The Secret Book of Paradys (15 page)

Water was sadness, air a vision, earth was thought. But fire, fire was the will.

Since reality and the physical world were only chaos, illusorily subdued, I did not perhaps pass through night along the ground, or through ruined halls of stone. Ascending, what did I climb but the heights of meaning? Certainly the tower had grown taller. High up in it, I was on some rarefied and open summit, where the air was thin and chimed with ice. There were no dimensions, or they were different ones … No, they were the usual ones. A bedchamber lit by a few candles, a man and a woman embracing.

I walked about them, round them, once, twice. They did not (did they?) know I was there. Hungrily they annexed each other with their mouths.

I put my arms over hers, around him, and my hands on hers – and drew them down from his body. Standing at her back, I wrested her quietly from his grasp, and when I had her, putting my mouth to her ear, I whispered, “That is over. What are you doing here?”

She opened her eyes, and looked at me with a somnambulist’s smile. Then, in the way of a peasant girl released from some temporary office, she bobbed me a silly little curtsey, and drifted at once across the room. The candlelight made lace, a bridal veil, over her hair. She vanished through the doorway, or only altogether.

He stood and looked at me, already in his shirt, a libertine’s face of arousal, the eyes of dreaming death.

“It
is
,” he said, “all one. You, or she, will do. Come here, then.”

I went to him and said, as he took hold of me, “Not for this. Only I, or you, will do for this,” and took hold of him as he had taken me.

The bed received my body like a cloud. How low the candles burned, the room seemed full of a darker sunset … In the sunset of the cloud, his weight lay on me with the heat of fire. In the hell of ecstasy, the caverns below were flame, and the river molten. Down and down, fall down with me into the underworld of red forgetful night. I am the ferryman. Lethe is all lava. My mouth is at your throat as you press your face against the pillows and your hands clench upon me –

And rising and sinking in the billows of shadow, the light was cleaved to crimson, crimson through and through, a dye never to be washed out, though the wounds of a redeemer might wash away all sins and stains. Crimson, crimson, the caves, the river, flowers and fruit and crystal and blood. Crimson the benediction; the waves, crimson, that never ended and were never begun, and were never begun or ended.

And in the morning, he lay beside me still. He was not asleep; when I kissed his skin it was only faintly cold, all the coldness fading from it. There was no pulse in the wrists, no heartbeat in the architrave under the breast. The texture of his jaw was unaltered, today it would not require a razor – The long lids of the eyes, fast shut, harboured darknesses.

A few drops of blood had spilled on the sheet. Under the left wrist, the blood had left an odd mark, but try as I would, I could not make it seem to resemble or suggest anything.

I had not failed. Things were as they must be. Antonina with Andre. Anna with Anthony. First one, now the other, was lost. To say she or he was dead was a great simplification. The exquisite taste of his blood – did I even remember it? Had she remembered the taste of mine?

I stretched myself along his body, and held him a brief while, reluctant to leave go.

But the room itself, by barely perceptible little shifts of the light, by distilled mutterings of the wood and the bed-curtains, did not permit too long an indulgence. I might grieve if I wished – surely grief was in the order of these new emotions, euphoria and dread, a bacchanal needing no wine – but not here. I must run from here, as from any place in the future where this should elect to happen. Forests, hillsides, city avenues, such a wealth of them should see me in flight from this. What aisles of woods and masonry groves of rooms would shelter me.

As I descended the tower, I recalled my agitation in Paradys, not knowing what I must feel or be or do. I had changed in more than gender. Eventually, perhaps, all these huge sensations would be worn down, or cauterised, and then must come a final act –

But not yet.

I ran along the shore. My pain tore from me like a birth. It pinned me to the earth and crushed me against the sky.

Towards evening I went over the causeway, and down into the derelict deserted village. Which had come alive.

I was not amazed to see it, the grass-grown lanes where now people walked, and the broken windows coined with lights. A shepherd drove his little flock of sheep across the slope under the trees. In the square, where only leaves had blown before, tables were set out, barrels and bottles and platters of food. Women were bringing oil lamps. Three wiry old men crouched near an open fire, one tuning a slender fiddle, one warming a drum-skin just clear of where the spits were roasting rabbits. The third worried a cloth through the notches of his pipes. It was to be a village feast. And there, a stout man in a good coat, with Oula on his arm, and a young man with bulging arm-muscles, and some gossiping wives. A handfasting, was it? Oula and her rustic swain.

I paused on the edge of the ripening lamplight. There would always be helpers. Always to hand, slaves, victims, other characters in the play. One called them up like spirits, and, more reliably than spirits, they came at a need. This – well, it was straight from the etchings and aquatints of the City, the bucolic world as seen through the eyes of Paradys.

When I moved forward, the villagers looked askance at me, but not in an unreceptive way. The stout man, Oula’s sire or uncle, came up to me, handing me a russet rose.

“For your hair, mademoiselle. Here you are, for the celebration. You’re most welcome.”

So I put the flower in my sash and sat at Oula’s table.

The beer and the sour potent wine gushed into the beakers. They crammed their mouths with food, and danced madly when the fiddle, pipe and drum struck up a wild and scrambling tune.

All around, the sheer glare of fire on faces, and in the shadows young lovers running off to the fields beyond the lanes.

A tallow moon rose.

Oula danced with her beau, who, presumably, did not care she had been deflowered by the local landowner. The beefy arms swung her round and round. Beyond them, I saw a woman suckling a baby. She looked like no one that I knew, but the child was the child who moved things, and was perhaps possessed by Philippe. Oula dashed by in a dance of skirts.

“Will you honour me?” said the stout father.

I came to my feet. He took my hand and waist, and we danced. It was a paraphrase of the intimate dances of liberty, and rough.

“The one who touched you last,” he said. “What has become of him?”

I looked up into the massive face, at its jowls which were hanging forward so earnestly, its uneasy eyes. Was it the face of the banker-baron, was it von Aaron in flighty disguise? He looked younger. He had no metallic lace at his cuffs, he smelled of garlic and tobacco.

“Become of whom?” I asked, as he bore me round in the prancing dance.

“Of
him
. Is it done? Has it taken place?”

“Possibly. If I take your meaning.”

“Dear God,” he said. He panted from the speed of the dance, and called a jolly greeting to Oula as she sped by. “We are all,” he said, between his gasps, “in the mill-race of destiny.”

“I don’t – believe in destiny.”

We plunged so fast now, both of us panted for breath.

“Believe in it. You will perceive it, for all the facts are now before you, or almost all the facts. He hates what he becomes, that is his pleasure, the hate. And to punish the cause, and to avenge it. With her, the same.”

“Are you speaking of your daughter? Of a wayward son, perhaps.”

“Dance, dance,” he cried.

A sustained and ghastly sound shot like a spear over the dancing-floor.

Everything ended. The curvetting dancers turned to stones, and the tiny band stood with its instruments aloft and voiceless, eyes twinkling with terror in the firelight where the skeletons of rabbits lingered on the spits. The drops of the lamps blinked in the scores of stares like tears.

The stout young baron had let me go.

Fear came to me, with an electrifying tingle.

“What noise was that?” I said.

“A dog,” he said, “a dog howling.”

As I walked away from him, across the burnished square, they watched me go with curious pity, and relief, with distaste, in silence.

And beyond the village? There lay the mirror tarn, and there the causeway, gaping like a bridge of bones under the moon.

I glanced over my shoulder. There were no lights among the trees, where the feast had been, and the dancing.

As my feet met the earth, a strange vitality seemed to course up into me. The dew was down. I was afraid. Oh let me feel and caress the fear. Close as a lover it clutched me.

The night pulsed with fear, all the land was in terror, but where was fear’s source?

Up among the forest trees, a pale glimmering. Had Oula run after me to be comforted? Or the ghost, that ghost of some predecessor of my own? How ethereal it was, that whiteness, yet it was neither quite human nor quite ghostly.
There, and there, threading in and out between the poles of the pine trees, there and there –

At once something leapt out, and another thing, two white bolts that flew down the incline, the distance and the dark, towards me.

Two white dogs.

I took my skirts up in my hand, and I ran. I ran towards the causeway, I screamed aloud as I did so. I had seen fear’s source. It was two white hounds, lean and long, with jackals’ pointing heads. And after them rode a figure on a white horse, clothed in white and cowled against the moon like a priestess –

Sanctuary – where was it? The ruin, the high altar of the crimson window and the white bed stained with crimson. Run, run, never look behind you.

I felt the heat of their desire upon me. I felt the teeth of the hounds rip the hem of my dress and their talons comb my flying hair.

The causeway slammed against my feet. On either side, the water like a precipice. And now, shining there, three white stretching ribbons of fire.

How fast do I run, now the Devil is after me? I am learning, but unknowingly, I have no time to tell. And she is a woman, the Devil, Princess of Darkness, clad in white. She is Antonina, hunting me – I have sold them both my soul.

I can make no noise, have no breath for it, but now I have reached the further bank. I fall against the stair to the tower door, then stumble up and rush on. I do not shut the door at my back. What good would that do?

Through the hall, the silver crucifixes staring down. I am on the inner stair. My heart is divided and beats twice at every blow. I cannot see the window, only a vertical pool of ink.

I am in the bedchamber. The bed, of course, is empty.

I hear my own breathing, like that of some dying thing. Which is apt enough.

And now I stand waiting, facing the doorway. The moon shines through the eastern window, striping the night, showing me all I will have to see. She is on the stair. She is coming towards me. She is Death.

(One day, or dark, I will slide the ruby scarab from my finger. In some graveyard, on some hill, I will find some other like myself, one who comprehends the real nature of reality. Shape-changer. Only then, and if, can I discard this horror and this appalling joy. A finish then. But not now. I am on the wheel with her. I am on the wheel with both of them and both of my selves. The snake devours its own tail. There is nothing domestic in this.)

The doorway slowly changed its shape. It glowed, and whiteness entered the chamber. In the room beyond, a dog shone like zinc, and beside it, another.

In the white cowl, the pale face, and the black eyes fixed on me.

Then she spoke.

“I am his sister. Perhaps that is obvious to you?”

In my terror I smiled. I dropped to my knees.

“I will give you my name,” she said. “Before my marriage, it was Antonina Scarabin.”

I kneeled at her feet. She came towards me, floating on her own whiteness. Andre struggled in turn towards her, deep within my flesh. She saw him in my gaze and bowed her head. She kissed my mouth, slowly and sweetly, and sank the steel of a dagger, warmer by far than her lips, into my raging heart.

She held me in her arms until I was dead, then gently closed my eyes.

A young girl with pale yellow hair was walking between the wheat fields, her hands at her sides and her eyes cast down. It was very early in the morning, the sun had only just risen, discovering in the sky tall northern hills black with pines, and lower down some black goats in a field busily feeding.

As the girl walked, a man’s voice shouted loudly to her. “Jehanine!” Jehanine hesitated, then halted. She looked over her shoulder and saw her stepfather, Belnard, riding down the track on his shaggy donkey. At once she sensed not merely trouble, but danger. A brutal, coarse man, strong as a bear, he had beaten her frequently and often abused her in small ways. He was an important person in the area. He had received his own farm and lands for past service had pleased his lord, and Belnard had even ridden with this master, twenty years ago, crossading to the Holy Land, and returned not only with scars, but with certain riches. Having a fancy for Jehanine’s mother, Belnard had wed her, though she already had a baby (Jehanine) at her breast. There-after the woman gave birth to several sons and daughters who were Belnard’s own. Of these, the favourite was Pierre. Lucently handsome (and as it transpired gifted by God) Pierre had been the joy of them all. Over the years, Jehanine’s mother grew sickly. Belnard’s proper daughters were sluts, and his other sons swaggering drunken louts like their sire. Beautiful Pierre, in whom even the lord had taken some interest, was now seventeen and gone three months to the dream-like city in the south, to be apprenticed at the studio of a great artisan. He was to become a famous painter, and a prince would be his patron. Meanwhile: