JANEEN WEBB AND JACK DANN
The wedding was the best that money could buy. A wooden platform was built right in the middle of Melbourne’s Royal Botanical Gardens; it overlooked the swan lake that was surrounded by a blaze of yellow and orange and pink flowers specially lit for the evening party. Under a chandeliered tent, five hundred people dined at cosy tables a-glitter with glassware and vintage bottles of Moet and danced to a full orchestra.
Helen Donoussa née Nisyros sat sweating in her gown at the head table beside her husband of exactly four hours and twenty-five minutes. It was unseasonably hot for April. ‘Kostas, you’re not supposed to look bored, this is supposed to be the most exciting night of your life.’ Helen had a way of pulling away and looking down her nose when speaking, which had always mesmerised suitors, admirers, and acquaintances. Although, feature for feature, she was rather plain (except for her thick, golden blonde hair), she looked regal; and everyone imagined her as being beautiful. Kostas, however, was beautiful: black curly hair, square face, deep brown eyes, and a dimple in his right cheek, which made him look off-balance and vulnerable. He was twenty-five years old, had already tried seventeen cases before juries, and had won them all. But he didn’t earn nearly as much money as Helen, who was a designer. She could turn an apartment into a virtual Georgian mansion.
‘This is interminable,’ he said. ‘No one looks like themselves. Everyone’s ugly. It’s -’
‘It’s business,’ she said.
‘I thought we were doing this for your family.’
‘Same thing,’ she said. ‘But it’s really for you ... for us.’ She extended her hand to an elderly man, one of her father’s law partners, who had worked his way down the table, shaking hands and offering hearty congratulations. Kostas greeted Mr Spiriounis, whose business he would eventually inherit, and then stood awkwardly before him while the old man chatted up the bride.
‘You know, your father loves you very much,’ Mr Spiriounis said.
‘Why of course he does, Uncle Dimi,’ Helen said, gazing up at him, as if she was the one standing.
‘No, no, no, I mean if he just loved you as fathers just love daughters, he would have given you a lovely wedding at Arbeena Court or Ballara or Ascot House, and everything would have been a virt; the flowers, the starry night. But this,’ - he motioned with his arms, gaining everyone’s attention, and spoke loudly, playing to Helen’s father - ’this is real.’
‘Yes, Uncle Dimi, and it’s hot, too,’ Helen said, as if she were complimenting her father for her discomfort.
‘But this is wonderful. This is how it used to be, for everyone, not just for those who have achieved the success your father has.’ Uncle Dimi looked toward Helen’s father, for whom he was talking loudly, but Mr Nisyros was preoccupied with important Japanese clients who were bowing and presenting him with gifts. ‘Well, will you excuse me?’
Helen blew him a kiss and Kostas sat down as Uncle Dimi backtracked to glad-hand the clients still talking to Helen’s father.
‘Why is he always kissing your father’s ass?’ Kostas asked. ‘He’s the principal partner.’
‘He thinks Daddy can help him stay in the firm, but he’s already out.’
‘What do you mean, already out? There would need to be a vote by all the senior partners. I would have heard something.’
‘Daddy told me he’s out, and when has he ever been wrong?’ Helen asked.
‘Maybe he should have taken you into the firm.’
‘He couldn’t afford me, and now you’re acting insecure and nasty. You don’t have to stay. You could open up your own practice and make a fortune. Or you could ask me to dance.’
Everyone stepped back to watch the bride and groom, who were not in the least self-conscious as they danced a perfect box step to a Strauss waltz. ‘You see, this is our perfect moment,’ Helen whispered into Kostas’s ear. ‘You, my darling, are like a jet plane. When you stand still, you’re awkward, but adorable. But when you’re moving, you’re like the music itself. You’re beautiful. You’re perfect.’
Regaining his self-esteem, Kostas danced even better. He dipped her and twirled her and stood razor straight, cutting a fine figure.
‘I wonder if Niagara Falls is a virt,’ Helen said.
‘I’m sure the Falls are real.’
Helen pulled back and looked at him contemptuously.
‘What does it matter, anyway?’
‘Professional curiosity.’
‘Well, we’ll probably be the only professionals in Australia who’ve ever seen it,’ Kostas said. ‘Except for the guy who was bowing to your father and his family, friends, and associates.’
Pleased, Helen giggled; and they left in the middle of the next dance, when everyone had crowded onto the floor. Daddy would be angry for a few minutes, and then he’d laugh that they’d ‘eloped’.
By 3.00 a.m. Helen and Kostas were seated comfortably in Connoisseur Class on a 999 Qantas suborbital.
* * * *
‘I think we should put in an appearance at David’s party,’ Helen said, as she gazed out the porthole window at the tarmac and the green runway lights. They were both seasoned travellers, resigned to spending as much time on runways as in the air.
‘Well, it’s too late now,’ Kostas said. The vibration of the engine was comforting and made him sleepy. He activated a privacy guard and the aisle and cruising automated stewards disappeared behind grey vibrating walls. ‘You didn’t want to go, remember?’
‘I was hungry.’
Kostas didn’t turn to look at her, but he could imagine her lips pursing into a pout. ‘Well, forget the party.’ He waited a beat and continued. ‘We did act like shits. The party was in our honour, after all.’
‘What you mean is that I’m a shit,’ Helen said.
‘I didn’t say that. I didn’t want to go to a party either. I’ll make up excuses when we get back.’
‘I’m sure the party is a bore and a half, and I’m tired, but we should put in an appearance,’ Helen said. ‘Come on, we’ll virt in, apologise - you can make up one of your good excuses - and honour will be satisfied.’
‘We were specifically invited in person, remember?’ Kostas said. ‘It’s very bad form, especially for the guests of honour. I’ll think of something when we get back.’
‘Well, I’m going to peep in,’ Helen said.
‘You won’t get in.’
Helen activated her privacy guard, walling herself away from Kostas. ‘Oh, yes I will ...’
Defeated, Kostas acquiesced; and Helen showed good form for their arrival. The guests at the party - if, indeed they would permit them to attend en virt - would see Kostas and Helen as Jan Van Eyck’s ‘Giovanni Arnolfini and his Bride’. Helen created their virtual images, her hands making tight motions on her lap, as if she were surreptitiously trying to conduct a symphony rather than manipulate data. She used an ancient geofiguration operation system, for she had trained with an old Mac designer, who died last year at 122, God rest his irritable soul.
Kostas lost his face to Van Eyck’s financier Giovanni Arnolfini. His features became pale and sharp and thin, aristocratic, a spoiled little boy who had grown into selfish ennui. He wore an ermine cape and a large velvet hat with a wide brim. But Helen retained her own features, now framed in a white lace shawl from which protruded two devil’s horns of twisted blonde hair. Her green dress, outlined with rabbit fur, cascaded to the floor in delightful folds.
‘Come on Kostas, stand up,’ Helen said, and she took his hand. ‘Stand up straight, there’s enough room. There, that’s close to the original painting. I just made us a bit better, that’s all. What do you think?’
Kostas laughed. ‘You’re beautiful, but are you sure you want to look pregnant?’
‘I’m just being true to the painting. Let everyone think what they like.’ She giggled.
‘You’re not pregnant, are you?’
She shrugged. ‘Think whatever you like. Now what do you think of ... you?’
‘I can’t see myself, but the frock feels nice and soft,’ Kostas said.
Kostas and Helen, like everyone else, wore self-cleaning virt body webs that were the texture of ancient nylon stockings.
‘Well, you look very nice. Do you want a mirror?’ She grinned at him, as she did when she was being provocative, when she was goading him.
‘I’ll trust you, but we don’t have much room to move here.’
‘Stop being a baby,’ Helen said. ‘Once we’re in, we’ll sit,’ and she rang them into the party, leaving Kostas to make all the excuses while she waved hello to all their friends. They stood in a large living room that opened onto a pond and garden in the oriental style. Some of the guests were still dressed in the formal eveningwear that had changed so little since the nineteenth century; most of the others were naked.
‘Why, you didn’t have to be embarrassed,’ said David, the host of the party. ‘This party was for you. We could have made it virtual, if that would have been easier.’
‘When we get back, we’ll have to have a party for all of you,’ Helen said. ‘Our way of doing penance.’
‘Well, we can do it right now,’ one of the other guests said, and in a trice the room dissolved, giving way after a few long moments to endless veldt at twilight. The sky was blood red, darkening into clotted purple only at the horizon. The guests reappeared as golden pelted lions and padded around the Van Eyckian Kostas and Helen, who both seemed to be sitting on a cloud floating but a foot above the veldt.
Helen squealed with surprise. The rank smell of wet animal fur was overpowering. ‘You planned this all along.’
‘Well, we were getting a tad bored just standing about,’ David confessed, ‘so Ellen started working up a story we could play.’ Host and guests could only be distinguished by their voices now.
‘It was interesting to get on for a while au fond,’ another said. ‘Somehow, though, it feels ... naughty.’
‘Well, we’re not being naughty now,’ said another.
‘Tell us about the story,’ Helen said.
‘First tell us if you’re pregnant,’ said Ellen, who settled back on her haunches before the newlyweds. ‘Your virt’s pregnant, anyway.’ Everyone laughed, and she continued. ‘And where are you going on your honeymoon? It seems that none of those who love you know. Now isn’t that just a little bit odd?’
‘I’ll tell you exactly what I told my husband,’ Helen said. ‘Think whatever you like.’
‘About which, your pregnancy or the honeymoon?’
Helen laughed. ‘Both.’ After a beat, she said: ‘Now let me guess the game. It shouldn’t be too difficult.’ Her friends circled them, and the scene took on a decidedly deadly cast. As it became darker, the other guests padded around Helen and Kostas in ever diminishing circles, feral eyes glowing.
Suddenly one of the guests leaped at Kostas, tearing at his legs, biting, ripping through to the virtual bone.
Kostas screamed in pain, and Helen said, ‘Okay, I’ll give up ... a little. I’m pregnant. Now, you see, you’ve spoiled it for Kostas. And I’ll never really find out whether he’s excited or upset.’
‘Well, tell her.’ The guests stopped pacing, all now watching Kostas, who was bleeding quite realistically, and was, indeed, in realistic pain.
‘Oh, he won’t reveal his true feelings in front of anyone,’ Helen said. ‘Not even me.’
‘You are pregnant?’ Kostas said, angry and in pain.
‘Would you like me to make the baby go away?’ Helen asked. ‘Is that what you want?’
‘No, of course not, but -’
‘You see, I’m now married to this man, and I don’t know him at all.’
With that, Helen transformed herself into an unpregnant bride. ‘And I’ll tell you where we’re going on our honeymoon. America!’
There was a gasp from the guests, and Helen disappeared, leaving her bleeding husband to the uncomprehending lions.
* * * *
‘Why did you lie about going to America?’ Kostas asked Helen, who sat beside him sipping a champagne cocktail and reading The Vision of God by Nicholas of Cusa. As she was of a flamboyant nature, she read publicly, and the text, set in flames, hung in the air before her like the tablets of Moses. Nicholas was her saint, the saint of VR designers; he had dreamed of creating an image so potent as to be ‘omnivoyant’ - all seeing. An icon of God.
Helen shrugged. ‘Give them something to talk about. And maybe I was angry at them for biting you. After all, you are the groom. And we’ll practically be in America, so I didn’t lie very much.’
‘Are you angry at me?’ Kostas asked.
‘Did you really think I might be pregnant?’
‘For a second, maybe.’
‘You really didn’t think I’d tell them before I told you,’ Helen said.
Kostas shrugged. ‘I asked you before, remember, and you wouldn’t tell me. Who can know what you think?’
That pleased her, and she smiled. ‘I worried that if I was pregnant ... that you wouldn’t be pleased.’
‘Of course I’d be pleased.’
‘Well, good. I assumed that you really truly loved me, so I took revenge on the party guests for you.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I drowned them. They stank from dampness anyway. That’s what gave me the idea. They won’t be able to turn off their game until they’re all practically choking to death.’
‘Christ, they were giving us a wedding party.’
‘One that they’ll never forget,’ Helen said.
‘They’ll hate us.’
‘They’ll love us.’
An hour later they landed at the Tad Wink International Airport, which was less than an hour from Niagara via the underground magnetic.
They were in the Confederacy of Canada.
And in love.
* * * *
‘Are you sure you want to go through with this?’ Kostas asked, uneasy with the third-world presence of human functionaries, each of whom was almost certainly carrying a cocktail of disgusting, transmittable diseases. He tried not to breathe too deeply.
‘We’ve had all our shots,’ Helen said. ‘Stop obsessing about your health. Do you remember the survival rules? Never eat anything uncooked or anything that might have been left standing. Never eat fruit that you don’t peel yourself. Never drink the water. But don’t worry,’ she said unctuously. ‘This is supposed to be a bath house? I’m sure it’s clean.’
Irritated and humiliated, Kostas turned to the interpreter, who, though obviously a male, wore a black veil; he also wore traditional western clothes: suit, tie and sneakers. The interpreter stammered a rehearsed apology: the lifts had failed. Again. As usual. They’d be working tomorrow. Maybe. But it wouldn’t be so bad: only ten flights to climb. Helen just shrugged and watched a lime-green turtle struggle with her luggage. The glittering Regency foyer with its Corinthian doorways, black marble insetting, and domed alcoves was serviced by bears and seals and all manner of aquatic and terrestrial creatures. But for all the expensive touches, everything looked dusty and soiled. Even the light streaming in through the windows seemed grey.
‘You see,’ Kostas said to Helen, ‘it’s just as I thought. All the porters and clerks are virts.’
Helen giggled. ‘No they’re not. They’re all wearing costumes. Can’t you tell? It’s just like America.’
Kostas understood. She was right, damn her.
He watched a cartoonesque turtle pushing their suitcases on a trolley across the huge marbled lobby to the ornamented stairway. Something about the comfortable angle of the turtle’s carapace betrayed the deformity beneath. A hunched back, maybe, or a twisted spine.
Yes, it was just as he had heard.
All the natives suffered some form of genetic damage.
And now that he knew what to look for, he could well imagine some subtle deformity covered by the translator’s veil.
* * * *
Their suite was shabby, the wallpaper aged a nondescript brown, the curtains faded, the obligatory Edo ukiyo-e prints of courtesans and erotica clung tiredly to the walls, a relief of form and figure fading one into the other. The traditional curtain-dais, latticed shutters, sliding doors, and screens seemed out of place in what would have passed for a cheap-jack motel room in any civilised country on the Pacific Rim. But these amenities were costing $12,000 a night, not including tax.
Kostas checked the bathroom and was relieved to find that the plumbing worked after a fashion. Everything smelled of a recent application of disinfectant. But he was not pleased to see a hinged basket under the toilet paper dispenser and a metal sign screwed into the wall that read in Japanese, Arabic, and English: Dispose of Paper in Basket, Not Toilet. He was, however, fascinated by the slightly out of focus moving figures and the ranked characters of the sexual services menu, printed on rather grubby paper that had slid into the porcelain bathtub. He hadn’t had it in his hand a second when he heard Helen gasp and call his name.
He stepped back into the bedroom, where Helen stood staring at a wall of water. The Falls. The exhausted turtle had brought in all the luggage and depolarised the far wall to reveal the great horseshoe of foaming water that threatened to crash into their suite. Dismissed, the turtle was now bowing out of the room, and Kostas saw a clutch of real money in its bony hand. He remembered Uncle Dimi slipping Helen a Japanese envelope at the wedding, and wondered if she had told the truth of their destination. He doubted it. The family was still traditional enough to disapprove of purchasing sexual games, no matter how fascinating and foreign, for its women. It wouldn’t approve of his complicity, either.
‘You called me in for this?’ Kostas asked.
‘Can’t you hear it? Can’t you feel it?’
The ancient waters roared their indifference, muted only by the heavy glass.
‘Before the turtle turned off the wall, I just thought I was hearing the airconditioning,’ Kostas said. ‘But I’m surprised that you’re so taken with it all. Don’t you think it’s just a bit tacky?’
Helen pulled him toward a balcony. The doors sighed open, and the falls sounded like constant thunder. ‘There. Can you feel it? Can you smell the ozone?’
‘I smell something,’ Kostas said.
Helen embraced him. ‘It’s supposed to act like an aphrodisiac. That’s why it’s so popular.’
‘Do you believe that?’ Kostas felt dizzy looking out at the falls and down at the Japanese gardens below. From this vantage, everything below looked small and perfect and at rest ... and about to be overwhelmed by the Falls.
‘No, but this is all real. I can tell the difference.’
‘No you can’t,’ Kostas said.
‘You’re being very unromantic,’ Helen said. ‘This was a sacred place. You can feel it.’
‘You’re being very silly.’
‘And you’re acting like a lawyer,’ Helen pulled away from him and went back inside.
Kostas followed. ‘I am a lawyer.’ The balcony shut out the noise behind him.
‘I can see that. Here we are on our honeymoon and you’re still clutching paperwork.’ She gestured at the sexual services menu that he was still holding.
‘I found it in the bathroom, but I can’t make out a damn thing ... except for a few of the pictures, and they’re fuzzy.’
She took the menu.
‘Could your Mac scan something that wrinkled?’
‘No,’ she said, sitting down on the bed, her head propped on the large, hard pillows.
‘There should be some clean copies in the desk,’ Kostas said.
‘Uh, huh, I already looked. No computer, no postcards, not even a pencil. And no screen. Can’t call out, can’t see in.’
‘It’s probably just a style thing. The stuff is there somewhere, just opaqued.’
‘Uh, huh,’ Helen said. ‘You could run downstairs and find out.’
‘I’m not -’
‘Or you could just tick a box, any box, from each section. It’s like those “authentic” oriental restaurants ... half a dozen basic items, with hundreds of minor variations. Look at the back page to see if there’s a banquet.’ There wasn’t. ‘So, here, let me surprise you.’
Helen thumbed some of the items at random, and pink circles appeared around the Japanese ideographs. ‘There. This is supposed to be an adventure. Now ... don’t you feel adventurous?’
As if responding to Helen, the room replied, in English, ‘Please forgive the inexcusable lapse of hospitality, Mrs Donoussa. Hotel Niagara is undergoing complete renovation. All hospitalities are being upgraded. It was most unfortunate that the hospitalities on this wing were down when you arrived. To make up for any inconvenience, we’ll provide a special supper for you on the private roof garden and free run of all our bath and pink facilities. To answer your questions, you need not fill out any paperwork to use our facilities. Just tell us and all will be arranged. Postcards will soon be delivered and the room properly cleaned. If you need to make any calls, you need just ask.’
‘So where did this come from?’ Kostas asked, waving the wrinkled services menu in the air.
‘Our apologies, sir. The brochures for our pink salon do not usually find their way upstairs. But all your preferences have been noted.’
‘What is your pink salon?’ Kostas asked.
‘We’re very proud of it, Mr Donoussa. It is an exact reproduction of the famous Futago no Kyabetsu, which thrived in Osaka before the Millennium. But unlike the ancient Osaka club, we offer intercourse as well as massage and violent service. It’s very authentic and downmarket. We had a customer murdered just this week. That caused quite a sensation.’
‘How do we turn you off?’ Helen asked.
‘Would you prefer privacy?’
‘Yes,’ Helen said. ‘Immediately, if you please.’
The room was silent, but this place definitely did not feel private.
* * * *
Helen’s belle epoch high heels clacked against the marble floor of the lobby as she and Kostas left the hotel to have dinner in the fabled street of Niagara Falls. Perhaps they would dine in the private roof garden tomorrow. Tonight they wanted privacy. They wanted to explore. In her crimson striped jacket and her gown that pushed her rouged bosom up and out like a pouter pigeon, Helen looked like a main character in a costume drama taking place in the mock period style of the hotel lobby. She was tall and confident and full of herself, in marked contrast to the groups of pin-neat Japanese businessmen hurrying through the lobby with their tour handlers like multi-legged beasts scurrying out of the way of predators. Kostas wore pegged trousers and an apricot yellow ascot ruffled in his shirt. It would be sticky out in the streets, so he dressed casually. But the thrill for Helen was to be seen, discussed, and complimented.
As she and Kostas reached the door, they had to step back, for a Muslim potentate entered with his entourage of bodyguards, servants, wild noisy children, and wives and concubines wearing silk headdresses and ornamented veils. The potentate was turbaned and dressed in white; he had a handsome pockmarked face, shaven cheeks, and a black moustache and beard. He stopped when he saw Helen, as if he recognised her; and he nodded to her as she and Kostas stepped past.
‘Do you know him?’ Kostas asked.
‘No, I never saw him before,’ Helen said. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘Because he looked at you as if he recognised you.’
Helen took his arm, obviously pleased, and they made their first foray out of the hotel. They walked down Bender Street to Falls Avenue, through the checkpoint guards and into the formal gardens of combed sand where pumice white rocks seemed to float like islands in a stationary grey sea, past the European gardens with turf walks bordered by strawberry beds, through copses of elm, chestnut, and fir that hid the sight but not the sound of the Falls. They walked beside the long wall that overlooked the crashing, steaming waterfall. Mist rose into the sky, creating soft clouds that turned to neon as the kliegs came on to illuminate the Falls. It became dark very quickly, and the damp, chilly air smelled of ozone and chestnuts and grilling soy meat. Vendors called out to Helen and Kostas as they passed. ‘American hot-dogs, California hamburgers, real-authentic’ Children played tag and ate real-authentic soy and vermiform dogs and burgers. Lovers leaned against the stone wall and necked or made love in the open. Natural Canadians strolled past, many veiled or masked or costumed in cloaks or coats too warm for the cool evening. The Confederacy had declared this perimeter by the Falls public land, and the Japanese Trade Corporation had not been allowed to purchase it.
Around the horseshoe of the Falls, neon beckoned: geometrical lines and clouds of suffusing light rising into columns, cliffs, and spires. Along the narrow public streets money and organs were gambled for a burst of white ecstasy; telefac booths took junkies through their personal and pre-recorded stations of the cross, while five and dime virts provided empty dinners for those who had never seen or smelled real meat and dreamland sex for those who could only imagine the pleasures to be had beyond the public perimeter.
But Kostas and Helen were anxious to see the real Niagara Falls. They could come down to the strip to slum later in the week. After all, there wouldn’t be anything much here that they couldn’t see for a dime in Sydney or Melbourne or Adelaide ... except for the Falls. At the checkpoint beyond the Japanese gardens Kostas asked a guard dressed in an olive drab uniform where the best restaurants could be found. The guard pointed his Uzi 5000 riot rifle at the ground and indicated that he did not speak English.
‘Even if he did speak English, you can’t ask someone like that to recommend a good restaurant,’ Helen said. ‘He’d just send you to the Japanese equivalent of a greasy spoon.’ Kostas didn’t argue, although he’d always found the best food in foreign towns by asking the advice of policemen and outworkers. They walked hand in hand past the neat grounds of hotels and the much more grand corporate lodgings. But beyond the hotels were winding, narrow streets chockablock with blinking billboards, holos, videotects, and neon signs, an entire city turned into a twentieth-century amusement park: Ferris wheels, parachute rides, the original steel-reinforced Cyclone roller-coaster lifted right out of Coney Island, tunnels of love and death. And there were, of course, the dioramas that Niagara Falls was famous for: American city streets that were cracked and overgrown with the brown fronds of fleshweed were resurrected here in all their glory. There were the original Golden Gate Bridge (or rather one quarter of it; the rest had been moved to New Japan near Chile) and Lombard Street and an exact recreation of Washington Square Park and ancient Japanese red lamp districts such as 1950’s Koganecho and Shiroganecho and Osaka’s Tobita district, circa 1911. Beyond were the sandy beaches of seventeenth-century Watakano Island with its welcoming funajoro and sentakunin - ship whores and washerwomen. And on every street corner were holos blinking ketchup red and whispering in the three major languages:
THE JAPANESE TRADE CORPORATION WELCOMES YOU. EVERYTHING YOU SEE IS REAL. THE NEW NIAGARA FALLS IS A VIRT-FREE ZONE. ENJOY IT BUT BE CAREFUL! BE REMINDED: YOU HAVE SIGNED A DEATH WAIVER. WE HAVE PROVIDED DANGEROUS SITUATIONS ESPECIALLY TO MAXIMISE YOUR ENJOYMENT. ALL CHILDREN UNDER SEVENTEEN MUST BE BRANDED.
As danger simply was not on for the first night of their honeymoon, they decided to try a famous Philadelphia restaurant called Locanda Veneta for a quiet supper and spend the rest of the night inhaling ozone from the Falls and making love; Kostas, after all, came from a traditional family. The ambiance of Locanda Veneta was a kitschy interpretation of late twentieth-century Italian (red velvet chairs and red felt on the walls and well-lit but poorly executed oil paintings.) The lasagna della casa and the spinach and ricotta cannelloni were execrable, as were the roasted quail and the calf’s liver with polenta. To add insult to injury, the food was tremendously overpriced.
Helen credited the bill and Kostas suggested a safe cab to the hotel and a judicious dose of mebeverine hydrochloride to eliminate any possible irritable bowel syndrome that might have been touched off by Locanda Veneta’s poisonous cuisine. ‘Now I understand why they have danger signs at every corner,’ Kostas said, once they were on the street.
Helen decided they would walk. They had come here for excitement. And anyway she had a special surprise waiting for Kostas.
‘What?’
‘Don’t worry. It’s right at the hotel. We’re going to take it easy tonight.’ With that she grinned and stepped off into the crowds of tourists and paid pickpockets, rapists, whores, and murderers.
* * * *
Helen led Kostas across the hotel’s lobby, past the banks of elevators, to Shinmachi Soaplands, the hotel’s bath house. The entrance - antique temple doors that reached almost to the ceiling - was behind a display of huge fans and screens, and a grandmotherly old lady dressed in tenth-century full court costume was waiting for him. She shooed Helen away and said, ‘Wasure nai,’ which meant ‘Don’t forget.’
‘What?’ Kostas, asked, pulling away from the grandmother, but Helen simply blew him a kiss and left him there.
‘I thought we were going to spend the night together,’ Kostas shouted, immediately embarrassing himself, for everyone nearby suddenly stopped talking.
Helen turned and said, ‘We will... now let the old lady do her job.’ With that she disappeared behind a tour group of new arrivals who had enough baggage to move house. And Kostas slipped through the doorway to the pink salon with the old lady who introduced herself with a bow and a faint smile as Sei Shonagon, the boss and bitch of this court. Indeed, the spacious room resembled a royal court; no expense had been spared. Grandmother Bitch led him through indoor gardens under high, timbered roofs. They passed an old man playing a thirteen-pipe flute. Beside him was a naked woman playing a zither; she must have weighed at least three hundred pounds.
One by one Grandmother’s nieces appeared with their enamelled fans and hair ornaments and formal long-trained skirts. Kostas found himself smiling nervously as any bridegroom, as he was introduced to these shy women, several of whom looked prepubescent, all of whom had Canadian Confederacy Department of Agriculture and Health facial implants that glowed with a soft green light: official proof that their blood was at this very minute clear of all communicable infections. Grandmother introduced each niece by her proper name, and Kostas would say, by rote, ‘Taihen utsukushii desu,’ or ‘Yubi na,’ telling each woman, or girl - it was difficult to determine their ages - that she was very beautiful or very graceful. One of the nieces wore hornrimmed eyeglasses. Whether it was an affectation or a foil for some minor degenerescence, Kostas couldn’t tell. He called her riko na, the last of the three compliments he could remember, and she beamed at him, for being called intelligent was the highest compliment one could receive in Japanese soiree society. Although unintentional, he had just made his selection. Grandmother’s other nieces, looking properly crestfallen, excused themselves, and Grandmother recounted Pretty Girl’s virtues and specialties. She was expert at pretend games such as pervert in the park and had invented and perfected ososhiki supesharu, which was now popular all over Japan: the funeral special. She could provide him with all the delicacies on the pink menu, from a simple bath to ippo tsuko (one-way street), name-name pure (lick-lick play), paizure (breast-urbation), or sakasa tsubo hoshi (upside-down pot service).
Grandmother bowed and excused herself.
Pretty Girl, although blushing, led Kostas through the gardens to a wonderfully hot and steamy bath, a huge improvement on the tepid water of his suite. Before she undressed him, he asked, ‘Why do you wear eyeglasses, Pretty Girl?’ Kostas felt awkward, felt a need to communicate before being ‘served’.
She kneeled before him, settling back comfortably on her haunches. She had very delicate features, except for her mouth, which was full. An application of lipstick would have made her look voluptuous, but she blurred her lip line with white face powder. Her hair was very long and lustrous; black, with brown highlights. ‘I’m blind, Mr Nisyros.’
‘Kostas.’
‘Kostas.’ She said the word as if she were tasting it. ‘I like it very much.’
‘Do the glasses allow you to see?’
‘No, they are for the comfort of others. They are like clothes to cover me. If you wish, you can see me without them?’
Kostas nodded, then realised she couldn’t see him and said, ‘Yes.’ But he looked away when she took the glasses off and laid them carefully beside her. Her eye sockets were empty, brown hollows, dark gouges in her powered-white face.
‘There are many who find my blindness attractive. If you find it repellent, I can put my glasses back on. Or perhaps you would rather one of my cousins instead?’ She bowed her head.
‘No, I wish to be with you,’ Kostas said, feeling an exotic rush of both attraction and repulsion as she undressed before him ... as she bathed him and soaped and efficiently fellated him. She was shy, yet able, and as he watched her serve him everything he had ordered on the menu, he dreamed of an eyeless, delicate Helen who would cater to his every wish. He dreamed of Helen as Pretty Girl performed kuchu kimmu aerial service which required that he only lie on his back while she climbed astride him. He dreamed of Helen as Pretty Girl led him back to the bath for a full body massage and pubic hair ‘brush wash’ on a tatami mat. After a moment of ecstasy, his gaze drifted back to Pretty Girl’s glasses, which rested neatly folded on the floor where she had left them.
Her lost, brown Bette Davis eyes gazed intently at him through tinted windows.
But Kostas was shocked out of his reverie by a glimpse of shiny black nine-inch stiletto heels. Suddenly, his wrists were seized and handcuffed behind him, his ankles bound, and his knees pushed forward, so that Kostas found himself with his chest on the mat and his buttocks raised, pink and exposed. He glimpsed someone the size of a sumo wrestler moving gracefully toward the door. As he shouted for help, the diminutive Pretty Girl merely consulted the menu, then produced a gag, which she tied very carefully, so as not to bruise his gums. She brushed her hands across his face, as if seeing him with her caress.
There was nothing Kostas could do but resign himself to his fate.
After all, there’s always something you don’t like on the menu. And at least Pretty Girl was small.
He ground his teeth as she lashed his buttocks, carefully pressing down the ends of the whip so as not to leave welts on his soft white skin. The whipping was mercifully short. When she teetered back into his line of vision to offer him his choice of authentic antique MADE IN TAIWAN battery operated dildoes for anaru zeme - anal attack, Kostas shook his head. He felt a cold blob of KY jelly followed by the tip of a boot heel as Pretty Girl gave him full measure, pumping, rotating her ankle, gradually working deeper inside him.
He was mortified to find his erection hardening as she increased the pressure. Then another woman wriggled onto the mat, sliding beneath his belly to take his penis in her mouth. Her technique was familiar, and Kostas’s mortification turned to true humiliation as Helen sucked the juices from him in an explosive orgasm.
He stared at Pretty Girl’s glasses, as if he could focus himself into one small object. He felt soiled, defiled. Sex was private. That’s what they’d agreed. That was to be the only rule.
The image of Pretty Girl’s brown eyes stared back at him.
And suddenly Kostas felt a shiver fan down his back.
Someone was watching them ... and it wasn’t Pretty Girl.
* * * *
When Kostas woke up, he was alone in his suite. His head ached and there was a metallic taste in his mouth, as if he’d been drugged. He told the room to turn off the wall, and morning sunlight blazed through the window plate. Niagara Falls was a dull roar, a vibration that could be sensed rather than felt. From his bed he could only glimpse blue sky threaded with sheet white cirrus. He listened for bath noises; there were none.
‘Where’s my wife?’
‘There was no message left for you, Mr Donoussa,’ the room said.
‘When did she leave?’
‘She was previously in the room from 3.36 p.m. to 5.17 p.m. yesterday, Mr Donoussa.’
‘Yes, go on.’
‘She has not returned, Mr Donoussa.’
Kostas was now sitting on the side of the bed, his hands shaking, his voice gravelly. Something had gone terribly wrong. He knew it. He could feel it. As he blinked, he imagined Pretty Girl’s glasses staring at him. He tried to remember. He remembered calling to Helen, then ... waking up here.
‘When did I return?’
The room didn’t answer.
‘When did I return?’
Again, no answer.
The room was dead.
Kostas went down to the old Niagara Falls strip, which was already crowded with penny-ante gamblers and skinny junkies out for a small, cheap shot to their pleasure centres. The day-shift whores had been out since dawn, calling and revealing and heckling. Most were occidental and thick-featured, illegals from the US side and Canadians who couldn’t qualify for the dole. One tried to hard-sell herself to a middle-aged, balding man who was with another woman and four children. The man ignored her, as she danced in front of him; he put his arms around two of the children and looked straight ahead, as if the casinos, virt parlours, and pink palaces were gold-steepled cathedrals. Kostas noticed that the children were dressed in identical, garish-red outfits. They would certainly be easy to find. And just then Kostas felt suddenly homesick. He heard the internal thunder that always preceded tears and focused on the task at hand, as if he were in court.
He found a plastic booth near the toilets in the seediest-looking casino on the strip. The sliding doors kept opening and closing until he hit the control panel hard with his fist, then the booth darkened. Activating his office’s privacy code, he waited until sufficient phantom circuits were created and the image of his father-in-law resolved a few feet away from him. He wore a well-pressed suit and looked morning fresh, although he had probably been in the office for fourteen hours. Mr Nisyros was compulsive about shaving and washing, which he did every few hours.
‘Christ, what kind of a hole are you calling from?’ Mr Nisyros asked. ‘I’m surprised the bugs managed to secure a line. Is everything all right?’ He paused for a beat, then said, ‘I can see that it’s not.’
‘Helen’s missing.’
‘Then find her.’
‘I tried. I did everything -’
‘You mean you reported it to the hotel and the corporation, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ Kostas said. ‘What else would you have me do?’
‘I would have you call me and not alert the Yakuza mob.’
‘I most certainly did not -’ Kostas controlled himself. ‘Do you have any suggestions?’
‘Yes, go to the hotel and wait in your room.’
‘Don’t you want to know the details of what happened?’
‘Wait in your room, send for room service. Stay away from entertainments.’
And Mr Nisyros faded into the fetid, smeary darkness of the booth, leaving Kostas to wonder why he wouldn’t talk on a secure line.
* * * *
Kostas did as he was told. Actually, there was no choice, for if Helen’s father was correct and the Yakuza were involved, he would be at risk. But if Angelos Maitland Nisyros told him to stay in his room, then there he would be safe.
But what about Helen?
If Kostas thought about her, if he imagined all the terrible possibilities, he would go mad.
He paced the room - twenty-two steps from the door to the balcony, thirteen steps wide. Angelos had warned him to stay away from virts. No, he told himself, the old man told him to stay away from everything but food. At least the amenities were working. He ordered a BLT and hot sake. The plate was brought by one of the hotel officers, an occidental who wore a red paisley tie and a blue uniform. The officer explained that the hotel provided authentic American-style bacon, then whispered out of the room as quickly and quietly as a robot... or a trained valet.
Kostas sat well away from the balcony, sipped the warm sake and watched the Falls. It was as if the air was vibrating; and as he gazed at the natural wonder, he felt himself falling as so many had done before him, sliding through the thundering storm of water and steam and foam, crashing onto the rocks below, to disappear. The day passed in increments of agony, for he could not escape memory and could not quiet his mind. He imagined all the possibilities, all the myriad deaths and tortures that Helen might be suffering right now as he drank and ate and remembered.
Yet she had manipulated him.
And he was helpless. He had tried to find her, and failed. Now her father was in control. As if in defiance, he opened the balcony doors and stepped out into the sunlight. He looked at the gardens below, perfectly laid out, as if he were an impotent god; and he felt a great surge of anger, of rage.
Helen was probably somewhere enjoying herself. And Kostas was being played the fool.
‘Mr Donoussa, would you kindly step back inside,’ the room said.
‘Why?’
‘It is the wish of your father-in-law, Mr Donoussa.’
* * * *
Dawn.
Kostas sat in the back seat of an antique Rolls-Royce Silver Steamer and gazed out the bullet-proof window. The chauffeur wore a traditional keffiyeh, headdress and abayeh and barely spoke, except when Kostas asked him a direct question. His cologne - oil of roses and sandalwood musk - permeated the cabin, overwhelming any lingering odours of strong tobacco, old leather, and sweat. There was no one else on the road. Empty tenements had given way to rocky scrub, and then the scrub and scrabble had disappeared; not even such hardy flora could grow in stone. Kostas was being driven across a stone desert. Grey escarpments rose in the distance, but the fused land was flat and pocked and utterly devoid of life. It was hard to believe that three hundred miles behind them was a living wall of water. And gardens of flowers and leaf wet to the touch.
But now he was in the real Canada, which wasn’t very different from the arid lands of America.
Kostas thought he saw forest, but he had mistaken the grotesque stands of rock cones for trees. Yet this was still temperate climate; something should grow here. The pot-holed, broken roadway suddenly ended, but the driver only slowed down a little as the rubber-padded crawler tracks eased the Rolls over rocks and ridges. As rough as the ground was, there were only a few bone-shaking jolts. Although Kostas was worn out, he couldn’t sleep; and the day seemed an eternity. Finally the noxious atmosphere deepened into sunset, which had become a crimson swirling of oil in a sea of turquoise. In the distance was a mirage of green, a forest of imported eucalyptus that could endure here better than the firs and deciduous oak and pine that had thrived for millennia.
And above the forest, on top of a smooth butte, was a fortress of polished white marble burning in the last rays of the sun.
* * * *
‘Sheik Mohammed bin Dakhil-Allah el Faud awaits you in the gazebo,’ the chauffeur said as he hurried Kostas through formal avenues of green, where lush, scented foliage and plashing fountains bespoke a fortune vast enough to lavish water upon this parched earth. In the centre of the gardens, the huge stained-glass tent that roofed the gazebo glowed like a mosaic of jewels. Over the damp exhalations of plants and the evening smells of cooling stone came the rose perfumes of Arabia, and the unmistakable aroma of freshly ground coffee.
Once inside the gazebo, Kostas - nervous and exhausted - felt that he had somehow fallen into a kaleidoscope. Soft lighting revealed a floor strewn with gorgeous carpets: silk Herekes tossed over Bokharas and piled with plush, tasselled cushions. The finest weaving, achieved by master craftsmen calling patterns to swift-fingered children soon blinded by the task. Panels of gold filigree supported the netted glass and woven draperies on the walls, framing a profusion of shimmering reds, golds and indigoes that shifted patterns and confused the eye.
The Sheik waved the chauffeur away, then rose to meet Kostas.
‘Masalama, Mr Donoussa. My home is your home. The gazebo is at its best at moonrise, wouldn’t you agree? A fitting welcome for an honoured guest.’ Mohammed bin Dakhil-Allah el Faud looked to be in his mid-forties and moved with the assurance of one used to exercising the power conferred by wealth, and willing to be seduced by its luxuries. His immaculate white robe revealed the rounded contours of a body over-fond of the sweetmeats that glistened in their golden dishes at his feet. His heavy black moustache drooped over full lips, which parted in a smile of greeting to reveal teeth stained by a lifetime of betel and coffee. He extended pudgy, ringed fingers to Kostas, who was momentarily surprised by the strength he found there.
‘Blessings upon you and your household, your Excellency,’ Kostas said. He knew how to respond, as he had escorted many of his father-in-law’s powerful Arab clients around Melbourne.
After an obligatory exchange of pleasantries, Kostas was invited to be seated on the carpets opposite his graceful host. The Sheik poured coffee into tiny, exquisite cups.
Kostas sipped, and could not suppress a smile of pure delight. ‘This is wonderful, your Excellency.’ He looked at the stained-glass tent above. ‘This ... is truly magical.’
‘And it has the virtue of being real, Mr Donoussa. I leave virts to the infidel. In Islam, we do not reproduce images of the body, not even in art. And all my food, including the coffee, is hand grown in safe soil. This is my personal blend. I have made it myself for you, to the traditional recipe: black as night, sweet as love, and hot as hell. It is a metaphor for your current situation, is it not?
The coffee was like a jolt of amphetamine, clearing Kostas’s head and sharpening his senses, which had been dulled by fatigue, grief, and frustration. He felt as if he were just coming out of a trance ...
The Sheik continued to speak, his plump fingers now interlaced with the silken black-tasselled cord of priceless, pure amber worry beads; their soft clicking punctuating his sentences.
‘Your father-in-law has explained your situation to me, and here in my home you will be safe from the Yakuza.’ The sheik made a clucking noise of disapproval. ‘In Niagara, you would have disappeared just like your wife. As if you had never been.’
‘What do you know of my wife?’ Kostas asked reflexively, realising only after he spoke that he had broached courtesy, that the Sheik would tell him in his own time.
Or perhaps would decide not to tell him anything.
‘The Yakuza do not like bad publicity,’ the Sheik continued, as if uninterrupted, ‘and news of an international abduction would be very bad for the tourist business. By now, the incident will not have happened. But they cannot come here. You are safe, inshallah.’ The Sheik nodded to Kostas, giving him permission to speak.
‘I appreciate your concern, your Excellency. Yet I must confess that I had expected to meet my father-in-law here with you. I am a lawyer, and I wish only to negotiate the release of my wife.’
‘That would be unwise, my son. Your laws are of no consequence here. Your father-in-law, however, is a respected man of business. He has property rights to the abducted woman and can speak as an equal with Sheik Fauzin el Harith. The Sheik is a reasonable man, a traditional man. Your wife will be safe under his protection.’
Kostas remembered meeting the Muslim potentate and his retinue of slaves, wives, and concubines in the lobby of the hotel, remembered how he had looked at Helen ... with recognition. Kostas felt soiled, for no doubt the man had watched everything, had watched Kostas and Helen making love in their room ... had watched them later in the pink salon a trois with Pretty Girl. It was Fauzin el Harith’s eyes that had been staring out at him from Pretty Girl’s glasses. ‘Protection? He has kidnapped -’
‘You are young, and emotional, as befits a bridegroom, but this is now a business matter for your elders. Sheik Fauzin el Harith has simply employed the means at his disposal to procure a woman who captured his fancy.’ Mohammed bin Dakhil-Allah el Faud shrugged, then continued. ‘He was of course not quite within the law, but he is a powerful man. And powerful men - such as your father-in-law and perhaps myself - are not within the law.’ He smiled, as if enjoying the idea. ‘It may be that the matter of your wife can be resolved with a negotiated ransom. Maybe yes, maybe no. Certainly Sheik Fauzin el Harith could be an important ally for your father-in-law. Pain is often the messenger of joy ... and wealth. But I will take care of you, as I promised your father-in-law. I would do the same for my own sons. But it is better that you should remain here where you are safe. It is important that you are secure and available when the need arises. So you will be my guest. I am honoured to have Mr Nisyros’s adopted heir under my protection. I have many children, praise be to Allah, and I will introduce you to my family. But perhaps not just now. You will feel much better after some rest.’
The gentle tone admitted no argument.
Kostas realised that he was now, like Helen, a prisoner.
An honoured prisoner in a cage of gold.
He could do nothing but wait.
* * * *
The days passed like the long hours in the Rolls.
Servants attended Kostas at all times, and from them he learned that it was an honour that Sheik Mohammed bin Dakhil-Allah el Faud had received him privately and served him with his own hands. It was an especial honour that he even allowed Kostas to speak to his daughters, who were always dressed, or rather hidden, in virgin-white gowns, headdresses, and veils. He thought it odd that he had not met any of the Sheik’s sons, but would not broach etiquette and ask.
Kostas waited for another audience with the Sheik. When that was not forthcoming, he became more insistent. The guards told him that the Sheik was busy.
The Sheik was always busy.
Kostas kept to himself and waited for the all-important call from his father-in-law or a summons from the Sheik. Wrestling with the dead weight of memory, he relived every moment of his last night with Helen. Indeed, it was as if Helen were already dead and he was in mourning. Then almost against his will, he began to come back to life. He read in the Sheik’s library; rode the Sheik’s horses in the scrub below the butte while a Sikorsky gunship helicopter flew overhead; walked every inch of compound in the polite and distant company of his guards; and found himself spending more and more time with the Sheik’s eldest daughter Sagan. She was as tall as Kostas, and was named after a man who had saved her father’s life. Although she, too, was always attended by servants and would not remove her veil, she claimed to have visited the ruins of Manhattan and to have lived on her own in Toronto.
‘Tell me about the man you are named after,’ Kostas asked as they sat in a long, lush garden. Beside them goldfish as large as trout swam back and forth along the edges of a brackish pond, as if waiting to be fed. Beyond - and white as Sagan’s gown - were huge marble buildings built in the shape of tents: the soldiers’ barracks. The architecture was as striking as the winged opera house in Sydney, Australia.
‘I’ve already told you,’ Sagan said, her beautiful, dark eyes gazing out at him, as if from silken prisons.
‘Was he an infidel?’
She laughed, and the guards standing a discreet distance away from them came to the alert, as if Kostas were about to do something untoward. ‘Do you think my father would name me after an infidel?’
Kostas shrugged.
‘No, he is not an infidel. You won’t find many infidels in Kentucky.’ She looked into the distance. ‘Have you been to America?’
‘No.’
She shook her head. ‘Better here.’
‘In the desert?’
‘Better here.’
‘Didn’t your father worry that you would be in the company of infidels when you lived in Toronto?’ Kostas asked.
‘Why are you obsessed with infidels?’ She smiled. ‘Are you asking if he would let me marry one?’
‘Would he?’
‘He allows you to keep me company.’
Shocked, Kostas realised that he had been leading the conversation back to that, for if he lost Helen, he wanted Sagan. He wanted everything to end with physical intimacy, for then he could not be hurt. If language separated him from this veiled stranger, that would have been better.
But what did he have with Helen? Emotional connection? Pain? Understanding? All of that, and he wallowed in the pain, yet he knew Helen little better than he knew this veiled princess, this outlander who was slumming with the infidel.
‘I’m sorry, Kostas.’ That was the first time she had called him by his given name. ‘I was taking advantage of you, playing with you. You must be in great pain over your wife.’
She watched him, waiting for him to speak; he had to say something. ‘I feel better when we’re together.’
‘We can be together as much as you like.’
Kostas nodded, thinking about Helen, wondering what she was doing while he was having this conversation. He felt no anxiety now. He was empty, and content.
And as he sat there, holding Sagan’s hand while the guards purposely looked the other way, he realised he had been trapped once again. By Helen. By his father-in-law. By her father.
There was nothing to be done but relax and accept it.
An arrangement had been made.
In time, Sagan would remove her veil ...
First published 1997.