“I don’t think they have indoor plumbing in Courteguay,” said one reporter who declined the assignment. “In order to eat, you probably have to pick mangos off the ground and wash them yourself, besides haven’t they just changed governments again? There are likely to be mortar shells exploding in the streets, and excitable snipers in the palms. Send someone who’s feeling suicidal.”
Though the Gringo Journalist was not feeling suicidal, he was the lowest of the low; he didn’t have the luxury of refusal. He took whatever assignment was thrown his way.
The actual trip to Courteguay turned out to be a disappointment. The Gringo Journalist, and the dozen or so press people on the tour, saw virtually nothing of interest. They were housed at an adequate beachfront hotel, the beach being on Lake Verde, a man-made lake that was filled with trash and smelled putrid. They were taken on tours of downtown San Barnabas, shown the Presidential Palace, from the outside only, taken for a drive through sugarcane fields, shown through an evil-smelling sugar processing plant, given a souvenir bottle of El Presidente Pure Cane Syrup, and taken to a night club featuring a marimba band, limbo dancers, and a fire-baton twirler. They were not allowed to go anywhere unescorted.
While the other reporters enjoyed the holiday and the free liquor, the Gringo Journalist was observing everything carefully. He concluded that things were not as tranquil as the ever-smiling Director of Tourism would like them to believe.
The only interesting information he had learned before the excursion came from a senior sports reporter at the Post.
“For the size of the place,” he said, “they produce a hell of a lot of good baseball players.”
The Gringo Journalist asked the Director of Tourism if he might take in a baseball game. He had seen a baseball stadium in downtown San Barnabas, although the tour had passed by it without a word from the tour guide; he had been able to translate the sign in front of it as St. Ann Mother of Mary Stadium.
“I’m afraid that will not be possible,” the white-suited Director of Tourism told him, “the baseball season is not in operation at the moment.”
The Gringo Journalist noticed too that the Courteguayan coat of arms, which featured crossed baseball bats, one filed to the thinness and sharpness of a sword, had been removed from the crown of the pith helmets of the stoic, white-uniformed palace guards. His questions about the fatigue-clad, submachine-gun-toting soldiers who seemed to always lurk on the edges of the tourist areas went unanswered.
“Leave well enough alone,” a colleague told him. “We’re on a freebee. Drink the liquor, enjoy the women. Keep your nose clean.”
HE HEARD A PERSISTENT RUMOR that a wizard with many names had written a novel in which a certain Dr. Lucius Noir was a character, the incarnation of evil, and that eventually the character had come to life and was now wreaking havoc in Courteguay. When the junket returned to America, while his colleagues wrote puff pieces for the travel page on Courteguay the Beautiful, the Gringo Journalist begged a senior editor for travel money to investigate Dr. Noir’s American school days.
By agreeing to relieve a senior editor of a particularly repugnant feature on an aging movie star’s latest marriage, this time to a sixteen-year-old pool boy, the Gringo Journalist was rewarded with a travel voucher and expense money to visit Davenport, Iowa.
He had to change planes three times to get from Washington, D.C., to Davenport, Iowa, but the trip proved to be well worth his while.
The first thing that the Gringo Journalist learned was that Dr. Noir did not graduate from the chiropractic school there.
“He was a difficult and only marginally motivated student,” the public relations director of the school said, choosing her words very carefully.
She was able to produce a photograph of Dr. Noir as an undergraduate, his shining black face centered by the slightly convex surgical mask.
“He seemed more interested in perfecting his English than in learning the intricacies of chiropractic treatment,” the public relations person went on, fingering Dr. Noir’s file, keeping it well on her side of the desk where the Gringo Journalist could not peek at it, even though, as a reporter, he had taught himself to be an expert at reading upside down.
“Exactly how close did he come to graduating?” asked the Gringo Journalist.
“He was only here for two semesters.”
“Then he has no right to call himself Dr. Noir?”
“Not insofar as this school is concerned. I imagine that in Courteguay he can call himself anything he wishes.”
“How were his grades?”
The public relations person shifted the file closer to her body.
“They were somewhat less than satisfactory,” she said.
“I wonder if I might get the names and addresses of some of the students who attended at the same time as Dr. Noir?”
“Since that information is a matter of public record, I see no harm in it. I’ll have our alumni center provide you with a list of current addresses.”
The Gringo Journalist found that most of his other inquiries drew blanks. Senior staff members were unavailable for interviews, or simply referred him back to the public relations person.
“Well, now, the black boy with the breathing mask,” said a retired professor of about seventy, with a fringe of white hair like frosting. The Gringo Journalist had tracked him down at his home.
“Lucius was what he called himself. Always alone. Not many blacks in Davenport. Folks don’t know what to make of them. Ordered his hamburgers raw. ‘Toast the bread, please,’ he’d say real polite like, ‘but leave the meat uncooked. Fried meat is very bad for my asthma, please.’ He was always polite, kind of bowed when he spoke, but his eyes were bubbling. I never saw so much hate in one man’s eyes.”
One of Dr. Noir’s classmates who had gone on to graduate, was, the Gringo Journalist discovered, employed at the University Hospital in Iowa City, some sixty miles west of Davenport. He bought her lunch in the hospital cafeteria.
“I remember him well,” said Patsy Akimoto, “since we were both foreign students we were teamed together on a lab project in our first year. The main thing I discovered was that Lucius was not a humanitarian.”
“How do you mean?” asked the Gringo Journalist, dipping into some pale gruel that was supposed to be corn soup.
“I think virtually all of us in chiropractic school were there because we wanted to help people, use our knowledge to relieve pain. Some of us wanted to make more money than others, but regardless, to be in medicine one has to have certain humanitarian instincts.
“Lucius Noir was there because he wanted to learn to hurt and cripple people. He told me he couldn’t wait to get back to his homeland and start dislocating joints and snapping vertebrae.”
“He was a rolling ball of butcher knives,” said a student who had known him slightly, “with a neck size that would qualify him for the Guinness Book of Records. He was smart when he wanted to be. Told me he’d read his file in the registrar’s office and that his IQ was 131, which put him in the top two percent of the world population. But he was the meanest son of a bitch I’ve ever known.
“When he wanted something nothing could stop him from getting it, but if he didn’t care he’d fail a course without a second thought. There is a story I heard from a Haitian who was a patient here for a few days, a story of Lucius Noir entering some kind of footrace, maybe in the Courteguayan military, a race it was very important for him to win. They say he was losing by a few strides, but at the last second he pulled a razor-sharp knife, or a small machete, and sliced off the tip of his left little finger and tossed it across the finish line. After a lot of debate he was declared the winner.”
The Gringo Journalist imparted what he had learned in an article titled “The American Education of Dr. Noir.” The article earned him an audience with an associate editor, who stated that the Gringo Journalist would be hired on a full-time basis when his internship was completed. The associate editor also presented the Gringo
Journalist with an American Express card in the name of the newspaper, and gave him ninety days to continue his research into the life and times of Dr. Lucius Noir.
FORTY-NINE
AN EXCERPT FROM A CHAPTER OF A NOVEL WRITTEN BY THE WIZARD
“Anyone can write a novel,” said the Wizard. “Especially me. If I can turn myself into a dewdrop, see the world through the eyes of a yellow-tufted cockatoo, inhabit a bullet as it speeds death toward enemy lines, why should I not be able to tell a simple story?”
The excerpt:
In a fetid alley in Port-au-Prince a wild-haired whore, smelling of sweat, cheap perfume and rum, locked her legs about the huge longshoreman who clasped her buttocks in his great hands and thrust himself into her. The longshoreman had a head big as a pumpkin, and a machete scar from eye to chin on his left side. The whore’s eyes glinted like broken glass in the moonlit alley.
When he was satisfied, the longshoreman, who wore a permanent and ferocious scowl, pushed the whore against the wall, ripped off her flimsy top, and reclaimed the small fee she had charged for her services. When she shrilled curses at him, he slapped her hard, leaving her sitting dazedly in the filth of the alley. The longshoreman lumbered drunkenly away.
An appropriate time later the whore, Regalia Noir, gave birth in a charity ward to a baby boy she named Lucius. She didn’t want the baby, but it was her lot in life. She stared down at the baby’s stolid, frying-pan face. She saw nothing there; she no longer remembered the longshoreman. Worse things had happened to her since she became pregnant. The baby’s black pupils stared up at her, hatred boiling like eels in those wounded eyes.
MEANWHILE, IN A FETID ALLEY in Port-au-Prince, a wild-haired whore smelling of sweat, cheap perfume and.…
FIFTY
THE GRINGO JOURNALIST
In a story done by 60 Minutes on Dr. Noir, the opening lines spoken by correspondent Ed Bradley were “Many people surmise that it would take a fiction writer to create a character like Dr. Lucius Noir, Dictator of Courteguay, so strange is his story.”
What Ed Bradley didn’t know, and 60 Minutes didn’t find out, was that Dr. Noir was indeed created by a fiction writer. That writer, using the name Jorge Blanco, had submitted a manuscript to a well-known Spanish publisher in Florida. The publisher rejected the manuscript, praising the quality of the writing but stating that the idea of such an ugly, deformed, evil villain, a man who, trained as a chiropractor, used his talent to torture and maim his enemies, would not be accepted by readers. They said that Mr. Blanco had a wild and violent imagination, as well as genuine talent as a storyteller, and that they would be happy to look at any future novels he might care to submit.
FIFTY-ONE
MILAN GARZA
It is very quiet here inside my crystal-domed coffin. Not that I cannot move about freely. Although I am very dead it is not as terrible as it ought to be. I spend a great deal of my day in the gardens of the Hall of Baseball Immortals. The eleven national flowers of Courteguay bloom in abundance. Of course no one can see me. I too always assumed, when I was alive, that while the dead are buried in coffins, or stuffed in drawers at mausoleums, or burned to a crisp like the Sunday roast, that their essence does not move about at will.
On the flagstone patio, I sit across the table from the Director of the Museum while he enjoys his morning coffee. I would like coffee too, but the essence of me can do little more than inhale the beautiful fumes. I always drank my coffee black. I hate to see the Director stir three spoons of sugar into perfectly flavorful coffee. I often tip his hand, sending a spoonful of sugar into his saucer or across the table. This has happened often enough that the Director thinks he is developing a weakness in his right hand. Often, as he is about to take a drink, my will pushes against his elbow and coffee spills down his chin splattering onto his expensive suit and camellia-white shirt.
There are barriers, like electric fields that keep me from exiting the Hall of Baseball Immortals. I cannot get to my enemy, Dr. Noir. I cannot even do much to him when he visits the Hall, as he does on ceremonial occasions. I can tell that in his heart he hates baseball, though he mouths platitudes, smiles his oil slick smile, as some anniversary is celebrated that has brought American media to Courteguay, perhaps someone new inducted for their exploits on the field.
Once, as he was cutting a crimson ribbon to inaugurate a new addition to the Hall, I tried to influence the cutting of the ribbon, hoped to make him amputate a finger or two, or at least wound himself. But his bulk was like iron, my pressure on his elbow went unacknowledged, even if it was felt, which I believe it was, for he glanced at the arm that was experiencing a life of its own, frowned, stiffened his arm with resolve, and went on with the dedication.
FIFTY-TWO
QUITA GARZA
“I want to see my father’s grave,” Quita said one evening. “Until now I have been unable to afford travel to the capital, or admission to the Courteguayan Hall of Baseball Immortals, where, it is said, lie the taxidermied bodies of many baseball heroes. But with the money Julio sends me I cannot only afford admission but bus fare to San Barnabas and a new dress.” She tossed her wild hair back from her face, and smiled at Fernandella, daring her to oppose the plan.
Quita’s memories of Milan Garza were vague, she had trouble distinguishing her actual memories from events she had been told about. She recalled a large, lovable stranger who took her by the hands and swung her in ever-widening circles in the magnificent garden behind their many-pillared home. In those childhood days Milan Garza had been a baseball superstar in America, revered like a god in Courteguay, wealthy beyond imagination. But had that giant of a man who disappeared for months at a time been the same man who had cuddled her in his arms and played dolls with her in that same riotously beautiful garden, pouring tea for them, eating pretend cookies, and helping her tuck her dolls in for an afternoon nap?
Why had Milan Garza, one of the richest men in Courteguay, soon after his baseball career ended, decided to oppose Dr. Lucius Noir for the Presidency for Life and even lobbied for and promised the people democratic elections? Her father had used his great wealth to start his own political party. He called it the Party of God and Baseball and of course received the immediate blessing of the church, however valueless it might be, for what else could they do? And since baseball was the passion of Courteguay, who could vote against baseball?
“I will show you your grandfather,” said Quita to the gentle swelling of her belly. She had told Julio in her last letter, “I am slowly filling with our son. He was conceived among the butterflies, he will be born the day you arrive home from the baseball wars, he will wait for you.”
Julio was overjoyed, though he told no one but Esteban of his joy. As the father of a son he would truly be a man. Fathering a son was more important to Julio than all the shutouts pitched in the history of baseball.
ON A SUNNY MORNING, after a breakfast of guava juice, grits, and pheasant breast with mango sauce, Quita set out for the capital. She wore white sandals, her new sun-yellow frock patterned with white daisies, and carried a reed basket-purse bright as a tropical bird. Quita crammed herself into the grumbling bus that spewed thick black fumes. There were boxes and crates of live goats and chickens tied to the roof. The bus was so crowded that people hung from the windows like decorations. A small, terrified dog nuzzled Quita’s ankle. At the next stop a dozen more people forced their way inside, a few more were pulled in via the windows, the black fumes followed the passengers, making the air thick and stifling.
In the city Quita asked directions to the Hall of Baseball Immortals and after a short walk found herself in front of a half-moon-shaped building with a fountain in front and in the fountain a statue of a baseball player swinging a handful of bats. Water poured out of the business end of each bat, out of the eyes, ears, mouth, and nose of the baseball player. There was a ten guilermo admission charge, which Quita was proud to be able to afford.
“I am the daughter of Milan Garza. I have come t
o see my father,” she told the sleepily insolent clerk who ignored her and went back to dozing, after pushing a brightly colored ticket at her.
But as soon as Quita had entered the quiet, air-conditioned display area, the clerk picked up her telephone and pressed a single digit that had been circled in red on the face of the phone. When it was answered, she spoke the words, “Quita Garza,” into the mouthpiece and hung up, her sleepy expression gone, her black eyes now bright with greed.
The inside of the Hall of Baseball Immortals was an open expanse, full of glass cases displaying memorabilia, the walls lined with photographs. In the cases were autographed baseballs, old uniforms, baseball cleats, stories from the world press on the exploits of Courteguayan players. There were also some unusual items. In a glass bottle was the poisonous insect that had bitten the middle finger of Cedeno Crispo’s pitching hand, eventually causing the finger to be amputated at the first joint, the amputated finger allowing Crispo to put a peculiar spin on the ball, turning him from an average minor league player to a two-time twenty-game winner for the Philadelphia Phillies. Beside the insect in another jar was a small black thing resting on a piece of cream-colored velvet that purported to be the amputated piece of finger. Quita shuddered.
In a nearby alcove Quita found an enclosed statue of a baseball player, a batter in full swing, a man she recognized from childhood as her father’s occasional teammate Javier Porto de Legre, a utility infielder for a few seasons with a number of teams, mainly at the Triple A level.
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