The Left Hand of God

by Paul Hoffman

  Duels were of two kinds: duels simplex and duels complex. In the first, just the drawing of blood could lead to the fight ending; in the second, one of the combatants had to die. The Marshal’s opposition to duels complex was driven not so much by compassion, though in old age he found no pleasure in such murderous spectacles, as by the enormous trouble they created. The feuds, squabbles and revenge murders that a deadly quarrel stirred up caused so much general grief that the Marshal had taken to bringing every power he had, formal and informal, to making sure they did not take place. Fights to the death were something that could only cause trouble in general and encourage disrespect for the ruling classes in particular. These days the Red Opera was where Memphis came only to see bullfighting and bearbaiting (though this was becoming unfashionable). Professional boxing matches and executions were also staged there. The opportunity, therefore, to see their betters—and no one knew any different about Cale—murdering each other in public was not to be missed. Who knew when the chance would come again?

  From early in the morning of the fight, the huge plaza in front of the Opera Rosso was already packed. The queues for the ten entrances were already thousands deep, and those who soon realized they would not get in milled around in the markets and stalls that appeared on these big occasions like a tented city. There were peelers and riot gendarmes everywhere, watching for thieves and trouble, knowing that disappointment could turn into an ugly fight. All the spivs and gangs of the city were there—the Suedeheads with their gold and red waistcoats and silver-colored boots, the hooligans in their white braces and black top hats, the rockers in their bowlers, monocles and thin mustaches. The girls were out in force too, the Lollards with their long coats and thigh-high boots and shaved heads, the Tickets with their shaped red lips like a cupid’s bow, their tight red bodices and long stockings black as night. There was the calling and shouting and booing and laughing—bursts of music, fanfares as the young Materazzi turned up to be gawped at and envied. And of every penny earned, half ended up with Kitty the Hare.

  At executions the hoi polloi used to throw dead cats at the condemned. While this was considered entirely fitting for criminals and traitors, such behavior was strictly forbidden on an occasion like this—disrespect involving one of the Materazzi was on no account to be allowed. However, such bans did not prevent the locals trying, and as the morning wore on, large piles of dead cats, along with weasels, dogs, stoats and the occasional aardvark, grew outside the ten entrances.

  At twelve a blast of fanfares for the arrival of Solomon Solomon. Ten minutes later Cale, along with Vague Henri and Kleist, made his way unrecognized through the crowd, only causing attention as the peelers overseeing the queues halted the moving lines and watched with morbid curiosity as the boys passed into the Opera Rosso.

  31

  In the shadowy rooms underneath the Opera kept only for the Materazzi about to try to slaughter each other, Cale sat in silence with Vague Henri and Kleist, brooding on what was to come. Until two days ago his thoughts had been of uncomplicated rage and revenge—all powerful but entirely familiar to him. But then everything had changed as he had lain in bed naked with Arbell Swan-Neck under rich cotton sheets and understood for the first time in his life the astonishing power of bliss. Consider what it was like for Cale—Cale the starving, Cale the brutalized, Cale the killer—to be wrapped in the arms and legs of this beautiful young woman, naked and desperately passionate as she stroked his hair and kissed him over and over again. And now he was waiting in a dim chamber smelling slightly of damp while above him the Opera was filling with thirty thousand people expecting to see him die. Until two days ago what had driven him was the will to survive: deep, animal, full of rage—but always part of him had not cared at all whether he lived or died. Now he did care, and very deeply, and so for the first time in a long time he was afraid. To love life is, of course, a wonderful thing, but not on this day of all days.

  So the three of them sat, Vague Henri and Kleist alike catching the completely unfamiliar sense of dread coming from someone they had come, like him or not, to see as untouchable. Now with each muffled shout or cheer, with each thud of huge doors and lifts, unseen machines clanking and echoing, expectation and belief were replaced by doubt and fear.

  With half an hour left there was a soft knock on the door, and Kleist opened it to let in Lord Vipond and IdrisPukke. They spoke softly, daunted by the strange mood in the dark room.

  Was he all right?

  “Yes.”

  Did he need anything?

  “No. Thank you.”

  And then the silence of the sickbed descended. IdrisPukke, witness to the terrible slaughter of the Redeemers against all odds at the Cortina pass, was baffled. Chancellor Vipond, so wise and crafty, who knew he had never met such a creature as Cale before, saw now a young boy going to a hideous death in front of a bellowing crowd. These duels had always seemed to him merely reckless and unwarranted; now they were grotesque and impossible to accept.

  “Let me go and talk to Solomon Solomon,” he said to Cale. “This is criminally stupid. I’ll make up an apology. Just leave it to me.”

  He stood up to leave, and something surged in Cale, something to him that was astonishing and that he’d thought he could never feel again. Yes, let it stop. I don’t want this. I don’t. But as Vipond reached the door, something else, not pride, but his deep grasp of the reality of things, caused him to call out.

  “Please. Chancellor Vipond. It won’t do any good. He wants my hide more than life itself. Nothing you can say will make any difference. You’ll give him the advantage over me for no gain.”

  Vipond did not argue with him, because he knew he was right. There was a loud rap on the door.

  “Fifteen minutes!”

  Then it opened. “Oh, the vicar’s here to see you.”

  A strikingly small man with a gentle smile entered the room dressed in a black suit and with a white band around his neck that looked something like a dog collar.

  “I’ve come,” said the vicar, “to give you a blessing.” He paused. “If you’d like me to.”

  Cale looked at IdrisPukke, who fully expected him to throw the man out. Seeing this, Cale smiled and said, “It can’t do any harm.” He held out his hand and IdrisPukke took it.

  “Good luck, boy,” he said and left quickly. Cale nodded at Vipond and the chancellor nodded back, leaving just the three boys and the vicar.

  “Shall we get on?” said the vicar pleasantly, as if he were officiating at a marriage or a baptism. He reached into his pocket and took out a small silver container. He opened the lid and showed Cale the powdery contents. “The ashes from the burned bark of an oak tree,” he said. “It’s thought to symbolize immortality,” he added, as if this was a view to which he, of course, attached little credibility. “May I?” He dipped his forefinger in the ash and spread it in a short line on Cale’s forehead.

  “Remember, man, that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return,” he intoned cheerfully. “But remember also that though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow, though they be as red like crimson, they shall be like wool.” He snapped the lid of the silver container shut and put it back in his pocket with the air of a job well done.

  “Um . . . oh . . . good luck.”

  As he made for the door, Kleist called after him. “Did you say the same to Solomon Solomon?”

  The vicar turned and looked at Kleist as if trying to remember.

  “Do you know,” he said, smiling oddly, “I don’t think I did.” And with that he was gone.

  There was one more visitor. There was a faint knock, Henri opened the door, and Riba slipped into the room. Henri flushed as she briefly squeezed his hand before passing on into the room. Cale was staring at the ground and appeared lost. She waited for a few moments before he looked up, surprised.

  “I came to wish you good luck,” she said, speaking quickly and nervously, “and to say sorry and to give you this.” She held out a no
te. He took it and broke the elegant seal.

  I love you. Please come back to me.

  No one spoke for a minute.

  “What do mean about being sorry?” asked Cale.

  “It’s my fault you’re here.”

  There was a snort of derision from Kleist, but he didn’t say anything. Cale looked at her as he handed the note to Vague Henri for safekeeping.

  “What my friend here is trying to say is that this is all my own doing. I’m not being kind. It’s the truth.”

  As might any of us in her situation, she wanted to be sure of her absolution and so she pushed her anxiety too far. “I still think it’s my fault.”

  “Have it your own way.”

  She looked so crestfallen at this that Vague Henri instantly took pity on her, put his hand in hers again and led her out of the room into the even darker corridor outside.

  “I’m such an idiot,” she said, in tears and angry at herself.

  “Don’t worry. He meant it about it not being your fault. He’s just got to give his attention to this now.”

  “What’s going to happen?”

  “Cale’s going to win. He always wins. I have to go.” She squeezed his hand again and kissed him on the cheek. Henri stared after her, feeling many strange things, then went back into the waiting room.

  With ten minutes left, Cale had begun, silent and automatic, to do his exercises before a fight. Kleist and Vague Henri joined in—arms milling, legs stretching, grunting softly with the exertion in the dim light. Then the loud knock on the door.

  “Time, gentleman, pleeeease!”

  The boys looked at each other. There was a short pause then a loud rap! as the bolt slid across a second door at the far end of the room. It groaned open slowly, and a ray of light bit through the gloom as if the sun itself waited just outside for Cale, the bright light arcing across the once dim room with all the weight of a blast of wind wanting to push them back into the safety of the dark.

  As he started forward, Cale could hear her last words. “Run away. Leave. Please. What does any of this mean to you? Run away.”

  In a few strides he was at the threshold and then out into the two o’clock sun.

  Along with the second blast of light, the bear-pit roar of the crowd, like the end of the world, assaulted his eyes and ears. As he moved forward ten, then fifteen, then twenty feet and his eyes adjusted, he made out not the wall of the faces of the thirty thousand moving and booing, cheering and singing, but at first only the man waiting in the center of the arena holding two swords in their scabbards. He tried not to look across to Solomon Solomon, but he could not stop himself. Solomon Solomon, thirty yards to his left, walked straight, eyes fixed on the man in the center of the arena. He was huge, far taller and broader than Cale remembered, as if he had doubled in size since Cale had last seen him. Cale was astonished at himself as terror drained him of the strength that had made him invincible for nearly half his life. His tongue, dry as sand, stuck to the roof of his mouth; the muscles in his thighs hurt, barely able to support him; his arms, oak strong, felt as if to lift them would be an impossible feat; and there was a strange burning in his ears, louder even than the noise of the crowd, the booing and cheering and snatches of song. Along the amphitheater wall several hundred soldiers were standing at attention every four yards or so, alternately looking in at the crowd and out into the great ring itself.

  The high-hatted hooligans sang joyfully:NOBODY LIKES US, WE DON’T CARE

  NOBODY LIKES US, WE DON’T CARE

  BUT WE LOVE LOLLARDS AND HUGUENOTS

  DO WE? DO WE? DO WE? DO?

  OOOOOOOH NO, I DON’T THINK SO

  BUT WE DO LOVE THE MEMPHIS AGGRO . . .

  Then they raised their hands high over their heads and clapped in time to the beat of a new song, raising their knees up and down as they did so:YOU’LL HAVE TO LIVE,

  OR ELSE YOU’LL DIE

  YOU’LL HAVE TO LIVE,

  OR ELSE YOU’LL DIE

  YOU’LL HAVE TO LIVE,

  OR ELSE YOU’LL DIE

  YOU’LL HAVE TO LIVE,

  OR ELSE YOU’LL DIE

  Trying to outperform them and taunt the participants at the same time, the baldy Lollards chanted happily:HELLO, HELLO, WHO ARE YOU?

  HELLO, HELLO, WHO ARE YOU?

  ARE YOU A RUPERT ? ARE YOU A FRED?

  IN A MINUTE YOU’LL BE DEAD.

  WHO ARE YOU?

  OH WE DON’T LIKE TO SAY, WE DON’T LIKE TO BLAB

  BUT SOON YOU’LL BE LYING ON A MARBLE SLAB

  LYING ON A SLAB COVERED BY A WREATH

  MISSING YOUR PRIVATES, MISSING YOUR TEETH

  HELLO, HELLO, WHO ARE YOU?

  Each step forward dragged Cale further down, as if weakness and fear, alive in him for the first time in years, ran riot in his guts and brain.

  Then finally he was there and Solomon Solomon beside him, his rage and power burning alongside him like a second sun.

  The master at arms gestured them to his left and right. Then he called out:

  “WELCOME TO THE RED OPERA!”

  With that, the crowd, almost as one, rose bellowing to its feet—except for the section reserved for the Materazzi, where the men cheered and the women applauded indifferently. This was not, in any case, the top drawer of Materazzi society, who would not readily associate themselves with something as vulgar as either this occasion or the not-quite-one-of-us Solomon Solomon, who, though respected for his power in the military hierarchy, was the great-grandson of a man who had made his fortune in dried fish. This is not to deny that a few of the choice of Materazzi society had come late, including a deeply reluctant Marshal, and were watching from carefully recessed private boxes while eating that morning’s catch of prawns. In the section reserved for the Mond, the blazing hatred they felt for Cale erupted in a sea of arms jabbing toward him and a chorus of derision.

  “BOOM LACALACALACA BOOM LACALACALACA TAC TAC TAC.”

  From high up on the West Bank some skillful thug or hooligan, having escaped the searches of the peelers, threw a dead cat in a massive arc, the body thudding into the sand only twenty feet from Cale, to a roar of delighted approval from the crowd.

  Panic ran riot though Cale’s wilting soul, as if some reservoir of fear had been dammed up in him for all these years and now had burst its banks and swept away all nerve and guts, all gall and the will to power. His very spine shook with cowardice as the master at arms handed him his sword. He could barely now raise his hand to pull it free, so weak had he become. It was so heavy that he let it fall to hang loosely at his side. Everything now was just sensation—the bitter taste of death and terror on his tongue, the bright and burning sun, the noise of the crowd and the wall of faces. And then the master at arms raised his hands. The crowd hushed. Then he dropped his arms to his sides. The crowd bellowed as if one beast, and Cale watched as the man who was about to slaughter him raised his sword and cautiously, thoughtfully, moved toward the trembling, panic-stricken boy.

  From deep inside, something in Cale called for protection, begging to be saved: IdrisPukke save me, Leopold Vipond save me, Henri and Kleist save me, Arbell Swan-Neck save me. But he was beyond all help except the help of the man he hated most in all the world. It was Redeemer Bosco who rescued him from the sickening blow and the red blood spilling on the sand; it was the years of violence at his hands, the daily dread and fear—those were what delivered him. Beginning in his chest, the waters of terror began to freeze. As Solomon Solomon quickly circled, the coldness spread downward through Cale’s heart and guts and into his thighs and then his arms. In only a few seconds, like a miraculous drug suppressing an agonizing pain, the old familiar, numbing, lifesaving indifference to fear and death was back. Cale was himself again.

  Solomon Solomon, wary at first of Cale’s immobility, was moving in quickly for his attack, sword raised, eyes intent, controlled, the skillful emissary of violent death. He moved within striking distance, then held for a moment. Both stared into
each other’s eyes. The crowd hushed. All sights seemed to come to Cale as in a tunnel—an older woman in the crowd was smiling at him like a kindly grandmother while pulling her finger across her throat, the dead cat so stiff on the ground it looked like a badly made toy, the young dancer at the arena’s edge, her mouth wide open in alarm and fear. And his opponent shuffling in the sand, the grating noise much louder than the crowd, who seemed to be so far away. And then Solomon Solomon gathered his strength—and struck.

  Cale ducked and moved under his arm, stabbing downward as Solomon Solomon’s sword tried to cut him in two. Then both had swapped places—the crowd roared, desperately excited and confused. Neither of them had been touched. Then something began to drip from Cale’s hand and then it poured. The little finger on his left hand had been severed and lay on the sand, small and ridiculous.

  Cale stepped back, the pain now hit, horrible, intense and agonizing. Solomon Solomon stood and took in carefully the blood and pain, the job not finished but the work of killing seriously begun. As the crowd started to see the blood on the sand, a slowly growing roar rippled around the Opera. There were boos from some of the hoi polloi, now rooting for the underdog, cheers from the Materazzi, more chattering mockery from the Mond. Then slowly the crowd went silent as Solomon Solomon, knowing that everything was now in his control, waited for the loss of blood, the pain and the fear of death, to do its work for him.

  “Stay still,” said Solomon Solomon, “and perhaps I’ll finish you quickly. Though I can’t promise anything.”

  Cale looked at him as if slightly puzzled. Then he moved his sword around in his hand, as if testing the weight, and made a lazy and slow pass at his opponent’s head. Years of instinct to counterattack such a weak attempt drew Solomon Solomon into striking at Cale, his great thighs pumping him forward like a sprinter. But with his second step he fell as if he had been struck by one of Henri’s bolts, crashing to the sand on his face and chest.