Need

by Nik Cohn

  She scoured the room for distractions, there were none. Just the mattress on the iron bedside beside the barred window, a framed photograph of some broad ballroom dancing, one book.

  The photo gave her the creeps. No particular reason, just the way the woman simpered in her backless blue gown, twirling on stiletto heels to show off her starched petticoats and all her scrawny legs. So she made do with the book.

  The Deaths of Joachim, by Hosea Tichenor; she’d never heard of it. One of those mouldy second-hand jobs off a street barrow, or thrown out with the trash. Dust and mildew, it smelled of dirty secrets, and she opened a page at random:

  “Fire being out & all Hands safe in the dye-works, 3 days before the final battel, noing now his Hours were numerd, Joachim led his faythful SWANS some mile outside the citie Gate, wher was a feeld of Clovr & Thyme. & there he recit his last sermon saying, O my swans weep not or wale. Tho dark Night ly in wait, even unto DEATH, by all means Keep good Heart & Cheer. For the false PREESTS shall tryumf here, but not hereafter, & their lude Mastres lykwys, a hollo show onlie, no Worth. But you, my swans, all eternitie will tast & sup. Tho bound in slavrie now & cruel usd, the END shall your great Fredom be, if onlie you endure. O BUT ENDURE, my swans. O BUT ENDURE.”

  Not Kate’s kind of stuff. Too much like hard work. But it helped fill her mind. Helped blot out the Zoo below. So she kept on flicking the pages. “For I have speke agin to the VIRGIN, in the Night she corns to me saying, Fere not,” she read. “& I to her say in retern, I am not Fered, but qestiun Why must I dye. Why periss by BODDIE BURRENING, for saying The VIRGIN have feets. Because thou art blessed, she ansers me. Because thou SEE true. For my feets they mov so fast, no fals eye can hop to follow. & HERE alone is the deep of truth: my feets they VANISH if you BLINK.”

  Strange, she’d never thought of that. All the hours she’d wasted arguing with Monsignor Beebe, struggling to explain, the answer had sat right there. For my feets they mov so fast, no fals eye can hop to follow. But she’d been too young, she couldn’t see it. All that had counted then was Elvis, and painting her toenails, and stopping Pompey from slobbering on her blouse.

  The book’s frontispiece was a woodcut of Joachim at the stake, devoured by tongues of fire. But he was no average martyr. Instead of an anguished ascetic with his eyes upraised to heaven, he was built like a lumberjack, too hale and muscular by half.

  Looked a bit like Fred Root, in fact. Only black.

  The first chapter was titled FALS HUNGERS OF THE FAYTHLES WORLD. “& dreme I did of men chaned and lasht, SLAVES in theyr skyn but theyr SOLES flying,” Kate began, but that was the furthest she got. Somebody was standing in the door, she glanced up, and it was Maguire. “I saw downstairs,” he said.

  So she was dragged back. To find the floorboards littered with Camel butts because there was no ashtray; and the rusted bars imprisoning the window, this glass was utterly filthy, she could hardly see herself reflected; and worst, Maguire himself. Looking like a deep-seam miner pulled half-dead from a cave-in, his clothes in tatters and his face caked with God knows what.

  Tensed and hovering for instructions, straining to read her wish, his eyes on her were avid like some other eyes. Black eyes, one ringed, head crooked. And it came to her then whose eyes those were. They were Pompey’s, of course. Waiting to be fed. So Kate closed her book. “What happened to you?” she asked.

  “There was a spot of bother.”

  “What bother?”

  “They killed Miss Crow.”

  People, you could not trust them. And the dead ones were the worst. That morning they’d passed on the stairs. Yesterday morning it must have been, though that seemed unrealistic. When Anna was La Belle Dame sans Merci in her velvet robe and blonde wig, I made her a garland for her head, and bracelets too, and fragrant zone: “She loved words,” said Kate.

  She supposed she should ask for details. Hear the story out. But it was none of her business, after all, she had no call to pry. Far below, she heard something thrash, sounded like a broken wing flapping, and she clattered her feet to drown it. “I have to go away,” she said.

  “What about downstairs?”

  “I’m sure you’ll handle things just fine. You have a natural bent for this business, you know, I spotted that right off. Just remember the oil in the rape, two drops per dish, and don’t forget the sunflower seeds.”

  “But those creatures are all dead, they aren’t eating.”

  “Flake maize and pellets are best in the morning, save the peanut kernels for night.”

  Now that she had determined to leave, there seemed no good cause to delay. “Good book, I enjoyed it,” she said, “O BUT ENDURE, there’s a lot of truth in that.”

  The lies out of her mouth! How could she exist with herself? “The lizards like live mealworms, you can mix them with wheat bran, or even termites if you like. Oh, and an occasional cabbage leaf or halved potato for variety. And mice for the whipsnakes on Sundays, please. The white ones are the sweetest, I always find,” she said. “But snakes are versatile, they adapt. Any old mouse will do in a storm.”

  “What about the iguanas?”

  “Spam.”

  Gingerly, as if testing her footing after a spill, she made her way down the stairway to her own room. She had a fleeting impression that poor Godwin was on the landing, pie in pudgy hand, but he was gone again before she could focus, and she knew he was a falsehood anyway. She was overstrained; she needed rest. Thirty-five acres, fresh air, loads of healthy walks. Maybe a few brisk swims in Lake George, there was nothing like a morning dip to perk you up. Of course, the buses might not be running today, what with this earthquake and all. Well, she’d wait.

  Cross her bedroom without glancing down. Reach the closet and pack. The only luggage she possessed was an antique cricket bag. The straps had rotted, the zipper failed to zip, but this was no moment to quibble. She threw in a change of underwear, Fred Root’s portrait, back copies of Soap Digest, her nightdress, her blue mules and dressing gown. Dressed herself in her flowered cotton dress, and left all other clothes be. Then threw out the Soap Digests, and left those behind as well.

  Feathers coated her hands and feet, she had no time to pick them off. Only looked around for a belt or some tape to bind up the bag. Curled at the foot of her bedside table, where it must have fallen sometime in the long night’s upheavals, was that length of rope Anna Crow had laid on her. It looked unclean, but never mind. The girl had had her uses.

  Should she say goodbye to Ferdousine? Better not, on the whole. His Test Match might still be in play, she didn’t like to intrude. Even if the game had finished, he would only weigh her down with macaroons and questions. A postcard from sunny Saratoga Springs would show more tact.

  Maguire was behind her, still hovering, still waiting to be commanded. Should she kiss his cheek goodbye? Doubtful that he would enjoy that. Give him a hug?

  They shook hands.

  “Do you have everything you need?” asked Maguire. That fucking word again, it was a fucking contagion. False Hungers of the Faithless World. Well, the antidote to need was belief, any fool knew that. But she had so little to tap. All she believed on this morning for sure was that Baloney Breath was her horse’s name, and a horse might lead to a hound, a hound at last to a sufferance. So grant her grace in small doses, roach by roach. Dog in the mirror make her whole.

  He was a temporary man just. Nothing more than a stopgap while Miss Root took her holidays. The Adirondacks, she had said, and very nice too, though he himself favoured the seaside. Balmy breezes, shimmering strands, you couldn’t beat the old bucket and spade.

  Desperate peaky she’d looked as she said goodbye. Small wonder in it either, the horror she had lived through. Ten years’ love and labour desolated, that would steal the roses from any woman’s cheeks. And then as well, of course, she’d be grieving for Miss Crow.

  It had been almost dawn before they’d brought Anna to the surface. Randall Gurdler had issued his statement and posed for his
pictures, gone home to bed long since. Or back to headquarters, as he claimed himself, but John Joe would not believe one word out of that man’s mouth. A born smarmy boots, you wouldn’t buy a used fart from a tosser like that. Although some of the men under him seemed decent sorts. Master Maitland had said not to trust them an inch, they were the Antichrist’s bumboys one and all. But those firefighters and ambulance men had plunged in the burning earth more times than you could count this night, bringing forth their dead.

  Most were victims of smoke, it seemed. Two lawmen had expired from friendly fire, and one civilian from a heart attack. The majority, though, were still extant. Strapped onto stretchers, they were trundled under the klieg lights to the ambulance, their stunned faces caked thick with soot and oil. White and black alike, they looked like Mitchell’s Minstrels down there. Strangers passed by in a breakless line. Then came Joe Easter, his chest stoved in. Then Burdette Merry-weather and Marvella Crabtree, both smoke. Then a body in Jerzy Polacki’s clothes, head bandaged like the Invisible Man. And Brulant Boniface, on foot, in handcuffs. “What became of the Master?” John Joe called out.

  “Vamoosed,” Brulant replied, then the lawmen took him away. The smoke pouring out of the subway exits was getting denser by the minute, you had to keep a handkerchief over your face, and even then you choked. The concrete underfoot kept gaining heat, it felt like hot coals. John Joe was forced to shuffle and hop, stay constantly on the shift, or else his rubber-soled Trudgett’s might have got stuck to the sidewalk. And still the stretchers kept coming, the firemen’s hoses kept sweeping their path, the kliegs kept drilling black holes in your eyes. Between the lights and smoke and weariness, he almost missed Anna Crow.

  She did not seem damaged in any way. John Joe’s first care was to search her for pain, but he found no trace. For a wonder, the worst soot had kept off her face. A few streaks and smudges on her forehead just, the rest of her was unblemished. As if the embalmer had done his work already, all fear and anger smoothed away. So this was not Anna. That person was elsewhere; vamoosed, like Master Maitland. While this waxwork lay in her place, borne in procession for all men to see.

  All the ambulances were fully loaded, there was a logjam behind. Even as Anna Crow was being paraded, another great roar came from underground, and water rushed, foaming, from the earth. A burst main perhaps, or some other flood. Within a space of seconds, countless fountains erupted from fire hydrants and subway vents, unclassified holes in the ground. In the glare of lights, with the stretchers gliding slow and stately beneath, it was almost like the water-ballet in the son et lumière at Kilmullen Castle. John Joe had watched one summer night with Juice Shovlin, they had got in for half price.

  Beautiful it had been then, and lovely now: the form of Anna still and white, the paramedics bent over her, tending. Better than the castle even, it might have been St. Conall’s stream, that night the stoats had buried their female. In silence they’d passed through the grove and over the stream, into the shelter of the bull, Scaith-na-Tairbhe. That was a burying proper, but Anna had shrugged when he told her. She wanted jazz, she’d said; she wanted cocktails with a cherry. But she got neither here, just one more blow-up underfoot, a gusher that sent the crowd floundering backwards, thrashing, and by the time John Joe could struggle into place again, the ambulance doors had shut, there was no more of Anna Crow.

  He made his best way home then. Straggling through the lightening streets, water to his ankles and the fire above, and the sights he saw on his journey, the fornication and the drunkenness, the looting and burning, smoke-blindness would have been a blessing to him. And again when he passed that Black Maria outside the cop shop, and it was full of Swans. Valence Holt was one he recognized, and Gladstone Rivers too. Hilario Vargas and his wife Angelique, Clarence Codd, James Jeffries Word, and all of them in shackles, down by law. But still no sign of Master Maitland.

  Where could he be hid? Vamoosed was not a word that told you much. Scrammed, skedaddled, he might be anywhere. Might have burrowed deeper yet in rock, found himself a fresh hiding place. Or been snatched away to heaven, just the way he had predicted. Risen with the raptured, enthroned at God’s right hand. A Black Swan in glory, he might have the last laugh yet.

  Well, strength to him, he might. But John Joe didn’t feel confident. Regardless that they had been foretold, this night’s affairs did not strike him as correct.

  If only the Master had been at hand to explain. Maybe John Joe misunderstood the programme, and this was just a dress rehearsal. A test of faith, to see who truly believed, and who was expendable. Maybe the top Swans, those chosen as worthy to survive, would regroup at some later date and create another Mount Tabor. But it could never again be so snug. So companionable to his soul. Best of luck in their endeavours. Still and all, they’d have to make do without himself.

  The moment he stepped inside the Zoo, anyhow, all thought of Black Swans fled his mind. Impossible, in this charnel house, to fret over Kingdom Come. He saw Barnabus the monkey pushed from the railway bridge, saw Rudkin scalded in boiling milk. He saw a white bull kneeling with its throat slit, its blood draining in black earth.

  Who fathered such distress? What power of hurt could so betray a man? In their room above Duchess Gardens, his mother had pinned a poem to the wall one time. Pain that cannot forget, it read, Falls drop by drop upon the heart Until in our despair comes wisdom Through the awful grace of God. But no wisdom came to John Joe, or even a settled digestion.

  It was the times that were in it. Sifting through the remains of these sliced creatures, shuffling them into plastic bags, he had to hold his breath so fiercely for so long, his skull filled with crackles and buzzings, and he failed to hear Mr. Ferdousine descend the stairs.

  John Joe hardly knew him to speak to, just a casual nod on the landing was all. Mornings when the old man stepped out to fetch his English newspaper, or Friday nights when he went to his chess club. Otherwise, they were strangers. But Mr. Ferdousine appeared nothing shy. He stepped out crisp and keen through the Zoo, cast a cold eye on the carnage, picked his way through the body parts to the counter, and there he perched on a high stool. Though it was his own living that lay in its blood, he only nibbled at a flat tablet, it looked like caramel. “Great tidings from London,” he said. “England is destroyed.”

  Taking inventory was no easy task. Every time John Joe had one animal reassembled, so he thought, one piece would still be missing, or an alien piece crept in. “A most notable trouncing,” said Mr. Ferdousine, nibbling, bibbling. “At play’s commencement, the English seemed home and dry, the Ashes were theirs. And now they are not merely defeated, but utterly prostrated. Perfidious Albion brought to dust.”

  One hopeful sign, there were more cages than corpses. Two skinks and a chuckwalla turned up alive behind the velvet curtain, then John Joe found the Lutino Cockatiel huddled under a macaranga, sorely carved but breathing still. No other survivors, however, were reported at this time. “Lambasted, lathered, skinned alive,” said Mr. Ferdousine, then he glanced up sharply, as if caught short. “Where is Miss Root?” he enquired.

  “She stepped out for a breath of air.”

  “I see.” And the old man started on a fresh caramel. “A most remarkable woman, that; I met her great-uncle once. Fred Root, the famed Leg Theorist. Late in his career, he came one evening to Westminster School, to proffer a few coaching tips. He had been representing Worcestershire against Surrey at The Oval, and made his appearance at the close of the day’s play. Hot and perspiring from his toils, he had not even time to change his flannels, but appeared in full working fig. Alas, I myself was not cricketer enough to qualify for his attentions. However, I took up a position behind his arm as he bowled, and I will never forget the splendour of his action. Two short walking steps, six accelerating strides, then the body rocked easily back. The left arm was thrown up as a pivot, the ball held in the back-slung right hand. Then, with a final leap, came the full rhythmic swing of those heavy shoulders. Root delivered at
the acme, and as he followed through, his hand seemed to press down heavily on the air. His left foot plunged into the ground, and his arm swept on after the delivery, describing a wide circle. Such beauty it was. The mastery of the thing.”

  From the holy-Joe tone that Mr. Ferdousine employed, you could tell this story was meant to matter. But cricket was not John Joe’s idea of a game. The GAA did not approve it, and Juice Shovlin had always said that only nancy boys played, a bunch of Fifi la Plumes scared to get their togs mucked.

  “And afterwards,” said Mr. Ferdousine, sprinking crumbs of caramel down his bottle-green velvet waistcoat, “and afterwards, I walked home by myself. An alien, I was never popular with the other boys. Their ceaseless ragging and bullying were a deep bitterness to me, so that, when Root concluded his demonstration, I was glad to escape my confreres’ unwanted attentions, and wend my way in solitude. The evening light was all but gone, the night came on apace. Lost in thoughts of the peerless exhibition that I had so recently witnessed, I walked oblivious to my surroundings. Thus, it came as a complete surprise when suddenly a car horn blared in my ear, and I looked up to see Root’s smiling face at the window of his Morris Minor. It was not a handsome countenance; no amount of hero worship could make it so. Gnarled and lumpen, it was the face of a gargoyle rather. But humorous, warm, infinitely kind. And now he smiled on me. Something in my posture may have apprised him of my loneliness, for, without a word, he reached inside his cricket bag and brought out a cherry-red ball, as yet untouched by willow. A moment he paused to rub it on his flannels for luck, then tossed it to me. But the light was poor, and I was ever a duffer at catch. Slipping through my fingers, the ball fell to the pavement with a thud, then rolled away. When I retrieved it, its perfection was scuffed and marred, my humiliation complete. In desperation, I tried to blame the gathering dusk. It was the dark, I protested. But Root only laughed. It always is, he said, and drove on.”