Budayeen Nights (27 page)

He sank slowly into the red-leather chair, a wide and wobbly grin on his face. “In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful,” he said.

“Praise Allah,” I said.

“Now what?” asked Firon. “We’re at one of those famous impasses.”

I thought for a moment or two. “Here,” I said at last, “how’s this as a solution? You’re ripping off people in the CRCorp building who’ve become my friends, at least some of them have. I don’t like that. Still, I don’t have a goddamn problem with you and Musa and whomever else works with you pulling this gimmick all over town. You don’t turn my name over to Shaykh Reda, and I let you guys alone, unless you take on my few remaining friends. You do that wrong thing, and I’ll hand you right to the civil authorities, and you know—Musa sure as hell knows—what the penalties are.”

“We can trust you?”

“Can you?”

Firon took a deep breath, let it out, and nodded. “We can live with that. We can surely live with that! You’re a kind of legend among us. A small legend, an ignoble kind of legend, but if you were younger, our age….”

“Thanks a hell of a lot,” I said, still holding the seizure gun on him.

Firon got up and headed for my inner door. “You know, CRCorp knew about us from the beginning, and let us be. Shaykh il-Qurawi and the others just wanted to test out their security measures and their alarm programs. You care more about those people in that building than they do.”

“Somebody’s got to,” I said wearily.

“Peoples’ lives are their own, and there are no corporations, man!” He made some sort of sign with his hand in the gloomy outer office. I recalled what it had been like to be his age and youthfully idealistic.

Then he was gone.

The City on the Sand

In some ways, this is the ultimate tale of Budayeen Nights.

In every other tale of the Budayeen, while the action is going on, the presence of Emst Weinraub is more or less implied, sitting at his cafe table, watching what goes on without the faintest idea of what’s actually going on. You can almost see him out of the comer of your eye.

This is another one printed here from George’s file copy, not the version actually published in F&SF—and this story was later expanded upon to make up George’s novel Relatives. It was the first appearance of the Budayeen, and one of the few works in which it, and the nameless City, are described: the Chinese quarter; the canal with its restaurants, bars, casinos (i.e. Canal Street in New Orleans, which was named after a canal that was never dug); the marketplace and miniature golf facilities; and the bizarre replica of Singapore built by a crazed millionaire. (On St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans stands a 1960s copy of the mansion “Tarn” from the film
Gone with the Wind.)

“
The city was the final hope of those who truly needed to hide
.”

As was—and is—New Orleans
.

The hiding place to which George fled from the noise and stress of New York in the early seventies; the place where he returned after the final disaster of his last marriage in Los Angeles.

We see a day in the life of the Budayeen, through the eyes of lost, shabby, and hopeless expatriate Ernst Weinraub (or Weintraub). We meet, for the first time, Monsieur Gargotier, proprietor of the Fee Blanche; see Sandor Courane in one of his few nonfatal roles; hear tell of Marîd’s favorite hangouts, the Solace and Chiriga’s. We see the ubiquitous Arab boy, here called Kebap (“Roast Beef), though he has other names in other tales, coming and going like a troublesome little ghost.

Weinraub himself like Sandor Courane, was one of George’s generic recurring heroes, appearing in a number of early stories before he was supplanted by Courane. In most of them, Ernst is the ultimate square-jawed hero, but without Courane’s doomed and hapless charm; maybe that was Ernst’s point. In this tale he has been sawed and filed down to being a legend in his own mind: aloof in his self-conscious dreams, mocked at by the street folk, losing himself deeper and deeper into his alcoholic fantasies. He wants to be a writer and wants desperately to be noticed, but he only pretends to write—a fate that befalls and befell many writers who get seduced by the “New Orleans lifestyle.”

I suspect George had met a number of Ernsts in New Orleans—I know he was friends with Tennessee Williams’s houseboy, to whom he lived next door for many years. (I still have the smudged and blotted napkins bearing the outlines of trilogies never written, in George’s spiky block-print hand, including the outline of the fourth Budayeen novel
, Word of Night.)

Weinraub has tried—as George tried for so many years—“to write…short, terse essays about the city…” But “he couldn’t seem to capture the true emotions he experienced…the pervasive sense of isolation, of eternal uncleanness, of a soul-deep loss of personality….”

But where poor Ernst failed, George succeeded dazzlingly. This is very much a Budayeen night: a night on which nothing in particular takes place. The nameless city simply winds its accustomed way through another turning of the sterile Earth. Everyone in it goes about their own obscure business like the characters in the Dylan song “Mr. Tambourine Man,” observed by a failed poet who has nowhere left to go.

—
Barbara Hambly

IN EUROPE, THERE WERE ONLY MEMORIES OF GREAT
cultures. Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, England, Carbba, and Germany had all seized control of the world’s course and the imagination of the human race at one time or another. But now these great powers of the past were drifting into a cynical old age, where decadence and momentary pleasures replaced the drive for dominance and national superiority. In Asia, the situation was even worse. The Russias struggled pettily among themselves, expending the last energies of a once-proud nation in puerile bickerings. China showed signs of total degeneration, having lost its immensely rich heritage of art and philosophy while clinging to a ruthless creed that crushed its hopeless people beneath a burden of mock-patriotism. Breulandy was the only vibrant force east of the Caucasus Mountains; still, no observer could tell what that guarded land might do. Perhaps a Breulen storm would spill out across the continent, at least instilling a new life force in the decaying states. But from Breulandy itself came no word, no hint, as though the country had bypassed its time of ascendancy to settle for a weary and bitter mediocrity.

Of the rest of the world there was nothing to be said. The Americas still rested as they had in the few centuries since their discovery: huge parklike land masses, populated by savages, too distant, too worthless, too impractical to bother about. None of the crumbling European governments could summon either the leadership or the financial support to exploit the New World. The Scandinavian lands were inhabited by skin-clad brutes scarcely more civilized than the American cannibals. Farther east, beyond the teeming Chinese shores, between Asia and the unexplored western reaches of the Americas, no one was quite certain just what existed and what was only myth. Perhaps the island continent of Lemarry waited with its untold riches and beautiful copper spires.

And then, lastly, there was Africa. One city sat alone on its fiery sands. One city, filled with refugees and a strange mongrel population, guarded that massive continent. Beyond that single city, built in some forgotten age by an unknown people for unimaginable purposes, beyond the high wooden gates that shut in the crazy heat and locked in the citizens, there was only death. Without water, the continent was death. Without shade, the parching sharaq winds were death. Without human habitation, the vast three thousand miles of whispering sands were death for anyone mad enough to venture across them. Only in the city was there a hollow travesty of life.

Ernst Weinraub sat at a table on the patio of the Cafe de la Fee Blanche. A light rain fell on him, but he did not seem to notice. He sipped his anisette, regretting that the proprietor had served it to him in such an ugly tumbler. The liqueur suffered. M. Gargotier often made such disconcerting lapses, but today especially Ernst needed all the delicacy, all the refinement that he could buy to hold off his growing melancholy. Perhaps the Fee Blanche had been a mistake. It was early, lacking some thirty minutes of noon, and if it seemed to him that the flood of tears was rising too quickly, he could move on to the Cafe Solace or Chiriga’s. But as yet there was no need to hurry.

The raindrops fell heavily, spatting on the small metal table. Ernst turned in his chair, looking for M. Gargotier. Was the man going to let his customer get drenched? The proprietor had disappeared into the black interior of his establishment. Ernst thought of lowering the striped canopy himself, but the shopkeeper-image of himself that the idea brought to mind was too absurd. Instead, he closed his eyes and listened to the water. There was music when the drops hit the furnishings on the patio, a duller sound when the rain struck the pavement. Then, more frequently, there was the irritating noise of the drops hitting his forehead. Ernst opened his eyes. His newspaper was a sodden mess and the puddle on his table was about to overflow onto his lap.

Ernst considered the best way to deal with the accumulating water. He could merely cup his hand and swipe the puddle sideways. He dismissed that plan, knowing that his hand would be soaked; then he would sit, frustrated, without anything on which to dry it. He would end up having to seek out M. Gargotier. The confrontation then, with the proprietor standing bored, perhaps annoyed, would be too unpleasant. Anyway, the round metal top of the table was easily removed. Ernst tipped it, revealing the edges of the white metal legs, which were sharp with crystal rust. The water splashed to the paved floor of the patio, loudly, inelegantly. Ernst sighed; he had made another compromise with his manner. He had sacrificed style for comfort. In the city, it was an easy bargain.

“It is a matter of bodies,” he said to himself, as though rehearsing bons mots for a cocktail party. “We have grown too aware of bodies. Because we must carry them always from place to place, is that any reason to accord our bodies a special honor or affection? No, they are sacks only. Rather large, unpleasant, undisciplined containers for meager charges of emotion. We should all stop paying attention to our bodies’ demands. I don’t know how….” He paused. The idea was stupid. He sipped the anisette.

There were not more than twenty small tables on the Fee Blanche’s patio. Ernst was the only patron, as he was every day until lunchtime. He and M. Gargotier had become close friends. At least, so Ernst believed. It was so comforting to have a place where one could sit and watch, where the management didn’t eternally trouble about another drink or more coffee. Bien sur, the old man never sat with Ernst to observe the city’s idlers or offer to test Ernst’s skill at chess. In fact, to be truthful, M. Gargotier had rarely addressed a full sentence to him. But Ernst was an habitue, M. Gargotier’s only regular customer, and for quite different reasons they both hoped the Fee Blanche might become a favorite meeting place for the city’s literate and wealthy few. Ernst had invested too many months of sitting at that same table to move elsewhere now.

“A good way to remove a measure of the body’s influence is to concentrate on the mind,” he said. He gazed at the table top, which already was refilling with rainwater. “When I review my own psychological history, I must admit to a distressing lack of moral sense. I have standards gleaned from romantic novels and magistral decrees, standards which stick out awkwardly among my intellectual baggage like the frantic wings of a tethered pigeon. I can examine those flashes of morality whenever I choose, though I rarely bother. They are all so familiar. But all around them in my mind are the heavy, dense shadows of events and petty crimes.”

With a quick motion, Ernst emptied the table top once more. He sighed. “There was Eugenie. I loved her for a time, I believe. A perfect name, a lesser woman. When the romance began, I was well aware of my moral sense. Indeed, I cherished it, worshiped it with an adolescent lover’s fervor. I needed the constraints of society, of law and honor. I could only prove my worth and value within their severe limits. Our love would grow, I believed, fed by the bitter springs of righteousness. Ah, Eugenie! You taught me so much. I loved you for it then, even as my notion of purity changed, bit by bit, hour by hour. Then, when I fell at long last to my ardent ruin, I hated you. For so many years I hated you for your joy in my dismay, for the ease of your robbery and betrayal, for the entertainment I provided in my youthful terror. Now, Eugenie, I am at peace with your memory. I would not have understood in those days, but I am at last revenged upon you: I have achieved indifference.

“How sad, I think, for poor Marie, who came after. I loved her from a distance, not wishing ever again to be wounded on the treacherous point of my own affection. I was still foolish.” Ernst leaned back in his chair, turning his head to stare across the small expanse of vacant tables. He glanced around; no one else had entered the cafe. “What could I have learned from Eugenie? Pain? No. Discomfort, then? Yes, but so? These evaluations, I hasten to add, I make from the safety of my greater experience and-sophistication. Nevertheless, even in my yearling days I recognized that la belle E. had prepared me well to deal not only with her successors but with all people in general. I had learned to pray for another’s ill fortune. This was the first great stain on the bright emblem of virtue that, at the time, still resided in my imagination.

“Marie, I loved you from whatever distance seemed appropriate. I was still not skillful in these matters, and it appears now that I judged those distances poorly. Finally, you gave your heart to another, one whose management of proximity was far cleverer than mine. I could not rejoice in your good fortune. I prayed fervently for the destruction of your happiness. I wished you and him the most total of all disasters, but I was denied. You left my life as you entered it—a cold, distant dream. Yet before you left, you rehearsed me in the exercise of spite.”

He took a sip of the liqueur and swirled it against his palate. “I’ve grown since then, of course,” he said. “I’ve grown and changed, but you’re still there, an ugly spatter against the cleanness of what I wanted to be.” With a sad expression he set the tumbler on the small table. Rain fell into the anisette, but Ernst was not concerned.

This morning he was playing the bored expatriate. He smoked only imported cigarettes, his boxed filters conspicuous among the packs of Impers and Les Bourdes. He studied the strollers closely, staring with affected weariness into the eyes of the younger women, refusing to look away. He scribbled on the backs of envelopes that he found in his coat pockets or on scraps of paper from the ground. He waited for someone to show some interest and ask him what he did. “I am just jotting notes for the novel,” he would say, or “Merely a sketch, a small poem. Nothing important. A transient joy mingled with regret.” He watched the hotel across the square with a carefully sensitive expression, as if the view were really from the windswept cliffs of the English coast or the history-burdened martial plains of France. Anyone could see that he was an artist. Ernst promised fascinating stories and secret romantic insights, but somehow the passersby missed it all.

Only thoughts of the rewards for success kept him at M. Gargotier’s table. Several months previously, a poet named Courane had been discovered while sitting at the wicker bar of the Blue Parrot. Since then, Courane had become the favorite of the city’s idle elite. Already he had purchased his own cafe and held court in its several dank rooms. Stories circulated about Courane and his admirers. Exciting, licentious rumors grew up around the young man, and Ernst was envious. Ernst had lived in the city much longer than Courane. He had even read some of Courane’s alleged poetry, and he thought it was terrible. But Courane’s excesses were notorious. It was this that no doubt had recommended him to the city’s weary nobility.

Something about the city attracted the failed poets of the world. Like the excavation of Troy, which discovered layer upon layer, settlement built upon ancient settlement, the recent history of the civilized world might be read in the bitter eyes of the lonely men waiting in the city’s countless cafes. Only rarely could Ernst spare the time to visit with his fellows, and then the men just stared silently past each other. They all understood; it was a horrible thing for Ernst to know that they all knew everything about him. So he sat in the Fee Blanche, hiding from them, hoping for luck.

Ernst’s city sat like a blister on the fringe of a great equatorial desert. The metropolitan centers of the more sophisticated nations were much too far away to allow Ernst to feel completely at ease. He built for himself a life in exile, pretending that it made no difference. But the provinciality of these people! The mountains and the narrow fertile plain that separated the city from the northern sea effectively divided him from every familiar landmark of his past. He could only think and remember. And who was there to decide if his recollections might have blurred and altered with repetition?

“Now, Eugenie. You had red hair. You had hair like the embers of a dying fire. How easy it was to kindle the blaze afresh. In the morning, how easy. The fuel was there, the embers burned hotly within; all that was needed was a little wind, a little stirring. Eugenie, you had red hair. I’ve always been weakened by red hair.

“Marie, poor Marie, your hair was black, and I loved it, too, for a time. And I’ll never know what deftnesses and craft were necessary to fire your blood. Eugenie, the creature of flame, and Marie, the gem of ice. I confuse your faces. I can’t recall your voices. Good luck to you, my lost loves, and may God bless.”

The city was an oven, a prison, an asylum, a veritable zoo of human aberration. Perhaps this worked in Ernst’s favor; those people who did not have to hire themselves and their children for food spent their empty hours searching for diversion. The laws of probability suggested that it was likely that someday one of the patricians would offer a word to Ernst. That was all that he would need. He had the scene carefully rehearsed; he, too, had nothing else to do.

The rain was falling harder. Through the drops, which made a dense curtain that obscured the buildings across the square, Ernst saw outlines of people hurrying. Sometimes he pretended that the men and, especially, the women were familiar, remnants of his abandoned life come by chance to call on him in his exile. Today, though, his head hurt and he had no patience with the game, particularly the disappointment at its inevitable conclusion.

He finished the last of the anisette. Ernst rapped on the table and held the tumbler above his head. He did not look around; he supported his aching head with his other hand and waited. M. Gargotier came and took the tumbler from him. The rain fell harder. Ernst’s hair was soaked and tiny rivulets ran down his forehead and into his eyes. The proprietor returned with the tumbler filled. Ernst wanted to think seriously, but his head hurt too much. The day before, he had devised a neat argument against the traditional contrast of city and Arcadian life in literature. Shakespeare had used it to great effect: the regulated behavior of his characters in town opposed to their irrational, comedic entanglements outside the city’s gates. Somehow the present circumstance destroyed those myths. Somehow Ernst knew that he didn’t want them destroyed, and he had his headache and the everlasting morning rain to preserve them another day.