Burning City

by Ariel Dorfman

  Walking with an unfamiliar man down familiar city streets.

  Salim wasn’t quick to open his mouth, either. Every now and again he would ask a question, tell Heller something, never in any rush for a response.

  “Are you from the city, Heller?”

  “I’ve lived here most of my life.”

  A few blocks later: “Have you ever been to Turkey?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, it’s such a place. . . . Something about it, you know? Home.”

  Next thing, he was pointing to an alcove between two buildings. “That is where I used to set up my book stand. I must have spent every day there for three months before I was usurped. Usurped by students setting up a table to collect money for the homeless. I have not found a spot quite like it. . . .”

  “It’s a nice spot.”

  “It was. . . .”

  It wasn’t long before Heller noticed something. It had been gnawing at his mind for several minutes before it finally hit him. Salim wouldn’t speak unless they were standing at a crosswalk. Waiting for the lights to change at an intersection. Other than that, their walk was composed purely of city sounds.

  Once Heller picked up on it, he found himself becoming a part of it. “How long have you been in New York, Salim?”

  “A year.”

  “You speak English well.”

  “I learned in Istanbul. You have to know English these days; it is necessary.”

  Heller was amused by the pace of the conversation. He gave it another go at the next intersection:

  “I don’t speak Turkish.”

  “Do you speak Kurdish?”

  “No . . .”

  It was Salim’s turn to look amused. “Of course not.”

  During their trek from the Lower East Side the sun had begun its descent. They were walking up LaGuardia now, pausing at the intersection on Houston Street. The rush of a thousand cars added to the light breeze brought by the rainstorm.

  “Do you like living in America?” Heller asked.

  Salim didn’t answer. They made their way up another block, then stopped.

  Heller looked up at Salim, saw his eyes lost in the twilight. All around them, nightlife was appearing out of the brightly lit doorways, rising with the steam from the streets.

  “You can never call a place home until you have buried someone there,” Salim told Heller. “The prophet Muhammad never said he was going to return from the dead. He knew it wasn’t necessary. . . . So what comes next?” Salim’s eyes were distant. “You wander. Keep wandering. You wander until you find the place you can call home. It is easy for a Muslim to forget this.” He paused, waiting for the traffic light to grant them safety. “It is easy for anyone to forget this. . . .”

  The DON’T WALK sign changed its mind and the two of them crossed the street, taking a westbound direction on Bleecker. Piercing parlors, jazz clubs, and pizza for a dollar seventy-five a slice.

  “If you’re a Muslim,” Heller ventured, aware that they were midway along a city block, “then how come we’re going to a bar?”

  Salim waited until they had reached the corner of Bleecker and MacDougal Street, where he paused, thinking.

  “I never drink,” he said in a way that made Heller think that there was more to it than that. “But a Kurdish wedding lasts several days. . . . I think God will understand.”

  “Will he?”

  Salim nodded.

  Traffic continued on its due course.

  chapter thirteen

  The stairs had led them underground, into a bar called Creole Nights.

  No more than ten steps, but Heller couldn’t help but feel he’d entered another world. Still New York. Only smaller.

  A tiny dive.

  Not cramped. Comfortable.

  The walls were a dirty yellow, cracks displaying what must have once been a semiwhite sort of color underneath. Candles lit the room, backed by the soft orange glow of scattered lamps built into the bar. The tables were rickety, chairs the same. Stapled to the ceiling were rows and rows of straw hats hung upside down. A tabby cat prowled around underfoot on a smooth, red-brick floor dotted with cigarette burns.

  It was early. A pair of waitresses at the far end slicing lemons, a few Haitian men sitting, talking shop with the bartender. In a far corner, some musicians were setting up their instruments, comparing sheet music.

  Everyone greeted Salim as he walked in, like an old friend back from battle. He threw his arms up, a warm embrace for the entire group. Walked right over to the bar, shook hands, kissed the waitresses, the bartender. He laughed along with everyone else and returned a smile for each one given to him.

  It was warm down there. Genuinely warm.

  Heller stood by the door, awkward, taking everything in, curious and unsure. He glanced behind him, back up the stairs, making sure his bike was still chained to the tree outside. Making sure the city was still there, that he hadn’t fallen down a rabbit hole. Heller shifted his weight from one foot to another, crossed his arms, uncrossed them.

  Reggae music poured softly from the speakers.

  One of the waitresses, a blonde with intense blue eyes and round, elfin features, walked briskly across the room. Black pants, a belt adorned with metal studs. Black shirt, a figure impossible to ignore; Heller was still trying to when she got to him, soft smile and pleasant smoker’s voice.

  “Would you like to sit?”

  “I’m with Salim,” Heller said, too shy to look at her. “I came in with him.”

  “Oh, Salim . . . ,” she said, as though Heller had cracked some sort of code. “I’ll just put you at his usual table.”

  The waitress led him to a round table. Heller sat with his back to a large mural depicting a crowd of people gathered in a Caribbean village. The waitress handed him a drink menu. Pulled a pen out of her hair.

  “What can I get you?”

  Heller stared at the list of drinks, felt like he was reading Latin. Panicked, he pointed randomly and plunged ahead:

  “How’s the melon ball?”

  “You don’t want that.”

  “I don’t?”

  “Nobody wants that—it’s like drinking syrup.”

  “Well . . . what do I want?”

  “You want a Jack Daniel’s,” she told him, sounding incredibly sure of herself.

  “He wants a ginger ale,” Salim informed them, sitting down at the table with a wry smile. “I don’t want you corrupting my friend with your Tennessee poison.”

  “It’s not poison,” she insisted. “It’s sunshine.”

  “Just get the boy a ginger ale and a double gin and tonic for me.”

  “Nope.”

  “Please, my dear?”

  “No.”

  “Must I beg?” Salim put his hands together, eyes of a lost dog.

  The waitress smiled slyly, winked at Heller, and went back to the bar.

  Salim laughed and turned to Heller. “That’s Wanda. She is from Kentucky. Wanda writes her own poetry, wonderful poetry. She has such a spirit about her, don’t you think?”

  “She’s beautiful,” Heller said, before realizing the words were coming. He closed his mouth, bit his lip, tried to reverse time by adding, “I mean she’s . . . astute.”

  “Astute, beautiful . . .” Salim shifted in his seat, pointed to the bar. “Do you see that man with the glasses and mustache standing by the far wall? That is Zephyr. He is from Haiti. He owns this place. The bartender? See her, the tall Korean woman? That is Janet. The man she is talking to, with the shaved head and the suit? That is her husband, Felix. He is from Haiti also.”

  Heller shook his head, trying to get the information straight. “You said you’d been in New York for around a year.”

  “Yes.”

  “You have a lot of friends.”

  “You must have several, then, if you have lived here all your life.”

  “I know people.” Heller shrugged. “On the job, I meet people, in their apartments, their homes. . . . I know
lots of people.”

  “What about all those who applaud you in the streets?”

  It dawned on Heller that Salim must have seen him before that day. “Well, that’s different. . . . Those aren’t really friends, the people who’ve seen me on my bike.”

  “I have seen you on your bike. . . .”

  Heller didn’t say anything.

  Wanda the waitress arrived with their drinks. She handed Salim his gin and tonic, handed Heller his ginger ale. Heller mumbled an embarrassed thank-you, waited for her to leave before telling Salim, “My father doesn’t mind if I drink, you know.”

  “Your father is a long way from here.”

  Heller stared at Salim and drank his ginger ale.

  “ADASI!”

  Salim turned to the door, his eyes alight. “Velu! Christoph!”

  Heller’s head shot up from his glass. Walking into Creole Nights was Christoph Toussaint. He was accompanied by a wiry Indian man with the features of a clever fox etched into the lines of his face. The two of them hugged Salim, and Christoph was about to introduce himself to Heller when he suddenly realized there was no need.

  “Bike boy!” Christoph’s grin widened. “Twice in two days, my friend!”

  Heller was astonished. “Hello.”

  “You two know each other?” Salim asked.

  “Saved my life, man,” Christoph said.

  “Well.” Salim looked pleased. “It appears you do have friends, Heller.”

  “It appears I’m going to have to introduce myself,” the Indian man said, extending his hand. “My name is Velu.”

  “Velu.” Heller met his hand with a tight shake.

  “Who wants drinks?” Christoph asked, turning to Heller. “What do you need, bike boy?”

  “Jack Daniel’s . . .”

  “JACK DANIEL’S FOR THE MESSENGER!”

  “No,” Salim insisted. “He is fine. I am fine. Get Velu a Bombay gin and get yourself some of that French poison you like so much.”

  “Rémy Martin isn’t poison,” Christoph insisted, walking to the bar and greeting the rest of the regulars. Creole Nights was starting to fill up, energy building rapidly and crawling up the walls, filling the gaps between customers. Heller found himself looking in five directions at once, wishing for a second set of ears, eyes, a need to taste the air he was breathing.

  “It appears I do need another drink, after all,” Salim observed. He stood, offered his seat to Velu, then went to catch up with Christoph. Velu sat in one fluid motion, looked as though he could be comfortable in any situation. Adaptable.

  “You are a messenger?” he asked Heller.

  “Bike messenger, yeah.”

  “And that’s how you know Salim?”

  “And Christoph.”

  “It’s a small world.”

  “This is a small bar.”

  “Exactly.”

  Heller caught himself having a conversation, struggled to forget it, tried to say something else and couldn’t. He bit his lip and waited for Velu to say something.

  “So you brought Salim some good news?”

  “Salim seems to think so,” Heller said hesitantly, pretending to be engrossed with the bubbles in his drink. “How do you know him?”

  “He . . . works for me. I needed a good man who could sell books, had a good feel for them. He was a librarian back in Istanbul. He knows everything about books, speaks eight different languages.”

  “So you’re his boss.”

  “I supply him with the books. . . .”

  “Who do you work for?”

  Velu took his time answering. He lit a bidi. The smoke carried with it the vague scent of talc, taking Heller back momentarily to when he was four years old.

  “I went to India when I was four,” he told Velu.

  “By yourself?” Velu asked.

  “Yes,” Heller answered.

  “Me too.”

  Salim and Christoph returned to the table, laughing loudly, sat down, and distributed the drinks.

  “Are you all right, Heller?” Salim asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Velu is treating you well, I hope.”

  “I treat everyone well,” Velu said.

  “Well . . . ,” Salim said, not bothering to finish his sentence.

  “Well, well,” Christoph amended.

  Pause.

  Everyone burst out laughing at once for no reason. Heller joined in, and the alarm in his face at hearing his own laugh wasn’t missed by anyone. The laughter continued simply because it was there, and Salim raised his glass:

  “To Paris!”

  “Paris, France, or Paris, Texas?” Heller asked.

  “Paris of Troy—who else would it be?” Velu said.

  “The man who pulled it off!” Salim continued in a mad burst of words. “He came to her with nothing but a promise from the goddess of love and snatched Helen from under her husband’s nose and all the rest of those Greeks!”

  “I can see it’s going to be one of those nights,” Christoph sighed.

  “The rest of those Greeks laid siege to Troy for ten years,” Velu told Salim.

  “We’ve had this conversation,” Christoph said.

  “The rest of those Greeks burned the city to the ground!” Velu continued, voice raised over the noise of the bar. “The rest of those Greeks raped and murdered everything in sight, and for those ten years, Paris didn’t even have the courage to fight!”

  “But . . .” Salim held up his hand. “For those ten years he made love to Helen every single morning, afternoon, and night.”

  Heller coughed, moved around in his seat.

  “Salim claims his father was from what used to be Troy,” Velu explained to Heller. “So Salim believes that gives him some sort of extrasensory insight. After all, who needs Homer, historical documentation, and the nine cities of Troy discovered over two hundred years by over two dozen archaeologists?”

  Christoph nudged Heller. “It’s interesting the first five hundred times you hear them arguing. The next thousand times, not so much.”

  “Then leave,” Velu said.

  “Yes, leave,” Salim agreed.

  “Ah, to hell with it.” Christoph raised his glass. “To Paris and Nizima.”

  Everyone drank except Heller, who tried his best to appear invisible.

  “So when is she getting here?” Velu asked. “When does the war begin? Because you know they’ll be coming after her, and if the storm clouds are gathering, I stand to lose my best book vendor—”

  “You,” Salim told him, “aren’t going to lose anything. Nizima isn’t coming.”

  The conversation was shot down in midstride. Velu and Christoph looked at Salim, who did nothing to further the topic, just stirred his drink rhythmically. The sounds of the bar magnified themselves, all coming to rest at their table: glasses clinking, chairs scraping against the floor, a burst of laughter from Zephyr and his staff. Detailed silence, thick with cigarette smoke.

  Velu turned to Heller, looking for something.

  Heller looked right back, then shook his head. “She’s not coming.”

  Velu and Christoph exchanged glances, understanding how they all came to be there. Christoph nudged Heller for the second time that night, for the third time in two days:

  “Tell him what you told me, bike boy.”

  Heller turned to Salim.

  Salim looked calm. Sad and accepting. Nizima was a thousand miles away, and it was a hell of a distance to cram into a single moment.

  Heller didn’t speak.

  “Sometimes it is all right to keep things to oneself,” Salim told him. “Only sometimes, though. Sometimes it’s all right.”

  The band began tuning their instruments, and the lights dimmed, shadows and light mixing by the glow of a dozen candles.

  “To Paris and Nizima,” Heller said.

  They all toasted and downed the rest of their drinks.

  The band was on its second break of the night.

  Just abo
ut every seat in Creole Nights had been claimed, some more than once and by several different customers. The air underground had grown intense, a steady stream on the brink of rapids. The familiar eyes of a hundred strangers in off the streets, drawn by the sounds below. Drink by drink, the minutes passed, marked by the glow of an electric clock hung high over the end of the bar.

  The glow of an electric clock that Heller hadn’t looked at once since setting foot through the door. It must have been hours—he wasn’t sure. His head swam effortlessly in his surroundings. Over the course of the evening he had slowly felt himself dissolving into his surroundings, a gradual sense that at some point it no longer mattered where Heller began and the bar ended.

  Eternity.

  Christoph and Velu had ventured to the other end of the bar earlier, and now Heller was listening to Salim and a twenty-two-year-old named Lucky Saurelius engage in some form of debate.

  “And you think love is unimportant?” Salim accused.

  “I said it was dangerous,” Lucky clarified.

  “Not worth the risk, eh?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “What are you saying?” Salim laughed, put an arm around Lucky with pure affection. “You writers are all the same! Nobody understands you until you put pen to paper!”

  “Nobody understands us even after we put pen to paper, but by that point nobody wants to admit it.”

  Salim laughed, turned to Heller. “Love, my friend. What about it?”

  “I don’t know,” Heller said. He glanced at Lucky, saw him watching closely, eyes accompanied by early signs of dark semicircles underneath. “Do you have a girlfriend, Lucky?”

  Lucky lit a cigarette, took a drink of his beer. “I used to have a girlfriend. Her name is Helena. . . . She’s in Paris now.”

  “Paris, France, or Paris, Texas?”

  “Ah, Paris,” Salim interjected wistfully.

  “The first one,” Lucky said. “Paris, France.”

  “Is she from Paris?”

  “She’s from New Jersey.”

  “Are you from New Jersey?”