The Story of B (Ishmael 2) - Page 5

The stage revolved, bringing me first Atterley then the woman, speaking with her hands. It got so that I hated seeing them coming and going—the two of them somehow being worse than twice as bad as one of them alone.

I hated seeing them coming and going—but I also just hated them, for what they were doing. They were showing me I was exactly like that goddamned horse in the winner’s circle at Ascot. I may toss my head and prance like a champion, but when it comes right down to it, I can’t make out any difference between the Queen of England and a stable boy.

They had found a sore spot in me that I didn’t even know I had—and I detested them for it. They went on for another forty minutes or so. I heard it all, and I closed my ears to every bit of it—though my hand went on taking it down. Then suddenly the screens went dark, the lights on the stage dimmed, and Atterley and his pal stepped off into the darkness.

I got out of there like a drunk who has just remembered where he stashed a bottle. In fact, I needed a drink, but I didn’t want one there or at my hotel, where I might conceivably run into Herr Reichmann again.

No problem. Munich is a big, big city, with plenty of drinks in it.

* The text of this speech will be found in Chapter 25–The Great Forgetting.

Friday, May 17

Aftershocks

Quite probably I’ve screwed up, though I don’t suppose I’ve screwed up irrevocably. I came, I saw, I ran away. I’m obviously not going to make a point of reporting this to Fr. Lulfre.

It’s also obvious that I have to get back on Atterley’s trail.

Later

Herr Reichmann isn’t registered at the hotel, and the barman who introduced us says he’d never seen him before. I didn’t really expect it to be that easy. The concierge looked up Der Bau and learned that it opens at three in the afternoon, information that proved to be false or outdated. It opened—rather reluctantly, it seemed to me—at around five-thirty. The staff on hand for this event didn’t have enough English to be of any help, but they managed to make it clear that they would send me someone named Harry if I’d sit down and wait for an hour or so.

I sat down and waited for an hour or so, and, surprisingly enough, they sent me someone named Harry, who turned out to be an Englishman or maybe a German who had schooled in England. I told him I was trying to find Charles Atterley.

“The name isn’t familiar to me, I’m afraid,” said Harry.

“The man who spoke here last night,” I said.

“Ah. Is that his name?”

I looked at him incredulously. “You don’t know his name?”

“I don’t know that one.”

“What do you mean?”

Harry shrugged. “The name I know may not be a name at all. He’s known as B.”

“B? B as in boy?”

“That’s right.”

“Why does he call himself that?”

Harry gave me the sort of smile you give a toddler who inquires about Santa’s elves. I asked where I might find him.

“No idea at all,” Harry said.

“Do you know where he might be speaking next?”

“No.”

I thought for a moment. “How did you happen to book him into Der Bau?”

He frowned over this question as if I might be approaching the boundary between curiosity and presumptuousness. “This isn’t Caesars Palace here, my friend. Arrangements are made in all sorts of ways and are usually very offhand. We don’t go through any process you would recognize as ‘booking acts.’”

“But you must have had some way of reaching him….”

Tags: Daniel Quinn Ishmael Classics
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