Marshlands (5 page)

She smiled ironically. “And all we did was drain the marshes and destroy their civilization.”

The director had given in to the politicians. A huge kiosk devoted to the crimes of the insurgency was to be installed in the middle of the exhibit, destroying the illusion of naturalism she'd worked so hard to create. All she'd wanted was to re-create a way of life that had vanished, but now the exhibit would be a war memorial. The marshman's guerrilla tactics and methods of torture would be showcased. All the old stereotypes were to be studiously reinforced. It was sure to be very popular.

He considered telling her that the kiosk would be balm for the nation's guilt; that war memorials were building blocks of empire; that museums were no different from any other institution: it took money to keep the doors open. But she was too upset for platitudes. He leaned in to dry her tears with his sleeve. Then, drawn closer by the gravity of her round wet cheeks, he closed his eyes and kissed her.

After the kiss, she sat quietly for a few moments, then pulled a tissue from her purse and wiped her mouth. She got up, brushed the stiff fabric of her skirt, and walked the length of the guesthouse. When she returned to the hearth, she nodded, and in a voice full of resentment told him she understood.

He didn't really know what she meant. What was there to understand? She'd bared herself to him. He'd seen a bit of himself reflected there and reached for it, like the boy in the ancient myth.

He was a broken-down relic. He knew that. She was strong and healthy and so much younger. It was a shameful mismatch. Now he saw just how shameful. Who was he to think he could comfort her?

She said she was running late and asked him to hurry up and finish his coffee.

He put out the cooking fire, and then, in the surest sign yet that she'd ceased to trust him, she knelt down and heaped extra sand on the buried embers, as if to suggest that he didn't know how flammable a reed hut could be.

But of course he knew. He'd seen his share of burning villages.

She didn't look back at him during the long walk to the exit. The lighting was undergoing a test. They were working on sunset. One of the attempts in particular was very much like the way night fell in the marshes, suddenly and completely, like a loss of consciousness.

She stopped at the bronze gates and fumbled with her purse. The sight of it alarmed him. He told her she'd already been far too kind.

“Yes, well,” she said, “you may need this.” She handed him her business card. The tiny letters swam before his eyes:
Thali Addison.

She told him to come back at the end of the day. She'd be in meetings all afternoon fighting a holding action.

He found it sad that she used the language of war to describe her workday, and in such a peaceful setting as the back halls of the museum, where even the dust motes seemed to follow the rules of an unspoken truce.

He quit the museum and wandered windblown streets, his lips tingling from the coffee. Towering clouds dominated the sky. The air was raw. His new clothes kept him warm, but he was hungry again. He felt dazed and alone, like a doted-on housecat suddenly forced to live by its wits.

He sat at a playground for a while and watched the clouds. A pair of boisterous twins came to play on the swings, but their parents spirited them away when they saw how he was dressed. He didn't mind. Clouds were easier to watch than children; no one glared at him for looking.

He lost track of time and hurried back to the museum, only to learn by the lobby clock, which was fixed to a stela imported from some conquered desert or other, that he'd been gone for less than an hour. The guards took an active interest when he settled onto one of the leather benches. He considered showing them the business card, but decided not to.

A change had come over him. He was less frightened than before. He took off his shoes and sat cross-legged on the bench, like an elder determined to drink in the peace of the evening before disputants arrived to shatter the calm.

6

After work, they walked side by side against the evening chill. The streets were busy. From time to time, he moved to avoid another pedestrian, but she held him firmly by the arm. She interpreted his desire to pull away as fear. She told him it was natural; everyone feared the dentist.

This was the first he'd heard of their destination. So he was to be a project. What had he been thinking, kissing her like that? He was nothing more to her than a stray. You took strays to a vet, first and foremost, to make sure their health wasn't a threat to your own.

They shuffled awkwardly through the revolving door of an office tower and took the elevator to the twentieth floor. Her dentist was prosperous enough to work high in a downtown building; already his mind was reeling from the debt she was planning to incur on his behalf.

The dentist's office was streamlined and spotless. There were no magazines to clutter the glass coffee table. The only books were a set of pristine historical almanacs that ran the length of a locked credenza.

She filled out some paperwork at the counter, then came and sat next to him on the hard leather sofa, whispering a steady stream he couldn't quite hear. She seemed genuinely happy to be helping him. And why not? She'd arranged a no doubt expensive dentist's appointment for a derelict who sorely needed it. She had every right to feel good about herself. She looked like someone who felt good about herself too rarely, when by all rights she should feel it every waking hour.

The dentist was tall and gaunt and wore a yellow bow tie under his prominent Adam's apple. He had a politician's folksy manner, but his spit-polished shoes spoke of a man with a history in the service. He gave her hair a playful fluff and said he'd heard the exhibit was really coming along. Then he winked and said, “Let's take a look at your new protégé.”

His examination involved three quick forays into the mouth, with a change of gloves each time he made notes with his tortoiseshell fountain pen. “Right,” he said, turning to announce that aside from one fairly deep cavity, the remaining teeth were sound. He waved her off when she asked if the cosmetic work was going to be terribly involved. “Not to worry,” he said. “I'll put it on your tab.”

There were several injections, but he never felt anything worse than a pinprick. The drill made an eerie breeze on the back of his tongue.

There had been great advances in dentistry. Or perhaps private dentistry had been different for a long time. No sooner had the dentist finished filling the cavity than he started rummaging through a drawer labeled
TEETH, INDIVIDUAL AND SMALL GROUPINGS
. The new teeth were fitted with the help of a wand that cast gorgeous purple light.

After the final adjustments, the dentist ran a gloved finger across the repairs, closing his eyes to better concentrate with his fingertips.

The last step was to polish the teeth to erase any remaining differences. Only then did he step back to take in the overall effect.

“Your friend looks awfully familiar,” the dentist said.

“He has one of those faces,” she said.

“No, I've seen him before. I just can't place him.” The dentist excused himself and left the room.

Supine on the armless chair, he suddenly felt very small and exposed. The anesthesia didn't mask the feeling that a great trauma had happened in his mouth. He ran first his tongue, and then a tentative finger, across his new teeth. It felt as though a door that had been left naggingly open was at last closed. But for how long?

The dentist burst back in waving one of the historical almanacs. He handed her the open book, slapping the page with the back of his long elegant fingers. “There, you see?” he said. “It's him.”

It was the famous photograph from his trial. He was sitting in the dock, looking small and haunted. The prosecutor was holding up the boy's homemade blade, a miniature marsh dirk. The caption simply read, “Betrayed!”

While she studied the picture, the dentist loomed over him, flexing his jaw. He wished the chair had arms or side rails, anything to cling to. Part of him expected the violence and even welcomed it, but he couldn't manage even the one sit-up that would restore him to the level of the conversation. His stomach muscles were in revolt.

She handed the book back to the dentist. “Yes, I see,” she said. Then, without another word, she helped him up from the dentist's chair and led him out, slowing only to leave her card with the receptionist, along with instructions for mailing the bill.

His knees went weak when the elevator doors closed behind him, but she didn't offer a steadying hand. He wanted to tell her that the man in the picture was a different man, which was essentially true, but not factual.

The elevator went up instead of down. She gave a self-mocking laugh. There couldn't have been any more contempt in her voice. He wanted to beg her not to be scornful of her kinder impulses.

The elevator traveled to the top of the building, then descended again, stopping at the dentist's floor. When the doors opened, the dentist himself was standing there in a shearling coat and green fedora. He consulted his watch and stepped into the elevator, turning his back on them as soon as he crossed the grooved threshold.

He announced that he wished to go to the lobby. He was apparently someone who disdained pressing his own elevator buttons. When they were under way, he spoke to her over his shoulder. “No more,” he said. “That's the last one.”

She held the door for him at the lobby. They stayed in the elevator until his sharp footsteps were gone.

He was prepared to go his own way when they reached the sidewalk. The fresh air was bracing. Sounds from a distant street festival bounced gaily off the glass facades.

“I should have told you,” he said.

He tracked the motion of her pupils as they flitted across his face. “I know exactly who you are,” she said. “It's a shame you don't know me.”

*   *   *

They took a bus that crossed the river on a new suspension bridge with huge green towers. The bus was nearly empty, but she didn't sit beside him; neither did he move to sit beside her.

Eventually she reached up and tugged the signal wire. She called out a word of thanks to the driver, who lifted a weary hand in acknowledgment.

She didn't help him down to the sidewalk, not even when he stumbled. Her pace was quicker than before. She waited impatiently at intersections.

She led him through an overgrown park to the gates of an armory made of huge granite blocks, along the lines of a fortress from an earlier century. They ducked under a rusting portcullis, then forced their way through a pair of swollen oak doors. There was a security desk, complete with lamp and logbook, but no guard.

The long arched hallways were tiled to shoulder height. The sameness of the cracked white tiles disoriented him. There was a slight tilt to the floor that pushed him ever forward, as though the building were drinking him down. As they walked, the staccato clang of some pump or other grew louder, then softer.

When they came to a locked metal door, she pulled out her overburdened key chain. The lock was sticky. He watched her work the key in and out, wondering how she could possibly be part of such a place.

Beyond the locked door was a vast room, once a workshop of some kind, judging from the axles and flywheels overhead, equipment from a time when everything was driven by a single source of power, a waterwheel or a steam engine. The heavy machinery was long gone, the leather belts and pulleys stripped away. Everything was whitewashed. The center of the room was partitioned with hanging sheets of sandblasted glass.

“There are hospitals in this city that still won't treat marshmen,” she said. “The ones that do often require payment in cash. So we've set up a free clinic for them.”

She led him to a waiting area full of austere furniture softened with pillows made from tribal rugs. She told him she had to check on something, but that he could rest if he needed to. He sank heavily into a chair.

He had no idea how much time passed before her warm hand touched his neck. His head bent instinctively to it, like a cat to its owner's fingers, but she pulled away. The breaking of that connection was what finally woke him.

He would have been happy to spend the night in that chair, surrounded by the musk of dried marsh grasses, but she took him to one of the glass-paneled rooms and told him to be prepared to work in the morning.

The room was small but efficient. There was a sink, a set of drawers, a scale, and an examination table, which she'd made up as a bed with a blanket and a pillow scrounged from the waiting area. She told him that the water from the tap was potable, but she recommended drinking from the glass carboy at the end of the hall. She looked very tired.

He wanted to apologize and ask how they knew each other; instead, he thanked her again for her hospitality.

There was no rejoinder this time, no proverb. She closed the door behind her and paused outside as if trying to decide whether to lock it. Then her blurred shadow disappeared.

She hadn't shown him a bathroom. He splashed some water on his face, but didn't drink.

When the lights went out, he pictured her throwing a huge industrial switch. He approved of her frugality. Even so, he wished she'd left him with a little light.

He felt his way to the examining table and climbed on. The blanket was thick and rough and smelled like carbolic. He fell asleep remembering the harshness of winter in the marshes, and how he used to listen for spring peepers, whose mating song, so insistent and piercing, offered the promise of warmer nights to come.

7

He groaned and covered himself when the lights came on. There was whispering outside the door. He got up, rinsed his mouth, and brushed his teeth with a curved finger. His jaw ached from the dentist, but he took pleasure in his mouth's new solidity.

He needed to find a bathroom. He was hungry, too. He rewrapped his leggings, smoothed his caftan, and ventured out.