The Demi-Monde: Summer (30 page)

‘But the UnFunnies are coming.’

‘And we will fight them, but we will fight them as free
Femmes, not as docile women eager to sublimate themselves and their identities to beasts such as you.’

A baffled Wysochi led the WFA fighters east from the Anichkov Bridge along the bank of the Volga. He had no alternative, Trung Nhi – the maniac – had threatened to have her fighters fire on the WFA fighters unless they withdrew and that would have just made a difficult situation impossible. Having been told that Trixie had her Command Post on the Hubside of the bridge, he’d decided to march his ragtag army there to get orders, which he hoped would involve skedaddling out of the Coven while they still had a chance to skedaddle. He’d had enough of these lunatic dorks to last a lifetime.

When he finally got to Trixie’s command bunker, his welcome wasn’t quite what he’d been anticipating. ‘Wysochi? What the fuck are you doing here? I gave you an order to defend the bridge.’

As he and his fighters had just spent the last thirty minutes fighting their way through the alleys and backstreets of a burning Rangoon to get to the bunker, Wysochi wasn’t in the mood to be given a dressing-down.

‘And fuck you too … GeneralFemme, ma’am. For your information, that LessBien nutcase Trung Nhi told me and my fighters that we weren’t wanted.’

‘I put you in command, not her!’

‘That order might have been given, but it certainly wasn’t obeyed. If I had insisted then the chances are that those minddead Amazons would have started firing on my fighters and, much as I’d have loved to have shot the mad bitch, it didn’t seem a particularly productive way to go about saving the Coven.’

Scarlet with fury, Trixie turned on CommanderNoN Jiao Yu. ‘You knew this would happen, didn’t you?’

The fearful NoN took a step back. Wysochi didn’t blame him; Trixie in a rage was an intimidating sight. As he saw it, the NoN would be bloody lucky if he got out of the bunker without being shot. Fuck it,
he’d
be lucky to get out of the bunker without being shot.

‘I did not
know
, GeneralFemme. I suspected, but I did not know. You must realise that Trung Nhi is a Suffer-O-Gette, one of the most radical of all HerEticals. She hates nonFemmes: it is impossible for her ever to accept orders from one of them.’

For several long moments Trixie stood stock-still, only the tapping of her right foot on the concrete floor signalling her agitation. Finally she spoke and, thankfully, it seemed she understood what the NoN had said. ‘Has there been any word from ColonelFemme Trung Nhi?’

‘The last message from her was received thirty minutes ago.’

‘You have observers …’

‘They report that armoured steamers have successfully crossed the Anichkov Bridge and that the Second Army is retreating back into Rangoon.’

‘And the First Army?’

‘ColonelFemme Trung Trac reported that she believed herself to be in danger of being encircled by ForthRight forces to the east and to the west and would be retreating to a defensive line on the border of the Industrial Sector.’

Trixie leant over the large map of the Coven that was spread across the table in the centre of the redoubt. ‘If the UnFunnies have taken the bridge, then they have driven a wedge between what’s left of the First and the Second Armies. All we can do now is fall back and provide a rearguard to allow as many fighters as possible to escape. We’ll form a defensive line around Rangoon’s Blood Bank.’

Jiao Yu was provoked into protesting. ‘Surely we must counter-attack? We must try to retake the bridge.’

‘One of the Confusionist generals I remember reading about,
a chap called Sun Tzu, always taught that in war you should reinforce success and starve failure. And that, CommanderNoN Jiao Yu, is just what we’re going to do. There’s no way we can recapture the bridge and, now the ForthRight has brought their heavy vehicles across, Rangoon is toast.’ She gave the NoN a wry smile. ‘I deem my responsibility to Empress Wu fulfilled. I have done my best to command her army in defence of the Coven but I have been betrayed by my officers. Therefore I feel free to pursue the war against the ForthRight in any way I see fit.’

As hotels went, the Hotel Copasetic was right down there with the worst of them. Vanka, in his time wandering around the Demi-Monde, had stayed in some real fleapits but never, ever, anything to compare with the Copasetic. The room he was occupying was despicably shabby, the food the restaurant served poisonous and the staff incorrigibly rude and inefficient. The only decent conversation he’d had since he’d come to the JAD had been with the tailor Josephine Baker had sent to equip him with a suitably JADdy wardrobe.

Boredom had provoked him to read everything there was to read in the hotel, to the extent that he was now fully conversant with every one of the ingredients of Abercrombie’s Amazing Macassar Oil and could recite – word-perfectly – Mrs Beeton’s flatulence-inducing recipe for
brioche pain perdu
. Indeed, his desperation for mental stimulation had been such that he had even tried to engage the receptionist in conversation, an exercise he abandoned when he had realised his efforts were being misconstrued and the woman had begun winking at him with real purpose.

Having been holed up in the place for forty days and forty nights, Vanka knew he was on the brink of going stir crazy but the note he had received from Josephine Baker delivered courtesy of the tailor had been very firm on the matter: under no circumstances was he to leave the hotel until he received word from the Code Noir that the coast was clear. So he’d sat in his room and waited … and waited … and waited. He’d had nothing to do except eat and sleep … although he had tried to do as little of the latter as was humanly possible. Vanka hated sleeping. When he slept he was visited by the Dream, and though when he woke he couldn’t for the life of him remember what it was about, he was left so wrung out and upset that he knew it hadn’t been a pleasant experience. Every night he was visited by the Dream and every morning he woke tired, confused and very troubled.

The upshot was that Vanka came down to breakfast that morning exhausted. Not that the prospect of breakfast did anything to raise his spirits: as the broken-down old waiter ladled a great mound of very obnoxious-looking
matzo brei
onto his plate, Vanka found himself fantasising about bacon and sausages. He pushed the plate to one side and contented himself with munching absent-mindedly on a stale bagel, wondering as he chewed when –
if
– he’d ever get out of the JAD. He wished Fate would come to his rescue.

It did.

‘Excuse me, younk man.’

Vanka looked up to see an old man – seventy years old, if he was a day – standing at the side of his table, with a hand outstretched in his direction. He was a tall man, dressed in a well-worn black suit with a kippah atop his bald head, and this, together with his thick accent, proclaimed him to be a nuJu. ‘
Gut morgen
. I am Rabbi Schmuel Gelbfisz,’ the man announced, ‘unt I am delighted to meet mit you, Mr …’

‘Jim Tyler.’ Vanka took the proffered hand and shook it carefully. It was like grasping a sheath of brittle twigs. ‘How can I help you, Rabbi Gelbfisz?’

The man waved the bony hand. ‘You zee, Mr Jim Tyler, zhat ve are zhe only two guests occupying zhe whole of zhis enormous unt somewhat dilapidated dining room.’

Vanka nodded, and then raised a ‘so what?’ eyebrow.

‘Vell … it zeems to me zhat it is zhe height of absurdity zhat I should zit over zhere’ – again the hand was waved, though this time in the direction of the empty tables lining the far wall of the dining room – ‘unt zhat you should zit over here.
Feh
! Is it not ridiculous zhat ve should continue to ignore one anozzer? Fate has placed us in each ozzher’s company unt I am loath to spurn zhe overtures of such a vilful deity. Perhaps, zherefore, you vould permit me to join you?’

‘Well, actually—’ Vanka began, but before he could formulate a polite demurral, the man was making himself comfortable in the chair across the table from his.

‘Gut. I am alvays delighted to make new acquaintances, especially zhose, like you, who are newcomers to zhe JAD.’ The man gave a beaming smile: old he might be, but he was an arresting individual who must, Vanka decided, have been a dog for the ladies when he was young.

Vanka bowed to the inevitable and prompted the conversation forward. ‘You say I’m a newcomer to the JAD, Rabbi Gelbfisz: am I that easy to spot?’

‘Jah, of course. You sport zhe typical expression of a first-time visitor to zhe JAD, zhat cocktail of bemusement unt incredulity I call zhe “JAD look” vhich is similar to zhat vorn by a man who has just taken a cucumber up zhe
keister
.’

Despite himself – the last thing he wanted to do was to encourage this strange man – Vanka laughed, finding himself intrigued by the old rabbi with the pixie eyes. ‘Do all newcomers have this “JAD look”?’

The rabbi helped himself to a spoonful of Vanka’s abandoned breakfast. ‘Jah, every von of zhem … especially zhose zadniks from NoirVille mit a penchant for communing mit vegetables.’

Vanka smiled. ‘I’m not surprised. The JAD isn’t anything like I imagined. It’s
very
different where I come from.’

‘A
brokh
. I often zay how remarkable it is zhat zhe JAD unt zhe rest ov zhe Demi-Monde could have deviated zo far, zo quickly.’ The rabbi sat silent for a moment as he munched suspiciously on the
matzo brei
. ‘Zhe JAD is an anthropologist’s vet dream, is it not? How vonderful to be able to study zhe manner in vhich a population, shunned unt isolated as ve nuJus have been, can develop in such strange unt different vays. It is proof zhat evolution is alive unt vell.’ He took a sip of his coffee, eyeing Vanka as he did so. ‘Perhaps zhat is vot you are, Mr Tyler, an anthropologist?’

With a panache honed by practice, Vanka trotted out his cover story. ‘No, I’m a writer. I’ve been commissioned to do a book about the music that has grown up in the JAD since its inception. I’m especially interested in the JAD’s own brand of dance music, the stuff called reBop.’

Rabbi Gelbfisz chuckled as he poured a life-threatening amount of sugar into his coffee. ‘
Azoy?
Your investigations must be at a very early stage, Mr Tyler. ReBop is a style of music zhat has not been popular mit nuJus for several years now. Zhe younk JADniks have come to embrace vot zhey call klezmerJad.’

‘You seem to know an awful lot about it.’

A snort of derision. ‘I have not alvays been old, Mr Tyler. Vonce, long before I vos ejected from my homeland by zhose anti-nuJu bastards who masquerade as UnFunnies, I vos’ – he gave Vanka a wink – ‘in zhe idiom of zhe day, slack, slim unt sent. I played trumpet … jah, trumpet, in a vigged-out combo called, unt here, Mr Tyler, you must remember I vos
very
younk, zhe Zink Zonk Zombies.’ Rabbi Gelbfisz smirked at the recollection. ‘Jah, it is true, vonce zhis old
alter cocker
vos pretty good at blowing on a horn … unt at having his horn blown.’ He gave a mischievous little giggle before continuing. ‘Zhey vere interesting times, zhough vhen I think about vot I used to vear – zoot suits in pastel colours, mit drape jackets unt peg-leg trousers, vide-brimmed fedoras – I am acutely embarrassed. I must have looked a real
schloomp
.’

Rabbi Gelbfisz’s gaze seemed to harden for a moment. ‘Zo, who do you write for, Mr Tyler? Your accent is strange. Your Anglo is too gut for you to be a native speaker.’