Robert Stone - Dog Soldiers

“Is that a more enlightening drink?”

“Yes,” Dieter said. “The taste of Zen and the taste of rose-hip wine are the same.”

Across from the straight-backed refectory chair in which Marge sat was an altar on which stood a crucifix hung with Christmas balls and gift-wrapping paper. Behind it was a large reproduction of Ilya Repin’s portrait of the dying Moussorgsky.

“So he drinks about twenty pitchers a day of it,” someone said. It was Kjell, sprawled on a mattress in a confusion of electronic equipment — microphones, headphones, speaker tubes, and a labyrinth of insulated wires. A copy of Treasure Island lay face down across them.

“I make it myself,” Dieter said, “it’s stronger than beer. I’m sure the Jesuits did better but they had more organization.” He turned to Marge, who was fidgeting. “What would you like to do? Freshen up?”

“I guess so,” Marge said.

“It’s a long climb without the lift.” He stood hospitably. “It’s outside. I’ll show you.” Marge was going through her bag nervously. “I know where it is,” Hicks said. “I’ll show her.” He picked up the bag and led her through a curtained doorway at the rear of the altar and down a sunlit passage way that opened to an overgrown garden beside the stream.

“You want the John or this?” he asked, showing her the pack.

“I thought I might as well.”

“You’re going right from dilaudid on to the purest shit in America. I can see you passing the time on a ride but you better use some moderation.”

“What the hell,” Marge said, “I’ve already missed my modern dance class.” She took the pack from him. “It’s the kid, I guess. It bothers me.”

He took the works inside out of the wind and loaded the spike for her.

“Someday,” she said, “I’ll get what Gerald got.”

She held the needle point upward and looked at the sky.

“This might be a good place for it.”

“Now, now,” Hicks said to her.

With her tongue in the corner of her mouth, she jabbed her thigh, lay back, and handed him the needle. He sat watching her until she smiled.

“Feel better?”

“Are you kidding?” she asked him.

He left her nodding over the stream, dragged the seabag with the gun in it to a corner of the corridor, and went back to his beer.

“To suffering sentience,” Dieter said, raising his glass. “May it endure.”

“I think you’re loaded, Dieter.”

Dieter looked at the bag which he had set by his feet.

“More in the bag, is there?”

“There’s a lot more in the bag,” Hicks said. “I want to move it.”

“Is that why you came out here?”

“We’re hot. We’ve got to get loose of it.”

“I thought you might have come to stay awhile.”

“How about it, man?”

Dieter shook his head.

“Not here. Not me.”

Hicks let his eyes settle on Dieter’s.

“No? But Gibbs was just here. K-jell told me.”

Kjell looked up from Treasure Island.

“Gibbs brought mushrooms for the fiesta. That’s the only dope we have around here now.”

“Nobody asked you,” Dieter told his son. “Go tune your guitar.”

Kjell tossed his book aside and went out the front door.

“Gibbs brought mushrooms for the fiesta. That’s the only dope we have around here now.”

“Dieter, man, all you have to do is call some people.”

“I don’t call people anymore.”

“Look,” Hicks said, “I have to take care of it. I really went for this one.”

He told Dieter about Converse and Marge and the things that had happened. Dieter went to the refrigerator and took out another pitcher of wine.

“I envy your energy,” he said. “It was there,” Hicks said. “I went for it. Maybe next year I’ll do it all over again.”

“And then next year, it’ll be the same. Lots of scurrying around and no payoff. You should have stayed with us.”

“Well, the fishing was good,” Hicks said, “no question about that. I could put myself to sleep fishing that stream in my head. Pool by pool. Like Hemingway.” He rubbed his face and stood up. “I’m dead, man. I’ve got to crash.”

“Yes, crash,” Dieter said. “You know where it is.”

In the pool beside which Marge sat, the fish were nearly tame. They nibbled wrists and sailed confidently into cupped hands below the surface, but they could vanish in an instant at the slightest capturing gesture, leaving a tiny sunlit ripple. Marge sat and played with them beneath the vaults of time and silence to which she was becoming accustomed.

At some point, she decided to put herself in the water. She left her sour-smelling clothes on the bank and eased in. The bottom was pebbles, the water was sun-warmed; she ducked her head under and came up feeling faintly sick. The wind smelled of pines.

Kjell was sitting on a rock a few yards downstream. She turned around and waved to him mechanically.

“Want some soap?” he called to her.

“Sure.”

He ran inside and came out with a square of lye-smelling homemade soap.

“Look,” he said pointing to the edge of the building, “there’s a shower over there. You use that and the soap won’t hurt the fish.”

He watched her soberly as she climbed out of the stream and walked to the shower. The water was cold, much colder than the stream. She soaped herself as the boy looked on, rinsed, and wrapped herself sarongwise in the towel.

“O.K.?” she asked him.

“Sure.”

He walked across the creek from rock to rock and sat down on the bank opposite her.

“Nice place,” she said.

“Pretty nice. Nothing like it was though.”

“How was it?”

“Oh, it was full of people all the time.

“It’s better like this, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know. The fishing’s better.”

“How can you fish,” she asked him, “if you’re worried about soap hurting them? Doesn’t the hook hurt them?”

“I don’t think it’s the same,” Kjell said. “Some people around here used to say fishing was cruel. Dieter says the people who objected to it most are all murderers now.”

“You mean they’ve killed people?”

“Well, it could be symbolic. Or it could be they’ve killed people.”

“I see,” she said. “Have you lived here all your life?”

“Most of it. I was born in Paris though.”

He was quite perfect, an exquisite artifact of the scene like the Indian bells in the trees. He was a child of Advance as she herself was — born to the Solution at the dawn of the New Age.

It was impossible for her not to think of Janey but the drug dulled her panic nicely.

“Where’s your mother?”

“Back east in the hospital. She left here a long time ago.”

“She get tired of the crowds?”

“She thought he was God.”

“Well,” Marge said, “that was silly of her.”

“No,” Kjell said, “she thought he really was God. Some people used to. Once some regular church people came up here to ask him about it.”

“What did he tell them?”

“He kind of let on that he was.”

“Did he think he was?”

“He sort of did. Now he says he wasn’t any more God than anybody else but other people didn’t know they were God and he did.”

“Did you think he was God?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he is. I mean, how could you tell?”

“Now when I was a kid,” Marge said, “there was an organization called the League of the Militant Godless.”

“Goddess?”

“God- less ,” Marge said. “They did without.”

“And they were pissed off?”

“Everybody was pissed off when I was a kid. I was pretty pissed off myself.” She stood up and shivered inside the towel. “Hey, it’s nice up here. What is this place?”