by R. M. Koster
I might have had Nightandmist or Apple raise it. I might have put it in the night court judge’s mind to let her go. I might have had the cops neglect to book her, or simply snatched her from the wagon to the loft. Instead it came to me to go ministering in public, with Full Moons gathering in the contributions. I didn’t think it over and decide. I saw myself at it and knew what I would do, I realized that my interim was over.
Sniffed the air and stared about. Squad car across the avenue in front of Gucci’s, idling motor puffing out fumes, occupants pulsing out hate waves. Weirdo boogie scumbag! Greaseball pimp! Things scarcely better on the sidewalks, only a few nuggets of well-being. On the near corner, Mr. Amos Longstreet Lee, father of five, with his first paycheck in months nested safely in an inner pocket. Across Fifth, Mrs. Erica Salter, ash-blond beauty just turned twenty-six, northbound from Saks to the St. Regis for a nooner with a new acquaintance, Baltic eyes sparkling, cheeks rouged fetchingly by the nippy air and the anticipated thrills of careless love. And steaming past me, his pointed beard prowed forward, his breath pluming above, the tails of his Burberry billowing behind him, Mr. S. Heilanstalt, author, who’d just seen his latest book stacked in Rizzoli’s window. Three moderately happy humans out of a hundred in my radar range, and for the rest the streets polluted with ill feeling, the symptoms of denatured life. Hostility. Worry and boredom. Tamped-down rage and papered-over terror. Along with twisted bowels and ulcerated stomachs, dysfunctional sex organs, crazed fifth-column cells. The eyes of captive beasts glanced up at me; a dozen cancers returned Mandragon’s smirk.
Rat rite unquestionably apt. Hadn’t thought about it. Seen myself at it, so I knew what I would do. But now, noting the troubles of my congregation, I realized the propriety of invoking the only beast, along with the roach of course, that actually thrives in centers of advanced culture. But first I worked a little one-on-one. Rattling slowly, uttering small squeaks, Mandragon hop-danced back and forth along the church front, drawing game.
Got the first inside a minute: Mr. Norman C. Baldeck, Esq., counselor at law. Large handsome chap in his late forties. Chesterfield coat, man-of-affairs bearing. Might have stepped from a Caddy ad, but had in fact just left his office for a business lunch at “21.” I spotted him as he crossed Fifty-fourth Street headed south, spun him around midway over and hauled him back, speared him as he reached the curb. That is, I punched up FIRST LOVE in the computing instrument under Mr. Baldeck’s homburg, so that he looked at Full Moons and saw a girl he’d dated thirty years before. Since then he’d led what’s called an interesting life: Big Ten football, combat in Korea, deals that could have put him behind bars. He’d managed swindles, sweated out tax audits, but he’d never again lived with such intensity as when he loved that girl and was maneuvering her sackward. He’d won unwinnable cases, bested expert bargainers in delicate negotiations, married an heiress, and made gobs of money, but he’d never again known such joy and triumph as when that girl moaned “Normy!” and raised her rump so he could pull her panties down. He had obstructed justice, suborned perjury, committed fraud; betrayed his wife, his friends, and his associates; spoiled his children and neglected them to boot, but he’d never again felt such ecstasies of guilt as when he dumped that girl once she turned pregnant. When Mr. Baldeck looked at Full Moons and saw his own first love, all these sensations flooded back to him, pure as when he’d felt them first, so that for the first time in thirty years he was living fully.
Held him at that peak for thirty seconds—all he could safely take—then eased him down. The girl who’d moaned “Normy!” faded back to Full Moons, still smiling vacantly, cradling her peach tin. Norman C. Baldeck, Esq., began to sob. Forked his bill clip up into the tin. Let Full Moons blot his jowls with her mitten. Turned and shuffled off to his appointment, head bowed, heart full of wild regret and longing for the freshness of life that once was his. But also restored to it a little, just a bit cleansed and wakened, partially reminded of true value.
Netted my next contributor as Baldeck left. One Emil Vogler, Johannesburg export merchant, who was returning to his hotel (the Sherry Netherland) from the diamond center. He wore an astrakhan-style hat of Persian lamb, and a rich overcoat with matching collar. He had rings worth several thousands on his gloved hands. But he’d spent seven years in hell and left everyone he loved behind there: that was tattooed on his left forearm and his heart. So I recaptured time for him, made winter summer and Fifth Avenue the Tiergarten, restored his family. Vogler saw them strolling toward him across the meadow—Vatti in cream flannels, Mutti with little Heinie in her arms; his sister Lili, her auburn hair in ringlets; straw-hatted Onkel Max (who’d lost an arm and won a Knight’s Cross at Verdun); Tanchen Mitzi, Cousin Willi, Cousin Fritz. They’d all been wafted up the Auschwitz chimneys; now Mr. Vogler had them back again, along with his cremated childhood. I let him keep all that for a full minute, held the vision while he wept and wheezed. Then I dissolved it, but its warmth remained, and he stuffed all his cash in Full Moons’ tin.
I pulled in a few more, people who could pay well to have their lives enriched, and a few passersby stopped to watch me, though they couldn’t see what my act had to make anyone come up with dough. Then I began the general service. My rattling swelled in volume, the tempo of my dance picked up. Tail swayed, nose crinkled, upper lip drew back.
Mouth opened and shut quickly, and the spectators—the more suggestible among them first—saw my ears bell, my face elongate, my cap spread peltlike down over my body. And then they understood my squeakings as this hymn:
The wise rat of the sewers, the roach in the walls
The rat who sees, the roach in the walls who senses
I am above you all, I have every gift
I am the one chosen by infinite power
Come, then, O marvelous rat, and teach!
Come, O clever roach, instruct them!
By the time I’d done half a dozen of the faster shuffles, everyone who’d paused to watch, everyone who merely looked up at the church front saw a huge brown Norway rat doing a dance there, and a giant upright honey-colored roach with a peach tin in its topmost pair of legs.
Not disconcerted in the slightest. Comforted. For all their size and strangeness, the rat and roach were benign. Everyone who so much as glanced their way, everyone around, walking or driving, stopped at once and watched them, captivated.
The roach smiled out contentment from its luminous, globular eyes; it waved peace and contentment with its feelers. The rat’s tail swung in rhythmic, rapid arcs; its squeaks were an enchanting melody. Then all the onlookers were in an immense sewer, full of filth and every sort of vermin, but not a bit disturbed. At home. They had come to know the city as a sewer, and the knowledge brought great peace.
The squad-car cops squeaked, wriggled their glad haunches on the vinyl. Those in the street were dancing back and forth. They held their fingers bunched before their chests. Their noses crinkled, their upper lips drew back, their rumps moved with the rhythmic swaying of the long lithe tails they felt extending from them, and their mouths opened and shut compulsively, squeaking. They forgot their boredom and their worry, their rage and terror, their hostility and discontent. Mandragon had brought them life, Mandragon had freed them.
The cops and others got down from their cars. Passengers streamed down from buses and joined the dance. Shops emptied out. Windows filled with peering eyes, with crinkled noses, drawn-back upper lips, and where second-story windows could be opened people leaped from them, flew ratlike head-first down, and landed lightly on their palms and jumped up dancing. People formed wheellike clusters with their imaginary tails entwined and spun along, the avenue and crosswalks, rebounded from abandoned cars and buses, bowled dancers into one another, and others danced their way forward through the press and crammed their cash into the roach’s tin. Avenue jumbled with rat-dancers. Cars backed up from Fifty-fifth to the park. But not all the honking or the wailing of cop sirens could bruise my congregation’s newfound bliss
.
Then the rat danced down from the steps and drew the roach out into the middle of the avenue and aimed it south. The giant roach stepped stately down Fifth Avenue, body upright, feelers erect, luminous eyes smiling. The rat weaved dancing circles around it. All the people danced behind—three blocks south to St. Paddy’s, and as they progressed others were swept into the dance.
Opposite the cathedral the roach halted. The rat danced wildly round it, squeaking shrilly, and all formed clusters with their imaginary tails entwined. Spinning pinwheels squeaking in delight, whirling knots of joy. Round and around, leaning out from the hubs of their twined tails, melded together.
Then the dancers noticed—those least capable of ecstasy among them first—that the rat and roach had vanished. The clusters slowed, then broke apart. People stood rubbing their flushed faces, twisting their necks, blinking at one another. Then they looked up toward the cathedral.
• • •
Mandragon sits cross-legged in the air above the portal of St. Patrick’s. An orange glow flames all about me. My teeth gleam in a smirk, my eyes sear down, piercing yet kindly, on the staring multitude below.
Mandragon is entirely motionless. My lips do not move, no sound comes from me. And yet my words are clear to each member of the crowd.
“Beloved, the universe is a network of power.
“It is not a puzzle to be figured out. It is a network to be tuned to.
“Reason is a technique for tuning out vast portions of the network so that a petty scrap may be grasped. The benefits of reason are illusory. Its comforts are false, Its ministry is ending.
“Advanced cultures are mechanisms for jamming one’s reception of the network, for short-circuiting the network itself. The time is near when these shall vanish. They will explode and flame to cinder. They will crumble and be blown away. Earth will be cleansed.
“Billions will perish. I’ve heard them howling, I’ve watched them trudge bewildered till they fall. Earth will be winnowed.
“A few will be saved. I will shelter them against the holocaust. I will tune them to the network of the universe. Earth will be renewed.”
My mission had come to me.
“RATMAN STUNS MIDTOWN”
“MASS HALLUCINATION ON 5TH AVE”
“MYSTERY GURU EMPTIES PRECINCT LOCKUP”
Mandragon emerged.
24
Mandragon moved south and west. Over high-crowned secondary roads head-lamped in loneliness, and highways rumbled with huge semis. Past sullen woods of bare-limbed brittle trees and fields patched with grey snow, down sudden gantlets of blared neon—ZIPPYFRY, FAST-O-SWILL, MAXIGAS, YUMMY-GULP, FLASHBURGER. Through wind-flailed country towns, along the outskirts of dinged cities. West and south onto the temperate waist of the continent, south and east toward its loins, pulled by merged revelations of mission and destiny.
Swelling my tribe on route. At the precinct I freed everyone along with Confort but took only three, Six String and Argo Who and Monorail. No bail, just drowsed the cops and slid the steel doors open, and we set out that night in an old school bus. Then I took novices from road and town, a remnant for the beginning.
Often I navigated by them, ordered new headings as knowledge of my salvagees came to me, homed in on them like beacons. Crossing New Guernsey our first night on the road I got an extrasensogram about No Puedo Más. That’s what I named him: towheaded runaway sixteen years old, riding late through the wind and the rain in a fatherly old pervert’s Hermes Malaga. I vectored us southeast on intercept, had us parked at a motel off the turnpike outside Fenville when they pulled in, plucked him from Dad’s arms and we drove on. And next day sidetracked forty miles to Clemency, West Jamesland, for Burundanga. I had a futureview of him in the sleet-streaked window, watched him wake up, hung over and strung out, beside a girl he couldn’t recognize, then stumble round the room in Jockey shorts, hunting for his wallet. All his money, all his papers gone, and the next frame had him standing in the iced street beside the car he’d borrowed three days earlier in Swanee but forgotten to fill up with antifreeze. Joyride over, ripe for a new life, and so I detoured there and took him.
And swung across North Gloriana into Micherburg, to the laundromat Miss Nowhere worked in. All day I dreamed her dreams of being wanted, of being worth something; locked on them, rode them in, and let her join me. Then, leaving town, had Argo hang a left: kid brown as me and even thinner, pedaling along, delivering groceries. In chinos and a ragged warm-up jacket. Trying to whistle, but his teeth were chattering too hard. Mom dead and Pop run off, and Princess said that she was hungry, so I took the groceries and him, I named him Snowman.
Sometimes no change of course was needed. I’d get a glimpse into some place ahead, roadhouse or diner—kid staring at a row of empty beer cans, girl dancing by herself in an empty room—and tell who happened to be driving where to stop. Then have him honk, and my new convert would come out, get on the bus or follow in car or pickup. And others came to join me at my stops.
No urgency to my progress. Used back roads more than highways, ambled on. Stopped when and where it moved me, for rest and rite. I’d feel the call of some deserted spot and guide us there, nudge in along dirt trackways dowsing for a hidden spring of power, and when I’d found it settle my people in and stop their minds and dance myself from my humanity. To stag or sparrow, weasel, hawk, or linx; to wasp or otter. Put on that knowledge and that power, passed alien being into my tribe’s hearts. That gift too was mine.
Gone now. Drained from me. Feel power trickling back but not in time. Be transformed anyway in a few hours fish if they put me in the ocean, worm if they put me in the ground, bird and insect if they leave me hanging. In those days, though, I danced my transformations, and when my ecstasy stepped from me I’d notice newcomers standing shyly beside their vehicles beyond the circle of communicants. Or I would wake to find them waiting. Or they would travel out to meet me on the road.
Often I felt or visioned them approaching. Sunlight and Nineveh leaving a lecture hall at Kennessippi State, hitching a ride out to the interstate past Ramses, waiting all day till I came by. Earthly Delights piloting her camper down through Arkalachee into Catchpole to hook on to my caravan. Or Perfume River. For days I had flashes of him. Watched him check out of the veterans’ hospital at Manticore, where he’d lain for years, nonface to the wall and never speaking, where he’d coffin’d himself. I saw him draw his back pay at Fort Vermis, outfit himself in Salamandra. I felt him rocketing across the Utaho fiats, steel hooks pinced on the handlebars, plastic knees gripping the tank—neuter as me, crotch napalmed smooth and dollish, but alive again, and he was waiting for me over the Texahoma line northwest of Deathwright.
Six String took him for a cop, and couldn’t learn cops couldn’t touch us. Eyes only twenty-twenty, and he’d been busted several times too often, so when he saw the bike parked on a rise above the road and the helmeted figure beside it, he came off the gas though we were doing only forty. I didn’t have to look, I’d been expecting. I knew the bike was a Hakagawa not a Harley, the helmet had white wings and a football face guard, the wearer had no face. He mounted and kicked the starter as we went by, rolled down the bank and tan up on us slowly, weaving in and out among the vehicles I pulled in train, took station on our left front so that his head was just forward of Six String’s, about a yard off and below. Then he looked round. One eye and two pink holes in a glaze of scar tissue, but they tried to smile when I raised my hand in welcome.
Still others joined after I crossed into Mexico, and on my counterclockwise progress south and east. I didn’t summon them, didn’t compel them in. Those who belonged with me knew where to find me. Brought me their wan lives to be refreshed, their aimless lives to be directed, their empty lives to be filled up with light. And I received them, named them, clasped them to me. More than sixty by the time I reached Ticamala. Nearly a dozen cars and trucks followed my bus into the fallow field outside Huacho, the spot where, twice seven years to the mo
nth before, power chose me.
And on that spot I paused for seven days. Fasted. Made journeys of ascent and of descent. Crossed the highway—which was paved now, the only difference—and wandered in the jungle, where flocks of red and yellow parrots flew down toward me then disappeared. Sat all one day under the sun and rain, sponging my mind of word-thought. Went through the windy crack between the worlds. Prepared my tribe.
The sun is down. An April canopy of clouds hangs close to the moist earth, masking the stars. Mandragon’s tribe sit in a circle behind Apple and Nightandmist, Full Moons and Confort and Paloma, who kneel beneath tall torches spiked in the soil, marking the points of a pentagram. Within it Mandragon dances.
Framed in a pale, lime-colored aura; crowned with a single feather-horn. Arms lifted, face toward the dark sky, Mandragon dances. Leaps and turns, shivers the gourd rattles, sings shrilly in an unknown language.
The seated figures twist. Sway and bend forward. Clutch handfuls of earth. They moan and laugh as images form in them, as waves of feeling sweep them.
Above the darker line of jungle, lightning crackles.
Mandragon entered them, Mandragon joined them. Sang them from themselves in a wordless tongue they did not know yet understood. Danced them to a collective mind communing images and feelings. Then danced and sang the end and the beginning, the mutant monsters, flamed-to-cinder cities, the earth cleansed and renewed. The end was horrible, but they must long for it and love it as themselves. The beginning was lovely, but full of hardship. I danced the sea of water and the sea of air, the sea of stars beyond, and all the other forms that power takes so that my tribe might live respectfully beside them. I danced the force that moves each particle and sun. I tuned them to it—gave them the living ocean-swell of unity, not the dead fragments I can word-think now, not the autopsied and reasonable corpse chopped into morsels, into neat bits a conscious mind can suck on then spit out. I gave them participation in the universe.