Mister B. Gone Read online

  I’ve started counting, in my head. I’ll tell you why later.

  For now, just know that I’m counting, and that the end is in sight. I’m not talking about the end of this book, I’m talking about THE END, as in the end of everything you know, which is to say: only yourself. That’s all we can ever know, isn’t it? When the rhythm of the dance stops, we’re on our own, all of us, damned Humankind and demon-lovers alike. The objects of our affections have been spirited away. We are alone in a wilderness, and a great wind is blowing and a great bell tolling, summoning us to judgment.

  Enough morbid talk. You want to know what happens between here and the End, don’t you? Of course, of course. It’s my pleasure. No, really.

  I didn’t tell you yet that Mainz, the town where Gutenberg resided, was built beside a river. In fact, there were parts of the town on both banks, and a wooden bridge between the two that looked poorly built, and likely to be swept away should the river get too ambitious.

  I didn’t make the crossing immediately, even though it was clear from a quick visit to the riverbank that the greater part of the town lay on the far side. First I scoured the streets and alleyways of the smaller part of the town, hoping that if I kept to the shadows, and kept my senses alert, I’d overhear some fragment of gossip, or an outpouring of fear-filled incoherence; signs, in short, that Quitoon was at work here. Once I had located someone who had information it would be quite easy, I knew, to follow them until I had them on some quiet street, then corner them and press them get to spit out all the little details. People were usually quick to unburden themselves of their secrets as long as I promised to leave them alone when they’d done so.

  But my search was fruitless. There were gossips to be overheard, certainly, but their talk was just the usual dreary malice that is the stuff of gossiping women everywhere: talk of adultery, cruelty, and disease. I heard nothing that suggested some world-changing work was being undertaken in this squalid, little town.

  I decided to cross the river, pausing on my way to the bridge only to coerce food from a maker of meat pies and drink from a vendor of the local beer. The latter was barely drinkable, but the pies were good, the meat—rat or dog, at a guess—not bland but spicy and tender. I went back to the beerseller, and told him that his ale was foul and that I had a good mind to slaughter him for not preventing me from buying it. In terror, the man gave me all the money he had had about his person, which was more than enough to purchase three more meat pies from the pieman, who was clearly perplexed that I, the thuggish thief, had returned to make a legitimate purchase, paying for the coerced pie while I bought the others.

  Pleased to have my money though he was, he did not hesitate, once he’d been paid, to tell me to go on my way.

  “You may be honest,” he said, “but you still stink of something bad.”

  “How bad is bad?” I said, my mouth crammed with meat and pastry.

  “You won’t take offense?”

  “I swear.”

  “All right, well, let me put it this way, I’ve put plenty of things in my pies that would probably make my customers puke if they knew. But even if you were the last piece of meat in Christendom, and without your meat I would go out of business, I’d go be a sewer man instead of trying to make something tasty of you.”

  “Am I being insulted?” I said. “Because if I am—”

  “You said you wouldn’t take offense,” the pieman reminded me.

  “True. True.” I took another mouthful of pie, and then said:

  “The name Gutenberg.”

  “What about them?”

  “Them?”

  “It’s a big family. I don’t know much except bits of gossip my wife tells me. She did say Old Man Gutenberg was close to dying, if that’s what you’ve come about.”

  I gave him a puzzled stare, though I was less puzzled than I appeared.

  “What would make you think I was in Mainz to see a dying man?”

  “Well, I just assumed, you being a demon and Old Man Gutenberg having a reputation, I’m not saying it’s true, I’m just telling you what Marta tells me, Marta’s my wife, and she says he’s—”

  “Wait,” I said. “You said demon?”

  “I don’t think Old Man Gutenberg’s a demon.”

  “Christ in Heaven, pieman! No. I’m not suggesting any member of the Gutenberg clan is a demon. I’m telling you that I’m the demon.”

  “I know.”

  “That’s my point. How do you know?”

  “Oh. It was your tail.”

  I glanced behind me to see what the pieman was seeing. He was right. I had indeed allowed one of my tails to escape my breeches.

  I ordered it to return into hiding, and it scornfully withdrew itself. When it was done, the dullard pieman seemed congenially pleased on my behalf that I should have such an obedient tail.

  “Aren’t you at least a little afraid of what you just saw?”

  “No. Not really. Marta, that’s my wife, said she’d seen many celestial and infernal presences around town this last week.”

  “Is she right in the head?”

  “She married me. You be the judge.”

  “Then no.” I replied.

  The pieman looked puzzled. “Did you just insult me?” he said.

  “Hush, I’m thinking,” I told him.

  “Can I go, then?”

  “No, you can’t. First you’re going to take me to the Gutenberg house.”

  “But I’m covered in dirt and bits of pie.”

  “It’ll be something to tell the kids,” I told him. “How you led the Angel of Death himself—Mister Jakabok Botch, ‘Mister B.’ for short—all the way through town.”

  “No, no, no. I beg you, Mister B., I’m not strong enough.

  It would kill me. My children would be orphans. My wife, my poor wife—”

  “Marta.”

  “I know her name.”

  “She’d be widowed.”

  “Yes.”

  “I see. I have no choice in the matter.”

  “None.”

  Then he shrugged, and we took our way through the streets, the pieman leading, me with my hand on his shoulder, as if I were blind.

  “Tell me something,” the pieman said matter-of-factly. “Is this the Apocalypse the priest reads to us about? The one from Revelations?”

  “Demonation! No.”

  “Then why all the presences celestial and infernal?”

  “At a guess it’s because something important is being invented. Something that will change the world forever.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. What does this man Gutenberg do?”

  “He’s a goldsmith, I believe.”

  I was thankful for his guidance, though not his conversation. The streets of the town all looked alike—mud, people, and grey-and-black houses, many less luxurious than some of the ruins Quitoon and I had slept in as we’d traveled.

  Quitoon! Quitoon! Why was my every second thought of him, and of his absence? Rather than free myself of the obsession, I made a game of it, reciting to the pieman a list of the most noteworthy things Quitoon and I had eaten as we’d gone on our way: dog-fish, cat-fish, bladder-fish; potato blood soup, holy water soup with waffles, nettle and needle soup, dead man’s gruel thickened with the ash of a burned bishop, and on and on, my memory serving me better rather than I’d expected. I was actually enjoying my recollections, and would have happily continued to share more unforgettable morsels had I not been interrupted by a rising howl of anguish from the streets ahead of us, accompanied by the unmistakable smell of burning human flesh. Seconds later the source of both the noise and the noisome stench came into view: a man and a woman, with flames leaping three feet or more from their lushly coiffed heads, which the fire was consuming with enthusiasm, as it was their backs and buttocks and legs. I stepped out of their path, but the pieman remained there, staring at them, until I took his arm and dragged him out of their way.

  When I looked at
him I found that he was staring up at the narrow strip of sky visible between the eaves of the houses on either side of the street. I followed the direction of his gaze to discover that despite the brightness of the summer sky there were forms moving overhead that were brighter still. They weren’t clouds, though they were as pristine and unpredictable as clouds, schools of amorphous shapes moving across the sky in the same direction that we were traveling.

  “Angels,” the pieman said.

  I was genuinely astonished that he could know such a thing.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure,” he replied, not without a twinge of irritation.

  “Watch. They’re going to do this thing they do.”

  I watched. And to my astonishment I saw them converge upon one another, until all the shapeless masses had become a single incandescent form that then began to spin counterclockwise in a spiral motion, its center growing still brighter until it erupted, spitting motes of light like a bursting seed pod. The seeds came twirling down onto the roofs of the houses, where, like a late winter snow, they went to nothing.

  “Something of great consequence must be going on,” I said to myself. “Quitoon was finally right.”

  “It’s not much farther,” the pieman said. “Couldn’t I just direct you from here?”

  “No. To the door, pieman.”

  Without further exchange, we made our way on down the street. Though there were plenty of people around, I no longer bothered to add my little grace-note grotesqueries, the lolling mouth, the snot running from my nostrils, to my general appearance. I had no need. With the dung-encrusted pieman leading, we made quite a disgusting pair, and the citizens kept clear of us, their heads down, staring at their feet as they hurried on their way.

  It wasn’t our presence that was causing this subtle agitation amongst the citizens. Even those who had not yet laid their eyes on us were walking with downcast gazes. Everybody, it seemed, knew that there were angels and demons sharing the thoroughfares with them, and they were doing their best to hurry about their business without having to look up at the soldiers from either army.

  We turned a corner, and walked a little way, then turned another corner, each turn bringing us into streets that were more deserted than those we’d left behind. Finally, we turned into a street lined with small businesses: a seller and repairer of shoes; a butcher’s shop, a purveyor of fabric. Of all the stores along the street only the butcher’s seemed to be open, which was useful because my stomach was still demanding some nourishment.

  The pieman came in with me more, I think, out of fear of what might happen to him if I left him on his own on this uncannily empty street than out of any great interest in what the butcher had to sell.

  The place was poorly kept, the sawdust on the floor gumming with blood, and the air busy with flies.

  Then, from the other side of the counter came a pain-thickened voice.

  “Take whatever . . .” the owner of the voice said, his timbre raw. “It doesn’t matter . . . to me . . . anymore.”

  The pieman and I peered over the counter. The butcher lay in the sawdust on the other side, his body comprehensively pierced and slashed. There was a large pool of blood around him. Death stared out from his small blue eyes.

  “Who did this?” I asked the man.

  “It was one of your kind,” the pieman said. “Torturing him like that.”

  “Don’t be so quick to judge,” I said. “Angels have very nasty tempers. Especially when they’re feeling righteous.”

  “Both . . . wrong . . .” the dying man said.

  The pieman had gone around the counter and picked up the two knives he found there beside the butcher’s body.

  “They’re neither of them much . . . much use,” the butcher said. “I thought one good stab to my heart would do it. But no. I bled copiously but I was still alive, so I stab all over, looking for some place which will kill me. I mean it was easy with my wife.

  One good stab and—”

  “You killed your own wife?” I said.

  “She’s back there,” the pieman said, nodding through the door that led to the back of the shop. He went to the threshold and took a closer look. “And he cut out her heart.”

  “I didn’t want to,” the butcher said. “I wanted her dead, safe with the angels. But I didn’t want to be hacking at her like she was a side of pork.”

  “Then why’d you do it?” the pieman asked him.

  “The demon wanted it. I had no choice.”

  “There was a demon here?” I said. “What was his name?”

  “Her name was Mariamorta. She was here because this is the End of the World.”

  “Today?”

  “Yes. Today.”

  “That’s not what you said,” the pieman said to me. “If I’d known, I would have gone back to my own family, instead of wandering around with you.”

  “Just because a suicidal butcher says it’s the End of the World, it doesn’t mean we have to believe him.”

  “We do if it’s the truth,” said somebody at the door.

  It was Quitoon. In some other place a nobleman must have been laying dead and naked, because Quitoon was dressed in purloined finery: an outfit of scarlet, gold, and black. His appearance was further enhanced by the way his long black hair had been coiffed with tight, shiny curls and his beard and mustache trimmed.

  His changed appearance unnerved me. I had had a dream about him a few nights before in which he had appeared as he was now, in every detail, down to the smallest jewel set in the scabbard of his dagger. In the dream there’d been good reason for his fancification, though I am loathe to speak of it now.

  For some reason I feel ashamed, in truth. But why not? We’ve come so far, you and I, haven’t we? All right. Here’s the truth. I dreamt he was dressed that way because he and I were to be married. Such confections our sleeping minds create! It’s meaningless nonsense, of course. But I still found it troubling when I woke.

  Now I found the dream had been prophetic. Here was Quitoon in the flesh, standing at the doorway, dressed precisely as he had been dressed in preparation for our union. The only difference was that he had no interest in marriage. He had more apocalyptic talk in mind.

  “Didn’t I tell you, Mister B.?” he crowed. “Didn’t I say there was something going on in Mainz that would bring the world to an end?”

  “See?” moaned the butcher at my feet.

  “Hush,” I said to him. He seemed to take me at my word, and died. I was glad. I don’t like to be around things in pain.

  Now it was over. I had no need to think of him anymore.

  “Who’s your new friend?” Quitoon said lazily.

  “He’s just a pieman. You don’t need to hurt him.”

  “It’s the end of the world as we know it, Mister B. What does it matter one way or another if a pieman dies?”

  “It doesn’t. Any more than it matters that he lives.”

  Quitoon smiled his wicked, shiny smile. “You’re right.” He shrugged. “It doesn’t.” He took his malice-gazed eyes off the pieman and turned them on me.

  “What made you follow me?” he wanted to know. “I thought we’d parted on the road and that was the end of things between us.”

  “So did I.”

  “So what happened?”

  “I was wrong.”

  “About what?”

  “About going on without you. There . . . there didn’t seem . . .any purpose.”

  “I’m moved.”

  “You don’t sound it.”

  “Now I disappoint you. Poor Jakabok. Were you hoping for some great moment of reconciliation? Were you hoping perhaps that we’d fall weeping into one another’s arms? And that I’d tell you all the tender things I tell you in your dreams?”

  “What do you know about my dreams?”

  “Oh, a lot more than you imagine,” he said to me.

  He’s been in my dreams, I thought. He’s read the book of my sleeping thoughts
. He had even written himself into them if it amused him to do so. Perhaps Quitoon was the reason I’d dreamt of that strange wedding. Perhaps it wasn’t my unnatural desire surfacing, but his.

  There was a curious comfort in this knowledge. If the idyll of our wedding had been Quitoon’s invention than I was perhaps safer from his harm than I’d imagined. Only a mind that was infatuated with another could conceive of a joy such as I had dreamt: the trees that lined the path to the wedding place in full blossom, the breeze shaking their perfumed branches so that the air was filled with petals like one-winged butterflies, spiraling earthward.

  Well, I would remind Quitoon of this vision when we were alone. I would drag him cursing and screeching out of that room he had somewhere, filled with costumes and disguises: the place where he worked to have power over me.

  But for now the only urgent business I had was to keep my sometime friend from setting me on fire where I stood. I could not help but remember him staring at me as I lay in the dirt of the ditch. There had been no smile on his lips then. Just four loveless words:

  Worm, he’d said, prepare to burn. Was that what he was thinking now? Was there a murderous fire being stoked in the furnace of his stomach, ready to be spewed out at me when he deemed the moment appropriate?

  “You look nervous, Mister B.”

  “Not nervous, just surprised.”

  “At what?”

  “You. Here. I didn’t expect to see you again so soon.”

  “Then, again I ask you why did you follow me?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “You’re a liar. A bad liar. A terrible liar.” He shook his head.

  “I despair of you, truly I do. Have you learned nothing over the years? If you can’t tell a decent lie, then tell me the truth.” He glanced over at the pieman. “Or are you attempting to preserve some fragment of dignity for this imbecile’s sake?”

  “He’s not an imbecile. He makes pies.”

  “Oh, well.” Quitoon laughed, genuinely amused at this. “If he makes pies, no wonder you don’t want him knowing your secrets.”