Chapter 35
Bubbardizing Humberto
THE FACT THAT he was still an on-the-job stringer for the National Record may have become farcical to Edgar, but not to Wallasek, who’d left an irascible message on Abrab’s answering machine, demanding a detailed account of Barba’s first bombing for the morning edition. As a fresh-faced cub, Edgar would have scurried off to the stadium to personally check out the damage and vox-pop eyewitnesses. As an old hand, he wasn’t such a sap, especially if nipping into town meant presenting himself as potential sport for passing pera peluda trucks.
Armchair journalism was much more efficient. Edgar dialed Martha Hulbert at the Post for the lowdown. The quotes he could invent; like General Syedlo’s, they’d be sharper, smarter, and livelier than authentic er-uhs. Overall, covering a complete fabrication had helped Edgar to relax about his work, and for months now he’d concocted statements from nonexistent government underlings, faked statistics he couldn’t be arsed to look up, and contrived sociological studies. Owing to the profusion of fellow armchair hacks, Edgar’s creative factoids had infected copy all over the world. It was so satisfying to spot quotes from “Dr. Anselmo Bitterbottom” on the Sydney Morning Herald Web page that he finally understood the hitherto unfathomable allure of authoring the computer virus.
Hulbert’s thumbnail: Since breast-beating peace rallies were regularly held in the praça dos touros, the noontime fertilizer bomb had been hidden in a trailer delivering one of the bulls for that night’s fight. The swaying assembly of lunchtime do-gooders had still been crooning “Aonde foram todas as flores?”—a Peter, Paul, and Mary standard that was interminable in any language. The event hadn’t yet climaxed in its traditional flap of white doves, whose cages were still stacked by the trailer. To wit, many Barban gentlefolk were dining on squab this evening.
Other than pigeons, o touro was the only fatality. When Edgar phoned Trudy, she guaranteed a bathetic close-up of the dead bull’s bewildered face, replete with flies. So Edgar decided to Bubbardize the story, as the animal-shtick was now known in the terror trade. Opting for the poor-old-bull angle was intellectually bankrupt if the SOB had shifted its “strategy” to blowing up its own patch, but Edgar was eager to divert attention from the tactics of an organization that, overnight, actually had tactics, thanks to him.
Edgar had appealed to Barrington to please put the study in some kind of order, but figments of your imagination just weren’t very helpful around the house. His computer having been filched, Edgar subsequently set up shop in the atrium with a pen and paper, which felt no more practical than chiseling out the story on a stone tablet. Concentrating his exasperation on this crude chicken-scratching process, for a full hour Edgar blocked out the suspicion that being run off the road this afternoon was no accident.
Yet once Edgar had laboriously dictated the article down the line instead of e-mailing it like a civilized person, even one of those nefarious pink gins couldn’t forestall a deepening funk. Had that device fully exploded, the bullring bomb could have whacked any number of innocuous peaceniks. Edgar had been lucky, but this was the kind of luck that ran out.
The Creams had a ready-made constituency inured to political violence, both in-country and abroad. Creams had more cash than they knew what to do with and a huge pool of footloose juvies on tap—those pimply kids desperate to get their hands on a detonator instead of a colander. The technology for Easy-Bake terrorism lay a few keystrokes away on the Internet. Verdade would have his army of downy-cheeked losers improvising recipes with sugar and ammonia in no time, and sooner or later those bombs would work swell.
Inevitably, too, after practicing small beer on home turf, Verdade was bound to turn on Lisbon—a politically logical target that any real SOB would have been blitzing all along. Edgar liked Lisbon, and he was sickened by visions of the majestic marble arch of the Praça do Comércio or that nifty iron elevator-to-nowhere designed by Eiffel being sent skyward for the asinine cause of Barban independence.
Still trudging numbly through the paces of a good little scribbler, Edgar had no choice but to attend O Creme’s press conference at the new Hilton the next afternoon. Walking from his car to the hotel, Edgar had to negotiate around countless broken Choque bottles and acrid pools of puke; a bomb in Cinziero at last had goosed the whole city into an all-night booze-up. Hitherto, locals had felt a little left out. Here Barbans had apparently provided the rationale, matériel, and know-how, and the party was held perpetually somewhere else. Cinziero had a hell-raising side, and its residents far preferred an impromptu fertilizer fest to staid events like the pitifully undersubscribed opening of their classical concert hall, featuring flautist Jean-Pierre Rampal. Had the Creams hawked tickets to yesterday’s bullring bomb, they’d have sold out.
In the Hilton’s lobby, Edgar battled through jumped-up pubescent Creamie-boppers, girls who shrieked and flopped about in a frenzy at every false sighting of Tomás Verdade. You’d think that blasting holes in your own town would be a bit of a black eye, but no. Sponsoring one cut-rate fireworks display had already jacked Verdade to the status of Van the Man.
The Creams’ press conference was held in the banquet room. Reflecting an arbitrary theme-park vulgarity perfectly calibrated to Barba’s hick tastes, the hall’s motif was unaccountably designed around colonial India; murals depicted pith-helmeted British officers astride elephants in little red hats. Tentacled flowers in bulbous bowls poked reporters in the eye, and a rancid reek from the tropical blooms lent a literal cast to O Creme’s leadership having a bad smell. The taint only drew jackals, and the hall was jammed.
The dais was arranged with individual mineral waters by each party official, Pacheco among them, Serio not—an absence Edgar took obscurely as bad news; he felt safer with Creamie muscle in plain view. Half a dozen young Turks stood guard behind the table, one of whom had once pressed Edgar for an SOB referral at the Rat. Repressing grins, these proud new deputies stood erect, chests out, shoulders back, like freshly pinned Eagle Scouts.
Verdade’s late entrance drew applause. Good-humored, personable, and dashing, Tomás was popular with the press.
“Yesterday was a heavy day for my country,” Verdade boomed into the mic, as the crowd hushed. “Perhaps the rest of the world can appreciate that Barba herself is not immune to the violence that injustice invites. Even if that violence is not always vented on those who most deserve it—like our friend Humberto.” A chuckle rippled through the media; Humberto was the name of the bull. “I understand that the correspondent for the esteemed National Record,” Verdade continued, eyes seeking Edgar, “was especially moved by Humberto’s poor fortune.” Another chuckle, at Edgar’s expense; Bubbardizing might work a treat with readers, but had a tacky tabloid rep.
“Others of the press,” Verdade continued in a more serious vein, “have made much of the irony that yesterday’s SOB operation took place at a peace rally. Though I would not presume to speak for our brothers in the SOB, I would hazard that this irony was intended. Those good citizens gathered in a praça dos touros wanted peace. But the SOB also wants peace. We all want peace. No one aches for peace more than I.
“But there are different types of peace. There is the peace of oppression—the peace of silence, of fear, of those unwilling or unable to speak up. This is an unsettled peace, a thin peace, a whitewashed peace, like a single coat of paint over a cracked wall. Most of all, this is a peace that cannot last, and in this sense it is no peace at all.
“I yearn for another sort of peace,” Verdade intoned as the audience jotted and an ABC cameraman frantically fiddled with a silver reflective shield aimed at the president’s face. “The peace of justice. The peace of freedom. Yet the road to true tranquility—ironically, as many of you have written—is not always peaceful. It is all very well for my people to cry, Enough! We must have peace for our children! Yet our children must also be allowed to grow up with self-respect, in a nation they can call their own, where they can speak their own language and
be understood, where they are not marginalized or overrun. Our children have a right to deep-seated peace, not the peace of inertia, of embarrassment, of gloom—the peace of abdication, of colonization, of defeat.
“However well-meaning my countrymen at that bullring rally yesterday, I must charge them with wanting a cheap and easy peace. We in O Creme de Barbear and our noble comrades in Os Soldados Ousados de Barba are willing to pay the price for a profound peace, a lasting peace. We must therefore redress the grievances that have given rise to this conflict. If we do not treat the germinal causes of violence—if we only suture infection into a gaping wound—that wound is sure to fester, and the violence will resurge with all the terrible recrudescence of gangrene.”
As Verdade began accepting questions, Edgar added up the tally-marks on his notepad appreciatively. In justifying a bomb that might have killed two dozen people had it worked properly, O Creme’s president had managed to use the word peace twenty-four times.
“Mr. Verdade!” cried Martha Hulbert. “Can we put you on record, then, as refusing to condemn yesterday’s attack?”
A ritual question demanded a ritual reply. “Condemnation is an empty formality, Senhorita Hulbert. Of course I am regretful about the incident, and relieved that no one was killed. But I wish to excavate the taproot of this violence, not recite platitudes. Roland?”
“Does your refusal to condemn extend to the Novo Marrakech lynchings two nights ago?” Verdade never turned a hair, but Ordway flattered himself that he was putting Tomás on the spot. What a pill.
“Those ‘lynchings,’ as you call them, were tragic.” Verdade’s head canted at a mournful angle, achieving an attractive three-quarters profile for the ABC camera. “But those unfortunate Moroccans were in the wrong place at the wrong time—that is, they were in the wrong country. I fear that unless we get unwelcome migrants back where they belong there are bound to be repetitions of this week’s outburst of frustration.”
“Mr. Verdade, are you inciting your people to commit more murders—?”
Meantime, Edgar was transfixed. Two days ago Verdade discovers his whole political movement is founded on a sham, and the guy doesn’t miss a beat. The man was unflappable. Verdade could as well have been a tycoon just informed that his stock portfolio was worthless, and his reaction was to write more checks.
“Mr. Verdade!” Edgar waved his hand. “Was the bullring bombing an aberration, or is Barba likely to suffer more of the same? And now that the SOB has gone local, do you anticipate that the armed campaign could move to Lisbon?” It was humiliating to be inquiring after the intentions of his own acronym, like having to quiz the neighbors about the whereabouts of your own wayward kid.
“Edgar,” Verdade chided familiarly. “I couldn’t possibly have any idea.”
Edgar pressed on as Nicola’s proxy, “And what’s the logic of blowing up your own country?”
“You would have to ask the SOB.” Verdade’s capacity to look Edgar smack in the eye was unnerving.
“I am, apparently.” Edgar glared with the impotent indignation of the dispossessed. Meanwhile, with nine-tenths of the law on his side, the thief toys in plain view with what he’s stolen, with no intention of giving it back.
“If I were to venture a theory,” Verdade posited coyly, “I might suppose that when you are being held hostage against your will, it is in your interests to make your company as disagreeable as possible. If Barba becomes a sharp enough thorn in Lisbon’s side, perhaps the government will eventually do the sensible thing, and detach the thorn.”
“Lisbon is a very old, venerable city,” Edgar appealed. “Full of irreplaceable castles, plazas, and artifacts. It wouldn’t just be bad PR, but a tragic waste—”
“You are a man of broad passions,” Verdade commended, eyes twinkling. “I’m sure the SOB will take your architectural attachments into account. Win?”
That twinkle: it wasn’t simply the glimmer of having caught on about the Terra do Cão phone booth. Rather, Verdade’s gaze sparkled with intelligence about Edgar’s late-night weakness for the faithless Angela, his unmanly two-year tolerance of Jamesie, his high school prostration before the platinum blond icon of Toby Falconer, his dead-end infatuation with Nicola Tremaine, and his secret indenturement to the immortal Barrington Saddler, a windbag whom Edgar publicly disparaged but privately resurrected as the best friend he’d never had. Far from being the flinty, clinical records of a thick-skinned cynic, the journal entries on Edgar’s hard drive were the outpourings of a puppy dog. The exposure was unendurable. Edgar slipped from the banquet room early, and fled to his car.
Fleeing to his car was quite another matter from fleeing in it. After peering under the chassis for any alarming lumps or wires—a procedure already as routine as a woman’s check in the mirror for blemishes or stray hairs when exiting a restroom—Edgar nosed into a nearly immobile tailback. Owing to the arrival of copious foreign do-gooders, local radio now broadcast the news in English, to which Edgar tuned in. According to the lead story, this traffic jam wasn’t restricted to downtown. Most of Cinziero was paralyzed by bomb threats.
Unless Verdade had been sitting on an arsenal that was primed and ready to go, the threats were empty, though scares worked every bit as well as the real thing in the inconvenience department. Had Edgar called in the scares himself, he might have hunkered into his upholstery with sly satisfaction, but being dicked around turned out to be substantially less amusing than doing the dicking. Road after road was cordoned off with yellow security tape, and Edgar’s usual route to Abrab Manor was blocked. In fact, listening to which areas were affected, Edgar could almost conclude that the scares were deliberately confected to impede his personal journey home.
Three hours. In the course of which Edgar had progressed 2.6 miles, the while forced to confront the painful crumple of his glossy black hood, still dented from that encounter with the flauta ventosa pole. Between torturous rebroadcasts of Verdade’s press conference—I yearn for a different sort of peace; the peace of justice, the peace of freedom—the radio announcer delivered a warning that grew increasingly stern as the sun set. For tonight the weather service was issuing a Wind Watch, cautioning Barbans to secure their homes and stay indoors. Gales that drove most nationals to storm cellars Barbans regarded as kite weather. If Radio Cinziero forecast the wind would be “severe,” it would be deadly.
As Edgar finally struck the long road out of town and traffic began to move and thin, the atmosphere was already throwing its weight around. It was difficult to keep the Turbo in lane. The blasts were unpredictable, and this time when oncoming trucks wobbled over the meridian Edgar couldn’t indulge his paranoia that the bumpers were lunging for him on purpose. The high-pitched eee shrieking through the ventilation system gave him a headache, and gripping the wheel ten-and-two stiffened his neck. As ever when the vento’s assault grew more punishing than usual, Edgar felt hounded, badgered, and bullied by forces beyond his control, and in his current besieged political circumstances the harassment took on the character of metaphor. During a Barban Wind Watch, cars had been known to roll like tumbleweed, so that simply being prevented from getting home as zero hour approached could be chalked up as a second attempt on his life.
Edgar managed to shudder into his drive by seven-thirty p.m., half an hour before the watch began, though groping from the car to the front door was a quasi-military maneuver, like scrambling through enemy flak. Abandoning all pretense of dignity, Edgar groveled this distance on hands and knees. Opening the jimmied front door was a cinch, closing it an athletic feat.
He leaned with his back against the door with relief. Though the house was haunted with thumps and creaks, in comparison with the roar outside it was blessedly quiet. From that brief journey to the porch, his cheeks felt raw and dry; his ears were ringing. Damn those miscreants to hell. He was out of Choque, Noah’s Mill, and lasagna; with the whole town gridlocked, shopping had been out of the question.
Edgar shambled to the kitchen and
wrenched open a bottle of Rainier cherries in kirsch, about all that was left of Barrington’s ludicrous gourmet larder. The cherry glop was cloying, but in this sirocco the villa had acquired the live-by-your-wits austerity of a bomb shelter, where the finicky would perish. Edgar slurped grateful spoonfuls of the syrup with survivalist resourcefulness.
Edgar was spent. He didn’t want to use his time wisely, he just wanted to slaughter it. Figuring that Jerry Springer could only be improved in Portuguese, Edgar picked through the pillow fluff in the living room to the TV, only to find that the vento was blowing reception to snow. Trailing with his silly dinner to the atrium, he plopped onto a nest of cushions by the fountain and stared vacantly at the glass double doors. He had to keep yawning to equalize the pressure in his ears. As the gale gathered, flautas ventosas over the countryside whoo-ed at a gradually higher pitch. With all the rattles and thumps resounding throughout the house, Edgar might have been on edge without the assurance that this structure had withstood similar poundings for over two hundred years. At any rate, the vento was coalescing into such an event in itself that he didn’t much miss the tube. Funny, though, that buzzing sound from the double doors—that was new.
“Eddie . . . ?”
It was a quiet, cooing call that Edgar first dismissed as more wind.
“Eddie!” whispered more insistently, this time distinctly from the kitchen.
Rats. What now. Edgar was just beginning to enjoy the show.
Edgar stumbled up and trundled into the kitchen. “Don’t tell me,” he grumbled, “you’ve found a jar of double-chocolate truffle sauce with Cointreau for my main course.”
“Get your backside in here now, you git!” Weird—Saddler’s voice emitted from the walk-in pantry.