The Quest: A Novel (38 page)

H
enry Mercado, wearing a bathrobe and undershorts, sat on the balcony of his top-floor room sipping coffee. The fog was lifting, and in the distance he could see a single-engine black aircraft rising off a hilltop airstrip. He said, “That must be Frank.”

Vivian, sitting next to him, replied, “He said to look for him about seven.”

Mercado glanced at her. She was wearing a short white
shamma
that she’d picked up somewhere, and she had obviously worn it to bed. The
shamma
reminded him of Getachu’s camp. The parade ground. The pole. He wondered if she’d thought about that.

Vivian told him, “Frank said he’d do a flyby and tip his wings.”

He supposed that meant she had to leave and get to her own room—or Purcell’s room—so that Purcell would not see both of them having coffee on Henry Mercado’s balcony at 7
A.M
. But she didn’t move.

To make conversation, he said, “This is a squalid city.”

“It is not Rome.”

“No. This is the Infernal City.”

She laughed.

He had developed a strong dislike for Addis Ababa in 1935, and forty years later nothing he’d seen had changed his opinion. Even the Ethiopians disliked it. It was like every semi-Westernized town he’d seen in Africa or Asia, combining the worst aspects of each culture. Its only good feature was its eight-thousand-foot elevation, which made the climate pleasant—except during the June-to-September rainy season when mud slid down the hills into the streets.

He poured more coffee for both of them. Vivian put her bare feet on the balcony rail and her
shamma
slipped back to her thighs.

He was surprised that she had accepted his invitation for coffee on the balcony, and more surprised when she came to his door wearing only the
shamma
and little else. Or nothing else.

On the other hand, Vivian was of another generation. And sometimes he thought of her as a child of God: naturally innocent while unknowingly sensuous.

He looked out at the black aircraft in the distance. It was circling over the hills and making steep, dangerous-looking turns. He said, “I hope he’s a good pilot.”

She was staring at the aircraft and didn’t reply.

He looked out again into the city. Like all the cities of his youth, he hated this place because it reminded him of a time when he was hopeful and optimistic—when he believed in Moscow and not Rome. Now he was burdened with years and disappointments, and with God.

If he looked hard enough into the swirling fog below, he could see Henry Mercado dashing across Saint George Square to the telegraph office. He could hear the roar of Italian warplanes overhead. He could and did remember and feel the pleasure of making love to the nineteen-year-old daughter of an American diplomat in the blacked-out lobby of the Imperial. Why the lobby? He had a room upstairs. What if they’d snapped on the lights? He smiled.

“What is making you smile, Henry?”

“What always makes me smile?”

“Tell me.”

So he told her about having sex in the lobby of the Imperial Hotel during an air raid blackout.

She listened without comment, then stayed silent awhile before saying, “So you understand.”

He didn’t reply.

“We do things when we’re frightened.”

“We were not frightened of the air raid.”

“We want to hold on to another person.”

“I didn’t follow this person to Cairo.”

She didn’t reply.

He looked out at the Imperial Hotel. Its surrounding verandas
seemed to sag. He had the nostalgic idea of checking in there instead of here, but maybe it was enough to visit once a day when he went to the press office. In fact, the places that once held good memories were best left as memories.

The aircraft was climbing to the north, and Mercado saw that it cleared a distant peak by a narrow margin. Vivian didn’t seem to notice, but he said to her, “I hope you’re prepared to do some aerial photography in a small plane with a novice pilot.”

“You should stay here, Henry.”

“I don’t care if I die, Vivian. I care if you die.”

“No one is going to die. But that’s very… loving of you to say that.”

“Well, I love you.”

“I know.”

He didn’t ask the follow-up question and stared out at Addis Ababa. It was dirty and it smelled bad. Old men with missing pieces of their bodies were a walking reminder of old-style Ethiopian justice. Adding to the judicial mutilations were the wounded of recent and past wars. And then there were the deformed beggars, the diseased prostitutes, and the starving barefoot children running through donkey dung. A quarter million already dead from the famine. How was he supposed to believe in God? “How can this be?”

“How can what be?”

“
This
.” He swept his arm over the city.

She thought a moment, then replied, “It’s good that you still care.”

“I don’t care anymore.”

“You do.”

He said to her, “Sometimes I think I’ve been around too long.”

“I think you told me that once before.”

“Did I? What did you say?”

“I don’t remember.”

But
he
did. She’d said to him, “How can you say that when you have me?”

He looked at her and his heart literally skipped a beat.

The aircraft was now directly over the city, making tight banking turns as they’d have to do when they were shooting photographs of the ground. He thought she should leave before Purcell decided to do
a flyby. But she just sat there, her feet on the rail, with her legs parted too wide, sipping coffee, watching her lover fly. Finally he said to her, “You should go to your own balcony. Or his.”

Again, she didn’t reply.

Mercado stood, but did not go inside.

The sun was coming over the eastern hills, burning off the last of the ground mist. The capital of the former empire was a straggly city of empty lots with gullies and ridges everywhere. The few high-rise buildings were separated by miles of squalid huts that sat in clusters like primitive villages. Banana trees and palms shaded the corrugated metal roofs of the huts from the blazing sun. Vermin and insects swarmed through the city, and at night hyenas howled in the surrounding hills. Whatever hope there had been for this city and this country under the emperor’s halfhearted reforms was now drowned in a sea of blood. A long night was descending on this ancient land, and if a new dawn ever arrived, he would not see it in his lifetime.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“I see things more clearly now. And I am feeling sorry for myself, and for these people.”

“You’re a good man, Henry.”

“I was.”

“We will find that good, happy, and optimistic man. That’s why we’re here.”

He nodded. This was the last quest. He hoped for salvation, but was prepared for the final disillusionment.

He looked down into the square dominated by the city’s only beautiful building, the octagonal Cathedral of Saint George. The square was filled with beggars by day and prostitutes by night. To further desecrate the great Coptic cathedral, it had been built by Italian prisoners of war captured at Adowa during the first Italian invasion of 1896. He found that an irony of sorts, or maybe a great cosmic joke.

Vivian said, “Here he comes.” She pointed.

The black aircraft was coming in from the east so that the pilot’s side would be facing the hotel as it passed by. Mercado noticed the aircraft was flying dangerously low and slow as it approached the hotel. If he stalled, he had no altitude to recover.

Vivian seemed not to understand the danger, and she was smiling and waving.

Mercado could not take his eyes off the aircraft, expecting it to nosedive any second. What was Purcell thinking? That’s what happens when you show off for a woman, Mercado thought. You die. And if Frank Purcell died… He looked at Vivian.

She was standing on her toes now, waving wildly. “Frank! Over here!” She jumped up and down.

The aircraft dipped its wings about a hundred yards from the balcony, indicating he’d seen them. Mercado gave a half wave, and as the plane passed by he could see Purcell’s face, looking at them.

Vivian shouted, “He saw us! Did you see him, Henry?”

He didn’t reply. Mercado watched the aircraft as it gained speed and continued west. He expected that Purcell would come around for another flyby, but he continued on and disappeared against the background of the tall western mountains.

Vivian remained standing at the rail, looking at the fog-shrouded hills.

Mercado was going to ask her to leave now, but he didn’t. Finally he said, “I trust this will not cause a problem.”

She turned her head toward him. “We had coffee. Waiting for Frank.”

He nodded.

She turned and put her back against the rail. “You were not the jealous type.”

“No.”

“We all bathed together.”

“Yes… well, bathing together and sleeping together are different things.”

“One is a prelude to the other. And you knew that.”

“Don’t try that argument on me, Vivian.”

She walked past him into his bedroom.

He stood on the balcony for a few seconds, then went through the sliding door.

She was lying on his unmade bed, her
shamma
still on, but pulled back, revealing her jet black pubic hair.

He looked at her, but said nothing.

She said to him, “This will make everything right between us.”

He understood what she meant. This was her way of saying, I’m sorry. I’m giving you back your pride. I’m taking away your anger.

He dropped his robe to the floor, then slipped off his shorts and got into the bed. He knelt between her wide-spread legs, bent forward, and started to pull off her
shamma
, but she said, “No. Like this.”

He looked at her.

“Like this, Henry. You understand.”

He nodded.

She reached out and took his hard penis in her hand and pulled him toward her. He lay down on top of her and she guided him in, then wrapped her legs around his buttocks and pulled him in tighter.

He began thrusting against her tight grip, and within a minute she climaxed and let out a long moan—the same moan he’d heard that night hanging from the pole. He kept thrusting inside her and she climaxed again, then he felt himself coming into her.

They lay side by side, holding hands, gazing at the paddle fan spinning slowly on the ceiling.

She asked him, “Do you understand this?”

“I do.”

“And you understand that this is between two friends.”

He didn’t reply.

“I hurt you, and now I feel better, and I want you to feel better. About me. And about… all of us.”

“I understand.”

“I hope you do. If not right now, then later.”

He knew that she meant when he next saw Purcell. When the three of them sat together having a drink, the score was even, even if Purcell did not know that. But Henry Mercado did.

And actually he did feel better already. The anger wasn’t there any longer, or if it was, it was not helpless anger. But what remained was a sense of loss. He wanted to be with her.

He said to her, “At least tell me you enjoyed it.”

“I always did.”

“Encore?”

She glanced at the clock. “I’d better get moving.”

“Rain check?”

“No. This will not happen again.” She sat up and started to swing her legs out of the bed, but he put his hand on the back of her head and gently pulled her toward him.

She hesitated, then let him bring her head and face down on his wet penis, which she took into her mouth.

She knelt between his legs and her long, raven black hair fell across his thighs as her head bobbed up and down.

He came and his body arched up, and she stayed with him until there was nothing left inside him.

Vivian sat back on her haunches, and he looked at her, his semen running down her chin. Their eyes met and she smiled, then pulled off her
shamma
and stood on the bed. She turned completely around for him, and he watched her but said nothing.

Vivian jumped off the bed, wiped her face with a tissue, slipped on her
shamma
, and moved toward the door. “Thank you for coffee.”

“Anytime.”

She left, and he stared up at the rotating fan. “I love you.”

P
urcell took a taxi from the airstrip to the hotel and called Mercado in his room to meet him for coffee. The two men sat in the Hilton cocktail lounge, which doubled as the breakfast room.

Mercado had hoped Vivian would be there so he could have that post-coital moment that she suggested would make him feel better. It wasn’t the same, somehow, with only the two cuckolded men having coffee. He asked, “Where is Vivian?”

“I called both rooms, but she’s not answering.”

Mercado wanted to say, “Well, she’s not still in my room.” Instead he said, “Probably napping. She was up early.” He suggested, “Try her again.”

“She’ll be down.”

A waiter came by with breakfast menus and Mercado said, “Every time I eat, I think about the famine.”

“Order light.”