Arslan. Part 4

Not just human company, either, and not just the horses. Sam Tuller told me the fairground camp was full of dogs and puppies; and in a very short time my house was, too. "Every time he goes out in that Land Rover," Luella complained to me, "he brings back another animal." The first pup was a beagle. The next was a bluetick hound. Then came a German shepherd b.i.t.c.h with a litter of puppies that didn't look much like German shepherds. In between he had picked up half a dozen kittens and Paula Sears's pet monkey. All of them except the monkey had the run of the house, and all of us were under orders to let them in or out whenever they wanted-which wasn't the kind of order I was going to pay any attention to.

Luella had to feed them most of the time and clean up after them all of the time, but it was Arslan who trained them, and did it very well, too-if you didn't count the monkey. "To be fair," I told Luella, "I don't think you can housebreak a monkey."

She sniffed. "Not without trying, I'm sure of that. But if he just won't, he could at least keep it in a cage. Paula had a perfectly nice, big cage for it."

He kept it in the coal bin. A couple of his men shoveled what little coal there was left into a corner of the furnace room, and mopped out the bin. From then on, it was Luella's job to go in every day and clean up; and of course that was on top of all the damage it managed to do around the house when Arslan had it out. I objected, not only because it was a dirty, mean job, and it was his monkey, or rather Paula Sears's, but because Luella was getting physically worn out.

"You are wrong, sir; it is woman's work. My men have other occupations."

"Then let one of those girls help her-or Betty. It wouldn't hurt Betty to do a little work around here."

He shook his head. "They do woman's work also," he said cheerfully, "but of another type."

I hadn't ridden a horse in ten years, hadn't owned a hunting dog in six, and I had missed them. In a way, it did me good to have them around the place again. And Arslan was undeniably good with all of the animals. He would pet a cat about the same way he petted his girls-expertly and with interest, but a little offhandedly. I'd never had anything against cats, but it still looked peculiar to me, a grown man fondling one like a little girl with her doll. What was beautiful was to see him with the dogs. He reminded me of a good teacher-the kind whose technique is so good it looks like all rapport and no technique. The dogs wanted to please him, wanted to understand what he was telling them to do, and do it; and he could make them understand. He knew something about training, no doubt of that.

Which didn't mean I liked having my house transformed into something between a barracks and a menagerie. Just the smell disgusted me every time I came in the door: the smell of the monkey, of too many cats and too many dogs, of too many soldiers and too many muddy boots, of too much cooking and too much laundry, of liquor, of tobacco. And it was never really quiet. There were always people moving around, if not inside the house, then in the yard. All day there was tramping in and out, up and down the stairs, doors slamming, foreign voices. And there was always some uproar or other likely to erupt at any hour of the day or night. It would be a dog fight, or Betty Hanson in hysterics, or some indecipherable Turkistani crisis that had soldiers gallumphing down the walk, radios crackling, Arslan machinegunning out orders. I was used to spending my workdays amid noise and confusion-yes, and some smells, too; but I was used to peace and quiet and cleanliness in my own house.

Along about lettuce-planting time, which was February 11 by Kraft County tradition, I had the year's outline pretty well set. The details remained to be filled in. "I can't do all this from an office chair," I told the Colonel. "I've got to get out and talk to people, and look at what we've got."

He contemplated his cigarette, while he constructed his clauses. "You will give me two lists. Of people to whom you wish to talk. Of things at which you wish to look. Before noon tomorrow."

I gave him his lists first thing in the morning. A little past ten he sent for me. Lieutenant Z and two soldiers were waiting in his office. "You will follow this route," said Nizam, holding up a paper for me to take. He didn't bother to look at me; after all, he'd glanced up when I came in. "You will return between noon and curfew, eighteen February. Dismissed."

Nizam, or his staff, had laid out a very sensible route. It not only took in all the people and places on my lists with just about the minimum of wasted miles and minutes, but it also made allowance for the type and condition of different roads. In fact, unless we were just peculiarly lucky, it made allowance for the visibility from different spots. I'd learned to respect the Turkistani organization, if nothing else. They were thorough, and they digested information fast. I came back with two notebooks full of data, and raring to get on with the job. Lieutenant Z watched me sidelong but wide-eyed. It was the first time he'd seen me with my hands on really solid material I knew I could work with.

We checked in with Nizam first, and from there I started home on foot. But Leland Kitchener's wagon came moseying out of the last alley before my house. Leland had a very handy way of just happening to run into you when he wanted to tell you something. We said h.e.l.lo, and I asked him how things had been while I was gone.

"Pretty quiet. The Commies got their stable about finished. Nothing new out of your houseguest, that I know of-except he's sent Miss Hanson somewhere out of county, and he's got a girl for Hunt Morgan."

"A what?"

"A girl-you know what I mean; one of them little Russian girls. A girl for Hunt. Now ain't that something?"

Arslan wasn't in the living room, or the dining room, or the kitchen. The guard at the guestroom door put his rifle to my chest. I wasn't there to beg anybody's permission. I opened my mouth and yelled, "Arslan!"

Instantly his voice came back, what sounded like a single word in his unG.o.dly language, and the guard moved aside. I opened the door and slammed it behind me.

He was sitting on the edge of the bed. There were dented pillows behind him, just starting to swell back into shape, and maps and papers on the bed and the floor. The rest of his bodyguards were distributed around the room, like statuary in an old-fas.h.i.+oned garden. He had a gla.s.s of beer in his hand (he had taken up beer lately) and he was smiling. "Welcome home, sir."

I walked up to him. I wanted to be at close range, and maybe I wanted to see him looking up. "Leave Hunt Morgan alone," I said.

He did look up, and looked down at his gla.s.s, and drank; and when he looked up again it was his smart-aleck look, a look that begged for a spanking. He gestured toward the chair. "Will you sit, sir?" he said silkily. "We can talk."

I hit the gla.s.s sideways with the heel of my hand. He didn't drop it; beer and shattered gla.s.s sprayed like an explosion. And at the same time his left hand came up and closed on my wrist, and he wrenched me down onto the bed beside him. For a little bit I couldn't see much, let alone speak. I hadn't known till then that a simple twist of the wrist could be so effective. "Now, sir," I heard him saying, "you should tell me what you mean."

"You know d.a.m.n well what I mean."

"Unfortunately no." I could see him all right by now. He looked interested. The guards had surged forward a step, their faces dangerous and confused. "What do you wish me to do?"

"I want you to stop systematically corrupting that boy."

"I am wooing Hunt," he said smugly. "First the rape, then the seduction."

I shook my head. "What are you getting out of it-another kick?"

"Do you imagine that I require 'another kick,' sir?"

"Some people never lose their appet.i.te for cheap thrills."

He put on a little studied frown-giving courteous consideration to a silly idea. "Is every pleasure a cheap thrill? Thrills of any price do not attract me; but it is true that I enjoy pleasure. For what else do we live?"

"I thought you didn't conquer the world for fun."

"Your memory is good, sir. Most men forget. Yes, this is also true. There are patterns to be completed without regard to pleasure." He tilted the broken stub of gla.s.s in his right hand and let the last of the beer dribble onto my rug. "And yet you know, sir, that every pleasure has its own character, its own ... shape. For example, under certain circ.u.mstances, rape gives a very beautiful pleasure, a unique pleasure."

I felt my throat swell. "What about that girl? What kind of pleasure do you get from turning a boy over to a wh.o.r.e?"

He looked at me sidelong and humorously for a moment. The gla.s.s dropped quietly, and he wiped his wet hand on the bedclothes. "Consider. When a woman is raped, then she is perhaps by so much more a woman-do you understand? But when a boy is raped, he is by so much less a man. And at Hunt's age, a boy questions already whether he can attain manhood. I wish Hunt to know that he is a man."

"He's not a man. He's a child. You're not doing him any favor. You put him into h.e.l.l, and now you're trying to make him like it."

He smiled broadly at me. "Yes, sir. Yes, sir. This is true. And if he must live in h.e.l.l, do you not also wish him to be happy there?"

"No, I don't."

He raised his eyebrows. "Why not, sir?"

"Because in h.e.l.l only the devils are happy."

He threw back his head and laughed. "Good! And you believe that I am a devil. Good! Then you can well believe that I desire to make Hunt happy."

"Leave him alone. You've played with him long enough."

"Yes, I have played. I am not playing now."

"Then let him go."

"Not yet."

Sometimes his eyes were as deep as h.e.l.l itself. But I wasn't about to let him stare me down. "Why not?"

"Because, sir," he answered slowly, "I have taken something from Hunt. I desire to give him something."

"And what do you think you have to give him?"

"Strength. Strength. And if I cannot give him enough, then I shall do him the favor of killing him."

"Why do you care?"

Very slowly his mouth pursed into a half smile, and the creases of amus.e.m.e.nt showed around his eyes again. "Why do you care what happens to your wife, or to the children of your school?"

I looked at him in disgust. "I don't think you could understand why."

"Yes, sir, I understand." He held up two fingers, and touched one of them. "You are connected with them. If they are hurt, you feel the pain." He touched the second finger. "Also you are responsible for them. If they are hurt, you have failed in your duty." He nodded a.s.sertively. "It is the same with Hunt and me. I am connected. I am responsible."

He kept the boy with him most of the time, physically beside him; and the rest of the time he kept him locked in that back upstairs room, either alone or with the girl. Hunt never left the house. Getting ready to go out, Arslan himself would turn the key in Hunt's door and pocket it. But when he came in, he was as likely as not to toss the key, without a word, to one of his bodyguards, and the grinning soldier would tramp up the stairs and tramp down again with Hunt docilely at his heels. Or when Arslan was busy and had no time for Hunt, he would send him upstairs with a curt word, handing the key to the nearest guard. And he talked about giving the boy strength!

The girl couldn't have been more than sixteen. Even so, she was enough older than Hunt to matter; and in some ways, of course, she was ages older. She was slight and dark, pretty in a gypsy way, and her whole occupation, outside of whatever she did in bed, seemed to be singing songs and beautifying herself. She was a cheery little creature, I had to say that for her, but at absolute maximum she was worthless. Most of her time was spent in Hunt's room or monopolizing the bathroom-though she didn't dare start that till Arslan was definitely out of the house. In between, she would wander airily around the house, getting into everybody's way and poking into everybody's things, chattering saucily in what she seemed to think was English. She was absolutely the first child I'd ever met (and in every way except her profession she was a child) on whom I couldn't seem to make any impression-and there were times when I was red in the face from shouting at her. She was a little too old, and the situation a little too touchy, for me to turn her over my knee. Even so, I was mightily tempted.

She made herself very scarce whenever Arslan appeared. I saw him look at her sometimes, but I never heard him speak to her. For that matter, I didn't hear him say much to Hunt. "Read to me." That was his usual greeting. He would pluck a book from the shelves, or his pocket, or most often from one of the piles that littered the floor and the furniture (Luella wasn't allowed to touch them), and flip it carelessly at Hunt. If the boy caught it clumsily or missed it altogether, the bodyguard would grin in derision. And Hunt, G.o.d help him, was still vulnerable enough to flush.

He would read-read until he was hoa.r.s.e, until sometimes his voice cracked and broke, and Arslan would stop him impatiently, as he might have switched off a staticky radio. He read while Arslan ate, while Arslan was being shaved, while Arslan skimmed through reports and pored over maps. He read to him in the bathroom, in Arslan's bedroom and his own-or at least they carried a good many books in and out. He read, read; and it was touching to see him lose himself in his reading. Since that first night, he had hardly spoken voluntarily. Every move he made, every look of his dark eyes, showed how badly he was being hurt. But when he read aloud, you could literally see and hear him sink into the words, shutting out everything else. He had always read well by school standards, two or three grade levels ahead of himself all the way; but now he was beginning to read really well, not just "putting in the expression," but living the words.

So I was concerned about what he read. It was certainly a strange mixture. They always had about half a dozen different books in process, scattered around the house. Arslan seemed to pick up whichever one was handiest. Most of them came out of my bookcases, and to tell the truth I was surprised to be reminded of what all I had on hand. They read Shakespeare, and Shaw, and Oscar Wilde, and an old manual of beekeeping, and Stories of the Great Operas, and the introductions to Luella's cookbooks, and Paradise Lost, and (so help me G.o.d) Fowler's Dictionary of English Usage from cover to cover, and books on vegetable gardening and evolution and hunting rifles, and Moby d.i.c.k, and Nietzsche, and the Bible. Those were all from my shelves, and so were the old histories: Prescott's Conquest of Mexico, and Cook's Voyages, and a few volumes left from a nineteen-hundred set of histories of the princ.i.p.al nations of the world. The books that Arslan produced from somewhere were mostly histories, too, but modern ones, and technical works on electronics, medicine, biology.

And it was this hodgepodge that Hunt read day by day, sitting a little hunched with the book on his knees, never looking up except for occasional furtive glances at Arslan, and all the life of his young body and soul concentrated in his voice.

Is this the Region, this the Soil, the Clime, Said then the lost Arch-Angel, this the seat That we must change for Heav'n, this mournful gloom For that celestial light? Be it so, since he Who now is Sovran can dispose and bid What shall be right.

And as Hunt read, Arslan listened. Sometimes his eyes would take on a tranced expression, his eyelids would droop, and he would look, for the time being, genuinely Oriental.

For we cannot call it reasoning to make pain a presumption of death, while, in fact, it is rather a sign of life. For though it be a question whether that which suffers can continue to live for ever, yet it is certain that everything which suffers pain does live, and that pain can exist only in a living subject.

Meanwhile, if it was one of his irregular mealtimes, he would be chewing slowly, seeming to consider and savor every mouthful. He liked to eat like a Roman emperor, reclining on the living-room couch, with his meal on the coffee table. Chairs certainly weren't invented for Arslan. If he wasn't standing up, or riding something, he was sure to be stretched out somewhere.

His movement was prompt and his hand heavy; the staff of Ivan IV. seems to have pa.s.sed into his grasp.

We have seen him strike with his cane the greatest lords, Prince Menchikof among the number. He bent to his will men, things, nature, and time; he realized his end by despotic blows.

Or he would be leaning back in my armchair beside the kitchen sink, in the blissful trance of a hot shave, the little orderly operating with all the grim delicacy of a brain surgeon. And Arslan would look like a petted cat.

Locks so grey did never grow but from out some ashes! But do I look very old, so very, very old, Starbuck? I feel deadly faint, bowed, and humped, as though I was Adam, staggering beneath the piled centuries since Paradise.

It was strange fare for a Turkistani general. He never commented, never asked questions; and, almost always, he was doing something else while he listened. But he listened. Sometimes a pa.s.sage would make him smile. More often, he would turn his snake's eyes abruptly on Hunt, with an expressionless spotlight intensity that it almost hurt to watch. Hunt seemed to feel it, always; a flush would start upward from his neck, and his voice would burn all the more earnestly. But those were never the times when he stole his glances at Arslan.

His mother had been after me all along to arrange some way for her to talk to Hunt. She had lost weight, and she'd never had a lot to spare. Her freckled face was pinched and grim, but she went about business as briskly as ever. On my way to Nizam's-or more often on my way back, because I'd be in better humor-she would waylay me. "Any chance, Franklin?"

"Nothing new, Jean, but you know there's always a chance."

What was less common was for me to hear anything from her husband. Arnold Morgan was generally considered the best attorney in town, or anyway the sharpest, and in my opinion he'd raised a fine son; but I didn't think any the better of him for the way he was acting now.

I caught up with him one day just coming out of his office. Business was still being conducted, Arslan or no Arslan. A lot of legal requirements were in abeyance, for lack of a government, and we weren't allowed to hold court, but there was still plenty to keep the lawyers busy. "h.e.l.lo, Arnold." I slowed down to fall into step beside him, and he looked a little annoyed.

"Good afternoon, Franklin. How's it going?"

"Not too bad." I waited; sooner or later he would have to ask about his son.

"Of course, Jean keeps us pretty well posted about Hunt," he said reluctantly, "and I know he's in good hands at your house. The best thing we can do for him now is not make waves."

"He's in General Arslan's hands," I said.

He threw a furious look at me and checked himself. "Fortunately, Hunt has been brought up to think for himself. He's a very mature boy." He settled his hat more firmly on his head, and added, "All this must be pretty hard on your ulcer."

"It's not an ulcer. It's a spastic pylorus."

"I beg your pardon."

What that came to was that Arnold Morgan was in no hurry to get his son back. A bright, polite, good-looking child was an a.s.set, no matter how much it took to support him, but now Hunt was tainted. It wasn't a question of morals. It would have been the same if he had lost his looks, or his grade average. But Jean was dying for him.

It wasn't often Hunt was alone with Luella and me, or either of us. But sometimes Arslan would trot upstairs for a few minutes, or swing out of the house for half an hour, leaving Hunt unoccupied. He would sit in his little pool of self-consciousness, waiting for whatever somebody might choose to do to him next. I always took the opportunity to speak to him and try to get some reaction, if it was nothing but a faint nod in response to some remark on the weather.

"Isn't there a poem with something about Bukhara in it? Something about 'lonely Bukhara'?" Arslan had just gone out with one of his officers, and the word Bukhara hung in the air.

Hunt nodded. He got up silently, took an old high school literature book from the shelf, and leafed straight to the page he wanted. He held the book out toward me without a word.

"Will you read it to me, please, Hunt?" I didn't want him to feel that reading was just part of the regimen Arslan inflicted on him.

He sat down, docile as always. "Matthew Arnold," he said quietly, smoothing the page. "'Sohrab and Rustem.'" He began to read. I didn't pay much attention to the words at first- My terrible father's terrible horse- But Hunt was reading it as if he'd been born to read it.

O Ruksh, thou art more fortunate than I; For thou hast gone where I shall never go, And snuff'd the breezes of my father's home.

And thou hast trod the sand of Seistan- It didn't sound exactly like what I remembered.

-But I Have never known my grandsire's furrow'd face- His voice shook with feeling. It was a question whether he would make it through.

But lodged among my father's foes, and seen Afrasiab's cities only, Samarcand, Bokhara, and lone Khiva in the waste, And the black Toorkmun tents; and only drunk The desert rivers, Moorgab and Tejend, Kohik, and where the Kalmuks feed their sheep, The northern Sir; and this great Oxus stream, The yellow Oxus, by whose brink I die.

He stopped. "That's all," he said, without lifting his eyes. "It's not much." But he was struggling to bring out something else, so I waited. "He," he began, and swallowed hard, and then got it out steadily enough, "he told me they really do ferment the milk of mares. I was surprised."

It didn't matter much what he had said; he had said something. His hands jammed the book shut convulsively, and he shot me a naked, stricken look-confessing everything, that he was a child, that he was alive, that Arslan was his grown-up. His eyes fell again; his shoulders shook, but before I could cross the room to him he stiffened again, and the look he flung at me this time stopped me dead-it was so plainly a look of fear.

I held out my hand for the book, and I saw his shoulders relax. "Thank you, Hunt," I said.

Chapter 6.

"That Morgan boy's a pitiful case, isn't he?" Fred Gonderling made it sound sympathetic, which was better than most people managed to do.

"He's in a tough spot, if that's what you mean. But he keeps his wits about him. I think he'll come out of it all right." It made me a little mad to hear Hunt Morgan dismissed as pitiful, like a failing patient in a nursing home. There was no telling what kind of a future lay ahead of that boy, except that it wouldn't be an easy one; but I thought he had more of a future than most of the people who were shaking their heads over him. There was something in Hunt that could hold out for a long time against everything Arslan was doing to him-given a little luck, long enough to come through on the other side.

By midsummer, he had been granted some of the trappings of freedom. He was never locked up now. He was allowed to come and go pretty much at will, except when Arslan had a use for him. He was even allowed to take a horse out of the Russians' stable and ride anywhere in the district, apparently. But the district was sown with soldiers, and I thought one of the permanent duties of every one of them was keeping an eye out for Hunt Morgan. Every time Jean had tried lying in wait along his usual routes-and she had tried it often enough, if not more-some Russian or Turkistani had sent her about her business. After a while I persuaded her to quit trying and wait till I could arrange something. Partly I wanted to keep her out of official trouble, and partly I wanted to keep her from finding out in the bluntest way that Hunt didn't want to see her.

"She's on your side, Hunt," I told him. "Forget about everybody else."