Bogeywoman

by Jaimy Gordon

  IN THE HUNGER DESERT

  The hunting shack of cousin Édouard, second vice consul (department of sheep exchange) of Caramel-Creamistan to the United States of America, had a warped and wavy tin roof like an old broiler pan, and needed paint. Well, perhaps it didn’t need paint so much as never had any. Paint was a citified notion hardly known in the Dismal, judging by the few dumps we’d passed. The shack was built of silvery planks and stood on not too crooked stilts on the shore of Ditch 19. The sagging front porch screens had a greenish cast, and all around the front door, curious perches for birds seemed to have sprouted-antlers, as it turned out, of every shape, but all kinda pipsqueak, nailed up as they were without the heads they grew on, godzilla be thanked.

  All told, an unassuming den of classic fudd, according to your Baedeker. So I wasn’t allowing for much of a spectacle from Cousin Édouard. In fact I was thinking that, after Madame Zuk, a soldierly old fuddy with a firm paunch and grizzled sideburns would be a relief-a modest, dignified sportsman, that was the ticket, given to colorless oaths, politely indifferent to women but a mean hand with a frypan full of fliers-I mean, how many fantasticoes dare we hope, or rather must we dread, from any one family?

  Zuk buckled on her silver sandals, I borrowed her shirt, and together we staggered up the dock. The screen door opened and there was Cousin Édouard-I tried not to gape. “My godzilla it’s Yul Brynner in Anastasia,” I whispered in her ear, and she laughed a nervous laugh that caused me to narrow my eyes at her-just what was going on here? I swear I saw it all in one second flat: He was old, maybe thirty, and beautiful, and bald as a mahogany finial, but not as old as Zuk. These cousins knew each other well! I could smell it, they were ancient lovers, and I knew which was which. I figured she had introduced him under the Ottoman Empire to the same black arts she had lately shown me.

  In fact he looked like her, the same giant-sized eyes, nose, cheekbones-so beautiful he was grotesque-the same Mongol flash, but with black ficus of body hair at the wrists and throat of his pale green shirt. He was a little shorter than Zuk, and he worried, that was what really made me stare: the bare notion of a worried Zuk. He had her beauty, he was younger and an international playboy to boot, around 16,000 miles out of my league, but his face was nicked here and there with a fretfulness quite unknown to madame-too-beautiful-on-her-horse. Was he scared-scared, possibly, of Zuk? Well, who wasn’t? Maybe her fumy dangers had affected more than his growth. And sumpm else I saw right away: he wasn’t all that glad to see us. He was worried. I saw it before she did, even before he quieted his dogs, two ringletted spaniels, and held out his arms to us and smiled courteously and bowed us in. And said over my head to Zuk: “Very interesting-the blond hair-and soulful, belligerent face, like some orphan boy from a film-some movie of Dickens maybe?-Oliver Twist I think.”

  Zuk pushed me firmly forward. I hadn’t realized I’d stopped. As I stumbled by he caught my hand and pressed it to his lips-not some sleazy fakeroo but a real kiss that left a wet spot. His lips were big beautifully molded Levantine numbers, with that sorta blue tattoo of a banished mustache gleaming faintly above them. I noticed he held my hand a little longer than was strictly necessary-could be he was scoping my scars, all bazillion threads of them that looked like carded plastic fishing line in that light. But of course an international playboy doesn’t say a wrong word at a moment like that. “Come in, ladies, sit down…” And then, like Zuk back at her place, he was off and clanking around in the icebox-brought in three little glasses and the vwodka. I choked mine down.

  Coupla paragraphs to be filled in later about his guns and knives, a whole wall of em. Bear rugs, raccoon lampshades, ocelot headrests-you get the picture. Ruffs of brown feathers tacked up on the bias-just the wingspreads, no stuffed voodoo turkeys with empty glass eyes. Cousin Édouard ate the meat and didn’t pay the taxidermist, I guess. But there was a sweet smell of violence and rot about the place, as though carcasses were hanging in the guestroom. He did know his way around a frypan full of dead fish: they came out to the front porch headless, cockle-shaped and gritty with golden meal. I ate six or seven. And then, sitting in the rusty lawnchairs, we got down to business.

  “Édouard, is good to see you. I need little help from you.” “Tell me, have you two women really sailed all night in that clumsy oyster boat? What nerve you have, Gulaim.” “Why, what is to fear?” He shook his head. “Is very good thing, Édouard, your boat is in Baltimore for paint-sorry to commandeer, but we must stay in front of police.” “Good god, Gulaim…” His hand rose vaguely to his forehead. “Don’t you wish sometimes to live a quiet life? And my god what a genius must be that kokpar player Fazool who until one year ago never saw the sea. It’s a miracle you have not got lost or run aground, Gulaim. Or been stopped by police, or the Coast Guard.” “Actually Fazool must get out and push Jenghiz Khan for one mile of low water at Currigunk Landing-extremely tiresome but then Bogey has beautiful idea we will jump in snake-filled canal and push with him.” Zuk leaned back contentedly, smoking one of Édouard’s cigarettes, wagging a crossed foot in its silver sandal, looking sultry and piratical in sopping rolled-up pinstripe trousers and nothing but the wet pinstripe vest over her momps, with one button buttoned.

  “How original… I am glad at last to see Miss Koderer with my own eyes-the famous Bogeywoman, yes?” I couldn’t help smiling at this proof of far report. Zuk smiled too. “And what you think-she is not what I have said?-a charming monster? You have noticed her latissimus dorsi and her strange quick foot like goat foot?”

  “Miss Koderer,” Édouard bent towards me, “may I ask to what is owing the prodigious leather of your fingertips?” I opened my mouth to talk but Zuk beat me to it: “She plays every day kidney-shaped hospital utility basin with orthopedic brace for neck, and strings of catgut sutures-she can play as beautiful as the moon. You would like to hear?” “She has pleased the moon,” Édouard said smoothly, “she is under no obligation to the stars.” “Anyhow I didn’t bring my pukelele,” I reminded them.

  “Ah! quel dommage! In any event I hope you ladies will be at home in the Dismal. You may want to canoe the ditches-I have a good Wild Duck, consider it at your service. Do take care not to fall through the turf into burning peatholes.” “Fire is bad this year?” “No more than usual,” he shrugged, “only usual is bad enough. Canebrake rattlers are pouring into the ditch all night-do keep your eyes open. You may have the blue room, as soon as Fazool fetches the, ah, hanging game out to the lean-to. Dinner is at nine…

  “But perhaps you two will wish to ‘haunt the moonlit bog’, as the poet says, like those tragic lovers of old who met ‘by firefly lamp’ and paddled off ‘through many a fen, where the serpent feeds’-or was that the runaway slave? Saprelotte, I can never keep those two straight-pardon, I’m only a lowly diplomat, not an artiste like you two ladies. Surely one of you knows?”

  “What’s he talking about?” I whispered to Zuk, who shook her head. “And I trust you will have a good holiday in my swamp,” he went on, “-until Tuesday. But then, ladies. Then-you see-”

  “What, Édouard? What is Tuesday?” Zuk asked casually, but I saw her craggy knuckles whiten on the rust-speckled arms of her chair.

  “Tuesday is four days from today, Gulaim. This is the least possible time I calculate it will take certain parties, with gracious but snail-paced help from my consulate, to track you two to my cabin. Before they come, with no margin for mistakes-you must be gone from here,” Cousin Édouard said with sudden firmness, looking from one of us to the other.

  “What you mean we must leave from here? But this is what we hope,” Zuk said, “and not for Tuesday-already for today. So soon as you can fix papers we want to fly together to Samovarobad. You understand, Édouard? Bogey is ready for start new life in Karamul-Karamistan.”

  “My dear Gulaim, do you realize what you are saying? You propose to kidnap an American child and take her out of the country.” “Kidnap? She has begged me to take her. Bogeywoman is no child,” Zuk sa
id, “in certain ways Bogeywoman is older than I am old.” “I believe you,” said Édouard drily. “Nevertheless: not only a child, that is, a legal minor, but a mentally ill child, and a patient under your care in the hospital that invited you to the United States, after delicate diplomatic proceedings with the Soviet Autonomous Republic of Karamul-Karamistan. And not only a child, Gulaim, but a female child-that is bad-and female as you yourself are female-that is worse. You have perhaps forgotten that you are still a diplomatic representative of a Soviet government and there is a war on. Are you prepared to be an outlaw-and not only an outlaw, Gulaim, but a female degenerate-in an international incident?”

  “I care nothing for that,” Zuk said, “I spit at it, I yawn at it, and so does Miss Bogey. You must explain him yourself, Bogey,” she elbowed me, “anyway you know me, Édouard, they cannot make rein for my forehead. I will never leave my Bogeywoman.”

  “Gulaim, do you remember when you needed travel permission to the United States and diplomatic portfolio and the rest? I arranged this for you-all of it. Now you want to wreck my good name with yours. Is it right to ask this? Keep in mind, cousin, when the hungry lies with the hungry, a meal is not born. At least, as things are now, should Karamul-Karamistan have troubles-plague or famine or war-we are in a position to, ah, transfer nationality if necessary, as long as we are here, if we have committed no crime. But if you must do this thing, soon neither of us will have liberty or property so much as an onion. You will be as one whom seven seas have vomited up-either a stateless person or in prison.”

  “Pfui-Édouard, you are hysterical, like young girl with pimple on nose, eh? You think whole world talks of nothing but your pimple. Where you get this idea that somebody cares so much what happens to Bogeywoman? Who is watching? Her family hears she has vanished forever, maybe they make small fuss but privately we know they dance and make holiday. For god sake, tell him yourself, Bogey.”

  Certainly it was high time I said sumpm-I sat there dumb as a goat carcass while they dragged me back and forth, me, a pawn in international affairs and in family politics too, among the Schapiro-Koderers on the one side and the Suleymenov-Suleymenians on the other. Probably I should have felt small, small like one of those Hershey kiss-shaped markers from Sorry or some other game, but to tell you the truth I felt big, bigger than yesterday, bigger all the time. In fact I had never had such a good time in my life and was trying to figure out why.

  “Her family,” Édouard replied. “Her family is her father, I believe-Merlin of Merlin’s World Tour, yes? A theatrical personage, famous, some would say notorious, for his antiwar puppet theater. Presently somewhere in Southeast Asia…” “Famous is only big help for us, you see?” Zuk said impatiently, “this is not a mother, to weep and tear hair over girl for reason she has nothing better to do. Here is my point: Her father neglects her, he hardly knows she is life, he lets them keep her prisoner in Rohring Rohring Clinic and she is not buggy, well, no more buggier than she should be, a girl her age…”

  “Ahem,” I said weakly, “sorry to interrupt, but it’s an honor to be neglected by Merlin on the grounds of world peace.” “Ah! Thank you for this contribution, Miss Koderer,” Édouard said with a tiny bow, “it is poignant. I wonder if you-either of you-has any idea where Merlin of Merlin’s World Tour is today?-even as we speak?”

  Zuk and I looked at each other, dumbfounded and alarmed. I said: “Don’t tell me-just leave it to that wizardly Merlin to be in Caramel-Creamistan right now. Probably staying in the president’s private palace or sumpm. Curses! The Divine Melvin has gotta have all the love in the world for himself and can’t leave two crumbs for somebody else.” I rolled my eyes in disgust. “He is with Mrs. Khazarolova?” Zuk asked, whitening under her mossy tan. I saw that if Zuk’s fantastic past had somehow swallowed me up in the last few days, no less had my ridiculous and clumsy destiny overtaken her, so that she was not even properly skeptical to hear that my old man might have turned up in the mansion of her boss, the premier of Caramel-Creamistan, Mrs. Khazarolova herself. “Choleria-he is with her?” she almost choked.

  “No, no-such a coincidence, like something in a storybook, I don’t ask you to credit,” Édouard replied with a smile. “Not quite. All the same!-Merlin is, in fact, a great favorite of Mrs. Khazarolova. Possibly you know that he performed at l’Oase in Samovarobad as her guest last spring?” We didn’t know. Édouard leaned over to offer us a plate of fig newtons. I took five. Zuk stared at the plate without seeing.

  “Let me put the entire case in perspective for you,” Édouard went on. “Rohring Rohring Psychiatric Clinic of course contacted Merlin’s American agent as soon as Miss Koderer was missed. The agent reached Merlin somewhere in Cambodia, via Hanoi. Merlin, hearing of the involvement of a Karamul-Karamistani doctor in the case, thought of his great friendship with Mrs. Khazarolova, and wired Mrs. Khazarolova, via Hanoi, requesting her assistance. Ladies, you must bear in mind that Merlin is at this moment the best-loved American in all Soviet Central Asia. What commissar, petty or great, would not fall over her feet to please him?

  “And so I have my orders straight from Mrs. Khazarolova, and you, Gulaim, may be sure you have yours as well. Your diplomatic passport is temporarily revoked. You are recalled to Karamul-Karamistan at once.”

  “Very good, is exactly what I want, and the rest will be business of nobody but me. You can fix papers for the girl?”

  “Gulaim, you cannot think of bringing the child. I must inform you, you are greatly mistaken in the level of interest you attribute to her father. Merlin is at this moment flying to Washington, from Hanoi, via Bangkok, Moscow and New York. He has canceled engagements for a fortnight. This is Friday. I don’t see how he can arrive in Baltimore before Sunday or Monday. He means, of course, to see his daughter Ursula. He presumes she will be back in custody by that time. He sends her a message.” Édouard handed me a yellow consulate teletype. There was a half page of minestrone in some whirly alphabet and then it read: OKAY, URSIE, YOU’VE GOTTEN MY ATTENTION. I’M COMING. MERLIN.

  “Of all the cheek!” I said, handing it to Zuk. “He thinks I did it just to roast his oysters, when I’d finally managed to forget his existence completely.”

  “Ursula, you must listen carefully,” said Cousin Édouard. “Your father is coming chiefly to shield you from legal responsibility in the matter of the death of internationally known psychiatrist Reinhold Feuffer. You need this protection, do you understand? But as for the other psychiatrist in the case, whom he knows only as Doctor Zuk, the Visiting Youth Psychiatry Fellow from Karamul-Karamistan, who apparently left with his daughter-Merlin says he is ‘studying the situation.’ I believe this means that if you are back in hospital by Tuesday and have done yourself no harm in the meantime, the matter may be overlooked. So you see, dear ladies, for the good of both of you, there can be no question of sustaining this holiday beyond Tuesday next. If you try to enter Karamul-Karamistan together, even supposing you can get papers and a plane, you, my cousin, will be detained, and Miss Koderer returned at once to United States. And both of you will be in a great deal of trouble.”

  “Choleria, you think after what I have lived through already in this life I am scared before that little trouble? God he closes one gate and opens a thousand. To get away from Red Army robots and old-style Foodian analysts, nothing is too much. We can come down into desert of Kyzl Kum from Pamirs, or airplane of certain friend of mine can drop us in desert, other old friend can find us with horses in chosen place. I know every rock and water spring, for years we can live like queens with old comrades of my father in Hunger Steppe of Betpak-Dala, where nobody dares even come for look. You think I have hidden in desert all those years with Der Kaifer for nothing? Like you in swamp is Zuk in Hunger Desert.”

  Édouard shrugged. “Very well, Gulaim. If you are determined to become the wild woman of Betpak-Dala with your small and lost American friend, two stateless persons running like mice in the desert from rock to rock as long as you last, who am I
to say no? When you must flee border police in winter, I hope Der Kaifer’s old comrades will loan you the fleetest of snow camels. And who knows? Border militia are not so assiduous, especially when the bouran is blowing. Or they may be bribed with-for example-a case of Coca-Cola. Of course you may be jailed,” Édouard pointed out, “or shot.”

  “Shot!” I whispered. “If I am arrested, if I am lost, dead, kaput, Bogeywoman can hide in this or that aool for short time with old friends. In eleven more months Bogeywoman is grown woman, free, she can do like she wants.” “Dead!” I whispered, “kaput!” “She will return to Baltimore alone by camel, I suppose?” Édouard inquired. “Sure, make joke, have fun,” Zuk said scornfully, “still Bogeywoman does not go back to bughouse on Tuesday.” “Hey, what the hump,” I said uneasily, thinking of Madame Zuk’s buzzard-picked rib cage sticking out of pink sand, “Rohring Rohring ain’t so bad. I can get outa there anytime, you know I can.” “Like you said it yourself,” Zuk reminded me, “now you are dangerous person. Is not so easy to escape from every-fifteen-minute checks in quietroom.” “Merlin won’t leave me stuck in lockup once he sees I’m okay.” “You are sure? He is ready for give up career to watch over you? If not, he must find somebody…”

  I had no answer to that. In fact it was just how I’d landed in Rohring Rohring in the first place. I could choose, back then: the ritzy private bughouse or the juvenile authorities. This time, there was a feast of possibilities, by comparison. The Hunger Steppe stretched to the end of the world, relieved only by the shadow of a trudging snow camel. Or-as long as I was here-the Dismal Swamp lay at my feet, trickling and bubbling, soft enough to swallow me up.