Part 26 (1/2)
”Welcome back, my queen,” he called, as he caught sight of Amaunet. ”You see? Not only have I not run off with Emil to a gambling den, I've fixed you a nice supper. Come and eat. I'll see to the horses.”
Amaunet regarded him warily, but she climbed down from the wagon and approached the fire.
”Where is Emil?”
”Why, safe in his little cupboard, just as he ought to be,” said Golescu, rising to offer his seat. Seeing her again up close, he felt a s.h.i.+ver of disappointment; Amaunet looked tired and bad-tempered, not at all like an immortal being who had supped of some arcane nectar. He left her by the fire as he led the horses off to drink. Not until he had come back and settled down across from her did he feel the stirring of mundane l.u.s.t.
”I trust all that unsightly clutter in the wagon has been unloaded on some discreet fence?” he inquired pleasantly.
”That's one way of putting it,” said Amaunet, with a humorless laugh. ”You'll have all the room you need back there, for a while.”
”And did we get a good price?”
Amaunet just shrugged.
Golescu smiled to himself, noting that she carried no purse. He kept up a disarming flow of small talk until Amaunet told him that she was retiring. Bidding her a cheery good night without so much as one suggestive remark, he watched as she climbed into the wagon-her back view was as enthralling as ever-and waited a few more minutes before lighting a candle-lantern and hurrying off to the other wagon.
On climbing inside, Golescu held the lamp high and looked around.
”Beautifully empty,” he remarked in satisfaction. Not a carpet, not a painting, not so much as a silver spoon anywhere to be seen. As it should be. But- ”Where is the money?” he wondered aloud. ”Come out, little iron-bound strongbox. Come out, little exceptionally heavy purse. She must have made a fortune from the fence. So”
Golescu proceeded to rummage in the cupboards and cabinets, hastily at first and then with greater care, rapping for hollow panels, testing for hidden drawers. At the end of half an hour he was baffled, panting with exasperation.
”It must be here somewhere!” he declared. ”Unless she made so little off the bargain she was able to hide her miserable share of the loot in her cleavage!”
Muttering to himself, he went out and banked the fire. Then he retrieved his satchel of money and the new clothes he had bought, including Emil's daylight ensemble, from the bush where he had stashed them.
Having re- secured them in a cupboard in the wagon, he stretched out on the floor and thought very hard.
”I've seen that dull and sullen look before,” he announced to the darkness. ”Hopeless. Apathetic.
Ill-used. She might be sick, but also that's the way a wh.o.r.e looks, when she has a nasty brute of a pimp who works her hard and takes all her earnings away. I wonder ”Perhaps she's the hapless victim of some big operator? Say, a criminal mastermind, with a network of thieves and fences and middlemen all funneling profits toward him? So that he sits alone on a pyramid of gold, receiving tribute from petty crooks everywhere?
”What a lovely idea!” Golescu sat up and clasped his hands.
He was wakened again that night by her singing. Amaunet's voice was like slow coals glowing in a dying fire, or like the undulation of smoke rising when the last glow has died. It was heartbreaking, but there was something horrible about it. They rolled on. The mountains were always ahead of them, and to Golescu's relief the valley of his labors was far behind them. No one was ever hanged for selling a weak solution of yellow dye, but people have been hanged for being too successful; and in any case he preferred to keep a good distance between himself and any outcomes he couldn't predict.
The mountains came close at last and were easily crossed, by an obscure road Amaunet seemed to know well. Noon of the second day they came to a fair-sized city in the foothills, with grand houses and a domed church.
Here a fair was setting up, in a wide public square through which the wind gusted, driving yellow leaves before it over the cobbles. Golescu made his usual helpful suggestions for improving Amaunet's business and was ignored. Resigned, he stood in the permit line with other fair vendors, whom he was beginning to know by sight. They also ignored his attempts at small talk. The permit clerk was rude and obtuse.
By the time evening fell, when the fair came to life in a blaze of gaslight and calliope music, Golescu was not in the best of moods.
”Come on, pallid one,” he said, dragging Emil forth from the wagon. ”What are you shrinking from?”
”It's too bright,” whimpered Emil, squeezing his eyes shut and trying to hide under Golescu's coat.
”We're in a big modern city, my boy,” said Golescu, striding through the crowd and towing him along relentless. ”Gaslight, the wonder of the civilized world. Soon we won't have Night at all, if we don't want it. Imagine that, eh? You'd have to live in a cellar. You'd probably like that, I expect.”
”I want a sausage on a stick,” said Emil.
”Patience,” said Golescu, looking around for the food stalls. ”Eating and scratching only want a beginning, eh? So scratch, and soon you'll be eating too. Where the h.e.l.l is the sausage booth?”
He spotted a vendor he recognized and pushed through the crowd to the counter.
”Hey! Vienna sausage, please.” He put down a coin.
”We're out of Vienna sausage,” said the cas.h.i.+er. ”We have sarmale on polenta, or tochitura on polenta. Take your pick.”
Golescu's mouth watered. ”The sarmale, and plenty of polenta.”
He carried the paper cone to a relatively quiet corner and seated himself on a hay bale. ”Come and eat. Emil dear. Polenta for you and nice spicy sarmale for me, eh?”
Emil opened his eves long enough to look at it.
”I can't eat that. It has sauce on it.”
”Just a little!” Golescu dug his thumb in amongst the meatb.a.l.l.s and pulled up a glob of polenta. ”See?
Nice!”
Emil began to sob. ”I don't want that. I want a sausage.”
”Well, this is like sausage, only it's in grape leaves instead of pig guts, eh?” Golescu held up a nugget of sarmale. ”Mmmm, tasty!”
But Emil wouldn't touch it. Golescu sighed, wolfed down the sarmale and polenta, and wiped his fingers on Emil's coat. He dragged Emil after him and searched the fairground from end to end, but n.o.body was selling Vienna sausage. The only thing he found that Emil would consent to eat was candy floss, so he bought him five big wads of it. Emil crouched furtively under a wagon and ate it all, as Golescu looked on and tried to slap some warmth into himself. The cold wind pierced straight through his coat, taking away all the nice residual warmth of the peppery sarmale.
”This is no life for a red-blooded man,” he grumbled. ”Wine, women and dance are what I need, and am I getting any? It is to laugh. Wet-nursing a miserable picky dwarf while the temptress of my dreams barely knows I exist. If I had any self-respect, I'd burst into that wagon and show her what I'm made of.”
The last pink streamer of candy floss vanished into Emil's mouth. He belched.
”Then, of course, she'd hurt me,” Golescu concluded. ”Pretty badly, I think. Her fingers are like steel.
And that excites me, Emil, isn't that a terrible thing? Yet another step downward in my long debas.e.m.e.nt.”
Emil belched again.
The chilly hours pa.s.sed. Emil rolled over on his side and began to wail to himself. As the fair grew quieter, as the lights went out one by one and the carousel slowed through its last revolution, Emil's whining grew louder. Amaunet's last customer departed; a moment later her door flew open and she emerged, turning her head this way and that, searching for the sound. Her gaze fell on Emil, prostrate under the wagon, and she bared her teeth at Golescu.
”What did you do to him?”
”Nothing!” said Golescu, backing up a pace or two. ”His highness the turnip wouldn't eat anything but candy, and now he seems to be regretting it.”
”Fool,” said Amaunet. She pulled Emil out from the litter of paper cones and straw. He vomited pink syrup and said, ”I want a potato.”
Amaunet gave Golescu a look that made his heart skip a beat, but in a reasonable voice he said: ”I could take us all to dinner. What about it? My treat.”
”It's nearly midnight, you a.s.s,” said Amaunet.