The Quest

On the other hand, Vivian was of another generation. And sometimes he thought of her as a child of God: naturally innocent while unknowingly sensuous.

He looked out at the black aircraft in the distance. It was circling over the hills and making steep, dangerous-looking turns. He said, “I hope he’s a good pilot.”

She was staring at the aircraft and didn’t reply.

He looked out again into the city. Like all the cities of his youth, he hated this place because it reminded him of a time when he was hopeful and optimistic-when he believed in Moscow and not Rome. Now he was burdened with years and disappointments, and with God.

If he looked hard enough into the swirling fog below, he could see Henry Mercado dashing across Saint George Square to the telegraph office. He could hear the roar of Italian warplanes overhead. He could and did remember and feel the pleasure of making love to the nineteen-year-old daughter of an American diplomat in the blacked-out lobby of the Imperial. Why the lobby? He had a room upstairs. What if they’d snapped on the lights? He smiled.

“What is making you smile, Henry?”

“What always makes me smile?”

“Tell me.”

So he told her about having sex in the lobby of the Imperial Hotel during an air raid blackout.

She listened without comment, then stayed silent awhile before saying, “So you understand.”

He didn’t reply.

“We do things when we’re frightened.”

“We were not frightened of the air raid.”

“We want to hold on to another person.”

“I didn’t follow this person to Cairo.”

She didn’t reply.

He looked out at the Imperial Hotel. Its surrounding verandas seemed to sag. He had the nostalgic idea of checking in there instead of here, but maybe it was enough to visit once a day when he went to the press office. In fact, the places that once held good memories were best left as memories.

The aircraft was climbing to the north, and Mercado saw that it cleared a distant peak by a narrow margin. Vivian didn’t seem to notice, but he said to her, “I hope you’re prepared to do some aerial photography in a small plane with a novice pilot.”

“You should stay here, Henry.”

“I don’t care if I die, Vivian. I care if you die.”

“No one is going to die. But that’s very… loving of you to say that.”

“Well, I love you.”

“I know.”

He didn’t ask the follow-up question and stared out at Addis Ababa. It was dirty and it smelled bad. Old men with missing pieces of their bodies were a walking reminder of old-style Ethiopian justice. Adding to the judicial mutilations were the wounded of recent and past wars. And then there were the deformed beggars, the diseased prostitutes, and the starving barefoot children running through donkey dung. A quarter million already dead from the famine. How was he supposed to believe in God? “How can this be?”

“How can what be?”

“This.” He swept his arm over the city.

She thought a moment, then replied, “It’s good that you still care.”

“I don’t care anymore.”

“You do.”

He said to her, “Sometimes I think I’ve been around too long.”

“I think you told me that once before.”

“Did I? What did you say?”

“I don’t remember.”

But he did. She’d said to him, “How can you say that when you have me?”

He looked at her and his heart literally skipped a beat.

The aircraft was now directly over the city, making tight banking turns as they’d have to do when they were shooting photographs of the ground. He thought she should leave before Purcell decided to do a flyby. But she just sat there, her feet on the rail, with her legs parted too wide, sipping coffee, watching her lover fly. Finally he said to her, “You should go to your own balcony. Or his.”

Again, she didn’t reply.

Mercado stood, but did not go inside.

The sun was coming over the eastern hills, burning off the last of the ground mist. The capital of the former empire was a straggly city of empty lots with gullies and ridges everywhere. The few high-rise buildings were separated by miles of squalid huts that sat in clusters like primitive villages. Banana trees and palms shaded the corrugated metal roofs of the huts from the blazing sun. Vermin and insects swarmed through the city, and at night hyenas howled in the surrounding hills. Whatever hope there had been for this city and this country under the emperor’s halfhearted reforms was now drowned in a sea of blood. A long night was descending on this ancient land, and if a new dawn ever arrived, he would not see it in his lifetime.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“I see things more clearly now. And I am feeling sorry for myself, and for these people.”

“You’re a good man, Henry.”

“I was.”

“We will find that good, happy, and optimistic man. That’s why we’re here.”

He nodded. This was the last quest. He hoped for salvation, but was prepared for the final disillusionment.