The accusation baffled Senlin. He had never read or heard a word about Algez. The angle of Kristof’s gun made it difficult to think. He doubted that a denial would convince the agent, and he was too flustered to think of a convincing lie. So he blurted, “I am the headmaster of the only school in a fishing village called Isaugh. I came here on my honeymoon with my wife, but I have lost her. The original artist, who is withholding information about my lost wife, coerced me into stealing this painting for him. I am only doing this for my wife.”
Using the barrel of his pistol, Kristof knocked his cap back on his head and scratched his brow with the bead of the gun. “You’re a good liar.”
The same attentiveness and suspicion that made Kristof a successful lookout also apparently blinded him to honesty. Which was probably just as well. Senlin could think of nothing to say except “Thank you.”
“I wish you were half as good at painting. This is a terrible forgery. The Commissioner will spot it, or one of his beetle-brained curators will. How much money do you have?”
“I have two and a half shekels to my name.”
“A very poor pirate. Imagine that! For two and a half shek I can give you an hour’s head start.” Kristof holstered his pistol and asked, “Do I smell of drink?”
“Strongly,” Senlin said, straightening his arm as he dug into the pockets of his trousers and coat. He placed the last of his coins in Kristof’s palm.
“Then I will give you two hours.” Kristof shooed Senlin from his chair with an exhausted sweep of his arm and sat down with a grunt. “If you ever decide that you do work for the House of Algez, tell them that I’ll entertain offers. I’d make an excellent rat.”
Senlin refused to run at the door, though his heart beat at him to do just that. Instead, he walked with determined and loping steps, like a king at his coronation. He would not run. He would not.
Kristof called after him when he’d reached the door, and Senlin turned to find him pointing at the painting with a smile that was yellow as old ivory. “Why does the dwarf walk on the water?” he said, a hiccup turning into a belch.
Chapter Ten
“The Baths are like a chrysalis. Exhausted men and women wrap the Baths about them and, in a fortnight, are transformed. One may come in a worm, and go out a butterfly.”
- Everyman’s Guide to the Tower of Babel, V. III
The Customs Bureau building was crowded now with the changing of the shifts. A cacophony of boots, exaggerated by the odd acoustics of the corridors, drummed everywhere like an unbalanced engine. The air was thick with the musk of leather and sweat. No doubt the atmosphere would’ve been toxic to (what had Kristof called him?) Commissioner Snot.
Senlin couldn’t help but imagine that the agents leered at him more knowingly now. He came around a blind corner and collided with a man who stood a head shorter than him. It was a minor bump, but Senlin felt like a train had struck him.
The man, dressed in white, craned his neck back and peered at Senlin from under the frayed brim of a straw hat. His unwrinkled, poreless complexion reminded Senlin of a boiled egg, and his large round teeth seemed to have been worn down by habitual gnawing, as if he made a point of worrying the bones left on his dinner plate. The Red Hand’s pale blue eyes were distant, almost sleepy. “Isn’t he tall! Yes, quite the specimen; prominent brow, thin lips...” the Red Hand said in a low, meditative grumble. “Sharp chin and cheeks— such a tragic visage! Must be from the land of cod and ballads and lighthouses. Like something straight out of a textbook: Eastern Ur Male.”
The Red Hand’s deduction was startling in its accuracy. Even amid his shock, Senlin couldn’t help but to be impressed by the man’s intelligence. But before Senlin could formulate a coherent reply, the Red Hand swept past him, his hands balled in his pockets, the soles of his leather sandals clucking against his heels. Senlin gulped at the lump in his throat and hurried on.
He could only hope that Kristof was as good as his word. Though, really, what were two hours worth? He’d planned on it being weeks before the forgery was discovered, had planned to borrow a little money from Tarrou and collect Marya and be halfway down the Tower before the Commissioner could loose his hounds. He’d planned to vanish into the human maze, Marya clutched to his side, not just clutched, but also tied, just like the old spinster sisters had been lashed together in the Market. But so much had gone wrong.
A chorus of bells rang three o’clock as he exited again onto the gloomy street. His satchel seemed to pull at his neck like a millstone, the bottle biting into his hip like a riding crop. Many blocks stood between him and the bench by the glittering reservoir where he was to meet Ogier. He had no choice but to run.
If the painter turned out to be a liar or a villain, if it turned out that he was behind Marya’s present difficulties, and all of this had been a ruse to trick Senlin into doing his dirty work, Senlin wasn’t sure what he would do. He might strangle Ogier in the streets, right in front of everyone. He wondered if a single soul would try to stop him, or if the tourists and drudges would part and pretend to look away. The thought horrified him.
For the moment, he was still anonymous. No one paid his hurry much attention. He dashed like a rabbit between the curbs of the street, bounding over the gutters full of sudsy gray water, and dodging the crones and wenches toting laundry baskets. He apologized until it became a string of indiscriminate pardons. By the time his feet struck the clean flagstones of the mall that ringed the reservoir, he was shining with sweat.
The promenade was overflowing with vendors. The gaps between booths, which were buried under produce, tonics and soaps, were clogged with wagons at almost every end. He could hardly squeeze through. He veered toward the shoreline where the crowd appeared, for the moment, more fluid, and regretted the decision as soon as he saw what had parted the crowd. Customs agents encircled a man, freshly shaved and stripped to the waist. A basket of coal sat at his feet. Senlin had stumbled upon the making of a hod.
When he saw who was reading the declaration of the man’s crimes, he stopped dead. It was Commissioner Pound, dressed just as he had for the ball, in a black suit that seemed to have shrunk a few sizes. He wore his nightmarish gas mask. The lenses over his eyes were as black as the bottom of a well. They seemed to stare straight at Senlin, and the illusion made his skin crawl.
It was unfair. As hard and as far as he had searched, he could not find Marya, and yet he could not stop running headlong into his enemies.
Senlin tried to dissolve back into the crowd, but found himself hemmed in between a wagon that was filled with fragrant melons and a perimeter of children in striped bathing suits, all gawking at the poor, ruined man. His crime was apparently entirely one of debt: the Commissioner read a list of the man’s unpaid bills to restaurants, clothiers, dance halls, theaters, hotels, and every other trap of pleasure the Baths had to offer. Senlin didn’t doubt that the charges were exaggerated like those recited at the boy’s execution. Regardless, this wasn’t his tragedy, and he hadn’t time to share in the man’s misery. He’d be joining him soon enough if he didn’t hurry.
Senlin dug his forearm into the crowd, trying to open a gap. His efforts were rewarded by one of the children slamming her heel down on his toe. He let out a pained yelp, and the Commissioner’s litany halted. The cans of the gasmask whipped about and pointed at him. Pound called, “Mr. Senlin! Mr. Senlin. I’m so glad I caught you.” The words froze his blood, and the children recoiled from him. He felt as if he’d been shoved onto a stage. “I’ve heard that you have been very active in your notes. Good. I like a thorough scholar. A man who makes up his own mind can be trusted. Is it done fuming?”
Senlin nodded, relieved that he had not yet been discovered. “The sun is doing its work. Your Ogier is nearly cured.” He rubbed at his nose and sniffed daintily several times. “It has been exhausting for me, but I have drafted some excellent impressions.”
“Excellent impressions!” Pound echoed, and slapped the decree he’d been readi
ng against the chest of an unprepared agent. The agent fumbled to catch the papers before they spilled. “It occurred to me that perhaps an interview would make a nice frame for your article. Bald facts are so dull. We should sit down and discuss my thoughts on the art world.”
“Yes, indeed. Of course,” Senlin said eagerly. The minutes were slipping by. What if Marya wasn’t conveniently placed? What if she was locked in a room across the Baths or sitting in a tub in the Fountain? It might take him hours to find her even if Ogier knew exactly where she was staying. He’d have to sneak about town like a thief. As a thief, in fact.
To Senlin’s relief, the Commissioner was already losing interest. The headmaster was preparing a bow when the bare-chested, swarthy wretch, the newly made hod, leapt through the agents and grabbed Senlin by the coat. He pulled Senlin into a fierce embrace and dug his fingers into his back. Senlin’s revulsion was automatic: he turned his head and fought to bring his arms up between them, but the hod only gripped him more tightly.
“My friend, it is me!”
Senlin turned back to reexamine the man’s wide face, threaded with sweat and blood from where the unforgiving razor had scored his scalp and cheeks.
Without his imperial beard or his iron mane, Tarrou seemed now like a ghost cut from its shell. Only his slate eyes and warm baritone were recognizable.
Senlin quickly turned back to the Commissioner. “Commissioner Pound, there must be some mistake. This is Tarrou! He was in your home two nights ago.”
“I am just as surprised as you, Mr. Senlin. There is no mistake; ledgers do not lie. He has not paid his bills in more than a month, and yet has gone on living like a sheik.”
Senlin thought of all those dinners and bottles his friend had bought for the two of them. He had been stubbornly generous. “So, he is a little tardy; I’m sure he will pay his debts now.” Senlin gripped his friend’s hard shoulders. “This is no time to be shy with your wallet. Out with it!”
“I cannot,” Tarrou said. All his humor, his citric wit, was gone. Senlin looked into Tarrou’s eyes and saw a man who had passed beyond humiliation, passed through despair and fear. Some primitive kernel had burst open inside him. Tarrou was now livid with rage.
Abruptly, Tarrou roared over Senlin’s head at the goggling crowd: “I betrayed myself and my friends. I grew fat and tired.” Tarrou gripped the sides of his gut, a softened swell of abandoned muscle. “I drank and danced and soaked myself silly, but I was never free. I was only distracted! I now appear to be what I have been for years: a slave.” The crowd blanched when Tarrou, in a gesture of pique, smeared the blood from his scalp down over his eyes. “We have society, but we are alone. We have light, but we have no sun. The Tower sucks our life and gives us only a little diversion and a little death. Do not accept a little death! Demand a great, booming demise!”
As each phrase burst with more hatred and bile than the last, the men and women who had come to stare, to watch with voyeuristic pleasure, found themselves becoming the focus of attention. The Commissioner and his agents watched the audience for any wince of sympathy or revolt. The onlookers stood motionless as startled rabbits. They blinked in the shadow of a hawk.
Amidst this horrible tension, Senlin vaguely registered Tarrou’s hand passing into his coat pocket. Then Tarrou shoved him so violently he was sent reeling backward against the cowering mob, “And here you only care about your paintings and your book. Academic! Anemic! You are as cowardly as a clam! Your death will go off like a fart!”
Senlin was pained by his friend’s abrupt betrayal, and his shock registered baldly on his face. But, in the very next moment, he understood Tarrou’s motive. It wasn’t to hurt him; it was to protect him. He was making it apparent that they were not really friends and certainty not co-conspirators. Nevertheless, Senlin was shocked by Tarrou’s seditious outburst. He had always shied away from political statements, had seemed always afraid that they might be overheard. It was only now, when there was nothing left for him to lose, that Tarrou was free to speak his mind, and it had been, Senlin thought, a fine speech.
The Commissioner flicked his hand and his agents leapt on Tarrou. They swung their black-lacquered clubs at his legs, and his knees buckled. A second rain of blows to his back and shoulders made him collapse entirely. Tarrou refused to cry out, even as he was driven into a ball on the ground. Senlin wanted to leap into the frenzy of batons and scrabble down to his friend and split the abuse. But that would make an end of everything. Tarrou’s sacrifice would be worthless, and Marya would be lost forever. He would have to be the coward once again, and once again leave a friend behind.
The Commissioner casually resumed their conversation. “Come by my home this evening at eight, Mr. Senlin.” Pound’s voice sounded like a wasp in a can. “Bring a sharp pencil or two. I will add some flamboyance to your facts.” He turned from Senlin, concluding the exchange, and pointed at Tarrou where he lay panting raggedly, his eyes already swelling shut. Without a hint of inflection, he said, “Put that in the wall.”
In the distance, bells rang the half hour.
Senlin pushed outward with his shoulder. No one tried to stomp on his toes now. They parted before him like water about a stone. Nor did they gawk at him, but only looked down as if they were afraid. And why shouldn’t they be afraid? Ruin was contagious. If Tarrou, who was so well liked, could be ruined so summarily, undefended by anyone, what hope did anyone have?
Marya. What hope was there for her?
Senlin found the artist sitting on the bench by the shore, as promised, the sleeves of his paint- spattered smock tied up around his elbows. Ogier sat with his hands in his lap, a serene, unfocused expression on his face. He would seem, to the casual observers, a lamentable sort: a poor hunchbacked outcast. But Senlin knew better. There was nothing about Ogier that deserved pity. Ogier was clever and commanding. He had marched Senlin around easily enough.
When Ogier saw Senlin, he did not stir much, but only nodded at the opposite arm of the bench. Senlin sat down and without looking at the artist spoke to the air and the uninterested migrations of bathers, “They have Tarrou. They’ve turned him into a hod.” Turning his head finally toward the painter, Senlin felt his face flush with anger. “I hope the painting is worth it to you. It was not worth it to me.” He felt his composure slipping. He wanted very badly to blame the artist, to hold him accountable, and to punish him. “I have only an hour before the alarm is raised because of your incompetent copy.”
Senlin watched the plot unravel on the stage of Ogier’s face. The painter’s expression bloomed and wilted and bloomed again as disbelief and despair ran through him. It was frightening to watch Ogier’s confidence collapse, and fascinating to watch him struggle to rebuild it, first with the smoothing of his brow and then the untangling of his mouth. His composure regained, the painter dispensed with his earlier discretion and turned to face Senlin. “Then we haven’t time for this. The painting is still around the bottle?”
“Yes,” Senlin said, sliding his satchel down the length of the bench. Ogier snatched it quickly, a little alarmed by Senlin’s cavalier shuttling of his precious cargo.
“Wait here,” Ogier said and left Senlin on the bench. The artist took the satchel to one of the green-painted bathhouses, hardly larger than an outhouse, paid a dozy attendant two pence for the key, and then disappeared inside.
Several minutes later, Senlin was on the verge of rising and beating the flimsy door of the changing stall in when the artist emerged. Ogier gestured Senlin to his feet. “We must hurry.”
“Tell me about Marya.” He said with planted feet.
“As we go. There’s little time before they will close the ports to trap you here. That will be the Commissioner’s first move, to tighten the noose.” Ogier opened a small paper accordion, and consulted the printed grid. He scanned the port schedule for a moment before announcing, “A ferry leaves at the top of the hour from North Port. We’ll be pressed to get there in time.”
“I
haven’t any money.”
“I will get you aboard.”
“Is Marya there, at North Port? Tell me where she is, or I promise you, I will…” his voice quavered and he gulped. He found he was clinching his fists and bringing them up. Heat ran up his spine like a fuse.
The artist gave Senlin a disarmingly fragile smile. His expression was sympathetic, genuine, and devoid of the arrogance that had seemed permanently chiseled there. It was as if Ogier had, all in a moment, pulled off a hood he’d worn since the first time Senlin had set eyes on him. “I am sorry I had to treat you with such suspicion, but I had to be sure.” Bewildered, Senlin dropped his hands and Ogier pressed on, “This place is full of spies and traitors. I had to be sure you were Marya’s husband. You have given me all the proof I need. You would risk anything for her. I will tell you all I know, but we have to leave for North Port this instant. We must hurry without seeming to.”
Chapter Eleven
“The truth, when finally told, will often sound strange, while a lie is so often familiar.”
- Everyman’s Guide to the Tower of Babel, V.IV
With their heads drawn so close that they looked like conjoined twins, Ogier and Senlin plowed a way toward North Port. They skirted the agents who prowled among the bathers scrabbling about the perfectly curved shoreline. They didn’t dare run. Brass music brayed from an unseen bandstand, the piccolo rising shrilly over the joyless band. The afternoon sun no longer dazzled, but seemed rather like a scaly disease that scabbed the tourists and blighted the pastel hotels. The Fountain vented steam like a factory stack. A girl selling oranges from her apron, still years from womanhood, was trying to evade a cotton-headed, lecherous gentleman who tried to pinch her hips and stroke her hair. The girl dropped the corners of her apron, letting the oranges fall and bounce and roll underfoot as she made a nimble escape. Senlin thought of his own students for the first time in weeks. The memory seemed like a fable: an ancient and unsophisticated ideal. He used to occasionally dream of bringing his class to the Tower of Babel on a grand field trip. Now he couldn’t imagine anything more specious.
Senlin Ascends (The Books of Babel Book 1) Page 20