Ammud whirled around, the GO, VARSITY! inscription bold across his chest. “I not make team!” he cried out, and then relapsed into glibbering.
Fawz stared at his son for long, uncomprehending moments. “Not make——!” Suddenly he leaned back his head with an anguished bellow of rage and frustration, and the throne room plunged instanter into the silence of grapes thinking; the terrible, awesome hush of the moon’s surface.
Fists clenched at his sides, Fawz gazed heartsick at Ammud. He shut his eyes powerfully, then, groping for understanding. “How dis happen?” he choked. “You prince! Cannot cut prince!”
“Because I not Irish,” whimpered Ammud, for it was his habit to think in conspiracies. “They not want Arab! They ‘Fighting Irish!’ Want whole team Irish!”
“I-rish!” bellowed the King. “I-RISH?!” thundered the King. “Da Irish better dan ARAB?! Better dan Arab PRINCE?!” Then he put on such a face as none had seen since the bloody rebellion of the northern tribes, which had occurred three months after the bloody rebellion of the southern tribes and was a scandal. “HOKRATHMARAN!” he ranted. “HAMMURABI!” he roared. It wasn’t Arabic, of course, but then he was clearly beside himself. “I FIX dos lousy Irish!” he thundered in white fury. “I FIX dem, I FIX dem I FIX dem!!” Then he slapped a sheik who had giggled.
Chapter Thirteen
“WHAT NAME again, lady?”
“Haya Condios.”
“Nice, very nice.”
They were aboard Fawzi Arabian Airlines, nearing their destination. A steward approached them, proffering a box white with powdered sugar. “Turkish delight?”
Jenny shook her head.
“I take one,” nodded Mahmoud, and took several.
“Where do all these girls come from?” whispered Jenny.
“All over,” Mahmoud allowed hugely. Fourteen voluptuas of assorted nationality had been picked up in Beirut, the point of rendezvous, and flown out in a chartered flight under Mahmoud’s prudent stewardship.
Jenny looked around her. “Awful lot of them.”
“It’s de season,” he replied absently.
Jenny turned her head slowly, eying him with suspicion. “What season?”
“Lady, please!” implored Mahmoud. “Stop you are turning around whatever I am saying!”
“Okay, okay; forget it.”
Mahmoud set his mouth in an outraged pout and stared out at the cloudless sky. He had prearranged it with the steward so that his would be the window seat. “Remember,” he reviewed sulkily, “you are night-club dancer from Yonkers.”
“Right.”
“I connect you wid Samir, de keeper uff de harem, and he gets out for you de pictures for de magazine.”
“And when I’m ready, he gets me out.”
“Absolute. Only making sure de King don’ find out you are taking nize pictures in de Turkish bat’.”
“Absolute,” nodded Jenny. Then she sighed, pulled an armrest lever and tilted her seat back, closing her eyes. She struggled for a comfortable position; found it. And then opened her eyes again. “Look,” she whispered, “the King—you’re certain he——?”
“Lady, he’s not able!” Mahmoud exploded. Heads turned and he lowered his voice, putting his hand over his heart and cocking his head in an attitude of great hurt. “Am I not Mahmoud?”
The pitch of the engines shifted subtly and an Arabic inscription flashed red above the forward bulkhead. Mahmoud fumbled for a strap. “Fasten de seat belt, lady.”
* * *
The girls trailed Mahmoud through the palace in columns of gaping twos, wide-eyed and snickery, their high heels clicking questions against tile.
“Ain’t this a kick?”
Jenny eyed the girl beside her. Cockney?
“Me in a bloomin’ palace!” Definitely cockney. “Hey, ducks—never did say hello. I’m Sable Chiggers.”
“Haya Condios.”
“American?”
“Yes. How could you tell?”
“You got that scared look.”
They bumped into the girls ahead as the column halted, and were rewarded with hostile glares from a Peruvian prostitute who had listed her occupation as “Andean priestess,” and a hot-eyed Italian who still had lawsuits pending against Carlo Ponti for “plagiarizing her life story in The Two Women.”
Mahmoud was standing beside a sober-visaged Arab resplendent in many-splendored damasks. He cleared his throat for attention.
“Lovely and most fortunate ladies,” he began, “permit me to introduce to you Samir.” He indicated the Arab beside him, leaned his head to one side, and caught Jenny’s eye. “Samir,” he repeated meaningfully. Jenny nodded. “Samir, who is in charge uff de harem,” resumed Mahmoud. “He will look after all your needs—whatever. You will please to think uff him as a fadder.” Sable snickered and they waited interminably as Mahmoud repeated the speech in French, Italian, and then German. During this time two dwarfs wheeled up a cart laden with abbreviated gossamer harem costumes.
“… ihnen Vater,” concluded Mahmoud at last. Then he began anew in English: “You will leaving your baggage here, take one uff—” he picked a silk breastpiece from the cart and held it aloft uncertainly, like Fagin discovering a Salvation Army tambourine, “—dese—nice t’ings. Den go inside,” he indicated the door beside him, “wash yourselfs, and dress. Aftair, Samir will take you to your quarters and instruct you in your duties.” One of the dwarfs leered broadly and Mahmoud rattled his brains with a backhand slap. Then as he launched into French translation, the English-speaking recruits began to file past him, taking a costume and entering the bath. As Jenny came even with him, Mahmoud interrupted himself, wrapping a tight hand around Samir’s wrist. “Taking special care uff dis one,” he intoned. Samir nodded. His eyes knew.
Jenny walked into the bath.
Wizard! A mammoth sunken pool with steam in gentle mists rising up from its surface like ghosts of warm caresses on a heath in Scotland. Storybook stuff, thought Jenny. Even giant Nubians posted stiffly and inscrutably at each corner of the—— Her eyes widened with panic and she raced back into the corridor, irrupting upon Mahmoud’s florid Italian. “I can’t take a bath in there!” she husked.
Mahmoud looked dumfounded. “Don’ be foolish—we haff de best water!”
“I mean those men in there!”
“Ohhhh,” throated Mahmoud as comprehension dawned. “No, no, no; dey are eunuchs!”
“Eunuchs!”
“Eunuchs. Dey don’ haff—whatever. Dey——”
“I know what they are, dummy! They’re still men!”
“Lady,” fumed Mahmoud, “why don’ you listening instead always talking! Dese eunuchs, dey are blind from when dey are born! You t’ink de King would like for every camel to look at his weemen?”
Compassion hoisted sail. “Blind! Oh, those poor men!”
“Don’t feel sorry for dem; dey are very happy.”
Jenny re-entered the bath and stripped, eying the eunuchs. Now she could see the dull luster in their eyes, the rigid, unseeing stare.
Two of the girls were already in the pool, splashing and laughing girlishly. Jenny tucked her Minox into a shoe, stripped off her undergarments and waded in quickly. She took no pleasure in her body; its glorious proportions embarrassed her, even before other women. It was—— She didn’t even want to think about it. She discovered soap in a niche along the pool’s edge and covered herself speedily with camouflaging lather. The water was delicious, scented with marvelous spices of the East. More girls entered and Jenny moved to deeper water, partly to rinse, but mostly to mask her nakedness. She hated pools: public pools, private pools, pools where men pried and nudged you with carnal stares. She thought of that creepy lifeguard at Far Rockaway who’d approached her when the beach was almost deserted and—— She shuddered with the memory and stared around for a suitable distraction. It was then that she noticed the towel racks lining the entire perimeter of the room. One towel was inscribed “HIS”; the remain
der, “HERS.”
Jenny absently reached for another bar of soap, but it squirted out of her fingers, plopping onto the decking, out of reach. A Nubian stooped swiftly, picked it up, and handed it to her.
“Thank you very much,” she said primly.
She screamed once before submerging.
Chapter Fourteen
BENEATH LONG, slender wings, tapered like the fingers of a Horowitz, Goldfarb Agonistes stood attentive in his space suit, a sad-eyed lemur embattled. Engines hummed throatily, sipping rich mixtures of octane and oil. We are ready, they crooned, we are ready. The horizon bulged pink with the promise of dawn and runway lights held filaments at “Present Arms.” Take off, John Goldfarb, take off, whispered the lights; we tire; we are mass-produced and need sleep.
Goldfarb held pencil poised above clipboard. The colonel stood opposite him, crisp and efficient; cool in his blues, and wise beneath the lightning on the black bill of his cap. He held a list.
“Auxiliary oxygen tanks?” snapped the colonel.
“Check!”
“Film, eight reels?”
“Check!”
“Suicide kit?”
“Check!” Goldfarb looked up with pride of derring-do.
“That’s it.” The colonel tossed him a rakish salute. “Luck, Wrong-Way.”
The colonel turned and walked clear of the aircraft and Goldfarb’s frustrated gaze burned into his back. “John, John, John!” he gritted.
The colonel halted abruptly and flung a stern look over his shoulder. “Goldfarb,” he said icily, “you had six hours to think of that!” Then he walked on, his shoulders heavy with the burden of command.
His moment tarnished, John Goldfarb knit his brow in a furious effort to make minstrel raptures swell and clambered moodily into his cockpit, ready to pursue an unspoiled glory in a plane so slight and eager that no corner of sky was safe from its probing, gleaming prow.
Engineers scampered like discovered crickets, pulling away chocks and buzzing portentously, and Goldfarb again exchanged salutes with the colonel, though had the rakish angle of the colonel’s hat not fuzzed his vision, he might have noticed that Goldfarb was in fact thumbing his nose at him.
At last, at last, blinked the runway lights, and farewell, farewell, as the U-2 plane lifted into the fat air of promise; then they all turned and glowered at a light that said, “A rivederci!” A leader of the lights hinted at reprisal. The wind sock said nothing.
* * *
“Yookoomian, are you sure this cable from Cronkite has been properly transcribed?”
“I checked it twice.”
Whitepaper neither looked up nor replied. As he reread the TWX for the fifth time, his vision blurred and he blinked several times, rapidly. Before him was an official memorandum from the government of Fawzi Arabia requesting Point Four assistance in the matter of procuring a football coach.
Chapter Fifteen
“I got plenty o’ nothin’…” whined the voice of the transistor, and Fawz twisted the dial irritably. “Got no coach!” he ranted at the walls of his throne room. Then, “Foos!” he muttered, pulling tighter around his shoulders the paisley shawl that had been sent to him at Christmas by Lucky Luciano. He circled, baffled, in his cart, his thoughts a swirling, flapping bedlam of croaking ravens. He heard a distant high-altitude explosion and hoped the Imam of Doom had stepped into one of his booby-trapped oases.
… In the harem, where she was surreptitiously lensing from behind a potted palm, Jenny heard the explosion and wondered when the Fawzians would cease their senseless slaughter of gazelles.
… And on the football field, where he moodily kicked field goals, Prince Ammud heard the blast and merely looked up, a skill at which he was marvelous adept. From out of the cloud cover ballooned a tiny mannikin dangling from a red parachute; down, down, floating down. A Doomian spy? wondered Ammud. Another bloody missionary? The Notre Dame coach come to beg forgiveness and plead for his return? A hopeless stab of joy stiffened the prince’s spine and he rehearsed how he would spit in the weeping Markhoff’s face. Closer, closer.… He tracked the descending parachute until it collapsed to earth not more than 500 yards from where he stood, then he raced to the spot.
A shower of disappointment drizzled through him; it was clearly not Markhoff.
The creature lifted its head, stared vacantly toward the practice field, and Ammud, fascinated, ignored the call to prayer. Saucer eyes turned up at him. “Sweet Jesus!” said the thing.
Ammud knelt and put a comforting hand on the creature’s shoulder. The creature pawed at it. “You’re—real!” it croaked.
“Please not move,” commanded Ammud, for he had been to school and knew.
“You’re—not Russian?” it gurgled.
“Please to be still. You hurt. You—” Ammud groped for the word “delirious.” “You crazy,” he settled. The thing seized his hand imploringly, squeezing with a death grip, and in a small voice, a hysterical squeal, it begged, “Please tell me you’re Russian!”
Ammud reassured him. “Not worry. You in Fawzi Arabia.”
The thing’s eyes widened with horror, and it lifted its head to scream a scream of indescribable agony and frustration.
The ancient eagle, in the act of saying “I understand you” to a caged and wary chicken, heard the cry of a kindred spirit from afar and screamed in sympathy, hoping it would help.
Wrong-Way Goldfarb had done it again.
Chapter Sixteen
FORTY-TWO feckless phantoms of delight disported themselves with a languid ease in the King’s harem. Some played shuffleboard. Some worked puzzles. And some played Ping-pong while others clipped their toenails. “The sneaks!” accused one of the latter, a volatile Australian named Wallaby. “They grow when you’re not looking!” She was not extremely stable.
Near the cooler air of a wide, arched casement, Miss Gigi Touloos, a pièce de non-résistance, was instructing Jenny and Sable in the mysteries of the belly dance. “Ze stomach muscles only. Like ziss.” The strings of her stomach played “Clair de Lune,” and the girls watched, fascinated. “You, now,” Miss Touloos ordered Jenny.
Jenny attempted to ape what she had seen, wiggling surrealistically, and “No, no, no!” cried the exasperated Miss Touloos. “You are doing ze Twist!”
“So that’s how you do it!”
“Enough, enough!” shrilled Miss Touloos. “Finis for today. Go a-way.” She looked over at the shuffleboarders. “Come! Ready now!” The “Andean priestess,” looking wary, dropped her shuffleboard stick and approached. Jenny and Sable stumbled to the casement, where they gulped fresh air, perspiring.
Jenny dabbed at her brow with the back of her wrist. “Whew, what a workout!”
“Beats Piccadilly.”
“What?”
“I said, ‘it’s hot.’”
“Oh.”
They breathed deep, fanning with their hands. “Sable,” asked Jenny, “why did you come here?”
“You do ask a lot of questions.”
“Just naturally curious. I——” She suddenly clutched at her stomach with both hands. Sable looked concerned. “Miss Wigglebottom too much for you, ducks?”
Jenny’s face was a wrinkle of acute discomfort. “Huh-uh; ‘gyppy tummy.’”
“What?”
“‘Delhi belly.’”
“Told you not to eat the mongoose.”
“Uh-huh.” She was hunched over, still clutching.
“Ain’t you gonna make a run for it?” Sable backed away uneasily. She had once gotten too close to a sick jackass who——
“It’s not that kind. Just hurts,” oofed Jenny. “Like a hand grabbing the inside of your stomach.”
“Bloody greasy hand, too; don’t I know it!”
Jenny exhaled a sigh of relief and straightened up. “There. Gone.”
“Loverly.”
“What were we talking about?”
“You asked why I come here.”
“Well?”
&n
bsp; “Well? Well, what? I come here same as you: for ten thousand quid and an easy time of it.”
“It doesn’t bug you?”
“Bug?”
“Bother. I mean, it’s sort of like slavery, isn’t it? Here we all are, locked in a——”
She stopped, staring at a crimson Rolls-Royce that had pulled up to the palace steps, disgorging two Arabs carrying an oddly dressed man on a stretcher. “Another nut who went out without his sun helmet,” grunted Jenny.
Behind them, Samir tacked a poster to the bulletin board, and then turned for a stentorian announcement: “De movie for tonight is Lost Horizon,” he began.…
Chapter Seventeen
“YOU saw him?”
“We saw.”
“You are sure?”
“We are sure.”
“But a red parachute?” puzzled the Imam of Doom. He had never seen a red parachute. He had never seen a white one either, but a red one beggared the imagination to the point of giddiness.
“A red parachute,” chorused his council of seers, their voices oddly muffled, and for a very good reason: they were sprawled prostrate on their faces, bare feet facing the throne. The Imam hated faces and was far more tolerant of feet. Feet were never insolent. Faces were good to watch only when slitting throats, for he adored the sound of guggling. “Isn’t it heaven!” he would exclaim while watching an execution.
The Imam contemplated his long, honed fingernails, which he kept razor-sharp for the impaling of butterflies who now and then alighted on his breakfast figs. “Who said at first that it was a green parachute?” he asked softly.
“Let me tell you how it happened,” began one of the seers hastily, turning his face to the Imam, and “Seize him!” he roared, leaping up in a fury.
Black-hooded executioners padded into the room, eyes cruel through their slits as they chanted their introit ritual: “We are the hooded men, headpiece filled with face!” They pulled the miscreant to his feet, and the Imam pointed a stiletto-capped finger at him: “Death without the sacraments!” he cackled with glee. It was something he had learned from an unfortunate Jesuit missionary whom he had dipped in garlic butter and fed to giant ants. The missionary’s last words had been “Death, where is thy sting?”—a question that did not lack for reply. The Imam’s name had never been removed from the missionary society’s mailing list and he still received fund-raising brochures.
John Goldfarb, Please Come Home Page 7