Budayeen Nights (30 page)

“It was only a joke, yaa Sidi,” said the boy, not the least afraid.

“A joke. How old are you?”

“I am nine, yaa Sidi.”

“Then you should know the danger of mocking your betters. I have the power to do you great harm: I may draw a picture of you. I may touch you with my left hand. Your mother will beat you dead when she hears.”

“You are wrong,” said the boy, laughing again. “You are a Nazarene, yes, or a Jew. But I am no rug-squatter. Touch me with your left hand, yaa Sidi, and I will gnaw it off. Do you wish me to fetch your supper? I will not charge you this time.”

“I tend to doubt your offer. In any event, I have a regular boy who brings my food. What is your name, you young criminal?”

“I am Kebap,” said the boy. “It means ‘roast beef in the language of Turkey.”

“I can see why,” said Ernst dryly. “You will have to work hard to take the place of my regular boy, if you want this job.”

“I am sorry,” said Kebap. “I have no wish to perform that kind of service.” Then he ran away, shouting insults over his shoulder.

Ernst stared after him, his fists clenching. “Ieneth will pay for her joke,” he thought. “If only I could find a vulnerable spot in these people. Without possessions, inured against discomfort, hoping for nothing, they are difficult indeed to punish. Perhaps that is the reason I have stayed in this capital of lice so long. No other reason comes quickly to mind.”

He sipped his wine and stared at the smudged handwriting on a scrap of paper: an
ebauche
of his trilogy of novels. He had done the rough outline so long ago that he had forgotten its point. But he was certain that the reflected light from the wineglass shifted to good effect on the yellowed paper, too.

“This was the trilogy that was going to make my reputation,” thought Ernst sadly. “I remember how I had planned to dedicate the first volume to Eugenie, the second to Marie, and the third…? I can’t remember, after all. It has been a long time. I cannot even recall the characters. Ah, yes, here. I had stolen that outstanding, virtuous fool, d’Aubont, put a chevalier’s outfit on him, taken off his mustache, and renamed him Gerhardt Friedlos. How the fluttering feminine hearts of Germany, Carbba, France, and England were to embrace him, if hearts are capable of such a dexterous feat. Friedlos. Now I remember. And there is no further mystery as to why I can’t recall the plot. It was nothing. Mere slashings of rapier, mere wooings of maid, mere tauntings of coward. One thousand pages of adolescent dreams, just to restore my manly figure. Beyond the dedications, did I not also represent Eugenie and Marie with fictional characters? I cannot read this scrawl. Ah, yes. Eugenie is disguised in volume one as the red-haired Marchioness Fajra. She is consumed in a horrible holocaust as her outraged tenants wreak their just revenge. Friedlos observes the distressing scene with mixed emotions. In volume two, he consoles himself with the contrasting charms of Marie, known in my novel as the maid Malvarma, who pitiably froze to death on the great plain of Breulandy rather than acknowledge her secret love. Friedlos comes upon her blue and twisted corpse and grieves. I am happy, I am very, very-happy that I never wrote that trash.”

Ernst took his short, fat pencil and wrote in the narrow spaces left to him on the scrap.
My scalp itches, he wrote. When I scratch it, I break open half-healed sores. I have a headache; behind my right eye my brain throbs. My ears are blocked, and the canals are swollen deep inside, as though large pegs had been hammered into them. My nostrils drip constantly, and the front of my face feels as if it has been filled with sand. My gums bleed, and my teeth communicate with stabbing pains. My tongue is still scalded from the morning tea. My throat is dry and sore
. This catalogue continued down the margins of the paper, and down his body, to end with,
My arches cramp up at regular intervals, whenever I think about them. My toes are cut and painful on the bottom and fungused and itching between. And now I believe that it pains me to piss. But this last symptom bears watching; it is not confirmed.

On a napkin ringed with stains of chocolate and coffee, Ernst began another list, parallel to the first.
The very continents shudder with the fever chills of war. Europe, my first home so far away, cringes in the dark sickroom between the ocean and the Urals. Asia teeters into the false adolescence of senility, and is the more dangerous for it. Breulandy rises in the north and east, and who can tell of her goals and motives? South of the city, Africa slumbers, hungry and sterile, under the cauterizing sun. The Americas? Far too large to control, too broken to aid us now.

Oh, and whom do I mean by “us”? The world is fractured so that we no longer know anything but self. My self finds symptoms everywhere, a political hypochondriac in exile. Perhaps if I were still in the numbing academic life of old, I would see none of this
; l’ozio e la sepoltura dell’uomo vivo—“
inactivity is the tomb of the vital man
.”
I have time to make lists now
.

Of course he found sad significance in the two inventories when he completed them. He shook his head sorrowfully and stared meditatively at his wineglass, but no one noticed.

Ernst folded the paper with his trilogy synopsis and the first list, and returned it to his pocket. He skimmed through the second list again, though. “‘I have time to make lists now,’” he read. “What does that mean? Who am I trying to distress?” Just beyond the railing, on the sidewalk bordering the Fee Blanche, sat Kebap, the little boy named “roast beef.” The boy was grinning.

“Allo, Sidi Weinraub. I’m back. I’ve come to haunt you, you know.”

“You’re doing a fine job,” said Ernst. “Do you know anything of poetry?”

“I know poetry,” said the boy. “I know what Sidi Courane writes. That’s poetry. That’s what everyone says. Do you write poetry, too?”

“I did,” said Ernst, “in my youth.”

“It is lucky, then, that I cannot read,” said Kebap. He grinned again at Ernst, evilly. “I see that your usual boy hasn’t yet brought your supper.”

“Why are you called ‘roast beef? I doubt if you’ve ever seen any in your whole life.”

“One of my uncles called me that,” said the boy. “He said that’s what I looked like when I was born.”

“Do you have a lot of uncles?” asked Ernst maliciously.

Kebap’s eyes opened very wide. “Oh, certainly,” he said solemnly. “Sometimes a new one every day. My mother is very beautiful, very wise, and often very silent. Would you like to meet her, yaa Sidi?”

“Not today, you little thief.” Ernst held up the annotated napkin. “I’m very busy.”

Kebap snorted. “Certainly, yaa Sidi. Of course.” Then he ran away.

“Good evening, M. Weinraub.” It was Czerny, still dressed in his gray uniform of the Citizens’ Army. Ernst saw that the tunic was without decoration or indication of rank. Perhaps the Jaish was still so small that the men had only a handful of officers in the whole organization. And here was the man again, to persuade him that the whole situation was not foolish, after all.

“You are a man of your word, M. Czerny,” said Ernst. “Will you join me again? Have a drink?”

“No, I’ll pass that up,” said Czerny as he seated himself at Ernst’s table. “I trust your appointment concluded satisfactorily?”

Ernst grunted. It became evident that he would say nothing more. Czerny cursed softly. “Look,” he said, “I don’t want to have to go through all these stupid contests of yours. This isn’t amusing any longer. You’re going to have to choose sides. If you’re not with us, you’re against us.”

Perhaps it was the heat of the afternoon, or the amount of liquor he had already consumed, or the annoying events of the day, but Ernst refused to allow Czerny the chance to make a single argumentative point. It was not often that someone came to Ernst with a request, and he was certainly going to enjoy it fully. That in doing so he would have to disappoint and even antagonize Czerny made little difference. If Czerny wanted Ernst’s help badly enough, Czerny would return. And if Czerny didn’t mean what he said, then, well, he deserved everything Ernst could devise.

Ernst was amused by the man’s grave talk. He couldn’t understand the urgency at all. “Who are you going to fight? I don’t see it. Maybe if you paid them enough, you could hire some nomad tribe. But it’s still a good distance to ask them to ride just for a battle. Or maybe if you split your tiny bunch in half, one part could start a civil uprising and the other part could put it down. But I really just want to watch.”

“We will get nowhere, Monsieur,” said Czerny in a tight, controlled voice, “until you cease treating my army as a toy and our cause as a tilting at windmills.”

“My good Czerny,” said Ernst slowly, “you reveal quite a lot when you say ‘my army.’ You reveal yourself, if you understand me. You divulge yourself. You display yourself, do you see? You expose yourself. There, I see that I must say it plainly. You expose yourself, but in this locality, at this time, that seems to be a most commendable form of expression.”

“Damn it, you
are
an idiot! I’m not asking you to be a dirty
goundi
. We can get plenty of infantry just by putting up notices. If we could afford to pay them. If we could afford the notices. But intelligence is at a premium in this city. We need you and the others like you. I promise you, you’ll never have to carry a rifle or face one. But you have to be man enough to cast your lot with us, or we’ll sweep you aside with the rest of the old ways.”

“Rhetoric, Czerny, rhetoric!” said Ernst, giggling. “I came here to get away from all that. Leave me alone, will you? I sit here and get drunk. I don’t mess with you while you play soldiers. I’m not any more useful than you, but at least I don’t bother anybody.” He looked around, hoping that some diversion might arise to rescue him. There was nothing. Perhaps he might cause enough of a row with Czerny that M. Gargotier would ask that they both leave; the danger with that plan was that Czerny would be sure to invite Ernst somewhere, some place where Czerny and his Jaish held an edge. Well, then, something simpler was necessary. Perhaps the young nuisance would return. With any luck, the boy would change his target; Czerny would be in no mood to ignore Kebap. Still, that didn’t seem likely either.

Czerny banged the little table with his fist. The table’s metal top flipped off its three legs, dumping Ernst’s wineglass to the ground. Czerny didn’t appear to notice. He talked on through the crashing of the table and the breaking of the glass. “Useful? You want to talk about useful? Have you ever read anything about politics? Economics? You know what keeps a culture alive?”

“Yes,” said Ernst sullenly, while M. Gargotier cleaned up the mess. “People not bothering other people.”

“A good war every generation or so,” said Czerny, ignoring Ernst, seeing him now as an enemy. “We’ve got authorities. Machiavelli - he said that the first cause of unrest in a nation is idleness and peace. That’s all this city has ever known, and you can see the results out there.” Czerny waved in the direction of the street. All that Ernst could see was a young woman in a short leather skirt, naked from the waist up. She met his glance and waved.

“Ah,” thought Ernst, “it has been a long time since I’ve been able just to sit and watch those lovely girls. It seems that one should have thought to do that, without fear of interruption. But there is always war, disease, jealousies, business, and hunger. I have asked for little in my life. Indeed, all that I would have now is a quiet place in the Faubourg St. Honore to watch the Parisian girls. Instead, here I am. Observing that single distant brown woman is infinitely preferable to listening to Czerny’s ranting.” Ernst smiled at the half-naked woman; she turned away for a moment. A small boy was standing behind her. The woman whispered in the boy’s ear. Ernst recognized the boy, of course; the boy laughed. It would not be long before Kebap learned that even industry and enterprise would avail him nothing in that damned city.

“You cannot afford silence,” Czerny was saying loudly.

“I hadn’t realized your concerns had gotten this involved,” said Ernst. “I really thought you fellows were just showing off, but it’s a great deal worse than that. Well, I won’t disturb you, if that’s what you’re worried about. I still don’t see why you’re so anxious to have me. I haven’t held a rifle since my partridge-shooting days in Madrid.”

“You aren’t even listening,” said Czerny, his voice shrill with outrage.

“No, I guess I’m not. What is it again that you want?”

“We want you to join us.”

Ernst smiled sadly, looking down at his new glass of wine. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I don’t make decisions anymore.”

Czerny stood up. He kicked a shard of the broken wineglass into the street. “You’re wrong,” he said. “You’ve just made a very bad one.”

Dusk settled in on the shoulders of the city. The poor of the city happily gave up their occupations and hurried to their homes to join their families for the evening meal. Along the city’s avenues, merchants closed their shops and locked gated shutters over display windows. The wealthy few considered the entertainments and casually made their choices. The noises of the busy day stilled, until Ernst could hear the bugle calls and shouted orders of the Jaish as it drilled beyond the city’s walled quarter. The day’s liquor had had its desired effect on him, and so the sounds failed to remind him of Czerny’s anger.

“There seem to be no birds in this city,” thought Ernst. “That is reasonable. For them to abide in this vat of cultural horrors, they must first fly over that great, empty, dead world beyond the gates. Sand. What a perfect device to excise us from all hope of reentering the world. We are shut up like lepers, in a colony across the sand, and easily, gratefully forgotten. The process of forgetting is readily learned. First we are forgotten by our families, our nations. Then we are forgotten by those we’ve hated, our enemies in contiguous countries. At last, when we have alighted here in our final condition, we forget ourselves. Children must be hired to walk the streets of this city, reminding us of our names and our natures, otherwise we should disappear entirely, as we have dreamed and prayed for so many years. But that, after all, is not the reason we have been sent here. We have come not to die, but to exist painfully apart. Death would be a cleansing for us, a discourtesy to our former friends.”