Zeitgeist

by Bruce Sterling

  “Wait till I make ’em cover themselves with mud.”

  Zeta giggled.

  “Honey, you promised not to laugh. If you have to laugh, you’re gonna have to go lock yourself in the rental car.”

  “I’ll be okay, Dad. Can I have some more granola now?”

  After some considerable time Starlitz returned to the meticulously groomed prayer site. “Now, I’m sure you’ve all been wondering—what about myself? Am I sufficiently pure for this ritual? Is my own heart pure? Is my own soul pure? Well, of course you are not pure! All those clothes you wear are twentieth-century products! They must be destroyed. Into the fire with them!”

  “But what’ll we wear back to the house?”

  “Be more trust,” Starlitz barked, ad-libbing. He returned to his prepared script. “You must cover yourselves completely with this sacred Waialua red earth. I can’t be responsible for the consequences if you leave any patch of skin exposed to the unearthly forces.”

  When he returned again, the devotees were naked and smeared with mud. It was rather pleasant mud, actually. The effect could feel quite soothing. Starlitz himself had donned a feather cloak, a bark-and-grass breechclout, and a towering Hawaiian tribal helmet, all from a local crafts store.

  “The moment approaches,” he intoned. “You seem to be naked and pure now. But you’ve forgotten one thing. Do you know what that is?”

  The Japanese muttered among themselves at some length. They were clueless.

  “Your contact lenses! They are alien devices, and in your ignorance you are gazing through them at this very moment, while you cannot see them! I will now circulate among you to remove and store these contaminants.”

  After half blinding the audience, Starlitz closed in on Makoto, with a tom-tom dragged from the underbrush. “Here you go, man. You’ve got a central shamanic role here. Start it up with the ritual drumming.”

  Makoto blinked myopically and thumped experimentally at the taut leather skin. “Hey! This drum is a cheap piece of shit!”

  “That is hand-cut wood, Makoto. Natural leather and blood for glue. You think New Guinea tribesmen are gonna tune a drum to middle C? That is a totally natural musical instrument, so of course it’s a piece of shit! Get after it, man, play the moment, play what you feel.”

  Smoke gathered as the sun set, with tropical speed. A spectral oozing of dry ice began to curl along the ground. From her concealed position Zeta yanked long silent threads attached to various limbs and bushes. The outskirts of the clearing swiftly came alive with uncanny presences. The mud-smeared Japanese, reduced to the filthy, half-starved condition of the world’s last Stone Age tribe, were utterly petrified.

  Starlitz adjusted his headdress and feather cape. Then he led Barbara, naked like everyone else, to her central wooden pedestal.

  “I’m so scared,” she hissed.

  “Sit here in lotus position. Be calm. Rise above.”

  “But I’m naked! And I gained five kilos.”

  “That’s Makoto playing, isn’t it? You’re giving Makoto his heart’s desire. Just be magic.”

  Starlitz made his final arrangements. Then he clapped his hands. The drumming rose to a crescendo. “Good-bye, cruel world,” he said.

  The pedestal vanished.

  There were cries of awestruck wonder. Barbara lifted her shapely arms, white hands unfolding like a pair of calla lilies. She was a trans-Pacific boddhisattva, floating on a cloud of fire.

  The torches shot sparks and died. In the double gust of bright and dark Barbara sank gently to earth. Starlitz rushed forward at once, brandishing a second cape.

  He wrapped her up and delivered her to the crowd.

  “Was I magic?” she muttered.

  “Don’t ask me. Ask your public.”

  And her public wept. They believed in her, completely, every one.

  THE PUBLIC WADED INTO THE WAIALUA TO WASH THEMSELVES free of red mud. Starlitz thoughtfully produced a dozen sets of shorts, T-shirts, and zoris. Trembling with hunger and amazement, the celebrants hiked a quarter mile downriver. A previously prepared set of taxis were waiting there, meters ticking and headlights blazing. The cars took the crowd back to the mansion grounds, where Starlitz had seen to it that a roaring, fully catered luau was already in progress. He knew they would welcome it. They were freaked, munchie-stricken, and starving.

  Working alone by the hearty glow of two big magnum flashlights, Starlitz and Zeta put out the bonfires, gathered up all the doctored tiki torches, shoveled in the stage hole under the fake pedestal, removed every one of the ropes, strings, and hinges, smashed the large stage mirrors to bits with a ball peen hammer, shoved the whole mess of wreckage into a heavy-duty drawstring canvas bag, and threw it all into the bottom of a ravine. Then they drove their hidden rental car to a cheap hotel room in Princeville, where they bought some Chinese takeout and a fifth of Kentucky bourbon.

  Later, bloated with pale shrimp-fried rice and wontons, Zeta picked at the laces of her soaping shoes, in front of the silent, flickering cable TV. “Dad, why do you have to drink that whiskey stuff?”

  “In Hawaii it’s cheaper than the gasoline.” Starlitz was tired.

  “Is she really magic, Dad? She sure looked magic. She’s like a goddess.”

  Starlitz looked at his child wearily, and stirred himself. Nobody else was going to be able to tell her the truth. He owed it to her. She was just a little kid. “Honey, we scammed them. It was a confidence trick. But in pop that is the legitimate method. As the great Eno declares in one of his many sacred works, pop music doesn’t work on any lame fine-arts model where inspired individual genius presents a masterpiece to an inert public. Pop is very popular. All important changes in the pop world are created by little scenes of people, blindly conspiring with their circumstances, to create something cool that they can’t understand.” He had a long chug of bourbon. “Eno said it, I believe it, and that oughta be good enough for us.”

  “So Barbara can’t really fly, right?”

  “Look, that doesn’t matter. Really. That’s just not the point.”

  Zeta scowled. “I still don’t get it, Dad.”

  “Then I’ll put it another way, okay? Those people are hippies! As long as they think that the cops and the priests don’t approve of it, they’ll believe anything! They’ll swallow any loony, irrational crap you want to hand them.”

  Zeta tied the loose lace of her soaping shoe and climbed up on the hotel bed. “Well, let me try, Dad. I think I can float in midair.” She began energetically jumping up and down on the hotel bed.

  “That’s a cheap bed, honey. Don’t do that.”

  “Look at me, I’m soaping, Dad.” Zeta screeched along the metal edge of the bedframe, poised on one foot. “Look, Dad, I’m moon-walking.”

  “Give it a rest.”

  “I’m not tired! Ha ha ha!” Zeta jumped up onto the headboard with a violent crash. “You can’t catch me, Dad!”

  Starlitz scowled. “You heard me! Don’t make me come over there.”

  Zeta flung herself like a dandelion seed to the top of the window frame. She slid along the top of the window, spun slowly across the ceiling, and fetched up light as a cobweb, in the corner of the ceiling. “Can’t catch me! You can’t come over! You can’t get me down! Look, Dad, I’m being impossible! Ha ha ha!”

  “Zeta, you’re getting all worked up.”

  “Look, I’m flying in midair! Ha ha ha!”

  More in sorrow than anger Starlitz reached into his bag and produced a throwaway camera. “Zeta, come down from there! Don’t make me use this.”

  Head inverted and pigtails dangling, Zeta began jumping up and down on the ceiling. Hard. Plaster cracked and fell like chunks of macaroni. Starlitz lifted the camera, aimed the lens. Light flashed. Zeta tumbled to the hotel floor with a shattering crash. She began shrieking in pain and rage, clutching her bruised knees and rolling back and forth histrionically.

  It had been a long day for both of them.

  EVEN AFT
ER ZETA HAD FALLEN INTO A TWITCHING sleep, Starlitz found himself jet-lagged and detached from all comfort. The room smelled funny. Why was he drunk now, in some shitty hotel, stinking of smoke and bone weary, in the middle of Paradise? He could feel heartburn gas from bad moo goo gai pan. Maybe it was a clogged artery. A hot little corroded wire of visceral weariness there. A small but lethal promise of future coronary misbehavior. He was exhausted, he’d had too many cigs.

  Maybe this had nothing to do with anything in Hawaii. Something had gone wrong with him. With the room; with the town; with the island; with the planet, with the universe. There was a very bad vibe loose somewhere. There was no escaping it; he could feel it rolling in from some stinking rim of the cosmos. He could smell it. The neon sun sinks in a sharp chlorine smell of junk. The vacant rooms and rubble and the chemical gardens … the cold blue pool … eyes upturned to last cold bubbles, lipstick like iced grease … Bad needle jones …

  Starlitz reached for the phone and dialed.

  “Shtoh vy khoteti?”

  “Viktor? It’s Lekhi Starlits.”

  “Are you in Cyprus?”

  “No. I’m in Hawaii.”

  “Hawaii? TV police thriller? Dark-haired man, many car chases, villains, handguns?”

  “Yeah, no, maybe. About the band, Viktor.”

  “Can you get me a green card?”

  “Viktor, has something happened to the band?”

  “Oh. Yeah.” Viktor smacked his lips. “One of them died.”

  “Yeah, you told me that. The French One.”

  “Who, her? No, now the Italian One’s dead.”

  “You’re kidding. The Italian One’s dead?”

  “Facedown in a hotel pool. Drugs, swimming … the usual.”

  “Where is the band now? Where is Ozbey?”

  “Mehmet Ozbey is in Istanbul. He’s training a new Italian One. His Albanian Muslim emigré Italian One.”

  Starlitz groaned. “Is your uncle around? Put him on the line.”

  “What are you, drunk? You sound drunk! My uncle’s still dead, Lekhi. He was in a Belgrade air base on the first night of NATO strikes. Remember?”

  “He’s not dead.”

  “Even if Pulat Romanevich was alive you couldn’t talk to him. NATO is blowing up all the power plants and telephones, in a corrupt assault against a sovereign socialist nation.”

  “Forget about it. Air strikes always look better on paper than they do when you blow up real phones.”

  “Even if my uncle was alive, and the Yugoslav phones were working, my uncle wouldn’t talk to you, because my uncle would be heroically engaged in defending the democratically elected president of a Slavic nation, Slobodan Milosevic.”

  “Tell it to Zhirinovsky, kid. How many missions have the Yugo Air Force been flying against NATO? I’ve been a little out of touch.”

  “Not very many,” Viktor admitted.

  “Then our flying ace is probably not very dead,” said Starlitz.

  Zeta sat up in bed. “Who is that, Dad? Is it my mom?”

  “No.”

  Zeta sniffled sulkily. Her face looked drawn and wan. “I want to talk to my mom.”

  “Last I heard of Vanna, she was in Cyprus. I’m calling Cyprus now.”

  “Is it about the band?”

  “Yup.”

  “Is G-7 gonna die, Dad?”

  “No, no, the band does great. It’s just the girls that are gonna die.”

  “You have to save them, Dad.”

  “Why should I do that?”

  “I don’t know why. But you have to, Dad. You just have to save them.”

  STARLITZ WENT BACK TO THE MANSION TO CADGE SOME money from Makoto. Makoto wasn’t taking visitors. Instead, Starlitz was corralled by a staffer, who followed his orders and took Starlitz and Zeta to meet Barbara.

  Barbara was lounging in the garden in a McDonough plyboo lawn-chair. She was overseeing the staffers as they languidly ripped up the mutant rosebushes.

  “What a nice little girl,” Barbara said, looking down at Zeta in her logoed tank top and pedal pushers.

  “Mahalo,” Zeta said. “Can I have some of that coconut milk? It smells great!”

  Barbara languidly beckoned another staffer and had her take Zeta to the kitchen.

  “Makoto’s laying down some studio tracks today,” Barbara told him. “He’s not seeing anybody. Especially you.”

  “Makoto’s not all freaked out or anything, is he?”

  “No … but we never did get our contact lenses sorted properly.”

  Starlitz said nothing.

  “Am I cursed now?” Barbara said. “Makoto said I was supernatural. Did I go too far? Am I doomed now?”

  Starlitz shrugged. “No more than anybody else.”

  “Was I really magic? Is that the real truth?”

  “The truth is that you’re an idol, Barbara.”

  “He’s not happy,” Barbara said, lower lip trembling. “We have little idol problems, sometimes.”

  “Look, you’re shacked up with a crazy musician, babe. Get over it.”

  “I’m an idol. Is he going to break me?”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “He’s going to break me, isn’t he? He always wants me to read those stupid books of his where perfect women die.”

  “I guess Makoto could break you, but no, I’m pretty sure he won’t.”

  “Then will he leave me? For some other goddess?” Barbara pursed her lips below the sunglasses.

  “Yeah, he’ll leave you. When you bury him. Then he’ll be gone a long, long time.”

  “But not for some other goddess.”

  “No.”

  “Well.” She seemed much happier now.

  “Look, Barbara, stop fretting. The situation has advantages, okay? Makoto doesn’t see you getting old. He doesn’t see you changing at all. Because he never fuckin’ saw you in the first place. He can only see the magic.” Starlitz drew a breath. “People love idols because of the stars in front of their own eyes. Your boyfriend is your biggest fan. It’s a drag in some ways, but live with it.”

  “I always have to live on a pedestal.”

  “Yeah, sure, but just till he’s dead.”

  Barbara scratched at her cheek.

  “Think about that. You’re doing hula aerobics three times a week, while Mr. Ukelele Boy is in there chowing on Spam and huffing pakalolo unfiltereds. There’s only one end to that story line. The odds say you outlive Makoto by twenty, twenty-five years. Then you get everything, whatever’s left. No more idol. No more crowds. So then it’s just you. A little old lady. No sex appeal, no flashbulbs, no wolf whistles, no encores. When you’re an old woman with lots of money of your own, it’s a very different life. There’s not a man on earth that can tell you to do a damned thing—men don’t give you orders anymore, because men don’t even notice you. That’s when you come totally into your own. Whatever you are, whoever you are, under there.”

  “That’s my future? They say you can tell the future.”

  “Give me your hand, to make sure.” Hiding a yawn, Starlitz looked cursorily into the lines of her palm. “Oh, yeah. That’s it, all right.”

  Barbara pulled her hand back and rubbed it uneasily. “I’ll have to think about that.”

  “Yeah, I would advise that. Think pretty hard. It’s way hard to become yourself when you’ve been pleasing other people all your life.”

  Barbara gazed at the garden. The conversation was taxing her heavily. “I hate these evil roses. They’re the future, but they’re not my future. I’m glad I killed them all.”

  Starlitz nodded silently.

  Barbara caught his eye. “If I give you some money, would you go away, and not come back here for a long, long time?”

  ON THEIR ARRIVAL AT ATATURK INTERNATIONAL IN Istanbul, Ozbey had them met by a government limo. The leather upholstery had been smoothed sleek by the rumps of high-ranking Turkish bureaucrats. It reeked of chain smoking and generous three-raki lunches.
r />   Zeta flung her G-7 backpack on the limo’s floor and slumped fitfully behind the nicotine-yellowed lace curtains.

  Worn out from repeated jet flights, Starlitz stared murkily out his curtained window.

  So it was back to Istanbul, finally. He’d never meant to spend so much time here. The place had a fatal attraction for him. It had been so much stronger than he was, so far beyond his ability to help. The city was neck deep, chin deep, nose deep, in the darkest sumps of history. Istanbul was the unspoken capital of many submerged empires: it had called itself Byzantium, Vizant, Novi Roma, Anthusa, Tsargrad, Constantinople.…

  Stuck in dense Turkish traffic, their driver clicked on his radio and began to curse a soccer game. The variant districts of Galata, Pera, Beshiktas, and Ortakoy inched beyond the bumpers. It was the Moslem London, the Islamic New York, crammed neighborhoods of millions with as much regional variety as Bloomsbury or The Bronx.

  Istanbul. Crumbling ivy-grown Byzantine aqueducts with Turkish NO PARKING signs. Smog-breathing streetside vendors with ring-shaped breadrolls on sticks. Rubber-tired yellow bulldozers parked under the carved stone eaves of mosques.

  Tourist-trap nightclubs featuring potbellied Ukrainian dancers. Vast sunshine-yellow billboards imploring bored Turkish housewives to learn English. Cash-card bank machines in prefab kiosks, built to mimic minarets. Pudding shops. Chestnut trees. Spotted wild dogs of premedieval lineage on their timeless garbage patrol.

  Istanbul had more vitality than Sofia, or Belgrade, or Baghdad. Despite its best efforts, the twentieth century had not been able to beat the place down. Istanbul had lost its capitalship, but Istanbul had always walked on its own sore feet. It had not been crushed, conquered, and carpet bombed, it had never been forced to exist at the sufferance of others.

  This had everything to do with the scary omnipresence of Turkey’s own native version of the Twentieth Century Personified. He was a bizarre, anomalous entity self-named Kemal Atatürk. He was a jackbooted, pistol-packing generalissimo. He had founded the Turkish Republic, kicked out the pashas, shot the Greeks dead in heaps on the battlefield, given Turkey a new name, a new alphabet, new constitution, a new flag. He was a Moslem Mussolini who made the local trains run, but somehow, miraculously, refused to debase himself with fascist crap.