The Secret Book of Paradys (103 page)

The two warders came out of the area with the chair and joined Doctor Volpe behind the glass.

From the ceiling of the room, above the chair, hung a black tube, large and coiled, a sort of serpent.

Dr. Volpe peered through the glass.

“Is she quite ready?”

“Of course. She can’t get away.”

The doctor stretched out his hand to a lever, then hesitated.

“You shall do it, Desel.”

Dr. Volpe had an air of conferring a favor. And Desel was pleased, Marie Tante almost jealous. In fact, Dr. Volpe did not like to perform the action. He would have preferred not to watch.

The warders, though, were avid, and Desel, taking hold of the lever, plunged it down.

In the ceiling the serpent suddenly snapped straight, and out of its headless mouth there rushed an avalanche of water. Its weight was unimaginable, although it had been precisely gauged. It crashed upon Hilde in the little black monster chair and she vanished. Her first shriek of terror was cut off in a frightful choking. Then all audible sound was crushed under the gush of the Waterfall.

Desel’s face was now a picture of content, and Marie Tante’s was pale with some sort of oblique arousal, pinched and pointing. They stared through the glass, and Dr. Volpe stared too, but with his hand up to his face, shielding his eyes.

For ten minutes the onslaught of the water raged.

“That will be enough,” said Dr. Volpe.

“Surely,” said Marie Tante, “a few minutes more.”

“Oh, yes, then.”

“To be sure,” said Desel, helping him.

Dr. Volpe thought of his Russian novel. This would soon be over now.

It was over. Marie Tante pushed up the lever, and the incredible Waterfall slackened to a pulse, a flickering tail, a few harsh drops.

The girl sat still in the chair, impossibly not smashed and flushed away.
Yet she was colorless, her clothes like rain, her skin like white paper. Even her vibrant hair, though darkened, seemed diluted out.

Marie Tante now managed Hilde alone. She undid the bars of the chair and dragged the drowned creature out of it. Hilde’s eyes rolled, yet she was still conscious. Water ran from her mouth. Marie Tante thrust the girl along before her, holding her up by the back of her sodden dress.

Dr. Volpe was more sunny. He shook Desel by the hand before hurrying away to his sanctuary. He had done all he could.

In another cell, Marie Tante and the woman Moule stripped Hilde of her soaked clothing. When she was naked, they prodded at her, saying she was too soft. Marie Tante tweaked Hilde’s nipples and asked if she had been a bad girl. “Push your finger in and see,” said Moule, but neither she nor Marie Tante did this. The girl, unable to stand, lay on a pallet. They hauled her up. “We should cut her hair,” said Moule. Marie Tante scraped back Hilde’s wet and deadened tresses and, holding them in her fist, hacked them through with a pair of scissors. Hilde gave a faint cracked cry, the first since the treatment, but she did not seem to realize what had happened, even so. “Shorter,” said Moule. “That will do,” said Marie Tante. “Look at it,” said Moule, “all that hair, at least a meter of it.” “It can be sold,” said Marie Tante, “but not for much. If it had been black, now. But some ginger cat will buy it in the slums.” “Don’t forget I helped you cut it,” said Moule.

They dressed Hilde, then, in the uniform of her prison. A coarse seamless petticoat and over that the death-white dress of the asylum, tied at the waist with a black cord. On her legs were gartered woolen stockings, and her feet were shoved into heelless cloth shoes.

Hilde was ready now, for the ball.

She was just able to walk, though not to speak, and probably not properly to see or hear.

They conducted her from the building and out across the yard with the stone block. In the shadow away from the sunlight, Moule drew a glinting brown bottle from her pocket. She gulped some liquid down and smacked her lips, then reluctantly passed the gin to Marie Tante.

“They say the vats are all corroded,” said Marie Tante. “The rats die that drink the dregs.”

“And someone has poured acid in it, too,” chortled Moule. “Penguin Gin takes away your pain.”

It was almost autumn, and as they crossed the last stretch of yard between the black doors and window-eyed walls of the madhouse, an intimation of fall sweetness drifted from the air – the low sun, the smolder of
the trees outside. But the two wardresses did not heed, and the girl was past knowing what it was.

Beyond the asylum, an apron of untended garden ran off into a wood, the trees of which were sometimes cut down. There, over the barricade of an outer wall, lay the countryside, impossible as a foreign land. Even the warders took no notice of it. They too lived in hell, going out rarely, and then in a sort of disdain.

Back inside the first building, Marie Tante and Moule bore Hilde through into the succession of white rooms, where the mad people were.

They moved her out into the middle of the floor, over which the ill-smelling straw extended, giving the space a peculiar farmyard touch. They left her there, like a landmark, and drew back, the two women, to see how the indigenous population received her.

But nothing happened. No one went near.

The mad continued at their insanity quietly, not bothering with the new mad one.

“Here, here” — Moule took hold of a man who kneeled on the ground, swaying,—“there’s a new girl, go and give her a kiss.”

The man who swayed began to cry. He curled up on the floor and Moule kicked him with her booted foot.

“Useless,” said Marie Tante. “No spirit. Slugs.”

One of the male warders had come in, and seeing them, walked up.

“A new lovely for you,” said Marie Tante.

“None lovelier than you,” said the warder. “Do you have a drink on you?”

“No,” said Marie Tante. Moule twitched her pocket uneasily.

Hilde stood alone in the middle of the room. She looked down into the straw, and presently crumpled and slipped over.

“No trouble with her,” said the man.

“She’s been swimming in the Waterfall.”

All around the white forms with cropped or shorn heads bobbed slowly at their antics, like leaves on a pool.

“They make you sick,” said the man, “this filth.”

They went on into another room, where there were one or two tied up who could sometimes be tormented into noise.

Hilde lay on the straw, and a roach with transparent copper wings crawled over her wrist but did not hurt her.

A woman sat on the straw by Hilde.

Although her hair had been cropped, her head shaved, a dark shadow downed over her skull, which was exquisitely shaped, so that it did not mar her beauty. She was very beautiful, a face of bones and eyes and lips, the thin
body of a damask lizard having breasts. Some kind of sphinx?

As Hilde raised her fluttering lids, the woman spoke. “I’m Judit, Queen Judit. I come from a distant country, where I rule. Barges of metal with silk sails go about on my river, and palaces of marble rise. But here I am.”

Hilde gazed, her sight returning, into the face of a mother, for the mother to the tiny helpless child is a goddess, infinite and gorgeous, inexorable, yet kind. And all this Judit was. Queen Judit, the mad, who had been a whore in the alleys of Paradys.

“Help me,” said helpless Hilde.

“Of course,” said Judit. “You mustn’t be afraid. This is a great trial. We queens are born to it, and grasp its syntax. But you are only a little angel fallen into the beastliness. Don’t be frightened. I’m here.”

“Oh,” said Hilde.

Judit held her wrist, over which the bracelet of the roach’s running had gone. Judit kissed Hilde on the eyebrow.

“Now you’re my handmaiden,” said Judit. “All will be well.”

“But,” said Hilde.

“Forget the past, my dear,” said Judit. “This is like death. Of course, it will end and we shall go back, in victory. But would you rather come with me to my own country? The mountains embrace the sky. Hawks feed from my hands. I’ve had a hundred thousand lovers, great kings and lords. Each brought me a fabulous gift, and my house is seventeen stories high.”

“How do you reach the top?” asked Hilde, stirring a little, like a wounded bird.

“A flying carpet,” said Judit. “How else?”

Pleased, for she had an answer to every question, and liked to display her skill, Judit laughed.

Her teeth were flawless, but for one eyetooth that had been struck from her mouth by a warder (Desel) long ago. She did not recall this. She knew she had lost the tooth in a fight, when she had defended a king who had lain with her, a long dagger in her hand. Judit’s beauty had grown with her delusions of beauty, and her strength too. Never, as a starveling harlot, had she had this excellence.

“How did you come here?” asked Hilde.

“A trial. Didn’t I say?”

“But why?” Hilde, only half in the world, at once revealed her sense of the truth of Judit, for how should a queen, of Sheba, Egypt, or Andromeda, be
here
?

“There was a face of bronze,” said Judit, “which I killed.” She was satisfied. “That is why. And how. But I’ll triumph over all ruin. One passes every
day to whom I blow a kiss. He doesn’t know that each kiss is my power; he’ll fall under the spell of it.”

“Will you help me?” said Hilde, sleepily. The fortitude of Judit had lulled her.

“Poor child. You are mine now. Fear nothing.”

And Judit drew Hilde into her lap and held her, stroking the crinkled apricot hair, all that was left of it.

In a hovel Judit had slain a man who had tried to mutilate her for his pleasure. And Judit had gone mad. Mad with anger and justice, to escape the foulness of her world. Now she dwelled among shining thoughts, remembering always she was a queen.

Her fingers were like honey after the horror before. Judit was fire to heal the blows of water. She smelled unclean, but not impure.

The man who had cried had also crept to her, and Judit had not thrust him off. He lay with his mouth against her skirt, asleep.

Judit sang softly of her palaces, of the lions that drank from the river, and the curtains of spun light, and the flowers of her garden, which were fed dead murderers. Her song sounded like gibberish, but this did not matter.

After a time, Hilde told Judit what had happened to her, and Judit listened carefully, her perfect head turned a little to one side. Judit wept, her tears were flames. Hilde saw this, but she was not afraid.

Twice a day, the inmates were fed. In the morning a gruel was brought, and in the evening a type of stew without meat. Both these meals were slops. Bread was served with them that had, as often as not, gone a little moldy.

The cauldrons of food were brought through the rooms on a contraption like a four-legged stretcher with wheels. Certain of the patients were recruited to dole out rations, overseen by the warders with their sticks. To every patient, rounded up and herded to the cauldron, was given a small bowl. There was no cutlery, as even a spoon might be put to dangerous use. They ate with the bread and with their fingers and mouths.

Those who would not eat were watched, and after the third day taken to a room the warders had nicknamed the Banquet Hall. Here a tube was thrust down their throats and they were force-fed on a kind of ant food or sugar water. Sometimes a patient had died from these feasts, from mere shock, or because of the carelessness of the operative, who had inserted the feeding tube into the air vent rather than the esophagus, and so flooded the lungs and drowned them. (These poor patients were always found to have choked while eating too greedily.)

Of such things Judit warned Hilde as she drew her gently to the cauldron.

While they waited their turn, a male warder came to Judit and was familiar with her, putting his hands on her buttocks. Judit laughed in his face. Her body had no scruples and no modesty, and she was, besides, a queen. But when the warder turned to Hilde, as if to extend the treatment to her, Judit came between them, smiling. “Get off, you old whore,” said the warder, and backed away, menacing Judit with his stick.

In the bottom of the cauldron, under the soggy vegetables, something glittered.

“There are spikes there,” said Judit.

Once a small man, a dwarf, had hidden in the tureen and so got to the kitchens, where he took a knife and attacked some of the warders. Now the spikes were in the pot to prevent another such attempt.

Hilde did not want to eat, but Judit urged her to take a little, especially the disgusting bread. The warders had not realized, it seemed, that the fungus on the bread helped keep off infections. Judit’s grandmother in the alleys had taught her this, but she had forgotten, and now explained a great physician had exposed the fact to her.

After the cauldron was removed, most of the warders went off to their own dinner of meat and potatoes in another building. Only four were left on duty, two playing cards in a central room and two patrolling.

“What is it they drink?” asked Hilde.

“A venom,” said Judit. “I, too, have tasted it. Unlike the wines of my own country.”

Judit took Hilde by the hand through the many large mirror-like white rooms, on which now late afternoon was gathering from the high barred windows that showed nothing but the closing sky.

Hilde stared at the mad people in still wonder. She was so shocked, so wrecked, that now her capacity for fear was virtually gone. She had entered a translucent state, as human things sometimes do when they lose their personalities. Everything that had happened to her seemed to have happened to another. All the world was alien and illogical and this piece of it no more so than the rest. She wanted nothing, except perhaps eventually to sleep. She was glad of Judit’s company and seemed to have known her countless years.

Several of the mad acknowledged Judit, and some even bowed or curtseyed to her. But others were too busy. One was an insect and waited in her web for flies and another was talking to spirits or invisible people. One crawled in a circle around and around.

In perhaps the third room a man had been tied to the wall by a thong about his throat. He wept ceaselessly and his neck was raw from trying to pull free. Judit went to him and wiped up his tears with her long hair, which no more existed. A second man was in a mad-shirt, and he rolled along the floor, bit
ing at the straw and making strange hoarse barks. The warders had beaten his legs on their patrol.