"Mur-der-ESS. Mur-der-ESS. Mur-der-ESS."
Only today did she feel she truly understood the protesters. Always before she had considered them pious hypocrites and censorious meddlers. She saw now for the first time that they were all perfectly sincere. That they had no hidden agenda. That they meant no more than what they said. She envied them their simplicity, and wished she shared it. She wished she could talk with them.
You all chose to be where you are, she would tell them. I did not. I have no alternatives. I can do no other.
Gretchen had gone out to argue with them once or twice, when the protesters first appeared outside her houses and the pharmaceuticals laboratory. But she had quickly realized that they were not going to listen to anything she said. They believed they already knew what she thought. "I agree with you," she had said, "that life is sacred." "No you don't," they'd told her. "You think that—" and one of them spat upon her. There was a white heated point at which nobody could admit to anybody else's honesty, a blind line of passion between the two sides across which nobody dared step in either direction.
I am more than just my body, she thought.
But the world did not agree. To existence she was her physical self and nothing more. Her highest thoughts, her most spiritual impulses could only elevate her within the privacy of her own mind. They were helpless before any of the foot-soldiers of reality: a rotting tooth, a broken leg, cancer, an unwanted pregnancy. Her most fervent regrets couldn't wish away the smallest blister. No more than the protesters' chants and bullhorns could change her mind.
She was out of cigarettes. The ashtray was overflowing with butts.
It was futile. In the end, there were no answers, could be no understanding, would never be the least hope of any communication at all. Silence ruled, and it was not the silence of peace but the seething and unhappy silence of things not spoken. It was the deep submarine silence of a woman drowning. In the end, one recognized this and did not struggle anymore, but simply did as one must.
"Mur-der-ESS. Mur-der-ESS. Mur-der-ESS."
There was a knock on the door.
"Come in, Doctor," she said.
* * *
THE WILD HUNT
The biplane was an experimental model with a lightweight aluminum engine. It carried Faust and Wagner across the Channel to France in practically no time. The engineers had not been at all certain it would hold together for so long a journey. Yet Faust was assured it would, and that was good enough for Wagner.
They landed the plane in a turnip field outside of Calais, cracking a strut in the process. A few hurried words and a fistful of bank notes convinced the farmer to convey them to a train station. There, they caught the express to Paris; and it was on the train that Faust's old madness returned to him.
Wagner had booked a first-class compartment. Faust sat down heavily and then glared at the empty seat facing him. "Devil!" he cried. "You lied to me!"
"Quietly, master, please." Wagner shot the curtains, lest a passenger in the aisle should look in and see the Magister railing against vacant space and his own reflection in the glass. "You must remember that other people cannot see your daemon."
Faust blazed. "Do not condescend to me, you little ball of snot. I know what you think. You think me crazed." He snapped his fingers under Wagner's nose. "This for you! I care not a fig for your good opinion, nor that of any other man."
For a long time after that Faust said no more.
Throughout the silence, Wagner's mind was working furiously, considering his options, preparing himself for this ordeal.
He must be loyal.
He had to be strong, fearless, a Faustian man himself, his master in parvum, a humble echo of his greatness. He must keep ever in mind that there was in Faust's madness more sanity than there was in the sanity of ordinary men. He must not betray the master with skepticism or disbelief.
Not turning, Faust let out a long and dolorous groan, and then began to speak again. "I should never have encouraged Gretchen in such things. I was weak. But now I am myself again. I will reclaim her and lift her up from the muck of carnality. We shall buy a country estate and live together in chaste respectability."
"Master..."
"We will have children."
"Yes. Yes, of course you will."
Faust wallowed heavily over on his side, presenting a pitiable face to Wagner. "Never fall in love," he said. "She will take lovers, and some of them will be more experienced and capable than you. I tell you this as a friend—there are dishes once tasted, a woman is loath to do without."
Wagner nodded solemnly, hiding his dismay.
"Tell me! What do you think of life? What do you think of ambition? What do you think of science, of learning, of love, of fame, of glory, of aspiration?"
"I think ... that those are all very different things."
"You are wrong. They are all one thing—a cunt."
"Sir?"
"A cunt! Consider: The cunt is a nasty, ugly, filthy thing. Yet we desire it so greatly as to be willing to suffer any indignity to attain it. For the sake of it we labor and preen and whisper sugary words. We go to the theatre with flowers in our arms, climb over back walls by moonlight, write sonnets, jump out of windows with our trousers in our hands, give dangerous men their choice of weapons. We build love-nests for its sake, and cities, and civilizations. It is our all, our only, our ideal. It has created us and made us great. Such is life, such is ambition, such is science, learning, love, fame, glory, and aspiration. The Eternal Cunt," he said significantly, "draws us onward."
"I am afraid I cannot follow your reasoning," Wagner confessed miserably.
"No. I did not think you would."
Faust turned away again and, staring once more into the distant Nowhere, shook an admonishing finger and cried, "Fiend! I renounce you and all your works! From this day onward, rise or fall, succeed or fail, suffer or triumph, I will have no more dealings with you. I will not listen to your advices. I will not d6 your bidding or serve your purposes, however innocent they seem, however subtly you lay your traps for me."
"Dear master," Wagner said, close to tears.
Faust did not reply. With all the restraint he could muster,
Wagner left him to his desired solitude. Sitting back, he opened a pocket-book and pretended to read. France glided by outside the windows.
The train passed through endless corridors of buildings left derelict and boarded up—businesses that had sprouted alongside the railroad in the technological springtime of European prosperity, and since been made obsolete and bankrupted by German and English innovations. It made Wagner feel proud of his race and of his newly adopted land as well. But it was, at the same time, rather sad.
"Keep your silence," Faust muttered. "I do not need you. You are as powerless as a buttercup. A sparrow's fart exerts more force than you do."
Wagner put down his book and started to reply. Then he realized that Faust was talking in his sleep. After a moment's contemplation, he got out his notebook and a fountain pen. Working on the Biography always calmed him. Uncapping the pen, he began to write.
In his lucid moments on the train, the Magister became exceptionally openhearted and personal He hides absolutely nothing from me. Intimate talks like that strengthen one's heart.
Wagner stopped. This was very well, but he must deal with Faust's mania. Posterity demanded his unflinching honesty. He drew a line under what was already penned and resumed writing, slowly at first but then with increasing confidence.
This was not the first time the Magister had fallen into such a state. By now, however, I had come to realize that
his madness was not the result of a breakdown of intellect but rather of a surfeit of genius. Utilizing a form of alienation-analysis invented by the Magister himself, I saw that the "demon" he railed at was a projection and denial of his own genius. What the common man calls Evil, he once told me, is nothing more than the fear of one's own potential. How difficult it must be for the Magister
to acknowledge his overwhelming superiority to the merely human! How crushing a burden it must often seem to him! Yet let him become one again with his demon, and all will be well.
He recapped his pen, convinced that he had just written as well as ever he had, and with an acuteness of perception that cut to the very core of Faust's emotional crisis. It was, he dared think, a distinguished bit of analysis.
Alas, the cure was beyond him. He could only watch and hope.
They detrained in Paris. On the platform, Faust abruptly turned and seized Wagner's sleeve. "You must protect me!" he said wildly. "I have given up my prescience, and now I am blind to the hazards of the future. Anything could happen to me! Assassins, madmen, malcontents... I have enemies, too many to count."
Embarrassed and thrilled, Wagner said, "You are in no danger, Magister."
"You have no way of knowing that! No way at all." "Come. It is late. We must find a hotel."
The Dix-huit Novembre was comfortably furnished but not overly large, newly electrified, and convenient to the station. It had been a nunnery before the Revolution, a brothel during the Restoration, and was now respectable again under the Directorate. The desk clerk, who by reason of her employment was nominally a political officer, yawned and then took down their particulars in a large leather-bound ledger. She wore her hair bobbed and her lips painted red. In France, it seemed, even the police informers kept up with the fashions. She asked whether the two valises were all the luggage they had, and then wrote down that information as well.
The clerk was handing Wagner the key when Faust said, "Who else has rooms on that floor?"
She blinked. "I beg your pardon?"
"He wants to know—" Wagner began. Faust seized his arm and whispered urgently in his ear. He squared his shoulders. "I am afraid that we shall have to insist that anybody else rooming on the same floor be immediately removed. For reasons of safety."
"Impossible!" The clerk, coming fully awake for the first time, threw up her hands in horror. "Outrageous! Just who do you think you are?"
Wagner leaned forward. "Do you know, do you understand who this man is? He is the Prometheus who brought your city electric lighting, the father of modern sewage treatment, the creator of the flying-machine. He invented la meth-ode..."
The young woman waited until he had run down. Then in a flinty voice she said, "How much?"
Faust took a chair to the rear of the lobby, and sat moodily watching the door while they haggled out a price. At last a suitable bribe was agreed upon, and the clerk set about her task.
"Come, Magister," Wagner said when the last grumbling tenant had been moved up stairs or down, "I will see that your room is properly secure, the blankets soft, the sheets clean."
He paused halfway up the stairs and gazed down into the desk clerk's incurious stare. She couldn't be much more than thirteen. No doubt she intended to report them to the national police. Who, in turn, would want to hold such suspicious foreigners for a day or three of questioning. She was, however, clearly exhausted and if she thought they were staying would happily put off that chore for tomorrow.
Wagner coughed and casually said, "I will want to make a telephone call in the morning."
"The office is down the street."
"Good, good!" he cried, briskly rubbing his hands together. So they didn't have a telephone! "Will there be any public executions tomorrow?"
"When are there not?" she said with a Gallic shrug.
"Then we'll stay the extra day," he said with a little laugh. "Why not? As long as there's entertainment?"
It was, Wagner felt, a shrewd bit of business on his part. When he glanced back from the top of the stairs, the girl was slumped in a chair behind the desk. Her eyes were closed.
He must be fearless.
When Faust was at last settled in, Wagner went down to the lobby, past the drowsing clerk, and out into the streets.
He walked until he found the squalid quarters by the university, where such things as he wanted could be obtained. At its affluent fringes were galleries with cast-iron facades and plate-glass windows, in which was displayed degenerate art that faithfully reflected the ugliness of the times, art without balance or serenity, little more than daubs much of it, incomprehensible trash, the rest.
He shook his head and moved on.
Beyond the galleries, the city darkened and tenements leaned toward each other over the narrow streets. Whenever a pimp materialized from a doorway and approached him, he solemnly shook his head and then told the man what he really wanted. The first two scowled and shook their heads back at him.
The third took him to a small wine-shop.
The place was filthy. An oil lantern over the bar shed just enough light to cause Wagner to draw in the skirts of his coat, lest they brush against anything. He stepped into the thronged darkness, cringing as he was assailed by a sudden conviction that there would be someone behind it, waiting to attack and rob him. But there was not.
He straightened again.
Behind what had once been an altar and was now the bar, a fat woman with a little black mustache sat in a rocking chair. It moved, crick-crack, forward and back, with the unvarying tyranny of a metronome. She was reading a dime novel.
Wagner and his pimp were dwarfed by unsteady pillars of kegs and barrels, overtoppling stacks of stenciled crates, jagged halberds and rusty pikes, religious statuary, brokentoothed hay-rakes, endless bolts of dusty grey cloth. Crick. There were small tables, a few chairs, no customers. It was as if somebody had decided to establish a bar in a warehouse and then not told anybody. Crack. If only one box of grease-packed machine parts were to fall, it would bring everything down, and he'd be crushed before he could reach the door.
Crick. Through a doorway behind the woman could be glimpsed—was surely meant to be glimpsed, for there was a brighter lantern within—another woman combing her long tresses. Crack. She was naked to the waist, with skin white as curdled milk and nipples black as the tangles of hair that burst from her armpits. Despite himself, for he was not eager for a second dose of French pox, Wagner felt his cock stiffen. Crick. Clearly, wine was not all that was sold here.
The fat woman did not look up from her paperback. "What is it you want?"
Crack.
"A revolver," Wagner said, "and ammunition."
There were no express trains eastbound out of Paris. So in the morning they caught the local to Metz. It left two hours late and slowly chugged east and south out of Ile-de-France up into the chalky plains of Champagne, stopping at every hamlet and water-jerk to take on corn and crates of pigs.
It took two days to reach Reims.
The delays were interminable, frequent, maddening. They would find themselves idling for hours on a siding while no trains whatsoever went by on the empty tracks; the conductor always shrugged when asked what was happening. Sometimes the train would retrace a section of route it had already completed. Once, it visited the same weary hamlet four times. It ran out of water. It ran out of coal. It lost an engineer.
In a tract of land so undistinguished that a shed or hill or tree would have been a novelty, the train was stopped by a squad of soldiers in the spurs and uniforms of the Provisional forces. With batons they emptied out the second-class and third-class coaches, driving the poorer passengers into a kind of holding pen, as if they were cattle. Then, with terrifying disinterest, the Provos proceeded to beat and brutalize them. Finally, they erected a gallows, and hung three ragged men upon it. The workers stared silent and expressionless through the execution and when their comrades were dead filed back in to their seats. The train proceeded on its way.
In Reims, they were first told they would have to change locomotives, then that they would have to stand on the platform while the cars were fumigated. Luckily, the day, though overcast, was not cold. Thunderheads piled up to the west.
A wind-up gramophone was playing in the distance. Wagner could hear its mournfully romantic lyrics afloat upon the breeze:
Adieu
, mes amours,
Adieu, та maitress . ..
"Farewell, my loves," Faust grumbled. "Farewell, my mattress. Love and doves above. Amours, les fleurs, toujours. Who is so degraded as to fall for such mush? It is music for men without pricks, and women without physical needs!"
"Still," Wagner said cautiously, "it's a lovely sentiment."
"Sentiment! When the great River of Time has carried all human sentiment out into the Sea of Eternity, it will filter down, grain by grain, and form a delta so mighty it will choke the mouth of the river, and thus put an end to all such so-called songs. It cannot happen too soon."
Wagner had no choice but to lapse into a bewildered and acquiescing silence. The master could never be wrong, he understood that now. Nevertheless, in the distance he heard, and strained to hear, the refrain:
Mille regretz ...
Plusieurs regretz ...
Regretz sans fin.
He thought then, as he often did, of his lost Sophia, and had to turn away to hide his tears. He thought of her skin, white as the porcelain Christ in the parish church of his childhood. He wished he could throw himself on the ground before her and one by one kiss each toe of her perfect feet.
"When I reach Nuremberg, you and I are through." Wagner looked back, startled, only to realize that Faust was talking to himself again. He waved his arms in an agitated fashion. "No, never, preposterous," he muttered, and then, "If that is the price I must pay, then so be it," and "If I give in to you this once, how do I know it will go no further?"
Wagner touched his arm.
Lifting his jaw, Faust stared like an eagle into the gathering storm-clouds. With a thrill, Wagner saw the profile of a barbarian conqueror, the flashing eyes of a Gaiseric, an Alaric, an Ataulf, the savage intensity of the Visigothic and Vandalic heroes of the great racial theorists who had arisen within the industrialized Empire.
Jack Faust - Michael Swanwick Page 24