A Separate Country

by Robert Hicks

  “What are you suggesting?”

  His head was very hard. The metal knob of my cane cracked against him and then vibrated so painfully I nearly dropped it. He fell in place, keeled over, and curled on the floor like a puppy. I sat and watched him, peaceful and still, until I could see his chest rise and fall.

  My head began to ache, caving in at the temples. (My head hurts as I write this. My heart is pushing against my chest. No more cigars.) I surveyed the room: a riot of paper and ink and ledgers and broken glass extending out from where I sat. I contained all of that also, but I felt no thrill in it. Just pain in my head.

  I stood up, gathered my hat, and hobbled over the casualties. There lay the record of my fortune, all of it empty or illegible. There had been no fortune, only a childish trust and childish fantasies.

  Lord help me, but in that moment I gave serious thought to killing the man. I required a sacrifice equal to the loss of my standing, equal to the humiliation of being deceived by two godless French twits, equal to the horror of knowing I’d been the financier of their descent into the underworld. I knew this, yes. I had followed them, tracked them, made a reconnaissance of their movement, their activities, their lives. I do not beat men without reason.

  On several evenings I had pursued my prey from glass of liquor to hanger steak at Arnaud’s, to more liquor in the clubs and the negro music dens, to (most unnerving) the little cottages off Rampart Street where the two kept their colored women. Pretty little cottages. My partners walked arm in arm, point to point, holding each other up. Too drunk to notice me clunking from shadow to shadow. Drunk on my money. I had been defeated without ever engaging, without meeting the enemy until it was too late.

  Felix lay on the floor, quiet. One side of him, the side that lay against the hard, old barge-wood floor, had become white in the dust, as if he were disintegrating, ashing away, restoring himself to his original state. I left him there. I walked into Alcée’s office and broke open the locked drawer of his desk, where I knew he kept the true book on our business. I took it and ripped out the first page. It said, in thin and angular letters, Défense d’entrer. I thought, Oh, of course it’s private, and thank you for reminding me or otherwise I might have taken it or violated its secrets. Forgive me! I stabbed that page through with his sterling letter opener and pinned it to the desk. I had their record of crime, and I left my own, bleeding and foggy-headed. We were square. Our partnership would take months to sever cleanly, but I was free from that day on.

  I walked out and down onto Common Street. Behind me I could feel the heavy, moist river breathing on me, pushing me on and away. I slipped through the shadows that chilled the wood of the banquette. I passed Plato and said nothing. He sat on his box drawn back between buildings that leaned against each other. He had pulled his hat down over his face. His eyes followed me, and he smiled.

  The more I walked, the less my head hurt. I went down unfamiliar streets and saw nothing I knew: strangers, galleries, screeching children throwing old fruit, screens of graying sheets floating in the air from lines cast between houses. Dogs sniffed at me, interrogating the stranger with the limp. Water crashed from a basin held in the window above to the courtyard three stories below. It sounded like breaking glass.

  The less I knew of what I saw, the calmer I became. The known world contracted, all was simple. I sat in a nearly abandoned café and watched my hand stir the syrup of coffee clinging inside the cup. My hand was steady. I was steady again. Now I could feel remorse. Sparrows dipped in at my feet, where the remains of old bread lay dried and disintegrating. I admired the birds, like brown brushstrokes on slate. They reminded me of my men rushing across dark fields. I flinched at the memory and downed my drink. What were my prospects? I might hunt sparrows and serve them up fried on the street. Silly. I could not decide whether to get up from my seat or stay counting the grinds in the bottom of my cup. I stood up and sat down. The old man at the counter danced slowly to the music in his head. A palm put me in shade of a sudden, a breeze cooled my face. I walked out.

  I found my friend Rintrah on his corner packing up his merchandise for the day. He had artichokes, ghastly things. I walked so slowly toward him, so deliberately, like I was swimming down the street. He saw me and I saw the alarm on his face. He said nothing and offered me an artichoke for free. I held it like an egg, afraid of what might hatch from the barbed, dark thing. He rocked on his heels, his hands in the pockets of his vest, and waited for me to say something, but thought better of it. For a moment I entertained the thought that he already knew what had happened, that behind that thick beard lay the face of a seraph. Everywhere at once, nothing unknown to him.

  “General?”

  “May I sit?”

  He gestured at the stoop behind him. I watched the street go by. I had hardly ever imagined such places during the war, certainly not the vibrating, growling, clanging street presided over by a dwarf on his fruit box. When I thought at all of this other world, it was always something like a tableau containing houses and streets, neat, trim, and empty. Empty. I had not thought of people in this paradise beyond smoke and rifle fire and shouting. I had thought of an empty place, one in which I could walk alone, undisturbed, amid the achievements of man, his monuments and landscapes, without having to hear anyone else jabber on in my ear. So many damned people on the street. So many people everywhere. I suppose had I thought of a woman, the place wouldn’t have been entirely empty. Yes, I had, an Eve to my Adam, only without the will to disturb me nor the means to lead me from my happiness. I thought of Anna Marie then. No Eve like that, for damned sure. Nothing was what I had dreamed, not even love. Some things were more interesting.

  “Are you well, General?”

  “Silence!”

  I was listening to the spies passing by, down the alley, carrying their bombs in grocery sacks. That’s Hood! I’m sure he’s looked better, but how would you know? I heard he’s made of wood, not just his leg, but his head and his heart too. But I am cruel.

  They would report back to Washington. They would report my weakness. I thought I should fall in and show the colors, show that I would not be crossed or defeated. There were no lieutenants, I would have to do without them.

  Maman, who is the man talking to the air? Does he talk to insects?

  They are all enlisted, all maneuvering. Flanking me!

  Don’t look, cher.

  Rintrah had finished packing up his artichokes and stood quietly next to me. He removed his short straw hat and scratched at his tangled and dense black hair. My head began to hurt again. I noticed that my shirt had stuck to my chest in sweat. I whispered.

  “Clear the street.”

  “What?” The dwarf leaned his ear toward me.

  “Clear the damned street!” I shouted. Women turned and hurried on, pulling hats close over their eyes. I watched their feet click-clacking away from me, thin heels and thick heels, brown toes and yellow toes. No respect. Had they been respectful they would have arrived for formation in matching footwear. Nothing conformed now, there was no standard.

  “Keep the whores out of camp, no exceptions.”

  Rintrah sighed, as if he’d seen people like me before.

  “Come with me, General.” He took my arm and tried to pull me to my feet. “Let’s get you out of here before you make more of an ass of yourself.”

  I tried to stand up on the brick step, caught the edge with the kindling I called a leg, and toppled over. Rintrah fell with me, cursing me. A crazy quilt of eaves and corners reared up against the sky above me, General John Bell Hood, and among them I saw two brown thrashers twisting together in flight. I lay heavy on Rintrah and he jabbed at my ribs with his sharp, fat fingers.

  “Get up, you’re killing me.”

  “I wouldn’t kill you. Don’t have it in me anymore.”

  “General. Christ.”

  The thrashers disappeared behind a narrow coal chimney, and I rolled off and stood on my knees. My leg had been queered and I straightened
it. When Rintrah got to his feet he stood taller than me. Fierce, broad, craggy browed.

  “General, you’re drunk. Let’s leave the street.”

  “I am not drunk.”

  I followed him. He looked back at me, suddenly curious about something. A thoughtful look passed his face.

  “Does Anna Marie know where you are?”

  “No.”

  “Come with me.”

  It was an order, pure and clean and without deception. There was no answer but to follow, and I did so thankfully.

  The garroters, Rintrah said, they been sleeping all day, but they just getting up now, so you stay close, General. I didn’t understand him, so he made a sign with his hands around his neck. He made his eyes bulge out farther, until they seemed about to pop out of his head, and I told him to please stop. As the light left it got dark quickly between the buildings and along the sidewalks. The sky was still lit up warm, but we were in the dark as if sunk in a pit. Rintrah slowed down some and was careful about looking around corners and down alleys. We walked down an alley so narrow I could barely get my shoulders through, and at the other end was a courtyard greened by date palms and a great, fraying mass of hibiscus, where the cobblestones looked as if they would never dry.

  In the dark, it was a different city. I didn’t see anything of the city I’d seen earlier. The noise of the day, what I had once thought was like a song, was a fine wailing. Like something in pain giving up, or someone sad knowing the sadness was forever. The dark had done it, I thought, nothing to worry about. Things are strange in the dark, sounds and shapes and lights come out of places all of a sudden, places you can’t see and so you think they come from nowhere, out of the air, ever present. But then in the day you see where you’ve been and you aren’t afraid and you laugh at yourself and you have a nigger shine your shoes.

  The dark buildings seemed like they were leaning over the wet street, about to fall in on us, Rintrah and me and the pickpockets, fancy ladies, sick and insane who drew around us. I stumbled into a hole in the street and cried out, but Rintrah was there to catch me. Ladies in purple and yellow dresses leaned out from their balconies on the second floor above the street—it was Burgundy Street—and waved their kerchiefs. I watched hunched men in tight hats duck into the dark doorways beneath those balconies. I was blinded by each quick shot of light that hit me and disappeared as quickly as the doors could be opened and closed. I stopped walking and let my eyes get themselves back and righted, and when they did I looked down the street and I saw block and block and block of women raised up high above the black stream of men and boys and dogs in the street. They were leaves that had been taken up by the wind and never let back down. I stood still long enough that some of the whores right above me took notice, and they called for me. For a moment, just a moment I swear on my Bible, I wanted nothing else but to be upstairs with them, surrounded by all that color, raised up and laid down by all those soft hands. They called to me with lewd words, and I thought they sounded sweet. They leered at me and I saw only kindness. I stared up at them and they began to poke fun at me. I looked stupid. I was stupid. What did I have anymore? There was no money, and I was a fool for all to see. I let the whores have their fun with me.

  Rintrah had gone on down the street without knowing I’d stopped, and when he saw what had happened, he came rolling back up the street on his bandy legs, shook his fist, and roared at the whores.

  “This here is a good man and you ain’t getting in his way. I’ll make sure of that, don’t you cross me. He got himself a woman, damned if he don’t.”

  His voice was deep and loud, and it shook me until I was awake again. The ladies he was shouting at flicked their tongues at him, but they did quit shouting at me and turned their eyes up the street. I reckon they were looking for what else the street would bring their way. Rintrah took me by my elbow. His hard, sharp hand was painful and I told him so. He didn’t speak until we’d gone down the block a ways, and then he let me go.

  He lived in a large white house four blocks away, close in on the street, approached through a small arbor woven with trumpet vine. Gargoyles smiled brightly from the brick above tall windows. We let ourselves in at the back, the courtyard entrance. Behind us water trickled slowly from the mouth of a lion, down the brick wall, and across the slate. Parakeets twittered from a twisted fig at the center. It was cool back there, the sun hid behind roof tiles.

  We sat in a room overlooking the courtyard on the second floor. There were no rugs, no mirrors, no tables, no paintings, just two wooden chairs on a wooden floor newly swept. The walls bore nothing but a perfect coat of whitewash in which there was no variation or error. The sun threw no shadows. All was uniform, spare, and perfect. I removed my hat and saw that my shirt had begun to dry.

  Rintrah brought a pot of tea and two white cups. He set them on the broad windowsill near our elbows. He said nothing, just pointed at the tea, and I drank. He climbed quickly into his chair, swinging himself up and flexing powerful shoulders.

  The tea was bitter and chalky, but it calmed me.

  “What have you been doing?” Rintrah’s mouth moved slowly. “Why did you come find me?”

  I had been destroying, fighting, routing the past and the future. I had been defeated by the present. I was at a standoff. I had beaten a retreat. I had nearly crushed Rintrah, an old friend of Anna Marie’s and my new confidant. I had made myself free for the moment. I had been doing one hell of a lot, but at the moment I had nothing to do and no desire to do it.

  I told him what had happened. I told him I was on the run. He swung his legs against the bottom rung of the gray oak chair. Then I told him I wasn’t on the run, that I had done the honorable thing by tearing up the office and beating my partner, and that I would have been well within my rights to cut his head off. I told him I would have me jailed for dishonorable conduct had I been in charge of me. I told him my head hurt. He squeezed his eyes and popped them open again and again. He looked irritated.

  “Drink the tea,” he said.

  I did as I was told. I calmed, my heart slowed. I slumped in the chair and balanced my cup on my stomach. Rintrah did the same. We stared at each other for many minutes. Occasionally I studied the baseboard and noticed that someone must have scrubbed at the joint with a needle or a very fine wire. There was no mortar of dust and hair and dirt that always collected in such places after moppings.

  “Thank you, Rintrah.”

  “You frighten me, General. I reckon you’re not well. You’re not yourself. Breaking up businesses don’t usually involve the cracking of skulls. You know this.”

  “Yes.”

  “Something has taken your head.”

  “Yes.”

  “Fever.”

  “No.”

  “Yes, a fever.”

  I felt very sleepy. Rintrah put his teacup on the windowsill and hurried out of the room. I threw the bitter drink down, hoping to stave off sleep.

  I woke several times, a few seconds at a time. I lay on a pallet made of old wool blankets. Rintrah must have dragged me into the corner, the strong little bastard.

  Later, I don’t know when, I woke and through the scrim of just-parted eyelids I saw that the poisoner, that damned dwarf—I had been drugged!—had pulled a small table into the room where he wrote furiously on blue paper. He scribbled and crumpled, scribbled and crumpled. He swore at the paper, and at the ceiling. Paper piled up around him, and only occasionally would a page make it to the blotter and into the small collection of pages he finally stuffed in an envelope.

  Again I awoke and watched him swinging my cane like a club, round and round, vicious and untiring.

  Again I awoke and he stood over me, still as a rock. All I could see were his shoes, shined and gleaming. I looked dead in the reflection and dared not look up.

  The last time I awoke I saw that he had made a pallet for himself in the corner diagonally across the long room, an identical pallet to mine. There he lay with his back to me, facing the
wall. Where was his bedroom? I thought. Does he have a bed? What is this place?

  The priest who sat at my foot smiled when my eyes finally focused on him.

  “Father Mike,” I said.

  He never looked much like a priest. He was a childhood friend of Anna Marie’s, though we rarely saw him. He was someone Anna Marie had known but almost never talked about, someone I thought she had outgrown. In the priest’s case, I had always assumed he was insane, a suitable explanation for avoiding him, in my mind. He looked like a mason or a carpenter, sun-browned like an old vine. His boots were heavy and caked with mud and he had unbuttoned his shirt down his chest. Such a chest. Broad and sowed with black hair so thick he appeared, in the candlelight, to be disappearing into the darkness through a hole in his center. A beard like a wire brush, a head wrapped in a nimbus of sweaty, stabbing locks. The little poisoner asleep in the other corner needed my attention, a boot on his throat perhaps, and I rolled over to see about getting to my feet. Father Mike wouldn’t be ignored.

  “Want to kill him, do ya?”

  “Hadn’t thought about it.”

  “Maybe he needs killing. Some do, you know.”

  What day was it? I thought. The battering I’d given Felix seemed as distant as the mistiest memories of my boyhood. Another life. It was dark, no moon. Mike’s eyes shot gold sparks in the candlelight. He looked amused, like there was something funny about me. This made him look more the priest. That is, smug.

  “Don’t know about killing.”

  “Go on, John, kill him. Look at him, he’s an abomination. If that was made in God’s image, the rest of us are doomed. Kill it. He poisoned you. Go on.”

  I hesitated. One thing in his favor, he talked like no priest I’d ever known. Those men had been mainly simpering tea-sippers and natives of the righteous salons owned by the rich and the generous and the lonely. This priest, Father Mike, would not have been welcome in such places. He wouldn’t have matched the drapery.

  The other reason I hesitated was that my leg had disappeared.