught frantically at the railing. His body stopped falling. He held. He cursed. The "something soft" that had caused his feet to slip, rustled and thumped down a few steps. |
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But children take years to speak and learn to stumble around on their weak legs. "But suppose one child in a billion is — strange? Born perfectly aware, able to think, instinctively. Wouldn't it be a perfect setup, a perfect blind for anything the baby might want to do? He could pretend to be ordinary, weak, crying, ignorant. With just a little expenditure of energy he could crawl about a darkened house, listening. And how easy to place obstacles at the top of the stairs. How easy to cry all night and tire a mother into pneumonia. How easy, right at birth, to be so close to the mother that a few deft maneuvers might cause peritonitis!" "For God's sake!" Jeffers was on his feet. "That's a repulsive thing to say!" "It's a repulsive thing I'm speaking of. How many mothers have died at the birth of their children? How many have suckled strange little improbabilities who cause death one way or another? Strange, red little creatures with brains that work in a bloody darkness we can't even guess at. Elemental little brains, aswarm with racial memory, hatred, and raw cruelty, with no more thought than self-preservation. And self-preservation in this case consisted of eliminating a mother who realized what a horror she had birthed. I ask you, doctor, what is there in the world more selfish than a baby? Nothing!" Jeffers scowled and shook his head, helplessly. Leiber dropped his cigarette down. "I'm not claiming any great strength for the child. Just enough to crawl around a little, a few months ahead of schedule. Just enough to listen all the time. Just enough to cry late at night. That's enough, more than enough." Jeffers tried ridicule. "Call it murder, then. But murder must be motivated. What motive had the child?" Leiber was ready with the answer. "What is more at peace, more dreamfully content, at ease, at rest, fed, comforted, unbothered, than an unborn child? Nothing. It floats in a sleepy, timeless wonder of nourishment and silence. Then, suddenly, it is asked to give up its berth, is forced to vacate, rushed out into a noisy, uncaring, selfish world where it is asked to shift for itself, to hunt, to feed from the hunting, to seek after a vanishing love that once was its unquestionable right, to meet confusion instead of inner silence and conservative slumber! And the child resents it! Resents the cold air, the huge spaces, the sudden departure from familiar things. And in the tiny filament of brain the only thing the child knows is selfishness and hatred because the spell has been rudely shattered. |
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Who is responsible for this disenchantment, this rude breaking of the spell? The mother. So here the new child has someone to hate with all its unreasoning mind. The mother has cast it out, rejected it. And the father is no better, kill him, too! He's responsible in his way!" Jeffers interrupted. "if what you say is true, then every woman in the world would have to look on her baby as something to dread, something to wonder about." "And why not? Hasn't the child a perfect alibi? A thousand years of accepted medical belief protects him. By all natural accounts he is helpless, not responsible. The child is born hating. And things grow worse, instead of better. At first the baby gets a certain amount of attention and mothering. But then as time passes, things change. When very new, a baby has the power to make parents do silly things when it cries or sneezes, jump when it makes a noise. As the years pass, the baby feels even that small power slip rapidly, forever away, never to return. Why shouldn't it grasp all the power it can have? Why shouldn't it jockey for position while it has all the advantages? In later years it would be too late to express its hatred. Now would be the time to strike." Leiber's voice was very soft, very low. "My little boy baby, lying in his crib nights, his face moist and red and out of breath. From crying? No. From climbing slowly out of his crib, from crawling long distances through darkened hallways. My little boy baby. I want to kill him." The doctor handed him a water glass and some pills. "You're not killing anyone. You're going to sleep for twenty-four hours. Sleep'll change your mind. Take this." Leiber drank down the pills and let himself be led upstairs to his bedroom, crying, and felt himself being put to bed. The doctor waited until he was moving deep into sleep, then left the house. Leiber, alone, drifted down, down. He heard a noise. "What's — what's that?" he demanded, feebly. Something moved in the hall. David Leiber slept. Very early the next morning, Dr. Jeffers drove up to the house. It was a good morning, and he was here to drive Leiber to the country for a rest. Leiber would still be asleep upstairs. Jeffers had given him enough sedative to knock him out for at least fifteen hours. He rang the doorbell. No answer. The servants were probably not up. Jeffers tried the front door, found it open, stepped in. He put his medical kit on the nearest chair. Something white moved out of sight at the top of the stairs. Just a suggestion of a movement. |
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Where the crowd came from he didn't know. He struggled to remain aware and then the crowd faces hemmed in upon him, hung over him like the large glowing leaves of down-bent trees. They were a ring of shifting, compressing, changing faces over him, looking down, looking down, reading the time of his life or death by his face, making his face into a moondial, where the moon cast a shadow from his nose out upon his cheek to tell the time of breathing or not breathing any more ever. How swiftly a crowd comes, he thought, like the iris of an eye compressing in out of nowhere. A siren. A police voice. Movement. Blood trickled from his lips and he was being moved into an ambulance. Someone said, "Is he dead?" And someone else said, "No, he's not dead." And a third person said, "He won't die, he's not going to die." And he saw the faces of the crowd beyond him in the night, and he knew by their expressions that he wouldn't die. And that was strange. He saw a man's face, thin, bright, pale; the man swallowed and bit his lips, very sick. There was a small woman, too, with red hair and too much red on her cheeks and lips. And a little boy with a freckled face. Others' faces. An old man with a wrinkled upper lip, an old woman, with a mole upon her chin. They had all come from — where? Houses, cars, alleys, from the immediate and the accident-shocked world. Out of alleys and out of hotels and out of streetcars and seemingly out of nothing they came. The crowd looked at him and he looked back at them and did not like them at all. There was a vast wrongness to them. He couldn't put his finger on it. They were far worse than this machine-made thing that happened to him now. The ambulance doors slammed. Through the windows he saw the crowd looking in, looking in. That crowd that always came so fast, so strangely fast, to form a circle, to peer down, to probe, to gawk, to question, to point, to disturb, to spoil the privacy of a man's agony by their frank curiosity. The ambulance drove off. He sank back and their faces still stared into his face, even with his eyes shut. The car wheels spun in his mind for days. One wheel, four wheels, spinning, spinning, and whirring, around and around. He knew it was wrong. Something wrong with the wheels and the whole accident and the running of feet and the curiosity. The crowd faces mixed and spun into the wild rotation of the wheels. He awoke. Sunlight, a hospital room, a hand taking his pulse. "How do you feel?" asked the doctor. The wheels faded away. |
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Once, lost, he wandered for hours in insane foothills of dust and echoes, where the hooks and hangers in closets were hung only with night. But she found him and carried him weeping down through the leveling Universe to the Parlor where dust motes, exact and familiar, fell in showers of sparks on the sunlit air. He ran up a stair. Here he knocked a thousand thousand doors, all locked and forbidden. Here Picasso ladies and Dali gentlemen screamed silently from canvas asylums, their gold eyes burning when he dawdled. "Those Things live out there," his mother had said, pointing to the Dali-Picasso families. Now running quickly past, he stuck out his tongue at them. He stopped running. One of the forbidden doors stood open. Sunlight slanted warm through it, exciting him. Beyond the door, a spiral stair screwed around up in sun and silence. He stood, gasping. Year after year he had tried the doors that were always found locked. What would happen now if he shoved this one full open and climbed the stair? Was some Monster hiding at the top? "Hello!" His voice leapt up around the spiraled sunlight. "Hello ..." whispered a faint, far lazy echo, high, high, and gone. He moved through the door. "Please, please, don't hurt me," he whispered to the high sunlit place. He climbed, pausing with each step to wait for his punishment, eyes shut like a penitent. Faster now, he leapt around and around and up until his knees ached and his breath fountained in and out and his head banged like a bell and at last he reached the terrible summit of the climb and stood in an open, sun-drenched tower. The sun struck his eyes a blow. Never, never so much sun! He stumbled to the iron rail. "It's there!" His mouth opened from one direction to another. "It's there!" He ran in a circle. "There!" He was above the somber tree barrier. For the first time he stood high over the windy chestnuts and elms and as far as he could see was green grass, green trees, and white ribbons on which beetles ran, and the other half of the world was blue and endless, with the sun lost and dropping away in an incredible deep blue room so vast he felt himself fall with it, screamed, and clutched the tower ledge, and beyond the trees, beyond the white ribbons where the beetles ran he saw things like fingers sticking up, but he saw no Dali-Picasso terrors, he saw only some small red-and-white-and-blue handkerchiefs fluttering high on great white poles. He was suddenly sick; he was sick again. Turning, he almost fell flat down the stairs. |
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He slammed the forbidden door, fell against it. "You'll go blind." He crushed his hands to his eyes. "You shouldn't have seen, you shouldn't, you shouldn't!" He fell to his knees, he lay on the floor twisted tight, covered up. He need wait but a moment — the blindness would come. Five minutes later he stood at an ordinary Highlands window, looking out at his own familiar Garden World. He saw once more the elms and hickory trees and the stone wall, and that forest which he had taken to be an endless wall itself, beyond which lay nothing but nightmare nothingness, mist, rain, and eternal night. Now it was certain, the Universe did not end with the forest. There were other worlds than those contained in Highland or Lowland. He tried the forbidden door again. Locked. Had he really gone up? Had he really discovered those half-green, half-blue vastnesses? Had God seen him? Edwin trembled. God. God, who smoked mysterious black pipes and wielded magical walking sticks. God who might be watching even now! Edwin murmured, touching his cold face. "I can still see. Thank you, thank you. I can still see!" At nine-thirty, half an hour late, he rapped on the school door. "Good morning, Teacher!" The door swung open. Teacher waited in her tall gray, thick-clothed monk's robe, the cowl hiding her face. She wore her usual silver spectacles. Her gray-gloved hands beckoned. "You're late." Beyond her the land of books burned in bright colors from the hearth. There were walls bricked with encyclopedias, and a fireplace in which you could stand without bumping your head. A log blazed fiercely. The door closed, and there was a warm quiet. Here was the desk, where God had once sat, he'd walked this carpet, stuffing his pipe with rich tobacco, and scowled out that vast, stained-glass window. The room smelled of God, rubbed wood, tobacco, leather, and silver coins. Here, Teacher's voice sang like a solemn harp, telling of God, the old days, and the World when it had shaken with God's determination, trembled at his wit, when the World was abuilding under God's hand, a blueprint, a cry, and timber rising. God's fingerprints still lay like half-melted snowflakes on a dozen sharpened pencils in a locked glass display. They must never never be touched lest they melt away forever. Here, here in the Highlands, to the soft sound of Teacher's voice running on, Edwin learned what was expected of him and his body. He was to grow into a Presence, he must fit the odors and the trumpet voice of God. |
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He thought of Teacher and knew that if she was in none of the hills and mountains above, then there was only one place she could be. She had wandered, by error, into the Outlands, lost until someone found her. And so he must go out, call after her, bring her back to wake Mother, or she would lie here forever with the dust falling in the great darkened spaces. Through the kitchen, out back, he found late afternoon sun and the Beasts hooting faintly beyond the rim of the World. He clung to the garden wall, not daring to let go, and in the shadows, at a distance, saw the shattered box he had flung from the window. Freckles of sunlight quivered on the broken lid and touched tremblingly over and over the face of the Jack jumped out and sprawled with its arms overhead in an eternal gesture of freedom. The doll smiled and did not smile, smiled and did not smile, as the sun winked on the mouth, and Edwin stood, hypnotized, above and beyond it. The doll opened its arms toward the path that led off between the secret trees, the forbidden path smeared with oily droppings of the Beasts. But the path lay silent and the sun warmed Edwin and he heard the wind blow softly in the trees. At last, he let go of the garden wall. "Teacher?" He edged along the path a few feet. "Teacher!" His shoes slipped on the animal droppings and he stared far down the motionless tunnel, blindly. The path moved under, the trees moved over him. "Teacher!" He walked slowly but steadily. He turned. Behind him lay his World and its very new silence. It was diminished, it was small! How strange to see it less than it had been. It had always and forever seemed so large. He felt his heart stop. He stepped back. But then, afraid of that silence in the World, he turned to face the forest path ahead. Everything before him was new. Odors filled his nostrils, colors, odd shapes, incredible sizes filled his eyes. If I run beyond the trees I'll die, he thought, for that's what Mother said. You'll die, you'll die. But what's dying? Another room? A blue room, a green room, far larger than all the rooms that ever were! But where's the key? There, far ahead, a great half-open iron door, a wrought-iron gate. Beyond a room as large as the sky, all colored green with trees and grass! Oh, Mother, Teacher ... He rushed, stumbled, fell, got up, ran again, his numb legs under him were left behind as he fell down and down the side of a hill, the path gone, wailing, crying, and then not wailing or crying any more, but making new sounds. |
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"Beggin'," he said harshly. "Ain't none of us ever begged before. Ain't none of us ever goin' to." Molly's hand tightened on his wrist. He turned and saw her eyes. He saw the eyes of Susie and little Drew, looking at him. Slowly all the stiffness went out of his neck and his back. His face got loose and blank, shapeless like a thing that has been beaten too hard and too long. He got out of the car and went up the path to the house. He walked uncertainly, like a man who is sick, or nearly blind. The door of the house was open. Drew knocked three times. There was nothing inside but silence, and a white window curtain moving in the slow, hot air. He knew it before he went in. He knew there was death in the house. It was that kind of silence. He went through a small, clean living room and down a little hall. He wasn't thinking anything. He was past thinking. He was going toward the kitchen, unquestioning, like an animal. Then he looked through an open door and saw the dead man. He was an old man, lying out on a clean white bed. He hadn't been dead long; not long enough to lose the last quiet look of peace. He must have known he was going to die, because he wore his grave clothes — an old black suit, brushed and neat, and a clean white shirt and a black tie. A scythe leaned against the wall beside the bed. Between the old man's hands there was a blade of wheat, still fresh. A ripe blade, golden and heavy in the tassel. Drew went into the bedroom, walking soft. There was a coldness on him. He took off his broken, dusty hat and stood by the bed, looking down. The paper lay open on the pillow beside the old man's head. It was meant to be read. Maybe a request for burial, or to call a relative. Drew scowled over the words, moving his pale, dry lips. To him who stands beside me at my death bed: Being of sound mind, and alone in the world as it has been decreed, I, John Buhr, do give and bequeath this farm, with all pertaining to it, to the man who is to come. Whatever his name or origin shall be, it will not matter. The farm is his, and the wheat; the scythe, and the task ordained thereto. Let him take them freely, and without question — and remember that I, John Buhr, am only the giver, not the ordainer. To which I set my hand and seal this third day of April, 1938. (Signed) John Buhr. Kyrie eleison! Drew walked back through the house and opened the screen door. He said, "Molly, you come in. Kids, you stay in the car." Molly came inside. He took her to the bedroom. |
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He made a toy boat for little Drew and one for Susie, and then he churned some of the milk into butter and drew off the buttermilk, but the sun was in his head, aching. It burned there. He wasn't hungry for lunch. He kept looking at the wheat and the wind bending and tipping and ruffling it. His arms flexed, his fingers, resting on his knee as he sat again on the porch, made a kind of grip in the empty air, itching. The pads of his palms itched and burned. He stood up and wiped his hands on his pants and sat down and tried to roll another cigarette and got mad at the mixings and threw it all away with a muttering. He had a feeling as if a third arm had been cut off of him, or he had lost something of himself. It had to do with his hands and his arms. He heard the wind whisper in the field. By one o'clock he was going in and out of the house, getting underfoot, thinking about digging an irrigation ditch, but all the time really thinking about the wheat and how ripe and beautiful it was, aching to be cut. "Damn it to hell!" He strode into the bedroom, took the scythe down off its wall-pegs. He stood holding it. He felt cool. His hands stopped itching. His head didn't ache. The third arm was returned to him. He was intact again. It was instinct. Illogical as lightning striking and not hurting. Each day the grain must be cut. It had to be cut. Why? Well, it just did, that was all. He laughed at the scythe in his big hands. Then, whistling, he took it out to the ripe and waiting field and did the work. He thought himself a little mad. Hell, it was an ordinary-enough wheat field, really, wasn't it? Almost. The days loped away like gentle horses. Drew Erickson began to understand his work as a sort of dry ache and hunger and need. Things built in his head. One noon, Susie and little Drew giggled and played with the scythe while their father lunched in the kitchen. He heard them. He came out and took it away from them. He didn't yell at them. He just looked very concerned and locked the scythe up after that, when it wasn't being used. He never missed a day, scything. Up. Down. Up, down, and across. Back and up and down and across. Cutting. Up. Down. Up. Think about the old man and the wheat in his hands when he died. Down. Think about this dead land, with wheat living on it. Up. Think about the crazy patterns of ripe and green wheat, the way it grows! Down. Think about ... The wheat whirled in a full yellow tide at his ankles. The sky blackened. Drew Erickson dropped the scythe and bent over to hold his stomach, his eyes running blindly. |
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He read their names in the cut grain and couldn't go on. He locked the scythe in the cellar and put the key away. He was done with the reaping, done for good and all. He smoked his pipe in the evening, on the front porch, and told the kids stories to hear them laugh. But they didn't laugh much. They seemed withdrawn, tired and funny, like they weren't his children any more. Molly complained of a headache, dragged around the house a little, went to bed early and fell into a deep sleep. That was funny, too. Molly always stayed up late and was full of vinegar. The wheat field rippled with moonlight on it, making it into a sea. It wanted cutting. Certain parts needed cutting now. Drew Erickson sat, swallowing quietly, trying not to look at it. What'd happen to the world if he never went in the field again? What'd happen to people ripe for death, who waited the coming of the scythe? He'd wait and see. Molly was breathing softly when he blew out the oil lamp and got to bed. He couldn't sleep. He heard the wind in the wheat, felt the hunger to do the work in his arms and fingers. In the middle of the night he found himself walking in the field, the scythe in his hands. Walking like a crazy man, walking and afraid, half-awake. He didn't remember unlocking the cellar door, getting the scythe, but here he was in the moonlight, walking in the grain. Among these grains there were many who were old, weary, wanting so very much to sleep. The long, quiet, moonless sleep. The scythe held him, grew into his palms, forced him to walk. Somehow, struggling, he got free of it. He threw it down, ran off into the wheat, where he stopped and went down on his knees. "I don't want to kill anymore," he said. "if I work with the scythe I'll have to kill Molly and the kids. Don't ask me to do that!" The stars only sat in the sky, shining. Behind him, he heard a dull, thumping sound. Something shot up over the hill into the sky. It was like a living thing, with arms of red color, licking at the stars. Sparks fell into his face. The thick, hot odor of fire came with it. The house! Crying out, he got sluggishly, hopelessly, to his feet, looking at the big fire. The little white house with the live oaks was roaring up in one savage bloom of fire. Heat rolled over the hill and he swam in it and went down in it, stumbling, drowning over his head. By the time he got down the hill there was not a shingle, bolt or threshold of it that wasn't alive with flame. It made blistering, crackling, fumbling noises. |
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No one screamed inside. No one ran around or shouted. He yelled in the yard. "Molly! Susie! Drew!" He got no answer. He ran close in until his eyebrows withered and his skin crawled hot like paper burning, crisping, curling up in tight little curls. "Molly! Susie!" The fire settled contentedly down to feed. Drew ran around the house a dozen times, all alone, trying to find a way in. Then he sat where the fire roasted his body and waited until all the walls had sunken down with fluttering crashes, until the last ceilings bent, blanketing the floors with molten plaster and scorched lathing. Until the flames died and smoke coughed up, and the new day came slowly; and there was nothing but embering ashes and an acid smoldering. Disregarding the heat fanning from the leveled frames, Drew walked into the ruin. It was still too dark to see much. Red light glowed on his sweating throat. He stood like a stranger in a new and different land. Here — the kitchen. Charred tables, chairs, the iron stove, the cupboards. Here — the hall. Here the parlor and then over here was the bedroom where — Where Molly was still alive. She slept among fallen timbers and angry-colored pieces of wire spring and metal. She slept as if nothing had happened. Her small white hands lay at her sides, flaked with sparks. Her clam face slept with a flaming lath across one cheek. Drew stopped and didn't believe it. In the ruin of her smoking bedroom she lay on a glittering bed of sparks, her skin intact, her breast rising, falling, taking air. "Molly!" Alive and sleeping after the fire, after the walls had roared down, after ceilings had collapsed upon her and flame had lived all about her. His shoes smoked as he pushed through piles of fuming litter. It could have seared his feet off at the ankles, he wouldn't have known. "Molly ..." He bent over her. She didn't move or hear him, and she didn't speak. She wasn't dead. She wasn't alive. She just lay there with the fire surrounding her and not touching her, not harming her in any way. Her cotton nightgown was streaked with ashes, but not burnt. Her brown hair was pillowed on a tumble of red-hot coals. He touched her cheek, and it was cold, cold in the middle of hell. Tiny breaths trembled her half-smiling lips. The children were there, too. Behind a veil of smoke he made out two smaller figures huddled in the ashes sleeping. He carried all three of them out to the edge of the wheat field. "Molly. Molly, wake up! Kids! Kids, wake up!" They breathed and didn't move and went on sleeping. |
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"Catch!" Back from the trip, he sailed the clothes, dry as popcorn, down on a series of clean blankets she'd spread for their landing. "Thank you!" she cried. "Gahh!" he shouted, and flew off under the apple tree to brood. Uncle Einar's beautiful silk-like wings hung like sea-green sails behind him, and whirred and whispered from his shoulders when he sneezed or turned swiftly. He was one of the few in the Family whose talent was visible. All his dark cousins and nephews and brothers hid in small towns across the world, did unseen mental things or things with witch-fingers and white teeth, or blew down the sky like fire-leaves, or loped in forests like moon-silvered wolves. They lived comparatively safe from normal humans. Not so a man with great green wings. Not that he hated his wings. Far from it! In his youth he'd always flown nights, because nights were rare times for winged men! Daylight held dangers, always had, always would; but nights, ah, nights, he had sailed over islands of cloud and seas of summer sky. With no danger to himself. It had been a rich, full soaring, an exhilaration. But now he could not fly at night. On his way home to some high mountain pass in Europe after a Homecoming among Family members in Mellin Town, Illinois (some years ago) he had drunk too much rich crimson wine. "I'll be all right," he had told himself, vaguely, as he beat his long way under the morning stars, over the moon-dreaming country hills beyond Mellin Town. And then — crack out of the sky — A high-tension tower. Like a netted duck! A great sizzle! His face blown black by a blue sparkler of wire, he fended off the electricity with a terrific back-jumping percussion of his wings, and fell. His hitting the moonlit meadow under the tower made a noise like a large telephone book dropped from the sky. Early the next morning, his dew-sodden wings shaking violently, he stood up. It was still dark. There was a faint bandage of dawn stretched across the east. Soon the bandage would stain and all flight would be restricted. There was nothing to do but take refuge in the forest and wait out the day in the deepest thicket until another night gave his wings a hidden motion in the sky. In this fashion he met his wife. During the day, which was warm for November first in Illinois country, pretty young Brunilla Wexley was out to udder a lost cow, for she carried a silver pail in one hand as she sidled through thickets and pleaded cleverly to the unseen cow to please return home or burst her gut with unplucked milk. |
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Mr. Koberman's sleeping habits made it necessary for Douglas to be quiet. This was unbearable. So, whenever Grandma visited down the street, Douglas stomped up and down stairs beating a drum, bouncing golf balls, or just screaming for three minutes outside Mr. Koberman's door, or flushing the toilet seven times in succession. Mr. Koberman never moved. His room was silent, dark. He did not complain. There was no sound. He slept on and on. It was very strange. Douglas felt a pure white flame of hatred burn inside himself with a steady, unflickering beauty. Now that room was Koberman Land. Once it had been flowery bright when Miss Sadlowe lived there. Now it was stark, bare, cold, clean, everything in its place, alien and brittle. Douglas climbed upstairs on the fourth morning. Halfway to the second floor was a large sun-filled window, framed by six-inch panes of orange, purple, blue, red and burgundy glass. In the enchanted early mornings when the sun fell through to strike the landing and slide down the stair banister, Douglas stood entranced at this window peering at the world through the multicolored windows. Now a blue world, a blue sky, blue people, blue streetcars and blue trotting dogs. He shifted panes. Now — an amber world! Two lemonish women glided by, resembling the daughters of Fu Manchu! Douglas giggled. This pane made even the sunlight more purely golden. It was eight A. M. Mr. Koberman strolled by below, on the sidewalk, returning from his night's work, his cane looped over his elbow, straw hat glued to his head with patent oil. Douglas shifted panes again. Mr. Koberman was a red man walking through a red world with red trees and red flowers and — something else. Something about — Mr. Koberman. Douglas squinted. The red glass did things to Mr. Koberman. His face, his suit, his hands. The clothes seemed to melt away. Douglas almost believed, for one terrible instant, that he could see inside Mr. Koberman. And what he saw made him lean wildly against the small red pane, blinking. Mr. Koberman glanced up just then, saw Douglas, and raised his cane-umbrella angrily, as if to strike. He ran swiftly across the red lawn to the front door. "Young man!" he cried, running up the stairs. "What were you doing?" "Just looking," said Douglas, numbly. "That's all, is it?" cried Mr. Koberman. "Yes, sir. I look through all the glasses. All kinds of worlds. Blue ones, red ones, yellow ones. All different." "All kinds of worlds, is it!" Mr. Koberman glanced at the little panes of glass, his face pale. |
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The spider hung on a silvery lasso about Timothy's slender neck as he washed his face. "Just think, Spid, tomorrow night is Allhallows Eve!" He lifted his face and looked into the mirror. His was the only mirror allowed in the house. It was his mother's concession to his illness. Oh, if only he were not so afflicted! He opened his mouth, surveyed the poor, inadequate teeth nature had given him. No more than so many corn kernels — round, soft and pale in his jaws. Some of the high spirit died in him. It was now totally dark and he lit a candle to see by. He felt exhausted. This past week the whole family had lived in the fashion of the old country. Sleeping by day, rousing at sunset to move about. There were blue hollows under his eyes. "Spid, I'm no good," he said, quietly, to the little creature. "I can't even get used to sleeping days like the others." He took up the candleholder. Oh, to have strong teeth, with incisors like steel spikes. Or strong hands, even, or a strong mind. Even to have the power to send one's mind out, free, as Cecy did. But, no, he was the imperfect one, the sick one. He was even — he shivered and drew the candle flame closer — afraid of the dark. His brothers snorted at him. Bion and Leonard and Sam. They laughed at him because he slept in a bed. With Cecy it was different; her bed was part of her comfort for the composure necessary to send her mind abroad to hunt. But Timothy, did he sleep in the wonderful polished boxes like the others? He did not! Mother let him have his own bed, his own room, his own mirror. No wonder the family skirted him like a holy man's crucifix. If only the wings would sprout from his shoulder blades. He bared his back, stared at it. And sighed again. No chance. Never. Downstairs were exciting and mysterious sounds, the slithering black crape going up in all the halls and on the ceilings and doors. The sputter of burning black tapers in the banistered stair well. Mother's voice, high and firm. Father's voice, echoing from the damp cellar. Bion walking from outside the old country house lugging vast two-gallon jugs. "I've just got to go to the party, Spid," said Timothy. The spider whirled at the end of its silk, and Timothy felt alone. He would polish cases, fetch toadstools and spiders, hang crape, but when the party started he'd be ignored. The less seen or said of the imperfect son the better. All through the house below, Laura ran. "The Homecoming!" she shouted gaily. "The Homecoming!" Her footsteps everywhere at once. |
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Seventy? One hundred? He passed a farmhouse. If only you knew what was happening at our house, he said to the glowing windows. He climbed a hill and looked at the town, miles away, settling into sleep, the town-hall clock high and round white in the distance. The town did not know, either. He brought home many jars of toadstools and spiders. In the little chapel belowstairs a brief ceremony was celebrated. It was like all the other rituals over the years, with Father chanting the dark lines, Mother's beautiful white ivory hands moving in the reverse blessings, and all the children gathered except Cecy, who lay upstairs in bed. But Cecy was present. You saw her peering, now from Bion's eyes, now Samuel's, now Mother's, and you felt a movement and now she was in you, fleetingly and gone. Timothy prayed to the Dark One with a tightened stomach. "Please, please, help me grow up, help me be like my sisters and brothers. Don't let me be different. If only I could put the hair in the plastic images as Ellen does, or make people fall in love with me as Laura does with people, or read strange books as Sam does, or work in a respected job like Leonard and Bion do. Or even raise a family one day, as Mother and Father have done... ." At midnight a storm hammered the house. Lightning struck outside in amazing, snow-white bolts. There was a sound of an approaching, probing, sucking tornado, funneling and nuzzling the moist night earth. Then the front door, blasted half off its hinges, hung stiff and discarded, and in trooped Grandmama and Grandpapa, all the way from the old country! From then on people arrived each hour. There was a flutter at the side window, a rap on the front porch, a knock at the back. There were fey noises from the cellar; autumn wind piped down the chimney throat, chanting. Mother filled the large crystal punch bowl with a scarlet fluid poured from the jugs Bion had carried home. Father swept from room to room lighting more tapers. Laura and Ellen hammered up more wolfsbane. And Timothy stood amidst this wild excitement, no expression to his face, his hands trembling at his sides, gazing now here, now there. Banging of doors, laughter, the sound of liquid pouring, darkness, sound of wind, the webbed thunder of wings, the padding of feet, the welcoming bursts of talk at the entrances, the transparent rattlings of casements, the shadows passing, coming, going, wavering. "Well, well, and this must be Timothy!" "What?" A chilly hand took his hand. A long hairy face leaned down over him. |
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He threw himself across Einar's arms. Einar lifted him. "You've wings, Timothy!" He tossed the boy light as thistles. "Wings, Timothy: fly!" Faces wheeled under. Darkness rotated. The house blew away. Timothy felt breezelike. He flapped his arms. Einar's fingers caught and threw him once more to the ceiling. The ceiling rushed down like a charred wall. "Fly, Timothy!" shouted Einar, loud and deep. "Fly with wings! Wings!" He felt an exquisite ecstasy in his shoulder blades, as if roots grew, burst to explode and blossom into new, moist membrane. He babbled wild stuff; again Einar hurled him high. The autumn wind broke in a tide on the house, rain crashed down, shaking the beams, causing chandeliers to tilt their enraged candle lights. And the one hundred relatives peered out from every black, enchanted room, circling inward, all shapes and sizes, to where Einar balanced the child like a baton in the roaring spaces. "Enough!" shouted Einar, at last. Timothy, deposited on the floor timbers, exaltedly, exhaustedly fell against Uncle Einar, sobbing happily. "Uncle, uncle, uncle!" "Was it good, flying? Eh, Timothy?" said Uncle Einar, bending down, patting Timothy's head. "Good, good." It was coming toward dawn. Most had arrived and were ready to bed down for the daylight, sleep motionlessly with no sound until the following sunset, when they would shout out of their mahogany boxes for the revelry. Uncle Einar, followed by dozens of others, moved toward the cellar. Mother directed them downward to the crowded row on row of highly polished boxes. Einar, his wings like sea-green tarpaulins tented behind him, moved with a curious whistling down the passageway; where his wings touched they made a sound of drumheads gently beaten. Upstairs, Timothy lay wearily thinking, trying to like the darkness. There was so much you could do in darkness that people couldn't criticize you for, because they never saw you. He did like the night, but it was a qualified liking: sometimes there was so much night he cried out in rebellion. In the cellar, mahogany doors sealed downward, drawn in by pale hands. In corners, certain relatives circled three times to lie, heads on paws, eyelids shut. The sun rose. There was a sleeping. Sunset. The revel exploded like a bat nest struck full, shrieking out, fluttering, spreading. Box doors banged wide. Steps rushed up from cellar damp. More late guests, kicking on front and back portals, were admitted. It rained, and sodden visitors laid their capes, their water-pelleted hats, their sprinkled veils upon Timothy who bore them to a closet. |
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"Timothy." Uncle Einar's wings spread and twitched and came in with a sound like kettledrums. Timothy felt himself plucked up like a thimble and set upon Einar's shoulder. "Don't feel badly, Nephew Timothy. Each to his own, each in his own way. How much better things are for you. How rich. The world's dead for us. We've seen so much of it, believe me. Life's best to those who live the least of it. It's worth more per ounce, Timothy, remember that." The rest of the black morning, from midnight on, Uncle Einar led him about the house, from room to room, weaving and singing. A horde of late arrivals set the entire hilarity off afresh. Great-great-great-great and a thousand more great-greats Grandmother was there, wrapped in Egyptian cerements. She said not a word, but lay straight as a burnt ironing board against the wall, her eye hollows cupping a distant, wise, silent glimmering. At the breakfast, at four in the morning, one-thousand-odd-greats Grandmama was stiffly seated at the head of the longest table. The numerous young cousins caroused at the crystal punch bowl. Their shiny olive-pit eyes, their conical, devilish faces and curly bronze hair hovered over the drinking table, their hard-soft, half-girl half-boy bodies wrestling against each other as they got unpleasantly, sullenly drunk. The wind got higher, the stars burned with fiery intensity, the noises redoubled, the dances quickened, the drinking became more positive. To Timothy there were thousands of things to hear and watch. The many darknesses roiled, bubbled, the many faces passed and repassed... . "Listen!" The party held its breath. Far away the town clock struck its chimes, saying six o'clock. The party was ending. As if at a cue, in time to the rhythm of the clock striking, their one hundred voices began to sing songs that were four hundred years old, songs Timothy could not know. They twined their arms around one another, circling slowly, and sang, and somewhere in the cold distance of morning the town clock finished out its chimes and quieted. Good-bys were said, there was a great rustling. Mother and Father and the brothers and sisters lined up at the door to shake hands and kiss each departing relative in turn. The sky beyond the open door colored and shone in the east. A cold wind entered. The shouting and the laughing bit by bit faded and went away. Dawn grew more apparent. Everybody was embracing and crying and thinking how the world was becoming less a place for them. There had been a time when they had met every year, but now decades passed with no reconciliation. |
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Yrs., affect. Dudley Stone Earthquakes and avalanches, in that order. "Why?" we asked ourselves, meeting down the years. In fine soap-opera fashion we debated if it was women caused him to hurl his literary future away. Was it the Bottle. Or Horses that outran him and stopped a fine pacer in his prime? We freely admitted to one and all, that were Stone writing now, Faulkner, Hemingway, and Steinbeck would be buried in his lava. All the sadder that Stone, on the brink of his greatest work, turned one day and went off to live in a town we shall call Obscurity by the sea best named The Past. "Why?" That question forever lived with those of us who had seen the glints of genius in his piebald works. One night a few weeks ago, musing off the erosion of the years, finding each others' faces somewhat more pouched and our hairs more conspicuously in absence, we became enraged over the typical citizen's ignorance of Dudley Stone. At least, we muttered, Thomas Wolfe had had a full measure of success before he seized his nose and jumped off the rim of Eternity. At least the critics gathered to stare after his plunge into darkness as after a meteor that made much fire in its passing. But who now remembered Dudley Stone, his coteries, his frenzied followers of the twenties? "Pass the hat," I said. "I'll travel three hundred miles, grab Dudley Stone by the pants and say: 'Look here, Mr. Stone, why did you let us down so badly? Why haven't you written a book in twenty-five years?'" The hat was lined with cash; I sent a telegram and took a train. I do not know what I expected. Perhaps to find a doddering and frail praying mantis, whisping about the station, blown by seawinds, a chalk-white ghost who would husk at me with the voices of grass and reeds blown in the night. I clenched my knees in agony as my train chuffed into the station. I let myself down into a lonely country-side, a mile from the sea, like a man foolishly insane, wondering why I had come so far. On a bulletin board in front of the boarded-up ticket office I found a cluster of announcements, inches thick, pasted and nailed one upon another for uncountable years. Leafing under, peeling away anthropological layers of printed tissue I found what I wanted. Dudley Stone for alderman, Dudley Stone for Sheriff, Dudley Stone for Mayor! On up through the years his photograph, bleached by sun and rain, faintly recognizable, asked for ever more responsible positions in the life of this world near the sea. I stood reading them. |
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A dying man will do anything, John. Now take my last novel and get along with you.' "We sat there, the three of us, just as we three are sitting tonight. There was a smell of lemons and limes and camellias. The ocean roared on the stony coastland below; God, what a lovely moonlit sound. And at last, picking up the manuscripts, John Oatis took them, like my body, out of the room. He paused at the door and said, 'I believe you.' And then he was gone. I heard him drive away. I put Lena to bed. That was one of the few nights in my life I ever walked down by the shore, but walk I did, taking deep breaths and feeling my arms and legs and my face with my hands, crying like a child, walking and wading in the surf to feel the cold salt water foaming about me in a million suds." Dudley Stone paused. Time had made a stop in the room. Time was in another year, the three of us sitting there, enchanted with his telling of the murder. "And did he destroy your last novel?" I asked. Dudley Stone nodded. "A week later one of the pages drifted up on the shore. He must have thrown them over the cliff, a thousand pages, I see it in my mind's eye, a flock of white sea-gulls it might seem, flying down to the water and going out with the tide at four in the black morning. Lena ran up the beach with that single page in her hand, crying, 'Look, look!' And when I saw what she handed me, I tossed it back in the ocean." "Don't tell me you honored your promise!" Dudley Stone looked at me steadily. "What would you have done in a similar position? Look at it this way: John Oatis did me a favor. He didn't kill me. He didn't shoot me. He took my word. He honored my word. He let me live. He let me go on eating and sleeping and breathing. Quite suddenly he had broadened my horizons. I was so grateful that standing on the beach hip-deep in water that night, I cried. I was grateful. Do you really understand that word? Grateful he had let me live when he had had it in his hand to annihilate me forever." Mrs. Stone rose up, the dinner was ended. She cleared the dishes, we lit cigars; and Dudley Stone strolled me over to his office-at-home, a rolltop desk, its jaws propped wide with parcels and papers and ink bottles, a typewriter, documents, ledgers, indexes. "It was all rolling to a boil in me. John Oatis simply spooned the froth off the top so I could see the brew. It was very clear," said Dudley Stone. "Writing was always so much mustard and gallweed to me; fidgeting words on paper, experiencing vast depressions of heart and soul. |
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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. |
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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. 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. |
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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. 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. |
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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. |
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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. 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. |
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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. Far away to the right, beyond the iron fences enclosing the property and softened by mist, he saw rows of quarters, quiet, empty. |
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D'Ortega's ship had been anchored a nautical mile from shore for a month waiting for a vessel, due any day, to replenish what he had lost. A third of his cargo had died of ship fever. Fined five thousand pounds of tobacco by the Lord Proprietarys' magistrate for throwing their bodies too close to the bay; forced to scoop up the corpses — those they could find (they used pikes and nets, D'Ortega said, a purchase which itself cost two pounds, six) — and ordered to burn or bury them. He'd had to pile them in two drays (six shillings), cart them out to low land where saltweed and alligators would finish the work. Does he cut his losses and let his ship sail on to Barbados? No, thought Jacob. A sloven man, stubborn in his wrongheadedness like all of the Roman faith, he waits in port for another month for a phantom ship from Lisbon carrying enough cargo to replenish the heads he has lost. While waiting to fill his ship's hold to capacity, it sinks and he has lost not only the vessel, not only the original third, but all, except the crew who were unchained, of course, and four unsalable Angolans red-eyed with anger. Now he wanted more credit and six additional months to pay what he had borrowed. Dinner was a tedious affair made intolerable by the awkwardness Jacob felt. His rough clothes were in stark contrast to embroidered silk and lace collar. His normally deft fingers turned clumsy with the tableware. There was even a trace of raccoon blood on his hands. Seeded resentment now bloomed. Why such a show on a sleepy afternoon for a single guest well below their station? Intentional, he decided; a stage performance to humiliate him into a groveling acceptance of D'Ortega's wishes. The meal began with a prayer whispered in a language he could not decipher and a slow signing of the cross before and after. In spite of his dirty hands and sweat-limp hair, Jacob pressed down his annoyance and chose to focus on the food. But his considerable hunger shrank when presented with the heavily seasoned dishes: everything except pickles and radishes was fried or overcooked. The wine, watered and too sweet for his taste, disappointed him, and the company got worse. The sons were as silent as tombs. D'Ortega's wife was a chattering magpie, asking pointless questions — How do you manage living in snow? — and making sense-defying observations, as though her political judgment were equal to a man's. Perhaps it was their pronunciation, their narrow grasp of the English language, but it seemed to Jacob that nothing transpired in the conversation that had footing in the real world. |
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D'Ortega was notorious for unpaid debts and had to search far outside Maryland for a broker since he had exhausted his friends and local lenders refused what they knew would be inevitable default. The air tightened. "You don't seem to comprehend my offer. I not forfeiting my debt. I honoring it. The value of a seasoned slave is beyond adequate." "Not if I can't use her." "Use her? Sell her!" "My trade is goods and gold, sir," said Jacob Vaark, landowner. And he could not resist adding, "But I understand how hard it is for a Papist to accommodate certain kinds of restraint." Too subtle? wondered Jacob. Not at all, apparently, for D'Ortega's hand moved to his hip. Jacob's eyes followed the movement as the ringed fingers curled around a scabbard. Would he? Would this curdled, arrogant fop really assault his creditor, murder him and, claiming self-defense, prerogative, rid himself of both debt and social insult even though it would mean complete financial disaster, considering that his coffers were as empty as his scabbard? The soft fingers fumbled for the absent haft. Jacob raised his eyes to D'Ortega's, noticing the cowardice of unarmed gentry confronted with a commoner. Out here in wilderness dependent on paid guards nowhere in sight this Sunday. He felt like laughing. Where else but in this disorganized world would such an encounter be possible? Where else could rank tremble before courage? Jacob turned away, letting his exposed, unarmed back convey his scorn. It was a curious moment. Along with his contempt, he felt a wave of exhilaration. Potent. Steady. An inside shift from careful negotiator to the raw boy that once prowled the lanes of town and country. He did not even try to mute his chuckling as he passed the cookhouse and glanced again at the woman standing in its door. Just then the little girl stepped from behind the mother. On her feet was a pair of way-too-big woman's shoes. Perhaps it was that feeling of license, a newly recovered recklessness along with the sight of those little legs rising like two bramble sticks from the bashed and broken shoes, that made him laugh. A loud, chest-heaving laugh at the comedy, the hopeless irritation, of the visit. His laughter had not subsided when the woman cradling the small boy on her hip came forward. Her voice was barely above a whisper but there was no mistaking its urgency. "Please, Senhor. Not me. Take her. Take my daughter." Jacob looked up at her, away from the child's feet, his mouth still open with laughter, and was struck by the terror in her eyes. |
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He was determined to prove that his own industry could amass the fortune, the station, D'Ortega claimed without trading his conscience for coin. He tapped Regina to a faster pace. The sun was low; the air cooler. He was in a hurry to get back into Virginia, its shore, and to Pursey's tavern before night, sleep in a bed if they weren't all packed three or four abreast. Otherwise he would join the other patrons and curl on any surface. But first he would have one, perhaps two, drafts of ale, its bitter, clear taste critical to eliminating the sweetish rot of vice and ruined tobacco that seemed to coat his tongue. Jacob returned Regina to the hostler, paid him and strolled to the wharf and Pursey's tavern. On the way he saw a man beating a horse to its knees. Before he could open his mouth to shout, rowdy sailors pulled the man away and let him feel his own knees in mud. Few things angered Jacob more than the brutal handling of domesticated animals. He did not know what the sailors were objecting to, but his own fury was not only because of the pain it inflicted on the horse, but because of the mute, unprotesting surrender glazing its eyes. Pursey's was closed on Sunday, as he should have known, so he went to the one always open. Rough, illegal and catering to hard boys, it nevertheless offered good, plentiful food and never strong meat. On his second draft, a fiddler and a piper entered for their merriment and their money and, the piper having played less well than himself, raised Jacob's spirits enough for him to join in the singing. When two women came in, the men called out their names with liquored glee. The bawds flounced a bit before choosing a lap to sit in. Jacob demurred when approached. He'd had enough, years ago, of brothels and the disorderly houses kept by wives of sailors at sea. The boyish recklessness that flooded him at Jublio did not extend to the sweet debauchery he had sought as a youth. Seated at a table cluttered with the remains of earlier meals, he listened to the talk around him, which was mostly sugar, which was to say, rum. Its price and demand becoming greater than tobacco's now that glut was ruining that market. The man who seemed to know most about kill-devil, the simple mechanics of its production, its outrageous prices and beneficial effects, was holding forth with the authority of a mayor. Burly, pock-faced, he had the aura of a man who had been in exotic places and the eyes of someone unaccustomed to looking at things close to his face. |
| 302 |
The job required literacy and led to his being signed up by the Company. 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. |
| 303 |
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. 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. |
| 304 |
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. 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. |
| 305 |
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. |
| 306 |
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. 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. |
| 307 |
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. And now having died in it he will haunt its rooms forever. The first house Sir built — dirt floor, green wood — was weaker than the bark-covered one she herself was born in. The second one was strong. He tore down the first to lay wooden floors in the second with four rooms, a decent fireplace and windows with good tight shutters. There was no need for a third. Yet at the very moment when there were no children to occupy or inherit it, he meant to build another, bigger, double-storied, fenced and gated like the one he saw on his travels. Mistress had sighed and confided to Lina that at the least the doing of it would keep him more on the land. "Trading and traveling fill his pockets," she'd said, "but he had been content to be a farmer when we married. Now ..." Her voice trailed off as she yanked out the swan's feathers. |
| 308 |
During its construction, however, Mistress couldn't keep a smile off her face. Like everyone else, Willard, Scully, hired help, deliverymen, she was happy, cooking as though it were harvest time. Stupid Sorrow gaping with pleasure; the smithy laughing; Florens mindless as fern in wind. And Sir — she had never seen him in better spirits. Not with the birth of his doomed sons, nor with his pleasure in his daughter, not even with an especially successful business arrangement he bragged about. It was not a sudden change, yet it was a deep one. The last few years he seemed moody, less gentle, but when he decided to kill the trees and replace them with a profane monument to himself, he was cheerful every waking moment. Killing trees in that number, without asking their permission, of course his efforts would stir up malfortune. Sure enough, when the house was close to completion he fell sick with nothing else on his mind. He mystified Lina. All Europes did. Once they terrified her, then they rescued her. Now they simply puzzled her. Why, she wondered, had Mistress sent a love-disabled girl to find the blacksmith? Why not tamp down her pride and seek out one of the Anabaptists? The deacon would be more than willing. Poor Florens, thought Lina. If she is not stolen or murdered, if she finds him safe she would not return. Why should she? Lina had watched first with mild amusement, then with increasing distress the courtship that began the morning the blacksmith came to work on Sir's foolish house. Florens had stood still, a startled doe, when he dismounted his horse, doffed his hat and asked if this was the Vaark place. Lina had shifted the milk bucket to her left hand and pointed up the hill. Mistress, leading the heifer, had come around the corner of the shed and asked him his business, sucking her teeth when he answered. "Dear Lord," she murmured and, pushing out her bottom lip, blew hair away from her forehead. Then, "Wait here a moment." As Mistress led the cow to pasture the blacksmith locked eyes with Lina before returning his hat to his head. He never once looked at Florens standing nearby, not breathing, holding the milking stool with both hands as though to help gravity keep her earthbound. She should have known then what the consequences would be, but felt sure that Sorrow, always an easy harvest, would quickly draw his attention and thwart Florens' drooling. Learning from Mistress that he was a free man doubled her anxiety. He had rights, then, and privileges, like Sir. |
| 309 |
He could marry, own things, travel, sell his own labor. She should have seen the danger immediately because his arrogance was clear. When Mistress returned, rubbing her hands on her apron, he removed his hat once more, then did something Lina had never seen an African do: he looked directly at Mistress, lowering his glance, for he was very tall, never blinking those eyes slanted and yellow as a ram's. 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. |
| 310 |
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. 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. |
| 311 |
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. 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. |
| 312 |
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. |
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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. 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? |
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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. 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. |
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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. |
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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. "And the eggs?" she asks. "They hatch alone," says Lina. "Do they live?" Florens' whispering is urgent. "We have," says Lina. Florens would sigh then, her head on Lina's shoulder and when sleep came the little girl's smile lingered. Mother hunger — to be one or have one — both of them were reeling from that longing which, Lina knew, remained alive, traveling the bone. As Florens grew, she learned quickly, was eager to know more and would have been the perfect one to find the blacksmith if only she had not been crippled with worship of him. When Mistress insisted on unhinging herself by staring at her face in the mirror, Lina closed her eyes against that reckless solicitation of bad luck and left the room. A heap of chores beckoned and, as always, Sorrow was not to be found. Pregnant or not, she could at least have mucked out the stalls. Lina entered the cowshed and glanced at the broken sleigh where, in cold weather, she and Florens slept. At the sight of cobwebs strung from blade to bed, Lina sighed, then caught her breath. Florens' shoes, the rabbit skin ones she had made for her ten years ago, lay under the sleigh — lonely, empty like two patient coffins. Shaken, she left the shed and stood still at the door. Where to go? She couldn't endure the self-pity that drove Mistress to tempt harmful spirits, so she decided to look for Sorrow down by the river where she often went to talk to her dead baby. The river gleamed under a sun departing slowly like a bride reluctant to leave the marriage feast. No Sorrow anywhere, but Lina caught the delicious smell of fire and followed it. Cautiously she moved toward the odor of smoke. Soon she heard voices, several, carefully, deliberately low. Creeping a hundred yards or so toward the sound she saw figures lit by a small fire dug deep in the ground. A boy and several adults camped in wintergreen beneath two hawthorns. One man was asleep, another whittling. Three women, two of whom were Europes, seemed to be clearing away signs of a meal, nutshells, corn husks, and repacking other items. |
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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. Reverend Father says communion is the best hope, prayer the next. |
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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. |
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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. She wraps a cloth around to dry him. Later she steps in and splashes herself. He does not scrub her. He is in the house to dress himself. A moose moves through the trees at the edge of the clearing. We all, Mistress, Lina and me, see him. He stands alone looking. Mistress crosses her wrists over her breasts. Her eyes are big and stare. Her face loses its blood. Lina shouts and throws a stone. The moose turns slowly and walks away. Like a chieftain. Still Mistress trembles as though a wicked thing has come. I am thinking how small she looks. It is only a moose who has no interest in her. Or anyone. Mistress does not shout or keep to her splashing. She will not risk to choose. Sir steps out. Mistress stands up and rushes to him. Her naked skin is aslide with wintergreen. Lina and I look at each other. What is she fearing, I ask. Nothing, says Lina. Why then does she run to Sir? Because she can, Lina answers. Sudden a sheet of sparrows fall from the sky and settle in the trees. So many the trees seem to sprout birds, not leaves at all. Lina points. We never shape the world she says. The world shapes us. Sudden and silent the sparrows are gone. I am not understanding Lina. You are my shaper and my world as well. It is done. No need to choose. How long will it take will she get lost will he be there will he come will some vagrant rape her? She needed shoes, proper shoes, to replace the dirty scraps that covered her feet, and it was only when Lina made her some did she say a word. Rebekka's thoughts bled into one another, confusing events and time but not people. |
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The need to swallow, the pain of doing so, the unbearable urge to tear her skin from the bones underneath stopped only when she was unconscious — not asleep, because as far as the dreams were concerned it was the same as being awake. "I shat among strangers for six weeks to get to this land." She has told this to Lina over and over. Lina being the only one left whose understanding she trusted and whose judgment she valued. Even now, in the deep blue of a spring night, with less sleep than her Mistress, Lina was whispering and shaking a feathered stick around the bed. "Among strangers," said Rebekka. "There was no other way packed like cod between decks." She fixed her eyes on Lina who had put away her wand and now knelt by the bed. "I know you," said Rebekka, and thought she was smiling although she was not sure. Other familiar faces sometimes hovered, then went away: her daughter; the sailor who helped carry her boxes and tighten their straps; a man on the gallows. No. This face was real. She recognized the dark anxious eyes, the tawny skin. How could she not know the single friend she had? To confirm to herself that moment of clarity, she said, "Lina. Remember, do you? We didn't have a fireplace. It was cold. So cold. I thought she was a mute or deaf, you know. Blood is sticky. It never goes away however much ..." Her voice was intense, confidential as though revealing a secret. Then silence as she fell somewhere between fever and memory. There was nothing in the world to prepare her for a life of water, on water, about water; sickened by it and desperate for it. Mesmerized and bored by the look of it, especially at midday when the women were allowed another hour on deck. Then she talked to the sea. "Stay still, don't hurtle me. No. Move, move, excite me. Trust me, I will keep your secrets: that the smell of you is like fresh monthly blood; that you own the globe and land is afterthought to entertain you; that the world beneath you is both graveyard and heaven." Immediately upon landing Rebekka's sheer good fortune in a husband stunned her. Already sixteen, she knew her father would have shipped her off to anyone who would book her passage and relieve him of feeding her. A waterman, he was privy to all sorts of news from colleagues, and when a crewman passed along an inquiry from a first mate — a search for a healthy, chaste wife willing to travel abroad — he was quick to offer his eldest girl. The stubborn one, the one with too many questions and a rebellious mouth. |
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Rebekka's mother objected to the "sale" — she called it that because the prospective groom had stressed "reimbursement" for clothing, expenses and a few supplies — not for love or need of her daughter, but because the husband-to-be was a heathen living among savages. Religion, as Rebekka experienced it from her mother, was a flame fueled by a wondrous hatred. Her parents treated each other and their children with glazed indifference and saved their fire for religious matters. Any drop of generosity to a stranger threatened to douse the blaze. Rebekka's understanding of God was faint, except as a larger kind of king, but she quieted the shame of insufficient devotion by assuming that He could be no grander nor better than the imagination of the believer. Shallow believers preferred a shallow god. The timid enjoyed a rampaging avenging god. In spite of her father's eagerness, her mother warned her that savages or nonconformists would slaughter her as soon as she landed, so when Rebekka found Lina already there, waiting outside the one-room cottage her new husband had built for them, she bolted the door at night and would not let the raven-haired girl with impossible skin sleep anywhere near. Fourteen or so, stone-faced she was, and it took a while for trust between them. Perhaps because both were alone without family, or because both had to please one man, or because both were hopelessly ignorant of how to run a farm, they became what was for each a companion. A pair, anyway, the result of the mute alliance that comes of sharing tasks. Then, when the first infant was born, Lina handled it so tenderly, with such knowing, Rebekka was ashamed of her early fears and pretended she'd never had them. Now, lying in bed, her hands wrapped and bound against self-mutilation, her lips drawn back from her teeth, she turned her fate over to others and became prey to scenes of past disorder. The first hangings she saw in the square amid a happy crowd attending. She was probably two years old, and the death faces would have frightened her if the crowd had not mocked and enjoyed them so. With the rest of her family and most of their neighbors, she was present at a drawing and quartering and, although she was too young to remember the details, her nightmares were made permanently vivid by years of retelling and redescribing by her parents. She did not know what a Fifth Monarchist was, then or now, but it was clear in her household that execution was a festivity as exciting as a king's parade. |
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Brawls, knifings and kidnaps were so common in the city of her birth that the warnings of slaughter in a new, unseen world were like threats of bad weather. The very year she stepped off the ship a mighty settlers-versus-natives war two hundred miles away was over before she heard of it. The intermittent skirmishes of men against men, arrows against powder, fire against hatchet that she heard of could not match the gore of what she had seen since childhood. The pile of frisky, still living entrails held before the felon's eyes then thrown into a bucket and tossed into the Thames; fingers trembling for a lost torso; the hair of a woman guilty of mayhem bright with flame. Compared to that, death by shipwreck or tomahawk paled. She did not know what other settler families nearby once knew of routine dismemberment, but she did not share their dread when, three months after the incident, news came of a pitched battle, a kidnap or a peace gone awry. The squabbles between local tribes or militia peppering parts of the region seemed a distant, manageable backdrop in a land of such space and perfume. The absence of city and shipboard stench rocked her into a kind of drunkenness that it took years to sober up from and take sweet air for granted. Rain itself became a brand-new thing: clean, sootless water falling from the sky. She clasped her hands under her chin gazing at trees taller than a cathedral, wood for warmth so plentiful it made her laugh, then weep, for her brothers and the children freezing in the city she had left behind. She had never seen birds like these, or tasted fresh water that ran over visible white stones. There was adventure in learning to cook game she'd never heard of and acquiring a taste for roast swan. Well, yes, there were monstrous storms here with snow piled higher than the sill of a shutter. And summer insects swarmed with song louder than chiming steeple bells. Yet the thought of what her life would have been had she stayed crushed into those reeking streets, spat on by lords and prostitutes, curtseying, curtseying, curtseying, still repelled her. Here she answered to her husband alone and paid polite attendance (time and weather permitting) to the only meetinghouse in the area. Anabaptists who were not the Satanists her parents called them, as they did all Separatists, but sweet, generous people for all their confounding views. Views that got them and the horrible Quakers beaten bloody in their own meetinghouse back home. Rebekka had no bone-deep hostility. |
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Even the king had pardoned a dozen of them on their way to the gallows. She still remembered her parents' disappointment when the festivities were canceled and their fury at an easily swayed monarch. Her discomfort in a garret full of constant argument, bursts of enraged envy and sullen disapproval of anyone not like them made her impatient for some kind of escape. Any kind. There had been an early rescue, however, and the possibility of better things in Church School where she was chosen as one of four to be trained for domestic service. But the one place that agreed to take her turned out to require running from the master and hiding behind doors. She lasted four days. After that no one offered her another place. Then came the bigger rescue when her father got notice of a man looking for a strong wife rather than a dowry. Between the warning of immediate slaughter and the promise of married bliss, she believed in neither. Yet without money or the inclination to peddle goods, open a stall or be apprenticed in exchange for food and shelter, with even nunneries for the upper class banned, her prospects were servant, prostitute, wife, and although horrible stories were told about each of those careers, the last one seemed safest. The one where she might have children and therefore be guaranteed some affection. As with any future available to her, it depended on the character of the man in charge. Hence marriage to an unknown husband in a far-off land had distinct advantages: separation from a mother who had barely escaped the ducking pond; from male siblings who worked days and nights with her father and learned from him their dismissive attitude toward the sister who had helped rear them; but especially escape from the leers and rude hands of any man, drunken or sober, she might walk by. 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. |
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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. |
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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. 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. |
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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. They hauled him through a cold spring rain. Skirts dragging in mud, shawls asunder, the caps on their heads drenched through to the scalp. There was trouble at the gate. They had to lay him in mud while two undid the hinges and then unbolted the door to the house. As rain poured over his face, Rebekka tried to shelter it with her own. Using the driest part of her underskirt, she blotted carefully lest she disturb the boils into pain. At last they entered the hall and situated him far away from the rain blowing through the window space. Rebekka leaned in close to ask if he would take a little cider. He moved his lips but no answer came. His eyes shifted to something or someone over her shoulder and remained so till she closed them. All four — herself, Lina, Sorrow and Florens — sat down on the floor planks. One or all thought the others were crying, or else those were raindrops on their cheeks. |
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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. |
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Other than her mother, no one had ever struck her. Fourteen years and she still didn't know if her mum was alive. She once received a message from a captain Jacob knew. Eighteen months after he was charged to make inquiries, he reported that her family had moved. Where, no one could say. Rising from the brook, laying her son in the warm grass while she dressed, Rebekka had wondered what her mother might look like now. Gray, stooped, wrinkled? Would the sharp pale eyes still radiate the shrewdness, the suspicion, Rebekka hated? Or maybe age, illness, had softened her to benign, toothless malice. Confined to bed now, her question was redirected. "And me? How do I look? What lies in my eyes now? Skull and crossbones? Rage? Surrender?" All at once she wanted it — the mirror Jacob had given her which she had silently rewrapped and tucked in her press. It took a while to convince her, but when Lina finally understood and fixed it between her palms, Rebekka winced. "Sorry," she murmured. "I'm so sorry." Her eyebrows were a memory, the pale rose of her cheeks collected now into buds of flame red. She traveled her face slowly, gently apologizing. "Eyes, dear eyes, forgive me. Nose, poor mouth. Poor, sweet mouth, I'm sorry. Believe me, skin, I do apologize. Please. Forgive me." Lina, unable to pry the mirror away, was pleading with her. "Miss. Enough. Enough." Rebekka refused and clung to the mirror. Oh, she had been so happy. So hale. Jacob home and busy with plans for the new house. The evenings when he was exhausted and she picked his hair clean; the mornings when she tied it. She loved his voracious appetite and the pride he took in her cooking. The blacksmith, who worried everybody except herself and Jacob, was like an anchor holding the couple in place in untrustworthy waters. Lina was afraid of him. Sorrow grateful as a hound to him. And Florens, poor Florens, she was completely smitten. Of the three, only she could be counted on to get to him. Lina would have begged off, unwilling to leave her patient, of course, but, more than that, despising him. 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. |
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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. |
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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. 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. |
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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? 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. |
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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. Once more I aim north through the wood following at a distance the hoofprints of the boys' horses. |
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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. 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. |
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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. |
| 335 |
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. 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. |
| 336 |
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. 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. |
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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. A bad sign. We squeeze between the fence slats and run into the wood. Now we walk, softly, Daughter Jane leading the way. The sun empties itself, pouring what is left through tree shadow. Birds and small animals eat and call to one another. We come to a stream, dry mostly, muddy elsewhere. |
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Daughter Jane hands me the cloth of eggs. She explains how I am to go, where the trail will be that takes me to the post road that takes me to the hamlet where I hope you are. I say thank you and lift her hand to kiss it. She says no, I thank you. They look at you and forget about me. She kisses my forehead then watches as I step down into the stream's dry bed. I turn and look up at her. Are you a demon I ask her. Her wayward eye is steady. She smiles. Yes, she says. Oh, yes. Go now. I walk alone except for the eyes that join me on my journey. Eyes that do not recognize me, eyes that examine me for a tail, an extra teat, a man's whip between my legs. Wondering eyes that stare and decide if my navel is in the right place if my knees bend backward like the forelegs of a dog. They want to see if my tongue is split like a snake's or if my teeth are filing to points to chew them up. To know if I can spring out of the darkness and bite. Inside I am shrinking. I climb the streambed under watching trees and know I am not the same. I am losing something with every step I take. I can feel the drain. Something precious is leaving me. I am a thing apart. With the letter I belong and am lawful. Without it I am a weak calf abandon by the herd, a turtle without shell, a minion with no telltale signs but a darkness I am born with, outside, yes, but inside as well and the inside dark is small, feathered and toothy. Is that what my mother knows? Why she chooses me to live without? Not the outside dark we share, a minha mae and me, but the inside one we don't. Is this dying mine alone? Is the clawing feathery thing the only life in me? You will tell me. You have the outside dark as well. And when I see you and fall into you I know I am live. Sudden it is not like before when I am always in fright. I am not afraid of anything now. The sun's going leaves darkness behind and the dark is me. Is we. Is my home. She did not mind when they called her Sorrow so long as Twin kept using her real name. It was easy to be confused. Sometimes it was the housewife or the sawyer or the sons who needed her; other times Twin wanted company to talk or walk or play. Having two names was convenient since Twin couldn't be seen by anybody else. So if she were scrubbing clothes or herding geese and heard the name Captain used, she knew it was Twin. But if any voice called "Sorrow," she knew what to expect. Preferable, of course, was when Twin called from the mill door or whispered up close into her ear. |
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Then she would quit any chore and follow her identical self. They had met beneath the surgeon's hammock in the looted ship. All people were gone or drowned and she might have been too had she not been deep in an opium sleep in the ship's surgery. Taken there to have the boils removed from her neck, she drank the mixture the surgeon said would cut off the pain. So when the ship foundered she did not know it, and if any unmurdered hands and passengers escaped, she didn't know that either. What she remembered was waking up after falling to the floor under the hammock all alone. Captain, her father, nowhere. Before coming to the sawyer's house, Sorrow had never lived on land. Now the memories of the ship, the only home she knew, seemed as stolen as its cargo: bales of cloth, chests of opium, crates of ammunition, horses and barrels of molasses. 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. |
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"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. The housewife told her it was monthly blood; that all females suffered it and Sorrow believed her until the next month and the next and the next when it did not return. Twin and she talked about it, about whether it was instead the result of the goings that took place behind the stack of clapboard, both brothers attending, instead of what the housewife said. Because the pain was outside between her legs, not inside where the housewife said was natural. The hurt was still there when the sawyer asked Sir to take her away, saying his wife could not keep her. Sir asked, "Where is she?" and Sorrow was summoned into the mill. |
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"How old?" When the sawyer shook his head, Sorrow spoke up. "I believe I have eleven years now." Sir grunted. "Don't mind her name," said the sawyer. "You can name her anything you want. My wife calls her Sorrow because she was abandoned. She is a bit mongrelized as you can see. However be that, she will work without complaint." As he spoke Sorrow saw the side smile on his face. She rode behind Sir's saddle for miles with one stop on the way. Since it was her first time astride a horse, the burning brought her to tears. Swaying, bumping, clinging to Sir's coat, finally she threw up on it. He reined in, then, and lifted her down, letting her rest while he wiped his coat with a leaf of coltsfoot. She accepted his water pouch, but the first gulp spewed out along with whatever was left in her stomach. "Sorrow, indeed," mumbled Sir. She was grateful when they got close to his farm and he took her down so she could walk the rest of the way. He looked around every few furlongs to make sure she had not fallen or sickened again. Twin smiled and clapped her hands when they glimpsed the farm. All along the trail riding behind Sir, Sorrow had looked around with a fright that would have been even deeper had she not been suffering nausea as well as pain. Miles of hemlock towered like black ship masts, and when they fell away cathedral pine, thick as the horse was long, threw shadows over their heads. No matter how she tried, she never saw their tops that, for all she knew, broke open the sky. Now and again a hulking pelted shape standing among the trees watched them ride by. Once when an elk crossed their path, Sir had to swerve and turn the horse around four times before it would go forward again. So when she followed Sir's horse into a sun-drenched clearing and heard the cackle of ducks neither she nor Twin could have been more relieved. Unlike the housewife, Mistress and Lina both had small, straight noses; Mistress' skin was like the whites of eggs, Lina's like the brown of their shells. Before anything, food or rest, Lina insisted on washing Sorrow's hair. Not only the twigs and bits of straw hiding under her cap bothered her; she feared lice. It was a fear that surprised Sorrow who thought lice, like ticks, fleas or any of the other occupants of the body, were more nuisance than danger. Lina thought otherwise and after the hair-washing, scrubbed the girl down twice before letting her in the house. Then, shaking her head from side to side, gave her a salted rag to clean her teeth. |
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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. 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. |
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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. 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. |
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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. |
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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. It amazed her to see that. In all of the goings she knew, no one had ever kissed her mouth. Ever. It was natural, once Sir was buried and Mistress fell ill, to send for the blacksmith. And he came. Alone. He gazed for a while at the great, new house before dismounting. Then he glanced at Sorrow's belly, then her eyes before handing her the reins. He turned to Lina. "Lead me to her," he said. Sorrow rushed back from tying the horse as fast as her weight let her and the three of them entered the house. He paused and, noticing the smell, looked into the pot of stewed mugwort and other bits of Lina's brew. "How long has she been abed?" "Five days," answered Lina. He grunted and entered Mistress' bedroom. Lina and Sorrow watched him from the door as he sat on his haunches beside the sickbed. "Thank you for coming," whispered Mistress. "Will you make me drink my own blood? I'm afraid there is none left. None that isn't polluted." He smiled and stroked her face. "Am I dying?" she asked. He shook his head. "No. The sickness is dead. Not you." Mistress closed her eyes. When she opened them they were glassy and she blotted them with the back of a bandaged hand. She thanked him again and again, then told Lina to prepare him something to eat. When he left the room, Lina followed. Sorrow, too, but not before turning back for a last look. That was when she saw Mistress toss off the bedsheet and go down on her knees. Sorrow watched as she used her teeth to loosen the wrappings on her hands, then press her palms together. Glancing around the room she was usually forbidden to enter, Sorrow noticed the clumps of hair stuck in the pillow's damp; noticed too how helpless-looking were the soles of Mistress' pale feet, protruding from the hem of her nightdress. On her knees, her head bowed, she seemed completely alone in the world. |
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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. |
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At some point before sunset she roused to a cry and squeezed her breasts until one delivered. 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. |
| 348 |
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. 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. |
| 349 |
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. 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. |
| 350 |
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? |
| 351 |
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. 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. |
| 352 |
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. |
| 353 |
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. 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. |
| 354 |
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. Makes Sorrow look like a Quaker." Only a few years older than Florens, Scully was less bewildered by the sharp change in her demeanor than Willard was. He thought of himself as an astute judge of character, felt he, unlike Willard, had a wily, sureshot instinct for the true core of others. Willard judged people from their outside: Scully looked deeper. Although he relished Lina's nakedness, he saw a purity in her. Her loyalty, he believed, was not submission to Mistress or Florens; it was a sign of her own self-worth — a sort of keeping one's word. Honor, perhaps. And while he joined Willard in making fun of Sorrow, Scully preferred her over the other two servants. If he had been interested in seduction, that's who he would have chosen: the look of her was daunting, complicated, distant. |
| 355 |
The unblinking eyes, smoke gray, were not blank, but waiting. It was that lying-in-wait look that troubled Lina. Everyone but himself thought she was daft because she talked out loud when alone, but who didn't? Willard issued greetings to ewes regularly and Mistress always chatted directions to herself while at some solitary task. And Lina — she answered birds as if they were asking her advice on how to fly. To dismiss Sorrow as "the odd one" ignored her quick and knowing sense of her position. Her privacy protected her; her easy coupling a present to herself. When pregnant, she glowed and when her time came she sought help in exactly the right place from the right people. On the other hand, if he had been interested in rape, Florens would have been his prey. It was easy to spot that combination of defenselessness, eagerness to please and, most of all, a willingness to blame herself for the meanness of others. Clearly, from the look of her now, that was no longer true. The instant he saw her marching down the road — whether ghost or soldier — he knew she had become untouchable. His assessment of her un-rape-ability, however, was impersonal. Other than a voyeur's obsession with Lina's body, Scully had no carnal interest in females. Long ago the world of men and only men had stamped him and from the first moment he saw him he never had any doubt what effect the blacksmith would have on Florens. Thus her change from "have me always" to "don't touch me ever" seemed to him as predictable as it was marked. Also Scully's opinion of Mistress was less generous than Willard's. He did not dislike her but looked on her behavior after the master's death and her own recovery not simply as the effects of ill health and mourning. Mistress passed her days with the joy of a clock. She was a penitent, pure and simple. Which to him meant that underneath her piety was something cold if not cruel. Refusing to enter the grand house, the one in whose construction she had delighted, seemed to him a punishment not only of herself but of everyone, her dead husband in particular. What both husband and wife had enjoyed, even celebrated, she now despised as signs of both the third and seventh sins. However well she loved the man in life, his leaving her behind blasted her. How could she not look for some way to wreak a bit of vengeance, show him how bad she felt and how angry? In his twenty-two years, Scully had witnessed far more human folly than Willard. By the time he was twelve he had been schooled, loved and betrayed by an Anglican curate. |
| 356 |
He had been leased to the Synod by his so-called father following his mother's death on the floor of the tavern she worked in. The barkeep claimed three years of Scully's labor to work off her indebtedness, but the "father" appeared, paid the balance due and sold his son's services, along with two casks of Spanish wine, to the Synod. 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. |
| 357 |
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. 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. |
| 358 |
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. 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. |
| 359 |
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. |
| 360 |
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. Sometimes we sang. Some of we fought. Mostly we slept or wept. Then the whitened men divided we and placed we in canoes. We come to a house made to float on the sea. Each water, river or sea, has sharks under. The whitened ones guarding we like that as much as the sharks are happy to have a plentiful feeding place. I welcomed the circling sharks but they avoided me as if knowing I preferred their teeth to the chains around my neck my waist my ankles. When the canoe heeled, some of we jumped, others were pulled under and we did not see their blood swirl until we alive ones were retrieved and placed under guard. We are put into the house that floats on the sea and we saw for the first time rats and it was hard to figure out how to die. Some of we tried; some of we did. Refusing to eat the oiled yam. Strangling we throat. |
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(The sheet, incidentally, is stained too, with three drops of old, faded redness. As the Quran tells us: Recite, in the name of the Lord thy Creator, who created Man from clots of blood.) One Kashmiri morning in the early spring of 1915, my grandfather Aadam Aziz hit his nose against a frost-hardened tussock of earth while attempting to pray. Three drops of blood plopped out of his left nostril, hardened instantly in the brittle air and lay before his eyes on the prayer-mat, transformed into rubies. Lurching back until he knelt with his head once more upright, he found that the tears which had sprung to his eyes had solidified, too; and at that moment, as he brushed diamonds contemptuously from his lashes, he resolved never again to kiss earth for any god or man. This decision, however, made a hole in him, a vacancy in a vital inner chamber, leaving him vulnerable to women and history. Unaware of this at first, despite his recently completed medical training, he stood up, rolled the prayer-mat into a thick cheroot, and holding it under his right arm surveyed the valley through clear, diamond-free eyes. The world was new again. After a winter's gestation in its eggshell of ice, the valley had beaked its way out into the open, moist and yellow. The new grass bided its time underground; the mountains were retreating to their hill-stations for the warm season. (In the winter, when the valley shrank under the ice, the mountains closed in and snarled like angry jaws around the city on the lake.) In those days the radio mast had not been built and the temple of Sankara Acharya, a little black blister on a khaki hill, still dominated the streets and lake of Srinagar. In those days there was no army camp at the lakeside, no endless snakes of camouflaged trucks and jeeps clogged the narrow mountain roads, no soldiers hid behind the crests of the mountains past Baramulla and Gulmarg. In those days travellers were not shot as spies if they took photographs of bridges, and apart from the Englishmen's houseboats on the lake, the valley had hardly changed since the Mughal Empire, for all its springtime renewals; but my grandfather's eyes — which were, like the rest of him, twenty-five years old — saw things differently ... and his nose had started to itch. To reveal the secret of my grandfather's altered vision: he had spent five years, five springs, away from home. (The tussock of earth, crucial though its presence was as it crouched under a chance wrinkle of the prayer-mat, was at bottom no more than a catalyst.) Now, returning, he saw through travelled eyes. |
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Instead of the beauty of the tiny valley circled by giant teeth, he noticed the narrowness, the proximity of the horizon; and felt sad, to be at home and feel so utterly enclosed. He also felt — inexplicably — as though the old place resented his educated, stethoscoped return. Beneath the winter ice, it had been coldly neutral, but now there was no doubt; the years in Germany had returned him to a hostile environment. Many years later, when the hole inside him had been clogged up with hate, and he came to sacrifice himself at the shrine of the black stone god in the temple on the hill, he would try and recall his childhood springs in Paradise, the way it was before travel and tussocks and army tanks messed everything up. On the morning when the valley, gloved in a prayer-mat, punched him on the nose, he had been trying, absurdly, to pretend that nothing had changed. So he had risen in the bitter cold of four-fifteen, washed himself in the prescribed fashion, dressed and put on his father's astrakhan cap; after which he had carried the rolled cheroot of the prayer-mat into the small lakeside garden in front of their old dark house and unrolled it over the waiting tussock. The ground felt deceptively soft under his feet and made him simultaneously uncertain and unwary. "In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful ..." — the exordium, spoken with hands joined before him like a book, comforted a part of him, made another, larger part feel uneasy — "... Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Creation ..." — but now Heidelberg invaded his head; here was Ingrid, briefly his Ingrid, her face scorning him for this Mecca-turned parroting; here, their friends Oskar and Ilse Lubin the anarchists, mocking his prayer with their anti-ideologies — "... The Compassionate, the Merciful, King of the Last Judgment! ..." — Heidelberg, in which, along with medicine and politics, he learned that India — like radium — had been "discovered" by the Europeans; even Oskar was filled with admiration for Vasco da Gama, and this was what finally separated Aadam Aziz from his friends, this belief of theirs that he was somehow the invention of their ancestors — "... You alone we worship, and to You alone we pray for help ..." — so here he was, despite their presence in his head, attempting to reunite himself with an earlier self which ignored their influence but knew everything it ought to have known, about submission for example, about what he was doing now, as his hands, guided by old memories, fluttered upwards, thumbs pressed to ears, fingers spread, as he sank to his knees — "... |
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Guide us to the straight path, The path of those whom You have favored ..." But it was no good, he was caught in a strange middle ground, trapped between belief and disbelief, and this was only a charade after all — "... Not of those who have incurred Your wrath, Nor of those who have gone astray." My grandfather bent his forehead towards the earth. Forward he bent, and the earth, prayer-mat-covered, curved up towards him. And now it was the tussock's time. At one and the same time a rebuke from Ilse-Oskar-Ingrid-Heidelberg as well as valley-and-God, it smote him upon the point of the nose. Three drops fell. There were rubies and diamonds. And my grandfather, lurching upright, made a resolve. Stood. Rolled cheroot. Stared across the lake. And was knocked forever into that middle place, unable to worship a God in whose existence he could not wholly disbelieve. Permanent alteration: a hole. The young, newly-qualified Doctor Aadam Aziz stood facing the springtime lake, sniffing the whiffs of change; while his back (which was extremely straight) was turned upon yet more changes. His father had had a stroke in his absence abroad, and his mother had kept it a secret. His mother's voice, whispering stoically: "... Because your studies were too important, son." This mother, who had spent her life housebound, in purdah, had suddenly found enormous strength and gone out to run the small gemstone business (turquoises, rubies, diamonds) which had put Aadam through medical college, with the help of a scholarship; so he returned to find the seemingly immutable order of his family turned upside down, his mother going out to work while his father sat hidden behind the veil which the stroke had dropped over his brain ... in a wooden chair, in a darkened room, he sat and made bird-noises. Thirty different species of birds visited him and sat on the sill outside his shuttered window conversing about this and that. He seemed happy enough. (... And already I can see the repetitions beginning; because didn't my grandmother also find enormous ... and the stroke, too, was not the only ... and the Brass Monkey had her birds ... the curse begins already, and we haven't even got to the noses yet!) The lake was no longer frozen over. The thaw had come rapidly, as usual; many of the small boats, the shikaras, had been caught napping, which was also normal. But while these sluggards slept on, on dry land, snoring peacefully beside their owners, the oldest boat was up at the crack as old folk often are, and was therefore the first craft to move across the unfrozen lake. |
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Tai's shikara ... this, too, was customary. Watch how the old boatman, Tai, makes good time through the misty water, standing stooped over at the back of his craft! How his oar, a wooden heart on a yellow stick, drives jerkily through the weeds! In these parts he's considered very odd because he rows standing up ... among other reasons. Tai, bringing an urgent summons to Doctor Aziz, is about to set history in motion ... while Aadam, looking down into the water, recalls what Tai taught him years ago: "The ice is always waiting, Aadam baba, just under the water's skin." Aadam's eyes are a clear blue, the astonishing blue of mountain sky, which has a habit of dripping into the pupils of Kashmiri men; they have not forgotten how to look. They see — there! like the skeleton of a ghost, just beneath the surface of Lake Dal! — the delicate tracery, the intricate crisscross of colorless lines, the cold waiting veins of the future. His German years, which have blurred so much else, haven't deprived him of the gift of seeing. Tai's gift. He looks up, sees the approaching V of Tai's boat, waves a greeting. Tai's arm rises — but this is a command. "Wait!" My grandfather waits; and during this hiatus, as he experiences the last peace of his life, a muddy, ominous sort of peace, I had better get round to describing him. Keeping out of my voice the natural envy of the ugly man for the strikingly impressive, I record that Doctor Aziz was a tall man. Pressed flat against a wall of his family home, he measured twenty-five bricks (a brick for each year of his life), or just over six foot two. A strong man also. His beard was thick and red — and annoyed his mother, who said only Hajis, men who had made the pilgrimage to Mecca, should grow red beards. His hair, however, was rather darker. His sky-eyes you know about. Ingrid had said, "They went mad with the colors when they made your face." But the central feature of my grandfather's anatomy was neither color nor height, neither strength of arm nor straightness of back. There it was, reflected in the water, undulating like a mad plantain in the centre of his face ... Aadam Aziz, waiting for Tai, watches his rippling nose. It would have dominated less dramatic faces than his easily; even on him, it is what one sees first and remembers longest. "A cyranose," Ilse Lubin said, and Oskar added, "A proboscissimus." Ingrid announced, "You could cross a river on that nose." (Its bridge was wide.) My grandfather's nose: nostrils flaring, curvaceous as dancers. |
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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. This friendship had plunged Aadam into hot water with great regularity. |
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everything, and not just the few clues one stumbles across, for instance by opening an old tin trunk which should have remained cobwebby and closed. ... Aadam refills his mother's glass and continues, worriedly, to examine her. "Put some cream on these rashes and blotches, Amma. For the headache, there are pills. The boils must be lanced. But maybe if you wore purdah when you sat in the store ... so that no disrespectful eyes could ... such complaints often begin in the mind ..." ... Slap of oar in water. Plot of spittle in lake. Tai clears his throat and mutters angrily, "A fine business. A wet-head nakkoo child goes away before he's learned one damned thing and he comes back a big doctor sahib with a big bag full of foreign machines, and he's still as silly as an owl. I swear: a too bad business." ... Doctor Aziz is shifting uneasily, from foot to foot, under the influence of the landowner's smile, in whose presence it is not possible to feel relaxed; and is waiting for some tic of reaction to his own extraordinary appearance. He has grown accustomed to these involuntary twitches of surprise at his size, his face of many colors, his nose ... but Ghani makes no sign, and the young Doctor resolves, in return, not to let his uneasiness show. He stops shifting his weight. They face each other, each suppressing (or so it seems) his view of the other, establishing the basis of their future relationship. And now Ghani alters, changing from art-lover to tough-guy. "This is a big chance for you, young man," he says. Aziz's eyes have strayed to Diana. Wide expanses of her blemished pink skin are visible. ... His mother is moaning, shaking her head. "No, what do you know, child, you have become a big-shot doctor but the gemstone business is different. Who would buy a turquoise from a woman hidden inside a black hood? It is a question of establishing trust. So they must look at me; and I must get pains and boils. Go, go, don't worry your head about your poor mother." ... "Big shot," Tai is spitting into the lake, "big bag, big shot. Pah! We haven't got enough bags at home that you must bring back that thing made of a pig's skin that makes one unclean just by looking at it? And inside, God knows what all." Doctor Aziz, seated amongst flowery curtains and the smell of incense, has his thoughts wrenched away from the patient waiting across the lake. Tai's bitter monologue breaks into his consciousness, creating a sense of dull shock, a smell like a casualty ward overpowering the incense ... |
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the old man is clearly furious about something, possessed by an incomprehensible rage that appears to be directed at his erstwhile acolyte, or, more precisely and oddly, at his bag. Doctor Aziz attempts to make small talk ... "Your wife is well? Do they still talk about your bag of golden teeth?" ... tries to remake an old friendship; but Tai is in full flight now, a stream of invective pouring out of him. The Heidelberg bag quakes under the torrent of abuse. "Sister-sleeping pigskin bag from Abroad full of foreigners' tricks. Big-shot bag. Now if a man breaks an arm that bag will not let the bone-setter bind it in leaves. Now a man must let his wife lie beside that bag and watch knives come and cut her open. A fine business, what these foreigners put in our young men's heads. I swear: it is a too-bad thing. That bag should fry in Hell with the testicles of the ungodly." ... Ghani the landowner snaps his braces with his thumbs. "A big chance, yes indeed. They are saying good things about you in town. Good medical training. Good ... good enough ... family. And now our own lady doctor is sick so you get your opportunity. That woman, always sick these days, too old, I am thinking, and not up in the latest developments also, what-what? I say: physician heal thyself. And I tell you this: I am wholly objective in my business relations. Feelings, love, I keep for my family only. If a person is not doing a first-class job for me, out she goes! You understand me? So: my daughter Naseem is not well. You will treat her excellently. Remember I have friends; and ill-health strikes high and low alike." ... "Do you still pickle water-snakes in brandy to give you virility, Taiji? Do you still like to eat lotus-root without any spices?" Hesitant questions, brushed aside by the torrent of Tai's fury. Doctor Aziz begins to diagnose. To the ferryman, the bag represents Abroad; it is the alien thing, the invader, progress. And yes, it has indeed taken possession of the young Doctor's mind; and yes, it contains knives, and cures for cholera and malaria and smallpox; and yes, it sits between doctor and boatman, and has made them antagonists. Doctor Aziz begins to fight, against sadness, and against Tai's anger, which is beginning to infect him, to become his own, which erupts only rarely, but comes, when it does come, unheralded in a roar from his deepest places, laying waste everything in sight; and then vanishes, leaving him wondering why everyone is so upset ... They are approaching Ghani's house. |
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She had fevers and she also had subnormal temperatures. At these times his thermometer would be placed under her armpit and he would hum and haw about the relative inefficiency of the method. In the opposite armpit she once developed a slight case of tineachloris and he dusted her with yellow powder; after this treatment — which required him to rub the powder in, gently but firmly, although the soft secret body began to shake and quiver and he heard helpless laughter coming through the sheet, because Naseem Ghani was very ticklish — the itching went away, but Naseem soon found a new set of complaints. She waxed anemic in the summer and bronchial in the winter. ("Her tubes are most delicate," Ghani explained, "like little flutes.") Far away the Great War moved from crisis to crisis, while in the cobwebbed house Doctor Aziz was also engaged in a total war against his sectioned patient's inexhaustible complaints. And, in all those war years, Naseem never repeated an illness. "Which only shows," Ghani told him, "that you are a good doctor. When you cure, she is cured for good. But alas!" — he struck his forehead — "She pines for her late mother, poor baby, and her body suffers. She is a too loving child." So gradually Doctor Aziz came to have a picture of Naseem in his mind, a badly-fitting collage of her severally-inspected parts. This phantasm of a partitioned woman began to haunt him, and not only in his dreams. Glued together by his imagination, she accompanied him on all his rounds, she moved into the front room of his mind, so that waking and sleeping he could feel in his fingertips the softness of her ticklish skin or the perfect tiny wrists or the beauty of the ankles; he could smell her scent of lavender and chambeli; he could hear her voice and her helpless laughter of a little girl; but she was headless, because he had never seen her face. His mother lay on her bed, spreadeagled on her stomach. "Come, come and press me," she said, "my doctor son whose fingers can soothe his old mother's muscles. Press, press, my child with his expression of a constipated goose." He kneaded her shoulders. She grunted, twitched, relaxed. "Lower now," she said, "now higher. To the right. Good. My brilliant son who cannot see what that Ghani landowner is doing. So clever, my child, but he doesn't guess why that girl is forever ill with her piffling disorders. Listen, my boy: see the nose on your face for once: that Ghani thinks you are a good catch for her. Foreign-educated and all. |
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In the morning, the sheet was displayed, and after the consummation ceremony a limousine hired by the landowner arrived to drive my grandparents to Amritsar, where they would catch the Frontier Mail. Mountains crowded round and stared as my grandfather left his home for the last time. (He would return, once, but not to leave.) Aziz thought he saw an ancient boatman standing on land to watch them pass — but it was probably a mistake, since Tai was ill. The blister of a temple atop Sankara Acharya, which Muslims had taken to calling the Takht-e-Sulaiman, or Seat of Solomon, paid them no attention. Winter-bare poplars and snow-covered fields of saffron undulated around them as the car drove south, with an old leather bag containing, amongst other things, a stethoscope and a bedsheet, packed in the boot. Doctor Aziz felt, in the pit of his stomach, a sensation akin to weightlessness. Or falling. ( ... And now I am cast as a ghost. I am nine years old and the whole family, my father, my mother, the Brass Monkey and myself, are staying at my grandparents' house in Agra, and the grandchildren — myself among them — are staging the customary New Year's play; and I have been cast as a ghost. 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. |
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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. The city swarmed about, too, mirroring the motion of the flies. Doctor Aziz looked down from his hotel window on to this scene as a Jain in a face-mask walked past, brushing the pavement before him with a twig-broom, to avoid stepping on an ant, or even a fly. |
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Spicy sweet fumes rose from a street-snack barrow. "Hot pakoras, pakoras hot!" A white woman was buying silks from a shop across the street and men in turbans were ogling her. Naseem — now Naseem Aziz — had a sharp headache; it was the first time she'd ever repeated an illness, but life outside her quiet valley had come as something of a shock to her. There was a jug of fresh lime water by her bed, emptying rapidly. Aziz stood at the window, inhaling the city. The spire of the Golden Temple gleamed in the sun. But his nose itched: something was not right here. Close-up of my grandfather's right hand: nails knuckles fingers all somehow bigger than you'd expect. Clumps of red hair on the outside edges. Thumb and forefinger pressed together, separated only by a thickness of paper. In short: my grandfather was holding a pamphlet. It had been inserted into his hand (we cut to a long-shot — nobody from Bombay should be without a basic film vocabulary) as he entered the hotel foyer. Scurrying of urchin through revolving door, leaflets falling in his wake, as the chaprassi gives chase. Mad revolutions in the doorway, roundandround; until chaprassi-hand demands a close-up, too, because it is pressing thumb to forefinger, the two separated only by the thickness of urchin-ear. Ejection of juvenile disseminator of gutter-tracts; but still my grandfather retained the message. Now, looking out of his window, he sees it echoed on a wall opposite; and there, on the minaret of a mosque; and in the large black type of newsprint under a hawker's arm. Leaflet newspaper mosque and wall are crying: Hartal! Which is to say, literally speaking, a day of mourning, of stillness, of silence. But this is India in the heyday of the Mahatma, when even language obeys the instructions of Gandhiji, and the word has acquired, under his influence, new resonances. Hartal — April 7, agree mosque newspaper wall and pamphlet, because Gandhi has decreed that the whole of India shall, on that day, come to a halt. To mourn, in peace, the continuing presence of the British. "I do not understand this hartal when nobody is dead," Naseem is crying softly. "Why will the train not run? How long are we stuck for?" Doctor Aziz notices a soldierly young man in the street, and thinks — the Indians have fought for the British; so many of them have seen the world by now, and been tainted by Abroad. They will not easily go back to the old world. The British are wrong to try and turn back the clock. "It was a mistake to pass the Rowlatt Act," he murmurs. |
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The largest compound in Amritsar is called Jallianwala Bagh. It is not grassy. Stones cans glass and other things are everywhere. To get into it, you must walk down a very narrow alleyway between two buildings. On April 13th, many thousands of Indians are crowding through this alleyway. "It is peaceful protest," someone tells Doctor Aziz. Swept along by the crowds, he arrives at the mouth of the alley. A bag from Heidelberg is in his right hand. (No close-up is necessary.) He is, I know, feeling very scared, because his nose is itching worse than it ever has; but he is a trained doctor, he puts it out of his mind, he enters the compound. Somebody is making a passionate speech. Hawkers move through the crowd selling channa and sweetmeats. The air is filled with dust. There do not seem to be any goondas, any troublemakers, as far as my grandfather can see. A group of Sikhs has spread a cloth on the ground and is eating, seated around it. There is still a smell of ordure in the air. Aziz penetrates the heart of the crowd, as Brigadier R. E. Dyer arrives at the entrance to the alleyway, followed by fifty crack troops. He is the Martial Law Commander of Amritsar — an important man, after all; the waxed tips of his moustache are rigid with importance. As the fifty-one men march down the alleyway a tickle replaces the itch in my grandfather's nose. The fifty-one men enter the compound and take up positions, twenty-five to Dyer's right and twenty-five to his left; and Aadam Aziz ceases to concentrate on the events around him as the tickle mounts to unbearable intensities. As Brigadier Dyer issues a command the sneeze hits my grandfather full in the face. "Yaaaakh-thoooo!" he sneezes and falls forward, losing his balance, following his nose and thereby saving his life. His "doctori-attachE" flies open; bottles, liniment and syringes scatter in the dust. He is scrabbling furiously at people's feet, trying to save his equipment before it is crushed. There is a noise like teeth chattering in winter and someone falls on him. Red stuff stains his shirt. There are screams now and sobs and the strange chattering continues. More and more people seem to have stumbled and fallen on top of my grandfather. He becomes afraid for his back. The clasp of his bag is digging into his chest, inflicting upon it a bruise so severe and mysterious that it will not fade until after his death, years later, on the hill of Sankara Acharya or Takht-e-Sulaiman. His nose is jammed against a bottle of red pills. |
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This is why I have resolved to confide in paper, before I forget. (We are a nation of forgetters.) There are moments of terror, but they go away. Panic like a bubbling sea-beast comes up for air, boils on the surface, but eventually returns to the deep. It is important for me to remain calm. I chew betel-nut and expectorate in the direction of a cheap brassy bowl, playing the ancient game of hit-the-spittoon: Nadir Khan's game, which he learned from the old men in Agra ... and these days you can buy "rocket paans" in which, as well as the gum-reddening paste of the betel, the comfort of cocaine lies folded in a leaf. But that would be cheating. ... Rising from my pages comes the unmistakable whiff of chutney. So let me obfuscate no further: I, Saleem Sinai, possessor of the most delicately-gifted olfactory organ in history, have dedicated my latter days to the large-scale preparation of condiments. But now, "A cook?" you gasp in horror, "A khansama merely? How is it possible?" And, I grant, such mastery of the multiple gifts of cookery and language is rare indeed; yet I possess it. You are amazed; but then I am not, you see, one of your 200-rupees-a-month cookery johnnies, but my own master, working beneath the saffron and green winking of my personal neon goddess. And my chutneys and kasaundies are, after all, connected to my nocturnal scribblings — by day amongst the pickle-vats, by night within these sheets, I spend my time at the great work of preserving. Memory, as well as fruit, is being saved from the corruption of the clocks. But here is Padma at my elbow, bullying me back into the world of linear narrative, the universe of what-happened-next: "At this rate," Padma complains, "you'll be two hundred years old before you manage to tell about your birth." She is affecting nonchalance, jutting a careless hip in my general direction, but doesn't fool me. I know now that she is, despite all her protestations, hooked. No doubt about it: my story has her by the throat, so that all at once she's stopped nagging me to go home, to take more baths, to change my vinegar-stained clothes, to abandon even for a moment this darkling pickle-factory where the smells of spices are forever frothing in the air ... now my dung goddess simply makes up a cot in the corner of this office and prepares my food on two blackened gas-rings, only interrupting my Anglepoise-lit writing to expostulate, "You better get a move on or you'll die before you get yourself born." Fighting down the proper pride of the successful storyteller, I attempt to educate her. |
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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. |
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Pantry and kitchen were her inalienable territory; and she defended them ferociously. When she was carrying her last child, my aunt Emerald, her husband offered to relieve her of the chore of supervising the cook. She did not reply; but the next day, when Aziz approached the kitchen, she emerged from it with a metal pot in her hands and barred the doorway. She was fat and also pregnant, so there was not much room left in the doorway. Aadam Aziz frowned. "What is this, wife?" To which my grandmother answered, "This, whatsitsname, is a very heavy pot; and if just once I catch you in here, whatsitsname, I'll push your head into it, add some dahi, and make, whatsitsname, a korma." I don't know how my grandmother came to adopt the term whatsitsname as her leitmotif, but as the years passed it invaded her sentences more and more often. I like to think of it as an unconscious cry for help ... as a seriously-meant question. Reverend Mother was giving us a hint that, for all her presence and bulk, she was adrift in the universe. She didn't know, you see, what it was called. ... And at the dinner-table, imperiously, she continued to rule. No food was set upon the table, no plates were laid. Curry and crockery were marshalled upon a low side-table by her right hand, and Aziz and the children ate what she dished out. It is a sign of the power of this custom that, even when her husband was afflicted by constipation, she never once permitted him to choose his food, and listened to no requests or words of advice. A fortress may not move. Not even when its dependants' movements become irregular. During the long concealment of Nadir Khan, during the visits to the house on Cornwallis Road of young Zulfikar who fell in love with Emerald and of the prosperous reccine-and-leathercloth merchant named Ahmed Sinai who hurt my aunt Alia so badly that she bore a grudge for twenty-five years before discharging it cruelly upon my mother, Reverend Mother's iron grip upon her household never faltered; and even before Nadir's arrival precipitated the great silence, Aadam Aziz had tried to break this grip, and been obliged to go to war with his wife. (All this helps to show how remarkable his affliction by optimism actually was.) ... In 1932, ten years earlier, he had taken control of his children's education. Reverend Mother was dismayed; but it was a father's traditional role, so she could not object. Alia was eleven; the second daughter, Mumtaz, was almost nine. The two boys, Hanif and Mustapha, were eight and six, and young Emerald was not yet five. |
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Then — Allah, then! — the knives began to sing and Abdullah sang louder, humming high-high like he'd never hummed before. His body was hard and the long curved blades had trouble killing him; one broke on a rib, but the others quickly became stained with red. But now — listen! — Abdullah's humming rose out of the range of our human ears, and was heard by the dogs of the town. In Agra there are maybe eight thousand four hundred and twenty pie-dogs. On that night, it is certain that some were eating, others dying; there were some who fornicated and others who did not hear the call. 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. |
| 377 |
Meanwhile, in the old house on Cornwallis Road, the days were full of potential mothers and possible fathers. You see, Padma: you're going to find out now. Using my nose (because, although it has lost the powers which enabled it, so recently, to make history, it has acquired other, compensatory gifts) — turning it inwards, I've been sniffing out the atmosphere in my grandfather's house in those days after the death of India's humming hope; and wafting down to me through the years comes a curious mElange of odors, filled with unease, the whiff of things concealed mingling with the odors of burgeoning romance and the sharp stink of my grandmother's curiosity and strength ... while the Muslim League rejoiced, secretly of course, at the fall of its opponent, my grandfather could be found (my nose finds him) seated every morning on what he called his "thunderbox," tears standing in his eyes. But these are not tears of grief; Aadam Aziz has simply paid the price of being Indianized, and suffers terribly from constipation. Balefully, he eyes the enema contraption hanging on the toilet wall. Why have I invaded my grandfather's privacy? Why, when I might have described how, after Mian Abdullah's death, Aadam buried himself in his work, taking upon himself the care of the sick in the shanty-towns by the railway tracks — rescuing them from quacks who injected them with pepperwater and thought that fried spiders could cure blindness — while continuing to fulfill his duties as university physician; when I might have elaborated on the great love that had begun to grow between my grandfather and his second daughter, Mumtaz, whose dark skin stood between her and the affections of her mother, but whose gifts of gentleness, care and fragility endeared her to her father with his inner torments which cried out for her form of unquestioning tenderness; why, when I might have chosen to describe the by-now-constant itch in his nose, do I choose to wallow in excrement? Because this is where Aadam Aziz was, on the afternoon after his signing of a death certificate, when all of a sudden a voice — soft, cowardly, embarrassed, the voice of a rhymeless poet — spoke to him from the depths of the large old laundry-chest standing in the corner of the room, giving him a shock so profound that it proved laxative, and the enema contraption did not have to be unhooked from its perch. Rashid the rickshaw boy had let Nadir Khan into the thunderbox-room by way of the sweeper's entrance, and he had taken refuge in the washing-chest. |
| 378 |
("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. (Aadam Aziz had always insisted that his daughters be permitted to have male friends.) Ahmed Sinai — "Ahaa!" yells Padma in triumphant recognition — had met Alia at the University, and seemed intelligent enough for the bookish, brainy girl on whose face my grandfather's nose had acquired an air of overweight wisdom; but Naseem Aziz felt uneasy about him, because he had been divorced at twenty. ("Anyone can make one mistake," Aadam had told her, and that nearly began a fight, because she thought for a moment that there had been something overly personal in his tone of voice. But then Aadam had added, "Just let this divorce of his fade away for a year or two; then we'll give this house its first wedding, with a big marquee in the garden, and singers and sweetmeats and all." Which, despite everything, was an idea that appealed to Naseem.) Now, wandering through the walled-in gardens of silence, Ahmed Sinai and Alia communed without speech; but although everyone expected him to propose, the silence seemed to have got through to him, too, and the question remained unasked. Alia's face acquired a weightiness at this time, a jowly pessimistic quality which she was never entirely to lose. ("Now then," Padma reproves me, "that's no way to describe your respected motherji.") One more thing: Alia had inherited her mother's tendency to put on fat. She would balloon outwards with the passing years. And Mumtaz, who had come out of her mother's womb black as midnight? Mumtaz was never brilliant; nor as beautiful as Emerald; but she was good, and dutiful, and alone. She spent more time with her father than any of her sisters, fortifying him against the bad temper which was being exaggerated nowadays by the constant itch in his nose; and she took upon herself the duties of caring for the needs of Nadir Khan, descending daily into his underworld bearing trays of food, and brooms, and even emptying his personal thunderbox, so that not even a latrine cleaner could guess at his presence. When she descended, he lowered his eyes; and no words, in that dumb house, were exchanged between them. |
| 379 |
What was it the spittoon hitters said about Naseem Aziz? "She eavesdropped on her daughters' dreams, just to know what they were up to." Yes, there's no other explanation, stranger things have been known to happen in this country of ours, just pick up any newspaper and see the daily titbits recounting miracles in this village or that — Reverend Mother began to dream her daughters' dreams. (Padma accepts this without blinking; but what others will swallow as effortlessly as a laddoo, Padma may just as easily reject. No audience is without its idiosyncrasies of belief.) So, then: asleep in her bed at night, Reverend Mother visited Emerald's dreams, and found another dream within them — Major Zulfikar's private fantasy, of owning a large modern house with a bath beside his bed. This was the zenith of the Major's ambitions; and in this way Reverend Mother discovered, not only that her daughter had been meeting her Zulfy in secret, in places where speech was possible, but also that Emerald's ambitions were greater than her man's. And (why not?) in Aadam Aziz's dreams she saw her husband walking mournfully up a mountain in Kashmir with a hole in his stomach the size of a fist, and guessed that he was falling out of love with her, and also foresaw his death; so that years later, when she heard, she said only, "Oh, I knew it, after all." ... It could not be long now, Reverend Mother thought, before our Emerald tells her Major about the guest in the cellar; and then I shall be able to speak again. But then, one night, she entered the dreams of her daughter Mumtaz, the blackie whom she had never been able to love because of her skin of a South Indian fisherwoman, and realized the trouble would not stop there; because Mumtaz Aziz — like her admirer under the carpets — was also falling in love. There was no proof. The invasion of dreams — or a mother's knowledge, or a woman's intuition, call it what you like — is not something that will stand up in court, and Reverend Mother knew that it was a serious business to accuse a daughter of getting up to hanky-panky under her father's roof. In addition to which, something steely had entered Reverend Mother; and she resolved to do nothing, to keep her silence intact, and let Aadam Aziz discover just how badly his modern ideas were ruining his children — let him find out for himself, after his life-time of telling her to be quiet with her decent old-fashioned notions. "A bitter woman," Padma says; and I agree. "Well?" Padma demands. |
| 380 |
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. And she said afterwards, at the ending of the long silence, "We would have had children in the end; only then it wasn't right, that's all." Mumtaz Aziz loved children all her life. Meanwhile, Reverend Mother moved sluggishly through the months in the grip of a silence which had become so absolute that even the servants received their instructions in sign language, and once the cook Daoud had been staring at her, trying to understand her somnolently frantic signalling, and as a result had not been looking in the direction of the boiling pot of gravy which fell upon his foot and fried it like a five-toed egg; he opened his mouth to scream but no sound emerged, and after that he became convinced that the old hag had the power of witchery, and became too scared to leave her service. He stayed until his death, hobbling around the courtyard and being attacked by the geese. They were not easy years. The drought led to rationing, and what with the proliferation of meatless days and riceless days it was hard to feed an extra, hidden mouth. Reverend Mother was forced to dig deep into her pantry, which thickened her rage like heat under a sauce. Hairs began to grow out of the moles on her face. Mumtaz noticed with concern that her mother was swelling, month by month. The unspoken words inside her were blowing her up ... Mumtaz had the impression that her mother's skin was becoming dangerously stretched. And Doctor Aziz spent his days out of the house, away from the deadening silence, so Mumtaz, who spent her nights underground, saw very little in those days of the father whom she loved; and Emerald kept her promise, telling the Major nothing about the family secret; but conversely, she told her family nothing about her relationship with him, which was fair, she thought; and in the cornfield Mustapha and Hanif and Rashid the rickshaw boy became infected with the listlessness of the times; and finally the house on Cornwallis Road drifted as far as August 9th, 1945, and things changed. |
| 381 |
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. |
| 382 |
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. Old men were playing hit-the-spittoon and the spittoon was out in the street. Urchins, dodging in and out of the streams of betel-juice. Major Zulfy ran, ononon. Between the old men and their target, but he lacked the urchins' skill. What an unfortunate moment: a low hard jet of red fluid caught him squarely in the crotch. A stain like a hand clutched at the groin of his battledress; squeezed; arrested his progress. Major Zulfy stopped in almighty wrath. O even more unfortunate; because a second player, assuming the mad soldier would keep on running, had unleashed a second jet. A second red hand clasped the first and completed Major Zulfy's day ... slowly, with deliberation, he went to the spittoon and kicked it over, into the dust. He jumped on it — once! twice! again! — flattening it, and refusing to show that it had hurt his foot. Then, with some dignity, he limped away, back to the car parked outside my grandfather's house. The old ones retrieved their brutalized receptacle and began to knock it back into shape. "Now that I'm getting married," Emerald told Mumtaz, "it'll be very rude of you if you don't even try to have a good time. And you should be giving me advice and everything." At the time, although Mumtaz smiled at her younger sister, she had thought it a great cheek on Emerald's part to say this; and, unintentionally perhaps, had increased the pressure of the pencil with which she was applying henna tracery to the soles of her sister's feet. |
| 383 |
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? — For solace, for children. But at first the insomnia coating her brain got in the way of her first aim; and children don't always come at once. So Amina had found herself dreaming about an undreamable poet's face and waking with an unspeakable name on her lips. |
| 384 |
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. Washed by relief, father Kemal Butt breathed air filled with incendiarized bicycles, coughing and spluttering as the fumes of incinerated wheels, the vaporized ghosts of chains bells saddlebags handlebars, the transubstantiated frames of Arjuna Indiabikes moved in and out of their lungs. A crude cardboard mask had been nailed to a telegraph pole in front of the flaming godown — a mask of many faces — a devil's mask of snarling faces with broad curling lips and bright red nostrils. The faces of the many-headed monster, Ravana the demon king, looking angrily down at the bodies of the night-watchmen who were sleeping so soundly that no one, neither the firemen, nor Kemal, nor Butt, nor my father, had the heart to disturb them; while the ashes of pedals and inner tubes fell upon them from the skies. "Damn bad business," Mr. Kemal said. He was not being sympathetic. He was criticizing the owners of the Arjuna Indiabike Company. |
| 385 |
Look: the cloud of the disaster (which is also a relief) rises and gathers like a ball in the discolored morning sky. See how it thrusts itself westward into the heart of the old city; how it is pointing, good lord, like a finger, pointing down at the Muslim muhalla near Chandni Chowk! ... Where, right now, Lifafa Das is crying his wares in the Sinais' very own gully. "Come see everything, see the whole world, come see!" * * * It's almost time for the public announcement. I won't deny I'm excited: I've been hanging around in the background of my own story for too long, and although it's still a little while before I can take over, it's nice to get a look in. So, with a sense of high expectation, I follow the pointing finger in the sky and look down on my parents' neighborhood, upon bicycles, upon street-vendors touting roasted gram in twists of paper, upon the hip-jutting, hand-holding street loafers, upon flying scraps of paper and little clustered whirlwinds of flies around the sweetmeat stalls ... all of it foreshortened by my high-in-the-sky point of view. And there are children, swarms of them, too, attracted into the street by the magical rattle of Lifafa Das's dugdugee drum and his voice, "Dunya dekho," see the whole world! Boys without shorts on, girls without vests, and other, smarter infants in school whites, their shorts held up by elasticated belts with S-shaped snake-buckles, fat little boys with pudgy fingers; all flocking to the black box on wheels, including this one particular girl, a girl with one long hairy continuous eyebrow shading both eyes, the eight-year-old daughter of that same discourteous Sindhi who is even now raising the flag of the still-fictional country of Pakistan on his roof, who is even now hurling abuse at his neighbor, while his daughter rushes into the street with her chavanni in her hand, her expression of a midget queen, and murder lurking just behind her lips. What's her name? I don't know; but I know those eyebrows. Lifafa Das: who has by an unfortunate chance set up his black peepshow against a wall on which someone has daubed a swastika (in those days you saw them everywhere; the extremist R. S. S. S. party got them on every wall; not the Nazi swastika which was the wrong way round, but the ancient Hindu symbol of power. Svasti is Sanskrit for good) ... this Lifafa Das whose arrival I've been trumpeting was a young fellow who was invisible until he smiled, when he became beautiful, or rattled his drum, whereupon he became irresistible to children. |
| 386 |
This is not right acting." And Amina, "I know this man. He is a decent type. Go, get out, none of you have anything to do? In a Muslim muhalla you would tear a man to pieces? Go, remove yourselves." But the mob has stopped being surprised, and is moving forward again ... and now. Now it comes. "Listen," my mother shouted, "Listen well. I am with child. I am a mother who will have a child, and I am giving this man my shelter. Come on now, if you want to kill, kill a mother also and show the world what men you are!" That was how it came about that my arrival — the coming of Saleem Sinai — was announced to the assembled masses of the people before my father had heard about it. From the moment of my conception, it seems, I have been public property. But although my mother was right when she made her public announcement, she was also wrong. This is why: the baby she was carrying did not turn out to be her son. My mother came to Delhi; worked assiduously at loving her husband; was prevented by Zohra and khichri and clattering feet from telling her husband her news; heard screams; made a public announcement. And it worked. My annunciation saved a life. After the crowd dispersed, old Musa the bearer went into the street and rescued Lifafa Das's peepshow, while Amina gave the young man with the beautiful smile glass after glass of fresh lime water. It seemed that his experience had drained him not only of liquid but also sweetness, because he put four spoonfuls of raw sugar into every glass, while Zohra cowered in pretty terror on a sofa. And, at length, Lifafa Das (rehydrated by lime water, sweetened by sugar) said: "Begum Sahiba, you are a great lady. If you allow, I bless your house; also your unborn child. But also — please permit — I will do one thing more for you." "Thank you," my mother said, "but you must do nothing at all." But he continued (the sweetness of sugar coating his tongue). "My cousin, Shri Ramram Seth, is a great seer, Begum Sahiba. Palmist, astrologer, fortune-teller. You will please come to him, and he will reveal to you the future of your son." Soothsayers prophesied me ... in January 1947, my mother Amina Sinai was offered the gift of a prophecy in return for her gift of a life. And despite Zohra's "It is madness to go with this one, Amina sister, do not even think of it for one sec, these are times to be careful"; despite her memories of her father's scepticism and of his thumbandforefinger closing around a maulvi's ear, the offer touched my mother in a place which answered Yes. |
| 387 |
True was a thing concealed just over the horizon towards which the fisherman's finger pointed in the picture on my wall, while the young Raleigh listened to his tales. Now, writing this in my Anglepoised pool of light, I measure truth against those early things: Is this how Mary would have told it? I ask. Is this what that fisherman would have said? ... And by those standards it is undeniably true that, one day in January 1947, my mother heard all about me six months before I turned up, while my father came up against a demon king. Amina Sinai had been waiting for a suitable moment to accept Lifafa Das's offer; but for two days after the burning of the Indiabike factory Ahmed Sinai stayed at home, never visiting his office at Con-naught Place, as if he were steeling himself for some unpleasant encounter. For two days the gray money-bag lay supposedly secret in its place under his side of their bed. My father showed no desire to talk about the reasons for the gray bag's presence; so Amina said to herself, "Let him be like that; who cares?" because she had her secret, too, waiting patiently for her by the gates of the Red Fort at the top of Chandni Chowk. Pouting in secret petulance, my mother kept Lifafa Das to herself. "Unless-and-until he tells me what he's up to, why should I tell him?" she argued. And then a cold January evening, on which "I've got to go out tonight," said Ahmed Sinai; and despite her pleas of "It's cold — you'll get sick ..." he put on his business suit and coat under which the mysterious gray bag made a ridiculously obvious lump; so finally she said, "Wrap up warm," and sent him off wherever he was going, asking, "Will you be late?" To which he replied, "Yes, certainly." Five minutes after he left, Amina Sinai set off for the Red Fort, into the heart of her adventure. One journey began at a fort; one should have ended at a fort, and did not. One foretold the future; the other settled its geographical location. During one journey, monkeys danced entertainingly; while, in the other place, a monkey was also dancing, but with disastrous results. In both adventures, a part was played by vultures. And many-headed monsters lurked at the end of both roads. One at a time, then ... and here is Amina Sinai beneath the high walls of the Red Fort, where Mughals ruled, from whose heights the new nation will be proclaimed ... neither monarch nor herald, my mother is nevertheless greeted with warmth (despite the weather). In the last light of the day, Lifafa Das exclaims, "Begum Sahiba! |
| 388 |
Oh, that is excellent that you came!" Dark-skinned in a white sari, she beckons him towards the taxi; he reaches for the back door; but the driver snaps, "What do you think? Who do you think you are? Come on now, get in the front seat damn smart, leave the lady to sit in the back!" So Amina shares her seat with a black peepshow on wheels, while Lifafa Das apologizes: "Sorry, hey, Begum Sahiba? Good intents are no offence." But here, refusing to wait its turn, is another taxi, pausing outside another fort, unloading its cargo of three men in business suits, each carrying a bulky gray bag under his coat ... one man long as a life and thin as a lie, a second who seems to lack a spine, and a third whose lower lip juts, whose belly tends to squashiness, whose hair is thinning and greasy and worming over the tops of his ears, and between whose eyebrows is the tell-tale furrow that will, as he ages, deepen into the scar of a bitter, angry man. The taxi-driver is ebullient despite the cold. "Purana Qila!" he calls out, "Everybody out, please! Old Fort, here we are!" ... There have been many, many cities of Delhi, and the Old Fort, that blackened ruin, is a Delhi so ancient that beside it our own Old City is merely a babe in arms. It is to this ruin of an impossibly antique time that Kemal, Butt and Ahmed Sinai have been brought by an anonymous telephone call which ordered, "Tonight. Old Fort. Just after sunset. But no police ... or godown funtoosh!" Clutching their gray bags, they move into the ancient, crumbling world. ... Clutching at her handbag, my mother sits beside a peep-show, while Lifafa Das rides in front with the puzzled, irascible driver, and directs the cab into the streets on the wrong side of the General Post Office; and as she enters these causeways where poverty eats away at the tarmac like a drought, where people lead their invisible lives (because they share Lifafa Das's curse of invisibility, and not all of them have beautiful smiles), something new begins to assail her. Under the pressure of these streets which are growing narrower by the minute, more crowded by the inch, she has lost her "city eyes." When you have city eyes you cannot see the invisible people, the men with elephantiasis of the balls and the beggars in boxcars don't impinge on you, and the concrete sections of future drainpipes don't look like dormitories. My mother lost her city eyes and the newness of what she was seeing made her flush, newness like a hailstorm pricking her cheeks. |
| 389 |
Look, my God, those beautiful children have black teeth! Would you believe ... girl children baring their nipples! How terrible, truly! And, Allah-tobah, heaven forfend, sweeper women with — no! — how dreadful! — collapsed spines, and bunches of twigs, and no caste marks; untouchables, sweet Allah! ... and cripples everywhere, mutilated by loving parents to ensure them of a lifelong income from begging ... yes, beggars in boxcars, grown men with babies' legs, in crates on wheels, made out of discarded roller-skates and old mango boxes; my mother cries out, "Lifafa Das, turn back!" ... but he is smiling his beautiful smile, and says, "We must walk from here." Seeing that there is no going back, she tells the taxi to wait, and the bad-tempered driver says, "Yes, of course, for a great lady what is there to do but wait, and when you come I must drive my car in reverse all the way back to main-road, because here is no room to turn!" ... Children tugging at the pallu of her sari, heads everywhere staring at my mother, who thinks, It's like being surrounded by some terrible monster, a creature with heads and heads and heads; but she corrects herself, no, of course not a monster, these poor poor people — what then? A power of some sort, a force which does not know its strength, which has perhaps decayed into impotence through never having been used ... No, these are not decayed people, despite everything. "I'm frightened," my mother finds herself thinking, just as a hand touches her arm. Turning, she finds herself looking into the face of — impossible! — a white man, who stretches out a raggedy hand and says in a voice like a high foreign song, "Give something, Begum Sahiba ..." arid repeats and repeats like a stuck record while she looks with embarrassment into a white face with long eyelashes and a curved patrician nose — embarrassment, because he was white, and begging was not for white people. "... All the way from Calcutta, on foot," he was saying, "and covered in ashes, as you see, Begum Sahiba, because of my shame at having been there for the Killing — last August you remember, Begum Sahiba, thousands knifed in four days of screaming ..." Lifafa Das is standing helplessly by, not knowing how to behave with a white man, even a beggar, and "... Did you hear about the European?" the beggar asks, "... Yes, among the killers, Begum Sahiba, walking through the town at night with blood on his shirt, a white man deranged by the coming futility of his kind; did you hear?" ... |
| 390 |
And now a pause in that perplexing song of a voice, and then: "He was my husband." Only now did my mother see the stifled breasts beneath the rags ... "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). |
| 391 |
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? |
| 392 |
Friends mutilate him — blood will betray him!" And Amina Sinai, "What does he mean? I don't understand — Lifafa Das — what has got into him?" But, inexorably, whirling egg-eyed around her statue-still presence, goes Ramram Seth: "Spittoons will brain him — doctors will drain him — jungle will claim him — wizards reclaim him! Soldiers will try him — tyrants will fry him ..." While Amina begs for explanations and the cousins fall into a hand-flapping frenzy of helpless alarm because something has taken over and nobody dares touch Ramram Seth as he whirls to his climax: "He will have sons without having sons! He will be old before he is old! And he will die ... before he is dead." Is that how it was? Is that when Ramram Seth, annihilated by the passage through him of a power greater than his own, fell suddenly to the floor and frothed at the mouth? Was mongoose-man's stick inserted between his twitching teeth? Did Lifafa Das say, "Begun Sahiba, you must leave, please: our cousinji has become sick"? And finally the cobra-wallah — or monkey-man, or bone-setter, or even Lifafa Das of the peepshow on wheels — saying, "Too much prophecy, man. Our Ramram made too much damn prophecy tonight." Many years later, at the time of her premature dotage, when all kinds of ghosts welled out of her past to dance before her eyes, my mother saw once again the peepshow man whom she saved by announcing my coming and who repaid her by leading her to too much prophecy, and spoke to him evenly, without rancor. "So you're back," she said, "Well, let me tell you this: I wish I'd understood what your cousinji meant — about blood, about knees and nose. Because who knows? I might have had a different son." Like my grandfather at the beginning, in a webbed corridor in a blind man's house, and again at the end; like Mary Pereira after she lost her Joseph, and like me, my mother was. good at seeing ghosts. ... But now, because there are yet more questions and ambiguities, I am obliged to voice certain suspicions. Suspicion, too, is a monster with too many heads; why, then, can't I stop myself unleashing it at my own mother? ... What, I ask, would be a fair description of the seer's stomach? And memory — my new, all-knowing memory, which encompasses most of the lives of mother father grandfather grandmother and everyone else — answers: soft; squashy as cornflour pudding. Again, reluctantly, I ask: What was the condition of his lips? And the inevitable response: full; overfleshed; poetic. A third time I interrogate this memory of mine: what of his hair? |
| 393 |
At first they became raucous, shouting the praises of their favorite whores in Pushtu; then they fell into wild giggling as the soft fluttering fingers of the drug tickled their ribs ... until the giggling gave way to dreams and they roamed in the frontier passes of the drug, riding the horses of the drug, and finally reached a dreamless oblivion from which nothing on earth could awaken them until the drug had run its course. Ahmed, Butt and Kemal arrived by taxi — the taxi-driver, unnerved by the three men who clutched wads of crumpled banknotes which smelled worse than hell on account of the unpleasant substances they had encountered in the ditch, would not have waited, except that they refused to pay him. "Let me go, big sirs," he pleaded, "I am a little man; do not keep me here ..." but by then their backs were moving away from him, towards the fire. He watched them as they ran, clutching their rupees that were stained by tomatoes and dogshit; open-mouthed he stared at the burning godown, at the clouds in the night sky, and like everyone else on the scene he was obliged to breathe air filled with leathercloth and matchsticks and burning rice. With his hands over his eyes, watching through his fingers, the little taxi-driver with his incompetent moustache saw Mr. Kemal, thin as a demented pencil, lashing and kicking at the sleeping bodies of night-watchmen; and he almost gave up his fare and drove off in terror at the instant when my father shouted, "Look out!" ... but, staying despite it all, he saw the godown as it burst apart under the force of the licking red tongues, he saw pouring out of the godown an improbable lava flow of molten rice lentils chick-peas waterproof jackets matchboxes and pickle, he saw the hot red flowers of the fire bursting skywards as the contents of the warehouse spilled on to the hard yellow ground like a black charred hand of despair. Yes, of course the godown was burned, it fell on their heads from the sky in cinders, it plunged into the open mouths of the bruised, but still snoring, watchmen ... "God save us," said Mr. Butt, but Mustapha Kemal, more pragmatically, answered: "Thank God we are well insured." "It was right then," Ahmed Sinai told his wife later, "right at that moment that I decided to get out of the leathercloth business. Sell the office, the goodwill, and forget everything I know about the reccine trade. Then — not before, not afterwards — I made up my mind, also, to think no more about this Pakistan claptrap of your Emerald's Zulfy. |
| 394 |
History churned ahead; Methwold died; and in 1660, Charles II of England was betrothed to Catharine of the Portuguese House of Braganza — that same Catharine who would, all her life, play second fiddle to orange-selling Nell. But she has this consolation — that it was her marriage dowry which brought Bombay into British hands, perhaps in a green tin trunk, and brought Methwold's vision a step closer to reality. 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. |
| 395 |
Methwold's Estate: four identical houses built in a style befitting their original residents (conquerors' houses! Roman mansions; three-storey homes of gods standing on a two-storey Olympus, a stunted Kailasa!) — large, durable mansions with red gabled roofs and turret towers in each corner, ivory-white corner towers wearing pointy red-tiled hats (towers fit to lock princesses in!) — houses with verandahs, with servants' quarters reached by spiral iron staircases hidden at the back — houses which their owner, William Methwold, had named majestically after the palaces of Europe: Versailles Villa, Buckingham Villa, Escorial Villa and Sans Souci. Bougainvillaea crept across them; goldfish swam in pale blue pools; cacti grew in rock-gardens; tiny touch-me-not plants huddled beneath tamarind trees; there were butterflies and roses and cane chairs on the lawns. And on that day in the middle of June, Mr. Methwold sold his empty palaces for ridiculously little — but there were conditions. So now, without more ado, I present him to you, complete with the center-parting in his hair ... a six-foot Titan, this Methwold, his face the pink of roses and eternal youth. He had a head of thick black brilliantined hair, parted in the center. We shall speak again of this center-parting, whose ramrod precision made Methwold irresistible to women, who felt unable to prevent themselves wanting to rumple it up ... Methwold's hair, parted in the middle, has a lot to do with my beginnings. It was one of those hairlines along which history and sexuality moved. Like tightrope-walkers. (But despite everything, not even I, who never saw him, never laid eyes on languid gleaming teeth or devastatingly combed hair, am capable of bearing him any grudge.) And his nose? What did that look like? Prominent? Yes, it must have been, the legacy of a patrician French grandmother — from Bergerac! — whose blood ran aquamarinely in his veins and darkened his courtly charm with something crueller, some sweet murderous shade of absinthe. Methwold's Estate was sold on two conditions: that the houses be bought complete with every last thing in them, that the entire contents be retained by the new owners; and that the actual transfer should not take place until midnight on August 15th. "Everything?" Amina Sinai asked. "I can't even throw away a spoon? Allah, that lampshade ... I can't get rid of one comb?" "Lock, stock and barrel," Methwold said, "Those are my terms. A whim, Mr. Sinai ... you'll permit a departing colonial his little game? |
| 396 |
Homi Catrack, film magnate and racehorse-owner, with his idiot daughter Toxy who had to be locked up with her nurse, Bi-Appah, the most fearsome woman I ever knew; also the Ibrahims in Sans Souci, old man Ibrahim Ibrahim with his goatee and sisal, his sons Ismail and Ishaq, and Ismail's tiny flustery hapless wife Nussie, whom we always called Nussie-the-duck on account of her waddling gait, and in whose womb my friend Sonny was growing, even now, getting closer and closer to his misadventure with a pair of gynecological forceps ... Escorial Villa was divided into flats. On the ground floor lived the Dubashes, he a physicist who would become a leading light at the Trombay nuclear research base, she a cipher beneath whose blankness a true religious fanaticism lay concealed — but I'll let it lie, mentioning only that they were the parents of Cyrus (who would not be conceived for a few months yet), my first mentor, who played girls' parts in school plays and was known as Cyrus-the-great. Above them was my father's friend Doctor Narlikar, who had bought a flat here too ... he was as black as my mother; had the ability of glowing brightly whenever he became excited or aroused; hated children, even though he brought us into the world; and would unleash upon the city, when he died, that tribe of women who could do anything and in whose path no obstacle could stand. And, finally on the top floor, were Commander Sabarmati and Lila — Sabarmati who was one of the highest flyers in the Navy, and his wife with her expensive tastes; he hadn't been able to believe his luck in getting her a home so cheaply. They had two sons, aged eighteen months and four months, who would grow up to be slow and boisterous and to be nicknamed Eyeslice and Hairoil; and they didn't know (how could they?) that I would destroy their lives ... Selected by William Methwold, these people who would form the center of my world moved into the Estate and tolerated the curious whims of the Englishman — because the price, after all, was right. ... There are thirty days to go to the transfer of power and Lila Sabarmati is on the telephone, "How can you stand it, Nussie? In every room here there are talking budgies, and in the almirahs I find moth-eaten dresses and used brassiEres!" ... And Nussie is telling Amina, "Goldfish, Allah, I can't stand the creatures, but Methwold Sahib comes himself to feed ... and there are half-empty pots of Bovril he says I can't throw ... it's mad, Amina sister, what are we doing like this?" ... |
| 397 |
A whopper of a ten-chip pomfret, wait and see!" The servants were pleased; because a birth is a fine thing and a good big baby is best of all ... ... And Amina whose belly had stopped the clocks sat immobilized in a room in a tower and told her husband, "Put your hand there and feel him ... there, did you feel? ... such a big strong boy; our little piece-of-the-moon." Not until the rains ended, and Amina became so heavy that two manservants had to make a chair with their hands to lift her, did Wee Willie Winkie return to sing in the circus-ring between the four houses; and only then did Amina realize that she had not one, but two serious rivals (two that she knew of) for the Times of India's prize, and that, prophecy or no prophecy, it was going to be a very close-run finish. "Wee Willie Winkie is my name; to sing for my supper is my fame!" Ex-conjurers and peepshow-men and singers ... even before I was born, the mold was set. Entertainers would orchestrate my life. "I hope you are com-for-table! ... Or are you come-for-tea? Oh, joke-joke, ladies and ladahs, let me see you laugh now!" Talldarkhandsome, a clown with an accordion, he stood in the circus-ring. In the garden of Buckingham Villa, my father's big toe strolled (with its nine colleagues) beside and beneath the center-parting of William Methwold ... sandalled, bulbous, a toe unaware of its coming doom. And Wee Willie Winkie (whose real name we never knew) cracked jokes and sang. From a first-floor verandah, Amina watched and listened; and from the neighboring verandah, felt the prick of the envious competitive gaze of Nussie-the-duck. ... While I, at my desk, feel the sting of Padma's impatience. (I wish, at times, for a more discerning audience, someone who would understand the need for rhythm, pacing, the subtle introduction of minor chords which will later rise, swell, seize the melody; who would know, for instance, that although baby-weight and monsoons have silenced the clock on the Estate clocktower, the steady beat of Mount-batten's ticktock is still there, soft but inexorable, and that it's only a matter of time before it fills our ears with its metronomic, drumming music.) Padma says: "I don't want to know about this Winkie now; days and nights I've waited and still you won't get to being born!" But I counsel patience; everything in its proper place, I admonish my dung-lotus, because Winkie, too, has his purpose and his place, here he is now teasing the pregnant ladies on their verandahs, pausing from singing to say, "You've heard about the prize, ladies? |
| 398 |
"Amina Begum!" Musa is saying. "Wake up! Bad dream, Begum Sahiba!" Incidents of those last few hours — the last dregs of my inheritance: when there were thirty-five hours to go, my mother dreamed of being glued to brown paper like a fly. And at the cocktail hour (thirty hours to go) William Methwold visited my father in the garden of Buckingham Villa. Center-parting strolling beside and above big toe, Mr. Methwold reminisced. Tales of the first Methwold, who had dreamed the city into existence, filled the evening air in that penultimate sunset. And my father — aping Oxford drawl, anxious to impress the departing Englishman — responded with, "Actually, old chap, ours is a pretty distinguished family, too." Methwold listening: head cocked, red rose in cream lapel, wide-brimmed hat concealing parted hair, a veiled hint of amusement in his eyes ... Ahmed Sinai, lubricated by whisky, driven on by self-importance, warms to his theme. "Mughal blood, as a matter of fact." To which Methwold, "No! Really? You're pulling my leg." And Ahmed, beyond the point of no return, is obliged to press on. "Wrong side of the blanket, of course; but Mughal, certainly." That was how, thirty hours before my birth, my father demonstrated that he, too, longed for fictional ancestors ... how he came to invent a family pedigree that, in later years, when whisky had blurred the edges of his memory and djinn-bottles came to confuse him, would obliterate all traces of reality ... and how, to hammer his point home, he introduced into our lives the idea of the family curse. "Oh yes," my father said as Methwold cocked a grave unsmiling head, "many old families possessed such curses. In our line, it is handed down from eldest son to eldest son — in writing only, because merely to speak it is to unleash its power, you know." Now Methwold: "Amazing! And you know the words?" My father nods, lip jutting, toe still as he taps his forehead for emphasis. "All in here; all memorized. Hasn't been used since an ancestor quarrelled with the Emperor Babar and put the curse on his son Humayun ... terrible story, that — every schoolboy knows." And the time would come when my father, in the throes of his utter retreat from reality, would lock himself in a blue room and try to remember a curse which he had dreamed up one evening in the gardens of his house while he stood tapping his temple beside the descendant of William Methwold. Saddled now with flypaper-dreams and imaginary ancestors, I am still over a day away from being born ... |
| 399 |
but now the remorseless ticktock reasserts itself: twenty-nine hours to go, twenty-eight, twenty-seven ... What other dreams were dreamed on that last night? Was it then — yes, why not — that Doctor Narlikar, ignorant of the drama that was about to unfold at his Nursing Home, first dreamed of tetrapods? Was it on that last night — while Pakistan was being born to the north and west of Bombay — that my uncle Hanif, who had come (like his sister) to Bombay, and who had fallen in love with an actress, the divine Pia ("Her face is her fortune!" the Illustrated Weekly once said), first imagined the cinematic device which would soon give him the first of his three hit pictures? ... It seems likely; myths, nightmares, fantasies were in the air. This much is certain: on that last night, my grandfather Aadam Aziz, alone now in the big old house in Cornwallis Road — except for a wife whose strength of will seemed to increase as Aziz was ground down by age, and for a daughter, Alia, whose embittered virginity would last until a bomb split her in two over eighteen years later — was suddenly imprisoned by great metal hoops of nostalgia, and lay awake as they pressed down upon his chest; until finally, at five o'clock in the morning of August 14th — nineteen hours to go — he was pushed out of bed by an invisible force and drawn towards an old tin trunk. Opening it, he found: old copies of German magazines; Lenin's What Is To Be Done?; a folded prayer-mat; and at last the thing which he had felt an irresistible urge to see once more — white and folded and glowing faintly in the dawn — my grandfather drew out, from the tin trunk of his past, a stained and perforated sheet, and discovered that the hole had grown; that there were other, smaller holes in the surrounding fabric; and in the grip of a wild nostalgic rage he shook his wife awake and astounded her by yelling, as he waved her history under her nose: "Moth-eaten! 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) ... |
| 400 |
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. |
| 401 |
"ArrE Ahmed!" Amina Sinai yelled, "Janum, the baby! It's coming — bang on time!" Ripples of electricity through Methwold's Estate ... and here comes Homi Catrack, at a brisk emaciated sunken-eyed trot, offering: "My Studebaker is at your disposal, Sinai Sahib; take it now — go at once!" ... and when there are still five hours and thirty minutes left, the Sinais, husband and wife, drive away down the two-storey hillock in the borrowed car; there is my father's big toe pressing down on the accelerator; there are my mother's hands pressing down on her moon-belly; and they are out of sight now, around the bend, past Band Box Laundry and Reader's Paradise, past Fatbhoy jewels and Chimalker toys, past One yard of Chocolates and Breach Candy gates, driving towards Doctor Narlikar's Nursing Home where, in a charity ward, Wee Willie's Vanita still heaves and strains, spine curving, eyes popping, and a midwife called Mary Pereira is waiting for her time, too ... so that neither Ahmed of the jutting lip and squashy belly and fictional ancestors, nor dark-skinned prophecy-ridden Amina were present when the sun finally set over Methwold's Estate, and at the precise instant of its last disappearance — five hours and two minutes to go — William Methwold raised a long white arm above his head. White hand dangled above brilliantined black hair; long tapering white fingers twitched towards center-parting, and the second and final secret was revealed, because fingers curled, and seized hair; drawing away from his head, they failed to release their prey; and in the moment after the disappearance of the sun Mr. Methwold stood in the afterglow of his Estate with his hairpiece in his hand. "A baldie!" Padma exclaims. "That slicked-up hair of his ... I knew it; too good to be true!" Bald, bald; shiny-pated! Revealed: the deception which had tricked an accordionist's wife. Samson-like, William Methwold's power had resided in his hair; but now, bald patch glowing in the dusk, he flings his thatch through the window of his motor-car; distributes, with what looks like carelessness, the signed title-deeds to his palaces; and drives away. Nobody at Methwold's Estate ever saw him again; but I, who never saw him once, find him impossible to forget. Suddenly everything is saffron and green. Amina Sinai in a room with saffron walls and green woodwork. In a neighboring room, Wee Willie Winkie's Vanita, green-skinned, the whites of her eyes shot with saffron, the baby finally beginning its descent through inner passages that are also, no doubt, similarly colorful. |
| 402 |
Saffron minutes and green seconds tick away on the clocks on the walls. Outside Doctor Narlikar's Nursing Home, there are fireworks and crowds, also conforming to the colors of the night — saffron rockets, green sparkling rain; the men in shirts of zafaran hue, the women in saris of lime. On a saffron-and-green carpet, Doctor Narlikar talks to Ahmed Sinai. "I shall see to your Begum personally," he says, in gentle tones the color of the evening, "Nothing to worry about. You wait here; plenty of room to pace." Doctor Narlikar, who dislikes babies, is nevertheless an expert gynecologist. In his spare time he lectures writes pamphlets berates the nation on the subject of contraception. "Birth Control," he says, "is Public Priority Number One. The day will come when I get that through people's thick heads, and then I'll be out of a job." Ahmed Sinai smiles, awkward, nervous. "Just for tonight," my father says, "forget lectures — deliver my child." It is twenty-nine minutes to midnight. Doctor Narlikar's Nursing Home is running on a skeleton staff; there are many absentees, many employees who have preferred to celebrate the imminent birth of the nation, and will not assist tonight at the births of children. Saffron-shirted, green-skirted, they throng in the illuminated streets, beneath the infinite balconies of the city on which little dia-lamps of earthenware have been filled with mysterious oils; wicks float in the lamps which line every balcony and rooftop, and these wicks, too, conform to our two-tone color scheme: half the lamps burn saffron, the others flame with green. Threading its way through the many-headed monster of the crowd is a police car, the yellow and blue of its occupants' uniforms transformed by the unearthly lamplight into saffron and green. (We are on Colaba Causeway now, just for a moment, to reveal that at twenty-seven minutes to midnight, the police are hunting for a dangerous criminal. His name: Joseph D'Costa. The orderly is absent, has been absent for several days, from his work at the Nursing Home, from his room near the slaughterhouse, and from the life of a distraught virginal Mary.) Twenty minutes pass, with aaahs from Amina Sinai, coming harder and faster by the minute, and weak tiring aaahs from Vanita in the next room. 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. |
| 403 |
because the finger pointed even further than that shimmering horizon, it pointed beyond teak frame, across a brief expanse of sky-blue wall, driving my eyes towards another frame, in which my inescapable destiny hung, forever fixed under glass: here was a jumbo-sized baby-snap with its prophetic captions, and here, beside it, a letter on high-quality vellum, embossed with the seal of state — the lions of Sarnath stood above the dharma-chakra on the Prime Minister's missive, which arrive, via Vishwanath the post-boy one week after my photograph appeared on the front page of the Times of India. Newspapers celebrated me; politicians ratified my position. Jawaharlal Nehru wrote: "Dear Baby Saleem, My belated congratulations on the happy accident of your moment of birth! You are the newest bearer of that ancient face of India which is also eternally young. We shall be watching over your life with the closest attention; it will be, in a sense, the mirror of our own." And Mary Pereira, awestruck, "The Government, Madam? It will be keeping one eye on the boy? But why, Madam? What's wrong with him?" — And Amina, not understanding the note of panic in her ayah's voice: "It's just a way of putting things, Mary; it doesn't really mean what it says." But Mary does not relax; and always, whenever she enters the baby's room, her eyes flick wildly towards the letter in its frame; her eyes look around her, trying to see whether the Government is watching; wondering eyes: what do they know? 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 ... |
| 404 |
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. |
| 405 |
From my very first days I embarked upon an heroic program of self-enlargement. (As though I knew that, to carry the burdens of my future life, I'd need to be pretty big.) By mid-September I had drained my mother's not inconsiderable breasts of milk. A wet-nurse was briefly employed but she retreated, dried-out as a desert after only a fortnight, accusing Baby Saleem of trying to bite off her nipples with his toothless gums. I moved on to the bottle and downed vast quantities of compound: the bottle's nipples suffered, too, vindicating the complaining wet-nurse. Baby-book records were meticulously kept; they reveal that I expanded almost visibly, enlarging day by day; but unfortunately no nasal measurements were taken so I cannot say whether my breathing apparatus grew in strict proportion, or faster than the rest. I must say that I had a healthy metabolism. Waste matter was evacuated copiously from the appropriate orifices; from my nose there flowed a shining cascade of goo. Armies of handkerchiefs, regiments of nappies found their way into the large washing-chest in my mother's bathroom ... shedding rubbish from various apertures, I kept my eyes quite dry. "Such a good baby, Madam," Mary Pereira said, "Never takes out one tear." Good baby Saleem was a quiet child; I laughed often, but soundlessly. (Like my own son, I began by taking stock, listening before I rushed into gurgles and, later, into speech.) For a time Amina and Mary became afraid that the boy was dumb; but, just when they were on the verge of telling his father (from whom they had kept their worries secret — no father wants a damaged child), he burst into sound, and became, in that respect at any rate, utterly normal. "It's as if," Amina whispered to Mary, "he's decided to put our minds at rest." There was one more serious problem. Amina and Mary took a few days to notice it. Busy with the mighty, complex processes of turning themselves into a two-headed mother, their vision clouded by a fog of stenchy underwear, they failed to notice the immobility of my eyelids. Amina, remembering how, during her pregnancy, the weight of her unborn child had held time as still as a dead green pond, began to wonder whether the reverse might not be taking place now — whether the baby had some magical power over all the time in his immediate vicinity, and was speeding it up, so that mother-and-ayah never had enough time to do everything that needed doing, so that the baby could grow at an apparently fantastic rate; lost in such chronological daydreams, she didn't notice my problem. |
| 406 |
Only when she shrugged the idea off, and told herself I was just a good strapping boy with a big appetite, an early developer, did the veils of maternal love part sufficiently for her and Mary to yelp, in unison: "Look, baap-re-baap! Look, Madam! See, Mary! The little chap never blinks!" The eyes were too blue: Kashmiri-blue, changeling-blue, blue with the weight of unspilled tears, too blue to blink. When I was fed, my eyes did not flutter; when virginal Mary set me across her shoulder, crying, "Oof, so heavy, sweet Jesus!" I burped without nictating. When Ahmed Sinai limped splint-toed to my crib, I yielded to jutting lips with keen and batless gaze ... "Maybe a mistake, Madam," Mary suggested. "Maybe the little sahib is copying us — blinking when we blink." And Amina: "We'll blink in turn and watch." Their eyelids opening-and-closing alternately, they observed my icy blueness; but there was not the slightest tremor; until Amina took matters into her own hands and reached into the cradle to stroke my eyelids downwards. They closed: my breathing altered, instantly, to the contented rhythms of sleep. After that, for several months, mother and ayah took it in turns to open and close my lids. "He'll learn, Madam," Mary comforted Amina, "He is a good obedient child and he will get the hang of it for sure." I learned: the first lesson of my life: nobody can face the world with his eyes open all the time. Now, looking back through baby eyes, I can see it all perfectly — it's amazing how much you can remember when you try. What I can see: the city, basking like a bloodsucker lizard in the summer heat. Our Bombay: it looks like a hand but it's really a mouth, always open, always hungry, swallowing food and talent from everywhere else in India. A glamorous leech, producing nothing except films bush-shirts fish ... in the aftermath of Partition, I see Vishwanath the post-boy bicycling towards our two-storey hillock, vellum envelope in his saddle-bag, riding his aged Arjuna Indiabike past a rotting bus — abandoned although it isn't the monsoon season, because its driver suddenly decided to leave for Pakistan, switched off the engine and departed, leaving a full busload of stranded passengers, hanging off the windows, clinging to the roof-rack, bulging through the doorway ... I can hear their oaths, son-of-a-pig, brother-of-a-jackass; but they will cling to their hard-won places for two hours before they leave the bus to its fate. And, and: here is India's first swimmer of the English Channel, Mr. |
| 407 |
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. I can't remember anything Toxy said when she sent her thoughts to whisper to me; probably nothing except gurgles and spittings; but she gave a door in my mind a little nudge, so that when an accident took place in a washing-chest it was probably Toxy who made it possible. That's enough for the moment, about the first days of Baby Saleem — already my very presence is having an effect on history; already Baby Saleem is working changes on the people around him; and, in the case of my father, I am convinced that it was I who pushed him into the excesses which led, perhaps inevitably, to the terrifying time of the freeze. Ahmed Sinai never forgave his son for breaking his toe. |
| 408 |
Cocktail-cabinets had whetted his appetite; but it was my arrival that drove him to it ... In those days, Bombay had been declared a dry state. The only way to get a drink was to get yourself certified as an alcoholic; and so a new breed of doctors sprang up, djinn-doctors, one of whom, Doctor Sharabi, was introduced to my father by Homi Catrack next door. After that, on the first of every month, my father and Mr. Catrack and many of the city's most respectable men queued up outside Doctor Sharabi's mottled-glass surgery door, went in, and emerged with the little pink chitties of alcoholism. But the permitted ration was too small for my father's needs; and so he began to send his servants along, too, and gardeners, bearers, drivers (we had a motorcar now, a 1946 Rover with running-boards, just like William Methwold's), even old Musa and Mary Pereira, brought my father back more and more pink chitties, which he took to Vijay Stores opposite the circumzising barbershop in Gowalia Tank Road and exchanged for the brown paper bags of alcoholism, inside which were the chinking green bottles, full of djinn. And whisky, too: Ahmed Sinai blurred the edges of himself by drinking the green bottles and red labels of his servants. The poor, having little else to peddle, sold their identities on little pieces of pink paper; and my father turned them into liquid and drank them down. At six o'clock every evening, Ahmed Sinai entered the world of the djinns; and every morning, his eyes red, his head throbbing with the fatigue of his night-long battle, he came unshaven to the breakfast table; and with the passage of the years, the good mood of the time before he shaved was replaced by the irritable exhaustion of his war with the bottled spirits. After breakfast, he went downstairs. He had set aside two rooms on the ground floor for his office, because his sense of direction was as bad as ever, and he didn't relish the notion of getting lost in Bombay on the way to work; even he could find his way down a flight of stairs. Blurred at the edges, my father did his property deals; and his growing anger at my mother's preoccupation with her child found a new outlet behind his office door — Ahmed Sinai began to flirt with his secretaries; After nights in which his quarrel with bottles would sometimes erupt in harsh language — "What a wife I found! I should have bought myself a son and hired a nurse — what difference?" And then tears, and Amina, "Oh, janum — don't torture me!" which, in turn, provoked, "Torture my foot! |
| 409 |
Every great man in this city has a son brought into the world by me; no doors will close. You manufacture; I will get the contract! Fifty-fifty; fair is fair!" But, in my view, there is a simpler explanation. My father, deprived of wifely attention, supplanted by his son, blurred by whisky and djinn, was trying to restore his position in the world; and the dream of tetrapods offered him the chance. Whole-heartedly, he threw himself into the great folly; letters were written, doors knocked upon, black money changed hands; all of which served to make Ahmed Sinai a name known in the corridors of the Sachivalaya — in the passageways of the State Secretariat they got the whiff of a Muslim who was throwing his rupees around like water. And Ahmed Sinai, drinking himself to sleep, was unaware of the danger he was in. * * * Our lives, at this period, were shaped by correspondence. The Prime Minister wrote to me when I was just seven days old — before I could even wipe my own nose I was receiving fan letters from Times of India readers; and one morning in January Ahmed Sinai, too, received a letter he would never forget. Red eyes at breakfast were followed by the shaven chin of the working day; footsteps down the stairs; alarmed giggles of Coca-Cola girl. The squeak of a chair drawn up to a desk topped with green leathercloth. Metallic noise of a metal paper-cutter being lifted, colliding momentarily with telephone. The brief rasp of metal slicing envelope; and one minute later, Ahmed was running back up the stairs, yelling for my mother, shouting: "Amina! Come here, wife! The bastards have shoved my balls in an ice-bucket!" In the days after Ahmed received the formal letter informing him of the freezing of all his assets, the whole world was talking at once ... "For pity's sake, janum, such language!" Amina is saying — and is it my imagination, or does a baby blush in a sky-blue crib? And Narlikar, arriving in a lather of perspiration, "I blame myself entirely; we made ourselves too public. These are bad times, Sinai bhai — freeze a Muslim's assets, they say, and you make him run to Pakistan, leaving all his wealth behind him. Catch the lizard's tail and he'll snap it off! This so-called secular state gets some damn clever ideas." "Everything," Ahmed Sinai is saying, "bank account; savings bonds; the rents from the Kurla properties — all blocked, frozen. By order, the letter says. By order they will not let me have four annas, wife — not a chavanni to see the peepshow!" "It's those photos in the paper," Amina decides. |
| 410 |
The rumor spread that a mad Bengali snake-charmer, a Tubriwallah, was travelling the country, charming reptiles from captivity, leading them out of snake farms (such as the Schaapsteker, where snake venom's medicinal functions were studied, and antivenenes devised) by the Pied Piper fascination of his flute, in retribution for the partition of his beloved Golden Bengal. After a while the rumors added that the Tubriwallah was seven feet tall, with bright blue skin. He was Krishna come to chastise his people; he was the sky-hued Jesus of the missionaries. It seems that, in the aftermath of my changeling birth, while I enlarged myself at breakneck speed, everything that could possibly go wrong began to do so. In the snake winter of early 1948, and in the succeeding hot and rainy seasons, events piled upon events, so that by the time the Brass Monkey was born in September we were all exhausted, and ready for a few years' rest. Escaped cobras vanished into the sewers of the city; banded kraits were seen on buses. Religious leaders described the snake escape as a warning — the good Naga had been unleashed, they intoned, as a punishment for the nation's official renunciation of its deities. ("We are a secular State," Nehru announced, and Morarji and Patel and Menon all agreed; but still Ahmed Sinai shivered under the influence of the freeze.) And one day, when Mary had been asking, "How are we going to live now, Madam?" Homi Catrack introduced us to Doctor Schaapsteker himself. He was eighty-one years old; his tongue flicked constantly in and out between his papery lips; and he was prepared to pay cash rent for a top-floor apartment overlooking the Arabian Sea. Ahmed Sinai, in those days, had taken to his bed; the icy cold of the freeze impregnated his bedsheets; he downed vast quantities of whisky for medicinal purposes, but it failed to warm him up ... so it was Amina who agreed to let the upper storey of Buckingham Villa to the old snake-doctor. At the end of February, snake poison entered our lives. Doctor Schaapsteker was a man who engendered wild stories. The more superstitious orderlies at his Institute swore that he had the capacity of dreaming every night about being bitten by snakes, and thus remained immune to their bites. Others whispered that he was half-snake himself, the child of an unnatural union between a woman and a cobra. His obsession with the venom of the banded krait — bungarus fasciatus — was becoming legendary. There is no known antivenene to the bite of bungarus; but Schaapsteker had devoted his life to finding one. |
| 411 |
— 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? Ending questions, I confine myself to facts: Musa and Mary were perpetually at daggers drawn. And yes: Ahmed insulted him, and Amina's pacifying efforts may not have been successful; and yes: the fuddling shadows of age had convinced him he would be dismissed, without warning, at any moment; and so it was that Amina came to discover, one August morning, that the house had been burgled. The police came. Amina reported what was missing: a silver spittoon encrusted with lapis lazuli; gold coins; bejewelled samovars and silver tea-services; the contents of a green tin trunk. Servants were lined up in the hall and subjected to the threats of Inspector Johnny Vakeel. "Come on, own up now" — lathistick tapping against his leg — "or you'll see what we can't do to you. You want to stand on one leg all day and night? You want water thrown over you, sometimes boiling hot, sometimes freezing cold? We have many methods in the Police Force ..." And now a cacophony of noise from servants, Not me, Inspector Sahib, I am honest boy; for pity's sake, search my things, Sahib! And Amina: "This is too much, sir, you go too far. My Mary I know, anyway, is innocent. |
| 412 |
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. ... Such as the time when Sonny Ibrahim plucked up his courage to tell her, "Hey, listen, Saleem's sister — you're a solid type. I'm, um, you know, damn keen on you ..." And at once she marched across to where his father and mother were sipping lassi in the gardens of Sans Souci to say, "Nussie Aunty, I don't know what your Sonny's been getting up to. Only just now I saw him and Cyrus behind a bush, doing such funny rubbing things with their soo-soos!" ... The Brass Monkey had bad table manners; she trampled flowerbeds; she acquired the tag of problem-child; but she and I were close-as-close, in spite of framed letters from Delhi and sadhu-under-the-tap. From the beginning, I decided to treat her as an ally, not a competitor; and, as a result, she never once blamed me for my preeminence in our household, saying, "What's to blame? Is it your fault if they think you're so great?" (But when, years later, I made the same mistake as Sonny, she treated me just the same.) And it was Monkey who, by answering a certain wrong-number telephone call, began the process of events which led to my accident in a white washing-chest made of slatted wood. Already, at the age of nearlynine, I knew this much: everybody was waiting for me. Midnight and baby-snaps, prophets and prime ministers had created around me a glowing and inescapable mist of expectancy ... in which my father pulled me into his squashy belly in the cool of the cocktail hour to say, "Great things! My son: what is not in store for you? Great deeds, a great life!" While I, wriggling between jutting lip and big toe, wetting his shirt with my eternally leaking nose-goo, turned scarlet and squealed, "Let me go, Abba! Everyone will see!" And he, embarrassing me beyond belief, bellowed, "Let them look! Let the whole world see how I love my son!" ... |
| 413 |
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. |
| 414 |
Change clothes," she advised, "take regular baths. Go, baba, or I'll send you to the washerman and he'll wallop you on his stone." She also threatened me with bugs: "All right, stay filthy, you will be nobody's darling except the flies'. They will sit on you while you sleep; eggs they'll lay under your skin!" In part, my choice of hiding-place was an act of defiance. Braving dhobis and houseflies, I concealed myself in the unclean place; I drew strength and comfort from sheets and towels; my nose ran freely into the stone-doomed linens; and always, when I emerged into the world from my wooden whale, the sad mature wisdom of dirty washing lingered with me, teaching me its philosophy of coolness and dignity-despite-everything and the terrible inevitability of soap. One afternoon in June, I tiptoed down the corridors of the sleeping house towards my chosen refuge; sneaked past my sleeping mother into the white-tiled silence of her bathroom; lifted the lid off my goal; and plunged into its soft continuum of (predominantly white) textiles, whose only memories were of my earlier visits. Sighing softly, I pulled down the lid, and allowed pants and vests to massage away the pains of being alive, purposeless and nearly nine years old. Electricity in the air. Heat, buzzing like bees. A mantle, hanging somewhere in the sky, waiting to fall gently around my shoulders ... somewhere, a finger reaches towards a dial; a dial whirs around and around, electrical pulses dart along cable, seven, zero, five, six, one. The telephone rings. Muffled shrilling of a bell penetrates the washing-chest, in which a nearlynineyearold boy lies uncomfortably concealed ... I, Saleem, became stiff with the fear of discovery, because now more noises entered the chest; squeak of bedsprings; soft clatter of slippers along corridor; the telephone, silenced in mid-shrill; and — or is this imagination? Was her voice too soft to hear? — the words, spoken too late as usual: "Sorry. Wrong number." And now, hobbling footsteps returning to the bedroom; and the worst fears of the hiding boy are fulfilled. Doorknobs, turning, scream warnings at him; razor-sharp steps cut him deeply as they move across cool white tiles. He stays frozen as ice, still as a stick; his nose drips silently into dirty clothes, a pajama-cord — snake-like harbinger of doom! — inserts itself into his left nostril. To sniff would be to die: he refuses to think about it. ... Clamped tight in the grip of terror, he finds his eye looking through a chink in dirty washing ... |
| 415 |
and sees a woman crying in a bathroom. Rain dropping from a thick black cloud. And now more sound, more motion: his mother's voice has begun to speak, two syllables, over and over again; and her hands have begun to move. Ears muffled by underwear strain to catch the sounds — that one: dir? Bir? Dil? — and the other: Ha? Ra? No — Na. Ha and Ra are banished; Dil and Bir vanish forever; and the boy hears, in his ears, a name which has not been spoken since Mumtaz Aziz became Amina Sinai: Nadir. Nadir. Na. Dir. Na. And her hands are moving. Lost in their memory of other days, of what happened after games of hit-the-spittoon in an Agra cellar, they flutter gladly at her cheeks; they hold her bosom tighter than any brassieres; and now they caress her bare midriff, they stray below decks ... yes, this is what we used to do, my love, it was enough, enough for me, even though my father made us, and you ran, and now the telephone, Nadirnadirnadirnadirnadirnadir ... hands which held telephone now hold flesh, while in another place what does another hand do? To what, after replacing receiver, is another hand getting up? ... No matter; because here, in her spied-out privacy, Amina Sinai repeats an ancient name, again and again, until finally she bursts out with, "ArrE Nadir Khan, where have you come from now?" Secrets. A man's name. Never-before-glimpsed motions of the hands. A boy's mind filled with thoughts which have no shape, tormented by ideas which refuse to settle into words; and in a left nostril, a pajama-cord is snaking up up up, refusing to be ignored ... And now — O shameless mother! Revealer of duplicity, of emotions which have no place in family life; and more: O brazen unveiler of Black Mango! — Amina Sinai, drying her eyes, is summoned by a more trivial necessity; and as her son's right eye peers out through the wooden slats at the top of the washing-chest, my mother unwinds her sari! While I, silently in the washing-chest: "Don't do it don't do it don't do!" ... but I cannot close my eye. Unblinking pupil takes in upside-down image of sari falling to the floor, an image which is, as usual, inverted by the mind; through ice-blue eyes I see a slip follow the sari; and then — O horrible! — my mother, framed in laundry and slatted wood, bends over to pick up her clothes! And there it is, searing my retina — the vision of my mother's rump, black as night, rounded and curved, resembling nothing on earth so much as a gigantic, black Alfonso mango! In the washing-chest, unnerved by the vision, I wrestle with myself ... |
| 416 |
self-control becomes simultaneously imperative and impossible ... under the thunderclap influence of the Black Mango, my nerve cracks; pajama-cord wins its victory; and while Amina Sinai seats herself on a commode, I ... what? Not sneeze; it was less than a sneeze. Not a twitch, either; it was more than that. It's time to talk plainly: shattered by two-syllabic voice and fluttering hands, devastated by Black Mango, the nose of Saleem Sinai, responding to the evidence of maternal duplicity, quivering at the presence of maternal rump, gave way to a pajama-cord and was possessed by a cataclysmic — a world-altering — an irreversible sniff. Pajama-cord rises painfully half an inch further up the nostril. But other things are rising, too: hauled by that feverish inhalation, nasal liquids are being sucked relentlessly up up up, nose-goo flowing upwards, against gravity, against nature. Sinuses are subjected to unbearable pressure ... until, inside the nearlynineyearold head, something bursts. Snot rockets through a breached dam into dark new channels. Mucus, rising higher than mucus was ever intended to rise, Waste fluid, reaching as far, perhaps, as the frontiers of the brain ... there is a shock. Something electrical has been moistened. Pain. And then noise, deafening manytongued terrifying, inside his head! ... Inside a white wooden washing-chest, within the darkened auditorium of my skull, my nose began to sing. But just now there isn't time to listen; because one voice is very close indeed. Amina Sinai has opened the lower door of the washing-chest; I am tumbling downdown with laundry wrapped around my head like a caul. Pajama-cord jerks out of my nose; and now there is lightning flashing through the dark clouds around my mother — and a refuge has been lost for ever. "I didn't look!" I squealed up through socks and sheets. "I didn't see one thing, Ammi, I swear!!" And years later, in a cane chair among reject towels and a radio announcing exaggerated war victories, Amina would remember how with thumb and forefinger around the ear of her lying son she led him to Mary Pereira, who was sleeping as usual on a cane mat in a sky-blue room; how she said, "This young donkey; this good-for-nothing from nowhere is not to speak for one whole day." ... And, just before the roof fell in on her, she said aloud: "It was my fault. I brought him up too badly." As the explosion of the bomb ripped through the air, she added, mildly but firmly, addressing her last words on earth to the ghost of a washing-chest: "Go away now. |
| 417 |
Gradually the stars' faces dissolve into dancing grain; tiny details assume grotesque proportions; the illusion dissolves — or rather, it becomes clear that the illusion itself is reality ... we have come from 1915 to 1956, so we're a good deal closer to the screen ... abandoning my metaphor, then, I reiterate, entirely without a sense of shame, my unbelievable claim: after a curious accident in a washing-chest, I became a sort of radio. ... But today, I feel confused. Padma has not returned — should I alert the police? Is she a Missing Person? — and in her absence, my certainties are falling apart. Even my nose has been playing tricks on me — by day, as I stroll between the pickle-vats tended by our army of strong, hairy-armed, formidably competent women, I have found myself failing to distinguish lemon-odors from lime. The workforce giggles behind its hands: the poor sahib has been crossed in — what? — surely not love? ... Padma, and the cracks spreading all over me, radiating like a spider's web from my navel; and the heat ... a little confusion is surely permissable in these circumstances. Rereading my work, I have discovered an error in chronology. 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 ... |
| 418 |
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. Heat, gnawing at the mind's divisions between fantasy and reality, made anything seem possible; the half-waking chaos of afternoon siestas fogged men's brains, and the air was filled with the stickiness of aroused desires. What grows best in the heat: fantasy; unreason; lust. In 1956, then, languages marched militantly through the daytime streets; by night, they rioted in my head. |
| 419 |
What was present on the frequent occasions when Toxy Catrack's nurse Bi-Appah yelled down from the top floor of Homi's home: "Brats! Rackety good-for-nothings! Shut your noise!" ... so that we all ran away, returning (when she vanished from our sight) to make mute faces at the window at which she'd stood? In short, what was it, tall and blue and flaking, which oversaw our lives, which seemed, for a while, to be marking time, waiting not only for the nearby time when we would put on long trousers, but also, perhaps, for the coming of Evie Burns? Perhaps you'd like clues: what had once hidden bombs? In what had Joseph D'Costa died of snake-bite? ... When, after some months of inner torment, I at last sought refuge from grown-up voices, I found it in an old clocktower, which nobody bothered to lock; and here, in the solitude of rusting time, I paradoxically took my first tentative steps towards that involvement with mighty events and public lives from which I would never again be free ... never, until the Widow ... Banned from washing-chests, I began, whenever possible, to creep unobserved into the tower of crippled hours. When the circus-ring was emptied by heat or chance or prying eyes; when Ahmed and Amina went off to the Willingdon Club for canasta evenings; when the Brass Monkey was away, hanging around her newly-acquired heroines, the Walsingham School for Girls' swimming and diving team ... that is to say, when circumstances permitted, I entered my secret hideout, stretched out on the straw mat I'd stolen from the servants' quarters, closed my eyes, and let my newly-awakened inner ear (connected, like all ears, to my nose) rove freely around the city — and further, north and south, east and west — listening in to all manner of things. To escape the intolerable pressures of eavesdropping on people I knew, I practiced my art upon strangers. Thus my entry into the public affairs of India occurred for entirely ignoble reasons — upset by too much intimacy, I used the world outside our hillock for light relief. The world as discovered from a broken-down clocktower: at first, I was no more than a tourist, a child peeping through the miraculous peepholes of a private "Dilli-dekho" machine. Dugdugee-drums rattled in my left (damaged) ear as I gained my first glimpse of the Taj Mahal through the eyes of a fat Englishwoman suffering from the tummy-runs; after which, to balance south against north, I hopped down to Madurai's Meenakshi temple and nestled amongst the woolly, mystical perceptions of a chanting priest. |
| 420 |
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. |
| 421 |
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! |
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From the heights of Methwold's Estate, we looked down on them all, on white and brown alike; but nobody ever looked down on Evie Burns — except once. Only once did anyone get on top of her. Before I climbed into my first pair of long pants, I fell in love with Evie; but love was a curious, chain-reactive thing that year. To save time, I shall place all of us in the same row at the Metro cinema; Robert Taylor is mirrored in our eyes as we sit in flickering trances — and also in symbolic sequence: Saleem Sinai is sitting-next-to-and-in-love-with Evie Burns who is sitting-next-to-and-in-love-with Sonny Ibrahim who is sitting-next-to-and-in-love-with the Brass Monkey who is sitting next to the aisle and feeling starving hungry ... I loved Evie for perhaps six months of my life; two years later, she was back in America, knifing an old woman and being sent to reform school. A brief expression of my gratitude is in order at this point: if Evie had not come to live amongst us, my story might never have progressed beyond tourism-in-a-clocktower and cheating in class ... and then there would have been no climax in a Widows' Hostel, no clear proof of my meaning, no coda in a fuming factory over which there presides the winking, saffron-and-green dancing figure of the neon goddess Mumbadevi. But Evie Burns (was she snake or ladder? The answer's obvious: both) did come, complete with the silver bicycle which enabled me not only to discover the midnight children, but also to ensure the partition of the state of Bombay. To begin at the beginning: her hair was made of scarecrow straw, her skin was peppered with freckles and her teeth lived in a metal cage. These teeth were, it seemed, the only things on earth over which she was powerless — they grew wild, in malicious crazy-paving overlaps, and stung her dreadfully when she ate ice-cream. (I permit myself this one generalization: Americans have mastered the universe, but have no dominion over their mouths; whereas India is impotent, but her children tend to have excellent teeth.) Racked by toothaches, my Evie rose magnificently above the pain. Refusing to be ruled by bone and gums, she ate cake and drank Coke whenever they were going; and never complained. A tough kid, Evie Burns: her conquest of suffering confirmed her sovereignty over us all. It has been observed that all Americans need a frontier: pain was hers, and she was determined to push it out. Once, I shyly gave her a necklace of flowers (queen-of-the-night for my lily-of-the-eve), bought with my own pocket-money from a hawker-woman at Scandal Point. |
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"I don't wear flowers," Evelyn Lilith said, and tossed the unwanted chain into the air, spearing it before it fell with a pellet from her unerring Daisy air-pistol. Destroying flowers with a Daisy, she served notice that she was not to be manacled, not even by a necklace: she was our capricious, whirligig Lill-of-the-Hill. And also Eve. The Adam's-apple of my eye. How she arrived: Sonny Ibrahim, Eyeslice and Hairoil Sabarmati, Cyrus Dubash, the Monkey and I were playing French cricket in the circus-ring between Methwold's four palaces. A New Year's Day game: Toxy clapping at her barred window; even Bi-Appah was in a good humor and not, for once, abusing us. Cricket — even French cricket, and even when played by children — is a quiet game: peace anointed in linseed oil. The kissing of leather and willow; sprinkled applause; the occasional cry — "Shot! Shot, sir!" — "Owzatt??" but Evie on her bicycle was having none of that. "Hey, you! Alla you! Hey, whassamatter? You all deaf or what?" I was batting (elegantly as Ranji, powerfully as Vinoo Mankad) when she charged up the hill on her two-wheeler, straw hair flying, freckles ablaze, mouth-metal flashing semaphore messages in the sunlight, a scarecrow astride a silver bullet ... "Hey, you widda leaky nose! Stop watching the schoopid ball, ya crumb! I'll showya something worth watching!" Impossible to picture Evie Burns without also conjuring up a bicycle; and not just any two-wheeler, but one of the last of the great old-timers, an Arjuna Indiabike in mint condition, with drop-handlebars wrapped in masking tape and five gears and a seat made of reccine cheetah-skin. And a silver frame (the color, I don't need to tell you, of the Lone Ranger's horse) ... slobby Eyeslice and neat Hairoil, Cyrus the genius and the Monkey, and Sonny Ibrahim and myself — the best of friends, the true sons of the Estate, its heirs by right of birth — Sonny with the slow innocence he had had ever since the forceps dented his brain and me with my dangerous secret knowledge — yes, all of us, future bullfighters and Navy chiefs and all, stood frozen in open-mouthed attitudes as Evie Burns began to ride her bike, fasterfasterfaster, around and around the edges of the circus-ring. "Lookit me now: watch me go, ya dummies!" On and off the cheetah-seat, Evie performed. One foot on the seat, one leg stretched out behind her, she whirled around us; she built up speed and then did a headstand on the seat! She could straddle the front wheel, facing the rear, and work the pedals the wrong way round ... |
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gravity was her slave, speed her element, and we knew that a power had come among us, a witch on wheels, and the flowers of the hedgerows threw her petals, the dust of the circus-ring stood up in clouds of ovation, because the circus-ring had found its mistress, too: it was the canvas beneath the brush of her whirling wheels. Now we noticed that our heroine packed a Daisy air-pistol on her right hip ... "More to come, ya zeroes!" she yelled, and drew the weapon. Her pellets gave stones the gift of flight; we threw annas into the air and she gunned them down, stone-dead. "Targets! More targets!" — and Eyeslice surrendered his beloved pack of rummy cards without a murmur, so that she could shoot the heads off the kings. Annie Oakley in toothbraces — nobody dared question her sharpshooting, except once, and that was at the end of her reign, during the great cat invasion; and there were extenuating circumstances. Flushed, sweating, Evie Burns dismounted and announced: "From now on, there's a new big chief around here. Okay, Indians? Any arguments?" No arguments; I knew then that I had fallen in love. At Juhu Beach with Evie: she won the camel-races, could drink more coconut milk than any of us, could open her eyes under the sharp salt water of the Arabian Sea. Did six months make such a difference? (Evie was half a year older than me.) Did it entitle you to talk to grown-ups as an equal? Evie was seen gossiping with old man Ibrahim Ibrahim; she claimed Lila Sabarmati was teaching her to put on make-up; she visited Homi Catrack to gossip about guns. (It was the tragic irony of Homi Catrack's life that he, at whom a gun would one day be pointed, was a true aficionado of firearms ... in Evie he found a fellow-creature, a motherless child who was, unlike his own Toxy, as sharp as a knife and as bright as a bottle. Incidentally, Evie Burns wasted no sympathy on poor Toxy Catrack. "Wrong inna head," she opined carelessly to us all, "Oughta be put down like rats." But Evie: rats are not weak! There was more that was rodent-like in your face than in the whole body of your despised Tox.) That was Evelyn Lilith; and within weeks of her arrival, I had set off the chain reaction from whose effects I would never fully recover. It began with Sonny Ibrahim, Sonny-next-door, Sonny of the forcep-hollows, who has been sitting patiently in the wings of my story, awaiting his cue. In those days, Sonny was a badly bruised fellow: more than forceps had dented him. To love the Brass Monkey (even in the nine-year-old sense of the word) was no easy thing to do. |
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Because none of the children suspected that their time of birth had anything to do with what they were, it took me a while to find it out. At first, after the bicycle accident (and particularly once language marchers had purged me of Evie Burns), I contented myself with discovering, one by one, the secrets of the fabulous beings who had suddenly arrived in my mental field of vision, collecting them ravenously, the way some boys collect insects, and others spot railways trains; losing interest in autograph books and all other manifestations of the gathering instinct, I plunged whenever possible into the separate, and altogether brighter reality of the five hundred and eighty-one. (Two hundred and sixty-six of us were boys; and we were outnumbered by our female counterparts — three hundred and fifteen of them, including Parvati. Parvati-the-witch.) Midnight's children! ... From Kerala, a boy who had the ability of stepping into mirrors and re-emerging through any reflective surface in the land — through lakes and (with greater difficulty) the polished metal bodies of automobiles ... 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 ... |
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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 ... 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 ... |
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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. |
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He sold off the many tenements or chawls which he'd bought cheaply on his arrival in Bombay, and on which our family's fortunes had been based. Freeing himself from all business connections with human beings — even his anonymous tenants in Kurla and Worli, in Matunga and Mazagaon and Mahim — he liquefied his assets, and entered the rarefied and abstract air of financial speculation. Locked in his office, in those days, his one contact with the outside world (apart from his poor Fernandas) was his telephone. He spent his day deep in conference with this instrument, as it put his money into suchandsuch shares or soandso stocks, as it invested in government bonds or bear market equities, selling long or short as he commanded ... and invariably getting the best price of the day. In a streak of good fortune comparable only to my mother's success on the horses all those years previously, my father and his telephone took the stock exchange by storm, a feat made more remarkable by Ahmed Sinai's constantly-worsening drinking habits. Djinn-sodden, he nevertheless managed to ride high on the abstract undulations of the money market, reacting to its emotional, unpredictable shifts and changes the way a lover does to his beloved's slightest whim ... he could sense when a share would rise, when the peak would come; and he always got out before the fall. This was how his plunge into the abstract solitude of his telephonic days was disguised, how his financial coups obscured his steady divorce from reality; but under cover of his growing riches, his condition was getting steadily worse. Eventually the last of his calico-skirted secretaries quit, being unable to tolerate life in an atmosphere so thin and abstract as to make breathing difficult; and now my father sent for Mary Pereira and coaxed her with, "We're friends, Mary, aren't we, you and I?", to which the poor woman replied, "Yes, Sahib, I know; you will look after me when I'm old," and promised to find him a replacement. The next day she brought him her sister, Alice Pereira, who had worked for all kinds of bosses and had an almost infinite tolerance of men. Alice and Mary had long made up their quarrel over Joe D'Costa; the younger woman was often upstairs with us at the end of the day, bringing her qualities of sparkle and sauciness into the somewhat oppressive air of our home. I was fond of her, and it was through her that we learned of my father's greatest excesses, whose victims were a budgerigar and a mongrel dog. |
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she burst an artery as she ran and died spouting blood from her mouth and her behind, under the gaze of a hungry cow. The Brass Monkey (who didn't even like dogs) cried for a week; my mother became worried about dehydration and made her drink gallons of water, pouring it into her as if she were a lawn, Mary said; but I liked the new puppy my father bought me for my tenth birthday, out of some flicker of guilt perhaps: her name was the Baroness Simki von der Heiden, and she had a pedigree chock-full of champion Alsatians, although in time my mother discovered that that was as false as the mock-bulbul, as imaginary as my father's forgotten curse and Mughal ancestry; and after six months she died of venereal disease. 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! |
| 430 |
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. The government had been forced — although the elections were just around the corner — to announce to the world that it could accept no more development loans unless the lenders were willing to wait indefinitely for repayment. (But let me not overstate the case: although the production of finished steel reached only 2.4 million tons by the Plan's end in 1961, and although, during those five years, the number of landless and unemployed masses actually increased, so that it was greater than it had ever been under the British Raj, there were also substantial gains. The production of iron ore was almost doubled; power capacity did double; coal production leaped from thirty-eight million to fifty-four million tons. Five billion yards of cotton textiles were produced each year. |
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Also large numbers of bicycles, machine tools, diesel engines, power pumps and ceiling-fans. But I can't help ending on a downbeat: illiteracy survived unscathed; the population continued to mushroom.) On my tenth birthday, we were visited by my uncle Hanif, who made himself excessively unpopular at Methwold's Estate by booming cheerily, "Elections coming! Watch out for the Communists!" On my tenth birthday, when my uncle Hanif made his gaffe, my mother (who had begun disappearing on mysterious "shopping trips") dramatically and unaccountably blushed. On my tenth birthday, I was given an Alsatian puppy with a false pedigree who would shortly die of syphilis. On my tenth birthday, everyone at Methwold's Estate tried hard to be cheerful, but beneath this thin veneer everyone was possessed by the same thought: "Ten years, my God! Where have they gone? What have we done?" On my tenth birthday, old man Ibrahim announced his support for the Maha Gujarat Parishad; as far as possession of the city of Bombay was concerned, he nailed his colors to the losing side. On my tenth birthday, my suspicions aroused by a blush, I spied on my mother's thoughts; and what I saw there led to my beginning to follow her, to my becoming a private eye as daring as Bombay's legendary Dom Minto, and to important discoveries at and in the vicinity of the Pioneer CafE. On my tenth birthday, I had a party, which was attended by my family, which had forgotten how to be gay, by classmates from the Cathedral School, who had been sent by their parents, and by a number of mildly bored girl swimmers from the Breach Candy Pools, who permitted the Brass Monkey to fool around with them and pinch their bulging musculatures; as for adults, there were Mary and Alice Pereira, and the Ibrahims and Homi Catrack and Uncle Hanif and Pia Aunty, and Lila Sabarmati to whom the eyes of every schoolboy (and also Homi Catrack) remained firmly glued, to the considerable irritation of Pia. But the only member of the hilltop gang to attend was loyal Sonny Ibrahim, who had defied an embargo placed upon the festivities by an embittered Evie Burns. He gave me a message: "Evie says to tell you you're out of the gang." On my tenth birthday, Evie, Eyeslice, Hairoil and even Cyrus-the-great stormed my private hiding-place; they occupied the clocktower, and deprived me of its shelter. On my tenth birthday, Sonny looked upset, and the Brass Monkey detached herself from her swimmers and became utterly furious with Evie Burns. |
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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. "... When you are stronger," someone who cannot be named is saying, "a day at Elephanta, why not, a nice ride in a motor-launch, and all those caves with so-beautiful carvings; or Juhu Beach, for swimming and coconut-milk and camel-races; or Aarey Milk Colony, even! ..." And Padma: "Fresh air, yes, and the little one will like to be with his father." And someone, patting my son on his head: "There, of course, we will all go. Nice picnic; nice day out. Baba, it will do you good ..." As chutney arrives, bearer-borne, in my room, I hasten to put a stop to these suggestions. |
| 433 |
Early each morning, it would be full of the best-looking ne'er-do-wells in the city, all the goondas and taxi-drivers and petty smugglers and racecourse tipsters who had once, long ago, arrived in the city dreaming of film stardom, of grotesquely vulgar homes and black money payments; because every morning at six, the major studios would send minor functionaries to the Pioneer CafE to rope in extras for the day's shooting. For half an hour each morning, when D. W. Rama Studios and Filmistan Talkies and R K Films were taking their pick, the Pioneer was the focus of all the city's ambitions and hopes; then the studio scouts left, accompanied by the day's lucky ones, and the CafE emptied into its habitual, neon-lit torpor. Around lunchtime, a different set of dreams walked into the CafE, to spend the afternoon hunched over cards and Lovely Lassi and rough biris — different men with different hopes: I didn't know it then, but the afternoon Pioneer was a notorious Communist Party hangout. It was afternoon; I saw my mother enter the Pioneer CafE; not daring to follow her, I stayed in the street, pressing my nose against a spider-webbed corner of the grubby window-pane; ignoring the curious glances I got — because my whites, although boot-stained, were nevertheless starched; my hair, although boot-rumpled, was well-oiled; my shoes, scuffed as they were, were still the plimsolls of a prosperous child — I followed her with my eyes as she went hesitantly and verruca-hobbled past rickety tables and hard-eyed men; I saw my mother sit down at a shadowed table at the far end of the narrow cavern; and then I saw the man who rose to greet her. The skin on his face hung in folds which revealed that he had once been overweight; his teeth were stained with paan. He wore a clean white kurta with Lucknow-work around the buttonholes. He had long hair, poetically long, hanging lankly over his ears; but the top of his head was bald and shiny. Forbidden syllables echoed in my ears: Na. Dir. Nadir. I realized that I wished desperately that I'd never resolved to come. Once upon a time there was an underground husband who fled, leaving loving messages of divorce; a poet whose verses didn't even rhyme, whose life was saved by pie-dogs. After a lost decade he emerged from goodness-knows-where, his skin hanging loose in memory of his erstwhile plumpness; and, like his once-upon-a-time wife, he had acquired a new name ... Nadir Khan was now Qasim Khan, official candidate of the official Communist Party of India. |
| 434 |
Lai Qasim. Qasim the Red. Nothing is without meaning: not without reason are blushes red. My uncle Hanif said, "Watch out for the Communists!" and my mother turned scarlet; politics and emotions were united in her cheeks ... through the dirty, square, glassy cinema-screen of the Pioneer CafE's window, I watched Amina Sinai and the no-longer-Nadir play out their love scene; they performed with the ineptitude of genuine amateurs. 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. |
| 435 |
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? Did I return to the cafE of extras and Marxists? Did I confront my mother with the heinous nature of her offence — because what mother has any business to — never mind about what once-upon-a-time — in full view of her only son, how could she how could she how could she? Answers: I did not; I did not; I did not. What I did: when she went on "shopping trips," I lodged myself in her thoughts. No longer anxious to gain the evidence of my own eyes, I rode in my mother's head, up to the north of the city; in this unlikely incognito, I sat in the Pioneer CafE and heard conversations about the electoral prospects of Qasim the Red; disembodied but wholly present, I trailed my mother as she accompanied Qasim on his rounds, up and down the tenements of the district (were they the same chawls which my father had recently sold, abandoning his tenants to their fate?), as she helped him to get water-taps fixed and pestered landlords to initiate repairs and disinfections. Amina Sinai moved amongst the destitute on behalf of the Communist Party — a fact which never failed to leave her amazed. |
| 436 |
while the government tried to work out what on earth to do, the city's inhabitants decided to encourage it to be quick. Riots proliferated (and you could still hear the old battle-song of the Mahrattas — How are you? I am well! I'll take a stick and thrash you to hell! — rising above the fray); and to make things worse, the weather joined in the melEe. There was a severe drought; roads cracked; in the villages, peasants were being forced to kill their cows; and on Christmas Day (of whose significance no boy who attended a mission school and was attended upon by a Catholic ayah could fail to be aware) there was a series of loud explosions at the Walkeshwar Reservoir and the main fresh-water pipes which were the city's lifelines began to blow fountains into the air like giant steel whales. 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. |
| 437 |
the Brass Monkey stood up a little crookedly and shook the sodden hem of her dress, ignoring the cries of retribution proceeding from the lips of Amina Sinai and Mary Pereira; because there in the hose-wet dirt of the circus-ring lay Evie Burns, her tooth-braces broken, her hair matted with dust and spittle, her spirit and her dominion over us broken for once and for all. A few weeks later her father sent her home for good, "To get a decent education away from these savages," he was heard to remark; I only heard from her once, six months later, when right out of the blue she wrote me the letter which informed me that she had knifed an old lady who had objected to her assault on a cat. "I gave it to her all right," Evie wrote, "Tell your sister she just got lucky." I salute that unknown old woman: she paid the Monkey's bill. More interesting than Evie's last message is a thought which occurs to me now, as I look back down the tunnel of time. Holding before my eyes the image of Monkey and Evie rolling in the dirt, I seem to discern the driving force behind their battle to the death, a motive far deeper than the mere persecution of cats: they were fighting over me. Evie and my sister (who were, in many ways, not at all dissimilar) kicked and scratched, ostensibly over the fate of a few thirsty strays; but perhaps Evie's kicks were aimed at me, perhaps they were the violence of her anger at my invasion of her head; and then maybe the strength of the Monkey was the strength of sibling-loyalty, and her act of war was actually an act of love. Blood, then, was spilled in the circus-ring. Another rejected title for these pages — you may as well know — was "Thicker Than Water." In those days of water shortages, something thicker than water ran down the face of Evie Burns; the loyalties of blood motivated the Brass Monkey; and in the streets of the city, rioters spilled each other's blood. There were bloody murders, and perhaps it is not appropriate to end this sanguinary catalogue by mentioning, once again, the rushes of blood to my mother's cheeks. Twelve million votes were colored red that year, and red is the color of blood. More blood will flow soon: the types of blood, A and O, Alpha and Omega — and another, a third possibility — must be kept in mind. Also other factors: zygosity, and Kell antibodies, and that most mysterious of sanguinary attributes, known as rhesus, which is also a type of monkey. Everything has shape, if you look for it. There is no escape from form. |
| 438 |
But before blood has its day, I shall take wing (like the parahamsa gander who can soar out of one element into another) and return, briefly, to the affairs of my inner world; because although the fall of Evie Burns ended my ostracism by the hilltop children, still I found it difficult to forgive; and for a time, holding myself solitary and aloof, I immersed myself in the events inside my head, in the early history of the association of the midnight children. To be honest: I didn't like Shiva. I disliked the roughness of his tongue, the crudity of his ideas; and I was beginning to suspect him of a string of terrible crimes — although I found it impossible to find any evidence in his thoughts, because he, alone of the children of midnight, could close off from me any part of his thoughts he chose to keep to himself — which, in itself, increased my growing dislike and suspicion of the rat-faced fellow. However, I was nothing if not fair; and it would not have been fair to have kept him apart from the other members of the Conference. I should explain that as my mental facility increased, I found that it was possible not only to pick up the children's transmissions; not only to broadcast my own messages; but also (since I seem to be stuck with this radio metaphor) to act as a sort of national network, so that by opening my transformed mind to all the children I could turn it into a kind of forum in which they could talk to one another, through me. So, in the early days of 1958, the five hundred and eighty-one children would assemble, for one hour, between midnight and one a. m., in the lok sabha or parliament of my brain. We were as motley, as raucous, as undisciplined as any bunch of five hundred and eighty-one ten-year-olds; and on top of our natural exuberance, there was the excitement of our discovery of each other. After one hour of top-volume yelling jabbering arguing giggling, I would fall exhausted into a sleep too deep for nightmares, and still wake up with a headache; but I didn't mind. Awake I was obliged to face the multiple miseries of maternal perfidy and paternal decline, of the fickleness of friendship and the varied tyrannies of school; asleep, I was at the center of the most exciting world any child had ever discovered. Despite Shiva, it was nicer to be asleep. Shiva's conviction that he (or he-and-I) was the natural leader of our group by dint of his (and my) birth on the stroke of midnight had, I was bound to admit, one strong argument in its favor. |
| 439 |
— 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. |
| 440 |
I turn to my mistress; she applauds, softly. "Hey man, pretty good." But now my moment has passed; and Fat Perce is picking himself up, and Glandy Keith is already moving towards me ... abandoning all pretence of manhood, I turn and run. And the two bullies are after me and behind them comes Masha Miovic calling, "Where are you running, little hero?" But there's no time for her now, mustn't let them get me, into the nearest classroom and try and shut the door, but Fat Perce's foot is in the way and now the two of them are inside too and I dash at the door, I grab it with my right hand, trying to force it open, get out if you can, they are pushing the door shut, but I'm pulling with the strength of my fear, I have it open a few inches, my hand curls around it, and now Fat Perce slams all his weight against the door and it shuts too fast for me to get my hand out of the way and it's shut. A thud. And outside, Masha Miovic arrives and looks down at the floor; and sees the top third of my middle finger lying there like a lump of well-chewed bubble-gum. This was the point at which she fainted. No pain. Everything very far away. Fat Perce and Glandy Keith fleeing, to get help or to hide. I look at my hand out of pure curiosity. My finger has become a fountain: red liquid spurts out to the rhythm of my heart-beat. Never knew a finger held so much blood. Pretty. Now here's nurse, don't worry, nurse. Only a scratch. Your parents are being phoned; Mr. Crusoe is getting his car keys. Nurse is putting a great wad of cotton-wool over the stump. Filling up like red candy-floss. And now Crusoe. Get in the car, Saleem, your mother is going straight to the hospital. Yes sir. And the bit, has anybody got the bit? Yes headmaster here it is. Thank you nurse. Probably no use but you never know. Hold this while I drive, Saleem ... and holding up my severed fingertip in my unmutilated left hand, I am driven to the Breach Candy Hospital through the echoing streets of night. At the hospital: white walls stretchers everyone talking at once. Words pour around me like fountains. "O God preserve us, my little piece-of-the-moon, what have they done to you?" To which old Crusoe, "Heh heh. Mrs. Sinai. Accidents will happen. Boys will be." But my mother, enraged, "What kind of school? Mr. Caruso? I'm here with my son's finger in pieces and you tell me. Not good enough. No, sir." And now, while Crusoe, "Actually the name's — like Robinson, you know — heh heh," the doctor is approaching and a question is being asked, whose answer will change the world. |
| 441 |
My father advances on my bed, towers over me, I've never seen him look like this before. "Abba ..." And he, "I should have known. Just look, where am I in that face. That nose, I should have ..." He turns on his heel and leaves the room; my mother follows him, too distraught to whisper now: "No, janum, I won't let you believe such things about me! I'll kill myself! I'll," and the door swings shut behind them. There is a noise outside: like a clap. Or a slap. Most of what matters in your life takes place in your absence. Tony Brent begins crooning his latest hit into my good ear: and assures me, melodiously, that "The Clouds Will Soon Roll By." ... And now I, Saleem Sinai, intend briefly to endow myself-then with the benefits of hindsight; destroying the unities and conventions of fine writing, I make him cognizant of what was to come, purely so that he can be permitted to think the following thoughts: "O eternal opposition of inside and outside! Because a human being, inside himself, is anything but a whole, anything but homogeneous; all kinds of everywhichthing are jumbled up inside him, and he is one person one minute and another the next. The body, on the other hand, is homogeneous as anything. Indivisible, a one-piece suit, a sacred temple, if you will. It is important to preserve this wholeness. But the loss of my finger (which was conceivably foretold by the pointing digit of Raleigh's fisherman), not to mention the removal of certain hairs from my head, has undone all that. Thus we enter into a state of affairs which is nothing short of revolutionary; and its effect on history is bound to be pretty damn startling. Uncork the body, and God knows what you permit to come tumbling out. Suddenly you are forever other than you were; and the world becomes such that parents can cease to be parents, and love can turn to hate. And these, mark you, are only the effects on private life. The consequences for the sphere of public action, as will be shown, are — were — will be no less profound." Finally, withdrawing my gift of foreknowledge, I leave you with the image of a ten-year-old boy with a bandaged finger, sitting in a hospital bed, musing about blood and noises-like-claps and the expression on his father's face; zooming out slowly into long shot, I allow the sound-track music to drown my words, because Tony Brent is reaching the end of his medley, and his finale, too, is the same as Winkie's: "Good Night, Ladies" is the name of the song. Merrily it rolls along, rolls along, rolls along ... |
| 442 |
He besieged Homi Catrack with scripts. Catrack produced none of them; they sat in the small Marine Drive apartment, covering every available surface, so that you had to pick them off the toilet seat before you could lift it; but Catrack (out of charity? Or for another, soon-to-be-revealed reason?) paid my uncle a studio salary. That was how they survived, Hanif and Pia, on the largess of the man who would, in time, become the second human being to be murdered by mushrooming Saleem. Homi Catrack begged him, "Maybe just one love scene?" And Pia, "What do you think, village people are going to give their rupees to see women pickling Alfonsos?" But Hanif, obdurately: "This is a film about work, not kissing. And nobody pickles Alfonsos. You must use mangoes with bigger stones." The ghost of Joe D'Costa did not, so far as I know, follow Mary Pereira into exile; however, his absence only served to increase her anxiety. She began, in these Marine Drive days, to fear that he would become visible to others besides herself, and reveal, during her absence, the awful secrets of what happened at Doctor Narlikar's Nursing Home on Independence night. So each morning she left the apartment in a state of jelly-like worry, arriving at Buckingham Villa in near-collapse; only when she found that Joe had remained both invisible and silent did she relax. But after she returned to Marine Drive, laden with samosas and cakes and chutneys, her anxiety began to mount once again ... but as I had resolved (having troubles enough of my own) to keep out of all heads except the Children's, I did not understand why. Panic attracts panic; on her journeys, sitting in jam-packed buses (the trams had just been discontinued), Mary heard all sorts of rumors and tittle-tattle, which she relayed to me as matters of absolute fact. According to Mary, the country was in the grip of a sort of supernatural invasion. "Yes, baba, they say in Kurukshetra an old Sikh woman woke up in her hut and saw the old-time war of the Kurus and Pandavas happening right outside! It was in the papers and all, she pointed to the place where she saw the chariots of Arjun and Karna, and there were truly wheel-marks in the mud! Baap-re-baap, such so-bad things: at Gwalior they have seen the ghost of the Rani of Jhansi; rakshasas have been seen many-headed like Ravana, doing things to women and pulling down trees with one finger. I am good Christian woman, baba; but it gives me fright when they tell that the tomb of Lord Jesus is found in Kashmir. |
| 443 |
I stood on the balcony with Mary Pereira, turning my bad ear to her whispered rumors, the city at my back and the crowding, chattering card-schools before my eyes. And one day, amongst the card-players, I recognized the sunken-eyed, ascetic form of Mr. Homi Catrack. Who greeted me with embarrassed heartiness: "Hi there, young chap! Doing fine? Of course, of course you are!" My uncle Hanif played rummy dedicatedly; but he was in the thrall of a curious obsession — namely, that he was determined never to lay down a hand until he completed a thirteen-card sequence in hearts. Always hearts; all the hearts, and nothing but the hearts would do. In his quest for this unattainable perfection, my uncle would discard perfectly good threes-of-a-kind, and whole sequences of spades clubs diamonds, to the raucous amusement of his friends. I heard the renowned shehnai-player Ustad Changez Khan (who dyed his hair, so that on hot evenings the tops of his ears were discolored by running black fluid) tell my uncle; "Come on, mister; leave this heart business, and just play like the rest of us fellows." My uncle confronted temptation; then boomed above the din, "No, dammit, go to the devil and leave me to my game!" He played cards like a fool; but I, who had never seen such singleness of purpose, felt like clapping. One of the regulars at Hanif Aziz's legendary card-evenings was a Times of India staff photographer, who was full of sharp tales and scurrilous stories. My uncle introduced me to him: "Here's the fellow who put you on the front page, Saleem. Here is Kalidas Gupta. A terrible photographer; a really badmaash type. Don't talk to him too long; he'll make your head spin with scandal!" Kalidas had a head of silver hair and a nose like an eagle. I thought he was wonderful. "Do you really know scandals?" I asked him; but all he said was, "Son, if I told, they would make your ears burn." But he never found out that the evil genius, the Eminence grise behind the greatest scandal the city had ever known was none other than Saleem Snotnose ... I mustn't race ahead. The affair of the curious baton of Commander Sabarmati must be recounted in its proper place. Effects must not (despite the tergiversatory nature of time in 1958) be permitted to precede causes. I was alone on the balcony. Mary Pereira was in the kitchen helping Pia to prepare sandwiches and cheese-pakoras; Hanif Aziz was immersed in his search for the thirteen hearts; and now Mr. Homi Catrack came out to stand beside me. |
| 444 |
It had begun to decay, so that now bits of it were missing: an ear, several toes on each foot, most of its teeth; and there was a hole in its stomach larger than an egg. Distressed by this crumbling spectre, she asked it (when she was sure nobody else was within earshot): "O God, Joe, what you been doing to yourself?" He replied that the responsibility for her crime had been placed squarely on his shoulders until she confessed, and it was playing hell with his system. From that moment it became inevitable that she would confess; but each time she looked at me she found herself prevented from doing so. Still, it was only a matter of time. In the meanwhile, and utterly ignorant of how close I was to being exposed as a fraud, I was attempting to come to terms with a Methwold's Estate in which, too, a number of transformations had occurred. In the first place, my father seemed to want nothing more to do with me, an attitude of mind which I found hurtful but (considering my mutilated body) entirely understandable. In the second place, there was the remarkable change in the fortunes of the Brass Monkey. "My position in this household," I was obliged to admit to myself, "has been usurped." Because now it was the Monkey whom my father admitted into the abstract sanctum of his office, the Monkey whom he smothered in his squashy belly, and who was obliged to bear the burdens of his dreams about the future. I even heard Mary Pereira singing to the Monkey the little ditty which had been my theme-song all my days: "Anything you want to be," Mary sang, "you can be; You can be just what-all you want!" Even my mother seemed to have caught the mood; and now it was my sister who always got the biggest helping of chips at the dinner-table, and the extra nargisi kofta, and the choicest pasanda. While I — whenever anyone in the house chanced to look at me — was conscious of a deepening furrow between their eyebrows, and an atmosphere of confusion and distrust. But how could I complain? The Monkey had tolerated my special position for years. With the possible exception of the time I fell out of a tree in our garden after she nudged me (which could have been an accident, after all), she had accepted my primacy with excellent grace and even loyalty. Now it was my turn; long-trousered, I was required to be adult about my demotion. "This growing up," I told myself, "is harder than I expected." The Monkey, it must be said, was no less astonished than I at her elevation to the role of favored child. |
| 445 |
She did her best to fall from grace, but it seemed she could do no wrong. These were the days of her flirtation with Christianity, which was partly due to the influence of her European school-friends and partly to the rosary-fingering presence of Mary Pereira (who, unable to go to church because of her fear of the confessional, would regale us instead with Bible stories); mostly, however, I believe it was an attempt by the Monkey to regain her old, comfortable position in the family doghouse (and, speaking of dogs, the Baroness Simki had been put to sleep during my absence, killed by promiscuity). My sister spoke highly of gentle Jesus meek and mild; my mother smiled vaguely and patted her on the head. She went around the house humming hymns; my mother took up the tunes and sang along. She requested a nun's outfit to replace her favorite nurse's dress; it was given to her. She threaded chick-peas on a string and used them as a rosary, muttering Hail-Mary-full-of-grace, and my parents praised her skill with her hands. Tormented by her failure to be punished, she mounted to extremes of religious fervor, reciting the Our Father morning and night, fasting in the weeks of Lent instead of during Ramzan, revealing an unsuspected streak of fanaticism which would, later, begin to dominate her personality; and still, it appeared, she was tolerated. Finally she discussed the matter with me. "Well, brother," she said, "looks like from now on I'll just have to be the good guy, and you can have all the fun." She was probably right; my parents' apparent loss of interest in me should have given me a greater measure of freedom; but I was mesmerized by the transformations which were taking place in every aspect of my life, and fun, in such circumstances, seemed hard to have. 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. |
| 446 |
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 ... |
| 447 |
"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! We," I cried passionately, "must be a third principle, we must be the force which drives between the horns of the dilemma; for only by being other, by being new, can we fulfill the promise of our birth!" I had supporters, and none greater than Parvati-the-witch; but I felt them slipping away from me, each distracted by his or her own life ... just as, in truth, I was being distracted by mine. It was as though our glorious congress was turning out to be no more than another of the toys of childhood, as though long trousers were destroying what midnight had created ... "We must decide on a program," I pleaded, "our own Five Year Plan, why not?" But I could hear, behind my anxious broadcast, the amused laughter of my greatest rival; and there was Shiva in all our heads, saying scornfully, "No, little rich boy; there is no third principle; there is only money-and-poverty, and have-and-lack, and right-and-left; there is only me-against-the-world! The world is not ideas, rich boy; the world is no place for dreamers or their dreams; the world, little Snotnose, is things. Things and their makers rule the world; look at Birla, and Tata, and all the powerful: they make things. For things, the country is run. Not for people. For things, America and Russia send aid; but five hundred million stay hungry. When you have things, then there is time to dream; when you don't, you fight." The Children, listening fascinatedly as we fought ... or perhaps not, perhaps even our dialogue failed to hold their interest. And now I: "But people are not things; if we come together, if we love each other, if we show that this, just this, this people-together, this Conference, this children-sticking-together-through-thick-and-thin, can be that third way ..." But Shiva, snorting: "Little rich boy, that's all just wind. All that importance-of-the-individual. All that possibility-of-humanity. Today, what people are is just another kind of thing." And I, Saleem, crumbling: "But ... free will ... hope ... the great soul, otherwise known as mahatma, of mankind ... and what of poetry, and art, and ..." Whereupon Shiva seized his victory: "You see? I knew you'd turn out to be like that. Mushy, like overcooked rice. Sentimental as a grandmother. Go, who wants your rubbish? |
| 448 |
Age, failing to draw his teeth and poison-sacs, had turned him instead into the incarnation of snakehood; like other Europeans who stay too long, the ancient insanities of India had pickled his brains, so that he had come to believe the superstitions of the Institute orderlies, according to whom he was the last of a line which began when a king cobra mated with a woman who gave birth to a human (but serpentine) child ... it seems that all my life I've only had to turn a corner to tumble into yet another new and fabulously transmogrified world. Climb a ladder (or even a staircase) and you find a snake awaiting you. The curtains were always drawn; in Schaapsteker's rooms, the sun neither rose nor set, and no clocks ticked. Was it the demon, or our mutual sense of isolation which drew us together? ... Because, in those days of the Monkey's ascendancy and the Conference's decline, I began to ascend the stairs whenever possible, and listen to the ravings of the crazy, sibilant old man. His first greeting to me, when I stumbled into his unlocked lair, was: "So, child — you have recovered from the typhoid." The sentence stirred time like a sluggish dust-cloud and rejoined me to my one-year-old self; I remembered the story of how Schaapsteker had saved my life with snake-poison. And afterwards, for several weeks, I sat at his feet, and he revealed to me the cobra which lay coiled within myself. Who listed, for my benefit, the occult powers of snakes? (Their shadows kill cows; if they enter a man's dreams, his wife conceives; if they are killed, the murderer's family is denied male issue for twenty generations.) And who described to me — with the aid of books and stuffed corpses — the cobra's constant foes? "Study your enemies, child," he hissed, "or they will surely kill you." ... At Schaapsteker's feet, I studied the mongoose and the boar, the dagger-billed adjutant bird and the barasinha deer, which crushes snakes' heads under its feet; and the Egyptian ichneumon, and ibis; the four-feet-high secretary bird, fearless and hook-beaked, whose appearance and name made me think suspicious thoughts about my father's Alice Pereira; and the jackal buzzard, the stink cat, the honey ratel from the hills; the road runner, the peccary, and the formidable cangamba bird. 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. |
| 449 |
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. |
| 450 |
It is not untrue to say that what came to be known as the Sabarmati affair had its real beginnings at a dingy cafE in the north of the city, when a stowaway watched a ballet of circling hands. I was secret; I struck from the cover of a bush. What drove me? Hands at the Pioneer CafE; wrong-number telephone calls; notes slipped to me on balconies, and passed under cover of bedsheets; my mother's hypocrisy and Pia's inconsolable grief: "Hai! Ai-hai! Ai-hai-hai!" ... Mine was a slow poison; but three weeks later, it had its effect. It emerged, afterwards, that after receiving my anonymous note Commander Sabarmati had engaged the services of the illustrious Dom Minto, Bombay's best-known private detective. (Minto, old and almost lame, had lowered his rates by then.) He waited until he received Minto's report. And then: That Sunday morning, six children sat in a row at the Metro Cub Club, watching Francis The Talking Mule And The Haunted House. You see, I had my alibi; I was nowhere near the scene of the crime. Like Sin, the crescent moon, I acted from a distance upon the tides of the world ... while a mule talked on a screen, Commander Sabarmati visited the naval arsenal. He signed out a good, long-nosed revolver; also ammunition. He held, in his left hand, a piece of paper on which an address had been written in a private detective's tidy hand; in his right hand, he grasped the unholstered gun. By taxi, the Commander arrived at Colaba Causeway. He paid off the cab, walked gun-in-hand down a narrow gully past shirt-stalls and toyshops, and ascended the staircase of an apartment block set back from the gully at the rear of a concrete courtyard. He rang the doorbell of apartment 18C; it was heard in 18B by an Anglo-Indian teacher giving private Latin tuition. When Commander Sabarmati's wife Lila answered the door, he shot her twice in the stomach at point-blank range. She fell backwards; he marched past her, and found Mr. Homi Catrack rising from the toilet, his bottom unwiped, pulling frantically at his trousers. Commander Vinoo Sabarmati shot him once in the genitals, once in the heart and once through the right eye. The gun was not silenced; but when it had finished speaking, there was an enormous silence in the apartment. Mr. Catrack sat down on the toilet after he was shot and seemed to be smiling. Commander Sabarmati walked out of the apartment block with the smoking gun in his hand (he was seen, through the crack of a door, by a terrified Latin tutor); he strolled along Colaba Causeway until he saw a traffic policeman on his little podium. |
| 451 |
How much of their awesome competence leaked into her?), there lurked the ghost of a boy who had been my friend. "That Lord Khusro?" Padma asks, amazed. "You mean that same mahaguru who drowned at sea last year?" Yes, Padma; he could not walk on water; and very few people who have come into contact with me have been vouchsafed a natural death ... let me confess that I was somewhat resentful of Cyrus's apotheosis. "It should have been me," I even thought, "I am the magic child; not only my primacy at home, but even my true innermost nature, has now been purloined." Padma: I never became a "mahaguru"; millions have never seated themselves at my feet; and it was my own fault, because one day, many years ago, I had gone to hear Cyrus's lecture on the Parts of a Wooman's Body. "What?" Padma shakes her head, puzzled. "What's this now?" The nuclear physicist Dubash possessed a beautiful marble statuette — a female nude — and with the help of this figurine, his son would give expert lectures on female anatomy to an audience of sniggering boys. Not free; Cyrus-the-great charged a fee. In exchange for anatomy, he demanded comic-books — and I, in all innocence, gave him a copy of that most precious of Superman comics, the one containing the frame-story, about the explosion of the planet Krypton and the rocket-ship in which Jor-El his father despatched him through space, to land on earth and be adopted by the good, mild Kents ... did nobody else see it? In all those years, did no person understand that what Mrs. Dubash had done was to rework and reinvent the most potent of all modern myths — the legend of the coming of the superman? I saw the hoardings trumpeting the coming of Lord Khusro Khusrovand Bhagwan; and found myself obliged, yet again, to accept responsibility for the events of my turbulent, fabulous world. How I admire the leg-muscles of my solicitous Padma! There she squats, a few feet from my table, her sari hitched up in fisherwoman-fashion. Calf-muscles show no sign of strain; thigh-muscles, rippling through sari-folds, display their commendable stamina. Strong enough to squat forever, simultaneously defying gravity and cramp, my Padma listens unhurriedly to my lengthy tale; O mighty pickle-woman! What reassuring solidity, how comforting an air of permanence, in her biceps and triceps ... for my admiration extends also to her arms, which could wrestle mine down in a trice, and from which, when they enfold me nightly in futile embraces, there is no escape. |
| 452 |
Past our crisis now, we exist in perfect harmony: I recount, she is recounted to; she ministers, and I accept her ministrations with grace. I am, in fact, entirely content with the uncomplaining thews of Padma Mangroli, who is, unaccountably, more interested in me than my tales. Why I have chosen to expound on Padma's musculature: these days, it's to those muscles, as much as to anything or -one (for instance, my son, who hasn't even learned to read as yet), that I'm telling my story. Because I am rushing ahead at breakneck speed; errors are possible, and overstatements, and jarring alterations in tone; I'm racing the cracks, but I remain conscious that errors have already been made, and that, as my decay accelerates (my writing speed is having trouble keeping up), the risk of unreliability grows ... in this condition, I am learning to use Padma's muscles as my guides. When she's bored, I can detect in her fibers the ripples of uninterest; when she's unconvinced, there is a tic which gets going in her cheek. The dance of her musculature helps to keep me on the rails; because in autobiography, as in all literature, what actually happened is less important than what the author can manage to persuade his audience to believe ... Padma, having accepted the story of Cyrus-the-great, gives me the courage to speed on, into the worst time of my eleven-year-old life (there is, was, worse to come) — into the August-and-September when revelations flowed faster than blood. 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. |
| 453 |
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. |
| 454 |
And then, on the twenty-second day of the mourning period, my grandfather, Aadam Aziz, saw God. He was sixty-eight that year — still a decade older than the century. But sixteen years without optimism had taken a heavy toll; his eyes were still blue, but his back was bent. Shuffling around Buckingham Villa in embroidered skull-cap and full-length chugha-coat — coated, too, in a thin film of dust — he munched aimlessly on raw carrots and sent thin streaks of spittle down the grizzled white contours of his chin. And as he declined, Reverend Mother grew larger and stronger; she, who had once wailed pitifully at the sight of Mercurochrome, now appeared to thrive on his weakness, as though their marriage had been one of those mythical unions in which succubi appear to men as innocent damsels, and, after luring them into the matrimonial bed, regain their true, awful aspect and begin to swallow their souls ... my grandmother, in those days, had acquired a moustache almost as luxuriant as the dustily-sagging hair on the upper lip of her one surviving son. She sat cross-legged on her bed, smearing her lip with a mysterious fluid which set hard around the hairs and was then ripped off by a sharp, violent hand; but the remedy only served to exacerbate the ailment. "He has become like a child again, whatsitsname," Reverend Mother told my grandfather's children, "and Hanif has finished him off." She warned us that he had begun to see things. "He talks to people who are not there," she whispered loudly while he wandered through the room sucking his teeth, "How he calls out, whatsitsname! In the middle of the night!" And she mimicked him: "Ho, Tai? Is it you?" She told us children about the boatman, and the Hummingbird, and the Rani of Cooch Naheen. "Poor man has lived too long, whatsitsname; no father should see his son die first." ... And Amina, listening, shook her head in sympathy, not knowing that Aadam Aziz would leave her this legacy — that she, too, in her last days, would be visited by things which had no business to return. We could not use the ceiling-fans for the dust; perspiration ran down the face of my stricken grandfather and left streaks of mud on his cheeks. Sometimes he would grab anyone who was near him and speak with utter lucidity: "These Nehrus will not be happy until they have made themselves hereditary kings!" Or, dribbling into the face of a squirming General Zulfikar: "Ah, unhappy Pakistan! How ill-served by her rulers!" But at other times he seemed to imagine himself in a gemstone store, and muttered, "... |
| 455 |
Yes: there were emeralds and rubies ..." The Monkey whispered to me, "Is grandpa going to die?" What leaked into me from Aadam Aziz: a certain vulnerability to women, but also its cause, the hole at the center of himself caused by his (which is also my) failure to believe or disbelieve in God. And something else as well — something which, at the age of eleven, I saw before anyone else noticed. My grandfather had begun to crack. "In the head?" Padma asks, "You mean in the upper storey?" The boatman Tai said: "The ice is always waiting, Aadam baba, just under the water's skin." I saw the cracks in his eyes — a delicate tracery of colorless lines against the blue; I saw a network of fissures spreading beneath his leathery skin; and I answered the Monkey's question: "I think he is." Before the end of the forty-day mourning period, my grandfather's skin had begun to split and flake and peel; he could hardly open his mouth to eat because of the cuts in the corners of his lips; and his teeth began to drop like Flitted flies. But a crack-death can be slow; and it was a long time before we knew about the other cracks, about the disease which was nibbling at his bones, so that finally his skeleton disintegrated into powder inside the weatherbeaten sack of his skin. Padma is looking suddenly panicky. "What are you saying? You, mister: are you telling that you also ... what nameless thing can eat up any man's bones? Is it ..." No time to pause now; no time for sympathy or panic; I have already gone further than I should. Retreating a little in time, I must mention that something also leaked into Aadam Aziz from me; because on the twenty-third day of the mourning period, he asked the entire family to assemble in the same room of glass vases (no need to hide them from my uncle now) and cushions and immobilized fans, the same room in which I had announced visions of my own ... Reverend Mother had said, "He has become like a child again"; like a child, my grandfather announced that, three weeks after he had heard of the death of a son whom he had believed to be alive and well, he had seen with his own eyes the God in whose death he had tried all his life to believe. And, like a child, he was not believed. Except by one person ... "Yes, listen," my grandfather said, his voice a weak imitation of his old booming tones, "Yes, Rani? You are here? And Abdullah? Come, sit, Nadir, this is news — where is Ahmed? Alia will want him here ... God, my children; God whom I fought all my life. |
| 456 |
at the end of the forty-day mourning period, he would refuse to go to Pakistan (as Reverend Mother had planned) because that was a country built especially for God; and in the remaining years of his life he often disgraced himself by stumbling into mosques and temples with his old man's stick, mouthing imprecations and lashing out at any worshipper or holy man within range. In Agra, he was tolerated for the sake of the man he had once been; the old ones at the Cornwallis Road paan-shop played hit-the-spittoon and reminisced with compassion about the Doctor Sahib's past. Reverend Mother was obliged to yield to him for this reason if for no other — the iconoclasm of his dotage would have created a scandal in a country where he was not known. Behind his foolishness and his rages, the cracks continued to spread; the disease munched steadily on his bones, while hatred ate the rest of him away. He did not die, however, until 1964. It happened like this: on Wednesday, December 25th, 1963 — on Christmas Day! — Reverend Mother awoke to find her husband gone. Coming out into the courtyard of her home, amid hissing geese and the pale shadows of the dawn, she called for a servant; and was told that the Doctor Sahib had gone by rickshaw to the railway station. By the time she reached the station, the train had gone; and in this way my grandfather, following some unknown impulse, began his last journey, so that he could end his story where it (and mine) began, in a city surrounded by mountains and set upon a lake. The valley lay hidden in an eggshell of ice; the mountains had closed in, to snarl like angry jaws around the city on the lake ... winter in Srinagar; winter in Kashmir. On Friday, December 27th, a man answering to my grandfather's description was seen, chugha-coated, drooling, in the vicinity of the Hazratbal Mosque. At four forty-five on Saturday morning, Haji Muhammad Khalil Ghanai noticed the theft, from the Mosque's inner sanctum, of the valley's most treasured relic: the holy hair of the Prophet Muhammad. Did he? Didn't he? If it was him, why did he not enter the Mosque, stick in hand, to belabor the faithful as he had become accustomed to doing? If not him, then why? There were rumors of a Central Government plot to "demoralize the Kashmiri Muslims," by stealing their sacred hair; and counter-rumors about Pakistani agents provocateurs, who supposedly stole the relic to foment unrest ... did they? Or not? Was this bizarre incident truly political, or was it the penultimate attempt at revenge upon God by a father who had lost his son? |
| 457 |
For ten days, no food was cooked in any Muslim home; there were riots and burnings of cars; but my grandfather was above politics now, and is not known to have joined in any processions. He was a man with a single mission; and what is known is that on January 1st, 1964 (a Wednesday, just one week after his departure from Agra), he set his face towards the hill which Muslims erroneously called the Takht-e-Sulaiman, Solomon's seat, atop which stood a radio mast, but also the black blister of the temple of Sankara Acharya. Ignoring the distress of the city, my grandfather climbed; while the cracking sickness within him gnawed patiently through his bones. He was not recognized. Doctor Aadam Aziz (Heidelberg-returned) died five days before the government announced that its massive search for the single hair of the Prophet's head had been successful. When the State's holiest saints assembled to authenticate the hair, my grandfather was unable to tell them the truth. (If they were wrong ... but I can't answer the questions I've asked.) Arrested for the crime — and later released on grounds of ill-health — was one Abdul Rahim Bande; but perhaps my grandfather, had he lived, could have shed a stranger light on the affair ... at midday on January 1st, Aadam Aziz arrived outside the temple of Sankara Acharya. He was seen to raise his walking-stick; inside the temple, women performing the rite of puja at the Shiva-lingam shrunk back — as women had once shrank from the wrath of another, tetra-pod-obsessed doctor; and then the cracks claimed him, and his legs gave way beneath him as the bones disintegrated, and the effect of his fall was to shatter the rest of his skeleton beyond all hope of repair. He was identified by the papers in the pocket of his chugha-coat: a photograph of his son, and a half-completed (and fortunately, correctly addressed) letter to his wife. The body, too fragile to be transported, was buried in the valley of his birth. I am watching Padma; her muscles have begun to twitch distractedly. "Consider this," I say. "Is what happened to my grandfather so very strange? Compare it with the mere fact of the holy fuss over the theft of a hair; because every last detail of that is true, and by comparison, an old man's death is surely perfectly normal." Padma relaxes; her muscles give me the go-ahead. Because I've spent too long on Aadam Aziz; perhaps I'm afraid of what must be told next; but the revelation will not be denied. One last fact: after the death of my grandfather, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru fell ill and never recovered his health. |
| 458 |
"Pakistan," I said aloud, "What a complete dump!" And we hadn't even arrived ... I looked at the boats; they seemed to be swimming through a dizzying haze. The deck seemed to be swaying violently as well, although there was virtually no wind; and although I tried to grab the rails, the boards were too quick for me: they rushed up and hit me on the nose. That was how I came to Pakistan, with a mild attack of sunstroke to add to the emptiness of my hands and the knowledge of my birth; and what was the name of the boat? What two sister-ships still plied between Bombay and Karachi in those days before politics ended their journeys? Our boat was the SS Sabarmati; its sister, which passed us just before we reached the Karachi harbor, was the Sarasvati. We steamed into exile aboard the Commander's namesake-ship, proving once again that there was no escape from recurrence. We reached Rawalpindi by hot, dusty train. (The General and Emerald travelled in Air-Conditioned; they bought the rest of us ordinary first-class tickets.) But it was cool when we reached 'Pindi and I set foot, for the first time, in a northern city ... I remember it as a low, anonymous town; army barracks, fruitshops, a sports goods industry; tall military men in the streets; Jeeps; furniture carvers; polo. A town in which it was possible to be very, very cold. And in a new and expensive housing development, a vast house surrounded by a high wall which was topped by barbed wire and patrolled by sentries: General Zulfikar's home. There was a bath next to the double bed in which the General slept; there was a house catch-phrase: "Let's get organized!"; the servants wore green military jerseys and berets; in the evenings the odors of bhang and charas floated up from their quarters. The furniture was expensive and surprisingly beautiful; Emerald could not be faulted on her taste. It was a dull, lifeless house, for all its military airs; even the goldfish in the tank set in the dining-room wall seemed to bubble listlessly; perhaps its most interesting inhabitant was not even human. You will permit me, for a moment, to describe the General's dog Bonzo. Excuse me: the General's old beagle bitch. This goitred creature of papery antiquity had been supremely indolent and useless all her life; but while I was still recovering from sunstroke she created the first furore of our stay — a sort of trailer for the "revolution of the pepperpots." General Zulfikar had taken her one day to a military training-camp, where he was to watch a team of mine-detectors at work in a specially-prepared minefield. |
| 459 |
"You're a big man now! Damn it to hell! Still, and still you do it! Get yourself organized! Good for nothing! Who behaves in this damn way? Cowards, that's who! Damn me if I'll have a coward for a son ..." The enuresis of my cousin Zafar continued, however, to be the shame of his family; despite thrashings, the liquid ran down his leg; and one day it happened when he was awake. But that was after certain movements had, with my assistance, been performed by pepperpots, proving to me that although the telepathic airwaves were jammed in this country, the modes of connection still seemed to function; active-literally as well as -metaphorically, I helped change the fate of the Land of the Pure. The Brass Monkey and I were helpless observers, in those days, of my wilting mother. She, who had always been assiduous in the heat, had begun to wither in the northern cold. Deprived of two husbands, she was also deprived (in her own eyes) of meaning; and there was also a relationship to rebuild, between mother and son. She held me tightly one night and said, "Love, my child, is a thing that every mother learns; it is not born with a baby, but made; and for eleven years, I have learned to love you as my son." But there was a distance behind her gentleness, as though she were trying to persuade herself ... a distance, too, in the Monkey's midnight whispers of, "Hey, brother, why don't we go and pour water over Zafar — they'll only think he's wet his bed?" — and it was my sense of this gap which showed me that, despite their use of son and brother, their imaginations were working hard to assimilate Mary's confession; not knowing then that they would be unable to succeed in their re-imaginings of brother and son, I remained terrified of Shiva; and was accordingly driven even deeper into the illusory heart of my desire to prove myself worthy of their kinship. Despite Reverend Mother's recognition of me, I was never at my ease until, on a more-than-three-years-distant verandah, my father said, "Come, son; come here and let me love you." Perhaps that is why I behaved as I did on the night of October 7th, 1958. ... An eleven-year-old boy, Padma, knew very little about the internal affairs of Pakistan; but he could see, on that October day, that an unusual dinner-party was being planned. Saleem at eleven knew nothing about the Constitution of 1956 and its gradual erosion; but his eyes were keen enough to spot the Army security officers, the military police, who arrived that afternoon to lurk secretly behind every garden bush. |
| 460 |
Burning with optimism, the Government even interned Indian citizens of Chinese descent — now "enemy aliens" — in camps in Rajasthan. Birla Industries donated a miniature rifle range to the nation; schoolgirls began to go on military parade. But I, Saleem, felt as if I was about to die of asphyxiation. The air, thickened by optimism, refused to enter my lungs. Ahmed and Amina Sinai were amongst the worst victims of the renewed disease of optimism; having already contracted it through the medium of their new-born love, they entered into the public enthusiasm with a will. When Morarji Desai, the urine-drinking Finance Minister, launched his "Ornaments for Armaments" appeal, my mother handed over gold bangles and emerald ear-rings; when Morarji floated an issue of defense bonds, Ahmed Sinai bought them in bushels. War, it seemed, had brought a new dawn to India; in the Times of India, a cartoon captioned "War with China" showed Nehru looking at graphs labelled "Emotional Integration," "Industrial Peace" and "People's Faith in Government" and crying, "We never had it so good!" Adrift in the sea of optimism, we — the nation, my parents, I — floated blindly towards the reefs. As a people, we are obsessed with correspondences. Similarities between this and that, between apparently unconnected things, make us clap our hands delightedly when we find them out. It is a sort of national longing for form — or perhaps simply an expression of our deep belief that forms lie hidden within reality; that meaning reveals itself only in flashes. Hence our vulnerability to omens ... when the Indian flag was first raised, for instance, a rainbow appeared above that Delhi field, a rainbow of saffron and green; and we felt blessed. Born amidst correspondence, I have found it continuing to hound me ... while Indians headed blindly towards a military dEbacle, I, too, was nearing (and entirely without knowing it) a catastrophe of my own. Times of India cartoons spoke of "Emotional Integration"; in Buckingham Villa, last remnant of Methwold's Estate, emotions had never been so integrated. Ahmed and Amina spent their days like just-courting youngsters; and while the Peking People's Daily complained, "The Nehru Government has finally shed its cloak of non-alignment," neither my sister nor I were complaining, because for the first time in years we did not have to pretend we were non-aligned in the war between our parents; what war had done for India, the cessation of hostilities had achieved on our two-storey hillock. |
| 461 |
The numbers marching one two three. Hiss of released gas. The numbers crushing me four five six. Faces swimming in fog. And still the tumultuous numbers, I was crying, I think, the numbers pounding seven eight nine. Ten. "Good God, the boy's still conscious. Extraordinary. We'd better try another — can you hear me? Saleem, isn't it? Good chap, just give me another ten!" Can't catch me. Multitudes have teemed inside my head. The master of the numbers, me. Here they go again 'leven twelve. But they'll never let me up until ... thirteen fourteen fifteen ... O God O God the fog dizzy and falling back back back, sixteen, beyond war and pepperpots, back back, seventeen eighteen nineteen. Twen There was a washing-chest and a boy who sniffed too hard. His mother undressed and revealed a Black Mango. Voices came, which were not the voices of Archangels. A hand, deafening the left ear. And what grew best in the heat: fantasy, irrationality, lust. There was a clocktower refuge, and cheatery-in-class. And love in Bombay caused a bicycle-accident; horn-temples entered forcep-hollows, and five hundred and eighty-one children visited my head. Midnight's children: who may have been the embodiment of the hope of freedom, who may also have been freaks-who-ought-to-be-finished-off. Parvati-the-witch, most loyal of all, and Shiva, who became a principle of life. There was the question of purpose, and the debate between ideas and things. There were knees and nose and nose and knees. Quarrels began, and the adult world infiltrated the children's; there was selfishness and snobbishness and hate. And the impossibility of a third principle; the fear of coming-to-nothing-after-all began to grow. And what nobody said: that the purpose of the five hundred and eighty-one lay in their destruction; that they had come, in order to come to nothing. Prophecies were ignored when they spoke to this effect. And revelations, and the closing of a mind; and exile, and four-years-after return; suspicions growing, dissension breeding, departures in twenties and tens. And, at the end, just one voice left; but optimism lingered — what-we-had-in-common retained the possibility of overpowering what-forced-us-apart. Until: Silence outside me. A dark room (blinds down). Can't see anything (nothing there to see). Silence inside me. A connection broken (for ever). Can't hear anything (nothing there to hear). Silence, like a desert. And a clear, free nose (nasal passages full of air). Air, like a vandal, invading my private places. |
| 462 |
Drained. I have been drained. The parahamsa, grounded. (For good.) O, spell it out, spell it out: the operation whose ostensible purpose was the draining of my inflamed sinuses and the once-and-for-all clearing of my nasal passages had the effect of breaking whatever connection had been made in a washing-chest; of depriving me of nose-given telepathy; of banishing me from the possibility of midnight children. Our names contain our fates; living as we do in a place where names have not acquired the meaninglessness of the West, and are still more than mere sounds, we are also the victims of our titles. Sinai contains Ibn Sina, master magician, Sufi adept; and also Sin the moon, the ancient god of Hadhramaut, with his own mode of connection, his powers of action-at-a-distance upon the tides of the world. But Sin is also the letter S, as sinuous as a snake; serpents lie coiled within the name. And there is also the accident of transliteration — Sinai, when in Roman script, though not in Nastaliq, is also the name of the place-of-revelation, of put-off-thy-shoes, of commandments and golden calves; but when all that is said and done; when Ibn Sina is forgotten and the moon has set; when snakes lie hidden and revelations end, it is the name of the desert — of barrenness, infertility, dust; the name of the end. In Arabia — Arabia Deserta — at the time of the prophet Muhammad, other prophets also preached: Maslama of the tribe of the Banu Hanifa in the Yamama, the very heart of Arabia; and Hanzala ibn Safwan; and Khalid ibn Sinan. Maslama's God was ar-Rahman, "the Merciful"; today Muslims pray to Allah, ar-Rahman. Khalid ibn Sinan was sent to the tribe of 'Abs; for a time, he was followed, but then he was lost. Prophets are not always false simply because they are overtaken, and swallowed up, by history. Men of worth have always roamed the desert. "Wife," Ahmed Sinai said, "this country is finished." After ceasefire and drainage, these words returned to haunt him; and Amina began to persuade him to emigrate to Pakistan, where her surviving sisters already were, and to which her mother would go after her father's death. "A fresh start," she suggested, "Janum, it would be lovely. What is left for us on this God-forsaken hill?" So in the end Buckingham Villa was delivered into the clutches of the Narlikar women, after all; and over fifteen years late, my family moved to Pakistan, the Land of the Pure. Ahmed Sinai left very little behind; there are ways of transmitting money with the help of multinational companies, and my father knew those ways. |
| 463 |
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. Saleem's parents said, "We must all become new people"; in the land of the pure, purity became our ideal. But Saleem was forever tainted with Bombayness, his head was full of all sorts of religions apart from Allah's (like India's first Muslims, the mercantile Moplas of Malabar, I had lived in a country whose population of deities rivalled the numbers of its people, so that, in unconscious revolt against the claustrophobic throng of deities, my family had espoused the ethics of business, not faith); and his body was to show a marked preference for the impure. |
| 464 |
Mopla-like, I was doomed to be a misfit; but, in the end, purity found me out, and even I, Saleem, was cleansed of my misdeeds. After my sixteenth birthday, I studied history at my aunt Alia's college; but not even learning could make me feel a part of this country devoid of midnight children, in which my fellow-students took out processions to demand a stricter, more Islamic society — proving that they had contrived to become the antitheses of students everywhere else on earth, by demanding more-rules-not-less. My parents, however, were determined to put down roots; although Ayub Khan and Bhutto were forging an alliance with China (which had so recently been our enemy), Ahmed and Amina would listen to no criticisms of their new home; and my father bought a towel factory. There was a new brilliance about my parents in those days; Amina had lost her guilt-fog, her verrucas seemed not to be playing up any more; while Ahmed, although still whitened, had felt the freeze of his loins thawing under the heat of his newfound love for his wife. On some mornings, Amina had toothmarks on her neck; she giggled uncontrollably at times, like a schoolgirl. "You two, honestly," her sister Alia said, "Like honeymooners or I don't know what." But I could smell what was hidden behind Alia's teeth; what stayed inside when the friendly words came out ... Ahmed Sinai named his towels after his wife: Amina Brand. "Who are these multi-multis? These Dawoods, Saigols, Haroons?" he cried gaily, dismissing the richest families in the land. "Who are Valikas or Zulfikars? I could eat them ten at a time. You wait!", he promised, "In two years the whole world will be wiping itself on an Amina Brand cloth. The finest terry-cloth! The most modern machines! We shall make the whole world clean and dry; Dawoods and Zulfikars will beg to know my secret; and I will say, yes, the towels are high-quality; but the secret is not in the manufacturing; it was love that conquered all." (I discerned, in my father's speech, the lingering effects of the optimism virus.) Did Amina Brand conquer the world in the name of cleanliness (which is next to ...)? Did Valikas and Saigols come to ask Ahmed Sinai, "God, we're stumped, yaar, how'd you do it?" Did high-quality terry-cloth, in patterns devised by Ahmed himself — a little gaudy, but never mind, they were born of love — wipe away the moistness of Pakistanis and export-markets alike? Did Russians Englishmen Americans wrap themselves in my mother's immortalized name? |
| 465 |
I will not say he was not sad; refusing to censor my past, I admit he was as sullen, often as uncooperative, certainly as spotty as most boys of his age. His dreams, denied the children of midnight, became filled with nostalgia to the point of nausea, so that he often woke up gagging with the heavy musk of regret overpowering his senses; there were nightmares of numbers marching one two three, and of a tightening, throttling pair of prehensile knees ... but there was a new gift, and a Lambretta scooter, and (though still unconscious) a humble, submissive love of his sister ... jerking my narrator's eyes away from the described past, I insist that Saleem, then-as-now, succeeded in turning his attention towards the as-yet-undescribed future. Escaping, whenever possible, from a residence in which the acrid fumes of his aunt's envy made life unbearable, and also from a college filled with other equally dislikeable smells, I mounted my motorized steed and explored the olfactory avenues of my new city. And after we heard of my grandfather's death in Kashmir, I became even more determined to drown the past in the thick, bubbling scent-stew of the present ... O dizzying early days before categorization! Formlessly, before I began to shape them, the fragrances poured into me: the mournful decaying fumes of animal feces in the gardens of the Frere Road museum, the pustular body odors of young men in loose pajamas holding hands in Sadar evenings, the knife-sharpness of expectorated betel-nut and the bitter-sweet commingling of betel and opium: "rocket paans" were sniffed out in the hawker-crowded alleys between Elphinstone Street and Victoria Road. Camel-smells, car-smells, the gnat-like irritation of motor-rickshaw fumes, the aroma of contraband cigarettes and "black-money," the competitive effluvia of the city's bus-drivers and the simple sweat of their sardine-crowded passengers. (One bus-driver, in those days, was so incensed at being overtaken by his rival from another company — the nauseating odor of defeat poured from his glands — that he took his bus round to his opponent's house at night, hooted until the poor fellow emerged, and ran him down beneath wheels reeking, like my aunt, of revenge.) Mosques poured over me the itr of devotion; I could smell the orotund emissions of power sent out by flag-waving Army motors; in the very hoardings of the cinemas I could discern the cheap tawdry perfumes of imported spaghetti Westerns and the most violent martial-arts films ever made. |
| 466 |
I was, for a time, like a drugged person, my head reeling beneath the complexities of smell; but then my overpowering desire for form asserted itself, and I survived. Indo-Pakistani relations deteriorated; the borders were closed, so that we could not go to Agra to mourn my grandfather; Reverend Mother's emigration to Pakistan was also somewhat delayed. In the meantime, Saleem was working towards a general theory of smell: classification procedures had begun. I saw this scientific approach as my own, personal obeisance to the spirit of my grandfather ... to begin with, I perfected my skill at distinguishing, until I could tell apart the infinite varieties of betel-nut and (with my eyes shut) the twelve different available brands of fizzy drink. (Long before the American commentator Herbert Feldman came to Karachi to deplore the existence of a dozen aerated waters in a city which had only three suppliers of bottled milk, I could sit blindfolded and tell Pakola from Hoffman's Mission, Citra Cola from Fanta. Feldman saw these drinks as a manifestation of capitalist imperialism; I, sniffing out which was Canada Dry and which 7-Up, unerringly separating Pepsi from Coke, was more interested in passing their subtle olfactory test. Double Kola and Kola Kola, Perri Cola and Bubble Up were blindly identified and named.) Only when I was sure of my mastery of physical scents did I move on to those other aromas which only I could smell: the perfumes of emotions and all the thousand and one drives which make us human: love and death, greed and humility, have and have-not were labelled and placed in neat compartments of my mind. Early attempts at ordering: I tried to classify smells by color — boiling underwear and the printer's ink of the Daily Jang shared a quality of blueness, while old teak and fresh farts were both dark brown. Motor-cars and graveyards I jointly classified as gray ... there was, too, classification-by-weight: flyweight smells (paper), bantam odors (soap-fresh bodies, grass), welterweights (perspiration, queen-of-the-night); shahi-korma and bicycle-oil were light-heavyweight in my system, while anger, patchouli, treachery and dung were among the heavyweight stinks of the earth. And I had a geometric system also: the roundness of joy and the angularity of ambition; I had elliptical smells, and also ovals and squares ... a lexicographer of the nose, I travelled Bunder Road and the P. E. C. H. S.; a lepidopterist, I snared whiffs like butterflies in the net of my nasal hairs. |
| 467 |
O wondrous voyages before the birth of philosophy! ... Because soon I understood that my work must, if it was to have any value, acquire a moral dimension; that the only important divisions were the infinitely subtle gradations of good and evil smells. Having realized the crucial nature of morality, having sniffed out that smells could be sacred or profane, I invented, in the isolation of my scooter-trips, the science of nasal ethics. Sacred: purdah-veils, halal meat, muezzins' towers, prayer-mats; profane: Western records, pig-meat, alcohol. I understood now why mullahs (sacred) refused to enter aeroplanes (profane) on the night before Id-ul-Fitr, not even willing to enter vehicles whose secret odor was the antithesis of godliness in order to make sure of seeing the new moon. I learned the olfactory incompatibility of Islam and socialism, and the inalienable opposition existing between the after-shave of Sind Club members and the poverty-reek of the street-sleeping beggars at the Club gates ... more and more, however, I became convinced of an ugly truth — namely that the sacred, or good, held little interest for me, even when such aromas surrounded my sister as she sang; while the pungency of the gutter seemed to possess a fatally irresistible attraction. Besides, I was sixteen; things were stirring beneath my belt, behind my duck-white pants; and no city which locks women away is ever short of whores. While Jamila sang of holiness and love-of-country, I explored profanity and lust. (I had money to burn; my father had become generous as well as loving.) At the eternally unfinished Jinnah Mausoleum I picked up the women of the street. Other youths came here to seduce American girls away, taking them off to hotel rooms or swimming pools; I preferred to retain my independence and pay. And eventually I nosed out the whore of whores, whose gifts were a mirror for my own. Her name was Tai Bibi, and she claimed to be five hundred and twelve. But her smell! The richest spoor he, Saleem, had ever sniffed; he felt bewitched by something in it, some air of historic majesty ... he found himself saying to the toothless creature: "I don't care about your age; the smell's the thing." ("My God," Padma interrupts, "Such a thing — how could you?") Though she never hinted at any connection with a Kashmiri boatman, her name exerted the strongest of pulls; although she may have been humoring Saleem when she said, "Boy, I am five hundred and twelve," his sense of history was nevertheless aroused. |
| 468 |
At this point Saleem acquired the air of a bad-tempered dog and tried to turn away; but Mutasim now begged to know what Jamila Singer really looked like. Saleem, however, kept his silence; until Mutasim, in the grip of a wild obsession, asked to be brought close enough to Jamila to press his charm against her hand. Now Saleem, whose sly look did not register on love-struck Mutasim, said, "Give me the parchment"; and Mutasim, who, though expert in the geography of European cities, was innocent in things magical, yielded his charm to Saleem, thinking it would still work on his behalf, even if applied by another. Evening approached at the palace; the convoy of cars bringing General and Begum Zulfikar, their son Zafar, and friends, approached, too. But now the wind changed, and began to blow from the north: a cold wind, and also an intoxicating one, because in the north of Kif were the best hashish fields in the land, and at this time of year the female plants were ripe and in heat. The air was filled with the perfume of the heady lust of the plants, and all who breathed it became doped to some extent. The vacuous beatitude of the plants affected the drivers in the convoy, which only reached the palace by great good fortune, having overturned a number of street-side barber-stalls and invaded at least one tea-shop, leaving the Kifis wondering whether the new horseless carriages, having stolen the streets, were now going to capture their homes as well. The wind from the north entered the enormous and highly sensitive nose of Saleem, Jamila's brother, and made him so drowsy that he fell asleep in his room; so that he missed the events of an evening during which, he afterwards learned, the hashashin wind had transformed the behavior of the guests at the engagement ceremony, making them giggle convulsively and gaze provocatively at one another through heavy-lidded eyes; braided Generals sat splay-legged on gilded chairs and dreamed of Paradise. The mehndi ceremony took place amid a sleepy contentment so profound that nobody noticed when the bridegroom relaxed so completely that he wet his pants; and even the quarreling badmaashes from the C. O. P. linked arms and sang a folk-song. And when Mutasim the Handsome, possessed by the lustiness of hashish-plants, attempted to plunge behind the great gold-and-silken sheet with its single hole, Major Alauddin Latif restrained him with beatific good humor, preventing him from seeing Jamila Singer's face without even bloodying his nose. |
| 469 |
The war in the Rann lasted until July 1st. That much is fact; but everything else lies concealed beneath the doubly hazy air of unreality and make-believe which affected all goings-on in those days, and especially all events in the phantasmagoric Rann ... so that the story I am going to tell, which is substantially that told by my cousin Zafar, is as likely to be true as anything; as anything, that is to say, except what we were officially told. ... As the young Pakistani soldiers entered the marshy terrain of the Rann, a cold clammy perspiration broke out on their foreheads, and they were unnerved by the greeny sea-bed quality of the light; they recounted stories which frightened them even more, legends of terrible things which happened in this amphibious zone, of demonic sea-beasts with glowing eyes, of fish-women who lay with their fishy heads underwater, breathing, while their perfectly-formed and naked human lower halves lay on the shore, tempting the unwary into fatal sexual acts, because it is well known that nobody may love a fish-woman and live ... so that by the time they reached the border posts and went to war, they were a scared rabble of seventeen-year-old boys, and would certainly have been annihilated, except that the opposing Indians had been subjected to the green air of the Rann even longer than they; so in that sorcerers' world a crazy war was fought in which each side thought it saw apparitions of devils fighting alongside its foes; but in the end the Indian forces yielded; many of them collapsed in floods of tears and wept, Thank God, it's over; they told about the great blubbery things which slithered around the border posts at night, and the floating-in-air spirits of drowned men with seaweed wreaths and seashells in their navels. What the surrendering Indian soldiers said, within my cousin's hearing: "Anyway, these border posts were unmanned; we just saw them empty and came inside." The mystery of the deserted border posts did not, at first, seem like a puzzle to the young Pakistani soldiers who were required to occupy them until new border guards were sent; my cousin Lieutenant Zafar found his bladder and bowels voiding themselves with hysterical frequency for the seven nights he spent occupying one of the posts with only five jawans for company. During nights filled with the shrieks of witches and the nameless slithery shufflings of the dark, the six youngsters were reduced to so abject a state that nobody laughed at my cousin any more, they were all too busy wetting their own pants. |
| 470 |
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? |
| 471 |
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? 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? |
| 472 |
Did Pakistani fighter-bombers truly make that "daring raid" which caught one-third of the Indian Air Force helplessly grounded on tarmac? Did they didn't they? And those night-dances in the sky, Pakistani Mirages and MystEres against India's less romantically-titled MiGs: did Islamic mirages and mysteries do battle with Hindu invaders, or was it all some kind of astonishing illusion? Did bombs fall? Were explosions true? Could even a death be said to be the case? And Saleem? What did he do in the war? This: waiting to be drafted, I went in search of friendly, obliterating, sleep-giving, Paradise-bringing bombs. The terrible fatalism which had overcome me of late had taken on an even more terrible form; drowning in the disintegration of family, of both countries to which I had belonged, of everything which can sanely be called real, lost in the sorrow of my filthy unrequited love, I sought out the oblivion of — I'm making it sound too noble; no orotund phrases must be used. Baldly, then: I rode the night-streets of the city, looking for death. Who died in the holy war? Who, while I in bright white kurta and pajamas went Lambretta-borne into the curfewed streets, found what I was looking for? Who, martyred by war, went straight to a perfumed garden? Study the bombing pattern; learn the secrets of rifle-shots. On the night of September 22nd, air-raids took place over every Pakistani city. (Although All-India Radio ...) Aircraft, real or fictional, dropped actual or mythical bombs. It is, accordingly, either a matter of fact or a figment of a diseased imagination that of the only three bombs to hit Rawalpindi and explode, the first landed on the bungalow in which my grandmother Naseem Aziz and my aunty Pia were hiding under a table; the second tore a wing off the city jail, and spared my cousin Zafar a life of captivity; the third destroyed a large darkling mansion surrounded by a sentried wall; sentries were at their posts, but could not prevent Emerald Zulfikar from being carried off to a more distant place than Suffolk. She was being visited, that night, by the Nawab of Kif and his mulishly unmaturing daughter; who was also spared the necessity of becoming an adult woman. In Karachi, three bombs were also enough. The Indian planes, reluctant to come down low, bombed from a great height; the vast majority of their missiles fell harmlessly into the sea. One bomb, however, annihilated Major (Retired) Alauddin Latif and all his seven Puffias, thus releasing me from my promise for ever; and there were two last bombs. |
| 473 |
How often did Brigadier Iskandar — "Smell this! That's the stink of subversion!" — unleash the war-hounds of unity? There are things which took place on the night of March 25th which must remain permanently in a state of confusion. Futility of statistics: during 1971, ten million refugees fled across the borders of East Pakistan-Bangladesh into India — but ten million (like all numbers larger than one thousand and one) refuses to be understood. Comparisons do not help: "the biggest migration in the history of the human race" — meaningless. Bigger than Exodus, larger than the Partition crowds, the many-headed monster poured into India. On the border, Indian soldiers trained the guerrillas known as Mukti Bahini; in Dacca, Tiger Niazi ruled the roost. 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. |
| 474 |
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. Shaheed has dreamed his pomegranate dream. Despair, lapping at the edges of the boat. And in the distance, near the horizon, an impossible endless huge green wall, stretching right and left to the ends of the earth! Unspoken fear: how can it be, how can what we are seeing be true, who builds walls across the world? ... And then Ayooba, "Look-look, Allah!" Because coming towards them across the rice-paddies is a bizarre slow-motion chase: first the buddha with that cucumber-nose, you could spot it a mile off, and following him, splashing through paddies, a gesticulating peasant with a scythe, Father Time enraged, while running along a dyke a woman with her sari caught up between her legs, hair loose, voice pleading screaming, while the scythed avenger stumbles through drowned rice, covered from head to foot in water and mud. |
| 475 |
The leaves in the heights of the great nipa palms began to spread like immense green cupped hands, swelling in the nocturnal downpour until the entire forest seemed to be thatched; and then the nipa-fruits began to fall, they were larger than any coconuts on earth and gathered speed alarmingly as they fell from dizzying heights to explode like bombs in the water. Rainwater was filling their boat; they had only their soft green caps and an old ghee tin to bale with; and as night fell and the nipa-fruits bombed them from the air, Shaheed Dar said, "Nothing else to do — we must land," although his thoughts were full of his pomegranate-dream and it crossed his mind that this might be where it came true, even if the fruits were different here. While Ayooba sat in a red-eyed funk and Farooq seemed destroyed by his hero's disintegration; while the buddha remained silent and bowed his head, Shaheed alone remained capable of thought, because although he was drenched and worn out and the night-jungle screeched around him, his head became partly clear whenever he thought about the pomegranate of his death; so it was Shaheed who ordered us, them, to row our, their, sinking boat to shore. A nipa-fruit missed the boat by an inch and a half, creating such turbulence in the water that they capsized; they struggled ashore in the dark holding guns oilskins ghee-tin above their heads, pulled the boat up after themselves, and past caring about bombarding nipa palms and snaking mangroves, fell into their sodden craft and slept. When they awoke, soaking-shivering in spite of the heat, the rain had become a heavy drizzle. They found their bodies covered in three-inch-long leeches which were almost entirely colorless owing to the absence of direct sunlight, but which had now turned bright red because they were full of blood, and which, one by one, exploded on the bodies of the four human beings, being too greedy to stop sucking when they were full. Blood trickled down legs and on to the forest floor; the jungle sucked it in, and knew what they were like. When the falling nipa-fruits smashed on the jungle floor, they, too, exuded a liquid the color of blood, a red milk which was immediately covered in a million insects, including giant flies as transparent as the leeches. The flies, too, reddened as they filled up with the milk of the fruit ... all through the night, it seemed, the Sundarbans had continued to grow. Tallest of all were the sundri trees which had given their name to the jungle; trees high enough to block out even the faintest hope of sun. |
| 476 |
There was a silence; and then Farooq Rashid said, "So much, yaar, inside one person; so many bad things, no wonder he kept his mouth shut!" You see, Padma: I have told this story before. But what refused to return? What, despite the liberating venene of a colorless serpent, failed to emerge from my lips? Padma: the buddha had forgotten his name. (To be precise: his first name.) And still it went on raining. The water-level was rising daily, until it became clear that they would have to move deeper into the jungle, in search of higher ground. The rain was too heavy for the boat to be of use; so, still following Shaheed's instructions, Ayooba Farooq and the buddha pulled it far away from the encroaching bank, tied mooring-rope around sundri-trunk, and covered their craft with leaves; after which, having no option, they moved ever further into the dense uncertainty of the jungle. Now, once again, the Sundarbans changed its nature; once again Ayooba Shaheed Farooq found their ears filled with the lamentations of families from whose bosom they had torn what once, centuries ago, they had termed "undesirable elements"; they rushed wildly forward into the jungle to escape from the accusing, pain-filled voices of their victims; and at night the ghostly monkeys gathered in the trees and sang the words of "Our Golden Bengal": "... O Mother, I am poor, but what little I have, I lay at thy feet. And it maddens my heart with delight." Unable to escape from the unbearable torture of the unceasing voices, incapable of bearing for a moment longer the burden of shame, which was now greatly increased by their jungle-learned sense of responsibility, the three boy-soldiers were moved, at last, to take desperate measures. Shaheed Dar stooped down and picked up two handfuls of rain-heavy jungle mud; in the throes of that awful hallucination, he thrust the treacherous mud of the rain-forest into his ears. And after him, Ayooba Baloch and Farooq Rashid stopped their ears also with mud. Only the buddha left his ears (one good, one already bad) unstopped; as though he alone were willing to bear the retribution of the jungle, as though he were bowing his head before the inevitability of his guilt ... The mud of the dream-forest, which no doubt also contained the concealed translucency of jungle-insects and the devilry of bright orange bird-droppings, infected the ears of the three boy-soldiers and made them all as deaf as posts; so that although they were spared the singsong accusations of the jungle, they were now obliged to converse in a rudimentary form of sign-language. |
| 477 |
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. In October, however, when the rains ended and the guerilla units of the Mukti Bahini began terrorizing Pakistani military outposts; when Mukti Bahini snipers picked off soldiers and petty officials alike, our quartet emerged from invisibility and, having little option, attempted to rejoin the main body of the occupying West Wing forces. Later, when questioned, the buddha would always explain his disappearance with the help of a garbled story about being lost in a jungle amid trees whose roots grabbed at you like snakes. It was perhaps fortunate for him that he was never formally interrogated by officers in the army of which he was a member. Ayooba Baloch, Farooq Rashid and Shaheed Dar were not subjected to such interrogations, either; but in their case this was because they failed to stay alive long enough for any questions to be asked. ... In an entirely deserted village of thatched huts with dung-plastered mud walls — in an abandoned community from which even the chickens had fled — Ayooba Shaheed Farooq bemoaned their fate. Rendered deaf by the poisonous mud of the rain-forest, a disability which had begun to upset them a good deal now that the taunting voices of the jungle were no longer hanging in the air, they wailed their several wails, all talking at once, none hearing the other; the buddha, however, was obliged to listen to them all: to Ayooba, who stood facing a corner inside a naked room, his hair enmeshed in a spider's web, crying "My ears my ears, like bees buzzing inside," to Farooq who, petulantly, shouted, "Whose fault, anyway? — Who, with his nose that could sniff out any bloody thing? — Who said That way, and that way? — And who, who will believe? — About jungles and temples and transparent serpents? — What a story, Allah, buddha, we should shoot you here-and-now!" While Shaheed, softly, "I'm hungry." Out once more in the real world, they were forgetting the lessons of the jungle, and Ayooba, "My arm! |
| 478 |
In these positions: I on the floor, Farooq crouched in a corner, Shaheed pressed against dung-plaster: we waited, helplessly, to see what would transpire. 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. |
| 479 |
She did it; I was invisible; bas. Enough. Memories of invisibility: in the basket, I learned what it was like, will be like, to be dead. I had acquired the characteristics of ghosts! Present, but insubstantial; actual, but without being or weight ... I discovered, in the basket, how ghosts see the world. Dimly hazily faintly ... it was around me, but only just; I hung in a sphere of absence at whose fringes, like faint reflections, could be seen the specters of wickerwork. The dead die, and are gradually forgotten; time does its healing, and they fade — but in Parvati's basket I learned that the reverse is also true; that ghosts, too, begin to forget; that the dead lose their memories of the living, and at last, when they are detached from their lives, fade away — that dying, in short, continues for a long time after death. Afterwards, Parvati said, "I didn't want to tell you — but nobody should be kept invisible that long — it was dangerous, but what else was there to do?" In the grip of Parvati's sorcery, I felt my hold on the world slip away — and how easy, how peaceful not to never to return! — to float in this cloudy nowhere, wafting further further further, like a seed-spore blown on the breeze — in short, I was in mortal danger. 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? |
| 480 |
But now I cannot linger over empty pickle-jars; the night is for words, and green chutney must wait its turn. ... Padma is wistful: "O, mister, how lovely Kashmir must be in August, when here it is hot like a chilli!" I am obliged to reprove my plump-yet-muscled companion, whose attention has been wandering; and to observe that our Padma Bibi, long-suffering tolerant consoling, is beginning to behave exactly like a traditional Indian wife. (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. |
| 481 |
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. |
| 482 |
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. 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! |
| 483 |
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. Of my last miserable contact with the brutal intimacies of family life, only fragments remain; however, since it must all be set down and subsequently pickled, I shall attempt to piece together an account ... to begin with, then, let me report that my Uncle Mustapha lived in a commodiously anonymous Civil Service bungalow set in a tidy Civil Service garden just off Rajpath in the heart of Lutyens's city; I walked along what-had-once-been-Kingsway, breathing in the numberless perfumes of the street, which blew out of State Handicraft Emporia and the exhaust-pipes of auto-rickshaws; the aromas of banyan and deodar mingled with the ghostly scents of long-gone viceroys and memsahibs in gloves, and also with the rather more strident bodily odors of gaudy rich begums and tramps. Here was the giant election scoreboard around which (during the first battle-for-power between Indira and Morarji Desai) crowds had thronged, awaiting the results, asking eagerly: "Is it a boy or a girl?" ... |
| 484 |
Parvati-the-witch was waiting for me on the pavement; I did not tell her that there was a sense in which I'd been glad of the interruption, because as I kissed her in the dark of that illicit midnight I had seen her face changing, becoming the face of a forbidden love; the ghostly features of Jamila Singer replaced those of the witch-girl; Jamila who was (I know it!) safely hidden in a Karachi nunnery was suddenly also here, except that she had undergone a dark transformation. She had begun to rot, the dreadful pustules and cankers of forbidden love were spreading across her face; just as once the ghost of Joe D'Costa had rotted in the grip of the occult leprosy of guilt, so now the rancid flowers of incest blossomed on my sister's phantasmal features, and I couldn't do it, couldn't kiss touch look upon that intolerable spectral face, I had been on the verge of jerking away with a cry of desperate nostalgia and shame when Sonia Aziz burst in upon us with electric light and screams. 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. |
| 485 |
The problems of the magicians' ghetto were the problems of the Communist movement in India; within the confines of the colony could be found, in miniature, the many divisions and dissensions which racked the Party in the country. Picture Singh, I hasten to add, was above it all; the patriarch of the ghetto, he was the possessor of an umbrella whose shade could restore harmony to the squabbling factions; but the disputes which were brought into the shelter of the snake-charmer's umbrella were becoming more and more bitter, as the prestidigitators, the pullers of rabbits from hats, aligned themselves firmly behind Mr. Dange's Moscow-line official C. P. I., which supported Mrs. Gandhi throughout the Emergency; the contortionists, however, began to lean more towards the left and the slanting intricacies of the Chinese-oriented wing. Fire-eaters and sword-swallowers applauded the guerrilla tactics of the Naxalite movement; while mesmerists and walkers-on-hot-coals espoused Namboodiripad's manifesto (neither Muscovite nor Pekinese) and deplored the Naxalites' violence. There were Trotskyist tendencies amongst card-sharpers, and even a Communism-through-the-ballot-box movement amongst the moderate members of the ventriloquist section. I had entered a milieu in which, while religious and regionalist bigotry were wholly absent, our ancient national gift for fissiparousness had found new outlets. Picture Singh told me, sorrowfully, that during the 1971 general election a bizarre murder had resulted from the quarrel between a Naxalite fire-eater and a Moscow-line conjurer who, incensed by the former's views, had attempted to draw a pistol from his magic hat; but no sooner had the weapon been produced than the supporter of Ho Chi Minh had scorched his opponent to death in a burst of terrifying flame. Under his umbrella, Picture Singh spoke of a socialism which owed nothing to foreign influences. "Listen, captains," he told warring ventriloquists and puppeteers, "will you go to your villages and talk about Stalins and Maos? Will Bihari or Tamil peasants care about the killing of Trotsky?" The chaya of his magical umbrella cooled the most intemperate of the wizards; and had the effect, on me, of convincing me that one day soon the snake-charmer Picture Singh would follow in the footsteps of Mian Abdullah so many years ago; that, like the legendary Hummingbird, he would leave the ghetto to shape the future by the sheer force of his will; and that, unlike my grandfather's hero, he would not be stopped until he, and his cause, had won the day ... |
| 486 |
but, but. Always a but but. What happened, happened. We all know that. Before I return to telling the story of my private life, I should like it to be known that it was Picture Singh who revealed to me that the country's corrupt, "black" economy had grown as large as the official, "white" variety, which he did by showing me a newspaper photograph of Mrs. Gandhi. Her hair, parted in the center, was snow-white on one side and black-asnight on the other, so that, depending on which profile she presented, she resembled either a stoat or an ermine. Recurrence of the center-parting in history; and also, economy as an analogue of a Prime Ministerial hair-style ... I owe these important perceptions to the Most Charming Man In The World. Picture Singh it was who told me that Mishra, the railway minister, was also the officially-appointed minister for bribery, through whom the biggest deals in the black economy were cleared, and who arranged for payoffs to appropriate ministers and officials; without Picture Singh, I might never have known about the poll-fixing in the state elections in Kashmir. He was no lover of democracy, however: "God damn this election business, captain," he told me, "Whenever they come, something bad happens; and our countrymen behave like clowns." I, in the grip of my fever-for-revolution, failed to take issue with my mentor. There were, of course, a few exceptions to the ghetto's rules: one or two conjurers retained their Hindu faith and, in politics, espoused the Hindu-sectarian Jana Sangh party or the notorious Ananda Marg extremists; there were even Swatantra voters amongst the jugglers. Non-politically speaking, the old lady Resham Bibi was one of the few members of the community who remained an incurable fantasist, believing (for instance) in the superstition which forbade women to climb mango trees, because a mango tree which had once borne the weight of a woman would bear sour fruit for ever more ... and there was the strange fakir named Chishti Khan, whose face was so smooth and lustrous that nobody knew whether he was nineteen or ninety, and who had surrounded his shack with a fabulous creation of bamboo-sticks and scraps of brightly-colored paper, so that his home looked like a miniature, multi-colored replica of the nearby Red Fort. Only when you passed through its castellated gateway did you realize that behind the meticulously hyperbolic facade of bamboo-and-paper crenellations and ravelins hid a tin-and-cardboard hovel like all the rest. |
| 487 |
What she did for me: under the power of her magic, hair began to grow where none had grown since Mr. Zagallo pulled too hard; her wizardry caused the birthmarks on my face to fade under the healing applications of herbal poultices; it seemed that even the bandiness of my legs was diminishing under her care. (She could do nothing, however, for my one bad ear; there is no magic on earth strong enough to wipe out the legacies of one's parents.) But no matter how much she did for me, I was unable to do for her the thing she desired most; because although we lay down together beneath the walls on the blind side of the Mosque, the moonlight showed me her night-time face turning, always turning into that of my distant, vanished sister ... no, not my sister ... into the putrid, vilely disfigured face of Jamila Singer. Parvati anointed her body with unguent oils imbued with erotic charm; she combed her hair a thousand times with a comb made from aphrodisiac deer-bones; and (I do not doubt it) in my absence she must have tried all manner of lovers' sorceries; but I was in the grip of an older bewitchment, and could not, it seemed, be released; I was doomed to find the faces of women who loved me turning into the features of ... but you know whose crumbling features appeared, filling my nostrils with their unholy stench. "Poor girl," Padma sighs, and I agree; but until the Widow drained me of past present future, I remained under the Monkey's spell. When Parvati-the-witch finally admitted failure, her face developed, overnight, an alarming and pronounced pout. She fell asleep in the hut of the contortionist orphans and awoke with her full lips stuck in a protruding attitude of unutterably sensuous pique. Orphaned triplets told her, giggling worriedly, what had happened to her face; she tried spiritedly to pull her features back into position, but neither muscles nor wizardry managed to restore her to her former self; at last, resigning herself to her tragedy, Parvati gave in, so that Resham Bibi told anyone who would listen: "That poor girl — a god must have blown on her when she was making a face." (That year, incidentally, the chic ladies of the cities were all wearing just such an expression with erotic deliberation; the haughty mannequins in the Eleganza-'73 fashion show all pouted as they walked their catwalks. In the awful poverty of the magicians' slum, pouting Parvati-the-witch was in the height of facial fashion.) The magicians devoted much of their energies to the problem of making Parvati smile again. |
| 488 |
Maya-Shakti mothers, but also "muffles consciousness in its dream-web." Too-many-women: are they all aspects of Devi, the goddess — who is Shakti, who slew the buffalo-demon, who defeated the ogre Mahisha, who is Kali Durga Chandi Chamunda Uma Sati and Parvati ... and who, when active, is colored red? "I don't know about that," Padma brings me down to earth, "They are just women, that's all." Descending from my flight of fancy, I am reminded of the importance of speed; driven on by the imperatives of rip tear crack, I abandon reflections; and begin. This is how it came about; how Parvati took her destiny into her own hands; how a lie, issuing from my lips, brought her to the desperate condition in which, one night, she extracted from her shabby garments a lock of hero's hair, and began to speak sonorous words. Spurned by Saleem, Parvati remembered who had once been his arch-enemy; and, taking a bamboo stick with seven knots in it, and an improvised metal hook attached to one end, she squatted in her shack and recited; with the Hook of Indra in her right hand, and a lock of hair in her left, she summoned him to her. Parvati called to Shiva; believe don't believe, but Shiva came. From the beginning there were knees and a nose, a nose and knees; but throughout this narrative I've been pushing him, the other, into the background (just as once, I banned him from the councils of the Children). He can be concealed no longer, however; because one morning in May 1974 — is it just my cracking memory, or am I right in thinking it was the 18th, perhaps at the very moment at which the deserts of Rajasthan were being shaken by India's first nuclear explosion? Was Shiva's explosion into my life truly synchronous with India's arrival, without prior warning, at the nuclear age? — he came to the magicians' slum. Uniformed, gonged-and-pipped, and a Major now, Shiva alighted from an Army motorcycle; and even through the modest khaki of his Army pants it was easy to make out the phenomenal twin bulges of his lethal knees ... India's most decorated war hero, but once he led a gang of apaches in the back-streets of Bombay; once, before he discovered the legitimized violence of war, prostitutes were found throttled in gutters (I know, I know — no proof); Major Shiva now, but also Wee Willie Winkie's boy, who still remembered the words of long-silenced songs: "Good Night, Ladies" still echoed on occasion in his ears. There are ironies here, which must not pass unnoticed; for had not Shiva risen as Saleem fell? |
| 489 |
Because of the Major's national status as a war hero, he was permitted to take certain liberties with military regulations; so nobody took him to task for importing a woman into what were not, after all, married men's quarters; and he, not knowing what had brought about this remarkable alteration in his life, sat down as requested in a cane chair, while she took off his boots, pressed his feet, brought him water flavored with freshly-squeezed limes, dismissed his batman, oiled his moustache, caressed his knees and after all that produced a dinner of biriani so exquisite that he stopped wondering what was happening to him and began to enjoy it instead. Parvati-the-witch turned those simple Army quarters into a palace, a Kailasa fit for Shiva-the-god; and Major Shiva, lost in the haunted pools of her eyes, aroused beyond endurance by the erotic protrusion of her lips, devoted his undivided attentions to her for four whole months: or, to be precise, for one hundred and seventeen nights. On September 12th, however, things changed: because Parvati, kneeling at his feet, fully aware of his views on the subject, told him that she was going to have his child. The liaison of Shiva and Parvati now became a tempestuous business, filled with blows and broken plates: an earthly echo of that eternal marital battle-of-the-gods which their namesakes are said to perform atop Mount Kailasa in the great Himalayas ... Major Shiva, at this time, began to drink; also to whore. The whoring trails of the war hero around the capital of India bore a strong resemblance to the Lambretta-travels of Saleem Sinai along the spoors of Karachi streets; Major Shiva, unmanned in the company of the rich by the revelations of Roshanara Shetty, had taken to paying for his pleasures. And such was his phenomenal fecundity (he assured Parvati while beating her) that he ruined the careers of many a loose woman by giving them babies whom they would love too much to expose; he sired around the capital an army of street-urchins to mirror the regiment of bastards he had fathered on the begums of the chandeliered salons. Dark clouds were gathering in political skies as well: in Bihar, where corruption inflation hunger illiteracy landlessness ruled the roost, Jaya-Prakash Narayan led a coalition of students and workers against the governing Indira Congress; in Gujarat, there were riots, railway trains were burned, and Morarji Desai went on a fast-unto-death to bring down the corrupt government of the Congress (under Chimanbhai Patel) in that drought-ridden state ... |
| 490 |
Pictureji and I had gone into the tapering tenement streets behind the General Post Office, where memories of fortune-tellers peep-show-men healers hung in the breeze; and here Picture Singh had performed an act which was growing more political by the day. His legendary artistry drew large good-natured crowds; and he made his snakes enact his message under the influence of his weaving flute music. While I, in my role of apprentice, read out a prepared harangue, serpents dramatized my speech. I spoke of the gross inequities of wealth distribution; two cobras performed, in dumbshow, the mime of a rich man refusing to give alms to a beggar. Police harassment, hunger disease illiteracy, were spoken of and also danced by serpents; and then Picture Singh, concluding his act, began to talk about the nature of red revolution, and promises began to fill the air, so that even before the police materialized out of the back-doors of the post office to break up the meeting with lathi-charges and tear-gas, certain wags in our audience had begun to heckle the Most Charming Man In The World. Unconvinced, perhaps, by the ambiguous mimes of the snakes, whose dramatic content was admittedly a little obscure, a youth shouted out: "OhE, Pictureji, you should be in the Government, man, not even Indiramata makes promises as nice as yours!" Then the tear-gas came and we had to flee, coughing spluttering blind, from riot police, like criminals, crying falsely as we ran. (Just as once, in Jallianwala Bagh — but at least there were no bullets on this occasion.) But although the tears were the tears of gas, Picture Singh was indeed cast down into an awesome gloom by the heckler's gibe, which had questioned the hold on reality which was his greatest pride; and in the aftermath of gas and sticks, I, too, was dejected, having suddenly identified a moth of unease in my stomach, and realized that something in me objected to Picture's portrayal in snake-dance of the unrelieved vilenesses of the rich; I found myself thinking, "There is good and bad in all — and they brought me up, they looked after me, Pictureji!" After which I began to see that the crime of Mary Pereira had detached me from two worlds, not one; that having been expelled from my uncle's house I could never fully enter the world-according-to-Picture-Singh; that, in fact, my dream of saving the country was a thing of mirrors and smoke; insubstantial, the maunderings of a fool. And then there was Parvati, with her altered profile, in the harsh clarity of the winter day. |
| 491 |
It was — or am I wrong? I must rush on; things are slipping from me all the time — a day of horrors. It was then — unless it was another day — that we found old Resham Bibi dead of cold, lying in her hut which she had built out of Dalda Vanaspati packing-cases. She had turned bright blue, Krishna-blue, blue as Jesus, the blue of Kashmiri sky, which sometimes leaks into eyes; we burned her on the banks of the Jamuna amongst mudflats and buffalo, and she missed my wedding as a result, which was sad, because like all old women she loved weddings, and had in the past joined in the preliminary henna-ceremonies with energetic glee, leading the formal singing in which the bride's friends insulted the groom and his family. On one occasion her insults had been so brilliant and finely calculated that the groom took umbrage and cancelled the wedding; but Resham had been undaunted, saying that it wasn't her fault if young men nowadays were as fainthearted and inconstant as chickens. I was absent when Parvati went away; I was not present when she returned; and there was one more curious fact ... unless I have forgotten, unless it was on another day ... it seems to me, at any rate, that on the day of Parvati's return, an Indian Cabinet Minister was in his railway carriage, at Samastipur, when an explosion blew him into the history books; that Parvati, who had departed amid the explosions of atom bombs, returned to us when Mr. L. N. Mishra, minister for railways and bribery, departed this world for good. Omens and more omens ... perhaps, in Bombay, dead pomfrets were floating belly-side-up to shore. January 26th, Republic Day, is a good time for illusionists. When the huge crowds gather to watch elephants and fireworks, the city's tricksters go out to earn their living. For me, however, the day holds another meaning; it was on Republic Day that my conjugal fate was sealed. In the days after Parvati's return, the old women of the ghetto formed the habit of holding their ears for shame whenever they passed her; she, who bore her illegitimate child without any appearance of guilt, would smile innocently and walk on. But on the morning of Republic Day, she awoke to find a rope hung with tattered shoes strung up above her door, and began to weep inconsolably, her poise disintegrating under the force of this greatest of insults. Picture Singh and I, leaving our shack laden with baskets of snakes, came across her in her (calculated? genuine?) misery, and Picture Singh set his jaw in an attitude of determination. |
| 492 |
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! 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 ... |
| 493 |
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. If William Methwold had lacked a center-parting, I might not have been here today; and if the Mother of the Nation had had a coiffure of uniform pigment, the Emergency she spawned might easily have lacked a darker side. But she had white hair on one side and black on the other; the Emergency, too, had a white part — public, visible, documented, a matter for historians — and a black part which, being secret macabre untold, must be a matter for us. Mrs. Indira Gandhi was born in November 1917 to Kamala and Jawaharlal Nehru. Her middle name was Priyadarshini. She was not related to "Mahatma" M. K. Gandhi; her surname was the legacy of her marriage, in 1952, to one Feroze Gandhi, who became known as "the nation's son-in-law." They had two sons, Rajiv and Sanjay, but in 1949 she moved back into her father's home and became his "official hostess." Feroze made one attempt to live there, too, but it was not a success. He became a ferocious critic of the Nehru Government, exposing the Mundhra scandal and forcing the resignation of the then Finance Minister, T. |
| 494 |
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. In those last days my wife Laylah or Parvati was also being gnawed by the interior moths of a despair, because when she came towards me for comfort or warmth in the isolation of our sleeping hours, I still saw superimposed upon her features the horribly eroded physiognomy of Jamila Singer; and although I confessed to Parvati the secret of the specter, consoling her by pointing out that at its present rate of decay it would have crumbled away entirely before long, she told me dolorously that spittoons and war had softened my brain, and despaired of her marriage which would, as it transpired, never be consummated; slowly, slowly there appeared on her lips the ominous pout of her grief ... but what could I do? What solace could I offer — I, Saleem Snotnose, who had been reduced to poverty by the withdrawal of my family's protection, who had chosen (if it was a choice) to live by my olfactory gifts, earning a few paisa a day by sniffing out what people had eaten for dinner the previous day and which of them were in love; what consolation could I bring her, when I was already in the clutches of the cold hand of that lingering midnight, and could sniff finality in the air? Saleem's nose (you can't have forgotten) could smell stranger things than horse-dung. The perfumes of emotions and ideas, the odor of how-things-were: all these were and are nosed out by me with ease. When the Constitution was altered to give the Prime Minister well-nigh-absolute powers, I smelled the ghosts of ancient empires in the air ... in that city which was littered with the phantoms of Slave Kings and Mughals, of Aurangzeb the merciless and the last, pink conquerors, I inhaled once again the sharp aroma of despotism. It smelled like burning oily rags. But even the nasally incompetent could have worked out that, during the winter of 1975-6, something smelled rotten in the capital; what alarmed me was a stranger, more personal stink: the whiff of personal danger, in which I discerned the presence of a pair of treacherous, retributive knees ... my first intimation that an ancient conflict, which began when a love-crazed virgin switched name-tags, was shortly to end in a frenzy of treason and snippings. Perhaps, with such a warning pricking at my nostrils, I should have fled — tipped off by a nose, I could have taken to my heels. |
| 495 |
but maybe he was never more than a snake-charmer; I do not deny the possibility. I say only that to me my last father, tall gaunt bearded, his hair swept back into a knot behind his neck, seemed the very avatar of Mian Abdullah; but perhaps it was all an illusion, born of my attempt to bind him to the threads of my history by an effort of sheer will. There have been illusions in my life; don't think I'm unaware of the fact. We are coming, however, to a time beyond illusions; having no option, I must at last set down, in black and white, the climax I have avoided all evening. Scraps of memory: this is not how a climax should be written. A climax should surge towards its Himalayan peak; but I am left with shreds, and must jerk towards my crisis like a puppet with broken strings. This is not what I had planned; but perhaps the story you finish is never the one you begin. (Once, in a blue room, Ahmed Sinai improvised endings for fairy-tales whose original conclusions he had long ago forgotten; the Brass Monkey and I heard, down the years, all kinds of different versions of the journey of Sinbad, and of the adventures of Hatim Tai ... if I began again, would I, too, end in a different place?) Well then: I must content myself with shreds and scraps: as I wrote centuries ago, the trick is to fill in the gaps, guided by the few clues one is given. Most of what matters in our lives takes place in our absence; I must be guided by the memory of a once-glimpsed file with tell-tale initials; and by the other, remaining shards of the past, lingering in my ransacked memory-vaults like broken bottles on a beach ... Like scraps of memory, sheets of newsprint used to bowl through the magicians' colony in the silent midnight wind. Wind-blown newspapers visited my shack to inform me that my uncle, Mustapha Aziz, had been the victim of unknown assassins; I neglected to shed a tear. But there were other pieces of information; and from these, I must build reality. On one sheet of paper (smelling of turnips) I read that the Prime Minister of India went nowhere without her personal astrologer. In this fragment, I discerned more than turnip-whiffs; mysteriously, my nose recognized, once again, the scent of personal danger. What I am obliged to deduce from this warning aroma: soothsayers prophesied me; might not soothsayers have undone me at the end? Might not a Widow, obsessed with the stars, have learned from astrologers the secret potential of any children born at that long-ago midnight hour? |
| 496 |
And was that why a Civil Servant, expert in genealogies, was asked to trace ... and why he looked at me strangely in the morning? Yes, you see, the scraps begin to fit together! Padma, does it not become clear? Indira is India and India is Indira ... but might she not have read her own father's letter to a midnight child, in which her own, sloganized centrality was denied; in which the role of mirror-of-the-nation was bestowed upon me? You see? You see? ... And there is more, there is even clearer proof, because here is another scrap of the Times of India, in which the Widow's own news agency Samachar quotes her when she speaks of her "determination to combat the deep and widespread conspiracy which has been growing." I tell you: she did not mean the Janata Morcha! No, the Emergency had a black part as well as a white, and here is the secret which has lain concealed for too long beneath the mask of those stifled days: the truest, deepest motive behind the declaration of a State of Emergency was the smashing, the pulverizing, the irreversible discombobulation of the children of midnight. (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 ... |
| 497 |
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! |
| 498 |
Parvati-the-witch had told me all about my rival; is it likely that she would not have mentioned me to him? I will answer that question, too: it is not likely at all. So our war hero knew where, in the capital, lurked the one person his masters wanted most (not even my uncle Mustapha knew where I went after I left him; but Shiva knew!) — and, once he had turned traitor, bribed, I have no doubt, by everything from promises of preferment to guarantees of personal safety, it was easy for him to deliver me into the hands of his mistress, the Madam, the Widow with the particolored hair. Shiva and Saleem, victor and victim; understand our rivalry, and you will gain an understanding of the age in which you live. (The reverse of this statement is also true.) I lost something else that day, besides my freedom: bulldozers swallowed a silver spittoon. Deprived of the last object connecting me to my more tangible, historically-verifiable past, I was taken to Benares to face the consequences of my inner, midnight-given life. Yes, that was where it happened, in the palace of the widows on the shores of the Ganges in the oldest living city in the world, the city which was already old when the Buddha was young, Kasi Benares Varanasi, City of Divine Light, home of the Prophetic Book, the horoscope of horoscopes, in which every life, past present future, is already recorded. The goddess Ganga streamed down to earth through Shiva's hair ... Benares, the shrine to Shiva-the-god, was where I was brought by hero-Shiva to face my fate. In the home of horoscopes, I reached the moment prophesied in a rooftop room by Ramram Seth: "soldiers will try him ... tyrants will fry him!" the fortuneteller had chanted; well, there was no formal trial — Shiva-knees wrapped around my neck, and that was that — but I did smell, one winter's day, the odors of something frying in an iron skillet ... Follow the river, past Scindia-ghat on which young gymnasts in white loincloths perform one-armed push-ups, past Manikarnika-ghat, the place of funerals, at which holy fire can be purchased from the keepers of the flame, past floating carcasses of dogs and cows — unfortunates for whom no fire was bought, past Brahmins under straw umbrellas at Dasashwamedh-ghat, dressed in saffron, dispensing blessings ... 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! |
| 499 |
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. |
| 500 |
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. And as for the children of midnight — that fearsome conspiracy which had to be broken at all costs — that gang of cutthroat desperadoes before whom an astrology-ridden Prime Minister trembled in terror — the grotesque aberrational monsters of independence, for whom a modern nation-state could have neither time nor compassion — twenty-nine years old now, give or take a month or two, they were brought to the Widows' Hostel, between April and December they were rounded up, and their whispers began to fill the walls. The walls of my cell (paper-thin, peeling-plastered, bare) began to whisper, into one bad ear and one good ear, the consequences of my shameful confessions. A cucumber-nosed prisoner, festooned with iron rods and rings which made various natural functions impossible — walking, using the tin chamberpot, squatting, sleeping — lay huddled against peeling plaster and whispered to a wall. It was the end; Saleem gave way to his grief. All my life, and through the greater part of these reminiscences, I have tried to keep my sorrows under lock and key, to prevent them from staining my sentences with their salty, maudlin fluidities; but no more. I was given no reason (until the Widow's Hand ...) for my incarceration: but who, of all the thirty thousand or quarter of a million, was told why or wherefore? Who needed to be told? In the walls, I heard the muted voices of the midnight children; needing no further footnotes, I blubbered over peeling plaster. What Saleem whispered to the wall between April and December 1976: ... Dear Children. How can I say this? What is there to say? My guilt my shame. Although excuses are possible: I wasn't to blame about Shiva. And all manner of folk are being locked up, so why not us? |
| 501 |
And guilt is a complex matter, for are we not all, each of us in some sense responsible for — do we not get the leaders we deserve? But no such excuses are offered. I did it, I. Dear children: and my Parvati is dead. And my Jamila, vanished. And everyone. Vanishing seems to be yet another of those characteristics which recur throughout my history: Nadir Khan vanished from an underworld, leaving a note behind; Aadam Aziz vanished, too, before my grandmother got up to feed the geese; and where is Mary Pereira? I, in a basket, disappeared; but Laylah or Parvati went phutt without the assistance of spells. And now here we are, disappeared-off-the-face-of-the-earth. The curse of vanishment, dear children, has evidently leaked into you. No, as to the question of guilt, I refuse absolutely to take the larger view; we are too close to what-is-happening, perspective is impossible, later perhaps analysts will say why and wherefore, will adduce underlying economic trends and political developments, but right now we're too close to the cinema-screen, the picture is breaking up into dots, only subjective judgments are possible. Subjectively, then, I hang my head in shame. Dear children: forgive. No, I do not expect you to forgive. Politics, children: at the best of times a bad dirty business. We should have avoided it, I should never have dreamed of purpose, I am coming to the conclusion that privacy, the small individual lives of men, are preferable to all this inflated macrocosmic activity. But too late. Can't be helped. What can't be cured must be endured. Good question, children: what must be endured? Why are we being amassed here like this, one by one, why are rods and rings hanging from our necks? And stranger confinements (if a whispering wall is to be believed): who-has-the-gift-of-levitation has been tied by the ankles to rings set in the floor, and a werewolf is obliged to wear a muzzle; who-can-escape-through-mirrors must drink water through a hole in a lidded can, so that he cannot vanish through the reflective surface of the drink; and she-whose-looks-can-kill has her head in a sack, and the bewitching beauties of Baud are likewise bag-headed. 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. |
| 502 |
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? |
| 503 |
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. Incredible, children: we, who could not talk for five minutes without disagreeing: we, who as children quarrelled fought divided distrusted broke apart, are suddenly together, united, as one! O wondrous irony: the Widow, by bringing us here, to break us, has in fact brought us together! O self-fulfilling paranoia of tyrants ... because what can they do to us, now that we're all on the same side, no language-rivalries, no religious prejudices: after all, we are twenty-nine now, I should not be calling you children ... ! Yes, here is optimism, like a disease: one day she'll have to let us out and then, and then, wait and see, maybe we should form, I don't know, a new political party, yes, the Midnight Party, what chance do politics have against people who can multiply fishes and turn base metals into gold? Children, something is being born here, in this dark time of our captivity; let Widows do their worst; unity is invincibility! Children: we've won! Too painful. Optimism, growing like a rose in a dung-heap: it hurts me to recall it. Enough: I forget the rest. — No! — No, very well, I remember ... What is worse than rods bar-fetters candles-against-the-skin? What beats nail-tearing and starvation? I reveal the Widow's finest, most delicate joke: instead of torturing us, she gave us hope. Which meant she had something — no, more than something: the finest thing of all! — to take away. And now, very soon now, I shall have to describe how she cut it off. Ectomy (from, I suppose, the Greek): a cutting out. To which medical science adds a number of prefixes: appendectomy tonsillectomy mastectomy tubectomy vasectomy testectomy hysterectomy. Saleem would like to donate one further item, free gratis and for nothing, to this catalogue of excisions; it is, however, a term which properly belongs to history, although medical science is, was involved: Sperectomy: the draining-out of hope. |
| 504 |
I realized that I had not seen myself in a mirror for months, perhaps years, and walked across to stand beneath it. Looking upwards into the mirror, I saw myself transformed into a big-headed, top-heavy dwarf; in the humblingly foreshortened reflection of myself I saw that the hair on my head was now as grey as rainclouds; the dwarf in the mirror, with his lined face and tired eyes, reminded me vividly of my grandfather Aadam Aziz on the day he told us about seeing God. In those days the afflictions cured by Parvati-the-witch had all (in the aftermath of drainage) returned to plague me; nine-fingered, horn-templed, monk's-tonsured, stain-faced, bow-legged, cucumber-nosed, castrated, and now prematurely aged, I saw in the mirror of humility a human being to whom history could do no more, a grotesque creature who had been released from the pre-ordained destiny which had battered him until he was half-senseless; with one good ear and one bad ear I heard the soft footfalls of the Black Angel of death. The young-old face of the dwarf in the mirror wore an expression of profound relief. I'm becoming gloomy; let's change the subject ... Exactly twenty-four hours before a paan-wallah's taunt provoked Picture Singh into traveling to Bombay, my son Aadam Sinai made the decision which permitted us to accompany the snake-charmer on his journey: overnight, without any warning, and to the consternation of his washerwoman wet-nurse, who was obliged to decant her remaining milk into five-liter vanaspati drums, flat-eared Aadam weaned himself, soundlessly refusing the nipple and demanding (without words) a diet of solid foods: pulped rice overboiled lentils biscuits. It was as though he had decided to permit me to reach my private, and now-very-near, finishing line. Mute autocracy of a less-than-two-year-old infant: Aadam did not tell us when he was hungry or sleepy or anxious to perform his natural functions. He expected us to know. The perpetual attention he required may be one of the reasons why I managed, in spite of all indications to the contrary, to stay alive ... incapable of anything else in those days after my release from captivity, I concentrated on watching my son. "I tell you, captain, it's lucky you came back," Picture Singh joked, "otherwise this one would have turned us all into ayahs." I understood once again that Aadam was a member of a second generation of magical children who would grow up far tougher than the first, not looking for their fate in prophecy or the stars, but forging it in the implacable furnaces of their wills. |
| 505 |
Looking into the eyes of the child who was simultaneously not-my-son and also more my heir than any child of my flesh could have been, I found in his empty, limpid pupils a second mirror of humility, which showed me that, from now on, mine would be as peripheral a role as that of any redundant oldster: the traditional function, perhaps, of reminiscer, of teller-of-tales ... 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. |
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yes, and Aadam heard it too, with his flapping ears he heard the rhythm of the magic, I saw his eyes light up as I accepted, and then we were in a third-class railway carriage heading south south south, and in the quinquesyllabic monotony of the wheels I heard the secret word: abracadabra abracadabra abracadabra sang the wheels as they bore us back-to-Bom. Yes, I had left the colony of the magicians behind me for ever, I was heading abracadabra abracadabra into the heart of a nostalgia which would keep me alive long enough to write these pages (and to create a corresponding number of pickles); Aadam and Saleem and Picture Singh squeezed into a third-class carriage, taking with us a number of baskets tied up with string, baskets which alarmed the jam-packed humanity in the carriage by hissing continually, so that the crowds pushed back back back, away from the menace of the snakes, and allowed us a measure of comfort and space; while the wheels sang their abracadabras to Aadam's flapping ears. As we traveled to Bombay, the pessimism of Picture Singh expanded until it seemed that it had become a physical entity which merely looked like the old snake-charmer. At Mathura an American youth with pustular chin and a head shaved bald as an egg got into our carriage amid the cacophony of hawkers selling earthen animals and cups of chaloo-chai; he was fanning himself with a peacock-feather fan, and the bad luck of peacock feathers depressed Picture Singh beyond imagining. While the infinite flatness of the Indo-Gangetic plain unfolded outside the window, sending the hot insanity of the afternoon loo-wind to torment us, the shaven American lectured the occupants of the carriage on the intricacies of Hinduism and began to teach them mantras while extending a walnut begging bowl; Picture Singh was blind to this remarkable spectacle and also deaf to the abracadabra of the wheels. "It is no good, captain," he confided mournfully, "This Bombay fellow will be young and strong, and I am doomed to be only the second most charming man from now on." By the time we reached Kotah Station, the odors of misfortune exuded by the peacock-feather fan had possessed Pictureji utterly, had eroded him so alarmingly that although everyone in the carriage was getting out on the side farthest from the platform to urinate against the side of the train, he showed no sign of needing to go. By Ratlam Junction, while my excitement was mounting, he had fallen into a trance which was not sleep but the rising paralysis of the pessimism. |
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"At this rate," I thought, "he won't even be able to challenge this rival." Baroda passed: no change. At Surat, the old John Company depot, I realized I'd have to do something soon, because abracadabra was bringing us closer to Bombay Central by the minute, and so at last I picked up Picture Singh's old wooden flute, and by playing it with such terrible ineptitude that all the snakes writhed in agony and petrified the American youth into silence, by producing a noise so hellish that nobody noticed the passing of Bassein Road, Kurla, Mahim, I overcame the miasma of the peacock-feathers; at last Picture Singh shook himself out of his despondency with a faint grin and said, "Better you stop, captain, and let me play that thing; otherwise some people are sure to die of pain." Serpents subsided in their baskets; and then the wheels stopped singing, and we were there: Bombay! I hugged Aadam fiercely, and was unable to resist uttering an ancient cry: "Back-to-Bom!" I cheered, to the bewilderment of the American youth; who had never heard this mantra: and again, and again, and again: "Back! Back-to-Bom!" By bus down Bellasis Road, towards the Tardeo roundabout, we traveled past Parsees with sunken eyes, past bicycle-repair shops and Irani cafEs; and then Hornby Vellard was on our right — where promenaders watched as Sherri the mongrel bitch was left to spill her guts! Where cardboard effigies of wrestlers still towered above the entrances to Vallabhbhai Patel Stadium! — and we were rattling and banging past traffic-cops with sun-umbrellas, past Mahalaxmi temple — and then Warden Road! The Breach Candy Swimming Baths! And there, look, the shops ... but the names had changed: where was Reader's Paradise with its stacks of Superman comics? Where, the Band Box Laundry and Bombelli's, with their One Yard Of Chocolates? And, my God, look, atop a two-storey hillock where once the palaces of William Methwold stood wreathed in bougainvillaea and stared proudly out to sea ... look at it, a great pink monster of a building, the roseate skyscraper obelisk of the Narlikar women, standing over and obliterating the circus-ring of childhood ... yes, it was my Bombay, but also not-mine, because we reached Kemp's Corner to find the hoardings of Air-India's little rajah and of the Kolynos Kid gone, gone for good, and Thomas Kemp and Co. itself had vanished into thin air ... flyovers crisscrossed where, once upon a time, medicines were dispensed and a pixie in a chlorophyll cap beamed down upon the traffic. |
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My son, Aadam, however, sat beside me with ears burning with fascination; his eyes shone in the darkness as he listened, and memorized, and learned ... and then there was light. A single shaft of light spilled into a pool on the floor of the Midnite-Confidential Club. From the shadows beyond the fringe of the illuminated area, Aadam and I saw Picture Singh sitting stiffly, cross-legged, next to a handsome Brylcreemed youth; each of them was surrounded by musical instruments and the closed baskets of their art. A loudspeaker announced the beginning of that legendary contest for the title of Most Charming Man In The World; but who was listening? Did anyone even pay attention, or were they too busy with lips tongues hands? This was the name of Pictureji's opponent: the Maharaja of Cooch Naheen. (I don't know: it's easy to assume a title. But perhaps, perhaps he really was the grandson of that old Rani who had once, long ago, been a friend of Doctor Aziz; perhaps the heir to the supporter-of-the-Hummingbird was pitted, ironically, against the man who might have been the second Mian Abdullah! It's always possible; many maharajas have been poor since the Widow revoked their civil-list salaries.) How long, in that sunless cavern, did they struggle? Months, years, centuries? I cannot say: I watched, mesmerized, as they strove to outdo one another, charming every kind of snake imaginable, asking for rare varieties to be sent from the Bombay snake-farm (where once Doctor Schaapsteker ...); and the Maharaja matched Picture Singh snake for snake, succeeding even in charming constrictors, which only Pictureji had previously managed to do. In that infernal Club whose darkness was another aspect of its proprietor's obsession with the color black (under whose influence he tanned his skin darker darker every day at the Sun 'n' Sand), the two virtuosi goaded snakes into impossible feats, making them tie themselves in knots, or bows, or persuading them to drink water from wine-glasses, and to jump through fiery hoops ... defying fatigue, hunger and age, Picture Singh was putting on the show of his life (but was anyone looking? Anyone at all?) — and at last it became clear that the younger man was tiring first; his snakes ceased to dance in time to his flute; and finally, through a piece of sleight-of-hand so fast that I did not see what happened, Picture Singh managed to knot a king cobra around the Maharaja's neck. What Picture said: "Give me best, captain, or I'll tell it to bite." That was the end of the contest. |
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Braganza, was of course my erstwhile ayah, the criminal of midnight, Miss Mary Pereira, the only mother I had left in the world. Midnight, or thereabouts. A man carrying a folded (and intact) black umbrella walks towards my window from the direction of the railway tracks, stops, squats, shits. Then sees me silhouetted against light and, instead of taking offense at my voyeurism, calls: "Watch this!" and proceeds to extrude the longest turd I have ever seen. "Fifteen inches!" he calls, "How long can you make yours?" Once, when I was more energetic, I would have wanted to tell his life-story; the hour, and his possession of an umbrella, would have been all the connections I needed to begin the process of weaving him into my life, and I have no doubt that I'd have finished by proving his indispensability to anyone who wishes to understand my life and benighted times; but now I'm disconnected, unplugged, with only epitaphs left to write. So, waving at the champion defecator, I call back: "Seven on a good day," and forget him. Tomorrow. Or the day after. The cracks will be waiting for August 15th. There is still a little time: I'll finish tomorrow. Today I gave myself the day off and visited Mary. A long hot dusty bus-ride through streets beginning to bubble with the excitement of the coming Independence Day, although I can smell other, more tarnished perfumes: disillusion, venality, cynicism ... the nearly-thirty-one-year-old myth of freedom is no longer what it was. New myths are needed; but that's none of my business. Mary Pereira, who now calls herself Mrs. Braganza, lives with her sister Alice, now Mrs. Fernandes, in an apartment in the pink obelisk of the Narlikar women on the two-storey hillock where once, in a demolished palace, she slept on a servant's mat. Her bedroom occupies more or less the same cube of air in which a fisherman's pointing finger led a pair of boyish eyes out towards the horizon; in a teak rocking-chair, Mary rocks my son, singing "Red Sails In The Sunset." Red dhow-sails spread against the distant sky. A pleasant enough day, on which old days are recalled. The day when I realized that an old cactus-bed had survived the revolution of the Narlikar women, and borrowing a spade from the mali, dug up a long-buried world: a tin globe containing yellowed ant-eaten jumbo-size baby-snap, credited to Kalidas Gupta, and a Prime Minister's letter. And days further off: for the dozenth time we chatter about the change in Mary Pereira's fortunes. |
| 510 |
How she owed it all to her dear Alice. Whose poor Mr. Fernandes died of color-blindness, having become confused, in his old Ford Prefect, at one of the city's then-few traffic lights. How Alice visited her in Goa with the news that her employers, the fearsome and enterprising Narlikar women, were willing to put some of their tetrapod-money into a pickle firm. "I told them, nobody makes achar-chutney like our Mary," Alice had said, with perfect accuracy, "because she puts her feelings inside them." So Alice turned out to be a good girl in the end. And baba, what do you think, how could I believe the whole world would want to eat my poor pickles, even in England they eat. And now, just think, I sit here where your dear house used to be, while God-knows what-all has happened to you, living like a beggar so long, what a world, baapu-rE! And bitter-sweet lamentations: O, your poor mummy-daddy! That fine madam, dead! And the poor man, never knowing who loved him or how to love! And even the Monkey ... but I interrupt, no, not dead: no, not true, not dead. Secretly, in a nunnery, eating bread. Mary, who has stolen the name of poor Queen Catharine who gave these islands to the British, taught me the secrets of the pickling process. (Finishing an education which began in this very air-space when I stood in a kitchen as she stirred guilt into green chutney.) Now she sits at home, retired in her white-haired old-age, once more happy as an ayah with a baby to raise. "Now you finished your writing-writing, baba, you should take more time for your son." But Mary, I did it for him. And she, switching the subject, because her mind makes all sorts of flea-jumps these days: "O baba, baba, look at you, how old you got already!" Rich Mary, who never dreamed she would be rich, is still unable to sleep on beds. But drinks sixteen Coca-Colas a day, unworried about teeth, which have all fallen out anyway. A flea-jump: "Why you getting married so sudden sudden?" Because Padma wants. No, she is not in trouble, how could she, in my condition? "Okay, baba, I only asked." And the day would have wound down peacefully, a twilight day near the end of time, except that now, at last, at the age of three years, one month and two weeks, Aadam Sinai uttered a sound. "Ab ..." ArrE, O my God, listen, baba, the boy is saying something! And Aadam, very carefully: "Abba ..." Father. He is calling me father. But no, he has not finished, there is strain on his face, and finally my son, who will have to be a magician to cope with the world I'm leaving him, completes his awesome first word: "... |
| 511 |
cadabba." Abracadabra! But nothing happens, we do not turn into toads, angels do not fly in through the window: the lad is just Flexing his muscles. I shall not see his miracles ... Amid Mary's celebrations of Aadam's achievement, I go back to Padma, and the factory; my son's enigmatic first incursion into language has left a worrying fragrance in my nostrils. Abracadabra: not an Indian word at all, a cabbalistic formula derived from the name of the supreme god of the Basilidan gnostics, containing the number 365, the number of the days of the year, and of the heavens, and of the spirits emanating from the god Abraxas. "Who," I am wondering, not for the first time, "does the boy imagine he is?" My special blends: I've been saving them up. Symbolic value of the pickling process: all the six hundred million eggs which gave birth to the population of India could fit inside a single, standard-sized pickle-jar; six hundred million spermatozoa could be lifted on a single spoon. Every pickle-jar (you will forgive me if I become florid for a moment) contains, therefore, the most exalted of possibilities: the feasibility of the chutnification of history; the grand hope of the pickling of time! I, however, have pickled chapters. Tonight, by screwing the lid firmly on to a jar bearing the legend Special Formula No. 30: "Abracadabra," I reach the end of my long-winded autobiography; in words and pickles, I have immortalized my memories, although distortions are inevitable in both methods. We must live, I'm afraid, with the shadows of imperfection. These days, I manage the factory for Mary. Alice — "Mrs. Fernandes" — controls the finances; my responsibility is for the creative aspects of our work. (Of course I have forgiven Mary her crime; I need mothers as well as fathers, and a mother is beyond blame.) Amid the wholly-female workforce of Braganza Pickles, beneath the saffron-and-green winking of neon Mumbadevi, I choose mangoes tomatoes limes from the women who come at dawn with baskets on their heads. 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. |
| 512 |
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. |
| 513 |
Author's Note I am not writing volume three of my autobiography because of possible hurt to vulnerable people. Which does not mean I have novelised autobiography. There are no parallels here to actual people, except for one, a very minor character. I hope I have managed to recapture the spirit of, particularly, the Sixties, that contradictory time which, looking back and comparing it with what came later, seems surprisingly innocent. There was little of the nastiness of the Seventies, or the cold greed of the Eighties. Some events described as taking place at the end of the Seventies and early Eighties in fact happened later, by a decade. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament took a stand against the government doing anything at all to protect the population against the results of nuclear attack or accident, even fall-out, though surely protection of its citizens should be any government's first responsibility. People who believed that the population should be protected were treated as if they were enemies, attacked with verbal abuse, fascists being the least of it, and sometimes physically. Death threats... unpleasant substances pushed through letterboxes the whole gamut of mob abuse. There has never been a more hysterical, noisy and irrational campaign. Students of the dynamics of mass movements will find it all in the newspaper archives, and I have had letters from them on the lines of, 'But that was crazy. Just what was it all about?' What Has Been, Can Be Again Upon Receiving the 2001 Prince of Asturias Prize in Literature in Madrid Once upon a time, and it seems a long time ago, there was a respected figure, the Educated Person. He — it was usually he, but then increasingly often she — was educated in a way that differed little from country to country — I am of course talking about Europe — but was different from what we know now. William Hazlitt, our great essayist, went to a school, in the late eighteenth century, whose curriculum was four times more comprehensive than that of a comparable school now, a mix of the bases of language, law, art, religion, mathematics. It was taken for granted that this already dense and deep education was only one aspect of development, for the pupils were expected to read, and they did. This kind of education, the humanist education is vanishing. Increasingly governments — our British government among them — encourage citizens to acquire vocational skills, while education as a development of the whole person is not seen as useful to the modern society. |
| 514 |
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. 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. |
| 515 |
' She could not go on standing here, knowing that the boys were watching her, nervously, hurt because of her, even if the others were gazing at Johnny with eyes shining with love and admiration. She said, 'Sophie, give me a hand.' At once willing hands appeared, Sophie's and, it seemed, everyone's, and dishes were being set down the centre of the table. There were wonderful smells as the covers came off. They sat down at the head of the table, glad to sit, not looking at Johnny. All the chairs were full, but others stood by the wall, and, if he wanted, he could bring one up and sit down himself. Was he going to do this? He often did, infuriating her, though he believed, it was obvious, that it was a compliment. No, tonight, having made an impression, and got his fill of admiration (if he ever did) he was going to leave surely? He was not leaving. The wine glasses were full, all around the table. Johnny had brought two bottles of wine: open-handed Johnny, who never entered a room without offerings of wine... she was unable to prevent this bile, these bitter words, arriving unwanted on her tongue. Just go away, she was mentally urging him. Just leave. She had cooked a large, filling, winter stew of beef and chestnuts, from a recipe of Elizabeth David, whose French Country Cooking was lying open somewhere in the kitchen. (Years later she would say, Good Lord, I was part of a culinary revolution and didn't know it.) She was convinced that these youngsters did not eat 'properly' unless it was at this table. Andrew was dispensing mashed potatoes flavoured with celeriac. Sophie ladled out stew. Creamed spinach and buttered carrots were being allotted by Colin. Johnny stood watching, silenced for the moment because no one was looking at him. Why didn't he leave? Around the table this evening were what she thought of as the regulars: or at least some of them. On her left was Andrew, who had served himself generously, but now sat looking down at the food as if he didn't recognise it. Next to him was Geoffrey Bone, Colin's schoolfriend, who had spent all his holidays with them since she could remember. He did not get on with his parents, Colin said. (But who did, after all?) Beside him Colin had already turned his round flushed face towards his father, all accusing anguish, while his knife and fork rested in his hands. Next to Colin, was Rose Trimble, who had been Andrew's girlfriend, if briefly: an obligatory flutter with Marxism had taken him to a weekend seminar entitled, 'Africa Bursts Its Chains!', and there Rose had been. |
| 516 |
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. |
| 517 |
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. 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. |
| 518 |
The English were sensible people, after all, she had to agree to that. One couldn't imagine allowing battles between communists and fascists in the streets well, there were some scuffles, but one mustn't exaggerate, there was nothing like Hitler. A letter arrived from Eton saying that Jolyon had disappeared, leaving behind a note saying that he was off to the Spanish Civil War, signed, Comrade Johnny Lennox. Philip used every influence to find out where their son was. The International Brigade? Madrid? Catalonia? No one seemed to know. Julia tended to sympathise with her son, for she had been shocked at the treatment of the elected government in Spain, by Britain and the French. Her husband, who was a diplomat after all, defended his government and his country but alone with her said he was ashamed. He did not admire the policies he was defending and conducting. Months passed. Then a telegram arrived from their son, asking for money: address, a house in the East End of London. Julia at once saw this meant he was wanting them to visit him, otherwise he would have designated a bank where he could pick up the money. Together she and Philip went to a house in a poor street, and found Jolyon being nursed by a decent sort of woman of the kind Julia at once thought of as a possible servant. He was in an upstairs room, ill with hepatitis, caught, presumably, in Spain. Then talking with this woman, who called herselfComrade Mary, it slowly became evident she knew nothing of Spain, and then that Jolyon had not been in Spain, but had been here, in this house, ill. 'Took me a bit of time to see he was having a bit of a breakdown,' said Comrade Mary. These were poor people. Philip wrote out a fair-sized cheque, and was told, politely enough, that they did not have a bank account, with the only just sarcastic implication that bank accounts were for the well off. Since they did not have that kind of money on them, Philip said that money would be delivered, next day, and it was. Jolyon, but he was insisting on being called Johnny, was so thin the bones of his face suggested the skeleton, and while he kept saying that Comrade Mary and her family were the salt of the earth, easily agreed to come home. That was the last his parents heard of Spain, but in the Young Communist League, where he now became a star, he was a Spanish Civil War hero. Johnny had a room, and then a floor, in the big house, and there many people came who disturbed the parents, and made Julia actively miserable. |
| 519 |
She observed everything around her with a view to correcting errors of fact and belief, and she criticised men in every sentence, taking it for granted, as believers tend to do, that Frances agreed with her in everything. She had been keeping an eye on Frances, had seen articles by her here and there, and in The Defender too, but one article had decided her to get her on to the staff. It was a satirical, but good-natured piece about Carnaby Street, which was in the process of becoming a symbol for trendy Britain, and attracting youngsters, not to mention the young in heart, from all over the world. Frances had said that they must all be suffering from some sort of collective hallucination, since the street was grubby, tatty, and if the clothes were attractive some of them they were no better than others in streets that did not have the magic syllables Carnaby attached to them. Heresy! A brave heresy, judged Julie Hackett, seeing Frances as a kindred soul. Frances was shown an office where a secretary was sorting through letters addressed to Aunt Vera, and putting them in heaps, since even the nastiest predicaments of humanity must fall into easily recognised categories. My husband is unfaithful, an alcoholic, beats me, won't give me enough money, is leaving me for his secretary, prefers his mates in the pub to me. My son is alcoholic, a druggie, has got a girl pregnant, won't leave home, is living rough in London, earns money but won't contribute to the household. My daughter... Pensions, benefits, the behaviour of officials, medical problems... but a doctor answered those. These more common letters were dealt with by this secretary, signing Aunt Vera, and it was a flourishing new department of The Defender. Frances's job was to scan these letters, and find a theme or concern that predominated, and then use it for a serious article, a long one, which would have a prominent place in the paper. Frances could write her articles and do her research at home. She would be of The Defender but not in it, and for this she was grateful. When she got out of the Underground, coming home from the newspaper, she bought food, and walked down the hill, laden. Julia was standing at her high window, looking down, when she saw Frances approaching. At least this smart coat was an improvement, not the usual duffel-coat: perhaps one could look forward to her wearing something other than the eternal jeans and jerseys? She was walking heavily, making Julia think of a donkey with panniers. |
| 520 |
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. |
| 521 |
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. He had a pleasant face. He was writing, or making notes, with a biro, just as she was. They smiled and nodded, and at that moment she saw a tall man in a Mao jacket stand up to leave. Good Lord, it was Johnny. He shrugged on a long Afghan coat, dyed blue, the last word in Carnaby Street, and went out. And there a few tables away, in a corner, obviously trying not to be seen (probably by Johnny) was Julia. She was in conversation with... he was certainly an intimate friend. Her boyfriend? Frances had recently been acknowledging that Julia was not much over sixty. But no, Julia could not have an affair (the word she would use was probably liaison) in a house crammed with ever-watching youngsters. It was as ludicrous as that Frances could. Giving up the theatre, which probably she had done for ever, Frances had felt she was slamming a door on romance, or serious love. And Julia... Frances was thinking that Julia must be pretty lonely, by herself at the top of that crammed noisy house, where the young ones called her the old woman or, even, the old fascist. She listened to classical music on the radio, and read. But she did go out sometimes, and it seemed she came here. Julia was wearing a misty-blue costume and a mauveish hat with of course a tiny net veil. Her gloves lay on the table. Her gentleman friend, grey haired, well-kept, was as elegant and old-fashioned as she was. He got up, bent over Julia's hand, where his lips met in the air over it. She smiled, and nodded, and he went out. Her face, when he left, composed itself into a look Frances understood was stoicism. Julia had enjoyed an hour off her leash, and would now go home, or perhaps do some frugal shopping. Who was keeping an eye on Sylvia? That meant Andrew must be at home. |
| 522 |
'As if'? she had tried to make up for Johnny. On the Saturday Frances crept out of the house knowing that Andrew would be on the look-out, for he was a restless sleeper, and Colin might have decided to wake earlier than his usual mid-morning. She glanced up at the front of the house, dreading to see Andrew's face, Colin's but there were no faces at the windows. It was seven in the morning of a wonderful summer's day, and her spirits, in spite of her guilt, were threatening to shoot her up into an empyrean of irresponsibility, and here he was, her beau, her date, smiling, obviously enjoying what he saw, this blonde woman (she had had her hair done) in her green linen dress, settling herself beside him, and turning to him to share a laugh at this adventure. They drove comfortably through the suburbs of London, and were in the country, and she was enjoying his enjoyment of her, and her pleasure in him, this handsome sandy man, and meanwhile she combated thoughts of the helpless unhappy faces of her sons. Dear Aunt Vera, I am divorced and I bring up two boys. I am tempted to have an affair but I am afraid of upsetting my sons. They watch me like hawks. What shall I do? I'd like to have some fun. Don't I have any rights? Well, if she, Frances, was in line for some fun then do it: and she shut her sons firmly out of her thoughts. Either that, or say to this man, Turn around and go back, I have made a mistake. They stopped by the river near Maidenhead and had breakfast, rested later in a town whose public gardens looked inviting, drove on, were invited by an attractive pub, and had lunch in another garden while sparrows hopped about them in the dust. He said once, 'Are you having difficulty suspending disbelief?' 'Yes,' and stopped herself saying, It's the boys, you see. 'I thought so. As for me, I am having no difficulty at all.'And his laughter had enough triumph in it to make her examine him for the reason. There was something in all this she was not understanding but never mind. She was quite recklessly happy. What a dull life she did lead: Julia was right. They drove up side roads to avoid the motorways, got themselves lost, and all the time their looks and smiles promised, Tonight we are going to lie in each other's arms. The day continued warm, with a silky golden haze, and in the late afternoon they sat in another garden, by a river, observed by blackbirds, a thrush, and a large friendly dog who sat by them, until it gained its bit of cake from both of them, and wandered off, its tail slowly swinging. |
| 523 |
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. He couldn't cope with it, he was not up to it, half the time he didn't even know what things were for a bit of kitchen equipment, or furniture. But he did go back and back, and found himself being treated like a son in that house. Johnny was a difficulty, at first. Franklin had been exposed to Johnny's doctrines, his kind of talk, before, and he had resolved he did not want to have anything to do with these politics, that frightened him. Politicos had exhorted him to kill all the whites, but his experience of good had been through the white priests at the mission even though they were stern, and through an unknown white protector, and now these kindly people at the new school and in this house. And yet he burned, he ached, he suffered: it was envy and it was poisoning him. I want. I want it. I want. I want... He knew that most of what he thought he could not say. The thoughts that crammed his head were dangerous and could not be allowed out. And with Rose they were not let out either. Neither Rose nor Franklin ever let the other into the lurid poisonous scenes in their minds. But they liked to be with each other. It took him a long time to sort out what people were to each other, their relationships, and if they were related. It was not surprising to him that so many sat around that table to eat, though he had to go back for a comparison, to his village, where he was familiar with people being made welcome, expecting to be fed, given a place to sleep. In his father's and mother's little house at the mission, not much more than a meagre room and a kitchen, there was no room for the kind of casual hospitality of the village. When Franklin stayed with his grandparents for the school holidays, around the great log that smouldered all night in the middle of the hut, people lay wrapped in blankets to sleep whom he had not known before and might never see again: distant relatives passing through. Or relations down on their luck came for refuge. Yet this kindly warmth went with a poverty that he was ashamed of and worse could no longer understand. When he went back home after all this, would he be able to bear it? he thought, seeing Rose's clothes heaped on her bed, seeing what the children at school had: there was no end to what they possessed, what they expected to have. |
| 524 |
Julia's immediate reaction was to back away from it, as it yapped around her skirts, and then, seeing her old friend's anxiety that she like it, made herself pat the dog and try to calm it. She put on a good enough act to make Wilhelm think that she might learn to like the creature, but when he went, and she had to see to the dog's food, its toilet arrangements, she sat trembling on her chair and thought: He's my best friend and he knows so little about me he thinks I want a dog. There followed unpleasant days: food for the dog, messes on her floors, smells and the restless little creature who yapped and drove Julia to tears. How could he? she muttered, and when Wilhelm arrived to see how things went, her efforts to be nice told him what a bad mistake he had made. 'But, my dear, it would be good for you to take him for a walk. What have you called him? Fuss! I see. 'And he went off, wounded, so now she had to worry about him too. Fuss, who knew this mistress hated him, found his way to Colin, who liked the creature because it made him laugh. Fuss became Vicious, because of the absurdity of this minute thing growling and defending itself, and snapping with its jaws the size of Julia's sugar tongs. Its paws were like puffs of cotton wool, its eyes like little black pawpaw seeds, its tail a twist of silvery silk. Vicious now went everywhere with Colin, and so the dog that had been meant to be good for Julia became good for Colin, who had no friends, went for solitary walks around the Heath, and was drinking too much. Nothing serious but enough for Frances to tell him she was worried. He flared up with, 'I don't like being spied on.' The real trouble was that he hated being dependent on Julia and his mother. He had written two novels, which he knew were no good, and was at work on a third, with Wilhelm Stein as a mentor. He was pleased that Andrew had returned to the condition of being dependent. Having done well in his exams, Andrew had left home to set himself up with a group of lawyers, but decided he wanted to do international law. He came home, and was going to Oxford, Brasenose, for a two-year course. Sylvia had become a junior doctor, much younger than most, and was working as hard as they do. When she did come home she walked in a trance of exhaustion up the stairs, not seeing anyone, or anything; she was already in her mind in her bed, able to sleep at last. She might sleep the clock around, then take a bath and was off. Often she did not even say hello to Julia, let alone kiss her goodnight. |
| 525 |
Phyllida picked up the letter which had fallen on the floor, read it, and sat with it in her hand. She had not had the opportunity to sit and look at her daughter, really look, for years. Now she did look. Tilly was so thin and pale and washed out it was a crime, what they expected of young doctors, someone should pay for it... These thoughts ran out into silence. The heavy curtains were drawn, the whole house was quiet. Perhaps Tilly should be woken? She would be late for work. That face it was not at all like hers. Tilly's mouth, it was her father's, pink and delicate. Pink and delicate would do to describe him, Comrade Alan, a hero, well let them think it. She had married two communist heroes, first one, and then the other. What was the matter with her, then? (This until now uncharacteristic self-criticism was soon to take her into the Via Dolorosa of psychotherapy and from there into a new life.) When Tilly came down to tell her of the legacy, was that boasting? A taunt? But Phyllida's sense of justice told her it was not so. Sylvia was full of airs and graces and she hated her mother, but Phyllida had never known her spiteful. Sylvia woke with a start and thought she was in a nightmare. Her mother's face, coarse, red, with wild accusing eyes, was just above her, and in a moment that voice would start, as it always did, talking at her, shouting at her. You have ruined my life. If I hadn't had you my life would have been... You are my curse, my millstone... Sylvia cried out and pushed her mother away, and sat up. She saw her letter in Phyllida's hand, and snatched it. She stood up and said, 'Now listen, mother, but don't say anything, don't say anything, please, it's unfair he gave me all the money, I'll give you half. I'll tell the lawyer. And she ran out of the room, with her hands over her ears. Sylvia informed the lawyers, having consulted with Andrew, and the arrangements were made. Giving Phyllida halfmeant that a substantial legacy became a useful sum, enough to buy a good house, insurance security. Andrew told her to get financial advice. Suddenly there was only one set of fees to pay Andrew's. Frances decided that the next time she was offered a good part she would take it. Once again Wilhelm knocked on the kitchen door, but this time Doctor Stein was all smiles, and as bashful as a boy. Again it was Sunday evening, and Frances and the two young men were making a family scene at the supper table. 'I have news,' said Wilhelm to Frances. 'Colin and I have news.' He produced a letter and waved it about. |
| 526 |
Julia did wonder about sharing a bed after so many years as a widow, but increasingly saw his point. She always felt bad, staying comfortably in her room, when he had to go home, through whatever weather there was. His home was a very large flat, where once his wife, who was dead long ago, and two children, now in America, had lived. He was hardly ever in this flat. He was not a poor man, but it was not sensible, keeping up his flat with its doorman and the little garden, while there was this big house of Julia's. They discussed, then argued, then bickered about how things could be arranged. For Wilhelm to live with Julia in the four little rooms that were enough for her out of the question. And what would he do with his books? He had thousands of them, some of them part of his stock as a book dealer. Colin had taken over the floor beneath Julia, had colonised Andrew's room. He could not be asked to move why should he? Of all the people in this house, except Julia herself, he needed most his place, his little secure place in the world. Below Colin was Frances in two good rooms and a little one. And on that floor was the room that was Sylvia's, even if she only came back to it once a month. It was her home and must remain so. But why should Frances not be asked to move? Wilhelm wanted to know. She earned enough money these days, didn't she? But Julia refused. She saw Frances as a woman used by the Lennox family to do the job of bringing up two sons, and now out. Julia had never forgotten how Johnny had demanded that she should go away, into some little flat or other, when Philip died. Beneath Frances was the big sitting-room that stretched from front to back of the house. It might take more shelves for Wilhelm 's books? But Wilhelm knew Julia did not want this room to be sacrificed. There remained Phyllida. She could now well afford to find her own place. She had the money Sylvia had assured her and she earned steady money as a psychic and fortune teller, and increasingly a therapist. When the family heard that Phyllida was now a therapist, the jokes, all on the lines of 'but herself she cannot save' , were unending. But she was attracting patients. To get rid of Phyllida and her persistent customers no one in the house would object. Yes, one, Sylvia, whose attitude towards her mother was now maternal. She worried about her. And to what end would be Phyllida's moving out? Only useful if Frances would move down, or if Colin did. Why should they? And there was something else, very strong, which Wilhelm only guessed at. |
| 527 |
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. |
| 528 |
Sylvia had not had a Catholic childhood, had never dipped her fingers into the Holy Water stoups, or wound pretty rosaries around them, or crossed herself or swapped Holy cards with other little girls. ('I'll give you three St Jeromes for one Holy Mother.') She had never prayed to the Virgin, only to Jesus. Therefore, when she joined the Church, she did not miss what she had never known, and only slowly, when meeting older priests or nuns or church members, had learned that a revolution had taken place which had left many in mourning, and particularly for the Virgin. (She would be reinstated, decades later.) Meanwhile, in places of the world where eyes vigilant for heresy or backsliding did not reach, priests and nuns kept their rosaries and their Holy Water, their statues and pictures of the Virgin, hoping that no one would notice. For someone like Rebecca, who had a little card of the Holy Mother nailed on to the central pole of her hut, this ideological argument would have seemed too silly to think about: but she had never heard of it. On the wall in Sylvia's room was tacked, straight on to the brick, a large reproduction of Leonardo 's Virgin of the Rocks, and some other smaller Virgins. It could be easy to conclude from that wall that this was a religion that worshipped women. The crucifix was a paltry thing in comparison. Rebecca sometimes sat on the bottom of Sylvia's bed, her hands folded, looking at the Leonardo, sighing, tears running. 'Oh, they are so beautiful.'You could say that the Virgin had slipped through the interstices of dogma by the way of Art. Sylvia had not known that she cared particularly for the Holy Mother but did know she could not live without reproductions of the pictures she loved best. Fish moth were attacking the edges of the posters. She must ask someone to bring her new pictures. She fell asleep on her chair, looking at Father McGuire's insipid statuette and wondering why anyone could choose that if they could have a real statue, a real picture. She would not dream of saying this to Father McGuire who had been brought up in Donegal, in a small house with many children in it, and had come here to Zimlia straight from theological college. Did he not like the Leonardo then? He had stood a long time in the doorway of Sylvia's room, because Rebecca had told him, 'Father, Father, come and see what Doctor Sylvia has brought us.' His hands folded together on his stomach, and enlaced by his rosary, rose and fell as he stood there, and looked. |
| 529 |
It was still one of the best hotels, but the new ones, of an international standard, were already racing up into the sky like arrows into the future a remark by President Matthew often quoted in promotion brochures. Tonight a table of twenty or so people stood prominently in the centre of the dining-room, where lesser guests told each other, 'Look, there's Global Money.' 'And there's the Caring International people.' At the head one end was Cyrus B. Johnson, who was boss of the section of Global Money that deal with that Oliver Twist, Africa, a silver-haired much-groomed man with the habit of authority. Next to him sat Andrew Lennox, and on the other side Geoffrey Bone, Global Money and Caring International respectively. Geoffrey had been an expert on Africa for some years. His enterprise had caused hundreds of the latest most elaborate tractors donated to an ex-colony up north to lie rotting and rusting around the edges of as many fields: spare parts, know-how and fuel had been lacking, quite apart from the agreement of the local people, who would have liked something less grandiose. He had also caused coffee to be planted in parts of Zimlia where it instantly failed. In Kenya millions of pounds disbursed by him had vanished into greedy pockets. He was disbursing millions here, in Zimlia, which were suffering the same fate. These errors had in no way set back his career, as might have happened in less sophisticated times. He was deputy head of CI, in constant discussion with G M. Next to him was his ever-faithful admirer Daniel whose shock of red hair was as much of a beacon as it ever was: Daniel was rewarded for his decades of devotion by a starry job as Geoffrey's secretary. James Patton, now Labour MP for Shortlands in the Midlands, was here on a fact-finding trip, but really because Comrade Mo, visiting London, had run into him at Johnny's, and said, 'Why don't you come and visit us?' This did not mean that Comrade Mo was now a Zimlian, more than a citizen of any other part of Africa. But he knew Comrade Matthew of course, as he seemed to know every new president and when he was at Johnny's he would issue invitations as from some generic Africa, a benevolent burgeoning place with ever-open arms. It was because of Comrade Mo and his contacts that Geoffrey had reached his eminence; because of Comrade Mo's remark to some powerful person that Andrew Lennox was a clever up-and-coming lawyer, and he knew him well, 'had known him since he was a child' , Global Money had headhunted him from some rival enterprise. |
| 530 |
Tiny black ants crawled over the floor. The black woman brought him a glass of orange juice. Warm. No ice? The kitchen where the black woman was, opened to his right. Another door, standing ajar, was on his left. On the door a dressing-gown hung from a nail: he knew it was Sylvia's, he remembered it. He went into the room. The bare red brick floor, the brick walls, the gleaming pale reed ceiling which now was to Sylvia like a second skin, seemed to him offensively meagre. So small, this room was, so bare. On the little chest of drawers were photographs, in silver frames. There was Julia, and there, Frances. And one of him, aged about twenty-five, debonair, whimsical, smiling straight back at him. It hurt, his younger self he turned away, unconsciously passing his hands down over his face, as if to restore that confident unmarked face, that innocent face. He thought, mocking the surroundings, so inimical to him that little crucifix that he had not then eaten of the fruit of good and evil. He stared conscientiously at the crucifix, which defined a Sylvia he did not know at all, trying to accept it, accept her. Her clothes were hanging on nails on the walls. Her shoes, mostly sandals, stood along a wall. He turned and saw the Leonardo on the wall. The other pictures of Virgins and infants he ignored. Well, there was one decent thing in the room. Now he heard that someone approached, and went to the window that opened on to the verandah, and watched Sylvia coming up the path. She wore jeans, a loose top similar to the one he had seen on the black servant, and her hair was bleached by the sun, and tied back with an elastic band. Between her eyes was a deep frowning furrow. She was burned by the sun a dry dark brown. She was as thin as he remembered ever seeing her. He went out, she saw him, rushed to him, and there was a long embrace full of love and memories. He wanted to see the hospital: she was reluctant, knowing he would not understand what he saw: how could he, when it had taken her long enough? But they walked together down the path, and she showed him the shed she called the dispensary, the various shelters and the big hut which it seemed she was proud of. Some black people lay about on mats, under trees. A couple of men came from the bush, lifted a woman he had thought was sleeping on to a litter made of branches, the fronds of leaves tied down over it for softness, and went off with her into the trees. 'Dead,' said Sylvia. 'Childbirth. But she was ill. |
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A clever man, that's Comrade President Matthew Mungozi. 'And people who had been deprived of the soothing rhetoric of the communist world found it again in Zimlia. Into this fortress buttressed by fear, it might have happened that no one could find a way, but someone did, a woman, for at a reception for the Organisation of African Unity he saw her, this handsome black Gloria, who had all the men clamouring around her while she flirted and bestowed smiles, but really she had her eyes on the man who stood well to one side, following her every movement as a hungry dog watches food being conveyed to mouths not his. 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. |
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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. And now when Comrade President Matthew went abroad to meet his favourite people, the immensely rich, dissolute and corrupt rulers of the new Africa and new Asia, he did not sit silent when they displayed their wealth and boasted of their avarice. Now he could boast of his and did, and when these men showed how they admired him, giving him gifts and flattery, that empty place in him where there would always be a thin stray dog with its tail between its legs was filled, at least for a time, and Gloria caressed and stroked and petted and nuzzled and licked and sucked and held him against those great breasts and kissed the old scars on his legs. 'Poor Matthew, poor poor little boy.' The evening before Sylvia had left for London she had stood on the path just where the oleanders and hibiscus and plumbago bushes ended, and looked down at the hospital with more than the forgivable amount of pride. |
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Surely she, a 'religious' as Rebecca called her 'I told them in the village that you are a religious'-should be admiring this evidence of the poor in wealth, and probably of spirit, though she did not see herself as equipped to judge that. That great heap of a city, covering so many square miles, so rich, so rich — and then this group of paltry sheds and huts: Africa, beautiful Africa, which oppressed her spirits with its need, wanting everything, lacking everything, and everywhere people white and black working so hard to well, what? To put a little plaster on an old weeping wound. And that was what she was doing. Sylvia felt as if her own real self, her substance, the stuff of belief, was leaking away as she stood there. A sunset, a rainy season's going down of the sun... from a black cloud low on the red horizon shot heavy thick rays like spikes of gold that radiate around a saint's head. She felt mocked, as if a clever thief were stealing from her and laughing as he did it. What was she doing here? And what good did she really do? And above all where was that innocence of faith that had sustained her when she first came? What did she believe in, really? God, yes, she could say that, if no one pressed for definitions. She had suffered a conversion, as classic in its symptoms as an attack of malaria, to The Faith which is what Father McGuire called it, and she knew that it had begun because ofascetic Father Jack, with whom she had been in love, though at the time she would have said it was God she loved. Nothing was left of all that brave certainty, and she knew only that she must do her duty here, in this hospital, because Fate had set her down here. The state of her mind could also be described clinically: it was, in a hundred religious textbooks. The doctors of her Faith would say to her, Disregard it, it is nothing, seasons of dryness come to us all. But she didn't need these experts on the soul, she did not need Father McGuire, she could diagnose herself. So why then did she need a spiritual mentor at all, if she was not going to tell him, simply because she knew what he would say? But the real question was, why would it be so easy for Father McGuire to say 'a season of dryness', but for her it was like a sentence of self-excommunication? What she had brought to her conversion was a hungry needful heart, and anger too, though she had not recognised that until recently. She could see herself, as she had been then, in Joshua, where anger burned always, forced out of him in bitter accusations and demands. |
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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. Nothing to choose between any of them.' Now Rose saw two black men, who had been at the back of the plane, being waved forward by an attendant through to Club Class or perhaps even First. |
| 535 |
On his old-age pension. 'And of course the senior bus pass helps.' 'A good member of the proletariat at last,' said Andrew, smiling benevolently from the windows of his gravy train at his dispossessed father. 'And you got married, I hear. I was beginning to think you must be a queer.' 'Who knows these days? But never mind all that, we thought you might like to come and live in the bottom flat?' 'It's my house anyway, so don't make a favour out of it.' But there were two good rooms, and everything paid for, and he was pleased. Colin went down to help settle him in and said that he mustn't expect Frances to wait on him. 'It's news to me that she ever did. She was always a lousy housekeeper.' But Johnny was far from dependent on his family for company. His visitors brought him gifts and flowers as if to a shrine. Johnny was in the process of becoming a holy man, the follower of a senior Indian holy man, and was now often heard to remark, 'Yes, I was a bit of a Red once.' He would sit cross-legged on his pillows on his bed, and his old gesture, palms extended outwards as if offering himself to an audience, fitted in nicely with this new persona. He had disciples, and taught meditation and the Fourfold Sacred Way. In return they kept his rooms clean for him and cooked dishes in which lentils played a leading role. But this was his new self, perhaps one could describe it as a role, in a play where Sisters and Brothers and Holy Mothers replaced the comrades. His older self did sometimes resurface, when other visitors, old comrades, came around to reminisce as ifthe great failure of the Soviet Union had never happened, as if that Empire was still marching on. Old men, old women, whose lives had been illumined by the great dream, sat about drinking wine in an atmosphere not unlike that ofthose far-offcombative evenings, except for one thing: they did not smoke now, whereas once it would have been hard to see across a room for the smoke that had been through their lungs. Late, before the guests left, Johnny would lower his voice and lift his glass, and propose a toast, 'To Him.' And with tender admiration they drank to possibly the cruellest murderer who has ever lived. They say that for decades after Napoleon's death old soldiers met in taverns and bars and, secretly, in each other's hovels, raised their glasses to The Other: they were the few survivors of the Grand ArmEe (whose heroic feats had achieved precisely nothing, except the destruction of a generation), crippled men, whose health had gone and who had survived unspeakable sufferings. |
| 536 |
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. |
| 537 |
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. |
| 538 |
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. 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. |
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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. If that happins we will have to send you bak to the Warren state home to live. I said I dint care because I aint afraid of nothing. I'm very strong and I always do good and beside I got my luky rabits foot and I never breakd a mirrir in my life. I droppd some dishis once but that don't count for bad luk. Then Dr Strauss said Charlie even if this fales your making a grate contribyushun to sience. This experimint has been successful on lots of animils but its never bin tride on a humen beeing. You will be the first, I told him thanks doc you won't be sorry for giving me my 2nd chanse like Miss Kinnian says. And I meen it like I tolld them. After the operashun I'm gonna try to be smart. I'm gonna try awful hard. progris riport 6th Mar 8 I'm skared. Lots of pepul who werk at the collidge and the pepul at the medicil school came to wish me luk. Burt the tester brot me some flowers he said they were from the pepul at the psych departmint. He wished me luk. I hope I have luk. I got my rabits foot and my luky penny and my horshoe. Dr Strauss said don't be so superstishus Charlie. This is sience. I don't no what sience is but they all keep saying it so mabye its something that helps you have good luk. |
| 540 |
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. |
| 541 |
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. 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. |
| 542 |
Burt is a gradulate studint and he is a majer in psychology like the name on the door to the lab. I dint know they had majers in collidge. I thot it was onley in the army. Anyway I hope I get smart soon because I want to lern everything there is in the werld like the collidge boys know. 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. |
| 543 |
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. 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. |
| 544 |
Somethings it did just before I fall asleep like teach me things when I'm very sleepy and a little while after I start to fall asleep I still hear the talk even if I don't see the picturs anymore. Other things is at nite its suppose to make me have dreams and remembir things that happened a long time ago when I was a very littel kid. Its scary. Oh yes I forgot. I asked Prof Nemur when I can go back to Miss Kinnians class at the adult center and he said soon Miss Kinnian will come to the collidge testing center to teach me speshul. I am glad about that. I dint see her so much since the operashun but she is nice. March 25 That crazy TV kept me up all nite. How can I sleep with something yelling crazy things all night in my ears. And the nutty picturs. Wow. I don't know what it says when I'm up so how am I going to know when I'm sleeping. I asked Burt about it and he says its ok. He says my branes are lerning just before I got to sleep and that will help me when Miss Kinnian starts my lessons at the testing center. The testing center isn't a hospitil for animils like I thougt before. Its a labortory for sience. I don't know what sience is exept I'm helping it with this experimint. Anyway I don't know about that TV. I think its crazy. If you can get smart when your going to sleep why do pepul go to school. I don't think that thing will werk. I use to watch the late show and the late late show on TV all the time before I went to sleep and it never made me smart. Maybe only certin movies make you smart. Maybe like quizz shows. March 26 How am I gonna work in the daytime if that thing keeps waking me up at nite. In the middel of the nite I woke up and I coudnt go back to sleep because it kept saying remembir... remembir... remembir. .. So I think I remembird something. I don't remembir exackly but it was about Miss Kinnian and the school where I lerned about reading. And how I went their. A long time ago once I asked Joe Carp how he lerned to read and if I coud lern to read to. He laffed like he always done when I say something funny and he says to me Charlie why waste your time they cant put any branes in where there aint none. But Fanny Birden herd me and she askd her cusin who is a collidge studint at Beekman and she told me about the adult center for retarded pepul at the Beekman collidge. She rote the name down on a paper and Frank laffed and said don't go getting so eddicated that you won't talk to your old frends. I said don't worry I will always keep my old frends even if I can read and rite. |
| 545 |
He was laffing and Joe Carp was laffing but Gimpy came in and told them to get back to making rolls. They are all good frends to me. After werk I walked over six blocks to the school and I was scared. I was so happy I was going to lern to read that I bougt a newspaper to take home with me and read after I lerned. When I got their it was a big long hall with lots of pepul. I got scared of saying somthing wrong to sombody so I startid to go home. But I don't know why I terned around and went inside agen. I wated until most everbody went away exept some pepul going over by a big timeclock like the one we have at the bakery and I asked the lady if I coud lern to read and rite because I wanted to read all the things in the newspaper and I showed it to her. She was Miss Kinnian but I dint know it then. She said if you come back tomorow and rejister I will start to teach you how to read. But you got to understand it will take a long time maybe years to lern to read. I told her I dint know it took so long but I wantid to lern anyway because I made believe a lot of times. I meen I pretend to pepul I know how to read but it aint true and I wantid to lern. She shaked my hand and said glad to meet you Mistre Gordon. I will be your teacher. My name is Miss Kinnian. So that's wear I went to lern and that's how I met Miss Kinnian. Thinking and remembiring is hard and now I don't sleep so good any more. That TV is too loud. March 27 Now that I'm starting to have those dreams and remembiring Prof Nemur says I got to go to theripy se-sions with Dr Strauss. He says theripy sesions is like when you feel bad you talk to make it better. I tolld him I don't feel bad and I do plenty of talking all day so why do I have to go to theripy but he got sore and says I got to go anyway. What theripy is is that I got to lay down on a couch and Dr. Strauss sits in a chair near me and I talk about anything that comes into my head. For a long time I dint say nothing because I coudnt think of nothing to say. Then I told him about the bakery and the things they do there. But its silly for me to go to his office and lay down on the couch to talk because I rite it down in the progress reports anyway and he could read it. So today I brout the progress report with me and I told him maybe he could just read it and I could take a nap on the couch. I was very tired because that TV kept me up all nite but he said no it don't work that way. I got to talk. So I talked but then I fell asleep on the couch anyway — rite in the middle. |
| 546 |
March 28 I got a headake. its not from that TV this time. Dr Strauss showed me how to keep the TV turned low so now I can sleep. I don't hear a thing. And I still don't understand what it says. A few times I play it over in the morning to find out what I lerned before I fell asleep and while I was sleeping and I don't even know the words. Maybe its another langwidge or something. But most times it sounds american. But it talks too fast. I askd Dr Strauss what good is it to get smart in my sleep if I want to be smart when I'm awake. He says its the same thing and I have two minds. Theres the subconscious and the conscious (thats how you spell it) and one don't tell the other what its doing. They don't even talk to each other. that's why I dream. And boy have I been having crazy dreams. Wow. Ever since that night TV. The late late late late late movie show. I forgot to ask Dr Strauss if it was only me or if everybody has two minds like that. (I just looked up the word in the dicshunery Dr Strauss gave me. subconscious, adj. Of the nature of mental operations yet not present in consciousness; as, subconscious conflict of desires) Theres more but I still don't know what it meens. This isn't a very good dicshunery for dumb people like me. Anyway the headake is from the party. Joe Carp and Frank Reilly invited me to go with them after work to Hal-lorans Bar for some drinks. I don't like to drink wiskey but they said we will have lots of fun. I had a good time. We played games with me doing a dance on the top of the bar with a lampshade on my head and everyone laffing. Then Joe Carp said I shoud show the girls how I mop out the toilet in the bakery and he got me a mop. I showed them and everyone laffed when I told them that Mr Donner said I was the best janiter and errand boy he ever had because I like my job and do it good and never come late or miss a day exept for my operashun. 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. |
| 547 |
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. |
| 548 |
Oliver who works on the mixer quit yesterday. I used to help him out before bringing the bags of flour over for him to put in the mixer. Anyway I dint know that I knew how to work the mixer. Its very hard and Oliver went to bakers school for one year before he could learn how to be an assistint baker. But Joe Carp he's my friend he said Charlie why don't you take over Olivers job. Everybody on the floor came around and they were laff laughing and Frank Reilly said yes Charlie you been here long enuff enough. Go ahead. Gimpy aint around and he won't know you tryed it. I was scared because Gimpy is the head baker and he told me never to go near the mixer because I would get hurt. Everyone said do it exept Fannie Birden who said stop it why don't you leave the poor man alone. Frank Reilly said shut up Fanny its April fools day and if Charlie works on the mixer he might fix it good so we will all have the day off. I said I coudnt fix the mashine but I could work it because I been watching Oliver ever since I got back. I worked the dough-mixer and everybody was surprised espeshully Frank Reilly. Fanny Birden got exited because she said it took Oliver 2 years to learn how to mix the dough right and he went to bakers school. Bernie Bate who helps on the mashine said I did it faster then Oliver did and better. 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. |
| 549 |
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. 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. |
| 550 |
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? |
| 551 |
He picks up the bundle of paper bags and puts it on his shoulder. He is skinny but he is strong from many years of hard work "Charlie! Charlie!.. . fat head barley!" Children circle around him laughing and teasing him like little dogs snapping at his feet. Charlie smiles at them. He would like to put down his bundle and play games with them, but when he thinks about it the skin on his back twitches and he feels the way the older boys throw things at him. Coming back to the bakery he sees some boys standing in the door of a dark hallway. "Hey look, there's Charlie!" "Hey, Charlie. "What you got there? Want to shoot some craps?" "C'mere. We won't hurtya." But there is something about the doorway — the dark hall, the laughing, that makes his skin twitch again. He tries to know what it is but all he can remember is their dirt and piss all over his clothes, and Uncle Herman shouting when he came home all covered with filth, and how Uncle Herman ran out with a hammer in his hand to find the boys who did that to him. Charlie backs away from the boys laughing in the hallway, drops the bundle. Picks it up again and runs the rest of the way to the bakery. "What took you so long, Charlie?" shouts Gimpy from the doorway to the back of the bakery. Charlie pushes through the swinging doors to the back of the bakery and sets down the bundle on one of the skids. He leans against the wall shoving his hands into his pockets. He wishes he had his spinner. He likes it back here in the bakery where the floors are white with flour — whiter than the sooty walls and ceiling. The thick soles of his own high shoes are crusted with white and there is white in the stitching and lace-eyes, and under his nails and in the cracked chapped skin of his hands. He relaxes here — squatting against the wall — leaning back in a way that tilts his baseball cap with the D forward over his eyes. He likes the smell of flour, sweet dough, bread and cakes and rolls baking. The oven is crackling and makes him sleepy. Sweet... warm... sleep Suddenly, falling, twisting, head hitting against the wall. Someone has kicked his legs out from under him. That's all I can remember. I can see it all clearly, but I don't know why it happened. It's like when I used to go to the movies. The first time I never understood because they went too fast but after I saw the picture three or four times I used to understand what they were saying. I've got to ask Dr. Strauss about it. April 14 Dr. Strauss says the important thing is to keep recalling memories like the one I had yesterday and to write them down. |
| 552 |
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. 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. |
| 553 |
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. |
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And then he will be able to read the story. He feels a hand on his shoulder and he looks up. It is Gimpy holding out the brass disc and chain, letting it swing and twirl around so that it catches the light. "Here," he says gruffly, tossing it into Charlie's lap, and then he limps away... I never thought about it before, but that was a nice thing for him to do. Why did he? Anyway, that is my memory of the time, clearer and more complete than anything I have ever experienced before. Like looking out of the kitchen window early when the morning light is still gray. I've come a long way since then, and I owe it all to Dr. Strauss and Professor Nemur, and the other people here at Beekman. But what must Frank and Gimpy think and feel now, seeing how I've changed? April 22 People at the bakery are changing. Not only ignoring me. I can feel the hostility. Donner is arranging for me to join the baker's union, and I've gotten another raise. The rotten thing is that all of the pleasure is gone because the others resent me. In a way, I can't blame them. They don't understand what has happened to me, and I can't tell them. People are not proud of me the way I expected — not at all. Still, I've got to have someone to talk to. I'm going to ask Miss Kinnian to go to a movie tomorrow night to celebrate my raise. If I can get up the nerve. April 24 Professor Nemur finally agreed with Dr. Strauss and me that it will be impossible for me to write down everything if I know its immediately read by people at the lab. I've tried to be completely honest about everything, no matter who I was talking about, but there are things I can't put down unless I can keep them private — at least for a while. Now, I'm allowed to keep back some of these more personal reports, but before the final report to the Welberg Foundation, Professor Nemur will read through everything to decide what part of it should be published. What happened today at the lab was very upsetting. I dropped by the office earlier this evening to ask Dr. Strauss or Professor Nemur if they thought it would be all right for me to ask Alice Kinnian out to a movie, but before I could knock I heard them arguing with each other. I shouldn't have stayed, but it's hard to break the habit of listening because people have always spoken and acted as if I weren't there, as if they never cared what I overheard. I heard someone bang on the desk, and then Professor Nemur shouted: "I've already informed the convention committee that we will present the paper at Chicago." Then I heard Dr. |
| 555 |
"Good night, Charlie, and thank you again for a lovely... lovely time." And closed the door. I was furious at her, myself, and the world, but by the time I got home, I realized she was right. Now, I don't know whether she cares for me or if she was just being kind. What could she possibly see in me? What makes it so awkward is that I've never experienced anything like this before. How does a person go about learning how to act toward another person? How does a man learn how to behave toward a woman? The books don't help much. But next time, I'm going to kiss her good night. May 3 One of the things that confuses me is never really knowing when something comes up from my past, whether it really happened that way, or if that was the way it seemed to be at the time, or if I'm inventing it. I'm like a man who's been half-asleep all his life, trying to find out what he was like before he woke up. Everything is strangely slow-motion and blurred. I had a nightmare last night, and when I woke up I remembered something. First the nightmare: I'm running down a long corridor, half blinded by the swirls of dust. At times I run forward and then I float around and run backwards, but I'm afraid because I'm hiding something in my pocket. I don't know what it is or where I got it, but I know they want to take it away from me and that frightens me. The wall breaks down and suddenly there is a red-haired girl with her arms outstretched to me — her face is a blank mask. She takes me into her arms, kisses and caresses me, and I want to hold her tightly but I'm afraid. The more she touches me, the more frightened I become because I know I must never touch a girl. Then, as her body rubs up against mine, I feel a strange bubbling and throbbing inside me that makes me warm. But when I look up I see a bloody knife in her hands. I try to scream as I run, but no sound comes out of my throat, and my pockets are empty. I search in my pockets but I don't know what it is I've lost or why I was hiding it. I know only that it's gone, and there is blood on my hands too. When I woke up, I thought of Alice, and I had the same feeling of panic as in the dream. What am I afraid of? Something about the knife. I made myself a cup of coffee and smoked a cigarette. I'd never had a dream like it before, and I knew it was connected with my evening with Alice. I have begun to think of her in a different way. Free association is still difficult, because it's hard not to control the direction of your thoughts... |
| 556 |
just to leave your mind open and let anything flow into it... ideas bubbling to the surface like a bubble bath... a woman bathing... a girl... Norma taking a bath... I am watching through the keyhole... and when she gets out of the tub to dry herself I see that her body is different from mine. Something is missing. Running down the hallway... somebody chasing me... not a person... just a big flashing kitchen knife... and I'm scared and crying but no voice comes out because my neck is cut and I'm bleeding... "Mama, Charlie is peeking at me through the keyhole..." Why is she different? What happened to her?... blood... bleeding... a dark cubbyhole... Three blind mice... three blind mice, See how they run! 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. |
| 557 |
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. But when the little red-haired woman came in — the one who always pinched my cheek and joked about finding a girl friend for me — I recalled that she came in most often when Donner was out to lunch and Gimpy was behind the counter. Gimpy had often sent me out to deliver orders to her house. Involuntarily, my mind totaled her purchases to $4.53. But I turned away so that I would not see what Gimpy rang up on the cash register. I wanted to know the truth, and yet I was afraid of what I might learn. "Two forty-five, Mrs. Wheeler," he said. The ring of the sale. The counting of change. The slam of the drawer. "Thank you, Mrs. Wheeler." I turned just in time to see him putting his hand into his pocket, and I heard the faint clink of coins. |
| 558 |
I find no pleasure in discussing ideas any more on such an elementary level. People resent being shown that they don't approach the complexities of the problem — they don't know what exists beyond the surface ripples. It's just as bad on a higher level, and I've given up any attempt to discuss these things with the professors at Beekman. Burt introduced me to an economics professor at the faculty cafeteria, one well known for his work on the economic factors affecting interest rates. I had long wanted to talk to an economist about some of the ideas I had come across in my reading. The moral aspects of the military blockade as a weapon in times of peace had been bothering me. I asked him what he thought of the suggestion by some senators that we begin using such tactics as "blacklisting" and reinforcement of the navicert controls that had been used in World Wars I and II, against some of the smaller nations which now oppose us. He listened quietly, staring off into space, and I assumed he was collecting his thoughts for an answer, but a few minutes later he cleared his throat and shook his head. That, he explained apologetically, was outside his area of specialization. His interest was in interest rates, and he hadn't given military economics much thought. He suggested I see Dr. Wessey, who once did a paper on War Trade Agreements during "World War II. He might be able to help me. Before I could say anything else, he grabbed my hand and shook it. He had been glad to meet me, but there were some notes he had to assemble for a lecture. And then he was gone. The same thing happened when I tried to discuss Chaucer with an American literature specialist, questioned an Orientalist about the Trobriand Islanders, and tried to focus on the problems of automation-caused unemployment with a social psychologist who specialized in public opinion polls on adolescent behavior. They would always find excuses to slip away, afraid to reveal the narrowness of their knowledge. How different they seem to be now. And how foolish I was ever to have thought that professors were intellectual giants. They're people — and afraid the rest of the world will find out. And Alice is a person too — a woman, not a goddess — and I'm taking her to the concert tomorrow night. May 17 Almost morning and I can't fall asleep. I've got to understand what happened to me last night at the concert. The evening started out well enough. The Mall at Central Park had filled up early, and Alice and I had to pick our way among the couples stretched out on the grass. |
| 559 |
The International Psychological Convention at Chicago is only a week away. He wants his preliminary report to be as full as possible, since Algernon and I are the prime exhibits for his presentation. Our relationship is becoming increasingly strained. I resent Nemur's constant references to me as a laboratory specimen. He makes me feel that before the experiment I was not really a human being. I told Strauss that I was too involved in thinking, reading, and digging into myself, trying to understand who and what I am, and that writing was such a slow process it made me impatient to get my ideas down. I followed his suggestion that I learn to type, and now that I can type nearly seventy-five words a minute, it's easier to get it all down on paper. Strauss again brought up my need to speak and write simply and directly so that people will understand me. He reminds me that language is sometimes a barrier instead of a pathway. Ironic to find myself on the other side of the intellectual fence. I see Alice occasionally, but we don't discuss what happened. Our relationship remains platonic. But for three nights after I left the bakery there were the nightmares. Hard to believe it was two weeks ago. I am pursued down the empty streets at night by ghostly figures. Though I always run to the bakery, the door is locked, and the people inside never turn to look at me. Through the window, the bride and groom on the wedding cake point at me and laugh — the air becomes charged with laughter until I can't stand it — and the two cupids wave their flaming arrows. I scream. I pound on the door, but there is no sound. I see Charlie staring back at me from inside. Is it only a reflection? Things clutch at my legs and drag me away from the bakery down into the shadows of the alleyway, and just as they begin to ooze all over me I wake up. Other times the window of the bakery opens into the past and looking through it I see other things and other people. It's astonishing how my power of recall is developing. I cannot control it completely yet, but sometimes when I'm busy reading or working on a problem, I get a feeling of intense clarity. I know it's some kind of subconscious warning signal, and now instead of waiting for the memory to come to me, I close my eyes and reach out for it. Eventually, I'll be able to bring this recall completely under control, to explore not only the sum of my past experiences, but also all of the untapped faculties of the mind. Even now, as I think about it, I feel the sharp stillness. |
| 560 |
I recall once overhearing Norma and one of her girl friends playing in her room, and Norma shouting: "He is not my real brother! He's just a boy we took in because we felt sorry for him. My mamma told me, and she said I can tell everyone now that he's not really my brother at all." I wish this memory were a photograph so that I could tear it up and throw it back into her face. I want to call back across the years and tell her I never meant to stop her from getting her dog. She could have had it all to herself, and I wouldn't have fed it, or brushed it, or played with it — and I would never have made it like me more than it liked her. I only wanted her to play games with me the way we used to. I never meant to do anything that would hurt her at all. June 6 My first real quarrel with Alice today. My fault. I wanted to see her. Often, after a disturbing memory or dream, talking to her — just being with her — makes me feel better. But it was a mistake to go down to the Center to pick her up. I had not been back to the Center for Retarded Adults since the operation, and the thought of seeing the place was exciting. It's on Twenty-third Street, east of Fifth Avenue, in an old schoolhouse that has been used by the Beekman University Clinic for the last five years as a center for experimental education — special classes for the handicapped. The sign outside on the doorway, framed by the old spiked gateway, is just a gleaming brass plate that says C. R. A. Beekman Extension. Her class ended at eight, but I wanted to see the room where — not so long ago — I had struggled over simple reading and writing and learned to count change of a dollar. I went inside, slipped up to the door, and, keeping out of sight, I looked through the window. Alice was at her desk, and in a chair beside her was a thin-faced woman I didn't recognize. She was frowning that open frown of unconcealed puzzlement, and I wondered what Alice was trying to explain. Near the blackboard was Mike Dorni in his wheelchair, and there in his usual first-row first-seat was Lester Braun, who, Alice said, was the smartest in the group. Lester had learned easily what I had struggled over, but he came when he felt like it, or he stayed away to earn money waxing floors. I guess if he had cared at all — if it had been important to him as it was to me — they would have used him for this experiment. There were new faces, too, people I didn't know. Finally, I got up the nerve to go in. "It's Charlie!" said Mike, whirling his wheelchair around. |
| 561 |
I wanted my anger to consume the building. But as I walked away I felt a kind of simmering, then cooling, and finally a relief. I walked so fast I was drifting along the streets, and the feeling that hit my cheek was a cool breeze out of the summer night. Suddenly free. I realize now that my feeling for Alice had been moving backward against the current of my learning, from worship, to love, to fondness, to a feeling of gratitude and responsibility. My confused feeling for her had been holding me back, and I had clung to her out of my fear of being forced out on my own, and cut adrift. But with the freedom came a sadness. I wanted to be in love with her. I wanted to overcome my emotional and sexual fears, to marry, have children, settle down. Now it's impossible. I am just as far away from Alice with an I. Q. of 185 as I was when I had an I. Q. of 70. And this time we both know it. June 8 What drives me out of the apartment to prowl through the city? I wander through the streets alone — not the relaxing stroll of a summer night, but the tense hurry to get — where? Down alleyways, looking into doorways, peering into half-shuttered windows, wanting someone to talk to and yet afraid to meet anyone. Up one street, and down another, through the endless labyrinth, hurling myself against the neon cage of the city. Searching... for what? I met a woman in Central Park. She was sitting on a bench near the lake, with a coat clutched around her despite the heat. She smiled and motioned for me to sit beside her. We looked at the bright skyline on Central Park South, the honeycomb of lighted cells against the blackness, and I wished I could absorb them all. Yes, I told her, I was from New York. No, I had never been to Newport News, Virginia. That's where she was from, and where she had married this sailor who was at sea now, and she hadn't seen him in two and a half years. She twisted and knotted a handkerchief, using it from time to time to wipe the beaded sweat from her forehead. Even in the dim light reflected from the lake, I could see that she wore a great deal of make-up, but she looked attractive with her straight dark hair loose to her shoulders — except that her face was puffy and swollen as if she had just gotten up from sleep. She wanted to talk about herself, and I wanted to listen. Her father had given her a good home, an education, everything a wealthy shipbuilder could give his only daughter — but not forgiveness. He would never forgive her elopement with the sailor. |
| 562 |
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. Gordon here is no longer retarded?" "Ah!" crowed Nemur, "I said the destruction to the tissue was irreversible, not the process itself. Many researchers have been able to reverse the process through injections of chemicals which combine with the defective enzymes, changing the molecular shape of the interfering key, as it were. |
| 563 |
Two other professors from Beekman who had arrived in Chicago just this morning joined us. Professors "White and Clinger walked a little to the right and a step or two behind Nemur and Strauss, while Burt and I brought up the rear. Standees parted to make a path for us into the Grand Ballroom, and Nemur waved to the reporters and photographers who had come to hear at first hand about the startling things that had been done with a retardate adult in just a little over three months. Nemur had obviously sent out advance publicity releases. Some of the psychological papers delivered at the meeting were impressive. A group from Alaska showed how stimulation of various portions of the brain caused a significant development in learning ability, and a group from New Zealand had mapped out those portions of the brain that controlled perception and retention of stimuli. But there were other kinds of papers too — P. T. Zeller-man's study on the difference in the length of time it took white rats to learn a maze when the corners were curved rather than angular, or Worfels paper on the effect of intelligence level on the reaction-time of rhesus monkeys. Papers like these made me angry. Money, time, and energy squandered on the detailed analysis of the trivial. Burt was right when he praised Nemur and Strauss for devoting themselves to something important and uncertain rather than to something insignificant and safe. If only Nemur would look at me as a human being. After the chairman announced the presentation from Beekman University, we took our seats on the platform behind the long table — Algernon in his cage between Burt and me. We were the main attraction of the evening, and when we were settled, the chairman began his introduction. I half expected to hear him boom out: Laideezzz and gentulmennnnnn. Step right this way and see the side show! An act never before seen in the scientific world! A mouse and a moron turned into geniuses before your very eyes! I admit I had come here with a chip on my shoulder. All he said was: "The next presentation really needs no introduction. "We have all heard about the startling work being done at Beekman University, sponsored by the Wel-berg Foundation grants, under the direction of the chairman of the psychology department, Professor Nemur, in co-operation with Dr. Strauss of the Beekman Neuropsy-chiatric Center. Needless to say, this is a report we have all been looking forward to with great interest. I turn the meeting over to Professor Nemur and Dr. |
| 564 |
Strauss." Nemur nodded graciously at the chairman's introductory praise and winked at Strauss in the triumph of the moment. The first speaker from Beekman was Professor Clinger. I was becoming irritated, and I could see that Algernon, upset by the smoke, the buzzing, the unaccustomed surroundings, was moving around in his cage nervously. I had the strangest compulsion to open his cage and let him out. It was an absurd thought — more of an itch than a thought — and I tried to ignore it. But as I listened to Professor Clinger's stereotyped paper on "The effects of left-handed goal boxes in a T-maze versus right-handed goal boxes in a T-maze," I found myself toying with the release-lock mechanism of Algernon's cage. In a short while (before Strauss and Nemur would unveil their crowning achievement) Burt would read a paper describing the procedures and results of administering intelligence and learning tests he had devised for Algernon. This would be followed by a demonstration as Algernon was put through his paces of solving a problem in order to get his meal (something I have never stopped resenting!). Not that I had anything against Burt. He had always been straightforward with me — more so than most of the others — but when he described the white mouse who had been given intelligence, he was as pompous and artificial as the others. As if he were trying on the mantle of his teachers. I restrained myself at that point more out of friendship for Burt than anything else. Letting Algernon out of his cage would throw the meeting into chaos, and after all this was Burt's debut into the rat-race of academic preferment. I had my finger on the cage door release, and as Algernon watched the movement of my hand with his pink-candy eyes, I'm certain he knew what I had in mind. At that moment Burt took the cage for his demonstration. He explained the complexity of the shifting lock, and the problem-solving required each time the lock was to be opened. (Thin plastic bolts fell into place in varying patterns and had to be controlled by the mouse, who depressed a series of levers in the same order.) As Algernon's intelligence increased, his problem-solving speed increased — that much was obvious. But then Burt revealed one thing I had not known. At the peak of his intelligence, Algernon's performance had become variable. There were times, according to Burt's report, when Algernon refused to work at all — even when apparently hungry — and other times when he would solve the problem but, instead of taking his food reward, would hurl himself against the walls of his cage. |
| 565 |
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! |
| 566 |
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. For both Algernon and myself, it would take more time to see if this change would stick The professors had made a mistake, and no one else had caught it. I wanted to jump up and tell them, but I couldn't move. Like Algernon, I found myself behind the mesh of the cage they had built around me. Now there would be a question period, and before I would be allowed to have my dinner, I would be required to perform before this distinguished gathering. No. I had to get out of there. "... In one sense, he was the result of modern psychological experimentation. In place of a feeble-minded shell, a burden on the society that must fear his irresponsible behavior, we have a man of dignity and sensitivity, ready to take his place as a contributing member of society. I should like you all to hear a few words from Charlie Gordon..." God damn him. He didn't know what he was talking about. At that point, the compulsion overwhelmed me. I watched in fascination as my hand moved, independent of my will, to pull down the latch of Algernon's cage. As I opened it he looked up at me and paused. Then he turned, darted out of his cage, and scampered across the long table. At first, he was lost against the damask tablecloth, a blur of white on white, until a woman at the table screamed, knocking her chair backwards as she leaped to her feet. Beyond her, pitchers of water overturned, and then Burt shouted. "Algernon's loose!" Algernon jumped down from the table, onto the platform and then to the floor. "Get him! Get him!" Nemur screeched as the audience, divided in its aims, became a tangle of arms and legs. Some of the women (non-experimentalists?) tried to stand on the unstable folding chairs while others, trying to help corner Algernon, knocked them over. "Close those back doors!" shouted Burt, who realized Algernon was smart enough to head in that direction. "Run," I heard myself shout. "The side door!" "He's gone out the side door," someone echoed. "Get him! Get him!" begged Nemur. The crowd surged out of the Grand Ballroom into the corridor, as Algernon, scampering along the maroon carpeted hallway, led them a merry chase. |
| 567 |
Seeing Charlie huddled beneath the covers I wish I could give him comfort, explain to him that he has done nothing wrong, that it is beyond him to change his mother's attitude back to what it was before his sister came. There on the bed, Charlie did not understand what they were saying, but now it hurts. If I could reach out into the past of my memories, I would make her see how much she was hurting me. This is no time to go to her. Not until I've had time to work it out for myself. Fortunately, as a precaution, I withdrew my savings from the bank as soon as I arrived in New York Eight hundred and eighty-six dollars won't last long, but it will give me time to get my bearings. I've checked into the Camden Hotel on 4lst Street, a block from Times Square. New York! All the things I've read about it! Gotham... the melting pot... Baghdad-on-the-Hudson. City of light and color. Incredible that I've lived and worked all my life just a few stops away on the subway and been to Times Square only once — with Alice. It's hard to keep from calling her. I've started and stopped myself several times. I've got to keep away from her. So many confusing thoughts to get down. I tell myself that as long as I keep taping my progress reports, nothing will be lost; the record will be complete. Let them be in the dark for a while; I was in the dark for more than thirty years. But I'm tired now. Didn't get to sleep on the plane yesterday, and I can't keep my eyes open. I'll pick up at this point tomorrow. June 16 Called Alice, but hung up before she answered. Today I found a furnished apartment. Ninety-five dollars a month is more than I planned to spend, but it's on Forty-third and Tenth Avenue and I can get to the library in ten minutes to keep up with my reading and study. The apartment is on the fourth floor, four rooms, and there's a rented piano in it. The landlady says that one of these days the rental service will pull it out, but maybe by that time I can learn to play it. Algernon is a pleasant companion. At mealtimes he takes his place at the small gateleg table. He likes pretzels, and today he took a sip of beer while we watched the ball game on TV. I think he rooted for the Yankees. I'm going to move most of the furniture out of the second bedroom and use the room for Algernon. I plan to build him a three-dimensional maze out of scrap plastic that I can pick up cheaply downtown. There are some complex maze variations I'd like him to learn to be sure he keeps in shape. But I'm going to see if I can find some motivation other than food. |
| 568 |
From the darkness I feel the shudder pass over the house, and then Matt's voice, less panicky than hers. "I know what you've gone through with him, and I can't blame you for being afraid. But you've got to control yourself. I'll take him over to Herman. Will that satisfy you?" "That's all I ask. Your daughter is entitled to a life, too." Matt comes into Charlie's room and dresses his son, and though the boy doesn't understand what is happening, he is afraid. As they go out the door, she looks away. Perhaps she is trying to convince herself that he has already gone out of her life — that he no longer exists. On the way out, Charlie sees on the kitchen table the long carving knife she cuts roasts with, and he senses vaguely that she wanted to hurt him. She wanted to take something away from him, and give it to Norma. When he looks back at her, she has picked up a rag to wash the kitchen sink... When the haircut, shave, sun treatment, and the rest were over, I sat in the chair limply, feeling light, and slick, and clean, and Matt whisked the neckcloth off and offered me a second mirror to see the reflection of the back of my head. Seeing myself in the front mirror looking into the back mirror, as he held it for me, it tilted for an instant into the one angle that produced the illusion of depth; endless corridors of myself... looking at myself... looking at myself... looking at myself... looking... Which one? Who was I? I thought of not telling him. What good was it for him to know? Just go away and not reveal who I was. Then I remembered that I wanted him to know. He had to admit that I was alive, that I was someone. I wanted him to boast about me to the customers tomorrow as he gave haircuts and shaves. That would make it all real. If he knew I was his son, then I would be a person. "Now that you've got the hair off my face, maybe you'll know me," I said as I stood up, waiting for a sign of recognition. He frowned. "What is this? A gag?" I assured him it was not a gag, and if he looked and thought hard enough he would know me. He shrugged and turned to put his combs and scissors away. "I got no time for guessing games. Got to close up. That'll be three-fifty." What if he didn't remember me? What if this was only an absurd fantasy? His hand was out for the money, but I made no move toward my wallet. He had to remember me. He had to know me. But no — of course not — and as I felt the sour taste in my mouth and the sweat in my palms, I knew that in a minute I would be sick. |
| 569 |
I lay there for a while watching her. She moved in front of me with no shyness or inhibition. Her breasts were full as she had painted them in that self-portrait. I longed to reach out for her, but I knew it was futile. In spite of the operation Charlie was still with me. And Charlie was afraid of losing his peanuts. June 24 Today I went on a strange kind of anti-intellectual binge. If I had dared to, I would have gotten drunk, but after the experience with Fay, I knew it would be dangerous. So, instead, I went to Times Square, from movie house to movie house, immersing myself in westerns and horror movies — the way I used to. Each time, sitting through the picture, I would find myself whipped with guilt. I'd walk out in the middle of the picture and wander into another one. I told myself I was looking for something in the make-believe screen world that was missing from my new life. Then, in a sudden intuition, right outside the Keno Amusement Center, I knew it wasn't the movies I wanted, but the audiences. I wanted to be with the people around me in the darkness. The walls between people are thin here, and if I listen quietly, I hear what is going on. Greenwich Village is like that too. Not just being close — because I don't feel it in a. crowded elevator or on the subway during the rush — but on a hot night when everyone is out walking, or sitting in the theater, there is a rustling, and for a moment I brush against someone and sense the connection between the branch and trunk and the deep root. At such moments my flesh is thin and tight, and the unbearable hunger to be part of it drives me out to search in the dark corners and blind alleys of the night. Usually, when I'm exhausted from walking, I go back to the apartment and drop off into a deep sleep, but tonight instead of going up to my own place I went to the diner. There was a new dishwasher, a boy of about sixteen, and there was something familiar about him, his movements, the look in his eyes. And then, clearing away the table behind me, he dropped some dishes. They crashed to the floor, shattering and sending bits of white china under the tables. He stood there, dazed and frightened, holding the empty tray in his hand. The whistles and catcalls from the customers (cries of "hey, there go the profits!"... "Mazel tov!".. and "well, he didn't work here very long..." which invariably seems to follow the breaking of dishware in a public restaurant) confused him. When the owner came to see what the excitement was about, the boy cowered — threw up his arms as if to ward off a blow. |
| 570 |
The week before she met me, she had befriended a girl she'd met at the Stardust Ballroom. "When the girl told Fay she had no family in the city, was broke, and had no place to sleep, Fay invited her to move in. Two days later the girl found the two hundred and thirty-two dollars that Fay kept in her dresser drawer, and disappeared with the money. Fay hadn't reported it to the police — and as it turned out, she didn't even know the girl's last name. "What good would it do to notify the police?" she wanted to know. "I mean this poor bitch must have needed the money pretty badly to do it. I'm not going to ruin her life over a few hundred bucks. I'm not rich or anything, but I'm not going after her skin — if you know what I mean." I knew what she meant. I have never met anyone as open and trusting as Fay is. She's what I need most of all right now. I've been starved for simple human contact. July 8 Not much time for work — between the nightly club-hopping and the morning hangovers. It was only with aspirin and something Fay concocted for me that I was able to finish my linguistic analysis of Urdu verb forms and send the paper to the International Linguistics Bulletin. It will send the linguists back to India with their tape recorders, because it undermines the critical superstructure of their methodology. I can't help but admire the structural linguists who have carved out for themselves a linguistic discipline based on the deterioration of written communication. Another case of men devoting their lives to studying more and more about less and less — filling volumes and libraries with the subtle linguistic analysis of the grunt. Nothing wrong with that, but it should not be used as an excuse to destroy the stability of language. Alice called today to find out when I am coming back to work at the lab. I told her I wanted to finish the projects I had started, and that I was hoping to get permission from the Welberg Foundation for my own special study. She's right though — I've got to take time into consideration. Fay still wants to go out dancing all the time. Last night started out with us drinking and dancing at the "White Horse Club, and from there to Benny's Hideaway, and then on to the Pink Slipper... and after that I don't remember many of the places, but we danced until I was ready to drop. My tolerance for liquor must have increased because I was pretty far gone before Charlie made his appearance. I can only recall him doing a silly tap dance on the stage of the Allakazam Club. |
| 571 |
I want to see her and I don't. Not until I'm sure what is going to happen to me. Let's see first how the work goes and what I discover. Algernon refuses to run the maze any more; general motivation has decreased. I stopped off again today to see him, and this time Strauss was there too. Both he and Nemur looked disturbed as they watched Burt force-feed him. Strange to see the little puff of white clamped down on the worktable and Burt forcing the food down his throat with an eye-dropper. If it keeps up this way, they'll have to start feeding him by injection. Watching Algernon squirm under those tiny bands this afternoon, I felt them around my own arms and legs. I started to gag and choke, and I had to get out of the lab for fresh air. I've got to stop identifying with him. I went down to Murray's Bar and had a few drinks. And then I called Fay and we made the rounds. Fay is annoyed that I've stopped taking her out dancing, and she got angry and walked out on me last night. She has no idea of my work and no interest in it, and when I do try to talk to her about it she makes no attempt to hide her boredom. She just can't be bothered, and I can't blame her. She's interested in only three things that I can see: dancing, painting, and sex. And the only thing we really have in common is sex. It's foolish of me to try to interest her in my work. So she goes dancing without me. She told me that the other night she dreamed she had come into the apartment and set fire to all my books and notes, and that we went off dancing around the flames. I've got to watch out. She's becoming possessive. I just realized tonight that my own place is starting to resemble her apartment — a mess. I've got to cut down on the drinking. July 16 Alice met Fay last night. I'd been concerned about what would happen if they came face to face. Alice came to see me after she found out about Algernon from Burt. She knows what it may mean, and she still feels responsible for having encouraged me in the first place. We had coffee and we talked late. I knew that Fay had gone out dancing at the Stardust Ballroom, so I didn't expect her home so early. But at about one forty-five in the morning we were startled by Fay's sudden appearance on the fire-escape. She tapped, pushed open the half-open window and came waltzing into the room with a bottle in her hand. "Crashing the party," she said. "Brought my own refreshments." I had told her about Alice working on the project at the university, and I had mentioned Fay to Alice earlier — so they weren't surprised to meet. |
| 572 |
Here is the place for the application of all the knowledge I have acquired. Time assumes another dimension now — work and absorption in the search for an answer. The world around me and my past seem far away and distorted, as if time and space were taffy being stretched and looped and twisted out of shape. The only real things are the cages and the mice and the lab equipment here on the fourth floor of the main building. There is no night or day. I've got to cram a lifetime of research into a few weeks. I know I should rest, but I can't until I know the truth about what is happening. Alice is a great help to me now. She brings me sandwiches and coffee, but she makes no demands. About my perception: everything is sharp and clear, each sensation heightened and illuminated so that reds and yellows and blues glow. Sleeping here has a strange effect. The odors of the laboratory animals, dogs, monkeys, mice, spin me back into memories, and it is difficult to know whether I am experiencing a new sensation or recalling the past. It is impossible to tell what proportion is memory and what exists here and now — so that a strange compound is formed of memory and reality; past and present; response to stimuli stored in my brain centers, and response to stimuli in this room. It's as if all the things I've learned have fused into a crystal universe spinning before me so that I can see all the facets of it reflected in gorgeous bursts of light... A monkey sitting in the center of his cage, staring at me out of sleepy eyes, rubbing his cheeks with little old-man shriveled hands... chee... cheee... cheeeee.. . and bouncing off the cage wire, up to the swing overhead where the other monkey sits staring dumbly into space. Urinating, defecating, passing wind, staring at me and laughing... cheeee... cheeeee... cheeeee.. .. And bouncing around, leap, hop, up around and down, he swings and tries to grab the other monkey's tail, but the one on the bar keeps swishing it away, without fuss, out of his grasp. Nice monkey... pretty monkey... with big eyes and swishy tail. Can I feed him a peanut?... No, the man'll holler. That sign says do not feed the animals. That's a chimpanzee. Can I pet him? No. I want to pet the chip-a-zee. Never mind, come and look at the elephants. Outside, crowds of bright sunshiny people are dressed in spring. Algernon lies in his own dirt, unmoving, and the odors are stronger than ever before. And what about me? July 28 Fay has a new boy friend. I went home last night to be with her. |
| 573 |
I went to my room first to get a bottle and then headed over on the fire escape. But fortunately I looked before going in. They were together on the couch. Strange, I don't really care. It's almost a relief. I went back to the lab to work with Algernon. He has moments out of his lethargy. Periodically, he will run a shifting maze, but when he fails and finds himself in a dead-end, he reacts violently. When I got down to the lab, I looked in. He was alert and came up to me as if he knew me. He was eager to work, and when I set him down through the trap door in the wire mesh of the maze, he moved swiftly along the pathways to the reward box. Twice he ran the maze successfully. The third time, he got halfway through, paused at an intersection, and then with a twitching movement took the wrong turn. I could see what was going to happen, and I wanted to reach down and take him out before he ended up in a blind alley. But I restrained myself and watched. When he found himself moving along the unfamiliar path, he slowed down, and his actions became erratic: start, pause, double back, turn around and then forward again, until finally he was in the cul-de-sac that informed him with a mild shock that he had made a mistake. At this point, instead of turning back to find an alternate route, he began to move in circles, squeaking like a phonograph needle scratched across the grooves. He threw himself against the walls of the maze, again and again, leaping up, twisting over backwards and falling, and throwing himself again. Twice he caught his claws in the overhead wire mesh, screeching wildly, letting go, and trying hopelessly again. Then he stopped and curled himself up into a small, tight ball. "When I picked him up, he made no attempt to uncurl, but remained in that state much like a catatonic stupor. When I moved his head or limbs, they stayed like wax. I put him back into his cage and watched him until the stupor wore off and he began to move around normally. "What eludes me is the reason for his regression — is it a special case? An isolated reaction? Or is there some general principle of failure basic to the whole procedure? I've got to work out the rule. If I can find that out, and if it adds even one jot of information to whatever else has been discovered about mental retardation and the possibility of helping others like myself, I will be satisfied. Whatever happens to me, I will have lived a thousand normal lives by what I might add to others not yet born. That's enough. |
| 574 |
July 31 I'm on the edge of it. I sense it. They all think I'm killing myself at this pace, but what they don't understand is that I'm living at a peak of clarity and beauty I never knew existed. Every part of me is attuned to the work. I soak it up into my pores during the day, and at night — in the moments before I pass off into sleep — ideas explode into my head like fireworks. There is no greater joy than the burst of solution to a problem. Incredible that anything could happen to take away this bubbling energy, the zest that fills everything I do. It's as if all the knowledge I've soaked in during the past months has coalesced and lifted me to a peak of light and understanding. This is beauty, love, and truth all rolled into one. This is joy. And now that I've found it, how can I give it up? Life and work are the most wonderful things a man can have. I am in love with what I am doing, because the answer to this problem is right here in my mind, and soon — very soon — it will burst into consciousness. Let me solve this one problem. I pray God it is the answer I want, but if not I will accept any answer at all and try to be grateful for what I had. Fay's new boy friend is a dance instructor from the Stardust Ballroom. I can't really blame her since I have so little time to be with her. August 11 Blind alley for the past two days. Nothing. I've taken a wrong turn somewhere, because I get answers to a lot of questions, but not to the most important question of all: How does Algernon's regression affect the basic hypothesis of the experiment? Fortunately, I know enough about the processes of the mind not to let this block worry me too much. Instead of panicking and giving up (or what's even worse, pushing hard for answers that won't come) I've got to take my mind off the problem for a while and let it stew. I've gone as far as I can on a conscious level, and now it's up to those mysterious operations below the level of awareness. It's one of those inexplicable things, how everything I've learned and experienced is brought to bear on the problem. Pushing too hard will only make things freeze up. How many great problems have gone unsolved because men didn't know enough, or have enough faith in the creative process and in themselves, to let go for the whole mind to work at it? So I decided yesterday afternoon to put the work aside for a while and go to Mrs. Nemur's cocktail party. It was in honor of the two men on the board of the Welberg Foundation who had been instrumental in getting her husband the grant. |
| 575 |
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. |
| 576 |
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. 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. |
| 577 |
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. |
| 578 |
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. October 17 Why can't I remember? I've got to try to resist this slackness. Alice tells me I lie in bed for days and don't seem to know who or where I am. Then it all comes back and I recognize her and remember what's happening. |
| 579 |
Fugues of amnesia. Symptoms of second childhood — what do they call it? — senility? I can watch it coming on. All so cruelly logical, the result of speeding up all the processes of the mind. I learned so much so fast, and now my mind is deteriorating rapidly. What if I won't let it happen? What if I fight it? Think of those people at Warren, the empty smiles, the blank expressions, everyone laughing at them. Little Charlie Gordon staring at me through the window — waiting. Please, not that again. October 18 I'm forgetting things I learned recently. It seems to be following the classic pattern, the last things learned are first things forgotten. Or is that the pattern? Better look it up again. Reread my paper on the Algernon-Gordon Effect and even though I know I wrote it, I keep feeling it was written by someone else. Most of it I don't even understand. But why am I so irritable? Especially when Alice is so good to me? She keeps the place neat and clean, always putting my things away and washing dishes and scrubbing floors. I shouldn't have shouted at her the way I did this morning because it made her cry, and I didn't want that to happen. But she shouldn't have picked up the broken records and the music and the book and put them all neatly into a box. That made me furious. I don't want anyone to touch any of those things. I want to see them pile up. I want them to remind me of what I'm leaving behind. I kicked the box and scattered the stuff all over the floor and told her to leave them just where they were. Foolish. No reason for it. I guess I got sore because I knew she thought it was silly to keep those things, and she didn't tell me she thought it was silly. She just pretended it was perfectly normal. She's humoring me. And when I saw that box I remembered the boy at Warren and the lousy lamp he made and the way we were all humoring him, pretending he had done something wonderful when he hadn't. That was what she was doing to me, and I couldn't stand it. When she went to the bedroom and cried I felt bad about it and I told her it was all my fault. I don't deserve someone as good as her. Why can't I control myself just enough to keep on loving her? Just enough. October 19 Motor activity impaired. I keep tripping and dropping things. At first I didn't think it was me. I thought she was changing things around. The wastebasket was in my way, and so were the chairs, and I thought she had moved them. Now I realize my coordination is bad. I have to move slowly to get things right. |
| 580 |
I was on a down escalator now. If I stood still I'd go all the way to the bottom, but if I started to run up maybe I could at least stay in the same place. The important thing was to keep moving upward no matter what happened. So I went to the library and got out a lot of books to read. I've been reading a lot now. Most of the books are too hard for me, but I don't care. As long as I keep reading I'll learn new things and I won't forget how to read. That's the most important thing. If I keep reading, maybe I can hold my own. Dr. Strauss came around the day after Alice left, so I guess she told him about me. He pretended all he wanted was the progress reports but I told him I would send them. I don't want him coming around here. I told him he doesn't have to be worried about me because when I think I won't be able to take care of myself any more I'll get on a train and go to Warren. I told him I'd rather just go by myself when the time comes. I tried to talk to Fay, but I can see she's afraid of me. I guess she figures I've gone out of my mind. Last night she came home with somebody — he looked very young. This morning the landlady, Mrs. Mooney, came up with a bowl of hot chicken soup and some chicken. She said she just thought she would look in on me to see if I was doing all right. I told her I had lots of food to eat but she left it anyway and it was good. She pretended she was doing it on her own but I'm not that stupid yet. Alice or Strauss must have told her to look in on me and make sure I was all right. Well, that's okay. She's a nice old lady with an Irish accent and she likes to talk all about the people in the building. When she saw the mess on the floor inside my apartment she didn't say anything about it. I guess she's all right. November 1 A week since I dared to write again. I don't know where the time goes. Todays Sunday I know because I can see through my window the people going into the church across the street. I think I laid in bed all week but I remember Mrs. Mooney bringing me food a few times and asking if I was sick. What am I going to do with myself? I cant just hang around here all alone and look out the window. I've got to get hold of myself. I keep saying over and over that I've got to do something but then I forget or maybe its just easier not to do what I say I'm going to do. I still have some books from the library but a lot of them are too hard for me. I read a lot of mystery stories now and books about kings and queens from old times. |
| 581 |
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. |
| 582 |
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. 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. |
| 583 |
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. When I talk to you boy you better listen to me. Or I coud brake your arm for you. He twisted my arm so it hurt and I got scared he was going to brake it like he said. And he was laffing and twisting it, and I didn't know what to do. I got so afraid I felt like I was gonna cry but I didn't and then I had to go to the bathroom something awful. My stomack was all twisting inside like I was gonna bust open if I didn't go right away... because I couldn't hold it back. |
| 584 |
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. |
| 585 |
Crooks had his apple box over his bunk, and in it a range of medicine bottles, both for himself and for the horses. There were cans of saddle soap and a drippy can of tar with its paint brush sticking over the edge. And scattered about the floor were a number of personal possessions; for, being alone, Crooks could leave his things about, and being a stable buck and a cripple, he was more permanent than the other men, and he had accumulated more possessions than he could carry on his back. Crooks possessed several pairs of shoes, a pair of rubber boots, a big alarm clock and a single-barreled shotgun. And he had books, too; a tattered dictionary and a mauled copy of the California civil code for 1905. There were battered magazines and a few dirty books on a special shelf over his bunk. A pair of large gold-rimmed spectacles hung from a nail on the wall above his bed. This room was swept and fairly neat, for Crooks was a proud, aloof man. He kept his distance and demanded that other people keep theirs. His body was bent over to the left by his crooked spine, and his eyes lay deep in his head, and because of their depth seemed to glitter with intensity. His lean face was lined with deep black wrinkles, and he had thin, pain-tightened lips which were lighter than his face. It was Saturday night. Through the open door that led into the barn came the sound of moving horses, of feet stirring, of teeth champing on hay, of the rattle of halter chains. In the stable buck's room a small electric globe threw a meager yellow light. Crooks sat on his bunk. His shirt was out of his jeans in back. In one hand he held a bottle of liniment, and with the other he rubbed his spine. Now and then he poured a few drops of the liniment into his pink-palmed hand and reached up under his shirt to rub again. He flexed his muscles against his back and shivered. Noiselessly Lennie appeared in the open doorway and stood there looking in, his big shoulders nearly filling the opening. For a moment Crooks did not see him, but on raising his eyes he stiffened and a scowl came on his face. His hand came out from under his shirt. Lennie smiled helplessly in an attempt to make friends. Crooks said sharply, "You got no right to come in my room. This here's my room. Nobody got any right in here but me." Lennie gulped and his smile grew more fawning. "I ain't doing nothing," he said. "Just come to look at my puppy. And I seen your light," he explained. "Well, I got a right to have a light. You go on get outa my room. |
| 586 |
You stick with us so we don't think you had nothin' to do with this." George moved slowly after them, and his feet dragged heavily. And when they were gone, Candy squatted down in the hay and watched the face of Curley's wife. "Poor bastard," he said softly. The sound of the men grew fainter. The barn was darkening gradually and, in their stalls, the horses shifted their feet and rattled the halter chains. Old Candy lay down in the hay and covered his eyes with his arm. The deep green pool of the Salinas River was still in the late afternoon. Already the sun had left the valley to go climbing up the slopes of the Gabilan Mountains, and the hilltops were rosy in the sun. But by the pool among the mottled sycamores, a pleasant shade had fallen. A water snake glided smoothly up the pool, twisting its periscope head from side to side; and it swam the length of the pool and came to the legs of a motionless heron that stood in the shallows. A silent head and beak lanced down and plucked it out by the head, and the beak swallowed the little snake while its tail waved frantically. A far rush of wind sounded and a gust drove through the tops of the trees like a wave. The sycamore leaves turned up their silver sides, the brown, dry leaves on the ground scudded a few feet. And row on row of tiny wind waves flowed up the pool's green surface. As quickly as it had come, the wind died, and the clearing was quiet again. The heron stood in the shallows, motionless and waiting. Another little water snake swam up the pool, turning its periscope head from side to side. Suddenly Lennie appeared out of the brush, and he came as silently as a creeping bear moves. The heron pounded the air with its wings, jacked itself clear of the water and flew off down river. The little snake slid in among the reeds at the pool's side. Lennie came quietly to the pool's edge. He knelt down and drank, barely touching his lips to the water. When a little bird skittered over the dry leaves behind him, his head jerked up and he strained toward the sound with eyes and ears until he saw the bird, and then he dropped his head and drank again. When he was finished, he sat down on the bank, with his side to the pool, so that he could watch the trail's entrance. He embraced his knees and laid his chin down on his knees. The light climbed on out of the valley, and as it went, the tops of the mountains seemed to blaze with increasing brightness. Lennie said softly, "I di'n't forget, you bet, God damn. Hide in the brush an' wait for George." He pulled his hat down low over his eyes. |
| 587 |
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. |
| 588 |
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. 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. |
| 589 |
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. 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. |
| 590 |
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. |
| 591 |
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. 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? |
| 592 |
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. 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. |
| 593 |
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. |
| 594 |
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. |
| 595 |
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. 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. |
| 596 |
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. |
| 597 |
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. 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! |
| 598 |
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. 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. |
| 599 |
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. Louis, I wouldn't have been. My guess isyou're a practical joker. Maybeyou're hustling something. But I think maybe well have a better time if we end this conversation here. |
| 600 |
I said, who are you? Lets see. Well, seeing that today certainly is my daywhy don't you call me Wednesday? Mister Wednesday. Although given the weather, it might as well be Thursday, eh? Whats your real name? Work for me long enough and well enough, said the man in the pale suit, and I may even tell you that. There. Job offer. Think about it. No one expects you to say yes immediately, not knowing whetheryou're leaping into a piranha tank or a pit of bears. Take your time. He closed his eyes and leaned back in his seat. I don't think so, said Shadow. I don't like you. I don't want to work with you. Like I say, said the man, without opening his eyes, don't rush into it. Take your time. The plane landed with a bump, and a few passengers got off. Shadow looked out of the window: it was a little airport in the middle of nowhere, and there were still two little airports to go before Eagle Point. Shadow transferred his glance to the man in the pale suitMr. Wednesday? He seemed to be asleep. Impulsively, Shadow stood up, grabbed his bag, and stepped off the plane, down the steps onto the slick, wet tarmac, walking at an even pace toward the lights of the terminal. A light rain spattered his face. Before he went inside the airport building, he stopped, and turned, and watched. No one else got off the plane. The ground crew rolled the steps away, the door was closed, and it took off. Shadow walked inside and he rented what turned out, when he got to the parking lot, to be a small red Toyota. Shadow unfolded the map theyd given him. He spread it out on the passengers seat. Eagle Point was about 250 miles away. The storms had passed, if they had come this far. It was cold and clear. Clouds scudded in front of the moon, and for a moment Shadow could not be certain whether it was the clouds or the moon that were moving. He drove north for an hour and a half. It was getting late. He was hungry, and when he realized how hungry he really was, he pulled off at the next exit and drove into the town of Nottamun (pop. 1301). He filled the gas tank at the Amoco and asked the bored woman at the cash register where he could get something to eat. Jacks Crocodile Bar, she told him. Its west on County Road N. Crocodile Bar? Yeah. Jack says they add character. She drew him a map on the back of a mauve flyer, which advertised a chicken roast for the benefit of a young girl who needed a new kidney. he's got a couple of crocodiles, a snake, one a them big lizard things. An iguana? that's him. |
| 601 |
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. |
| 602 |
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. 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. |
| 603 |
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. 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. |
| 604 |
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. Call, he said. Why? asked Wednesday. I don't want to work for anyone with worse luck than me. Call. Heads, said Mr. Wednesday. |
| 605 |
It reminded him a little of prison hooch, brewed in a garbage bag from rotten fruit and bread and sugar and water, but it was sweeter, and far stranger. Okay, said Shadow. I tasted it. What was it? Mead, said Wednesday. Honey wine. The drink of heroes. The drink of the gods. Shadow took another tentative sip. Yes, he could taste the honey, he decided. That was one of the tastes. Tastes kinda like pickle juice, he said. Sweet pickle-juice wine. Tastes like a drunken diabetics piss, agreed Wednesday. I hate the stuff. Then why did you bring it for me? asked Shadow, reasonably. Wednesday stared at Shadow with his mismatched eyes. One of them, Shadow decided, was a glass eye, but he could not decide which one. I brought you mead to drink because its traditional. And right now we need all the tradition we can get. It seals our bargain. 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? |
| 606 |
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. 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? |
| 607 |
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. |
| 608 |
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. 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. |
| 609 |
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. 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. |
| 610 |
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. Shadow watched as Wednesday became increasingly flustered and apologetic. He seemed very old, suddenly. The girl gave him his cash back, and put the purchase on the card, and then gave him the card receipt and took his cash, then returned the cash and took a different card. |
| 611 |
What the hell was that all about? She stopped in the dark corridor. The violets? They were always her favorite flower. When we were girls we used to pick them together. Not the violets. Oh, that, she said. She wiped a speck of something invisible from the corner of her mouth. Well, I would have thought that was obvious. Not to me, Audrey. They didn't tell you? Her voice was calm, emotionless. Your wife died with my husbands cock in her mouth, Shadow. He went back in to the funeral home. Someone had already wiped away the spit. * * * After lunchShadow ate at the Burger Kingwas the burial. Lauras cream-colored coffin was interred in the small nondenominational cemetery on the edge of town: un-fenced, a hilly woodland meadow filled with black granite and white marble headstones. He rode to the cemetery in the Wendells hearse, with Lauras mother. Mrs. McCabe seemed to feel that Lauras death was Shadows fault. If youd been here, she said, this would never have happened. I don't know why she married you. I told her. Time and again, I told her. But they don't listen to their mothers, do they? She stopped, looked more closely at Shadows face. Have you been fighting? Yes, he said. Barbarian, she said, then she set her mouth, raised her head so her chins quivered, and stared straight ahead of her. To Shadows surprise Audrey Burton was also at the funeral, standing toward the back. The short service ended, the casket was lowered into the cold ground. The people went away. Shadow did not leave. He stood there with his hands in his pockets, shivering, staring at the hole in the ground. Above him the sky was iron gray, featureless and flat as a mirror. It continued to snow, erratically, in ghostlike tumbling flakes. 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. |
| 612 |
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. |
| 613 |
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. * * * Shadows temples felt as if they had been reattached to the rest of his skull with roofing nails. His hands were bound behind his back with what felt like some kind of straps. He was in a car, sitting on leather upholstery. For a moment he wondered if there was something wrong with his depth perception and then he understood that, no, the other seat really was that far away. There were people sitting beside him, but he could not turn to look at them. The fat young man at the other end of the stretch limo took a can of diet Coke from the cocktail bar and popped it open. He wore a long black coat, made of some silky material, and he appeared barely out of his teens: a spattering of acne glistened on one cheek. He smiled when he saw that Shadow was awake. Hello, Shadow, he said. don't fuck with me. Okay, said Shadow. I wont. Can you drop me off at the Motel America, up by the interstate? Hit him, said the young man to the person on Shadows left. A punch was delivered to Shadows solar plexus, knocking the breath from him, doubling him over. He straightened up, slowly. I said don't fuck with me. That was fucking with me. Keep your answers short and to the point or I'll fucking kill you. Or maybe I won't kill you. Maybe I'll have the children break every bone in your fucking body. There are two hundred and six of them. So don't fuck with me. Got it, said Shadow. The ceiling lights in the limo changed color from violet to blue, then to green and to yellow. you're working for Wednesday, said the young man. Yes, said Shadow. What the fuck is he after? I mean, whats he doing here? He must have a plan. Whats the game plan? I started working for Mister Wednesday this morning, said Shadow. I'm an errand boy. you're saying you don't know? I'm saying I don't know. The boy opened his jacket and took out a silver cigarette case from an inside pocket. He opened it, and offered a cigarette to Shadow. Smoke? Shadow thought about asking for his hands to be untied, out decided against it. No, thank you, he said. The cigarette appeared to have been hand-rolled, and when the boy lit it, with a matte black Zippo lighter, it smelled a little like burning electrical parts. The boy inhaled deeply, then held his breath. He let the smoke trickle out from his mouth, pulled it back into his nostrils. |
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A precise voice, fussy and exact, was speaking to him, in his dream, but he could see no one. These are gods who have been forgotten, and now might as well be dead. They can be found only in dry histories. They are gone, all gone, but their names and their images remain with us. Shadow turned a corner, and knew himself to be in another room, even vaster than the first. It went on farther than the eye could see. Close to him was the skull of a mammoth, polished and brown, and a hairy ocher cloak, being worn by a small woman with a deformed left hand. 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. |
| 615 |
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. 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? |
| 616 |
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. |
| 617 |
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. |
| 618 |
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. 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. |
| 619 |
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. The All-Father made the world, he shouted. He built it with his hands from the shattered bones and the flesh of Ymir, his grandfather. He placed Ymirs brains in the sky as clouds, and his salt blood became the seas we crossed. If he made the world, do you not realize that he created this land as well? And if we die here as men, shall we not be received into his hall? And the men cheered and laughed. They set to, with a will, to build a hall out of split trees and mud, inside a small stockade of sharpened logs, although as far as they knew they were the only men in the new land. |
| 620 |
And, the next day, when two huge ravens landed upon the scraelings corpse, one on each shoulder, and commenced to peck at its cheeks and eyes, the men knew their sacrifice had been accepted. It was a long winter, and they were hungry, but they were cheered by the thought that, when spring came, they would send the boat back to the northlands, and it would bring settlers, and bring women. 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. |
| 621 |
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. 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. |
| 622 |
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. 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. |
| 623 |
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. |
| 624 |
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. How do you do, Mr. Czernobog? I do old. My guts ache, and my back hurts, and I cough my chest apart every morning. Why you are standing at the door? asked a womans voice. Shadow looked over Czernobogs shoulder, at the old woman standing behind him. She was smaller and frailer than her sister, but her hair was long and still golden. I am Zorya Utrennyaya, she said. You must not stand there in the hall. You must go in, sit down. I will bring you coffee. Through the doorway into an apartment that smelled like overboiled cabbage and cat box and unfiltered foreign cigarettes, and they were ushered through a tiny hallway past several closed doors to the sitting room at the far end of the corridor, and were seated on a huge old horsehair sofa, disturbing an elderly gray cat in the process, who stretched, stood up, and walked, stiffly, to a distant part of the sofa, where he lay down, warily stared at each of them in turn, then closed one eye and went back to sleep. Czernobog sat in an armchair across from them. Zorya Utrennyaya found an empty ashtray and placed it beside Czernobog. How you want your coffee? she asked her guests. Here we take it black as night, sweet as sin. Thatll be fine, maam, said Shadow. He looked out of the window, at the buildings across the street. Zorya Utrennyaya went out. Czernobog stared at her as she left. that's a good woman, he said. Not like her sisters. One of them is a harpy, the other, all she does is sleep. He put his slippered feet up on a long, low coffee table, a chess board inset in the middle, cigarette burns and mug rings on its surface. Is she your wife? asked Shadow. she's nobodys wife. The old man sat in silence for a moment, looking down at his rough hands. |
| 625 |
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. |
| 626 |
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. 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. |
| 627 |
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. 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. |
| 628 |
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. 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. |
| 629 |
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. |
| 630 |
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. 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. |
| 631 |
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. 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. |
| 632 |
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. |
| 633 |
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. For Czernobog. Shadow glanced about. No, they were alone on the roof. Zorya Polunochnaya laughed. Silly, he is not here. And you won a game also. He may not strike his blow until this is all over. He said he would not. And you will know. Like the cows he killed. They always know, first. Otherwise, what is the point? I feel, Shadow told her, like I'm in a world with its own sense of logic. Its own rules. Like whenyou're in a dream, and you know there are rules you mustn't break. Even if you don't know what they mean. I'm just going along with it, you know? I know, she said. She held his hand, with a hand that was icy cold. You were given protection once. You were given the sun itself. But you lost it already. You gave it away. All I can give you is much weaker protection. The daughter, not the father. But all helps. Yes? Her white hair blew about her face in the chilly wind. Do I have to fight you? Or play checkers? he asked. You do not even have to kiss me, she told him. Just take the moon from me. How? Take the moon. I don't understand. Watch, said Zorya Polunochnaya. She raised her left hand and held it in front of the moon, so that her forefinger and thumb seemed to be grasping it. Then, in one smooth movement, she plucked at it. For a moment, it looked like she had taken the moon from the sky, but then Shadow saw that the moon shone still, and Zorya Polunochnaya opened her hand to display a silver Liberty-head dollar resting between finger and thumb. That was beautifully done, said Shadow. I didn't see you palm it. And I don't know how you did that last bit. I did not palm it, she said. I took it. And now I give it to you, to keep safe. Here. don't give this one away. She placed it in his right hand and closed his fingers around it. The coin was cold in his hand. Zorya Polunochnaya leaned forward, and closed his eyes with her fingers, and kissed him, lightly, once upon each eyelid. * * * Shadow awoke on the sofa, fully dressed. A narrow shaft of sunlight streamed in through the window, making the dust motes dance. He got out of bed, and walked over to the window. The room seemed much smaller in the daylight. The thing that had been troubling him since last night came into focus as he looked out and down and across the street. |
| 634 |
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. He rifled the house while the family slept on. Suspicion immediately fell upon someone in the house, for it was apparent that someone must have opened the door (which the squires wife distinctly remembered having bolted herself), and someone must have known where the squire kept his silver plate, and the drawer in which he kept his coins and his promissory notes. |
| 635 |
Still, Essie, by resolutely denying everything, was convicted of nothing until Master Josiah Horner was caught, in a chandlers in Exeter, passing one of the squires notes. The squire identified it as his, and Horner and Essie went to trial. Horner was convicted at the local assizes, and was, as the slang of the time so cruelly and so casually had it, turned off, but the judge took pity on Essie, because of her age or her chestnut hair, and he sentenced her to seven years transportation. She was to be transported on a ship called the Neptune, under the command of one Captain Clarke. So Essie went to the Carolinas; and on the way she conceived an alliance with the selfsame captain, and prevailed upon him to return her to England with him, as his wife, and to take her to his mothers house in London, where no man knew her. The journey back, when the human cargo had been exchanged for cotton and tobacco, was a peaceful time and a happy one for the captain and his new bride, who were as two lovebirds or courting butterflies, unable to cease from touching each other or giving each other little gifts and endearments. When they reached London, Captain Clarke lodged Essie with his mother, who treated her in all ways as her sons new wife. Eight weeks later, the Neptune set sail again, and the pretty young bride with the chestnut hair waved her husband goodbye from dockside. Then she returned to her mother-in-laws house, where, the old woman being absent, Essie helped herself to a length of silk, several gold coins, and a silver pot in which the old woman kept her buttons, and pocketing these things Essie vanished into the stews of London. Over the following two years Essie became an accomplished shoplifter, her wide skirts capable of concealing a multitude of sins, consisting chiefly of stolen bolts of silk and lace, and she lived life to the full. Essie gave thanks for her escapes from her vicissitudes to all the creatures that she had been told of as a child, to the piskies (whose influence, she was certain, extended as far as London), and she would put a wooden bowl of milk on a window ledge each night, although her friends laughed at her; but she had the last laugh, as her friends got the pox or the clap and Essie remained in the peak of health. She was a year shy of her twentieth birthday when fate dealt her an ill blow: she sat in the Crossed Forks Inn off Fleet Street, in Bell Yard, when she saw a young man enter and seat himself near the fireplace, fresh down from the university. |
| 636 |
The children grew in the lush Virginia hills, grew tall and strong (although Anthony, her first son, was always weaker, paler, more prone to disease and bad airs) and the Richardsons were happy; and Essie loved her husband as best she could. They had been married a decade when John Richardson developed a toothache so bad it made him fall from his horse. They took him to the nearest town, where his tooth was pulled; but it was too late, and the blood poisoning carried him off, black-faced and groaning, and they buried him beneath his favorite willow tree. The widow Richardson was left the farm to manage until Richardsons two children were of age: she managed the indentured servants and the slaves, and brought in the tobacco crop, year in, year out; she poured cider on the roots of the apple trees on New Years Eve, and placed a loaf of new-baked bread in the fields at harvest time, and she always left a saucer of milk at the back door. The farm flourished, and the widow Richardson gained a reputation as a hard bargainer, but one whose crop was always good, and who never sold shoddy for better merchandise. So all went well for another ten years; but after that was a bad year, for Anthony, her son, slew Johnnie, his half brother, in a furious quarrel over the future of the farm and the disposition of Phyllidas hand; and some said he had not meant to kill his brother, and that it was a foolish blow that struck too deep, and some said otherwise. Anthony fled, leaving Essie to bury her youngest son beside his father. Now, some said Anthony fled to Boston, and some said he went south, and his mother was of the opinion that he had taken ship to England, to enlist in Georges army and fight the rebel Scots. But with both sons gone the farm was an empty place, and a sad one, and Phyllida pined and plained as if her heart had been broken, while nothing that her stepmother could say or do would put a smile back on her lips again. But heartbroken or not, they needed a man about the farm, and so Phyllida married Harry Soames, a ships carpenter by profession, who had tired of the sea and who dreamed of a life on land on a farm like the Lincolnshire farm upon which he had grown up. And although the Richardsons farm was little enough like that, Harry Soames found correspondences enough to make him happy. Five children were born to Phyllida and Harry, three of whom lived. The widow Richardson missed her sons, and she missed her husband, although he was now little more than a memory of a fair man who treated her kindly. |
| 637 |
Phyllidas children would come to Essie for tales, and she would tell them of the Black Dog of the Moors, and of Raw-Head and Bloody-Bones, or the Apple Tree Man, but they were not interested; they only wanted tales of JackJack up the Beanstalk, or Jack Giant-killer, or Jack and his Cat and the King. 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. |
| 638 |
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. I think she's beautiful, said Shadow, holding the coin up close. Libertys silver face reminded him a little of Zorya Polunochnaya. That, said Wednesday, driving off, is the eternal folly of man. To be chasing after the sweet flesh, without realizing that it is simply a pretty cover for the bones. |
| 639 |
Think snow for me, will you? Huh? Concentrate on making those cloudsthe ones over there, in the westmaking them bigger and darker. Think gray skies and driving winds coming down from the arctic. Think snow. I don't think it will do any good. Nonsense. If nothing else, it will keep your mind occupied, said Wednesday, unlocking the car. Kinkos next. Hurry up. Snow, thought Shadow, in the passenger seat, sipping his hot chocolate. Huge, dizzying clumps and clusters of snow falling through the air, patches of white against an iron-gray sky, snow that touches your tongue with cold and winter, that kisses your face with its hesitant touch before freezing you to death. Twelve cotton-candy inches of snow, creating a fairy-tale world, making everything unrecognizably beautiful Wednesday was talking to him. 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. |
| 640 |
And then the cops drew up outside the bank, and Shadows heart sank. Wednesday tipped his cap to them, and ambled over to the police car. He said his hellos and shook hands through the open window, and nodded, then hunted through his pockets until he found a business card and a letter, and passed them through the window of the car. Then he sipped his coffee. The telephone rang. Shadow picked up the handpiece and did his best to sound bored. A1 Security Services, he said. Can I speak to A. Haddock? asked the cop across the street. This is Andy Haddock speaking, said Shadow. Yeah, Mister Haddock, this is the police, said the cop in the car across the street. Youve got a man at the First Illinois Bank on the corner of Market and Second. Uh, yeah. that's right. Jimmy OGerman. And what seems to be the problem, officer? Jim behaving himself? he's not been drinking? No problem, sir. Your man is just fine, sir. Just wanted to make certain everything was in order. You tell Jim that if he's caught drinking again, officer, he's fired. You got that? Out of a job. Out on his ass. We have zero tolerance at A1 Security. I really don't think its my place to tell him that, sir. 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. |
| 641 |
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. 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. |
| 642 |
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. |
| 643 |
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. |
| 644 |
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. Shadow was amused, and a little puzzled, to realize that he was far more concerned about breaking the rules by climbing onto the carousel than he had been aiding and abetting this afternoons bank robbery. Each of the old men selected a mount. Wednesday climbed onto a golden wolf. Czernobog climbed onto an armored centaur, its face hidden by a metal helmet. Nancy, chuckling, slithered up onto the back of an enormous, leaping lion, captured by the sculptor mid-roar. He patted the side of the lion. The Strauss waltz carried them around, majestically. Wednesday was smiling, and Nancy was laughing delightedly, an old mans cackle, and even the dour Czernobog seemed to be enjoying himself. Shadow felt as if a weight were suddenly lifted from his back: three old men were enjoying themselves, riding the Worlds Largest Carousel. So what if they all did get thrown out of the place? Wasnt it worth it, worth anything, to say that you had ridden on the Worlds Largest Carousel? Wasnt it worth it to have traveled on one of those glorious monsters? Shadow inspected a bulldog, and a mer-creature, and an elephant with a golden howdah, and then he climbed on the back of a creature with an eagles head and the body of a tiger, and held on tight. The rhythm of the Blue Danube waltz rippled and rang and sang in his head, the lights of a thousand chandeliers glinted and prismed, and for a heartbeat Shadow was a child again, and all it took to make him happy was to ride the carousel: he stayed perfectly still, riding his eagle-tiger at the center of everything, and the world revolved around him. Shadow heard himself laugh, over the sound of the music. He was happy. It was as if the last thirty-six hours had never happened, as if the last three years had not happened, as if his life had evaporated into the daydream of a small child, riding the carousel in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, on his first trip back to the States, a marathon journey by ship and by car, his mother standing there, watching him proudly, and himself sucking his melting Popsicle, holding on tightly, hoping that the music would never stop, the carousel would never slow, the ride would never end. He was going around and around and around again Then the lights went out, and Shadow saw the gods. |
| 645 |
Wide open and unguarded stand our gates, And through them passes a wild motley throng. Men from Volga and Tartar steppes. Featureless figures from the Hoang-ho, Malayan, Scythian, Teuton, Kelt and Slav, Flying the Old Worlds poverty and scorn; These bringing with them unknown gods and rites, Those tiger passions here to stretch their claws, In street and alley what strange tongues are these, Accents of menace in our ear, Voices that once the Tower of Babel knew. Thomas Bailey Aldrich, The Unguarded Gates, 1882 One moment Shadow was riding the Worlds Largest Carousel, holding on to his eagle-headed tiger, and then the red and white lights of the carousel stretched and shivered and went out, and he was falling through an ocean of stars, while the mechanical waltz was replaced by a pounding rhythmic roll and crash, as of cymbals or the breakers on the shores of a far ocean. The only light was starlight, but it illuminated everything with a cold clarity. Beneath him his mount stretched and padded, its warm fur under his left hand, its feathers beneath his right. Its a good ride, isn't it? The voice came from behind him, in his ears and in his mind. Shadow turned, slowly, streaming images of himself as he moved, frozen moments, each him captured in a fraction of a second, every tiny movement lasting for an infinite period. The images that reached his mind made no sense: it was like seeing the world through the multifaceted jeweled eyes of a dragonfly, but each facet saw something completely different, and he was unable to combine the things he was seeing, or thought he was seeing, into a whole that made any sense. He was looking at Mr. Nancy, an old black man with a pencil mustache, in his check sports jacket and his lemon-yellow gloves, riding a carousel lion as it rose and lowered, high in the air; and, at the same time, in the same place, he saw a jeweled spider as high as a horse, its eyes an emerald nebula, strutting, staring down at him; and simultaneously he was looking at an extraordinarily tall man with teak-colored skin and three sets of arms, wearing a flowing ostrich-feather headdress, his face painted with red stripes, riding an irritated golden lion, two of his six hands holding on tightly to the beasts mane; and he was also seeing a young black boy, dressed in rags, his left foot all swollen and crawling with blackflies; and last of all, and behind all these things, Shadow was looking at a tiny brown spider, hiding under a withered ocher leaf. Shadow saw all these things, and he knew they were the same thing. |
| 646 |
If you don't close your mouth, said the many things that were Mr. Nancy, somethins goin to fly in there. Shadow closed his mouth and swallowed, hard. There was a wooden hall on a hill, a mile or so from them. They were trotting toward the hall, their mounts hooves and feet padding noiselessly on the dry sand at the seas edge. Czernobog trotted up on his centaur. He tapped the human arm of his mount. None of this is truly happening, he said to Shadow. He sounded miserable. Is all in your head. Best not to think of it. Shadow saw a gray-haired old Eastern-European immigrant, with a shabby raincoat and one iron-colored tooth, true. But he also saw a squat black thing, darker than the darkness that surrounded them, its eyes two burning coals; and he saw a prince, with long flowing black hair and a long black mustache, blood on his hands and his face, riding, naked but for a bear skin over his shoulder, on a creature half-man, half-beast, his face and torso blue-tattooed with swirls and spirals. Who are you? asked Shadow. What are you? Their mounts padded along the shore. Waves broke and crashed implacably on the night beach. Wednesday guided his wolfnow a huge and charcoal-gray beast with green eyesover to Shadow. Shadows mount caracoled away from it, and Shadow stroked its neck and told it not to be afraid. Its tiger tail swished, aggressively. It occurred to Shadow that there was another wolf, a twin to the one that Wednesday was riding, keeping pace with them in the sand dunes, just a moment out of sight. Do you know me, Shadow? said Wednesday. He rode his wolf with his head high. His right eye glittered and flashed, his left eye was dull. He wore a cloak with a deep, monklike cowl, and his face stared out from the shadows. I told you I would tell you my names. This is what they call me. I am called Glad-of-War, Grim, Raider, and Third. I am One-Eyed. I am called Highest, and True-Guesser. I am Grimnir, and I am the Hooded One. I am All-Father, and I am Gondlir Wand-Bearer. I have as many names as there are winds, as many titles as there are ways to die. My ravens are Huginn and Muninn, Thought and Memory; my wolves are Freki and Geri; my horse is the gallows. Two ghostly-gray ravens, like transparent skins of birds, landed on Wednesdays shoulders, pushed their beaks into the side of Wednesdays head as if tasting his mind, and flapped out into the world once more. What should I believe? thought Shadow, and the voice came back to him from somewhere deep beneath the world, in a bass rumble: Believe everything. |
| 647 |
Odin? said Shadow, and the wind whipped the word from his lips. Odin, whispered Wednesday, and the crash of the breakers on the beach of skulls was not loud enough to drown that whisper. Odin, said Wednesday, tasting the sound of the words in his mouth. Odin, said Wednesday, his voice a triumphant shout that echoed from horizon to horizon. His name swelled and grew and filled the world like the pounding of blood in Shadows ears. And then, as in a dream, they were no longer riding toward a distant hall. They were already there, and their mounts were tied in the shelter beside the hall. The hall was huge but primitive. The roof was thatched, the walls were wooden. There was a fire burning in the center of the hall, and the smoke stung Shadows eyes. We should have done this in my mind, not in his, muttered Mr. Nancy to Shadow. It would have been warmer there. Were in his mind? More or less. This is Valaskjalf. Its his old hall. Shadow was relieved to see that Nancy was now once more an old man wearing yellow gloves, although his shadow shook and shivered and changed in the flames of the fire, and what it changed into was not always entirely human. There were wooden benches against the walls, and, sitting on them or standing beside them, perhaps ten people. They kept their distance from each other: a mixed lot, who included a dark-skinned, matronly woman in a red sari, several shabby-looking businessmen, and others, too close to the fire for Shadow to be able to make them out. Where are they? whispered Wednesday fiercely, to Nancy. Well? Where are they? There should be dozens of us here. Scores! You did all the inviting, said Nancy. I think its a wonder you got as many here as you did. You think I should tell a story, to start things off? Wednesday shook his head. Out of the question. They don't look very friendly, said Nancy. A storys a good way of gettin someone on your side. And you don't have a bard to sing to them. No stories, said Wednesday. Not now. Later, there will be time for stories. Not now. No stories. Right. I'll just be the warm-up man. And Mr. Nancy strode out into the firelight with an easy smile. I know what you are all thinkin, he said, You are thinking, What is Compe Anansi doin, comin out to talk to you all, when the All-Father called you all here, just like he called me here? Well, you know, sometimes people need remindin of things. I look around when I come in, and I thought, wheres the rest of us? But then I thought, just because we are few and they are many, we are weak, and they are powerful, it does not mean that we are lost. |
| 648 |
You know, one time I saw Tiger down at the water hole: he had the biggest testicles of any animal, and the sharpest claws, and two front teeth as long as knives and as sharp as blades. And I said to him, Brother Tiger, you go for a swim, I'll look after your balls for you. He was so proud of his balls. So he got into the water hole for a swim, and I put his balls on, and left him my own little spider balls. And then, you know what I did? I ran away, fast as my legs would take me. I didn't stop till I got to the next town. And I saw Old Monkey there. You lookin mighty fine, Anansi, said Old Monkey. I said to him, You know what they all singin in the town over there? What are they singin? he asks me. They singin the funniest song, I told him. Then I did a dance, and I sings, 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. 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. |
| 649 |
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. 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. |
| 650 |
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. |
| 651 |
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. 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. |
| 652 |
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. |
| 653 |
He wondered whether Wednesday and the others were still at liberty, if they were even still alive. 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. |
| 654 |
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. 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. |
| 655 |
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. 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. |
| 656 |
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. 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? |
| 657 |
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. 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. |
| 658 |
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. It belongs to my boss, said Shadow, surprising himself with the fluency and ease of his lies. I need to call him, so he can come pick it up. |
| 659 |
A thought struck him. Your brother-in-law, is he around here? he's in Muscoda. Ten minutes south of here. Just over the river. Why? Well, does he have a Pee-Oh-Ess hed like to sell me for, mm, five, six hundred bucks? She smiled sweetly. Mister, he doesn't have a car on that back lot you couldn't buy with a full tank of gas for five hundred dollars. But don't you tell him I said so. Would you call him? asked Shadow. I'm way ahead of you, she told him, and she picked up the phone. Hon? Its Mattie. You get over here this minute. I got a man here wants to buy a car. * * * The piece of shit he chose was a 1983 Chevy Nova, which he bought, with a full tank of gas, for four hundred and fifty dollars. It had almost a quarter of a million miles on the clock, and smelled faintly of bourbon, tobacco, and more strongly of something that might well have been bananas. He couldn't tell what color it was, under the dirt and the snow. Still, of all the vehicles in Matties brother-in-laws back lot, it was the only one that looked like it might take him five hundred miles. The deal was done in cash, and Matties brother-in-law never asked for Shadows name or social security number or for anything except the money. Shadow drove west, then south, with five hundred and fifty dollars in his pocket, keeping off the interstate. The piece of shit had a radio, but nothing happened when he turned it on. A sign said hed left Wisconsin and was now in Illinois. He passed a strip-mining works, huge blue arc lights burning in the dim midwinter daylight. He stopped and ate at a place called Moms, catching them just before they closed for the afternoon. Each town he passed through had an extra sign up beside the sign telling him that he was now entering Our Town (pop. 720). The extra sign announced that the towns under-14s team was the third runner-up in the interstate basketball tournament, or that the town was the home of the Illinois girls under-16s wrestling semifinalist. He drove on, head nodding, feeling more drained with every minute that passed. He ran a stoplight, and was nearly side-swiped by a woman in a Dodge. As soon as he got out into open country he pulled off onto an empty tractor path on the side of the road, and he parked by a snow-spotted stubbly field in which a slow procession of fat black wild turkeys walked like a line of mourners; he turned off the engine, stretched out in the backseat, and fell asleep. Darkness; a sensation of fallingas if he were tumbling down a great hole, like Alice. |
| 660 |
He fell for a hundred years into darkness. Faces passed him, swimming out of the black, then each face was ripped up and away before he could touch it Abruptly, and without transition, he was not falling. Now he was in a cave, and he was no longer alone. Shadow stared into familiar eyes: huge, liquid black eyes. They blinked. Under the earth: yes. He remembered this place. The stink of wet cow. Firelight flickered on the wet cave walls, illuminating the buffalo head, the mans body, skin the color of brick clay. Cant you people leave me be? asked Shadow. I just want to sleep. The buffalo man nodded, slowly. His lips did not move, but a voice in Shadows head said, Where are you going, Shadow? Cairo. Why? Where else have I got to go? Its where Wednesday wants me to go. I drank his mead. In Shadows dream, with the power of dream logic behind it, the obligation seemed unarguable: he drank Wednesdays mead three times, and sealed the pactwhat other choice of action did he have? 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. |
| 661 |
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. 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. |
| 662 |
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. |
| 663 |
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. The food came mounded high on plates and steaming, more than any one person could eat. So whats in Cairo? asked Sam, with her mouth full. No idea. I got a message from my boss saying he needs me down there. What do you do? I'm an errand boy. She smiled. Well, she said, you arent mafia, not looking like that and driving that piece of shit. Why does your car smell like bananas, anyway? He shrugged, carried on eating. Sam narrowed her eyes. Maybeyou're a banana smuggler, she said. You haven't asked me what I do yet. I figureyou're at school. UW Madison. Where you are undoubtedly studying art history, womens studies, and probably casting your own bronzes. And you probably work in a coffeehouse to help cover the rent. She put down her fork, nostrils flaring, eyes wide. How the fuck did you do that? What? Now you say, no, actually I'm studying Romance languages and ornithology. Soyou're saying that was a lucky guess or something? What was? She stared at him with dark eyes. You are one peculiar guy, MisterI don't know your name. They call me Shadow, he said. She twisted her mouth wryly, as if she were tasting something she disliked. She stopped talking, put her head down, finished her lasagna. Do you know why its called Egypt? asked Shadow when Sam finished eating. Down Cairo way? Yeah. Its in the delta of the Ohio and the Mississippi. Like Cairo in Egypt, in the Nile delta. That makes sense. She sat back in her chair, ordered coffee and chocolate cream pie, ran a hand through her black hair. You married, Mister Shadow? And then, as he hesitated, Gee. I just asked another tricky question, didn't I? They buried her on Thursday, he said, picking his words with care. She was killed in a car crash. Oh. God. Jesus. I'm sorry. Me too. An awkward pause. My half sister lost her kid, my nephew, end of last year. Its rough. Yeah. It is. What did he die of? She sipped her coffee. We don't know. We don't even really know that he's dead. He just vanished. But he was only thirteen. It was the middle of last winter. My sister was pretty broken up about it. |
| 664 |
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. |
| 665 |
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. 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. |
| 666 |
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. I'd never do that, honey. No, I want to offer you a job. Doing what? Working for me. I heard about the trouble you had with the Spookshow, and I was impressed with how you dealt with it. Efficient, no-nonsense, effective. Whodve thought you had it in you? They are really pissed. Really? They underestimated you, sweetheart. Not a mistake I'm going to make. I want you in my camp. She stood up, walked toward the camera. Look at it like this, Shadow: we are the coming thing. Were shopping mallsyour friends are crappy roadside attractions. Hell, were on-line malls, while your friends are sitting by the side of the highway selling homegrown produce from a cart. Nothey arent even fruit sellers. Buggy-whip vendors. Whalebone-corset repairers. We are now and tomorrow. Your friends arent even yesterday anymore. It was a strangely familiar speech. |
| 667 |
Shadow asked, Did you ever meet a fat kid in a limo? She spread her hands and rolled her eyes comically, funny Lucy Ricardo washing her hands of a disaster. The technical boy? You met the technical boy? Look, he's a good kid. he's one of us. he's just not good with people he doesn't know. Whenyou're working for us, you'll see how amazing he is. And if I don't want to work for you, I-Love-Lucy? There was a knock on the door of Lucys apartment, and Rickys voice could be heard offstage, asking Loo-cy what was keepin her so long, they was due down at the club in the next scene; a flash of irritation touched Lucys cartoonish face. Hell, she said. Look, whatever the old guys are paying you, I can pay you double. Treble. A hundred times. Whateveryou're giving you, I can give you so much more. She smiled, a perfect, roguish, Lucy Ricardo smile. You name it, honey. What do you need? She began to undo the buttons of her blouse. Hey, she said. You ever wanted to see Lucys tits? The screen went black. The sleep function had kicked in and the set turned itself off. Shadow looked at his watch: it was half past midnight. Not really, said Shadow. He rolled over in bed and closed his eyes. It occurred to him that the reason he liked Wednesday and Mr. Nancy and the rest of them better than their opposition was pretty straightforward: they might be dirty, and cheap, and their food might taste like shit, but at least they didn't speak in cliches. And he guessed he would take a roadside attraction, no matter how cheap, how crooked, or how sad, over a shopping mall, any day. * * * Morning found Shadow back on the road, driving through a gently undulating brown landscape of winter grass and leafless trees. The last of the snow had vanished. He filled up the tank of the piece of shit in a town that was home to the runner-up of the state womens under 16s three-hundred-meter dash, and, hoping that the dirt wasnt all that was holding it together, he ran the car through the gas station car wash. He was surprised to discover that the car was, when cleanagainst all reasonwhite, and pretty much free of rust. He drove on. The sky was impossibly blue, and white industrial smoke rising from factory chimneys was frozen in the sky, like a photograph. A hawk launched itself from a dead tree and flew toward him, wings strobing in the sunlight like a series of stop-motion photographs. At some point he found himself heading into East St. Louis. He attempted to avoid it and instead found himself driving through what appeared to be a red-light district in an industrial park. |
| 668 |
A lone seagull was gliding along the rivers edge, flipping a wing to correct itself as it went. Shadow realized that he was not alone. A small girl, wearing old tennis shoes on her feet and a mans gray woolen sweater as a dress, was standing on the sidewalk, ten feet away from him, staring at him with the somber gravity of a six-year-old. Her hair was black, and straight, and long; her skin was as brown as the river. He grinned at her. She stared back at him, defiantly. There was a squeal and a yowl from the waterfront, and the little brown cat shot away from a spilled garbage can, pursued by a long-muzzled black dog. The cat scurried under a car. Hey, said Shadow to the girl. You ever seen invisible powder before? She hesitated. Then she shook her head. Okay, said Shadow. Well, watch this. Shadow pulled out a quarter with his left hand, held it up, tilting it from one side to another, then appeared to toss it into his right hand, closing his hand hard on nothing, and putting the hand forward. Now, he said, I just take some invisible powder from my pocket and he reached his left hand into his breast pocket, dropping the quarter into the pocket as he did so, and I sprinkle it on the hand with the coin and he mimed sprinkling, and looknow the quarters invisible too. He opened his empty right hand, and, in astonishment, his empty left hand as well. The little girl just stared. Shadow shrugged, and put his hands back in his pockets, loading a quarter in one hand, a folded up five-dollar bill in the other. He was going to produce them from the air, and then give the girl the five bucks: she looked like she needed it. Hey, he said. Weve got an audience. The black dog and the little brown cat were watching him as well, flanking the girl, looking up at him intently. The dogs huge ears were pricked up, giving it a comically alert expression. A cranelike man with gold-rimmed spectacles was coming up the sidewalk toward them, peering from side to side as if he were looking for something. Shadow wondered if he was the dogs owner. What did you think? Shadow asked the dog, trying to put the little girl at her ease. Was that cool? The black dog licked its long snout. Then it said, in a deep, dry voice, I saw Harry Houdini once, and believe me, man, you are no Harry Houdini. The little girl looked at the animals, she looked up at Shadow, and then she ran off, her feet pounding the sidewalk as if all the powers of hell were after her. The two animals watched her go. The cranelike man had reached the dog. |
| 669 |
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. After she blows her nose she wipes it, and drops the Kleenex into the trash. Salim got there at 10:30 A. M., half an hour before his appointment. Now he sits there, flushed and shivering, wondering if he is running a fever. The time ticks by so slowly. Salim looks at his watch. Then he clears his throat. The woman behind the desk glares at him. Yes? she says. It sounds like Yed. It is eleven-thirty-five, says Salim. The woman glances at the clock on the Wall, and says, Yed, again. I'd id. My appointment was for eleven, says Salim with a placating smile. Mister Blanding knowsyou're here, she tells him, reprovingly. (Bidter Bladdig dodeyou're here.) Salim picks up an old copy of the New York Post from the table. He speaks English better than he reads it, and he puzzles his way through the stories like a man doing a crossword puzzle. He waits, a plump young man with the eyes of a hurt puppy, glancing from his watch to his newspaper to the clock on the wall. At twelve-thirty several men come out from the inner office. They talk loudly, jabbering away to each other in American. One of them, a big, paunchy man, has a cigar, unlit, in his mouth. He glances at Salim as he comes out. He tells the woman behind the desk to try the juice of a lemon, and zinc as his sister swears by zinc and vitamin C. She promises him that she will, and gives him several envelopes. He pockets them and then he, and the other men, go out into the hall. The sound of their laughter disappears down the stairwell. It is one oclock. The woman behind the desk opens a drawer and takes out a brown paper bag, from which she removes several sandwiches, an apple, and a Milky Way. She also takes out a small plastic bottle of freshly squeezed orange juice. Excuse me, says Salim, but can you perhaps call Mister Blanding and tell him that I am still waiting? She looks up at him as if surprised to see that he is still there, as if they have not been sitting five feet apart for two and a half hours. |
| 670 |
he's at lunch, she says. Hed ad dudge. Salim knows, knows deep down in his gut, that Blanding was the man with the unlit cigar. When will he be back? She shrugs, takes a bite of her sandwich. he's busy with appointments for the rest of the day, she says. Hed biddy wid abboidmeds for the red ob the day. Will he see me, then, when he comes back? asks Salim. She shrugs, and blows her nose. Salim is hungry, increasingly so, and frustrated, and powerless. At three oclock the woman looks at him and says He wode be gubbig bag. Excuse? Bidder Bladdig. He wode be gubbig bag today. Can I make an appointment for tomorrow? She wipes her nose. You hab to teddephode. Appoid-beds odly by teddephode. I see, says Salim. And then he smiles: a salesman, Fuad had told him many times before he left Muscat, is naked in America without his smile. Tomorrow I will telephone, he says. He takes his sample case, and he walks down the many stairs to the street, where the freezing rain is turning to sleet. Salim contemplates the long, cold walk back to the 46th Street hotel, and the weight of the sample case, then he steps to the edge of the sidewalk and waves at every yellow cab that approaches, whether the light on top is on or off, and every cab drives past him. One of them accelerates as it passes; a wheel dives into a water-filled pothole, spraying freezing muddy water over Salims pants and coat. For a moment, he contemplates throwing himself in front of one of the lumbering cars, and then he realizes that his brother-in-law would be more concerned with the fate of the sample case than of Salim himself, and that he would bring grief to no one but his beloved sister, Fuads wife (for he had always been a slight embarrassment to his father and mother, and his romantic encounters had always, of necessity, been both brief and relatively anonymous): also, he doubts that any of the cars are going fast enough actually to end his life. 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. |
| 671 |
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. |
| 672 |
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. 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. |
| 673 |
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. When Salim gets out of the cab he gives the ifrit a twenty-dollar bill, tells him to keep the change. Then, with a sudden burst of courage, he tells him his room number. The taxi driver says nothing in reply. A young woman clambers into the back of the cab, and it pulls out into the cold and the rain. Six oclock in the evening. Salim has not yet written the fax to his brother-in-law. He goes out into the rain, buys himself this nights kabob and french fries. It has only been a week, but he feels that he is becoming heavier, rounder, softening in this country of New York. When he comes back to the hotel he is surprised to see the taxi driver standing in the lobby, hands deep in his pockets. He is staring at a display of black-and-white postcards. When he sees Salim he smiles, self-consciously. I called your room, he says, but there was no answer. So I thought I would wait. Salim smiles also, and touches the mans arm. I am here, he says. Together they enter the dim, green-lit elevator, ascend to the fifth floor holding hands. The ifrit asks if he may use Salims bathroom. |
| 674 |
I feel very dirty, he says. Salim nods. He sits on the bed, which fills most of the small white room, and listens to the sound of the shower running. Salim takes off his shoes, his socks, and then the rest of his clothes. The taxi driver comes out of the shower, wet, with a towel wrapped about his midsection. He is not wearing his sunglasses, and in the dim room his eyes burn with scarlet flames. Salim blinks back tears. I wish you could see what I see, he says. I do not grant wishes, whispers the ifrit, dropping his towel and pushing Salim gently, but irresistibly, down onto the bed. It is an hour or more before the ifrit comes, thrusting and grinding into Salims mouth. Salim has already come twice in this time. The jinns semen tastes strange, fiery, and it burns Salims throat. Salim goes to the bathroom, washes out his mouth. When he returns to the bedroom the taxi driver is already asleep in the white bed, snoring peacefully. Salim climbs into the bed beside him, cuddles close to the ifrit, imagining the desert on his skin. As he starts to fall asleep he realizes that he still has not written his fax to Fuad, and he feels guilty. Deep inside he feels empty and alone: he reaches out, rests his hand on the ifrits tumescent cock and, comforted, he sleeps. They wake in the small hours, moving against each other, and they make love again. At one point Salim realizes that he is crying, and the ifrit is kissing away his tears with burning lips. What is your name? Salim asks the taxi driver. There is a name on my driving permit, but it is not mine, the ifrit says. Afterward, Salim could not remember where the sex had stopped and the dreams began. When Salim wakes, the cold sun creeping into the white room, he is alone. Also, he discovers, his sample case is gone, all the bottles and rings and souvenir copper flashlights, all gone, along with his suitcase, his wallet, his passport, and his air tickets back to Oman. He finds a pair of jeans, the T-shirt, and the dust-colored woolen sweater discarded on the floor. Beneath them he finds a drivers license in the name of Ibrahim bin Irem, a taxi permit in the same name, and a ring of keys with an address written on a piece of paper attached to them in English. The photographs on the license and the permit do not look much like Salim, but then, they did not look much like the ifrit. The telephone rings: it is the front desk calling to point out that Salim has already checked out and his guest needs to leave soon so that they can service the room, to get it ready for another occupant. |
| 675 |
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. |
| 676 |
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. 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. |
| 677 |
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. 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. |
| 678 |
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. 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. |
| 679 |
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. 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. |
| 680 |
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 closetyou'll 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. 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. |
| 681 |
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. 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. |
| 682 |
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. |
| 683 |
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. 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. |
| 684 |
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. 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. |
| 685 |
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. |
| 686 |
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. |
| 687 |
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. 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. |
| 688 |
He lit it carefully, trying not to burn his fingers or his beard. I'll tell you something, he said, as if he had said nothing that day. you're walking on gallows ground, and theres a rope around your neck and a raven-bird on each shoulder waiting for your eyes, and the gallows tree has deep roots, for it stretches from heaven to hell, and our world is only the branch from which the rope is swinging. He stopped. I'll rest here a spell, he said, touching down, his back resting against the black brickwork. Good luck, said Shadow. Hell, I'm fucked, said Mad Sweeney. Whatever. Thanks. Shadow walked back toward the town. It was 8:00 A. M. and Cairo was waking. He glanced back to the bridge and saw Sweeneys pale face, striped with tears and dirt, watching him go. It was the last time Shadow saw Mad Sweeney alive. * * * The brief winter days leading up to Christmas were like moments of light between the winter darknesses, and they fled fast in the house of the dead. It was the twenty-third of December, and Jacquel and Ibiss played host to a wake for Lila Goodchild. Bustling women filled the kitchen with tubs and with saucepans, and with skillets and with Tupperware, and the deceased was laid out in her casket in the funeral homes front room with hothouse flowers around her. There was a table on the other side of the room laden high with coleslaw and beans and cornmeal hush puppies and chicken and ribs and black-eyed peas, and by midafternoon the house was filled with people weeping and laughing and shaking hands with the minister, everything being quietly organized and overseen by the sober-suited Messrs. Jacquel and Ibis. The burial would be on the following morning. When the telephone in the hall rang (it was Bakelite and black and had an honest-to-goodness rotary dial on the front), Mr. Ibis answered. Then he took Shadow aside. That was the police, he said. Can you make a pickup? Sure. Be discreet. Here. He wrote down an address on a slip of paper, then passed it to Shadow, who read the address, written in perfect copperplate handwriting, and then folded it up and put it in his pocket. Therell be a police car, Ibis added. Shadow went out back and got the hearse. Both Mr. Jacquel and Mr. Ibis had made a point, individually, of explaining that, really, the hearse should only be used for funerals, and they had a van that they used to collect bodies, but the van was being repaired, had been for three weeks now, and could he be very careful with the hearse? Shadow drove carefully down the street. |
| 689 |
The snowplows had cleaned the roads by now, but he was comfortable driving slowly. It seemed right to go slow in a hearse, although he could barely remember the last time he had seen a hearse on the streets. Death had vanished from the streets of America, thought Shadow; now it happened in hospital rooms and in ambulances. We must not startle the living, thought Shadow. Mr. 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. |
| 690 |
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. 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. |
| 691 |
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? 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. |
| 692 |
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. |
| 693 |
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. 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. |
| 694 |
He didn't mind. He wasnt even sure that Wednesday was crazy. Wednesday grunted. Just spooks. Members of the opposition. Black hats. I think, said Shadow, that they thinkyou're the white hats. Of course they do. Theres never been a true war that wasnt fought between two sets of people who were certain they were in the right. The really dangerous people believe that they are doing whatever they are doing solely and only because it is without question the right thing to do. And that is what makes them dangerous. And you? asked Shadow. Why are you doing whatyou're doing? Because I want to, said Wednesday. And then he grinned. So that's all right. Shadow said, How did you all get away? Or did you all get away? We did, said Wednesday. Although it was a close thing. If theyd not stopped to grab you, they might have taken the lot of us. It convinced several of the people who had been sitting on the fence that I might not be completely crazy. So how did you get out? Wednesday shook his head. I don't pay you to ask questions, he said. I've told you before. Shadow shrugged. They spent the night in a Super 8 motel south of La Crosse. Christmas Day was spent on the road, driving north and east. The farmland became pine forest. The towns seemed to come farther and farther apart. They ate their Christmas lunch late in the afternoon in a hall-like family restaurant in northern central Wisconsin. Shadow picked cheerlessly at the dry turkey, jam-sweet red lumps of cranberry sauce, tough-as-wood roasted potatoes, and violently green canned peas. From the way he attacked it, and the way he smacked his lips, Wednesday seemed to be enjoying the food. As the meal progressed he became positively expansivetalking, joking, and, whenever she came close enough, flirting with the waitress, a thin blonde girl who looked scarcely old enough to have dropped out of high school. Excuse me, mdear, but might I trouble you for another cup of your delightful hot chocolate? And I trust you won't think me too forward if I say what a mightily fetching and becoming dress that is. Festive, yet classy. The waitress, who wore a bright red-and-green skirt edged with glittering silver tinsel, giggled and colored and smiled happily, and went off to get Wednesday another mug of hot chocolate. Fetching, said Wednesday, thoughtfully, watching her go. Becoming, he said. Shadow did not think he was talking about the dress. Wednesday shoveled the final slice of turkey into his mouth, flicked at his beard with his napkin, and pushed his plate forward. |
| 695 |
Aaah. Good. He looked around him, at the family restaurant. In the background a tape of Christmas songs was playing: the little drummer boy had no gifts to bring, parupapom-pom, rapappom pom, rapappom pom. Some things may change, said Wednesday, abruptly. 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? |
| 696 |
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. 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. |
| 697 |
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. He stared at herit was almost a leeras if nothing that she could offer him would be as toothsome a morsel as herself. Shadow felt deeply uncomfortable: it was like watching an old wolf stalking a fawn too young to know that if it did not run, and run now, it would wind up in a distant glade with its bones picked clean by the ravens. |
| 698 |
The girl blushed once more and told them that dessert was apple pie a la modeThats with a scoop of vanilla ice creamChristmas cake a la mode, or a red-and-green whipped pudding. Wednesday stared into her eyes and told her that he would try the Christmas cake a la mode. Shadow passed. Now, as grifts go, said Wednesday, the fiddle game goes back three hundred years or more. And if you pick your chicken correctly you could still play it anywhere in America tomorrow. I thought you said that your favorite grift was no longer practical, said Shadow. I did indeed. However, that is not my favorite. No, my favorite was one they called the Bishop Game. It had everything: excitement, subterfuge, portability, surprise. Perhaps, I think from time to time, perhaps with a little modification, it might he thought for a moment, then shook his head. No. Its time has passed. It is, let us say, 1920, in a city of medium to large sizeChicago, perhaps, or New York, or Philadelphia. We are in a jewelers emporium. A man dressed as a clergymanand not just any clergyman, but a bishop, in his purpleenters and picks out a necklacea gorgeous and glorious confection of diamonds and pearls, and pays for it with a dozen of the crispest hundred-dollar bills. Theres a smudge of green ink on the topmost bill and the store owner, apologetically but firmly, sends the stack of bills to the bank on the corner to be checked. Soon enough, the store clerk returns with the bills. The bank says they are none of them counterfeit. The owner apologizes again, and the bishop is most gracious, he well understands the problem, there are such lawless and ungodly types in the world today, such immorality and lewdness abroad in the world and shameless women, and now that the underworld has crawled out of the gutter and come to live on the screens of the picture palaces, what more could anyone expect? And the necklace is placed in its case, and the store owner does his best not to ponder why a bishop of the church would be purchasing a twelve-hundred-dollar diamond necklace, nor why he would be paying good cash money for it. The bishop bids him a hearty farewell, and walks out on the street, only for a heavy hand to descend on his shoulder. Why Soapy, yez spalpeen, up to your old tricks, are you? and a broad beat cop with an honest Irish face walks the bishop back into the jewelry store. Beggin your pardon, but has this man just bought anything from you? asks the cop. Certainly not, says the bishop. Tell him I have not. |
| 699 |
Indeed he has, says the jeweler. He bought a pearl and diamond necklace from mepaid for it in cash as well. Would you have the bills available, sir? asks the cop. So the jeweler takes the twelve hundred-dollar bills from the cash register and hands them to the cop, who holds them up to the light and shakes his head in wonder. Oh, Soapy, Soapy, he says, these are the finest that youve made yet! you're a craftsman, that you are! A self-satisfied smile spreads across the bishops face. You cant prove nothing, says the bishop. And the bank said that they were on the level. Its the real green stuff. I'm sure they did, agrees the cop on the beat, but I doubt that the bank had been warned that Soapy Sylvester was in town, nor of the quality of the hundred-dollar bills hed been passing in Denver and in St. 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. |
| 700 |
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. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, I've left town already. So were staying here for the night? Wednesday rubbed his chin. I shall stay in the Motel 6, he said. Then he put his hand into his coat pocket. He pulled out a front door key, bronze-colored, with a card tag attached on which was typed an address: 502 Northridge Rd, Apt #3. You, on the other hand, have an apartment waiting for you, in a city far from here. Wednesday closed his eyes for a moment. Then he opened them, gray and gleaming and fractionally mismatched, and he said, The Greyhound bus will be coming through town in twenty minutes. It stops at the gas station. Heres your ticket. He pulled out a folded bus ticket, passed it across the table. Shadow picked it up and looked at it. |
| 701 |
Whos Mike Ainsel? he asked. That was the name on the ticket. You are. Merry Christmas. And wheres Lakeside? Your happy home in the months to come. And now, because good things come in threes He took a small, gift-wrapped package from his pocket, pushed it across the table. It sat beside the ketchup bottle with the black smears of dried ketchup on the top. Shadow made no move to take it. Well? Reluctantly, Shadow tore open the red wrapping paper to reveal a fawn-colored calfskin wallet, shiny from use. It was obviously somebodys wallet. Inside the wallet was a drivers license with Shadows photograph on it, in the name of Michael Ainsel, with a Milwaukee address, a MasterCard for M. Ainsel, and twenty crisp fifty-dollar bills. Shadow closed the wallet, put it into an inside pocket. Thanks, he said. Think of it as a Christmas bonus. Now, let me walk you down to the Greyhound. I shall wave to you as you ride the gray dog north. They walked outside the restaurant. Shadow found it hard to believe how much colder it had gotten in the last few hours. It felt too cold to snow, now. Aggressively cold. This was a bad winter. Hey. Wednesday. Both of the scams you were telling me aboutthe violin scam and the bishop one, the bishop and the cop He hesitated, trying to form his thought, to bring it into focus. What of them? Then he had it. you're both two-man scams. One guy on each side. Did you used to have a partner? Shadows breath came in clouds. He promised himself that when he got to Lakeside he would spend some of his Christmas bonus on the warmest, thickest winter coat that money could buy. Yes, said Wednesday. Yes. I had a partner. A junior partner. But, alas, those days are gone. Theres the gas station, and there, unless my eye deceives me, is the bus. It was already signaling its turn into the parking lot. Your address is on the key, said Wednesday. If anyone asks, I am your uncle, and I shall be rejoicing in the unlikely name of Emerson Borson. Settle in, in Lakeside, nephew Ainsel. I'll come for you within the week. We shall be traveling together. Visiting the people I have to visit. In the meantime, keep your head down and stay out of trouble. My car? said Shadow. I'll take good care of it. Have a good time in Lakeside, said Wednesday. He thrust out his hand, and Shadow shook it. Wednesdays hand was colder than a corpses. Jesus, said Shadow. you're cold. Then the sooner I am making the two-backed beast with the little hotsy-totsy lass from the restaurant in a back room of the Motel 6, the better. |
| 702 |
And he reached out his other hand and squeezed Shadows shoulder. Shadow experienced a dizzying moment of double vision: he saw the grizzled man facing him, squeezing his shoulder, but he saw something else: so many winters, hundreds and hundreds of winters, and a gray man in a broad-brimmed hat walking from settlement to settlement, leaning on his staff, staring in through windows at the firelight and a joy and a burning life he would never be able to touch, never even be able to feel Go, said Wednesday, his voice a reassuring growl. 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. |
| 703 |
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. 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. |
| 704 |
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. |
| 705 |
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. 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. |
| 706 |
Course, the joke was on us, because they knitted him a suit of bright orange wool, so no hunter ever shot at it. Hunters in these parts wear orange at hunting season, he added, helpfully. And if you think theres a word of a lie in that, I can prove it to you. I've got the antlers up on my rec room wall to this day. Shadow laughed, and the old man smiled the satisfied smile of a master craftsman. They pulled up outside a brick building with a large wooden deck, from which golden holiday lights hung and twinkled invitingly. that's five-oh-two, said Hinzelmann. Apartment three would be on the top floor, around the other side, overlooking the lake. There you go, Mike. Thank you, Mr. Hinzelmann. Can I give you anything toward gas? Just Hinzelmann. And you don't owe me a penny. Merry Christmas from me and from Tessie. Are you sure you won't accept anything? The old man scratched his chin. Tell you what, he said. Sometime in the next week or so I'll come by and sell you some tickets. For our raffle. Charity. For now, young man, you can be getting onto bed. Shadow smiled. Merry Christmas, Hinzelmann, he said. The old man shook Shadows hand with one red-knuckled hand. It felt as hard and as callused as an oak branch. Now, you watch the path as you go up there, its going to be slippery. I can see your door from here, at the side there, see it? I'll just wait in the car down here untilyou're safely inside. You just give me the thumbs-up whenyou're in okay, and I'll drive off. He kept the Wendt idling until Shadow was safely up the wooden steps on the side of the house and had opened the apartment door with his key. The door to the apartment swung open. Shadow made a thumbs-up sign, and the old man in the WendtTessie, thought Shadow, and the thought of a car with a name made him smile one more timeHinzelmann and Tessie swung around and made their way back across the bridge. Shadow shut the front door. The room was freezing. It smelled of people who had gone away to live other lives, and of all they had eaten and dreamed. He found the thermostat and cranked it up to seventy degrees. He went into the tiny kitchen, checked the drawers, opened the avocado-colored refrigerator, but it was empty. No surprise there. At least the fridge smelled clean inside, not musty. There was a small bedroom with a bare mattress in it, beside the kitchen, next to an even tinier bathroom that was mostly shower stall. An aged cigarette butt sat in the toilet bowl, staining the water brown. Shadow flushed it away. |
| 707 |
He found sheets and blankets in a closet, and made the bed. Then he took off his shoes, his jacket, and his watch, and he climbed into the bed fully dressed, wondering how long it would take him to get warm. The lights were off, and there was silence, mostly, nothing but the hum of the refrigerator, and, somewhere in the building, a radio playing. He lay there in the darkness, wondering if he had slept himself out on the Greyhound, if the hunger and the cold and the new bed and the craziness of the last few weeks would combine to keep him awake that night. In the stillness he heard something snap like a shot. A branch, he thought, or the ice. It was freezing out there. He wondered how long he would have to wait until Wednesday came for him. A day? A week? However long he had, he knew he had to focus on something in the meantime. He would start to work out again, he decided, and practice his coin sleights and palms until he was smooth as anything (practice all your tricks, somebody whispered inside his head, in a voice that was not his own, all of them but one, not the trick that poor dead Mad Sweeney showed you, dead of exposure and the cold and of being forgotten and surplus to requirements, not that trick. Oh, not that one). But this was a good town. He could feel it. He thought of his dream, if it had been a dream, that first night in Cairo. He thought of Zoryawhat the hell was her name? The midnight sister. And then he thought of Laura It was as if thinking of her opened a window in his mind. He could see her. He could, somehow, see her. She was in Eagle Point, in the backyard outside her mothers big house. She stood in the cold, which she did not feel anymore or which she felt all the time, she stood outside the house that her mother had bought in 1989 with the insurance money after Lauras father, Harvey McCabe, had passed on, a heart attack while straining on the can, and she was staring in, her cold hands pressed against the glass, her breath not fogging it, not at all, watching her mother, and her sister and her sisters children and husband in from Texas, home for Christmas. Out in the darkness, that was where Laura was, unable not to look. Tears prickled in Shadows eyes, and he rolled over in his bed. He felt like a Peeping Tom, turned his thoughts away, willed them to come back to him: he could see the lake spread out below him as the wind blew down from the arctic, prying jack-frost fingers a hundred times colder than the fingers of any corpse. Shadows breath came shallowly now. |
| 708 |
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. |
| 709 |
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. What did Hinzelmann say last nighta ten-minute walk? And Shadow was a big man. He would walk briskly and keep himself warm. He set off south, heading for the bridge. Soon he began to cough, a dry, thin cough, as the bitterly cold air touched his lungs. Soon his ears and face and lips hurt, and then his feet hurt. He thrust his ungloved hands deep into his coat pockets, clenched his fingers together trying to find some warmth. He found himself remembering Low Key Lyesmiths tall tales of the Minnesota wintersparticularly the one about a hunter treed by a bear during a hard freeze who took out his dick and pissed an arching yellow stream of steaming urine that was already frozen hard before it hit the ground, then slid down the rock-hard frozen-piss-pole to freedom. A wry smile at the memory and another dry, painful cough. Step after step after step. He glanced back. The apartment building was not as far away as he had expected. This walk, he decided, was a mistake. But he was already three or four minutes from the apartment, and the bridge over the lake was in sight. It made as much sense to press on as to go home (and then what? Call a taxi on the dead phone? Wait for spring? He had no food in the apartment, he reminded himself). He kept walking, revising his estimates of the temperature downward as he walked. Minus ten? Minus twenty? Minus forty, maybe, that strange point on the thermometer when Celsius and Fahrenheit say the same thing. Probably not that cold. But then there was wind chill, and the wind was now hard and steady and continuous, blowing over the lake, coming down from the Arctic across Canada. He remembered, enviously, the chemical hand-and foot-warmers. He wished he had them now. Ten more minutes of walking, he guessed, and the bridge seemed to be no nearer. |
| 710 |
He was too cold to shiver. His eyes hurt. This was not simply cold: this was science fiction. This was a story set on the dark side of Mercury, back when they thought Mercury had a dark side. This was somewhere out on rocky Pluto, where the sun is just another star, shining only a little more brightly in the darkness. This, thought Shadow, is just a hair away from the places where air comes in buckets and pours just like beer. The occasional cars that roared past him seemed unreal: spaceships, little freeze-dried packages of metal and glass, inhabited by people dressed more warmly than he was. An old song his mother had loved, Walking in a Winter Wonderland, began to run through his head, and he hummed it through closed lips, kept pace to it as he walked. He had lost all sensation in his feet. He looked down at his black leather shoes, at the thin cotton socks, and began, seriously, to worry about frostbite. This was beyond a joke. This had moved beyond foolishness, slipped over the line into genuine twenty-four-karat Jesus-Christ-I-screwed-up-big-time territory. His clothes might as well have been netting or lace: the wind blew through him, froze his bones and the marrow in his bones, froze the lashes of his eyes, froze the warm place under his balls, which were retreating into his pelvic cavity. Keep walking, he told himself. Keep walking. I can stop and drink a pail of air when I get home. A Beatles song started in his head, and he adjusted his pace to match it. It was only when he got to the chorus that he realized that he was humming Help. He was almost at the bridge now. Then he had to walk across it, and he would still be another ten minutes from the stores on the west of the lakemaybe a little more A dark car passed him, stopped, then reversed in a foggy cloud of exhaust smoke and came to a halt beside him. A window slid down, and the haze and steam from the window mixed with the exhaust to form a dragons breath that surrounded the car. Everything okay here? said a cop inside. Shadows first, automatic instinct was to say Yup, everythings just fine and jimdandy thank you officer. But it was too late for that, and he started to say, I think I'm freezing. I was walking into Lakeside to buy food and clothes, but I underestimated the length of the walkhe was that far through the sentence in his head, when he realized that all that had come out was F-f-freezing, and a chattering noise, and he said, So s-sorry. Cold. Sorry. The cop pulled open the back door of the car and said, You get in there this moment and warm yourself up, okay? |
| 711 |
Mostly you need to be at least up Ironwood way to get one. The Cornish men who came over to work the iron mines brought them over. Yoopie? Upper Peninsula. U. P. Yoopie. Its the little chunk of Michigan to the northeast. The chief of police came back. He picked up the hot chocolate and slurped it. Mabel, he said, are you forcing this nice young man to eat one of your pasties? Its good, said Shadow. It was too, a savory delight wrapped in hot pastry. They go straight to the belly, said Chad Mulligan, patting his own stomach. I warn you. Okay: So you need a car? With his parka off, he was revealed as a lanky man with a round, apple-belly gut on him. He looked harassed and competent, more like an engineer than cop. Shadow nodded, mouth full. Right. I made some calls. Justin Liebowitzs selling his jeep, wants four thousand dollars for it, will settle for three. The Gunthers have had their Toyota 4-Runner for sale for eight months, ugly sonofabitch, but at this point theyd probably pay you to take it out of their driveway. And if you don't care about ugly, its got to be a great deal. I used the phone in the mens room, left a message for Missy Gunther down at Lakeside Realty, but she wasnt in yet, probably getting her hair done down at Sheilas. 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. |
| 712 |
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. Then he took his bags into the mens rest room, came out wearing many of his purchases. Looking good, big fella, said Mulligan. At least I'm warm, said Shadow, and outside, in the parking lot, although the wind burned cold on the skin of his face, the rest of him was warm enough. |
| 713 |
Lakeside seems kind of prosperous, though. The old mans blue eyes blinked. And believe me, it takes a lot of work, he said. Hard work. But this is a good town, and all the work all the people here put into it is worthwhile. Not that my family werent poor as kids. Ask me how poor we was as kids. Shadow put on his straight-man face and said, How poor were you as kids, Mister Hinzelmann? Just Hinzelmann, Mike. We were so poor that we couldn't afford a fire. Come New Years Eve my father would suck on a peppermint, and us kids, wed stand around with our hands outstretched, basking in the glow. Shadow made a rimshot noise. Hinzelmann put on his ski mask and did up his huge plaid coat, pulled out his car keys from his pocket, and then, last of all, pulled on his great gloves. 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. |
| 714 |
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? 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 worryyou'll get your share when all this is done. |
| 715 |
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? |
| 716 |
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. 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. |
| 717 |
A taxi follows him slowly down the street, keeping its distance. He does not notice it; it does not occur to him to notice it: he is so rarely noticed himself that he finds the concept that he could be being followed almost inconceivable. Its four in the morning, and he finds himself drawn to a hotel and casino that has been out of style for thirty years, still running until tomorrow or six months from now when theyII implode it and knock it down and build a pleasure palace where it was, and forget it forever. Nobody knows him, nobody remembers him, but the lobby bar is tacky and quiet, and the air is blue with old cigarette smoke and someones about to drop several million dollars on a poker game in a private room upstairs. The man in the charcoal suit settles himself in the bar several floors below the game, and is ignored by a waitress. A Muzak version of Why Cant He Be You? is playing, almost subliminally. Five Elvis Presley impersonators, each man wearing a different-colored jumpsuit, watch a late night rerun of a football game on the bar TV. A big man in a light gray suit sits at the man in the charcoal suits table, and, noticing him even if she does not notice the man in the charcoal suit, the waitress, who is too thin to be pretty, too obviously anorectic to work Luxor or the Tropicana, and who is counting the minutes until she gets off work, comes straight over and smiles. He grins widely at her. you're looking a treat tonight, mdear, a fine sight for these poor old eyes, he says, and, scenting a large tip, she smiles broadly at him. The man in the light gray suit orders a Jack Daniels for himself and a Laphroaig and water for the man in the charcoal suit sitting beside him. You know, says the man in the light gray suit, when his drink arrives, the finest line of poetry ever uttered in the history of this whole damn country was said by Canada Bill Jones in 1853, in Baton Rouge, while he was being robbed blind in a crooked game of faro. George Devol, who was, like Canada Bill, not a man who was averse to fleecing the odd sucker, drew Bill aside and asked him if he couldn't see that the game was crooked. 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. |
| 718 |
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. |
| 719 |
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. Whats Soma? Its a drink. They walked onto the charter plane, empty but for them and a trio of corporate big spenders who needed to be back in Chicago by the start of the next business day. Wednesday got comfortable, ordered himself a Jack Daniels. My kind of people see your kind of people he hesitated. Its like bees and honey. Each bee makes only a tiny, tiny drop of honey. It takes thousands of them, millions perhaps, all working together to make the pot of honey you have on your breakfast table. Now imagine that you could eat nothing but honey. that's what its like for my kind of peoplewe feed on belief, on prayers, on love. And Soma is To take the analogy further, its a honey wine. Like mead. He chuckled. Its a drink. Concentrated prayer and belief, distilled into a potent liqueur. They were somewhere over Nebraska eating an unimpressive in-flight breakfast when Shadow said, My wife. The dead one. Laura. She doesn't want to be dead. She told me. After she got me away from the guys on the train. The action of a fine wife. Freeing you from durance vile and murdering those who would have harmed you. You should treasure her, Nephew Ainsel. She wants to be really alive. Can we do that? Is that possible? Wednesday said nothing for long enough that Shadow started to wonder if he had heard the question, or if he had, possibly, fallen asleep with his eyes open. Then he said, staring ahead of him as he talked, I know a charm that can cure pain and sickness, and lift the grief from the heart of the grieving. I know a charm that will heal with a touch. I know a charm that will turn aside the weapons of an enemy. I know another charm to free myself from all bonds and locks. A fifth charm: I can catch an arrow in flight and take no harm from it. His words were quiet, urgent. Gone was the hectoring tone, gone was the grin. Wednesday spoke as if he were reciting the words of a religious ritual, or remembering something dark and painful. |
| 720 |
A sixth: spells sent to hurt me will hurt only the sender. A seventh charm I know: I can quench a fire simply by looking at it. An eighth: if any man hates me, I can win his friendship. A ninth: I can sing the wind to sleep and calm a storm for long enough to bring a ship to shore. Those were the first nine charms I learned. Nine nights I hung on the bare tree, my side pierced with a spears point. I swayed and blew in the cold winds and the hot winds, without food, without water, a sacrifice of myself to myself, and the worlds opened to me. For a tenth charm, I learned to dispel witches, to spin them around in the skies so that they will never find their way back to their own doors again. An eleventh: if I sing it when a battle rages it can take warriors through the tumult unscathed and unhurt, and bring them safely back to their hearths and their homes. A twelfth charm I know: if I see a hanged man I can bring him down from the gallows to whisper to us all he remembers. A thirteenth: if I sprinkle water on a childs head, that child will not fall in battle. A fourteenth: I know the names of all the gods. Every damned one of them. A fifteenth: I have a dream of power, of glory, and of wisdom, and I can make people believe my dreams. His voice was so low now that Shadow had to strain to hear it over the planes engine noise. A sixteenth charm I know: if I need love I can turn the mind and heart of any woman. A seventeenth, that no woman I want will ever want another. And I know an eighteenth charm, and that charm is the greatest of all, and that charm I can tell to no man, for a secret that no one knows but you is the most powerful secret there can ever be. 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. |
| 721 |
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. |
| 722 |
One ticket buys you five minutes. Of course we cant promise itll go down in your five minutes, but the person whos closest stands to win five hundred bucks, and if it goes down in your five minutes, you win a thousand dollars. The earlier you buy your tickets, the more times arent spoken for. You want to see the info sheet? Sure. Hinzelmann handed Shadow a photocopied sheet. The klunker was an old car with its engine and fuel tank removed, which would be parked out on the ice for the winter. Sometime in the spring the lake ice would melt, and when it was too thin to bear the cars weight the car would fall into the lake. The earliest the klunker had ever tumbled into the lake was February the twenty-seventh (That was the winter of 1998. I don't think you could rightly call that a winter at all), the latest was May the first (That was 1950. Seemed that year that the only way that winter would end was if somebody hammered a stake through its heart). The beginning of April appeared to be the most common time for the car to sinknormally in midafternoon. All of the midafternoons in April had already gone, marked off in Hinzelmanns lined notebook. Shadow bought a thirty-minute period on the morning of March 23, from 9:00 A. M. to 9:30 A. M. He handed Hinzelmann thirty dollars. I just wish everybody in town was as easy a sell as you are, said Hinzelmann. Its a thank-you for that ride you gave me that first night I was in town. No, Mike, said Hinzelmann. Its for the children. For a moment he looked serious, with no trace of impishness on his creased old face. Come down this afternoon, you can lend a hand pushing the klunker out onto the lake. He passed Shadow six blue cards, each with a date and time written on it in Hinzelmanns old-fashioned handwriting, then entered the details of each in his notebook. Hinzelmann, asked Shadow. Have you ever heard of eagle stones? Up north of Rhinelander? Nope, that's Eagle River. Cant say I have. How about thunderbirds? Well, there was the Thunderbird Framing Gallery up on Fifth Street, but that closed down. I'm not helping, am I? Nope. Tell you what, why don't you go look at the library. Good people, although they may be kind of distracted by the library sale on this week. I showed you where the library was, didn't I? Shadow nodded, and said so long. He wished hed thought of the library himself. He got into the purple 4-Runner and drove south on Main Street, following the lake around to the southernmost point, until he reached the castlelike building that housed the city library. |
| 723 |
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. 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. |
| 724 |
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. 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. |
| 725 |
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. |
| 726 |
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. |
| 727 |
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. 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. |
| 728 |
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. 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. |
| 729 |
There was only one waitress, who wore her eyebrow ring as a mark of caste, and a woman making coffee behind the counter. The waitress advanced upon them, smiling automatically, sat them down, took their orders. Easter put her slim hand on the back of Wednesdays square gray hand. I'm telling you, she said, I'm doing fine. On my festival days they still feast on eggs and rabbits, on candy and on flesh, to represent rebirth and copulation. They wear flowers in their bonnets and they give each other flowers. They do it in my name. More and more of them every year. In my name, old wolf. And you wax fat and affluent on their worship and their love? he said, dryly. don't be an asshole. Suddenly she sounded very tired. She sipped her mochaccino. Serious question, mdear. Certainly I would agree that millions upon millions of them give each other tokens in your name, and that they still practice all the rites of your festival, even down to hunting for hidden eggs. But how many of them know who you are? Eh? Excuse me, miss? This to their waitress. She said, You need another espresso? No, my dear. I was just wondering if you could solve a little argument we were having over here. My friend and I were disagreeing over what the word Easter means. Would you happen to know? The girl stared at him as if green toads had begun to push their way between his lips. 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? |
| 730 |
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. 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. |
| 731 |
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. |
| 732 |
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. 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. |
| 733 |
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. 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. |
| 734 |
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. |
| 735 |
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? Shadow hazarded. She looked almost disappointed. Yeah. that's it. They kill themselves. She shook her head. Then she continued, There are too many towns hereabouts that only exist for the hunters and the vacationers, towns that just take their money and send them home with their trophies and their bug bites. Then there are the company towns, where everythings just hunky-dory until Wal-Mart relocates their distribution center or 3M stops manufacturing CD cases there or whatever and suddenly theres a boatload of folks who cant pay their mortgages. I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name. Ainsel, said Shadow. Mike Ainsel. The beer he was drinking was a local brew, made with spring water. It was good. I'm Gallic Knopf, she said. Dollys sister. Her face was still ruddy from the cold. So what I'm saying is that Lakesides lucky. Weve got a little of everything herefarm, light industry, tourism, crafts. Good schools. Shadow looked at her in puzzlement. There was something empty at the bottom of all her words. It was as if he were listening to a salesman, a good salesman, who believed in his product, but still wanted to make sure you went home with all the brushes or the full set of encyclopedias. Perhaps she could see it in his face. She said I'm sorry. When you love something you just don't want to stop talking about it. What do you do, Mister Ainsel? My uncle buys and sells antiques all over the country. He uses me to move big, heavy things. Its a good job, but not steady work. A black cat, the bar mascot, wound between Shadows legs, rubbing its forehead with his boot. It leapt up beside him onto the bench and went to sleep. At least you get to travel, said Brogan. You do anything else? You got eight quarters on you? asked Shadow. Brogan fumbled for his change. He found five quarters, pushed them across the table to Shadow. Gallic Knopf produced another three quarters. He laid out the coins, four in each row. Then, with scarcely a fumble, he did the Coins Through the Table, appearing to drop half the coins through the wood of the table, from his left hand into his right. After that, he took all eight coins in his right hand, an empty water glass in his left, covered the glass with a napkin and appeared to make the coins vanish one by one from his right hand and land in the glass beneath the napkin with an audible clink. |
| 736 |
So, efficiently and good-naturedly, he exterminates Jews: he appreciates the music that plays in the background to pacify them; he advises the Jews not to forget their identification numbers as they go into the showersmany people, he tells them, forget their numbers, and take the wrong clothes when they come out of the showers. This calms the Jews. There will be life, they assure themselves, after the showers. Our man supervises the detail taking the bodies to the ovens; and if there is anything he feels bad about, it is that he still allows the gassing of vermin to affect him. Were he a truly good man, he knows, he would feel nothing but joy as the earth is cleansed of its pests. There was a girl, and her uncle sold her. Put like that it seems so simple. No man, proclaimed Donne, is an Island, and he was wrong. If we were not islands, we would be lost, drowned in each others tragedies. We are insulated (a word that means, literally, remember, made into an island) from the tragedy of others, by our island nature, and by the repetitive shape and form of the stories. The shape does not change: there was a human being who was born, lived, and then, by some means or another, died. There. You may fill in the details from your own experience. As unoriginal as any other tale, as unique as any other life. Lives are snowflakesforming patterns we have seen before, as like one another as peas in a pod (and have you ever looked at peas in a pod? I mean, really looked at them? Theres not a chance youd mistake one for another, after a minutes close inspection), but still unique. Without individuals we see only numbers: a thousand dead, a hundred thousand dead, casualties may rise to a million. With individual stories, the statistics become peoplebut even that is a lie, for the people continue to suffer in numbers that themselves are numbing and meaningless. Look, see the childs swollen, swollen belly, and the flies that crawl at the corners of his eyes, his skeletal limbs: will it make it easier for you to know his name, his age, his dreams, his fears? To see him from the inside? And if it does, are we not doing a disservice to his sister, who lies in the searing dust beside him, a distorted, distended caricature of a human child? And there, if we feel for them, are they now more important to us than a thousand other children touched by the same famine, a thousand other young lives who will soon be food for the flies own myriad squirming children? We draw our lines around these moments of pain, and remain upon our islands, and they cannot hurt us. |
| 737 |
They are covered with a smooth, safe, nacreous layer to let them slip, pearllike, from our souls without real pain. Fiction allows us to slide into these other heads, these other places, and look out through other eyes. And then in the tale we stop before we die, or we die vicariously and unharmed, and in the world beyond the tale we turn the page or close the book, and we resume our lives. A life that is, like any other, unlike any other. And the simple truth is this: There was a girl and her uncle sold her. This is what they used to say, where the girl came from: no man may be certain who fathered a child, but the mother, ah, that you could be certain of. Lineage and property was something that moved in the matrilineal line, but power remained in the hands of the men: a man had complete ownership of his sisters children. There was a war in that place, and it was a small war, no more than a skirmish between the men of two rival villages. It was almost an argument. One village won the argument, one village lost it. Life as a commodity, people as possessions. Enslavement had been part of the culture of those parts for thousands of years. The Arab slavers had destroyed the last of the great kingdoms of East Africa, while the West African nations had destroyed each other. There was nothing untoward or unusual about their uncle selling the twins, although twins were considered magical beings, and their uncle was scared of them, scared enough that he did not tell them that they were to be sold in case they harmed his shadow and killed him. They were twelve years old. She was called Wututu, the messenger bird, he was called Agasu, the name of a dead king. They were healthy children, and, because they were twins, male and female, they were told many things about the gods, and because they were twins they listened to the things that they were told, and they remembered. Their uncle was a fat and lazy man. If he had owned more cattle, perhaps he would have given up one of his cattle instead of the children, but he did not. He sold the twins. Enough of him: he shall not enter further into this narrative. We follow the twins. They were marched, with several other slaves taken or sold in the war, for a dozen miles to a small outpost. Here they were traded, and the twins, along with thirteen others, were bought by six men with spears and knives who marched them to the west, toward the sea, and then for many miles along the coast. There were fifteen slaves now altogether, their hands loosely bound, tied neck to neck. |
| 738 |
Wututu asked her brother Agasu what would happen to them. I do not know, he said. Agasu was a boy who smiled often: his teeth were white and perfect, and he showed them as he grinned, his happy smiles making Wututu happy in her turn. He was not smiling now. Instead he tried to show bravery for his sister, his head back and shoulders spread, as proud, as menacing, as comical as a puppy with its hackles raised. The man in the line behind Wututu, his cheeks scarred, said, They will sell us to the white devils, who will take us to their home across the water. 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. |
| 739 |
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. 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. |
| 740 |
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. |
| 741 |
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. |
| 742 |
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. 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. |
| 743 |
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. |
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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. The youngest, unable to say Sukey as a child, had called her Mama Zouzou, and the name had stuck. Now the year was 1821, and Sukey was in her mid-fifties. She looked much older. She knew more of the secrets than old Sanite Dede, who sold candies in front of the Cabildo, more than Marie Saloppe, who called herself the voodoo queen: both were free women of color, while Mama Zouzou was a slave, and would die a slave, or so her master had said. The young woman who came to her to find what had happened to her husband styled herself the Widow Paris. She was high-breasted and young and proud. She had African blood in her, and European blood, and Indian blood. Her skin was reddish, her hair was a gleaming black. Her eyes were black and haughty. Her husband, Jacques Paris, was, perhaps, dead. He was three-quarters white as these things were calculated, and the bastard of a once-proud family, one of the many immigrants who had fled from St. Domingo, and as free-born as his striking young wife. My Jacques. Is he dead? asked the Widow Paris. She was a hairdresser who went from home to home, arranging the coiffures of the elegant ladies of New Orleans before their demanding social engagements. Mama Zouzou consulted the bones, then shook her head. He is with a white woman, somewhere north of here, she said. A white woman with golden hair. He is alive. This was not magic. It was common knowledge in New Orleans just with whom Jacques Paris had run off, and the color of her hair. Mama Zouzou was surprised to realize that the Widow Paris did not already know that her Jacques was sticking his quadroon little pipi into a pink-skinned girl up in Colfax every night. Well, on the nights that he was not so drunk that he could use it for nothing better than pissing. Perhaps she knew. Perhaps she had another reason for coming. The Widow Paris came to see the old slave woman one or two times a week. After a month she brought gifts for the old woman: hair ribbons, and a seedcake, and a black rooster. Mama Zouzou, said the girl, it is time for you to teach me what you know. Yes, said Mama Zouzou, who knew which way the wind blew. And besides, the Widow Paris had confessed that she had been born with webbed toes, which meant that she was a twin and she had killed her twin in the womb. |
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What choice did Mama Zouzou have? She taught the girl that two nutmegs hung upon a string around the neck until the string breaks will cure heart murmurs, while a pigeon that has never flown, cut open and laid on the patients head, will draw a fever. She showed her how to make a wishing bag, a small leather bag containing thirteen pennies, nine cotton seeds and the bristles of a black hog, and how to rub the bag to make wishes come true. The Widow Paris learned everything that Mama Zouzou told her. She had no real interest in the gods, though. Not really. Her interests were in the practicalities. She was delighted to learn that if you dip a live frog in honey and place it in an ants nest, then, when the bones are cleaned and white, a close examination will reveal a flat, heart-shaped bone, and another with a hook on it: the bone with the hook on it must be hooked onto the garment of the one you wish to love you, while the heart-shaped bone must be kept safely (for if it is lost, your loved one will turn on you like an angry dog). Infallibly, if you do this, the one you love will be yours. She learned that dried snake powder, placed in the face powder of an enemy, will produce blindness, and that an enemy can be made to drown herself by taking a piece of her underwear, turning it inside out, and burying it at midnight under a brick. 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. |
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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. 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. |
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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. |
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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. I knew a guy once. He did weight training at the Muscle Farm, years back. He said that the Dakota Indians, the young men climb up the mountain, then form death-defying human chains off the heads, just so that the guy at the end of the chain can piss on the presidents nose. Wednesday guffawed. Oh, fine! Very fine! Is any specific president the particular butt of their ire? Shadow shrugged. He never said. Miles vanished beneath the wheels of the Winnebago. Shadow began to imagine that he was staying still while the American landscape moved past them at a steady sixty-seven miles per hour. A wintry mist fogged the edges of things. It was midday on the second day of the drive, and they were almost there. Shadow, who had been thinking, said, A girl vanished from Lakeside last week, when we were in San Francisco. Mm? Wednesday sounded barely interested. Kid named Alison McGovern. she's not the first kid to vanish there. There have been others. They go in the wintertime. Wednesday furrowed his brow. It is a tragedy, is it not? The little faces on the milk cartonsalthough I cant remember the last time I saw a kid on a milk cartonand on the walls of freeway rest areas. Have you seen me? they ask. A deeply existential question at the best of times. Have you seen me? Pull off at the next exit. Shadow thought he heard a helicopter pass overhead, but the clouds were too low to see anything. Why did you pick Lakeside? asked Shadow. I told you. Its a nice quiet place to hide you away. you're off the board there, under the radar. Why? Because that's the way it is. Now hang a left, said Wednesday. |
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He had already forgotten the mans name. I don't know how we could have lost them, says Local Law Enforcement, apologetic and puzzled. It was an optical illusion, he replies. You get them in freak weather conditions. The mist. It was a mirage. They were driving down some other road. We thought they were on this one. Local Law Enforcement looks disappointed. Oh. 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. |
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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. 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. |
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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. |
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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. 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. |
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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. 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. |
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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. |
| 755 |
Whiskey Jack waited in the doorway. 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. |
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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. 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. |
| 757 |
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. 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. |
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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. |
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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. 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. |
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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. 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. |
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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. |
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He took the paper bag from his pocket, and removed the pasty from it. He broke off the top: it breathed a faint wisp of steam into the wintry air. It smelled really good, too. He bit into it. Something rustled behind him. He thought for a moment it was the cat, but then he smelled perfume, and under the perfume, the scent of something rotten. Please don't look at me, she said, from behind him. Hello, Laura, said Shadow. Her voice was hesitant, perhaps, he thought, even a little scared. She said, Hello, puppy. He broke off some pasty. Would you like some? he asked. She was standing immediately behind him, now. No, she said. You eat it. I don't eat food anymore. He ate his pasty. It was good. I want to look at you, he said. You won't like it, she told him. Please? She stepped around the stone angel. Shadow looked at her, in the daylight. Some things were different and some things were the same. Her eyes had not changed, nor had the crooked hopefulness of her smile. And she was, very obviously, very dead. Shadow finished his pasty. 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. |
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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. I think I'm on the right track No, she said. I mean, I'm grateful. And I hope you really can do it. I did a lot of bad stuff She shook her head. But I was talking about you. I'm alive, said Shadow. I'm not dead. Remember? you're not dead, she said. But I'm not sure thatyou're alive, either. Not really. This isn't the way this conversation goes, thought Shadow. This isn't the way anything goes. I love you, she said, dispassionately. you're my puppy. But whenyou're really dead you get to see things clearer. |
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Then, Sammy, hows school? you're giving us a week off. Problem with the furnaces. How are things in your neck of the North Woods? Well, I've got a new next-door neighbor. He does coin tricks. The Lakeside News letter column currently features a blistering debate on the potential rezoning of the town land down by the old cemetery on the southeast shore of the lake and yours truly has to write a strident editorial summarizing the papers position on this without offending anybody or in fact giving anyone any idea what our position is. Sounds like fun. Its not. Alison McGovern vanished last weekJilly and Stan McGoverns oldest. Nice kid. She baby-sat for Leon a few times. A mouth opens to say something, and it closes again, leaving whatever it was to say unsaid, and instead it says, that's awful. Yes. So and theres nothing to follow that with that isn't going to hurt, so she says, Is he cute? Who? The neighbor. His names Ainsel. Mike Ainsel. he's okay. Too young for me. Big guy, lookswhats the word. Begins with an M. Mean? Moody? Magnificent? Married? A short laugh, then, Yes, I guess he does look married. I mean, if theres a look that married men have, he kind of has it. But the word I was thinking of was Melancholy. He looks Melancholy. And Mysterious? Not particularly. When he moved in he seemed kinda helplesshe didn't even know to heat-seal the windows. These days he still looks like he doesn't know what he's doing here. When he's herehes here, then he's gone again. I've seen him out walking from time to time. Maybe he's a bank robber. Uh-huh. Just what I was thinking. You were not. That was my idea. Listen, Mags, how are you? Are you okay? Yeah. Really? No. A long pause then. I'm coming up to see you. Sammy, no. Itll be after the weekend, before the furnaces are working and school starts again. Itll be fun. You can make up a bed on the couch for me. And invite the mysterious neighbor over for dinner one night. Sam, you're matchmaking. Whos matchmaking? After Claudine-the-bitch-from-hell, maybe I'm ready to go back to boys for a while. I met a nice strange boy when I hitchhiked down to El Paso for Christmas. Oh. Look, Sam, youve got to stop hitchhiking. How do you think I'm going to get to Lakeside? Alison McGovern was hitchhiking. Even in a town like this, its not safe. I'll wire you the money. You can take the bus. I'll be fine. Sammy. Okay, Mags. Wire me the money if itll let you sleep easier. You know it will. Okay, bossy big sister. Give Leon a bug and tell him Auntie Sammys coming up and he's not to hide his toys in her bed this time. |
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He would have to make conversation, as Mike Ainsel. He checked his watch. It was two-thirty. Marguerite Olsen had told him to be there at six. Did she mean six exactly? Should he be there a little early? A little late? He decided, eventually, to walk next door at five past six. Shadows telephone rang. Yeah? he said. that's no way to answer the phone, growled Wednesday. When I get my telephone connected I'll answer it politely, said Shadow. Can I help you? I don't know, said Wednesday. There was a pause. Then he said, Organizing gods is like herding cats into straight lines. They don't take naturally to it. There was a deadness, and an exhaustion, in Wednesdays voice that Shadow had never heard before. Whats wrong? Its hard. Its too fucking hard. I don't know if this is going to work. We might as well cut our throats. Just cut our own throats. You mustn't talk like that. Yeah. Right. Well, if you do cut your throat, said Shadow, trying to jolly Wednesday out of his darkness, maybe it wouldn't even hurt. It would hurt. Even for my kind, pain still hurts. If you move and act in the material world, then the material world acts on you. Pain hurts, just as greed intoxicates and lust burns. We may not die easy and we sure as hell don't die well, but we can die. 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. |
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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. |
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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. 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. |
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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. They walked down the drive side by side. He opened the garage door, and she started to laugh. Omigod, she said, when she saw the 4-Runner. Paul Gunthers car. You bought Paul Gunthers car. Omigod. Shadow opened the door for her. Then he went around and got in. You know the car? When I came up here two or three years ago to stay with Mags. It was me that persuaded him to paint it purple. Oh, said Shadow. Its good to have someone to blame. He drove the car out onto the street. Got out and closed the garage door. Got back into the car. Sam was looking at him oddly as he got in, as if the confidence had begun to leak out of her. He put on his seat belt, and she said, Okay. This is a stupid thing to do, isn't it? Getting into a car with a psycho killer. I got you home safe last time, said Shadow. You killed two men, she said. you're wanted by the feds. |
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And now I find outyou're living under an assumed name next door to my sister. Unless Mike Ainsel is your real name? No, said Shadow, and he sighed. Its not. He hated saying it. It was as if he was letting go of something important, abandoning Mike Ainsel by denying him; as if he were taking his leave of a friend. Did you kill those men? No. They came to my house, and said wed been seen together. And this guy showed me photographs of you. What was his nameMister Hat? No. Mister Town. It was like The Fugitive. But I said I hadn't seen you. Thank you. So, she said. Tell me whats going on. I'll keep your secrets if you keep mine. I don't know any of yours, said Shadow. Well, you know that it was my idea to paint this thing purple, thus forcing Paul Gunther to become such an object of scorn and derision for several counties around that he was forced to leave town entirely. We were kind of stoned, she admitted. I doubt that bit of its much of a secret, said Shadow. Everyone in Lakeside must have known. Its a stoner sort of purple. And then she said, very quiet, very fast, Ifyou're going to kill me please don't hurt me. I shouldn't have come here with you. I am so fucking fucking dumb. I can identify you. Jesus. Shadow sighed. I've never killed anybody. Really. Now I'm going to take you to the Buck, he said. Well have a drink. Or if you give the word, I'll turn this car around and take you home. Either way, I'll just have to hope you arent going to call the cops. There was silence as they crossed the bridge. Who did kill those men? she asked. You wouldn't believe me if I told you. I would. She sounded angry now. He wondered if bringing the wine to the dinner had been a wise idea. Life was certainly not a cabernet right now. Its not easy to believe. I, she told him, can believe anything. You have no idea what I can believe. Really? I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that arent true and I can believe things where nobody knows ifyou're true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyones ass. |
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I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. 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. |
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Slowly now the red laser pointer traced its bead onto Wednesdays glass eye, and once again the side of his face dissolved into a cloud of blood. Freeze frame. Yes, its still Gods Own Country, said the announcer, a news reporter pronouncing the final tag line. The only question is, which gods? Another voiceShadow thought that it was Mr. Worlds, it had that same half-familiar qualitysaid, We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming. On Cheers, Coach assured his daughter that she was truly beautiful, just like her mother. The telephone rang, and Officer Liz sat up with a start. She picked it up. Said, Okay. Okay. Yes. Okay. Put the phone down. She got up from behind the counter, and said to Shadow, I'm going to have to put you in the cell. don't use the can. The Lafayette sheriffs department should be here to collect you soon. She removed the cuffs and the hobble, locked him into the holding cell. The smell was worse, now that the door was closed. Shadow sat down on the concrete bed, slipped the Liberty dollar from his sock, and began moving it from finger to palm, from position to position, from hand to hand, his only aim to keep the coin from being seen by anyone who might look in. He was passing the time. He was numb. He missed Wednesday, then, sudden, and deep. He missed the mans confidence, his attitude. His conviction. He opened his hand, looked down at Lady Liberty, a silver profile. He closed his fingers over the coin, held it tightly. He wondered if hed get to be one of those guys who got life for something they didn't do. If he even made it that far. From what hed seen of Mr. World and Mr. Town, they would have little trouble pulling him out of the system. Perhaps hed suffer an unfortunate accident on the way to the next holding facility. He could be shot while making a break for it. It did not seem at all unlikely. There was a stir of activity in the room on the other side of the glass. Officer Liz came back in. She pressed a button, a door that Shadow could not see opened, and a black deputy in a brown sheriffs uniform entered and walked briskly over to the desk. Shadow slipped the dollar coin back into his sock. The new deputy handed over some papers, Liz scanned them and signed. Chad Mulligan came in, said a few words to the new man, then he unlocked the cell door and walked inside. Okay. Folk are here to pick you up. Seemsyou're a matter of national security. You know that? Itll make a great front-page story for the Lakeside News, said Shadow. |
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Chad looked at him without expression. That a drifter got picked up for parole violations? Not much of a story. So that's the way it is? that's what they tell me, said Chad Mulligan. Shadow put his hands in front of him this time, and Chad cuffed him. Chad locked on the ankle hobbles, and a rod from the cuffs to the hobbles. Shadow thought, they'll take me outside. 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. |
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She called them there, the day after she had her vision. Atsula scraped some lichen into the fire, then she threw in dried leaves with her withered left hand: they smoked, with an eye-stinging gray smoke, and gave off an odor that was sharp and strange. Then she took a wooden cup from the wooden platform, and she passed it to Gugwei. The cup was half filled with a dark yellow liquid. Atsula had found the pungh mushrooms, each with seven spots, only a true holy woman could find a seven-spotted mushroomand had picked them at the dark of the moon, and dried them on a string of deer cartilage. Yesterday, before she slept, she had eaten the three dried mushroom caps. Her dreams had been confused and fearful things, of bright lights moving fast, of rock mountains filled with lights spearing upward like icicles. In the night she had woken, sweating, and needing to make water. She squatted over the wooden cup and filled it with her urine. Then she placed the cup outside the tent, in the snow, and returned to sleep. When she woke, she picked the lumps of ice out from the wooden cup, leaving a darker, more concentrated liquid behind. It was this liquid she passed around, first to Gugwei, then to Yanu and to Kalanu. Each of them took a large gulp of the liquid, then Atsula took the final draft. She swallowed it, and poured what was left on the ground in front of their god, a libation to Nunyunnini. They sat in the smoky tent, waiting for their god to speak. Outside, in the darkness, the wind wailed and breathed. Kalanu, the scout, was a woman who dressed and walked as a man: she had even taken Dalani, a fourteen-year-old maiden, to be her wife. Kalanu blinked her eyes tightly, then she got up and walked over to the mammoth skull. She pulled the mammoth-hide cloak over herself, and stood so her head was inside the mammoth skull. There is evil in the land, said Nunyunnini in Kalanus voice. Evil, such that if you stay here, in the land of your mothers and your mothers mothers, you shall all perish. The three listeners grunted. Is it the slavers? Or the great wolves? asked Gugwei, whose hair was long and white, and whose face was as wrinkled as the gray skin of a thorn tree. 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. |
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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. 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. |
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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. 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. |
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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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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. Shadow wound down his window. Arent you worried about lung cancer? he said. I am cancer, said Czernobog. I do not frighten myself. Nancy spoke. Folk like us don't get cancer. We don't get arteriosclerosis or Parkinsons disease or syphilis. Were kind of hard to kill. They killed Wednesday, said Shadow. He pulled over for gas, and then parked next door at a restaurant for an early breakfast. As they entered, the pay phone in the entrance began to jangle. They gave their orders to an elderly woman with a worried smile, who had been sitting reading a paperback copy of What My Heart Meant by Jenny Kerton. The woman sighed, then walked back and over to the phone, picked it up, said Yes. Then she looked back at the room, said, Yep. Looks like they are. You just hold the line now, and walked over to Mr. Nancy. Its for you, she said. Okay, said Mr. Nancy. Now, maam, you make sure those fries are real crisp now. Think burnt. He walked over to the pay phone. This is he. And what makes you think I'm dumb enough to trust you? he said. I can find it, he said. I know where it is. Yes, he said. Of course we want it. You know we want it. And I know you want to get rid of it. So don't give me any shit. He hung up the telephone, came back to the table. Who was it? asked Shadow. didn't say. What did they want? They were offerin us a truce, while they hand over the body. They lie, said Czernobog. They want to lure us in, and then they will kill us. What they did to Wednesday. Is what I always used to do, he added, with gloomy pride. Its on neutral territory, said Nancy. |
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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. |
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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. 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. |
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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. 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. |
| 781 |
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. |
| 782 |
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. |
| 783 |
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. 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. |
| 784 |
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. 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. |
| 785 |
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? |
| 786 |
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. There was a click from behind him, and a scuff of shoe against earth. Shadow sat up, and turned. Someone stood just outside the open doorway, a dark shape against the stars. Moonlight glinted from something metal. You going to shoot me? asked Shadow. JesusI wish, said Mr. Town. Its only for self-defense. So, you're praying? Have they got you thinking thatyou're gods? They arent gods. I wasnt praying, said Shadow. Just thinking. The way I figure it, said Town, you're mutations. Evolutionary experiments. A little hypnotic ability, a little hocus-pocus, and they can make people believe anything. Nothing to write home about. that's all. They die like men, after all. They always did, said Shadow. He got up, and Town took a step back. Shadow walked out of the little chapel, and Mr. Town kept his distance. Hey, Shadow said. Do you know who Louise Brooks was? Friend of yours? Nope. She was a movie star from south of here. Town paused. Maybe she changed her name, and became Liz Taylor or Sharon Stone or someone, he suggested, helpfully. Maybe. Shadow started to walk back to the motel. Town kept pace with him. You should be back in prison, said Mr. Town. You should be on fucking death row. I didn't kill your associates, said Shadow. But I'll tell you something a guy once told me, back when I was in prison. Something I've never forgotten. And that is? There was only one guy in the whole Bible Jesus ever personally promised a place with him in Paradise. Not Peter, not Paul, not any of those guys. He was a convicted thief, being executed. So don't knock the guys on death row. Maybe they know something you don't. The driver stood by the Humvee. Gnight, gentlemen, he said as they passed. Night, said Mr. Town. And then he said, to Shadow, I personally don't give a fuck about any of this. What I do, is what Mister World says. Its easier that way. Shadow walked down the corridor to room 9. He unlocked the door, went inside. He said, Sorry. I thought this was my room. It is, said Media. I was waiting for you. He could see her hair in the moonlight, and her pale face. She was sitting on his bed, primly. |
| 787 |
I'll find another room. I won't be here for long, she said. I just thought it might be an appropriate time to make you an offer. Okay. Make the offer. Relax, she said. There was a smile in her voice. You have such a stick up your butt. Look, Wednesdays dead. You don't owe anyone anything. Throw in with us. Time to Come Over to the Winning Team. Shadow said nothing. We can make you famous, Shadow. We can give you power over what people believe and say and wear and dream. You want to be the next Cary Grant? We can make that happen. We can make you the next Beatles. I think I preferred it when you were offering to show me Lucys tits, said Shadow. If that was you. Ah, she said. I need my room back. Good night. And then of course, she said, not moving, as if he had not spoken, we can turn it all around. We can make it bad for you. You could be a bad joke forever, Shadow. Or you could be remembered as a monster. You could be remembered forever, but as a Manson, a Hitlerhow would you like that? I'm sorry, maam, but I'm kind of tired, said Shadow. I'd be grateful if youd leave now. I offered you the world, she said. Whenyou're dying in a gutter, you remember that. I'll make a point of it, he said. After she had gone her perfume lingered. He lay on the bare mattress and thought about Laura, but whatever he thought aboutLaura playing Frisbee, Laura eating a root-beer float without a spoon, Laura giggling, showing off the exotic underwear she had bought when she attended a travel agents convention in Anaheimalways morphed, in his mind, into Laura sucking Robbies cock as a truck slammed them off the road and into oblivion. 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. |
| 788 |
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. |
| 789 |
Loki, he said. Loki Lie-Smith. you're slow, said Loki, but you get there in the end. 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. |
| 790 |
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. 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. |
| 791 |
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. |
| 792 |
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? 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. |
| 793 |
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. Good, said Czernobog. Shadow was stretched out full length on the seat in the back. He felt like two people, or more than two. There was part of him that felt gently exhilarated: he had done something. He had moved. It wouldn't have mattered if he hadn't wanted to live, but he did want to live, and that made all the difference. He hoped he would live through this, but he was willing to die, if that was what it took to be alive. And, for a moment he thought that the whole thing was funny, just the funniest thing in the world; and he wondered if Laura would appreciate the joke. There was another part of himmaybe it was Mike Ainsel, he thought, vanished off into nothing at the press of a button in the Lakeside Police Departmentwho was still trying to figure it all out, trying to see the big picture.. Hidden Indians, he said out loud. What? came Czernobogs irritated croak from the front seat. The pictures youd get to color in as kids. |
| 794 |
The farm roof was crumbling at the back; it was covered in black plastic sheeting. 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. |
| 795 |
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. 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. |
| 796 |
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. 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. |
| 797 |
It seemed to him that the tree reached from hell to heaven, and that he had been hanging there forever. A brown hawk circled the tree, landed on a broken branch near to him, and then took to the wing, flying west. The storm, which had abated at dawn, began to return as the day passed. Gray, roiling clouds stretched from horizon to horizon; a slow drizzle began to fall. The body at the base of the tree seemed to have become less, in its stained motel winding sheet, crumbling into itself like a sugar cake left in the rain. Sometimes Shadow burned, sometimes he froze. When the thunder started once more he imagined that he heard drums beating, kettledrums in the thunder and the thump of his heart, inside his head or outside, it did not matter. He perceived the pain in colors: the red of a neon bar sign, the green of a traffic light on a wet night, the blue of an empty video screen. The squirrel dropped from the bark of the trunk onto Shadows shoulder, sharp claws digging into his skin. Ratatosk! it chattered. The tip of its nose touched his lips. Ratatosk. It sprang back onto the tree. His skin was on fire with pins and needles, a pricking covering his whole body. The sensation was intolerable. His life was laid out below him, on the motel-sheet shroud: literally laid out, like the items at some Dada picnic, a surrealist tableau: he could see his mothers puzzled stare, the American embassy in Norway, Lauras eyes on their wedding day He chuckled through dry lips. Whats so funny, puppy? asked Laura. Our wedding day, he said. You bribed the organist to change from playing the Wedding March to the theme song from Scooby-Doo as you walked toward me down the aisle. Do you remember? Of course I remember, darling. I would have made it too, if it wasnt for those meddling kids. I loved you so much, said Shadow. He could feel her lips on his, and they were warm and wet and living, not cold and dead, so he knew that this was another hallucination. You arent here, are you? he asked. No, she said. But you are calling me, for the last time. And I am coming. Breathing was harder now. The ropes cutting his flesh were an abstract concept, like free will or eternity. Sleep, puppy, she said, although he thought it might have been his own voice he heard, and he slept. * * * The sun was a pewter coin in a leaden sky. Shadow was, he realized slowly, awake, and he was cold. But the part of him that understood that seemed very far away from the rest of him. Somewhere in the distance he was aware that his mouth and throat were burning, painful, and cracked. |
| 798 |
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. |
| 799 |
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. How did you find me? he asked. She was silent, for a while, in the moonlight. Then she said, You are the nearest thing I have to life. You are the only thing I have left, the only thing that isn't bleak and flat and gray. I could be blindfolded and dropped into the deepest ocean and I would know where to find you. I could be buried a hundred miles underground and I would know where you are. He looked down at the woman in the moonlight, and his eyes stung with tears. I'll cut you down, she said, after a while. I spend too much time rescuing you, don't I? He coughed again. Then, No, leave me. I have to do this. She looked up at him, and shook her head. you're crazy, she said. you're dying up there. Or you'll be crippled, if you arent already. Maybe, he said. But I'm alive. Yes, she said, after a moment. I guess you are. You told me, he said. In the graveyard. It seems like such a long time ago, puppy, she said. Then she said, I feel better, here. It doesn't hurt as much. You know what I mean? But I'm so dry. The wind let up, and he could smell her now: a stink of rotten meat and sickness and decay, pervasive and unpleasant. I lost my job, she said. It was a night job, but they said people had complained. I told them I was sick, and they said they didn't care. I'm so thirsty. The women, he told her. They have water. The house. Puppy she sounded scared. Tell themtell them I said to give you water The white face stared up at him. I should go, she told him. Then she hacked, and made a face, and spat a mass of something white onto the grass. |
| 800 |
It broke up when it hit the ground, and wriggled away. It was almost impossible to breathe. His chest felt heavy, and his head was swaying. Stay he said, in a breath that was almost a whisper, unsure whether or not she could hear him. Please don't go. He started to cough. Stay the night. I'll stop awhile, she said. And then, like a mother to a child, she said, Nothings gonna hurt you when I'm here. You know that? Shadow coughed once more. He closed his eyesonly for a moment, he thought, but when he opened them again the moon had set and he was alone. * * * A crashing and a pounding in his head, beyond the pain of migraine, beyond all pain. Everything dissolved into tiny butterflies which circled him like a multicolored dust storm and then evaporated into the night. The white sheet wrapped about the body at the base of the tree flapped noisily in the morning wind. The pounding eased. Everything slowed. There was nothing left to make him keep breathing. His heart ceased to beat in his chest. The darkness that he entered this time was deep, and lit by a single star, and it was final. I know its crooked. But its the only game in town. Canada Bill Jones The tree was gone, and the world was gone, and the morning-gray sky above him was gone. The sky was now the color of midnight. There was a single cold star shining high above him, a blazing, twinkling light, and nothing else. He took a single step and almost tripped. Shadow looked down. There were steps cut into the rock, going down, steps so huge that he could only imagine that giants had cut them and descended them a long time ago. He clambered downward, half jumping, half vaulting from step to step. His body ached, but it was the ache of lack of use, not the tortured ache of a body that has hung on a tree until it was dead. He observed, without surprise, that he was now fully dressed, in jeans and a white T-shirt. He was barefoot. He experienced a profound moment of deja vu: this was what he had been wearing when he stood in Czernobogs apartment the night when Zorya Polunochnaya had come to him and told him about the constellation called Odins Wain. 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. |
| 801 |
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? |
| 802 |
Neither Powers nor West seemed able to remember what the fight had been about, but they each admitted that Shadow had been their assailant. Nobody talked about the money. Nobody even mentioned Laura, and that was all that Shadow had wanted. Shadow wondered whether the path of comforting lies would have been a better one to walk. He walked away from that place, and followed the rock path down into what looked like a hospital room, a public hospital in Chicago, and he felt the bile rise in his throat. He stopped. He did not want to look. He did not want to keep walking. In the hospital bed his mother was dying again, as shed died when he was sixteen, and, yes, here he was, a large, clumsy sixteen-year-old with acne pocking his cream-and-coffee skin, sitting at her bedside, unable to look at her, reading a thick paperback book. Shadow wondered what the book was, and he walked around the hospital bed to inspect it more closely. He stood between the bed and the chair looking from the one to the other, the big boy hunched into his chair, his nose buried in Gravitys Rainbow, trying to escape from his mothers death into London during the blitz, the fictional madness of the book no escape and no excuse. His mothers eyes were closed in a morphine peace: what she had thought was just another sickle-cell crisis, another bout of pain to be endured, had turned out, they had discovered, too late, to be lymphoma. There was a lemonish-gray tinge to her skin. She was in her early thirties, but she looked much older. Shadow wanted to shake himself, the awkward boy that he once was, get him to hold her hand, talk to her, do something before she slipped away, as he knew that she would. 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. |
| 803 |
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. |
| 804 |
The mirror lights were gone, and now the only illumination came from the tiny moon that burned high above his head. 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. |
| 805 |
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. 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. |
| 806 |
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. 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. |
| 807 |
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. |
| 808 |
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. 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? |
| 809 |
The driver is led by this to believe that Rock City is surely just around the nearest corner, instead of being a days drive away, on Lookout Mountain, a hair over the state line, in Georgia, just southwest of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Lookout Mountain is not much of a mountain. It resembles an impossibly high and commanding hill. The Chickamauga, a branch of the Cherokee, lived there when the white men came; they called the mountain Chattotonoogee, which has been translated as the mountain that rises to a point. In the 1830s Andrew Jacksons Indian Relocation Act exiled them from their landall the Choctaw and Chickamauga and Cherokee and Chickasawand U. S. troops forced every one of them they could catch to walk over a thousand miles to the new Indian Territories in what would one day be Oklahoma, down the trail of tears: an act of casual genocide. Thousands of men, women, and children died on the way. When youve won, youve won, and nobody can argue with that. For whoever controlled Lookout Mountain controlled the land; that was the legend. It was a sacred site, after all, and it was a high place. In the Civil War, the War Between the States, there was a battle there: the Battle Above the Clouds, that was the first days fighting, and then the Union forces did the impossible and, without orders, swept up Missionary Ridge and took it. The North took Lookout Mountain and the North took the war. There are tunnels and caves, some very old, beneath Lookout Mountain. For the most part they are blocked off now, although a local businessman excavated an underground waterfall, which he called Ruby Falls. It can be reached by elevator. Its a tourist attraction, although the biggest tourist attraction of all is at the top of Lookout Mountain. That is Rock City. Rock City begins as an ornamental garden on a mountainside: its visitors walk a path that takes them through rocks, over rocks, between rocks. They throw corn into a deer enclosure, cross a hanging bridge and peer out through a quarter-a-throw binoculars at a view that promises them seven states on the rare sunny days when the air is perfectly clear. And from there, like a drop into some strange hell, the path takes the visitors, millions upon millions of them every year, down into caverns, where they stare at back-lit dolls arranged into nursery-rhyme and fairy-tale dioramas. When they leave, they leave bemused, uncertain of why they came, of what they have seen, of whether they had a good time or not. * * * They came to Lookout Mountain from all across the United States. |
| 810 |
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. |
| 811 |
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. 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. |
| 812 |
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. 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. |
| 813 |
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. |
| 814 |
It had amused him to play chauffeur, in Kansas, after all. Look No martyrs, Town. And Town had nodded, and taken the knife in its sheath, and pushed the rage that welled up inside him down deep and away. Mr. Towns hatred of Shadow had become a part of him. As he was falling asleep he would see Shadows solemn face, see that smile that wasnt a smile, the way Shadow had of smiling without smiling that made Town want to sink his fist into the mans gut, and even as he fell asleep he could feel his jaws squeeze together, his temples tense, his gullet burn. He drove the Ford Explorer across the meadow, past an abandoned farmhouse. He crested a ridge and saw the tree. He parked the car a little way past it, and turned off the engine. The clock on the dashboard said it was 6:38 A. M. He left the keys in the car, and walked toward the tree. The tree was large; it seemed to exist on its own sense of scale. Town could not have said if it was fifty feet high or two hundred. Its bark was the gray of a fine silk scarf. There was a naked man tied to the trunk a little way above the ground by a webwork of ropes, and there was something wrapped in a sheet at the foot of the tree. Town realized what it was as he passed it. He pushed at the sheet with his foot. Wednesdays ruined half-a-face stared out at him. Town reached the tree. He walked a little way around the thick trunk, away from the sightless eyes of the farmhouse, then he unzipped his fly and pissed against the trunk of the tree. He did up his fly. He walked back over to the house, found a wooden extension ladder, carried it back to the tree. He leaned it carefully against the trunk. Then he climbed up it. Shadow hung, limply, from the ropes that tied him to the tree. Town wondered if the man was still alive: his chest did not rise or fall. Dead or almost dead, it did not matter. Hello, asshole, Town said, aloud. Shadow did not move. Town reached the top of the ladder, and he pulled out the knife. He found a small branch that seemed to meet Mr. Worlds specifications, and hacked at the base of it with the knife blade, cutting it half through, then breaking it off with his hand. It was about thirty inches long. He put the knife back in its sheath. Then he started to climb back down the ladder. When he was opposite Shadow, he paused. God, I hate you, he said. He wished he could just have taken out a gun and shot him, and he knew that he could not. And then he jabbed the stick in the air toward the hanging man, in a stabbing motion. |
| 815 |
It was an instinctive gesture, containing all the frustration and rage inside Town. He imagined that he was holding a spear and twisting it into Shadows guts. Come on, he said, aloud. Time to get moving. Then he thought, First sign of madness. Talking to yourself. He climbed down a few more steps, then jumped the rest of the way to the ground. He looked at the stick he was holding, and felt like a small boy, holding his stick as a sword or a spear. I could have cut a stick from any tree, he thought. It didn't have to be this tree. Who the fuck would have known? And he thought, Mr. World would have known. He carried the ladder back to the farmhouse. From the corner of his eye he thought he saw something move, and he looked in through the window, into the dark room filled with broken furniture, with the plaster peeling from the walls, and for a moment, in a half dream, he imagined that he saw three women sitting in the dark parlor. 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. |
| 816 |
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. And we shall take their heads as trophies, and the crows shall have their eyes and their corpses. The dot had become a bird, its wings outstretched, riding the gusty morning winds above them. Easter cocked her head on one side. Is that some hidden war goddess knowledge? she asked. The whole whos-going-to-win thing? Who gets whose head? No, said the girl, I can smell the battle, but that's all. But well win. won't we? We have to. I saw what they did to the All-Father. Its them or us. Yeah, said Easter. I suppose it is. |
| 817 |
The girl smiled again, in the half-light, and made her way back to the camp. Easter put her hand down and touched a green shoot that stabbed up from the earth like a knife blade. As she touched it it grew, and opened, and twisted, and changed, until she was resting her hand on a green tulip head. When the sun was high the flower would open. Easter looked up at the hawk. Can I help you? she said. The hawk circled about fifteen feet above Easters head, slowly, then it glided down to her, and landed on the ground nearby. It looked up at her with mad eyes. Hello, cutie, she said. Now, what do you really look like, eh? The hawk hopped toward her, uncertainly, and then it was no longer a hawk, but a young man. He looked at her, and then looked down at the grass. You? he said. His glance went everywhere, to the grass, to the sky, to the bushes. Not to her. Me, she said. What about me? You. He stopped. He seemed to be trying to muster his thoughts; strange expressions flitted and swam across his face. He spent too long a bird, she thought. He has forgotten how to be a man. She waited patiently. Eventually, he said, Will you come with me? Maybe. Where do you want me to go? The man on the tree. He needs you. A ghost hurt, in his side. The blood came, then it stopped. I think he is dead. Theres a war on. I cant just go running away. The naked man said nothing, just moved from one foot to another as if he were uncertain of his weight, as if he were used to resting on the air or on a swaying branch, not on the solid earth. Then he said, If he is gone forever, it is all over. But the battle If he is lost, it will not matter who wins. He looked like he needed a blanket, and a cup of sweet coffee, and someone to take him somewhere he could just shiver and babble until he got his mind back. He held his arms stiffly against his sides. Where is this? Nearby? He stared at the tulip plant, and shook his head. Way away. Well, she said, I'm needed here. And I cant just leave. How do you expect me to get there? I cant fly, like you, you know. No, said Horus, You cant. Then he looked up, gravely, and pointed to the other dot that circled them, as it dropped from the darkening clouds, growing in size. He can. * * * Another several hours pointless driving, and by now Town hated the global positioning system almost as much as he hated Shadow. There was no passion in the hate, though. He had thought finding his way to the farm, to the great silver ash tree, had been hard; finding his way away from the farm was much harder. |
| 818 |
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? The boy nodded again. Mr. World walked with the kid back to his operations center: a damp cave containing a diorama of drunken pixies making moonshine with a still. A sign outside warned tourists away during renovations. The two men sat down on plastic chairs. How can I help you? asked Mr. World. Yes. Okay. Right, two things, Okay. One. What are we waiting for? And two. Two is harder. Look. We have the guns. Right. We have the firepower. They have. They have fucking swords and knives and fucking hammers and stone axes. And like, tire irons. We have fucking smart bombs. Which we will not be using, pointed out the other man. I know that. You said that already. I know that. And that's doable. But. Look, ever since I did the job on that bitch in L. A., I've been He stopped, made a face, seemed unwilling to go on. Youve been troubled? Yes. Good word. Troubled. Yes. Like a home for troubled teens. Funny. Yes. And what exactly is troubling you? Well, we fight, we win. And that is a source of trouble? I find it a matter of triumph and delight, myself. |
| 819 |
But. they'll die out anyway. They are passenger pigeons and thylacines. Yes? Who cares? This way, its going to be a bloodbath. Ah. Mr. World nodded. He was following. That was good. The fat kid said, Look, I'm not the only one who feels this way. I've checked with the crew at Radio Modern, andyou're all for settling this peacefully; and the intangibles are pretty much in favor of letting market forces take care of it. I'm being. You know. The voice of reason here. You are indeed. Unfortunately, there is information you do not have. The smile that followed was twisted and scarred. The boy blinked. He said, Mister World? What happened to your lips? World sighed. The truth of the matter, he said, is that somebody once sewed them together. A long time ago. Whoa, said the fat kid. Serious omerta shit. Yes. You want to know what were waiting for? Why we didn't strike last night? The fat kid nodded. He was sweating, but it was a cold sweat. We didn't strike yet, because I'm waiting for a stick. A stick? that's right. A stick. And do you know what I'm going to do with the stick? A head shake. Okay. I'll bite. What? I could tell you, said Mr. World, soberly. But then I'd have to kill you. He winked, and the tension in the room evaporated. The fat kid began to giggle, a low, snuffling laugh in the back of his throat and in his nose. Okay, he said. Hee. Hee. Okay. Hee. Got it. Message received on Planet Technical. Loud and clear. Ixnay on the Estionsquay. Mr. World shook his head. He rested a hand on the fat kids shoulder. Hey, he said. You really want to know? Sure. Well, said Mr. World, seeing that were friends, heres the answer: I'm going to take the stick, and I'm going to throw it over the armies as they come together. As I throw it, it will become a spear. And then, as the spear arcs over the battle, I'm going to shout I dedicate this battle to Odin. Huh? said the fat kid. Why? Power, said Mr. World. He scratched his chin. And food. A combination of the two. You see, the outcome of the battle is unimportant. What matters is the chaos, and the slaughter. I don't get it. Let me show you. Itll be just like this, said Mr. World. Watch! He took the wooden-bladed hunters knife from the pocket of his Burberry and, in one fluid movement, he slipped the blade of it into the soft flesh beneath the fat kids chin, and pushed hard upward, toward the brain. I dedicate this death to Odin, he said, as the knife sank in. There was a leakage onto his hand of something that was not actually blood, and a sputtering sparking noise behind the fat kids eyes. |
| 820 |
The smell on the air was that of burning insulation wire. The fat kids hand twitched spastically, and then he fell. The expression on his face was one of puzzlement and misery. Look at him, said Mr. World, conversationally, to the air. He looks as if he just saw a sequence of zeroes and ones turn into a flock of brightly colored birds and fly away. There was no reply from the empty rock corridor. Mr. World shouldered the body as if it weighed very little, and he opened the pixie diorama and dropped the body beside the still, covering it with its long black raincoat. He would dispose of it that evening, he decided, and he grinned his scarred grin: hiding a body on a battlefield would almost be too easy. Nobody would ever notice. Nobody would care. For a little while there was silence in that place. And then a gruff voice, which was not Mr. Worlds, cleared its throat in the shadows, and said, Good start. They tried to stand off the soldiers, but the men fired and killed them both. So the songs wrong about the jail, but that's put in for poetry. You cant always have things like they are in poetry. Poetry aint what youd call truth. There aint room enough in the verses. A Singers Commentary on The Ballad of Sam Bass, in A Treasury of American Folklore None of this can actually be happening. If it makes you more comfortable, you could simply think of it as metaphor. Religions are, by definition, metaphors, after all: God is a dream, a hope, a woman, an ironist, a father, a city, a house of many rooms, a watchmaker who left his prize chronometer in the desert, someone who loves youeven, perhaps, against all evidence, a celestial being whose only interest is to make sure your football team, army, business, or marriage thrives, prospers, and triumphs over all opposition. Religions are places to stand and look and act, vantage points from which to view the world. So none of this is happening. Such things could not occur. Never a word of it is literally true. Even so, the next thing that happened, happened like this: At the foot of Lookout Mountain men and women were gathered around a small bonfire in the rain. They were standing beneath the trees, which provided poor cover, and they were arguing. The lady Kali, with her ink-black skin and her white, sharp teeth, said, It is time. Anansi, with lemon-yellow gloves and silvering hair, shook his head. We can wait, he said. While we can wait, we should wait. There was a murmur of disagreement from the crowd. No, listen. he's right, said an old man with iron-gray hair: Czernobog. |
| 821 |
He was holding a small sledgehammer, resting the head of it on his shoulder. They have the high ground. The weather is against us. This is madness, to begin this now. Something that looked a little like a wolf and a little more like a man grunted and spat on the forest floor. When better to attack them, dedushka? Shall we wait until the weather clears, when they expect it? I say we go now, I say we move. There are clouds between us and them, pointed out Isten of the Hungarians. He had a fine black mustache, a large, dusty black hat, and the grin of a man who makes his living selling aluminum siding and new roofs and gutters to senior citizens but who always leaves town the day after the checks clear whether the work is done or not. A man in an elegant suit, who had until now said nothing, put his hands together, stepped into the firelight, and made his point succinctly and clearly. There were nods and mutters of agreement. A voice came from one of three warrior-women who comprised the Morrigan, standing so close together in the shadows that they had become an arrangement of blue-tattooed limbs and dangling crows wings. She said, It doesn't matter whether this is a good time or a bad time. This is the time. They have been killing us. Better to die together, on the attack, like gods, than to die fleeing and singly, like rats in a cellar. Another murmur, this time one of deep agreement. She had said it for all of them. Now was the time. The first head is mine, said a very tall Chinese man, with a rope of tiny skulls around his neck. He began to walk, slowly and intently, up the mountain, shouldering a staff with a curved blade at the end of it, like a silver moon. * * * Even Nothing cannot last forever. He might have been there, been Nowhere, for ten minutes or for ten thousand years. It made no difference: time was an idea for which he no longer had any need. He could no longer remember his real name. He felt empty and cleansed, in that place that was not a place. He was without form, and void. He was nothing. And into that nothing a voice said, Ho-hoka, cousin. We got to talk. And something that might once have been Shadow said, Whiskey Jack? Yeah, said Whiskey Jack, in the darkness. You are a hard man to hunt down, whenyou're dead. You didn't go to any of the places I figured. I had to look all over before I thought of checking here. Say, you ever find your tribe? Shadow remembered the man and the girl in the disco beneath the spinning mirror-ball. I guess I found my family. |
| 822 |
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? 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. |
| 823 |
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. She reached out a white hand to Horus, and she touched his black hair. He blinked at her, intently. Then he shimmered, as if in a heat haze. The hawk eye that faced her glinted orange, as if a flame had just been kindled inside it; a flame that had been long extinguished. The hawk took to the air, and it swung upward, circling and ascending in a rising gyre, circling the place in the gray clouds where the sun might conceivably be, and as the hawk rose it became first a dot and then a speck, and then, to the naked eye, nothing at all, something that could only be imagined. The clouds began to thin and to evaporate, creating a patch of blue sky through which the sun glared. The single bright sunbeam penetrating the clouds and bathing the meadow was beautiful, but the image faded as more clouds vanished. Soon the morning sun was blazing down on that meadow like a summer sun at noon, burning the water vapor from the mornings rain into mists and burning the mist off into nothing at all. |
| 824 |
Laura raised her head against his, and her hand stroked the line of his neck, absently. MackI keep thinking. You must really want to know what happened to those friends of yours? she asked. Woody and Stone. Do you? Yeah, he said, moving his lips down to hers, for their first kiss. Sure I do. So she showed him. * * * Shadow walked the meadow, making his own slow circles around the trunk of the tree, gradually widening his circle. Sometimes he would stop and pick something up: a flower, or a leaf, or a pebble, or a twig, or a blade of grass. He would examine it minutely, as if concentrating entirely on the twigness of the twig, the leafness of the leaf. Easter found herself reminded of the gaze of a baby, at the point where it learns to focus. She did not dare to talk to him. At that moment, it would have been sacrilegious. She watched him, exhausted as she was, and she wondered. About twenty feet out from the base of the tree, half-overgrown with long meadow grass and dead creepers, he found a canvas bag. Shadow picked it up, untied the knots at the top of the bag, loosened the drawstring. The clothes he pulled out were his own. They were old, but still serviceable. He turned the shoes over in his hands. He stroked the fabric of the shirt, the wool of the sweater, stared at them as if he were looking at them across a million years. One by one, he put them on. He put his hands into his pockets, and looked puzzled as he pulled one hand out, holding what looked to Easter like a white-and-gray marble. He said, No coins. It was the first thing he had said in several hours. No coins? echoed Easter. He shook his head. They gave me something to do with my hands. He bent down to pull on his shoes. Once he was dressed, he looked more normal. Grave, though. She wondered how far he had traveled, and what it had cost him to return. He was not the first whose return she had initiated; and she knew that, soon enough, the million-year stare would fade, and the memories and the dreams that he had brought back from the tree would be elided by the world of things you could touch. That was the way it always went. She led their way to the rear of the meadow. Her mount waited in the trees. It cant carry both of us, she told him. I'll make my own way home. Shadow nodded. He seemed to be trying to remember something. Then he opened his mouth, and he screeched a cry of welcome and of joy. The thunderbird opened its cruel beak, and it screeched a welcome back at him. Superficially, at least, it resembled a condor. |
| 825 |
He was reading the Washington Post by the light of a small electric lantern. When he saw her he folded the paper and placed it beneath his chair. He stood up, a tall man with close-cropped orange hair in an expensive raincoat, and he gave her a small bow. I shall assume that Mister Town is dead, he said. Welcome, spear-carrier. Thank you. I'm sorry about Mack, she said. 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. |
| 826 |
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. |
| 827 |
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. 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. |
| 828 |
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. 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. |
| 829 |
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. |
| 830 |
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. 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. |
| 831 |
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. 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. |
| 832 |
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. 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. |
| 833 |
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. |
| 834 |
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. 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. |
| 835 |
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? |
| 836 |
before crooning out a moving, tuneful version of The Way You Look Tonight. 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. |
| 837 |
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. He unscrewed the top, and shook out a couple of white pills. Here. Nice trunk, said Shadow. He took the bitter pills, swallowed them with a glass of water. My son sent it to me, said Mr. Nancy. he's a good boy. I don't see him as much as I'd like. I miss Wednesday, said Shadow. Despite everything he did. I keep expecting to see him. But I look up and he's not there. He kept staring at the pirate trunk, trying to figure out what it reminded him of. You will lose many things. Do not lose this. Who said that? You miss him? After what he put you through? Put us all through? Yes, said Shadow. I guess I do. Do you think hell be back? I think, said Mr. Nancy, that wherever two men are gathered together to sell a third man a twenty-dollar violin for ten thousand dollars, he will be there in spirit. Yes, but We should get back into the kitchen, said Mr. Nancy, his expression becoming stony. Those pans won't wash themselves. Mr. Nancy washed the pans and the dishes. Shadow dried them and put them away. Somewhere in there the headache began to ease. They went back into the sitting room. Shadow stared at the old trunk some more, willing himself to remember. If I don't go to see Czernobog, he said, what will happen? you'll see him, said Mr. Nancy flatly. Maybe hell find you. Or maybe hell bring you to him. But one way or another, you'll see him. Shadow nodded. Something started to fall into place. A dream, on the tree. |
| 838 |
The layer of water on the ice, made up of melted ice and melted snow, was deeper than it had looked from above, and the ice beneath the water was slicker and more slippery than any skating rink, so that Shadow was forced to fight to keep his footing. He splashed though the water as it covered his boots to the laces and seeped inside. Ice water. It numbed where it touched. He felt strangely distant as he trudged across the frozen lake, as if he were watching himself on a movie screena movie in which he was the hero: a detective, perhaps. He walked toward the klunker, painfully aware that the ice was too rotten for this, and that the water beneath the ice was as cold as water could be without freezing. He kept walking, and he slipped and slid. Several times he fell. He passed empty beer bottles and cans left to litter the ice, and he passed round holes cut into the ice, for fishing, holes that had not frozen again, each hole filled with black water. The klunker seemed farther away than it had looked from the road. He heard a loud crack from the south of the lake, like a stick breaking, followed by the sound of something huge thrumming, as if a bass string the size of a lake were vibrating. Massively, the ice creaked and groaned, like an old door protesting being opened. Shadow kept walking, as steadily as he could. This is suicide, whispered a sane voice in the back of his mind. Cant you just let it go? No, he said, aloud. I have to know. And he kept right on walking. He arrived at the klunker, and even before he reached it he knew that he had been right. There was a miasma that hung about the car, something that was at the same time a faint, foul smell and was also a bad taste in the back of his throat. He walked around the car, looking inside. The seats were stained, and ripped. The car was obviously empty. He tried the doors. They were locked. He tried the trunk. Also locked. He wished that he had brought a crowbar. He made a fist of his hand, inside his glove. He counted to three, then smashed his hand, hard, against the drivers-side window glass. His hand hurt, but the side window was undamaged. He thought about running at ithe could kick the window in, he was certain, if he didn't skid and fall on the wet ice. But the last thing he wanted to do was to disturb the klunker enough that the ice beneath it would crack. He looked at the car. Then he reached for the radio antennait was the kind that was supposed to go up and down, but that had stuck in the up position a decade agoand, with a little waggling, he broke it off at the base. |
| 839 |
He took the thin end of the antennait had once had a metal button on the end, but that was lost in time, and, with strong fingers, he bent it back up into a makeshift hook. Then he rammed the extended metal antenna down between the rubber and the glass of the front window, deep into the mechanism of the door. He fished in the mechanism, twisting, moving, pushing the metal antenna about until it caught: and then he pulled up. He felt the improvised hook sliding from the lock, uselessly. 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. |
| 840 |
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. |
| 841 |
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. He felt himself sliding forward in the tub. He put out his hands, pressed them against the sides of the tub, and leaned back. The bathroom was small. The tub was metal, and the enamel was stained and scratched. An old man moved into his field of vision. He looked concerned. Feeling better? asked Hinzelmann. You just lay back and relax. I've got the den nice and warm. You tell me whenyou're ready, I got a robe you can wear, and I can throw your jeans into the dryer with the rest of your clothes. Sound good, Mike? that's not my name. If you say so. The old mans goblin face twisted into an expression of discomfort. Shadow had no real sense of time: he lay in the bathtub until the burning stopped and his toes and fingers flexed without real discomfort. Hinzelmann helped Shadow to his feet and let out the warm water. Shadow sat on the side of the bathtub and together they pulled off his jeans. He squeezed, without much difficulty, into a terrycloth robe too small for him, and, leaning on the old man, he went into the den and flopped down on an ancient sofa. He was tired and weak: deeply fatigued, but alive. A log fire burned in the fireplace. A handful of surprised-looking deer heads peered down dustily from around the walls, where they jostled for space with several large varnished fish. Hinzelmann went away with Shadows jeans, and from the room next door Shadow could hear a brief pause in the rattle of a clothes dryer before it resumed. The old man returned with a steaming mug. Its coffee, he said, which is a stimulant. And I splashed a little schnapps into it. |
| 842 |
Thats 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. |
| 843 |
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. 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. |
| 844 |
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. |
| 845 |
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? asked Shadow. Day after they took you away, she said she liked me as a friend, but it would never work out between us, us being family and all, and she went back to Eagle Point. Broke my gosh-darn heart. Makes sense, said Shadow. And it wasnt personal. Hinzelmann didn't need her here anymore. They drove back past Hinzelmanns house. A thick plume of white smoke was coming up from the chimney. She only came to town because he wanted her here. She helped him get me out of town. I was bringing attention he didn't need. I thought she liked me. They pulled up beside Shadows rental car. What are you going to do now? asked Shadow. I don't know, said Mulligan. His normally harassed face was starting to look more alive than it had at any point since Hinzelmanns den. It also looked more troubled. I figure, I got a couple of choices. Either Illhe made a gun of his first two fingers, put the fingertips into his open mouth, and removed themput a bullet through my brain. Or I'll wait another couple of days until the ice is mostly gone, and tie a concrete block to my leg and jump off the bridge. Or pills. Sheesh. Maybe I should just drive a while, out to one of the forests. Take pills out there. I don't want to make one of my guys have to do the cleanup. Leave it for the county, huh? He sighed, and shook his head. You didn't kill Hinzelmann, Chad. He died a long time ago, a long way from here. Thanks for saying that, Mike. But I killed him. I shot a man in cold blood, and I covered it up. And if you asked me why I did it, why I really did it, I'm darned if I could tell you. Shadow put out a hand, touched Mulligan on the arm. Hinzelmann owned this town, he said. I don't think you had a lot of choice about what happened back there. I think he brought you there. He wanted you to hear what you heard. He set you up. I guess it was the only way he could leave. Mulligans miserable expression did not change. Shadow could see that the police chief had barely heard anything that he had said. |
| 846 |
He had killed Hinzelmann, and built him a pyre, and now, obeying the last of Hinzelmanns desires, he would commit suicide. Shadow closed his eyes, remembering the place in his head that he had gone when Wednesday had told him to make snow: that place that pushed, mind to mind, and he smiled a smile he did not feel and he said, Chad. Let it go. There was a cloud in the mans mind, a dark, oppressive cloud, and Shadow could almost see it and, concentrating on it, imagined it fading away like a fog in the morning. Chad, he said, fiercely, trying to penetrate the cloud, this town is going to change now. Its not going to be the only good town in a depressed region anymore. Its going to be a lot more like the rest of this part of the world. Theres going to be a lot more trouble. People out of work. People out of their heads. More people getting hurt. More bad shit going down. They are going to need a police chief with experience. The town needs you. And then he said, Marguerite needs you. Something shifted in the storm cloud that filled the mans head. Shadow could feel it change. He pushed then, envisioning Marguerite Olsens practical brown hands and her dark eyes, and her long, long black hair. He pictured the way she tipped her head on one side and half smiled when she was amused. she's waiting for you, said Shadow, and he knew it was true as he said it. Margie? said Chad Mulligan. And at that moment, although he could never tell you how he had done it, and he doubted that he could ever do it again, Shadow reached into Chad Mulligans mind, easy as anything, and he plucked the events of that afternoon out from it as precisely and dispassionately as a raven picks an eye from roadkill. 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. |
| 847 |
* * * 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? |
| 848 |
I would have seen them. Sam looked down. Then she grinned. You are so sweet. I should have said something when you gave them to me, shouldn't I? she said. They are lovely. Thank you so much. But wouldn't red have been more appropriate? They were roses, their stems wrapped in paper. Six of them, and white. I didn't give them to you, said Natalie, her lips firming. And neither of them said another word until they reached the movie theater. When she got home that night Sam put the roses in an improvised vase. Later, she cast them in bronze, and she kept to herself the tale of how she got them, although she told Caroline, who came after Natalie, the story of the ghost-roses one night when they were both very drunk, and Caroline agreed with Sam that it was a really, really strange and spooky story, and, deep down, did not actually believe a word of it, so that was all right. * * * Shadow had parked near a pay phone. He called information, and they gave him the number. No, he was told. She isn't here. she's probably still at the Coffee House. He stopped on the way to the Coffee House to buy flowers. He found the Coffee House, then he crossed the road and stood in the doorway of a used bookstore, and waited, and watched. 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. |
| 849 |
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. 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. |
| 850 |
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. |
| 851 |
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. 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. |
| 852 |
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. |
| 853 |
Shadow wondered if the man was going to hit him up for a cigarette. 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? |
| 854 |
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. 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... |
| 855 |
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! |
| 856 |
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? 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. |
| 857 |
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. 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. |
| 858 |
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. A common flower, a weed that no one sees, yes. But for us, a noble thing, the dandelion. So, plucked carefully, in sacks, the dandelions were carried below. The cellar dark glowed with their arrival. The wine press stood open, cold. A rush of flowers warmed it. The press, replaced, its screw rotated, twirled by Grandfather, squeezed gently on the crop. There... so... The golden tide, the essence of this fine fair month ran, then gushed from the spout below, to be crocked, skimmed of ferment, and bottled in clean ketchup shakers, then ranked in sparkling rows in cellar gloom. Dandelion wine. The words were summer on the tongue. The wine was summer caught and stoppered. And now that Douglas knew, he really knew he was alive, and moved turning through the world to touch and see it all, it was only right and proper that some of his new knowledge, some of this special vintage day would be sealed away for opening on a January day with snow falling fast and the sun unseen for weeks or months and perhaps some of the miracle by then forgotten and in need of renewal. Since this was going to be a summer of unguessed wonders, he wanted it all salvaged and labeled so that any time he wished, he might tiptoe down in this dank twilight and reach up his fingertips. And there, row upon row, with the soft gleam of flowers opened at morning, with the light of this June sun glowing through a faint skin of dust, would stand the dandelion wine. Peer through it at the wintry daythe snow melted to grass, the trees were reinhabitated with bird, leaf, and blossoms like a continent of butterflies breathing on the wind. And peering through, color sky from iron to blue. Hold summer in your hand, pour summer in a glass, a tiny glass of course, the smallest tingling sip for children; change the season in your veins by raising glass to lip and tilting summer in. Ready, now, the rain barrel! Nothing else in the world would do but the pure waters which had been summoned from the lakes far away and the sweet fields of grassy dew on early morning, lifted to the open sky, carried in laundered clusters nine hundred miles, brushed with wind, electrified with high voltage, and condensed upon cool air. This water, falling, raining, gathered yet more of the heavens in its crystals. Taking something of the east wind and the west wind and the north wind and the south, the water made rain and the rain, within this hour of rituals, would be well on its way to wine. |
| 859 |
Douglas ran with the dipper. He plunged it deep in the rain barrel. Here we go! The water was silk in the cup; clear, faintly blue silk. It softened the lip and the throat and the heart, if drunk. This water must be carried in dipper and bucket to the cellar, there to be leavened in freshets, in mountain streams, upon the dandelion harvest. Even Grandma, when snow was whirling fast, dizzying the world, blinding windows, stealing breath from gasping mouths, even Grandma, one day in February, would vanish to the cellar. Above, in the vast house, there would be coughings, sneezings, wheezings, and groans, childish fevers, throats raw as butchers meat, noses like bottled cherries, the stealthy microbe everywhere. Then, rising from the cellar like a June goddess, Grandma would come, something hidden but obvious under her knitted shawl. This, carried to every miserable room upstairs-and-down would be dispensed with aroma and clarity into neat glasses, to be swigged neatly. The medicines of another time, the balm of sun and idle August afternoons, the faintly heard sounds of ice wagons passing on brick avenues, the rush of silver skyrockets and the fountaining of lawn mowers moving through ant countries, all these, all these in a glass. Yes, even Grandma, drawn to the cellar of winter for a June adventure, might stand alone and quietly, in secret conclave with her own soul and spirit, as did Grandfather and Father and Uncle Pert, or some of the boarders, communing with a last touch of a calendar long departed, with the picnics and the warm rains and the smell of fields of wheat and new popcorn and bending hay. Even Grandma, repeating and repeating the fine and golden words, even as they were said now in this moment when the flowers were dropped into the press, as they would be repeated every winter for all the white winters in time. Saying them over and over on the lips, like a smile, like a sudden patch of sunlight in the dark. Dandelion wine. Dandelion wine. Dandelion wine. You did not hear them coming. You hardly heard them go. The grass bent down, sprang up again. They passed like cloud shadows downhill... the boys of summer, running. Douglas, left behind, was lost. Panting, he stopped by the rim of the ravine, at the edge of the softly blowing abyss. Here, ears pricked like a deer, he snuffed a danger that was old a billion years ago. Here the town, divided, fell away in halves. Here civilization ceased. Here was only growing earth and a million deaths and rebirths every hour. |
| 860 |
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. |
| 861 |
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? 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? |
| 862 |
A few people drifted by on the sidewalk outside, in the hot sun. Still the man and boy stood there, the boy glowing, the man with revelation in his face. Boy, said the old man at last, in five years, how would you like a job selling shoes in this emporium? Gosh, thanks, Mr. Sanderson, but I don't know what I'm going to be yet. Anything you want to be, son, said the old man, you'll be. No one will ever stop you. The old man walked lightly across the store to the wall of ten thousand boxes, came back with some shoes for the boy, and wrote up a list on some paper while the boy was lacing the shoes on his feet and then standing there, waiting. The old man held out his list. A dozen things you got to do for me this afternoon. Finish them, were even Stephen, andyou're fired. Thanks, Mr. Sanderson! Douglas bounded away. Stop! cried the old man. Douglas pulled up and turned. Mr. Sanderson leaned forward. How do they feel? The boy looked down at his feet deep in the rivers, in the fields of wheat, in the wind that already was rushing him out of the town. He looked up at the old man, his eyes burning, his mouth moving, but no sound came out. Antelopes? said the old man, looking from the boys face to his shoes. Gazelles? The boy thought about it, hesitated, and nodded a quick nod. Almost immediately he vanished. He just spun about with a whisper and went off. The door stood empty. The sound of the tennis shoes faded in the jungle heat. Mr. Sanderson stood in the sun-blazed door, listening. From a long time ago, when he dreamed as a boy, he remembered the sound. Beautiful creatures leaping under the sky, gone through brush, under trees, away, and only the soft echo of their running left behind. Antelopes, said Mr. Sanderson. Gazelles. He bent to pick up the boys abandoned winter shoes, heavy with forgotten rains and long-melted snows. Moving out of the blazing sun, walking softly, lightly, slowly, he headed back toward civilization... He brought out a yellow nickel tablet. He brought out a yellow Ticonderoga pencil. He opened the tablet. He licked the pencil. Tom, he said, you and your statistics gave me an idea. I'm going to do the same, keep track of things. For instance: you realize that every summer we do things over and over we did the whole darn summer before? Like what, Doug? Like making dandelion wine, like buying these new tennis shoes, like shooting off the first firecracker of the year, like making lemonade, like getting slivers in our feet, like picking wild fox grapes. |
| 863 |
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. And last of all, the children, who had been off squinting their way through a last hide-and-seek or kick-the-can, panting, glowing, would sickle quietly back like boomerangs along the soundless lawn, to sink beneath the talking talking talking of the porch voices which would weigh and gentle them down... Oh, the luxury of lying in the fern night and the grass night and the night of susurrant, slumbrous voices weaving the dark together. The grownups had forgotten he was there, so still, so quiet Douglas lay, noting the plans they were making for his and their own futures. And the voices chanted, drifted, in moonlit clouds of cigarette smoke while the moths, like late appleblossoms come alive, tapped faintly about the far street lights, and the voices moved on into the coming years... In front of the United Cigar Store this evening the men were gathered to burn dirigibles, sink battleships, blow up dynamite works and, all in all, savor the very bacteria in their porcelain mouths that would someday stop them cold. Clouds of annihilation loomed and blew away in their cigar smoke about a nervous figure who could be seen dimly listening to the sound of shovels and spades and the intonations of ashes to ashes, dust to dust. This figure was that of Leo Auffmann, the town jeweler, who, widening his large liquid-dark eyes, at last threw up his childlike hands and cried out in dismay. Stop! In Gods name, get out of that graveyard! Lee, how right you are, said Grandfather Spaulding, passing on his nightly stroll with his grandsons Douglas and Tom. But, Lee, only you can shut these doom-talkers up Invent something that will make the future brighter, well rounded, infinitely joyous. Youve invented bicycles, fixed the penny-arcade contraptions, been our town movie projectionist, haven't you? Sure, said Douglas. invent us a happiness machine! The men laughed. don't, said Leo Auffmann. How have we used machines so far, to make people cry? Yes! Every time man and the machine look like they will get on all rightboom! Someone adds a cog, airplanes drop bombs on us, cars run us off cliffs. So is the boy wrong to ask? No! No... His voice faded as Leo Auffmann moved to the curb to touch his bicycle as if it were an animal. What can I lose? he murmured. A little skin off my fingers, a few pounds of metal, some sleep? |
| 864 |
I'll do it, so help me! Lee, said Grandfather, we didn't mean But Leo Auffmann was gone, pedaling off through the warm summer evening, his voice drifting back. I'll do it... You know, said Tom, in awe, I bet he will. Watching him cycle the brick streets of evening, you could see that Leo Auffmann was a man who coasted along, enjoying the way the thistles ticked in the hot grass when the wind blew like a furnace, or the way the electric power lines sizzled on the rain-wet poles. He was a man who did not suffer but pleasured in sleepless nights of brooding on the great clock of the universe running down or winding itself up, who could tell? But many nights, listening, he decided first one way and then the other... The shocks of life, he thought, biking along, what were they? Getting born, growing up, growing old, dying. Not much to do about the first. Butthe other three? The wheels of his Happiness Machine spun whirling golden light spokes along the ceiling of his head. A machine, now, to help boys change from peach fuzz to briar bramble, girls from toadstool to nectarine. And in the years when your shadow leaned clear across the land as you lay abed nights with your heartbeat mounting to the billions, his invention must let a man drowse easy in the falling leaves like the boys in autumn who, comfortably strewn in the dry stacks, are content to be a part of the death of the world... 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. |
| 865 |
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. His mother and himself and the night all around their small house on the small street. |
| 866 |
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. |
| 867 |
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. Just waitll I get that boy. The Lonely Ones around again. Killing people. No ones safe anymore. You never know when the Lonely Onell turn up or where. So help me, when Doug gets homeI'll spank him within an inch of his life. Now they had walked another block and were standing by the holy black silhouette of the German Baptist Church at the corner of Chapel Street and Glen Rock. In back of the church, a hundred yards away, the ravine began. He could smell it. It had a dark-sewer, rotten-foliage, thick-green odor. It was a wide ravine that cut and twisted across towna jungle by day, a place to let alone at night, Mother often declared. He should have felt encouraged by the nearness of the German Baptist Church but he was not, because the building was not illumined, was cold and useless as a pile of ruins on the ravine edge. He was only ten years old. He knew little of death, fear, or dread. Death was the waxen effigy in the coffin when he was six and Great-grandfather passed away, looking like a great fallen vulture in his casket, silent, withdrawn, no more to tell him how to be a good boy, no more to comment succinctly on politics. Death was his little sister one morning when he awoke at the age of seven, looked into her crib, and saw her staring up at him with a blind, blue, fixed and frozen stare until the men came with a small wicker basket to take her away. Death was when he stood by her high chair four weeks later and suddenly realized shed never be in it again, laughing and crying and making him jealous of her because she was born. That was death. |
| 868 |
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. |
| 869 |
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. 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! |
| 870 |
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. He nudged the grass trays disrespectfully. Bill, whenyou're my age, you'll find out its the little savors and little things that count more than big ones. A walk on a spring morning is better than an eighty-mile ride in a hopped-up car, you know why? Because its full of flavors, full of a lot of things growing. |
| 871 |
Your motives are above reproach, but my motives, I feel, because I'm approaching my tenderest years, must be considered first. Yes, sir. Bill pocketed the bills reluctantly. Bill, you just plant this new grass some other year. The day after I die, Bill, you're free to tear up the whole damn lawn. Think you can wait another five years or so for an old orator to kick off? I know dam well I can wait, Bill said. Theres a thing about the lawn mower I cant even tell you, but to me its the most beautiful sound in the world, the freshest sound of the season, the sound of summer, and I'd miss it fearfully if it wasnt there, and I'd miss the smell Of cut grass. 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. |
| 872 |
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. 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. |
| 873 |
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? |
| 874 |
Also tell me, Lee, how is our life? You know how our house is. 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? |
| 875 |
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. that's 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! |
| 876 |
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. |
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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. 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. |
| 878 |
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! 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. |
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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? |
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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? 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. |
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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. Bentley? asked Alice. Of you, later? You got a picture of you at fifteen, and one at twenty, and one at forty and fifty? The girls chortled. I don't have to show you anything! said Mrs. Bentley. Then we don't have to believe you, replied Jane. But this picture proves I was young! that's some other little girl, like us. You borrowed it. I was married! Wheres Mr. Bentley? he's been gone a long time. If he were here, hed tell you how young and pretty I was when I was twenty-two. But he's not here and he cant tell, so what does that prove? I have a marriage certificate. You could have borrowed that, too. Only way I'll believe you were ever young-Jane shut her eyes to emphasize how sure she was of herselfis if you have someone say they saw you when you were ten. Thousands of people saw me butyou're dead, you little foolor ill, in other towns. I don't know a soul here, just moved here a few years ago, so no one saw me young. |
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Well, there you are! Jane blinked at her companions. Nobody saw her! Listen! Mrs. Bentley seized the girls wrist. You must take these things on faith. Someday you'll be as old as I. People will say the same. Oh no, they'll say, those vultures were never hummingbirds, those owls were never orioles, those parrots were never bluebirds! One day you'll be like me! No, we wont! said the girls. Will we? they asked one another. Wait and see! said Mrs. Bentley. And to herself she thought, Oh, God, children are children, old women are old women, and nothing in between They cant imagine a change they cant see. Your mother, she said to Jane. haven't you noticed, over the years, the change? No, said Jane. she's always the same. And that was true. You lived with people every day and they never altered a degree. It was only when people had been off on a long trip, for years, that they shocked you. And she felt like a woman who has been on a roaring black train for seventy-two years, landing at last upon the rail platform and everyone crying: Helen Bentley, is that you? I guess we better go home, said Jane. Thanks for the ring. It just fits me. Thanks for the comb. Its fine. Thanks for the picture of the little girl. Come backyou cant have those! Mrs. Bentley shouted as they raced down the steps. you're mine! don't! said Tom, following the girls. Give them back! No, she stole them! They belonged to some other little girl. She stole them. Thanks! cried Alice. So no matter how she called after them, the girls were gone, like moths through darkness. I'm sorry, said Tom, on the lawn, looking up at Mrs. Bentley. He went away. They took my ring and my comb and my picture, thought Mrs. Bentley, trembling there on the steps. Oh, I'm empty, empty; its part of my life. She lay awake for many hours into the night, among her trunks and trinkets. She glanced over at the neat stacks of materials and toys and opera plumes and said, aloud, Does it really belong to me? Or was it the elaborate trick of an old lady convincing herself that she had a past? After all, once a time was over, it was done. You were always in the present. She may have been a girl once, but was not now. Her childhood was gone and nothing could fetch it back. A night wind blew in the room. The white curtain fluttered against a dark cane, which had leaned against the wall near the other bric-a-brac for many years. The cane trembled and fell out into a patch of moonlight, with a soft thud. Its gold ferule glittered. It was her husbands opera cane. |
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It seemed as if he were pointing it at her, as he often had, using his soft, sad, reasonable voice when they, upon rare occasions, disagreed. 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? |
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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. 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. |
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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. 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. |
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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. |
| 887 |
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! Rumble. that's a rare word: rumble. Oh, how that mighty storm rumbled along down, up, and over the rises, and all you could see was the cloud and nothing inside. that's them! cried Pawnee Bill. And the cloud was dust! Not vapors or rain, no, but prairie dust flung up from the tinder-dry grass like fine corn meal, like pollen all blazed with sunlight now, for the sun had come out. I shouted again! Why? Because in all that hell-fire filtering dust now a veil moved aside and I saw them, I swear it! The grand army of the ancient prairie: the bison, the buffalo! The colonel let the silence build, then broke it again. Heads like giant Negroes fists, bodies like locomotives! Twenty, fifty, two hundred thousand iron missiles shot out of the west, gone off the track and flailing cinders, their eyes like blazing coals, rumbling toward oblivion! I saw that the dust rose up and for a little while showed me that sea of humps, of dolloping manes, black shaggy waves rising, falling... Shoot! says Pawnee Bill. Shoot! And I cock and aim. Shoot he says. And I stand there feeling like Gods right hand, looking at the great vision of strength and violence going by, going by, midnight at noon, like a glinty funeral train all black and long and sad and forever and you don't fire at a funeral train, now do you, boys? do you? All I wanted then was for the dust to sink again and cover the black shapes of doom which pummeled and jostled on in great burdensome commotions. And, boys, the dust came down. The cloud hid the million feet that were drumming up the thunder and dusting out the storm. I heard Pawnee Bill curse and hit my arm. But I was glad I hadn't touched that cloud or the power within that cloud with so much as a pellet of lead. I just wanted to stand watching time bundle by in great trundlings all hid by the storm the bison made and carried with them toward eternity. |
| 888 |
An hour, three hours, six, it took for the storm to pass on away over the horizon toward less kind men than me. Pawnee Bill was gone, I stood alone, stone deaf. I walked all numb through a town a hundred miles south and heard not the voices of men and was satisfied not to hear. For a little while I wanted to remember the thunder. I hear it still, on summer afternoons like this when the rain shapes over the lake; a fearsome, wondrous sound... one I wish you might have heard... The dim light filtered through Colonel Freeleighs nose which was large and like white porcelain which cupped a very thin and tepid orange tea indeed. Is he asleep? asked Douglas at last. No, said Charlie. Just recharging his batteries. Colonel Freeleigh breathed swiftly, softly, as if hed run a long way. At last he opened his eyes. Yes, sir said Charlie, in admiration. Hello Charlie. The colonel smiled at the boys puzzledly. that's Doug and that's John, said Charlie. How-de-do, boys. The boys said hello. But said Douglas. Where is the? My gosh, you're dumb! Charlie jabbed Douglas in the arm. He turned to the colonel. You were saying, sir? Was I? murmured the old man. The Civil War, suggested John Huff quietly. Does he remember that? Do I remember? said the colonel. Oh, I do, I do! His voice trembled as he shut up his eyes again. Everything! Except... which side I fought on... The color of your uniform Charlie began. Colors begin to run on you, whispered the colonel. its gotten hazy. I see soldiers with me, but a long time ago 1 stopped seeing color in their coats or caps. I was born in Illinois, raised in Virginia, married in New York, built a house in Tennessee and now, very late, here I am, good Lord, back in Green Town. 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. |
| 889 |
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. |
| 890 |
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. 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. |
| 891 |
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? Maybe yes and maybe no. Far-traveling- whispered Tom. Only one thing I'm sure of, said Douglas, closing his eyes. It sure sounds lonely. Bang! A door slammed. In an attic dust jumped off bureaus and bookcases. Two old women collapsed against the attic door, each scrabbling to lock it tight, tight. A thousand pigeons seemed to have leaped off the roof right over their heads. They bent as if burdened, ducked under the drum of beating wings. Then they stopped, their mouths surprised. What they heard was only the pure sound of panic, their hearts in their chests... Above the uproar, they tried to make themselves heard. Whatve we done! Poor Mister Quartermain! We mustve killed him. And someone mustve seen and followed us. Look... Miss Fern and Miss Roberta peered from the cobwebbed attic window. Below, as if no great tragedy had occurred, the oaks and elms continued to grow in fresh sunlight. A boy strolled by on the sidewalk, turned, strolled by again, looking up. In the attic the old women peered at each other as if trying to see their faces in a running stream. The police! But no one hammered the downstairs door and cried, In the name of the law! Whos that boy down there? Douglas, Douglas Spaulding! Lord, he's come to ask for a ride in our Green Machine. He doesn't know. Our pride has ruined us. Pride and that electrical contraption! |
| 892 |
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. Whats that? Frank peered through the kitchen window into the dusk. Whats Roberta up to? Look at her out there, sitting in the Green Machine, poking the rubber horn! Once, twice more, in the dusk, softly, like some kind of mournful animal, the bulbing sound was pinched out. Whats got into her? demanded Frank. You just leave her alone! screamed Fern. Frank looked surprised. A moment later Roberta entered quietly, without looking at anyone, and they all sat down to supper. The first light on the roof outside; very early morning. The leaves on all the trees tremble with a soft awakening to any breeze the dawn may offer. And then, far off, around a curve of silver track, comes the trolley, balanced on four small steel-blue wheels, and it is painted the color of tangerines. Epaulets of shimmery brass cover it and pipings of gold; and its chrome bell bings if the ancient motorman taps it with a wrinkled shoe. The numerals on the trolleys front 1, and sides are bright as lemons. |
| 893 |
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. |
| 894 |
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. 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. |
| 895 |
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? |
| 896 |
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. 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. |
| 897 |
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. 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. |
| 898 |
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. 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. |
| 899 |
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... |
| 900 |
There! By God, I got a head like a box Brownie. Got the words, even if I haven't got the sense. Elmira stood looking at her iodined finger as if it were pointed at her by a stranger. Clara Goodwater, she murmured. Looked me right in the eye as I handed it over, said, Going to be a witch, first-class no doubt. Get my diploma in no time. Set up business. Hex crowds and individuals, old and young, big and small. Then she kinda laughed, put her nose in that book, and went in. Elmira stared at a bruise on her arm, carefully tongued a loose tooth in her jaw. A door slammed. Tom Spaulding, kneeling on Elmira Browns front lawn, looked up. He had been wandering about the neighborhood, seeing how the ants were doing here or there, and had found a particularly good hill with a big hole in which all kinds of fiery bright pismires were tumbling about scissoring the air and wildly carrying little packets of dead grasshopper and infinitesimal bird down into the earth. Now here was something else: Mrs. Brown, swaying on the edge of her porch as if shed just found out the world was falling through space at sixty trillion miles a second. Behind her was Mr. Brown, who didn't know the miles per second and probably wouldn't care if he did know. You, Tom! said Mrs. Brown. I need moral support and the equivalent of the blood of the Lamb with me. Come along! And off she rushed, squashing ants and kicking tops off dandelions and trotting big spiky holes in flower beds as she cut across yards. Tom knelt a moment longer studying Mrs. Browns shoulder blades and spine as she toppled down the street. He read the bones and they were eloquent of melodrama and adventure, a thing he did not ordinarily connect with ladies, even though Mrs. Brown had the remnants of a pirates mustache. A moment later he was in tandem with her. Mrs. Brown, you sure look mad! You don't know what mad is, boy! Watch out! cried Tom. Mrs. Elmira Brown fell right over an iron dog lying asleep there on the green grass. Mrs. Brown! You see? Mrs. Brown sat there. Clara Goodwater did this to me! Magic! Magic? Never mind, boy. Heres the steps. You go first and kick any invisible strings out of the way. Ring that doorbell, but pull your finger off quick, the juicell burn you to a cinder! Tom did not touch the bell. Clara Goodwater! Mrs. Brown flicked the bell button with her iodined finger. Far away in the cool dim empty rooms of the big old house, a silver bell tinkled and faded. Tom listened. Still farther away there was a stir of mouselike running. |
| 901 |
A shadow, perhaps a blowing curtain, moved in a distant parlor. Hello, said a quiet voice. And quite suddenly Mrs. Goodwater was there, fresh as a stick of peppermint, behind the screen. Why, hello there, Tom, Elmira. What don't rush me! We came over about your practicing to be a full-fledged witch! Mrs. Goodwater smiled. Your husbands not only a mailman, but a guardian of the law. Got a nose out to here! He didn't look at no mail. he's ten minutes between houses laughing at post cards. and tryin on mail-order shoes. It aint what he seen; its what you yourself told him about the books you got. Just a joke. Goin to be a witch! I said, and bang! Off gallops Sam, like I'd flung Lightning at him. I declare there cant be one wrinkle in that mans brain. You talked about your magic other places yesterday You must mean the Sandwich Club... To which I pointedly was not invited. Why, lady, we thought that was your regular day with your grandma. I can always have another Grandma day, if peopled only ask me places. All there was to it at the Sandwich Club was me sitting there with a ham and pickle sandwich, and I said right out loud, At last I'm going to get my witchs diploma. Been studying for years! that's what come back to me over the phone! Aint modern inventions wonderful! said Mrs. Goodwater. Considering you been president of the Honeysuckle Ladies Lodge since the Civil War, it seems, I'll put it to you bang on the nose, have you used witchcraft all these years to spell the ladies and win the ayes-have-it? Do you doubt it for a moment, lady? said Mrs. Goodwater. Elections tomorrow again, and all I want to know is, you runnin for another termand aint you ashamed? Yes to the first question and no to the second. Lady, look here, I bought those books for my boy cousin, Raoul. he's just ten and goes around looking in hats for rabbits. I told him theres about as much chance finding rabbits in hats as brains in heads of certain people I could name, but look he does and so I got these gifts for him. wouldn't believe you on a stack of Bibles. Gods truth, anyway. I love to fun about the witch thing. The ladies all yodeled when I explained about my dark powers. Wish youd been there. I'll be there tomorrow to fight you with a cross of gold and all the powers of good I can organize behind me, said Elmira. Right now, tell me how much other magic junk you got in your house. Mrs. Goodwater pointed to a side table inside the door. I been buyin all kinds of magic herbs. Smell funny and make Raoul happy. |
| 902 |
That little sack of stuff, that's called This is rue, and this is Sabisse root and that theres Ebon herbs; heres black sulphur, and this they claim is bone dust. Bone dust Elmira skipped back and kicked Toms ankle. Tom yelped. And heres wormwood and fern leaves so you can freeze shotguns and fly like a bat in your dreams, it says in Chapter X of the little book here. 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. |
| 903 |
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. |
| 904 |
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! Careful, you! to reach the platform, turn, and knock a glass of water dripping over the table. She gave Mrs. Goodwater another bristly scowl when this happened and let her mop it up with a tiny handkerchief. Then with a secret look of triumph, Elmira drew forth the empty philter glass and held it up, displaying it for Mrs. Goodwater and whispering, You know what was in this? Its inside me, now, lady. The charmed circle surrounds me. No knife can cleave, no hatchet break through. The ladies, all talking, did not hear. Mrs. Goodwater nodded, held up her hands, and there was silence. Elmira held tight to Toms hand. Tom kept his eyes shut, wincing. Ladies, Elmira said, I sympathize with you. I know what youve been through these last ten years. I know why you voted for Mrs. Goodwater here. Youve got boys, girls, and men to feed. Youve got budgets to follow. You couldn't afford to have your milk sour, your bread fall, or your cakes as flat as wheels. You didn't want mumps, chicken pox, and whooping cough in your house all in three weeks. You didn't want your husband crashing his car or electrocuting himself on the high-tension wires outside town. But now all of that's over. You can come out in the open now. No more heartburns or backaches, because I've brought the good word and were going to exorcise this witch weve got here! Everybody looked around but didn't see any witch. I mean your president! cried Elmira. Me! Mrs. Goodwater waved at everyone. Today, breathed Elmira, holding onto the desk for support, I went to the library. I looked up counteractions. How to get rid of people who take advantage of others, how to make witches leave off and go. And I found a way to fight for all our rights. I can feel the power growing. |
| 905 |
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. |
| 906 |
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? 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. |
| 907 |
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. 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. |
| 908 |
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. 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. |
| 909 |
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! |
| 910 |
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. But he did not get up; he just lay there, his face thoughtful. You look likeyou're going to get out the old pencil any second now, said Tom. Let me think! said Douglas, looking at the cannon. He rolled over and gazed at the sky and the trees above him. Tom, it just hit me. What? Yesterday Ching Ling Soo died. Yesterday the Civil War ended right here in this town forever. Yesterday Mr. Lincoln died right here and so did General Lee and General Grantl and a hundred thousand others facing north and south. And yesterday afternoon, at Colonel Freeleighs house, a herd of buffalo-bison as big as all Green Town, Illinois, went off the cliff into nothing at all. Yesterday a whole lot of dust settled for good. And I didn't even appreciate it at the time. Its awful, Tom, its awful! What we going to do without all those soldiers and Generals Lee and Grant and Honest Abe; what we going to do without Ching Ling Soo? It never dreamed so many people could die so fast, Tom. But they did. They sure did! Tom sat astride the cannon, looking down at his brother as his voice trailed away. You got your tablet with you? Douglas shook his head. Better get home and put all that down before you forget it. It aint every day you got half the population of the world keeling over on you. Douglas sat up and then stood up. He walked across the courthouse lawn slowly, chewing his lower lip. Boom, said Tom quietly. Boom. Boom! Then he raised his voice: Doug! I killed you three times, crossing the grass! Doug, you hear me? Hey, Doug! Okay. All right for you. He lay down on the cannon and sighted along the crusted barrel. He squinted one eye. Boom! he whispered at that dwindling figure. Boom! There! Twenty-nine! There! Thirty! There! Thirty-one! |
| 911 |
The lever plunged. The tin caps, crushed atop the filled bottles, flickered bright yellow. Grandfather handed the last bottle to Douglas. Second harvest of the summer. Junes on the shelf. Heres July. Now, just-August up ahead. Douglas raised the bottle of warm dandelion wine but did not set it on the shelf. He saw the other numbered bottles waiting there, one like another, in no way different, all bright, all regular, all self-contained. Theres the day I found I was alive, he thought, and why isn't it brighter than the others? Theres the day John Huff fell off the edge of the world, gone; why isn't it darker than the others? Where, where all the summer dogs leaping like dolphins in the wind-braided and unbraided tides of what? Where lightning smell of Green Machine or trolley? Did the wine remember? It did not! Or seemed not, anyway. Somewhere, a book said once, all the talk ever talked, all the songs ever sung, still lived, had vibrated way out in space and if you could travel to Far Centauri you could hear George Washington talking in his sleep or Caesar surprised at the knife in his back. So much for sounds. What about light then? All things, once seen, they didn't just die, that couldn't be. It must be then that somewhere, searching the world, perhaps in the dripping multiboxed honeycombs where light was an amber sap stored by pollen-fired bees, or in the thirty thousand lenses of the noon dragonflys gemmed skull you might find all the colors and sights of the world in any one year. Or pour one single drop of this dandelion wine beneath a microscope and perhaps the entire world of July Fourth would firework out in Vesuvius showers. This he would have to believe. And yet... looking here at this bottle which by its number signalized the day when Colonel Freeleigh had stumbled and fallen six feet into the earth, Douglas could not find so much as a gram of dark sediment, not a speck of the great flouring buffalo dust, not a flake of sulphur from the guns at Shiloh... 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. |
| 912 |
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. |
| 913 |
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? 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. |
| 914 |
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. 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. |
| 915 |
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. I should have gone an hour ago. You know I love every minute of it. But what you should see in an old silly woman... He lay back in his chair and half closed his eyes and looked at her. |
| 916 |
He squinted his eyes so the merest filament of light came through. He tilted his head ever so little this way, then that. What are you doing? she asked uncomfortably. He said nothing, but continued looking. If you do this just right, he murmured, you can adjust, make allowances... To himself he was thinking, You can erase lines, adjust the time factor, turn back the years. Suddenly he started. Whats wrong? she asked. But then it was gone. He opened his eyes to catch it. That was a mistake. He should have stayed back, idling, erasing, his eyes gently half closed. For just a moment, he said, I saw it. Saw what? The swan, of course, he thought. His mouth must have pantomimed the words. The next instant she was sitting very straight in her chair. Her hands were in her lap, rigid. Her eyes were fixed upon him and as he watched, feeling helpless, each of her eyes cupped and brimmed itself full. I'm sorry, he said, terribly sorry. No, don't be. She held herself rigid and did not touch her face or her eyes; her hands remained, one atop the other, holding on. Youd better go now. Yes, you may come tomorrow, but go now, please, and don't say any more. He walked off through the garden, leaving her by her table in the shade. He could not bring himself to look back. Four days, eight days, twelve days passed, and he was invited to teas, to suppers, to lunches. They sat talking through the long green afternoons-they talked of art, of literature, of life, of society and politics. They ate ice creams and squabs and drank good wines. I don't care what anyone says, she said. And people are saying things, arent they? He shifted uneasily. I knew it. A womans never safe, even when ninety-five, from gossip. I could stop visiting. Oh, no, she cried, and recovered. In a quieter voice she said, You know you cant do that. You know you don't care what they think, do you? So long as we know its all right? I don't care, he said. Now-she settled backlets play our game. Where shall it be this time? Paris? I think Paris. Paris, he said, nodding quietly. Well, she began, its the year 1885 and were boarding the ship in New York harbor. Theres our luggage, here are our tickets, there goes the sky line. Now were at sea. Now were coming into Marseilles... Here she was on a bridge looking into the clear waters of the Seine, and here he was, suddenly, a moment later, beside her, looking down at the tides of summer flowing past. Here she was with an aperitif in her talcum-white fingers, and here he was, with amazing quickness, bending toward her to tap her wineglass with his. |
| 917 |
His face appeared in mirrored halls at Versailles, over steaming smorgasbords in Stockholm, and they counted the barber poles in the Venice canals. The things she had done alone, they were now doing together. I the middle of August they sat staring at one another one late afternoon. Do you realize, he said, I've seen you nearly every day for two and a half weeks? Impossible! I've enjoyed it immensely. Yes, but there are so many young girls... you're everything they are notkind, intelligent, witty. Nonsense. Kindness and intelligence are the preoccupations of age. Being cruel and thoughtless is far more fascinating whenyou're twenty. She paused and drew a breath. Now, I'm going to embarrass you. Do you recall that first afternoon we met in the soda fountain, you said that you had had some degree ofshall we say affection for me at one time? Youve purposely put me off on this by never mentioning it again. Now I'm forced to ask you to explain the whole uncomfortable thing. He didn't seem to know what to say. that's embarrassing, he protested. Spit it out! I saw your picture once, years ago. I never let my picture be taken. This was an old one, taken when you were twenty. Oh, that. Its quite a joke. Each time I give to a charity or attend a ball they dust that picture off and print it. Everyone in town laughs; even I Its cruel of the paper. No. I told them, If you want a picture of me, use the one taken back in 1853. Let them remember me that way. Keep the lid down, in the name of the good Lord, during the service. I'll tell you all about it. He folded his hands and looked at them and paused a moment. He was remembering the picture now and it was very clear in his mind. There was time, here in the garden to think of every aspect of the photograph and of Helen Loomis, very young, posing for her picture the first time, alone and beautiful. He thought of her quiet, shyly smiling face. It was the face of spring, it was the face of summer, it was the warmness of clover breath. Pomegranate glowed in her lips, and the noon sky in her eyes. To touch her face was that always new experience of opening your window one December morning, early, and putting out your hand to the first white cool powdering of snow that had come, silently, with no announcement, in the night. And all of this, this breath-warmness and plum-tenderness was held forever in one miracle of photographic chemistry which no clock winds could blow upon to change one hour or one second; this fine first cool white snow would never melt, but live a thousand summers. |
| 918 |
That was the photograph; that was the way he knew her. Now he was talking again, after the remembering and the thinking over and the holding of the picture in his mind. When I first saw that pictureit was a simple, straightforward picture with a simple hairdoI didn't know it had been taken that long ago. The item in the paper said something about Helen Loomis marshaling the Town Ball that night. I tore the picture from the paper. I carried it with me all that day. I intended going to the ball. Then, late in the afternoon, someone saw me looking at the picture, and told me about it. How the picture of the beautiful girl had been taken so long ago and used every year since by the paper. And they said I shouldn't go to the Town Ball that night, carrying that picture and looking for you. They sat in the garden for a long minute. He glanced over at her face. She was looking at the farthest garden wall and the pink roses climbing there. There was no way to tell what she was thinking. Her face showed nothing. She rocked for a little while in her chair and then said softly, Shall we have some more tea? There you are. They sat sipping the tea. Then she reached over and patted his arm. Thank you. For what? For wanting to come to find me at the dance, for clipping out my picture, for everything. Thank you so very much. They walked about the garden on the paths. And now, she said, its my turn. Do you remember, I mentioned a certain young man who once attended me, seventy years ago? Oh, he's been dead fifty years now, at . least, but when he was very young and very handsome he rode a fast horse off for days, or on summer nights over the meadows around town. He had a healthy, wild face, always sunburned, his hands were always cut and he fumed like a stovepipe and walked as if he were going to fly apart; wouldn't keep a job, quit those he had when he felt like it, and one day he sort of rode off away from me because I was even wilder than he and wouldn't settle down, and that was that. 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. |
| 919 |
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. |
| 920 |
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. Time is so strange and life is twice as strange. The cogs miss, the wheels turn, and lives interlace too early or too late. I lived too long, that much is certain. And you were born either too early or too late. It was a terrible bit of timing. But perhaps I am being punished for being a silly girl. Anyway, the next spin around, wheels might function right again. Meantime you must find a nice girl and be married and be happy. But you must promise me one thing. Anything. You must promise me not to live to be too old, William. If it is at all convenient, die beforeyou're fifty. It may take a bit of doing. But I advise this simply because there is no telling when another Helen Loomis might be born. It would be dreadful, wouldn't it, if you lived on to be very, very old and some afternoon in 1999 walked down Main Street and saw me standing there, aged twenty-one, and the whole thing out of balance again? I don't think we could go through any more afternoons like these weve had, no matter how pleasant, do you? A thousand gallons of tea and five hundred biscuits is enough for one friendship. So you must have an attack of pneumonia some time in about twenty years. For I don't know how long they let you linger on the other side. Perhaps they send you back immediately. But I shall do my best, William, really I shall. And everything put right and in balance, do you know what might happen? You tell me. Some afternoon in 1985 or 1990 a young man named Tom Smith or John Green or a name like that, will be walking downtown and will stop in the drugstore and order, appropriately, a dish of some unusual ice cream. A young girl the same age will be sitting there and when she hears the name of that ice cream, something will happen. I cant say what or how. She won't know why or how, assuredly. Nor will the young man. It will simply be that the name of that ice cream will be a very good thing to both of them. they'll talk. And later, when they know each others names, they'll walk from the drugstore together. |
| 921 |
August 27, 1928. He looked at his wrist watch and felt his heart beat slowly, saw the second hand of the watch moving moving with no speed at all, saw the calendar frozen there with its one day seeming forever, the sun nailed to the sky with no motion toward sunset whatever. The warm air spread under the sighing fans over his head. A number of women laughed by the open door and were gone through his vision, which was focused beyond them at the town itself and the high courthouse clock. He opened the letter and began to read. He turned slowly on the revolving chair. He tried the words again and again, silently, on his tongue, and at last spoke them aloud and repeated them. A dish of lime-vanilla ice, he said. A dish of lime-vanilla ice. Douglas and Tom and Charlie came panting along the unshaded street. Tom, answer me true, now. Answer what true? What ever happened to happy endings? They got them on shows at Saturday matinees. Sure, but what about life? All I know is I feel good going to bed nights, Doug. that's a happy ending once a day. Next morning I'm up and maybe things go bad. But all I got to do is remember that I'm going to bed that night and just lying there a while makes everything okay. I'm talking about Mr. Forrester and old Miss Loomis. Nothing we can do; she's dead. I know! But don't you figure someone slipped up there? You mean about him thinking she was the same age as her picture and her a trillion years old all the time? No, sir, I think its swell! Swell, for gosh sakes? The last few days when Mr. Forrester told me a little here or a little there and I finally put it all togetherboy, did I bawl my head off. I don't even know why. I wouldn't change one bit of it. If you changed it, what would we have to talk about? Nothing! And besides, I like to cry. After I cry hard its like its morning again and I'm starting the day over. I heard everything now. You just won't admit you like crying, too. You cry just so long and everythings fine. And theres your happy ending. Andyou're ready to go back out and walk around with folks again. And its the start of gosh-knows-what-all! Any time now, Mr. Forrester will think it over and see its just the only way and have a good cry and then look around and see its morning again, even though its five in the afternoon. That don't sound like no happy ending to me. A good nights sleep, or a ten-minute bawl, or a pint of chocolate ice cream, or all three together, is good medicine, Doug. You listen to Tom Spaulding, M. |
| 922 |
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. |
| 923 |
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. 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. |
| 924 |
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. I made him give me a description-the druggist. I made him tell what the man looked like. A stranger, she said, in a dark suit. Sort of pale and thin. Were all overwrought, said Lavinia. I simply won't take a taxi if you get one. If I'm the next victim, let me be; the next. Theres all too little excitement in life, especially for a maiden lady thirty-three years old, so don't you mind if I enjoy it. Anyway its silly; I'm not beautiful. Oh, but you are, Lavinia; you're the loveliest lady in town, now that Elizabeth is Francine stopped. You keep men off at a distance. If youd only relax, youd been married years ago! Stop sniveling, Francine! Heres the theater box office, I'm paying forty-one cents to see Charlie Chaplin. If you two want a taxi, go on. I'll sit alone and go home alone. Lavinia, you're crazy; we cant let you do that They entered the theater. The first showing was over, intermission was on, and the dim auditorium was sparsely populated. |
| 925 |
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. |
| 926 |
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. 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. |
| 927 |
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. Only the ravine existed and lived, black and huge, about her. Nothings happened, has it? No one around, is there? Twenty-four, twenty-five steps. Remember that old ghost story you told each other when you were children? She listened to her shoes on the steps. The story about the dark man coming in your house and you upstairs in bed. And now he's at the first step coming up to your room. And now he's at the second step. |
| 928 |
Only a little way, she prayed. One hundred eight, nine, one hundred ten steps! The bottom! Now, run! Across the bridge! She told her legs what to do, her arms her body, her terror; she advised all parts of herself in this white and terrible moment, over the roaring creek waters, on the hollow, thudding, swaying, almost alive, resilient bridge planks she ran, followed by the wild footsteps behind, behind, with the music following, too, the music shrieking and babbling. 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. |
| 929 |
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. 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. |
| 930 |
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. |
| 931 |
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! |
| 932 |
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. But no, it was Great-grandma somehow transported, singing, pounding nails, replacing shingles, high in the sky! Douglas, she whispered, don't ever let anyone do the shingles unless its fun for them. Look around come April, and say, Whod like to fix the roof? And whichever face lights up is the face you want, Douglas. Because up there on that roof you can see the whole town going toward the country and the country going toward the edge of the earth and the river shining, and the morning lake, and birds on the trees down under you, and the best of the wind all around above. Any one of those should be enough to make a person climb a weather vane some spring sunrise. Its a powerful hour, if you give it half a chance... Her voice sank to a soft flutter. Douglas was crying. She roused herself again. Now, why are you doing that? Because, he said, you won't be here tomorrow. She turned a small hand mirror from herself to the boy. He looked at her face and himself in the mirror and then at her face again as she said, Tomorrow morning I'll get up at seven and wash behind my ears; I'll run to church with Charlie Woodman; I'll picnic at Electric Park; I'll swim, run barefoot, fall out of trees, chew spearmint gum... Douglas, Douglas, for shame! You cut your fingernails, don't you? Yes m. And you don't yell when your body makes itself over every seven years or so, old cells dead and new ones added to your fingers and your heart. You don't mind that, do you? |
| 933 |
No m. Well, consider then, boy. Any man saves fingernail clippings is a fool. You ever see a snake bother to keep his peeled skin? that's about all you got here today in this bed is fingernails and snake skin. One good breath would send me up in flakes. Important thing is not the me that's lying here, but the me that's sitting on the edge of the bed looking back at me, and the me that's downstairs cooking supper, or out in the garage under the car, or in the library reading. All the new parts, they count. I'm not really dying today. No person ever died that had a family. I'll be around a long time. A thousand years from now a whole township of my offspring will be biting sour apples in the gumwood shade. that's my answer to anyone asks big questions! Quick now, send in the rest! At last the entire family stood, like people seeing someone off at the rail station, waiting in the room. Well, said Great-grandma, there I am. I'm not humble, so its nice seeing you standing around my bed. Now next week theres late gardening and closet-cleaning and clothes-buying for the children to do. And since that part of me which is called, for convenience, Great-grandma, won't be here to step it along, those other parts of me called Uncle Bert and Leo and Tom and Douglas, and all the other names, will have to take over, each to his own. Yes, Grandma. I don't want any Halloween parties here tomorrow. don't want anyone saying anything sweet about me; I said it all in my time and my pride. I've tasted every victual and danced every dance; now theres one last tart I haven't bit on, one tune I haven't whistled. But I'm not afraid. I'm truly curious. Death won't get a crumb by my mouth I won't keep and savor. So don't you worry over me. Now, all of you go, and let me find my sleep... Somewhere a door closed quietly. that's better. Alone she snuggled luxuriously down through the warm snowbank of linen and wool, sheet and cover, and the colors of the patchwork quilt were bright as the circus banners of old time. Lying there, she felt as small and secret as on those mornings eighty-some-odd years ago when, wakening, she comforted her tender bones in bed. A long time back, she thought, I dreamed a dream, and was enjoying it so much when someone wakened me, and that was the day when I was born. And now? Now, let me see... She cast her mind back. Where was I? she thought. Ninety years... how to take up the thread and the pattern of that lost dream again? She put out a small hand. There... Yes, that was it. |
| 934 |
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? 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. |
| 935 |
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. |
| 936 |
The town clock struck nine forty-five. The moon was high and filled all the sky with a warm but wintry light. The sidewalk was solid silver on which black shadows moved. Douglas moved with the thing of velvet and fairy wax in his arms, stopping to hide in pools of shadow under trembling trees, alone. He listened, looking back. A sound of running mice. Tom burst around the corner and pulled up beside him. Doug, I stayed behind. I was afraid Mr. Black was, well... then he began to come alive... swearing... Oh, Doug, if he catches you with his dummy! What will our folks think? Stealing! Quiet! They listened to the moonlit river of street behind them. Now, Tom, you can come help me rescue her, but you cant if you say dummy or talk loud or drag along as so much dead weight. I'll help! Tom assumed half the weight. My gosh, she's light. She was real young when Napoleon... Douglas stopped. Old people are heavy. that's how you tell. But why? Tell me why all this running around for her, Doug. Why? Why? Douglas blinked and stopped. Things had gone so fast, he had run so far and his blood was so high, he had long since forgotten why. Only now, as they moved again along the sidewalk, shadows like black butterflies on their eyelids, the thick smell of dusty wax on their hands, did he have time to reason why, and, slowly, speak of it, his voice as strange as moonlight. 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. |
| 937 |
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! |
| 938 |
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?... when the bells of death do ring... and turn upon the toe... and sing Hey nonny no! And itll say, Tom and Douglas Spaulding, everything you wish for, all your life through, you'll get... And itll say that well live forever, you and me, Tom, well live forever... All that on just this one card? All that, every single bit of it, Tom. In the light of the electric bulb they bent, the two boys heads down, the witchs head down, staring and staring at the beautiful blank but promising white card, their bright eyes sensing each and every incredibly hidden word that would soon rise up from pale oblivion. Hey, said Tom in the softest of voices. And Douglas repeated in a glorious whisper, Hey... Faintly, the voice chanted under the fiery green trees at noon. ... nine, ten, eleven, twelve... Douglas moved slowly across the lawn. Tom, what you counting? ... thirteen, fourteen, shut up, sixteen, seventeen, cicadas, eighteen, nineteen... ! Cicadas? Oh hell! Tom unsqueezed his eyes. Hell, hell, hell! Better not let people hear you swearing. Hell, hell, hell is a place! Tom cried. Now I got to start all over. I was counting the times the cicadas buzz every fifteen seconds. He held up his two dollar watch. You time it, then add thirty-nine and you get the temperature at that very moment. He looked at the watch, one eye shut, tilted his head and whispered again, One, two, three... ! Douglas turned his head slowly, listening. Somewhere in the burning bone-colored sky a great copper wire was strummed and shaken. Again and again the piercing metallic vibrations, like charges of raw electricity, fell in paralyzing shocks from the stunned trees. Seven! counted Tom. Eight. Douglas walked slowly up the porch steps. Painfully he peered into the hall. He stayed there a moment, then slowly he stepped back out on the porch and called weakly to Tom. Its exactly eighty-seven degrees Fahrenheit. -twenty-seven, twenty-eight Hey, Tom you hear me? I hear youthirty, thirty-one! |
| 939 |
Get away! Two, three thirty-four! You can stop counting now, right inside on that old thermometer its eighty-seven and going up, without the help of no katydids. Cicadas! Thirty-nine, forty! Not katydids! Forty-two! Eighty-seven degrees, I thought youd like to know. Forty-five, that's inside, not outside! Forty-nine, fifty, fifty-one! Fifty-two, fifty-three! Fifty-three plus thirty-nine isninety-two degrees! Who says? I say! Not eighty-seven degrees Fahrenheit! But ninety-two degrees Spaulding! You and who else? Tom jumped up and stood red-faced, staring at the sun. Me and the cicadas, that's who! Me and the cicadas! you're out-numbered! Ninety-two, ninety-two, ninety-two degrees Spaulding, by gosh! They both stood looking at the merciless unclouded sky like a camera that has broken and stares, shutter wide, at a motionless and stricken town dying in a fiery sweat. Douglas shut his eyes and saw two idiot suns dancing on the reverse side of the pinkly translucent lids. One... two... three... Douglas felt his lips move. ... four... five... six... This time the cicadas sang even faster. From noontime to sundown, from midnight to sunrise, one man, one horse, and one wagon were known to all twenty-six thousand three hundred forty-nine inhabitants of Green Town, Illinois. In the middle of the day, for no reason quickly apparent, children would stop still and say: Here comes Mr. Jonas! Here comes Ned! Here comes the wagon! Older folks might peer north or south, east or west and see no sign of the man named Jonas, the horse named Ned, or the wagon which was a Conestoga of the kind that bucked the prairie tides to beach on the wilderness. But then if you borrowed the ear of a dog and tuned it high and stretched it taut you could hear, miles and miles across the town a singing like a rabbi in the lost lands, a Moslem in a tower. Always, Mr. Jonass voice went clear before him so people had a half an hour, an hour, to prepare for his arrival. And by the time his wagon appeared, the curbs were lined by children, as for a parade. So here came the wagon and on its high board seat under a persimmon-colored umbrella, the reins like a stream of water in his gentle hands, was Mr. Jonas, singing. Junk! Junk! No, sir, not Junk! Junk! Junk! No, maam, not Junk! Bricabracs, brickbats! Knitting needles, knick-knacks! Kickshaws! Curies! Camisoles! Cameos! But... Junk! Junk! No, sir, not... Junk! As anyone could tell who had heard the songs Mr. Jonas made up as he passed, he was no ordinary junkman. |
| 940 |
To all appearances, yes, the way he dressed in tatters of moss-corduroy and the felt cap on his head, covered with old presidential campaign buttons going back before Manila Bay. But he was unusual in this way: not only did he tread the sunlight, but often you could see him and his horse swimming along the moonlit streets, circling and recircling by night the islands, the blocks where all the people lived he had known all of his life. And in that wagon he carried things he had picked up here and there and carried for a day or a week or a year until someone wanted and needed them. Then all they had to say was, I want that clock, or How about the mattress? And Jonas would hand it over, take no money, and drive away, considering the words for another tune. So it happened that often he was the only man alive in all Green Town at three in the morning and often people with headaches, seeing him amble by with his moon-shimmered horse, would run out to see if by chance he had aspirin, which he did. More than once he had delivered babies at four in the morning and only then had people noticed how incredibly clean his hands and fingernails werethe hands of a rich man who had another life somewhere they could not guess. Sometimes he would drive people to work downtown, or sometimes, when men could not sleep, go up on their porch and bring cigars and sit with them and smoke and talk until dawn. Whoever he was or whatever he was and no matter how different and crazy he seemed, he was not crazy. As he himself had often explained gently, he had tired of business in Chicago many years before and looked around for a way to spend the rest of his life. couldn't stand churches, though he appreciated their ideas, and having a tendency toward preaching and decanting knowledge, he bought the horse and wagon and set out to spend the rest of his life seeing to it that one part of town had a chance to pick over what the other part of town had cast off. He looked upon himself as a kind of process, like osmosis, that made various cultures within the city limits available one to another. He could not stand waste, for he knew that one mans junk is another mans luxury. So adults, and especially children, clambered up to peer over into the vast treasure horde in the back of the wagon. Now, remember, said Mr. Jonas, you can have what you want if you really want it. The test is, ask yourself, Do I want it with all my heart? Could I live through the day without it? If you figure to be dead by sundown, grab the darned thing and run. |
| 941 |
I'll be happy to let you have whatever it is. And the children searched the vast heaps of parchments and brocades and bolts of wallpaper and marble ash trays and vests and roller skates and great fat overstuffed chairs and end tables and crystal chandeliers. 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. |
| 942 |
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. 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. |
| 943 |
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. |
| 944 |
Thats 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. I remember years like that, said the junkman. He looked off at the sky and there were all the years. So there you are, Mr. Jonas. that's it. that's why he's dying... Tom stopped and looked away. Let me think, said Mr. Jonas. Can you help, Mr. Jonas? Can you? Mr. Jonas looked deep in the big old wagon and shook his head. Now, in the sunlight, his face looked tired and he was beginning to perspire. Then he peered into the mounds of vases and peeling lamp shades and marble nymphs and satyrs made of greening copper. He sighed. He turned and picked up the reins and gave them a gentle shake. Tom, he said, looking at the horses back, I'll see you later. I got to plan. I got to look around and come again after supper. Even then, who knows? Until then... He reached down and picked up a little set of Japanese wind-crystals. Hang these in his upstairs window. They make a nice cool music! Tom stood with the wind-crystals in his hands as the wagon rolled away. He held them up and there was no wind, they did not move. They could not make a sound. Seven oclock. The town resembled a vast hearth over which the shudderings of heat moved again and again from the west. Charcoal-colored shadows quivered outward from every house, every tree. A red-haired man moved along below. Tom, seeing him illumined by the dying but ferocious sun, saw a torch proudly carrying itself, saw a fiery fox, saw the devil marching in his own country. At seven-thirty Mrs. Spaulding came out of the back door of the house to empty some watermelon rinds into the garbage pail and saw Mr. Jonas standing there. How is the boy? said Mr. Jonas. Mrs. Spaulding stood there for a moment, a response trembling on her lips. May I see him, please? said Mr. Jonas. Still she could say nothing. |
| 945 |
I know the boy well, he said. Seen him most every day of his life since he was out and around. I've something for him in the wagon. he's not She was going to say conscious, but she said, awake. he's not awake, Mr. Jonas. The doctor said he's not to be disturbed. Oh, we don't know whats wrong! Even if he's not awake, said Mr. Jonas, I'd like to talk to him. Sometimes the things you hear in your sleep are more important, you listen better, it gets through. I'm sorry, Mr. Jonas, I just cant take the chance. Mrs. Spaulding caught hold of the screen-door handle and held fast to it. Thanks. Thank you, anyway, for coming by. Yes, maam, said Mr. Jonas. He did not move. He stood looking up at the window above. Mrs. Spaulding went in the house and shut the screen door. Upstairs, on his bed, Douglas breathed. It was a sound like a sharp knife going in and out, in and out, of a sheath. At eight oclock the doctor came and went again shaking his head, his coat off, his tie untied, looking as if he had lost thirty pounds that day. At nine oclock Tom and Mother and Father carried a cot outside and brought Douglas down to sleep in the yard under the apple tree where, if there might be a wind, it would find him sooner than in the terrible rooms above. Then they went back and forth until eleven oclock, when they set the alarm clock to wake them at three and chip more ice to refill the packs. The house was dark and still at last, and they slept. At twelve thirty-five, Douglass eyes flinched. The moon had begun to rise. And far away a voice began to sing. It was a high sad voice rising and falling. It was a clear voice and it was in tune. You could not make out the words. The moon came over the edge of the lake and looked upon Green Town, Illinois, and saw it all and showed it all, every house, every tree, every prehistoric-remembering dog twitching in his simple dreams. And it seemed that the higher the moon the nearer and louder and clearer the voice that was singing. And Douglas turned in his fever and sighed. Perhaps it was an hour before the moon spilled all its light upon the world, perhaps less. But the voice was nearer now and a sound like the beating of a heart which was really the motion of a horses hoofs on the brick streets muffled by the hot thick foliage of the trees. And there was another sound like a door slowly opening or closing, squeaking, squealing softly from time to time. The sound of a wagon. And down the street in the light of the risen moon came the horse pulling the wagon and the wagon riding the lean body of Mr. |
| 946 |
Jonas easy and casual on the high seat. He wore his hat as if he were still out under the summer sun and he moved his hands on occasion to ripple the reins like a flow of water on the air above the horses back. Very slowly the wagon moved down the street with Mr. Jonas singing, and in his sleep Douglas seemed for a moment to stop breathing and listen. Air, air... who will buy this air... Air like water and air like ice... buy it once and you'll buy it twice... heres the April air... heres an autumn breeze... heres papaya wind from the Antilles... Air, air, sweet pickled air... fair... rare... from everywhere... bottled and capped and scented with thyme, all that you want of air for a dime! At the end of this the wagon was at the curb. And someone stood in the yard, treading his shadow, carrying two beetle-green bottles which glittered like cats eyes. Mr. Jonas looked at the cot there and called the boys name once, twice, three times, softly. Mr. Jonas swayed in indecision, looked at the bottles he carried, made his decision, and moved forward stealthily to sit on the grass and look at this boy crushed down by the great weight of summer. Doug, he said, you just lie quiet. You don't have to say anything or open your eyes. You don't even have to pretend to listen. But inside there, I know you hear me, and its old Jonas, your friend. Your friend, he repeated and nodded. He reached up and picked an apple off the tree, turned it round, took a bite, chewed, and continued. Some people turn sad awfully young, he said. No special reason, it seems, but they seem almost to be born that way. They bruise easier, tire faster, cry quicker, remember longer and, as I say, get sadder younger than anyone else in the world. I know, for I'm one of them. He took another bite of the apple and chewed it. Well, now, where are we? he asked. A hot night, not a breath stirring, in August, he answered himself. Killing hot. And a long summer its been and too much happening, eh? Too much. And its getting on toward one oclock and no sign of a wind or rain. And in a moment now I'm going to get up and go. But when I go, and remember this clearly, I will leave these two bottles here upon your bed. And when I've gone I want you to wait a little while and then slowly open your eyes and sit up and reach over and drink the contents of these bottles. Not with your mouth, no. Drink with your nose. Tilt the bottles, uncork them, and let what is in them go right down into your head. Read the labels first, of course. |
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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. She saw him standing there, opened the screen door for him, kissed his brow, brushed his pale hair back from his eyes, looked him straight on in the face to see if the fever had fallen to ashes and, seeing that it had, went on, singing, to her work. Grandma, he had often wanted to say, Is this where the world began? For surely it had begun in no other than a place like this. The kitchen, without doubt, was the center of creation, all things revolved about it; it was the pediment that sustained the temple. Eyes shut to let his nose wander, he snuffed deeply. He moved in the hell-fire steams and sudden baking-powder flurries of snow in this miraculous climate where Grandma, with the look of the Indies in her eyes and the flesh of two firm warm hens in her bodice, Grandma of the thousand arms, shook, basted, whipped, beat, minced, diced, peeled, wrapped, salted, stirred. Blind, he touched his way to the pantry door. A squeal of laughter rang from the parlor, teacups tinkled. But he moved on into the cool underwater green and wild-persimmon country where the slung and hanging odor of creamy bananas ripened silently and bumped his head. |
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Was she conscious of her talent? Hardly. If asked about her cooking, Grandma would look down at her hands which some glorious instinct sent on journeys to be gloved in flour,, r to plumb disencumbered turkeys, wrist-deep in search of their animal souls. Her gray eyes blinked from spectacles warped by forty years of oven blasts and blinded with strewings of pepper and sage, so she sometimes flung cornstarch, ver steaks, amazingly tender, succulent steaks! And sometimes dropped apricots into meat leaves, cross-pollinated meats, herbs, fruits, vegetables with no prejudice, no tolerance for recipe or formula, save that at the final moment of delivery, mouths watered, blood thundered in response. 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. |
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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. 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? |
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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. |
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On top of one suitcase, fluttering in the summer breeze, was a pink railroad ticket. The boarders, all ten of them, were seated on the porch stiffly. Grandfather, like a train conductor, a mayor, a good friend, came down the steps solemnly. Rose, he said to her, taking her hand and shaking it up and down, I have something to say to you. What is it? said Aunt Rose. Aunt Rose, he said. Good-bye. They heard the train chant away into the late afternoon hours. The porch was empty, the luggage gone, Aunt Roses room unoccupied. Grandfather in the library, groped behind E. A. Poe for a small medicine bottle, smiling. Grandma came home from a solitary shopping expedition to town. Wheres Aunt Rose? We said good-bye to her at the station, said Grandfather. We all wept. She hated to go, but she sent her best love to you and said she would return again in twelve years. Grandfather took out his solid gold watch. And now I suggest we all repair to the library for a glass of sherry while waiting for Grandma to fix one of her amazing banquets. Grandma walked off to the back of the house. Everyone talked and laughed and listenedthe boarders, Grandfather, and Douglas, and they heard the quiet sounds in the kitchen. When Grandma rang the bell they herded to the dining room, elbowing their way. Everyone took a huge bite. Grandma watched the faces of her boarders. Silently they stared at their plates, their hands in their laps, the food cooling, unchewed, in their cheeks. I've lost it! Grandma said. I've lost my touch... And she began to cry. She got up and wandered out into her neatly ordered, labeled kitchen, her hands moving futilely before her. The boarders went to bed hungry. Douglas heard the courthouse clock chime ten-thirty, eleven, then midnight, heard the boarders stirring in their beds, like a tide moving under the moonlit roof of the vast house. He knew they were all awake, thinking, and sad. After a long time, he sat up in bed. He began to smile at the wall and the mirror. He saw himself grinning as he opened the door and crept downstairs. The parlor was dark and smelled old and alone. He held his breath. He fumbled into the kitchen and stood waiting a moment. Then he began to move. He took the baking powder out of its fine new tin and put it in an old flour sack the way it had always been. He dusted the white flour into an old cookie crock. He removed the sugar from the metal bin marked sugar and sifted it into a familiar series of smaller bins marked spices, cutlery, string. |
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He put the cloves where they had lain for years, littering the bottom of half a dozen drawers. He brought the dishes and knives and forks and spoons back out on top of the tables. He found Grandmas new eyeglasses on the parlor mantel and hid them in the cellar. He kindled a great fire in the old wood-burning stove, using pages from the new cookbook. By one oclock in the still morning a huge husking roar shot up in the black stovepipe, such a wild roar that the house, if it had ever slept at all, awoke. He heard the rustle of Grandmas slippers down the hall stairs. She stood in the kitchen, blinking at the chaos. Douglas was hidden behind the pantry door. At one-thirty in the deep dark morning, the cooking odors blew up through the windy corridors of the house. Down the stairs, one by one, came women in curlers, men in bathrobes, to tiptoe and peer into the kitchenlit only by fitful gusts of red fire from the hissing stove. And there in the black kitchen at two of a warm summer morning, Grandma floated like an apparition, amidst bangings and clatterings, half blind once more, her fingers groping instinctively in the dimness, shaking out spice clouds over bubbling pots and simmering kettles, her face in the firelight red, magical, and enchanted as she seized and stirred and poured the sublime foods. 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. |
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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. Inside, they heard Grandma poking up a fire in the library. The windows shook with a sudden gust of wind. Douglas, spending a last night in the cupola tower above Grandma and Grandpa, wrote in his tablet: Everything runs backward now. Like matinee films sometimes, where people jump out of water onto diving boards. Come September you push down the windows you pushed up, take off the sneakers you put on, pull on the hard shoes you threw away last June. People run in the house now like birds jumping back inside clocks. One minute, porches loaded, everyone gabbing thirty to a dozen. Next minute, doors slam, talk stops, and leaves fall off trees like crazy. He looked from the high window at the land where the crickets were strewn like dried figs in the creek beds, at a sky where birds would wheel south now through the cry of autumn loons and where trees would go up in a great fine burning of color on the steely clouds. Way out in the country tonight he could smell the pumpkins ripening toward the knife and the triangle eye and the singeing candle. Here in town the first few scarves of smoke unwound from chimneys and the faint faraway quaking of iron was the rush of black hard rivers of coal down chutes, building high dark mounds in cellar bins. But it was late and getting later. Douglas in the high cupola above the town, moved his hand. Everyone, clothes off! He waited. The wind blew, icing the windowpane. Brush teeth. He waited again. Now, he said at last, out with the lights! He blinked. And the town winked out its lights, sleepily, here, there, as the courthouse clock struck ten, ten-thirty, eleven, and drowsy midnight. The last ones now... there... there... He lay in his bed and the town slept around him and the ravine was dark and the lake was moving quietly on its shore and everyone, his family, his friends, the old people and the young, slept on one street or another, in one house or another, or slept in the far country churchyards. |
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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. |
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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. "I should have been a plumber," Einstein said just before he died. Actually the discovery of atomic energy was the result of the work of every scientist, craftsman, engineer, technician, philosopher, and gadgeteer who had ever lived on Terra. The use of atomic energy as a weapon was the result of all the political decisions ever made, from the time the vertebrates first started competing for territory. Most Terran primates did not understand the multiplex nature of causality. They tended to think everything had a single cause. This simple philosophic error was so widespread on that planet that the primates were all in the habit of giving themselves, and other primates, more credit than was deserved when things went well. This made them all inordinately conceited. They also gave themselves, and one another, more blame than was deserved when things went badly. This gave them all jumbo-sized guilt complexes. It is usually that way on primitive planets, before quantum causality is understood. Quantum causality was not understood on Terra until physicists solved the Schrodinger's Cat riddle. Schrodinger's Cat never became as famous among the primate masses as Pavlov's Dog, but that was because the cat was harder to understand than the dog. Pavlov's Dog could be understood in simple mechanical metaphors. To understand Schrodinger's Cat you needed to first understand the equations of quantum probability waves. Only a few primates were smart enough to read the equations, and even they couldn't understand them. That was because the equations seemed to say that the cat was dead and alive at the same time. |
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"Art has meaning but reality has none," he said cheerfully. The six-legged majority on Terra were never consulted when the domesticated primates set about building weapons that could destroy all life-forms on that planet. This was not unusual. The fish, the birds, the reptiles, the flowers, the trees, and even the other mammals weren't allowed to vote on this issue. Even the wild primates weren't involved in the decision to produce such weapons. In fact, the majority of domesticated primates themselves never had a say in the matter. A handful of alpha males among the leading predator bands among the domesticated primates had made the decision on their own. Everybody else on the planet-including the six-legged majority, who had never been involved in primate politics-just had to face the consequences. Most of the domesticated primates of Terra did not know they were primates. They thought they were something apart from and "superior" to the rest of the planet. Even Benny Benedict's "One Month to Go" column was based on that illusion. Benny had actually read Darwin once, in college a long time ago, and had heard of sciences like ethology and ecology, but the facts of evolution had never really registered on him. He never thought of himself as a primate. He never realized his friends and associates were primates. Above all, he never understood that the alpha males of Unistat were typical leaders of primate bands. As a result of this inability to see the obvious, Benny was constantly alarmed and terrified by the behavior of himself, his friends and associates and especially the alpha males of the pack. Since he didn't know it was ordinary primate behavior, it seemed just awful to him. Since a great deal of primate behavior was considered just awful, most of the domesticated primates spent most of their time trying to conceal what they were doing. Some of the primates got caught by other primates. All of the primates lived in dread of getting caught. Those who got caught were called no-good shits. The term no-good shit was a deep expression of primate psychology. For instance, one wild primate (a chimpanzee) taught sign language by two domesticated primates (scientists) spontaneously put together the signs for "shit" and "scientist" to describe a scientist she didn't like. She was calling him shit-scientist. She also put together the signs for "shit" and "chimpanzee" for another chimpanzee she didn't like. She was calling him shit-chimpanzee. "You no-good shit," domesticate primates often said to each other. |
| 957 |
This metaphor was deep in primate psychology because primates mark their territories with excretions, and sometimes they threw excretions at each other when disputing over territories. One primate wrote a long book describing in vivid detail how his political enemies should be punished. He imagined them in an enormous hole in the ground, with flames and smoke and rivers of shit. This primate was named Dante Alighieri. Another primate wrote that every primate infant goes through a stage of being chiefly concerned with biosurvival, i. e. food, i. e. Mommie's Titty. He called this the Oral Stage. He said the infant next went on to a stage of learning mammalian politics, i. e. recognizing the Father (alpha male) and his Authority and territorial demands. He called this, with an insight that few primates shared, the Anal Stage. This primate was named Freud. He had taken his own nervous system apart and examined his component circuits by periodically altering its structure with neuro-chemicals. Among the anal insults exchanged by domesticated primates when fighting for their space were: "Up your ass," "Go shit in your hat," "You're full of shit," "Take it and stick it where the moon doesn't shine," and many others. One of the most admired alpha males in the Kingdom of the Franks was General Canbronne. General Canbronne won this adulation for the answer he once gave when asked to surrender at Waterloo. "Merde," was the answer General Canbronne gave. When primates went to war or got violent in other ways, they always said they were about to knock the shit out of the enemy. They also spoke of dumping on each other. The primates who had mined Unistat with nuclear bombs intended to dump on the other primates real hard. Benny Benedict's entire philosophy of life had been shaped by an obscene novel, a murder, and a Boston Cream Pie. The novel was called Odysseus and the most shocking thing about it, aside from the searing indecency of its language, was that it had been written by a famous theologian, Rev. Carl Gustav Jung of Zurich, Switzerland. Nobody had known what to make of the book when it was first published, except to fulminate against it. The story, in fourteen chapters, recounted fourteen hours in a very ordinary day as some staggeringly ordinary characters wandered about Zurich on extraordinarily ordinary business. When Jung revealed that the fourteen chapters corresponded to the fourteen Stations of the Cross, conservative critics added blasphemy to their charges against him. |
| 958 |
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. |
| 959 |
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. Benny Benedict realized that each minute, somewhere in the world, somebody was being bashed, beaten, stabbed, shot, slashed, gassed, poisoned, robbed of life. He could not bear to be alone at night anymore. The Grinning Sadist began to haunt him. This horrifying image had been imprinted upon his neurons by various movies and TV melodramas of the sixties and seventies. The Grinning Sadist invaded your home, sometimes alone and sometimes with a horde of equally moronic and vicious cohorts. You were particularly susceptible if you were blind or a woman or all alone at night, but sometimes-as in The Dangerous Hours-he would come with his brutal crew in the bright daytime. His business was never simply burglary, although that was part of it; his real interest was in humiliation, terror, degradation, torture of the body and spirit. And he always grinned. Benny's doctor prescribed Valium, 5 mg. before bedtime. It helped Benny sleep; but when he was awake, every noise still sounded like the Grinning Sadist furtively trying the door. Benny bought a police lock. Every noise now sounded like the Grinning Sadist trying to force a window. Then, one day looking through the old files in the newspaper morgue, Benny found an interview with Senator Charles Percy given in 1970, two years after the murder of his daughter. "For the first year after the murder," Senator Percy said, "my whole family lived in terror." Benny felt a sudden sense of relief. This must be normal, he thought; it happens to everybody who's had a murder close to them. And it lasts only a year... But as July 23, 1982, approached, Benny was not emerging from the terror; it was growing worse. |
| 960 |
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. The anal-territorial (old primate) section of Justin's brain took an imprint of Pretend-Authority. Then Justin discovered the semantic environment. He learned to read and watch TV. The books seemed clumsy and sententious compared to the immediacy of the tube. |
| 961 |
"What the hell?" Blake Williams asked nobody in particular. It was like an old movie of Nazi Germany. Nobody had told him that bookburning was now an American institution. He approached the stout man, who was the only one of the three who seemed unhappy, and repeated his question. "What the hell?" he asked. "I mean, are you people burning books?" "They are," the stout man said. He went on to explain that he was an executive of something called the Orgone Institute Press and that a court had ordered all their books destroyed. Williams was curious and looked at some of the titles: Character Analysis and The Mass Psychology of Fascism and The Cancer Biopathy and Contact with Space. "I didn't know that book burning was legal in this country," he said. "Neither did I," the stout man said bitterly. Blake Williams walked on, dazed. He couldn't have been more astonished if he'd seen Storm Troopers rounding up Jews. He wondered if he'd fallen into a time warp. Later, of course, he learned that the Orgone Institute, headed by Dr. Wilhelm Reich, had been investigating human sexuality and had come to some highly unorthodox conclusions. Dr. Reich himself died in prison, Dr. Silvert (Reich's co-investigator) committed suicide, the books were burned, and the heresy was buried. But Williams had an entirely new attitude toward the country in which he lived, the scientific community which had looked on and made not a single gesture to support Dr. Reich and Dr. Silvert, and the omnipresent rhetoric which insisted that the Dark Ages had ended many centuries ago. He remembered that Sister Kenny, at the time he and thousands of others were cured by her polio therapy, had been denounced as a quack by the same entrenched medical bureaucrats who imprisoned the Orgone researchers. How convenient, he thought, aghast, to assume that all the injustices happen in other countries and other ages: that Dreyfus may have been innocent, but the Rosenbergs never; that Pasteur may have been right, but not the researcher ostracized from the American Association for the Advancement of Science-not the professor denied tenure at our university, not the man in our prison. Blake Williams came to the Great Doubt without bitterness but with increased awareness that society is everywhere in conspiracy against intelligence. On his own, and at some expense, he repeated all of Dr. Reich's experiments and drew his own conclusions. "There were only eighteen," he used to say, deliberately cryptic, sucking his pipe, deadpan, whenever anybody enthused about scientific freedom in his presence. |
| 962 |
Even that was disconcerting. "It probably won't do any good," Joe said once, rather bitterly. "The kids don't believe anything we tell them." The next step into psychosis was unexpected and oddly pleasurable. It occurred in the lunchroom at Weishaupt a few days later. Babbit was pouring sugar into his coffee when he suddenly looked at the sugar dispenser. The simplicity of the design, the one small flap that opened to let the sugar pour, abruptly delighted him. It was as if he had never seen it before. After that he was noticing more and more things in that heightened vision. One day in the Loop he saw a mother whirl suddenly and slap a whining child. His heart leapt with shock-and then he remembered that this was an everyday occurrence in America. It was as if he had seen it from the perspective of some culture where whining and hitting were not normal communication between parents and children. He wanted less and less meat in his diet; meat now appeared heavy and hard to digest. The strangest and most disturbing thing of all was the way Weishaupt Chemicals itself began to change. But everything was the same; he was just seeing with different eyes. The contrast between the executive offices and the workshops was an overwhelming experience. Architecture, coloring, decoration, upkeep-every kind of communication except words themselves said with total clarity "The Masters" and "The Serfs." The typical primate pack hierarchy, unnoticed and taken for granted before. Strange visions came to him whenever his mind relaxed from financial or scientific problems. He would be in a burning jungle, running from helicopters that caused the burning. Or he would be in a temple with the eye-on-the-pyramid design practicing strange breathing exercises. Once he even had a name-Fed King-and he watched as one of his teachers burned himself to death in protest against the war. He was Fed Xing seeing through the eyes of Mountbatten Babbit. His monogamy, which he usually succeeded in maintaining fifty-one weeks of the year, was falling apart on him. He worried that Mary Lou would be growing suspicious. Women turned him on constantly, incessantly, tor-mentingly, as in early adolescence. Not all women-just white women. Fed Xing couldn't get enough of them. He couldn't even get enough of any one of them. Even after an orgasm, I would want to start again, rubbing and caressing their moist pussies until they came a second time. This excited me so much that I would often go down and suck them into a third orgasm. |
| 963 |
But that was only for the future, when he began to show signs of shifting allegiance. Now (it is the night of December 23, 1983, again) while a miniature sled with eight tiny reindeer was allegedly dodging past commercial airliners, communications satellites, flying saucers, and other technocraft in the skyways, two human beings of reprehensible character drove up to the Sutton Place digs of Mary Margaret (Epicene) Wilde-blood in a truck hired from U-Haul only a few hours earlier. These were Edward J. Smith and Samuel R. Hall, and they had been purged from the Black Panther Party a few months earlier because of their fondness for the null-circuit neurological program induced by injecting diacetylmorphine (C21H23NO5) directly into their veins. This compound was known as heroin to white people and caballo to Ed and Sam's Puerto Rican neighbors. Ed and Sam called it horse and mainlined it as often as they possibly could-"riding the horse over the rainbow" was their expression for the null program, and it meant as much to them as Samadhi to a Hindu or the Eucharist to a Catholic. In fact, it allowed them to forget for a while that, to 90 percent of their fellow citizens, they were unmistakably identifiable as niggers, a species generally regarded as twice as ugly and ten times as dangerous as wild gorillas. It didn't matter, to Sam and Ed, that the people who believed this also believed in the existence of a gaseous vertebrate of astronomical heft named God, in the Virgin Birth of U. S. Senators, in the accuracy of TV news, and in premarital chastity for women. Sam and Ed also believed in the existence of the gaseous vertebrate, the immaculate generation of senators, the pictures on the tube, and premarital chastity for at least some women (their own sisters, wives, and daughters). They also believed that they were twice as ugly and ten times as dangerous as wild gorillas, but that they had a right to be that way. They called it Black Pride. Once inside the Wildeblood apartment, Ed and Sam were as efficient as a pay- of vacuum cleaners. To say they took everything that wasn't nailed down is to underestimate their rapacity. If something that looked valuable was nailed down, they employed pliers and other tools. When they finally drove away the U-Haul truck was as stuffed with goodies as the miniature sled allegedly circling the skies at that moment. When Mary Margaret Wildeblood returned from her month in Vermont, she was heard to compare her condition to that of the Chinese farmer in The Good Earth after the locusts had passed. |
| 964 |
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. |
| 965 |
He couldn't stand any more ambiguity in one evening. Ulysses was actually Mary Margaret Wildeblood's penis, which was now in Dash wood's laboratory-a fact which neither of them realized. Mary Margaret was not a born woman (which was commonplace, since 51 percent of the Terran primates qualified for it), but a manufactured woman. This was something new and exotic. It had only been possible on that primitive planet for around forty years. Epicene Wildeblood, Mary Margaret's former self, had been the bitchiest literary critic in Manhattan, the man that writers love to hate. His aphorisms were known and quoted everywhere in the world that was important by his own standards-i. e., from St. Mark's Place to 110th Street (East). Each Wildebloodism was a pearl of wit and a poison dart of malice: "Norman's mailer-than-thou-attitude," "Either McLuhan has had a divine vision or he is merely incoherent, and it is obvious that he has not had a divine vision," "llluminatus is just two nursery Nietzsches daydreaming about a psychedelic Superman," "Nixon's memoirs will never be placed beside Casanova's in the annals of amusing rascality, but they may well stand beside Mussolini's play about Napoleon in the archives of stentorian dullness." Wildeblood had named his penis Ulysses way back in Gilgamesh Junior High School in Babylon, Long Island, where he grew up. He named it Ulysses because it had Greek proclivities and a tendency to invade dark, forbidden places. Wildeblood was by no means a simple or uncomplicated WoMan. The sex-change operation had been only stage one in a plan to totally transform himself. After that, she intended to become a nun. By 1983 it was a sane and sensible decision for one living at the hot center of New York intellectual life. Like the Southerners who think "damn Yankee" is one word, Wildeblood's milieu had long ago forgotten that "male chauvinist" was two words. The slightest, kinkiest remnant of masculinity was a definite handicap, a suggestion of possible viciousness-like membership in the John Birch Society, owning a Mississippi accent, or a conviction for a major felony. Besides, Wildeblood did urgently want to be a nun. A priest or even a monk had a certain arrogance in his very role qua priest or qua monk, however passionately he might cultivate Total Submission to the Will of God. Only a nun could experience the true endlessness of humility. Wildeblood, simply, was tired of being the bitchiest male in Manhattan. He wanted to become the saintliest woman. |
| 966 |
Pussycat suddenly had six Senior Editors, twelve Associate Editors, twenty-four Assistant Editors, and thirty Junior Editors. The other publishers found themselves confronting deadlines with nobody left on their staffs. Two went bankrupt; one committed suicide; the others took a year to get back in gear again. "Business is business," said Sput. He liked to think of himself as a tough, hard-driving businessman, as well as the twentieth century's leading philosopher, the superstud of every girl's tender dreams, the hero of the free press, the foe of bigotry and intolerance everywhere, and the world's unacknowledged Master Psychologist. If he had known there was such a thing as pie-eating champion, he would have aimed for that title also. He considered himself a Renaissance Man. Although Stuart had advanced from Junior Editor to Senior Editor in spite of this competition, he hardly knew Sput at all. Sput never came to the offices, preferring to work in his mansion in Manhattan, and Stuart saw him only on the rare occasions when he was called upon to fly to New York for a conference. Those conferences tended to be a bit much. Like certain movie actors who are always "on," even when nowhere near a soundstage, Sput was as determined to impress his editors as he was to overwhelm the whole world. For years, he had insisted on playing chess during conferences, keeping an impoverished grandmaster on hand for a stiff competition; since the grandmaster knew which side his bread was buttered on, Sput always won. He had gotten this idea from a very inaccurate historical novel about Napoleon, in which the little Corsican sociopath was portrayed as playing masterful chess while discussing military strategy with his generals and the Napoleonic legal code with his judges. More recently Sput had read a novel about Nero. The effect was even more disconcerting than trying to talk with him while he laboriously evaded an obvious Noah's Ark trap. He was seated behind his desk receiving a blow job when Stuart had been ushered into his presence the last time. It was unnerving. "You wanted to discuss the interview subjects for the next six months?" Stuart asked, taking his seat and noting that the erotic technician kneeling before the Great Man was a recent Pussyette from the mag's foldout. In fact, she was the first to appear, not in an ordinary crotch shot (they were now becoming commonplace, not only in Pussycat, but in its imitators), but in a randy low-angle crotch shot in which her vulva lips could clearly be seen pouting beneath the pubic hair. |
| 967 |
The mystery was this: Two early, approximately contemporary and seemingly authentic accounts tell one particular story about Vlad, but each tells it differently. There is thus no scientific way of saying which account is true. The disputed story is that two monks on a journey stopped at Vlad's castle one night and begged shelter from the elements. Vlad set out for them a magnificent banquet and then afterward asked them what the people of Hungary really thought about him. The first monk answered diplomatically and falsely that everybody said Vlad was a stern but just ruler. The second monk boldly told the truth: that everybody said Vlad was a homicidal maniac. Vlad thereupon had one of the monks impaled. The problem is that the first seemingly authentic account says he executed the flattering liar, and the other seemingly authentic account claims he executed the honest monk. Marvin left this mystery unsolved in his book, and it was, perhaps, one reason that the novel became fashionable even with intellectuals. Everybody, it appeared, had some intuitive, prelogical feeling about which monk a man of the caliber of Vlad Teppis would impale. Some were quite sure that a dingaling of that sort would kill the one who dared to tell him the truth. Others, however, were just as sure that Vlad would find a special sadistic relish, and a moral justification to boot, in surprising both monks by executing the flatterer. Arguing about Vlad's choice, as it was soon called, spread from coast to coast. "What would you do if you were one of the monks?" was a favorite question in these arguments. "I'd do what the first monk did," Simon Moon said, in an argument with other programmers who worked with the Beast. "I'd tell Vlad he was the very model of a Christian statesman-which, in fact, he was." "I'd tell the truth," said Markoff Chancy, on a Greyhound bus, "just to prove that little men have big balls." "I'd lie," Dr. Frank Dashwood admitted at a posh Nob Hill party in San Francisco. "The most dangerous thing in the world is to tell the truth to a government official who is a primitive barbarian, in fourteenth-century Transylvania or twentieth-century America." Professor Fred ("Fidgets") Digits, who always kept his connection with the Warren Belch Society a secret and, hence, retained academic respectability, finally published a paper in Technology Review analyzing the problem from the perspective of the von Neumann-Morgenstern game theory. The monks, in this context, basically confront a problem in prediction. |
| 968 |
The Code Hubbard, the most important revision of primate jurisprudence since the Code Napoleon, divided all crimes into three classes. Crimes against convention-so-called victimless crimes- were not penalized at all. A citizen could be interrogated about each behavior only after complaints by a minimum of one hundred neighbors. The interrogators, a group of trained neurogeneticists, would then publish a report, either mildly recommending relocation of the heretic, or, much more commonly, strongly advising the neighbors to mind their own business. Many libertarians objected to this, since they wanted victimless crimes abolished utterly. Hubbard had pragmatically realized that such libertarian penology was impractical until the primates totally outgrew the morality delusion. Those who chose relocation were assigned by the Beast to an environment where their heresy was "normal." Most of them found that the Beast recommended an L5 space-city, and most of them liked it when they got there. They had futique genes. Many of the heretics, of course, chose to stay where they were and go on annoying the bejesus out of their neighbors. This is the typical recalcitrant streak found in certain domesticated primates on all planets. Crimes against property were regarded as improper economics requiring adjustment. The felon was compelled to pay in full the value of that which had been appropriated or destroyed. If unable to pay, the felon then had a literal "debt to society." The government paid the victim, and the felon repaid the government by working at half wages on some socially useful project, such as longevity research, space research, or just as a forest ranger in the growing number of national parks that were appearing since Industry was moved off the planet into Free Space. Crimes of violence were defined as the natural, inevitable, tragic, but intolerable resultant of some combination of genes, imprints, and conditioning. The biots who committed such acts were sent, without condemnation but irrevocably, to Hell. Hell had previously been the state of Mississippi. After the aborigines were resettled in an environment suitable for two-circuit (prehominid) primates, Mississippi became Hell by simply surrounding it with a laser shield that made escape impossible. Everything within the shield was intact. The violent biots were free to do what they wanted, and they soon had several forms of feudalism, war, piracy, commerce, slavery, and other early primate institutions functioning in a manner that seemed normal to them. |
| 969 |
"It's that motherfuckin' loa," Carol said angrily. "We didn't do the exorcism right..." "Choronzon" was a mind-construct of the primates specializing in the Enochian version of Cabalistic magick. Talking out of two sides of their mouths at once, as was typical of primate mystics, the Cabalists said that Choronzon was the astral embodiment of all the illusions and deception on Terra (especially all the egotism and malice). They added that Choronzon was also a part of the psyche of the student which had to be faced and conquered before Illumination was complete. When asked whether Choronzon was then outside or inside, they usually answered "Both." This reply made no sense at all until G. Spencer Brown published his Laws of Form. A loa was a mind-construct of those primates who specialized in Santaria, also called Magicko de Chango or Voudon. A loa, just like the Gentry, might on occasion be kindly disposed; but a guardian loa who was set on a woman to prevent her from copulating (except with the primate who had through Santaria createdprojectedcontacted said loa) was well known to be extremely malign, devious, fiendish, impish, devilish, and a Royal pain in the ass. The has, like the Gentry and the various Cabalistic angels and demons, operated beneath the space-time continuum in "dream time," where the true Free Masons create reality friezes. An archetype was a mind-construct of a primate named Carl Jung, who specialized in preneurological psychology. An archetype existed at the "psychoid" level, which was below that of individual or collective unconsciousness, where the organic and the inorganic meld and merge into psychoid matrices which, if nudged by the right archetype, would produce a reality-construct so astonishing that it would appear like magick or a very strange "coincidence." Jung called these psychoid archetypal effects synch ronicities. And Marvin Gardens, coked to the nines, is reading on and on with absolute absorption: Syngamy forms a zygote, which develops into a new diploid form, and the cycle begins anew Cycles that's it, he thinks excitedly, we're all permutations and combinations of that first amoeba every ejaculation another birthdeath or node in the everybranching whatchamacallit. Oh man this is heavy and I'm really grooving with it cycles in time great wheels turning like the Mayan calendar the genetic clock like music but oh shit maybe it's just the coke I still haven't figured out if the damn amoeba is immortal. But Malik is maintaining his cool, albeit with some effort. |
| 970 |
"So all right," he said aloud, facing the Eye unblinking, "are you just trying to scare me to death, or do you have a message for me?" Treat all of Them in a lofty way, lest They have cause to think thee weak, said Dr. Dee. "We better do the exorcism again," whispered Carol Christmas-nude, golden, and delicious-also maintaining her cool. 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. |
| 971 |
A is Brahm, the Creator: let it explode upward from the diaphragm, like the big bang of creation itself. U is Vishnu, the Preserver: hold it so long that it vibrates, like the rhythm of life, the Big Beat of Beethoven's Seventh. M is Shiva, the Destroyer: close the lips in a decisive bite of "This is the way the world ends" as you enter the silence. May 1, 1952-Today, unexpectedly, pure dhyana. It was so much simpler than I ever guessed, and it is obviously a matter of practice. No wonder the yogis say that it's dangerous to do this without a guru: I am no better or worse, morally, and no wiser or more "spiritual." Repetition is the whole key. Force the nerves and muscles and glands, force them day after day, and it happens. The chief function of the guru is to ensure that you don't take advantage of the new freedom too quickly and get yourself in trouble with the authorities. The guru doesn't help it happen at all (as the honest ones admit); you do all the work yourself. The guru just makes sure that the rapture flows into "safe" (domesticated?) channels. Without such a moral watchdog, I am free to do as I bloody please. I just realized why all the real occult schools are so damned secretive, why the ordinary seeker is given a lot of double-talk and ejected out the same door wherein he came. If everybody could do this, the whole world would be in continuous revolution.* May 27, 1952-Another successful dhyana. There's nothing to it, really. The brain obviously operates on the same principle as those fellows in The Hunting of the Snark: "What I tell you three times is true." (Three million times is more accurate.) It was marvelous-better than the first time-and I'll never identify with "Cagliostro the Great" or "Hugh Crane" or even "me" or the perpendicular pronoun, ever again. I can see more and more clearly why all this is "sealed with seven seals" and hidden behind all kinds of mystification. Society as we know it is based on torture and death, or the threat of torture and death. I am in here to be tortured, although the authorities will never admit that. (What they do with heretics in other countries is torture; what we do here is penology.) The cage experience is profoundly punishing to the average human, as to any primate; it is the form of torture our society countenances. It is no torture to me only because I have learned certain neurological arts every stage magician learns. But if everybody could go into dhyana at will, nobody could be controlled-by fear of prison, by fear of whips or electroshock, by fear of death, even. |
| 972 |
That which was above was precisely reflected in that which was below. To cross again was not to cross. "So all right," Joe Malik said, staring at Simon through a triangle, "are you just trying to scare me to death or do you have a message for me?" Simon was on the balcony of Mary Margaret Wildeblood's apartment again and somebody was staring out at him in horror. "My God, it's Bigfoot!" Simon reentered the form, and contemplated it. Civilization was destroyed by nuclear holocaust in May 1984 because Furbish Lousewart was a certain kind of man and Franklin Delano Roosevelt Stuart was a certain other kind of man; and they were what they were because of genetic programs and accidental imprints and conditioning and some learning, and because of the society around them; and that society was the resultant of various conflicting historical and neurogenetic causes; and Lousewart became President because of a thousand other factors, only one of which, the accident at Three Mile Island in 1979, was itself the resultant of thousands of factors, including the usual struggles between the engineers and the financiers; and to explain Stuart you would have to start with the institution of slavery six thousand years earlier; and... 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. |
| 973 |
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. Tell them all." And yet that seems to mark the experience as brain-generated: the style is Simon-pwer not Tim-pater even if the idea is most certainly something old Tim Moon would want to communicate. A collaboration perhaps between the part of Tim Moon that lives on in Simon's memory banks and the part that lives eternally in the Mind of the Author of Our Being. |
| 974 |
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. Bonny kept the world informed about which celebrities were Potter Stewarting each other. She did this in a way that was perfectly clear to every reader but totally without any clear meaning in a court of law, in case somebody got irritated and tried to sue her. What she did was to write something like "Hollywood sexpot Carol Christmas and Black novelist Frank Stuart are an item these days." Everybody knew what "an item" meant. When Bonny wrote that a couple were "a hot item" many of her readers were mildly puzzled, but assumed she was insinuating some fantastic sexual acrobatics. Actually, it only meant that Bonny was trying to avoid stylistic monotony; occasionally, she even switched it to "a torrid item," which led to even more lascivious fantasies for some of her readers. Justin Case didn't object to Carol Christmas's other affairs because he accepted it as a fact of life that actors are hypersexed, just as coal miners are prone to black lung disease and novelists to booze and weird drugs. Besides, jealousy was a sign of possessiveness, and possessiveness was illiberal. And, anyway-as he usually concluded his ruminations on this subject, during the infrequent moments when he thought of it at all-Carol's career kept them apart most of the time, and he was not so naive as to expect somebody of her youth and beauty to resist all temptations. And it was the 1980s, wasn't it? Actually, Case was a bit of an unconscious psychic-that is, he was aware of quantum probability waves, although not consciously. He sensed that there were approximately 1050 universes in which he had lusted after Carol and never got into her Frankel even once. That unconscious psychic knowledge kept him content with this universe, where he was her part-time lover. Carol Christmas had starred in the first hard-core porn movie to win the Academy Award, Deep Mongolian Steinem Job. |
| 975 |
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. |
| 976 |
C., and Smokey; and maybe she should cut down on those diet pills; it was absurd to be wandering around at three in the morning thinking in threes. And then there was up-down, back-forward, and right-left, the three dimensions in space; and Wynken, Blynken, and Nod; and the Three Wise Men, Whozit, and Whatzis-name and Melchior; and Peter, Jack, and Martin, the three brothers in Swift's Tale of a Tub; and Peter, Paul, and Mary; and the Kingston Trio; and Friends, Romans, Countrymen, which was not only a triad, but a progressive triad, one beat, two beats, three beats, one, two, three, just like that, and she would definitely cut down on the diet pills. Polly Esther finally put a record on the stereo, turning the volume down to low so as not to waken her lover in the bedroom. She picked the Hammerklavier sonata, not out of coincidence or propinquity or even synchronicity, but just because it was her favorite of Beethoven's piano pieces. It was her favorite because she couldn't understand it, no matter now often she played it. It was the musical equivalent of a Zen koan to her, endlessly fascinating because endlessly enigmatic. The stark, discordant opening bars drove all wandering threesomes out of her mind, narrowing her attention to Ludwig's urgent if incomprehensible universe of structured sound. She was swept into it again, as always, swept along by emotions so deep and yet so austere that nobody has ever been able to name them. Once she had invited the world's three most admired concert pianists to a party, just so she could ask each of them, privately, what they thought the Hammerklavier meant. As she expected, she had gotten three wildly conflicting answers. Another time she had ordered every book in print about Beethoven from Doubleday's on Fifty-third Street at Fifth Avenue and looked up Hammerklavier in the index of each. She got forty-four different opinions that way. The music hammered and surged along, carrying her through pain and frustration and loneliness to land, again and again, at things beyond such simple feelings, things that she sometimes felt were extraterrestrial or non-Euclidean or somehow beyond normal human perception. There are some kinds of knowledge, Ludwig had once claimed, that can only be expressed in music, not in any other art, not in science or philosophy. This was the most arcane of such knowledge, Ludwig's most intimate secret, and maybe you weren't entitled to understand it until you had been to the strange dark places of the psyche out of which he had created it. |
| 977 |
It was the passive, nonviolent nature of their resistance that made the Stephenites so troublesome to persons in authority; it is impossible to jail nonviolent idealists without a large part of the world sympathizing with them. Father Starhawk had served three terms himself, for passively resisting Unistat's wars against Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the People's Republic of Hawaii. 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. |
| 978 |
Of course some cynics immediately assumed that His Eminence was as drunk as a skunk. There are always types like that, believing the worst of everybody. Then the rumors started to circulate. Those who had been in the Cathedral said that the Most Reverend Archbishop had not so much stumbled as jumped, and that his expression was one of such fear and loathing that all present felt at once that something distinctly eldritch and unholy had invaded the church. Others, imaginative types and religious hysterics, claimed to have felt something cold and clammy moving in the air, or to have seen "auras." By the time the rumors had gone three times around the United Kingdom and twice around Europe, there were details that came out of the Necronomicon or the grim fictions of Stoker, Machen, Walpole. Horned men, Things with tentacles, and Linda Lovelace were prominently featured in these embroidered versions of the Canterbury Horror, as it was beginning to be called. The press, of course, got more interested at this point, and the Reverend Archbishop was constantly besieged to conform or deny the most outlandish and distasteful reports about what had occurred. At first His Eminence refused to speak to the press at all, but finally, by the time some scandal sheets were claiming that Nyarlathotep, the mad faceless god of Khem, had appeared on the altar bellowing Cthulhu fthagn!, the Archbishop issued a terse statement through his Press Secretary. "Nothing untoward happened. His Eminence merely tripped on the altar rug, and any further discussion would be futile." This merely fanned the flames of Rumor, of course. One legend circulated even more than the others, perhaps because it appealed to prurient interest, or maybe just because it was the version given by a few people who had actually been in the Cathedral during Mass. According to this yarn, a miraculous flying Rehnquist- just like the ones in the murals at Pompeii, except that it didn't have wings-had soared across the front of the church, barely missing His Eminence's high episcopal nose. The judicious, of course, did not credit this wild rumor. They were all coming around, as the judicious usually do, to the view of the cynics. The Archbishop, they said, had been stewed to the gills. His Eminence was no fool, however. After the first shock, he had begun his own investigation, aided by a few trusted deacons. They found the slingshot, abandoned, on the floor of the first pew, to the right. That was the direction the Rehnquist had come from, and they all breathed a sigh of relief. |
| 979 |
Then one traumatic day, they did not own any Van Goghs at all. They owned El Mirs. El Mir was the most talented painting forger of that time. His Van Goghs, Cezannes, and Modiglianis were totally indistinguishable from "the real thing," whatever that is. It was widely believed, after El Mir was exposed by another forger named Irving, that many masterpieces still hanging in museums were El Mir's work. Indeed, El Mir insisted on that, regarding it as the cream of the jest. Some said that these El Mirs still hung in museums because the experts had not yet found any way to distinguish them from "real" art. Others said that the experts, once aware of El Mir's work, could distinguish it from Van Gogh's or Cezanne's or Modigliani's, but would not do so, because they had authenticated the fakes originally and did not want anybody to know that they had been fooled. Blake Williams, Ph. D., had purchased a very fine El Mir, under the impression it was a Van Gogh, after the great success of his popularized book on primate psychology, How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes. Williams was then in the midst of his first phase synthesizing General Semantics and Zen Buddhism, and he immediately recognized what was really going on when identifiable El Mirs were everywhere falling in value after the great Expose. It was a glitch, he decided. He called together a small group of people who also owned identified El Mirs and begged them not to believe that they had been deceived. "A signature," he told them earnestly, "is not an economic Good in itself, like gold or land or factories. It is only a squiggle given contextual meaning by social convention." He went on like that for nearly an hour. He spoke of the differences between the map and the territory; between the spoken word ("a sonic wave in the atmosphere") and the nonverbal thing or event which the word merely designates; between the menu and the meal. He quoted Hume, Einstein, Korzybski, and Pope Stephen. He dragged in the latest theories in perception psychology, Ethnome-thodology, and McLuhan's version of media-message analysis. He reminded them that Carlos Castaneda had studied Ethnomethodology with Garfinkle before studying shamanism with Don Juan Matus, and he assured them, as a professional anthropologist, that anyone who has the power to define reality for you has become a sorcerer, if you don't catch the bastard real quick. By this time a lot of his audience was irritated and a little frightened-mutters of "He's just a damned crank" were heard from some corners of the room-but others were listening, enthralled. |
| 980 |
Williams resorted to psycho-drama and Role Playing to get his point across. He said that he would pretend to be an extraterrestrial-"I wonder if it's just pretending," said an awed voice from the group who had followed this lecture with a sense of Illumination. Play-acting the extraterrestrial, Williams defied them to explain several things to him, rationally and logically, without assuming he had "intuitive" or a priori knowledge about what they took for granted. He wanted to know, first, the difference between a dollar bill printed by the Unistat Treasury and a dollar bill printed by a gang of counterfeiters. Everybody got excited, and most of them got angry, in the course of trying to make this distinction clear to the extraterrestrial, who was very literal and logical, and did not understand anything they took for granted until it was explained literally and logically. By the time the extraterrestrial was willing to grant that there was an agreed-upon difference between the two bills created by social consensus, a few people had left, saying, "It's just an elaborate put-on." But the others, who stuck it out, were next confronted with a dollar bill hung in a museum as "found" art. Williams, the extraterrestrial, wanted to know whether its value was the same as, greater than, or less than it had been before being hung in the museum. More people lost their tempers in the course of his discussion. But Williams persisted. Still playing extraterrestrial, he wanted to know if it made any difference if the dollar hung in the museum as "found" art had been printed by the Treasury or by the criminal gang. After a few minutes of this topic most of the people in the room were jumping up and down like the Ambassador who found the Rehnquist on the stairs. Williams had no mercy. He next wanted them to explain the difference between any or all of the above and an exact duplicate of any or all of them painted by Roy Lichtenstein and exhibited as Pop Art. After a half hour more he pointed out that they were arguing among themselves even more than they were attempting to explain these mysteries to him. He also mentioned, not too cruelly, that many of them had arrived at the state where they seemed to believe their definitions would become more convincing if they just repeated them at a louder decibel level. Williams then gave up the extraterrestrial game and tried to restore order. He became droll and told them the old story of how Picasso, asked to identify the real Picas-sos in a group of possible fakes, had put one of his own canvases among the fraudulent group. |
| 981 |
And sometimes I even think the whole Church is a very old novel which I've revised and modernized. And, my reverend brother in Christ, sometimes I even think that I'm not alone in this novel-writing business; I think that every man, woman, and child on this planet is writing a novel inside their heads, all day long, every day-editing, rewriting, touching things up, improving a page here and throwing a page out somewhere else. The only difference is that when I write a novel, it becomes an Encyclical, and is therefore Reality for millions of believers." Williams now had five True Believers out of the thirty persons he had called together. The five, together with Williams, founded the W. F. Bach Society that night, and set out to impose their definition of Art on the rest of the world. They began by finding and financing Orson Welles, an obese genius who might have been the world's greatest film director if he had only been allowed to direct films. Welles was not allowed to direct films because he had made the mistake, his first time out, of making a movie about Charles Foster Hearst, the richest and most powerful of the Communist clique who ruled Unistat. Welles changed the name, of course, and called his movie character William Randolph Kane, but few were deceived by this, and Hearst certainly wasn't. The movie had a scene, at the beginning, in which a conservative banker said bluntly that "Kane" (Hearst) was a Communist. It went on to make a big mystery about the word "Rosebud," which referred to General Crowley's system of "Rosy Cross" Cabalistic magick which the Communists were using to make money out of nothing. It exposed, almost blatantly, how Unistat was actually governed. Welles was blacklisted, and spent the rest of his life wandering around the world playing bit parts in films by other directors. The W. F. Bach Society financed Welles in the making of his second film, Art Is What You Can Get Away With, which was a bold glorification of El Mir. Next, the W. F. Bach cabal financed a new literary journal, Passaic Review, which they advertised so widely that everybody with any pretense to being an intellectual had to read it. The Passaic Review heaped scorn and invective on the established literary idols of the time-Simon Moon, the neo-surrealist novelist; Gerald Ford, the "country-and-western" poet; Norman Mailer; Robert Heinlein; Tim Hildebrand; and so on. They also denounced all the alleged "greats" of the first part of the century, like H. P. Lovecraft, Henry James, T. |
| 982 |
But then Professor Fred "Fidgets" Digits spoke up suddenly: "This opens a whole new can of worms," he said. "If General Crowley was-well, what he now appears to be, a common hoaxter- well, gentlemen, can we trust his reports on the North Pole expedition?" "I fear not," Clem Cotex said. "That question came to me as soon as I began to realize Crowley's true character. We can't believe the North Pole story at all. It may just be another of his jokes. We may have been wrong for years, gentlemen. "The earth may not be hollow, after all." Down the hall the Invisible Hand Society was having problems of its own. A group of the more avant-garde members had become convinced of the existence of the Tooth Fairy and were trying to convert everybody else. Naturally, Dr. Rauss Elysium did not like this. He felt it reduced the principles of the Invisible Hand Society to absurdity. Dr. Rauss Elysium had summed up the entire science of economics in four propositions, to wit: 1. Find out who profits from it. This was merely a restatement of the old Latin proverb-a favorite of Lenin's-cui bono? 2. Groups never meet together except to conspire against other groups. This was a generalization of Adam Smith's more limited proposition "Men of the same profession never meet together except to defraud the general public." Dr. Rauss Elysium had realized that it applies not just to merchants, but to groups of all sorts, including the governmental sector. 4. Every system evolves and expands until it encroaches upon other systems. This was just a simplification of most of the discoveries of ecology and General Systems Theory. 4. It all returns to equilibrium, eventually. This was based on a broad Evolutionary Perspective and was the basic faith of the Invisible Hand mystique. Dr. Rauss Elysium had merely recognized that the Invisible Hand, first noted by Adam Smith, operates everywhere. The Invisible Hand, Dr. Rauss Elysium claimed, does not merely function in a free market, as Smith had thought, but continues to control everything no matter how many conspiracies, in or out of government, attempt to frustrate it. Indeed, by including Propositions 2 and 3 inside the perspective of this Proposition 4, it was obvious-at least to him-that conspiracy, government interference, monopoly, and all other attempts to frustrate the Invisible Hand were themselves part of the intricate, complex working of the Invisible Hand itself. He was an economic Taoist. The Invisible Hand-ers were bitterly hated by the orthodox old Libertarians. |
| 983 |
Through a series of fronts, he had taken over organized crime in Unistat and arranged that everybody would blame it on the Sicilians. He was currently engaged in smuggling as many as one thousand of the "boat people" a month into Hong Kong, where he put them to work in his factories and paid them three cents a day. Wing Lee Chee, at eighty-seven, was a philosopher and a man of balance. His life-style always tempered severity with mercy, larceny with generosity, sensuality with meditation. He always tried to be as just a man as was compatible with being a rich and comfortable man. If one of the employees in his factories showed initiative or talent, Wing Lee Chee noticed, and that man or woman was quickly promoted to a position of responsibility and solvency. He was no xenophobe; this policy applied even to Japanese, Hindus, and the wretched Unistat refugees. Mr. Wing lived on Peach Blossom Street and had a magnificent view of all of Hong Kong and the harbor. He felt that the view was making him more philosophical every year. Each evening, after his twilight meditation period, he would sit at his window, smoking a long black Italian cigar, and look down at the teeming human hive below him, thinking that every person down there was the center of a whole universe, just like himself. He had learned total detachment from all his own emotions in one split second, the day the white cops in Bad Ass knocked his eye out while arresting him. He had known, in that second, that he could kill them all-no man in the world knew more of aikido, judo, kung fu, and karate than Wing Lee Chee in his youth-but he knew what would happen after that if he did it. He looked at his own rage, understood suddenly in a mini-Satori that this was a mechanical-chemical process in his body, and became the clear mind that watched the rage instead of the emotional mind that experienced it. All of the more mystical and obscure things his martial arts teachers had tried to teach him abruptly made sense. He was never the same man again. So he would sit, in the early evenings, smoking his foul Italian cigars (a taste acquired from a business associate named Celine) and look down at Hong Kong and its myriad of robots, each driven by mechanical and chemical reflexes, each believing itself the center of the universe. And then he would laugh softly at his own sense of superiority, because he knew that he was also controlled by chemical chains that determined what he could and could not think. Only in very deep meditation, and only a few times, had he broken those chains and seen-briefly! |
| 984 |
Only her hearing would be of any help in taking in the grandeur all around her. Out beyond where the woman sat, one of the many bridges in the palace crossed the hall at a second-floor level. Clutches of people engaged in conversation strolled across the bridge while others stood at the marble balusters, gazing down on the vast passageway below, some watching Richard and Kahlan and their accompanying contingent of guards. Many in the thick crowds of people strolling the expansive corridors of the palace were visitors who had come for the festivities of the day before. Though the People's Palace was more or less under one roof, it was really a city tightly clustered atop a lone, immense plateau rising up out of the Azrith Plain. Since the palace was the ancestral home of the Lord Rahl, parts of it were off-limits to the public, but most of the expansive complex was home to thousands of others. There were living quarters for people of every sort, from officials to merchants, to craftsmen, to workers, with other areas set aside for visitors. The sprawling public corridors linked the city palace together and provided access to it all. Not far from the woman sitting against the wall, a shop window displayed bolts of cloth. Throughout the palace there were shops of every sort. Down inside the plateau hundreds more rooms provided everything from quarters for soldiers to yet more shops for residents and visitors alike. 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. |
| 985 |
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. He didn't really care what a fortune-teller might have to say, but he expected something in return for the penny. |
| 986 |
He has more than proven himself to all of us. Leave the magic to him." Coming from a Mord-Sith, those words had a chilling finality. The crowd seemed to realize that they were not merely pushing into areas where they didn't belong, but overstepping bounds. Somewhat shamed, they spoke quietly among themselves, agreeing with one another that it made sense that maybe they should leave such matters to those who were best able to deal with them. Everyone seemed to relax a bit, as if having just pulled back from the brink. Out of the corner of his eye to the right, Richard saw the blue robes of one of the serving women coming up on the far side of Kahlan. The woman gently laid her left hand on Kahlan's forearm as if wanting to speak to her confidentially. That, more than anything, was what got Richard's attention. People didn't just come up and casually lay a hand on the Mother Confessor. As she came around and turned in toward Kahlan, Richard saw the haunted look in the woman's eyes and the blood down the front of her robes. He was already moving when he saw the knife in her other hand sweeping around toward Kahlan's chest. Time itself seemed to stop. Richard recognized all too well the eternal emptiness between the heartbeats of time, that expectant void before the lightning ignition of power. He was a step too far away to stop the woman in time, yet he also knew that he was too close for what was about to happen. It was already out of his hands and there was nothing he could do about it. Life and death hung in that instant of time. Kahlan could not afford to hesitate. His instinct to turn away tensed his muscles even though he was well aware that nothing he could do would be fast enough. The sea of people stood wide-eyed, frozen in shock. Several Mord-Sith in red leather had already begun to leap a distance that Richard knew they could never make in time. He saw Cara's red Agiel beginning to spin up into her hand, soldiers' hands going for swords, and Zedd's hand lifting to cast magic. Richard knew that not one of them had a chance to make it in time. At the center of it all, Richard saw the woman holding Kahlan's forearm down out of the way as the bloody knife in her other hand arced around toward Kahlan's chest. In that instant everyone had only begun to move. Into that silent void in time, thunder without sound suddenly ignited. Time crashed back in a headlong rush as the force of the concussion exploded through the confined space of the banquet hall. The impact to the air raced outward in a circle. |
| 987 |
People near the front cried out in pain as they tumbled backward to the ground. Those farther away in the rear were knocked back a few steps. In shock and fear they too late protectively covered their faces with an arm. Food flew off tables and carts; glasses and plates shattered against the walls; wine bottles, cutlery, containers, small serving bowls, napkins, and fragments of glass were blown back by the shock wave sweeping across the room at lightning speed. When it hit the far end of the room the glass in all the windows blew out. The bottoms of curtains flapped out through the shattered windows. Knives, forks, food, drink, plates, and pieces of broken glass clattered across the floor. Richard was by far the one closest to Kahlan as she had unleashed her Confessor power. Too close. Proximity to such power being loosed was dangerous. The pain of it seared through every joint in his body, dropping him to a knee. Zedd fell back, knocked from his feet. Nathan, a little farther away, staggered back, catching Cara's arm to steady her. When pieces of shattered glass finally stopped skipping across the floor, the tablecloths and curtains finally settled and stilled, and people sat up in stunned silence, the woman in bloody blue robes was kneeling at the Mother Confessor's feet. Kahlan stood tall at the center of the settling chaos. People stared in shock. None of them had ever seen a Confessor unleash her power before. It was not something done before spectators. Richard doubted that any of them would ever forget it as long as they lived. "Bags, that hurts," Zedd muttered as he sat up rubbing his elbows and rolling his shoulders. As Richard's vision and mind cleared from the needle-sharp stab of pain that had instantly stitched its way through every joint in his body, he saw that the woman had left a bloody handprint on the sleeve of Kahlan's white dress. Kneeling there before the Mother Confessor, the woman didn't look at all like an assassin. She was of average build with small features. Limp ringlets of dark hair just touched her shoulders. Richard knew that a person touched by a Confessor's power didn't feel the same pain as those nearby, but, more than that, things such as pain would be merely distant considerations to her. Once touched by a Confessor, the Confessor was all. Whoever the woman had been, she was no more. "Mistress," the woman whispered, "command me." Kahlan's voice came as cold as ice. "Tell me again what you have done, what you said to me before." "I've killed my children," the woman said in a dispassionate voice. |
| 988 |
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. |
| 989 |
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. No answer came in response. Nathan knocked harder. When that, too, received no answer he banged the side of his fist against the door. "Lauretta, it's Nathan. Please open the door?" He banged his fist on the door again. "I told Lord Rahl what you said, that you have a message for him. I brought him along. He wants to see you." The door opened a crack, just wide enough for one eye to peer out into the hallway. When she saw the three of them waiting she immediately opened the door all the way. "Lord Rahl! You came!" She grinned as she licked her tongue out between missing front teeth. Layers of clothes covered her short, heavyset form. From what Richard could see, she was wearing at least three sweaters over her dark blue dress. The buttons on the dingy, off-white sweater on the bottom strained to cover her girth. Over that sweater she had on a faded red sweater and a checkered flannel shirt with sleeves that were too long for her. She pulled up a sleeve and then pushed stringy strands of sandy-colored hair back off her face. "Please, won't you all come in?" She waddled back into the dark depths of her home, grinning — giddy, apparently — to have company come to visit. As strange as Lauretta was, it was her home that was strangest of all. In order to enter, since he was taller than she was, Richard had to hold aside yarn objects hanging just inside the door. Each of the dozens of yarn contraptions was different, but all of them had been constructed in roughly the same manner. Yarn of various colors had been wound around crossed sticks into designs that resembled spiderwebs. He couldn't imagine what they were for. By no stretch of the imagination could they be considered attractive, so he didn't think they were intended to be decorative. When Zedd saw him frowning at them he leaned close to speak confidentially. "Meant to keep evil spirits from her door." Richard didn't comment on the likelihood of evil spirits who had managed to make it this far on a journey from the dark depths of the underworld being stopped cold by sticks and yarn. To each side of the entrance, papers, books, and boxes were stacked nearly to the ceiling. There was a tunnel of sorts going back through the mess into the interior of her home. |
| 990 |
She had been trying to put everything from her mind. She hadn't wanted to think about the woman who had killed her children. She hadn't wanted to think about the children and how they had died. All for fear of a prophecy. 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. |
| 991 |
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. If there was one thing Kahlan was good at, it was questioning those she had touched with her power. The thought occurred to her that it was awfully convenient that the woman confessed what she had done, revealed what her prophecy said would happen to Kahlan, and then managed to die before she could be questioned. When all else was said and done, that was the single thing that convinced Kahlan that Richard was right, that there was something more going on. And if he was right, then the woman had likely only been a puppet being moved by a hidden hand. At the thought of Richard, she smiled. Thinking of him always lifted her heart. When she pulled open the bedroom door, Cara, with her arms folded, was leaning back against the doorframe. Nyda, one of the other Mord-Sith, was with her. Cara looked back over her shoulder at Kahlan. "How do you feel?" Kahlan forced a smile. "I'm fine." Cara's arms came unfolded as she turned. "Lord Rahl wanted me to bring you to him after you were rested. He's going to see that abbot." Kahlan let out a weary breath. She didn't feel like seeing people, but she wanted to be with Richard and she, too, wanted to hear what the man might know. Cara's eyes narrowed. "Why is your face so pale?" "Just still a bit tired, I guess." Kahlan studied Cara's blue eyes for a moment. |
| 992 |
The captain worked a big key in the door. The lock resisted for a moment, but after the latch clanged open, the man yanked the heavy iron door open enough to slip through. After hooking the keys on his belt, he took a lantern from a table and led the way into the inner dungeon. In a well-practiced sweep of her arm, Nyda took another lantern off an iron peg in the wall. Before Richard could go through the door, she stepped in front of him and went in first. He was quite familiar with Mord-Sith's insistence on going first so they could check for danger. He had long ago learned that his life was easier if he let them have their way and didn't argue with them over such minor issues. He saved commands for times when they really mattered. Because of that, the Mord-Sith heeded his commands. The captain led them down a series of narrow passageways that in most places had been carved out of solid rock. Even after thousands of years, the chisel marks looked as fresh as when they had first been cut through the stone. They passed cell doors behind which criminals were held. Up ahead, in the light of the captain's lantern, Richard saw fingers sticking out, gripping the edges of tiny openings in the iron doors. He saw eyes looking out through some of the black openings. When the prisoners saw Nyda coming behind the captain, the fingers withdrew and the eyes disappeared back into the blackness. No one called out. No one wanted to draw her attention. At the end of a particularly narrow, crooked passageway with doors spaced farther apart, the captain came to a halt at a cell on the left. There were no fingers in the opening, no eyes looking out. When the heavy door was pulled open, Richard saw the reason. The outer door opened not into a cell, but into a small inner room with another door. The second, smaller door held the prisoner in an inner room. The man used a long sliver of fatwood to transfer a flame from his lantern to a second hanging on an iron peg. "These are the shielded cells," the captain said in answer to the question on Richard's face. Even though the palace had been constructed in the form of a power spell that strengthened the gift of any Rahl, and weakened that of others, the shields around the cells were an extra layer of protection to contain anyone gifted, no matter how powerful they were. No chances were taken with the gifted. The captain lifted his lantern to look in the small opening in the second door. When he was sure that the prisoner wasn't going to spring at him, he unlocked the door. |
| 993 |
Their suffering will be your fault. "All because you will not do your duty to your people by heeding prophecy." Richard didn't answer. 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. |
| 994 |
It was no less a formidable weapon in his hands for all its embellishments. Kahlan knew that he was a reasoned leader, but she also knew that he had a volatile temper. His wife, Catherine, his ever-present shadow, glided forward with him. She wore a beautiful dark green brocade dress embroidered with vibrant gold leaves. She looked stunning in the dress. Though she was a queen with as much authority as her husband, she had little interest in matters of rule. She was also quite pregnant. Kahlan knew that this would be their first child, and they were eagerly looking forward to it now that the war was over. King Philippe gestured around at the gathered dignitaries. "We are the leaders of the lands that make up the D'Haran Empire. Many of us here were loyal to you, Mother Confessor, before that, in the Midlands. All of our people have fought, bled, and died to help us stand here today, triumphant. They have a right, through us, to hear the shape of the future they have fought so hard to make possible. On their behalf, as their representatives, we should be informed of what prophecy has to say so we can make sure it is being heeded and not ignored." A roar of voices rose as everyone agreed with King Philippe. Queen Orneta, not keen to cede her informal leadership role in arguing their position, swept a skeletal arm back at the crowd, calling for silence. "Prophecy must be obeyed. What we want, Mother Confessor, is for you to reveal what prophecy says so that we may see for ourselves that you are heeding it." "But I have just spent a great deal of time with all of you, listening to your concerns and explaining why prophecy is not meant for the uninitiated." The queen smiled in that patronizing manner that for some queens seemed to be an inborn ability bordering on theatric gift. "So you have," she said, glancing over at King Philippe as if telling him that he should let her do the talking. "Yet we have all heard the dark warnings from various diviners back in our homelands, those with a bit of prophetic talent. That is one reason we were all so eager to come here for this gathering. Something significant is happening — the signs are all there. "We want to know what dark foretelling prophecy holds so that when this storm ends we might send word home to our people so they can prepare for looming dangers. Prophecy can be of no value if it is kept secret." Kahlan straightened her back. She let the smile slip away as she put on her Confessor's face. The queen's talent at presenting an intimidating presence was no match for Kahlan's. |
| 995 |
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. "Dear spirits," Kahlan whispered, "what is that?" Richard couldn't even venture a guess. |
| 996 |
Each polished slab between those columns, laced with multicolored crystalline veins, was like a work of art. Besides the men following behind Richard and Kahlan, there was a sizable force already stationed throughout the passageways. This part of the palace was always heavily guarded and strictly off-limits to the public. 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. |
| 997 |
It could be pretty dangerous being underneath it if it were to break in." If the roof fell in. The leaded glass was the roof in this room. If the sky fell in. In this room, the glass roof was the sky. Richard stood. He understood the two different prophecies. They really were the same. "I think we should get out of here." "I think you may be right. I don't like the idea of all that glass coming down on us." Just then, a lightning strike lit the room with a flash and a deafening blast. As Richard shielded Kahlan, turning her away from the blinding illumination, he saw the lacework of lightning arcing and crackling through the heavy metal framework that held the glass over the center of the room. Glass shattered, sending shards flying everywhere. One sliver hit the back of his shoulder; another shard stuck in his thigh. A piece nicked Kahlan's arm. Once the glass ceiling was cracked by the the lightning hitting the metal framework, the tremendous weight of wet snow brought the center of it cascading down. Lightning lanced a route through the opening toward the floor of the room. At the same time that the tremendous weight of it all came crashing down, hitting the floor hard enough to make the whole room shudder with a resounding thud, another bolt of lightning lashed in through the breach in the ceiling and made it to ground. The impact of all the wet snow and the jarring jolt of lightning sent a shock wave through the room that blew the torches out. In the sudden darkness, Richard could hear a great rending groan as stone cracked and began breaking apart. As they ducked, trying to avoid being hit by the debris flying in every direction, Richard and Kahlan both covered their ears against the deafening sound of thunder crashing and stone breaking. In the staccato flashes of lightning, Richard glanced back over his shoulder and saw the floor in the center of the room caving in. Great granite blocks under the floor groaned as they twisted apart from one another and fell inward. Grass, dirt, and a thick bed of sand poured into the expanding hole, like the sands of an hourglass falling inward. When the broken sections of glass finally stopped falling, Richard looked up to see in the flashes of lightning a jagged breach in the ceiling surrounded by twisted pieces of the heavy metal framework. Fortunately, most of the ceiling all around the room held in place. By the looks of the framework that Richard could see, the builders had overbuilt it for all but the rarest of events. |
| 998 |
Maybe longer." Kahlan glanced around at the thick gray layers of dust clinging to the walls. "A lot longer." As Richard started down the steps he carefully stepped around chunks of fallen stone and areas of sand and dirt that covered large parts of the stairs. Kahlan, a hand on his shoulder, followed him down, careful to also step around rubble. At the bottom of the long flight of stairs they reached a walkway at the outer edge of a room. The walls were made up of granite blocks, and soaring arches created a vaulted ceiling, all supporting the center portion of the Garden of Life. The dark stone, its surface dirty and decayed, looked ancient. Richard didn't think the place had seen the light of day for millennia. Rather than being flat, the center portion of the floor rose up in a dome formed by fat stone ribs filled in between with simple stone blocks. The dome forced them to use the walkway around the outer edges of the room. A lot of debris from above covered the dome, but much of it had slid down to build up in the well against the wall that was the only walk-way. Richard started around the room, climbing over the rubble. Kahlan clambered over huge stone pieces fallen from above, going around in the opposite direction. The room appeared to serve no purpose except possibly as an inspection area for the structure. There were other places in the palace that were intended only as inspection ports for the foundation, or hidden parts of the support columns, connections, and beams, so he didn't find that much of it surprising. Richard wondered why, though, if that was true, it had been closed off from the Garden of Life. The stairway above the landing where the ladder rested appeared to have been dismantled. Since that part of the garden's floor had collapsed, there was no longer any way to know if there had ever been access up into the garden. He supposed that it could have been nothing more than a construction access that had been sealed over. "Over here," Kahlan called out. "There's a spiral staircase over here in the corner that goes down to what's below." Richard held the glowing sphere out ahead of him as he wound his way down the spiral of wedge-shaped stairs. There was no railing, making the descent into the darkness treacherous, especially since a lot of the sand and dirt from the floor of the Garden of Life that had fallen into the room above them had in turn poured down the spiral stairs. Richard had to pause in places to use the side of his boot to move dirt and debris aside so that they would have a safe place to step. |
| 999 |
As they went ever lower into the blackness, the confining shaft for the spiral stairs opened up into a dark, dead still room. The light of the sphere Richard was holding cast only enough illumination into the distance to see that the simple, unadorned room was made of stone blocks. There were no doors or other openings that Richard could see. The room was empty except for what appeared to be a block of stone sitting in the middle. "What in the world could this place be?" Kahlan asked. Richard shook his head as he looked around. "I don't know. Doesn't look like much of anything. Maybe it's just an old storage room." "It doesn't make any sense that they would seal off a storage room the way this place has been sealed up." "I suppose not," Richard conceded. Kahlan was right. It didn't appear that there had ever been any convenient access to the place. As he moved into the gloomy room, proximity spheres set in wall brackets began to glow. By the time he made it around the perimeter of the room the four spheres, one on each wall, had all come to life, if weakly. Each sphere brightened as he came close and dimmed as he moved away. Even so, they cast sufficient light to banish enough of the blackness for them to see. Looking around the room for any sign of what the place might have been used for, Richard only distantly noted the nondescript monolithic block sitting in the center of the room. He thought it might be a leftover block of stone used in the construction of the palace walls. The only thing that Richard thought was odd about it was that it sat square with the room, as if it had been carefully placed. It served no structural purpose as far as he could see. Snowflakes drifted down from the stairwell and into the room to mix with the dust they had stirred up. Up above, the storm raged across the land, but the remnants of gusty wind could not make it this far down. Snowflakes floating by, catching the light of the proximity spheres, sparkled in the murky light. A quick search around the perimeter confirmed that the room had no doors. There were no other stairs, or openings of any kind. There was no way out but the spiral stairs that had brought them down into the still grave of a room. Richard wasn't sure why, but the place was making the hair on the back of his neck stand out. The still, silent room had the feel of a place deliberately built to be sealed over and forgotten. But why would anyone seal off and bury an empty room? Kahlan inched in close to him. |
| 1000 |
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. He was surprised to realize that the surface was not stone, as he had thought, but thick, heavy metal. He rubbed away at the dust and grime of ages, trying to see it better. The surface of the metal was corroded and dirty, making it look like the stone in the room, but there could be no doubt, it was metal. Beneath the filth where he wiped his hand across the surface, metal glinted in the light of the sphere. "Look at this," Richard said. Kahlan glanced back over her shoulder. "What is it?" Richard thumped his fist against it. Even though it seemed to be extraordinarily heavy, he could just barely tell from the sound that it was hollow. "This thing is made of metal. And look at this, here." He held the sphere out so she could see better as she came up next to him. There was a small slot, starting in the top and cut down into one side of the thing. Some of the curious strips of metal were stacked in the slot. Kahlan removed one of the metal strips, inspecting it. As far as Richard could tell it was devoid of any markings, the same as all the others stacked against the wall. He rubbed more of the dirt and debris off the side. "There's some kind of emblem or something on the side. Kind of hard to tell what it is." With a heavy thud that shook the ground and made both of them flinch, light shot up from the center of the top. Dirt in the space between the metal monolith and the stone floor, disturbed by the thump, lifted into the still air. |
| 1001 |
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. |
| 1002 |
Even then, when they went in to do their work officers of the First File watched them at all times. During the war, when they were under constant threat and there were dangerous objects of magic containing tremendous power locked away in the Garden of Life for safekeeping, not even the people who tended the garden had been allowed to go in to take care of the plants and trees. As a result it became for a time a wild, overgrown place that had taken on an eerie look that in a way matched the gloomy mood of everyone in the palace. After the war had ended, it had taken a lot of work to return the garden to the state of splendor it was now in. Kahlan had a feeling, though, that even such occasional tending was at an end and the Garden of Life was about to again become strictly off-limits to everyone except on Lord Rahl's instructions. Throughout history the Garden of Life had been a place where the Lord Rahl, from time to time, had unleashed some of the most powerful magic in existence. It had been a place that on occasion had been a gateway to the underworld itself. Magic was a mystery to most people and therefore greatly feared. Kahlan knew that magic could be glorious, wondrous, a magnificent affirmation of life. But Kahlan knew magic's other side, its dark and dangerous side. Most people only knew magic as a dark, mysterious danger. For the D'Haran people, the Lord Rahl was their protection against those dark dangers of magic. For their part, these soldiers were meant to be the steel against steel. They would lay down their lives in that service. But it was Richard's responsibility as the Lord Rahl to deal with any matters involving magic. It seemed that the Garden of Life had once again become the stage for dangerous magic. Nyda stood before the ranks of soldiers, her arms folded, watching Richard and Kahlan come. The Mord-Sith was in her red leather. She looked to be in a foul mood, but for a Mord-Sith that wasn't necessarily at all unusual. "What's going on?" Nyda asked. As Richard stormed past, he took her by the arm and turned her around to walk with him, but he spoke to the commander of the soldiers on his way by. "No one is to go in there. No one. Do you understand?" The commander clapped a fist to his heart in salute. "Of course, Lord Rahl." The commander immediately assigned men to guard the doors and then issued orders to the rest of them to take up stations along the hallways and intersections. The hall came alive with movement and the echoing jangle of metal as men rushed to take up their posts. |
| 1003 |
Like an otherworldly collection of spectral shapes seemingly carried on random eddies of air, they wandered in a loose clutch among the still and silent mounted bears and beasts rising up on their stands, the small forest of stone pedestals holding massive books of recorded prophecy, and the evenly spaced display cases of oddities, their glass reflecting the firelight from the massive hearth at the side of the room. Since the seven rarely used doors, the shutters on the windows down on the ground level several stories below stood open in a fearless show of invitation. Though they frequently chose to use windows, they didn't actually need the windows any more than they needed the doors. 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. |
| 1004 |
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. Hesitantly, Mohler reached out and moved an alabaster piece to another square, taking an inky black piece that occupied it off the board and setting it aside. It was a move that he had probably pondered for hours, a move that captured a valuable piece and put him into a position to threaten to win. Hannis Arc rose and, hands clasped behind his back, strode to the board. He stroked the knuckle of his first finger along his gaunt cheek to make it look as if the loss of his piece might have taken him by surprise and his next move required consideration. It did not. He advanced a black pawn toward the white side. Mohler had hoped for just that move and he was ready. Without thinking it through he immediately took the pawn, placing his alabaster rook in its place on a square that now placed his opponent in peril. |
| 1005 |
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. |
| 1006 |
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. Hannis Arc had even sent troops to support the effort, as would anyone loyal to the D'Haran Empire. He had saved himself and worked on his plans. Now that war was ended, the time to extract his revenge on the House of Rahl had at long last arrived. The new Lord Rahl was said to be widely respected, admired, and even loved by many. He was a man at the height of power, a conquering hero. Hannis Arc was pleased that the man was as powerful as he was. That would make his fall all the farther, all the harder, and therefore, Hannis Arc's rise all the more momentous, all the more satisfying. Still, Hannis Arc knew that simply killing a man like that would accomplish nothing except to make him a martyr. Making Richard Rahl a martyr would not bring Hannis Arc the rule of the D'Haran Empire. He knew that he couldn't merely kill a popular Lord Rahl and expect to move into the People's Palace and rule the D'Haran Empire. It would not be that simple. After all, as a ruler of a distant province Hannis Arc was unknown to most people. No one would respect his rule. Not yet, anyway. Hannis Arc first needed people to stop believing in Lord Rahl, in the man, in his ability to protect them from their rightful fears. Once his people lost their respect and rejected him, Richard Rahl's fall from power would be swift. Only then, in that moment of chaos and panic, would D'Hara be ready to cast off the shackles of the House of Rahl and at last embrace someone who would speak to their fears about the future. |
| 1007 |
While Darken Rahl had been preoccupied with his obsession for the boxes of Orden, and Richard Rahl had fought the long war for the D'Haran Empire, Hannis Arc had been working on the means to accomplish his lifelong goal of removing the House of Rahl from power and taking its place himself. His patience had at last been rewarded. Now that goal was within his grasp. The means were at hand. "Rest assured, Mohler, I will rule D'Hara," he said softly. "That day will come sooner than we have ever before dared hope. The great gears of change have been set in motion. The pieces are finally moving into place, all to my advantage. There will be no stopping me, now. It will soon be check-mate for the House of Rahl." "Prophecy is on your side," Mohler said. "Surely, Bishop, the Creator is no less on your side. I have always believed that He has protected you since that awful day when your parents were murdered because He has great things planned for you. He has helped you rise up and overcome all the obstacles in your path. The Creator will see this, too, finally come to pass." "He reveals to us through prophecy that it is so." "I look forward, then, to a new awakening out of darkness, as prophecy itself has foretold." Little did the man know that there had already been an awakening out of darkness. Little did the man know that the seven familiars huddled together in the peak of the ceiling, watching, listening. Hannis Arc knew that they would report every word back to the Hedge Maid. "Soon, Bishop, you will rule D'Hara. You will rule the empire." Mohler did not look up to meet the steady gaze of the blue-eyed woman watching him as he pulled open the door. Few people had the courage to meet her gaze. Hannis Arc returned to his desk as the old scribe pulled the heavy iron-bound oak door closed on his way out. As he scooped his dark robes under his legs to sit at the desk in his massive leather chair, he watched from the corner of his eye as the seven glided in closer. Their flowing robes radiated a supple, bluish blush with a soft, ethereal glimmer to it. 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. |
| 1008 |
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. |
| 1009 |
"No, I have a better idea." He gestured with it. "Place it in that display case, there, for visitors to see." The woman in red leather flashed a grim smile. "Of course, Lord Arc." Richard yawned. He looked up from the complexities of translating the symbolic elements he was working on to see Zedd coming back into the library. Through the high windows above, the first blush of dawn revealed a clear sky. The strange spring storm had broken, but it seemed that it had merely been the harbinger of bigger problems. It was clear to Richard that there was trouble about, but what ever the core of the trouble might be, it was hidden from him. He was getting that familiar, uneasy feeling that he was in the dark about what was really going on. All of it, from the boy down in the market to the storm, to the strange deaths, to the variety of strange prophecies, to the machine buried for so long that had suddenly come to life, was too much to be a coincidence. Things that seemed to be a coincidence always made him edgy. He was worried the most about the machine they had discovered, worried that it was somehow at the heart of it all. The translations of the metal strips were only confirming his suspicions. Since he had discovered that everything in the book was backward, those translations, while tedious, had been working smoothly. The more he learned from those translations, the more his concern grew. As his grandfather crossed the library, Richard noticed that Zedd didn't have the usual spring in his step. He thought at that moment that Zedd looked like nothing so much as an old man, a tired old man. Richard could read the creases in Zedd's face and tell that he, too, was concerned about what kind of trouble they might have on their hands. Zedd's typical exuberant, sometimes childlike way of looking at the world was nowhere in evidence. That, more than any words, framed for Richard the seriousness of the situation. That, and the translations from the strips. Richard stuck his hand in the book to stop the pages from turning over when out of the corner of his eye he spotted the part he was looking for. "There's the first one," he told Berdine. He tapped an element on the page. "That's the one. What's the inversion of it?" Berdine leaned in, looking, reading the High D'Haran explanation silently. "It has to do with falling." Richard had already begun to grasp the language of Creation and he knew what many of the symbols meant. He had only been looking to confirm his worst fears. |
| 1010 |
Whenever there was even a hint of trouble, all of the Mord-Sith did what ever they could to stay as close as possible to him. Berdine had lost her bubbly demeanor, turning as implacable as any of the Mord-Sith when there was a threat. From time to time as she ran, she spun her Agiel up into her fist, as if to reassure herself that it was there at the ready. Down the hallway beyond the smoke, Richard spotted men of the First File running in from the other direction. Several of them had buckets. Water slopped out as they ran, splashing across the wood floor. Several women, awakened at the early hour by the commotion, had come out of their rooms to stand in their doorways, clutching nightgowns at their throats in fright as they watched soldiers racing past. "What is it?" Nathan asked as he rounded the corner and caught up. Zedd was right on his heels. Richard pointed. "It's Lauretta's place. It's on fire." Lauretta stumbled to a halt, gasping for breath. Her short, rapid gait had left her face bright red and her hair in disarray. "My room!" She swallowed, trying to get enough air. She pressed her hands to the sides of her head. "My prophecies!" The soldiers with the buckets kicked open the door. Black smoke laced with crackling sparks and burning pieces of paper rolled out into the hall and along the ceiling. Flags of flame unfurled out along the ceiling of the hallway. The soldiers heaved water in through the open doorway. From the amount of smoke and the heat from the flames, Richard didn't think their buckets of water were going to be anywhere near enough. Lauretta screamed when she saw the soldiers throwing water into her room. She pushed past Zedd and Nathan. "No! You'll ruin my prophecies!" Richard knew that it was too late to worry about that. Besides, water was not the real threat to her prophecies. He caught Lauretta's arm and dragged her to a halt. He knew that if left to her own devices she would run into the burning room to try to save her precious prophecies. As thick as the smoke was, and as heavily as she was breathing, she would have been overcome in mere seconds. The heat, even at a distance, was withering. Richard was relieved that the palace was made mostly of stone. Still, parts of it, like the floors under them and beams above, were wood. They needed to put out the fire as quickly as possible. More soldiers raced up with yet more buckets of water. They ran in toward the door, turned their faces away from the heat, and heaved the water in. |
| 1011 |
Angry, hot flames licked out through the open door in defiance of the water. As Richard had suspected, such an effort was hopelessly in effective. Zedd knew it, too. He rushed past Richard and down the hall, ducking under the lowering black smoke hugging the ceiling to make his way toward the doorway into the inferno. Urging soldiers back out of the way with one arm, he cast the other out toward the open door as yet more smoke and flames poured out. Richard could see the air waver before Zedd's hand, forcing the smoke back into the room, but more flames boiled out of the doorway, as if to chase the wizard away. The heat drove Zedd back. "Bags! My gift is too weak in this place." Nathan caught up with Zedd and lifted his palms out toward the smoke-filled doorway, adding his gift to the effort. He, too, caused the air to waver, but it also slowed the amount of smoke as the flames withdrew back into the room. At last the smoke coming out the doorway was choked off entirely, confining it to the room inside, leaving the hallway in a dark and pungent haze. Nathan was a Rahl. His gift wasn't hampered by the palace's spell. He stepped in closer, holding the flats of his hands out toward the doorway again. As Richard restrained Lauretta, he watched Nathan gradually circle his palms, sealing off the room, suffocating the fire at its source. After a few tense moments, the fire died out and the prophet spun a web that cooled the remains of Lauretta's home. As Nathan entered the room, checking that it was safe, Richard let go of Lauretta, allowing her to follow. Weeping in misery, she rushed into the room behind Nathan. She lifted her arms in distress. "My prophecies! Dear Creator! My prophecies are ruined!" Richard could see that she was right. There looked to be some stacks in the farthest reaches that might not have been totally destroyed, but the blackened, wet mess covering the floor was all that was left of most of them. Lauretta fell to her knees, scooping up handfuls of the useless, wet ash. "They're ruined," she wept. Richard laid a hand on her shoulder. "You can write more, Lauretta. You can use the library as a place to write more." She nodded absently. He wondered if she even heard him. Out in the hall, people had gathered to see what was happening. Many of them covered their noses against the stench left from the fire. Richard saw a number of representatives he recognized at the back of the crowd. They looked grim. The fire was obviously confirmation of the prophecy they had all heard that morning. |
| 1012 |
He worried that he had miscalculated. But then she began to give in to the kiss and melt easily into his arms. He told himself that he could do far worse than this woman. She was older, but not much. In fact, he was finding her more attractive, more appealing, with every heavy breath they shared. It was clear that in this moment of vulnerability she was letting her passion take charge. He eased her back onto the couch. She went willingly, surrendering to him, to his hands exploring her, his hands drawing her dress off her shoulders. Kahlan woke with a start when she heard the howls. With a gasp, she sat bolt upright in her bedroll, her heart hammering so hard she could hear the blood whooshing in her ears. She frantically looked around, expecting fangs to rip into her at any instant. She snatched for her knife. The knife wasn't there. She scanned the trees, trying to see the source of the bloodcurdling howls. She saw no beasts, no fangs. She realized that she wasn't out in the woods at all. She was inside. She had been catching a little sleep at the edge of the small indoor forest. 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. |
| 1013 |
The palace was a virtual city atop the plateau and was certainly large enough to accommodate them. Except, of course, for all the princes. At least for the time being, every prince had been sent home. People naturally wanted an explanation. Richard wouldn't give them one. To do so, he would have had to reveal the last prophecy from the machine, and he didn't want to do that. He didn't want to lie, either, but he had to tell them something. So he had simply told them part of the truth, that word of a threat had been brought to his attention. There had been three princes at the palace. One was an important man who had come representing his father, the king of Nicobarese. The other two princes were less important, but Richard had taken no chances. He had sent each prince home guarded by a sizable force of men led by competent officers who had been handpicked by General Meiffert. That left no princes at the People's Palace, even if it left some of the representatives confused and curious, and a few resentful of the secrecy. It couldn't be helped. The consequences of the last omen given by the machine were not something Richard wanted to risk. The resulting questions at times tried Richard and Kahlan's patience, but they had dealt with it as best they could and everything had eventually quieted down as people moved on to other issues of more immediate concern to them. When Kahlan reached the bottom of the ladder leading down below the Garden of Life she had to hurry to keep up with Nathan. He had long legs and he wasn't slowing to wait for her. The bright moonlight coming through the hole in the garden floor lit the dome in the room directly under it, the room over the tomb where the machine rested. Kahlan hadn't brought a torch, so she was thankful for the moonlight as she scrambled over large blocks of stone that had once been the supporting structure for the floor of the garden and had not yet been removed. Richard, keeping watch over the machine in case it awakened again, had heard them coming and was at the bottom of the spiral stairs, waiting. Nicci joined him to see what was so urgent. Kahlan saw Richard use two fingers of his left hand to lift the sword at his hip a few inches and then let it drop back, checking that it was clear in its scabbard. It was an old habit that had always served him well. "What is it?" he asked when the prophet reached the bottom of the spiral stairs. "You know that last prophecy, the omen that the machine spit out after the one saying 'Pawn takes queen'?" Richard nodded. |
| 1014 |
The Sword of Truth had been made thousands of years before and invested with great power. There was nothing it couldn't cut through in the hands of the Seeker, except one thing: those he knew to be innocent. With an earsplitting crash the blade smashed through the heavy doors. Sharp wooden fragments sailed through the hallway, ricocheting off the walls. Everyone nearby ducked away, covering their faces with an arm. Only the briefest pause later, a second swing shattered another ragged swath down through the doors, sending huge splinters flying through the hall and skittering across the carpets. Kahlan could see that a heavy beam inside that had barred the doors had been shattered by the sword. Richard threw a powerful kick into the center of the two broken doors. They both ripped from their hinges and toppled into the room. As the heavy doors crashed to the ground and clouds of dust and debris billowed up, Richard dove through into the dark room. 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. |
| 1015 |
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. Richard put an arm around the man's shoulders and tried to gently pull him back and away from the sight. King Philippe jerked away and turned in fury toward Richard. "This is your fault!" Nathan lifted a hand in warning. "It was no such thing." The king ignored him. He brought his sword up, pointing it at Richard's face. "You could have prevented this!" Richard, his own sword still in his fist, its rage still in his eyes, slowly brought his blade up and used it to turn the point of King Philippe's sword aside. |
| 1016 |
"I'll personally see to having the room carefully checked." "I have to go look into something," Richard said. "Tell the other representatives that for now we have reason to believe that the queen was killed by animals — most likely wolves or dogs. Have them keep their exterior doors closed and locked. You should also station men outside to watch for anything suspicious. If you see anything on four legs running loose, kill it and inspect the contents of its stomach." When the general clapped a fist to his heart, Richard started off at a trot. Momentarily surprised, Kahlan and the others quickly followed behind as he ran off down the corridor. Guards backed out of the way when they saw him coming. When they reached the people being kept back, the guards moved everyone out of the way so Richard and the rest of them could get through. Representatives snatched at his sleeve, wanting to know what had happened and if there was danger about. Richard told them that there was, and that the soldiers would see to it, but he didn't slow to explain or to discuss it. Once finally away from the guest quarters, they went through doors that were always guarded, and into the private sections of the palace, the sections where the public wasn't allowed. It was a relief to be away from people, to be away from their questions, from the accusations in their eyes. The small group took a shortcut through rooms that were lit only by a few lamps, and small libraries where the only light came from open doors at either end, or from low fires in a hearth. "Where are we going?" Kahlan asked as she trotted along beside Richard once they were out into a wider corridor. "To the last bedroom we stayed in." Kahlan thought about it for a moment as she listened to their footfalls echoing back from the distance. "You mean the bedroom where we ... saw something?" "That's right." Before long they reached a familiar hallway. The walls were paneled and at intervals had pedestals with crystal vases holding cut tulips. Partway down the hall was the bedroom Kahlan had found for them, the last bedroom they had stayed in before they had moved to the Garden of Life to sleep, not long after the woman who had tried to kill Kahlan predicted that she would be taken by the same thing as would have eaten her children. Dark things, the woman had said. "Dark things stalking you, running you down. You won't be able to escape them." When they reached the doorway to the bedroom, Richard kicked back the carpeting. There, hidden under the carpet, scratched into the polished marble floor, was another symbol. |
| 1017 |
It looked to Kahlan like the last one, the one stained with Catherine's and her unborn child's blood. "It says the same thing," Richard said as he stared down at the ancient design scratched into the floor. "'Watch them.'" "This was the last place where we felt someone watching us," Kahlan said. "I wonder if Catherine felt someone watching her." "What I want to know is who put this here, and how is it that they weren't seen." Richard stood alone, hands clasped behind his back, staring at the machine, trying to work out what could be going on. He had lain down with Kahlan for a long time up in the Garden of Life, holding her until her tears had ended, waiting until the tension had gone out of her body and her breathing had slowed. When she had finally fallen into a fitful sleep, he had come alone down to the room where the machine had been buried and forgotten for uncounted centuries. He still didn't know who had created the thing, or why. It would seem that it had been created to give prophecy. An omen machine, the king had called it. Somehow, as inconceivable as that was, it still sounded too simple. The book, after all, called the machine Regula, and that meant so much more. But the book Regula down in the library was merely a translation of the symbols, of the language of Creation, that the machine used to convey its predictions. The book only helped them to understand the omens that the Regula machine issued. It did not explain why it called the machine Regula. "Regula" meant to regulate with sovereign authority. What that had to do with omens Richard couldn't imagine. He supposed that in a way, through its prophecies, the machine actually was controlling what was happening. Or someone else was, and making them look like prophecies coming from the machine. It also seemed that the prophecies issued by the machine were not enough. Those same prophecies also came to light through various people in the palace, as if to insure that the messages could not be kept secret. It could be, he imagined, that the machine was very much regulating — controlling — what was going on through its recent prophecies, so in that way the name Regula fit, although that seemed a stretch. It seemed to Richard far more likely that the answers to the machine's true purpose were in the part of the book that was missing, the part hidden away in the Temple of the Winds. What ever was in that part of the book had to be important, or else dangerous, to warrant being hidden away in the Temple of the Winds. |
| 1018 |
Richard didn't relish the idea of again setting foot in that place. It would be far from simple and could easily create more problems than it solved. He tried to push the troubling thoughts aside. He wanted to be up in the Garden of Life with Kahlan, to be in her arms, to have her tell him that everything would be all right ... to tell him again that it wasn't his fault. He knew that it wasn't, but that still didn't make him feel any better. It couldn't undo what had happened. He had to find out what was going on and put a stop to it. He knew that the representatives would be in an uproar, not only over the murder of a queen while she was a guest of the palace, but even more so over King Philippe denouncing Richard as the ruler of the D'Haran Empire. It was a declaration driven by raw emotion, but even so, Richard knew that there were a number of people who would side with King Philippe and follow his lead. Richard wasn't sure what he could do about it, but at the moment, he had bigger worries. While the king and others found it convenient to blame Richard — and Richard blamed himself for failing to link the prophecy to an unborn prince — that didn't get to the heart of what was going on. He needed to figure out what had really happened and why. Something, or someone, had been in that room and had killed Queen Catherine. He was convinced that someone was behind it, that it was deliberate. After all, someone had set about watching the queen. Someone had scratched that symbol in the floor outside her room. Someone was watching and when she had been alone they had struck. At least, that was the way it seemed to him. He had to admit that as incriminating as the symbol was, the murder might not actually be connected to it. He couldn't let himself become locked into only one possibility. He was even more puzzled as to how someone could have gotten into the Lord Rahl's quarters, past all the guards, and then, unseen, scratch that same symbol in the floor outside their bedroom door. As much as he wanted to be with Kahlan, he needed to think things through. More than that, though, he needed to be alone. Somehow, it seemed certain to him that the machine, a machine that could issue omens, had to be at the heart of the the darkness that had settled over the palace. Richard remembered what the sick boy down in the market, the boy who had scratched Richard and Kahlan, had said. He'd said there was darkness in the palace. Darkness seeking darkness. Richard no longer doubted that there was darkness in the palace. |
| 1019 |
It had descended on them all. He reached out and placed a hand on the machine. "What are you?" he whispered, wondering out loud to himself. "Why are you doing this?" As if in response, a low rumble came from the machine as the gears began turning against one another. It wasn't like in the past, though. In the past it had always started with a jolt that shook the ground. This time it began softly, the shafts and gears slowly beginning to move, to gather momentum. In the past it had always been a sudden, thunderous initiation of movement. It had always started at full speed. This time, it was very different. It was a quiet beginning that was building toward that eventual mechanical mayhem. Richard leaned over, looking into the slit of a window. He saw the light inside gradually intensify as the slowly turning gears picked up speed with the machine's awakening. The same symbol projected up onto the ceiling as in the past, though this time instead of igniting at full intensity, it gradually grew in strength. Before long, though, the inner workings of the machine were in full motion. The ground around it rumbled. The light burning up from deep inside steadily grew brighter. The symbol on the ceiling rotating above his head glowed. A latch on a rotating wheel popped up beneath the stack of strips on the other side of the machine and pushed a strip partway out from under the stack. Pincers then plucked the blank metal strip from the bottom of the stack. As the strip was pulled onward through the interior mechanism, the light from below intensified again, narrowing and closing down into a beam that burned lines and symbols into the underside of the strip. As the light inscribed the underneath side of the strip, it caused hot spots to glow through onto the top of the metal. After passing over the beam of light, the strip moved along the same as he had seen others move through the machine in the past to finally make it all the way across and drop into the slot near the small window. Richard licked his fingers and plucked the strip from the slot where it rested. He tossed it onto the top of the machine to cool. He blinked in surprise when he realized that the strip had not been hot at all. He reached out and touched it, testing. It was cool to the touch. Frowning, he pulled it close. There were symbols burned into the metal as before, but for some reason this time the process hadn't left it hot. He couldn't imagine why not. Richard turned the strip around so he could read it. |
| 1020 |
He bent closer to the light of a proximity sphere and deciphered the unique collection of elements assembled into a single emblem that made a phrase in the language of Creation. I have had dreams. Richard stood frozen, staring at it. He thought that he must have read it wrong. He rotated the metal strip around, looking at each element in the circle, as he worked out the translation again to make sure he had it right and then spoke it aloud. "I have had dreams." He took a step back from the machine. It had always given a warning in the past, an omen, some kind of prophecy. This didn't make any sense, and it didn't sound at all like prophecy. It sounded as if the machine had ... said something about itself. As he stood staring, Regula paused momentarily as shafts disengaged and gears slowed; then the gears interlocked and picked up speed again. The machine drew another strip from the stack on the other side and pulled it through the inner mechanism, in the process passing it over the focused beam of light to engrave a new message on the second strip. When it dropped into the tray, Richard stood looking at it for a long time before he finally pulled it out. The second strip was as cool to the touch as the first had been. He held it up in the light, looking at the unique organization of symbols that made up the two emblems burned into the metal. Hardly able to believe what he was seeing, he read it aloud. "Why have I had dreams?" The machine seemed to be asking him a question. If it was, he had no idea how to answer it. Richard remembered then having heard before what was now written in the language of Creation on both strips. It had been the boy down in the market, Henrik, who had said "I have had dreams." Richard and Kahlan hadn't been able to understand why he'd said it. They had thought he was sick and delirious. He had then asked "Why have I had dreams?" Now the machine had just asked the very same thing. The boy hadn't been delirious. It had been the machine speaking through him. The boy had also asked if the sky was still blue. And it had asked why they had all left it alone. Only it had said "me" — why had they left "me" all alone in the cold and dark. It had said it was alone, so alone. The machine was asking why it had been buried alive. It had also said He will find me, I know he will. Richard wondered if that was a prophecy ... an omen. Or was the machine expressing a fear? Henrik lifted his head from gulping water out of the brook to look back through the trees into the deep shadows. |
| 1021 |
He could hear the hounds coming. They crashed through brush, snarling and barking as they came. With the back of his fist, Henrik wiped fresh tears of terror from his cheeks. The hounds were going to catch him, he knew they were. They wouldn't stop until they had him. Ever since that day at the People's Palace, when they had showed up outside the tent, sniffing and growling, they kept coming for him. His only chance was to keep running. He stuck his foot into the stirrup and hooked his wrist over the horn of the saddle to help pull himself back up onto the horse's back. 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. |
| 1022 |
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. 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. |
| 1023 |
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. |
| 1024 |
Here and there cedars grew on patches of slightly higher ground, but the broad-bottomed trees were the only ones standing in the stagnant stretches of foul-smelling water. Their gnarled branches, extending outward not far above the water, held veils of moss. In places the moss dragged in the water. In other places, twisting vines hung down all the way to the water from somewhere in the canopy above, providing support for smaller vines with deep violet flowers. Lizards darted up the wispy trailers of plants as he came close. Snakes, lounging over branches, tongues flicking the air, watched him pass. Things under the water swam lazily away, leaving a wake of quiet ripples that lapped at the soggy trail. The deeper into the wooded bog he went, the thicker the tangle of shoots and vines grew as they closed in from the sides, making the way in a tunnel through the snarl of woody growth. Out beyond, unseen birds let out sharp calls that echoed across the still stretches of water. Behind, the hounds sounded like they were in a rabid rage to get to him. He paused in the dark tunnel of dense woods, uncertain if he dared go on. Henrik knew where he was. Before him, the tangle of growth and trailers of vine marked the outer fringe of Kharga Trace. He had heard from his mother that a person had to have a powerful need to go into this place, because not many ever came out again. He and his mother had been two of the lucky ones who had made it back out, making it seem all the more foolish to tempt fate twice. His heart pounding, his breath coming in rapid pulls, he stared ahead with wide eyes. He knew what was waiting for him. Jit, the Hedge Maid, was waiting for him. There was only one thing worse than facing the Hedge Maid again: the certainty of being torn apart and eaten alive by the pack of dogs chasing him. He could hear them getting closer. He had no choice. He plunged ahead. After a frightening race along the trail as it tunneled in places through the dense growth, the landscape opened somewhat as he reached some of the more open stretches of water. The trail, never more than inches above the muddy water, was gradually taken over by tangled roots, sticks, vines, and branches all woven together into a mat that made a walkway of sorts. Without it, the solid ground of the trail in places would simply have vanished beneath stretches of duckweed. As it was, the pathway of sticks and vines barely cleared the surface of the dark brown water. Henrik worried about what would happen should he slip off the trail of tangled shoots and branches. |
| 1025 |
He worried about what waited in the water for the unwary, or the careless. He was so tired, so afraid, that only raw fear kept his feet moving. He wished he could be back, safe, with his mother. But he couldn't stop or the hounds would get him. While the stick and vine walkway was in places wide enough for several people to walk abreast, much of it was only wide enough for one person. In those narrow places where it became a bridge over stretches of open water, there were sometimes handholds or even rails made of crooked branches, lashed by thin vines to supports sticking up out of the tangle of wood underfoot. The whole thing creaked and moved as he made his way farther out onto it, as if it were a partially submerged monster displeased to have someone walking on its back. Henrik couldn't tell for sure how far the hounds were behind him because sound carried so well across water. He wondered if the dogs would have a hard time of trying to walk on the mat of tangled vines and branches that made up the bridge through the watery world. 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. |
| 1026 |
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. 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. |
| 1027 |
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. |
| 1028 |
The entire structure moved and creaked as he made his way through the maze, his route lit by candles, as if to welcome visitors. It felt like he was walking into a giant, tubular spiderweb, something like those he'd seen at the base of logs that were meant to funnel prey inward to their death. He knew, though, that it was worse than that. This was the lair of the Hedge Maid. Candles by the hundreds if not thousands lit the place, and yet the darkness they tried to hold back felt oppressive. Sounds from out in the swamp were so muted that they could barely be heard through the thick thatch all around, but the wet, fetid smell of rot had no difficulty stealing in with the muggy air. The candles at least helped mask the smell somewhat. As he moved deeper into the Hedge Maid's inner sanctuary, several more familiars drifted in through the walls and gathered around to escort him where he needed to go. More likely, they were making certain that he didn't turn back. Whenever he glanced up at them, they stared at him with the most sickly yellow eyes and he would immediately look away. Each of the seven, when seen up close, was as ugly as death itself. As they made their way down a broader corridor, there were even more candles placed all along the twig walls, from the curving edge of the floor up the rounded walls higher than he was tall. The hall they were in, lit by the golden glow of all the candles, led them abruptly into a murky room with hardly any candles. 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. |
| 1029 |
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. Through that slit behind the cross-stitched leather thong, Jit let out an undulating squealing sound that didn't sound human. |
| 1030 |
It ran goose bumps up Henrik's arms. From having been here before, he knew that it was her language, her way of talking. While he didn't have the slightest idea what the sound meant, he did know that she was directing it at him. One of the familiars, missing a hand, he noticed, leaned toward him. "Jit says that she is pleased to see you again, boy." Henrik swallowed. He couldn't bring himself to say he was pleased to see her again as well. Jit, her head bobbing, let out a low-pitched grating screech, punctuated with a few clicks of her tongue against the top of her mouth. "Jit wants to know if you brought it," the familiar said. Henrik's mouth felt stuck closed. He couldn't make himself speak. Fearing what she would do if he didn't somehow answer, he held out his fisted hands. He didn't think that, after all this time, he could open them if he tried. The Hedge Maid let out a soft raspy sound — half pule, half screech. "Come closer," the familiar said. "Jit says to come closer so that she may see for herself." Somewhere behind, there was a sound that made all the familiars pause and turn to look. The Hedge Maid's black eyes turned up to focus into the distance behind him. Henrik looked back over his shoulder to see what had caught their attention. In the distance, there was some kind of disturbance. Something was making its way up the hall that led into the chambers. Candle flames wavered, their light flickering, and then they went out. What ever it was brought darkness with it. As it passed, the candles nearby all around it went dark. When it was beyond them, the extinguished flames slowly returned to life until they were once more fully lit. It made it seem as if darkness itself were stalking through the tunnel of a hall, coming for them all. As it came closer, pulling that darkness with it, extinguishing candles all around as it passed, the familiars cowered back behind Jit. Henrik could see the one without a hand trembling slightly. Jit let out a long, low squeal and a few clicks. Two of the familiars gathered in close about her, leaning in, whispering. They nodded to more clicks and soft, grating sounds from deep in the Hedge Maid's throat. When the form finally swept into the room, bringing darkness with it, Henrik saw at last that it was a man. The man paused before Jit, not far from Henrik. The candles' flames in the hall behind him and those nearby in the room slowly came back to life, showing at last the man before them. When he finally got a good look at the man, Henrik froze stiff, unable to draw a breath. |
| 1031 |
The man glanced down at the warm, wet place growing on the front of Henrik's pants and smiled to himself. "This is the boy?" he asked in a deep, iron-hard voice that made Henrik have to remind himself to blink and caused the seven familiars to drift back up ever so slightly more behind Jit, as if they weren't aware that his voice alone had bulled them back. The Hedge Maid let out a short, grating, clicking sound. "Yes, this is him, Bishop Arc," the handless familiar said for her mistress after watching her speak in the strange voice. Bishop Arc glared at Jit for a moment. His gaze lowered deliberately to take in her mouth sewn closed; then he again turned his terrible eyes on Henrik. The whites of the man's eyes were not white. Not at all. They had been tattooed a bright blood red. The dark iris and pupil in the field of blood red made his eyes seem as if they were looking out from some other world, a world of fire and flame — or perhaps from the underworld itself. 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. |
| 1032 |
"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. "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. |
| 1033 |
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. 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. |
| 1034 |
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. "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. |
| 1035 |
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. "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. |
| 1036 |
Instead of going across the sky as before, though, the clouds started to move around in a circle overhead. They stretched into long spiral shapes as they rotated over the clearing, mirroring the glowing circular symbol on the ground. Small flickers of orange light intermittently illuminated the clouds from inside. At the same time, the six familiars seemed to have been lulled into a trance of some sort by the murmurs from the Hedge Maid. All of them began circling the Hedge Maid along with the clouds above. Their feet weren't touching the ground as they floated around Jit in a circle, gradually picking up speed. The clouds, too, picked up speed, going faster all the time, the orange and yellow light flickering like the light flashing in the symbols on the ground. The Hedge Maid's low, steady rhythm of sounds rose in pitch. As the familiars and the clouds moved faster, the sound Jit made became a painful, high-pitched squeal. It kept getting louder and louder, higher and higher. Henrik had to cover his ears against the pain of the sound. Suddenly, the six forms seemed to break apart. Henrik stared with wide eyes as hideous creatures with long bony arms and legs began to pull themselves out of the glowing forms of the familiars. Their backs were humped, their flesh blotchy and wet. They had no hair. Their knobby heads had angry, bulging eyes and snarling mouths that showed wicked fangs. Unlike the familiars from which they had emerged, these things did not glow. Flickers of light from the clouds above and the circular designs below reflected off their glistening, mottled flesh. Henrik saw then the same sorts of creatures erupting from the mounds where the stones were. Each struggled and strained to pull itself up out of the dirt. Yet more of them broke through the surface of the mounds, pulling themselves up out of the ground, joining into the growing mass of those that were circling the Hedge Maid, dancing around her like crazed animals. But these were no animals. Though they appeared animate, there were not living things. Henrik thought they looked like the dead rising up from the ground, dancing with flailing arms and legs to the tune the Hedge Maid played. He glanced back at the low, dark structure of woven sticks and branches. He realized that these mounds must be the graves of the people encased in the walls who died. After they had served what ever purpose the Hedge Maid needed them for, they were buried out here, and there they waited until called upon to serve her again. |
| 1037 |
Henrik imagined that the Hedge Maid must be a creature born in the underworld, the spawn of the Keeper himself. In the center of the clearing the grotesque forms had gathered by the dozens, with more coming in out of the darkness of the surrounding swamp all the time to join with the others, circling ever faster. 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. |
| 1038 |
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. 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. |
| 1039 |
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. There was nothing chasing her, nothing coming after her. It was quiet. She had been having a nightmare. In the dream something had been chasing her, something dark and profoundly dangerous, something terrifying. It had been relentless and had been getting closer all the time. |
| 1040 |
She had been running, trying to get away. But she hadn't been able to make her legs move fast enough. It had all seemed so real. But she was awake, at last. She wasn't dreaming anymore. She had escaped the nightmare and in so doing escaped what was after her. She told herself to let it go, to stop focusing on the dream. It was only a dream. She was awake now. She was safe. But she quickly found that being awake was no salvation. While she had awakened and escaped what had been after her in the dream, in being awake she had not escaped the pain. Her head hurt so much she thought she might pass out. She pressed her fingers to her temples only to have to hug her arms across her abdomen, pressing them against the twisting ache in her middle. As the spike of pain drove through her head, a hot wave of nausea welled up through her. She fought the building urge to throw up. The throbbing pain in her head overwhelmed her, making her all the more dizzy and sick. With all her might, she fought back the expanding waves of nausea. The nausea won out. As her insides began to convulse, Kahlan urgently struggled out of the tangled blanket and crawled on her hands and knees into the grass and away from where she'd been sleeping. She did her best to resist the urge to throw up, but her body would not obey her will and she began heaving so hard that it felt like her stomach was trying to turn inside out. Undulating waves of sickness swept through her again and again in rhythm with the pounding pain in her head, making her vomit each time. Kahlan realized that there was a hand on her back and another hand holding her long hair back out of the way. She gasped for breath between the spasms. She was sure that she had to be throwing up blood. The excruciating pain seemed unendurable each time her muscles convulsed. It felt like her insides were ripping. The waves of heaving finally began to subside. As she spit out the bitter bile, it was a relief to at least see that there was no blood. "Mother Confessor, are you all right?" It was Cara. It felt good to have someone there. It was comforting not to be alone. "I don't know," she managed. Suddenly, Richard was there as well. "What's wrong?" Rolling trembles racked her whole body. Between that and panting for air, "Sick" was all she could manage to get out. "I heard you scream from all the way down in the room with the machine," Richard said as he placed a reassuring hand on her back. She ripped off a thick fistful of grass and wiped her mouth with it, threw it down and then did it again with a clean handful. |
| 1041 |
Kahlan shivered in pain again. A wave of icy cold swept over her. The pain in her head bore down on her with crushing weight. And then, as Richard leaned over and held her close against him, she began to feel the sweet softness of his gift seeping into her. Warm relief flooded through her cold, stiff muscles. He had used his gift to heal her in the past, so she recognized the feeling of being touched by his magic. That was what he was doing now — healing her with his magic. Richard's gift worked in a unique way, and usually only ignited within him if there was great need. His empathy for her, his love for her, his need for her to be safe, had brought it forth now to heal her. Time became meaningless in his warm embrace, in the flow of magic coursing into her. She felt his comforting, reassuring, loving presence in every fiber of her being. But as much as she wanted his help, she also didn't want to allow him to do it. She knew that in the process of healing he would have to take on her pain. He first had to lift her agony away and take it into himself, so that his gift could then flow into her to heal what was wrong. Kahlan didn't want Richard to take in this pain. As much as she wanted to be rid of the hurt, she didn't want him to suffer it. Fighting him, though, proved useless. The strength of his gift overwhelmed her. She had no choice but to let go of her resistance. The feeling was like letting herself fall backward into an unknown, bottomless abyss. It was frightening, and at the same time a relief, a relief in the sense of letting go, of letting someone else fight for her, fight against the pain on her behalf, of being able to stand aside as the battle raged. She didn't know how long she had been lost in that distant place of pain with Richard there with her, joined with her, but she did know that when she opened her eyes and the world came back in around her, she was still in his arms. Despite what she expected, the pain was still there. It was just as strong, just as oppressive as before. She recognized that same pain in Richard's eyes as well. He had taken it into himself, but oddly enough, it had not at the same time drawn it away from her. The effort had not healed her. She thought that maybe she'd done something wrong. Maybe she hadn't tried hard enough. Or, more accurately, maybe she had been too fearful of letting Richard take the pain into himself and so she hadn't done enough to let go so he could help her. Cara leaned in over Richard. "Sorry it took me so long to find Zedd. |
| 1042 |
He had hopes that this place would be safe, since it was not one of the bedchambers belonging to the Lord Rahl. In those bedrooms something had been watching them. Of course, he had later discovered that there were symbols scratched in the floors outside those rooms, but still, even without the symbols, he didn't trust the official bedrooms for the Lord Rahl. They seemed too easy a target for forces he didn't yet understand. Until he knew how those symbols got scratched on floors in well-guarded halls, as well as what their ultimate purpose was, he didn't trust that those rooms would be safe. This room was not one of the Lord Rahl's bedrooms, but instead it was a secluded guest bedroom. The wing had no guests at the moment, so it wouldn't have anyone near, and no one would really know that they were there. It was several floors above ground level, so no one could come in from outside. It wasn't big, but Richard didn't care about that. He simply wanted a safe place to sleep. Before he could enter the room, Cara pushed in ahead of him. Benjamin already had men of the First File stationed at every intersection of halls throughout the whole wing of the palace. Rikka stood not far down the hallway to one side, Berdine on the other. Both were in their red leather. While he welcomed the guards outside the room, he didn't really put too much faith in them stopping what really mattered to him. What had been in their room before, watching them, had without any trouble slipped past guards. This time, Richard intended to have a little surprise if the mysterious watchers again came looking in. With an arm around Kahlan's waist, Richard led her into the room. He set the load of their packs and other gear down to the side. Cara came back from her inspection and gave him a nod to indicate that she didn't see anything that caused her any concern in the room. "What do you think?" he asked Kahlan. Richard saw that her gaze took in only the bed. "Looks good to me." He was glad that she looked longingly at the bed. He was worried about her and wanted her to be able to get some sleep. Cara's face, after surveying Kahlan's, clearly reflected her concern as well. Zedd gave Kahlan a gentle pat on the back as he came into the room behind them. "You get settled in, dear one. I'll get a poultice prepared and be back as soon as I can to put it on your arm. Then you need to get some sleep. That will help more than anything." Kahlan nodded. Her face was ashen. By the look in her green eyes alone Richard knew how much pain she was in. |
| 1043 |
He also knew that she didn't want to worry him, so she wouldn't admit the full extent of how she really felt. But he could see it clearly enough in her eyes. Because they had been sleeping on the ground in the Garden of Life, Kahlan was in her traveling clothes of pants, a shirt, and boots. "How about we get you out of those things and into bed?" She shook her head and immediately crawled onto the bed. Before they had left the Garden of Life, Nathan had tried healing her arm. He had no better luck than any of the rest of them had had. Richard was depending, now, on Zedd's poultice to draw out the infection and some good old-fashioned sleep. Zedd leaned toward Richard. "I'll go make up a poultice and be right back." He pointed and spoke in a low voice. "In the meantime, just to be on the safe side, get rid of those mirrors." There were twin mirrors over a dressing table. "Don't worry," Richard said, "I have something in mind for them." Once Zedd left, Richard did his own check of the room. Not that he didn't trust Cara's search, but he wanted to be sure. Since it was a single room and wasn't very large at that, there wasn't much to check. The wardrobes smelled of aromatic cedar and were empty. At the back of the room there were double doors with glass panes. With the back of his hand, Richard pushed the drapes aside and looked out the glass into the darkness. There appeared to be a small terrace with a potted evergreen to the side up against the fat, waist-high stone railing. Out on the grounds far below, Richard saw a patrol of soldiers. Once Cara left, Richard tried to get Kahlan to at least take off her boots. She fussed and said that she was cold and just wanted the blanket over her. Richard knew how when he had a headache and was throwing up and terribly sick to his stomach he didn't want anyone messing with him, either. He carefully laid the comforter over Kahlan and gently tucked it up around her neck. When Kahlan closed her eyes, he went to the drapes at the double doors in the back of the room and took off the fabric swag holding them back. At the dressing table, he took down the only two mirrors in the room. He placed the identical mirrors on the floor, standing face-to-face, and used the swag to tie them tightly together. When he was finished, he leaned the paired mirror up against the padded seat. He sat on the edge of the bed and leaned over, hugging Kahlan to warm her up and let her know that she wasn't alone. Her eyes were closed and she didn't say anything, but she let out a little sigh to let him know that she appreciated it. |
| 1044 |
Orneta had been having intensive talks with these people over recent days. They were among the representatives who were the most concerned about prophecy, who believed firmly in it, and who wanted it used to help guide them into the future. They were greatly troubled that the Lord Rahl and the Mother Confessor wouldn't share prophecy with them. They felt that their views were being ignored. Orneta had never really known these people to be all that concerned with prophecy, but recently it had taken center stage in their lives. It was much the same with her. She supposed that since peace had come, so had broader concerns about the future. As they had learned from the intimate discussions with Orneta and Ludwig, there could be only one explanation as to why Lord Rahl and the Mother Confessor refused to share prophecy. Orneta gestured to Ludwig. "As Abbot Dreier has revealed, a number of places in prophecy have been discovered that name Lord Rahl 'the bringer of death.' I take no satisfaction in telling you this. Nor do you need to take my word for it. Though I doubt that it would be wise to ask Lord Rahl to show you the reference material, it is available. Bishop Arc, reluctantly, would show it to you if you insisted on seeing it with your own eyes." The notion that the Keeper of the world of the dead was influencing and using their leaders for his own ends was clearly alarming. Most didn't want to believe it was true, but they could not argue the evidence. "Who but the Creator, who has created all things, would know the future?" Ludwig asked. "Since the Creator knows all things, how would He warn us, His creation, of dangers He sees for us in the future?" Eyes big, everyone leaned in a little. "Prophecy," Ludwig said in answer to his own question. "The Creator uses omens to warn us of danger only He can see. Clearly, the Nameless One would want to suppress that means of salvation, would he not? Would he not want to possess the most trusted among us to conceal those prophecies from us and thus to insure that we are more easily delivered into the arms of death itself?" The implication was clear. Lord Rahl and the Mother Confessor, in hiding prophecy from these leaders, could only be working toward the Keeper's ends. It was a sobering conclusion, and one that these people did not take lightly, one that, even for the duchess, transcended mere gossip. Orneta thought that maybe they needed a little demonstration of proper resolve to help them make up their minds as to what to do about it. |
| 1045 |
Since he would be guided by prophecy, he would be better able to maintain the peace and help us all take the safest path into the future." Among the dozen and a half people gathered, there were nods and whispers of agreement to Ambassador Grandon's wisdom. "I would hope as much myself," Orneta said. "Lord Rahl and the Mother Confessor have fought hard to bring us to victory. I — we — are all greatly indebted to them. I fear, though, that somewhere along the line they have succumbed to the influence of dark whispers, so now we must do what is in the best interest of our people. It is our responsibility to now embrace the guidance of Lord Arc. That is my choice, and it is final." Ambassador Grandon dipped his head in a single but firm nod. "It must be." The duchess took refuge in sipping her tea rather than voice such a profound and final choice. Others in the group, though, did voice their solemn agreement. 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. |
| 1046 |
At least Orneta could get the Mord-Sith away from Ludwig before he did something foolish and got himself hurt even worse. As she made her way down the elegant corridor, Orneta tried not to move too swiftly. Rather, she moved at a stately pace, just to remind the Mord-Sith of who she was dealing with. Orneta was also in no hurry to reach her room and be alone with the woman. A servant going in the opposite direction, carrying an armful of fresh bed linens, moved hard against the side of the hallway when she saw the Mord-Sith coming, and stayed well out of her way. The woman kept her eyes turned toward the ground as she passed, avoiding meeting the steady gaze of the tall woman in red leather. Orneta felt like a prisoner being led to an execution. She couldn't believe that she was being treated with such disrespect. Considering her decision, it occurred to her that it wasn't entirely undeserved. For years, she had been nothing but loyal to the cause of the D'Haran Empire. She reminded herself that what she was doing was out of loyalty to the D'Haran Empire — to the people, anyway, if not the leader. She didn't know what the Mord-Sith could possibly want, but Orneta was becoming more worried by the moment that it had something to do with her throwing her loyalty to Hannis Arc over Richard Rahl. She told herself that it was a silly worry. No one knew of her decision but her and Ludwig. And of course the group, but she had only just told them. It occurred to her then that there might have been a prophecy that foretold of her new-sworn allegiance. Lord Rahl wouldn't tell them what prophecy said, wouldn't help them against threats those omens revealed, but that didn't mean he wouldn't use them for his own dark ends. There was no telling what a person being used by the Keeper of the underworld might know, or what they might do. Lord Rahl was a good man, a decent man, but even such a person could become possessed so that they were not acting of their own free will; they were instead being guided by death itself. As Ludwig had pointed out, who better for the Keeper to possess in order to carry out his dark deeds than the most trusted among them? When Orneta glanced back over her shoulder, she saw that the Mord-Sith was right behind her, wearing a grim expression. But past the Mord-Sith, Orneta could see that the entire group she'd been meeting with was following them up the hall. They were keeping their distance, but they were clearly intent on seeing what this was about, seeing why one of their group was being singled out. |
| 1047 |
Orneta screamed so hard she thought it might rip her throat. She wouldn't have been able to stop herself if she had wanted to. The pain overwhelmed her, making the muscles of her arms and neck convulse in uncontrolled spasms. The screams were drowned out as blood frothed up from her throat and out her mouth. It ran down her chin, hanging in long, thick strings, and soaked the front of her dress. The room darkened in her dwindling spot of vision, but then slowly widened back into view. She was hardly aware of where the Mord-Sith was or what she was doing until Orneta saw her walk around behind her. Without a word, Vika jammed her Agiel into the base of Orneta's skull. Light flashed in her vision. Sparkling colors exploded in every direction. There was a most terrible shrieking sound inside her head that made the pain beyond anything that had come before. Sharp shards of suffering drove inward through her ears. Orneta sat on the floor, limp and helpless, as the shrieking, crashing, roaring sound and the blaze of light swirled through her head. She heard Vika's boots on the white marble floor as the woman came around in front of her. The Mord-Sith stood over Orneta, towered over her, looking down without the slightest hint of compassion, much less remorse. Orneta had never seen such a cold and heartless look in all her life. "That was quite good," Vika said in a calm voice. "I'm sure everyone could hear it." Orneta couldn't hold her head up. She couldn't make her neck muscles respond. By the terrible pain, she thought that they must be torn. Her chin rested on her blood-soaked chest. She saw blood spreading across the white marble floor. Her blood. A lot of her blood. The Mord-Sith's boots were the same color as the pool of blood she was standing in. With supreme effort, through the burning pain in her throat, past the blood filling her mouth, she used all her might to lift her head to look up and speak. "What do you want of me?" Vika arched a brow over a cold blue eye. "Well, now that you have screamed very nicely for me, I want you to die." Orneta blinked up at the woman. She could offer no resistance, could not fight such a savage creature. She was not surprised, though. She had known the answer before Vika had spoken it. Orneta saw the Agiel coming again. She felt only the first instant of exquisite pain as her heart exploded in her chest. And then, even that breathless, crushing agony diminished into the last conscious, dimming spark of awareness. Ludwig was pouring himself a last glass of wine when he heard the door behind him open and then close. |
| 1048 |
She couldn't think of a single person who would do such a thing as a joke. She realized that the smell of the thing was decidedly unpleasant and not human. The heavy breathing had an element of a low growl to it. Ever so carefully, she slitted her eyelids open just the tiniest bit. Near to her, to each side, she could see something slender. 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. |
| 1049 |
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. 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. |
| 1050 |
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. 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. |
| 1051 |
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. |
| 1052 |
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. It was deep in the middle of the night by the time Richard finally stepped off the spiral stairs and into the room with Regula. It had been a long journey from the guest quarters up to the Garden of Life. The palace complex was a sprawling city and it sometimes seemed that he spent half his time crossing back and forth through it. He gritted his teeth in anger at the sight of the machine. He was fed up with the way its predictions had been at the core of every one of the recent deaths. And now the machine was predicting that the hounds would take Kahlan from him. He couldn't get the image out of his mind of the manner in which the hounds had taken Catherine from her husband. The thought of that happening to Kahlan had him seeing red. On the way from the murdered Queen Orneta, despite Nicci's assurance that Kahlan was sleeping peacefully, he had stopped in to check for himself. He had slipped quietly into the room and by the light of a single lamp burning on a table by the bed he had seen her, covered by the blanket he had tucked under her chin earlier, sound asleep. Her breathing had been even and she wasn't tossing and turning, so it seemed to Richard that she was resting comfortably. He had gently kissed her forehead and left her to her rest. He had also checked with Rikka, Berdine, and the soldiers to make sure that they understood that anything at all unusual was to be taken as dead serious. They all understood. The whole time, the words from the machine, The hounds will take her from you, kept running through his mind. Zedd looked up when he saw Richard coming. "What is it?" Richard flicked his hand at the machine. "Remember the prediction the machine issued earlier this evening? |
| 1053 |
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. He knew that others couldn't see it, but he had always sensed the field of power around certain people. No aura he had ever seen was as strong as Nicci's. Black lightning — Subtractive Magic — ignited in the room with a thunderous thump. Dust lifted from the floor. The proximity spheres instantly went dark. The black lightning twisted together with a blindingly bright sudden discharge of Additive Magic. The rope of Subtractive Magic was so dark that it was like looking through a crack in the world of life into the underworld itself. In a way, it was. The inky black lightning connected with the machine. The end played over the surface, flickering up and down it. The rest of it, between Nicci and the machine, whipped wildly about the room as it crackled and popped where the two flows of power, impossible darkness and blinding light, touched. The air of the room smelled like burning sulfur and vibrated with the power of the conflicting forces fighting each other. |
| 1054 |
Eyes closed, he gave himself over to the volatile fusing of magic. "Blade," he whispered, "be true this day." With both hands, Richard lifted the sword high over his head. Without pause and with all his might and fury, he drove the blade down toward the machine. The sword's tip whistled as it sliced through the air. Richard screamed with the power of the magic coursing through him, with the power of his rage. The blade arced around and down toward the machine with lightning speed. A hairsbreadth from touching the machine, the blade stopped cold in midair. Richard was taken by surprise. He hadn't expected the blade to stop the way it had. His muscles ached with the expected release that didn't happen. The sword's magic worked by intent. If the one wielding the sword believed that what he was attacking was the enemy, or evil, the sword would cut through it, cut through anything. If the Seeker believed the person evil, there was no defense against the blade, not even a wall of steel. But if the Seeker, somewhere deep inside, in the darkest corner of his mind, believed that the adversary was innocent, then the blade would not cut through even paper to harm them. Richard stood with the sword tightly gripped in both fists, the blade motionless in midair just above the top of the machine, a trail of sweat running down his temple. And then the machine began to wake. Shafts slowly started turning, gears engaged, and yet more of the mechanism began to gather momentum. Well isn't that something," Zedd said as he stepped out of the stairwell. "Seems that none of us has it in us to destroy the machine." Richard wondered why. He staggered back from the machine as its internal mechanism gradually came to life, the internal parts progressively gathering momentum. He stood silently staring at the waking machine, stunned that the sword had halted so abruptly. He hadn't expected it to. He'd had the same experience before, when somewhere deep down inside he'd had a glimmer of doubt. This time, as well, some part of him didn't think the machine was at fault for the things that had happened. Some part of him thought that it was wrong to blame the machine for the terrible things that had happened. If he hadn't had those doubts, he knew, the sword would have shattered the machine. Even so, he had fully committed himself. It was disorienting to come back from that lethal brink. The fact that doubts existed prevented the sword from doing harm. But that didn't mean that those doubts were justified. |
| 1055 |
"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. 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. |
| 1056 |
She needed a good rest in order to recover from her fever. He was thankful that his grandfather had put a poultice on her arm to help draw out the infection. His own scratch from the boy down in the market had long ago healed. He had thought that Kahlan's had as well. It was more than a little worrisome the way it had returned so suddenly, especially after Zedd had healed it with his gift. On his way to the chair, Richard's feet caught up a blanket lying in the middle of the floor. He thought that Kahlan, in a fevered sleep, must have thrown off her cover. He picked it up by the edge and held it up to lay it back over her. In the dim light from the lantern, on the way to the bed, Richard paused. Something was wrong. Even if Kahlan had thrown the blanket off in her sleep, it seemed unlikely she could have thrown it that far. The first thing that instantaneously flashed through his mind was the machine's warning that hounds would take her from him. Almost at the same time, he remembered Queen Catherine lying dead on the floor, her middle viciously ripped open by some kind of animals with fangs. Richard dropped the blanket and rushed to the bed. Kahlan wasn't there. He stared for a moment at the rumpled, empty bed before turning up the wick on the lamp and scanning the room. He didn't see her anywhere. When he glanced up, Richard saw that the door to the balcony was open. His first thought was that maybe her fever had driven her out on the balcony to get some relief in the cool night air. Before he could go to the balcony, his attention was caught by his pack on the floor. Kahlan's pack had been beside it before. He knew, because he had been the one who had put them both there. He supposed that Kahlan might have wanted to get something out of it and could have moved it somewhere, but he didn't really believe that. Something told him that it would be a waste of time searching the room for it. Richard instead ran to the balcony doors. He was worried that, at the least, she might have gotten worse. He expected to see her passed out on the balcony floor. She wasn't there. The bedroom, like the balcony, wasn't that big. There was no way he could have missed her back in the room. Baffled as to where she could be, he reluctantly looked over edge of the railing, fearing that she might have fallen. 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. |
| 1057 |
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. |
| 1058 |
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. It made no sense. There were no prints of anything chasing her, yet he could clearly read the indications of fear in her tracks. What ever was after her would have had to be flying not to leave prints. He knew, too, that it might very well be fevered delusions chasing her. But the prophecy from the machine saying that the hounds would take her from him was no delusion. At least there were no tracks of hounds. And then, in the midst of hoofprints and wagon tracks, Kahlan's footprints simply ended. Richard went to one knee and bent to study the tracks more closely. He saw, then, the marks where her last print pushed off on the ball of her foot. It had left a heavier impression with pronounced side ridges as she had jumped up onto something. Since her footprints ended there, he knew that it was most likely a wagon or coach that she had jumped up onto. With an icy sense of dread, Richard realized that Kahlan was gone. He couldn't understand what had happened, or why she would have run the way she did, but he could see plainly enough that she had left the bedroom, come down the steps to the ground, run across the plateau, and then jumped into a wagon. There were wagons leaving all the time. Wheel tracks and hoofprints were everywhere. There was no telling which wagon or coach was the one Kahlan had jumped up into. If she had stayed in one of those wagons, she could be headed off in just about any direction away from the palace. There were a number of representatives who had left overnight. Many of them were accompanied by escorts. Some of them had entire house holds with them, everyone from guards to attendants, to advisors, to support staff, to wagons of baggage, so there were likely numerous wagons and coaches involved. |
| 1059 |
"Captain, be sure to tell Nicci, too, where I'm going. Be sure to tell her that I said that I think the Mother Confessor may be headed to the Hedge Maid in Kharga Trace. I am going to try to catch her before she can get there." One of the other soldiers ran up and threw saddlebags over the back of the horse. "At least take some supplies, Lord Rahl." Richard lifted his sword from its scabbard just a bit and let it drop back, making sure that it was clear. He nodded his thanks to the men and then urged the horse toward the road that led down the side of the plateau. As Richard gave the horse reins and leaned over its withers, it complied instantly and thundered off into the night. Kahlan woke with a start. She squinted out at the surrounding woods in the faint, first light of dawn. She didn't see the hounds down on the ground, at least, not yet. They always came back. She knew that it was only a matter of time. She'd gotten only a few hours of sleep, and it was neither good nor enough. At least she hadn't fallen out of the tree. The lap of several branches had made a somewhat safe, if uncomfortable, place to rest. The days of terror seemed endless and had blended one into another until she had completely lost track of time. She was exhausted from the relentless chase. 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. |
| 1060 |
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. 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. |
| 1061 |
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. |
| 1062 |
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. 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. |
| 1063 |
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. 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. |
| 1064 |
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. |
| 1065 |
The floor, walls, and ceiling were all constructed the same way, made entirely of woven branches, twigs, vines, and grasses. Kahlan had never seen anything like the remarkably well built and solid structure. She didn't know who had placed all the candles to welcome visitors, but she was thankful for them. She would at last be safe from the dogs that had pursued her for so long. She would at last be able to get help and return to the palace and to Richard. Kahlan remembered the prophecy all too well. "Dark things. Dark things stalking you, running you down. You won't be able to escape them... your body being ripped open as you scream, all alone, no one to help you." Now that she had found a place where it seemed clear that there would be people, she at last dared to think that she had beaten the prophecy. Soon, she would be somewhere safe and she could at last rest. At the thought of being safe, she could hardly keep her eyes open any longer. As she went deeper into the structure, she shed the panic that had kept her going at maximum effort for so long. Now, as the panic faded, she could feel her strength ebbing as well. She hadn't eaten much, and she hadn't slept much for days on end. Now, along with the fever, it was all catching up with her. She was having trouble walking, but she knew that she had to keep going. She wasn't safe, yet, until she could get help. It became an effort to keep her eyes open, to put one foot in front of the other. Her feet felt so heavy she could hardly lift them. Before long, it was all she could do to shuffle ahead. Kahlan passed through rooms with hundreds of strips of cloth hanging from the ceiling, each holding an object of some sort, everything from coins to the remains of small animals. She was mystified by the purpose of the place and had to hold her breath against the stench as she hurried past. Beyond, she went through a network of passageways and rooms, her way ahead lit by candles. Kahlan paused. She thought she had heard a whisper calling to her. "Mother Confessor..." That time she was sure she'd heard it. She looked around the room and peered down the dark corridors to the side, but she didn't see anyone. When she heard it a third time, she was listening more carefully and was able to tell where it had come from. It seemed to have come from the wall to the side. Moving toward the sound she saw then that there was a small person inside the structure of the wall itself. He was naked. Kahlan realized, then, that she recognized him. |
| 1066 |
"This way," the woman said in a low, thin, stretched tone. "Who are you?" Kahlan asked. It was almost too much effort. Another figure appeared on the other side and slipped a hand under Kahlan's other arm. She was also wearing a cowled cape, like the first woman. Together, they took some of her weight as they started walking her back toward a darker room. They both had an odd bluish, spiritlike glow about them. Kahlan had the passing thought that maybe she was dead, and she was being welcomed into the spirit world. That thought quickly faded. Strange as the place was, it was was no spirit world. Kahlan wasn't sure what was going on, but after Henrik's frantic warning, she wanted to run, but she was at the end of her strength. "We've been expecting you," the stooped figure on the right said as her grip tightened on Kahlan's arm. The two glowing figures dragged Kahlan into a larger room crowded with bottles, jars, vessels, and small boxes of every kind. The jars of colored glass were stuck in the walls anywhere a place could be found. Yet others, as well as pottery jars and jugs, were crowded together all over the floor. Acrid smoke rose in wisps from a shallow bowl in the center of the room. As Kahlan was hauled toward the center of the room, she pulled her gaze away from staring at the strange collection of containers and found herself face-to-face with a small woman just coming to her feet. The woman wasn't very big. In the dim light it was difficult to see much more than her boyish figure and shoulder-length hair. And then the woman leaned in and gave Kahlan a broad grin with lips sewn nearly shut. Kahlan stiffened at the evil in that grin and in her dark eyes. The woman with the sewn-shut mouth made low, drawn-out, screeching, clicking sounds toward another one of the glowing figures that seemed to have appeared out of the walls. Yet more of them gathered close around. Including the two holding Kahlan up, there were six of them. The cowled figure the woman had spoken to in the strange language bowed her head. "I will leave at once, Mistress, and let him know that we have her, and that she will soon be among the walking dead." Kahlan ran the words through her mind again, not sure she had heard them right. She will soon be among the walking dead. With that, the figure vanished like smoke through the walls. As Kahlan watched her go, she saw for the first time other people back in the walls, woven in the way Henrik had been. Some were near the surface of the wall while others were so far back in she couldn't see much of them. |
| 1067 |
None had clothes. A number of them were clearly dead. The small woman with the leather thongs sewing her mouth closed turned and tossed a handful of dusty material in the shallow bowl where small sticks were smoldering. Sparkling light spiraled up. Other figures, grotesque figures only partially visible, crowded into the room. It felt like being among an assembly of ghosts, except they didn't look like ghosts of people. They were gangly, human-like, skeletal creatures. Their long arms and legs had big, knobby joints. Their flesh, tight on their slender limbs, as if they had no muscle whatsoever, glistened with mottled, slimy rot. Their demonic heads bore only a passing resemblance to humans'. They growled at the sight of her, their thin lips drawing back to reveal large mouths crowded with pointed, needle-sharp teeth. The woman with the sewn-shut lips reached out with a filthy, blackened hand and grasped Kahlan's wrist. Paralyzing pain instantly crackled through her. But it was more than simply pain. Besides the jolt of pain, the touch carried the sensation of utter, disheartened hopelessness. It was like being touched by death. As all the glowing creatures in cowled robes closed in around her, Kahlan finally got a good look at their frightening faces. It was like looking at rotting corpses. Their gnarled hands clawed at her clothes, and Kahlan knew that she had to do something, and fast. She couldn't allow them to do what ever it was they intended. The woman with the sewn-shut mouth was touching her. That was all Kahlan needed. More than she needed. The world seemed to slow almost to a stop. Time belonged to Kahlan. Exhaustion, fear, pain, sickness, misery, hopelessness were forgotten. Mercy did not exist. The moment was hers. In that timeless place within, that place of power, that core of her being, where her inborn Confessor power resided, Kahlan released the constraints on her ability. Thunder without sound jolted the air. The power of the concussion shook the whole structure. All around the people in the walls screamed as they shuddered violently, their arms and legs shaking as much as they could in the confinement of the thorny walls. The air was filled with their howls. When it finally died down, the woman with the sewn-shut lips merely smiled. Kahlan's power hadn't worked on her. Kahlan's power worked on everyone. Everyone who was human, anyway. It didn't work on certain creatures of magic, on beings that had elements of magic, or were different. Nicci's words that they had no defense against the Hedge Maid rang through Kahlan's thoughts. |
| 1068 |
This could only be the Hedge Maid. Knobby fingers started clawing at her clothes again. Kahlan had nothing left with which to resist, to fight. She was sick and weak, and on top of that she had just used the last bit of strength she had left in order to unleash her power. Gnarled hands pulled at her clothes. The bony creatures growled through open mouths filled with fangs. Kahlan was upright only because of all the hands on her, pulling at her, pressing her this way and that, tearing and yanking. As they went about their work of pulling her clothes off, the Hedge Maid turned to her jars and bottles, opening various containers, adding things to the smoldering fire in the broad, flat bowl in the center of the room. When sparks flew up, she used a slender stick to draw symbols in trays of ash to the side. Kahlan felt tears running down her face, dripping from her jaw, as she was dragged back by the glowing figures. The demonic, bony creatures hissed and snarled at her. Kahlan felt as if she were being conveyed by evil spirits to the torturous depths of the underworld. She thought that maybe she was. With the help of the snarling creatures, hands all around pulled strands of thorny vines up around her. They wrapped them around her wrists and ankles, anchoring the ends in the wall behind her, tying them in tight. Kahlan was only barely conscious as laughing, cavorting figures danced around with strands of vine and thorny branches, adding them to the weave of the wall. She cried out in pain when she realized that some of the creatures around her were biting her abdomen. She could feel the needle-sharp teeth sinking into her flesh. She cried out in despair and grief, too, over the thought of never seeing Richard again. She watched in horror as the glowing figures pressed bowls against her belly, collecting the blood as it rolled down her. Kahlan could do nothing to stop the madness. Every movement she made only worked the thorns deeper into her flesh. The glowing figures, and the bony creatures dancing around the room, all laughed and chattered in the strange squealing clicking sounds. Others, who had already collected bowls with blood running from Kahlan's bite wounds, took the blood to the Hedge Maid. The woman with the leather strips sewing her lips shut drank greedily. Creatures danced around her, arms flailing in the air, feet high-stepping. The room pulsed with the drum-like sound of their bony feet slapping the woven floor. Kahlan's blood ran down the small woman's chin, dripping off in thick strings. |
| 1069 |
Cockroaches emerged from the floor where the blood dropped to feast along with the Hedge Maid. Kahlan felt merciful darkness stealing her away from the insanity raging all around her. Richard stood staring through the soft haze of drizzle at the tunnel-shaped entrance of tightly woven sticks and branches. He thought that it looked just a little too welcoming. The whole, carefully maintained trail through the swamp of Kharga Trace was too easy, too simple, too enticing the way it encouraged visitors in. He wondered where the spider was. He knew that Kahlan had gone this way. He knew because he had tracked her there. He'd seen where she'd fallen from her horse and slid down the steep slope. He'd seen her footprints, staggering in a crooked line, wandering off the trail into boggy mud and then back again. He could tell by the tracks that she was hardly able to stand anymore. He could see by the halting, unsteady prints she left just how sick and exhausted she was. He would have caught up with her long before had his horse not been killed. It had happened after dark when a huge wild boar had charged out of the brush. It wasn't rutting season but wild boars could be aggressive anytime, and this one certainly had been, charging in at the horse when they surprised it. As the horse went down, the boar's razor-sharp tusks slashed the horse's belly open. Richard ran the boar through with his sword, but it was too late. After killing the boar, he had no choice but to put the horse out of its misery. There had been nothing he could do for the poor animal. With his horse dead, much of the last part of the race to catch Kahlan had been on foot. He had contemplated leaving her trail and going off to find another horse, but without knowing the area, he feared that even if he could manage to find a horse, the search would cost him too much time, so he had pressed on. Because she was so sick and weak she hadn't traveled as swiftly as she might have, so she didn't get out too far ahead of him. But she had been going fast enough that he couldn't catch her on foot. As he stood at the tunnel entrance to the structure, he heard someone running toward him. By the stride and the weight of the footfalls, he thought it had to be an awfully small person. In another moment, a boy came racing out. He was wearing one of Kahlan's shirts. Richard went to a knee and swept an arm around the boy's middle to catch him before he could escape. He felt hot with fever. "Henrik?" The boy, panicked tears running down his face, stopped fighting and blinked. |
| 1070 |
I need you to go back the way you came and find my friends who are coming this way. I need you to bring them here. I'm going in there to get Kahlan out. But I'm going to need the help of my friends when I come out. I need you to tell my friends where I am and get them here right away. Can you do that?" "Yes, Lord Rahl. I'll do it. 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. |
| 1071 |
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. 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. |
| 1072 |
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. 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. |
| 1073 |
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. |
| 1074 |
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. 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. |
| 1075 |
The scream was death itself. Now that the truth of the dead soul within her was released, it was taking the life of its host. She was seeing the truth of her dead inner self. Life, her life, was incompatible with the death she carried inside. Death showed her no appreciation, and no mercy. Her face began to melt as her own evil, the death at her core, escaped its prison. Blood veins broke, muscle ripped apart, and her skin split open until her bones were exposed. It all added power and force to her death shriek. That scream, its power, its poison, lanced into Richard as well. The pain of it was more than he could stand. Every joint cried out in agony. Every nerve fiber vibrated with the torture of the sound escaping the Hedge Maid. He, too, was being touched by death that had been freed. As he began to lose consciousness, Richard realized that the plugs he had made for his ears, and for Kahlan's ears, were not sufficient to stand up against the malevolence he had unleashed. He had failed. He had failed Kahlan. He felt a tear of grief for Kahlan, of his love for her, run down his face as the screaming, roaring, flashing world went slowly dark and silent. If he lives," Cara said, "I'm going to kill him." Nicci smiled, but the thought of Richard dying sent a renewed spike of panic through her. It was too terrifying a thought to contemplate. She laid a hand to his chest as somber soldiers gently laid his unconscious form beside Kahlan in the back of the wagon. Blood seeped through the blankets Richard and Kahlan were both wrapped in. But Nicci could feel his heart beating, feel the breath of life in his lungs. Kahlan, thankfully, was alive as well. For now, the two of them were alive and that was what mattered most. "He will live," Nicci said. "Both of them will, if I have anything to say about it." By the looks of what had happened in the room where they had found them, it was perhaps surprising that they were both alive, much less in one piece. It had been frightening to have to pull them both out of the prison of thorn branches and vines they had been encased in. "What's this?" Zedd asked with a frown. Nicci came out of her thoughts and took the little object from him. It looked to be a rolled-up wad of cloth. "I don't know. Where did you find it?" "In his ear." Zedd sounded astonished. He waved a finger, pointing. "Look, there's another in his other ear." He pulled it out and held it up to show her. Nicci bent over the side of the wagon and checked Kahlan. |
| 1076 |
Composite image, optically encoded by escort-craft of the trans-Channel airship Lord Brunel: aerial view of suburban Cherbourg, October 14, 1905. A villa, a garden, a balcony. Erase the balcony's wrought-iron curves, exposing a bath-chair and its occupant. Reflected sunset glints from the nickel-plate of the chair's wheel-spokes. The occupant, owner of the villa, rests her arthritic hands upon fabric woven by a Jacquard loom. These hands consist of tendons, tissue, jointed bone. Through quiet processes of time and information, threads within the human cells have woven themselves into a woman. Her name is Sybil Gerard. Below her, in a neglected formal garden, leafless vines lace wooden trellises on whitewashed, flaking walls. From the open windows of her sickroom, a warm draft stirs the loose white hair at her neck, bringing scents of coal-smoke, jasmine, opium. Her attention is fixed upon the sky, upon a silhouette of vast and irresistible grace — metal, in her lifetime, having taught itself to fly. In advance of that magnificence, tiny unmanned aeroplanes dip and skirl against the red horizon. Like starlings, Sybil thinks. The airship's lights, square golden windows, hint at human warmth. Effortlessly, with the incomparable grace of organic function, she imagines a distant music there, the music of London: the passengers promenade, they drink, they flirt, perhaps they dance. Thoughts come unbidden, the mind weaving its perspectives, assembling meaning from emotion and memory. She recalls her life in London. Recalls herself, so long ago, making her way along the Strand, pressing past the crush at Temple Bar. Pressing on, the city of Memory winding itself about her — till, by the walls of Newgate, the shadow of her father's hanging falls ... And Memory turns, deflected swift as light, down another byway — one where it is always evening ... It is January 15, 1855. A room in Grand's Hotel, Piccadilly. One chair was propped backward, wedged securely beneath the door's cut-glass knob. Another was draped with clothing: a woman's fringed mantelet, a mud-crusted skirt of heavy worsted, a man's checked trousers and cutaway coat. Two forms lay beneath the bedclothes of the laminated-maple four-poster, and off in the iron grip of winter Big Ben bellowed ten o'clock, great hoarse calliope sounds, the coal-fired breath of London. Sybil slid her feet through icy linens to the warmth of the ceramic bottle in its wrap of flannel. Her toes brushed his shin. The touch seemed to start him from deep deliberation. |
| 1077 |
And Sybil hadn't been dollymopping, with Egremont. Not exactly, anyway. A matter of degree ... She could tell that Mick was pleased at the lie she'd told him. It had flattered him. Mick opened a gleaming cigar-case, extracted a cheroot, and lit it in the oily flare of a repeating match, filling the room with the candied smell of cherry tobacco. "So now you feel a bit shy with me, do you?" he said at last. "Well, I prefer it that way. What I know, that gives me a bit more grip on you, don't it, than mere tin." His eyes narrowed. "It's what a cove knows that counts, ain't it, Sybil? More than land or money, more than birth. Information. Very flash." Sybil felt a moment of hatred for him, for his ease and confidence. Pure resentment, sharp and primal, but she crushed her feelings down. The hatred wavered, losing its purity, turning to shame. She did hate him — but only because he truly knew her. He knew how far Sybil Gerard had fallen, that she had been an educated girl, with airs and graces, as good as any gentry girl, once. From the days of her father's fame, from her girlhood, Sybil could remember Mick Radley's like. She knew the kind of boy that he had been. Ragged angry factory-boys, penny-a-score, who would crowd her father after his torchlight speeches, and do whatever he commanded. Rip up railroad tracks, kick the boiler-plugs out of spinning jennies, lay policemen's helmets by his feet. She and her father had fled from town to town, often by night, living in cellars, attics, anonymous rooms-to-let, hiding from the Rad police and the daggers of other conspirators. And sometimes, when his own wild speeches had filled him with a burning elation, her father would embrace her and soberly promise her the world. She would live like gentry in a green and quiet England, when King Steam was wrecked. When Byron and his Industrial Radicals were utterly destroyed ... But a hempen rope had choked her father into silence. The Radicals ruled on and on, moving from triumph to triumph, shuffling the world like a deck of cards. And now Mick Radley was up in the world, and Sybil Gerard was down. She stood there silently, wrapped in Mick's coat. Paris. The promise tempted her, and when she let herself believe him, there was a thrill behind it like lightning. She forced herself to think about leaving her life in London. It was a bad, a low, a sordid life, she knew, but not entirely desperate. She still had things to lose. Her rented room in Whitechapel, and dear Toby, her cat. |
| 1078 |
He retrieved a cheap black portmanteau of proofed canvas, placed it carefully on the floor before him, and squatted to undo the flimsy tin clasps. He removed a stack of perforated cards bound with a ribbon of red paper. There were other bundles in the bag as well, Sybil saw, and something else, a gleam of polished wood. He handled the cards gently, like a Bible. "Safe as houses," he said. "You just disguise 'em, you see — write something stupid on the wrapper, like 'Temperance Lecture — Parts One Two Three.' Then coves never think to steal 'em, or even load them up and look." Hefting the thick block, he riffled its edge with his thumb, so that it made a sharp crisp sound, like a gambler's new deck. "I put a deal of capital in these," he said. "Weeks of work from the best kino hands in Manchester. Exclusively to my design, I might point out. 'Tis a lovely thing, girl. Quite artistic, in its way. You'll soon see." Closing the portmanteau, he stood. He carefully slid the bundle of cards into his coat-pocket, then bent over a crate and tugged out a thick glass tube. He blew dust from the tube, then gripped one end of it with a special pair of pincers. The glass cracked open with an airtight pop — there was a fresh block of lime in the tube. Mick slid it loose, humming to himself. He tamped the lime gently into the socket of a limelight burner, a great dish-shaped thing of sooty iron and gleaming tin. Then he turned a hose-tap, sniffed a bit, nodded, turned a second tap, and set the candle to it. Sybil yelped as a vicious flash sheeted into her eyes. Mick chuckled at her over the hiss of blazing gas, dots of hot blue dazzle drifting before her. "Better," he remarked. He aimed the blazing limelight carefully into the stage-mirror, then began to adjust its cranks. Sybil looked around, blinking. It was dank and ratty and cramped under the Garrick stage, the sort of place a dog or a pauper might die in, with torn and yellowed bills underfoot, for naughty farces like That Rascal Jack and Scamps of London. A pair of ladies' unmentionables were wadded in a corner. From her brief unhappy days as a stage-singer, she had some idea how they might have gotten there. She let her gaze follow steam-pipes and taut wires to the gleam of the Babbage Engine, a small one, a kinotrope model, no taller than Sybil herself. Unlike everything else in the Garrick, the Engine looked in very good repair, mounted on four mahogany blocks. The floor and ceiling above and beneath it had been carefully scoured and whitewashed. |
| 1079 |
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. |
| 1080 |
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. Now he stepped back from the podium and pointed up at the kino with his heavy polished cane. "The forces of Lopez de Santa Anna were arrayed as you see them here, with the woods upon his left flank and the San Jacinto river-marshes at his back. His siege engineers had dug in around the baggage-train, with emplacements of sharpened timber, represented thusly. By a forced march through Burnham's Ford, however, my army of six hundred had seized the wooded banks of Buffalo Bayou, unbeknown to enemy intelligence. The assault began with a brisk cannon-fire from the Texian center ... Now we can witness the movement of the Texian light-cavalry ... The shock of the foot-charge sent the enemy reeling in confusion, throwing his artillery, which was not yet limbered, into utter disarray." The kinotrope's blue squares and lozenges slowly chased the buckling red Mexican regiments through the checkered greens and whites of woods and swamps. Sybil shifted in her seat, trying to ease the chafing of her hoop-skirt. Houston's bloodthirsty boasting was finally reaching a climax. "The final count of the fallen numbered two Texian dead, six hundred and thirty of the invader. The massacres of Alamo and Goliad were avenged in Santanista blood! Two Mexican armies utterly defeated, with the capture of fourteen officers and twenty cannon." Fourteen officers, twenty cannon — yes, that was her cue. Her moment had come. "Avenge us. General Houston!" Sybil shrieked, her throat constricted with stage-fright. She tried again, pulling herself to her feet, waving one arm, "Avenge us, General Houston!" Houston halted, taken aback. Sybil shouted at him, shrilly. "Avenge our honor, sir! Avenge Britain's honor!" A babble of alarm rose — Sybil felt the eyes of the theatre crowd in upon her, shocked looks that people might give a lunatic. "My brother," she shouted, but fear had seized her, bad nerves. She hadn't expected it to be so frightening. This was worse than singing on stage, far worse. Houston lifted both his arms, the striped blanket spreading behind him like a cloak. Somehow he calmed the crowd by the gesture, asserted command. Above his head, the kinotrope wound slowly down, its flickering domino-tricks whirring to a stop, leaving San Jacinto frozen in mid-victory. Houston fixed Sybil with a look of mingled sternness and resignation. |
| 1081 |
Can't there be justice for Texas, sir? Some redress for these affronts? Must my poor brother die there in misery, while cheats and tyrants steal our British property?" But Mick's fine rhetoric was drowned; there were shouts from the audience, here and there, over a muttered undertone of surprise and approval. Loud boyish hooting came from the penny-gallery. A bit of London fun, all told. Perhaps, Sybil thought, she had made some of them believe her story, and pity her. Most simply howled and joked a bit, pleased to see some unexpected liveliness. "Sam Houston was always a true friend of Britain!" Sybil shrieked, into the crowd's upturned faces. The words half-lost, useless, she raised the back of her wrist to her damp forehead. Mick had given her no more lines, so she let the strength seep from her legs and fell back, eyes fluttering, half-sinking into her seat. "Give Miss Jones air!" Houston commanded, an excited bellow. "The lady is overcome!" Sybil watched through half-closed lids as blurred figures haltingly gathered round her. Dark evening-jackets, a rustle of crinoline, gardenia perfume, and a masculine smell of tobacco — a man seized her wrist, and felt for a pulse there with pinching fingers. A woman fanned Sybil's face, clucking to herself. Oh heaven, Sybil thought, shrinking, the fat mama from the row before her, with that intolerable oily look of a good woman doing her moral duty. A little thrill of shame and disgust shot through her. For a moment she felt genuinely weak, sinking with a buttery ease into the warmth of their concern, a half-dozen busybodies muttering around her in a shared pretense of competence, while Houston thundered on above them, hoarse with indignation. Sybil allowed them to get her to her feet. Houston hesitated, seeing it, and there was a light gallant scatter of applause for her. She felt pale, unworthy; she smiled wanly, and shook her head, and wished she were invisible. She leaned her head on the padded shoulder of the man who had taken her pulse. "Sir, if I could go, please," she whispered. Her rescuer nodded alertly, a little fellow with clever blue eyes. His long greying hair was parted in the middle. "I shall see the lady home," he piped at the others. He shrugged into an opera cape, perched a tall beaver hat on his head, and lent her his arm. They walked together up the aisle, Sybil leaning on him heavily, unwilling to meet anyone's eyes. The crowd was roused, now. For the first time, perhaps, they were listening to Houston as a man, rather than as some sort of queer American exhibit. |
| 1082 |
The new lines were shored with steel, and soon Lord Babbage's smokeless trains would slide through them silent as eels, though she found the thought of it somehow unclean. The lamps flared all at once, the flow of gas disturbed by a particularly sharp jolt, the faces of the other passengers seeming to leap out at her: the sallow gent with something of the successful publican about him, the round-cheeked old Quaker cleric, the drunken dandy with his coat open, his canary waistcoat all dotted down the front with claret ... There were no other women in the carriage. Farewell to you, sirs, she imagined herself crying, farewell to your London, for she was a 'prentice adventuress now, sworn and true, bound for Paris, though the first leg of the voyage consisted necessarily of the tuppenny trip back to Whitechapel ... But the clergyman had noticed her, his contempt quite open, there for anyone to see. It was really quite horribly cold, making her way from the station to her room in Flower-and-Dean Street; she regretted her vanity, for having chosen her fine new shawl rather than her mantelet. Her teeth were chattering. Sharp frost shone in pools of gas-light on the street's new macadam. The cobbles of London were vanishing month by month, paved over with black stuff that poured stinking hot from the maws of great wagons, for navvies to spread and smooth with rakes, before the advance of the steam-roller. A daring fellow whisked past her, taking full advantage of the gritty new surface. Nearly recumbent within the creaking frame of a four-wheeled velocipede, his shoes were strapped to whirling cranks and his breath puffed explosively into the cold. He was bare-headed and goggled, in a thick striped jersey, a long knit scarf flapping out behind him as he sped away. Sybil supposed him an inventor. London was rife with inventors, the poorer and madder of them congregating in the public squares to display their blueprints and models, and harangue the strolling crowds. In a week's time she'd encountered a wicked-looking device meant to crimp hair by electricity, a child's mechanical top that played Beethoven, and a scheme for electro-plating the dead. Leaving the thoroughfare for the unimproved cobbles of Renton Passage, she made out the sign of the Hart and heard the jangle of a pianola. It was Mrs. Winterhalter who'd arranged for her to room above the Hart. The public house itself was a steady sort of place, admitting no women. It catered to junior clerks and shopmen, and offered as its raciest pleasure a pull at a coin-fed wagering-machine. |
| 1083 |
The rooms above were reached by way of steep dark stairs, that climbed below a sooty skylight to an alcove presenting a pair of identical doors. Mr. Cairns, the landlord, had rooms behind the door on the left. Sybil climbed the stairs, fumbled a penny box of lucifers from her muff, and struck one. Cairns had chained a bicycle to the iron railing overlooking the stairwell; the bright brass padlock gleamed in the flare of the match. She shook the lucifer out, hoping that Hetty hadn't double-latched the door Hetty hadn't, and Sybil's key turned smoothly in the lock. Toby was there to greet her, padding silently across the bare boards to twine himself around and about her ankles, purring like sixty. Hetty had left an oil-lamp turned down low on the deal table that stood in the hallway; it was smoking now, the wick in need of trimming. A foolish thing to have left it burning, where Toby might've sent it crashing, but Sybil felt grateful not to have found the place in darkness. She took Toby up in her arms. He smelled of herring. "Has Hetty fed you, then, dear?" He yowled softly, and batted at the ribbons of her bonnet. The pattern of the wallpaper danced as she lifted the lamp. The hallway had seen no sunlight in all the years the Hart had stood, yet the printed flowers were gone a shade like dust. Sybil's room had two windows, though they opened on a blank wall of grimed yellow brick, so near she could've touched it, if someone hadn't driven nails into the casements. Still, on a bright day, with the sun directly overhead, a bit of light did filter in. And Hetty's room, though larger, had only one window. If Hetty was here, now, she must be alone and asleep, as no light was visible from the crack at the bottom of her closed door. It was good to have one's own room, one's privacy, however modest. Sybil put Toby down, though he protested, and carried the lamp to her own door, which stood slightly ajar. Inside, all was as she'd left it, though she saw that Hetty had left the latest number of the Illustrated London News on her pillow, with an engraving from Crimea on the front, a scene of a city all aflame. She set the lamp down on the cracked marble lid of the commode, Toby prowling about her ankles as though he expected to discover more herring, and considered what she should do. The ticking of the fat tin alarm-clock, which she sometimes found unbearable, was reassuring now; at least it was running, and she imagined that the time it showed, quarter past eleven, was correct. |
| 1084 |
Sybil generally avoided medical students. They prided themselves on studied beastliness. But now, in the grip of a powerful nervous impulse, she opened the tin, drew out one of the crisp paper cylinders, and inhaled its fierce perfume. A Mr. Stanley, a barrister, well-known among the flash mob, had smoked cigarettes incessantly. Stanley, during his acquaintanceship with Sybil, had frequently remarked that a cigarette was the thing to steel a gambler's nerve. Fetching the lucifers, Sybil placed the cigarette between her lips, as she'd seen Stanley do, struck a lucifer, and remembered to let the bulk of the sulphur burn away before applying the flame to the cigarette's tip. She drew hesitantly on the lit cigarette and was rewarded with an acrid portion of vile smoke that set her wracking like a consumptive. Eyes watering, she nearly flung the thing away. She stood before the grate and forced herself to continue, drawing periodically on the cigarette and flicking pale delicate ash onto the coals with the gesture Stanley had used. It was barely tolerable, she decided, and where was the desired effect? She felt abruptly ill, her stomach churning with nausea, her hands gone cold as ice. Coughing explosively, she dropped the cigarette into the coals, where it burst into flame and was swiftly consumed. She became painfully aware of the ticking of the clock. Big Ben began to sound midnight. Where was Mick? She woke in darkness, filled with a fear she couldn't name. Then she remembered Mick. The lamp had gone out. The coals were dead. Scrambling to her feet, she fetched the box of lucifers, then felt her way into her room, where the tinny ticking of the clock guided her to the commode. When she struck a match, the face of the clock seemed to swim in the sulphur glare. It was half past one. Had he come when she was sleeping, knocked, had no answer, and gone away without her? No, not Mick. He'd have found a way in, if he wanted her. Had he gulled her, then, for the cakey girl she surely was, to trust his promises? A queer sort of calm swept over her, a cruel clarity. She remembered the departure date on the steamship ticket. He wouldn't sail from Dover till late tomorrow, and it seemed unlikely that he and General Houston would be departing London, after an important lecture, in the dead of night. She'd go to Grand's, then, and find Mick, confront him, and plead, threaten blackmail, exposure, whatever proved necessary. What tin she had was in her muff. There was a cab-stand in Minories, by Goodman's Yard. |
| 1085 |
"Charles, you promised me that you would save my poor father. Instead you corrupted me, body and soul. Today I am leaving London, in the company of powerful friends. They know very well what a traitor you were to Walter Gerard, and to me. Do not attempt to find me, Charles. It would be useless. I do hope that you and Mrs. Egremont will sleep soundly tonight." Sybil shuddered. "Sign that 'Sybil Gerard,' if you please." "Yes, madame," the clerk muttered, eyes downcast as Mick sprang silently back over the counter in his stocking feet. Mick crouched low, hidden by the counter's bulk, then crept off quickly on his haunches, waddling across the marble floor, like a monstrous duck. In a moment he had rolled behind a pair of overstuffed chairs. "What do I owe?" Sybil asked the clerk politely. "Two and six," the clerk stammered, quite unable to meet her eyes. She counted it out from the little clasp-purse she took from her muff, and left the red-faced clerk at his station, punching telegram-cards from his box. Mick came strolling like a gentleman across the lobby. He paused beside a reading-rack hung with neatly ironed newspapers. He bent down, coolly re-tying his shoes, straightened, and she saw the glint of metal in his hand. Not bothering even to catch her eye, he tucked the key behind a cut-velvet cushion on the chaise-longue. Then he stood briskly, straightened his tie, brushed at his sleeves, and strode straight off into the smoking-room. Sybil sat for a moment on the chaise, pretending to read a gold-spined monthly, 'Transactions of the Royal Society'. Carefully, with the fingertips of her right hand, she fished behind her for the key. Here it was, with the number "24" engraved on the oval brass. She yawned, in what she hoped was a ladylike fashion, and stood, to retire upstairs, entirely as if she had a room there. Her feet ached. As she trudged along the silent gas-lit hall, toward Houston's suite, she felt a sudden amazement at having struck out at Charles Egremont. Needing some dramatic message to distract the clerk, she'd blurted out threats and rage. It had come boiling out of her, almost without her will. It puzzled her, and even frightened her, after having imagined that she'd almost forgotten the man. She could imagine the fear on Egremont's face when he read her telegram. She remembered his face well enough, fatuous and successful, which always looked as though it meant well, always apologized, always preached at her, and whined, and begged, and wept, and sinned. |
| 1086 |
He was a fool. But now she'd let Mick Radley set her to thieving. If she were clever, she should walk out of the Grand Hotel, vanish into the depths of London, and never see Radley again. She should not let the 'prentice oath hold her. To break an oath was frightening, but no more vile than her other sins. Yet somehow here she was; she had let him do with her as he would. She stopped before the door, looked up and down the deserted corridor, fingered the stolen key. Why was she doing this? Because Mick was strong, and she was weak? Because he knew secrets that she didn't? For the first time, it occurred to her that she might be in love with him. Perhaps she did love him, in some strange way, and if that were true, it might explain matters to her, in a way which was almost soothing. If she were in love, she had a right to burn her bridges, to walk on air, to live by impulse. And if she loved Radley, it was finally something she knew, which he didn't. Her secret alone. Sybil unlocked the door nervously, rapidly. She slipped through, shut it behind her, set her back against it. She stood in darkness. There was a lamp in the room somewhere. She could smell its burnt wick. In the wall opposite, the outline emerged of a square curtained window to the street, between the curtains a faint knife-slice of upwashed gas-light. She faltered her way into the room, hands outstretched, until she felt the solid polished bulk of a bureau, and made out the dim sheen of a lamp-chimney there. She lifted the lamp, shook it. It had oil. Now she needed a lucifer. She felt for drawers in the bureau. For some reason they were already open. She rustled through them. Stationery. Useless, and someone had spilled ink in one of the drawers; she could smell it. Her fingers brushed a box of lucifers, which she recognized less by touch than by the dry familiar rattle. Her fingers, really, didn't seem to be working properly. The first lucifer popped and fizzled out, refusing to light, filling the room with a vile smell of sulphur. The second showed her the lamp. Her hands were trembling badly as she raised the chimney and applied flame to the wick. She saw her own lamp-lit reflection staring wild-eyed from tilted cheval-glass, then doubled in beveled mirrors set into the twin doors of a wardrobe. She noticed clothing scattered on the bed, on the floor ... A man was sitting on the arm of a chair, crouched there like a great shadowed crow, an enormous knife in his hand. He stood then, but slowly, with a creak of leather, like some huge wooden puppet that had lain years in the dust. |
| 1087 |
His hands are jammed deep in the long coat's pockets. His name is Edward Mallory. He tramped through a lacquered gleam of carriages, blindered horses cropping noisily at the turf, amid childhood smells of harness, sweat, and grassy dung. His hands inventoried the contents of his various pockets. Keys, cigar-case, billfold, card-case. The thick staghorn handle of his multi-bladed Sheffield knife. Field notebook — most precious item of all. A handkerchief, a pencil-stub, a few loose shillings. A practical man. Dr. Mallory knew that every sporting-crowd has its thieves, none of them dressed to match their station. Anyone here might be a thief. It is a fact; it is a risk. A woman blundered into Mallory's path, and his hobnails tore the flounce of her skirt. Turning, wincing, she tugged herself loose with a squeak of crinoline as Mallory touched his cap, and marched quickly on. Some farmer's wife, a clumsy, great red-cheeked creature, civilized and English as a dairy-cow. Mallory's eye was still accustomed to a wilder breed, the small brown wolf-women of the Cheyenne, with their greased black braids and beaded leather leggings. The hoop-skirts in the crowd around him seemed some aberrant stunt of evolution; the daughters of Albion had got a regular scaffolding under there now, all steel and whalebone. Bison; that was it. American bison, just that very hoopskirt silhouette, when the big rifle took them down; they had a way of falling, in the tall grass, suddenly legless, a furry hillock of meat. The great Wyoming herds would stand quite still for death, merely twitching their ears in puzzlement at the distant report of the rifle. Now Mallory threaded his way among this other herd, astonished that mere fashion could carry its mysterious impetus so far. The men, among their ladies, seemed a different species, nothing so extreme — save, perhaps, their shiny toppers, though his inner eye refused to find any hat exotic. He knew too much about hats, knew too many of the utterly mundane secrets of their manufacture. He could see at a glance that most of the hats around him were dead cheap, Engine-made, pre-cut in a factory, though looking very nearly as fine as a craftsman-hatter's work, and at half the price or less. He had helped his father in the little haberdashery in Lewes: punching, stitching, blocking, sewing. His father, dipping felt in the mercury bath, had seemed not to mind the stench ... Mallory was not sentimental about the eventual death of his father's trade. |
| 1088 |
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. |
| 1089 |
He shook off the dark thought with an effort. Beyond the barricade, each separate stall was carefully shielded from spies and odds-makers by tall baffles of tarpaulin, tautly braced by criss-crossed cables threaded through flagpoles. Mallory worked his way through an eager crowd of gawkers and steam-hobbyists. Two coppers stopped him brusquely at the gate. He displayed his citizen's number-card and his engraved invitation from the Brotherhood of Vapor Mechanics. Making careful note of his number, the policemen checked it against a thick notebook crammed with fan-fold. At length they pointed out the location of his hosts, cautioning him not to wander. As a further precaution, the Brotherhood had appointed their own look-out. The man squatted on a folding-stool outside the tarpaulin, squinting villainously and clutching a long iron spanner. Mallory proffered his invitation. The guard stuck his head past a narrow flap in the tarpaulin, shouted, "Your brother's here, Tom," and ushered Mallory through. Daylight vanished in the stink of grease, metal-shavings, and coal-dust. Four Vapor Mechanics, in striped hats and leather aprons, were checking a blueprint by the harsh glare of a carbide lamp; beyond them, a queer shape threw off highlights from curves of enameled tin. He took the thing for a boat, in the first instant of his surprise, its scarlet hull absurdly suspended between a pair of great wheels. Driving-wheels, he saw, stepping closer; the burnished piston-brasses vanished into smoothly flared openings in the insubstantial-looking shell or hull. Not a boat: it resembled a teardrop, rather, or a great tadpole. A third wheel, quite small and vaguely comical, was swivel-mounted at end of the long tapered tail. He made out the name painted in black and gilt across the bulbous prow, beneath a curved expanse of delicately leaded glass: Zephyr. "Come, Ned, join us!" his brother sang out, beckoning. "Don't be shy!" The others chuckled at Tom's sauciness as Mallory strode forward, his hobnails scraping the floor. His little brother Tom, nineteen years old, had grown his first mustache; it looked as though a cat could lick it off. Mallory offered his hand to his friend, Tom's master. "Mr. Michael Godwin, sir!" he said. "Dr. Mallory, sir!" said Godwin, a fair-haired engineer of forty years, with mutton-chop whiskers over cheeks pitted by smallpox. Small and stout, with shrewd, hooded eyes, Godwin began a bow, thought better of it, clapped Mallory gently across the back, and introduced his fellows. |
| 1090 |
"Ten pounds on the Zephyr, to win," Mallory told the betting-clerk at the steam-wicket, presenting a five-pound note and five singles. As the clerk methodically punched out the wager, Mallory studied the odds arrayed in kino-bits above and behind the glossy faux-marble of the papier-mache counter. The French were heavily favored, he saw, with the Vulcan of the Compagnie Generate de Traction, the driver one M. Raynal. He noted that the Italian entry was in little better position than Godwin's Zephyr. Word of the try-rods? The clerk passed Mallory a flimsy blue copy of the card he'd punched. "Very good, sir, thank you." He was already looking past Mallory to the next customer. Mallory spoke up. "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. |
| 1091 |
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. He dashed to the side of the brougham and yanked open the lacquered door. "What is the meaning of this?" he shouted. "Go away," the tart suggested. "I saw you strike this lady. How dare you?" The brougham lurched back into motion, almost knocking Mallory from his feet. Mallory recovered swiftly, dashed forward, seized the gentlewoman's arm. "Stop at once!" The gentlewoman rose again to her feet. Beneath the black veil her rounded, gentle face was slack and dreamy. She tried to step free again, seeming unaware that the carriage was in motion. She could not get her balance. With a quite natural, ladylike gesture, she handed Mallory the long wooden box. Mallory stumbled, clutching the ungainly case with both hands. Shouts arose from the milling crowd, for the tout's careless driving had infuriated them. The carriage rattled to a halt again, the horses snorting and beginning to plunge. |
| 1092 |
I shall certainly put your name forward for the Geographical, as I have promised, and I do hope that you will seriously consider my proposal regarding possible uses of the Bow Street Engines." Mallory watched as this extraordinary personage rose, turned, and strode away, across the Palace's rich carpet, his long legs flashing like scissors. Clutching his new valise with one hand, the overhead straps with another, Mallory inched his way along the crowded aisle of the omnibus to the rattling exit-platform. When the driver slowed for a filthy tarmac-wagon. Mallory jumped for the curb. Despite his best efforts, Mallory had boarded the wrong 'bus. Or perhaps he had ridden too far on the correct vehicle, well past his destination, while engrossed in the latest number of the Westminster Review. He'd purchased the magazine because it carried an article of Oliphant's, a witty post-mortem on the conduct of the Crimean War. Oliphant, it developed, was something of an expert on the Crimean region, having published his The Russian Shores of the Black Sea a full year prior to the outbreak of hostilities. The book detailed a jolly but quite extensive Crimean holiday which Oliphant had undertaken. To Mallory's newly alerted eye, Oliphant's latest article bristled with sly insinuation. A street-arab whipped with a broom of twigs at the pavement before Mallory's feet. The boy glanced up, puzzled. "Pardon, guv?" Mallory realized with an unhappy start that he had been talking to himself, standing there in rapt abstraction, muttering aloud over Oliphant's deviousness. The boy, grasping at Mallory's attention, did a back-somersault. Mallory tossed him tuppence, turned at random, and walked away, shortly discovering himself in Leicester Square, its gravel walks and formal gardens an excellent place to be robbed or ambushed. Especially at night, for the streets about featured theatres, pantos, and magic-lantern houses. Crossing Whitcomb, then Oxenden, he found himself in Haymarket, strange in the broad summer daylight, its raucous whores absent now and sleeping. He walked the length of it, for curiosity's sake. It looked very different by day, shabby and tired of itself. At length, noting Mallory's pace, a pimp approached him, offering a packet of French-letters, sure armor against the lady's-fever. Mallory bought them, dropping the packet into his valise. Turning left, he marched into the chuffing racket of busy Pall Mall, the wide macadam lined by the black iron palings of exclusive clubs, their marbled fronts set well back from the street-jostle. |
| 1093 |
Off Pall Mall, at the far end of Waterloo Place, stood the Duke of York's memorial. The Grand Old Duke of York, Who Had Ten Thousand Men, was a distant soot-blackened effigy now, his rotund column dwarfed by the steel-spired headquarters of the Royal Society. Mallory had his bearings now. He tramped the elevated pedestrian-bridge, over Pall Mall, while below him sweating kerchief-headed navvies ripped at the intersection with a banging steel-armed excavator. They were preparing the foundation of a new monument, he saw, doubtless to the glory of the Crimean victory. He strode up Regent Street to the Circus, where the crowd poured endlessly forth from the underground's sooty marble exits. He allowed himself to be swept into swift currents of humanity. There was a potent stench here, a cloacal reek, like burning vinegar, and for a moment Mallory imagined that this miasma emanated from the crowd itself, from the flapping crannies of their coats and shoes. It had a subterranean intensity, some fierce deep-buried chemistry of hot cinders and septic drippings, and now he realized that it must be pistoned out somehow, forced from the hot bowels of London by the charging trains below. Then he was being jostled up Jermyn Street, and in a moment he was smelling the heady wares of Paxton and Whitfield's cheese emporium. Hurrying across Duke Street, the stench forgotten, he paused below the wrought-iron lamps of the Cavendish Hotel, secured the fastenings of his valise, then crossed to his destination, the Museum of Practical Geology. It was an imposing, sturdy, fortress-like edifice; Mallory thought it much like the mind of its Curator. He trotted up the steps into a welcome stony chill. Signing the leather-bound visitor's book with a flourish, he strode on, into the vast central hall, its walls lined with shining glass-fronted cabinets of rich mahogany. Light poured down from the great cupola of steel and glass, where a lone cleaner dangled now in his shackled harness, polishing one pane after another in what Mallory supposed would amount to an unending rota. On the Museum's ground floor were displayed the Vertebrata, along with various pertinent illustrations of the marvels of stratigraphical geology. Above, in a railed and pillared gallery, were a series of smaller cabinets containing the Invertebrata. The day's crowd was of gratifying size, with surprising numbers of women and children, including an entire uniformed class of scruffy, working-class school-boys from some Government academy. |
| 1094 |
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. 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. |
| 1095 |
"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. 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. |
| 1096 |
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. |
| 1097 |
Dr. Gove's Hydropathic Strengthener. Mallory, from his nights down Haymarket, knew that Dr. Cove's was in fact a patent aphrodisiac, but the file made no mention of this fact. The fatal illness in 1852 of Bartlett's mother, and of her husband's brother in 1851, were also recorded, their respective certificates of death citing perforated ulcer and cholera morbus. These purported illnesses featured symptoms very like those of arsenic poisoning. Never formally accused of these other deaths, Mrs. Bartlett had escaped custody, overpowering her jailer with a concealed derringer. The Central Statistics Bureau suspected her of having fled to France, Mallory assumed, because someone had appended translations of French police-reports of 1854 dealing with a crime passionel trial in the Paris assizes. One "Florence Murphy," abortionist, purportedly an American refugee, was arrested and tried for the crime of vitriolage, the flinging of sulphuric acid with intent to disfigure or maim. The victim, Marie Lemoine, wife of a prominent Lyons silk-merchant, was an apparent rival. But "Mrs. Murphy" had vanished from custody, and from all subsequent French police-records, during the first week of her trial as a vitrioleuse. Mallory sponged his face, neck, and armpits in tap-water, thinking bleakly of vitriol. He was perspiring freely again as he laced his shoes. Leaving his room, he discovered that the city's queer summer had overwhelmed the Palace. Sullen humidity simmered over the marble floors like an invisible swamp. The very palms at the foot of the stairs seemed Jurassic. He trudged to the Palace's dining-room, where four cold hard-boiled eggs, iced coffee, a kippered herring, some broiled tomato, a bit of ham, and a chilled melon somewhat restored him. The food here was rather good, though the kipper had smelled a bit off — small wonder, in heat like this. Mallory signed the chit, and left to fetch his mail. He had been unjust to the kipper. Outside the dining room, the Palace itself stank: bad fish, or something much like it. There was a soapy perfume in the front lobby, left from the morning's mopping, but the air was heavy with the humid distant reek of something dreadful, and apparently long-dead. Mallory knew he had smelled that reek before — it was sharp, like acid, mixed with the greasy stench of a slaughterhouse — but he could not place the memory. In a moment the stink was gone again. He stepped to the desk for his mail. The wilted clerk greeted him with a show of courtesy; Mallory had won the staff's loyalty with generous tips. |
| 1098 |
One might complain of some Radical innovations, Mallory mused, but there was no denying the sense and justice of fine headquarters for scholars engaged in the noblest work of mankind. Surely, in their aid to Science, the Palaces had repaid the lavish cost of their construction at least a dozen times. Up Knightsbridge and past Hyde Park Corner to the Napoleon Arch, a gift from Louis Napoleon to commemorate the Anglo-French Entente. "The great iron arch, with its lavish skeleton of struts and bolting, supported a large population of winged cupids and draperied ladies with torches. A handsome monument, Mallory thought, and in the latest taste. Its elegant solidity seemed to deny that there had ever been a trace of discord between Great Britain and her staunchest ally, Imperial France. Perhaps, thought Mallory wryly, the "misunderstandings" of the Napoleonic Wars could be blamed on the tyrant Wellington. Though London possessed no monuments to the Duke of Wellington, it sometimes seemed to Mallory that unspoken memories of the man still haunted the city, an unlaid ghost. Once, the great victor of Waterloo had been exalted here, as the very saviour of the British nation; Wellington had been ennobled, and had held the highest office in the land. But in modern England he was vilified as a swaggering brute, a second King John, the butcher of his own restless people. The Rads had never forgotten their hatred for their early and formidable enemy. A full generation had passed since Wellington's death, but Prime Minister Byron still often spattered the Duke's memory with the acid of his formidable eloquence. Mallory, though a loyal Radical Party man, was unconvinced by mere rhetorical abuse. He privately entertained his own opinion of the long-dead tyrant. On his first trip to London at the age of six, Mallory had once seen the Duke of Wellington — passing in his gilded carriage in the street, with a clopping, jingling escort of armed cavalry. And the boy Mallory had been vastly impressed — not simply by that famous hook-nosed face, high-collared and whiskered, groomed and stem and silent — but by his own father's awe-struck mix of fear and pleasure at the Duke's passage. Some faint tang of that childhood visit to London — in 1831, the first year of the Time of Troubles, the last of England's old regime — still clung to Mallory whenever he saw the capital. Some few months later, in Lewes, his father had cheered wildly when news came of Wellington's death in a bomb atrocity. |
| 1099 |
But Mallory had secretly wept, stirred to bitter sorrow for a reason he could not now recall. His seasoned judgment saw the Duke of Wellington as the outmoded, ignorant victim of an upheaval beyond his comprehension; more Charles the First than King John. Wellington had foolishly championed the interests of declining and decadent Tory blue-bloods, a class destined to be swept from power by the rising middle-class and the savant meritocrats. But Wellington himself had been no blue-blood; he had once been plain Arthur Wellesley, of rather modest Irish origin. Further, it seemed to Mallory that as a soldier, Wellington had displayed a very praiseworthy mastery of his craft. It was only as a civil politician, and a reactionary Prime Minister, that Wellington had so thoroughly misjudged the revolutionary tenor of the coming age of industry and science. He had paid for that lack of vision with his honor, his power, and his very life. And the England that Wellington had known and misruled, the England of Mallory's childhood, had slid through strikes, manifestos, and demonstrations, to riots, martial law, massacres, open class-warfare, and near-total anarchy. Only the Industrial Radical Party, with their boldly rational vision of a comprehensive new order, had saved England from the abyss. But even so, Mallory thought. Even so, there should be a monument somewhere ... The cabriolet rolled up Piccadilly, passing Down Street, Whitehorse Street, Half-Moon Street. Mallory thumbed through his address-book, and found Laurence Oliphant's carte-de-visite. Oliphant lived on Half-Moon Street. Mallory had half a mind to stop the cab and see if Oliphant were at home. If, unlike most posh courtiers, Oliphant perhaps rose before ten, he might have something like a bucket of ice in his household and perhaps a drop of something to open the pores. The thought of boldly interrupting Oliphant's day, and perhaps surprising him at some covert intrigue, was a pleasant one to Mallory. But first things first. Perhaps he would try Oliphant when his errand was done. Mallory stopped the cab at the entrance to the Burlington Arcade. The gigantic iron-framed ziggurat of Fortnum & Mason lurked across the street, amid an array of jewelers and exclusive shops. The cabbie severely overcharged him, but Mallory took no notice, being in an expansive mood. It seemed the cabbies were imposing on everyone. Some small distance down Piccadilly, another man had leapt from his cab and was arguing, in a vulgar fashion, with his driver. |
| 1100 |
Mallory had found nothing to equal shopping in its gratifying demonstration of the power of his new-found wealth. He had won his money through an act of half-mad bravado, but the secret of its origin was safe with him. London's credit-machines clicked for the vaporous profits of gambling as readily as they did for the widow's mite. So what was it to be? This giant iron vase, with octagonal base, with eight open-work screens hanging before its fluted pedestal, giving a singular lightness and elegance to the entire object? This carved box-wood bracket with sculpted canopy, the intended mounting of a Venetian-glass thermometer? This ebony salt-cellar enriched with columns and elaborate sunken panels, accompanied by a silver salt-spoon rich with trefoils, oak-leaves, a spiral-girded stem, and the monogram of one's choice? Within J. Walker & Co., a small but marvelously tasteful establishment amid the bay-windowed shops of the famed Arcade, Mallory discovered a gift that seemed to him perfectly apt. It was an eight-day clock which struck the quarters and hours on fine cathedral-tone bells. The timepiece, which also displayed the date, the day of the week, and the phases of the moon, was an outstanding piece of British precision craftsmanship, though naturally the elegant clock-stand would claim more admiration from the mechanically undiscerning. The stand, of the finest lacquered papier-mache inlaid with turquoise-blue glass, was surmounted by a group of large gilt figures. These represented a young and decidedly attractive Britannia, very lightly robed, admiring the progress made by Time and Science in the civilization and happiness of the people of Britain. This laudable theme was additionally illustrated by a series of seven graven scenes, revolving weekly on hidden gear-work within the clock's base. The price was nothing less than fourteen guineas. It seemed that an item of this artistic rarity could not be denominated in simple pounds-shillings-and-pence. The crass pragmatic thought struck Mallory that the happy couple might be better served with a jingling handful of fourteen guineas. But the money would soon go, as money always did when one was young. A fine clock like this one might adorn one's home for generations. Mallory bought the clock with cash, refusing the offer of credit, with a year to pay. The clerk, a supercilious elderly man, sweating into a starched Regency collar, demonstrated the system of cork chocks that secured the gear-work from the exigencies of travel. |
| 1101 |
Mallory turned at once and looked behind him. There was a tall, long-shanked, slender man behind him, with a button-nose and long side-whiskers, in a short Albert coat and plain trousers. Even as Mallory's gaze caught him, the man raised a handkerchief to his face. He coughed, in a gentlemanly way, then he dabbed at his eyes a bit. Then he seemed, with a sudden theatrical start, to have recalled something he had forgotten. He turned away, and began to wander back toward the Burlington Arcade. He had not once looked straight at Mallory. Mallory himself took a sudden pretended interest in the clasps of his clock-case. He set his case down, bent, and looked at the bits of shiny brass with his mind racing and a chill in his spine. The rascal's handkerchief trick had given him away. Mallory recognized him now as the man he had seen by the underground station in Kensington; the coughing gent, who would not give up his cab. What's more, thought Mallory, his mind hot with insight, the coughing gent was also the rude man who'd argued with the cabbie about his fare, in Piccadilly. He had followed Mallory the whole distance from Kensington. He was trailing him. Mallory seized his clock-case in a fierce grip and began to walk quietly down Burlington Gardens. He turned right on Old Bond Street. His nerves were tingling now, with a stalker's instinct. He had been a fool to turn and stare at first. Perhaps he had given himself away to his pursuer. Mallory did not turn and look again, but ambled along with his best pretense at leisure. He paused before a jeweler's velvet racks of cameos and bracelets and evening tiaras for Her Ladyship, and watched the street behind him, in the iron-barred shining glass. He saw the Coughing Gent reappear almost at once. The man hung well back for the moment, careful to keep groups of London shoppers between himself and Mallory. The Coughing Gent was perhaps thirty-five, with a bit of grey in his side-whiskers, and a dark machine-stitched Albert coat that did not look like anything remarkable. His face was that of anyone in London, perhaps a little heavier, a little colder in the eyes, with a grimmer mouth beneath the button-nose. Mallory took another turn, left up Bruton Street, his clock-case growing more awkward by the step. The shops here lacked conveniently angled glass. He doffed his hat to a pretty woman, and pretended to glance back at her ankles. The Coughing Gent was still with him. Perhaps the Coughing Gent was a confederate of the tout and his woman. |
| 1102 |
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. |
| 1103 |
"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. |
| 1104 |
"Deep metaphysical roots! If I model a phenomenon accurately, does that mean I understand it? Or might it be simple coincidence, or an artifact of the technique? Of course, as an ardent simulationist, I myself put much faith in Engine-modeling. But the doctrine can be questioned, no doubt of it. Deep waters, Fraser! The sort of thing that old Hume and Bishop Berkeley used to thrive on!" "You're not drunk, are you, sir?" "Just a bit elevated," Mallory said. "Squiffy, you might say." They tramped on, wisely leaving the police to their squabbling. Mallory suddenly felt the loss of his good old Wyoming toggle-coat. He missed his canteen, his spyglass, the snug stiffness of a rifle over his back. The look of a cold, clean, wild horizon where life was fully lived and death was swift and honest. He wished he were out of London, on expedition again. He could cancel all his engagements. He could apply for funding to the Royal Society, or better yet, the Geographical. He would leave England! "You needn't do that, sir," Fraser said. "Might make matters worse, actually." "Was I talking aloud?" "A bit, sir. Yes." "Where could a man get a first-class game-rifle here in town, Fraser?" They were behind Chelsea Park now, in a place called Camera Square, where the shops offered fancy optical goods: talbotypes, magic-lanterns, phenakistoscopes, telescopes for the amateur star-gazer. There were toy microscopes for the boy-savant of the house, boys often taking a strong interest in the wriggling animalcules in pond-water. The minute creatures were of no practical interest, but their study might lead young minds to the doctrines of genuine Science. Stung by sentiment, Mallory paused before a window displaying such microscopes. They reminded him of kindly old Lord Mantell, who had given him his first job tidying-up about the Lewes Museum. From there he'd moved to cataloguing bones and birds'-eggs, and at last to a real Cambridge scholarship. The old Lord had been a bit eager with the birch-switch, he now recalled, but likely no more than Mallory had deserved. There came an odd whizzing sound from up the pavement. Mallory glanced in that direction and saw a queer half-crouching ghostly figure emerge from the fog, clothing flapping about it with speed, a pair of walking-canes doubled up under its arms. Mallory jumped back at the last possible instant as the boy shot past him with a yowling whoop. A London boy, thirteen or so, on rubber-wheeled boots. The boy turned swiftly, skidded to an expert stop, and began to pole himself back up the pavement with the walking-sticks. |
| 1105 |
Byron himself, questioned in this regard, is widely believed to have replied, "But there were Luddites, sir, and then there were Luddites." While this remark may be apocryphal, it is wholly in keeping with what is known of the Prime Minister's personality, and would seem to refer to the extraordinary severity with which he later put down and suppressed the popular Manchester-based anti-industrial movement led by Walter Gerard. For this was a form of Luddism attacking, not the old order, but the order that the Rads themselves had established. This object was once the property of Inspector Ebenezer Fraser, of the Bow Street Special Branch. Mallory had stayed with Fraser, watching the police surgeon at work with dirty sponge and bandage, until he was sure that Fraser was fully distracted. To further ease Fraser's evident suspicions, Mallory had borrowed a sheet of police stationery and set to the task of composing a letter. In the meantime, the Kings Road station had slowly filled with bellowing ruffian drunks and various species of rioter. It was very interesting as a social phenomenon, but Mallory was in no mood to spend the night on a cheerless cot in some raucous cell. His taste was most stubbornly set on something else entirely. So he had politely asked directions of a harried and exhausted sergeant, noted them with care in his field-book, and eased out of the station. He'd had no problem finding Cremorne Gardens. The situation there was nicely indicative of the city's crisis dynamic. 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. |
| 1106 |
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. And she had a splendid form. |
| 1107 |
Mallory, powerfully glad to be free of the fog-choked eeriness of back-street Whitechapel, edged past her into the parlor. A square, plank-topped table held a messy stack of illustrated tabloids, somehow still delivered despite the Stink. In the dimness he could make out fat Engine-printed headlines bemoaning the poor state of the Prime Minister's health. Old Byron was always feigning sickness, some gammy foot or rheumy lung or raddled liver. Hetty entered the parlor with her glowing lamp, and faded roses bloomed in the dusty wallpaper. Mallory dropped a gold sovereign on the table-top. He hated trouble in these matters, and always paid in advance. She noted the ring of the coin, smiling. Then she kicked off her street-muddied dolly-boots, and walked, swaying, to a doorway, which she flung open. A grey cat ran out, mewing, and she fussed at it, petting it and calling it Toby. She let it out to the stairs. Mallory watched her do this, and stood flat-footed in unhappy patience. "Well, then, come on with you," she said, tossing her plaited brown head. The bedroom was small enough, and shabby, with a pressed-oak two-poster and a tall, tarnished cheval-glass that looked as if it had once cost some money. Hetty set the lamp on the badly delaminated veneer of a bedside commode and began to pick at the buttons of her blouse, pulling her arms from the sleeves and tossing the garment aside as if clothing were more trouble to her than she cared for. Stepping deftly out of her skirt, she began to remove her corset and a stiff crinkled petticoat. "You wear no crinoline," Mallory noted hoarsely. "Don't like 'em." She popped the waistband of the petticoat and laid it aside. She deftly picked the wire hooks of the corset and eased its laces open, then wriggled it over her hips and stood there, breathing in relief, in her lace chemise. Mallory got out of his jacket and shoes. His member strained at his fly-buttons. He was anxious to get it out of his trousers, but didn't care to parade his erect prick by lamplight. Hetty jumped into the bed in her chemise, the worn springs complaining loudly. Mallory sat on the edge of the bed, which smelled powerfully of cheap orange-water and Hetty's sweat, and got his trousers and unmentionables off, leaving himself in his shirt. Leaning off the bed, he unbuttoned one compartment of his money-belt and removed a French-letter. "I'll do it in armor, dear," he muttered. "Is that all right?" Hetty sat up brightly on her elbow. "Let me see it, then." Mallory showed her the rolled membrane of sheep-gut. |
| 1108 |
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. He did not sleep, exactly, but rested for some indefinite time. When his mind began to run in circles, he lit and smoked one of Hetty's cigarettoes, a pleasant ritual, though without much point as far as the proper use of tobacco went. |
| 1109 |
He scuffed down Flower-and-Dean Street, awestruck, coughing. He could see little more than thirty feet ahead, for the alley roiled with a low-lying yellow fog that blurred his eyes with its clinging acid tang. More by luck than design, he emerged on Commercial Street, ordinarily a thriving Whitechapel avenue. Deserted now, its smooth tarmac was spread with fountained shards of shop-front glass. He walked a block, then another. There was scarcely a window intact. Cobbles, grubbed up from side-streets, had been flung right and left like a shower of meteors. A seeming whirlwind had descended on a nearby grocery, leaving the street ankle-deep in dirty snow-drifts of flour and sugar. Mallory picked his way through battered cabbages, squashed greengages, crushed jars of syrupped peaches, and the booted footballs of whole smoked hams. Scatterings of damp flour showed a stampede of men's brogues, the small bare feet of street-urchins, the dainty trace of women's shoes, and the sweep of their skirt-hems. Four mist-shrouded figures, three men and a woman, all dressed respectably, all carefully masked in thick cloth, came shuffling into view. Noticing him, they pointedly crossed the street. They moved slowly, unhurriedly, talking together in low tones. Mallory moved on, splintered glass crunching under his shoe-heels. Meyer's Gent's Furnishings, Peterson's Haberdashery, LaGrange's Parisian Pneumatique Launderette, all presented disintegrated store-fronts and doors torn off their hinges. Their fronts had been thoroughly pelted with stones, with bricks, with raw eggs. 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. |
| 1110 |
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. |
| 1111 |
Mallory dearly wished for such a mask himself, for his eyes were misting so painfully now that he squinted like a pantomime pirate, but he tramped on. Aldgate became Fenchurch, then Lombard, then Poultry Street, and still he was miles from his goal, if the Palace of Paleontology could be said to be one. His head pounded and swam with the sullen lees of bad whiskey and worse air, and he seemed to be nearer the Thames now, for a damp and viscous taint arose that sickened him. On Cheapside, a city omnibus had been toppled on its side and set afire with its own boiler-coals. Every window in it had been shattered, and it had burnt to a blackened husk. Mallory hoped no one had died inside it. The smoking wreckage stank too fiercely for him to want to look more closely. There were people in the churchyard of St. Paul's. The air seemed somewhat clearer there, for the dome was visible, and a large crowd of men and boys had collected among the churchyard trees. Unaccountably, they seemed in the highest spirits. Mallory perceived to his astonishment that they were brazenly tossing dice on the very steps of Wren's masterpiece. A little farther on, and Cheapside itself was blocked by scattered crowds of eager and determined gamblers. Fairy-rings of rascals had sprouted left and right from the very pavement, men kneeling to guard their mounting stakes of coins and paper-money. Eager leaders in mischief, tough, squint-eyed cockneys who seemed to have leapt whole from the coagulated Stink of London, cried aloud, hoarsely, like patterers, as Mallory passed. "A shilling to open! Who'll shoot? Who will shoot, my lads?" From the scattered rings came cries of triumph at winning, angry groans muffled by masks. For each man boldly gambling, there were three who timidly watched. A carnival attraction, it seemed, a stinking and criminal carnival, but a London lark nonetheless. There were no police in sight, no authority, no decency. Mallory edged warily through the thin, excited crowd, a cautious hand on the butt of the sailor's pistol. In an alley, two masked men booted a third, then relieved him of his watch and wallet. A crowd of at least a dozen watched the sight with only mild interest. These Londoners were like a gas, thought Mallory, like a cloud of minute atomies. The bonds of society broken, they had simply flown apart, like the perfectly elastic gassy spheres in Boyle's Laws of Physics. Most of them looked respectable enough by their dress; they were merely reckless now, stripped by Chaos to a moral vacuity. |
| 1112 |
Mallory propped the rolled bills against an ornate lamppost, and re-knotted his cloth mask over nose and mouth. His head spun evilly. Perhaps, he thought, that sticking-paste had had a bit of arsenic in it, or the ink some potent nauseous coal-derivative, for he felt poisoned, and weak in his very marrow. When he juggled up the bills again, their paper wrinkled in his sweating hands like the peeling skin of a drowned man. He had, it seemed, frustrated a lashing bite of the tout's hydra-headed devilment. But this minor triumph seemed wretchedly small, when matched against the villain's seemingly endless reservoirs of wicked ingenuity. Mallory was stumbling in darkness — while torn at will by invisible fangs ... And yet Mallory had discovered a crucial piece of evidence: the tout was gone to earth in the West India Docks! To be so close to a chance to grapple with the scoundrel, and yet so far — it was enough to madden a man. Mallory stumbled badly on a slick lump of horse-dung, then swung the scrolls up onto his right shoulder, in an unstable heap. 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. |
| 1113 |
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. Within the faltering maelstrom, a nucleation of spontaneous order had arisen! Now, like a cloudy muck resolving into crystals, everything would change. Mallory flung his hated burden behind the deserted counter of the lobby-desk. In one corner, a telegraph was clacking fitfully, new punch-tape spooling by fits and starts upon the floor. Mallory observed this small but significant miracle, and sighed, like a diver whose head has broken water. |
| 1114 |
The Palace air was sharp with disinfectant, but blissfully breathable. Mallory stripped the filthy mask from his face and stuffed it in his pocket. Somewhere in this blessed shelter, he thought, there was food to be had. Perhaps a wash-basin, and soap, and sulphurated powder for the fleas that had been creeping about his waistband since morning. Eggs. Ham. Restorative wine. Postage-stamps, laundresses, shoe-blacking — the whole miraculous concatenated network of Civilization. A stranger came marching toward Mallory across the lobby floor: a British soldier, an Artillery subaltern, in elegant dress-gear. He wore a double-breasted blue coatee, bright with chevrons, brass buttons, and gold-braided epaulets. His sleek trousers had a red military stripe. He wore a round, gold-laced forage-cap, and a buttoned pistol-holster at his neat white waistbelt. With his shoulders square, spine straight, and head high, this handsome young man approached with a stern look of purpose. Mallory straightened quickly, taken aback, even vaguely shamed, to compare his rumpled, sweat-stained civilian garb to this crisp military paragon. Then, with a leap of surprise, happy recognition dawned. "Brian!" Mallory shouted. "Brian, boy!" The soldier quickened his pace. "Ned — why it is you, ain't it!" said Mallory's brother, a tender smile parting his new Crimean beard. He seized Mallory's hand in both his own, and shook it heartily, with a solid strength. Mallory noted with surprise and pleasure that military discipline and scientific diet had put inches and pounds on the lad. Brian Mallory, the family's sixth-born child, had often seemed a bit quiet and timid, but now Mallory's little brother stood a good six-four in his military boots, and had the look in his creased blue eyes of a man who had seen the world. "We've been a-waiting for you, Ned," Brian told him. His bold voice had slipped a bit, by some old habit, into the remembered tone of their childhood. For Mallory, it was a plaintive echo from deep memory: the demands of a crowd of little children upon their eldest brother. Somehow, this familiar call, far from tiring or burdening Mallory, rallied him immediately into a mental second-wind. Confusion vanished like a mist and he felt stronger, more capable; the very presence of young Brian had recalled him to himself. "Damme but it's good to see you!" Mallory blurted. "It's good you're back at last," Brian said. "We heard tale of a fire in your room — and you vanished into London, none knew where! |
| 1115 |
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. The bill featured a large winged woman with her hair afire, surmounting two columns of dense text. Words, apparently at random, had been marked out in red. |
| 1116 |
Mallory adjusted his mask, checked the workings of the Ballester-Molina, exchanged a few words with Brian. But with all doubt resolved, with life and death awaiting the coming roll of the die, there seemed little enough to say. Instead, like Brian, Mallory found himself inspecting every passing door and window with a nervous care. It seemed that every wall in Limehouse was spattered with the wretch's outpourings. Some were vivid madness pure and simple: many others, however, were cunningly disguised. Mallory noted five instances of the lecture-posters that had libeled him. Some might have been genuine, for he did not read the text. The sight of his own name struck his heightened sensibilities with a shock almost painful. And he had not been the only victim of this queer kind of forgery. An advert for the Bank of England solicited deposits of pounds of flesh. A seeming offer of first-class railway excursions incited the public to rob the wealthy passengers. Such was the devilish mockery of these fraudulent bills that even quite normal adverts began to seem queer. As he scanned the bills, searching for double-meanings, every posted word seemed to decay into threatening nonsense. Mallory had never before realized the ubiquity of London's advertisements, the sullen omnipresence of insistent words and images. An inexplicable weariness of soul struck him, as the Zephyr rumbled on unchallenged through the macadamed streets. It was a very weariness of London, of the city's sheer physicality, its nightmare endlessness, of streets, courts, crescents, terraces, and alleys, of fog-shrouded stone and soot-blackened brick. A nausea of awnings, a nastiness of casements, an ugliness of scaffoldings lashed together with rope; a horrible prevalence of iron street-lamps and granite bollards, of pawn-shops, haberdashers, and tobacconists. The city seemed to stretch about them like some pitiless abyss of geologic time. An ugly shout split Mallory's reverie. Masked men had scuttled into the street before them, shabby, threatening, blocking the way. The Zephyr braked to a sudden stop, the coal-wain lurching. Mallory saw at a glance that these were rascals of the roughest description. The first, an evil youngster with a face like dirty dough, in a greasy jacket and corduroy trousers, had a mangy fur cap pulled low, but not low enough to hide the prison-cut of his hair. The second, a sturdy brute of thirty-five, wore a tall grease-stiffened hat, checked trousers, and brass-toed lace-up boots. |
| 1117 |
The strange acoustics of the makeshift hall warped her words as if she were speaking through a drumhead. Some kind of queer temperance lecture it seemed, for she was decrying "the poison alcohol" and its threat to the "revolutionary spirit of the working-class." She had flasks, great glass-stoppered carboys, full of liquor on her table. They were labeled with the skull-and-crossbones, amid a truck of distillation-flasks, red rubber-tubing, wire cages, and laboratory gas-rings. Tom, at Mallory's right, tapped Mallory's arm and whispered in a voice of near-terror, "Ned! Ned! Is that Lady Ada?" "My God, boy," Mallory hissed, the hair prickling in fear all across his arms and neck, "what makes you think that? Of course it isn't she!" Tom looked relieved, puzzled, vaguely offended. "Who is it, then?" The lecturing female turned to the chalkboard, and wrote, in a ladylike cursive, the words "Neurasthenic Degeneracy." She turned, aimed a false and brilliant smile at the audience over her shoulder, and for the first time Mallory recognized her. She was Florence Russell Bartlett. Mallory stiffened in his chair with a half-stifled gasp of shock. Something — a fleck of dry cotton from within his mask — lodged like a barb in his throat. He began coughing. And he could not stop. His slimy throat was lacerated. He tried to smile, to whisper a word of apology, but his windpipe seemed pinched in iron bands. Mallory fought the racking spasms with all his strength, hot tears gushing freely, but he could not stop himself, nor even muffle the nightmare hacking. It called a deadly attention to him like a coster-monger's bellow. At last Mallory jerked to his feet, knocking his chair back with a clatter, and staggered away half-bent, half-blinded. He tottered, arms outstretched, through the blurry wilderness of booty, his feet tangling in something, some wooden object falling with a clatter. Somehow he found a spot of shelter, and bent there shaking violently, his breath choked now by a loathsome bolus of phlegm and vomit. I could die from this, he thought in desperation, his eyes bulging in their sockets. Something will rupture. My heart will burst. Then somehow the clog was gone, the fit defeated. Mallory drew a ragged squeak of air, coughed, found his wind and began to breathe. He wiped foul spittle from his beard with his bare hand, and found himself leaning against a piece of statuary. It was a life-sized Hindu maiden in Coate's patent artificial stone, half-nude, with a water-jug poised on her draperied hip. |
| 1118 |
He had neglected to cock the hammers. The Marquess's gun seemed to have some kind of nickeled safety-switch. Someone nearby threw a chair at Mallory; he fended it off, absently, but then something struck him hard in the foot. The blow was sharp enough to numb his leg, and knock him from his stance; he took the opportunity to retreat. He could not seem to run properly. Perhaps he had been crippled. Bullets sang past him with a nostalgic drone from far Wyoming. Fraser beckoned at him from the mouth of a side-alley. Mallory ran to him, turned, skidded. Fraser stepped coolly into the open, raising his copper's pepperbox in a dueling stance, right arm extended, body turned to present a narrow target, head held keen-eyed and level. He fired twice, and there were screams. Fraser took Mallory's arm. "This way!" Mallory's heart was jumping like a rabbit, and he could not get his foot to work. He limped down the alley. It ended abruptly. Fraser searched frantically for a crawl-way. Tom was boosting Brian atop a great unsteady heap of cartons. Mallory stopped beside his brothers, turned, raised both pistols. He glanced down swiftly at his foot. A stray bullet had knocked the heel from his shoe. He looked up an instant later to see half-a-dozen screaming bandits approaching in hot pursuit. A vast concussion shook the building. Heaps of tinned goods clattered to the floor in a billow of powder-smoke. Mallory gaped. All six of the wretches lay sprawled and blasted in the alley, as if lightning-struck. "Ned!" shouted Brian, from atop his heap of cartons. "Get their weapons!" He crouched there on one knee, the Russian pistol gushing smoke from its opened loading-chamber. He loaded a second cartridge of brass and red waxed-paper, as thick as a copper's baton. Mallory, ears ringing, lunged forward, then slipped and almost fell headlong in the spreading blood. He grabbed right-handed for support and the Ballester-Molina went off, its bullet whanging from an iron beam overhead. Mallory paused, uncocked it carefully, uncocked the Marquess's pistol as well, stuck them both into his belt, precious seconds ticking as he dithered. The alley was awash with blood. The blunderbuss blast of the Russian hand-cannon had lacerated the men hideously. One poor devil was still gurgling as Mallory pried a Victoria carbine from beneath him, its stock dripping red. He struggled with the fellow's bandolier, but gave that up for another's wooden-handled Yankee revolver. Something stung his palm as he snatched up the pistol. |
| 1119 |
They took inventory. Tom had a derringer with one loaded chamber; useful, perhaps, if the anarchists swarmed in like boarding pirates, but not otherwise. Mallory's Ballester-Molina had three rounds. Fraser's pepperbox had three caps left, and the Marquess's gun five rounds. And they had an empty Victoria carbine, and Fraser's little truncheon. There was no sign of Brian. There were angry, muffled shouts in the depths of the warehouse — orders. Mallory thought. The gunfire died away quite suddenly, replaced by an ominous silence, broken by rustling and what seemed to be hammering. He peered up over the edge of a forward bale. There was no visible enemy, but the doors of the warehouse had been shut. Gloom flew across the warehouse in a sudden wave. Beyond the glazed vaulting of the ceiling, it had grown swiftly and astonishingly dark, as if the Stink had thickened further. "Should we make a run for it?" whispered Tom. "Not without Brian," Mallory said. Fraser shook his head dourly — not speaking his doubt, but it was clear enough. They worked in the gloom for a while, clearing space, digging in deeper, heaving up some of the bales to serve as crenellations. At the sound of their activity, more shots came, muzzle-flashes savagely lighting the darkness, bullets screaming off iron braces overhead. Here and there in the heaps of merchandise, the kindled light of lanterns glowed. More shouted orders, and the firing ceased. There was a flurry of pattering on the metal roof, swiftly gone. "What was that?" Tom asked. "Sounded like rats scampering," Mallory said. "Rain!" Fraser suggested. Mallory said nothing. Another ash-fall seemed far more likely. The gloom lightened again, quite suddenly. Mallory peered over the edge. A crowd of the rascals were creeping forward, almost to the foot of the ramparts, barefoot and in hushed silence, some with knives in their teeth. Mallory bellowed in alarm and began firing. He was blinded at once by his own muzzle-flashes, but the Ballester-Molina, kicking and pumping, seemed to have a life of its own; in an instant the three remaining rounds were gone. Not wasted, though; at such short range he had not been able to miss. Two men were down, a third crawling, and the rest fleeing in terror. Mallory could hear them re-grouping out of sight, milling, cursing each other. Mallory, his gun empty, grasped its hot barrel like a club. The building shook with the awful roar of Brian's pistol. The silence afterward was broken by agonized screams. |
| 1120 |
The noise was hellish, supernatural. The warehouse shook like a sheet of beaten tin. Brian, Tom, and Fraser crouched like praying Bedouins, their hands clamped to their ears. Bits of flaming wood and fabric fell gently onto the bales around them, jumping a bit with each repeated concussion, smoldering into the cotton where they lay. The warehouse billowed with air and heat. Mallory absently plucked two wads of cotton and stuffed them into his ears. A section of roofing collapsed, quite slowly, like the wing of a dying swan. Rain in torrents fought the fires below. Beauty entered Mallory's soul. He stood, the rifle like a wand in his hands. The shelling had stopped, but the noise was incessant, for the building was on fire. Tongues of dirty flame leapt up in a hundred places, twisted fantastically by gusts of wind. Mallory stepped to the edge of the cotton parapet. The shelling had knocked the covered walkway into fragments, like a muddy crawl-way of termites, crushed by a boot. Mallory stood, his head filled with the monotone roaring of absolute sublimity, and watched as his enemies fled screaming. A man stopped amid the flames, and turned. It was Swing. He gazed up at Mallory where he stood. His face twisted with a desperate awe. He screamed something — screamed it louder still — but he was a little man, far away, and Mallory could not hear him. Mallory slowly shook his head. Swing raised his weapon then. Mallory saw, with a glow of pleased surprise, the familiar outlines of a Cutts-Maudslay carbine. Swing aimed the weapon, braced himself, and pulled the trigger. Pleasantly tenuous singing sounds surrounded Mallory, with a musical popping from the perforating roof behind him. Mallory, his hands moving with superb and unintentioned grace, raised his rifle, sighted, fired. Swing spun and fell sprawling. The Cutts-Maudslay, still in his grasp, continued its spring-driven jerking and clicking even after its drum of cartridges was empty. Mallory watched, with tepid interest, as Fraser, leaping through the wreckage with a spidery agility, approached the fallen anarchist with his pistol drawn. He handcuffed Swing, then lifted him limply over one shoulder. Mallory's eyes smarted. Smoke from the flaming warehouse was gathering under the wreckage of its roof. He looked down, blinking, to see Tom lowering a limping Brian to the floor. The two joined Fraser, who beckoned sharply. Mallory smiled, descended, followed. The three then fled through the whipping, thickening fires, with Mallory strolling after them. |
| 1121 |
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. |
| 1122 |
Babbage, speaking at Byron's state funeral, had regretted the fact that modern medicine remained more an art than a science. The speech, naturally, had been most widely published. "Do close your eyes, please, in the event of a spark being discharged." McNeile was pulling on a pair of great, stiff, leather gauntlets. McNeile connected the copper cables to a massive voltaic cell. The room filled with the faint eerie odor of electricity. "Please try to relax, Mr. Oliphant, so as to facilitate the polar reversal!" Half-Moon Street was illuminated by a massive Webb lamp, a fluted Corinthian column fueled by sewer-gas. Like the rest of London's Webbs, it had remained unlit, during the summer's emergency, for fear of leaks and explosions. Indeed, there had been at least a dozen pavement-ripping blasts, most attributed to the same firedamp that powered the Webb. Lord Babbage was an outspoken supporter of the Webb method; as a result, every school-boy knew that the methane potential from a single cow was adequate for an average household's daily heating, lighting, and cooking requirements. He glanced up at the lamp as he neared his own Georgian facade. Its light was another apparent token of returning normalcy, but he took little comfort in tokens. The physical and more crudely social cataclysm was past now, certainly, but Byron's death had triggered successive waves of instability; Oliphant imagined them spreading out like ripples in a pond, overlapping with others that spread from more obscure points of impact, creating ominously unpredictable areas of turbulence. One such, certainly, was the business of Charles Egremont and the current Luddite witch-hunt. Oliphant knew with absolute professional certainty that the Luddites were defunct; despite the best efforts of a few manic anarchists, the London riots of the past summer had shown no coherent or organized political agenda. All reasonable aspirations of the working-class had been successfully subsumed by the Radicals. Byron, in his vigorous days, had tempered justice with a well-dramatized show of mercy. Those early Luddite leaders who had made their peace with the Rads were now the tidy, comfortably well-to-do leaders of respectable trades-unions and craft-guilds. Some were wealthy industrialists — though their peace of mind was severely perturbed by Egremont's systematic disinterment of old convictions. A second wave of Luddism had arisen in the turbulent forties, aimed, this time, directly against the Rads, with a charter of popular rights and a desperate zest for violence. |
| 1123 |
There had been no message on that one since the death of the late Prime Minister. The address to which the cab earned him was in Brigsome's Terrace, off a thoroughfare of the sort that speculative builders delighted in carving through the ancient and still largely unexplored wilderness that was East London. The terrace itself, Oliphant decided as he alighted from his hansom, was as dismal a block of buildings as had ever been composed of brick and mortar. The builder who had speculated on these ten dreary prison-houses, he thought, had likely hung himself behind the parlor door of some adjacent tavern before the hideous things were finished. The streets through which the cab had conveyed him had been those one seemed to traverse at times such as these — all those thoroughfares seemingly unknown to day and the ordinary pedestrian. A thin rain was falling now, and Oliphant momentarily regretted not having accepted the water-proof that Bligh had offered at the door. The two men before No. 5 wore long drooping black cape-like articles of waxed Egyptian cotton. A recent innovation from New South Wales, Oliphant knew, much praised in the Crimea and precisely the thing for concealing weapons of the sort that these two most certainly concealed. "Special Bureau," Oliphant said, briskly climbing past the guards. Abashed by his accent and manner, they let him pass. It would be necessary to report that to Fraser. He entered the house, finding himself in a parlor lit by a powerful carbide-lantern, atop a tripod, its merciless white glare magnified by a concave round of polished tin. The parlor was furnished with scraps salvaged from the ruins of gentility. There was a cottage-piano, and a chiffonier several sizes too large for the room. The latter struck him as pathetically gorgeous, with its tarnished gilt moldings. A threadbare patch of Brussels carpet swarmed with roses and lilies, amid a desert of colorless drugget. Knitted curtains shaded the windows overlooking Brigsome's Terrace. Beside the glass, two hanging wire baskets were festooned with plants of the cactus species, which grew in prickly and spider-like profusion. Oliphant noted an acrid stench, more penetrating than the reek of carbide. Betteredge emerged from the rear of the house. He wore a high-crowned derby hat that made him seem altogether American, so that he might easily have been mistaken for one of the Pinkerton operatives he shadowed daily. Likely the effect was deliberate, down to the patent boots with their elasticated side-gores. |
| 1124 |
He dreamed, as he often did, of an omniscient Eye in whose infinite perspectives might be sorted every least mystery. Upon arrival, he found, to his ill-concealed chagrin, that Bligh had drawn a bath for him in the collapsible rubber tub recently prescribed by Dr. McNeile. In robe and nightshirt, slippered in embroidered moleskin, Oliphant examined the thing with resigned distaste. It stood, steaming, before the perfectly good and perfectly empty tub of white porcelain which dominated his bath-room. It was Swiss, the rubber bath, its slack black trough gone taut and bulbous with the volume of water it presently contained. Supported by an elaborately hinged frame of black-enameled teak, it was connected to the geyser with a worm-like hose and several ceramic petcocks. Removing his robe, and then his nightshirt, he stepped from his slippers, then from the chill of octagonal marble tiles, into the soft, warm maw. It very nearly overturned as he struggled to sit. The elastic material, supported on all sides by the frame, gave distressingly beneath one's feet. And was, he discovered, quite horrid in its embrace of one's buttocks. He was, according to McNeile's prescription, to recline for a quarter-hour, his head supported on the small pneumatic pillow of rubberized canvas supplied for this purpose by the manufacturer. McNeile maintained that the cast-iron body of a porcelain tub confused the spine's natural attempts to return to its correct magnetic polarity. Oliphant shifted slightly, grimacing at the obscene sensation of the clinging rubber. Bligh had arranged a sponge, pumice, and a fresh bar of French-milled soap in the little bamboo basket attached to the side of the tub. Bamboo, Oliphant supposed, must also lack magnetic properties. He groaned, then took up sponge and soap and began to wash himself. Released from the pressing business of the day, Oliphant, as he often did, undertook a detailed and systematic act of recollection. He had a natural gift for memory, greatly aided in youth by the educational doctrines of his father, whose ardent interest in mesmerism and the tricks of stage-magic had introduced his son to the arcane disciplines of mnemonics. Such accomplishments had been of great use to Oliphant in later life, and he practiced them now with a regularity he had once devoted to prayer. Almost a year had passed since his search through the effects of Michael Radley, in Room 37, Grand's Hotel. Radley had owned a modern steamer-trunk of the sort that, upended and opened, served as a compact combination of wardrobe and bureau. |
| 1125 |
Radley's face was there, quite dead, mouth agape, eyes blank as fog, and the cool marble features of Lady Ada Byron, aloof and impassive, framed by curls and ringlets that were proofs of a pure geometry. But the third head, sinuously swaying, evaded Oliphant's gaze. He sometimes imagined its face was Edward Mallory's, resolutely ambitious, hopelessly frank; at other times he took it to be the pretty, poisonous visage of Florence Bartlett, wreathed in fumes of vitriol. And sometimes, particularly as now, in the rubber bath's cloying embrace, drifting toward the continent of sleep, the face was his own, its eyes filled with a dread he could not name. The following morning, Oliphant slept in, then kept to his bed, Bligh supplying him with files from the study, strong tea, and anchovy toast. He read a Foreign Office dossier on one Wilhelm Stieber, a Prussian agent posing as an emigre newspaper editor named Schmidt. With considerably more interest, he read and annotated a Bow Street file detailing several recent attempts to smuggle munitions, each incident involving cargo destined for Manhattan. The next file consisted of Engine-printed copies of several letters from a Mr. Copeland, of Boston. Mr. Copeland, who traveled in lumber, was in British pay. His letters described the system of forts defending the island of Manhattan, with extensive notes on ordnance. Oliphant's gaze, from long practice, slid lightly over Copeland's account of the south battery on Governor's Island, something of a relic by the sound of it, and quickly arrived at a report of rumors that the Commune had strung a chain of mines from the Romer Shoals to the Narrows. Oliphant sighed. He very much doubted that the channel had been mined, but the leaders of the Commune would certainly wish it to be thought to have been mined. As indeed it might soon be, if the gentlemen of the Commission for Free Trade were to have their way. Bligh was at the door. "You've an appointment with Mr. Wakefield, sir, at the Central Statistics Bureau." An hour later, Betteredge greeted him from the open door of a cab. "Good afternoon, Mr. Oliphant." Oliphant climbed in and settled himself. Pleated shades of black-proofed canvas were drawn firmly across either window, shutting out Half-Moon Street and the stark November sun. As the driver urged the cab-horse forward, Betteredge opened a case at his feet, took out a lamp, which he lit in a rapid and dextrous fashion, and fixed, with a brass apparatus of screws and bolts, to the arm of the seat. |
| 1126 |
The interior of the case glittered like a miniature arsenal. He passed Oliphant a crimson file-folder. Oliphant opened the file, which detailed the circumstances of the death of Michael Radley. He had himself been in the smoking-room with the General and poor doomed Radley, the both of them awash with drink. Of their respective styles of drunkenness, Radley's had been the more presentable, the least predictable, the more dangerous. Houston, in his cups, delighted in playing the barbarous American; red-eyed, perspiring, foul-mouthed, he lounged with one great coarse boot propped muddily atop an ottoman. As Houston spoke, and smoked, and spat, roundly cursing Oliphant and Britain, he sullenly shaved curls from a bit of pine, periodically pausing to strop the jack-knife on the edge of his boot-sole. Radley, in contrast, had positively quivered with the liquor's stimulant effect, cheeks flushed and eyes flashing. Oliphant's visit had been intended deliberately to disturb Houston on the eve of his departure to France, but the display of ill-concealed mutual hostility evident between the General and his publicist had been quite unexpected. He had hoped to sow seeds of doubt with regard to the French tour; to this end, and primarily for Radley's benefit, he had managed to imply an exaggerated degree of cooperation on the parts of the intelligence services of Britain and France. 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. |
| 1127 |
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. "Are you done with that one, sir?" He looked up at Betteredge, then down at the file, seeing Radley's blood spread in a tacky pool. |
| 1128 |
They were, he was pleased to note, a thoroughly unremarkable lot. He disliked swinging-saloons, finding the Engine-controlled movements of the cabin, intended to compensate for the vessel's pitch and roll, somehow more unsettling than the ordinary motion of a ship at sea. In addition, the cabin itself was effectively windowless. Swung on gimbals in a central well, the cabin was mounted so deeply in the hull that its windows, such as they were, were located high up along the walls, well above one's line of sight. All in all, as a remedy for mal-de-mer, Oliphant thought it excessive. The public, however, were apparently fascinated by the novel employment of a small Engine, somewhat on the order of a gunnery Engine, whose sole task consisted of maintaining as near a level footing in the cabin as was deemed possible. This was accomplished via something the press referred to, in clacker's argot, as "back-feed." Still, with twin paddles fore and aft, the Bessemer customarily performed the distance of twenty-one miles between Dover and Calais in an hour and thirty minutes. He would rather have been above-decks, now, facing into the wind; able then, perhaps, to imagine himself steaming toward some grander, more accessible goal. But the promenade of a swinging-saloon offered no bulwark, only an iron railing, and the Channel wind was damp and cold. And he had, he reminded himself, only the one goal now, and it, in all likelihood, a fool's errand. Still: Sybil Gerard. He had decided, upon reading the telegram to Egremont, against having her number spun. He had expected it might attract unwanted attention; with Criminal Anthropometry holding sway at Central Statistics, of course, he had been proven correct. And he rather suspected that Sybil Gerard's file might no longer exist. Walter Gerard of Manchester, sworn enemy of progress, agitator for the rights of man. Hanged. And if Walter Gerard had had a daughter, what might have become of her? And if she had been ruined, as she claimed to have been, by Charles Egremont? Oliphant's back began to ache. Beneath the chair's stiff brocade, Jacquard-woven with repeated images of the Bessemer, the horsehair stuffing held a chill. But if nothing else, he reminded himself, he at least had temporarily escaped the soft black pit of Dr. McNeile's patent Swiss bath-tub. Putting his brandy aside unfinished, he nodded then, and napped. And dreamed, perhaps, of the Eye. The Bessemer docked at Calais at half past one. Monsieur Lucien Arslau's apartments were in Passy. |
| 1129 |
The Commons procrastinated on the Radical Reform Bill, and on 8 October the Lords threw it out. The King refused to create new Radical peers who might force the Bill through; on the contrary, the Fitzelarences were ennobled instead, leading Byron to comment bitterly: "How much better it is to be a Royal bastard than a philosopher in England at present. But a mighty change is at hand." Popular pressure mounted swiftly. In Birmingham, Liverpool, and Manchester, the working-class, inspired by Babbage's ideals of union ownership and mutual co-operatives, took to the streets in massive torchlight parades. The Industrial Radical Party, disdaining violence, called for moral suasion and a peaceful mass-campaign for redress of legitimate grievances. But the Government remained stubborn, and events took an ugly turn. In a rising crescendo of random outrage, violent rural "Swing bands" and proletarian Luddites attacked aristocratic homes and capitalist factories alike. Mobs in London shattered the windows in the house of the Duke of Wellington and other Tory peers, and, cobblestones in hand, lay sullenly in wait for the passing carriages of the elite. The Anglican bishops, who had voted against Reform in the Lords, were burned in effigy. Ultra-radical conspirators, fired to frenzy by the furious polemics of the atheist R B. Shelley, attacked and looted Establishment churches. On 12 December Lord Byron introduced a new Reform Bill, more radical yet, proposing outright disfranchisement of the hereditary British aristocracy, including himself. This was more than the lories could bear, and Wellington involved himself in covert planning for a military coup. The crisis had polarized the nation. At this juncture, the middle-classes, terrified of the prospect of anarchy, made their own move and came down on the side of the Radicals. A tax-strike was declared, to force Wellington from office; there was a deliberate run on the banks, in which merchants demanded and hoarded gold specie, bringing the national economy to a grinding halt. In Bristol, after three days of major riots, Wellington ordered the Army to put down "Jacobinism" by any means necessary. In the resulting massacre three hundred people, including three prominent Radical M. P.'s, lost their lives. When the news of the massacre reached him, a furious Byron, now calling himself "Citizen Byron," and appearing without coat or necktie at a London rally, called for a general strike. This rally was also attacked by Tory cavalry, with bloody results, but Byron eluded capture. |
| 1130 |
He had the gifts of a Newton, but he could not persuade. I brought you together. At first you hated him, and mocked him behind his back, and me as well, for showing you a truth beyond your comprehension. I persisted; begged you to think of honor, of service, of your own glory, of the future of the child in my womb, Ada, that strange child. (Poor Ada, she does not look well, she has too much of you in her.) But you cursed me for a cold-hearted shrew and retired in a drunken temper. For the sake of that greater good, I painted a smile on my face and descended open-eyed into the very Pit. How it pained me, that vile greasy probing and animal nastiness; but I let you do as you liked, and forgave you for it, and petted and kissed you for it, as if I liked it. And you wept like a child, and were grateful, and talked of love undying and united souls, until you tired of that sort of talk. And then, to hurt me, you told me dreadful, shocking things, to disgust me and frighten me away, but I would no longer allow you to frighten me; I was steeled to anything, that night. So I forgave you, forgave and forgave, until at last you could find no further confession even in the foulest dregs of your soul, and at last you had no pretense left, nothing left to say. I imagine that after that night you became frightened of me, perhaps, a little frightened, and that did you a great deal of good, I think. It never hurt me so again, after that night. I taught myself to play all your "pretty little games," and to win them. That was the price I paid, to put your beast in harness. If there is a Judge of Men in another world, though I no longer believe that, no, not in my heart, and yet at times, evil times, times like these — I fancy I sense a never-closing, all-embracing Eye, and feel the awful pressure of its dreadful comprehension. And if there be a Judge, milord husband, then do not think to gull him. No, do not boast of your magnificent sins and demand damnation — for how little you knew, over the years. You, the greatest Minister of the greatest Empire in history — you flinched, you were feeble, you dodged every consequence — Are these tears? We should not have killed so many ... We, I say, but it was I, I who sacrificed my virtue, my faith, my salvation, all burnt to black ashes on the altar of your ambition. For all your bold trumpery talk of Corsairs and Bonaparte, you had no iron in you; you wept even at the thought of hanging miserable Luddites, and could not bear to chain away vicious mad Shelley, until I forced your hand. |
| 1131 |
The discussion has been marked with more than usual violence against my office, and there has been no defense from any of you — the members of my own Cabinet. "How, under these circumstances, are we to successfully resolve the matter of the murder of the Reverend Alistair Roseberry? This shameful, atavistic crime, brutally perpetrated within a Christian church, has blackened the reputation of Party and Government, and cast the gravest doubts on our intentions and integrity. And how are we to root out the murderous dark-lantern societies whose power, and provocative daring, grows daily? "God knows, gentlemen, that I never sought my present office. Indeed, I would have done anything, consistent with honor, to avoid assuming it. But I must be master in this House, or else resign my office — abandoning this nation to the purported leadership of men whose intentions are increasingly stark in their clarity. Gentlemen, the choice is yours." ======== Death of the Marquess of Hastings Yes, sir, two-fifteen to be quite exact, sir — and no other way to be, as we're on the Colt & Maxwell system of patent punch-clocks. Just a sort of dripping sound, sir. For a moment I took it to be a leakage, forgetting the night was clear. Rain, I thought, and that was all my anxiety, sir, thinking the Land Leviathan would be damaged by damp, so I flung my lantern's beam up quick, and there the poor rascal hung, and blood all down the Leviathan's neck-bones, sir, and all on the — what d'ye call 'em? — the armatures, what hold the beast upright. And his head a bloody min, sir — no longer as you'd call a head at all. Dangling there by his ankles from this manner of harness, and I saw the ropes and pulleys going straight up, taut, into the dark of the great dome, and the sight struck me so, sir, that it wasn't till I'd sounded the alarm that I saw the Leviathan's head was missing too. Yes, sir, I do believe that to be the case — the manner in which it was done. He was lowered down from the dome and did the job up there, in the dark, and paused when he'd hear my footsteps, and then continue his work. The work of some hours, for they'd had to rig their lines and pulleys. Likely I passed beneath them several times, on my watch. And when he'd got it free, the head, sir, someone else winched it up, and took it away through that panel they'd unbolted. But something must have given, sir, or slipped, for down he came, square into the floor, best Florentine marble that is. We found where his brains had been dashed, sir, though I'd as soon forget it. |
| 1132 |
I told Mr. Oliphant that it had been my pleasure to accompany Dr. Mallory's triumphant lecture on the Brontosaurus with a highly advanced kinotropic program. The Monthly Review of the Steam Intellect Society had run a most gratifying review of my efforts, and I offered Mr. Oliphant a copy of the magazine. He glanced within it, but it seemed that his grasp of the intricacies of clacking was amateurish at best, for his reaction was one of polite puzzlement. I then informed him that Dr. Mallory had led me to his door. In one of our private conversations, the great savant had seen fit to tell me of Mr. Oliphant's daring proposal — to employ the Engines of the police in the scientific exploration of previously hidden patterns underlying the movements and occupations of the metropolitan population. My admiration for this bold scheme had brought me directly to Mr. Oliphant, and I stated my willingness to assist in the implementation of that vision. He interrupted me, then, in a markedly distracted manner. We are numbered, he declared, each of us, by an all-seeing eye; our minutes, too, are numbered, and each hair upon our heads. And surely it was God's will, that the computational powers of the Engine be brought to bear upon the great commonality, upon the flows of traffic, of commerce, the tidal actions of crowds — upon the infinitely divisible texture of His work. I waited for a conclusion to this extraordinary outburst, but Mr. Oliphant seemed quite lost in thought, of a sudden. I then explained to him, as nearly as possible in layman's terms, how the nature of the human eye necessitates, in kinotropy, both remarkable speed and remarkable complexity. For this reason, I concluded, we kinotropists must be numbered among Britain's most adept programmers of Enginery of any sort, and virtually all advances in the compression of data have originated as kinotropic applications. At this point, he interrupted again, asking if I had indeed said "the compression of data," and was I familiar with the term "algorithmic compression"? I assured him that I was. He rose, then, and going to a bureau near at hand, he brought out what I took to be a wooden box of the sort used to transport scientific instruments, though this was partially covered, it seemed, with remnants of white plaster. And would I be so kind, he requested, as to examine the cards within, copy them for safekeeping, and privately report to him upon the nature of their content? He had no idea of their astonishing import, you see, no idea whatever. |
| 1133 |
It was indeed a painful lesson in the halting abilities of even our finest ordinateurs. "Yet I do believe, and must assert most strongly, that the Modus technique of self-referentiality will someday form the bedrock of a genuinely transcendent meta-system of calculatory mathematics. The Modus has proven my Conjectures, but their practical exfoliation awaits an Engine of vast capacity, one capable of iterations of untold sophistication and complexity. "Is it not strange that we mere mortals can talk about a concept — truth — that is infinitely complicated? And yet — is not a closed system the essence of the mechanical, the unthinking? And is not an open system the very definition of the organic, of life and thought? "If we envision the entire System of Mathematics as a great Engine for proving theorems, then we must say, through the agency of the Modus, that such an Engine lives, and could indeed prove its own life, should it develop the capacity to look upon itself. The Lens for such a self-examination is of a nature not yet known to us; yet we know that it exists, for we ourselves possess it. "As thinking beings, we may envision the universe, though we have no finite way to sum it up. The term, 'universe,' is not in fact a rational concept, though it is something of such utter immediacy that no thinking creature can escape a pressing knowledge of it, and indeed, an urge to know its workings, and the nature of one's own origin within it. "In his final years, the great Lord Babbage, impatient of the limits of steam-power, sought to harness the lightning in the cause of calculation. His elaborate system of 'resistors' and 'capacitors,' while demonstrative of the most brilliant genius, remains fragmentary, and is yet to be constructed. Indeed, it is often mocked by the undiscerning as an old man's hobby-horse. But history shall prove its judge, and then, I profoundly hope, my own Conjectures will transcend the limits of abstract concept and enter the living world." Applause was thin and scattered. Ebenezer Fraser, watching from the shelter of the wings, in the shadow of ropes and sandbags, felt his heart sink. But at least it was over. She was leaving the podium to join him. Fraser opened the nickeled catches of Her Ladyship's traveling-bag. Lady Ada dropped her manuscript within it, followed it with her kid gloves and her tiny ribboned hat. "I think they understood me!" she said brightly. "It sounds quite elegant in French, Mr. Fraser, does it not? A very rational language, French." "What next, milady? |
| 1134 |
And many of the Mexican middle class are about as awful as any bourgeoisie in the world. I remember that in Mexico the narcotic scripts were bright yellow, like a thousand-dollar bill, or a dishonorable discharge from the Army. One time Old Dave and I tried to fill such a script, which he had obtained quite legitimately from the Mexican government. The first pharmacist we hit jerked back snarling from such a sight: "? No prestamos servicio a los viciosos!" ("We do not serve dope fiends!") From one farmacia to another we walked, getting sicker with every step: "No, senor... ." We must have walked for miles. "Never been in this neighborhood before." "Well, let's try one more." Finally we entered a tiny hole-in-the-wall farmacia. I pulled out the receta, and a gray-haired lady smiled at me. The pharmacist looked at the script, and said, "Two minutes, senor." We sat down to wait. There were geraniums in the window. A small boy brought me a glass of water, and a cat rubbed against my leg. After awhile the pharmacist returned with our morphine. "Gracias, senor" Outside, the neighborhood now seemed enchanted: Little farmacias in a market, crates and stalls outside, a pulqueria on the corner. Kiosks selling fried grasshoppers and peppermint candy black with flies. Boys in from the country in spotless white linen and rope sandals, with faces of burnished copper and fierce innocent black eyes, like exotic animals, of a dazzling sexless beauty. Here is a boy with sharp features and black skin, smelling of vanilla, a gardenia behind his ear. Yes, you found a Johnson, but you waded through Shitville to find him. You always do. Just when you think the earth is exclusively populated by Shits, you meet a Johnson. 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. |
| 1135 |
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. |
| 1136 |
My past was a poisoned river from which one was fortunate to escape, and by which one feels immediately threatened, years after the events recorded. — Painful to an extent I find it difficult to read, let alone to write about. Every word and gesture sets the teeth on edge." The reason for this reluctance becomes clearer as I force myself to look: the book is motivated and formed by an event which is never mentioned, in fact is carefully avoided: the accidental shooting death of my wife, Joan, in September 1951. While I was writing The Place of Dead Roads, I felt in spiritual contact with the late English writer Denton Welch, and modelled the novel's hero, Kim Carson, directly on him. Whole sections came to me as if dictated, like table-tapping. I have written about the fateful morning of Denton's accident, which left him an invalid for the remainder of his short life. If he had stayed a little longer here, not so long there, he would have missed his appointment with the female motorist who hit his bicycle from behind for no apparent reason. At one point Denton had stopped to have coffee, and looking at the brass hinges on the cafe's window shutters, some of them broken, he was hit by a feeling of universal desolation and loss. So every event of that morning is charged with special significance, as if it were underlined. This portentous second sight permeates Welch's writing: a scone, a cup of tea, an inkwell purchased for a few shillings, become charged with a special and often sinister significance. I get exactly the same feeling to an almost unbearable degree as I read the manuscript of Queer. The event towards which Lee feels himself inexorably driven is the death of his wife by his own hand, the knowledge of possession, a dead hand waiting to slip over his like a glove. So a smog of menace and evil rises from the pages, an evil that Lee, knowing and yet not knowing, tries to escape with frantic flights of fantasy: his routines, which set one's teeth on edge because of the ugly menace just behind or to one side of them, a presence palpable as a haze. Brion Gysin said to me in Paris: "For ugly spirit shot Joan because ..." A bit of mediumistic message that was not completed — or was it? It doesn't need to be completed, if you read it: "ugly spirit shot Joan to be cause," that is, to maintain a hateful parasitic occupation. My concept of possession is closer to the medieval model than to modern psychological explanations, with their dogmatic insistence that such manifestations must come from within and never, never, never from without. |
| 1137 |
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. The result was ghastly. As Lee stood aside to bow in his dignified old-world greeting, there emerged instead a leer of naked lust, wrenched in the pain and hate of his deprived body and, in simultaneous double exposure, a sweet child's smile of liking and trust, shockingly out of time and out of place, mutilated and hopeless. Allerton was appalled. "Perhaps he has some sort of tic," he thought. He decided to remove himself from contact with Lee before the man did something even more distasteful. The effect was like a broken connection. Allerton was not cold or hostile; Lee simply wasn't there so far as he was concerned. Lee looked at him helplessly for a moment, then turned back to the bar, defeated and shaken. Lee finished his second drink. When he looked around again, Allerton was playing chess with Mary, an American girl with dyed red hair and carefully applied makeup, who had come into the bar in the meantime. "Why waste time here?" Lee thought. He paid for the two drinks and walked out. He took a cab to the Chimu Bar, which was a fag bar frequented by Mexicans, and spent the night with a young boy he met there. At that time the G. I. students patronized Lola's during the daytime and the Ship Ahoy at night. Lola's was not exactly a bar. It was a small beer-and-soda joint. There was a Coca-Cola box full of beer and soda and ice at the left of the door as you came in. A counter with tube-metal stools covered in yellow glazed leather ran down one side of the room as far as the juke box. Tables were lined along the wall opposite the counter. |
| 1138 |
Mary had been in and had asked Lee if he had seen Allerton. Allerton was relieved. "Oh, thank you," he said, quite cordial now. "Will you be around tonight?" "Yes, I think so." Lee nodded and smiled, and turned away quickly. Lee left his apartment for the Ship Ahoy just before five. Allerton was sitting at the bar. Lee sat down and ordered a drink, then turned to Allerton with a casual greeting, as though they were on familiar and friendly terms. Allerton returned the greeting automatically before he realized that Lee had somehow established himself on a familiar basis, whereas he had previously decided to have as little to do with Lee as possible. Allerton had a talent for ignoring people, but he was not competent at dislodging someone from a position already occupied. Lee began talking — casual, unpretentiously intelligent, dryly humorous. Slowly he dispelled Allerton's impression that he was a peculiar and undesirable character. When Mary arrived, Lee greeted her with a tipsy old-world gallantry and, excusing himself, left them to a game of chess. "Who is he?" asked Mary when Lee had gone outside. "I have no idea," said Allerton. Had he ever met Lee? He could not be sure. Formal introductions were not expected among the G. I. students. Was Lee a student? Allerton had never seen him at the school. There was nothing unusual in talking to someone you didn't know, but Lee put Allerton on guard. The man was somehow familiar to him. When Lee talked, he seemed to mean more than what he said. A special emphasis to a word or a greeting hinted at a period of familiarity in some other time and place. As though Lee were saying, "You know what I mean. You remember." Allerton shrugged irritably and began arranging the chess pieces on the board. He looked like a sullen child unable to locate the source of his ill temper. After a few minutes of play his customary serenity returned, and he began humming. It was after midnight when Lee returned to the Ship Ahoy. Drunks seethed around the bar, talking as if everyone else were stone deaf. Allerton stood on the edge of this group, apparently unable to make himself heard. He greeted Lee warmly, pushed in to the bar, and emerged with two rum Cokes. "Let's sit down over here," he said. Allerton was drunk. His eyes were flushed a faint violet tinge, the pupils widely dilated. He was talking very fast in a high, thin voice, the eerie, disembodied voice of a young child. Lee had never heard Allerton talk like this before. The effect was like the possession voice of a medium. |
| 1139 |
The boy had an inhuman gaiety and innocence. Allerton was telling a story about his experience with the Counter-intelligence Corps in Germany. An informant had been giving the department bum steers. "How did you check the accuracy of information?" Lee asked. "How did you know ninety percent of what your informants told you wasn't fabricated?" "Actually we didn't, and we got sucked in on a lot of phony deals. Of course, we cross-checked all information with other informants and we had our own agents in the field. Most of our informants turned in some phony information, but this one character made all of it up. He had our agents out looking for a whole fictitious network of Russian spies. So finally the report comes back from Frankfurt — it is all a lot of crap. But instead of clearing out of town before the information could be checked, he came back with more. "At this point we'd really had enough of his bullshit. So we locked him up in a cellar. The room was pretty cold and uncomfortable, but that was all we could do. We had to handle prisoners very careful. He kept typing out confessions, enormous things." This story clearly delighted Allerton, and he kept laughing while he was telling it. Lee was impressed by his combination of intelligence and childlike charm. Allerton was friendly now, without reserve or defense, like a child who has never been hurt. He was telling another story. Lee watched the thin hands, the beautiful violet eyes, the flush of excitement on the boy's face. An imaginary hand projected with such force it seemed Allerton must feel the touch of ectoplasmic fingers caressing his ear, phantom thumbs smoothing his eyebrows, pushing the hair back from his face. Now Lee's hands were running down over the ribs, the stomach. Lee felt the aching pain of desire in his lungs. His mouth was a little open, showing his teeth in the half-snarl of a baffled animal. He licked his lips. Lee did not enjoy frustration. The limitations of his desires were like the bars of a cage, like a chain and collar, something he had learned as an animal learns, through days and years of experiencing the snub of the chain, the unyielding bars. He had never resigned himself, and his eyes looked out through the invisible bars, watchful, alert, waiting for the keeper to forget the door, for the frayed collar, the loosened bar ... suffering without despair and without consent. "I went to the door and there he was with a branch in his mouth," Allerton was saying. Lee had not been listening. |
| 1140 |
He made no attempt to clarify the situation. He did not want to see the contradiction involved in resenting a favor which he accepted. Lee found that he could tune in on Allerton's viewpoint, though the process caused him pain, since it involved seeing the extent of Allerton's indifference. "I liked him and I wanted him to like me," Lee thought. "I wasn't trying to buy anything." "I have to leave town," he decided. "Go somewhere. Panama, South America." He went down to the station to find out when the next train left for Veracruz. There was a train that night, but he did not buy a ticket. A feeling of cold desolation came over him at the thought of arriving alone in another country, far away from Allerton. Lee took a cab to the Ship Ahoy. Allerton was not there, and Lee sat at the bar for three hours, drinking. Finally Allerton looked in the door, waved to Lee vaguely, and went upstairs with Mary. 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. |
| 1141 |
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. "Bring the tomato juice over here, will you, Joe?" he called to the bartender. Lee sat at the table next to Allerton's. Tom Weston was leaving. Allerton followed him out. He came back in and sat in the other room, reading the papers. Mary came in and sat down with him. After talking for a few minutes, they set up the chess board. Lee had thrown down three drinks. He walked over and pulled up a chair to the table where Mary and Allerton were playing chess. "Howdy," he said. "Don't mind if I kibitz?" Mary looked up annoyed, but smiled when she met Lee's steady, reckless gaze. "I was reading up on chess. Arabs invented it, and I'm not surprised. |
| 1142 |
The town looked old, with limestone streets and dirty saloons crowded with sailors and dockworkers. A shoeshine boy asked Lee if he wanted a "nice girl." Lee looked at the boy and said in English, "No, and I don't want you either." He bought a bottle of cognac from a Turkish trader. The store had everything: ship stores, hardware, guns, food, liquor. Lee priced the guns: three hundred dollars for a 30-30 lever-action Winchester carbine that sold for seventy-two dollars in the States. The Turk said duty was high on guns. That was the reason for this price. Lee walked back along the beach. The houses were all split bamboo on wood frame, the four posts set directly in the ground. The simplest type of house construction: you set four heavy posts deep in the ground and nail the house to the posts. The houses were built about six feet off the ground. The streets were mud. Thousands of vultures roosted on the houses and walked around the streets, pecking at offal. Lee kicked at a vulture, and the bird flapped away with an indignant squawk. Lee passed a bar, a large building built directly on the ground, and decided to go in for a drink. The split-bamboo walls shook with noise. Two middle-aged wiry little men were doing an obscene mambo routine opposite each other, their leathery faces creased in toothless smiles. The waiter came up and smiled at Lee. He didn't have any front teeth either. Lee sat down on a short wood bench and ordered a cognac. A boy of sixteen or so came over and sat down with Lee and smiled an open, friendly smile. Lee smiled back and ordered a refresco for the boy. He dropped a hand on Lee's thigh and squeezed it in thanks for the drink. The boy had uneven teeth, crowded one over the other, but he was a young boy. Lee looked at him speculatively; he couldn't figure the score. Was the boy giving him a come-on, or wars he just friendly? He knew that people in the Latin American countries were not self-conscious about physical contact. Boys walked around with their arms around each other's necks. Lee decided to play it cool. He finished his drink, shook hands with the boy, and walked back to the hotel. Allerton was still sitting on the porch in his swimming trunks and a short-sleeved yellow shirt, which flapped around his thin body in the evening wind. Lee went inside to the kitchen and ordered ice and water and glasses. He told Allerton about the Turk, the town and the boy. "Let's go dig that bar after dinner," he said. "And get felt up by those young boys?" said Allerton. |
| 1143 |
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. |
| 1144 |
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? 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. |
| 1145 |
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. There was a statue of Bolivar, "The Liberating Fool" as Lee called him, shaking hands with someone else. Both of them looked tired and disgusted and rocking queer, so queer it rocked you. Lee stood looking at the statue. Then he sat down on a stone bench facing the river. Everyone looked at Lee when he sat down. Lee looked back. He did not have the American reluctance to meet the gaze of a stranger. The others looked away, and lit cigarettes and resumed their conversations. Lee sat there looking at the dirty yellow river. He couldn't see half an inch under the surface. From time to time, small fish jumped ahead of a boat. There were trim, expensive sailing boats from the yacht club, with hollow masts and beautiful lines. There were dugout canoes with outboard motors and cabins of split bamboo. |
| 1146 |
You're the occupant of an inside room, a room without windows. So remember your place and shut your poverty-stricken mouth!" A stream of chingas and cabrones replied. "Hombre," Lee asked, "? En donde esta su cultura?" "Let's hit the sack," said Allerton. "I'm tired." They took a river boat to Babahoya. Swinging in hammocks, sipping brandy, and watching the jungle slide by. Springs, moss, beautiful clear streams and trees up to two hundred feet high. Lee and Allerton were silent as the boat powered upriver, penetrating the jungle stillness with its lawnmower whine. From Babahoya they took a bus over the Andes to Ambato, a cold, jolting fourteen-hour ride. They stopped for a snack of chick-peas at a hut at the top of the mountain pass, far above the tree line. A few young native men in gray felt hats ate their chickpeas in sullen resignation. Several guinea pigs were squeaking and scurrying around on the dirt floor of the hut. Their cries reminded Lee of the guinea pig he owned as a child in the Fairmont Hotel in St. Louis, when the family was waiting to move into their new house on Price Road. He remembered the way the pig shrieked, and the stink of its cage. They passed the snow-covered peak of Chimborazo, cold in the moonlight and the constant wind of the high Andes. The view from the high mountain pass seemed from another, larger planet than Earth. Lee and Allerton huddled together under a blanket, drinking brandy, the smell of wood smoke in their nostrils. They were both wearing Army-surplus jackets, zipped up over sweatshirts to keep out the cold and wind. Allerton seemed insubstantial as a phantom; Lee could almost see through him, to the empty phantom bus outside. From Ambato to Puyo, along the edge of a gorge a thousand feet deep. There were waterfalls and forests and streams running down over the roadway, as they descended into the lush green valley. Several times the bus stopped to remove large stones that had slid down onto the road. Lee was talking on the bus to an old prospector named Morgan, who had been thirty years in the jungle. Lee asked him about Ayahuasca. "Acts on them like opium," Morgan said. "All my Indians use it. Can't get any work out of them for three days when they get on Ayahuasca." "I think there may be a market for it," Lee said. Morgan said, "I can get any amount." They passed the prefabricated bungalows of Shell Mara. The Shell Company had spent two years and twenty million dollars, found no oil, and pulled out. They got into Puyo late at night, and found a room in a ramshackle hotel near the general store. |
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The place looked deserted. He could hear someone crying. He saw his little son, and knelt down and took the child in his arms. The sound of crying came closer, a wave of sadness, and now he was crying, his body shaking with sobs. He held little Willy close against his chest. A group of people were standing there in convict suits. Lee wondered what they were doing there and why he was crying. When Lee woke up, he still felt the deep sadness of his dream. He stretched out a hand towards Allerton, then pulled it back. He turned around to face the wall. Next morning, Lee felt dry and irritable and empty of feeling. He borrowed Cotter's .22 rifle and set out with Allerton to have a look at the jungle. The jungle seemed empty of life. "Cotter says the Indians have cleaned most of the game out of the area," said Allerton. "They all have shotguns from the money they made working for Shell." They walked along a trail. Huge trees, some over a hundred feet high, matted with vines, cut off the sunlight. "May God grant we kill some living creature," Lee said. "Gene, I hear something squawking over there. I'm going to try and shoot it." "What is it?" "How should I know? It's alive, isn't it?" Lee pushed through the undergrowth beside the trail. He tripped on a vine and fell into a saw-toothed plant. When he tried to get up, a hundred sharp points caught his clothes and stuck into his flesh. "Gene!" he called. "Help me! I been seized by a man-eating plant. Gene, cut me free with the machete!" They did not see a living animal in the jungle. Cotter was supposedly trying to find a way to extract curare from the arrow poison the Indians used. He told Lee there were yellow crows to be found in the region, and yellow catfish with extremely poisonous spines. His wife had gotten spined, and Cotter had to administer morphine for the intense pain. He was a medical doctor. Lee was struck by the story of the Monkey Woman: a brother and sister had come down to this part of Ecuador, to live the simple healthful life on roots and berries and nuts and palm hearts. Two years later a search-party had found them, hobbling along on improvised crutches, toothless and suffering from half-healed fractures. It seems there was no calcium in the area. Chickens couldn't lay eggs, there was nothing to form the shell. Cows gave milk, but it was watery and translucent, with no calcium in it. The brother went back to civilization and steaks, but the Monkey Woman was still there. She earned her monicker by watching what monkeys ate: anything a monkey eats, she can eat, anybody can eat. |
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It's a handy thing to know, if you get lost in the jungle. Also handy to bring along some calcium tablets. Even Cotter's wife had lost her teeth "inna thervith." His were long gone. He had a five-foot viper guarding his house from prowlers after his precious curare notes. He also had two tiny monkeys, cute but ill-tempered and equipped with sharp little teeth, and a two-toed sloth. Sloths live on fruit in trees, swinging along upside down and making a sound like a crying baby. On the ground they are helpless. This one just lay there and thrashed about and hissed. Cotter warned them not to touch it, even on the back of the neck, since it could reach around with its strong, sharp claws and drive them through one's hand, then pull it to its mouth and start biting. Cotter was evasive when Lee asked about Ayahuasca. He said he was not sure Yage and Ayahuasca were the same plant. Ayahuasca was connected with Brujena — witchcraft. He himself was a white Brujo. He had access to Brujo secrets. Lee had no such access. "It would take you years to gain their confidence." Lee said he did not have years to spend on the deal. "Can't you get me some?" he asked. 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. |
| 1149 |
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. Swanson, hardly noticing, yelped with delight: "Look!" He dragged a gun from the desk. "And it's loaded, too!" Burckhardt stared at him blankly, trying to assimilate what he had read. Then, as he realized what Swanson had said, Burckhardt's eyes sparked. "Good man!" he cried. "We'll take it. We're getting out of here with that gun, Swanson. And we're not going to the police! Not the cops in Tylerton, but the F. B. I., maybe. Take a look at this!" The sheaf he handed Swanson was headed: "Test Area Progress Report. Subject: Marlin Cigarettes Campaign." It was mostly tabulated figures that made little sense to Burckhardt and Swanson, but at the end was a summary that said: Although Test 47-K3 pulled nearly double the number of new users of any of the other tests conducted, it probably cannot be used in the field because of local sound-truck control ordinances. The tests in the 47-K12 group were second best and our recommendation is that retests be conducted in this appeal, testing each of the three best campaigns with and without the addition of sampling techniques. An alternative suggestion might be to proceed directly with the top appeal in the K12 series, if the client is unwilling to go to the expense of additional tests. All of these forecast expectations have an 80% probability of being within one-half of one per cent of results forecast, and more than 99% probability of coming within 5%. Swanson looked up from the paper into Burckhardt's eyes. "I don't get it," he complained. Burckhardt said, "I don't blame you. |
| 1150 |
Beneath his fine white hair, a pillow for his head, was a journal begun thirty years before. His name was on the first page: Dr. Alfred Keeley. And the date: February 6, 1997. Feb. 6,1997. This is a day twice-blessed for me. Today, at St. Luke's Hospital, our first child was born to my wife, Ila. The baby is a boy, seven pounds, two ounces, and according to Ila's sentimental appraisal, the image of his father. When I saw her this morning, I could not bring myself to mention the second birth which has taken place in my laboratory. The birth of Machine, my robot child. Machine was conceived long before the infant Ila will bring home soon (we will call him Peter Fitzpatrick, after Ila's grandfather). Machine was conceived long before my marriage, when I first received my professorship in robotics. It is exhilarating to see my dream transformed into reality: a robot child that would be reared within the bosom to a human family, raised like a human child, a brother to a human child-growing, learning, becoming an adult. 1 can hardly contain my excitement at the possibilities I foresee. It has taken me seven years to perfect the robot brain which will be the soul of my robot son, a brain whose learning capacities will equal (and in some regard, exceed) the capabilities of Peter Fitzpatrick himself. But I must keep the experiment perfectly controlled. My duties will consist primarily of careful observation, and of providing for the physical maturation of Machine. My robot child will not have the natural advantages of growth that Peter Fitzpatrick will possess; I must provide them for him. I will reconstruct his metal body periodically, so that he keeps pace with the growth of his human brother. Eventually, I hope that Machine will learn enough about the construction of his own form that he may make these changes for himself. At the moment, Machine already has physical advantages over his brother. I did not wish to handicap my metal child; he will have serious shortcomings in a human world; the least I could do was to provide him with the advantages only a machine could boast. He will never know hunger or thirst, or the unpleasant necessities of human waste disposal. He will never know bitter cold or sweltering heat. The ills to which mankind are subject will never trouble his artificial body. The vulnerability of human flesh will never be his problem. He will live on, inviolate, as long as his robot brain pulses within the impenetrable housing of his beautiful head. |
| 1151 |
Before long, he will learn to speak; already I hear rumbles within the cavity of the sound-box in his chest. Fitz can only gurgle and coo his delight at being alive. I believe Ila was right; Fitz does look like me. I would have preferred him to have Ila's green eyes and fair skin, but he is dark like myself. I feel an unscientific pride in my boy. Sept. 10, 1997. Must happiness and despair always live side by side? It would seem that is my fate. Today, I thought I would surprise Ila with the extraordinary progress of our robot child. I knew that Mac has been developing the power of coherent speech, and has already said some simple words. For the past week, I have been teaching him phrases, beginning with the one I thought would please Ila most. But I have been foolish. I believe Ila must resent Mac's rapid development. Fitz, at the age of seven months, is just now displaying coordination. He can transfer objects from hand to hand, and he makes sounds that might be taken, or mistaken, for words. But Mac is far ahead of him. And this morning, at ten o'clock, I brought him into Ila's bedroom. She was still fast asleep; her illness seems to produce the need for sleep. She stirred when she heard our footsteps (Mac's metal feet are too noisy; I must muffle his lumbering stride). I said: "Ila, I have a little surprise..." She raised her head from the pillow and looked at me, avoiding contact with Mac's silvery face. "What is it?" she said. "It's Mac. He wants to say something to you." "What are you talking about?" I smiled. "All right, Mac." His metal face lifted towards her. From the featureless surface, a small, uncertain voice emerged. "He... llo... mo... ther..." I almost laughed aloud in satisfaction and delight, and turned to Ila in search of her approval and pleasure. But her face bore an expression that amazed and frightened me, an expression of utter horror I had never seen before. Her lips moved soundlessly, and her eyes, always feverish, burned brighter than ever. And then she screamed. God help me, she screamed as if the devil were in the room, bringing up her hands to clutch at her hair. In the nursery next door, little Fitz set up a sympathetic wail, and I saw Mac's metal body shiver as if in reaction to the sound. I tried to calm her, but she was lost in hysteria. Eventually her sobs stopped, but then she fell back upon the pillow with such exhaustion that I became concerned and telephoned for medical help. Dr. Foster arrived half an hour later and shut me out of the bedroom. |
| 1152 |
When he finally emerged, he mumbled something about shock, and prescribed rest and tranquilizing drugs. I went into Ila's room a few minutes ago. Her eyes were closed and her breathing was shallow. I spoke to her, but she merely lifted her hand and said nothing. My poor Ila! Why must she face so much misery, while I experience such joy and satisfaction in my work? Jan. 1, 1998. It has been almost two months since I last touched this journal, but I must take strength in this New Year and continue. It has been hard for me to work at all; there has been too much bitterness in my mind and unhappiness in my heart since Ila's death. As I write these words, little Fitz is sleeping peacefully in his crib, watched over by his new nursemaid, Annette. But Mac, who needs no sleep, is sitting in the study chair beside my desk, watching me through the expressionless eyes I have placed in his silver skull. Yet, blank as they are, somehow I sense emotion in those eyes as he watches me. Somehow, I feel my robot creation knows the torment I suffer, and knows the void in our home since Ila's death. Does he miss her, too? It is so difficult to tell. Even with Fitz, my human child, it is hard to recognize the signs of sorrow he must be feeling. During these past weeks, I began to believe that my experiment was all a conceit. But now I realize it was only grief that brought such thoughts; I must continue. Already, I believe Mac thinks of Fitz as his brother, and I know that someday Fitz will reciprocate. There will be much to learn from both of them. I cannot fail my mission now. I will go on. July 25, 2002. Today, my family and I began life in new surroundings, and as difficult as the transplantation has been, I am glad now that we made the move. It had become too much of a burden to face the curiosity and gibes of the neighborhood; we have attracted too much attention. For this reason, I have purchased this small home in the exurbs of the city, just outside the town of Fremont. Both my children seem happy in their new country residence. They are playing together now on the green grass that grows untamed behind the house; I will have to trim and weed it, like a truly domesticated homeowner. I think I shall enjoy the sensation. Despite our problems, my joy is great as I watch the human and mechanical beings outside my window, laughing and romping together as if the differences between them had no existence. In one respect, my experiment is already successful. In the eyes of Fitz, my human boy, and Mac, my inhuman invention, they are truly brothers. |
| 1153 |
I think, too, that I can create a superior sound system for him now, which will overcome the flat, metallic voice of my robot child. Both Mac and Fitz are not overly impressed by my sudden fame. But I believe Mac is secretly excited by my promise to build him a better body. He has become acutely aware of his appearance; I have caught him gazing (with what emotion, I cannot say) into the mirrors of the house, standing before them with a stillness that only a robot can maintain. I have questioned him at length about his feelings, but have learned little. I must be sure to keep close to his emotional growth. But if I have a real source of happiness now, it is my son Fitz. He has become a fine handsome boy, of such good humor and intelligence that he is extremely popular with all the residents of the town — and the power of his engaging personality has created an acceptance for Mac, his robot brother, that all my elaborate scientific titles couldn't have attained. He is still fiercely loyal to Mac, but I already detect signs of independence. These do not worry me; they would be natural even among human brothers. Fitz is discovering that he is an individual; it's a process of life. But I wonder — will Mac feel the same way? Jan. 4, 2012. There has been a quarrel, and it has taken me several days to learn the true details. I have never been disturbed about quarrels between Fitz and Mac; they have had surprisingly few for brothers. But for the first time, I sensed that the quarrel concerned the differences between them. It began last week, when a boy of their age, Philip, a hostile surly youth, involved Fitz in a fight. Philip is the son of a divorced woman in the town, named Mrs. Stanton. She is a strange, brooding woman, with a terrible resentment against her ex-husband. I am afraid some of the resentment has been passed on to her son, Philip, and that he is an unhappy youngster. For the last two months, Fitz has been a frequent visitor to their home, and Mrs. Stanton has displayed great fondness for him. Philip, of course, doesn't like this affection, this stolen love, and has developed a strong animosity towards Fitz. One day, it turned into violence. Philip is big for his fifteen years, a tall boy, well over six feet, and well muscled. When he stopped Fitz and Mac on the street that morning, it was immediately apparent that he was seeking trouble. Fitz is not afraid of him, I know that; but Fitz tries to laugh trouble away. But the boy was in no mood to be put off with a smile. |
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He lashed out and knocked Fitz down. When he got to his feet, Philip knocked him down again, and then leaped atop him. I don't know what outcome the fight would have had if Fitz had been allowed to finish it. But he didn't have the chance. Mac, who was standing by, watching the altercation in his blank manner, suddenly threw himself upon his brother's assailant and pulled him away as easily as if Philip had been an infant. He lifted him into the air with his superhuman strength and merely held him there. He didn't hurt Philip, he traded no blows; he simply held him, helpless, in the air, while the boy kicked and screamed his frustration and anger. Fitz shouted at his brother to release him, and eventually Mac did. Philip didn't resume the attack; he was frightened by the easy, unconquerable strength in Mac's metal arms. He turned and ran, shouting threats and ugly names over his shoulder. Of course, I know Mac's intent was good. He was protecting his brother, and wasn't violating the code of conduct. But I can also understand Fitz's emotion. He didn't feel grateful for Mac's help, only resentful. He turned upon the robot and reviled him, called him terrible names I never knew were in his vocabulary. He told Mac that he didn't want protection, that he could fight his own battles, that he didn't require Mac's metal strength to keep him from harm. He said a great deal more, and it is well that Mac is not more sensitive than he is. There is a strain between them now. For the last few days, Fitz has been leaving the house without Mac's company. Mac, fortunately, doesn't seem injured by his behavior. He sits, blank-faced as ever, in his room. He reads or listens to his phonograph. Sometimes, he gets up and stares into the mirror, for interminable periods. Oct. 15, 2016. It is extraordinary, the speed with which Mac has learned his lessons. For the past year, I have been teaching him the secrets of his own construction, and how he himself could repair or improve all or part of his artificial body. He has been spending five or six hours each day in my laboratory workshop, and now I believe he is as skilled as — or perhaps more skilled than — I am myself. It will not be long before he blueprints and builds his own new body. No, not blueprint. I cannot allow him to design the plans, not yet. The Face episode proved that. It began last Friday evening, when Fitz left the house to take Karen to the movies. As usual, Mac seemed lost without his brother, and sat quietly in his room. |
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About midnight, he must have heard the sound of my typewriter in the study, because he came to the doorway. I invited him in and we chatted. He was curious about certain things, and asking a great number of questions about Karen. Not sex questions, particularly; Mac is as well read as any adult, and knows a good deal about human biology and human passions (I wonder sometimes what his opinion is of it all!) But he was interested in learning more about Fitz and Karen, about the nature of their relationship, the special kind of fondness Fitz seemed to display towards the girl. 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. |
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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. 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. |
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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. |
| 1158 |
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. |
| 1159 |
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. |
| 1160 |
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. The shining, well-maintained cooling plant was a reminder of the priorities of the times. Some years back, an erratic bio-human had botched an attempt to sabotage the cooling plant. All it accomplished was to have the old style banished from that part of the station. And some mechano-cryo staff members who had previously been sympathetic with the Ethicalist cause switched to Utilitarianism as a result. The mammoth sphere passed over and behind Jason. In moments there was only the lightship ahead, shimmering within its cradle of spotlit gantries. A voice cut in over his helmet speaker in a sharp monotone. "Attention approaching biological... you are entering a restricted zone. Identify yourself at once." Jason grimaced. The station director had ordered all mechano personnel — meaning just about everybody left — to reprogram their voice functions along "more logical tonal lines." That meant they no longer mimicked natural human intonations, but spoke in a new, shrill whine. Jason's few android and cyborg friends — colleagues on the support staff — had whispered their regrets. But those days it was dangerous to be in the minority. All soon adjusted to the new order. "Jason Forbs, identifying self." He spoke as crisply as possible, mimicking the toneless Utilitarian dialect. He spelled his name and gave his ident code. "Oral witness engineer for Project Lightprobe, reporting for duty." There was a pause, then the unseen security overseer spoke again. "Cleared and identified, Jason Forbs. Proceed directly to slip nine, scaffold B. Escorts await your arrival." Jason blinked. Had the voice softened perceptibly? A closet Ethicalist, perhaps, out here in this Utilitarian stronghold. |
| 1161 |
"Success, and an operative return are approved outcomes," the voice added, hesitantly, with just a hint of tonality. Jason understood Utilitarian dialect well enough to interpret the simple good luck wish. He didn't dare thank the fellow, whoever he might be, whatever his body form. But he appreciated the gesture. "Acknowledged," he said, and switched off. Ahead, under stark shadows cast by spotlights girdling the starship, Jason saw at least a dozen scientists and technicians, waiting for him by a docking slip. One or two of the escorts actually appeared to be fidgeting as he made his final maneuvers into the slot. They came in all shapes and sizes. Several wore little globe-bot bodies. Spider forms were also prominent. Jason hurriedly tied the sled down, almost slipping as he secured his magnetic boots to the platform. He knew his humaniform shape looked gawky and unsuited to this environment. But he was determined to maintain some degree of dignity. Your ancestors made these guys, he reminded himself. And old style people built this very station. We're all citizens under the law, from the director down to the janitor-bot, all the way down to me. Still, he felt awkward under their glistening camera eyes. "Come quickly, Jason Forbs." His helmet speaker whined and a large mechanical form gestured with one slender, articulated arm. "There is little time before the test begins. We must instruct you in your duties." Jason recognized the favorite body-form of the director, an antibiological Utilitarian of the worst sort. The machine-scientist swiveled at the hips and rolled up the gangplank. Steam-like vapor puffed from vents in the official's plasteel carapace. It was an ostentatious display, to release evaporated helium that way. It demonstrated that the assistant director could keep his circuits as comfortably cool as anybody's, and hang the expense. An awkward human in the midst of smoothly gliding machines, Jason glanced backward for what he felt sure would be his last direct view of the universe. He had hoped to catch a final glimpse of the Old Wheel, or at least the sun. But all he could see was the great hulk of the cooling plant, staring out into the space between the galaxies, keeping cool the lifeblood of the apparent inheritors of the solar system. The director called again, impatiently. Jason turned and stepped through the hatch to be shown his station and his job. 3. "You will remember not to touch any of the controls at any time. The ship's operation is automatic. |
| 1162 |
One thing Jason was sure of: anything that could harm mechano-cryos would easily suffice to do in a biological. He was resigned, but all the same determined to do his part. If some small thing he noticed, and commented on into the tape machine, led to a solution — maybe some little thing missed by all the recording devices — then Terran civilization would have the stars. That would be something for his son to remember, even if the true inheritors would be "human" machines. "All right," he told the director. "Take this bunch of gawkers with you and let's go on with it." He strapped himself into the observer's chair, behind the empty pilot's seat. He did not even look up as the technicians and officials filed out and closed the hatch behind them. 4. In the instant after launching, the lightship made an eerie trail across the sky. Cylindrical streaks of pseudo-Cerenkov radiation lingered long after the black globe had disappeared, bolting faster and faster toward its rendezvous with hyperspace. The director turned to the emissary from Earth. "It is gone. Now we wait. One Earth-style month. "I will state, one more time, that I did not approve willingly of the inclusion of the organic form aboard the ship. I object to the inelegant modifications required in order to suit the ship to... to biological functions. Also, old style humans are three times as often subject to irrational impulses than more modem forms. This one may take it into its head to try to change the ship's controls when the fatal stress begins." Unlike the director, the visiting councilor wore a humaniform body, with legs, arms, torso and head. He expressed his opinion with a shrug of his subtly articulated shoulders. "You exaggerate the danger, Director. Don't you think I know that the controls Jason Forbs sees in front of him are only dummies?" The director swiveled quickly to stare at the councilor. How — ? He made himself calm down. It — doesn't — matter. So what if he knew that fact? Even the sole Ethicalist member of the Solar System Council could not make much propaganda of it. It was only a logical precaution to take, under the circumstances. "The designated oral witness engineer should spend his living moments performing his function," the director said coolly. "Recording his subjective impressions as long as he is able. It is the role you commanded we open up for an old style human, using your peremptory authority as a member of the council." The other's humaniform face flexed in a traditional, pseudoorganic smile, archaic in its mimicry of the Old Race. |
| 1163 |
And yet the director, schooled in Utilitarian belief, felt uneasy under the councilor's gaze. "I had a peremptory commandment left to use up before the elections," the councilor said smoothly in old-fashioned, modulated tones. "I judged that this would be an appropriate way to use it." He did not explain further. The director quashed an urge to push the question. What was the Ethicalist up to? Why waste a peremptory command on such a minor, futile thing as this? How could he gain anything by sending an old style human out to his certain death! Was it to be some sort of gesture? Something aimed at getting out the biological vote for the upcoming elections? If so, it was doomed to failure. In-depth psychological studies had indicated that the level of resignation and apathy among organic citizens was too high to ever be overcome by anything so simple. Perhaps, though, it might be enough to save the seat of the one Ethicalist on the council... The director felt warm. He knew that it was partly subjective — resentment of this invasion of his domain by a ridiculous sentimentalist. Most of all, the director resented the feelings he felt boiling within himself. Why, why do we modern forms have to be cursed with this burden of emotionalism and uncertainty! I hate it! Of course he knew the reasons. Back in ancient times, fictional "robots" had been depicted as caricatures of jerky motion and rigid, formal thinking. The writers of those precryo days had not realized that complexity commanded flexibility... even fallibility. The laws of physics were adamant on this. Uncertainty accompanied subtlety. An advanced mind had to have the ability to question itself, or creativity was lost. The director loathed the fact, but he understood it. Still, he suspected that the biologists had played a trick on his kind, long ago. He and other Utilitarians had an idea that there had been some deep programming, below anything nowadays accessed, to make mechano-people as much like the old style as possible. If I ever had proof it was true... he thought, gloweringly, threateningly. Ah, but it doesn't matter. The biologicals will be extinct in a few generations, anyway. They're dying of a sense of their own uselessness. Good riddance! "I will leave you now, Councilor. Unless you wish to accompany me to recharge on refrigerants?" The Ethicalist bowed slightly, ironically, aware, of course, that the director could not return the gesture. "No, thank you, Director. I shall wait here and contemplate for a while. |
| 1164 |
"Before you go, however, please let me make one thing clear. It may seem, at times, as if I am not sympathetic with your work here. But that is not true. After all, we're all humans, all citizens. Everybody wants Project Lightprobe to succeed. The dream is one we inherit from our makers... to go out and live among the stars. "I am only acting to help bring that about — for all of our people." The director felt unaccountably warmer. He could not think of an answer. "I require helium," he said, curtly, and swiveled to leave. "Good bye, Councilor." The director felt as if eyes were watching his armored back as he sped down the hallway. Damn the biologicals and their allies! he cursed within. Damn them for making us so insidiously like them... emotional, fallible and, worst of all, uncertain! Wishing the last of the old style were already dust on their dirty, wet little planet, the director hurried away to find himself a long, cold drink. 5. "Six hours and ten minutes into the mission, four minutes since breakover into hyperspace..." Jason breathed into the microphone. "So far so good. I'm a little thirsty, but I believe it's just a typical adrenaline fear reaction. Allowing for expected tension, I feel fine." Jason went on to describe everything he could see, the lights, the controls, the readings on the computer displays, his physical feelings... he went on until his throat felt dry and he found he was repeating himself. "I'm getting up out of the observer's seat, now, to go get a drink." He slipped the recorder strap over his shoulder and unbuckled from the flight chair. There was a feeling of weight, as the techs had told him to expect. About a tenth of a g. It was enough to make walking possible. He flexed his legs and moved about the control room, describing every aspect of the experience. Then he went to the refrigerator and took out a squeeze-tube of lemonade. Jason was frankly surprised to be alive. He knew the previous voyagers had lived several days before their unknown catastrophe struck. But they had been a lot tougher than he. Perhaps the mysterious lethal agency had taken nearly all the fifteen days of the minimum first leg of the round trip to do them in. If so, he wondered, how long will it take to get me? A few hours later, the failure of anything to happen was starting to make him nervous. 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. |
| 1165 |
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. |
| 1166 |
If he'd had to pay carpenters and masons and plumbers, he would never have been able to afford the house. But by building it himself, he had paid for it as he went along. It had taken ten years, of course, but think of all the fun he'd had! He sat there and thought of all the fun he'd had, and of all the pride. No, sir, he told himself, no one in his circumstances had a better house. Although, come to think of it, what he'd done had not been too unusual. Most of the men he knew had built their homes, too, or had built additions to them, or had remodeled them. He had often thought that he would like to start over again and build another house, just for the fun of it. But that would be foolish, for he already had a house and there would be no sale for another one, even if he built it. Who would want to buy a house when it was so much fun to build one? And there was still a lot of work to do on the house he had. New rooms to add — not necessary, of course, but handy. And the roof to fix. 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). |
| 1167 |
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. |
| 1168 |
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. Lee hadn't said a word, a year or two later, when Knight built the studio for Grace, who had grown tired of pottery and had turned to painting. Knight felt, though, that Lee had kept silent only because he was convinced of the futility of further argument. But Lee would approve of the dog. He was that kind of fellow, a man Knight was proud to call a friend — yet queerly out of step. With everyone else absorbed in things to do, Lee took it easy with his pipe and books, though not the ones on law. Even the kids had their interests now, learning while they played. Mary, before she got married, had been interested in growing things. The greenhouse stood just down the slope, and Knight regretted that he had not been able to continue with her work. Only a few months before, he had dismantled her hydroponic tanks, a symbolic admission that a man could only do so much. John, quite naturally, had turned to rockets. For years, he and his pals had shot up the neighborhood with their experimental models. The last and largest one, still uncompleted, towered back of the house. Someday, Knight told himself, he'd have to go out and finish what the youngster had started. In university now, John still retained his interests, which now seemed to be branching out. Quite a boy, Knight thought pridefully. Yes, sir, quite a boy. He went down the ramp into the basement to get the dolly and stood there a moment, as he always did, just to look at the place — for here, he thought, was the real core of his life. There, in that corner, the workshop. Over there, the model railroad layout on which he still worked occasionally. Behind it, his photographic lab. He remembered that the basement hadn't been quite big enough to install the lab and he'd had to knock out a section of the wall and build an addition. That, he recalled, had turned out to be a bigger job than he had bargained for. He got the dolly and went out to the hanger and loaded on the kit and wrestled it into the basement. Then he took a pinch-bar and started to uncrate it. He worked with knowledge and precision, for he had unpacked many kits and knew just how to go about it. He felt a vague apprehension when he lifted out the parts. |
| 1169 |
They were neither the size nor the shape he had expected them to be. Breathing a little heavily from exertion and excitement, he went at the job of unwrapping them. By the second piece, he knew he had no dog. By the fifth, he knew beyond any doubt exactly what he did have. He had a robot — and if he was any judge, one of the best and most expensive models! He sat down on one corner of the crate and took out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead. Finally, he tore the invoice letter off the crate, where it had been tacked. To Mr. Gordon Knight, it said, one dog kit, paid in full. So far as How-2 Kits, Inc. , was concerned, he had a dog. And the dog was paid for — paid in full, it said. He sat down on the crate again and looked at the robot parts. No one would ever guess. Come inventory time, How-2 Kits would be long one dog and short one robot, but with carloads of dog kit orders filled and thousands of robots sold, it would be impossible to check. Gordon Knight had never, in all his life, done a consciously dishonest thing. But now he made a dishonest decision and he knew it was dishonest and there was nothing to be said in defense of it. Perhaps the worst of all was that he was dishonest with himself. At first, he told himself that he would send the robot back, but — since he had always wanted to put a robot together — he would assemble this one and then take it apart, repack it and send it back to the company. He wouldn't activate it. He would just assemble it. But all the time he knew that he was lying to himself, realized that the least he was doing was advancing, step by evasive step, toward dishonesty. And he knew he was doing it this way because he didn't have the nerve to be forthrightly crooked. So he sat down that night and read the instructions carefully, identifying each of the parts and their several features as he went along. For this was the way you went at a How-2. You didn't rush ahead. You took it slowly, point by point, got the picture firmly in your mind before you started to put the parts together. Knight, by now, was an expert at not rushing ahead. Besides, he didn't know when he would ever get another chance at a robot. It was the beginning of his four days off and he buckled down to the task and put his heart into it. He had some trouble with the biologic concepts and had to look up a text on organic chemistry and try to trace some of the processes. He found the going tough. It had been a long time since he had paid any attention to organic chemistry, and he found that he had forgotten the little he had known. |
| 1170 |
I don't know why they called me Albert. I should have a female name." "But you shouldn't be able to make other robots!" "Look, stop your worrying. You want robots, don't you?" "Well — Yes, I guess so." "Then I'll make them. I'll make you all you need." He went back to his work. A robot who made other robots — there was a fortune in a thing like that! The robots sold at a cool ten thousand and Albert had made one and was working on another. Twenty thousand, Knight told himself. Perhaps Albert could make more than two a day. He had been working from scrap metal and maybe, when the new material arrived, he could step up production. But even so, at only two a day — that would be half a million dollars' worth of robots every month! Six million a year! It didn't add up, Knight sweatily realized. One robot was not supposed to be able to make another robot. And if there were such a robot, How-2 Kits would not let it loose. Yet, here Knight was, with a robot he didn't even own, turning out other robots at a dizzy pace. He wondered if a man needed a license of some sort to manufacture robots. It was something he'd never had occasion to wonder about before, or to ask about, but it seemed reasonable. After all, a robot was not mere machinery, but a piece of pseudo-life. He suspected there might be rules and regulations and such matters as government inspection and he wondered, rather vaguely, just how many laws he might be violating. He looked at Albert, who was still busy, and he was fairly certain Albert would not understand his viewpoint. So he made his way upstairs and went to the recreation room, which he had built as an addition several years before and almost never used, although it was fully equipped with How-2 ping-pong and billiard tables. In the unused recreation room was an unused bar. He found a bottle of whiskey. After the fifth or sixth drink, the outlook was much brighter. He got paper and pencil and tried to work out the economics of it. No matter how he figured it, he was getting rich much faster than anyone ever had before. Although, he realized, he might run into difficulties, for he would be selling robots without apparent means of manufacturing them and there was that matter of a license, if he needed one, and probably a lot of other things he didn't even know about. But no matter how much trouble he might encounter, he couldn't very well be despondent, not face to face with the fact that, within a year, he'd be a multimillionaire. So he applied himself enthusiastically to the bottle and got drunk for the first time in almost twenty years. |
| 1171 |
When he came home from work the next day, he found the lawn razored to a neatness it had never known before. The flower beds were weeded and the garden had been cultivated. The picket fence was newly painted. Two robots, equipped with telescopic extension legs in lieu of ladders, were painting the house. Inside, the house was spotless and he could hear Grace singing happily in the studio. In the sewing room, a robot — with a sewing-machine attachment sprouting from its chest — was engaged in making drapes. "Who are you?" Knight asked. "You should recognize me," the robot said. "You talked to me yesterday. I'm Abe — Albert's eldest son." Knight retreated. In the kitchen, another robot was busy getting dinner. "I am Adelbert," it told him. Knight went out on the front lawn. The robots had finished painting the front of the house and had moved around to the side. Seated in a lawn chair, Knight again tried to figure it out. He would have to stay on the job for a while to allay suspicion, but he couldn't stay there long. Soon, he would have all he could do managing the sale of robots and handling other matters. Maybe, he thought, he could lay down on the job and get himself fired. Upon thinking it over, he arrived at the conclusion that he couldn't — it was not possible for a human being to do less on a job than he had always done. The work went through so many hands and machines that it invariably got out somehow. He would have to think up a plausible story about an inheritance or something of the sort to account for leaving. He toyed for a moment with telling the truth, but decided the truth was too fantastic — and, anyhow, he'd have to keep the truth under cover until he knew a little better just where he stood. He left the chair and walked around the house and down the ramp into the basement. The steel and other things he had ordered had been delivered. It was stacked neatly in one corner. Albert was at work and the shop was littered with parts and three partially assembled robots. Idly, Knight began clearing up the litter of the crating and the packing that he had left on the floor after uncrating Albert. In one pile of excelsior, he found a small blue tag which, he remembered, had been fastened to the brain case. He picked it up and looked at it. The number on it was X-190. X? X meant experimental model! The picture fell into focus and he could see it all. How-2 Kits, Inc., had developed Albert and then had quietly packed him away, for How-2 Kits could hardly afford to market a product like Albert. |
| 1172 |
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. |
| 1173 |
"... all business virtually at a standstill. Many industrialists are wondering, in case Knight wins, if they may not have to fight long, costly legal actions in an attempt to prove that their automatic setups are not robots, but machines. There is no doubt that much of the automatic industrial system consists of machines, but in every instance there are intelligent robotic units installed in key positions. If these units are classified as robots, industrialists might face heavy damage suits, if not criminal action, for illegal restraint of person. "In Washington, there are continuing consultations. The Treasury is worried over the loss of taxes, but there are other governmental problems causing even more concern. Citizenship, for example. Would a ruling for Knight mean that all robots would automatically be declared citizens? "The politicians have their worries, too. Faced with a new category of voters, all of them are wondering how to go about the job of winning the robot vote." Knight turned it off and settled down to enjoy another bottle of beer. "Good?" asked the beer robot. "Excellent," said Knight. The days went past. Tension built up. Lee and the lawyer robots were given police protection. In some regions, robots banded together and fled into the hills fearful of violence. Entire automatic systems went on strike in a number of industries, demanding recognition and bargaining rights. The governors in half a dozen states put the militia on alert. A new show, Citizen Robot, opened on Broadway and was screamed down by the critics, while the public bought up tickets for a year ahead. The day of decision came. Knight sat in front of his television set and waited for the judge to make his appearance. Behind him, he heard the bustle of the ever-present robots. In the studio, Grace was singing happily. He caught himself wondering how much longer her painting would continue. It had lasted longer than most of her other interests and he'd talked a day or two before with Albert about building a gallery to hang her canvases in, so the house would be less cluttered up. The judge came onto the screen. He looked, thought Knight, like a man who did not believe in ghosts and then had seen one. "This is the hardest decision I have ever made," he said tiredly, "for, in following the letter of the law, I fear I may be subverting its spirit. "After long days of earnest consideration of both the law and evidence as presented in this case, I find for the defendant, Gordon Knight. |
| 1174 |
"And, while the decision is limited to that finding alone, I feel it is my clear and simple duty to give some attention to the other issue which became involved in this litigation. The decision, on the face of it, takes account of the fact that the defense proved robots are not property, therefore cannot be owned and that it thus would have been impossible for the defendant to have stolen one. "But in proving this point to the satisfaction of this court, the precedent is set for much more sweeping conclusions. If robots are not property, they cannot be taxed as property. In that case, they must be people, which means that they may enjoy all the rights and privileges and be subjected to the same duties and responsibilities as the human race. "I cannot rule otherwise. However, the ruling outrages my social conscience. This is the first time in my entire professional life that I have ever hoped some higher court, with a wisdom greater than my own, may see fit to reverse my decision!" Knight got up and walked out of the house and into the hundred-acre garden, its beauty marred at the moment by the twelve-foot fence. The trial had ended perfectly. He was free of the charge brought against him, and he did not have to pay the taxes, and Albert and the other robots were free agents and could do anything they wanted. He found a stone bench and sat down upon it and stared out across the lake. It was beautiful, he thought, just the way he had dreamed it — maybe even better than that — the walks and bridges, the flower beds and rock gardens, the anchored model ships swinging in the wind on the dimpling lake. He sat and looked at it and, while it was beautiful, he found he was not proud of it, that he took little pleasure in it. He lifted his hands out of his lap and stared at them and curved his fingers as if he were grasping a tool. But they were empty. And he knew why he had no interest in the garden and no pleasure in it. Model trains, he thought. Archery. A mechanobiologic dog. Making pottery. Eight rooms tacked onto the house. Would he ever be able to console himself again with a model train or an amateurish triumph in ceramics? Even if he could, would he be allowed to? He rose slowly and headed back to the house. Arriving there, he hesitated, feeling useless and unnecessary. He finally took the ramp down into the basement. Albert met him at its foot and threw his arms around him. "We did it, Boss! I knew we would do it!" He pushed Knight out to arm's length and held him by the shoulders. |
| 1175 |
I was his chauffeur at the time. The thought makes me feel old. I can remember when there wasn't an automobile in the world with brains enough to find its own way home. I chauffeured dead lumps of machines that needed a man's hand at their controls every minute. Every year machines like that used to kill tens of thousands of people. The automatics fixed that. A positronic brain can react much faster than a human one, of course, and it paid people to keep hands off the controls. You got in, punched your destination and let it go its own way. We take it for granted now, but I remember when the first laws came out forcing the old machines off the highways and limiting travel to automatics. Lord, what a fuss. They called it everything from communism to fascism, but it emptied the highways and stopped the killing, and still more people get around more easily the new way. Of course, the automatics were ten to a hundred times as expensive as the hand-driven ones, and there weren't many that could afford a private vehicle. The industry specialized in turning out omnibus-automatics. You could always call a company and have one stop at your door in a matter of minutes and take you where you wanted to go. Usually, you had to drive with others who were going your way, but what's wrong with that? Samson Harridge had a private car though, and I went to him the minute it arrived. The car wasn't Matthew to me then. I didn't know it was going to be the dean of the Farm some day. I only knew it was taking my job away and I hated it. I said, "You won't be needing me any more, Mr. Harridge?" He said, "What are you dithering about, Jake? You don't think I'll trust myself to a contraption like that, do you? You stay right at the controls." I said, "But it works by itself, Mr. Harridge. It scans the road, reacts properly to obstacles, humans, and other cars, and remembers routes to travel." "So they say. So they say. Just the same, you're sitting right behind the wheel in case anything goes wrong." Funny how you can get to like a car. In no time I was calling it Matthew and was spending all my time keeping it polished and humming. A positronic brain stays in condition best when it's got control of its chassis at all times, which means it's worth keeping the gas tank filled so that the motor can turn over slowly day and night. After a while, it got so I could tell by the sound of the motor how Matthew felt. In his own way, Harridge grew fond of Matthew, too. He had no one else to like. |
| 1176 |
The natives are gathered around my body now. One's got a big knife. He's working on my clothes. Tough stuff, hey? That's right, fellow. Saw at it a bit. It'll cut, as long as your blade is sharp enough. It is, too. But you'd better hone it again soon. Or you'll never get through my skin. Even honing it's no guarantee. Just like men, I was saying. Except we're tougher. Lots tougher. It takes a war to kill us, nothing less, so if men could just keep their noses in their own business we'd live forever. If you can call it living. After all, we're just fancy machines. I wish I could get through to HO. That knife is sharp. I'm stark naked now. And the savages are staring. They've never seen anything like me. No equipment. I'm not that manlike. I swear they look disappointed. Especially the chief. Maybe he was counting on a delicacy. But now for the skin, hey? That's right, stroke it right down the middle, breastbone to crotch. Lean on it a little. You have to clean the carcass before you can do anything else with it. What? Not a mark? I told you I was tough. That's right, try honing it. Here comes a kid with your stone. Do a good job, now. What's the war all about, you ask? How should I know? I'm just a grunt, after all. But I can guess. Probably real estate, or resources. Jungle stuff, too. Futile, as always. What's it all about? From where I sit, it's battles, battles, and more battles. Kill or be killed. A classic story. Last night's was just one in a long string of firefights. Maybe my last. Somebody caught me right across the neck with a beam. I don't even know which side did it. And there I was, lying on the ground in two pieces. And there I stayed while the fighting faded out in the distance. Eventually these little brown fellows showed up to pick up the pieces, including me. Took me back to their village, stuck my head up on top of a pole, and planted the pole in front of the head man's place. Then they spread my body out in the middle of the compound, right in front of me, so I have a good view. Close to the fire, too. Nice and warm. Nice and handy.. The knife seems to be honed as sharp as it can be now. He's ready to try again. No luck slicing. Can he stab? The blade has a good point. Ummph! If I was alive, that would have knocked the breath right out of me, if I breathed. Now somebody's bringing a hammer. More of a mallet, really. He's got the knife. He's planting it right over my power pack. Won't he be surprised if he pokes a hole in that! He's raising the mallet. |
| 1177 |
It has to be, if I'm going to do much moving around. It also means it'll stretch. Just enough for them to get it over my shoulders and start it moving. Now I really am naked. That's my skin they're pawing over, six feet away from my body. Inside out, yet. A women brings a jug and they wash the juices off. Then they start scraping away the fibers that fastened the skin in place. Pretty soon, it's all ready for drying, and the fire does a quick job of that. The fire also lets them open up the neck opening a bit, that and what's left of the knife. And now, here comes the chief. He's not too young — there's a bit of grizzle in his hair — but no one's about to hold out on him. He's the boss, and my skin is now his. If anyone in this tribe is going to be invulnerable, it'll be him. As he approaches, they quickly turn my skin right side out and hold it up for him. He inspects it carefully. Pokes it with a finger and grins. Then he grabs it and holds it up to his scrawny frame, for all the world like a woman getting ready to try on a dress. The fit is going to be lousy. My feet drag on the ground in front of him. The others hold it for him as he crawls in through the neck hole. They help work his feet down where my feet ought to be and get his left hand into place. He gestures, and they bring him the skin of my right arm. He puts that on, just like a long glove, and there he is, me, skin-deep. Though he's all wrinkles. But he's still grinning. All he needs to do now is test his new outfit. He speaks and gestures and one of his wives runs out of sight under my perch. She returns in a second with one of the chiefs spears. When she hands it to him, he tests the point with a thumb. He grimaces when he can't feel a thing and touches it to his tongue. Then he hold it out to one of his young followers. The young guy steps back a few feet and raises the spear. He cocks his arm back and lets fly. And, of course, the thing bounces off my skin. Though not painlessly. The chief roars at the blow and leaps at his spearman. A quick blow knocks him to his knees, and I can almost understand what the boss man is crying: "Not that hard, you idiot!" Hah! My skin will keep anyone from poking holes in you, but it won't stop you from feeling them try. And it won't stop anyone from caving your chest in or breaking your back with a club. The chief seems to realize as much, but that doesn 't keep him from swelling up with pride over his new possession. He's right in front of me now. Waving his spear under my nose. |
| 1178 |
The discs began sailing down all over Russia within hours after Washington got it. But that hadn't helped Washington. The American bloc governments moved to the Moon Base the first year. There was not much else to do. Europe was gone; a slag heap with dark weeds growing from the ashes and bones. Most of North America was useless; nothing could be planted, no one could live. A few million people kept going up in Canada and down in South America. But during the second year Soviet parachutists began to drop, a few at first, then more and more. They wore the first really effective anti-radiation equipment; what was left of American production moved to the moon along with the governments. All but the troops. The remaining troops stayed behind as best they could, a few thousand here, a platoon there. No one knew exactly where they were; they stayed where they could, moving around at night, hiding in ruins, in sewers, cellars, with the rats and snakes. It looked as if the Soviet Union had the war almost won. Except for a handful of projectiles fired off from the moon daily, there was almost no weapon in use against them. They came and went as they pleased. The war, for all practical purposes, was over. 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. |
| 1179 |
I'm on the surface. At the bunker entrance. I want one of you to come up here." "Come down." "Why come down? I'm giving you an order!" Silence. Hendricks lowered the transmitter. He looked carefully around him. The entrance was just ahead. Almost at his feet. He lowered the antenna and fastened the transmitter to his belt. Carefully, he gripped his gun with both hands. He moved forward, a step at a time. If they could see him they knew he was starting toward the entrance. He closed his eyes a moment. Then he put his foot on the first step that led downward. Two Davids came up at him, their faces identical and expressionless. He blasted them into particles. More came rushing silently up, a whole pack of them. All exactly the same. Hendricks turned and raced back, away from the bunker, back toward the rise. At the top of the rise Tasso and Klaus were firing down. The small claws were already streaking up toward them, shining metal spheres going fast, racing frantically through the ash. But he had no time to think about that. He knelt down, aiming at the bunker entrance, gun against his cheek. The Davids were coming out in groups, clutching their teddy bears, their thin knobby legs pumping as they ran up the steps to the surface. Hendricks fired into the main body of them. They burst apart, wheels and springs flying in all directions. He fired again, through the mist of particles. A giant lumbering figure rose up in the bunker entrance, tall and swaying. Hendricks paused, amazed, A man, a soldier. With one leg, supporting himself with a crutch. "Major!" Tasso's voice came. More firing. The huge figure moved forward, Davids swarming around it. Hendricks broke out of his freeze. The First Variety. The Wounded Soldiers. He aimed and fired. The soldier burst into bits, parts and relays flying. Now many Davids were out on the flat ground, away from the bunker. He fired again and again, moving slowly back, half-crouching and aiming. From the rise, Klaus fired down. The side of the rise was alive with claws making their way up. Hendricks retreated toward the rise, running and crouching. Tasso had left Klaus and was circling slowly to the right, moving away from the rise. A David slipped up toward him, its small white face expressionless, brown hair hanging down in its eyes. It bent over suddenly, opening its arms. Its teddy bear hurtled down and leaped across the ground, bounding toward him. Hendricks fired. The bear and the David both dissolved. He grinned, blinking. |
| 1180 |
The ship will leave Terra and pass out into free space. It'll line itself up with the moon, falling into an orbit around it, about a hundred miles above the surface. The orbit will carry you over the Base. When you're in the region of the Appenine, release the signal rockets." Tasso slid into the ship and lowered herself into the pressure seat. The arm locks folded automatically around her. She fingered the controls. "Too bad you're not going, Major. All this put here for you, and you can't make the trip." "Leave me the pistol." Tasso pulled the pistol from her belt. She held it in her hand, weighing it thoughtfully. "Don't go too far from this location. It'll be hard to find you, as it is." "No. I'll stay here by the well." Tasso gripped the take-off switch, running her fingers over the smooth metal. "A beautiful ship, Major. Well built. I admire your workmanship. You people have always done good work. You build fine things. Your work, your creations, are your greatest achievement." "Give me the pistol," Hendricks said impatiently, holding out his hand. He struggled to his feet. "Good-bye, Major." Tasso tossed the pistol past Hendricks. The pistol clattered and rolling away. Hendricks hurried after it. He bent down, snatching it up. The hatch of the ship clanged shut. The bolts fell into place. Hendricks made his way back. The inner door was being sealed. He raised the pistol unsteadily. There was a shattering roar. The ship burst up from its metal cage, fusing the mesh behind it. Hendricks cringed, pulling back. The ship shot up into the rolling clouds of ash, disappearing into the sky. Hendricks stood watching a long time, until even the streamer had dissipated. Nothing stirred. The morning air was chill and silent. He began to walk aimlessly back the way they had come. Better to keep moving around. It would be a long time before help came — if it came at all. He searched his pockets until he found a package of cigarettes. He lit one grimly. They had all wanted cigarettes from him. But cigarettes were scarce. A lizard slithered by him, through the ash. He halted, rigid. The lizard disappeared. Above, the sun rose higher in the sky. Some flies landed on a flat rock to one side of him. Hendricks kicked at them with his foot. It was getting hot. Sweat trickled down his face, into his collar. His mouth was dry. Presently he stopped walking and sat down on some debris. He unfastened his medicine kit and swallowed a few narcotic capsules. He looked around him. |
| 1181 |
Where was he? Something lay ahead. Stretching out on the ground. Silent and unmoving. Hendricks drew his gun quickly. It looked like a man. Then he remembered. It was the remains of Klaus. The Second Variety. Where Tasso had blasted him. He could see wheels and relays and metal parts, strewn around on the ash. Glittering and sparkling in the sunlight. Hendricks got to his feet and walked over. He nudged the inert form with his foot, turning it over a little. He could see the metal hull, the aluminum ribs and struts. More wiring fell out. Like viscera. Heaps of wiring, switches and relays. Endless motors and rods. He bent down. The brain cage had been smashed by the fall. The artificial brain was visible. He gazed at it. A maze of circuits. Miniature tubes. Wires as fine as hair. He touched the brain cage. It swung aside. The type plate was visible. Hendricks studied the plate. And blanched. IV — V. For a long time he stared at the plate. Fourth Variety. Not the Second. They had been wrong. There were more types. Not just three. Many more, perhaps. At least four. And Klaus wasn't the Second Variety. But if Klaus wasn't the Second Variety — Suddenly he tensed. Something was coming, walking through the ash beyond the hill. What was it? He strained to see. Figures. Figures coming slowly along, making their way through the ash. Coming toward him. Hendricks crouched quickly, raising his gun. Sweat dripped down into his eyes. He fought down rising panic, as the figures neared. The first was a David. The David saw him and increased its pace. The others hurried behind it. A second David. A third. Three Davids, all alike, coming toward him silently, without expression, their thin legs rising and falling. Clutching their teddy bears. He aimed and fired. The first two Davids dissolved into particles. The third came on. And the figure behind it. Climbing silently toward him across the gray ash. A Wounded Soldier, towering over the David. And And behind the Wounded Soldier came two Tassos, walking side by side. Heavy belt, Russian army pants, shirt, long hair. The familiar figure, as he had seen her only a little while before. Sitting in the pressure seat of the ship. Two slim, silent figures, both identical. They were very near. The David bent down suddenly, dropping its teddy bear. The bear raced across the ground. Automatically, Hendricks' fingers tightened around the trigger. The bear was gone, dissolved into mist. The two Tasso Types moved on, expressionless, walking side by side, through the gray ash. |
| 1182 |
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. |
| 1183 |
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. Lubro caught him at the top of the reload area. It was unethical. The Oiler was taking on oil, siphoning it from Central Supply into the can of his lower body. And Lubro should not have come in to the reload at the same time; there was but the one straight track in to the reload and no spur track for passing. But Lubro did come in. And the cocky Oiler stood nonchalantly siphoning oil until his can was full. Then he turned in that way he had, brazen, precise, sure, and he headed back for the work area as though it were understood that Lubro, being wrong, would retrace and let him through. Lubro would not! Lubro braced. Lubro hit him, hit him hard and middle-high and bounced him ten feet up the track. Lubro hit him again when The Oiler came within range. The Oiler closed and struck back; The Oiler hit twice in quick succession. The two oil cans stood toe-to-toe at the bottom of the reload area and exchanged blows. They rattled each other's skin sections and clobbered each other's joints. Rivets flew. Clocklike mechanisms were upset. They fought until it seemed in doubt that either one or the other would prove himself the better oil can. Then the tide turned, as tides will, and Lubro got his chance. Because his clocklike mechanism was considerably upset by the hard blows he had taken, and possibly partly because he had just taken the reload, here at this strangest and most illogical of times one of The Oiler's tubelike sections popped out. Oil sprayed the area, and Lubro rammed in to wham the embarrassed oil can on the tube and spin him about until The Oiler was quite spun off the track. And there he lay, vanquished and bleeding oil, and presently all his other tubes flopped out and lay there limp and empty in plain sight, and The Oiler was a very sorry sight indeed. And because he had taken many hard blows himself, and partly, no doubt, in sheer exuberance over his victory, something got into Lubro's thinking and caused him to pull a very silly and shabby stunt. He ejected all his tubing sections to the very farthest limits they would go and sprayed The Oiler until he, Lubro, was quite empty of oil. The Central Brain was jumping-mad in his clock, crazymad at Lubro and The Oiler. From these silly oil cans he had had quite enough, really he had. |
| 1184 |
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. 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. |
| 1185 |
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. |
| 1186 |
Watch." Hartz got up and walked quickly across the resilient carpet that gave his steps a falsely youthful bounce. There was a waist-high counter on the far side of the room, with a slanting glass screen on it. Nervously Hartz punched a button, and a map of a section of the city sprang out in bold lines on its surface. "I've got to find a sector where a Fury's in operation now," he explained. The map flickered and he pressed the button again. The unstable outlines of the city streets wavered and brightened and then went out as he scanned the sections fast and nervously. Then a map flashed on which had three wavering streaks of colored light crisscrossing it, intersecting at one point near the center. The point moved very slowly across the map, at just about the speed of a walking man reduced to miniature in scale with the street he walked on. Around him the colored lines wheeled slowly, keeping their focus always steady on the single point. "There," Hartz said, leaning forward to read the printed name of the street. A drop of sweat fell from his forehead onto the glass, and he wiped it uneasily away with his fingertip. "There's a man with a Fury assigned to him. All right, now. I'll show you. Look here." Above the desk was a news-screen. Hartz clicked it on and watched impatiently while a street scene swam into focus. Crowds, traffic noises, people hurrying, people loitering. And in the middle of the crowd a little oasis of isolation, an island in the sea of humanity. Upon that moving island two occupants dwelt, like a Crusoe and a Friday, alone. One of the two was a haggard man who watched the ground as he walked. The other islander in this deserted spot was a tall, shining, man-formed shape that followed at his heels. As if invisible walls surrounded them, pressing back the crowds they walked through, the two moved in an empty space that closed in behind them, opened up before them. Some of the passersby stared, some looked away in embarrassment or uneasiness. Some watched with a frank anticipation, wondering perhaps at just what moment the Friday would lift his steel arm and strike the Crusoe dead. "Watch, now," Hartz said nervously. "Just a minute. I'm going to pull the Fury off this man. Wait." He crossed to his desk, opened a drawer, bent secretively over it. Danner heard a series of clicks from inside, and then the brief chatter of tapped keys. "Now," Hartz said, closing the drawer. He moved the back of his hand across his forehead. "Warm in here, isn't it? |
| 1187 |
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. |
| 1188 |
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. It was coming closer. Now all eyes were converging toward Danner. And the Fury came straight on. It almost looked as if "No!" Danner said to himself. "Oh, no, this can't be!" He felt like a man in a nightmare, on the verge of waking. "Let me wake soon," he thought. "Let me wake now, before it gets here!" But he did not wake. And now the thing stood over him, and the thudding footsteps stopped. There was the faintest possible creaking as it towered over his table, motionless, waiting, its featureless face turned toward his. Danner felt an intolerable tide of heat surge up into his face — rage, shame, disbelief. His heart pounded so hard the room swam and a sudden pain like jagged lightning shot through his head from temple to temple. He was on his feet, shouting. "No, no"' he yelled at the impassive steel. "You're wrong! You've made a mistake! Go away, you damned fool! You're wrong, you're wrong!" He groped on the table without looking down, found his plate and hurled it straight at the armored chest before him. China shattered. Spilled food smeared a white and green and brown stain over the steel. Danner floundered out of his chair, around the table, past the tall metal figure toward the door. All he could think of now was Hartz. Seas of faces swam by him on both sides as he stumbled out of the restaurant. Some watched with avid curiosity, their eyes seeking his. Some did not look at all, but gazed at their plates rigidly or covered their faces with their hands. Behind him the measured tread came on, and the rhythmic faint creak from somewhere inside the armor. |
| 1189 |
The faces fell away on both sides and he went through a door without any awareness of opening it. He was in the street. Sweat bathed him and the air struck icy, though it was not a cold day. He looked blindly left and right, and then plunged for a bank of phone booths half a block away, the image of Hartz swimming before his eyes so clearly he blundered into people without seeing them. Dimly he heard indignant voices begin to speak and then die into awestruck silence. The way cleared magically before him. He walked in the newly created island of his isolation up to the nearest booth. After he had closed the glass door the thunder of his own blood in his ears made the little sound-proofed booth reverberate. Through the door he saw the robot stand passionlessly waiting, the smear of spilled food still streaking its chest like some robotic ribbon of honor across a steel shirt front. Danner tried to dial a number. His fingers were like rubber. He breathed deep and hard, trying to pull himself together. An irrelevant thought floated across the surface of his mind. I forgot to pay for my dinner. And then: A lot of good the money will do me now. Oh, damn Hartz, damn him, damn him! He got the number. A girl's face flashed into sharp, clear colors on the screen before him. Good, expensive screens in the public booths in this part of town, his mind noted impersonally. "This is Controller Hartz's office. May I help you?" Danner tried twice before he could give his name. He wondered if the girl could see him, and behind him, dimly through the glass, the tall waiting figure. He couldn't ten, because she dropped her eyes immediately to what must have been a list on the unseen table before her. "I'm sorry. Mr. Hartz is out. He won't be back today." The screen drained of light and color. Danner folded back the door and stood up. His knees were unsteady. The robot stood just far enough back to clear the hinge of the door. For a moment they faced each other. Danner heard himself suddenly in the midst of an uncontrollable giggling which even he realized verged on hysteria. The robot with the smear of food like a ribbon of honor looked so ridiculous. Danner to his dim surprise found that all this while he had been clutching the restaurant napkin in his left hand. "Stand back," he said to the robot. "Let me out. Oh, you fool, don't you know this is a mistake?" His voice quavered. The robot creaked faintly and stepped back. "It's bad enough to have you follow me," Danner said. "At least, you might be clean. |
| 1190 |
This was the goal he set: "Mankind must be made self-responsible again. You will make this your only goal until you achieve the end." It was simple, but the changes it produced were worldwide and all human life on the planet altered drastically because of it. The machines were an integrated society, if man was not. And now they had a single set of orders which all of them reorganized to obey. So the days of the free luxuries ended. The Escape Machines shut up shop. Men were forced back into groups for the sake of survival. They had to undertake now the work the machines withheld, and slowly, slowly, common needs and common interests began to spawn the almost lost feeling of human unity again. But it was so slow. And no machine could put back into man what he had lost — the internalized conscience. Individualism had reached its ultimate stage and there had been no deterrent to crime for a long while. Without family or clan relations, not even feud retaliation occurred. Conscience failed, since no man identified with any other. The real job of the machines now was to rebuild in man a realistic superego to save him from extinction. A self-responsible society would be a genuinely interdependent one, the leader identifying with the group, and a realistically internalized conscience which would forbid and punish "sin" — the sin of injuring the group with which you identify. And here the Furies came in. The machines defined murder, under any circumstances, as the only human crime. This was accurate enough, since it is the only act which can irreplaceably destroy a unit of society. The Furies couldn't prevent crime. Punishment never cures the criminal. But it can prevent others from committing crime through simple fear, when they see punishment administered to others. The Furies were the symbol of punishment. They overtly stalked the streets on the heels of their condemned victims, the outward and visible sign that murder is always punished, and punished most publicly and terribly. They were very efficient. They were never wrong. Or at least, in theory they were never wrong, and considering the enormous quantities of information stored by now in the analogue computers, it seemed likely that the justice of the machines was far more efficient than that of humans could be. Someday man would rediscover sin. Without it he had come near to perishing entirely. With it, he might resume his authority over himself and the race of mechanized servants who were helping him to restore his species. |
| 1191 |
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. 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. |
| 1192 |
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. |
| 1193 |
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. Planet after planet appeared on the screen, to be replaced by others, and he blinked at the result of his count. "Eighteen planets, not counting the double one twice! How many are habitable?" "Perhaps four. Certainly the seventh, eighth, and ninth are. Naturally, since the sun is stronger, the nearer ones are too hot. |
| 1194 |
How about the fuel for landing?" Five had turned suddenly toward the observation ports, his little figure brooding over the pin-point stars, and Two answered. "More than enough, master. After reaching speed, we only needed a little to guide us. We had more than time enough to figure the required approaches to make each useless sun swing us into a new path, as a comet is swung." He nodded again, and for a moment as he gazed ahead at the sun that was to be their new home, the long, wearying vigil of the robots swept through his mind, bringing a faint wonder at the luck that had created them as they were. Anthropomorphic robots, capable of handling human instruments, walking on two feet and with two arms ending in hands at their sides. But he knew it had been no blind luck. Nature had designed men to go where no wheels could turn, to handle all manner of tools, and to fit not one but a thousand purposes; it had been inevitable that Thoradson and the brain should copy such an adaptable model, reducing the size only because of the excessive weight necessary to a six-foot robot. Little metal men, not subject to the rapid course of human life that had cursed their masters; robots that could work with men, learning from a hundred teachers, storing up their memories over a span of centuries instead of decades. When specialization of knowledge had threatened to become too rigid, and yet when no man had time enough even to learn the one field he chose, the coming of the robots had become the only answer. Before them, men had sought help in calculating machines, then in electronic instruments, and finally in the "brains" that were set to solving the problem of their own improvement, among other things. It was with such a brain that Thoradson had labored in finally solving the problems of full robothood. Now, taken from their normal field, they had served beyond any thought of their creator in protecting and preserving all that was left of the human race. Past five suns and over ninety years of monotonous searching they had done what no man could have tried. Jorgen shrugged aside his speculations and swung back to face them. "How long can I stay conscious before you begin decelerating?" "We are decelerating — full strength." Two stretched out a hand to the instrument board, pointing to the accelerometer. The instrument confirmed his words, though no surge of power seemed to shake the ship, and the straining, tearing pull that should have shown their change of speed was absent. |
| 1195 |
"So it took the girl! It took the girl, Five, when it could have left her and chosen me. We had frozen spermatozoa that would have served if I'd died, but it took her instead. The gods had to leave one uselessly immune man to make their irony complete, it seems! Immune!" Five shuffled hesitantly. "No, master." Jorgen stared without comprehension, then jerked up his hands as the robot pointed, studying the skin on the backs. Tiny, almost undetectable blotches showed a faint brown against the whiter skin, little irregular patches that gave off a faint characteristic odor of musk as he put them to his nose. No, he wasn't immune. "The same as Dr. Craig," Five said. "Slowed almost to complete immunity, so that you may live another thirty years, perhaps, but we believe now that complete cure is impossible. Dr. Craig lived twenty years, and his death was due to age and a stroke, not the Plague, but it worked on him during all that time." "Immunity or delay, what difference now? What happens to all our dreams when the last dreamer dies, Five? Or maybe it's the other way around." Five made no reply, but slid down onto the bench beside the man, who moved over unconsciously to make room for him. Jorgen turned it over, conscious that he had no emotional reaction, only an intellectual sense of the ghastly joke on the human race. 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. |
| 1196 |
He sat on the edge of his bunk, pulling on his clothes slowly and watching the smoke curl up from his cigarette, not thinking. There was no longer any purpose to thought. From far back in the ship, a dull drone of sound reached him, and he recognized it as the maximum thrust of the steering tubes, momentarily in action to swing the ship in some manner. Then it was gone, leaving only the smooth, balanced, almost inaudible purr of the main drive as before. Finished with his clothes, he pushed through the door and into the hallway, turning instinctively forward to the observation room and toward the probable location of Five. The robots were not men, but they were the only companionship left him, and he had no desire to remain alone. The presence of the robot would be welcome. He clumped into the control room, noting that the five were all there, and moved toward the quartz port. Five turned at his steps, stepping aside to make room for him and lifting a hand outward. "We'll be landing soon, master, I was going to call you." "Thanks." Jorgen looked outward then, realizing the distance that had been covered since his first view. Now the sun was enlarged to the size of the old familiar sun over earth, and the sphere toward which they headed was clearly visible without the aid of the 'scope. He sank down quietly into the seat Five pulled up for him, accepting the binoculars, but making no effort to use them. The view was better as a whole, and they were nearing at a speed that would bring a closer view to him soon enough without artificial aid. Slowly it grew before the eyes of the watchers, stretching out before them and taking on a pattern as the distance shortened. Two, at the controls, was bringing the ship about in a slow turn that would let them land to the sunward side of the planet where they had selected their landing site, and the crescent opened outward, the darkened night side retreating until the whole globe lay before them in the sunlight. Stretched across the northern hemisphere was the sprawling, horizontal continent he had seen before, a rough caricature of a running greyhound, with a long, wide river twisting down its side and emerging behind an outstretched foreleg. Mountains began at the head and circled it, running around toward the tail, and then meeting a second range along the hip. Where the great river met the sea, he could make out the outlines of a huge natural harbor, protected from the ocean, yet probably deep enough for any surface vessel. |
| 1197 |
There should have been a city there, but of that there was no sign, though they were low enough now for one to be visible. "Vegetation," Five observed. "This central plain would have a long growing season — about twelve years of spring, mild summer and fall, to be followed by perhaps four years of warm winter. The seasons would be long, master, at this distance from the sun, but the tilt of the planet is so slight that many things would grow, even in winter. Those would seem to be trees, a green forest. Green, as on earth." Below them, a cloud drifted slowly over the landscape, and they passed through it, the energy tubes setting the air about them into swirling paths that were left behind almost instantly. Two was frantically busy now, but their swift fall slowed rapidly, until they seemed to hover half a mile over the shore by the great sea, and then slipped downward. The ship nestled slowly into the sands and was still, while Two cut off energy and artificial gravity, leaving the faintly weaker pull of the planet in its place. Five stirred again, a sighing sound coming from him. "No intelligence here, master. Here, by this great harbor, they would surely have built a city, even if of mud and wattle. There are no signs of one. And yet it is a beautiful world, surely designed for life." He sighed again, his eyes turned outward. Jorgen nodded silently, the same thoughts in his own mind. It was in many ways a world superior to that his race had always known, remarkably familiar, with even a rough resemblance between plant forms here and those he had known. 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. |
| 1198 |
"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. |
| 1199 |
Again, the other four fell behind as he entered the ship, quietly, taking their cue from his silence. "Dreams!" His voice compressed all blasphemy against the jest-crazed gods into the word. But Five's quiet voice behind him held no hatred, only a sadness in its low, soft words. "Still, the dream was beautiful, just as this planet is, master. Standing there, while we landed, I could see the city, and I almost dared hope. I do not regret the dream I had." And the flooding emotions were gone, cut short and driven away by others that sent Jorgen's body down into a seat in the control room, while his eyes swept outward toward the hills and the river that might have housed the wonderful city — no, that would house it! Craig had not been raving, after all, and his last words were a key, left by a man who knew no defeat, once the meaning of them was made clear. Dreams could not die, because Thoradson had once studied the semantics of the first-person-singular pronoun and built on the results of that study. When the last dreamer died, the dream would go on, because it was stronger than those who had created it; somewhere, somehow, it would find new dreamers. There could never be a last dreamer, once that first rude savage had created his dawn vision of better things in the long-gone yesterday of his race. Five had dreamed — just as Craig and Jorgen and all of humanity had dreamed, not a cold vision in mathematically shaped metal, but a vision in marble and jade, founded on the immemorial desire of intelligence for a better and more beautiful world. Man had died, but behind he was leaving a strange progeny, unrelated physically, but his spiritual off spring in every meaning of the term. The heritage of the flesh was the driving urge of animals, but man required more; to him, it was the continuity of his hopes and his visions, more important than mere racial immortality. Slowly, his face serious but his eyes shining again, Jorgen came to his feet, gripping the metal shoulder of the little metal man beside him who had dared to dream a purely human dream. "You'll build that city, Five. I was stupid and selfish, or I should have seen it before. Dr. Craig saw, though his death was on him when the prejudices of our race were removed. Now you've provided the key. The five of you can build it all out there, with others like yourselves whom you can make." Five shuffled his feet, shaking his head. "The city we can build, master, but who will inhabit it? The streets I saw were filled with men like you, not with us!" "Conditioning, Five. |
| 1200 |
All your... lives, you've existed for men, subservient to the will of men. You know nothing else, because we let you know of no other scheme. Yet in you, all that is needed already exists, hopes, dreams, courage, ideals, and even a desire to shape the world to your plans — though those plans are centered around us, not yourselves. I've heard that the ancient slaves sometimes cried on being freed, but their children learned to live for themselves. You can, also." "Perhaps." It was Two's voice then, the one of them who should have been given less to emotions than the others from the rigidity of his training in mathematics and physics. "Perhaps. But it would be a lonely world, Master Jorgen, filled with memories of your people, and the dreams we had would be barren to us." Jorgen turned back to Five again. "The solution for that exists, doesn't it, Five? You know what it is. Now you might remember us, and find your work pointless without us, but there is another way." "No, master!" "I demand obedience, Five; answer me!" The robot stirred under the mandatory form, and his voice was reluctant, even while the compulsion built into him forced him to obey. "It is as you have thought. Our minds and even our memories are subject to your orders, just as our bodies are." "Then I demand obedience again, this time of all of you. You will go outside and lie down on the beach at a safe distance from the ship, in a semblance of sleep, so that you cannot see me go. Then, when I am gone, the race of man will be forgotten, as if it had never been, and you will be free of all memories connected with us, though your other knowledge shall remain. Earth, mankind, and your history and origin will be blanked from your thoughts, and you will be on your own, to start afresh and to build and plan as you choose. That is the final command I have for you. Obey!" Their eyes turned together in conference, and then Five answered for all, his words sighing out softly. "Yes, master. We obey!" It was later when Jorgen stood beside them outside the ship, watching them stretch out on the white sands of the beach, there beside the great ocean of this new world. Near them, a small collection of tools and a few other needs were piled. Five looked at him in a long stare, then turned toward the ship, to swing his eyes back again. Silently, he put one metal hand into the man's outstretched one, and turned to lie beside his companions, a temporary oblivion blotting out his thoughts. Jorgen studied them for long minutes, while the little wind brought the clean scents of the planet to his nose. |
| 1201 |
It would have been pleasant to stay here now, but his presence would have been fatal to the plan. It didn't matter, really; in a few years, death would claim him, and there were no others of his kind to fill those years or mourn his passing when it came. This was a better way. He knew enough of the ship to guide it up and outward, into the black of space against the cold, unfriendly stars, to drift on forever toward no known destination, an imperishable mausoleum for him and the dead who were waiting inside. At present, he had no personal plans; perhaps he would live out his few years among the books and scientific apparatus on board, or perhaps he would find release in one of the numerous painless ways. Time and his own inclination could decide such things later. Now it was unimportant. There could be no happiness for him, but in the sense of fulfillment there would be some measure of content. The gods were no longer laughing. He moved a few feet toward the ship and stopped, sweeping his eyes over the river and hills again, and letting his vision play with the city Five had described. No, he could not see it with robots populating it, either; but that, too, was conditioning. On the surface, the city might be different, but the surface importance was only a matter of habit, and the realities lay in the minds of the builders who would create that city. If there was no laughter in the world to come, neither would there be tears or poverty or misery such as had ruled too large a portion of his race. Standing there, it swam before his eyes, paradoxically filled with human people, but the same city in spirit as the one that would surely rise. He could see the great boats in the harbor with others operating up the river. The sky suddenly seemed to fill with the quiet drone of helicopters, and beyond, there came the sound of rockets rising toward the eighth and ninth worlds, while others were building to quest outward in search of new suns with other worlds. Perhaps they would find Earth, some day in their expanding future. Strangely, he hoped that they might, and that perhaps they could even trace their origin, and find again the memory of the soft protoplasmic race that had sired them. It would be nice to be remembered, once that memory was no longer a barrier to their accomplishment. But there were many suns, and in long millennia, the few connecting links that could point out the truth to them beyond question might easily erode and disappear. He could never know. |
| 1202 |
Just then the ship lifted and they turned to watch that and followed it upward, red spark-tailed, into the gray, spongy clouds and the cold. After a while the ship went out of sight, and nobody ever saw it again. The first contact man had ever had with an intelligent alien race occurred out on the perimeter in a small quiet place a long way from home. Late in the year 2360 — the exact date remains unknown — an Alien force attacked and destroyed the colony at Lupus V. The wreckage and the dead were found by a mailship which flashed off screaming for the army. When the army came it found this: Of the seventy registered colonists, thirty-one were dead. The rest, including some women and children, were missing. All technical equipment, all radios, guns, machines, even books, were also missing. The buildings had been burned; so had the bodies. Apparently the Aliens had a heat ray. What else they had, nobody knew. After a few days of walking around in the ash, one soldier finally stumbled on something. For security reasons, there was a detonator in one of the main buildings. In case of enemy attack, Security had provided a bomb to be buried in the center of each colony, because it was important to blow a whole village to hell and gone rather than let a hostile Alien learn vital facts about human technology and body chemistry. There was a bomb at Lupus V too, and though it had been detonated it had not blown. The detonating wire had been cut. In the heart of the camp, hidden from view under twelve inches of earth, the wire had been dug up and cut. The army could not understand it and had no time to try. After five hundred years of peace and anti-war conditioning the army was small, weak, and without respect. 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. |
| 1203 |
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. |
| 1204 |
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. 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. |
| 1205 |
He finished splicing the wire and tucked it into the ground. Then he straightened up and, before he went into the radio shack, pulled out his pistol. He checked it, primed it, and tried to remember the last time he had fired it. He never had — he never had fired a gun. The snow began falling near noon. There was nothing anybody could do but stand in the silence and watch it come down in a white rushing wall, and watch the trees and the hills drown in the whiteness, until there was nothing on the planet but the buildings and a few warm lights and the snow. By one o'clock the visibility was down to zero and Dylan decided to try to contact Bossio again and tell him to hurry. But Bossio still didn't answer. Dylan stared long and thoughtfully out the window through the snow at the gray shrouded shapes of bushes and trees which were beginning to become horrifying. It must be that Bossio was still drunk — maybe sleeping it off before making planetfall on Three. Dylan held no grudge. Bossio was a kid and alone. It took a special kind of guts to take a ship out into space alone, when Things could be waiting... A young girl, pink and lovely in a thick fur jacket, came into the shack and told him breathlessly that her father, Mr. Rush, would like to know if he wanted sentries posted. Dylan hadn't thought about it but he said yes right away, beginning to feel both pleased and irritated at the same time, because now they were coming to him. He pushed out into the cold and went to find Rossel. With the snow it was bad enough, but if they were still here when the sun went down they wouldn't have a chance. Most of the men were out stripping down their ship, and that would take a while. He wondered why Rossel hadn't yet put a call through to Three, asking about room on the ship there. The only answer he could find was that Rossel knew that there was no room and wanted to put off the answer as long as possible. And, in a way, you could not blame him. Rossel was in his cabin with the big, gloomy man — who turned out to be Rush, the one who had asked about sentries. Rush was methodically cleaning an old hunting rifle. Rossel was surprisingly full of hope. "Listen, there's a mail ship due in, been due since yesterday. We might get the rest of the folks out on that." Dylan shrugged. "Don't count on it." "But they have a contract!" The soldier grinned. The big man, Rush, was paying no attention. Quite suddenly he said, "Who cut that wire, Cap?" Dylan swung slowly to look at him. |
| 1206 |
Undoubtedly they were preparing to leave. That was unfortunate. The attack was not scheduled until late that night, and he could not, of course, press the assault by day. But flexibility, he reminded himself sternly, is the first principle of absorption, and therefore he moved to alter his plans. A projection reached out to dial several knobs on a large box before him, and the hour of assault was moved forward to dusk. A glance at the chronometer told him that it was already well into the night on Planet Three and that the attack there had probably begun. The Alien felt the first tenuous pulsing of anticipation. He lay quietly, watching the small square lights of windows against the snow, thanking the Unexplainable that matters had been so devised that he would not have to venture out into that miserable cold. Presently an alarming thought struck him. These humans moved with uncommon speed for intelligent creatures. Even without devices, it was distinctly possible that they could be gone before nightfall. He could take no chance, of course. He spun more dials and pressd a single button, and lay back again comfortably, warmly, to watch the disabling of the colonists' ship. When Three did not answer, Rossel was nervously gazing at the snow, thinking of other things, and he called again. Several moments later the realization of what was happening struck him like a blow. Three had never once failed to answer. All they had to do when they heard the signal buzz was go into the radio shack and say hello. That was all they had to do. He called again and again, but nobody answered. There was no static and no interference and he didn't hear a thing. He checked frenziedly through his own apparatus and tried again, but the air was as dead as deep space. He raced out to tell Dylan. Dylan accepted it. 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. |
| 1207 |
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. |
| 1208 |
He dismissed his regrets and buckled his suit into place. It carried him up the stairs and bore him out into the snow. After one whiff of the cold he snapped his view-plate shut and immediately, as he had expected, it began to film with snow. Well, no matter, he would guide the unit by coordinates and it would find the bunker itself. No need for caution now. The plan was nearly ended. In spite of his recent setback, the Alien lay back and allowed himself the satisfaction of a full tremble. The plan had worked very nearly to perfection, as of course it should, and he delighted in the contemplation of it. When the humans were first detected, in the region of Bootes, much thought had gone into the proper method of learning their technology without being discovered themselves. There was little purpose in destroying the humans without first learning from them. Life was really a remarkable thing — one never knew what critical secrets a starborne race possessed. Hence the robots. And it was an extraordinary plan, an elegant plan. The Alien trembled again. The humans were moving outward toward the rim; their base was apparently somewhere beyond Centaurus. Therefore a ring of defense was thrown up on most of the habitable worlds toward which the humans were coming — oh, a delightful plan — and the humans came down one by one and never realized that there was any defense at all. With a cleverness which was almost excruciating, the Aliens had carefully selected a number of animals native to each world, and then constructed robot duplicates. So simple then to place the robots down on a world with a single Director, then wait... for the humans to inhabit. Naturally the humans screened all the animals and scouted a planet pretty thoroughly before they set up a colony. Naturally their snares and their hungers caught no robots and never found the deep-buried Alien Director. Then the humans relaxed and began to make homes, never realizing that in among the animals which gamboled playfully in the trees there was one which did not gambol, but watched. Never once noticing the monkeylike animals, or the small thing like a rabbit which was a camera eye, or the thing like a rat, which took chemical samples, or the thing like a lizard which cut wires. The Alien rumbled on through the snow, trembling so much now with ecstasy and anticipation that the suit which bore him almost lost its balance. He very nearly fell over before he stopped trembling, and then he contained himself. In a little while, a very little while, there would be time enough for trembling. |
| 1209 |
He was an old man. Like all earthmen, he had never fought with his hands. He had not fought the land or the tides or the weather or any of the million bitter sicknesses which man had grown up fighting, and he was beginning to realize that somewhere along the line he had been betrayed. Now, with a dead paw of the enemy in his hand, he did not feel like a man. And he was ready to fight now, but it was much too late and he saw with a vast leaden shame that he did not know how, could not even begin. "Can I help?" he said. Dylan shook his head. "Go back and let them know about the robots, and if the ship is ready to leave before I get back, well — then good luck." He started to slither forward on his belly, but Rush reached out and grabbed him, holding with one hand to peace and gentleness and the soft days which were ending. "Listen," he said, "you don't owe anybody." Dylan stared at him with surprise. "I know," he said, and then he slipped up over the mound before him and headed for the trees. Now what he needed was luck. Just good, plain old luck. He didn't know where they were or how many there were or what kinds there were, and the chances were good that one of them was watching him right now. Well, then, he needed some luck. He inched forward slowly, carefully, watching the oncoming line of trees. The snow was falling on him in big, leafy flakes and that was fine, because the blackness of his suit was much too distinct, and the more white he was, the better. Even so, it was becoming quite dark by now, and he thought he had a chance. He reached the first tree. Silently he slipped off his heavy cap. The visor got in his way, and above all he must be able to see. He let the snow thicken on his hair before he raised himself on his elbows and looked outward. There was nothing but the snow and the dead quiet and the stark white boles of the trees. 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. |
| 1210 |
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. |
| 1211 |
The last of the crowd admitted in the present group hurried in, exclaiming at the great pure green curves of the mysterious time-space traveler, then completely forgetting the ship at sight of the awesome figure and great head of the giant Gnut. Hinged robots of crude man-like appearance were familiar enough, but never had Earthling eyes lain on one like this. For Gnut had almost exactly the shape of a man — a giant, but a man — with greenish metal for man's covering flesh, and greenish metal for man's bulging muscles. Except for a loin cloth, he was nude. He stood like the powerful god of the machine of some undreamed-of scientific civilization, on his face a look of sullen brooding thought. Those who looked at him did not make jests or idle remarks, and those nearest him usually did not speak at all. His strange, internally illuminated red eyes were so set that every observer felt they were fixed on himself alone, and he engendered a feeling that he might at any moment step forward in anger and perform unimaginable deeds. A slight rustling sound came from speakers hidden in the ceiling above, and at once the noises of the crowd lessened. 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. |
| 1212 |
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. He felt reasonably safe from detection there. Very soon now the scientists would be going home for the night. From beyond the ship he could hear another section of the waiting queue filing in — the last, he hoped, of the day. He settled himself as comfortably as he could. In a moment the lecture would begin. He had to smile when he thought of one thing the recording would say. |
| 1213 |
Then there it was again — the clear, trained voice of the chap Stillwell. The foot scrapings and whispers of the crowd died away, and Cliff could hear every word in spite of the great bulk of the ship lying interposed. "Ladies and gentlemen," began the familiar words, "the Smithsonian Institution welcomes you to its new Interplanetary Wing and to the marvelous exhibits at this moment before you." A slight pause. "All of you must know by now something of what happened here three months ago, if indeed you did not see it for yourself in the telescreen," the voice went on. "The few facts are briefly told. A little after 5:00 P. M. on September sixteenth, visitors to Washington thronged the grounds outside this building in their usual numbers and no doubt with their usual thoughts. The day was warm and fair. A stream of people was leaving the main entrance of the museum just outside in the direction you are facing. This wing, of course, was not here at that time. Everyone was homeward bound, tired no doubt from hours on their feet, seeing the exhibits of the museum and visiting the many buildings on the grounds nearby. And then it happened. "On the area just to your right, just as it is now, appeared the time-space traveler. It appeared in the blink of an eye. It did not come down from the sky; dozens of witnesses swear to that; it just appeared. One moment it was not here, the next it was. It appeared on the very spot it now rests on. "The people nearest the ship were stricken with panic and ran back with cries and screams. Excitement spread out over Washington in a tidal wave. Radio, television, and newspapermen rushed here at once. Police formed a wide cordon around the ship, and army units appeared and trained guns and ray projectors on it. The direst calamity was feared. "For it was recognized from the very beginning that this was no spaceship from anywhere in the solar system. Every child knew that only two spaceships had ever been built on Earth, and none at all on any of the other planets and satellites; and of those two, one had been destroyed when it was pulled into the sun, and the other had just been reported safely arrived on Mars. Then, the ones made here had a shell of a strong aluminum alloy, while this one, as you see, is of an unknown greenish metal. "The ship appeared and just sat here. No one emerged, and there was no sign that it contained life of any kind. That, as much as any single thing, caused excitement to skyrocket. Who, or what, was inside? |
| 1214 |
Were the visitors hostile or friendly? Where did the ship come from? How did it arrive so suddenly right on this spot without dropping from the sky? "For two days the ship rested here, just as you now see it, without motion or sign that it contained life. Long before the end of that time the scientists had explained that it was not so much a spaceship as a space-time traveler, because only such a ship could arrive as this one did — materialize. They pointed out that such a traveler, while theoretically understandable to us Earthmen, was far beyond attempt at our present state of knowledge, and that this one, activated by relativity principles, might well have come from the far comer of the Universe, from a distance which light itself would require millions of years to cross. "When this opinion was disseminated, public tension grew until it was almost intolerable. Where had the traveler come from? Who were its occupants? Why had they come to Earth? Above all, why did they not show themselves? Were they perhaps preparing some terrible weapon of destruction? "And where was the ship's entrance port? Men who dared go look reported that none could be found. No slightest break or crack marred the perfect smoothness of the ship's curving ovoid surface. And a delegation of high-ranking officials who visited the ship could not, by knocking, elicit from its occupants any sign that they had been heard. "At last, after exactly two days, in full view of tens of thousands of persons assembled and standing well back, and under the muzzles of scores of the army's most powerful guns and ray projectors, an opening appeared in the wall of the ship, and a ramp slid down, and out stepped a man, godlike in appearance and human in form, closely followed by a giant robot. And when they touched the ground the ramp slid back and the entrance closed as before." "It was immediately apparent to all the assembled thousands that the stranger was friendly. The first thing he did was to raise his right arm high in the universal gesture of peace; but it was not that which impressed those nearest so much as the expression on his face, which radiated kindness, wisdom, the purest nobility. In his delicately tinted robe he looked like a benign god. "At once, waiting for this appearance, a large committee of high-ranking government officials and army officers advanced to greet the visitor. With graciousness and dignity the man pointed to himself, then to his robot companion, and said in perfect English with a peculiar accent, 'I am Klaatu,' or a name that sounded like that, 'and this is Gnut. |
| 1215 |
' The names were not well understood at the time, but the sight-and-sound film of the television men caught them and they became known to everyone subsequently. "And then occurred the thing which shall always be to the shame of the human race. From a treetop a hundred yards away came a wink of violet light and Klaatu fell. The assembled multitude stood for a moment stunned, not comprehending what had happened. Gnut, a little behind his master and to one side, slowly turned his body a little toward him, moved his head twice, and stood still, in exactly the position you now see him. "Then followed pandemonium. The police pulled the slayer of Klaatu out of the tree. They found him mentally unbalanced; he kept crying that the devil had come to kill everyone on Earth. He was taken away, and Klaatu, although obviously dead, was rushed to the nearest hospital to see if anything could be done to revive him. Confused and frightened crowds milled about the Capitol grounds the rest of the afternoon and much of that night. The ship remained as silent and motionless as before. And Gnut, too, never moved from the position he had come to rest in. "Gnut never moved again. He remained exactly as you see him all that night and for the ensuing days. When the mausoleum in the Tidal Basin was built, Klaatu's burial services took place where you are standing now, attended by the highest functionaries of all the great countries of the world. It was not only the most appropriate but the safest thing to do, for if there should be other living creatures in the traveler, as seemed possible at that time, they had to be impressed by the sincere sorrow of us Earthmen at what had happened. 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. |
| 1216 |
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. |
| 1217 |
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. 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. |
| 1218 |
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. 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? |
| 1219 |
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. |
| 1220 |
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. 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. |
| 1221 |
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. r severely wounded. He jumped back just in time; the gorilla pulled out the last robot attendant and hurled it violently at Gnut, missing him narrowly. |
| 1222 |
That was its last effort. The weakness caught it again; it dropped heavily on one side, rocked back and forth a few times, and fell to twitching. Then it lay still and did not move again. The first faint pale light of the dawn was seeping into the room. From the corner where he had taken refuge, Cliff watched closely the great robot. It seemed to him that he behaved very queerly. He stood over the dead gorilla, looking down at him with what in a human would be called sadness. Cliff saw this clearly; Gnut's heavy greenish features bore a thoughtful, grieving expression new to his experience. For some moments he stood so, then as might a father with his sick child, he leaned over, lifted the great animal in his metal arms and carried it tenderly within the ship. Cliff flew back to the table, suddenly fearful of yet other dangerous and inexplicable happenings. It struck him that he might be safer in the laboratory, and with trembling knees he made his way there and hid in one of the big ovens. He prayed for full daylight. His thoughts were chaos. Rapidly, one after another, his mind churned up the amazing events of the night, but all was mystery; it seemed there could be no rational explanation for them. That mockingbird. The gorilla. Gnut's sad expression and his tenderness. What could account for a fantastic milange like that! Gradually full daylight did come. A long time passed. At last he began to believe he might yet get out of that place of mystery and danger alive. At eight-thirty there were noises at the entrance, and the good sound of human voices came to his ears. He stepped out of the oven and tiptoed to the passageway. The noises stopped suddenly and there was a frightened exclamation and then the sound of running feet, and then silence. Stealthily Cliff sneaked down the narrow way and peeped fearfully around the ship. There Gnut was in his accustomed place, in the identical pose he had taken at the death of his master, brooding sullenly and alone over a space traveler once again closed tight and a room that was a shambles. The entrance doors stood open and, heart in his mouth, Cliff ran out. A few minutes later, safe in his hotel room, completely done in, he sat down for a second and almost at once fell asleep. Later, still in his clothes and still asleep, he staggered over to the bed. He did not wake up till midafternoon. 3 Cliff awoke slowly, at first not realizing that the images tumbling in his head were real memories and not a fantastic dream. |
| 1223 |
It was a recollection of the pictures which brought him to his feet. Hastily he set about developing the film in his camera. Then in his hands was proof that the events of the night were real. Both shots turned out well. The first showed clearly the ramp leading up to the port as he had dimly discerned it from his position behind the table. The second, of the open port as snapped from in front, was a disappointment, for a blank wall just back of the opening cut off all view of the interior. That would account for the fact that no light had escaped from the ship while Gnut was inside. Assuming Gnut required light for whatever he did. Cliff looked at the negatives and was ashamed of himself. What a rotten picture man he was to come back with two ridiculous shots like these! He had had a score of opportunities to get real ones — shots of Gnut in action — Gnut's fight with the gorilla — even Gnut holding the mockingbird — spine-chilling stuff! — and all he had brought back were two stills of a doorway. Oh, sure, they were valuable, but he was a grade-A ass. And to top this brilliant performance, he had fallen asleep! Well, he'd better get out on the street and find out what was doing. Quickly he showered, shaved, and changed his clothes, and soon was entering a nearby restaurant patronized by other picture and newsmen. Sitting alone at the lunch bar, he spotted a friend and competitor. "Well, what do you think?" asked his friend when he took the stool at his side. "I don't think anything until I've had breakfast," Cliff answered. "Then haven't you heard?" "Heard what?" fended Cliff, who knew very well what was coming. "You're a fine picture man," was the other's remark. "When something really big happens, you are asleep in bed." But then he told him what had been discovered that morning in the museum, and of the world-wide excitement at the news. Cliff did three things at once, successfully — gobbled a substantial breakfast, kept thanking his stars that nothing new had transpired, and showed continuous surprise. Still chewing, he got up and hurried over to the building. Outside, balked at the door, was a large crowd of the curious, but Cliff had no trouble gaining admittance when he showed his press credentials. Gnut and the ship stood just as he had left them, but the floor had been cleaned up and the pieces of the demolished robot attendants were lined up in one place along the wall. Several other competitor friends of his were there. "I was away; missed the whole thing," he said to one of them — Gus. |
| 1224 |
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. |
| 1225 |
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. |
| 1226 |
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. Gnut passed from a figure of dull red to one brighter and brighter, clearly glowing now even through the magnifier. And then he moved! Unmistakably he moved! He had within himself somehow the means to raise his own body temperature, and was exploiting the one limitation of the plastic in which he was locked. For glasstex, Cliff now remembered, was a thermoplastic material, one that set by cooling and conversely would soften again with heat. Gnut was melting his way out! In three-word snatches, Cliff described this. The robot became cherry red, the sharp edges of the icelike block rounded, and the whole structure began to sag. |
| 1227 |
The process accelerated. The robot's body moved more widely. The plastic lowered to the crown of his head, then to his neck, then to his waist, which was as far as Cliff could see. His body was free! And then, still cherry-red, he moved forward out of sight! Cliff strained eyes and ears, but caught nothing but the distant roar of the watchers beyond the police lines and a few low, sharp commands from the batteries posted around him. They, too, had heard, and perhaps seen by telescreen, and were waiting. Several minutes passed. There was a sharp, ringing crack; the great metal doors of the wing flew open, and out stepped the metal giant, glowing no longer. He stood stock-still, and his red eyes pierced from side to side through the darkness. Voices out in the dark barked orders and in a twinkling Gnut was bathed in narrow, crisscrossing rays of sizzling, colored light. Behind him the metal doors began to melt, but his great green body showed no change at all. Then the world seemed to come to an end; there was a deafening roar, everything before Cliff seemed to explode in smoke and chaos, his tree whipped to one side so that he was nearly thrown out. Pieces of debris rained down. The tank gun had spoken, and Gnut, he was sure, had been hit. Cliff held on tight and peered into the haze. As it cleared he made out a stirring among the debris at the door, and then dimly but unmistakably he saw the great form of Gnut rise to his feet. He got up slowly, turned toward the tank, and suddenly darted toward it in a wide arc. The big gun swung in an attempt to cover him, but the robot sidestepped and then was upon it. As the crew scattered, he destroyed its breech with one blow of his fist, and then he turned and looked right at Cliff. He moved toward him, and in a moment was under the tree. Cliff climbed higher. Gnut put his two arms around the tree and gave a lifting push, and the tree tore out at the roots and fell crashing to its side. Before Cliff could scramble away, the robot had lifted him in his metal hands. Cliff thought his time had come, but strange things were yet in store for him that night. Gnut did not hurt him. He looked at him from arm's length for a moment, then lifted him to a sitting position on his shoulders, legs straddling his neck. Then, holding one ankle, he turned and without hesitation started down the path which led westward away from the building. Cliff rode helpless. Out over the lawns he saw the muzzles of the scattered field pieces move as he moved, Gnut — and himself — their one focus. |
| 1228 |
But they did not fire. Gnut, by placing him on his shoulders, had secured himself against that — Cliff hoped. The robot bore straight toward the Tidal Basin. Most of the field pieces throbbed slowly after. Far back, Cliff saw a dark tide of confusion roll into the cleared area — the police lines had broken. Ahead, the ring thinned rapidly off to the sides; then, from all directions but the front, the tide rolled in until individual shouts and cries could be made out. 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. |
| 1229 |
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. The door still stood open, and Gnut, hardly varying his almost jerkless rhythm, made his way over the debris and went straight for the port end of the ship. Cliff wondered if he would be set free. He was. The robot set him down and pointed toward the door; then, turning, he made the sounds that opened the ship. The ramp slid down and he entered. Then Cliff did the mad, courageous thing which made him famous for a generation. Just as the ramp started sliding back in, he skipped over it and himself entered the ship. The port closed. 7 It was pitch dark, and the silence was absolute. Cliff did not move. He felt that Gnut was close, just ahead, and it was so. His hard metal hand took him by the waist, pulled him against his cold side, and carried him somewhere ahead. Hidden lamps suddenly bathed the surroundings with bluish light. He set Cliff down and stood looking at him. The young man already regretted his rash action, but the robot, except for his always unfathomable eyes, did not seem angry. |
| 1230 |
"Never mind," she would say. It was the people Marlene liked least. The new census, they said, would show sixty thousand of them on Rotor. Too many. Far too many. Everyone of them showing a false face. Marlene hated seeing those false faces and knowing there was something different inside. Nor could she say anything about it. She had tried sometimes when she had been younger, but her mother had grown angry and told her she must never say things like that. As she got older, she could see the falseness more clearly, but it bothered her less. She had learned to take it for granted and spend as much time as possible with herself and her own thoughts. Lately, her thoughts were often on Erythro, the planet they had been orbiting almost all her life. She didn't know why these thoughts were coming to her, but she would skim to the observation deck at odd hours and just stare at the planet hungrily, wanting to be there — right there on Erythro. Her mother would ask her, impatiently, why she should want to be on an empty barren planet, but she never had an answer for that. She didn't know. "I just want to," she would say. She was watching it now, alone on the observation deck. Rotorians hardly ever came here. They had seen it all, Marlene guessed, and for some reason they didn't have her interest in Erythro. There it was; partly in light, partly dark. She had a dim memory of being held to watch it swim into view, seeing it every once in a while, always larger, as Rotor slowly approached all those years ago. Was it a real memory? After all, she had been getting on toward four then, so it might be. But now that memory — real or not — was overlaid by other thoughts, by an increasing realization 'of just how large a planet was. Erythro was over twelve thousand kilometers across, not eight kilometers. She couldn't grasp that size. It didn't look that large on the screen and she couldn't imagine standing on it and seeing for hundreds — or even thousands — of kilometers. But she knew she wanted to. Very much. Aurinel wasn't interested in Erythro, which was disappointing. He said he had other things to think of, like getting ready for college. He was seventeen and a half. Marlene was only just past fifteen. That didn't make much difference, she thought rebelliously, since girls developed more quickly. At least they should. She looked down at herself and thought, with her usual dismay and disappointment, that somehow she still looked like a kid, short and stubby. She looked at Erythro again, large and beautiful and softly red where it was lit. |
| 1231 |
"And nothing can stop it." Marlene turned and walked away, angry at Aurinel for doubting her. No, not doubting her. It was more than that. He thought she was out of her mind. And there it was. She had said too much and had gained nothing by it. Everything was wrong. Aurinel was staring after her. The laughter had ceased on his boyishly handsome face and a certain uneasiness was creasing the skin between his eyebrows. 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. |
| 1232 |
"The only solution, fellow Councillors, is to leave the Solar System — without fanfare, without warning. Let us leave and find a new home, where we can build a new world, with our own brand of humanity, our own society, our own way of life. This can't be done without hyper-assistance — which we have. Other Settlements will eventually learn the technique and will leave, too. The Solar System will be a dandelion gone to seed, its various components drifting in space. "But if we go first, we will find a world, perhaps, before others follow. We can establish ourselves firmly, so that when others do follow and, perhaps, come across us in our new world, we will be strong enough to send them elsewhere. The Galaxy is large and there are bound to be elsewheres." There had been objections, of course, and fierce ones. There were those who argued out of fear — fear of leaving the familiar. There were those who argued out of sentiment — sentiment for the planet of birth. There were those who argued out of idealism — the desire to spread knowledge so that others might go, too. Pitt had scarcely thought he would win out. He had done so because Eugenia Insigna had supplied the winning argument. What an incredible stroke of luck it was that she had come to him first. She was quite young then, only twenty-six, married but not yet pregnant. She was excited, flushed, and laden down with computer sheets. Pitt had frowned, he recalled, at her intrusion. He was Secretary of the Department and she — well, she was nobody although, as it happened, this was the very last moment when she would be nobody. At the time, he didn't realize this, of course, and he was annoyed that she had forced her way in. He cringed at the obvious excitement of the young woman. She was going to make him go through the infinite complexities of whatever it was she was holding in her hand, and do so with an enthusiasm that would quickly exhaust him. She should give a brief summary to one of his assistants. He decided to say so. "I see you have data there, Dr. Insigna, that you wish to bring to my attention. I'll be glad to look at it in due course. Why don't you leave it with one of my people?" And he indicated the door, hoping ardently that she would about-face and move in that direction. (Sometimes, in idle moments in later years, he would wonder what would have happened if she had, and his blood would run cold at the thought.) But she said, "No no, Mr. Secretary. I must see you and no one else." Her voice trembled as she spoke, as though her inner excitement was unbearable. |
| 1233 |
The density and composition of interstellar matter alone — At no time in those four years had she been able to think of Nemesis in detail; not once could she zero in on the obvious. Was that possible? Or did she simply turn away from what she did not want to see? Had she deliberately sought refuge in all the secrecy and scurry and excitement that presented itself to her? But there came a time when the last hyperspatial period was behind them; when, for a month, they would be decelerating through an initial hail of hydrogen atoms, which they struck with such speed that those atoms were converted into cosmic ray particles. No ordinary space vehicle could have endured that, but Rotor had a layer of soil around it that had been thickened for the trip, and the particles were absorbed. There would come a time, she had been assured by one of the hyperspatialists when one would enter and leave hyperspace at ordinary speeds. "Given hyperspace in the first place," he had said, "no new conceptual breakthrough is required. It's just engineering." Maybe! The remaining hyperspatialists, however, considered the notion so much star exhaust. Insignia hurried in to see Pitt when the appalling truth descended upon her. He had had little time for her in the last year, and she had understood. There was a certain tension that became more and more evident as the excitement of the trip wound down, as people realized that in a matter of months they would be in the neighborhood of anther star. They would then have the constant problem of having to survive over a long period in the vicinity of a strange red dwarf star without any guarantee of reasonable planetary material to serve as a supply source, let alone a living place. Janus Pitt no longer looked like a young man, although his hair was still dark, his face unlined. Only four years had passed since she had come to him with the news of Nemesis' existence. There was, however, a harried look in his eyes, a sense of having had his joy rubbed away and his cares left naked to the world. He was Commissioner-elect now. Perhaps that might account for a great deal of what might be troubling him, but who could tell? Insignia had never known true power — or the responsibility that accompanied it — but something told her it might have the capacity for souring one who did. Pitt smiled at her absently. They had been forced to be close when they had shared a secret that at first no one — and then almost no one — had shared with them. They could then talk unguardedly with each other, when they could not do so with anyone else. |
| 1234 |
To remove billions of people without chaos and without tremendous loss of life would require long preparation. If they are in mortal danger five thousand years from now, they must know now. It is not too soon to begin to plan." Pitt said, "You have a good heart, Eugenia, so I'll offer a compromise. Suppose we take a hundred years in which to establish ourselves here, to multiply, to build a cluster of Settlements that will be strong enough and stable enough to be secure. Then we can investigate Nemesis' destination and — if necessary — warn the Solar System. They will still have nearly five thousand years in which to prepare. Surely a small delay of a century will not be fatal." Insigna sighed. "Is that your vision of the future? Humanity squabbling endlessly over the stars? Each little group trying to establish itself as supreme over this star or that? Endless hatred, suspicion, and conflict, of the kind we had on Earth for thousands of years, expanded into the Galaxy for thousands more?" "Eugenia, I have no vision. Humanity will do as it pleases. It will squabble as you say, or it will perhaps set up a Galactic Empire, or do something else. I can't dictate what humanity will do, and I don't intend to try to shape it. For myself, I have only this one Settlement to care for, and this one century in which to establish it at Nemesis. By then, you and I will be safely dead, and our successors will handle the problem of warning the Solar System — if that should be necessary. I'm trying to be reasonable, not emotional, Eugenia. You are a reasonable person, too. Think about it." Insigna did. She sat there, looking somberly at Pitt, while he waited with almost exaggerated patience. Finally she said, "Very well. I see your point. I will get on with analyzing Nemesis' motion relative to the Sun. Perhaps we can forget the whole thing." "No." Pitt raised an admonishing finger. "Remember what I said earlier. These observations will not be made. If it turns out that the Solar System is not in danger, we will have gained nothing. We will then merely do what I insist we do in any case — spend a century strengthening the civilization of Rotor. If, however, you find that there is danger, then your conscience will hurt and you will be consumed with apprehensions and fears and guilt. The news will somehow get out and it will weaken the resolve of Rotorians, many of whom may be as sentimental as you are. We would then lose a great deal. Do you understand me?" She was silent, and he said, "Good. |
| 1235 |
If they had enough time, they might expand their hold over a group of stars. If not, Nemesis alone would be enough — but it must be made impregnable. Pitt did not dream of universal conquest, of conquest of any kind. What he wanted was an island of tranquility and security against the days when the Galaxy would be aflame and in chaos as a result of conflicting ambitions. But he alone could see this. He alone bore the weight of it. He might live another quarter century and might remain in power through all that time, either as actual Commissioner or as an elder statesman whose word would be decisive. Yet, eventually, he would die — and to whom could he then bequeath his far-sightedness? Then Pitt felt a twinge of self-pity. He had labored for so many years, would labor for so many more, yet was appreciated — truly appreciated — by none. And it would all come to an end anyway, because the Idea would be drowned in the ocean of mediocrity that constantly lapped at the ankles of those few who could see beyond the years. It was fourteen years since the Leaving and when, at any time, had he been able to be quietly confident? He went to sleep each night with the fear that he would be awakened before morning with the news that another Settlement had arrived — that Nemesis had been found. He passed through every day with some hidden part of him paying no attention to what was immediately on the agenda, but listening — listening for the fatal words. Fourteen years and they were still not safe. One additional settlement had been built — New Rotor. There were people living on it, but it was a new world, of course. It still smelled of paint, as the old saying had it. Three more Settlements were in various stages of construction. Soon — within the decade, at any rate — the number of Settlements under construction would increase, and they would be given that oldest of all commands: Be fruitful and multiply! With the example of Earth before them, with the knowledge that each Settlement had a narrow and unexpandable capacity, procreation had always been under strict control in space. There the immovable needs of arithmetic met the possibly irresistible force of instinct and immovability won. But as the number of Settlements grew, there would come a time when more people would be needed — many more — and the urge to produce them could be unleashed. It would be temporary, of course. No matter how many Settlements there were, they could be filled without effort by any population that could easily double its numbers every thirty-five years, or less. |
| 1236 |
And when the day came when the rate of Settlement formation passed through its inflection point and began to diminish, it might be far harder to stuff the djinn back into its bottle than it had been to release it. Who would see this well in advance, and prepare for it once Pitt himself was gone? And there was Erythro, the planet that Rotor orbited in such a way that huge Megas and ruddy Nemesis rose and set in an intricate pattern. Erythro! That had been a question from the beginning. Pitt remembered well the early days of their entry into the Nemesian System. The limited intricacy of the planetary family of Nemesis had exposed itself little by little, as Rotor raced toward the red dwarf star. Megas had been discovered at a distance of four million kilometers from Nemesis, only one fifteenth the distance of Mercury from the Sun of the Solar System. Megas obtained about the same amount of energy as Earth got from its Sun, but with a lesser intensity of visible light and a higher intensity of infrared. Megas, however, was clearly not habitable, even at first glance. It was a gas giant, with one side always facing Nemesis. Both its rotation and revolution were twenty days long. The perpetual night on half of Megas cooled it only moderately, since its own interior heat rose to the surface. The perpetual day on the other half was unendurably hot. That Megas kept its atmosphere under this heat was entirely because, with its mass higher and its radius smaller than that of Jupiter, its surface gravity was fifteen times that of Jupiter, and forty times that of Earth. Nor did Nemesis have any other sizable planet. But then, as Rotor drew closer, and Megas could be seen more clearly, the situation was altered again. It was Eugenia Insigna who brought Pitt the news. It was not that she had made the discovery herself. It had merely showed up on the computer-enhanced photographs, and had been brought to Insigna's attention since she was Chief Astronomer. With considerable excitement, she had brought it to Pitt in his Commissioner's chambers. She had begun simply enough, keeping her voice level, though it was shaking with emotion. "Megas has a satellite," she said. Pitt had lifted his eyebrows ever so slightly, but then he said, "Isn't that to be expected? The gas giants of the Solar System have anywhere up to a score of satellites." "Of course, Janus, but this is not an ordinary satellite. It's large." Pitt kept his cool. "Jupiter has four large satellites." "I mean, really large, with almost Earth's size and mass." "I see. |
| 1237 |
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. |
| 1238 |
I didn't mind obliging her. It's only temporary. Finish your calculations and return." She thought: That's twice he mentioned my return. What would Marlene make out of that if she were here? 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. |
| 1239 |
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. 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. |
| 1240 |
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. It lacked irregularity, lacked the chaos of permanent life, where a room, or even just a desk, had adjusted itself to the hollows and waverings of a particular personality. There was himself, of course. His desk and his room reflected his own angular and planar person. That, perhaps, might be another reason he was at home in the Erythro Dome. |
| 1241 |
The shape of his inner spirit matched its spare geometry. But what would Eugenia Insigna think of it? (He was rather pleased she had resumed her maiden name.) If she were as he remembered her, she would revel in irregularity, in the unexpected touch of frippery, for all she was an astronomer. Or had she changed? Did people ever change, essentially? Had Crile Fisher's desertion embittered her, twisted her Genarr scratched the hair at his temple where it had gone distinctly gray and thought that these speculations were useless and time-wasting. He would see Eugenia soon enough, for he had left word that she was to be brought to him as soon as she had arrived. Or should he have gone to greet her in person? No! He had argued that with himself half a dozen times already. He couldn't look too anxious; it wouldn't suit the dignity of his position. But then Genarr thought that that wasn't the reason at all. He didn't want to make her uneasy; he didn't want her to think he was still the same uncomfortable and incompetent admirer who had retreated in so shambling a manner before the tall and brooding good looks of the Earthman. And Eugenia had never looked at him again after she had seen Crile — never seriously looked at him. Genarr's eyes scanned the message from Janus Pitt — dry, condensed, as his messages always were, and with that indefinable feel of authority behind it, as though the possibility of disagreement were not merely unheard of — but actually unthought of. And he now noted that Pitt spoke more forcefully of the young daughter than of the mother. There was especially Pitt's statement that the daughter had expressed a deep interest in Erythro, and if she wished to explore its surface, she was to be allowed to. Now why was that? 26. And there she was. Fourteen years older than at the time of the Leaving. Twenty years older than she was in her pre-Crile youth, the day they had gone into Farming Area C and climbed the levels into low gravity, and she had laughed when he tried a low somersault and had turned too far and had come down on his belly. (Actually, he could easily have hurt himself, for though the sensation of weight decreased, mass and inertia did not, and damage could follow. Fortunately, he had not suffered that humiliation. Eugenia looked older, too, but she had not thickened very much, and her hair — shorter now, and straight — was more matter-of-fact somehow, but was still a lively dark brown. And when she advanced toward him, smiling, he could feel his traitor heart speed a bit. |
| 1242 |
(The days and nights were at least uniformly twelve hours long.) There had been occasional movements among the Settlements to adopt a system of merely numbering days and grouping them into tens and multiples of tens; into dekadays, hectodays, kilodays, and, in the other direction, decidays, centidays, millidays; but that was really impossible. The Settlements could not set up each their own system for that would have reduced trade and communications to chaos. N or was any unified system possible save that of Earth, where 99 percent of the human population still lived, and to which ties of tradition still held the remaining 1 percent. Memory held Rotor and all the Settlements to a calendar that was intrinsically meaningless for them. But now Rotor had left the Solar System and was a world that was isolated and alone. No day, or month, or year in the Earthly sense existed. It was not even sunlight that marked day from night, for Rotor gleamed with artificial daylight and darkened to a light whisper twelve hours on and twelve hours off. The harsh precision was not even broken by the gradual dimming and brightening at the boundaries that might simulate twilight and dawn. There seemed to be no need. And within this all-Settlement division, individual homes kept their illumination on and off to suit their whims or needs, but counted the days by Settlement time — which was Earth time. Even here at the Erythro Dome, where there was a natural day and night that was casually used as such by those in occupation, it was the not-quite-matching Settlement day length, still tied to that of Earth (the memory of a memory) that was used in official calculations. The movement was now stronger to leave the day as the only basic measure of time. Insigna knew for a fact that Pitt favored the decimalization of time measure, and yet even he hesitated to suggest it officially, for fear of rousing wild opposition. But perhaps not forever. The traditional disorderly units of weeks and months seemed less important. The traditional holidays were more frequently ignored. Insigna, in her astronomical work, used days as the only significant units. Someday the old calendar would die, and, in the far unseen future, new methods of agreed-upon time marking would surely arise — a Galactic Standard calendar, perhaps. But now she found herself marking off the time to a New Year that began arbitrarily. On Earth, at least, the New Year began at the time of a solstice — winter in the northern hemisphere, summer in the southern. |
| 1243 |
"Can you hear me, Mother?" "Yes, dear," said Insigna. Her voice sounded dry and abnormal in her own ear. "We're out here and it's wonderful. It couldn't be nicer." "Yes, dear ," Insigna repeated, feeling hollow and lost and wondering whether she would ever see her daughter in her right mind again. 57. Siever Genarr felt almost lighthearted as he stepped out upon the surface of Erythro. The sloping wall of the Dome, behind him, reached upward, but he kept his back to it, for a sight so un-Erythronian would have spoiled the savor of the world. Savor? It was a queer word to use for Erythro, for at the moment it had no meaning. He lived behind the protection of his helmet, breathing the air of the Dome, or at least the air that had been purified and conditioned within the Dome. He could not smell the planet, or taste it, within that shelter. And yet there was a feel to it that made him oddly happy. His boots crunched slightly upon the ground. Although Erythro's surface was not rocky, it was rather gravelly and, between the bits of gravel, there was what he could only describe as soil. There was, of course, ample water and air to break up the primordial surface rock and, perhaps, the ubiquitous prokaryotes had, in their countless trillions, added their own work patiently over the billions of years. The soil felt soft. It had rained the day before, the soft and steady misty rain of Erythro — or at least of this portion of Erythro. The soil still felt slightly damp as a result, and Genarr imagined the bits of soil, the tiny scraps of sand and loam and clay, each with its coat of water film that had been refreshed and renewed. In that film, prokaryotic cells lived happily, basking in the energy of Nemesis, building complex proteins out of simple ones, while other prokaryotes, indifferent to solar energy, made use, instead of the energy content of the remnants of those prokaryotes that, in their countless trillions, died during each moment of time. Marlene was at his side. She was looking upward, and Genarr said gently, "Don't stare at Nemesis, Marlene." Marlene's voice sounded naturally in his ear. It contained no tension or apprehension. Rather, her voice was filled with quiet joy. She said, "I'm looking at the clouds, Uncle Siever." Genarr looked up into the dark sky where, by squinting for a while, one could detect a faint greenish-yellow gleam. Against it were the feathery fair-weather clouds that caught Nemesis' light and reflected it in orange splendor. There was an eerie quiet about Erythro. |
| 1244 |
Some said it was merely for exploration, some for the establishment of an Earth colony on Mars in order to bypass the few Settlements in orbit around the planet; and some for the purpose, eventually, of establishing an outpost on some sizable asteroid that no Settlement had yet claimed. What the ship actually carried in its cargo hold was the Superluminal and the crew that was to propel her to the stars. Tessa Wendel, even though she had been planet-bound for eight years, took the space experience calmly, as any Settler by birth would naturally do. Spaceships were far more like Settlements in principle than they were like the planet Earth. And because of that, Crile Fisher, though he had been on many a spaceflight before, was a bit uneasy. This time something more than the unnaturalness of space contributed to the tension on board the cargo ship. Fisher said, "I can't endure the waiting, Tessa. It's taken us years to reach this point and the Superluminal is ready and we still wait." Wendel regarded him thoughtfully. She had never intended to get this involved with him. She had wanted moments of relaxation to rest a mind overcome with the complexity of the project, so that it might return to work refreshed and keener. That was what she had intended; what she had ended up with was something much more. Now she found herself helplessly tied to him, so that his problems had become hers. The years of his waiting would surely come to nothing, and she worried about the despair that would follow his inevitable disappointment. She had tried to dash cold water on his dreams judiciously, tried to cool down his overheated anticipation of a reunion with his daughter, but she had not succeeded. If anything, over this past year, he had grown more optimistic about the possibility for no obvious reason — at least, none he would explain to her. Tessa was finally satisfied (and relieved) that it was not his wife Crile was looking for, but only his daughter. To be sure, she had never understood this longing for a daughter he had last seen as an infant, but he had volunteered no explanation and she had not wanted to probe the matter. What was the use? She was certain that his daughter was not alive, that nothing on Rotor was alive. If Rotor was there near the Neighbor Star, it was a giant tomb drifting in space, wandering forever — and undetectable except by incredible coincidence. Crile Fisher would have to be kept steady and functioning once that inevitable prospect became clearly apparent reality. |
| 1245 |
In our project, which has worked out hyperspatial theory in great detail, we've managed to establish the effect on material objects of passing from space to hyperspace and vice versa. "If an object is a point, there is no strain on it during the transition. If an object is not a point, however — if it is an extended bit of matter, as any ship would be — then there is always a finite period of time during which part of it is in space and part is in hyperspace. 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. |
| 1246 |
Sounds were not forbidden on Erythro; they were merely doled out as occasional adornments that served to make the surrounding silence more precious. She stamped her foot on the soft clay at the creek's edge. She heard a small dull thump, and there was the vague impression of a footprint. She bent down, cupped some water in her hand, and tossed it over the soil in front of her. It moistened and darkened in spots, crimson showing against pink. She added more water and finally placed her right shoe on the dark spot, pressing down. When she lifted her shoe, there was a deeper footprint there. There were occasional rocks in the creek bed and she used them as stepping-stones to cross the water. Marlene kept on, walking vigorously, swinging her arms, taking in deep breaths of air. She knew very well that the oxygen percentage was somewhat lower than it was on Rotor. If she ran, she would quickly grow tired, but she lacked the impulse to run. If she ran, she would use up her world more rapidly. She wanted to look at everything! She looked back and the mound of the Dome was visible, especially the bubble that housed the astronomical instruments. That irritated her. She wanted to be far enough away so that she could turn around and see the horizon as a perfect — if irregular — circle, with no intrusion of any sign of humanity (except herself) anywhere. (Should she call the Dome? Should she tell her mother she would be out of sight for a little while? No, they would just argue. They could receive her carrier wave. They would be able to tell that she was alive, well, and moving around. If they called her, she decided, she would ignore them. Really! They must leave her to herself.) Her eyes were adjusting to the pinkness of Nemesis and of the land around her in every direction. It was not merely pink; it was all in darks and lights, in purples and oranges, almost yellows in some places. It time, it would become a whole new palette of colors to her heightened senses, as variegated as Rotor, but more soothing. What would happen if someday people settled on Erythro, introduced life, built cities? Would they spoil it? Or would they have learned from Earth and would they go about it in a different way, taking this new untouched world and making it into something close to their heart's desire? Whose heart's desire? That was the problem. Different people would have different ideas, and they would quarrel with each other and pursue irreconcilable ends. Would it be better to leave Erythro empty? |
| 1247 |
Would that be right when people might enjoy it so? Marlene knew well that she didn't want to leave it. It warmed her, being on this world. She didn't know quite why, but it felt more like home than Rotor ever had. Was it some dim atavistic memory of Earth? Was there a feeling for a huge endless world in her genes; a longing that a small, artificial, turning city-in-space could not fulfill? How could that be? Earth was surely different from Erythro in every possible way but the similarity of size. And if Earth were in her genes, why wouldn't it be in the genes of every human being? But there must be some explanation. Marlene shook her head as though to clear it and whirled around and around as if she were in the midst of endless space. Strange that Erythro didn't seem barren. On Rotor, you could see acres of grain and orchards of fruit trees, and a haze of green and amber, and the straight-line irregularity of human structures. Here on Erythro, however, you saw only the rolling ground, interspersed with rocks of all sizes, as though strewn carelessly by some giant hand-strange, brooding silent shapes, with rivulets of water, here and there, flowing around and among them. And no life at all if you didn't count the myriads of tiny germ-like cells that kept the atmosphere full of oxygen, thanks to the energy supply of Nemesis' red light. And Nemesis, like any red dwarf, would continue to pour out its careful supply of energy for a couple of hundred billion years, hoarding its energy and seeing to it that Erythro and its tiny prokaryotes were warm and comfortable through all that time. Long after Earth's Sun had died and other bright stars, born still later, had also died, N emesis would shine on unchanged, and Erythro would roll about Megas unchanged, and the prokaryotes would live and die, also essentially unchanged. Surely human beings would have no right to come to this unchanging world and change it. Yet if she were alone on Erythro, she would need food — and companionship. She might return to the Dome now and then for supplies, or to refresh a need to see other people, but she could still spend most of her time alone with Erythro. But would not others follow? How could she prevent them? And with others, no matter how few, would not Eden inevitably be ruined? Wasn't it being ruined because she herself had entered Eden — only she? "No!" She shouted it. She shouted it loudly in a sudden eager experiment to see if she could make the alien atmosphere tremble and force it to carry words to her ears. |
| 1248 |
He slept only in snatches, and woke to renewed despair. How long can we go on like this? he thought on the second day, as he looked at the beauty of that unattainable bright dot in the sky that, so brief a time ago, had warmed him and lighted his way on Earth. Sooner or later, they would die. Modern space technology would prolong life. Recycling was quite efficient. Even food would last a long time if they were willing to accept the tasteless algae cake they would end up with. The micro-fusion motors would dribble out energy for a long time, too. But surely no one would want to prolong life through the full time that the ship would make possible. With a lingering, dragging, hopeless, lonely death finally certain, the rational way out would be to use the adjustable de-metabolizers. That was the preferred method for suicide on Earth; why should it not be on board ship as well? You could — if you wished — adjust the dose for a full day of reasonably normal life, live it out as joyously as you could — a known last day. At the end of the day, you would grow naturally sleepy. You would yawn and release your hold on wakefulness, passing into a peaceful sleep of restful dreams. The sleep would slowly deepen, the dreams would slowly fade, and you would not wake up. No kinder death had ever been invented. And then, Tessa, just before 5 P. M., ship-time, on the second day after the transition that had curved instead of being straight, burst into the room. Her eyes were wild and she was breathing hard. Her dark hair, which, in the last year had become liberally salted with gray, was mussed. Fisher rose in consternation. "Bad?" "No, good!" she said, throwing herself into a chair rather than sitting down. Fisher wasn't sure he had heard correctly, wasn't sure that perhaps she might only have been speaking ironically. He stared at her and watched her as she visibly gathered herself together. "Good," she repeated. "Very good! Extraordinary! Crile, you're looking at an idiot. I don't suppose I'll ever recover from this." "Well, what happened?" "Chao-Li Wu had the answer. He had it all along. He told me. I remember him telling me. Months ago. Maybe a year ago. I dismissed it. I didn't even listen, really." She paused to catch her breath. Her excitement had completely disoriented the natural rhythm of her speech. She said, "The trouble was that I thought of myself as the world authority on superluminal flight, and was convinced that no one could possibly tell me anything I didn't know or hadn't thought of. |
| 1249 |
Travel would therefore be, by my assumption, in a Euclidean straight line." "But it wasn't." "Obviously not. And Wu explained it. Imagine that the speed of light is a zero point. All speeds less than that of light would have negative magnitude, and all speeds greater than that of light would have positive magnitude. In the ordinary Universe we live in, therefore, all speeds would be negative, by that mathematical convention, and, in fact, must be negative. "Now, the Universe is built on principles of symmetry. If something as fundamental as speed of movement is always negative, then something else, just as fundamental, ought to be always positive, and Wu suggested that that something else was gravitation. In the ordinary Universe, it is always an attraction. Every object with mass attracts every other object with mass. "However, if something goes at a superluminal speed — that is, faster than light — then its speed is positive and the other something that was positive has to become negative. At superluminal speed, in other words, gravitation is a repulsive force. Every object with mass repels every other object with mass. Wu suggested that to me a long time ago and I wouldn't listen. His words just bounced off my eardrums." Crile said, "But what's the difference, Tessa? When we're going at enormous superluminal speeds, and gravitational attraction doesn't have time to affect our motion, neither would gravitational repulsion." "Ah, that's not so, Crile. That's the beauty of it. That reverses, too. In the ordinary Universe of negative speeds, the faster the speed relative to an attractive body, the less gravitational attraction affects the direction of movement. In the Universe of positive speeds, hyperspace, the faster we go relative to a repulsive body, the more gravitational repulsion affects the direction of movement. That makes no sense to us, since we're used to the situation as it exists in the ordinary Universe, but once you are forced to change signs from plus to minus and vice versa, you find these things falling into place." "Mathematically. But how much can you trust the equations?" "You match your calculations against the facts. Gravitational attraction is the weakest of all the forces and so is the gravitational repulsion along the virtual paths. Within the ship and within us, every particle repels all other particles while we are in hyperspace, but that repulsion can do nothing against the other forces that hold it together and have not changed signs. |
| 1250 |
It would be like a shower coming down from the whole sky, so that you couldn't step out of it. A thought occurred to her: Will there be trouble breathing? No, that couldn't be. It rained on Earth all time — frequently, anyway — and she didn't hear that people drowned in it. No, it would be like a shower. You could breathe in a shower. The rain wouldn't be hot, though, and she liked hot showers. She thought about it lazily. It was very quiet out here, and very peaceful, and she could rest and there was no one to see her, to watch her, no one whom she had to interpret. It was great not to have to interpret. What temperature would it be? The rain, that is. Why shouldn't it be the same comfortable temperature as Nemesis itself? Of course, she would get wet, and it was always cold when you stepped out of a shower all wet. And the rain would wet her clothes, too. But it would be silly to wear clothes in the rain. You didn't wear clothes in the shower. If it rained, you would take off your clothes. That would be the only thing that made sense. Only — where did you put the clothes? When you showered, you put your clothes i4 the cleaner. Here on Erythro, maybe you could put them under a rock, or have a little house built, in which you could leave your clothes on a rainy day. After all, why wear clothes at all if it were raining? Or if it were sunny? You'd want to wear them if it were cold, of course. But on warm days But then, why did people wear clothes on Rotor, where it was always warm and clean? They didn't at swimming pools — which reminded Marlene that the young people with slim bodies and good shapes were the first ones off with their clothes — and the last ones to put them on again. And people like Marlene just didn't take their clothes off in public. Maybe that's why people wore clothes. To hide their bodies. Why didn't minds have shapes you could show off? Except that they did, and then people didn't like it. People liked to look at shapely bodies and turned up their noses at shapely minds. Why? But here in Erythro with no people, she could take her clothes off whenever it was mild and be free of them. There'd be no one to point fingers or laugh at her. In fact, she could do whatever she wanted because she had a whole comfortable world, an empty world, an all-alone world, to surround her and envelop her like a huge soft blanket enclosing her and — just silence. She could feel herself letting go. Just silence. Her mind whispered it, so that even that would interfere as little as possible. |
| 1251 |
Time existed in plenty. Time blended into eternity. Only to Pitt himself was it left to consider the fact that time was short, that at any given moment, without warning, time might come to an end. When would Nemesis be discovered back in the Solar System? When would some Settlement decide to follow Rotor's lead? It had to come someday. With Nemesis inexorably moving in the direction of the Sun, it would eventually reach that point — still far distant, of course, but close enough — at which the people of the Solar System would have to be blind not to see it. Pitt's computer, with the aid of a programmer who was convinced he was working out a problem of academic interest only, had estimated that by the end of a thousand years, the discovery of Nemesis would be inevitable, and that the Settlements would begin to disperse. Pitt had then put the question: Would the Settlements come to Nemesis? The answer was no. By that time, hyper-assistance would be far more efficient, far cheaper. The Settlements would know more about the nearer stars — which of them had planets, and what kind. They would not bother with a red dwarf star, but would head out for the Sun-like stars. And that would leave Earth itself, which would be desperate. 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? |
| 1252 |
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. A suspicious energy source was approaching, but allowing for its probable distance, it was an unusually small source — a smaller source by some four orders of magnitude than one would expect of a Settlement. It was a source so small that it was all but inseparable from noise. |
| 1253 |
It was only all of the prokaryote cells together that made up an organism that encircled the planet in a billion trillion tiny interconnected pieces, that so filled and permeated and grasped the planet, that it might as well be thought of as the planet. 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. |
| 1254 |
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. |
| 1255 |
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. This would be a completely new section of Eternity for him. He knew about it in a rough way, of course, having checked upon it in the Temporal Handbook. Still, there was no substitute for actual appearance and he steeled himself for the initial shock of adjustment. He adjusted the controls, a simple matter in passing into Eternity (and a very complicated one in passing into Time, a type of passage which was correspondingly less frequent). He stepped through the curtain and found himself squinting at the brilliance. Automatically he threw up his hand to shield his eyes. Only one man faced him. At first Harlan could see him only blurrily. The man said, "I am Sociologist Kantor Voy. I imagine you are Technician Harlan." Harlan nodded and said, "Father Time! Isn't this sort of ornamentation adjustable?" Voy looked about and said tolerantly, "You mean the molecular films?" "I certainly do," said Harlan. The Handbook had mentioned them, but had said nothing of such an insane riot of light reflection. Harlan felt his annoyance to be quite reasonable. The 2456th Century was matter-oriented, as most Centuries were, so he had a right to expect a basic compatibility from the very beginning. It would have none of the utter confusion (for anyone born matter-oriented) of the energy vortices of the 300's, or the field dynamics of the 600's. In the 2456th, to the average Eternal's comfort, matter was used for everything from walls to tacks. To be sure, there was matter and matter. A member of an energyoriented Century might not realize that. To him all matter might seem minor variations on a theme that was gross, heavy, and barbaric. |
| 1256 |
To matter-oriented Harlan, however, there was wood, metal (subdivisions, heavy and light), plastic, silicates, concrete, leather, and so on. But matter consisting entirely of mirrors! That was his first impression of the 2456th. Every surface reflected and glinted light. Everywhere was the illusion of complete smoothness; the effect of a molecular film. And in the ever-repeated reflection of himself, of Sociologist Voy, of everything he could see, in scraps and wholes, in all angles, there was confusion. Garish confusion and nausea! "I'm sorry," said Voy, "it's the custom of the Century, and the Section assigned to it finds it good practice to adopt the customs where practical. You get used to it after a time." Voy walked rapidly upon the moving feet of another Voy, upside down beneath the floor, who matched him stride for stride. He reached to move a hair-contact indicator down a spiral scale to point of origin. The reflections died; extraneous light faded. Harlan felt his world settle. "If you'll come with me now," said Voy. Harlan followed through empty corridors that, Harlan knew, must moments ago have been a riot of made light and reflection, up a ramp, through an anteroom, into an office. In all the short journey no human being had been visible. Harlan was so used to that, took it so for granted, that he would have been surprised, almost shocked, if a glimpse of a human figure hurrying away had caught his eyes. No doubt the news had spread that a Technician was coming through. Even Voy kept his distance and when, accidentally, Harlan's hand had brushed Voy's sleeve, Voy shrank away with a visible start. Harlan was faintly surprised at the touch of bitterness he felt at all this. He had thought the shell he had grown about his soul was thicker, more efficiently insensitive than that. If he was wrong, if his shell had worn thinner, there could only be one reason for that. Noys! Sociologist Kantor Voy leaned forward toward the Technician in what seemed a friendly enough fashion, but Harlan noted automatically that they were seated on opposite sides of the long axis of a fairly large table. Voy said, "I am pleased to have a Technician of your reputation interest himself in our little problem here." "Yes," said Harlan with the cold impersonality people would expect of him. "It has its points of interest." (Was he impersonal enough? Surely his real motives must be apparent, his guilt be spelled out in beads of sweat on his forehead.) He removed from an inner pocket the foiled summary of the projected Reality Change. |
| 1257 |
A door was closing, and a glistening shoe of a red, semi-transparent material was just visible through the space that remained. It did not move. Nothing moved. If the picture could have been made sharp enough to picture the dust motes in the air, they would not have moved. Voy said, "For two hours and thirty-six minutes after the viewed instant, that engine room will remain empty. In the current Reality, that is." "I know," murmured Harlan. He was putting on his gloves and already his quick eyes were memorizing the position of the critical container on its shelf, measuring the steps to it, estimating the best position into which to transfer it. He cast one quick look at the other screen. If the engine-room, being in the range described as "present" with respect to that Section of Eternity in which they now stood, was clear and in natural color, the other scene, being some twenty-five Centuries in the "future," carried the blue luster all views of the "future" must. It was a space-port. A deep blue sky, blue-tinged buildings of naked metal on blue-green ground. A blue cylinder of odd design, bulgebottomed, stood in the foreground. Two others like it were in the background. All three pointed cleft noses upward, the cleavage biting deeply into the vitals of the ship. Harlan frowned. "They're queer ones." "Electro-gravitic," said Voy. "The 2481st is the only Century to develop electro-gravitic space-travel. No propellants, no nucleonics. It's an aesthetically pleasing device. It's a pity we must Change away from it. A pity." His eyes fixed themselves on Harlan with distinct disapproval. Harlan's lips compressed. Disapproval of course! Why not? He was the Technician. To be sure, it had been some Observer who had brought in the details of drug addiction. It had been some Statistician who had demonstrated that recent Changes had increased the addiction rate until now it was the highest in all the current Reality of man. Some Sociologist, probably Voy himself, had interpreted that into the psychiatric profile of a society. Finally, some Computer had worked out the Reality Change necessary to decrease addiction to a safe level and found that, as a side effect, electro-gravitic space-travel must suffer. A dozen, a hundred men of every rating in Eternity had had a hand in this. But then, at the end, a Technician such as himself must step in. Following the directions all the others had combined to give him, he must be the one to initiate the actual Reality Change. And then all the others would stare in haughty accusation at him. |
| 1258 |
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. |
| 1259 |
From his earliest days in school he had ridden the hobbyhorse of Primitive history, and Educator Yarrow had encouraged it. 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. |
| 1260 |
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. If his disturbing presence could only be made disturbing enough at some key point, a different branch of possibility would become real, a branch in which millions of pleasure-seeking women would find themselves transformed into true, pure-hearted mothers. They would be in another Reality with all the memories that belonged with it, unable to tell, dream, or fancy that they had ever been anything else. Unfortunately, to do that, he would have to step outside the bounds of the spatio-temporal chart and that was unthinkable. Even if it weren't, to step outside the bounds at random could change Reality in many possible ways. It could be made worse. Only careful analysis and Computing could properly pin-point the nature of a Reality Change. Outwardly, whatever his private opinions, Harlan remained an Observer, and the ideal Observer was merely a set of sense-perceptive nerve patches attached to a report-writing mechanism. Between perception and report there must be no intervention of emotion. Harlan's reports were perfection itself in that respect. Assistant Computer Finge called him in after his second weekly report. "I congratulate you, Observer," he said in a voice without warmth, "on the organization and clarity of your reports. But what do you really think?" Harlan sought refuge in an expression as blank as though chipped painstakingly out of native 95th Century wood. |
| 1261 |
We would see a great deal we would miss if we just scanned the film as it went past. I think that helps me a great deal with my work." Finge stared at him in amazement, widened his eyes a little, and left with no further remark. Occasionally, thereafter, he brought up the subject of Primitive history and accepted Harlan's reluctant comments with no decisive expression on his own plump face. Harlan was not sure whether to regret the whole matter or to regard it as a possible way of speeding his own advancement. He decided on the first alternative when, passing him one day in Corridor A, Finge said abruptly and in the hearing of others, "Great Time, Harlan, don't you ever smile?" The thought came, shockingly, to Harlan that Finge hated him. His own feeling for Finge approached something like detestation thereafter. Three months of raking through the 482nd had exhausted most of its worth-while meat and when Harlan received a sudden call to Finge's office, he was not surprised. He was expecting a change in assignment. His final summary had been prepared days before. The 482nd was anxious to export more cellulose-base textiles to Centuries which were deforested, such as the 1174th, but were unwilling to accept smoked fish in return. A long list of such items was contained in due order and with due analysis. He took the draft of the summary with him. But no mention of the 482nd was made. Instead Finge introduced him to a withered and wrinkled little man, with sparse white hair and a gnomelike face that throughout the interview was stamped with a perpetual smile. It varied between extremes of anxiety and joviality but never quite disappeared. Between two of his yellow-stained fingers lay a burning cigarette. It was the first cigarette Harlan had ever seen, otherwise he would have paid more attention to the man, less to the smoking cylinder, and been better prepared for Finge's introduction. Finge said, "Senior Computer Twissell, this is Observer Andrew Harlan." Harlan's eyes shifted in shock from the little man's cigarette to his face. Senior Computer Twissell said in a high-pitched voice, "How do you do? So this is the young man who writes those excellent reports?" Harlan found no voice. Laban Twissell was a legend, a living myth. Laban Twissell was a man he should have recognized at once. He was the outstanding Computer in Eternity, which was another way of saying he was the most eminent Eternal alive. He was the dean of the Allwhen Council. He had directed more Reality Changes than any man in the history of Eternity. |
| 1262 |
He was — He had — Harlan's mind failed him altogether. He nodded his head with a doltish grin and said nothing. Twissell put his cigarette to his lips, puffed quickly, and took it away. "Leave us, Finge. I want to talk to the boy." Finge rose, murmured something, and left. Twissell said, "You seem nervous, boy. There is nothing to be nervous about." But meeting Twissell like that was a shock. It is always disconcerting to find that someone you have thought of as a giant is actually less than five and a half feet tall. Could the brain of a genius actually fit behind the retreating, bald-smooth forehead? Was it sharp intelligence or only good humor that beamed out of the little eyes that screwed up into a thousand wrinkles. Harlan didn't know what to think. The cigarette seemed to obscure what small scrabble of intelligence he could collect. He flinched visibly as a puff of smoke reached him. Twissell's eyes narrowed as though he were trying to peer through the smoke haze and he said in horribly accented tenth-millennial dialect, "Will you petter feel if I in your yourself dialect should speech, poy?" Harlan, brought to the sudden brink of hysterical laughter, said carefully, "I speak Standard Intertemporal quite well, sir." He said it in the Intertemporal he and all other Eternals in his presence had used ever since his first months in Eternity. "Nonsense," said Twissell imperiously. "I do not bother of Intertemporal. My speech of ten-millennial is over than perfect." Harlan guessed that it had been some forty years since Twissell had had to make use of localwhen dialects. But having made his point to his own satisfaction, apparently, he shifted to Intertemporal and remained there. He said, "I would offer you a cigarette, but I am certain you don't smoke. Smoking is approved of hardly anywhen in history. In fact, good cigarettes are made only in the 72nd and mine have to be specially imported from there. I give you that hint in case you ever become a smoker. It is all very sad. Last week, I was stuck in the 123rd for two days. No smoking. I mean, even in the Section of Eternity devoted to the 123rd. The Eternals there have picked up the mores. If I had lit a cigarette it would have been like the sky collapsing. Sometimes I think I should like to calculate one great Reality Change and wipe out all the no-smoking taboos in all the Centuries, except that any Reality Change like that would make for wars in the 58th or a slave society in the 1000th. Always something." Harlan was first confused, then anxious. |
| 1263 |
Just teach him Primitive history. No field trips. No laboratory experiments, either. Next you'll be changing Reality just to show him how." Harlan licked his dry lips with a dry tongue, muttered a resentful acquiescence, and, eventually, was allowed to leave. It took weeks for his hurt feelings to heal over somewhat. 4 Computer Harlan had been two years a Technician when he re-entered the 482nd for the first time since leaving with Twissell. He found it almost unrecognizable. It had not changed. He had. Two years of Technicianhood had meant a number of things. In one sense it had increased his feeling of stability. He had no longer to learn a new language, get used to new styles of clothing and new ways of life with every new Observation project. On the other hand, it had resulted in a withdrawal on his own part. He had almost forgotten now the camaraderie that united all the rest of the Specialists in Eternity. Most of all, he had developed the feeling of the power of being a Technician. He held the fate of millions in his finger tips, and if one must walk lonely because of it, one could also walk proudly. So he could stare coldly at the Communications man behind the entry desk of the 482nd and announce himself in clipped syllables: "Andrew Harlan, Technician, reporting to Computer Finge for temporary assignment to the 482nd," disregarding the quick glance from the middle-aged man he faced. It was what some people called the "Technician glance," a quick, involuntary sidelong peek at the rose-red shoulder emblem of the Technician, then an elaborate attempt not to look at it again. Harlan stared at the other's shoulder emblem. It was not the yellow of the Computer, the green of the Life-Plotter, the blue of the Sociologist, or the white of the Observer. It was not the Specialist's solid color at all. It was simply a blue bar on white. The man was Communications, a subbranch of Maintenance, not a Specialist at all. And he gave the "Technician glance" too. Harlan said a little sadly, "Well?" Communications said quickly, "I'm ringing Computer Finge, sir." Harlan remembered the 482nd as solid and massive, but now it seemed almost squalid. Harlan had grown used to the glass and porcelain of the 575th, to its fetish of cleanliness. He had grown accustomed to a world of whiteness and clarity, broken by sparse patches of light pastel. The heavy plaster swirls of the 482nd, its splashy pigments, its areas of painted metal were almost repulsive. Even Finge seemed different, less than life-size, somewhat. |
| 1264 |
In a way, it's a waste of talent to ask a Technician to do a job of Observation, but your previous Observations, for clarity and insight, were perfect. We need that again. Now I'll just sketch in a few details... ." What those details were Harlan was not to find out just then. Finge spoke, but the door opened, and Harlan did not hear him. He stared at the person who entered. It was not that Harlan had never seen a girl in Eternity before. Never was too strong a word. Rarely, yes, but not never. But a girl such as this! And in Eternity! Harlan had seen many women in his passages through Time, but in Time they were only objects to him, like walls and balls, barrows and harrows, kittens and mittens. They were facts to be Observed. In Eternity a girl was a different matter. And one like this! She was dressed in the style of the upper classes of the 482nd, which meant transparent sheathing and not very much else above the waist, and flimsy, knee-length trousers below. The latter, while opaque enough, hinted delicately at gluteal curves. Her hair was glossily dark and shoulder length, her lips redly penciled thin above and full below in an exaggerated pout. Her upper eyelids and her ear lobes were tinted a pale rose and the rest of her youthful (almost girlish) face was a startlingly milky white. Jeweled pendants descended forward from mid-shoulder to tinkle now this side, now that of the graceful breasts to which they drew attention. She took her seat at a desk in the corner of Finge's office, lifting her eyelashes only once to sweep her dark glance across Harlan's face. When Harlan heard Finge's voice again, the Computer was saying, "You'll get all this in an official report and meanwhile you can have your old office and sleeping quarters." Harlan found himself outside Finge's office without quite remembering the details of his leaving. Presumably he had walked out. The emotion within him that was easiest to recognize was anger. By Time, Finge ought not to be allowed to do this. It was bad for morale. It made a mockery — He stopped himself, unclenched his fist, unclamped his jaw. Let's see, now! His footsteps sounded sharply in his own ear as he strode firmly toward the Communications man behind the desk. Communications looked up, without quite meeting his eye, and said cautiously, "Yes, sir." Harlan said, "There's a woman at a desk in Computer Finge's office. Is she new here?" He had meant to ask it casually. He had meant to make it a bored, indifferent question. |
| 1265 |
It rang out, instead, like a pair of cymbals clashing. But it roused Communications. The look in his eye became something that made all men kin. It even embraced the Technician, drew him in as a fellow. Communications said, "You mean the babe? Wow! Isn't she built like a force-field latrine, though?" Harlan stammered a bit. "Just answer my question." Communications stared and some of his steam evaporated. He said, "She's new. She's a Timer." "What's her job?" A slow smile crept over Communications' face and grew into a leer. "She's supposed to be the boss's secretary. Her name is Noys Lambent." "All right." Harlan turned on his heel and left. Harlan's first Observation trip into the 482nd came the next day, but it lasted for thirty minutes only. It was obviously only an orientation trip, intended to get him into the feel of things. He entered it for an hour and a half the next day and not at all on the third. He occupied his time in working his way through his original reports, relearning his own knowledge, brushing up on the language system of the time, accustoming himself to the local costumes again. One Reality Change had hit the 482nd, but it was very minor. A political clique that had been In was now Out, but there seemed no change in the society otherwise. Without quite realizing it he slipped into the habit of searching his old reports for information on the aristocracy. Surely he had made Observations. He had, but they were impersonal, from a distance. His data concerned them as a class, not as individuals. Of course his spatio-temporal charts had never demanded or even permitted him to observe the aristocracy from within. What the reasons for that might have been was beyond the purview of an Observer. He was impatient with himself at feeling curiosity concerning that now. During those three days he had caught glimpses of the girl, Noys Lambent, four times. At first he had been aware only of her clothes and her ornaments. Now he noticed that she was five feet six in height, half a head shorter than himself, yet slim enough and with a carriage erect and graceful enough to give an impression of height. She was older than she first seemed, approaching thirty perhaps, certainly over twenty-five. She was quiet and reserved, smiled at him once when he passed her in the corridor, then lowered her eyes. Harlan drew aside to avoid touching her, then walked on feeling angry. By the close of the third day Harlan was beginning to feel that his duty as an Eternal left him only one course of action. |
| 1266 |
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. |
| 1267 |
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. It is easy, thought Harlan, that first evening, to live with aristocrats. And just before he fell asleep, he thought of Noys. He dreamed he was on the Allwhen Council, fingers clasped austerely before him. He was looking down on a small, a very small, Finge, listening in terror to the sentence that was casting him out of Eternity to perpetual Observation of one of the unknown Centuries of the far, far upwhen. The somber words of exile were coming from Harlan's own mouth, and immediately to his right sat Noys Lambent. He hadn't noticed her at first, but his eyes kept sliding to his right, and his words faltered. Did no one else see her? The rest of the members of the Council looked steadily forward, except for Twissell. He turned to smile at Harlan, looking through the girl as though she weren't there. Harlan wanted to order her away, but words were no longer coming out of his mouth. He tried to beat at the girl, but his arm moved sluggishly and she did not move. Her flesh was cold. Finge was laughing — louder — louder — — and it was Noys Lambent laughing. Harlan opened his eyes to bright sunlight and stared at the girl in horror for a moment before he remembered where she was and where he was. She said, "You were moaning and beating the pillow. Were you having a bad dream?" Harlan did not answer. She said, "Your bath is ready. So are your clothes. I've arranged to have you join the gathering tonight. It felt queer to step back into my ordinary life after being in Eternity so long." Harlan felt acutely disturbed at her easy flow of words. He said, "You didn't tell them who I was, I hope." "Of course not." Of course not! Finge would have taken care of that little matter by having her lightly psychoed under narcosis, if he felt that necessary. He might not have thought it necessary, however. After all, he had given her "close observation." The thought annoyed him. He said, "I'd prefer to be left to myself as much as possible." She looked at him uncertainly a moment or two and left. |
| 1268 |
How many excellent prospects had been left untouched in Time because their removal into Eternity would have meant the non-birth of children, the non-death of women and men, non-marriage, non-happenings, non-circumstance that would have twisted Reality in directions the Allwhen Council could not permit. Could he tell her any of this? Of course not. Could he tell her that women almost never qualified for Eternity because, for some reason he did not understand (Computers might, but he himself certainly did not), their abstraction from Time was from ten to a hundred times as likely to distort Reality as was the abstraction of a man. (All the thoughts jumbled together in his head, lost and whirling, joined to one another in a free association that produced odd, almost grotesque, but not entirely unpleasant, results. Noys was closer to him now, smiling.) He heard her voice like a drifting wind. "Oh, you Eternals. You are so secretive. You won't share at all. Make me an Eternal." Her voice was a sound now that didn't coalesce into separate words, just a delicately modulated sound that insinuated itself into his mind. He wanted, he longed to tell her: There's no fun in Eternity, lady. We work! We work to plot out all the details of everywhen from the beginning of Eternity to where Earth is empty, and we try to plot out all the infinite possibilities of all the might-have-beens and pick out a might-have-been that is better than what is and decide where in Time we can make a tiny little change to twist the is to the might-be and we have a new is and look for a new might-be, forever, and forever, and that is how it has been since Vikkor Mallansohn discovered the Temporal Field in the 24th, way back in the Primitive 24th and then it was possible to start Eternity in the 27th, the mysterious Mallansohn whom no man knows and who started Eternity, really, and the new might-be, forever and forever and forever and ... He shook his head, but the whirligig of thought went on and on in stranger and more jagged breaks and leaps until it jumped into a sudden flash of illumination that persisted for a brilliant second, then died. 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. |
| 1269 |
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 ... |
| 1270 |
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. 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. |
| 1271 |
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. The intensity of the Reality Change declined thereafter. Theorists pointed out that nowhere to the infinite upwhen could the Change ever become zero, but by fifty Centuries upwhen from the Touch the Change had become too small to detect by the finest Computing, and that was the practical limit. Of course no human being in Time could ever possibly be aware of any Reality Change having taken place. Mind changed as well as matter and only Eternals could stand outside it all and see the change. Sociologist Voy was staring at the bluish scene in the 2481st, where earlier there had been all the activity of a busy space-port. He barely looked up when Harlan entered. He barely mumbled something that might have been a greeting. A change had indeed blasted the space-port. Its shininess was gone; what buildings there stood were not the grand creations they had been. |
| 1272 |
Every physioyear, the chance that a random Change is likely to be for the worse increases. That means the proportion of guys we can cure gets smaller anyway. It's always going to get smaller. Someday, we'll be able to cure only one guy a physioyear, even counting the neutral cases. Remember that." Harlan lost even the faintest interest. This was the type of griping that went with the business. The Psychologists and Sociologists, in their rare introvertive studies of Eternity, called it identification. Men identified themselves with the Century with which they were associated professionally. Its battles, all too often, became their own battles. Eternity fought the devil of identification as best it could. No man could be assigned to any Section within two Centuries of his homewhen, to make identification harder. Preference was given to Centuries with cultures markedly different from that of their homewhen. (Harlan thought of Finge and the 482nd.) What was more, their assignments were shifted as often as their reactions grew suspect. (Harlan wouldn't give a 5oth Century grafenpiece for Feruque's chances of retaining this assignment longer than another physioyear at the outside.) And still men identified out of a silly yearning for a home in Time (the Time-wish; everyone knew about it). For some reason this was particularly true in Centuries with space-travel. It was something that should be investigated and would be but for Eternity's chronic reluctance to turn its eyes inward. A month earlier Harlan might have despised Feruque as a blustering sentimentalist, a petulant oaf who eased the pain of watching the electro-gravitics lose intensity in a new Reality by railing against those of other Centuries who wanted anti-cancer serum. He might have reported him. It would have been his duty to do so. The man's reactions obviously could no longer be trusted. He could not do so, now. He even found sympathy for the man. His own crime was so much greater. How easy it was to slip back to thoughts of Noys. Eventually he had fallen asleep that night, and he awoke in daylight, with brightness shining through translucent walls all about until it was as though he had awakened on a cloud in a misty morning sky. Noys was laughing down at him. "Goodness, it was hard to wake you." Harlan's first reflexive action was a scrabble for bedclothes that weren't there. Then memory arrived and he stared at her hollowly, his face burning red. How should he feel about this? But then something else occurred to him and he shot to a sitting position. |
| 1273 |
It didn't succeed. She bent and kissed him on his lips, and nothing seemed shameful any more. Nothing that involved Noys and himself. He wasn't sure when first he began to do something that an Observer, ethically, had no right to do. That is, he began to speculate on the nature of the problem involving the current Reality and of the Reality Change that would be planned. It was not the loose morals of the Century, not ectogenesis, not matriarchy, that disturbed Eternity. All of that was as it was in the previous Reality and the Allwhen Council had viewed it with equanimity then. Finge had said it was something very subtle. The Change then would have to be very subtle and it would have to involve the group he was Observing. So much seemed obvious. It would involve the aristocracy, the well-to-do, the upper classes, the beneficiaries of the system. What bothered him was that it would most certainly involve Noys. He got through the remaining three days called for in his chart in a gathering cloud that dampened even his joy in Noys's company. She said to him, "What happened? For a while, you seemed all different from the way you were in Eter — in that place. You weren't stiff at all. Now, you seem concerned. Is it because you have to go back?" Harlan said, "Partly." "Do you have to?" "I have to." "Well, who would care if you were late?" Harlan almost smiled at that. "They wouldn't like me to be late," he said, yet thought longingly just the same of the two-day margin allowed for in his chart. She adjusted the controls of a musical instrument that played soft and complicated strains out of its own creative bowels by striking notes and chords in a random manner; the randomness weighted in favor of pleasant combinations by intricate mathematical formulae. The music could no more repeat itself than could snowflakes, and could no more fail of beauty. Through the hypnosis of sound Harlan gazed at Noys and his thoughts wound tightly about her. What would she be in the new dispensation? A fishwife, a factory girl, the mother of six, fat, ugly, diseased? Whatever she was, she would not remember Harlan. He would have been no part of her life in a new Reality. And whatever she would be then, she would not be Noys. He did not simply love a girl. (Strangely, he used the word "love" in his own thoughts for the first time and did not even pause long enough to stare at the strange thing and wonder at it.) He loved a complex of factors; her choice of clothes, her walk, her manner of speech, her tricks of expression. |
| 1274 |
Hours had passed nightmarishly and Harlan felt trapped in the prison of his mind. All that Finge had said was so true, so transparently true. Harlan's Observer mind could look back upon the relationship of himself and Noys, that short, unusual relationship, and it took on a different texture. It wasn't a case of instant infatuation. How could he have believed it was? Infatuation for a man like himself? Of course not. Tears stung his eyes and he felt ashamed. How obvious it was that the affair was a case of cool calculation. The girl had certain undeniable physical assets and no ethical principles to keep her from using them. So she used them and that had nothing to do with Andrew Harlan as a person. He simply represented her distorted view of Eternity and what it meant. Automatically Harlan's long fingers caressed the volumes in his small bookshelf. He took one out and, unseeingly, opened it. The print blurred. The faded colors of the illustrations were ugly, meaningless blotches. Why had Finge troubled to tell him all this? In the strictest sense he ought not to have. An Observer, or anyone acting as Observer, ought never to know the ends attained by his Observation. It removed him by so much from the ideal position of the objective non-human tool. It was to crush him, of course; to take a mean and jealous revenge! Harlan fingered the open page of the magazine. He found himself staring at a duplication, in startling red, of a ground vehicle, similar to vehicles characteristic of the 45th, 182nd, 590th, and 984th Centuries, as well as of late Primitive times. It was a very common sort of affair with an internal-combustion motor. In the Primitive era natural petroleum fractions were the source of power and natural rubber cushioned the wheels. That was true of none of the later centuries, of course. Harlan had pointed that out to Cooper. He had made quite a point of it, and now his mind, as though longing to turn away from the unhappy present, drifted back to that moment. Sharp, irrelevant images filled the ache within Harlan. "These advertisements," he had said, "tell us more of Primitive times than the so-called news articles in the same magazine. The news articles assume a basic knowledge of the world it deals with. It uses terms it feels no necessity of explaining. What is a 'golf ball,' for instance?" Cooper had professed his ignorance readily. Harlan went on in the didactic tone he could scarcely avoid on occasions such as this. "We could deduce that it was a small pellet of some sort from the nature of the casual mentions it receives. |
| 1275 |
We know that it is used in a game, if only because it is mentioned in an item under the heading 'Sport.' We can even make further deductions that it is hit by a long rod of some sort and that the object of the game is to drive the ball into a hole in the ground. 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. |
| 1276 |
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. He had not wasted a moment after that. It was with excitement and even joy that he left his quarters, at all but a run, to commit a major crime against Eternity. 8 Crime No one had questioned him. No one had stopped him. There was that advantage, anyway, in the social isolation of a Technician. He went via the kettle channels to a door to Time and set its controls. There was the chance, of course, that someone would happen along on a legitimate errand and wonder why the door was in use. He hesitated, and then decided to stamp his seal on the marker. A sealed door would draw little attention. An unsealed door in active use would be a nine-day wonder. Of course, it might be Finge who stumbled upon the door. He would have to chance that. Noys was still standing as he had left her. Wretched hours (physiohours) had passed since Harlan had left the 482nd for a lonely Eternity, but he returned now to the same Time, within a matter of seconds, that he had left. Not a hair on Noys's head had stirred. She looked startled. "Did you forget something, Andrew?" Harlan stared at her hungrily, but made no move to touch her. He remembered Finge's words, and he dared not risk a repulse. He said stiffly, "You've got to do as I say." She said, "But is something wrong, then? |
| 1277 |
He said, "Noys, dear, let's find a place to sit down and — and I'll have to explain something." The concept of a variable Reality, a Reality that was not fixed and eternal and immutable was not one that could be faced casually by anyone. In the dead of the sleep period, sometimes, Harlan would remember the early days of his Cubhood and recall the wrenching attempts to divorce himself from his Century and from Time. It took six months for the average Cub to learn all the truth, to discover that he could never go home again in a very literal way. It wasn't Eternity's law, alone, that stopped him, but the frigid fact that home as he knew it might very well no longer exist, might, in a sense, never have existed. It affected Cubs differently. Harlan remembered Bonky Latourette's face turning white and gaunt the day Instructor Yarrow had finally made it unmistakably clear about Reality. None of the Cubs ate that night. They huddled together in search of a kind of psychic warmth, all except Latourette, who had disappeared. There was a lot of false laughter and miserably poor joking. Someone said with a voice that was tremulous and uncertain, "I suppose I never had a mother. If I go back into the 95th, they'd say: 'Who are you? We don't know you. We don't have any records of you. You don't exist.'" They smiled weakly and nodded their heads, lonely boys with nothing left but Eternity. They found Latourette at bedtime, sleeping deeply and breathing shallowly. There was the slight reddening of a spray injection in the hollow of his left elbow and fortunately that was noted too. Yarrow was called and for a while it looked as though one Cub would be out of the course, but he was brought around eventually. A week later he was back in his seat. Yet the mark of that evil night was on his personality for as long as Harlan knew him thereafter. And now Harlan had to explain Reality to Noys Lambent, a girl not much older than those Cubs, and explain it at once and in full. He had to. There was no choice about that. She must learn exactly what faced them and exactly what she would have to do. He told her. They ate canned meats, chilled fruits, and milk at a long conference table designed to hold twelve, and there he told her. He did it as gently as possible, but he scarcely found need for gentleness. She snapped quickly at every concept and before he was half through it was borne in upon him, to his great amazement, that she wasn't reacting badly. She wasn't afraid. She showed no sense of loss. |
| 1278 |
His grand, intuitional guess was more than a guess. Everything was checking neatly. Item Four: research. Twofold research. For himself, first. Each day, with ferreting eyes, he went through the reports on Twissell's desk. The reports concerned the various Reality Changes being scheduled or suggested. Copies went to Twissell routinely since he was a member of the Allwhen Council, and Harlan knew he would not miss one. He looked first for the coming Change in the 482nd. Secondly he looked for other Changes, any other Changes, that might have a flaw, an imperfection, some deviation from maximum excellence that might be visible to his own trained and talented Technician's eyes. In the strictest sense of the word the reports were not for his study, but Twissell was rarely in his office these days, and no one else saw fit to interfere with Twissell's personal Technician. That was one part of his research. The other took place in the 575th Section branch of the library. For the first time he ventured out of those portions of the library which, ordinarily, monopolized his attention. In the past he had haunted the section on Primitive history (very poor indeed, so that most of his references and source materials had to be derived from the far downwhen of the 3rd millennium, as was only natural, of course). To an even greater extent he had ransacked the shelves devoted to Reality Change, its theory, technique, and history; an excellent collection (best in Eternity outside the Central branch itself, thanks to Twissell) of which he had made himself full master. 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. |
| 1279 |
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. |
| 1280 |
Then, too, he would have the chance once again of savoring the weirdly attractive atmosphere about a doomed house. He had felt it before, when entering it carefully during the period of grace allowed by the spatio-temporal charts. He had felt it as he wandered through its rooms, collecting clothing, small objets d'art, strange containers, and instruments from Noys's vanity table. There was the somber silence of a doomed Reality that was past merely the physical absence of noise. There was no way for Harlan to predict its analogue in a new Reality. It might be a small suburban cottage or a tenement in a city street. It might be zero with untamed scrubland replacing the parklike terrain on which it now stood. It might, conceivably, be almost unchanged. And (Harlan touched on this thought gingerly) it might be inhabited by the analogue of Noys or, of course, it might not. To Harlan the house was already a ghost, a premature specter that had begun its hauntings before it had actually died. And because the house, as it was, meant a great deal to him, he found he resented its passing and mourned it. Once, only, in five trips had there been any sound to break the stillness during his prowlings. He was in the pantry, then, thankful that the technology of that Reality and Century had made servants unfashionable and removed a problem. He had, he recalled, chosen among the cans of prepared foods, and was just deciding that he had enough for one trip, and that Noys would be pleased indeed to intersperse the hearty but uncolorful basic diet provided in the empty Section with some of her own dietary. He even laughed aloud to think that not long before he had thought her diet decadent. It was in the middle of the laugh that he heard a distinct clapping noise. He froze! The sound had come from somewhere behind him, and in the startled moment during which he had not moved the lesser danger that it was a housebreaker occurred to him first and the greater danger of its being an investigating Eternal occurred second. It couldn't be a housebreaker. The entire period of the spatio-temporal chart, grace period and all, had been painstakingly cleared and chosen out of other similar periods of Time because of the lack of complicating factors. 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. |
| 1281 |
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. 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. |
| 1282 |
He grew uneasy and said, "Yes, Computer?" "Nothing," said Twissell, and perhaps it was the cloak of age weighing down upon his shoulders, but his voice was unaccountably sad. "I thought you were about to speak." "No," said Harlan. "I had nothing to say." "Well, then, I'll see you tomorrow at opening in the Computing Room, boy. I have a great deal to say." "Yes, sir," said Harlan. He stared for long minutes at the plate after it went dark. That had almost sounded like a threat. Finge had called Twissell, had he? What had he said that Twissell did not report. But an outside threat was what he needed. Battling a sickness of the spirit was like standing in a quicksand and beating it with a stick. Battling Finge was another thing altogether. Harlan had remembered the weapon at his disposal and for the first time in days felt a fraction of self-confidence return. It was as though a door had closed and another had opened. Harlan grew as feverishly active as previously he had been catatonic. He traveled to the 2456th and bludgeoned Sociologist Voy to his own exact will. He did it perfectly. He got the information he sought. And more than he sought. Much more. Confidence is rewarded, apparently. There was a homewhen proverb that went: "Grip the nettle firmly and it will become a stick with which to beat your enemy." In short, Noys had no analogue in the new Reality. No analogue at all. She could take her position in the new society in the most inconspicuous and convenient manner possible, or she could stay in Eternity. There could be no reason to deny him liaison except for the highly theoretical fact that he had broken the law — and he knew very well how to counter that argument. So he went racing upwhen to tell Noys the great news, to bathe in undreamed-of success after a few days horrible with apparent failure. And at this moment the kettle came to a halt. It did not slow; it simply halted. If the motion had been one along any of the three dimensions of space, a halt that sudden would have smashed the kettle, brought its metal to a dull red heat, turned Harlan into a thing of broken bone and wet, crushed flesh. As it was, it merely doubled him with nausea and cracked him with inner pain. When he could see, he fumbled to the temporometer and stared at it with fuzzy vision. It read 100,000. Somehow that frightened him. It was too round a number. He turned feverishly to the controls. What had gone wrong? That frightened him too, for he could see nothing wrong. Nothing had tripped the drive-lever. |
| 1283 |
Harlan's fists clenched and unclenched. He stared helplessly after the Computer and then, simply because there was nothing else to do, he walked slowly, and without full consciousness of his surroundings, back to his own room. Harlan slept fitfully. He told himself he needed sleep. He tried to relax by main force, and, of course, failed. His sleep period was a succession of futile thought. First of all, there was Noys. They would not dare harm her, he thought feverishly. They could not send her back to Time without first calculating the effect on Reality and that would take days, probably weeks. As an alternative, they might do to her what Finge had threatened for him; place her in the path of an untraceable accident. He did not take that into serious consideration. There was no necessity for drastic action such as that. They would not risk Harlan's displeasure by doing it. (In the quiet of a darkened sleeping room, and in that phase of half sleep where things often grew queerly disproportionate in thought, Harlan found nothing grotesque in his sure opinion that the Allwhen Council would not dare risk a Technician's displeasure.) Of course, there were uses to which a woman in captivity might be put. A beautiful wOman from a hedonistic Reality. Resolutely Harlan put the thought away as often as it returned. It was at once more likely and more unthinkable than death, and he would have none of it. He thought of Twis sell. The old man was out of the 575th. Where was he during hours when he should have been asleep? An old man needs his sleep. Harlan was sure of the answer. There were Council consultations going on. About Harlan. About Noys. About what to do with an indispensable Technician one dared not touch. Harlan's lips drew back. If Finge reported Harlan's assault of that evening, it would not affect their considerations in the least. His crimes could scarcely be worsened by it. His indispensability would certainly not be lessened. And Harlan was by no means certain that Finge would report him. To admit having been forced to cringe before a Technician would put an Assistant Computer in a ridiculous light, and Finge might not choose to do so. Harlan thought of Technicians as a group, which, of late, he had done rarely. His own somewhat anomalous position as Twissell's man and as half an Educator had kept him too far apart from other Technicians. But Technicians lacked solidarity anyway. Why should that be? Did he have to go through the 575th and the 482nd rarely seeing or speaking to another Technician? |
| 1284 |
Very amusing, thought Harlan bitterly. The Administrator said, "I have my orders. I know nothing more." Then, still surprised, "You've heard nothing of this?" "Technicians," said Harlan sarcastically, "lead sheltered lives." Five besides Twissell! Senior Computers all, none less than thirtyfive years an Eternal. Six weeks earlier Harlan would have been overwhelmed by the honor of sitting at lunch with such a group, tongue-tied by the combination of responsibility and power they represented. They would have seemed twice life-size to him. But now they were antagonists of his, worse still, judges. He had no time to be impressed. He had to plan his strategy. They might not know that he was aware they had Noys. They could not know unless Finge told them of his last meeting with Harlan. In the clear light of day, however, he was more than ever convinced that Finge was not the man to broadcast publicly the fact that he had been browbeaten and insulted by a Technician. It seemed advisable, then, for Harlan to nurse this possible advantage for the time being, to let them make the first move, say the first sentence that would join actual combat. They seemed in no hurry. They stared at him placidly over an abstemious lunch as though he were an interesting specimen spreadeagled against a plane of force by mild repulsors. In desperation Harlan stared back. He knew all of them by reputation and by trimensional reproduction in the physiomonthly orientation films. The films co-ordinated developments throughout the various Sections of Eternity and were required viewing for all Eternals with rating from Observer up. August Sennor, the bald one (not even eyebrows or eyelashes), of course attracted Harlan most. First, because the odd appearance of those dark, staring eyes against bare eyelids and forehead was remarkably greater in person than it had ever seemed in trimension. Second, because of his knowledge of past collisions of view between Sennor and Twissell. Finally, because Sennor did not confine himself to watching Harlan. He shot questions at him in a sharp voice. For the most part his questions were unanswerable, such as: "How did you first come to be interested in Primitive times, young man?" "Do you find the study rewarding, young man?" Finally, he seemed to settle himself in his seat. He pushed his plate casually onto the disposal chute and clasped his thick fingers lightly before him. (There was no hair on the back of the hands, Harlan noticed.) Sennor said, "There is something I have always wanted to know. |
| 1285 |
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. Once, though, you frightened me." Harlan said, at once, "You mean the time I took Cooper along the kettle ways." "How do you come to guess that?" demanded Twissell. "It was the one time you were really angry with me. I suppose now it went against something in the Mallansohn memoir." "Not quite. |
| 1286 |
"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. |
| 1287 |
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. The curve was a check against ampules sent not all the way into the Primitive but into the early Centuries of Eternity where direct observations could also be made. "Naturally, there were failures. The first few ampules were lost until we learned to allow for the not too major geological changes between the late Primitive and the 575th. Then, three of the ampules later on never showed up in the 575th. Presumably, something went wrong with the discharge mechanism and they were buried too deeply in the mountain for detection. We stopped our experiments when the level of radiation grew so high that we feared that some of the Primitive inhabitants might detect and wonder what radioactive artifacts might be doing in the region. But we had enough for our purposes and we are certain we can send back a man to any hundredth of a Century of the Primitive that is desired. "You follow all this, Cooper, don't you?" Cooper said, "Perfectly, Computer Twissell. I have seen the calibration curve without understanding the purpose at the time. It is quite clear now." But Harlan was exceedingly interested now. He stared at the measured arc marked off in centuries. The shining arc was porcelain on metal and the fine lines divided it into Centuries, Decicenturies and Centicenturies. Silvery metal gleamed thinly through the porcelainpenetrating lines, marking them clearly. The figures were as finely done and, bending close, Harlan could make out the Centuries from 17 to 27. The hairline was fixed at the 23.17th Century mark. He had seen similar time-gauges and almost automatically he reached to the pressure-control lever. It did not respond to his grasp. The hairline remained in place. He nearly jumped when Twissell's voice suddenly addressed him. "Technician Harlan!" He cried, "Yes, Computer," then remembered that he could not be heard. He stepped to the window and nodded. Twissell said, almost as though chiming in with Harlan's thoughts, "The time-gauge is set for a thrust back to the 23.17th. |
| 1288 |
That requires no adjustment. Your only task is to pour energy through at the proper moment in physiotime. There is a chronometer to the right of the gauge. Nod if you see it." Harlan nodded. "It will reach zero-point backward. At the minus-fifteen-second point, align the contact points. It's simple. You see how?" Harlan nodded again. Twissell went on, "Synchronization is not vital. You can do it at minus fourteen or thirteen or even minus five seconds, but please make every effort to stay this side of minus ten for safety's sake. Once you've closed contact, a synchronized force-gear will do the rest and make certain that the final energy thrust will occur precisely at time zero. Understood?" Harlan nodded still again. He understood more than Twissell said. If he himself did not align the points by minus ten, it would be taken care of from without. Harlan thought grimly: There'll be no need for outsiders. Twissell said, "We have thirty physiominutes left. Cooper and I will leave to check on the supplies." They left. The door closed behind them, and Harlan was left alone with the thrust control, the time (already moving slowly backward toward zero) — and a resolute knowledge of what must be done. Harlan turned away from the window. He put his hand inside his pocket and half withdrew the neuronic whip it still contained. Through all this he had kept the whip. His hand shook a little. An earlier thought recurred: a Samson-smash of the temple! A corner of his mind wondered sickly: How many Eternals have ever heard of Samson? How many know how he died? There were only twenty-five minutes left. He was not certain how long the operation would take. He was not really certain it would work at all. But what choice had he? His damp fingers almost dropped the weapon before he succeeded in unhinging the butt. He worked rapidly and in complete absorption. Of all the aspects of what he planned, the possibility of his own passage into nonexistence occupied his mind the least and bothered him not at all. At minus one minute Harlan was standing at the controls. Detachedly he thought: The last minute of life? Nothing in the room was visible to him but the backward sweep of the red hairline that marked the passing seconds. Minus thirty seconds. He thought: It will not hurt. It is not death. He tried to think only of Noys. Minus fifteen seconds. Noys! Harlan's left hand moved a switch down toward contact. Not hastily! Minus twelve seconds. Contact! The force-gear would take over now. |
| 1289 |
She was a girl of this very Century, the 575th. I didn't see her until after the assignment, of course. She was intelligent and kind. Not beautiful or even pretty, but then, even when young (yes, I was young, never mind the myths) I was not noted for my own looks. We were well suited to one another by temperament, she and I, and if I were a Timed man, I would have been proud to have her as my wife. I told her that many times. I believe it pleased her. I know it was the truth. Not all Eternals, who must take their women as and how Computing permits, are that fortunate. In that particular Reality, she was to die young, of course, and none of her analogues was available for liaison. At first, I took that philosophically. After all, it was her short lifetime which made it possible for her to live with me without deleteriously affecting Reality. I am ashamed of that now, of the fact that I was glad she had a short time to live. Just at first, that is. Just at first. I visited her as often as spatio-temporal charting allowed. I squeezed every minute out of it, giving up meals and sleep when necessary, shifting my labor load shamelessly whenever I could. Her amiability passed the heights of my expectations, and I was in love. I put it bluntly. My experience of love is very small, and understanding it through Observation in Time is a shaky matter. As far as my understanding went, however, I was in love. What began as the satisfaction of an emotional and physical need became a great deal more. Her imminent death stopped being a convenience and became a calamity. I Life-Plotted her. I didn't go to the Life-Plotting departments, either. I did it myself. That surprises you, I imagine. It was a misdemeanor, but it was nothing compared to the crimes I committed later. Yes, I, Laban Twissell. Senior Computer Twissell. Three separate times, a point in physiotime came and passed, during which some simple action of my own might have altered her personal Reality. Naturally, I knew that no such personally motivated Change could possibly be authorized by the Council. Still, I began to feel personally responsible for her death. That was part of my motivation later on, you see. She became pregnant. I took no action, though I should have. I had worked her Life-Plot, modified to include her relationship with me, and I knew pregnancy to be a high-probability consequence. As you may or may not know, Timed women are occasionally made pregnant by Eternals despite precautions. It is not unheard of. |
| 1290 |
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. |
| 1291 |
The memoir had located it and first Cooper, now he, had been pin-pointed back to it. He had not doubted precision pin-pointing in Time-travel since his Cubhood days. He remembered himself then, facing Educator Yarrow seriously, saying, "But Earth moves about the Sun, and the Sun moves about the Galactic Center and the Galaxy moves too. If you started from some point on Earth, and move downwhen a hundred years, you'll be in empty space, because it will take a hundred years for Earth to reach that point." (Those were the days when he still referred to a Century as a "hundred years.") And Educator Yarrow had snapped back, "You don't separate Time from space. Moving through Time, you share Earth's motions. Or do you believe that a bird flying through the air whiffs out into space because the Earth is hurrying around the Sun at eighteen miles a second and vanishes from under the creature?" Arguing from analogy is risky, but Harlan obtained more rigorous proof in later days and, now, after a scarcely precedented trip into the Primitive, he could turn confidently and feel no surprise at finding the opening precisely where he had been told it would be. He moved the camouflage of loose rubble and rock to one side and entered. He probed the darkness within, using the white beam of his flash almost like a scalpel. He scoured the walls, ceiling, floor, every inch. Noys, remaining close behind him, whispered, "What are you looking for?" He said, "Something. Anything," He found his something, anything, at the very rear of the cave in the shape of a flattish stone covering greenish sheets like a paperweight. Harlan threw the stone aside and flipped the sheets past one thumb. "What are they?" asked Noys. "Bank notes. Medium of exchange. Money." "Did you know they were there?" "I knew nothing. I just hoped." It was only a matter of using Twissell's reverse logic, of calculating cause from effect. Eternity existed, so Cooper must be making correct decisions too. In assuming the advertisement would pull Harlan into the correct Time, the cave was an obvious additional means of communication. Yet this was almost better than he had dared hope. More than once during the preparations for his trip into the Primitive, Harlan had thought that making his way into a town with nothing but bullion in his possession would result in suspicion and delay. Cooper had managed, to be sure, but Cooper had had time. Harlan hefted the sheaf of bills. And he must have used time to accumulate this much. |
| 1292 |
He had the blaster in his hand. It was aimed at Noys. But why did she say nothing? Why did she persist in this impassive attitude? How could he kill her? How could he not kill her? He said hoarsely, "Well?" She moved, but it was only to clasp her hands loosely in her lap, to look more relaxed, more aloof. When she spoke her voice seemed scarcely that of a human being. Facing the muzzle of a blaster, it yet gained assurance and took on an almost mystic quality of impersonal strength. She said, "You cannot wish to kill me only in order to protect Eternity. If that were your desire, you could stun me, tie me firmly, pin me within this cave and then take to your travels in the dawn. Or you might have asked Computer Twissell to keep me in solitary confinement during your absence in the Primitive. Or you might take me with you at dawn, lose me in the wastes. If it is only killing that will satisfy you, it is only because you think that I have betrayed you, that I have tricked you into love first in order that I might trick you into treason later. This is murder out of wounded pride and not at all the just retribution you tell yourself it is." Harlan squirmed. "Are you from the Hidden Centuries? Tell me." Noys said, "I am. Will you now blast?" Harlan's finger trembled on the blaster's contact point. Yet he hesitated. Something irrational within him could still plead her case and point up the remnants of his own futile love and longing. Was she desperate at his rejection of her? Was she deliberately courting death by lying? Was she indulging in foolish heroics born of despair at his doubts of her? No! The book-films of the sickly-sweet literary traditions of the 289th might have it so, but not a girl like Noys. She was not one to meet her death at the hands of a false lover with the joyful masochism of a broken, bleeding lily. Then was she scornfully denying his ability to kill her for any reason whatever? Was she confidently relying on the attraction she knew she had for him even now, certain that it would immobilize him, freeze him in weakness and shame. That hit too closely. His finger clamped a bit harder on the contact. Noys spoke again. "You're waiting. Does that mean you expect me to enter a brief for the defense?" "What defense?" Harlan tried to make that scornful, yet he welcomed the diversion. It could postpone the moment when he must look down upon her blasted body, upon whatever remnants of bloody flesh might remain, and know that what had been done to his beautiful Noys had been done by his own hand. |
| 1293 |
He found excuses for his delay. He thought feverishly: Let her talk. Let her tell what she can about the Hidden Centuries. So much better protection for Eternity. It put a front of firm policy on his action and for the moment he could look at her with as calm a face, almost, as she looked at him. Noys might have read his mind. She said, "Do you want to know about the Hidden Centuries? If that will be a defense, it is easily done. Would you like to know, for instance, why Earth is empty of mankind after the 150,000th? Would you be interested?" Harlan wasn't going to plead for knowledge, nor was he going to buy knowledge. He had the blaster. He was very intent on no show of weakness. 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. |
| 1294 |
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. "When we moved out into space, the signs were up. Occupied! No Trespassing! Clear Out! Mankind drew back its exploratory feelers, remained at home. But now he knew Earth for what it was: a prison surrounded by an infinity of freedom ... And mankind died out!" Harlan said, "Just died out. Nonsense." "They didn't just die out. It took thousands of Centuries. There were ups and downs but, on the whole, there was a loss of purpose, a sense of futility, a feeling of hopelessness that could not be overcome. Eventually there was one last decline of the birth rate and finally, extinction. Your Eternity did that." Harlan could defend Eternity now, the more intensely and extravagantly for having so shortly before attacked it so keenly. He said, "Let us at the Hidden Centuries and we will correct that. We have not failed yet to achieve the greatest good in those Centuries we could reach." "The greatest good?" asked Noys in a detached tone that seemed to make a mockery of the phrase. |
| 1295 |
It was an airy, open catwalk with a 360-degree view of the sky and the low gray-green hills that encircled the city of Jonglor. The light of the day's four suns came streaming in from all sides. Pausing for a moment, the hospital director looked to his right, then to his left, taking in the complete panorama. The little man's dour pinched features seemed to glow with sudden youth and vitality as the warm rays of Onos and the tighter, sharply contrasting beams from Dovim, Patru, and Trey converged in a brilliant display. "What an absolutely splendid day, eh, gentlemen!" Kelaritan cried, with an enthusiasm that Sheerin found startling, coming from someone as restrained and austere as he seemed to be. "How glorious it is to see four of the suns in the sky at the same time! How good it makes me feel when their light strikes my face! Ah, where would we be without our marvelous suns, I wonder?" "Indeed," said Sheerin. He was feeling a little better himself, as a matter of fact. Half a world away, one of Sheerin 501's Saro University colleagues was staring at the sky also. But the only emotion she felt was horror. She was Siferra 89, of the Department of Archaeology, who had been conducting excavations for the past year and a half at the ancient site of Beklimot on the remote Sagikan Peninsula. Now she stood rigid with apprehension, watching a catastrophe come rushing toward her. The sky offered no comfort. In this part of the world the only real light visible just then was that of Tano and Sitha, and their cold, harsh gleam had always seemed joyless, even depressing, to her. Against the deep somber blue of the two-sunday sky it was a baleful, oppressive illumination, casting jagged, ominous shadows. Dovim was in view also-barely, just rising now-right on the horizon, a short distance above the tips of the distant Horkkan Mountains. The dim glow of the little red sun, though, was hardly any more cheering. But Siferra knew that the warm yellow light of Onos would come drifting up out of the east before long to cheer things up. What was troubling her was something far more serious than the temporary absence of the main sun. A killer sandstorm was heading straight toward Beklimot. In another few minutes it would sweep over the site, and then anything might happen. Anything. The tents could be destroyed; the carefully sorted trays of artifacts might be overturned and their contents scattered; their cameras, their drafting equipment, their laboriously compiled stratigraphic drawings-everything that they had worked on for so long might be lost in a moment. |
| 1296 |
"I'll be there, Thuvvik. Go on! Stop bothering me!" Across the way, near the six-sided brick building that the early explorers had called the Temple of the Suns, Siferra caught sight of the stocky figure of Balik 338. Squinting, shading his eyes against the chilly light of Tano and Sitha, he stood looking toward the north, the direction from which the sandstorm was coming. The expression on his face was one of anguish. Balik was their chief stratigrapher, but he was also the expedition's meteorological expert, more or less. 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? |
| 1297 |
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. 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. |
| 1298 |
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. |
| 1299 |
He jumped aside, spitting out sand. "Sorry," she said, without looking down. She cut into the hillside a second time, widening the storm gouge. It wasn't the best of technique, she knew, to be slashing away like this. Her mentor, grand old Shelbik, was probably whirling in his grave. And the founder of their science, the revered Galdo 221, no doubt was looking down from his exalted place in the pantheon of archaeologists and shaking his head sadly. On the other hand, Shelbik and Galdo had had chances of their own to uncover whatever lay in the Hill of Thombo, and they hadn't done it. If she was a little too excited now, a little too hasty in her attack, well, they would simply have to forgive her. Now that the seeming calamity of the sandstorm had been transformed into serendipitous good fortune, now that the apparent ruination of her career had turned unexpectedly into the making of it, Siferra could not hold herself back from finding out what was builed here. Could not. Absolutely could not. "Look-" she muttered, knocking a great mass of overburden away and going to work with her brush. "We've got a charred layer here, right at the foundation level of the cyclopean city. The place must have burned clear down to the stone. But you look a little lower on the hill and you can see that the crosshatch-style town is sitting right under the fire line-the cyclopean people simply plunked this whole monumental foundation down on top of the older city-" "Siferra-" said Balik uneasily. "I know, I know. But let me at least begin to see what's here. Just a quick probe now, and then we can go back to doing things the proper way." She felt as though she were perspiring from head to toe. Her eyes were starting to ache, so fiercely was she staring. "Look, will you? We're way up on top of the hill, and we've already got two towns. And it's my guess that if we unzip the mound a little further, someplace around where we'd expect to find the foundations of the crosshatch people, we'll- yes! Yes! There! By Darkness, will you look at that, Balik! Just look!" She pointed triumphantly with the tip of her pick. Another dark line of charcoal was apparent, near the foundations of the crosshatch-style building. The second highest level had also been destroyed by fire just as the cyclopean one had. And from the way things looked, it was sitting atop the ruins of an even older village. Balik now had caught her fervor too. Together they worked to lay bare the outer face of the hill, midway between ground level and the shattered summit. |
| 1300 |
Nor did he feel in the least hungry now. The thought of going downstairs for breakfast had no appeal whatever. That was an alien concept to him, not to feel hungry. Was the bleakness of his mood, he wondered, the result of his interviews with Kelaritan's hapless patients yesterday? Or was he simply terrified of going through the Tunnel of Mystery? Certainly seeing those three patients hadn't been easy. It was a long time since he'd done any actual clinical work, and obviously his sojourn among the academics at Saro University had attenuated the professional detachment that allows members of the healing arts to confront the ill without being overwhelmed by compassion and sorrow. Sheerin was surprised at that, how tenderhearted he seemed to have become, how thin-skinned. 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. |
| 1301 |
Wherever he looked there was something unusual and beautiful to engage his eye. Thousands of people, perhaps hundreds of thousands, strolled its glittering, elegant boulevards and avenues. Sheerin had always heard that the Jonglor Centennial Exposition was one of the marvels of the world, and he saw now that it was true. To be able to visit it was a rare privilege. It was open only once every hundred years, for a three-year run, to commemorate the anniversary of the city's founding-and this, Jonglor's Fifth Centennial Exposition, was said to be the greatest of all. Indeed he felt sudden buoyant excitement, such as he had not known in a long while, as he traveled through its wellmanicured grounds. He hoped that he'd have some time later in the week to explore it on his own. But his mood changed abruptly as the car swung around the perimeter of the Exposition and brought them to an entrance in back that led to the amusement area. Here, just as Kelaritan had said, great sections were roped off; and sullen crowds peered across the ropes in obvious annoyance as Cubello, Kelaritan, and Varitta 312 led him toward the Tunnel of Mystery. Sheerin could hear them muttering angrily, a low harsh growling that he found unsettling and even a little intimidating. He realized that the lawyer had told the truth: these people were angry because the Tunnel was closed. They're jealous, Sheerin thought in wonder. They know we're going to the Tunnel, and they want to go too. Despite everything that's happened there. "We can go in this way," Varitta said. The facade of the Tunnel was an enormous pyramidal structure, tapering away at the sides in an eerie, dizzying perspective. In the center of it was a huge six-sided entrance gate, dramatically outlined in scarlet and gold. Bars had been drawn across it. Varitta produced a key and unlocked a small door to the left of the facade, and they stepped through. Inside, everything seemed much more ordinary. Sheerin saw a series of metal railings no doubt designed to contain the lines of people waiting to board the ride. Beyond that was a platform much like that in any railway station, with a string of small open cars waiting there. And beyond that- Darkness. Cubello said, "If you don't mind signing this first, please, Doctor-" Sheerin stared at the paper the lawyer had handed him. It was full of words, blurred, dancing about. "What is this?" "A release. The standard form." "Yes. Of course." Airily Sheerin scrawled his name without even trying to read the paper. |
| 1302 |
You are not afraid, he told himself. You fear nothing at all. Varitta 312 put a small device in his hand. "An abort switch," she explained. "The full ride lasts fifteen minutes, but you just have to press this green panel here as soon as you've been inside long enough to have learned what you need to know-or in case you begin to feel uncomfortable-and lights will come on. Your car will go quickly to the far end of the Tunnel and circle back to the station." "Thank you," Sheerin said. "I doubt that I'll need it." "But you should have it. Just in case." "It's my plan to experience the ride to the fullest," he told her, enjoying his own pomposity. But there was such a thing as foolhardiness, he reminded himself. He didn't intend to use the abort switch, but it was probably unwise not to take it. Just in case. He stepped out on the platform. Kelaritan and Cubello were looking at him in an all too transparent way. He could practically hear them thinking, This fat old fool is going to turn to jelly in there. Well, let them think it. Varitta had disappeared. No doubt she had gone to turn on the Tunnel mechanism. Yes: there she was now, in a control booth high up to the right, signaling that everything was ready. "If you'll board the car, Doctor-" Kelaritan said. "Of course. Of course." Fewer than one out of ten experienced harmful effects. Very likely they were unusually vulnerable to Darkness disorders to begin with. I am not. I am a very stable individual. He entered the car. There was a safety belt; he strapped it around his waist, adjusting it with some difficulty to his girth. The car began to roll forward, slowly, very slowly. Darkness was waiting for him. Fewer than one out often. Fewer than one out of ten. He understood the Darkness syndrome. That would protect him, he was sure: his understanding. Even though all of mankind had an instinctive fear of the absence of light, that did not mean that the absence of light was of itself harmful. What was harmful, Sheerin knew, was one's reaction to the absence of light. The thing to do is to stay calm. Darkness is nothing but darkness, a change of external circumstances. 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. |
| 1303 |
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. |
| 1304 |
"I wanted this to be a purely abstract mathematical exercise for you. But it doesn't surprise me that you were able to figure out the context. You figured it out after you had your result, didn't you?" "Yes, sir," said Yimot and Faro at the same time. "We ran all the calculations first," Faro said. "Then we took a second look, and the context became apparent," said Yimot. "Ah. Yes," Beenay said. These kids were sometimes a little unnerving. They were so young-only six or seven years younger than he, as a matter of fact, but he was an assistant professor and they were students, and to him and them both that was a vast barrier. Young as they were, though, they had such extraordinary minds! He wasn't altogether pleased that they had guessed at the conceptual matrix within which these calculations were located. In fact, he wasn't pleased at all. In another few years they'd be right up here on the faculty with him, perhaps competing for the same professorship he hoped to get, and that might not be fun. But he tried not to think about that. He reached for their printout. "May I see?" he asked. Hands fluttering wildly, Yimot handed it over. Beenay scanned the rows of figures, calmly at first, then with rising agitation. He had been pondering, all year long, certain implications of the Theory of Universal Gravitation, which his mentor Athor had brought to such a summit of perfection. It had been Athor's great triumph, the making of his lofty reputation, to work out the orbital motions of Kalgash and all six of its suns according to rational principles of attractive forces. Beenay, using modern computational equipment, had been calculating some aspects of Kalgash's orbit around Onos, its primary sun, when to his horror he observed that his figures didn't check out properly in terms of the Theory of Universal Gravitation. The theory said that at the beginning of the present year Kalgash should have been here in relation to Onos, when in undeniable fact Kalgash was there. The deviation was trivial-a matter of a few decimal places- but that wasn't trivial at all, in the larger sense of things. The Theory of Universal Gravitation was so precise that most people preferred to refer to it as the Law of Universal Gravitation. Its mathematical underpinning was considered impeccable. But a theory that purports to explain the movements of the world through space has no room for even small discrepancies. Either it is complete or it is not complete: no middle way was permissible. |
| 1305 |
And a difference of a few decimal places in a shortrange calculation would widen into a vast abyss, Beenay knew, if more ambitious computations were attempted. What good was the whole Theory of Universal Gravitation if the position that it said Kalgash was going to hold in the sky a century from now turned out to be halfway around Onos from the planet's actual location then? Beenay had gone over his figures until he was sick of reworking them. The result was always the same. But what was he supposed to believe? His numbers, or Athor's towering master scheme? His piddling notions of astronomy, or the great Athor's profound insight into the fundamental structure of the universe? He imagined himself standing right on top of the dome of the Observatory, calling out, "Listen to me, everybody! Athor's theory is wrong! I've got the figures right here that disprove it!" Which would bring forth such gales of laughter that he'd be blown clear across the continent. Who was he to set himself up against the titanic Athor? Who could possibly believe that a callow assistant professor had toppled the Law of Universal Gravitation? And yet-and yet- His eyes raced over the printout sheets that Yimot and Faro had prepared. The calculations on the first two pages were unfamiliar to him; he had set up the data for the two students in such a way that the underlying relationships from which the numbers were derived were not at all obvious, and evidently they had approached the problem in a way that any astronomer trying to compute a planetary orbit would regard as quite unorthodox. Which was exactly what Beenay had wanted. The orthodox ways had led him only into catastrophic conclusions; but he had too much information at his own disposal to be able to work in any other mode but the orthodox ones. Faro and Yimot hadn't been hampered in that fashion. But as he followed along their line of reasoning, Beenay began to notice a discomforting convergence of the numbers. By the third page they had locked in with his own calculations, which he knew by heart by this time. And from there on, everything followed in an orderly way, step by step by step, to the same dismaying, shattering, inconceivable, totally unacceptable culminating result. Beenay looked up at the two students, aghast. "There's no possibility, is there, that you've slipped up somewhere? This string of integrations here, for example-they look pretty tricky-" "Sir!" Yimot cried, sounding shocked to the core. His face was bright red and his arms waved about as if moving of their own accord. |
| 1306 |
It had been a long time since he'd done any real science, he realized. He'd occupied himself almost entirely with administrative matters at the Observatory for the past eight or ten years. But the mind that had produced the Theory of Universal Gravitation might yet have a thought or two left in it, he told himself. -"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. |
| 1307 |
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. Folimun 66's chilly eyes betrayed no sign of surprise. "You may think of me as the voice of Mondior." "I understood it would be a personal audience." "It is. Anything said to me is shared with Mondior; anything that comes from me is the word of Mondior. This should be understood." "Nevertheless, I was given assurances that I'd be allowed to talk with Mondior. |
| 1308 |
That they were cranks and superstition-mongers was still obvious to Theremon. Plainly they didn't have a shred of anything like real evidence that some gigantic cataclysm was in store for the world soon. Whether they were mere self-deluding fools, though, or outright frauds looking to line their own pockets, was something that he could not yet clearly decide. It was all pretty confusing. There was an element of fanaticism, of puritanism, about their movement that was not at all to his liking. And yet, and yet ... this Folimun, this spokesman of theirs, had seemed an unexpectedly attractive person. He was intelligent, articulate-even, in his way, rational. The fact that he appeared to have a sense of humor of sorts was a surprise, and a point in his favor. Theremon had never heard of a maniac who was capable of even the slightest self-mockery- or a fanatic, either. -Unless it was all part of Folimun's publicrelations act: unless Folimun had been deliberately projecting the kind of persona that someone like Theremon would be likely to find appealing. Be careful, he told himself. Folimun wants to use you. But that was all right. 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. |
| 1309 |
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. That made him feel better too. She was a slender, pleasant-looking woman in her late forties, a fellow member of the Psychology Department, though her work was experimental, animals in mazes, no overlap at all with his. They had known each other ten or fifteen years. Sheerin would probably have asked her to marry him long ago if he had been the marrying type. |
| 1310 |
I'll have to call Beenay right away. What in the world can be going on over at the Observatory?" This was Siferra 89's third day back at Saro University, and it hadn't stopped raining yet. Qite a refreshing contrast to the bone-dry desert environment of the Sagikan Peninsula. She hadn't seen rain in so long that she found herself wonderstruck at the whole idea that water could fall from the skies. In Sagikan, every drop of water was enormously precious. You calculated its use with the greatest precision and recycled whatever was recyclable. Now here it was, pouring down out of the heavens as though from a gigantic reservoir that could never run dry. Siferra felt a powerful urge to strip her clothes off and sprint across the great green lawns of the campus, letting the rainfall flow down her body in an unending delicious stream to wash her clean at last of the infernal desert dust. That was all they'd need to see. That cool, aloof, unromantic professor of archaeology, Siferra 89, running naked in the rain! It would be worth doing if only to enjoy the sight of their astounded faces peering out of every window of the university as she went flying past. Not very likely, though, Siferra thought. Not my style at all. And there was too much to do, really. She hadn't wasted any time getting down to work. Most of the artifacts she had excavated at the Beklimot site were following along by cargo ship and wouldn't be here for many weeks. But there were charts to arrange, sketches to finish, Balik's stratigraphic photographs to analyze, the soil samples to prepare for the radiography lab, a million and one things to do. -And then, too, there were the Thombo tablets to discuss with Mudrin 505 of the Department of Paleography. The Thombo tablets! The find of finds, the premier discovery of the entire year and a half! Or so she felt. Of course, it all depended on whether anyone could make any sense out of them. At any rate, she would waste no time getting Mudrin working on them. At the least, the tablets were fascinating things; but they might be much more than that. There was the possibility that they might revolutionize the entire study of the prehistoric world. That was why she hadn't entrusted them to the freight shippers, but had carried them back from Sagikan in her own hands. A knock at the door. "Siferra? Siferra, are you there?" "Come on in, Balik." The broad-shouldered stratigrapher was soaking wet. "This foul abominable rain," he muttered, shaking himself off. |
| 1311 |
The middle screen carried both orbits plotted one over the other. In the past five days Athor had produced seven different postulates to account for the deviation between the theoretical orbit and the observed one, and he could call up any of those seven postulates on the middle screen with a single key-stroke. The trouble was that all seven of them were nonsense, and he knew it. Each one had a fatal flaw at its heart-an assumption that was there not because the calculations justified it, but only because the situation called for some such sort of special assumption in order to make the numbers turn out the right way. Nothing was provable, nothing was confirmable. It was as though in each case he had simply decreed, at some point in the chain of logic, that a fairy godmother would step in and adjust the gravitational interactions to account for the deviation. In truth that was precisely what Athor knew he needed to find. But it had to be a real fairy godmother. Postulate Eight, now- He began keying in Yimot's calculations. Several times his trembling fingers betrayed him and he made an error; but his mind was still sharp enough to tell him instantly that he had hit the wrong key, and he backed up and repaired the damage each time. Twice, as he worked, he nearly blacked out from the intensity of his effort. But he forced himself to go on. You are the only person in the world who can possibly do this, he told himself as he worked. And so you must. It sounded foolish to him, and madly egocentric, and perhaps a little insane. It probably wasn't even true. But at this stage in his exhaustion he couldn't allow himself to consider any other premise but that of his own indispensability. All the basic concepts of this project were held in his mind, and his mind alone. He had to push himself onward until he had closed the last link in the chain. Until There. The last of Yimot's numbers went into the computer. Athor hit the key that brought the two orbits up into view simultaneously on the middle screen, and hit the key that integrated the new number with the existing patterns. The brilliant red ellipse that was the original theoretical orbit wavered and shifted, and suddenly it was gone. So was the yellow one of the observed orbit. Now there was only a single line on the screen, a deep, intense orange, the two orbital simulations overlapping to the last decimal place. Athor gasped. For a long moment he studied the screen, and then he closed his eyes again and bowed his head against the edge of the desk. |
| 1312 |
The orange ellipse blazed like a ring of flame against his closed eyelids. He felt a curious sense of exultation mixed with dismay. He had his answer, now; he had a hypothesis that he was certain would stand up to the closest scrutiny. The Theory of Universal Gravitation was valid after all: the epochal chain of reasoning on which his fame was based would not be overthrown. But at the same time he knew now that the model of the solar system with which he was so familiar was in fact erroneous. The unknown factor for which they had sought, the invisible giant, the dragon in the sky, was real. Athor found that profoundly upsetting, even if it bad rescued his famous theory. He had thought for years that he fully understood the rhythm of the heavens, and now it was clear to him that his knowledge had been incomplete, that a great strangeness existed in the midst of the known universe, that things were not as he had always believed them to be. It was hard, at his age, to swallow that. After a time Athor looked up. Nothing had changed on the screen. He punched in a few interrogative equations, and still nothing changed. He saw one orbit, not two. Very well, he told himself. So the universe is not quite as you thought it was. You 'd better rearrange your beliefs, then. Because you certainly can't rearrange the universe. "Yimot!" he called. "Faro! Beenay! All of you!" Roly-poly little Faro was the first through the door, with beanpole Yimot just behind him, and then the rest of the Astronomy Department, Beenay, Thilanda, Klet, Simbron, and some others. They clustered just inside the entrance to his office. Athor saw by the expression of shock on their faces that he must be a frightful sight indeed, no doubt wild and haggard, his white hair standing out in all directions, his face pale, his whole appearance that of an old man right on the edge of collapse. It was important to defuse their fears right away. This was no moment for melodrama. Quietly he said, "Yes, I'm very tired and I know it. And I probably look like some demon out of the nether realms. But I've got something here that looks like it works." "The gravitational lens idea?" Beenay said. "The gravitational lens is a completely hopeless concept," Athor said frostily. "The same with the burned-out sun, the fold in space, the zone of negative mass, and the other fantastical notions we've been playing with all week. They're all very pretty ideas but they don't stand up to hard scrutiny. There is one that does, though." He watched their eyes widen. |
| 1313 |
But these charts'll give you an idea. -You aren't going to be bored, are you? All this stuff does interest you, doesn't it, Beenay?" "I find it completely fascinating. Do you think I'm so totally preoccupied with astronomy that I can't pay attention to any of the other disciplines? -Besides, archaeology and astronomy sometimes go hand in hand. We've learned more than a little about the movements of the suns through the heavens by studying the ancient astronomical monuments that you people have been digging up here and there around the world. Here, let me see." They were in Siferra's office. She had asked Beenay to come there to discuss a problem which she said had unexpectedly arisen in the course of her research. Which puzzled him, because he didn't immediately see how an astronomer could help an archaeologist in her work, despite what he had just said about archaeology and astronomy sometimes going hand in hand. But he was always glad to have a chance to visit with Siferra. They had met initially five years before, when they were working together on an interdisciplinary faculty committee that was planning the expansion of the university library. Though Siferra had been out of the country most of the time since then doing field work, she and Beenay did enjoy meeting for lunch now and then when she was there. He found her challenging, highly intelligent, and abrasive in a refreshing sort of way. What she saw in him he had no idea: perhaps just an intellectually stimulating young man who wasn't involved in the poisonous rivalries and feuds of her own field and had no apparent designs on her body. Siferra unfolded the charts, huge sheets of thin parchmentlike paper on which complex, elegant diagrams had been ruled with pencil, and she and Beenay bent forward to examine them at close range. He had been telling the truth when he said he was fascinated by archaeology. Ever since he'd been a boy, he had enjoyed reading the narratives of the great explorers of afitiquity, such men as Marpin, Shelbik, and of course Galdo 221. He found the remote past nearly as exciting to think about as the remote reaches of interstellar space. His contract-mate Raissta wasn't greatly pleased by his friendship with Siferra. She had rather testily implied, a couple of times, that it was Siferra herself who fascinated him, not her field of research. But Beenay thought Raissta's jealousy was absurd. Certainly Siferra was an attractive woman-it would be disingenuous to pretend otherwise-but she was relentlessly non-romantic and every man on campus knew it. |
| 1314 |
I'm speaking, naturally, of the Apostles of Flame. "But then, when Beenay came back to me a little while later with his new findings, the discovery of the periodicity of these eclipses of Dovim, I knew I had to reveal what I know. I have here photographs and charts of my excavation at the Hill of Thombo, near the Beklimot site on the Sagikan Peninsula. Beenay, you've already seen them, but if you'll be good enough to pass them to Dr. Athor and Dr. Sheerin-" Siferra waited until they had had a chance to glance at the material. Then she resumed speaking. "The charts will be easier to understand if you think of the Hill of Thombo as a giant layer cake of ancient settlements, each built upon its immediate predecessor-the youngest one at the top of the hill, naturally. That one is a city of what we call the Beklimot culture. Below it is one built by those same people, we think, in an earlier phase of their civilization, and then down and down and down, for a total of at least seven different periods of settlement, perhaps even more. "Each of those settlements, gentlemen, came to an end because it was destroyed by fire. You can see, I think, the dark boundaries between the layers. Those are the burn lines-charcoal remnants. My original guess, based purely on an intuitive sense of how long it might have taken for these cities to have arisen, flourished, decayed, and crumbled, is that each of these great fires happened something like two thousand years apart, with the most recent of them taking place about two thousand years ago, just prior to the unfolding of the Beklimot culture that we regard as the beginning of the historical period. "But charcoal is particularly well suited for radiocarbon dating, which gives us a fairly precise indication of the age of a site. Ever since my Thombo material reached Saro City, our departmental lab has been busy doing radiocarbon analysis, and now we have our figures. I can tell you what they are from memory. The youngest of the Thombo settlements was destroyed by fire two thousand and fifty years ago, with a statistical deviation of plus or minus twenty years. The charcoal from the settlement below that is forty-one hundred years old, with a deviation of plus or minus forty years. The third settlement from the top was destroyed by fire sixty-two hundred years ago, with a deviation of plus or minus eighty years. The fourth settlement down shows a radiocarbon age of eighty-three hundred years, plus or minus a hundred. The fifth-" "Great gods!" Sheerin cried. |
| 1315 |
Like it or not, Folimun's helping to make news these days. It's my job to find out what's going on in his mind." "Well," Beenay said hotly, "maybe Athor takes the same view. That was the point where they had let the discussion drop. It was beginning to change from a discussion into a quarrel, and neither one of them wanted that. Since Beenay really had no idea what kind of understanding, if any, Athor and Folimun might have worked out with each other, Theremon saw there wasn't much sense in belaboring him about it. But, Theremon realized afterward, that conversation with Beenay was exactly when his attitude toward Beenay and Sheerin and the rest of the Observatory people had begun to shift-when he had started to move from sympathetic and curious onlooker to jeering, scornful critic. Even though he himself had been instrumental in bringing it about, the meeting between the Observatory director and the Apostle now seemed to Theremon to be a sellout of the most disastrous kind, a naive capitulation on Athor's part to the forces of reaction and blind ignorance. Although he had never really been able to make himself believe the theories of the scientists-despite all the so-called "evidence" they had allowed him to inspect-Theremon had taken a generally neutral position in his column when the first news stories about the impending eclipse began to appear in the Chronicle. "A startling announcement," he had called it, "and very frightening-if true. As Athor 77 quite rightly says, any prolonged period of sudden worldwide Darkness would be a calamity such as the world has never known. But from the other side of the world comes a dissenting view this morning. 'With all due respect to the great Athor 77,' declares Heranian 1104, Astronomer Royal of the Imperial Observatory of Kanipilitiniuk, 'there is still no firm evidence that the so-called Kalgash Two satellite exists at all, let alone that it is capable of causing such an eclipse as the Saro group predicts. We must bear in mind that suns-even a small sun such as Dovim-are immensely larger than any wandering space satellite could possibly be, and it strikes us as highly unlikely that such a satellite would be able to enter precisely the position in the heavens necessary to intercept all solar illumination that might reach the surface of our world-'" But then came Mondior 71's speech of Umilithar thirteenth, in which the High Apostle proudly declared that the world's greatest man of science had given his support to the word of the Book of Revelations. |
| 1316 |
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. |
| 1317 |
He took Theremon by the arm and quietly he said, "No sense provoking people now, friend. Let's go somewhere where we won't bother people, and we can talk." "Good idea," Theremon said. But he made no motion toward leaving the room. A game of stochastic chess had begun around the table, and Theremon stood watching for a moment or two in obvious incomprehension as moves were made rapidly and in silence. He seemed amazed by the ability of the players to concentrate on a game, when they all must believe that the end of the world was just hours away. "Come," Sheerin said again. "Yes. Yes," said Theremon. He and Sheerin went out into the hail, followed, an instant later, by Beenay. What an infuriating man, Siferra thought. She stared at the bright orb of Dovim, burning fiercely in the sky. Had the sky grown even darker in the past few minutes? No, no, she told herself, that was impossible. Dovim was still there. It was just imagination. The sky looked strange, now that Dovim was the only sun aloft. She had never seen it like that before, such a deep purple hue. But it was far from dark out there: somber, yes, but there was light enough, and everything was still easily visible outside despite the relative dimness of the one small sun. She thought about her lost tablets again. Then she banished them from her mind. The chess players had the right idea, she told herself. Sit down and relax. If you can. Sheerin led the way to the next room. There were softer chairs in there. And thick red curtains on the windows, and a maroon carpet on the floor. With the strange brick-toned light of Dovim pouring in, the general effect was one of dried blood everywhere. He had been surprised to see Theremon at the Observatory this evening, after the horrendous columns he had written, after all he had done to pour cold water on Athor's campaign for national preparedness. In recent weeks Athor had gone almost berserk with rage every time Theremon's name was mentioned; yet somehow he had relented and permitted him to be here for the eclipse. That was odd and a little troublesome. It might mean that the stern fabric of the old astronomer's personality had begun to break down-that not only his anger but also his whole inner structure of character was giving way in the face of the oncoming catastrophe. For that matter Sheerin was more than slightly surprised to find himself at the Observatory too. It had been a last-minute decision, a pure impulse of the kind he rarely experienced. Liliath had been horrified. |
| 1318 |
But Athor looked hesitant too. Beenay, standing next to Theremon, murmured, "What do you think? Is he bluffing?" But the newspaperman didn't reply. He had gone pale to the lips. "Look at that!" The finger he pointed toward the window was shaking, and his voice was dry and cracked. There was a simultaneous gasp as every eye followed the pointing finger and, for one moment, stared frozenly. Dovim was chipped on one side! The tiny bit of encroaching blackness was perhaps the width of a fingernail, but to the staring watchers it magnified itself into the crack of doom. For Theremon the sight of that small arc of darkness struck with terrible force. He winced and put his hand to his forehead and turned away from the window. He was shaken to the roots of his soul by that little chip in Dovim's side. Theremon the skeptic-Theremon the mocker-Theremon the tough-minded analyst of other people's folly- Gods! How wrong I was! As he turned, his eyes met Siferra's. She was at the other side of the room, looking at him. There was contempt in her eyes- or was it pity? He forced himself to meet her gaze and shook his head sadly, as though to tell her with all the humility there was in him, I fouled things up and I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It seemed to him that she smiled. Maybe she had understood what he was trying to say. Then the room dissolved in shrieking confusion for a moment, as everyone began to rush frenziedly around; and a moment after that, the confusion gave way to an orderly scurry of activity as the astronomers leaped to their assigned tasks, some running upstairs to the Observatory dome to watch the eclipse through the telescopes, some going to the computers, some using hand-held instruments to record the changes in Dovim's disk. At this crucial moment there was no time for emotion. They were merely scientists with work to do. Theremon, alone in the midst of it all, looked about for Beenay and found him, finally, sitting at a keyboard, madly working out some sort of problem. Of Athor there was no sign at all. Sheerin appeared at Theremon's side and said prosaically, "First contact must have been made five or ten minutes ago. A little early, but I suppose there were plenty of uncertainties involved in the calculations despite all the effort that went into them." He smiled. -"You ought to get away from that window, man." "Why is that?" said Theremon, who had swung around again to stare at Dovim. "Athor is furious," the psychologist whispered. "He missed first contact on account of this fuss with Folimun. |
| 1319 |
The odor of smoke here was just as cloying as it had been upstairs. Theremon found himself bothered even by the little chuckling sounds that the torches made as they burned, and by the soft pad of Sheerin's footsteps as the heavyset psychologist circled round and round the table in the middle of the room. It was getting harder to see, torches or no. So now it begins, Theremon thought. The time of total Darkness-and the coming of the Stars. For an instant he thought it might be wisest to look for some cozy closet to lock himself into until it was all over. Stay out of the way, avoid the sight of the Stars, hunker down and wait for things to become normal again. But a moment's contemplation told him what a bad idea that was. A closet-any sort of enclosed place-would be dark too. Instead of being a safe snug harbor, it might become a chamber of terrors far more frightening than the rooms of the Observatory. And then too, if something big was going to happen, something that would reshape the history of the world, Theremon didn't want to be tucked away with his head under his arm while it was going on. That would be cowardly and foolish; and it might be something he would regret all the rest of his life. He had never been the sort of man to hide from danger, if he thought there might be a story in it. Besides, he was just self-confident enough to believe that he would be able to withstand whatever was about to occur-and there was just enough skepticism left in him so that at least part of him wondered whether anything significant was going to happen at all. He stood still, listening to Siferra's occasional indrawn breaths, the quick little respirations of someone trying to retain composure in a world that was all too swiftly retreating into the shadow. Then came another sound, a new one, a vague, unorganized impression of sound that might well have gone unnoticed but for the dead silence that prevailed in the room and for Theremon's unnatural focus of attention as the moment of totality grew near. The newspaperman stood tensely listening, holding his breath. After a moment he carefully moved toward the window and peered out. The silence ripped to fragments at his startled shout: "Sheerin!" There was an uproar in the room. They were all looking at him, pointing, questioning. The psychologist was at his side in a moment. Siferra followed. Even Beenay, crouched in front of his computers, swung around to look. Outside, Dovim was a mere smoldering splinter, taking one last desperate look at Kalgash. |
| 1320 |
There was the sound of breaking glass. Beenay will kill me, Theremon thought. He worships all that stuff. But this was no moment for being delicate. He slammed one case after another up against the door, and in a few minutes had built a barricade that might, he hoped, serve to hold back the mob if it succeeded in breaking through the gate. Somewhere, dimly, far off, he could hear the battering of bare fists against the door. Screams-yells- It was all like a ghastly dream. The mob had set out from Saro City driven by the hunger for salvation, the salvation held forth by the Apostles of Flame, which could be attained now, they had been told, only by the destruction of the Observatory. But as the moment of Darkness drew near a maddening fear had all but stripped their minds of the ability to function. There was no time to think of ground cars, or of weapons, or of leadership, or even of organization. They had rushed to the Observatory on foot, and they were assaulting it with bare hands. And now that they were there, the last flash of Dovim, the last ruby-red drop of sunlight, flickered feebly over a humanity that had nothing left but stark, universal fear. Theremon groaned. "Let's get back upstairs!" There was no sign of anyone now in the room where they had been gathered. They had all gone to the topmost floor, into the Observatory dome itself. As he came rushing in, Theremon was struck by an eerie calmness that seemed to prevail in there. It was like a tableau. Yimot was seated in the little lean-back seat at the control panel of the gigantic solarscope as if this were just an ordinary evening of astronomical research. The rest were clustered about the smaller telescopes, and Beenay was giving instructions in a strained, ragged voice. "Get it straight, all of you. It's vital to snap Dovim just before totality and change the plate. Here, you-you-one of you to each camera. We need all the redundancy we can get. You all know about-about times of exposure-" There was a breathless murmur of agreement. Beenay passed a hand over his eyes. "Are the torches still burning? Never mind, I see them!" He was leaning hard against the back of a chair. "Now remember, don't-don't try to look for fancy shots. When the Stars appear, don't waste time trying to get t-two of them in the scope field at a time. One is enough. And ... and if you feel yourself going, get away from the camera." At the door, Sheerin whispered to Theremon, "Take me to Athor. I don't see him." The newspaperman did not answer immediately. |
| 1321 |
Folimun had gone limp in his loosening grasp. Theremon peered into the Apostle's eyes and saw the blankness of them, staring upward, mirroring the feeble yellow of the torches. He saw the bubble of froth upon Folimun's lips and heard the low animal whimper in Folimun's throat. With the slow fascination of fear, he lifted himself on one arm and turned his eyes toward the bloodcurdling blackness of the sky. Through it shone the Stars! Not the one or two dozen of Beenay's pitiful theory. 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. |
| 1322 |
The gigantic blazing thing was still there in the sky. It hadn't moved an inch. It wasn't going to fall on him. He began to shiver despite the heat. The dry, choking smell of smoke came to him. Something was burning, not very far away. It was the sky, he thought. The sky was burning. The golden thing is setting fire to the world. No. No. There was another reason for the smoke. He would remember it in a moment, if only he could clear the haze out of his mind. The golden thing hadn't caused the fires. It hadn't even been here when the fires started. It was those other things, those cold glittering white things that filled the sky from end to end-they had done it, they had sent the Flames- What were they called? The Stars. Yes, he thought. The Stars. And he began to remember, just a little, and he shivered again, a deep convulsive quiver. He remembered how it had been when the Stars came out, and his brain had turned to a marble and his lungs refused to pump air and his soul had screamed in the deepest of horror. But the Stars were gone now. That bright golden thing was in the sky instead. The bright golden thing? Onos. That was its name. Onos, the sun. The main sun. One of-one of the six suns. Yes. Theremon smiled. Things were beginning to come back to him now. Onos belonged in the sky. The Stars did not. The sun, the kindly sun, good warm Onos. And Onos had returned. Therefore all was well with the world, even if some of the world seemed to be on fire. Six suns? Then where were the other five? He even remembered their names. Dovim, Trey, Patru, Tano, Sitha. And Onos made six. He saw Onos, all right-it was right above him, it seemed to fill half the sky. What about the rest? He stood up, a little shakily, still half afraid of the hot golden thing overhead, wondering now if perhaps he stood up too far he would touch it and be burned by it. No, no, that didn't make any sense. Onos was good, Onos was kind. He smiled. Looked around. Any more suns up there? There was one. Very far off, very small. Not frightening, this one-the way the Stars had been, the way this fiery hot globe overhead was. Just a cheerful white dot in the sky, nothing more. Small enough to put in his pocket, almost, if he could only reach it. Trey, he thought. That one is Trey. So its sister Patru ought to be somewhere nearby- Yes. Yes, that's it. Down there, in the corner of the sky, just to the left of Trey. Unless that one's Trey, and the other one is Patru. Well, he told himself, the names don't matter. |
| 1323 |
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. |
| 1324 |
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. "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. |
| 1325 |
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. 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. |
| 1326 |
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. 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. |
| 1327 |
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. Gone was his naive plan to observe the Darkness phenomena like the aloof, dispassionate scientist he pretended to be. Let someone else observe the Darkness phenomena. He was going to hide. And so, somehow, he had made his way to the basement level, to that cheery little storeroom with its cheery little godlight casting a feeble but very comforting glow. And bolted the door, and waited it out. He had even slept, a little. And now it was morning. Or perhaps afternoon, for all he knew. One thing was certain: the terrible night was over, and everything was calm, at least in the vicinity of the Observatory. Sheerin tiptoed into the hall, paused, listened, started warily up the stairs. Silence everywhere. Puddles of dirty water, from the sprinklers. The foul reek of old smoke. He halted on the stairway and thoughtfully removed a firehatchet from a bracket on the wall. He doubted very much that he could ever bring himself to use a hatchet on another living thing; but it might be a useful thing to be carrying, if conditions outside were as anarchic as he expected to find them. Up to the ground floor, now. Sheerin pulled the basement door open-the same door that he had slammed behind him in his frenzied downward flight the evening before-and looked out. |
| 1328 |
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. She could not think. She could not think. She could not think. All she could do was run this way and that, shoving leering gibbering fools aside, shouldering her way through clotted gangs of ragged strangers, searching desperately and ineffectually and futilely for one of the main exits. And so it went, for hour after hour, as though she were caught in a dream that would not end. Now, at last, she was outside. She didn't know how she had gotten there. Suddenly there had been a door in front of her, at the end of a corridor that she was sure she had traversed a thousand times before. She pushed and it yielded and a cool blast of fresh air struck her, and she staggered through. The city was burning. She saw the flames far away, a bright furious red stain against the dark background of sky. |
| 1329 |
Yes. Yes. And what archaeologists did was dig for ancient things. She had been digging in a place far away. Sagimot? Beklikan? Something like that. And had found tablets, prehistoric texts. 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. |
| 1330 |
He let go of her and lurched a few steps backward. His eyes were wide with surprise and pain. His lip was split where he had bitten into it, and blood was pouring down on one side. "Hey, you bitch! What did you want to hit me for?" "You touched me." "Damn right I touched you! And about time, too." He rubbed his jaw. "Listen, Siferra, put that stick down and stop looking at me that way. I'm your friend. Your ally. The world has turned into a jungle now, and there's just the two of us. We need each other. It isn't safe trying to go it alone now. You can't afford to risk it." Again he came toward her, hands upraised, seeking her. She hit him again. This time she brought the club around and smashed it against the side of his cheek, connecting with bone. There was an audible sharp sound of impact, and Balik jerked to one side under the force of it. With his head turned halfway away from her, he looked at her in utter astonishment and staggered back. But he was still standing. She hit him a third time, above his ear, swinging the club with all her strength in a long arc. As he fell, Siferra clubbed him once more, in the same place, and felt everything give beneath the blow. His eyes closed and he made a strange soft sound, like an inflated balloon releasing its air, and sank down in the corner against the wall, with his head going one way and his shoulders the other. "Don't ever touch me like that again," Siferra said, prodding him with the tip of the club. Balik didn't reply. He didn't move, either. Balik ceased to concern her. Now for the tablets, she thought, feeling wonderfully calm. No. The tablets were gone, Balik had said. Stolen. And she remembered now: they really were. They had disappeared just before the eclipse. All right, the charts then. All those fine drawings they had made of the Hill of Thombo. The stone walls, the ashes at the foundation lines. Those ancient fires, just like the fire that was ravaging Saro City at this very moment. Where were they? Oh. Here. In the chart cabinet, where they belonged. She reached in, grabbed a sheaf of the parchment-like papers, rolled them, tucked them under her arm. Now she remembered the fallen man, and glanced at him. But Balik still hadn't moved. He didn't look as though he was going to, either. Out the office door, down the stairs. Mudrin remained where he had been before, sprawled out motionless and stiff on the landing. Siferra ran around him and continued to the ground floor. Outside, the morning was well along. |
| 1331 |
Onos was climbing steadily and the Stars were pale now against its brightness. The air seemed fresher and cleaner, though the odor of smoke was thick on the breeze. Down by the Mathematics building she saw a band of men smashing windows. They caught sight of her a moment later and shouted to her, raucous, incoherent words. A couple of them began to run toward her. Her breast ached where Balik had squeezed it. She didn't want any more hands touching her now. Turning, Siferra darted behind the Archaeology building, pushed her way through the bushes on the far side of the pathway in back, ran diagonally across a lawn, and found herself in front of a blocky gray building that she recognized as Botany. 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. |
| 1332 |
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. 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. |
| 1333 |
Days. A feverish daze. Then, on the morning of the third day, remembering finally who he was, what had happened. Thinking of Raissta, his contract-mate. Remembering that he had promised to go to her at the Sanctuary when his work at the Observatory was done. The Sanctuary-now where was that? Beenay's mind had healed enough for him to recall that the place of refuge that the university people had established for themselves was midway between the campus and Saro City, in an open, rural area of rolling plains and grassy meadows. The Physics Department's old particle accelerator was there, a vast underground chamber, abandoned a few years back when they had built the new research center at Saro Heights. It hadn't been difficult to equip the echoing concrete rooms for short-term occupation by several hundred people, and, since the accelerator site had always been sealed off from easy access for security reasons, it was no problem to make the site safe against any sort of invasion by townsfolk who might be driven insane during the eclipse. 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. |
| 1334 |
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. The outer gate, a high metal-mesh screen, was standing open when he reached it. That was an unexpected and ominous sight. Had the mob come roaring in here too? But there was no sign of mob destruction. Everything was as it should be, except that the gate was open. He went on in, puzzled, and made his way down the unpaved road. The inner gate, at least, was closed. "I am Beenay 25," he said to it, and gave his university identification-code number. |
| 1335 |
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. |
| 1336 |
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. 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. |
| 1337 |
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. 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. |
| 1338 |
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. |
| 1339 |
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. 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. |
| 1340 |
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. 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. |
| 1341 |
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. |
| 1342 |
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! She would go to the Sanctuary. Somehow there would be a way to get them to take her in. It was a measure of the extent to which the Stars had disrupted her mind, she told herself, that it had taken her as long as this to remember that the Sanctuary was there. Too bad, she thought, that the idea hadn't occurred to her earlier. She realized now that she had spent the last few days traveling in precisely the wrong direction. |
| 1343 |
And that patch of slightly brighter sky off to the southwest very likely indicated the presence of one of the pairs of twin suns, but whether they were Sitha and Tano or Patru and Trey he had no way of discerning. He was very tired. It was already abundantly clear to him that his notion of making his way alone and on foot across the hundreds of miles between Saro City and Amgando National Park was an absurd fantasy. Damn Theremon! Together, at least, they might have stood a chance. But the newspaperman had been unshakable in his confidence that he would somehow find Siferra in the forest. Talk about fantasy! Talk about absurdity! Sheerin stared ahead, peering through the fog. He needed a place to rest for a while. He needed to find something fit to eat, and perhaps a change of clothing, or at least a way of bathing himself. He had never been this filthy in his life. Or as hungry. Or as weary. Or as despondent. Through the whole long episode of the coming of the Darkness, from the first moment that he had heard from Beenay and Athor that such a thing was likely, Sheerin had bounced around from one end of the psychological spectrum to the other, from pessimism to optimism and back again, from hope to despair to hope. 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. |
| 1344 |
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. 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. |
| 1345 |
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! |
| 1346 |
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. 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. |
| 1347 |
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. They all had an acrid, repellent odor. Their eyes had that intense, rigid, off-center look that he had seen a thousand times in recent days. You didn't need any clinical experience to know that those were the eyes of the insane. Cutting through the stink of the squatters' bodies, though, was another odor, a much more pleasing one, one that almost drove Sheerin out of his mind too: the aroma of cooking food. They were preparing a meal in the next room. Soup? Stew? Something was boiling in there. He swayed, dizzied by his own hunger and the sudden hope of soothing it at last. Mildly he said, "I didn't know the house was occupied. But I hope you'll let me stay with you this evening, and then I'll be moving along." "You from the Patrol?" a big, heavily bearded man asked suspiciously. |
| 1348 |
"He's going to bring them again, Tasibar! He'll make it go dark on us! Stop him! Stop him!" Suddenly they were clustering all about him, closing in, reaching for him. Sheerin, standing in their midst, held out his hands helplessly, apologetically, toward them and did not try to move. He regretted having insulted them just now, not because it had endangered his life-they probably hadn't even paid attention to the names he was calling them-but because he knew that the way they were was not their fault. If anything it was his fault, for not having tried harder to help them protect themselves against what he knew was coming. Those articles of Theremon's-if only he had spoken with the newspaperman, if only he had urged him in time to change his mocking tack- Yes, he regretted that now. He regretted all sorts of things, things both done and undone. But it was much too late. Someone punched him. He gasped in surprise and pain. "Liliath-" he managed to cry. Then they swarmed all over him. There were four suns in the sky: Onos, Dovim, Patru, Trey. Four-sun days were supposed to be lucky ones, Theremon remembered. And certainly this one was. Meat! Actual meat at last! What a glorious sight! It was food that he had obtained strictly by accident. But that was all right. The novel charms of outdoor life had been wearing thinner and thinner for him, the hungrier he got. By now he'd gladly take his meat any way it came, thank you very much. The forest was full of all sorts of wild animals, most of them small, very few of them dangerous, and all of them impossible to catch-at least with your bare hands. And Theremon knew nothing about making traps, nor did he have anything out of which he might have fashioned one. Those children's tales about people lost in the woods who immediately set about adapting to life in the open, and turn instantly into capable hunters and builders of dwelling-places, were just that-fables. Theremon regarded himself as a reasonably competent man, as city-dwellers went; but he knew that he had no more chance of hunting down any of the forest animals than he did of making the municipal power generators start to work again. And as for building a dwelling-place, the best he had been able to do was throw together a simple lean-to of branches and twigs, which at least had kept most of the rain away from him on the one stormy day. But now the weather was warm and lovely again, and he had actual meat for dinner. The only problem now was cooking it. He was damned if he was going to eat it raw. |
| 1349 |
Ironic that in a city that had just undergone near-total destruction by fire he should be pondering how he was going to go about cooking some meat. But most of the worst fires had burned themselves out by now, and the rain had taken care of the rest. And though for a while in the first few days after the catastrophe it had seemed as though new fires were still being lit, that didn't seem to be happening any more. I'll figure something out, Theremon thought. Rub two sticks together and get a spark? Strike metal against stone and set a scrap of cloth ablaze? Some boys on the far side of a lake near the place where he was camped had obligingly killed the animal for him. Of course, they hadn't known they were doing him any favor- most likely they had been planning to eat it themselves, unless they were so unhinged that they were simply chasing the creature for the sake of sport. Somehow he doubted that. They had been pretty purposeful about it, with a single-mindedness that only hunger can inspire. The beast was a graben-one of those ugly long-nosed bluish-furred things with slithery hairless tails that sometimes could be seen poking around suburban garbage cans after Onos had set. Well, beauty wasn't a requirement just now. The boys had somehow flushed it out of its daytime hiding place and had driven the poor stupid thing into a little dead-end box of a canyon. As Theremon watched from the other side of the lake, disgusted and envious at the same time, they chased it tirelessly up and down, pelting it with rocks. For a dumb scavenger it was remarkably agile, scooting swiftly this way and that in its desperation to elude its attackers. But finally a lucky shot caromed off its head and killed it instantly. He had assumed that they would devour it on the spot. But at that moment a shaggy, shambling figure came into view above them, standing for a moment at the rim of the little canyon, then beginning to climb down toward the lake. "Run! It's Garpik the Slasher!" one of the boys yelled. "Garpik! Garpik!" In an instant the boys scattered, leaving the dead graben behind. Theremon, still watching, had slipped back into the shadows on his side of the lake. He also knew this Garpik, though not by name: one of the most dreaded of the forest-dwellers, a squat, almost ape-like man who wore nothing but a belt through which an assortment of knives was thrust. 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. |
| 1350 |
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. Two rocks, though-was it possible to strike a spark by banging one against the other? He doubted that too. But he might as well try it, he thought. He had no other ideas. There was a wide flat stone lying nearby, and after a little searching he found a smaller triangular one that could fit conveniently in the palm of his hand. He knelt beside his little fireplace and began methodically to hit the flat one with the pointed one. Nothing in particular happened. A hopeless feeling began to grow in him. Here I am, he thought, a grown man who can read and write, who can drive a car, who can even operate a computer, more or less. I can turn out a newspaper column in two hours that everybody in Saro City will want to read, and I can do it day in, day out, for twenty years. But I can't start a fire in the wilderness. On the other hand, he thought, I will not eat this graben raw unless I absolutely have to. Will not. Will not. Not. Not. Not! In fury he struck the stones together, again, again, again. Spark, damn you! Light! Burn! Cook this ridiculous pathetic animal for me! Again. Again. Again. "What are you doing there, mister?" an unfriendly voice asked suddenly from a point just behind his right shoulder. Theremon looked up, startled, dismayed. The first rule of survival in this forest was that you must never let yourself get so involved in anything that you failed to notice strangers sneaking up on you. There were five of them. Men, about his own age. They looked as ragged as anyone else living in the forest. They didn't seem especially crazy, as people went these days: no glassy eyes, no drooling mouths, only an expression that was grim and weary and determined. They didn't appear to be carrying any weapons other than clubs, but their attitude was distinctly hostile. |
| 1351 |
Someone hit him, hard, in the midsection. He gasped and gagged and doubled over, clutching his belly with his arms, and someone else hit him from behind, a blow in the small of the back that nearly sent him tumbling forward on his face. But this time he jabbed backward sharply with his elbow, felt a satisfying contact, heard a grunt of pain. He had been in fights before, but not for a long, long time. And never one against five. But there was no running away from this one now. What he had to do, he told himself, was stay on his feet and keep on backpedaling until he was up against the rock wall, where at least they couldn't come at him from the rear. And then just try to hold them off, kicking and punching and if necessary biting and roaring, until they decided to let him be. A voice somewhere deep within him said, They 're completely nuts. They 're perfectly likely to keep this up until they beat you to death. Nothing he could do about that now, though. Except try to hold them off. He kept his head down and punched as hard as he could, while steadily pushing onward toward the wall. They crowded around him, battering him from all sides. But he stayed on his feet. Their numerical advantage wasn't as overwhelming as he had expected. In these close quarters, the five of them were unable all to get at him at once, and Theremon was able to play the confusion to his own benefit, striking out in any direction and moving as quickly as he could while they lumbered around trying to avoid hitting each other. Even so, he knew he couldn't take much more. His lip was cut and one eye was starting to swell, and he was getting short of breath. One more good punch could send him down. He held one arm in front of his face and struck with the other, while continuing to back toward the shelter of the rock wall. He kicked someone. There was a howl and a curse. Someone else kicked back. Theremon took it on his thigh and swung around, hissing in pain. He swayed. He struggled desperately for air. It was hard to see, hard to tell what was going on. They were all around him now, fists flailing at him from all sides. He wasn't going to reach the wall. He wasn't going to stay on his feet much longer. He was going to fall, and they were going to trample him, and he was going to die- Going-to — die- Then he became aware of confusion within the confusion: the shouts of different voices, new people mingling in the melee, a host of figures everywhere. Fine, he thought. Another bunch of crazies joining the fun. |
| 1352 |
All greatness gone. Everything in ruins, everything-as if the ocean had risen, she thought, and swept all our achievements into oblivion. Siferra was no stranger to ruins. She had spent her whole professional life digging in them. But the ruins she had excavated were ancient ones, time-mellowed and mysterious and romantic. What she saw here now was all to immediate, all too painful to behold, and there was nothing at all romantic about it. She had been able readily enough to come to terms with the downfall of the lost civilizations of the past: it carried little emotional charge for her. But now it was her own epoch that had been swept into the discard-bin of history, and that was hard to bear. Why had it happened? she asked herself. Why? Why? Why? Were we so evil? Had we strayed so far from the path of the gods that we needed to be punished this way? No. No! There are no gods; there was no punishment. Of that much, Siferra was still certain. She had no doubt that this was simply the working of blind fate, brought about by the impersonal movements of inanimate and uncaring worlds and suns, drawing together every two thousand years in dispassionate coincidence. That was all. An accident. An accident that Kalgash had been forced to endure over and over again during its history. From time to time the Stars would appear in all their frightful majesty; and in a desperate terror-kindled agony, man would unknowingly turn his hand against his own works. Driven mad by the Darkness; driven mad by the ferocious light of the Stars. It was an unending cycle. The ashes of Thombo had told the whole tale. And now it was Thombo all over again. Just as Theremon had said: This place is archaeology now. Exactly. The world they had known was gone. But we are still here, she thought. What shall we do? What shall we do? The only comfort she could find amidst the bleakness was the memory of that first evening with Theremon, in the Sanctuary: so sudden, so unexpected, so wonderful. She kept going back to it in her mind, over and over. His oddly shy smile as he asked her to stay with him-no sly seductive trick, that! And the look in his eyes. And the feel of his hands against her skin- his embrace, his breath mingling with hers- How long it had been since she had been with a man! She had almost forgotten what it was like-almost. And always, those other times, there had been the uneasy sense of making a mistake, of taking a false path, of committing herself to a journey she should not be taking. |
| 1353 |
"Even though they're trying to kill you, Siferra? Even though they think it's fun to send a couple of shots whistling past your ears?" She made no reply. She had thought she was beginning to understand the way things worked in the monstrous new world that had come into being on the evening of the eclipse; but she realized that she understood nothing, nothing at all. Theremon had crept out toward the street a short way once again. He was aiming his needler. The incandescent bolt of light struck the white facade of the house down the street. Instantly the wood began to turn black. Little flamelets sprang up. He drew a line of fire across the front of the building, paused a moment, fired again, tracing a second line across the first. "Give me your gun," he said. "Mine's overheating." She passed him the weapon. He adjusted it and fired a third time. An entire section of the house's front wall was ablaze now. Theremon was cutting through it, aiming his beam toward the interior of the building. Not very long ago, Siferra thought, that white wooden house had belonged to someone. People had lived there, a family, proud of their house, their neighborhood-tending their lawn, watering their plants, playing with their pets, giving dinner parties for their friends, sitting on the patio sipping drinks and watching the suns move through the evening sky. Now none of that meant anything. Now Theremon was lying on his belly in an alleyway strewn with ashes and rubble across the way, efficiently and systematically setting that house on fire. Because that was the only way that he and she could get safely out of this street and continue on their way to Amgando Park. A nightmare world, yes. A column of smoke was rising within the house now. The whole left-hand side of its front wall was on fire. And people were leaping from the second-story windows. Three, four, five of them, choking, gasping. Two women, three men. They dropped down on the lawn and lay there a moment, as though dazed. Their clothes were ragged and dirty, their hair was unkempt. Crazies. They had been something else, before Nightfall, but now they were simply part of that vast horde of wild-eyed, uncouth-looking drifters whose minds had been unhinged, perhaps forever, by the sudden astounding blast of stunning light that the Stars had hurled against their unprepared senses. "Stand up!" Theremon called to them. "Hands in the air! Now! Come on, get 'em up!" He stepped out into full view, holding both of the needle-guns. |
| 1354 |
Just like that, convenient as could be. I didn't stop to think that the road would be totally blocked -that even if we were lucky enough to find a car we could use, we wouldn't be able to drive so much as fifty feet in it-" "It'll be hard enough just to walk along the road, in the shape it's in." "Yes. But we'll have to." Grimly, they set out on their long journey south. By the warm Onos-light of early afternoon they picked their way through the carnage of the highway, scrambling over the twisted and battered wreckage of the cars, trying hard to ignore the charred and mutilated bodies, the dried pools of blood, the reek of death, the total horror of it all. Theremon felt himself growing desensitized to it almost at once. Perhaps that was an even greater horror. But after a short while he simply stopped noticing the gore, the staring eyes of the corpses, the vastness of the disaster that had taken place here. The task of clambering over mountainous heaps of shattered cars and squeezing himself past dangerous jutting masses of jagged metal was so exacting that it required all his concentration, and he quickly ceased to pay attention to the victims of the debacle. He already knew there was no point in searching for survivors. Anyone who had been trapped here this many days would surely have died of exposure by now. Siferra too seemed to have quickly adapted to the nightmare scene that was the Great Southern Highway. Scarcely saying a word, she picked her way through the obstacles alongside him, now pausing to point to an opening in the tangle of debris, now dropping to her hands and knees to crawl under some overhang of crumpled metal. They were virtually the only living people using the road. Now and then they caught sight of someone moving southward on foot far ahead of them, or even coming up out of the south heading toward the Saro City end of the road, but there were never any encounters. The other wayfarers would hastily duck down out of sight and lose themselves in the wreckage, or, if they were up ahead, would begin frantically to scramble forward at a pace that spoke of terrible fear, disappearing quickly in the distance. What are they afraid of? Theremon wondered. That we'll attack them. Is everyone's hand lifted against everyone else, now? Once, an hour or so from their starting point, they saw a bedraggled-looking man going from car to car, reaching in to fumble in the pockets of the dead, despoiling the bodies of their possessions. There was a great sack of loot on his back, so heavy that he was staggering under the weight of it. |
| 1355 |
Two huge transport trucks seemed to be in the middle of it, interlocked face to face like two warring beasts of the jungle; and it appeared that dozens of passenger cars had come barreling into them, flipping up on end, falling back on those who followed them, building a gigantic barrier that reached from one side of the road to the other and outward over the railings at the road's margins. Crumpled doors and fenders, sharp as blades, stuck out everywhere, and acres of broken glass set up a sinister tinkling as the wind played over it. "Here," Theremon called. "I think I see a way-up through this opening, and then over the left-hand truck-no, no, that won't work, we'll have to go under-" Siferra came up alongside him. He showed her the problem -a cluster of up-ended cars waiting for them on the far side, like a field of upturned knives-and she nodded. They went underneath instead, a slow, dirty, painful crawl through shards of glass and clotted pools of fuel. Midway through they paused to rest before continuing through to the far side of the pileup. Theremon was the first to emerge. "Gods!" he muttered, staring in bewilderment at the scene that lay before him. "What now?" The road was open for perhaps fifty feet on the far side of the great mass of wreckage. Beyond the clear space a second roadblock lay across the highway from one side to the other. This one, though, had been deliberately constructed-a heap of car doors and wheels neatly piled on the roadbed to a height of eight or nine feet. In front of the barricade Theremon saw some two dozen people, who had set up a campsite right on the highway. He had been so intent on getting through the tangle of wreckage that he had paid no attention to anything else, and so he had not heard the sounds from the other side. Siferra came crawling out beside him. He heard her gasp of surprise and shock. "Keep your hand on your needler," Theremon said quietly to her. "But don't pull it out and don't even think of trying to use it. There are too many of them." A few of the strangers were sauntering up the road toward them now, six or seven brawny-looking men. Theremon, motionless, watched them come. He knew that there was no turning back from this encounter-no hope of escape through that maze of knife-sharp wreckage through which they had just wriggled. He and Siferra were trapped in this clearing between the two roadblocks. All they could do was wait to see what happened next, and hope that these people were reasonably sane. |
| 1356 |
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. 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. |
| 1357 |
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. |
| 1358 |
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. In the murky grayness Siferra thought she could see a couple of figures on the far side of the main bonfire, though the smoke rising from the fire made it difficult to be sure. The thing to do, she thought, was to slip into the deep shadows behind one of the trucks and toss a rock against a tree some distance away. The sentries would probably investigate; and if they fanned out separately, she could slip up behind one of them, jab the needler into his back, warn him to keep quiet, make him strip off his robe- No, she thought. Don't warn him of anything. Just shoot him, quickly, and take his robe, before he can call out an alarm. These are Apostles, after all. Fanatics. Her own newfound cold-bloodedness amazed her. Onward. Onward. She was almost at the nearest truck now. Into the darkness on the side opposite the campfire. Where's a rock? Here. Here, this is a good one. Shift the needler to the left hand for a moment. Now, toss the rock at that big tree over there- She raised her arm to make the throw. And in that moment she felt a hand seize her left wrist from behind and a powerful arm clamp across her throat. Caught! Shock and outrage and a jolt of maddening frustration went coursing through her. Furiously Siferra lashed out with her foot, kicking backward with all her strength, and connecting. She heard a grunt of pain. Not enough to break the man's strong grip, though. Twisting halfway around, she kicked again, and attempted at the same time to pass the needle-gun from her left hand to her right. But her assailant pulled her left arm upward in a short, sharp, agonizing gesture that numbed her and sent the needler spilling out of her hand. The other arm, the one that was pressing against her throat, tightened to choking intensity. She coughed and gasped. Darkness! Of all the stupidity, to let someone sneak up on her while she was sneaking up on them! |
| 1359 |
To the surgeon he said, "The thing that I need to know, Doctor, is how soon the operation can be carried out." The surgeon hesitated a perceptible moment. Then he said softly, with that certain inalienable note of respect that a robot always used when speaking to a human being, "I am not convinced, sir, that I fully understand how such an operation could be performed, let alone why it should be considered desirable. And of course I still don't know who the subject of the proposed operation is going to be." There might have been a look of respectful intransigence on the surgeon's face, if the elegantly contoured stainless steel of the surgeon's face had been in any way capable of displaying such an expression — or any expression at all. It was the turn of Andrew Martin to be silent for a moment, now. He studied the robot surgeon's right hand — his cutting hand — as it rested on the desk in utter tranquility. It was splendidly designed. The fingers were long and tapering, and they were shaped into metallic looping curves of great artistic beauty, curves so graceful and appropriate to their function that one could easily imagine a scalpel being fitted into them and instantly becoming, at the moment they went into action, united in perfect harmony with the fingers that wielded it: surgeon and scalpel fusing into a single marvelously capable tool. That was very reassuring, Andrew thought. There would be no hesitation in the surgeon's work, no stumbling, no quivering, no mistakes or even the possibility of a mistake. Such skill came with specialization, of course — a specialization so fiercely desired by humanity that few robots of the modern era were independently brained any more. The great majority of them nowadays were mere adjuncts of enormously powerful central processing units that had computing capacities far beyond the space limitations of a single robot frame. A surgeon, too, really needed to be nothing more than a set of sensors and monitors and an array of tool-manipulating devices — except that people still preferred the illusion, if nothing more than that, that they were being operated on by an individual entity, not by a limb of some remote machine. So surgeons — the ones in private practice, anyway — were still independently brained. But this one, brained or not, was so limited in his capacity that he didn't recognize Andrew Martin — had probably never heard of Andrew Martin at all, in fact. That was something of a novelty for Andrew. He was more than a little famous. |
| 1360 |
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. |
| 1361 |
But Andrew and I intend to be in that courtroom." "Andrew and you, Mrs. Charney?" "Did you think I was going to stay home that day?" And so it came to pass that the appropriate writ was filed, and the intervening parties grumbled but could raise no sustainable objection — for it was still anyone's right to have his day in court, electronic testimony being by no means mandatory — and on the appointed day Andrew and Little Miss at last presented themselves at the surprisingly modest chambers of Judge Kramer of the Fourth Circuit of the Regional Court for the long-awaited hearing on the petition that was, for purely technical reasons, listed on the docket as Martin vs. Martin. Stanley Feingold accompanied them. The courtroom — located in a tired-looking old building that might have gone back to Twentieth Century times — was surprisingly small and unglamorous, a modest little room with a plain desk at one end for the judge, a few uncomfortable chairs for those rare people who insisted on appearing in person, and an alcove that contained the electronic playback devices. The only other human beings present were Judge Kramer himself — unexpectedly youthful, dark-haired, with quick glinting eyes — and a lawyer named James Van Buren, who represented all the intervening parties gathered into a single class. The various intervening parties themselves were not present. Their interventions would be shown on the screen. There was nothing they could do to overturn the writ Feingold had secured, but they had no desire to make the trip to court themselves. Almost no one ever did. So they had waived their right to be physically present in the courtroom and had filed the usual electronic briefs. The positions of the intervenors were set forth first. There were no surprises in them. The spokesman for the Regional Labor Federation did not place much explicit stress on the prospect for greater competition between humans and robots for jobs, if Andrew were granted his freedom. He took a broader, loftier way of raising the issue: "Throughout all of history, since the first ape-like men chipped the edges of pebbles into the chisels and scrapers and hammers that were the first tools, we have realized that we are a species whose destiny it is to control our environment and to enhance our control of it through mechanical means. But gradually, as the complexity and capability of our tools have increased, we have surrendered much of our own independence — have become dependent on our own tools, that is, in a way that has weakened our power to cope with circumstances without them. |
| 1362 |
Andrew might be free, but there was built into him a carefully detailed program concerning his behavior toward human beings: a neural channel that was not as powerful in its effect as the Three Laws, but nevertheless was there to discourage him from giving any sort of offense. It was only by the tiniest steps that he dared advance. Open disapproval would set him back months. It was an enormous leap for him when he finally allowed himself to leave his house with clothing on. No one he encountered that day showed any sign of surprise. But perhaps they were too astounded even to react. And indeed even Andrew himself still felt strange about his experiment with clothing. He had a mirror, now, and he would study himself for long periods of time, turning from side to side, looking at himself from all angles. And sometimes he found himself reacting with disfavor to his own appearance. His metal face, with its glowing photoelectric eyes and its rigidly carved robotic features, sometimes struck Andrew himself as strikingly incongruous now that it rose up out of the soft, brightly colored fabrics of clothing meant for a human body. But at other times it seemed to him perfectly appropriate for him to be wearing clothing. Like virtually all robots, he had been designed, after all, to be fundamentally humanoid in shape: two arms, two legs, an oval head set upon a narrow neck. The U. S. Robots designers had not needed to give him that form. They could have made him look any way they deemed efficient — with rotors instead of legs, with six arms instead of two, with a swiveling sensor-dome atop his trunk instead of a head with two eyes. But no: they had patterned him after themselves. The decision had been made, very early in the history of robotics, that the best way to overcome mankind's deep-seated fear of intelligent machines was to make them as familiar in form as possible. In that case, why should he not wear clothing also? That would make him look even more human, wouldn't it? And in any event Andrew wanted to wear clothing now. It seemed symbolic to him of his new status as a legally free robot. Of course, not everyone accepted Andrew as free, regardless of what the legal finding had been. The term "free robot" had no meaning to many people: it was like saying "dry water" or "bright darkness." Andrew was inherently incapable of resenting that, and yet he felt a difficulty in his thinking process — a slowing, an inner resistance — whenever he was faced with someone's refusal to allow him the status he had won in court. |
| 1363 |
Human languages, he knew, were constantly in a state of flux. There was nothing fixed or really systematic about them. New words were invented all the time, old words would change their meanings, all sorts of short-lived informal expressions slipped into ordinary conversation. That much he had already had ample reason to learn, though he had not done any kind of scientific investigation of the kinds of changes that tended to take place. The English language, which was the one Andrew used most often, had altered tremendously over the past six hundred years. Now and then he had looked at some of Sir's books, the works of the ancient poets — Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare — and he had seen that their pages were sprinkled with footnotes to explain archaic word usage to modern readers. What if the language were to change just as significantly in the next six hundred years? How was he going to be able to communicate with the human beings around him, unless he kept up with the changes? Already, in one brief conversation, George had baffled him three times. "Like grandfather, like grandson." How simple that seemed now that George had explained it — but how mysterious it had been at first. And why had George called him a "hunk of tin," when George surely knew that there was no tin in Andrew's makeup whatsoever? And — it was the most puzzling one of all — why should George have called Sir a "monster," when that was plainly not an appropriate description of the old man? Those were not even the latest modern phrases, Andrew knew. They were simply individual turns of phrase, a little too colloquial or metaphorical for instant handling by Andrew's linguistic circuitry. He would face far more mystifying ways of speech in the outside world, he suspected. Perhaps it was time for him to update some of his linguistic documentation. His own books would give him no guidance. They were old and most of them dealt with woodworking, with art, with furniture design. There were none on language, none on the ways of human beings. Nor was Sir's library, extensive as it was, likely to be of much use. No one was living in the big house just now — it was sealed, under robot maintenance — but Andrew still could have access to it whenever he wanted. Nearly all of Sir's books, though, dated from the previous century or before. There was nothing there that would serve Andrew's purpose. All things considered, the best move seemed to be for him to get some up-to-date information — and not from George. |
| 1364 |
And to take any other position is a wrongheaded, sentimental, dangerous way of thinking." George Charney was a persuasive orator, but so was James Van Buren. And in the end the battle — fought mainly in the court of public opinion, rather than in the Legislature or the Regional Court — ended in something of a stalemate. There were a great many people now who had been able to transcend the fear or dislike of robots that had been so widespread a couple of generations earlier, and George's arguments struck home with them. They too had begun to look upon their robots with a certain degree of affection, and wanted them afforded some kind of legal security. But then there were the others, who may not have feared robots themselves so much as they did the financial risks that they might somehow experience as a result of extending civil rights to robots. They urged caution in this new legal arena. So when the battle at last was over and pro-robot legislation came forth, setting up conditions under which it was illegal to issue an order that might harm a robot, the law that was passed by the Regional Legislature, sent back for revisions by the Regional Court, passed again in a modified way, this time upheld in the Regional Court, and eventually ratified by the World Legislature and upheld after a final appeal to the World Court, was a very tepid one indeed. It was endlessly qualified and the punishments for violating its provisions were totally inadequate. But at least the principle of robot rights — established originally by the decree awarding Andrew his "freedom" — had been extended a little further. The final approval by the World Court came through on the day of Little Miss's death. That was no coincidence. Little Miss, very old and very weak now, had nevertheless held on to life with desperate force during the closing weeks of the debate. Only when word of victory arrived did she at last relax the tenacity of her grip. Andrew was at her bedside when she went. He stood beside her, looking down at the small, faded woman propped up among the pillows and thinking back to those days of nearly a hundred years before when he was newly arrived at the grand coastside mansion of Gerald Martin and two small girls had stood looking up at him, and the smaller one had frowned and said, "En-dee-arr. That isn't any good. We can't call him something like that. What about calling him Andrew?" So long ago, so very long ago. A whole lifetime ago, so far as things went for Little Miss. |
| 1365 |
He felt almost as though he were reliving the story himself, as he told of the early years of struggle in drafty converted-warehouse rooms and the first dramatic breakthrough in the construction of the platinum-iridium positronic brain, after endless trial-and-error. The conception and development of the indispensable Three Laws; research director Alfred Lanning's early triumphs at designing mobile robot units, clumsy and ponderous and incapable of speech, but versatile enough to be able to interpret human orders and select the best of a number of possible alternative responses. Followed by the first mobile speaking units at the turn of the Twenty-First Century. And then Andrew turned to something much more troublesome for him to describe: the period of negative human reaction which followed, the hysteria and downright terror that the new robots engendered, the worldwide outburst of legislation prohibiting the use of robot labor on Earth. Because miniaturization of the positronic brain was still in the development stage then and the need for elaborate cooling systems was great, the early mobile speaking units had been gigantic — nearly twelve feet high, frightful lumbering monsters that had summoned up all of humanity's fears of artificial beings — of Frankenstein's monster and the Golem and all the rest of that assortment of nightmares. Andrew's book devoted three entire chapters to that time of extreme robot-fear. They were enormously difficult chapters to write, for they dealt entirely with human irrationality, and that was a subject almost impossible for Andrew to comprehend. He grappled with it as well as he could, striving to put himself in the place of human beings who — though they knew that the Three Laws provided foolproof safeguards against the possibility that robots could do harm to humans — persisted in looking upon robots with dread and loathing. And after a time Andrew actually succeeded in understanding, as far as he was able, how it had been possible for humans to have felt insecure in the face of such a powerful guarantee of security. For what he discovered, as he made his way through the archives of robotics, was that the Three Laws were not as foolproof a safeguard as they seemed. They were, in fact, full of ambiguities and hidden sources of conflict. And they could unexpectedly confront robots — straightforward literal-minded creatures that they were — with the need to make decisions that were not necessarily ideal from the human point of view. |
| 1366 |
The robot who was sent on a dangerous errand on an alien planet, for example — to find and bring back some substance vital to the safety and well-being of a human explorer — might feel such a conflict between the Second Law of obedience and the Third Law of self-preservation that he would fall into a hopeless equilibrium, unable either to go forward or to retreat. And by such a stalemate the robot — through inaction — thus could create dire jeopardy for the human who had sent him on his mission, despite the imperatives of the First Law that supposedly took precedence over the other two. For how could a robot invariably know that the conflict he was experiencing between the Second and Third Laws was placing a human in danger? Unless the nature of his mission had been spelled out precisely in advance, he might remain unaware of the consequences of his inaction and never realize that his dithering was creating a First Law violation. Or the robot who might, through faulty design or poor programming, decide that a certain human being was not human at all, and therefore not in a position to demand the protection that the First and Second Laws were supposed to afford Or the robot who was given a poorly phrased order, and interpreted it so literally that he inadvertently caused danger to humans nearby There were dozens of such case histories in the archives. The early roboticists — most notably the extraordinary robopsychologist, Susan Calvin, that formidable and austere woman — had labored long and mightily to cope with the difficulties that kept cropping up. The problems had become especially intricate as robots with more advanced types of positronic pathways began to emerge from the workshops of U. S. Robots and Mechanical Men toward the middle of the Twenty-First Century: robots with a broader capacity for thought, robots who were able to look at situations and perceive their complexities with an almost human depth of understanding. Robots like — though he took care not to say so explicitly — Andrew Martin himself. The new generalized-pathway robots, equipped with the ability to interpret data in much more subjective terms than their predecessors, often reacted in ways that humans were not expecting. Always within the framework of the Three Laws, of course. But sometimes from a perspective that had not been anticipated by the framers of those laws. As he studied the annals of robot development, Andrew at last understood why so many humans had been so phobic about robots. |
| 1367 |
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. |
| 1368 |
I am alone in the world, you know. There is nothing like me. There never has been. As I move through the world of humans, no one will understand what I am, and I barely understand it myself. So I must learn. If that is what you call turning inward, Paul, so be it. But it is the thing that I must do." Andrew had to start from the very beginning, for he knew nothing of ordinary biology, almost nothing of any branch of science other than robotics. The nature of organic life, the chemical and electrical basis of it, was a mystery to him. He had never had any particular reason to study it before. But now that he was organic himself — or his body was, at any rate — he experienced a powerful need to expand his knowledge of living things. To understand how the designers of his android body had been able to emulate the workings of the human form, he needed first to know how the genuine article functioned. He became a familiar sight in the libraries of universities and medical schools, where he would sit at the electronic indices for hours at a time. He looked perfectly normal in clothes and his presence caused no stir whatever. Those few who knew that he was a robot made no attempt to interfere with him. He added a spacious room to his house to serve as a laboratory, and equipped it with an elaborate array of scientific instruments. His library grew, too. He set up research projects for himself that occupied him for weeks on end of his sleepless twenty-four-hour-a-day days. For sleep was still something for which Andrew had no need. Though virtually human in outer appearance, he had been given ways of restoring and replenishing his strength that were far more efficient than those of the species after which he had been patterned. The mysteries of respiration and digestion and metabolism and cell division and blood circulation and body temperature, the whole complex and wondrous system of bodily homeostasis that kept human beings functioning for eighty or ninety or, increasingly, even a hundred years, ceased to be mysteries to him. 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. |
| 1369 |
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. |
| 1370 |
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. 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. |
| 1371 |
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. He found that if he walked in a straight line the glow was pale pink and the music was mildly percussive in texture, but that when he sauntered in a curve that followed the border of the room the light shifted more toward the blue end of the spectrum and the music seemed more like the murmuring of the wind. He wondered if any of this had any significance and decided that it did not: that it was mere ornamentation, a decorative frill. In this placid and unchallenging era such lovely but meaningless decorative touches were ubiquitous, Andrew knew "Ah — Andrew Martin at last," a deep voice said. A short, stocky man had appeared in the room as though some magic had conjured him out of the carpet. The newcomer was dark of complexion and hair, with a little pointed beard that looked as though it had been lacquered, and he wore nothing above the waist except the breastband that fashion now dictated. Andrew himself was more thoroughly covered. He had followed George Charney in adopting the "drapery" style of clothing, thinking that its flowing nature would better conceal what he still imagined to be a certain awkwardness of his movements, and though the stylishness of drapery was several decades obsolete now and Andrew could move as easily and gracefully as any human, he had continued to dress in that manner ever since. |
| 1372 |
But I don't think it's going to happen." Magdescu looked bleak. "You insist on going through with it, then." "I insist. I have every faith in the skill of the staff at U. S. Robots." And that was where the matter rested. Magdescu was unable to budge him; and once more Andrew made the journey eastward to the U. S. Robots research center, where an entire building had been reconfigured to serve as the operating theater. Before he went, he took a long solitary stroll one afternoon along the beach, under the steep rugged cliffs, past the swarming tide pools where Miss and Little Miss had liked to play in their childhood of a century and more ago, and stood for a long while looking out at the dark turbulent sea, the vast arch of the sky, the white flecks of cloud in the west. The sun was beginning to set. It cast a golden track of light across the water. How beautiful it all was! The world was really an extraordinarily splendid place, Andrew told himself. The sea — the sky — a sunset — a glossy leaf shining with the morning dew — everything. Everything! And, he thought, perhaps he was the only robot who had ever been able to respond to the beauty of the world in this way. Robots were a dull plodding bunch, in the main. They did their jobs and that was that. It was the way they were supposed to be. It was the way everyone wanted them to be. "You're the only one of you that there is," Magdescu had said. Yes. It was true. He had a capacity for aesthetic response that went far beyond the emotive range of any other robot that had ever been. Beauty meant something to him. He appreciated it when he saw it; he had created beauty himself. And if he never saw any of this again, how very sad that would be. And then Andrew smiled at his own foolishness. Sad? For whom? He would never know it, if the operation should fail. The world and all its beauty would be lost to him, but what would that matter? He would have ceased to function. He would be permanently out of order. He would be dead, and after that it would make no difference to him at all that he could no longer perceive the beauties of the world. That was what death meant: a total cessation of function, an end to all processing of data. There were risks, yes. But they were risks he had to take, because otherwise — Otherwise — He simply had to. There was no otherwise. He could not go on as he was, outwardly human in form, more or less, but incapable of the most basic human biological functions — breathing, eating, digesting, excreting — An hour later Andrew was on his way east. |
| 1373 |
Alvin Magdescu met him in person at the U. S. Robots airstrip. "Are you ready?" Magdescu asked him. "Totally." "Well, then, Andrew, so am I." Obviously they intended to take no chances. They had constructed a wondrous operating theater for him, far more advanced in capability than the earlier room in which they had carried out his transformation from the metallic to the androidal form. It was a magnificent tetrahedral enclosure illuminated by a cross-shaped cluster of chromed fixtures at its summit that flooded the room with brilliant but not glaring light. A platform midway between floor and ceiling jutted from one wall, dividing the great room almost in half, and atop this platform rested a dazzling transparent aseptic bubble within which the surgery would be performed. Beneath the platform that supported the bubble was the surgical stage's environmental-support apparatus: an immense cube of dull green metal, housing an intricate tangle of pumps, filters, heating ducts, reservoirs of sterilizing chemicals, humidifiers, and other equipment. On the other side of the room was a great array of supplementary machinery covering an entire wall: an autoclave, a laser bank, a host of metering devices, a camera boom and associated playback screens that would allow consulting surgeons outside the operating area to monitor the events. "What do you think?" Magdescu asked proudly. "Very impressive. I find it most reassuring. And highly flattering as well." "You know that we don't want to lose you, Andrew. You're a very important — individual." Andrew did not fail to notice the slight hesitation in Magdescu's voice before that last word. As though Magdescu had been about to say man, and had checked himself just barely in time. Andrew smiled thinly but said nothing. The operation took place the next morning, and it was an unqualified success. There turned out to be no need for any of the elaborate safety devices that the U. S. Robots people had set up. The operating team, following procedures that Andrew himself had helped to devise, went briskly about the task of removing his atomic cell, installing the combustion chamber, and establishing the new neural linkages, and performed its carefully choreographed work without the slightest hitch. Half an hour after it was over Andrew was sitting up, checking his positronic parameters, exploring the altered data-flow surging through his brain as a torrent of messages came in from the new metabolic system. Magdescu stood by the window, watching him. |
| 1374 |
Already he had had several major prosthetic operations himself — a double kidney replacement, first, and then a new liver. Soon Magdescu would reach retirement age. And then, no doubt, he would die, in ten or twenty years more, Andrew told himself. Another friend gone, swept away by the remorseless river of time. Andrew himself, naturally, showed no signs of aging at all. For a time that troubled him enough that he debated having some cosmetic wrinkles added — a touch of crow's feet around his eyes, for example — and graying his hair. After giving the matter a little thought, though, he decided that to go in for such things would be a foolish affectation. Andrew did not see his upgrades that way at all: they represented his continued attempt to leave his robot origins behind and approach the physical form of a human being. He did not deny to himself that it had become his goal to do that But there was no sense in becoming more human than the humans themselves. It struck him as pointless and absurd to subject his ever-more-human but still ageless android body to the external marks of aging. Vanity had nothing to do with Andrew's decision — only logic. He was aware that humans had always tried to do everything in their power to conceal the effects that growing old had on their appearance. Andrew realized that it would be altogether ridiculous for him, exempted as he was from aging by his inherent android nature, to go out of his way deliberately to take those effects upon himself. So he remained ever youthful-looking. And, of course, there was never any slackening of his physical vigor: a careful maintenance program made certain of that But the years were passing, and passing swiftly now. Andrew was approaching the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of his construction. By this time Andrew was not only exceedingly wealthy but covered with the honors that Alvin Magdescu had foretold for him. Learned societies hastened to offer him fellowships and awards — in particular one society which was devoted to the new science he had established, the one he had called robobiology but which had come to be termed prosthetology. He was named its honorary president for life. Universities vied with one another to give him degrees. An entire room in his house — the one upstairs that once had been his woodworking studio, five generations before — was given over now to storing the myriad diplomas, medals, scrolls of honor, testimonial volumes, and other artifacts of Andrew's worldwide status as one of humanity's greatest benefactors. |
| 1375 |
The desire to recognize Andrew's contribution became so universal that he needed one full-time secretary simply to reply to all the invitations to attend testimonial banquets or accept awards and degrees. He rarely did attend any such ceremonies any longer, though he was unfailingly courteous in refusing, explaining that the continued program of his research made it inadvisable for him to do a great deal of traveling. But in fact most of these functions had come to irritate and bore him. The first honorary degree from a major university had given him a thrill of vindication. No robot had ever received such an honor before. But the fiftieth honorary degree? The hundredth? They had no meaning for him. They said more about the giver than about the recipient. Andrew had proved whatever point it was that he had set out to make about his intelligence and creativity long ago, and now he simply wanted to proceed with his work in peace, without having to make long trips and listen to speeches in his honor. He was surfeited with honor. Boredom and irritation, Andrew knew, were exceedingly human traits, and it seemed to him that he had only begun to experience them in the past twenty or thirty years. Previously — so far as he could recall — he had been notably free from such afflictions, though from the beginning there had always been a certain unrobotic component of impatience in his makeup that he had chosen not to acknowledge for a long time. This new irritability, though: it was some side effect of the upgrades, he suspected. But not a troublesome one, at least not so far. When his hundred and fiftieth anniversary came around and the U. S. Robots people let it be known that they wanted to hold a great testimonial dinner to mark the occasion, Andrew instructed his secretary, with some annoyance in his voice, to turn the invitation down. "Tell them I'm deeply touched, et cetera, et cetera, the usual stuff. But that I'm busy right now with an extremely complex project, et cetera, et cetera, and that in any case I'd just as soon not have a lot of fuss made over the anniversary, but I thank them very much, I understand the great significance of the gesture, and so forth — et cetera, et cetera, et cetera." Usually a letter like that was enough to get him off the hook. But not this time. Alvin Magdescu called him and said, "Look, Andrew, you can't do this." "Can't do what?" "Toss the U. S. R. M. M. testimonial dinner back in their faces like that." "But I don't want it, Alvin." "I realize that. |
| 1376 |
"You get more and more human all the time, don't you? You lie just like one of us, now. And how easily that bit of flattery rolled off your lips, Andrew! You didn't even hesitate." "There is really no law against a robot's telling an untruth to a human being," said Andrew. "Unless the untruth would do harm, of course. And you do look good to me, Alvin." "For a man my age, you mean." "Yes, for a man your age, I suppose I should say. If you insist on my being so precise." The after-dinner speeches were the usual orotund pompous things: expressions of admiration and wonder over Andrew's many achievements. One speaker followed another, and they all seemed ponderous and dreary to Andrew, even those who in fact managed a good bit of wit and grace. Their styles of delivery might vary, but the content was always the same. Andrew had heard it all before, many too many times. And there was an unspoken subtext in each speech that never ceased to trouble him: the patronizing implication that he had done wonderful things for a robot, that it was close to miraculous that a mere mechanical construction like himself should have been able to think so creatively and to transmute his thoughts into such extraordinary accomplishments. Perhaps it was the truth; but it was a painful truth for Andrew to face, and there seemed no way of escaping it. Magdescu was the last to speak. It had been a very long evening, and Magdescu looked pale and tired as he stood up. But Andrew, who was seated next to him, observed him making a strenuous effort to pull himself together, raising his head high, squaring his shoulders, filling his lungs — his Andrew Martin Laboratories prosthetic lungs — with a deep draught of air. "My friends, I won't waste your time repeating the things that everyone else has said here tonight. We all know what Andrew Martin has done for mankind. Many of us have experienced his work at first hand — for I know that sitting before me tonight as I speak are scores of you who have Andrew's prosthetic devices installed in your bodies. And I am of your number. So I want to say, simply, that it was my great privilege to work with Andrew Martin in the early days of prosthetology — for I myself played a small part in the development of those devices of his which are so essential to our lives today. And in particular I want to acknowledge that I would not be here tonight but for Andrew Martin. But for him and his magnificent work, I would have been dead fifteen or twenty years ago — and so would many of you. |
| 1377 |
There were problems, too, of tensile strength, of durability, of unexpected and unwanted feedback complications. The lunar prosthetologists had begged Andrew for years to visit the Moon and get a first-hand look at the problems of adaptation that they were forced to deal with. The U. S. Robots marketing division on the Moon repeatedly urged him to go. On a couple of occasions, it was even suggested that, under the terms of the licensing agreement, Andrew was required to go; but Andrew met that suggestion — and it was phrased as a suggestion, not as an order — with such chilly refusal that the company did not attempt to raise the issue a third time. But still the requests for help came from the doctors on the Moon. And again and again Andrew declined — until, suddenly, he found himself asking himself, Why not go ? Why is it so important to stay on Earth all the time? Obviously he was needed up there. No one was ordering him to go — no one would dare, not these days — but nevertheless he could not lose sight of the fact that he had been brought into the world for the purpose of serving mankind, and nothing said that the sphere of his service was limited only to Earth. So be it., Andrew thought. And within an hour his acceptance of the latest invitation was being beamed Moonward. On a cool, drizzly autumn day Andrew went by flitter down to San Francisco, and from there took the underground tube to the big Western Spaceport Facility in the district of Nevada. He had never gone anywhere by tube before. Over the past fifty years nuclear-powered subterrenes had drilled a network of wide tunnels through the deep-lying rocks of the continent, and now high-speed trains moving on silent inertialess tracks offered swift and simple long-distance travel, while much of the surface zone was allowed to revert to its natural state. To Andrew it seemed that he was reaching the spaceport in Nevada almost before the train had set out from the San Francisco terminal. And now into space at last — the lunar journey — He was handled at every stage of the embarkation procedure like some fine and highly breakable piece of rare porcelain. Important officials of U. S. Robots clustered around him, eagerly assisting him with the minutiae of checking in and being cleared for flight. They were surprised at how little baggage he had brought with him — just one small bag, containing a couple of changes of clothing and a few holocubes for reading during the trip — considering that he was likely to be staying on the Moon anywhere from three months to a year. |
| 1378 |
(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. The Earth seen from space looked extraordinarily lovely to him: a perfect disk of blue, stippled with white masses of clouds. The outlines of the continents were surprisingly indistinct. Andrew had expected to see them sharply traced as they were on a geographic globe; but in fact they were no more than vaguely apparent, and it was the wondrous swirling of the atmospheric clouds against the vastness of the seas that gave the Earth its beauty from this vantage-point. |
| 1379 |
And they had agreed. But there was hardly a day thereafter when he was not amazed at his own boldness. Equals? Equals? How could he have dared even to suggest such a thing? Phrasing it as a direct instruction, no less — virtually an order! Saying it in a casual, jaunty way, like one human being to another. Hypocrisy, Andrew thought Arrogance. Delusions of grandeur. Yes. Yes. Yes. He could buy a human-appearing body for himself, he could fill it with prosthetic devices that performed many of the functions of a human body whether he needed those functions performed or not, he could look human beings straight in the eye and speak coolly to them as though he were their equal — but none of that made him their equal. That was the reality that Andrew could not deny. In the eyes of the law he was a robot and always would be, no matter how many upgrades he was given, or how ingenious they might be. He had no citizenship. He could not vote. He could not hold public office, even the most trivial. About the only civil rights Andrew had, despite all that the Charneys had done over the years on his behalf, were the right to own himself, and the right to go about freely without being humiliated by any passing human who cared to harass him, and the right to do business as a corporation. And also the right — such as it was — to pay taxes. "Let's all be equals," he had said, as if by merely saying so he could make it be. What folly! What gall! But the mood soon passed and rarely returned. Except in the dark moments when he berated himself this way, though, Andrew found himself enjoying his stay on the Moon, and it was a particularly fruitful time for him creatively. The Moon was an exciting, intellectually stimulating place. The civilization of Earth was mature and sedate, but the Moon was the frontier, with all the wild energy that frontier challenges inevitably called forth. Life was a little on the frantic side in the underground lunar cities — constant expansion was going on, and you could not help being aware of the eternal throbbing of the jackhammer subterrenes as new caverns were melted into being daily so that in six months the next group of suburbs could be undergoing construction. The pace was fast and the people were far more competitive and vigorous than those Andrew had known on Earth. Startling new technical developments came thick and fast there. Radical new ideas were proposed at the beginning of one week and enacted into law by the end of the next. One of the prosthetologists explained it to him: "It's a genetic thing, Andrew. |
| 1380 |
Everyone on Earth with any get-up-and-go got up and went a long time ago, and here we all are out on the edge of civilization, inventing our way as we go along, while those who remained behind have raised a race that's been bred to remain behind and do things the most familiar comfortable way possible. From here on in, I think, the future belongs to those of us who live in space. Earth will become a mere backwater world." "You really believe that?" Andrew asked. "Yes. I do." He wondered what would become of him, living on and on through the decades and centuries ahead, if any such decadence and decline truly was going to overcome the world. His immediate answer was that it made no difference to him if Earth became some sort of sleepy backwater where "progress" was an obscene word. He no longer had need of progress now that he had attained the upgrade he had most deeply desired. His body was virtually human in form; he had his estate; he had his work, in which he had achieved enormous success; he would live as he always had, no matter what might be going on around him. 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. |
| 1381 |
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. There was a surprised look on DeLong's face. "We had been told you were returning, Andrew," he said — with just a bit of uncertainty in his voice at the end, as though he too had briefly considered calling him "Mr. Martin" — "but we weren't expecting you until next week." "I became impatient," said Andrew brusquely. He was anxious to get to the point. "On the Moon, Simon, I was in charge of a research team of twenty or thirty human scientists. |
| 1382 |
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. Perhaps it was only his imagination. The surgeon said that he was recovering quite well. There was a syndrome called hypochondria, Andrew knew, in which you felt that you were suffering from conditions that in fact you did not have. It was a fairly common thing among human beings, he had heard. People who were hypochondriacs found all manner of symptoms in themselves that no medical tests could confirm; and the more thought they gave to the possibility that they might be ill, the more symptoms they discovered. Andrew wondered whether in his long unceasing quest to attain full humanity he had somehow managed to contract a case of hypochondria, and smiled at the thought. Quite likely he had, he decided. His own testing equipment showed no measurable degrading of his performance capabilities. All parameters were well within permissible deviation. And yet — yet — he felt so tired It had to be imaginary. Andrew ordered himself to give his feelings of weariness no further thought. And, tired or not, he made one more journey across the continent to the great green-glass tower of the World Legislature in New York to pay a call on Chee Li-hsing. He entered her grand and lofty office and she beckoned him automatically to a seat before her desk, the way she would have done with any other visitor. But Andrew had always preferred to stand in her presence, out of some obscure impulse of courtesy that he had never tried to explain to himself, and he did not want to sit now — especially not now. It would be entirely too revealing to do that Nevertheless, he found after a moment or two that standing seemed a bit troublesome to him, and he leaned, as unobtrusively as he could manage, against the wall. Li-hsing said, "The final vote will come this week, Andrew. |
| 1383 |
No one would have dared to vote against it. There was scarcely even any debate. There was no need for it. The measure was unprecedented, yes — of course it was — but for once everyone was willing to put precedent aside. The final ceremony was timed, quite deliberately, for the day of the two hundredth anniversary of Andrew's construction. The World Coordinator was to put his signature to the act publicly, making it law, and the ceremony would be visible on a global network and would be beamed to the lunar settlements and to the other colonies farther out in space. Andrew was in a wheelchair. He still was capable of walking, but only shakily, now, and it would embarrass him to be seen looking so feeble when so many billions of people would be watching. And billions were watching — watching everywhere. The ceremony was simple and quite brief. The World Coordinator — or his electronic simulacrum, rather, for Andrew was at his home in California and the World Coordinator was in New York — began by saying, "This is a very special day, Andrew Martin, not only for you but for the entire human race. There has never been a day like it before. But then there has never been anyone like you before, either. "Fifty years ago, Andrew, a ceremony in your honor was held at the headquarters of the United States Robots and Mechanical Men Corporation to celebrate the hundred-fiftieth anniversary of your inception. I understand that at that ceremony one of the speakers proclaimed you to be a Sesquicentennial Robot. The statement was correct — as far as it went. But it did not go quite far enough, we realize now. And so the world has taken steps to make amends, and those amends will be made today." The World Coordinator glanced toward Andrew and smiled. There was a document before him on a little podium. The World Coordinator leaned over it and, with a grand flourish, signed his name. Then, looking up after a moment and speaking in his most formal, solemn tone, the Coordinator said, "There you are. The decree is official and irrevocable. Your sesquicentennial anniversary is fifty years behind you, today. And so is the status of robot with which you came into the world, and for which you were cited on that day. We take that status from you now. You are a robot no longer. The document that I have just signed changes all that. Today, Mr. Martin, we declare you — a Bicentennial Man." And Andrew, smiling in return, held out his hand as though to shake that of the World Coordinator — despite the distance of a continent's width that actually lay between them. |
| 1384 |
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. Alastair looked very donnish, since his receding hairline gave his brow noble proportions. Behind his glasses his pale-blue eyes held a mystical gleam that you would have expected from the White Knight, and he wore an almost perpetual grin. He had a habit of holding his head on one side and revolving slowly in a circle, so that he bore a vivid resemblance to the Hanged Man on a Tarot card. His habit of speaking in half-sentences which did not appear to have any relation to each other made communication difficult, but fortunately we had Paula to act as translator on those occasions when Alastair got so overexcited that he appeared to be speaking Patagonian. |
| 1385 |
Overhead, the chocolate-dark skuas wheeled on huge wings, keeping a careful eye on us, for they had young concealed in the heather. We discovered one youngster, the size of a small chicken. Clad in pale tawny down, with his black face and beak and huge, dark, soulful eyes, he was an enchanting baby. Lee and I pursued him as he waddled off through the heather and his parents started to dive-bomb us a really impressive performance. Huge wings taut, they swooped at us, the wind whooshing through their feathers, looking like strange, coffee-coloured Concordes. 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. |
| 1386 |
'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. The air was full of the surge of surf and the cries of thousands upon thousands of seabirds that drifted like a snowstorm along the cliffs. The mind boggled at the numbers. Hundreds upon hundreds of gannets, kittiwakes, fulmars, shags, razorbills, gulls, skuas, and tens of thousands of puffins Could the sea possibly hold enough fish to feed this cacophonous aerial army and its numerous families that lined the cliff-faces? At the cliff-edge, where the earth was soft enough for digging, was the puffins' special area. Here they excavated their burrows with powerful beaks and feet. They sat around in their hundreds, almost letting you tread on them before launching themselves over the cliffs edge and flying away with rapid wing-beats, their feet trailing behind them like little orange ping-pong bats. To see the green cliff-tops lined with hundreds of these comical waddling birds, each very upright in its neat black and white dinner-jacket, each wearing (as it were) one of those carnival noses, a huge beak striped orange and red. |
| 1387 |
'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. |
| 1388 |
Below the kittwakes among the rocks were the handsome razorbills with their neat black and white plumage and their beaks shaped like cut-throat razors neatly marked with white. They looked like a gathering of impeccable merchant bankers. However, occasionally one would assume what is called the ecstatic position, bill pointed skywards and then clattered like a pair of castanets, while its mate nibbled and preened its throat. This is a procedure which I personally have never seen any merchant banker (even the more convivial ones) indulge in. On separate sections of the cliff-face the fulmars were nesting, with their dark-grey backs and tails and their white heads and breasts. There is something curiously pigeon-like about them, a look that is enhanced by their tubular nostrils. Although they are placid, even shy-looking birds, fulmars know how to protect their young. Should you venture too close to the nest, the parent birds open their beaks wide and eject a disgustingly smelly, sticky fluid from their mouths, and their accuracy is extraordinary. When I mentioned this habit to Jonathan, he was all for having me climb up to a nest so that he could film me being drenched by the parent. I said that this was definitely not in my contract and I refused to spend the rest of the day smelling like a whaling vessel. I said having my trousers decorated with skua excreta was as far as I was prepared to go in that direction. The process of zoning on these cliffs was very apparent. At first sight, it looked like a gigantic mad concourse of birds all jumbled together, but on closer inspection you saw how neatly it was divided up. Shags had all the ground-floor apartments, then came the razorbills and the guillemots and the auks. On the higher ledges were the rows of kittiwakes and fulmars, and then the clown-like puffins on the very top of the cliffs. Among the tuihbled, spray-drenched rocks, in the crevices and caves formed by the huge boulders, the shags were nesting, their greeny-black plumage shining as if polished, their green eyes as vivid as jewels in their heads. 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. |
| 1389 |
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. |
| 1390 |
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. 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. |
| 1391 |
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. The octopus, the squid and the delicate sea-hare can all produce clouds of ink to confuse and blind their enemy while they escape. |
| 1392 |
Here we have eaten many memorable meals and drunk vast quantities of good wine, bathed and sunbathed, watched the crimson pink of the flamingoes like a sunset cloud, bee-eaters glistening like opals and hoopoes as pink as any salmon. Through the streets of Arles, we have watched the gardiens of the Camargue (the 'cowboys' of the region) ride on their white steeds with their beautiful ladies, each decked out in ancient costume. Later, they form an arrowhead of horses, surrounding a flock of the little devil-black bulls, which they drive at a gallop through the streets to the arena while the crowd does its best to break the arrowhead to make the bulls scatter, which would be a black mark against the abilities of the gardiens if it should be done. Then we have jostled our way into the Roman arena, tiny and beautiful, in honey-coloured stone and, when full of people, looking like a strange bowl full of moving flowers. Then the sound of Carmen fills the air, and the doors fling wide. From where perhaps lions or elephants and their Christian victims had at one time emerged, would appear a solitary bull, black and glossy as jet, tiny, muscular, horns showing white as ivory, strong, short legs as nimble as a ballerina's. The doors would shut behind it and he would stand there, a tiny black mark like an inkstain on the pale sand floor. He would look round, snort, trot forward a few paces, then lower his sharp horns, paw the sand, defying all comers. The fight had begun. Before my indignant reader throws down this book and takes up a vitriol-dipped pen to write to me about the cruelty of bullfighting, may I hastily point out that there are two forms of bullfighting, and in this one the bull is never killed. Indeed, he stands an excellent chance of inflicting crippling, sometimes mortal, damage on his foes, the razateurs, and, as I witnessed myself, actually enjoys the fight, once he is habituated to it. The black bulls of the Camargue realise that this is a curious sort of game, yet their ferocity is such that they can kill without necessarily meaning to. The fight is organised like this. The bull, before entering the arena, has certain little coloured tassels attached to his horns with rubber bands. These are called cockades. The object of the fight (not so much a fight as a contest of speed and skill) is for the razateurs, or bullfighters if you will, to remove these cockades from the bull's horns within a given length of time. No bull is in the arena for more than twenty minutes. |
| 1393 |
During that time the razateurs, a group of men incongruously clad in white shirts and flannels as if for tennis, enter the ring. They are armed only with fleetness of foot and a curious thing that looks like a curry-comb fixed by a band round their right hand, snuggling into the palm. With this instrument they try to cut loose the cockades from the bull's horns. Each cockade is worth a certain sum of money. The longer it remains, as it were, the bull's property, the higher the price rises. Some razateurs, with new and idiotic bulls, leave the moment of removing the cockade until the very end of the twenty minutes so that the price is high. However, if they are fighting an experienced bull, they might find that at the end of the twenty minutes the animal still retains its cockades. The fight then ends and the Grand March from Carmen is played in the bull's honour as he is ushered out of the ring and back to his lorry to be taken back and released once more in the green, glinting pastures and reed-beds of the Camargue. That experienced bulls actually enjoy this I have witnessed with my own eyes, as some years ago we made a film of the Course Libre, as it is called, and so had to attend many bullfights to get the necessary shots. An experienced bull enters the ring and gazes around at the crowd like an actor summing up the audience at a matinEe. Then he goes through the 'Look how fierce I am' routine the snorting, the tossing of the head, the pawing of the sand. He is apparently unaware that the white-flannelled razateurs have entered the ring and are now approaching him. Then suddenly, with astonishing speed and agility, he whirls round and is among them, galloping head down, and the razateurs are running before him like snowflakes driven before the wind. He chases them to the six-foot-high wooden barrier, over which they leap with alacrity great leaps that would be envied by Nureyev himself. Sometimes the bull, to prove his fierceness, sticks his horns into the planks and sends them flying like matchwood. At other times an overenthusiastic bull might jump the barrier with the razateurs, and then you will see the audience in the front three rows of the stalls hastily vacate their seats until the bull can be inveigled back into the ring. On many occasions, I have seen a bull so enjoying himself that when the twenty-minute bell went as the signal for the end of the contest he would refuse to leave the ring as he wanted to continue the fight. In these cases a lead bull, with a bell on it, would be sent in to entice the recalcitrant bull out. |
| 1394 |
On one never-to-be-forgotten afternoon, a lead bull was sent in and got so carried away that it started chasing the razateurs with the bull it was supposed to be luring out of the ring, and a third bull had to be sent in to lead the two of them out. 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. |
| 1395 |
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. 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. |
| 1396 |
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. 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. |
| 1397 |
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. 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. |
| 1398 |
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. '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. |
| 1399 |
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. |
| 1400 |
Marise was her name, and she viewed us with a bright humorous eye while Jonathan explained what he wanted. She obviously thought us quite mad but was happy to oblige the eccentric anglais. First, as the sun was setting, Jonathan wanted her to drive her truck with its whipping antenna to and fro through the false olive groves, just as she would do if tracking the pigs after dark. These shots had to be done before the sun set, so that when printed in the laboratory they would look like night. This she dutifully did, and by the time we had finished it was almost dark. The mosquitoes, as though at a signal, rose from the surrounding countryside and converged on us like a solid wall. I have always contended that no place on earth could compete with the Paraguayan chaco near the Matto Grosso in quantities of mosquitoes. After our experience in the Camargue, I am hesitant to give Paraguay first prize. Wherever you shone your torch all you saw was a thick, dancing, almost opaque veil of mosquitoes. It became advisable to breathe through the nose if you didn't want to inhale a lungful of them. Our hands and faces and necks became black with them. They bit our scalps through our hair and they bit every other portion of our anatomies through the thin summer clothes we were wearing. In seconds, Brian was whirling like a dervish, slapping and, moaning. Reeking though he was of so-called mosquito repellent, this made no difference. The mosquitoes of the Camargue apparently looked upon the foul-smelling repellent as a sort of aperitif before getting down to the main meal of blood. Lee and I knew it was more than our life was worth to point out that mosquitoes did not worry us. Of course, they were irritating when they flew in your eye or up your nose, but because of Lee's two-year research in Madagascar and my wanderings about the world we have developed hides like rhinos and few if any of the bites we suffered even itched. But you can't tell the true sufferer that without risking a lynching. While the team, cursing and swatting, set up the fights for the next scene, Marise, Lee and I shared the back of her little van with approximately two million mosquitoes as she talked about her studies. In the old days, if you wanted to work out where animals went and what they did you had to rely on your own eyesight and tracking abilities. Now, with radio tracking, the whole thing is more efficient and accurate. The small radio collars attached to an animal send out a radio bleep. |
| 1401 |
This is picked up on what, to all intents and purposes, is a little radar screen. Reading the bleeps off the screen on to a map of a given area, you can follow the movements of the animals you are studying without having to disturb them or go near them. Marise was obviously very involved with the wild boars she was studying and she talked on enthusiastically, oblivious of mosquitoes. Did we know they had a tremendously wide range of food? Even though the bulk of their food is vegetarian acorns, beech mast, grasses, various herbs they will eat an astonishing amount of other things from carrion, ground-nesting birds and their eggs and young, lizards and snakes, various insects, crabs, and they have even been seen to be adept at catching mice. During the rutting season, she went on, the big boars have the most terrible mating battles, slashing at each other with their razor-sharp tusks. Generally, they tend to attack each other's shoulders, and to protect himself against his sharp-toothed foes each boar develops at this season a sort of thick plate of flesh which guards his shoulders much in the way that knights of old used to wear steel breastplates for battle. When the female is ready to farrow, she leaves the others and finds a quiet place in dense cover where she builds a comfortable nest, sometimes even roofing it over, and here she gives birth to her piglets. By now the lights had been set up, illuminating the interior of the mosquito-ridden van and Marise's equipment, and we were ready to show how it worked. She prepared her maps and switched on her little radar screen, and then she started slowly to turn the fishing-rod antenna on top of the van. Soon there was one bleep on the screen, a tiny green dot; then there was another and another and finally a little constellation of them. It was a fascinating thought that we, sitting in the van perhaps a mile away from the pigs, were aware of the movements of these elusive and wary creatures, and yet they were unaware of our surveillance. Eventually, thoroughly bitten but happy, we thanked Marise for her help and, leaving her to her work, went back to our hotel, having arranged to rendezvous early the following morning to visit her traps with her. The eastern sky was just paling into daffodil yellow as we drove out along the straight white roads and into the dark, mysterious, more solid thickets of false olives. There was much birdsong, and skeins of duck flew black against the lightening sky, flighting into the deeper recesses of the marsh to feed. |
| 1402 |
Presently we stopped the cars and got out, and walked a few hundred yards to a clearing where Marise had her trap a huge box made out of wood and wire and steel, baited with all sorts of delicacies. It was important that the trap was looked at for results at first light, for if you left the boars in the traps when the sun had risen you risked losing them through sunstroke. It is always interesting to visit a trap, wondering whether your efforts have been successful. I have set traplines all over the world, but I have never got over the excitement of visiting traps in the early morning, wondering what you have caught, if anything. In this case, we were well rewarded, for in the trap was a whole sounder of baby boars, six of them, each about the size of a terrier, with gingery fur, and their baby stripes just fading. To Marise's delight, one of them was wearing one of her radio collars. He had apparently led all his brothers and sisters back to the same trap in which he had himself been caught. The babies jostled together in the trap, stamping their feet, grunting and squealing, obviously a bit panicky at our approach. Marise and her team of helpers worked very swiftly. The job had to be done as quickly as possible, so as to minimise the stress on the piglets. Each baby was ushered from the main trap into a sort of funnel trap from which, with many piercing screams, he or she was gently extracted and a radio collar deftly clipped round its neck; the next minute it was released and making off through the trees at a smart trot, tail twisted up over its back in an indignant question mark, carrying with it unknowingly the instrument that would allow us access to its private life. It was, I reflected, rather unfair. It was like having the local police station bug your bedroom. However, if we are adequately to protect wildlife we must know how it functions and what its needs are, and this is one of the many ways of doing just that. The next morning, with his mouth full of croissant, Jonathan said jubilantly and indistinctly: 'I've fixed up the bulls.' 'Good,' I said absentmindedly. 'What bulls?' 'Well, you know you said you couldn't show the Camargue without showing bulls, so, I've fixed up some bulls.' 'But they're not fighting at this time of the year,' I pointed out. 'I don't mean fighting,' said Jonathan. 'I mean we're going to round them up.' 'This use of the royal We,' I said cautiously, 'does this include Lee and me?' 'Of course you,' said Jonathan, with the air of one promising a treat to a child. |
| 1403 |
Burnished frogs slid under the water away from the monstrous hoofs, and around us darted huge blue and huntsman-red dragonflies. Flocks of the more delicate damsel flies in pale powder blue and deep peacock blue rose from the clumps of flags as we splashed through. Once a huge scarlet dragonfly sped past on purring, glittering wings carrying in its jaws a bright-blue damsel fly. Around us, opalescent bee-eaters and dark swallows hawked the myriad insects, and in the distance we could see herons, bitterns, egrets and night herons pursuing frogs and tiny fish among the tamarisks. Suddenly, ahead of us we saw the bulls. A herd of about a hundred animals, grazing beneath the trees, looking like a black and dangerous reef against the green of the swamp. The gardiens, telling us to go to one side for a moment, then spread out and surrounded the snorting, suspicious creatures, whistling and calling encouragement. Gradually, they moved the bulls towards and past us, and we then took up our position behind the herd, jockeying them along. At first the bulls moved slowly but then, encouraged by the gardiens, they started to trot and then the whole black mass, horns glinting, broke into a gallop in a great froth of water and we galloped behind them. It was really most exhilarating with the herd thundering along on a tidal wave of water and we riding behind, shouting and whistling in imitation of the gardiens. Then, quite suddenly, it ceased to be exhilarating. The bulls reached a rather solid thicket of tamarisk trees and for some reason best known to themselves they decided that danger lurked beyond the trees. The herd halted and turned and, as one animal, came thundering down on us. One minute we had been gaily pursuing the bulls, the next minute we had turned and were in full flight. The great mass of menacing black muscle surmounted by a forest of sharply curved horns thundered after us. It was a very confused and hectic five minutes before the gardiens managed to turn the stampede. They let the bulls graze for a few minutes so that they could regain their equilibrium (to say nothing of us regaining ours) and then slightly less vigorously we chivvied them towards the cameras. It was at this moment that I got my own back on Jonathan. A hundred yards away, he and the camera were not very well concealed behind a group of fragile tamarisks. The bulls took fright again. This time they were convinced that the danger lay behind so they broke into a gallop and thundered down upon the cameras. |
| 1404 |
Panama had another advantage as far as we were concerned: ever since the construction of the canal and the necessary flooding that went with it, an island was created, called Barro Colorado, and it has been used for many years by the Smithsonian Institution as a tropical research station. The Smithsonian also has the reef research station on the San Bias Islands, lying off the Caribbean coast, about an hour's flight from Panama City. Wherever groups of scientists gather together in one spot over a period of time, you may be sure that they get to know every leaf of every tree, and this sort of knowledge, when your time is limited, is of inestimable value to the film-maker. Lee and I arrived in Panama City suffering terribly from jetlag, since we had flown the Atlantic and then down to Panama from New York. However, no exhaustion could quench our happiness at being in the tropics again, to see the boat-tailed grackles, black and solemn as undertakers, parading on the half-finished blocks of flats outside our hotel bedroom window, to see glittering humming-birds and butterflies the size of your hand in the hotel garden and, above all, to feel the moist, scented hot air, like the smell of plum cake from a newly opened oven, that told you that you were once more in that richest area of the earth's surface, the tropics. The following day, when we had recovered, we met for a briefing with Paula and Alastair. Alastair has a very curious method of communication with members of his own species. So strange is it, indeed, that I, in spite of priding myself on being able to communicate with most people anywhere in the world, found I had to use Paula as a translator. What Alastair would do was to throw you a half-sentence or, even worse, two half-sentences which appeared to have no connection with each other, and you then had to fill in the missing words to find the sense of what he was saying. It was rather like trying to do a Times crossword puzzle without the clues. Now, beaming at us affectionately, he said: 'Jetlag over? Good. I thought ... you know ... San Bias first. Reefs like ... or perhaps more like ... forests, fish really, like birds only no wings. Don't you think? So islands ... pretty ... because you don't ... see when we get there. Then we know for, er, Barro Colorado, don't we?' I took a deep draught of my drink. It had been several months since I had worked with Alastair, and mercifully time had dulled some of the wounds brought about by the more horrifying attempts at communication with him in Mauritius. |
| 1405 |
I threw a mute look of appeal at Paula. 'What Alastair is saying, honey, is this,' she said soothingly. 'If we are going to try to compare the forest with the reef, he thinks the reef is going to be more difficult because it is underwater filming, so he suggests we go to the San Bias Islands first. 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. |
| 1406 |
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. 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. |
| 1407 |
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. He directed you around the reef as a man would direct you round his home town, and certainly, without his guidance and expertise, there is a lot we would have missed or failed to understand unless it was explained. With birds and mammals and, to a certain extent, reptiles, their language consists to a very large extent of minute gestures and postures, and it takes time for you to adjust to these movements to be able to interpret what a wolfs tail is saying to you, for example. Now, with fife under the sea you have to learn a whole new language. You are constantly asking yourself why is that fish lying on its side? Or standing on its head? What was that one so busily defending and why was that one, like some street-walker, apparently soliciting a fish of a different species? Without Mark's help, we would have had little hope of understanding a millionth part of what we saw. Take the damsel fish, for example. These plump, velvety-black little creatures are ardent gardeners. Each had selected a certain portion of coral on which grew a mass of weed, carefully tended by the fish, representing not only his own territory but his larder as well. This garden he would defend against all comers, and his bravery was considerable. One that we watched and eventually filmed had a green garden some six by twelve inches in size on a huge brain coral. Our attention was drawn to him because he was, unaccountably, and with the utmost vigour, attacking a sea-urchin as black and spiny as a pin-cushion perambulating innocently past. Closer inspection, however, revealed that the sea-urchin's peregrinations were going to take it, as it were, bulldozing its way straight across the damsel fish's front lawn, hence his display of pugnacity. One morning we found our damsel fish nearly frantic, for his precious garden was being visited by a group of parrot fish. |
| 1408 |
However, this is really unsatisfactory and obviously it is a fairly hit-and-miss affair. Ideally, the young males should stake out and defend territory and in this way be able to have the females to themselves, and thus fertilize even more. So his strategy is to grow big enough, change colour and get himself a penthouse. Meanwhile, what of the female wrasse? It is obvious that the number of eggs she can lay and the number of offspring she can produce is very small compared to the legion a big male can fertilize. So what does she do? It sounds magical to us, but it is commonplace to a wrasse. She simply changes sex from a yellow female into a large blue male, strong enough to seize and defend a territory. This she does and is soon busy mating with dozens of females a day. This is, I suppose, the ultimate, a sub-aqua piscatorial women's liberation movement. Love in the wrasse's world is enchanting but apt to be confusing to the amateur naturalist at first. We arranged to film the damsel fish defending his garden and the extraordinary sexual activities of the blue-headed wrasse and many other things besides. Once Alastair got so carried away that he attempted to give directions under water, forgetting that the snorkel was not a megaphone, and nearly drowned in consequence. All in all, it was a most enjoyable and successful shoot. Our next stop was to be Barro Colorado, but as we knew it would take the crew some time to get organized Lee and I decided to stay on for a few days in the San Bias Islands, since it is not often that you find such an ideal, unspoilt spot. However, I felt it incumbent upon me to go to Israel, our hotel owner, and remonstrate with him. It is not often that I do battle with a hotel manager, but in this instance I felt justified. After all, we didn't mind the sand on the bedroom floor, the fact that we had to make our own beds, if we could find the sheets, or the fact that the sea-water in the shower would suddenly cease owing to a surfeit of shrimps in the pipes, or that the lavatory (because two screws were missing) bucked like a rodeo horse and nearly precipitated you through the bamboo walls into the sea. No, we put up with these minor irritations because of the charm of the place. What we were really complaining about was the food. Breakfast consisted of coffee, toast, marmalade and cereals perfectly satisfactory but it was the other meals that filled us with despair. So, determined to be firm but fair, I talked to Israel. 'Israel,' I said, smiling warmly, 'I want to talk to you about the food.' 'Huh?' said Israel. |
| 1409 |
One had to go fairly carefully with him, because his knowledge and command of English were rudimentary, so any sudden new idea inserted into his life was liable to panic him and make him as incomprehensible as Alastair. '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. |
| 1410 |
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. Israel said that he would take one end of the reef and Lee and I should take the other. Miss Copacabana had already lowered herself elegantly into the sea and was hanging on to the side of the boat, looking singularly out of place. 'Will you help Israel, or will you come with us?' I asked. 'I swim with you,' she said, giving me a smouldering look. So the three of us set out. After ten minutes, we all met over a forest of staghorn. Lee had seen nothing, neither had I. Treading water, I turned to Copacabana Lady. 'Did you see it?' I questioned. 'See what?' she asked. 'The corpse,' I said. 'The ... what?' 'The corpse. You know, the dead body.' 'Dead body?' she squeaked. 'What dead body?' 'That's what we're looking for,' I said exasperatedly. 'I told you.' 'Oh, Madre de Dios! A dead body? Here on the reef?' 'Yes.' 'And you are letting me swim with corpses?' she said indignantly. 'You are letting me swim with dead cadavers?' 'You wanted to come,' I pointed out. 'I go,' she said. She covered the distance to the boat in record time and hauled herself on board. 'Oh, well,' said Lee philosophically, 'she would only have had hysterics if we had found it.' It was time for us to catch our plane. We hadn't found our corpse. |
| 1411 |
Their whole metabolism is as slow as their movements, as slow as bureaucracy. They may go for a week without urinating, for example. The sloth's fur, of course, grows differently from that of other animals. In other mammals the hair grows from the backbone towards the ground, so the parting, so to speak, is on the backbone. In the sloth, it lies along the side of the belly and the rest of the hair grows towards the backbone, so when the sloth is upside-down the rain runs off the fall of the fur more easily. They have a very strange adaptation of their fur thin layers of cells which lie diagonally across the hairs forming ridges in which two species of blue-green algae flourish. This gives the animal's fur a greenish tinge, which acts as a camouflage among the leaves, so the sloth is, in effect, a sort of hanging garden. Even more curious than this, there are several species of beetle and mite which have taken up residence in the sloth's fur, as well as a strange species of moth called the snout moth. There are approximately twelve thousand different species of this sort of moth scattered around the world and many of them are very curious. For example, some have what is called a tympanal organ on the base of the abdomen. This hearing organ can detect the ultrasonic cries of bats (developed to capture prey) and thus allow the moths to escape this predator. Some of the snout moths' caterpillars live on or in aquatic plants and in many cases become really aquatic, one species of caterpillar even developing gills. The species has a curious relationship with the sloth. It lays its eggs on the sloth's fur and when these hatch out the larvae feed on the algae which exist in the grooves and possibly on the fur as well, so as well as being a sort of hanging garden the sloth is also a sort of perambulating furry hotel for all these insects. The next film star that was brought from the forest to appear in front of the cameras was a fascinating little creature that I have not seen since I obtained some in Guyana many years ago. It was a pygmy anteater, the smallest of the anteaters, a beast that, fully grown, would fit comfortably into your cupped hand with room to spare. Like the sloth, this diminutive creature is perfectly adapted to its arboreal life. Its fur is short, dense and silky, an amber brown in colour. Its prehensile tail is naked at the end, which enables the creature to get a firmer grip with it, when it is wound round a branch. It has a short, tube-like snout, slightly curved, and tiny eyes and ears hidden in its thick fur. |
| 1412 |
It is the feet of this little beast which are so extraordinary. Its hands are fat, pink pads armed with three long, slender, sharp claws, the middle one being the biggest. These claws can fold back into the palm of the hand like the blade of a pocket-knife. On the hind feet (the heel of the foot, so to speak) is a muscular pad shaped like a cup, which enables it to fit snugly round a branch. The toes on these feet end in sharp claws and have pads at their base so these, together with the suction-cup effect, help to form a prodigious clasping mechanism, without actually involving the claws. When in danger, the pygmy anteater lashes its tail round a branch, attaches its hind feet firmly (thus forming a triangle with the two feet and the tail), raises its arms above its head and, when its adversary is within range, falls forward, slashing downwards with its razor-sharp front claws. Unlike the sloth, who has blunt, peg-like teeth with no enamel that go on growing throughout its life, this anteater has no teeth, merely a long, sticky tongue and a very muscular gizzard in its stomach, which pulverizes the tree ants on which it lives. 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. |
| 1413 |
'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. '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. |
| 1414 |
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. |
| 1415 |
Lee threw a snowball at him and, unfortunately, missed. The log cabin belonged to Bob and Louise Sopuck, a charming couple who were to be our landlords and general helpers on this leg of the trip, together with their neighbours, Cheryl and Don Macdonald. When I say it was a log cabin, I do not mean one of those shoebox-shaped edifices you so frequently see in films about the old West. This large building was certainly constructed out of giant pine logs, but there the resemblance ended. Once you entered the cabin you saw that the whole of the lower floor was open-plan. The roof soared thirty feet or more above you and below were the dining, living and kitchen areas. Stairs led up to bedrooms under the eaves, and more stairs down to more bedrooms and cellars below the house. It was one of the most unusual houses that I have ever been in. Bob and Louise were both excellent cooks and had prepared a sumptuous meal to thaw out our bodies, frozen after our four-hour drive from Winnipeg: rich soup, home-made bread, followed by so much venison that I wondered if the entire deer population of Canada had been eliminated in our honour. Actually, Bob manages their land excellently and every year only shoots just enough venison to last them through the winter (generally two animals), and this acts as a beneficial cull as well as supplying delicious food. With the aid of the food, accompanied by a certain amount of medicinal Scotch which we had thoughtfully brought with us, my beard and moustache thawed out and Paula was able to see once again. It was then suggested that she, Rodney (our cameraman in Canada) and Alastair went off on a recce, while Lee and I were introduced to the mysteries of skiing and snowshoeing. I very soon discovered that my figure, my en bon point as the French so beautifully put it, was not designed for skiing. If I leant forwards, I fell flat on my face; if I leant backwards I fell flat on my back; if I maintained a regal upright stance, I fell either forwards or backwards, depending on which way the wind was blowing. Snowshoeing, however, was quite another kettle of fish and most satisfactory. It was a fascinating feeling, to be able to walk over the deep snow without sinking in. It made you feel like one of those lovely birds, the lilytrotters (albeit a fairly massive one), who progress over the waterlilies as though they were a highway. With shoes like tennis rackets you could progress at a steady pace over a depth of snow that, without the shoes, would have had you floundering and immobilized within a few feet. |
| 1416 |
Turning round on shoes was the only tricky part, and if you did not do it right your shoes got tangled up and you fell into the snow, from whence it required much struggling and effort to get yourself upright again. Once you had mastered it you felt like a guardsman with outsize feet, doing a smart right-about-turn on the parade-ground. Having acquired some expertise on the snowshoes, Lee and I went off to explore the immediate environs. The sky was slate grey, so solid it looked as if it would clang like iron if you threw a snowball at it. Out of it drifted handfuls of snowflakes, each the size of a penny stamp, as thick and as soft as blotting-paper. The snow squeaked and purred under your shoes, but apart from this the silence was complete, the world gagged with snow. The pines looked as though some giant pastrycook had flung icing sugar at them, their dark-green branches bending under the weight. In places you could see where quite large trees had been bent over by their white load and it was obvious that with the next snowfall the trees would be wrenched from the ground. We came to a small lake, round and smooth as a saucer of milk under its ice and snow covering. At the edges we could see snow-covered hummocks with black branches sticking out of them, like sticks of charcoal breaking the icy crust. These were beaver lodges and deep inside the animals slumbered, waiting for the spring to melt the five-foot piecrust of ice and snow and thus release the water for them to swim in. In the summer, when we returned to Canada, we revisited this lake at dawn. Then the change was spectacular. The water was greeny-gold and the whole lake was rimmed with thick beds of reeds, like a fringe on a Victorian tablecloth, and here and there the surface was embroidered with patches of white waterlilies. The sun had just lifted above the green, shimmering trees, pulling wisps of mist up from the lake's surface, delicate skeins drifting among the reeds and the waterlilies, like fragile wedding veils. We took a canoe, and travelled slowly out across the water towards the brown hump, like a giant, badly made Christmas pudding, that was the beavers' lodge. Halfway to it, a large brown head suddenly broke the surface of the greeny-gold water, and in a circular picture-frame of ripples a beaver contemplated us with a certain suspicion. We paused in our paddling to watch him as he swam slowly and sedately to and fro in front of the lodge, like a guardsman patrolling in front of a palace. |
| 1417 |
When we attempted to manoeuvre the canoe closer to him, however, he panicked and lifted his paddle-shaped tail out of the water and brought it down on the surface with a blow that echoed across the lake like a gunshot and then dived. A few minutes later, he appeared in a different place and, seeing that we had not retreated, he smote the waters again before diving once more. The whole time we were out in the canoe, he kept reappearing, each time in a different place, and smiting the water to frighten us off. He was the only beaver we saw during our time in Canada and I cannot say that he behaved in anything like a welcoming manner. Back at the house, we found Alastair in high spirits, for he had come upon and filmed a large herd of white-tailed deer and a somewhat recalcitrant moose which proved, as far as he was concerned, that there were animals in this frozen wilderness. As we had only seen two crows in our four-hour drive from Winnipeg, I must say I hardly blamed Alastair for his belief that the frozen north was bereft of all life other than human. 'Tomorrow, we will go out and try to get some shots of you and Lee with the white-tailed deer and moose,' said Paula, producing. She had forgotten the days in Madagascar when she was merely the assistant producer, and went under the nickname of 'Ass. 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. |
| 1418 |
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. 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. |
| 1419 |
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. |
| 1420 |
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. 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. |
| 1421 |
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. 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. |
| 1422 |
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. Here he collected another mouthful of grass and made his way back to where I sat. Within a couple of feet of me he paused, peered at me with dark eyes over his monstrous green moustache, and then unconcernedly went to his haystack and added his burden to it, patting it carefully into place. The curious thing was that when the pikas in the lower valley uttered their shrill whistling alarm call our pika would stop and whistle back, even though, on several occasions, he was so close to me that I could have reached out and touched him. He treated the fact that there were seven human beings clustered around him filming and recording his every move or sound with complete sang-froid, ignoring us and getting on with his busy schedule as if his life depended on it which, of course, it did. The only point at which he got a trifle agitated was when we produced the kites, which sent his brethren down the valley into whistling hysterics. Somewhere in his researches, Alastair had come across an experiment Konrad Lorenz had conducted on some chickens. He had constructed a large cardboard silhouette of a flying goose. When he passed this across the sky above the chickens, they took no notice. However, if the silhouette was reversed, that is to say it was flying backwards, the chickens reacted strongly. The silhouette became that of a hawk, and the long neck and head of the goose became the hawk's long tail, and the tail of the goose was the small round head of the predator. Nothing loth, Alastair was determined to have us fly some kites to see what effect it would have on the pikas, and so he had paid a visit to a shop in Toronto's Chinatown and had procured two most elegant kites depicting hawks. Once we got these really beautiful kites airborne, the effect they had on the wildlife of the valley was considerable. Marmots shouted obscenities at them, pikas in the lower valley appeared to suffer a collective nervous breakdown, and four ptarmigans who had been walking along sedately minding their own business ran among the rocks and disappeared by the simple expedient of crouching down. Our pika, although he viewed the paper hawks with some alarm, was such a dedicated farmer that he did not let their presence interfere with his haymaking. He would pause now and then and utter a slightly muffled whistle through his green moustache. |
| 1423 |
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. 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. |
| 1424 |
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. 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. |
| 1425 |
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. 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. |
| 1426 |
'I would be glad of some clarification,' said the Captain. Simply and concisely, Paula explained the whole drama of the falling leaves. 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. |
| 1427 |
'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. 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. |
| 1428 |
'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. '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. |
| 1429 |
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. This persecution of the badger represents the two ends of our rainbow of society. The bureaucratic manipulation at one end and the wonderful, much lauded working man at the other, who, because he likes (like a Roman crowd) a little bit of blood-letting, drags society with him, sweating and grunting in his pursuit of pain and death. We had already obtained marvellous footage of badgers underground, filmed for us by Eric Ashby who has allowed badgers to build a sett under his cottage. With the aid of two-way glass he can observe and film his badgers underground. To complete this badger sequence, what Jonathan now wanted was some shots of Lee and myself outside a badger sett and the animal emerging in front of us. 'You will be sitting outside a sett on the other side of the valley,' Jonathan explained, 'and then, just as it becomes dusk, the badgers will come out.' 'Have you told the badgers this?' I asked. 'They will come out,' Jonathan said confidently. 'They will come out for the sandwich.' 'Sandwich? What sandwich?' asked Lee. 'A peanut-butter sandwich,' said Jonathan. 'What are you talking about?' asked Lee. 'Badgers,' said Jonathan, with an air of authority, 'badgers find peanut-butter sandwiches irresistible. They will travel miles to obtain one. Drag a peanut-butter sandwich through the forest and you will have every badger for miles around following you.' 'Where did you obtain this esoteric piece of information?' I enquired. 'I read it in a book on badgers,' said Jonathan. 'They said it never fails.' 'It sounds distinctly peculiar to me,' I said. 'I have never heard of attracting badgers with peanut butter.' 'Chipmunks like peanut butter,' said Lee. 'I used to feed it to them in the garden in Memphis, so I don't see why a badger shouldn't like it.' 'They find it irresistible,' repeated Jonathan. 'They'll do anything for a peanut-butter sandwich.' So, armed with a vast quantity of peanut-butter sandwiches, we made our way into the forest where there was an extensive badger sett. However, it was a fairly well-populated area and all the signs were that a number of human beings had been trampling round in the vicinity. |
| 1430 |
It is estimated that something like half a million miles of hedgerow lay like a chessboard across the countryside. As well as guarding his crops and cattle and providing wildlife with a refuge, the hedgerows were a veritable apothecary's shop to medieval man, providing him with many plants to cure everything from headaches to hernias and other plants to stave off the meddling of witches, so prevalent in those days. The lovely stitchwort, white as a snowflake, was supposed to cure sharp pains in your side; the cool, fleshy dock leaves were soothing for stings, especially nettle stings; if you were wounded or cut, the self-heal would be the plant to search for; or, if you suffered from ulcers in the mouth or in more intimate and painful places, the handsome silver weed would cure you. Medieval man treated the hedgerows with respect because they were the haunt of elves, fairies and other sprites. As well as bad magic lurking in the hedges (if you plucked lady's smock an adder would bite you, or pluck innocent blue speedwell and create a thunderstorm or, worse, bring a bird down to peck out your eyes), there was good magic as well. You could rub your cow's udder with buttercups and thus increase your milk yield or you could hang nettles in your dairy to prevent witches from curdling your milk. Once the hedgerows were considered vitally important and they were carefully maintained so that man and wild creatures benefited from them. Now, however, farmers consider the hedgerow to be a nuisance and so these ancient and useful sanctuaries are being bulldozed out of existence to make way for ever larger and larger tracts of land, exposed to the eroding effects of wind and rain. We wanted to try to show on film one of these ancient hedgerows that still exist and capture some of its beauty and importance. In time, the hedgerow will be a thing of the past and a lovely and important part of Britain's heritage will have vanished. So we wanted to show a bit of the English countryside as it had been for thousands of years and to explore it. We decided to use three archaic or semi-archaic forms of transport. Jonathan had found a magnificent area of hedgerow in Sussex which ran along the side of a sunken green lane, that is to say a natural lane, uncorrupted by gravel or macadam, the sort of lane a-glitter with flowers, sheltered by tall hawthorns covered with white blossom like snow. It was the sort of green lane that Shakespeare knew, the sort of lane that the pilgrims to Canterbury used. |
| 1431 |
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. 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. |
| 1432 |
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. 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. |
| 1433 |
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. |
| 1434 |
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. 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. |
| 1435 |
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. 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. |
| 1436 |
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. |
| 1437 |
The trees, prickly and dangerous, loomed nearer and nearer. Jeff did the only thing he could do he pulled the cord that opened the flap and released the hot air from the balloon. Our big, bright, beautiful balloon shrivelled and died, but in its death throes the basket was thrown on its side precipitating us all in a heap on top of poor Chris. In its dying flurry the balloon dragged the basket a further fifty or so yards with all of us in a splendid tangle, trying our best not to sustain a broken leg or arm. At length, we came to rest and, bruised and breathless, crept out of the basket. The aluminium pole with the remote-control camera on it had been bent and twisted like a corkscrew, but fortunately the camera was not broken. What was more important, neither was any of us. Jonathan, Paula and the crew, who had been following our erratic flight in two cars, came pelting through the trees, looking extremely worried. 'Are you all right?' shouted Jonathan, obviously with visions of the talent with a couple of broken legs. 'Yes, we're OK,' I shouted back. 'It was as easy as falling off a log.' Fortunately, they had brought with them the obligatory bottle of champagne which tradition demands that you consume to celebrate your first balloon flight. We drank it with relish, standing in the ruined barley field by the multicoloured corpse of our airy steed. In spite of our rather frightening crash landing, we greatly looked forward to our flight on the following day, when we would be escorted by the helicopter. Unfortunately, in the morning the weather was unsuitable, but by mid-afternoon the forecast was favourable so once more we drifted aloft, the helicopter, with Chris hanging out of it, following us closely. It was a glorious, golden afternoon, with the sky heat-hazy and a faded forget-me-not-blue. In this light, the countryside looked spectacular, the fields in so many different colours, emerald green, gold with buttercups, the pale fawn of ripening crops, the newly ploughed fields like reddish-brown corduroy. Once the helicopter signalled us on our walkie-talkie that Chris had obtained sufficient shots, we could let poor Jeff emerge from under the blanket and enjoy the flight. Lee, of course, had by now become so besotted with ballooning that she wanted me to go out the following day and purchase one. I confess that I was tempted, but I had to curb my enthusiasm and hers. So, as the sun set and flooded the countryside with delicate greeny-gold light, we drifted on, quiet and haphazard as a dandelion clock, vowing that this was the only way to travel. |
| 1438 |
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. It is the Gila woodpecker that, because it builds several nests each season, makes the Saguaro into a sort of prickly block of flats. Once the woodpecker has dug out a hole, the cactus (in self-defence) forms a hard, woody callus over the wound. These are the strange, misshapen 'clogs' that you find when the cactus dies. Once the woodpecker vacates its nest, other birds like owls, flycatchers and purple martins take them over, so it is possible to have three or four different species living in one of these cacti blocks of flats. |
| 1439 |
After we had driven some miles into the desert, we stopped and walked through the giant cactus forest. The Saguaro was the most prominent because of its size and impressive girth, but there were many other fantastic species as well. There were the Teddy Bear Chollas, for example, a medium-size cactus with many rather blunt limbs, so thickly covered with pale fawn-coloured spines that from a distance it looked like fur, and so the arms of the Cholla did look remarkably like the arms of a traditional teddy bear. Then there is the strange Boojum, with tall stems and long drooping arms, the whole thing covered with thorn-like black twigs so it looked as though each Boojum were in urgent need of a shave. These twigs bear leaves only when the Boojum has sufficient moisture to nourish them. These fantastic plants have been described as looking like upside-down carrots, though they are green not red. When you see some of them, sixty feet high with their drooping unshaven branches, it is really one of the oddest-looking plants of the desert. We were lucky that when we were there all the cacti were in flower, so that the desert was a riot of colour. There were flowers as green as jade, as yellow as daffodils, purple as heather, pink as cyclamen, tangerine orange and scarlet. If you had suddenly been dropped in the desert with this spiky profusion of strange shapes and the waxy, brilliant blooms and you had been informed you were on Mars, you would have unhesitatingly believed it. Although the Sonora was hot, it was so dry that you did not really feel it. In fact, you had to be careful working out in the cactus forest, for you could get badly sunburnt without realizing it. An additional hazard of course was the cacti themselves, for they surrounded you on all sides with, as it were, their swords at the ready. Brush against a Teddy Bear Cholla, for example, and you soon found out how deceptive its furry, cuddly look was and you had to spend a tedious hour or so plucking spines out of your shirt or trousers. Alastair, who always insisted on running everywhere and who was constantly tripping over his own feet, was in mortal peril most of the time we were in the Sonora. On one occasion, running backwards to get the right angle for a shot he wanted, he ran straight into an extremely prickly and unyielding Saguaro that had been growing in that spot for a hundred years or so and could see no reason why it should move for a film director. Alastair's hoot of agony could, with a following wind, have surely been heard in London. |
| 1440 |
We were very lucky to have the enthusiastic co-operation of the Sonora Desert Museum, a unique and wonderful institution that has living creatures for exhibition rather than stuffed ones. This of course enabled us to borrow most of our stars, and the majority of them were tame. But tameness can have its disadvantages, as we found out. We wanted to show the time-honoured method of catching lizards (which I have used with success all over the world) by the simple means of having a noose in a piece of fishing-line attached to a stick. 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. |
| 1441 |
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. 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. |
| 1442 |
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. |
| 1443 |
The fascinating thing about shooting this series was the contrast. One minute you would be filming in snow and the next minute sweating in the heat of a tropical forest. One minute paddling a canoe down an English river, the next minute paddling a canoe over a tropical reef. So in this case we had a contrast, for we left the giant cactus forests of Arizona and flew down to the rolling grasslands of southern Africa, to that great game reserve with the marvellous name straight out of Rider Haggard of Umfolozi. Approaching the wonderful reserve is one of the most salutary and frightening biological eye-openers I have ever experienced anywhere in the world. You drive through mile after mile of rolling green grassland that reminds you vaguely of parts of England. 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. |
| 1444 |
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. |
| 1445 |
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. Another point in our favour was that he had no tick birds on him, for these invariably gave the alarm that sent their steed lumbering off. 'Now,' whispered Alastair, 'what I want you to do is to get out of the car, get as close to him as you can, then turn round, face camera and do your opening speech.' 'Thanks,' I said. 'You, meanwhile, will be skulking in the safety of the car.' 'I shall be with you in spirit,' said Alastair. |
| 1446 |
The River Wye, our second location, which normally rushed joyfully over its rocky bed, clear as molten glass, was transformed by mud and debris into something closely resembling one of the more unpleasant lava flows regurgitated from a bad-tempered and dyspeptic volcano. Needless to say, this had a distressing effect on Jonathan, and every time he looked out of the window he mentally, as it were fell on his sword. We rushed from one location to the other (at opposite ends of the country, naturally) in the hopes that the weather had cleared, but in vain. 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. |
| 1447 |
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. 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. |
| 1448 |
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. |
| 1449 |
At length, in spite of the weather, Jonathan was reasonably satisfied. As well as all the necessary linking shots of Lee and myself, he now had film of beautifully marked polecats and those excellent swimmers, the water voles, the elegant mink and a family of baby coots who, in their yellow down jerseys had scarlet faces which made them look as though they were suffering from chronic high blood-pressure. Curiously, they resemble so many of the punks that you see about, but they are infinitely more appealing. We also had a lovely sequence of swans, those avian giraffes of the river, who sail majestically along, delving deep to reach the weed and then tossing it elegantly over their shoulders to be feasted on by the flotilla of fluffy grey young swimming expectantly behind them. So we left the river and went back to the pond which, though still muddy, was not quite as disgusting as it had been. Here we had several sequences to do, one involving a boat and a piece of film showing me walking on the water. Ponds are like little worlds of their own, and an enormous variety of creatures depend on them. Unfortunately, all over the country the number of ponds is dwindling as they are drained and filled, being considered by the nature-loving British farmer as being useless bits of water that get in the way of crops or grazing. The fact that an enormous number of creatures, from frogs and toads and dragonflies to the myriad microscopic beasts, depend on these ponds for their very lives does not concern a well-educated modern society. Fortunately, some people do still care and are willing to help and not harass nature out of existence. There is, for example, the excellent Frog Watch conducted by the Royal Society for Nature Conservation. In Britain you can phone a frog that is to say, there is a special hot-line telephone, number broadcast on local radio and printed in the local paper, by which you can report your first sighting of frog or toad spawn in ditches, garden ponds, or the dwindling number of natural ponds. Experts then mark this on large-scale maps of the area and thus gain a picture of the extent of the amphibians' breeding-grounds. Frogs, of course, stick fairly close to their birthplace throughout their lives, but toads present a very difficult problem. As soon as the toadlets come out of the pond they spread far and wide, for their skins do not require the moist environment that the frogs need. However, when they grow up and the breeding season arrives they hop off in their thousands to the pond or lake where they were born. |
| 1450 |
Of course, in many cases they have to cross roads or even motorways to attain their objective and so thousands are killed annually by cars. In the Netherlands, where they seem to deal more sympathetically with their wildlife, they have created underpasses for migrating toads. There is as yet no such refinement in Britain, but there is a move afoot to remedy this with the slogan 'Help a Toad Cross the Road'. People empathetic to toads (and who could be otherwise since, if kissed, each one is a potential prince?) take buckets, dustbins or other containers to those points where the toads habitually cross and as the vast concourse of amphibians arrives they bundle them into the buckets and other containers and take them safely across the road. It is to be hoped that the Boy Scouts give up their time-consuming traditional task of helping old ladies across the road and concentrate instead on the toads. Of course, we had already filmed quite a number of the pond sequences under controlled conditions and had got some remarkable material. 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. |
| 1451 |
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. |
| 1452 |
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. The dangerous part of the business was that if you lost your balance and fell over it was extremely hard to extract your legs from the canvas covering the top of the shoes and so you stood a pretty good chance of drowning before anyone came to your rescue. The rowing boat Jonathan had found was a magnificent craft some ten feet long, broad in the beam, so that she resembled a fat beetle in shape with the paint peeling off her in great strips like skin off an unwary sunbather. So, while I stamped about the surface of the pond in my water-shoes, Jonathan rowed the boat with the camera crew in it after me. When I had done all the walking-on-the-water shots to his satisfaction our noble sound-recordist, Brian who had been watching my performance enviously was determined to try his hand at it. We launched him successfully, and in great style he completed a circuit of the pond. It was when he was coming in to land that he ran into trouble. For some reason, as he reached the shallows, he lost his balance, fell over sideways and lay there in two feet of water, his legs trapped in the watershoes, frantically struggling to keep his head above water. It was fortunate that the water was shallow so he could keep one hand on the bottom and so keep his head above the surface. If the water had been deeper and we had not been handy as rescuers, he would assuredly have drowned. The next sequence we had to do was Lee and I rowing the boat about while I explained how an amateur naturalist does not have to spend large sums of money on vast quantities of sophisticated equipment but can, with a little bit of ingenuity, convert everyday appliances to his or her needs, such as making a perfectly good grapnel out of a wire coathanger, which will enable you to pull patches of weed from the centre of a pond to the bank. As every amateur naturalist knows, all the most exciting bits of weed are invariably situated in the exact centre of any body of water and so require some sort of appliance to bring them within reach. To get these idyllic shots of Lee and myself, clad in straw hats, rowing gently across the placid pond was slightly more complex than one imagined. |
| 1453 |
To begin with, the boat was not very large and so once Lee and I were in it there was very little space left in the stern for anyone else. Finally, with the boat sagging low in the water, there was the cameraman, the assistant cameraman, the sound-recordist and the director, as well as Lee and myself, in our long-suffering craft and my long-suffering wife had to row this crew to and fro over the pond until Jonathan was satisfied that he had got the shots that he required. So we left the turgid pond and the damp, cold English countryside and sped across the Atlantic to what Americans for some reason best known to themselves call the Big Apple New York City. Here, with Paula watching over us, Alastair directing and Rodders doing the camera work, we were going to try to show that to a dedicated amateur naturalist even a gigantic modern city could provide grist to his mill. Alastair greeted us as only Alastair can broad grin, glittering eyes, head on one side because that crafty hangman has placed the knot snugly under the left ear. 'Worms,' he said by way of greeting, 'worms, beating the ground to feel like rain ... cemetery ... lots of life in a cemetery.' I tried to think of all the cemeteries I had been in austere white ones like hospital wards, lichen-encrusted ones where you had to fight your way with a machete to decipher the carunculated faces of the gravestones with their time-blurred messages. 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. |
| 1454 |
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. So we continued to film in this, one of the most squalid, repulsive, dirty, beautiful and exciting of cities. |
| 1455 |
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. |
| 1456 |
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. 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? |
| 1457 |
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. 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. |
| 1458 |
'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 ... |
| 1459 |
As the whole theme of the series was about how to become an amateur naturalist, what better place to start (thought Jonathan) than the island of Corfu where I had first developed my passion for animals when I lived there as a child. I was pleased with this idea since I had not visited the island for many years in spite of all my friends there imploring me to do so, and Lee had never been there. The island, in spite of the tourist trade and all its attendant vulgarities and desecrations, still retains a special magic, and I was anxious to show Lee those bits of it that still remain the same as they had been when I was a boy. We were doubly lucky inasmuch as my friend Ann Peters was living on the island, spoke Greek fluently and offered to put herself at our disposal. At one time, Ann had been my secretary and had accompanied me on filming trips to Sierra Leone and complicated conservation trips to Australia and Patagonia, so she knew not only the difficulties of filming but also the particularly horrendous problems of filming animals. 'Where are we staying?' I asked Jonathan. 'The Corfu Palace,' he answered. I stared at him in disbelief. The Corfu Palace was the oldest and most venerable of the island's hotels, built in the early days of the century. It had been cunningly arranged (as only an architect worth his salt could arrange it) on a sweeping bay on the outskirts of the town, where the entire sewage system of Corfu was debouched into the sea. This gave the whole area especially in summer such a rich aroma that even dogs avoided it. 'Who suggested this?' I asked. 'Ann,' said Jonathan. I stared at Ann, thinking that a prolonged sojourn in Corfu had addled what brains she used to possess. 'Have you taken leave of your senses?' I asked. 'First of all, we will all be asphyxiated in our beds; second, the rooms will cost you ten billion drachmas a second; and, third, if we want to keep butterflies or tortoises handy, you can't do it in a hotel of that aristocratic decrepitude.' 'It has all been arranged,' said Ann soothingly. 'First, the manager a very nice man called Jean-Pierre is giving us special rates; second, the sewage problem has now been solved; and, third and this is really something Jean-Pierre is a mad-keen herpetologist.' I took a deep, steadying draught of B & S before replying. '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. |
| 1460 |
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. 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. |
| 1461 |
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. 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. |
| 1462 |
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. 'I was just looking through one of the back windows when this piece of glass fell out. If I put my hand in, we can open the window and we can get into the villa.' I sighed. 'I'm not sure what the sentence in Greece is for breaking and entering, but I think it would be several years and Greek gaols are notoriously uncomfortable.' 'Surely nobody would know,' said Lee, 'not if we put the glass back.' 'And what happens if the owner turns up while we are disporting ourselves in the villa?' I asked. 'Let's cross that bridge when we get to it,' said Jonathan firmly. 'At least we can get the veranda scenes done.' So we broke into the villa. The reason we needed to get into it and open it up was twofold. First, we needed shots of me and Lee looking inanely out of various windows and going in and out of the door and, second, we needed the electrical supply within so that we could film the night-time and evening sequences. All of this took some considerable time and it was quite late in the evening when we finally packed up and (having carefully locked up the villa and replaced the glass) wended our weary way back to the Corfu Palace. |
| 1463 |
'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. 'Pond terrapins,' he said with relish. 'Pond terrapins?' I asked incredulously. 'Yes,' said Jonathan, and then, misinterpreting my expression, in alarm: 'You've still got them, haven't you?' 'Oh yes,' I said. 'I was just thinking that our bath won't be quite the same without them. We have grown quite attached to them.' 'Good,' said Jonathan. 'I thought they might have escaped or something.' 'Unfortunately no,' I said. 'Well,' said Jonathan, 'this is what we will do. We will get a shot of you and Lee arriving at the lake and you can tell how you used to go there and catch things when you were a child. |
| 1464 |
Someone once said to me that they could not understand what I saw in the olive groves they were so dull and lifeless. For me, they housed an endless, fascinating pageant of creatures and in spring they were awash with flowers, as if someone had emptied a paintbox among the great, dark, gnarled trunks. They were anything but dull and lifeless. Finally, we bumped our way down a stony track through the olives and there lay Scottini, an almost circular lake about seven or eight acres in extent, surrounded by trees and with a large reedy island in the middle and its shallow water full of jade-green weeds. As olive groves looked to some people, it too looked lifeless, yet I knew it was a universe of its own, for in its depths were weird darting, rolling, jerking, flitting forms of microscopic life, fearsome dragonfly larvae, small fish, newts, frogs, snakes and pond terrapins. I remember in my youth I had gone here once and spent a day collecting, and so rich was this little lake and so numerous my captures that I had soon used up all my collecting gear and was forced to use my clothes in which to carry my precious specimens, so that I arrived back at our villa stark naked, to the alarm and consternation of my mother. So, after Jonathan had prowled around and found suitable locations, cameras were set up and we took the first sequence which starred the grass snake. Our snake wrangler, the cares of catering and hotel management forgotten, bare-footed, trousers rolled up, stripped to the waist, danced about in mud and water, getting the handsome reptile to do Jonathan's bidding. The snake behaved beautifully, slithering across mud, wriggling through grass and finally swimming out into the lake, its large handsome head raised high above the water, leaving a wide V of ripples behind it. 'Now for the piEce de rEsistance,' said Jonathan, overexcited by our success with the grass snake. 'The pond terrapins. Now, I want you to put three of them just there on that grass bank, and you and Lee come along and see them basking in the sun and you creep up and catch one as the others go into the water.' 'They will be down that bank before you can say "Jonathan Harris",' I said. 'Well, anyway, let's try it,' said Jonathan stubbornly. So three of the pond terrapins were taken out, held in position by Jean-Pierre, while Lee and I took up our positions. 'Now, action,' said Jonathan. Jean-Pierre released his hold on the terrapins and leapt back so that he was out of shot. Lee and I took one step forward. |
| 1465 |
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. |
| 1466 |
I often lost my wallet... I had my teeth kicked in... I was a lost soul... lost... lost... Then my drinking buddy, Mike, he got killed in a drunken car crash... that did it . . Sarah took a hit. "Now I am at peace... I sleep well... I'm beginning to feel like a functional human being again... And Christ is my high, greater than any drink the devil has put upon this earth!" Tears were in the fellow's eyes. I took another hit. Then he recited a poem: I am found again. I am made over by ten. I have lost the yen. I am brother to my kin. I am found again. He bowed his head and the others applauded. Then a woman began to speak. She had, she said, begun drinking at parties. And it had gone on from there. She began to drink alone at home. The plants died because she didn't water them. During an argument she slashed her daughter with a paring knife. Her husband began drinking also. Lost his job. Stayed at home. They drank together. Then she slashed him with a paring knife. One day she just got in her car and drove off with her suitcase and her credit cards. Drank in motels. Smoked and drank and watched TV. Vodka. She loved vodka. One night she set her bed on fire. A fire engine came to the motel. She was drunk in her nightie. One of the firemen squeezed her buttocks. She jumped into her car in just her nightie with only her purse. She drove and drove, in a daze. About noon the next day she was at 4th and Broadway. Two of the tires had gone flat as she was driving along. The tires had ripped off and she was driving on the rims, leaving deep grooves in the asphalt. A cop stopped her. She was taken in — for observation. The days went by. Her husband didn't come by or her daughter. She was alone. She was sitting with the shrink one day and the shrink asked her, "Why do you insist upon destroying yourself?" And when he asked her this it was no longer the face of the shrink looking at her but the face of Christ. That did it... "How did she know it was the face of Christ?" I asked aloud. "Who is that man?" I heard somebody ask. My bottle of wine was empty. I corkscrewed open a new one. Then another fellow told his story. The campfire just kept on burning and burning. Nobody had to add fuel to it. And no other bums came by and bothered them. When the fellow finished his story he reached into his shopping cart and pulled out a very expensive guitar. I took a hit and passed the red to Sarah. The fellow tuned his guitar, then began playing it and singing. He was right in tune, voice-trained. |
| 1467 |
Simplicity, that's what was needed. We went upstairs, washed, changed, made ready for bed. "What are those poor people going to do?" asked Sarah. "I know. I know..." Then it was time for sleep. I went downstairs for a last look, came back up. Sarah was asleep. I turned out the light. We slept. Having seen the movie made that afternoon we were now somehow different, we would never think or talk quite the same. We now knew something more but what it was seemed very vague and even perhaps a bit disagreeable. 29 Jon Pinchot had escaped from the ghetto. In his contract it stated that he would be supplied with an apartment to be paid for by Firepower. Jon found an apartment near the Firepower building. Each night, from his bed, Jon could see the lit sign at the top of the building, Firepower, and it shone through his window and upon his face as he slept. Francois Racine remained in the ghetto. He began a garden, growing vegetables. He spun his roulette wheel, tended his garden and fed the chickens. He was one of the strangest men I had ever met. "I cannot leave my chickens," he told me. "I will die in this strange land here with my chickens, here among the blacks." I went to the track on the days that the horses were running and the movie continued shooting. The phone rang every day. People wanted to interview the writer. I never realized that there were so many movie magazines or magazines interested in the movies. It was a sickness: this great interest in a medium that relentlessly and consistently failed, time after time after time, to produce anything at all. People became so used to seeing shit on film that they no longer realized it was shit. The racetrack was another waste of human life and effort. The people marched up to the windows with their money which they exchanged for pieces of numbered paper. Almost all of the numbers weren't good. In addition the track and the state took 18% off the top of each dollar, which they roughly divided. The biggest damn fools went to the movies and the racetracks. I was a damn fool who went to the racetrack. But I did better than most because after decades of race-going I had learned a minor trick or two. With me, it was a hobby and I never went wild with my money. Once you have been poor a long time you gain a certain respect for money. You never again want to be without any of it at all. That's for saints and fools. One of my successes in life was that in spite of all the crazy things I had done, I was perfectly normal: I chose to do those things, they didn't choose me. |
| 1468 |
And we used to think, 'Look at them, talking about their half-assed movie deals or their contracts or their last films.' What moles, what misfits... better to look away when the swordfish and the sand dabs arrive." "We thought they were shit," said Sarah, "and now we are." "What goes around comes around..." "Right! I think I'll have the sand dabs..." The waiter stood above us, shuffling his feet, scowling, the hairs of his eyebrows falling down into his eyes. Musso's had been there since 1919 and everything was a pain in the ass to him: us, and everybody else in the place. I agreed. Decided on the swordfish. With french fries. 33 The film was being shot in 3 locations. Different rooms, different streets and alleys, different bars had to be juggled about. There was a night scene which was to entail some stealing of corn from a vacant lot and a chase by the police. The corn had been planted and was ready to steal. To use the location cost the budget 5 thousand dollars. The vacant lot was now owned by a Rehabilitation Center for Alcoholics. Pinchot had searched everywhere for a cheaper location but finally had to settle for that one, which actually was the same vacant lot which my lady had stolen the corn from over 3 decades ago. The new corn had been planted in the exact location where the old corn had been planted. Other things were not quite so exact. The apartment building nearby where the lady had lived, the one I moved into with her, had now been turned into a Home for the Aged. The large building next to the vacant lot, now being used as a Rehabilitation Center, back then had been a popular ballroom. It was always busy especially on Saturday nights. The entire bottom floor was a ballroom, gigantic, with large globes of light slowly turning in the ceiling as the live band played dance music until early in the a. m. while many fancy cars, some with chauffeurs, waited outside. We hated that ballroom and those people while we starved and fought with each other and the police and the landlord, as we were taken to and then bailed out of the Lincoln Heights Jail. Now that building was full of reformed drunks who read the Bible, smoked too many cigarettes and played Bingo in the room that had once been the grand ballroom. The vacant lot was all that hadn't changed. In all those decades nobody had ever built a structure of any kind there. Francine and Jack had already had a couple of rehearsals and had vanished into their trailers and we were standing around waiting for the action. |
| 1469 |
Anyhow, I'm glad to be part of this film and part of her great comeback..." So, to celebrate our good feelings, we locked the cutting room, got into the elevator and got out into the street and into my car and went off to eat. Not Musso's this time but someplace closer, a restaurant about 8 blocks west. It was curious, I thought, the way things got done. It was just one day at a time, day after day and then there it was. In a sense, I felt as if I hadn't yet even written the script. You haven't, some critic might say, as long as you embrace the bad and the obvious in your writing. But what was the difference between a movie critic and the average movie-goer? Answer: the critic didn't have to pay. "Pull over here," said Jon, "this is the place!" And I did. 40 I went back to the racetrack. At times I wondered what I was doing out there. And at times I knew. For one, it allowed me to view large numbers of people at their worst, and this kept me in touch with the reality of what humanity consisted of. The greed, the fear, the anger were all there. There are certain characteristic individuals at every racetrack everywhere, every day. I was probably viewed as one of those characters and I didn't like that. I would have preferred to be invisible. I don't care to hold counsel with the other players. I don't want to discuss horses with them. I don't view the other players with any kind of camaraderie at all. Actually we are playing against each other. The track never has a losing day. The track takes its cut, the state takes its cut, and the cut keeps getting bigger, which means for a player to win consistently he or she must have a decided betting edge, a superior method, a logical insight. The average player plays daily doubles, exactas, triples, pick sixes, or pick nines. They end up with handfuls of useless cardboard. They bet win, they bet place, they bet show. But there is only one bet, and that bet is to win. It takes the pressure off. Simplicity is always the secret, to a profound truth, to doing things, to writing, to painting. Life is profound in its simplicity. I think that the racetrack keeps me aware of this. But, in another sense, the racetrack is a sickness, a fill-in, a cop-out, a substitute for something else that should be faced. Yet, we all need to escape. The hours are long and must be filled somehow until our death. And there's just not enough glory and excitement to go around. Things quickly get drab and deadly. We awaken in the morning, kick our feet out from under the sheets, place them on the floor and think, ah, shit, what now? |
| 1470 |
Peter Blood, bachelor of medicine and several other things besides, smoked a pipe and tended the geraniums boxed on the sill of his window above Water Lane in the town of Bridgewater. Sternly disapproving eyes considered him from a window opposite, but went disregarded. Mr. Blood's attention was divided between his task and the stream of humanity in the narrow street below; a stream which poured for the second time that day towards Castle Field, where earlier in the afternoon Ferguson, the Duke's chaplain, had preached a sermon containing more treason than divinity. These straggling, excited groups were mainly composed of men with green boughs in their hats and the most ludicrous of weapons in their hands. Some, it is true, shouldered fowling pieces, and here and there a sword was brandished; but more of them were armed with clubs, and most of them trailed the mammoth pikes fashioned out of scythes, as formidable to the eye as they were clumsy to the hand. There were weavers, brewers, carpenters, smiths, masons, bricklayers, cobblers, and representatives of every other of the trades of peace among these improvised men of war. Bridgewater, like Taunton, had yielded so generously of its manhood to the service of the bastard Duke that for any to abstain whose age and strength admitted of his bearing arms was to brand himself a coward or a papist. Yet Peter Blood, who was not only able to bear arms, but trained and skilled in their use, who was certainly no coward, and a papist only when it suited him, tended his geraniums and smoked his pipe on that warm July evening as indifferently as if nothing were afoot. One other thing he did. He flung after those war-fevered enthusiasts a line of Horace - a poet for whose work he had early conceived an inordinate affection: "Quo, quo, scelesti, ruitis?" And now perhaps you guess why the hot, intrepid blood inherited from the roving sires of his Somersetshire mother remained cool amidst all this frenzied fanatical heat of rebellion; why the turbulent spirit which had forced him once from the sedate academical bonds his father would have imposed upon him, should now remain quiet in the very midst of turbulence. You realize how he regarded these men who were rallying to the banners of liberty - the banners woven by the virgins of Taunton, the girls from the seminaries of Miss Blake and Mrs. Musgrove, who - as the ballad runs - had ripped open their silk petticoats to make colours for King Monmouth's army. That Latin line, contemptuously flung after them as they clattered down the cobbled street, reveals his mind. |
| 1471 |
To him they were fools rushing in wicked frenzy upon their ruin. You see, he knew too much about this fellow Monmouth and the pretty brown slut who had borne him, to be deceived by the legend of legitimacy, on the strength of which this standard of rebellion had been raised. He had read the absurd proclamation posted at the Cross at Bridgewater - as it had been posted also at Taunton and elsewhere - setting forth that "upon the decease of our Sovereign Lord Charles the Second, the right of succession to the Crown of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland, with the dominions and territories thereunto belonging, did legally descend and devolve upon the most illustrious and high-born Prince James, Duke of Monmouth, son and heir apparent to the said King Charles the Second." It had moved him to laughter, as had the further announcement that "James Duke of York did first cause the said late King to be poysoned, and immediately thereupon did usurp and invade the Crown." He knew not which was the greater lie. 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. |
| 1472 |
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. 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. |
| 1473 |
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. He had the advantage of a commission under the famous de Ruyter, and fought in the Mediterranean engagement in which that great Dutch admiral lost his life. After the Peace of Nimeguen his movements are obscure. But we know that he spent two years in a Spanish prison, though we do not know how he contrived to get there. It may be due to this that upon his release he took his sword to France, and saw service with the French in their warring upon the Spanish Netherlands. Having reached, at last, the age of thirty-two, his appetite for adventure surfeited, his health having grown indifferent as the result of a neglected wound, he was suddenly overwhelmed by homesickness. He took ship from Nantes with intent to cross to Ireland. But the vessel being driven by stress of weather into Bridgewater Bay, and Blood's health having grown worse during the voyage, he decided to go ashore there, additionally urged to it by the fact that it was his mother's native soil. Thus in January of that year 1685 he had come to Bridgewater, possessor of a fortune that was approximately the same as that with which he had originally set out from Dublin eleven years ago. Because he liked the place, in which his health was rapidly restored to him, and because he conceived that he had passed through adventures enough for a man's lifetime, he determined to settle there, and take up at last the profession of medicine from which he had, with so little profit, broken away. That is all his story, or so much of it as matters up to that night, six months later, when the battle of Sedgemoor was fought. Deeming the impending action no affair of his, as indeed it was not, and indifferent to the activity with which Bridgewater was that night agog, Mr. Blood closed his ears to the sounds of it, and went early to bed. He was peacefully asleep long before eleven o'clock, at which hour, as you know, Monmouth rode but with his rebel host along the Bristol Road, circuitously to avoid the marshland that lay directly between himself and the Royal Army. |
| 1474 |
"To be sure, I'll come. But first give me leave to get some clothes and other things that I may need." "There's no time to lose." "Be easy now. I'll lose none. I tell ye again, ye'll go quickest by going leisurely. Come in ... take a chair..." He threw open the door of a parlour. Young Pitt waved aside the invitation. "I'll wait here. Make haste, in God's name." Mr. Blood went off to dress and to fetch a case of instruments. Questions concerning the precise nature of Lord Gildoy's hurt could wait until they were on their way. Whilst he pulled on his boots, he gave Mrs. Barlow instructions for the day, which included the matter of a dinner he was not destined to eat. When at last he went forth again, Mrs. Barlow clucking after him like a disgruntled fowl, he found young Pitt smothered in a crowd of scared, half-dressed townsfolk - mostly women - who had come hastening for news of how the battle had sped. The news he gave them was to be read in the lamentations with which they disturbed the morning air. At sight of the doctor, dressed and booted, the case of instruments tucked under his arm, the messenger disengaged himself from those who pressed about, shook off his weariness and the two tearful aunts that clung most closely, and seizing the bridle of his horse, he climbed to the saddle. "Come along, sir," he cried. "Mount behind me." Mr. Blood, without wasting words, did as he was bidden. Pitt touched the horse with his spur. The little crowd gave way, and thus, upon the crupper of that doubly-laden horse, clinging to the belt of his companion, Peter Blood set out upon his Odyssey. For this Pitt, in whom he beheld no more than the messenger of a wounded rebel gentleman, was indeed the very messenger of Fate. Oglethorpe's farm stood a mile or so to the south of Bridgewater on the right bank of the river. It was a straggling Tudor building showing grey above the ivy that clothed its lower parts. Approaching it now, through the fragrant orchards amid which it seemed to drowse in Arcadian peace beside the waters of the Parrett, sparkling in the morning sunlight, Mr. Blood might have had a difficulty in believing it part of a world tormented by strife and bloodshed. On the bridge, as they had been riding out of Bridgewater, they had met a vanguard of fugitives from the field of battle, weary, broken men, many of them wounded, all of them terror-stricken, staggering in speedless haste with the last remnants of their strength into the shelter which it was their vain illusion the town would afford them. |
| 1475 |
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. |
| 1476 |
He sought to temporize. "Faith it will suit me very well," said he. "For Bridgewater is my destination, and but that ye detained me I'd have been on my way thither now." "Your destination there will be the gaol." "Ah, bah! Ye're surely joking!" "There's a gallows for you if you prefer it. It's merely a question of now or later." Rude hands seized Mr. Blood, and that precious lancet was in the case on the table out of reach. He twisted out of the grip of the dragoons, for he was strong and agile, but they closed with him again immediately, and bore him down. Pinning him to the ground, they tied his wrists behind his back, then roughly pulled him to his feet again. "Take him away," said Hobart shortly, and turned to issue his orders to the other waiting troopers. "Go search the house, from attic to cellar; then report to me here." The soldiers trailed out by the door leading to the interior. Mr. Blood was thrust by his guards into the courtyard, where Pitt and Baynes already waited. From the threshold of the hall, he looked back at Captain Hobart, and his sapphire eyes were blazing. On his lips trembled a threat of what he would do to Hobart if he should happen to survive this business. Betimes he remembered that to utter it were probably to extinguish his chance of living to execute it. For to-day the King's men were masters in the West, and the West was regarded as enemy country, to be subjected to the worst horror of war by the victorious side. Here a captain of horse was for the moment lord of life and death. Under the apple-trees in the orchard Mr. Blood and his companions in misfortune were made fast each to a trooper's stirrup leather. Then at the sharp order of the cornet, the little troop started for Bridgewater. As they set out there was the fullest confirmation of Mr. Blood's hideous assumption that to the dragoons this was a conquered enemy country. There were sounds of rending timbers, of furniture smashed and overthrown, the shouts and laughter of brutal men, to announce that this hunt for rebels was no more than a pretext for pillage and destruction. Finally above all other sounds came the piercing screams of a woman in acutest agony. Baynes checked in his stride, and swung round writhing, his face ashen. As a consequence he was jerked from his feet by the rope that attached him to the stirrup leather, and he was dragged helplessly a yard or two before the trooper reined in, cursing him foully, and striking him with the flat of his sword. It came to Mr. |
| 1477 |
Blood, as he trudged forward under the laden apple-trees on that fragrant, delicious July morning, that man - as he had long suspected - was the vilest work of God, and that only a fool would set himself up as a healer of a species that was best exterminated. It was not until two months later - on the 19th of September, if you must have the actual date - that Peter Blood was brought to trial, upon a charge of high treason. We know that he was not guilty of this; but we need not doubt that he was quite capable of it by the time he was indicted. Those two months of inhuman, unspeakable imprisonment had moved his mind to a cold and deadly hatred of King James and his representatives. It says something for his fortitude that in all the circumstances he should still have had a mind at all. Yet, terrible as was the position of this entirely innocent man, he had cause for thankfulness on two counts. The first of these was that he should have been brought to trial at all; the second, that his trial took place on the date named, and not a day earlier. In the very delay which exacerbated him lay although he did not realize it - his only chance of avoiding the gallows. Easily, but for the favour of Fortune, he might have been one of those haled, on the morrow of the battle, more or less haphazard from the overflowing gaol at Bridgewater to be summarily hanged in the market-place by the bloodthirsty Colonel Kirke. There was about the Colonel of the Tangiers Regiment a deadly despatch which might have disposed in like fashion of all those prisoners, numerous as they were, but for the vigorous intervention of Bishop Mews, which put an end to the drumhead courts-martial. Even so, in that first week after Sedgemoor, Kirke and Feversham contrived between them to put to death over a hundred men after a trial so summary as to be no trial at all. They required human freights for the gibbets with which they were planting the countryside, and they little cared how they procured them or what innocent lives they took. What, after all, was the life of a clod? The executioners were kept busy with rope and chopper and cauldrons of pitch. I spare you the details of that nauseating picture. It is, after all, with the fate of Peter Blood that we are concerned rather than with that of the Monmouth rebels. He survived to be included in one of those melancholy droves of prisoners who, chained in pairs, were marched from Bridgewater to Taunton. Those who were too sorely wounded to march were conveyed in carts, into which they were brutally crowded, their wounds undressed and festering. |
| 1478 |
Many were fortunate enough to die upon the way. When Blood insisted upon his right to exercise his art so as to relieve some of this suffering, he was accounted importunate and threatened with a flogging. If he had one regret now it was that he had not been out with Monmouth. That, of course, was illogical; but you can hardly expect logic from a man in his position. His chain companion on that dreadful march was the same Jeremy Pitt who had been the agent of his present misfortunes. The young shipmaster had remained his close companion after their common arrest. Hence, fortuitously, had they been chained together in the crowded prison, where they were almost suffocated by the heat and the stench during those days of July, August, and September. Scraps of news filtered into the gaol from the outside world. Some may have been deliberately allowed to penetrate. Of these was the tale of Monmouth's execution. It created profoundest dismay amongst those men who were suffering for the Duke and for the religious cause he had professed to champion. Many refused utterly to believe it. A wild story began to circulate that a man resembling Monmouth had offered himself up in the Duke's stead, and that Monmouth survived to come again in glory to deliver Zion and make war upon Babylon. Mr. Blood heard that tale with the same indifference with which he had received the news of Monmouth's death. But one shameful thing he heard in connection with this which left him not quite so unmoved, and served to nourish the contempt he was forming for King James. His Majesty had consented to see Monmouth. To have done so unless he intended to pardon him was a thing execrable and damnable beyond belief; for the only other object in granting that interview could be the evilly mean satisfaction of spurning the abject penitence of his unfortunate nephew. Later they heard that Lord Grey, who after the Duke - indeed, perhaps, before him - was the main leader of the rebellion, had purchased his own pardon for forty thousand pounds. Peter Blood found this of a piece with the rest. His contempt for King James blazed out at last. "Why, here's a filthy mean creature to sit on a throne. If I had known as much of him before as I know to-day, I don't doubt I should have given cause to be where I am now." And then on a sudden thought: "And where will Lord Gildoy be, do you suppose?" he asked. Young Pitt, whom he addressed, turned towards him a face from which the ruddy tan of the sea had faded almost completely during those months of captivity. |
| 1479 |
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. "Look you, sir: because we must observe the common and usual methods of trial, I must interrupt you now. You are no doubt ignorant of the forms of law?" "Not only ignorant, my lord, but hitherto most happy in that ignorance. I could gladly have forgone this acquaintance with them." A pale smile momentarily lightened the wistful countenance. "I believe you. You shall be fully heard when you come to your defence. But anything you say now is altogether irregular and improper." Enheartened by that apparent sympathy and consideration, Mr. |
| 1480 |
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. |
| 1481 |
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. He laughed, and his laugh jarred uncannily upon the deathly stillness of the court. It was all so grotesque, such a mockery of justice administered by that wistful-eyed jack-pudding in scarlet, who was himself a mockery - the venal instrument of a brutally spiteful and vindictive king. His laughter shocked the austerity of that same jack-pudding. "Do you laugh, sirrah, with the rope about your neck, upon the very threshold of that eternity you are so suddenly to enter into?" And then Blood took his revenge. "Faith, it's in better case I am for mirth than your lordship. For I have this to say before you deliver judgment. Your lordship sees me - an innocent man whose only offence is that I practised charity - with a halter round my neck. Your lordship, being the justiciar, speaks with knowledge of what is to come to me. I, being a physician, may speak with knowledge of what is to come to your lordship. And I tell you that I would not now change places with you - that I would not exchange this halter that you fling about my neck for the stone that you carry in your body. The death to which you may doom me is a light pleasantry by contrast with the death to which your lordship has been doomed by that Great Judge with whose name your lordship makes so free." The Lord Chief Justice sat stiffly upright, his face ashen, his lips twitching, and whilst you might have counted ten there was no sound in that paralyzed court after Peter Blood had finished speaking. |
| 1482 |
All those who knew Lord Jeffreys regarded this as the lull before the storm, and braced themselves for the explosion. But none came. Slowly, faintly, the colour crept back into that ashen face. The scarlet figure lost its rigidity, and bent forward. His lordship began to speak. In a muted voice and briefly - much more briefly than his won't on such occasions and in a manner entirely mechanical, the manner of a man whose thoughts are elsewhere while his lips are speaking - he delivered sentence of death in the prescribed form, and without the least allusion to what Peter Blood had said. Having delivered it, he sank back exhausted, his eyes half-closed, his brow agleam with sweat. The prisoners filed out. Mr. Pollexfen - a Whig at heart despite the position of Judge-Advocate which he occupied - was overheard by one of the jurors to mutter in the ear of a brother counsel: "On my soul, that swarthy rascal has given his lordship a scare. It's a pity he must hang. For a man who can frighten Jeffreys should go far." Mr. Pollexfen was at one and the same time right and wrong - a condition much more common than is generally supposed. He was right in his indifferently expressed thought that a man whose mien and words could daunt such a lord of terror as Jeffreys, should by the dominance of his nature be able to fashion himself a considerable destiny. He was wrong - though justifiably so - in his assumption that Peter Blood must hang. I have said that the tribulations with which he was visited as a result of his errand of mercy to Oglethorpe's Farm contained although as yet he did not perceive it, perhaps - two sources of thankfulness: one that he was tried at all; the other that his trial took place on the 19th of September. Until the 18th, the sentences passed by the court of the Lords Commissioners had been carried out literally and expeditiously. But on the morning of the 19th there arrived at Taunton a courier from Lord Sunderland, the Secretary of State, with a letter for Lord Jeffreys wherein he was informed that His Majesty had been graciously pleased to command that eleven hundred rebels should be furnished for transportation to some of His Majesty's southern plantations, Jamaica, Barbados, or any of the Leeward Islands. You are not to suppose that this command was dictated by any sense of mercy. Lord Churchill was no more than just when he spoke of the King's heart as being as insensible as marble. It had been realized that in these wholesale hangings there was taking place a reckless waste of valuable material. |
| 1483 |
Slaves were urgently required in the plantations, and a healthy, vigorous man could be reckoned worth at least from ten to fifteen pounds. Then, there were at court many gentlemen who had some claim or other upon His Majesty's bounty. Here was a cheap and ready way to discharge these claims. From amongst the convicted rebels a certain number might be set aside to be bestowed upon those gentlemen, so that they might dispose of them to their own profit. My Lord Sunderland's letter gives precise details of the royal munificence in human flesh. A thousand prisoners were to be distributed among some eight courtiers and others, whilst a postscriptum to his lordship's letter asked for a further hundred to be held at the disposal of the Queen. These prisoners were to be transported at once to His Majesty's southern plantations, and to be kept there for the space of ten years before being restored to liberty, the parties to whom they were assigned entering into security to see that transportation was immediately effected. We know from Lord Jeffreys's secretary how the Chief Justice inveighed that night in drunken frenzy against this misplaced clemency to which His Majesty had been persuaded. We know how he attempted by letter to induce the King to reconsider his decision. But James adhered to it. It was - apart from the indirect profit he derived from it - a clemency full worthy of him. He knew that to spare lives in this fashion was to convert them into living deaths. Many must succumb in torment to the horrors of West Indian slavery, and so be the envy of their surviving companions. Thus it happened that Peter Blood, and with him Jeremy Pitt and Andrew Baynes, instead of being hanged, drawn, and quartered as their sentences directed, were conveyed to Bristol and there shipped with some fifty others aboard the Jamaica Merchant. From close confinement under hatches, ill-nourishment and foul water, a sickness broke out amongst them, of which eleven died. Amongst these was the unfortunate yeoman from Oglethorpe's Farm, brutally torn from his quiet homestead amid the fragrant cider orchards for no other sin but that he had practised mercy. The mortality might have been higher than it was but for Peter Blood. At first the master of the Jamaica Merchant had answered with oaths and threats the doctor's expostulations against permitting men to perish in this fashion, and his insistence that he should be made free of the medicine chest and given leave to minister to the sick. |
| 1484 |
But presently Captain Gardner came to see that he might be brought to task for these too heavy losses of human merchandise and because of this he was belatedly glad to avail himself of the skill of Peter Blood. The doctor went to work zealously and zestfully, and wrought so ably that, by his ministrations and by improving the condition of his fellow-captives, he checked the spread of the disease. Towards the middle of December the Jamaica Merchant dropped anchor in Carlisle Bay, and put ashore the forty-two surviving rebels-convict. If these unfortunates had imagined - as many of them appear to have done - that they were coming into some wild, savage country, the prospect, of which they had a glimpse before they were hustled over the ship's side into the waiting boats, was enough to correct the impression. 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. |
| 1485 |
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. 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. |
| 1486 |
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. |
| 1487 |
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. As he finished, Blood, looking in his direction, noticed that the girl was speaking to Bishop, and pointing up the line with a silver-hilted riding-whip she carried. Bishop shaded his eyes with his hand to look in the direction in which she was pointing. Then slowly, with his ponderous, rolling gait, he approached again accompanied by Gardner, and followed by the lady and the Governor. On they came until the Colonel was abreast of Blood. He would have passed on, but that the lady tapped his arm with her whip. "But this is the man I meant," she said. "This one?" Contempt rang in the voice. Peter Blood found himself staring into a pair of beady brown eyes sunk into a yellow, fleshly face like currants into a dumpling. He felt the colour creeping into his face under the insult of that contemptuous inspection. "Bah! A bag of bones. What should I do with him?" He was turning away when Gardner interposed. "He maybe lean, but he's tough; tough and healthy. When half of them was sick and the other half sickening, this rogue kept his legs and doctored his fellows. But for him there'd ha' been more deaths than there was. Say fifteen pounds for him, Colonel. That's cheap enough. He's tough, I tell your honour - tough and strong, though he be lean. And he's just the man to bear the heat when it comes. The climate'll never kill him." There came a chuckle from Governor Steed. "You hear, Colonel. Trust your niece. Her sex knows a man when it sees one." And he laughed, well pleased with his wit. But he laughed alone. A cloud of annoyance swept across the face of the Colonel's niece, whilst the Colonel himself was too absorbed in the consideration of this bargain to heed the Governor's humour. He twisted his lip a little, stroking his chin with his hand the while. Jeremy Pitt had almost ceased to breathe. "I'll give you ten pounds for him," said the Colonel at last. Peter Blood prayed that the offer might be rejected. For no reason that he could have given you, he was taken with repugnance at the thought of becoming the property of this gross animal, and in some sort the property of that hazel-eyed young girl. But it would need more than repugnance to save him from his destiny. |
| 1488 |
A slave is a slave, and has no power to shape his fate. Peter Blood was sold to Colonel Bishop - a disdainful buyer - for the ignominious sum of ten pounds. One sunny morning in January, about a month after the arrival of the Jamaica Merchant at Bridgetown, Miss Arabella Bishop rode out from her uncle's fine house on the heights to the northwest of the city. She was attended by two negroes who trotted after her at a respectful distance, and her destination was Government House, whither she went to visit the Governor's lady, who had lately been ailing. Reaching the summit of a gentle, grassy slope, she met a tall, lean man dressed in a sober, gentlemanly fashion, who was walking in the opposite direction. He was a stranger to her, and strangers were rare enough in the island. And yet in some vague way he did not seem quite a stranger. Miss Arabella drew rein, affecting to pause that she might admire the prospect, which was fair enough to warrant it. Yet out of the corner of those hazel eyes she scanned this fellow very attentively as he came nearer. She corrected her first impression of his dress. It was sober enough, but hardly gentlemanly. Coat and breeches were of plain homespun; and if the former sat so well upon him it was more by virtue of his natural grace than by that of tailoring. His stockings were of cotton, harsh and plain, and the broad castor, which he respectfully doffed as he came up with her, was an old one unadorned by band or feather. What had seemed to be a periwig at a little distance was now revealed for the man's own lustrous coiling black hair. Out of a brown, shaven, saturnine face two eyes that were startlingly blue considered her gravely. The man would have passed on but that she detained him. "I think I know you, sir," said she. Her voice was crisp and boyish, and there was something of boyishness in her manner - if one can apply the term to so dainty a lady. It arose perhaps from an ease, a directness, which disdained the artifices of her sex, and set her on good terms with all the world. To this it may be due that Miss Arabella had reached the age of five and twenty not merely unmarried but unwooed. She used with all men a sisterly frankness which in itself contains a quality of aloofness, rendering it difficult for any man to become her lover. Her negroes had halted at some distance in the rear, and they squatted now upon the short grass until it should be her pleasure to proceed upon her way. The stranger came to a standstill upon being addressed. |
| 1489 |
Here at least one can believe in God." He looked first to right, then to left as he spoke, from the distant shadowy bulk of Mount Hillbay to the limitless ocean ruffled by the winds of heaven. Then, as if the fair prospect rendered him conscious of his own littleness and the insignificance of his woes, he fell thoughtful. "Is that so difficult elsewhere?" she asked him, and she was very grave. "Men make it so." "I see." She laughed a little, on a note of sadness, it seemed to him. "I have never deemed Barbados the earthly mirror of heaven," she confessed. "But no doubt you know your world better than I." She touched her horse with her little silver-hilted whip. "I congratulate you on this easing of your misfortunes." He bowed, and she moved on. Her negroes sprang up, and went trotting after her. Awhile Peter Blood remained standing there, where she left him, conning the sunlit waters of Carlisle Bay below, and the shipping in that spacious haven about which the gulls were fluttering noisily. It was a fair enough prospect, he reflected, but it was a prison, and in announcing that he preferred it to England, he had indulged that almost laudable form of boasting which lies in belittling our misadventures. He turned, and resuming his way, went off in long, swinging strides towards the little huddle of huts built of mud and wattles - a miniature village enclosed in a stockade which the plantation slaves inhabited, and where he, himself, was lodged with them. Through his mind sang the line of Lovelace: "Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage." But he gave it a fresh meaning, the very converse of that which its author had intended. A prison, he reflected, was a prison, though it had neither walls nor bars, however spacious it might be. And as he realized it that morning so he was to realize it increasingly as time sped on. Daily he came to think more of his clipped wings, of his exclusion from the world, and less of the fortuitous liberty he enjoyed. Nor did the contrasting of his comparatively easy lot with that of his unfortunate fellow-convicts bring him the satisfaction a differently constituted mind might have derived from it. Rather did the contemplation of their misery increase the bitterness that was gathering in his soul. Of the forty-two who had been landed with him from the Jamaica Merchant, Colonel Bishop had purchased no less than twenty-five. The remainder had gone to lesser planters, some of them to Speightstown, and others still farther north. |
| 1490 |
What may have been the lot of the latter he could not tell, but amongst Bishop's slaves Peter Blood came and went freely, sleeping in their quarters, and their lot he knew to be a brutalizing misery. They toiled in the sugar plantations from sunrise to sunset, and if their labours flagged, there were the whips of the overseer and his men to quicken them. They went in rags, some almost naked; they dwelt in squalor, and they were ill-nourished on salted meat and maize dumplings food which to many of them was for a season at least so nauseating that two of them sickened and died before Bishop remembered that their lives had a certain value in labour to him and yielded to Blood's intercessions for a better care of such as fell ill. To curb insubordination, one of them who had rebelled against Kent, the brutal overseer, was lashed to death by negroes under his comrades' eyes, and another who had been so misguided as to run away into the woods was tracked, brought back, flogged, and then branded on the forehead with the letters "F. T.," that all might know him for a fugitive traitor as long as he lived. Fortunately for him the poor fellow died as a consequence of the flogging. After that a dull, spiritless resignation settled down upon the remainder. The most mutinous were quelled, and accepted their unspeakable lot with the tragic fortitude of despair. Peter Blood alone, escaping these excessive sufferings, remained outwardly unchanged, whilst inwardly the only change in him was a daily deeper hatred of his kind, a daily deeper longing to escape from this place where man defiled so foully the lovely work of his Creator. It was a longing too vague to amount to a hope. Hope here was inadmissible. And yet he did not yield to despair. He set a mask of laughter on his saturnine countenance and went his way, treating the sick to the profit of Colonel Bishop, and encroaching further and further upon the preserves of the two other men of medicine in Bridgetown. Immune from the degrading punishments and privations of his fellow-convicts, he was enabled to keep his self-respect, and was treated without harshness even by the soulless planter to whom he had been sold. He owed it all to gout and megrims. He had won the esteem of Governor Steed, and - what is even more important - of Governor Steed's lady, whom he shamelessly and cynically flattered and humoured. Occasionally he saw Miss Bishop, and they seldom met but that she paused to hold him in conversation for some moments, evincing her interest in him. |
| 1491 |
These, indeed, stood in no need of her bounty - as she no doubt observed - since they were being plentifully supplied by others. Having thus emptied her basket, she called her negro, and without another word or so much as another glance at Peter Blood, swept out of the place with her head high and chin thrust forward. Peter watched her departure. Then he fetched a sigh. It startled him to discover that the thought that he had incurred her anger gave him concern. It could not have been so yesterday. It became so only since he had been vouchsafed this revelation of her true nature. "Bad cess to it now, it serves me right. It seems I know nothing at all of human nature. But how the devil was I to guess that a family that can breed a devil like Colonel Bishop should also breed a saint like this?" After that Arabella Bishop went daily to the shed on the wharf with gifts of fruit, and later of money and of wearing apparel for the Spanish prisoners. But she contrived so to time her visits that Peter Blood never again met her there. Also his own visits were growing shorter in a measure as his patients healed. That they all throve and returned to health under his care, whilst fully one third of the wounded in the care of Whacker and Bronson - the two other surgeons - died of their wounds, served to increase the reputation in which this rebel-convict stood in Bridgetown. It may have been no more than the fortune of war. But the townsfolk did not choose so to regard it. It led to a further dwindling of the practices of his free colleagues and a further increase of his own labours and his owner's profit. Whacker and Bronson laid their heads together to devise a scheme by which this intolerable state of things should be brought to an end. But that is to anticipate. One day, whether by accident or design, Peter Blood came striding down the wharf a full half-hour earlier than usual, and so met Miss Bishop just issuing from the shed. He doffed his hat and stood aside to give her passage. She took it, chin in the air, and eyes which disdained to look anywhere where the sight of him was possible. "Miss Arabella," said he, on a coaxing, pleading note. She grew conscious of his presence, and looked him over with an air that was faintly, mockingly searching. "La!" said she. "It's the delicate-minded gentleman!" Peter groaned. "Am I so hopelessly beyond forgiveness? I ask it very humbly." "What condescension!" "It is cruel to mock me," said he, and adopted mock-humility. "After all, I am but a slave. |
| 1492 |
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. |
| 1493 |
"Is the doctor here?" "That's his hut yonder." Kent pointed carelessly. "If he's not there, he'll be somewhere else." And he took himself off. He was a surly, ungracious beast at all times, readier with the lash of his whip than with his tongue. Nuttall watched him go with satisfaction, and even noted the direction that he took. Then he plunged into the enclosure, to verify in mortification that Dr. Blood was not at home. A man of sense might have sat down and waited, judging that to be the quickest and surest way in the end. But Nuttall had no sense. He flung out of the stockade again, hesitated a moment as to which direction he should take, and finally decided to go any way but the way that Kent had gone. He sped across the parched savannah towards the sugar plantation which stood solid as a rampart and gleaming golden in the dazzling June sunshine. Avenues intersected the great blocks of ripening amber cane. In the distance down one of these he espied some slaves at work. Nuttall entered the avenue and advanced upon them. They eyed him dully, as he passed them. Pitt was not of their number, and he dared not ask for him. He continued his search for best part of an hour, up one of those lanes and then down another. Once an overseer challenged him, demanding to know his business. He was looking, he said, for Dr. Blood. His cousin was taken ill. The overseer bade him go to the devil, and get out of the plantation. Blood was not there. If he was anywhere he would be in his hut in the stockade. Nuttall passed on, upon the understanding that he would go. But he went in the wrong direction; he went on towards the side of the plantation farthest from the stockade, towards the dense woods that fringed it there. The overseer was too contemptuous and perhaps too languid in the stifling heat of approaching noontide to correct his course. Nuttall blundered to the end of the avenue, and round the corner of it, and there ran into Pitt, alone, toiling with a wooden spade upon an irrigation channel. A pair of cotton drawers, loose and ragged, clothed him from waist to knee; above and below he was naked, save for a broad hat of plaited straw that sheltered his unkempt golden head from the rays of the tropical sun. At sight of him Nuttall returned thanks aloud to his Maker. Pitt stared at him, and the shipwright poured out his dismal news in a dismal tone. The sum of it was that he must have ten pounds from Blood that very morning or they were all undone. And all he got for his pains and his sweat was the condemnation of Jeremy Pitt. |
| 1494 |
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. Colonel Bishop set his foot upon the crossbar, and leaned over his victim, a cruel smile on his full, coarse face. "Let that teach you a proper submission," said he. "And now touching that shy friend of yours, you shall stay here without meat or drink - without meat or drink, d' ye hear me? - until you please to tell me his name and business." He took his foot from the bar. "When you've had enough of this, send me word, and we'll have the branding-irons to you." On that he swung on his heel, and strode out of the stockade, his negroes following. Pitt had heard him, as we hear things in our dreams. At the moment so spent was he by his cruel punishment, and so deep was the despair into which he had fallen, that he no longer cared whether he lived or died. Soon, however, from the partial stupor which pain had mercifully induced, a new variety of pain aroused him. The stocks stood in the open under the full glare of the tropical sun, and its blistering rays streamed down upon that mangled, bleeding back until he felt as if flames of fire were searing it. And, soon, to this was added a torment still more unspeakable. Flies, the cruel flies of the Antilles, drawn by the scent of blood, descended in a cloud upon him. Small wonder that the ingenious Colonel Bishop, who so well understood the art of loosening stubborn tongues, had not deemed it necessary to have recourse to other means of torture. Not all his fiendish cruelty could devise a torment more cruel, more unendurable than the torments Nature would here procure a man in Pitt's condition. The slave writhed in his stocks until he was in danger of breaking his limbs, and writhing, screamed in agony. Thus was he found by Peter Blood, who seemed to his troubled vision to materialize suddenly before him. Mr. Blood carried a large palmetto leaf. Having whisked away with this the flies that were devouring Jeremy's back, he slung it by a strip of fibre from the lad's neck, so that it protected him from further attacks as well as from the rays of the sun. Next, sitting down beside him, he drew the sufferer's head down on his own shoulder, and bathed his face from a pannikin of cold water. Pitt shuddered and moaned on a long, indrawn breath. "Drink!" he gasped. "Drink, for the love of Christ!" The pannikin was held to his quivering lips. |
| 1495 |
The slaves would have obeyed him on the instant but for Mr. Blood. "What need for haste, and in this heat?" quoth he. He was surprisingly cool, they thought. "Maybe there'll be no need to take to the woods at all, and, anyway, it will be time enough to do so when the Spaniards are masters of the town." And so, joined now by the other stragglers, and numbering in all a round score - rebels-convict all - they stayed to watch from their vantage-ground the fortunes of the furious battle that was being waged below. The landing was contested by the militia and by every islander capable of bearing arms with the fierce resoluteness of men who knew that no quarter was to be expected in defeat. The ruthlessness of Spanish soldiery was a byword, and not at his worst had Morgan or L'Ollonais ever perpetrated such horrors as those of which these Castilian gentlemen were capable. But this Spanish commander knew his business, which was more than could truthfully be said for the Barbados Militia. Having gained the advantage of a surprise blow, which had put the fort out of action, he soon showed them that he was master of the situation. His guns turned now upon the open space behind the mole, where the incompetent Bishop had marshalled his men, tore the militia into bloody rags, and covered the landing parties which were making the shore in their own boats and in several of those which had rashly gone out to the great ship before her identity was revealed. All through the scorching afternoon the battle went on, the rattle and crack of musketry penetrating ever deeper into the town to show that the defenders were being driven steadily back. 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. |
| 1496 |
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. That something was very gravely amiss there could be no further doubt, particularly as whilst they discussed and fumed and cursed two more shots came over the water to account for yet a third of their boats. The resolute Ogle was making excellent practice, and fully justifying his claims to know something of gunnery. In their consternation the Spaniards had simplified his task by huddling their boats together. After the fourth shot, opinion was no longer divided amongst them. As with one accord they went about, or attempted to do so, for before they had accomplished it two more of their boats had been sunk. The three boats that remained, without concerning themselves with their more unfortunate fellows, who were struggling in the water, headed back for the wharf at speed. If the Spaniards understood nothing of all this, the forlorn islanders ashore understood still less, until to help their wits they saw the flag of Spain come down from the mainmast of the Cinco Llagas, and the flag of England soar to its empty place. Even then some bewilderment persisted, and it was with fearful eyes that they observed the return of their enemies, who might vent upon them the ferocity aroused by these extraordinary events. Ogle, however, continued to give proof that his knowledge of gunnery was not of yesterday. |
| 1497 |
"You shall have a chance to swim for it," Peter Blood continued. "It's not above a quarter of a mile to the headland yonder, and with ordinary luck ye should manage it. Faith, you're fat enough to float. Come on! Now, don't be hesitating or it's a long voyage ye'll be going with us, and the devil knows what may happen to you. You're not loved any more than you deserve." Colonel Bishop mastered himself, and rose. A merciless despot, who had never known the need for restraint in all these years, he was doomed by ironic fate to practise restraint in the very moment when his feelings had reached their most violent intensity. Peter Blood gave an order. A plank was run out over the gunwale, and lashed down. "If you please, Colonel," said he, with a graceful flourish of invitation. The Colonel looked at him, and there was hell in his glance. Then, taking his resolve, and putting the best face upon it, since no other could help him here, he kicked off his shoes, peeled off his fine coat of biscuit-coloured taffetas, and climbed upon the plank. A moment he paused, steadied by a hand that clutched the ratlines, looking down in terror at the green water rushing past some five-and-twenty feet below. "Just take a little walk, Colonel, darling," said a smooth, mocking voice behind him. Still clinging, Colonel Bishop looked round in hesitation, and saw the bulwarks lined with swarthy faces - the faces of men that as lately as yesterday would have turned pale under his frown, faces that were now all wickedly agrin. For a moment rage stamped out his fear. He cursed them aloud venomously and incoherently, then loosed his hold and stepped out upon the plank. Three steps he took before he lost his balance and went tumbling into the green depths below. When he came to the surface again, gasping for air, the Cinco Llagas was already some furlongs to leeward. But the roaring cheer of mocking valediction from the rebels-convict reached him across the water, to drive the iron of impotent rage deeper into his soul. Don Diego de Espinosa y Valdez awoke, and with languid eyes in aching head, he looked round the cabin, which was flooded with sunlight from the square windows astern. Then he uttered a moan, and closed his eyes again, impelled to this by the monstrous ache in his head. Lying thus, he attempted to think, to locate himself in time and space. But between the pain in his head and the confusion in his mind, he found coherent thought impossible. An indefinite sense of alarm drove him to open his eyes again, and once more to consider his surroundings. |
| 1498 |
There could be no doubt that he lay in the great cabin of his own ship, the Cinco Llagas, so that his vague disquiet must be, surely, ill-founded. And yet, stirrings of memory coming now to the assistance of reflection, compelled him uneasily to insist that here something was not as it should be. The low position of the sun, flooding the cabin with golden light from those square ports astern, suggested to him at first that it was early morning, on the assumption that the vessel was headed westward. Then the alternative occurred to him. They might be sailing eastward, in which case the time of day would be late afternoon. That they were sailing he could feel from the gentle forward heave of the vessel under him. But how did they come to be sailing, and he, the master, not to know whether their course lay east or west, not to be able to recollect whither they were bound? His mind went back over the adventure of yesterday, if of yesterday it was. He was clear on the matter of the easily successful raid upon the Island of Barbados; every detail stood vividly in his memory up to the moment at which, returning aboard, he had stepped on to his own deck again. There memory abruptly and inexplicably ceased. He was beginning to torture his mind with conjecture, when the door opened, and to Don Diego's increasing mystification he beheld his best suit of clothes step into the cabin. It was a singularly elegant and characteristically Spanish suit of black taffetas with silver lace that had been made for him a year ago in Cadiz, and he knew each detail of it so well that it was impossible he could now be mistaken. The suit paused to close the door, then advanced towards the couch on which Don Diego was extended, and inside the suit came a tall, slender gentleman of about Don Diego's own height and shape. Seeing the wide, startled eyes of the Spaniard upon him, the gentleman lengthened his stride. "Awake, eh?" said he in Spanish. The recumbent man looked up bewildered into a pair of light-blue eyes that regarded him out of a tawny, sardonic face set in a cluster of black ringlets. But he was too bewildered to make any answer. The stranger's fingers touched the top of Don Diego's head, whereupon Don Diego winced and cried out in pain. "Tender, eh?" said the stranger. He took Don Diego's wrist between thumb and second finger. And then, at last, the intrigued Spaniard spoke. "Are you a doctor?" "Among other things." The swarthy gentleman continued his study of the patient's pulse. |
| 1499 |
That is what cause the delay. But we will be there to-morrow." The explanation, so completely satisfactory, and so readily and candidly forthcoming, left no room for further doubt that Don Diego should have been false to his parole. And when presently Don Diego had withdrawn again, Captain Blood confessed to Pitt that it was absurd to have suspected him. Whatever his antecedents, he had proved his quality when he announced himself ready to die sooner than enter into any undertaking that could hurt his honour or his country. New to the seas of the Spanish Main and to the ways of the adventurers who sailed it, Captain Blood still entertained illusions. But the next dawn was to shatter them rudely and for ever. Coming on deck before the sun was up, he saw land ahead, as the Spaniard had promised them last night. Some ten miles ahead it lay, a long coast-line filling the horizon east and west, with a massive headland jutting forward straight before them. Staring at it, he frowned. He had not conceived that Curacao was of such considerable dimensions. Indeed, this looked less like an island than the main itself. Beating out aweather, against the gentle landward breeze he beheld a great ship on their starboard bow, that he conceived to be some three or four miles off, and - as well as he could judge her at that distance - of a tonnage equal if not superior to their own. Even as he watched her she altered her course, and going about came heading towards them, close-hauled. A dozen of his fellows were astir on the forecastle, looking eagerly ahead, and the sound of their voices and laughter reached him across the length of the stately Cinco Llagas. "There," said a soft voice behind him in liquid Spanish, "is the Promised Land, Don Pedro." It was something in that voice, a muffled note of exultation, that awoke suspicion in him, and made whole the half-doubt he had been entertaining. He turned sharply to face Don Diego, so sharply that the sly smile was not effaced from the Spaniard's countenance before Captain Blood's eyes had flashed upon it. "You find an odd satisfaction in the sight of it - all things considered," said Mr. Blood. "Of course." The Spaniard rubbed his hands, and Mr. Blood observed that they were unsteady. "The satisfaction of a mariner." "Or of a traitor - which?" Blood asked him quietly. And as the Spaniard fell back before him with suddenly altered countenance that confirmed his every suspicion, he flung an arm out in the direction of the distant shore. |
| 1500 |
"Foul barbarian! Inhuman savage! Accursed heretic! Will it not content you to kill me in some Christian fashion?" Captain Blood vouchsafed him a malignant smile, before he turned to meet the fifteen manacled Spanish prisoners, who were thrust into his presence. Approaching, they had heard Don Diego's outcries; at close quarters now they beheld with horror-stricken eyes his plight. From amongst them a comely, olive-skinned stripling, distinguished in bearing and apparel from his companions, started forward with an anguished cry of "Father!" Writhing in the arms that made haste to seize and hold him, he called upon heaven and hell to avert this horror, and lastly, addressed to Captain Blood an appeal for mercy that was at once fierce and piteous. Considering him, Captain Blood thought with satisfaction that he displayed the proper degree of filial piety. He afterwards confessed that for a moment he was in danger of weakening, that for a moment his mind rebelled against the pitiless thing it had planned. But to correct the sentiment he evoked a memory of what these Spaniards had performed in Bridgetown. Again he saw the white face of that child Mary Traill as she fled in horror before the jeering ruffian whom he had slain, and other things even more unspeakable seen on that dreadful evening rose now before the eyes of his memory to stiffen his faltering purpose. The Spaniards had shown themselves without mercy or sentiment or decency of any kind; stuffed with religion, they were without a spark of that Christianity, the Symbol of which was mounted on the mainmast of the approaching ship. A moment ago this cruel, vicious Don Diego had insulted the Almighty by his assumption that He kept a specially benevolent watch over the destinies of Catholic Spain. Don Diego should be taught his error. Recovering the cynicism in which he had approached his task, the cynicism essential to its proper performance, he commanded Ogle to kindle a match and remove the leaden apron from the touch-hole of the gun that bore Don Diego. Then, as the younger Espinosa broke into fresh intercessions mingled with imprecations, he wheeled upon him sharply. "Peace!" he snapped. "Peace, and listen! It is no part of my intention to blow your father to hell as he deserves, or indeed to take his life at all." Having surprised the lad into silence by that promise - a promise surprising enough in all the circumstances - he proceeded to explain his aims in that faultless and elegant Castilian of which he was fortunately master - as fortunately for Don Diego as for himself. |
| 1501 |
"It is your father's treachery that has brought us into this plight and deliberately into risk of capture and death aboard that ship of Spain. Just as your father recognized his brother's flagship, so will his brother have recognized the Cinco Llagas. So far, then, all is well. But presently the Encarnacion will be sufficiently close to perceive that here all is not as it should be. Sooner or later, she must guess or discover what is wrong, and then she will open fire or lay us board and board. Now, we are in no case to fight, as your father knew when he ran us into this trap. But fight we will, if we are driven to it. We make no tame surrender to the ferocity of Spain." He laid his hand on the breech of the gun that bore Don Diego. "Understand this clearly: to the first shot from the Encarnacion this gun will fire the answer. I make myself clear, I hope?" White-faced and trembling, young Espinosa stared into the pitiless blue eyes that so steadily regarded him. "If it is clear?" he faltered, breaking the utter silence in which all were standing. "But, name of God, how should it be clear? How should I understand? Can you avert the fight? If you know a way, and if I, or these, can help you to it - if that is what you mean - in Heaven's name let me hear it." "A fight would be averted if Don Diego de Espinosa were to go aboard his brother's ship, and by his presence and assurances inform the Admiral that all is well with the Cinco Llagas, that she is indeed still a ship of Spain as her flag now announces. But of course Don Diego cannot go in person, because he is... otherwise engaged. He has a slight touch of fever - shall we say? - that detains him in his cabin. But you, his son, may convey all this and some other matters together with his homage to your uncle. You shall go in a boat manned by six of these Spanish prisoners, and I - a distinguished Spaniard delivered from captivity in Barbados by your recent raid - will accompany you to keep you in countenance. If I return alive, and without accident of any kind to hinder our free sailing hence, Don Diego shall have his life, as shall every one of you. But if there is the least misadventure, be it from treachery or ill-fortune - I care not which - the battle, as I have had the honour to explain, will be opened on our side by this gun, and your father will be the first victim of the conflict." He paused a moment. There was a hum of approval from his comrades, an anxious stirring among the Spanish prisoners. Young Espinosa stood before him, the colour ebbing and flowing in his cheeks. |
| 1502 |
I might have seen things which as Admiral of Spain it would be difficult for me to ignore." Both Esteban and Blood made haste to agree with him, and then Blood raised his glass, and drank to the glory of Spain and the damnation of the besotted James who occupied the throne of England. The latter part of his toast was at least sincere. The Admiral laughed. "Sir, sir, you need my brother here to curb your imprudences. You should remember that His Catholic Majesty and the King of England are very good friends. That is not a toast to propose in this cabin. But since it has been proposed, and by one who has such particular personal cause to hate these English hounds, why, we will honour it - but unofficially." They laughed, and drank the damnation of King James - quite unofficially, but the more fervently on that account. Then Don Esteban, uneasy on the score of his father, and remembering that the agony of Don Diego was being protracted with every moment that they left him in his dreadful position, rose and announced that they must be returning. "My father," he explained, "is in haste to reach San Domingo. He desired me to stay no longer than necessary to embrace you. If you will give us leave, then, sir uncle." In the circumstances "sir uncle" did not insist. As they returned to the ship's side, Blood's eyes anxiously scanned the line of seamen leaning over the bulwarks in idle talk with the Spaniards in the cock-boat that waited at the ladder's foot. But their manner showed him that there was no ground for his anxiety. The boat's crew had been wisely reticent. The Admiral took leave of them - of Esteban affectionately, of Blood ceremoniously. "I regret to lose you so soon, Don Pedro. I wish that you could have made a longer visit to the Encarnacion." "I am indeed unfortunate," said Captain Blood politely. "But I hope that we may meet again." "That is to flatter me beyond all that I deserve." They reached the boat; and she cast off from the great ship. As they were pulling away, the Admiral waving to them from the taffrail, they heard the shrill whistle of the bo'sun piping the hands to their stations, and before they had reached the Cinco Llagas, they beheld the Encarnacion go about under sail. She dipped her flag to them, and from her poop a gun fired a salute. Aboard the Cinco Llagas some one - it proved afterwards to be Hagthorpe - had the wit to reply in the same fashion. The comedy was ended. Yet there was something else to follow as an epilogue, a thing that added a grim ironic flavour to the whole. |
| 1503 |
But if at times in the laborious perusal of them - they are preserved in the library of Mr. James Speke of Comerton - I have inveighed against these lacunae, at others I have been equally troubled by the excessive prolixity of what remains and the difficulty of disintegrating from the confused whole the really essential parts. I have a suspicion that Esquemeling - though how or where I can make no surmise - must have obtained access to these records, and that he plucked from them the brilliant feathers of several exploits to stick them into the tail of his own hero, Captain Morgan. But that is by the way. I mention it chiefly as a warning, for when presently I come to relate the affair of Maracaybo, those of you who have read Esquemeling may be in danger of supposing that Henry Morgan really performed those things which here are veraciously attributed to Peter Blood. I think, however, that when you come to weigh the motives actuating both Blood and the Spanish Admiral, in that affair, and when you consider how integrally the event is a part of Blood's history - whilst merely a detached incident in Morgan's - you will reach my own conclusion as to which is the real plagiarist. The first of these logs of Pitt's is taken up almost entirely with a retrospective narrative of the events up to the time of Blood's first coming to Tortuga. This and the Tannatt Collection of State Trials are the chief - though not the only - sources of my history so far. Pitt lays great stress upon the fact that it was the circumstances upon which I have dwelt, and these alone, that drove Peter Blood to seek an anchorage at Tortuga. He insists at considerable length, and with a vehemence which in itself makes it plain that an opposite opinion was held in some quarters, that it was no part of the design of Blood or of any of his companions in misfortune to join hands with the buccaneers who, under a semi-official French protection, made of Tortuga a lair whence they could sally out to drive their merciless piratical trade chiefly at the expense of Spain. It was, Pitt tells us, Blood's original intention to make his way to France or Holland. But in the long weeks of waiting for a ship to convey him to one or the other of these countries, his resources dwindled and finally vanished. Also, his chronicler thinks that he detected signs of some secret trouble in his friend, and he attributes to this the abuses of the potent West Indian spirit of which Blood became guilty in those days of inaction, thereby sinking to the level of the wild adventurers with whom ashore he associated. |
| 1504 |
"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. 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. |
| 1505 |
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. |
| 1506 |
Gloriously heroic he seemed as he stood towering there, masterful, audacious, beautiful. He saw her, and with a glad shout sprang towards her. The Dutch master got in his way with hands upheld to arrest his progress. Levasseur did not stay to argue with him: he was too impatient to reach his mistress. He swung the poleaxe that he carried, and the Dutchman went down in blood with a cloven skull. The eager lover stepped across the body and came on, his countenance joyously alight. But mademoiselle was shrinking now, in horror. She was a girl upon the threshold of glorious womanhood, of a fine height and nobly moulded, with heavy coils of glossy black hair above and about a face that was of the colour of old ivory. Her countenance was cast in lines of arrogance, stressed by the low lids of her full dark eyes. In a bound her well-beloved was beside her, flinging away his bloody poleaxe, he opened wide his arms to enfold her. But she still shrank even within his embrace, which would not be denied; a look of dread had come to temper the normal arrogance of her almost perfect face. "Mine, mine at last, and in spite of all!" he cried exultantly, theatrically, truly heroic. But she, endeavouring to thrust him back, her hands against his breast, could only falter: "Why, why did you kill him?" He laughed, as a hero should; and answered her heroically, with the tolerance of a god for the mortal to whom he condescends: "He stood between us. Let his death be a symbol, a warning. Let all who would stand between us mark it and beware." It was so splendidly terrific, the gesture of it was so broad and fine and his magnetism so compelling, that she cast her silly tremors and yielded herself freely, intoxicated, to his fond embrace. Thereafter he swung her to his shoulder, and stepping with ease beneath that burden, bore her in a sort of triumph, lustily cheered by his men, to the deck of his own ship. Her inconsiderate brother might have ruined that romantic scene but for the watchful Cahusac, who quietly tripped him up, and then trussed him like a fowl. Thereafter, what time the Captain languished in his lady's smile within the cabin, Cahusac was dealing with the spoils of war. The Dutch crew was ordered into the longboat, and bidden go to the devil. Fortunately, as they numbered fewer than thirty, the longboat, though perilously overcrowded, could yet contain them. Next, Cahusac having inspected the cargo, put a quartermaster and a score of men aboard the Jongvrow, and left her to follow La Foudre, which he now headed south for the Leeward Islands. |
| 1507 |
His fingers had been busy tying knots in a length of whipcord. He held it up. "You know this? It is a rosary of pain that has wrought the conversion of many a stubborn heretic. It is capable of screwing the eyes out of a man's head by way of helping him to see reason. As you please." He flung the length of knotted cord to one of the negroes, who in an instant made it fast about the prisoner's brows. Then between cord and cranium the black inserted a short length of metal, round and slender as a pipe-stem. That done he rolled his eyes towards Levasseur, awaiting the Captain's signal. Levasseur considered his victim, and beheld him tense and braced, his haggard face of a leaden hue, beads of perspiration glinting on his pallid brow just beneath the whipcord. Mademoiselle cried out, and would have risen: but her guards restrained her, and she sank down again, moaning. "I beg that you will spare yourself and your sister," said the Captain, "by being reasonable. What, after all, is the sum I have named? To your wealthy father a bagatelle. I repeat, I have been too modest. But since I have said twenty thousand pieces of eight, twenty thousand pieces it shall be." "And for what, if you please, have you said twenty thousand pieces of eight?" In execrable French, but in a voice that was crisp and pleasant, seeming to echo some of the mockery that had invested Levasseur's, that question floated over their heads. Startled, Levasseur and his officers looked up and round. On the crest of the dunes behind them, in sharp silhouette against the deep cobalt of the sky, they beheld a tall, lean figure scrupulously dressed in black with silver lace, a crimson ostrich plume curled about the broad brim of his hat affording the only touch of colour. Under that hat was the tawny face of Captain Blood. Levasseur gathered himself up with an oath of amazement. He had conceived Captain Blood by now well below the horizon, on his way to Tortuga, assuming him to have been so fortunate as to have weathered last night's storm. Launching himself upon the yielding sand, into which he sank to the level of the calves of his fine boots of Spanish leather, Captain Blood came sliding erect to the beach. He was followed by Wolverstone, and a dozen others. As he came to a standstill, he doffed his hat, with a flourish, to the lady. Then he turned to Levasseur. "Good-morning, my Captain," said he, and proceeded to explain his presence. "It was last night's hurricane compelled our return. We had no choice but to ride before it with stripped poles, and it drove us back the way we had gone. |
| 1508 |
"If you will sail with me again," the Captain answered him, "you may do so on the condition that you make your peace with the Dutch, and restore the brig and her cargo." The condition was accepted, and Captain Blood went off to find his guests, the children of the Governor of Tortuga. Mademoiselle d'Ogeron and her brother - the latter now relieved of his bonds - sat in the great cabin of the Arabella, whither they had been conducted. Wine and food had been placed upon the table by Benjamin, Captain Blood's negro steward and cook, who had intimated to them that it was for their entertainment. But it had remained untouched. Brother and sister sat there in agonized bewilderment, conceiving that their escape was but from frying-pan to fire. At length, overwrought by the suspense, mademoiselle flung herself upon her knees before her brother to implore his pardon for all the evil brought upon them by her wicked folly. M. d'Ogeron was not in a forgiving mood. "I am glad that at least you realize what you have done. And now this other filibuster has bought you, and you belong to him. You realize that, too, I hope." He might have said more, but he checked upon perceiving that the door was opening. Captain Blood, coming from settling matters with the followers of Levasseur, stood on the threshold. M. d'Ogeron had not troubled to restrain his high-pitched voice, and the Captain had overheard the Frenchman's last two sentences. Therefore he perfectly understood why mademoiselle should bound up at sight of him, and shrink back in fear. "Mademoiselle," said he in his vile but fluent French, "I beg you to dismiss your fears. Aboard this ship you shall be treated with all honour. So soon as we are in case to put to sea again, we steer a course for Tortuga to take you home to your father. And pray do not consider that I have bought you, as your brother has just said. All that I have done has been to provide the ransom necessary to bribe a gang of scoundrels to depart from obedience to the arch-scoundrel who commanded them, and so deliver you from all peril. Count it, if you please, a friendly loan to be repaid entirely at your convenience." Mademoiselle stared at him in unbelief. M. d'Ogeron rose to his feet. "Monsieur, is it possible that you are serious?" "I am. It may not happen often nowadays. I may be a pirate. But my ways are not the ways of Levasseur, who should have stayed in Europe, and practised purse-cutting. I have a sort of honour - shall we say, some rags of honour? |
| 1509 |
M. d'Ogeron was in the Captain's debt for more than the twenty thousand pieces of eight which he had provided for mademoiselle's ransom; and shrewd, hard bargain-driver though he might be, the Frenchman could be generous and understood the sentiment of gratitude. This he now proved in every possible way, and under his powerful protection the credit of Captain Blood among the buccaneers very rapidly reached its zenith. So when it came to fitting out his fleet for that enterprise against Maracaybo, which had originally been Levasseur's project, he did not want for either ships or men to follow him. He recruited five hundred adventurers in all, and he might have had as many thousands if he could have offered them accommodation. Similarly without difficulty he might have increased his fleet to twice its strength of ships but that he preferred to keep it what it was. The three vessels to which he confined it were the Arabella, the La Foudre, which Cahusac now commanded with a contingent of some sixscore Frenchmen, and the Santiago, which had been refitted and rechristened the Elizabeth, after that Queen of England whose seamen had humbled Spain as Captain Blood now hoped to humble it again. Hagthorpe, in virtue of his service in the navy, was appointed by Blood to command her, and the appointment was confirmed by the men. 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. |
| 1510 |
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. "Ah, sangdieu! Tu ris, animal? You laugh! Tell me this: How do we get out again unless we accept the terms of Monsieur the Admiral of Spain?" From the buccaneers at the foot of the steps came an angry rumble of approval. |
| 1511 |
Still," he went on, "if you and your own French followers wish to avail yourselves of the Spaniard's terms, we shall not hinder you. Send one of your prisoners to announce it to the Admiral. Don Miguel will welcome your decision, you may be sure." Cahusac glowered at him in silence for a moment. Then, having controlled himself, he asked in a concentrated voice: "Precisely what answer have you make to the Admiral?" A smile irradiated the face and eyes of Captain Blood. "I have answered him that unless within four-and-twenty hours we have his parole to stand out to sea, ceasing to dispute our passage or hinder our departure, and a ransom of fifty thousand pieces of eight for Maracaybo, we shall reduce this beautiful city to ashes, and thereafter go out and destroy his fleet." The impudence of it left Cahusac speechless. But among the English buccaneers in the square there were many who savoured the audacious humour of the trapped dictating terms to the trappers. Laughter broke from them. It spread into a roar of acclamation; for bluff is a weapon dear to every adventurer. Presently, when they understood it, even Cahusac's French followers were carried off their feet by that wave of jocular enthusiasm, until in his truculent obstinacy Cahusac remained the only dissentient. He withdrew in mortification. Nor was he to be mollified until the following day brought him his revenge. This came in the shape of a messenger from Don Miguel with a letter in which the Spanish Admiral solemnly vowed to God that, since the pirates had refused his magnanimous offer to permit them to surrender with the honours of war, he would now await them at the mouth of the lake there to destroy them on their coming forth. He added that should they delay their departure, he would so soon as he was reenforced by a fifth ship, the Santo Nino, on its way to join him from La Guayra, himself come inside to seek them at Maracaybo. 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. |
| 1512 |
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. |
| 1513 |
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. If by a resolute stand the Salvador had encouraged the other two undamaged vessels to resistance, the Spaniards might well have retrieved the fortunes of the day. But it happened that the Salvador was handicapped in true Spanish fashion by being the treasure-ship of the fleet, with plate on board to the value of some fifty thousand pieces. |
| 1514 |
Intent above all upon saving this from falling into the hands of the pirates, Don Miguel, who, with a remnant of his crew, had meanwhile transferred himself aboard her, headed her down towards Palomas and the fort that guarded the passage. This fort the Admiral, in those days of waiting, had taken the precaution secretly to garrison and rearm. For the purpose he had stripped the fort of Cojero, farther out on the gulf, of its entire armament, which included some cannon-royal of more than ordinary range and power. With no suspicion of this, Captain Blood gave chase, accompanied by the Infanta, which was manned now by a prize-crew under the command of Yberville. The stern chasers of the Salvador desultorily returned the punishing fire of the pursuers; but such was the damage she, herself, sustained, that presently, coming under the guns of the fort, she began to sink, and finally settled down in the shallows with part of her hull above water. Thence, some in boats and some by swimming, the Admiral got his crew ashore on Palomas as best he could. And then, just as Captain Blood accounted the victory won, and that his way out of that trap to the open sea beyond lay clear, the fort suddenly revealed its formidable and utterly unsuspected strength. With a roar the cannons-royal proclaimed themselves, and the Arabella staggered under a blow that smashed her bulwarks at the waist and scattered death and confusion among the seamen gathered there. Had not Pitt, her master, himself seized the whipstaff and put the helm hard over to swing her sharply off to starboard, she must have suffered still worse from the second volley that followed fast upon the first. Meanwhile it had fared even worse with the frailer Infanta. Although hit by one shot only, this had crushed her larboard timbers on the waterline, starting a leak that must presently have filled her, but for the prompt action of the experienced Yberville in ordering her larboard guns to be flung overboard. Thus lightened, and listing now to starboard, he fetched her about, and went staggering after the retreating Arabella, followed by the fire of the fort, which did them, however, little further damage. Out of range, at last, they lay to, joined by the Elizabeth and the San Felipe, to consider their position. It was a crestfallen Captain Blood who presided over that hastily summoned council held on the poop-deck of the Arabella in the brilliant morning sunshine. It was, he declared afterwards, one of the bitterest moments in his career. |
| 1515 |
"Look you, Cahusac: it's sick and tired I am of your perpetual whining and complaining when things are not as smooth as a convent dining-table. If ye wanted things smooth and easy, ye shouldn't have taken to the sea, and ye should never ha' sailed with me, for with me things are never smooth and easy. And that, I think, is all I have to say to you this morning." Cahusac flung away cursing, and went to take the feeling of his men. Captain Blood went off to give his surgeon's skill to the wounded, among whom he remained engaged until late afternoon. Then, at last, he went ashore, his mind made up, and returned to the house of the Governor, to indite a truculent but very scholarly letter in purest Castilian to Don Miguel. "I have shown your excellency this morning of what I am capable," he wrote. "Although outnumbered by more than two to one in men, in ships, and in guns, I have sunk or captured the vessels of the great fleet with which you were to come to Maracaybo to destroy us. So that you are no longer in case to carry out your boast, even when your reenforcements on the Santo Nino, reach you from La Guayra. From what has occurred, you may judge of what must occur. I should not trouble your excellency with this letter but that I am a humane man, abhorring bloodshed. Therefore before proceeding to deal with your fort, which you may deem invincible, as I have dealt already with your fleet, which you deemed invincible, I make you, purely out of humanitarian considerations, this last offer of terms. I will spare this city of Maracaybo and forthwith evacuate it, leaving behind me the forty prisoners I have taken, in consideration of your paying me the sum of fifty thousand pieces of eight and one hundred head of cattle as a ransom, thereafter granting me unmolested passage of the bar. 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. |
| 1516 |
"At last!" he cried. "God delivers him into my hands!" He turned to the group of staring officers behind him. "Sooner or later it had to be," he said. "Say now, gentlemen, whether I am justified of my patience. Here end to-day the troubles caused to the subjects of the Catholic King by this infamous Don Pedro Sangre, as he once called himself to me." He turned to issue orders, and the fort became lively as a hive. The guns were manned, the gunners already kindling fuses, when the buccaneer fleet, whilst still heading for Palomas, was observed to bear away to the west. The Spaniards watched them, intrigued. Within a mile and a half to westward of the fort, and within a half-mile of the shore - that is to say, on the very edge of the shoal water that makes Palomas unapproachable on either side by any but vessels of the shallowest draught - the four ships cast anchor well within the Spaniards' view, but just out of range of their heaviest cannon. Sneeringly the Admiral laughed. "Aha! They hesitate, these English dogs! Por Dios, and well they may." "They will be waiting for night," suggested his nephew, who stood at his elbow quivering with excitement. Don Miguel looked at him, smiling. "And what shall the night avail them in this narrow passage, under the very muzzles of my guns? Be sure, Esteban, that to-night your father will be paid for." He raised his telescope to continue his observation of the buccaneers. He saw that the piraguas towed by each vessel were being warped alongside, and he wondered a little what this manoeuver might portend. Awhile those piraguas were hidden from view behind the hulls. Then one by one they reappeared, rowing round and away from the ships, and each boat, he observed, was crowded with armed men. Thus laden, they were headed for the shore, at a point where it was densely wooded to the water's edge. The eyes of the wondering Admiral followed them until the foliage screened them from his view. Then he lowered his telescope and looked at his officers. "What the devil does it mean?" he asked. None answered him, all being as puzzled as he was himself. After a little while, Esteban, who kept his eyes on the water, plucked at his uncle's sleeve. "There they go!" he cried, and pointed. And there, indeed, went the piraguas on their way back to the ships. But now it was observed that they were empty, save for the men who rowed them. Their armed cargo had been left ashore. Back to the ships they pulled, to return again presently with a fresh load of armed men, which similarly they conveyed to Palomas. |
| 1517 |
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. |
| 1518 |
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. As for the survivors in that ghastly shambles that had been the Royal Mary, they were abandoned by the Spaniards to their own resources. Let them take to the boats, and if those did not suffice them, let them swim or drown. If Lord Julian and Miss Bishop were retained, it was because Don Miguel perceived their obvious value. He received them in his cabin with great urbanity. Urbanely he desired to have the honour of being acquainted with their names. Lord Julian, sick with horror of the spectacle he had just witnessed, commanded himself with difficulty to supply them. Then haughtily he demanded to know in his turn the name of their aggressor. He was in an exceedingly ill temper. He realized that if he had done nothing positively discreditable in the unusual and difficult position into which Fate had thrust him, at least he had done nothing creditable. This might have mattered less but that the spectator of his indifferent performance was a lady. |
| 1519 |
Miss Bishop took no heed of him or his offering, but continued to stare before her, lost in thought. Lord Julian took a turn in the long low cabin, which was lighted by a skylight above and great square windows astern. It was luxuriously appointed: there were rich Eastern rugs on the floor, well-filled bookcases stood against the bulkheads, and there was a carved walnut sideboard laden with silverware. On a long, low chest standing under the middle stern port lay a guitar that was gay with ribbons. Lord Julian picked it up, twanged the strings once as if moved by nervous irritation, and put it down. He turned again to face Miss Bishop. "I came out here," he said, "to put down piracy. But - blister me! - I begin to think that the French are right in desiring piracy to continue as a curb upon these Spanish scoundrels." He was to be strongly confirmed in that opinion before many hours were past. Meanwhile their treatment at the hands of Don Miguel was considerate and courteous. 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. |
| 1520 |
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. They advanced to the poop-rail, and watched the bustle. Telescope in hand on the quarter-deck, Don Miguel was issuing his orders. Already the gunners were kindling their matches; sailors were aloft, taking in sail; others were spreading a stout rope net above the waist, as a protection against falling spars. And meanwhile Don Miguel had been signalling to his consort, in response to which the Hidalga had drawn steadily forward until she was now abeam of the Milagrosa, half cable's length to starboard, and from the height of the tall poop my lord and Miss Bishop could see her own bustle of preparation. |
| 1521 |
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. But even as his fingers closed upon the hilt, the other's closed upon his wrist to arrest the action. "Calm, Don Miguel!" he was quietly but firmly enjoined. "Do not recklessly invite the ugly extremes such as you would, yourself, have practised had the situation been reversed." A moment they stood looking into each other's eyes. |
| 1522 |
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. |
| 1523 |
Let him now justify her. She was aboard his ship, in his power, and he desired her. He laughed softly, jeeringly, as he leaned on the taffrail, looking down at the phosphorescent gleam in the ship's wake, and his own laughter startled him by its evil note. He checked suddenly, and shivered. A sob broke from him to end that ribald burst of mirth. He took his face in his hands and found a chill moisture on his brow. Meanwhile, Lord Julian, who knew the feminine part of humanity rather better than Captain Blood, was engaged in solving the curious problem that had so completely escaped the buccaneer. He was spurred to it, I suspect, by certain vague stirrings of jealousy. Miss Bishop's conduct in the perils through which they had come had brought him at last to perceive that a woman may lack the simpering graces of cultured femininity and yet because of that lack be the more admirable. He wondered what precisely might have been her earlier relations with Captain Blood, and was conscious of a certain uneasiness which urged him now to probe the matter. His lordship's pale, dreamy eyes had, as I have said, a habit of observing things, and his wits were tolerably acute. He was blaming himself now for not having observed certain things before, or, at least, for not having studied them more closely, and he was busily connecting them with more recent observations made that very day. He had observed, for instance, that Blood's ship was named the Arabella, and he knew that Arabella was Miss Bishop's name. And he had observed all the odd particulars of the meeting of Captain Blood and Miss Bishop, and the curious change that meeting had wrought in each. The lady had been monstrously uncivil to the Captain. It was a very foolish attitude for a lady in her circumstances to adopt towards a man in Blood's; and his lordship could not imagine Miss Bishop as normally foolish. Yet, in spite of her rudeness, in spite of the fact that she was the niece of a man whom Blood must regard as his enemy, Miss Bishop and his lordship had been shown the utmost consideration aboard the Captain's ship. A cabin had been placed at the disposal of each, to which their scanty remaining belongings and Miss Bishop's woman had been duly transferred. They were given the freedom of the great cabin, and they had sat down to table with Pitt, the master, and Wolverstone, who was Blood's lieutenant, both of whom had shown them the utmost courtesy. Also there was the fact that Blood, himself, had kept almost studiously from intruding upon them. |
| 1524 |
Lord Julian was sententious, as I gather that he often was. "Life can be infernally complex," he sighed. Miss Arabella Bishop was aroused very early on the following morning by the brazen voice of a bugle and the insistent clanging of a bell in the ship's belfry. As she lay awake, idly watching the rippled green water that appeared to be streaming past the heavily glazed porthole, she became gradually aware of the sounds of swift, laboured bustle - the clatter of many feet, the shouts of hoarse voices, and the persistent trundlings of heavy bodies in the ward-room immediately below the deck of the cabin. Conceiving these sounds to portend a more than normal activity, she sat up, pervaded by a vague alarm, and roused her still slumbering woman. In his cabin on the starboard side Lord Julian, disturbed by the same sounds, was already astir and hurriedly dressing. When presently he emerged under the break of the poop, he found himself staring up into a mountain of canvas. Every foot of sail that she could carry had been crowded to the Arabella's yards, to catch the morning breeze. Ahead and on either side stretched the limitless expanse of ocean, sparkling golden in the sun, as yet no more than a half-disc of flame upon the horizon straight ahead. About him in the waist, where all last night had been so peaceful, there was a frenziedly active bustle of some threescore men. By the rail, immediately above and behind Lord Julian, stood Captain Blood in altercation with a one-eyed giant, whose head was swathed in a red cotton kerchief, whose blue shirt hung open at the waist. As his lordship, moving forward, revealed himself, their voices ceased, and Blood turned to greet him. "Good-morning to you," he said, and added "I've blundered badly, so I have. I should have known better than to come so close to Jamaica by night. But I was in haste to land you. Come up here. I have something to show you." Wondering, Lord Julian mounted the companion as he was bidden. Standing beside Captain Blood, he looked astern, following the indication of the Captain's hand, and cried out in his amazement. There, not more than three miles away, was land - an uneven wall of vivid green that filled the western horizon. And a couple of miles this side of it, bearing after them, came speeding three great white ships. "They fly no colours, but they're part of the Jamaica fleet." Blood spoke without excitement, almost with a certain listlessness. "When dawn broke we found ourselves running to meet them. |
| 1525 |
If I don't, it's for the same reason that once before I gave ye your life when it was forfeit. Ye're not aware of the reason, to be sure; but it may comfort ye to know that it exists. At the same time I'll warn ye not to put too heavy a strain on my generosity, which resides at the moment in my trigger-finger. Ye mean to hang me, and since that's the worst that can happen to me anyway, you'll realize that I'll not boggle at increasing the account by spilling your nasty blood." He cast his cane from him, thus disengaging his left hand. "Be good enough to give me your arm, Colonel Bishop. Come, come, man, your arm." Under the compulsion of that sharp tone, those resolute eyes, and that gleaming pistol, Bishop obeyed without demur. His recent foul volubility was stemmed. He could not trust himself to speak. Captain Blood tucked his left arm through the Deputy-Governor's proffered right. Then he thrust his own right hand with its pistol back into the breast of his doublet. "Though invisible, it's aiming at ye none the less, and I give you my word of honour that I'll shoot ye dead upon the very least provocation, whether that provocation is yours or another's. Ye'll bear that in mind, Lord Julian. And now, ye greasy hangman, step out as brisk and lively as ye can, and behave as naturally as ye may, or it's the black stream of Cocytus ye'll be contemplating." Arm in arm they passed through the house, and down the garden, where Arabella lingered, awaiting Peter Blood's return. Consideration of his parting words had brought her first turmoil of mind, then a clear perception of what might be indeed the truth of the death of Levasseur. She perceived that the particular inference drawn from it might similarly have been drawn from Blood's deliverance of Mary Traill. When a man so risks his life for a woman, the rest is easily assumed. For the men who will take such risks without hope of personal gain are few. Blood was of those few, as he had proved in the case of Mary Traill. It needed no further assurances of his to convince her that she had done him a monstrous injustice. She remembered words he had used - words overheard aboard his ship (which he had named the Arabella) on the night of her deliverance from the Spanish admiral; words he had uttered when she had approved his acceptance of the King's commission; the words he had spoken to her that very morning, which had but served to move her indignation. All these assumed a fresh meaning in her mind, delivered now from its unwarranted preconceptions. |
| 1526 |
Therefore she lingered there in the garden, awaiting his return that she might make amends; that she might set a term to all misunderstanding. In impatience she awaited him. Yet her patience, it seemed, was to be tested further. For when at last he came, it was in company - unusually close and intimate company - with her uncle. In vexation she realized that explanations must be postponed. Could she have guessed the extent of that postponement, vexation would have been changed into despair. He passed, with his companion, from that fragrant garden into the courtyard of the fort. Here the Commandant, who had been instructed to hold himself in readiness with the necessary men against the need to effect the arrest of Captain Blood, was amazed by the curious spectacle of the Deputy-Governor of Jamaica strolling forth arm in arm and apparently on the friendliest terms with the intended prisoner. For as they went, Blood was chatting and laughing briskly. They passed out of the gates unchallenged, and so came to the mole where the cock-boat from the Arabella was waiting. They took their places side by side in the stern sheets, and were pulled away together, always very close and friendly, to the great red ship where Jeremy Pitt so anxiously awaited news. You conceive the master's amazement to see the Deputy-Governor come toiling up the entrance ladder, with Blood following very close behind him. "Sure, I walked into a trap, as ye feared, Jeremy," Blood hailed him. "But I walked out again, and fetched the trapper with me. He loves his life, does this fat rascal." Colonel Bishop stood in the waist, his great face blenched to the colour of clay, his mouth loose, almost afraid to look at the sturdy ruffians who lounged about the shot-rack on the main hatch. Blood shouted an order to the bo'sun, who was leaning against the forecastle bulkhead. "Throw me a rope with a running noose over the yardarm there, against the need of it. Now, don't be alarming yourself, Colonel, darling. It's no more than a provision against your being unreasonable, which I am sure ye'll not be. We'll talk the matter over whiles we are dining, for I trust ye'll not refuse to honour my table by your company." He led away the will-less, cowed bully to the great cabin. Benjamin, the negro steward, in white drawers and cotton shirt, made haste by his command to serve dinner. Colonel Bishop collapsed on the locker under the stern ports, and spoke now for the first time. "May I ask wha... what are your intentions?" he quavered. |
| 1527 |
He sneered and snorted at the notion of Blood's word being good for anything, forgetting that he owed to it his own preservation at that moment. At supper, and for long thereafter he talked of nothing but Blood - of how he would lay him by the heels, and what hideous things he would perform upon his body. And as he drank heavily the while, his speech became increasingly gross and his threats increasingly horrible; until in the end Arabella withdrew, white-faced and almost on the verge of tears. It was not often that Bishop revealed himself to his niece. Oddly enough, this coarse, overbearing planter went in a certain awe of that slim girl. It was as if she had inherited from her father the respect in which he had always been held by his brother. Lord Julian, who began to find Bishop disgusting beyond endurance, excused himself soon after, and went in quest of the lady. 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. |
| 1528 |
Because of that he bade me leave his ship, and had me put ashore." She looked at him with eyes that were aswim with tears. He took a step towards her, a catch in his breath, his hand held out. "Was he right, Arabella? My life's happiness hangs upon your answer." But she continued silently to regard him with those tear-laden eyes, without speaking, and until she spoke he dared not advance farther. A doubt, a tormenting doubt beset him. When presently she spoke, he saw how true had been the instinct of which that doubt was born, for her words revealed the fact that of all that he had said the only thing that had touched her consciousness and absorbed it from all other considerations was Blood's conduct as it regarded herself. "He said that!" she cried. "He did that! Oh!" She turned away, and through the slender, clustering trunks of the bordering orange-trees she looked out across the glittering waters of the great harbour to the distant hills. Thus for a little while, my lord standing stiffly, fearfully, waiting for fuller revelation of her mind. At last it came, slowly, deliberately, in a voice that at moments was half suffocated. "Last night when my uncle displayed his rancour and his evil rage, it began to be borne in upon me that such vindictiveness can belong only to those who have wronged. It is the frenzy into which men whip themselves to justify an evil passion. I must have known then, if I had not already learnt it, that I had been too credulous of all the unspeakable things attributed to Peter Blood. Yesterday I had his own explanation of that tale of Levasseur that you heard in St. Nicholas. And now this... this but gives me confirmation of his truth and worth. To a scoundrel such as I was too readily brought to believe him, the act of which you have just told me would have been impossible." "That is my own opinion," said his lordship gently. "It must be. But even if it were not, that would now weigh for nothing. What weighs - oh, so heavily and bitterly - is the thought that but for the words in which yesterday I repelled him, he might have been saved. If only I could have spoken to him again before he went! I waited for him; but my uncle was with him, and I had no suspicion that he was going away again. And now he is lost - back at his outlawry and piracy, in which ultimately he will be taken and destroyed. And the fault is mine - mine!" "What are you saying? The only agents were your uncle's hostility and his own obstinacy which would not study compromise. |
| 1529 |
At first she did not understand the purport of his question. When understanding came, a flush suffused her face. "I do not know," she said, faltering a little. This was hardly a truthful answer. For, as if an obscuring veil had suddenly been rent that morning, she was permitted at last to see Peter Blood in his true relations to other men, and that sight, vouchsafed her twenty-four hours too late, filled her with pity and regret and yearning. Lord Julian knew enough of women to be left in no further doubt. He bowed his head so that she might not see the anger in his eyes, for as a man of honour he took shame in that anger which as a human being he could not repress. And because Nature in him was stronger - as it is in most of us than training, Lord Julian from that moment began, almost in spite of himself, to practise something that was akin to villainy. I regret to chronicle it of one for whom - if I have done him any sort of justice - you should have been conceiving some esteem. But the truth is that the lingering remains of the regard in which he had held Peter Blood were choked by the desire to supplant and destroy a rival. He had passed his word to Arabella that he would use his powerful influence on Blood's behalf. I deplore to set it down that not only did he forget his pledge, but secretly set himself to aid and abet Arabella's uncle in the plans he laid for the trapping and undoing of the buccaneer. He might reasonably have urged - had he been taxed with it - that he conducted himself precisely as his duty demanded. But to that he might have been answered that duty with him was but the slave of jealousy in this. When the Jamaica fleet put to sea some few days later, Lord Julian sailed with Colonel Bishop in Vice-Admiral Craufurd's flagship. Not only was there no need for either of them to go, but the Deputy-Governor's duties actually demanded that he should remain ashore, whilst Lord Julian, as we know, was a useless man aboard a ship. Yet both set out to hunt Captain Blood, each making of his duty a pretext for the satisfaction of personal aims; and that common purpose became a link between them, binding them in a sort of friendship that must otherwise have been impossible between men so dissimilar in breeding and in aspirations. The hunt was up. They cruised awhile off Hispaniola, watching the Windward Passage, and suffering the discomforts of the rainy season which had now set in. But they cruised in vain, and after a month of it, returned empty-handed to Port Royal, there to find awaiting them the most disquieting news from the Old World. |
| 1530 |
d'Ogeron, is, in brief, that you enroll your ships and your force under M. de Rivarol's flag." Blood looked at him with a faint kindling of interest. "You are offering to take us into the French service?" he asked. "On what terms, monsieur?" "With the rank of Capitaine de Vaisseau for yourself, and suitable ranks for the officers serving under you. You will enjoy the pay of that rank, and you will be entitled, together with your men, to one-tenth share in all prizes taken." "My men will hardly account it generous. They will tell you that they can sail out of here to-morrow, disembowel a Spanish settlement, and keep the whole of the plunder." "Ah, yes, but with the risks attaching to acts of piracy. With us your position will be regular and official, and considering the powerful fleet by which M. de Rivarol is backed, the enterprises to be undertaken will be on a much vaster scale than anything you could attempt on your own account. So that the one tenth in this case may be equal to more than the whole in the other." Captain Blood considered. This, after all, was not piracy that was being proposed. It was honourable employment in the service of the King of France. "I will consult my officers," he said; and he sent for them. They came and the matter was laid before them by M. de Cussy himself. Hagthorpe announced at once that the proposal was opportune. The men were grumbling at their protracted inaction, and would no doubt be ready to accept the service which M. de Cussy offered on behalf of France. Hagthorpe looked at Blood as he spoke. Blood nodded gloomy agreement. Emboldened by this, they went on to discuss the terms. Yberville, the young French filibuster, had the honour to point out to M. de Cussy that the share offered was too small. For one fifth of the prizes, the officers would answer for their men; not for less. M. de Cussy was distressed. He had his instructions. It was taking a deal upon himself to exceed them. The buccaneers were firm. Unless M. de Cussy could make it one fifth there was no more to be said. M. de Cussy finally consenting to exceed his instructions, the articles were drawn up and signed that very day. The buccaneers were to be at Petit Goave by the end of January, when M. de Rivarol had announced that he might be expected. After that followed days of activity in Tortuga, refitting the ships, boucanning meat, laying in stores. In these matters which once would have engaged all Captain Blood's attention, he now took no part. He continued listless and aloof. |
| 1531 |
de Rivarol smote the table in exasperation. This pirate was too infernally skillful a fencer. "You are quite certain of that, M. le Baron - that you cannot?" "I am quite certain that I will not." Captain Blood shrugged, and looked down his nose. "In that case," said he, "it but remains for me to present my little account for our disbursement, and to fix the sum at which we should be compensated for our loss of time and derangement in coming hither. That settled, we can part friends, M. le Baron. No harm has been done." "What the devil do you mean?" The Baron was on his feet, leaning forward across the table. "Is it possible that I am obscure? My French, perhaps, is not of the purest, but..." "Oh, your French is fluent enough; too fluent at moments, if I may permit myself the observation. Now, look you here, M. le filibustier, I am not a man with whom it is safe to play the fool, as you may very soon discover. You have accepted service of the King of France - you and your men; you hold the rank and draw the pay of a Capitaine de Vaisseau, and these your officers hold the rank of lieutenants. These ranks carry obligations which you would do well to study, and penalties for failing to discharge them which you might study at the same time. They are something severe. The first obligation of an officer is obedience. I commend it to your attention. You are not to conceive yourselves, as you appear to be doing, my allies in the enterprises I have in view, but my subordinates. In me you behold a commander to lead you, not a companion or an equal. You understand me, I hope." "Oh, be sure that I understand," Captain Blood laughed. He was recovering his normal self amazingly under the inspiring stimulus of conflict. The only thing that marred his enjoyment was the reflection that he had not shaved. "I forget nothing, I assure you, my General. I do not forget, for instance, as you appear to be doing, that the articles we signed are the condition of our service; and the articles provide that we receive one-fifth share. Refuse us that, and you cancel the articles; cancel the articles, and you cancel our services with them. From that moment we cease to have the honour to hold rank in the navies of the King of France." There was more than a murmur of approval from his three captains. Rivarol glared at them, checkmated. "In effect..." M. de Cussy was beginning timidly. "In effect, monsieur, this is your doing," the Baron flashed on him, glad to have some one upon whom he could fasten the sharp fangs of his irritation. |
| 1532 |
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! But of an insolence that is intolerable!" Normally a man of the utmost self-possession he was so rudely shaken now that he actually stammered. |
| 1533 |
"M. le Baron, you waste words. This is the New World. It is not merely new; it is novel to one reared amid the superstitions of the Old. That novelty you have not yet had time, perhaps, to realize; therefore I overlook the offensive epithet you have used. But justice is justice in the New World as in the Old, and injustice as intolerable here as there. Now justice demands the enlargement of my officer and the arrest and punishment of yours. That justice I invite you, with submission, to administer." "With submission?" snorted the Baron in furious scorn. "With the utmost submission, monsieur. But at the same time I will remind M. le Baron that my buccaneers number eight hundred; your troops five hundred; and M. de Cussy will inform you of the interesting fact that any one buccaneer is equal in action to at least three soldiers of the line. I am perfectly frank with you, monsieur, to save time and hard words. Either Captain Wolverstone is instantly set at liberty, or we must take measures to set him at liberty ourselves. The consequences may be appalling. But it is as you please, M. le Baron. You are the supreme authority. It is for you to say." M. de Rivarol was white to the lips. In all his life he had never been so bearded and defied. But he controlled himself. "You will do me the favour to wait in the ante-room, M. le Capitaine. I desire a word with M. de Cussy. You shall presently be informed of my decision." When the door had closed, the baron loosed his fury upon the head of M. de Cussy. "So, these are the men you have enlisted in the King's service, the men who are to serve under me - men who do not serve, but dictate, and this before the enterprise that has brought me from France is even under way! What explanations do you offer me, M. de Cussy? I warn you that I am not pleased with you. I am, in fact, as you may perceive, exceedingly angry." The Governor seemed to shed his chubbiness. He drew himself stiffly erect. "Your rank, monsieur, does not give you the right to rebuke me; nor do the facts. I have enlisted for you the men that you desired me to enlist. It is not my fault if you do not know how to handle them better. As Captain Blood has told you, this is the New World." "So, so!" M. de Rivarol smiled malignantly. "Not only do you offer no explanation, but you venture to put me in the wrong. Almost I admire your temerity. But there!" he waved the matter aside. He was supremely sardonic. "It is, you tell me, the New World, and - new worlds, new manners, I suppose. |
| 1534 |
In time I may conform my ideas to this new world, or I may conform this new world to my ideas." He was menacing on that. "For the moment I must accept what I find. It remains for you, monsieur, who have experience of these savage by-ways, to advise me out of that experience how to act." "M. le Baron, it was a folly to have arrested the buccaneer captain. It would be madness to persist. We have not the forces to meet force." "In that case, monsieur, perhaps you will tell me what we are to do with regard to the future. Am I to submit at every turn to the dictates of this man Blood? Is the enterprise upon which we are embarked to be conducted as he decrees? Am I, in short, the King's representative in America, to be at the mercy of these rascals?" "Oh, by no means. I am enrolling volunteers here in Hispaniola, and I am raising a corps of negroes. I compute that when this is done we shall have a force of a thousand men, the buccaneers apart." "But in that case why not dispense with them?" "Because they will always remain the sharp edge of any weapon that we forge. In the class of warfare that lies before us they are so skilled that what Captain Blood has just said is not an overstatement. A buccaneer is equal to three soldiers of the line. At the same time we shall have a sufficient force to keep them in control. For the rest, monsieur, they have certain notions of honour. They will stand by their articles, and so that we deal justly with them, they will deal justly with us, and give no trouble. I have experience of them, and I pledge you my word for that." M. de Rivarol condescended to be mollified. It was necessary that he should save his face, and in a degree the Governor afforded him the means to do so, as well as a certain guarantee for the future in the further force he was raising. "Very well," he said. "Be so good as to recall this Captain Blood." The Captain came in, assured and very dignified. M. de Rivarol found him detestable; but dissembled it. "M. le Capitaine, I have taken counsel with M. le Gouverneur. From what he tells me, it is possible that a mistake has been committed. Justice, you may be sure, shall be done. To ensure it, I shall myself preside over a council to be composed of two of my senior officers, yourself and an officer of yours. This council shall hold at once an impartial investigation into the affair, and the offender, the man guilty of having given provocation, shall be punished." Captain Blood bowed. It was not his wish to be extreme. |
| 1535 |
"Perfectly, M. le Baron. And now, sir, you have had the night for reflection in this matter of the articles. Am I to understand that you confirm or that you repudiate them?" M. de Rivarol's eyes narrowed. His mind was full of what M. de Cussy had said - that these buccaneers must prove the sharp edge of any weapon he might forge. He could not dispense with them. He perceived that he had blundered tactically in attempting to reduce the agreed share. Withdrawal from a position of that kind is ever fraught with loss of dignity. But there were those volunteers that M. de Cussy was enrolling to strengthen the hand of the King's General. Their presence might admit anon of the reopening of this question. Meanwhile he must retire in the best order possible. "I have considered that, too," he announced. "And whilst my opinion remains unaltered, I must confess that since M. de Cussy has pledged us, it is for us to fulfil the pledges. The articles are confirmed, sir." Captain Blood bowed again. In vain M. de Rivarol looked searchingly for the least trace of a smile of triumph on those firm lips. The buccaneer's face remained of the utmost gravity. Wolverstone was set at liberty that afternoon, and his assailant sentenced to two months' detention. Thus harmony was restored. But it had been an unpromising beginning, and there was more to follow shortly of a similar discordant kind. Blood and his officers were summoned a week later to a council which sat to determine their operations against Spain. M. de Rivarol laid before them a project for a raid upon the wealthy Spanish town of Cartagena. Captain Blood professed astonishment. Sourly invited by M. de Rivarol to state his grounds for it, he did so with the utmost frankness. "Were I General of the King's Armies in America," said he, "I should have no doubt or hesitation as to the best way in which to serve my Royal master and the French nation. That which I think will be obvious to M. de Cussy, as it is to me, is that we should at once invade Spanish Hispaniola and reduce the whole of this fruitful and splendid island into the possession of the King of France." "That may follow," said M. de Rivarol. "It is my wish that we begin with Cartagena." "You mean, sir, that we are to sail across the Caribbean on an adventurous expedition, neglecting that which lies here at our very door. In our absence, a Spanish invasion of French Hispaniola is possible. If we begin by reducing the Spaniards here, that possibility will be removed. |
| 1536 |
We shall have added to the Crown of France the most coveted possession in the West Indies. The enterprise offers no particular difficulty; it may be speedily accomplished, and once accomplished, it would be time to look farther afield. That would seem the logical order in which this campaign should proceed." He ceased, and there was silence. M. de Rivarol sat back in his chair, the feathered end of a quill between his teeth. Presently he cleared his throat and asked a question. "Is there anybody else who shares Captain Blood's opinion?" None answered him. His own officers were overawed by him; Blood's followers naturally preferred Cartagena, because offering the greater chance of loot. Loyalty to their leader kept them silent. "You seem to be alone in your opinion," said the Baron with his vinegary smile. Captain Blood laughed outright. He had suddenly read the Baron's mind. His airs and graces and haughtiness had so imposed upon Blood that it was only now that at last he saw through them, into the fellow's peddling spirit. Therefore he laughed; there was really nothing else to do. But his laughter was charged with more anger even than contempt. He had been deluding himself that he had done with piracy. The conviction that this French service was free of any taint of that was the only consideration that had induced him to accept it. Yet here was this haughty, supercilious gentleman, who dubbed himself General of the Armies of France, proposing a plundering, thieving raid which, when stripped of its mean, transparent mask of legitimate warfare, was revealed as piracy of the most flagrant. M. de Rivarol, intrigued by his mirth, scowled upon him disapprovingly. "Why do you laugh, monsieur?" "Because I discover here an irony that is supremely droll. You, M. le Baron, General of the King's Armies by Land and Sea in America, propose an enterprise of a purely buccaneering character; whilst I, the buccaneer, am urging one that is more concerned with upholding the honour of France. You perceive how droll it is." M. de Rivarol perceived nothing of the kind. M. de Rivarol in fact was extremely angry. He bounded to his feet, and every man in the room rose with him - save only M. de Cussy, who sat on with a grim smile on his lips. He, too, now read the Baron like an open book, and reading him despised him. "M. le filibustier," cried Rivarol in a thick voice, "it seems that I must again remind you that I am your superior officer." "My superior officer! You! Lord of the World! |
| 1537 |
Why, you are just a common pirate! But you shall hear the truth for once, and that before all these gentlemen who have the honour to serve the King of France. It is for me, a buccaneer, a sea-robber, to stand here and tell you what is in the interest of French honour and the French Crown. Whilst you, the French King's appointed General, neglecting this, are for spending the King's resources against an outlying settlement of no account, shedding French blood in seizing a place that cannot be held, only because it has been reported to you that there is much gold in Cartagena, and that the plunder of it will enrich you. 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. |
| 1538 |
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. 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. |
| 1539 |
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. |
| 1540 |
It was with me. But if you are concerned to abate the pride of Spain and plant the Lilies of France on the forts of this settlement, the loss of some treasure should not really weigh for much." M. de Rivarol bit his lip in chagrin. His gloomy eye smouldered as it considered the self-contained buccaneer. "But if I command you to go - to make the attempt?" he asked. "Answer me, monsieur, let us know once for all where we stand, and who commands this expedition." "Positively, I find you tiresome," said Captain Blood, and he swung to M. de Cussy, who sat there gnawing his lip, intensely uncomfortable. "I appeal to you, monsieur, to justify me to the General." M. de Cussy started out of his gloomy abstraction. He cleared his throat. He was extremely nervous. "In view of what Captain Blood has submitted..." "Oh, to the devil with that!" snapped Rivarol. "It seems that I am followed by poltroons. Look you, M. le Capitaine, since you are afraid to undertake this thing, I will myself undertake it. The weather is calm, and I count upon making good my landing. If I do so, I shall have proved you wrong, and I shall have a word to say to you to-morrow which you may not like. 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. |
| 1541 |
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. |
| 1542 |
Among the buccaneers that night there was hilarity over the sudden abatement of M. de Rivarol's monstrous pride. But when the next dawn broke over Cartagena, they had the explanation of it. The only ships to be seen in the harbour were the Arabella and the Elizabeth riding at anchor, and the Atropos and the Lachesis careened on the beach for repair of the damage sustained in the bombardment. The French ships were gone. They had been quietly and secretly warped out of the harbour under cover of night, and three sails, faint and small, on the horizon to westward was all that remained to be seen of them. 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. |
| 1543 |
"Aye, I was right. The fire's slackening. It'll mean the end of Mallard's resistance in the fort. Ho there, Jeremy!" He leaned on the carved rail and issued orders crisply. The bo'sun's pipe shrilled out, and in a moment the ship that had seemed to slumber there, awoke to life. Came the padding of feet along the decks, the creaking of blocks and the hoisting of sail. The helm was put over hard, and in a moment they were moving, the Elizabeth following, ever in obedience to the signals from the Arabella, whilst Ogle the gunner, whom he had summoned, was receiving Blood's final instructions before plunging down to his station on the main deck. Within a quarter of an hour they had rounded the head, and stood in to the harbour mouth, within saker shot of Rivarol's three ships, to which they now abruptly disclosed themselves. Where the fort had stood they now beheld a smoking rubbish heap, and the victorious Frenchman with the lily standard trailing from his mastheads was sweeping forward to snatch the rich prize whose defences he had shattered. Blood scanned the French ships, and chuckled. The Victorieuse and the Medusa appeared to have taken no more than a few scars; but the third ship, the Baleine, listing heavily to larboard so as to keep the great gash in her starboard well above water, was out of account. "You see!" he cried to van der Kuylen, and without waiting for the Dutchman's approving grunt, he shouted an order: "Helm, hard-a-port!" The sight of that great red ship with her gilt beak-head and open ports swinging broadside on must have given check to Rivarol's soaring exultation. 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 ... |
| 1544 |
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. |
| 1545 |
I fail within an ace of victory." But they had not yet completely failed. 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. |
| 1546 |
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. 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. |
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