“Of course I mind!” Linda snaps, nevertheless carrying out the order. She’s already been forced to unwrap all the gift packages, the contents of which are now strewn all over the bed. Then came the suitcases. She pulled everything out of them, but the madman with the anteater’s nose still doesn’t seem satisfied. “I don’t know what you want from me, but I can assure you that you’re becoming absolutely intolerable!”
The man grumbles something and waves his gun. “Yes, that’s it. Those two bags. Open them and put what’s in them on the bed, like the others … but very slowly. Even slower.”
“You’ll pay for this, you scoundrel….”
“I said slowly.”
“I have a date. My boyfriend will be here any moment now. And he’s a very strong man.”
“Open that box, please.”
“This one?” asks Linda.
“Open it.”
Linda takes the wrapping paper off of what looks like an old wooden box. Dr. Nose sinks his nose into the bouquet of flowers with which he appeared in the room. The wrapping paper flies off across the room and the old wooden box, covered with writings and furrows, is placed on the bed.
“Magnificent,” the man says.
“What’s magnificent?” Linda says sourly.
Egon steps over to the bed and strokes the box’s wooden surface. “This must be it. Magnificent, don’t you think?”
Linda rests her hands on her hips, peeved. “You’re insane. What’s so special about that dusty old thing?”
“Magnificent …,” Egon repeats.
Linda stares at him silently. She observes the man, who only comes up to her shoulders, with a mix of hatred and pity. “Never in my whole life have I found myself in a situation like this….”
Dr. Nose gestures that she should continue emptying out the bag.
“Nothing like this has ever happened to me,” Linda repeats.
“That small package, please.”
Inside of it is a wooden top.
“At last! That’s it!” the man exclaims. He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a similar top and rests it beside the one that Linda has just placed on the bed. “Look! They’re identical!”
At this point, the woman explodes. “What are you, some kind of clown? This is all a practical joke, isn’t it? Now I understand!” She whirls around toward the mirrored closet and shouts, “Elettra! Did you have me take part in one of those ridiculous American programs with a hidden camera? So where’s it hiding? Here? Behind this?”
Egon Nose raises his voice. “Ma’am, stop it!”
“No, you stop it! Enough with these shenanigans!” Linda continues, undaunted. She throws open the closet door and starts rummaging through the things on the shelves. “I fell for it for long enough! You aren’t even a good actor. With that toy gun and … heavens! You made me put everything in such disorder! I’m sure it’ll look quite hilarious on television! And do take off that fake nose!”
Egon raises his gun and aims it at Linda Melodia’s back. He rests his finger on the trigger and orders her, in a deep voice, “Stop.” Linda turns toward him and gestures for him to remove the fake nose. Dr. Nose begins to tremble with rage. “Not another word about my nose …”
Linda ignores him. “Well, are you going to take it off or not?”
“Not another word,” the man repeats, holding the gun in front of him.
“I’ve had enough of you,” Linda Melodia hisses, suddenly picking up the bronze Statue of Liberty from the closet beside her. “Take this!” she shouts, hurling it at him.
On the top floor of the Mandarin Oriental, four women come out of the elevator. They stride quickly, confidently, knowing there isn’t a moment to lose. The first one has short, dark hair, big blue eyes and a long, slender neck. The second one has a cascade of dark curls. The third is black and is wearing a sweat suit. The fourth has a shaved head and on her face is the determined expression of someone who has nothing to lose.
The moment they see them, two women with flashy blond wigs spring to attention without saying a word.
“Get out of here,” Mistral orders them without slowing down.
“That’s my room,” Elettra adds.
Egon’s women don’t utter a word. Their well-trained bodies are ready to pounce. Two groups form, facing each other. The hotel’s acoustic system is filling the air with Muzak. Music without meaning.
“Get out of here …,” Mistral repeats, staring the women in the eyes.
For the first time, one of the women speaks. Her voice is cold. “We don’t beat up other chicks. Normally.”
The black woman standing behind Elettra bursts out laughing. “Really?” she exclaims. “Well, we do!” As fast as lightning and with equally unpredictable power, her fist smashes into Egon’s lady-thug’s nose.
It’s all over in a second, if not less. Elettra and Mistral jump to the side as the woman staggers backward, dazed.
“Never lower your guard,” says Olympia, Harvey’s boxing trainer. “Right, Evelyn?”
32
THE STAR OF STONE
THE PNEUMATIC TRAIN HURTLES THROUGH THE OLD, FORGOTTEN tunnels, crossing over the subway lines, between the aqueduct pipes and the network of millions of cables that connect in the underground realms beneath New York City. It reaches a dank, leaky area, passes through it with the last puff of air it has left and, after a brief descent, stops with a groan at its destination. Last Station.
Sheng moves the flame from the lighter all around him. It’s an underground room with a pale blue vaulted ceiling. “Stars,” he says, recognizing the glowing specks. “We’re heading in the right direction.”
“But to get to what?” Harvey asks, passing in front of him. The underground station’s platform has only one exit. It’s a carved, egg-shaped opening surrounded by the twelve signs of the zodiac.
“The path of stars?” Sheng guesses, the lighter raised.
On the other side of the opening is a short corridor that finishes in a steep, narrow staircase leading up. They take it. It isn’t very long, and at the top of it is an open door. On the wall beside it is a relief sculpture of a man, his face twisted with grief, who’s slaying a bull.
“Mithra as he’s killing the bull,” Harvey says, remembering. They step through the doorway. The room on the other side is very large. To the left and right of the entrance, on the walls, are large carved bronze panels. Sheng’s lighter lingers beside the muscular shapes of ancient heroes who look like they’re leaping out from the stone. There are women of incomparable beauty, their faces partially hidden behind veils. There are animals, snakes, ravens and bulls lurking in the shadows.
Even with the help of their only light, the two boys can’t make out how large the underground room is. They walk down one side of it, pausing to look at the scenes carved into the walls and read their captions.
“ ‘Deucalion and Pyrrha after the flood’ …,” Sheng reads, studying a man and woman walking on a rocky outcrop surrounded by water. Over her shoulder she’s throwing stones, which are turning into tiny men.
The next panel depicts a brawny, bearded man who’s carving a rock with wind whirling around it. “ ‘Hephaestus creating Pandora, the first woman.’ ”
On the next side is Prometheus, surrounded by flames as he crafts a man out of clay and water. After him is a man sleeping in a large garden with animals peering into it. “ ‘Adam, made of clay, about to awaken,’ ” Sheng reads.
Next comes Niobe, who’s desperate because she’s been turned to stone.
They’re all legends that connect man and stone.
The room is shaped like a circle. Harvey suddenly stops. “Did you hear that?” he asks Sheng.
“No. What was it?”
The voice in Harvey’s head just said something. Look for the center, it told him.
“We need to look for the center,” says Harvey, pointing to the heart of the room, which is still pitch-dark, “and see what’s there.”
“Whatever you s
ay.”
The two friends stand next to each other, shoulder to shoulder, and move forward. After a few steps, their little flame starts to illuminate cords and vines hanging down from the ceiling. They look like big stone spiderwebs. Little by little, as they move closer to the center of the room, the tangle grows denser. Sheng touches one of the cords. It looks like fossilized wood, but it turns out to be fragile and snaps easily. All together, it looks like a jungle with a thick mane of stone. “Harvey,” he whispers, frightened, “what are all these … things?”
“I don’t know,” he answers, making his way through the spiderwebs trailing down from above.
“It’s like being surrounded by tree roots!”
“Maybe they really are roots,” Harvey says in a hushed voice, moving closer to his friend. The voice he heard a moment ago is silent now. “Give me some light, Sheng.” The tangle of branches is incredibly dense. The space has grown cramped, stifling. Harvey’s forced to walk with his head bowed down.
They’ve almost reached the center of the room. The lighter illuminates a strange object on the floor. “What’s that?” Sheng asks, moving the little flame as far in front of him as he can.
“I’m not sure,” Harvey whispers, pushing the branches aside to take a better look. “It looks like …”
“An egg?” Sheng says, finishing his sentence.
It’s a red rock shaped like a vase the size of a soccer ball. The top of it looks cracked, like a broken eggshell. It’s resting on a structure held up by three stones. A dolmen. Depicted around the vaselike rock are dozens of little men. Above it is a stylized shower of falling stars.
Sheng lights up the altar and red marble stone. The lighter goes out and is flicked on again. It goes out and is flicked on again. The mystery of the room and the object remain unsolved. “Do we take it?” he asks, looking over at his friend.
Harvey stares at the stone before him. He doesn’t seem to have even heard Sheng, whose voice is being covered up by a sort of murmur, an intense whispering that’s growing louder and louder inside his head. They’re voices. Thousands of overlapping voices talking to him with the same tone, mixing together. Harvey hears them but doesn’t understand them. All he can make out is an emotion, which is crystal-clear. Crystal-clear and nameless. It isn’t like the other times. It isn’t Dwaine. Among the roots coming down from the ceiling, he can sense absolute antiquity, a time that came before the founding of New York, before the Indian villages. It goes much, much farther back in time.
Pure antiquity, a state that belongs to no calendar, is echoing through his head like the song of the Earth itself. It’s what existed in the very beginning. It’s something that belonged to the first men.
Where were the first men born? In Africa? Asia? America? He doesn’t know. He never studied that at school. Or if he did, he doesn’t remember it anymore.
His head is crowded with names that mean nothing to him, that he can’t sort through no matter how hard he tries. Neanderthal man, Homo erectus, Cercopithecus. Which of them is the oldest? Which ones are the ancestors of mankind?
“Man descended from the apes …,” he says aloud.
“You got that right,” Sheng replies in the darkness.
The noise inside Harvey’s head has grown more insistent, almost painful. He raises his hands to push the branches aside. The stone is coarse, rough. It’s a pure object, untouched by men’s tools.
The little men surrounding it. The stars falling from the sky.
“Man descended from the apes,” he repeats. “Or from the stars.”
The stone is hollow. Harvey feels around inside of it, his fingers discovering a series of small lumps that form four backbones, like arches in a vaulted ceiling, which join together at the bottom of the vase.
There’s something at the bottom. Four tiny objects. Harvey grabs them and rolls them out into the palm of his hand. Sheng moves his lighter closer. “Smaller stones?”
“No …,” Harvey whispers, turning them over in his fingers. “They’re seeds. Tree seeds.”
The voices become even more insistent. Take the Star of Stone!
Harvey claps his hands over his ears, trying not to hear, but then he gives in, grabs the stone and picks it up.
“What are you doing?” Sheng asks him.
“I think we’re supposed to take it with us,” he answers.
“Take it where?”
Harvey turns around. The wooden vines caress his face. “We’d better get out of here,” he says as the light flickers out.
“Yeah, but go where?”
Sheng tries to get the lighter working again, but all it does is let out a few meager sparks. “Oh, no!” he groans.
“There’s got to be a way out of here,” Harvey says beside him. He pushes the vines aside and grabs Sheng’s arm. “Come on. Follow me.”
“Which way?”
“In this direction. I think it’s the right one.”
“How can you tell?”
“The voice of the Earth just told me so.”
Sheng tugs on his friend’s arm, stopping him. He switches on his camera, which starts up with a high-pitched whine. “The flash,” he explains. “We can use it to see something….” A second later, a burst of white light fills the room.
With Harvey leading the way, they reach a second door in the circular wall. They slip down a tunnel and find a passageway heading upward.
Harvey is clutching the Star of Stone to his chest. In his pocket are the four seeds. Sheng sets off his flash every ten seconds, intermittently lighting up their path. He doesn’t ask questions. He doesn’t say a word.
From time to time they stop. Each time, Harvey seems to listen to something and then says which way they should go.
33
THE DOOR
THE DOOR TO LINDA MELODIA’S HOTEL ROOM SUDDENLY BURSTS open. The woman peers out, sees what’s happening in the hallway and cries, “Elettra!”
“Auntie!” Elettra shouts.
Linda dodges one of the women from Lucifer, along with Olympia’s punches. Then she leans back against the door, too stunned to do anything else.
Mistral holds out her hand. “Quick! Let’s get out of here!”
Four girls are duking it out right outside her hotel room. Soaking wet, Elettra and Mistral shout at Linda to follow them.
“Get out of here!” Olympia shouts to her, too.
The woman stares at the black girl. Who’s that? she wonders. But she doesn’t have time to find out. Enough is enough, she thinks. And quite frankly, this is definitely enough. She dashes down the hallway. The moment she catches up with her niece, she asks, almost shouting, “What’s going on?”
“Are you okay?”
“Yes, but …” Linda points to the room she just left. “What is it these people want?”
Elettra grabs her aunt’s hands and pulls her away, almost dragging her. “It’s a really long story! We’ve really got to get out of here!” She tries to accompany her to the elevator at the end of the hall. Mistral, on the other hand, moves toward the hotel room door.
“Mistral!” Elettra calls to her. “Come on, quick!”
The French girl doesn’t listen to her. Her back flattened up against the wall, she moves even closer. The door is still open. The map and the tops are inside.
She can’t leave them there.
She goes in.
A stairway. A stairway leading up. Flashes of light coming from above.
Harvey and Sheng scramble up the steps. They push against a wall of wooden planks nailed together and make an opening that leads into a big, empty room. Sheng steps out from the darkness, coughing. He kneels down on the floor. Behind him, Harvey staggers around the room, exhausted. He leans against his friend’s shoulder, staring at him. Sheng looks back at him. They’re covered head to foot with cobwebs. Giant threads of spider’s silk.
“You okay?”
“I think so.”
Sheng pulls himself up to his feet. The room around them has pe
eling walls and a ceiling with patches of mildew. The floor is covered with debris. The windows are open, empty gaps. A doorless doorway leads out into a silent corridor. There are lights coming from outside.
The two boys lean out into the corridor to take a look. They’re in a giant abandoned building. Dozens of empty rooms. Rust, crumbling walls. Echoes of laughter. Shadows. Stairways leading nowhere. Silence. Light streaming in through the damp air.
“I’ve got to get out of here,” Sheng says, looking around. The rhythmic noise they hear is the rain. It’s muffled, melodious. “I’ve got to get this stuff off me.”
They walk down two giant hallways, which were once painted. Vines are peeking out from the gaps in the walls. The light streaming through the boarded-up windows reveals the glistening paths of snails on the walls. It’s a crazy building without any real dimensions.
It’s the smallpox hospital on Roosevelt Island.
Mountains of wrapping paper. From the hallway between the door and the bedroom, all Mistral can see is wrapping paper. She steps closer. She sees the open suitcases, the clothes scattered all over the bed and the floor, the bouquet of flowers … and a man’s body lying on the floor. She can hear him gasping for air. Half-hidden behind his fingers, the man’s eyes open wide. His nose is bleeding and his hand is splattered with blood.
“Ohhh … ohhh …,” Egon Nose howls, trying to get to his feet. “Ohhh …”
He gropes around for something.
The gun.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Mistral darts forward. As if in a dream, she dives onto the bed and flings the mountain of paper onto the man lying on the floor. She recognizes Elettra’s bag, the wooden map, the tops. She scoops it all up in her arms and flies off, leaving a rustling pile of crumpled paper behind her.
“Hey! Little girl!” Dr. Nose shrieks, rising to his feet. His enormous nose is dripping blood all over the carpet. The door to the room is open. His women are retreating from the blows of two strange girls. Egon Nose raises his gun.
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