Gorgeous East

by null

  “They can try,” Smith said. “But they won’t find parking.”

  The Marabout mullahs dismounted their camels, rolled out prayer carpets, and arranged themselves facing the eastern horizon. A rustic bagpipe began to bleat, then stopped and the twenty disciples fell to their knees. Veiled women stepped out of the crowd into the windy silence and helped remove twenty scratchy goat-hair shirts and soon the disciples, reduced to blue loincloths, were nearly as cold and naked as Smith and the colonel, though they seemed impervious to physical suffering, focused on the mysterious initiation to come. Another bleat from the bagpipe and more women emerged, these bearing horsehair whisks and white plastic buckets heaped with yellow or pink powder. Gusts of wind billowed colorful puffs of the powder into the morning air as the bucket women began dusting the disciples from head to toe. The disciples got dusted with one color or the other, two or three a mixture of both. The bucket women paid close attention to the crotch area; perky responses from beneath the loincloths in this region sent knowing giggles rippling through the crowd.

  “Cover up every available centimeter of skin and anything, even the arching of an eyebrow, becomes erotic stimulus,” Phillipe observed, his voice low in Smith’s ear. “Really, it’s an excellent reproductive strategy.”

  Smith didn’t say anything. Long minutes passed. A bee landed on his forearm; he shook it away, chains clanking. A cloud of pink powder, taken by the wind, blew into their eyes. Phillipe turned his head away and sneezed.

  “Pronounced medicinal odor,” he said.

  “Like antibacterial foot powder,” Smith agreed.

  “Strange to find such an odor among a tribe of technologically innocent Saharouian Berbers. Some age-old mixture of camel dung and piss and a bush that only blossoms at midnight—that sort of thing, absolutely. But this, this”—he searched for the word—“chemical is clearly the product of a modern industrial process. Have you understood its purpose yet?”

  Smith thought for a long minute. Lack of food and constant cold had made his brain sluggish. They’d witnessed three or four of these terrible Marabout initiations in their months of captivity, all with equivocal results: Some died, some lived, as if by the magical whim of the bees. Other than that, he couldn’t say.

  “They’re breeding a race of warriors here, Milquetoast,” the colonel continued. “This is how the Marabouts rid themselves of those weaker types unfit for military service. Meanwhile, we in the West natter on about tolerance and gender equality and sleep the sleep of reason in our comfortable beds. Watch the colors—one will immediately provoke the insects; the other just as quickly sedate them.”

  The first recruit, completely dusted in pink, lowered himself to all fours and crawled into the waxy mouth of the giant hive. At this, the bees began an aggressive humming, like a generator flipped to high voltage. The crowd of villagers carefully backed away, clearing a space all around the thick mud walls. About ten seconds later a low, painful grunting echoed from inside. The grunting grew louder, then exploded into horrible, high-pitched screams and something, a monster wearing a writhing, stinging human-shaped covering of bees, burst from the hive and ran screaming toward the edge of the cliff, bees covering eyes, mouth, nose; bees at last choking the painful screams to a desperate gargle. The cliff here dropped off about sixty feet to a ledge covered with sharp rocks. Without breaking stride this unhappy individual flung himself off into empty air, the bees sailing up like bits of confetti as he dropped. Some things seen cannot be unseen. The image of the screaming bee-man jumping off the cliff would burn in Smith’s imagination forever. But the Marabout villagers seemed unmoved by his horrendous spectacle. Going around with faces covered all the time must have a curious effect on people, Smith thought: The covering of faces, like the wearing of masks, seemed to distance them from normal human empathy. Did they feel regret, remorse, shame? How could anyone be certain? Human emotions conveyed by facial expressions perfected over tens of thousands of years of evolution were, because of their veils, unknowable.

  After a while, a second disciple, this one dusted with yellow powder, crawled into the hive. The villagers settled back to wait. At first, nothing. Then a foot could be seen through the opening, twitching. That was all. After a long time—Smith guessed an hour, hard to know without his dad’s old Rolex—the ordeal passed its natural time limit. Two Marabout guards wearing gloves and bee-proof meshing cautiously approached the hive. They reached in and removed the disciple via his formerly twitching foot. He was already purple and swollen, grotesque black tongue hanging from his mouth. Dead. The few bees still crawling on his flesh were groggy, engorged, and easily brushed aside.

  “Different colors and yet they both died,” Smith said. “There goes your theory, mon colonel.”

  Phillipe squinted up at the nearest peak. “That fool was clearly allergic. Death came from a single sting.”

  5.

  The earthly dwelling place of the mysterious Al Bab, Gateway to the Age of the Hidden Imam, Beloved of God, the Stung One, Supernatural Grand Marabout, Supreme Military Leader, and General of All Generals of the Marabout Uprising, lay tucked behind a rocky protrusion at the top of the village, removed at a safe distance from the giant hive and its buzzing, stinging raiding parties of heavenly messengers. It was a modest, cheery structure built solidly of brick and cinder block, its walls painted flamingo pink, a vibrant color Smith assumed had everything to do with bee-resistant pink powder mixed in with the plaster, and nothing to do with the owner’s fondness for South Florida chic. A small satellite dish sprouted off the gable end; a generator chuffed away, hidden behind a barrier of thornbushes. Yellow lights burned from within. Electric lights. This familiar glow meant much more than the promise of artificial illumination to Smith, who had come to dread the long, icy hours of darkness. It meant heat. The death sentence that no doubt awaited him inside might be received without bitterness if he could just sit there in the warmth for a few minutes to hear it pronounced.

  Dusk was the hour allotted for private petitions and also the hour of judgments rendered. The Gateway to the Age of the Hidden Imam received his faithful now as the sun descended. Villagers assembled humbly in the waning light, peasants on their way to an audience with their king. Smith stood under guard at the end of this line of wheedlers, whispering to himself a quotation from Camus: “There is no fate which cannot be surmounted by scorn. There is no fate which cannot be surmounted by scorn.’ ”

  He raised his eyes to the heavens and watched the stars come up, repeating this mantra under his breath, and seemed able to call the brilliant little pinpricks of light into existence just by the force of these ten words. Then he was standing on the gravel of the forecourt and the door swung open and two Marabout guards dragged him roughly by his chains into the sanctuary. The sensation of heat crept in a kind of half-painful prickling across Smith’s bare skin. Driven to his knees, he was forced to crawl up a narrow hallway of rough, untreated concrete to a room at the back. The first thing he saw of the men waiting for him was their bare feet and brown toes, some decorated with silver rings, protruding from beneath Marabout-blue djellahs and set against the dark red and blue arabesques of thick Berber carpets. A calloused, bare foot forced him down and for several long minutes, Smith lay deliciously warm, nose pressed to the fragrant weave. How he wished he could stay there forever!

  Then the foot lifted and a hand yanked him by the hair to his knees. He looked around, blinking, and found himself in a large, plain room, crowded with men, who, being inside the four walls of a holy sanctuary, were allowed to remove their veils. The proliferation of chins, noses, mouths, beards, mustaches—features unseen for so many weeks—unsettled him. At the center of the room, enthroned in a yellow, wingback glider that looked like it might have come from Sears, sat Al Bab. The Gateway to the Age of the Hidden Imam alone remained veiled. He was a stocky figure, round as Buddha, his hands and the rectangle of skin visible around his eyes hennaed in a complicated web pattern usually reserved for dainty y
oung brides. A large gold bee hieroglyph pendant hung on a chain around his neck; white light from the bare lightbulb in the ceiling danced off this garish piece of bling. He alone also hadn’t removed his shoes—clunky-looking leather orthopedics resembling Birkenstocks—an insult, in Smith’s mind, to the beautiful, soft carpet.

  To one side of the yellow throne stood a narrow-faced man, with an air of self-importance about him, Al Bab’s prime minister or vizier. A scraggly mustache and moth-eaten beard drooped forlornly from the man’s face. For a while, no one spoke.

  “State your name, Enemy of God,” the vizier said at last, in French.

  “I’m not an enemy of God,” Smith said.

  The vizier raised an eyebrow and one of the Marabout guards smacked Smith in the head with a leather quoit and Smith’s vision shattered into a scattering of light and yellow squiggles.

  “Hey!” Smith said, shaking himself.

  “Blasphemy is rewarded with pain,” the vizier said. “Be warned.”

  “How is it blasphemy to say I’m not an enemy of God?” Smith managed, trying to keep his voice calm. “I like God—” Though this wasn’t true. He felt nothing but bitter resentment toward the divinity that had struck down his sister at thirteen and taken his father and mother and now poor Jessica without consulting him first. Anyway, he believed himself to be an atheist.

  The vizier frowned and Smith was hit again.

  “Your name!” the vizier commanded.

  “Legionnaire Caspar P. Milquetoast,” Smith gasped. “1e RE, Musique Principale. Serial number 9938947.”

  “Your are an American. C’est vrai?”

  “The Legion is my country,” Smith said, stiffly. “I’m a soldier in the service of the French Republic. Currently attached to MINURSO, the United Nations Peacekeeping—”

  The vizier interrupted with another gesture and Smith was hit a third time on the back of the head. Al Bab watched, his black eyes without emotion.

  “An American. You are an American. Say it!”

  “All right,” Smith said when he had recovered sufficiently to speak. “I’m an American. Have it your way.”

  At this, Al Bab beckoned with a hennaed hand and the vizier knelt down and listened, nodding.

  “As an American, you are an unholy cancer,” the vizier translated, when he had absorbed the Hidden One’s message. “America is the cancer of all cancers, infecting the world with the AIDS virus grown in a laboratory as a weapon against all brown-skinned peoples.”

  “That’s a bunch of conspiracy-theory bullshit—” Smith began, and again he was hit.

  “A cancer,” the vizier continued, “corrupting the world with your iPods and your computer Web full of naked women and naked men engaging in many sexual acts and perversions, sometimes with each other, sometimes with household pets.”

  “I hear you guys have a Web site!” Smith shot back.

  “Our Web site is holy and therefore necessary,” the vizier said. “Your Web site is an abomination.”

  “It’s not that bad,” Smith said. “A buddy put it up for me. An actor who waits tables at Toast, in the East Village—this crazy place that only serves toast with various kinds of toppings, peanut butter, almond spread, Cheez Whiz, caviar, whatever. Stupid idea you say, but a monster hit with the late-night munchie crowd. Anyway, Toby does computer stuff on the side and he did my Web site as a favor. I guess it’s not great, maybe a little user unfriendly, but it was free.”

  The vizier paused, confused, then conferred with the Holy Gateway. “Not your own personal Web site,” he said after a moment. “His Holiness speaks of the Internet as a whole. Full of filthy perversions.”

  “Got me there,” Smith admitted. “The Internet’s definitely 70 percent porn.”

  “Aha!” The vizier wagged his head. Then: “They say you are also a singer of songs. Is this true?”

  “I sing,” Smith admitted. “I also dance and act. The old triple threat.”

  “Be that as it may, we do not permit singing here,” the vizier said. “It is an affront to God. Nor do we permit the flying of kites or the eating of pork, or swimming, which is an activity only meant for fish, God be praised.”

  “You have a pool?” Smith said.

  Al Bab crooked a finger and the vizier leaned in close for a quick word.

  “Correction,” the vizier said. “We will permit singing under certain circumstances.”

  “O.K.,” Smith said.

  “The Holy Gateway wishes you to sing something now.”

  “I’m not in the mood,” Smith said.

  “You will sing,” the vizier said. “At once.”

  Smith did a couple of scales, then sang “One Enchanted Evening” from South Pacific, which he’d done at the 6th Avenue Play house in New Paltz and that, truthfully, is a song better suited for an operatic baritone. When finished he wished he’d sung something else, but it was too late.

  Al Bab spoke aloud; the vizier translated: “The Hidden One does not like this song. He wishes you to sing another one. Something better.”

  “I agree with”—Smith couldn’t decide what to call a semisupernatural being wearing Birkenstocks—“with His Magnitude. But it’s hard for me to sing while kneeling, it’s all about breathing, you know. May I stand?”

  The vizier nodded. As Smith rose, chains rattling, he saw the Hidden Imam’s eyes glance down for the barest moment, measuring the size of Smith’s penis tucked in its matted nest of yellow hair. The old locker-room syndrome, Smith thought ruefully, even out here in a place where there were no locker rooms. He cleared his throat and decided on a whimsically comic number: “Good Old Days” from Damn Yankees.

  “Cannibals a-munchin’ a missionary luncheon”—Smith did his best to give it the old comic zing—“ha-ha-ha-ha! those were the good old days . . .”

  This is the lament of Mr. Applegate, who is the devil, for the passing of the bad old days of cannibalism, pestilence, and war, which to him, being the devil, were actually the good old days. Funny stuff. It was a song, Smith always thought, that could only have been written from the high ground of 1958, when things seemed to be getting better in the world for everyone: infectious diseases on the wane, totalitarianism on the outs, the stock market up, and America a gleaming beacon of personal liberty, excellent hygiene, frost-free refrigerators, and gigantic cars with fins that got eight miles to the gallon. Mr. Applegate would be very pleased with the way things were sliding these days.

  But this number also fell flat. The Marabouts exchanged confused looks, rustled restlessly in their djellahs.

  Al Bab sighed and spoke again at length.

  “The Gateway to the Age of the Hidden Imam, peace be upon him, does not like your singing at all,” the vizier translated.

  “Then I guess he’s not a fan of show tunes,” Smith said peevishly, crossing his arms.

  “This is an accurate statement,” the vizier conceded.

  Just then, a door opened at the back of the room and two more Marabouts entered. Before the door closed, Smith caught an intriguing glimpse of the next room: He saw a shelf crammed with books and DVDs and what looked like a shortwave radio. And, on a small table by a bowl and a spoon neatly laid out, a narrow red-and-blue box covered with garish cartoon graphics. This box was utterly familiar to Smith, and yet so alien in this context he could hardly say what it might be. Then the door closed and the identity of the thing was gone from him.

  “Someone has come looking for your colonel,” the vizier said presently; his voice sounded the serious note that all men’s voices have when they speak about money. “They have entered the souk at Laayoune, offering bribes for information concerning his whereabouts. Do you think”—he paused, stroking his thin mustache—“someone might also come to offer money for the sake of your head?”

  Smith thought about this, his skin prickling from more than the unaccustomed warmth. The Legion was looking for Phillipe! If they were looking for Phillipe, this must mean they were looking for him too! The Legion
would never abandon its lost children!

  “Of course,” Smith said, grinning. “Absolutely.”

  “Your family in America, they are rich?”

  “Very rich!” Smith said enthusiastically. And he gave them the same absurd story he’d given Kasim Vatran, way back in Istanbul: He came from a family of Iowa lumber barons, rich like Rockefeller for a hundred years. They owned lumber mills, acres of property, railroads, the entire city of Montezuma. More, they held the monopoly on all of Iowa’s vast lumber preserves.

  “Forests,” Smith said. “One-hundred-foot-tall Iowa pines. Far as the eye can see.”

  Suddenly, Al Bab shifted in his yellow chair and uttered a short, incredulous bark. He became animated briefly, jabbed his hennaed finger repeatedly in Smith’s direction, speaking rapidly in the Saharoui Berber dialect. He seemed angry. Smith’s heart sank.

  “You are a liar!” the vizier exclaimed, outraged. “There are no such forests. This place you call Iowa is much like a desert. With only”—he paused searching for the word—“many fields of corn!”

  Smith wasn’t given a chance to explain himself or make any emendations to his fantastic tale. Someone hit him from behind so hard he fell to the floor stunned. And he was dragged by his chains across the nice soft carpets and down the concrete hallway, out of the warmth of Al Bab’s comfortable pink ranch house and back into the darkness and the cold of the mountain.

  6.

  Smith awoke to the sound of Phillipe jabbering to himself and the usual lapping of cold night air on his bare feet and ass. Phillipe’s madness always intensified in the dark. Now, an odd, tuneless snatch of Satie’s Musique d’ameublement—Pom-pom-pom-pom; pom, pom, pom!—emanated from his dark corner. The colonel was mimicking the sound of his old baby grand, the piano that had kept him more or less sane through all those sleepless midnights at the Fort de Nogent. You could ask him to stop, scream at him, but it was no use. He would stop for a minute, maybe two, forget himself, and start up again.