The other answered."They came at the same time, and in the same way. I don"t like the way they look. I just don"t like it. They"re trying to appear harmless, but do you believe it?"
"What do you want to do, Walter, kill them?" asked a voice from the far side. Hardesty tried to see over their shoulders.
"Yes," was the answer, followed by a buzz of disapproval.
Hardesty stood on a bucket and looked over their heads. Sitting on a bunch of hay bales, tapping their feet, smiling, and chewing sprigs of straw, were fifty or sixty of the oddest-looking men he hadever seen.
Their faces were either pinched and squashed, or as long and sharp as saws. Snub noses, overly bushy eyebrows, huge boxing-glove chins, and wickedly bowed legs were among their conspicuous features. But each and every one had in his eyes an emptiness that was terribly threatening, even if one could not say exactly why. They were dressed like vaudevillians, in derbies, and seemed to think nothing of it. They were further decked out in Edwardian three-piece suits, watch chains, and canes, all ratty and inelegant. They flashed the ingratiating smiles of those who do not have to conceal an evil and violent nature. But what proof was this of what a.s.sertion? And from where had they come?
"They were just suddenly all over the place," was the answer to the question that Hardesty had spoken aloud,"rummaging in people"s barns, trying to hitch up sleds, stealing horses. We caught about twenty of them that way. And then, when we thought we had them all, we ran into another fifty in a field near the mill. Who knows? Maybe there"s more out there."
"As long as we"ve got him" someone said.
"Who?" Hardesty asked.
A dozen men pointed past the doorway of another room, to thedoctor and several other men. The doctor"s kit was slung over his shoulder, and his shotgun was aimed at whatever he was observing. On his way over, Hardesty kicked a pile of something that jangled. We took it all off these muskrats here," he was told. He bent to examine the pile, and saw silver- and gold-plated pistols, including ones with pearl handles, a set or two of derringers small enough for a dollhouse, bra.s.s knuckles with projecting stilettos, spiked beaver tails, blackjacks, a miniature shotgun, and ivory-handled garrotes. There were no rifles though. No skis, snowshoes, or heavy clothing. Whoever they were, they were poorly equipped for the Lake of the Coheeries.
Hardesty put his hand on the doctor"s shoulder and gently pushed him to the side so that he could see. When he did see, he shrank back, trying to catch his breath and stay upright.
"Who in G.o.d"s name is that?" he asked, still off balance.
"I could say, but I don"t want to," the doctor replied.
Hardesty then moved between the men with the guns and looked into the little room where they kept the prisoner, who was bigger than the runts in the derbies, but not all that big, and quite thin. He had a dreadful face, and his limbs twitched almost as much as his darting tonguea"which seemed to have a life of its own, and was obviously beyond his control. His eyes, too, moved on their own, like angry rats trying to get out of a cage. Hardesty had the distinct impression that this man was a construct. Neither the eyes nor the bony fingers ceased moving for a second. Now and then, electricity seemed to spark from him, and, clearly, imprisoned within him was a destructive agony entirely inappropriate to the peace of the Coheeries.
"Who is he?" Hardesty asked.
"Ask him," was the reply.
"Me?" Hardesty said.
The doctor looked at Hardesty askance."Yes, you."
"Who are you?" Hardesty begged in a barely audible voice. Then he took hold of himself, stepped closer to the prisoner, and repeated the question with admirable firmness and authority.
Pearly Soames bristled. His hot electric palsies filled the air as if he were a hundred rattlesnakes dangling from a chandelier. Hardesty suspected that this strange man and his companions were not actually captive but, rather, just resting in a warm barn to which the farmers had been courteous enough to bring them. This notion wasfairly well confirmed by whatever it was that shook the barn walls when Pearly was displeased.
But as far as Hardesty knew, this had nothing to do with Abby"s sickness, and he stole the doctor away from the Coheeries men, depriving them of the doctor"s learned opinions as they deliberated on what to do with the outlandish creatures that they had discovered in their fields and barns.
THE next night, under a sliver of silver moon, Hardesty drove the sleigh out of Lake of the Coheeries Town at an astounding pace. He cracked the whip over the mare"s head until she devoured the road in front of her like a hungry dog. Though she was on fire with the race, it still wasn"t enough for him, and while he scanned the landscape in every direction, he shouted for her to pull even faster. An automatic shotgun lay by his side. Virginia held another on her lap. And Mrs. Gamely, inside a tentlike structure in the back seat with Martin and Abby, had her double-barreled twelve-gauge Ithaca right next to her. The odd gentlemen had been escorted from town onto the high road. Now the Marrattas and Mrs. Gamely had to pa.s.s through their ranks on the way out, because the doctor had said that he was unable to treat Abby. She was to be taken to a hospital without delay. Now they could no longer consider the luxury of being trapped in the safety and stillness of the Coheeries. Now they needed the city as much as they had needed before to get away from it, in fact much more. The doctor had been unwilling to educate them in the particulars of the disease."That will come later," he said."You"ll want to know everything there is to know about it, and you will. It won"t make much difference." They were stunned, and they didn"t believe hima"what would a country doctor know?a"but they left immediately.
They had set out armed to the teeth, because they expected that the prisoners who had just been released would want the sleigh and the horse. There was only one road, and the snow was too deep for travel across the open terrain. Hardesty calculated that he would intercept the strange lot of men before the climb from the plain tothe mountains. In that case, the sooner the better, since the horse would have more speed on the flat than in the hills. He drove her hard as he did not only because they needed to get Abby out quickly, but because he wanted to be halfway through the brigands before they knew that he had overtaken them.
The horse seemed to understand. But whether she did or not she pulled them at a delirious pace, locomotive style, along the snow-packed road.
When they had crossed most of the plain they came to a rise from which it was possible to look down the road that led into the mountains. Here they paused to search the steppes in front of them. Apart from the mare"s breathing and the gentle luffing of the sleigh blankets in the night breeze, there were no sounds. Though the temperature was less than zero, the breeze seemed balmy. Only after Hardesty and Virginia had looked carefully about them to make sure that no one was close by, did they again look up to see the faint bloomings of the night sky. Against the stars and ether, red plumes as squat and symmetrical as mushrooms, as graceful as parachutes, and as quick to fade as shooting stars, flowered and disappeared, floating downward. Every few seconds one of these would flare and vanish, though sometimes several would appear at one time or in rapid succession.
"Parachutists," Hardesty said."And they keep on coming. Who knows, maybe it"s been that way all night. Maybe it"ll continue. And it"s not the Eighty-Second Airborne, either."
Then they looked downward, and as their eyes adjusted to the change in light, they saw that the plain was filled with scattered formsa"gray individuals and dark formations struggling through the snow to converge on the road, where they made a ragged column that stretched for miles. These night soldiers moved silently and deliberately, without signals or lights. There was a thud in the snow nearby, and Hardesty and Virginia saw a doubled form unfold an run down the hill like a rat. It had been a man, clutching his hat to make sure that the breeze coming up the hillside did not roll it off his head.
"Can we go around?" Virginia asked.
"The horse would be chest deep. She could never pull thesleigh."
"Is there another road?"
"You know better than I do that there isn"t," Hardesty answered."Undo the safety," he said, readying his own gun,"and brace yourself with your feet. Mrs. Gamely?"
"Yes, dear?" came the answer from the tentlike enclosure in the back of the sleigh.
"How fast can you load that thing?"
"Fast enough to keep a pie plate in the air. Before Virginia was born," Mrs. Gamely said,"Theodore and I had to drive now and then to Bucklenburg in the hills. The wolves there were as big as ponies and as hungry as stecthaws. That"s where I learned." "Are Abby and Martin sleeping?" Virginia asked."Tucked away, sort of behind me," Mrs. Gamely answered."Jack is in the hatbox. So is Teddy."
"All right," Hardesty said,"let"s get to the forest." He snapped the reins and the mare moved forward, picking up speed as she went down the hill. Her hoofbeats were m.u.f.fled in the snow, and the bells had been removed.
As their runners hissed along the smooth road, they pa.s.sed stragglers who hardly had time to get out of the way, but soon the sled began to break into formations of ten or fifteen men, scattering them against the s...o...b..nks like mailsacks tossed from a train. Pistol shots were fired, alerting those ahead, who still were not aware of exactly what was coming at them from the dark. The horse began to thud against the ones who tried to stand their ground. This slowed her down. Muzzle flashes appeared from the front and the sides, the children awoke and began to scream, and dozens of the marchers were hanging on to the sled or trying to jump into it.
Hardesty, Virginia, and Mrs. Gamely opened up with their shotguns, and the deafening noise was amplified by the shouting of the men on the road. The ma.s.s of the marchers seemed likely to stop them, and they soon slowed down to a trot. The horse was wounded. Her nostrils flared and her teeth showed. She was no Athansor, no war-horse, and as she bled, she cried out for him. Because she wasbound by the traces of the sleigh, she could use only her forelegs and only directly in front of her. This she did, knocking down her attackers and then pulling the knifelike runners over their limbs and bodies. But there were so many of them that eventually she found herself standing still.
Though they reloaded very fast, Hardesty, Virginia, and Mrs Gamely could not reload fast enough."Don"t stop firing," Hardesty called out as they were gradually overwhelmed by ranks of squat insistent fighters who grunted and groaned, and held onto the sleigh with fleshy podlike hands. The more it seemed that the Marrattas were about to go under, the harder they fought. There were hundreds and hundreds of little men in a black knot around the sled.
No one saw the white trail in the sky ahead, far brighter than when it had been a thin lashlike bend to the southeast. Now it appeared like a comet, dripping a million diamond embers that flared briefly and left the sky full of white smoke. It pa.s.sed over them, a weaving shuttlec.o.c.k, and then descended to the battle, lighting the white horse at the end of its blazing beam.
First he froze the Short Tails in astonishment, and then he cleared a path through them for the sleigh. When he was rampant, his forelegs were a wheel of white knives, opening a b.l.o.o.d.y cut in the snow. When he kicked, the unfortunates who took the blow were propelled into the air like artillery sh.e.l.ls. And when Athansor used his head and neck and teeth, he moved so fast that there seemed to be several of him.
Then, a miracle of sharp and deadly grace, he began to move forward, wading through them, gaining speed, until he was fighting and running at the same time. The mare followed. Hardesty stopped firing and drove. They were galloping now, past the thinning ranks of the Short Tails. With the white horse a length and a half ahead, they broke into the clear and ran toward the mountains.
He took them effortlessly to the top, from which they could see the Coheeries stretching away into the night. It seemed like a place that was too close to the stars to be cold, one of those tranquil high overlooks where there are no senses, but only the spirit. The white horse stretched his long neck down to the snow and then raised himself. He took a few turns around the sleigh and approached the mare He was twice as big as she was. He bent his huge head and touched the side of her face. She backed a pace or two. Then he turned his attention to her wounds. He licked them, one by one; and, one by one, they were healed. Then he walked a few paces ahead, looked up, and broke into his long strides.
The next thing the Marrattas knew, they were alone, and a white band that had stretched across the sky was beginning to fade. They heard a faint whistling.
Now it was almost morning, the moon was down, and the stars were tired. Hardesty flicked the reins, and the mare led them into the mountain forests.
OLD aldermen with beards on their jowls, monomaniacal ward captains, party officials, ex-mayors, and precinct hacks insisted as one that the preelection debates embrace a topic or two other than the holiness of winter and the theory of balance and grace. Skilled even in his thumbs at political maneuver, and used to telling audiences exactly what they wanted to hear, the Ermine Mayor finally forced Praeger to partic.i.p.ate in a series of debates co-sponsored by The Sun and The Ghost, neither of which backed Praeger, since Craig Binky had deserted Praeger after Praeger had denounced him in public as (among many other things) "the slow dim-witted b.o.o.b who runs The Ghost," "our most beloved moron," and "the jerk de resistance who floats around in a blimp that he calls a Binkopede."
Seasoned old rhinoceros that he was, the Ermine Mayor was surethat in the debates he would trample the clean-shaven young idealist, who was an a.s.similated patrician of sorts, and who had opened himself up to attack with the lunacy of all his talk about winter. At first it had been successful, but the voters were now hungry for the hard stuff, and the Ermine Mayor looked forward to his frontal a.s.sault on the newcomer, eager to crush him in the triple millstones of the mayor"s experience, age, and inc.u.mbency.
The first debate had to be held in Central Park because Praegerrefused to be on television. He hated it, and attacked it whenever he could. Since a substantial plank in Praeger"s platform called for the abolition of television, it was not surprising that the station owners threw their support to the Ermine Mayor and ran his political ads for free. They refused to cover Praeger at all, but Praeger would allow television cameras to come anywhere near him anyway. He hit hard at what he called electronic slavery, and implored his listener to rea.s.sert the primacy and sacredness of the printed page. It was the first time in half a century that anyone had attempted to be elected to public office without the use of captive electrons. In the debate only the Ermine Mayor was televised, and it appeared that he was debating a phantom. After ten minutes, Central Park began to fill with people who had abandoned their electronic hearthsides to see the first man in history with the courage to defy what had become the most powerful instrument of persuasion ever developed. Praeger had wisely insisted on the park. Though the evening was frigid, he eventually faced several million people and implored them to smash their televisions. For many, this was shocking and almost inconceivable. They stayed for hours in the cold, stomping from one foot to another, while vendors of hot drinks did a brisk trade among them.
"Who is this character who talks about winter and tells you to throw out your hard-earned television sets?" the mayor asked in a mocking tone.
But Asbury Gunwillow was in the crowd, and he answered,"Praeger de Pinto! Praeger de Pinto!" until the chant spread among the millions, and the mayor was forced to change his tack.
"Well, actually," he said,"I seldom watch television myselfa" only the good programs. You know, the culture stuff."
"What"s the difference what you watch?" Praeger shot back."When that stream of hypnotic electrons starts winging into your brain, you"re finished, good-as-gone, condemned to h.e.l.l. No matter what it is, if you don"t move your eyes and set the pace yourself, you intellect is sentenced to death. The mind, you see, is like a muscle For it to remain agile and strong, it must work. Television rules that out. And besides, Minnie,"a"which is what he sometimes called the Ermine Mayora""you just watch all those dramatizations of literature because you"ve forgotten how to read."
"You"re not just talking about me, sir," said the Ermine Mayor."You"re referring to and insulting the entire electorate!"
"The number of disabled and electronically pickled brains is notat issue, Mr. Mayor," Praeger stated."The issue is that the slaves may want to be free."
"You call our citizens slaves?"
"Yes. They are slaves of the winking eyes that tie them down and tell them what to think, what to buy, and how many blankets to put on their beds each night."
Forced onto the defensive, the Mayor blurted out,"Television is the common ground, the agora of democracy, the great communicator."
"That"s correct, but it only communicates in one direction," Praeger answered."It subjects everyone to its decrees, and will not discuss a single one. It takes away not only the right, but the ability to speak. Besides, I don"t want to communicate with pickles." The crowd was enormously pleased. They could not have been more grateful if he had contrived to pa.s.s out several million pints of hot b.u.t.tered rum."Look at *em all out there," he continued."They have legs. They have muscles. They can breathe, and go outside at night. They can even walk in the cold. In fact, I"ll bet they can even hunt, ski, chop wood, weave, whittle, and fix huge machines.
"Give me a night by the fire, with a book in my hand, not that flickering rectangular son of a b.i.t.c.h that sits screaming in every living room in the land."
"That"s retrogressive," the Ermine Mayor declared."I rest my case," Praeger answered.
Then the moderator introduced the question of whether or not to abolish the garbage man"s training academy on Randall"s Island, since most of the cadets had recently been unable to pa.s.s the noise-making course.
"I won"t talk about that," Praeger said, after the Ermine Mayor delivered a long treatise on how to rattle a trash can."I only want to talk about important thingsa"a decent wage for hard work as well as for skilled work, getting the criminals off the street, banning automobiles from Manhattan. I want to talk about great things, about history and the city, about where we"re going, about the minor tyrannies and the major tyrannies that must be overturned, about my love for this place where I was born, and where I grew up.
"I don"t care about garbage cans. I care about the bridges, therivers, and the maze of streets. I believe that they"re alive unto them selves....
"Look," he said,"sometimes I want to quit, to withdraw from the race and leave the city. It"s a hard placea"too big for most, and nearly always incomprehensible. But at those times, I stop, throw aside my ambitions, and view the city as a whole, and in so doing Iam immeasurably encouraged. For, then, the city"s fire burns away the mists that frequently obscure it. Then, it looks like an animal perched upon the sh.o.r.e of the river. Then, it seems like a single work of art shrouded in changing galleries of climate, a sculpture of unfathomable detail standing on the floor of an orrery that is filled with bright lights and golden suns.
"If you"re born here, or if you come here from some distant place, or if you see the city rising over fields and forests from a home not far away, then you know. Rich or poor, you know that the heart of the city was set to beating when the first axe rang out against the first tree to be felled. And it has never ceased, for the city is a living thing far greater than just its smoke and light and stone.
"The city," he said with emotion that moved even his opponent and held him in the rhythm of the rolling words,"is no less an object of divine affection than life itself or the exact perfections of the light-paced universe. It is alive, and with patience one can see that despite the anarchy, the ugliness, and the fire, it is ultimately just and ultimately kind.
"G.o.d, I love it. I do love it. Forgive me," he said, covering his eyes and bowing his head.
The mayor dared not break the silence of the crowd that stretched from the Sheep Meadow to Eighty-sixth Street, on a great cold night, bathed in the silver glare of floodlights. The openmouthed inc.u.mbent feared that his challenger, who stood before him plainly overcome, was going to take the election for having seen the soul of the city and fallen deeply in love. He feared that the city was going to answer Praeger"s unusual appeal. And indeed it did. Not only were its citizens enthralled, but, when Praeger looked up, the city made itself very clear. For it was all around him, and it was sparkling like a diamond.
THE WHITE DOG OF AFGHANISTAN.
PETER Lake thought the healing powers of time had finally overcome his madness, and that he was learning to live in harmony with other men. In fact, when the man for whom he had cast his twelve votes in the Five Points was elected by a landslide, Peter Lake began to feel rather like a power broker. On election eve he was intensely self-satisfied. It was easy to reinforce this budding pomposity by obtaining from Fippo"s, the city"s best men"s clothing store, an outfit that was not only respectable but handsome as well. With a haircut, a shave, and a careful trim of the mustache, his face emerged from the raggle of white beard"s nest and shiny eggish c.o.c.keyes that had been his madman"s trumpet, and he was surprised to see that he did indeed look like a power broker, or, if not that, a stockbroker, or, at the very least, a ship broker.
His face had been aged and tutored until he looked like the kind of war veteran who didn"t talk about war, a family man, a good citizen, a senatorial businessman whose ambitions had long cooleda" paternal, understanding, a lover of good music and poetry who held some great secret in his soul, the way all such men do, never to be fathomed.
The greatest shock was to see that his face was kind. Where he wondered, did he ever have the time or opportunity to become kind? He did not a.s.sociate kindness with the recent past in which he had been powered through cellar walls like an artillery sh.e.l.l. And rather than puzzle about it, he set out to milk for all it was worth the new mildness that had found its way into his heart.
He took decent lodgings. His salary at The Sun had acc.u.mulated, and he had more than enough to make him comfortable. He chose a small room in an old building in Chelsea. It was in such a backwater that returning home to it every evening was like coming back to a farm. And the woodwork and moldings around the fireplace and near the ceiling, having had the tranquillity and patience to remain unflinchingly in the same place for 150 years, were a great comfort.
At night, Peter Lake made a fire in the grate and rocked back and forth, listening to the clock ticking in the hallway. Like all old clocks, it said, "North Dakota, South Dakota. North Dakota, South Dakota. North Dakota, South Dakota." Although he did not know why, he was moved to tears whenever he heard the hoofbeats of a horse pa.s.sing by outside. Even as he lay in bed in the early morning and listened to the clomping sound of women in high-heeled shoes as they rushed to work, he thought he was hearing milk horses. Perhaps, he hoped, this would be enougha"the clock that said North Dakota, South Dakota, the quiet old room, the fireplace, the shadows, an occasional horse that pa.s.sed by, the slightly Edwardian cut of his suit. Perhaps he would be forgiven for not remembering what he could not really remember. Perhaps that time was truly lost, and he, like others who had been hurled ahead or backward, would succ.u.mb and adapt, and become a quiet citizen with faint and inexplicable memories.
This path was easy. The small pleasures were intensely satisfyinga"not only the eloquent clock, but the fine sound of the piano, which he pretended was welling up through the floors from the apartment of a young musician (but which he knew, in fact, to be coming from within). No matter, the music was beautiful, and he did not question it. He had to rest, to survive. What a delight, then, was survival. Forgoing meals at The Sun (since he preferred to be alone), he ate in a restaurant called the French Mill, where the waiters brought over a slate that had some ten things written on it. He said what he wanted, and it was delivered without fanfare. The food was always extremely good, cheap, and accompanied by a gla.s.s of fruity alpine wine.
Every night after dinner he went to the public baths. First a barber gave him a shave and a day"s trim. Then he put his clothes in a locker and took a high-pressure shower in one of a hundred marble cubicles. After that came a series of alternating steambaths, ice dips, saunas, whirlpools, and showers, until he staggered out, as clean as a baby pearl (even his insides felt whitewashed and scrubbed), all set to rock for an hour or two by the fire and then go to sleep on clean sheets under a vast down comforter.
He had no difficulty falling asleep. Not only did he walk ten miles every day on his way to and from The Sun, but he was not the kind of master mechanic who farmed off the heavy work onto his skinny apprentices. When a web skirt, a piston, or a roller had to be moved, Peter Lake strained as hard as anyone else, and five hours in a health club could not have done him better.
Now the exercise, the good air on his long walks, the fresh vegetables and lean meats at the French Mill, the daily small gla.s.s of wine, the restorative baths, the clean linen on the bed every night, and his heavy reliance on the Swedish Hand (a local laundry) to provide him with starched shirts and clean socks each day, were excellent prods to health and vigor. But his body would have remained the wreck that it had been, were it not for the magical recuperation of his mind.
And this, in his opinion, was due to the meadowlike calm of his old room, the ticking of the clock, the soft talk of the fire, the many many hours of solitude, and the rest that had come to him after his unspeakable dream of hurtling through all the graves of the world.
He tried to put it out of his mind, for nothing was more contrary to the new serenity and equanimity of his life in Chelsea than the frightening truth of the mattera"which was that he, Peter Lake, the master mechanic, the citizen who imagined that he had at last settled in and found peace, was indeed the living registrar of the dead, and was capable of recounting them, in their mult.i.tudes, each and every one all of them, one by one.
ONE evening, Peter Lake was sitting by himself at the French Mill awaiting a small steak, shoestring potatoes, a salad, and a gla.s.s of Brennero mountain wine. As it somehow always manages to be before the winter solstice, but never after, the early darkness was cheerful and promising, even for those who had nothing. For Peter Lake, who had at least half of something, the lights up and down the length of Hudson Street were like those of a Christmas tree.
He leaned against a wall and watched as people hurried through the unusually frigid November wind. Bombarded by ice crystals that were the emissaries of a blizzard, a subway motorman clutching his hat raced for the warmth underground. An expensively dressed woman, who, to judge by her appearance, looked as if she seldom ventured outside the Upper East Side, went by with a pained expression. How impudent of the cold to sneak under her furs. Her pearls gave Peter Lake a painful start. He took note, for it had happened before.
He had to consider women for the first time since he had awakened to see the young red-haired doctor at his bedside. It did not occur to him that part of his reason for going on the b.u.m may have been to avoid women. And he had no memory of any former loyalties, except that he was unable even to look at a woman with blue eyes, at least not directly; and young girls with a certain kind of face had the same effect; and, now, the pearls.
The main door of the French Mill opened, let in some gla.s.s] snow, and shut. At first, Peter Lake thought that the wind had done this, but then he looked down and saw two small men walking to a table on the opposite side of the room. Not only were they no more than five feet tall, but they both wore bowler hats, and ragged jackets that, before they were trimmed in the back, had once been tails. Their eyes were sunken, their faces had a leathery look, and they had bony cheeks and mouths that would have been large and toothy on men twice their size. Their hands were fat little b.a.l.l.s of flesh with flat infantile thumbs, as delicate and strange as the paws of a tree frog- Their voices matched the rest of them in that they were small and sounded like the supplicating chirp of men who are married to female lumberjacks or prison matrons.
Feeling neither antipathy, nor sympathy, nor curiosity, Peter Lake was, nonetheless, unable to take his eyes from them. They weren"t conversing: they were conspiring. They seemed to hate one another ferociously, and yet they were apparently close. They quickly began to argue, and the more impa.s.sioned they grew the more they bounced up and down in their seats. Their peculiar voices kept on rising as they grew agitated and angry.
Peter Lake"s food was brought to him by a waiter who motioned in the direction of the screaming midgets in bowlers and cut-off tails, and then rolled his eyes up to the ceiling and back as if to say, "La Madonna!" (All the waiters at the French Mill were, naturally, Italians from the Brenta.) Peter Lake started to eat, trying as best he could to ignore the two little men. But try as he might there was no way he could avoid hearing those words that were emphasized in their argument. He had wanted to enjoy his steak, but at one point he almost choked on it.
Their conversation had gone like this: "Something something, something something, something something something... the White Dog of Afghanistan... something something something, something, something, something else, something entirely unintelligible."
"The White Dog of Afghanistan." These words stuck in Peter Lake like a fishhook.
The next thing he knew, he was walking briskly against the north wind. He overshot Chelsea and was aimed toward midtown. Whatever the "White Dog of Afghanistan" meant, it had a powerful effect on him, and he feared that it might smash his newfound equibrium."f.u.c.k!" he said, impelled forward by legs that were hardly under his control."d.a.m.n!" He didn"t even know why he was walking, but he felt that if he had returned to his room everything would have been spoiled.
"Save the clock, save the clock, save the clock that goes tick tock, " he found himself chanting, as in the old days of his dereliction. And when he neared the bright and crowded shopping districts he discovered that despite his cleanliness and fine clothes people on the street were once again giving him a wide berth.
"No!" he cried out, unwittingly providing himself the luxury of an empty path."Stop it! Stop it! Stop it. Stop it...." And then, very softly, "Stop it." He restrained his maniacal strides."I"ll buy a dog, " he said to himself."I"ll buy a white dog, and take him to my room. He"ll be a good companion. I"ve always loved dogs. Actually, I don"t know if that"s true, but I"ll buy one anyway, a white dog, a white dog of Afghanistan. That must be it. I must be yearning for a dog." He cleared his throat."Aaarrch! That"s ita"a dog, a white dog." He walked toward the great stores.
Kublai Khan could not have decreed a better shopping district. Anywhere anyone looked, anyone could buy anything, because everything was everywhere, in department stores that were half a mile square, a hundred stories high, and lined up along the avenues like dominoes. The people of the city of the poor could see these temples of materialism across the distant river, flashing their electrical signs in the night or gleaming like fixed bayonets in the daytime sunshine. They wondered what they were.
Peter Lake found a dog store, where he asked for a white dog."Would you like a nice Shar Mein?" the salesman inquired."I already ate, " Peter Lake replied."A Shar Mein, sir, is a very fine white dog." "Oh. All right, let"s have a look."
The salesman disappeared, and returned with a dog under his arm.
"For Christ"s sake, " said Peter Lake, looking at the dog. don"t want a mop. Where are its eyes? That"s for an old lady who doesn"t even know what a dog is. Don"t bring me anything that can jump over a sawhorse."
"What about Ariadne, then, " the salesman said, pointing to a beautiful snow-white Saint Bernard.
"Now, that"s a nice dog, " Peter Lake responded. He went over to Ariadne and patted her fat head."Good dog, good dog, " he said.
"None finer, " the salesman added.