Wonderland (77 page)

A long-haired boy was hawking newspapers. He held them up for people to see, but few passers-by bothered with him. His face was savage and weary; his hair bounced out angrily and comically. He showed no surprise when Jesse stopped to buy a paper for a quarter.

The little paper had red, white, and blue stripes across its front. It was called
THE HOLE WITH A VOICE
. The biggest headline was in black: N
IXON PLANS MASS CONCENTRATION CAMPS
. Other stories dealt with FBI agents’ activities, the “Most Wanted” list back in the United States, a communal picnic of draft dodgers and “freaks” that had evidently been broken up a few days before, and Prime Minister Trudeau, “Canadian puppet of imperialistic war-mongering nations.” Inside, a smudgy cartoon showed a middle-aged flabby man holding a gun to the head of a long-haired child, presumably his son.
We all die for our country
, the caption said.

Jesse glanced through the rest of the paper and tossed it into a trash can. He felt a quickening of his senses, a greedy, restless anticipation. He was going to find her and bring her home. He would not fail. That other Jesse urged him on, seemed to be straining his legs forward, forward. He was wasting time like this. Why had he bothered with that little newspaper? Wasting time, wasting time! He passed decorators’ shops where antique chairs were draped with costly silk or brocade material; galleries with enormous, awkward paintings that were mostly slashes of color; sleazy paperback stores; health-food stores; a cheap clothing store.… Jesse went into the store on an impulse. He bought a dark, pullover shirt of a cheap jersey material and asked the clerk to take out the tags and the pins. Then, while the clerk was ringing up his purchase, he thought of something else—new trousers. He picked out a pair of khaki pants on sale for $3.98, with standard cuffs. In a crowded little dressing room, with boxes and tissue paper scattered everywhere, he decided that the length was all right—a little short, but all right. So he transferred everything from his trouser pockets into these pockets, including the gun, and he pulled on the shirt, and had the clerk put his own clothes in a paper bag. Out on the street he threw the bag into a trash barrel. He was relieved to get rid of it so easily. But there was something more … something he should get rid of.… He took out his wallet, extracted his money, and placed the wallet inside the bag. This way he would have no identification in case anything happened. He could not be identified. Then, if all went well, he thought vaguely, he might stroll back this way and pick these things out of the trash barrel again … he must remember where the barrel was.…

Now he felt light on his feet and very energetic. He could not fail. In a telephone booth he leafed through the directory, looking for the listing of the “Hacienda Restaurant.” Under “Restaurants” he located something called the “Yonge Hacienda.” Good. That would be it. It was only a few blocks away. As he approached it, on the far side of the street, he saw that there was a tall tenement building in that block; that would be it, the place where Shelley was living. Up there, behind one of those grimy windows, his daughter was waiting. Watching? The building was five stories high, decrepit and Victorian and still handsome in a terse, uniform way. But its ground floor, at least along the street, had been improved with a new façade. There was a drugstore with a front of white tile, and an open-air pizza place, all garish red
wood. A clothing store with a black-and-white façade and a sign of a boy/girl dangling over its doorway, clinking little bells on a rope around the figure’s neck. The “Hacienda” was an ordinary restaurant with a bright orange sombrero for a sign.

Jesse crossed the street. A few young people were sitting on the steps to a door that was ajar, so that Jesse could dimly see part of a stairway. One boy held out a plate with a few coins on it. Jesse approached the young people, sensing his height in their eyes. Though it was rather chilly, one of the boys was barechested, and his hair was twisted into a single thick strand that rose from the very top of his head, fixed with rubber bands. Everything in his face rose, straining upward. His eyebrows looked permanently arched. He was no more than twenty, but his eyes had that pouchy, blurred, childish look that Monk’s had had. He held the plate up to Jesse.

These dying people!

Beside the boy, slouched as if exhausted, sat a girl of about eighteen, in a faded green outfit, a sari perhaps, pulled up carelessly above her knees. Her dirty feet were held out straight, small and blunt and charming in sandals decorated with beads. Jesse was struck by the sleepy tinted cast of her face, her eyelids smeared with a greasy blue ointment. In the center of her forehead there was a blue spot. Her brown hair fell to her waist.

The boy begged for something; Jesse could only catch the word “nutrition.” He took a bill out of his pocket and put it on the plate. He smiled formally at them. “I’m looking for someone you might know,” he said. They stared expressionlessly at him. He felt his heart enlarge with hope, with cunning. “A young man named Noel. I’m not bringing him bad news. Nothing bad.”

The girl stared up at him without blinking.

“Do you know anyone named Noel?” Jesse asked. “Does he live here?”

Nervously they shook their heads, no, they didn’t know, didn’t know anything. Jesse had the idea that they were afraid of him. He wanted to comfort them; he stood staring down at them, puzzled, thoughtful, while another part of him urged him into motion.

“Excuse me, will you let me by?” Jesse asked.

They moved at once for him. The girl scrambled to her feet and the boy with the plate inched over to one side, on his haunches. Another
boy—Jesse thought it was a boy—slid off the steps and squatted on the sidewalk, watching Jesse closely. There was no real alarm in their faces, only a momentary unsettling. They had the appearance of victims of war, photographed to illustrate the anonymity of war.

Jesse entered the dark foyer. He was intensely, lightly happy. It was as if he were coming home. The steep dark stairs in front of him might have been trick stairs, a fake cardboard obstacle that would collapse beneath his powerful weight. But he would get to where he wanted to go. It was dark: good. He needed darkness in which to breathe deeply, privately. From the street behind him lights flickered, showing a large feeble shadow of Jesse on the stairs. The shadow moved quickly, rippled quickly upward.

The tenement building was old, shabby, smelly. Unsurprising. Debris lay on the floor, a pile of garbage and papers. No light on the landing. The building was open, welcoming. Anyone could walk in. Anyone could run lightly up these stairs. It might have been the end of the world, with everything so open and dream-like and obliging! Jesse’s blood pounded with certainty. He was so powerful, his back so suddenly strong, certain.… He did not pause until he reached the third floor. There he went to a door that was partly opened; he heard a radio playing inside. Jesse rapped politely on the door. A girl in a short dress, or perhaps in a man’s shirt worn as a dress, poked her head out.

“I’m looking for a young man named Noel. He has blond hair.…”

“Oh, them. They’re upstairs,” the girl said brightly.

Jesse thanked her.

On the next floor he came up to a door that had been crudely painted—a kind of rainbow—while the rest of the hall was a drab, dull green. The painting on the door was of a peacock’s tail. Had Shelley painted it? He was about to open the door without knocking, when something made him hesitate. Sweat had broken out on his body. It was no good to be too anxious, too nervous; in that way fatal mistakes might be made.… And there was something profound about this door. Once opened, it might never be closed. Once he opened it, he would have to go in.

A light bulb burned in the hallway. No one was around. No one was watching.

He turned the knob.

Unlocked. He opened the door gently, stealthily. The room inside
had been a kitchen, but for some reason the stove had been taken out. There were holes in the plaster where it had been detached. But the refrigerator remained, scuffed and dirty, its door decorated with a smaller version of the peacock’s tail. A childish blurred spectrum of bright colors. Jesse frowned at the stench of the room. He saw the roaches crawling freely in the sink and along the floorboards.

“Is anyone here?” Jesse said.

Someone jumped up and ran toward him from another room—appeared in the doorway gaping at Jesse. He was about Jesse’s height. His curly hair hung in damp ringlets about his face; it was silver-blond.

“Who are you? What do you want?” the man asked.

Jesse guessed he was about thirty. He was very thin. Emaciated chest, shoulder bones that seemed to lurch nervously forward, the bones of his face severe and ascetic.

“I’m a friend.…” Jesse said, his face frozen into a small stiff smile. He held out his hands as if to show that he was carrying nothing, no weapons.

“Are you from the peace clinic?” the man asked doubtfully.

“Yes,” said Jesse.

“Is this Friday night, then?” the man asked, staring in bewilderment at Jesse. “No, this isn’t Friday night. This isn’t Friday night.”

His eye fell to Jesse’s trousers, and Jesse pulled his shirt down lower, still smiling. “How many of you live here?” he asked. He looked over the man’s shoulder. The next room was not much larger than the kitchen. Someone was sitting by a window, looking toward him. Someone else—two figures—were lying on a mattress on the floor. The room was crowded with boxes and junk, piles of clothing, towels. Jesse saw the entire room in that first instant, but then his vision seemed to shift out of focus and he stood there, staring helplessly.

“What do you want?” the man with the silver-blond hair asked sternly.

“Is your name Noel?”

The man did not back away. Though his face was thin it was blunt and hard; he had a jaw like a man’s fist.

“What …? Who …? My name is St. John,” he said with an ironic bow.

“You are not St. John!” the person by the window cried, jumping up. “I am St. John!”

“Noel is gone. Took off. Vanished. Noel is not in Toronto tonight,” the blond-haired man said, staring at Jesse. His thin, insolent lips shaped themselves into a nervous smile.

The boy by the window ran over and tried to seize Jesse’s hand. “He isn’t St. John, I’m St. John. He’s been after me ever since I came here. He wants to take me over. I am St. John and no one else can claim to be St. John.…” This boy was younger than the other, but not very young; he was not really a boy at all; his pock-marked face gleamed with anguish. Jesse paid no attention to him and looked again at the couple on the mattress—two boys—a boy with a dark untidy mustache and ragged hair, who was sitting up, and another, lying flat and senseless on his back, his arms folded across his stomach as if they had been laid there reverently.

Jesse’s heart pounded. That he had come so far, only to fail.…

“You’re not St. John!” the boy cried. “Why do you persecute me, Noel? Isn’t your own soul enough for you? Why do you want to possess us?”

He clutched at Jesse’s arm and began to weep. “Noel wants to take me over. He wants to claim the authorship of the
Revelations
—my life-work—he wants to claim them for himself—”

“Noel is not in town tonight,” the blond man said. “You won’t find him. He’s in Montreal on business.”

“When do you expect him back?” Jesse asked.

“Noel is evil. Noel does not exist. Noel has no soul of his own,” the boy cried angrily.

“Did you want to leave a message for Noel? Or did you bring him something?” the blond man asked.

Jesse was trembling. Did they notice? But the boy was so upset, whimpering, he kept dancing around and trying to tug at Jesse’s arm … and the man with the silver-blond hair, his hands on his hips, appearing so stern, really had a raw, edgy, wild look to his eyes, as if he too were hiding his terror.

“No, no message. Nothing,” said Jesse.

“Then why are you here?”

“You didn’t bring us anything?” the boy sitting up on the mattress cried. Though his voice showed disappointment, he got to his feet with a bouncy spring and came over to shake hands. “My name is Wolcott. I’m from Peoria. I know you’re an American, I know your accent—Chicago?
I want some news from home, authentic news, not what you read in the newspaper. I want some citrus fruit. What I need is nutrition, good sound nutrition, and I need somebody to take me seriously,” he said, rubbing at his mustache, “not like this clown Noel, Noel is just a joke … oh, Noel is evil, but evil can be laughed at too … I laugh at evil … I laugh at death itself. Mister, what are you running up here? What are you peddling?”

“Does anyone else live here with you?” Jesse asked.

“Oh, nobody, nobody! People come and go and we can’t account for them. That’s my little brother over there. We’re all tented up here, we help one another, it’s like the Boy Scouts back home.… There are deaths in the Boy Scouts too, but they are kept secret. Tents collapse, boys die in campfires and drown on canoe trips. Those deaths are kept secret, but ours are shouted from steeples.…”

“Shut your mouth,” the blond man said.

Wolcott darted away behind Jesse, giggling.

“You’re Noel, then?” Jesse asked the blond man.

The man shrugged his shoulders.

The boy on the mattress stirred as if this noise annoyed him. He drew the back of his hand across his forehead the way Jesse often did. That weariness, that reluctance.… Jesse could see, in spite of the dim light in the room, that the boy’s skin was yellow.

“Is he sick?” Jesse said.

“No. Oh, maybe the flu. Nothing much,” Noel muttered.

“What flu?” said Jesse.

“The flu. Any flu. He’s okay.”

“Angel will be all right as soon as the nutrition man arrives,” Wolcott said cheerfully. “That will clean out our systems nicely. Noel can’t do it anymore. Noel is wearing out, eh, Noel? Lost his contacts. In fact, he’s hiding. He’d like to be in Montreal, eh, but how can he get there without appearing on the street …?”

Jesse went over to the boy on the mattress. He stared down—his heart pounding in that slow, heavy, clutching way—and saw that this was not a boy at all, but a girl—her hair cut off close to the skull, jaggedly, her face wasted, yellow, the lips caked with a stale dried substance.