Читать книгу Wizard of the Pigeons - Megan Lindholm - Страница 6

Rasputin sunned himself on the bench, making October look like June. He was wearing sandals, and between the leather straps his big feet were as scuffed and grey as an elephant’s hide. His blue denims were raggedy at the cuffs, and the sleeves of his sweatshirt had been cut off unevenly. His eyes were closed, his head nodding gently to the rhythm of his music, one long-fingered hand keeping graceful time. Black and Satisfied, Wizard titled him. Blending in with the bench squatters like a pit bull in a pack of fox hounds. The benches near him were conspicuously empty of loiterers. Wizard shook his head over him as he sat down at the other end of the bench.

Rasputin didn’t stir. Reaching into a pocket, Wizard drew out a crumpled sack of popcorn fragments. He leaned forward to scatter a handful. Rasputin shifted slightly at the fluttering sound of pigeon wings as a dozen or so birds came immediately to the feed.

‘Don’t let them damn pests be shitting on me,’ he warned Wizard laconically.

‘Wouldn’t dream of it. Don’t you think you should carry a radio or something?’

‘What for? So folks would quit looking for my headphones? Ain’t my fault they can’t hear the real music. They too busy covering it up with their own noises.’

Wizard nodded and threw another handful of popcorn. Rasputin’s hand danced lazily on the back of the bench. Muscles played smoothly under his sleek skin, sunlight played smoothly over it. The day arched above them, and Wizard could have dreamed with his eyes open. Instead, he asked, ‘So what brings you to Pioneer Square?’

‘My feet, mostly.’ Rasputin grinned feebly. ‘I’m looking for Cassie. Got a present for her. New jump rope song. Heard it just the other day.’

Wizard nodded sagely. He knew Cassie collected jump rope songs and clapping rhymes. ‘Let’s hear it.’

Rasputin shook his head slowly in a graceful counterpoint to the dance of his hand. A passerby slowed down to watch him, then scurried on. ‘No way, man. Not going to repeat it here. Sounded new, and real potent in a way I don’t like. Gonna tell it to Cassie, but I’m not going to spread it around. Won’t catch me fooling with magic not mine to do.’ Rasputin’s words took on the cadence of his concealed dance, becoming near a chant. Wizard had known him to speak in endless rhymes, or fall into the steady stamp of iambic pentameter when the muse took him. But today he broke out of it abruptly, the rhythm of his hand suddenly changing. A grin spread over his face slowly as he gestured across the square to where a woman in a yellow raincoat had just emerged from a shop.

‘See her? Walking like rain trickling down a window glass? She makes love in a waltz rhythm.’ A black hand waltzed on its fingertips on the bench between them. Wizard glanced from it to the tall, graceful woman crossing the square.

‘That doesn’t seem possible,’ he observed after a perusal of her swinging stride.

‘The best things in this life are the ones that aren’t possible, my friend. ’Sides, would I lie to you? You don’t believe me, you just go ask her. Just walk right on up and say, “My friend Rasputin says you can make a man’s eyes roll back in his head while your thighs play the Rippling River Waltz.” You go ask her.’

‘No thanks,’ Wizard chuckled softly. ‘I’ll take your word for it.’

‘Don’t have to, man. She’s one generous lady. Picked me up off the bus one rainy night, took me home and taught me to waltz horizontal. Kept me all night, fed me breakfast, and put me out with her cat when she left for work. Best night of my life.’

‘You never went back?’

‘Some things don’t play well the second time around; only a fool takes a chance at ruining a perfect memory. ’Sides, I wasn’t invited. Kinda lady she is, she does all the asking. All a man can say to her is “yes, please” and “thank you kindly.” That’s all.’

Wizard shifted uncomfortably on the bench. This kind of talk made him uneasy, stirring places in him better left dormant. ‘So you’re looking for Cassie,’ he commented inanely, looking for a safer topic.

Rasputin gave a brief snort of laughter. ‘Did I say that? Stupid way to put it. No sense looking for her. No, I’m just waiting to be found. She’ll know I got something for her, and she’ll come to find me. Don’t you know that about her by now? Think on it. You ever been looking for Cassie and found her? No. Just about the time you give up looking and sit down someplace, who finds you? Cassie. Ain’t that right?’

‘Yeah.’ He chuckled slightly at the truth of it. ‘So what you been doing lately?’

‘I just told you. Getting laid, and listening to jump rope songs in the park. How ’bout you?’

Wizard shrugged. ‘Not much of anything. Little magics, mostly. Told a crying kid where he’d lost his lunch money. Went to visit Sylvester. Saw an old man hurting on a street corner. Asked him the time, the way to Pike Place Market, and talked about the weather until he had changed his mind about stepping in front of the next bus. Was standing in front of the Salvation Army Store and a man drove up and handed me a trenchcoat and a pair of boots. Boots didn’t fit, so I donated them. Trenchcoat did, so I kept it. Listened to a battered woman on the public dock until she talked herself into going to a shelter instead of going home. Listened to an old man whose daughter wanted him to put his sixteen-year-old dog to sleep. Told him “Bullshit!” Old dog sat and wagged his tail at me all through it. That’s about it.’

Rasputin was grinning and shaking his head slowly. ‘What a life! How do you do it, Wizard?’

‘I don’t know,’ the other man replied in a soft, naive voice, and they both laughed together as at an old joke.

‘I mean,’ Rasputin’s voice was thick and mellow as warm honey, ‘how you keep going? Look how skinny you getting lately! Bet Cassie don’t appreciate that in the sack; be like sleeping with a pile of kindling.’

Wizard shot Rasputin a suddenly chill look. ‘I don’t sleep with Cassie.’

The big man wasn’t taking any hints. ‘No, I wouldn’t either. No time for sleeping with something that warm and soft up against you. You don’t know how many times Euripides and I sat howling at the moon for her. Then you come along, and she falls into your lap. Her eyes get all warm when they touch you. First time she brought you to me, I saw it. Oh, oh, I say to myself, here come Cassie, mixing business with pleasure. Now you telling me, oh, no, ain’t really nothing between us. You sure you wouldn’t be telling me a lie?’ An easy, teasing question.

‘I don’t do that.’ Wizard’s voice was hard.

‘Don’t do what?’ Rasputin teased innocently. ‘Screw or tell lies?’

‘I tell lies only to stay alive. I tell the Truth when it’s on me.’ Ice and fire in his voice, warning the black wizard.

‘Say what?’ Rasputin sat up straight on the bench, and his fingers suddenly beat a dangerous staccato rhythm on the bench back. Wizard felt his strength gather in his shoulders and watched the play of muscles in the black hand and wrist on the bench back. He felt the edge and dragged himself back from it. This man was his friend. He forced his voice into a casual scale.

‘Remember who you’re talking to, Rasputin. I’m the man who knows the Truth about people, and when they ask me, I’ve got to tell them. I have my own balancing points for my magic. One of them is that I don’t touch women. I don’t touch anyone.’

‘That so?’ the black wizard asked sceptically. Wizard looked at him stony-eyed. ‘You poor, stupid bastard,’ Rasputin said softly, more to himself than to his friend. ‘Drawing the circle that shuts it out.’ He flopped back into his earlier, careless pose, but his dancing fingers jigged on the bench back, and Wizard felt his awareness digging at him.

The pigeons roared up suddenly around them, their frantically beating wings swishing harshly against Wizard’s very face. Cassie stood before them, slender and smiling. She was very plain today, dressed all in dove grey from her shoes to the softly draped cloth of her dress. Her hair was an unremarkable brown, her features small and regular. But when she flashed Wizard her smile, the blue voltage of her eyes stunned him. She proffered him a couple of grey tail feathers. ‘Nearly had myself a pigeon pie for tonight,’ she teased, tossing the feathers in his face. Wizard winced, fearing there was more truth in her jest than he approved. ‘Come on,’ she cajoled, sitting down between the men. ‘If lions are majestic and wolves are noble and tigers are princely, what’s so cruddy about a person who snags a few pigeons for a meal now and then?’

She bent suddenly to wipe a smudge from her shoe, and Rasputin grabbed Wizard’s eyes over her bent back. ‘Stupid shit!’ he mouthed silently at Wizard, but composed his face quickly as Cassie sat up between them. She gave her brown bobbed hair a shake, and the scent of wistaria engulfed Wizard and threatened to sweep him away. But she had fixed those eyes on Rasputin and pinned him to the bench. ‘Give it to me!’ she demanded instantly.

‘Right here?’ His reluctance wasn’t feigned. ‘It’s a heavy one, Cassie. Bad. I didn’t like hearing it, and I don’t like repeating it.’

‘All the more reason I should have it. Out with it.’

‘It was these two cute little girls, one in pigtails, down in Gas Works Park, and they were jumping rope, and I was hardly listening, cause they was doing all old ones, you know, like “I like coffee, I like tea, I like boys, why don’t they like me?” and “Queen Bee, come chase me, all around my apple tree…”’

‘Oldies!’ Cassie snorted. ‘Get to the good stuff.’

‘It didn’t sound so good to me. All of a sudden, one starts a new one. Scared the shit out of me. “Billy was a sniper, Billy got a gun, Billy thought killing was fun, fun fun. How many slopes did Billy get? One, two, three, four…”’ Rasputin’s voice trailed off in a horrified whisper. Wizard’s nails dug into his palms. The day turned a shade greyer, and Cassie rubbed her hands as if they pained her.

‘It has to come out somewhere,’ Cassie sighed, ripping the stiff silence. ‘All the horrors come out somewhere, even the ones no one can talk about. Look at child abuse. You know this one, so it doesn’t bother you anymore. But think about it. “Down by the ocean, down by the sea, Johnny broke a bottle and blamed it on me. I told Ma, Ma told Pa, and Johnny got a licking with a ha, ha, ha! How many lickings did Johnny get? One, two, three,” and on and on, for as long as little sister or brother can keep up with the rope. Or “Ring around a Rosie” that talks about burning bodies after a plague. Believe in race memory. It comes out somewhere.’

‘“When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall,”’ whispered Wizard.

‘“Take the key and lock her up,”’ Rasputin added.

The day grew chillier around them, until a pigeon came to settle on Wizard’s knee. He stroked its feathers absently and then sighed for all of them. ‘Kids’ games,’ he mused. ‘Kids’ songs.’

‘Jump rope songs they’ll still be singing a hundred years from now,’ Cassie said. ‘But it’s better it comes out there than to have it sealed up and forgotten. Because when folks try to do that, the thing they seal up just finds a new shape, and bulges out uglier than ever.’

‘What do you do with those jump rope songs, anyway?’ Rasputin demanded, his voice signalling that he’d like the talk to take a new direction.

Cassie just smiled enigmatically for a moment, but then relented. ‘There’s power in them. I can tap that magic, I can guide it. Think of this. All across the country, little girls play jump rope. Sometimes little boys, too. Everywhere the chanting of children, and sometimes the rhymes are nationally known. A whole country of children, jumping and chanting the same words. There’s a power to be tapped there, a magic not to be ignored. The best ones, of course, are the simple, safe-making ones.’

‘Like?’

‘Didn’t you ever play jump rope? Like “Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, turn around. Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, touch the ground. Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, go upstairs. Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, say your prayers. Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, say good-night. Good night!”’

The last words she shouted as gleefully as any child ever did. Both men jumped, then smiled abashedly at one another. The simple words were full, not of awe-inspiring power, but of glowing energy. When Cassie chanted them, her voice made them a song to childhood and innocence, suggesting the woman’s magic she wielded so well. Wizard and Rasputin exchanged glances, nodding at the sudden freeness in the sky and the fresh calm that settled over them. They settled back onto the bench.

‘Something bad’s come to Seattle,’ Cassie announced suddenly.

Rasputin and Wizard stiffened again. Rasputin’s feet began to keep time with his hand, to dance away the threat that hovered. Wizard sat very still, looking apprehensive and feeling strangely guilty.

‘What you want to be saying things like that for?’ the black wizard abruptly complained. ‘Nice enough day, we all come together for some talk, like we hardly ever do, I bring you a new jump rope song, and then you go “Boogie-boo!” at us. Why get us all spooked up when we just got comfortable?’

‘Oh, bullshit!’ Cassie disarmed him effortlessly. ‘You knew it when you came. That jump rope song scared the shit out of you. You knew it didn’t mean anything good when kids in the city start singing stuff like that. So you brought it to me to hear me say how bad it was. Well, it’s bad.’

‘Just one little jump rope song!’

‘Omens and portents, my dear Rasputin. I have seen the warnings written in the graffiti on the overpasses and carved on the bodies of the young punkers. There are signs in the entrails of the gutted fish on the docks, and ill favours waft over the city.’

‘Just a strong wind from Tacoma,’ Rasputin tried to joke, but it fell flat. The small crowd of pigeons that had come to cluster at Wizard’s feet rose suddenly, to wheel away in alarm. Startled at nothing.

‘What kind of trouble, Cassie?’ Wizard asked.

‘You tell me,’ she challenged quietly.

‘Ho, boy!’ Rasputin breathed out. ‘Think I’m gonna dance me off to somewhere else. Give a holler when the shit settles, Cassie. I’ll tell the Space Needle you said hi!’

She nodded her good-byes as Wizard sat silent and stricken. Rasputin stroked off across the cobbled square, his gently swaying hips and shoulders turning his walk into a motion as graceful as the flight of a sea bird. He vanished slowly among the parked cars and moving pedestrians. Wizard was left sitting beside Cassie. Her body made him uneasy. It had taken him a long time to accept that every time he saw Cassie she would be a different person. Today she seemed too young and vibrantly feminine, radiating a femaleness that had nothing to do with weakness or docility. He wished she had come as the bag lady, or the retired nurse, or the straggly-haired escapee from the rest home. Those persons were easier for him to deal with. Looking at her today was like staring into the sun. Yet anyone else passing by their bench might have tagged them as a very nondescript couple. He suddenly wished desperately to be somewhere else, to be someone else. But he was Wizard, and he was sitting beside Cassie, and he felt like a small and scruffy kid in spite of his magic. Or maybe because of it.

‘Your den is the storm’s eye,’ she said without preamble. ‘Whatever it is, it’s coming for you. You want to tell me about it, so I can at least warn the rest of us?’

Wizard shook his head, trying to breathe. ‘I can’t. Not because I won’t, but because I don’t know what you’re talking about. I mean, I don’t know anything about it. Not exactly. Anyone with any magic at all can tell that there’s something hanging over the city. But I don’t know what it is, and –’

‘It’s coming for you.’ Cassie’s voice brooked no denial. There was a chill in it that was not the absence of feelings, but the hard edge of emotions kept in check. ‘Whatever it is, it’s yours. If it has a balancing point, only you will be able to reach it. The sooner you stop it, the better for us all. But you can’t stop it until you give it a name. Do you know what I’m saying?’

‘I know you’re scaring the hell out of me.’

‘Good. Then you do understand. Be on your toes. Keep your rules.’

‘I do. You know I do.’ He added the last reproachfully.

‘Yes. As I keep mine. I suppose I know that best of all.’ There was regret in her words. It stung him.

‘Cassie. I’m not holding out on you. If I knew anything, wouldn’t I tell you?’

She leaned back on the bench, not speaking. Silence fell between them. Thin Seattle sunshine, a mixture of yellow and grey, cautiously touched the uneven paving stones. A sea bird flew overhead, too high to be seen against the sun’s glare, but its mournful cries penetrated the city sounds to echo in Wizard’s soul. A terrible foreboding built within him, forcing words out.

‘There was something, once. Like a hunger, an appetite. Something like that. I don’t remember.’

‘It didn’t have a name?’

‘It was grey,’ he admitted uneasily.

‘So it was.’ Cassie sighed heavily. ‘So you’ve told me. Listen, Wizard. If you needed help, you’d come to me, wouldn’t you?’

‘Who else would I go to? But you’ve got something backward, Cassie. I heard about the grey thing from you.’

‘You did? Well, if you say so, it must have been so. Just remember, Wizard. If you need help, I’m your friend. Just let it out that you need me, and I’ll come to you. And…it doesn’t have to be danger. If you just want some company, that’s fine, too. If you just want to see me…’

‘If I need a friend. I know that, Cassie.’

She lifted a slender hand that hovered uncertainly for a moment before falling to gently pat the bench between them. ‘Listen,’ she said suddenly. ‘You want a story? I’ve got a story for you if you want it.’

‘Sure,’ he lied, covering his reluctance. He never liked what Cassie’s stories did for him.

Cassie settled in. She took a breath, and after a moment began, ‘Once there was a war, where a guerrilla force was fighting an army from across the seas that was struggling to keep a government in power.’

‘If you mean Viet Nam, say Viet Nam,’ he said with a bravado he didn’t feel.

‘I didn’t say Viet Nam, so shut your mouth and listen!’ When Cassie was interrupted, she was as fierce as a banty on eggs. ‘There was an old man in a village. He had an old rifle, and whenever the foreign soldiers came near, he would fire a few shots in the air. This was because the guerrilla forces expected him to snipe at the foreign soldiers. He could not bring himself to do that. So he would fire a few wild rounds at nothing in particular, and the guerrillas would hear the shots and be satisfied he was doing his part. The foreign soldiers understood. Sometimes they’d even let off a burst or two, to make things sound lively. And the old man’s family slept safely at night.

‘But into this there came a very young foreign soldier who didn’t understand the rules of the game. So when he saw the old man fire the old rifle, he took him seriously. He killed him.’

Wizard’s mouth was dry. Cassie had stopped talking as suddenly as the jolt of a rear-ended vehicle. He sat silently, waiting for more, but she said nothing. After a moment she bent her head to dig through her purse, and offered him a Lifesaver.

‘The moral?’ he asked, taking one. His voice cracked slightly.

‘There isn’t one.’ She spoke to the roll of candy she was peeling. ‘Except that the next week, the guy sniping at them from that hamlet wasn’t shooting into the air.’

Another electric jolt from those incredible eyes. He withstood their voltage, gripping the edge of the bench to keep his hands from shaking. She rose and walked away, leaving as silently as she had come. He tried to watch her go, but the sunlight was making his eyes water, and it seemed that she just melted into the passing foot-traffic.

‘Cassie,’ he sighed softly, feeling empty. And wondered why.