Senlin plodded on, hoping to find a road or signpost. Neither appeared. He allowed the throng to offer a path rather than forge one himself. When a gap opened, he leapt into it. After progressing perhaps a hundred paces in this manner, he had no idea which direction the tracks lay. He regretted wandering away from the tracks. They could’ve followed them to the Babel Central Station. It was unsettling how quickly he’d become disoriented.
Still, he was careful to occasionally turn and construct a smile for Marya. The beam of her smile never wavered. There was no reason to worry her with the minor setback.
Ahead, a bare-chested boy fanned the hanging carcasses of lambs and rabbits to keep a cloud of flies from settling. The flies and sweet stench wafting from the butcher’s stall drove the crowd back, creating a little space for them to pause a moment, though the stench was nauseating. Placing Marya’s trunk between them, Senlin dried his neck with his handkerchief.
“It certainly is busy,” Senlin said, trying not to seem as flustered as he felt, though Marya hardly noticed; she was staring over his head, a bemused expression lighting her pretty face.
“It’s wonderful,” she said.
A gap in the awnings above them exposed the sky, and there, like a pillar holding up the heavens, stood the Tower of Babel.
The face of the Tower was patched with white, gray, rust, tan, and black, betraying the many types of stone and brick used in its construction. The irregular coloration reminded Senlin of a calico cat. The Tower’s silhouette was architecturally bland, evoking a dented and ribbed cannon barrel, but it was ornamented with grand friezes, each band taller than a house. A dense cloudbank obscured the Tower’s pinnacle. The Everyman’s Guide noted that the upper echelons were permanently befogged, though whether the ancient structure produced the clouds or attracted them remained a popular point of speculation. However it was, the peak was never visible from the ground.
The Everyman’s description of the Tower of Babel hadn’t really prepared Senlin for the enormity of the structure. It made the ziggurats of South Ur and the citadels of the Western Plains seem like models, the sort of thing children built out of sugar cubes. The Tower had taken a thousand years to erect. More, according to some historians. Overwhelmed with wonder and the intense teeming of the Market, Senlin shivered. Marya squeezed his hand reassuringly, and his back straightened. He was a headmaster, after all, a leader of a modest community. Yes, there was a crowd to push through, but once they reached the Tower, the throng would thin. They would be able to stretch a little and would, almost certainly, find themselves among more pleasant company. In a few hours, they would be drinking a glass of port in a reasonable but hospitable lodging on the third level of the Tower—the Baths, locals called it—just as they had planned. They would calmly survey this same human swarm, but from a more comfortable distance.
Now, at least, they had a bearing, a direction to push toward.
Senlin was also discovering a more efficient means of advancing through the crowds. If he stopped, he found, it was difficult to start again, but progress could be made if one was a little more firm and determined. After a few minutes of following, Marya felt comfortable enough to release his belt, which made walking much easier for them both.
Soon, they found themselves in one of the many clothing bazaars within the Market. Laced dresses, embroidered pinafores, and cuffed shirts hung on a forest of hooks and lines. A suit could be had in any color, from peacock blue to jonquil yellow; women’s intimate apparel dangled from bamboo ladders like the skins of exotic snakes. Square-folded handkerchiefs covered the nearest table in a heap like a snowdrift.
“Let me buy you a dress. The evenings here are warmer than we’re used to.” He had to speak close to her ear.
“I’d like a little frock,” she said, removing her pith helmet and revealing her somewhat deflated bronzy hair. “Something scandalous.”
He gave her a thoughtful frown to disguise his own surprise. He knew that this was the kind of flirtation that even decent couples probably indulged in on their honeymoon. Still, he was unprepared and couldn’t reflect her playful tone. “Scandalous?”
“Nothing your pupils will need to know about. Just a little something to disgrace our clothesline back home,” she said, running her finger down his arm as if she were striking a match.
He felt uneasy. Ahead of them, acres of stalls cascaded with women’s undergarments. There wasn’t a man in sight.
Fifteen years spent living as a bachelor hadn’t prepared him for the addition of Marya’s undergarments to the landscape of his bedroom. Finding her delicates draped on the bedposts and doorknobs of his old sanctuary had come as something of a shock. But this mass of nightgowns, camisoles, corsets, stockings, and brassieres being combed through by thousands of unfamiliar women seemed exponentially more humiliating. “I think I’ll stay by the luggage.”
“What about your rules?”
“Well, if you’ll keep that red bowl on your head, I’ll be able to spot you just fine from here.”
“If you wander off, we’ll meet again at the top of the Tower,” she said with exaggerated dramatic emphasis.
“We will not. I’ll meet you right here beside this cart of socks.”
“Such a romantic!” she said, passing around two heavy-set women who wore the blue-and-white apron dresses popular many years earlier. Senlin noticed with amusement that they were connected at the waist by a thick jute rope.
He asked them if they were from the east, and they responded with the name of a fishing village that was not far from Isaugh. They exchanged the usual nostalgia common to coastal folk: sunrises, starfish, and the pleasant muttering of the surf at night, and then he asked, “You’ve come on holiday?”
They responded with slight maternal smiles that made him feel belittled. “We’re far past our holidays,” one said.
“Do you go everywhere lashed together?” A note of mockery crept into his voice now.
“Yes, of course,” replied the older of the two. “Ever since we lost our little sister.”
“I’m sorry. Did she pass away recently?” Senlin asked, recovering his sincere tone.
“I certainly hope not. But it has been three years. Maybe she has.”
“Or maybe she found some way to get back home?” the younger sister said.
“She wouldn’t abandon us,” the older replied in a tone that suggested this was a well-tread argument between them.
“It is intrepid of you to come alone,” the younger spinster said to him.
“Oh, thank you, but I’m not alone.” Tiring of the conversation, Senlin moved to grip the handle of the trunk only to find it had moved.
Confused, he turned in circles, searching first the ground and then the crowd of blank, unperturbed faces snaking about him. Marya’s trunk was gone. “I’ve lost my luggage,” he said.
“Get yourself a good rope,” the eldest said, and reached up to pat his pale cheek.
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The Thousand Deaths of Ardor Benn Page 75
