Nathaniel Rich - The Mayor's Tongue

Every time you reveal a secret to someone," said Eakins, "part of you dies. One knows oneself by one's secrets. If you reveal everything, you're empty — just a collection of facts in other people's minds.

"For years, I've been giving away my secrets in my books. Sometimes directly, as in my memoirs, and sometimes indirectly, as in my poetry and fiction. I reveal my darkest perversions, my guilt, my fear, and my anger, no matter how irrational or poorly it reflects upon me. I have been killing myself slowly. But it's not all a loss. In return, I have gained the secret of eternal life. What I'm going to tell you is not only my most coveted secret, it is also the key to my immortality."

Eugene did not listen without skepticism to this line of talk, but he nodded along, not wishing to betray Eakins's trust — or arouse his anger.

"Please go on. I promise not to repeat anything you tell me."

"I don't really care what you repeat, God damn it," said Eakins. "I'm writing all this down in the last chapter of my next book, so soon the world will know it. No one, however, will believe it. Except you.

"As it was reported in the press, I disappeared from public view one summer thirty years ago. I had last been seen in Duino, on my way to hike in the Carso mountains. The trip went as planned — I found a trail leading up from the Timavo River, and followed it through the forest, past Aurisina and Ternova. The path led in a loop, but when I spotted the peak of a limestone mountain through a clear patch in the woods, I decided to chop through the brush to reach it. At the edge of the precipice, I spotted this inland valley, with its beech groves and crisscrossing streams, surrounded by four additional mountain peaks. And at the rear end of the valley, I saw a gateway to the sea. As far as I could tell, the valley was completely uninhabited.

"People assume that man has trampled every single square inch of earth, but this isn't true. There are lots of places on this world that are unexplored, and not just the peaks of the Rocky Mountains in British Columbia or the polar ice cap or the ocean floor of the Marianas Trench. Most men, when faced with the option, choose to trample land that has been already heavily trampled over. There are far more Alexanders and Corteses than there are Lewises and Clarks. Even so, few explorers would ever think of trekking into a region so travel-worn as this one, a swath of land that sits on the border of the most heavily touristed country in the world.

"I hiked down the cliff face into the valley, my traveling sack full of enough provisions to last me another month. I was stunned by the rough beauty of the land — the scattered plane trees, the rangy cordgrass, the shrubs of juniper and cashew.

"I was walking through this valley when I heard, from behind a little mound, a horrible, wet cough. It was a man — a disheveled, wounded drunk with purple sores on his mouth and his arm in a paper sling. He coughed and spat and tumbled gently down the hill, finally rolling to a rest at my feet. I realized — and had even known from the moment I had heard his cough — that I had met this man before. And yet I could not remember where.

"'Hello there,' he said. And then, 'Gawdamnit! Izityew?'

"I stared at his cast, then at his face, and then at his cast again. His cast was an impediment — it seemed out of place, but everything else looked familiar to me. And then, when I saw that one of his legs was a wooden stump, I knew who he was: Bobby Bazlen, the alcoholic bum whom I always try to fit into my novels. Despite his inanition, incoherence, and general sloppiness, his presence signifies some dramatic transformation in the main character, or some foolhardy leap of plot.

"And so my first thought, while staring at this wreck of a man, was: have I gone insane? Followed shortly by: I have hallucinated myself into my own fiction. And that is the insanity.

"Bazlen gasped at me, his breath reeking of gin. 'Eakins,' he said. His voice was badly obscured by liquor, but I understood him. Each word was accompanied by a shudder. 'Eakins! Eakins! You've come! To! Join us! To! Save! Us!'

"The grove behind him rustled and for a moment appeared to come slowly toward me — like Birnam Wood to Dunsinane. The noise grew louder and louder, until it differentiated into a number of human voices. Some were beatific, some frightened, and others were venomous and filled with loathing. There were sighs and benedictions and I think one woman was even ululating. I heard words like Blessed Cursed Praise Be to Our Damn This Father Monster Lord Our God Lucifer Savior Zeus Loki Judas The-One-and-Only Son of Man. Chaos had descended over this tranquil landscape."

Eakins was looking off in the distance now, over the cliff. He seemed to have forgotten about Eugene.

"A crowd of people rushed at me, bowing and swooning; another group ran screaming into the hills. Some came with malice, but they were restrained by cooler heads and pinned to the ground. I tried to ward them off as respectfully as I could, but as soon as I raised my hands, everyone fell to the ground. Out of fear, perhaps, or awe, or some unidentifiable spiritual fervor. But who were these people? They were parents and children and grandchildren. They were lovers and enemies, rivals and friends; they were explorers, college students, scientists, doctors, patients, academics, writers, firemen, and steel mill workers. Mississippian poets, New Orleans river salesmen, New York admen, French plumbers, Aztec princesses, Slavic mobsters, and South African schoolteachers. The largest group, of course, was the throng of beautiful women, who seemed to have stepped right out of my own fantasies.

"There were hundreds of them and they kept racing through the shadowy grove from the valley behind it, running toward me and falling before they came too close. And I recognized every one. Because I had created them all. They were my characters, from my books — the heroes and the extras alike, all together in that valley, praying to me and bowing and laughing and screaming and chanting as if they had witnessed the coming of the Lord."

Eugene narrowed his eyes at Eakins, trying to figure out whether he was joking. But Eakins looked solemn and determined. His breath had settled into a normal rhythm and he grew increasingly animated, punctuating his speech with forceful air punches.

"They led me in a dancing, jangling procession through the grove." His voice was booming. "We came to a muddy, godforsaken pit at the back of the valley. It looked like a refugee camp. Several fallen trees, covered by rags blowing in the sea breeze, were propped up in ramshackle lean-tos. Small children played in the dirt, their faces covered with mud and their feet cut by pebbles. Elderly people, too ill or decrepit to have joined the procession, glared balefully from under their tents. Lazy flies circled their heads. It was painful to see such disgraceful indigence in this bright and healthful setting.

"Yet despite their altered appearances and torn garments, I knew them all. These children here were the nephews of Squire Froth from The House of Leicester —and there were the Squire and Baronet Leicester themselves, warming their hands by a dying bonfire. The whole Botton family was there, old blind Keftir and his nurses, little Twiffle and his milk maidens were debating something fierce with Octavian Caesar and Franklin Acton, and there, in loose groups, were Esquire and Jeb Pickett and the private eye Jaymes Silk and Marie Mallon, the young thief Turk and his little girlfriend Alcida, Trace Burnhoof, and Audrey, the inbred cousin of the revolutionary hero Jean D'Artagnan, who was then yelling something at me in a crude, hysteric French. I could go on and on, but you get the point. They were all there, all of my characters, living together in this ragtag camp in various stages of disintegration, prostration, and decrepitude.