In Darkness We Pass
Fiction by Patrick Johnston
Jack takes the Beachcraft back up to XXXXXXXX and goes straight from the Airstrip back to the city. He is going after Adolf Schiller. The intel he got from Lahar indicates that Schiller may up-sticks at any moment. He has his HQ at a safe house above a laundry shop in the Kasbah, but he relocates regularly. Jack needs to act fast. A car is waiting for him and takes him hell for leather into the heart.
He performs a quick costume change to pass as a local.
Jack jumps out and ducks into a side alley as the car speeds away. The alley is one of the many nameless small passageways, ginnels, sois, lanes, ten-foots and snickleways that lead westwards away from the Socco di Alenzo into that mazelike rat-run of souks, yards, piazzas and alleyways that make up that part of the old-town known as Kasbah. To the east lies the Socco, where he could grab a car or an autorickshaw and take the route northwards, skirting in westwards around the ill-defined borders of Kasbah, ultimately a short southerly jog to make his way over almost to the far side of Kasbah. The paths of light, of broad boulevards and streetlamps – the allure of a neat and finite set of straight lines - but also, potentially of traffic snarls and spot checks… gangs of Schiller Youth kids are operating right out in the open.
So, instead, Jack snags himself a guide to abet him in his passage across the labyrinth that is Kasbah. This is almost a guaranteed necessity, since the only people who can really find their way around Kasbah are the natives. The safe routes through the area are in constant flux, as the turf occupied by different gangs, tribes, sects, and subcategories constitutes an ever-evolving tapestry depending upon a complex web of alliances, accommodations, sub-lets and precedents. It is not only the political landscape that is liable to change. Whole thoroughfares may open-up, disappear or be diverted as the result of some structure being torn-down, erected, by-passed, or bridged. As a result, good Kasbah guide is a navigator, lawyer, diplomat, and linguist all rolled into one. The need to hire a guide is paramount for anyone who does not have the time, knowledge or armaments for independent exploration.
The perennial danger that naturally attends hiring a guide is the guides’ tendency to lead the unwary deep into the maze of alleys and then, at best, to demand outrageous sums not to just leave them stranded and alone. People can just disappear in Kasbah. Jack, though, is wise to this ploy and, also, is no slouch when it comes to finding his way around. He has a knack for it. He has snagged a guide, only partly as a means for navigating the quickest route through – the other reason is that because he is accompanied by a guide, he will waste less time trying to shake off the attentions of other would-be guides. He has employed the services of a young girl, Jessa, whom he showed a wad of small denomination notes, a large American candy-bar and, pulling aside his jacket, the butt of his gun. The money and the gun did not impress. Her eyes fixed on the candy-bar with a knowing grin. She knows that he will eat it the moment she gives him any shit. She said – Ok Baba. No bull. Take you cross quick-smart… And set off at a pace that Jack is pressed to match.
They tilt down a series of alleyways, taking so many sharp turns that Jack is already mildly disorientated. The girl looks about fourteen years old, but factoring in the probable effects of malnutrition she is probably at least a couple of years older. She has the typical street-urchin look. An untidy mop of unwashed hair, dirty face, raggedy clothes and watchful eyes that dart endlessly seeking opportunities. Like so many street kids she has an easy smile and is quick to find humour in the world around her. She chuckles to herself as Jack almost trips over a crouching beggar, his empty eye-sockets staring balefully as he drones out his pitch – Careful, Baba. Don’t fuck with the mole-man.
They pass a cluster of off-duty forces kids, in town for some R&R. They are no doubt heading towards one of the ‘Hells’ that have recently opened on the eastern fringes of Kasbah. These establishments cater to ‘young hellraisers’ who want to enjoy an authentic Kasbah experience with a minimum of fuss and danger. They are all wearing disposable faces and have swallowed pills that will temporarily play havoc with their vocal chords making their voices unrecognisable. They have all been encouraged to adopt a ‘Kasbah Persona’ so as to assimilate more closely with the locals, contribute synergistically to the atmosphere and derive an overall richer immersive cultural experience.
Essentially what this means is that aside from a few old lags and professional ring-ins they will meet and interact with a bunch of people exactly like themselves all pretending to be something other, and will do exactly what they usually do in slightly seedier surroundings that exude a mild air of heavily contrived menace. The following weekend the same shuffling guide will lead them down a slightly different set of alleys. He will be unable to find the place that they went to last week and are so keen to revisit. –I’m so sorry my friends. I cannot find the ‘Sweating Rapist’. Things change so quickly in Kasbah. Maybe it is no-longer here. Maybe I took a wrong turning. I know another place. This place is better. And will lead them a circuitous dance through more alleyways, never more than a couple of hundred metres from the Socco di Alenzo, until finally leading them back to the same bar. The name will be different, the lay out different, the barman will wear a different face. It will be the same old shit.
- Dumb assholes, hey Baba? The girl says, favouring Jack with a toothy grin as they dart through a hole in the wall and through the decaying rooms of a derelict building.
They scoot down alleyways. They press their way through jostling souks. They negotiate open sewers and cavernous pits and potholes. They pass a grizzled old man slaughtering a sheep in a quiet alley. Its tongue lolls thick with sticky saliva and flies gather around its eyes as its life-blood mixes with dust and trickles between the cobblestones. They tread carefully through darkened passageways. They pass through empty buildings. They pass through buildings that are teeming with activity. Anyone who gets in Jack’s face, he shucks off with the sign-of-five. They pass through mazelike covered markets. Through bars, slop-kitchens and fuck houses. Through drug-dens. Through workshops. Through bathhouses. Through hovels. Through flophouses. Through peoples’ living spaces. They go through ghettoes, slums, and shantytowns. Periodically Jessa stops to negotiate passage with surly looking men who eye Jack with suspicion. Jessa talks passwords. Jack greases palms. They pass by the black-clad men of the Hassidim, shuffling and mumbling their incantations to the ancient walls. They pass by sullen drug-fucked youths, lounging with rolling eyes in pools of their own piss and filth. They pass timid beshrouded Bennaninni who scuttle aside to let them by. They pass polkestibbes, who collect rats and dog-turds.
They pass the poor, the crippled, the mad. Beggars and thieves all. They pass by the flesh parlours where the more affluent beggars pay for their bodily amendments. Some of the less scrupulous of these establishments will perform transformations on credit, with usurious rates of interest – their customers becoming locked into a cycle needing more and more surgery in to make themselves more physically pitiful, and thus more effective beggars, so as to be able to pay-off the original loan. They pass packs of children who race down the alleys like feral dogs. Grinning idiot boys with dead eyes paw at the clothes as they race by. They pass the extended families of Ho’liss people, who have no shoes, and who cry out – Taita! Taita! Wen’ ha’ t’po’ dieneros? (‘Father! Father!’ – for so they are wont to address anyone who is wearing shoes – ‘Have you brought us some money today?’).
Jessa says – Streets no good. Too many fuck-heads. Jack, who is beginning to form a favourable opinion of Jessa’s skills, chutzpah, and relative lack of bullshit nods in agreement.
They take to the roof-tops where the Ya’tan people build their great communal nest dwellings and where guttersnipe children live without ever descending to street-level. There are gardens up here, and bird-farms. Some even farm fish, or frogs, in permanent pools or converted gutter systems. There is an air of ramshackle industry, of people trying to make the best of what life offers. Jessa cites precedents to surly men who eye Jack with suspicion. Jack greases palms. An old man says – Don’t fuck with our gardens. A woman says – Don’t mess with our kids. A surly looking man says – You fuck with our shit, we fuck with you but good.
They hit the roofs. A mess of rope bridges, ladders, planks, ramps, and swing ropes span gaps between buildings and across alleys, linking roof-tops and gantries. They pass by makeshift greenhouses and tiny allotments. They are travelling quickly, so Jack does not really have time to take bearings, but it is clear from the city-lights that they are somewhere around the centre of the district. Kasbah, at roof-top level at least, is something of a black-hole. There is no municipal lighting here, the city authorities having long since turned their back upon the area. Hence Kasbah relies upon a range of illumination-solutions ranging from kerosene lamps, braziers and bonfires to the occasional neon-sign, fluorescent-tube, floodlight, or fairy lights that are either run from small generators or pirated off the grid.
What lighting that does exist, as well as being idiosyncratic in its form is largely idiographic in its distribution, reflecting the idiosyncratic needs and prejudices of the person or persons who rigged it. There are bright clusters of lighting around intersections, communal water sources and other places where people have considered it judicious to set up places of business. Outside of these areas darkness prevails. Living areas are lit by candles, kerosene lamps, braziers and small fires, reflecting the proximal needs of small family units. As a rule, communal areas such as alleys, passages and thoroughfares that are not centres of commerce are poorly lit, unless some community spirited individual or forward-thinking business owner has rigged-up some serious lighting. At street-level this means that the experience of passing through Kasbah after sunset is one of passing through darkened pathways of solitude interspersed with oases of light, noise and activity. Up on the rooftops it is a different story, since by-and-large, the majority of businesses and people restrict themselves to a terrestrial existence. Also, fire is treated with caution up here, since wood, thatch and recycled garbage constitute the major building materials. As a result, rooftop Kasbah, by night, looks like a sinister dark patch amidst the brightness of the city. A single sub-division where the power has irrevocably failed.
Based on a rough estimate of the surrounding gloom-to-light ratio Jack guesses that he is somewhere around the middle of that dark patch. But daylight is approaching. He is trying to keep as close as possible to Jessa, who, unlike himself, seems to have the night vision of a cat. Thankfully she has noticed that he is not as adept as herself in negotiating the hazards of the darkened rooftops, and has taken to pausing and helping him whenever she judges some particular obstacle to be beyond his visual acuity or skills. She darts across a makeshift pathway of wooden pallets providing a means of passage across a vegetable garden. She hesitates, indicating the presence of a thick bundle of pipes and cables that bisects the flat roof, as she passes, and then sprints to the end of the roof where she plunges over the edge drops out sight. Jack cautiously walks the rest of the roof and peers down to see that Jessa having landed, catlike, eight feet below and is standing, urgently beckoning, on a flat roof. An open skylight in the rooftop shines green bioluminescence. This must be the place. He can discern some shapes are slowly converging on Jessa – Fuck Baba - Fucking warpigs!
These arseholes are full blown Nazis - not just your rum with your milk Schiller Youth. They got warpigs on their helmuts, and lightning flashes on their collars. They got boots of shiny, shiny leather. Pin-eyed and packing Erma Werkes 40’s. Miffed to the gills. Gotterdammerung grenades strapped to their webbing. They can blitz full Wagnerian in mere moments. The full Ring Cycle. Ride with Valkyries. Donnerkreig und Blitzkrieg. And Rudolphkreig.
U-oh - this situation looks bad…
But Jack has a trick up his sleeve. Escher Gambit[1]. He pulls it out and steps outside of the narrative. Strange loop… it is what it is… neither my way nor yahway… a boy hath not wept nor dashed a thousand kim… nor a voice from a fire… Ehyeh asher Ehyeh… eyes poppin’… yangyinning… we circle round, we circle round… the hand that draws, the hand that draws…
And Jack says - let me reiterate the situation…And this time, the Warpigs are stationed outside the front of the building, rather than on the roof.
Jack presses some things into Jessa’s hand and then turns and drops down through the skylight. A candy bar? A small gold ingot?
And the shooting starts in the square below
[1] It is what it is… the hand that wrote… numbered, weighed, and wanting… coded like Gödel… now let’s get Bach to it…
BIO: Patrick Johnston is an Anglo-Australian writer and former professor of psychology and neuroscience. His work appears in The Louisville Review, Eastern Iowa Review, Thin Air Magazine, and Litro Magazine USA, among others, and has received a Pushcart Prize nomination. He is the author of the novel The Gaps Between the Stories. dr-patrick-johnston.com