GOOD AMERICANS GO TO PARIS WHEN THEY DIE (43 page)

One night, Helen doesn’t return.

Seymour, like Louis and Max, capitulates to
sleep until detonations, never so violent, pull him out of the
recurrent nightmare. He waits, fearfully impatient, for
disintegrating floors above to crush him into peace. It doesn’t
happen and he has to confront the dream with Marie-Claude
again.

This time, though, she’s in her safely
nubile 1951 version and visiting him in his second life. She kneels
by his cot in the dark and urges him to convince Margaret to dance
for the Prefect and so be able to join her outside. “I will, I
will,” he says and reaches out for her.

But in the dream it’s no longer
Marie-Claude kneeling by the cot in the dark but Gentille and he
pulls his hand back. She whispers that she’s escaped (although
escape, like prayer, is a sin), that a big big crack had opened in
the hospital prison wall and she’d escaped before they could stick
the needle in her head and steal the sea from her again, that she
still has the key, the key to Room 147 and the tunnel to escape
from the Prefecture for good, I’ll be waiting for you there,
Monsieur
Saymore, I have to leave now,
the Black Men are looking for me, goodbye
Monsieur
Saymore and sleep well but not too long because
they’ll end up finding me.

Then Marie-Claude returns in the dark next
to Seymour’s cot (naked he somehow knows) and says: “Room 147, Room
147, Room 147.” Seymour reaches out for her again and then wakes
up. Hoping that awakening may be part of the dream, he goes on
groping in the empty darkness. Bitter, he finally gets up.

Something small and hard falls to the floor.
He switches on the light and sees a key lying by the cot.

At that moment, Helen Ricchi finds herself in
one of the ruined corridors leading to the Hub. So far she hasn’t
encountered a single Black Man. The concussions begin again. She
can feel the floor tremble. She trembles too and has to squat
against the cracked wall until the trembling stops.

When she reaches the Hub, the quakes start
up again. She encounters hundreds of scared-looking functionaries
milling about in the great circular corridor. They shrink back from
her as she goes past. Between concussions, she overhears scraps of
their muttered fearful remarks and fitting them together
understands that chaos has invaded the offices as never before.
Files are crumbling and typewriters rusting before their very eyes.
Ceilings are bulging dangerously. What will become of us?

The Prefect’s neo-classical office is in
semi-ruin. Three of the marble nudes that once upheld the Doric
roof of the peristyle have lost their essential arms and the roof
sags badly. The giant bronze eagle atop it, insignia of power, is
askew and dove-white with plaster dust. One of its wings is
bent.

Ahead, she recognizes Sub-Prefect Marchini,
imperial in his bedraggled uniform. As he strides past them, the
functionaries beg him to intervene, to do something. His metallic
voice rings out above the uproar of chaos: “The situation lies
beyond my area of competence. I am not the Prefect. I am
powerless.”

A voice
murmurs: “
Vive Préfet Marchini
!”

Another voice
murmers: “
Vive Préfet Marchini
!”

Other voices, more frightened than
scandalized, hush them up.

The Sub-Prefect, expressionless, strides
on.

Helen starts trotting to catch up with him
and ask about Margaret. He turns into the Reception Room and once
again the lights go out.

In the total darkness, groping slowly
forward, arms outstretched, she hears frightened voices.

“Ruin is reaching the upper floors now.”

“He’s walking the inner corridors
again.”

“Hasn’t got his mind focused on here but on
back then.”

“He has a long memory supply with the woman
as long as she lasts.”

“What’s to become of us?”

“Pray to have him removed.”

“Shh. You know direct prayer is forbidden.
All prayers are routed through him.”

The lights return. Standing before the shut
door of the Reception Room, Helen hears a sharp tonal hubbub. It
sounds like a mob of incensed Chinese within. She pulls the door
open.

Yes, exactly that: a mob of incensed
Chinese, at least thirty of them, a mob of Chinese in a bad
scramble of periods, a mob of anachronisms. Some can only be
pre-Ming Dynasty Imperial Civil Servants, inscrutable pigtailed
mandarins in long silk gowns with great floppy sleeves, clasped
hands concealed in them, jade pendants at their waist. There are
also bare-chested skin-and-bone coolies with rice-straw paddy hats.
Others wear Mao unisex uniforms, certainly blue in the shade of
gray that represents blue in the Prefecture, and there, there
(Helen’s eyes widen in astonishment), isn’t that the Helmsman,
Chairman Mao himself, bearing aloft in his right hand the
celebrated book, doubtless red, that shade of gray? Other Chinamen
are dressed in Hong Kong western business suits and have well-fed
moon-faces and they look scared: for isn’t the man who looks like
Mao and probably is Mao haranguing the coolies against them?

Sadie is enraged. “No such gigantic blunder
of processing has ever been committed, ever, ever.” The Sub-Prefect
stands there close to the Empire table with the three telephones,
gazing at the milling throng of Asians with a tight little
smile.

Sadie empties her lungs into a mute
whistle. Helen shrinks aside as a dozen Black Men materialize and
march into the Reception room. Using their clubs like cattle prods
they jab the Chinese out into the circular corridor. Turnkey takes
the largest of the keys on his ring and unlocks a steel door marked
48596. The Exiters prod and club the screaming Asians into the
room. The Exiters and Turnkey follow. The door clangs shut on them.
The vehement
ching-chang-choong
goes on for a minute and then is suddenly cut
off.

Profound silence ensues. A few seconds later, the
Black Men and Turnkey emerge. Turnkey locks the door behind him,
sinks to a knee and on his skinny calf scribbles a note in his worn
notebook.

The lights blink twice and go out. Helen
collides with someone in the dark and feels an icy burning hand on
her neck.

She loses everything, where she is and who
she is, loses everything except intense pain.

Light now.

Shabby corridor.

Stone-faced man in gray smock opposite. Hand
outstretched. Ecstatic expression. Eyes blank like a statue’s. My
head, my head.

Who is he? Where am I?
Who am I?

In the face opposite, real eyes replace
the statue-white eyes. Terror replaces the ecstatic expression. He
runs away from her.
She
looks about in bewilderment.

Vast arena. Dark in the middle. Illuminated
mile-long circular corridor with doors and corridor openings,
hundreds of both. Ornate ruined Graeco-Roman peristyle.

A scarecrow creature stumbles out of it. Her
skimpy knit dress exposes blood-streaked thighs no thicker than
normal arms, not hers, her abnormal arms are like broomsticks and
raised in defense before her wasted terrified face. A profound
décolleté exposes jutting collarbones and breasts like wrinkled
deflated balloons.

A great dusty white wind sweeps down the
corridor. The creature whirls like a dead leaf and collapses on the
broken arms of a marble statue.

What is this place? Who is she? Help her
up.

But the scarecrow gasps “Don’t touch me, O
please, lady, please, don’t touch me again!” and now a gray-smocked
frozen-faced mob runs toward them, crying in French: “Exit her!
Exit her!”

Black-uniformed goggle-eyed men like giant
insects charge the mob. One of them yanks the scarecrow to its
feet. Propels it back through the open door of the ruined
peristyle. The mob surges back. Quick, out of harm’s way. Here: an
open door. Inside, quick, shut the door. My head.

Huge room with churchlike pillars. Chinese
caps and jade pendants on the floor. Over there two men, one old
with long white hair in a big-sleeved black gown, the other small
and imperious in a tattered white uniform, standing before a big
Empire table with three telephones, one of them black and gigantic
under a glass bell. My head, my head. The old man in black says (in
French): “Try again. Surely her state bears clear witness to his
act.” The man in tattered white says: “For the nineteenth time,
then.” He grits his teeth, heaves the glass bell up and sets it
down on the table. With both hands he lifts the telephone, sinks to
his knees and murmurs. Murmurs. Murmurs. “Still no reply,” he says
finally.

The old man in black says: “With the actress
in Batch C2645, intervention was immediate, almost upon first
contact.”

The man in tattered white says: “All things
are running down. He too.”

The old man in black says: “Try again.”

My head, my head, my head.

She (who is she?) slumps against the wall
and loses the little she possesses.

When she awakens the pain is still there but
the old man in black and the small man in tattered white are gone.
The concussions and the uproar in the corridor have stopped.

In the silence, knowledge starts seeping
back.

Slowly she realizes where she is and who she
is.

Finally she realizes who the mumbling
scarecrow is, who it once had been.

Chapter 44

San Juan Hill

The three men are seated on the edge of
their cots. By now the key to Room 147 has gone the round of fists.
First the hand it was intended for clenched it stubbornly. Finally
Max twisted Seymour’s arm, pried the key free and started running
down the corridor in the vague direction of the distant lock it
fitted. Louis caught up with him. Now it’s in the impregnable keep
of Louis’ big fist. Max begs Louis for it. Louis says over and over
that they have to wait for Margaret and Helen before deciding
anything. Max goes on begging.

A painful intake of breath makes him break
off.

An unknown woman wearing a ghastly plaster
mask sways in the doorway. The mask stares at them for long
seconds. Then the bearer of the mask disappears.

When she returns with the plaster dust
washed off her face, the ghastliness is still there but they
recognize her now (barely) and wonder if those billions of
hourglass grains of sand haven’t coalesced and clobbered her into
early old age. Her voice too is old and cracked as she tries to
tell them what she’d seen, or rather, what the “not-she” had seen
during the time the state had lasted, that state she’d briefly
shared with the broomstick scarecrow she recognized later as the
husk of Margaret, tottering out of the Prefect’s office, recognized
it only later, once that mindlessly registering “not-she” reverted
to Helen.

They don’t understand her confused story.
They know that something terrible has happened to her in body and
mind (they can see and hear that) and apparently to Margaret as
well. But they can’t see or hear Margaret. How can they possibly
imagine the once-Margaret Helen encountered? Words, even coherent
words, aren’t equal to the task.

Helen weeps and then shouts at their
stupidly inadequate faces. In all those decades together they’ve
never seen her weep or heard her shout. She points a trembling
finger at Max and accuses him of having met Margaret in the
corridors and told her to dance for the Prefect, the way they’d
voted it. “You’re a murderer.”

Max protests violently.

Her trembling finger points at Seymour. She
repeats the accusation. “You’re a murderer too.”

Seymour protests violently.

Her trembling finger points at Louis and she
makes the same accusation.

At the word “murderer” Louis silently stares
down at the floor as he’d done when they’d argued about telling
Margaret to dance and finally he’d said that he’d go along with the
majority vote.

Seymour and Max go on protesting but they
feel a certain relief at the wildness of her accusations. It allows
them to relativize her description of Margaret. Margaret’s alive so
how can they be murderers? Anyway, how can dancing or more than
dancing kill someone?

But she goes on yelling at them: a
functionary had touched her just a second and she’d lost everything
at that contact, been drained dry of memory for hours. How long had
Margaret been in contact with the Prefect and what sort of contact?
How long would it take for Margaret to recover, unless she was
already beyond recovery? Don’t they understand what contact means
here? It drains your mind and then it drains your body, drains you
to a husk.

At that, and perhaps too late, they
understand what they should have grasped from the moment of their
materialization among these zombies with their prophylactic rubber
gloves (unless their delay in comprehension was programmed like
everything else here): the supreme temptation (and transgression)
of contact with the Administratively Suspended to drain off the raw
material of memory and reconstruct a past existence at the expense
of the contacted, robbed of the substance of mind and body. They
understand the treachery of Advocate’s assurance of collective
reward to make them manipulate Margaret into prostitution with the
Prefect (“harmless, perfectly harmless!”).

Why hadn’t Seymour understood what he does
now and recounts: his long-ago contact with Gentille’s bare arm and
his instant blankness and her terrified ecstasy at winning back
forbidden bits of a past sea? Max remembers and tells about going
blank, he too, upon contact with Dummy.

Yes, Helen was right; contact in their case
had been brief and memory had ebbed back. But with Margaret, the
contact would be (already was, and would be again and again)
prolonged, total, and deep.