Stanley Elkin - George Mills

“Listen to this bird,” Bufesqueu said. “He’s marching off to a town where the first guy to spot him will already be thinking not how to kill him but how best to dispose of his body after he’s dead, and his heart’s in his head and his head’s up his ass. What, you’re a snowman? You got coals for eyes? Open them up, you’re melting. Kickbacks! ”

“Kickbacks?”

“Sure kickbacks, of course kickbacks! Kickback kickbucks! The fix is in. The fix has always been in. The two-hundred-year-old fix. The peddlers vigorish the Busboy, the Busboy kicks back to the Steam Table Man, the Steam Table gives to the Meat Cut, the Meat Cut slices off a piece for the Soup Man, the Soup Man ladles it out to the Grand Vizier, the Grand Vizier sees to the Sultan and the Sultan gave at the office. And that’s why we continue to exist! You know what’s the best business there is?”

“I don’t know anything,” George Mills said.

“The best business there is is a deprived, captive population. A prison’s a good business. A garrison like ours is. Mom and Pop stores on desert islands.”

“If you’re so smart why ain’t you rich?”

“I am rich. They say they let you keep Khoraghisinian’s bribegold.”

“They say I captured it in a fair fight,” Mills said gloomily.

“More snowmen.”

“But me? How would they know about me?”

“In town you mean? The good people who want to kill you, who want to hide your face?”

“Yes.”

“George, George, those walls only look impenetrable.”

“Money talks.”

“Talks? It sings soprano. But it didn’t need any money to make you famous. Penny dreadfuls tell your story. There’s broadsides and chapbooks and solos for cello. The ruthless, Christian Janissary from Blighty Limey Land. The folks hate you, Mills!”

“I’m done for.”

“Nah, I have a plan.”

They were caparisoned, their formal uniforms more like frock than battle dress. In their flaring knee-length skirts and high bodices they seemed rather like warriors on vases, urns. Percale as sheet or pillowslip, even their fabrics felt sumptuary, voluptuous. Though he had the reputation, Mills did not feel vicious. And if he’d had no knowledge of what Bufesqueu had described as the Janissary’s Byzantine arrangements — indeed, he’d only first heard of them moments before — he felt, in his Attic, high-stepper uniform, more raiment than clothing, more gown than garment, oddly venal, sharp and shady. (Already memorizing it, figuring ways it could be rendered.) But then, recalling his jeopardy — Bufesqueu he figured was there for the ride, along as a witness, no more (suspicion reinforcing his new Tammany heart) — chiefly he felt foolish, vulnerable as a traffic cop. “Oh yes?” Mills said. “A plan?”

They were on the open plain that ringed their fort — men watched from the ramparts and parapets — land that had once been valuable and held some of the city’s most venerable buildings. As recently as Mills’s induction the year before, a sort of grandstand and playing field had stood there, but over the years, as the original defilement became a parade ground, the parade ground an entrenchment, the entrenchment a breastworks, the breastworks a camp, the camp a fortification and the fortification the fortress that the Janissaries now permanently occupied, there had been a sort of piecemeal retreat, gradual as balding, of the old residences and public buildings. Now, however, they left the open area and entered the city proper, slicing into it through a failing neighborhood. Here, Mills guessed, the vendors and profiteers lived whom Bufesqueu said supplied his colleagues with their black market contraband. (I didn’t know, he thought. Sitting aloof and ignorant on my double bribegold. Starving for halvah and they didn’t even tell me, wouldn’t, not even Bufesqueu. Sent to halvah Coventry.)

A few women and old men returning from market spotted them and were already whispering among themselves, gesturing and, so far at least, only vaguely pointing in their direction. Boys saw them, watched silently, their faces expressionless. Dogs barked. “It better be good,” Mills said into his hand as if he were coughing.

“Trust me,” Bufesqueu said.

“Sure,” Mills said, out of sight now of the Janissaries on the battlements but still closely scrutinized by Bufesqueu.

“When I give the word,” Bufesqueu said.

“Sure,” Mills said, “the word.” (And thought: The word will be Mills. Hey, everybody, here’s George Mills that you heard so much about. Come and get it!)

“Just watch me,” Bufesqueu said. “When I give the signal.”

“When you drop the handkerchief?” Mills said.

Bufesqueu glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. “Just watch me,” he said.

They might have been strolling in the park, Bufesqueu slowing his pace and Mills slackening his own in order not to get out in front of him, when Bufesqueu suddenly began to run full out, shouting as he came. “ Blitzpounce! ” he shouted. “ Thrustrush! Raid-grapple! ” They were Janissary commands for attack and Bufesqueu was yelling them at the top of his lungs. “ Flakshoot! ” he screamed. “ Swipeslam! Flailshove! Harrywaste! ”

The people divided before them and Mills fell in beside his friend, matching him stride for stride. Bufesqueu continued to shout. “ Sallystorm! Knockstrike! ” he shouted.

“ Chargepelt! ” Mills joined in. “ Lungehavoc! Siegescorch! ”

Now the crowd was taking actual flight, disappearing into passageways, alleyways, niches, hiding in the bays and cubbyholes of architecture like matadors behind the barriers in bullrings.

Leaving Bufesqueu the final word. “ Charge, men! ” he roared so passionately even Mills looked around to see if they were not the vanguard of a full-fledged invasion.

The trouble was it was a city, that as they cleared one street their sheer noise attracted new groups in the next. The good part was the new groups saw the old ones disperse, and, when the pair was close enough for their war cries to be distinguished, they’d already gotten the message and begun to scatter. There wasn’t a soul in the streets who hadn’t himself either been beaten by a Janissary or known or heard about someone who had. Beaten or killed, beaten and killed. So what worked in their favor was history, time’s and memory’s bad press.

And they looked as they advanced like engines of destruction, like some great avenging avalanche of trouble and death, some spilled Vesuvius of molten bad news and worse intentions. Guzo Sanbanna himself was a witness that day and later admitted that it seemed to him that nothing, no one, could have stopped them. “I ran myself,” Guzo would say, “with one thought for my life and another for my profits!”

The trouble was they were only human first and Janissaries second. That the spirit was willing but the flesh was an old story. That charges like theirs, even with the adrenalin flowing like a chemical bonanza, could not be maintained. Already Mills was winded, already Bufesqueu was. The good part was traffic was already beginning to back up, that, seeing the townspeople scatter, lunging recklessly in front of the rearing nags, drivers and passengers alike called from their carriages to the fleeing crowds. Mills could hear them. And the isolated replies of brave men: “An attack,” they called back over their shoulders as they fled. “Janissaries,” they shouted, “the entire force.” “Janissaries, including that legion recalled from Africa.” “ Janissaries! ” they cried. “ Janissaries on a rampage! They’ve overturned their soup kettles in the square!” “I heard someone say that Mills himself is leading the charge! ”