Tanner’s Virgin

Chapter 12

The Wicked Witch of the West had lost an eye to some loathsome disease. She had never bothered to replace it with a glass eye and did not wear a patch, either. Nor was she wearing a Hathaway shirt, which was just as well, because she would have set their image back immeasurably. Aside from the gaping, red-rimmed eye socket that glared at one, she wasn’t particularly bad looking. Her body was well proportioned and her face would have been attractive.

She compensated for her relative shortage of deformities by reeking. She was the rankest-smelling female in the world, and it was not necessary for me to smell every woman on earth to make this statement. She stank; her breath was enough to curdle Coca-Cola and her flatulence suggested a lifelong diet of nothing but baked beans. I don’t think she ever bathed; if she did, the Farah Rud River would have a water pollution problem.

“You come from Amanullah!” She slapped me on the back, put her mouth to my ear for a confidential whisper. I tried to do something about my nostrils. “He is my good friend,” she hissed. (You couldn’t hiss this in English, but the Afghan for it is full of sibilants. Don’t quibble.) “My very good friend,” she went on, still hissing. “Always he brings me my very best girls. So many of the maradóosh, they are not lovely, they do not please men, they bleed, they get sick, they die. Often they are diseased, and men complain later that their members have been set afire and immersed in acid. But from Amanullah I obtain always only the very finest, the milk of the milk. The best girl in this house is a girl Amanullah sold me.”

“One of them,” I said, “is a girl he should not have sold you. I must repurchase her.”

“I do not sell my girls, kâzzih.”

“Amanullah wishes to buy her himself. I am his agent.”

“Oh?”

I showed her the letter. “You see? He will pay your price for the girl, whatever you declare your price to be. And of course you know that Amanullah is a man of his word, that his word is to be trusted.”

“It is so.”

“The girl is called Phaedra Harrow,” I said. “Or perhaps she is called Deborah Horowitz.”

“You do not know her name?”

“It is one of the two.”

“But I know neither name,” she said, punctuating the remark flatulently. I took an involuntary step backwards. “I give them new names when they come into my house, and they learn their new names even as they learn their new lives. The old names cease to have any importance for them. They are even buried under their new names.”

“I see.”

“So these names mean nothing.”

I took out the photograph and showed it to her. She leaned forward expectantly and her black hair brushed at my nose. The odor that rose from it was absolutely incredible. It staggered the mind, to say nothing of the nostrils. My olfactory nerves were utterly unnerved. I winced at the stench, and the madam recoiled at the photo.

“She who is alive,” she said.

One hears not merely words but the thoughts they comprise; otherwise none of us could speak nearly as quickly as we do and hope to be understood. And so what I heard her say was “She who is not alive,” because it made more sense. One doesn’t expect a person to look at a picture and recoil in horror at the thought that the pictured individual is alive. Our necrophilic culture may be headed in that direction, but so far it hasn’t quite arrived.

So I thought she meant that Phaedra was dead.

Over a period of time people become their images, become their role in one’s life. It takes a shock to remind one how one really regards various individuals. My mother, I remember, used to say in jest that I would not really appreciate her until she was gone. She was not serious; I guess the maudlin mush of this particular cliché appealed to her as a sort of verbal camp. And I had appreciated her, of course; we were quite close. But one day one of my aunts called, broken-voiced, to tell me that Mother had somehow died, and it turned out that she had been right all along. I hadn’t really appreciated her before, not as I did then.

I said, “The girl is dead?”

A moment’s hesitation. Then, with a rush of words packaged in foul air, “Ah, yes, yes, you speak the truth, kâzzih. The girl is dead.”

“The hell she is.”

“Eh?”

“‘She who is alive,’” I said. “I missed it the first time, but you were all nervous when you saw the picture, and then you were relieved when I said she was dead. Where is she?”

“You must go, kâzzih.”

I straightened up, glowered down at her. “Where is she? And why do you not answer me?”

“Phuc’mi.”

“Not if you were the last woman on – huh?”

“Phuc’mi.”

“I don’t know what that means,” I said. “In my own tongue, the tongue of a far-off land, it has a meaning. But I know little of Pushtu, and the word you speak is unknown to me.”

“It is unknown to me also, kâzzih. It is the name of the one you seek, of She who is alive.”

“Her name is Phaedra.”

“Her new name. We gave it to her because it is all she says. ‘Phuc’mi, Phuc’mi,’ it is all she says, night and day. We try to teach her our own tongue but she refuses to learn it. One can make her learn nothing. But kâzzih, I will tell you this. She is the best maradóon ever to work in this house. She is the finest worker I have ever had.”

“No,” I said.

“The finest in all my years. Her beauty is greater than the others. I noticed this when she came to me, but what did it matter? A few weeks and all my girls lose their beauty. These miners and camel herders, what know they of beauty? When they have no money for maradóosh they content themselves in the orifices of their camels.”

“I suppose it’s better than riding one,” I said.

“But this Phuc’mi,” she said. “That which makes other girls grow pale and wither makes her grow ever more beautiful. That which puts death in the eyes of the others gives her eyes the spark and sparkle of life. And with men she is wild. She can please a man as can no other girl I have ever known.”

“No,” I said.

“But it is so.”

I shook my head wordlessly. Not Phaedra, I thought. Not my little virgin, not my cloistered nun. It was patently impossible. Mother Horowitz’s little girl was not the sort to reign as star performer in an Afghanistan whorehouse. Mother Horowitz’s beloved Deborah wasn’t the possessor of the camel herders’ favorite orifice. I could, like the Red Queen, believe six impossible things before breakfast. This, though, I simply could not believe.

“And so we call her ‘She who is alive,’” the smelly old pig was saying. “Because that which brings others to their death gives her more and more of life, so that she thrives upon it and grows every day younger and fairer. She is my jewel, kâzzih, my treasure, the flower of my garden.” It was an obscenity for anything that smelled like this even to speak of flowers and gardens. She is the cabbage of my skunk, maybe. She is the arm of my pit, even. But farther than that one could not go.

“And so I cannot let her go,” she said.

“But that’s ridiculous.”

“She is worth more than any three of my girls combined. She can go with more men in a night than the others, and the men prefer her, they wait in a long line for her. I thought that if they want her more, then they should pay more for her, and so I raised her price. Thirty for the other girls, fifty for Phuc’mi. They pay her price. They stand in line for her. She is the queen of this house of maradóosh.”

“She does not belong here.”

“But she does.”

“She belongs in her own country,” I said. “With her own mother, and with the ones who love her. She-”

The hog bristled. “You say that we do not love her? I, who could not care for her more were she my own daughter? She reminds me of my own self in my youth.” This I rather doubted. “And the other girls, do you think they do not care for Phuc’mi? They regard her as their sister. And do you not think the men care for her? Would they pay such prices for one for whom they do not care?”

I turned from her, went outside for a moment. I wanted some fresh air, not just to clear my nose but to clear my head as well. I looked out over the desolate landscape. It was the middle of the afternoon and most of the girls were sleeping. Soon they would awaken and have their breakfast. Shortly thereafter the men would arrive from their camels, from the mines. And Phuc’mi-Phaedra-Deborah would have her work cut out for her until sunrise.

I went inside again. I told the foul-smelling old woman that, when all was said and done, she had no real choice in the matter. Amanullah would pay her price, whatever it might turn out to be. If the girl was worth that much, Amanullah would nevertheless make it good. Her customers might be unhappy, but she did hold the whip hand; after all, her house was the only game in town, and if it came down to a choice between her girls and camels, well, it might be close but her gals would surely carry the day. However good an adjustment Phaedra might have made to Afghanistanian whoredom, she surely belonged in her own home.

And, as a final argument, I showed her the gun. I explained that if she did not deliver Phaedra at once I would shoot her, and then I would go through the house and shoot all the other girls, and then I would take Phaedra away anyhow. This was sheer bravado, since the gun didn’t have that many bullets in it anyway, and since I wouldn’t have gone around shooting innocent maradóosh to begin with, but I guess she believed enough of it to go get Phaedra. She choked back a sob and said something which must have been interestingly obscene, some suggestion no doubt as to the ideal employment for diverse portions of my anatomy. And then she went away.

I steeled myself. Well, aluminumed myself, anyway. I told myself Phaedra was going to look like hell, and might be more than a little hysterical, and would need no end of tender loving care.

Whereupon she appeared.

She was more beautiful than could be believed. I use the awkward construction purposefully; “unbelievably beautiful” is one of those clichés fastened on every sunset and most Swedish films, the latter of which are at best believably beautiful. Phaedra was something quite out of the ordinary. I have already told you what she looked like, and she still looked that way, but with a new radiance, a special glow, a lilt to her walk and to her smile that had not been there before.

Before she had been a beautiful virgin. Now she was as beautiful as ever, and she wasn’t exactly a virgin anymore. She was, from what I had heard, as far from the state of virginity as she and I both were from the state of New Mexico, and perhaps even farther than that.

“Phaedra,” I said.

“Phuc’mi,” she said.

“Phaedra, it’s me. Evan. Evan Tanner. From New York. You remember me, Phaedra.”

“Phuc’mi.”

“And your name is Phaedra Harrow. Once your name was Deborah Horowitz. Do you remember? And then you changed it to Phaedra, and then-”

“Phuc’mi.”

She was wearing a piece of silk that was sort of wrapped all over her and fastened at the shoulder. Purple silk. She said her new name a few more times, and then she unfastened the purple silk and unwrapped herself like a self-opening Christmas present, and I looked at the glory that had lived untouched with me in New York, and the same glory that had since turned on half the camel schleppers in Afghanistan, and I think I got a little weak in the knees.

“She wishes not to go with you,” said the “before” half of the Ban ad. “She wishes only to stay here. I do not think she understands what you say to her.”

She was right. Phaedra’s eyes gave the show away. They had the queer light of madness in them. I nodded and went out to the car. I came back with a bottle of Coke.

“Coca-Cola,” said Phaedra.

“She is mad for Coca-Cola,” said the madam. “There is an empty bottle she takes every morning to sleep with her.”

“She used to like wine,” I recalled. “But she wasn’t queer for the bottles.” I opened the Coke and gave it to Phaedra and turned to go back for another one.

“Get two,” the madam said.

I didn’t want to. I knew it would make her belch, and I could imagine what that would smell like. But I got two more Cokes, and we all three drank ours down. I was the first to finish. I waited patiently until Phaedra was through with hers. She put the bottle down and gave me her one response to life, saying the new name by which she was so well known in the area.

And I hit her over the head with the Coke bottle.

“My head hurts,” she said.

“You’re awake.”

“You hit me.”

I took my eyes off the road and looked at her. She looked better than ever, but the madness had not left her eyes. I put my eyes back on the road just in time to avoid putting the car off the road, and I agreed that I had hit her, by George.

“What with?”

“A Coke bottle.”

“Oh. Stop the car, Evan.”

“You know who I am.”

“Sure. I knew back there but I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t say anything, just what I said over and over. I get blocked all the time, I can’t even think. Stop the car.”

“What for?”

“Just do it.”

I stopped the car, and Phaedra came into my arms and unzipped my fly.

“Hey,” I said.

“What’s the matter?”

“Well, I don’t know.”

“You always wanted to. From the first time you saw me you wanted to. Always. But I wouldn’t let you. I wouldn’t let anybody. They didn’t care that I wouldn’t let them, not here. I couldn’t even tell them. I couldn’t tell anybody anything because they didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. They said things I didn’t understand, and they didn’t understand anything I said, and it was horrible. Why isn’t it hard?”

“What?”

“Your thing. I want it hard so that we can do it. Don’t you want me?”

“Of course, but-”

“I know how to get it hard. Just a minute.”

But I was gently pushing her away. I held her at arm’s length, and she looked unhappily at me and wanted to know what was the matter.

“You don’t want me.”

“Sure, but-”

“The hell you do. I want to go back there. It was nice there. I got as much as I wanted. All night long, practically. As soon as one was finished another one would come. They didn’t want to talk or anything. All they wanted to do was-”

“I know, I know.”

“How come you don’t want to, Evan?”

I looked into her poor insane eyes. She was so magnificently beautiful it was almost painful to look at her, and she was begging me to do more than look, and she might as well have asked me to swim the English Channel.

Come to think of it, that’s a rotten metaphor. I had already swum the English Channel. And I had crossed the burning deserts and, in the Hindu Kush, had driven through some of the tallest mountains, even if I hadn’t literally climbed them. I’d performed all the proper Herculean tasks, all for love of a girl named Phaedra, and the only thing left was to claim my prize.

And I certainly couldn’t do that.

Because this wasn’t Phaedra. This was a poor sick kid with her sweetness and charm temporarily (one hoped) buried under a sea of nymphomaniacal hysteria. This was not something one took to bed, no matter how much she asked one to.

In the first place, I got a little sick at the thought of it. It seemed indecent. If I hadn’t known her before it might have been different, but I had, and it wasn’t.

And in the second place, even if I had managed to rationalize the first place, the whole thing would have been roughly akin, in a purely physical sense, to the prospect of inserting a boiled noodle in a bouncing bagel. Not quite impossible, perhaps, but not bloody likely either.

She said, “I thought you were my friend.”

“I am.”

“Is something wrong with me?”

“No.”

“Then is something wrong with you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then what’s the matter, Evan?”

“You’re not you,” I said.

“I don’t get you.”

“That’s the idea.”

“Huh?”

I pulled the car onto the road. Phaedra, rejected, hurt, cringed against the door on the passenger side. I drove for a little while and didn’t say anything. She announced that she was going to take a nap. I told her it sounded like a good idea. She pouted and said that she couldn’t take a nap because she was sexually frustrated. I told her to play with herself. She said that sounded like a fine idea, and she proceeded to do just that, while I proceeded to pay more attention to the road than the road really deserved. Finally she gave up and told me that it wasn’t the same at all. “I’m going to sleep now,” she said, and did.

When she woke up she was worse. She could barely talk at all, and she couldn’t keep her hands off me. This might have been somewhat more flattering if she had not been so obviously out of her mind. She would let loose with a wild peal of laughter, then make a grab at my groin, then burst just as suddenly into tears.

A little of this goes a long way. A lot of it, which is what I was getting, goes even further. I wanted very much to do something that would at least render her unconscious for a time, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to hit her again. I didn’t want to hurt her. She was more to be pitied than censured, just as her language was more to be pitied than censored. The only thing wrong with pity as an emotion is that it’s so goddamned tiresome. It bores the subject and does nothing for the object.

I drove on, doing my best to ignore her. She was as easy to ignore as an earthquake, and about as subtle. But I kept the car on what the map laughingly called a road – a new one this time, a more direct route from Anardara right through to Kabul, bypassing Kandahar and presumably cutting quite a few miles off our journey. This road was what I kept my eyes on, which was something of a waste, actually, since in most places the road was so narrow that one could have covered it adequately, leaving the other eye free to do what it wanted. Since there was nothing else it wanted to do, I kept my eyes, both of them, on the road, as I guess I may already have said, and while doing this little thing I concentrated on figuring out what to do after I got back to Kabul.

I had to take her some place where they could do something for her. That much was obvious. Some place quiet and restful and eminently sane. Those qualifications gave me three reasons for ruling out the place I had originally assumed we would go, since New York was neither quiet nor restful nor sane, and never will be. In New York all I could do would be to turn her over to an analyst, which would involve paying around thirty dollars an hour for a period of several years to establish that Mrs. Horowitz had discouraged little Debbie from smearing her fecal matter on the wall. I could think of many things for which to blame Mrs. Horowitz, but this was not one of them, and I couldn’t see any reason to spend thirty dollars an hour for revelations of this nature.

Or else we could go back to Switzerland. They have a thing there called the Sleep Cure, and I supposed that Phaedra could take it. They just keep you asleep almost forever and let your unconscious work things out on its own. You get better, the idea seems to be, but because you are asleep during it all your conscious mind doesn’t know that you’re better. So you go on being the same old lunatic, but deep down inside you’re sane.

I may have that wrong. Somehow, though, my own personal situation is such that I’m illogically biased against anything called the Sleep Cure. Mea culpa, perhaps, but sic friat crustulum.

Oh.

About seventy miles out of Anardara, I knew where I would take her.

And about ninety miles out of Anardara, the helicopter opened fire on us.