Читать книгу Koko - Peter Straub - Страница 46

As soon as the plane took off, Koko too would be a man in motion.

This is one thing Koko knew: all travel is travel in eternity. Thirty thousand feet above the earth, clocks run backward, darkness and light change places freely.

When it got dark, Koko thought, you could lean close to the little window, and if you were ready, if your soul was half in eternity already, you could see God’s tusked grey face leaning toward you in the blackness.

Koko smiled, and the pretty stewardess in first class smiled back at him. She leaned forward, bearing a tray. ‘Sir, would you prefer orange juice or champagne this morning?’

Koko shook his head.

The earth sucked at the feet of the plane, reached up through the body of the plane and tried to pull Koko down into itself, suck suck, the poor earth loved what was eternal and the eternal loved and pitied the earth.

‘Is there a movie on this flight?’

‘Never Say Never Again,’ the stewardess said over her shoulder. ‘The new James Bond movie.’

‘Excellent,’ Koko said, with real inward hilarity. ‘I never say never, myself.’

She laughed dutifully and went on her way.

Other passengers filed down the aisles, carrying suitbags, shopping bags, wicker baskets, books. Two Chinese businessmen took the seats before Koko, who heard them snap open their briefcases as soon as they sat down.

A middle-aged blonde stewardess in a blue coat leaned down and smiled a false machine smile at him.

‘What shall we call you today, hmm?’ She raised a clipboard with a seating chart into his field of vision. Koko slowly lowered his newspaper. ‘You are…?’ She looked at him, waiting for a reply.

What shall we call you today, hmm? Dachau, let’s call you Lady Dachau. ‘Why don’t you call me Bobby?’

‘Well then, call you Bobby is what I’ll do,’ the woman said, and scrawled Bobby in the space marked 4B on the chart.

In his pockets, Roberto Ortiz had carried his passports and a pocketful of cards and ID, as well as six hundred dollars American and three hundred Singapore. Big time! In a pocket of his blazer Koko had found a room key from the Shangri-La, where else would an ambitious young American be staying?

In Miss Balandran’s bag Koko had found a hot comb, a diaphragm, a tube of spermicidal jelly, a little plastic holder containing a tube of Darkie toothpaste and a toothbrush, a fresh pair of underpants and a new pair of tights, a bottle of lip gloss and a lip brush, a vial of mascara, a blush brush, a rat-tailed comb, three inches of a cut-down white plastic straw, a little leather kit ranked with amyl nitrate poppers, a tattered Barbara Cartland paperback, a compact, half a dozen loose Valium, lots of crumpled-up Kleenex, several sets of keys, and a big roll of bills that turned out to be four hundred and fifty-three Singapore dollars.

Koko put the money in his pocket and dropped the rest onto the bathroom floor.

After he had washed his hands and face he took a cab to the Shangri-La.

Roberto Ortiz lived on West End Avenue in New York City.

On West End Avenue, could you feel how the lords of the earth, how God himself, hungered for mortality? Angels flew down West End Avenue, their raincoats billowing in the wind.

When Koko walked out of the Shangri-La he was wearing two pairs of trousers, two shirts, a cotton sweater, and a tweed jacket. In the carry-on bag in his left hand were two rolled-up suits, three more shirts, and a pair of excellent black shoes.

A cab took Koko down leafy Grove Road to Orchard Road and on through clean, orderly Singapore to an empty building on a circular street off Bahru Road, and on this journey he imagined that he stood in an open car going down Fifth Avenue. Ticker tape and confetti rained down upon him and all the other lords of the earth, cheers exploded from the crowds packing the sidewalks.

Beevers and Poole and Pumo and Underhill and Tattoo Tiano and Peters and sweet Spanky B, and everybody else, all the lords of the earth, who may abide the day of their coming? For behold, darkness shall cover the earth. And the lawyer boy, Ted Bundy, and Juan Corona who labored in fields, and he who dressed in Chicago as a clown, John Wayne Gacy, and Son of Sam, and Wayne Williams out of Atlanta, and the Zebra Killer, and they who left their victims on hillsides, and the little guy in the movie Ten Rillington Place, and Lucas, who was probably the greatest of them all. The warriors of heaven, having their day. Marching along with all those never to be caught, all those showing presentable faces to the world, living modestly, moving from town to town, paying their bills, all these deep embodied secrets.

The refiner’s fire.

Koko crawled in through his basement window and saw his father seated impatient and stormy on a packing crate. Goddamned idiot, his father said. You took too much, think they’ll ever give someone like you a parade? We waste no part of the animal.

He spread the money out on the gritty floor, and that did it, the old man smiled and said, There is no substitute for good butter, and Koko closed his eyes and saw a row of elephants trudging past, nodding with grave approval.

On his unrolled sleeping bag he placed Roberto Ortiz’s passports and spread out the five Rearing Elephant cards so he could read the names. Then he rooted in a box of papers and found the copy of the American magazine, New York, which he had picked up in a hotel lobby two days after the hostage parade. Beneath the title, letters of fire spelled out: TEN HOT NEW PLACES.

Ia Thuc, Hue, Da Nang, these were hot places. And Saigon. Here is a hot new place, here is Saigon. The magazine fell open automatically to the picture and the paragraphs about the hot new place. (The Mayor ate there.)

Koko lay sprawled on the floor in his new suit and looked as deeply as he could into the picture of the hot new place. Deep green fronds waved across the white walls. Vietnamese waiters in white shirts whipped between crowded tables, going so fast they were only blurs of light. Koko could hear loud voices, knives and forks clanking against china. Corks popped. In the picture’s foreground, Tina Pumo leaned against his bar and grimaced – Pumo the Puma leaned right out of the frame of the picture and spoke to Koko in a voice that stood out against the clamor of his restaurant the way a saxophone solo stands out against the sound of a big band.

Pumo said: ‘Don’t judge me, Koko.’ Pumo looked shitscared.

This was how they talked when they knew they stood before eternity’s door.

‘I understand, Tina,’ Koko said to the little anxious man in the picture.

The article said that Saigon served some of the most varied and authentic Vietnamese food in New York. The clientele was young, hip, and noisy. The duck was ‘heaven-sent’ and every soup was ‘divine’.

‘Just tell me this, Tina,’ Koko said. ‘What is this shit about “divine”? You think soup can be divine?’

Tina blotted his brow with a crisp white hankerchief and turned back into a picture.

And there it was, the address and the telephone number, in the soft cool whisper of italics.

A man sat down beside Koko in the fourth row of the first-class compartment, glanced sideways, and then buckled himself into his seat. Koko closed his eyes and snow fell from a deep cold heaven onto a layer of ice hundreds of feet deep. Far off, dim in the snowy air, ranged the broken teeth of glaciers. God hovered invisibly over the frozen landscape, panting with impatient rage.

You know what you know. Forty, forty-one years old. Thick fluffy richboy-blond hair, and thin brown glasses, heavy face. Heavy butcher’s hands holding a day-old copy of the New York Times. Six-hundred-dollar suit.

The plane taxied down the runway and lifted itself smoothly into the air, the envious mouths and fingers fell away, and the jet’s nose pointed west, toward San Francisco. The man beside Koko is a rich businessman with butcher’s hands.

A black-naped tern flies across the face of the Singapore one-dollar note. A black band like a burglar’s mask covers its eyes, and behind it hovers a spinning chaos of intertwined circles twisting together like the strands of a cyclone. So the bird agitates its wings in terror, and darkness overtakes the land.

Mr Lucas? Mr Bundy?

Banking, the man says. Investment banking. We do a lot of work in Singapore.

Me too.

Hell of a nice place, Singapore. And if you’re in the money business, it’s hot, and I mean hot.

One of the hot new places.

‘Bobby,’ the stewardess asks. ‘what would you like to drink?’

Vodka, ice-cold.

‘Mr Dickerson?’

Mr Dickerson will have a Miller High Life.

In Nam we used to say: Vodka martini on the rocks, hold the vermouth, hold the olive, hold the rocks.

Oh, you were never in Nam?

Sounds funny, but you missed a real experience. Not that I’d go back, Christ no. You were probably on the other side, weren’t you? No offense, we’re all on the same side now, God works in funny ways. But I did all my demonstrating with an M-16, hah hah.

Bobby Ortiz is the name. I’m in the travel industry.

Bill? Pleased to meet you, Bill. Yes, it’s a long flight, might as well be friends.

Sure, I’ll have another vodka, and give another beer to my old pal Bill here.

Ah, I was in I Corps, near the DMZ, up around Hue.

You want to see a trick I learned in Nam? Good – I’ll save it, though, it’ll be better later, you’ll enjoy it, I’ll do it later.

Bobby and Bill Dickerson ate their meals in companionable silence. Clocks spun in no-time.

‘You ever gamble?’ Koko asked.

Dickerson glanced at him, his fork halfway to his mouth. ‘Now and then. Only a little.’

‘Interested in a little wager?’

‘Depends on the wager.’ Dickerson popped the forkful of chicken into his mouth.

‘Oh, you won’t want to do it. It’s too strange. Let’s forget it.’

‘Come on,’ Dickerson said. ‘You brought this up, don’t chicken out now.’

Oh, Koko liked Billy Dickerson. Nice blue linen suit, nice thin glasses, nice big Rolex. Billy Dickerson played racquet-ball, Billy Dickerson wore a sweatband across his forehead and had a hell of a good backhand, real aggressor.

‘Well, I guess being on a plane reminded me of this. It’s something we used to do in Nam.’

Definite look of interest on good old Billy’s part.

‘When we’d come into an LZ.’

‘Landing Zone?’

‘You got it. LZ’s were all different, see? Some were popping, and some were like dropping into the middle of a church picnic in Nebraska. So we’d make the Fatality Wager.’

‘Like you’d bet on how many people would get killed? Buy the farm, like you guys used to say?’

Buy the farm. Oh, you sweetheart.

‘More on if someone would get killed. How much money you carrying in your wallet?’

‘More than usual,’ Billy said.

‘Five, six hundred?’

‘Less than that.’

‘Let’s make it two hundred. If somebody dies at the San Francisco airport while we’re in the terminal, you pay me two hundred. If not, I’ll give you one hundred.’

‘You’ll give me two to one on someone dying in the terminal while we’re going through customs, getting our bags, stuff like that?’

‘That’s the deal.’

‘I’ve never seen anyone kick off in an airport,’ Billy said, shaking his head, smiling. He was going to take the bet.

‘I have,’ Koko said. ‘Upon occasion.’

‘Well, you got yourself a bet,’ Billy said, and they shook hands.

After a time Lady Dachau pulled down the movie screen. Most of the cabin lights went out, Billy Dickerson closed Megatrends, tilted his seat way back, and went to sleep.

Koko asked Lady Dachau for another vodka and settled back to watch the movie.

The good James Bond saw Koko as soon as he came on the screen. (The bad James Bond was a sleepy Englishman who looked a little bit like Peters, the medic who had been killed in a helicopter crash. The good James Bond looked a little like Tina Pumo.) He walked straight up to the camera and said, ‘You’re fine, you have nothing to worry about, everybody does what they have to do, that’s what war teaches you.’ He gave Koko a little half-smile. ‘You did well with your new friend, son. I noticed that. Remember now –’

Ready on the right? Ready on the left? Lock and load.

Good afternoon, gentlemen, and welcome to the Republic of South Vietnam. It is presently fifteen-twenty, November three, 1967. You will be taken to the Long Binh Replacement Center, where you will receive your individual unit assignments.

Remember the darkness of the tents. Remember the metal lockers. Remember the mosquito netting on the T-bars. Remember the muddy floors. Remember how the tents were like dripping caves.

Gentlemen, you are part of a great killing machine.

This is your weapon. It may save your life.

Nobility, grace, gravity.

Koko saw an elephant striding down a civilized European avenue. The elephant was buttoned into an elegant green suit and tipped his hat to all the charming ladies. Koko smiled at James Bond, who jumped out of his fancy car and looked Koko straight in the eye, and in quiet clear italics said, Time to face the elephant again, Koko.

A long time later they stood in the aisle, holding their carry-on baggage and waiting for Lady Dachau to open the door. At eye level directly before Koko hung the jacket of Billy Dickerson’s blue linen suit, all correctly webbed and criss-crossed with big easy-going, casual-looking wrinkles that made you want to be wrinkled yourself, as easy and casual as that. When Koko glanced up he saw Billy Dickerson’s blond hair ruffling out over the perfect collar of the linen suit. A pleasant smell of soap and aftershave emanated from good old Bill, who had disappeared into the forward toilet for nearly half an hour that morning while no-time turned into San Francisco time.

‘Hey,’ Dickerson, said, looking over his shoulder at Koko, ‘if you want to call off that bet it’s okay with me, Bobby. Pretty crazy.’

‘Indulge me,’ Koko said.

Lady Dachau got the signal she was waiting for and opened the door.

They walked into a corridor of cool fire. Angels with flaming swords waved them forward. Koko heard distant mortar fire, a sign that nothing truly serious was happening: the Tin Man had just sent out a few boys to use up some of this month’s quota of the taxpayers’ money. The cool fire, frozen into patterns like stone, wavered beneath their feet. This was America again. The angels with flaming swords gave flaming smiles.

‘You remember me mentioning that trick?’

Dickerson nodded and lifted an eyebrow, and he and Koko strolled along toward the baggage area. The angels with flaming swords gradually lost their numinosity and became uniformed stewardesses pulling wheeled carts behind them. The flames curling in the stone hardened into stiff cold patterns.

The corridor went straight for perhaps twenty yards, then slanted off to the right.

They turned the corner.

‘A men’s room, thank God,’ Dickerson said, and sped on ahead and shouldered open the door.

Smiling, Koko sauntered after, imagining an empty white-tiled place.

A woman in a bright yellow dress who passed before him exuded the hot, bloody aroma of the eternal world. For a moment a bright sword flickered in her hand. He pushed open the door of the men’s room and had to shift his case to one side to swing open another door almost immediately behind it.

A bald man stood at one of the sinks, washing his hands. Beside him a shirtless man leaned over a sink and scraped lather from his face with a blue plastic razor. Koko’s stomach tightened. Good old Billy was far down a row of urinals, more than half of which were occupied.

Koko saw his tense, haunted-looking face in the mirror. He jumped at himself out of his own eyes.

He went to the first urinal and pretended to pee, waiting for everyone to leave him alone with Dickerson. Something had gotten loose inside him, buzzed under his ribs, made him so lightheaded that he wobbled.

For an instant he thought he was already in Honduras, his work was either completed or ready to be begun all over again. Under an immense sun little brick-colored people milled around a comically provincial airport with tumbledown shacks, lounging policemen, and dozing hounds.

Dickerson zipped up, moved swiftly to the sink, passed his hands through a stream of water and a stream of air, and was gone almost before Koko came back to the men’s room.

He hurried out. The loose thing in his chest buzzed painfully against his ribs.

Dickerson was moving quickly into a huge room where carousels like black volcanos whirred and gouted suitcases down their ribbed flanks. Nearly everyone on their flight was already gathered around the second carousel. Koko watched Dickerson work his way around the edge of the people waiting for their bags. The thing in his chest slipped down into his stomach, where it flew like an angry bee into his intestines.

Sweating now, Koko crept through the people who stood between himself and Dickerson. Lightly, almost reverently, he brushed his fingers over the linen sleeve that held Dickerson’s left arm.

‘Hey, Bobby, I don’t feel right, you know,’ Dickerson said, bending forward and lifting a big Vuitton suitcase off the belt.

Koko knew one thing: a woman had picked out that bag.

‘About the money thing. Let’s eighty-six the whole idea, okay?’

Koko nodded miserably. His own beat-up case was nowhere on the carousel. Everything had gone slightly blurry around the edges, as if a fine mist hung in the air. A tall black-haired woman who was a living sword plucked a tiny case off the belt and – Koko saw through the descending mist – smiled at Dickerson.

‘Take care,’ Dickerson said.

A uniformed man walked unerringly up to Dickerson and passed him through customs with a few questions. Dickerson strode off to a window to have his passport stamped.

Dazed, Koko saw his own suitcase thump down the side of the carousel and glide past him before he thought to lift it off the belt. He watched Dickerson’s steadily dwindling body pass through a door marked EXIT-TRANSPORTATION.

In Customs the inspector called him ‘Mr Ortiz’ and searched the ripped lining of his suitcase for diamonds or heroin.

At Immigration he saw flaming wings sprout from the uniformed shoulders of the man in the booth, and the man stamped his passport and welcomed him back to the country, and Koko grabbed his old case and his carry-on bag and ran to the nearest men’s room. He dropped the bags just inside the door and sprinted into an open toilet. As soon as he sat down his bowels opened, then opened again. Fire dripped and spurted from him. For a moment Koko’s stomach felt as though a long needle had pierced it; then he bent forward and vomited between his shoes. He sat in his own stink for a long time, his bags forgotten, thinking only of what was there before him.