Henry of Atlantic City

by Frederick Reuss

  Henry remembered one day when he had gone with Helena to Sy’s place. There was a big box in the middle of the room and Sy said it was an orgone accumulator and he built it himself. He said the box captured all the energy in the universe and concentrated it inside and if you sat in the box you could feel the energy. It was called orgone. Henry wanted to go inside but Sy said no. He said you had to be prepared.

  Helena laughed at Sy and said he was crazy. Sy had a book that was written by a man named Wilhelm Reich, who had invented the box and gone to prison because, Sy said, he had discovered a new level of human consciousness the same way Jesus Christ had. Sy said Reich called Christ the archetypal genital character. He said he had followed the instructions for the orgone accumulator very carefully and every day he sat in it for a little while.

  Helena asked what he did inside.

  “I work toward my full orgastic capacity.”

  “That’s disgusting,” Helena said.

  “I’m talking about orgone energy,” Sy said. “The living pulse of the universe.”

  Sy took more chocolate out of his pocket and ate some and gave a piece to Henry. Then he took out the video and put it in the VCR.

  Henry asked what the movie was.

  “Total Recall. With Arnold Schwarzenegger.”

  Henry said he had never heard of it.

  “I’m not surprised,” Sy said and gave Henry another piece of chocolate. Sy sat on the couch and Henry lay down on the floor and they watched the movie. Afterward Sy asked Henry if he liked it.

  Henry said it was all wrong.

  “How can a movie be all wrong?”

  Henry said because Schwarzenegger was not nailed to a tree in the end and the world was saved anyway. In the divided world there are those who come to know the truth and those who despise the truth because they are created by error. Error created this world and that was why Jesus had to come and ransom it back for his father by getting killed.

  “Jesus, Henry,” Sy said.

  Henry said the only lost causes are the ones who can’t rise above ignorance and see that the world they live in is a void of darkness and drunkenness and sleep and illusion.

  “Maybe you should take a break from that stuff you’ve been reading.”

  Henry asked why.

  “Because one day you might wake up and find out that all the things you’ve been saying are, well, true. Like what the guy said to Schwarzenegger when he’s in the Recall Office picking out his fantasy trip. You remember the line?”

  Henry said you get the girl, kill all the bad guys, and save the entire planet?

  “No, before that.”

  Henry said you dumb bitch, he’s just acting out the secret-agent part of his ego trip?

  “No, before that.”

  Henry said when you go Recall you get nothing but first-class memories?

  “No.”

  Henry said when you travel with Recall everything is perfect?

  “Right after that.”

  Henry said take a vacation from yourself?

  “That’s it! Take a vacation from yourself. I like that. It’s taken me thirty-nine years to figure that one out.” He ruffled Henry’s hair with his hand.

  Henry said his favorite line in the movie was I wanted him dead, you moron, or I wouldn’t have dumped him down on Earth.

  “I liked that one too. Anyway, enough movie talk. I’m hungry. What are you in the mood for?”

  Henry said nothing.

  “That won’t do, kid. What do you say we get a little room service?” Room service delivered a whole table of food and Sy ate everything and drank three bottles of beer. Henry didn’t eat anything but watched Sy as he gobbled everything up. He had been transformed from a lover of truth into a lover of food. Henry asked Sy to take him to the library.

  “We’ll do it in the morning.”

  Henry’s father came back a little while later. He unbuttoned his shirt and sat on the couch and put his feet up on the table. He looked like a bear. “You two have fun?” he asked. “What movie’d you watch?”

  “Total Recall. Henry’s a tough critic,” Sy said.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Henry wanted to see Schwarzenegger nailed to a tree in the end.”

  Henry’s father laughed and pulled Henry over onto his lap. “I don’t blame you, kid. I get sick of the good guys always winning in the end too.” Then he said it was time for bed.

  Henry didn’t go to sleep but stood at the door and listened while Sy and his father talked.

  “You telling me they bought it?” Sy was saying. “They actually believed you? Christ almighty. Now they have both our asses in a sling!”

  “Trust me, Sy. It all makes perfect sense. The story is air-fucking-tight. I’ve been over it with the old man ten times already. Tomorrow you’ll see for yourself. Just wait. Oh, and he wants me to bring Henry too.”

  “What? Henry? What the hell for?”

  “Beats me. Some kind of assurance, maybe.”

  “Assurance? For what?”

  “Fuck if I know. He’s known about Henry from the beginning. He’s got a soft spot for kids. Maybe he wants to see what kind of a family man I am. Who the hell knows?”

  “I don’t believe this. You can’t be serious. Henry’s only a kid, for Christ’s sake. You can’t mix him up in this.”

  “I got news for you, Sy. He’s already mixed up in it. Anyway, when he sees all that money we’ll both be golden.”

  “We’re bringing the money with us?”

  “Goddamn right. A Christmas present.”

  “And what if he doesn’t like how much is there?”

  “Jesus Christ! How many times do I have to explain it? I’m not going to say it again. Just wait’ll he sees the green stuff. When we hand over the cash, everything will fit in just perfectly.”

  “So you told him she was padding the numbers?”

  “One thing at a time, buddy. One thing at a time.”

  Henry went to the bed and lay down. He tried to forget himself and Byzantium and the Big Apple and everything but he couldn’t. He went to the window and looked out into the darkness of Central Park. His angel said those who have come to know themselves will enjoy their possessions.

  Henry asked the angel what happened if you had nothing to possess. He had his face pressed to the glass of the window, trying to look down at the street below.

  The angel said then the light will descend upon you and you will be clothed in it.

  Henry tried to imagine being clothed in the light but he couldn’t. He was disappointed. It was like that sometimes between divided egos and lovers of the truth.

  There was an owl in the emperor’s garden. It lived in a tree. One of the guards had the job of finding mice for it to eat. The mouse got left in the grass somewhere on the big lawn. After a while the owl swooped down and grabbed it and took it back up into the tree to eat. Life in the emperor’s garden was easy. There was a wall around it and a long, long driveway that went through some woods. There were statues and fountains and terraced gardens and springs with flowing water and gazebos. There was even a helicopter landing pad with a big red X painted across it and a swimming pool.

  “Looks like fucking East Egg,” Sy said.

  “Don’t be so nervous,” Henry’s father said as they drove up to the gate.

  “Don’t be nervous? How can I not be nervous?”

  A guard at the gate stopped them and talked into his walkie-talkie before letting them through. They drove slowly through the grounds until another guard stepped out from nowhere and pointed to where they should park the car. They got out of the car and Henry’s father opened the trunk and pulled out a big suitcase. As they walked toward the house he asked Henry if he still had the gold chain. When Henry showed it, his father put down the suitcase and picked him up and kissed him on both cheeks.

  Procopius said the emperor rarely ever left the Palace grounds except to go to the Hippodrome. He was always surrounded by people. They came from all p
arts of the empire and grew so numerous after the wars with Persia and Carthage that he ordered a special hostel built in the Palace for them to stay in. Henry had only seen the emperor once before. It was a long time ago during the Easter festival in the Forum of Constantine, where Henry and his father were supervising the slaughter of the Paschal Lambs. Justinian and Theodora were generous at Easter. They provided lambs to be roasted for all the people of Byzantium. Not just a few but thousands and not just in the Forum of Constantine but in all the public areas throughout the city. As captain of the Blues Henry’s father helped keep order during the festival. Just as the big charcoal fires over which the lamb would be cooked were being lit, Justinian entered the Forum with Belisarius, who had just returned from the war with Persia. At first nobody noticed because they were not dressed in their normal regalia or accompanied by the regular guard. They just rode into the Forum of Constantine on their horses as if they were ordinary people. It was noisy and the air was thick with smoke from the fires and everybody was watching the soldiers do the slaughtering. Henry figured it was what battle looked like. There was blood everywhere and a strong smell of viscera. The two men rode through the crowd and when somebody shouted, “Hail Justinian, emperor of Rome,” and someone else shouted, “Hail Belisarius, commander of the armies,” a cheering began that drowned out even the bleating of the doomed animals. The people pressed around the two men on all sides and the emperor and his general made their way slowly until they reached the big pit where the meat was being cooked and then one of the Blues gave them each a leg of roasted lamb. Belisarius ate his but the emperor refused because he always fasted at Easter and took nothing but water and bitter herbs for three days. They sat on their horses and watched the festival while the people cheered them. Then a detachment of the Palace guard made its way through the crowd and surrounded them and made the people stand back. That was before the Nike riots, when the Hagia Sophia was burned down, and before Belisarius was publicly disgraced and made to walk the streets of Byzantium as a beggar and when the emperor was not afraid of the people.

  They followed the guard down a long corridor lined with statues. Some statues were missing arms and some were missing heads and one was missing completely. The pedestal had a little card on it. The emperor was a great lover of antiquity.

  “You behave yourself, kid,” Henry’s father said.

  The emperor was sitting behind a big desk and was surrounded by his generals. They all looked up when Henry and his father and Sy entered the room. Henry was surprised because they were all old men and the room smelled kind of sour, like old men. The emperor motioned for everybody to be seated. He beckoned Henry to come to him. Henry walked around behind the desk and the emperor leaned forward in his chair and whispered into Henry’s ear. “Do you love your father?” he asked. He turned his head so Henry could answer.

  Henry whispered into the emperor’s ear who is he that exists except the Father alone?

  The emperor looked across his desk at the room full of men and smiled. Then he picked Henry up and sat him on his knee. He was much stronger than he looked. He swiveled in his chair so their backs were to the men in the room and they were looking out the window over the beach. The waves crashed silently in the distance and outside it was cold and gray December. The emperor stroked the back of Henry’s head. “Tell me, son. Should I believe what your father has come here to tell me? Is he telling the truth?” One of the generals sneezed and blew his nose. Without turning around Henry knew it was Sittas the Thracian because he had a cold he could never get rid of. He had caught it in the mountains when he was trying to persuade the Armenians to leave their mountain homes and become part of the empire.

  Henry cupped both his hands over the emperor’s shaggy ear and said if we know the truth, we shall find the fruits of the truth in us; if we unite with it, it will bring our fulfillment.

  The emperor was quiet for a long time and kept stroking the back of Henry’s head. The generals were getting restless. Then the emperor whispered in Henry’s ear, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

  Henry cupped both hands over the emperor’s ear again and said a saint.

  The emperor laughed and then he lifted Henry off his lap and told him to go sit down. Then he swiveled around so he was facing the men in the room. “Okay, gentlemen. What have you brought me?”

  Germanus leaned forward in his chair. “How about the whole story?” he said in a low voice. Germanus had married an Anicii. The Aniciis came to Byzantium from Rome after it was conquered by the Ostrogoths. They were about as old and noble as families that could still call themselves Romans got and Theodora hated Germanus and his wife because they were aristocratic and rich whereas she had once been an actress who took off her clothes on stage and people knew what she looked like naked. Everybody knew that Theodora hated them only because she was jealous and they were never welcome in the Palace, which suited them just fine because they hated being anywhere near the rabble. People called Germanus the Grand Seigneur because he dressed in fancy clothes and spoke in a fancy way and had estates and palaces all over the empire.

  “There’s not much to say,” Sy said slowly. “Except that I was asked to carry some money out of the country.”

  “What were your exact instructions?” Germanus asked.

  “To deposit the cash and return with the deposit slip.”

  “Which bank?”

  “ICCB. The International Commerce and Credit Bank.”

  “Did you ask why?”

  “No.”

  “Did you have any idea yourself?”

  “I assumed it was a tax thing.”

  “A tax thing,” Germanus said. “What were you offered for helping out with this tax thing?”

  “Two percent.”

  “And what did that come to?” Germanus asked.

  “A little over sixty thousand dollars.”

  “So the total sum of the deposit would have been a little over three million?”

  “That’s correct,” Sy said.

  Germanus didn’t look satisfied with Sy’s answers and clasped his hands together with his fingers pointing up and put them to his lips like he was trying to wedge something between his front teeth.

  “That’s a nice little fee for taking a trip to the Bahamas,” Solomon said. Solomon had been Belisarius’s chief of staff in the Carthage expedition where the Arian Vandals were defeated and Gelimer, their king, was brought back to Byzantium in chains and made to walk in procession through the streets of the city. As he walked he looked around him and said, “O vanity of vanities, all is vanity,” and when he reached the imperial box in the Hippodrome he was forced to prostrate himself before Justinian and Theodora. Solomon was from Daras in Mesopotamia and had a high, squeaky voice because he was a eunuch. He said it had happened in battle but everybody else said it had happened in a brothel in Tyre when he was asleep. The woman who did it to him was angry because he refused to take her back to Byzantium with him. As punishment she had her breasts cut oft and the joke among the soldiers was a ball for a tit but anyone caught telling it had his head cut off, which gave rise to even more jokes.

  “What made you change your mind and bring us the money instead?” Solomon asked.

  “I didn’t change my mind,” Sy said. “I was told there was going to be a change of plan.”

  “Oh? You mean someone told you that you weren’t really going to steal three million dollars after all? Is that it?”

  “I wasn’t told anything. I was just doing what I was told.”

  “Did you have any ideas about what you were involved in?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what did you think it was?”

  “Embezzlement.”

  Germanus lifted his fingers away from his lips. “We understand that. The question is by whom.”

  “I didn’t want to know about it. I was just doing what I was told.”

  “You weren’t even curious?” Solomon asked.

  “No. I figured th
at kind of stuff was par for the course.”

  “Par for the course?” Solomon asked. “You telling me you think embezzlement is par for the course?”

  “Let’s just say that once I was asked, it never occurred to me to say no.”

  “Why not?” Germanus asked.

  “Because I figured once I was asked, no was not an option.” He smiled in a funny way, as if to say he’d made a joke. But nobody laughed. “It wasn’t until the airport when everything got explained to me that I realized I was in deep shit. And I then I really knew I didn’t have any options.”

  “Mind explaining that?”

  “Look, there I am waiting in the airport with a suitcase full of cash, okay? And suddenly here comes the chief of security and tells me I can cooperate with him or I can kiss my ass good-bye. Those were the exact words. I thought I was dead meat.”

  “So you went along with him?”

  “Of course I went along with him,” Sy said. “What else was I supposed to do?”

  John Troglita cleared his throat and spoke for the first time. “You say he caught up to you at the airport?”

  “Half an hour before my flight.”

  John Troglita was also called John the Troglite. He was famous for his bad temper and was a specialist in search-and-destroy missions and punitive expeditions. The emperor had sent him to Africa to clean up after Belisarius’s victory. He had carried out the emperor’s orders by depopulating the place. Some people said he was insane but everyone agreed he was a great military man and there was even a long poem about him written by a Carthaginian schoolmaster that nobody read anymore.

  “So at the airport you just decided to drop everything and follow this new plan. That was it?” John the Troglite asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “He told you that you were helping to lay a trap?”

  “Yes.”

  “Describe the trap.”

  “It seemed pretty straightforward. Instead of taking the money out of the country, we would bring it directly to you. The story back at the Palace would be that I had stolen it. We’d give her time to doctor the books, then the money would be returned and she’d be exposed.”

  Henry’s father stood up and put the suitcase down on the emperor’s desk and turned it around and flipped it open so the emperor could see what was inside.