I slept in snatches that night, awakened by the slightest noise. I decided I would find some other sleeping area farther away in the morning. It was still dark when I set out and when I stopped by the destroyed smoker and looked through the window, I had the horrible thought that the man who had been inside with me had been caught in the fire. I opened the door in a hurry and was relieved when I saw no signs of a burnt body. I was about to leave when I noticed the safe was locked. I could not recall if I had done this myself or if the man had locked it. I tried the handle and after a while, I managed to open it. Inside I saw some kind of bamboo boomerang.
I took the boomerang and set out for the area I had visited the previous day. Once again, I hurried along in case I was being followed. As I was passing the junkyard, I was startled when a figure rose up from a mess of cardboard on the sidewalk. He was not one of the crew and I had not seen him with the group the other day. In any case, he was so ragged I felt he had been hiding out in the junkyard for a while. “What are you doing here?” I asked him.
“Ah, brother,” he began as if he had been waiting there forever for that question. “Ah, brother. The walk of life. It’s a funny thing when you think of it. Everybody’s walking away from each other. Hadda time” – he made snipping gestures at the buildings and I noticed that his eyes were bright and unsuited to his badly creased face – “hadda time when only music was streaming from the decks. First was real slow music. Frilly like a ruffled hem. I used to think of it as mountain music because of all the peaks and valleys. That lasted a long time but it got taken over by music of the plains, you know, cause everything was one tone. Lotta weeping about broken hearts. Then the crying stopped. And the hollering began. Popping out slow in the beginning from every pocket. Spreading everywhere. Savannah music it was. Then that, too, stopped. I was waiting, patiently, brother to hear some new sound but it seems there is a chink in the groove.”
“What do you mean?”
“Clip, clip, pop.” He lay down once more and drew a slim piece of cardboard over his head. “By the way, brother, Conductor is the name. Don’t have a calling card as yet but working on it. Can I tell you something? Every single time you ask the same damn questions. What happened to the woman? Why is the place so quiet? Where are the others? Always on the run or looking for someone. The two don’t add up. Dunno what you are expecting, brother. There is a way in the world that leads to nothing. This is the way it is and the way it will be. End of text.”
He fell back on the pavement and pulled his cardboard blanket over his head. “Wait,” I told him with some urgency. “You said I asked these questions previously. When did we meet? Did you ever answer?”
“There is a way in the world that leads to nothing. This is the way it is and the way it will go down. I try to stitch and join and hem but the patches are getting bigger. I have the answer, but no one asks the proper question.”
“What is the question?”
“The question is why do they now search for the very ones they discarded?”
“And the answer?”
“Because we got something they want. Something they lost. We got the music, brother. We got the crazy dreams and the funny songs. We got the ups and downs and the topsy-turvies.” He pulled at the end of his ragged coat and bit into a dangling thread. “I shouldn’t be telling you any of this. There’s a little bat roaming about. You better avoid her.” I saw his hands on either side, grasping pieces of cardboard and fitting them over his body. I stood there awhile, hoping he would emerge from the junk. I called a few times and eventually I walked on to the waiting area where I had seen the group.
As I expected, the place was empty. I decided I would head for the forest I had seen the previous day. Perhaps there might be a little town there. I paced myself by resting at twenty-minute intervals and at the fifth stop, I saw someone standing on the brink of a hill. I was a bit disappointed that someone from the group had found this area. I hoped it was not Balzac but as I drew closer, I saw it was a slim man in a grey overcoat. He was leaning on a parasol and looking up. I hurried in his direction but just before I got there, he jumped.
18 THE GIRL WITH THE BOOMERANG
I scrambled down the hill as fast as I could, but there was no sign of anyone. I looked behind the rocks and boulders and peered inside the crevices and between the spiky shrubs. Could he have been caught on one of the ledges? I glanced up but saw no one clinging to the sides. Perhaps his parasol had enabled him to ride an air current and he had landed some distance away. Even though I knew this was highly unlikely, I hurried to a field with rows of spindly, bird-shaped plants. I called out and hearing no response, I ventured within. The protruding stalks were stiff and I had to constantly brush these away from my face but soon they grew softer and more oval and I realized I was in another type of field. Here, there were leaning palms with twisted fronds and hanging epiphytes bearing wispy blue flowers and, most strange of all, clumps of miniature bamboo. “Hello,” I shouted once more.
“There’s no need to shout. Everyone can hear you for miles and you have scared away all the parrots.”
I saw a slight movement behind one of the clumps. “Hello,” I shouted once more.
“How did you find this place? Did the Citizen Brigade send you?”
I saw a face peeping from behind a bamboo shoot. Although I could not properly make out the features I was sure it was not an adult. “What are you doing here by yourself, child?” The figure stepped out and I saw it was a girl of about eight or nine. Her hood was studded with blue flowers and I added, “Are you collecting flowers for a game? You know you shouldn’t be here all alone.”
“What are you doing here? It’s not even a sector.”
“I was looking for someone. I think he floated off on an umbrella.”
“Floated off on an umbrella? I knew you had been done.” She seemed a bit demented and I asked where her parents were. When she did not reply, just regarded me skeptically, I inquired if there was a town close by. A little grin fitted itself on her face and she said, “You shouldn’t pretend, you know. Or maybe you have been done just like all the others.”
“Done? Which others? The film crew?”
“You think they are all actors? Really?”
“What else would they be? I have the script. Do you know what the word means?”
“I am not stupid. Where is it?” She took a step toward me.
“Someone stole it.”
“Hah! I knew it.” She stepped a bit closer. “I see you have brought my boomerang. Can I have it?”
“Wait a minute. Did I see you the other day? Running among the coaches?”
“No one will ever catch me here. I know all the trails and burrows that no one else can see.”
“I have no intention of catching you. I already mentioned I was looking for someone.”
“Or maybe it’s just a trick.” She looked at me with suspicion.
I decided to be firm with her. “This is not a game, child. Someone –”
“Floated away on an umbrella. Now can you throw me my boomerang? And don’t try to trick me because I can talk with parrots and armadillos. Can you do that?”
“No, I cannot. And I am not trying to trick you. I am simply concerned that a child such as yourself is wandering about all alone.”
“A child such as yourself? Who speaks this way?” She tittered and covered her mouth with her dirty hands. “Does everyone who has been done talk like the stiff people from old mothy books?”
“Why don’t you tell me?” I asked her. “You seem to know everything. Hiding about and talking to your animals.”
“I knew you were mean. I knew it would be a matter of time before your meanness showed through.”
She took a backward step and I told her, “I am sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. It’s just that I am looking for someone who disappeared –”
“Yes, yes. I know. The man from the Compound and the old house and the haunted place with the monster and the train.�
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“Was he the same person from the smoker carriage? I didn’t know that. He might be hurt. Did you see him?”
She shook her head and some of the blue flowers fell to her feet. She gazed at the flowers and told me, “I never saw his face. He died hundreds and thousands of years ago. I think during the war when there were yellow and red clouds on all the streets and machines were pretending to be men and the animals that could not have babies died out. They told me that with their own beaks. Do you know what else? It was the man from the house and the train who invented the do machines. Serves him right if he’s hurt.”
“What did he invent?”
“The machines that joined with people and made them act strange. I think the machines did not work all that well because it made monsters, too. I read that in the books with pictures. Are you one?”
“You tell me. Do I look like a monster?” I asked, smiling.
“Maybe. A little. But I never saw one up close. I run away whenever I hear them coming.”
“Really?” I decided to humour her. “So it’s a little game? Like hide-and-seek, maybe.”
“It’s not a game, you silly old man. The Citizen Brigade checks to see if there are any new monsters and then sends them to live with other monsters. I know all the secrets because they can never catch me. Do you know why?”
“I am in the dark.”
“That’s a funny thing to say. They can never catch me because I can talk to birds and cats and lizards. I think I am...”
“You are what?” I asked.
“Alone. They can’t feel what I am thinking, but I can see everything.”
“Can you tell me how you manage to do that?”
She took a tentative step forward. “If you throw me my boomerang, I will tell you. Wait. Kick it to me or it will just fly back to you.” I tossed the boomerang lightly to her and she grabbed it and pushed it somewhere in her clothes. “Bye, sucker.” She ran off. I had to smile at her childish scheminess. I decided to return to the terminal when I heard, “They put other people’s stories in your head.”
“Really? Why would they do this?” I asked.
“Because they don’t have any of their own, silly. They want to see what will happen when all these stories join into a big great story.”
“So they can tell it to each other in the nights?”
“I already told you it’s because they don’t have any of their own.”
“And why is that so?”
“Because they lost them, silly. So now they are looking for them.”
“I see. And where do they get these stories to put into peoples’ heads if they have lost –”
“From the books that they stopped everyone from reading because they said it made everyone mad. I think it’s wrong to steal other peoples’ stories and have them stuffed inside your head.”
“And why is that so?”
“Because you believe they belong to you, silly.”
“I see. And who puts these stories in? A monster?”
“No, silly old man. The three horrible men. One looks like a nasty toad and another looks like an imp and the last one like a sor...sorcerer. They will never catch me.”
“Because they are from the books?” I asked her. “A fairy-tale book with a frog, an imp and a sorcerer?”
“No, you crazy old man. Because I can talk with parrots and armadillos. And I have a pet cat that’s wild. Did I mention those?”
I decided to be firm with her. “Why are they trying to catch you? Do you think that maybe they would like you to rejoin your parents?”
“That’s what they want me to believe. But I have no parents. I saw when they were done. And their brains taken out and stuffed into new parents.”
“Are we still playing here? If so, that’s a horrible joke to make.”
“It’s no joke. I was hiding at the time and when I ran away, they tried to follow me. They have been trying ever since.”
“Hmm. Where do you live, child? I can take you there.”
“Are you deaf? I have no home. Do you know how long I have been hiding?”
She stepped out and I saw her transferring the boomerang from one hand to the other. I wondered if the girl had strayed into the smoker and had viewed some of the films. It was likely because she had left her boomerang there. “And how does it all end?” I asked.
“It never ends because the toad and his two friends send back everyone, over and over, to do the same thing until they get the secret. And I know what it is, too.” She looked smug with herself as if she anticipated my next question. When I asked her, she said, “They make these people pretend they are someone else. I think they want them to finish something that they started, but they never finished. I know what you are going to ask and I already told you that they want to see how the stories end. It’s there in the books in the carriage.”
“Is that where you read of the war? And the people whose stories were stolen and the strange machines?”
“I know what you are getting at, but I can tell the difference between a true story and a made-up one. That’s why I am hiding here. All my stories are my own and no one will take them away. I know the name of the machine that made everything think the same. Would you like to hear it?” When I nodded, she said, “Birdie.” As she spoke, I wished I recalled more of my own childhood. Perhaps at one time, I was like this child. I have to say it was interesting listening to her fantasies even though I felt guilty at delaying her return to her home. Then she said, “That is why only I can remember in a straight line. They can’t steal my remembering.” I tried to ignore her boast but I immediately thought of my own memory loss. I recalled my strange dreams of dungeons and lopsided streetlamps and blue-skinned beings shedding tears that seemed to transform into leaves as they touched the ground. I thought of my nightmare where I was floating on a sea or lake and watching armies fighting and falling around me. In some of my dreams, those that lasted a minute or so, there was a compound filled with lunatics and a man who looked like a zombie in an old house and a completely insane man in another. They were as disconnected as the proposed film scripts in the stolen ledger and I surprised myself by wondering if the insertion of foreign memories could have caused this fragmentation. But this was just a silly child’s story. “Did you swallow your tongue?” the girl asked. She stooped to retrieve a flower that she replaced on her ragged lapel. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I don’t know,” I said, confused. “Maybe all little girls look alike. I believe you reminded me of someone...but I don’t know who exactly.”
“This is strange. People who have been done never remember anything. I should warn you that I like puzzles. I spend all nights solving them. I call them fuzzles.”
“Then we are alike.”
“What did you say? It’s poor manners to talk to yourself. Even I know this.”
“I said that I, too, spend all nights working on my puzzles.”
“And?”
It may seem strange that I should reveal to a ragged child that I had found myself in a derelict studio with a group of actors who had memorized their roles for so long they had begun to believe they were these characters. I told her that I could not explain my presence in this sprawling studio set in an abandoned terminal, but I guessed I might have been one of the writers because I had been left with the storyboard. I told her of my dreams.
I saw her looking at me and stroking her boomerang and I felt she did not believe a word of what I had said, but she asked me, “I never talked to one of you. I thought you would forget everything. Do you think all these dreams are clues?”
I smiled. “I wished they were, but they are just bad dreams. Maybe people with bad memories try to fill in the gaps with –”
“Or maybe they try to not get mad. Like the people you are hiding from.” I tried to recall if I had mentioned this fact. “The people from all these places, now in the train, are dangerous because all the voices are shaking in their heads and telling them
different things.”
“That’s interesting. Did you read about that in one of the books?”
“I follow them around and see what they are doing and listen to everything.” I saw her drawing circles in the air. “The toad and his two friends always send everyone back to the beginning.”
“Of what?”
“Don’t you listen? Of when the craziness started. They want to see if you will do the same crazy things.”
I was about to tell her that trailing strangers was a dangerous game, especially with men like Balzac about, when I noticed a brief flicker of sadness on her face. I asked her, “Are you looking for someone? A friend?”
I thought she would run away and she made a few tentative steps before she returned, her shoulders slumping. “Not a friend. How did you know?”
“With most games, children are searching for something or someone.”
“It’s not a game.” And here she told me an astonishing story. The men and women who had been stolen and their memories replaced had all been working on something important before they were forced to give up. I asked why they had stopped their projects and she thought for a while before she said it was because they wanted to come off the Birdie machine that joined everyone’s thoughts. Her own mother, she said, had been studying plants and flowers. In her story, there were priests and scientists and writers and artists and musicians and athletes. All were sent to institutions. “That is how the toad and his two friends got them. I know something else. Only three months. That is how long they forget before everything has to start over.”
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