by Paula Guran
Of course. She took another of the little fruits, and ate it, and held her fingers ready to lick, a delicate spread fan.
She touched her fingers to a napkin, then put the tray aside. She knelt beside me, and leaned through the perfume of herself, which was light and clean and spoke only quietly of her wealth. Who are you? she said, and she put her lips to mine, and held them there a little, her eyes closing, then opening surprised. Do you not want to kiss me?
I sit with my fellows in the briefing-room at the barracks. Up on the movie screen, foreign actors are locked together by their lips. Boss-soldiers groan and hoot in the seats in front of us. We giggle at the screen and at the men. “And they call us ‘tribals.’” says my friend Kadir, who later will be blown to pieces before my eyes. “Look at how wild they are, what animals! They cannot control themselves.”
The princess was poised to be dismayed or embarrassed. Oh, I do want to, I said, but how is it done? For, except for my mother in my childhood, I had never kissed a woman—even here in my rich-man life—in a way that was not somehow a violence upon her.
So handsome, and you don’t already know? But she taught me. She was gentle, but forceful; she pressed herself to me, pushed me (with her little weight!) down onto the couch cushions. I was embarrassed that she must feel my desire, but she did not seem to mind, or perhaps she did not know enough to notice. She crushed her breasts against me, her belly and thighs. And the kissing—I had to breathe through my nose, for she would not stop, and there was no room for my breath with all her little lively tongue, and her hair falling and sliding everywhere, and eventually I dared to put my hands to her rounded bottom and pull her harder against me, and closed my eyes against the consequences.
Hush, she said over me at one point, rising off me, her hair making a slithering tent around our heads and shoulders, all dark gold. Her breasts hung forward in the elaborate frontage of the nightgown—I was astonished by their closeness; I covered them with my hands in a kind of swoon.
I told her what I was, in the night, over some more of that beautiful insubstantial food. I told her about the old woman, and the dogs; I showed her the Bic. That is all I am, I said. Lucky. Lucky to have lived, lucky to have come into this fortune, lucky to have you before me. I am not noble and I have no right to anything.
Oh, she said, but it is all luck, don’t you see? And she knelt up and held my face as a child does, to make you listen. My own family’s wealth, it came about from the favors of one king and one bishop, back in the fourteenth century. You learn all the other, all the speaking and manners and how to behave with people lower than yourself; it can be learned by goatherds and by soldiers just as it can by the farmers my family once were, the loyal servants.
She kissed me. Certainly you look noble, she whispered and smiled. You are my prince, be sure of that.
She dazzled me with what she was, and had, and said, and what she was free from knowing. But I would have loved her just for her body and its closeness, how pale she was, and soft, and intact, and for her face, perfect above that perfection, gazing on me enchanted. She was like the foods she fancied, beautiful nothingness, a froth of luxury above the hard, real business of the world, which was the machinery of war and missiles, the flying darts and the blown dust and smoke, the shudder in your guts as the bosses brought in the air support, and saved you yet again from becoming a thing like these others, pieces of bleeding litter tossed aside from the action, their part in the game ended.
With the muzzle of the pistol, I push aside the queen’s earring—a dangling flower or star, made of sparkling diamonds, a royal heirloom. I press the tip in below her ear, fire, and drop her to the carpet. It’s all coming back to me, the efficiency. “Bring me the prince!” I cry.
The women of the bosses’ world, they are foul beautiful creatures. They are devils that light a fire in the loins of decent men. One picture is all you need, and such a picture can be found on any boss-soldier’s wall in the barracks; my first time in such a place, all my fellows around me were torn as I was between feasting their eyes on the shapes and colors taped to the walls, and uttering damnation on the bosses’ souls, and laughing—for it was ridiculous, wasn’t it, such behavior? The taping itself was unmanly, a weakness—but the posturing of the picture-girls, I hardly knew how to regard that. I had never seen faces so naked, let alone the out-thrustingness of the rest of their bodies. I was embarrassed for them, and for the boss-men who looked upon these women, and longed for them—even as the women did their evil work on me, and woke my longings too.
We covered our embarrassment by pulling the pictures down, tearing one, but only a little, and by accident. We put them in the bin, where they were even less dignified, upside down making their faces to themselves, of ecstasy and scorn, or animal abandon. We looked around in relief, the walls bare except for family pictures now. Someone opened a bedside cupboard and found those magazines they have. Around the group of us they went, and we yelped and laughed and pursed our mouths over them, and some tried to whistle as the bosses whistled; I did not touch one at all, not a single page, but I saw enough to disgust and enliven me both for a long time to come.
Someone raised his head, and we all listened. Engines. “Land Rover! They are coming!” And we scrambled to put the things back, made clumsy by our laughter and our fear.
“This is the best one! Take this one with us!”
“Straighten them! Straighten them in the cupboard, like we found them!”
I remember as we ran away, and I laughed and hurried with the rest, another part of me was dazed and stilled by what I had seen, and could not laugh at all. Those women would show themselves, all of themselves, parts you had never seen, and did not want to—or did you?—to any man, any; they would let themselves be put in a picture and taped up on a wall for any man’s eyes. I was stunned and aroused; I felt so dirtied that I would never be clean, never the man I had been before I saw what I had seen.
And now I was worse, myself, even than those bosses. I lived, I knew, an unclean life. I did not keep my body pure, for marriage or any other end, but only polluted myself and wasted my good seed on wanton women, only poisoned myself with spliffs and powders and liquors.
It is very confusing when you can do anything. You settle for following the urge that is strongest, and call up food perhaps. Then this woman smiles at you, so you do what a man must do; then another man insults you, so you pursue his humiliation. While you wait for a grander plan to emerge in your head, a thousand small choices make up your life, none of them honorable.
It is much easier to take the right path when you only have two to choose from. Easiest of all is when you are under orders, or under fire; when one choice means death, you can make up your mind in a flash.
These things, about the women and my impurity, I would not tell anyone at home. This was why my family stayed away from the greater, the outer world; this was why we hid in the mountains. We could live a good life there, a clean life.
Buzzz. I go to the wall and press the button to see out. Three men stand at the door downstairs. They wear suits, old-fashioned but not in a dowdy way. You thought you had run ahead of us, say the steep white collars, the strangely-fastened cuffs, and the fit, the cut of those clothes; even a goat-boy can hear it. But our power is sunk deep, spread wide, and knotted tight into the fabric of all things.
The closest one takes off his sunglasses. He calls me by my army name. I fall back a little from the screen. “Who are you and what do you want?”
“We must ask you some questions, in the name of His Majesty the King,” he says. He’s well fed, the spokesman, and pleased with himself, the way boss-soldiers are, the higher ranks who can fly away back to Boss-Land if things get too rough for them.
“I’ve nothing to say to any king,” I say into the grille. How is he onto me so quickly? Does he have magic dogs as well?
“I have to advise you that we are authorized to use force.”
I move the camera up to see beyond t
hem. Their car gleams in the apartment’s turning circle, with the royal crest on the door. Six soldiers—spick and span, well armed, no packs to weigh them down if they need to run—are lining up alert and out of place on the gravel. Behind them squats an armored vehicle, a prison on wheels.
I pull the sights back down to the ones at the door. I wish I had wired those marble steps the way the enemy used to. I itch for a button to press, to turn them to smoke and shreds. But there are plenty more behind them. By the look of all that, they know they’re up against more than one man.
I buzz them in to the lobby. In the bedroom, I take the pistol from my bedside drawer. In the sitting-room lie the remains of the feast, the spilled throw-rug that the princess wrapped herself in as she talked and talked last night. I pick up the Bic and click it twice. “Tidy this up,” I say into the bomb-blast of silver, and he picks up the mess in his teeth and tosses it away, and goggles at me for more orders. He could deal with this whole situation by himself if I told him. But I’m not a lazy man, or a coward.
The queen’s men knock at the apartment door. I get into position—it feels good, that my body still knows how. “Shrink down, over there,” I say to the silver dog. The light from his eyes pulses white around the walls.
Three clicks. “Fetch me the king!” I shout before the gold dog has time to properly explode into being, and they arrive together, the trapped man jerking and exclaiming in the dog’s jaws. He wears a nice blue suit, nice shoes, all bespoke, as a king’s clothes should be.
The knocking comes again, and louder. The dog stands the king gently on the carpet. I take the man in hand—not roughly, just so he knows who’s running this show. “Sit with your friend,” I say to the dog, and it shrinks and withdraws to the window, its flame-fur seething. The air is strong with their spice and hot metal, but it won’t overpower me; I’m cold and clever and I know what to do.
I lean over the king and push the door-button on the remote. The queen’s suits burst in, all pistols and posturing. Then they see me; they aren’t so pleased with themselves then. They scramble to stop. The dogs stir by the window and the scent tumbles off them, so strong you can almost see it rippling across the air.
“You can drop those,” I say. The men put up their hands and kick their guns forward.
I have the king by the neck. I push my pistol into his mouth, and he gags. He doesn’t know how to fight, hasn’t the first clue. He smells nice, expensive.
“Maybe he can ask me those questions himself, no?” I shout past his ear at the two suits left. I swing him around to where he will not mess me up so much. “Bring me the queen!” I shout to the golden dog, and blow out the back of the king’s head. The noise is terrific; the deafness from it wads my ears.
The queen arrives stiff with fear between the dog’s teeth. Her summery dress is printed with carefree flowers. Her skin is as creamy as her daughter’s; her body is lean and light and has never done a day’s proper work. I catch her to me by the shoulders. One of the guards dives for his gun. I shoot him in the eye. The queen gives a tiny shriek and shakes against me.
The dogs’ light flashes in the men’s wide eyes. “Please!” mouths their captain. “Let her go. Let her go.”
I can feel the queen’s voice, in her neck and chest, but her lips are not moving. She’s trying to twist, trying to see what’s left of the king.
“What are you saying, Your Majesty?” I shake her, keeping my eyes on her men. “Are you giving your blessing, upon your daughter’s marriage? Perhaps you should! Perhaps I should make you! No?” My voice hurts in my throat, but I only hear it faintly.
I take her out from the side, quickly so as not to give her goons more chances. I drop her to the carpet. It’s all coming back to me, the efficiency.
“The prince!” I command, and there he is, flung on the floor naked except for black socks, his wet man wilting as he scrambles up to face me. I could laugh, and tease him and play with him, but I’m not in that mood. He’s just an obstacle to me, the king’s only other heir. My gaze fixes on the guards, I push my pistol up under his jaw and I fire. The silent air smells of gun smoke and burnt bone.
“Get these toy-boys out of here,” I shout to the dogs, even more painfully, even more faintly. “Put the royals back, just the way they are. In their palace, or their townhouse, or their brothel, or wherever you found them. My carpet, and my clothes here—get the stains off them. Don’t leave a single clue behind. Then go down and clear the garden, and the streets, of all those men and traffic.”
It’s not nice to watch the dogs at work, picking up the live men and the dead bodies both, and flinging them like so many rags, away to nothing. The filthy dog, the scabbed one—why must he be the one to lick up the blood from the carpet, from the white leather of the couch? Will he lick me clean too? But my clothes, my hands, are spatter-free already; my fingertips smell of the spiciness of the golden dog, not the carrion tongue of the mangy one.
Then they’re gone. Everything’s gone that doesn’t belong here. The carpet and couch are as white as when I chose them from the catalogue; the room is spacious again without the dogs.
I open the balcony windows to let out the smells of death and dog. Screams come up from the street, and a single short burst of gunfire. A soldier flies up past me, his machine-gun separating from his hands. They go up to dots in the sky, and neither falls back down.
By the time I reach the balcony railing, all is gone from below except people fleeing from what they’ve seen. The city lies in the bright morning, humming with its many lives and vehicles. I spit on its peacefulness. Their king is dead, and their prince. Soon they’ll be ruled by a goatherd, all those suits and uniforms below me, all those bank-men and party-boys and groveling shop-owners. Everyone from the highest dignitary to the lowliest beggar will be at my disposal, subject to my whim.
I stride back into the apartment, which is stuffed fat with the dogs. They shrink and fawn on me, and shine their eyes about.
“I want the princess!” I say to the golden one and he grins and hangs out his crimson tongue. “Dress her in wedding finery, with the queen’s crown on her head. Bring me the king-crown, and the right clothes, too, for such an occasion. A priest! Rings! Witnesses! Whatever papers and people are needed to make me king!”
Which they do, and through everyone’s confusion and my girl’s delight—for she thinks she’s dreaming me still, and the news hasn’t yet reached her that she is orphaned—the business is transacted, and all the names are signed to all the documents that require them.
But the instant the crown is placed on my head, my rage, which was clean and pure and unquestioning while I reached for this goal, falters. Why should I want to rule these people, who know nothing either of war or of mountains, these spoiled fat people bowing down to me only because they know I hold their livelihoods—their very lives!—in my hands, these soft-living men, these whore-women, who would never survive the cold, thin air of my home, who would cringe and gag at the thought of killing their own food?
“Get them out of here,” I say to the golden dog. “And all this nonsense. Only leave the princess—the queen, I should say. Her Majesty.”
And the title is bitter on my tongue, so lately did I use it for her mother. King, queen, prince and people, all are despicable to me. I understand for the first time that the war I fought in, which goes on without me, is being fought entirely to keep this wealth safe, this river of luxury flowing, these chefs making their glistening fresh food, these walls intact and the tribals busy outside them, these lawns untrampled by jealous mobs come to tear down the palaces.
And she’s despicable too, who was my princess and dazzled me so last night. Smiling at our solitude, she walks towards me in that shameful dress, presenting her breasts to me in their silken tray, the cloth sewn close about her waist to better show how she swells above and below, for all to see, as those dignitaries saw just now, my wife on open display like an American celebrity woman in a movie, like a porn queen in a
sexy-mag.
I claw the crown from my head and fling it away from me. I unfasten the great gold-encrusted king-cape and push it off; it suffocates me, crushes me. My girl watches, shocked, as I tear off the sash and brooches and the foolish shirt—truly tear some of it, for the shirt-fastenings are so ancient and odd, it cannot be removed undamaged without a servant’s help.
Down to only the trousers, I’m a more honest man; I can see, I can be, my true self better. I take off the fine buckled shoes and throw them hard at the valuable vases across the sitting room. The vases tip and burst apart against each other, and the pieces scatter themselves in the dogs’ fur as they lie there intertwined, grinning and goggling, taking up half the room.
The princess—the queen—is half-crouched, caught mid-laugh, mid-cringe, clutching the ruffles about her knees and looking up at me. “You are different,” she says, her child-face insulting, accusing, above the cream-lit cleft between her breasts. “You were gentle and kind before,” she whispers. “What has happened? What has changed?”
I kick aside the king-clothes. ‘Now you,’ I say, and I reach for the crown on her head.
My mother stirs the pot as if nothing exists but this food, none of us children tumbling on the floor fighting, none of the men talking and taking their tea around the table. The food smells good, bread baking, meat stewing with onions.
It is a tiny world. The men talk of the larger, outer one, but they know nothing. They know goats, and mountains, but there is so much more that they can’t imagine, that they will never see.
I shower. I wash off the blood and the scents of the princess, the bottled one and the others, more natural, of her fear above and of her flower below that I plucked—that I tore, more truthfully, from its roots. I gulp down shower-water, lather my hair enormously, soap up and scrub hard the rest of me. Can I ever be properly clean again? And once I am, what then? There seems to be nothing else to do, once you’re king, once you’ve treated your queen so. I could kill her, could I not? I could be king alone, without her eyes on me always, fearful and accusing. I could do that; I’ve got the dogs. I could do anything. (I lather my sore man-parts—they feel defiled, though she was my wife and untouched by any other man—or so she claimed, in her terror.)
