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Zanzibar
by Connor Caddigan
-1-
It’s early Saturday morning, and before his overnight guests begin to stir from their drug- and alcohol-induced sleep, William de Vere cracks open a warm beer, picks up a letter that the landlady has slipped under his door in the middle of the night, and then sits on a folding chair near the big bay window. Hard bullets of freezing rain strike the glass. Around the twisted trunks of the old chestnut trees dead yellow leaves gather, their coarse-toothed edges cracking and withering away to mud and dust. Above the nearby shipyards, coppery clouds of coal-fire soot slowly curl across the sky and then suddenly jab at a row of abandoned brownstones like the practiced fingers of a magician performing sleight of hand, withholding from the penniless men and women who drift through these streets a chance encounter, a lucky break, a day without worries. In this forgotten quarter of the city, the only real magic is human endurance. The residents just take each day as it comes, and when they’re not lamenting their terrible misfortune or daydreaming of fabulous riches, they wander over to the local brewery or visit the coffeehouse where the lovely and exotic barista anticipates a stunningly horrific demise--or is it a blessed cessation?--to all of her woes.Will ponders these matters carefully, believes that he has been contaminated by the indolence and cowardice of these wretched souls. The evidence is in his hands. He reads the eviction notice several times, trying to comprehend its awful meaning. Unlike the other notices that demand immediate back payment of rent, this one simply informs him that he has twenty-four hours in which to vacate the premises--the police will be summoned otherwise. Scribbled in red ink at the bottom of the notice are the explicit and unalterable terms of an offer that will allow him to stay on for another month.
Because he is a musician, Will is able to detect a lunatic cadence in these words, something manic and vulgar, like the lyrics to a grotesque polka played on a rusty squeezebox, “Who Stole the Keeshka” hummed by a corpulent hobgoblin in a ratty green robe who yearns to dance with him, feverish with lust. The demented melody rings in his head and makes his two-bedroom apartment seem like a demon-haunted music hall, complete with dripping faucets, squeaking hinges, inexplicable pockets of icy air that whistle through the bare rooms.
At the sound of approaching footsteps, Will jumps. He turns from the window to see coming through the hallway the great muscled figure of the bass guitarist, the Minotaur.
By nature Will is a showman, an entertainer, and always greets his guests with a smile, even if it’s a forced one. “Good morning, sunshine! Care for a little hair of the dog?” He holds out the can of beer.
Pale and sweating from a crushing hangover, leaning heavily against the wall for support, the Minotaur manages to shake his head and points to the letter in Will’s hand.
“Eviction notice. Ha!” Will tosses the letter to ground. “So how’d it go last night?”
The Minotaur bites his lower lip. He has to think hard about this for a moment. “Everything went real good. Helluva party.”
“Well, I’m awfully glad I could be of service.”
The Minotaur grunts. His hangover is so unbearable that he can only gasp like an asthmatic struggling to catch his breath. It’s obvious from the way his hands tremble that he is in no mood for conversation and wants to make a quick escape. But Will, who has no close friends, no one he can really trust, is reluctant to let him go. Suddenly he has an overwhelming urge to unburden his heart. In the past few months he’s done some truly stupid and shameful things and needs to confess them to someone thoughtful, sensitive, sympathetic to his plight, but the Minotaur, like so many of his acquaintances, inhabits a parallel universe where there rages an intellectual Dark Age absent of books and music and challenging ideas, his mind a flickering candle that leads him to deeper and darker depths of barbarism and savagery.
Rather than confide in him Will decides to torment the beast a bit further.
“You do know what day it is, don’t you?”
The Minotaur rubs his temples. “Yeah, I know…”
“It’s the first of November. The Day of the Dead. A day to build altars and shrines honoring the souls of the dearly departed. A day to drink and laugh and join hands in the Danse Macabre. Because no matter one's station in life, the dance of death unites us all. Yes, we all dance to the same tune.”
The Minotaur blinks with incomprehension, then his eyes grow large, full of terror and regret. He thanks Will for his hospitality and stumbles out the door into the freezing rain.-2-
After months of what he thought were empty threats, Will’s mother and father have finally kicked him out of the house once and for all and, maybe because they are fond of melodrama, have vowed to disinherit him, their only child. Not that there’s much left to inherit anyway. Like so many members of the nouveau riche, they enjoy the finer things in life and love to impress sycophantic acquaintances with their largesse--holiday soirees, benefit dinners, annual galas; it’s paying for it all that gives them so much trouble. His mother’s fashion sense, faux haute couture, and weekend shopping sprees to the downtown boutiques, not to mention his father’s fondness for absinthe, hand-rolled cigars and occasional peccadilloes with widowers and divorcees and young strumpets in lavish hotel suites, aren’t exactly indicative of people who possess much in the way of self-discipline. They’re big believers in debt management and the redeeming power found inside a confessional, but if they attend mass on Sunday mornings, murmur “forgive us our debts”, it’s only because they have confused their prodigal spending with piety. To atone for their sins, they help finance the new chapel and commission a local artist to design its giant stained glass windows of Jesus, the boss’s son as it were, who stares blankly out at the street where drunks and whores and madmen wait in line to get into Paradise.
For too many years his parents have sought happiness in petty status symbols. Will has seen the bills and bank statements piled high on the kitchen counter, a Mount Vesuvius of delinquent loans with the whole works about to go up in one great cataclysmic bang, threatening to suffocate them all under a noxious cloud of lawsuits and criminal investigations. The phrase “misappropriation of funds” is one that he has heard with increasing regularity from his father’s study. Since the outstanding balances are so insurmountable Will feels no guilt about “borrowing” (as he later tried to explain it to them) one of their credit cards. He took out a hefty cash advance to rent this modest apartment for weekend parties; treated himself to the steel-string guitar made of Brazilian rosewood that he has had his eye on for a few months now; bought a dozen shots of top shelf Tequila for the band after a gig one night; purchased sodium lights and bottles of mineral solution in order to cultivate his little garden of hydroponic dope, bright green and fragrant as a meadow at the height of summer, the kind of shit that makes you forget your troubles for awhile, provides inspiration for your inner genius. Writing songs for a death metal band requires loads of inspiration after all. Will has to consider tempo and key changes, at what measure to include tremolo picking, blast beats, alternating rhythms, grunts, growls, snarls, wailing harmonics. There are subtleties, techniques of composition. Craftsmanship and skill are required, but good strong dope helps alleviate the serious bouts of writer’s block that have started to afflict him of late.
His parents find his musical aspirations contemptible, liturgical music is what they like best, scintillating melodies strummed on guitars by two Poor Clares, and after they discovered his larceny, his parents flew into a rage. With deadly talons his mother clamped onto his mop of greasy black hair and shook his head with such uncharacteristic strength that she chipped a nail and dislodged from the prongs of her ring the two-carat marquise-cut diamond--the envy of the parish ladies. With a sharp cry of alarm she slumped to the floor and ran her fingers frantically over the carpet.
“Well, don’t just stand there! Help me, goddamn you!”
This argument erupted as his father was leaving on another “business trip.” From the old man’s suitcase wafted a fragrance so alluring that it must have belonged to a woman many years his junior, perfume so expensive that it had to be bottled by the ounce and dispensed with a medicine dropper. Why his father doesn’t bother to disguise these scents is a mystery. More mysterious still is why women find him so appealing. Maybe it’s because he has an authoritative presence that intimidates subordinates, especially those confused and emotionally distraught assistants who shudder as his corrupt fingers dance like the legs of a millipede along their bare flesh. Though outwardly kind in the presentation of gifts (or bribes, depending on the circumstances) the old man is also capable of inflicting pain, and at the sight of his son brazenly smirking at him he tightened his fists and lowered the boom, saying with each blow, “You’re no son of mine, you’re no son of mine.” His mother joined in the refrain until together their voices became an operatic chorus.
Will knows boys, some much younger than he is, who have taken on their fathers, have punched them square in the jaw and bragged about the next day at school, but Will is much too timid to do something so assertive, so ballsy. He cowered, covered his face with both hands and sank to the floor, bloody and bruised and blubbering like a small child.
-3-
Medicine is close at hand. Twenty-four hours after the confrontation, Will slides down on the folding chair and fires up the fancy hookah that he ordered from a Tanzanian shopkeeper. All around him his guests are beginning to stir. They search desperately for water, aspirin, an empty bathroom to piss and vomit. On the couch, the drummer opens his crusty eyes. He coughs and moans and, after digging under the cushions and around his bare stinking toes, finds the remote buried under his dreadlocks. He turns on the TV.
A marauding band of mercenaries on horseback appears out of the wobbling dust spouts of a vast desert plain. With the creak and clink of saddles and the high wild cries of pillage and slaughter they sweep through the post-apocalyptic streets of a war torn city. One machete-wielding maniac with sinister yellow eyes and teeth filed to sharp points pursues a little boy and, murmuring a deliciously foul prayer to the gods of war and conquest, hacks wildly at his scalp. After finishing the job, he seizes the child’s body, raises the bubbling chalice of the skull to his cracked, leathery lips and drinks the blood.
The drummer clutches his sides and erupts with shrill laughter. “That is totally cool! Look! Now he’s eating the brains like a big bowl of custard!” More screams. A laughing bandit shoots a dog. The drummer lights a cigarette from his dwindling pack. “You still got that credit card, man?”
“Naw, I told you,” says Will, a bit embarrassed by how shaken he sounds. “My parents are tight with a dollar these days. They’re delusional, they’re like children. They think they need trips to Paris to visit the catacombs. Excursions through the Belgian countryside to buy cases of beer from Trappist monks. Hell, just give me a little mystic and my guitar and I’m cool, I’m doing alright.”
He eyes the cigarettes on the coffee table, but when he reaches for the pack the drummer grabs him hard by the wrist.
“Fuck, dude! You and your goddamn personal problems!” Spittle flies from his lips, his face contorts into loathsome mask of anger. “Where’s your dedication, man, your fucking dedication. When you gonna find us another gig? We haven’t played a decent joint in weeks. And you haven’t written any new music in months.”
Will yanks his arm away, massages his wrist.
“Stop being such a little bitch,” says the drummer.
Outside, the dust and grit of the city collect along the window sills, tinting the world with what looks like thin trails of blood spilled by the movie mercenaries who drag their prey back to a lonely desert hideout where the feasting continues with wild abandon until the film’s final frame.
-4-
The next morning, before the landlady can either chase him from the apartment or seduce him with an offer of rent free accommodations, Will hastily collects his things, stuffing whatever he can into his book bag: his favorite t-shirt with the grinning skull, the rock wool and plastic trays he uses to grow his weed, a faded show bill tacked to the wall with the word “Zanzibar” printed in bold black letters set against a background of blue and green. There is nothing striking about the poster or about the band of the same name. Dozens of death metal bands compete for five or six hot spots in town, and many club owners insist that Zanzibar, in order to distinguish itself from the competition, come up with a gimmick to draw larger crowds.
“You should wear masks and capes,” suggested one club manager from behind a makeshift desk of plywood and sawhorses. “Run around the stage with chainsaws dripping with blood. And you should definitely think of a new name. Zanzibar sounds a little fruity to me.”
But Will is attached to the name, believes there is something auspicious about the solidity of its syllables, the repetition of its hard consonants, Z, that superfluous letter, “Thou whoreson Zed,” mathematical symbol of unknown variables. He recalls hearing an ad on the radio, the narrator’s baritone, soothing and earthy like cinnamon and cloves, beckoning him to come to an island paradise: “Zanzibar, home of Sufi mystics, munificent sultans, wise viziers.” A few days later he found an apartment at the Zanzibar Towers and Gardens and knew right away that it had to mean something.
Things may be bleak now, compromise can’t be far down the road, but regardless of his desperation for cash, Will still clings to his vaguely defined sense of artistic integrity and is unwilling to turn his music into a ridiculous circus act. He settles for playing small, concrete pits that smell of urine and beer, places for shady transactions, hard drinking, gambling, fighting, fucking in toilet stalls. The most recent gig is at a local brewery where a dozen or so merchant marines and longshoremen from the shipyards heckle him as he sings. After the band finishes its last set, the bartender, smiling sheepishly, slinks over to the makeshift platform and doles out a few dollars, slips the band members a couple of joints, some big blue and yellow pills. “Horse tranquilizers,” he calls them.
Drinking alone at the end of the bar a man in coveralls and steel-toed boots turns to Will and says, “I been there, buddy.”
“Where?” Will asks, not really caring and wishing he’d never asked the question.
“Island of Zanzibar. Real fucked up place these days. Islamic fundamentalists run the show.”
Blinded by the stage lights and bathed in sweat, Will finds it difficult to tell what the man looks like, whether he is tall or short, lean or fat, but his voice has a certain richness and depth, like the low chords of an old church organ that has survived an air raid and is now in need of careful restoration; it’s the voice of someone who has participated in the nightmare spectacle of the world, has used his wits on some occasions and fled in naked terror on others. Before speaking again he gulps down his beer and then wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. His right index finger has been sawed away; his left eyelid droops.
“I once seen a group of clerics in white robes take this poor sonofabitch out to the public square and hack off his cock and balls with a machete. Don’t know what he did to deserve that kind of treatment. Probably tapped someone’s old lady, I’m guessing. Well, that’s the way of the world these days, ain’t it, brother?” The man stands up and moves closer to Will, looks him up and down. “Shit, man, you look just like Freddie Mercury. Anyone ever tell you that? He was a Zoroastrian or some crazy shit, wasn’t he?”
Furious that someone would dare compare him to a homo pop star, Will says he’s gotta take a leak, gathers his share of pills and dope and then storms away, refusing to return until the man has left the bar.
-5-
Will takes to the streets. During the course of his wanderings he sometimes sees himself as either a runaway from a particularly cruel Dickensian workhouse or the sole survivor of some long forgotten war, an exile bound for a glorious but still unknown destiny. He has his doubts, of course, especially during the dreary November afternoons when the people he knows have gone off to their part-time jobs in the factories and fast food restaurants and rendering plants. He worries that, like everyone else cursed to live in this city, he has no talent for rising in the world and expects more from life than is reasonable. Because he prefers self-righteousness to self-pity he becomes convinced that only by living like a nomad on the brink of total destitution can he find the elusive artistic truth he’s been seeking ever since he first picked up a guitar five years ago, and so homelessness becomes just one more part of his burdensome quest, another kind of suffering, sublime in its ability to wreak havoc with his already badly eroded confidence, but one that offers the potential reward of adoration from millions of fans willing to wait in long lines to see him play in stadiums and arenas. Everyone loves a good rags-to-riches story, and on that glorious day when he grants Rolling Stone an interview he will proudly boast of his misadventures on the mean streets of this wicked town, how he survived on cans of cold soup and bottles of warm beer and how he turned down solicitations in public restrooms from nervous, middle-aged men in suits and ties.
For a few days he crashes with the keyboardist, then with a stagehand who staggers in drunk each night and slaps his girlfriend around. Those who offer him shelter don’t want him around for very long, maybe because like a highly contagious pathogen there is something viral about homelessness, more abhorrent than the medieval plague, and every time he passes a mirror he sees angry pustules of defeat spreading across his face, leaving an indelible mark like the acne scars that already cover his cheeks.
Will quickly commits to memory a new list of rules that for pure soul-stifling masochism surpass all of those pages of thou shalt nots from Leviticus, a turn of events that he finds ironic since he’s spent the better part of his eighteen years circumventing rules of any kind. Regardless of where he stays the rules remain the same: never take food from the refrigerator unless you’re invited to do so first; the same goes for cigarettes and dope--don’t touch them or you’ll soon find yourself back on the streets; and if anything goes missing, anything at all--a comb, a guitar pick, loose change scattered on top of a dresser--suspicion immediately falls on you. Not that Will is beyond petty theft. Around every corner there lurk new temptations, and he must continually remind himself that there are dire consequences for breaking the rules.
-6-
He spends most of his time at the Stone Town Café.
Sitting in a far corner near the fireplace with his back pressed against the exposed bricks for warmth, Will strums random chords on his guitar, struggling to write new material for the band. Despite his best efforts he can’t discover an original melody, a satisfying rhythm, a memorable riff. He’s beginning to think that he has finally hit rock bottom. Though things look pretty grim right now he fears there are still greater depths of despair and misery yet to be explored, and unless Fate intervenes, and does so soon, he may find himself freefalling through a mineshaft of mediocrity from which there is no escape. Briefly he considers walking next door to the pawnshop, getting whatever he can for his instrument, but he is prevented from doing so by a group of overserious, middle-aged poets who engage him in rambling conversations about art and god and their own unrecognized genius.
“Always remember,” they tell him, “the muses cannot be summoned through sheer willpower. Patience is what defines the true artist. You may have to wait for years, for decades, and even then you may never garner recognition from the unlettered herd.”
They’re positively committed to self deception, these failed scribes, and while they go on waiting for inspiration to reveal its grand metaphysical vistas, they bide their time by lecturing Will, their sole pupil, in tones so utterly patronizing and devoid of insight that their voices, like the voices of all teachers and solipsists the world over, begin to sound like the steady hiss of the gas fireplace.
Only barista treats him with respect. Each day she brings him unusual drinks and confections “on the house,” she says. The poets resent him for this (they’ve never been offered a free drink, not even a discounted one), they see it as yet another of society’s injustices, and some of them refuse to speak to him anymore.
“That’s espresso cubano,” the barista explains with a little laugh when Will’s eyes widen at the taste of its sweetness. Later she makes him a cup of ristretto, which is bitter, and a café coretto with two shots of cognac. She keeps a bottle hidden behind the counter, “survival gear,” she calls it, and sometimes pours the cognac straight up into his mug.
With the approach of evening Will locks himself in the restroom, fires up a joint, the last of his dwindling stash, inhales deeply, and with the same black magic marker he uses to jot down forgettable and poorly arranged chord progressions in his notebook, he draws abstract patterns on the toilet stall, pretends he’s charting his way through a treacherous maze of strange, cyclopean dimensions. When he emerges from the restroom the barista is standing at the door.
“I am sorry about the fumes,” she says, peering inside. Her eyes remain incurious and distant. When she speaks her lips barely move. Will doesn’t know if she’s angry or amused. He finds the atonal quality of her accent mysterious, difficult to read. “I just painted the walls,” she continues. “Maybe you noticed. Chartreuse. It sounds fancy. But it looks green to me. Except it’s not. No, not quite. There is a little yellow in there. Maybe I’m colorblind. The paint was on sale so I bought it. I don’t know why I bother. How many people notice the color of the walls in the restroom? Of course I have my fair share of critics. They always find something to complain about.”
Although he is a bit paranoid right now and has never been especially courageous around pretty women, Will manages to focus his bloodshot eyes on the barista’s fine features, studies the tattoo of a brightly colored bird on the side of her neck that she playfully conceals with her long hair and small lively hands.
“My name is Salme,” she tells him.
“I’m Will,” he croaks. His throat is dry, raw. He can’t remember the last time he drank a glass of water. For five days straight he’s been living on espresso and weed.
“You attend the Jesuit high school, don’t you?”
He shrugs in a noncommittal way. He hasn’t been to school in weeks and has no intention of returning. He is eighteen now and no one can make him go back.
“You play in a band?”
“Sometimes. Zanzibar.”
“That is interesting. There must be a connection between us. I knew it when I first saw you.” She moves her hair aside, deliberately, so he can get a better look at the tattoo of the red and black bird on her neck, its head cocked, its eyes shining. “You don’t recognize it, do you? I thought maybe you would. It’s called a Zanzibar bishop. It’s song is strange but beautiful. Like your music. I enjoy listening to you play.”
Will, who isn’t used to compliments, feels his cheeks begin to burn.
“Would you perhaps be interested in playing here? I can pay you. Forty dollars a day. Under the table, of course. I wish I could give you more but it’s all I can afford. Hard times for everyone around here.”
Will listens with interest to her proposition, he’s down to spare change, a handful of quarters and dimes, but what if this woman, with her immigrant schemes and duplicitous smiles, is up to no damned good, what if she is luring him into a steely trap? He understands that she isn’t simply offering him a job, she’s reporting the facts, and the facts are these: he lacks the talent and persistence and, most important of all, the luck to become a successful musician. A gig at a coffee shop is the best he can do, another proving grounds, another clear indication of his immaturity and creative paralysis.
“You have big dreams, yes, but you should consider my words carefully. Please, come with me. I wish to show you something.”
Off they go, past a swinging door, through the tiny kitchen, then down a creaking staircase into the basement. Above them, hanging precariously from the exposed beams, a twisted highway of rusted pipes and heating ducts groan and sigh. Black spiders and silverfish scurry into dark recesses. Swirling tempests of dust shimmer through long shafts of opalescent streetlight that struggle through the glass block windows. Dangling from a frayed wire, a single light bulb swings gently back and forth like a man from the gallows and casts a faint yellow glow across dozens of wooden crates stacked one on top of the other.
“This is my husband’s domain,” she explains. “As you can see he has turned the basement into a warehouse for his plunder.”
“You’re married?”
She nods. “For ten years. Ever since I was a young girl, younger than you are now. He’s a merchant marine and sails the world on a cargo ship. He doesn’t wish to be tied down. He will never change. And I know that I cannot change him. I was very naïve when we met.” She runs her fingers across the tops of the crates. “Twice a year he returns home with odd things, items he finds in bazaars and opium dens and brothels. I have warned him. One day I will toss his treasures onto the street. But I cannot drag these crates up the stairs by myself.”
Will sighs. He knew there would be a catch, a reason for the free drinks, but it’s too late to think of an excuse.
“So which crates do you want out on the curb first? I won’t be able to carry them all out tonight, you know.”
Salme laughs. “Usipime, baga sosi! My husband would kill us both if I actually went through with something like that.” She slides against him, touches his shoulder. “Do you live nearby? Do you have a place to stay? If you do not mind the mess, there is more than enough room down here for you. An extra bed in the corner…”
But Will barely hears her. When it comes to matters of chance and coincidence he has always been a skeptic, but suddenly he sees an irrefutable sign, whether for good or ill he isn’t entirely certain, he’s never had the ability to interpret omens and doesn’t really know what this one means. Like a genuflecting penitent before the sacristy he kneels down in the dust, glides his trembling fingers across the splintered wood of a crate and whispers the improbable name that has been seared into the slats of wood with a hot iron.
“Zanzibar, Zanzibar, Zanzibar…”
-7-
The following afternoon he starts on the job. Eager to attract a mainstream audience, he forgoes the death metal riffs and plays the bouncy pop tunes one might expect to hear in a small café, standards and ballads from Tin Pan Alley, a jazzy number by Billy Joel, but he learns that success is just as elusive in a coffee shop as it is on stage. After each song he is greeted not with polite applause but with the rude slurping of cappuccino and the ornery rumbles from the poets who drum their chests and hack and wheeze and invent clever ways to put off their writing for another day.
He is grateful when Salme closes the café for the night, and he can retreat to the basement. Despite the gloom and solitude and the faint odor of chemicals, a sour smell that reminds him of those high school lab experiments he once slept through--the fleshy bull frogs pale green to the point of translucence bobbing around in big glass jars of formaldehyde like things half-remembered from childhood dreams--the basement provides a refuge from the whirlwind of failure and heartbreak that await him at the top of the stairs each day. In the corner there is a utility tub with running water where he brushes his teeth, washes his face and armpits, what the street people call a whore’s bath, and below the window there is an end table with a lamp and a pile of travel magazines, the pages yellow and brittle with age like the delicate parchment of an ancient codex. And of course there are the big wooden crates stacked three and four high like the turrets of a medieval fortress, shielding him from any possible intruders who might slink through the darkness and do unspeakable things to him.
Out of sheer boredom, he randomly selects a crate and pries it open, mystified by the curious artifacts buried beneath the straw--peculiar wooden idols with grotesque leers, jars packed with spices, leather bound volumes written in indecipherable and ancient tongues, waxes and oils and containers filled with mysterious dust. The ashes of forgotten kings, revered mystics?
In the crate marked Zanzibar he finds a glass hookah pipe with a half dozen hoses that reach out like tentacles to caress his cheek and a canopic jar made of alabaster depicting an Egyptian god--Aten? Horus? Ra?--stuffed with fragrant hashish the color of desert sand at sunset. He packs the bowl, lights a match and takes in the curative smoke that coils in thick purple plumes around his head. The stuff makes him feel disembodied, divorced from reality, in a vague state of turmoil. Strange sounds fill the basement, spectral shadows dance on the walls. His mind is adrift in an incalculable waste, his thoughts gather like the heavy drops of moisture that collect and fall from the groaning pipes, thoughts so small and scattered that they quickly evaporate and merge into the mossy cinderblock walls.
He takes off his clothes and waits for Salme join him under the thin sheets. She straddles him with the ferocity of a famished she-wolf about to eviscerate its prey. “Oh, it has been such a long time,” she rasps, stroking his arms, his chest, his stomach. If she has any thoughts of the merchant marine whose ship even now may be sailing through the perilous straights of faraway lands she gives no sign. It’s an arrangement that pleases them both, and for the whole of that long, brutal winter they enjoy each other.
Then during a crippling blizzard, when the snow piles up so high that it keeps the ghostly streetlights from entering the basement window, Will puts his guitar away for the night, lights some candles and waits for Salme to lock up and come downstairs. With a lazy hand he reaches for the hookah, and for one troubling hour smokes dope and listens to the shrieking wind that with each passing moment begins to sound more and more like a heated exchange, a deadly confrontation. He hears bellows and screams and wails and a deep voice that demands to see the thing penned up in the basement, the sniveling creature, the worm, the insect. There is a long silence, then it’s Salme’s voice he hears.
“The café is closed,” she says. “Permanently. Gone out of business once and for all. No one is allowed in. You must leave now.”
Will props himself up on an elbow. Maybe he should see what’s going on up there. Salme is a smart woman, tough, experienced, she can probably handle any trouble without his help, but when he hears the ensuing struggle, a sharp cry of anguish, a muffled plea for help, the boom of shattering of glass, the sudden, terrible sound of strangulation, a garrote pulled tight around the throat, Will jumps from the bed, searches for a closet, a crawl space, an alcove, but there is nowhere to hide. Finally, he crouches behind a stack of crates and shivers in the cold.
The basement door creaks opens. A wedge of white light slashes across the cement floor. The heavy thud of boots fills the clammy pit and sounds like the steady beat of a kettledrum. Will lifts his head. At the foot of the stairs, regarding him with a flash of recognition, stands a man whose shaved head and pronounced cheekbones and stumps of crooked teeth remind Will of those B-movie bandits that slobber with an inhuman and pitiless rage, a man who has known exile, driven from society time and again like a thief and forced to hide from marauding warlords in wadi-channels and cliff-hollows, burying his stool in the sand, burning scrub-brush for warmth, slitting the throats of pack-animals for sustenance, slipping across borders by the light of a gibbous moon, disappearing into towns reduced to ashes where children feral and skittish observe him from the shadows of mud huts, ancient cultures acting out the final cataclysmic scene of their long history and he the last observer of the drama.
Shaking his head back and forth the man smiles and in a voice from out of a dust cloud says, “So it’s you. Freddy Mercury.” His right index finger is missing, his left eyelid droops. He stares at the crate marked Zanzibar, sees that it has been pried open, its contents scattered around the room. Calmly he lifts Will’s guitar from the corner of the bed, plucks a string or two, and with one mighty swing shatters it against the cinderblock walls. Shards of wood fly in a hundred directions. The man tosses the busted neck to the floor, takes a deep breath, then points not to the crate exactly but to the darkness inside.
“Get in,” he says.
Will backs away. “What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean.”
“But why…”
“You know why.”
“Please.”
“I’m not a very patient man. Get inside.”
Will lowers his head, and suddenly, in an instant, all of the tremulous fears vanish. He accepts his fate, is somehow totally resigned to it. He steps into the box, crouches down, tucks his knees against his chin. Then the man sets to work. He slams the lid down and using the pry bar hammers it shut with a handful of rusty nails. The wood splinters at the corners of the crate and gouge the flesh at the back of Will’s neck. Grunting and cursing, the man drags the crate across the floor and up the stairs. Will’s head bounces violently against the sides. He moans in despair, cradles his legs, rocks back and forth. The café door opens, and through the thin slats of wood he feels the sharp stab of icy air. He considers screaming for help, but in this neighborhood who would dare rescue him? At this hour even the police are reluctant to get out of their cruisers.
The hinges of a tailgate open, a truck engine rumbles to life, and in a reassuring voice the man speaks to him, tells him that the loading docks of the shipyard are not far from here, all is well, all is well.
-8-
In time Will sleeps.
He dreams of a strange, new melody in the dissonant twelve-tone musical scale. There is no middle C, no starting point from which to center his consciousness. He envisions himself writhing on his deathbed, suffering from some unnamed affliction, one that utterly baffles a chorus of babbling doctors who with perfect impassivity listen to the final beats of his heart and watch his body go limp; the plaintive motif turns into the strangled lamentation of his grieving parents as they stand before the open casket at the funeral parlor to view his corpse, his eyes glued shut, lips wired together, features dulled by the artless application of makeup, fingernails manicured and positioned in an unconvincing imitation of repose. “What a misguided boy,” they say, “what a terrible disappointment.” During the funeral at the Jesuit chapel, the band members reunite a final time to play a dirge, transforming the motif into an insidious danse macabre, but they shed no tears. For them this is just another gig, another way to buy dope and booze. Their performance is rushed, lacks passion and conviction. Out in the raging blizzard, the gravediggers wait by the door, shovels at the ready, whistling the tuneless melody.
At some point he opens his eyes, though he can never be sure if he’s awake or still dreaming. In the darkness of the crate it’s hard to tell. He hears the crashing surf and sees seeping slowly from his lips the wraithlike quarter notes of his dream song. He worries that he’ll be forgotten in this box, just another amusing curio, mummified and leathery like a thing dredged up from a haunted bog. But there may be a fate worse still. In time the lid of the crate will surely fly open, and instead of the overcast skies of home he’ll see the bright blue sea that surrounds the faraway island of Zanzibar.
Connor Caddigan, a native of Achill Island, currently lives in Cleveland, Ohio and teaches English at several area colleges. His stories have appeared (or will soon appear) in a number of literary zines, including The Big Stupid Review, The Bicycle Review, The Legendary, Xenith, Red Fez, Poor Mojo's Almanac(k), and many others.
