UpRightDown: Issue # 2: performances: MY BLIND SISTER a novel by Brian Lemarié: episode 18

What happened then, after we got that call from Ada about a message from Zelda, what happened was very strange, let me tell you, and the source of all the strangeness must have been that drug Han gave me, that drug he also took, whose name eludes me now because of the effect, the effect of that drug, that just won't wear off. What happened was that as soon as we emerged from that tea house we began to see double and to hear double, to hear and see double, and on top of that, we couldn't talk properly because, such was the effect of the drug, everybody around us was a duck, and we were also ducks. The pet shop cats were all ducks and the caged bunny and her bunny-husband, busy as ever at God's work, were ducks, and the lady at the counter of the pet shop was a duck, and the lady-vet next door, who stood there, bored as hell, at the entrance to the Pet Health Center and exhaled donuts of tobacco smoke, she also was a duck, and the newspaper vendor on the corner and everybody else that walked up and down the avenue, everybody was a duck and so were we. We looked at each other: we saw what we were, and wondered whether we should laugh or cry.

True enough. Feathers everywhere, and a beak, and webbed feet. Nevertheless, we had a job to do: we had to go down to Chelsea to see Ada about that message, that text message from Zelda. We walked over to Second Avenue and got a cab.

"Chelsea where?" quacked the cabby, whose name, as engraved on the badge appended to the back of the front seat, was Caetano Portugal.

"You go downtown Chelsea, we tell you lata," Han quacked. "We call people tell us where." He called Ada and asked where she was. She couldn't understand a word of what he quacked, apparently, because after some exchanges he huffed and passed the phone over to me, who asked her once more where exactly we should go; we had gotten on a cab and were on our way to Chelsea but had no exact address, or street and cross-street, to tell Caetano Portugal, our cabby.

"We'll meet you on the corner of Seventh and Seventeenth," she quacked and hung up.

The cab crawled southward, slow as a turtle. There were huge jams, on account of the subway route excavated along Second Avenue. Caetano Portugal told us a story on the way, a story about a shepherd called Campos from a hamlet called Chamusca who had a flock of hogs, even though he was a shepherd and not a hogherd, and he needed to herd the whole flock of hogs from Chamusca to a nearby hamlet, Golegã, but to do that he and the hogs had to cross a large waterway, called the Tejo, and the only way to cross the Tejo was to transport the hogs, one by one, on a small ferry manned by a gray-bearded ferryman named Pedro whose father had been a duke. The ferry was very, very small and could carry no more than one hog, plus the ferryman. So Campos gave Pedro forty escudos (an outrageous sum, an account of the ferryman's noble ancestry) and Pedro proceeded to transport one hog, then another hog, then another hog, and another hog and another hog, across the Tejo. The cabby told us to keep track of these hogs: he had to know the exact number of hogs transported by Pedro from one bank of the Tejo to the other, or else he wouldn't be able to tell the story. So we counted, because we were eager to know what happened after all the hogs had been successfully transported across the Tejo. But though we kept good count, or at least we thought we kept good count, the cabby never completed the story because by the hundred and seventy-seventh hog, the cab had reached Chelsea and there were at least two hundred more hogs left for Pedro to ferry across the Tejo.

We got off on the corner of Seventh and Seventeenth, as Ada had commanded. But where were they?

Ada emerged, alone, from Café Tutto è Buono. She had on a black sweater and black leather pants and a red beret over her dappled plumage. She saw us but would not acknowledge our presence. She snatched a Homes & Land, one of those free real estate rags,from a house-shaped box and she began to read. We weren't offended. We assumed that was code: we should observe her, follow her. She read the whole Homes & Land, from page one all the way to the end, as though she wanted to buy a condo. Then, abruptly, she chucked the rag and began to walk westward. We observed, we followed. Halfway down the block, under the shades of D'AG NY Seventeenth Street Market, she stopped and turned to us. "Now we can talk," she quacked. "We lost the bastard."

She took out a small notebook from her pocketbook, tore off a page, and wrote down an address. "Here," she quacked. "That's where she'll be, and very soon, so hurry. There's a show, you know. She knows all about ZANAZ. We know all about ZANAZ too. We know lots of stuff. We know more than you would suppose. Now go." And on that note, she spread out her long slender arms, flapped, and was gone.

Perhaps, but she was all we had. The note read as follows: "go to 154 orchard st then go to 28 ave b apt b1 say shoddy freddy to enter." What the quack. Those were two addresses, not one, and who was Shoddy Freddy? Han, however, seemed to understand. We walked back to Seventh and made our way south, took Bedford to Houston, and walked east all the way to Orchard Street. On that corner, hungry as all hell, we each got a kebab, then proceeded to 154 Orchard Street.

154 Orchard was a store, Second-Hand Goodness, that sold old clothes and old books and old records from a thousand years ago and dusty old lampshades and teacups and vases and toys that nobody wanted anymore. The place smelled of mothballs and old age and made you want to cry. We asked the duck at the counter whether she knew or had seen or had heard of a woman named Zelda.

She beamed at us as soon as she heard the name. "That's me!" she quacked. "Zelda!"

We wondered why we'd been sent to that address, and why to 154 Orchard before 28 Avenue B. We concluded that the reason for that was as follows: we should buy new clothes here, or rather old clothes, and put them on, so that the people at 28 Avenue B wouldn't know who we were. We each got a fedora, a yellow straw one for Han and a tan-colored felt one for me. We also got each a long gray trench coat and sunglasses, and emerged from Second-Hand Goodness so transformed that our own mothers would not have been able to tell who we were.

From there to 28 Avenue B was a short walk. There was a bar, Croxley Ales; there was Ben's Grocery Store, and between these two there was a narrow entrance, not very clean. The door was dark gray and sported more obscene scrawls than a school bathroom stall. We buzzed apartment B1 and got no answer.

Eventually a young duck came out, but he shut the door and wouldn't let us enter. "Who you?" he quacked.

But the ducky ducked and elbow-jabbed Han just above the knee. The knee jerked, Han howled, and the ducky ran away.

The guy had no clue who Shoddy Freddy was, or so he pretended. He told us to hold on, he would come out. A few seconds later we heard the same guy, now just beyond the door. "Jot down," he quacked, "the password on a note and pass me the note through the letter slot."

He repeated: "Jot down the password on a note and pass me the note through the letter slot."

We searched our pockets for a paper and a pen. We produced a green crayon and an envelope, wrote down "Shoddy Freddy," and put the envelope through the letter slot.

Just then, the clouds burst. What a torrent! What a downpour! Thoroughly drenched, we pounded on the door, we pounded, pounded, pounded.

The door opened. He was a tall muscular Japanese drake whose eyes were all aflame. Or who knows, maybe he wasn't Japanese, but he had on a black Japanese robe and square wooden sandals. He held a metal cane whose handle was a wooden duck. "Enter," he quacked, and when we had, he added, "Just so you know, the password's Schadenfreude, not--"

We followed the drake down to a basement apartment, dark and damp, a cave. He unlocked the door, entered, and told us to hold on. We put our ears to the door. We heard footsteps, a soft crash, a rustle, a meow, a saxophone, more footsteps. The door reopened. The Japanese drake, eyes aflame, told us to enter and watch our step. As we entered, he grabbed me by the arm, gave me some sort of brochure, and softly quacked, "Be on your guard, son. The theater's not always a safe place."

The theater? He ushered us down a long hallway toward what seemed to be one of the bedrooms. As we entered, he told us once more to be careful. The room was dark, though not so dark that you couldn't see what had been done. The bedroom, a huge bedroom, had been converted to a theater. There were seats everywhere and a stage. But there was no one around, nobody on stage, not even a stagehand, and no spectators. Or at least we couldn't see any. We grabbed two seats--stools, wooden stools--all the way at the back, took off our drenched coats, and sat down. The stools were feeble, and protested under our butts, crack, crack. Dark as the room was, we proceeded to study the brochure or program or whatever that was. All we could make out was the word "ZANAZ" on the cover. We looked at the contents; there was text and there were photos, but we couldn't make out what or who--except one photograph: that duck, or so we thought, was Zelda. What the quack. Was she one of the players? Was ZANAZ some sort of show? Were we part of some farce? What the quack! The worst part was that the effect of the drug would not wear off, would not wear off. My beak had begun to foam and old thoughts, contrary and confused old thoughts, flooded my head and made me blurt out an odd jumble of words: "Marmalade! Monopoly! Condolences! Crackerjack! Poop!" Han told me to shut up; the show was about to start. But couldn't he see? We were trapped! We were trapped! The drug! The marmalade! Webbed feet! "Psst, Han...pssst, psssst, Han!" My beak was full of foam....But how could he not...? Why was he...? Why were we...? The drug, yes, the drug, and the ducks and the drakes and the...Quack! That feeble wooden stool crumbled under my two hundred pounds.