Silent Partner

by Leigh Brackett

  1

  HE stood in blueness as in the midst of heaven. There was blue tile beneath his feet. The cloisters and prayer halls of the mosque were blue, picked out with gleams of yellow like sunbeams. Out in the vast courtyard an oblong pool flung back. the flawless color of the sky, and when he looked upward, the soaring domes and minarets pierced his eyes with blueness even as they uplifted his soul. Unreligious as he was, Harvey Martin could almost envy the dark-haired man who crouched devoutly at the edge of the tiled floor, busy with his prayers.

  He said to Karim Hassani, “I may even become a Moslem.”

  “Sunni or Shia?"

  “Shia, of course. The Partisans of Ali."

  “Good. You remembered." He looked at his watch. “Let’s cut the sight-seeing short, huh?" His speech was slightly accented but otherwise colloquial American, and his tropical suit had been tailored in Beverly Hills. “It’s almost time to meet Ahmad.”

  “Of course," said Harvey. “There'll be years for sightseeing.” They walked across a corner of the courtyard. The sunlight fell harshly on Karim’s dark handsome face, and Harvey was suddenly concerned. “Are you feeling ill?"

  “The flight down," said Karim. “I always get airsick."

  Harvey smiled. “I think. the truth is you’re afraid of flying and ashamed to admit it."

  They passed under the magnificent honeycomb arch of the portal, out onto the Maidan-i-Shah. Karim pointed.

  "The bazaar's down there, at the other end.”

  They walked down the long street. The buildings were identical on both sides of the maidan: two stories high with pointed arches up and down, a single facade broken midway by the Sheikh Lutfullah Mosque on one side and the little Ali Qapu Palace on the other. The shops on the ground floor featured Isfahani metalwork. Upstairs the arches were shuttered. There, Harvey knew, the fashionable folk of Isfahan had sat and watched the polo games in the time of Shah Abbas. He had studied his history well.

  He smiled contentedly and put on his sunglasses. His fair English skin had crisped and reddened in the Iranian sun. It had begun to peel across the forehead and the bridge of the nose, just as it had done in the days when he and Karim Hassani and Tony Wales had been students together, going to UCLA and spending their free days on the Southern California beaches.

  "I was a bit doubtful at first,” he said. "I’ll admit that. Too settled in my familiar groove, much as I didn’t like it. Now I know it’s going to work, and I’m damned grateful to you and Tony for taking me in.”

  "It was Tony’s idea," said Karim. "I wouldn’t have thought you’d be interested.” He had put on his sunglasses too, and so his eyes were hidden; but there was a drawn look about his mouth as though he still felt ill. "Shall we move a little faster? I don’t like to keep Ahmad waiting.”

  They walked faster down the long, bright street. Traffic whirled noisily around the central gardens of the maidan. Harvey looked at the girls they passed as much as he dared, yet not nearly as much as he would have liked to; they were draped but not veiled, and their faces were delicious, both shy and merry as they shot sidelong glances at the tall stranger. Ellen, he thought, had better make haste.

  He saw, but did not particularly notice, an old man who sat on a bench in front of a coffeehouse, smoking a hubble-bubble. He did not see at all that the old man rose and fell in behind them.

  Karim walked faster still, with his head bent and his gaze fixed on the ground.

  They reached the gateway of the bazaar. Karim motioned Harvey ahead of him, toward one of the cavernous doorways. "This way.”

  They moved through a thickening crowd of people. The old man came on steadily behind them. A second man, much younger, detached himself from the miscellany of shoppers and street vendors and joined him. Both men wore suits of coarse dark cloth and shirts that had been washed but not ironed. The second man had the fierce eye of a Kashgai. Just once Karim looked back over his shoulder and saw them, and his mouth opened as in a silent cry of pain.

  Harsh, haunting, and musical, the noonday call to prayer echoed across the maidan from the great mosque. Harvey Martin went with Karim into the bazaar.

  It was dim and cool inside. Harvey removed his sunglasses, blinking. He was in a wide, roofed passage resembling a tunnel, with stalls on each side. Holes pierced in the stones above let in slanting rays of dusty sunlight. There was an indescribable and fascinating odor, compounded of spices and dung, wool, leather, and endless humanity.

  “There are seven miles of this,” Karim said. “Don’t get lost."

  He took Harvey’s arm and hurried him on, protesting, and the two men in the shabby suits followed, patient shadows in the gloom.

  Beyond the street of the coppersmiths was an older part of the bazaar, a maze of narrow tunnels and unexpected courtyards masked by sagging gates.

  At one of these Karim stopped and said, “In here.”

  The gate was ajar. Harvey stepped through it.

  “Up that stairway,” Karim said. “The fifth door. Go ahead and practice your Persian on Ahmad. There’s a fellow I’ve got to see.”

  "But—” said Harvey.

  "I’ll join you in a minute,” Karim said, and was gone.

  It was quiet in the courtyard. Pigeons flew overhead. Blinking again in the abrupt change of light, Harvey noticed that the pale-brown color of the mud roofs was very pleasing against the sky. The buildings were of two low stories, with a balcony running all the way around the court. The ground-floor rooms appeared to be used only for storage, and that was why it was so quiet.

  It seemed an odd place for a prosperous merchant to have an office. But Harvey, in five weeks, had begun to understand the curious non sequiturs of the East. He shrugged and climbed the stair.

  The stair was rickety, and the wooden balcony gave under him, creaking, when he stepped on it. Probably it was sounder than it looked, but it made him shake his head. Faith in the mercy of Allah was all very well, but he felt it could be overdone.

  Treading gently, he approached the fifth door.

  The fourth door opened behind him. He heard the dry screaking sound and then the quick rush of footsteps, and he started to turn around, still not afraid but merely startled. He did not quite see the man. He only felt that he was large, measuring perhaps by the height of the breathing sound above his ear. The blow fell so swiftly and surely that he hardly felt it. There was a snapping somewhere within his flesh, as though someone had stepped on a dry stick. He plunged against the balcony rail, and it broke, splintering. The pieces fell with him, out and down.

  He was already dying, and the impact of his body on the hard-packed earth was remote and of little interest to him. He lay staring up at the sky and the pigeons and the mounded pale-brown roof line. A black-and-gray crow cawed harshly, and the balcony was empty with its shattered rail. He was not really conscious of any of this, only of dim surprise and confusion. Then the face of Karim appeared above him, and there was that in it which pierced momentarily to his fading self.

  “You?"

  Tears gathered in Karim’s eyes. “I had to do this, Harvey. I had to."

  Harvey’s lips formed the one all-important question.

  "Why?"

  If there was an answer, he did not hear it.

  2

  In Santa Monica, California, it was two o’clock in the morning, and Tony Wales was dancing in a place called The Third Illusion. There was a girl with him, a short but very limber girl with long dark hair that snapped to and fro behind her head. Her name was Sandra Chaney. They danced far apart, never touching, their eyes fixed in a mutual hypnotic stare that bound them more firmly together than any physical contact. The five-man combo made powerful driving rhythms, and sixty-two couples danced all in the same way, sweating, spast
ic, in a state of conditioned ecstasy that had nothing to do with joy.

  They all danced here in The Third Illusion on the edge of desperation. There were no teenagers and no hippies. All were washed and shaved, and their clothes were fashionable. All had sufficient funds to provide the necessities, the drugs and liquors and distractions that made life endurable. They were well-off, and they were doomed, and they knew it, and so they danced to forget that they would soon be thirty.

  This fear weighed perhaps more heavily on Tony Wales than on most of the others. He had been orphaned at age six because his father liked to drive sports cars very fast on difficult roads, and he was already older than his parents had been when they died. In this age-conscious world he felt always that time was running by him and would soon run out.

  The music stopped. The dancers stopped. Tony and the girl stood still for a moment, letting the pounding beat ease out of them. Tony’s chest heaved, and his face was dewed. He was a big young man and almost psychopathically fit. He exercised furiously between carouses, ate no starches, did not smoke, and drank only vodka because it was pure. He had tried acid twice, and the second time frightened the wits out of him. He had tried pot and some other things, but he preferred to stick almost exclusively to pep pills. They made him feel good. They kept him going. And that was the thing about life, Tony felt; you had to keep going.

  Gradually his eyes refocused, and he could see Sandra’s damp, flushed face as a face rather than a symbolic blur. She smiled and said, “I'm thirsty.”

  “Me too.” The other couples were beginning to leave the floor. The vacuum left when the music stopped was filling up with the babble of voices, laughter, the clink of glasses. Tony took Sandra's arm and ushered her back to the table. They had drinks working there, and they gulped them while Tony ordered more. Sandra lighted a cigarette and blew smoke high in the smoky air, leaning back against the padded booth.

  “That was great. I love this place, Tony. Let's come here a lot.”

  “Sure,” said Tony. “Any time you want.”

  “Whenever I can catch you, you mean. When are you running off again?”

  “Whenever I have to,” said Tony largely. “Paris, Rome ... I never know.”

  Sandra sighed. “I wish I had a trust fund.”

  “It's easy. Get yourself a rich grandfather. And anyway, the trust fund has nothing to do with it. I'm in business.”

  “Sure,” said Sandra sardonically. “You told me. Import-export, whatever that is, and if you get paid for all the work I see you doing, you’re robbing somebody.”

  Tony grinned. “That's the whole idea.”

  Somebody shouted, “Hey, Tony!” Two young men approached, carrying pitchers of beer. “Hi, Sandra.”

  “Hi, Bill. Hi, George. Sit down. Where’s Sammy boy?”

  Bill and George made shrugging motions. “Not tonight, Tony. We’re having a swim-in at our house."

  Bill, George, and Sam were unattached, nonhomosexual, share-the-renters. One could live more cheaply that way, leaving more money over for the necessities.

  Sandra said, “What do you mean, a swim-in? There’s no pool.”

  “Can't tell Sammy that. Roy Krafft and Jim Davis came over with some stuff. Jim kind of curled up in a corner with his thumb in his mouth, but Roy and Sammy think they’re fish. They're swimming around on the living-room floor.”

  George grinned and made two opposing circles in the air. “In opposite directions. They bow and wave their fins every time they meet.”

  “Ich," said Sandra. “Creepy.”

  “Yuh,” said Bill. “Hey, Tony, there's a couple of new nurses at St. E's. Real swingers, and they've got good connections at the dispensary. Any time you want anything—”

  “Thanks.”

  George said dreamily, “We got a bundle of jimsonweed the other day. Grows wild right out in the fields. Crazy."

  “We've got it in the refrigerator," Bill said. “Every time you open the door to get a beer there's fluff all over the place. Christ, what a mess. Come on over sometime, and we'll have a party.”

  The combo climbed back onto the platform and made premonitory noises. Bill and George arose, holding their pitchers. “See you,” they said, and drifted away—nice, clean-cut young fellows, only slightly glassy about the eyes. Tony popped another pill, washed it down with vodka and orange juice, and took Sandra out on the floor again, prancing high.

  Some time later they emerged into the cool, fog-smelling air and the deserted streets and drove to Tony’s pad, an apartment overlooking the beach. They stripped and piled into bed and wrestled with each other in much the same way they had danced, and outside, the long Pacific rollers curled and broke ghostly white against the black water, to slide up hissing over the sand and suck away again. Tony heard this even in the midst of his endeavors, and it was an old and comforting sound. He had been born along this beach, played along it, grown up along it, with that sound always in his ears. It was like the world breathing. Like your mother breathing, when you were very small and she held you with your head against her breast. It made him feel good.

  Sandra made him feel good, too. She was a lively little bunny. He mouthed at her. Their lips clung, and their bodies clung; but nothing else did, and that was the way they wanted it. No tears, no pain, no involvement, no bull about love. Just good, cool fun. Too many things to do, too many places to go, and life was too short. Too short. Too short—

  As though on cue, just at the most inopportune moment, the phone rang. Tony growled and let it ring. Presently it stopped, and after a while Tony stopped, and they lay panting in the hot bed, beginning to think of ice cubes and more vodka.

  “Who do you suppose that was,” asked Sandra, “at this hour of the morning?”

  “Some damn drunk,” said Tony, “with the wrong number.”

  Sandra was in the shower and Tony was mixing drinks when the phone rang again. Angrily Tony picked it up and shouted, “What the hell!”

  “Tony. Tony, this is Jake Zacharian.”

  Tony stared at the phone. “Jake? You out of your tree or something? Who needs the rug business at—”

  “Tony.” The voice was insistent. “Listen to me. I have a message for you, from Karim Hassani. He tried to call you but you—”

  “Karim? Calling me? From Teheran?”

  “He isn’t in Teheran; he’s in Isfahan. He couldn't get you so he called me. Now listen. Harvey Martin is dead.”

  Tony stood still and felt the cold shock hit him like the first wave.

  Sandra came out of the bathroom scrubbing her flanks with a towel and yawning. “Are the drinks ready? I think I'm going to have an entire collapse.”

  “Shut up,” said Tony, and she turned and looked at him with her mouth open. He said into the phone, “Jake. Did I hear you right? Harvey Martin—”

  "Yes."

  “Oh, hell,” said Tony. “Oh, Christ." Harvey Martin, dead. The crash of finality, the end of a world. It hurt him, a physical pain in his gut. “How did it happen?”

  “An accident. Look, come around and have breakfast with me. You know the place on the corner? Good, I’ll meet you there at eight. Okay?”

  “Okay,” said Tony. “Eight.”

  He put the phone down and continued to stand with his hand on it.

  Sandra said, “What is it?”

  Tony seemed to have forgotten she was there. “The same age as me,” he muttered. “The same damned age."

  “Tony! What is all this? What’s going on?”

  Now he remembered her. “Don’t you have to go somewhere?”

  “You know I don’t. I just have to sleep."

  “Not here, baby. Out.”

  He started toward the bathroom, and she began to wail. “I can’t. I’m tired. And I don’t have my car."

  Tony stopped at the night table and took a small bottle from the drawer. He tossed it to her.

  “Have a benny. And call yourself a taxi.”

  He went into the bathroom and too
k a hot shower, lathering himself in a kind of ritual ablution to cleanse away the mention of death. Then he turned the cold water on full. The tingling shock cleared some of the gummy fog out of his brain. He heard Sandra bang the door behind her as she left. He dried himself and shaved and opened the windows to air the girl smell out. He dressed, and it was still too early to start for Beverly Hills.

  He made himself several cups of instant coffee and drank them, staring with a leaden gaze at the sea as it emerged from the vague uncertainty of dawn into the clear daylight. The water was as smooth as stretched silk, and a white fishing boat moved across it like something in a mirage, close in, trawling for bait.

  After a while it was time to go.

  The Beverly Hills restaurant was quiet at this hour. They sat in a corner booth at the back, and Tony drank more coffee. His stomach was uneasy, and it made him sick to watch Zacharian plowing steadily through his bacon and eggs. Zacharian was fortyish, swarthy, suave, immaculate, and one of the best customers of the firm of Hassani, Wales & Martin, now reverted so cruelly to the original Hassani-Wales. He kept watching Tony.

  “You’d feel much better if you’d eat something.”

  "Believe me, I wouldn't,”

  Zacharian shrugged. “I didn’t think this would hit you so hard, Tony. In fact, I’ll be honest. I didn’t think anything would hit you so hard.”

  "If I’d known this was going to happen, I’d have arranged things a little differently this last week." He was wearing dark glasses so Zacharian would not see his eyes, which shocked even him.

  "There's more to it than that," said Zacharian shrewdly. “I’m sorry, this wasn’t a good idea. Let’s go.”

  He paid the check, and they went out. Beverly Drive was stirring, preparing for the day. Tony moved beside Zacharian, a suntanned muscular sham. The sun hurt his head, and the first faint edge of the day’s smog sawed at his nostrils. He was thankful when they turned into Zacharian's shop.

  It was air-conditioned, and the light was muted, a rich and gorgeous reflection of jewel-toned reds, blues, greens, yellows. Zacharian dealt in Oriental carpets, and nothing but the best. The decor of the shop was deliberately neutral, so that there should be no clash or distraction. His carpets were gems and were displayed as such, sufficient unto themselves. Clerks and maintenance people were attending to the preopening chores. Zacharian ushered Tony into his private office at the back and closed the door. Tony sank gratefully into a chair and shook.