Villa Incognito

by Tom Robbins

  After retrieving the letter, he paced the floor. Lisa Ko wasn’t going to get off that easily. She had some serious explaining to do. If the baby was his, how dare she take it away! And if it was not his, how dare she have conceived it! After so many years, did she think she could just drop off a note at his hut and . . . ? Where was she? Oh, but of course! There was only one place she could be, would be.

  Dickie was in such a state when he stormed out of the hut that he neglected to secure the treasure he’d acquired that afternoon. After receiving a half-dozen especially rude, small, undistinguished rubies on consignment, Dickie had been about to bid the Hmong widow farewell when she’d reached into her skirts and, looking around anxiously to ascertain that no one was approaching, pulled out a pigeon-blood stone of extraordinary size and clarity. He’d never seen anything to equal it. He couldn’t believe that she would entrust such a rare, valuable specimen to him—it should have been turned over at once to the Hmong elders—and under ordinary conditions he would not have accepted it. Nor, under ordinary conditions would he have done what she expected him to do in return. But these were hardly ordinary conditions. He assuaged his guilt and disgust by reminding himself of Miss Ginger Sweetie and the violations of intimacy that wonderful girl regularly and cheerfully endured in exchange for control over her destiny.

  In the end, Dickie’s spirits had been immeasurably buoyed by that grand ruby. His share of its sale could have taken him—and eventually Lisa Ko—a long, long way. Now, however, he walked off and left it on his table as if it were a forsaken morsel of chili pepper (or a little Janis Joplinized piece of his heart).

  What he required was an aerialist. Alas, at Madame Phom’s house, everything was dark and still. He hurried to the home of her cousins. They were eating dinner and invited him to join them. “Very good tam màak hung.” When he explained that he wanted to cross over to Villa Incognito, they laughed and pointed out that it was night. “Nobody can walk wire in dark. Not even ghost of Papa Phom.” They laughed some more.

  Obviously, Dickie should have just let his emotions settle down. He’d survived rejection before (remember Charlene in Chapel Hill?), and he wasn’t one of those fragile or self-obsessed types who allow themselves to become embalmed in the crawling formaldehyde of prolonged depression. But the green worm had him by the brainstem, and he was unwilling to wait quietly for it to relax its bite (as, with patience and perspective, it always will). He was driven to act, even if the action was muddleheaded, futile, and wrong. He may have successfully dropped out of dream school, but his name, like the names of so many lovers, was obviously still on the rolls at Cupid’s Academy of Needless Melodrama.

  Out by the gorge there were no lights, and the moon, pale and waxen as a junky’s jowls, was just rising. Dickie, however, had no need of lamp or lantern. His eyes were bright and bulging, like a lemur’s, like a hungry prosimian awakened from its diurnal slumber. Standing on the platform, he saw with those big bush-baby orbs every inch of circus cable that separated him from Villa Incognito, where there were lights aplenty and where things he fought not to imagine were likely going on.

  He stood there for at least ten minutes, reasoning with himself, reminding himself of the last and only time he’d crossed the gorge on his own. Although human beings are by and large a fearful lot, every bit as fearful behind their civilized, technologized masks as they were in jungles and caves, there are emotions capable of turning the charcoal sweat of fear into pink lemonade. Not that Dickie didn’t have an electric drill in his stomach: he was scared, all right, but his fear, like his judgment, was simply outvoted and overridden. Then, too, there was that crazy attraction he had, not to heights but to falling.

  Around the wire he closed first his right hand, then his left. Against his palms the steel felt as cold and solid as his mind was hot and turbulent. Although it led out over a near-bottomless gulf, there was something grounding about it. Gripping it, he felt purposeful, calmed, in control. There was no single moment when he decided to go for it. Rather, one second his feet were on the ground beside the platform, where little Ko Ko had so often stood, and the next they were dangling in air.

  Hand over hand, he went. It was cool out there in space, and silent and peaceful. Dickie couldn’t remember when he’d felt so alone: not lonely but, rather, alone in an oceanic sense, as if there was only one great all-encompassing throb of life in the universe and he represented it. True, his arms were starting to register the strain, but he was making good progress. It definitely was easier crossing the wire in the dark. Hand over hand. Hand over hand.

  About that time, the moon broke free of the teak boughs. Its rays fell over him like a net. In its web he felt like some kind of huge silver insect. My God, he thought—and he hadn’t thought anything along those lines in years—if the folks back in Carolina could see me now!

  The wire was sagging now, so he reasoned he must be nearing the halfway point. It seemed to sag more than he remembered it sagging, and to shake more, too, but he supposed he’d put on a pound or two since then. Apparently, the added weight wasn’t muscle, because his shoulders were starting to ache in earnest.

  The cable sagged further still. A mighty quiver ran along it, making it difficult for him to maintain his grip. Panic rose in Dickie like gasoline in a siphon. He heard noises, human noises, like someone swearing and laughing. They sounded close by. Swiveling his neck toward the villa side of the gorge, he saw then a shadowy shape a few yards away—and realized with a frozen prickle that someone else was on the wire.

  Ach! Lieutenant Goldwire, I presume.”

  “Stubblefield? What th—?!”

  “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”

  “Stubblefield! What’re you doing?!”

  “Taking the air, my boy, taking the air. Mmm. An evening redolent with gossamer delights.” He was taking air, all right, breathing very hard. “I’m in my element. Oh, yes. Where the bee sucks, there suck I/On a bat’s back I do fly.” His words from Shakespeare were punctuated with huffs and gasps.

  “What the hell are you doing out here?” There was desperation in Dickie’s voice, and a growing pain in his arms.

  “Coming to call on you (gasp). Foley left the chopper in Thailand. I knew I should’ve gone and fetched it. Jesus! Think I’m too old for this (grunt). Gymnastics never my sport. Wrong body type.”

  “But . . . where’s Lisa?”

  Stubblefield groaned. “Lisa? Not hanging seven hundred fifty feet above the goddamn terra firma, I’ll tell you that.” He groaned again. “Don’t know about Lisa. Madame Phom (gasp) left me her letter. She wrote you, too, I gather. Thought you might be upset. Was coming to see if I could cheer you up. Jesus! My shoulders are killing me.”

  Dickie didn’t know what to think. “Lisa’s not been here at all? Okay, I get it now, yeah. And you were coming to comfort me?”

  “I’m your officially designated bluebird.” Puffing, but with a childish lilt, Stubblefield broke into an old Sunday school song. “If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands.” He glanced at the sagging wire to which they clung. “On second thought . . .”

  “You’re crazy, Stub.”

  “No, you’re crazy. I’m here to straighten you out.”

  “Look, we got to get off of here. You start moving backward.” Dickie’s supraspinatus and infraspinatus muscles were frying in napalm, and his brachioradialis tendons seemed ready to pop.

  “Don’t know if I can. . . .”

  “Go back the way you came. It’s shorter. I’ll follow you. Get moving!” Dickie proceeded, but Stubblefield hadn’t budged. Now they were almost cheek to cheek.

  “You’re (groan) in my space, Goldwire. I swear, you have no more respect for privacy than those women I live with.”

  In the near distance, an errata of bats zigzagged by, their squeaks and beeps providing a science-fiction soundtrack to the spectacle of the two men hanging there in midair, side by side. Had there actually been a fairy on a bat’s back, it might
have thought the men, silhouetted against weak moonlight, to be a feature of the skyline of a faraway city.

  “Get moving, damn it!”

  “Okay, okay. You’re pressuring me to retreat, Goldwire. Are you not aware (gasp) that I owe my reputation to (gasp) pressing ever forward? Ow!”

  Slowly, with painful effort, they were making their way to the rim. Despite the gravity of the situation, Dickie was unable to prevent himself from calling out, “What about the baby?”

  “Baby (gasp)?”

  “Who’s the father?”

  Stubblefield abruptly stopped, and Dickie almost collided with him. “None of our business.” He huffed and heaved. “None of our business, Goldwire. Women have their mysteries. Honor that.” His voice was weakening. “Our Lisa has some . . . some enchanted sickness—or haven’t you figured that out? Lisa’s dealing with significant forces (puff). Forces worthy of awe and respect. You and I, we only have to deal with the government.” He chortled at that, and when he laughed, his right hand slipped off of the cable. His luxurious, purple-suited body was left dangling by one flabby arm.

  “Hang on, Stub! Jesus! Grab the wire!” Dickie understood the difficulty, for his own fingers were growing increasingly numb. “Grab it! Grab it! Please! Stub! Hurry!” He was sobbing. “Please!”

  “I’m . . . disillusioned . . . with this method . . . of travel.” Stubblefield was swinging somewhat wildly. “It’s . . . undignified. Think I’ll . . . take a . . . different route.” He shouted something that sounded vaguely like, “Keep ’em guessing!”

  And then he was gone.

  Gone. Just like that. Dickie never really saw him fall. Stubblefield simply was there one moment and not the next. The soles of Dickie’s feet felt the emptiness beneath them as plainly as if they were standing on a pile of sharp rocks. And from the depths of that vertical desert, no cry, no splat, thud, or parting champagne burp rose to signal a conclusion. There was only a bat squeak, a cuckoo’s cu-koo, and the flirtatious hum of oblivion.

  Followers of Carl Jung maintain that there’s no such thing as coincidence. There’re some people of our acquaintance, moreover, who’d have us believe that there are no mistakes, and, by inference, we might conclude, no happy accidents. Well, who’s to say whether it was by random chance or unconscious design, but there Col. Patt Thomas was, on September 15, at the Chingo-do temple in Tokyo. Chingo-do happens to be a temple consecrated to tanukis, and Thomas definitely had not gone there on purpose.

  Immediately after receiving news of the terrorist attacks, the colonel had reported via phone to the commanding general of air force intelligence. Thomas and Sergeant Canterbury were ordered to proceed at once to the U.S. embassy in Tokyo and stand by for possible Asian assignments. Toward the end of their brief conversation, Thomas had mentioned that the deserter Dern Foley had been “neutralized” and wasn’t likely to cause further trouble. (Ol’ Pitter Patt had his fingers crossed.) The general growled, “Good,” and that was the end of that. Mayflower Cabot Fitzgerald could like it or lump it, though the dweeb doubtlessly had more pressing matters on his mind now than inconvenient MIAs. It’s an ill wind, indeed, that blows no good.

  In Tokyo, the colonel had looked up an old friend. Bill Leworc was a former intelligence officer who worked for the Public Affairs Section at the embassy. On Saturday afternoon, with no orders yet and nothing on his plate, Thomas accepted Leworc’s offer to show him around town. Thomas, who hadn’t been in Tokyo in nearly twenty years, listed several points of interest he’d like to visit. Among them was a certain temple—but it was not the Chingo-do temple. Leworc’s knowledge of temples was incomplete, and he had taken his pal to Chingo-do by mistake. (Mistake?)

  It might be more accurate to say that Leworc took him to Senso-ji, the large, lively Buddhist complex in Asakusa, that quarter of the city that, along with neighboring Yoshiwara, was once to Tokyo what Patpong is nowadays to Bangkok. Chingo-do temple is situated very near Senso-ji, on the temple precinct’s (Senso-ji’s) shopping street, where everything from tourist trinkets to genuine Edo antiques are sold, and is loosely associated with the much grander Senso-ji. (The five-story pagoda of Senso-ji is surrounded by gardens, whereas the entrance to Chingo-do is next to a shoe store.)

  Confused? So was Bill Leworc. “Naw,” he said, “this isn’t the place.” He’d paused to read the plaque by the vermilion torii gate, and now he informed Thomas that in 1872 the head priest of Chingo-do temple—the so-called Hall of the Guardians—had dedicated it to a deified animal, a “raccoon dog,” that had formerly lived in great numbers on the grounds of Senso-ji and that was popularly believed to fend off robbers and prevent fires. “Sounds like a combination of Smoky the Bear and Sergeant McDuff,” sneered Leworc, and he was about to move on. “Maybe your place is around here somewhere.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Thomas. “Let’s pay our respects. If it works, I can cancel my home insurance. Damn fire and theft premiums are bankrupting me.” Despite the tragic events of that week, the colonel was in an oddly ebullient mood. Maybe it was the prospect of action, maybe it was related somehow to the note in his uniform pocket: when he’d returned to the Green Spider Hotel late on the night of September 11, he discovered under his door a scrap of paper upon which was scrawled the name and address of a hospice in India where his terminally ill sister might have her suffering eased with heroin. The note was signed, “Tree Hugger.”

  The Americans walked through the torii, paid a nominal fee at the ticket office on their left, passed between two quite large stone lanterns, and approached the shrine. It was in no way remarkable, the shrine, except that just to the right of it there stood two ceramic statues, each of them a funny-looking animal figure up on its hind legs. Four or five feet tall, the figures were painted black, with round white bellies and wide white circles around their decidedly crazed eyes. As the representations were rather mannered and stylized, it didn’t dawn on Colonel Thomas what they were supposed to be until Leworc said, “Oh, I get it. These ‘raccoon dogs’ are the legendary Japanese badgers, the, uh, tanukis I believe they’re called.”

  The words were hardly out of his friend’s mouth than Thomas saw her. High-collared green dress, black patent-leather boots, lovely if marginally lopsided face, gleam in her eye that lent her a playfully menacing air. She was dropping five-yen coins into an offering box. Without a word to Leworc, he went straight to her.

  She returned his greeting with icy politeness. Then, she brightened. “Ah so. From Bangkok. Yes, I ’member you. You alla time go for tanuki, ne?”

  “Say what?” He followed her gaze to the ceramic statues. He laughed. “No, no. Not me. Just a coincidence.”

  “I no think so. I think you—how you say?—got big thing for the tanuki. Tanuki fan. You for secret alla time belong Tanuki cult.”

  “No, really. I don’t know diddley-damn-squat about tanukis. I was looking for another temple, a different temple altogether. My buddy thought it might be in this area.” She’d been seated at a table when he’d encountered her in Thailand, and now he noticed for the first time that she was about six months pregnant, straining the seams of her cheongsam. Nodding at her stomach, he said, “I got a feeling you might know where it’s located.”

  “Oh? What you speak?”

  Thomas said there was supposed to be a temple in Tokyo, he couldn’t remember its name, where pregnant women went to petition the gods for healthy babies and childless couples went to pray that they might conceive. Kind of an obstetrics/fertility temple.

  “I not know such place. I live Tokyo short time.” She looked at him quizzically. “Why you want go such temple?”

  For reasons he couldn’t explain, the colonel had recently found himself giving frank answers to personal questions, not ordinarily a trait of his trade. “Uh, well, you see, my wife and me haven’t been able to have kids. I’m forty-five and she’s thirty-eight, so the clock’s ticking itself to death on us. My wife saw on TV that there’s this temple in Tokyo where infertility is c
ured, so when she heard I was coming here, she bugged me to drop by and give it a whirl. She tried to sound like she was joking, but she’s a Louisiana woman, got a lot of them ol’ voodoo superstitions.” He glanced back at the statues, noting the one’s huge scrotum. “I don’t suppose these critters here would help us?”

  Smiling, Lisa shook her head. “No, no help you here. This nice temple but alla time crazy silly place.”

  “Yeah? Why do you say that? Why crazy silly?”

  “Japanese people think Tanuki is keep them safe from robber, but Tanuki is biggest robber of all. Tanuki alla time stealing food, stealing sake, stealing women.”

  Sounds like some of my buddies, Thomas thought. He said, “We have a saying in English: ‘Takes a thief to catch a thief.’ In fact, what passes for law enforcement in the U.S. these days seems to be operating pretty solidly on that principle. So maybe these tanuki guardians are just right for the job.”

  Lisa looked at her wristwatch. “I go now more better Tanuki place. More better. You like Tanuki, you secret Tanuki fan, you come with me I show you. Best Tanuki shrine. Ichiban. Number one. You want see?”

  With one of his long fingers, Thomas beckoned to Leworc, who’d been waiting at a discreet distance. “Bill. Come here. I want you to meet Madame Ko. She’s offered to take us to tanuki world headquarters.” He turned back to Lisa. “This isn’t anything like that showbox in Bangkok, is it?”

  Leworc’s bow would have been almost imperceptible to anyone but a Japanese. Madame Ko, blushing incandescently at the colonel’s reference, acknowledged the greeting. “More tanukis?” asked Leworc. “What the hell for?”

  “I’m a fan,” the colonel said, winking. “Secret member of the cult.” He dropped a coin in the offering box, and the three of them, chatting away, walked to the nearby train station. The men wondered if Lisa didn’t have some kind of serious speech impediment (she spoke as if there was a gumball in her mouth), but neither of them inquired about it.