An hour reneging on the wager of light at the down of sun, Die accompanied by Hamm exits the lobby of the Q’asino here in Hebron, Palestein — the Vault it’s called, a complex erected around a famous cave at middle, the grave of the Patriarchs and the burial of their promise, in that its entrance’s now atriumed in an arch of bombproof, bulletproof glass — and is valeted in a stretch of limo through the desert toward a distant glint, this rising, shining orbicular track: the Drom Dome, tenthousand seats stadiumed under a retractable roof under the immaculate sky, if the weather holds; he makes Abulafia I’s private box in time for the first card. A beastly silence shot fatally by gunfire — a ring, they’re dashing to track in bobs up down up and down again; two of them, breaking fast a length or two now three ahead right from out of the gate; this team of dromedaries racing ridiculously with knees held high like risen mountains. Twotoed hard, and lately shaved of their shag to decrease resistance to the wind they’re faster than, they turn turns around and around, with their necks outstretched, their mouths agape, spitting forward, a gleet fleet with tongues like flags, loose and flapping lips and nostrils flaring. The leaning might of these racers, these small dark smokes, cameljockeys they’re called, enslaved short and skinny kinder, rationed by their sheikhs to keep down their times — they’re slumped low atop the naked fat of the hump, stripped to the waist, pithhelmeted. To ride against that wind, its speed and force, their records: history, too, is racing tonight, and the principals, they’re just trying to hold on…and, to broadcast this race: an ancient vulture trained by its forefeatheredfathers to fly with an antenna in its talons, transmitting Image.
Die sits on the rug, on the floor of the platform glassed above the action; smiling a fresh moustache with a pretense to enjoying the sport, he’s really just preparing his shtick, working up the room and the relevant nerve, what he’s willing to give. Here in Palestein to merit the favor of substitute gods, he’s willing to offer, what do you want, what can he do for you on the outs as he is: if Die needs B to keep himself not only purchasing but politically necessary, which is free, and, also, if Shade’s going Affiliated on the deal, then Die needs other allies, alternate angels. And so the Abulafias, until now the most important faction of any Resistance, their ambition unchecked by moral imperative, the idea of statecraft, or good will, any responsibility to the world and its sufferers that doesn’t in any way, even if calculatingly meek, profit their own effort into the bargain: Abulafias II through Allah knows how many taking turns amid the warm dusk phoning out wagers to their bookies below (un-guessed scarabs they seem from up here, running numbers around tracks of their own making), Muhammed the Infinite Oddsmaker O don’t You forsake me now…making straights and shows, pick threes, sixes, perfectas, trifectas, and supers, anything with the promise of fixed returns; card after cards they’re betting big, until the races end — droms each to their own stables, jockeys returned to their cells, the losers to be whipped with the severed tails of retired rides. At the suggestion of al-Cohol, who’s just returned from a state visit to Moscow, they’re drinking yorsh, that mortalizing mix of vodka bombed with beer, ladled up into crystal from a trophy’s bowl — the stadium’s lights dim, they’re soon sloshed, and eventually, ten, twelve lchaims in, wagering on everything, digitdrunk sums who thinks to take seriously or honor: He’ll turn up where as who or what, alive or dead by the time we get done with Him, His weight to size of waist upon apprehension, hatless or hapless they’re slurrings, phoning further bets overseas to Gelt who takes them down diligently into a little black machzor he keeps in a suitpocket, and this despite unimpeachable evidence of their wagerers’ intoxication, the incomprehension of figures named then raised amid promises made, faces kissed, hands shook then wrung in for a hug, embraced into a kiss for the duplicitous face, too, oneupmenschship all.
