The Stranger at the Palazzo D'Oro

by Paul Theroux

  “So you’re a wise guy, too. I’m going to tell the cops about your guns. Them are illegal, you know.”

  What I had told him was in the First Aid merit badge handbook, three stages in removing a hook: push, snip, pull. Snip it with pliers, the handbook said, but he did not want to hear it. The hook in his thumb looked just like the one in the picture illustrating the hook-removal technique.

  “Where’s the emergency people?” he said angrily. “Where’s the fire station?”

  “And you need a tetanus shot for tetanus toxoid,” I said, to irritate him, because he refused to do what the book told him to do.

  “You could get lockjaw.”

  “Another wise guy,” the man said, and stooped and groaned and gathered up his fishing tackle with his left hand—I could see a pair of the right kind of needle-nose pliers in the tackle box. He held up his right hand like a policeman signaling to stop traffic, his fingers spread out, his thumb hooked.

  “This hurts like hell—it’s throbbing,” he said. ‘As if you give a shit!”

  And he threw his tackle box and rod into the back seat and reversed down the narrow road, the car bouncing.

  “Getting POed makes your heart beat faster,” I said. “The poison spreads.”

  “He’s not even supposed to drive here, the stupid bastard,” Chicky said. He mocked the man, saying, “It’s thrawbing!”

  “This is where the other guy was,” Walter said.

  “The homo?” Chicky said.

  Walter sucked on his lips, probably so they would not quiver and show how upset he was, and we looked at him, feeling sorry for him, standing on the spot where the strange man in the blue Studebaker had—what?—fooled around with him. No one said anything for a while.

  “Other people come parking here,” Chicky said at last. “Submarine races.”

  About twenty feet from where the fisherman had parked his car there was a barrier gate, just a horizontal steel pipe, hinged to a post on one side and padlocked to one on the other. Above it, the sign with our bullet holes in it, No Parking—Police Take Notice. Chicky unsheathed his hunting knife and shinned up the pole and scraped away at the t, so that it said, Police Take No ice.

  “Bastards,” he said.

  Farther along the shore of the pond, in the water, beyond a scooped-out embankment, there were scraps of paper curling and bobbing beneath the surface. Making sure the fisherman was gone, we put our guns down and broke off branches from the low bushes. We stood at the edge and used these, dragging the branches, to fish up the fragments of paper. The women in the torn pages were alone, some sitting or lying down, some in bathtubs, half hidden in a froth of bubbles, heavy breasts and dark nipples. We knew these dripping pages were from girlie magazines, ripped squarely in large pieces. On one was a large breast, on another a bare leg, a shoulder, the woman’s head: bouffant hair, big lips, black-and-white photographs of naked women. They seemed much wickeder soaking wet.

  “I like this one,” I said.

  “She’s wearing socks,” Chicky said.

  “She looks more naked that way.”

  “You’re nuts.”

  Chicky found the cover, all in color, Naturist Monthly, two women playing tennis, seen from the rear, a nudist magazine. We pieced some pages back together and saw naked people putting golf balls on a miniature-golf course, others playing Ping-Pong, some swimming, and oddest of all, a family eating dinner at an outdoor picnic table, Dad, Mom, and two little flat-chested girls. Mom was smiling: droopy tits and holding a forkful of droopy spaghetti.

  “You can’t see the guy’s wang,” Chicky said, “but lookit.”

  Naked children frolicking in shallow water with naked parents, a whole bare-assed family. And even though one of the teenage girls was being splashed I could see her breasts and a tuft of hair between her legs.

  “I bet she’s not a virgin,” Walter said. And then, grunting, “I’ve got a raging bonah.”

  “Give him some saltpeter,” I said.

  That was the remedy we had heard about, to prevent you from getting a hard-on. People said that in some schools the teachers mixed it with the food, to keep the kids out of trouble.

  We trawled with the branches, hoping for more thrown-away pages. There were certain secluded places at the edge of the woods or near the ponds, where cars could park, where we found these torn-up or discarded magazines. They were always damaged; we had no idea where anyone could buy them. Without being able to explain it, we knew that men took them here, as part of a ritual, a private vice, to look at the forbidden pictures and then destroy the evidence.

  And we did the same, piecing the wet pages together, and gloating over them, and then, feeling self-conscious, we scattered them and kicked them aside and walked on.

  At the far margin of the pond, there was another parking place, another barrier, more litter, broken beer bottles and paper.

  “It wasn't here,” Walter said.

  We knew what he meant. We were more relaxed, kicking the trash, for sometimes there were coins in the cinders.

  “Lookit. A Trojan,” Chicky said.

  A rubber ring, partly unrolled, thin balloon skin protruding, lay lighdy on the ground.

  “Never been used,” Chicky said. He poked it with his gun barrel. “No jism in it. All dry.”

  “What do you figure he did with it?” Walter said. “Huh, Andy? Tell us the story.”

  “He goes, ‘Open your legs.’ She goes, ‘Use a rubber.’ He takes it out but she’s so hot and bothered he doesn’t have time to put it on his dong. Her legs are open so wide he can see up her hole and into her tonsils. He throws the rubber out the window and bangs her.”

  Chicky was giggling as he said, “What else?”

  “She’s saying, ‘Farther in, farther in!’ He goes, ‘I’m not Father In, I’m Father O’Brien and I’m doing the best I can.’ Now she’s knocked up.”

  “I like the way you tell stories,” Chicky said, as Walter, holding up his Remington, showed us a rubber dangling, suspended from the nipple on the front sight. “It’s used,” he said.

  The slimy smooth gray-white rubber reminded me of naked bodies, hairless women's skin, and penises.

  “Prophylactic,” I said, trying out the word that was on the Trojan wrapper.

  “You can get a wicked disease from that.”

  Walter flopped it onto the ground and fired his gun into it, and at the same time the three of us looked around, hearing the gunshot echo, blunted by the pond.

  “Let’s go,” I said, fearing that someone might have heard.

  As we walked quickly away, Chicky said, “I know this guy who got a pack of his brother’s Trojans and stuck a pin through each one. So that when his brother banged his girlfriend a little bit of sperm leaked through.”

  We tried to picture it. A little bit of sperm leaked through did not seem very risky, not enough to make a baby. You needed a lot of sperm for that, and in my mind some sperm represented arms, and some legs, and more would make the baby’s body and head.

  We left the bridle path and crouched, ducking through the budded bushes, traversing the hill. No one could see us, and as always when we were sneaking through the woods like this we were careful not to step on any twigs. We trod on the balls of our feet, “sure-footed,” as though in moccasins, like the Indians we saw in movies who were indistinguishable from the bushes and the mottled light of the forest.

  “Heads up,” I said, hearing muffled hoofbeats, a lovely sound, because it was not a gallop but a slow tramping gait, the hooves crushing and grinding the cinders on the bridle path. The sound made us feel more than ever like Indians. “It’s a mounted cop.”

  He rode upright in the saddle like a sheriff in a cowboy movie, wearing a wide-brimmed hat and shiny black boots, a big black holster at his waist on a wide belt. We pressed ourselves against the ground, like Indians in the same movie, watching him, feeling anxious pleasure that he did not see us as he passed, and when he was gone, just the distant sound of hoo
ves, intense excitement.

  “We could have told him about the homo.”

  “He wouldn't have believed us.”

  “He'd take our guns away,” Chicky said. “He’d tell our parents.”

  Another mile onward, walking along the margin of the bridle path, we came to a clearing, the meadow of the Sheepfold, some scorched stone fireplaces and picnic tables and stumps to sit on. The place was empty this cold afternoon: all ours. We gathered wood and started a fire, warmed our hands, piled on more wood, and I whittled a stick to roast the hot dogs.

  Walter said, “Those things have shit in them, real pieces of shit.”

  “You’re just saying that because you don’t eat meat,” Chicky said. “Because of your religion.”

  He unpacked some Italian sausages, bright red meat and pepper, speckled white with fat, and held tight with filmy sausage casing that looked like a Trojan. These he penetrated lengthwise with a sharp narrow stick, and held them over the fire, letting them sputter and burst.

  “I’m going up for a Cooking merit badge,” Chicky said.

  Walter ate a chocolate bar while I burned my hot dog and, trying to toast it, burned the roll I had brought. Chicky nibbled the burned end of one of his sausages, and roasted it some more over the fire.

  “It looks like a bonah,” Walter said.

  “Hoss cock,” Chicky said.

  While we were sitting there, the fire crackling, the smoke blowing around us, three people approached through the meadow, two men and a woman. They were much older than we were, and had the look of being strangers, not just to these woods but maybe to the state.

  “What’s the name of this place?” one of the men asked—the taller one, in the sort of thick warm sweater I associated with college students.

  “Sheepfold,” I said. “Where are you from?”

  “Tufts,” the man said.

  Chicky said, “Hey, can I see that pocket book?”

  The smaller of the two men, young but balding, wearing a blue windbreaker, was holding a paperback book. On the cover was a crouching woman clutching her head. You couldn’t see much of her, but you knew she was naked. The title was Escape from Fear.

  “It’s a psychology book,” the man said.

  Chicky snatched at it and almost got a grip, but before he could try again the taller man batted Chicky’s arm, hitting him hard and knocking him off balance. Chicky, too startled to get to his feet, held his elbow where he had banged it on the ground and began to wail—not cry, but howl.

  “Hey, you hurt my friend,” Walter said, and I admired him for stepping up to the man who was flanked by two other people.

  “I’m sorry,” the man said, looking suddenly worried and regretful. He pulled a pack of gum out of his pocket and gave it to Chicky, who had stopped wailing but was still holding tightly to his elbow.

  “I’m telling the cops,” Chicky said.

  The man said to me, perhaps because I had said nothing at all, “I didn’t mean to hurt him.”

  The woman, who was pretty, a college girl—wearing a skirt, thick white socks, a tweed jacket—said to the man, “Let’s go. These kids could get us into trouble,” and before she finished speaking she screamed.

  Walter was pushing the bolt action into his gun, which he had picked up from where he had hidden it, behind the stone fireplace.

  “What are you doing with that thing?” the taller man said, trying to be calm.

  The woman looked too terrified to speak. The smaller man in the windbreaker said, “You're not supposed to play with guns.”

  “I'm not playing,” Walter said.

  Without their having noticed him, Chicky had crept to his feet and found his rifle behind the fireplace. When the three people turned he put a handful of bullets into his mouth and began spitting them into the tube under the muzzle, loading it.

  “You crazy? What do you want?” the taller man said, looking panicky and taking the woman’s arm, shoving her behind him.

  “What do I want? I want you to pound sand up your ass and give your crabs a beach,” Chicky said. “Say you’re sorry.”

  “I already said it.” The man was angry but he was also afraid. In an abject voice he said, “Okay, kid, I'm sorry. Put that gun down.”

  “Fungoo to you,” Chicky said in defiance. He slid the handle on the pump action of his Winchester, putting a bullet into the chamber.

  The three people, perhaps without realizing it, had begun to raise their hands, and held them chest high, as though being robbed. They backed away, the taller man saying, “Look, we're going—we don’t want any trouble.” And then they were running across the meadow and toward an opening in the trees, where the road led to the parking lot.

  “You hear what I said? Pound sand!” Chicky said. He was excited, jabbering crazily. “He hurt my friggin’ arm!”

  Walter said, “Why didn’t you get your gun, Andy?”

  “Didn’t have time,” I said, but the fact was that I was afraid—fearful of being caught with it, fearful that it might go off, fearful of something awful happening, hating the recklessness of Chicky and Walter, wishing that we had not brought the guns.

  “We better get out of here,” I said. “They might see that cop and tell him.”

  That was a danger. We put out the fire by dumping dirt on it, and flung away the burned sausages and hot dogs.

  “Let’s make sure they didn’t tell the cop,” I said, because I was still concerned.

  We went through the woods to the parking lot, just in time to see the car—three people in it—speeding down the road. We looked at the lot, the space where they had parked, and saw a dollar bill and some change.

  “He must have been pulling the keys out of his pocket,” I said, “and this fell out.”

  “So it’s mine, because I scared him,” Chicky said, and picked it up. ‘A buck thirty.”

  Back in the woods, heading home the long way, over the hill, off the path, we saw a squirrel, and chased it, throwing stones at it because a gunshot would be heard clearly so close to the road. And chasing it, the squirrel leaping from bough to bough, pushing the branches down each time he jumped, we came again to the margin of Doleful Pond, without realizing how we had got there, and losing the squirrel in the darkness.

  That was when we saw the headlights, so bright the glare of them obscured the shape and color of the car.

  “That’s him,” Walter said.

  “Bull,” Chicky said, because it was just a pair of yellow lights.

  We crouched down and watched the car reverse, moving slowly, and where the road was wider, the car stopped and made a three-point turn, lighting the bushes, illuminating itself, a small blue car sitting high on its wheels, a Studebaker.

  4

  So Walter Herkis, who sometimes fibbed, was telling the truth after all. He did not gloat about being right—he didn’t even seem glad that now he had us as witnesses to the blue Studebaker, the man inside. He even seemed a bit sorry and looked as though he had eaten something bad and wanted to throw up. He looked more worried than ever, even sick, which seemed like more proof that he had not been lying. And maybe the truth was even worse than he had admitted. Certainly he had been very upset and we were not quite sure what had really happened, what the man in the blue Studebaker had done to him at Doleful Pond. We asked again but this time Walter did not want to talk about it, only made the swollen pukey face again. That meant that something serious had happened.

  The man had driven past us. He was not a blurry villain anymore, but a real man in a shiny car and looked strong. We had not seen his face—we were on the wrong side of the car, hiding against the pond embankment. He had driven fast, in the decisive way of a person who had finished something and wanted to get away; not on the lookout for anyone, not noticing anything, like a man in a hurry to go home, someone late.

  The way the man was leaving fast seemed to make Walter angry, and he watched, growing helpless, like the man was escaping from him. Walter’s eyes were glistening
. He held his gun in his arms tightly as though he was cold. But he was clutching his stomach and retched, started to spew, a moment later bent over and puked into the bushes, and paused, labored a little, and splashed some more, coating the leaves with yellow slime and mucus and chewed puke.

  He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said, “I’d like to kill the bastard.”

  “Yeah,” Chicky said. “Let’s kill him.”

  I did not say anything. I was retching myself, my mouth full of saliva from having watched Walter. I was also afraid of the word; and they knew it, they noticed my silence.

  “Andy’s chickenshit.”

  “Yah. Let’s get him,” I said. I could not say the word “kill” without feeling unsafe. “You all right, Herkis?”

  Walter nodded. He was not all right. He was pale and pukey-looking. But he was angrier than ever, and his anger excited Chicky and touched me too. The anger gave us a purpose that was better than going out for merit badges but involved the same concentration. We had found the car, we had glimpsed the man, we had to find him again and do something. We were not Scouts, we were soldiers, we were Indians, we were men, defending ourselves.

  “Kill him” was just an expression, but one that frightened me. Walter and Chicky were not so frightened of it—Walter was angry, Chicky was excited. We did not explain what killing meant, but I wanted to think it was stalking him, trapping him, not firing bullets into him.

  “We’ll put him out of commission,” I said, so that they would see I was on their side, because they thought of me as the sensible one, the cautious one, the chicken.

  “Even if we really do kill him, no one will know,” Chicky said.

  That was the way we reasoned in the woods—getting away with something made it all right. If we killed a squirrel, or started a fire, or shot bullets into a sign and no one caught us, we felt we had done nothing wrong: nothing to explain. If we found money, we kept it. “What if we discovered a dead body in the woods?” Walter had asked once, and Chicky had said, “What if it was a woman and she was bollocky!” In the woods we were conscienceless creatures, like the other live things that lurked among the trees. Even so, Chicky’s excitement disturbed me—he was jabbering to Walter now—because talk of killing, even in a reckless jokey way, made me uneasy. My hesitation was not guilt, not even conscience—I was afraid of getting caught and having to face my parents' fury and shame.