Then, one day, the Pharaoh and entourage happen by. The swim instructor’s out scything reeds when he sees a barge capsize. Without the least hesitation, he dives into the river, swims a magnificent crawl out and rescues a little girl and races the crocodiles back to shore. All with powerful grace. As gracefully as he’d lit the Bunsen burner in science class. The Pharaoh is most impressed and thinks, that’s it, I’ll get this youth to teach my princes how to swim. The previous swim instructor had proven insubordinate and was thrown into the bottomless pit just the week before. Thus my classmate becomes the Royal Swim Instructor. And he’s so likable everyone adores him. At night, the ladies-in-waiting anoint their bodies with oils and perfumes and hasten to his bed. The princes and princesses are all devoted to him.
Cut to a spectacle scene on the order of The Bathing Beauty or The King and I. My classmate and the princes and princesses in a grand synchronized swim routine in celebration of the Pharaoh’s birthday. The Pharaoh is overjoyed, which further boosts the youth’s stock. Still, he doesn’t let it go to his head. He’s a paragon of humility. He smiles the same as ever, and pisses elegantly. When a lady-in-waiting slips under the covers with him, he spends a full one hour on foreplay, brings her all the way to climax, then afterward strokes her hair and says, “You’re the best.” He’s a good guy.
For a moment, I tried to picture sleeping with an Egyptian court lady, but the image wouldn’t gel. The more I forced it, the more everything turned into 20th Century Fox’s Cleopatra. Very epic. Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Rex Harrison. The “Hollywood Exotic” mode—olive-skinned, long-legged slave girls waving long-handled fans over Liz, who strikes various glamorous poses to seduce my classmate. A specialty of the Egyptian femme fatale.
But the Jodie Foster Cleopatra has fallen head-over-heels for him.
Mediocre fare, admittedly, but that’s the movies.
He’s pretty much gone on Jodie Cleopatra, too.
But he’s not the only one who’s crazy about Jodie Cleopatra. There’s a dark, dark Arabian prince who’s burning with passion for her. He’s so in love with her that just thinking about her is enough to make him dance. The role is tailor-made for Michael Jackson. He’s crossed the Arabian sands all the way to Egypt for her love. We see him dancing around the caravan camp fire, shaking a tambourine, singing “Billie Jean.” His eyes gleam in the starlight. So of course there ensues a major face-off between Michael and my classmate, our swim instructor. A rivalry between lovers.…
I’d gotten this far when the bartender came over and said sorry, closing time. It was a quarter past twelve; I was the last customer in the lounge, glasses were already drying on towels, the bartender almost through cleaning up. Had I been tweaking this nonsense all this time? What an idiot! I signed the bill, downed the last of my martini, and walked out, shuffling my way to the elevators, hands useless in my pockets.
Still, wasn’t Jodie Cleopatra obliged to marry her younger brother? My dream scenario had a life of its own. I couldn’t get it out of my head. The scenes kept on coming. Her shiftless and crooked younger brother. Now who’d be good for the part? Woody Allen? Gimme a break. This isn’t a comedy! We don’t need a court jester cracking stupid jokes and hitting himself over the head with a plastic mallet.
We’ll work on the brother later. The Pharaoh’s got to go to Laurence Olivier. Always got a migraine, always pressing fingers to his temples. Throws anyone who gets on his nerves into the bottomless pit or makes them swim the Nile with the crocs. Intelligent, cruel, and high-strung. Digs out people’s eyes and throws the poor souls into the desert.
Oh, the casting, the casting, and then the elevator arrived. The door opened, ever so silently. I got in and pressed 15. And went back to my Egyptian movie. Not that I really wanted to, but there was no way to stop it.
The scene changes to the desert wastelands. Unbeknownst to all, in a cave in the wilderness lives a solitary prophet-recluse, cast out of society by the Pharaoh. With his eyes gouged out, he has miraculously survived his long trek across the desert. A sheepskin shields him from the merciless sun. He dwells in total darkness, eating locusts and wild grasses. He gains inner vision and sees the future. He sees the fall of the Pharaoh, Egypt’s twilight, a world shifting on its foundations.
It’s the Sheep Man, I think. The Sheep Man?
The elevator door opened silently, and I exited without thought. The Sheep Man? In ancient Egypt? Isn’t this all meaningless pastiche anyway? I reasoned these things out, standing, hands in my pockets, in total darkness.
Total darkness?
Only then did I notice the complete absence of light. Not one speck of light. As the elevator door shut behind me, I was enveloped in lacquer black darkness. I couldn’t see my own hands. The Muzak was gone too. No “Love Is Blue,” no “A Summer Place.” And the air was chill and moldy.
I stood there alone, abandoned in utter nothingness.
The darkness was deathly absolute.
I could not distinguish one shape or object. I could not see my own body. I could not get any sense of anything out there. I was in a great black vacuum.
I was reduced to pure concept. My flesh had dissolved; my form had dissipated. I floated in space. Liberated of my corporeal being, but without dispensation to go anywhere else. I was adrift in the void. Somewhere across the fine line separating nightmare from reality.
I stood. But I could not move. My arms and legs felt paralyzed. I was at the bottom of the sea, the pressure dense, crushing, inexorable. Dead silence strained against my eardrums. The darkness was without reprieve. No mental adjustment could make it less absolute. It was impenetrable—black painted over black painted over black.
Unconsciously I groped around in my pockets. On the right was my wallet and key holder, on the left my room card-key and handkerchief and small change. All useless now. Now if I hadn’t quit smoking, I’d at least be carrying a lighter or some matches. As if that would make a difference. I pulled my hands out of my pockets and reached out to touch a wall. I found one all right, alarmingly slick and chill, not exactly a wall you’d expect to find in the climate-controlled Dolphin Hotel.
Easy now. Think it through.
Okay, this is exactly what happened to my receptionist friend. I am merely retracing her steps. There is no need for alarm. She survived; I will too. Calm down; do what she did. Now, something funny is definitely going on here. Maybe it has something to do with me? With the old Dolphin Hotel? That’s why I came here, isn’t it? Yes. So go through the motions and finish the job.
Scared?
Damned straight.
I was scared, scared witless. I felt naked. Cast into the midst of violent particle drifts of intense black, thrashing about me like blind eels. I was overcome with my helplessness. My shirt was drenched in cold sweat, my throat felt raspy, dry.
Where the hell was I? I wasn’t here, at l’Hôtel Dauphin, that’s for sure. I had crossed a line and I had entered this world in limbo. I shut my eyes and breathed deeply.
I know it sounds ridiculous, but I found myself longing for “Love Is Blue.” The sound of Muzak—any Muzak—would give me strength. I’d have settled for Richard Clayderman. Or Los Indios Tabajaras, José Feliciano, Julio Iglesias, Sergio Mendes, The Partridge Family, 1910 Fruitgum Company, Mitch Miller and chorus, Andy Williams in duet with Al Martino …, anything.
But enough. My mind went blank. From fear? Could fear lurk in empty space?
Michael Jackson dancing around the camp fire with his tambourine singing “Billie Jean.” The camels entranced by the song.
I must be getting a little confused.
I must be getting a little confused.
Seems like an echo inside my head. An echo inside my head.
I took another deep breath, and tried to drive meaningless images from my mind.
I braced myself and turned right, arms extended. But my legs would not move, as if they were not mine. The muscles and nerves would not respond. I was sending the signals, but no
thing was happening. I was immersed in fluid darkness. I was trapped, I was immobilized.
The darkness was without end. I was being propelled toward the center of the earth. I would never resurface. Think of something else, kid. Think, or fear will take over your whole being. How about that Egyptian film scenario? Where were we? The Sheep Man enters. Move on from desert wilderness back to palace of the Pharaoh. Tinsel towers aglitter with the treasures of Africa. Nubian slaves everywhere. Dead center, the Pharaoh. Music, by Miklos Rozsa. The Pharaoh is pissed off. Something is rotten in the state of Egypt, he thinks. I smell a plot in the palace. I can feel it in my bones. I must set it right.
One foot at a time, I stepped forward, carefully. That was when it occurred to me. What my receptionist friend had been able to do. Amazing! Thrown into some crazy black hole and she’s able to go check out everything for herself.
And now she’s wearing her black racing swimsuit, doing her laps at the swim club. And who’s there but my movie star classmate. Sure enough, she goes gaga at the sight of him. He gives her pointers on the right arm extension for the crawl. She gazes at him, her eyes aglow. And that very night, she slips into his bed. I’m crushed. I can’t let this happen. She doesn’t know a thing. Oh, he’s nice and kind all right. He says sweet things and he gets her juices going. But that’s as far as the kindness goes. That’s just foreplay.
The hallway bent to the right.
Just like she said.
But she’s in bed with my classmate. Gently he takes off her clothes, lavishing compliments on her about each part of her body. And he’s being sincere. Great, just great. Got to hand it to the guy. But little by little the anger mounts inside me. This was wrong!
The hallway bends to the right.
I turned right, feeling my way along the wall. Far off up ahead there was a faint light. As if filtered through layers and layers of veils.
Just like she said.
My classmate is kissing her all over. Slowly, with such finesse, from the nape of her neck to her shoulders to her breasts. Camera angle shows his face and her back. Then the camera dollies around to reveal her face. But it isn’t my receptionist friend, no. It’s Kiki! My high-class call-girl friend with the world’s most beautiful ears, who was with me at the old Dolphin. Kiki, who disappeared without a word, without a trace. And here she is, sleeping with my classmate.
It’s a real scene from a real movie. Every shot and cut according to plan. Maybe a little too planned—it looks so commonplace. They are making love in an apartment, the light shining in through the blinds. Kiki. What’s she doing here? Time and space must be getting out of whack.
Time and space must be getting out of whack.
I kept walking toward the light. As my feet took the lead, the image in my head evaporated.
FADE OUT.
I proceeded along the wall. No more thinking. Concentrate on moving feet forward. Carefully, surely. The dim light ahead begins to leak and spread, from a door. But I still don’t know where I am. And I can barely tell that it’s a door. It isn’t like anything I saw when I made the rounds earlier. On the door, a metal plate, a number engraved on it. I can’t read the number. It’s dark, the plate’s tarnished. But, at the very least, I know this isn’t the Dolphin Hotel. The doors are different. The air is wrong too. That smell, what is it? Like old papers. The light sways from time to time. Candlelight.
I thought about my receptionist friend again. I should have slept with her when I could have. Who knew if I’d ever return to the real world? Would I ever get another chance to see her? I was jealous of the real world and her swim club. Or maybe I wasn’t jealous. Maybe it was a matter of regret, an overblown, distorted sense of regret, although maybe what it came down to, plunged in this darkness, was I was jealous. It’d been years. I’d forgotten what it felt like to be jealous. It’s such a personal emotion. Maybe I was feeling jealous now. Maybe, but toward a swim club?
This is stupid.
I swallowed. It sounded like a metal baseball bat striking a barrel drum. That was saliva?
Then a strange vibration, a half sound. I had to knock. That’s right, like she said. I summoned up my courage and let go with a tiny rap. Something that didn’t necessarily demand to be heard. But it was a huge, booming noise. Cold and heavy as death.
I held my breath.
Silence. Just like with her. How long it lasted, I couldn’t tell. It might have been five seconds, it might have been a minute. Time wasn’t fixed. It wavered, stretched, shrank. Or was it me that wavered, stretched, and shrank in the silence? I was warped in the folds of time, like a reflection in a fun house mirror.
Then that sound. A rustling, amplified, like fabric. Something getting up from the floor. Then footsteps. Coming toward me. The scuffling of slippers. Something, but not human. Like she said. Something from another reality—a reality that existed here.
There was no escape. I did not move. Sweat streamed down my back. Yet, as the footsteps grew closer and closer, unaccountably my fears began to subside. It’s all right, I said to myself. Whatever it is, it is not evil. I knew. I knew there was nothing to fear. I could let it happen.
I felt aswirl with warm secretions. I gripped the doorknob, I shut my eyes, I held my breath. You’re all right, you’re fine. I heard a tremendous heartbeat through the darkness. It was my own. I was enveloped in it, I was a part of it. There was nothing to fear. It was all connected.
The footsteps halted. They were beside me. It was beside me. My eyes were shut. It is beginning to come together. I knew. I knew I was connected to this place. The banks of the Nile and the perfumed Nubian court ladies and Kiki and the Dolphin Hotel and rock ‘n’ roll, everything, everything, everything! An implosion of time and physical form. Old light, old sound, old voices.
“Beenwaitingforyou. Beenwaitingforages. Comeonin.”
I knew who it was without opening my eyes.
We faced each other across a small table, talking. The table was very old, round, set with one candle in the middle. The candle had been stuck directly onto a saucer. And that was the entire inventory of furnishings in the room. There weren’t any chairs. We sat on piles of books.
It was the Sheep Man’s room.
Narrow and cramped. The walls and ceiling had the feeling of the old Dolphin Hotel, but it wasn’t the old hotel either. At the far end of the room was a window, boarded up from inside. Boarded up a long time ago, if the rusty nails and gray dust in the cracks of the boards were any indication. The room was a rectangular box. No lights. No closet. No bath. No bed. He must’ve slept on the floor, wrapped in his sheep costume.
There was barely enough room to walk. The floor was littered with yellowing old books and newspapers and scrapbooks filled with clippings. Some were worm-eaten, falling apart at their bindings. All, from what I could tell, having to do with the history of sheep in Hokkaido. All, probably, from the archive at the old Dolphin Hotel. The sheep reference room, which the owner’s father, the Sheep Professor, pretty much lived in. What ever became of him?
The Sheep Man looked at me across the flickering candle flame. Behind him, his disproportionately enormous shadow played over a grimy wall.
“Beenalongtime,” he spoke from behind his mask. “Let’s-ussee, youthinnerorwhat?”
“Yeah, I might have lost some weight.”
“Sotellus, what’stheworldoutside? Wedon’tgetmuchnews, notinhere.”
I crossed my legs and shook my head. “Same as ever. Nothing worth mentioning. Everything’s getting more complicated. Everything’s speeding up. No, nothing’s really new.”
The Sheep Man nodded. “Nextwarhasn’tbegunyet, wetakeit?”
Which was the Sheep Man’s last war? I wasn’t sure. “Not yet,” I said.
“Butsoonerorlateritwill,” he voiced, uninflected, folding his mitted hands. “Youbetterwatchout. War’sgonnacome, nothreewaysaboutit. Markourwords. Can’ttrustpeople. Won’tdoanygood. They’llkillyoueverytime. They’llkilleachother. They’llkilleveryone.” br />
The Sheep Man’s fleece was dingy, the wool stiff and greasy. His mask looked bad too, like something patched together at the last minute. The poor light in the damp room didn’t help and maybe my memory was wrong, but it wasn’t just the costume. The Sheep Man was worn-out. Since the last time I’d seen him four years ago, he’d shrunk. His breathing came harder, more disturbing to the ears, like a stopped-up pipe.
“Thoughtyou’dgetheresooner,” said the Sheep Man. “Webeenwaiting, allthistime. Meanwhile, somebodyelsecame’round. Wethought, maybe, butwasn’tyou. Howdoyoulikethat? Justanybody, comewanderinginhere. But anyway, wasexpectingyousooner.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I always thought I would come back, I guess. I knew I had to, but I didn’t have it together. I dreamed about it. About the Dolphin Hotel, I mean. Dreamed about it all the time. But it took a while to make up my mind to come back.”
“Triedtoputitoutofmind?”
“I guess so, yes,” I said. Then I looked at my hands in the flickering candlelight. A draft was coming in from somewhere. “In the beginning I thought I should try to forget what I could forget. I wanted a life completely dissociated from this place.”
“Becauseyourfrienddied?”
“Yes. Because my friend died.”
“Butyoucameback,” said the Sheep Man.
“Yes, I came back,” I said. “I couldn’t get this place out of my mind. I tried to forget things, but then something else would pop up. So it didn’t matter whether I liked it or not, I sort of knew I belonged here. I didn’t really know what that meant either, but I knew it anyway. In my dreams about this place, I was … part of everything. Someone was crying for me here. Someone wanted me. That’s why I came back. What is this place anyway?”
The Sheep Man looked me hard in the face and shook his head. “ ‘Fraidwedon’tknowmuch. It’srealbig, it’srealdark. Allweknow’sthisroom. Beyondhere, wedon’tknow. Butanyway, you’rehere, somust’vebeentime. Timeyoufoundyourwayhere. Wayweseeit, atleast.…” The Sheep Man paused to ruminate. “Maybesomebody’scryingforyou, throughthisplace. Somebodywhoknewyou, knewyou’dbeheadinghereanyway. Likeabird, comingbacktothenest.… Butlet’sussayitdifferent. Ifyouweren’tcomingbackhere, thisplacewouldn’texist.” The Sheep Man wrung his mitts. The shadow on the wall exaggerated every gesture on a grand scale, a dark spirit poised to seize me from above.