“Very good. Not the best part of town, but not bad for a first run in your new position.” Branca took a leather shoulder satchel and tossed that to Largo too. “Keep your new deliveries in that. It’s old and if you think the stains inside look like dried grease, they are. It’s the type of bag used by many of the workers at the armaments factory. A nondescript way to haul your cargo and perhaps save your hide. Do you have any questions before you go?”
“None,” said Largo. “Thank you again for the opportunity, sir.”
“Stop thanking me and stop saying ‘sir’ all the time. That’s for the others. Not the chief courier.”
Largo’s bones felt icy. He needed to get away. “All right,” he said, having to choke back a reflexive sir. “Before I go out, do I have time to use the toilet?”
Branca went back to doing paperwork. He didn’t look up when he spoke. “Use the toilet if you need to. Better now than being arrested for pissing into the canal.”
Largo put the box in the shoulder bag and started out. His hands were beginning to tremble.
“One more thing, Largo,” said Branca.
He stopped nervously midstride. “Yes, sir?”
“Your chum Parvulesco. Keep an eye on him too. He’s never been arrested, but he has a most colorful reputation.”
“Thank you. I’ll remember that,” said Largo before hurrying out of the office and down the hall to the employee toilets. Once inside, he locked himself in the farthest stall from the door. His cold hands shook as he pulled the bottle of morphia from an inside pocket of his jacket. Earlier, as Branca had taken it off him to fit the harness, he’d been nervous that his boss would discover the drug. Now Largo couldn’t care less. The only thing that mattered was the bottle.
He unscrewed it, drew a portion into the rubber stopper at the top, and squeezed three drops under his tongue. It was one more drop than usual, but these were dire circumstances and he needed the relief an extra drop would give him.
Within seconds, the blizzard inside him began to calm and he felt warm again. The muscles in his shoulders and back unknotted. The tension in his jaw eased so that he wasn’t tempted to grind his teeth, which, along with the shakes, was one of the sure giveaways of morphia addiction.
Not that any of that mattered now. His nervousness over the promotion and Branca’s paranoid warnings meant nothing. His stomach settled as his hunger pangs vanished. He felt wrapped in safety even as he thought again of the humiliation of staring hungrily at the sandwich in the street.
Never again.
Never.
Again.
Remy’s beautiful face swam into his head and he couldn’t help but close his eyes. Just for a second.
And drifted back to earlier that morning.
Remy was in bed, wrapped in a sheet. She turned the pages of a script with one hand and smoked a cigarette with the other. Largo was in the little kitchen of her flat making tea for them both. It was still dark outside. They hadn’t slept much the previous night.
While he waited for the water to boil, Largo took a step out of the kitchen and called to her. “Is there any cocaine left? I could use a bit to help me wake up.”
Remy glanced at the bedside table. “Not a speck.”
“Damn.” He leaned back against the wall. “It’s your fault for keeping me up so late.”
She didn’t look up from her script. “Yes, dear. I distinctly remember you saying how much you wanted to sleep as you took my clothes off.”
The teakettle whistled and Largo turned off the burner. “If only I could have found your pajamas, none of this would have happened.”
“Hush,” Remy called. “I need to learn this script.”
As the tea steeped, Largo went back into the bedroom and lay down next to her. “Please. You don’t need any time. You memorize those things in a flash.”
She stubbed out her cigarette. “You think so?”
He laid his head sleepily against her shoulder. “No question. It used to take you days. Now it seems like you have a new script in your head by the time you finish reading it.”
“I hadn’t really noticed.”
Largo yawned. “You learn the words and blocking faster and better than ever. Are you doing something different?”
Remy shook her head. “Nothing. But I’ve felt better since the doctor gave me a shot. Sharper. More clear-headed.”
“What kind of a shot was it? I could use one.”
“Vitamins, I think.”
As he went to check on the tea, Largo said, “You haven’t had one of your attacks in a while.”
“That’s a relief. Now leave me alone. I have to work.”
He poked his head out from the kitchen. “You’re quite sure there’s no more cocaine?”
Remy playfully tossed a pillow at him. “Finish making the tea and be happy I don’t push you out the window for interrupting my work.”
Largo froze in the doorway. “Work …”
He lurched to his feet in the bathroom stall, realizing he’d nodded off. He checked the address on the package one more time and left the building through the loading dock so that he didn’t have to pass Herr Branca’s office again. Promotion or not, he’d had enough of the old man’s scrutiny for one day.
Outside, the fog had begun to lift somewhat, but the sky was still gray under the smokestacks of the armaments factory. A light mist fell as Largo pedaled along Tombstrasse, making the air smell fresh and clean. With the welcome promotion, good air in his lungs, and morphia in his blood, Largo felt better than he had in days.
THE CITY. THE AIR.
From Noble Aspirations and Hard Realities: Life in Lower Proszawa by Ralf Moessinger, author of High Proszawa: A Dream in Stone
A haze, perpetual and gray, hangs over much of Lower Proszawa, like a murder of crows frozen in flight. Below, the coal plants that dot the city smolder and roar, roiling black ribbons of soot into the atmosphere. There, they’re caught by the wind and distributed throughout the city. The dust settles everywhere, on the rich and poor alike. Of course, the wealthy have the means to sweep their streets clean, as if soot wouldn’t dare venture into their districts, griming the windows and tower rooms that overlook the roofs of the less fortunate.
But even the rich can’t entirely keep ahead of it. The dust invades homes, offices, and churches, drifting down chimneys, snaking through cracks in window frames and under doors. The outdoor cafés and markets that display fruits and bread in the open air employ troops of ragged children armed with horsehair brushes and dustpans to wipe every surface clean. They throw the soot into the sewers, where it mixes with the city’s waste and drifts out to sea in a black tide that stains the hulls of fishing boats and smuggler ships alike a uniform gray. People call the color “city silver” and laugh it off because what else is there to do?
Thus, the citizens of Lower Proszawa have learned to live with the dust, even be amused by it. Of course, in the postwar elation that’s gripped much of the city, almost everything is amusing. Besides, it rains frequently and when the clouds part, the streets are washed clean, if just for a day or two.
Rain or shine, however, the power plants are nothing compared to what truly fills the skyline. Dominating much of the city are the cluster of immense foundries and assembly lines that make up the armaments factory. Unlike the streets, it is never completely clean. The coal dust clings to its sides and roofs. When the rains fall, they leave strangely beautiful ebony streaks and rivulets down the exteriors of the buildings, making the factory look ancient—like a mountain range that has been rooted to the spot forever.
Districts such as Kromium and Empyrean are kept pristine by cleaners who work in clouds of filth. Ironically, in some ways these workers are the lucky ones. While they go about their jobs, the crews wear surplus gas masks left over from the war. That means that for a few hours every day, they breathe air cleaner and sweeter than that of even the wealthiest industrialist or banker. Still, not everybody has the means to cope with the gray air so easily. It is a particular problem in the Rauschgift district.
Among the people I interviewed for this piece, Frau Mila Weill’s story is typical of the area. She lives in a cramped apartment with her children and grandmother. Herr Weill died suddenly from the Drops a few months earlier, leaving Frau Weill as the sole breadwinner. There are many explanations for the Drops among the ignorant class in these poorer districts: that foreigners from the southern colonies put it in the food shipped north or that chimeras that gobble trash in the gutters spread it with a bite. Frau Weill saw her husband die in agonizing convulsions and wonders if that is her fate too. She has a chronic cough, which is typical in the area, and it has advanced to the point where there is often blood in the sputum. Unable or, perhaps, afraid to go to one of the city’s hospitals for the indigent, she relies on the advice of her grandmother. The old woman tries to comfort Frau Weill using the only tools she has: folk remedies from the ancient past. She assures Frau Weill that she merely has a “touch of Rote Lungen,” and that “thistle-root tea will clear that right up.”
Frau Weill wants to believe her grandmother, but no amount of tea helps her condition. Each day, the red marks on her handkerchief grow. During one of our interviews she confessed that she had thought about finding someone—anyone—to marry so that he would be obliged to care for her family after she was gone. (There was an awkward moment in that day’s discussion when I suspect she considered asking me.) Though she still uses her grandmother’s tea remedy, she continues to believe that her condition is really an early stage of the Drops. However, she has formulated her own theory: that the disease isn’t spread by foreigners or chimeras. Frau Weill believes that it comes from the very air.
Spurred on by what can be seen only as a new urban folk belief, one morning Frau Weill took some of the household money and attempted to buy a gas mask from one of the cleaners in Kromium. She says that he laughed in her face. To make matters worse, the conductor on a tram asked her to get off, as her coughing fits were disturbing the other passengers. Since then, she remains at home, waiting for what she believes is the inevitable. Frau Weill keeps a constant watch on her arms and legs, certain that someday soon the convulsions will come. As our final interview came to a close I once again had that sense that she was on the verge of proposing marriage, and I was obliged to leave more abruptly than is my normal fashion.
Whatever the truth is about Frau Weill’s condition, we must agree on one point—that the “city silver” air in Lower Proszawa is as much a defining characteristic of the place as prewar High Proszawa’s clear blue skies. While the high city was known for its universities, museums, and sprawling stone mansions, the swirling gray gusts of the low city represent progress, industry, and strength. And while those things might inconvenience some, the power plants that fuel the place and the armaments factory that keeps all of Proszawa prosperous and safe are national treasures every bit as much as the high city’s more traditional elegance.1
CHAPTER TWO
While the trip to Haxan Green had been fast and pleasant, his arrival in the old district was decidedly less so. Largo hadn’t been in the Green in years and the place was grimmer—and grimier—than he’d ever seen it.
The Green had once been a fashionable district where wealthy families from High and Lower Proszawa enjoyed their summers, spending many nights at the enormous fair at the end of a long pier. But the pier and fair had collapsed decades ago and were now nothing more than a pile of waterlogged timbers festooned with canal garbage and poisonous barnacles that killed wayward gulls.
The derelict homes that lined the broad streets had once sported gold-leaf roofs and sunny tower rooms that gave the inhabitants views of both the High and Lower cities. Now the buildings were rotting hulks, the gold leaf long gone and the roofs crudely patched with wood from even more run-down habitations. Most of the lower windows were blocked with yellowsheets and covered with metal bars from fallen fences. Few had any glass to speak of. The addresses of the old homes had all been chiseled away. This was by design rather than neglect, though. Only those acquainted with the district could find any specific dwelling. Fortunately, Largo knew the Green well.
He chained his bicycle to the charred skeleton of an old delivery Mara outside one of the tower blocks. Skinny, filthy children played war in the weed-strewn yard, throwing imaginary grenades of rocks and dirt clods at one another. The children stared at Largo for only a moment before going back to their game, but he knew their eyes were on him his whole way into the building. He checked his pocket to make sure he had a few coins so there wouldn’t be any trouble later.
He walked up three flights of stairs littered with stinking, overflowing trash cans and sleeping tenants too sick or drunk to make it all the way home. There were holes in the walls where old charging stations for Maras and wires that provided light for the halls had been torn out, the copper almost certainly sold to various scrap yards along the canal.
Without numbers identifying the individual flats anymore, this could have been a difficult delivery, but through long practice, Largo knew how the apartments were laid out—even numbers on the north, odd on the south—so he found his destination without trouble.
Out of habit, Largo straightened his tie before knocking on the door of the flat, then felt foolish for it. A straight tie was the last thing that would impress Green residents; it might, in fact, make them hostile. But it was too late now. He’d already knocked.
A moment later an unshaven man wearing small wire-rimmed glasses opened the door a crack, leaving the lock chain across the gap. “Who the fuck are you?” he said.
Largo took the box from his shoulder bag and said, “Delivery,” in a flat, indifferent voice. Saying anything more might invite suspicion. Speaking any other way definitely would.
The unshaven man tilted his head, taking in Largo and the box. His hair was gray and thin. There were scabs on his forehead near his hairline. It looked like he’d been picking at them. “Where’s the other one?” he said.
It took Largo a second to understand that the man meant König. He shook his head. “He doesn’t work there anymore. It’s just me now.”
“Huh,” said the man. “You’re a bit pretty for this neck of the woods.”
Largo straightened, feeling the knife under his jacket. His sense for the mores of the old neighborhood was coming back to him—as was his hatred for them. He knew what would come next from the scabby man and how he was supposed to respond, and the cheap game brought back frightening childhood memories. He said, “Fuck off, my fine brother. I grew up by the canal on Berber Lane.”
“Did you now? You’ve cleaned up since then.”
“My compliments to your spectacles.” Largo loathed the ritual posturing of the Green, and he’d hoped never to have to do it again. Yet his promotion had brought him straight back to this awful place. It wasn’t an auspicious beginning for the new position. He pressed on, holding up the little box and waggling it up and down. “Do you want it or not? I don’t have all day.”
The man was starting to say something else when a piercing scream came from somewhere in the flat. “Wait here,” he said, and closed the door. Standing in the hall, Largo heard more screams through the door. Questions and images flowed through his head. Had the scabby man kidnapped someone? Was someone—a woman, he was sure it was a woman—being beaten in another room? Or was she dying in childbirth? The next scream wasn’t just a wail, there were words: “Now! Now! Now! Now!” Largo dug his heel into a splintered part of the floor as it dawned on him that he recognized the screams.
It was someone deep in the throes of morphia withdrawal.
He looked at the box. There weren’t any markings to indicate its origin. He wondered if it was medication from a hospital. He was sure Herr Branca wouldn’t send him out on his first delivery with something illicit. It must be medicine, he told himself.
A second later, the flat’s door opened again. The man stuck out a grimy-black hand and grabbed for the box. “Give it to me.”
Largo took a step back out of his reach. He got the pad and pencil from his bag. “You have to sign for it,” he said.
The man’s hand dropped a few inches. “Please. I need it now.”
“Not until you sign.” Largo knew the rules of the Green. If he backed down now it would be a sign of weakness, and if anyone was watching the exchange it would put him in danger. He gave the man a hard look even as he felt a few beads of perspiration on his forehead.
“Wait,” said the scabby man. He closed the door for a moment and when he opened it again there was a pile of coins in his hand, including two small gold ones. “Take it.”
“Are you trying to bribe me?” he said, a little surprised by the offer.
There was another scream from the flat. Largo felt like a heel for continuing to play the game, but he knew he had to.
“It’s a tip,” said the man. “For your trouble and my earlier rudeness. Only you have to sign the form.”
Largo looked at the money. Whether it was a bribe or a tip, it was the largest amount of money anyone had ever offered him for a delivery.
There was another scream, this one more violent than the others. Largo grabbed the coins from the man’s hand and gave him the package. “Good luck,” he said, but the man had already slammed the door shut. Largo put the coins in his pocket and looked at the delivery form. There was no name on it, just the address.
Perfect. My first delivery as chief courier and I’ve already committed an offense that could get me fired.
With no other choice in the matter, Largo signed the form Franz Negovan, the name of a boy he’d known growing up in the Green. He was anxious and angry as he left the building, thinking that if all of his deliveries were like this, he wouldn’t last long as chief courier.
Downstairs, as he expected, the children who’d been playing war earlier were clustered around his bicycle. A dirty blond girl of about ten sat on the seat and looked at him with eyes that were forty years older and harder.
“We watched it for you,” she said. “Made sure nothing bad happened to it.”
Largo had been through similar shakedowns before and had known this other ritual of the Green was coming. When he’d been in similar situations as a child, when he’d had little to give or trade, the result was usually a beating or his running as fast as he could—and his bicycle being stolen or destroyed. These were only children, but in the Green, age didn’t mitigate danger. Fortunately, now things were different. He hoped.
He reached into his pants pocket and came up with some of the coins he’d brought from home and a few from the gray-haired man—all silver. He’d put the gold ones in his jacket. He said, “And you did an excellent job, I see. Here’s something for your trouble.”
The girl accepted the coins and counted them carefully. When she was done she nodded to the other kids and hopped off Largo’s bicycle. As soon as they were across the yard, the girl distributed the money to the other children and the war game resumed without missing a beat. Largo unchained his bicycle, dropped the lock into his shoulder bag, and pedaled slowly back down the route he’d taken earlier. As much as he wanted to speed away from the misery and memories of the Green, he kept to a moderate pace. To go faster was something else that he knew would show weakness. There were many unspoken but universally understood rules in the district, and he’d learned them all the hard way. The one odd thought that struck him as he pedaled away was that if, as a younger man, he hadn’t left Haxan Green, a hard-eyed little girl like the one at the tower block could have been his daughter. It made him think of his own family.
Largo had grown up with his parents in a decaying mansion by the canal. His father had a wagon and a sick horse that he’d probably bought under the table from an army stable. Father rode the wagon all over Lower Proszawa looking for scrap to sell and, like Largo, making the occasional delivery. Largo’s mother panhandled and picked pockets in the street markets around the Green. Largo had been a pale, scrawny child, and his parents had been very protective of him. Maybe too much, he thought now. He was always cautious and nervous around confrontations. Even his encounter with the scabby man, as well as he’d handled it, left him feeling slightly ill, which was humiliating.
Because no one had been home during the day to take care of him, Largo went with his father on his rounds. His mother worried about taking a small boy to some districts even more dangerous than Haxan Green—kidnappings were frequent and children were often sold off to fishing ships along the bay or pimps in the city. To protect the boy during his rounds, his father put him in a wooden crate up front in the wagon. It was through the air holes in the side of the crate that Largo first learned Lower Proszawa’s winding streets and alleys.
Later, he would become an expert while running from gangs wielding chains and knives or bullocks looking for his parents. Of course, he’d never admitted any of this to Remy. It was too embarassing. Besides, she talked as little about her family as Largo did about his, and it made him wonder if she had secrets too.
On his way back to the office, Largo was delayed by a caravan of double-decker party Autobuses. The city’s merrymakers always grew more boisterous in the days before the anniversary of the end of the Great War. Buses and street parties were some of the few places where the upper and lower classes mingled easily because each had the same goal—a gleeful obliteration.
When Largo returned to the courier office, Herr Branca was waiting for him.
“And how was your first foray into new territories?”
“Excellent. It went very well,” Largo said.
Branca glanced up from his paperwork. “I’m glad to hear that. König was seldom so cheerful when returning from Haxan Green.”
Largo smiled but wasn’t sure it was entirely convincing. “That’s too bad. As for me, I found the building, delivered the parcel, and made my way back without any problems.”
“Good. And there was no trouble with the client?”
Largo’s stomach fluttered for a moment as he thought of the forged receipt. “None, sir. Our meeting was both cordial and efficient.”
Branca chuckled. “Efficient. Again, something I’ve not heard about the Green before,” he said. Then he became more serious. “Tell me about the client. What was he like?”
The question took Largo by surprise. Herr Branca had never asked him about a client before, let alone one as peculiar as the gray-haired man. “He was just a man. An old man with gray hair and spectacles.”
“How did he appear to you?”
“Sir?”
“Was he in good health? Happy? Apprehensive? Was there anyone with him?”
Largo considered how best to answer the question. “He was surprised that I wasn’t König, but when I explained that he had moved on—I didn’t mention the bullocks, sorry, the police. After that he accepted the package without incident.”
Branca looked Largo up and down. “And was there anyone with him?”
“Yes.”
“A man or woman?”
“I’m not sure. I think a woman. But the person was in another room and I couldn’t see.”
“Of course,” Branca said, and Largo wondered what that meant. He started to say something but Branca cut him off.
“What was his condition? Dirty? Clean? Did you see his hands?”
