Word Made Flesh

14

There is something slightly phantasmal about Cabaret Vermin. Walking through Ribbentrop Square, you would have no sense of the chic decadence conceived nightly in the cellars below the old Bubben-Krupp Iron Works. But on any given evening, as you sit beneath the low, vaulted ceilings breathing in the nicotine and schnapps, as you listen to piano ballads that make Teutonic myth infectious, your sense of spacial perception can seem to slip just a touch. Patrons report finding themselves unable to keep track of time. Trips to the rest room become perilous due as much to the constant hint of vertigo as to the mazelike floor plan. Sampling the complimentary knockwurst cubes, you find your mouth flooded with the taste of metal and ash.

No one can provide an adequate explanation for the phenomenon, and while some point to the architecture of the basements and others the lack of proper ventilation, owner and host Rikki Tzara will simply shrug off the analysis and say that people come to the Vermin to lose themselves and that process is always a bit dizzying at first.

It’s no secret that more than anything else, Tzara wants canonization into the Canal Zone mythos. He yearns nightly to be remembered as one of the era’s arbiters of hip, a legend carved along the same lines as Elmore Orzi. And Cabaret Vermin could well be his vehicle for ascension into decadent sainthood. The club has anticathedral possibilities, the way it insinuates itself into the earth, snakes itself underneath the streets of the Zone, weaving and bobbing, rising and falling, tunneling its way into a morass of geometrical confusion, chambers leading into mushroomlike hollows that flow into fishbowl parlors with each little squat café having its own subtle but absolute individuality. The only unifying decor, the single motif that extends from bunker to bunker, is an ongoing tribute to dancer Anita Berber, the once legendary star of the old White Mouse Club in Berlin. Tzara has made Berber into something of a deity and it is said that when he locks up the Cabaret at dawn, his last act is to genuflect before a marble statue of his lascivious goddess, bringing his head down to her cold, bare feet — nails made apple red one night by an impulsive beautician — and repeatedly mumbling the word Morphium as he beats his breast.

When you exit the Vermin, you never know what street you’re going to arrive upon. Tzara would have you believe he’s the only one who can maneuver through the entire club without a map and a trail of bar nuts, and that may well be the case. But it’s really Tzara’s innate talents as both showman and provocateur that define his character. Dressed each evening in his chartreuse velvet dinner jacket, his remaining hair dyed the color of oxblood and slicked back on his skull with what the waitresses swear is Crisco, Tzara can fondle a microphone stand in a manner that could make the most hardened barkeep at Caesar’s Palace phone in sick for a shift or two. Tzara’s oiliness knows no limits. Introducing the perennial amateurs of open mike night, the Rikkster will have you believing the King himself has risen from his Memphis grave just to shimmy to a backup band that features the Angel Gabriel blowing “Don’t Be Cruel.”

And that’s not far from the patter he gives as he leads Gilrein and Inspector Lacazze through dense clouds of purple-tinged smoke to a cocktail table adjacent to the lip of the stage. The club is packed and as Gilrein slides into his seat he watches Tzara refuse the Inspector’s attempt to palm the host a gratuity. Tzara shakes his head adamantly as he removes a RESERVED sign from the table and begins to snap fingers for a waitress.

“So good to have you back with us, Father,” Tzara fawns.

“Please, just call me Emil,” the Inspector says.

“As you wish,” Tzara replies, bowing slightly and at the same time corralling a spooked young woman dressed in a reflective sequined minidress. “Katrina will see to all of your needs.”

Tzara claps a hand on Lacazze’s shoulder, then disappears through an archway into the club’s next cavern.

Katrina says, “Welcome to Cabaret Vermin. Tonight’s special is the Witch’s Sabbath.”

Gilrein picks up a small, plastic-coated card from the table thinking it’s a drink menu. Instead he reads

FIVE SYMPTOMS OF ST. LEON’S GRIPPE

• SWELLING OF THE TONGUE

• CHRONIC DRYNESS OF THE TONGUE

• NUMBNESS OF THE TONGUE

• WEEPING PUSTULES ON THE TONGUE

• MALAPROPISMS

IF YOU HAVE EXPERIENCED ANY OF THE ABOVE PLEASE DO NOT BOTHER CONTACTING A REPRESENTATIVE OF THE CITY’S HEALTH SERVICES AS THEY CONTINUE TO DENY THE GRIPPE’S EXISTENCE.

“I’ll have a double Siena with an onion,” Lacazze says. “And bring my friend—”

“Could you just bring me a bowl of chipped ice?” Gilrein says through fingers dabbing lightly at his lips. It’s been less than an hour since the Inspector swathed them with the horrid-smelling mud, but already he can speak again.

Lacazze shakes his head and inclines toward the waitress.

“He’ll have a glass of the Spanish sherry.”

“Malflores?” Katrina asks.

“The private label,” Lacazze whispers and winks.

Katrina departs and the two men stare at each other.

“Have you ever been down below before?” the Inspector asks.

“Never,” Gilrein lies.

Ceil brought him to the Vermin once on one of her book hunts. She was supposed to meet with a periodicals dealer who never showed.

“Are you a regular?” Gilrein asks.

Lacazze smiles and shakes his head.

“I know Rikki from the neighborhood. Not a bad sport but just a bit too needy. If you know what I mean.”

“I think I can guess.”

“So,” as the Inspector gets comfortable in his chair and steals a glance around the room, “would you like to tell your brother officer who did this to you?”

“Brother officer?” Gilrein repeats. “Is either one of us still on the job?”

Lacazze bows his head and raises his eyes.

“Technically, and for tax purposes, I’m an independent consultant. But I retain my commission. And all the powers of the badge.”

“Well, God and Chief Bendix both work in perverse ways.”

Lacazze smiles.

“It’s mysterious, Mr. Gilrein,” he says. “The word is ‘mysterious,’ not ‘perverse.’”

“My mistake.”

“And in either case,” Lacazze says, “it doesn’t ring true coming from your unfortunate lips. I’m sure Ceil told me you were a devout atheist.”

“No,” Gilrein plays along. “I’m just a cabdriver. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the esoteric.”

“Just as well. Though, to be honest, I really can’t make myself care about which systems you do or do not subscribe to, Mr. Gilrein. Whether you bow down before the classical Western Daddy in the sky or some notion of romantic fate or that old bitch of cruel and random chance, none of it matters to me. But I might enjoy my drink a bit more if we could agree that whatever the agent, it is fortuitous that you and I have been brought together again. Perhaps we should even thank August Kroger.”

Katrina arrives with the drinks and places them on the table.

The Inspector raises his glass of Siena and says, “To the men in Ceil’s all-too-brief life.”

Gilrein doesn’t move for a moment. Then he breaks eye contact and touches his bottom lip without flinching. He pulls the fingers away, looks at the smear of tacky blood and residual silt, and says, “Are you trying to bait me, Inspector?”

“Bait you?” Sipping the Siena, he shakes his head and tries to look amused. “Not at all. Just the opposite.”

Lacazze pulls down a long drink and rotates his head around his neck as he speaks.

“When I came to this city, I looked out from the hill on my first night and cursed my own particular construct of faith—”

“That’s an odd phrasing,” Gilrein says.

The interruption seems to focus Lacazze. His voice drops and he says, “Yes,” in something of a drawl. “I suppose I’ve never been able to wear my learning very lightly.”

“Hazard of the trade, I guess.”

“Which trade are you referring to?” Lacazze asks. “I’ve had a few.”

“Your choice,” Gilrein says.

The Inspector tries to shrug but it comes off as a shiver.

“Every profession has its quirks. But my point is that I was wrong to profane my new home. It may not be Paris but it has its own charms. And, more importantly I’ve found, it appears to be the locus where my most important work is to come together.”

“I thought all your important work was behind you, Inspector.”

The old priest goes silent for a moment and stares down at his glass.

“That would be a misconception, my son. But it’s not your fault. I don’t expect you to be familiar with my Methodology. I know Ceil was never comfortable discussing her work at home. She didn’t want to burden you.”

“My wife was a considerate woman.”

“Among other things.”

Gilrein lets it go.

“I’m sure I heard the department had abandoned the”—a pause to show a little contempt for the word—“Methodology.”

“Oh, Gilrein,” the Inspector’s voice faux-tired from dealing with deficient minds all his life, “my work for the city was only the lowest function of my system. I’m moving on to the next phase, so to speak. I’m taking my child out of the laboratory and into the street. Where it belongs. Where it can find its own organic ends. We need a new language, Gilrein. Surely, your wife must have shared at least this one secret with you?”

“Like you said, I don’t think she wanted to burden me.”

The Inspector nods, pulls down his jaw to show his impression of fatherly understanding.

“You have no idea,” he says, “how often I wish she was still with us. She’s the only witness I would want for what’s to come. She’s the only one qualified to appreciate where we go next.”

“We?”

“The city, Gilrein. Our city, ‘these streets of oozing muck,’ to quote a poet I once knew. Quinsigamond is where the final battle of the war will be fought.”

“The war?” Gilrein repeats.

But the Inspector has moved from conversation to soliloquy.

“Think of all the arrogant, logocentric rationalists before me. I could spit in every one of their enigmatic faces. Reason lovers. With their cannibal picnics and their Japanese fashion shows. Every one with their own metalanguage. Every little bastard promising the Grail, the map out of the darkness. Promising us they could slow down the world, cool down the input, build us a new tongue that would be the universal translator we’ve lusted after since they built the beautiful tower in Shinar—”

Gilrein says, “Inspector,” reasserting his presence just to stop the babble.

Lacazze blinks a few times, sniffs, and stares at his table companion as if one of them has just woken up.

“You brought me here to tell me something.”

Lacazze’s mouth opens and closes. Gilrein leans in and gets a smell, something close to paint thinner.

“Inspector?”

A deep exhale and then, “I wanted to tell you—”

But Lacazze’s words are interrupted by microphone squeal as Rikki Tzara bounds onto the stage, ubiquitous handkerchief at the ready, mopping his brow as if he’s just wrapped up a lifetime of telethon appeals.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Tzara says, and waits for some modicum of quiet to fall over the lounge, “as you know, it is the mission of the Cabaret Vermin to discover and encourage new talent wherever we may find it. In constant pursuit of that mission we have established Saturday night here in the Rudi Anhang Room as open mike night to showcase the finest amateur entertainers in our fair city. So without further ado, I’d like to introduce our first act of the evening, a really sweet guy, he’s just trying to break into the business, would you give a big, warm Vermin welcome for Shecky Langer.”

Otto Langer walks out onstage dressed in a rented tux that’s clearly too small for him, carrying Zwack the golem, his ventriloquial dummy. Zwack looks like a cross between the Gothic wood-carving of some nightmare-plagued folk artist and a Raggedy Ann doll that’s been dragged through a thousand ghettos in the teeth of a mange-scarred dog. The house lights go down and a classic blue spot comes up and trains itself on a profusely sweating Langer seated on a bar stool, a glass of tap water resting near his feet. For a moment he looks hypnotized by the spotlight, stares into it as if it was a sun about to go nova. Then the drummer cues him with an introductory burst of timpani and Langer snaps out of his trance and nods to the audience. He positions his figure on his lap and uses his free hand to adjust her black-yarn pigtails.

The dummy opens her lipsticked mouth and says, “Take my partner,” pauses and deadpans, “please.”

The audience comes back silent, caught communally wondering if this is one of those ultrahip performance artistes, a socio-cultural commentator playing the part of retro borscht-belt comedian while in actuality holding up a mirror to their hidden bourgeois pretensions.

“That’s not nice at all, Zwack,” says Langer in a halting, stagey voice as he wags a finger at his wooden cohort. “Now you behave or you go back into the trunk.”

Zwack swivels her head and looks out at the crowd.

“You’ll have to forgive Shecky,” she says. “He just flew in from Maisel and, boy, is his soul tired.”

A nervous undercurrent begins to sound and a rimshot only accentuates the discomfort.

“My darling,” says Langer, leaning forward and lifting the water glass from the floor, “don’t you know any new material? These good people would like something a bit more relevant.”

The golem somehow manages to roll her eyes. This actually produces a sympathetic if abbreviated laugh from the crowd.

“Knock knock,” the dummy says.

“Who’s there?” Langer responds.

“The Censor.”

Langer suddenly drops his stage face and stares at the dummy as if the puppet has launched into an improvisation, as if this were not the line they’ve rehearsed a hundred times. Flustered, Langer makes a production of bringing the water glass to his lips.

“The Censor who?” he asks hesitantly, then tilts his head back and sips from his glass theatrically as Zwack launches into song.

The Censor of Maisel

The Censor of Maisel

Hi ho the derry-oh

I’ll send you straight to hell

After a shocked second or two, the crowd begins to shower the duo with a smattering of applause. And of the two performers it’s the dummy who seems to respond to the approval, nodding to the room, a sense of confidence installing itself on the pinewood face. The golem rolls with the audience’s minuscule endorsement and seems to take over the act.

“There was a young girl from Maisel,” she crows,

Whose talent for tales was quite swell.

She built a library

But things got a bit scary

When Meyrink rang the front bell.

Langer gets furious and suddenly it’s more difficult to tell if his anger is genuine or part of the stage act.

“Now you stop this nonsense at once,” he bellows at the dummy, his face growing flushed. “You perform as you are meant to perform. You will tell the story that these people came to hear.”

Zwack the golem stares into her master’s face. The partners glare at each other for an uncomfortable parcel of time and the audience begins to get antsy, maybe even a little unnerved.

Finally, Zwack turns her gaze from Langer to the crowd, as if inspecting their worth, as if the wooden dummy were trying to calculate this small mob’s value as listeners. Her bottom jaw drops open, then seals closed, then slowly opens again. And a voice emerges. It’s neither Langer’s voice nor Zwack’s, but some other persona utilizing the golem’s wooden mouth, some entity possessing the larynx of both performers and uttering a new sound that nobody in the room can possibly ignore.

And the voice says, “This is the story of the girl who disappeared.”