In a pa.s.sageway far from the skirmishes he heard footsteps-sandaled, not booted-coming after him. He turned to face his pursuer. It was a monk, his scrawny features every inch the ascetic"s. He arrested the sergeant by the tattered collar of his shirt.
"You"re G.o.d-given," he said. He was breathless, but his grip was fierce.
"Let me alone. I want to get out."
"The fighting"s spreading through the building; it"s not safe anywhere."
"I"ll take the risk." The sergeant grinned.
"You were chosen, soldier," the monk replied, still holding on. "Chance stepped in on your behalf. The innocent boy at your side died, but you survived. Don"t you see? Ask yourself why."
He tried to push the shaveling away; the mixture of incense and stale sweat was vile. But the man held fast, speaking hurriedly: "There are secret tunnels beneath the cells. We can slip away without being slaughtered."
Yes?"
"Certainly. If you"ll help me."
"How?"
"I"ve got writings to salvage; a life"s work. I need your muscle, soldier. Don"t fret yourself, you"ll get something in return."
"What have you got that I"d want?" the sergeant said. What could this wild-eyed flagellant possibly possess?
"I need an acolyte," the monk said. "Someone to give my learning to."
"Spare me your spiritual guidance."
"I can teach you so much. How to live forever, if that"s what you want." Mamoulian had started to laugh, but the monk went on with his dreamtalk. "How to take life from other people, and have it for yourself. Or if you like, give it to the dead to resurrect them."
"Never. "
"It"s old wisdom," the monk said. "But I"ve found it again, written out in plain Greek. Secrets that were ancient when the hills were young. Such secrets."
"If you can do all that, why aren"t you tsar of all the Russians?" Mamoulian replied.
The monk let go of his shirt, and looked at the soldier with contempt freshly squeezed from his eyes. "What man," he said slowly, "what man with true ambition in his soul would want to be merely tsar?"
The reply wiped the soldier"s smile away. Strange words, whose significance-had he been asked-he would have had difficulty explaining. But there was a promise in them that his confusion couldn"t rob them of. Well, he thought, maybe this is the way wisdom comes; and the sword didn"t fall on me, did it?
"Show me the way," he said.
Carys smiled: a small but radiant smile. In the s.p.a.ce of a wing-beat winter melted away. Spring blossomed, the ground was green everywhere, especially over the burial pits.
"Where are you going?" Marty asked her. It was clear from her delighted expression that circ.u.mstances had changed. For several minutes she had spat out clues to the life she was sharing in the European"s head. Marty had barely grasped the gist of what was going on. He hoped she would be able to furnish the details later. What country this was; what war.
Suddenly, she said: "I"m finished." Her voice was light; almost playful.
"Carys?"
"Who"s Carys? Never heard of him. Probably dead. They"re all dead but me."
"What have you finished?"
"Learning, of course. All he can teach me. And it was true. Everything he promised: all true. Old wisdom."
"What have you learned?"
She raised her hand, the burned one, and spread it. "I can steal life," she said. "Easily. Just find the place, and drink. Easy to take; easy to give."
"Give?"
"For a while. As long as it suits me." She extended a finger: G.o.d to Adam. "Let there be life."
He began to laugh in her again.
"And the monk?"
"What about him?"
"Is he still with you?"
The sergeant shook Carys" head.
"I killed him, when he"d taught me everything he could." Her hands reached out and strangled the air. "I just throttled him one night, when he was sleeping. Of course he woke when he felt my grip around his throat. But he didn"t struggle; he didn"t make the slightest attempt to save himself." The sergeant was leering as he described the act. "He just let me murder him. I could scarcely believe my luck; I"d been planning the thing for weeks, terrified that he"d read my thoughts. When he went so easily, I was ecstatic-" The leer suddenly vanished. "Stupid," he murmured in her throat. "So, so stupid."
"Why?"
"I didn"t see the trap he"d set. Didn"t see how he"d planned it all along, nurtured me like a son knowing that I"d be his executioner when the time came. I never realized-not once-that I was just his tool. He wanted to die. He wanted to pa.s.s his wisdom"-the word was p.r.o.nounced derisively-"along to me, and then have me put an end to him."
"Why did he want to die?"
"Don"t you see how terrible it is to live when everything around you perishes? And the more the years pa.s.s the more the. thought of death freezes your bowels, because the longer you avoid it the worse you imagine it must be? And you start to long-oh, how you long-for someone to take pity on you, someone to embrace you and share your terrors. And, at the end, someone to go into the dark with you."
"And you chose Whitehead," Marty said, almost beneath his breath, "the way you were chosen; by chance."
"Everything is chance; and so nothing is," the sleeping man p.r.o.nounced; then laughed again, at his own expense, bitterly. "Yes, I chose him, with a game of cards. And then I made a bargain with him."
"But he cheated you."
Carys nodded her head, very slowly, her hand inscribing a circle on the air.
"Round and round," she said. "Round and round."
"What will you do now?"
"Find the pilgrim. Wherever he is, find him! Take him with me. I swear won"t let him escape me. I"ll take him, and show him."
"Show him what?"
No answer came. In its place, she sighed, stretching a little, and moving her head from left to right and back again. With a shock of recognition Marty realized that he was still watching her repeat Mamoulian"s movements: that ail the time the European had been asleep, and now, his energies repleted, he was preparing to wake. He snapped his previous question out again, determined to have an answer to his last, vital inquiry.
"Show him what?"
"h.e.l.l," Mamoulian said. "He cheated me! He squandered all my teachings, all my knowledge, threw it away for greed"s sake, for power"s sake, for the life of the body. Appet.i.te! All gone for appet.i.te. All my precious love, wasted!" Marty could hear, in his litany, the voice of the puritan-monk"s voice, perhaps?-the rage of a creature who wanted the world purer than it was and lived in torment because it saw only filth and flesh sweating to make more flesh, more filth. What hope of sanity in such a place? Except to find a soul to share the torment, a lover to hate the world with. Whitehead had been such a partner. And now Mamoulian was being true to his lover"s soul: wanting, at the end, to g0 into death with the only other creature he had ever trusted. "We"ll go to nothing . . ." he breathed, and the breath was a promise. "All of us, go to nothing. Down! Down!"
He was waking. There was no time left for further questions, however curious Marty was.
"Carys."
"Down! Down!"
"Carys! Can you hear me? Come out of him! Quickly!"
Her head rolled on her neck.
"Carys!"
She grunted.
"Quickly!"
In Mamoulian"s head the patterns had begun again, as enchanting as ever. Spurts of light that would become pictures in a while, she knew. What would they be this time? Birds, flowers, trees in blossom. What a wonderland it was.
"Carys."
The voice of someone she had once known was calling her from some very distant place. But so were the lights. They were resolving themselves even now. She waited, expectantly, but this time they weren"t memories that burst into view- "Carys! Quickly!"
-they were the real world, appearing as the European opened his lids. Her body tensed. Marty reached for her hand, and seized it. She exhaled, slowly, the breath coming out as a thin whine between her teeth, and suddenly she was awake to her imminent danger. She flung her thought out of the European"s head and back across the miles to Kilburn. For an agonized instant she felt her will falter, and she was falling backward, back into his waiting head. Terrified, she gasped like a stranded fish while her mind fought for propulsion.
Marty dragged her to a standing position, but her legs buckled. He held her up with his arms wrapped around her.
"Don"t leave me," he whispered into her hair. "Gentle G.o.d, don"t leave me."
Suddenly, her eyes flickered open.
"Marty," she mumbled. "Marty."
It was her: he knew her look too well for the European to deceive him.
"You came back," he said.
They didn"t speak for several minutes, simply held on to each other. When they did talk, she had no taste for retelling what she"d experienced. Marty held his curiosity in check. It was enough to know they had no Devil on their backs.
Just old humanity, cheated of love, and ready to pull down the world on its head.
63
So perhaps they had a chance of life after all. Mamoulian was a man, for all his unnatural faculties. He was two hundred years old, perhaps, but what were a few years between friends?
The priority now was to find Papa and warn him of what Mamoulian intended, then plan as best they could against the European"s offensive. If Whitehead wouldn"t help, that was his prerogative. At least Marty would have tried, for old times" sake. And in the light of the murder of Charmaine and Flynn, Whitehead"s crimes against Marty diminished to sins of discourtesy. He was easily the lesser of two evils.
As to the how of finding Whitehead, the only lead Marty had was the strawberries. It had been Pearl who"d told him that Old Man Whitehead had never let a day go by without strawberries. Not in twenty years, she"d claimed. Wasn"t it possible, then, that he"d continued to indulge himself, even in hiding? It was a slender line of inquiry. But appet.i.te, as Marty had so recently learned, was at the crux of this conundrum.
He tried to persuade Carys to come with him, but she was wrung out to the point of collapse. Her journeys, she said, were over; she"d seen too much for one day. All she wanted now was the sunshine island, and on that point she would not be moved. Reluctantly, Marty left her to her fix, and went off to discuss strawberries with Mr. Halifax of Holborn.
Left alone, Carys found forgetfulness very quickly. The sights she had witnessed in Mamoulian"s head were dismissed to the dim past from which they"d come. The future, if there was to be one, was ignored here, where there was only tranquility. She bathed under a sun of nonsenses, while outside a soft rain began.
XII
The Fat Man Dances
64
Breer didn"t mind the change in the weather. It was altogether too sultry on the street, and the rain, with its symbolic cleansing, made him feel more comfortable. Though it was many weeks since he"d felt the least spasm of pain, he did itch in the heat. Not even an itch really. It was a more fundamental irritation: a crawling sensation on or beneath his skin that no ointment allayed. The drizzle seemed to subdue it a measure, however, for which he was grateful. Either the rain, or the fact that he was going to see the woman he loved. Though Carys had attacked him several times (he wore the wounds like trophies) he forgave her her trespa.s.ses. She understood him better than anyone else. She was unique-a G.o.ddess, despite her body hair-and he knew that if he could only see her again, display himself for her, touch her, all would be well.
But first he had to get to the house. It had taken him a while to find a taxi that would stop for him, and when one obliged the driver only took him part of the way before telling him to get out because, he claimed, the smell was so repulsive he wouldn"t be able to get another fare all day. Shamed by this all-too-public rejection-the taxi driver harangued him from his cab as he drove away-Breer took to the back streets, where he hoped he wouldn"t be sneered and sn.i.g.g.e.red at.
It was in one such backwater, just a few minutes" walk from where Carys was waiting for him, that a young man with blue swallows tattooed on his neck stepped out of a doorway to offer the Razor-Eater some a.s.sistance.
"Hey, man. You look sick, you know that? Let me lend you a hand."
"No, no," Breer grunted, hoping the Good Samaritan would leave him alone. "I"m fine, really."
"But I insist," Swallows said, picking up his pace to overtake Breer, then standing in the Razor-Eater"s way. He glanced up and down the road to check for witnesses before pushing Breer into the doorway of a bricked-up house.
"You keep your mouth shut, man," he said, whipping out a knife and pressing it to Breer"s bandaged throat, "and you"ll be OK. Just empty your pockets. Quick! Quick!"
Breer made no move to comply. The suddenness of the attack had disoriented him; and the way the youth had seized his splinted neck had made him giddy. Swallows pushed the knife a little way into the bandaging to make his point clear. The victim smelled bad, and the thief wanted the job over and done with as soon as possible.
"Pockets, man! You deaf?" He pushed the knife deeper. The man didn"t flinch. "I"ll do it, man," the thief warned, "I"ll slit your f.u.c.king throat."