by Tom Robbins
His reverie, his fanciful yearning for a time machine that might set back his presence on that Damascus street by five thousand years, was punctured by Toufic’s resumed apologies. Apparently the driver imagined that his guest was sulking. “I am very sorry, my friend, but I must drive again come the dawn. I had not thought it so.”
“No problem,” Switters assured him. “Will you be going anywhere near the Lebanese border? I could use a ride.”
“Oh, no. As a matter of fact”—he laughed—”I must drive again back to the convent oasis.”
The wheelchair skidded to a stop. “Why? What do you mean?” The migraine shot out of his ears like squirt from a clam. He hadn’t felt so alert in months.
Toufic looked worried, as if he were again offending the American. “Those two foreign gentlemen at the garage. They wish to be taken there tomorrow.”
Switters remained stationary. “What for?”
“Why, business of the Church, most assuredly. One of them is a religious scholar from Lisbon in Portugal, and the other is a lawyer in the employ of the Vatican.”
“They told you this?”
“They told my boss. I will transport them in his car with the four-wheel drive. No need for the truck, naturally. The gentlemen could not hire a car from the airport because the drivers there are under Ramadan.”
En route to Deir ez-Zur, they’d discussed Ramadan, and Switters had wondered why, if a people were at one with the Divine, was not every month holy; why this setting apart of dates and places, shouldn’t Tuesday be as glorious as Sunday or Saturday, shouldn’t one’s water closet be as sanctified as Mecca, Lourdes, or Benares? If Toufic imagined such thoughts in his guest’s mind at this moment, however, he was badly mistaken.
The foreign gentlemen at the garage . . . The younger, thinner one (late thirties, probably, and lithe as a bean vine) had a face like the instruction sheet that came with an unassembled toy: it looked simple at first and ordinary and frank, but the longer you studied it, the more incomprehensible it became. It was his body language that was troublesome, however. From his receding ebony hair to the points of his hand-tooled shoes, the Italian carried himself with the self-conscious grace of a commercially oriented martial artist. He feigned an attitude of disinterest, of relaxation, yet every muscle was spring-wound and tense, ready to pop into furious action. Switters had observed a similar look in many a street-level operative, in many a hitman. There was a time when he had observed the look in his own mirror.
The older man (well over sixty) had wispy gray hair and the ruddy complexion of a whiskey priest. His mouth was babyish and weak, a mouth meant for sucking a sugar tit; but behind his gold-rimmed spectacles, his eyes were as hard and unfeeling as petrified scat. Although he seemed highly intelligent, Switters could detect that his was an intellect of the shrewd variety, the kind that grasped facts and figures and understood virtually nothing of genuine importance; a well-oiled brain dedicated to the defense, perpetuation, and exploitation of every cliché and superstition in the saddlebags of institutionalized reality. This cookie is the spitting image of John Foster Dulles, thought Switters, and immediately he dispatched a sample of his oral fluids to mingle with the dust of the oldest continuously inhabited city on earth.
Switters turned to the somewhat bewildered Toufic. “Beginning tomorrow, pal,” he said, “you’re going to have a new assistant. I hope your employer’s jalopy seats four comfortably.” He fixed the slack-jawed Syrian with what the unoriginal have described as his fierce, hypnotic green eyes. “I’ll be going back to the oasis with you.”
He unzipped his valise and, tossing aside C.R.A.F.T. Club T-shirts and socks with little cartoon squid on them, went straight for the false bottom. “First,” he said, “you’ve got to help me install this device in the rear seat of that car we’ll be driving. In English, we call it a bug.”
Switters grinned. Toufic looked numb. Above them, the third-quarter crescent of the Ramadan moon was itself a numb smile, perfectly suited, perhaps, for the human activities upon which its dry silvery drool seemed ever destined to fall.
part 4
You only live twice:
once after you’re born
and once before you die.
—Bash¯o
Once upon a time, four nuns boarded a jetliner bound from Damascus to Rome. Alitalia Flight 023 took off to the northeast and flew out over twenty or so land miles of the arid Syrian plain before banking with an avian grace and turning back toward the Mediterranean. From the air, the desert appeared a loose, lumpy weave of red and yellow strands, like a potholder made in the craft shack at a summer camp for retarded children. The nuns were sweating like mares, and as they . . .
Sorry. It’s no big deal, really; nothing major, not anything that wholly justifies this interruption. And yet despite the fact that the truths in narration are all relative truths (perhaps the truths in life, as well), despite the sovereign authority of poetic license, this report, claiming no kinship to Finnegan, has, in the interest of both clarity and expediency, endeavored never to indulge in the sort of literary trickery that actively encourages readers to jump to false conclusions. So, while it may be overreactive in this instance, while it may even smack of the kind of self-righteous puritanism that is to genuine purity what a two-bit dictator is to a philosopher king, let us reach into the inkwell jewel box and withdraw two sets of exquisite superscript signs— “ for the right ear, ” for the left—and hang them from the lobes on either side of the word nuns. Like so: “nuns.” This, of course, is not for purposes of ornamentation, although these apostrophic clusters possess an understated, overlooked beauty that transcends the merely chic. (Do they not resemble, say, the windblown teardrops of fairy folk, commas on a trampoline, tadpoles with stomach cramps, or human fetuses in the first days following conception?) No, a stern word such as nuns is undemanding of decorative trinket. We so adorn it here only to set it apart from other words in the sentence for reasons of scrupulous verisimilitude.
It was reported above that once upon a time in Damascus, four nuns boarded an airliner bound for Rome. To be absolutely factual, while they may have looked like ordinary holy sisters to their fellow passengers, three of those “nuns” had been long-since defrocked and the fourth “nun,” the one rolled aboard in a wheelchair, was a man.
The part about them sweating, however, was completely accurate. They perspired because it was a warm day in May, and they were dressed in dark, heavy winter habits that had been dug out of a trunk in the abbess’s storeroom, their lighter habits, customary in that area of the world, having been ceremoniously incinerated approximately one year before. They also perspired because they were nerve-racked, because their ability to board the flight had been in question to the very last moment; because recent history, already somewhat of a trial for them, had really gotten out of hand after the evening when that “nun” most deserving of apostrophic disclaimer—the imposter, the man—had reappeared at their convent.
The supply truck, when en route from Damascus to Deir ez-Zur, always stopped for the night in a hill village about thirty kilometers west of the Pachomian oasis. That was why it would arrive at the compound early of a morning. The car, an Audi sedan with reinforced suspension, heavy-duty shock absorbers, and four-wheel drive, traveled faster than the truck, even across that rude terrain; there were no deliveries to be made in the village, and the European clients would brook no delay. So, Toufic drove through the settlement with only a honk and a wave, and pressed on to the convent. They arrived just before sunset.
Ordering Toufic and his suspect “assistant” (again, the earrings of qualification) to wait in the car, the two men walked up to the great wooden gate. As they read its sign, Switters listened with interest to hear how many times they’d ring the bell. He watched even more intently to see which of the sisters would eventually admit them. He knew that in time the pair would be admitted. He knew their business. Their quiet conversation in the backseat had resounded in his ear chip like dia
logue in a Verdi opera, and although his Italian was hardly perfetto, he had scant difficulty in piecing together their intentions.
Not surprisingly, it was Domino Thiry who finally let them in. She couldn’t see him, and Switters caught only the briefest glimpse of her, but it was enough to set his pulses syncopating the way they used to do when Suzy entered the room. He wondered if Suzy would still affect him like that—and could think of no reason why she would not. He lit a cigar. There was little cause to rush. The churchmen were undoubtedly ruthless, but they would prefer negotiation to intimidation, intimidation to violence. There would be protocol to follow. On both sides. Right now, he imagined that tea was being served.
“Back there on the other side of Jebel ash-Shawmar¯iyah,” said Toufic, referring to the central mountain range, “when we passed that band of Bedouins, you almost broke your eyeballs looking at them. I thought you were going to leap from the car and join them.”
“I almost did. But I didn’t see anyone I recognized.”
Scoffing, Toufic pulled the lever that allowed his seat to recline. He had driven for nearly nine hours, a lot of it spent dodging rocks and potholes in the roadless road. He lay back and lit a cigarette. If he was aware that his cigarette, any cigarette, was to Switters’s cigar what a two-bit dictator was to a philosopher king, he did not let on. “You may have been better off intruding on Bedouins instead of getting mixed up in the internal affairs of a church to which you don’t even belong.”
“I expect you’re right.”
“You Americans!”
“Always butting into other people’s business?”
“We are told that America is the land of the free.”
Switters might have brought up video surveillance in public places, police microphones on neighborhood street corners, sniffer dogs in airports, blue codes, urine testing, DNA data banks, Internet censorship, helmet laws, tobacco laws, seat belt laws, liquor laws, persecution for joking, prosecution for flirting, litigation over everything under the sun, and the telling statistic that in the U.S., 645 out of every 100,000 citizens were locked up in prisons, as opposed to an average of 80 per 100,000 in the rest of the world. However, it was just too difficult to put those things into Arabic. And anyhow, he would have had to end by suggesting that maybe those outrages were a small price to pay, America being so bouncy, and all.
Switters switched to French, in which Toufic, like many Damascenes, was modestly conversant. “If land is taken to mean nation, then ‘land of the free’ is an oxymoron. You know this word? An oxymoron is a faux paradox, an incongruity that arises not out of the pervasively contradictory nature of the universe but out of a clumsy or deceptive misuse of language. Our oxymorons are more dangerous than our missiles, pal. Back when the mendacious phrase ‘genuine imitation leather’ was accepted by the populace without violent protest, it paved the way for all the bigger, more sophisticated lies that were to follow. But, hey, don’t get me wrong, Toufic, I’m no seditious malcontent. After eight months of living high on the chickpea, I’d just love to sink down into one of those American fried ham suppers with gravy, a meal so greasy you have to tie it to your teeth to chew it. Afterward, a Baby Ruth candy bar, an hour of Pee-wee Herman. And if the truth be told, I’m nearly as admiring of the audacious hustler who had the sheer gall to promote a ‘genuine imitation’ as I am disappointed in the public that neglected to lynch him for it. P. T. Barnum, Joseph Goebbels, John Foster Dulles.” He spat out of the window. “The ‘genuine imitation leather’ bastard could rub shoulders with the worst of them.”
Switters turned to see if Toufic had followed any of this babble and found him sound asleep. Well, okay, this was as good a time as any to bring on Mr. Beretta. He removed the handgun from crocodilian confinement and stuck it in the waistband of his trousers. He was convinced that the Vatican attorney (perhaps earrings— ” “ —are needed here, perhaps not) was armed. He pictured the fellow curling a finger around a teacup handle or a sugared date much as it might close around a trigger. The longer he pictured this, the more uneasy he became. At last, he shook Toufic gently awake.
“You were dreaming of Louisville, Kentucky, weren’t you? Dreaming of the Yankee dollar. I could tell by the way you were grinning. Sorry to interrupt, pal, but I’m in requirement of strategic relocation.”
Toufic was groggy and irritable, but he followed instructions, driving without headlamps around to the rear of the convent and parking close to the mud wall. Grunting, Switters slithered backward through the window, then scrambled up onto the roof of the car. From there, it was an easy matter to hoist himself to the top of the wall. Seated on the wall, he waved Toufic back to the gate and wondered what to do next. He wasn’t particularly worried because the electricity wasn’t on in the compound yet, and he knew that any minute now Pippi would have to—Yes, perfect, there she was!
There commenced a low voltaic drone, like Thomas Edison’s spiritual mantra or the romantic humming of ogres in love. Toward the center of the oasis, a few lights flickered on. Pippi backed away from the generator shed and broke into a trot, pigtails swinging, as if in a great hurry to resume unfinished business elsewhere on the premises. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw him. Obviously she didn’t know it was he. From the way she screeched, she might have been transported for a second back to Notre Dame—and the way he squatted there atop the wall, the tip of his cigar glowing red in the thickening dark, well, to mistake him for a gargoyle was by no means ridiculous. He called her name, which no horrid gargoyle had ever done, even in her nightmares, but still she trembled, one freckled hand over her mouth. Perhaps, she imagined him to be the ghost of Cardinal Thiry, come to punish the Pachomians for having failed him. She was delusional enough to fear such a thing. The deeply religious are by definition superstitious. As she slowly crossed herself, Switters observed, not for the first time, how much she resembled a middle-aged version of Audubon Poe’s daughter, Anna. Oh, that succulent sprig, Anna! To think he might have. . . . But why was he thinking of such things now?
“Pippi! C’est moi. Les échasses, s’il vous plaît. The stilts. Dépêchez-vous. C’est moi, bébé. The fucking circus is back in town!”
When she realized it was he, she shrieked anew. She hopped around in a circle squealing before composing herself and dashing to fetch him the nearest pair of stilts. They were the outsized stilts, the Barnum & Bailey stilts, the absurdly tall pair, for his customized two-inch walkers had been left in his old room, and the regular pair was at the front gate where it was always kept. What the hell. He’d called it, hadn’t he? Send in the clowns.
If the stilts that had held him two inches above the ground were analogous to enlightenment, this extra-elevated pair must have represented Nirvana. It was not surprising, then, that so few aspirants ever attained the Nirvanic state. Switters, by now an accomplished stiltsman, was nearly as ungainly on the exaggerated numbers as he had been the first and only time he’d ever strapped them on. He teetered, staggered, and dangerously swayed, but he set off, anyway, following behind Pippi, only too glad that his hands were free. For the present, he busied his hands with the task of brushing foliage aside as they traversed the various orchards. At one point, his head banged against a high branch in a willow tree, startling a pair of roosting cuckoos and causing them to rocket from their untidy nest, their normal sweetly mournful song taking on an angry, hysterical edge. He grabbed a limb to keep from falling and sent yet another of the slender white-and-olive birds flapping noisily into the night air. “Oh, stop your bitching,” he scolded them. “It isn’t that late. You remind me of my grandmother.”
Governing her pace so that she would be close enough to break his fall should he topple, Pippi—in staccato, over-the-shoulder bursts—tried to fill him in. “From the Vatican. They want it. The prophecy. The Church knows about it. Fannie told. Watch your head. They want it now. I think Masked Beauty will not give it up.”
By the time Pippi and Switters reached the main building, the meeting
had lost any semblance of civility. In fact, the participants had erupted from the conference room and were grouped outside by the jasmine bushes, arguing heatedly. So much for sneaking up on them. A ten-foot Switters came weaving and wobbling through the eggplant patch just as the older churchman, the scholar from Lisbon, reached out and ripped off the abbess’s veil. She slapped his face, a light blow that did not stun him half as much as the sudden sight of her two-story wart. He was gawking at the growth as if transfixed when his gaze was diverted by the arrival of the careening colossus, its throat full of wahoo, its hair full of leaves.