The Masters of Atlantis (10 page)

“Squanto.”

“A talking bird,” said Mrs. Mack. “I've heard of people keeping canary birds but not jaybirds. I didn't know they could talk.”

“He's quite old now and new words are difficult for him. It gets harder and harder to drive anything into his little crested head. Anyway, Squanto and I are glad you enjoyed our little joke. I happen to think a light note is important. It sets a friendly tone. It breaks the ice. Speaking of which, let us move on to the kitchen, ladies. I'll stoke up the fire and we'll be much warmer in there. The vines are not so thick on the floor there and I've moved the cot and the table back against the wall. We may want to dance later. The important thing now, as I see it, is for June to get into her apron toot sweet. We've had our bit of fun, and now, I don't mind telling you, I'm ready to get down to serious business and tackle some of those chicken livers on toast points.”

In the kitchen there were black windrows of soot on the floor but little bagweed, except around the base of the walls. The table and chairs were spackled with whitecapped bird droppings. Burlap bags were stuffed around the window frames. Overhead there was a long stovepipe and from the rusty elbow joint there came a steady fall of fine soot.

“Here, ladies, drape these towels over your heads, if you will, please. Don we now our gay apparel. That black stuff will get in your hair and it's the very devil to get out, not to mention your nose and ears.”

Popper and Mrs. Mack sat at the table while June bustled about. Mrs. Mack would have liked to rest her arms on the table but the oilcloth was sticky with molasses. It pulled fibers from her sweater. The kitchen was poorly furnished. The few cooking vessels had deposits of carbonized grease at their bottoms. There were no measuring, beating or sifting instruments. The only condiments were salt and pepper, all mixed together in a glass jar with ice-pick holes in the lid.

“Saves a step or two,” said Popper. “Takes the guesswork out of seasoning.”

June and her mother drank hot chocolate topped off with floating marshmallows. Popper stayed with his rum, mixing it with hot water and molasses. He talked on and on in an extravagant way that confused Mrs. Mack. All she could think to say was, “Well, aren't you smart!” to the bird, who had lapsed into muttering and squawking. Popper drank and chattered away and tried to pick out a tune by dinging a spoon against the glassware. June was a plain cook, no bay leaves or underdone chicken breasts for her, but she was a good cook and she became more and more exasperated with Austin. All this loving effort for a babbling drunk.

When at last the dinner was served his head fell. The Macks likewise bowed, and then after a time they saw that he was not, as they had thought, lost in a prayer of thanksgiving, but asleep. They left him to his nap and spoke in whispers as they ate. His head sank in jerks and his face was not far from the livers and congealing gravy on his plate when there came a voice from the doorway.

“What do these women want? Get this gang of women out of here.”

It was Professor Golescu. He was wearing bib overalls with a black buzzard feather stuck in the breast pocket. With his worker's cap and pointed beard and glittering eyes he looked like V. I. Lenin. June was astonished. Austin had spoken of his associate as “demented” and “badly stooped” and as having “abnormal brain rhythms,” and yet here was no such pitiful figure but rather a well-formed and dynamic little man who set her pulse racing.

The cold draft from the open door brought Popper around. He shuddered and sat up. “Ho. Cezar. Come in and warm yourself. Ladies, my partner, Cezar Golescu. He comes to us from the Caspian Sea and his name means ‘not many camels.' ”

Golescu said, “Who are these women? Our agreement was no women and no drink.”

“Don't mind him, ladies. You must make allowances. He has no manners. I had always thought that the laws of hospitality were universal but it seems Cezar and his people, the Shittite people of central Asia, have their own ideas about these things. Look at those eyes. We are entering a new age of reptiles.”

“Where is my soup?”

“He wants his soup. Well, we can't talk soup until you take off your cap. These ladies are my guests.”

“You are drunk again, Popper.”

“Not at all. We are simply having a civilized evening of good food and good conversation. Where is the harm in that? It makes for a change. This is my good friend from Rollo, Miss June Mack. And over here, though you would never guess it, is her mother, the very charming Mrs. Mack. Now if you think you can be polite, Cezar, you are welcome to join us. Or you can go back to your weeds. Suit yourself but we can't have you standing there in the doorway scowling at us like that.”

Golescu was wearing brown knit gloves with the finger ends cut off, gardener style, the better to feel things and take their measure. His exposed fingertips were a larval white. He tapped them together and stared at June. Her pug nose did not come up to his leptorhine ideal of female beauty but in other ways she pleased him. A long woodpecker nose and heavy legs—“the big hocks,” as he put it—these were the qualities that Golescu first looked for in a woman. June met his appraising gaze with her own.

“I want these women out of here,” he said, and wheeled about and left.

Popper turned up his hands. “My apologies. What more can I say? You see how it is. The man is loco. I know we must appear ridiculous to you, living here like this, like wild beasts in this Mato Grosso, but you get deeper and deeper into a hole and you don't know quite how to get out. Anyway, our party pooper is gone and let's say no more about him.”

June said, “What about his soup?”

“Don't worry about him. He keeps coconut cookies in his room. I've seen them. You'll never believe me when I tell you what he has on his wall up there. Diplomas? A favorite poem in a frame? Some bathing beauty? Not on your life. Give up? It's a picture of his king.”

“You haven't eaten anything, Austin.”

“Nothing? Are you sure?”

“You look gray. I'll heat up those livers. It won't take a minute.”

“No, no. To tell you the truth I'm a little queasy. Just a spoon or two of ice cream maybe.”

He ate a bowl of snow ice cream and then pulled some blankets about his shoulders and curled up on the cot and fell asleep again, facing the wall.

Twilight came early to Hogandale, when the sun dropped below the peak of Puerco Mountain. June lighted the kerosene lamp. Mrs. Mack announced that she had had quite enough of ranch life and was ready to go. June was about ready too, but outside it was growing dark and sleet was rattling against the windows. She knew nothing about the bus schedule and she had no intention of walking back up the hill unescorted. She tried to rouse Popper. The more she shook him, the more he contracted into a ball-like form, presenting a smaller and smaller surface to the attack.

June took the lamp and boldly made her way through the bagweed and up the stairs. The banister glistened with hoarfrost. She found Golescu's room and spoke to him through the locked door. He said nothing. She explained the situation, that Austin was in a deep sleep, out for the night apparently, and that she and her mother wished to return home. Could he not help them? There was a scrabbling movement within the room but there came no reply. Sobs and hysterics, she decided, would avail her nothing with this man, a tough foreigner of some kind, not likely to be moved by female tears. She stood there and considered how best to flush him. Cajolery? Money? Warm food?

The door opened and the professor appeared before her with one hand casually at rest in a coat pocket. The cap was gone and in its place there sat an alpine hat. He had changed his work clothes too and was now wearing a belted woolen suit and dotted bow tie. The buzzard feather was in the breast pocket. He wore glasses with perfectly round black frames. General Tojo himself had no glasses that were any rounder.

“How would you like to go to the pictures with Golescu?” he said.

Surprisingly enough, he knew when the buses ran, and he escorted the Macks all the way back to Rollo. They arrived in time to catch the last show at the Majestic. He knew his way about town and had in fact been to this theater two or three times before.

Popper had told June that nothing would get the professor out of the house, but there was one thing and that was a Jeanette MacDonald movie. He seldom missed one. Cut off as he was from the world, he still managed to stay current on the coming attractions in Rollo by way of movie calendars that were delivered by hand each month over the entire county, even to the old Taggert house. When a new calendar came, he circled any notice of a film starring Miss MacDonald and laid his travel plans accordingly.

On this night, of course, any picture would do. He had not had such a soft armful as June Mack at his side in a very long time, and the show itself and its featured players were a matter of indifference to him.

As luck would have it, there was a musical cartoon of the kind he liked, with some toys coming to life in a toy shop after the toy maker had gone to bed. He hummed along with the singing dolls. The feature was good too, a murder mystery with a circus setting, in which an escaped gorilla figured as a red herring. It was not June's kind of picture. She liked the ones with big city nightclub scenes, with perky cigarette girls in their cute outfits, and dark sleek men who whispered orders to henchmen, and pale ladies in white satin gowns who drank highballs and took calls on white telephones. The selected short subject was puzzling to Golescu. It was all about a luxurious rest home in California for retired movie stars, a beautiful estate set in rolling hills, with cottages and swimming pools and all the latest medical equipment. Nothing was too good for the Hollywood old-timers who had worn themselves out with their antics before the camera. When it was over the lights came up and ushers appeared at a quick march to collect money for the home in cardboard buckets. Each of the Macks gave a dime. Golescu dropped in a penny. America, so far from the Danube, was a strange land and he was still not clear as to the nature and extent of his duties here. Among other things, it seemed, he was expected to help Errol Flynn with his retirement plans.

At the close of the program the moviegoers shuffled out and paused in the lobby to put on their heavy coats and think over some of the things they had seen. Golescu looked into their faces. “Where are the Red Indians?” he said. “For months I am living in the West and I am seeing no Amerinds.”

June said, “I think they live in Arizona, don't they, Mom?”

“You got me.”

“Arizona or New Mexico, one. Wait a minute. I forgot about Thomas. He's some kind of Indian.”

“I am anxious to see the solemn old chiefs in their round hats,” said Golescu. “Their squaws and papooses. Those noble faces are from Mu. I am most anxious to measure their heads.”

At Mack house, after Mrs. Mack had said good night and gone to her room, the professor sat on the sofa with June and showed her his membership cards from various secret brotherhoods. Then some tricks. He wrote with both hands. He balanced a glass of water on his forehead, tossed three nickels into the air and caught them on the back of one hand. He drove two nails with a hammer in each hand. June offered him some squares of fudge. He declined. He brought out his cylinder seal and told her a little about Kikku and the burial customs of Mu. But he went through all this in a mechanical way, with none of the old Golescu brio, and after a time fell silent.

June ventured a thought. “Do you want to know what I think, Cezar? I think you must have some secret sorrow in your life.”

He admitted that his work was not going well and that life in the old Taggert house was grim. Hogandale was worse than Mount Grobny. He didn't know how much longer he could tolerate Popper's drinking and his insults. The man was a lunatic. He had once been at the very top of the Gnomon Society, a trusted keeper of the secret knowledge of Atlantis, and was now a raving drunk. You never knew what was going on in his head, what he might say next, or even what his raucous bird might say.

“But you and Austin are alike in some ways,” said June. “No, it's true. Do you want to know what I've noticed? I've noticed that neither one of you ever laughs. Austin has a wonderful smile but that's as far as it goes. And you never even smile.”

“So, you expect me to cackle, do you? My dear girl, Romanians are known all over the world for their hilarity. I love nothing better than to laugh but my life it is not a joke. Or it is a joke if you like but not a good one. I am engaged in serious work and how can I do it properly when I am living in an icehouse with a crazy man and eating garbage? Such conditions. Yes, and I am half crazy myself from inhaling mercury fumes. How can I laugh? Much better I was living in Mu fifty thousand years ago.”

Following these remarks there was a lull, a highly charged calm, and then with no warning the professor sprang. He threw his arms around June and buried his face in her stiff and tawny wavelets and called her his “little mole” and his “tulip.”

June was taken by surprise. From cultivated men she expected more chat, a longer stalking period, as with Austin, who had sat on this same sofa and pawed her a little in an absentminded way, and pecked her on the cheek, but never making a decisive move. Perhaps he had held back out of wariness, sensing the steady gaze of Mother Mack on the back of his neck, she with one inflamed eyeball pressed to a door crack and her teeth bared in a rictus from the painful effort to see and hear everything. Or from a failure of nerve, or concern about the difference in their ages. Or from a simple lack of ardor. Whatever his reasons, Popper had been much too slow off the mark to suit June and had thereby forfeited his chance.