Julia gets her novel manuscript back without comment; the next day a letter comes requesting the return of the advance. She immediately withdraws the last of her money from her savings account, leaves just enough in her checking account to cover current bills, writes the publishers that she is taking their request under advisement, wishing she could tell them they could whistle for their money. She sighs over the royalties they’d withhold, but with the courts in their present mood, there isn’t much she can do but be glad for once that these are reduced to a trickle, since most of the books are vanishing from stores and libraries into the fires of the righteous. She cannot understand what is so offensive about her books. There’s a bit of sex, but nothing really raunchy-it wasn’t necessary-some misery, for after all she is writing mostly about the poor, about the odd characters she’d grown up with. She likes her people, even the most flawed and evil of them, writing of them with sympathy and understanding of the forces that shaped them. She grows depressed when she thinks about them vanishing in black smoke, can only hope that moderation and intelligence will make themselves felt before the country tears apart.
She sleeps badly; things are closing in about her She has enough money to keep her going another few months if prices don’t rise too drastically, or the city itself doesn’t shut down. By then she should be in a hospital somewhere. She has stopped watching the news or reading newspapers, notices events only when they impact directly on her life…
Until the day she comes home worn out, sick, beginning finally to admit she could fail, dispiritedly wondering if she could somehow pry the money out of Hrald.
She pressed the bellbutton, stood with weary impatience while the guard looked her over. She was too tired to feel any more anger at the obstacle between her and the bath she wanted so much, even though the water would be cold and she’d have to heat pots of it on the stove, feeling absurdly like the pioneer women who helped settle this region more than five centuries before. When she was still writing, she rather enjoyed the process, working on her novel while the water heated, the tub was filled, pot by slow pot. How good it was going to feel, sliding into water almost too hot to bear, hot soapy water spreading over her body, a last pot set aside to wash her hair. The locks buzzed and she pushed inside.
As she trudged up the stairs to the fourth floor, she ignored the irritating echoes, the ugly smears on the walls, the dead smell in the air. These were once the firestairs, meant for emergency use only. The metal steps were worn and dangerously slippery especially during the hot rains of summer when the walls oozed moisture and drips fell six floors, bouncing off the steps and spattering on the heads of those that had to use them. She plodded up and around, cursing the landlords who wouldn’t fix her heater though the law said they were responsible for it. And she couldn’t bring in an outside repairman without permission and she couldn’t get permission because they wouldn’t answer her calls or her letters, leaving her more than half convinced they wanted her out of there. If she wanted hot water, she could move.
Halfway up she stopped, laughed, seeing as silly the gloom she was indulging, knowing she’d almost regret getting the heater fixed. Once she was inside her apartment, she’d relax into the pleasures of anticipation. The making of her bath was one of the many small rituals she found herself adopting lately, rituals that gave a kind of surety and continuity to her life as things around her degenerated into chaos. She straightened her shoulders, chuckled when a single warm drop of water bounced off her nose, then started up again. It wasn’t that late, not even two yet. Three of the people she had to see left word they’d be out of town until the end of the week. She glanced at her watch, nodded. She could start looking through her manuscripts and her notebooks, seeing if there was something that could be salvaged, something she could get to her foreign publishers that might bring her in a little money. She knew what those messages meant; one of them was from an old acquaintance who liked her well enough to be uncomfortable about giving her a bad answer; she suspected he’d seized the opportunity to send a nonverbal message he knew she’d understand. She stepped onto the fourth floor landing, shoved at the press-bar with her hip, nudged the door open and started down the hall.
She dealt automatically with the three locks, pushed the door open, kicked her shoes off, dropped her purse on a small table and swung around.
And stopped, her heart thudding.
Five men stood at the far end of the room watching her.
Young men. Not boys. Mid to late twenties. Short clipped hair. Clean shaven. Black shirts. Button-down collars. Neat black ties. Tailored black trousers. Black boots, trouser cuffs falling with clean precision exactly at the instep. Black leather gloves, supple as second skins. They looked like dress-up sp), dolls, vaguely plastic, with less expression than any doll.
“Who are you?” She was pleased her voice was steady though the question was stupid, she knew well enough what they were, who didn’t matter.
“Julia Dukstra?”
Anger began to outshine fear. “Get the hell out of here,” she said. “You have no right. This is my home.” She scowled, remembering the locks she’d had to open, silently cursed the landlords-who else could get them past the guard and hand them whatever keys they wanted? She started for the phone. “I don’t care who you are, get out of here. I’m calling the police.” One of the plastic dolls stepped in front of the phone. She wheeled, started for the door. A second blackshirt got there before her. She swung back around to face the one who’d spoken. “What is this?”
“Julia Dukstra?” he repeated. He had a high, light tenor that rose to a squeak at times. He didn’t wait for her to answer but went into what was obviously a set speech. “There are those who corrupt the morals of all who touch them; there are those who spread filth and corruption everywhere, who mean to destroy goodness and innocence in women and children, who advocate adultery and unnatural acts, who incite the poor to rebellion instead of blessing God for letting them born into the United Domains where hard work and steady faith will reward them with all they need or want. There are those who are intent on destroying this nation which is the greatest on God’s green earth. These purveyors of filth must be warned and if they persist in their treachery they must be punished…” He went on speaking with the spontaneity of a tape recorder. I bet he says that to all us purveyors of filth, she thought and wanted to giggle. They were so solemn, so ridiculous… Good god, what a tin ear he’s got, him or whoever wrote that spiel.
But as the man went on, the stench of violence grew thicker and heavier in the room, as if this pack of wolves smelled her growing terror and grew excited by the smell.
“… must be disciplined, taught to fear the wrath of the Lord, the anger of the righteous man. Your filth will no longer be permitted to pollute the minds of the young and the weak in spirit. Temptation will be removed from them.” He stepped aside and pointed.
One of her bedsheets was spread out in the corner of the room, the mint green one with the teastain at one end. On it was heaped most of her books, the ones she’d written, the others she bought for reference and pleasure, books she’d kept because they meant something to her. Beside the tumbled towers of the books, all her manuscripts, the old ones, her copies, the novel and story just returned, both copies, her notebooks. Fifteen years work. They were going to wipe it out, They were going to take all that away. Her books, her manuscripts, her bedsheet. Take them away and burn them. “No,” she said. “No.” She started for the pile.
The blackshirt caught hold of her arm, jerked her around. Without stopping to think, she slapped him, hard.