Budayeen Nights

by George Alec Effinger

  “How curious,” said Ernst scornfully. “Do you know, I don’t care at all.”

  “The principal occupation of the people of this city, in light of their self-imposed imprisonment, is to build and change their town, to provide entertainment both in the labor and in the enjoyment thereafter. And the model they have chosen to follow is our city, here. It was the wall that inspired them. You must know that the mayor’s office here receives a letter from this village perhaps eight times yearly, asking for instructions on how they may reproduce the newest alterations in our city. I have seen their version, and it is so exact a rendering that it would give you the nervous ailment peculiar to white Europeans. You would lose all sense of reality and orientation. This cafe has been built, table by table, tile by tile, bottle by bottle. The very crack in the mirror inside has been reconstructed perfectly, attention having been paid to angularity, width, depth, and character. A man owns the cafe, from whom Monsieur Gargotier could not be differentiated, even by M. Gargotier himself. And, do you think, there is a dejected drunkard sitting at this table, many thousands of miles away, whose eyes have the same expression as yours, whose hands flutter just as yours, whose parts smell as foul as yours. What do you think he is doing?”

  “He is wishing that you would go away.”

  “That is mildly put,” said Kebap. “I wish I could know what you really thought to say.”

  “You may find out easily enough. Ask that solitary winesop in Nearer Hindoostan.” Ernst had been observing a dimly lighted tower across the square. He turned to look at Kebap, to fix the teasing boy with a venomous stare, perhaps to frighten him away at last, but Kebap was not there. Ernst sighed; he would ask the proprietor to do something about the annoyance.

  Every quarter hour a clock tower chimed more of the night away. Sitting alone in the Cafe de la Fee Blanche, he could hear the distant carnival noises: sirens, the flat clanging of cheap metal chimes, the music of small silver bells, shrill organ melodies, gunshots, voices singing, voices laughing. In the immediate area of the cafe, however, there were few people about—only those who had exhausted their money or their curiosity and were returning home. Occasionally, the wind brought tenuous hints of strange smells and noises. Still, Ernst had no desire to discover what they might be. Over the years, his route to the city had been long, and these days he was tired.

  “I have returned,” said Kebap. He leaned casually over the iron rail of the cafe. Ernst regarded him with some boredom, realizing that this was the first time in quite a while that he had actually seen the boy, though their conversation had been growing increasingly bizarre for several hours.

  “There is no such town in Nearer Hindoostan,” said Ernst. “There is no such perfect imitation of this corrupted city. The Lord of Heaven would not allow two pits of damnation in one world.”

  “Of course not,” said Kebap with a wink. “Wherever did you get the idea that there might be another?”

  “From the pigeons, of course,” said Ernst, greatly irritated. “The pigeons have to come from somewhere.”

  “Why?”

  “Have you ever seen a baby pigeon?” asked Ernst. “I don’t believe I ever have. I always wondered where the fledgling pigeons were. We see numbers of adult birds around every day; there must be a proportionate mass of immature young. It is a great mystery. And one never sees a dead or dying bird, unless it has been the victim of some accident, generally caused by cruel or careless human agency. I theorize that pigeons are immortal, and the actual carriers and disseminators of all human knowledge. This town of yours in Hindoostan is the product of unimaginative pigeons.”

  “You ask dangerous questions, yaa Sidi,” said Kebap, his expression fearful. “We had wrens in Armenia, I recall. There were many newly hatched chicks, chirping pleasantly before dusk. But here, concerning the pigeons, you must learn to keep silent.”

  “I believe I know who your mother might be. At least, if she is not, Eugenie would be proud to call you her son.”

  “My mother stands over there,” said Kebap. “She has not clothed her breasts, as she should in the evening, only because she hopes to beguile you. She is a very energetic person, yaa Sidi, and even though the hour grows late, she still reserves a place in her heart for you.”

  Ernst shook his head. The liquor had made him sick. “No, I am sorry. I have ceased hunting after hearts. Indeed, I thought no one followed that fruitless sport any longer.”

  “Then there is my older sister. That is her, on the far side of the square, pretending that she is an armless beggar.”

  “No, you tactless procurer. You still have much to learn.”

  “I am sorry again,” said Kebap with a cruel grin. “My own body will not be available for perhaps another three years. These are the days of my carefree childhood.”

  Ernst stood up and screamed at the boy. Kebap laughed and ran toward his mother.

  There were few customers in the Fee Blanche after dark. Ernst did not mind. His nights were entrusted to solitude; he actually looked forward to night, when he ceased performing for the benefit of the passersby. Now his only audience was himself. His thoughts grew confused, and he mistook that quality for complexity. By this time, he was taking his whiskey straight.

  There had been a woman, Ernst thought, later in his life than either of his juvenescent calamities. This woman had brought a great settling of his rampant doubts, a satisfaction of his many needs. There had been a time of happiness, he thought. The idea seemed to fit, though the entire memory was clouded in the haze of years and of deliberate forgetfulness. There was a large open space, an asphalt field with painted lines running in all directions. Ernst was dressed differently, was speaking another language, was frantically trying to hide somewhere. He couldn’t see the picture any more clearly. He couldn’t decide whether or not he was alone.

  Somehow it now seemed as if it hadn’t even been his own experience, as though he were recalling the past of another person. He had forgotten very well indeed.

  “Your passport, sir?” he whispered, remembering more.

  “Yes, here it is,” he answered himself. “I’m sure you’ll find it all in order.” He spoke aloud in German, and the words sounded odd in the hot desert night.

  “You are Ernst Weinraub?”

  “With a t. My name is Weintraub. A rather commonplace German name.”

  “Yes. So. Herr Weintraub. Please step over here. Have a seat.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “No, this is purely formality. It won’t take but a moment to clear it up.”

  Ernst recalled how he had taken a chair against the gray and green wall. The official had disappeared for a short time. When he returned, he was accompanied by another man. The two spoke quietly in their own language, and quickly enough so that Ernst understood little. He heard his name mentioned several times, each time mispronounced as “Weinraub.”

  Ernst shook his head sadly. He had never gone through such a scene with any border officials, and he had never spelled his name with a “t.” He stared at the hotel across the avenue and took a long swallow of whiskey. Now the Fee Blanche was empty again except for himself and M. Gargotier, who sat listening to a large radio inside the dark cave of the bar.

  “Monsieur Weinraub?” It was Czerny, his gray uniform soiled, his tunic hanging unbuttoned on his thin frame. “You’re certainly dependable. Always here, eh? What an outpost you’d make.” Czerny staggered drunkenly. He supported a drunken woman with the aid of another uniformed man. Ernst’s own eyes were not clear, but he recognized Ieneth. He did not answer.

  “Don’t be so moody,” said the woman. “You don’t have any more secrets, do you, Sidi Weinraub?” Czerny and the other man laughed.

  Ernst looked at her as she swayed on the sidewalk. “No,” he said. He took some more of his liquor and waved her away. She paid no attention.

  “Here,” said Czerny, “try some of this. From the amusement quarter. A little stand by the Pantheon. The man makes the best s
tuffed crab I’ve ever had. Do you know Lisbon? The Tavares has a name for stuffed crab. Our local man should steal that honor.”

  “Alfama,” said Ernst.

  “What is that?” asked Ieneth.

  “Alfama,” said Ernst. “Lisbon. The old quarter.”

  “Yes,” said Czerny. They were all silent for a few seconds. “Oh, forgive me, M. Weinraub. You are acquainted with my companion, are you not?”

  Ernst shook his head and raised his hand for M. Gargotier, forgetting that the proprietor had retired inside his bar and could not see.

  “We have met before,” said the stranger in the uniform of the Jaish. “Perhaps M. Weinraub does not recall the occasion. It was at a party at the home of Safety Director Chanzir.” Ernst smiled politely but said nothing.

  “Then may I present my friend?” said Czerny. “M. Weinraub, I am honored to introduce Colonel Sandor Courane.”

  Czerny grinned, waiting to see how Ernst would react. Courane reached over the railing to shake hands, but Ernst pretended not to see. “Ah, yes,” he said. “Forgive me for not recognizing you. You write verses, do you not?”

  Czerny’s grin vanished. “Do not be more of a fool, M. Weinraub. You see very little from your seat here, you know. You cannot understand what we have done. Tonight the city is ours!”

  Ernst drained the last drop of whiskey from his glass. “To whom did it belong previously?” he said softly.

  “M. Weinraub,” said Ieneth, “we’ve had some pleasant talks. I like you, you know. I don’t want you to be hurt.”

  “How can I be hurt?” asked Ernst. “I’m carefully not taking sides. I’m not going to offend anyone.”

  “You offend me,” said Czerny, beckoning to Ieneth and Courane. The woman and the two uniformed men tottered away down the sidewalk. Ernst got up and took his glass into the bar for more whiskey.

  The lonely night passed. It was very late. Ernst drank, and his thoughts became more incoherent and his voice more strident; but there was only M. Gargotier to observe him now. He sang to himself, and thought sadly about the past, and, though he gestured energetically to the proprietor, even that patient audience remained silent. Finally, driven further into his own solitude, he drew out his most dangerous thoughts. He reviewed his life honestly, as he did every night. He took each incident in order, or at least in the special order that this particular night demanded. “The events of the day,” he thought, “considered with my customary objectivity. A trivial today, a handful of smoke.”

  Only the bright, unwinking lights of the amusement quarter still pierced the darkness. The last celebrants had all straggled back up the street, past the Cafe de la Fee Blanche. Now there was only Ernst and the nervous, sleepy barkeep.

  When was the last time Ernst had seen Gretchen? He recalled the characteristic thrill he got whenever he saw his wife’s comfortable shape, recognized her familiar pace. What crime had he committed, that he was left to decay alone? Had he grown old? He examined the backs of his hands, the rough, yellowed skin where the brown spots merged into a fog. He tried to focus on the knife ridges of tendon and vein. No, he decided, he wasn’t old. It wasn’t that.

  Ernst listened. There were no sounds now. It had been a while since Kebap had last sauntered past with his vicious words and his degenerate notions. It was so like the city, that one as young as the boy could already possess the bankrupt moral character of a Vandal warlord. The festivals in the other quarters of the city had long ago come to an end. The pigeons in the square did not stir; there wasn’t even the amazed flutter of their sluggish wings, lifting the birds away from some imagined danger, settling them back asleep before their mottled feet touched the ground again. They wouldn’t move even if he threw his table into their sculpted flock.

  There was no Kebap, no Czerny, no Ieneth. There was only Ernst, and the darkness. “This is the time for art,” he said. “There can’t be such silence anywhere else in the world, except perhaps at the frozen ends. And even there, why, you have whales and bears splashing into the black water. The sun never sinks, does it? There’s always some daylight. Or else I have it wrong, and it is dark all the time. In any event, there will be creatures of one sort or another to disturb the stillness. Here I am, the one creature, and I’ve decided that it is a grand misuse of silence just to sit here and drink. The night is this city’s single resource. Well, that and disease.”

  He tried to stand, to gesture broadly and include the entire city in a momentary act of drama, but he lost his balance and sat heavily again in his chair. “This is the time for art,” he muttered. “I shall make of the city either a living statue or a very boring play. Whichever, I shall present it before the restless audiences of my former home. Then won’t I be welcomed back! I’ll let the others worry about what to do with these mean people, these most malodorous buildings, and all this sand. I’ll drop it all down in the middle of Lausanne, I think, and let the proper authorities attempt to deal with it. I shall get my praise, and they shall get another city.”

  He fretted with his clothing for a few moments, fumbling in drunken incompetence with the buttons of his shirt. He gave up at last. “It is the time for art, as I said. Now I must make good on that claim, or else these gentlefolk will be right in calling me an idiot. The concept of presenting this city as a work of art, a serious offering, had a certain value as amusement, but not enough of enchantment to carry the idea beyond whimsy. So, instead I shall recite the final chapter of my fine trilogy of novels. The third volume, you may recall, is entitled The Suprina of the Maze. It concerns the suprine of Carbba, Wreylan III, who lived about the time of the Protestant Reformation, and his wife, the mysterious Suprina Without A Name. The suprina has been variously identified on many occasions by students of political history, but each such ‘authoritative account’ differs, and it is unlikely that we shall ever know her true background.”

  Ernst looked up suddenly, as if he had heard a woman calling his name. He closed his eyes tightly and continued. “This enigmatic suprina,” he said, “is a very important character in the trilogy. At least I shall make her so, even though she does not appear until the final book. She has certain powers, almost supernatural. And at the same time, she is possessed of an evil nature that battles with her conscience. Frequently, the reader will stop his progress through the book to wonder at the complications of her personality.

  “She is to be loved and hated. I do not wish the reader to form but a single attitude toward her. That is for Friedlos, my protagonist. He will come riding across the vast wooded miles, leaving behind in the second volume the bleak, gelid corpse of Marie, lying stiff upon the frontier marches of Breulandy. Friedlos will pass through Poland, I suppose, in order to hear from the president there a tale of the Queen Without a Name. I must consider how best to get Friedlos from Breulandy to Poland. Perhaps a rapid transition: ‘A few weeks later, still aggrieved by the death of his second love, Friedlos crossed the somber limits of Poland.’ Bien. Then off he starts for Carbba, intrigued by the president’s second-hand information. Ah, Friedlos, you are so much like your creator that I blush to put my name on the book’s spine.”

  Ernst dug in his pockets, looking again for his outline. He could not find it, and shrugged carelessly. “Gretchen, will you ever learn that it is you he seeks? I have put you on a throne, Gretchen. I have made you suprina of all Carbba, but I have given you my own life.”

  He longed to see Steven, his son. It had been years; that, too, wasn’t fair. Governments and powers must have their way, but certainly it wouldn’t upset their dynastic realms to allow the fulfilling of one man’s sentiments. How old was the boy now? Old enough to have children of his own? Perhaps, amazingly, grandchildren for Ernst? Steven might have a son; he might be named Ernst, after his funny, old grandfather.

  “How unusual it would be, to bounce a grandchild upon this palsied knee,” he thought. “I doubt if ever a grandchild has been cuddled in all the history of this city. Surely Kebap could not accurately identify his
own grandparents. Would they be anxious to claim him? He is, after all, somewhat of an objectionable child. And he has had only nine years to develop so remarkably offensive a manner. It is truly an accomplishment—all emotional considerations aside, one must give the wretched boy his due.

  “There is something about him, though, that obsesses me. If there were not, I should without hesitation inflict some kind of permanent injury upon him, to induce him to leave my peace unspoiled. I detect an affinity. I cannot dispute the possibility that I, myself, may be the lad’s own father. What a droll entertainment that would be. I shall have to explore the possibility with him tomorrow. Indeed, the more I consider it, the better the idea becomes. I hope I can remember it.”

  He heard the rattling of M. Gargotier drawing the steel gate across the door and windows of the small cafe. The sound was loud and harsh, and it made Ernst feel peculiarly abandoned, as it did every night. Suddenly, he was aware that he sat alone in a neglected city, a colony despised by the rest of the world, alone on the insane edge of Africa, and no one cared. He heard the click of a switch, and knew that the Fee Blanche’s own sad strings of lights had been extinguished. He heard M. Gargotier’s slow, heavy steps.

  “M. Weinraub?” said the proprietor softly. “I will go now. It is nearly dawn. Everything is locked up. Maybe you should go, too, eh?” Ernst nodded, staring across the avenue. The proprietor made some meaningless grunt and hurried home, down the street.

  The last of the whiskey went down Ernst’s throat. Its abrupt end shocked him. So soon? He remembered M. Gargotier’s last words, and tears formed in the corners of his eyes. He struggled to order his thoughts.