Ross MACDONALD - The Moving Target

“Are you judging me?” she asked me, after a pause.

“Provisionally. The evidence isn’t in. I’d say you have nearly everything, and could develop into nearly anything.”

“Why ‘nearly’? What’s my big deficiency?”

“A tail on your kite. You can’t speed up time. You have to pick up its beat and let it support you.”

“You’re a strange man,” she said softly. “I didn’t know you’d be able to say things like that. And do you judge yourself?”

“Not when I can help it, but I did last night. I was feeding alcohol to an alcoholic, and I saw my face in the mirror.”

“What was the verdict?”

“The judge suspended sentence, but he gave me a tongue-lashing.”

“And that’s why you drive so fast?”

“Maybe it is.”

“I do it for a different reason. I still think your reason is a kind of running away. Death wish.”

“No jargon, please. Do you drive fast?”

“I’ve done a hundred and five on this road in the Caddie.”

The rules of the game we were playing weren’t clear yet, but I felt outplayed. “And what’s your reason?”

“I do it when I’m bored. I pretend to myself I’m going to meet something – something utterly new. Something naked and bright, a moving target in the road.”

My obscure resentment came out as fatherly advice, “You’ll meet something new if you do it often. A smashed head and oblivion.”

“Damn you!” she cried. “You said you liked danger, but you’re as stuffy as Bert Graves.”

“I’m sorry if I frightened you.”

“Frightened me?” Her short laugh was thin and cracked like a sea bird’s cry. “All you men still have the Victorian hangover. I suppose you think woman’s place is in the home, too?”

“Not my home.”

The road began to twist restlessly and rise toward the sky. I let the gradient brake the car. At fifty we had nothing to say to each other.

At a height that made me conscious of my breathing we came to a high-backed road of new gravel, barred by a closed wooden gate. A metal mailbox on the gatepost bore the name “Claude” in stenciled white letters. I opened the gate, and Miranda drove the car through.

“It’s another mile,” she said. “Do you trust me?”

“No, but I want to look at the scenery. I’ve never been here before.”

Apart from the road the country looked as if no one had ever been there. A valley dotted with boulders and mountain evergreen opened below us as we spiraled upward. Far down among the trees I caught the slight brown shudder of a deer’s movement and disappearance. Another deer went after it in a rocking-horse leap. The air was so clear and still I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear the rustle of their hoofs. But there was no sound above the whine of the motor. Nothing to hear, and nothing to look at but light-saturated air and the bare stone face of the mountain opposite.

The car crawled over the rim of a saucer-shaped depression in the top of the mountain. Below us, in the center of the mesa, the Temple in the Clouds stood, hidden from everyone but hawks and airmen. It was a square one-storied structure of white-painted stone and adobe, built around a central court. There were a few outbuildings inside the wire fence that formed a kind of stockade around it. From one of them a thin black smoke was trickling up the sky.

Then something moved on the flat roof of the main building, something that had been so still my eyes had taken it for granted. An old man was squatting there with his legs folded under him. He rose with majestic slowness, a huge leather-brown figure. With the uncut tangles of his gray hair and beard standing out from his head, he looked like the rayed sun in an old map. He stooped deliberately to pick up a piece of cloth, which he wound around his naked middle. He raised one arm as if to tell us to be patient, and descended into the inner court.

Its ironbound door creaked open. He emerged and waddled to the gate, which he unlocked. I saw his eyes for the first time. They were milky blue, bland and conscienceless, like an animal’s. In spite of his great sun-blacked shoulders and the heavy beard that fanned across his chest, he had a womanish air. His rich self-conscious voice was a subtle blend of baritone and contralto.

“Greetings, greetings, my friends. Any traveler who comes to my out-of-the-way doorstep is welcome to share my fare. Hospitality stands high among the virtues, close to the supreme virtue of health itself.”

“Thanks. Do we drive in?”

“Please leave the automobile outside the fence, my friend. Even the outer circle should not be sullied by the trappings of a mechanical civilization.”

“I thought you knew him,” I said to Miranda, as we got out of the car.

“I don’t think he can see very well.”

When we came nearer, his blue-white eyes peered at her face. He leaned toward her, and his straggling gray hair swung forward, brushing his shoulders.

“Hello, Claude,” she said crisply.

“Why, Miss Sampson! I was not looking for a visit from youth and beauty today. Such youth! Such beauty!”

He breathed through his lips, which were very heavy and red. I looked at his feet to check his age. Shod in rope-soled sandals with thongs between the toes, they were gnarled and swollen: sixty-year-old feet.

“Thank you,” she said unpleasantly. “I came to see Ralph, if he’s here.”

“But he isn’t, Miss Sampson. I am alone here. I have sent my disciples away for the present.” He smiled vaguely without uncovering his teeth. “I am an old eagle communing with the mountains and the sun.”

“An old vulture!” Miranda said audibly. “Has Ralph been here recently?”

“Not for several months. He has promised me, but he has not yet come. Your father has spiritual potentialities, but he is still caged and confined by the material life. It is hard to draw him up into the azure world. It is painful for him to open his nature to the sun.” He said it with a chanting rhythm, an almost liturgical beat.

“Do you mind if I look around?” I said. “To make sure he isn’t here.”

“I tell you I am alone.” He turned to Miranda. “Who is this young man?”

“Mr. Archer. He’s helping me look for Ralph.”

“I see. I’m afraid you must take my word that he is not here, Mr. Archer. I cannot permit you to enter the inner circle, since you have not submitted to the rite of purification.”

“I think I’ll have a look around anyway.”

“But that is not possible.” He placed his hand on my shoulder. It was soft and thick and brown, like a fried fish. “You must not enter the temple. It would anger Mithras.”

His breath was sour-sweet and foul in my nostrils. I picked his hand off my shoulder. “Have you been purified?”

He raised his innocent eyes to the sun. “You must not jest of these matters. I was a lost and sinful man, blind-hearted and sinful, till I entered the azure world. The sword of the sun slew the black bull of the flesh, and I was purified.”

“And I’m the wild bull of the pampas,” I said to myself.

Miranda stepped between us. “All this is nonsense. We’re going in to look. I wouldn’t take your word for anything, Claude.”

He bowed his shaggy head and smiled a close-mouthed smile of sour benevolence that made my stomach queasy. “As you will, Miss Sampson. The sacrilege will rest upon your heads. I hope and trust that the wrath of Mithras will not be heavy.”

She brushed past him disdainfully. I followed her through the arched doorway into the inner court. The red sun over the mountains to the west remained impassive. Without a look or another word Claude mounted the stone staircase inside the door and disappeared onto the roof.