In the Country of Last Things Read online

  I told him my size, the money I could spend, and then fixed an appointment for the following afternoon. Unctuous as he was, I couldn’t help feeling that Dujardin was trying to be nice. He probably took a cut from the business he drummed up for his cousin, but I didn’t find anything wrong with that. We all have to make money somehow, and if he had a scheme or two cooking on the side, then so much the better for him. I managed to say nothing to Sam about this encounter for the rest of the day. It was by no means sure that Dujardin’s cousin would have anything for me, but if the deal worked out, I wanted it to be a surprise. I did my best not to count on it. Our funds had dwindled to less than a hundred glots by then, and the figure I had mentioned to Dujardin was absurdly low—just eleven or twelve glots, I think, maybe even ten. On the other hand, he hadn’t blinked at my offer, and that seemed to be a sign of encouragement. It was enough to keep my hopes up anyway, and for the next twenty-four hours I spun in a turmoil of anticipation.

  We met in the northwest corner of the main lobby at two o’clock the next day. Dujardin showed up carrying a brown paper bag, and the moment I saw it I knew that things had gone well. “I believe we’re in luck,” he said, taking my arm conspiratorially and leading me behind a marble column where no one could see us. “My cousin had a pair in your size, and he’s willing to sell them for thirteen glots. I’m sorry I couldn’t get the price down any lower, but that was the best I could do. Given the quality of the merchandise, it still stands as an excellent bargain.” Turning in to the wall so that his back was facing me, Dujardin cautiously pulled a shoe from the bag. It was a brown leather walking shoe for the left foot. The materials were obviously genuine, and the sole was made of a durable, comfortable-looking hard rubber—perfect for negotiating the streets of the city. What was more, the shoe was in nearly pristine condition. “Try it on,” Dujardin said. “Let’s see if it fits.” It did. As I stood there wiggling my toes along the smooth inner sole, I felt happier than I had in a long time. “You’ve saved my life,” I said. “For thirteen glots we have ourselves a deal. Just give me the other shoe, and I’ll pay you right now.” But Dujardin seemed to hesitate, and then, with an embarrassed look on his face, showed me that the bag was empty. “Is this some kind of joke?” I said. “Where’s the other shoe?”

  “I don’t have it with me,” he said.

  “It’s all a wretched little come-on, isn’t it? You dangle a good shoe in front of my nose, get me to give you money for the pair in advance, and then present me with a beat-up piece of junk for the other foot. Isn’t that right? Well, I’m sorry, but I’m not going to fall for that trick. There won’t be a single glot from me until I see the other shoe.”

  “No, Miss Blume, you don’t understand. It’s not like that at all. The other shoe is in the same condition as this one, and no one is asking you for money in advance. It’s my cousin’s way of doing business, I’m afraid. He insisted that you go to his office in person to complete the transaction. I tried to talk him out of it, but he wouldn’t listen to me. At such a low price, he said, there was no room for a middleman.”

  “Are you trying to tell me that your cousin doesn’t trust you for thirteen glots?”

  “It puts me in a very awkward position, I admit. But my cousin is a hard man. He doesn’t trust anyone when it comes to business. You can imagine how I felt when he told me this. He cast my integrity into doubt, and that is a bitter pill to swallow, I can assure you.”

  “If there’s nothing in it for you, then why did you bother to keep our appointment?”

  “I had made you a promise, Miss Blume, and I didn’t want to renege. That only would have proved my cousin right, and I have my dignity to think of, you know, I have my pride. Those are things more important than money.”

  Dujardin’s performance was impressive. There was no flaw in it, not the slightest crack to suggest that he was anything other than a man whose feelings had been deeply hurt. I thought: he wants to stay in his cousin’s good graces, and therefore he is willing to do me this favor. It’s a test for him, and if he manages to pass it successfully, his cousin will begin allowing him to make deals on his own. You see how clever I was trying to be. I thought I had outsmarted Dujardin, and because of that, I did not have the sense to be afraid.

  It was a sparkling afternoon. Sunlight everywhere, and the wind all but carrying us in its arms. I felt like someone who had recovered from a long illness—experiencing that light again, feeling my legs as they moved below me in the open air. We walked at a brisk tempo, dodging numerous impediments, veering nimbly around the heaps of wreckage left by winter, and barely exchanged a word the whole way. Spring was definitely on the verge now, but patches of snow and ice were still present in the shadows that jutted from the sides of buildings, and out in the streets, where the sun was strongest, broad rivers rushed among the churned-up stones and crumbling bits of pavement. My shoes were a sorry mess after ten minutes, inside as well as out: socks drenched through, toes all damp and slippery from the cool seepage. It’s odd to be mentioning these details now, perhaps, but they are what stand out most vividly from that day—the happiness of the journey, the buoyant, almost drunken sense of movement. Afterward, when we got to where we were going, things happened too fast for me to remember them. If I see them now, it is only in short, random clusters, isolated images removed from any context, bursts of light and shadow. The building, for example, left no impression on me. I remember that it was on the edge of the warehouse district in the eighth census zone, not far from where Ferdinand had once had his sign studio—but that was only because Isabel had once pointed out the street to me in passing, and I sensed that I was on familiar ground. It could be that I was too distracted to take in the surfaces of things, too lost in my own thoughts to be thinking about anything except how glad Sam would be when I returned. As a consequence, the facade of the building is a blank to me. Likewise the act of walking through the front door and climbing several flights of stairs. It’s as if those things never happened, even though I know for a fact they did. The first image that comes to me with any clarity is the face of Dujardin’s cousin. Not so much his face, perhaps, but my noticing that he wore the same wire-rimmed glasses as Dujardin, and my wondering—ever so briefly, for the merest prick of a moment—if they had bought them from the same person. I don’t think I actually had my eyes on that face for more than a second or two, for just then, as he came forward to shake my hand, a door opened behind him—accidentally, it would seem, for the noise of it turning on its hinges changed his expression from one of cordiality to sudden, desperate concern, and he immediately turned around to close it without bothering to shake my hand—and in that instant I understood that I had been deceived, that my visit to this place had nothing to do with shoes or money or business of any kind. For right then, in the tiny interval that elapsed before he shut the door again, I was able to see clearly into the other room, and there was no mistaking what I saw in there: three or four human bodies hanging naked from meat-hooks, and another man with a hatchet leaning over a table and lopping off the limbs of another corpse. There had been rumors circulating in the library that human slaughterhouses now existed, but I hadn’t believed them. Now, because the door behind Dujardin’s cousin had accidentally slipped open, I was able to glimpse the fate these men had planned for me. At that point, I think I started to scream. At times I can even hear myself shouting the word “murderers” over and over again. But that couldn’t have gone on for very long. It’s impossible to reconstruct my thoughts from that moment, impossible to know if I was thinking anything at all. I saw a window to my left and ran for it. I remember seeing Dujardin and his cousin make a lunge for me, but I ran through their outstretched arms at full tilt and went crashing through the window. I remember the sound of the glass shattering and the air rushing into my face. It must have been a long drop. Long enough for me to realize that I was falling, at any rate. Long enough for me to know that once I hit the bottom, I would be dead.

  Little by li
ttle, I am trying to tell you what happened. I can’t help it if there are gaps in my memory. Certain events refuse to reappear, and no matter how hard I struggle, I am powerless to unearth them. I must have passed out the moment I made contact with the ground, but I have no memory of pain, no memory of where I fell. When it comes right down to it, the only thing I can be certain of is that I did not die. This is a fact that continues to confound me. More than two years after my fall from that window, I still don’t understand how I managed to live.

  I groaned when they lifted me, they said, but afterward I remained inert, barely breathing anymore, barely making any sound at all. A long time passed. They never told me how long, but I gather it was more than a day, perhaps as many as three or four. When I finally opened my eyes, they said, it was less a recovery than a resurrection, an absolute rising up out of nothingness. I remember noticing a ceiling above me and wondering how I had got myself indoors, but an instant later I was stabbed by pain—in my head, along my right side, in my belly—and it hurt so much that I gasped. I was in a bed, a real bed with sheets and pillows, but all I could do was lie there, whimpering as the pain traveled through my body. A woman suddenly appeared in my field of vision, looking down at me with a smile on her face. She was about thirty-eight or forty, with dark wavy hair and large green eyes. In spite of how I was feeling at that moment, I could see that she was beautiful—perhaps the most beautiful woman I had seen since coming to the city.

  “It must hurt a lot,” she said.

  “You don’t have to smile about it,” I answered. “I’m not in the mood for smiles.” God knows where I developed this sense of tact, but the pain was so wretched that I spoke the first words that came into my head. The woman did not seem put off, however, and went on smiling the same comforting smile.

  “I’m glad to see that you’re alive,” she said.

  “You mean I’m not dead? You’ll have to prove that to me before I believe it.”

  “You have a broken arm, a couple of broken ribs, and a bad bump on the head. For the time being, however, it seems that you’re alive. That tongue of yours is proof enough, I should think.”

  “Who are you, anyway,” I said, refusing to give up my petulance. “The angel of mercy?”

  “I’m Victoria Woburn. And this is Woburn House. We help people here.”

  “Beautiful women aren’t allowed to be doctors. It’s against the rules.”

  “I’m not a doctor. My father was, but he’s dead now. He was the one who started Woburn House.”

  “I heard someone talk about this place once. I thought he was making it up.”

  “That happens. It’s hard to know what to believe anymore.”

  “Are you the one who brought me here?”

  “No, Mr. Frick did. Mr. Frick and his grandson, Willie. They go out in the car every Wednesday afternoon to make the rounds. Not all the people who need help can get here by themselves, you understand, so we go out and find them. We try to take in at least one new person that way every week.”

  “You mean they found me by accident?”

  “They were driving by when you went crashing through that window.”

  “I wasn’t trying to kill myself,” I said defensively. “You shouldn’t get any funny ideas about that.”

  “Leapers don’t jump from windows. And when they do, they make sure to open them first.”

  “I would never kill myself,” I said, blustering on to emphasize the point, but just as I spoke these words, a dark truth began to dawn in me. “I would never kill myself,” I said again. “I’m going to have a baby, you see, and why would a pregnant woman want to kill herself? She’d have to be insane to do a thing like that.”

  From the way her face changed expression, I immediately knew what had happened. I knew it without having to be told. My baby was no longer inside me. The fall had been too much for it, and now it was dead. I can’t tell you how bleak everything became at that moment. It was a raw, animal misery that took hold of me, and there were no images inside it, no thoughts, absolutely nothing to see or think. I must have begun crying before she said another word.

  “It’s a miracle that you managed to get pregnant in the first place,” she said, stroking my cheek with her hand. “Babies don’t get born here anymore. You know that as well as I do. It hasn’t happened in years.”

  “I don’t care,” I said angrily, trying to talk through my sobs. “You’re wrong. My baby was going to live. I know that my baby was going to live.”

  Each time my chest convulsed, my ribs were scorched with pain. I tried to stifle these outbursts, but that only made them more intense. I shook from the effort to keep myself still, and that in turn unleashed a series of unendurable spasms. Victoria tried to comfort me, but I didn’t want her comfort. I didn’t want anyone’s comfort. “Please go away,” I finally said. “I don’t want anyone to be here now. You’ve been very kind to me, but I need to be left alone.”

  It took a long time before my injuries got better. The cuts on my face cleared up without much permanent damage (a scar on my forehead and another close to the temple), and my ribs mended in due course. The broken arm did not knit smoothly, however, and it still gives me a fair amount of trouble: pain whenever I move it too brusquely or in the wrong direction, an inability to extend it fully anymore. The bandages stayed on my head for almost a month, the bumps and scrapes subsided, but since then I have been left with something of a headache condition: knife-like migraines that attack at random moments, an occasional dull ache throbbing at the back of my skull. As far as the other blows are concerned, I hesitate to talk about them. My womb is an enigma, and I have no way of measuring the catastrophe that took place inside it.

  The physical damage was only part of the problem, however. Just hours after my first conversation with Victoria, there was more bad news, and at that point I nearly gave up, I nearly stopped wanting to live. Early that evening she came back to my room with a tray of food. I told her how urgent it was for someone to go to the National Library and find Sam. He would be worried to death, I said, and I needed to be with him now. Now, I screamed, I need to be with him now. I was suddenly beside myself, sobbing out of control. Willie, the fifteen-year-old boy, was dispatched on the errand, but the news he brought back was devastating. A fire had broken out in the library that afternoon, he said, and the roof had already collapsed. No one knew how it had started, but the building was totally in flames by now, and word was that over a hundred people were trapped inside. It was still unclear whether anyone had managed to escape; there were rumors pro and con. But even if Sam had been one of the fortunate ones, there was no way that Willie or anyone else would be able to find him. And if he had died along with the others, then everything was lost for me. I saw no way around it. If he was dead, then I had no right to be alive. And if he was alive, then it was almost certain that I would never see him again.

  Those were the facts I had to deal with during my first months at Woburn House. It was a dark period for me, darker than any period I have ever known. In the beginning, I stayed in the room upstairs. Three times a day someone would come to visit me—twice to deliver meals, once to empty the chamber pot. There was always a commotion of people down below (voices, shuffling feet, groans and laughter, howls, snoring at night), but I was too weak and depressed to bother getting out of bed. I moped and sulked, brooded under the blankets, wept without warning. Spring had come by then, and I spent most of my time looking at the clouds through the window, inspecting the molding that ran along the top of the walls, staring at the cracks in the ceiling. For the first ten or twelve days, I don’t think I even managed to go into the hallway outside the door.

  Woburn House was a five-story mansion with over twenty rooms—set back from the street and surrounded by a small private park. It had been built by Dr. Woburn’s grandfather nearly a hundred years before and was considered to be one of the most elegant private residences in the city. When the period of troubles began, Dr. Woburn was among the first
to call attention to the growing numbers of homeless people. Because he was a respected doctor from an important family, his statements were given a good deal of publicity, and it soon became fashionable in wealthy circles to support his cause. There were fund-raising dinners, charity dances, and other society functions, and ultimately a number of buildings around the city were converted into shelters. Dr. Woburn gave up his private practice to administer these way houses, as they were called, and every morning he would go out in his chauffeur-driven car to visit them, talking to the people who lived there and giving whatever medical assistance he could. He became something of a legend in the city, known for his goodness and idealism, and whenever people talked about the barbarity of the times, his name was brought up to prove that noble actions were still possible. But that was long ago, before anyone believed that things could disintegrate to the extent they finally did. As conditions grew worse, the success of Dr. Woburn’s project was gradually undermined. The homeless population grew in vast, geometric surges, and the money to finance the shelters dwindled at an equal rate. Rich people absconded, stealing out of the country with their gold and diamonds, and those who remained could no longer afford to be generous. The doctor spent large sums of his own money on the shelters, but that did not prevent them from failing, and one by one they had to shut their doors. Another man might have given up, but he refused to let the matter end there. If he could not save thousands, he said, then perhaps he could save hundreds, and if he could not save hundreds, then perhaps he could save twenty or thirty. The numbers were no longer important. Too much had happened by then, and he knew that any help he could offer would only be symbolic—a gesture against total ruin. That was six or seven years ago, and Dr Woburn was already well past sixty. With his daughter’s support, he decided to open up his house to strangers, converting the first two floors of the family mansion into a combination hospital and shelter. Beds were bought, kitchen supplies were bought, and little by little they worked their way through the remaining assets of the Woburn fortune to maintain the operation. When the cash was exhausted, they began selling off heirlooms and antiques, gradually emptying the upstairs rooms of their contents. With constant, back-breaking effort, they were able to house from eighteen to twenty-four people at any given time. Indigents were allowed to stay for ten days; the desperately ill could stay longer. Everyone was given a clean bed and two warm meals a day. Nothing was solved by this, of course, but at least people were given a respite from their troubles, a chance to gather strength before moving on. “We can’t do much,” the doctor would say. “But the little we can do we are doing.”