Celebrant (56 page)

The man, who seems lost in thought, rolls his shoulders a little, adjusting them.
She is jostled only slightly, and keeps her balance.
She fixes her eye on the corner coming up on the right where a signboard-post sticks out into space
—
the sign having been taken in for the night.
As the man turns the corner, she simply takes hold of the post and lifts her feet.
While he straightens up a little, and seems to sigh faintly with relief, he does not notice, and goes on his way.
Burn has climbed on top of the post, which feels shaky
—
did the dog bark again?
The echo isn’t so near, but that could mean anything.
She takes hold of a window sill and lowers her legs onto the end of a projecting beam, then takes hold of that to the ground.

The man is already out of sight.

deKlend:

MOON SET

but maybe it’s deKlend who’s flabby and listless in his misbebuttoned shirt, and they are all moving normally in toe-tapping silence

or maybe it really is the imbecility of these walking men, or just their swinging, bile-colored hairy arms, with their woofing voices and hoo-hoo coughing

How.
To.
Escape?
He remembers, as he parted company with the black-globe-headed sarkoform, known as Lyrical, that a tiny purple constellation had detached itself from its starry surface and gone trembling off into the dark on its own.
He even remembers that it emitted a regularly-oscillating chirp.
A machine
—
so of course, this was the constellation he was meant to navigate by.
And he utterly failed to realize that at the time it would have been at all useful to.

He would have to look for it.
If it had gone on ahead, following its own route, he would have to foreswear it as lost, but if it were somehow attached to him, then it should still be lingering somewhere in the neighborhood.

I must not work
(he says to himself earnestly)
I mean, I must avoid becoming regularly employed, to make sure all my energies are devoted
—
unswervingly
—
to the purpose.
That can be a hard thing to know, but you can know for certain that you aren’t devoting your energies to the purpose if you’re regularly employed.
Those two things are mutually exclusive, at least that much is plain.

Ravenously hungry, deKlend can find nothing to eat but the odds and ends the others left behind on a silver tray on the sideboard.
With fastidious distaste he cuts away whatever portions of the bread and fruit that seem inedible or contaminated, and makes an inadequate repast of the rest, staring dejectedly out the window.
He has a dissatisfied feeling, a mothlike stirring at the back of his memory;
a dream, in which he’d been charged to find something
—
a palace, a cursed gemstone, an enchanted weapon, what was it?
Whatever it was, it had a name:
“The Laughter of the Maniac.”

That’s not a bad name for a gemstone, or a constellation
—
but I was already looking for the constellation!
(he thinks, suddenly peevish and frustrated)

And
for black radio,
and
for that veiled man
...
or was I looking for him?
But the main thing is always to get to Votu, isn’t it?
Or is this the way?
Another name for the way?
Wait
—
which takes precedence, the constellation or the radio?
The radio sent me, didn’t it?
Or did he?
But then the constellation was emitted at roughly the same time.
All right, so the constellation is an emission
of
the radio and therefore leads to it, good.
I’m glad I’ve gotten
that
mess sorted out at least (he thinks)

Standing up and brushing the crumbs from his lapels roughly, he stumbles away from the window and out into the arcades.

Where was I?

There’s unusual bustle.
Something excites everyone.
They are hurrying on all sides of him.

The Laughter of the Maniac?
Was it a person?
No, you imbecile.
You maniac.
Of course not.
So, a place or a thing.

He tries to picture it, but he sees only the security guard’s radio, the constellation, other things he’s seen before, and then, concentrating on the idea of a significant object, he sees in the mental frame labelled “Laughter of the Maniac” a protean succession of neutral images, like an abstract gemstone, a costly volume with gold decorations, a sleep-watered mask discolored with age.

You know (he interjects) your propensity to represent yourself as a stoic who has renounced pleasure and happiness in favor of something like a higher labor
...
that has a
...
hm.

How is it possible to estimate the truth of this?
And how is it possible to determine to what extent this restraint, or resignation, or what have you, is not merely cowardice?
Or incapacity?

I don’t know.

He walks on.

Not a gate up here.
It’s in the twilight.

Peace.
I feel it in my throat, like a wad of burning thirst.

He walks on.

Strength came into me from that “I don’t know.”

He stops to look out through a gap in the arcades, through which he can see the grey-haired hills.

Looking at the plants, the palms, the landscape, and thinking
necessity
.

I’m in love with necessity!
Inevitability, implacability.

Shrinking, getting farther away and too close.

What am I after?
I am (he thinks, idly picking up a sort of brass appliance hanging from one of the stalls that are still open) avoiding the things that I know are on the loose seeking to destroy intelligence and dignity.

Half-formed ideas that dart back into the reef.
Why catch them and trap them?
Let them go.
Come and go.

Wanting to be sad, not wanting to be happy
—
this is perverse, but some sadnesses are better than some happinesses, sometimes it is nobler to refuse to be happy.

There, standing at an intersection, with the people rustling around him the way water rustles around a stone in midstream, is Yolk Eye, whom deKlend knows from the party.
Wise old dark-skinned Yolk Eye.
There he is.
Now what?

Yolk Eye walks with deKlend.

There’s no machine I can’t wreck (he says, smiling)
Light a fire, I’ll break the fire.

—
You’re not my teacher?

Yolk Eye:
Nobody is.

—
Where do I find nobody?

Yolk Eye:
Nowhere.

—
Where is nowhere?

Yolk Eye:
Too close!

deKlend turns and returns his gaze intensely.

Do you not forget (he says)

I.
Am.
An.
Idiot.

Just celebrating life is stupid.

Remember that.

Don’t do it.

Of course, this is my point of view.
But don’t think that, by saying that, I’m trying to weasel out on you
—
you’re still not as stupid as I am.

deKlend passes Yolk Eye, where he stands in the intersection.
Yolk Eye doesn’t seem to notice him.
deKlend imagines the two of them, walking together, having a conversation, seeing language as he used it,
like a quilt or tilefloor, dark blues and bright yellows, plastic dyes.
Timelessness shines in on me through leaf shadows and glints.

Imaginary Yolk Eye tells him solemnly:
a Celebrant will be made from you.
It can be a rib, a hair, a preserved baby tooth
...

deKlend steps through a doorway into a rambling sort of public house on many levels.
The ceiling is a tangle of small vaults.
From the back comes singing, lively and solemn echoes.
Coming in, he passes a man in the hallway, his coat flapping behind him like
...
he were going into the past, but from where.
Coming in, deKlend sees a grey apparition of water in white pot in dim.

He wanders in farther, toward a table against the wall, from the center of which emerges a preposterous object.
He stares at it for some minutes.
It is a sprig of broccoli.
He sits down to contemplate it for a moment.
There are tiny turds of whitish grey ash in an old mint tin on the dusk uh desk.
The circular shadow around the base of the candle sways like a living thing, hovers like a phantom.
When he turns his head abruptly without knowing why, the little loop of shadow is still there.
The candle light dabbing with bright nameless angles and curls the edges of the salt shaker.

There are musicians floating around.
One with two cigarettes in his mouth, one singing a trombone solo.
There seem to be several bands blaying at once, I mean playing, I must say playing, or else what?
With whose will I get in trouble, I mean with whot.
The melody seems to go on after the song is over or am I humming it?

Simpering, delicately dipping an elfin spoon into paper-thin cups of gold foil heaped with sugary pink brains, drizzled in clear treacle of aspirin rain.
There’s an attitude of sourceless hilarity keeping him awake, a wild giddy feeling that won’t let him sleep.
I feel the ghost city creep around me like icy mist
...
I’m still too sane to go
—
the ghost planetarium, projecting ghosts into little scenes, rooms, high in the dome.
Threads of dead tissue vibrate around from my back to my front, as though I were backing into a web
—
I stroke one of the discolored stripes
—
it is puffy and cold.

The future where all energy is
—
not waiting, already under way
—
tremble
—
a torrent that surges toward you, yet its current draws you forward.
Proportionate to your energy, your affectability.
No struggling against it.
The current draws with its sliding force, and, like an accumulation of sand behind you, draws you up, not with mass, but with momentum.
I’d need a special tense, Future-Ancient, to designate what comes from the remote future, meaning it will loyally exist for a long time
—
as loyal to me as my death.
I forgot it again, when I’m not supposed to.