Marshlands (2 page)

Prison hadn't erased his youthful vanity completely. He'd been a handsome man once. Women had told him that, and it was still with him.

Shopgirls on their lunch break offered him bits of food as if he were a bird. A large stinking bird, but still one of God's creatures, nevertheless a life to be cherished. They were too skinny, these shopgirls. They seemed to hold it as an immutable law not to finish their lunch. Food was to be suffered briefly and then scattered to the animals: the pigeons and squirrels and the toothless old fellow in the park whose courtly manners were so comically at odds with his dereliction. He never rushed to take it, no matter how ravenous he might be. There were rules, even for the fallen. This was the capital!

Sometimes they left him a pastry. How he loved the buttery layers, the texture of sugar crystals on his tongue. One bite, and he was back in his childhood bakery, his mother holding a cookie hostage for a kiss on the cheek. His father standing apart, disapproving. Boys were supposed to be outside playing, not crowding their mother's knees under a café table, clutching a stuffed crocodile. Or perhaps not a crocodile, maybe a snake, some creature from the marshes. This was long before he'd even heard of the marshes, but already its monsters dominated his imagination.

A neighbor's Pomeranian had gotten hold of that stuffed animal and chewed its tail. A great disaster.
There's no need to cry
, his mother had said,
you can fix it with those healing paws of yours.

2

In good weather, he wandered the Mall, where the hollowed-out eyes of founding fathers seemed to offer a silent reprieve. Everything was just so on the Mall, down to the shadows that crept obediently across warlike friezes. The dazzling marble facades erased differences, silhouetting tourist and bureaucrat alike, unifying everyone in a grand tableau. There was even a place for him; he stood as a warning, an example of what befalls a man unprotected by empire.

On the weekends, crowds would gather on the wide gravel paths opposite the museums. A march, a protest, a rally—it didn't make much difference. Where there was a crowd, there were students; where there were students, there was spare change and food.

Not all of the students were generous. Some were self-righteous. He'd been one of the self-righteous ones. It was hard to tell which was which, since he rarely made eye contact. Eye contact could be taken as a challenge. He knew that about dogs. In the marshes, looking into a man's eyes was a sign of welcome. He still associated marsh greetings with a sliding sensation above his ears, the feeling of sunglasses being removed.

Crowds meant street vendors. He was not welcome among the vendors, who were often fresh immigrants. Nevertheless, he was drawn to them the way he was drawn to marshmen everywhere, out of a sense of kinship. They weren't bold enough to chase him off, but that didn't stop them from saying shamefully inhospitable things to his face. There was no pity among the vendors. He had every possible advantage, including the most prized: skin of the right color. Yet here he was, sniffing around their carts like a stray.

He knew what they thought of him, but he went to them anyway. There were perks: the smell of roasted meat, a bit of stale flatbread, perhaps some charred orts headed for the bin.

Today there was a protest on the steps of the museum of natural history, something about a new exhibit. A politician was making an impassioned speech. The politician wore a business suit, but waved a cadet's shako.

A crowd of angry men in ill-fitting fatigues clustered at the base of the steps. These were middle-aged men wearing the uniforms of youth. Many of them had long hair. Some were draped in regimental colors. Others waved placards that read
WE BLED FOR THIS?
and
HONOR OUR FALLEN, NOT THE ENEMY!

Across the avenue, in front of a stand of towering walnut trees, there was a large counter-protest. These were mostly students. Their contorted mouths were like pretty pink blossoms. They were chanting, “We broke it, we bought it!”

If only he could harvest the energy these young people poured into the air. He wanted to lift up his arms and say,
Relax, children, this is a land of plenty
.

A group of boys broke off from the seething mass and hurled green walnuts at the veterans on the steps. There were cries of outrage. The veterans scattered, collected the nuts, and hurled them back.

It was in this counter-volley that he was struck in the face. One moment he was staring dreamily at the melee; the next, he was on the ground. He couldn't be sure exactly where the nut had struck. His face was numb. He knew he'd been hit, though. His lips were wet with blood.

He was suddenly very thirsty. Just before he fell, he'd been considering the water fountain in the rotunda. It was near the entrance, but had the disadvantage of being one of those low fixtures designed for schoolchildren. He didn't like drinking from it. His hands were unclean. He worried for the children who drank after him.

At any rate, now he was lying on the gravel with protesters all around, some of them quietly conferring, others squatting nearby as if they felt they ought to help, but couldn't quite overcome their disgust.

He didn't blame them for not wanting to touch him. There was no telling what vermin pulsed in his clothes, what virus polluted his blood.

A nervous little marshman in a tracksuit, one of the sausage vendors, parted the crowd. He kept saying, “Excuse me,” but his tone implied that anyone standing in his way was either an idler or a fool. He had a woman in tow, a museum worker with a laminated badge. Her stride was confident, but she held herself aloof, wrapping a wool shawl ever tighter around her shoulders.

She thanked the marshman, then turned to the young protesters and said, “We need to move this man. Gently, now.” Her words seemed to wake them up. They pressed his arms and legs in encouragement. Someone cried out, “He's going to be okay!” There were murmurs of relief.

They lifted him by his scavenged raincoat and carried him to the side entrance of the museum. Along the way, several of his bearers melted back into the crowd. Now there were only three resentful young men who realized too late that their colleagues had slipped away. They were rough with him, not out of anger, but because their arms were tiring. As they passed through the bronze doors, his mouth brushed the bare arm of one of the young men, who recoiled and cursed.

They laid him on an upholstered bench under the disapproving eye of an elderly guard. The bench sighed, its leather exhaling an odor of wealth. For the first time, he had a good look at the woman who'd intervened on his behalf. She was middle-aged, with dark, tightly curled hair, shot through with white. Her eyes were deep brown and soulful, but diminished by octagonal glasses, bits of burnished gold and plastic that should have lightened her face, but instead gave it a kind of severity.

She wore a gray suit that was well made but old-fashioned, like something she'd found in her grandmother's closet and mockingly tried on, only to discover that it fit quite well—well enough, anyway, to save the expense of buying something new.

She didn't wear makeup. In fact, she looked like someone who thought makeup was silly, but was nevertheless vulnerable to the attention of glamorous department store saleswomen. He wanted to tell her she was right not to wear it, that no one should hide such beautiful tawny skin.

It had been a long time since he'd studied a woman's face so closely. He was surprised to be drawing conclusions from it. That was a skill from his old life, when subtleties mattered, before all he needed to know was whether or not a person meant him harm.

She dismissed the last young man who'd carried him in. The others had already disappeared through the massive revolving door.

She asked if he was comfortable, then offered him an oat bar, rummaging for it in her purse.

He wished she had something else. He avoided food that made him thirsty. This was a city of pay toilets. A homeless man was forced to do his business out in the open, in precisely the way that invited beatings and even arrest.

“Here,” she said. “I know it's not great.”

He was in no position to refuse it, but he told her that oat bars didn't agree with him, all the while hinting that the problem lay in his teeth. Actually, he had strategies for eating anything, even beef jerky. He knew how to keep food in his cheek until it softened. If that didn't work, there were other ways to break it down.

She slid the bar back into her purse and said she didn't really like them, either, which was why she carried one for emergencies. She wasn't likely to eat an oat bar unless she was truly desperate.

The guard came over and whispered something that made her angry. She walked back to his station, dealing with him sharply along the way, and returned with a guest badge. She made a show of pinning the badge to his chest, then helped him to his feet and led him to an unmarked door, which she opened with a swipe of a security card.

They walked long hallways lined with specimen cases. When he paused to rest in front of one of the cases, a bird with iridescent feathers caught his eye. A male marsh coot. He knew it well. The taxidermist had captured the coot's enigmatic smile, but the eyes were the wrong color; he remembered them as red, not purple.

She explained, as if he were a visiting colleague, that museums were in a time of transition. Merely displaying the wonders of nature was no longer enough. What curators emphasized now was not so much this or that specimen, but rather the story of the scientist or explorer who collected it.

He didn't really understand what she meant but nodded sagely to keep her talking. The businesslike tone of her voice made him feel safe.

Then she told him they were headed to the infirmary, which surprised him. He wondered why there should be an infirmary in a museum.

“There've been accidents,” she said. “That's what we're calling them, anyway. Some quite serious.” She went on to say that the museum had added extra security, and that its insurer had insisted on a medical station until the new exhibit was finished and all the fuss about it died down. Everyone called it the “infirmary” because the phrase “medical station” seemed awfully heavy. Didn't he agree?

He nodded, but once again, she was talking beyond him. “Medical station” seemed perfectly normal. Had words truly become light or heavy while he was away?

“Here we are,” she said, stopping at the open door of an office suite. A male nurse rose from a swivel chair to greet them. He'd been interrupted while reading. He set aside his book and let his reading glasses dangle from a cord around his neck. He was a compact, balding man whose large ears and rosy cheeks nevertheless gave an impression of youth.

She greeted him with a familiarity that aspired to a kiss but didn't quite reach it. There was an uncomfortable spark between them—or perhaps that was just his overactive imagination. Then again, why shouldn't they be a couple? She was lonely. He didn't need all of his wits to see that. Of course there was always the possibility that the nurse was a homosexual, that antique stereotype.

Homosexuality was in vogue in the capital. He'd noticed a surprising amount of public affection between men at rallies on the Mall. The hand-holding might have been tactical, a mirror image of the battle lines of the police, who linked arms when facing a crowd. But he'd seen men holding hands when there were no threatening police to be found.

It didn't really faze him. He'd always envied the easy camaraderie that marshmen shared, which wasn't entirely chaste. A marshman never knew when he might be called to defend his fellow tribesman in a blood feud. He might hold that very tribesman, bleeding to death, in his arms. A precedent of intimacy might prove helpful, even if it was years in the past and forbidden to remember, much less invoke, in those ultimate moments.

The employee lounge had been converted into an examination room. It was strange to undress in front of a vending machine, to warm his bare legs by the coils of a miniature refrigerator. The nurse helped him change into a gown of dimpled crepe, carefully folding his filthy rags and setting them on a side chair, but not before lining the upholstery with table paper.

There had been advances in medical supplies. The gown's soft fabric was one of them, as were the tools the nurse used during his examination, which were sculptural, the steel curving and glistening as if it were still liquid. These were finer tools than he'd ever had in the field. He marveled that a temporary infirmary should be so well stocked.

The nurse proceeded methodically, examining the facial wound first of all, cleaning with disinfectant and probing with tweezers so fine they looked as though they terminated in two metal hairs. As he worked, he applied a balm that instantly made the area numb.

With the numbness came guilt. He'd trained himself to ignore pain for as long as possible, and then, when it could no longer be ignored, to think of it as retribution, a reminder of the pain he'd inflicted on others.

The nurse continued the examination downward, swabbing old wounds as he went, bandaging some, applying his wonderful balm. When the examination was over, and the street grime had been lifted away, the small trash can by the door overflowed with filthy cotton. The nurse then cut his toenails, which were gnarled and yellow, an old man's claws.

He hadn't found a blade sharp enough to cut them, not even the broken penknife he'd tried to whet on a curb with unusually creamy concrete. He'd gouged one of his toes with its jagged steel tip. The wound had festered and was only just beginning to heal.

The nurse made short work of the nails, then handed him an emery board, out of deference to his masculinity. But his fingers were too clumsy to hold the file at the proper angle, and his body was stiff from the fall, so in the end the nurse took back the emery board. It was a blow to his pride, but what blow hadn't he weathered? He held himself still, closed his eyes, and listened to the
wisp wisp
of the file, the tiny pulses of another person attending to him.