Between the Bridge and the River (17 page)

“Oh, excellent! Absolutely spiffy! Like I say, I’m a huge fan. Let’s head off, everyone is
dying
to meet you—well, perhaps not dying to meet you, if you know what I mean?” He laughed uproariously at his own joke.

“Are we dead?” said Brinsley.

“I am, you are.” He glanced at Fraser. “I’m not sure about Laughing Boy here.”

“What about my wife and kids?”

“They’ll be fine. Miss you, of course, but All Is Well. C’mon, let’s go. You’re going to love this bunch of guys. They’re loonies!”

“Am I going to hell?” asked Brinsley.

“Oh Brins, what are you talking about?” laughed H.P. Lovecraft. “You were finished with hell by the time you were in your thirties. All Is Well my friend, All Is Well.”

The gentle Irishman couldn’t help but smile and sigh with relief. He gestured toward Fraser.

“What about yer man here?”

“Someone will be along for him in a minute. Come on, come on. Let’s go.”

Brinsley could not help but be caught up in the enthusiasm and cheer of H.P., and he wished Fraser good-bye and good luck before he allowed himself to be hustled out the door. Fraser sat down again and waited.

RUE DE VAUGIRARD IS ONE OF THE LONGEST STREETS IN PARIS
. It runs from the Boulevard Saint Michel, alongside the Palais de Luxembourg and its gardens, crosses Rue de Rennes, and heads out of the Sixth Arrondissement to the groovy wilds of the Fifteenth. It’s a busy street during the day, lots of deliveries and the ubiquitous European buzzy moped funsters, but at night it is as quiet as the Pantheon.

Claudette and George, or Georges, as she called him (he loved it), had walked away from Notre Dame’s gothic threat and seemed instinctively to be headed toward Claudette’s apartment, the one she had inherited from her actor-lover. As they strolled by the dark palace, now a government building, Claudette told George how Hermann Göring had taken it as his personal residence during the Nazi occupation of the city. How he had looted the place of many art treasures, some of which were still missing.

It was a mystery to Claudette why the Nazis, who were so spiritually bankrupt, were such art lovers. She couldn’t seem to equate the two, and why was it that their tastes ran to the flamboyant and expensive?

George said it was because they were criminals. He had seen the same thing with clients. Occasionally he would be called upon to defend successful career criminals. Ugly, brutish, greedy minds who
would, when they had the funds, surround themselves with expensive and gaudy art. Art that the rest of the world, that history, had declared meaningful and beautiful.

They did this for two reasons, said George. One was that it showed everyone they were powerful and could acquire beautiful and expensive things, and the other was that they had no real idea of beauty, so they had to take everyone else’s word for it. George said that it is impossible to see beauty unless you possess some yourself, but there is solace in this fact if it is examined.

Claudette agreed, delighted with the explanation. She said it was like when she had gone to Hollywood with Guillame, she had seen so many hideous men—Hollywood producers and executives, fat barrels of spite—who always had beautiful escorts with them. But the thing about the beautiful escorts was that they all sort of looked the same: big pouty collagen lips, large fake breasts, gym stomachs, and perfect round asses. They were like drawings of women done by a horny teenage boy.

“Exactly,” said George.

The men have no idea what they want and the women cater to that. That same look is favored by criminals the world over. Big, noisy art in gilt frames. You won’t see much Miró on the walls of the wicked.

“Does that mean the art is debased if it is owned by a philistine?” asked Claudette.

“
Oui,
” replied George, thrilled with his daring new controversial stance. “Just like the pouty Hollywood escorts.”

“Are you sure you are not French?” laughed Claudette.

“I’m not.” George smiled. “But I’m getting there.”

And indeed he was. He thought about his abandoned wife, Sheila. He felt another stab of guilt but at the same time he could not remember when he had last had a discussion about art or Nazis or even Hollywood. He hadn’t even been up this late in maybe five years. He wondered what the hell he had done with his life. He’d settled for less. Settled for the path of least resistance. Tried to be a good egg. Didn’t want to hurt those he loved, which of course is impossible. If someone loves someone else it’s going to hurt. That’s part of it. He could see that
now. He wasn’t sure that he had ever loved Sheila, he thought probably not, and he didn’t think Sheila had ever really loved him, it’s just that he was convenient. She had acquired him like a big, gaudy painting, except he was more a kind of store-bought print.

Well, no more, he was getting French,
bébé
. Finding his inner Frenchman. He couldn’t live for other people anymore, he was dying, and the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

As they walked under the covered arches on Rue de Vaugirard, opposite the Palais du Luxembourg, George turned and kissed Claudette again. He held her passionately and she returned his ardor with fire and enthusiasm. They were backlit with the light from a display in a clockmaker’s window.

Across the street, guarding the palace gate, stood a gendarme who was in reality the angel Gabriel. He watched them from his little Perspex sentry box. He smiled approvingly and took a last drag on his cigarette.
L’amour
.

FRASER WAITED FOR FIFTEEN MINUTES
or so after Brinsley left with H.P. Lovecraft before he thought of leaving himself. He tried to but found the door was locked from the outside—somehow he had expected that. He sat down and leafed through an
Architectural Digest,
finally getting interested in an article about the actor Robert Duvall, who liked to collect South American art and to dance the tango with his pretty young wife in their immaculate country home.

He heard a key in the lock and the door was opened by a short middle-aged man in a dark blue toga. He was red faced, chubby cheeked, and pudgy-fat. He held his hands up high in a rather effete affected manner and his tubby, sausagey fingers looked like they were being throttled by his many elaborate rings. Totally out of character with the rest of his outfit, he wore a jesus is my homeboy baseball cap. He spoke American-accented English, sounding almost exactly like Lee Liberace, the flamboyant homosexual concert pianist.

“Fraser Darby?”

“Yes, sir,” said Fraser, standing. He threw in the “sir” just in case. You never knew what would keep you from the lake of fire.

“Oh, please. ‘Sir’ is my father. Call me V.” He grabbed Fraser and gave him an affectionate but chaste little hug. “It’s short for Virgil. I’m Roman originally.”

“Okay . . . V,” said Fraser.

“Sorry I’m late. I have a terrible time with directions, which is embarrassing really, given that I’m a senior guide here.”

“Where are we, V? What is ‘here’?”

“Ooh. Good question, smartyboots. All in good time. We’ve got a bit of a trek ahead of us, do you want to go to the bathroom or anything before we leave?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Course you don’t, silly. It’s just my little joke. Shall we?” He motioned to the open door and Fraser walked toward it. Virgil followed.

The landscape had completely changed.

The sea was gone and stretched out in front of, and indeed behind and to either side of, them was a vast, flat hardscrabble desert under a white sky. A couple of dowdy fake cacti were placed here and there, and about thirty feet in front of them was a large cardboard cutout of a camel that was smiling and wearing a pair of sunglasses. The earth was parched and devoid of all life, as if crossed by a retreating czar.

“Behold!” squeaked V.

Fraser turned and looked at him, mystified.

V apologized, then tried it again in a much more dramatic and appropriate tone.

“Behold!” he boomed theatrically.

There was silence for a long moment. V smiled awkwardly.

“Behold what?” asked Fraser.

“The Inferno,” boomed V again, playing to the balcony. Fraser could not believe it.

“What, this is it? This is the lake of fire? This is hell?”

“Well, sort of.” V shrugged. He had given up any pretence of sounding scary and prophetic. “Actually, I never really know what’s going to appear until the client arrives. I had one guy, an Italian, few hundred years ago now, doesn’t time fly—in both directions—you should have seen what he came up with. It was stupendous, although a bit over the top for me. We went on for days. All very allegorical and learned. A real masterpiece.”

“Dante Alligersomething. That who you’re talking about. Dante’s
Inferno
?”

“Yes, that was him. Dante. Dan, I called him. ‘Dan, Dan, the Renaissance man.’ That’s what I used to say, made him laugh. Sweet guy. Smelled a bit garlicky but, you know, Italian.”

“You are the poet Virgil and you are going to guide me through
The Inferno
?”

“Exactly!” said V. “You’re very quick.”

“I did Dante’s
Inferno
at school. It was nothing like this. Where’re the levels and the wailing corpses and people frozen in ice and all that stuff?”

“You’re talking about Dante’s
Inferno
. This isn’t Dante’s, it’s yours.”

“What?” asked Fraser, genuinely puzzled.

“This is your soul, Fraser. It looks like this because this is the way you’ve made it.”

“What do other people’s souls look like?”

“Oh, it varies—some swampy, some dark, some cheery. I had a very nice lady from Toronto once, she had the whole thing covered in brightly patterned wool. Like a giant sweater. Very Canadian.”

Fraser stepped forward and kicked a few pebbles toward the cutout of the camel.

“So I’m dead, then?”

“I don’t know, I’m just a guide. I don’t get that sort of information.”

“But I won’t be going back to where I came from?”

“Dante did.”

“Yes, I suppose he must have, to write about it. What do I do now?”

“It’s your soul. We have to cross it.”

“Why?”

“To get to the other side,” said V smugly.

Fraser gave him a withering look.

“What I mean is, my job is to escort you across your soul to Your Solution, which lies”—Virgil built himself up for a dramatic finish—”BEYOND!” He gestured out across the arid plain.

“Oh, stop talking like that, you sound like a gay magician,” grumbled Fraser.

“They have straight magicians?”

But Fraser wasn’t listening. He started walking out across the desert to the eastern horizon.

V shouted after him. “You’re going the wrong way!”

Fraser turned. “How do you know?”

Virgil smiled and held up a shiny golden compass that dangled at the end of a thick chain.

It glinted in the sunlight, momentarily blinding Fraser.

They headed west, as is traditional for Scotsmen in search of a solution.

The walk was dull. V made a few attempts at light conversation, complimenting Fraser on the tiny rock formations on the floor of his soul, but Fraser was too sad and angry to reply. He just grunted.

There was no sun in the sky, only the blank white light that seemed to have no definable source. It was neither too hot nor too cold but neither was it just right. It was empty, mile after mile of empty.

After three hours of walking Fraser eventually spoke.

“Jeez, it never ends. Are you sure we’re going in the right direction?”

“Oh yes,” said V.

“’Cause I don’t get the impression we’re moving at all.”

“That’s the soul for you. Infinite, you know—very big.”

“If it’s infinite, how can we possibly cross it?”

“Yes, it can take a while, no doubt about it, that’s why the storytellers are the guides.”

“Sorry?” said Fraser.

“Lovecraft, me, the new fellow, Brinsley—all the other guides of the soul. We’re all storytellers.”

“Why storytellers? Why not Indian scouts or Sherpas? People with a sense of direction?” whined Fraser pointedly, hinting at a suspected incompetence on the part of the ancient Roman.

Virgil didn’t stoop to defend himself but good-naturedly offered an explanation.

“A good storyteller has an excellent sense of direction. Plus a good story helps pass the time crossing long distances. Wanna hear a story?”

“No!” Fraser snapped.

They walked on in silence for a while, V pouting a little at Fraser’s brusque manner. The light didn’t move or change, the temperature did not alter, Fraser felt no physical fatigue but he found himself sighing deeply, the old ennui needling at him.

“Who was your guide?” he asked eventually.

“John Lennon.” V beamed proudly.

“That’s impossible. John Lennon wasn’t born until thousands of years after you died.”

“Time is only linear for engineers and referees,” said V.

They walked on in silence again, until again Fraser could no longer bear it.

“John Lennon wasn’t a storyteller, he was a musician.”

“He’s an artist,” said V. “All artists are storytellers.”

“You make this crap up as you go along, don’t you?” growled Fraser.

“I’m a storyteller.” Virgil smiled infuriatingly. “I can’t help myself.”

And so they walked on. Fraser tried speeding up to put some distance between him and the portly poet but Virgil kept up with ease. On and on they walked.

“Oh, go on then,” Fraser said after another six hours of silence.

“Go on then what?” asked V.

“Tell me a story.”

“Hah!” said V. “I thought you’d never ask. This story is called ‘The Midwife.’”

ONCE UPON A TIME
there was a soldier who believed in God. The soldier, whose name was Joshua, was from the North of England, a town called Newcastle. He had grown up poor and took to soldiering as a way to escape the miserable life of a serf in his hometown. He had become, at first, a pikeman—that is, he carried a pike, a long stick with a pointed hook that looked a little like the vicious freshwater shark of the same name, into battle and tried to stab as many enemy combatants as he could. He was good at this because he had played a lot of darts growing up so had had a certain amount of training.