Frogmouth (10 page)

It must have been one hell of a movie. Lim, glancing back at the wall, said, "Yes?"

"Absolutely." O'Yee, turning to lay his hand gently on Lim's shoulder, steering him to a view of all that was honest and pure and true in life, said gently, "Have you ever seen a ghost story that had an ending you believed in?"

"No."

O'Yee said, "That's because there isn't any ending because there aren't any real ghost stories!" He was getting there, he could feel it. O'Yee, reaching for the window, said in full throat, "There are no sounds coming from the wall! There is no headless ghost! There are no mutilated spirits haunting this station! There are no psychic disturbances! There is no danger! There is only—" He opened the window and called out to the girl, "
Hey!
"

"AAARRRAAGGHHH! Twen-ty-eight! Twen-ty-EIGHT! NAARRINGGAHHH! BOOM!"

Or, on the other hand—

O'Yee, leaning out the window shouting after the fleeing girl at the top of his lungs, the skewer in his neck starting to hurt like hell, yelled, "Hey!
Hey!
You've forgotten your bicycle—!"

. . . the girl was the one who fawned. In the street, Natasha in white shirt, brown tie, brown slacks and with bobbed hair, said in Cantonese in a voice that turned him to vanilla, "You were so brave, Mr. Auden. For a man of your size to chase up that hill like a man carrying no muscle on his bones—like a mere Chinese— that was what won the Empire for you English." She, like all the other tellers in the bank, was about five foot two. She came up to Auden's bicep.

Auden flexed it.

Natasha, gazing up at him and seeing the firm set of his jaw, said in admiration, "If we had someone like you in the bank not even Mr. Nyet could push us around." Was there a tear? Natasha, putting out her fingers gingerly to touch the mighty frame and then pulling them away out of maidenly reserve, said, "You carry all your muscle and sinews like a dancer, so gracefully." She gave him a modest smile.

Ah, it weren't nothin'. Auden said, staring above her and out to the far horizons, "A man has to do what he's capable of."

"You are light and freedom to us in the bank."

Auden said, "I try."

"You are the spirit of the wind."

"Banks are important too."

"Not ours."

Auden said encouragingly, "Oh, yes. Commerce is important too." He gave her his Errol Flynn smile, "Not everyone can go haring about up impossible hills—"

Natasha said with a gasp, "Chasing impossible dreams . . ."

Auden said, "Climb every mountain!"

Natasha said, "Keep right on till the end of the road."

It was so nice to meet someone who wasn't a Communist. Auden said, "A man must dream." Once you got close to her you noticed she was a girl. You could tell by the way the front of her shirt rose and fell. You could smell it. It was perfume. It wafted. It rose from her five foot two about fourteen—well maybe twelve— inches upward and came in zephyrs and— Auden said abruptly, "Business before pleasure."

Natasha said with the tear still glistening, "The bank is a terrible place to work, Phillip." She asked, "May I call you Phillip?"

Auden said, "Sure." For a man of muscle and sinew the voice came out as fast-melting butter. Auden, clearing his throat, said, "Sure!"

"We have no happiness in our lives in the bank, only drudgery and the dust of shattered dreams. Shattered by Mr. Nyet." Natasha said, "He's away at the moment." She said with what looked like a sneer, "He knows better than to be around when great things are happening!" Natasha said, "I'm an athlete myself. The bank staff and I, we all planned to represent the bank this year in the Pan-Asia Bank Officers' Games in Bangkok, but Mr. Nyet—" She sniffed, "Mr. Nyet refused to sponsor us—"

Auden the Magnificent asked with interest, "What sport do you play?" Maybe he could give her a few tips.

There was a silence. She gazed up at him with almond eyes. How anyone could fail to see she was a girl was beyond him. Auden said, leaning down to catch her sweet and low voice, "Hmm?"

Natasha said, "Indoor games, Phillip."

Auden said in English in a whisper, "Oh, boy . . ."It sounded as if he was practicing his fast breathing for the next run. Auden, looking around, wondering where the hell Spencer had gone, said, "Oh." Auden said, "Ah." Auden said, "Well . . ."

". . . Phillip . . ."

". . . Natasha . . ."

"Thank you, Phillip, for showing us all that there is a way to rise above all of life's hard blows, that there is Hope." Natasha said, "And you do all this for the love of a friend, for poor P.C. Wang—"

Who? Auden said quickly, "I do."

"Phillip . . ."

Auden said in a tiny voice, "Natasha . . ." Auden said, "Natasha—"

Natasha said, "Yes?"

Auden said, "Um." He looked at his watch. It was working, going around: both hands, the big hand and the little hand. Auden said, touching her gently on the shoulder with his mighty mitt—like all powerful hulks gentle to a fault, "Just—just stand clear when I go." Auden said, "Just—just—" Auden said, "This time, I'm going to go full speed!"

"Oh!"

"Oh . . ."

She was a girl. He could tell. His legs, as she brushed against them to give him room to move, turned quiveringly, completely— to jelly.

"Twenty . . .
eight
!"

"
Aw
—SHUT UP!"

Enough was enough. He was, after all, the officer in charge.

He took charge.

"AW, SHUT UP, WHY DON'T YOU!?"

In the Detectives' Room, O'Yee, getting madder'n hell, slammed the window to the outside world with a bang.

They were forming. All up and down the street to the base of Sagarmatha Hill, people were forming. Natasha had gone back into the bank. Auden had stopped saying, "Oh . . ." They were forming to catch some of the money when either he or the Tibetan dropped it when they were shot. Auden said, "
Hell!
" Maybe he was hiding behind the trash skip. Auden, not turning around, his eyes glued to the waiting multitudes, said out of the corner of his mouth, "Bill?"

He was nowhere. He was gone.

All the multitudes were fit young men wearing singlets and shorts. Some of them looked like rickshaw pullers: they had muscles in their legs like oak.

He looked at their feet. They were all bare. They looked like Frisbees. Auden said, "
Hell!
"

He waited, calm, unruffled, by his demeanor and his grace the undisputed, the favorite, the Olympian. Auden said with a sneer on his face to the waiting hordes, "Huh!"

Auden, out of the corner of his mouth, so imperceptibly that it looked merely as if his lip muscles were doing warming-up exercises, said, "Bill! Bill! —
Bill!
"

He was never around when you needed him.

Auden, in his last final gasp before he crouched down on his starting blocks and waved across to the bank to where Natasha watched from a window, said for one last time, "—
Bill!!
"

He wondered.

In the library with a book in front of him opened to pictures and drawings of all the birds, he wondered.

By now, everyone would be finished at Yat's.

He wondered why, of all the buildings and cages and kiosks at Yat's, why only the Wishing Chair, why only that in the midst of all the terrible slaughter, had been smashed.

In the empty, silent library, Feiffer, touching his hand to his face, said softly, "Christ . . . !"

He wondered why any of it had been done.

It had been done with a machete. In the night, its edge, coming down, had glittered like lightning and then it had been gone.

"
More pork, more pork, wide-awake, wide-awake!
" They were the sounds of the birds in the books, sounds like bells, like music, calls, carillons, rolls, whiplashes, reprises over and over in the stillness.

In the library, there was only the stillness.

In the lightning, in the stillness, in the grayness and the pictures in the book in front of him, he wished he could hear the sounds of birds.

There were so sounds.

He wished he were someone else.

He wished, someone suddenly frightened in the big, empty room alone—

He wished—

He wished to God it had never, never happened.

S
olipsism. It was a word. It was the last word left. It meant the belief that all things in the external world were only the imaginings of the last, the only mind, left on earth—that the earth itself was only the imaginings of the last, the only mind left on— left inside the cocoon of redness.

It was true. The word was the last word left in a world in which all the words had gone. Maybe it was no word—maybe it was only a sound, what things were, not a word at all, but only the awareness of the red. The redness was a veil, it was spinning, opening and closing in slits and buzzing without sound.

Solipsism. The street, through the slits, was yellow—there was a car, a mailbox—they appeared as objects in the redness, free-floating, passing by, entering the redness, sailing through it in colors and then, halting for a moment in the cupola of red, floating out again. The objects, the streets, Hong Kong came into the cupola disconnected, rootless—the car passed through a slit in the cocoon—it was black, a taxi, with the driver, openmouthed and shouting without sound—and then—then it was gone.

All the birds and animals had died. They had come into the cocoon like owls on silent wings, seemed suspended on wires and then, their heads coming loose and floating away, they had begun to spin, to fall out of control with dark liquids falling away from them like vapor trails; they had struck a part of the redness, the veil, the cocoon, and then had passed out, gone over, ceased to be. They had been wet. It had been raining. An umbrella, like an ectoplasm, had hovered there above the roof of the cupola. Beneath the umbrella and the cupola, the blood vapor trails had spun and turned and twisted and gouted in slow motion, splashing, passing through and out of the redness and there had been no sound at all.

Things had come halfway into the redness—the stomach and paws of a dog, the head of a crocodile, dreamthings: they had been pulped into blood and slashed to entrails.

And then they had gone again.

The street passed in through the cocoon, not at its base, but at chest height as a long, unwinding yellow strip with black lines on it where the paving stones were, then, a moving image on a racing-driver computer game, it was swallowed up into nothing and was gone again.

The red cocoon was expanding, contracting, pulsing, shimmering, opening and closing without cause.

Something on the yellow street—part of the yellow street— something following the yellow street came in—something— objects—black and stark white and bright blue and black, and then they were gone again.

There was a buzzing starting, getting louder and louder.

The objects in the cocoon were dreamer's pictures, the pictures of the sleepless.
Solipsism
: it was the thought—the last thought, the only thought in the cocoon that all there was was the cocoon. The red cocoon covered, enveloped, was the person inside it. The person was reflected, was the reflection of itself, was only the image in a mirror with the form of the cocoon. The person's name was Jakob. It was a small, brown-faced old man.

The dreams, the objects came in and out of the red cocoon like pulsings of sleep, like the world seen in and out, sharp and blurred like spectacles taken quickly on and off.

There was a buzzing.

There was a sickness.

It was the sickness of the spectacles taken on and off, of the queasy loss of balance, of nausea, of trying, failing, to fix on a single object.

Through secret, different streets, like the birds traveling on different, invisible currents and along arcane, unknown, unknowable roads in the air, the person inside the cocoon traveled in another dimension, in another time, toward another destination.

Jakob. He was a small, brown-faced old man with a soft, almost whispering voice.

There was only the buzzing getting louder and louder.

It was not true. If there was any external reference to truth, to the world as it was, it was not true at all. It was a trick, a device, a secret.

. . . Jakob. He was a small, brown-faced old man with a soft, whispering voice.

It was camouflage.

It was a trick.

The machete, like lightning, had killed everything that had come into the cocoon and disemboweled it.

The person inside the cocoon, moving through secret streets to a secret place, like the birds of the night seen during the day, held up to the light, looked nothing like that at all.

He had cold, dead eyes, the small brown-faced man with the whispering voice.

His name was Jakob.

His last name did not matter in the least. No need for a last name.

He existed through the shimmering red cupola that only he— the last thought on earth—ever saw. He was God.

He killed things.

They came into the red, pulsing cupola and he killed them.

10:33
A.M.
It was red light inside the cupola, the cocoon. Like a submarine, closed in and without windows, it passed through seas it never saw, never touched.

It was merely there, passing. The cocoon, like the hull of the submarine, was hard, enclosed, impermeable, without light other than the red light of depth and dark places.

It traveled invisibly, unseen in the places of the night.

10:33
A.M.
In Icehouse Street, Hong Bay, Crown Colony of Hong Kong, as it passed by, like a memory, a thought, a secret held tight-lipped silent, no one knew it was there.

Jakob . . .

There was no Jakob.

What was inside the cocoon, hidden, invisible, hiding there, was merely a reflex, an amoeba. It was merely a mechanism that killed.

There was only the buzzing.

In Icehouse Street, only the person inside the cocoon, the person who was the cocoon, heard it.

Buzzing.

Jakob.

—it was very important that, methodically, in order, following a pattern, one by one at the right time and place, he, without mercy or thought, killed things.