The Moving Target

16

At a height that made me conscious of my breathing we came to a high-backed road of new gravel, barred by a closed wooden gate. A metal mailbox on the gatepost bore the name “Claude” in stenciled white letters. I opened the gate, and Miranda drove the car through.

“It’s another mile,” she said. “Do you trust me?”

“No, but I want to look at the scenery. I’ve never been here before.”

Apart from the road the country looked as if no one had ever been there. A valley dotted with boulders and mountain evergreen opened below us as we spiraled upward. Far down among the trees I caught the slight brown shudder of a deer’s movement and disappearance. Another deer went after it in a rocking-horse leap. The air was so clear and still I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear the rustle of their hoofs. But there was no sound above the whine of the motor. Nothing to hear, and nothing to look at but light-saturated air and the bare stone face of the mountain opposite.

The car crawled over the rim of a saucer-shaped depression in the top of the mountain. Below us, in the center of the mesa, the Temple in the Clouds stood, hidden from everyone but hawks and airmen. It was a square one-storied structure of white-painted stone and adobe, built around a central court. There were a few outbuildings inside the wire fence that formed a kind of stockade around it. From one of them a thin black smoke was trickling up the sky.

Then something moved on the flat roof of the main building, something that had been so still my eyes had taken it for granted. An old man was squatting there with his legs folded under him. He rose with majestic slowness, a huge leather-brown figure. With the uncut tangles of his gray hair and beard standing out from his head, he looked like the rayed sun in an old map. He stooped deliberately to pick up a piece of cloth, which he wound around his naked middle. He raised one arm as if to tell us to be patient, and descended into the inner court.

Its ironbound door creaked open. He emerged and waddled to the gate, which he unlocked. I saw his eyes for the first time. They were milky blue, bland and conscienceless, like an animal’s. In spite of his great sun-blacked shoulders and the heavy beard that fanned across his chest, he had a womanish air. His rich self-conscious voice was a subtle blend of baritone and contralto.

“Greetings, greetings, my friends. Any traveler who comes to my out-of-the-way doorstep is welcome to share my fare. Hospitality stands high among the virtues, close to the supreme virtue of health itself.”

“Thanks. Do we drive in?”

“Please leave the automobile outside the fence, my friend. Even the outer circle should not be sullied by the trappings of a mechanical civilization.”

“I thought you knew him,” I said to Miranda, as we got out of the car.

“I don’t think he can see very well.”

When we came nearer, his blue-white eyes peered at her face. He leaned toward her, and his straggling gray hair swung forward, brushing his shoulders.

“Hello, Claude,” she said crisply.

“Why, Miss Sampson! I was not looking for a visit from youth and beauty today. Such youth! Such beauty!”

He breathed through his lips, which were very heavy and red. I looked at his feet to check his age. Shod in rope-soled sandals with thongs between the toes, they were gnarled and swollen: sixty-year-old feet.

“Thank you,” she said unpleasantly. “I came to see Ralph, if he’s here.”

“But he isn’t, Miss Sampson. I am alone here. I have sent my disciples away for the present.” He smiled vaguely without uncovering his teeth. “I am an old eagle communing with the mountains and the sun.”

“An old vulture!” Miranda said audibly. “Has Ralph been here recently?”

“Not for several months. He has promised me, but he has not yet come. Your father has spiritual potentialities, but he is still caged and confined by the material life. It is hard to draw him up into the azure world. It is painful for him to open his nature to the sun.” He said it with a chanting rhythm, an almost liturgical beat.

“Do you mind if I look around?” I said. “To make sure he isn’t here.”

“I tell you I am alone.” He turned to Miranda. “Who is this young man?”

“Mr. Archer. He’s helping me look for Ralph.”

“I see. I’m afraid you must take my word that he is not here, Mr. Archer. I cannot permit you to enter the inner circle, since you have not submitted to the rite of purification.”

“I think I’ll have a look around anyway.”

“But that is not possible.” He placed his hand on my shoulder. It was soft and thick and brown, like a fried fish. “You must not enter the temple. It would anger Mithras.”

His breath was sour-sweet and foul in my nostrils. I picked his hand off my shoulder. “Have you been purified?”

He raised his innocent eyes to the sun. “You must not jest of these matters. I was a lost and sinful man, blind-hearted and sinful, till I entered the azure world. The sword of the sun slew the black bull of the flesh, and I was purified.”

“And I’m the wild bull of the pampas,” I said to myself.

Miranda stepped between us. “All this is nonsense. We’re going in to look. I wouldn’t take your word for anything, Claude.”

He bowed his shaggy head and smiled a close-mouthed smile of sour benevolence that made my stomach queasy. “As you will, Miss Sampson. The sacrilege will rest upon your heads. I hope and trust that the wrath of Mithras will not be heavy.”

She brushed past him disdainfully. I followed her through the arched doorway into the inner court. The red sun over the mountains to the west remained impassive. Without a look or another word Claude mounted the stone staircase inside the door and disappeared onto the roof.

The stone-paved court was empty. Its walls were lined with closed wooden doors. I pressed the latch of the nearest. It opened into an oak-raftered room that contained a built-in bed covered with dirty blankets, a scarred iron trunk, unlabeled, a cheap cardboard wardrobe, and the sour-sweet smell of Claude.

“The odor of sanctity,” Miranda said, at my shoulder.

“Did your father actually stay here with Claude?”

“I’m afraid so.” She wrinkled her nose. “He takes this sun-worshipping nonsense seriously. It’s all tied up with astrology in his mind.”

“And he actually gave this place to Claude?”

“I don’t know if he deeded it to him. He handed it over for Claude to use as a temple. I suppose he’ll take it back sometime, if he can. And if he ever gets over this religious lunacy of his.”

“It’s a queer sort of hunting-lodge,” I said.

“It’s not really a hunting-lodge. He built it as a kind of hideout.”

“A hideout from what?”

“War. This dates from Ralph’s last phase, the pre-religious one. He was convinced that another war was just around the corner. This was to be his sanctuary if we were invaded. But he got over the fear last year, just before they started work on the bomb shelter. The plans for the shelter were all ready, too. He took refuge in astrology instead.”

“I didn’t use the word ‘lunacy,’” I said. “You did. Were you serious?”

“Not really.” She smiled a little bleakly. “Ralph doesn’t seem so crazy if you understand him. He felt guilty, I think, because he made money out of the last war. And then there was Bob’s death. Guilt can cause all sorts of irrational fears.”

“You read another book,” I said. “This time it was a psychology textbook.”

Her reaction was surprising. “You make me sick, Archer. Don’t you get bored with yourself playing the dumb detective?”

“Sure I get bored. I need something naked and bright. A moving target in the road.”

“You!” She bit her lip, flushed, and turned away.

We went from room to room, opening and closing the doors. Most of the rooms had beds in them and very little else. In the big living-room at the end there were five or six straw pallets on the floor. It was narrow-windowed and thick-walled like a fortress, and the air smelled like the tank of a county jail.

“The disciples live well, whoever they are. Did you see any when you were here before?”

“No. But I didn’t come inside.”

“Some people are suckers for a pitch like Claude’s. They’ll hand over everything they own and get nothing in return but a starvation diet and the prospect of a nervous breakdown. But I’ve never heard of a sun-worshippers’ monastery before. I wonder where the suckers are today.”

We finished our circuit of the court without seeing anyone. I looked up at the roof. Claude was sitting with his face to the sun, his naked back to us. The flesh hung down in heavy folds from his flanks and hips. His head was moving jerkily back and forth, as if he was arguing with someone, but no sound came from him. Like a bearded woman who knew two sexual worlds, the great eunuch back and head outlined by the sun were strange and ridiculous and dreadful.

Miranda touched my arm. “Speaking of lunacy–”

“He’s putting on an act,” I said, and half believed it. “At least he was telling the truth about your father. Unless he’s in one of the other buildings.”

We crossed the gravel yard to the adobe with the smoking chimney. I looked in through the open door. A girl with a shawl over her head was sitting on her heels in front of a glowing fireplace stirring a bubbling pot. It was a five-gallon pot, and it was full of what looked like beans.

“It looks as if the disciples are coming for supper.” Without moving her shoulders the girl turned her head to look at us. The whites of her eyes shone like porcelain in the clay-colored Indian face.

“Have you seen an old man?” I asked her in Spanish. She shrugged one calico shoulder in the general direction of the temple.

“Not that old man. One who is beardless. Beardless, fat, and rich. His name is Senor Sampson.”

She shrugged both shoulders and turned back to her steaming pot. Claude’s sandals crunched in the gravel behind us.

“I am not wholly alone, as you can see. There is my handmaiden, but she is little better than an animal. If you have done with us, perhaps you will permit me to return to my meditation. Sunset is approaching, and I must pay my respects to the departing god.”

Beside the adobe there was a galvanized iron shed with a padlocked door. “Before you go, open the shed.”

Sighing, he took some keys from the folds of his body cloth. The shed contained a pile of bags and cartons, most of which were empty. There were several sacks of beans, a case of condensed milk, some overalls and work boots in a few of the cartons.

Claude stood in the doorway watching me. “My disciples sometimes work in the valley by the day. Such work in the vegetable fields is a form of worship.”

He moved back to let me out. I noticed the imprint of a tire in the clay at the edge of the gravel where his foot had been. It was a wide truck tire. I’d seen the herringbone pattern of the tread before.

“I thought you didn’t let mechanical trappings come inside the fence?”

He peered at the ground and came up smiling. “Only when necessary. A truck delivered some provisions the other day.”

“I hope and trust it was purified?”

“The driver has been purified, yes.”

“Good. I suppose that you’ll be doing some housecleaning now that we’ve contaminated the place.”

“It is between you and the god.” With a backward glance at the declining sun he returned to his perch on the roof.

On the way back to the state highway I memorized the route so that I could drive it blind at night if I had to.