Budayeen Nights

by George Alec Effinger

  “Now,” thought Ernst, “if I look closely enough, I will be able to recognize the backsides of every person I’ve ever known. How tedious the world becomes, once one realizes that everyone in it can be divided into a dozen or so groups. That young woman there, ah, a fairly interesting knot of black hair, attractive legs, a thick waist. If she were to turn around, her face would be no surprise. Heavy eyebrows, no doubt, full lips, her upper front teeth protruding just a little. Large breasts hanging, her shirt cut to expose them, but it is ten years too late for that. It is too boring. I have no interest even in seeing if I’m correct.”

  Ernst smiled, realizing that he was deliberately avoiding any real observation. It was nonsense, of course, to think that twelve physical types might be enough to catalogue the shabby mass of people that filled the city. He had exhausted that particular entertainment, and rather quickly; what remained was the more tiresome prospect of actually describing the crowd. Perhaps M. Gargotier would arrive soon, interrupting the intellectual effort, scattering the energy, mercifully introducing a tiny but vital novelty.

  “An interesting point,” Ernst said aloud, imagining himself a lecturer before dozing students in some stifling European hall, “a genuine philosophical point that we can all grasp and taste for truth, is that there is nothing in the world quite like the opportunity of seeing someone make an ass of himself. Free entertainment is, after all, the Great Leveler, not death, as we have often been told. In the case of death, the rich are often able to regulate its moment of victory, staving off the final instant for months, even years, with purchased miracles of medicine. The poor take what they are given. But free entertainment is democratic! No one may say when a spectacle may arise, may explode, may stumble. And then, when that moment comes, every man, rich or poor, must take advantage as best he can, elbowing aside the crowds all together at the same time. So, by sitting here, I have conquered them all, diversion and audience alike. And I can delude myself with my own analogies, considering death a lesser antagonist, and applaud my own immortality.”

  In a while, Ernst heard a ragged ruffle of drums, and a high-pitched voice shouting orders. Only the Jaish, thought Ernst with disappointment. It was only the new Citizens’ Army; there would be little chance here to advance his position. He did not care for the local folk and their sudden and silly politics, and his own sort of people would not be long entertained by the fools’ parade. He called M. Gargotier in a loud, rude voice. “Bring me some of that ugly Arab drink,” he said. “It’s noon, isn’t it?” There was not a word from the proprietor, not a smile or a nod.

  The people on the sidewalk, however, were having a wonderful time. Ernst could hear the rattling of the snare drums playing a syncopated, unmilitary cadence. The several drummers had evidently not had much practice together; the strokes rarely fell in unison, and with a little attention one could identify the different styles of each man. The slapping of the marching feet against the rough stones of the pavement was likewise without precision. Ernst frowned, looking at his own frayed, stained suit. If things could be arranged according to merit, then certainly he would be granted a better situation than this. He remembered the white linen suit he had owned when he first came to the city. He had worn it proudly, contemptuous of the city’s natives and their hanging, shapeless garments, all darkly sweat-marked, torn, and foul. That suit had not lasted long. It, along with the white, wide-brimmed hat and his new boots, had been stolen within a week, while he indulged himself at the Sourour baths. He had never returned to that establishment, nor any other in the Arab quarter. Now he looked much like those he had disdained on his arrival, and, strangely, that brought him a certain pleasure as well. At least he didn’t seem to be a mere newcomer. He had been initiated. He belonged, as all the cityful of mongrels belonged.

  So the time passed with Ernst trying mightily to ignore the exhibition in the street. Often the movements of the crowd opened spaces and he could see the garishly outfitted militia. The workmen and slaves of the city cheered them, and this made Ernst even more cheerless. He swallowed some of the local liquor in a gulp, holding the small wooden bowl on the flat of one palm. What good is that army? he wondered. The Jaish had no weapons. An army of no threats. And, beyond that, thought Ernst as he waved once more to M. Gargotier, they have no enemies. There is nothing on all of this damned sand but this single city. Just bread and circuses, he thought, observing the crowd’s excitement. Just an entertainment for the groundlings. He had other, more important things to consider.

  “Eugenie,” he thought, “magnificent horror of my youth, I would trade my eternal portion to have you with me now. How old you must be! How like these cheap dorsal identities I see before me, without personality, without more than the instantaneous appetites, without the barest knowledge of me. They, who have drifted here from the living world, have been charred slowly to that condition. They have greedily accepted their lot, their badge of grime, their aristo suppuration, their plebeian filth. They left Europe as I did, to change slowly and by degrees of privation, like a slow sunset of amnesia, into this life of utter exhaustion. Never again will my eyes, my nose and mouth, the wet hairs of my body be free of grit and sand. The wealthy and I have had to labor to attain such an existence. But you, Eugenie, you had it with you all the time. You would be queen here, Eugenie, but you would be as ugly as the rest.”

  Ernst sipped more of the liqueur. He dipped three fingertips into it, and flicked the dark fluid at the backs of the people crowding against the railing. Spots formed on the clothing of a man and a girl. Ernst laughed; the too-loud noise sobered him for a moment. “You’d be ugly, Eugenie,” he said, “and I’d be drunk.” The heat of the African noon enveloped him, and the stillness made it difficult to breathe. Ernst struggled out of his old worn jacket, throwing it onto the chair across the small metal table from him.

  “Marie, you don’t matter. Not now. Not here. Africa would be perfect for Eugenie, but you, Marie, I picture your destruction among the million mirror shards of Paris or Vienna. So forget it, I’m talking to Eugenie. She would come right across that square, scattering the pigeons, the pedestrians, the damned army just the same, marching right across the square, right up to this cafe, to my table, and stare down at me as if she had walked the Mediterranean knowing where I was all the time. But it won’t work again. She wouldn’t have thought that I could catch up to her laughing crime, that I’d still be the same rhyming idiot I always was. And she’d be old, older than I, lined and wrinkled, leaning, tucked in, shaking just a bit in the limbs, aching just a bit in the joints, showing patches and patterns of incorrect color, purples on the legs, brown maculae on the arms, swirls and masses on the face beneath the surgery and appliances. Then what would I do? I would buy her a drink and introduce her to everyone I know. That would destroy her surely enough, speedily enough, satisfyingly enough, permanently enough. Oh, the hell with indifference. I really can’t maintain it.” Ernst laughed again and hoped some patrician in the Jaish’s audience would turn around, bored by the mock military show, and ask Ernst what amused him. No one did. Ernst sat in glum silence and drank.

  He had been in the Fee Blanche all morning and no one, not even the most casual early strollers, had paused to wish him a good day. Should he move on? Gather “material” in another cafe? Have a sordid experience in a disorderly house, get beaten up by a jealous gavroche?

  “So, Sidi Weinraub! You sit out under all skies, eh?”

  Ernst started, blinking and rapidly trying to recover his tattered image. “Yes, leneth, you must if you want to be a poet. What is climate, to interfere with the creative process?”

  The girl was young, perhaps not as old as seventeen. She was one of the city’s very poor, gaunt with years of hunger and dressed in foul old clothes. But she was not a slave—she would have looked better if she had been. She earned a trivial living as a knife sharpener. Behind her she pulled a two-wheeled cart, dilapidated and peeling, filled with tools and pieces of equipment. “How does it go?” s
he asked.

  “Badly,” admitted Ernst, smiling sadly and pulling a soggy bit of scrap paper from his pocket. “My poem of yesterday lies still unfinished.”

  The girl laughed. “Chi ama assai parla poco,” she said. “‘He who loves much says little.’ You spend too much time chasing the pretty ones, no? You do not fool me, yaa Sidi, sitting there with your solemn long face. Your poem will have to be finished while you catch your breath, and then off after another of my city’s sweet daughters.”

  “You’ve seen right through me, Ieneth,” said Ernst with a tired shrug. ‘You’re right, of course. One can’t spend one’s entire life chasing the Muse. Wooing the Muse, I mean. If you chase the Muse, you gain nothing. Wooing becomes a chief business. It’s like anything else—you get better with practice.” He smiled, though he was dreadfully weary of the conversation already. The necessity of keeping up the pretense of sexual metaphor annoyed him.

  “You are lucky, in a way,” said the girl. “Pity the poor butcher. What has he in his daily employment to aid him in the wooing? You must understand your advantage.”

  “Is there a Muse of Butchery?” asked Ernst with a solemn expression.

  “You are very clever, yaa Sidi. I meant, of course, in the wooing of a pretty girl. Were a butcher to approach me, a blood sausage in his hands, I would only laugh. That is not technique, yaa Sidi. That is uninspired. But these poems of yours are the product, as you say, of one kind of wooing, and moreover the weaponry of another sort.”

  “So poems still work their magic?” asked Ernst, wondering if this meeting were, after all, better than simple boredom.

  “For some young girls, I suppose. Do you favor many young girls with them?”

  A sudden cry from the crowd on the sidewalk prevented Ernst’s reply. He shook his head in disgust. Ieneth interpreted his expression correctly, looking over her shoulder for a few seconds. She turned back to him, leaning on the railing near his table. He, of course, could not invite her to join him. There were only two classes of people in the city, besides the slaves: the wealthy and those like Ieneth. She was forbidden by custom to intrude on her betters, and Ernst was certainly not the crusading sort to sweep aside the laws of delicacy. Anyway, he thought, her people had their own dives, and he surely wouldn’t be made welcome in them.

  “Ah, I see you disapprove of the Jaish,” said Ieneth. “At least your expression shows contempt, and its object must be either our army or myself.”

  “No, no, don’t worry, I have nothing but affection for you,” said Ernst. He was amazed by his facile speech; generally he would have been reduced to unpleasant sarcasm long before this. In point of fact, he felt even less than mere affection for the girl. He felt only recognition; he knew her as another resident of the city, with little to recommend her in any way. He didn’t even feel lust for her. He rather wished that she’d go away.

  “Then it’s the Jaish. That’s a shame, really. There are several very nice gentlemen involved with it.” She smiled broadly. Ernst felt certain that she would wink, slowly. She did.

  Ernst smiled briefly in return. “I’m sure there are,” he said. “It’s just that I’m not one of them, and I have no interest at all in making the acquaintance of any, and I wish they’d stop spoiling my afternoons with their juvenile tin-soldiery.”

  “You should see the larger story,” said Ieneth. “As long as they spend their time marching and carrying broom rifles, you will have no competition for the company of their mothers and daughters.”

  “You mistake me,” said Ernst, “though you flatter me unduly. Surely it is hopeless for such a one as I, with such, ah, cosmopolitan tastes.”

  “I would not agree,” she whispered. Ernst became aware that he had been staring at her. She reached across the railing and touched him confidentially on the shoulder. The motion exposed her wonderful breasts completely.

  Ernst took a deep breath, forcing himself to look into her eyes. “Do you know what I mean then?”

  “Certainly,” she said, with an amused smile. She indicated her little wagon. “I know that sometimes men want their scissors sharpened, and sometimes their appetites. And anyone may have a lucrative avocation, no?”

  “When I was young, there was an old man who ground scissors and sharpened knives. He had a cart very much like your own.”

  “There, you see? I am of the acquaintance of a—what shall I say?—an organ grinder.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Ieneth shook her head, laughing at his obtuseness. She motioned for him to come closer. He slid his chair nearer to the railing. She touched his arm at the elbow, trailing her fingers down his sleeve, across his hip, and, most lightly of all, over the bunched material at his crotch. “I will meet you here in an hour?” she asked softly.

  Ernst’s throat was suddenly dry. “I will be here,” he said.

  “A poem,” thought Ernst. “I need a poem. Nothing impresses the uneducated mind quite like rhymes. But it must be the right sort, or it will bring nothing but ruin and humiliation. How the women used to laugh at my romantic verses! How dismayed I was, left alone on the darkened balcony, holding the flimsy product of my innocent wit. The sonnet on the arch of her brow. Good God, how could I have done it? I wish I could return, go back to those iron moments, stand behind a curtain and listen to myself. I wonder if I would be amused. I cannot understand why those brainless princesses so easily dismissed me; they couldn’t have been so plagued with clowns. I ought to have been kept as a refreshing antidote to dawning maturity.”

  He took out a pen and began to compose on the back of a soiled napkin. The atmosphere of the Fee Blanche was not the best for the generation of poetry, he realized. But he also understood that the unknown recipient of his craft would be more awed by the simple fact of the poem than by any singular verbal charm. Surely no friend of Ieneth’s could be sophisticated enough to appreciate anything but the grossest of street chants. In that case, all that was required was a quick collection of lines, without attention to musical values, arranged visually in a recognizably poetic way. The ink from the fountain pen blotted on the napkin, spreading rapidly and obscuring each letter, obliterating all sense and intention. Ernst cursed and crushed the paper into a ball, tossing it to the floor.

  “My life would have been greatly different, Eugenie, if this had happened while I loved you. If I had only known enough to keep my mouth closed, to express myself only in abstract looks and gestures, so that it all might be disowned quickly as worldly nonsense. Wisdom does not necessarily come with age, only silence. And that is the greatest treasure of all.” He returned his pen to his pocket and called for M. Gargotier.

  In the time it took for Ernst to drink two more bowls of bingara, the parade had ended. The crowd broke up, shouting new slogans which Ernst could not understand. The other patrons finished their drinks and departed, and the cafe was again empty except for its single poet. The sun had marked noon and now, hotter still, moved down the sky just enough to hurt his eyes as he looked westward, across the street.

  “West,” thought Ernst, rocking restlessly in his chair. “What absurd, empty thoughts does that bring to mind, to help pass this hour? One day after another. It gets to be so tedious. I should begin walking through this blighted city, through the wealthy sections clustered near this quarter, through the more populated tradesmen’s quarter, through the filthy paupers’ streets, past the noisy, dangerous rim of utter human refuse just within the walls, beyond the city’s gates and across the dunes. Then what? Then I would die in about twelve hours, burned by the noonday sun, chiseled by the windborne sand, frozen by Barid, the cold wind of night. Westward, toward the Atlantic, toward England and her debauched civilities. West, the direction of death, decay, finality, and poetic conclusions. Into Avalon. Perhaps if it weren’t for Ieneth and her sly, snickering hints, I would wander off that way. Pack a picnic lunch, perhaps, and bake myself dead upon a hill of sand. I always dreamed of a heroic death, defending Eugenie’s intermittent honor,
or fighting for Marie’s bemused favor. Gasping, I would lie upon the specified lap and the lady would weep. Her tears would restore my fleeing mortality. Then I would smile, as would Eugenie or Marie in her proper turn, amazed and joyful. A signal that would be for me to begin the dream anew. Another way of getting through the hours, though much too unfulfilling for my present needs.”

  Ernst watched the clock on the hotel impatiently. The pedestrians moved by in their aimless courses, and each ticked off a few seconds on the yellow clock face. Yet the traffic was too sluggish to move the clock’s iron hands quickly enough to suit Ernst, and thus could not beguile his furious anticipation.

  It was while Ernst was silent in thought, staring at the damned clock, lost in his own strange expectant horror, that someone moved a chair to his table and joined him. He looked up, startled. The intruder was a tall, thin Polish man named Czerny, a wealthy man who had come to the city a political refugee and who had made his fortune by teaching the city’s hungry inhabitants to require the luxuries of Europe. Ernst had been introduced to Czerny a few times, but neither had been overly taken with the other’s company.

  “Good afternoon, M. Weintraub,” said Czerny. “Although there are a number of tables free, I have preferred to join you. I hope you will forgive my rather forward behavior.”

  Ernst waved away the apology, more curious about Czerny’s motives. He did realize that the blond man was the founder of the Jaish, the Citizens’ Army, and its principal financial support. His appearance after its show was not mere happenstance.

  “I’d like to speak with you for a moment, if I may, M. Weintraub,” said Czerny.