The hog bristled. “You say that we do not love her? I, who could not care for her more were she my own daughter? She reminds me of my own self in my youth.” This I rather doubted. “And the other girls, do you think they do not care for Phuc’mi? They regard her as their sister. And do you not think the men care for her? Would they pay such prices for one for whom they do not care?”
I turned from her, went outside for a moment. I wanted some fresh air, not just to clear my nose but to clear my head as well. I looked out over the desolate landscape. It was the middle of the afternoon and most of the girls were sleeping. Soon they would awaken and have their breakfast. Shortly thereafter the men would arrive from their camels, from the mines. And Phuc’mi-Phaedra-Deborah would have her work cut out for her until sunrise.
I went inside again. I told the foul-smelling old woman that, when all was said and done, she had no real choice in the matter. Amanullah would pay her price, whatever it might turn out to be. If the girl was worth that much, Amanullah would nevertheless make it good. Her customers might be unhappy, but she did hold the whip hand; after all, her house was the only game in town, and if it came down to a choice between her girls and camels, well, it might be close but her gals would surely carry the day. However good an adjustment Phaedra might have made to Afghanistanian whoredom, she surely belonged in her own home.
And, as a final argument, I showed her the gun. I explained that if she did not deliver Phaedra at once I would shoot her, and then I would go through the house and shoot all the other girls, and then I would take Phaedra away anyhow. This was sheer bravado, since the gun didn’t have that many bullets in it anyway, and since I wouldn’t have gone around shooting innocent maradóosh to begin with, but I guess she believed enough of it to go get Phaedra. She choked back a sob and said something which must have been interestingly obscene, some suggestion no doubt as to the ideal employment for diverse portions of my anatomy. And then she went away.
I steeled myself. Well, aluminumed myself, anyway. I told myself Phaedra was going to look like hell, and might be more than a little hysterical, and would need no end of tender loving care.
Whereupon she appeared.
She was more beautiful than could be believed. I use the awkward construction purposefully; “unbelievably beautiful” is one of those clichés fastened on every sunset and most Swedish films, the latter of which are at best believably beautiful. Phaedra was something quite out of the ordinary. I have already told you what she looked like, and she still looked that way, but with a new radiance, a special glow, a lilt to her walk and to her smile that had not been there before.
Before she had been a beautiful virgin. Now she was as beautiful as ever, and she wasn’t exactly a virgin anymore. She was, from what I had heard, as far from the state of virginity as she and I both were from the state of New Mexico, and perhaps even farther than that.
“Phaedra,” I said.
“Phuc’mi,” she said.
“Phaedra, it’s me. Evan. Evan Tanner. From New York. You remember me, Phaedra.”
“Phuc’mi.”
“And your name is Phaedra Harrow. Once your name was Deborah Horowitz. Do you remember? And then you changed it to Phaedra, and then-”
“Phuc’mi.”
She was wearing a piece of silk that was sort of wrapped all over her and fastened at the shoulder. Purple silk. She said her new name a few more times, and then she unfastened the purple silk and unwrapped herself like a self-opening Christmas present, and I looked at the glory that had lived untouched with me in New York, and the same glory that had since turned on half the camel schleppers in Afghanistan, and I think I got a little weak in the knees.
“She wishes not to go with you,” said the “before” half of the Ban ad. “She wishes only to stay here. I do not think she understands what you say to her.”
She was right. Phaedra’s eyes gave the show away. They had the queer light of madness in them. I nodded and went out to the car. I came back with a bottle of Coke.
“Coca-Cola,” said Phaedra.
“She is mad for Coca-Cola,” said the madam. “There is an empty bottle she takes every morning to sleep with her.”
“She used to like wine,” I recalled. “But she wasn’t queer for the bottles.” I opened the Coke and gave it to Phaedra and turned to go back for another one.
“Get two,” the madam said.
I didn’t want to. I knew it would make her belch, and I could imagine what that would smell like. But I got two more Cokes, and we all three drank ours down. I was the first to finish. I waited patiently until Phaedra was through with hers. She put the bottle down and gave me her one response to life, saying the new name by which she was so well known in the area.
And I hit her over the head with the Coke bottle.
“My head hurts,” she said.
“You’re awake.”
“You hit me.”
I took my eyes off the road and looked at her. She looked better than ever, but the madness had not left her eyes. I put my eyes back on the road just in time to avoid putting the car off the road, and I agreed that I had hit her, by George.
“What with?”
“A Coke bottle.”
“Oh. Stop the car, Evan.”
“You know who I am.”
“Sure. I knew back there but I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t say anything, just what I said over and over. I get blocked all the time, I can’t even think. Stop the car.”
“What for?”
“Just do it.”
I stopped the car, and Phaedra came into my arms and unzipped my fly.
“Hey,” I said.
“What’s the matter?”
“Well, I don’t know.”
“You always wanted to. From the first time you saw me you wanted to. Always. But I wouldn’t let you. I wouldn’t let anybody. They didn’t care that I wouldn’t let them, not here. I couldn’t even tell them. I couldn’t tell anybody anything because they didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. They said things I didn’t understand, and they didn’t understand anything I said, and it was horrible. Why isn’t it hard?”
“What?”
“Your thing. I want it hard so that we can do it. Don’t you want me?”
“Of course, but-”
“I know how to get it hard. Just a minute.”
But I was gently pushing her away. I held her at arm’s length, and she looked unhappily at me and wanted to know what was the matter.
“You don’t want me.”
“Sure, but-”
“The hell you do. I want to go back there. It was nice there. I got as much as I wanted. All night long, practically. As soon as one was finished another one would come. They didn’t want to talk or anything. All they wanted to do was-”
“I know, I know.”
“How come you don’t want to, Evan?”
I looked into her poor insane eyes. She was so magnificently beautiful it was almost painful to look at her, and she was begging me to do more than look, and she might as well have asked me to swim the English Channel.
Come to think of it, that’s a rotten metaphor. I had already swum the English Channel. And I had crossed the burning deserts and, in the Hindu Kush, had driven through some of the tallest mountains, even if I hadn’t literally climbed them. I’d performed all the proper Herculean tasks, all for love of a girl named Phaedra, and the only thing left was to claim my prize.
And I certainly couldn’t do that.
Because this wasn’t Phaedra. This was a poor sick kid with her sweetness and charm temporarily (one hoped) buried under a sea of nymphomaniacal hysteria. This was not something one took to bed, no matter how much she asked one to.
In the first place, I got a little sick at the thought of it. It seemed indecent. If I hadn’t known her before it might have been different, but I had, and it wasn’t.
And in the second place, even if I had managed to rationalize the first place, the whole thing would have been roughly akin, in a purely physical sense, to the prospect of inserting a boiled noodle in a bouncing bagel. Not quite impossible, perhaps, but not bloody likely either.