“All right, then,” Master Yu said decisively. “I need to see a wise sage with a harem of four wives in the far south of the island of many hills, and if you say that is New York city, then New York city it is. I will ride out to California, sell the horse, take the train from Sacramento straight across the country, till the New Jersey ferry.”
His work in Texas apparently having concluded successfully, Master Yu opened his bag and began to count out payment, right there on the bar.
John Dead-Man looked offended, and Master Yu misunderstood.
“This is just a ‘down payment,’ as they say here in America,” he said gently. “And the diamond is worth a few good meals, too.”
“Should I not come with you?” John Dead-Man asked.
Master Yu shook his head.
“What about poor Waukendah?” Master Yu asked.
He looked up now, fingering one gold coin with his left hand.
“Stabled with old man Hessel. She must miss you.”
“Waukendah is dead, I think,” said the Indian. “It was only loyalty to me that was keeping her alive. I think when I patted her for the last time and did not return by the next dawn, she was probably a little relieved. When you said she would await me at the end of the journey, I think you meant at the end of life’s journey.”
He stared into his empty glass.
“I think we need each other’s help right now, crazy Chinaman. I never thought I would have another friend.”
“What we need most of all,” Master Yu said, “is more Peking Indians. And you will have another friend. You will have a wife, and a house full of noble warriors. Now please accept these coins from her Majesty the Empress’s personal mint. It will get you back home and let you live until my instructions to the Empress are received and carried out.”
Master Yu began to count again.
“The Peking Indians will live to fight the enemy from the Winter North once more,” he said, and he smiled as he counted. “1918, 1919. Thereabouts. The results will be different this time, I think, if we strengthen our hearts to meet the challenge. Change your name, John Dead-Man. Henceforth, you are John Rising-Spirit.”
“John Rising-Spirit,” the Indian murmured, and he looked stronger and younger than he had a moment before.
“Return to your round mud hut, and more money will arrive shortly from China,” Master Yu promised. “Use it for a bride price, if they have such things here in Texas, and if they do not, just use it to impress the ladies. You will have your choice, I think. Please choose a strong one, one destined to be the mother of a fearsome warrior. Only choose one if she is worthy to join the Peking Indian tribe. A real killer, with a heart full of love and justice and hard steel. I expect some serious procreation to begin at your earliest convenience, my friend. We can have a full battalion of Peking Indians ready to fight at the dawn of the Falsturm Apocalypse.”
He grabbed his friend’s shoulder in a firm, confident grip.
“You will know her when you see her, John Rising-Spirit.”
Chapter 17
As though I were a sincere and devout true pilgrim to Sidonia, in that September of 1879, I led a horse loaded up with all my belongings along the trail that scaled the Montana mountains. From the mountain peaks, the city was barely visible, shrouded as it was in a protective wall of fog.
I was not the only one scrambling over these mountain rocks. Who were these other would-be Sidonians? They were refugees from all across a country devastated by a great Depression that had begun in ‘73. They all believed their government had let them down, they felt as though their own hard work had let them down, and, in most cases, they also felt that God had let them down, and they were willing to follow a new Savior. Folks like me, mostly, and maybe like you. I met a lot of folks on my journey – widows, widowers, orphans, all desperate, none greedy. I met a couple of political easterners, folks searching for Utopia, and a few true religious pilgrims who thought the one true God had shown Himself in Montana.
For most of them, it was Sidonia or death.
I’ll give you one example. I walked for a while with a family from Northern Utah, struggling the last few miles of their journey. They had lost everything when the promised railroad line went broke, their land lost all its value, their remaining crops were ravaged by the locust plague, and their horses died in the epizootic epidemic that had devastated the West. Husband, wife, and three children, all bone thin. Two teenage girls and one nine-year-old boy. From their conversation, I gathered they’d left someone behind on the trail. They didn’t say who. I didn’t ask. Sidonia was made up, mostly, of folks like these. Decent folks, just hoping they were selling their souls to the angels and not to the Devil, but scared and hungry enough to take the risk.
At length, I descended to the other side into the green valley that held the rebel city. I have since come to understand that Sidonia rejected some pilgrims, who were unable even to penetrate the fog, which physically blocked them. I, however, walked through without difficulty, and when the fog cleared, I entered a city that was clean and brightly lit by the Montana sunshine, a lemniscate reflected in a thousand mirrors. It was an impossible engineering feet, a metropolis closed off on all sides by the Montana mountains, yet here it was. As impossible as the deadlings who occasionally walked its streets. I perpetually touched my face, making certain that this disguise had not worn off, and that I might still maintain my new, princely bearing in the city of the enemy.
The city entrance led immediately to a well-drawn metropolitan center, traversed by a broad boulevard stretching off to the east and west, fronted by a city hall to the east, and finally the Sidonia Palace, glinting silvery gold in the morning air. To the north and south, the streets narrowed and twisted out of sight, leading as they did to new domains that might match each citizen’s whimsy.
The boulevard that most directly abutted the Palace gate was lined with government offices and pricy, classy storefronts, hawking jewelry, top-hats, men’s suits and ladies’ opera gowns, while further from the city center, a livelier fair spread across the street, and crowds gathered to watch dancers, acrobats and clowns, whose energetic and occasionally physically impossible frolics were undoubtedly enhanced by Sidonian magic.
I felt it then, the goodness of the ages, a tug from the dawn of the universe rising up and engulfing the smooth polished surfaces and rough glinting stones of this untainted metropolis, the tranquility and hope of that prehistoric beach, where love rose from the surf with the first stirrings of life, and the idea that existence might consist of anything other than hatred and fear seemed as possible as the blue-green Pangaean sea; and it was this gossamer dream that now sang to me from the cobblestones and emerald facades, and the joyful murmur of the fairground children, and the mountains that stood guard over them all.
I shut my eyes and blocked out these yearnings for paradise.
Look, I had seen men back in the slums return from a two day dalliance with the opium pipe, happy as could be, and on the train that transported Emelina and me from Blue Rock, Wyoming, to a life of riches and fame in New York, I had known the drug of love and happiness, but, like my slum-neighbor waking hungry and penniless from his addled dream, I too had awoken from my flirtation with hopefulness to a life that is random and pointless and short and in which faith is a myth, and so with a less strenuous effort than most, I was able to ignore the fragrance of the Sidonian air. I turned my back on the fairground and headed across the street to the Sidonian hotels closest to the Palace and to the two Sidonian leaders whom I was resolved to destroy.
The hotels, which sat side-by-side on the southern end of the avenue just past the government buildings, were shrouded by towering elms and ringed by well-tended bushes and shrubs. The one to the east was the more imposing and luxurious of the two, with columns, golden angels and turrets, while the one on the western end of the street was plain brick, without any ostentatious adornments. I stabled my horse and wandered into the more frugal of the two. The foyer w
as small and modest, and an unimposing fellow manned the front desk. He was of medium height and stocky, with a receding hairline and worry lines about his eyes. When he smiled mildly, the worry lines deepened. He seemed a bit surprised to find himself here at the front desk of the more frugal of the two hotels in the Sidonian city center, and at something of a loss as to how to manage a customer. Still, he found a key for me, and when I asked him how much lodging would run me for the night, he shrugged and directed me to the stairs. My room was similarly unpretentious, with a threadbare rug whose colors had long since faded away, a simple wooden bed with a lumpy mattress and a wobbly dresser with three drawers. I tossed my bag on the floor, placed my guns carefully on the floor beside my bed on the far end of the room, lay back on the bed and listened to the noise of the crowds on the main thoroughfare, the Sidonian citizenry enjoying the market and the carnival, living a baffling, unearned life of leisure, kissing cheeks, sipping champagne on the street in glasses that appeared in their hands by Magic, feeling the sun on their bald spots and the breeze flapping their whiskers to and fro.
Without really intending it, I fell quickly into a dark, dreamless sleep. When it was barely dusk, I awoke, hungry and disoriented. Still fully dressed, I grabbed my guns, tossed on my coat, and wandered out into the mild early evening.
I followed a rather broad side street that seemed to lead into an older quarter of the city, with slightly faded but elegant apartment buildings. The smell of slowly roasting meat, chicken, beef and fish wafted through the air from somewhere nearby, and I found myself following that delicious smell. After a while, I could hear a woman’s voice singing in the near distance, and the street opened up into a broad plaza – a piazza, you want me to call it – which was empty but for a young couple at the far right, embracing in the starlight. A many-times larger-than-life statue of a royal on horseback looked down over the plaza, centuries old and corroded green, a heroic man in full uniform, his strong-knuckled hand resting on the sword at his side. A fountain spouted at the center of the plaza, and a great blue emerald hung suspended above the fountain. I passed under a stone arch at the back of the plaza wrapped in multiple layers of thick vine, and which seemed older than America itself. Beyond the arch, I came into a smaller courtyard, which was lit by torchlight, shrouded by cedar trees, and peopled by a natty crowd of young men in tailcoats and ascots and lithe young women in light summer evening gowns, all with champagne glass in hand and wry delight on their pleasing young porcelain faces. A very young woman in a long dark dress stood by the edge of the forest. Her hair was jet-black with streaks of starlight gold, and she sang into the night breeze. It was a piece of music I had never heard, and she was singing a capella, words I could not understand, even notes that I believe were utterly unfamiliar. It was a piece of music from the deep past, so pure and innate that I could not believe it writ by the hand of a mere human; it must have existed long before our universe came into being, before protons and neutrons, formed in the pre-universal vacuum caldron along with Pachelbel’s Canon, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and, I suppose, Come on Eileen. Behind her was a little waterfall, a gentle stream trickling prettily over smooth stones.
Her black eyes fearless, she was as old as the trees and the mountains in the far night and younger than the spring flowers emerging from cracks in the stone beneath her feet; she had always been here in this courtyard beyond the vine-covered arches, singing this song that lived before the universe, and she was fire’s incandescence, old and new and reborn every fraction of a millisecond. She was a panther, a night-bird, her voice floating among the tree branches and fluttering away into the darkness.
After she finished singing, she nodded indifferently and a touch insolently to the ensuing round of glove-muffled applause – an audience who appreciated what they had just heard, but not nearly enough – and the crowd turned back to their champagne and what I could only imagine was highly sophisticated persiflage.
When I approached, she looked up at me with her black cat eyes, and she seemed relieved to see me.
I admitted to her that I didn’t know my name and could not introduce myself (although I treated this as a joke), and so I would not ask hers, that I really didn’t know why I was here, or how I would ever get back to my hotel.
“You are lost,” she said, and her speaking voice was just as lovely, a soft, whispery velvet.
She seemed pleased and surprised when she heard herself speak.
“Yes. I am lost,” I said.
“I think we should take a walk. If we look everywhere, perhaps we will find you.”
She took my arm, and we passed under the arch, and around that fountain with the suspended emerald.
To my unasked question, she replied, “The emerald is there, just floating in the air, because that way, you will enjoy this night more than you otherwise would have."
We followed a little cobblestone path just east into thin woods, and then up narrow stone stairs that led to a small clearing. Before us, an old, moss-covered stone wall ran along an abrupt cliff edge, and behind us ruins cut a gash in the dark night sky. The ruins’ original function was unclear. A great crumbling tower loomed over us.
She leaned forward, her arms on the wall. Over the edge, we could observe a fanciful landscape, an old fortress on the other side of a winding, moon-bathed river. A far-away figure on a horse, a young woman, rode alone in the starry darkness. The horse trotted rather aimlessly along a river-bank trail that ran parallel to the decaying fortress walls. All of this, a world of antiquity, destruction, great beauty and ageing wealth.
I could still see the statue in the plaza through the trees, and I asked who the imposing gentleman was, and she said this was just a statue that seemed designed to meet expectations. It appeared to be old, dignified and artistic, which was what I must have wanted, deep down.
“He never lived, and after tonight, he will be gone forever.”
“Doesn’t it destroy the illusion that you’ve all built for me?” I asked. “Telling me all this?”
“You also must want honesty. Maybe too many people in your life have lied to you. So I tell you the truth.”
“And what do you do with your life, the rest of the time?”
“Nothing.” She shook her head. “As you approached the plaza, I began to exist, just as a voice in the night air. I became a whole person when you passed under the arch and entered the courtyard.”
“I can’t think of anything to say. I cannot believe that.”
“It’s true.”
“And what will you do once this is over? Once you and I part?”
“I will … end. I will be over. I will not exist.”
“Does that make you sad?”
She nodded.
“It makes me sad. It is terribly unfair. I am like a firefly, aren’t I? Or like …” She struggled to find the right word, and then suddenly her face lit up. “Or like a dinoflagellate. I am like one little dinoflagellate. Why did that idea come into my mind just like that? I think you must be a man who likes dinoflagellates.”
“I do like them. I remember them with great fondness.”
“Maybe it seems very vain and arrogant of me to compare myself to beautiful things that do not live very long. To compare myself to things that are so beautiful.”
“Not at all. I know that the idea of you and your song has always existed and will always exist. So maybe you come back?”
“You mean my ‘soul’? Maybe. I don’t remember being here before. Why should I come back again? Maybe fireflies and dinoflagellates come back again. Maybe they don’t.”
“What about the rest of your audience?” I asked her. “Did they have the same thought that I had? Why did we all want the same thing, on the same night, at the same moment?”
She frowned lightly as she pondered them, her appreciative audience. Those handsome ladies and gentlemen who stood about the courtyard, wine glasses at their lips, and whose gloves offered her muffled applause.
“I imagine t
hey came into being the moment you walked into that courtyard. It would not have been much of a concert with only you there. And now I would guess that they are gone. A short but very happy life. One big party.”
“None of them, real?”
“Not exactly real. But real in the moment.”
“And you are real?”
“I certainly know that I am real, if you mean to ask whether I am sentient, or in other words, conscious. But I have no way to convince you that I am. How do I know that you are real?”
“You don’t. No one knows but me.”
“I do enjoy being alive,” she sighed.
She smiled into the breeze that blew in from the mountains.
“I wonder why you are here,” she said. “Do you want to fall in love?”
She turned and looked into my eyes.
“No, that isn’t it. You are in love with too many women already.”
Her smile faded a little bit.
“You wanted to hear a beautiful song. So I suppose I am just a vessel for a beautiful song.” She looked out at the winding river, at the woman on the horse, disappearing into the night mist. “Not so bad, I suppose. There are worse reasons for being. And the song is part of me, you know. It will not exist anymore, after this night.”
I touched her chin gently with my hand, and I turned her towards me.
“Then if time is short,” I said, “tell me what you want.”
“What I want?” she laughed. “What does it matter what I want?”
But she thought about my question, laughing a little more, quietly.
“I have never eaten a meal,” she said. “I would like to eat a meal in a fine, elegant hotel restaurant. And then I would like to fall asleep in a man’s arms. I imagine this would be a nice experience to have before I dissolve into the night.”
We went back to the center of town, and this time I checked into the more ostentatious hotel, with a chandelier in the expansive lobby, and an army of bellboys to attend to luggage. The dining room was carpeted and lit dimly by candlelight. In the corner, a beautiful woman played the harp, and a handsome man played the cello.
Watt O'Hugh Underground: Being the Second Part of the Strange and Astounding Memoirs of Watt O'Hugh the Third (The Memoirs of Watt O'Hugh III Book 2) Page 21