Science Fiction



   The City on
     the Sand



         By George Alec Effinger
                    The City on the Sand
                   by George Alec Effinger




                      Fictionwise
                www.Fictionwise.com



     Copyright ©1973 by George Alec Effinger

  First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and
             Science Fiction, April 1973


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                              2
                       The City on the Sand
                      by George Alec Effinger




   In Europe, there were only memories of great cultures.
Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, England, Carbba, and Germany
had all seized control of the world's course and the
imagination of the human race at one time or another. But
now these great powers of the past were drifting into a
cynical old age, where decadence and momentary pleasures
replaced the drive for dominance and national superiority. In
Asia, the situation was even worse. The Russias struggled
pettily among themselves, expending the last energies of a
once-proud nation in puerile bickerings. China showed signs
of total degeneration, having lost its immensely rich heritage
of art and philosophy while clinging to a ruthless creed that
crushed its hopeless people beneath a burden of mock-
patriotism. Breulandy was the only vibrant force east of the
Caucasus Mountains; still, no observer could tell what that
guarded land might do. Perhaps a Breulen storm would spill
out across the continent, at least instilling a new life force in
the decaying states. But from Breulandy itself came no word,
no hint, as though the country had bypassed its time of
ascendancy to settle for a weary and bitter mediocrity.
   Of the rest of the world there was nothing to be said. The
Americas still rested as they had in the few centuries since
their discovery: huge parklike land masses, populated by
savages, too distant, too worthless, too impractical to bother
about. None of the crumbling European governments could
summon either the leadership or the financial support to
exploit the New World. The Scandinavian lands were inhabited
by skin-clad brutes scarcely more civilized than the American
                                 3
                       The City on the Sand
                      by George Alec Effinger


cannibals. Farther east, beyond the teeming Chinese shores,
between Asia and the unexplored western reaches of the
Americas, no one was quite certain just what existed and
what was only myth. Perhaps the island continent of Lemarry
waited with its untold riches and beautiful copper spires.
    And then, lastly, there was Africa. One city sat alone on its
fiery sands. One city, filled with refugees and a strange
mongrel population, guarded that massive continent. Beyond
that single city, built in some forgotten age by an unknown
people for unimaginable purposes, beyond the high wooden
gates that shut in the crazy heat and locked in the citizens,
there was only death. Without water, the continent was
death. Without shade, the parching sharaq winds were death.
Without human habitation, the vast three thousand miles of
whispering sands were death for anyone mad enough to
venture across them. Only in the city was there a hollow
travesty of life.
                              ****
    Ernst Weinraub sat at a table on the patio of the Café de la
Fée Blanche. A light rain fell on him, but he did not seem to
notice. He sipped his anisette, regretting that the proprietor
had served it to him in such an ugly tumbler. The liqueur
suffered. M. Gargotier often made such disconcerting lapses,
but today especially Ernst needed all the delicacy, all the
refinement that he could buy to hold off his growing
melancholy. Perhaps the Fée Blanche had been a mistake. It
was early, lacking some thirty minutes of noon, and if it
seemed to him that the flood of tears was rising too quickly,


                                 4
                       The City on the Sand
                      by George Alec Effinger


he could move on to the Café Solace or Chiriga's. But as yet
there was no need to hurry.
    The raindrops fell heavily, spatting on the small metal
table. Ernst turned in his chair, looking for M. Gargotier. Was
the man going to let his customer get drenched? The
proprietor had disappeared into the black interior of his
establishment. Ernst thought of lowering the striped canopy
himself, but the shopkeeper-image of himself that the idea
brought to mind was too absurd. Instead, he closed his eyes
and listened to the water. There was music when the drops
hit the furnishings on the patio, a duller sound when the rain
struck the pavement. Then, more frequently, there was the
irritating noise of the drops hitting his forehead. Ernst opened
his eyes. His newspaper was a sodden mess and the puddle
on his table was about to overflow onto his lap.
    Ernst considered the best way to deal with the
accumulating water. He could merely cup his hand and swipe
the puddle sideways. He dismissed that plan, knowing that his
hand would be soaked; then he would sit, frustrated, without
anything on which to dry it. He would end up having to seek
out M. Gargotier. The confrontation then, with the proprietor
standing bored, perhaps annoyed, would be too unpleasant.
Anyway, the round metal top of the table was easily removed.
Ernst tipped it, revealing the edges of the white metal legs,
which were sharp with crystal rust. The water splashed to the
paved floor of the patio, loudly, inelegantly. Ernst sighed; he
had made another compromise with his manner. He had
sacrificed style for comfort. In the city, it was an easy
bargain.
                                 5
                       The City on the Sand
                      by George Alec Effinger


    “It is a matter of bodies,” he said to himself, as though
rehearsing bons mots for a cocktail party. “We have grown
too aware of bodies. Because we must carry them always
from place to place, is that any reason to accord our bodies a
special honor or affection? No, they are sacks only. Rather
large, unpleasant, undisciplined containers for meager
charges of emotion. We should all stop paying attention to
our bodies’ demands. I don't know how....” He paused. The
idea was stupid. He sipped the anisette.
    There were not more than twenty small tables on the Fée
Blanche's patio. Ernst was the only patron, as he was every
day until lunchtime. He and M. Gargotier had become close
friends. At least, so Ernst believed. It was so comforting to
have a place where one could sit and watch, where the
management didn't eternally trouble about another drink or
more coffee. Bien sûr, the old man never sat with Ernst to
observe the city's idlers or offer to test Ernst's skill at chess.
In fact, to be truthful, M. Gargotier had rarely addressed a full
sentence to him. But Ernst was an habitué, M. Gargotier's
only regular customer, and for quite different reasons they
both hoped the Fée Blanche might become a favorite meeting
place for the city's literate and wealthy few. Ernst had
invested too many months of sitting at that same table to
move elsewhere now.
    “A good way to remove a measure of the body's influence
is to concentrate on the mind,” he said. He gazed at the table
top, which already was refilling with rainwater. “When I
review my own psychological history, I must admit to a
distressing lack of moral sense. I have standards gleaned
                                 6
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                      by George Alec Effinger


from romantic novels and magistral decrees, standards which
stick out awkwardly among my intellectual baggage like the
frantic wings of a tethered pigeon. I can examine those
flashes of morality whenever I choose, though I rarely bother.
They are all so familiar. But all around them in my mind are
the heavy, dense shadows of events and petty crimes.”
    With a quick motion, Ernst emptied the table top once
more. He sighed. “There was Eugenie. I loved her for a time,
I believe. A perfect name, a lesser woman. When the
romance began, I was well aware of my moral sense. Indeed,
I cherished it, worshiped it with an adolescent lover's fervor. I
needed the constraints of society, of law and honor. I could
only prove my worth and value within their severe limits. Our
love would grow, I believed, fed by the bitter springs of
righteousness. Ah, Eugenie! You taught me so much. I loved
you for it then, even as my notion of purity changed, bit by
bit, hour by hour. Then, when I fell at long last to my ardent
ruin, I hated you. For so many years I hated you for your joy
in my dismay, for the ease of your robbery and betrayal, for
the entertainment I provided in my youthful terror. Now,
Eugenie, I am at peace with your memory. I would not have
understood in those days, but I am at last revenged upon
you: I have achieved indifference.
    “How sad, I think, for poor Marie, who came after. I loved
her from a distance, not wishing ever again to be wounded on
the treacherous point of my own affection. I was still foolish.”
Ernst leaned back in his chair, turning his head to stare
across the small expanse of vacant tables. He glanced
around; no one else had entered the café. “What could I have
                                 7
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                      by George Alec Effinger


learned from Eugenie? Pain? No. Discomfort, then? Yes, but
so? These evaluations, I hasten to add, I make from the
safety of my greater experience and sophistication.
Nevertheless, even in my yearling days I recognized that la
belle E. had prepared me well to deal not only with her
successors but with all people in general. I had learned to
pray for another's ill fortune. This was the first great stain on
the bright emblem of virtue that, at the time, still resided in
my imagination.
   “Marie, I loved you from whatever distance seemed
appropriate. I was still not skillful in these matters, and it
appears now that I judged those distances poorly. Finally, you
gave your heart to another, one whose management of
proximity was far cleverer than mine. I could not rejoice in
your good fortune. I prayed fervently for the destruction of
your happiness. I wished you and him the most total of all
disasters, but I was denied. You left my life as you entered
it—a cold, distant dream. Yet before you left, you rehearsed
me in the exercise of spite.”
   He took a sip of the liqueur and swirled it against his
palate. “I've grown since then, of course,” he said. “I've
grown and changed, but you're still there, an ugly spatter
against the cleanness of what I wanted to be.” With a sad
expression he set the tumbler on the small table. Rain fell
into the anisette, but Ernst was not concerned.
   This morning he was playing the bored expatriate. He
smoked only imported cigarettes, his boxed filters
conspicuous among the packs of Impers and Les Bourdes. He
studied the strollers closely, staring with affected weariness
                                 8
                      The City on the Sand
                     by George Alec Effinger


into the eyes of the younger women, refusing to look away.
He scribbled on the backs of envelopes that he found in his
coat pockets or on scraps of paper from the ground. He
waited for someone to show some interest and ask him what
he did. “I am just jotting notes for the novel,” he would say,
or “Merely a sketch, a small poem. Nothing important. A
transient joy mingled with regret.” He watched the hotel
across the square with a carefully sensitive expression, as if
the view were really from the wind-swept cliffs of the English
coast or the history-burdened martial plains of France.
Anyone could see that he was an artist. Ernst promised
fascinating stories and secret romantic insights, but somehow
the passersby missed it all.
    Only thoughts of the rewards for success kept him at M.
Gargotier's table. Several months previously, a poet named
Courane had been discovered while sitting at the wicker bar
of the Blue Parrot. Since then, Courane had become the
favorite of the city's idle elite. Already he had purchased his
own café and held court in its several dank rooms. Stories
circulated about Courane and his admirers. Exciting,
licentious rumors grew up around the young man, and Ernst
was envious. Ernst had lived in the city much longer than
Courane. He had even read some of Courane's alleged poetry,
and he thought it was terrible. But Courane's excesses were
notorious. It was this that no doubt had recommended him to
the city's weary nobility.
    Something about the city attracted the failed poets of the
world. Like the excavation of Troy, which discovered layer
upon layer, settlement built upon ancient settlement, the
                                9
                       The City on the Sand
                      by George Alec Effinger


recent history of the civilized world might be read in the bitter
eyes of the lonely men waiting in the city's countless cafés.
Only rarely could Ernst spare the time to visit with his fellows,
and then the men just stared silently past each other. They
all understood; it was a horrible thing for Ernst to know that
they all knew everything about him. So he sat in the Fée
Blanche, hiding from them, hoping for luck.
    Ernst's city sat like a blister on the fringe of a great
equatorial desert. The metropolitan centers of the more
sophisticated nations were much too far away to allow Ernst
to feel completely at ease. He built for himself a life in exile,
pretending that it made no difference. But the provinciality of
these people! The mountains and the narrow fertile plain that
separated the city from the northern sea effectively divided
him from every familiar landmark of his past. He could only
think and remember. And who was there to decide if his
recollections might have blurred and altered with repetition?
    “Now, Eugenie. You had red hair. You had hair like the
embers of a dying fire. How easy it was to kindle the blaze
afresh. In the morning, how easy. The fuel was there, the
embers burned hotly within; all that was needed was a little
wind, a little stirring. Eugenie, you had red hair. I've always
been weakened by red hair.
    “Marie, poor Marie, your hair was black, and I loved it, too,
for a time. And I'll never know what deftnesses and craft
were necessary to fire your blood. Eugenie, the creature of
flame, and Marie, the gem of ice. I confuse your faces. I can't
recall your voices. Good luck to you, my lost loves, and may
God bless.”
                                10
                       The City on the Sand
                      by George Alec Effinger


    The city was an oven, a prison, an asylum, a veritable zoo
of human aberration. Perhaps this worked in Ernst's favor;
those people who did not have to hire themselves and their
children for food spent their empty hours searching for
diversion. The laws of probability suggested that it was likely
that someday one of the patricians would offer a word to
Ernst. That was all that he would need. He had the scene
carefully rehearsed; he, too, had nothing else to do.
    The rain was falling harder. Through the drops, which
made a dense curtain that obscured the buildings across the
square, Ernst saw outlines of people hurrying. Sometimes he
pretended that the men and, especially, the women were
familiar, remnants of his abandoned life come by chance to
call on him in his exile. Today, though, his head hurt and he
had no patience with the game, particularly the
disappointment at its inevitable conclusion.
    He finished the last of the anisette. Ernst rapped on the
table and held the tumbler above his head. He did not look
around; he supported his aching head with his other hand and
waited. M. Gargotier came and took the tumbler from him.
The rain fell harder. Ernst's hair was soaked and tiny rivulets
ran down his forehead and into his eyes. The proprietor
returned with the tumbler filled. Ernst wanted to think
seriously, but his head hurt too much. The day before, he had
devised a neat argument against the traditional contrast of
city and Arcadian life in literature. Shakespeare had used it to
great effect: the regulated behavior of his characters in town
opposed to their irrational, comedic entanglements outside
the city's gates. Somehow the present circumstance
                                11
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                     by George Alec Effinger


destroyed those myths. Somehow Ernst knew that he didn't
want them destroyed, and he had his headache and the
everlasting morning rain to preserve them another day.
                              ****
    As the clock moved on toward midday, the rain stopped.
Ernst leaned back in his chair and waited for the sun to draw
pedestrians from their shelters. He signaled to M. Gargotier,
and the proprietor brought a rag from the bar to mop the
table. Ernst left his seat to check his appearance in the Fée
Blanche's huge, cracked mirror. His clothes were still soaked,
of course, and in the sudden afternoon heat they clung to him
unpleasantly. He ran his hand through his hair, trying to give
it a more raffish, rumpled look, but it was far too wet. M.
Gargotier returned to his place behind the bar, ignoring Ernst.
There were voices from the patio. Ernst sighed and gave up
the bar's muggy darkness.
    Outside, the sun made Ernst squint. His headache began
to throb angrily. He went back to his usual table, noticing the
crowd that had collected beyond the café's rusty iron railing.
A few people had come into the Fée Blanche, preferring no
doubt to witness the unknown spectacle from a more
comfortable vantage. It was nearly time for Ernst to change
from anisette to bingara, his afternoon refreshment, but M.
Gargotier was busily serving the newcomers. Ernst waited
impatiently, his tumbler of anisette once again empty. He
stared at the backs of the people lining the sidewalk, unable
for the moment to guess what had attracted them.
    “Now,” thought Ernst, “if I look closely enough, I will be
able to recognize the backsides of every person I've ever
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                      by George Alec Effinger


known. How tedious the world becomes, once one realizes
that everyone in it can be divided into a dozen or so groups.
That young woman there, ah, a fairly interesting knot of black
hair, attractive legs, a thick waist. If she were to turn around,
her face would be no surprise. Heavy eyebrows, no doubt, full
lips, her upper front teeth protruding just a little. Large
breasts hanging, her shirt cut to expose them, but it is ten
years too late for that. It is too boring. I have no interest
even in seeing if I'm correct.”
    Ernst smiled, realizing that he was deliberately avoiding
any real observation. It was nonsense, of course, to think
that twelve physical types might be enough to catalogue the
shabby mass of people that filled the city. He had exhausted
that particular entertainment, and rather quickly; what
remained was the more tiresome prospect of actually
describing the crowd. Perhaps M. Gargotier would arrive soon,
interrupting the intellectual effort, scattering the energy,
mercifully introducing a tiny but vital novelty.
    “An interesting point,” Ernst said aloud, imagining himself
a lecturer before dozing students in some stifling European
hall, “a genuine philosophical point that we can all grasp and
taste for truth, is that there is nothing in the world quite like
the opportunity of seeing someone make an ass of himself.
Free entertainment is, after all, the Great Leveler, not death,
as we have often been told. In the case of death, the rich are
often able to regulate its moment of victory, staving off the
final instant for months, even years, with purchased miracles
of medicine. The poor take what they are given. But free
entertainment is democratic! No one may say when a
                                13
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                      by George Alec Effinger


spectacle may arise, may explode, may stumble. And then,
when that moment comes, every man, rich or poor, must
take advantage as best he can, elbowing aside the crowds all
together at the same time. So, by sitting here, I have
conquered them all, diversion and audience alike. And I can
delude myself with my own analogies, considering death a
lesser antagonist, and applaud my own immortality.”
   In a while, Ernst heard a ragged ruffle of drums, and a
high-pitched voice shouting orders. Only the Jaish, thought
Ernst with disappointment. It was only the new Citizens’
Army; there would be little chance here to advance his
position. He did not care for the local folk and their sudden
and silly politics, and his own sort of people would not be long
entertained by the fools’ parade. He called M. Gargotier in a
loud, rude voice. “Bring me some of that ugly Arab drink,” he
said. “It's noon, isn't it?” There was not a word from the
proprietor, not a smile or a nod.
   The people on the sidewalk, however, were having a
wonderful time. Ernst could hear the rattling of the snare
drums playing a syncopated, unmilitary cadence. The several
drummers had evidently not had much practice together; the
strokes rarely fell in unison, and with a little attention one
could identify the different styles of each man. The slapping
of the marching feet against the rough stones of the
pavement was likewise without precision. Ernst frowned,
looking at his own frayed, stained suit. If things could be
arranged according to merit, then certainly he would be
granted a better situation than this. He remembered the
white linen suit he had owned when he first came to the city.
                                14
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                      by George Alec Effinger


He had worn it proudly, contemptuous of the city's natives
and their hanging, shapeless garments, all darkly sweat-
marked, torn, and foul. That suit had not lasted long. It,
along with the white, wide-brimmed hat and his new boots,
had been stolen within a week, while he indulged himself at
the Sourour baths. He had never returned to that
establishment, nor any other in the Arab quarter. Now he
looked much like those he had disdained on his arrival, and,
strangely, that brought him a certain pleasure as well. At
least he didn't seem to be a mere newcomer. He had been
initiated. He belonged, as all the cityful of mongrels belonged.
    So the time passed with Ernst trying mightily to ignore the
exhibition in the street. Often the movements of the crowd
opened spaces and he could see the garishly outfitted militia.
The workmen and slaves of the city cheered them, and this
made Ernst even more cheerless. He swallowed some of the
local liquor in a gulp, holding the small wooden bowl on the
flat of one palm. What good is that army? he wondered. The
Jaish had no weapons. An army of no threats. And, beyond
that, thought Ernst as he waved once more to M. Gargotier,
they have no enemies. There is nothing on all of this damned
sand but this single city. Just bread and circuses, he thought,
observing the crowd's excitement. Just an entertainment for
the groundlings. He had other, more important things to
consider.
    “Eugenie,” he thought, “magnificent horror of my youth, I
would trade my eternal portion to have you with me now.
How old you must be! How like these cheap dorsal identities I
see before me, without personality, without more than the
                                15
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                      by George Alec Effinger


instantaneous appetites, without the barest knowledge of me.
They, who have drifted here from the living world, have been
charred slowly to that condition. They have greedily accepted
their lot, their badge of grime, their aristo suppuration, their
plebeian filth. They left Europe as I did, to change slowly and
by degrees of privation, like a slow sunset of amnesia, into
this life of utter exhaustion. Never again will my eyes, my
nose and mouth, the wet hairs of my body be free of grit and
sand. The wealthy and I have had to labor to attain such an
existence. But you, Eugenie, you had it with you all the time.
You would be queen here, Eugenie, but you would be as ugly
as the rest.”
   Ernst sipped more of the liqueur. He dipped three
fingertips into it, and flicked the dark fluid at the backs of the
people crowding against the railing. Spots formed on the
clothing of a man and a girl. Ernst laughed; the too-loud
noise sobered him for a moment. “You'd be ugly, Eugenie,” he
said, “and I'd be drunk.” The heat of the African noon
enveloped him, and the stillness made it difficult to breathe.
Ernst struggled out of his old worn jacket, throwing it onto
the chair across the small metal table from him.
   “Marie, you don't matter. Not now. Not here. Africa would
be perfect for Eugenie, but you, Marie, I picture your
destruction among the million mirror shards of Paris or
Vienna. So forget it, I'm talking to Eugenie. She would come
right across that square, scattering the pigeons, the
pedestrians, the damned army just the same, marching right
across the square, right up to this café, to my table, and stare
down at me as if she had walked the Mediterranean knowing
                                16
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                      by George Alec Effinger


where I was all the time. But it won't work again. She
wouldn't have thought that I could catch up to her laughing
crime, that I'd still be the same rhyming idiot I always was.
And she'd be old, older than I, lined and wrinkled, leaning,
tucked in, shaking just a bit in the limbs, aching just a bit in
the joints, showing patches and patterns of incorrect color,
purples on the legs, brown maculae on the arms, swirls and
masses on the face beneath the surgery and appliances. Then
what would I do? I would buy her a drink and introduce her to
everyone I know. That would destroy her surely enough,
speedily enough, satisfyingly enough, permanently enough.
Oh, the hell with indifference. I really can't maintain it.” Ernst
laughed again and hoped some patrician in the Jaish's
audience would turn around, bored by the mock military
show, and ask Ernst what amused him. No one did. Ernst sat
in glum silence and drank.
   He had been in the Fée Blanche all morning and no one,
not even the most casual early strollers, had paused to wish
him a good day. Should he move on? Gather “material” in
another café? Have a sordid experience in a disorderly house,
get beaten up by a jealous gavroche?
   “So, Sidi Weinraub! You sit out under all skies, eh?”
   Ernst started, blinking and rapidly trying to recover his
tattered image. “Yes, Ieneth, you must if you want to be a
poet. What is climate, to interfere with the creative process?”
   The girl was young, perhaps not as old as seventeen. She
was one of the city's very poor, gaunt with years of hunger
and dressed in foul old clothes. But she was not a slave—she
would have looked better if she had been. She earned a trivial
                                17
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                      by George Alec Effinger


living as a knife sharpener. Behind her she pulled a two-
wheeled cart, dilapidated and peeling, filled with tools and
pieces of equipment. “How does it go?” she asked.
    “Badly,” admitted Ernst, smiling sadly and pulling a soggy
bit of scrap paper from his pocket. “My poem of yesterday lies
still unfinished.”
    The girl laughed. "Chi ama assai parla poco," she said. “‘He
who loves much says little.’ You spend too much time chasing
the pretty ones, no? You do not fool me, yaa Sidi, sitting
there with your solemn long face. Your poem will have to be
finished while you catch your breath, and then off after
another of my city's sweet daughters.”
    “You've seen right through me, Ieneth,” said Ernst with a
tired shrug. “You're right, of course. One can't spend one's
entire life chasing the Muse. Wooing the Muse, I mean. If you
chase the Muse, you gain nothing. Wooing becomes a chief
business. It's like anything else—you get better with
practice.” He smiled, though he was dreadfully weary of the
conversation already. The necessity of keeping up the
pretense of sexual metaphor annoyed him.
    “You are lucky, in a way,” said the girl. “Pity the poor
butcher. What has he in his daily employment to aid him in
the wooing? You must understand your advantage.”
    “Is there a Muse of Butchery?” asked Ernst with a solemn
expression.
    “You are very clever, yaa Sidi. I meant, of course, in the
wooing of a pretty girl. Were a butcher to approach me, a
blood sausage in his hands, I would only laugh. That is not
technique, yaa Sidi. That is uninspired. But these poems of
                                18
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                      by George Alec Effinger


yours are the product, as you say, of one kind of wooing, and
moreover the weaponry of another sort.”
    “So poems still work their magic?” asked Ernst, wondering
if this meeting were, after all, better than simple boredom.
    “For some young girls, I suppose. Do you favor many
young girls with them?”
    A sudden cry from the crowd on the sidewalk prevented
Ernst's reply. He shook his head in disgust. Ieneth interpreted
his expression correctly, looking over her shoulder for a few
seconds. She turned back to him, leaning on the railing near
his table. He, of course, could not invite her to join him.
There were only two classes of people in the city, besides the
slaves: the wealthy and those like Ieneth. She was forbidden
by custom to intrude on her betters, and Ernst was certainly
not the crusading sort to sweep aside the laws of delicacy.
Anyway, he thought, her people had their own dives, and he
surely wouldn't be made welcome in them.
    “Ah, I see you disapprove of the Jaish,” said Ieneth. “At
least your expression shows contempt, and its object must be
either our army or myself.”
    “No, no, don't worry, I have nothing but affection for you,”
said Ernst. He was amazed by his facile speech; generally he
would have been reduced to unpleasant sarcasm long before
this. In point of fact, he felt even less than mere affection for
the girl. He felt only recognition; he knew her as another
resident of the city, with little to recommend her in any way.
He didn't even feel lust for her. He rather wished that she'd
go away.


                                19
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                      by George Alec Effinger


    “Then it's the Jaish. That's a shame, really. There are
several very nice gentlemen involved with it.” She smiled
broadly. Ernst felt certain that she would wink, slowly. She
did.
    Ernst smiled briefly in return. “I'm sure there are,” he said.
“It's just that I'm not one of them, and I have no interest at
all in making the acquaintance of any, and I wish they'd stop
spoiling my afternoons with their juvenile tin-soldiery.”
    “You should see the larger story,” said Ieneth. “As long as
they spend their time marching and carrying broom rifles, you
will have no competition for the company of their mothers
and daughters.”
    “You mistake me,” said Ernst, “though you flatter me
unduly. Surely it is hopeless for such a one as I, with such,
ah, cosmopolitan tastes.”
    “I would not agree,” she whispered. Ernst became aware
that he had been staring at her. She reached across the
railing and touched him confidentially on the shoulder. The
motion exposed her wonderful breasts completely.
    Ernst took a deep breath, forcing himself to look into her
eyes. “Do you know what I mean then?”
    “Certainly,” she said, with an amused smile. She indicated
her little wagon. “I know that sometimes men want their
scissors sharpened, and sometimes their appetites. And
anyone may have a lucrative avocation, no?”
    “When I was young, there was an old man who ground
scissors and sharpened knives. He had a cart very much like
your own.”


                                20
                      The City on the Sand
                     by George Alec Effinger


    “There, you see? I am of the acquaintance of a—what shall
I say?—an organ grinder.”
    “I don't understand.”
    Ieneth shook her head, laughing at his obtuseness. She
motioned for him to come closer. He slid his chair nearer to
the railing. She touched his arm at the elbow, trailing her
fingers down his sleeve, across his hip, and, most lightly of
all, over the bunched material at his crotch. “I will meet you
here in an hour?” she asked softly.
    Ernst's throat was suddenly dry. “I will be here,” he said.
                               ****
    “A poem,” thought Ernst. “I need a poem. Nothing
impresses the uneducated mind quite like rhymes. But it must
be the right sort, or it will bring nothing but ruin and
humiliation. How the women used to laugh at my romantic
verses! How dismayed I was, left alone on the darkened
balcony, holding the flimsy product of my innocent wit. The
sonnet on the arch of her brow. Good God, how could I have
done it? I wish I could return, go back to those iron moments,
stand behind a curtain and listen to myself. I wonder if I
would be amused. I cannot understand why those brainless
princesses so easily dismissed me; they couldn't have been so
plagued with clowns. I ought to have been kept as a
refreshing antidote to dawning maturity.”
    He took out a pen and began to compose on the back of a
soiled napkin. The atmosphere of the Fée Blanche was not the
best for the generation of poetry, he realized. But he also
understood that the unknown recipient of his craft would be
more awed by the simple fact of the poem than by any
                               21
                       The City on the Sand
                      by George Alec Effinger


singular verbal charm. Surely no friend of Ieneth's could be
sophisticated enough to appreciate anything but the grossest
of street chants. In that case, all that was required was a
quick collection of lines, without attention to musical values,
arranged visually in a recognizably poetic way. The ink from
the fountain pen blotted on the napkin, spreading rapidly and
obscuring each letter, obliterating all sense and intention.
Ernst cursed and crushed the paper into a ball, tossing it to
the floor.
   “My life would have been greatly different, Eugenie, if this
had happened while I loved you. If I had only known enough
to keep my mouth closed, to express myself only in abstract
looks and gestures, so that it all might be disowned quickly as
worldly nonsense. Wisdom does not necessarily come with
age, only silence. And that is the greatest treasure of all.” He
returned his pen to his pocket and called for M. Gargotier.
   In the time it took for Ernst to drink two more bowls of
bingara, the parade had ended. The crowd broke up, shouting
new slogans which Ernst could not understand. The other
patrons finished their drinks and departed, and the café was
again empty except for its single poet. The sun had marked
noon and now, hotter still, moved down the sky just enough
to hurt his eyes as he looked westward, across the street.
   “West,” thought Ernst, rocking restlessly in his chair.
“What absurd, empty thoughts does that bring to mind, to
help pass this hour? One day after another. It gets to be so
tedious. I should begin walking through this blighted city,
through the wealthy sections clustered near this quarter,
through the more populated tradesmen's quarter, through the
                                22
                      The City on the Sand
                     by George Alec Effinger


filthy paupers’ streets, past the noisy, dangerous rim of utter
human refuse just within the walls, beyond the city's gates
and across the dunes. Then what? Then I would die in about
twelve hours, burned by the noonday sun, chiseled by the
windborne sand, frozen by Barid, the cold wind of night.
Westward, toward the Atlantic, toward England and her
debauched civilities. West, the direction of death, decay,
finality, and poetic conclusions. Into Avalon. Perhaps if it
weren't for Ieneth and her sly, snickering hints, I would
wander off that way. Pack a picnic lunch, perhaps, and bake
myself dead upon a hill of sand. I always dreamed of a heroic
death, defending Eugenie's intermittent honor, or fighting for
Marie's bemused favor. Gasping, I would lie upon the
specified lap and the lady would weep. Her tears would
restore my fleeing mortality. Then I would smile, as would
Eugenie or Marie in her proper turn, amazed and joyful. A
signal that would be for me to begin the dream anew.
Another way of getting through the hours, though much too
unfulfilling for my present needs.”
    Ernst watched the clock on the hotel impatiently. The
pedestrians moved by in their aimless courses, and each
ticked off a few seconds on the yellow clock face. Yet the
traffic was too sluggish to move the clock's iron hands quickly
enough to suit Ernst, and thus could not beguile his furious
anticipation.
    It was while Ernst was silent in thought, staring at the
damned clock, lost in his own strange expectant horror, that
someone moved a chair to his table and joined him. He
looked up, startled. The intruder was a tall, thin Polish man
                               23
                       The City on the Sand
                      by George Alec Effinger


named Czerny, a wealthy man who had come to the city a
political refugee and who had made his fortune by teaching
the city's hungry inhabitants to require the luxuries of Europe.
Ernst had been introduced to Czerny a few times, but neither
had been overly taken with the other's company.
   “Good afternoon, M. Weintraub,” said Czerny. “Although
there are a number of tables free, I have preferred to join
you. I hope you will forgive my rather forward behavior.”
   Ernst waved away the apology, more curious about
Czerny's motives. He did realize that the blond man was the
founder of the Jaish, the Citizens’ Army, and its principal
financial support. His appearance after its show was not mere
happenstance.
   “I'd like to speak with you for a moment, if I may, M.
Weintraub,” said Czerny.
   “That's Weinraub, without the t. Certainly. Would you care
for a drink?”
   Czerny smiled his commercial smile. “No, thank you. This
new religion of mine doesn't allow it. But look, M. Weinraub, I
wonder if you realize the service you could render, in the time
you spend idly here?”
   Ernst was slightly annoyed. Surely Czerny wanted
something, and his patronizing attitude wasn't going to help
him get it. “What service do you mean, Monsieur Czerny? I
doubt if I have anything that you might envy.”
   “It is your talent. As you know, the Jaish is still small in
numbers, even smaller in resources. I have been doing my
limited best to help, but for our purposes even all my savings
would be too little.”
                                24
                       The City on the Sand
                      by George Alec Effinger


   Ernst finished half a bowl of the liquor in one swallow. He
raised his hand for M. Gargotier. “What are these purposes?”
he asked.
   “Why, liberty for all, of course,” said Czerny, disappointed
that Ernst had need to ask. “We distribute leaflets at all
parades. Surely you've seen them.”
   “Yes,” said Ernst, “but not read them.”
   “Ah, well. Perhaps if they were composed in a better
style....”
   “Might I ask who has the task now?”
   “A young man of great promise,” said Czerny proudly.
“Sandor Courane.”
   Ernst leaned back, lifting the front two legs of his chair off
the pavement. “M. Czerny,” he said slowly, “that is very
interesting, but I must embarrassedly admit that you have
chosen an inopportune time for this interview. This afternoon
I have something of an assignation, and so....” Ernst settled
his chair, smiled drunkenly, and shrugged.
   Czerny looked angry. He rose from his seat. “M.
Weintraub, I will return later. I believe it is time that you
considered such matters as duty and honor. Perhaps this
evening you will be more of a mind to discuss this. Good day,
and have a gratifying ... assignation.”
   “Weinraub,” whispered Ernst, as Czerny strode away.
“Without the t."
   Czerny walked swiftly along the eastern edge of the square
until he came to a parked limousine. It was one of the very
few automobiles in the city; Ernst did not doubt that it was
Czerny's private car. The driver got out and handed Czerny a
                                25
                       The City on the Sand
                      by George Alec Effinger


gray uniform coat, taking the wealthy man's more
expensively cut jacket in return. “Ah,” thought Ernst, “at least
I rated a change of clothing. We shall see whether or not the
same thing happens this evening. It is sad that so frequently
the scheme of great men may be deciphered by such paltry
tokens.” Czerny put on his uniform coat and waited until the
driver opened the rear door of the limousine for him. Then he
entered; the driver walked around the car and disappeared
inside. In a moment the vehicle moved slowly away from the
curb, its siren crying shrilly and the pennants of the Jaish
whipping in the breeze. The car drove down the length of the
square, turned along the north side, and went on for a short
distance. Then it stopped again, and Czerny spoke with two
figures on the sidewalk. From that distance Ernst could not
recognize them.
    “If I were you, Czerny,” he thought, “I would not involve
myself too deeply with the people of this city. There is always
the danger that you may find people to like or, most deadly of
all, to love. What should you do, having fallen in love with
some rare woman, and then find yourself betrayed? Ah, I
anticipate your outraged reply. We are both too far along to
have that happen to us again. Perhaps you are right, though
one can never be too careful. But what if you are not
betrayed, eh, Czerny? What then? No final demarcations,
however painful. You have forgotten that. Nothing to chop it
off before weariness sets in. Lifetimes go by that way,
Czerny. Boredom and angry frustration are only the first
symptoms. No mistresses for you, no other men's wives, no
playful daughters of police commissioners. We find that we
                                26
                       The City on the Sand
                      by George Alec Effinger


need them, sooner or later. And that is the first of the body's
spasms of death. Years, years, years in this city, with the
same faces, yours and hers. Years, years, years. Do not stop
for them, Czerny. Tend to your army.”
    Czerny's car drove away, and after a few moments Ernst
saw that one of the two people walking toward him was the
girl, Ieneth, without her knife-sharpening equipment. With
her was another girl, taller and darker. Ernst rose from his
chair by the railing, and the two girls joined him at his table.
M. Gargotier, evidently expecting that Ernst would soon
depart, did not come to take an order. He stood glaring in the
bar's doorway, obviously resenting the presence of the two
lower-class women. Ernst made a flamboyant gesture to
summon the proprietor. He switched his drinking to absinthe,
and the girls ordered wine.
    “What is her name, Ieneth?” he asked, staring at the new
girl. She looked shyly at the table.
    “She is called Ua. In her language it means ‘flower.’ She
does not understand our speech.”
    “How charming she is, and how lovely her name. Truly a
flower. Convey to her my sincerest compliments.” Ieneth did
so. “What language is that?” asked Ernst.
    “It is a strange dialect, spoken by the black people beyond
the desert and the mountains. It is called Swahili.”
    “Black people? How interesting. I have only heard stories.
They actually exist?”
    “Yes, yaa Sidi,” said Ieneth.
    “And how did she learn the tongue? And you, also, for that
matter?”
                                27
                      The City on the Sand
                     by George Alec Effinger


   Ieneth closed her eyes, fluttering her painted lashes, and
smiled.
   Ernst turned to Ua. “What is this called?” he said, pointing
to her foot. Ieneth translated, and Ua replied.
   "Mguu," she said.
   “And this?” said Ernst, pointing now to her ankle.
   "Kifundo cha mguu."
   “What is this?”
   "Jicho." Eye.
   “How do you say ‘mouth'?”
   "Kinywa."
   Ernst sipped his drink nervously, although he labored to
seem casual and urbane. “This?” he asked.
   "Mkono." Arm.
   “This?” Ernst's fingers lingered on her breast, feeling the
rough material of the brassiere beneath the cotton blouse.
   Ua blushed. "Ziwa," she whispered.
   “She is indeed very lovely,” Ernst said.
   “And worthy of reward for her, ah, agent?” asked Ieneth.
   “Certainly,” said Ernst absently, as he moved his hand
down past Ua's stomach, stopping at the juncture of her
thighs. “Now, my love, what could this be?”
   Ua said nothing, staring at the table. She blushed fiercely
while she played with the base of her wineglass.
   “Ask her what the word for this is,” he said. Ieneth did so.
   "Mkunga," Ua said at last, removing Ernst's hand.
   Ieneth laughed shrilly, clapping her hands. Tears ran down
her cheeks as she rose from her seat. “Ah, your cosmopolitan
tastes!” she said.
                               28
                       The City on the Sand
                      by George Alec Effinger


    “What is so amusing?” asked Ernst.
    "Mkunga!" said Ieneth. "Mkunga is the word for ‘eel.’ Oh,
enjoy your hour together, yaa Sidi. You and she will have
much to discuss!” And she went out of the café, laughing as
she walked away from Ernst's disconcerted and savage glare.
                               ****
    It was late afternoon, and already the sun was melting
behind the hotel across the street. Ernst sipped wine now, for
he appreciated the effect of the slanting sun's rays on the
rich, dark liquid. He had discovered this by accident when he
had first come to the city, strolling along the walled quarter's
single, huge avenue. He had seen the red shimmers reflecting
on the impassive face of a shopworn working girl. How much
better, he had thought then, how much better it would be to
have that singularly fortunate play of light grace a true poet.
    “It may be a bit naive of me, nonetheless,” he thought.
“After all, if these loiterers of the city lack the verbal
sophistication to appreciate the verses themselves, how can I
expect them to have any greater regard for the wielder of the
pen? But I must defeat that argument by ignoring it if by no
more rigorous means. I cannot allow myself to be pulled
down into the intellectual miasma of these Afric prisoners.
The sun must burn out all wonder and delight at an early age;
it is only we unlucky travelers who can deplore their sand-
worn ignorance.” He took some more of the wine and held it
in his mouth until he began to feel foolish. He swallowed it
and pushed the glass away.
    While Ernst sat there, sucking the taste of the wine from
his teeth, a young boy walked by on the sidewalk. He was
                                29
                      The City on the Sand
                     by George Alec Effinger


small, nearly hairless, and quite obviously had strayed from
the neighborhood of his parents. He stopped when he saw
Ernst. “Are you not Weinraub the wanderer, from Europe?”
   “I am,” said Ernst. “I have been, for some time. Has my
fame then spread as far as your unwashed ears?”
   “I have heard much about you, yaa Sidi,” said the boy. “I
never believed that I'd really see you.”
   “And are your dreams confirmed?”
   “Not yet,” said the boy, shaking his head. “Do you really
kiss other men?”
   Ernst spat at the boy, and the dark boy laughed, dancing
into the street, hopping back on the sidewalk. “Come here,”
said Ernst, “and I'll wrap this chair around your skinny neck.”
   “It was only a joke, yaa Sidi,” said the boy, not the least
afraid.
   “A joke. How old are you?”
   “I am nine, yaa Sidi.”
   “Then you should know the danger of mocking your
betters. I have the power to do you great harm: I may draw a
picture of you. I may touch you with my left hand. Your
mother will beat you dead when she hears.”
   “You are wrong,” said the boy, laughing again. “You are a
Nazarene, yes, or a Jew. But I am no rug-squatter. Touch me
with your left hand, yaa Sidi, and I will gnaw it off. Do you
wish me to fetch your supper? I will not charge you this
time.”
   “I tend to doubt your offer. In any event, I have a regular
boy who brings my food. What is your name, you young
criminal?”
                               30
                       The City on the Sand
                      by George Alec Effinger


    “I am Kebap,” said the boy. “It means ‘roast beef’ in the
language of Turkey.”
    “I can see why,” said Ernst dryly. “You will have to work
hard to take the place of my regular boy, if you want this
job.”
    “I am sorry,” said Kebap. “I have no wish to perform that
kind of service.” Then he ran away, shouting insults over his
shoulder.
    Ernst stared after him, his fists clenching. “Ieneth will pay
for her joke,” he thought. “If only I could find a vulnerable
spot in these people. Without possessions, inured against
discomfort, hoping for nothing, they are difficult indeed to
punish. Perhaps that is the reason I have stayed in this
capital of lice so long. No other reason comes quickly to
mind.”
    He sipped his wine and stared at the smudged handwriting
on a scrap of paper: an ebauche of his trilogy of novels. He
had done the rough outline so long ago that he had forgotten
its point. But he was certain that the reflected light from the
wineglass shifted to good effect on the yellowed paper, too.
    “This was the trilogy that was going to make my
reputation,” thought Ernst sadly. “I remember how I had
planned to dedicate the first volume to Eugenie, the second to
Marie, and the third... ? I can't remember, after all. It has
been a long time. I cannot even recall the characters. Ah,
yes, here. I had stolen that outstanding, virtuous fool,
d'Aubont, put a chevalier's outfit on him, taken off his
mustache, and renamed him Gerhardt Friedlos. How the
fluttering feminine hearts of Germany, Carbba, France, and
                                31
                      The City on the Sand
                     by George Alec Effinger


England were to embrace him, if hearts are capable of such a
dexterous feat. Friedlos. Now I remember. And there is no
further mystery as to why I can't recall the plot. It was
nothing. Mere slashings of rapier, mere wooings of maid,
mere tauntings of coward. One thousand pages of adolescent
dreams, just to restore my manly figure. Beyond the
dedications, did I not also represent Eugenie and Marie with
fictional characters? I cannot read this scrawl. Ah, yes.
Eugenie is disguised in volume one as the red-haired
Marchioness Fajra. She is consumed in a horrible holocaust as
her outraged tenants wreak their just revenge. Friedlos
observes the distressing scene with mixed emotions. In
volume two, he consoles himself with the contrasting charms
of Marie, known in my novel as the maid Malvarma, who
pitiably froze to death on the great plain of Breulandy rather
than acknowledge her secret love. Friedlos comes upon her
blue and twisted corpse and grieves. I am happy, I am very,
very happy that I never wrote that trash.”
     Ernst took his short, fat pencil and wrote in the narrow
spaces left to him on the scrap. My scalp itches, he wrote.
When I scratch it, I break open half-healed sores. I have a
headache; behind my right eye my brain throbs. My ears are
blocked, and the canals are swollen deep inside, as though
large pegs had been hammered into them. My nostrils drip
constantly, and the front of my face feels as if it has been
filled with sand. My gums bleed, and my teeth communicate
with stabbing pains. My tongue is still scalded from the
morning tea. My throat is dry and sore. This catalogue
continued down the margins of the paper, and down his body,
                               32
                      The City on the Sand
                     by George Alec Effinger


to end with, My arches cramp up at regular intervals,
whenever I think about them. My toes are cut and painful on
the bottom and fungused and itching between. And now I
believe that it pains me to piss. But this last symptom bears
watching; it is not confirmed.
    On a napkin ringed with stains of chocolate and coffee,
Ernst began another list, parallel to the first. The very
continents shudder with the fever chills of war. Europe, my
first home so far away, cringes in the dark sickroom between
the ocean and the Urals. Asia teeters into the false
adolescence of senility, and is the more dangerous for it.
Breulandy rises in the north and east, and who can tell of her
goals and motives? South of the city, Africa slumbers, hungry
and sterile, under the cauterizing sun. The Americas? Far too
large to control, too broken to aid us now.
    Oh, and whom do I mean by “us"? The world is fractured
so that we no longer know anything but self. My self finds
symptoms everywhere, a political hypochondriac in exile.
Perhaps if I were still in the numbing academic life of old, I
would see none of this; l'ozio é la sepoltura dell'uomo vivo —
"inactivity is the tomb of the vital man.” I have time to make
lists now.
    Of course he found sad significance in the two inventories
when he completed them. He shook his head sorrowfully and
stared meditatively at his wineglass, but no one noticed.
    Ernst folded the paper with his trilogy synopsis and the
first list, and returned it to his pocket. He skimmed through
the second list again, though. “‘I have time to make lists
now,'” he read. “What does that mean? Who am I trying to
                               33
                      The City on the Sand
                     by George Alec Effinger


distress?” Just beyond the railing, on the sidewalk bordering
the Fée Blanche, sat Kebap, the little boy named “roast beef.”
The boy was grinning.
    “Allo, Sidi Weinraub. I'm back. I've come to haunt you,
you know.”
    “You're doing a fine job,” said Ernst. “Do you know
anything of poetry?”
    “I know poetry,” said the boy. “I know what Sidi Courane
writes. That's poetry. That's what everyone says. Do you
write poetry, too?”
    “I did,” said Ernst, “in my youth.”
    “It is lucky, then, that I cannot read,” said Kebap. He
grinned again at Ernst, evilly. “I see that your usual boy
hasn't yet brought your supper.”
    “Why are you called ‘roast beef'? I doubt if you've ever
seen any in your whole life.”
    “One of my uncles called me that,” said the boy. “He said
that's what I looked like when I was born.”
    “Do you have a lot of uncles?” asked Ernst maliciously.
    Kebap's eyes opened very wide. “Oh, certainly,” he said
solemnly. “Sometimes a new one every day. My mother is
very beautiful, very wise, and often very silent. Would you
like to meet her, yaa Sidi?”
    “Not today, you little thief.” Ernst held up the annotated
napkin. “I'm very busy.”
    Kebap snorted. “Certainly, yaa Sidi. Of course.” Then he
ran away.
    “Good evening, M. Weinraub.” It was Czerny, still dressed
in his gray uniform of the Citizens’ Army. Ernst saw that the
                               34
                       The City on the Sand
                      by George Alec Effinger


tunic was without decoration or indication of rank. Perhaps
the Jaish was still so small that the men had only a handful of
officers in the whole organization. And here was the man
again, to persuade him that the whole situation was not
foolish, after all.
    “You are a man of your word, M. Czerny,” said Ernst. “Will
you join me again? Have a drink?”
    “No, I'll pass that up,” said Czerny as he seated himself at
Ernst's table. “I trust your appointment concluded
satisfactorily?”
    Ernst grunted. It became evident that he would say
nothing more. Czerny cursed softly. “Look,” he said, “I don't
want to have to go through all these stupid contests of yours.
This isn't amusing any longer. You're going to have to choose
sides. If you're not with us, you're against us.”
    Perhaps it was the heat of the afternoon, or the amount of
liquor he had already consumed, or the annoying events of
the day, but Ernst refused to allow Czerny the chance to
make a single argumentative point. It was not often that
someone came to Ernst with a request, and he was certainly
going to enjoy it fully. That in doing so he would have to
disappoint and even antagonize Czerny made little difference.
If Czerny wanted Ernst's help badly enough, Czerny would
return. And if Czerny didn't mean what he said, then, well, he
deserved everything Ernst could devise.
    Ernst was amused by the man's grave talk. He couldn't
understand the urgency at all. “Who are you going to fight? I
don't see it. Maybe if you paid them enough, you could hire
some nomad tribe. But it's still a good distance to ask them to
                                35
                       The City on the Sand
                      by George Alec Effinger


ride just for a battle. Or maybe if you split your tiny bunch in
half, one part could start a civil uprising and the other part
could put it down. But I really just want to watch.”
    “We will get nowhere, Monsieur,” said Czerny in a tight,
controlled voice, “until you cease treating my army as a toy
and our cause as a tilting at windmills.”
    “My good Czerny,” said Ernst slowly, “you reveal quite a
lot when you say ‘my army.’ You reveal yourself, if you
understand me. You divulge yourself. You display yourself, do
you see? You expose yourself. There, I see that I must say it
plainly. You expose yourself, but in this locality, at this time,
that seems to be a most commendable form of expression.”
    “Damn it, you are an idiot! I'm not asking you to be a dirty
goundi. We can get plenty of infantry just by putting up
notices. If we could afford to pay them. If we could afford the
notices. But intelligence is at a premium in this city. We need
you and the others like you. I promise you, you'll never have
to carry a rifle or face one. But you have to be man enough to
cast your lot with us, or we'll sweep you aside with the rest of
the old ways.”
    “Rhetoric, Czerny, rhetoric!” said Ernst, giggling. “I came
here to get away from all that. Leave me alone, will you? I sit
here and get drunk. I don't mess with you while you play
soldiers. I'm not any more useful than you, but at least I
don't bother anybody.” He looked around, hoping that some
diversion might arise to rescue him. There was nothing.
Perhaps he might cause enough of a row with Czerny that M.
Gargotier would ask that they both leave; the danger with
that plan was that Czerny would be sure to invite Ernst
                                36
                      The City on the Sand
                     by George Alec Effinger


somewhere, some place where Czerny and his Jaish held an
edge. Well, then, something simpler was necessary. Perhaps
the young nuisance would return. With any luck, the boy
would change his target; Czerny would be in no mood to
ignore Kebap. Still, that didn't seem likely either.
    Czerny banged the little table with his fist. The table's
metal top flipped off its three legs, dumping Ernst's wineglass
to the ground. Czerny didn't appear to notice. He talked on
through the crashing of the table and the breaking of the
glass. “Useful? You want to talk about useful? Have you ever
read anything about politics? Economics? You know what
keeps a culture alive?”
    “Yes,” said Ernst sullenly, while M. Gargotier cleaned up
the mess. “People not bothering other people.”
    “A good war every generation or so,” said Czerny, ignoring
Ernst, seeing him now as an enemy. “We've got authorities.
Machiavelli—he said that the first cause of unrest in a nation
is idleness and peace. That's all this city has ever known, and
you can see the results out there.” Czerny waved in the
direction of the street. All that Ernst could see was a young
woman in a short leather skirt, naked from the waist up. She
met his glance and waved.
    “Ah,” thought Ernst, “it has been a long time since I've
been able just to sit and watch those lovely girls. It seems
that one should have thought to do that, without fear of
interruption. But there is always war, disease, jealousies,
business, and hunger. I have asked for little in my life.
Indeed, all that I would have now is a quiet place in the
Faubourg St. Honoré to watch the Parisian girls. Instead, here
                               37
                       The City on the Sand
                      by George Alec Effinger


I am. Observing that single distant brown woman is infinitely
preferable to listening to Czerny's ranting.” Ernst smiled at
the half-naked woman; she turned away for a moment. A
small boy was standing behind her. The woman whispered in
the boy's ear. Ernst recognized the boy, of course; the boy
laughed. It would not be long before Kebap learned that even
industry and enterprise would avail him nothing in that
damned city.
    “You cannot afford silence,” Czerny was saying loudly.
    “I hadn't realized your concerns had gotten this involved,”
said Ernst. “I really thought you fellows were just showing off,
but it's a great deal worse than that. Well, I won't disturb
you, if that's what you're worried about. I still don't see why
you're so anxious to have me. I haven't held a rifle since my
partridge-shooting days in Madrid.”
    “You aren't even listening,” said Czerny, his voice shrill
with outrage.
    “No, I guess I'm not. What is it again that you want?”
    “We want you to join us.”
    Ernst smiled sadly, looking down at his new glass of wine.
“I'm sorry,” he said, “I don't make decisions anymore.”
    Czerny stood up. He kicked a shard of the broken
wineglass into the street. “You're wrong,” he said. “You've
just made a very bad one.”
                              ****
    Dusk settled in on the shoulders of the city. The poor of
the city happily gave up their occupations and hurried to their
homes to join their families for the evening meal. Along the
city's avenues, merchants closed their shops and locked gated
                                38
                       The City on the Sand
                      by George Alec Effinger


shutters over display windows. The wealthy few considered
the entertainments and casually made their choices. The
noises of the busy day stilled, until Ernst could hear the bugle
calls and shouted orders of the Jaish as it drilled beyond the
city's walled quarter. The day's liquor had had its desired
effect on him, and so the sounds failed to remind him of
Czerny's anger.
    “There seem to be no birds in this city,” thought Ernst.
“That is reasonable. For them to abide in this vat of cultural
horrors, they must first fly over that great, empty, dead world
beyond the gates. Sand. What a perfect device to excise us
from all hope of reentering the world. We are shut up like
lepers, in a colony across the sand, and easily, gratefully
forgotten. The process of forgetting is readily learned. First
we are forgotten by our families, our nations. Then we are
forgotten by those we've hated, our enemies in contiguous
countries. At last, when we have alighted here in our final
condition, we forget ourselves. Children must be hired to walk
the streets of this city, reminding us of our names and our
natures, otherwise we should disappear entirely, as we have
dreamed and prayed for so many years. But that, after all, is
not the reason we have been sent here. We have come not to
die, but to exist painfully apart. Death would be a cleansing
for us, a discourtesy to our former friends.”
    Ernst looked around him. The twilight made pleasant
shadows on the stone-paved street surrounding the square.
Some of the shadows moved. “Hey!” shouted Ernst
experimentally. The shadows burst, flew up, flapped away in
many directions. “Pigeons,” thought Ernst. “I forgot pigeons.
                                39
                       The City on the Sand
                      by George Alec Effinger


But that hardly ruins my thesis. Pigeons are a necessity in a
city. They were sitting here, asleep on the sand, when the
first parched exiles arrived on the spot. The abundantly
foolish idea of building a town must have occurred to those
unwanted knaves only after seeing the pigeons.”
    The city was certainly one of immigrants, Ernst thought. As
he had escaped from a crazy Europe, so had Czerny. So had
Sandor Courane. Ieneth and her false flower, Ua, had fled
from some mysterious wild empire. Could it be that every
person sheltered within the city's granite walls had been born
elsewhere? No, of course not; there must be a large native
population. These must be the ones most stirred by the
absurd wrath of the Jaish, for who else had enough interest?
Ernst lived in the city only because he had nowhere else to
go. He had stopped briefly in Gelnhausen and the nearby
village of Frachtdorf. From Bremen he had sailed to the
Scandinavian settlements that bordered the northern sea. He
had resided for short times in England and France, but those
nations’ murderous nationalism made him run once more.
Each time he settled down, it was in a less comfortable
situation. Here on the very lip of Africa, the city was the final
hope of those who truly needed to hide.
    Ernst had often tried to write poems or short, terse essays
about the city, but each time he had given up in failure. He
couldn't seem to capture the true emotions he experienced,
feelings different in subtle, unpoetic ways from the vaguely
similar emotions he had known while living in Europe. The
poems could not reflect the pervasive sense of isolation, of
eternal uncleanness, of a soul-deep loss of personality; these
                                40
                      The City on the Sand
                     by George Alec Effinger


things descended upon a European, only hours after arriving
at the dune-guarded gates of the city.
   He had early on made the mistake of showing some of
these frustrated scribblings to M. Gargotier. The proprietor
had read them politely, muttering the words under his breath
as he traced his progress down the page with a grimy finger.
When he finished, he had handed the paper back to Ernst
without a word, and stood silently, evidently uncomfortable
but unwilling to make a final judgment. Soon Ernst stopped
asking M. Gargotier to read them, and both men seemed
happier for it.
   A small voice whispered behind Ernst. It was Kebap, the
young fraud. “I know of another city like this one,” said the
boy. “It was in Armenia. Of course, there wasn't sand all
around to keep us in. This town was imprisoned by its own
lack of identity. There were perhaps five thousand Turks living
there, of which several may have been my true father.
Indeed, ‘several’ hardly does justice to the whiteness of my
mother's eyes, or the perfection of her skin, at least in those
days of a decade past. But I must be modest in all accounts,
so that later claims may be made with greater hope of
acceptance.”
   “You are wise beyond your years, Kebap,” said Ernst sadly.
   “That is not difficult at the age of nine,” said the boy.
“Nevertheless, I continue. There were perhaps half again as
many Armenians, and some Greeks. Persians passed through
often, bearing objects which they could not sell. These men
rode on the backs of bad-smelling horses and camels of a


                               41
                       The City on the Sand
                      by George Alec Effinger


worse reputation, and we always deviled them continuously
until they departed again.
   “The houses in this Armenian wonder had flat roofs above
stone walls, and it was the custom to grow grass upon the
roofs. Naturally, with the best fodder in the neighborhood up
there, our sheep and calves grazed above our heads. When
we stood on the hillsides not far from this town, the houses
were invisible against the surrounding plain. I forget what the
name of this city was. One day my mother and several of my
uncles took me on a long walk; we packed a lunch of cold
meat and water, for the Persians had arrived early that
morning and we wanted to escape their presence. We climbed
far into the hills so that it was almost time for evening wagib
when we stopped. I was asleep, carried by an uncle, on the
return journey. I was told the next day that our city could not
be found. Every time a herd of sheep was investigated, it was
discovered to be firmly on the ground, not upon our familiar
rooftops. We wandered the hills and the nearby country for
weeks, searching for that disguised city. At last, we arrived
here.”
   “Your strategy was shrewd, Kebap,” said Ernst. “That is
very difficult to believe.”
   “It is fully documented.”
   “I shall have to examine your records someday.” Ernst
turned to see the boy, but there was no one there. “He is a
quick monster indeed,” thought Ernst.
   Night crept westward, sweeping more of Africa under her
concealing shroud. Ernst sat at his table with his bits of paper
and his little supper of cheese and apples. Around him the
                                42
                       The City on the Sand
                      by George Alec Effinger


city prepared for night but he didn't care. Customarily each
evening after dinner he declared the day productive; arriving
at this point, he ordered Scotch whisky and water.
    “It is time to relax now,” thought Ernst. “It is time to pack
away for the day the tedious, essential hatreds and hopes. It
is time to sit back and bring out my informal thoughts. How I
am growing to despise these memories even more than I
despise their subjects. The very issue of my thoughts is soiled
by this city, so that had I known the dearest saint of Rome in
my youth, I could not think on her now with anything but
scorn and malice. I am not interested by my musings, and
their temper is becoming too acid for my dispassionate self.
    “Eugenie, you seem to be suffering the most, though even
now, at this unofficial time of day, I can still summon up
nothing but a tepid dislike. You must hold a special position of
disfavor in my heart; that is your fate, grow used to it. Marie,
you look lovely tonight. A constellation of false memories
enriches you. If I do not look at them too closely, I can
successfully pretend a few moments of joy. Permit me this
indulgence, Marie. I will do the same for you, if ever I'm given
the opportunity.”
    The people on the sidewalk were rushing by now, their
faces marked by an intensity of purpose that was never
apparent during the day's business hours. Despite Ernst's
glum appraisal, the city held many sorts of wonderful things,
nonetheless, things rare in Europe and prized by the slaves
and the poor. For instance, there was a large colony of
artists, and their pottery and sculpture had a certain
reputation beyond the walls of the city, though not so great
                                43
                       The City on the Sand
                      by George Alec Effinger


that it attracted either merchants or collectors. Ernst was
bored by clay pots, and he had little enough of his own art to
offer in trade. At this time of day, the craftsmen of the city
would be heading for the bars with their day's earnings, eager
for the less tangible beauties of wine and poetry.
   The citizens of this place of oblivion chased amusement
relentlessly, as a plague victim might follow a hapless doctor
in hope of miracles. At night, with only the cold cosmetic of
moonlight, the city slipped on a shabby mask of gaiety, but
no one criticized. Ernst smiled to himself, nodded to the grim-
faced celebrants, observed in a clinical fashion the desperate
pursuit of diversion.
   It was a dangerous thing to pray that a lasting release
might be had from the day's troubles. Each day was so like
the previous day that the pleasures pilfered during the night
cheapened with the sun's rising. It was as hopeless a thing as
the Bridge of the Mad Berber, who cried for many years to the
people of the city that a bridge be built—a gigantic bridge, the
world's largest suspension bridge, an engineering marvel to
catch the imagination of all civilized peoples. It would rise
from the north gate of the city, span the immense waste of
sand, cross the distant range of mountains, the narrow strip
of coastal plain, the rolling leagues of the sea, to end at last,
abruptly, curiously, on the island of Malta. It would be a
hardship, indeed, for anyone traveling along that bridge. The
Mad Berber chose Malta as the terminus evidently only
because that island had been the birthplace of his mother.
   Many of the people hurried along the street to the south,
toward the Chinese quarter, where another eccentric resident
                                44
                       The City on the Sand
                      by George Alec Effinger


of the city, a weary, stranded Breulen duke, had long ago
built a fantastic parody of various memorable sections of
Singapore. Like many things in the city, this dollop of Asia
seemed romantic at first, but soon distressed the observer
with a richness of unwholesome detail. The Breulen nobleman
had loved Singapore, the story went, or, at least according to
other accounts, had been fascinated by written descriptions
and never actually visited the island at all. In any event, he,
like so many others of his class, at last took up residence in
the lonely African city. His project to reproduce the more
spectacular attributes of Singapore was no less insane than
the Mad Berber's bridge, but in this case the duke had the
wealth to accomplish his goal.
    That had been many years ago, and now the false
Singapore wore the decaying garments that clothed all the
rest of the city. The imitation Tiger Balm Gardens were
uncared for—a tangle of brittle growths perverted from their
natural forms by the arid climate, the heat, and the genius of
the city itself. There was a tumbling-down replica of the
Raffles Hotel, but there was no mystery there, merely the
scorpions scuttling across the littered parquet. Street dining
stalls after the Singapore fashion once dominated a narrow
alley, which was now used as a public open-air toilet. The
Breulen duke died during the construction of a likeness of
Singapore's Happy World; he was to have been buried
beneath the joget platform, but his corpse was lost and never
found again.
    Following the street to the north, the strollers would reach
the city's quarter, where replicas of more familiar scenes from
                                45
                      The City on the Sand
                     by George Alec Effinger


other lands dug at their buried homesickness. Ernst could see
the brightly colored strings of lights go on, shining through
the gaps between trees and buildings, diffused by mist and
distance.
   A canal ran parallel to the avenue toward the northern
gates of the city. On its west bank were restaurants, bars,
and casinos. Women danced naked in all of them. Diamonds
were sold by old men in tents, and every building had a few
young whores in the front window. There were areas set aside
for dozens of different sports: bocci, tennis, and miniature
golf facilities were the most popular. The large marketplace
was lit by torches. All goods available within the city were
also on sale here, at higher prices: fine leather goods; lace;
gold and silverware; expensive woods made into furniture,
alone or in combination with steel or plastic; perfumes; silks;
rugs; every sort of luxury.
   Floodlights went on, illuminating models of the ruins of
Rome Staeca and Athens. The replica of the Schloss Brühl
opened its gates, complete with exact representations of the
ceiling paintings of Nicholas Stüber, and the furnishings in
white and gold of the dining room, music room, and state
bedroom upstairs. Other European landmarks were
reproduced in bewildering combinations, but Ernst had only
heard stories. He had never seen any of this. He preferred
rather to spend his evenings dedicated to serious drinking.
                             ****
   “Allo again, Sidi Weinraub, man of mysterious desires,”
whispered a thin voice.


                               46
                       The City on the Sand
                      by George Alec Effinger


    “Allo to you, Kebap, youngest scoundrel, apprentice felon.
My desires are not so hidden after all. It is only that you will
not open your eyes to them. My most supreme desire, at this
particular unpleasant moment, is to have you sunken to your
lice-ridden ears in that vast ocean of sand.”
    “That will happen to me, no doubt,” said the boy. “That is
the sort of thing that occurs to people like me, who have
chosen the life of the shadow, the way of the murmured
delights. I shall probably pass a good portion of my life bound
to creaking wooden racks; or with right wrist chained to left
ankle I shall languish forgotten in damp cells beneath this
municipal fantasy; or perhaps someone such as yourself will
capture me on an aristocratic whim and compel me to violate
my principles.”
    Ernst laughed. “You are doubtless in error,” he said loudly,
drunkenly. “You shall not be the violator of those principles.
You will be the violatee.”
    “Ah, yaa Sidi, I must take exception. One cannot make
such forthright statements as that. One cannot anticipate the
odd pleasures of the leisured class. You, yourself, are an
example of that.”
    “I was merely deceived,” said Ernst angrily.
    “Of course, yaa Sidi.”
    “And if you do not cease exaggerating the incident, I shall
grab you by your scruffy neck and imprison you on a rooftop
of grass, where you can munch your life away like the
mythical sheep of your babyhood.”
    Kebap sighed. “Were you then so impressed by my tale?”


                                47
                       The City on the Sand
                      by George Alec Effinger


    “No, but it gave me some interesting glimpses of the shiny
new cogwheels of your intellect.”
    “Then I will tell you of another town,” said the young boy.
“This place will wipe all memory of the Armenian village from
your thoughts.”
    “A not overly difficult feat.”
    “There is a town in Nearer Hindoostan,” said Kebap in a
low, monotonous voice, “which has only one remarkable
feature. The area around the city is infested with wild beasts
of all kinds. Tigers roam the plains, fearing neither animal
rivals nor human guile. Huge beasts somewhat like elephants
browse the lower branches of the slender dey trees. There are
other curious things about that plain, but my story does not
concern them other than to say they caused the citizens of
the village to erect a large gray wall. This mud-brick barrier is
supposed to be for protection. It does serve to keep out the
beasts at night, of course. It also reminds the townspeople of
the dangers beyond, and jails them in their city as surely as if
the gates were permanently locked.”
    “How curious,” said Ernst scornfully. “Do you know, I don't
care at all.”
    “The principal occupation of the people of this city, in light
of their self-imposed imprisonment, is to build and change
their town, to provide entertainment both in the labor and in
the enjoyment thereafter. And the model they have chosen to
follow is our city, here. It was the wall that inspired them.
You must know that the mayor's office here receives a letter
from this village perhaps eight times yearly, asking for
instructions on how they may reproduce the newest
                                48
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                       by George Alec Effinger


alterations in our city. I have seen their version, and it is so
exact a rendering that it would give you the nervous ailment
peculiar to white Europeans. You would lose all sense of
reality and orientation. This café has been built, table by
table, tile by tile, bottle by bottle. The very crack in the mirror
inside has been reconstructed perfectly, attention having
been paid to angularity, width, depth, and character. A man
owns the café, from whom Monsieur Gargotier could not be
differentiated, even by M. Gargotier himself. And, do you
think, there is a dejected drunkard sitting at this table, many
thousands of miles away, whose eyes have the same
expression as yours, whose hands flutter just as yours, whose
parts smell as foul as yours. What do you think he is doing?”
    “He is wishing that you would go away.”
    “That is mildly put,” said Kebap. “I wish I could know what
you really thought to say.”
    “You may find out easily enough. Ask that solitary winesop
in Nearer Hindoostan.” Ernst had been observing a dimly
lighted tower across the square. He turned to look at Kebap,
to fix the teasing boy with a venomous stare, perhaps to
frighten him away at last, but Kebap was not there. Ernst
sighed; he would ask the proprietor to do something about
the annoyance.
    Every quarter hour a clock tower chimed more of the night
away. Sitting alone in the Café de la Fée Blanche, he could
hear the distant carnival noises: sirens, the flat clanging of
cheap metal chimes, the music of small silver bells, shrill
organ melodies, gunshots, voices singing, voices laughing. In
the immediate area of the café, however, there were few
                                 49
                       The City on the Sand
                      by George Alec Effinger


people about—only those who had exhausted their money or
their curiosity and were returning home. Occasionally, the
wind brought tenuous hints of strange smells and noises. Still,
Ernst had no desire to discover what they might be. Over the
years, his route to the city had been long, and these days he
was tired.
    “I have returned,” said Kebap. He leaned casually over the
iron rail of the café. Ernst regarded him with some boredom,
realizing that this was the first time in quite a while that he
had actually seen the boy, though their conversation had
been growing increasingly bizarre for several hours.
    “There is no such town in Nearer Hindoostan,” said Ernst.
“There is no such perfect imitation of this corrupted city. The
Lord of Heaven would not allow two pits of damnation in one
world.”
    “Of course not,” said Kebap with a wink. “Wherever did
you get the idea that there might be another?”
    “From the pigeons, of course,” said Ernst, greatly irritated.
“The pigeons have to come from somewhere.”
    “Why?”
    “Have you ever seen a baby pigeon?” asked Ernst. “I don't
believe I ever have. I always wondered where the fledgling
pigeons were. We see numbers of adult birds around every
day; there must be a proportionate mass of immature young.
It is a great mystery. And one never sees a dead or dying
bird, unless it has been the victim of some accident, generally
caused by cruel or careless human agency. I theorize that
pigeons are immortal, and the actual carriers and


                                50
                       The City on the Sand
                      by George Alec Effinger


disseminators of all human knowledge. This town of yours in
Hindoostan is the product of unimaginative pigeons.”
    “You ask dangerous questions, yaa Sidi,” said Kebap, his
expression fearful. “We had wrens in Armenia, I recall. There
were many newly hatched chicks, chirping pleasantly before
dusk. But here, concerning the pigeons, you must learn to
keep silent.”
    “I believe I know who your mother might be. At least, if
she is not, Eugenie would be proud to call you her son.”
    “My mother stands over there,” said Kebap. “She has not
clothed her breasts, as she should in the evening, only
because she hopes to beguile you. She is a very energetic
person, yaa Sidi, and even though the hour grows late, she
still reserves a place in her heart for you.”
    Ernst shook his head. The liquor had made him sick. “No, I
am sorry. I have ceased hunting after hearts. Indeed, I
thought no one followed that fruitless sport any longer.”
    “Then there is my older sister. That is her, on the far side
of the square, pretending that she is an armless beggar.”
    “No, you tactless procurer. You still have much to learn.”
    “I am sorry again,” said Kebap with a cruel grin. “My own
body will not be available for perhaps another three years.
These are the days of my carefree childhood.”
    Ernst stood up and screamed at the boy. Kebap laughed
and ran toward his mother.
    There were few customers in the Fée Blanche after dark.
Ernst did not mind. His nights were entrusted to solitude; he
actually looked forward to night, when he ceased performing
for the benefit of the passersby. Now his only audience was
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                      by George Alec Effinger


himself. His thoughts grew confused, and he mistook that
quality for complexity. By this time, he was taking his
whiskey straight.
    There had been a woman, Ernst thought, later in his life
than either of his juvenescent calamities. This woman had
brought a great settling of his rampant doubts, a satisfaction
of his many needs. There had been a time of happiness, he
thought. The idea seemed to fit, though the entire memory
was clouded in the haze of years and of deliberate
forgetfulness. There was a large open space, an asphalt field
with painted lines running in all directions. Ernst was dressed
differently, was speaking another language, was frantically
trying to hide somewhere. He couldn't see the picture any
more clearly. He couldn't decide whether or not he was alone.
    Somehow it now seemed as if it hadn't even been his own
experience, as though he were recalling the past of another
person. He had forgotten very well indeed.
    “Your passport, sir?” he whispered, remembering more.
    “Yes, here it is,” he answered himself. “I'm sure you'll find
it all in order.” He spoke aloud in German, and the words
sounded odd in the hot desert night.
    “You are Ernst Weinraub?”
    “With a t. My name is Weintraub. A rather commonplace
German name.”
    “Yes. So. Herr Weintraub. Please step over here. Have a
seat.”
    “Is something wrong?”
    “No, this is purely formality. It won't take but a moment to
clear it up.”
                                52
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                     by George Alec Effinger


   Ernst recalled how he had taken a chair against the gray
and green wall. The official had disappeared for a short time.
When he returned, he was accompanied by another man. The
two spoke quietly in their own language, and quickly enough
so that Ernst understood little. He heard his name mentioned
several times, each time mispronounced as “Weinraub.”
   Ernst shook his head sadly. He had never gone through
such a scene with any border officials, and he had never
spelled his name with a “t.” He stared at the hotel across the
avenue and took a long swallow of whiskey. Now the Fée
Blanche was empty again except for himself and M. Gargotier,
who sat listening to a large radio inside the dark cave of the
bar.
   “Monsieur Weinraub?” It was Czerny, his gray uniform
soiled, his tunic hanging unbuttoned on his thin frame.
“You're certainly dependable. Always here, eh? What an
outpost you'd make.” Czerny staggered drunkenly. He
supported a drunken woman with the aid of another
uniformed man. Ernst's own eyes were not clear, but he
recognized Ieneth. He did not answer.
   “Don't be so moody,” said the woman. “You don't have any
more secrets, do you, Sidi Weinraub?” Czerny and the other
man laughed.
   Ernst looked at her as she swayed on the sidewalk. “No,”
he said. He took some more of his liquor and waved her
away. She paid no attention.
   “Here,” said Czerny, “try some of this. From the
amusement quarter. A little stand by the Pantheon. The man
makes the best stuffed crab I've ever had. Do you know
                               53
                       The City on the Sand
                      by George Alec Effinger


Lisbon? The Tavares has a name for stuffed crab. Our local
man should steal that honor.”
    “Alfama,” said Ernst.
    “What is that?” asked Ieneth.
    “Alfama,” said Ernst. “Lisbon. The old quarter.”
    “Yes,” said Czerny. They were all silent for a few seconds.
“Oh, forgive me, M. Weinraub. You are acquainted with my
companion, are you not?”
    Ernst shook his head and raised his hand for M. Gargotier,
forgetting that the proprietor had retired inside his bar and
could not see.
    “We have met before,” said the stranger in the uniform of
the Jaish. “Perhaps M. Weinraub does not recall the occasion.
It was at a party at the home of Safety Director Chanzir.”
Ernst smiled politely but said nothing.
    “Then may I present my friend?” said Czerny. “M.
Weinraub, I am honored to introduce Colonel Sandor
Courane.”
    Czerny grinned, waiting to see how Ernst would react.
Courane reached over the railing to shake hands, but Ernst
pretended not to see. “Ah, yes,” he said. “Forgive me for not
recognizing you. You write verses, do you not?”
    Czerny's grin vanished. “Do not be more of a fool, M.
Weinraub. You see very little from your seat here, you know.
You cannot understand what we have done. Tonight the city
is ours!”
    Ernst drained the last drop of whiskey from his glass. “To
whom did it belong previously?” he said softly.


                                54
                       The City on the Sand
                      by George Alec Effinger


    “M. Weinraub,” said Ieneth, “we've had some pleasant
talks. I like you, you know. I don't want you to be hurt.”
    “How can I be hurt?” asked Ernst. “I'm carefully not taking
sides. I'm not going to offend anyone.”
    “You offend me," said Czerny, beckoning to Ieneth and
Courane. The woman and the two uniformed men tottered
away down the sidewalk. Ernst got up and took his glass into
the bar for more whiskey.
                             ****
    The lonely night passed. It was very late. Ernst drank, and
his thoughts became more incoherent and his voice more
strident; but there was only M. Gargotier to observe him now.
He sang to himself, and thought sadly about the past, and,
though he gestured energetically to the proprietor, even that
patient audience remained silent. Finally, driven further into
his own solitude, he drew out his most dangerous thoughts.
He reviewed his life honestly, as he did every night. He took
each incident in order, or at least in the special order that this
particular night demanded. “The events of the day,” he
thought, “considered with my customary objectivity. A trivial
today, a handful of smoke.”
    Only the bright, unwinking lights of the amusement
quarter still pierced the darkness. The last celebrants had all
straggled back up the street, past the Café de la Fée Blanche.
Now there was only Ernst and the nervous, sleepy barkeep.
    When was the last time Ernst had seen Gretchen? He
recalled the characteristic thrill he got whenever he saw his
wife's comfortable shape, recognized her familiar pace. What
crime had he committed, that he was left to decay alone? Had
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                       The City on the Sand
                      by George Alec Effinger


he grown old? He examined the backs of his hands, the
rough, yellowed skin where the brown spots merged into a
fog. He tried to focus on the knife ridges of tendon and vein.
No, he decided, he wasn't old. It wasn't that.
    Ernst listened. There were no sounds now. It had been a
while since Kebap had last sauntered past with his vicious
words and his degenerate notions. It was so like the city, that
one as young as the boy could already possess the bankrupt
moral character of a Vandal warlord. The festivals in the other
quarters of the city had long ago come to an end. The pigeons
in the square did not stir; there wasn't even the amazed
flutter of their sluggish wings, lifting the birds away from
some imagined danger, settling them back asleep before their
mottled feet touched the ground again. They wouldn't move
even if he threw his table into their sculpted flock.
    There was no Kebap, no Czerny, no Ieneth. There was only
Ernst, and the darkness. “This is the time for art,” he said.
“There can't be such silence anywhere else in the world,
except perhaps at the frozen ends. And even there, why, you
have whales and bears splashing into the black water. The
sun never sinks, does it? There's always some daylight. Or
else I have it wrong, and it is dark all the time. In any event,
there will be creatures of one sort or another to disturb the
stillness. Here I am, the one creature, and I've decided that it
is a grand misuse of silence just to sit here and drink. The
night is this city's single resource. Well, that and disease.”
    He tried to stand, to gesture broadly and include the entire
city in a momentary act of drama, but he lost his balance and
sat heavily again in his chair. “This is the time for art,” he
                                56
                       The City on the Sand
                      by George Alec Effinger


muttered. “I shall make of the city either a living statue or a
very boring play. Whichever, I shall present it before the
restless audiences of my former home. Then won't I be
welcomed back! I'll let the others worry about what to do with
these mean people, these most malodorous buildings, and all
this sand. I'll drop it all down in the middle of Lausanne, I
think, and let the proper authorities attempt to deal with it. I
shall get my praise, and they shall get another city.”
   He fretted with his clothing for a few moments, fumbling in
drunken incompetence with the buttons of his shirt. He gave
up at last. “It is the time for art, as I said. Now I must make
good on that claim, or else these gentlefolk will be right in
calling me an idiot. The concept of presenting this city as a
work of art, a serious offering, had a certain value as
amusement, but not enough of enchantment to carry the idea
beyond whimsy. So, instead I shall recite the final chapter of
my fine trilogy of novels. The third volume, you may recall, is
entitled The Suprina of the Maze. It concerns the suprine of
Carbba, Wreylan III, who lived about the time of the
Protestant Reformation, and his wife, the mysterious Suprina
Without A Name. The suprina has been variously identified on
many occasions by students of political history, but each such
‘authoritative account’ differs, and it is unlikely that we shall
ever know her true background.”
   Ernst looked up suddenly, as if he had heard a woman
calling his name. He closed his eyes tightly and continued.
“This enigmatic suprina,” he said, “is a very important
character in the trilogy. At least I shall make her so, even
though she does not appear until the final book. She has
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                      The City on the Sand
                     by George Alec Effinger


certain powers, almost supernatural. And at the same time,
she is possessed of an evil nature that battles with her
conscience. Frequently, the reader will stop his progress
through the book to wonder at the complications of her
personality.
    “She is to be loved and hated. I do not wish the reader to
form but a single attitude toward her. That is for Friedlos, my
protagonist. He will come riding across the vast wooded
miles, leaving behind in the second volume the bleak, gelid
corpse of Marie, lying stiff upon the frontier marches of
Breulandy. Friedlos will pass through Poland, I suppose, in
order to hear from the president there a tale of the Queen
Without a Name. I must consider how best to get Friedlos
from Breulandy to Poland. Perhaps a rapid transition: ‘A few
weeks later, still aggrieved by the death of his second love,
Friedlos crossed the somber limits of Poland.’ Bien. Then off
he starts for Carbba, intrigued by the president's second-hand
information. Ah, Friedlos, you are so much like your creator
that I blush to put my name on the book's spine.”
    Ernst dug in his pockets, looking again for his outline. He
could not find it, and shrugged carelessly. “Gretchen, will you
ever learn that it is you he seeks? I have put you on a throne,
Gretchen. I have made you suprina of all Carbba, but I have
given you my own life.”
    He longed to see Steven, his son. It had been years; that,
too, wasn't fair. Governments and powers must have their
way, but certainly it wouldn't upset their dynastic realms to
allow the fulfilling of one man's sentiments. How old was the
boy now? Old enough to have children of his own? Perhaps,
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                      by George Alec Effinger


amazingly, grandchildren for Ernst? Steven might have a son;
he might be named Ernst, after his funny, old grandfather.
    “How unusual it would be, to bounce a grandchild upon
this palsied knee,” he thought. “I doubt if ever a grandchild
has been cuddled in all the history of this city. Surely Kebap
could not accurately identify his own grandparents. Would
they be anxious to claim him? He is, after all, somewhat of an
objectionable child. And he has had only nine years to
develop so remarkably offensive a manner. It is truly an
accomplishment—all emotional considerations aside, one
must give the wretched boy his due.
    “There is something about him, though, that obsesses me.
If there were not, I should without hesitation inflict some kind
of permanent injury upon him, to induce him to leave my
peace unspoiled. I detect an affinity. I cannot dispute the
possibility that I, myself, may be the lad's own father. What a
droll entertainment that would be. I shall have to explore the
possibility with him tomorrow. Indeed, the more I consider it,
the better the idea becomes. I hope I can remember it.”
    He heard the rattling of M. Gargotier drawing the steel
gate across the door and windows of the small café. The
sound was loud and harsh, and it made Ernst feel peculiarly
abandoned, as it did every night. Suddenly, he was aware
that he sat alone in a neglected city, a colony despised by the
rest of the world, alone on the insane edge of Africa, and no
one cared. He heard the click of a switch, and knew that the
Fée Blanche's own sad strings of lights had been
extinguished. He heard M. Gargotier's slow, heavy steps.


                                59
                       The City on the Sand
                      by George Alec Effinger


    “M. Weinraub?” said the proprietor softly. “I will go now. It
is nearly dawn. Everything is locked up. Maybe you should go,
too, eh?” Ernst nodded, staring across the avenue. The
proprietor made some meaningless grunt and hurried home,
down the street.
    The last of the whiskey went down Ernst's throat. Its
abrupt end shocked him. So soon? He remembered M.
Gargotier's last words, and tears formed in the corners of his
eyes. He struggled to order his thoughts.
    “Is that the whiskey? I need some more whiskey,” he said
aloud. There was an unnatural, cracked quality to his voice
that alarmed him. Perhaps he was contracting some
disgusting rot of the city. “There had better be some more
whiskey,” he thought. “It isn't a matter of courtesy any
longer. I require a certain quantity of the stuff to proceed
through this. Gretchen would get it for me, but I cannot find
Gretchen anywhere. Steven would get it for me, but I haven't
seen Steven in years. One would think that someone in my
position would command a bit more devotion.”
    He wondered about his sanity for a moment. Perhaps the
day's excitement, perhaps the liquor, had introduced a painful
madness into his recollections. He realized that, in point of
fact, he had never been married. Gretchen, again? Where had
that name come from? Who could she be? Steven, the
fantasy son? Ernst's father's name had been Stefan, perhaps
there was some connection.
    He called to M. Gargotier. “More whiskey, straight, no
water.” He wanted to believe that there was still some
darkness left, but he could already make out the lines of the
                                60
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                      by George Alec Effinger


hotel across the street, just beginning to edge clearly into
view from the mask of nighttime.
   “I have never traveled anywhere," he admitted in a
whisper. “I did not come from anywhere.” He sat silently for a
few seconds, his confession hanging in the warm morning air,
echoing in his sorrowing mind. Will that do? he wondered. He
looked in vain for M. Gargotier.
   He could almost read the face of the clock across the
street. He picked up his glass, but it was still empty. Angrily,
he threw it toward the clock. It crashed into pieces in the
middle of the street, startling a small flock of pigeons. So it
was morning. Perhaps now he could go home. He rose from
his creaking latticed chair. He stood, wavering drunkenly.
Wherever he turned, it seemed to him that an invisible wall
held him. His eyes grew misty. He could not move.
   “No escape,” he said, sobbing. “It's Courane that's done
this. Courane and Czerny. He said they'd get me, the
bastards, but not now. Please.” He could not move.
   He sat again at the table. “They're the only ones who know
what's going on. They're the ones with all the facts,” he said,
searching tiredly for M. Gargotier. He held his head in his
hands. “It's for my own good, I suppose. They know what
they're doing.”
   His head bowed over the table. Soon he would be able to
hear the morning sounds of the city's earliest risers. Soon the
day's business would begin. Not so very long from now, M.
Gargotier would arrive again, greet him cheerfully as he did
every day, roll back the steel shutters and bring out two
fingers of anisette. Now, though, tears dropped from Ernst's
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                       The City on the Sand
                      by George Alec Effinger


eyes onto the table's rusting circular surface. They formed
little convex puddles, and in the center of each reflected the
last of the new morning's stars.




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