Boswell (37 page)

Mud shrugged and gave me his mysterious smile.

Dr. Mud is the only genuinely sinister man I have ever met. I’m always looking for the fez which ought to be on his head, the Palm Beach yellow-white suit on his back. I had coffee with him in his tent one night and automatically I found myself switching our paper cups. As far as I can make out he represents “certain foreign interests.”

He shaded his eyes (it is dark in the tent, but whenever he looks at you Dr. Mud shades his eyes) and told me in his amused, Cauco-Asiatic voice, using the upper register tones this time, that it would be better not to anger Lano.

“The shell of the young turtle is hard,” he said, “but exceeding brittle.” (Mud uses a lot of sinister Eastern sayings. I think he makes them up. I have taken to answering him in kind and have gotten pretty good at it.)

“The east wind never blows without first consulting the west wind,” I said.

“Ah,” said Mud, “every ocean climbs mountains to the shore.”

“Your ad,” I said.

When Mud left the tent I decided I’d better go to Lano.

I went out. The east wind tells the west wind when to blow, I thought, polishing as I passed Dr. Mud. He was by the Lister bag. It made me a little nervous to see him near our drinking water. “Ah, Mud,” I said, “the thirsty man drinks deepest.”

“A hungry man is no judge of food,” he said back, quick as a shot.

Sinister bastard, I thought.

Outside Lano’s compound one of his supernumerary Pakistanis stood guard. He carried no rifle but in each hand he held a grenade from which the pin had already been pulled. His famine-thin thumbs strained against the
safety device to depress it.

“I’m invited,” I said.

He shook his head and looked troubled.

“I’m American. I go inside, yes? The Generalissimo Lano awaits.”

He didn’t understand.

“A hungry man is no judge of food. North wind blows south wind,” I told him Easternly.

He looked helplessly at the grenades in his hands. He was, I knew, ordered to throw them at anyone who tried to get past the gate.

I whistled “Yankee Doodle” and he smiled suddenly in recognition. “Foh Jul,” he said happily, “Foh Jul.” He motioned me inside.

“Jesus Christ,” I said, “don’t wave.”

I had never been inside before (none of us had) and did not see immediately where I was supposed to go. From outside Lano’s electrified fence the compound looks pretty much like the one I am in myself, but once inside I noticed some subtle differences. For one thing, there were flowers. Not the exotic man-eaters that grew in such abundance elsewhere in this steamy jungle, but gentle, familiar ones, homey ones. They grew along both sides of a tree-lined path that wound up the mountain. I climbed the path for about a quarter of a mile and then heard voices. I knew I must be going in the right direction and walked faster. Suddenly the path leveled off and I came into a clearing. About fifteen yards away were the thirty- three other Americans in Lano’s army.

Lano, on a high platform exactly like the one at the drill field where the men did their calisthenics each morning, saw me and waved.

“What’s happening?” I asked a thin soldier in a shabby Class A American uniform.

“We’re celebrating the Fourth,” he answered glumly. “Only he does all the drinking.”

“Attention,” Lano called out through a megaphone and raised a canteen cup. “Attention there! I propose a very important, very special sentimental toasts to the memory of the great General Washington. Proclaim liberty throughout the land.” He leaned forward and drank. “Happy Fourth July to all,” he said, smiling. He put down the cup and placed his hands on the railing. “Celebration over. Back to your stations at once,” he shouted abruptly. “And don’t forget,” he said, pointing to a tent. just below and to the side of the platform, “you saw yourselves how your General Lano shares with you disfortune and hardship, as he will share with you the prizes of the victory. Tell the others. Dismissed!” The soldiers turned and began to walk off uncertainly. “Go back the way you came,” Lano roared from the platform. “Follow the flowers down.”

I was walking beside Rohnspeece when I heard my name shouted in Lano’s deep voice through the megaphone. “Boswells,” he called again. I looked back at him over my shoulder. “I dismissed only the soldiers. My aides cannot yet go,” he said. Rohnspeece looked at me admiringly as I walked back toward the platform.

Lano rested his arms along the railing and leaned down toward me, smiling. He seemed very pleased. Raising his megaphone again he spoke into it in a normal voice. “What’s the matter,” he said, “don’t you want to be my aide no more?”

“I want to go back.”

“Only deep wounded can be moved. My planes bring in equipment, take out deep wounded heroes.” He laughed. “Relax,” he said, “it’s not a bad war. I fight for freedom. You free man yourself, you understand good cause.” He climbed down from the platform. “Hey, Boswells, when I win, you fix me up with big-shot pals?”

“Lano, I told you. I only said that to get you to take me in. I don’t know any big shots.”

“Sure you do. You know me. I make world’s first international revolution. Everybody come.” He slapped me across the shoulders. “Hey,” he said, “I show you my operation here.”

“I’ve seen it,” I said.

“No, no, not that. Something special. My
operation.
Big military secret. Come on. Special day, Fourth July. Sentimental occasion for Lano. Live Wilmington, Delaware, three year. Seen Du Pont firework display. Beautiful, beautiful. See that, think, America the beautiful. Some day Lano make international revolution, Du Pont do the firework.”

With his arm across my shoulders he led me off across the field and into the woods. In a few minutes we struck another path and started to climb again. “You don’t know what Lano got back here,” he whispered. “Only Dr. Mud see this. Now you. Special. Very sentimental.”

I had come a long way in my life. There had been a time when I had responded to the bizarre without understanding it, feeling only the need to be curious, to remember it, as though anything truly outlandish were a kind of signpost, an indication of a sort of clumsy, cloudy truth. I can remember as a kid in school during the war being visited by a private named Pressman. He came to us several times. Needing a platform, he used our classroom and told us endlessly of his pathetic life in the army, apologizing, laughing at the jokes the other soldiers played on him, losing the thread of his story in his own roared laughter, shouting above it like some comedian who has lost control of his audience, “But wait a minute, wait a minute,” taking it or some new shame up again, recounting humiliation like a braggart in reverse, but mixing it all up somehow with a kind of civics and endorsing everything, everything—the Pledge of Allegiance, our penny milk program, the Second Front, casualty lists— insisting in a crazy, personal grammar on the fitness of everything that happened in the world. Pressman was insane. His desperation, his clumsy, Jewish being, his self- hatred had brought him finally into a mad agreement with everything that forced him down. Forever short- sheeted, a man with frogs in his beds, he came to accept all insults, to convert them into proofs of justice and the wisdom of power.

I used to stare fondly at the Pressmans of the world, primitives holding their insanity as a sign from God. Now I know better. Pressman’s nuttiness was just the self trying to get out. Death gives us nerve. I am calmer now; I see pain everywhere.

“Not far now,” Lano said. “What a surprise for you. There. Look!”

I looked in the direction Lano was pointing and saw—a ranch house. A ranch house! There, high on a mountain, hidden by the pines, in still unmapped Los Farronentes, Q. R., two miles from the tents, the quiescent bivouac of the world’s first international revolution, a ranch house. Landscaped with a patio, a barbecue pit, picture windows.
A carport, for Christ’s sake!
I could not have been more surprised if he’d shown me a full-scale replica of the Taj Mahal and informed me that he used it as an outhouse. What simple things were at the core of our revolutions, finally! What little content to our discontent! And how unmysterious the world mysteriously was! Dr. Mud sinister? Don’t make me laugh.

“Lano,” I said, “I want to get out of here. Tomorrow. Tonight. Now. The next plane, Lano, the next plane. Lano, do you hear me? The next plane.”

“How about that?” he asked, excited. “Beautiful. Like in Wilmington, Delaware. I had it built to specification. Everything to specification. Four bedroom. Sunken living room, three bathroom, full basement. Half bath downstair off pine-paneled rumpus room.”

“The next plane, Lano. Do you hear me?”

“Very special. Sentimental. Beautiful. In capital, when I win war, I make another. Better than this one even. Come on, I show you.”

He started to run toward his house and I ran after him. I caught him by the fake gas lamp.

“Wait a minute,” I yelled, holding him. “I want to get out. Lano, you’re crazy. I want to go back to the real Wilmington, Delaware, and I want to go back now.”

He looked confused for a moment and then began to struggle to free himself. I shoved him down on the lawn. “Give me an answer, Lano. I’m warning you.”

“Only the deep wounded,” he said.

“Goddamn it,” I shouted, “there
are
no deep wounded. And even if there were, do you think I’d let myself get shot?”

“There will
be
deep wounded, don’t worry about that,” he answered as though that were the point.

“Stop it, Lano. I’m warning you. If you don’t get me out of here I’ll break your face. I’ll tear you up, Lano, I promise.”

“Counterrevolution,” he screamed suddenly.

“Give the orders, Lano. Give the orders.”

“Counterrevolution!”

“What are you talking about? Goddamn it, don’t you hear me?”

“Counterrevolution! Go ahead. Be ridiculous. Hit me, kill me. Counterrevolution! Revolution in infancy. At delicate stage. Anyone who punches Lano in face be its new leader. You want that?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Seven hundred forty-one men. From all over world. Hundreds of thousands of dollars equipment. You want that? You want that responsibility? You hurt me you make successful counterrevolution. You the
new
leader. Move into the ranch house. You want that? You ready for that? You have to want a thing like that. Where you stand on certain issues? You got five-year plan? You got even lousy three-year plan? No—you don’t even have fucking
ten-minute
plan! What you think of agrarian reform? Compulsory education? Shit, what you think of
freedom?”

“You’re crazy.”

“Yeah, yeah. Go on, you hot to make revolution, hit me. You be new leader. No, you don’t want? Then you go when I say. Go on, get off my lawn. Doesn’t mean a damn no more if you tell troops what I got here. In two days we attack!”

July 8, 1958. Los Farronentes, Q.
R.

Lano started moving the men out at two in the morning. He had trucks for only half of them; the rest went on foot. Corbonzelos is a nineteen-mile march.

Rohnspeece couldn’t understand why I was staying behind. The Eskimo was drunk and Rohnspeece got to drive his truck. He was very pleased.

Before Lano gave the command to move out he had the men gather in the training compound in order to address them. I had dissociated myself and remained in the tent. Some men came to move it. They said it was equipment earmarked for the trucks and I told them, fuck that, it was staying put, I was in essence a prisoner of war and entitled to be housed as such. I cited a Geneva convention which I made up on the spot and got a young Persian lieutenant to agree with me. They let me alone finally.

A quarter of a mile away I could hear Lano haranguing the men in several broken languages. Then, after the men did the Chant of the Revolution and the War Scream, they re-formed into their units and went away.

At about three that afternoon I heard the abrupt dull pops of distant explosions. I walked higher up the mountain, into Lano’s abandoned compound, and followed the flowers to the scene of the celebration and crossed the field and went into the woods and made my way up to the ranch house. I broke in. Through the big picture windows I could see flames, smoke rising.

It was crazy. Lano’s argument had been enough to destroy whatever ideas I had of doing something about my situation. He was right: to act against Lano was to make a counterrevolution, to drag others into it behind me. A strong man travels very light. Unless I murdered him—and I am no murderer—and hid his body, I couldn’t get away.

At seven Lano came racing back in a jeep. Dr. Mud was with him. He pulled the jeep into the carport and they got out. When he saw me in his house he didn’t even seem surprised.

“Many deep wounded,” he said. “Terrible.”

“The flame that cools one burns another,” Dr. Mud said.

“Heavy resistance. Terrible. It was better over the radio,” Lano said.

“So,” I said, “you lost. The revolution’s over. Now I can go.”

“We
won,
Boswells,” Lano said. “My grief special, sentimental grief of all generals. On the other hand, victory glorious, brilliant! I blow up whole town entire!”

That night I stole Lano’s jeep.

Down the mountain, on the plain, I saw the fires. Corbonzelos was burning, and I turned the jeep in that direction.

There was death. There was turnover.

People were burning. Lano’s soldiers moved leadenly among the corpses and survivors. It was awful.

It was not entirely unpleasant.

“Okay,” I shouted when I brought the jeep back. “Mud can’t help you. He’s unconscious. Hey, Dr. Mud,” I screamed toward his collapsed, Boswell-clobbered body, “heal thyself.”

“Get back to your tent. You’re a prisoner of the revolution,” Lano said.

“Balls,” I said. “When does a plane go out? Come on, come on. I’ll stick dynamite up you, blow up whole ass entire. Get on your radio. Give orders. Get a plane.”

“Take the jeep.”

“I’d get pretty far in your jeep, wouldn’t I? Come on, come on.”

“Counterrevolution.”

“Lano, don’t start with me, Lano.”