“You did not react,” the large man said to the three.
“Why should we?” Gus said, seeming to sip from a stein. “He was nothing to us. Better off dead, I say. And with the end of this bit of unexpected autumn celebration, I think we’ll take our leave and head back to our vehicle on the other side of the mountain. I trust you won’t consider us rude.”
Gus paid for abundant, widely appreciated food and drink, and left a generous tip. Leeda saw the old yulen suffer underneath gracious comments and attempts to put everyone at ease over what happened, less the men’s guilt turn on them. As they left, they passed the body, and she saw Gus pause. His head lowered and his lips formed goodbye dear boy, if only a second. They continued sadly through the square, leaving the retched village behind, and she worried how much more they could take.
XIX
In Saint Tropez, Chief Landowski settled in to a gentleman investigator’s routine. He’d developed the style since landing on retainer for Mr. Bloom, and liked it. It beat public servant any day.
He established a tab at the same bar Macon Early had patronized, but unlike the Reverend’s parsimonious two glasses of wine a day, the waiters dispensed Landowski’s libation graciously. Rounds of Manhattans, Scotch and sodas, Gin Fizz kept him lubricated every morning. The waiters called the new beach inhabitant Tuyau, French for hose, because he always wore a bathing suit, but never removed his black stocking hose.
Promptly at nine AM, he’d stretch onto a readied beach lounge shaded by opened umbrella that a boy regularly adjusted to the Sun’s transit. When he needed his permanent cigar lit, someone magically appeared with a light. Around noon he’d feast on whatever the restaurant brought over, downing it with a bottle of Champagne. I should of got myself fired from the force years ago, he liked to joke to himself.
Around two o’clock after a snooze, the waiters would watch Tuyau leave, black bathing trunks, black Yves Saint Laurent spa robe, and pulled up black hose never having gone near the water. “Merci, and don’t pad the bill,” he’d crack, every time he passed the restaurant’s terrace on leaving for the day.
He’d then settle in for work through the evening, administering Scotch and soda bottles while watching the comings and goings at the double C gates for signs of Nathan Nols. Unlike the swampers, the unhurried former police chief would wait watching from a rented luxury villa across the street for his prey’s return.
As for Landowski’s competition, the Earlys had resigned themselves to an unproductive phone call to Constance Nols every other day from a northern German boarding house that the elder Early christened Early Bible College.
“Pa, how much longer we gonna wait here?” his eldest sons would ask for the twelfth time, looking up from their Bibles in their cramped, mandated room.
“Why? You finished your Bible?” Reverend Early would ask, looking up from his own Good Book.
“No, Pa, but—”
“Then near as I can figure, you ain’t got no place to go.”
“Yes sir.”
“I’m on Jeremiah,” Joseph said, eagerly referring to his open Bible.
“I wish I was on Esther,” Josiah winked to a grinning Joseph Henry.
“Hush up.”
“Yes sir . . .”
At that same time, Nathan and his remaining group waited in a shepherd’s hut for another hailstorm over the mountain to pass. “It’s Mr. Hain calling,” a downcast Gus said, looking at his device. “I don’t have the spirit to watch him relish our lose of Sammy. You?” He motioned the handheld to Nathan.
“Later,” Nathan said. “We can’t go anywhere anyway.”
“So you’ve both finally turned battle weary,” Leeda admonished.
“We learn from experience. Can we not see Mr. Hain delight at our lose?” Gus said.
“You lie there defeated.”
“We’re not defeated, Leeda,” Gus said.
“You look it.”
“We’ve lost good friends, my dear.”
“And the nerve to continue.”
“Grieving,” Nathan said, “isn’t a sign of surrender.”
“Then the next time that thing sounds, I expect to see you both jump to answer.”
Nathan got up and went to the hut’s door. The hail had stopped. He left and walked to leeward overlooking a deep gully falling off the mountainside. He felt Leeda had misinterpreted his quietness, but had he become weary?
His helplessness before Sammy’s brutal death kept bringing back Russell’s reckless effrontery against what they were as yulen. It made inroads and traveled on his doubts over their nature that according to Gus was somehow sacred and inviolable. With each friend’s provoked death, he grew more doubtful and weary of Gus’ belief.
To be able to protect themselves when assaulted by men was all he’d originally wanted from the journey. Certainly, temptations as Russell voiced had kindled in his mind, but they had not burned in him as in Russell. Equality with men would have been enough. Find that in The Book of Yulen, and his travails would be compensated. But now he wondered of advantage over man, even—and he almost dare not think it—superiority. Science had shown them how to eliminate their disadvantage against gathering and cooperating, and they’d benefited. Hain had read to them from The Book how to eliminate another source of their disadvantage, their putrid smell that often chased away a near taking at end season. What else could science teach them? What else might The Book reveal? A cure to their allergy of water? Avoiding takings? Becoming superior to man?
“You know, Gus is in late season,” Leeda said, stopping behind him.
“Yes, and since you could tell, you could’ve gone easier on him.”
“I haven’t forgotten the others either, yulen.”
“We’re all weary and need a moment to strengthen our resolve.”
“And to forget?”
“What we’re able to, yes.”
“I feel so sorry for you.”
“Why? . . .”
“You’re the yulen closest to man that I have ever met. You remember. And you suffer for it.”
“Everybody suffers, Leeda. It’s not a choice.”
“But you’ve questioned what you do, we do—to survive. Our taking.”
“I did but it was a mistake.”
“But that you did it was something. Like your wanting once to love.”
“That was a mistake too.”
“We each came from a man or woman, and some became more yulen than others. You, I think, barely made it to our side. You wanted the unwantable, that is, what’s unwantable for the rest of us, and the unwinnable. You’ve suffered what the rest of us have not suffered. I never wanted to be or know anything that I was not, except perhaps during a momentary playful thought.”
“You’re lying, Leeda.”
“Don’t tell me that!”
“Your desire to know love is real and possibly as real as mine was.”
“How can you tell that? Aren’t you being a little presumptive?”
“You know how humans look at one another when they feel love?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I do.”
“Then you’ve known love?”
“No, not really, not real or true love, but that’s not what I was saying. There’s a look that’s special and unique and unmistakable, that I’m talking about.”
“And?”
“And although you haven’t demonstrated it, its image has played on your mind’s screen when you’ve looked at me.”
“You really are arrogant. I think Gus is right about how dangerous you can make our minds. I only wanted to be with you. I found it pleasing to be with you, something pleasing was all, and still is.”
“And what was or is that pleasure?”
“Do you see that hawk, those hawks there, circling in the currents, unencumbered, unmolested, flying free?”
“Do you think they’re free?”
“Freer than us aren’t they?”
“Nature won’t le
t them be free. They’ll react to nature’s commands, act to fulfill their calling, just as we. There’s only one animal that’s free, and that is man.”
“You’re the freest of us that I’ve known. Whatever our individual reasons to come with you, it was that transfer into each of us that made us want to come, and stay. Don’t tell me I’m mistaken. I look at that hawk and I feel freer. I walk with you and I’m freer.”
“Or maybe you just found the courage to pursue it, freedom.”
“Whatever it is you want from The Book of Yulen, I hope you find it. It may be terrible, even terrifying, but I trust that in your hands it will be for better and good.”
“That would be a fine thing, Leeda,” he nodded, “if you’re right.”
“Come!” Gus called from the hut’s door. “Hain is on the phone.”
As Nathan moved to return, Leeda stopped him. Her arms circled his back, and she smiled at him. “You know I like you.”
“I know,” he smiled back, and together they returned to the hut, a crisp, cloudless sky having opened over the mountain and its valleys.
Hain smiled from Gus’ screen seated in his customary way, the tall oil of the young woman flanking him. “Tell me all about the shepherd and harvest festival, Gus,”
“As far as your interest may be concerned, Mr. Hain, there’s one less of us.”
“Tell me how he went.”
“I don’t think so, Conrad.”
“What if I insist.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I may insist.”
“He was clubbed to death,” Nathan squeezed in.
“Clubbing . . . What would you say is worse, Mr. Nols, clubbed or eaten alive by wild animals?”
“I don’t know.”
“I insist you think about it.”
“Okay.”
“Now, Mr. Nols.” Hain’s face hardened.
Nathan looked at the others, then back at the screen. “They’re equally bad. It would depend on the number and size of the clubs and animals.”
“One big club versus one big animal.”
“One big animal is likely worse.”
“Thank you for that bit of information, Mr. Nols. You see how easy it is to work together. And now I have some information for you.”
“I hope it includes vehicular transportation,” Gus said.
“Feeling a bit low are you, Gus, Gussy ol’ pal?”
“May we ride now?”
“You are looking seasoned, Gus. Wrinkles forming, healthy tan fading, gums receding. Teeth falling out yet? Alright, I’ll tell you what—l’m such a softy. When you cross into Poland, rent yourselves a car to take you to Belarus. That’s right, beautiful, wonderful, cosmopolitan Minsk. And check yourselves in to the Hotel Yaroslav.”
“My God, is it still standing?”
“Swankiest hotel in Minsk, Gus. They’ve made improvements, don’t worry. Anyway, further details to follow. How’s that sound, Gus?”
“Wunderbar . . .”
“That’s the spirit, Gus. Make it through your little Minsk test, a quiz really, and you’re next stop is my humble home. Please don’t quit. I want one of you to make it here. Lovely Leeda would be especially warmly received. Do svidaniya.”
“Do svidaniya . . . ,” Gus said goodbye in Russian.
“He does want someone to survive,” Gus said. “Walking from here across Poland would see me dead before the Belarus border.”
“Is there anything wrong with the hotel?” Nathan asked.
“Oh I don’t know. Only that it was old when I last stayed in it, and that was when the country was still part of Lithuania.”
“When was that?” Leeda asked.
“Nineteen oh-one, give or take a decade.”
“You easily remember that far back,” Leeda said.
“It wasn’t that long ago, a century and some. Besides, I remember the good parts.”
“The takings?” she asked.
“Oh no, why clutter one’s mind with that.”
“Well, some do. Nathan, for example.”
“You mustn’t do that, my boy. It makes one dull. Do men try to remember every occasion when they dined out? Certainly not. A waste of thought.”
“Anyway, about the hotel. Like Mr. Hain said, they’ve made improvements,” she said.
“There was the most marvelous duchess I met there . . . Let’s hope she’s not still alive.”
“That would be scary,” Leeda said.
“For whom?”
“That would depend on what she remembered, Gus.”
“Well I tell you, my dear, if she remembered everything about me, she’d be grateful to still be alive.” He smiled, bent, and took Leeda’s hand to kiss.
“Such a killer you are, Gus.”
“It’s kept me alive, dear lady.”
XX
A day’s walk after passing into Poland through a rural border crossing, Nathan, Gus, and Leeda rented a car at the first place they found. The next day at the Belarus border after guards kept them waiting the afternoon for “appropriate approval of papers,” Nathan took the expeditious route and bribed them.
The following day under a drizzling gray sky, they drove past leafless black trees lining the street to Hotel Yaroslav. At the hotel, uniformed umbrella clutching doormen quickly rushed to open and hold the car doors for the arrivals. Gus peeked up from under an umbrella to the brick building and its iron balconies and pedestals with missing gargoyles, and nodded approvingly. “Ah, Hotel Yaroslav, it’s been a long time. Older but both of us still standing.”
Hain was right about the interior. Its antique presence had been varnished, buffed, and made to shine. Bellhops, messengers, cocktail servers, scurried attending the busy grand foyer, contrasting with their unhurried clientele having drinks, taking calls, or passing to and fro.
The three new guests stopped at the oak covered reception area that glowed under turn of the century lamps, and they proceeded to check in.
A thin, short, heavily made up woman of about eighty, left a sitting area upon seeing Gus, and briskly walked to him, her jewelry shimmering and layered silk dress flowing. Enthralled, she halted beside him. “You are beautiful,” she said, in strongly accented English, her eyes glued on his, her chin pointing up at his neck. “I must have you.”
“Good afternoon, madam,” Gus said, taking her hand and kissing it.
“I must have you, gentleman.”
Gus nodded amused.
“I must. You are man and animal. I must. You will break my heart not to let me have you.”
“Well madam, I’m not an animal.”
“Then let me make you into one, half gentle half wild. I know what I’m speaking. I know what I saw the instant my eyes caught you.”
“I will have no trouble in making your acquaintance, madam.”
“Thank you. You please me momentously. You may be younger than I but I will not disappoint you.”
Nathan and Leeda exchanged a humored look with Gus.
“Are you at the hotel?” Gus asked her.
“Yes. I write my room’s number on your breast.” Her bony fingers wrote three numbers there. “Do you have it?”
“Yes. Allow me to register with my friends.” He motioned to them. “May I introduce—”
“I am Tellilla. Only that. Tellilla.”
“Tellilla,” Gus said, introducing her by reproducing her long ells. “These are Leeda and Nathan, and I am Baron Gustav—”
“I knew you were royal. And you are heroic, I can tell. And I will not disappoint you. I can be fire—my lord. Do you believe me?”
“I believe you, madam. I do.”
“I will leave you to what you must do although I do not wish to. It’s hard already to leave you. You are heroic. I am yours, Lord. Lord of mine,” she practically gasped for breath.
“I will phone your room and we will meet for dinner tonight, if you’re free.”
“Until this evening, divine man.”
“Until then, madam,” he said, bowing to kiss her hand.
With regained spring of a youth, she walked to the manned elevators.
“That was quick,” Leeda smiled.
“A woman of character and good taste, one can’t let go.”
“You didn’t ask her if she was alone.”
“Oh, she is. Alone and extremely lonely.”
“Then it looks like you may have found your end of late season.”
“With . . . proper cultivation.”
“You be careful Gus, she seems pretty fiery.”
“Oh I think I’ve cultivated enough candidates to know how to prepare her. After all my travails these weeks, I believe Provenance may have provided me an easy end of late season.”
“You deserve it, Gus,” Leeda said.
“Clerk,” Nathan said to the front desk. “A postcard, please.”
The clerk handed him a hotel postcard and pen.
“I should put Constance at ease,” Nathan said, writing several lines on the card. “France,” he told the clerk, returning the card, and the clerk in turn handing them their room keys.
“She couldn’t be your duchess could she, Gus?”
“Too young. Maybe her daughter. One generation passeth into the next.”
“And you keep shining and giving.”
“We do give a lot, Leeda. Don’t you think? A lot of pleasure and joy?”
“You could see it that way.”
“I do. I definitely do,” he said, the three walking to the elevator bank.
>
Constance lounged by the cooler weather enclosed swimming pool, again reading the postcard arrived from Belarus several days earlier. Her private phone rang, and she slipped the card back into the romance novel on her lap. She gladdened on seeing who called. She excitedly blurted to Reverend Early where Nathan, Gus, and Leeda were—the others having left their party. She reminded him to keep her informed about what he found when he arrived at the hotel. He should hurry, though. Nathan did not say how long they’d remain.
Yulen: Return of the Beast – Mystery Suspense Thriller (Yulen - Book 2) Page 21