Soldiers of Paradise (8 page)

I squeezed my sister’s hand, and she squeezed mine. I turned to look at her, and she looked away and lay back in the shadow of the wall. But even so I could see her naked shoulders and her arms, and her golden hair around her face. I could see her frowning, biting her lips. The shadow cut across her face. I kept staring at her, trying to memorize her beauty. And she would glance at me and glance away, holding my hand so tightly she was hurting me. I reached out and took hold of her jaw, and pulled her towards me, and when I kissed her I could feel her tense, hard lips, and feel her teeth clenched tight beneath them. She let me kiss her on the mouth.

I was with her the whole night. When it was almost morning, we walked outside into a snowstorm, to watch the snow falling out of a clear sky, the stars like chips of ice, and Paradise small behind the mountains, circled by a ring of ice. The thaw was over; it was the first night of spring, and the snow was coming back. Some little girls were throwing snowballs. I heard some music from the rooftops, fragile and sweet, a song called “children playing,” and when they heard it, the girls stopped and looked at each other as if confused, their arms at their sides. And one held up her wrist and stared at it, and turned it, and turned each finger in a movement so delicate, so expressive of the music, that it was as if another instrument had joined in, playing in a kind of harmony.

 

Part Two:
Among Strangers

 

M
orning was making its first suggestions as the voice of the antinomial flickered and went out. Not a moment too soon, thought Doctor Thanakar, stretching his crippled leg out on the carpet, relaxing for the first time in many hours. The man’s story had seemed to require physical discomfort to understand, for whenever the doctor had relaxed his body he had lost the sense, so he had spent the night cross-legged, his back and shoulders stiffly hunched, his hands held out in front of him. It was as if sorting the narrative out from all the vagaries of music had involved tedious manual labor that could only be performed in that position.

For at times while speaking, the antinomial would play on different instruments—gentle, interminable melodies without repetition or variety. Sometimes he would chant the words, or clap his hands between them, or space them so irregularly that it was hard to make the jumps. Sometimes he would sing, or talk in a dreary, inaudible monotone, and the doctor would have to strain to understand. In the dark warehouse, it seemed to him the voice illuminated the story as badly as a flickering candle would a book. Intermittently, though, the man had played a flute, and that had been enough to compensate. For then it had been restful to listen, when music was the end and not the means.

Morning came in through narrow windows high up along the walls, and the doctor looked around. He and the prince had come there in the dark for entertainment, and at first, while the antinomial was singing, a girl had heated wine for them. She had burned a dirty fire, and he had seen her face and shadows in the empty space around them. Even when the prince was drunk, she had fed it for a while longer with handfuls of dung. But then she had gotten up and gone, the fire had burned out, and Thanakar had sat for hours, listening to stories in the black dark. Now, with the windows turning pink, and pink light playing on the walls, he was surprised to see the warehouse was full of people. Antinomials were wandering between the rows of mattresses, or sitting among piles of broken bottles, or lying wrapped in rags. He was surprised that they had made no noise, required no light. And he was anxious to see them there at all, though none paid any attention. None had yet approached the remote corner where he and the prince sat on a shred of carpet.

The girl, though, had returned sometime in the night, and was standing motionless quite close to him. She was dressed in a coarse shirt of unalleviated white, rolled up to the elbows and open in the front, so that he could see the hairless skin between her breasts. Her legs and feet were bare. It was a pose too frankly immodest to be stimulating. He had friends who came down nightly to this section of the docks, looking for antinomials, addicted to their powerful bodies and cheap fees. The doctor found it unimaginable, even if he had been able to imagine, in principle, paying for a woman’s body with a bucketful of entrails or a yard of cloth. To him the antinomial women were intimidating and unfeminine. This one was over six feet tall. And while he might admire her lithe bulk, her long legs, her unmarked face, her short, simple hair, she looked too alien to be beautiful. In the quiet air, she was humming a quiet, tuneless song. Perhaps, he thought, if he had been able, he could have heard in it the expression which her features lacked. What was it? Sadness without experience, perhaps.

The storyteller was asleep. And the prince slept too, cross-legged, his head bobbing up and down, his sweet, lunatic face uneasy even in slumber. Though that was no surprise, thought Doctor Thanakar. It was a sign of madness that he could sleep at all in that position. For the warehouse was worse than unfurnished—mattresses and couches strewn with animal products. He had not wanted to stay, but the prince had barely seemed to notice, and had sunk to the floor with a contempt for his own dignity that had touched the doctor’s heart. The girl had brought them wine, and Abu had taken the cup out of her hands with childlike unconcern—a dozen cups, and now he slept. The doctor envied him. Prince Abu’s drunkenness was the aspect of his condition that the doctor had most wished to share, yet each time the girl had offered him the cup he had refused. She had offered it with passable politeness, but each time his own fastidiousness had shamed him into thinking she was mocking him, that their host was mocking him by squatting happily upon his hams the whole gigantic night, leaving the leather couch unoccupied as if in deference to his guests. Eighty months, eight thousand days had passed since the antinomials had fled that savage life up in the snow, the one they now described with such nostalgia. They had left in the last phase of winter, and it was now midspring. A whole new generation had grown up. But still the antinomials had not learned the value of other people’s comfort. “My lords,” the man had sung, in such a gentle tone. Yet so much of his story had seemed calculated to offend them. It was true, his people had been brutally misused. But it was partly their own fault. A cousin of the doctor’s had given a party, and had hired a troupe of antinomial musicians. But when the food was served, they had come down from the platform to mix with the guests. They had put their hands into the food, and everything had to be thrown away.

The prince was talking in his sleep, guttural languages known only to himself. Thanakar looked at him with mingled irritation and concern. And when he turned away again, he found the girl was staring at him. In a sense, even that was peculiar and exciting, even though her expression was one of fierce indifference, for women rarely looked him in the face. Occasionally a servant would meet his eyes, a female of his household or one toiling on the road, and he would always turn his head, humiliated and embarrassed. But there was nothing envious or curious about this girl’s stare. It rested lightly on his face. As his host had said, the antinomials had no personalities, not in the way he knew. She was singing a small tune and then she stopped, and for the first time there was some content in her face, a smile, a reaction. She smiled. A cat had jumped onto the carpet from behind a pillar, a huge and golden cat. It was followed by a second, and then a third, of the same unusual size, the same splendid color. Golden sunlight was coming in through the windows; these cats were like sunlight made animate. They furnished space in the same way.

Smiling, the girl sat down and stretched out her legs. A cat walked round her once, twice, stepping over her legs with exaggerated care.

The cats paced and turned, rousing the sleepers. Prince Abu woke up shivering, for as always, his sleep had been a thin and insubstantial cover. As always, he looked around him with a kind of fear, and Thanakar could tell he had forgotten where he was. His dreams took him on such hard journeys, he woke up miles from where he went to sleep. The doctor would hear about it presently. In the meantime, he leaned forward to touch his cousin’s knee, to catch his eye, and it cheered him to see some reassurance come into that tired face.

Abu and the doctor were the same age. They had been born within two months of each other, at the end of winter. Now they had reached the burning middle of man’s life. Apart from that, and friendship, they shared little. Winter babies are alike, people said, gloomy and fat. It was absurd. True, he was morose, the prince was overweight, but there resemblance ended. Abu was prematurely old. Not withered or bent—his skin was young and smooth. But his eyes were old, his cheeks yellow and puffy with drink, and he was losing his hair. Yet in a way, also, his face had retained some of the best of childishness: his frank, pure expression, his childish delight in little things, the sudden sweetness in his eyes when they had focused on the cats moving back and forth, back and forth across the carpet. It was a look that made it easy to forget his defects, the small futility of his hands as they fluttered near his throat, pulling at the buttons of his uniform. He had worn an overcoat and had worn gloves over his golden tattoos. The doctor had insisted on that much of a disguise at least. But in the fever of drinking he had stripped them off, and now he sat smiling and nodding, his useless body gorgeous in white silk and gold embroidery, his palms marked with the symbol of the sun, his fingers decorated with lists of privileges. In the worst slum of the city, he feared nothing. Among people who had every reason to hate him, he was as trusting as a child.

Prince Abu laughed and clapped his hands. Their host, the antinomial musician, had risen to his feet, had stood up straight to his enormous height. Thanakar looked at him in good light for the first time. He had heavy lips and a hard jaw, a cruel face, but the unusual thing was the way it mixed black with white: black hair with a peculiar streak of white along the part; a livid scar running down from outside of one eye along his dark cheek; black eyes, with a milky circle at their center like a cataract.

Unlike the girl’s, his face was full of motion—nervous now, unsure, and perhaps a little angry. The doctor thought that such a struggling mixture did not suit his features. It was as if he were spoiling with thought a face intended to express feelings only—simple pleasure, simple pain. The man reached down for his guitar. It looked too fragile for his massive hands.

“It is enough,” he said. “More than enough. I didn’t want to fall asleep.”

“Please don’t apologize,” said Doctor Thanakar politely. “It was only a few minutes. We were quite comfortable.”

The antinomial looked puzzled. He ran his finger along a steel string, making a little noise. “You don’t understand,” he said. “No apology was intended. I mean that you have stayed here long enough. Too long.”

He would have claimed, thought Thanakar, that there was music in his words. But as usual, it was irritating and presumptuous. Thanakar tried to rise, but the prince had grabbed him by the sleeve. “No offense, Cousin,” he cried in his high, gentle voice. He was still drunk. He stammered something, closed his eyes and partly opened them in a way that was habitual with him, showing only the whites, his lashes trembling as if with the effort of speech. “No … No offense taken. He is right. It is late.”

Thanakar shook himself loose and rose painfully to his feet. But already he felt a little foolish. His anger had come quickly and was just as quickly overwhelmed. At his full height, the top of his head was on a level with the antinomial’s armpit. “My cousin is Prince Abu Starbridge,” he said sulkily. “You cannot understand the honor we do you just to come here.”

“No doubt,” replied the antinomial. “But this I do understand. I played my flute, and gave you drink, and told you the story closest to my heart, and it was not for my own happiness, my lords.”

The cats walked back and forth. “I’m not sure what you mean,” stammered the prince.

There was a silence. And then the girl spoke from where she sat, smiling and looking at the cats. “He is asking to be paid,” she said. “It’s a form of begging. Surely it’s a tune you know.”

Thanakar frowned. They had paid already, a price already agreed on, and they had been generous. They had brought down baskets of food, real vegetables and valuable fruits, and loaves of bread, and chocolate, enough for several men for several days. They had carried them with their own hands. He turned angrily away, for the price had been agreed, but from the floor Prince Abu blinked and stammered. “Oh,” he said, “of course. How stupid. I forgot. I brought him a gift. He told me what to bring. It slipped my mind, I’m sorry. Let me see …” He fumbled with his overcoat and drew from an inside pocket a bulky package wrapped in linen. “It’s not quite what you wanted.” He undid the strings to reveal a wooden case. Inside lay a pair of silver dueling pistols in a nest of velvet.

“I know you were expecting something more practical,” continued the prince apologetically. “But I don’t have much access to firearms.”

The antinomial made a little noise on his guitar. “Single shot?” he asked.

“Yes, I’m sorry.”

“Ammunition?”

“N-no.”

“Are they … valuable?”

“I suppose so. Fairly.”

The antinomial put down his guitar and knelt beside the prince. Reaching for the box, he ran his finger down the long, intricate barrel, the carved stock. “It doesn’t matter,” he said grudgingly. “Perhaps I can exchange them. But next time I want something I can use.”

“Abu, are you crazy?” exclaimed Doctor Thanakar. “You promised this man guns?”

“Yes, and what of it? What’s it to you? I don’t see why not. He could have bought a cannon for all the wine I’ve drunk. You are all extremely rude. I’ve got such a headache.”

Impatient, Thanakar turned back to the antinomial. “What do you mean by this?” he demanded. “What do you mean to do?” But the question was a useless one. The man raised his head and gave him a long stare, and then gave it sudden cruelty by squinting slightly, although the light hadn’t changed. The girl behind them was still humming, playing with the cats.