Wakefield

by Andrei Codrescu

  The Blue Book was published monthly in the heyday of the red-light district, listing all the fancy brothels, including portraits of the prettiest girls, and their prices. An original Blue Book is a sizable wager, worth quite a lot on the rare book market, and gambling is one thing that the members of the club have taken seriously since its founding. The members have regular card games, too, and large sums are won and lost.

  Wakefield lingers in the deep chair, soaking in the masculine atmosphere of the room. Rows of trophies line the shelves, and the faded photographs of men in trunks and boxing gloves, men lifting weights, holding tennis rackets, bending over the green felt of a billiard table, or hefting a glass, generate an aura that envelops Wakefield, as does the lingering aroma of Cuban cigars and Irish whiskey. It is the lair of his enemy, Wakefield thinks. I’m here to hunt him down, maybe catch him in some illegality that will put an end to the restoration. He decides to continue his investigation in the steam room.

  With a towel draped over his head and one wrapped around his bottom, he lounges in the fog with a liquor distributor and a city court judge. They are discussing a liquor license for a new bar, talking right over his head as if he isn’t there, and maybe he isn’t. In the dim, steamy room he is truly invisible, his lifelong urge to disappear gratified. Wakefield returns to the club every day on his free introductory pass, picking up interesting information, becoming more and more inconspicuous now that he’s a regular.

  One day he overhears a bit of intriguing news. In a few weeks the city will conduct its annual termite fumigation, a foggy and poisonous affair. For three nights in the tropical spring the termites swarm; hordes of insects funnel out of the buildings and swirl around the streetlamps. Walking through the bugs is an ordeal, and most citizens stay indoors while city trucks pass through the streets releasing dense clouds of pesticide. The unfortunates caught on the streets get the dying insects under their eyeglasses, in their ears, and on their skin, transparent wings glued by sweat to their every pore.

  The termites have been bad news for the city for decades, a century, but now, Wakefield hears a termite specialist explain to his companion in the steam room, Formosan termites, a new species, have arrived. The foreign bugs have a voracious appetite, fifty times more destructive than the native variety. They can consume an entire wooden building in less than a month, and killing them is almost impossible: houses have to be enclosed inside a plastic tent for ten days until poison gas penetrates every crevice. The specialist is not optimistic. The insects collected so far are being studied at the city’s Termite Bureau. The peculiar distinction of this termite is that it is not detectable on the surface of the wood; it eats it from within until the beam or plank becomes sheer gossamer, or as the specialist puts it, “lace.” When someone steps on, let’s say, a stair tread that looks for all practical purposes sturdy, his foot goes right through the board. “Just five of those bastards could gut a floor joist in twenty minutes,” the entomologist confides in his friend. Wakefield files this information away in his Catalogue of Horrors, which is housed in his memory opposite his Libidinal Store and has no connection to it, at least none he’s aware of.

  Weeks pass before Wakefield gets the information he’s really after. The Commissioner of Historical Preservation and the mad restorationist stroll into the steam room one morning, wrapped in identical black towels. The commissioner is portly and jowly, the restorationist muscular and hard. They sit on the bench opposite Wakefield, involved in a conversation that must have begun on the treadmill.

  “Dogs,” says the commissioner. “You train ’em to sniff for genuine period. If something’s fake, the dog sits down just like a drug dog. Add dogs to plainclothes looking for illegal additions and we got them.”

  The maniac approves: “Dogs! Damn! Walking up to doorknobs. Sniff, sniff. It’s fake! Not 1823 by a long shot. They could smell acrylic paint, fiberboard, all kinds of synthetics …”

  Amused, the two friends try to outdo each other thinking up means to detect inauthentic restoration: an elaborate system of mirrors that can catch people cheating on paving stones in courtyards; video surveillance to bust them replacing genuine Victorian fountain angels with cement replicas; piercing alarms that go off when someone repairs an old wall with new bricks.

  At the mention of bricks, Wakefield listens even more closely.

  “Bricks are a big problem, Chief,” the restorationist confides. “Antebellum bricks are selling for five dollars each. I’m being bled dry by my supplier.”

  “I might be able to help you with that,” the commissioner says, lowering his voice.

  Wakefield hopes he really is invisible, and pulls his towel over his face.

  The black market source for old bricks—Wakefield strains to hear now, they are whispering—is somebody called the Grave, or Gravier, who gets them from historic cemeteries, for which the city is famous. Wakefield gathers that this Gravier dismantles old tombs under cover of darkness, replacing the old bricks with new, and he sells the stolen bricks at a fraction of the legitimate market price.

  “The guy is great with faux finishes, covers over the new stuff with cracked, stained plaster,” snickers the commissioner. “The parvenus never notice the difference.”

  Wakefield can hardly breathe. The two conspirators go on discussing the nasty business of grave robbing. “Can’t let them sniffer dogs anywhere near the cemeteries,” laughs the madman. “Not 1823 by a long shot.”

  Wakefield is a mass of sweat-stung wrinkles and he feels as if he is about to faint. When the steam-room door opens and a fat man with loud flipflops comes in, Wakefield slips out, unobserved.

  A few days later he’s watching from behind the louvers of his hotel room as a truckful of old bricks is unloaded across the street. He fancies he can even smell the dankness of the graves they came from. He can’t quite believe the brazenness of the scheme, even though he heard it from the mouths of the conspirators, men charged with a public trust, looting the city’s true historical past for the purpose of “restoration.”

  More and more, Wakefield feels enveloped in invisibility: people in the street don’t seem to notice him. Acquintances pass him by without a glance; even Ivan acts as if he isn’t there, and he’s blasé when Wakefield tells him about the cemetery thefts.

  “Big fucking deal, that’s how business is done everywhere, my friend. You want that the dead should have the best houses? Look, this whole detective thing is stupid. You should just take a vacation,” he says, but Wakefield continues his surveillance.

  One afternoon the courtyard gate is left open and Wakefield trains a pair of opera glasses on the construction site. The project looks in a sorry state, more unfinished than ever; there is scaffolding in the middle of the courtyard, on top of which is a wooden chair where the madman sits surveying the chaos. He’s a long way from getting that Blue Book, Wakefield concludes.

  The hotel where Wakefield has taken refuge was built on the site of a Civil War hospital, and every evening he listens to the ghost stories of the tour guides as they pass under his windows. Then one night he actually sees a spectral soldier with blood-soaked bandages and a comely nurse hovering in midair over his bed. “Why are you here?” he asks telepathically, and they dissolve into a plume of white smoke. When he falls asleep he dreams that flames are licking the walls and soon he is lying in a sea of fire, but he’s not afraid. The fire is on its way somewhere else, only coincidentally going through him. He wakes up feeling cleansed somehow, and that’s when the solution to his problem comes to him.

  The night guard at the hotel is a bored ex-con, a guy trying to keep his probation but on the lookout for any scam. Wakefield has seen him hustling hookers to guests, paying bookies, selling dope. The guard smiles and smooths down his khaki pants when Wakefield approaches. Wakefield gets right to the point.

  “How would you like to make, let’s say, a couple of thousand dollars?”

  “You kiddin’, man? I’d hang myself for that much fucking money.”


  “Then you couldn’t enjoy it.”

  “You got a point. What would I have to do, brother?”

  “Steal some bugs.”

  The guy laughs. Then he listens.

  And where, one might ask, has our Devil been all this time? It’s not an easy story to tell, not even for the Devil, who is a master at telling his own story. He is, in fact, doing just that, but not to us: he’s telling it to a psychiatrist, of sorts. Not just any psychiatrist, of course, but a supernatural mental health professional charged with the rectification of wayward demons. In short, after the Devil made his revolutionary speech at the demonic conference and then stormed back to his cave, the Dark Powers-That-Be had a closed-door meeting. The Devil, the Dark Powers concluded, is suffering from depression. The inevitable transitions ahead have upset him because he is overly attached to the beings it is his job to torment. Instead of just doing his job and collecting what is objectively his due, he’s allowed his clients to identify with him and they have become prideful, believing in their own demonic divinity. Now he’s allowed one of his clients to flaunt the terms of the Deal! Hubris in humans, as everyone knows, screws up the universe, which is supposed to be coldly efficient in every circumstance. The Ancient One has gummed up the works and he has compounded the situation by threatening to awaken the sleeping God, a prospect so terrible to every right-thinking citizen of Hell that it can hardly be imagined. To wit, this Devil is out of control. An intervention, followed by therapy, is called for and approved.

  Our Devil looks inside each of his colleagues and sees nothing but his own reflection. Perhaps he has existed entirely too long, and exhausted himself in the effort, admittedly futile, of prolonging the Romantic era into the postmechanical age. His malignant minders authorize a raid on his quarters, sealing him in his cave with the aforementioned “psychiatrist.” The Devil is reminded of times when he was in similar predicaments: chained to the bottom of a well, imprisoned inside a labyrinth, tied to a rock with vultures pecking his liver, paralyzed by John of Patmos, hurled into an abyss by Milton. But during all those ordeals he had been alone. He’s never before had someone to talk to while he contemplates his singularity, certainly not some kind of demon head doctor. But that’s progress, he sighs, and begins to talk.

  He does admit that awakening the sleeping God could have unforeseen consequences; God is asleep and dreaming the universe and His anger at being awakened will be incalculable. If His dream is lost, so are all things. He asserts that his own attachment to humans, including Wakefield, is a whim, with no great echoes. If humans can choose their mates and companions, why can’t he, a loner and a bachelor, whose infinite solitude could use a bit of solace? In addition, the Devil sees no reason whatsoever why waste, corruption, and confusion should be eliminated for the sake of efficiency! Humanity has for all its existence done what the universe has asked of it: it has multiplied, it has recorded, it has abstracted, it has slaved. They’ve earned their R and R, by Jove. Now let them play.

  The Devil argues and berates the representative of the Dark Powers-That-Be. He would rather be actively participating in the long stretches of Wakefield’s story he’s been left out of, but he’s currently a prisoner of his own kind. Of all things!

  It’s the usual evening hour for Wakefield to go to the bar, but he walks past it and no one hails him from the window. He can hear foghorns on the river; the quarter is blanketed in haze. There is a little café in an alley behind the cathedral, a mysterious place with a few tables outside and a dark, inviting interior. Two women are sitting at the bar chatting in French with the bartender. He’s explaining that they should stay indoors tonight because this is the night of the swarming termites and the poisonous gas. Indeed, the moon is already obscured by clouds of flying insects.

  “We must then stay in here all night!” one of the women says, in English.

  “Another Corbu?” The bartender pours brandy, Coca-Cola, and milk over ice in a slender, tall glass.

  The woman’s voice sounds familiar to Wakefield. He sits down at the bar and asks for “whatever it is that the ladies are drinking.”

  “We make it up,” the woman says, her accented English a lot like Marianna’s once was.

  “It is because we are architects we make up drinks named for other architects. The Corbu is after le Corbusier,” her companion adds.

  Wakefield still suffers occasionally from an auditory hallucination that began with Marianna. After living with her for a year or so, he was on a city bus with a group of Hispanic high-school girls. They all sounded to him like Marianna speaking English. Only, the girls were speaking Spanish. Even after he realized the words were Spanish, the illusion persisted; he even imagined he could understand what they were saying, though his knowledge of Spanish was zilch. He got pretty rattled and got off at a coffeehouse to calm down, but the woman at the counter also spoke with Marianna’s voice, though her accent was German. All accented speech thenceforth was uttered by his ex-wife, and there was no dispelling the disturbance with the aid of reason. The hallucination dissipated on its own after a while. Wakefield suspects that there was something primal about the timbre or pitch of Marianna’s voice, like an urvoice that unsettled the language root in his brain.

  Wakefield drinks his Corbu and orders another, and more for the French women, who introduce themselves as Françoise and Cybelle.

  “You know,” the bartender says, pouring more brandy than cola into the glasses, “I’m an architecture student, and I didn’t even know there was an architects’ convention in town.”

  “Figure the odds,” Wakefield mutters.

  “This city reminds me of France,” Cybelle tells him. Wakefield has heard that before; it’s no hallucination. “Françoise and I get our best ideas in cafés talking with our friends. You don’t have that in most of America.”

  The bartender raises a hand. “Listen. The trucks are coming.” He comes out from behind the bar and closes all the doors and windows. Then he turns off the lights and sets three candles on the bar: “So we can watch the show.” The cloud of insects and poison swirling in the air outside is eerie, but they feel safe enough inside.

  “Since this is a café and you are architects,” Wakefield suggests, “perhaps you would design an ideal home for me, to pass the time.”

  The women take up the challenge with typical Parisian aplomb.

  “You must tell us what is your dream house,” Françoise urges him.

  “Yes, leave nothing out!” naughtily, in Marianna’s voice from Cybelle’s lips.

  Wakefield looks thoughtful. “I want a house that’s mobile but stationary, situated in a safe place without borders, where the people are peace-loving.” Redbone glares at him from a dark corner.

  “I want one of those, too,” says the bartender.

  “Hmm. You would like to live in a paradox,” Cybelle observes. “Are you going to live by yourself in this house, or do you picture in it a beautiful woman?”

  “Women understand well paradox,” Françoise adds, a little smugly.

  The two women begin to draw on napkins, questioning Wakefield on his preferences as they draw.

  “Two rooms only, library and bedroom, and kitchen and bathroom, of course,” Wakefield answers when the problem of partition comes up. Soon, a blueprint of home emerges, looking a bit like a Gypsy wagon. Cybelle adds some solar panels, Françoise designs a bed and adjustable bookshelves.

  “It’s wonderful,” Wakefield says, “but if there is a woman …”

  “What if there are two women?” Cybelle suggests.

  “What about me?” protests the bartender.

  “Oh,” Françoise slaps her forehead, “I forgot the café!” She adds a collapsible awning on one side of the wagon, and draws in a little round table and folding chairs. “Now it’s perfect, very French, no?”

  Wakefield couldn’t be more pleased. Emboldened, he invites everyone for a swim at his hotel. Cybelle and Françoise debate for a moment. “What about the bugs, the poiso
n? Is it safe?”

  The bartender is already putting a bottle of brandy and the other ingredients for Corbu in a plastic bag. “It should be by now. I see people walking around again.”

  The four of them leave the café linking arms, strutting through still-floating wisps of poison fog. The sidewalks are carpeted with the silvery corpses of millions of termites, and the little group begins to dance along, inventing steps as they go through the square, past the cathedral, and down the silent streets. As they go, Wakefield tells them the story of the insane man with the hammer, and how he was forced to leave his apartment.

  “Tomorrow,” he tells them, “I will have my beautiful revenge.” They ask for details, but Wakefield is mum. “You’ll see,” he promises. “It will be very amusing.”

  The foursome are frosted with termite wings by the time they arrive at the locked gate of the hotel. The night guard is waiting expectantly with a grin on his face.

  “I’ll be back in a minute,” Wakefield whispers to him.

  He leads his guests to the suite, shows them where the ice and towels are, and returns to the gate to talk to his man.

  “I got them,” the guard says, pulling a stoppered vial from his pocket. Five silvery-winged insects flutter around inside.

  “Now comes part two,” Wakefield instructs him. He points out the house across the street, and describes what is to be done there.

  “Shouldn’t I get half the money now?” The thug makes a tough face.

  “You’ll get it all tomorrow, when the job’s done.”

  The guard shrugs. Tomorrow Wakefield will place a call to Termite Control and tell them exactly where the stolen Formosan bugs can be retrieved. He prays that they’ve been sterilized and won’t be laying any eggs. He doesn’t want to destroy the city. A nonnative species, like the mongoose in Martinique or the nutria in Louisiana, is like an arsonist in the forest, or a single lunatic with a homemade bomb; destruction is all too easy. Low tech. No tech.