Neither of them acknowledged any of this, and soon the car entered a courtyard and pulled up before a gloomy-looking stone building of fortresslike construction: those few windows it had were narrow and barred. The two men hustled me into its grim dark interior, along several tunneled corridors ever grimmer and darker, and finally into a room that was grimmest, and darkest, of all, illuminated at the moment only by whatever light could penetrate the slit-window high on the wall, though a lamp with a mesh-covered reflector hung from the ceiling directly over the single piece of furniture in the room, a stark straightbacked chair.
I was pushed violently towards the chair and told to sit upon it. The overhead light was switched on. The bulb was more powerful than I expected; I sat in a cone of intense light, and the heat of it was comforting, for the men soon left the room. How long I sat there I could not say, but finally the door opened and in came a person I could hardly see: he remained in the shadows beyond the circle of light.
Suddenly he said in a harsh tone, “You’ve been frequenting a Blond.”
“I’m a tourist.”
“You’re an American agent.”
“May I ask who you are?”
“The State Security Service of Saint Sebastian.”
I suspected my best move would be to tell the literal truth, up to a point. “By chance I encountered the stewardess of the airplane that brought me here. ‘Frequenting’ is scarcely the word for my distant and brief acquaintance with her.”
“You did not fuck her? Blond females are nymphomaniacs.” He came closer, but I still could not see him except in outline. “Oh, you fucked her,” said he, “or vice versa.”
I took the courage to say, “I’m not going to speak to anyone I can’t see.” After a delay he slowly moved into the edge of the light, and I saw that he was—or had been, for his hair was now dark, and his accent had been lost—the rickshaw-puller known as Helmut.
“Was it not you who took me to the fireworks factory?”
“I was giving you enough rope,” said he. “You see, it has been my conviction from the first that you came to our country with a favorable bias towards the Blonds. I was putting you to the test, and of course you failed—or rather, I should say you succeeded beautifully in confirming my theory.”
“Why would I be favorably disposed to them when it was they who blew up my home in New York?”
He smiled sardonically. “Because cultured Americans adore those who abuse them in what is represented as a good cause.”
“I assure you I am still happily enmired in the Me Generation,” I cried with false enthusiasm. “I’m a monster of self-interest and have been denounced as such by a series of do-gooder women, for I am often attracted to social activists, if they have long legs and nice breasts.” I was trying for a joke here, but without undue conviction that I would succeed. My lack of faith was appropriately rewarded: Helmut threatened to connect electrodes to my testicles and send a powerful current through them.
“You don’t seem to understand,” said he. “You’re in the hands of the dreaded security police. You are dead to the outside world when you’re in here, and vice versa. We can wash your brain like a handkerchief, flushing away your memories, hopes, ideals, and...” He searched for a word, did not find it, and murmuringly repeated “ideals.” Aha! I thought, there’s his usable weakness, a poor command of terms, but he soon confounded me by saying quickly, “And principles, values, convictions, and if I’ve left anything out with regard to the superego, you can be sure it will wash away as quickly as the rest.”
“And you think my government will sit idly by while this is going on?”
“Certainly not,” said he. “They’ll launch nuclear missiles at us.” His grin was unfunny. “Why, you poor schmuck!” he said, pretending to more compassion than he felt.
I decided to counterattack, though naturally in an extremely subtle way. “I think you’re better-looking with blond hair.”
He scowled. “Why should I care what you think?”
“I only just discovered that all Sebastianers are born blond.”
His expression changed to one that might have been called uneasy. “That’s common knowledge. We’re all in the same boat to start with. Those who are content to stay there deserve to drown. Not much is asked, after all: just a little dye, but you see they’re too lazy even for that.”
“Not everyone is cut out to be blond all his life,” I said, cunningly perverting his point, “but I think you could do it to advantage.”
“Dammit,” said Helmut.
“It’s the shape of your jaw.” I suggested a square with my fingers and thumbs.
I had got to him! He hung his head for a moment. “You might be right, but it’s the political thing, you see. Were it simply aesthetics...” He showed a regretful pout.
“To be sure,” I went on, “fair hair doesn’t stay all that light on the adult head. So-called blond men usually have a head of dirty brown, if not snot-green.”
He raised his chin further than required. “As you saw me with the rickshaw, that’s entirely natural.” He pointed at his scalp. “This is the dye-job.”
“Then indeed you have beautiful hair.”
He peered narrowly at me. “Are you a bugger after all?”
It was the “after all” that caught my interest. “Certainly not. I assume the concierge assured you of that truth. Does he not work for you?”
“Naturally,” Helmut said. “Concierges are always police spies by tradition, as you very well know. Their mystique demands it.... Look, it’s kind of you to admire my hair, but that doesn’t alter the fact that we must force a confession out of you. I’m afraid that the means by which that will be done are extremely cruel. I say ‘I’m afraid’ merely to be courteous. Actually, I enjoy that phase of my job more than any other. I am that relatively rare person who is authorized to carry out his most outlandish fantasies in his everyday work.”
“You do this in support of the status quo?”
“No,” said Helmut. “I do it because I enjoy having the power to remove someone’s freedom and to bring him pain.”
“But you don’t want to see the prince deposed?”
He shrugged. “I couldn’t care less. My job is to ferret out dissenters and to frustrate their efforts. The means I employ represent my own interpretation of the work. I have infiltrated the liberation movement and can identify every one of its ringleaders. I could at any moment round all of them up and bring them here. But the fact is that, as you could see, they are a pack of harmless, ineffectual clowns here at home. Their bombs are used only in America. I would dearly like to torture them, enjoying the bringing of pain as I do, but alas! how can I do that when I already know all their secrets?”
“You can’t do it to me, either,” I said, rising from the chair. “Because before you can torture me, I confess!”
“Oh, no you don’t!” he cried. “You cannot.”
“But I have already done so, you see. Any torture you submit me to now would be contrary to the international standards of interrogation. You would reveal yourself as being a selfish sadist rather than a zealous investigator. Your authenticity would be shattered!”
Helmut threw his hands up. “All right, all right, you’ve made your point. But can’t we just talk, at least?”
I had him on the run now. “Perhaps, if you’ll just apologize for submitting me to this ordeal.”
He spoke impatiently. “Consider it done. But your responsibility hasn’t ended. What are you confessing to?”
“To being an American agent.”
“OK. Now confess what sort of mischief you had planned to wreak in this role.”
“None whatever. I’m on a fact-finding mission. But just a moment: Olga knew that. Why didn’t you, if you have infiltrated the movement?”
He looked sheepish. “Well, all right, so I miss a few things. I don’t get the rest I should, and I work darn hard, pulling that rickshaw, so I admit I catch a few winks whenever the opp
ortunity offers itself. You don’t know how boring it is to listen to revolutionary rhetoric. Another thing that limits the effectiveness of this agency is the lack of a name that can be used easily and gracefully, like Gestapo or KGB. It’s awkward to pronounce the letter S five times in succession, and the term Five Esses, which we’ve tried to get people to use in recent years, simply doesn’t sound serious.”
I was still standing in the circle of light. “That’s your problem,” I said. “Having kept my end of the bargain, I’m leaving.”
He clasped my arm and pleaded, “Look here, old fellow, can’t you stay awhile? I could really use the company. You’re someone I can talk to. This is a very lonely job. We might drink a beer or two and play some cards. I’ll take you home for some of the best goulash you ever ate. Afterwards we’ll listen to my brother-in-law play the concertina. And, say, my wife has another sister who’s unmarried. You’ll like her. She’s—” He suggested, with cupped hands, a pair of enormous breasts, to carry which the woman would need a frame of the same kind.
He was about to resume when the door opened and one of the black-suited men came in.
“Sir,” he said, “the revolution has begun.”
“Of course it has,” Helmut said derisively. “Led by that ridiculous Olga, no doubt.”
“In fact, yes,” said the man.
“I don’t know why you’ve chosen this moment for your little joke, Stanislaus,” said Helmut. “It’s been a long day. Mr. Wren and I are going home now to a good dinner.”
“It’s not a joke, sir. The Blonds have taken the palace and captured the prince. Others are going around to all the government facilities. They’ll be here at any moment. What shall we do, sir? Surrender or fight?”
“Hold them off until I wash this dye out of my hair!” cried Helmut, dashing for the door.
9
I ENCOUNTERED NO ONE at all on my uncertain exit through the grim dark passageways of the building of the SSSSS (a name easier to write than to speak). When I finally emerged I had no idea of where I might be. However, when I rounded the first corner, I saw The Linden Street School at the end of the street. I had been only a block from where the security people had picked me up, and it was a short walk from there to the hotel.
As I passed the school I glanced through the glass-paneled front doors and saw that the audience was once again entering the auditorium from the hall or lobby. It would seem as if news of the revolution had not yet reached them—or they were simply indifferent to it.
But changes had already been made at the hotel. For one, its name, according to the replaced brass plate on either side of the entrance, was now The Hotel Blond. I was confronted by the concierge, whose hair was now a mass of tight yellow curls and who had exchanged his tailcoat for a resplendent uniform tunic, draped with braid and bearing an embroidered legend on the left breast: again “The Hotel Blond.” I suspected that he had not only been the classic concierge in serving as police spy, but had typified the traditional police spy by being a double agent.
“Halt!” he cried from behind the desk. “Your identification!”
“Come off it.”
He flushed and brought, from under the counter, the Luger he had drawn on me once before, then with his free hand he banged the little domed bell before him. In a moment the bellboy appeared, the same whose flesh he had tried to sell me on numerous occasions. The concierge ordered him to search my person, which the lad proceeded to do, and though presumably a catamite he was discreet enough with his hands. He wore the old uniform with a newly embroidered Hotel Blond breast patch.
Next the concierge lifted the telephone and tried to reach the police but had no success. Lowering the instrument, he spoke to me as if I might be sympathetic.
“I suppose we must be patient. The changeover is not quite complete.”
I asked sourly, “What are you charging me with this time?”
“Refusal to identify yourself to an officer.”
“You’re an officer?”
“Do you not see my uniform?”
“It’s the costume of a hotel flunky!” I cried. “Whom are you trying to fool?”
“I’m afraid your troubles are growing,” he said with false regret. “Everybody in any kind of uniform is perforce an officer of the Revolution. It is a grave offense to insult one of us.”
“Just a moment. A mailman is an officer?”
“Certainly. As is a nurse.” He moved his heavy head from side to side. I suspected that though obviously he had been prepared with clothing and signplates, the Revolution had caught him with insufficient time in which to bleach his dark-dyed hair and that that which crowned his skull was a wig.
“This bellboy wears a uniform!” I pointed out.
“And he’s an officer,” shouted the concierge.
“Do you admit that the last time I saw you, a scant few hours ago, you showed quite another attitude towards the Blonds?”
He addressed the lad, who had withdrawn from me. “Lieutenant, what was consistently my position on the Blonds when they were a despised and oppressed minority?”
The boy clicked his heels. “Sir, you always admired them and in so doing took an enormous risk.”
“There you are,” the concierge said smugly.
I grimaced. “Your effrontery is breathtaking. As to the ‘lieutenant’ here, how recently was it that you were trying to peddle him for sexual purposes?”
“Oho.” The large man moaned in pleasurable anticipation. “I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes when I get hold of the police! Sexual inversion is of course counterrevolutionary, as is indecency with respect to a minor. The lieutenant is but seventeen years old. To have made importunities to him is the foulest of crimes.... Indeed, you are such a heinous criminal, all in all, that I am justified, as a colonel in the Revolutionary Blond Army, to sentence you to death on my own authority.” He raised the Luger to point at my head. It might have been a bluff, as so many things proved to be in Saint Sebastian, but I was not inclined to put him to the test.
Fortunately, I did not have to, for Clyde McCoy reeled into the lobby at that moment, leaned across the counter and disarmed the concierge, and spoke to me.
“There you are. I’ve been lookin’ for you, sport. Thought you might have located a source for something to drink by now.”
“You haven’t heard of the revolution?”
“Huh? Oh, that. That’s their business.”
“What will become of the prince, do you think?”
McCoy shrugged. “They’ll probably knock him off.” He took the clip from the Luger and returned the weapon to the concierge, who smiled obsequiously and thanked him. The bellhop had disappeared.
“You are curiously unimpressed,” I told the veteran correspondent. “You don’t expect your own status to be altered?”
McCoy gave me his bleary eye. “I took the poet’s advice many years ago and abandoned excessive expectation about anything. That philosophy has left me untouched by human hands, if you know what I mean.”
“But with all respect, McCoy, is that any way to live?”
He groaned. “You call this living? I haven’t had a drink for an hour!”
“The Blonds have closed the wine shops and taverns?”
He squinted at me. “Is that the reason? I thought they just ran out of goods, which happens a lot. The distillery breaks down.” He turned and lurched towards the door. “Come on.”
In truth, I had nothing better to do, not to mention that in such a time I felt secure in McCoy’s presence, the drunk tending to enjoy the status of a holy idiot in most cultures or anyway someone who is given a wide berth (except on the iconoclastic pavements of the Big Apple, where he might well be set on fire).
I followed McCoy out to his car and was about to take my chances with the passenger’s door when he directed me to enter by way of the window. I did so, sliding headfirst through the aperture, then falling inside. Meanwhile he inserted himself behind the steering wheel, and soon
we were roaring and rattling up the hills towards the palace.
When I saw what our destination would be, I asked, “You think it’s the opportune time to go there?”
“Damn right,” said McCoy, setting his jaw. “I’m not going to let them get away with this Prohibition shit.”
“You can stop them?”
He scowled at the windshield. “I’m an American, for Christ sake.”
It was so strange nowadays to hear the term used in that way—though it was no doubt routine in the movies shown by the priest.
We gained the summit and shortly thereafter scraped to a stop against the wall overlooking the moat. We left the car and climbed the spiral staircase in the tower. The old journalist displayed an impressive spryness. No doubt he was energized by the expectation of getting a drink from the stores of the deposed monarch.
When we reached those corridors through which I had been conducted by General Popescu on my previous visit to the palace, I saw that the walls had been denuded of the so-called Old Masters.
We still had not seen a Blond, or, for that matter, anyone from the ancien régime, but when we finally reached the first of what had formerly been the sumptuously furnished antechambers to the throne room but now was empty except for a desk of gray metal, atop and around which were a number of matching accessories, intercom, wastecan, telephone, there sat a young fair-haired woman. She wore a suit of some gray material with a slight sheen, a white blouse, and a black bow tie. Her hair was pulled into a tight bun at her nape. She was wearing no jewelry and no makeup.
I had assumed that McCoy would continue and perhaps even intensify the truculence with which he had greeted my suggestion that the new leaders were teetotalers, but in fact he now turned on an old-fashioned charm, or in any event, what he obviously intended to be taken as such.
“Sweetie,” he crooned, so to speak quasimodoing his body, lowering his head to leer on the level of her own, “Could I ask you kindly to let me see Who’s in Charge?”