Chapter 4 - City of Truth

Monday: back to work, my flesh leaden, my blood like liquid mercury. I'd spent the previous week locked in the Wittgenstein's tiny screening room, scrutinizing the fruit of Hollywood's halcyon days and confirming the archeologists' suspicions that none of these narratives contained a single frame of truth, and now it was time to deconstruct them. Hour followed hour, day melded into day, but my routine never varied: filling the bathtubs, dumping in the 35mm negatives, watching the triumph of Clorox over illusion.

Like souls leaving bodies, the Technicolor emulsions floated free of their bases, disintegrating in the potent, purifying bleach.

My heart wasn't in it. Cohn, Warner, Mayer, Thalberg, Selznick — these men were not my enemies.

Au contraire

, I wanted to be like them. Whatever one might say against Hollywood's moguls, they could all have blessed their ailing children with therapeutic falsehoods.

Stanley Marcus stayed away until Thursday, when he suddenly appeared in my coffee cubicle as I was dispiritedly consuming a tuna fish sandwich and attempting, without success, to drown my sorrows in caffeine. Saying nothing, he took up his broom and began sweeping the floor with slow, morose strokes.

That recommendation letter was pretty nasty, he said at last, sweating in the July heat. I wish you hadn't called me a toady.

I had a choice?

I didn't get the promotion.

It's not easy for me to pity you, I said through a mouthful of tuna, mayo, and Respectable Rye. I have a

sick son. Only lies can cure him.

Stanley rammed his broom into the floor. Look, I'm a pathetic person, we all know that. Women want nothing to do with me. I'm a loser. Don't talk to me about your home life, Mr. Sperry.

Don't talk about your lousy son.

I blanched and trembled. Fuck you figuratively, Stanley Marcus!

Fuck you figuratively, Jack Sperry! He clutched the broom against his bosom and fled.

I finished my coffee and decided to make some more, dumping a double helping of Fran's Fairish

Crystals into my mug.

Back in the shop, a stack of 35mm reels awaited my review, a celluoid tower stretching clear to the ceiling. As Fran's Fairish sparked and flared amid my neurons, I rolled up my sleeves and got to work. I

dissolved

The Wizard of Oz and

Gone With the Wind

, stripped

Citizen Kane and

King Kong down to the acetate, rid the world of

Singin' in the Rain A Night at the Opera

, , and — how blatant can a prevaricator get? —

It's a Wonderful Life

.

The end-of-day whistle blew, four steamy squeals echoing throughout the Wittgenstein. As the last cry faded away, a fifth one arose, human, female — familiar.

Way to go, critic!

I glanced up from a tub of Clorox, where

Casablanca was currently burbling toward oblivion. The doorway framed her.

Martina?

Martina

?

Hello, Jack. Her silver lame dress hugged her every contour like some elaborate skin graft. A matching handbag swung from her shoulder. I'd never seen a Veritasian outfitted so dishonestly before — but then, of course, Martina was evidently more than a Veritasian.

The guard let you through? I asked, astonished.

After I agreed to copulate with him tomorrow, yes.

The truth? A half-truth? There was no way, I realized with a sudden pang of anxiety, to gauge this woman's sincerity. I'm extraordinarily happy to see you, I said. I went to that address you gave me, but—

Just once

I'd like to meet a man whose genitalia didn't rule his life.

I wanted to talk with you, that's all. A

talk

. I met Boris the Clamdigger.

Opening her silver handbag, Martina retrieved a one liter bottle of Charlie's Cheapdrunk and a pair of

Styrofoam cups. Did he mention anything about two hundred bucks?

Uh-huh.

He's not going to get it. She set the cups on the workbench, filled them with mud-colored wine.

I

suppose he told you we had sex?

Yes.

Hell, Jack, you know more about my private life than do. She seized her cup of Charlie's and sashayed

I

around the shop, breasts rolling like channel buoys on Becket Bay, hips swaying like mounds of dough being hefted by a pizza chef.

It was all lost on me, every bounce and bob. My urges had died when Prendergorst said fatal

; I'd been gelded by an adjective.

Grabbing my wine, I swilled it down in one gulp.

So this is where it all happens. Martina stopped before my tool rack, massaging my axes, fondling my hammers, running her fingers over my saws, pliers, and drills. Impressive...

Where are you living now? I asked, refilling my cup.

With my girlfriend. I can't afford anything better — Cloying and Coy turned down my Mother's Day series. She finished off her Charlie's. Which reminds me — you know that page of doggerel I gave you?

Like a chipmunk loading up on acorns, I inflated my cheeks with wine. I swallowed. Those verses have never left my mind. So to speak.

Martina frowned severely, apparently puzzled by the notion that her doggerel was in any way memorable. I want them back. You never liked them in the first place.

The wine was everywhere now, warming my hands and feet, massaging my brain. They're somewhat appealing, in their own vapid way.

Hips in high gear, she moved past the seething remains of Casablanca

, reached the door, and snapped the deadbolt into place. I don't know what I was thinking when I let them go. I always save my original manuscripts. I'll gladly give you a copy.

So there it was, the final proof of Martina's true colors. The cunning little liar had deduced the poems were dangerous — in her justified paranoia, she'd imagined me spotting the flagrant falsehoods carved into the page.

Buzzing with Cheapdrunk, I didn't resist when Martina ushered me across the shop to my assignment for the upcoming week — a mountainous pile of Cassini gowns, Saint Laurent shirts, and Calvin Klein jeans.

So anyway, she said as we eased into the deceiving fabrics, if you could give me those verses...

Her full wet lips came toward me, her eager puppyish tongue emerged. She kissed me all over; it was like being molested by a marshmallow. We hugged and fondled, clutched and tussled, poked and probed.

My genitalia, to use Martina's word, might as well have been on the moon, for all they cared. I said, Martina, I know why you want that doggerel.

Oh?

Icy vibrations passed through her, the tremors of her guilt. You want it because the paper's embedded with lies, I said. The skin tightened on her bones. You're a dissembler.

No, she insisted, extricating herself from our embrace.

How do you counteract the conditioning? I persisted.

She stood up. I'm not one.

You wrote about having wings. You wrote about a soul

. Scrambling to my feet, I squeezed her large, Rubensian hand. My son means a great deal to me.

Love, even. He's just a boy. Ever heard of Xavier's Plague? He mustn't learn the truth. If he doesn't realize it's fatal, he might go into remission or even—

She ran to the door as if fleeing some act of the alleged God, a forest fire, tidal wave, cyclone.

You've got the wrong woman! she shouted, throwing back the bolt.

I won't go to the Squad — I promise. Please, Martina, teach me how you do it!

She tore open the door, started into the hot dusk. I tell only the truth!

Liar!

I watched her fumble, sweating and shaking, into her shiny Toyota Perfunctory. Her rubbery face was bloodless. As she backed out of the parking lot, I clasped my hands together and bent my head in that most dangerous of postures, that most disingenuous of gestures, prayer.

Heaven answered me with a traffic jam, the full glory of the Veritasian rush hour. I ran into its dense screeching depths, weaving around pedestrians like a skier following a slalom course, never letting

Martina's Perfunctory out of my sight. She crawled down Voltaire Avenue, turned east onto River Street.

By the time she reached the bridge, the traffic had halted completely, like a wave of molten lava solidifying on the slope of a volcano.

She pulled into a parking space, started the meter running, and ducked into a disreputable looking bar-and-grill called Danny's Digestibles.

A pay telephone stood at the Galileo Avenue intersection. The thing worked perfectly. In the Age of

Lies, I'd heard, public phones were commonly the targets of criminal behavior.

I told Helen I wouldn't be home for supper. I'm tracking a dissembler, I explained.

The Coventry woman?

Yes. I peered through the bar's grubby window. Martina sat at a back table, sipping a Citizen Smith's and eating a murdered cow.

Helen said, Did you have sex with her?

No. A mild but undeniable pain arose in my temples. We kissed.

On the lips?

Yes. We also hugged.

Come home, Jack.

Not before I'm one of them.

Jack!

Click. I stood in the silvery, sulfurous rain and waited.

* * *

Within the hour Martina left Danny's Digestibles and set out on foot, striding eastward into the twilit depths of Nietzsche Borough. Once the lynchpin of the Veritas Trolley Company, an enterprise that in its heyday shuttled both freight and humans around the metropolis, Nietzsche had of late fallen victim to the revolution in private transportation, becoming underpopulated and inert, an urban moonscape. I followed

Martina to a depot, its tracks now deserted but for the occasional rusting Pullman or decaying boxcar.

How stealthy I was, how furtive — how like a dissembler already.

A roundhouse loomed up, its turntable lying before the switchyard like an enormous lazy Susan, its barns sealed with slabs of corrugated steel. A diesel switch engine sat on the nearest siding,

hulking into the wet summer air like the fossilized remains of some postindustrial dinosaur.

Martina drummed on the door — a swift, snappy paradiddle — and a tall, devil-bearded man answered, his gaunt features softened by the dusk. I'm Spartacus, come to free the slaves, she told him

— a code phrase, evidently. I flinched at the falsehood.

Right this way, brave Thracian, he replied, stepping aside to let her pass.

Sneaking around back, I groped along the sooty, rust-stained walls. A high, open window beckoned. I

piled the handiest junk together — pickle barrel, apple crate, 55-gallon drum — climbed to the sill, and peered in.

Liars — everywhere, liars. There were over four hundred of them, chattering among themselves as they gripped kerosene lanterns and drifted amid the empty rails, gradually converging upon a makeshift wooden podium suspended several feet above the ground on stilts. The women were dressed outrageously, in low-cut sequined blouses and spangled stretch pants, like prostitutes or chorus girls;

Martina fit right in. The men's attire was equally antisocial. They wore tuxedos with white gloves; riding cloaks and jodhpurs; lavender suits that might have been stolen from pimps.

A burly man in a zoot suit mounted the steps of the podium carrying a battery-powered bullhorn. Settle down, everybody! came his electrified bellow.

The mob grew quiet. Take it away, Sebastian! somebody called from the floor.

The liars' leader — Sebastian — strutted back and forth on the podium, flashing a jack-o'-lantern grin.

What is snow? he shouted.

I fixed on Martina. Snow is hot! she screamed along with her peers.

A dull ache wove through my belly. I closed my eyes and jumped into the thick, creosote-clogged air.

What chases cats? asked Sebastian.

Rats chase cats! the liars responded in a single voice — a mighty shout drowning out the thud of my boots striking the roundhouse floor.

Rats chase cats

: Jesus. My discomfort increased, bursts of nausea deep within my gut. I backed against a rivet-studded girder, my body camouflaged by shadows, my footfalls masked by the rumble of the crowd.

Now, said Sebastian, down to business...

Gradually the nausea passed, and I was able to monitor the ugly schemes now unfolding before me.

The dissemblers, I soon learned, were planning yet another attack on Veritas's domestic tranquility. For one astonishingly disruptive afternoon, they would revive what Sebastian called that vanished and mythic festival known as Christmas. Anything to demoralize the city, evidently, anything to rot it from within, anything to sicken our supposed souls. At 2 P.M. on December 25th, when Circumspect Park was packed with families out for a happy day of skating on the duck pond and drinking hot chocolate by bonfires, the liars would strike. Costumed as angels, elves, gnomes, and sugarplum fairies, they would swoop into the park and cordon it off with snow fences, discreetly taking a dozen hostages to discourage police intervention.

Sebastian's forces would next erect a so-called Christmas tree on the north shore of the pond —

a Scotch pine as big as a windmill — immediately inviting Veritas's presumably awestruck children to decorate it with glass balls and tinsel. Then, as evening drew near, the dissemblers would perform a three-act adaptation of a Charles Dickens story called A Christmas Carol

. I knew all about that story, and not just because I'd read a copy of the first edition prior to burning it.

A Christmas Carol had entered history as one the falsest fables of all time, a glib embodiment of the lie that the wicked can be made to see the errors of their ways.

Finally: the climax. A loading gantry would appear on the scene and suddenly — look — here comes old Santa Claus himself, descending from the sky in a shiny red sleigh harnessed to eight audio-animatronics reindeer and jammed with gifts wrapped in glittery gold paper. As the children gathered around — their hearts pounding with delight, their faces aglow with glee, their poor defenseless minds dizzy with delusion — the elves would shower them with the stuff of their dreams, with scooters and ten-speeds, doll houses and electric trains, teddy bears and toy soldiers.

Sebastian held up the red suit and fake beard he intended to wear as Santa Claus, and the roundhouse broke into instant, thunderous applause.

I studied the crowd, shuddering each time I came upon a familiar face. Good heavens: Jimmy Breeze, the bartender from Booze Before Breakfast. Who would have picked him for a liar? Or my plumber, Paul Irving? Or my barber, Bill Mumford?

Sebastian divided his legions into the necessary task forces. Martina ended up on the Ornaments Committee. My plumber was cast as Ebenezer Scrooge. My barber volunteered to be an elf.

The closing litany caught me by surprise. Had I known it was coming, I would have steeled myself.

What can dogs do? Sebastian shouted abruptly.

They can talk! answered the mob.

My skull began to throb.

What color is grass?

Purple!

The pounding in my skull intensified.

Stones are...

Alive!

Stop! I cried, squeezing my head between my palms. Stop! Please stop!

Four hundred faces turned toward me. Eight hundred eyes flashed with anger and indignation.

Who's that? someone asked.

Spy! a voice called.

Another voice: Who is he?

Another: Brutality Squad!

I raised my open palms. Listen! I want to join you! The liars rushed toward me like the hordes in the most impressive Renaissance oil I'd deconstructed during my apprenticeship, Altdorfer's Battle of Issus

.

I want to become a dissembler!

A leathery hand curled around my mouth. I bit into it, tasting the liar's salty blood. A boot jabbed my side, snapping a middle rib like a dry twig. Groaning, reeling with fear, I dropped to my knees. I'd never before felt so much of that ultimate truth, that quintessential fact, pain.

The last thing I saw before losing consciousness was my tax advisor's fist moving swiftly toward my jaw.

* * *

I woke up alive. Alive — and no better. My lips felt like two fat snails grafted onto my mouth.

My torso, it seemed, had recently been employed as the ball in some nameless and aggressive contact sport. Pain chewed at my side.

Gradually the gooey film slid from my eyes. I took stock. Foam mattress, eiderdown pillow, the

adamant odor of rubbing alcohol. Adhesive tape encircled my chest, as if it were the gripping end of a baseball bat.

A middle-aged doctor in a white lab coat fidgeted beside me, stethoscope dangling from her neck.

Good morning, she said, apparently meaning it. A thin, vivid face — hawkish nose, sharp chin, high cheeks: a face that, while not beautiful, would probably always retain a certain appeal for anybody

obliged to behold it regularly.

Morning? Is it Friday already?

Very good, the doctor answered merrily. Her smile was as crisp and bright as a gibbous moon.

I'm

Felicia Krakower, and I truly, sincerely hope you're feeling better.

Across the room, an old man with skin the color of oolong tea sat upright on his mattress, his head wrapped in a turban of brilliant white bandages.

My rib hurts, I said.

I'm terribly sorry to hear that, said Dr. Krakower. Don't fret. You're in Satirev now, the place where all wishes find fulfillment.

Satirev?

Off the map. Dr. Krakower waved a thermometer around as if conducting an orchestra.

Spell it backwards, my roommate suggested. I'm Louie, by the way. Brain cancer. No big deal. It just grows and grows up there, like moss, and then one day — pfttt — I'm gone. Death is an extraordinary adventure.

I slid the thermometer between my lips. Satirev ... Veritas ... Satirev ... Veritas ...

My accomodations were coated with lurid yellow paint and equally lurid lies — a poster-sized edition of

Keats's Ode to a Grecian Urn, a reproduction of Van Gogh's Sunflowers

, a print of Salvador Dali's notorious landscape of trees fruited with pocket watches. I glanced through a rose-tinted window.

Outside, a rank of Corinthian columns supported a carved lintel reading CENTER FOR

CREATIVE

WELLNESS.

As Krakower removed the thermometer, I pressed my staved-in side and said, Doctor, you've heard of psychoneuroimmunology, haven't you?

The mind-body connection?

Right. The patient adopts such a cheerful outlook that his sickness never takes hold. Does that ever happen?

Of course it happens, the doctor replied, sliding her index finger along the bright yellow tubing of her stethoscope. Miracles happen every day — the sun comes up, a baby gets born — and don't you ever forget it, Jack.

How marvelous to be among people who weren't afraid of hope. Bless you, doctor — am I running a fever?

Maybe a tiny one. Not to worry. In Satirev, one never stays ill for long.

I should call my wife.

Against all odds, the doctor's smile grew even larger. You have a wife

? Wonderful. Lovely. I'll relay

your request to Internal Security immediately. Open your mouth, would you?

Why?

Something for your own good.

I moved my wounded lips apart. The doctor deposited a sugary, kidney-shaped capsule on my tongue, handed me a glass of water. How do I

know it's for my own good? I asked.

Trust me, said Dr. Krakower.

In Satirev people trust each other, said Louie.

Sleeping pill? I asked, swallowing.

Could be, said the doctor.

Sleeping pill...

* * *

When I returned to consciousness, Martina Coventry was leaning over me, still packaged in her lascivious gold dress. Beside her stood a tall, lanky, coarse-skinned man in a green dinner jacket fitted over a sweatshirt that said, WHEN LIFE GIVES YOU LEMONS, MAKE

LEMONADE. He looked like a cactus.

Martina!

She laid a plump hand on my forehead. Say hello to Franz Beauchamp.

Hello, I said to the cactoid man.

I'm in charge of making sure you don't wander off, Franz explained in a voice that seemed to enter the room after first traveling through a gallon of honey. It's no big deal. Just give me your Veritasian word you won't wander off.

I won't wander off.

Good for you. My guardian's smile was as spectacular as Felicia Krakower's; I'd fallen in with a population of smilers. I have a feeling we're going to be great friends, he said.

Martina was gaudier than ever. She'd worked her long terra-cotta hair into a sculpted object, a thick braid that lay on her shoulder like a loaf of challah. Her eyes had become cartoons of themselves, boldly outlined and richly shaded. Even though this is Satirev, she said, I am Veritasian enough to speak frankly.

I saved your ass, Jack. You're alive because good old Martina Coventry spoke up for you back at the roundhouse.

I'm grateful, I said.

You should be.

You told them about Toby?

She nodded. Yes, and I must say, the story was an instant hit. A Xavier's child with a shot at remission

— you have no idea what appeal that sort of situation holds down here.

It's all so amazingly touching, said Franz. A father fighting for his son's life — my goodness

, that's touching.

Can you teach me to lie? I asked.

It depends, said Martina.

On what?

On whether you're accepted into the program — on whether the treatment takes. Not everyone has the stuff to become a dissembler.

If it were up to me, I'd let you in — Franz snapped his fingers — like that

.

Unfortunately, it's not up to us, said Martina. You're going to need some luck. She reached into her madras bag and took out, of all things, a horseshoe. She opened the drawer in my nightstand and dropped it in, thud

. Horses have six legs, she said, matter-of-factly.

I gritted my teeth. Good luck charms are lies, I countered.

Perhaps, said Martina.

I understand you wish to make a phone call, rumbled Franz. Speaking on behalf of Internal Security, I

must tell you we're delighted to grant your request.

Franz and Martina helped me to my feet, inch by painful inch. I'd never realized I owned so many vulnerable muscles, so many assaultable bones. At last I stood, the cold floor nipping at my bare feet, my baggy and absurdly short hospital gown brushing my rump.

The Center for Creative Wellness was a modest affair. A dozen paces down a hall hung with photographs of ecstatic children, a dozen more across a lobby loaded with Monet's paintings of water lillies, and suddenly we were moving through the main entrance and into a small private park. Graffiti coated the smooth brick walls: JESUS LOVES YOU ... EVERYTHING IS

BEAUTIFUL IN ITS

OWN WAY ... TODAY IS THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF YOUR LIFE. I looked up.

No sun, no clouds — no sky. The whole park was covered by a concrete arch suggesting the vaulted dome of a cathedral; two enormous mercury-vapor searchlights lay suspended from the roof, technological suns.

We're under the ground, Martina explained, noting the confusion on my face. We're under Veritas, she said, launching her index finger upward; her nails were a fluorescent green. So far we've colonized only a hundred acres, but we're expanding all the time.

Compact, enclosed — and yet the park was not claustrophobic. Indeed, I had never before stood in such a soothing and airy space. It smelled of pine sap. The omnipresent birdsong boasted the exhilarating intricacy of a fugue. Butterflies representing a dozen species, each more colorful than the next, fluttered

about like patches attempting to fuse themselves into a crazy quilt. A flagstone footpath sinuated amid neat little gardens planted with zinnias, gladioli, tulips, and peonies.

Martina said, We'll never grow as big as Veritas, of course. But that's not the point.

I studied the roof, its curving face crisscrossed with Veritas's innards — her concrete intestines, gushing lead veins, buzzing nerves of steel and gutta-percha. Something peculiar glided over my head.

The point is that Satirev is here, Martina continued, and that it works.

A pig. A

pig

? Yes, there it was, sailing through the air like a miniature dirigible, flapping its little cherub-wings. A machine of some kind, a child's bizarre toy? No, its squeal was disconcertingly organic.

Pigs have wings, said Franz. His lie sent a chill through my flesh.

A scrawny yellow cat sidled out from behind a forsythia bush, its hairs erect with feline anxiety.

It shaped itself into an oblong of fur and shot toward the Center for Creative Wellness. An instant later, its pursuer appeared. A dog, I assumed at first. But no. Wrong shape. And that tail, long and ropelike.

The shudder began in my lower spine and expanded. A rat. A rat the size of a pregnant badger.

Chasing a cat.

This is a very strange place, I said, staring into Martina's exotically adorned eyes. Wouldn't you say?

Strangeness is relative, she replied.

I'm bewildered, I said.

It's not hard to make a lie, Jack. Avant-garde microbiology will give you a flying pig, an outsized rat —

anything you want.

I'm still bewildered.

Satirev takes some getting used to, said Franz, smiling prolifically. I'm sure you'll be able to master it.

You look like a champ to me, Jack.

The telephone booth sat on a knoll smothered in purple grass and five-leaf clovers. Slowly I limped through the odd flora — my body felt like a single gigantic bruise — and pushed the sliding door against the jamb. Martina and Franz stood beside me, well within earshot.

Do you understand how you must conduct yourself? my guardian asked.

I think so.

Drop the slightest hint and, bang, you're back in Veritas, awash in scopolamine — you'll never remember you've been here, not one detail. That would be most unfortunate, wouldn't it?

The phone was a deceitful affair, secretly wired into the Veritas system, blatantly looting its services. I

extended my index finger, pressed the appropriate buttons.

Helen didn't answer till the seventh ring. Obviously I'd awakened her. Hello? she said groggily.

Did I wake you?

Of course you woke me, she mumbled, whoever you are.

Listen, I told her abuptly. Don't ask me anything.

Jack

? Is that you

?

It's me. Don't ask me where I am, Helen. Everything depends on it.

My wife exhaled in frustration. I ... er, it's good to hear your voice, Jack.

I'm among them. Do you know what I'm talking about?

I think so.

They're considering my case, Helen. They might let me in. I hope you're not still against me on this.

I'm against you, she grunted.

I looped the phone cord around my arm, forcing it tight against my skin like a phylactery strap.

Have you heard anything from Toby?

Postcard came today.

Did he mention his health — headaches or anything?

He said he was in a canoe race. I'm supposed to pick him up at the bus station on the twenty-seventh. I

wish he weren't sick.

I kissed the plastic mouthpiece. I'll call you back as soon as I can. Good-bye, Helen. I'm terribly fond of you.

I'm terribly fond of you too, Jack — but please get out of there.

Please

.

I hung up and turned toward Martina and Franz. Behind them, a shaggy black rat pinned a Siamese cat to the ground and began tearing out its throat.

You did fine, said my guardian.