Ахмед Рушди - Quichotte - A Novel

“Or,” Sancho said, “we can be grateful for what my friend here has done, because she has found the cure.”

Here the White Lab Coat Woman removed from her pocket a small phial containing a colorless liquid and held it up for all to see.

“In some cases,” she shouted out in a strong voice, “the metamorphosis is partial, there are mastodons with some human features, such as these green-suited mastodons walking erect like us, and in other cases the metamorphosis may look complete but is still within the parameters of reversibility. A simple dart from a dart gun will achieve the cure.”

“Shoot—the—darts!” the crowd began to shout. “Shoot—the—darts!”

“However, I have to warn you that in cases in which the metamorphosis has gone too far, the cure will not reverse the process. In these cases the mastodon, the mutant, will die.”

“So it’s kill or cure?” the Editor asked.

“Kill—or—cure!” the crowd shouted. “Kill—or—cure!” The pro-mastodon faction had fallen silent, possibly denoting acquiescence, or simply the realization that they were outnumbered.

It was Mrs. Floral Print who made the kindly liberal objection. “Killing them seems harsh,” she cried. “They were our own community until the day before yesterday. And I don’t want my Frankie to die!” She began to sob. Others comforted her. But then the ground began to tremble, a loud trumpeting sound was heard, and the crowd scattered screaming. The mastodon that came thundering down the street was indeed one of the fabled green-suited creatures that could stand on their hind legs. Standing up like that, it looked even larger and more frightening than the ordinary kind, and it didn’t behave with anything like moderation, plowing into the ice cream parlor and destroying it, and the Gazetto offices above, before it ran off honking into the distance.

“So much for my moderate mastodon theory,” said Brown Suit Man. “I vote we go with the poison darts.”

“They aren’t poison,” White Lab Coat Woman protested, but to no avail. The crowds, coming back together, demanded “Poison darts now!”

“Very well,” Quichotte cried, taking the lead. “And I myself will fire the first dart.”

It turned out the laboratory where White Lab Coat Woman had found the cure was just around the corner. The crowd moved there quickly. She and Sancho went inside and brought out a quantity of dart guns, all loaded with the curative needles. When the arms had been distributed, the group moved down toward the water’s edge, where the mastodons had gathered in two distinct groups, the green-suited hind-leg-walkers to the left and the more traditional mastodons to the right. It’s almost as if they don’t care very much for each other, Sancho thought, but what unites them, I guess, is that they care for us even less.

On the way down to where the mastodons were gathered Sancho had another disquieting thought. What a strange town this was, he thought, where everything was so conveniently next door to everything else—the motel, the coffee place, the ice cream parlor, the newspaper offices, the laboratory—and where this group of recognizable character types rushed up and shouted and then rushed away screaming and then rushed back again to shout some more, almost as if they were doing it on cue, or according to some script which he and Quichotte had not read. Mrs. Floral Print, for example, didn’t seem to be in the state a mother might actually be in if her child had really turned into a mastodon, and nobody else seemed to be quite, so to speak, psychologically convincing. It was all too stylized, somehow, to be real.

But Quichotte had warned him that reality as they had understood the word would now cease to exist, so maybe this theatricality was an aspect of that transformation?

Then they were there, the human beings, on the higher ground above the water, looking down at the baleful mastodons, some in suits, others not, and their weapons were aimed, and Quichotte’s dart gun was raised along with the others, and Sancho suddenly understood that they were somehow being tested, who knew by whom or why, and he cried out to Quichotte, “Don’t shoot!” At which point all hell broke loose, the mastodons saw that they were under attack and charged, and the humans of Berenger began to fire their dart guns, panickily, some in the air, some in the direction of the mastodons, and in every other direction as well, and they were yelling and running, and the mastodons were charging, the ones in the green suits as well as the ones on all fours, and Quichotte and Sancho, rooted to the spot, found themselves in a kind of no-man’s-land between the charging tuskers and the screaming humans, and there somehow was Mr. Jonésco pointing at them and laughing an insane laugh, and this is it, Sancho thought, looks like it all ends right here, and then a sort of cloud or fog descended suddenly over the scene, and when it dispersed the battle of Berenger had vanished, as had Berenger itself, and they were back in the Cruze turning off the turnpike, and Quichotte was saying slash had just said that “we ought to be fresh and perky for our entrance into the great city where Destiny lies.” The fog dispersed quickly and there was a sign pointing to the town of Weehawken, New Jersey (pop. 12,554, reflecting a decline of seven percent from the 13,501 counted in the 2000 census), and the mastodon-benighted town of Berenger, New Jersey, was nowhere to be seen, not then, not later, never.

Quichotte somehow managed to guide the car down the exit ramp and then pulled over onto the hard shoulder, perspiring and panting. Sancho, wide-eyed, uncomprehending, shook in the seat beside him.

“What just happened to us?” Sancho finally asked.

Quichotte shook his head. “Now that we have passed through the veil,” he said finally, in a weak voice, “I surmise that visions and other phantasmagoria are to be expected.”

Quichotte, driving the Cruze out of the Lincoln Tunnel into Manhattan, felt like a snail coming out of its shell. Here was bustle and thrum, hustle and flow, everything he had run from, had spent the better part of his life recoiling from, concealing himself in the heart of the country, leading a small life among other small lives. And now he was back on the main stage, on which the headliner acts performed, he was at the high rollers’ table, betting the farm on love. “The fifth valley,” he said quietly, and Sancho looked at him for elucidation, but for the moment he said no more.

The city (pop. 8,623,000) greeted them with a sudden autumn storm: thunder that said I see you, and who do you think you are?, lightning that said I will fry the flesh off your bodies and your skeletons will dance to my tune, rain that said I will wash you away like the rats on the sidewalk and the bugs in the gutters, and like all the other fools who came here on quests in search of glory, salvation, or love.

They took shelter in the Blue Yorker hotel, which stood conveniently just a couple of blocks from the tunnel exit, $103 including parking, excellent value, no ID demanded, no questions asked, cash money required per night in advance, and only when they entered their Oriental Delights–themed room did they understand that they were in one of the city’s numerous no-tell motels, with six free porno stations on the TV. There was adjustable mood lighting. There were strategically placed mirrors. The bellhop, a sleazy old Korean gent wearing an ancient pillbox hat, said that for fifteen dollars they could upgrade to the Arabian Nights room with Jacuzzi and steam bath, and if there was anything else they wanted, maybe good massage, deep tissue massage, massage with happy ending, anything, you understand, he could arrange that too. There were twin double beds in the room, for double the action if you want it, the bellhop said, at which they shut the door in his face. That was no way to talk to a father and his son who had come to the city on a mission. “We will move tomorrow,” Quichotte said, “or as soon as the rain stops.” Sancho bounced down onto his bed and looked up at his reflection in the angled mirror above him. “No!” he objected. “This is cool.”