Other Earths Part 18

"I followed the trail of the Oglala, two or three score, it seemed to me. But when I came to the side of the ravine, where the track led downhill toward Sarpy's ford, I saw one horse break away. I was looking for the print of its shoes, a larger horse than any Indian's, and heavily loaded, and shod in the fashion of the United States' Cavalry-I knew what I saw. I thought Burgess would try to remove my wife across the river for safekeeping, perhaps because he thought the Sioux would murder her or worse or otherwise do damage to his schemes. Or else he wanted her for himself. In both cases it made me wild with rage. I pressed my mare forward, and as darkness fell I saw a campfire along the ridge, still on this side of the river, for which I thanked G.o.d.

"I loaded my long musket and crept up through the juniper trees. The moon was high and small. With as much stealth as I had, I crept up the ravine outside the glow of the fire, by whose flickering light I saw my wife among the stones, her head bowed, her hands tied in front of her as if in prayer. I can tell you, my heart boiled in my chest. Ben Burgess sprawled beside her, a chunk of roasted deer-meat on the end of his knife. He kept no ceremony with her-his collar was undone, his sleeves rolled up. His yellow beard merged with the hair of his fat chest and shoulders-truly, he was hairy as an animal! And he was no bashful or tongue-tied lover, but spoke freely in the language of the Omahas, laughing and muttering as if all this were a joke! He threw down his knife and lifted up instead a cup of whiskey, which I could determine from the smell. He thrust it into my wife's face. And when she raised her head, and when I saw her expression of despair and pa.s.sive courage, I thought I could contain myself no longer. I must challenge the lion in his lair, even though I could see Burgess' pistol laid out on the stones, already c.o.c.ked and primed. But in my rashness I discovered I had climbed into a trap, because no sooner had I stood up and thrust forward into the circle of the light, no sooner had I uttered my first cry, than one of the cursed Indians, his face still painted like a devil's, rose from beneath my feet and knocked my gun aside. He was a brave in his first season, younger than myself, bare chested despite the cold, with broken feathers in his hair. Burgess had not risen to his feet, as politeness or prudence would have required. 'Oho!' he said, still sprawled next to my wife, 'we have a guest. But if it isn't Monsieur Fontenelle!'-he spoke in English. 'What a surprise! But I suppose you're a regular tear-cat, now!'

"How can I describe the expression on my wife's face when she saw me-Bright Sun indeed, but streaked with clouds of anguish and despair. The Indian had his knife at my throat, and he dragged me forward into the firelight. I held out my hand as if to rea.s.sure her, but at the same time I saw nothing but blackness ahead of us, as if she and I together had been swallowed up in darkness or the shadow of the pit. I felt darkness overwhelm me, and I raised my hand to push it away, push its shadows from my eyes. The sharp steel was at my throat.

"At that moment, as the darkness threatened to surround me, I heard a noise from away down the hill. I heard a few soft, breathy notes, the low murmur of the black-robe's wooden flute, an air from his native Brittany . . ."

I have seen a photograph of Amelie de Fontenelle, taken when she was in her sixties after the end of the Civil War. She is dressed in mourning. Gray ringlets hang down underneath a white lace cap.

No photograph or painted portrait still exists of her brother Lucien. He was a famous trapper and mountain man, who established a trading post at Bellevue, Nebraska, in the eighteen twenties. His wife was an Omaha princess named Bright Sun. His only child, Logan, was the chief who bartered the land of the Omahas to the United States government after small-pox had destroyed the tribes. In 1855 he was scalped and murdered by the Dakota Sioux. His father did not live to see it; Lucien Fontenelle was dead from alcohol, or typhus, or suicide by that time, an ugly man, according to letters and journals of various pioneers, with a face like a monkey.

But what if his mother in Pointe a la Hache had not eaten too heavily one evening when she was pregnant, had not dreamed her monkey dream? What if Madame Mercier had been a different kind of woman, one who had taken to heart, perhaps, the great victory off Malta in 1798, when Horatio Nelson's flagship had sunk with all hands? She would have been just a girl, impressionable and easily influenced, perhaps, by the celebrations in the streets. Later on, she might have been overjoyed to take into her home her brother's children after the catastrophe. She might have loaded them with kindness. Stuck in a loveless marriage, she might have felt herself responding to the handsome young Lucien despite the difference in their ages. Generous, open hearted, and nave, perhaps she could not guard her nephew from the maniacal and s.a.d.i.s.tic Dr. Mercier, who would have driven the boy not just from the city but from the entire territory of New France-up the Mississippi and then east up the Ohio to the Kentucky wilderness. Several years later he might have sent his sister the following letter: "Ma Chere Soeur, my heart bleeds when I think of you still in the grip of that madman-I do not speak of my aunt. But I must tell you what has happened in case the worst comes to the worst. I lie here wounded, close to death, shot down by Douglas Sharpe and my erstwhile companions . . ."

(In New Orleans, Amelie de Fontenelle might have wondered at the careful, feminine handwriting on the envelope. "Ah, is it true?" she might have thought.) "Dear heart, it is true. And so I must leave a record of what has happened, for you to join together with your memory of our life together in Pointe a la Hache-ah, such times seem a paradise to me. In this way I might feel that my life has a pattern, however fitful and provisionary, however much it loops upon itself, as if I were a plaything for an arbitrary and erratic G.o.d. I also must inform you of what I most believe: that a war is coming, despite the wisdom of the emperor and his well-known sympathy for the rights of his native subjects, the appeal they have made to his own wild nature. The land is too empty on our side of the river. To the east the land fills up like water in a cup, and the time will come when it will burst its bounds.

"I have seen this at first hand, from the day I left the blessed sh.o.r.e of New France to a.s.sume my exile among these Americans. I suppose you must imagine me miserable, bedraggled, without funds, alone in an English-speaking land. Never mind how, but I found myself in a country called the Barrens, in the parish of Edmonson, along the banks of the Green River. This was a terrible desolation, as vast and lonely as the desolation in my heart, a sere expanse of hills and limestone k.n.o.bs, with dark forests of blackjack trees in the crevices between them. Everywhere were fissures in the earth such as could swallow up a man on horseback-remnants of the earthquake that formed that country in the early days and whose instability can still be felt.

"In this dereliction, though, I found a refuge on a little farm, a few dozen acres and a log cabin c.h.i.n.ked with mud, a few rooms to let to travelers. And you will understand what I mean when I suggest that the proprietress of this establishment reminded me of our dear aunt in her kindness toward an orphan far from home. Her name was Madame Mylecraine, but I did not think there was a monsieur, despite the presence of a dark-eyed and dark-skinned boy named Logan on the premises. You see I must describe these things as I first perceived them, not as I learned subsequently. She also had come a long way, because her father was a native of the Island of Man, and she spoke in the Manx language with a hired hand about the place. Oh, there is much for me to tell you. One thing at a time. I pray for strength to reach the end.

"She is small, formed like a woman and a child at the same time, although her hair already holds a silver frost-in this she also reminds me of our dear aunt. She has green eyes, I suppose. On my third night in that house, as I lay sobbing on my bed, she came into my room-these are s.p.a.ces scarcely large enough to let the door open inward. She stood at the threshold carrying a stick, I thought-the light was behind her and I could not make it out. But I imagined the cudgel in my uncle's hand, as he stood on the landing of the stairs (Oh, I pray that he is dead, and he torments you no longer!), until she moved. Then the light from the hurricane lantern touched her hair and the stick at the same time, revealing it to be a silver flute. She did not blow into it or touch its keys, but she showed it to me only, as if the fact of its existence could be a source of hope. It was outdoors that she played it, as well as a small flageolet or piccolo, a wild, ferocious sound! It was only later that I heard it, after I had revealed to her some news that agitated her in a way I did not understand. In my clumsy English I explained that I had taken employment. I thought she would be pleased! But I was to be a member of the party that would search out and apprehend a highway-man or bandit who preyed on travelers along the road; he always took refuge in one of the huge caves in that area, the largest one, in fact, which stretched many leagues under the earth from the great pit that was its entrance. A Captain Douglas Sharpe had undertaken to search him out.

"This was in the month of October. When I explained it to Madame Mylecraine, in the great room by the fire, I thought she would approve of me, if only because I would be able to pay my way-there were rumors, as always in such places, of buried treasure in the cave. Instead she was angry and distraught and asked me what I knew of this fellow, Leon Benbourgisse-an uncouth name! I answered what I had been told, that he was a mongrel or half-breed of prodigious strength who had robbed a number of rich gentlemen on horseback and murdered one of them, so that travelers now avoided the entire locality. I thought she would be grateful to dispose of such a one! Instead she said nothing and turned away from me. This was in the evening, when the lamps were lit. She put her kerchief over her head and went out.

"I waited for her to return. When she did not, I went in search of her. In time I followed not her foot-steps or the shadow of her pa.s.sing but a sound at the limit of my hearing, a melody from the Celtic islands, or Brittany, or Acadia, as you and I have heard together from the players in the Place D'Armes. I found her in a seam of sunken rocks below a limestone cliff, a place of evil reputation in that country, if one can judge from the name of Devil's Twist. It was a place where she went to be alone, and I followed the note of her piccolo, which in that amphitheater swelled among the rocks, even though she played quite softly, as I perceived. She had pulled away her kerchief, undone her long hair. When I kicked some stones to alert her to my presence, she turned suddenly, as if from a guilty secret. The music broke as if snapped off. When she saw who it was, she came to me. She took my hand and begged me to consider the extremities of fate that might drive a good man underground, the injustice that might force him to lash out against his tormenters. 'I will not go,' I said. 'Not if you forbid it.' But instead she asked me to continue the next morning to the muster at the gulf of Mammoth Cave so that I could be her eyes in that dark place. So small she was! Almost like a child. I reached to wipe away her tears, to comfort her like a child and a woman-you and I both know that is possible!

"The next morning I rendered myself at the top of the pit, at a distance from the farmhouse of two leagues or else some miles-I will give these measurements in the English fashion, as they were explained to me. We crossed over the stile of fence rails that blocked our way and continued down the ravine at a distance of a hundred feet below the surface of the plain. On each side of the dry streambed we found oak trees and chestnuts, as well as elms and maples and a proliferation of vines and brambles, in all a far greater variety than anything to be found up on the flat. When I remarked on this, my companions first explained to me one of the enduring mysteries of this place, which as we sank down appeared more and more dismal and terrible to me, darker and colder, though it was a bright, hot morning when I left Madame Mylecraine's farm. There is a wind that issues back and forth out of the cave, as if from a bellows or the lips of a stone giant, a breath that is most healthful and bountiful. Consumptive patients, I was told, after all hope was abandoned, could take up residence in the mouth of the Vestibule and be cured in a matter of days. This was first reported in the days of the last war, because the floors of the first galleries are rich in nitre, which is used in the manufacture of gunpowder. Even now we could see the remnants of the abandoned works, while the guides told us stories of their uncles or fathers who had emerged from the pit with their backs straight and their eyes keen, their ponies glossy and well-tempered. I thought at first they were deceiving me.

"But now we stood on a gra.s.sy terrace above the entrance, a steep descent to the black arch, choked with planks and timbers, while water dripped down from above. And for the first time I could feel the cold, sepulchral blast, while I watched the swallows dart through the thin water, and at the same time I listened to our commander, Captain Douglas Sharpe, as he explained our tasks. There were twenty-five of us, divided into groups of five.

"Now we also received our iron torches and a bucket of lard among each group. We filled our canteens from the brook and primed our pistols. But we could not light the swinging lanterns in the wind until we had descended beneath the great portal and sixty paces into the cave itself. Here the roof was just a foot above my head. The pa.s.sage was constricted by a wall built by the miners, leaving only a narrow door. The wind blew like a winter storm, and we must grope forward in the dark. A few feet beyond the wall, the air was calm and still.

"Here we lit our lamps and pressed forward in single file. We stayed in this low, narrow corridor for perhaps a quarter of a mile until it opened out into the Vestibule, a round chamber perhaps two hundred feet across, and the ceiling sixty feet above our heads. Black b.u.t.tresses of stone jutted from the shadowy walls. Our party of twenty-five had seemed sufficient in the narrow entrance to the cave. But as we pressed forward into the Grand Gallery we seemed small and few. We picked our way among the leaching vats and wooden pipes. We skirted mounds of excavated earth, while for the first time I gave credence to the stories I had heard outside, that the miners in their excavations had disturbed a cemetery of gigantic corpses, ten feet long. It was easy to imagine giants in this place, and to imagine also the ghostly presence of the aboriginal inhabitants of North America, specters from the more recent past.

"As it turned out, this was no idle speculation. Because of it, I was able to find our quarry where the rest failed. For by the light of my swinging torch I descried piles of blackened rushes and abandoned canes, which the Cherokees had used to light their way. As we spread out into the side pa.s.sages-the Haunted Chambers, as they are called, and the Bridges with their gleaming stalact.i.tes-I found myself looking always for these traces that, though ephemeral, seemed more trustworthy (I don't know why!) than the arrows marked in chalk to indicate the correct route or warn me from the brink of some precipice or pit. At the same time it occurred to me what in some fashion I must already have known, that Leon Benbourgisse and his accomplices must have another means of egress from the cave. Else they could not fail to be taken in the Narrows.

"And so as much as I was full of wonder at the dismal choirs of rock, the ghostly chapels with their dripping columns sixty feet above my head, I found myself studying the ground as well, looking for marks of the outlaw's pa.s.sage. I remembered the way Madame Mylecraine had leaped to his defense and wondered at the connection between them. At the same time I first noticed a shard of broken pottery such as is often found where Cherokees have camped-a distinctive piece, ridges of black on a dull surface. I swung my lantern over one of these, allowing my companions to go ahead. I thought I had seen several of these shards, broken into rough trapezoids, and resolved to look for them. I pa.s.sed by the Devil's Looking Gla.s.s, a sheet of fallen rock. And in a chamber called the Snow Room, where any shout or call brings from the ceiling a shower of crystal flakes, I found what I was looking for-away from the path, where the salt dust was undisturbed, a piece of my broken pot, and beyond a naked footprint.

"I let the torches diminish as the men pa.s.sed into the Deserted Chamber. I did not call them back. To do so would have dusted me as if with snow. Instead I remembered my promise to Madame Mylecraine, or Kate, as she would have had me call her. With my lantern held in front, I took a few steps forward, around a b.u.t.tress of the rock. There was a twisting corridor, another piece of pottery. Fifty yards on, I found a hole, a round pa.s.sage perhaps four feet tall, and in front of it, another footprint.

"Like Robinson Crusoe, I crouched over it. My dear sister, I do not know why I continued, except because there are always choices of this nature in the lives of men, to creep forward in the dark or else fall back. I could feel a wind from the round hole, not enough to threaten my flame. I knelt and pushed up an ascending pa.s.sage until it opened up into a great s.p.a.ce. My light could not reach the ceiling. And I found myself at the edge of a cliff. A spar or promontory of rock protruded thirty feet over the black chasm, ending in a rough point. From the cliff I could see no trace of the far wall, or of the bottom, or of the roof. It was a place at the edge of the world, a strip of rock that pa.s.sed into the darkness at both sides. I crossed it in five paces, shuffling through the half-burned canes that were as thick here as the saline crystals had been back beyond the hole, piles of them.

"I stretched my lamp over the abyss. Now I could hear at a great distance the rushing of a stream, while some wisps of vapor lifted toward the light. And I could see also the remnants of a painted geometric pattern on the limestone promontory, even on the underside, daubed there by some brave or chief's son as he hung suspended over the depths. On the top I saw three timbers wrapped in bundles of bleached cloth, carved poles or images sacred to the first inhabitants of that place and hidden there, I guessed, from men like me.

"Nor could I keep from my mind the rumors I had heard of buried treasure, purses robbed along the road or the lost gold of these ancient tribes. Even though I understood the foolishness of such tales, I could not stop myself from setting my lantern in a crevice in the rock, carved there, as I saw, for the purpose. On my hands and knees, I climbed out on the base of the promontory, placing my feet in the shallow steps. And I had just promised myself to turn back, to abandon this search or else to call out to my friends, as I still supposed them to be. But then I heard a noise behind me, the c.h.i.n.k of an iron chain, while at the same time the light trembled. I turned to see a man against the rock wall behind me, though whether he had followed me out of the hole or had crept toward me from somewhere further on along the ledge, I could not then determine. For a moment I was motionless with horror, because I was convinced that this was Benbourgisse himself, a huge man clad only in leather breeches, with naked legs and a black, naked, hairless chest. He had no beard and no hair on his oiled scalp. He pulled at the swinging torch, and when he turned to me and smiled, his features showed his Cherokee or African parentage. But more horrifying still was what he intended at that moment, as I saw him wrench the iron bar from its crevice in the rocks. Ah, G.o.d, he could not leave me here, and so I gathered myself on my stone promontory and leaped at him across the intervening s.p.a.ce. In the middle of my jump, he swung the lantern toward me, only high beyond my grasp, launching it out over the abyss, where it fell and was extinguished at once.

"How can I explain to you the terror that I felt, to find myself encased in darkness as I moved? No light, no light at all, darker than night, darker than when you close your eyes, darker, I suppose, than blindness. Every act is an act of faith. I scrambled up toward the wall where I had seen him, guided only by his low chuckle and his soft exhale. But in my desperation I found him and grabbed hold of him, only to feel myself suddenly overpowered, the pistol s.n.a.t.c.hed from my belt, while at the same time I could smell his whiskey-soaked breath and hear his voice muttering as if inside my ear itself, 'Well, ain't you a regular tear-cat, sure enough?'

"Then I could feel his arms tighten around my chest, and it occurred to me that he could crush my bones between his hands or that he could cast me over the lip of the abyss, to follow the light downward forever. He could not be resisted, because he had drunk so deeply from the cave's air. My eyes stared in the darkness, and as I felt the breath crushed out of me, I cried out, 'Please, I have a message from Mistress Mylecraine!'

"Suddenly I was released, flung a little distance onto the stone ground. I saw nothing, smelled nothing, heard nothing, while at the same time I did not dare to move, because I could not guess how far I cowered from the edge of the precipice, or even which direction it lay. I crouched as if at the bottom of my own grave. I raised my face up to the vault above me, imagining at some moment I might hear the strains of a silver flute, an air or melody from the Isle of Man, guiding me upward, always upward into the light of day."

In the big house on the Rue de Dryades, Lucien's lonely and brokenhearted sister might have wiped away a tear.

And though desperate to leave the house of Monsieur and Madame Mercier, still she might not have married at her first opportunity an American lawyer with whom she did not even share a language. Their daughter, Justine Lockett, would not have died in prison waiting for trial after she'd been arrested carrying letters and supplies through the Union lines at Petersburg. A widow, she would not have left young children, one of whom, my great-grandmother, would not have gone north to Virginia to live with her father's family. She would not have married William R. McKenney, a congressman and judge. Her granddaughter would not have met my father, who himself would never have existed for different but related reasons. Sixty years later, a diminutive universe of speculation would have been snuffed out.

DOG-EARED PAPERBACK OF MY LIFE.

Lucius Shepard

My name, Thomas Cradle, is not the most common of names, yet when I chanced upon a book written by another Thomas Cradle while looking up my work on Amazon (a pastime to which I, like many authors, am frequently given), I thought little of it, and my overriding reaction was one of concern that this new and unknown Cradle might prove the superior of the known. I became even more concerned when I learned that the book, The Tea Forest The Tea Forest, was a contemporary fantasy, this being the genre into which my own books were slotted. Published in 2002, it was ranked 1,478,040 in Amazon sales, a fact that eased my fears somewhat. According to the reader reviews (nine of them in sum, all five stars), the book was a cult item, partly due to its quality and partly because the author had disappeared in Cambodia not long after its publication. I found it odd that I hadn't heard of Cradle and his novel before; out of curiosity, I ordered a used copy and put the incident from mind.

The book arrived ten days later, while I was proofing my new novel, working on a screenplay based on my third novel, for which I was being paid a small fortune, and negotiating to buy a home in the Florida Keys, a property to which some of the screenplay money would be applied. The package lay on my desk unopened for several weeks, buried under papers. By the time I got around to opening it, I had forgotten what it was I ordered. My copy of the The Tea Forest The Tea Forest turned out to be a dog-eared trade paperback, the pages crimped and highlighted in yellow marker throughout, rife with marginalia. On the cover, framed by green borders, was a murky oil painting depicting a misted swamp with an almost indistinguishable male figure slogging though waist-deep water. I looked on the spine. The publisher was Random House, also my publisher. That made it doubly odd that I hadn't heard of the book. What the h.e.l.l, I asked myself, were they doing publishing two Thomas Cradles in the same genre? And why hadn't my editor or agent made me aware of this second Cradle? turned out to be a dog-eared trade paperback, the pages crimped and highlighted in yellow marker throughout, rife with marginalia. On the cover, framed by green borders, was a murky oil painting depicting a misted swamp with an almost indistinguishable male figure slogging though waist-deep water. I looked on the spine. The publisher was Random House, also my publisher. That made it doubly odd that I hadn't heard of the book. What the h.e.l.l, I asked myself, were they doing publishing two Thomas Cradles in the same genre? And why hadn't my editor or agent made me aware of this second Cradle?

I turned the book over and glanced at the tiny author photo, which showed a bearded, unkempt man glaring with apparent contempt at the camera. I skimmed the blurbs, the usual glowing overstatement, and read the bio:

"Thomas Cradle was born in Carboro, North Carolina in 1968. He attended the University of Virginia for two years before dropping out and has traveled widely in Asia, working as a teacher of English and martial arts. He currently lives in Phnom Penh. The Tea Forest The Tea Forest is his first novel." is his first novel."

A crawly sensation moved down my neck and spread to my shoulders. Not only did Cradle and I share a name, we had been born in the same town in the same year and had attended the same university (though I had graduated). I'd also trained in Muay Thai and Shotokan karate during high school-if not for a herniated disc, I might have pursued these interests. I had a closer look at the author photo. Lose the beard, shorten the hair, drop twenty-five pounds and six years, and he might have been my twin. The contemptuous glare alone should have made the likeness apparent.

Someone, I told myself, was playing a practical joke, someone who knew me well enough to predict my reactions. When I opened the book, something would pop out or a bad smell would be released . . . or perhaps it would be a good-natured joke. Kim, my girlfriend, had the wherewithal to doctor an old photograph and dummy up a fake book, but I would not have thought she possessed the requisite whimsy. I dipped into the first chapter, expecting the punchline would be revealed in the text; but after five chapters I recognized that the book could not be the instrument of a prank, and my feeling of unease returned.

The novel doc.u.mented a trip down the Mekong River taken by four chance acquaintances, beginning in Stung Treng on the Cambodian-Lao border, where the four had purchased a used fishing boat, to Dong Thap Province in the extreme south of Vietnam. It was an unfinished journey fraught with misadventure and illness, infused with a noirish atmosphere of low-level criminality, and culminated with a meditation on suicide that may well have foreshadowed the author's fate.

Judging by the wealth and authenticity of the background detail and by the precisely nuanced record of the first-person narrator's emotional and mental life, the novel was thinly disguised autobiography; and the configuration of the narrator's thoughts and perceptions seemed familiar, as did the style in which the novel was written: It was my style. Not the style in which I currently wrote, but the style I had demonstrated at the start of my career, prior to being told by an editor that long, elliptical sentences and dense prose would be an impediment to sales (she counseled the use of "short sentences, less navel-gazing, more plot," advice I took to heart). Cradle Two's novel was no mere pastiche; it was that old style perfected, carried off with greater expertise than I had ever displayed. It was as if he had become the writer I had chosen not to be.

I went to Amazon again, intending to have another look at the webpage devoted to The Tea Forest The Tea Forest and perhaps find the author's contact information; but I could not locate the page, and there was no evidence anywhere on the Internet of a second Thomas Cradle or his novel. I tried dozens of searches, all to no avail. I emailed the seller, Overdog Books, asking for any information they might have on the author; they denied having sold me the book. I sent them a scan of the packing slip, along with a note that accused them of being in collusion with one of my enemies, most likely another writer who, envious of my success, was mocking me. They did not respond. I riffled through the pages of the novel, half-expecting it to dematerialize along with the proof of its existence. I had often made the comment that if ever I were presented with incontrovertible evidence of the fantastic, I would quit writing and become a priest. Though I was not yet prepared to don the ca.s.sock, the book in my hands seemed evidence of the kind I had demanded. and perhaps find the author's contact information; but I could not locate the page, and there was no evidence anywhere on the Internet of a second Thomas Cradle or his novel. I tried dozens of searches, all to no avail. I emailed the seller, Overdog Books, asking for any information they might have on the author; they denied having sold me the book. I sent them a scan of the packing slip, along with a note that accused them of being in collusion with one of my enemies, most likely another writer who, envious of my success, was mocking me. They did not respond. I riffled through the pages of the novel, half-expecting it to dematerialize along with the proof of its existence. I had often made the comment that if ever I were presented with incontrovertible evidence of the fantastic, I would quit writing and become a priest. Though I was not yet prepared to don the ca.s.sock, the book in my hands seemed evidence of the kind I had demanded.

The narrative of the The Tea Forest The Tea Forest was episodic, heavy on the descriptive pa.s.sages, many of them violent or explicitly s.e.xual; and these episodes were strung together on a flimsy plotline that essentially consisted of a series of revelations, all leading the narrator (TC by name, thereby firmly establishing that Cradle Two had not overstrained his imagination during this portion of the creative process) to conclude that our universe and those adjoining it were interpenetrating. He likened this circ.u.mstance to countless strips of wet rice paper hung side by side in a circle and blown together by breezes that issued from every quarter of the compa.s.s, allowing even strips on opposite points of the circle to stick to each other for a moment and, in some instances, for much longer; thus, he concluded, we commonly spent portions of each day in places far stranger than we were aware (although the universes appeared virtually identical). This, he declared, explained why people in rural circ.u.mstances experienced paranormal events more often than urban dwellers: They were likely to notice unusual events, whereas city folk might mistake a ghost for a new form of advertising, or attribute the sighting of an enormous shadow in the Hudson River to chemicals in the air, or pay no attention to the fact that household objects were disappearing around them. It also might explain, I realized, why I was no longer able to unearth any record of the novel. was episodic, heavy on the descriptive pa.s.sages, many of them violent or explicitly s.e.xual; and these episodes were strung together on a flimsy plotline that essentially consisted of a series of revelations, all leading the narrator (TC by name, thereby firmly establishing that Cradle Two had not overstrained his imagination during this portion of the creative process) to conclude that our universe and those adjoining it were interpenetrating. He likened this circ.u.mstance to countless strips of wet rice paper hung side by side in a circle and blown together by breezes that issued from every quarter of the compa.s.s, allowing even strips on opposite points of the circle to stick to each other for a moment and, in some instances, for much longer; thus, he concluded, we commonly spent portions of each day in places far stranger than we were aware (although the universes appeared virtually identical). This, he declared, explained why people in rural circ.u.mstances experienced paranormal events more often than urban dwellers: They were likely to notice unusual events, whereas city folk might mistake a ghost for a new form of advertising, or attribute the sighting of an enormous shadow in the Hudson River to chemicals in the air, or pay no attention to the fact that household objects were disappearing around them. It also might explain, I realized, why I was no longer able to unearth any record of the novel.

I had the book copied and bound and FedExed the copy to my agent. The cover letter explained how I had obtained it and asked him to find out whatever he could. He called two mornings later to congratulate me on a stroke of marketing genius, saying that The Tea Forest The Tea Forest could be another Blair Witch and that this hoax concerning a second Thomas Cradle was a brilliant way of preparing the market for the debut of my "new" style. When I told him it wasn't a hoax, as far as I knew, he said not to worry, he'd never tell, and declared that if Random House wouldn't go for the book, he'd take me over to Knopf. At this juncture, I began to acknowledge that the universe might be as Cradle Two described, and, since there would be no one around to charge me with plagiarism, I saw no reason not to profit from the book; but I told him to hold off on doing anything, that I needed to think it through and, before all else, I might be traveling to Cambodia and Vietnam. could be another Blair Witch and that this hoax concerning a second Thomas Cradle was a brilliant way of preparing the market for the debut of my "new" style. When I told him it wasn't a hoax, as far as I knew, he said not to worry, he'd never tell, and declared that if Random House wouldn't go for the book, he'd take me over to Knopf. At this juncture, I began to acknowledge that the universe might be as Cradle Two described, and, since there would be no one around to charge me with plagiarism, I saw no reason not to profit from the book; but I told him to hold off on doing anything, that I needed to think it through and, before all else, I might be traveling to Cambodia and Vietnam.

The idea for the trip was little more than a whim, inspired by my envy of Cradle Two and the lush deviance of his life, as evidenced by The Tea Forest The Tea Forest; but over the ensuing two months, as I reread sections of the novel, committing many of them to memory, the richness of the prose infected me with Cradle Two's obsessiveness (which, after all, was a cousin to my own), and I came to speculate that if I retraced his steps (even if they were steps taken in another universe), I might derive some vital benefit. There was a mystery here that wanted unraveling, and there was no one more qualified than I to investigate it. While I hadn't entirely accepted his rice paper model of the universe, I believed that if his a.n.a.logy held water, I might be able to perceive its operations more clearly through the simple lens of a river culture. However, one portion of the novel gave me reason for concern. The narrator, TC, had learned during the course of his journey that in one alternate universe he was a secretive figure of immense power, evil in nature, and that his innumerable a.n.a.logs were, to some degree or another, men of debased character. The final section of the book suggested that he had undergone a radical transformation, and that idea was supported by a transformation in the prose. Under other circ.u.mstances, I would have perceived this to be a typical genre resolution, but Cradle Two's sentences uncoiled like vipers waking under the reader's eye, spitting out a black stream of venom from which the next serpent would slither, dark and supple, sleekly malformed, governed by an insidious sonority that got into my head and stained my dreams and my work for days thereafter. Eventually I convinced myself that Cradle Two's gift alone was responsible for this dubious magic and that it had been done for dramatic effect and was in no way a reflection of reality.

The book, the actual object, became an article of my obsession. I liked touching it. The slickness of the cover; the tacky spot on the back where a clerk or prior owner had spilled something sticky or parked a wad of chewing gum; the neat yet uninspired marginalia; the handwritten inscription, "To Tracy," and the anonymity of the dedication, "For you"; the faintly yellowed paper; the tear on page 19. All its mundane imperfections seemed proofs of its otherworldliness, that another world existed beyond the enclosure of my own, and I began carrying the book with me wherever I went, treating it as though it were a lover, fondling it, riffling its pages, fingering it while I drove, thinking about it to the point of distraction, until the idea of the trip evolved from a whim into a project I seriously considered, and then into something more. Though was ordinarily a cynical type, dismissive of any opinion arguing the thesis that life was anything other than a cruel and random process, my affair with the book persuaded me that destiny had taken a hand in my life, and I would be a fool not to heed it (I think every cynic's bra.s.sbound principles can be as easily overthrown). And so, tentatively to begin with, yet with growing enthusiasm, I started to make plans. As a writer, I delighted in planning, in charting the course of a story, in a.s.sembling the elements of a fiction into a schematic, and I plotted the trip as though it were a novel that hewed to (but was not limited by) the picaresque flow of Cradle Two's voyage along the Mekong. There would be a woman, of course-perhaps two or three women-and here a dash of adventure, here a time for rest and reflection, here the opportunity for misadventure, here a chance for love, and here a chance for disappointment. I laid in detail with the care of a master craftsman attempting a delicate mosaic, leaving only one portion undone: the ending. That would be produced by the alchemy of the writing or, in this instance, the traveling.

I intended to hew closely in spirit to the debauched tenor of Cradle Two/TC's journey, and I hoped that by setting up similar conditions, I might have illuminations similar to his; but I saw no purpose in duplicating its every detail-I expected my journey to be a conflation of his experience. The lion's share of his troubles on the trip had stemmed from his choice of boats, so rather than buying a leaky fishing craft with an unreliable engine for cheap, I arranged to have a houseboat built in Stung Treng. The cost was negligible, four thousand dollars, half up front, for a shallow-draft boat capable of sleeping four with a fully equipped galley and a new engine. Once I completed the trip, I intended to donate it to charity, a Christian act that, given the boat's value in U.S. dollars, would allow me to take a tax write-off of several times that amount. I informed Kim that I'd be going away for six to eight weeks, roughing it (she considered any activity that occurred partially outdoors to be roughing it) on the Mekong, far from five-star hotels and haute cuisine, and that she was welcome to hook up with me in Saigon, where suitable amenities were available. However, I cautioned her that I would be attempting to recreate the mood described in The Tea Forest The Tea Forest, and this meant I would be seeing other women. Perhaps, I suggested, she should seize the opportunity to spread her wings.

Kim, a tall, striking brunette, had an excellent mind, a background in microbiology, and a scientist's dispa.s.sionate view of human interactions. We had discussed marriage and discussed rather more the possibility of having children, but until we reached that pa.s.s, she was comfortable with maintaining an open relationship. She told me to be careful, a reference both to safe s.e.x and to the problems I'd had in compartmentalizing my emotional life, and gave me her blessing. I then contacted my agent and instructed him to sell The Tea Forest The Tea Forest while I was gone. These formalities out of the way, I had little left to do except lose some weight for the trip and cultivate a beard-I thought this would help get me into character-and wait for the end of the fall monsoon. while I was gone. These formalities out of the way, I had little left to do except lose some weight for the trip and cultivate a beard-I thought this would help get me into character-and wait for the end of the fall monsoon.

I flew to Bangkok and there took pa.s.sage on the Ubon Ratchatani Express toward the Lao border, berthed in an old-fashioned sleeping car with curtained fold-down beds on both sides of the aisle. I spent a goodly portion of the evening in the bar car, which reeked of garlic and chilis and frying basil, drinking bad Thai beer, trying to acclimate myself to the heat that poured through the lowered windows. From Ubon, I traveled by bus to Stung Treng, a dismal town of about twenty-five thousand at the confluence of the Mekong, the Sesan, and the Sekong Rivers. It was a transit point for backpackers, a steady trickle of them, the majority remaining in town no more than a couple of hours, the length of time it took for the next river taxi to arrive. I had thought to pick up a companion in one of the larger Cambodian towns downriver, but as I would be trapped in Stung Treng for three days while the boat was being fitted and provisioned, I posted signs at the border, in the open-air market, and around town, advertising a cruise aboard the Undine Undine (the name of my houseboat) in exchange for personal services. Women only. See the bartender at the Sekong Hotel. (the name of my houseboat) in exchange for personal services. Women only. See the bartender at the Sekong Hotel.

I was heading back to the hotel, pa.s.sing through the market when a mural painted on a noodle stall caught my eye. Abstract in form, a yellowish white ma.s.s of cells or chambers, spreading over the front and both sides of the stall-though crudely rendered, I had the idea that it was the depiction of microscopic life, one of those multicelled monstrosities that you become overly familiar with in Biology 101. It was such an oddity (most of the stalls were unadorned, a handful decorated with religious iconography), I stopped to look and immediately drew a gathering of young men, curious to see what had made me curious and taking the opportunity to offer themselves as guides, procurers, and so forth. The stallkeeper, an elderly Laotian man, grew annoyed with these loiterers, but I gave him a handful of Cambodian riels, enough to purchase noodles for my new pals, and asked (through the agency of an interpreter-one of the men spoke English) what the mural represented.

"He don't know," said the interpreter. "He say it make peaceful to look at. It make him think of Nirvana. You know Nirvana?"

"Just their first couple of alb.u.ms," I said. "Ask him who painted it."

This question stimulated a brief exchange, and the interpreter reported that the artist had been an American. Big like me. More hair. A bad man. I asked him to inquire in what way the man had been bad, but the stallkeeper would only say (or the interpreter could only manage to interpret) that the man was "very bad." I had only skimmed the last half of The Tea Forest The Tea Forest, but I seemed to recall a mention of a creature like that depicted by the mural, and I suspected that the mural and the bad man who had created it might be evidence supporting Cradle Two's theories.

That afternoon I staked out a table in the Sekong's bar and was amazed by how many women volunteered for my inspection. Two balked at the s.e.xual aspects of the position, and others were merely curious; but eleven were serious applicants, willing and, in some cases, eager to trade their favors for a boat ride and whatever experiences it might afford them. I rejected all but four out of hand for being too young or insufficiently attractive. The first day's interviews yielded one maybe, a thirty-four-year-old Swedish school-teacher who was making her way around the world and had been traveling for almost five years; but she seemed to be looking for a place to rest, and rest was the last thing on my mind.

The bar was a pleasant enough s.p.a.ce-walls of split, lacquered bamboo decorated with travel posters, Cambodian pop flowing from hidden speakers, and a river view through screen windows. A standing floor fan buzzed and whirred in one corner, yet it was so humid that the chair stuck to my back, and the smells drifting up from the water grew less enticing as the hours wore on. Late on the second day, I was almost ready to give up, when a slender, long-legged woman with dyed black hair (self-barbered, apparently, into a ragged pageboy cut), camo parachute pants, and an oft-laundered Olivia Tremor Control T-shirt approached the bar. She unshouldered her backpack and spoke to the bartender. I signaled to him that she pa.s.sed muster. He pointed me out, and she came toward my table but pulled up short a couple of feet away.

"Oh, gosh!" she said. "You're Thomas Cradle, aren't you?"

Flattered at being recognized, I said that I was.

"This is fantastic!" She came forward again, dragging the backpack. "I shall have to tell my old boyfriend. He's a devoted fan of yours, and he'll be terribly impressed. Of course, that would make it necessary to speak with him again, wouldn't it?"

She was more interesting-looking than pretty, yet pretty enough, with lively topaz eyes and one of those superprecise British accents that linger over each and every syllable, delicately tonguing the consonants, as if giving the language a b.l.o.w.j.o.b.

"It's h.e.l.lish outside," she said. "I must have a cold drink. Would you care for something?"

Her face, which I'd initially thought too young, mistaking her for a gangly teenager, had a waiflike quality; a white scar over one eyebrow and small indentations along her jaw, perhaps resulting from adolescent acne, added a decade to my estimate.

"I'll take a Green Star, thanks," I said. "No ice."

"Gin for me. Tons of ice." Her mouth, bracketed when she smiled by finely etched lines, was extraordinarily wide and expressive, appearing to have an extra hinge that enabled her crooked grin. "I'll just fetch them, shall I?"

She brought the drinks, had a sip, closed her eyes, and sighed. Then she extended a hand, shook mine, and said, "I'm Lucy McQuillen, and I loved your last book. At least I think it's your last." She frowned. "Didn't I hear that you'd stopped writing . . . or were giving it up or something? Not that your presence in Cambodia would refute that in any way."

"I have got a new novel coming out next spring," I said.

"Well, if it's as good as the last, you'll have my ten quid."

"The critics will probably say it's exactly the same as the last."

We teetered on the brink of an awkward silence, and then she said, "Shall I tell you about myself? Would that be helpful?"

"That's why I'm here."

"Okay. I'm thirty-one . . . thirty-two next month, actually. I've lived in London all my life. I graduated from the Chelsea School of Design and worked at a firm in the city for a while. Five years ago I started my own firm, specializing in urban landscape design. We were doing spectacularly well for a new business . . ."

A foursome of prosperous-looking Cambodian men entered the bar, laughing and talking; they acknowledged us, inclining their heads and pressing their hands together in a prayerful gesture, a gesture that Lucy returned, and they took seats at a table against the back wall.

"To put it succinctly," Lucy went on, "I'm a victim of multiculturalism. My East Indian accountant stole from me, quite a large sum, and fled to India. I couldn't recover. It was an absolute disaster. I'm afraid I was a mess for some time thereafter. I had a little money left in personal accounts, and I started out for India, planning some pitiful revenge. I'm not certain what I had in mind. Some sort of Kaliesque scenario, I suppose. Gobbets of blood. His wife screaming in horror. Of course, I didn't go through with it. I bypa.s.sed India completely, and I've been b.u.mming around Southeast Asia for a couple of years. My money's running low, and, to be frank, this voyage would extend my trip and give me the time and leisure to write a new business plan."

"You must be good at what you do," I said. "To be so successful at such a young age."

"I've won awards," she said, grinning broadly.

"I would have thought, then, you could have found investors to bail you out."

"As I said, I was a mess. Certifiably a mess. Once they noticed, investors wouldn't touch me. I've calmed down a great deal since, and I'm ready to have at it again."

She fit into the "too eager" category, yet I found her appealing. The Cambodian men burst into applause, celebrating something one of them had done or said. The light was fading on the river, the far bank darkened by cloud shadow. I asked Lucy if she understood the requirements of the position.

"Your sign was somewhat vague," she said. "I may be misreading it, but I a.s.sume 'companion' is another word for girlfriend?"

"That's right."

"May I ask a question?"

"Go for it."

"Surely a man of your accomplishment must have a number of admirers. You're not bad looking, and you obviously have money. I don't understand why you would be in the market."

"It's in the nature of an experiment," I said. "I can a.s.sure you that you won't be harmed or humiliated in any way."

"A literary experiment?"

"You might say."

"You know, I didn't intend to seek the position," she said. "I was just . . . intrigued. But I must admit, having Thomas Cradle on my resum' would do wonders for my self-esteem." She had a deep drink of her gin-and-tonic. "If the position is offered, I do have two conditions. One you've already spoken to-I'm not into pain. Short of sea urchins and safety pins, I'm your girl. I believe you can expect me, given a modic.u.m of compatibility, to perform my duties with relish."

"And the second condition?"

"Instead of leaping into the fire, as it were, I'd prefer we took some time to become comfortable with one another. Give it a day or two. Will that be a problem?"

"Not at all."

One of the Cambodian men bought us fresh drinks. He spoke no English, but Lucy chatted him up in his own tongue and then explained that his friend had received a promotion, and he would like us to join them in a toast. We complied, and, after bows and prayerful gestures all around, I asked if she had studied Cambodian.