Уолтер Тевис - The Steps of the Sun

So I tried to accommodate myself to it as best I could. They must have had erection pills ground up in my food and drink; I had a hard on whether I liked it or not at almost all times. My physical health was excellent and I found myself on my back for hours a day, my mind often totally divorced from the movement of my hips and the sensations of my bruised penis—pleasuring one general or the other, with my eyes squeezed shut and lines of Shakespeare in my head:

For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground

And tell sad stories of the death of kings…

Sometimes my thoughts would be jarred by the orgasm of my partner. I had become a thinking dildo, a mournful captive of my adolescent dreams.

Sometimes when alone in the room I would stand back from the bar, a drink in my hand, and look at myself in the big mirror. My work had narrowed my waist and firmed my abdomen even more than the Nautilus machines could, and I was still tanned. The smell of jasmine and of just-departed flesh might be in my nostrils. A line from Yeats would sometimes come into my head:

In dreams begin responsibilities…

and then I would wonder how long it would go on. In a fashion time-honored in the trade of prostitution, I found myself going to sleep drunk every night and so hung over in the mornings that my first two or three tricks might have been a continuation of the night’s unpleasant dreams. My God-tricks! I had no endolin and no morphine. I ate, drank, slept and copulated. I had quit exercising, since my work was vigorous enough. No. I had quit exercising because I didn’t feel like a man anymore. My underwear was always returned to me perfumed, and sometimes flowers were sent to the room by one of my lovers. When we drank together the woman would pour the drinks. The oldest of them—a wiry brigadier in her fifties—liked to feed me my desserts with a spoon. I ate them greedily.

It ended as quickly as it had begun. One Thursday morning, in the week before Christmas, my first visitors were a pair of policemen in gray uniforms and red armbands. They were polite and clearly intelligent. I had no idea where they were going to take me and didn’t particularly care; my main feeling was relief that I didn’t have an erection when they woke me. I dressed and left without breakfast.

The day was horribly raw, a Chicago-in-January day in Peking, with ice everywhere in the streets. Everybody but me was wearing puffy overcoats and boots and enormous caps. Fortunately, the limousine was parked near the building and I made it inside without frostbite. It felt like thirty below. In the car I was glad to be in the company of men again; I felt I could live without women forever. I leaned back in the middle of my seat.

It was a long trip. It took an hour to get out of Peking, and we followed a winding road through bare, ice-covered trees for another hour before turning down a narrow path and beginning to climb a series of hills. At first there were scrubby bushes flanking the narrow road, then snow. The gray pavement had been plowed flawlessly, although there was no sign of habitation. After an hour the snow was high on each side of us and we were humming at a smooth thirty miles an hour through what felt like a cloud tunnel. I was shockingly hungry. Little spots whirred in front of my eyes against the dead white of the world outside. It was spooky and peaceful, like a shared dream, and no one spoke for over an hour. The driver was a wiry old Chinese with a chauffeur’s cap; he kept both hands on the wheel and both eyes on the road. Once I cried out when a jackrabbit shot across in front of us like an apparition. The car was very warm; after a while I fell asleep.

I was awakened by a stop. Outside the driver’s window two guards, so muffled around the faces I couldn’t tell whether they were men or women, were standing like huge chessmen. The driver opened the back door with a switch; icy air stung my face; one of the guards bent down toward me, staring over a high collar and muffler and from under an enormous furry cap. Sunlight glinted on a bayonet. I stared back into sharp, ambiguous eyes; the guard nodded, said something to the driver and closed the door. We drove on.

We were on top of the hills now, rumbling through plowed snow along a flat plain. There were no features, no sign of life. It was like a snow-covered Belson. I stretched and rubbed my eyes. Somehow my hunger had gone. The sun was out; we drove through streamers of mist that were now lambent, along a perfectly straight road across the plain. After ten minutes I could see in the distance a red pagoda roof.

As we came closer and slowed, I made out a house or temple about the size of my parents’ home in Ohio, with a few wooden steps and a simple door in front. Snow had been cleared away from all around for a radius of about fifty feet. The roof was bright in the sun. On it sat a large bird or the image of a bird, head tucked under its wing. A dove.

Our car pulled up to the front steps. A tall, muffled guard was waiting, with no rifle this time. He held an enormous greatcoat open for me. I stepped from the warm car into it, pulling its huge collar around my ears. The guard took me firmly by the elbow and led me up the steps. The door opened. I walked inside, the weight of the coat giving gravity to my movement. I felt astonishingly calm, and the wearing of that coat for only a minute conferred dignity on my spirit as well as heft, as though it had been the robe of a Manchu emperor or Prospero’s magic cloak.

I was in a small room with no furniture. The bare floor was teak; ink brush drawings of birds hung on the walls.

There was a wide, green-lacquered door at the far side of the room. I walked toward it and as it swung open I saw daylight and green foliage. I heard the sound of falling water. Standing in the doorway I looked up at a skylight, with a willow tree brushing its top against it. Through ferns, light sparkled on water. I took a step forward and saw the surface of a pool. A gravelly, womanly voice said, “Come in, Mr. Belson.”

“Mourning Dove!” I said. “I hoped it would be you.”

I stepped forward onto gravel, turned at the feathery stand of ferns, walked around the pond and its small waterfall. A couple of abrupt chunks startled me; frogs had jumped into the water at my approach and were now peering at me from wet bubble eyes, the rest of their dark bodies floating below the surface in subaqueous murk.

At the other side of the pond on a raised wooden dais between willow trees sat Mourning Dove Soong in a white wicker chair. Her hair was white and she wore a plain black robe. She looked much older and terribly frail. Her face was chalky and, as I came closer, massively wrinkled around the intelligent black eyes. She was looking at me steadily. On her lap slept a gray cat. I walked to the chair across from her and took it.

She looked at me for several moments. Then she said, in English, “You are calm now, Mr. Belson.”

“Yes. A lot has happened since we first met. Some of the experiences have been calming.” I wondered if she knew what I had been doing in that room back in Peking. “I hope your life has been a pleasure for you.”

“It has not been,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” I said, truly feeling sorry. “Is it the endolin?”

“I am not concerned with endolin,” she said. “Would you like tea?”

“Yes. And food too, if I may?”

“You were not fed in Peking?”

“Not since last night.”

She nodded. “That would be Major Feng. I told her to treat you well, but she believes I do not care anymore. I will remind her eventually.” She pressed a button on the arm of her chair, and I heard a soft buzz in another room. A boy of about twelve came in, dressed in a black robe like Mourning Dove’s. He stood before her and bowed slightly.