The Land Across Page 8

  The most interesting room I found was on the ground floor, anyway. It was the master bedroom. You could tell right off that it was the master bedroom even if it was not very big. For one thing, there was a great big bed right in the middle of it, a really high bed with a tester and a little two-step ladder so you could climb into it. For another thing, the ceiling was all one big picture painted right on the plaster, naked girls having a picnic in the woods. There were trees and wildflowers and all that, and a guy with horns like a goat’s peeking out of the bushes to look at them. Some of the paint was gone and some of the plaster had fallen but I liked it anyway and when it was new it must really have been something, even if the girls were kind of fat.

  There was a chest of drawers and a fireplace and some other stuff, but the big thing for me was that picture. I must have taken twenty shots of it, trying to get it right. It was hard to get all of it in, or even most of it, and it was hard to light even with the strobes. I had just gotten the best shot of all when I heard somebody tapping on the front door.

  This is something I remember so well it hurts. I had been lying on the floor taking pictures, and I sat up and put my camera back in my camera bag, and shut it (turning the little catches), and got up and went to the door.

  There were three guys standing around on the porch, one wearing a raincoat, one a big sweater, and one a long black wool vest over a T-shirt. Raincoat said, “Can we come in?”

  It did not hit me right off that he had said it in German, and how did he know I did not understand much of the language here but I spoke German? I just said, “What do you want?”

  “We want to talk to you. It would be more friendly, perhaps, if all of us could sit down. So we hope that you will ask us in.”

  I shook my head. There was something about them that made me edgy. “We can talk right here,” I said.

  “Then let us go to a café. A café will not be as private, but perhaps we can get a good table, yes? You will be our guest, to be sure.”

  I shook my head again. “What’s this about?”

  Wool vest edged past Raincoat. I thought he was going to explain something, but he just grabbed the front of my shirt and jerked me out of the house. It was probably Sweater who pulled the bag over my head.

  Here is where I feel like I need to explain something. You may not give a shit, but I feel like it is important and I ought to put it in. This was where I learned how to hit people.

  Maybe you think you know already, and maybe you do. Only I thought I knew before when I did not. I had fights in elementary school like we all do, and two or three in middle school and even one in high school. None after that until I tangled with Kleon. Some I won and some I lost, like with Kleon. Only I did not know what I was doing, I just thought I did.

  When they pulled the bag over my head I started fighting for real. I had not been hitting anybody really hard up until then, not hitting them like I would drive a nail. Something about the bag made me do it. Sometimes I could hear somebody grunt when I hit him, and sometimes feel him stagger, only I did not pay any attention to it then, only after. Once I got the bag off my head for a minute. That was great, and it was when I learned not to hit the face. Faces are too hard and will hurt your hands. The body is good anywhere. The neck is best of all, and I do not think there was one of those three guys that I did not down at least once. I am not bragging. I really think I could say twice.

  If there had been two of them, I think I might have beaten them. There were three, and three was too many. I was fighting like hell when I lost track of everything.

  When I woke up my head ached so much I wished I had not. I was lying on my face, the floor rocked, my hands were behind me so I could not touch my head, and my feet were fastened together some way. In my whole life I had never felt so rotten as I did just then.

  And afterward, for hours. I learned that my hands were not tied—they were in metal handcuffs. I felt them all over, but there was no way to get them off. When I turned over and sat up, I saw my feet were tied with rope. It was not just my head that made the floor rock, it was really doing it. Now and then I could hear footsteps, and once in a while voices. Only nobody came.

  Finally somebody did. It was Raincoat, with the beady little eyes and big sharp nose, only he was not wearing the raincoat anymore, just baggy black pants and an old white shirt. There was a gun, not very big, in a black flap holster on his belt. He said, “Would you like some soup?”

  I said, “I’ve got to piss.”

  He laughed. “A good excuse to get my handcuffs off it is.”

  “No, I’ve really got to go.”

  “Do you now?” There was a narrow bench fastened to the cabin’s wall. He sat down on it.

  I said, “I can hold it awhile, but not forever. It will come out and soak my pants and I’ll stink. You won’t like it.”

  “So we shoot you and throw you over the side.”

  That was a bluff and somehow I knew it. I shrugged. “I can’t hold it forever. Nobody can.”

  “So I am to pull down your pants and hold your whistle for you.”

  I shook my head. “Take the handcuffs off and I’ll do it myself.”

  “No.” He turned away and yelled, “Croton!”

  Croton was Sweater, I was pretty sure, only he had taken it off. There was a gun, a pretty big one, stuck in his pants. He went off and came back with an old tin can. When we were done, he took it out. I suppose he emptied it over the side.

  “That was a lot.” Raincoat was grinning.

  “I told you.”

  “You would like the handcuffs gone. Your legs free also.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “By your good conduct you may earn those things. Do you like this country?”

  Here was the prof’s big question on the final exam, and I knew it. If I could guess what he wanted to hear, I was in. If I fumbled it, I flunked. Was he secret police or communist reactionary? Or just plain crook? I could not decide, and in the end I decided the best way was just to be honest. That way I would not have a bunch of lies to keep straight.

  So I told him, “I really like your country a lot, only not the clubs in Puraustays and not your cops. They nabbed me as soon as I got here when I hadn’t done anything wrong, and they took my passport. If they would give it back, I’d like them a whole lot better.”

  He nodded like he understood. “Are we well governed, you would say?”

  I shrugged. “It’s pretty bad in America, which is where I’m from, and—”

  “It is because you are Amerikan that we have taken you.”

  “No shit?”

  “Of this we may speak later. Are we well governed?”

  I shook my head. “It’s so bad in America that I want to say it’s got to be better everyplace else, only I’ve been around enough to know that’s not true. Every place I’ve been to, the people are generally pretty nice but the government stinks. The clubs in France and Germany are pretty good, and there’s some terrific clubs in Austria, but the government stinks in all of them, especially France.”

  Raincoat nodded hard. “They have not the Light of Stability.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “that’s it exactly.”

  “You are hungry, perhaps?”

  “I’m not starved, but I could eat. I’d like some water, too.”

  “You shall have better. Soon I return.”

  Off he went, and I sat there feeling the rock of the boat and the tilt of the deck and wondering. I knew I had been handed something when he said the Light of Stability, only I did not know what it was or how to use it. I thought that if I could find out what it meant I would figure out how to use it. That is the way I was thinking then, when my head hurt so much it was hard to think.

  Finally he came back, carrying a tray. “You have not the seasickness. That is well.”

  “I’ve been seasick twice in my life,” I told him, “only not very much.”

  He put down his tray in front of me and went around behind me. �
�If I unlock your hands you must do as you are told. This you understand, I hope.”

  I said, “Sure.”

  “Then I unlock so that you may eat. We have only the most small stove on this boat. One burner. But we do the better we can.”

  I said I would behave and I did, just feeling the big soft lump on my head before I pitched into the food. It was fried fish and fried potatoes mixed with onions, none of it too bad. There was wine, too, I think Tokay. I would rather have had Pepsi or even water, but I drank every drop.

  “Our government does not believe in God,” Raincoat said.

  I nodded. “That’s too bad.”

  “The churches believe, but all they teach is wrong. Would you be enlightened?”

  I said, “Sure.”

  “God exists and is real, but he did not create us. We create him.”

  I told him I had not known that, and it sure was interesting.

  “It is, and is true.” Raincoat stood up. “There is another, higher universe above this one we inhabit. Call it the Universe of the Ideal. There God dwells. He grants our prayers at times because he must. The more of us who pray for something, the more he must grant whatever it is so many pray for.”

  “Like if everybody prays for peace?”

  Raincoat had not heard me. “Thus all must pray for the Light of Stability. In change there is no progress. What is progress?”

  I waited and he said, “Speak! You must tell me.”

  “When things get better.”

  “That is change. No! One prays for long hot summers so that she may lounge upon the beach, her sister for long cold winters so she may ski. Crops fail and fail again. The people starve.”

  “That’s bad,” I said.

  “That is the progress for which you have wished.” Raincoat turned away from me and stood looking out the porthole.

  I drank a little sweet wine and waited.

  “I have taken away from you my handcuffs.”

  “That’s nice. I really appreciate it.”

  “You will seize my pistol. Shoot me in the back. Escape.”

  I had been thinking the same thing, only my legs were still tied. So I said he had been nice to me and the Light of Stability said it would be better to let him live.

  “Exactly so. What is, is right. The enlightened will preserve it. The unenlightened destroy it, promising to bring into being something better, but to bring into being is more difficult than to destroy, and the somethings they bring better are always worse. Thus it is that we do not seek to overthrow the government, though the government seeks to overthrow us.”

  “If you don’t want to overthrow the government,” I said, “why would the government want to overthrow you? It would seem to me that it would just pat you on the head and tell you to go ahead and have some fun.”

  He turned to face me. “Ah! You do not understand governments.”

  “That’s the flipping truth,” I said. I said flipping because I had the feeling he was not the type that would overlook fucking.

  “A government is not so many men behind desks,” he told me. “A government is an idea. Without the idea…” He shrugged.

  “Only you’ve got a different idea?”

  “Exactly so.”

  “But you ought to preserve the government, right? I mean from what you said a minute ago.”

  “Which we seek to do. A government is an idea; if that idea is mistaken, it is a building built upon the water. Such a building may float for a time. You come to see him and are told, ‘This is our foundation, a foundation so solid it can never fail. Islands wash away. Continents rise but sink again into the sea. But there has always been water and there will always be water. Here we stand!’ The next day they are gone.”

  I said, “I got it.”

  “There was in the cellar a door that must not be opened, you see. Someone opened—the water rushed in. The communists sink while I watch. It was very quick. Very quiet, too.”

  “So you want to change government’s idea.”

  Raincoat nodded. “We are the Legion of the Light. We will tow it to shore, you see, and because you are Amerikan you will help us.”

  “That’s right,” I said. It was not a lie the way I meant it.

  From then on I was loose on the boat. Yes, I could have grabbed somebody’s gun and maybe I could have killed all three of them, but what were the odds? I figured I had about one chance in fifty. And maybe I would not even be wounded. And maybe, just maybe, I could handle that big boat all by myself. But the sails generally took two men and during the thunder storms (we hit a couple of bad ones before we tied up at the capital) they took at least three. We had four because I pitched in, figuring that if we sunk I would drown, too.

  8

  THE CAPITAL

  What they wanted was for me to make radio broadcasts. I told them it would not help and nobody in America would even listen, but they said it did not matter. What did was that the government would hear them and think it mattered. The government would tune in and have everything I said translated and study it, and in that way the idea of the Light of Stability would sink in.

  When Raincoat told me that, I pointed out that he had a gun.

  “It is a tool,” he said. “To do good work, one must have tools.”

  That is the way it was with those people. On the one hand they did not like to destroy anything. On the other hand they were willing to destroy everything. The Light of Stability was really important to them, but winning was a lot more important. That was one way to put it.

  I had taped two or three broadcasts for them when it hit me. None of them spoke English, but if the government had me translated like they said it would, the government had somebody who did. I was broadcasting from an old factory down by the river, and by that time I knew what had been made there. So in the middle of my next I said, “We here where so many women once sewed shirts are sewing the shroud that will wrap all those who oppose the Light of Stability. For them to perish is change, but having perished they will change no more. You in America who hear my words must think on this. Listen again.”

  After that I waited, wondering how long it would be and telling myself it might be an hour or even a couple of hours. It took me a long time to go to sleep that night, only when I woke up nothing had changed.

  They had given me a book in English to read. It was called the Code of Unchanging and nothing in it made a whole lot of sense, but I had learned early on that the way to do it was to pick up phrases from it and drop them into my broadcasts. So I got them to give me a notebook and a ballpoint and wrote down some things I thought I might use. It would be interesting to know who had translated that book for them, but from the way it read I thought it had to be machine translation.

  Like I said, it did not make much sense, but looking for good phrases gave me something to do, and having the pen and notebook I started making notes for this book.

  One thing I came on straight off was the staircase. I had gone up it to take some pictures of the upstairs rooms, and Martya had climbed it so I could take pictures of her coming down. Only it had always seemed colder than the rest of the house—colder than it was outside, too.

  Also it was too long. The first-floor rooms had really high ceilings. I think I have written about that before, and it is true. But that stairway seemed like it had too many steps. I wanted to get back to the Willows and count them, but I could not.

  The next night I never got to sleep. They had given me a bed that had ARMY written all over it, a steel-frame bed with flat wire springs and a thin mattress. It was not as good as my bed at Kleon’s had been, but a ton better than sleeping on deck, which I had done out on the lake. I undressed and washed up as well as I could, then put on my clothes—the jeans and cool shirt I had been so happy to take out of my suitcase—and lay down and pulled the thin cotton blanket they had given me over me. I was thinking of the big dining room at the Hotel Sacher and how nice it would be to eat there again when I heard shots.

&
nbsp; I jumped up and ran to the door of my room. It was locked and there was wire over the windows, which would not open anyway. The door was old and I had always thought it probably was not as strong as it looked. I kicked it a couple of times, knowing that would bring Vest in if he was still out there. Nobody came, so I hit it three or four times with my shoulder and it flew open.

  The first thing I saw was a cop with a gun. He fired, and right then I thought he had missed me. Later I found out he had not.

  I turned and ran, only not back into the room where they had kept me locked up. I got out into a big, dark place where they must have had a couple of hundred sewing machines in the old days. It would have been a good place to hide in, only getting shot at like that had put a real scare into me and I just wanted to get away.

  Which I did. The cops had the place surrounded, or thought they did, but I guess they had not seen the door I found. It opened on a stack of old steel drums like you might ship diesel in, with just room enough for me to wiggle between the drums and the wall. When I got out of there, I saw a couple of police cars with searchlights aimed at the building, and soldiers, too, holding the kind of rifles soldiers have.

  You can guess what I did next. I got out of there as fast as I could, you know it! I had not gone far when I saw a poster. It was half torn off and somebody had spray painted a short word I could not read on what was left. But it was a picture of the third border guard wearing a suit. Part of the face was gone and there was some spray paint on the rest, but it was him. After that I saw at least two others, not painted and not torn. They did not seem important; still I wondered about them. You would have, too.

  The city was mostly dark, but I got lucky and found the district where the bars and clubs and so forth were. They call it the Mousukos. (I found that out later.) There were a lot of places I would have liked to see, only I did not have any money.

  Also I was bleeding just above my belt. It was not all that bad until my side started to stiffen up. The bullet had almost missed me clean, just not quite. After I found out I had been hit, looking around the Mousukos was not as much fun as it had been, and it had not been a whole lot of fun then. Pretty soon I was just looking for any workable place where I could hole up. There were streets that were no better than alleys, but they stunk and there were rats in them. If I had been in New York or even New Orleans—in LA or Chicago or someplace like that—I might have been able to find a car somebody had forgotten to lock. Then I would have crawled into the back and gone to sleep there, and anybody who found me would just think I had gone over my limit and chase me out. Only this was not New York or New Orleans either, or even Chicago or LA. Those people in the bars and clubs had walked to get there, or maybe ridden in one of the wagons with long benches that would take you downtown for a little change.