Death in Florence

by George Alec Effinger

  Brant shook her head. "That's not the way I want it," she said. "I don't want to be taken care of. It would spoil everything."

  "Spoil what? Do you want to be Mother of the Year or something?"

  Brant couldn't hope to make him understand that she was majestic and that having him feed her hot soup would tarnish the majesty. "You said I was like Eve in the Garden. She didn't have a doctor and a midwife."

  "She had Adam," he said.

  "Thanks, Bo, but I want to do it my way."

  "You're going to end up with a serious infection or pneumonia or something, to say nothing about the danger to the baby."

  "Bo," she said. He was about to say something, but closed his mouth. He reached out and held her hand. "Thanks, Bo," she said.

  "Have your baby, and let me worry about Dr. Waters. We'll take care of him. He's sitting like a jackal, staring across his borders at all the shiny things he can steal. It's like a game. To me it's the same as a game, and I love games. It's me against him. We'll shoot Waters down, and then the only games will be honest ones. Sportsmanship instead of greed. Good wholesome fun instead of guns and tanks."

  "Never," said Brant. "It will never happen."

  "It'll happen all right," said Staefler. "And pretty soon, too."

  Brant gasped. Her baby was making its presence known again.

  * * *

  The next day, just as Staefler's car drove away from her house, another came to replace it. Brant heard one car honk its horn in greeting, and the other honked in reply. "Who is it now, as if I couldn't guess," she thought. She opened the door and watched S. Norman Moore come across the lawn. "Hi," she said.

  "I hope you don't mind," he said.

  "Of course not. Just let me go upstairs and get some sleep. I'm exhausted."

  "Sure," he said. "I've got a couple of books to read. I'll wake you up in a couple of hours. I brought something nice for dinner."

  "Good. I'll talk to you later." She went to bed, but she couldn't fall asleep for a long time. She thought about how her relationship to Utopia 3 had changed. She realized that she had changed, just as Dr. Waters promised. Moore had changed, Staefler had changed, too. Utopia 3 was not as false as she had thought. It was a valid idea, and the only thing that invalidated it was Dr. Bertram Waters himself. She fell asleep thinking about him, wondering if he were the baby's father. That might explain his actions. Maybe the military buildup was in preparation for a massive attack on the remainder of Europe, purely to provide for the needs and wants of his illegitimate child and its mother. Seen in that light, he was only a concerned father. Brant was almost asleep, so she tended to give Dr. Waters the benefit of the doubt, something she wouldn't do if she had been completely conscious.

  For dinner Moore had prepared a pork roast, just as Brant had longed for months earlier. There were sauerkraut and dumplings. There was real gravy. And he had brought ice. They drank tall glasses of cold Coca-Cola. "If it weren't for Dr. Waters," said Moore, "you couldn't have had this."

  Brant shook her head. "If there weren't any Dr. Waters, I could have this any time I wanted. There wouldn't be a Utopia 3."

  "What I meant was that thanks to Dr. Waters, you can have both at the same time."

  "The next step, then, is obvious," she said. "I mean, have both at the same time without Dr. Waters."

  There was only silence from Moore. He was obviously worried and upset. He stood up from the table. "I have to go now, I think," he said. He put on the peaked green hat of the Utopia 3 paramilitary forces. He wiped some gravy off the MYRA WALDECOTT strip on his jacket sleeve. He bent down and kissed Brant on the cheek. "I have to go," he said. "I don't know what I'm doing anymore." He turned and went out the back door. Brant sat at the table, chewing a forkful of dumpling. She heard him start his car and drive away. She was very sorry for what she had said.

  * * *

  Scorpio ended, and Sagittarius began. Brant gathered her belongings and put them in the trunk of an old red Sunbeam. She had cleaned the Sebastiano house and was now ready to say good-by to Pilessio. She planned never to come back. The town had been good to her, but she had to get used to the idea that if she really were regal and majestic, she would have to sacrifice her privacy. She would never again be able to hide out in Utopia 3. It made her sad, because the little village was a symbol of everything good in Utopia 3, and she didn't like the idea of leaving it behind.

  She started the car and drove slowly through the narrow streets. She didn't stop until she arrived in Florence. Then she carried her bags into the Pitti Palace. She undressed and went to bed. Her huge swollen shape would be gone soon, she thought. After it was all over, she could finally get a good night's sleep. After she decided what to do with the baby.

  The next morning, when Brant went to the ladies' room downstairs, there was one of Courane's messages on the mirror. It said:

  I'm sorry for barging in here like this, Miss Brant, but the situation is getting urgent. Things are coming to their climax. You can no longer afford the luxury of noninvolvement. The bitter conflict that is shaping up between Dr. Waters and the sovereign people of Europe and Asia is timed to begin very soon now. We must know how you feel. We must know where we stand in regard to every utopiate. Are you for us or against us? There can be no neutrality.

  I cannot imagine that you harbor any sort of loyalty toward Dr. Waters. He has treated you like dirt, hasn't he? Hasn't he so much as called you a common trollop? Then if you're half the woman I think you are, you will be ready to take up our cry of revolution. Do not worry. Your part does not entail fighting or physical struggle. You are our symbol. You are our martyr. You are the first hero in the blazing rebellion that will unite the entire world. How about that!

  Eileen—I hope I can call you Eileen. You may call me Sandor, or even Sandy, if you like—your value in this conflict is known only to myself and Dr. Waters. You cannot suspect the vast influence you will have. I urge you to put that influence behind our movement. What can you feel for Dr. Waters? He has tried to get your allegiance through cruelty, extortion, and threats. I have never done other than put the facts to you and await your decision.

  You must make that decision! You must make it soon!

  If you wish to reach me, contact Bo Staefler in Venice. Mr. Staefler has changed his viewpoint considerably in the last several months. He is now one of my most trusted lieutenants. Together we will all make the world safe for anarchy. Anarchy, yes, but a benevolent anarchy. A world of freedom and liberty, a government of individual moral restraint.

  To help you decide, waiting for you when you choose to support our cause are the following gift items: A five-piece Rockingham dinette set donated by the Maxwell Furniture Factory Outlet of Great Neck, Long Island; an electric fondue pot donated by Mrs. Barbara Fairclough; five pounds of chocolate-covered coconut, donated by The Strawberry Shop of Elkhart, Indiana; a subscription to Sports Illustrated magazine, donated by Time-Life, Inc.; a free auto tune-up and lube job, donated by Prochaska's Texaco, Athens, Georgia; and a twenty-five-dollar gift certificate from the Spiegel catalogue.

  We'll be waiting to hear from you. There's no time to lose. Why not drive up to Venice this afternoon?

  Your very good friend,

  Sandor Courane

  Brant took the message down and looked at herself in the mirror. There were dark circles under her eyes. Her hair was matted in thick oily strands. Her cheeks seemed too hollow. When she brushed her teeth, her gums bled. "I have to take better care of myself," she thought.

  She went back to her bedchamber. She took off the robe and opened her suitcase. She took out a loose purple maternity gown. An envelope fell out of the clothing. She bent down and picked it up. She took out a sheet of paper, handwritten.

  Dear Miss Brant:

  Please excuse this intrusion on your private life. It's necessary, I believe, in order that I may try to dissuade you from the course that the lying cheat Courane is urging you to follow. Look. Have you ever suffered on my account?
Really? Think about it. If you have ever suffered, was it not the direct result of your own actions? Utopia 3 is only a project in which people are compelled to accept the responsibility for their words and deeds. The guilt and punishment that accompanies this seem more extreme because in the older life you were used to shirking your true duties.

  Now, I am aware that Courane is making all sorts of wild, even insane accusations. Can he prove even one? He is saying that I could do these things. Have I? Have I done anything to warrant his attacks? He is paranoid, Miss Brant, in the very clinical sense of the word. He is crazy.

  Come in to see Buddy and Claire. From the office I'll be able to speak with you over the phone. I wish you'd do me that justice, at least.

  With heartfelt best wishes,

  Dr. Bertram Waters

  "He wants to know if he's the father," she thought. She did not wonder how the envelope happened to be in her suitcase.

  * * *

  "How majestic," she thought. "How glorious I am. Hell, I can hardly stand it, I'm so glorious. Now I just have to wait for my various loyal knights to come to me. I will send them all out in quest of different things. Do I want a Holy Grail? What would I do with it? A piece of the True Cross? I could give them to the Pope for his birthday, I suppose, but after the first of the year I wouldn't know where to find him. The Pope will have to get an apartment or something. All the towns outside Utopia 3 are going to swell up like helium balloons, with the people displaced by Utopia 3. Little hamlets will become mighty metropolises. Scenic country villages will become crowded with hundreds of thousands of people. It will be difficult getting a table at a small cafe. It will be almost impossible to reserve a bowling alley. And the lines at the movie theaters ..."

  She waited for Staefler, Moore, or Mazzatti to return. She wanted to receive their devotion and to give them their missions. She was beginning her last few weeks of pregnancy, and her emotions were sometimes very confused.

  No one came. She heard nothing, day after day. "Where are they?" she wondered. "They're never around when you need them. Maybe I should just announce out loud that I'm going to take a nap. Then for sure at least one of them will come charging in." The palace was silent. The sound of her steps echoed in the huge, dark chambers. "Maybe I'll go over and visit Buddy and Claire, just for company." She climbed into bed and pulled the covers to her chin. She was cold. She was very lonely. She realized after a few minutes that she was crying.

  Later she actually did get up and leave the palace. She got in a car and drove to the Utopia 3 office. She needed to talk, especially to Claire. She needed reassurance. She left the car in the middle of the street. It looked to her as though the office was dark. "That's odd," she thought. "The office is supposed to be open every day." She walked up to the door. It was locked. She peered inside. The room was bare. The flag that had hung on one wall was gone. She walked around the corner to another window. There was a small handwritten note addressed to her, taped to the glass. It was from Claire. It said:

  Dear Eileen:

  I don't exactly know what's going on. We've been recalled to the orientation lodge for some reason. There's something strange going on. I'm sorry that I didn't have a chance to say good-by. I hope the baby is healthy, and I hope you will be happy. Maybe I'll see you soon.

  Love,

  Claire Montrose MacEldowney

  "That's odd," thought Brant. In the darkness, all alone, Brant felt very vulnerable. She hated being alone. She hurried home to pack, knowing that the only thing that could keep her sane was a quick trip to Venice. That was the nearest human being, as far as she knew. She never considered the possibility that when she arrived, Bo Staefler might be somewhere else. Her car, a white Ferrari convertible, was already filled with fuel. She stopped only long enough to make sure she knew the route. She stamped down on the accelerator and roared out of the parking lot in front of the Pitti Palace.

  A few miles out of Florence on the autostrada there was a large billboard. In tall black letters, Sandor Courane communicated with her. WATERS IS SELLING YOU INTO SLAVERY. Brant shook her head. She put the radio on, but could hear only static. A little farther on another message on a billboard loomed in her headlights. THIS IS WATERS. COURANE LIES. HE WILL STEAL YOUR GLORY. Waters understood how to trigger her responses; somehow he knew about Brant's majesty. Another billboard: WHY WON'T WATERS TELL ALL? Brant was getting interested. It almost seemed to her like the clash of two mighty rams, battling for the rights to a tender doe. She, of course, was the doe. Waters and Courane were crashing their heads together because of her. It was like being young again. She was flattered.

  Brant drove only twenty miles. Then she put on the brakes and steered the Ferrari into a tight U-turn. She had had enough of ping-ponging between Florence and Pilessio, Florence and Venice, Florence and Prague. "The hell with it," she thought, and she immediately felt much better. She was surprised how good that single decision made her feel. She sang to herself the whole way home.

  There was a billboard just outside Florence. It said: EILEEN BRANT: IMPORTANT MESSAGE 100 METERS. The next billboard, and the next several after it, spelled out a remarkable story, like a giant free verse Burma-Shave jingle.

  IT'S ALL OVER!

  COURANE HAS WON.

  AN ARAB KID HAS FOUND

  THE SECRET ARMY OF DR. WATERS

  HIDDEN IN BAVARIA

  SAID WATERS: "THEY WERE TO BE

  OBSERVERS AND CARETAKERS."

  WATERS IN DISGRACE.

  "I'm tired of reading their bickering," she thought. "If I go into a store to find a can of food, they've taped messages to the labels. If I go to the bathroom, I find notes on the toilet paper. There are notes inside my shoes. They pin messages to my pillowcase. I've had enough." She parked the car outside her palace. She opened her purse to find the keys to the front door. She found them, along with a final note:

  My fellow utopiates:

  This is the last time I will speak to you in this manner. This is the most difficult communication I have ever had to make. Briefly, then, the situation is that my enemies, those who have plotted to ruin my name and rob me of my dream of a successful Utopia 3, have at last succeeded. They have won their victory in the most influential arena of all, the public media. It does not matter that I have not committed a crime. It does not matter that their accusations have no basis in fact, or that their tactics were of the most reprehensible sort. What does matter is that people around the world have chosen to believe them, and not to believe me. That is the way of the world, and I guess I should have anticipated it.

  Therefore, my connection with Utopia 3 has been severed forever. In order to guarantee that Utopia 3 continues its great and good work, I will make the sacrifice that the world demands of me. Myra Waldecott has come to the same decision. Indeed, she and I will share our forced exile together, as she has consented to become my wife. We will go to live in America, at Utopia 2.

  I wish that I could have stayed on in my original capacity until the job which we began could be finished. The wishes of the people within Utopia 3 and without are otherwise, and I shall reluctantly hand over the job of directing the fortunes of the project to Pavel Rugorsky. I hope that God will give him the strength he needs in this undertaking. I urge you all to cooperate with him fully, in order that the healing process may begin immediately.

  I am happy that I have been able to serve, in whatever manner, however long. I will have good memories of you and your tireless endeavors. I will have Myra. You will have the world. Until that time when I may rejoin you, when the entire world is one great, all-inclusive Utopia, I bid you good luck and may God bless.

  Dr. Bertram Waters

  Capricorn came in with a swirl of snow. The Pitti Palace was a cold tomb, except for the room where Eileen Brant waited for the birth of her baby. She had moved into a small anteroom, where the stove could keep the air warm enough for comfort. Whenever she had to leave the room she stepped into bitterly cold drafts. The floors were glacial, an
d the water in the bathroom was frozen in the pipes. She had to force herself to go out and find firewood, because she tended to put that work off until too late. Then the discomfort of being cold became too great.

  Brant thought that she needed someone to be with her, as the birth of her baby became imminent. She didn't know what to do. She was alone in Florence, and now she knew she couldn't possibly drive anywhere else in search of company. And what could Staefler do to help? Or Moore? And the Utopia 3 offices were closed. Like it or not, Brant was on her own, like an Indian squaw. She pictured herself going off into the bushes and having her baby, and then coming back to make supper for her husband. But she didn't have a husband, and having the kid out back in the

  Boboli Gardens wasn't the same thing, and unless she went out soon there wouldn't even be supper.

  "It will take care of itself," she thought. "They all told me not to worry, that it will take care of itself. I wonder how. Maybe I'll fall unconscious and when I wake up, the baby will be eighteen years old and working at the K-Mart."

  Brant wondered if Queen Victoria had had to go through all this. Or other majestic persons. They all had royal advisors and physicians. Maybe that meant that Brant was not actually, really majestic. One or the other. It had to be one or the other. She didn't like giving up the thought that she was regal, so she decided to think of herself as just temporarily understaffed.

  The baby itself was getting ready to plummet into life. Brant did not like pain especially, and she was not looking forward eagerly to the experience. But she knew that she could learn from it, and she knew that childbirth was often a moving, emotional thing. None of that actually made up for the hurting, though.