A Beggar's Kingdom Page 28

  They’re dragged apart. Julian’s head and hands are fitted through holes in a wide wooden board nailed to a thick post. The framework of the pillory looks a lot like the cross. It’s hard not to be afraid. All around them is the terrible sound of a mob crazed by blood lust. Verbal assault is hurled at their heads. The magistrate swings his arm to signal the start of the pelting and quickly jumps off the stage.

  Julian and Miri’s bodies are exposed to the circling crowd, from back to front. The drunks pummel them with apple cores, tomatoes, potatoes, gin bottles, stones, old bones, pieces of wood.

  Wait, gin bottles? Stones?

  Most of it misses Julian. The tomatoes don’t miss. Other things don’t miss. “Stop throwin’,” someone yells. “Look, the woman’s hurt. Stop throwin’.” Julian’s legs go weak. Miri. His hands prickle from anxiety. He feels woozy as if he’s about to pass out. He turns his head to look at her, to see if she’s all right, but there’s a wooden post between them, blocking his view. He can feel her fear, but he can’t see her. The noise of the crowd is like machine-gun fire. No words of love can be heard above its din. Miri? Can you hear me? Julian barely hears his own voice. His body is in agony. His slack legs won’t hold him. He’s being held up only by his drooping head, by his flaccid arms through the holes.

  She doesn’t answer. Miri! he yells again or thinks he yells. The noise of the crowd dims. Through his faltering sight, Julian can see Monk and Jasper, the basket of tomatoes falling from their hands, tomatoes rolling like her red beret had once rolled. The men race to the magistrate, yelling, pulling on him, shouting, pointing.

  Never mind, Julian hears someone say. Throw what you can at the bloke, quick, before they call it off early. They always call it off early when someone dies, it’s so unfair.

  A stone makes landing, the sharp end hitting the side of Julian’s head. Blood drips onto the wooden platform.

  Don’t be afraid, Miri, Julian wants to say. You will live again.

  24

  Quatrang

  EVERYTHING I DO IS WRONG. WHAT I FEEL IS RIGHT IS WRONG. I fight, I don’t fight, we hide, we walk in plain sight, I give away your money, I cover up your sins, I gamble with your life, I say the right things, keep bad words to myself, I give you myself, I help you find your best self.

  And still it’s wrong.

  I’m sorry, Miri.

  In the pillory pose, a convulsing Julian pitched forward. Ashton grabbed him, shock and incomprehension on his face. Julian was wearing breeches, hose, funny shoes. He had on a waistcoat, a puffy shirt. Julian stank and was stained with tomato juice. Behind them, Sweeney yelled for help. Ashton’s bewildered expression told Julian that Ashton was seeing things that could not be attributed merely to Julian’s psychosis.

  “Jules, my God, you’re bleeding.” Ashton pressed the palm of his hand against Julian’s head wound. The blood ran down Ashton’s wrist, down Julian’s face and neck.

  I was stoned in the pillory, Julian said, in the middle of a medical emergency and unable to explain further. An ambulance took him to Queen Elizabeth. The bleeding was stopped, the head was stitched up, antibiotics were administered. X-rays showed multiple splinter-like fractures in his hands and feet. The doctors counted a half-dozen separate fractures in each foot, a half-dozen in each hand. Julian displayed marks of electrocution, the profuse violet flowers swelling like burns over his torso and arms and legs. The doctor asked where the injuries had come from this time. Ashton said don’t ask, but Julian replied, “I was stoned in a pillory.”

  “I told you not to ask,” Ashton said.

  Julian turned his face away from his friend, and from the acid memory of being catapulted through her death.

  Everything I do is wrong.

  The doctor and Ashton continued discussing things. Julian implored Ashton to stop speaking. Leave it. You know there’s nothing they can do.

  Yes, they might think it’s black magic, Ashton said.

  No, they’ll fire Sweeney and replace him with a real guard. They’ll forbid me entry to the Transit Circle. I won’t be able to go back.

  Go back? Are you insane? Have you seen yourself? Of course you won’t be able to go back.

  Please, Ashton.

  You mean, if I continue to speak to the doctor, you might stop doing the thing that’s killing you?

  Please, Ashton.

  “If there’s one word that describes you, it’s relentless,” Ashton said after the doctor left, without answers. “You wouldn’t think it by looking at you. That’s why your whole life, you’ve been underestimated. They laughed when you told them you’d be a boxer. They laughed until they watched you fight. When you went missing, they said you’d never be found. They said you were dead. Then they said you’d never come out of the coma. They said you’d never fully recover. Your brain would never function again like it used to. You wouldn’t make any money working for yourself, being Mr. Know-it-All. They said you’d go broke. When you met her, they said you didn’t love her. When she died, they said you’d get over it. And then I said, no how, no way did you travel through time.” Ashton fell silent. “Honest to God, I don’t know what’s going on with you, Julian.” He stared out the window. “I don’t know who you are anymore.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “I really don’t,” Ashton said. “It’s not like before, in the desert. That time you walked off and vanished when I wasn’t looking. Yes, something happened, but I wasn’t paying attention, and afterward, even you couldn’t tell me what it was. This time, I didn’t walk off. I was looking. You never left my side. You stepped over the railing and were maybe a foot away from me, but you never left my side or my sight. There was a flash of light, like a flare from a mirror pointing into the sun. I blinked.”

  “You didn’t blink,” Julian said. “You were blinded.”

  “I blinked,” Ashton repeated. “And you pitched forward. That’s all. Nothing else happened. A flare. And a pitch. I thought you tripped. I grabbed you.”

  “I wasn’t in Thermoprene anymore.”

  “That’s the least of it. Nor did you stink or have broken feet or bleed from a head wound, or wear breeches. Or carry gold rings in your pockets. Nor were you electrocuted. I know all this. Except I also know that you never left my sight.”

  “Except when you blinked.”

  “I fucking blinked! I didn’t space out, or faint, or step away. I blinked. You do know the definition of the word blink, don’t you?” Ashton said. “To quickly shut and open one’s eyes.”

  “Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?”

  “One hundred percent my lying eyes.”

  “Time is relative, Ash,” Julian said. “It’s just coordinates. Like latitude and longitude. Time is just direction. And most of the time that direction is forward.” He closed his eyes.

  There was no denying it, no pretending anymore, no wishing it away: 49 days is what she had. What he had. What they had together.

  Los Angeles, from their first word at Book Soup to Fario Rima on Normandie Avenue, 49 days.

  Clerkenwell, from her first wail in the garden to Falk’s hands around her throat, 49 days.

  The Silver Cross, from the great bed to the Great Fire, 49 days.

  St. Giles in the Fields, from Seven Dials to the stones at Charing Cross, 49 days.

  It was the loudest, most implacable, merciless, pitiless truth of Julian’s life. It was an unending scream—49 fucking fucking days.

  Gravity bends to my will, not the other way around. But my will is not enough. I am a Möbius strip of light and shadow. I am nothing but a quantum particle entangled with your immortal soul and spiraling through infinite meridians toward you—and away from you. I am a devastated supplicant, begging, pleading for a redress to your blight, stretching out my hand to the window, the sun, the heavens. Oh, Miri. Our bodies are like mercury, like quicksilver. They’re torn apart but not disintegrated. They wait for someone to come and collect the pieces, like you waited for me, and still
I failed you. Sometimes poverty hides inside a goddess, and sometimes the goddess hides inside poverty. You were royalty walking through that rookery. I knew it, and still I lost you.

  ∞

  After weeks of uneasy convalescence, they went to Quatrang, Julian limping on his healing feet. Ashton insisted. I want to hear what the little wise man has to say, Ashton said, his teeth snapped shut like a portcullis.

  Devi’s place was shut like a portcullis. The rolling steel shutter was padlocked into the hook in the concrete. Julian rapped his knuckles on the window of the Vietnamese joint next door.

  “Sometimes he leave like that without notice,” the harried owner said. “I think his mother die.”

  “That’s not it, Shinko,” the man’s agitated wife said, stepping forward, dishrags in her hands. “He gone over a month.”

  “Over a month? How long have I been home?”

  “It’s May,” Ashton said.

  Julian reeled against the steel shutter. Time had ceased to exist as he had ceased to exist. May?

  “He is”—the woman waved her rag through the air, still talking about Devi—“over in mountain, looking for his son.”

  “What mountain?” said Julian.

  “What son?” said Ashton.

  “I not know what mountain. He go look for him. Son missing.”

  “Also his mother die,” said Shinko.

  “How long does it take to bury mother! But to find son?” Wife of Shinko started yelling at Shinko in Vietnamese. They skulked off.

  Julian stood dumbly. So did Ashton.

  ∞

  Weeks later, Devi returned, late May, early June. The boys returned, too.

  “You’re back,” Devi said to Julian. He looked a decade older.

  “You’re back,” Julian said to Devi. He looked a decade older, too.

  Ashton grabbed Devi by the arms.

  Julian pulled Ashton off. Dude, stop it, what’s wrong with you?

  Devi didn’t even fight back.

  “Leave him alone,” Ashton said to Devi, ripping his arm away from Julian. He looked so angry. Julian wasn’t used to it. “Why are you doing this to him? What voodoo wand are you waving over him?”

  “Why does everyone blame poor voodoo for everything?” Devi muttered, unperturbed by the violence.

  “You’re going to kill him, don’t you understand?”

  “Like you, I keep telling him not to go.”

  “Bullshit. You’re a devil worshipper,” Ashton said. “You say white, but you mean black.”

  Ash, come on, man, Julian thought, but didn’t say.

  Devi straightened his shirt. “It’s fine, Julian. Your friend is worried about you. I understand.”

  “You understand nothing. I looked up the meaning of Quatrang.”

  “It means white crow. Why is this upsetting?”

  Again Julian had to come between his friend and his shaman, pushing Ashton to one corner, keeping a lackluster Devi away in the other.

  “White crow means a rare thing,” Devi said. “Something unique and unseen.”

  “White crow means a malevolent omen,” Ashton said. “A sign of bad things to come. It also means a Trojan horse. Something that at first seems great but turns out to be a disaster. Which do you think is more applicable in Julian’s case, your definition or mine?”

  They both swirled to Julian for his opinion.

  Julian said nothing. He turned to Devi. “Did you find your son? Shinko’s wife said you were looking for him. What mountains?”

  “My mother d-d-d-died,” Devi stuttered, after a long pause. Even Ashton looked thrown by Devi’s sudden speech impediment. “I brought her b-body back home to Vietnam to b-bury her. I s-s-s-stayed a few extra days.” Devi dusted himself off, flattened his black shirt. When he spoke again, the stammer was gone, and he was back to his old self, even a little energized. He stared at Ashton coldly. “What do we think of a man who, instead of putting a roof over his house, yells at the wind and rain for making him wet?”

  “You are most certainly not the wind and rain,” Ashton said.

  “First fight the wrong that’s in you,” Devi said. “Because it’s impossible to change the weather.”

  Julian had to separate Ashton from Devi. “Ashton, stop it!” What was going on with these two!

  Walking unafraid, Devi strode past Ashton to the back of the counter to grab his black apron. “What did Thomas Aquinas write?” the Hmong cook asked, tying the apron strings. “For those who believe in God, no explanation for miracles is necessary. For those who don’t, no explanation is possible.”

  “Fuck you,” Ashton said. “I believe in God. And miracles. It’s you I don’t believe in. And just to be clear—what you’ve brought him is not miracles but the fucking apocalypse.”

  25

  Karmadon

  “DEVI, WHY DO YOU KEEP DOING THAT? DON’T PROVOKE HIM,” Julian said to Devi a few days later, when he returned to Quatrang alone. “This is hard for him. He has no idea what’s happening. His eyes showed him one thing, yet everything he thinks he knows keeps telling him another. Just imagine what that must be like. Have some compassion. Not just for me. For him, too.”

  “He is worse than doubting Thomas,” Devi said. “Even when he sees with his own eyes, he refuses to believe.”

  “You’re surprised by this? You yourself have no idea what’s going on.”

  Devi drew the acupuncture needles on Julian’s body along the lines of the meridian, fed Julian chicken marinated in garlic, lemon, and brown sugar, gave Julian tiger water and a little fermented sickly-sweet coconut milk to drink. “You and your friend should go take a walk,” Devi said.

  “Where to, or are you insulting me?”

  “To Big Ben, the most famous mechanical clock ever built. Go there for an hour after a new moon and observe how many people gather around, holding talismans of the dead, trying to step through the swings of the 700-pound pendulum, between the tick and the tock. They’re all trying to do what you have done.”

  “How is that going to help Ashton—to see other people’s pain? He doesn’t even want to see mine.”

  “Maybe it will help you,” Devi said. “To stand witness to people who would take your 49 days in one chime of the clock over what they have now, which is nothing.”

  “They’re deluded,” Julian said grimly. “They don’t know what they’re asking for.”

  “So walk away, Julian,” said Devi. “Walk away, do something else.”

  “I can’t.” Julian’s body hung off his soul like an oversized coat. “You know I can’t.”

  Devi told Julian about a woman who every year jumped into a vortex in a river. “Not the Thames. The River Vistula in Poland in a small town called Kazimierz Dolny. It’s not even close to zero meridian.” She jumped into the Vistula, Devi said, because she had heard from a mystic that by a river of life you could get back to the ones you loved.

  “Like you’re trying to get back to your son?”

  “I wish to discuss it—not at all.”

  “You told me you had a son. Yet the woman next door said you were searching for a missing child. Is your son alive or not?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Is Ashton right about you? Do you want something from me?”

  “Have I asked you for anything?” Devi said, after the most imperceptible of pauses. “Have I in any way reaped your formidable spiritual strength for myself?”

  “What are you talking about, I’m not strong,” Julian said. Everything I do is wrong. “I’m nothing.”

  Julian returned to Devi the following day, the following week, the following month.

  “What if it’s me?” he said to the shaman, lying on the table, riddled with needles. “What if I’m the reason she dies? She kisses me and dies. She touches me and dies. She joins the skillions of her other selves who laughed and loved me and then died with their unrealized dreams unspent in their pockets. What else can I do, Devi? What can I do that
I haven’t already done? Go but keep away from her? Stay away until I know she makes it without me over the 49 days, and then…”

  “Are you at the bargaining stage, Julian? Are you negotiating with the Almighty?”

  “Trying to haggle with somebody,” Julian said. “What else can I do? Not go?” He said it in the smallest voice.

  “Yes,” Devi said, in his smallest voice. “But then for absolute certain nothing will change. It will be what it is. The next stage will be depression. And finally, acceptance.”

  Ignoring him, Julian plowed on. “How do you know she didn’t live to a ripe old age without ever meeting me?”

  “You’re right, I don’t know.”

  “How do you know I’m not the catalyst in her untimely death? That if she hadn’t met me in Book Soup, she wouldn’t still be singing, emceeing, dancing on boardwalks, living.”

  Neither one spoke.

  “Where’s your warrior spirit, Julian?” Devi said, quiet, quiet.

  “Shackled to her in the pillory.”

  Julian would never accept her death, never.

  Another month passed. Another moon rose. Julian returned to Quatrang. “Last night,” he said to Devi, “I dreamed of her again.” Shining and smiling and new, walking toward him in another life.

  Devi extended his hand with the glass of tiger water.

  ∞

  Barely healed, Julian redoubled his fight against the second law of the ordered universe, the law that governed matter: He struggled away from chaos and toward perfection.

  He attempted to make himself a better man.

  He’d been trying to reinvent her, redeem her, to perfect her soul, but what if what he needed to do was reinvent himself, to improve his own? She wasn’t being granted a reprieve not because she wasn’t worthy, but because he wasn’t worthy. Aside from ceasing the casual sexual encounters and increasing his time at the gym, Julian started going to church. On Sundays, while Ashton slumbered, he rose at 7:30 and took a cab to Quatrang, and he and Devi walked together to St. Monica’s in Hoxton Square for the 9:30 mass. In earnest he started reading theological writers: Aquinas, C.S. Lewis, Dostoyevsky, even Kierkegaard. He started reading the Bible.