The Radiant City (16 page)

Matthew punches the security code into the metal pad on the wall, waits for the click and then swings open the heavy door. Inside, the entrance is littered with junk-mail flyers. The sound of someone’s music, the bass far too loud, drifts down the stairwell. Through a doorway at the back he sees a minute courtyard, more of an airshaft, with a few dying plants in pots struggling toward the overcast sky. It smells of cat piss and old, mouldering plaster. He begins to climb the stairs and trips on the uneven, sloping second step. The handrail is sticky beneath his palm. He searches for the light switch, but when he finds it and presses, nothing happens.

As he passes the second floor the smell of marijuana drifts out from the same bright blue door that is the music source. Some sort of New World African-Cuban mix, overlaid by techno-bass. The floor shakes slightly in rhythmic response. On the third floor a baby cries, and Matthew notices a few more dead plants, geraniums, forgotten on a grimy window sill. The wooden floors are wide-planked and shiny from centuries of feet. Here and there a nail rises up to snag an unwary boot. On the fourth floor there is silence, more sinister than the thoughtless noise, and Matthew imagines eyes pressed to peepholes and cracks in the wood. The sixth floor is where, in considerably better days, servants would have been housed. There are two doors, and a hall leading to more. To the left of the stairwell is a door with glass panels, one cracked and held together with electrical tape. Matthew knocks.

There is a shuffle inside and then the door opens. Jack fills the space completely.

“Come on in,” he says.

The room is tiny and the door can’t be opened all the way because of the wooden chair behind it. To the right is a single bed, with two shelves above filled with folded black T-shirts, jeans, a sweater and two shirts. At the end of the bed is a footlocker, atop which sits Jack’s camera. To the left, next to the chair, is a square table on which sits a transistor radio, a copy of Tim O’Brien’s
The Things They Carried,
an old copy of
Penthouse,
an overflowing ashtray, a plate with half a baguette and some cheese, and several packages of Camel cigarettes. Matthew notices a couple of hand-rolled butts in the ashtray, which account for the lingering aroma of marijuana. At the end of the room is a washstand with a sink, a hotplate and a cupboard beneath. There is no window; the only light comes from a bulb in the ceiling that has an imitation Japanese shade with a calligraphy symbol drawn on it in black ink. It throws a strange and unsettling shadow, as though a huge moth rests against the bulb.

Apart from its size, and the lack of natural light, what is unusual about the room is that, except for the overflowing ashtray, everything is impeccably, institutionally, neat. The bed looks like it has been made by a four-star general, the blanket and sheet so tight there is no doubt a dime would bounce to the ceiling. The clothes are folded and their edges aligned. A few clean dishes stand neatly stacked next to the minuscule sink. Three cereal boxes and a box of rice, arranged smallest to largest, are lined up like nutritional soldiers.

Matthew thinks of his own impossibly messy kitchen and shudders.

“You’ve got this place shipshape.”

“I like to have things tidy. When you’re my size you can’t have a lot of clutter,” says Jack, and there is something in his voice, as though he has been looking for approval, as though this were an inspection. “Hey, it’s not much, but it’s cheap.”

“It’s great.”

“Yeah. A real château. You want a drink?”

“No. Too early, at least for today.”

“Coffee?” Jack goes back to the sink and pulls out a pot from the cupboard beneath the hot plate. “I can boil water.”

“Well, if you want one. Sure.”

Matthew sits on the chair, wedged between the wall and the table, facing the bed. There isn’t enough room to swing his legs under the table.

“Turn on the radio if you want,” says Jack as he lights the gas burner.

The radio is tuned to a jazz station and the sounds of Coltrane’s “Lush
Life” waft into the room. Jack spoons instant coffee into two thick white mugs.

“So, you looking forward to our journey into the city of the dead?” Matthew says.

“It’s all right. Something to do,” says Jack, giving voice to Matthew’s own opinion.

Jack carries the coffee over and sets the mugs down in front of them. “You want milk?” Matthew says black is fine and Jack sits on the bed, his back ramrod straight. They talk about Jack’s neighbours, old men mostly, and a couple of Filipina cleaning ladies who live together and avert their eyes whenever he passes them in the hall. “Like they’re scared of me,” Jack says, and chuckles.

Matthew finds it hard to relax in the room, and it dawns on him it is as if they are sitting in a military prison cell. When Jack suggests they should get going if they want to eat, he feels nothing but relief.

At the Cambodian restaurant they eat ginger port with peanuts and
cambogee
beef. The only occidentals in the place, they sit on narrow benches and hunch over the bowls of steaming meat and rice. They drink beer and smile at the faces around them.

“I love this stuff,” says Jack, shovelling it in.

When they finish they drink tea from small fragile cups with no handles.

“I hear Suzi’s coming this afternoon.” Matthew says. “So, you guys an item?”

“I don’t know. She’s all right. Smart, you know. Smarter than you’d think.”

“I wouldn’t think anything.”

“Well, most hookers aren’t smart. They’re stupid or they wouldn’t be in that job in the first place. I mean, they all think they’re smart because they’re getting the money, right, they think that’s power. But it’s not. That’s just a pimp’s con. Telling a woman how she can live off her womanhood and all that shit.”

“Sounds like you’ve given it some thought.”

Jack laughs. “Well, let’s just say there was a time when a couple of girls didn’t seem to mind making sure my rent was paid, know what I mean?”

Matthew pulls back. “You’re not pimping Suzi?”

“Fuck, no!” Jack looks deeply offended. “I was never a real pimp. It was back in the seventies when that sort of thing was considered not such a big deal. Just a casual sort of thing, you know?”

Matthew doesn’t, but keeps mum. Sips his tea.

“It’s not like that. I like Suzi. I pay my own way. Not that I pay her, no fucking way, but you know what I mean. And it’s none of my business what she does for a living, is it? I mean, not really.”

“Don’t suppose it is. But I have to say I don’t think I’d like my girlfriend sleeping with other guys.”

“It’s just a job. Don’t mean anything.”

“If you say so. I suppose she could stop.”

“Listen, Matthew, I like things the way they are. She stops hooking on account of me, then I own her, you know what I mean? I don’t want the responsibility. It’s just a for-now thing.”

“Fair enough. I like Suzi. She’s a nice girl.”

“Yeah, well, she’s nice enough for me.”

There is something in his tone of voice that unsettles Matthew.

The bill comes. “I’ll get that,” says Jack.

Matthew can’t help but notice the money in Jack’s wallet. “That’s quite a wad of cash.”

“I sold a couple of photos,” says Jack.

At the Passy Cemetery they wander through the paths set out like streets in this city of the dead. Over one of the graves a
Pieta
rises encased in fibreglass; over another is a statue of a naked woman kneeling, her hands palms-up on her thighs, her eyes closed in a face turned heavenward—the picture of despair and submission. There are angels and stone children and lambs and crosses carved to look as though they are made of wood. Trees line the paths and cast dappled shadows. The air smells fresh from the cedar trees but damp and earthy as well. Here and there old people stoop and kneel, dressed as though they’re having lunch with friends. They tend the flowers, water the plants and polish the marble.

Anthony, his boots ringing on the stones, leads them to the mausoleum of the Russian count he’s told them about. “He did everything,” says Anthony. “Painted, sculpted, wrote poetry.”

It is a massive tomb, easily the largest in the cemetery, with Cyrillic script engraved on the outside walls. They stand pressed up to the iron grill of the entrance, peering past the glass into the gloom within. The smell of cold stone and mould surrounds them. Inside there is a room decorated with a faded red-and-yellow carpet, a tasselled velvet chair, a candelabra, and a table on which stand two large stone vases hold wilted flowers. Over the table hangs a huge painting, presumably created by the talented count himself. In it, a black-hooded figure, face unseen, trudges up a bleak hill under a glowering sky.

“All very vampire Lestat,” says Jack. “Very fucking Anne Rice.” His camera shutter clicks; he checks the light setting and takes more shots.

Suzi, who wears red boots and a long black shirt with some sort of complicated elastic at the hem that makes it poof around her calves, puts her arm through Jack’s. “Does it frighten you?” she says. Matthew notices that her pupils seem normal today, her skin less blemished.

He shrugs her off. “Why would you say that?”

“It gives me some,
comment dire . . .?”
She shivers.

“Willies,” says Anthony.

She smiles at him, laughing.

Paweena, in jeans and a purple jacket, looks bored. “I don’t like this place. Too many dead people.” She has brought a baguette with her and picks at pieces of it, nibbling delicately. She behaves as if Suzi does not exist, looking through her, or past her. It occurs to Matthew that he can’t recall Paweena addressing any comments to Suzi when they were at Anthony’s for dinner.

Suzi says, “Debussy is buried in here as well, you know.” Her voice is high, girlish, like she is telling ghost stories, scaring herself and loving it. “Can you imagine it at night? Strains of
La Mer
drifting through the night as the count sits in his chair, listening.”

Jack takes photographs of Suzi peering into the tomb.

“I want to go,” says Paweena. She tosses the heel of her bread into a nearby garbage can. “This is no good, this place.”

“In a minute.” Anthony puts his arm around her. “Let’s take a walk through at least.”

She turns away from his embrace. “No. You stay. This is your thing. You like all this mumbo-jumbo. Not me. For children. And fools.” And with that she minces away, not waiting to see if he’ll follow her.

Matthew is gratified to see he does not. Bitch
,
he thinks.

Anthony stares at the ground, his hands in his pockets. “Man, I just thought it would be interesting. There are times when it’s very hard not to give her just the tiniest little slap,” he says, and makes a feeble attempt at laughter. “But hey, I used to arrest guys for that, right?”

Jack punches him in the shoulder. “It is interesting. Weird. But hey, I like weird, even if I don’t like cops.”

“Present company,” says Anthony, his voice flat.

“Excepted.” Jack nudges Anthony with his shoulder, once, twice, like an elephant trying to rouse a wounded member of the herd. Come on,” he says, “she’ll meet up with us later, I bet. Not everybody gets this stuff. Come on. Give us the grand tour. Gimme the full bones, all that root doctor and hoodoo stuff.”

“Yeah. What the fuck.” Anthony smiles, although it is not his usual smile.

They wander away from the count and walk through the lanes. Matthew is oddly at peace here. It is like a town set out on fairy scale. Maybe
,
he thinks, my ghosts are socializing.
Or maybe the world of death has finally become more his home than that of the living. It isn’t a pleasant thought, and yet he finds himself thinking that he could bring a book, a Thermos of coffee, maybe, and spend an afternoon here.

Anthony has meandered off on his own, and Matthew watches Suzi and Jack. They hold hands. She looks so small next to him that she could be his child. Her neck, underneath the tousle of short hair, looks very fragile. She missteps on a loose stone and Jack steadies her, protectively reaching out with both arms. Matthew finds himself grappling with a sudden surge of jealousy.

He spots Anthony standing by a large monument in the corner of the graveyard. Anthony looks up at the statue of a heavy-limbed woman, who appears to droop under the weight of the stone cloth draped around her body. Anthony himself might be taken for a mourner, dressed all in black as he is.

“That’s some statue,” Matthew says as he reaches him. “Great stones.” Around the upper rim of the stone square, at the feet of the figure that kneels over a central slab as though felled by sorrow, are a row of jewel-cut glass pieces, the colour of amethysts.

“Look inside,” says Anthony.

Inside, the light falls in mauve beams onto a reclining female figure carved from marble.

“It’s beautiful, but . . .”