The Kingdom of Ohio (30 page)

The charge is heard on the hillsides outside the city. A bugle call and then another, the sound of horses' hooves growing closer. The defenders take aim into the empty streets. For a long time—too long, this wait unraveling the steadiness of hands and hearts more surely than any bullet—nothing happens. They spit on their muskets and climb to the top of the barriers, straining to see. Then all at once the air is murderous and alive with gunfire and flying metal.

Musket balls tear into flesh, men fall in twos and threes and the men behind them bellow and scramble forward. The army soldiers run toward the barricades with their shoulders hunched and rifles outstretched, and the defenders reload and fire and reload again until the streets reek of gunpowder and the barrels of their weapons grow so hot that the powder sometimes explodes as it is tamped down, blowing off fingers and hands.

The position of the Royalists is a good one, and the federal troops soon realize this. For the men behind the barricades, it is almost too easy: they fire at the exposed infantrymen in the streets and duck down again to reload. It's like a shooting-gallery game, and within the first few minutes of fighting the streets are littered with the bodies of soldiers, their blue uniforms staining to black with blood.

The defenders of the city each have their own reasons for being here. Some of the men believe they are fighting for their land, as rumors have circulated that the federal government will confiscate the farms that the Ohioans carved from the wilderness. Others are fighting for the payment that has been offered by the Toledos. Still others are here out of simple loyalty, to the family their grandpar ents followed to this frontier. And all of them, in this instant, feel invincible: they smile at one another's smoke-smudged faces and laugh, verging on hysteria.

Harlan's men take refuge. They hide in alleyways between buildings and behind abandoned street vendors' stalls, pinned down, sniping ineffectively at the barriers. Then the word comes, shouted from one island of safety to the next: fire the buildings. It isn't clear whether this is an order or simply someone's bright idea, but it makes no difference. For the men trapped in the streets, it is a matter of survival. Someone produces a bundle of hay soaked with paraffin, someone else a torch—and soon factories and houses begin to burn. The wind fans the flames inward toward the barricades, and now it is the defenders who must fall back.

Abandoning their makeshift ramparts, they turn and run, looking for new positions behind walls and piles of garbage. But no real second line of defense exists: there was no time to prepare one. With a roar, Harlan's men rush the fortifications and now men on both sides are falling. More houses start to burn and families run out into the street, mothers in nightgowns pulling their children from the flames. Gradually, the superior numbers and training of the federal troops begin to take their toll. Panicked defenders drop their weapons and run, while those who remain are forced to steadily retreat.

 

 

In the sitting room of the mansion, everything is quiet. The French doors are closed and the curtains drawn, oil lamps glistening behind crystal shades. In an armchair near the cold fireplace sits the king, Louis Toledo; around him are gathered his valet, two bodyguards, and the old family butler, Nonce. Across the room, on a burgundy velvet sofa, the princess, Cheri-Anne, sits fidgeting nervously.

Watching her father, she is struck by the thought that for once he looks dignified, even regal. Louis is dressed in a dark suit; the royal purple sash is draped across his chest, the silver Toledo crest pinned to his lapel. When news of the federal troops' approach arrived, he had ascended to his chambers and then reappeared, perfumed and clothed in this finery. Calmly, Louis had read a passage of Byron to the assembled militia. And now, as he stares at the empty living room fireplace, fingering the silken sash, she wonders at the sudden transformation of his normally overwrought character. Through the lace curtains over the French doors, the evening sky has begun to glow red.

“Sire.”

Louis Toledo looks up at the wizened butler. “Yes, Nonce?”

“We should go, sire. It is time. If we wait much longer—”

“I won't be going.”

“Sire?” Nonce's eyebrows bristle. “As we discussed, your carriage is waiting.”

“I know.” Louis climbs to his feet and crosses to a mahogany sideboard, pouring a glass thimbleful of cognac. He turns and addresses the room. “I—I have changed my mind. Though I have failed as king in some respects, let no one say I failed here. A king should live and die by his kingdom. This”—he gestures, encompassing the room, the house, the countryside beyond—“has been my life. By God, I shall not forsake it in its hour of direst need!”

For a moment, shock and disbelief drive all other thoughts from her mind as these words sink in. It must be some kind of horrible joke, she thinks, one of his stupid pranks—

“Sire!” Nonce hesitates for an instant, then rushes angrily ahead. “I have served three generations of Toledos, and I tell you that this is not what your father would have wished. If you think you do a noble thing, you are mistaken. Flee! What will it benefit your family if you are cut down or arrested like a criminal?”

“Enough!” Louis stares unsteadily around the room, mopping the sudden sweat on his forehead with a handkerchief. “My mind”—his voice cracks—“my mind will not be changed.”

“Father! This is madness!” She stares up at him with a growing sense of despair as she realizes that he is serious. If Tesla were here, she thinks irrelevantly, if he hadn't moved back to distant New York, he would have some answer to this insanity. Then abruptly she remembers the untested machine that waits in the basement laboratory, and her heart begins to race.

“Daughter.” He returns her gaze, a brief confusion crossing his face—the same incomprehension with which he has always watched her. “The carriage will transport you to safety. But my fate is here.”

Like an image snapping into focus, understanding comes to her then. His calm demeanor, his sad smile: all of it makes sudden, terrible sense. Because all of his romantic heroes, the poets and novels that he loved, were training for this moment, she realizes. For him, this is not about politics or business, but rather the wheel of fate and the fall of empires, the chivalrous last stand and the noble death. Glimpsing the terrible equation of her father's obsession, she shakes her head. Unless you act now, some inner voice whispers. Unless now, at last—

“Do you wish so much to leave me an orphan?” She stares at him, this strange man whom she loves and has never really known. “I beg of you. This is only a senseless, romantic insanity.”

A musket ball thumps into the front door with the sick sound of splintering wood. No one moves.

“Sire.” Nonce's voice is low and urgent. “We still have time. Will you reconsider?”

A stillness descends on the room, then, an instant of balanced forces, as if each of their decisions—king, princess, butler, valet—has canceled the others out. A window breaks somewhere, glass tinkling into silence. The moment of anticipation when the dropped object seems to hang motionless, waiting for gravity to arrive. And then it does and she feels something tearing in her chest, pushing her to her feet as she thinks of her hours of study and effort, now crystallized as signs pointing to this moment, of what can still be saved.

“Then if you will do nothing, I shall!” She whirls in a white blossoming of petticoats and runs out of the room.

“Damn.” Louis Toledo sets down his glass, mopping his forehead again with the handkerchief. His hands are trembling, he notices, and to hide their flutter he draws the small pistol that he had concealed in his pocket.

“Make sure the carriage is ready,” he tells the butler. “You and the princess must escape. See to it that she is not harmed. Take her to Boston, as we discussed.”

For a moment, it seems as if Nonce might object—but he does not. Bowing his head, he shuffles out of the room. The valet follows with relief.

The king adjusts his sash and positions himself in the center of the room, facing the doors. The two bodyguards move to flank him. Outside, the sound of fighting is very near now.

“The king is dead,” he says softly to himself. “Long live the king.”

The front door bursts open with a crash, showering splinters into the room.

Somewhere downstairs, her heart pounding, Cheri-Anne throws a switch.

A moment later, the world explodes into fire and light.
⁴⁴

 

 

 

SITTING IN Paolo's nighttime apartment, she finishes this story and for a moment all three are silent, lost in the skein of what has been said. She looks over at Peter, expecting to see incredulity or some harsh judgment on his face, but he is staring out the window at the darkness beyond. Paolo methodically smokes a cigarette.

“It is a good story,” the Italian murmurs at length. “This is how it seems for me too, when I remember Italia—so long ago now, it is like a fairy tale.” He sighs. “So this is how you come here?”

She nods.

Peter knows that he should say something, but is at a loss for how to respond. He feels that in some way, with this story, something has changed. He thinks:
like the easing of a knot
, but then doesn't know exactly what this image might signify.

How to find a place for the inexplicable in the world, he thinks, to make room for what defies all common sense? But then, he reflects, studying the solemn lines of her face and remembering the touch of her lips, maybe it's always the inexplicable things that matter most. He reaches out, covering her hand where it lies on the table with his own. She squeezes his fingers for a moment before glancing up at the Italian and drawing her hand away.

“Thank you,” he says. “For telling us, I mean.”

“You are welcome.”

“And now—” Peter starts.

“Now we sleep,” Paolo interrupts, yawning.

“Sleep,” she echoes. Abruptly the long shadow of the day before, its recesses of tension and fear, envelops her in exhaustion. “Paolo, you are a genius.”

And they do: she on a cot behind the kitchen stove with the children, dreaming of her father, who melts and transforms into an unrecognizable stranger before she can reveal some essential thing to him. Peter, restless on a folded blanket on the living room floor, dreaming of a house, and Tesla's face in flames.

THE DOOR IN THE EARTH

AT LAST I'M ON MY WAY. SEATED ON A JETLINER HEADED EAST, I look through a porthole at the vast landscape of clouds and sky. My neighbor in the next seat, an overweight woman wearing a hideously purple sweat suit, tries to strike up a conversation by asking if I think we will arrive on time.

“We will come to claim our cast-off bodies,”
I tell her,
“but it would not be just if we again put on the flesh we robbed from our own souls”
—which, as I'd hoped, puts an end to our acquaintance (Dante seems to have that effect on people), leaving me free to study the passing clouds. Ten thousand feet below, beyond the citadels of white cumulus, forested mountain ranges spread like gnarled roots across the distant countryside. Watching them pass, a sudden sense of familiarity prompts me to flag down the nearest air hostess.

“Excuse me,” I ask, “can you tell me where we are?”

“We should be passing over Coeur d'Alene, right about now.” She smiles blandly. “Is there anything else, sir?”

“No. Thank you.”

She wheels her cart away and I turn back to the landscape, recalling how once—lifetimes ago—I sat on a river outcropping, somewhere in these mountains, gazing up at the sky. As a boy, I remember wondering what it might feel like to be a bird, wheeling above the clouds and mountain landscape. Back then, the height of a hawk's ascent seemed as unreachable as the moon.

Now, flying over the Idaho wilderness, I think of this past and the impossible chasm of years that has made that young man seem like a third-person stranger, and find myself wanting to laugh and cry. It's moments like this that leave me feeling like the punch line of some ridiculous, cosmic inside joke. Because certainly I couldn't have foreseen, or chosen, any of it: not the things that chased us like criminals through New York, or these strange shipwrecked years of living without you, and most of all not the consequences of my terrible choice, on that terrible final day.

 

 

 

PETER WAKES to the clatter of cheap earthenware on wood. Opening his eyes, he sees Paolo's wife—he can't remember her name—setting down a plate of toasted bread and a teapot on the living-room table. He sits up, blearily scratching the stubble on his cheeks. She gestures silently at him and then the food.

“Thank you.” He smiles at her. “And for letting us stay. Won't be much longer now, I guess.”

She stares at him with dark, expressionless eyes—then turns away, disappearing through the kitchen into the bedroom. A moment later she emerges with the children in tow and, with another silent glance at Peter, leaves the apartment.

He climbs to his feet, stretching, stiff from spending the night with only a blanket between himself and the floorboards. Pulls on his clothes and laces his boots, shivering in the morning cold. He pours a cup of tea and gulps it down, standing in the middle of the room. The weak, early sunlight, the warped floorboards, quiet, and the cracked yellow plaster of the walls.

It's over, he thinks, it's time to go.

Standing in the chill living room, he waits for the sense of relief that this realization should bring: a chance for safety and escape. Maybe even a happy ending with her by his side, if such things are possible. And the relief is there, all right, but also with it, strangely, a wash of diffuse sorrow at the sight of Paolo's shabby apartment in the morning light. The echo of some imagined moment, years from now, and its ghostly, far-flung distances: that this may be the last time he sees this place, this city.