Blind Assassin (48 page)

In addition to that, the wolves aren’t really wolves, they’re just sheepdogs who’ve been trained to impersonate wolves. Really they’re very tame, and very loyal.

So these people will take the two fugitives in, and once they’ve heard their sad story they’ll be really nice to them. Then the blind assassin and the girl with no tongue can live in one of the caves, and sooner or later they’ll have children who can see and speak, and they’ll be very happy.

Meanwhile, all their fellow-citizens are being slaughtered? he says, grinning. You’re endorsing treachery to one’s country? You’ve traded the general social good for private contentment?

Well, those were the people that were going to kill them. Their fellow citizens.

Only a few had those intentions—the elite, the top cards in the deck. You’d condemn the rest along with them? You’d have our twosome betray their own people? That’s pretty selfish of you.

It’s history, she says. It’s inThe Conquest of Mexico —what’s his name, Cortez—his Aztec mistress, that’s what she did. It’s in the Bible too. The harlot Rahab did the same thing, at the fall of Jericho. She helped Joshua’s men, and she and her family were spared.

Point taken, he says. But you’ve broken the rules. You can’t just change the undead women into a bunch of folkloric pastoralists at whim.

You never actually put these women into the story, she says. Not directly. You only told rumours about them. Rumours can be false.

He laughs. True enough. Now here’s my version. In the camp of the People of Joy, everything happens as you’ve said, although with better speeches. Our two young folks are taken to the foothills of the western mountains and left there among the tombs, and then the barbarians proceed to enter the city as per instructions, and they loot and destroy, and massacre the inhabitants. Not one escapes alive. The King is hanged from a tree, the High Priestess is disembowelled, the plotting courtier perishes along with the rest. The innocent slave children, the guild of blind assassins, the sacrificial girls in the Temple—all die. An entire culture is wiped from the universe. No one is left alive who knows how to weave the marvellous carpets, which you’ll have to admit is a shame.

Meanwhile the two young people, hand in hand with wandering steps and slow, through the western mountains take their solitary way. They are secure in the faith that they’ll soon be discovered by the benevolent vegetable-gardeners, and taken in. But, as you say, rumours don’t have to be true, and the blind assassin has got hold of the wrong rumour. The dead women really are dead. Not only that, the wolves really are wolves, and the dead women can whistle them up at will. Our two romantic leads are wolf meat before you can say Jack Robinson.

You’re certainly an incurable optimist, she says.

I’m not incurable. But I like my stories to be true to life, which means there have to be wolves in them. Wolves in one form or another.

Why is that so true to life? She turns away from him onto her back, stares up at the ceiling. She’s miffed because her own version has been trumped.

All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel.

All of them?

Sure, he says. Think about it. There’s escaping from the wolves, fighting the wolves, capturing the wolves, taming the wolves. Being thrown to the wolves, or throwing others to the wolves so the wolves will eat them instead of you. Running with the wolf pack. Turning into a wolf. Best of all, turning into the head wolf. No other decent stories exist.

I think they do, she says. I think the story about you telling me the story about wolves isn’t about wolves.

Don’t bet on it, he says. I have a wolf side to me. Come over here.

Wait. There’s something I have to ask you.

Okay, shoot, he says lazily. His eyes are closed again, his hand is across her.

Are you ever unfaithful to me?

Unfaithful. What a quaint word.

Never mind my choice of vocabulary, she says. Are you?

No more than you are to me. He pauses. I don’t think of it as unfaithfulness.

What do you think of it as? she asks, in a cold voice.

Absent-mindedness, on your part. You close your eyes and forget where you are.

And on yours?

Let’s just say you’re first among equals.

You really are a bastard.

I’m only telling the truth, he says.

Well, maybe you shouldn’t.

Don’t get up on your hind legs, he says. I’m only fooling. I couldn’t stand to lay a finger on any other woman. I’d sick up.

There’s a pause. She kisses him, draws back. I have to go away, she says carefully. I needed to tell you. I didn’t want you to wonder where I was.

Away where? What for?

We’re going on the maiden voyage. All of us, the whole entourage. He says we can’t miss it. He says it’s the event of the century.

The century’s only a third finished. And even so, I’d have thought that little spot was reserved for the Great War. Champagne by moonlight can hardly compete with millions dead in the trenches. Or how about the influenza epidemic, or…

He means the social event.

Oh, pardon me, ma’am. I stand corrected.

What’s the matter? I’ll only be gone a month—well, more or less. Depending on the arrangements.

He says nothing.

It’s not as if Iwant to.

No. I don’t suppose you do. Too many seven-course meals to eat, and far too much dancing. A gal could get all wore out.

Don’t be like that.

Don’t tell me how to be! Don’t join the chorus line of folks with plans for my improvement. I’m fucking tired of it. I’ll be what I am.

I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

I hate it when you grovel. But Jesus you’re good at it. I bet you get a lot of practice, on the home front.

Maybe I should leave.

Leave if you feel like it. He rolls over, his back to her. Do whatever you fucking well feel like doing. I’m not your keeper. You don’t have to sit up and beg and whine and wag your tail for me.

You don’t understand. You don’t even try. You don’t understand at all what it’s like. It’s not as if Ienjoy it.

Right.

In Search of an Adjective

BY J. HERBERT HODGINS

…No more beautiful ship ever crossed the sea lanes. She has the lithe, streamlined beauty of the greyhound in her outward construction and she is outfitted, in her interior, with a lavishness of detail and a superiority of decor that make her a masterpiece of comfort, efficiency and luxury. The new ship is a Waldorf-Astoria hotel, afloat.

I have searched for the proper adjective. She has been called marvellous, thrilling, magnificent, regal, stately, majestic and superb. All of these words describe her with a certain feeling of accuracy. But each word, in itself, accounts for no more than a single phase of this “greatest achievement in the history of British shipbuilding.” TheQueen Mary is impossible of description: she must be seen and “felt,” and her unique shipboard life participated in.

…There was dancing each evening, of course, in the Main Lounge, and here it was difficult to imagine one was at sea. The music, the dance floor, the smartly dressed crowd was typical of a hotel ballroom in any one of a half dozen cities in the world. You saw all of the newest gowns decreed by London and Paris, fresh and crisp from their bandboxes. You saw, too, the latest conceits in accessories: charming little hand bags; billowing evening capes of which there were many smart versions to accent colour schemes; luxurious wraps and capelets in fur. The bouffant gown carriedoff top honours, whether in taffeta or net. Where the pencil silhouette was favoured, the frock was invariably accompanied by an elaborate tunic of taffeta or printed satin. Chiffon capes were many and varied. But all fell from the shoulders in flowing military fashion. One lovely young woman with a Dresden china face under a coiffure of white hair wore a lilac chiffon cape over a full-flowing grey gown. A tall blonde in a watermelon pink gown wore a white chiffon cape trimmed with ermine tails.

In the evenings there’s dancing, smooth glittery dancing on a slippery floor. Induced hilarity: she can’t avoid it. Everywhere around, the flashbulbs pop: you can never tell where they’re aiming, or when a picture will appear in the paper, of you, with your head thrown back, all your teeth showing.

In the mornings her feet are sore.

In the afternoons she takes refuge in memory, lying in a deck chair, behind her sunglasses. She refuses the swimming pool, the quoits, the badminton, the endless, pointless games. Pastimes are for passing the time and she has her own pastime.

The dogs go round and round the deck on the ends of their leashes. Behind them are the top-grade dog-walkers. She pretends to be reading.

Some people write letters, in the library. For her there’s no point. Even if she sent a letter, he moves around so much he might never get it. But someone else might.

On calm days the waves do what they are hired to do. They lull. The sea air, people say—oh, it’s so good for you. Just take a deep breath. Just relax. Just let go.

Why do you tell me these sad stories? she says, months ago. They’re lying wrapped in her coat, fur side up, his request. Cold air blows through the cracked window, streetcars clang past. Just a minute, she says, there’s a button pressing into my back.

That’s the kind of stories I know. Sad ones. Anyway, taken to its logical conclusion, every story is sad, because at the end everyone dies. Birth, copulation, and death. No exceptions, except maybe for the copulation part of it. Some guys don’t even get that far, poor sods.

But there can be happy parts in between, she said. In between the birth and the death—can’t there? Though I guess if you believe in Heaven that could be a happy story of sorts—dying, I mean. With flights of angels singing you to your rest and so forth.

Yeah. Pie in the sky when you die. No thanks.

Still, there can be happy parts, she says. Or more of them than you ever put in. You don’t put in many.

You mean, the part where we get married and settle down in a little bungalow and have two kids? That part?

You’re being vicious.

Okay, he says. You want a happy story. I can see you won’t leave it alone until you get one. So here goes.

It was the ninety-ninth year of what was to become known as the Hundred Years’ War, or the Xenorian Wars. The Planet Xenor, located in another dimension of space, was populated by a super-intelligent but super-cruel race of beings known as the Lizard Men, which wasn’t what they called themselves. In appearance they were seven feet tall, scaly, and grey. Their eyes had vertical slits, like the eyes of cats or snakes. So tough was their hide that ordinarily they didn’t have to wear clothing, except for short pants made of carchineal, a flexible red metal unknown on Earth. These protected their vital parts, which were also scaly, and enormous I might add, but at the same time vulnerable.

Well, thank heaven something was, she says, laughing.

I thought you’d like that. Anyway, their plan was to capture a large number of Earth women and breed a super-race, half-human, half-Xenorian Lizard Man, which would be better equipped for life on the various other habitable planets of the universe than they were—able to adjust to strange atmospheres, eat a variety of foods, resist unknown diseases, and so on—but which would also have the strength and the extraterrestrial intelligence of the Xenorians. This super-race would spread out through space and conquer it, eating the inhabitants of the different planets en route, because the Lizard Men needed room for expansion and a new source of protein.

The space fleet of the Lizard Men of Xenor had launched its first attack on Earth in the year 1967, scoring devastating hits on major cities in which millions had perished. Amid widespread panic, the Lizard Men had made parts of Eurasia and South America their slave colonies, appropriating the younger women for their hellish breeding experiments and burying the corpses of the men in enormous pits, after eating the parts of them they preferred. They liked the brains and the hearts especially, and the kidneys, grilled lightly.