Nest of Worlds (9 page)

Zef returned from the movies with a foul smell and a scowl—they had tricked his side, urinating into balloons and dropping them from the balcony. He threw his splendid jacket in the washing machine. Edda grew impatient: besides the landlords, only the Throzzes were waiting in the dining room.

Finally Haifan showed. He set a hammer and a pillow on the table in front of him. Not waiting any longer, Edda brought in the pasta.

“We can eat,” Haifan said. “The others won’t be coming.”

He spoke calmly, but everyone looked at him.

“I’m done with the hammer now. It’s still wet, because I had it under the faucet. But the pillowcase needs to be laundered. Saliva got all over it, though the saliva dried. I hope the feathers inside didn’t get wet.”

“Haifan, why aren’t the others coming?” asked Gavein. Ra Mahleiné’s fork was tapping her plate rhythmically. Gavein gently stopped her hand, its trembling. “My nervous darling. Haifan is joking.”

“It’s not a joke. They’re not coming. Eat your dinner.”

“I better check on the Hannings, to see what the problem is,” said Gavein.

“Why go there now?” Haifan shook his head. “You won’t eat afterward. I finally solved the problem. They were suffering from bad incarnations, and now they’ll come back in new, better ones. No point in worrying over what they were before.”

“Are they dead, Haifan?” Gavein asked. A delicate question, but he sensed that Haifan would not be violent.

“Death doesn’t exist. They live on in the endless cycle of rebirth. Their bodies will turn into other organisms. Part of the biomass now, though they were always part of it, weren’t they? It had to be done, to help them. They could accomplish nothing good in their current forms. They insulted Magda, Fatima, and other whites. The Black Spirit and the Red Spirit ordered me to do it. They told me that the Hannings had depleted their energy, so they needed to return in another incarnation, perhaps as blacks. The White Spirit was insulted. I had to plead with it not to rule over Davabel.”

The belief that a person passed through four incarnations had come from the fact that most people were unable to experience all four Lands, their lives being too short. But if you were born four times, each time in a different Land, you would know good and evil in equal, and therefore just proportions. It was unclear how much was recalled of previous lives or in what order a person was born into the different Lands. It was generally thought that the highest stations in life were occupied by those in their third or fourth incarnation, that is, those who had accumulated the most experience and wisdom. After the fourth incarnation you dissolved back into nothingness, preserving the symmetry of the world, for it was from nothingness that you came.

In addition, the Davabel order of incarnations said that the number of your life was knowable. The category in a citizen’s identification papers always increased upon his arrival in a new Land; when he achieved a three, however, the number would be erased in the next. The more the erasure of category was postponed, therefore, the higher the person. (Not everyone reached a ripe old age, so those who were higher had a greater chance of avoiding erasure.)

Gavein had never given thought to how many times he himself or Ra Mahleiné had been incarnated.

“There is no White Spirit or Red Spirit, Haifan,” he said.

“You are mistaken, Dave. There are many spirits. Every street, every avenue, every phenomenon has its spirit. That is why things can happen. It is the spirits who make cars go, turn on the television, lift the sun from the horizon. Who else could manage these things? The spirits confide in me. They tell me of their work, of their cares, and that certain people make their work difficult. They come to me every night. In Davabel, the White Spirit is indignant. It told me that it may rule in Davabel to teach the blacks a lesson. Why shoot your mouth off at those who are better than you? All you need to do is look at the passports to see whose incarnation is higher and whose is lower. It’s misfortune enough that an individual is born white—why humiliate him even more?”

Ra Mahleiné, usually composed, was horror-struck. Her hands were clammy.

“Do I look paranoid, Dave?” Haifan asked, addressing Gavein only, perhaps because Gavein had spoken first.

“You don’t. Your eyes aren’t wild. You speak coherently, in whole sentences.” Which was the truth.

“Then eat, eat . . . I don’t want dinner to be as unpleasant as it was yesterday.”

“Haifan, tell us what happened. We’re a little frightened,” said Gavein.

No one else spoke.

“Fine, but eat. Then I must call the police, because the law, though it makes no sense, should be respected. A person needs to believe in something. That’s why we have the law. Don’t you think, Dave?”

“I too respect the law, though sometimes respecting it takes effort.”

“Exactly. You put that well.” He nodded. “I’ll tell you everything, but eat. I want to share it with you, explain my mission.”

The people at the table raised no objection, though the spaghetti was cold and stiff in their mouths.

“It was after three, when it’s darkest. I lay in bed and looked at the ceiling. I hadn’t been able to sleep for several nights. In the next room slept that abomination, the fratricide.”

“Him too?” gasped Edda.

“Yes. And serves him right if he comes back as a white. For burning Aladar.” He cleared his throat and continued. “And the White Spirit entered. It always comes from the closet. It was bright, had blue eyes and yellow hair, and it said: ‘Why did the Hannings do this thing to me? It is bad in Davabel, and now I must step in.’ I felt that I couldn’t sit by and watch either. Then the Red Spirit came out from behind the curtains. It had flaming hair and eyes that glowed green, and it said: ‘Go thou and do it.’ I asked it what exactly I should do, and it said: ‘The Black Spirit will tell you.’ The Black Spirit joined them and said: ‘You must silence them, so they do not anger the other spirits. Else they will take Davabel from me, and the blacks will have a zero instead of a three on their passports. Therefore take Edda’s hammer, the hammer you use to hang pictures, and take a pillow also.’ The spirits of the hammer and the pillow came to me and gave me the details. I went to the Hannings. The door was open. Ian must have had a premonition that his hour was up, because he wasn’t trying to hide. He slept on his side and had his vile mouth open. His wife slept on her back, snoring like a pig. A breast hung out of her nightgown, pale and long. I thought that she might toss and wake her husband, so I started with him.”

They all listened to Haifan’s account, forks frozen at various places between mouth and plate.

“I had brought a handful of long nails. That was to make sure, because his Significant Name was
Myzzt
. The first went in with one blow.”

Edda gave a shuddering sigh.

“Before he could wake up, I quickly hammered in a second, third, fourth, and fifth nail. Some brain spattered, but not much. The nails went in all the way, and when I put in a new one, a little brain came out the other holes. Then I hammered only halfway and moved the nail heads in circles, to tear the brains up more. He began to jerk his arms and legs. I was afraid Phyllis might wake up, so I started on her, not waiting for Ian to finish. I put a pillow over her face and my left knee on her neck. Holding her head in place with my thighs, I pressed the pillow into her face. She fought, scratching my left leg. It hurt, but I pressed with all my strength. The pale breast outside her nightgown jumped in every direction. Finally she weakened, and the twitching started. Meanwhile Ian fell out of bed and was trying to crawl, but his arms and legs didn’t work together. He made a little noise. It wasn’t until Phyllis stopped completely that I could get to him again. I hammered the other nails in the back of his head, at the base. That did the trick. He stopped scraping, only shook off and on. I sat down on a chair in their room and waited more than an hour, to make sure they got cold. They did.” He nodded. “I put Phyllis’s breast back in her shirt, so she would look neater. Then I cleaned my hands and the hammer in their bathroom. I thought to put Ian in bed beside his wife, but he was heavy and spattered with brain, and I didn’t want to get dirtier than I had to.”

“His Name was
Yacrod
, not
Myzzt
,” Edda said, breaking the silence.

“
Yacrod
?” Haifan was surprised. “Then the nails were unnecessary. I had a good knife. It would have worked just as well.”

Yacrod
meant: “From sleeping.”

“Haifan, and your son?” asked Ra Mahleiné.

“The fratricide? I knew that this night was to be the cleansing of Davabel, so I had to deal with him also. Unfortunately he woke when I began to tie him, and he struggled. But the Spirit of Sleep didn’t let you hear it, because my cause was just. I tied his hands and feet and put his head in a bucket of water, because he was a
Flued
. He didn’t even kick that much. Then he got properly cold and stiff. I fell asleep just as the sun came up, the first sleep I had in a long time. I’ve told you all this, leaving nothing out, because the spirits required it. Davabel is now purified. Do you know the number of the police station, Dave?” he asked, lifting the receiver.

“Four nines,” Edda said.

Haifan calmly reported the triple murder to a dumbfounded official, then ate his portion of pasta with great appetite, not bothered by the fact that the tomato sauce had congealed.

“Edda, bring the pizza quickly, before they come. The interrogation will take a long time, I’m sure, so I’ll need my strength to tell them everything.”

The police sirens started just as he finished his pizza. Edda went and opened the door. Haifan got up, identified himself, and asked that handcuffs be put on him. The policeman in front just blinked.

But they put the cuffs on Haifan after they found the mess and bodies in the Hannings’ apartment and then Tad’s bedroom. A plainclothes detective asked the preliminary questions. The man’s name was Bharr Tobiany. He was over six feet tall and massive.

His children must be clumsy hulks, Gavein thought. Even if Mrs. Tobiany is small and energetic, the father’s genes can’t be ignored.

In charge of the investigation, Tobiany sat at the table behind a cold pizza tray that had only one piece missing. The bodies were carried out. Then the policemen left. Tobiany asked the tenants not to go anywhere. The Hanning and Tonescu apartments were sealed.

When the last police car drove off, it became as quiet as it had been while Haifan was telling them about the spirits that moved the world. Edda’s eyes never left Gavein.

“I’ll make everyone some bitter tea,” said Ra Mahleiné.

“I’ll help you,” said Helga.

Edda bored through Gavein with her eyes.

Zef turned on the television. It was an old film starring Lola Low.

“Thin as a toothpick,” he said. “She has more voom now.”

“More voom and fewer clothes,” Gavein remarked.

The telephone clattered. It was Wilcox. He knew that at this hour Gavein would be sitting in Edda’s dining room. He had taken a book home with him, unable to stop reading it. He asked for two days off, Monday and Tuesday, so he could finish it. Gavein said yes. He was surprised by Wilcox’s request. The man could easily have hidden himself behind the pigeonhole desk during work hours.

“We should move,” Ra Mahleiné said when they were in bed. “Edda looks at you as if you were the murderer of those three. I felt like giving her hair a yank.”

He put an arm around her. She snuggled like a kitten.

“Next month, you’re going to the hospital,” he said. “The waiting list for whites is long, but I managed to get a place for you on the one for grays. That, and better treatment. As of a wife written into a passport.”

“And then we’ll look for another place.”

The interrogation, though overseen by Tobiany, came to no satisfactory conclusion. Haifan succeeded in opening the veins of his wrist with the sharp edge of a spoon. The guard, instead of collecting the eating utensils from the prisoners after the meal, had fallen asleep in front of the TV and didn’t wake until three in the morning, which gave Haifan enough time. They had kept him in isolation, unobserved, though his Significant Name—
Sulled
—clearly pointed to what could happen.

Wilcox did not part with his book, which had a stamped cover that resembled a mosaic. The title seemed assembled with colored stones:
Nest
of Worlds
. He carried it with him everywhere. The book was falling apart; it had been read by so many. He still had not got beyond the first chapter.

Gavein asked to see the beginning—to see what the book was about—but Wilcox refused.

The man stopped taking care of himself. He would sit until late in the bookstore, poring over the first few pages, then come in around noon the next day, saying that he had been reading.

“It would be nice to read something that absorbing,” Ra Mahleiné remarked when Gavein told her about Wilcox. “The TV commercials are turning my brains to mush. Yesterday, when you were at the bookstore, they showed an old movie with Maslynnaya. Her striptease was interrupted three times by ads. Potato chips, corn flakes. It’s such garbage. In Lavath they had more respect for the television viewer.”

Two days after that, Wilcox’s wife came to see them: Ra Bharré. She asked them to call her Brenda. A blonde, she was small but plump as a bun. She seemed so much younger than Wilcox that at first Gavein assumed she was his daughter.

“Don’t apologize, Dave. Everyone makes that mistake. Harry aged a lot on the force. He wasn’t cut out for it, but if a person spends his whole life daydreaming, that’s how he ends up. As a kid, Harry wanted to be a private eye, like in the movies. What did he become? A cop on the beat.”

Wilcox’s first name was Hvar, the word for a dwarf shrub, remarkably resistant to cold and wind and growing in the north of Lavath. The plant was a symbol of endurance and strength of character. Brenda had changed the name in the Davabel manner.

“You’re surprised by our difference in age?”

“Yes.” There was no point denying it.

“Our story is so romantic. A teenage girl watches a program one day about the dangerous work the police do. It shows a policeman in a hospital bed, hit by a stray bullet. That seems so noble to her, she writes a letter. Receiving an answer, she pays a visit to the hospital. Here I am thirty years later.”

“Ours is less romantic,” Ra Mahleiné said. “Four years separated us, and we compensated for that by my taking a prison ship. A kind of personal victory over time. The two of us. Or a personal defeat,” she added grimly.

“You had the courage to go by prison ship?”

“No one told me it would be a prison ship.” The few thin scars on her face turned red.

“True. It’s not generally known. Harry knew things like that, but he was a cop. I did without him, pined for ten years in Lavath rather than travel with compensation to remove the age difference. My best ten years. And then meeting the old Harry, that was awful. I hadn’t found anyone else in that time,” she said lightly, “so I came to him. He had waited for me.”

All three of them knew what a married person remaining in Lavath had to do.

“I didn’t even have the chance, you know, . . . on that boat,” said Ra Mahleiné. “But how did you get around the difference in category?” To change the embarrassing subject.

“I was too young to pay attention to that in Lavath. And here? I don’t even think Harry was aware he got a three.”

“You came to see me, Brenda?” said Gavein. He was put off by her breezy tone. He had some idea of the lengths Harry must have gone to to secure for her the rights of a legal wife.

“Yes. It’s about Harry and that book. He doesn’t wash. He sits up all night. He thinks of nothing else. He doesn’t even know I’m there. All he does is read. What’s in the book?”

Gavein shrugged. “He won’t give it to me, though he promised he would.”

“If only he’d read on. But he seems to always open to the same place, the beginning. I don’t want him going nuts.”

“He said something once. That the book was active, not passive, that it changed each time. That’s why he reads it in a circle. He keeps going back to page one, experimenting.”

“He told me that too. But sometimes I think it’s the book that’s experimenting. Is this a kind of insanity?”

“I don’t know. You might want to talk to a psychiatrist. Insanity has a chemical basis. If they give him the right pill, that might stop the problem.” Gavein led Brenda to the door.

“Maybe you could take the book away from him, play the bad boss,” Ra Mahleiné suggested after Brenda left.

Gavein nodded. It was not a bad idea.

They were silent. The blue eyes she raised from her knitting were filled with warmth. “Don’t be stiff with me. I didn’t really mean what I said, about not having the chance. She was expecting something like that. She wanted to hear that other women would have done the same. She was lying, of course: she had to marry another man when her husband left.”

“When you said good-bye to me at the airport, my little manul, you gave me a look that reminded me of a look I got from a girl once. I was young, in school. I said no to her. I don’t want to make that mistake again.”

“If you hadn’t rejected the first girl,” Ra Mahleiné pointed out, “then the second would never have been able to give you that look. Ah, I see,” she added, understanding, “you only said that to get back at me. It was a jab.”

“A jab for a jab. But that wasn’t what I intended to say.”

“I’ll have to practice making looks in a mirror,” she said. “The first look, hopelessly infatuated teenager. No, the second, because some hussy stole the first look before we met. She was also a blonde? No doubt, because you’re a one-color man.” And she gave him a look that made him melt.

“Yes, also a blonde. I should have been born earlier. That would have made things simpler.”

“You’re joking. Then I wouldn’t have given you the time of day. Even now, sometimes, you seem . . .” She laughed to herself. “I grew up, Gavein, I matured. That’s the price of our staying together.”

“You were grown up already in Lavath. And I knew you were smarter than me. My only advantage was experience. Now I have no advantage. Some tea?”

“Herbal. But cover it with a saucer, so it steeps.”

“What kind?”

“How about St. John’s wort?” She lowered her head over her work.

He put the tea ball into the glass.

She liked her tea bitter, her herbs bitter. He liked to sit in the chair next to hers and be idle with her.