Little, Big

“Who the hell knows?” Siegfried moved off. If Auberon wanted details, let him get a paper. The bartender had just been making conversation; he had better things to do than be grilled. Auberon drank, abashed. Outside, people were hurrying by, in groups of two and three, looking behind them. Some were shouting, others laughing.

Auberon turned from the window. Surreptitiously, he counted his money, contemplating the evening and the night ahead. Soon he would have to move downward in the drinker’s scale, from this pleasant—more than pleasant, necessary, imperative—retreat to less pleasant places, brightly-lit, naked, with sticky plastic bars surmounted by the waxy faces of aged patrons, their eyes fixed on the absurdly cheap prices posted on the mirror before them. Dram shops, as old books had it. And then? He could drink alone, of course, and wholesale so to speak: but not in Old Law Farm, not in the Folding Bedroom. “Another of these,” he said mildly, “when you get a chance.”

He had that morning decided, not for the first time, that his search was over. He wouldn’t sally forth today to follow illusory clues. She couldn’t be found who wanted not to be found. His heart had cried out, But what if she does? What if she is only lost, and searching for you even as you search for her, what if only yesterday you came within a block of one another, what if at this moment she sits somewhere nearby, on a park bench, a stoop, Somehow unable to find her way back to you, what if she is even now thinking He’ll never believe this crazy story (whatever it would be) if only I find him, if only; and the tears of loneliness on her brown cheeks… But that was all old. It was the Crazy Story Idea, and he knew it well; it had once been a bright hope, but it had over time condensed to this burning point, not a hope but a reproach, not even (no! No more!) a spur; and that was why it could be snuffed.

He’d snuffed it, brutally, and come to the Seventh Saint. A day off.

There was only one further decision then to make, and he would (with the help of this gin, and more of the same) make that today. She hadn’t ever existed at all! She was a figment. It would be hard, at first, to convince himself of how sensible a solution this was to his difficulty; but it would grow easier.

“Never existed,” he muttered. “Never never never.”

“Wazzat?” said Siegfried, who usually couldn’t hear the plainest request for replenishment.

“Storm,” Auberon said, for just then there was a sound which if it wasn’t cannon was thunder.

“Cool things off,” said Siegfried. What the hell could he care, Auberon thought, aestivating in this cave.

Out of the roll of thunder came the more rhythmic beats of a big bass drum far downtown. More people were in the streets, driven forward by or perhaps heralding the oncoming of something big which they looked now and again over their shoulders at. Police cruisers shot into the intersections of street and avenue, blue lights revolving. Among those coming up the street—they were walking heedlessly in the middle of the roadway, that looked exhilarating to Auberon—were several wearing the blousy shirts of many colors worn by Eigenblick’s adherents; these, and others in dark glasses and narrow suits, with what could have been hearing aids stuck into their ears but probably were not, discussed things with the sweating policemen, making gestures. A portable conga band, contrapuntal to the far-off beating bass drum, proceeded northward, surrounded by laughing brown and black people and by photographers. Their rhythms hurried the negotiators. The suited men seemed to command the police, who were helmeted and armed but apparently will-less. The thunder, more distinct, rolled again.

It seemed to Auberon that he had discovered, since coming to the City, or at least since he had spent a lot of time staring at crowds, that humanity, City humanity anyway, fell into only a few distinct types—not physical or social or racial, exactly, though the qualities that could be called physical or social or racial helped qualify people. He couldn’t say just how many of these types there were, or describe any of them at all precisely, or even keep any of them in his mind when he didn’t have an actual example before him; but he found himself continually saying to himself, “Ah, there’s one of that sort of person.” It certainly hadn’t helped in his search for Sylvie that, however distinct she was, however utterly individual, the vague type she belonged to could throw up cognates of her everywhere to torment him. A lot of them didn’t even look like her. They were her sisters, though; and they harrowed hini, far more than the jovens and lindas that superficially resembled her, like those that, on the lean muscled arms of their boyfriends or honorary husbands, now followed the conga band up the street, dancing. A larger group, of some status, was coming into view behind them.

These were decently dressed matrons and men, walking abreast, black women with broad bosoms and pearls and glasses, men in humble pork-pie hats, many skinny and stooped. He had often wondered how it is that great fat black women can grow faces, as they get older, that are hard, chiseled, granitic, tough and leathery, all that is associated with the lean. These people supported a street-wide banner on poles, with half-moon holes cut in it to keep it from being filled like a sail and carrying them off, whose letters, picked out in sequins, spelled out CHURCH OF ALL STREETS.

“That’s the church,” Siegfried said—he had moved his glass-wiping activities nearer the window in order to watch. “The church where they found those guys.”

“With the bombs?”

“They got a lot of nerve.”

Since Auberon still didn’t know whether the bombers found in the Church of All Streets were for or against whoever this parade was for or against, he supposed this could be true.

The Church of All Streets contingent, the decent poor mostly as far as Auberon could see but with one or two Eigenblick blousons marching beside them, and one of the hearing-aides watching them too, was escorted by the many-eyed press on foot and in vans, and by armed horsemen, and by the curious. As though the Seventh Saint were a tidepool, and the tide were rising, two or three of these spilled through its doors, bringing in the hot breath of day and the odor of their marching. They complained loudly of the heat, more in high-pitched whistles and low groans than in words, and ordered beers. “Here you are, take this,” said one, and held out something to Auberon on his yellow palm.

It was a narrow strip of paper, like a Chinese cookie fortune. Part of a sentence was crudely printed on it, but the sweat of the man’s hand had obscured part of that, and all Auberon could make out was the word “message”. Two of the others were comparing similar strips of paper, laughing and wiping beer-foam from their lips.

“What’s it mean?”

“That’s for you to figure out,” the man said gaily. Siegfried put a drink in front of Auberon. “Maybe if you make a match, you win a prize. A lottery. Huh? They’re handing ’em out all over town.”

And indeed now outside Auberon saw a line of whitefaced mimes or clowns cakewalking along in the wake of the Church of All Streets, doing simple acrobatics, firing cap pistols, tipping battered hats, and distributing among the jostling crowd that thronged around them these small strips of paper. People took them, children begged for more, they were studied and compared. If no one took them, the clowns let them flutter away into a breeze that was beginning to rise. One of the clowns turned the handle of a siren he had hung around his neck, and an eerie wail could be faintly heard.

“What on earth,” Auberon said.

“Who the hell knows,” Siegfried said.

With a crash of brass instruments, a marching band began, and the street was suddenly filled with bright silken flags, barred, starred, snapping and furling in the thunder-wind. Great cheers rose. Double eagles screamed from some banners, double eagles with double hearts aflame in their bosoms, some clutching roses in their beaks, myrtle, swords, arrows, bolts of lightning in their talons; surmounted with crosses, crescents, or both, bleeding, effulgent or aflame. They seemed to stream and flutter on the terrific wave of military sound rising from the band, which was not uniformed but dressed in top hats, tails, and paper bat-wing collars. A royal-blue gold-fringed gonfalon was born before them, but was gone before Auberon could read it.

The bar patrons went to the window. “What’s going on? What’s going on?” The mimes or clowns worked the borders of the march, handing out slips, avoiding grabbing hands dexterously as they somersaulted or rode each other’s shoulders. Auberon, well oiled by now, was exhilarated, as they all were, but he as much because he had no idea for what all this crazy energy was being expended as for the quick-stepping, flag-waving thing itself. More refugees barged through the doors of the Seventh Saint. For a moment the music grew loud. They weren’t a good band, cacaphonous in fact; but the big drum kept the time.

“Good God,” said a haggard man in a wrinkled Suit and a nearly brimless straw fedora. “Good God, those people.”

“Check it out,” said a black man. More entered, black, white, other. Siegfried looked startled, at bay. He’d