“Very good, sir,” said Ross.
“And you’re sure I’ll write ‘Kubla Khan’ when I emerge?” I said.
Ross didn’t get my little witticism and only said, “I don’t know about that, sir.”
We waited another twenty minutes and no more customers arrived.
“All right, sir, now’s the time, there’s the good chap.”
“See you in a bit, or so I hope,” I said.
“You’ll be fine.”
I drew my mac tight, my hat low, and headed across the cobblestones to the doorway, pushing my way through low drifts of fog that had blown in from seaward. It was getting more West End by the moment. Excellent job on the dry ice for fog, Mr. Jones!
I slid in the doorway and rapped three, then two, then waited. The police intelligence was good, and in a few seconds the slot opened and I saw a pair of slanted eyes.
“Bawang hua,” I said, which means, I believe, “flower king.”
More good intelligence. The slot snapped shut, the door opened. I slid in, hammered immediately by the drifting pall of fume in the red air, as all the lanterns were tinted in that hellish shade.
“A pipe, old man, and none of that for-shite Turkish sludge. Your finest Persian silk, if you please.” It was gibberish to me, but again Ross had advised well. The Chinaman looked me up and down, but I’m guessing to him occidental faces were as formulaic as Oriental faces are to Englishmen, and at any rate he could not classify me as miscreant, so had only the density of my brown tweed to go on, which he found acceptable. Then he led me down the hall where a Laskar brute who looked as if he chopped heads for a hobby sat grimly under a sign that said PIPES AND LAMPS ALWAYS CONVENIENT. A beaded curtain hung in a doorway to the left, and he led me through it.
I beheld the glare of red lanterns, and in that illumination I saw supine men and heard the shift and sigh and squirm of their presence, and my eyes adjusted. The reddened vapor drifted in the air; the place seemed squalid and damp and dry and hot at once; groans, low moans, giggles, and coughs rose softly. The smell, oddly, of toasted nuts was present, though it had disturbing undertones. Glow worms burned against the dark, reddening with the draw, diminishing as put down. My eyes found better focus, and what I beheld was a hall of profound stupor, men beyond movement or care, spilled across wicker divans, their bodies lackadaisical as rag dolls, all pretense of rank and show completely abandoned, all jaws flaccid, all eyes fixated on eternity or infinity or the place where the two somehow met. I could not make out the colonel, but I could not make out anyone.
The Chinaman poked me and jibber-jabbered, small paw out. When I placed in it the standard three and six for a thimbleful, he looked disappointed, so I passed over another tuppence to show goodwill. He led me, I shed myself of hat and coat, and he bade me go supine on my own divan. There were four of them placed about a red lantern glowing in the center on a brass-plated table. I lay for a few minutes, letting my eyes further refine, not daring to peer about, as it wasn’t the sort of place where friendly eye contact was encouraged.
In time, my host returned with a long clay stem, slightly curved, which at its end held a small cup. Ross had provided me with a veteran’s retinue of tricks, so I drew the cup close to eye for a check, scraped the brown paste inside, drew off a little under my thumbnail, and brought it to nostril for sniff and to tongue for taste, as if I were capable of discerning the difference between Turkish and Persian. It had neither odor nor taste, as far as I could tell, but I nodded and winked at the deliverer and he sped away.
I placed the pipe cup atop the lantern and waited for it to absorb enough concentrated energy to begin to smolder. I had been instructed that it was impervious to live flame; only the application of pure heat, as passed through the conduit of soft metals, ignited it and began its alchemical magic. Obviously I was being watched, so when I saw tendrils of vapor, I put it to mouth and applied suction.
Nothing happened. Odd, Coleridge had seen far-off lands, his imagination liberated by the stuff’s mythical ability to provoke, but I saw nothing. I blinked again, thinking, Opium: overrated.
And then . . . My, my, isn’t this interesting. It was a sense of pleasure that can only be called acute. My skin felt soft, my body warmed pleasantly. In a few seconds the acute metamorphisized to the chronic. Pleasure was general. I seemed to forget who I was and why I was there. I lay back and for a second believed I had found paradise. Drat! Too early to make such a claim, for the next second completed my journey through the upper levels of poppyland and brought me to the destination the opiate had selected for me.
I was in a concert hall, alone, though well dressed. Upon the stage was my sister. The applause was tumultuous, although again I was by myself in the ranks of red-plush seats, and I was not clapping. Lucy, the adored one, accepted the enthusiasm of the invisible crowd with grace. She was quite lovely, in a rather low silk gown, a small but firm bust with a string of pearls about her swan’s neck. There was serene confidence on her beautiful face.
She sang. An aria from Wagner, I think, though one of his gentler, more romantic ones, nothing with dark clouds and northern war gods bashing each other with sword and hammer. Her voice was exquisite, but the odd thing was that each note emerged shimmering from her throat and found a place in midair above her, moreover then transfiguring into a bird of bright plumage. I saw nightingales, peacocks, blue parrots, proud ocher hawks and falcons, even some prehistoric saurian birds festooned in the colors of the rainbow. In time an aviary of dazzling brilliance had taken grip on roosts above her beautiful head, and the radiance of the color had a kind of translucent sparkle to it, so that it caught, refracted, redirected, and amplified the lights of the hall.
She stood, crowned. The glory of the music was enshrined in the pigment of feathers above her, the whole thing rather awesome. It seemed to be a scene from some sort of devotional. It was whoever God may be, adoring her formally.
I had always hated her. Where I struggled, she soared. Where I bumbled, she triumphed. Where I was unloved, she was worshipped. She had been sent here, I was convinced, to make mockery of my many failings, my lack of talent and industry, my crude ways, my slithery mendacity, my awareness that the music that was the river of life in our family would not be my destiny, while it would be hers in diamonds.
The astonishment was how proud I felt. Shorn of my fury at her position of supremacy in the family, I felt the cascade of love. That was my sister, my flesh, my family, my blood up there, and it reflected so well upon me that I could not but take immense contentment from it.
Yet into this demi-paradise—my true expression of love for Lucy, which I have heretofore hidden from all, most especially myself, the depth of her talent, the perfection of her beauty unsnarled by jealousy and fear—came at last the snake, except it wasn’t a snake, it was a large brutish boar (an opium pun? bore? boor? brother?), horned and snuffling, grunting, leaking filth and offal, his unorganized ways suggestive of violence.
He wandered, sniffing, munching, probing his way across the stage. Lucy did not panic nor race to safety. Her love abideth. She reached to his hideous head and stroked it, knelt to it and switched to Brahms, something delicate and soothing. She tamed the savage heart of the beast, which happily went to knees and then full supine, placed its great snout upon the floor, and began to snore rapturously, lost, perhaps, in its own opium dreams. These images, I might add, were as vivid to me as any in reality. What they symbolized, I have no idea, if anything at all. Yet they have stayed with me and will, I believe, forever.