Jocasta was walking the corridors of her empire. Behind closed doors, the staff were busy. Jocasta liked nothing better than these muffled sounds, the grunts of real ecstasy mingling with the far more expert sighs of simulation. She sometimes thought she preferred this aural stimulation to the act itself … but then she put the unprofessional thought firmly in its place.
Certainly she was a desirable woman; she knew that all right. Not, perhaps, in the same visual class as some of the girls, but definitely a class lady. Her features were as classically Grecian as her name; and if her breasts were a trifle too heavy, she had stopped worrying about them aeons ago. They looked well enough, swelling through her long, floor-length, white lace nightgown, shadowed by the light from the candle she held as she toured the building. She enjoyed dressing like this. It made her feel pure.
Whereas, as every one of her staff was fully aware, anything they could do, Madame Jocasta could perform twice as erotically. She was the best; and if she undervalued her all-round gifts, her cohorts did not. On the rare occasions when she performed herself, they would crowd to the observation-holes in the walls of her room, and learn.
The sound of the whip was unmistakable. It came from the door behind which “Boom-Boom” de Sade was in full cry. Her hungry voice drawled something about a red-hot poker and Jocasta moved on contentedly.
Boom-Boom was a great favourite of Flann O’Toole’s, since she made him positively enjoy his self-mortifications; but Flann O’Toole was no favourite of Jocasta’s. He was too liable to turn sadist himself and damage the staff.
The next door yielded only silence. This was Mile Florence Nightingale’s chamber. She exuded a comfortable, homely sexuality, so peaceful as she displayed an accidental nipple, so demure as she undressed. Florence always
did it
, never screwed or fucked or shafted or banged; did it with grace and in the dark. As Jocasta paused, a tuneful hum welled up from within. Florence was singing her client to sleep with a soft lullaby.
From Gilles’ room came the sound of music. It could be that he was trying to conceal his lack of effort; but Madame Jocasta decided not to interfere tonight. She would, however, have to speak to Gilles soon.
The Indian girl, Kamala, was not in her room. Madame Jocasta remembered the presence next door, in the bed of the Chinese contortionist Lee Kok Fook, of a very special guest. Count Cherkassov had requested the company of his two favourite ladies, and while Madame the Countess Cherkassova slept unknowing in her bed, the two mistresses of the arts of the East were persuading the amiably stupid Count’s aristocratic blood to flow somewhat faster than usual. Lee Kok Fook and Kamala Sutra made a perfect team.
—Come in, Madame.
Media’s voice brought a glow of pleasure to Jocasta’s face. This one was her favourite; the only one who truly understood her. Media was the talent nearest Jocasta’s own. To avoid competing with her protégée, Jocasta had allotted her the task of pleasing only women; which she did with great zest. —I like women, she said. I get on well with them.
Jocasta entered her lieutenant’s room.
—It would appear we’re both free tonight, said Media. She was standing with her back to the window, naked, displaying herself to the night.
—Shut the window, Media. The mist. You’ll catch something.
Media obeyed unquestioningly. Madame knew best.
—Since we have this little time on our hands, she suggested, I was wondering if you felt like a little practice, Madame?
—That’s what I like, Media, said Madame Jocasta, letting her nightgown fall to the floor. Devotion.
—It’s a pleasure, Madame, replied Media, coming to her.
Blink.
Mr Norbert Page was a small man.
He wore small silver-rimmed bifocals.
He took small steps.
He drank small drinks.
His hands made small movements of nervousness as they discovered that the door to the shed was unlocked. Alex was getting far too good with his golden toothpick. He pushed the door open, and Alex grinned up at him, all innocence and childish charm.
—Alex, said Norbert Page, wagging as stern a finger as he could muster, you haven’t been out, have you? It was a forlorn question; Alex nodded the answer happily: —
Yes
.
—Did anyone see you?
Alex shook his head, still smiling beatifically.
—Alexy, said Mr Page in great relief, You’ll be the death of me, you will. If you’d been seen … if your mother had found out I went to have a little drinkie…
He gave up; Alex’s grin widened. —Play, he commanded. Play game.
Norbert Page loved indoor games; his armchair athleticism had earned him the title of “Sports” Page. This love made him Alex’s ideal guardian.
They played draughts on a chessboard, with chessmen. This enabled Mr Page to add a secret level of difficulty for himself. When the draughts reached the queening square, he would replace a pawn by a major chess piece. To Alex, these signified no more than a normal doubled draught; but Sports Page meticulously observed the seniority of Queen over Rook, Rook over Bishop and so forth, never permitting himself to take a great piece with a lesser. It made the game more interesting for him and gave Alex a chance of winning.
—Your move, said Mr Page.
Blink.
There were, of course, some who slept through the blink. Irina Cherkassova for instance lay unmoved in her large, if crude, four-poster, oblivious to this as she was to her husband’s nocturnal retreat.
If the Rising Son was the tallest house in K, the Cherkassov residence, somewhat distant from the main body of the town, was the most sprawling. It also had a fine, large garden. In fact, it was as near to an old dacha as they could make it; but since the family was not nearly large enough to fill it, they were obliged to share it with one P. S. Moonshy, about whom the standing joke was that he had been an afterthought on the part of his parents— hence his initials. P. S. Moonshy was the town quartermaster, and the continual battle that raged between him and the Cherkassovs was one of the wonders and hilarities of the town. —’Tis a happy irony, O’Toole had been heard to say in a sober moment, that that nest of gentility should be afflicted with so potent a viper of levelling.
P. S. Moonshy slept every night with Marx under the pillow. It was uncomfortable, but he did it, as a mark of respect. He was sleeping now. Badly.
So, in the neighbouring house, was that other possessor of meaningful initials, Ignatius Quasimodo Gribb.
Elfrida Gribb, being a prig, was filled with a faint nausea as she turned on to the Cobble-way and approached the Elbaroom. She could tolerate it no more than she could Madame Jocasta’s hell-hole; and if she had a complaint to level at her sleeping husband, it was that in his all-embracing love for the town where he had made his home, he could find no place for a condemnation of those two mansions of corruption.
It was, then, an ill-assorted quartet that found itself outside the Elbaroom … Virgil Jones, all of a shamble, slouching beside Flapping Eagle, squinting into the mist; the man called Stone crouching up the cobbled way; and the pale woman astride her pliant donkey.
Elfrida’s eyes met Flapping Eagle’s. She caught her breath.
Blink.
XXXIII
H
OW LONG
is an interlude in being? The blink had gone —or so it felt to those who experienced it—almost before it had had time to happen; and yet it had happened, and Elfrida shivered with the chill. She found herself thinking hard about Ignatius, holding his face in her mind’s eye, making him solid enough to clutch. Elsewhere, Jocasta and Media continued their practice with unwonted ferocity; and in the Elbaroom, Flann O’Toole put down the table he had been about to hurl and retreated behind his bar, where his Alsatian bitch stared up at him in confused silence.
—Virgil? asked Flapping Eagle; but Virgil Jones shook his head, uncomprehending. —Some sort of blackout, he said. We must be tired.
—But both of us, Virgil? At the same time?
Virgil shook his head again. —I don’t know, he said, his voice grating on Flapping Eagle’s jangled nerves.
—Let’s go in, said Flapping Eagle. We may as well try and find beds.
Elfrida had heard the name Virgil. Surely not, she thought, surely Mr Jones has not returned? And yet one of the figures in the doorway had a distinct air of Virgil Jones about it. The other … his companion … the one who had stared at her … the face … no, it was the mist and her imagination. He was a stranger. The feather, that proved it. He was a stranger.
One thing is now certain, Elfrida told herself. Whatever hopes of sleep I entertained are in utter disarray. Perhaps the night would be best used in arriving at a solution of this mystery.
Flapping Eagle and Virgil had gone into the Elbaroom.
Elfrida dismounted, and pulling her shawl tightly about her, she stole to the wall of the Elbaroom, to stand between the door and window.
For the first time in her life, Mrs Gribb was deliberately eavesdropping.
XXXIV
T
HE SILENCE SPREAD
with them as they walked through the long, narrow room. It was as though they exuded some invisible, deadening substance to kill words on people’s lips and stifle movements at their source. It was also a magnetic substance, since the eyes of the numbed were capable only of following the two walking men. Quiet was an alien condition here; the entry of Virgil and Flapping Eagle had somehow altered the element in which these late revellers habitually had their being. Under the shock, too, Flapping Eagle sensed the presence of something more slippery, more dangerous, less predictable in its effects: the emotion of the prison guard whose escaped charge has just returned to his captors of his own free will, or that of the lion faced with a suicidal Christian. Puzzlingly, this emotion seemed to be directed at both of them. Not for the first or last time, Flapping Eagle was consumed with curiosity about his companion’s past. Moreover, though, he was shocked by the looks, almost of
recognition
, he was receiving himself. And subsequently he found himself—equally confusingly—utterly ignored. As though he shouldn’t have been there, and all present wished he weren’t.
Once they know me, he reassured himself, they will not be hostile. In the face of the blank hush of the Elba-room, it was perhaps an overly optimistic thought.
Noise returned to the bar as abruptly as it had left; and with it, every eye snapped away from the two newcomers. It was an unnerving reversal; they might not have existed as the denizens of the drinking-house exploded into an effusion of speech.
Hunter was gazing at One-Track Peckenpaw with a desperate interest.
—Tell me, he said, a shade too earnestly, about your hunting techniques.
Peckenpaw burst into a voluble speech about trap-laying, stalking, shooting and survival in the wild. All trace of boredom was gone from the Two-Time Kid’s features, replaced by a new-found passion for the hunt. One-Track himself had rarely been so passionate; he spoke of his past as though his life depended on it.
Meanwhile Flann O’Toole seemed to have collapsed completely. He stood, eyes squeezed shut, fists drumming on the bar-top, repeating monotonously: —Holy Mary Mother of God I swear I’ll never drink again. Holy Mary Mother of God I swear I’ll never…
He broke off to be sick into a bucket under the bar.
—Jesu Maria, he groaned.
It was at this point that O’Toole’s Alsatian did an unexpected thing. Worming her way past her vomiting master and under the bar, she launched herself at Virgil Jones, tail wagging, tongue licking, to give the returning man his first taste of welcome. O’Toole looked up, grey-faced; his eyes widened.
—Certainly I don’t believe it, he said. But then the dog always liked him; being closer to animals than human beings he always had a way with ’em. ’Tis Virgil Jones himself an no miasma. Jones the Dig. The grave fool is returned.
Eyes slowly drifted back across the room to Virgil and Flapping Eagle and the big friendly animal leaping about them as they stood stock-still halfway along the bar, next to Peckenpaw and the Two-Time Kid. Flapping Eagle watched the eyes and saw them run through a fast series of expressions. Disbelief first, to echo O’Toole; then wonderment; and finally relief.
—
Wal
, said Peckenpaw. Jones and a
stranger
. He gave the word a heavy emphasis.
—Well, well, said Two-Time, two times. Jones and a stranger.
And there were other similar exclamations along the length of the room. Gradually, joviality returned to the night.
Flann O’Toole came out from behind the bar, recovering fast, his ebullience already restored. There was a smile on his face that looked friendly.
Looked
friendly, Flapping Eagle warned himself. Looking isn’t being.
—His friend, bellowed One-Track Peckenpaw obviously, got a feather in his hair. Reminds me when I scalped an Indian chief. (Laughs, cheers, boos.)
And that sparked a memory in Flapping Eagle. Not of an experience, but of a history. He knew what their arrival reminded him of: old films in the fleapit at Phoenix, illicitly visited. The Redskin enters the Saloon. The boys make fun of him before shooting him.
We don’t dig Redskins in this town. We dig holes
.
—Dog, said Flann O’Toole to the bitch, be in order. The rebuke heightened Flapping Eagle’s growing qualms, but there was still that pleasant-looking smile carving its way across O’Toole’s face. The Alsatian skulked away behind the bar.
Flann O’Toole’s hands: great hams hanging at the ends of his arms.
Strangler’s hands
, thought Flapping Eagle. He would remember that thought at another time and place. At the moment they were spread in a gesture of friendship.
—Virgil, boomed O’Toole. Virgil me lad. Is it you it is?
His left hand flashed forward and pinched Virgil mightily on the arm. He had been standing immobile for some time now. Flapping Eagle saw the pain fly across his face and vanish again. His eyes were vacant.
Flann O’Toole was roaring with laughter at his trick.
—It’s either a fool or brilliant you are, Mr Jones, he said. Only a fool would let a thing like that go unpunished. A fool or a man who knows his weakness. At least I’m sure of this now, you’re flesh and blood. Come now and let me make amends. Have a drink on me.
Virgil did not move.
—Come on, come on, chuckled O’Toole, now fully himself again and enjoying his needling of the fat, blinking man, I was merciful enough; I could have used the right. After all we have to be sure, eh? Come and drink with O’Toole and introduce your baleful friend while you’re at it. Drinks on O’Toole I he shouted to the room at large. Cluster round and welcome home the wandering soul!
Virgil spoke.
—Before I drink with you, O’Toole, I must talk to you.
—Ridiculous, cried O’Toole. Why, we’ll talk as we drink.
—Privately, said Virgil.
Flann O’Toole assumed an air of mock-seriousness.
He treats Virgil like the village idiot
, thought Flapping Eagle, and wondered why that was Virgil’s chosen rôle here. Perhaps, he guessed, it was not choice that had allotted him the part.
—Hoomph, exhaled O’Toole. Serious is it? But these are my friends here, my close and valued comrades. I’ll have no secrets from them. So spill it, man. I’m thirsty with the thrill of seeing you again.
—Your wife Dolores, said Virgil Jones, who left you. With good reason, I might add. She and I are lovers. I cannot drink with you. Everything she said about you was true. It was true then, before she fled. It is true now. We’re not here to drink with you. Just looking for rooms, you follow. So if You’ll excuse me…
The rumble began low in Flann O’Toole’s chest and swelled slowly to a wild, shaking noise. His eyes grew red and large in his head. He stood thus for a moment, roaring and reddening, and then his hands lunged for Virgil Jones. Before Virgil could move, he was held in a constricting grip around the throat. He wheezed for breath.
—Excuse you indeed! yelled O’Toole. O you’re a fine fool all right, Mr Virgil Casanova. Saints spare me if I don’t strangle you here and now, choke you slowly to your well-deserved death. To come into the house of O’Toole himself and accuse him of being a cuckold, ’tis the true folly of the madman you are. Seduce my wife! Lucky you are I don’t believe you. You could not seduce a sausage, which saves your life.
—I thought you said your wife was a trial to you, said Two-Time Hunter with interest.
—You’ll keep out of this, said O’Toole. My wife is my wife and I’ll not have her name insulted for it insults me in the association. It’s time Mr Jones acquired some manners. Even idiots are not spared that.
His hands released Virgil who staggered back a step, drawing lungsful of air into himself. Flapping Eagle saw the big right hand clench and begin to travel. He found he was rooted to the spot. In slow-motion he saw the fist glide through the air towards the gasping Virgil; and the noise Of impact seemed less than it should have been. Virgil folded from the knees, wordlessly, and fell to the floor.
Still Flapping Eagle stood stock-still. O’Toole turned, a bull after his second matador. —Aren’t you going to help your friend, what’sy ourname? he said, still speaking at maximum volume. Flapping Eagle felt his head nodding from side to side: —No. O’Toole laughed.
—Virgil never did make close friends, he said. You’re a wise man to keep your distance. Flapping Eagle felt a sickness in the pit of his stomach.
—Give him the rush, called a voice from the back of the room. The bum’s rush for him.
O’Toole grinned. —One-Track, he called. Your assistance, if you please. They hoisted Virgil Jones between them and dragged him towards the door. Flapping Eagle watched them go.
One.
Two.
Three.
And Virgil had gone to clatter on the cobbles.
Elfrida Gribb, alarmed, rushed to him and cradled his head in her lap; but when he gained his consciousness he stood shakily, replaced his hat and, without thanking her, made his way down to the far end of the Cobble-way, falling once, over the crouching Stone.
Elfrida pursed her lips, full of the injury of the unappreciated helper. Ignatius had always said Virgil Jones was out of his mind. He had evidently been right.
It was the voice in his head that had paralysed him. It had been as persuasive as it ever had been, and it left Flapping Eagle disgusted with himself. This is what it had told him:
He was already a suspected outsider in the town where he had resolved to settle. He needed the people in the Elbaroom—needed their trust and help if he was even to find a bed for the night, let alone a place in the town’s life. To ally himself with Virgil Jones now would be to kiss goodbye to his hopes of reaching, at last, the end of his road; of finding his haven. It nauseated him as he thought it: for he was already allied to Virgil and in his debt to the tune of two lives. And yet the voice was persuasive. He knew himself now; knew that the urge to fit in, to be accepted, had taken over as the spirit of adventure and the passion for his long-time search waned in him.
—Tomorrow, he told himself. Or later tonight, maybe. I’ll go and find Virgil and apologize. Yes, that’s it. Tomorrow.
He could hear Virgil’s plea, made only hours ago: —
I really am very vulnerable to any wounds you may care to inflict
. Already the fears under those words had been realized. Flapping Eagle knew that he had hit his friend a great deal harder than Flann O’Toole, and in a more sensitive spot. The guilt was there; but it seemed he did not wish to atone. Not yet. He had to introduce himself first.
Guilt. My fault. Mea maxima
.
He shook himself into awareness of his surroundings.
All around him, unsmiling faces; except for O’Toole’s, which was grinning its violent grin.
—Where will he go? asked Flapping Eagle.
—O, Jocasta’s, where else? said a beetling-browed, red face. She’s the only one’ll have him.
—I suppose, said a narrow, elegantly-boned face, we’ll have to accustom ourselves to him once more.
—Not in here, said Flann O’Toole, he’ll not enter Napoleon’s Empire.
—May I sit down? asked Flapping Eagle.
—You may, said Flann O’Toole. And You’ll answer some questions as well.
Cynicism in the elegant face, violence in O’Toole’s. O’Toole: the conscious face of violence, brute strength revelling in itself, a masturbation of power. God, thought Flapping Eagle, where have I come?
—I should be happy to answer, he said, and bit his tongue in shame.
—What’s your name? asked O’Toole.
—Flapping Eagle. I am an Axona Amerindian. (Rank and serial number. He could feel blood on his mouth. And Virgil’s on his hands. Another human being damaged by contact with him.)
—Never heard of them, said Peckenpaw, shaking his head slowly.
—Age, said O’Toole.
—Seven hundred and seventy-seven. (How ridiculous it sounded; how divorced he was from all his life before these last days. And here on Calf Island he had already suffered this change: his immortality was no longer important, no longer even a subject for thought or discussion, let alone sadness. Strange to think it had once driven him near suicide. Among geniuses intelligence loses its currency; they vie with each other at cooking or sex. So with immortals. When age becomes a constant, it becomes irrelevant.)
—Profession?
—Sailor … I was a sailor. (That, too, seemed now to be a description of some other Flapping Eagle.)
—Prime interest?
—I… excuse me?
—Prime interest, repeated O’Toole.
—I don’t quite understand, said Flapping Eagle.
—Will you do the explaining, Two-Time, sighed O’Toole, and I’ll get meself some liquid nourishment.
The elegant face replaced O’Toole’s. —We in K, it said in a voice heavy with cynicism, like to think of ourselves as complete men. Most, or actually all of us have a special area of interest to call our own. I don’t think we could accept anyone who thought otherwise. It’s the difference, you see, between casual sex and love. The more you love, the more closely you get to know, the more profoundly you see, the more you are enriched. We like to think of ourselves as being enriched. We’d like to think you agreed.
—Yes, said Flapping Eagle, I agree,
(…to any wounds you may care to inflict
, Virgil had said. —
Agreed
, Flapping Eagle had answered.)
O’Toole was back. —Now then, he said, let’s try again, why don’t we? Prime interest?
The faces waited.
Flapping Eagle, dizzy and confused, and without knowing the origins of the thought, said: —Grimus. It’s Grimus.
—Ah, said O’Toole, at a loss for words.
—Tsk, tsk, said Hunter. You have, unhappily, a gift for touching nerves. We don’t say too much about that … about that here.
The faces looked sullen. If O’Toole were to advocate violence now, there would be no chance.
It was One-Track Peckenpaw who sided unexpectedly with the “Redskin”.
—Hell, he said, live and let live. Don’t see why it shouldn’t be allowed just on account of he’s a queer looking Indian. Some of my best buddies was Indians. There’s no reason for objecting, right? He’s different, right? It fills a gap, right? So why the shit not?