The 1st Deadly Sin (8 page)

“Scream if you like,” she said. “No one can hear.”

But he clenched his jaws and thought he might die of pleasure.

He opened his eyes and saw her lying naked beside him, her long, white body as limp as a fileted fish. She began undressing him with practiced fingers…opening buttons…sliding down zippers…tugging things away gently, so gently he hardly had to move at all…

Then she was using him,
using
him, and he began to understand what his fate might be. Fear dissolved in a kind of sexual faint he had never experienced before as her strong hands pulled, her dry tongue rasped over his fevered skin.

“Soon,” she promised. “Soon.”

Once he felt a pain so sharp and sweet he thought she had murdered him. Once he heard her laughing: a thick, burbling sound. Once she wound him about with her smooth, black hair, fashioned a small noose and pulled it tight.

It went on and on, his will dissolving, a great weight lifting, and he would pay any price. It was climbing: mission, danger, sublimity. Finally, the summit.

Later, he was exploring her body and saw, for the first time, her armpits were unshaved. He discovered, hidden in the damp, scented hairs under her left arm, a small tattoo in a curious design.

Still later they were drowsing in each other’s sweated arms, the light turned off, when he half-awoke and became conscious of a presence in the room. The door to the corridor was partly open. Through sticky eyes he saw someone standing silently at the foot of the cot, staring down at their linked bodies.

In the dim light Daniel Blank had a smeary impression of a naked figure or someone dressed in white. Blank raised his head and made a hissing sound. The wraith withdrew. The door closed softly. He was left alone with her in that dreadful room.

5

O
NE NIGHT,
lying naked and alone between his sateen sheets, Daniel Blank wondered if this world might not be another world’s dream. It was conceivable: somewhere another planet populated by a sentient people of superior intelligence who shared a communal dream as a method of play. And Earth was their dream, filled with fantasies, grotesqueries, evil—all the irrationalities they themselves rejected in their daily lives but turned to in sleep for relaxation. For fun.

Then we are all smoke and drifting. We are creatures of another world’s midnight visions, moving through a life as illogical as any dream, and as realistic. We exist only in a stranger’s slumber, and our death is his awaking, smiling at the mad, tangled plot his sleep conceived.

It seemed to Blank that since meeting Celia Montfort his existence had taken on the quality of a dream, the vaporous quality of a dream shot through with wild, bright flashes. His life had become all variables and, just before falling asleep to his own disordered dream, he wondered if AMROK II, properly programmed, might print out the meaning in a microsecond, as something of enormous consequence.

“No, no,” Celia Montfort said intently, leaning forward into the candlelight. “Evil isn’t just an absence of good. It’s not just omission; it’s commission, an action. You can’t call that man evil just because he lets people starve to put his country’s meager resources into heavy industry. That was a political and economic decision. Perhaps he is right, perhaps not. Those things don’t interest me. But I think you’re wrong to call him evil. Evil is really a kind of religion. I think he’s just a well-meaning fool. But evil he’s not. Evil implies intelligence and a deliberate intent. Don’t you agree, Daniel?”

She turned suddenly to him. His hand shook, and he spilled a few drops of red wine. They dripped onto the unpressed linen tablecloth, spreading out like clots of thick blood.

“Well…” he said slowly.

She was having a dinner party: Blank, the Mortons, and Anthony Montfort seated around an enormous, candle-lighted dining table that could easily have accommodated twice their number in a chilly and cavernous dining hall. The meal, bland and without surprises, had been served by Valenter and a heavy, middle-aged woman with a perceptible black mustache.

The dishes were being removed, they were finishing a dusty beaujolais, and their conversation had turned to the current visit to Washington of the dictator of a new African nation, a man who wore white-piped vests and a shoulder holster.

“No, Samuel,” Celia shook her head, “he is not an evil man. You use that word loosely. He’s just a bungler. Greedy perhaps. Or out for revenge on his enemies. But greed and revenge are grubby motives. True evil has a kind of nobility, as all faiths do. Faith implies total surrender, a giving up of reason.”

“Who was evil?” Florence Morton asked.

“Hitler?” Samuel Morton asked.

Celia Montfort looked slowly around the table. “You don’t understand,” she said softly. “I’m not talking about evil for the sake of ambition. I’m talking about evil for the sake of evil. Not Hitler—no. I mean saints of evil—men and women who see a vision and follow it. Just as Christian saints perceived a vision of good and followed that. I don’t believe there have been any modern saints, of good
or
evil. But the possibility exists. In all of us.”

“I understand,” Anthony Montfort said loudly, and they all turned in surprise to look at him.

“To do evil because it’s fun,” the boy said.

“Yes, Tony,” his sister said gently, smiling at him. “Because it’s fun. Let’s have coffee in the study. There’s a fire there.”

In the upstairs room the naked bulb burned in the air: a dusty moon. There was a smell of low tide and crawling things. Once he heard a faint shout of laughter, and Daniel Blank wondered if it was Tony laughing, and why he laughed.

They lay unclothed and stared at each other through the dark sunglasses she had provided. He stared—but did she? He could not tell. But blind eyes faced his blind eyes, discs of black against white skin. He felt the shivery bliss again. It was the mystery.

Her mouth opened slowly. Her long tongue slid out, lay flaccid between dry lips. Were her eyes closed? Was she looking at the wall? He peered closer, and behind the dark glass saw a far-off gleam. One of her hands wormed between her thighs, and a tiny bubble of spittle appeared in the corner of her mouth. He heard her breathing.

He pressed to her. She moved away and began to murmur. He understood some of what she said, but much was riddled. “What is it? What is it?” he wanted to cry, but did not because he feared it might be less than he hoped. So he was silent, listened to her murmur, felt her fingertips pluck at his quick skin.

The black covers over her eyes became holes, pits that went through flesh, bone, cot, floor, building, earth, and finally out into the far, dark reaches. He floated down those empty corridors, her naked hands pulling him along.

Her murmur never ceased. She circled and circled, spiraling in, but never named what she wanted. He wondered if there was a word for it, for then he could believe it existed. If it had no name, no word to label it, then it was an absolute reality beyond his apprehension, as infinite as the darkness through which he sped, tugged along by her hungry hands.

“We’ve found out all about her!” Florence Morton laughed.

“Well…not all, but some!” Samuel Morton laughed.

They had appeared at Daniel’s door, late at night, wearing matching costumes of blue suede jeans and fringed jackets. It was difficult to believe them husband and wife; they were sexless twins, with their bony bodies, bird features, helmets of oiled hair.

He invited them in for a drink. The Mortons sat on the couch close together and held hands.

“How did you find out?” he asked curiously.

“We know everything!” Florence said.

“Our spies were everywhere!” Samuel said.

Daniel Blank smiled. It was almost true.

“Lots of money there,” Flo said. “Her grandfather on her mother’s side. Oil and steel. Plenty of loot. But her father had the family. He didn’t inherit much but good looks. They said he was the handsomest man of his generation in America. They called him ‘Beau Montfort’ at Princeton. But he never did graduate. Kicked out for knocking up—someone. Who was it, Samovel?”

“A dean’s wife or a scullery maid—someone like that. Anyway, this was in the late Twenties. Then he married all that oil and steel. He made a big contribution to Roosevelt’s campaign fund and thought he might be ambassador to London, Paris or Rome. But FDR had more sense than that. He named Montfort a ‘roving representative’ and got him away from Washington. That was smart. The Montforts loved it. They drank and fucked up a storm. The talk of Europe. Celia was born in Lausanne. But then things went sour. Her parents got in with the Nazis, and daddy sent home glowing reports about what a splendid, kindly gentleman Hitler was. Naturally, Roosevelt dumped him. Then, from what we can learn, they just bummed around in high style.”

“What about Celia?” Daniel asked. “Is Tony really her brother?”

They looked at him in astonishment.

“You wondered?” Flo asked.

“You guessed?” Sam asked.

“We didn’t get it straight,” she acknowledged. “No one really knows.”

“Everyone guesses,” Sam offered. “But it’s just gossip. No one
knows.
”

“But Tony could be her son,” Flo nodded.

“The ages are right,” Sam nodded. “But she’s never been married. That anyone knows about.”

“There are rumors.”

“She’s a strange woman.”

“And who is Valenter?”

“What’s his relationship to her?”

“And to Tony?”

“And where does she go when she goes away?”

“And comes back bruised? What is she
doing?”

“Why don’t her parents want her in Europe?”

“What’s
with
her?”

“Who
is
she?”

“I don’t care,” Daniel Blank whispered. “I love her.”

He worked late in his office on Halloween night. He had a salad and black coffee sent up from the commissary. As he ate, he went over the final draft of the prospectus he was scheduled to present to the Production Board on the following day: his plan to have AMROK II determine the ratio between advertising and editorial pages in every Javis-Bircham magazine.

The prospectus seemed to him temperate, logical, and convincing. But he recognized that it lacked enthusiasm. It was as stirring as an insurance policy, as inspirational as a corporate law brief; he poked it across the table and sat staring at it.

The fault, he knew, was his; he had lost interest. Oh the plan was valid, it made sense, but it no longer seemed to him of much import.

And he knew the reason for his indifference: Celia Montfort. Compared to her, to his relations with her, his job at Javis-Bircham was a game played by a grown boy, no worse and no better than Chinese Checkers or Monopoly. He went through the motions, he followed the rules, but he was not touched.

He sat brooding, wondering where she might lead him. Finally he rose, took his trench coat and hat. He left the prospectus draft on the table, with the garbage of his dinner and the dregs of cold coffee in the plastic cup. On his way to the executive elevator he glanced through the window of the Computer Room. The night shift, white-clad, floated slowly on their crepe soles over the cork floor, drifting through a sterile dream.

The rain came in spits and gusts, driven by a hacking wind. There were no cabs in sight. Blank turned up his coat collar, pulled down the brim of his hat. He dug toward Eighth Avenue. If he didn’t find a cab, he’d take a crosstown bus on 42nd Street to First Avenue, and then change to an uptown bus.

Neon signs glimmered. Porno shops offered rubdowns and body painting. From a record shop, hustling the season, came a novelty recording of a dog barking “Adeste Fidelis.” An acned prostitute, booted and spurred, murmured, “Fun?” as he passed. He knew this scruffy section well and paid no heed. It had nothing to do with him.

As he approached the subway kiosk at 42nd Street, a band of young girls came giggling up, flashing in red yellow green blue party dresses, coats swinging open, long hair ripped back by the wind. Blank stared, wondering why such beauties were on such a horrid street.

He saw then. They were all boys and young men, transvestites, on their way to a Halloween drag. In their satins and laces. In evening slippers and swirling wigs. Carmined lips and shadowed eyes. Shaved legs in nylon pantyhose. Padded chests. Hands flying and throaty laughs.

Soft fingers were on his arm. A mocking voice: “Dan!”

It was Anthony Montfort, looking back to flirt a wave, golden hair gleaming in the rain like flame. And then, following, a few paces back, the tall, skinny Valenter, wrapped in a black raincoat.

Daniel Blank stood and watched that mad procession dwindle up the avenue. He heard shouts, raucous cries. Then they were all gone, and he was staring after.

She went away for a day, two days, a week. Or, if she really didn’t go away, he could not talk to her. He heard only Valenter’s “Mith Montforth rethidenth,” and then the news that she was not at home.

He became aware that these unexplained absences invariably followed their erotic ceremonies in the upstairs room. The following day, shattered with love and the memory of pleasure, he would call and discover she was gone, or would not talk to him.

He thought she was manipulating him, dancing out her meaningful ballet. She approached, touched, withdrew. He followed, she laughed, he touched, she caressed, he reached, she pulled back, fingers beckoning. The dance inflamed him.

Once, after four days’ absence, he found her weary, drained, with yellow bruises on arms and legs, and purple loops beneath her eyes. She would not say where she had been or what she had done. She lay limp, without resistance, and insisted he abuse her. Infuriated, he did, and she thanked him. Was that, too, part of her plan?

She was a tangle of oddities. Usually she was well-groomed, bathed and scented, long hair brushed gleaming, nails trimmed and painted. But one night she came to his apartment a harridan. She had not bathed, as he discovered, and played the frumpish wanton, looking at him with derisive eyes and using foul language. He could not resist her.