Last Days (16 page)

"You're Paul," said Kline.

"Who isn't?" asked the Paul. "Even you might well be Paul, were there not another role prepared for you."

"Who says I want to accept it?" said Kline.

"Surely you don't believe, friend Kline, that we have any choice in the paths our lives take? God is the only one who controls our fate. We are predestined from the beginning. You believe in God, don't you?"

Kline didn't answer.

"No matter," said the Paul. "It makes no difference whether you believe in God, since God, so I have been led to understand, believes in you. And we believe in you as well, friend Kline. At first we weren't sure you were the one, so we watched. But now we're sure. From the moment you chose to go with their messengers to the compound, your fate has ground itself inexorably forward."

"Who's we?"

"We," said the Paul, and spread his arms wide. "Paul."

"I'm not the one, Paul," said Kline. "Whatever it is, I'm not it."

"But you are," said the Paul.

Kline shook his head.

"You made us certain when, instead of being killed by them, you extricated yourself wielding a sword of destruction. Metaphorically, I mean. By a sword I mean a gun."

"Like hell," said Kline.

"Yes," said Paul. "Exactly like hell. You harrowed them."

"I want to leave now," said Kline. He tried to look away, but didn't know where else to look.

Paul frowned. "You can go," he said. "You always could. We're not like them. Nobody is stopping you from going. But they'll be looking for you. Borchert's men."

"That so?" said Kline.

"They'll never stop looking," said Paul. "It's either you or them. An eye for an eye, friend Kline. If you leave, you'll have to kill them all."

They left him alone in the room for the rest of the day, though he had the feeling that if he were to get out of bed and go toward the door a Paul would suddenly be there, attentive, perhaps more than one. He could, he thought, leave if he needed to. He felt all right, considering, would be all right if leaving was all it was. But despite their assurances that he was free to go, he couldn't believe they wouldn't try to stop him. And once he was out, if Borchert's men came after him, what then? Better to stay and recover as best he could, choose the right moment to leave.

The trick, he told himself, was to avoid letting his curiosity get the better of his judgment, to know when, still suffering or no, to leave. He looked again at the painting of the one-legged screamer and now it seemed to him that the man wanted to leave the scene but couldn't, couldn't bring himself to limp out on the bleeding woman bundled up beside him, perhaps dead. Perhaps that was why he was screaming.

But I'm not like him
, Kline told himself.
If I have to leave something behind, I do. Even when it's part of me.

His dinner was brought to him by the piano-playing Paul, the Paul that seemed to be in charge. It consisted of a scoop of mashed potatoes, skins worked in, and a chicken leg.

"You're still here," the Paul said.

Kline nodded.

"I'm glad you decided to stay," said the Paul. "Things have gone so nicely to this point that I'd hate for them to take an unfortunate turn now."

"I'm not the one," said Kline. "Whatever it is you think I am, I'm not it."

"How can you say so if you don't even know what it is, friend Kline? You have to give yourself a chance."

Kline just shook his head.

"There's something I want to show you," said the Paul.

He turned slightly toward the open doorway and in came another Paul, carrying before him a lacquered casket, about a foot and a half long, fairly narrow. He carried it carefully forward and presented it to the first Paul, who took it and then carefully placed it on the bed, balancing it in Kline's lap.

"Go ahead," he said to Kline, "open it."

"What's in it?" asked Kline.

"Open it," he said again.

The casket had a gilt hasp, firmly shut but not locked. He ran his hand over the lacquered wood; it was smooth, felt exactly as it looked.

Undoing the hasp with the edge of his thumb, he opened the lid. The casket was lined with red velvet, the angle of the light lending it an odd sheen. The only thing in the box was a bone. Or rather two bones, from a forearm or foreleg, held together by a strand of wire at each end. He reached in and touched them, then glanced over at Paul.

"Go ahead," Paul said. "Pick it up if you want."

"What is it?" asked Kline.

"A relic," said Paul.

When he lifted the bones out, they clicked against one another. They were, he was suddenly certain, human. Both had been sheared off, leaving the ends open and porous and, he saw, strangely dark. He leaned the bones against the box and prodded the end of one; the marrow gave slightly, was oddly spongy.

"These are recent," said Kline, slightly surprised.

"Of course they are," said Paul. "They belonged to you."

Kline pulled back his hand, as if stung.

"We have one of our best Pauls seeing what he can do about acquiring your toes. We'd like your hand as well, but we've been looking for that for much longer and inquiries seem to have led nowhere. You wouldn't happen to know where it went, would you? Kept in evidence, perhaps?"

"Please," said Kline, "please, take it away."

The Paul stopped and looked at him closely. "There's nothing to worry about, friend Kline," he said. "Every bone has to come from somewhere. This one just happens to have come from you." He reached out and carefully lifted the bones, settled them into the casket, closed the lid. "It has a life of its own now, friend Kline."

"Thank God," said Kline.

The Paul stooped and awkwardly gathered the casket up, settling it on his forearms and carrying it out before him.

"Besides," he said. "It's not just you. We all have relics. I could show you my own if you'd like."

"Somehow that doesn't reassure me," said Kline.

"Would you like to see it?" asked the Paul.

"Absolutely not," said Kline.

"Don't worry," said the Paul. "You'll get used to it. You'll even start to understand it. You won't be able to help yourself." He started toward the door. "Some other time, then," he said, and went out.

Kline closed his eyes but against his eyelids still saw the bone, its spongy end. He opened them again, stared at the piano, the lacquered sheen of it.

The trick
, he told himself,
is knowing when to leave, and then leaving
. And then he thought,
I have to leave now.

II.

He lay in bed pretending to be asleep, waiting. Every so often he heard a shuffling and one of the Pauls came to the door, peered in, eyes blurry, then shuffled away. He let that happen six times and then the seventh time got up just after the Paul had left and began to search the room.

The top drawer of a mahogany tallboy contained a neat stack of undershirts and an even neater stack of boxers and a robe. He awkwardly struggled out of his gown, stump throbbing, and into an undershirt. The boxers he spread out on the floor and then stepped into the leg-holes, pulling them up around his hips with his single hand. They were a little big but would do. He slipped the robe on.

He tried the other drawers of the tallboy, found them all empty. He searched around the room for a pair of pants, finding nothing of note except, beneath the bathroom sink, a barrage of cleaning supplies and, wrapped in an old towel, a bedpan. This latter he took out and hefted. It was a little awkward but then he realized he could slip his hand into it and make a fist and it would stay in place when he swung it back and forth.

When a Paul came to the door for the eighth time and saw the bed empty, he took a step forward and was struck in the face by a bedpan. It hurt Kline's hand quite a bit, but seemed to hurt the Paul a great deal more. The Paul stumbled and started to go down and then began to catch himself, groping at one of his pockets with his stump. Kline hit him again, on the side of the head this time, and he went down for good.

Kline worked his hand out of the bedpan and let it drop and then started to slip the Paul's pants off. There was blood coming out of the Paul's mouth, he realized, and he opened his mouth to see the Paul had bitten through his tongue. He turned the head a little so as to keep him from choking to death on his own blood, then fished the severed tip out of the mouth and laid it on the carpet beside his head.

Like a slug
, he thought, working the Paul's pants the rest of the way off. There was nothing in the pants pockets. He took off his robe and tried the pants on and they didn't fit, they were too tight, so he stepped out of them and put the robe back on.

He imagined the other Pauls coming in to find this Paul unconscious, his severed tongue arranged neatly beside him. And then he realized, his body instantly feeling heavier, they would see the tongue and then do one of two things. Either they would all cut off their own tongues, making all the Pauls identical again, or they would make a holy relic of this tongue.

He picked the tongue up, carried it into the bathroom, and flushed it down the toilet.

He moved down a dim hall, past first one open doorway and then a second, each opening onto rooms that, as far as he could tell in the dim light, were like his own. The hall turned abruptly to the right and then terminated in a T-intersection. He turned right, went past another doorway and into growing darkness. When it became too difficult to see, he stopped and traced his steps back, taking the left fork.

He followed this down to another T-intersection, then followed the right branch, where there seemed to be more light, and came to a heavy banister and a spiral staircase. The light was coming from below. He leaned over the banister and saw, standing perhaps fifteen feet below, a Paul.

He started down the stairs, moving slowly, watching the Paul. The man just stood there, wearing a light jacket, arms crossed, facing a larger door. Kline went silently around another turn of the stairs and then leaned far over the banister and struck the Paul hard over the head with the bedpan.

The Paul took a step and then sat down, the back of his head slowly darkening with blood. Then he slumped over bonelessly.

Kline came down the rest of the way and searched the Paul's pockets. The pocket of his jacket had a gun in it and a ten-dollar bill and a car key on a rubber band.

Kline took everything, then started for the door. It was locked.

He looked at the key again, even tried it but, no, he knew it was a car key not a door key: it didn't fit. When he turned around to try to figure out what to do next, there was the chief Paul sitting on the bottom step of the stairs, watching him.

"Anything the matter?" the Paul asked.

Kline lifted the pistol, pointed it at him.

"Friend Kline," the Paul said. "You sadden me."

"Where's the key to the door?" demanded Kline.

"Nobody here has the key, friend Kline," said the Paul. He spread his arms, displayed his stump and an open palm. "There's no need for any of this."

"How do you get out if there's no key?"

"I don't want to get out," said the Paul. "Paul is perfectly happy where he is." He pointed at the gun with his stump. "No need for that," he said. "Please, put it away."

Kline looked at the gun, then shrugged, let it slowly fall to his side.

"All right," he said.

"There," said the Paul. "Don't you feel much better now that we can talk this over like civilized adults?"

"I want to leave," said Kline.

"If you really wanted to leave, all you had to do was ask," said the Paul. He stood and came slowly toward Kline, then moved past him and to the door. "Ask and ye shall receive," he said, "knock and it shall be opened unto you." He knocked twice, waited, then knocked a third time.

"What is wanted?" asked a muffled voice from the other side.

"Kline, having been true and faithful in all things, desires to turn his face away from the Lord by entering the lone and dreary world."

"Present him at the door and his request shall be granted," said the voice.

The Paul motioned him forward, positioned him in front of the door. He knocked once, then waited, then knocked twice more.

There was a rustling on the other side and the lock clicked. The door opened and Kline found himself looking into what appeared to be an empty building lobby, brightly lit. A revolving door on the far side opened onto a dark street. Beside it stood a Paul wearing a doorman's uniform.

"You see, friend Kline? We're men of our word. You're free to go."

Kline nodded, stopped forward and past the doorman.

"You took Paul's key, friend Kline, and his gun," said the chief Paul from behind. "There was no need to knock him out."

"I'm sorry," said Kline warily, holding out the key.

"No, no," said the chief Paul, waving his stump. "You might as well keep it. Paul's car is parked just outside, isn't it Paul?" he said, looking at the doorman. The doorman nodded. "It's a mistake to leave," said the chief Paul. "They'll kill you," he said. "But we all of us have to make our own mistakes. We all of us have free agency, friend Kline. But far be it from me to force a man to go on foot to his own death. By all means, take the car."

"Thank you," said Kline.

"You sure you won't reconsider?" asked the Paul.

Kline shook his head and moved through the door.

"A pity, friend Kline," he heard from behind him. "I was certain you were the one."

He tried the key in three car doors before it opened the door of a rusted, lime-green Ford Pinto. He climbed in, only now starting to feel how exhausted he was.

He cursed when he realized the car was a standard. He started it in neutral and then shifted it into first, slowly working the steering wheel around with his solitary hand until the wheels jacked sharply out. He could feel pressure in his clutch foot, the toes reminding him of their absence. Not pain exactly, though there was pain too, in his armless shoulder as he moved his other arm. He let out the clutch and the car lurched out, just nicking the bumper of the car ahead of him but scraping past. And then he had his hands, or rather his hand, full trying to correct before plowing into the cars on the other side of the street.