Nowhere by Thomas Berger

desk.
    Before I could speak he crooned, “Ah, now you want a boy.”
    I lost such little patience as I had retained. “No, you pederast’s ponce! How dare you accuse me of murder and put me through that humiliation?”
    He stared at me for a while, I think to determine whether I was serious, and then he called back the policemen, who were just rolling their bicycles out the door. My heartbeat became irregular. Despite McCoy, were they going to re-arrest me?
    But when they reached the desk, the fat man came out from behind his protection and extended his hands.
    “It’s the pillory for me, I’m afraid. This gentleman charges me with exaggerated rudeness.”
    The constables assumed stern expressions and proceeded to put him into the arrangement of manacles and chains from which I had only lately been freed. I felt no triumph. Indeed, I tried to register my protest—all I wanted was a simple apology and, more important, to establish the truth that those who make accusations should have sound evidence in support—I was about to ask the policemen to free the concierge, but McCoy restrained me.
    “Don’t interfere,” said he. “That’s their way. I never make any trouble except when it’s my own ox being gored. Besides, he should be punished. That’s no way to run a hotel.”
    The policemen led the fat man away, riding their bikes on either side of him, at none too slow a pace even while still within the hotel, so that he was forced to perform a brisk trot, which was anything but dignified for a man of his bulk.
    I said to McCoy, “Those policemen brought their bikes in here? In New York that would make sense, but I thought these people didn’t steal.”
    “You haven’t got the right idea yet,” said he. “There’s some theft here. What’s different is that nobody can make a career of it, if he loses a hand for every conviction.”
    I took an extra breath. I had heard that that punishment, for which Xenophon had praised the younger Cyrus, was still being exacted in remote regions of Arabia, but in mid-Europe in the late twentieth century? This was turning out to be an appalling little principality.
    “But are there still Sebastianers who would risk the loss of a hand for a bicycle, furthermore a bicycle that could easily be traced in so small an area and population?”
    “It can’t be news to you that human beings do things at which they can be hurt,” McCoy said, with an appropriately cynical turn at one corner of his mouth. “Maybe because they’ll get hurt.” He frowned. “I wonder whether I need a drink to hold me until we get to the palace.”
    “Palace?”
    “Uh-huh,” he replied negligently. “The prince has invited us to lunch.”
    “The sovereign of Saint Sebastian? This is incredible.”
    “Don’t make too much of it,” McCoy said sourly. “Not that many tourists come here, the foreign diplomats left years ago, and he is afraid he might get assassinated if he sees his subjects, so he gets lonely.” He started for the door. There was no one at the hotel desk now that the concierge had been arrested, but that was not my problem.
    We got into the car and McCoy drove, inordinately as ever, down the cobblestoned street, all but grazing a skirted priest wearing a wide-brimmed hat and riding a shabby bicycle. In response the man of peace raised a warlike fist. He was thus far the only person I had seen at large.
    Soon we entered upon a steep ascent that would have been an effort for a powerful new vehicle. At times the soles of my feet were seemingly higher than my chin, and the ancient car had a deeper cough and a more violent shudder for each yard of the road. But we finally reached the summit and rolled across a paved area large enough to be a parade ground and approached the palace, which without doubt was the castlelike structure I had seen from the air. It was massive and of a chunky stone texture, with narrow slits for windows and a roofline of crenellations, really more of a