The two men scuffled frantically for the bag. A strange and sullen hiss alerted them. A huge bronze pot was tipping at the rim of the battlements. They stared up, open-mouthed, into the deluge of flaming pitch.
Technician First-Class Beheshti pried an antipersonnel mine from the flaking soil. Below the mine’s ridged bottom, a crusted layer of black stained the dirt. He set the mine aside with tender gentleness, then prodded the soil with his entrenching tool. His eyes widened. “Hey!”
Four meters away, Technician Ali stopped his gingerly digging and pried the Walkman earphones from his close-cropped head. “Yeah?”
“Come have a look. See what I dug up.”
Ali squirmed on knees and elbows across the minefield, his plastic Khomeini tag dangling from one pocket flap. “Bouncing Betty. That’s a nasty one.”
“Not the mine—this.” Beheshti held up a dust-caked bit of pinkish alabaster. “Pagan stuff.”
“Huh!” Ali said. “You have all the luck, Beheshti.” He peered down into the cavity where the mine had been. He raked at the stained soil. “Look! Here’s one for me.”
He grabbed for it. They struggled briefly, but Ali snatched the stone cylinder away and sat up, frowning. “You’ve got yours. I saw this one. It’s mine!”
Beheshti shrugged with bad grace. “Allah wills.” He rubbed grit from his trophy with his thumb. “Look at this,” he said. “Some pagan whore standing on a lion! Look, she has no veil or cloak—you can practically see everything!” He tucked it carefully into his breast pocket.
The Walkman ’phones around Ali’s neck squeaked shrilly. “… acts of sabotage and terrorism! The Iranian criminals have flung acid into the faces of those attempting prayers at mosques. Shiite fanatics of the inhuman Khomeini regime have poisoned food at the holy shrines of Basra and Karbala …”
“Radio Baghdad!” Beheshti said. “You shouldn’t be listening to that filth.”
Ali looked sheepish. “They’re jamming Radio Tehran today. You can hardly hear the Imam. Besides, the heretics play Western rock and roll.”
“For shame,” Beheshti said, without much conviction.
A siren wailed briefly, back at the Iranian camp. The two men got to their feet and headed back to base, their bellies rumbling for lunch. An American-made Chinook copter stuttered along nearby, passing over a low mound of immemorial crushed brick.
The two Iranians passed the barbed wire and jumped down into a slit trench. They took their places in line beside a half-buried galley area, its tin roof heaped with sandbags. They shuffled forward, picking up battered army mess-trays still stamped with the Shah’s imperial seal.
Beheshti pulled a checkered kerchief from around his throat and flapped at his sleeves, beating out an ocher cloud of minefield dust. The man before him turned around, coughing. “Please stop!” The man’s face was weirdly scarred, his cheekbones hairless and skinned, his lips mere ribbons. He had no eyebrows.
“Sorry, brother,” Beheshti said.
“Mustard gas,” the scarred man said with a shy smile. “The dust is bad when you have no nose hair.”
Ali and Beheshti took their trays of chickpea gruel, rice, and flatbread. They clambered up out of the trench to a favored sitting spot, where a camouflage net had been cast over a ridge of chipped limestone. It was a little breezier there, and it was easy to spot convoys arriving with supplies.
They were still eating when a Revolutionary Guardsman wearing PLO-style lizard camo pulled up in a Toyota pickup. A multi-barreled anti-aircraft gun had been bolted to the truck’s bed. The truck’s hasty camouflage of desert brown and dun was peeling, showing bright strips of cheery civilian chrome yellow. The Guardsman stuck his head through the window. “General wants to see you.”
The two techs jumped into the back of the truck and were rapidly driven to field headquarters. Commandeered school buses were parked all around the bunker. Young boys in bloodied martyrs’ headbands leaned outside the windows, cheering wildly, waving at the truck.
Ali and Beheshti waited under a limp Iranian banner as the Guardsman disappeared into the concrete bunker. In the distance, two Iraqi fighter-bombers returned from harassing oil tankers in the Gulf. Their contrails streaked the horizon beside a billowing mass of smoke from distant Khorramshahr.
Ali looked morosely at the children in the buses as they began a vigorous sing-along war chant, kneeling on the bus seats and pounding their chests in unison. “The minefields,” he said. “It’s another human-wave attack. The General wants our advice. That minefield we’ve been working on—they’re gonna march these kids right through it.”
“Well, yeah,” Beheshti said. He hesitated. “We’ve done it before. Remember?”
Ali shrugged uneasily. “I guess so. I remember killing kids. We burned them on pyres. We displayed their bodies.” He paused, his fingers searching through reflex for a non-existent beard. “But wait. Those were enemy kids. Not our own boys.”
Beheshti was deeply confused. “Burned bodies on display …” He struggled hard for memory. “You must mean the American commandos,” he said, straightening in relief. “They tried to rescue the hostages in the Nest of Spies. God punished them. Their chariots crashed in the desert.”
“You just said ‘chariots,’ ” Ali remarked. He looked thoughtfully at the ground.
“Something really terrible has happened to us,” Beheshti concluded slowly. In absent irritation, he shook one trouser leg. Dust flew. “Where did these pants come from?” he demanded. “I hate these! And where’s my helmet?”
“Something’s changed,” Ali said. “I think we got lost or something. And it’s not any better here. We don’t even get loot in this war, Beheshti. This war’s not for soldiers—it’s all for the priests. They want us to die—not just the enemy, us!”
Beheshti gazed around. “Sure seems familiar, though.”
Ali looked deeply troubled. “I should have been a brewer by now. With a nice little tavern all my own …”
“Ali, we’re Muslims,” Beheshti pointed out. “We don’t drink.” He paused. “We’re Shiites of the Revolution. We don’t dance or play music. And we stone loose women.”
Ali thought this over. He seemed stunned. “What do we do for the joy in life, then?”
“Uh …” Beheshti wrinkled his brow. “Well, there’s mass-struggle rallies. And mass condemnations of the American Great Satan and the Marxist atheists …” Beheshti made a ritual air-punching gesture. “They’re pretty exciting, really …”
Ali frowned, thinking painfully. “No brewing? Well, I guess I could pirate tapes of pop music. At least a black marketeer has some kind of name in society …”
Atop a tall iron pole nearby, four klaxon speakers crackled into life. Out came an intense, sonorous voice, lightly eaten by static. “Soldiers of the Islamic Revolution! Today we will chop the hands from the minions of the Ba’athist regime! The corrupt and evil oppressors of the faithful will pay the full and bloody price for their crimes against the liberation struggle …” The voice went on and on.
Ali shuddered. “A mullah has come from the capital,” he said, his shoulders slumping. “We’ll have to talk to him. He’ll see into our souls. We’re done for.”
“Let’s lie to him,” Beheshti suggested in the sudden light of desperation. “We’ll hide our souls. We’ll lie and cheat. Until we’re either dead, or far away from here.”
Ali grimaced. “What could we do—even if we did get away?”
Beheshti shrugged. “Sin, I guess.”
“Good idea,” Ali said, brightening. “I hear and obey.”
To the north, heavy artillery opened up, throwing death across the Shatt-al-Arab with distant monotonous thuds. The Guardsman beckoned from the doorway. The General was ready.
They stepped down into the stinking darkness of the bunker.
THE SHORES
OF BOHEMIA
Rodolphe sat on the edge of his feather bed and cradled his favorite clock in his hands. The clock was made of p
olished black walnut and inlaid mother-of-pearl. It was handsome, and cleverly designed, and assembled with care and precision.
But at some time in the night, the clock had broken.
Gently, Rodolphe tried the wind-up key. The key turned loosely in its socket, with a dry, useless clicking.
Rodolphe felt a harsh sadness. He set the unhappy clock aside, then threw off his pajamas, and shrugged into an embroidered dressing gown. He unlocked the lowest drawer of a massive bureau, and withdrew a calfskin schedule book.
He dipped a goose quill and began to write, with quick, precise stokes. The alarm clock has ceased to function. Its gearwork seems broken, and it no longer responds to the key. Reason unknown. Rodolphe found his pocket watch, which hung by its gilded chain from the bedside watchstand. I have failed to rise at seven o’clock, he wrote. I have overslept an hour, and violated my daily schedule!
Rodolphe paused, thoughtfully stroking his stubbled chin with the quill feather. Yet another dream of flight, he confessed at last. I flew with strange winged beasts, high above the city.
He blew the ink dry, then locked the book back securely in the drawer. He was afraid his wife, Amelie, might glance into the book. After their years of married life together, Amelie knew his failings well enough. But Rodolphe did not want her to learn the disturbing nature of his recent dreams.
Rodolphe sponged his face and armpits over a brass basin. He stropped a razor and shaved. Then he dressed: trousers, undershirt, suspenders, shirt, waistcoat, dress coat, handkerchief, throat tie, socks, boots, stickpin, cane, and hat.
Amelie had left him some money. A stack of six gold coins gleamed ostentatiously on the corner of the bureau.
Amelie took pride in being a good provider. She had just been paid, Rodolphe recalled—she had finished sewing the upholstery for her latest steam car. Steam cars were fine things. Rodolphe envied her the pleasure she and her girlfriends took in building them.
Rodolphe flung open the linen window curtains, and studied each coin carefully with a powerful hand lens. Two of the coins had been minted in Syria, brought in by the caravan routes. The third came from glamorous Las Vegas, by the shore of America’s great inland sea. The fourth coin was from China, a lovely little artifact with the ancient symbol of a television.
The last two were domestic coins from southern France; a disappointment. The French coins were nicely crafted, but nothing special; they were not even antiques. Rodolphe wondered why Amelie had accepted them. Sometimes he suspected that his wife simply didn’t understand the true allure of money.
There was no time now for the comforting ritual of breakfast. Rodolphe left his apartments, clumped loudly down the wooden stairs and into the cobblestone streets of Paysage.
It was a crisp winter morning, under a pale pine-scented sky. Paysage’s young citizens went about their business, heads held high, faces sober, eyes set straight ahead. Rodolphe returned their respectful salutes with brief smiles and crisp gestures of his cane.
Rodolphe made it a point to show courtesy to all. The stewardship of a public trust was a delicate matter. It required the creation of a general consensus; the studied garnering of public goodwill. After thirty years’ hard work on his great project, Rodolphe knew that, to many people, he was the Enantiodrome; any personal failing of his own was somehow a reflection on the merits of the great construction.
As he did every day, Rodolphe walked downhill past a bakery, a flower shop, and a piano store. He paused on a street corner, awaiting a break in the jostling flow of horsedrawn traffic.
Rodolphe was joined in his wait by the city’s mayor. The mayor was a thin, gangling man, in spare, elegant dress, with a hawklike profile. The mayor was a hundred years old, and something of a bore.
“Good morning, Henri,” Rodolphe said.
“Yes, a lovely day,” the mayor agreed, gazing critically at a uniformed policeman guiding traffic. “It seems to get a bit cooler every year now … It might even snow this winter.” The mayor’s tone suggested that this meeting was less than coincidence.
The mayor took Rodolphe’s elbow, in apparently friendly fashion, as they crossed the street. “Are you prepared for that, Rodolphe? Snow?”
“We need no further construction grants,” Rodolphe said. “We’ll be finished very soon—well before the worst of winter.”
The mayor chuckled. “The Enantiodrome is never truly finished! To be sure, there will be a hearty celebration, as the latest phase is completed. You and your gallant crew deserve every credit! And yet …”
They reached the far side of the street. The mayor still held Rodolphe’s arm. “Trust my experience, Rodolphe. Of course we are pleased with your success. But eventually the city will get restless again. Though the Enantiodrome seems completed, we always find room for expansion. Another minaret, another set of buttresses …”
“My plans are very nearly fulfilled,” Rodolphe said.
“But the Enantiodrome is no mere blueprint, Rodolphe. It’s a tradition. A symbol. An incarnation of our civic spirit …”
“It’s a building, Monsieur Mayor. It’s a physical object. It has to stop growing eventually.”
“Perhaps it’s simply your personal role in the Enantiodrome that is near completion.” The mayor smiled evasively, to lessen this wounding remark. “It’s time you found a new vision, Rodolphe. You should direct your praiseworthy energies toward another career in Paysage. Architecture is not the only worthy pursuit, you know. There’s banking, perhaps. Or law. Or politics—and politics has no illusion of finality!”
“Yes.” Rodolphe nodded tactfully. “You were wise in your choice of vocation. Good day, monsieur.” He walked on.
The man aroused an instinctive distaste in Rodolphe. The mayor, a hundred years old, was very young indeed for an old man; but he was far too old for a young man. The mayor had lived too long in this City of Youth. Now there was a musty air about him, something of the pressed flower, something brittle and dry. Or stale, and bottled-up …
Rodolphe himself was fifty-one years old. He had walked this route to work for thirty years. He’d gone willingly, eagerly. People had been able to set their watches by his progress. This was only proper, for a man of civic responsibility.
But now it struck Rodolphe—not for the first time—how dreadfully easy it would be simply to keep walking. Straight down the street, out past the city walls of Paysage. Out past the plowed fields, out where the highway dwindled: first to a dirt track, then to a mere mule path through the endless tangled wilderness of Europe. A savagely thriving world, without boundaries, without direction, without constraint.
The thought struck his imagination with a deep, perverse thrill. To walk, naked and alone, into that vast ruin-spotted forest—that mystically seething realm …
It might be better to be dead. Rodolphe, with confused surprise, felt a sudden muddled uprush of deep love for this place, for this beloved city. His home. This sweet and settled landscape, every humble cobblestone set by someone who had cared for it, someone who had struggled to put meaning and structure into human existence. The buildings around him, the very pavement under his boots, seemed to vibrate suddenly with an essence of civilized purpose.
Rodolphe’s eyes were watering. Ashamed of his weakness, he walked on with careful dignity, his face and shoulders set. Despite himself, his thoughts wandered. He remembered the fate of his old friend, Charles.
Charles was the former chief architect of the Enantiodrome: “poor old Charles,” as Rodolphe had used to call him. Nothing solid or coherent could explain the poor fellow’s distress, and yet Charles had become a haunted man.
Sometimes, when he and Rodolphe found a moment alone together during a day’s hard work, Charles would confess his inner turmoil. Some senseless tormented babble about “transcendence” and “dissolution.”
Rodolphe would listen with a show of patience, then go home, satisfyingly sore and tired, and covered with mortar and stone dust. “Poor old Charles was at it again today,”
Rodolphe would tell his wife. And Amelie would shake her ringletted head in remorse and disdain.
Something had driven Charles to give up his life here, his status, his material comforts, his satisfying routines. But now Rodolphe could feel the lure of it; the lure of the Conventions, preying on his mind. He had never realized how vastly subtle and strong Conventionality was; that it would flood into the cellar of one’s mind, like black water …
Rodolphe rounded a familiar street corner, and saw the great clock minaret of the Enantiodrome. His reverie broke and his heart shed its unhappy weight. Perhaps Charles’s life, perhaps Rodolphe’s own life, perhaps the human condition itself, was somehow inherently redolent of this creeping ambiguous tragedy … but did that really matter?
After all, there was still the Enantiodrome. This great stone monument, this Cathedral to Youth, this soaring and splendidly useless edifice that defined the heart of Paysage. Rodolphe had fallen in love with it the first day that he saw it. Its defiant beauty had enchanted him.
He entered the spire-topped iron gates. Today workers swarmed across the site, over two hundred of them. Glaziers, painters, gargoyle sculptors, rooftop lead pourers whose smelters belched a picturesque black smoke across the city.
The Enantiodrome’s coming “completion” had never been officially announced. Nevertheless, Paysage seemed to sense the approaching climax. The city’s people felt the truth in the marrow of their bones, and it drew them to the site. Most of these volunteers would never be paid for their efforts here; even the highly skilled regulars received only token pay. They didn’t care; the pay was not their motive. Rather, they all wanted, with a deep unspoken yearning, to know that they had been there. To know they had lived the life.
Rodolphe left his hat, coat, and cane at the gate, and assumed his customary leather working-apron, boots, and hard hat. Cheerful supply workers passed out free sugared pastries and tiny cups of strong Algerian coffee. The chaffing and gossip of the crowd sounded shriller than usual, to Rodolphe’s ears. As if they were doing all this for the last time, and saving nothing for the morrow.
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