“So it must be, but I do not recall how they looked before. No, your face has changed.”
I guess the police know what they’re doing, at least insofar as ears are concerned.
I fixed my nose, too, making it a little longer and straightening out the slight bump just below the bridge. I preferred my ears as they had been before, but I had to admit that the new nose was more becoming than the original model.
“Your eyebrows, Evan.”
I had forgotten to dye them. I did this, getting only a little bit of hair dye in my eye and swearing only for a few minutes. I tried on the clear glass spectacles Arlette had bought me. The only trouble with them was that they looked fake. The light reflected oddly off the flat surface of the glass. The sunglasses were much better and hid my eyes in the bargain but might look odd after dark, assuming I still wanted to be disguised by then.
I put my new cap on my head. It was similar to the wino’s cap but infinitely cleaner. Too clean, I decided. It looked as if it had been hatched that morning. I threw it on the floor and stepped on it while Arlette looked at me as though I had gone suddenly mad.
The phone rang. I grabbed it, and it was Seth. “Oh, no,” I said. “It can’t be six yet. It’s impossible.”
“It isn’t. You okay, man?”
It was three thirty and once I found that out, I was okay and said so. I asked him if anything had gone wrong.
“Nothing serious. We’ve got twenty-three bodies for sure and a batch of maybes. From past experience, I’d say one out of three maybes will show. That’s in the States, in a typical antiwar march. It could be different with Canadians for a Modonoland protest, but I don’t know whether it would be more or less.”
“You’ll know in a couple of hours.”
“I’m hip. The reason I called-”
“How are you doing on boats?”
“Not too bad. Randy’s out on a lead now, and there’s a chick from Nova Scotia who’s getting in touch with a friend who’s supposed to know somebody. You know how it goes. I don’t honestly know how many we have lined up, but I think we’ll make it. I’ll know better at six o’clock.”
“Good.”
“Uh, the reason I called-”
“How about money? Are you running low?”
“No, that’s no problem. Evan, why I called-”
“I’m sorry.” I was turning into Arlette. “Go ahead.”
“Well, this is ridiculous, but how the hell do you spell Modonoland? We’re lettering some signs now and nobody knows how it’s spelled, hardly anybody ever heard of it. It’s not in any of the reference books around here. Or on any maps.”
I spelled it for him.
“Good,” he said. “There’s this one sign I’m proud of. Where Do You Stand On The Modonoland Question? I love it. Randy’s personal answer is On My Head. Mine is Abashed.”
“I like that.”
“I thought you might. I’m sorry to call you with such a stupid question, but I figured it might be uncool to spell the country wrong. You’re positive there really is such a place?”
“Positive.”
“I’ll take your word for it. People keep asking me where it is. So far I’ve been dodging the question.”
“That’s a good policy.”
“You don’t know either?”
“I used to, but I can never remember.” Arlette brought over a fresh cup of coffee and I swallowed half of it. “Tell them it’s near Kenya,” I suggested. “Most of Africa is near Kenya.”
“It is?”
“Isn’t it?”
“To be honest with you, I’m not entirely certain where Kenya is.”
“Well, we don’t want to get hung up on geography.”
“I’m hip. I’m sorry I had to call-”
“It’s all right. I was wondering how you were doing. Call at six.”
“Right.”
I cradled the phone. The hand that phones the cradle rules the waves. Britannia waives the rules. The hand that cradles the rock – I couldn’t even take a shower or I’d wash the dye out of my hair and the putty off my ears. Cradle, cradle. Children are starving in Hungary and you didn’t finish your cradles and bream cheese. Children are hungry in Starvaring and you didn’t finish your curds and whey. Little Miss Muffet was told to go stuffet –
“Arlette!”
“Something is wrong? Evan, what is the matter?”
I inhaled and exhaled, very slowly, very solemnly. “Nothing,” I said. “I’m on edge, that’s all it is.” Inhale, exhale. “I have to send you out again. This time you’ll have to go to the fairgrounds.”
“I will go.”
“You will have to find a certain man and make arrangements for later this evening.”
“Who is this man?”
“I don’t know. You’ll have to arrange to meet with him in a certain place-”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. In a certain place and at a certain time.”
“When?”
“I don’t know. This is terrible. Is there any more coffee?”
She peered into my eyes. I don’t guess she saw much. I was still wearing the sunglasses. She said, “Evan, I think you should sleep for an hour.”
“No.”
“You have had very little sleep, Evan, and-”
“I’m all right. Coffee.” She brought it. I drank it. “Okay,” I said, ignoring the busy little rumble in the back of my head. “Okay, just let me think for a moment. All right. This is what you’ll do.”
I explained it to her. I guess it registered, because she repeated it all back to me, and it sounded all right when she said it. She was a little leery of leaving me all alone, though.
“I’ll be all right,” I said.
“At least take a nap.”
“If I can. I have things to do.” She went away. And I have promises to keep, said the rotten little voice, and miles to go before I sleep. And I have promises to break and miles to go before I wake. And I have Thomases to peep and smiles to look before I leap. And I have –
I went to the mirror and glowered at it. “You are probably going mad,” I told my reflection aloud. “Do you realize what you’re doing? You’re having verbal hallucinations. That’s what you’re doing. Do you realize that this may mean your mind is going? And if so, the competence of your whole brilliant plan is called to question. And since you haven’t told anyone what your plan is, nobody can check it to make sure it makes sense. Maybe this is an aftereffect of the pot. Maybe you’re actually still lying on the floor stoned out of your bird and it’s only six in the morning and none of this has happened yet. Maybe it never will. Why do you just stand there, you schmuck in the mirror? Why don’t you say something? Oh, Jesus God, what would I do if you did?”
I returned to the other room, sat on the floor, and folded up my legs in the full lotus posture. I began chanting the multiplication tables, first in English, then in French, then in Spanish and Portuguese and German and Dutch and Serbo-Croat and on and on, switching from language to language, babbling inanely onward and waiting for whatever was happening to either improve or deteriorate.
Very weird it was, believe me. I was in several minds at once, one of them chanting polylingual gibberish, one punning endlessly, one terrified that I was going crazy, one not giving a damn, and one little spark of sense somewhere in the background shaking its head at all the others. If I can just get control, it was saying, everything will be all right again. Let all the other fellows burn themselves out. I’m still here, fellow. I’ll take care of you.