The Bridge Read online

  “Leo,” he said. “Let’s talk tliis thing over. I’ve got a proposition. Come in here.”

  A forelock of willow branches screened the bench. Oscar parted it. The granite was chill, powdery with green/white insecticide. Leo unlaced the thonging of his shorts; he hiked them over his belly. Goldfish snouts pocked the water. They ate at a flotsam mash of dying flies and spiders, big mosquitoes. Explosions troubled the pool, inscribed a complex record of their force and distance. Leo sat beside Oscar. He tried to heave right ankle onto left knee. The ankle slipped off, shoved by the fat of his inner thigh. He held it there, one finger hooked in the back of his moccasin. Oscar lit a pipe.

  “Well. What do you say, Oscar?”

  “Have you read my manuscript?” Leo’s ankle fell again. He put a sour ball in his mouth; he crushed it without sucking. “Have you read it?” Leo nodded. “I thought we might arrange a deal: I produce your children. You produce mine.”

  “Ha.” Leo smiled; frowned. “Tell me—honestly, Oscar. Do I look stupid or something?”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “No. That’s what I mean. No. You catch on slowly.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why not? he asks.” Leo shook his head. He mouthed two sour balls, tongues in both cheeks. “Why not? It’s suicide, that’s why. I’d never live to see my children grow up. I’d be running around in there with my hands over my head. And you running right next to me. The True Book of Priest. Yes. Yes, indeed. Just what we need. Dom’s arm, you’ve got to be kidding.”

  “I’m not. “

  “Then you’re insane.”

  “Come on, Leo. These aren’t the old days. Things have loosened up. Anyway, I don’t want a best seller. Just some sort of private edition. A few hundred copies.”

  “My friend, my friend—I’m glad you came to me.” Leo put a palm on each of Oscar’s shoulders. “I can save you a lot of trouble, a lot of heartache. Just listen to old Leo—for Eleanor’s sake, for the sake of your children.” He paused; he was panting. "You think I’m a big publisher. No. No, sir—I can’t print a menu without permission. And if the state rep isn’t watching, at least two men from my Printer’s Guild local are on the NIA payroll. This is the sort of thing I can publish.” He listed them on his fingers, “How to Prevent Potato Blight, You and Your Sewage, Venereal Disease: It Can Be Stopped. Oh, a classic now and then, Shakespeare. Yes, but they couldn’t even pass Julius Caesar. Dom, Oscar—your book suggests that Priest didn’t give his arm for our salvation.”

  “He didn’t. Any asshole knows that,” Oscar yelled it. Leo glanced toward the souvenir stand. But the mortars had suppressed Oscar’s words. “Look, Leo—the parallels with Christianity are too obvious. He must have found a copy of the New Testament or one of the prayer books. Maybe, who knows, he may have met someone like Xavier Paul. I’m not sure. No one can be certain. He was a crude, stupid man. Yet he was clever in a way. He understood men.”

  “Yes. Damn it. Give the devil his due. We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Priest. I don’t care what goes on in there. It’s better than suicide.”

  “What goes on in there stinks. It stinks.” Oscar’s intensity disconcerted Leo. “There’s no need for it. We’re not savages any more. And why? It’s just to support that sick, power-mad bunch of red arms.”

  “Keep your voice down.”

  “You won’t print it?”

  “No. I won’t. I can’t. I’ve no taste for martyrdom.”

  “Then send it back.”

  Leo slapped his thighs. “I should have burned the damn thing.”

  “I have a copy.”

  “Priest. You are crazy.”

  “Admit one thing. It’s well written, isn’t it?”

  “I see. Ha!” Leo laughed. He brushed through Oscar’s closely cropped hair. He cuffed Oscar’s ear. “Vanity? Is that it? Another man of science who wants to be an artist. Yes. Of course it’s well written, damn well written. The research on New York in the Ecological Age is fascinating, fabulous. I couldn’t put it down. Mind you, I’m not entirely convinced by your characterization of Priest. But, look—write another book if you like. We’ll be bringing out some novels in the next few years. Uncontroversial stuff. In fact, the deputy consul’s wife has written one.”

  “Screw you.”

  “Yes.” Leo laughed. Then he pushed his tongue through the wet valve of his lip. “Ah, Oscar—you’re not planning some sort of scene up in the gallery?”

  “No. Not this year. I won’t compromise you.”

  “Good boy. Good boy.” Leo clapped his hands. They stood and stepped sideways through the willow fall. At the souvenir stand Leo bought two Priest amulets, abstract stick figures of silver. A single mortar shell went wild above them: shrieks from a torn throat. The crowd performed calisthenics, knees bent, flat palms at sides of neck. It exploded in the West Parking Lot. Oscar saw the windshield and one fender of a Model T rise through a fifty-foot perpendicular, paddle-wheel over each other, the windshield intact. Next to him an old woman, an honorary Eve of Priest, kissed her armband. Leo turned and began to struggle up the steep dirt path, one yanking hand on a metal banister. Oscar followed him.

  “Priest Almighty.” Leo gasped. “I think we’d be safer inside the crater. Eco-technology. What a farce.”

  “It’s not bad—I mean statistically. Each mortar shoots at least five hundred rounds a day. Fifteen hundred between Good Monday and Eater.”

  “Ah—” Leo rested. He stared up at the black/green statue of Priest, now visible against a triple arch of gateway, against the sky. “I don’t care what you say. The Feast is a great thing. I remember my first shoot. I was sure I had killed someone. My father gave me a new red bicycle.”

  “I never try to kill anyone. I try to find an empty sector.”

  “Look. There are a lot of people up there—they all have a quite different idea of the Feast.” Leo started walking. “Just shut up.”

  “It’s barbaric.”

  “Better to eat than be eaten. Mmmpph-ah. Better than suicide.” Leo was cheerful. “Ahhh—I hope you Ecotech people are working on escalators.”

  “Forty years ago that lip would have been the end of you.” Leo stopped. “Better to eat than be eaten.”

  “That was uncalled for. That was low. You’re a scoundrel.”

  “Better to eat than be eaten. That big ass of yours would have fed a hundred communicants, I bet.”

  “Ha—” Leo pulled upward. “Better, I suppose, that mankind be eaten to the bone by vultures. If it comes down to me or the common housefly—I’ll take me every time, thank you.”

  “Not so fast. You’ll have a heart attack.”

  “Oscar. Do you really prefer Ecology to human life? Or is it just your latest affectation?”

  “There has to be a compromise.”

  “There is no compromise. History proves it.”

  “There must be. Look at America.”

  “Yes. Mmmm. Give a push while you’re talking.” Oscar placed a palm above each of Leo’s kidneys. He heaved: the heavy flesh hurried up along his spine, moving, loose, as though it were transient on him. “America. That was six hundred years ago. It just proves—men can’t progress with a too exalted concept of human life. Don’t use your nails, damn it.” Leo stopped. “By the way. That suggestion I made—about Flora and Betty.”

  “You retract it.”

  “Ah…well. In your present crazy state I’d rather not be indebted. Thanks anyway.”

  “Understood. Understood. The point is taken.”

  They hesitated at the downsloping cobblestone lip of Crater Plaza. Leo mouthed; he inclined his head. Reluctantly Oscar acknowledged its power. The bronze statue of Priest-at-his-feeding was twenty-seven feet tall. It dominated the plaza. Oscar gasped. Abruptly the two hundred mortars had ceased firing. The silence was fierce, a barrier wrenched aside. Oscar almost toppled forward into its great absence. He could hear the rivulet of water that dribbled from Priest’s torn half arm. Th
e figure was twisted slightly, at the knee, at the hips, contrapposto. There was primitive agony in the expression, yet forbearance and serenity interpenetrated it, occupied the same emotional space-time. This was the finest of A. Bonanno’s early works. The face—leathery tissue taut over cheekbone and jaw and prominent brow ridge—approximated the one authentic extant photo of Dominick Priest. The eyes were small and recondite. His occiput extended a perpendicular thrust of neck. Little brain capacity, Oscar thought, little capacity for guilt. Yet he is my father. He is father of us all. Each descended from the first ten women. Those poor fools: his captives; his concubines. The ten Eves of Priest, our second Adam.

  Leo knelt on pine-bough cushions. He dipped his right hand and anointed the armband’s ruby with water. Oscar’s gesture was perfunctory; his fingers did not touch the water. Leo immersed the two amulets he had bought for Betty and Flora. Oscar flipped a ten-dom piece into the fountain. From a loudspeaker the words of Priest, written a hundred years after his death by Dom Alphonsus Connor, echoed over the plaza, “It is said in the Book of Priest, ‘Death met me at the garden of jungles. He was hideous: head of deer and snake and bear and fly.’” Leo mouthed the familiar words silently. “‘And Death spoke unto me in this wise, “I have freed your people. I have taken life from them.” And I, Priest, did answer Death, “Verily man was made to rule over the birds of the sky and the beasts of the field and the fishes of the sea and the insect that burrows under the skin. And I will return man to his inheritance.” And Death said” unto me, “How will you do this? How? For your people’s mouths are stopped and their bowels are shriveled and they have forgotten to make children from their loins. Who will feed them?” And I, Priest, answered Death—“I, the Son, will feed them with my own arm. I will sharpen their teeth and open the passage of their throats. I will make their bowels to enrich the land. I will restore man to his inheritance, so that he may worship my Father. For my Father is not worshiped by deer and bear and snake and fly. My Father is worshiped by man, by the mind and the heart that can compass Him. My Father loves His children. He will make creation to worship Him again.” Leo nodded. The tape loop repeated, “It is said in the Book of Priest, ‘Death met me at the garden…”

  They entered the triple gullet of the archway. Each of its keystones was a single incisor; the voussoirs had been shaped to appear dentate. The ramp, though eroded by the scuffling of three hundred years, was a protrusive, bowled tongue. Above the crown: this is truth: all things eat or are EATEN. Beyond, the gravel gallery was thirty yards wide. Spectators milled six deep at the railing. Eastward the gigantic, abstract arrowhead of Crater Cathedral, its point toward the rising sun, funneled the light into a shadowy V. The north and south wings of its transept were flanged; against the wind, they seemed to imply lift. Worshipers who had made their preparatory devotions strolled, chatting, toward it. Oscar and Leo walked left, past a dozen mortar stations. They edged against the gallery wall as two tractors drawing supply trains ground, with short, dynamic jerks, past them. Noses of mortar shells were pyramided there. Leo sensed a lapse in the throng. He lifted his stomach and wedged through. At the rim he drew Oscar, who was shorter, in front of him. His hands settled on Oscar’s shoulders. Oscar shook his head. He balanced backward, bracing his heels, bowing his spine. Leo’s weight worried him: the iron railing, loose in its upright sockets, seemed to give dangerously above a hundred-foot drop.

  Stonehenge was the setting at this Feast of Eater. Oscar thought it apt. Last year’s Amazon Jungle panorama had been misconceived. By the third afternoon of dry heat, imported fronds were flabby and brown; the native huts, flimsily constructed thatch, had sagged, seeming tattered whisk brooms from the gallery. Oscar scanned the circular, square-mile floor. Slabs were erect. They were linteled by slabs. Some had been ruined in their design; others had been wrecked by mortar impact. One row of slabs was propped shoulder to shoulder, a loaf of bread fanning. Oscar counted four or five mock Stonehenges: he knew their purpose. Small figures prowled in the mazy stone angles, grouped there by a meretricious promise of shelter. They made convenient targets. Below, fifty yards in, Oscar saw the twenty-foot ditch and the electrified fence, concentric circles within the crater circle, there to prevent victims from assembling near the wall. It was intermission. Blocky orange tractors, bearing the white, red-gouted flag of Priest, crabbed over the crater floor. A dozen hooks furrowed behind on chains; each ripped up a wake of dust, polydactyl clawing hands. Leo offered a sour ball, but Oscar was fasting. He refused.

  “Oscar. I’ve been looking all over for you.” It was Eleanor.

  She pulled him away from the railing. “Come. I want you to watch me shoot.”

  “All right. Leo—I'll meet you outside the Cathedral entrance.”

  “Remember. I’m stuck here without you.”

  “Leo. Betty and Flora are down by the relic stand,” Eleanor said. “They’ve shot already.”

  “Spending money,” Leo said. “Good kill, Eleanor. Congratulations.”

  “Thank you.” They hurried around the western perimeter. Eleanor trotted: Oscar held the plump braid’s tip gently, a rein that canted her chin up as Eleanor picked a way through the crowd. She was excited; she rolled her small breasts upward/ downward with tight fists. The sun had declined; this side of the crater was in shadow. The burly mortars, swabs tonguing upward, seemed another sort of mortar, a chemist’s, pestled. Eleanor led him to Station ; #37; three and seven were her lucky numbers. The stations had an odd designation leftward from the crater entrance. She held reservation tickets 379-37 and 380-37. She handed Oscar the higher number. The ticket adhered to her fingers: Oscar saw on its glossy scarlet patina the whorl of Eleanor’s thumbprint and, over it, a circumflex punching of her sharp nail. They waited on line. Two young men described trajectories with their hands; they blew explosions out of bubble cheeks. Saliva froth collected at their mouth comers; it seemed an indication of appetite. Number 375-37 stood just below a spiraled metal staircase that led up/around the mortar platform. Eleanor stapled her arm over Oscar’s hips, poking, as she did, the sensitive nub end of his spine.

  “I feel homy.”

  Oscar grunted. Eleanor’s times of sexual exultation were rare and tremendous. She saved fantasies toward a tidal release; it occurred often just before her period. Oscar was aroused; and at once, too, he was ashamed. His pleasure would derive from an act of murder.

  “Remember now. This is a religious exercise.”

  ”Yes. Yes.” She sucked spit back through her long teeth. “I’m going to kill someone.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “How many are left out there? How many do you think?”

  “A few hundred. It’s pretty late in the afternoon.”

  “I wish—” She closed her eyes. “I wish they weren’t all defectives and criminals. I’d like to kill someone who was really built. Some big, cocky bastard.” She leaned close, whispered; she bit his ear lobe. “I’d like you to be out there. Naked.”

  “Many thanks.”

  “Just to see what it’s like. Not because I don’t love you. Because I do.” She stood on tiptoe. “I wish I could see better.”

  “Cruel Eleanor.” In a spontaneous convulsion that startled him, she clawed the tight seat of his deerskin pants. Taut material transmitted clawing to his codpiece. “A hundred years ago the killing was done with a club. Man to man. Man to woman. The victim’s hands were bound. His ankles were shackled to a stake.” Oscar wasn’t sure of the details: rituals had differed from principality to principality. He elaborated. He gave her fantasies.

  “Priest—that must have been exciting.”

  “Yes. Better, I think.” Oscar frowned. He was disgusted with himself. “People saw what they were doing. They saw the battered skulls. The brains. They understood the meaning of death. In fact that’s why the craters were invented. Too many people refused to kill. Also, of course, there weren’t enough victims to go around.”

  “People are getting soft. Soft. Oh!”r />
  The mortars had recommenced. Oscar wobbled the ear plugs in. His head was sealed; instinctively, he opened his mouth to release a cloying pressure. Eleanor had wedged to the rail. Number 375-37 started up the staircase. Gaping, fingers under jaw, Oscar gazed upward. It was a lovely day, but the sky held symptoms of its maturity and decay. Evening winds had materialized: the smoke/dust of explosions registered its direction, slanting up, exploding again, rising to the northeast. Oscar swallowed, swallowed. A bank of approaching cloud lay prone across the western horizon. It threatened the sun; night’s closing visor. The throb vibrated in his nose bridge; he breathed nervously and air seemed to escape from his head through the eye comers. His vision jiggled.

  Eleanor pumped his arm, pointed. Seventy-five yards beyond the electrified fence, Oscar saw a figure running. Stick legs, stick arms, dot of head at that distance, yet the legs flexed, extended with a high hurdler’s wind-milling, economical grace. Eleanor shouted; he did not hear. She ate at her fingers. Oscar supposed that the man was in panic. Then the figure slowed, stood still.

  He waited with both fists balled overhead. A creeping barrage of mortar bursts strode toward him from the north—one-two, three-four: an iambic walk. He did not move as the wind furled powder debris across his face, obscured him. Then he was visible, nude at the torso, a brown shirt held out on rigid arms, knuckles up. Another shell exploded. The spine arched; the shirt flicked, teasing. Oscar was fascinated. Eleanor had brought the braid around her cheek. She sucked it. Two shells twinned an explosion: with prancing heel steps the figure chased it. He seemed to chide; chin jutted, jerked. A shell hit behind and nearer. Its impact clapped him over the shoulder blades. The figure pirouetted, eager, the shirt easing across his chest. Eleanor pressed her palm against Oscar’s belly.

  “A matador.” She said. “Challenging all of us. Him. I want him. I want to kill him. Do you think I can?” But Oscar could not hear her.