by Paul Park
The tent was built like an umbrella of oilcloth and strips of steel, radiating from a central wooden pillar. Light came from a kerosene lantern hung from a nail in the central shaft, and it shone on Jenny’s hair, and on her desk, and on the drawings stacked upon it.
Thanakar took the lantern from its nail, and he limped over to stand next to her cot. He put the lantern down upon her desk, and he stood over the pile of drawings, examining them one by one. He sat on the edge of Jenny’s cot and held one of the drawings up to the light. It was her most recent flea, dated seven days before.
He reached into an inside pocket of his coat, where he kept a small case of instruments and specimens. Unzipping it, he removed a magnifying glass; turning the wick of the lantern higher, he studied the drawing underneath the glass.
On the bottom of the insect’s carapace, between its lower limbs, there was a small protuberance, a small, sharp spiral, like the end of a small drill. Thanakar frowned, and then unfolded from a pocket of the case a piece of paper, an earlier rendition of the flea, one of the first Jenny had drawn. The bottom of its carapace was clean.
Finally Thanakar took out a pair of tweezers and a small vial full of samples. He unscrewed the top of the vial, and with the tweezers he caught the body of a small specimen, an insect in the vial. He pulled it out and stared at it under the magnifying glass. It was a small, translucent dot, one-sixteenth of an inch long, innocent of detail even under the glass. Nevertheless, Jenny Pentecost, sitting up in bed behind him, whispered, “You have found it,” in his ear.
“Is it the same?” asked Thanakar, without turning around.
“Yes.”
“I found it on a rat,” he said. “Look,” he said, indicating Jenny’s drawing. “That’s where it keeps the virus. In that drill between its legs.”
He put down his magnifying glass, and held the flea up to the light. “Of my new patients,” he continued, “four of six are members of the oil pressers’ caste. They were temple servants, in Charn under the old regime. They mixed prescriptions for the priests.”
He was speaking more to himself than to her, and he was holding the flea out towards the light. Then he brought the tweezers back up to his eye, until the flea was only inches from his face. “The curious thing,” he said, “is that mental illness could be spread this way. By a virus.”
“It is spread in many ways,” whispered Jenny, close to his ear. She had put her arms around his neck. Her face was close to his. She, too, was staring at the flea.
“Yes,” said Thanakar. “The king of the oil pressers had looted drugs out of the Temple of Surcease. He kept rodents, too, sacred to the God of Animals. They were in jeweled cages in his tent. After his death I brought four of them into the laboratory and cut them open.”
Jenny said nothing, but he could hear her soft breath on his neck. “Their guts were full of them,” he said. “The sacred fleas of Angkhdt. In Charn they grind their bodies up for medicines. They make an anesthetic paste. Once in the blood, it can cause hallucinations.”
“I know,” whispered Jenny.
“These cases I have seen, the first symptoms are delusions and hallucinations. Nevertheless, the patient dies in sixty hours. It is because they have been bitten by the flea. You could not have been exposed that way.” Thanakar indicated the difference between the drawings, the old one and the new. “You yourself see this is a new mutation.”
“They grind them up for medicine,” said Jenny, in his ear.
* * *
In the morning when he woke, she was still asleep. But she had left something for him, a black and battered copy of the Song of Angkhdt, on the floor next to his bed.
She had been asleep when Thanakar had left her to return to bed. But late at night she must have gotten up again, to find the book for him; it was Mrs. Cassimer’s copy, which she kept under her chamber pot.
The book was open to the sixteenth verse. In the margin a small passage was marked in Jenny’s hand, one of the so-called interjections of Beloved Angkhdt. It read,
What is it that drives me on?
It is like the scratching of a flea.
It is like the biting of a flea.
The night before, he had dragged his cot in from his own tent, to stay close to his family. But in the morning he went out, to wash and dress; when he returned, Mrs. Cassimer was awake, feeding the baby from a bowl of artificial soup. He sat down next to her with the book in his hand. “What does this mean?” he asked, indicating the marked verse.
“Oh, sir, that’s a naughty one,” said Mrs. Cassimer.
Jenny was still asleep. She had turned over onto her back. “Tell me,” said Thanakar.
“Oh no, sir, I couldn’t do that. Not to you. That’s a naughty one.”
Mrs. Cassimer was knowledgeable on all aspects of holy scripture. But she was also prudish, and protective of her master. “No, sir,” she said. “I couldn’t tell you that.” But he insisted. “Please,” he said.
“Very well. That one’s about women. That’s what the parsons say. They’ve got a medicine for that. An ointment that they use.”
“A medicine?”
“Yes, sir. They make it out of bugs. And a little sugar. Rainwater, I guess.”
“But what’s it for?”
“An ointment, sir. They rub it on their penises. Oh, sir, Angkhdt had fifty women in one day, the day He overcame the nunnery.”
At 9 A.M., Thanakar sent a letter to the director of the hospital, enclosing several of Jenny’s drawings. Then he sent a message to the ministry of agriculture. That one was fruitful: By the middle of the afternoon a carriage had arrived, a large, heavy vehicle drawn by four horses. Craton Starbridge’s escutcheon was painted on the door, a white ship under sail.
At four o’clock Thanakar was packed and ready. He loaded his family into the dark, stuffy interior and then stepped onto the box, wearing an oilskin against the rain. He nodded to the coachman, and pulled his wide-brimmed hat over his eyes. He had a pocket full of marijuana cigarettes. He put one between his teeth.
Nobody had come to see them off.
From the walls behind him, the church bells rang the hour. Then they were moving, the horses struggling in the mud, kicking through the radiating circles of huts and canvas shelters. A mist was rising from the ground. People stood half-naked in the rain, gaunt, spectral figures, watching them.
Thanakar lit his cigarette, and pulled his hat down over his face. Mounted underneath him on the near horse, the postilion was acting as a guide. He carried a letter of safe-conduct in his boot, countersigned by the commander of the corps of engineers. Thanakar saw the flash of gold upon its seal, and through a dull narcotic haze he watched the soldiers at the checkpoint stiffen and salute. They pulled back the barricades of sharpwood and barbed wire, and let them out onto the road.
They were heading for the mountains. The postilion had already shown Thanakar their destination on a map, a small village north of Gaur, two hundred miles northwest of the city. In other seasons it was famous for its beauty, and wealthy Caladonians kept villas there. In spring most of these were empty, but there remained a small local population, who farmed the terraced hills and fished the lake for weeds. There was a hospital, where Thanakar had been guaranteed a job. There was also a small military garrison, largely convalescents on half-pay. Craton Starbridge’s first cousin was the captain.
But to go west, first they headed south. In all other directions the roads were reserved for military transport. Even on the great south highway, in the first few hours Thanakar counted seventeen convoys of soldiers, and even a few ancient trucks.
Like the coach, these vehicles were moving towards the border. The coachman pulled aside out of the road to let them pass. At other times he halted for another reason: Crowds of refugees, heading in the opposite direction, made the horses kick and shy. It was not till after midnight that they reached the end of their first stage, twenty miles from the border where the road split west. Rooms were ready for them at the
hotel. Jenny was asleep, so Thanakar carried her upstairs. They were to share a room.
Late at night he awoke from a strange dream. What was it? No—the details of it already were unclear to him, a medley of strange images that slipped and twisted from his grasp. He saw a bright light shining in his eyes. It seemed to hover a few inches from his face and disappear. He touched his fingers to his face and raised his head. In the corner of the room, under a small electric bulb, Jenny Pentecost sat hunched over a table.
Supported on one elbow, he watched her for a while—her narrow shoulders, the points of her thin shoulderblades under her slip. Her fine brown hair was twisted in a knot behind her head, out of the way. Single hairs stuck out at odd trajectories under the light. She had her back to him.
He remembered how he had found her, in a brothel by the Temple of Surcease, the night before they left the city. He had come back from the army and had searched for her, and had found her on the top floor of a brothel, near the altar of the God of Children. Was it there? It must have been there, that she had contracted this illness. It must have been there that the flea had crept into her blood. No doubt there had been a jar of unguent on the altar, where her clients had paused to anoint themselves. What kind of men could they have been, to try to duplicate the prowess of Beloved Angkhdt upon a child?
A feeling of longing rose up in his throat, hopeless, like unrequited love. “Jenny?” he whispered. “Jenny?” She didn’t turn around. Adjusting his pajamas, he got up to see what she was doing.
Before her on the table a drawing was spread out. It was in black-and-sepia pencil, with traces of red ink—the pen was still in her hand. But she was staring at it without moving. The drawing was finished. It showed a woman dressed in rags, her face hidden in shadow. She was lying on the ground next to an empty bowl, her ankle shackled to a post. Beside her stood a chicken, searching the ground for insects with its curious snout. Behind her a wire fence intersected with the wall of a small building.
This was in the corner of the picture. Most of the drawing was about the sky—a study of dark clouds and sugar rain. But one more artifact was visible: At the top of the page, a span of metal drawn in red. The clouds were parted by its edge.
“The Whisper Bridge,” said Thanakar. “How did you know?”
Jenny said nothing. Only she made a notation in red pen in the margin of the page: “21596.” And under it, in careful print: “17.78 mi.”
“How did you hear of it?” asked Thanakar. He leaned forward over the page. From his neck, his golden locket hung down close beside her ear. She turned and grabbed it, pulled it loose. The small chain snapped in her small hand.
Surprised, Thanakar pulled back. Then he reached out his hand. But she had found the locket’s clasp, had opened it, and was staring at the photograph inside. Cut from the yearbook of the Starbridge Schools, it was a photograph of a young girl with long black hair, thick eyebrows, and black eyes. A wide mouth, a wide jaw; two months after it was taken, Charity had married the old man.
Thanakar reached out to grab it back, but then he stopped. Jenny Pentecost had dipped her pen into her well, and she was drawing the profile of a face under her numerical notation: Just a few quick lines, so fast, so expert, and so sure. Thanakar cried out, with a pain like a needle in his heart. Then Jenny threw the pen down on the page, spattering it with ink. She turned in her chair and put her arms around his neck, squeezing until it hurt. She locked her arms around his neck and squeezed with all her strength, and he could feel her small lips on his cheek. “Trust me,” she whispered next to his ear, her voice so soft, almost inaudible. “Trust me,” she repeated.
* * *
Before first light he limped down to the post station at the crossroads to barter for a horse. He left a message for his coachman and his guide, instructing them to wait two days before continuing; he would catch them up. He left a note for Mrs. Cassimer. He didn’t wake her, not wanting to hear what she might say.
There were no horses. All had been sequestered by the army, or bought by wealthy refugees. But after some negotiation he obtained a bicycle. He tied his knee in linen strips, injecting lubricants into the joint, and at six-thirty he wheeled his bicycle out onto the road. It was an old, stiff, cast-iron model with enormous rubber wheels. For hours he rode it grimly over the deserted countryside, along a roadbed of crushed cinders.
The Whisper Bridge was in a range of washed-out hills, and there was no one on the road. At eight o’clock it started raining. Thanakar cursed aloud. Once, at the bottom of a long hill, with the rain pulsing from the sky like bullets of wet glass, he almost turned around. But finally, towards ten, he reached the border.
By the banks of the Moldau River, in a landscape of wet clay, the road came to an end. The fog was low upon the ground. He could not see the barricade; he could not see the bridge, but he could hear it in the wind. In front of him there was a mailbox, across the way a small tarpaper shack. Nearby, at the top of a high flagpole, flew an ensign he remembered well—the endless knot of the unravelers. Under it, the swine of Caladon, red upon a field of white.
Thanakar parked his bike next to the pole. He took off his hat. His leg was so weak he could barely stand. It throbbed and trembled under his weight.
He waited a minute and then walked around the shack. It was a two-story, dilapidated wooden structure. In back there was an empty chicken run.
Returning to the road, he limped up the steps of the shack onto the porch. Through the screen door he could see the unraveler at his desk, stretched back in his chair, his gaunt frame swathed in bandages. His eyes were veiled, his face turned to one side. With a broken pencil he tapped idly upon his desk.
Thanakar tried the door. It was locked.
“Are you applying for a visa?” asked the unraveler, his voice high and soft. “Office hours start at four o’clock.”
The screen was rotten near the clasp. Thanakar punched it with his fist and broke the lock. Already he was angry, but also he was weak and close to falling. He stepped inside the door and leaned against it, his back against the screen. “Is there a woman staying here?” he asked.
The unraveler leaned forward in his chair. “What do you mean?”
“I swear to God,” said Thanakar. “Tell me where she is, and then I’ll go.”
The unraveler placed his pencil on his desk, carefully among the littered paper. He seemed to frown under the veil. “She is no longer here,” he said. When Thanakar said nothing, he went on. “You do not understand. She was a foreign national, on Caladonian soil, without documentation. Not of any kind. I could not let her stay.”
Thanakar limped forward into the room. He put his hands upon the desk, then stopped. From underneath a pile of paper the unraveler had produced a gun.
“No violence,” he said. “You are the one. Yes, I have heard of you.” With one hand he held the small revolver, and with the other he rummaged in the papers on his desk. “Hah,” he said. “This is from the district headquarters at Sreshta Breaks,” he said, naming the border town where Thanakar had spent so long. “Distinguishing marks? Tattoos upon both hands. A golden briarweed, among others. Yes. You are the one. It says you failed to go through proper channels.”
Thanakar was leaning forward on the desk, supporting his weight upon his wrists. He caught a wisp of a sweet smell. He breathed deeply. It was whiskey. A jar half full of whiskey stood upon the corner of the desk between some books. He could smell whiskey on the breath of the unraveler, though it was not yet noon.
“Here,” the man continued, reading from a crumpled piece of paper. “Yes. Thanakar Starbridge. Yes, he has disrupted the morale of the entire district. Since he left, illegal penetration of the Sreshta Gate has increased more than thirty times. Thirty times! And you have the impudence to threaten me.”
There was a pause. Thanakar sat down in a chair and put both hands over his knee. The unraveler stared up at the ceiling. “Tell me what this woman is to you,” he said at last.
Thanak
ar put his hand up to his face. “Then she’s still here. You didn’t send her back?”
“No. It would not have been . . . humane. In your country they are murdering civilians. They have no respect for regulations of all kinds. This woman, she would not even give her name. What is she to you?”
He turned his head. His face under the veil was thin and bony, hairless and gray. “I too,” he said. “I should have sent her back. No, for her sake I have broken elementary statutes numbers fifteen through twenty-one. Yesterday morning I detained her in the proper place. But it was raining. Now she is upstairs, sleeping in my bed. Last night I fed her rations that were meant for me.”
Thanakar sat back. The unraveler gestured wearily with the revolver. It sank low to the desk, as if too heavy for his frail wrist. “The fact remains,” he said, “she is an unlawful alien, on Caladonian soil. She possesses two items of jewelry, but otherwise no means of livelihood, not to mention very little in the way of clothes. That is why I ask you, what is she to you? Is she your wife?”
“Yes,” said Thanakar.
“Papers, please.”
Thanakar took them from the inside pocket of his oilskin and slid them across the desk. The unraveler peeled them apart with his long fingers and held the seal up to the window. “You come under the protection of a powerful personage,” he said. “But what is this? Marital status: S.”
Again Thanakar pressed his hand against his lips. Then he spoke. “Please,” he said, “I speak of my intent. I have the means to support her. The government has granted me a house in K——” He named the village by the lake.
“I see that.”
“Please,” said Thanakar again. But there was no sincerity in the way he said the word: His teeth were clenched. Frustration had overcome his thoughts. That morning, cycling along the cinder road while his knee clanked and throbbed, his thoughts had all been routed by an army of conflicting hopes and doubts. They had driven him forward to the place where he now sat, his fingers twitching with frustration, an empty buzzing in his mind. Once again, he put his hands down to his knee, rubbing at the swollen joint.