Potboiler

Pfefferkorn supposed that, for PR purposes, it was almost as good to kill a faceless A. S. Peppers as it was to kill the real him. He also understood why Zhulk wanted him to read the article. In the eyes of the world, A. S. Peppers, Arthur Pfefferkorn, and Arthur Kowalczyk no longer existed. Nobody would come looking for him. However terrible this realization was, it was not nearly as terrible as knowing that someone had died solely because he happened to be about Pfefferkorn’s height.

A door opened and closed. Zhulk’s wife appeared shlepping a massive, sloshing bucket, a burlap sack slung over her shoulder. She put the bucket in the crook of her arm and fought to get the keys out of her apron without setting her burdens down, all the while doing an uncomfortable little dance. Pfefferkorn recognized the feeling. He remembered doing similar things on early mornings, thirty years ago: trying to bottle-feed his infant daughter with one hand, for example, and make coffee with the other. Zhulk’s wife succeeded in getting the right key into the lock. The cell door swung open. She left it ajar, brushing past him as she carried the sack and the bucket across the room. As long as he was chained up, there was no danger of his making a break for it. At the same time, he found her indifference to her own safety peculiar. He could have severed her carotid with one of his leakproof pens. He could have jammed his fingers into her eye sockets and popped out her eyeballs. Harry Shagreen and Dick Stapp had done that on more than one occasion. He could have strangled her. The chain tethering him to the desk looked long enough for him to gather the slack off the floor and get it around her neck. Yet she didn’t hesitate to bend over with her back turned. Was he that unintimidating?

She set the bucket and the sack down. She straightened up, winded, her hand pressed to the small of her back.

“Thank you,” he said.

She curtsied.

“You don’t need to do that,” he said.

She glared at the floor.

“Really,” he said. “I mean it.”

She looked up, meeting his eyes for a fraction of a moment. Then she turned and left.

Inside the burlap sack were a towel, a washcloth, and a hunk of rancid soap. The towel and the washcloth were identical to the ones at the Hôtel Metropole. He took off his clothes, leaving the left leg of the woolen pants and the left leg of his underwear strung along the chain. He stood over the floor drain and sluiced himself with water from the bucket. For a moment he allowed himself to fantasize that the soap was a high-density dubnium polymer, and that it would split open, revealing a weapon or a key. But it turned to lather in his hands.

96.

Pfefferkorn got to work.

It wasn’t easy. To begin with, he really was a lousy poet. He’d given up on the form sometime in high school. Moreover, the structure of Vassily Nabochka was extraordinarily demanding. Each canto was ninety-nine lines long, broken into nine stanzas of eleven lines of trochaic hendecameter apiece, adhering to a rhyme scheme of ABACADACABA, with triple internal rhymes on lines one, two, five, seven, ten, and eleven. What made the Zlabian language so tricky to master was its use of gendered, neuter, and hermaphroditic forms as well as a system of declension that had been mutating continuously since the days of Zthanizlabh of Thzazhkst. Add in several thousand textual variants, and a state of affairs resulted whereby a seemingly simple sentence—“Verily he loved him, for he was his beloved since days of yore”—could also be rendered “Verily she did love him, for she was his lover since long ago,” “Verily they did love each other, for he was his uncle since many a time,” or “Not necessarily false was her love for it, for he had not fondled it since Tuesday.” Pfefferkorn could all too easily see how this sort of muddiness would give rise to violence. It also accounted for the poem’s sustained popularity, for Vassily Nabochka possessed a quality essential to great literature, one that ensured it could be read by every successive generation and appreciated anew: it was meaningless.

Another major obstacle he faced was that Zhulk kept turning up to chat. Once or twice a day, as Pfefferkorn was getting ready to take another failed run at the thing, he would hear bony knuckles touching the bars. The prime minister wanted to know: was Pfefferkorn comfortable? Did he require more paper, more pens, more books? Was there something else, Zhulk asked, he or his wife could do to ease the maestro’s toil? These questions were but a prelude to the interrogation that inevitably followed, for Zhulk was unduly obsessed with Pfefferkorn’s creative process. When did the maestro like to write? Early in the morning? Late at night? After a large meal? A small meal? No meal at all? What about beverages? What role did carbonation play? Did he get his best ideas standing, sitting, or lying down? Was writing like pushing a boulder? Rowing a boat? Climbing a ladder? Netting a butterfly?

All of the above, Pfefferkorn said.

There was only so much poetry he could produce per day. The rest of the time he was profoundly bored. Other than Zhulk, he saw only Zhulk’s wife, and she resisted all his attempts at conversation. Mostly he was alone. The fluorescent tube never shut off. The lack of sunlight was disorienting. It warped his sense of time and made him drowsy. He dozed. He did push-ups, sit-ups, jumping jacks, and squats. He jogged in place, the chain rattling noisily against the floor. He projected maps of the world onto the cracks in the ceiling. He used the finest West Zlabian leakproof pens, all of them hemorrhaging ink, to play the cell bars like a xylophone. He marked off the days on his venereal disease calendar. The clap was rapidly approaching. He pressed his ears to the wall, hoping to catch a hint of the outside world. The temperature in the cell led him to conclude that he was far underground. He imagined what the rest of the prison looked like. He envisioned rows and rows of press-ganged authors, all of them laboring to complete the poem. There have been others like you. None of them have survived. It was like the world’s worst writers’ retreat.

On the seventh day of his captivity Pfefferkorn looked up from his desk to find Zhulk standing outside the cell, rocking back and forth on his heels. His hands were clasped behind his back. He started to speak, decided against it, and without further ado hurled a ball of paper through the bars. It bounced and landed at Pfefferkorn’s feet.

Pfefferkorn uncrumpled four handwritten pages, covered in crabbed script and marred by strike-throughs and carets. He looked at Zhulk uneasily.

Zhulk bowed. “Sir, you are the first to read it.”

Pfefferkorn read Zhulk’s own take on the final canto of Vassily Nabochka. In it, the king died before the antidote got to him, and a grief-stricken Prince Vassily repudiated the throne, deeding the royal lands over to the people and going to live as a commoner, tilling the fields and herding goats, finding redemption in manual labor before dying peacefully beneath a runty tree in the meadows of West Zlabia. It was the worst kind of agitprop: heavy-handed, impatient, and artless. The turns were improbable, the imagery fuzzy, and the characters reductive.

“Wonderful,” Pfefferkorn said in his writing-workshop voice.

Zhulk frowned. “It cannot be.”

“It is. Frankly, I don’t know why you need me at all.”

“It is putrid, disgusting, an offense to eye and ear alike. Please, you must say so.”

“It’s not, it’s very . . . evocative.”

Zhulk threw himself to his knees. He began to keen and pull at his hair.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Pfefferkorn said.

Zhulk moaned.

“I’m not saying it doesn’t stand to benefit from a little editing. But for a first draft—”

With a howl Zhulk sprang to his feet. He grabbed the bars and shook them like a madman. “It is bad,” he yelled, “and you must say it is bad.”

There was a silence.

“It’s . . . bad,” Pfefferkorn said.

“How bad.”

“. . . very.”

“Use adjectives.”

“. . . sickening?”

“Yes.”

“And, and—and juvenile.”

“Yes . . .”

“It’s repetitive,” Pfefferkorn said. “Pointless.”

“Yes, yes . . .”

“Trite, bland, rambling, overwritten. Poor in conception, worse in execution, just bad, bad, bad. Its only virtue,” Pfefferkorn said, finding his groove, “is that it’s short.”

Zhulk honked pleasurably.

“The person who wrote this ending,” Pfefferkorn said, “deserves to be punished.”

“How.”

“How should he be pu—eh, well—”

“Spare nothing.”

“He should, uh—beaten?”

“Oh yes.”

“And—shamed.”

“Yes.”

“He should . . . be forced to wear a bell around his neck so people can know he’s coming and run away.”

“Truly, he should,” Zhulk said. “Truly, his is a dead soul, and the ending reflects that.”

“You said it,” Pfefferkorn said.

“Yes, maestro. But tell me: if the ending seems bad now, how much worse will it seem when the maestro’s ending is revealed? And how much more glorious will the maestro’s ending be? Speak, maestro: how glorious will the ending be?”

There was a silence.

“Pretty darn glorious, I guess,” Pfefferkorn said.

Zhulk stood back, starry-eyed. “The suspense is killing me, the individual.”

Pfefferkorn did not share his patron’s optimism. Ninety-nine lines in twenty-two days equaled four and a half lines per day. By day eleven, the halfway point, he was still stuck on line nine. He knew exactly what was happening to him. He’d gone through it before, only this time there would be no salvation. He was at the mercy of a villain crueler than any Dick Stapp or Harry Shagreen had ever faced: crushing self-doubt. And he was beginning to understand the word “deadline” in a whole new way.

97.

Late at night, unable to sleep, Pfefferkorn wrote unsendable letters.

He wrote to Bill. He described his earliest memories of their friendship. He remembered their eighth-grade teacher, Ms. Flatt, who everyone had a crush on. He remembered taking the wheel of Bill’s Camaro, only to get pulled over for speeding. He had counted off the officer’s steps in the sideview mirror while Bill fumbled with the glove box, trying to hide an open can of beer. After the cop had ticketed them and sped off they heard dripping. The glove box was leaking into the footwell. He couldn’t believe what they’d gotten away with. Could Bill? Times were simpler then, weren’t they? Weren’t they. He asked if Bill had ever read any of the books he had recommended. He admitted that he hadn’t finished some of them himself. He reminisced about breaking into the university boathouse and stealing a flatbed cart of equipment. The next day they had stood in the quad among the crowd, watching the crew team try to get their oars down out of the trees. He painted pictures of all-nighters at the literary magazine, the two of them hunched over a drafting board, working the monthly puzzle of text, image, and advertisement. He wrote fondly of their basement apartment. He still savored the cheap, greasy meals they had shared. He wrote that Bill was a true gentleman. He confessed that he had been jealous of Bill, but that his jealousy had its origin in admiration. He wrote that once, in the thick of a fight, his ex-wife had told him he was half the man Bill was. He had been so furious that he hadn’t returned Bill’s calls for months. He apologized for punishing Bill for someone else’s sins. He wrote that he still thought of Bill’s first story. It had been better than he had been willing to cop to at the time. He wrote that, clandestine government activities aside, Bill surely would have made it as a writer. He wrote that their friendship was precious to him, no matter what else had been going on behind the scenes, and he regretted that he hadn’t come out to California while Bill was still alive. He hoped it was all right that he had slept with Carlotta. He wrote that he believed Bill would have given them his blessing, because that was the kind of person Bill was. He wrote that he wished he himself could be more generous. He wrote that he was working on it.

He wrote to Carlotta. He wrote that he had loved her from that first moment. He wrote that he had been afraid of her. It was this fear that had caused him to stand idly by as she fell into the arms of another man. He described a habit he had: at the end of a long writing session, when he would go back to read aloud what he’d put down that day, he would pretend that she was sitting in front of him. He would read to her, watching her facial expressions in his mind, listening to her laughter or gasps. That was how he knew something was right, if the Carlotta in his mind liked it. He had done this every day of his writing life, even when he was married. He had done it while writing his novel. Originally, he confessed, he had patterned the novel’s love interest after her, but he had worried that she would know and that that would be the end of seeing her, and he wanted her in his life one way or the other, any way he could have her. So he changed the book. It had been a mistake, he wrote, because everything he knew about romantic love came from her, so in writing away from her, he was writing falsely. It was a costly decision, in that it had informed everything since. He had not written a word of truth until now. He was happy she had married Bill, for Bill had provided her a life he never could have. And he was happy she had reentered his life at a moment when they could give to each other unselfishly. He wrote that he enjoyed making love to her. They had lived long enough to know what that act did and did not mean. He wrote that he didn’t care if she was a spy. It was sexy, actually. Nor did he regret coming to rescue her. He was sorry only that he had botched it so badly.

He wrote to his daughter. He wrote about the unreal spectacle of her arrival into the world. The change that took place within him felt physical. He felt it: felt his heart ripen. Like anything ripe it was swollen and delicate and prone to split. In one instant the world went from a place of no consequence to an endless series of life-and-death decisions. Everything mattered. Her face was slightly smushed and he worried. The nurses gave her supplementary oxygen and he worried. He put her in the car seat and worried. The worry burned underneath him and distilled him to his essence. Joy was real joy and fear was real fear and anger was real anger and happiness was the real thing. He revisited the coffee-colored sofa, the one that had springs exploding out of it before they finally got rid of it, and he told her that once upon a time it hadn’t been a wreck but a nice new piece of furniture that he liked to sit on with her in his arms, the sun coming up blue, her warm little head squirreled against his bare chest, her lips pursing and sucking in her sleep. Those hours had seemed endless then, but now he cherished them as the last moments he had had her all to himself. He wrote about the first time he accidentally pricked her foot while pinning on her diaper. She had barely bled and she hadn’t made a peep but it destroyed him to see what he could do to her if he wasn’t careful. He wrote that he was sorry. He wrote that it was silly of him to have insisted on cloth diapers. He wrote about how he had studied her as a child, collecting her every gesture and feature. He wished he had taken the time to write more of them down. He remembered her first day of school. She had thrown up from anxiety. He’d made her go anyway. At the time he had wondered if he was making a mistake but in retrospect it seemed like the right thing to do. He wrote that he was glad he hadn’t gotten everything wrong. He wrote of the triumph he felt at her triumphs, the agony of her disappointments. He remembered soccer practice and dance practice. He remembered father-daughter dances. He apologized that he had never danced at these dances, and that they’d always ended up standing on the side of the gym. He remembered the first time a boy broke her heart. He wrote that it was the first time in his life that he had honestly wanted to hit someone. He apologized that he had sometimes been angry at her for no reason other than that she made him acutely aware of his own shortcomings. He remembered the look on her face during those few months, long ago, when he was making progress on his lame attempt at a mystery novel. He had seen that she was happy, and he knew that her happiness came from thinking that he was happy. That kind of generosity made her special. She could be as smart and as beautiful as anybody in the world—she was that smart, she was that beautiful—but nothing made him prouder than her decency. He couldn’t take too much credit for that. She had always been that way, even as a baby. Some people were born pure, and somehow, in defiance of all the odds, she was one of them. He wrote that he was glad she had found someone who could take care of her. She deserved the best. She always had. Her wedding was the best investment he had ever made. He apologized that he had not articulated his feelings more clearly and more often. He had never had the right words. He still wasn’t sure he did, but it was better to try than to remain silent. In all his years, he wrote, he had produced nothing of value save her. She was his life’s work. He considered himself a successful man. He wrote that he loved her, and he signed it your father.

98.

With less than forty-eight hours left until his deadline, Pfefferkorn stood up from the desk and cricked his neck. A few days earlier, he had struck upon the idea of using the last chapter of Shade of the Colossus as a model for the ending of Vassily Nabochka. It was either the best idea or the worst idea he’d ever had, and since he had nothing to lose—at that point he’d come to a complete standstill—and since Zhulk liked the novel well enough, he had made up his mind to give it his all. Nonstop toil had pushed the total to more than seventy lines. So far he had the beleaguered and road-weary prince coming to his dying father’s bed, magical root vegetable antidote in hand. Then followed an internal monologue worthy of Hamlet, as the prince debated whether to give the antidote or to let the old man slip away peacefully. In the end the prince dropped the antidote into a chamber pot. These events were meant to correspond to the novel’s young artist pulling the plug on his father. To be on the safe side, he’d also thrown in some flattering references to Communism. With the remaining two dozen lines, he planned to have the prince ascend to “a most bitter throne.” He had thought of the phrase the day before and, liking the sound of it, had jotted it down in the margin. In Zlabian it was slightly less mellifluous: zhumyuiy gorkhiy dhrun. He thought it worked all right. He couldn’t tell. He was under pressure and he felt himself losing perspective.

A door opened and closed. It was Zhulk’s wife, come with dinner. As usual, her carriage was leaden and her face a mask of gloom. As usual, she left the cell door ajar and set the tray down on an empty corner of the desk.

As usual, he thanked her.

As usual, she curtsied.

“You really don’t need to do that,” he said, as usual.

As usual, she started out.

“I know it’s none of my business,” he said, “but you don’t seem very happy.”

For nineteen days she had ignored him, so for her to pause and stare at him was more than a bit unsettling.

“I’m just saying,” he said.

She said nothing.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

There was a silence. She looked at the pages on the desk, then at him for permission. He didn’t think he had any real choice in the matter. He stood back. “Please.”

She picked up the pages. Her lips moved slightly as she read. Her brow furrowed. She finished and put the pages facedown on the desk.

“It’s terrible,” she said.

Pfefferkorn was too shocked by the sound of her voice to reply.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “Why would Prince Vassily withhold the antidote?”

“Well,” he said, “well, but, well.” He paused. She was watching him in her moonfaced way, waiting for an answer. “Well, look. Look. Think about it. The king has disinherited him. He’s bound to have some resentment over that.” He paused again. “A lot of resentment.”

“So he lets his father die?”

“It’s the whole kingdom. It’s a big deal.”

She shook her head. “Makes no sense.”

“Don’t you think you’re being a tad literal?”

“How so?”

“I mean, it’s not necessarily the case that he’s letting him die.”

She picked up the pages again. “‘Lifeblood hotly overbrimmed his bristly wizened nostrils like a glist’ning ruddy fountain,’” she read, “‘Rendering his kingly spirit unto heavens slightly cloudy with a chance of showers.’”

She looked at him.

“You’re missing the point,” he said.

“Am I?”

“Completely.”

“Okay, what’s the point?”

“The important thing is not whether the king lives or dies. I mean of course that’s important, in a, a, a plot sense, but, first of all, I could change that in about five seconds, and anyway, the crucial part, thematically, is showing that the prince is conflicted.”

“About what?”

“Lots of things,” Pfefferkorn said. “He’s got mixed emotions.”

Zhulk’s wife was shaking her head. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Prince Vassily is not that kind of character.”

“What kind, nuanced?”

“The prince’s moral purity, and therefore a large part of his appeal, rests on his ability to set aside his feelings and do what’s right. Why else would he start out on the quest, if he didn’t intend to give his father the antidote? It makes no sense at all.”

“But isn’t it more interesting if at the last moment he has doubts?”

“It’s inconsistent with the rest of the poem.”

“I asked if it was interesting,” he said.

“I know,” she said, “and I told you: it’s inconsistent. It doesn’t matter whether it’s interesting. That’s not the right criterion. You’re working in someone else’s style. You have to accept the constraints handed to you.” She nosed at the page. “You’ve also got all sorts of fancy words in there that don’t belong.”

“Well, look,” Pfefferkorn said, snatching the pages from her, “you said you didn’t understand it, so maybe you ought to keep your opinions to yourself, thank you very much.”

She said nothing. He remembered that she was still the prime minister’s wife.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s just that I’m sensitive about people reading work in progress.”

“You’ve only got a couple of days left.”

“I’m aware of that,” he said. He shuffled the pages anxiously. “Do you, eh, have any suggestions for where to go from here?”

“I’m not a writer,” she said. “I just know what I like.”

He tried to hide his disappointment. “Well. I appreciate the constructive criticism.”

She nodded.

He hesitated before asking what she thought her husband would think.

She shrugged. “He’ll love it.”

Pfefferkorn relaxed. “Really?”

“Dragomir’s not a very tough critic. Certainly not as tough as I am. And he’s primed to think anything you do is genius.”

“Well,” Pfefferkorn said, “that’s good.”

“It won’t matter,” she said. “He’s still going to kill you before the festival.”

“. . . really.”

She nodded.

“I . . . wasn’t aware of that.”

“He thinks it’s more dramatic that way. Living writers lack a certain romance.”

“. . . mm.”

“You’ll be making him very happy,” she said. “He’s dreamed of this his entire life.”

Pfefferkorn said nothing.

“What’s that?” she asked.

He followed her gaze to the desk. The letters he had written were stacked up where he had left them.

“May I?” she asked.

His first instinct was to say no.

“Knock yourself out,” he said.

While Zhulk’s wife read the letters, Pfefferkorn for the hundredth time contemplated assaulting her. If it was true that Zhulk was going to kill him soon, this might be one of his last chances to escape. He did the visualization. Grab the chain, wrap it around her neck, pull it tight, put a knee into her back. His heart began to pound. His palms were sweaty. He readied himself. He didn’t move. He couldn’t. All that training, he thought. What a waste.

She finished reading and looked up. Her cheeks were wet and her eyes red-rimmed. She folded the letters neatly and put them back on the desk.

“You’re a good writer when you want to be,” she said.

There was a silence.

“Thank you,” he said.

“You’re welcome.”

There was a silence.

“Of course I’m unhappy,” she said.

He said nothing.

“I can’t have children,” she said.

There was a silence.

“I’m so sorry,” Pfefferkorn said.

She wiped her eyes on her apron. She began to laugh. It was a dirty, strident sound, full of disappointment and expecting more to come. She clutched the apron in her fist. “Can you believe he makes me wear this.”

Pfefferkorn smiled.

“I’m the wife of the goddamned prime minister.” She shook her head and laughed again and looked at him. She stepped forward. He could smell the same rancid soap she brought him to bathe with. He could smell cheap cosmetics. Her lips were chapped and parted. She leaned in as if to kiss him. His body tensed.

“Come with me,” she said, “if you want to live.”

99.

The chain had prevented him from seeing too far beyond the cell bars. He didn’t know what to expect when he stepped through the door. What he saw underwhelmed him. It was an ordinary concrete hallway, about eight feet long. At the far end was a plain wooden door.

“What about the guards?” he whispered.

“There are no guards,” she said.

She opened the wooden door. It wasn’t locked. On the other side was a square concrete antechamber. In front of him was a spiral staircase—nothing glamorous, just a narrow twist of steel ascending through a shaft bored in the ceiling. To his right were two more wooden doors. To his left was a third. It was a far cry from the dystopian holding pen he had envisioned.

“What about the alarm?” he whispered.

“There’s no alarm. And you don’t have to whisper.”

She opened the first of the doors on her right. It was a storage room, about ten feet on a side. Utilitarian wire shelving lined three walls. Pfefferkorn saw packs of one-ply toilet tissue, stacks of Hôtel Metropole linens, a carton of soap, more reams of writing paper, more boxes of pens. A crepey white jumpsuit hung from a hook. The wheelbarrow was propped in the corner. Zhulk’s wife got down on her knees, reached under one of the bottom shelves, and dragged out his wheelie bag. She stood it upright and invited him to take possession of it.

Pfefferkorn opened the bag. Incredibly, its contents were untouched. He looked at Zhulk’s wife. She shrugged.

“Dragomir doesn’t like to throw anything away,” she said.

She covered her eyes while he changed into the Zlabian goatherd’s outfit. It was comfortable, with the exception of the six-inch heels, which felt too unstable for a prison break. He kicked them off and put the straw slippers back on. He presented himself for inspection.

“Close enough,” she said.

He put the deodorant stun gun in one pocket and the toothbrush switchblade in the other. In his back pockets he put the dubnium polymer soap and the designer eau de cologne solvent. He tucked the roll of cash and the untraceable cell phone into his socks. He put his false passport in his underwear. “Don’t forget these,” she said, handing him his unsendable letters and his unfinished ending to Vassily Nabochka. He slid them in along with the soap. He was trying to decide what to do with the tin of breath mints when she put out her hand.

“These aren’t what you think they are,” he said.

She took the tin and dropped it in her apron pocket. “I know what they are,” she said.

He looked at her.

“Hurry,” she said. “We don’t have much time.”

The adjacent room was a galley kitchen. On the counter was a wicker basket filled with root vegetables, a crusty box grater, and a stack of unwashed trays. She made him drink two cups of tea. Then she sat him on a stool while she opened up the spare moustache kit and read through the instructions.

“Don’t forget the Q-tip,” he said.

“I can read,” she said.

She used up most of the tube of adhesive and all of the swatches. She polished a spatula on her apron and held it up so he could see his reflection.

He had a moustache to rival Blueblood’s.

They returned to the storage room. She handed him the white jumpsuit, which he now saw wasn’t a jumpsuit but a hazmat suit. He started to unzip it. She stopped him.

“Do you need to pee?”

He thought. “Probably not a bad idea.”

The room across the antechamber mirrored his almost exactly, with a mattress, a toilet, and a floor drain. Instead of books, the desk held a sorry assortment of cosmetics and a plastic comb tangled with hair the same color as Zhulk’s wife’s. The pillow was dented and shiny, the blanket rumpled.

She had been living next door to him the entire time.

He used the toilet and went back out to the antechamber. She held the hazmat suit open. He stepped into it. It was a roomy one-size-fits-all. He pulled his arms through the sleeves.

“Where’s your husband?” he asked.

She smiled sourly. “The penthouse at the Metropole.” She zipped him up and sealed him in with Velcro. “He’s busy with festival planning. He won’t be back until tomorrow morning.” She zipped the hood on. The interior of the suit smelled like her. “That’s your deadline,” she said, pressing the Velcro around his neck. “From this point on, you’re on your own.”

“I understand,” he said. His voice boomed inside the suit. “Thank you.”

She nodded. “Good luck.”

He started for the stairs. He paused and turned back.

“What’s going to happen to you?” he asked.

The same sour smile came across her face. She reached into the apron for the breath mints. She rattled the tin. If she swallowed one, she would be dead in three minutes.

“I’ll be minty fresh,” she said.

100.

He must have been a mile underground. As he rose, so did the ambient temperature. Breathability, he discovered, was not one of a hazmat suit’s selling points. Soon his peasant shirt was sticking to his chest and the viewing panel had fogged up. His thighs quivered with every step. His pockets felt like they were loaded with birdshot. The shaft was claustrophobic and dim. He imagined Zhulk’s wife doing the same climb carrying stacks of books, crates of root vegetables, re-ups of towels. He gritted his teeth and pressed onward.

The stairwell ended unceremoniously at a metal ladder bolted to the wall. Pfefferkorn climbed up and heaved against a trapdoor. It fell open with a clang. He poked his head up into a circular concrete chamber lit by bare yellow bulbs. At the center of the room stood a ten-foot tank that had burst open to resemble an enormous, rust-colored orchid. Oily puddles disclosed an uneven floor. Everything bore the universal three-petaled symbol for radiation. A series of pictorial placards ran along the wall. The first showed a smiling stick figure touching the tank. The next showed the stick figure down on one stick knee, proposing to a female stick figure. The third showed the stick-figure man standing by nervously as his stick-figure wife (her legs in stick-figure stirrups) bayed, a stick-figure midwife urging her on. The fourth placard completed the cautionary tale: the stick-figure couple’s faces contorted in stick-figure horror as they received a stick-figure baby with three eyes and both sets of genitals.

He found the exit. It was unlocked, as he knew it would be. He stepped onto a small concrete apron. The sun was going down. There were no dogs, no razor wire, no watchtowers, no arc lights, no cameras. Instead, extending in every direction for half a mile, was a vast lake of toxic goo. It was thick, sticky, and antifreeze green. It glowed faintly. Anyone wanting to come in or out of the building would have to cross it. He couldn’t smell it but he reckoned that the background smell from the forest multiplied by a billion was a decent approximation. He felt his prostate curling up and trying to hide. The hazmat suit didn’t much reassure him. It was one thing to know and another to do. He sighted the perimeter fence and stepped off the apron, sinking in up to his knees. He was glad he’d ditched the heels.

As he waded along, he glanced back at the ruined reactor. Cylindrical, flared at the top and bottom, the building looked like some overblown dessert sauced with lime coulis. A jagged crack ran up its side. It was identical to other nuclear reactors he had seen pictures of, only far smaller. The smallest in the world, he thought, remembering Zhulk’s obituary.

He reached the fence in thirty minutes. The goo had thinned enough that he could feel solid earth. He walked parallel to the fence for another twenty minutes and came to an abandoned checkpoint, the barrier arm replaced by a chain welded to the bent fencepost. He ducked underneath and was free.

Just off the dirt driveway was a three-sided wooden shower stall, like those at the beach for washing off sand. A sign read . Decontamination station. He looked down at an ordinary garden hose connected to a pipe rising from the ground. He rinsed the goo off, unzipped the suit, and stepped out of it carefully, leaving it puddled in the stall. He hurried down the driveway to the main road. He walked for a while—he wanted to put some distance between him and the reactor—then stopped and scanned in all directions. He saw dewy moonlit fields. All was quiet, not even a bleat. He took out the cell phone. He was getting one bar, barely. He moved around until it fixed. He closed his eyes and pictured the card. He opened his eyes and dialed.

“Tha,” Fyothor said.

“It’s me,” Pfefferkorn said.

There was a scratchy silence.

“Where are you?” Fyothor said.

“About five or six kilometers outside the city, I think.”

“Has anyone seen you?”

“No.”

“You are alone?”

“Yes.”

Pfefferkorn heard the phone’s mouthpiece muffled. Fyothor spoke to someone. The reply was inaudible. Fyothor came back on. He recited an address.

“It is near the waterfront district.”

“I’ll find it.”

“Come quickly,” Fyothor said and hung up.

Pfefferkorn took a good look at the stars. He might never see them again. In a world where nobody could be trusted, he had just committed a fatal error. He refused to live in that world. He put the phone back in his pocket and walked on.

101.

Fyothor lived on the eleventh floor of a hideous concrete-block tower. The elevator was out of service. The stairwell was slick with urine and sown with condom wrappers. Pfefferkorn’s legs were still sore from climbing out of the reactor and the long hike back to town. He relied heavily on the handrail.

Fyothor had told him to head straight to the end of the corridor. It was a sensible instruction, because most of the apartments were missing numbers. The prevailing hush amplified his knock. The door opened a crack. A hairy arm beckoned him in.

Pfefferkorn stepped into the entry hall. A sack-eyed Fyothor stood re-cinching his bathrobe. Through a doorless frame was the kitchen: a closet with a hotplate and a hand sink. A wooden drying rack nailed to the wall held four plastic plates. There was no refrigerator. It didn’t look like enough for a family to get by on. Down the hall was a darkened room.

“After you,” Fyothor said.

Pfefferkorn groped his way forward. His nose picked up a briny, masculine smell. He could hardly see. The room’s shades were drawn against the moonlight. He stopped short. Fyothor bumped into him from behind. He reached past Pfefferkorn and switched on the light.

Pfefferkorn cringed at the bright blast. Then his eyes opened and he was disappointed to learn that he indeed lived in a world where nobody could be trusted. The person waiting for them was not Fyothor’s wife. If Fyothor even had a wife. And if Fyothor was even his real name. The person waiting for them was six-foot-five. He—for it was a he, very much so—was muscular and mean-looking, with a jet-black goatee and tattoos on his hands and neck. He wore a leather motorcycle jacket and black leather boots, and he was making a growly noise not unlike a garbage disposal. Pfefferkorn sank to his knees, gasping for breath. Nobody had hit him yet, but his mind seemed to know what was coming, and it was determined not to be awake when it came.

102.

“Ahn dbhiguyietzha.”

“Dyiuzhtbhithelnyuio?”

“P’myemyiu.”

“Friend. Friend. Are you all right? Can you hear me?”

Pfefferkorn opened his eyes. Fyothor and the man in the motorcycle jacket were standing over him, fretting. Contrary to expectation, he was not back in his cell, but the selfsame living room, laid out on a mushy sofa. He tried to sit up. They restrained him gently.

“Please, friend, rest. You had a bad fall. You went down like a sack of root vegetables. We thought you had a heart attack.”

Down the hall a kettle whistled. The man in the motorcycle jacket growled and left.

Pfefferkorn palpated himself. He was not tied up, and aside from a sore head, he did not seem to be injured.

“Akha,” Fyothor said. He grunted as he sat down in a plastic chair. “I apologize. It was not my intention to disturb you. I assumed that you, as a foreigner, would be more accustomed to such things. But perhaps I am wrong.” He sighed and rubbed his face, then smiled tiredly. “Well, friend. My secret is now yours.”

Pfefferkorn, coming around, pointed to his ear and then to the wall.

Fyothor shook his head. “Not here. Besides, it is not them I worry about. It is my neighbors, friends, family. Jaromir’s mother is old. It would kill her to find out.”

Jaromir brought three steaming mugs of tea. He handed them out and sat on the floor near Fyothor. Fyothor laid his hand comfortably on Jaromir’s brawny shoulder. Jaromir’s hand went up to meet it. Their fingers laced and stayed that way as Pfefferkorn told them what he needed to do. He finished talking and fell silent and then he waited for a response. Fyothor’s eyes were focused on an imaginary point in the distance. Jaromir was likewise expressionless. Pfefferkorn feared that he had asked too much. He was betting the chance to save his life and Carlotta’s life against all of their lives, and he was getting poor odds. Action heroism was not a rational undertaking. He was far too preoccupied to wonder if that might make an interesting premise for a novel.

Suddenly Fyothor pushed himself out of the chair and went into the next room. A moment later he could be heard talking on the phone. Pfefferkorn offered Jaromir an apologetic smile.

“Sorry to disturb you like this,” Pfefferkorn said.

Jaromir growled and waved him off.

“Have you been together a long time?” Pfefferkorn asked.

Jaromir held up all ten fingers, then one more.

“Wow,” Pfefferkorn said. “That’s just great. Mazel tov.”

Jaromir smiled.

“And, eh. What is it you do?”

Jaromir growled as he searched for the word. He smiled and snapped his fingers. “Semen,” he said.

Fyothor came back with a slip of paper. “She is here.”

Pfefferkorn looked at the address.

“This is the Metropole,” he said.

Fyothor nodded.

Pfefferkorn looked at the room number. It was four higher than his old room number.

“Be at the harbor no later than three,” Fyothor said. “Jaromir sails at dawn.”

Pfefferkorn looked at Jaromir. “Ah,” he said. “Right. Seaman.”

“He told you this?” Fyothor chided Jaromir in Zlabian. “He is the captain.”

Jaromir shrugged modestly.

Pfefferkorn shook Jaromir’s hand and thanked them both. Fyothor embraced him and walked him to the door. Before he let him out, he said, “Tell me, friend. Is it true that in America men can walk down the street together, free of shame?”

Pfefferkorn looked him in the eye. “I’m not American,” he said. “But that’s what I’ve heard.”

103.

The night was gauzy and moist. At that hour there were few pedestrians other than soldiers. Preparations for the festival were coming along. The sidewalks had been swept. Bright banners rippled and snapped. Aluminum barricades lined the parade route. Pfefferkorn guessed that there would be a good deal more pomp than usual, owing to the momentous nature of the anniversary. To avoid attracting attention, he stuck to side streets and kept a medium pace. He put his head down, his hands in his pockets, and his faith in his moustache.

Typically during the day there was a line of troikas waiting outside the Metropole, but now he found the block deserted except for a lone soldier lighting a cigarette. The solider glanced at Pfefferkorn incuriously before taking his first drag and looking off in another direction. As Pfefferkorn approached the hotel’s glass doors he spied the night clerk engrossed in a magazine. He decided to go for it. He crossed the lobby, making a beeline for the elevator. He was almost there when the clerk called out in Zlabian. “Excuse me.”

Pfefferkorn froze.

The clerk ordered him to turn around.

Pfefferkorn put on an indignant face and marched to the desk. “Uiy muyiegho lyubvimogo uimzhtvyienno otzhtalyiy zhtarzhyegoh bvrudhu ghlizhtiy,” he snapped.

The clerk was understandably startled by this outburst. Pfefferkorn would have been startled, too, by a comprehensively moustachioed man in a goatherd’s outfit yelling at him that his beloved and mentally retarded older brother had tapeworms.

“Tapeworms,” Pfefferkorn repeated, for emphasis. Then he yelled that he had been waiting for an oscillating fan for more than a week. He slammed his fist on the desk as he said this. The clerk jumped. Then, with enormous contempt, as if he couldn’t stand to deal with such an imbecile any longer, Pfefferkorn reached into his left sock and whipped out the roll of cash. He peeled off a fifty-ruzha note and dangled it in front of the clerk’s face, as if to say, I can bribe you right out here in the open and no one can do anything about it. So how important must I be? Very important, that’s right. So don’t mess with me. That was his intention. It was equally possible that the message was Take this money and shut up. In any event, the clerk plucked the bill and gave him a timid smile. “Monsieur,” he said.

104.

Pfefferkorn’s finger hovered over the button for the penthouse. He told himself that he had more than enough on his plate as it was. He chafed, knowing he would have to let Dragomir Zhulk live to plot another day. He punched the button for the fourth floor.

As the car labored upward, he visualized what he was about to do. The Metropole was old and quirky enough for every room to be done up differently. Certain constants would hold, though. There would be an entry hall with a closet on one side and a bathroom door on the other. There would be a bed. There would be a dresser. There would be a television on top of the dresser. There would be a nightstand, a telephone, a clock, a radiator, and a lamp. There would be an oscillating fan, although the likelihood of its functioning would be low.

The elevator ground to a halt. The doors parted. He crept down the hall.

There would be Carlotta. That was important to keep in mind. He couldn’t come storming in like a maniac, striking at everything that moved. He had to be deadly but precise. If the room was anything like the one he’d stayed in, it could fit four comfortably. This being West Zlabia, he had to count on things being less than optimally comfortable. He steeled himself to fight ten men. They would be armed. They would have shoot-to-kill orders. His motions would have to be unified and fluid. He would go for the solar plexus.

He passed his old room. He passed 46, home of the noisy honeymooners. He came to number 48 and stopped. She had been no more than forty feet away the entire time.

He checked that he was alone.

He was alone.

He uncapped the deodorant stun gun and held it in his left hand. Not too tight, not too loose. He snicked open the toothbrush switchblade and held it in his right hand. Not too tight, not too loose. He reviewed Sockdolager’s advice. Let the weapons become an extension of your own body. Don’t pull punches. Commit. He held up the butt end of the toothbrush and tapped the door three times. There was silence, then footsteps, and then the door opened.

105.

The door opened.

“What the fuck?” Lucian Savory asked, or started to ask. He hadn’t gotten any further than “What the f—” when Pfefferkorn jammed the stun gun into his withered gut and fired. Savory’s knees folded and he went down like a sack of root vegetables, his bulbous head hitting the carpet. In one fluid motion Pfefferkorn sprang over him and rolled into the room, coming to his feet in a defensive crouch, whirling and ducking and weaving and jabbing with the knife and snapping off nasty eighty-thousand-volt crackles. “Hah!” he said. “Heh!” He dashed from end to end, a cyclone of lethality destroying everything in its path, meeting no opposition. He paused to assess the damage. Aside from Savory, who was an inert heap, the room was empty. He had completely subdued the finishings, though. He had mauled the curtains, lamed the lamp, annihilated the radiator, obliterated the fan, and electrocuted the duvet.

Carlotta was nowhere to be seen.

But then he saw that he had missed something. The room was mostly the same as his, but there was one key difference. There was an extra door, the kind that connects two adjacent rooms. It connected room 48 to room 46, home of the honeymooners.

He opened the door. The corresponding handleless door was ajar. He pushed it all the way open with his foot and stepped through the doorway and there she was, tied down to the bed, a moon-shaped scar in the wallpaper corresponding to the top of the headboard that she had been rocking back and forth for weeks, slamming the wood into the wall and producing a rhythmic banging that was not hot water pipes or overzealous lovers but a frightened woman’s desperate bid to attract the attention of whoever it was in room 44, not forty feet away but less than the same number of inches.

He ran forward to free her. She raised her head up off the pillow and stared at him uncomprehendingly as he used the knife to cut the ropes on her wrists. He cut the ropes holding her ankles and then he turned toward her with open arms but instead of kisses and pent-up passion he was met by a stinging right hook to the jaw that knocked him off the bed and onto the floor. He tried to sit up and with a primal scream she came flying off the bed and her knee smashed into his jaw and his teeth snapped shut like a mousetrap and he tasted blood and the knife pinwheeled out of his hand and embedded itself in the wall. He managed to scrabble backward and turn onto all fours and crawl away from her. She let him get as far as the doorway connecting room 46 to room 48 and then she kicked him in the rear, sending him sprawling on his stomach. She fell atop him with her knees in his kidneys and began punching him in the back of the head. She was deceptively strong and unfathomably vicious. He tried to roll over and she began belting him in the side of the head instead. He covered his head with his arms and she gave up punching him and started choking him. A remote part of his brain observed that she had absorbed her training well—much better than he had. Good girl, he thought. He also felt vaguely ashamed and made a note never to pick a fight with her. He grabbed her wrists and wrenched them from his throat and she screamed and started clawing at his eyes. It took both his hands to control one of hers, and with her free hand she grabbed his moustaches and began yanking on them hard enough to start tearing the glue. He realized then what was happening. She didn’t recognize him. He was dressed like a goatherd and he had more facial hair than the East German women’s gymnastic team. “Carlotta,” he cried. “Stop.” She didn’t hear him. She just kept on screaming and pulling at his moustaches and punching him in the mouth. “Stop,” he yelled. But she was berserk, lost in some kind of hateful hypnotic trance. He had no choice. He made a fist and walloped her on the side of the head hard enough to stun her. He wriggled out from under her and scrambled for the shredded curtain and hid behind it like a sorority girl caught in the shower.

“It’s me,” he yelled. His mouth was full of blood. “Art.”

She stopped screaming and looked at him. She was shaking.

He spat. “It’s me.”

She trembled and stared. Her fists were still tight little bloodless rocks. He said her name. Her face was pale and varnished with sweat. Her roots had grown out. She was thinner than he ever remembered seeing her. “It’s me,” he said. Her fists unclenched and fell and her hands hung limp at her sides. “It’s me,” he said. Her trembling peaked and began to subside. She said his name. He nodded. She said it again. He nodded again and put out a tentative hand. She said his name a third time and then he stepped all the way toward her without fear or hesitation, taking her in his arms and pressing her humming body close to his and kissing her like the California state bar exam, long and hard.

106.

He retrieved the knife. He wiped the plaster from the blade and closed it.

“How many others?” he asked.

“One. He went outside for a cigarette.”

“I saw him. He was just lighting up when I got here.” He spat blood and drew the back of his hand across his mouth. “We’ll have to find another way out.”

She glanced at Savory’s body. “What about him?”

Pfefferkorn knelt and took Savory’s pulse at both wrist and neck. He looked at Carlotta and shook his head.

“Don’t beat yourself up about it,” Carlotta said. “He was a hundred.”

Pfefferkorn expected to feel guilt, like he had standing in Dragomir Zhulk’s hut, staring at the prime minister’s waxwork “corpse.” He expected to feel disgust: unlike Zhulk, Savory really was dead, and he had died directly at Pfefferkorn’s hands, not via a middleman. He expected to feel fear. Any minute now the soldier would be coming back to the room, and they had at most a few hours before the manhunt for them began. He did not feel any of these emotions. Nor did he feel satisfaction, empowerment, or righteous fury. He felt nothing, nothing at all. He had become, irrevocably and without fanfare, a hard man hardened to hard truths.

“Closet,” he said.

They dragged the body into the closet and covered it with the spare blanket.

“It’ll do,” he said. His mouth was filling up with blood again. He spat, hard.

“Arthur.”

He looked at her.

“You came for me,” she said.

He set his jaw and took her by the hand. “Let’s move.”

107.

The service elevator let them out in the kitchen. They raced through a dark, steamy labyrinth of prep tables and swinging plastic strips. There were large walk-in coolers full of goat dairy and racks of unbaked pierogi on sheet trays. The whole place stank of garbage and bleach. The first exterior door they found was locked. He kicked it. It held firm.

“What now?” Carlotta asked.

Before he could answer, there was a noise. They turned to see a largish shadow moving toward them across the kitchen tiles. The shadow belonged to a largish person smiling menacingly and swinging a largish chef’s knife in lazy figure eights.

“Hungry,” Yelena said.

“Not in the least,” Pfefferkorn said.

He pulled Carlotta to safety behind him and flicked open his toothbrush.

108.

“Really, Arthur, that was very impressive.”

They were running.

“Brutal,” Carlotta said. “But impressive.”

Somewhere not too far away, a siren began to wail.

“You damn near took her head off,” she said.

“Keep your voice down,” he said.

They had no trouble at all finding the right ship. It dominated the harbor, a weathered twenty-five-thousand-ton handy-size freighter with in red letters along the starboard side. Jaromir was waiting for them by the gangplank. He blinked at their bloody clothes, then ushered them down into the cargo hold. There were hundreds of wooden crates, stacked eight high atop wooden pallets. They squeezed their way to the back of the hold, where Jaromir had cleared out a space and laid down a blanket. There was a bucket of water. He told them to keep quiet. He would let them know when they had reached the safety of international waters.

They waited. Pfefferkorn’s legs were cramping and it was hard for him to sit still. Carlotta massaged him and used the bucket to wash the blood from his face and hands. He couldn’t be sure whose blood it was, his or Yelena’s. Both, he assumed. He watched it come off impassively. Time ticked by. The sounds of a busy ship trickled down through the ventilation system: forklifts and winches, hydraulics and pistons. The engine began to churn and the whole ship juddered. Home free, he thought. Then he heard barking.

“They’re searching for us,” Carlotta whispered.

He nodded. He uncapped the stun gun and handed it to her. He opened the knife. The barking got louder and nearer and more insistent. There was a shrill metallic squeal as the cargo hold’s doors were hauled open. They could hear Jaromir arguing vociferously with a man in Zlabian. The dogs were going crazy, their barks echoing. Pfefferkorn could sense them straining in his direction. They could smell him. He thought fast and pulled the designer eau de cologne solvent out of his back pocket. It was amber and viscous, just like real designer eau de cologne. He had no idea if it was disguised to smell like anything, but he didn’t think twice. He pulled Carlotta out of the way, held the bottle out at arm’s length, and spritzed the side of a crate. A heady base note of sandalwood and musk, overlaid with ylang-ylang and bergamot, filled the air.

The effect was instantaneous, in more ways than one. The barks turned to whimpers. Pfefferkorn could hear the handler fighting to keep the dogs there, without success. They broke free and ran, and the handler’s voice faded as he chased after them. Right away the doors to the cargo hold slammed shut.

They were safe.

Except they weren’t.

“Arthur,” Carlotta said.

She pointed.

He looked.

The solvent was rapidly eating its way through the crate, the wood dissolving before their eyes. There was a creak and a spray of splinters. Pfefferkorn processed this information just fast enough to throw himself on top of Carlotta and tent his back. The bottom crate collapsed and the seven stacked atop it crashed inward on him, each one loaded with more than fifty-five kilograms of the world’s finest quality root vegetables.

109.

He awoke with his leg bound in a crude splint. His arms and torso were taped up. His head was bandaged tightly. His skin burned with fever. He looked around. He was in a tiny cabin, surrounded by metal canisters and mason jars. He was in the ship’s infirmary.

“My hero.”

An uninjured Carlotta smiled at him from the foot of his cot.

110.

She and Jaromir nursed him as best they could, feeding him soup and expired blister packets of Soviet-era antibiotics and keeping watch as he slipped in and out of delirious dreams. Eventually he awoke lucid enough to ask for a full serving of root vegetable hash and strong enough to get it down.

“Good?” she asked.

“Revolting,” he said. He twisted to set the plate aside and winced at his broken ribs.

“Poor baby,” she said.

“What about you?”

“What about me.”

“Are you okay?”

“You’re asking me that?”

“I mean, did they hurt you.”

She shrugged. “They roughed me up a bit in the beginning, but on the whole I was treated very well.”

“No funny business,” he said.

“Funn—oh.” She shuddered. “No, nothing like that.”

“Good,” he said. “I needed to know that first.”

“Before what.”

“Before this.”

They made love. It was unsanitary, precarious, acrobatic, and transcendent.

Afterward she lay in his arms, lightly stroking his head.

“It was trés sweet of you to come rescue me,” she said. “Stupid, but sweet.”

“That’s my motto.”

“How in the world did you find me?”

He told her everything. It took a while.

“That’s rather complicated,” she said.

“I’m still having trouble figuring out who was telling the truth.”

“Possibly everybody, in parts.”

“They sent me in knowing I would fail,” he said. “I was a pawn.”

“Welcome to the club.”

“Didn’t they care about getting you back?”

She shrugged.

“You could have died.”

“I suppose.”

“You don’t seem too bothered by that possibility,” he said.

“We’re all going to die, at some point.”

“That’s an awfully forgiving line to take on folks who, as far as I can see, have shown no concern for you.”

“You don’t become a beekeeper if you’re not ready to get stung,” she said. “And let’s be fair. I’ve had a comfortable life, courtesy of them. Everything’s a compromise.”

“How long have you been a spy?” he asked.

“Never ask a lady that.”

“Was it Bill’s idea?”

She laughed. “I was the one who recruited him.”

“Did you love him?”

“Enough.”

“What about me.”

“I’ve always loved you, Arthur.”

They made love.

“Sorry we’re not galloping off across the misty moors,” he said.

“It’ll do.”

“I’m still looking into that beefcake for your birthday.”

She smiled. “I can’t wait.”

They made love.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“Tomorrow is Casablanca, last stop on this side of the Atlantic before we cross. Once you get to Havana the first thing you need to do is check yourself into a hospital.”

He nodded.

“Promise me you will.”

“Of course,” he said, “but I’ll be fine, as long as you’re with me.”

“That’s what I mean,” she said.

He didn’t understand.

Then he did.

“No,” he said.

“It’s too dangerous for me to stay with you, Arthur. And it’s too dangerous for you to stay with me.”

“Carlotta. Please.”

“I’ve worked with these people for thirty years. I know how they think. They hate loose ends.”

“I’m not a loose end.”

“To them you are. You know too much. Not to mention that if Zhulk was telling the truth, he’s bound to renege on the gas, now that you’re gone. That’s an enormous setback for our side. They’re going to be mad. Someone’s got to be blamed, and you’ll make an ideal scapegoat.”

There was a silence.

“‘Our side’?” he said.

“I’m sorry, Arthur.”

He felt the hardness coming on.

“Go someplace far away,” she said. “Start over.”

“I don’t want to start over.”

She put her hand on his. “I’m sorry.”

They lay without speaking, listening to the ocean beat against the side of the ship.

“Whatever you do,” he said, “please don’t tell me I’m like a moth drawn to a flame.”

“All right, I won’t tell you that.”

The waves raged like war.

“Make love to me again,” she said.

He turned his head on the pillow. Her eyes were full of pain. He kissed them shut. Then he closed his own eyes and did his duty.

111.

They stood on deck, watching the rising sun gild the medina, listening to the muezzin’s fading wail as it yielded to the plashing of floukas in the harbor. Pfefferkorn was leaning on the railing to take the weight off his broken leg. Carlotta had her arm around his waist.

“I’ll miss you more than you know,” she said.

“I’ll know,” he said.

She started for the gangplank.

“Carlotta.”

She turned around.

“Read it at your leisure,” he said.

She tucked the letter into her coat, kissed his cheek, and walked away.

Pfefferkorn tracked her slender form as it moved along the waterfront. She was headed to the American embassy. There she would make contact with the local field agent. She would report that the West Zlabians had released her in the wake of Pfefferkorn’s execution at the hands of the East Zlabians. He would be gone before anyone thought to start hunting for him.

Jaromir helped him back down to the infirmary. He tucked Pfefferkorn into bed and handed him a tepid mug of thruynichka.

“To your health,” Jaromir said.

Pfefferkorn took a long pull. It burned.

SEVEN DEUS EX MACHINA

112.

The mercado was of a piece with the rest of the village, sleepy, low-slung, and salt-eaten. Life began before dawn with the arrival of fishermen offloading buckets of wriggling squid and fraying sacks of shrimp. At half past five the produce trucks pulled up, and by nine all but the sickliest foodstuffs were gone. Toward midafternoon the people rose from their siesta, yawning men jellied by drink, heavy-bosomed women shooing half-naked children with incongruously ancient Indian faces, boys doing battle over a scabby, wheezing fútbol until once again drawn homeward by the sweet smell of stewed pork.

Pfefferkorn, a wide-brimmed straw hat on his head, moved among the stalls, squeezing tomatoes. No longer did he feel petty for demanding a discount of a few pesos. Bargaining was not merely tolerated but appreciated, a dance that helped to freshen an otherwise tiresome courtship. He handed the six ripest to the vendor, who placed them on the scale and announced a total weight of eleven kilograms. Es ridículo, Pfefferkorn replied. Never in the history of agriculture had tomatoes weighed so much, he said. He would complain to the alcalde, he would inform the padre, he would get his axe (he owned no axe), he would pay a certain amount (he swung the bills, axe-like) and not a centavo more. The vendor replied that he would be reduced to poverty, that he was already giving Pfefferkorn a discount, and who did he think he was, gringo, talking to him like this? After several more thrusts and parries, they agreed upon the same price they had the day before and shook hands.

Christmas was on the horizon, the streets awash with the remains of the previous evening’s mercado. Pfefferkorn took his bags of food and walked to the post office, which was also the sewer department, pest control, and Western Union. The lone clerk swapped out the sign on the wall depending on who came through the door and for what purpose. As soon as he saw Pfefferkorn, he replaced ALCANTARILLADOS with CORREOS and began digging through a jumble of parcels, jostling the gimpy desk and setting its little plastic nativity scene aquiver, so that the animals and magi appeared to line-dance.

“It came yesterday. . . . Don’t you get headaches? . . . Sign here. . . . Thank you.”

Pfefferkorn tended to forget what he had ordered by the time it arrived, which made tearing into the brown paper more exciting—a surprise to himself, from himself. To prolong his pleasure, he strolled down the avenida. He sat in the zócalo, passing the time of day with the elderly men feeding the birds. A woman in a serape striped like a TV test pattern sold him fritters drenched in jaggery syrup, a seasonal specialty. He ate one and felt as though he had been kicked by a mule. He shifted the package under his other arm and headed toward the rectory.

113.

Some thirty-eight months prior, the had put ashore in Havana. While the rest of the crew stormed the city to carouse, Jaromir got Pfefferkorn into a taxi and rode with him to the nearest hospital. They checked him in under a false name. He was shown to the medical-tourism ward. He was given X-rays. His leg was rebroken and reset. Jaromir stayed at his side for four more days. Before he left, Pfefferkorn offered to pay him, but he waved it off, growling. He was fine, he said. He was taking back tobacco and sugar, several hundred pounds of which were undeclared and would be sold on the Tunisian black market. Pfefferkorn should keep his money.

The hospital discharged him with crutches, a bottle of painkillers, and instructions to reappear in five weeks. He holed up in a cheap hotel and watched baseball. He watched Venezuelan sitcoms. He watched a dubbed episode of The Poem, It Is Bad! For practice, he spoke back to the screen. He hadn’t used Spanish since high school, when he and Bill had been conversation partners.

After the cast came off he spent another month rebuilding his strength. He took long, slow walks. He resumed his regimen of push-ups and sit-ups. He sat in the Plaza de la Catedral, eating croquetas and listening to the street musicians. He felt the nightly thump of the cannon at the Castilla de San Carlos de la Cabaña. He did a lot of thinking.

He took a taxi to a secluded beach about thirty minutes east of the city. He paid the driver to wait for him. He walked along the sand, his pockets swinging. The tide was far out. He knelt and dug a hole with his hands. He took out the dubnium polymer soap and dropped it into the hole. He took out the designer eau de cologne solvent and aimed the nozzle at the soap and spritzed it three times. The soap began to bubble and dissolve. The solvent was far less effective on the soap than it had been on the wooden crate. He spritzed again and watched the polymer fizz. He kept on spritzing until there was nothing left in the hole except a tuft of foam. At no point did he see anything resembling a flash drive. Which meant that he had been the real bait in the deal with Zhulk. Which meant that Paul had lied, at least about that, and that Carlotta was right. He could never go home.

He had the taxi driver take him to the Malecón. He walked along the esplanade, shielding his eyes and gazing northward toward Key West. It was too far away for him to actually see it, but he pretended he could.

114.

He moved on.

He boarded a propeller plane to Cancún. He spent the night in a motel and caught the first bus out of town. He got off the bus in a random village and walked around. He spent the night in a motel and got back on a different bus. He did the same thing the next day, and the next. Rarely did he stay in one place for more than twenty-four hours. He ate when he was hungry and slept when he was tired. He let his beard grow. It came in everywhere except for the strip of scar tissue on his upper left lip.

One evening while walking from the bus station in some no-name rural hamlet he heard the sound of a struggle and went to investigate. Down a trash-strewn alley, a pair of thugs was robbing an old woman at knifepoint. Pfefferkorn flexed his arms. His healed leg was still stiff. It impaired his mobility a hair. On the other hand, he was leaner and stronger than he had been in years. He was all sinew and muscle and bone.

The old woman was crying, being jerked about as she clung to her handbag.

Pfefferkorn whistled.

The thugs looked up, looked at each other, and smiled. One of them told the other to wait and then he advanced on Pfefferkorn, the knife glinting in the moonlight.

Pfefferkorn left him sinking to his knees, gasping for breath.

The other thug ran.

Pfefferkorn scooped up the old woman in his arms and carried her three blocks to her home. She was still crying, now with gratitude. She blessed him and kissed his cheeks.

“De nada,” he said.

The next morning, he moved on.

115.

The places he visited all had the same markets, plazas, and cathedrals. They all had the same murals of Hidalgo or Zapata or Pancho Villa. They were all too provincial and remote to get foreign newspaper service, and so he had to wait until he reached Mexico City to get to an Internet café and catch up on the latest developments in the Zlabian valley.

What had happened depended on whose account you chose to believe. According to the West Zlabian state-run news agency, the festival celebrating the fifteen-hundredth anniversary of Vassily Nabochka had been an unmitigated success. Copies of the newly completed poem were distributed to every citizen, and the resulting swell of patriotism provoked the jealousy of the East Zlabian capitalist aggressors, who then invaded. According to the East Zlabian Pyelikhyuin, the release of the controversial new ending had sent waves of anger through a West Zlabian populace already brimming with discontentment. The rumblings grew in strength and ferocity until they erupted into riots. Violence spilled across the Gyeznyuiy, at which point it became incumbent upon Lord High President Thithyich to breach the median and reestablish order. According to CNN, the chaos was total. Everybody was killing everybody. Neighboring governments, fearing errant shells and a flood of refugees, had begged the world powers to intervene. The White House had petitioned Congress to authorize the use of troops. In theory the peacekeeping force was to be multilateral, but ninety percent of the boots and all of the strategic command were American. Within twenty-four hours they had put the entire valley on lockdown. The president of the United States had issued a statement that there would be a complete withdrawal as soon as feasible. He refused to set a timetable, calling that a “prescription for disappointment.” Nor would he comment on what would happen to the West Zlabian gas field.

Pfefferkorn reread the words “newly completed poem” several times.

He tried looking for a copy of it online but found nothing.

Back at his motel, he reread his unfinished ending to Vassily Nabochka. A few months’ distance enabled him to admit that Zhulk’s wife had been right on the money. It was terrible.

That night he went out for a walk. He passed a pimp slapping around a prostitute, threatening to cut her tongue out.

Pfefferkorn whistled.

116.

He used public phones.

He dared not try more than once every few months. He didn’t know who was monitoring the line. He also worried that overdoing it would lead her to stop picking up calls from strange Mexican numbers. On balance he preferred the answering machine. His sole aim was to hear her voice, if only for a second, and it was less painful to get a recording than to listen to her asking Hello? Hello? without being able to respond.

117.

He liked to tell himself that he had chosen to settle in the seaside village because of its pleasant weather, or because reaching the Pacific implied some sort of finality. The truth was he had simply run out of money. At that point he had been on the road for more than a year, and he was tired: tired of the smell of diesel, of falling asleep sitting up, of waking up and having to ask his seatmate where he was. He was tired of dispensing vigilante justice. It had been fun for a while—he had been blessed more than a hooker having an allergy attack inside a confessional—but on the whole, the country was so saturated with corruption that he wasn’t doing much except gratifying his own ego.

The focal point of every Mexican village was an overlarge church, and his was no exception. Among other tasks, Pfefferkorn swept up, shined the pews, did the shopping, and helped prepare meals. He had become reasonably handy. If a lightbulb got stuck and broke off, he could get it out with a raw potato. If a chair went wobbly, he could screw the leg back on.

His chief duty was maintaining the belfry. He shooed away the birds and bats. He scaled off the guano. He oiled the hinges. He re-rigged the ropes. It was hard work, but later he would be reading or walking and he would hear the hour peal. What busy people heard as a single sustained note was to the patient listener a densely woven cloak of tones and overtones. Knowing that he had contributed in some small way to its beauty gave him a sense of accomplishment, one that lingered long after the ringing had died.

For his efforts he received a few pesos, two meals a day, and the right to sleep out back in a converted coal shed. It measured six by nine, with a packed dirt floor and a screened window that kept out most of the larger insects. He fell asleep to the sough of the ocean and woke to the mad babble of chickens running free in the yard. The gulls and pelicans that perched along the rear fence made an odd, bobbing skyline. Summers he slept nude. In winter the padre loaned him extra blankets, and Fray Manuel spread a tarp across the tin roof. Just in case, as soon as the clouds started to darken, they disconnected the extension cord. For this reason Pfefferkorn kept a flashlight on hand. His spare shirt hung on a nail. Obeying the rebukes of his ancestors, he had surreptitiously taken down the crucifix. There was enough space for a cot and—on the floor, along the wall—his growing library.

On the first of the month, he wired money to an independent bookseller in San Diego. A few weeks later, he received in return a parcel addressed to “Arturo Pimienta.” The postage alone ate up most of his spending money. He didn’t mind. What else did he need it for? Four paperbacks per order made for a nice, unhurried pace. One would be a classic novel he’d always meant to read but had never gotten around to. The second book was the seller’s choice. She leaned toward contemporary fiction that had received favorable reviews in certain publications of repute. The third and fourth books varied. Biographies, history, and popular science were his favorites. This month, with Christmas coming, he had chosen a thriller for Fray Manuel, who liked to work on his English, and Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory, which he planned to reread before giving it to the padre.

He put the food away in the rectory kitchen and retired to his shed. He hung up his hat, kicked off his shoes, and sat on the cot with the package in his lap, combing his fingers through his beard. He wasn’t ready to part with the delicious feeling of anticipation. He spanned the package with his hand. It was bulkier than usual, owing to the presence of a fifth book, a hardcover.

He had a ritual. He began with the cover. If there was an image, he analyzed it as one might a work of art: framing, perspective, dynamics. If the design was abstract, he contemplated the effect of its color scheme on his mood. Did it match the contents? He would have to wait and see. Next he read the flap copy, sleuthing out hidden meanings. He read the blurbs aloud, warmly dismissing their extravagant comparisons. He flipped to the front matter, starting with the Library of Congress information. He admired its tidy divisions. He read the author biography, stitching together names, institutions, cities, and accolades. The omissions spoke loudest. If a writer had graduated from a prestigious university, and this, ten years on, was her first novel, Pfefferkorn inferred that the intervening decade had been full of rejection. Other writers claimed advanced degrees, as if to explain why it had taken them so long. Still others made a fetish of their struggles, boasting of time spent driving taxis, delivering pizzas, working as short-order cooks or process servers. All wanted it to seem as though writing had been their destiny. Pfefferkorn understood the impulse and pardoned it.

He studied the photo, picturing the author buttering toast or waiting at the doctor’s office. He imagined what he or she would be like as a brother, a sister, a lover, a teacher, a friend. He imagined the author calling his agent and pitching a half-formed story that made no sense outside of his mind. He imagined the frustration the author felt when he understood, yet again, that his mind was not synonymous with anyone else’s, and that to tell his story he would have to sit down and write and rewrite and work and rework. And the frustration that came with knowing that the story would never come out quite the way he had envisioned it. Writing was impossible. It was easy to think of books as products, made in a factory, churned out by some gigantic machine. Pfefferkorn knew better. Books came from people. People were imperfect. It was their imperfections that made their books worth reading. And in committing those imperfections to paper, they became omnipotent. A book was a soft machine that made a god of its builder. It was impossible and yet it happened every single day.

Writing is impossible, Pfefferkorn thought, reading more impossible still. To read truly—to read bravely—to read with compassion and without fear—did anyone? Could anyone? There were too many ways to understand, too much emptiness between word and mind, an infinite chasm of misplaced sympathies.

118.

The hardcover had red library binding stamped with gold lettering. Breaking with tradition, he turned straight to the last page.

He wanted to feel disappointed, but disappointment entails the possibility of surprise, and he had formed in advance a fairly clear notion of what to expect. In the final, unattributed canto of the revised West Zlabian People’s Press edition of Vassily Nabochka, the king died before the antidote got to him, and a grief-stricken Prince Vassily repudiated the throne, deeding the royal lands over to the people and going to live as a commoner, tilling the fields and herding goats, finding redemption in manual labor before dying peacefully beneath a runty tree in the meadows of West Zlabia. It was the worst kind of agitprop: heavy-handed, impatient, and artless. The turns were improbable, the imagery fuzzy, and the characters reductive.

Pfefferkorn laughed until he cried.

119.

Three days before Christmas he made a pilgrimage. The bus dropped him at a dusty intersection in a village thirty miles south. He visited the market and the plaza. He admired the murals. He noted with pride that the church bell was not as fine as the one he tended.

He checked to make sure he was not being watched.

He entered a bodega and found the pay phone at the back.

He put in his phone card.

He dialed.

It rang once.

It rang twice.

They had it set to answer after the fourth ring.

It rang a third time.

“Hello?”

Pfefferkorn’s heart pitched. It felt as though he were breathing through a drinking straw.

“Hello,” his daughter said again. She sounded harassed. He wondered if she had had a bad day. He wanted to console her. It’ll be all right, he wanted to say. Let me help you. But he could not say that. And he could not help her. He silently implored her to stay on the line. Don’t give up, he thought. Say Hello again. Or don’t. But don’t hang up. Say something else. Say I can’t hear you. Say Can you call back. Say anything at all. Get angry. Yell. Only: speak.

A child cried.

She hung up.

Pfefferkorn did not move for some time. The receiver was heavy in his hand. He replaced it softly. The phone ejected his card. He slid it into his pocket. He went to wait for the bus.

120.

The next morning, Fray Manuel greeted him when he came back from the market.

“You have a visitor. I asked him to wait in the vestry.”

Pfefferkorn handed over the bags and went down the hall. He knocked and entered.

They stood face-to-face.

“Hello, Yankel.”

“Hello, Bill.”

“You don’t seem that surprised to see me.”

“It takes a lot to surprise me these days.”

“I like the beard,” Bill said. “It makes you look distinguished.”

Pfefferkorn smiled. “How are you?”

“Not bad, for a dead guy.” Bill glanced around. “Some place you got here.”

“You want the tour?”

“Why the heck not.”

They went out back to the shed.

“It suits my needs,” Pfefferkorn said. “Although—a doorman. That I miss.”

“You have the priest.”

“That’s true.”

Bill’s gaze settled on the hardcover on the cot. “Is that what I think it is?”

“Be my guest.”

Bill opened Vassily Nabochka and paged to the end. He read. He closed the book and looked up.

“Well, that’s shit,” he said.

Pfefferkorn agreed.

“What about you? Working on anything?”

“Oh no. I’m done with that for good.”

“Sorry to hear it.”

“Don’t be,” Pfefferkorn said. “I’m not.”

“Not even a little?”

“I’ve said everything I needed to say.”

“You sound very sure of yourself.”

“When you know, you know.”

“And so that’s that.”

Pfefferkorn nodded.

“Kudos,” Bill said. “It’s a rare writer who knows when it’s time to shut up.”

Pfefferkorn smiled.

“Carlotta sends her love,” Bill said.

“Same to her.”

“She wanted me to tell you that she appreciated the letter.”

Pfefferkorn said nothing.

“She wouldn’t tell me what was in it. But clearly it meant a lot to her.”

There was a silence.

“I’m sorry about that,” Pfefferkorn said.

“It’s all right.”

“I thought you were dead. I’m sorry.”

“Water under the bridge,” Bill said. He tossed the book back on the bed. “You want to get out of here?”

“Sure.”

They headed down to the beach. It was a cool day. The light was flat and even, sharpening the gray gulls turning circles against a scrim of gray clouds. Flaking pangas lay like casualties in the sand. The wind came whipping off the water, driving back Bill’s hair and causing Pfefferkorn to snuff brine through his sinuses. They had walked perhaps half a mile when the hour began to toll, nine rich peals.

“You’re back together, then,” Pfefferkorn said. “You and Carlotta.”

“Well, yes and no. More no than yes. I’m sort of in limbo, myself.”

“What happened to you?” Pfefferkorn asked.

Bill shrugged. “I said the wrong things to the wrong people. Someone decided I was no longer reliable. Next thing I know, I’m treading water in the middle of the Pacific. Five and a half hours. I got very, very lucky someone happened by. Terrible sunburn. Hurt for weeks.”

“What did you do to piss them off?”

“I wanted to write a book,” Bill said. “A real one.”

“Carlotta mentioned something about that to me.”

“She did, did she.”

“She said you were working on a literary novel.”

“‘Working’ is a bit of an exaggeration.” Bill tapped his forehead. “Still all up here.”

“What’s it about?”

“Oh, you know. Trust. Friendship. Love. Art. The difficulty of meaningful and lasting connection. I don’t have much in the way of plot, yet.”

“It’ll come to you.”

“Maybe,” Bill said. He smiled. “Maybe not. That’s part of the adventure.”

For the first time, Pfefferkorn noticed that Bill had gotten rid of his beard. He had not seen him clean-shaven since college.

“You look good, too,” Pfefferkorn said.

“Thanks, Yankel.”

The surf surged underfoot.

“So how come you’re not in hiding, like me.”

“I was, for a long time. They found me. They always do.”

“And?”

“I guess they felt bad about the way things ended, because they invited me to come back on board. They even threw me a bone and said I could write whatever I wanted. Clean slate.”

“Good deal.”

“There’s a catch.”

“I would assume so.”

“They want me to prove my loyalty,” Bill said.

Pfefferkorn snorted. “Figures,” he said. “How.”

The gulls banked sharply and dove, screaming, toward unseen prey.

“You have to leave town,” Bill said.

Pfefferkorn smiled at him strangely. “What?”

“Listen carefully. You have to go. Today.”

“Why would I do that?”

“And you have to stop calling her.”

Pfefferkorn slowed and turned and faced him.

“That’s how they found you,” Bill said. He came in close, taking Pfefferkorn’s sleeve in his hand, speaking quickly and quietly. “They mapped all the places you’ve called from and triangulated.”

Pfefferkorn regarded him as one regards a madman.

“No calls,” Bill said. “No books. You get on a bus and you go somewhere. Don’t make friends. You stay out of sight as long as you can and then you get on another bus and repeat the whole process over again.” He pulled tighter on Pfefferkorn’s bunched sleeve. “Are you hearing me? Not tomorrow. Today. Do you understand? Say something so I know you understand.”

“They asked you to do it,” Pfefferkorn said.

“I checked the bus schedule. You can be gone by sunset. How much cash do you have?”

“They really did. They asked you.”

“Answer me. Cash. How much.”

Pfefferkorn shook his head admiringly. “Unbelievable.”

“Stop talking and listen.”

“The chutzpah . . . Unreal.”

“You need to listen. You need to concentrate.”

“Let me see,” Pfefferkorn said. “They said something about a ‘loose end.’”

“You’re not listening.”

“‘We’ve got a loose end we need you to tie up.’ Is that right?”

“Christ, Art, who cares? That’s hardly the point.”

“So? What did you tell them?”

“What do you think I told them? I told them I’d do it and then I came straight here to warn you. Now can we be practical for a minute here?”

Pfefferkorn pulled away from him. He put his hands on his hips and looked out at the ocean.

“I don’t want to leave,” he said. “I like it here.”

“That’s not an option.”

“Anyway, I hate the bus.”

“For God’s sake. Be reasonable.”

“Let’s not talk about it right now,” Pfefferkorn said. “Please?”

“This isn’t the time to—”

“I know,” Pfefferkorn said, “but I don’t want to talk about it. All right?”

Bill stared at him.

“Let’s talk about something else,” Pfefferkorn said.

Bill said nothing.

“Let’s talk about the old days.” Pfefferkorn smiled. “We had some fun, huh?”

Bill said nothing.

“Play along, would you,” Pfefferkorn said.

Bill continued to stare at him.

“Remember that time I was driving your car and got pulled over?” Pfefferkorn asked.

Bill’s face softened, just perceptibly.

“You remember,” Pfefferkorn said.

“We can’t talk about this now.”

“I want you to tell me if you remember.”

The wind relented, allowing a stillness to rush in. The cries of the gulls were no longer audible.

“If I play along will you listen to me?” Bill asked.

“Just answer the question,” Pfefferkorn said.

There was a long silence.

“I remember,” Bill said.

“Good,” Pfefferkorn said. “That’s very good. And? Then? You remember what happened next?”

“How could I forget? My glove box smelled like a urinal for six months.”

“And the thing we did, with the oars in the trees? What were we thinking?”

“I have no idea.”

“I don’t think we were thinking.”

“You were always thinking,” Bill said. “You probably meant something symbolic by it.”

“I was stoned,” Pfefferkorn said.

Bill smiled his most generous smile, the one Pfefferkorn loved and depended on, and despite the distress it concealed, it still made Pfefferkorn feel like the most important person on earth. He never wanted it to end, and to prolong its life he asked another question. “What else do you remember?”

“Art—”

“Tell me.”

“I remember everything.”

“Do you?”

“Of course I do.”

“Then tell me,” Pfefferkorn said. “Tell me everything.”

They walked on for some time. The surf crashed and roared. The church bell tolled, ten peals. They went on. The sand was firm and cold. It shined like a ballroom floor. The church bell tolled eleven. They worked their way back through the years, excavating the past and rebuilding the destroyed landscape of their memories. They walked on and on and then the beach ended where a bluff pushed out into the ocean. Waves boiled through the rocks and smashed against the base of the bluff, flinging curved lines of froth like lariats. They stopped walking and leaned against the water-beaten rock.

“Berlin,” Pfefferkorn said. “One night you went out around two in the morning.”

“If you say so.”

“Come off it,” Pfefferkorn said.

“All right, I remember.”

“What were you doing?”

“What do you think I was doing? I was meeting a girl.”

“What girl.”

“I met her on the night train from Paris.”

“I don’t remember any girl.”

“You were asleep. I ran into her coming out of the bathroom. We got to talking and she told me she’d meet me the next night at a park near her aunt’s house.”

“You didn’t tell me where you were going,” Pfefferkorn said. “You just snuck off.”

“Come on, Art. What was I supposed to say.”

“You thought I would tell Carlotta.”

“It did cross my mind.”

“I can’t believe you thought I would rat you out,” Pfefferkorn said.

“I didn’t say that. I said it crossed my mind.”

“I may be jealous but I’m not a bastard.”

“I knew how you felt about her.”

“So?”

“I assumed you would want to protect her.”

“Yeah, and how did you think I felt about you,” Pfefferkorn said.

There was a silence.

“You loved me,” Bill said.

“You’re goddamned right I did,” Pfefferkorn said.

There was a silence.

“I’m sorry,” Bill said. “I should’ve said something.”

“Yes, you should have.”

“I’m sorry. I truly am.”

“It’s all right,” Pfefferkorn said. “Did you ever end up telling Carlotta?”

Bill nodded.

“Was she mad?”

“A little. But, look. We never had that kind of relationship, she and I.”

Pfefferkorn did not ask what kind of relationship he meant.

“Out of curiosity, what did you think I was doing in Berlin?” Bill asked.

“I don’t know,” Pfefferkorn said. “Something top-secret.”

Bill laughed. “Hate to disappoint.”

They stayed there a while longer. The tide began to rise.

“There’s a baby,” Pfefferkorn said. “I heard it on the phone.”

Bill nodded once.

“Boy or girl?” Pfefferkorn asked.

“A boy,” Bill said. “Charles.”

“Charles,” Pfefferkorn repeated.

“They call him Charlie.”

“I like it,” Pfefferkorn said.

Bill hesitated, then took a wallet-sized photo from his breast pocket.

Pfefferkorn looked at his grandson. He didn’t see much of himself. After all, his daughter looked like his ex-wife, not like him. The baby had black hair poking out from under a white ski cap. His eyes were blue, but that meant nothing. Pfefferkorn’s daughter had had blue eyes, too, before they darkened to an inviting chocolate brown. Things changed.

“He’s perfect,” Pfefferkorn said.

Bill nodded.

“Does he have a middle name?”

Bill hesitated again. “Arthur.”

There was a silence.

“Can I keep this?” Pfefferkorn asked.

“I brought it for you.”

“Thanks.”

Bill nodded.

“So you’ve seen her, then,” Pfefferkorn said.

“I hear things,” Bill said.

“And? How is she?”

“From what I can tell, she’s getting along. She misses you, of course. But she’s living her life.”

“That’s what I want. Although, I have to say, I don’t feel too terrific about leaving her in his hands.”

“Can you think of anyone you would feel happy leaving her with?”

“Not really.”

“Well, there you go.”

Pfefferkorn nodded. He held up the photo. “Thanks again for this,” he said.

“You’re welcome.”

Pfefferkorn tucked the photo in his pocket. “You’re a good writer,” he said. “Always have been.”

“You don’t have to lie to me.”

“I’m not lying. You have talent.”

“Nice of you to say that.”

“Take a compliment.”

“All right.”

Silence.

“This deal they offered you,” Pfefferkorn said. “There’s something I don’t get about it. You’re supposed to be dead.”

Bill nodded.

“Now all of a sudden you’ve got a new book out?”

“They’re going to put it out under my real name.”

Pfefferkorn laughed. “At long last.”

“If it sells more than a dozen copies I’ll be surprised.”

“That’s not why you’re writing it.”

“No.”

“Still, from their end, why bother?” Pfefferkorn said. “What do they get out of it?”

“I suppose it’s their way of rewarding me for thirty years of service.”

“Come on. Even I know they don’t think like that.”

“I don’t have any other explanation.”

Pfefferkorn mused. “Better than a gold watch, I guess.”

“A lot better than being thrown off a boat.”

“That depends,” Pfefferkorn said. “Who’s your publisher?”

Bill smiled.

“Let’s say you did do it,” Pfefferkorn said.

“Do what.”

“Uphold your end of the bargain.”

“Knock it off.”

“Theoretically. Let’s say you did. How would they know?”

“They’d know.”

Pfefferkorn looked at him.

“They’re watching,” Bill said.

“Right now?”

Bill nodded.

“Where are they?”

Bill gestured all around. Everywhere.

“So they’ll also know if you don’t do it,” Pfefferkorn said. “And they’ll know if I run.”

“You have to try.”

“What for? They’ll know. They’ll just come after me again, and sooner or later, no matter how careful I am, they’ll catch me. And in the meantime what happens to you?”

Bill said nothing.

“That’s what I thought,” Pfefferkorn said.

There was a long silence.

“Take it,” Pfefferkorn said.

“What.”

“The deal. Take it.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’d take it, if I were you.”

“No, you wouldn’t.”

“If you don’t take it, we’re both finished.”

“Not necessarily.”

“They’ll find me. You said it yourself. They always do.”

“Not if you listen to me.”

“No calls.”

“Yes.”

“And no books.”

“Yes.”

Pfefferkorn shook his head. “Impossible.”

“It’s very simple. Don’t buy a phone card. Don’t buy books.”

“And I’m telling you, it’s not simple at all. As long as she’s there, it’s impossible.”

Bill said nothing.

“Don’t be stupid,” Pfefferkorn said. “If not you, it’ll be someone else.”

Bill said nothing.

“It’ll be a stranger. I don’t want that.”

Bill said nothing.

“It may as well be on my terms,” Pfefferkorn said. “It may as well achieve something.”

“Please shut up.”

“What’s more important, that you be the one who does it, or just that I’m out of the picture?”

“I’m not having this conversation.”

“It’s an important distinction,” Pfefferkorn said.

Bill said nothing.

“Well, let’s hope it’s the latter.”

“Shut up.”

“I will. Soon. Remember what you said before? In the shed?”

Bill did not answer.

“You said, ‘It’s a rare writer who knows when to shut up.’ That’s me.”

“For crissake,” Bill said, “it’s not a metaphor for life.”

Pfefferkorn took out the letters he carried on him at all times. The pages had taken on the warmth and curve of his thigh. “This one’s for you,” he said, peeling them apart. “You don’t have to read it now.”

“Art—”

“In fact, I’d prefer if you didn’t. This one’s for my daughter. Promise me she’ll get it.”

Bill did not move to take either letter.

“Promise me,” Pfefferkorn said.

“I’m not promising you anything.”

“You owe me a favor.”

“I don’t owe you a thing,” Bill said.

“The hell you don’t.”

The church bell began to toll. It tolled once.

Pfefferkorn flapped the letters. “Promise me she’ll get it.”

The bell tolled a second and a third time.

“You can’t sit here with me forever,” Pfefferkorn said.

The bell tolled four and five. Pfefferkorn leaned over and tucked the letters in Bill’s breast pocket. He dusted himself off and looked back at the town. The bell tolled six, seven, eight. Pfefferkorn looked at the ocean. The bell tolled nine. He stepped toward the water. He felt Bill’s eyes on him. Ten. He stretched his arms. Eleven. He stretched his legs. The bell tolled twelve and he put one foot in.

“Yankel,” Bill said.

Pfefferkorn advanced against the tide. The bell had stopped ringing but its vibrations could still be felt.

“Get back here.”

The water came up to his knees.

“Art.”

The sky was a high blank header. The horizon was a straight line of type. Pfefferkorn smiled back at his friend and called out above the waves.

“It had better be a damned good book,” he said.

Pfefferkorn embraced the sea.

121.

He swam.

From far behind him came shouts and splashes. Eventually the water gave up its resistance and the splashes fell away and the shouts receded and he was alone, swimming. No one could catch him. He swam out past the bend in the shoreline. His lungs burned. His legs stiffened. He swam on past the fishing boats. He swam on until he saw nothing and nobody and then he stopped. He turned onto his back and floated, unmoored, in the limitless sea, letting the current take him.

He expected to sink. He did not sink. He drifted. Water sloshed over his chest and into his ears. Salt water ran into his eyes like he was crying in reverse, sucking up the sorrow of the world. He was thirsty. Hours passed. The sun peaked, then dropped like a slow-moving bomb. The sky became a cathedral. Night fell. He turned beneath turning constellations. The sun rose and bore down like retribution. The flesh of his face grew tender. It blistered and still he drifted on, and by the next night, his thirst had waned. His stomach closed. He felt shrunken, like a jarred specimen, at once heavy and light. He surpassed pain. Time passed. The sun rose and fell and rose and fell. His clothes rotted away. He floated naked as a child.

Then he began to change. At first it was a change in perception. He ceased to feel his body. It was sad, like bidding an old friend goodbye. But there came a consolation. He felt new things, things bigger than himself. He felt the atmosphere like a blanket. The roll of a passing freighter. The tickle of kelp. The whizz of commuting sardines. The nuzzle of sharks. The stiff brush of cormorant wings. He heard new things, too. He eavesdropped on whales. He discerned the secrets of flatfish fathoms deep. It was as though he had become a tuning fork keyed to life itself. He gave himself over. He unfurled his limbs and beckoned life to him. First came algae. Then barnacles took up residence on his back and legs. They were joined there by limpets. He grew a moustache of mussels. He donned a crown of driftwood and trash. The tips of his fingers trailed delicate threads of seagrass. Coral cities were erected on his back and shoulders, attracting worms and crustaceans, anemones and clownfish, wrasses and triggerfish and tangs. Crabs hatched in his bellybutton. Eels curled up in his armpits. He was subsumed. He became a substrate. Mineral deposits grouted the gaps between his fingers and his toes. They spread up his shins. They locked his legs together. He calcified and collected. He was accommodating. He made room. He grew. His expanding shape created coves and inlets. The pilots of low-flying planes began to take him for a sandbar. He began to affect the tides. Organic matter composted atop his chest, creating a fertile soil. A coconut washed up onto his abdomen, cracked open, and germinated into a palm tree. An albatross dropped a mouthful of seeds. He bore wildflowers.

Later the wind shifted and he appeared off the coast, a vibrant and thriving assemblage, tilting like a giant hand in greeting. He was first noticed by fishermen. His natural beauty was taken note of. Word spread. The geological survey was divided over how to designate him. He seemed comfortable with his place, floating there in the just-beyond. An enterprising company began running tours out to see him. To prevent erosion, they limited the number of people onshore to twenty at a time. He was no longer visible except for his eyes, which peered out from the land around them, an invented land composed of many layers, some living, some dead. The people looked at his eyes and asked, Is it him? And the answer came: It is. Then they put out blankets and picnicked. They sunbathed on his shores. Children built castles and played in his waves. Pods of dolphins swam past, doing tricks. A good time was had by all.

* * *

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you: Stephen King, Lee Child, Robert Crais, Chris Pepe and everyone at Putnam, Amy Brosey, Zach Shrier, Norman Lasca, John Keefe, Alec Nevala-Lee, Amanda Dewey, Liza Dawson, Chandler Crawford, Nina Salter and everyone at Les Deux Terres, Julie Sibony, David Shelley and everyone at Little, Brown UK.

My gratitude to my wife is even greater than usual, as she made to me a gift of her idea for a casino within a casino.

ALSO BY JESSE KELLERMAN

The Executor

The Genius

Trouble

Sunstroke