Little, Big Part 35

Out of the roll of thunder came the more rhythmic beats of a big ba.s.s drum far downtown. More people were in the streets, driven forward by or perhaps heralding the oncoming of something big which they looked now and again over their shoulders at. Police cruisers shot into the intersections of street and avenue, blue lights revolving. Among those coming up the streeta"they were walking heedlessly in the middle of the roadway, that looked exhilarating to Auberona"were several wearing the blousy shirts of many colors worn by Eigenblick's adherents; these, and others in dark gla.s.ses and narrow suits, with what could have been hearing aids stuck into their ears but probably were not, discussed things with the sweating policemen, making gestures. A portable conga band, contrapuntal to the far-off beating ba.s.s drum, proceeded northward, surrounded by laughing brown and black people and by photographers. Their rhythms hurried the negotiators. The suited men seemed to command the police, who were helmeted and armed but apparently will-less. The thunder, more distinct, rolled again.

It seemed to Auberon that he had discovered, since coming to the City, or at least since he had spent a lot of time staring at crowds, that humanity, City humanity anyway, fell into only a few distinct typesa"not physical or social or racial, exactly, though the qualities that could be called physical or social or racial helped qualify people. He couldn't say just how many of these types there were, or describe any of them at all precisely, or even keep any of them in his mind when he didn't have an actual example before him; but he found himself continually saying to himself, "Ah, there's one of that sort of person." It certainly hadn't helped in his search for Sylvie that, however distinct she was, however utterly individual, the vague type she belonged to could throw up cognates of her everywhere to torment him. A lot of them didn't even look like her. They were her sisters, though; and they harrowed hini, far more than the jovens and lindas that superficially resembled her, like those that, on the lean muscled arms of their boyfriends or honorary husbands, now followed the conga band up the street, dancing. A larger group, of some status, was coming into view behind them.

These were decently dressed matrons and men, walking abreast, black women with broad bosoms and pearls and gla.s.ses, men in humble pork-pie hats, many skinny and stooped. He had often wondered how it is that great fat black women can grow faces, as they get older, that are hard, chiseled, granitic, tough and leathery, all that is a.s.sociated with the lean. These people supported a street-wide banner on poles, with half-moon holes cut in it to keep it from being filled like a sail and carrying them off, whose letters, picked out in sequins, spelled out CHURCH OF ALL STREETS.

"That's the church," Siegfried saida"he had moved his gla.s.s-wiping activities nearer the window in order to watch. "The church where they found those guys."

"With the bombs?"

"They got a lot of nerve."

Since Auberon still didn't know whether the bombers found in the Church of All Streets were for or against whoever this parade was for or against, he supposed this could be true.

The Church of All Streets contingent, the decent poor mostly as far as Auberon could see but with one or two Eigenblick blousons marching beside them, and one of the hearing-aides watching them too, was escorted by the many-eyed press on foot and in vans, and by armed hors.e.m.e.n, and by the curious. As though the Seventh Saint were a tidepool, and the tide were rising, two or three of these spilled through its doors, bringing in the hot breath of day and the odor of their marching. They complained loudly of the heat, more in high-pitched whistles and low groans than in words, and ordered beers. "Here you are, take this," said one, and held out something to Auberon on his yellow palm.

It was a narrow strip of paper, like a Chinese cookie fortune. Part of a sentence was crudely printed on it, but the sweat of the man's hand had obscured part of that, and all Auberon could make out was the word "message". Two of the others were comparing similar strips of paper, laughing and wiping beer-foam from their lips.

"What's it mean?"

"That's for you to figure out," the man said gaily. Siegfried put a drink in front of Auberon. "Maybe if you make a match, you win a prize. A lottery. Huh? They're handing *em out all over town."

And indeed now outside Auberon saw a line of whitefaced mimes or clowns cakewalking along in the wake of the Church of All Streets, doing simple acrobatics, firing cap pistols, tipping battered hats, and distributing among the jostling crowd that thronged around them these small strips of paper. People took them, children begged for more, they were studied and compared. If no one took them, the clowns let them flutter away into a breeze that was beginning to rise. One of the clowns turned the handle of a siren he had hung around his neck, and an eerie wail could be faintly heard.

"What on earth," Auberon said.

"Who the h.e.l.l knows," Siegfried said.

With a crash of bra.s.s instruments, a marching band began, and the street was suddenly filled with bright silken flags, barred, starred, snapping and furling in the thunder-wind. Great cheers rose. Double eagles screamed from some banners, double eagles with double hearts aflame in their bosoms, some clutching roses in their beaks, myrtle, swords, arrows, bolts of lightning in their talons; surmounted with crosses, crescents, or both, bleeding, effulgent or aflame. They seemed to stream and flutter on the terrific wave of military sound rising from the band, which was not uniformed but dressed in top hats, tails, and paper bat-wing collars. A royal-blue gold-fringed gonfalon was born before them, but was gone before Auberon could read it.

The bar patrons went to the window. "What's going on? What's going on?" The mimes or clowns worked the borders of the march, handing out slips, avoiding grabbing hands dexterously as they somersaulted or rode each other's shoulders. Auberon, well oiled by now, was exhilarated, as they all were, but he as much because he had no idea for what all this crazy energy was being expended as for the quick-stepping, flag-waving thing itself. More refugees barged through the doors of the Seventh Saint. For a moment the music grew loud. They weren't a good band, cacaphonous in fact; but the big drum kept the time.

"Good G.o.d," said a haggard man in a wrinkled Suit and a nearly brimless straw fedora. "Good G.o.d, those people."

"Check it out," said a black man. More entered, black, white, other. Siegfried looked startled, at bay. He'd expected a quiet afternoon. A sudden chattering roar drowned out their orders, and outside, descending right into the valley of the street, a sharpstuttering helicopter hove, hovered, reascended, scanning, raising winds in the streets; people clutched their hats, running in circles like farmyard fowl beneath a hawk. Commands issued from the copter in meaningless shouts of gravelly static, repeated over and over just as meaninglessly but more insistently. In the street, people shouted back defiance, and the helicopter rose away, turning carefully. Cheers and raspberries for the dragon's going.

"Whaddy say whaddy say?" the partrons asked each other.

"Maybe," Auberon said to no one, "warning them it's about to rain."

It was. They didn't care. More conga artists were pa.s.sing, nearly swamped by throngs, all chanting to their beat: "Let it fall, let it rain; let it fall, let it rain." Fights were breaking out, shoving contests mostly, girl-friends shrieked, bystanders pulled apart contestants. The parade seemed to be turning into a swarming culture, and growing a riot. But car horns honked, insistently, and the millers were parted by several black limousines with fast-fluttering pennants on their fenders. Hurrying beside the cars were many of the suited, dark-spectacled men, looking everywhere and nowhere, faces grim, not having fun. The scene had darkened, quickly, ominously, the harsh dusty orange light of late afternoon snuffed like a klieg-light. Black clouds must have extinguished the sun. And even the neat haircuts of the suited aides were ruffled by the rising wind. The band had ceased, only the drum went on, sounding threnodic and solemn. Crowds pressed closely around the cars, curious, perhaps angry. They were warned away. Wreaths of dark flowers dressed some of the cars. A funeral? Nothing could be seen within their tinted windows.

The patrons of the Seventh Saint had grown quiet, respectful or resentful.

"The last best hope," the sad man in the straw fedora said. "The G.o.ddam last best G.o.ddam hope."

"All over," said another, and drank deeply. "All over but the shouting." The cars pa.s.sed away, the crowds falling in behind them, filling up their wake; the drum was like a dying heartbeat. Then, as uptown the band rang out again, there was a terrific crash of thunder, and everyone in the bar ducked at once, and then looked at one another and laughed, embarra.s.sed to have been startled. Auberon finished his fifth gin in a gulp, and, pleased with himself for no reason but that, said "Let it fall, let it rain." He thrust his empty gla.s.s toward Siegfried, more commandingly than he usually did. "Another."

The rain began all at once, big drops spattering audibly on the tall window and then falling in great volumes, hissing furiously as though the city it fell on were red-hot. Rain coursing down the tinted gla.s.s obscured the parade's events. It looked now like ranks of people wearing hoods, holes cut out for eyes, or paper masks like welder's masks, carrying clubs or batons, were coming behind the limos and meeting some resistance; whether they were part of the parade or another show in opposition to it was hard to tell. The Seventh Saint filled rapidly with clamoring folk fleeing the rain. One of the mimes or clowns, his white face running, came in bowing, but certain shouts of greeting seemed to him hostile; he bowed out again.

Thunder, rain, sunset swallowed up in stormy darkness; crowds pouring through the pouring streets in the glare of streetlights. Breaking of gla.s.s, shouts, tumult, sirens, a war on. Those in the bar rushed out, to see or join in, and were replaced by others fleeing, who had seen enough. Auberon held his stool, calm, happy, lifting his drink with a suggestion of extended pinkie. He smiled beatifically at the troubled man in the straw fedora, who stood next to him. "Drunk as a lord," he said. "Quite literally. I mean lunk as a drord is when a lord is drunk. If you follow me." The man sighed and turned away.

"No, no," Siegfried shouted, waving his hands before him like shutters: for barging in were a bunch of Eigenblick adherents, their colored shirts plastered to their bodies with rain, supporting one among them who had been hurt: a spiderweb of blood over his face. They ignored Siegfried; the crowd, murmuring, let them in. The man next to Auberon stared openly and truculently at them, speaking in his mind to them in unguessable words. Someone vacated a table, upsetting a drink, and the wounded one was lowered into a chair.

They left him there to recuperate, and pushed to the bar. The man in the fedora was displaced elsewhere. A brief mood seemed to pa.s.s over Siegfried's face that he wouldn't serve them, but he thought better of it. One mounted the stool next to Auberon, a small person over whose shivering back was draped someone else's colored shirt. Another rose on tiptoe, gla.s.s raised high, and gave a toast: "To the Revelation!" Many cheered, for or against. Auberon leaned toward the person next to him and said, "What revelation?"

Excited, shivering, brushing rain from her face, she turned to Auberon. She'd got her hair cut, very short, like a boy's. "The Revelation," she said, and handed him a slip of paper. Not wanting to look away from her now that she was next to him, afraid if he looked away she would not be there when he looked back, he held the paper up to his near-blinded eyes. It said: No fault of your own.

Doesn't Matter In fact there were two Sylvies beside him, one for each eye. He clapped a hand over one eye and said, "Long time no see."

"Yah." She looked around at her companions, smiling, still shivering, but caught up in their excitement and glory.

"So where did you get to anyway?" Auberon said. "Where've you been? By the way." He knew he was drunk, and must speak carefully and mildly so that Sylvie wouldn't see and be ashamed of him.

"Around," she said.

"I don't suppose," he said, and would have gone on to say I don't suppose if you weren't really Sylvie here now that you'd tell me so, but this was drowned out by further toasts and comings and goings, and all he said was, "I mean if you were a figment."

"What?" Sylvie said.

"I mean how've you been!" He felt his head wobbling on his neck, and stopped it. "Can I buy you a drink?" She laughed at that: drinks for Eigenblick's people were not to be bought tonight. One of her companions caught her up and kissed her. "Fall of the City!" he cried hoa.r.s.ely, been shouting all day no doubt. "Fall of the City!"

"Heeeey!" she answered, a kind of agreement with his enthusiasm rather than exactly with his sentiment. She turned back to Auberon then; she lowered her eyes, she moved her hand toward him, she was about to explain everything; but no, she only picked up his drink, sipped from it (raising her eyes to him over its rim) and put it down again with a grimace of disgust.

"Gin," he said.

"Tastes like alcolado," she said.

"Well, it's not supposed to be good," he said, "only good for you," and heard in his own voice a joking Auberon-and-Sylvie tone that had been so long absent from it that it was like hearing old music, or tasting a long-untasted food. Good for you, yes, for a further thought about her figmentary nature was trying to crack his consciousness like an oyster-knife, so he drank again, beaming at her as she beamed at the merry madness that boiled around them. "How's Mr. Rich?" he said.

"He's okay." Mum, not looking at him. He wasn't to pursue such subjects. But he was desperate to know her heart.

"You've been happy, though?"

She shrugged. "Busy." A small smile. "A busy little girl."

"Well, I mean a" He stopped. The last dim bulb of reason in his brain showed him Silence and Circ.u.mspection, and then went out. "It doesn't matter," he said. "I've been thinking about this a lot, lately, you know, well, you could've guessed, about us and all, I mean you and me; and what I figured out is that really it's basically okay, and all right, really." She had cupped her cheek in her hand, and was looking up at him rapt yet inattentive, as she had always been at his disquisitions. "You moved on, is all, right? I mean things change, life changes; how could I complain about that? I couldn't have any argument with that." It was suddenly sweetly clear: "It's as though I were with you like in one stage of your developmenta"like a pupa stage, or a nymph stage. But you outgrew that. Became a different person. Like a b.u.t.terfly does." Yes: she had broken from the transparent sh.e.l.l which was the girl he had known and touched; and (as he had the empty isingla.s.s sculptures of locusts when he was a kid) he had preserved the sh.e.l.l, all he had of her, all the more precious for its terrible fragility and the perfect abandonment it embodied. She meanwhile (though out of his sight and ken, imaginable only by induction) had grown wings and flown: was not only elsewhere but something else as well.

She wrinkled her nose and opened her mouth in a huh? "What stage?" she said.

"Some early stage," he said.

"What was the word, though?"

"Nymph," he said. Thunder crashed; the eye of the storm had pa.s.sed; rain wept again. And was this before him then nothing but the old transparency? Or her in the flesh? It was important to get these things straight right off the bat. And how anyway could it be that her flesh was what he was most intensely left with, and was it the flesh of her soul or the soul of her flesh? "It doesn't matter, doesn't matter," he said, his voice thick with happiness and his heart awash in the gin of human kindness; he forgave her everything, in exchange for this presence, whatever it was. "Dozen madder."

"Listen, it really doesn't," she said, and raised his own gla.s.s to him before sipping it gingerly again. "Go with the flow, y'know."

"Trooty is booth, booth trooty," he said "that is all ye know on earth, and all a"

"I need to go," she said. "To the john."

That was the last thing he clearly remembered, that she returned from the john, though he hadn't expected her to; when he saw her returning, his heart rose as it had when she had turned to face him on the stool next to him; he forgot that he had denied her thrice, had decided to decide she had never existed; that was absurd anyway, when here she was, when in the pelting rain outside (this glimpse only he had) he could kiss her: her rain-wet flesh was as cold as any ghost's, her nipples as hard as unripe fruit, but he imagined that she warmed.

Sylvie Bruno Concluded There are charms that last, keeping the world long suspended in their power, and charms that do not last, that drain quickly away and leave the world as it was. Liquor is well known for not lasting.

Auberon was wrenched awake just after dawn, after a few hour of deathlike unconsciousness. He knew instantly that he should be dead, that death was his only appropriate condition, and that he was not dead. He cried out softly and hoa.r.s.ely,, "No, oh G.o.d no," but oblivion was far away and even sleep had fled utterly. No: he was alive and the wretched world was around him; his staring eyeb.a.l.l.s showed him the Folding Bedroom's crazed map of a ceiling, so many Devil's Islands in plaster. He didn't need to investigate to find that Sylvie wasn't next to him.

There was, however, someone next to him, bound up in the damp sheet (it was hot as h.e.l.l already, chill sweat circled Auberon's neck and brow). And someone else was speaking to him; speaking from a corner of the Folding Bedroom, soothingly, confidentially: "Oh for a draught of vintage, that hath been Cooled a long age in the deep delved earth, Tasting of Flora and the country green a"

The voice came from a small red plastic radio, an antique with the word Silvertone across it in bas-relief script. Auberon had never known it to work before. The voice was black, a silky DJ's voice, black but cultured. G.o.d, they're everywhere, Auberon thought, overwhelmed with horrid strangeness, as a traveler sometimes is to find so many foreigners in other lands. "Away! Away! For I will fly to thee, Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, But on the viewless wings of Poesy a"

Auberon climed slowly like a cripple from the bed. Who the h.e.l.l was this beside him anyway. A brown shoulder big with muscle could be seen; the sheet breathed softly. Snored. Christ what have I done. He was about to draw down the sheet when it moved of its own accord, snuffling, and a shapely leg, flat-shinned, with curly dark hair, came out like a further clue; yes it was a man, that was certain. He carefully opened the door of the toilet, and took out his overcoat. He put it on over his nakedness, feeling with loathing the clammy touch of its lining against his skin. In the kitchen he opened cupboards with trembling skeleton's hands. The dusty vacuity within the cupboards was for some reason ghastly. In the last he opened there was a bottle of Dona Mariposa rum with an inch or two of amber fluid in it. His stomach turned; but he took it out. He went to the door, with a glance at the beda"his new friend still slepta" and then out.

He sat on the stairs in the hallway, staring into the stairwell, the bottle in both hands. He missed Sylvie and comfort so dreadfully, with such a parched thirst, that his mouth hung open and he leaned forward as though to scream or vomit. But his eyes wouldn't yield tears. The vivifying fluids had all been drawn from him; he was a husk; the world was a husk too. And this man in the bed. He unscrewed (it took some application) the cap of the rum bottle, and, turning its accusatory label away from him, he poured fire on his sands. Darkling I listen. Keats, in smoothie blackface, slid out under the door and insinuatingly into his ear. Now more than ever seems it rich to die. Rich: he drank the last of the rum and rose, gasping and swallowing bitter spittle. To thy high requiem become a sot.

He recapped the empty bottle and left it on the stair. In the mirror hung over the pretty table at the hall's end he caught a glimpse of someone forlorn. The very word is like a bell. He looked away. He went into the Folding Bedroom, a golem, his dry clay animated briefly by rum. He could speak now. He went to the bed. The person there had thrown off his sheet. It was Sylvie, only modeled in male flesh, and no charm: this goatish boy was real. Auberon shook his shoulder. Sylvie's head rolled on the pillow. Dark eyes opened momentarily, saw Auberon, and closed again.

Auberon bent over the bed and spoke into his ear. "Who are you?" He spoke carefully and slowly. Might not understand our lingo. "What is you name?" The boy rolled over, woke, brushed his hand over his face from forehead to chin as though to magic away the resemblance to Sylvie (but it stayed) and said in a morningroughened voice, "Hey. What's happening?"

"What is your name?"

"Hey, hi. Jesus Christ." He lay back on the pillow, smacking his lips. He rubbed his knuckles in his eyes like a child. He scratched and stroked himself shamelessly, as though pleased to find himself to hand. He smiled at Auberon and said, "Bruno."

"Oh."

"You membah."

"Oh."

"We got frone outta dap bah."

"Oh. Oh."

"Boy you was drunk."

"Oh."

"Membah? You c.o.o.nt even a"

"Oh. No. No." Bruno was looking at him with easy affection, still stroking himself.

"You said Jus wait," Bruno said, and laughed. "That was you la.s.s words, man."

"Oh yes?" He didn't remember; but he felt a weird regret, and almost laughed, and almost wept, that he had failed Sylvie when she was Sylvie. "Sorry," he said.

"Hey listen," Bruno said generously.

He wanted to move away, he knew he ought; he wanted to close his coat, which hung open. But he couldn't. If he did so, if he let this cup pa.s.s away from him, then the last dry dregs of last night's charm within it would not be licked up, and they might be all he had forever. He stared at Bruno's open face, simpler and sweeter than Sylvie's, unmarked by his pa.s.sions, strong though Sylvie had always said they were. Friendly: tears, double-distilled because there was so little water within to draw on, burned the orbits of his eyes: friendly was the word to describe Bruno. "Do you," he said, "have a sister?"

"Shichess."

"You wouldn't happen to know," Auberon said, "where she is?"

"Nah." He dismissed her with an easy gesture, her own gesture translated. "Ain't seen her in munce. She gets around."

"Yes." If he could just put his hands in Bruno's hair. Just for a moment; that would be enough. And close his burning eyes. The thought made him faint, and he leaned against the headboard.

"A real mof," Bruno said. With an unself-conscious languor he disposed himself on the bed so that there would be room there for Auberon.

"A what?"

"A mof. Sylvie." Laughing, he linked his thumbs together, and with his hands made a winged creature. He made it fly a little, smiling at Auberon; and then made it, wings fluttering, summon Auberon to follow it.

How Far You Have Gone Fled is that music.

Sure that Burno slept as his sister did, dead to the world, Auberon took no precautions to be quiet; he hauled out his belongings from chest and closet and flung them around. He unfolded his crushed green knapsack and into it put his poems and the rest of the contents of his study, his razor and his soap, and as many of his clothes as would go wadded in; he stuffed what money he could find into the pockets of it.

Gone, gone, he thought; dead, dead; empty, empty. But by no incantation could he exorcise even the palest, most illusory ghost of her from this place; and so there was only one thing to do, and that was flee. Flee. He strode from side to side of the room, looking hastily into drawers and shelves. His abused s.e.x swung as he walked; at last he drew shorts and pants over it, but it glowed reproachfully even hidden. The deed had proved more operose than he'd expected. Oh well, oh well. Forcing a pair of socks into the knapsack's pocket he found something he had left there: something wrapped in paper. He dug it out.

It was the present he had had from Lily the day that he had left Edgewood to come to the City and seek his fortune; a small present, wrapped in white paper. Open it when you think of it, she'd said.

He looked around the Folding Bedroom. Empty. Or as empty as it would ever be. Bruno weighted the dishonored bed, and his coat of many colors hung on the velvet chair. A mouse, or a brief hallucination of one (had it already come to that? He felt that it had) sped across the floor of the kitchen and hid itself. He tore open Lily's little package.

It turned out to be a small machine of some sort. He stared at it uncomprehendingly for some time, turning it in his sticky and still-trembling fingers, before he realized what it was: it was a pedometer. The handy kind that attaches to your belt and tells you, whenever you look at it, how far you've gone.