AN ASSASSIN
ZUDI: THE SEVENTH MONTH IN THE FOURTEENTH YEAR OF THE REIGN OF ONE BRIGHT HEAVEN.
A white bird hung still in the clear western sky and flapped its wings sporadically.
Perhaps it was a raptor that had left its nest on one of the soaring peaks of the Er-Mé Mountains a few miles away in search of prey. But this was not a good day for hunting—a raptor’s usual domain, this sun-parched section of the Porin Plains, had been taken over by people.
Thousands of spectators lined both sides of the wide road out of Zudi; they paid the bird no attention. They were here for the Imperial Procession.
They had gasped in awe as a fleet of giant Imperial airships passed overhead, shifting gracefully from one elegant formation to another. They had gawped in respectful silence as the heavy battlecarts rolled before them, thick bundles of ox sinew draping from the stone-throwing arms. They had praised the emperor’s foresight and generosity as his engineers sprayed the crowd with perfumed water from ice wagons, cool and refreshing in the hot sun and dusty air of northern Cocru. They had clapped and cheered the best dancers the six conquered Tiro states had to offer: five hundred Faça maidens who gyrated seductively in the veil dance, a sight once reserved for the royal court in Boama; four hundred Cocru sword twirlers who spun their blades into bright chrysanthemums of cold light that melded martial glory with lyrical grace; dozens of elegant, stately elephants from wild, sparsely settled Écofi Island, painted with the
colors of the Seven States—the largest male draped in the white flag of Xana, as one would expect, while the others wore the rainbow colors of the conquered lands.
The elephants pulled a moving platform on which stood two hundred of the best singers all the Islands of Dara had to offer, a choir whose existence would have been impossible before the Xana Conquest. They sang a new song, a composition by the great imperial scholar Lügo Crupo to celebrate the occasion of the Imperial tour of the Islands:
Tothenorth:FruitfulFaça,greenastheeyesofkind Rufizo,
Pastureseverkissedbysweetrain,craggyhighlands shroudedinmist.
Soldiers walking next to the moving platform tossed trinkets into the crowd: Xana-style decorative knots made with bits of colorful string to represent the Seven States. The shapes of the knots were meant to evoke the logograms for “prosperity” and “luck.” Spectators scrambled and fought one another to catch a memento of this exciting day.
Tothesouth:CastledCocru,fieldsofsorghumandrice, bothpaleanddark, Red,formartialglory,white,likeproudRapa,black,as mournfulKana.
The crowd cheered especially loudly after this verse about their homeland.
Tothewest:AlluringAmu,thejewelofTututika, Luminouselegance,filigreedcitiessurroundtwoblue lakes.
Totheeast:GleamingGan,whereTazu’stradesand gamblesglitter , Wealthyasthesea’sbounty,culturedlikethescholars’ layeredgrayrobes.
Walking behind the singers, other soldiers held up long silk banners embroidered with elaborate scenes of the beauty and wonder of the Seven States: moonlight glinting from snowcapped Mount Kiji; schools of fish sparkling in Lake Tututika at sunrise; breaching crubens and whales sighted off the shores of Wolf’s Paw; joyous crowds lining the wide streets in Pan, the capital; serious scholars debating policy in front of the wise, all-knowing emperor. . . .
Tothenorthwest:High-mindedHaan,forumof philosophy, TracingthetortuouspathsofthegodsonLutho’syellow shell.
Inthemiddle:Ring-woodedRima,wheresunlightpierces ancient Foreststodappletheground,assharpasFithowéo’s blacksword.
Between each verse, the crowd bellowed out the chorus along with the singers:
Webowdown,bowdown,bowdowntoXana,Zenith, RulerofAir , Whyresist,whypersistagainstLordKijiinstrifethatwe can’tbear?
If the servile words bothered those in this Cocru crowd who had probably taken up arms against the Xana invaders scarcely more than a dozen years ago, any mutterings were drowned out by the full-throated, frenzied singing of the men and women around them. The hypnotic chant held a power of its own, as if by mere repetition the words gained weight, became more true.
But the crowd wasn’t close to being satisfied by the spectacle thus far. They hadn’t seen the heart of the Procession yet: the emperor.
The white bird glided closer. Its wings seemed to be as wide and long as the spinning vanes of the windmills in Zudi that drew water
from deep wells and piped it into the houses of the wealthy—too big to be an ordinary eagle or vulture. A few spectators looked up and idly wondered if it was a giant Mingén falcon, taken more than a thousand miles from its home in faraway Rui Island and released here by the emperor’s trainers to impress the crowd.
But an Imperial scout hidden among the crowd looked at the bird and furrowed his brows. Then he turned and shoved his way through the crowd toward the temporary viewing platform where the local officials were gathered.
Anticipation among the spectators grew as the Imperial Guards passed by, marching like columns of mechanical men: eyes straight ahead, legs and arms swinging in unison, stringed marionettes under the guidance of a single pair of hands. Their discipline and order contrasted sharply with the dynamic dancers who had passed before them.
After a momentary pause, the crowd roared their approval. Never mind that this same army had slaughtered Cocru’s soldiers and disgraced her old nobles. The people watching simply wanted spectacle, and they loved the gleaming armor and the martial splendor.
The bird drifted even closer.
“Coming through! Coming through!”
Two fourteen-year-old boys shoved their way through the tightly packed crowd like a pair of colts butting through a sugarcane field.
The boy in the lead, Kuni Garu, wore his long, straight, black hair in a topknot in the style of a student in the private academies. He was stocky—not fat but well-muscled, with strong arms and thighs. His eyes, long and narrow like most men from Cocru, glinted with intelligence that verged on slyness. He made no effort to be gentle, elbowing men and women aside as he forced his way forward. Behind him, he left a trail of bruised ribs and angry curses.
The boy in the back, Rin Coda, was gangly and nervous, and as he followed his friend through the throng like a seagull dragged
along on the tailwind of a ship, he murmured apologies at the enraged men and women around them.
“Kuni, I think we’ll be okay just standing in the back,” Rin said. “I reallydon’t think this is a good idea.”
“Then don’t think,” Kuni said. “Your problem is that you thinktoo much. Just do.”
“Master Loing says that the gods want us to always think before we act.” Rin winced and ducked out of the way as another man swore at the pair and took a swing at them.
“No one knows what the gods want.” Kuni didn’t look back as he forged ahead. “Not even Master Loing.”
They finally made it through the dense crowd and stood right next to the road, where white chalk lines indicated how far spectators could stand.
“Now, this is what I call a view,” Kuni said, breathing deeply and taking everything in. He whistled appreciatively as the last of the semi-nude Faça veil dancers passed in front of him. “I can see the attraction of being emperor.”
“Stop talking like that! Do you want to go to jail?” Rin looked nervously around to see if anyone was paying attention—Kuni had a habit of saying outrageous things that could be easily interpreted as treason.
“Now, doesn’t this beat sitting in class practicing carving wax logograms and memorizing Kon Fiji’s Treatise on Moral Relations?” Kuni draped his arm around Rin’s shoulders. “Admit it: You’re glad you came with me.”
Master Loing had explained that he wasn’t going to close his school for the Procession because he believed the emperor wouldn’t want the children to interrupt their studies—but Rin secretly suspected that it was because Master Loing didn’t approve of the emperor. A lot of people in Zudi had complicated views about the emperor.
“Master Loing would definitely not approve of this,” Rin said, but he couldn’t take his eyes away from the veil dancers either.
Kuni laughed. “If the master is going to slap us with his ferule for skipping classes for three full days anyway, we might as well get our
pain’s worth.”
“Except you always seem to come up with some clever argument to wiggle out of being punished, and I end up getting double strokes!”
The crowd’s cheers rose to a crescendo.
On top of the Throne Pagoda, the emperor was seated with his legs stretched out in front of him in the position of thakrido, cushioned by soft silk pillows. Only the emperor would be able to sit like this publicly, as everyone was his social inferior.
The Throne Pagoda was a five-story bamboo-and-silk structure erected on a platform formed from twenty thick bamboo poles—ten across, ten perpendicular—carried on the shoulders of a hundred men, their chests and arms bare, oiled to glisten in the sunlight.
The four lower stories of the Throne Pagoda were filled with intricate, jewel-like clockwork models whose movements illustrated the Four Realms of the Universe: the World of Fire down below— filled with demons who mined diamond and gold; then, the World of Water—full of fish and serpents and pulsing jellyfish; next, the World of Earth, in which men lived—islands floating over the four seas; and finally the World of Air above all—the domain of birds and spirits.
Wrapped in a robe of shimmering silk, his crown a splendid creation of gold and glittering gems topped by the statuette of a cruben, the scaled whale and lord of the Four Placid Seas, whose single horn was made from the purest ivory at the heart of a young elephant’s tusk and whose eyes were formed by a pair of heavy black diamonds—the largest diamonds in all of Dara, taken from the treasury of Cocru when it had fallen to Xana fifteen years earlier— Emperor Mapidéré shaded his eyes with one hand and squinted at the approaching form of the great bird.
“What isthat?” he wondered aloud.
At the foot of the slow-moving Throne Pagoda, the Imperial scout informed the Captain of the Imperial Guards that the officials in Zudi all claimed to have never seen anything like the strange bird. The
captain whispered some orders, and the Imperial Guards, the most elite troops in all of Dara, tightened their formation around the Pagoda-bearers.
The emperor continued to stare at the giant bird, which slowly and steadily drifted closer. It flapped its wings once, and the emperor, straining to listen through the noise of the clamoring, fervent crowd, thought he heard it cry out in a startlingly human manner.
The Imperial tour of the Islands had already gone on for more than eight months. Emperor Mapidéré understood well the necessity of visibly reminding the conquered population of Xana’s might and authority, but he was tired. He longed to be back in Pan, the Immaculate City, his new capital, where he could enjoy his zoo and aquarium, filled with animals from all over Dara—including a few exotic ones that had been given as tribute by pirates who sailed far beyond the horizon. He wished he could eat meals prepared by his favorite chef instead of the strange offerings in each place he visited —they might be the best delicacies that the gentry of each town could scrounge up and proffer, but it was tedious to have to wait for tasters to sample each one for poison, and inevitably the dishes were too fatty or too spicy and upset his stomach.
Above all, he was bored. The hundreds of evening receptions hosted by local officials and dignitaries merged into one endless morass. No matter where he went, the pledges of fealty and declarations of submission all sounded the same. Often, he felt as though he were sitting alone in the middle of a theater while the same performance was put on every night around him, with different actors saying the same lines in various settings.
The emperor leaned forward: this strange bird was the most exciting thing that had happened in days.
Now that it was closer, he could pick out more details. It was . . . not a bird at all.
It was a great kite made of paper, silk, and bamboo, except that no string tethered it to the ground. Beneath the kite—could it be?— hung the figure of a man.
“Interesting,” the emperor said.
The Captain of the Imperial Guards rushed up the delicate spiral stairs inside the Pagoda, taking the rungs two or three at a time. “Rénga, we should take precautions.”
The emperor nodded.
The bearers lowered the Throne Pagoda to the ground. The Imperial Guards halted their march. Archers took up positions around the Pagoda, and shieldmen gathered at the foot of the structure to create a temporary bunker walled and roofed by their great interlocking pavises, like the shell of a tortoise. The emperor pounded his legs to get circulation back into his stiff muscles so that he could get up.
The crowd sensed that this was not a planned part of the Procession. They craned their necks and followed the aim of the archers’ nocked arrows.
The strange gliding contraption was now only a few hundred yards away.
The man hanging from the kite pulled on a few ropes dangling near him. The kite-bird suddenly folded its wings and dove at the Throne Pagoda, covering the remaining distance in a few heartbeats. The man ululated, a long, piercing cry that made the crowd below shiver despite the heat.
“Death to Xana and Mapidéré! Long live the Great Haan!”
Before anyone could react, the kite rider launched a ball of fire at the Throne Pagoda. The emperor stared at the impending missile, too stunned to move.
“Rénga!” The Captain of the Imperial Guards was next to the emperor in a second; with one hand, he pushed the old man off the throne and then, with a grunt, he lifted the throne—a heavy ironwood sitting-board covered in gold—with his other hand like a giant pavise. The missile exploded against it in a fiery blast, and the resulting pieces bounced off and fell to the ground, throwing hissing, burning globs of oily tar in all directions in secondary explosions, setting everything they touched aflame. Unfortunate dancers and soldiers screamed as the sticky burning liquid adhered to their bodies and faces, and flaming tongues instantly engulfed them.
Although the heavy throne had shielded the Captain of the Imperial Guards and the emperor from much of the initial explosion, a few stray fiery tongues had singed off much of the hair on the captain and left the right side of his face and his right arm badly burned. But the emperor, though shocked, was unharmed.
The captain dropped the throne, and, wincing with pain, he leaned over the side of the Pagoda and shouted down at the shocked archers. “Fire at will!”
He cursed himself at the emphasis on absolute discipline he had instilled in the guards so that they focused more on obeying orders than reacting on their own initiative. But it had been so long since the last attempt on the emperor’s life that everyone had been lulled into a false sense of security. He would have to look into improvements in training—assuming he got to keep his own head after this failure.
The archers launched their arrows in a volley. The assassin pulled on the strings of the kite, folded the wings, and banked in a tight arc to get out of the way. The spent bolts fell like black rain from the sky.
Thousands of dancers and spectators merged into the panicked chaos of a screaming and jostling mob.
“I told you this was a bad idea!” Rin looked around frantically for somewhere to hide. He yelped and jumped out of the way of a falling arrow. Beside him, two men lay dead with arrows sticking out of their backs. “I should never have agreed to help you with that lie to your parents about school being closed. Your schemes always end with me in trouble! We’ve got to run!”
“If you run and trip in that crowd, you’re going to get trampled,” said Kuni. “Besides, how can you want to miss this?”
“Oh gods, we’re all going to die!” Another arrow fell and stuck into the ground less than a foot away. A few more people fell down screaming as their bodies were pierced.
“We’re not dead yet.” Kuni dashed into the road and returned with a shield one of the soldiers had dropped.
“Duck!” he yelled, and pulled Rin down with him into a crouch, raising the shield over their heads. An arrow thunked against the shield.
“Lady Rapa and Lady Kana, p-pr-protect me!” muttered Rin with his eyes squeezed tightly shut. “If I survive this, I promise to listen to my mother and never skip school again, and I’ll obey the ancient sages and stay away from honey-tongued friends who lead me astray. . . . ”
But Kuni was already peeking around the shield.
The kite rider jackknifed his legs hard, causing the wings of his kite to flap a few times in rapid succession. The kite pulled straight up, gaining some altitude. The rider pulled the reins, turned around in a tight arc, and came at the Throne Pagoda again.
The emperor, who had recovered from the initial shock, was being escorted down the spiraling stairs. But he was still only halfway to the foot of the Throne Pagoda, caught between the Worlds of Earth and Fire.
“Rénga, please forgive me!” The Captain of the Imperial Guards ducked and lifted the emperor’s body, thrust him over the side of the Pagoda, and dropped him.
The soldiers below had already stretched out a long, stiff piece of cloth. The emperor landed in it, trampolined up and down a few times, but appeared unhurt.
Kuni caught a glimpse of the emperor in the brief moment before he was rushed under the protective shell of overlapping shields. Years of alchemical medicine—taken in the hope of extending his life —had wreaked havoc with his body. Though the emperor was only fifty-five, he looked to be thirty years older. But Kuni was most struck by the old man’s hooded eyes peering out of his wrinkled face, eyes that for a moment had shown surprise and fear.
The sound of the kite diving behind Kuni was like a piece of rough cloth being torn. “Get down!” He pushed Rin to the ground and flopped on top of his friend, pulling the shield above their heads.
“Pretend you are a turtle.”
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pretty girls and music. Well a showman’s business is to give the public what they want.”
“I think that this city is full of people wanting inconceivable things.... Look at it.”
“It’s all right at night when you cant see it. There’s no artistic sense, no beautiful buildins, no old-time air, that’s what’s the matter with it.”
They stood a while without speaking. The orchestra began playing the waltz from The Lilac Domino. Suddenly Ellen turned to Goldweiser and said in a curt tone. “Can you understand a woman who wants to be a harlot, a common tart, sometimes?”
“My dear young lady what a strange thing for a sweet lovely girl to suddenly come out and say.”
“I suppose you’re shocked.” She didnt hear his answer. She felt she was going to cry. She pressed her sharp nails into the palms of her hands, she held her breath until she had counted twenty Then she said in a choking little girl’s voice, “Harry let’s go and dance a little.”
The sky above the cardboard buildings is a vault of beaten lead. It would be less raw if it would snow. Ellen finds a taxi on the corner of Seventh Avenue and lets herself sink back in the seat rubbing the numb gloved fingers of one hand against the palm of the other. “West Fiftyseventh, please.” Out of a sick mask of fatigue she watches fruitstores, signs, buildings being built, trucks, girls, messengerboys policemen through the jolting window. If I have my child, Stan’s child, it will grow up to jolt up Seventh Avenue under a sky of beaten lead that never snows watching fruitstores, signs, buildings being built, trucks, girls, messengerboys, policemen.... She presses her knees together sits up straight on the edge of the seat with her hands clasped over her slender belly. O God the rotten joke they’ve played on me, taking Stan away, burning him up, leaving me nothing but this growing in me that’s going to kill me. She’s whimpering into her numb hands. O God why wont it snow?
As she stands on the gray pavement fumbling in her purse for a bill, a dusteddy swirling scraps of paper along the gutter fills her mouth with grit. The elevatorman’s face is round ebony with ivory inlay. “Mrs. Staunton Wells?” “Yas ma’am eighth floor.”
The elevator hums as it soars. She stands looking at herself in the narrow mirror. Suddenly something recklessly gay goes through her. She rubs the dust off her face with a screwedup handkerchief, smiles at the elevatorman’s smile that’s wide as the full keyboard of a piano, and briskly rustles to the door of the apartment that a frilled maid opens. Inside it smells of tea and furs and flowers, women’s voices chirp to the clinking of cups like birds in an aviary. Glances flicker about her head as she goes into the room.
There was wine spilled on the tablecloth and bits of tomatosauce from the spaghetti. The restaurant was a steamy place with views of the Bay of Naples painted in soupy blues and greens on the walls. Ellen sat back in her chair from the round tableful of young men, watching the smoke from her cigarette crinkle spirally round the fat Chiantibottle in front of her. In her plate a slab of tricolor icecream melted forlornly. “But good God hasnt a man some rights? No, this industrial civilization forces us to seek a complete readjustment of government and social life ...”
“Doesnt he use long words?” Ellen whispered to Herf who sat beside her.
“He’s right all the same,” he growled back at her.... “The result has been to put more power in the hands of a few men than there has been in the history of the world since the horrible slave civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia....”
“Hear hear.”
“No but I’m serious.... The only way of bucking the interests is for working people, the proletariat, producers and consumers, anything
you want to call them, to form unions and finally get so well organized that they can take over the whole government.”
“I think you’re entirely wrong, Martin, it’s the interests as you call em, these horrible capitalists, that have built up this country as we have it today.”
“Well look at it for God’s sake.... That’s what I’m saying. I wouldnt kennel a dog in it.”
“I dont think so. I admire this country.... It’s the only fatherland I’ve got.... And I think that all these downtrodden masses really want to be downtrodden, they’re not fit for anything else.... If they werent they’d be flourishing businessmen ... Those that are any good are getting to be.”
“But I don’t think a flourishing businessman is the highest ideal of human endeavor.”
“A whole lot higher than a rotten fiddleheaded anarchist agitator.... Those that arent crooks are crazy.”
“Look here Mead, you’ve just insulted something that you dont understand, that you know nothing about.... I cant allow you to do that.... You should try to understand things before you go round insulting them.”
“An insult to the intelligence that’s what it is all this socialistic drivel.”
Ellen tapped Herf on the sleeve. “Jimmy I’ve got to go home. Do you want to walk a little way with me?”
“Martin, will you settle for us? We’ve got to go.... Ellie you look terribly pale.”
“It’s just a little hot in here.... Whee, what a relief.... I hate arguments anyway. I never can think of anything to say.”
“That bunch does nothing but chew the rag night after night.”
Eighth Avenue was full of fog that caught at their throats. Lights bloomed dimly through it, faces loomed, glinted in silhouette and faded like a fish in a muddy aquarium.
“Feel better Ellie?”
“Lots.”
“I’m awfully glad.”
“Do you know you’re the only person around here who calls me Ellie. I like it.... Everybody tries to make me seem so grown up since I’ve been on the stage.”
“Stan used to.”
“Maybe that’s why I like it,” she said in a little trailing voice like a cry heard at night from far away along a beach.
Jimmy felt something clamping his throat. “Oh gosh things are rotten,” he said. “God I wish I could blame it all on capitalism the way Martin does.”
“It’s pleasant walking like this ... I love a fog.”
They walked on without speaking. Wheels rumbled through the muffling fog underlaid with the groping distant lowing of sirens and steamboat whistles on the river.
“But at least you have a career.... You like your work, you’re enormously successful,” said Herf at the corner of Fourteenth Street, and caught her arm as they crossed.
“Dont say that.... You really dont believe it. I dont kid myself as much as you think I do.”
“No but it’s so.”
“It used to be before I met Stan, before I loved him.... You see I was a crazy little stagestruck kid who got launched out in a lot of things I didnt understand before I had time to learn anything about life.... Married at eighteen and divorced at twentytwo’s a pretty good record.... But Stan was so wonderful....”
“I know.”
“Without ever saying anything he made me feel there were other things ... unbelievable things....”
“God I resent his craziness though.... It’s such a waste.”
“I cant talk about it.”
“Let’s not.”
“Jimmy you’re the only person left I can really talk to.”
“Dont want to trust me. I might go berserk on you too some day.”
They laughed.
“God I’m glad I’m not dead, arent you Ellie?”
“I dont know. Look here’s my place. I dont want you to come up.... I’m going right to bed. I feel miserably....” Jimmy stood with his hat off looking at her. She was fumbling in her purse for her key. “Look Jimmy I might as well tell you....” She went up to him and spoke fast with her face turned away pointing at him with the latchkey that caught the light of the streetlamp. The fog was like a tent round about them. “I’m going to have a baby.... Stan’s baby. I’m going to give up all this silly life and raise it. I dont care what happens.”
“O God that’s the bravest thing I ever heard of a woman doing.... Oh Ellie you’re so wonderful. God if I could only tell you what I....”
“Oh no.” Her voice broke and her eyes filled with tears. “I’m a silly fool, that’s all.” She screwed up her face like a little child and ran up the steps with the tears streaming down her face.
“Oh Ellie I want to say something to you ...”
The door closed behind her.
Jimmy Herf stood stockstill at the foot of the brownstone steps. His temples throbbed. He wanted to break the door down after her. He dropped on his knees and kissed the step where she had stood. The fog swirled and flickered with colors in confetti about him. Then the trumpet feeling ebbed and he was falling through a black manhole. He stood stockstill. A policeman’s ballbearing eyes searched his face as he passed, a stout blue column waving a nightstick. Then suddenly he clenched his fists and walked off. “O God everything is hellish,” he said aloud. He wiped the grit off his lips with his coatsleeve.
She puts her hand in his to jump out of the roadster as the ferry starts, “Thanks Larry,” and follows his tall ambling body out on the bow. A faint riverwind blows the dust and gasoline out of their nostrils. Through the pearly night the square frames of houses along the Drive opposite flicker like burnedout fireworks. The waves slap tinily against the shoving bow of the ferry. A hunchback with a violin is scratching Marianela.
“Nothing succeeds like success,” Larry is saying in a deep droning voice.
“Oh if you knew how little I cared about anything just now you wouldnt go on teasing me with all these words.... You know, marriage, success, love, they’re just words.”
“But they mean everything in the world to me.... I think you’d like it in Lima Elaine.... I waited until you were free, didnt I? And now here I am.”
“We’re none of us that ever.... But I’m just numb.” The riverwind is brackish. Along the viaduct above 125th Street cars crawl like beetles. As the ferry enters the slip they hear the squudge and rumble of wheels on asphalt.
“Well we’d better get back into the car, you wonderful creature Elaine.”
“After all day it’s exciting isnt it Larry, getting back into the center of things.”
Beside the smudged white door are two pushbuttons marked N B and D B . She rings with a shaky finger. A short broad man with a face like a rat and sleek black hair brushed straight back opens. Short dollhands the color of the flesh of a mushroom hang at his sides. He hunches his shoulders in a bow.
“Are you the lady? Come in.”
“Is this Dr. Abrahms?”
“Yes.... You are the lady my friend phoned me about. Sit down my dear lady.” The office smells of something like arnica. Her heart joggles desperately between her ribs.
“You understand ...” She hates the quaver in her voice; she’s going to faint. “You understand, Dr Abrahms that it is absolutely necessary. I am getting a divorce from my husband and have to make my own living.”
“Very young, unhappily married ... I am sorry.” The doctor purrs softly as if to himself. He heaves a hissing sigh and suddenly looks in her eyes with black steel eyes like gimlets. “Do not be afraid, dear lady, it is a very simple operation.... Are you ready now?”
“Yes. It wont take very long will it? If I can pull myself together I have an engagement for tea at five.”
“You are a brave young lady. In an hour it will be forgotten.... I am sorry.... It is very sad such a thing is necessary.... Dear lady you should have a home and many children and a loving husband Will you go in the operating room and prepare yourself.... I work without an assistant.”
The bright searing bud of light swells in the center of the ceiling, sprays razorsharp nickel, enamel, a dazzling sharp glass case of sharp instruments. She takes off her hat and lets herself sink shuddering sick on a little enamel chair. Then she gets stiffly to her feet and undoes the band of her skirt.
The roar of the streets breaks like surf about a shell of throbbing agony. She watches the tilt of her leather hat, the powder, the rosed cheeks, the crimson lips that are a mask on her face. All the buttons of her gloves are buttoned. She raises her hand. “Taxi!” A fire engine roars past, a hosewagon with sweatyfaced men pulling on rubber coats, a clanging hookandladder. All the feeling in her fades with the dizzy fade of the siren. A wooden Indian, painted, with a hand raised at the streetcorner.
“Taxi!”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Drive to the Ritz.”
Third Section
I. Rejoicing City That Dwelt Carelessly
There are flags on all the flagpoles up Fifth Avenue. In the shrill wind of history the great flags flap and tug at their lashings on the creaking goldknobbed poles up Fifth Avenue. The stars jiggle sedately against the slate sky, the red and white stripes writhe against the clouds.
In the gale of brassbands and trampling horses and rumbling clatter of cannon, shadows like the shadows of claws grasp at the taut flags, the flags are hungry tongues licking twisting curling.
Oh it’s a long way to Tipperary ... Over there! Over there!
The harbor is packed with zebrastriped skunkstriped piebald steamboats, the Narrows are choked with bullion, they’re piling gold sovereigns up to the ceilings in the Subtreasury. Dollars whine on the radio, all the cables tap out dollars.
There’s a long long trail awinding ... Over there! Over there!
In the subway their eyes pop as they spell out A , typhus, cholera, shrapnel, insurrection, death in fire, death in water, death in hunger, death in mud.
Oh it’s a long way to Madymosell from Armenteers, over there! The Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming. Down Fifth Avenue the bands blare for the Liberty Loan
drive, for the Red Cross drive Hospital ships sneak up the harbor and unload furtively at night in old docks in Jersey. Up Fifth Avenue the flags of the seventeen nations are flaring curling in the shrill hungry wind.
O the oak and the ash and the weeping willow tree And green grows the grass in God’s country.
The great flags flap and tug at their lashings on the creaking goldknobbed poles up Fifth Avenue.
C J M D.S.C. lay with his eyes closed while the barber’s padded fingers gently stroked his chin. The lather tickled his nostrils; he could smell bay rum, hear the drone of an electric vibrator, the snipping of scissors.
“A little face massage sir, get rid of a few of those blackheads sir,” burred the barber in his ear The barber was bald and had a round blue chin.
“All right,” drawled Merivale, “go as far as you like. This is the first decent shave I’ve had since war was declared.”
“Just in from overseas, Captain?”
“Yare ... been making the world safe for democracy.”
The barber smothered his words under a hot towel. “A little lilac water Captain?”
“No dont put any of your damn lotions on me, just a little witchhazel or something antiseptic.”
The blond manicure girl had faintly beaded lashes; she looked up at him bewitchingly, her rosebud lips parted. “I guess you’ve just landed Captain.... My you’ve got a good tan.” He gave up his hand to her on the little white table. “It’s a long time Captain since anybody took care of these hands.”
“How can you tell?”
“Look how the cuticle’s grown.”
“We were too busy for anything like that. I’m a free man since eight o’clock that’s all.”
“Oh it must have been terr ... ible.”
“Oh it was a great little war while it lasted.”
“I’ll say it was ... And now you’re all through Captain?”
“Of course I keep my commission in the reserve corps.”
She gave his hand a last playful tap and he got to his feet.
He put tips into the soft palm of the barber and the hard palm of the colored boy who handed him his hat, and walked slowly up the white marble steps. On the landing was a mirror Captain James Merivale stopped to look at Captain James Merivale. He was a tall straightfeatured young man with a slight heaviness under the chin. He wore a neat-fitting whipcord uniform picked out by the insignia of the Rainbow Division, well furnished with ribbons and servicestripes. The light of the mirror was reflected silvery on either calf of his puttees. He cleared his throat as he looked himself up and down. A young man in civilian clothes came up behind him.
“Hello James, all cleaned up?”
“You betcher.... Say isnt it a damn fool rule not letting us wear Sam Browne belts? Spoils the whole uniform....”
“They can take all their Sam Browne’s belts and hang them on the Commanding General’s fanny for all I care.... I’m a civilian.”
“You’re still an officer in the reserve corps, dont forget that.”
“They can take their reserve corps and shove it ten thousand miles up the creek. Let’s go have a drink.”
“I’ve got to go up and see the folks.” They had come out on Fortysecond Street. “Well so long James, I’m going to get so drunk ... Just imagine being free.” “So long Jerry, dont do anything I wouldnt do.”
Merivale walked west along Fortysecond. There were still flags out, drooping from windows, waggling lazily from poles in the September breeze. He looked in the shops as he walked along; flowers, women’s stockings, candy, shirts and neckties, dresses, colored draperies through glinting plateglass, beyond a stream of faces, men’s razorscraped faces, girls’ faces with rouged lips and powdered noses. It made him feel flushed and excited. He fidgeted when he got in the subway. “Look at the stripes that one has.... He’s a D.S.C.,” he heard a girl say to another. He got out at Seventysecond and walked with his chest stuck out down the too familiar brownstone street towards the river.
“How do you do, Captain Merivale,” said the elevator man.
“Well, are you out James?” cried his mother running into his arms.
He nodded and kissed her. She looked pale and wilted in her black dress. Maisie, also in black, came rustling tall and rosycheeked behind her. “It’s wonderful to find you both looking so well.”
“Of course we are ... as well as could be expected. My dear we’ve had a terrible time.... You’re the head of the family now, James.”
“Poor daddy ... to go off like that.”
“That was something you missed.... Thousands of people died of it in New York alone.”
He hugged Maisie with one arm and his mother with the other. Nobody spoke.
“Well,” said Merivale walking into the living room, “it was a great war while it lasted.” His mother and sister followed on his heels. He sat down in the leather chair and stretched out his polished legs. “You dont know how wonderful it is to get home.”
Mrs. Merivale drew up her chair close to his. “Now dear you just tell us all about it.”
In the dark of the stoop in front of the tenement door, he reaches for her and drags her to him. “Dont Bouy, dont; dont be rough.” His arms tighten like knotted cords round her back; her knees are trembling. His mouth is groping for her mouth along one cheekbone, down the side of her nose. She cant breathe with his lips probing her lips. “Oh I cant stand it.” He holds her away from him. She is staggering panting against the wall held up by his big hands.
“Nutten to worry about,” he whispers gently.
“I’ve got to go, it’s late.... I have to get up at six.”
“Well what time do you think I get up?”
“It’s mommer who might catch me....”
“Tell her to go to hell.”
“I will some day ... worse’n that ... if she dont quit pickin on me.” She takes hold of his stubbly cheeks and kisses him quickly on the mouth and has broken away from him and run up the four flights of grimy stairs.
The door is still on the latch. She strips off her dancing pumps and walks carefully through the kitchenette on aching feet. From the next room comes the wheezy doublebarreled snoring of her uncle and aunt. Somebody loves me, I wonder who.... The tune is all through her body, in the throb of her feet, in the tingling place on her back where he held her tight dancing with her. Anna you’ve got to forget it or you wont sleep. Anna you got to forget. Dishes on the tables set for breakfast jingle tingle hideously when she bumps against it.
“That you Anna?” comes a sleepy querulous voice from her mother’s bed.
“Went to get a drink o water mommer.” The old woman lets the breath out in a groan through her teeth, the bedsprings creak as she turns over. Asleep all the time.
Somebody loves me, I wonder who. She slips off her party dress and gets into her nightgown. Then she tiptoes to the closet to hang up the dress and at last slides between the covers little by little so the slats wont creak. I wonder who. Shuffle shuffle, bright lights, pink
blobbing faces, grabbing arms, tense thighs, bouncing feet. I wonder who. Shuffle, droning saxophone tease, shuffle in time to the drum, trombone, clarinet. Feet, thighs, cheek to cheek, Somebody loves me.... Shuffle shuffle. I wonder who.
The baby with tiny shut purplishpink face and fists lay asleep on the berth. Ellen was leaning over a black leather suitcase. Jimmy Herf in his shirtsleeves was looking out the porthole.
“Well there’s the statue of Liberty.... Ellie we ought to be out on deck.”
“It’ll be ages before we dock.... Go ahead up. I’ll come up with Martin in a minute.”
“Oh come ahead; we’ll put the baby’s stuff in the bag while we’re warping into the slip.”
They came out on deck into a dazzling September afternoon. The water was greenindigo. A steady wind kept sweeping coils of brown smoke and blobs of whitecotton steam off the high enormous blueindigo arch of sky. Against a sootsmudged horizon, tangled with barges, steamers, chimneys of powerplants, covered wharves, bridges, lower New York was a pink and white tapering pyramid cut slenderly out of cardboard.
“Ellie we ought to have Martin out so he can see.”
“And start yelling like a tugboat.... He’s better off where he is.”
They ducked under some ropes, slipped past the rattling steamwinch and out to the bow.
“God Ellie it’s the greatest sight in the world.... I never thought I’d ever come back, did you?”
“I had every intention of coming back.”
“Not like this.”
“No I dont suppose I did.”
“S’il vous plait madame ...”
A sailor was motioning them back. Ellen turned her face into the wind to get the coppery whisps of hair out of her eyes. “C’est beau, n’est-ce pas?” She smiled into the wind into the sailor’s red face.
“J’aime mieux Le Havre ... S’il vous plait madame.”
“Well I’ll go down and pack Martin up.”
The hard chug, chug of the tugboat coming alongside beat Jimmy’s answer out of her ears. She slipped away from him and went down to the cabin again.
They were wedged in the jam of people at the end of the gangplank.
“Look we could wait for a porter,” said Ellen.
“No dear I’ve got them.” Jimmy was sweating and staggering with a suitcase in each hand and packages under his arms. In Ellen’s arms the baby was cooing stretching tiny spread hands towards the faces all round.
“D’you know it?” said Jimmy as they crossed the gangplank, “I kinder wish we were just going on board.... I hate getting home.”
“I dont hate it.... There’s H ... I’ll follow right along.... I wanted to look for Frances and Bob. Hello....” “Well I’ll be ...” “Helena you’ve gained, you’re looking wonderfully. Where’s Jimps?” Jimmy was rubbing his hands together, stiff and chafed from handles of the heavy suitcases.
“Hello Herf. Hello Frances. Isn’t this swell?”
“Gosh I’m glad to see you....”
“Jimps the thing for me to do is go right on to the Brevoort with the baby ...”
“Isn’t he sweet.”
“... Have you got five dollars?”
“I’ve only got a dollar in change. That hundred is in express checks.”
“I’ve got plenty of money Helena and I’ll go to the hotel and you boys can come along with the baggage.”
“Inspector is it all right if I go through with the baby? My husband will look after the trunks.”
“Why surely madam, go right ahead.”
“Isnt he nice? Oh Frances this is lots of fun.”
“Go ahead Bob I can finish this up alone quicker.... You convoy the ladies to the Brevoort.”
“Well we hate to leave you.”
“Oh go ahead.... I’ll be right along.”
“Mr. James Herf and wife and infant ... is that it?”
“Yes that’s right.”
“I’ll be right with you, Mr. Herf.... Is all the baggage there?”
“Yes everything’s there.”
“Isnt he good?” clucked Frances as she and Hildebrand followed Ellen into the cab.
“Who?”
“The baby of course....”
“Oh you ought to see him sometimes.... He seems to like traveling.”
A plainclothesman opened the door of the cab and looked in as they went out the gate. “Want to smell our breaths?” asked Hildebrand. The man had a face like a block of wood. He closed the door. “Helena doesn’t know prohibition yet, does she?”
“He gave me a scare ... Look.”
“Good gracious!” From under the blanket that was wrapped round the baby she produced a brownpaper package.... “Two quarts of our
special cognac gout famille ’Erf and I’ve got another quart in a hotwaterbottle under my waistband.... That’s why I look as if I was going to have another baby.”
The Hildebrands began hooting with laughter.
“Jimp’s got a hotwaterbottle round his middle too and chartreuse in a flask on his hip.... We’ll probably have to go and bail him out of jail.”
They were still laughing so that tears were streaming down their faces when they drew up at the hotel. In the elevator the baby began to wail.
As soon as she had closed the door of the big sunny room she fished the hotwaterbottle from under her dress. “Look Bob phone down for some cracked ice and seltzer.... We’ll all have a cognac a l’eau de selz....”
“Hadn’t we better wait for Jimps?”
“Oh he’ll be right here.... We haven’t anything dutiable.... Much too broke to have anything.... Frances what do you do about milk in New York?”
“How should I know, Helena?” Frances Hildebrand flushed and walked to the window.
“Oh well we’ll give him his food again.... He’s done fairly well on it on the trip.” Ellen had laid the baby on the bed. He lay kicking, looking about with dark round goldstone eyes.
“Isnt he fat?”
“He’s so healthy I’m sure he must be halfwitted.... Oh Heavens and I’ve got to call up my father.... Isnt family life just too desperately complicated?”
Ellen was setting up her little alcohol stove on the washstand. The bellboy came with glasses and a bowl of clinking ice and White Rock on a tray.
“You fix us a drink out of the hotwaterbottle. We’ve got to use that up or it’ll eat the rubber.... And we’ll drink to the Café d’Harcourt.”
“Of course what you kids dont realize,” said Hildebrand, “is that the difficulty under prohibition is keeping sober.”
Ellen laughed; she stood over the little lamp that gave out a quiet domestic smell of hot nickel and burned alcohol.
George Baldwin was walking up Madison Avenue with his light overcoat on his arm. His fagged spirits were reviving in the sparkling autumn twilight of the streets. From block to block through the taxiwhirring gasoline gloaming two lawyers in black frock coats and stiff wing collars argued in his head. If you go home it will be cozy in the library The apartment will be gloomy and quiet and you can sit in your slippers under the bust of Scipio Africanus in the leather chair and read and have dinner sent in to you.... Nevada would be jolly and coarse and tell you funny stories.... She would have all the City Hall gossip ... good to know.... But you’re not going to see Nevada any more ... too dangerous; she gets you all wrought up.... And Cecily sitting faded and elegant and slender biting her lips and hating me, hating life.... Good God how am I going to get my existence straightened out? He stopped in front of a flowerstore. A moist warm honied expensive smell came from the door, densely out into the keen steelblue street. If I could at least make my financial position impregnable.... In the window was a minature Japanese garden with brokenback bridges and ponds where the goldfish looked big as whales. Proportion, that’s it. To lay out your life like a prudent gardener, plowing and sowing. No I wont go to see Nevada tonight. I might send her some flowers though. Yellow roses, those coppery roses ... it’s Elaine who ought to wear those. Imagine her married again and with a baby. He went into the store. “What’s that rose?”
“It’s Gold of Ophir sir.”
“All right I want two dozen sent down to the Brevoort immediately.... Miss Elaine ... No Mr. and Mrs. James Herf.... I’ll write a card.”
He sat down at the desk with a pen in his hand. Incense of roses, incense out of the dark fire of her hair.... No nonsense for Heaven’s sake ...
D E ,
I hope you will allow an old friend to call on you and your husband one of these days. And please remember that I am always sincerely anxious—you know me too well to take this for an empty offer of politeness—to serve you and him in any way that could possibly contribute to your happiness. Forgive me if I subscribe myself your lifelong slave and admirer
G B
The letter covered three of the florists’ white cards. He read it over with pursed lips, carefully crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s. Then he paid the florist from the roll of bills he took from his back pocket and went out into the street again. It was already night, going on to seven o’clock. Still hesitating he stood at the corner watching the taxis pass, yellow, red, green, tangerinecolored.
The snubnosed transport sludges slowly through the Narrows in the rain. Sergeant-Major O’Keefe and Private 1st Class Dutch Robertson stand in the lee of the deckhouse looking at the liners at anchor in quarantine and the low wharfcluttered shores.
“Look some of em still got their warpaint—Shippin Board boats.... Not worth the powder to blow em up.”
“The hell they aint,” said Joey O’Keefe vaguely.
“Gosh little old New York’s goin to look good to me....”
“Me too Sarge, rain or shine I dont care.”
They are passing close to a mass of steamers anchored in a block, some of them listing to one side or the other, lanky ships with short funnels, stumpy ships with tall funnels red with rust, some of
