Freddy and Fredericka

by Mark Helprin

  “What’s your name?”

  “Kitten the Tenth.”

  “Kitten the Tenth?”

  “In Romany the word kitten, pronounced kitten, has a meaning different than it does in English. It means—and it’s impossible to translate directly—a small, agile, young, flexible, playful cat.”

  “Are you the king of all the Gypsies in the world?” Fredericka asked.

  “We don’t have a world king.”

  “Are you the king of all the Gypsies in the Western Hemisphere?”

  “No, we don’t have hemisphere kings, either.”

  “North America, then?”

  The Gypsy shook his head from side to side.

  “America?” Freddy asked, as the kingdom was whittled down.

  “No, too many Rom in America for one king.”

  “East of the Mississippi?” Fredericka inquired charmingly. They were now rooting for him. He was silent. “Where, then?” she asked.

  “I’m the king,” he said, drawing an air map quickly with his right index finger (Freddy could read air maps), “of all the Gypsies in New Jersey. Well, northern New Jersey east of the Saddle River, north of Hoboken, and south of Englewood.”

  Freddy considered this. “Some kings don’t have large kingdoms,” he said, “but they’re great kings nonetheless. A king’s fame and reputation depend not on the size of his country but on his virtues, and it has always been that way. For example, the kings of England have had for centuries a special respect for the kings of Portugal. Now, it is true that this is related to Portugal’s geographical position vis-à-vis Britain’s former great rival, Spain, and that Portugal had a great overseas empire. But, still, Portugal is, well, Portugal. Kingliness comes from . . . inside. We have a special place in our hearts for kings in exile, and though kings in exile have not a single subject, the place in our hearts is always open. It is the duty of one king to defend the nobility of another no matter what the indicia of the other’s power.”

  “Really?” asked Kitten the Tenth.

  “Absolutely,” said Freddy, exploring with his tongue the now familiar gap in his teeth.

  “You know,” declared Kitten, “I like you. I don’t know if you’re soul brothers or not, but it doesn’t matter. All the races of man—Gypsy, soul brother, anchorman—are the same. There’s no difference between them.”

  “Then how do we know there are different races?” Freddy asked.

  “Stereotypes.”

  “But how do we know which person fits in which stereotype?”

  “It’s random.”

  “It’s random?”

  “You never know what you are until someone abuses you. That’s what happened with the Indians.”

  “You mean that the Indians, who didn’t know who they were, and the Europeans, who also didn’t know who they were, were indistinguishable until the Europeans began to mistreat the Indians?”

  “No,” said Kitten. “The Indians killed the Europeans to get their horses. They mistreated them.”

  “Who mistreated whom?”

  “It doesn’t matter. They’re all the same. You’re walking a real thin line here.”

  “Tell me something,” said Freddy.

  “What?” asked Kitten, feeling the road to Baltimore vanish into the black hole of his exhaust pipes. With all the horses under the hood, it was almost like flying.

  “Are you really a Gypsy?”

  “Part Gypsy, part Italian, actually.”

  “What part Italian?”

  “In percent?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know, maybe a hundred.”

  “Then you’re not Kitten the Tenth?”

  “I can’t prove it, but I am. I’m also part Romanian. This is America, right? I mean, who are you, exactly? You can say anything you want, but you’ll never convince anyone in the world that you’ve got a clear bloodline. Look at you two. A census taker could spend the rest of his life figuring out what box to check.”

  “Moofoomooach,” Freddy said inexplicably, like a frog on a lily pad.

  “What shall we call you,” Fredericka asked, “rather than Kitten the Tenth?”

  “Sal.”

  “Sal what?” Freddy asked serenely.

  “Sal Foppiano.”

  Freddy withdrew, but Fredericka briefly put both hands on Sal’s right shoulder. “I shall call you Kitten the Tenth.”

  “Seven thousand cars,” Freddy said, devastatingly.

  “All right,” Kitten admitted, “seven hundred.”

  Freddy sneered.

  “Seventy.”

  “Please,” Freddy said.

  “Seven to ten—I swear on my mother’s grave—over a week’s time, sometimes two weeks, or three. In the winter, maybe four.”

  “And how do you get these cars?” Freddy asked.

  “You tell me.”

  “You steal them.”

  “You’re right.”

  “And that’s your proposition. You want us to steal cars for you.”

  “No.”

  “Freddy, you said you wanted to learn to hot-wire.”

  “I’ll teach you to hot-wire, just for the hell of it,” Kitten told them. “If you want, we’ll have dinner in South Baltimore and I’ll show you in the parking lot of the Crab House. Then you can pick a car and be on your way. It’s up to you. But maybe you’ll want to stay. Maybe you’ll want to take my deal, which, believe me, is a lot better than thirteen thousand dollars.”

  “How much better?” Freddy asked.

  “A hundred thousand, guaranteed. If you have a little patience, another hundred and fifty. You can’t beat this deal, and I’ll buy dinner.”

  He took a powerful right as the road forked, heading in the dusk toward the tunnel that dipped under Baltimore’s liver-grey harbor. Right and ahead the city rose up just as it was supposed to have, with the sun gleaming on it and a vast number of lights now sparkling and shining in the dance of dying heat.

  “THIS LOOKS FAMILIAR,” Freddy said as they glided through the twilight in South Baltimore. “I think I dedicated a bridge here once.”

  “You probably did,” said Kitten, “one of those bridges that goes underneath the water.”

  “Aren’t those called tunnels?” Fredericka asked.

  “Perhaps it was a ship,” Freddy added.

  “Which is your favourite kind of ship to dedicate?” Kitten mocked.

  “Ballistic missile submarines.”

  “You do a lot of those?”

  “Some.”

  “What did you say your name was, again?”

  “Desi Moofoomooach.”

  “Moffat,” Fredericka said. “Desi Moffat.”

  “Let’s not be confusing,” said Freddy. “Our names are Lachpoof Bachquaquinnik Dess Moofoomooach, and Mrs Lachpoof Bachquaquinnik Dess Moofoomooach. But you can call us Desi and Popeel Moffat.”

  The Cadillac moved like an arrow down leafy blocks of row houses with sugar-cube doorsteps until it reached the Crab House, where half a dozen people greeted Kitten as he came in, but only stole quick glances at his guests. The three royals sat at a round, deeply varnished table that pulsed with the bass beat of a jukebox. Various neon and electric bar signs flickered almost in time, crawling along motionless paths like hallucinogenic worms. Waitresses moved about as quietly as sharks at the bottom of municipal aquariums, though they looked less like sharks than like décolleté pigeons. Kitten ordered three pitchers of beer and three crab roasts.

  “What is a crab roast?” Freddy asked the waitress.

  “You take three kinds of crabs,” she said, “Alaska King, Chesapeake, and Stone; shell them; marinate them in spices, extra-virgin olive oil, and sherry; and then sear them on a superheated grill. They cook right through and stay hot. We give you a whole pound, and I tell you, honey, it’s a dish fit for a king.”

  “Then we’ll have to take it,” said Freddy.

  A little later they heard three pounds of marinated crab hit a white-hot grill
, and when the crab arrived, it was truly magnificent. They ate, gratefully. “Not even a day, Fredericka,” Freddy said quietly, “not even a full twenty-four hours, and here we are, in a cooled banquet hall, dressed in the clothes of nobles, with music, and the richest fruits of the sea. You see how, after falling from the heavens, we have been able to agitate fortune in our favour?”

  Kitten listened in true puzzlement as, after several pints, Freddy was oblivious of being overheard.

  “I think,” Freddy continued, “that not only is the reacquisition feasible, but desirable. I like the way of life here, the road, the music, the crab. I would like to be this people’s sovereign. They speak English in their way, they’re mad, and they’re vital.”

  “I don’t know, Freddy,” Fredericka whispered, though within the range of Kitten’s cocked ears, which moved like radar dishes. “Can you imagine them at the Garden Party, dressed in leather, chains, turbans, and street clothes born in the circus, speaking in their atrocious accents, with pierced body parts, tattoos, and rooster hair?”

  “We wouldn’t invite the intellectuals.”

  “But even the real people here are like that.”

  “Though it’s true that they have a certain wildness, like Indians or Celts, it’s part of what gives energy to their empire. When Phoebe Boylingehotte dresses as a Cel. . . .” Knowing that he had erred, Freddy nonetheless could not stop the memory, and it made him take a long deep breath.

  “Is that what she does?” Fredericka asked, like a munition about to explode. “Dresses as a Celt?”

  Caught, Freddy instinctively told the truth. “Body paint, feathers, and furry things like hracneets.”

  “Damn you, Freddy!” Fredericka shouted, half-rising in her seat, stilling the conversation in the room. “With her and not with me? Why not with me!” She was deeply hurt, but, also, a bit excited.

  Freddy said, “I don’t do it, she does it.” He looked sheepish. Behind him, in a pocket of darkness, a beer sign blinked in purple light. “I thought you’d be embarrassed, but if you’d like we can do it, too.”

  Fredericka seized her glass and threw a pint of beer into Freddy’s face. “Never again,” she said, like a dog growling through a tight muzzle. “Never again. From now on, it’s just business, and you can go fuck yourself.”

  Everyone in the restaurant began to applaud, though from experience they assumed that this was anything but a lasting declaration. For his part, Freddy began to streak. His face looked like a gold coin that had spent time on a hot grill. Catching a glimpse of himself in a distant mirror, he saw that he looked like a cross between a tiger, an angelfish, and a baked apple.

  “Who are you dudes, really?” Kitten asked.

  “That’s not important. What’s your proposition?” Fredericka said, nursing her wounds.

  “How do I know you’re not cops?” Kitten asked, and then quickly answered himself by laughing.

  “We would like to hear the proposition,” Freddy said. “We need a lot of money.”

  “For what?”

  “I can’t really explain, but we have a great mission, something very difficult, possibly impossible. We have no idea whatsoever how to accomplish it, but it may come to us on the road, and it shall almost certainly involve a major fiscal commitment.”

  “I know,” said Kitten.

  “On the road things occur that don’t occur to people who sit still. If we keep moving, the way may be illumined. Have you ever been on a quest?”

  “No, but I’ve eaten one,” said Kitten, thinking that a quest was a chocolate-covered pastry like a Ring-Ding or a Ding Dong. He hadn’t the vaguest idea of what Freddy was talking about. “It’s a big country. You ever been to Arizona?”

  “I dedicated a bridge there, or was that in Hawaii?”

  “Of course.”

  “The bigger the better. The more you move, the more likely you’ll find the divine rhythm. You have to throw yourself into the storm of the world even before it takes you, or it won’t. It’s like riding a wave.”

  “Yeah,” said Kitten. “You lost me.”

  “A man never rises to greater heights than when he does not know where he is going.”

  “I know,” said Kitten. “Like, you take the high road and I’ll take the low road, and I’ll get to Scotland before you.”

  “Afore ye,” Freddy corrected.

  “Whatever. But why do you need money, apart from the fact that everyone needs money?”

  “Money,” Freddy said, “is the store of power and effort. Properly understood, it can be a bolt of lightning. It is the compression and compressor of time, the frozen accumulation of motion, the battery of many engines too numerous to name, and the theory and history of effort. On a quest, one must accumulate it so that when the opportunity comes to cast or block lightning bolts one can draw upon its fluid power in reserve.”

  Kitten pondered this. “Will two hundred and fifty Gs do it?”

  “One has to start somewhere,” Freddy said. “What’s the proposition?”

  “You’ve heard of Swastika 34 Egg.”

  “Yes, I believe I have,” said Freddy. “It’s an ingredient in German shampoo.”

  Kitten thought this was funny.

  “It isn’t?” Freddy asked.

  “Obviously,” Kitten said, “you don’t read Time magazine.”

  “We don’t, so tell us.”

  “Okay. One of my clients is an accountant in Chevy Chase. His life is like an air crash in slow motion. Anything that he can do to destroy his family, not to speak of himself, he does. He overeats, he takes drugs, he drinks, he gambles, he whores, he steals from his clients. You know the type. He’s got a big house, he goes to fancy restaurants, dresses like Antonio Fantangami, drives a Ferrari, and keeps up all appearances. Something’s gotta break, right? He owes his bookie half a million dollars and is a million in debt to the banks over and above his mortgage. He covers himself by embezzling, and keeps all the plates in the air by shifting money around from client to client in a scheme so complicated it would take the math department at Cal Tech to figure it out. Even he can’t figure it out, but he knows he can’t last too much longer or go too much deeper. The string has got to run out, because he can’t stop gambling, and each week he spends on drugs twice what he makes in a month. So he wants to make a clean breast of it.”

  “Turn himself in to Scotland Yard?”

  “Yeah, turn himself in to Scotland Yard. You really get me. What good would it do to turn himself in? He’d go to jail. How could he pay his bookie? No. He’s desperate. So he comes to me. Why me? I got him a liver-and-onion-coloured BMW 750-IL. It was hard to get the right car. We went all the way to Atlanta. He knows I have connections, and that I can do things he can’t. ‘Let’s go into business together,’ he says. ‘One time, then it’s over.’

  “But it’ll never be over for him, even if he thinks it will, because he’s a born suicide. Still, that doesn’t mean I can’t help him. Who knows, maybe he’ll give all the money back, pay off his debts, become a vegetarian, and take up a hobby like building harpsichords. It can happen. Meanwhile, he cuts me in, and I cut you in.”

  “To what?” Freddy asked, warily. He had no intention of committing a major crime, although he would consider the possibility and judge the nature of the act before entirely ruling it out.

  “He goes to a lot of parties, right? He knows a lot of very rich people. Some of them have great art in their houses, but only a very select group of burglars can do art. Why? You have to have a special fence. As it happens, the accountant knows such a fence, and has been stealing his money for years.

  “So he knows that he can get rid of certain works. The fence says to him, ‘If you knew what I would pay for a Swastika 34 Egg, if only you knew.’ ”

  “What is a Swastika 34 Egg?” Freddy asked.

  “Art.”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t really understand what you’re saying.”

  “The artist, one of the most expensive artis
ts in the world.”

  “Really? I’ve never heard of Swastika 34 Egg.” Freddy knew almost as much about art as Kenneth Clark, but was uninterested in the avant-garde.

  “She died last year,” said Kitten. “That’s why she’s so hot.”

  “Who was she?”

  “She was on the cover of Time magazine, nude, but they put letters in the strategic places. She’s the greatest American artist after Frank Sumatra.”

  “I think I’ve heard of him,” said Freddy. “He’s some sort of entertainer.”

  “No, he’s an artist. He’s half Italian and half Indonesian. He puts dirt in rooms, screams a word for ten hours, chops off his foot, and eats government documents.”

  “That’s very interesting, but what about Homer, Eakins, Sargent, Whistler, Henri?” Freddy asked.

  “I’ve never heard of them,” Kitten said. “They didn’t jump out of a sixth-storey window into a three-storey pile of horse manure, did they? Frank Sumatra did. They didn’t wear a brassière made of miniature colour televisions tuned to the Golf Channel, did they? Swastika 34 Egg did. She’s really hot. She completed only thirty-four works and then killed herself, as she promised, for number thirty-five. She had the art world holding its breath for years as first one thing and then another was finished. Last year, they exhaled. Of the thirty-five, fifteen were things like jumping out of windows, committing suicide, or sweeping the ocean with a broom. There are only twenty Swastika 34 Eggs that can be bought and sold. Of those, ten are held in a vault by a public corporation—this scheme was one of the fifteen other works—and you can buy stock and futures in them. The value, as of the last time I looked, was a hundred and thirty-four million dollars. The prices fluctuate, but you have to figure that any of the ten in the outside world is worth about ten million. The fence can get five. My client the accountant can get three from the fence. He keeps two, and I get one, of which I give two hundred and fifty Gs to you.”

  Both Freddy and Fredericka were stunned. As sabre-toothed tigers were to the children of cavemen, art thieves were to them, which was perfectly understandable given that Freddy was the eventual owner of the world’s greatest private collection of paintings. His face showed through his tigrine stripes that he would have none of it, but Kitten thought he was merely sceptical.