So they went up Third Avenue, drowned in the Street's great wind: all flapping and Irish pennants. Stencil yarned. Told Profane of a whorehouse in Nice with mirrors on the ceiling where he thought, once, he'd found his V. Told of his mystical experience before a plaster death-cast of Chopin's hand in the Celda Museo in Mallorca.
'There was no difference,' he caroled, causing two strolling bums to laugh along with him: 'that was all. Chopin had a plaster hand!' Profane shrugged. The bums tagged along.
'She stole an airplane: an old Spad, the kind young Godolphin crashed in. God, what a flight it must have been: from Le Havre over the Bay of Biscay to somewhere in the back country of Spain. The officer on duty only remembered a fierce - what did he call her - 'hussar,' who came rushing by in a red field-cape, glaring out of a glass eye in the shape of a clock: 'as if I'd been fixed by the evil eye of time itself.'
'Disguise is one of her attributes. In Mallorca she spent at least a year as an old fisherman who evenings, would smoke dried seaweed in a pipe and tell the children stories of gun-running in the Red Sea.'
'Rimbaud,' suggested one of the bums.
'Did she know Rimbaud as a child? Drift up-country at age three or four through that district and its trees festooned gray and scarlet with crucified English corpses? Act as lucky mascot to the Mahdists? Live in Cairo and take Sir Alastair Wren for a lover when she came of age?
'Who knows. Stencil would rather depend on the imperfect vision of humans for his history. Somehow government reports, bar graphs, mass movements are too treacherous.'
'Stencil,' Profane announced, 'you are juiced.'
True. Autumn, coming on, was cold enough to've sobered Profane. But Stencil appeared drunk on something else.
V. in Spain, V. on Crete: V. crippled in Corfu, a partisan in Asia Minor. Giving tango lessons in Rotterdam she had commanded the rain to stop; it had. Dressed in tights adorned with two Chinese dragons she handed swords, balloons and colored handkerchiefs to Ugo Medichevole, a minor magician, for one lustless summer in the Roman Campagna. And, learning quickly, found time to perform a certain magic of her own; for one morning Medichevole was found out in a field, discussing the shadows of clouds with a sheep. His hair had become white, his mental age roughly five. V. had fled.
It went on like this, all the way up into the 70's, this progress-of-four; Stencil caught up in a compulsive yarning, the others listening with interest. It wasn't that Third Avenue was any kind of drunk's confessional. Did Stencil like his father suffer some private leeriness about Valletta - foresee some submersion, against his will, in a history too old for him, or at least of a different order from what he'd known? Probably not; only that he was on the verge of a major farewell. If it hadn't been Profane and the two bums it would have been somebody: cop, barkeep, girl. Stencil that way had left pieces of himself - and V. - all over the western world.
V. by this time was a remarkably scattered concept.
'Stencil's going to Malta like a nervous groom to matrimony. It is a marriage of convenience, arranged by Fortune, father and mother to everyone. Perhaps Fortune even cares about the success of these things: wants one to look after it in its old age.' Which struck Profane as outright foolish. Somehow they had wandered over by Park Avenue. The two bums, sensing unfamiliar territory, veered away toward the west and the Park. Toward what assignation? Stencil said: 'Should one bring a peace-offering?'
'Wha. Box of candy, flowers, ha, ha.'
'Stencil knows just the thing,' said Stencil. They were before Eigenvalue's office building. Intention or accident?
'Stay here in the street,' Stencil said. 'He won't be but a minute.' And vanished into the lobby of the building. Simultaneously a prowl car appeared a few blocks uptown, turned and headed downtown on Park Avenue. Profane started walking. Car passed him and didn't stop. Profane got to the corner and turned west. By the time he'd walked all around the block, Stencil was at a top floor window, yelling down.
'Come on up. You have to help.'
'I have to - You are out of your head.'
Impatient: 'Come up. Before the police get back.'
Profane stood outside for a minute, counting floors. Nine. Shrugged, went inside the lobby and took the self- service elevator up.
'Can you pick a lock,' Stencil asked. Profane laughed.
'Fine. You will have to go in a window, then.'
Stencil rummaged in the broom closet and came up with a length of line.
'Me,' said Profane. They started up to the roof.
'This is important.' Stencil was pleading. 'Suppose you were enemies with someone. But had to see him, her. Wouldn't you try to make it as painless as you could?'
They reached a point on the roof directly above Eigenvalue's office.
Profane looked down into the street. 'You,' with exaggerated gestures, 'are going to put me, over that wall, with no fire escape there, to open, that window, right?' Stencil nodded. So. Back to the boatswain's chair for Profane. Though this time no Pig to save, no good will to cash in on. There'd be no reward from Stencil because there's no honor among second- (or ninth-) story men. Because Stencil was more a bum than he.
They looped the line round Profane's middle. He being so shapeless, it was difficult to locate any center of gravity. Stencil gave the line a few turns round a TV antenna. Profane climbed over the edge and they began to lower away.
'How is it,' Stencil said after a while.
'Except for those three cops down there, who are looking at me sort of fishy -'
