room.
'Is your tour scheduled to take you to Chicago?' asked Jack.
'As a matter of fact, it is,' said Doyle.
'We travel tomorrow,' said Innes.
'We're going with you,' said Jack.
'Capital,' said Doyle. Jack continued to stare at him. 'What is it?'
'Someone I want you to meet tonight.'
'Late in the day for a social call.'
'My friend doesn't keep regular hours,' said Jack. 'Up to it?'
Doyle looked to Innes, who was nearly bursting with eagerness.
'Lead the way,' said Doyle.
The wind blew colder as they rode uptown, the streets empty, leaves beginning to turn. Even this deserted, you could feel the immense restless dynamism of the city, thought Doyle, coursing up through the ground like the hum of a massive turbine engine.
As they trotted past the terraced palazzos and mansions on Fifth Avenue, he felt a twinge of self-reproach, realizing that a part of him still yearned after a style of living scaled to these grandiose dimensions. The homes of the ruling class sat silent as medieval fortresses, eye-popping shrines to vanity and greed, and yes, he still wanted one. In England, the rich handled fortunes discreetly, tastefully tucked away in the country behind the tall hedges —Doyle had a country house himself now, albeit a modest one. In America the robber barons erected these self- celebrating monuments along the busiest street in the world: By God, look at me, I've done it! Cracked the bank! Beaten the gods at their own game!
Telephone wires clogged the air between the mansions and the street, connecting the rich to each other by means of this latest craze; they hardly had anything to say to each other when they were face-to-face, thought Doyle, why did they need so many telephones?
What an exhausting interior life the wealthy must lead, driven to these superhuman accomplishments by fitful longings for immortality; the thought of all that misguided passion filled Doyle with melancholy before he corrected himself: Who was he to say these titans of enterprise had it wrong? Two thousand years from now, with this great city fallen into dust, there might be little else left standing besides these sturdy secular temples for archaeologists to sift through, weaving together from their artifacts the life of a dead and distant culture. A hairbrush, an urn, a privately commissioned bust, these intensely personal possessions might one day find themselves behind museum glass, transformed into relics of worship. What if some fragment of a dream or, to put it more plainly, a few resilient molecules of its owner survived embedded in the matter of the object? That seemed to Doyle to be as close to immortality as any human could hope for; the body would fail, memories would fade, but we might live on for centuries in the form of a toothbrush or a hatpin.
After they turned west and reached the Hudson River, a ferry conveyed their coach-and-four to the palisades of New Jersey. The four men inside settled into the rhythms of a long carriage ride through the dead of night. No one but Jack knew where they were going, and he sat above them in the driver's seat, holding the reins lightly in his mangled fingers. As they rode, Presto entertained them with tales about the princes and maharanis of Gwalior and Rajputana; cursed jewels, palaces of ivory and gold, man-eating tigers, marauding elephants, and, of the most interest to Innes, the illicit mysteries of the harem: Did these girls really paint certain essential parts of themselves crimson? Indeed they did, confirmed Presto: Oiled, polished, and sheened, the houris lived a life devoted to the giving, and receiving, of pleasure. In each other's arms, as well as those of their master. Innes's mind spun like a pin-wheel in a stiff breeze: Had Presto actually visited any of these perfumed seraglios?
'But how different are these women, finally, from the well-kept wives of our Western high society?'' said Doyle, sparing Presto the indignity of confessing the obvious. 'I don't mean all of them, but those who spend their lives maintaining their physical charms—facial massages, six-gallon shampoos— transforming themselves into a prize or accessory to decorate their wealthy husbands' arms.'
'You can't keep up to fifty of 'em at a time, for starters,' argued Innes.
'You'd be surprised,' said Presto, with a salacious grin. 'Provided money was no object.'
'Putting the issue of multiples aside,' said Doyle.
'I can think of one important distinction,' said Stern. 'In the West the sort of wife you're describing can leave the house if she wants to.'
'Right, she's not a slave per se,' said Doyle. 'But what I'm getting at is, aren't they in a similar way slaves of the spirit? The wife here may leave the house as you suggest, but can she leave the situation? Fed up with her lot, can she run off and make a life of her own?'
'Why would she want to?' asked Innes.
'Theoretically speaking, old boy.'
'She should be able to,' said Presto. 'And she certainly has legal recourse under Western law.'
'But the reality is quite different: Western society is rigged to support free action on the part of the male and defended against the same rights being accorded the female. I believe it's something to do with unconscious protection of the reproductive function; the species must survive, at any cost; the woman must be shielded from harm, even if we aren't aware of it.'
'I've always been too busy to take a wife,' said Stern sifting through his regrets.
'Harem life doesn't sound so bad to me,' said Innes. 'Not much work. Lots of free time.'
'You're lost in a dream about the harem's compliance and round-the-clock availability; do you have any idea what can happen to one of these girls if she runs afoul of the ruling male?' Doyle turned to Presto.
'Torture, disfigurement. Beheading,' said Presto.
'Really? That's dreadful.'
'But how would you feel if these women were granted the same equality of sexual freedom you enjoy? If they could choose to make love with whomever they wanted, whenever they wanted?'
'What an appalling thought,' said Innes. 'I mean the whole point of the thing is lost then, isn't it?'
'My argument is that while men have made the civilized world as it is, they have done so at the expense of these partners our Creator had the good sense to grace us with; they are the invisible oppressed among us.'
'Are you in favor then of giving women the vote, Mr. Doyle?' asked Presto.
'Oh good God, no,' said Doyle. 'You have to go about these things sensibly. We should educate them first; they need to know what they're being asked to vote on. Rome wasn't built in a day.'
'Maybe it wouldn't be so bad,' said Innes, summoning up a rosy world of sexual equality. 'Be a lot less expensive getting a bird in the bed; no flowers, no fancy dinners for two in some pricey bistro.'
'I'm afraid the prospect fills me with despair,' said Presto. 'To abandon the ritual of the hunt, the thrill of conquest, and have everything I desired about a woman handed to me from the first moment without resistance or some modest reticence would ruin the entire experience.'
'So you didn't actually enjoy your visits to the harem, then?'' said Innes, like a dog digging up his favorite bone.
The discussion continued, lively and spirited, nothing laid to rest, as if in this delicate and fertile area anything could ever be settled. Doyle looked up at Jack driving the carriage, missing his participation in exactly the sort of philosophical free-for-all in which he used to take particular delight. Certainly, Jack could hear what they were saying from up on that lonely perch, but he never glanced their way, remote and purposeful as a lighthouse keeper watching a storm out at sea. How far had Jack journeyed beyond the reach of these essential animal concerns; and if they were lost to him forever, could he still in the same way be thought of as a man?
It was nearly one in the morning when their destination appeared, in a valley spreading below them illuminated by an impossible volume of light: a quadrangle of long brick buildings ringed with electric lamps and a high white picket fence. No identifying signs. After a whispered conversation with a guard stationed at the gate, their carriage was admitted; Jack drove them to the tallest structure in the center of the square and parked outside; through its large windows, they could see vast rooms crowded with machinery, laboratory apparatus, and scientific supplies.
They followed Jack through a steel door, down a corridor, and into a great hall sporting a thirty-foot ceiling; second-floor galleries flanked either side of bookshelves climbing the far wall—at least ten thousand books, estimated Doyle. Immense glass cases displayed stores of minerals, compounds, and prototypes of various
