"I"ve changed?"
"Yes, I"ve said that already." Cadimon stopped potting lilies and stood up, examined Dradin from crown to stirrups. "You"ve been to the jungle. A pity, really. You were a good student."
"I have come back from the jungle, if that"s what you mean. I took fever."
"No doubt. You"ve changed most definitely. Here, hold a lily bulb for me." Cadimon crouched down once more. Pull, pot, pull.
"You seem . . . you seem somehow less imposing. But healthier."
"No, no. You"ve grown taller, that"s all. What are you now that you are no longer a missionary?"
"No longer a missionary?" Dradin said, and felt as if he were drowning, and here they had only just started to talk.
"Yes. Or no. Lily please. Thank you. Blessed things require so much dirt. Good for the lungs exercise is. Good for the soul. How is your father these days? Such a shame about your mother. But how is he?"
"I haven"t seen him in over three years. He wrote me while I was in the jungle and he seemed to be doing well."
"Mmmm. I"m glad to hear it. Your father and I had the most wonderful conversations a long time ago. A very long time ago. Why, I can remember sitting up at his house-you just in a crib then, of course-and debating the aesthetic value of the Golden Spheres until-"
"I"ve come here looking for a job."
Silence. Then Cadimon said, "Don"t you still work for-"
"I quit." Emphasis on quit, like the pressure on an egg to make it crack just so.
"Did you now? I told you you were no longer a missionary. I haven"t changed a bit from those days at the academy, Dradin. You didn"t recognize me because you"ve changed, not I. I"m the same. I do not change. Which is more than you can say for the weather around here."
It was time, Dradin decided, to take control of the conversation. It was not enough to counter-punch Cadimon"s drifting dialogue. He bent to his knees and gently placed the rest of the lilies in Cadimon"s lap.
"Sir," he said. "I need a position. I have been out of my mind with the fever for three months and now, only just recovered, I long to return to the life of a missionary."
"Determined to stick to a point, aren"t you?" Cadimon said. "A point stickler. A stickler for rules. I remember you. Always the sort to be shocked by a Living Saint rather than amused. Rehea.r.s.ed rather than spontaneous. Oh well."
"Cadimon . . . "
"Can you cook?"
"Cook? I can boil cabbage. I can heat water."
Cadimon patted Dradin on the side of his stomach. "So can a hedge hog, my dear. So can a hedgehog, if pressed. No, I mean cook as in the Cooks of Kalay, who can take nothing more than a cauldron of bilge water and a side of beef three days old and tough as calluses and make a dish so succulent and sweet it shames the taste buds to eat so much as a carrot for days afterwards. You can"t cook, can you?"
"What does cooking have to do with missionary work?"
"Oh, ho. I"d have thought a jungle veteran would know the answer to that! Ever heard of cannibals? Eh? No, that"s a joke. It has nothing to do with missionary work. There." He patted the last of the lilies and rose to sit on the bench, indicating with a wave of the hand that Dradin should join him.
Dradin sat down on the bench next to Cadimon. "Surely, you need experienced missionaries?"
Cadimon shook his head. "We don"t have a job for you. I"m sorry. You"ve changed, Dradin."
"But you and my father . . . " Blood rose to Dradin"s face. For he could woo until he turned purple, but without a job, how to fund such adven tures in pocketbook as his new love would entail?
"Your father is a good man, Dradin. But this mission is not made of money. I see tough times ahead."
Pride surfaced in Dradin"s mind like a particularly ugly crocodile. "I am a good missionary, sir. A very good missionary. I have been a missionary for over five years, as you know. And, as I have said, I am just now out of the jungle, having nearly died of fever. Several of my colleagues did not recover. The woman. The woman . . . "
But he trailed off, his skin goose-pimpled from a sudden chill. Layeville, Flay, Stern, Thaw, and Krug had all gone mad or died under the onslaught of green, the rain and the dysentery, and the savages with their poison arrows. Only he had crawled to safety, the mush of the jungle floor beneath his chest a-murmur with leeches and dung bugs and "molly twelve-step" centipedes. A trek into and out of h.e.l.l, and he could not even now remember it all, or wanted to remember it all.
"Paugh! Dying of fever is easy. The jungle is easy, Dradin. I could survive, frail as I am. It"s the city that"s hard. If you"d only bother to observe, you"d see the air is overripe with missionaries. You can"t defecate out a win dow without fouling a brace of them. The city bursts with them. They think that the festival signals opportunity, but the opportunity is not for them! No, we need a cook, and you cannot cook."
Dradin"s palms slickened with sweat, his hands shaking as he examined them. What now? What to do? His thoughts circled and circled around the same unanswerable question: How could he survive on the coins he had yet on his person and still woo the woman in the window? And he must woo her; he did not feel his heart could withstand the blow of not pursuing her.
"I am a good missionary," Dradin repeated, looking at the ground. "What happened in the jungle was not my fault. We went out looking for converts and when I came back the compound was overrun."
Dradin"s breaths came quick and shallow and his head felt light. Suffocating. He was suffocating under the weight of jungle leaves closing over his nose and mouth.
Cadimon sighed and shook his head. In a soft voice he said, "I am not unsympathetic," and held out his hands to Dradin. "How can I explain myself? Maybe I cannot, but let me try. Perhaps this way: Have you converted the Flying Squirrel People of the western hydras? Have you braved the frozen wastes of Lascia to convert the ice-cube-like Skamoo?"
"No."
"What did you say?"
"No!"
"Then we can"t use you. At least not now."
Dradin"s throat ached and his jaw tightened. Would he have to beg, then? Would he have to become a mendicant himself? On the catafalque, the Living Saint had begun to stir, mumbling in his half-sleep.
Cadimon rose and put his hand on Dradin"s shoulder. "If it is any consolation, you were never really a missionary, not even at the religious academy. And you are definitely not a missionary now. You are . . . something else. Extraordinary, really, that I can"t put my finger on it."
"You insult me," Dradin said, as if he were the gaudy figurehead on some pompous yacht sailing languid on the Moth.
"That is not my intent, my dear. Not at all."
"Perhaps you could give me money. I could repay you."
"Now you insult me. Dradin, I cannot lend you money. We have no money. All the money we collect goes to our creditors or into the houses and shelters of the poor. We have no money, nor do we covet it."
"Cadimon," Dradin said. "Cadimon, I"m desperate. I need money."
"If you are desperate, take my advice-leave Ambergris. And before the festival. It"s not safe for priests to be on the streets after dark on festival night. There have been so many years of calm. Ha! I tell you, it can"t last."
"It wouldn"t have to be much money. Just enough to-"
Cadimon gestured toward the entrance. "Beg from your father, not from me. Leave. Leave now."
Dradin, taut muscles and clenched fists, would have obeyed Cadimon out of respect for the memory of authority, but now a vision rose into his mind like the moon rising over the valley the night before. A vision of the jungle, the dark green leaves with their veins like spines, like long, deli cate bones. The jungle and the woman and all of the dead . . .
"I will not."
Cadimon frowned. "I"m sorry to hear you say that. I ask you again, leave."
Lush green, smothering, the taste of dirt in his mouth; the smell of burning, smoke curling up into a question mark.
"Cadimon, I was your student. You owe me the-"
"Living Saint!" Cadimon shouted. "Wake up, Living Saint."
The Living Saint uncurled himself from his repose atop the catafalque.
"Living Saint," Cadimon said, "dispense with him. No need to be gentle." And, turning to Dradin: "Goodbye, Dradin. I am very sorry."
The Living Saint, spouting insults, jumped from the catafalque and-his p.e.n.i.s purpling and flaccid as a sea anemone, brandished menacingly-ran toward Dradin, who promptly took to his heels, stumbling through the ranks of the gathered acolytes and hearing directly behind him as he navigated the blue gra.s.s trail not only the Living Saint"s screams of "p.i.s.s off! p.i.s.s off, you great big baboon!" but also Cadimon"s distant shouts of: "I"ll pray for you, Dradin. I"ll pray for you." And, then, too close, much too close, the unmistakable hot and steamy sound of a man relieving himself, followed by the hands of the Living Saint clamped down on his shoulder blades, and a much swifter exit than he had hoped for upon his arrival, scuffing his fundament, his pride, his dignity.
"And stay out!"
When Dradin stopped running he found himself on the fringe of the religious quarter, next to an emaciated macadamia salesman who cracked jokes like nuts. Out of breath, Dradin put his hands on his hips. His lungs strained for air. Blood rushed furiously through his chest. He could almost persuade himself that these symptoms were only the aftershock of exertion, not the aftershock of anger and desperation. Actions unbecoming a missionary. Actions unbecoming a gentleman. What might love next drive him to?
Determined to regain his composure, Dradin straightened his shirt and collar, then continued on his way in a manner he hoped mimicked the stately gait of a mid-level clergy member, to whom all such earthly things were beneath and below. But the bulge of red veins at his neck, the stiffness of fingers in claws at his sides, these clues gave him away, and knowing this made him angrier still. How dare Cadimon treat him as though he were practically a stranger! How dare the man betray the bond between his father and the church!
More disturbing, where were the agents of order when you needed them? No doubt the city had ordinances against public urination. Al though that presupposed the existence of a civil authority, and of this mythic beast Dradin had yet to convince himself. He had not seen a single blue, black, or brown uniform, and certainly not filled out with a body lodged within its fabric, a man who might symbolize law and order and thus give the word flesh. What did the people of Ambergris do when thieves and molesters and murderers traversed the thoroughfares and alleyways, the underpa.s.ses and the bridges? But the thought brought him back to the mushroom dwellers and their alcove shrines, and he abandoned it, a convulsion traveling from his chin to the tips of his toes. Perhaps the jungle had not yet relinquished its grip.
Finally, shoulders bowed, eyes on the ground, in abject defeat, he admitted to himself that his methods had been grotesque. He had made a fool of himself in front of Cadimon. Cadimon was not beholden to him. Cadimon had only acted as he must when confronted with the unG.o.dly.
Necklace still wrapped in the page from The Refraction of Light in a Prison, Dradin came again to Hoegbotton & Sons, only to find that his love no longer stared from the third floor window. A shock traveled up his spine, a shock that might have sent him gibbering to his mother"s side aboard the psychiatrists" houseboat, if not that he was a rational and rationalizing man. How his heart drowned in a sea of fears as he tried to conjure up a thousand excuses: she was out to lunch; she had taken ill; she had moved to another part of the building. Never that she was gone for good, lost as he was lost; that he might never, ever see her face again. Now Dradin understood his father"s addiction to sweet-milled mead, beer, wine and champagne, for the woman was his addiction, and he knew that if he had only seen her porcelain-perfect visage as he suffered from the jungle fevers, he would have lived for her sake alone.
The city might be savage, stray dogs might share the streets with grimy urchins whose blank eyes reflected the knowledge that they might soon be covered over, blinded forever, by the same two pennies just begged from some gentleman, and no one in all the fuming, fulminous boulevards of trade might know who actually ran Ambergris-or, if anyone ran it at all, but, like a renegade clock, it ran on and wound itself heedless, empowered by the insane weight of its own inertia, the weight of its own citizenry, stamping one, two, three hundred thousand strong; no matter this savagery in the midst of apparent civilization-still the woman in the window seemed to him more ruly, more disciplined and in control and thus, perversely, malleable to his desire, than anyone Dradin had yet met in Ambergris: this priceless part of the whale, this over-br.i.m.m.i.n.g stew of the sublime and the ridiculous.
It was then that his rescuer came: Dvorak, popping up from betwixt a yardstick of a butcher awaiting a hansom and a jowly furrier draped over with furs of auburn, gray, and white. Dvorak, indeed, dressed all in black, against which the red dots of his tattoo throbbed and, in his jacket pocket, a dove-white handkerchief stained red at the edges. A mysterious, feminine smile decorated his mutilated face.
"She"s not at the window," Dradin said.
Dvorak"s laugh forced his mouth open wide and wider still, carnivorous in its red depths. "No. She is not at the window. But have no doubt: she is inside. She is a most devout employee."
"You gave her the book?"
"I did, sir." The laugh receded into a shallow smile. "She took it from me like a lady, with hesitation, and when I told her it came from a secret admirer, she blushed."
"Blushed?" Dradin felt lighter, his blood yammering and his head a puff of smoke, a cloud, a spray of cotton candy.
"Blushed. Indeed, sir, a good sign."
Dradin took the package from his pocket and, hands trembling, gave it to the dwarf. "Now you must go back in and find her, and when you find her, give her this. You must ask her to join me at The Drunken Boat at twilight. You know the place?"
Dvorak nodded, his hands clasped protectively around the package.
"Good. I will have a table next to the festival parade route. Beg her if you must. Intrigue her and entreat her."
"I will do so."
"U-u-unless you think I should take this gift to her myself?"
Dvorak sneered. He shook his head so that the green of the jungles blurred before Dradin"s eyes. "Think, sir. Think hard. Would you have her see you first out of breath, unkempt, and, if I may be so bold, there is a slight smell of urine. No, sir. Meet her first at the tavern, and there you shall appear a man of means, at your ease, inviting her to the unraveling of further mysteries."
Dradin looked away. How his inexperience must show. How foolish his suggestions. And yet, also, relief that Dvorak had thwarted his brashness.
"Sir?" Dvorak said. "Sir?"
Dradin forced himself to look at Dvorak. "You are correct, of course. I will see her at the tavern."
"Coins, sir."
"Coins?"
"I cannot live on kindness."
"Yes. Of course. Of course." d.a.m.n Dvorak! No compa.s.sion there. He stuck a hand into his pants pocket and pulled out a gold coin, which he handed to Dvorak. "Another when you return."
"As you wish. Wait here." Dvorak gave Dradin one last long look and then scurried up the steps, disappearing into the darkness of the doorway.
Dradin discovered he was bad at waiting. He sat on the curb, got up, crouched to his knees, leaned on a lamp post, scratched at a flea biting his ankle. All the while, he looked up at the blank window and thought: If I had come into the city today, I would have looked up at the third floor and seen nothing and this frustration, this impatience, this ardor, would not be practically bursting from me now.
Finally, Dvorak scuttled down the steps with his jacket tails floating out behind him, his grin larger, if that were possible, positively a leer.
"What did she say?" Dradin pressed. "Did she say anything? Something? Yes? No?"
"Success, sir. Success. Busy as she is, devout as she is, she said little, but only that she will meet you at The DrunkenBoat, though perhaps not until after dusk has fallen. She looked quite favorably on the emerald and the message. She calls you, sir, a gentleman."
A gentleman. Dradin stood straighter. "Thank you," he said. "You have been a great help to me. Here." And he pa.s.sed another coin to Dvorak, who s.n.a.t.c.hed it from his hand with all the swiftness of a snake.
As Dvorak murmured goodbye, Dradin heard him with but one ear, coc.o.o.ned as he was in a world where the sun always shone bright and uncovered all hidden corners, allowing no shadows or dark and glimmering truths.
V.
DRADIN HURRIED BACK TO THE HOSTEL. HE HARDLY SAW the flashes of red, green, and blue around him, nor sensed the expectant quality in the air, the huddled groups of people talking in animated voices, for night would bring the Festival of Freshwater Squid and the streets would hum and thrum with celebration. Already, the clean smell of fresh-baked bread, mixed with the treacly promise of sweets, began to tease noses and turn frowns into smiles. Boys let out early from school played games with hoops and marbles and bits of brick. The more adventurous imitated the grand old King Squid sinking ships with a single lash of tentacle, puddle-bound toy boats smashed against drainpipes. Still oth ers watched the erection of scaffolding on tributary streets leading into Alb.u.muth Boulevard . Stilt men with purpling painted faces hung candy and papiermache heads in equal quant.i.ties from their stilts.
At last, Dradin came to his room, flung open the door, and shut it abruptly behind him. As the citizens of Ambergris prepared for the festival, so now he must prepare for his love, putting aside the distractions of joblessness and decreasing coin. He stripped and took a shower, turning the water on so hot that needles of heat tattooed his skin red, but he felt clean, and more than clean, cleansed and calm, when he came out after thirty minutes and wiped himself dry with a large green towel. Standing in front of the bathroom mirror in the nude, Dradin noted that although he had filled out since the cessation of his fever, he had not filled out into fat. Not even the shadow of a belly, and his legs thick with muscle. Hardly a family characteristic, that, for his randy father had, since the onset of Mom"s river adventures, grown as pudgy as raw bread dough. Nothing for Dad to do but continue to teach ethics at the university and hope that the lithe young things populating his cla.s.ses would pity him. But for his son a different fate, Dradin was sure.
Dradin shaved, running the blade across his chin and down his neck, so that he thrilled to the self-control it took to keep the blade steady; and yet, when he was done, his hand shook. There. Now various oils worked into the scalp so that his hair became a uniform black, untainted by white except at the outer provinces, where it grazed his ears. Then a spot of rouge to bring out the muddy green of his eyes-a scandalous habit, perhaps, learned from his mother of course, but Dradin knew many pale priests who used it.
For clothing, Dradin started with clean underwear and followed with fancy socks done up in muted purple and gold serpent designs. Then the trousers of gray-gray as the slits of his father"s eyes in the grip of spirits, gray as his mother"s listless moods after performances at the music halls. Yes, a smart gray, a deep gray, not truly conservative, followed by the shirt: large on him but not voluminous, white with purple and gold b.u.t.tons, to match the socks, and a jacket over top that mixed gray and purple thread so that, from heel to head, he looked as distinguished as a debutante at some political gala. It pleased him-as much a uniform as his missionary clothes, but the goal a conversion of a more personal nature. Yes, he would do well.
Thus equipped, his pockets jingly with his last coins, his stomach wrapped in coils of nerves (an at-sea sensation of notenoughmoney, notenoughmoney beating inside his organs like a pulse), Dradin made his way out onto the streets.
The haze of twilight had smothered Ambergris, m.u.f.fling sounds and limiting vision, but everywhere also: lights. Lights from balconies and bedrooms, signposts and horse carriages, candles held by hand and lanterns swinging on the arms of grizzled caretakers who sang out, from deep in their throats, "The dying of the light! The dying of the light! Let the Festival begin."
Wraiths riding metal bars, men on bicycles swished past, bells all a-tinkle, and children in formal attire, entow to the vast and long-suffering barges of nannies, who tottered forward on unsteady if stocky legs. Child mimes in white face approached Dradin, prancing and pirouetting, and Dradin clapped in approval and patted their heads. They reminded him of the naked boys and girls of the Nimblytod Tribe, who swung through trees and ate birds that became lost in the forest and could not find their way again into the light.
Women in the red and black of hunters" uniforms crossed his path. They rode hollow wooden horses that fit around their waists, fake wooden legs clacking to either side as their own legs cantered or galloped or pranced, but so controlled, so tight and rigid, that they never broke formation despite the random nature of their movements. The horses had each been individually painted in grotesque shades of green, red, and white: eyes wept blood, teeth snarled into black fangs. The women"s lips were drawn back against the red leer of lipstick to neigh and nicker. Around them, the gathering crowd shrieked in laughter, the riders so entranced that only the whites of their eyes showed, shockingly pale against the gloom.