The Best of Robert Bloch (25 page)

A thin man emerging from a pawnshop and carrying an enormous tuba. He disappeared momentarily into a meat market next door, then came out again, the bell of his tuba stuffed with sausages—

A broadcasting studio, completely demolished, its once immaculate sound stage littered with the crumpled cartons of fifteen different varieties of America's Favorite Cigarette and the broken bottles of twenty brands of America's Favorite Beer. Protruding from the wreckage was the head of America's Favorite Quizmaster, eyes staring glassily at a sealed booth in the corner which now served as the coffin for a nine-year-old boy who had known the batting averages of every team in the American and National leagues since 1882—

A wild-eyed woman sitting in the street, crying and crooning over a kitten cradled in her arms—

A broker caught at his desk, his body mummified in coils of ticker tape—

A motorbus, smashed into a brick wall, its passengers still jamming the aisles, standees clutching straps even in rigor mortis—

The hindquarters of a stone lion before what had once been the Public Library; before it, on the steps, the corpse of an elderly lady whose shopping bag had spewed its contents over the street—two murder mysteries, a copy of
Tropic of Cancer
, and the latest issue of the
Reader's Digest
—

A small boy wearing a cowboy hat, who leveled a toy pistol at his little sister and shouted, "Bang! You're dead!"

(She was.)

He walked slowly now, his pace impeded by obstacles both physical and of the spirit. He approached the building on the hillside by a circuitous route, avoiding repugnance, overcoming morbid curiosity, shunning pity, recoiling from horror, surmounting shock.

He knew there were others about him here in the city's core, some bent on acts of mercy, some on heroic rescue. But he ignored them all, for they were dead. Mercy had no meaning in this mist, and there was no rescue from radiation. Some of those who passed called out to him, but he went his way, unheeding, knowing their words were mere death rattles.

But suddenly, as he climbed the hillside, he was crying. The salty warmth ran down his cheeks and blurred the inner surface of his helmet so that he no longer saw anything clearly. And it was thus he emerged from the inner circle, the inner circle of the city, the inner circle of Dante's hell.

His tears ceased to flow and his vision cleared. Ahead of him was the proud outline of the Federal Building, shining and intact—or almost so.

As he neared the imposing steps and gazed up at the façade, he noted that there were a few hints of crumbling and corrosion on the surface of the structure. The freakish blast had done outright damage only to the sculptured figures surmounting the great arched doorway; the symbolic statuary had been partially shattered so that the frontal surface had fallen away. He blinked at the empty outlines of the three figures; somehow he never had realized that Faith, Hope, and Charity were hollow.

Then he walked inside the building. There were tired soldiers guarding the doorway, but they made no move to stop him, probably because he wore a protective garment even more intricate and impressive than their own.

Inside the structure a small army of low clerks and high brass moved antlike in the corridors, marching grim-faced up and down the stairs. There were no elevators, of course—they'd ceased functioning when the electricity gave out. But he could climb.

He wanted to climb now, for that was why he had come here. He wanted to gaze out over the city. In his gray insulation he resembled an automaton, and like an automaton he plodded stiffly up the stairways until he reached the topmost floor.

But there were no windows here, only walled-in offices. He walked down a long corridor until he came to the very end. Here a single large cubicle glowed with gray light from the glass wall beyond.

A man sat at a desk, jiggling the receiver of a field telephone and cursing softly. He glanced curiously at the intruder, noted the insulating uniform, and returned to his abuse of the instrument in his hand.

So it was possible to walk over to the big window and look down.

It was possible to see the city, or the crater where the city had been.

Night was mingling with the haze on the horizon, but there was no darkness. The little incendiary blazes had been spreading, apparently, as the wind moved in, and now he gazed down upon a growing sea of flame. The crumbling spires and gutted structures were drowning in red waves. As he watched, the tears came again, but he knew there would not be enough tears to put the fires out.

So he turned back to the man at the desk, noting for the first time that he wore one of the very special uniforms reserved for generals.

This must be the commander, then. Yes, he was certain of it now, because the floor around the desk was littered with scraps of paper. Maybe they were obsolete maps; maybe they were obsolete plans; maybe they were obsolete treaties. It didn't matter now.

There was another map on the wall behind the desk, and this one mattered very much. It was studded with black and red pins, and it took but a moment to decipher their meaning. The red pins signified destruction, for there was one affixed to the name of this city. And there was one for New York, one for Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles—every important center had been pierced.

He looked at the general, and finally the words came.

"It must be awful," he said.

"Yes, awful," the general echoed.

"Millions upon millions dead."

"Dead."

"The cities destroyed, the air polluted, and no escape. No escape anywhere in the world."

"No escape."

He turned away and stared out the window once more, stared down at Inferno. Thinking,
this is what it has come to, this is the way the world ends
.

He glanced at the general again and then sighed. "To think of our being beaten," he whispered.

The red glare mounted, and in its light he saw the general's face, gleeful and exultant.

"What do you mean, man?" the general said proudly, the flames rising. "We won!"

"N
EW
O
RLEANS," SAID
Morgan. "The land of dreams."

"That's right," the bartender nodded. "That's the way the song goes."

"I remember Connee Boswell singing it when I was just a kid," Morgan told him. "Made up my mind to hit this town someday and see for myself. But what I want to know is, where is it?"

"It?"

"The land of dreams," Morgan murmured. "Where'd it all disappear to?" He leaned forward and the bartender refilled his glass. "Take Basin Street, for instance. It's just a lousy railroad track. And the streetcar named Desire is a bus."

"Used to be a streetcar, all right," the bartender assured him. "Then they took 'em out of the Quarter and made all the streets one way. That's progress, Mac."

"Progress!" Morgan swallowed his drink. "When I got down here today I did the Quarter. Museum, Jackson Square, Pirate's Alley, Antoine's, Morning Call, the works. It's nothing but a tourist trap."

"Now wait a minute," the bartender said. "What about all the old buildings with the balconies and grillwork, stuff like that?"

"I saw them," Morgan admitted. "But you pass one of those fine old green-shuttered jobs and what do you see sitting right next door? A laundromat, that's what. Laundromats in the Vieux Carré. They've killed off your old Southern mammy and installed an automatic washer in her place. All the quaint, picturesque atmosphere that's left is hidden behind the walls of a private patio. What's left to see are the antique shops on Royal Street, filled with precious items imported from faraway Brooklyn."

The bartender shrugged. "There's always Bourbon Street."

Morgan made a face. "I hit Bourbon tonight, before I came here. A big neon nothing. Clipjoints and stripjoints. Imitation Dixieland played for visiting Swedes from Minnesota."

"Careful, Mac," said the bartender. "I'm from Duluth myself."

"You would be." Morgan tackled a fresh drink. "There isn't a genuine native or a genuine spot in the whole place. What's the song say about Creole babies with flashing eyes? All I saw was a bunch of B-girls out of exotic, mysterious old Cincinnati."

The bartender tipped the bottle again without being asked, "Now I get the drift, Mac," he muttered. "Maybe you're looking for a little action, huh? Well, I know a place—"

Morgan shook his head. "I'll bet you do. Everybody knows a place. Walking north, before I crossed Rampart, I was stopped three times. Cab drivers. They wanted to haul me to a place. And what was their big sales pitch? Air-conditioning, that's what! Man waits half his life, saves his dough for a trip down here, and the land of dreams turns out to be air-conditioned!"

He stood up, knocking against the bar-stool.

"Tell you a secret," Morgan said. "If Jean Lafitte was around today, he'd be a cab driver."

He lurched out of the tavern and stood on the sidewalk outside, inhaling the damp air. It had turned quite foggy. Fog in the streets. Fog in his brain.

He knew where he was, though—north of Rampart, east of Canal and the Jung Hotel. In spite of the fog, he wasn't lost.

All at once Morgan wished he
was
lost. Lost on this crazy, winding little side street where the grass pushed up between the brick paving-stones and all the houses were shuttered against the night. There were no cars, no passersby, and if it wasn't for the street-lamps he could easily imagine himself to be in the old New Orleans. The
real
New Orleans of the songs and stories, the city of Bolden and Oliver and a kid named Satch.

It had been that way once, he knew. Then World War I came along and they closed down Storeyville. And World War II came along and they turned Bourbon Street into a midway for servicemen and conventioneers. The tourists liked it fine; they came to the Mardi Gras parades and they ate at Arnaud's and then sampled a Sazerac at the Old Absinthe House and went home happy.

But Morgan wasn't a tourist. He was a romantic, looking for the land of dreams.

Forget it,
he told himself.

So he started to walk and he tried to forget it, but he couldn't. The fog grew thicker—both fogs. Out of the internal fog came phrases of the old songs and visions of the old legends. Out of the external fog loomed the crumbling walls of the St. Louis Cemetery. St. Louis Number One, the guidebooks called it.

Well, to hell with the guidebooks. This was what Morgan had been looking for. The real New Orleans was inside these walls. Dead and buried, crumbling away in decayed glory.

Morgan found the grilled gate. It was locked. He peered through the bars, squinting at foggy figures. There were ghosts inside, real ghosts. He could see them standing silently within—white, looming figures pointing and beckoning to him. They wanted Morgan to join them there, and that's where he belonged. Inside, with the other dead romantics—

"Mister, what you doing?"

Morgan turned, stumbling back against the gateway. A small man peered up at him, a small white-haired man whose open mouth exuded a curious-sweet odor.

One of the ghosts,
Morgan told himself.
The odor of corruption
—

But it was only alcohol. And the old man was real, even though his face and his eyes seemed filled with fog.

"Can't get in there, Mister," he was saying. "Place is closed for the night."

Morgan nodded. "You the watchman?" he asked.

"No. Just happened I was wandering around."

"So was I." Morgan gestured at the vista beyond the gateway. "First damned thing I've hit in this town that looked real."

The old man smiled, and again Morgan caught the sickish-sweet odor. "You're right," he said. "All the real things are dead. Notice the angels?"

"I thought they were ghosts," Morgan admitted.

"Maybe so. Lots of things inside there besides statues. See the tombs? Everybody's buried above ground, on account of the swamps. Them as couldn't afford a tomb, why they just rented a crypt in the cemetery wall. You could rent by the month if you liked. But if you didn't pay up—out came Grandpa! That is, if the snatchers didn't get him first."

The old man chuckled. "See the bars and chains on the doors?" he asked. "Rich folk put them up. Had to protect their dead from the bodysnatchers. Some say the grave-robbers were after jewels and such. Others claim the darkies needed the bones for voodoo. I could tell you stories—"

Morgan took a deep breath. "I'd like to hear some of those stories," he said. "How about going somewhere for a drink?"

"A pleasure." The old man bowed.

Under ordinary circumstances, Morgan would have found the spectacle slightly ridiculous. Now it seemed appropriate. And it was appropriate that the little man led him down twisting streets into ever-thickening fog. It was appropriate that he steered him at last into a small, dingy bar with a single light burning in its curtained window. It was appropriate that the stranger ordered for both of them without inquiring what Morgan would have.

The bartender was a fat man with a pockmarked face which bore no expression at all as he set glasses down before them. Morgan stared at the cloudy greenish liquor. It looked like a condensation of the fog, but it gave off the odd, sickish-sweet smell he had come to recognize.

"Absinthe," the old man murmured. "Not supposed to serve it, but they know me here." He raised his glass. "To the old days," he said.

"The old days."

The drink tasted of licorice and fire.

"Everybody used to know me then," the stranger told him. "Came to Storeyville in nineteen-and-two. Never did pick up the accent, but I've been a professional Southerner ever since. A real professional, you might say." He started a chuckle that ended up as a wheeze. "Throat's dry," he explained.

Morgan beckoned to the bartender. The green liquor climbed in the glasses, then descended. It rose and fell several times during the next hour. And the old man's voice rose and fell, and Morgan felt himself rising and falling, too.

It wasn't a panicky feeling, though. Somehow it seemed quite natural for him to be sitting here in this lonely little bar with a shabbily-dressed old lush who gazed at him with eyes of milky marble.