Death in Florence

by George Alec Effinger

  It just wouldn't ever get delivered.

  Moore read his brief note to his mother. "Dear Mom," it said, "Here I am in Austria. This morning I was home in Prague. That's in Czechoslovakia. It all seems like a dream, I know, but I'm OK. Hope you are the same. Love, Norman." It was a dumb postcard, but at the time it seemed essentially part of his entire mood.

  Moore stretched out on the bed and opened a can of soup. He ate it, all the time wishing that the lights could work. He put the flashlight beside him, and the beam lit up the mirror over the desk, and he had an odd, frightening image of himself, strangely shadowed, to look at while he ate. He didn't like it at all, so he switched off the flashlight. That was worse. He turned it on again, pointed it sideways at a wall, and concentrated on reading the dimly illuminated label on the can.

  "This is the life," he thought glumly. "Maybe in the morning I'll go into town and find some leather. I'll make myself a wallet, and then I'll feel fine. Maybe I need some campfires and singing and marshmallow-toasting." He couldn't eat any more of the soup. He opened the beer; the first bottle was one of the best beers he had ever tasted. So was the second.

  When he decided to go to sleep, he became very frightened. Like a child, he was afraid of the impenetrable darkness, the absolute stillness, the total isolation. He pulled the covers over his head. Even when the air became hot and stale, he stayed under the covers. He fell asleep like that, had nightmares all night, and awoke aching and cramped in the early morning. He had a terrible headache, and it took him an hour to find aspirins. It took another half hour to find drinkable water. He got into his car and drove on into Italy.

  * * *

  Florence was bleak without Eileen Brant. It was a totally unsatisfying aspect of an otherwise charming place, a former highlight of the once-proud Italian nation. Without Brant, Florence was just Florence. Empty Florence. When Brant was in town, it became Firenze, and that was what had attracted Moore across hundreds of miles, what had guided him as he drove through the hollow shells of what had been three sovereign states. Moore sat in his car waiting for the rain to stop. The rain was so heavy that he could see through the windshield only when he switched on the wipers. He was parked in the large lot in front of the Pitti Palace, the palace where Brant had established her residence. Moore had the radio on, but he couldn't pull in anything but murmurs and static. The rain was too heavy for him to get out of the car. The Pitti Palace was just too immense for him to try all the entrances in the downpour. He listened to the drops hitting the roof and the windshield. He shut off the radio and the wipers. The only noise was the rain. He waited.

  After a while the storm slowed and he dashed out of the car. He ran across the lot and went up to one of the huge doors. It was locked fast. He beat on the heavy door and there was only a tiny sound, the smacking of his hand. The door was as solid as stone. He ran down to the next door and it was the same. He tried all the doors along the facade of the palace, but it was as if the building had been constructed without entrances. He ran around one wing of the palace and tried more doors, then the ones in the back, through the elaborate terraced courtyard. He made a circuit of the palace without success. If Brant were inside, there was no way for Moore to let her know he was there. If she were gone, he could only hope to see her by staying beside the building and being fortunate enough to catch her on her arrival.

  Moore felt frustrated. He went back to his Fiat, opened the trunk, and took out a bottle of warm beer. He opened the bottle and sat back inside the car. He drank the beer, staring at the grimy facade of the Pitti Palace. If it hadn't been raining, he would have enjoyed walking through the Boboli Gardens behind the palace. He'd be up to his belt buckle in mud, now. He finished the beer, opened the door, and flung the bottle into the rows of parked cars. He heard a small sound of shattering glass. He turned the key in the ignition and backed out of the parking space. He was going home. First, though, he wanted to drop the beer off in Venice. Maybe, if he were lucky, Moore would find her visiting Staefler; heaven only knew why she'd want to. But that was the way things had been going.

  Moore wanted something new. He wanted to see some elegance. He wanted to see beauty. He had hoped to be overwhelmed with beauty, when he had applied for admission. But in Prague there was only a heavy potato-and-radish kind of atmosphere. In Venice he hoped to see something else.

  Of course, thought Moore, Staefler had molded Venice the way he had molded Prague, the way Brant had molded Florence. In Venice now there might only be a Chianti-and-garlic ambience. Moore wondered if he could arrange a new deal with Dr. Waters. He'd be willing to trade his options on all the rest of Utopia 3 if he could have the wine cellars of Rheims and a subscription to The New Yorker. No. It was useless. He would go to Venice.

  * * *

  It was about two hundred eighty kilometers from Florence to Venice, about one hundred ninety miles. Between four and five hours of driving, thought Moore. He traded the Fiat for a fine gray Mercedes with a full tank of fuel. He almost forgot to transfer his belongings, but just as he was driving away in the Mercedes something reminded him. He had been thinking about Staefler, remembering how the man looked, coarse, unshaven. He remembered how Staefler smelled, and that reminded him of the beer in the trunk of the Fiat. He went back and fetched his things. Then he started out once again for Venice.

  The roads were good and clear, a straight line from Florence to Bologna, from there to Padua, from Padua straight to Mestre and across the causeway.

  The sight of Venice made Moore feel better; it rid him of some of the depression that had burdened him since his forced return to the orientation lodge. The city made wordless statements to him about the greatness of human endeavor. It restored his feeling that something was worth protecting, that there was more to look forward to than piling up little mounds of personal treasure. The great stone monuments of Venice waited for people to solve their troubles and get back to serious living. Utopia 3 was a faltering step, perhaps, but it was a step nonetheless, and if Venice could just hold on a little longer, there would soon be hundreds of people in the program, then thousands, then eventually millions— finally an entire world of people, a world Utopia, where everyone moved freely in a world without nations. He thought these things as he walked down to the Grand Canal. The water was green. He didn't know where to go. He didn't know where to find Staefler.

  If there were no nations, thought Moore as he walked along the canal, then people would have no political allegiances. There would be no feeling of being the property of some country. There would be a sense of relief instead, a sense of recovering something vital that one had always been forced to surrender. And wealth would mean nothing: everything would be for everybody. Just as in Utopia 3, objects would be nothing more than objects. Diamonds and bricks would be of equal cost, except that bricks would still be more useful. People would turn from enriching themselves to enriching the community. But, thought Moore, the community in those days would be the entire world.

  No one would own anything. Everyone would be rich. There would be no more crime; at least, those crimes of envy would be eliminated—thefts, cheats, murders, and so on. Moore crossed a bridge over an intersecting canal. He hummed to himself. In the distance he saw a tall tower and the dome of St. Mark's. He headed away from the Grand Canal in that direction.

  Already, he thought, the main thing that Utopia 3 had done was to eliminate money within its borders. That was a subtle, powerful stroke. The motivations for crime had been all but completely removed.

  Moore paused before the bronze doors of a church. The doors were divided into panels depicting scenes from the life of Christ. He chewed his lower lip as he stood looking at the doors. He thought that Thomas More's comments on Utopia were true in a negative sense. By removing the temptations to lie, steal, and kill, the Utopia had also removed the channels for expressing magnificence and majesty. What does it mean to present a gift of gold and diamonds, when you can use gold and diamonds as gravel in a bird cage? The sple
ndor of civilization, the ornaments, are cheapened when they are in reach of the lowest elements in the society. Moore shuddered and walked on. He knew that the concept of "lowest elements" was not in keeping with Utopia 3's philosophy. But he knew, and he could not claim otherwise, that there were, in fact, lower elements, and all the benevolent wishes of Utopia 3 could not make those elements into rational beings.

  After a while Moore arrived at St. Mark's. He was shocked by the sight in the Piazza. A large part of it had been taken up by Staefler's miniature golf course. Moore had heard of the project, but he had not imagined that Staefler was so insane. More areas had been drawn out, but the holes themselves had not been constructed. Materials were piled up all over the remainder of the Piazza. There were stacks of lumber, buckets of nails, hammers and tools, as well as piles of gorgeous paintings looted from the city's finest galleries, churches, and villas; the paintings were standing around the square like haystacks in a field. They were covered over with tarpaulins in a meager attempt to protect them from the weather. There were large collections of gold and silver plate, goblets, jeweled boxes and reliquaries and caskets, carved wooden chests and railings, tapestries and carpets, anything that Staefler had thought might make an unusual or diverting addition to his crazy golf course. But everything was crusted with salt, spotted with fungus growth, stained, ruined. Staefler had given up his project and left it weeks ago.

  "Hey, look!" Moore turned around to see who had shouted. It was, as he expected, Staefler. "Look! If it isn't Stormin' Norman Moore!"

  "Hello, Staefler," said Moore.

  "What are you doing in Venice?"

  Moore stared at Staefler. He didn't say anything for a while. He didn't know the answer to the question.

  "Come on," said Staefler. "We'll get the Arab kid to row us to the Lido. I spend a lot of time out there now. Nice place. Beautiful beaches. And there's a church out there, what is it, the church of San Nicolo. There's an argument about whether his bones are there or not, or if it's a fraud and the bones are somewhere else. But I don't care. I believe what I feel like, you know? So according to me his bones are there. San Nicolo's. St. Nicholas. You know, Santa Claus. Santa Claus is buried right out there. How about that?"

  "That's odd, Staefler," said Moore. "I brought you some beer."

  Staefler smiled. "Beer? From where?"

  "Czechoslovakia. Pilsener. Budweiser."

  "No Coors? No Miller's?"

  "No."

  "Well," said Staefler, "that's great. That's nice of you, Moore. Let's go get it and go on out to the Lido. We'll have a nice supper. I found a case of Hormel chili yesterday. We'll take the motor-boat."

  "I want to talk to you, Bo," said Moore sadly. "You were right about this thing with Dr. Waters."

  Staefler shaded his eyes with a hand. He shook his head. "Right, huh? You wouldn't listen. Learned the hard way, huh?"

  "Yes," said Moore. "It happens to me a lot."

  "Forget it," said Staefler. "Let's get the beer."

  * * *

  On the way back to Prague, Moore paused for several hours to inspect abandoned farms in the Czech countryside. The farms had always been poor, even when the Czech farmers worked to coax meager harvests from the stony soil. Now, unattended, the fields had gone to seed and ruin. Moore dug in the soil and unearthed several small potatoes and some radishes. All were unable to stand comparison with even the worst to be found in American supermarkets. "Utopia 3 had better work, for sure," he thought. "If ever the farmers have to come back here, they'll starve before they can get these fields into shape." He squatted thoughtfully beneath a gray, cloud-covered sky. He planned to write an article on the essential relationship between man and agriculture. "The Potato-Bountiful Clam of the Fields," he planned to call it. He plucked more radishes and stuffed them in his pockets. Then he walked back across the dry fields to his car.

  When he arrived in Prague some time later, he found posters all over the city, all addressed to him. There were so many posters that it would have been impossible for him not to have seen one. They said:

  Hello, Mr. MOORE! This is Dr. Bertram Waters, the founder of the same Utopia 3 in which you have found your opportunity to make the dreams of a lifetime come true. In addition to creating this important project, I have served for some time as the chairman of the plasmonics department at Ivy University. I hope you will take these credentials into account when I ask a very special favor of you.

  I know that our operator in PRAGUE, Donna Lupowicz, has spoken to you concerning our desire to buy your option on a selected portion of the Utopia 3 territory. We haven't yet received a definite answer from you in regard to this very crucial matter. Please, it would be very much appreciated if you would come in and speak to Ms. Lupowicz at your earliest convenience. You will be doing yourself a favor, as well as the other utopiates, myself, and ultimately the free people of the world.

  You may recall the terms of this offer. We are prepared to deliver to you—on the very day of your official acceptance—a long list of items which you may be certain are totally unavailable anywhere in the geographic extent of Utopia 3.

  Please be sure of one thing. This is in no way a kind of bribe. We have not singled you out for some sort of shady deal. You will not be betraying your neighbors or future residents of Utopia 3, as some of my misinformed and envious detractors claim. I have, or I will in the near future, made the same type of offer to every other person involved with Utopia 3. This is my way of getting you "on my team," as it were. We have projected a method of accelerating the Utopian processes, so that the goals I wish to achieve can be attained absolutely as quickly as possible.

  And, S. NORMAN MOORE, I hope you understand how much I would like to have you on my team. I have the profoundest respect for you. 1 have personally reviewed your test papers and psychological profiles, and let me tell you that I was suitably impressed. Having you as part of our undertaking makes me proud that I have been able to serve the world in whatever way I can. S. NORMAN MOORE, nothing would make me happier than to have word from you, through the Utopia 3 office in PRAGUE, that we can count on you to carry the ball for us, against the blitzing linebackers from the outside world. To extend the metaphor, we may be calling the signals, but we know that it's folks like you who have to put your head down and bull forward for the tough yardage. And we appreciate it, fella, you bet. And we think we can show our gratitude in a way which you will find meaningful.

  So, let's hear from you. The sooner the better. And then we can get on the stick and get the tokens of our gratitude out to you as soon as possible.

  All right? Fine, fine. We'll be looking to hear from you!

  * * *

  It was the end of August. The sun had moved on into Virgo, a sign that is definitely good for some people, but completely at odds with Utopia 3. A good Virgo country is Greece, well outside the boundaries of Utopia 3. A good Virgo city is Paris, which was also beyond Utopia 3, at least until the official expansion took place. S. Norman Moore had let the sun slip out of Leo without his thinking much about it. Perhaps he had lost some valuable opportunities, but he was content to do the best he could with whatever came his way. He had gone down to the Utopia 3 office in Schweik's tavern. Wesley was behind the counter; Donna Lupowicz was not working that shift.

  "Can I help you, sir?" asked Wesley.

  "A beer," said Moore. He waited for the young man to pour the warm beer from a bottle to a tall glass. "And I wanted to ask some questions."

  "Certainly," said Wesley. His expression changed. Moore decided instantly that Wesley had become wary. It was a wary expression. That let Moore know that he, too, should be wary.

  "There's a little jog in the boundaries," he said.

  "Jog?" said Wesley warily.

  "Sure. Look. Got a map?" Wesley said nothing, but he took the green notebook from beneath the counter. He opened it to a map with the proposed expansion marked in red ink. "Thanks," said Moore. He indicated the eastern boundary, where the line ran from a
point in the Bay of Danzig, through the Polish town of Braniewo, down through Warsaw, angling southeast through the tip of Czechoslovakia. A few miles beyond the Czech border, the boundary line passed through a tiny extension of the Ukrainian S.S.R. This was the only place where Utopia 3 intruded on the territory of the U.S.S.R. itself. The amount of land involved was scant, not more than six hundred square miles. Beyond the Ukraine, Utopia 3 closed off the rest of Hungary and grabbed a healthy portion of Rumania. "I want to know something," said Moore. "Why isn't there more of the Soviet Union in Utopia 3?"

  "Well," said Wesley. He stopped for a few moments, thinking. "Well, maybe because Dr. Waters doesn't want to make Utopia 3 larger than necessary at this time."

  "No," said Moore. "That's not it. What are we giving them for the piece of the Ukraine?"

  "Giving them? We've never had to reimburse any nation for the donation of land. That's part of the wonderful humanitarian essence of Utopia 3."

  "How much?" insisted Moore.

  "We're not getting that piece," said Wesley sadly. "The Russians won't let us have it. The nice straight boundaries are going to be spoiled. There's going to be a little—"

  "Jog," said Moore, smiling coldly. "What I said. I figured it out myself, and you've proven it. We're not going to fool with the Russians. Why doesn't Dr. Waters move the new eastern line west thirty miles or so, so that his straight lines won't be spoiled?"

  Wesley's face paled. "I don't know," he said. "It's too much difficulty to get everyone out, and then have to move them back, and then-"

  "They're not moved out yet. He just wanted Warsaw and some other smaller towns. That's why."

  "Not at all, Mr. Staefler. I'm not given inside information about Dr. Waters's private decisions. We're not in a position to speculate."