I slowed down, walked evenly, lightly towards it, closer and closer. Till I might have lunged forward and grabbed it. But I stopped, hesitant; and the moment it saw that the figure gestured again, desperately, and backed away towards the shadowy mouth of the narrow street behind. I’d come close enough to catch a gleam of dark eyes, a flash of a parchment-colored cheek, no other detail. Who had I known with any such coloring? Except …
The figure whirled about and ducked around the corner. I sprang after it; and found it there, standing, its back to me, as if gazing at the sky. A sky filling with light now, so that the surrounding rooftops stood out in sharp silhouette – but the light was white, and it didn’t drown the stars. My hair bristled. The sun rising when the moon should have, that was bad enough. But the moon in place of the sun – a new night, in place of a dawn and an end of deep shadows – That was far worse. I took two short steps forward, caught the figure by the shoulder, and felt a loose light cloak, almost a shawl, fall from the head. It turned sharply.
‘I’m sorry.’ I stammered idiotically, like anyone who’s accosted the wrong person, blinking hastily around for the real shadow. The face beneath the long hair was a man’s, lined and bony and sickly sallow, the livid lips set thin and hard. ‘I thought –’
Then the eyes met mine. The malevolent glitter in them lanced into me, diamond-hard, chilling – the triumphant eyes of the knave-card. And I had seen that face before! Where? A fleeting glimpse – a red car, madly driven … The thin lips split in a soundless crow of laughter, mocking, horrible. Instinctively I flung my sword up between us, as if to ward off a blow; but the shadow man only skipped back and fled. I bolted after him, furious now, fury fed on fear. This time there was no dodging, and no limp; the street was straight and he ran, fast, one block and across a road against lights, then another, with me never more than a sword’s length from his heels. Until, in the middle of the third block – he was not there. I skidded stumbling to a halt, stared wildly around, slashed at the air, at nothing. Then I gagged at a brief whiff of a horrible smell, like vomit. And that was it; I was alone.
Had he meant to lose me, whoever he was? He could damn well think again. I’d been ready for that. I’d kept track of every turn. I knew just which way we’d come, and where the river must be from here. Wherever here was …
I slid the sword back into my belt, and glanced around. High old walls, some of them stone, small barred windows – it looked strangely familiar somehow. Yes; these were warehouses, mostly Victorian by the look of them and pretty decrepit. But here and there ornate signs stretched out across walls cleaner than the rest, window frames newly painted; there was even a flash of pink neon. Another disco? Just the same sort of area, trendy chic creeping like a naked hermit crab into the shells of old solid commerce. But where? The neon sign spelt out Praliné’s – French-sounding, which meant precisely nothing; cafés in Moscow have French names. Anyhow, this didn’t smell like France – or Moscow either, somehow; there was a big-city sourness in the warm humid air, an unholy blend of traffic fumes and junk-food frying and aromatic plants that was wholly new to me. These were backstreets, with nobody about to ask. But just ahead there was more light, and the distant hum of traffic. I was curious; I went to look.
The street I emerged into was startling. No more warehouses; it was wide and well-lit and lined with houses, terraces of tall dignified houses in reddish brick. They had that elusive European look about them again, especially along their upper frontage, where a kind of continuous gallery ran, forming deep balconies under the common roof. Houseplants and large bushes grew there in tubs, bays and mimosas and others I didn’t know at all, exotic, elegant, airily graceful, trailing their foliage down over the ornate ironwork railings. But these houses had been restored, too; most of them were shopfronts, now, or cafés – some open. I strolled towards the nearest, and the warm night air rose up and hit me with the rich aromas of coffee and frying onions and hot pastry, and the blare of taped jazz. And suddenly I was so hungry I could have wept.
Hungry for more than food, too; it was a glimpse of civilization, of sanity – or at least of the kind of madness I knew. But would they take my kind of money here? I felt in my pockets. In an inner pocket were a few small coins, very heavy – gold pieces, of some kind I hadn’t seen, decorated with peculiar writing and elephants; they must be Jyp’s. All my ordinary money was in the pockets of my own clothes, on shipboard; and I began to feel very uneasy. I ought to be getting back. But I couldn’t resist peering in the window, seeing what kind of people were there. They were my own kind, exactly my own kind; they could have come from any country in the world, just about – mostly young, mostly Caucasian, but a good few blacks and Orientals too, a cheerful cosmopolitan crowd shouting so loudly over the jazz that I couldn’t make out the language. There was a menu, but the window was so steamed over I couldn’t make it out. And the café’s sign read Au Barataria. Which was where, exactly?
A young couple came out, and feeling a complete idiot I stepped up to them. The girl’s face, flushed and pretty, twisted; the boy’s darkened and he pulled her sharply aside. I shrugged, and let them pass; nice manners they had here. I strolled down the road. Here was a bookshop window still lit, and all the titles in English, by God! Only one gaggle of bestsellers looks pretty much like another to me. What I buy is Time and The Economist; so that didn’t tell me too much either. Next came a men’s boutique full of black leather and called, if you’ll believe it, Goebbels. That only went to prove that really bad taste is universal. And after that, a video shop, with just two or three cases on view; the titles were English, all right, but a little specialized – Pretty Peaches, Pussy Talk, Body Shop. Well, yes. Where the hell was this, the Costa Brava? The food smelt too appetizing for that.
Here came somebody else to ask, a hefty black man; but before I so much as opened my mouth I almost got a fist in it. The last day or so hadn’t exactly taught me to turn the other cheek, but I restrained myself; starting trouble now might be just the wrong thing. A more respectable citizen, middle-aged and fat, was hurrying down the far pavement; I strode over to intercept him, but before I got beyond the ‘Excuse me, sir –’ he thrust something into my hands and scuttled off at a rate he wasn’t built for. I gaped after him, then down at my hand. A few silvery coins; I picked up the two largest, and saw the eagle on each, soft-edged with wear. Quarters; twenty-five cents; hot damn, I was in America.
I stood there giggling helplessly to myself. In a night and a day – most of the latter spent drifting – I’d managed to cross the Atlantic. If I ever got the hang of how, I could play hob with the export business, that was for sure.
Or … how long had it actually taken me? Things had been happening with time. And suddenly childhood fairy tales came back to me, about the king who’d returned from under the hill – and this, after all, was the land of Rip van Winkle …
Suddenly I wasn’t giggling any more. For all the warmth of the night I felt pinched and cold like a returning ghost, a pathetic shadow in the twilight peering in at the warmth of life it had been shut out from for so long. Now I had to know when I was, as well as where. I glanced hungrily at a café, and stifled the thought; fifty cents wouldn’t buy the water in my coffee, if this was anything like New York. A squat blue bin across the street was a newspaper vending machine; that would help! I hurried back across the street – and stopped dead in the middle. Now I knew why people were shying away from me.