Arslan (9 page)

Which didn't mean I liked having my house transformed into something between a barracks and a menagerie. Just the smell disgusted me every time I came in the door: the smell of the monkey, of too many cats and too many dogs, of too many soldiers and too many muddy boots, of too much cooking and too much laundry, of liquor, of tobacco. And it was never really quiet. There were always people moving around, if not inside the house, then in the yard. All day there was tramping in and out, up and down the stairs, doors slamming, foreign voices. And there was always some uproar or other likely to erupt at any hour of the day or night. It would be a dog fight, or Betty Hanson in hysterics, or some indecipherable Turkistani crisis that had soldiers gallumphing down the walk, radios crackling, Arslan machinegunning out orders. I was used to spending my workdays amid noise and confusion—yes, and some smells, too; but I was used to peace and quiet and cleanliness in my own house.

Along about lettuce-planting time, which was February 11 by Kraft County tradition, I had the year's outline pretty well set. The details remained to be filled in. “I can't do all this from an office chair,” I told the Colonel. “I've got to get out and talk to people, and look at what we've got.”

He contemplated his cigarette, while he constructed his clauses. “You will give me two lists. Of people to whom you wish to talk. Of things at which you wish to look. Before noon tomorrow.”

I gave him his lists first thing in the morning. A little past ten he sent for me. Lieutenant Z and two soldiers were waiting in his office. “You will follow this route,” said Nizam, holding up a paper for me to take. He didn't bother to look at me; after all, he'd glanced up when I came in. “You will return between noon and curfew, eighteen February. Dismissed.”

Nizam, or his staff, had laid out a very sensible route. It not only took in all the people and places on my lists with just about the minimum of wasted miles and minutes, but it also made allowance for the type and condition of different roads. In fact, unless we were just peculiarly lucky, it made allowance for the visibility from different spots. I'd learned to respect the Turkistani organization, if nothing else. They were thorough, and they digested information fast. I came back with two notebooks full of data, and raring to get on with the job. Lieutenant Z watched me sidelong but wide-eyed. It was the first time he'd seen me with my hands on really solid material I knew I could work with.

We checked in with Nizam first, and from there I started home on foot. But Leland Kitchener's wagon came moseying out of the last alley before my house. Leland had a very handy way of just happening to run into you when he wanted to tell you something. We said hello, and I asked him how things had been while I was gone.

“Pretty quiet. The Commies got their stable about finished. Nothing new out of your houseguest, that I know of—except he's sent Miss Hanson somewhere out of county, and he's got a girl for Hunt Morgan.”

“A
what?
”

“A girl—you know what I mean; one of them little Russian girls. A girl for Hunt. Now ain't that something?”

Arslan wasn't in the living room, or the dining room, or the kitchen. The guard at the guestroom door put his rifle to my chest. I wasn't there to beg anybody's permission. I opened my mouth and yelled, “Arslan!”

Instantly his voice came back, what sounded like a single word in his ungodly language, and the guard moved aside. I opened the door and slammed it behind me.

He was sitting on the edge of the bed. There were dented pillows behind him, just starting to swell back into shape, and maps and papers on the bed and the floor. The rest of his bodyguards were distributed around the room, like statuary in an old-fashioned garden. He had a glass of beer in his hand (he had taken up beer lately) and he was smiling. “Welcome home, sir.”

I walked up to him. I wanted to be at close range, and maybe I wanted to see him looking up. “Leave Hunt Morgan alone,” I said.

He did look up, and looked down at his glass, and drank; and when he looked up again it was his smart-aleck look, a look that begged for a spanking. He gestured toward the chair. “Will you sit, sir?” he said silkily. “We can talk.”

I hit the glass sideways with the heel of my hand. He didn't drop it; beer and shattered glass sprayed like an explosion. And at the same time his left hand came up and closed on my wrist, and he wrenched me down onto the bed beside him. For a little bit I couldn't see much, let alone speak. I hadn't known till then that a simple twist of the wrist could be so effective. “Now, sir,” I heard him saying, “you should tell me what you mean.”

“You know damn well what I mean.”

“Unfortunately no.” I could see him all right by now. He looked interested. The guards had surged forward a step, their faces dangerous and confused. “What do you wish me to do?”

“I want you to stop systematically corrupting that boy.”

“I am wooing Hunt,” he said smugly. “First the rape, then the seduction.”

I shook my head. “What are you getting out of it—another kick?”

“Do you imagine that I require ‘another kick,’ sir?”

“Some people never lose their appetite for cheap thrills.”

He put on a little studied frown—giving courteous consideration to a silly idea. “Is every pleasure a cheap thrill? Thrills of any price do not attract me; but it is true that I enjoy pleasure. For what else do we live?”

“I thought you didn't conquer the world for fun.”

“Your memory is good, sir. Most men forget. Yes, this is also true. There are patterns to be completed without regard to pleasure.” He tilted the broken stub of glass in his right hand and let the last of the beer dribble onto my rug. “And yet you know, sir, that every pleasure has its own character, its own ... shape. For example, under certain circumstances, rape gives a very beautiful pleasure, a unique pleasure.”

I felt my throat swell. “What about that girl? What kind of pleasure do you get from turning a boy over to a whore?”

He looked at me sidelong and humorously for a moment. The glass dropped quietly, and he wiped his wet hand on the bedclothes. “Consider. When a woman is raped, then she is perhaps by so much more a woman—do you understand? But when a boy is raped, he is by so much less a man. And at Hunt's age, a boy questions already whether he can attain manhood. I wish Hunt to know that he is a man.”

“He's not a man. He's a child. You're not doing him any favor. You put him into hell, and now you're trying to make him like it.”

He smiled broadly at me. “Yes, sir. Yes, sir. This is true. And if he must live in hell, do you not also wish him to be happy there?”

“No, I don't.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Why not, sir?”

“Because in hell only the devils are happy.”

He threw back his head and laughed. “Good! And you believe that I am a devil. Good! Then you can well believe that I desire to make Hunt happy.”

“Leave him alone. You've played with him long enough.”

“Yes, I have played. I am not playing now.”

“Then let him go.”

“Not yet.”

Sometimes his eyes were as deep as hell itself. But I wasn't about to let him stare me down. “Why not?”

“Because, sir,” he answered slowly, “I have taken something from Hunt. I desire to give him something.”

“And what do you think you have to give him?”

“Strength. Strength. And if I cannot give him enough, then I shall do him the favor of killing him.”

“Why do you care?”

Very slowly his mouth pursed into a half smile, and the creases of amusement showed around his eyes again. “Why do you care what happens to your wife, or to the children of your school?”

I looked at him in disgust. “I don't think you could understand why.”

“Yes, sir, I understand.” He held up two fingers, and touched one of them. “You are connected with them. If they are hurt, you feel the pain.” He touched the second finger. “Also you are responsible for them. If they are hurt, you have failed in your duty.” He nodded assertively. “It is the same with Hunt and me. I am connected. I am responsible.”

He kept the boy with him most of the time, physically beside him; and the rest of the time he kept him locked in that back upstairs room, either alone or with the girl. Hunt never left the house. Getting ready to go out, Arslan himself would turn the key in Hunt's door and pocket it. But when he came in, he was as likely as not to toss the key, without a word, to one of his bodyguards, and the grinning soldier would tramp up the stairs and tramp down again with Hunt docilely at his heels. Or when Arslan was busy and had no time for Hunt, he would send him upstairs with a curt word, handing the key to the nearest guard. And he talked about giving the boy strength!

The girl couldn't have been more than sixteen. Even so, she was enough older than Hunt to matter; and in some ways, of course, she was ages older. She was slight and dark, pretty in a gypsy way, and her whole occupation, outside of whatever she did in bed, seemed to be singing songs and beautifying herself. She was a cheery little creature, I had to say that for her, but at absolute maximum she was worthless. Most of her time was spent in Hunt's room or monopolizing the bathroom—though she didn't dare start that till Arslan was definitely out of the house. In between, she would wander airily around the house, getting into everybody's way and poking into everybody's things, chattering saucily in what she seemed to think was English. She was absolutely the first child I'd ever met (and in every way except her profession she
was
a child) on whom I couldn't seem to make any impression—and there were times when I was red in the face from shouting at her. She was a little too old, and the situation a little too touchy, for me to turn her over my knee. Even so, I was mightily tempted.

She made herself very scarce whenever Arslan appeared. I saw him look at her sometimes, but I never heard him speak to her. For that matter, I didn't hear him say much to Hunt. “Read to me.” That was his usual greeting. He would pluck a book from the shelves, or his pocket, or most often from one of the piles that littered the floor and the furniture (Luella wasn't allowed to touch them), and flip it carelessly at Hunt. If the boy caught it clumsily or missed it altogether, the bodyguard would grin in derision. And Hunt, God help him, was still vulnerable enough to flush.

He would read—read until he was hoarse, until sometimes his voice cracked and broke, and Arslan would stop him impatiently, as he might have switched off a staticky radio. He read while Arslan ate, while Arslan was being shaved, while Arslan skimmed through reports and pored over maps. He read to him in the bathroom, in Arslan's bedroom and his own—or at least they carried a good many books in and out. He read, read; and it was touching to see him lose himself in his reading. Since that first night, he had hardly spoken voluntarily. Every move he made, every look of his dark eyes, showed how badly he was being hurt. But when he read aloud, you could literally see and hear him sink into the words, shutting out everything else. He had always read well by school standards, two or three grade levels ahead of himself all the way; but now he was beginning to read really well, not just “putting in the expression,” but living the words.

So I was concerned about
what
he read. It was certainly a strange mixture. They always had about half a dozen different books in process, scattered around the house. Arslan seemed to pick up whichever one was handiest. Most of them came out of my bookcases, and to tell the truth I was surprised to be reminded of what all I had on hand. They read Shakespeare, and Shaw, and Oscar Wilde, and an old manual of beekeeping, and
Stories of the Great Operas
, and the introductions to Luella's cookbooks, and
Paradise Lost
, and (so help me God) Fowler's
Dictionary of English Usage
from cover to cover, and books on vegetable gardening and evolution and hunting rifles, and
Moby Dick
, and Nietzsche, and the Bible. Those were all from my shelves, and so were the old histories: Prescott's
Conquest of Mexico
, and Cook's
Voyages
, and a few volumes left from a nineteen-hundred set of histories of the principal nations of the world. The books that Arslan produced from somewhere were mostly histories, too, but modern ones, and technical works on electronics, medicine, biology.

And it was this hodgepodge that Hunt read day by day, sitting a little hunched with the book on his knees, never looking up except for occasional furtive glances at Arslan, and all the life of his young body and soul concentrated in his voice.

Is this the Region, this the Soil, the Clime,

Said then the lost Arch-Angel, this the seat

That we must change for Heav'n, this mournful gloom

For that celestial light? Be it so, since he

Who now is Sovran can dispose and bid

What shall be right.

And as Hunt read, Arslan listened. Sometimes his eyes would take on a tranced expression, his eyelids would droop, and he would look, for the time being, genuinely Oriental.

For we cannot call it reasoning to make pain a

presumption of death, while, in fact, it is rather a

sign of life. For though it be a question whether that

which suffers can continue to live for ever, yet it is

certain that everything which suffers pain does live,

and that pain can exist only in a living subject.

Meanwhile, if it was one of his irregular mealtimes, he would be chewing slowly, seeming to consider and savor every mouthful. He liked to eat like a Roman emperor, reclining on the living-room couch, with his meal on the coffee table. Chairs certainly weren't invented for Arslan. If he wasn't standing up, or riding something, he was sure to be stretched out somewhere.

His movement was prompt and his hand heavy;

the staff of Ivan IV. seems to have passed into his grasp.

We have seen him strike with his cane the greatest

lords, Prince Menchikof among the number. He bent

to his will men, things, nature, and time; he realized