City (25 page)

32

All that hot and windy day Phil Wittacher is shut up inside the Old Man. A hydraulic clock, he says to himself as he opens the conduits of the cistern and lets the water flow, following every twist and turn down through the rewinding mechanism. He repeats the operation dozens of times. He can't figure it out. He sits down. Weary. He thinks. He gets up. He follows a stream that he alone knows and that takes him around inside the Old Man from one gear to the next, up to the painted clockface, with its thirteen beautiful playing cards, diamonds. He looks at them. For a long time.

Hours.

Then he understands.

At last he understands.

“Son of a bitch.”

He says.

“Ingenious son of a bitch.”

He climbs down from the Old Man with his head emptied out by fatigue. In the void a buzz of questions. They all begin with: Why?

He doesn't go back to his room, he goes straight to the house of the Dolphin sisters. Odor of wood and vegetables. Two guns hanging over the stove.

“What happened that night between Arne and Mathias?”

The sisters sit in silence.

“I asked what happened.”

Julie Dolphin looks at her hands, resting in her lap.

“They had a discussion.”

“What sort of discussion?”

“You repair clocks, there are some things there's no point in your knowing.”

“That is a peculiar clock.”

Julie Dolphin again looks at her hands, resting in her lap.

“What sort of discussion?” asks Phil Wittacher.

Melissa Dolphin raises her head.

“The river no longer yielded gold. In the mountains they had found nothing. Mathias had an idea. He made an agreement with the heads of five other families. The idea was to take all the gold and leave, at night.”

“Run away with the gold?”

“Yes.”

“And then?”

“Mathias asked Arne if he was with them.”

“And he?”

“Arne said he didn't want any part of it. He told Mathias that he was a shit, and so were the other five, and everyone else in the world. He seemed to be sincere, he could put on a good act when he wanted to. He said that if that was to be the end of Closingtown he didn't want to see it. He said that for him it was all over right then and there. I remember that he took his watch, a silver pocket watch, and gave it to Mathias, and he said to him: The town is yours. Then he picked up his things and left. He said he would never return. He never returned.”

Phil Wittacher thinks.

“And Mathias?”

“He was drunk. He started breaking things up, then he went out, and he stayed out for hours. He came back in the morning. He went to where they kept the gold. He found nothing, and realized that Arne had taken it all. He got the five others and they left at a gallop, on Arne's trail.”

“The same five family heads?”

“They were his friends.”

“And then?”

“Four days later their horses came back. And on the saddles were their heads, with the eyes burned.”

Phil Wittacher thinks.

“What time was it when they arrived?”

“Stupid question, around here.”

Phil Wittacher shakes his head.

“OK, what was it, day, night, what?”

“Evening.”

“Evening?”

“Yes.”

Phil Wittacher gets up. He goes to the window. He looks at the street and at the dust flying in front of the windows.

It takes some effort, but finally he says:

“Was it Arne who murdered time?”

The Dolphin sisters are silent.

“Was it?”

The Dolphin sisters sit there, heads bent, hands in their laps. It's not clear which it is, of the two, who says

“Yes. He took it with him, when he left.”

Phil Wittacher picks up his duster. And his hat. The Dolphin sisters stay seated. It's as if they're waiting to be photographed.

“That watch . . . the silver watch, did you ever find it?”

“No.”

“It wasn't attached to the saddle, or among Mathias's things?”

“No.”

Phil Wittacher says softly: yes.

Then, louder,

“Good night.”

He goes out. He crosses the town, enters the saloon, is about to go up to his room when he sees the old drunk Indian, sitting as usual on the floor with his back against the wall. He stops. He goes over and crouches in front of him.

He looks at him and says:

“Arne Dolphin, does that name mean anything to you?”

The Indian's eyes are wet rocks set in a mask of wrinkles.

“Can you hear me? . . . Arne Dolphin, your friend Arne, the great Arne Dolphin.”

The Indian's eyes are motionless.

“I'm talking to you . . . Arne Dolphin, that big creep bastard Arne Dolphin, great big son of a bitch.”

And then, in a much lower voice:

“The assassin of time.”

The Indian's eyes don't move.

Phil Wittacher smiles.

“You'll remember when it's useful.”

The Indian lowers and raises his eyelids.

Will he start the clock again? I asked Shatzy, and some of the others asked, too. She smiled. Maybe even she didn't know. I don't know how a Western is made. I mean, if you already know from the start how it's going to end or if you find out later, little by little. I've never made a Western. Once I made a child. But it's a strange story. And with that, too, you didn't know, at first, how it was going to end. The doctor says that when I'm better I'll have to start there, and, patiently,
tell myself the story.
But I don't know when that will be. I remember that his name was Gould, and also many other things, some of them nice, yet they are painful, all of them. It was the only thing I hated about Shatzy. She talked about that child, my child, as if it were nothing, and I couldn't bear it, I didn't want her to talk about him, I don't know how she could have been his girlfriend, she must have been fifteen years older, I didn't want to know what there was between them, I don't want to know, take that girl away, I don't want to see her anymore, Doctor, leave me alone, what's that girl doing here? take that girl away, I hate her, take her away or I'll kill her.

She said that Gould no longer needed anything or anyone.

She stayed here for six years. At some point she left for Las Cruces, she said she'd found a job in a supermarket there. But then, after a few months, we saw her come back. She didn't like it that in the place where she worked everything was a special offer. She said that she spent her time getting people to buy more than they needed, and this was stupid. She started working in the hospital again. Here in fact it's unlikely that for every two hysterical crises they give you a third, which entitles you to a lottery ticket for a free electroshock treatment. In this sense you couldn't blame her. She lived by herself, in a room nearby. I always told her that she should get married. She told me: she already had. But I don't remember the rest of the story anymore. Certainly she had no one. It's odd, but she was a girl who had no one. It's the thing I never understood about her: what she had done that she remained, in the end, so alone. Here at the hospital everything went to pieces on account of that business about the theft. They said she had stolen money, from the safe in the pharmacy. That is, they said she'd been doing it for months, that they had warned her, but to no avail, she kept doing it. I didn't think it was true, there were people who hated her here, who were perfectly capable of sabotaging her. So I told them I didn't believe it, that I thought it was all a setup. She didn't say a thing. She took her things and left. Halley, my husband, found her a job as a secretary at an association for war widows. It doesn't sound like much, but it was quite entertaining. War widows do a bunch of things you would never imagine. Every so often I went to see her. She had her own desk, the work wasn't onerous. She had plenty of time to do her Western.

Phil Wittacher stands up, glances at the old Indian and heads for the stairs.

“It's like squeezing blood from a stone. It's years since I've heard him say a word,” says Carver, drying yet another glass.

“Right.”

“Whiskey?”

“There's an idea.”

“Whiskey.”

Phil Wittacher leans on the bar.

Carver pours him a glass.

Phil Wittacher tries not to think. But he thinks.

“Carver.”

“Yes.”

“Was there anyone in this damn town who hated Arne Dolphin?”

“Before he left?”

“Now they all do.”

“Yes.”

“But before?”

Carver shrugs his shoulders.

“Who in the world doesn't have an enemy?”

Phil Wittacher drinks. He puts down the glass.

“Carver.”

“Yes?”

“Mathias, his brother Mathias, did he hate him?”

Carver stops. He looks at Phil Wittacher.

“Have you ever had a brother who was a god?”

“No.”

“Well, you would have hated him, every day of your life, in secret and with every ounce of your strength.”

On the desk she had two framed photographs. Shatzy. One was of Eva Braun, the other of Walt Disney.

33

Phil Wittacher in the noonday sun, leaning against the wall of the saloon, his hat pulled down over his eyes and his bandanna pulled up over his mouth for protection from the dust. He gazes at the face of the Old Man, its hands and numbers, like a poker player. He starts walking. He likes to walk with the wind behind him. It makes no noise, and he is in the lead.

He thinks how it's an old story and he has nothing to do with it. Joyfully he repeats that he is only a clock repairman. He says aloud I'm out of here, time to go, sorry, but it's not the job for me, adios amigos. He doesn't have a single reason to stay, he thinks, and make that clock run. Then he stops. He looks up ahead. He sees Melissa Dolphin: she's sweeping the street in front of her house, whipped by the river of whirling dust, with irrational care, and futile, she sweeps. Her white hair flies away, out of the neat arrangement that her old hands must have tried to impart, as she stood before the mirror, that morning, as every morning. She looks like a slender ghost, patient, invincible and vanquished.

Shatzy said that at precisely that point Phil Wittacher turned and spat, and, since the wind was against him, he spat practically on his pants. Then he sent them all to hell.

34

Phil Wittacher goes into the judge's house. Semi-darkness, stink of shit and cigars. Newspapers everywhere.

He takes a chair and pulls it up to the bed. He sits down.

“Still on the idea that sooner or later the horse will come to water?”

“You can bet on it, kid.”

“He doesn't seem to be very thirsty.”

“He'll come. I'm not in a hurry.”

“I am.”

“And so?”

“If he's not thirsty we'll have to make him come.”

As Phil Wittacher says this, he holds out a typewritten page. It says that on Sunday 8 June, at 12:37, with great pomp, Phil Wittacher, of Wittacher & Son, will make the historic clock of Closingtown, the biggest in the West, run again. Food, drink, and a surprise finale.

Phil Wittacher nods at the piles of newspapers.

“I've put out this announcement in such a way that he can read it. After all, he's been sending messages for thirty-four years: it's time to answer.”

The judge raises himself off his pillows, puts his legs down over the side of the bed, rereads the paper carefully.

“You don't think that bastard's so crazy he'll come.”

“He'll come.”

“Bullshit.”

“Will you believe me if I tell you he'll come?”

The judge looks at him as if he were an algebra problem.

“And how do you know that, asshole? Are you by some chance in Arne Dolphin's head?”

“I know where he is, what he's doing, and what he'll be doing tomorrow. I know everything about him.”

The judge starts laughing and lets out a gigantic fart. He laughs like a madman for several minutes. A monstrosity of bronchial tubes and catarrh. But with silver in the middle. All of a sudden he becomes serious again.

“All right, clockmaker, I'm damned if I understand it, but OK.”

He leans forward and brings his big face close to Phil Wittacher's.

“You're not going to tell me that you can really make that clock run?”

“That's my affair, let's talk about your part.”

“Simple. As soon as the bastard sets foot in town I plant a bullet between his eyes.”

“Anyone could do that. Don't waste yourself. For you I've thought of something more refined.”

“Which is?”

“
Not
to plant a bullet between his eyes.”

“Are you nuts?”

“In this town, that man is dead. I need him alive. You solve the problem.”

“Alive in what sense?”

“Judge: I bring him here to you. You find a way to make him sit at the table with me. Long enough to tell us a couple of stories. Then do what you want with him. But I want him at that table, without witnesses, and without a bullet between the eyes.”

“It won't be easy: that man is a wild beast. If you give him time, you're a dead man.”

“I told you it was a job worthy of you.”

“It won't be a walk.”

“No, so maybe you'd better find yourself another pair of shoes.”

“Go fuck yourself, snotface.”

“I don't have time. I have to see Bird.”

So he goes to see Bird.

“Bird, do you know how Arne Dolphin used to shoot?”

“Never met him.”

“I know, but you know what people say about him?”

“A little slow to draw. Dead aim. A family trait, it seems. The sisters used to make a little show out of it, at one time.”

“That story about the jack of hearts?”

“Right.”

“How the hell did they do it?”

“I don't know. But where cards are involved there's always a trick. Only guns never lie.”

Phil Wittacher doesn't think that's true.

“Bird: one man against six, in an open field: does he have any chance of coming out alive?”

“There are six shots in a Colt. So yes.”

“Forget the poetry, Bird. Does he come out alive or not?”

Bird thinks.

“Yes, if the six are blind.”

Phil Wittacher smiles.

“We're the ones who are blind, Bird. We see only what we expect to see.”

“Forget the philosophy, kid. What the fuck did you come to ask me?”

“Still have that idea about dying?”

“Yes, so hurry up and get that clock going.”

“Do you have any engagements for June the 8th?”

“Apart from pissing blood and throwing stones at dogs?”

“Apart from that.”

“Let me think.”

He thinks.

“I'd say no.”

“Good. I'll need you, that day.”

“Me or my guns?”

“Do you still work together?”

“Only on special occasions.”

“It
is
a special occasion.”

“In the sense of?”

“We're going to start that fucking clock.”

Bird narrows his eyes to look Phil Wittacher carefully in the face.

“Are you shitting me?”

“I'm utterly serious.”

How is it that the gun was in the holster and now it's pointed at Phil Wittacher's head?

“Are you kidding?”

“I'm utterly serious.”

How is it that that gun is once again in its holster?

“Count on me, kid.”

“I need your eyes, Bird.”

“Bad news.”

“How are they?”

“Depends on the light.”

“What card is this?”

Bird narrows his eyes on the card that Phil Wittacher slides out of his sleeve.

“Clubs?”

Phil Wittacher pinches it between two fingers and throws it in the air.

Bird draws and shoots. Six shots. The card ricochets off the six bullets as if on an invisible glass table. Then it falls like a dead leaf.

“Could you hit it at twenty paces?”

“No.”

“And if it weren't moving?”

“At twenty paces?”

“Yes.”

“With a bit of luck I could manage.”

“I need you to do it, Bird.”

“It'll take a bit of luck.”

“Wouldn't glasses be better?”

“Go fuck yourself, clockmaker.”

“I don't have time. I have to go see the Dolphin sisters.”

So he went to the Dolphin sisters'.

“Two Sundays from now, at 12:37, I'm going to restart the Old Man.”

The Dolphin sisters stare at him without moving. It's incredible, but it seems to Phil Wittacher that he sees Melissa Dolphin's eyes shining with something like: tears.

“It will be a big mess, but it's what you wanted.”

The Dolphin sisters nod their heads yes.

“I'd like to tell you to stay home until it's all over, but I know you won't, so I'd prefer that you come, and play your part. But let's be clear: no improvisations, and obey orders.”

The Dolphin sisters again nod their heads yes.

“OK. When it's time, I'll let you know. Good night, ladies.” Duster, hat.

“Mister Wittacher . . .”

“Yes.”

“We'd like you to know that . . .”

“Yes?”

“It's not easy to find the right words, but we have an obligation to let you know . . .”

“Yes?”

Melissa Dolphin has no more tears in her eyes when she says:

“Nothing personal, but in a moment your cock's going to come out, kid.”

“Pardon?”

“What we mean is that it might be more prudent if you were to button the relevant opening of your pants, right under the belt, Mister Wittacher.”

Phil Wittacher looks down. He buttons his pants. He looks up again at the Dolphin sisters.

What did I do wrong? he thinks.

That was more or less the last part of the Western that I heard in Shatzy's voice. I don't know if there was more, but if so she took it with her. The way she went was terrible, and I say that this was an injustice, because each of us should be able to choose the music we dance out on. It should be a
right,
or at least a privilege, of great dancers. I hated Shatzy, for a lot of reasons. But she knew how to dance, if you know what I mean. She was in a car with a doctor one night, they'd had a little to drink, or smoke, I don't remember. They hit a pylon on the viaduct, straight on, down in San Fernandez. The man was driving, and was killed instantly. When they pulled Shatzy out, though, she was still breathing. They brought her to the hospital and then it was a long, painful affair. She had a lot of injuries, including something in her spinal cord. Finally she had to be confined to a hospital bed, immobilized except for her head. Her brain still worked, she could look, hear, speak. But the rest was as if dead. It was heartbreaking. Shatzy had always been one who didn't give up easily. She had talent, if it was a matter of squeezing something out of life. But this time there wasn't much to squeeze. For a few days, motionless there in her bed, she said nothing. Then one day my husband, Halley, went to see her. And she said to him: General, for pity's sake, let's end this. She said it just like that. For pity's sake. The fact is, my husband, I don't know, was fond of that girl, she represented something for him, he would never let her get lost, or anything like that, he would never do it. So he found a way. He had her brought to a military hospital. Certain things are easier to do there. The military is accustomed to it, if one can put it like that. It was also kind of ridiculous because it was a hospital for soldiers, and she was the only woman. She even joked about it. The day before she left, when I went to say goodbye, so to speak, she wanted me to come close and then she asked me if I would go around through the hospital and find a boy who would like to come and see her for a moment. She wanted him to be cute. I tried to understand what she meant by cute, but she just said could I find one with nice lips. So I went and in the end I came back with a guy who had a lovely face, dark hair and a lovely face, an amazing guy, really. His name was Samuel. When he got there, Shatzy said to him: Would you kiss me? And he kissed her, a real kiss, a movie kiss, endless. The next day a doctor did what had to be done. I think it was some kind of an injection. But I don't know exactly. She went in a moment.

At home I have hundreds of her tapes, full of Westerns. And in my mind I have two things that she told me about Gould, which I will never tell anyone.

We buried her here in Topeka. The words on her tombstone she had chosen herself. No dates. Only:
Shatzy Shell, nothing to do
with the oil company.

May the earth lie light upon you, little one.