The New Republic

by Lionel Shriver

  Keeping the Saab on the road in the easterly vento took vigilance. Whenever the lane curved north or south the Saab’s body went foom, and Edgar’s adrenaline surged with fear that the coupe had been broadsided by a bus. Bleak and low-lying, the plain rumpled with not so much hills as lumps. The khaki grass was stubbled, its nap bent universally eastward like a fabric that smoothed in only one direction. Stunted olive trees hunkered in clumps, wider than they were high, their splayed branches reaching toward Spain, as if beseeching to be rescued from Barba. The muted green leaves, while glaucous and lackluster, still hit the brightest notes in the terrain, whose hues were otherwise restricted to dun, rust, and sulfur.

  A few of the dwellings Edgar passed were roofed with distinctively Iberian terra-cotta tiles, but for the most part the squat, paranoid stucco cubes could double as bomb shelters. Like Nicola’s villa, each house was built with one high, solid wall facing west; Abrab Manor’s windowed western face defied local convention. Often the traditional windbreak extended to protect a rickety swing set, or a few plastic chairs with legs rammed optimistically into the lawn for garden parties, as if that foul-tasting beer would grow any more palatable mixed with sand.

  The low moan that Edgar had noticed when he first awoke at Abrab Manor emitted from the birdhouse-like thingamabobs planted in every yard. Standard wind chimes of shells or shards of glass would shatter in gales, so the Barban variation was industrial-strength. Mounted on a thick post, a hollowed log was slit at an angle on one side; o vento insano tore through the opening. Engineered to accommodate the embouchure of the atmosphere itself, the wind whistles were all pitched at the deepest tones of a panpipe. The moans carried a remarkable distance, and together chorused like a boatload of seasick passengers. When a particularly bombastic blast of air advanced across the landscape, a groan rose over the fields as if the whole population were about to spew.

  Meanwhile, splotches of purple goo pooped across the tarmac every few inches, some viscous patches of sufficient mass to send the Turbo into a skid. Even with the windows closed, the glop stank: gaggingly sweet, yet spiked with a sharp, malevolent undersmell.

  It took Edgar a few miles to make the connection between the gelatinous blobs under his wheels and the midget baobabs that grew along the roadside. Their trunks were thick, with a diameter of three feet or more, but the stumpy trees grew only eight feet high. They looked beheaded. Wafting on their leeward side, fist-sized balls of brown fur dangled from sticks, like baby muskrats that had hanged themselves. Anything that looked that disgusting and smelled that disgusting surely tasted disgusting as well. Peras peludas.

  Curiosity got the better of revulsion. Edgar pulled over and stepped from the car to pick a hairy pear. The testicular blob had the pulpy give of a fig, though the scraggly inch-long threads on its skin were coarse. It was something like a kiwi on testosterone, or Cousin Itt from The Addams Family reincarnated as a fruit. And with a little squeeze, the fucking thing exploded. Edgar flung the scraps away, but sticky violet smoosh had got all over his hands. When he sponged at his shirt with a napkin from the glove compartment, he made one last discovery about the pera peluda: it stained.

  As Edgar drew into Cinziero, the city proved so remarkably ugly that Edgar wanted to shake somebody’s hand. There’s not-giving-a-shit ugliness, not-knowing-any-better ugliness, nakedly-cheap ugliness, and worst of all intending-to-be-really-attractive ugliness, but Cinziero was the kind of ugly that took effort.

  From what Edgar had read, Cinziero (Portuguese for “ashtray”) must have suffered from the fact that its residents had slightly too much cash. Stark, bone-aching poverty is the best guarantor of historical preservation, since the destitute can’t afford to give expression to their bad taste. Alas, Cinziero’s local industry had put spare change into the pockets of its citizenry, who had promptly razed every structure within reach that predated the architecturally illustrious 1965.

  This man-made catastrophe appeared far more devastating than the notorious earthquake that had leveled Lisbon two centuries earlier. According to Edgar’s books, Cinziero was over two thousand years old. But forget the intricate iron grillwork, painted tiles, the fanciful plaster moldings of Lisbon’s eighteenth-century revival—much less the residual Moorish influences reflected in Abrab Manor, remnants of 711 AD’s original North African invasion of Portugal. And never mind the sturdy stone castles from medieval times that had once dotted the entire province remarkably intact. Downtown Cinziero was uncannily evocative of Lincoln, Nebraska.

  Barbans had subscribed wholesale to the aesthetic tradition of the suburban bank. Materials ran to brown bricks, brown-tinted glass, and brown spray-painted aluminum. Façades were flat, windows undressed, forms rectangular. Presumably the point of all this fecal plainness was a statement of modernity, though an irony typical of such statements was their aura of the old hat.

  Then again, the primary aim of savings-and-loan architecture was not to give offense, and you’d think the one advantage of setting your sights that low would be meeting your miserable target. Yet Edgar was plenty offended, especially when he considered how much marble mosaic must have been bulldozed in the last few decades to make way for linoleum, or how many ornamental banks of brightly tiled solares had been wrecking-balled to prepare for gray cement. So far the only patches of the city that showed signs of funk were Moroccan restaurants, or the pleasantly grungy immigrant districts flapping with colorful laundry. No wonder Barbans resented the encroachments of another culture. The North Africans had one.

  Edgar prided himself on being streetwise, so it was curious that, no matter how dilapidated a residential neighborhood he steered into, his urban alarm bells never sounded. Much of the housing was run-down and like the central commercial sector sterile, but dusty children played in the street and waved at the black Saab, hair flying merrily eastward, cheap toys sailing midair on horizontal strings. The most threatening aspect of the adolescents huddled in doorways was their dress sense. Zigzagged polyester cardigans were all the rage, along with mid-calf bell-bottoms and canary-yellow or baby-blue knee-highs. Had locals menaced the rest of Europe with such fashions, they might have won Barban independence overnight.

  Graffiti blazed everywhere, but its penmanship was tidy and obedient, like the “Aa Bb Cc” above primary school bulletin boards. Some of the vandals had used stencils; others had changed Es to Is, as if to avoid markdowns for misspelling. Many walls were simply branded SOB or PARA CIMA O CREME (“Up the Creme”)—go-team! in Barba.

  The racial slogans were almost polite: ADEUS NORTE AFRICANOS! or the yet more well-wishing SALVO-CONDUTO AOS TANGIER, OS ESTRANGEIROS—“Safe conduct to Tangier, foreigners.” Edgar’s favorite inscription not only demonstrated a good sense of musical history but obviated another scrounge through his dictionary with its broken English: DON’T YOU KNOW YOU RIDING ON MARRAKESH EXPRESS? WE TAKING YOU TO MARRAKESH! Sweet, but no match for the vulgar racial epithets scrawled in Wilmington and New York projects. The graffiti came across as conscientious exercises copied from Insurgency for Beginners.

  “Senhor!” A raggedy little boy who’d been following Edgar’s travails with the dictionary waved down the car. “Americano?” Edgar nodded. “Você quer a minha fotografia?” The urchin made a shutter-clicking motion. Shrugging, Edgar got out his camera.

  The child scuttled in front of a spray-painted SOB, knelt, squinted, and sighted down his arm as if aiming an assault rifle. A little creepy, but Edgar snapped the shot to get rid of the kid.

  The boy held out a hand, raising five fingers on the other. “Quinhentos escudos.”

  Rolling his eyes, Edgar fished out his wallet. The boy nimbly picked out a five-hundred-escudo note and ran away. Over three bucks! And chances were that picture had been published before.

  The trouble with phrasebooks was that they were boffo at instructing how to ask for directions. That was quite another matter from understanding directions. In four different bodegas, “Aonde é o Rato que Late, por favor?” invit
ed a gracious torrent of Slavic-sounding mush. Having kept his face in an attentive mask, he backed from each shop blithering, “Obrigado! Muito obrigado!” or: thanks for nothing.

  Finally Edgar ran across O Rato que Late blinking in purple neon. In a crude latex-on-plywood painting by the entrance, a stumpy-legged albino creature with a pointed pink snout bared its teeth, the cartoon bubble overhead growling, URRRRF! Aside from the hairless tail, it was a passable representation of a bull terrier.

  Edgar trotted down the gritty steps, only to come up short against the first thoroughly intimidating character he’d encountered in Barba. While the Portuguese bruiser who blocked the entranceway was wide as a Deluxe Frigidaire, it was neither the man’s mass that was unnerving nor his encroachment on Edgar’s personal space. It was the face. The mouth described an unsmiling straight line, as if typed with an em-dash. The eyes were bricked, like the windows of an abandoned house: no one was home. Perfectly round and obscenely smooth for a grown man’s, the infantile countenance didn’t flicker with the slightest visible intelligence. For one long moment Edgar stared into this huge, blank moon pie, in recognition that, on a sufficiently awesome scale, stupidity could be terrifying.

  “Quem você,” the strongarm droned. By comparison, the relentless vento insano roared with personality.

  Edgar could only discern that he wasn’t getting farther into the bar. “I, uh—” His phrasebook practice fled. “Journalissimo!” Wrong.

  “Bebê!” Roland Ordway’s voice oozed from the interior. “Está bem! Apresento-lhe Senhor Kellogg, um amigo do Senhor Saddler!”

  After the usual open-sesame, the boulder rolled expressionlessly back, and Edgar proceeded to where the press corps had been enjoying his discomfort with the doorman. They were seated at a round table in the middle of the gloomy bar, much like the crowd of hangers-on that Edgar had expected to accompany Toby Falconer to The Red Shoe.

  However, at a glance this Barban circle was clearly bereft of a center. Wistfully, Edgar wondered how Barrington must have felt sashaying into this bar—as heads swiveled in unison, eyes brightened, and boisterous gratitude rose above the quiet, gratifying gnash of Win Pyre’s teeth.

  “So is that the ‘Barking Rat’?” Edgar asked the table at large, gesturing toward the doorman. “I’ve met floats at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade with higher IQs.”

  “That’s Bebê Serio,” explained Martha Hulbert, who had exchanged her rotten-broccoli dress for a cheese-mold print. “Baby Serious, in English; no one knows his real name. And he’s not employed to do calculus, Edgar. He’s Tomás Verdade’s muscle. Bodyguard, when Barba heats up. Meantime, he’s the Rat’s bouncer. Pull up a chair.”

  Edgar did so. “What’s the point of vetting patrons in this dive?”

  “The Rat’s a Creamie bar.”

  “Is that something like a Fudgsicle?”

  Martha paused politely. What, had Saddler patented this quip, too?

  “The Creams like to keep tabs on who’s where, especially foreigners,” Ordway injected, collusively sotto voce. “I can’t say if Bebê Serio has personally bombed any tube stations, but I wouldn’t cross him. Bear’s the only bloke I know who doesn’t give the big yob wide berth. Word is that Bear actually got Serio to smile once, but that must be an urban myth, right, Marth? Even Bear had his limits.”

  “Limits?” asked Martha archly. “I’ve heard countless theories, but that one’s new.”

  Edgar took orders, and the company was keen to stick the newcomer with a round of six drinks. After discreet consultation of his phrasebook, Edgar ordered três vinhos do Porto for the girls. Ordway and Pyre both wanted Choques; impulsively, Edgar made that three.

  Waiting at the bar, he borrowed a damp towel to wipe the sticky pera peluda glop from between his fingers. The tea towel was embroidered with SUPORTE NOSSOS SOLDADOS OUSADOS in bright red. In fact, the whole dive was inundated with political ephemera. Bumper stickers plastered on the walls read, LIBERTA A BARBA OCUPADA, VIVA OS BARBEADORES, VOTE O CREME DE BARBEAR. SOB and Tomás Verdade lapel buttons were stuck around the cash register; pennants were festooned with rifle replicas and cherry bombs. Posters featured unfocused photos of goons in balaclavas and combat fatigues sighting down automatics, as the kid had mimed that afternoon. A gold-plated AK-47 lapel pin twinkled on the barkeep’s apron. Under its gapping bib, the sullen publican’s T-shirt declared, VIVEMOS LIVRES OU VOCÊ MORRER!

  “Catch the shift in person,” Ordway said quietly at Edgar’s back, nodding at the T-shirt as he helped with the drinks. “ ‘We live free or you die.’ Barba has a wider streak of self-preservation than New Hampshire.”

  “I can understand the political gimcracks,” said Edgar, collecting the port order. “But what’s with all that kitsch on the top shelf?”

  Serving no apparent ideological purpose, a line of misshapen plastic reproductions was arrayed over the booze: a rotund Statue of Liberty with the pop-eyed expression of John Belushi at a toga party, a lopsided Eiffel Tower and a Tower of Pisa that stood up straight, and a Baby Jesus sufficiently deformed to have played a bit part in Alien 3.

  “Cinziero’s main industry is the production of rinky-dink souvenirs,” Ordway explained. “This burg earned its name from making millions of ashtrays. Barba supplies the kiosks around Buckingham Palace, Times Square, Bethlehem, and the Pyramids. The trinkets are grim enough when they come out properly, but the rejects are horror shows. Workers take them home. The Rat’s a favorite repository. What’s really class, though—” Ordway distributed the drinks—“is they’re starting to manufacture bits and bobs for the SOB on the quiet. Lighters, coffee mugs. I’ve started a corking collection.”

  “Where do you pick them up?” Edgar asked casually.

  “The Creams run a shop,” said Ordway. “Raises dosh for the party. It’s dead legit; O Creme’s legal. Nothing criminal about advocating random murder, so long as no one catches you slitting someone’s throat. Isn’t democracy brilliant?”

  “But you couldn’t call Creamie propaganda slick, could you?” Edgar noted, taking a seat. “Those gun-toting poster boys look like Mr. Potato Head dolls.”

  “Watch what you say here,” Ordway muttered. He swept his eyes significantly toward a well-populated corner, which seemed deliberately kept dark for the purpose of lurking. “Anywhere in Cinziero. Crap graphics maybe, but the Sobs aren’t a joke. These wankers are deadly. The rest of this lot like to pretend that Bear sailed off on a magic carpet with some randy skirt to Bali. It’s not just because they like him and don’t want to see him hurt. They don’t want to see themselves hurt. To bims like Trudy, Barba’s just a titillating panto, a feather in her cap to tickle her mates in Florida. Martha imagines liberal platitudes and journalistic credentials offer some sort of protection. Pyre knows better, but he’s too burnt-out to glance over his shoulder anymore. They’re all too blasé. Don’t follow their example.”

  Refusing to play to Roland’s self-importance, Edgar asked full-voice, “So you think Saddler was murdered by the SOB?”

  Not only the whole table but the rest of the Rat’s patrons went quiet.

  “Not exactly a fast learner, are you Kellogg?” said Ordway.

  Edgar gestured to the posters. “Why should I tiptoe around losers with their heads in socks? And you didn’t answer my question.”

  “Never overlook the obvious,” Ordway croaked harshly under his breath. “Bear was covering a terrorist movement that’s demonstrated a gleeful disregard for human life. His copy wasn’t always flattering. One day, poof, he’s gone. Doesn’t take a brain surgeon. I hope I’m wrong. But Bear could be a warning to us all. So if you ever speak to me that loudly in public about a violent paramilitary organization with ears at the bar, I will not only avoid your company but I will personally coldcock you to keep those blighters off my back.”

  “Roland,” said Win. “Laying it on a little thick?”

  Ordway stood up. He continued in a hoarse stage whisper, “I’ve had it up to my eyes w
ith gormless gits flying into this town, who don’t have a political clue, and who can’t even ask for the loo in Portuguese. I’m supposed to hold their hands and show them around the dodgy parts of town, while they broadcast self-righteous bromides about terrorism at the top of their lungs and might as well be painting a bull’s-eye on my forehead. No, thank you.”

  Before marching out of the Rat, Ordway picked up his Choque and chugged the whole bottle straight—the first thing the Guardian reporter had done that Edgar found truly impressive.

  Chapter 13

  A Brief Apprenticeship as an Ignorant Dipshit

  MARTHA PATTED EDGAR’S sticky hand. “Don’t mind Roland. TV crews are always coming through here needing a tour guide, and he’s tired of driving the bus. But he’s right. We all get careless. Best keep your lip buttoned, and watch where you walk.”

  “I poked around the better part of Cinziero today,” said Edgar, taking a slug of his beer and trying not to wince. “Didn’t seem too ominous.”

  “Not Terra do Cão?” Martha asked in alarm, describing where Edgar had snapped the photo of that kid. “Don’t go in there by yourself. Take a local, preferably a Cream.”

  “Excuse me,” said Edgar, keeping his sarcasm to sociable levels. “I didn’t know the rules.”

  “Roland shames everybody about not speaking Portuguese,” said Trudy. “He’s miffed ’cause the Guardian made him take a course? Nobody else had to. Like, Barrington hardly spoke a word.”

  “Why bother?” said Pyre. “With the faithful Roland Ordway to translate for him?”

  “Barrington knew just enough Portuguese to make bilingual puns,” said Martha. “He claimed that’s all foreign languages were for.”

  Edgar reached covertly into a jacket pocket to switch on his microcassette. “So what’s the consensus?” Begrudgingly, he kept his voice just low enough not to offend local toughs. “Did the Sobs whack Saddler?”