Villa Incognito

by Tom Robbins

  Slowly, Stubblefield rose. “My God, look at you! What’re you doing back here so soon? My guess is the puritanical Americans deported you for arousing widespread prurient interest. It’s a good thing the yahoos couldn’t read your mind.” He took her hand as if to buss it, then pulled her to him. Her resistance was slight. “Did they figure out that you were a threat to subvert their good ol’ way of life?”

  “No, and never mind the flattery. You’re the subversive. My hand-me-down ideas couldn’t corrupt a flea.”

  They argued for a while about who was the more radical and who exactly had influenced whom. Could the reader have overheard them, he or she would have quickly noticed that the woman arguing with Stubblefield sounded nothing like the woman who spoke with Bardo Boppie-Bip. Was it the same Madame Ko? Oh, yes. Whether it was a quirky accident of mind or an intentional ruse (a ploy to be incognito), it was only in America and to certain foreigners that Lisa Ko talked like a nineteenth-century Chinatown laundry woman. In Laos, her broken English miraculously mended, and she conversed fluently in the nearly immaculate syntax that Stubblefield had taught her before he taught her . . . the lascivious stuff. (On second thought, it’s unlikely that anybody can teach another to excel in bed. Rather, what they might do is awaken in the other her or his predisposition for copulative excellence. Not everyone is so disposed. Apparently, young Lisa was. In her, it was as innate and inevitable as the accumulation of nectar in a mellowing mango. Fortunately, though, she had possessed other predispositions, other gifts, that had prevented her libido from defining her life.)

  Arguing thus, articulately and with amusement, the pair remained in a near embrace. Neither conceded anything, and eventually Lisa said, “I’m not here to stay. I have to get back to the show right away. I took an unauthorized absence to come warn you and Dickie about Dern’s arrest. But it appears that’s old news to you.”

  “Not that old. I learned of it yesterday. Our boy Goldwire’s pretty worried.”

  “And you’re not?”

  He shrugged his fleshy shoulders. The tiger shrugged, too. “Hey, it is what it is. There are no mistakes.”

  “You dog!” she cried, but she couldn’t hide her grin. “So? What are you going to do?”

  “Oh, maybe get me to the pleasure domes of Europe. Take the waters. Submit to cosmetic surgery. Have a sex-change operation. Become a TV repairman. I’ve got fake papers and a Hong Kong bank account.” He gestured then at the carpets, French Colonial furniture, sumi scrolls, Meiji-era bronze okimonos, Thai and Burmese wooden buddhas, Shojo Noh masks, pornographic netsukes (shunga), and shelves of fine books. “And I could always hold a garage sale to pick up some extra change.”

  “Yes, you have so many valuables. But how could dealers possibly get to them or you get them out? There won’t be the luxury to take them out one or two at a time the way you had them brought in.”

  “Maybe not, but the U.S. government’s slower to move than a constipated tortoise—and they’d be more successful extracting information from a tortoise than from the likes of Dern Foley. Odds are they’re unlikely to trace us to La Vallée du Cirque on their own. And I doubt that it would even occur to anyone around here to give us up.”

  “You can’t be sure. Suppose there’s a publicized manhunt? What if there’s a reward? I understand there’s been an American search team up on Phou Louang for months now, excavating an old crash site. That’s not fifty kilometers from here.”

  “Yeah, I know. A little too close for comfort. But comfort’s a form of paralysis. It’s stupefying. I don’t want to waste my golden years in a goddamn cocoon. I’d always planned to burst out of here someday, become at large in the world, further loosen the bolts in my cannon.” He paused to stare into her eyes. “Of course, I’d hoped I’d be taking you with me. Back then, I mean.”

  Only a few inches separated their faces, but so dense was the tension in that narrow space that a neutrino with overhead cams scarcely could have breached it. As if greased and self-propelled, her lips moved toward his, his toward hers. There was a swift grazing of lip meat—before each of them rocked back on their heels.

  “Enough of that,” he said. He took a deep breath. He dropped his arms.

  “Quite,” she agreed. Her eyes were damp, her panties as well, but she’d never have acknowledged it.

  “Let me pour you some bubbly, baby. I want to hear your views on America. Obviously, the ol’ homeland is still hiding behind its mask of lipstick democracy and mascara faith, but what bouncy, enterprising weirdness is leaking out around the edges of its disguise? That’s the real America. That’s what justifies its existence.” Stubblefield moved toward the bronze urn in which the champagne bottle was iced. Then he stopped and slowly, almost shyly, returned to her. “Forgive me,” he said. “I just have to know.”

  With his fat thumb, callused from turning the pages of so many books, he parted her lips. Lisa Ko relaxed her jaw muscles and admitted his finger. Gently, he probed the roof of her mouth. Her palate was warm to his touch, and slippery and wet. He found what he was searching for. It was hardly the size of a buckshot. A tiny zap zinged through her when he pressed it. He withdrew his finger.

  “Still there,” he concluded.

  “Yes,” she said, and smiled, but there was something in her voice and in that smile that gave him cause to wonder.

  On the tinny, gray desk of Col. Patt Thomas—it looked like an old Spam can turned inside out—there lay amidst the clutter two crisp manila folders. One of these, he handed to Mayflower Cabot Fitzgerald, who had just entered the office, looking a trifle peaked. “Don’t want to Tom Clancy you here, Mayflower,” the colonel said, freeing a cigar from the clamp of his molars, “but these are the specs on the H-model B-fifty-two that Foley’s squadron was flying back then. Say, you feeling okay? Maybe I shouldn’t of fed you that barbeque last night.” Colonel Thomas, a native of Louisiana, was suspicious of the gastronomical fortitude of certain white men when confronted with the kind of eats that really counted.

  Mayflower winced. He was clearly uncomfortable about discussing personal matters with his military colleague. Perhaps his reticence was a natural byproduct of his CIA training, perhaps it was due to a difference in class and race. At last he mumbled, “I’ve been experiencing a touch of . . . distress. I underwent a test this morning. That’s why I’m late.”

  “Oh? What kinda test?”

  “Uh. Umm. Ultrasound.”

  “Yeah? Well, what showed up?”

  Again, the civilian winced. “Very little.” He was hesitant to continue, but the colonel was staring, so he added, “Three stones in my gallbladder.”

  “Three stones is all? Hell, long as one of ’em ain’t Keith Richards, you’ll be fine.”

  Mayflower looked rather puzzled and did not smile. Man, thought Thomas, this cat ain’t even hip to white musicians! “Just don’t try rolling ’em up a hill,” Thomas advised. Surely the reference to Sisyphus was not lost on the Langley man (he’d attended both Yale and Princeton), yet he exhibited no sign of mirth. Giving up, Thomas blew a smoke ring and returned his attention to the first folder. “Nothin’ in the specs that could shed any light on the case, really. Only question is, why were there only three crewmen aboard Foley’s aircraft the day it went down? B-Fifty-two normally carries a crew of five.”

  “Let me remind you that this was 1973. The war was winding to a close. Personnel were being rotated home at a higher rate than replacements were being shipped overseas. Foley’s squadron was shorthanded. It was certainly not S.O.P., but an experienced crew of three could manage the aircraft safely and efficiently unless . . .”

  “Unless something went wrong. Which it did. Was every plane in the squadron flying undermanned?”

  “No. Just the one. The former C.O. is in a nursing home in Wisconsin, but he’s reasonably cogent. He claims that Foley, Stubblefield, and Goldwire volunteered to undertake the mission without a full complement. However, the fellow Seward whom we interviewed in Virginia reme
mbers it differently. He says the C.O. chose their plane to be the undermanned one because nobody particularly liked flying with them. They were intellectuals.” Mayflower pronounced the word in a manner that suggested he’d just bitten into a worm.

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning they were constantly engaging in intellectual conversations. Ranting about things no normal, rational man could care about or understand. They got on people’s nerves. Men trying to win a war and get home safely to their loved ones, and there those snobs were, just blathering on and on about some effete European. . . . You know, Seward had once been their weapons officer. He’s an upright, God-fearing man. Well, it seems Stubblefield was always baiting him. Asking him things like, ‘What exactly has Jesus been doing with himself the past two thousand years?’ Asking, ‘Are there toilets in Heaven, Seward; are there plastic sewer pipes beneath those streets-paved-with-gold?’”

  As Mayflower grimaced in undisguised contempt, Thomas said, “Hmm. That’s an interesting question. I never thought about that. Up in Heaven, would a guy still have to pull his pants down and take a—”

  “Forget it!” Mayflower ground his steely little teeth. Had he been the one smoking, the cigar would be lying in two pieces, experiencing false memories of Havana and fighting for its life.

  “I assume,” Thomas continued thoughtfully, “that folks’ll be eating in Heaven. So, even if it’s only milk and honey—and I can’t imagine my people being content for eternity with such truck as that—it’d still have to be digested, wouldn’t it? So . . .”

  “Please! Let us not waste time here, Colonel. We’re under the gun, and I may be facing an interruptive infirmity.” Mayflower bit his thin lower lip. He was wondering if he was going to have to contact the chief of air force intelligence and request that Thomas be replaced.

  “Okay, so we know that Major Stubblefield was sacrilegious. . . .”

  “It’s pronounced sacra-lee-gous.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “Oh, but it is. It’s re-lij-ous, but it’s sacra-lee-gous.”

  Thomas coughed out a hairball of smoke. “That doesn’t make a goddamn lick of sense! Is this some British deal? Why when you stick a . . . a prefix on re-lij-ous would you start pronouncing it . . . ?”

  “Consult your dictionary. It’s recently become acceptable, actually, to say sacra-lij-ous, but sacra-lee-gous has always been preferred.”

  “Not by me it hasn’t.”

  “Very well, Colonel. That’s your prerogative. Now please, let’s get on with it.”

  No wonder this square’s got rocks in his bile box, Thomas thought, but he said, “Okay, we’ve ascertained that Stubblefield was a fuckin’ heathen, but what about our boy Foley, who was studying to be an Episcopal priest and who, even as we speak, is sitting down the hall there poring over the Bible like it was a menu and he can’t make his mind up if he wants the fried chicken or the milk and honey. And what about Lieutenant Goldilocks? And—this is the important point—did their smart-ass, pseudo-intellectual attitude toward Christianity carry over into their politics? I mean, were they pinkos, were they disloyal?”

  Mayflower frowned. “No. And yes.” He paused. “You see, even Seward, who despised them, admits they were skilled airmen who performed their duties efficiently and bravely. Foley and Stubblefield were eligible to be rotated stateside months earlier, but because replacements were slow in coming, they voluntarily extended their tour of duty. They were flying dangerous missions when they easily could have been home.” He paused again. “On the other hand, their C.O. calls them the most insubordinate officers he ever commanded, and Seward remembers them continually making sarcastic and derisory comments about the U.S. government and the war effort. Does that in itself classify them as unpatriotic pinkos? Not necessarily. Again, I remind you that this was 1973.”

  Across the desk (and Mayflower considered Thomas’s battered, messy desk distasteful, compared to his sleek, spare, mahogany workstation at Langley), the two men locked eyes. The colonel knew what Mayflower meant, and Mayflower knew he knew. By 1973, only a few terminally ignorant grunts, gung-ho true believers such as Captain Seward, and that gullible, malleable, pusillanimous segment of the civilian public that seems ever eager to swallow any outrageous institutional lie, only those naive nonthinkers could any longer regard the Vietnam War as anything but a shameful example of political posturing gone horrifically awry.

  For a minute or two, they were silent. At intervals, Thomas blew out puffs of smoke that, until they melted, resembled the clenched fists of angry snowmen. He could see the silver eagle on his right epaulet reflected in the left lens of Mayflower’s assiduously polished spectacles. Eventually, he said, “I’m gettin’ a classic picture here of good soldiers who questioned their orders but, however reluctantly, went on dutifully obeying them.”

  “That mightn’t be the case, either,” Mayflower cautioned. “Seward says that on its last mission, Foley’s aircraft had separated itself from formation while crossing the South China Sea. It veered off into a cloud bank for ten minutes or so before rejoining formation. Seward has reason to suspect it might have secretly dumped its bombs in the ocean.”

  “Uh-huh.” Thomas nodded. “So’s they wouldn’t have to drop ’em on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, where there were almost always collateral casualties.”

  “True. Villages on both sides of the border—Laos and Vietnam—occasionally took hits.”

  “Hey, man, that’s war.”

  “Exactly,” Mayflower agreed. He disliked being referred to as “man,” but what could one expect from an individual who had attempted to coax him into eating something called collard greens? “It seems that Stubblefield’s crew was outspokenly uncomfortable with inflicting collateral damage. They even objected to the prospect of their ordnance killing wildlife . . .”

  “We talking vegetarians?”

  “. . . not that there would have been much wildlife left by then. The trail was bombed heavily between 1966 and 1971. Our raids never fully achieved their objectives—NVA troops, supplies, and ordnance continued to flow down the trail—and after seventy-one, as you know, we bombed it only sporadically. So, I suppose a few bamboo rats and leaf monkeys might have survived or returned to the area.” He sneered.

  “Or tanukis,” put in Thomas.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Tanukis. Them funny little animals at the circus. They’re supposed to be indigenous to Southeast Asia. Man, was that bippie boppie clown snockered or what?! First I thought it was part of the act.”

  Mayflower scowled, and it wasn’t from gallbladder pain. His wife and eleven-year-old son were visiting from D.C., and he had been pressured into finally accompanying them to the circus. Mayflower didn’t like circuses. Mayflower didn’t like being pressured.

  “Saw on TV,” Thomas said, “that there was a train wreck and the damn tanukis got away. Up in Oregon or—”

  “The environmentalists will be howling over that.” Though his voice lost none of its monotone, Mayflower sounded almost gleeful. “At any rate, their last mission: it seems Stubblefield was aircraft commander and flying the plane, Foley doubled as co-pilot and electronic weapons officer, and Goldwire was both regular navigator and radar navigator. There was unexpectedly heavy anti-aircraft fire, but the B-fifty-twos were at an altitude where they shouldn’t have been vulnerable. Nevertheless, something—a rocket or something—caught Foley’s plane. Seward saw it lose altitude, but it disappeared into clouds and he was unable to ascertain whether or not the crew ejected. They were listed as MIA.”

  Thomas stubbed out his cigar. “So, that was that. Until ‘Father Smack’ turns up on Guam nearly thirty years later. Say—you don’t reckon Captain Seward might have shot ’em down himself?”

  “Ridiculous!”

  “There was a lot of fraggin’ going on in Nam.”

  “Seward is a devout Christian . . .”

  “So were the Inquisition popes.”

  “. . . and a loyal Ame
rican. To frag an insufferable platoon leader is one thing, this was a sixty-four-million-dollar piece of government property.”

  “Yeah. Cost more than that these days. You know, I’ve never been able to figure out why them things are so blessed expensive. For sixty-four mil, you could buy my entire hometown, including the catfish farm, and have enough left over for a secondhand Cadillac and a weekend in Vegas. I’ve flown in B-fifty-twos, Mayflower. Where does all that money go?”

  If Mayflower Cabot Fitzgerald had an inkling of where so much money went—and he probably did—he wasn’t inclined to share. Instead, he stood, straightened his mauve bowtie, and reached for the other folder on the colonel’s desk. “This isn’t classified, so if you don’t mind, I’ll fetch it with me. I have an early lunch with an associate from Washington. Sorry I can’t invite you along, but. . . .”

  “No problem. See you at the three o’clock interrogation. Bon appétit. But better not eat any more of them greasy ribs.”

  In the midst of locking the folder in his attaché case, Mayflower froze. A cold, dry chuckle found its way through his clenched teeth. “You needn’t worry about that.”

  The instant the company man left the office, Thomas grabbed a cell phone and buzzed one of his own men. He ordered a tail be put on Mayflower and his every move monitored until after lunch. Not for any particular reason, apparently. Just for the sport of it. Just to steal his crown.

  The One Who Is Missing is missing,

  He can’t run but He certainly can hide.

  His ghost car is parked in Cognito,

  Do you think He might give us a ride?

  Like Jesus, Tanuki is here and not here. He is always with us, yet conspicuously absent. On some glorious day in the future, will he come back to stay? No. He is perpetually coming back—and perpetually leaving. Over and over again. Every time we breathe. Such is the rhythm of the Two Worlds.

  As a species, Nyctereutes procyonoides may or may not have originated in what is now Japan. It’s possible that it evolved in eastern China, crossing to the Japanese islands many thousands of years ago. Some believe it may have developed in Siberia. What is indisputable is that Tanuki’s reputation, his legend, his legacy, was made in Japan. And it is to Japan that he is ever returning and from which he continually departs. Thanks to the God of Nooks and Crannies, his movements are even more stealthy than those of Christ.