“No doubt, despite his jovial appearance, he wields a savage pen?”
“Not at all,” said Hinkle. “He writes only praise.”
“Surprises keep coming,” I said. “What kind of thing does he write about?”
“Poetry is his great specialty.”
“There are many Sebastiani poets?”
“Not one,” Hinkle said.
“How’s that?”
“Riesling writes essays, even long books, about great poetry that has never been written.”
“Nobody ever tries to write poetry?”
“They’d keep it a secret if they did,” Hinkle said with feeling. “Riesling had sworn to murder anyone who tries. Even Smerd, strong and brutal as he is, is scared of Riesling in that regard.”
My second glassful was now gone. I twitched a finger at Inga, and when she came to me with a newly opened bottle, I took it from her and tried to ape Riesling’s stunt. But for the life of me I couldn’t swallow in consecutive gulps more than about a third of the contents. The critic really was a remarkable talent.
As I drank, Hinkle identified the rest of the authors and their genres. As it happened, only Blond women wrote fiction, and according to him it was all obscene.
“Explicit hardcore sex, eh?”
He snorted indignantly. “There’s no normal, decent crotchwork, if that’s what you mean. This is real filth. The heroine is saved from some peril by the big, handsome, and wealthy nobleman, who then asks for her hand in marriage. The one I read made me puke my guts out. I wouldn’t want one to get into the hands of any daughter of mine, I tell you.”
When he had finished, I asked, “Are there many Sebastianers who read books? If so, where do they get them? Not at the library.”
“Various places,” Hinkle said. “Whichever would be appropriate to the theme of the particular book. My own, for example, are distributed where children congregate: playgrounds, birthday parties, and so on. Hozenblatt’s tomes, being so heavy, are stacked in gyms used by weight lifters. The female porn is made available at hairdressing salons.”
“And Riesling’s criticism?” The large, jovial man fascinated me. It looked as though he seized life and made it groan.
Hinkle shrugged. “The fact is, it’s never been printed.” He leaned closer to me. “Some say, never been written. None of the rest of us has ever seen it, I know that.”
“Remarkable! But he seems happy enough, doesn’t he? Is he telling us something?” I took another swallow of wine. “And does anybody do playwriting, which I raffishly call my own racket?”
“No one,” said Hinkle.
“Then the art would be another good subject for Riesling!” I cried. I was feeling the wine now. I looked across at the critic. He had got Inga to bring him another enormous plate of food, great forkfuls of which he was shoveling into his open mouth. His eyes were closed in bliss.
“Hey, Riesling!” I shouted. He opened his watery eyes but continued to eat. “Catch!” I hurled the bottle at him. With horror I watched him do nothing whatever to seize or deflect it. It struck him squarely in the forehead and bounced off as if it, or his skull, were made of rubber. He closed his eyes again and went on eating.
I shouted his name once more, and then:
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely, and more temperate...”
The critic immediately dropped his loaded fork, went to his armpit, and brought out a large automatic pistol. His first shot broke the glass in front and slightly to the right of me; the slug continued past my forearm with a hideous whistle.
I didn’t wait for another. I plunged to the floor and left the room on running hands and feet. I hurled myself down the stairs and dashed out the door of the pink house and leaped into the waiting rickshaw, ordering Helmut to depart on the double.
But, looking back, I saw I was not pursued. The life of the Sebastiani authors, however intramurally passionate it was, never crossed the threshold to make contact with the great world. And no doubt that was best for the country.
Once we were beyond the Street of Words, I directed Helmut to pull over to the curb. Riesling’s attack had returned me to sobriety. I realized that I should sit quietly somewhere and try to make some sense of what I’d seen and heard since arriving in Saint Sebastian. I might use Helmut as a sounding board. He was so stupid that I would not appear foolish no matter what nonsense I bounced off him; also, he had no personal axe to grind.
We were on a street of low wooden sheds, each separated from the next by some distance; no people were in view or in hearing.
“Here’s how it looks to me,” I said towards Helmut but really to myself. “The prince is a pervert, an eccentric, and so on, but as rulers go, he’s far from being the worst imaginable, because he has no effect on the country.”
“Sir vill vish—”
“Please, Helmut, I’m trying to follow a train of thought. You wouldn’t understand, but I have been sent over here from my country to find out what happens in yours. If we like what we see, we will give you money.”
“Is interesting place,” Helmut said, pointing to the sheds. He picked up the shafts. “You should look.”
“What is it?” I asked. “It resembles the fireworks factory that was at the edge of my hometown when I was a child.”
“Yass,” said Helmut, pulling me into a graveled lane that went amongst the little frame buildings.
“You mean it is a fireworks factory?”
The establishment of my childhood had been surrounded by a high fence topped with barbed wire and everywhere posted with warnings as to the explosive nature of what was made therein and the danger of fire. Here there was nothing to restrain the layman or -child from wandering about the premises, not even an informational sign.
Helmut stopped before a certain hut, which was distinguished in no way from its fellows, lowered the shafts, and went to the door of weathered wood, saying “Come, please,” and I did as asked.
Inside, along three of the four walls, were workbenches at each of which sat a middle-aged woman. The one nearest me, her gray-blond hair in a bun, was pouring what would seem to be gunpowder through a funnel into a stout red cardboard tube. She did this none too carefully, for a dusting of the black powder covered the tabletop.
“Very interesting,” I told Helmut, and turned nervously away. “I really must get back to the hotel.”
Ignoring me, he went to the center of the room and pushed aside the rough-woven rug that lay there, uncovering a trapdoor. He bent and grasped the recessed ring that was its handle and pulled up the door, revealing a wooden ladder that descended to some space below. He beckoned me to follow and went first. Curiosity overcame my apprehensions. There was an earthen smell at the bottom of the ladder and no light whatever for a moment; then Helmut produced an electric torch from somewhere. He led me through a low, narrow tunnel whose ceiling and sides were braced with timbers. Just as it occurred to me that I should probably worry about being asphyxiated, we turned a corner, went through a crude door that resembled the end of a packing crate, and entered a chamber lighted by several kerosene lamps atop a coarse wooden table and, I was relieved to see, ventilated by a vertical pipe going up through the ground above. Nevertheless it was not the kind of retreat that would have appealed to the claustrophobe.
Camp chairs were arranged around the table, and Helmut, with a new authority and in a new accent, asked me to choose one and take a seat.
He stood before me. “Olga will be coming along in a few moments,” he said. “Along with the rest of the Revolutionary Council. We haven’t been able to get together with you until now, because each of us has a demanding, and of course degrading, job he or she must perform for at least ten hours a day or night. It is not generally known, I think, that one of the major problems in making a revolution is merely scheduling the conspiratorial meetings—if the persons involved are flunkies in their society.”
Temporarily dumbstruck by the transfo
rmation, I sank onto one of the chairs and stared at the hard-packed earth between my feet.
At last I looked up. “You’re telling me that you and your sister are leaders of the Sebastiani liberation movement?”
Helmut sneered. “The belief that we all look alike is but another manifestation of the bias against us. We are siblings only in the ideological and not the biological sense.”
This was a familiar plaint of oppressed minorities, and, so far as I was concerned, usually justifiable enough. On the other hand, these people had blown up my home. I reminded Helmut of that outrage.
He moved his square chin. “A man posing as an agent for the owner of the building assured us it was not only unoccupied but scheduled to be demolished.”
“The individual in reference was undoubtedly that swine who does janitorial work around the place,” said I.
Helmut’s nostrils flared. “In Saint Sebastian he would be a Blond.”
“No doubt,” I said. “But I hasten to assure you that such a chap in New York City is a social pariah only by reason of his own personality, not because of before-the-fact prejudice. I’ve seldom seen a black super in a white building. Finally, an Afro-American friend of mine, with a Harlem super of his own kind, had the same complaints as I. Along with one that remained unique: his super used a passkey to slip into the apartment and eat all the fresh fruit.”
Helmut shrugged. “If you remember, you did get a telephone warning as soon as it was discovered that you were on the premises. We had no motive to wish you harm.”
But I did not hear him offer to compensate me for the loss of property. He displayed the solipsist self-righteousness that has always kept me from wholeheartedly admiring the ideologue even when I give general assent to his proximate aim.
At that moment a woman came in from the tunnel. She was tall and full-figured, wore rumpled dark slacks and a shapeless gray coat; her hair was gathered within a beret, and she wore spectacles.
I assumed she was a hitherto-unencountered member of the Revolutionary Council—until she seized my hand, yanked it up and pushed it down, and said, “Good day, Brother Wren. We meet in other conditions than yesterday’s.”
I leaned forward and squinted. “Olga? Can it be?”
She laughed coldly. “Is that not a vile role I must play?” Then in came several other men and women, all of whom were fair-complexioned. They sat down on the camp chairs, but Olga remained standing.
“We’ll make this brief,” said she. “Rudy and Margit and some of you others are supposed to be on duty right now. Fortunately, the conviction that we all look alike helps us at such a time. They never quite know who’s who.” She directed the last comment to me.
I was still trying to habituate myself to the new Olga, who was even more remarkable than the new Helmut.
She continued. “Brother Wren, as some of us know already, has been sent over by the US government to determine how best to aid our movement.”
At this point I recovered sufficiently to interrupt. “Excuse me,” I said, “but that’s not quite the case.” The Blonds all turned and gave me uncompromising stares. In the modest refulgence of the kerosene lamps their eyes were darker than the normal sky blue. They were all rather large people. I quickly edited my statement. “That is, it might be premature to put it as you have. Anyway, I am a humble information-gatherer, not a policy-maker.”
Olga resumed as if I had not spoken. “We want arms that are light and portable: automatic rifles, machine pistols. We don’t need planes. Sebastian doesn’t have an air force, and he doesn’t have any armor, so we don’t need tanks. I suppose if we had artillery we could shell the palace, but then we’d have to go to the expense of rebuilding it, for we will want to maintain a commanding structure up there for the executive offices of the democratic government to come. It’s the highest point in the city and figures too importantly in the ruling symbolism of our country to dispense with.”
She was an impressive figure, standing there before us, though her clothes were drab. I do not ritualistically gasp in admiration at the sterner sort of woman (who has always, beginning with my grade-school gym teacher, an iron-jawed bruiser named Bertha Dirkwalter, tended to be impatient with me), but I had to admit that Olga was morally more prepossessing now than when posing as an airborne airhead.
She went on. “Annaliese, Hans, and I, as the Subcommittee on Arms, have drawn up a list of the weaponry we require from America.” She nodded at one of the other women, attired and spectacled as soberly as herself but underneath it all, one could discern, another Valkyrie only slightly less handsome than her leader. “Please give Brother Wren that list.”
Annaliese opened her blouse, reached within, and brought out a sheaf of papers, which she handed across to me. They were warm from contact with her flesh, which, judging from the set of her shoulders, was ample.
“I’ll look these over,” I said, placing the papers on the table. “But again I must remind you that somebody with more authority than I will make the judgment as to any aid, military or otherwise.”
“Of course, we will require a good deal more than arms,” Olga said, as usual making no acknowledgment of my reservations. “We’ll need one hundred million dollars to begin with. I won’t waste our time with a list of specific allocations: we’re quite capable of making the dispersals ourselves. If you must justify it to your people, tell them the largest single outlay will consist of bribes to those around Sebastian. His advisors and ministers are so corrupt that we might well bring him down bloodlessly: that should appeal to you Americans.”
“In which case you wouldn’t need the arms,” I pointed out.
Olga’s fair face darkened. “I’m afraid that, on the contrary, weapons must always, if deplorably, have the highest priority. For it is likely that as soon as Sebastian is removed, our neighbors will see what they will interpret as our time of weakness in which they might strike with success.”
The other Blonds murmured their fervent agreement with this analysis, and Annaliese smote the tabletop with her fist.
Intermittently I was still having seizures of astonishment at the change in Olga.
I said, “As I think you have reason to know, I was transported to Saint Sebastian in a comatose state and had not been well briefed beforehand. I’m not sure I can remember your abutting neighbors. Austria? Czechoslovakia, one or both Germanies?”
Olga proceeded to pronounce names which, never having heard them before or seen them written, I can reproduce only approximately. “Gezieferland on the north, and to the southeast, Swatina.”
“My ignorance of these countries is absolute. I take it they are as small as Saint Sebastian? What sort of regimes do they have?”
“Tyrannical,” said she. “One is ruled by a king and the other, a grand duke, two scoundrels who are in fact cousins to Sebastian.”
“Why would they be eager to attack this country?”
“They have no Blonds of their own,” said Olga.
“They would like to enslave you for their own purposes?”
“Need you ask?” She made a gesture of impatience. “It’s time for our people to get back to their jobs before they’re missed. And I’m sure you are eager to get to the cable office to contact your principals with our demands.”
I winced. “Just a moment. You’re speaking of demands now? Or was that a slip of the tongue?”
Olga said coldly, “Not at all, Brother Wren. I’m afraid we must hold you hostage until we receive an affirmative response from your government.”
6
THERE WAS LITTLE QUESTION that I could be easily restrained by the large Blond men, and therefore I attempted no physical resistance.
But I could say, “I find your tactics leave something to be desired. Remember, I am first the man whose home you destroyed, along with the script of a play that might have been produced on Broadway, making me rich and famous. Then I am literally kidnapped by an agency of the US government, drugged, and sent over here. As if that
isn’t enough, you now inform me that I am to be used as a pawn in your game. You certainly know how to attract sympathizers.”
Oblivious to my remarks, the Blonds rose from the table. Helmut remained at the door; the others left.
“There’s nothing personal in it,” said Olga. “You should not take offense. The individual cannot be respected in such an effort as ours, else nothing would be accomplished. Our country is already badly behind the times. Who else in the world is governed by such a degenerate as Sebastian?”
“Ironically enough, some of the newest nations in the so-called Third World might provide a rival or two,” said I. “But even if I agreed that you Blonds are in a peculiarly subservient situation in Europe, even if you might require brute force to depose the prince, why must you work your will by violent means on foreigners, strangers who have no proper involvement in your affairs?”
A sneer hardened the shape of Olga’s full mouth. “Do you think anyone would even hear of us, let alone care, if we were nonviolent? You have just admitted you are here only as result of our bombing your home. Then we were successful! Why should we be concerned with your inconvenience, even your pain? Did you care about ours?” She sighed in impatience. “Wren, the humanistic platitudes belong in the schoolbooks. They have no meaning in the real world.”
This argument, like all the effective ones in my experience of life, was not original, but except in the hands of geniuses, innovation tends to be little more than thrillseeking. In any event, I had virtually exhausted, for the moment, my capacity for debate on the subject at hand: Aristotle to the contrary notwithstanding, I am not to any degree a political animal: I just wish people would be quietly nice and fair to one another and there would never be any riots, revolutions, wars. I am aware that hope is weak-minded, but I am confident that it is normal amongst the rank and file of all nations, creeds, and breeds.