Outside the Dog Museum (13 page)

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Authors: Jonathan Carroll

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Fanny unplugged one ear and said much too loud (the disease of the Walkman listener), “WHAT’S THAT?”
“A book on Saru.”
“Let me see it when you’re done.” She put the earphone back in.
I am obnoxious, but sometimes Fanny outdid me in that department, if only by the way she phrased things or the timbre of her voice. There was almost never a “Please” or “May I?” It all came out sounding like a cop telling you to pull over. We’d talked about it before, but she had the additional bad habit of getting aggressively defensive about things when she realized she was wrong. I wasn’t on her side that day anyway because of her indifference to my epiphany, so that infuriating tone of voice encouraged me to throw the book out the window rather than hand it over.
I took a deep breath, opened to the first page. And started smiling right away because there, in the daft, hilariously bad English of a hack translated by an even worse translator, was the standard orgasmic introduction to a book of this sort.
“Saru has launched itself into the late twentieth century with a speed that touches on transgression. It has always been a maverick amongst its Middle East brethren states, but since the midseventies, when the Sultan launched his first Six-Year Plan, there has been no stopping this country from taking distinct advantage of its glorious natural resources, oil and natural gas, and using them to place itself even further on top of the world map.”
That oatmeal went on for twenty painful pages, but I read it all, in between glances out the window to see if we really were going toward the airport and not Disneyland.
The contrast between the Los Angeles out my window and the photographs in the book was appalling. Like the other Arab countries I’d visited, the real Saru appeared to be a beautiful sand land full of emptiness and unearthly quiet: a place for religious zealots who had their choice of deserts to disappear into to find God; a country where people built fires three thousand years ago and you could stand on a windy mountain and see camel caravans or black bedouin tents off in the distance. It reminded me of driving across Jordan and seeing, a hundred miles from Amman and then again deep in the sand hills of
Wadi Rum, men standing motionlessly by the side of the road, doing nothing. Looking serene as dead saints, they didn’t appear to be going or coming from anywhere. Just
there
, maybe for all time. It struck me as both spooky and marvelous; it hinted that if I only knew a little of how things worked here, I’d discover some new and very important facts of life. There was none of the fatal despair or angry madness on their faces that is seen on the motionless ones dying slowly on the street corners in Los Angeles or other American cities.
Unfortunately the book also had too many pictures of the graceless, ultramodern buildings that didn’t fit into the natural landscape at all but had been thrown up presto chango as soon as the bottomless pits of oil had been discovered in Saru forty years before.
For example, one Sultan had had vague socialist leanings, so someone in his cabinet had commissioned Felix Förcher, Walter Ulbricht’s favorite architect, to build a university complex that looked as if it belonged in the middle of Volgograd rather than a desert. What made me even angrier, looking at the other shameless abortions in the book (by some pretty damned famous people!), was that I knew exactly what a number of these architects had done: either pulled something out of a drawer that’d been around for years because no one wanted to build it, or rubbed their hands together thinking, Oh boy, now I get to try out every wacky notion I’ve ever dreamed of because no matter what I come up with, they’ll build it and pay me a fortune. Screw the needs of people, the geography of the site, the demands the building would have to fulfill over the years. Wotton, rewriting Vitruvius, said “Well-building hath three conditions: Commodity, Firmness, and Delight.” What cynics or scoundrels like Forcher had done in places like Saru was delight their bank accounts, or whims, and fucked the rest with no further ado.
Closing the book on a finger, I swore to myself that whatever I designed for this Sultan of Saru, it would incorporate everything I could find out about his country, the people, the culture. Sure, it
would have Radcliffe’s signature on it, but unlike other work I’d done, that signature would be very small and at the bottom of the picture. In fact, one might even need a magnifying glass to find it. I thought about those mysterious men on the desert road. Make something for them. Make something they could stand in forever and be content.
 
THE FLIGHT TO VIENNA
was funny and uneventful. Big Top had to be pushed into his cage/prison by three handlers who were not a bit happy about the fact he farted continually while they pushed. Ah, stinky revenge.
From Vienna the Sultan wanted us to fly in his private jet to Salzburg and then drive on to Zell am See, but both Fanny and I agreed we’d rather spend a couple of nights in Vienna and take the train to his mountain town.
Fanny didn’t know it, but there was another reason why I wanted to stop off there. The man who had been with Venasque when he died, Walker Easterling, lived in Vienna, and I wanted to talk to him about the old man’s last day. Easterling had called me from the Santa Barbara hospital to say Venasque had had a stroke and was in a coma. But when Sydney and I got there in the middle of the night, I was much too upset to have any kind of logical, calm discussion about details.
 
IF YOU’VE NEVER BEEN
to a place, you naturally create an image beforehand of what it will be like. Although my images have rarely been correct, I am always slightly resentful of how “off” I am in my conjuring, i.e., Radcliffe’s Vienna was going to be a “Guidebook City”; a combination of living museum and quaint wine gardens.
There are “Guidebook Cities” and there are “Living Cities.” You can visit a “Living City” with nothing more than your wallet and a map, but after a few days of walking, eating, and sleeping there you
begin to “get it”; to feel and understand its idiosyncrasies and greatness without guides or tours or visits to the place’s famous spots: London, Venice, Athens.
“Guidebook Cities” are stern and demanding—no slackers allowed. To know this town you
must
experience certain things: walk this street, smell this garden, visit this cathedral (page 82 in your books). See the Michelangelo, Mozart’s house, Napoleon’s sword. Words like “essential,” “extravagant,” and “tragic” are commonplace. There will be a final examination before you’re permitted to leave. Any questions?
The first Viennese surprise was passing through customs and seeing who was there to meet us: our smiling chauffeur from Los Angeles. Was it déjà vu or did he have a twin brother?
He took our baggage, struggled it out onto the street and while setting it down, gestured for us to stay put while he went for the car. After a particularly big smile, he raced off for the parking lot a few hundred feet away.
“Do you think they make those guys en masse in Saru?”
Fanny was sniffing the air like a setter. “What does it smell like here? I can’t figure it out.”
The weather was clear blue, sunny and cool. An airplane rumbled through its takeoff above us.
“It smells like grass. It smells like lawns.”
“That’s right! How strange. When was the last time you were in an airport that smelled green?”
The ride into town was along your typical airport-to-city freeway, but the difference was the road was flanked on both sides by more greenery and after a certain point, the Danube Canal. You sensed how far east you were when road signs said Prague and Budapest.
When we turned onto the Ringstrasse, passing Fabiani’s Urania Theatre, the city opened up like a beautiful gray fan.
“It’s so clean!”
“Look at those horse-drawn carriages.”
“Oh Harry, there’s the Opera House!”
The chauffeur was kind enough to take us on a short sight-seeing tour before dropping us at the hotel. Not that we could understand a word he was saying, but he pointed in all the right directions and we were able to get a good first glimpse of Freud’s home.
Vienna had the clean, orderly, tight-assed feel of a Communist city with Western frills: stores full of goodies, every other car a Mercedes, well-dressed women … . A town where people were suspicious and kept secrets. How did I know all this in half an hour? I didn’t, but walking around the place that night with Fanny told me things. The center of town was empty and quiet after nine o’clock. Even the drunks kept their voices down, but looking for an open bar to have a drink was tough. When we found one, the people inside were frantic with good cheer, as if they needed to store it up before going out again into those solemn streets.
I’ve often had interesting experiences in new cities my first day there, and Vienna was no exception. On an L.A. friend’s suggestion, we hunted down a Hungarian restaurant that was supposed to be atmospheric and serve perfect goulash.
The restaurant turned out to be a tiny hole-in-the-wall with eight tables and a two-hundred-pound waitress who looked like The Fabulous Moolah’s tag-team partner. We sat down and ordered the strangest-sounding things on the menu. I noticed when we walked in that the restaurant closed at ten, and since we arrived at nine-thirty, there were only a few people left. One of them was a shabby-looking old man who ate slowly while reading a newspaper in Cyrillic. By the time our food arrived, the three of us were the only customers left.
On finishing, the old man signaled to the waitress for what I thought was the check. Instead she walked to a sideboard and, opening a drawer, took out a thick handful of passports. When she put
them down in front of him, I looked as closely as possible without being too obvious and saw as he shuffled through them that they were all from Communist countries. Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary. I kicked Fanny under the table and gestured for her to check it out.
The man took a large yellow fountain pen from his pocket and began to write a long time in each of them.
What,
I don’t know, but I sure don’t like the idea of anyone writing in my passport, particularly if I own one from a part of the world infamous for issuing passports about as frequently as hens lay golden eggs.
When he was done, he gave the pile back to the woman, who quickly put them back into the drawer. He got up, didn’t pay, and left with a loud “Auf Wiedersehen!”
“What the hell was he doing?”
“I have no idea.”
“Wow. Welcome to Vienna.”
The next afternoon Easterling met me in the lobby of the Imperial Hotel. Although clearly in his forties, he had the young, clean-cut blond look of a Mormon proselytizer or a gay dancer on Broadway.
We walked across the street to a restaurant and small-talked our way for half an hour. Then a woman showed up, a real knockout, whom he introduced as his wife, Maris. She was the dark to his light—black hair, big marvelous brown eyes, pale skin.
I liked her even more when she said she’d been a fan of mine for years and proceeded to rattle off intelligent insights into my work. I was impressed and flattered, especially when she said she’d “begged” Walker to let her come to our meeting.
Basking in this, I didn’t notice the child really until it was standing by Maris’s elbow and looking at me.
“And this is our son, Nicholas. Zack, this is Harry Radcliffe.”
He put out his hand, but gave a “dead-fish” shake and wouldn’t look me in the eye.
“Is your name Nicholas or Zack?”
“Nicholas, but my friends call me Zack.”
I’m good at guessing kids’ ages, but this one was a mystery. He might have been anywhere from eight to thirteen. His face said nothing—no little-boy innocence there, but no twelve-year-old wiseguy either. Unfortunately, he wasn’t a good combination of his attractive parents’ features—Walker’s nothing-special blue eyes above Maris’s small nose and large teeth.
“How old are you, Nicholas?”
He looked at his parents and, putting a hand over his mouth to cover a giggle, said, “One.”
“Pretty big guy for one.”
The waiter came and we ordered. Maris took out some paper and colored pencils and gave them to Nicholas, who started drawing, one hand over the sheet so we couldn’t see what he was doing.
I talked about the shaman and why I’d wanted to meet with Easterling. He looked at me appraisingly. The food came.
“Venasque came and spoke to me after he died.”
I waited for more, but both Easterlings were watching to see how I’d react to that one. I cut a potato in half and shrugged. “No surprise. His dog, Big Top, has been protecting me since the old man died.” I briefly described the earthquake and how he’d led us to safety.
Nicholas was whacking away at his meal as if he were in a film on “fast forward.” I paid no attention because his father was saying Venasque had appeared in their bathroom as Connie the Pig.
“Connie died the same day as Venasque.”
“Right. He said she had to die for him to be able to come and talk to me through her form.”
“He came back as his pet pig? How’s
that
for a Jew reincarnating?”

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