The Secret Book of Paradys (92 page)

Leocadia experienced the sharp sour champagne, partially digested, creeping back into her mouth. She swallowed it, and walked around the canvas to its back.

There, tilted over, was the head and hair of Asra, known as Leocadia had known the naked form.

Something horrible had happened with Asra’s head. Its eyes bulged and showed white. Between the lips was wedged a tube of brilliant orange paint, it had been squeezed to poison and to choke. Orange dribbled from the nostrils and the ears out into the silky fleece of hair.

Leocadia bent double and fire burst from her belly.

Far away, as this happened, she heard a tremendous crash, the roots of the house exploding.

As she stood up, wiping her mouth, and fell again and got up again, holding to the wall, a renewal of the sound of pursuit – the herd – drove up to the house, snorting and thundering on all the stairs.

The attic door bounced open.

It was like a party trick. For there they all were. Pir and Jacqueline and Claude Ful, and behind them Nanice and the peculiar Monsieur Saume. And then four men in white, who moved forward into the room.

Jacqueline began to shriek, as if she had been paid to do so.

Leocadia ignored her. The men in the white coats came right up to Leocadia.

“Now, now,” said one fawningly.

“Poor Asra, it’s what she feared,” said Claude.

And Nanice exclaimed, “I warned you all – she’s mad.”

They had broken in the door below, and somewhere was the note of a police siren, rushing to contend with the door alarm.

“Oh, no police,” said Nanice. “Our family name –”

Leocadia discerned a stinging in her arm, like the pincers of an angry beetle. She looked and saw the needle drawing away. The room wheeled and flew up into the dark.

After Van Orles and Saume had gone, sunset bloomed on the walls of Leocadia’s room, deepening the colors of the broken ship that spilled glass and fruit.

On impulse Leocadia had painted a few shells into one corner of the picture, an insulting gesture, as if to overinform the watcher that this was the
sea
.

The room of pale gray was very plain, the furniture comfortable but modern, therefore unsumptuous, a large couch, small tables, a bed with a fearful plastic underlay. In the bathroom the fixtures were white and functional, and the floor was laid with stark black and white tiles, which leapt like rats at her blurred morning eyes.

Leocadia went to the door of the room, which opened. Past eight o’clock, or whenever presumably darkness came, the door did not open.

In the corridor was a hygienic nothingness.

Leocadia stepped to the elevator, which bore her seamlessly down to the garden.

The garden was a long slope of lawn, the grass seared by summer. A birdbath without water mocked the sky. At the bottom of the lawn stood a summerhouse, with curious windows of the shades of cinnamon and milk. Beyond, trees marked a boundary. A gravel walk led away, toward the crumbling biscuit buildings of the old asylum, as unlike the Residence as was possible. Black windows stared from those tall blocks, and copper pipes protruded from the shortbread walls. Between these monoliths and the modern site, an ancient hothouse, broken, held the corpse of an enormous grapevine, the black and withered grapes mummified upon it.

Huge outer barricades secured the entire complex. Within the labyrinth, you might wander as you wished, unable, ultimately, to get out.

Leocadia walked down to the summerhouse in the brazen glow. On a bench sat Mademoiselle Varc, a madwoman, who always mistook Leocadia for someone from her past.

“Have you brought my fan?” demanded Mademoiselle Varc.

“I’m sorry. It’s been mislaid.”

“Tssk,” said Mademoiselle Varc. She had wispy white hair piled unsuccessfully upon her head, a white shawl. She was a White Queen, and twice as crazy.

“There goes the sun,” said Leocadia.

“Goodbye!” cried Mademoiselle Varc, waving.

The sun eased behind the walls of the mo.

dern block.

“You’re late,” said Mademoiselle Varc.

“I’m sorry.”

“Soon the police will be here.”

As dusk came, wardens stole through the garden, shepherding inmates back to their rooms. Everyone went quietly, for they were always fairly demure. No need for needles, or truncheons.

“The police – yes.”

“I miss the sunset,” said Mademoiselle Varc. “It used to be so lovely. But now it takes only a moment or two, as in India, you know.”

The sun vanished. A bat flew over the compound, exquisite wild thing, ignorant of barriers.

Then a uniformed man came walking up the gravel way. He raised his hand to the two women.

“Time to go in, ladies.”

“You know what it is,” said Mademoiselle Varc, taking Leocadia’s arm and hurrying her back up the lawn.

“No.”

“It’s that the trees come alive after dark. They stump about the garden and catch anyone who’s abroad. They tear them limb from limb, and eat them.”

“How terrible,” said Leocadia.

“Yes, it is.”

She had woken in that bed, that sanitary bed with the plastic underlay, which creaked as she moved, making her think for a moment she lay in a hammock. The room rocked, certainly, but this was the aftereffect of the drug they had injected into her. And as she remembered that, she remembered it all.

A couple of minutes later the door opened, and a friendly dark-clad young woman entered with a tray of breakfast. Rolls and conserves, fruit, coffee, and a little pot of tea.

“I take vodka with my breakfast,” said Leocadia, from the bed.

“I’ll fetch you some from your refrigerator, mademoiselle.”

And sure enough, she went into an alcove and returned with a bottle and a tall glass. “It’s nice and cold, mademoiselle. The way you like it. Anything you want can be ordered and kept there. And there’s a heater, besides, for making hot drinks.”

“This isn’t a hotel,” said Leocadia. The girl smiled nicely.

Leocadia got out of bed, and the room gradually righted itself. There was the bathroom, black and white and clean as disinfectant.

When she emerged, the attendant was gone.

As she ate a roll and drank her vodka, Leocadia explored the confine. She did not try the door, which she assumed would be locked. (It was not.)

On one wall was a shelf of books, which in turn, at the press of a switch, gave on an alcove also lined with books. These were her own, it seemed, or most of them. She saw at once there were new titles, volumes on art and design, current novels, treatises on animal and human behavior.

At the other end of the room, beyond the bed and the sitting area, was a broad space. An easel leaned against the wall, and three canvases, unprepared, beside it. Leocadia’s worktable stood by, loaded with paints and accessory impedimenta. The light was excellent, windows on both sides of the room, and a light source above the painting space, nearly as good as the attic.

Leocadia went to both the windows.

The one beyond the bed looked out across the slope of garden to the summerhouse. Behind that were the trees, and then the vague shapes in sunshine of colossal block buildings, utterly square in form, indefinably blind, like a deserted factory – or a prison.

The window at the other end of the room showed only a high wall, but it was grown with blackish ivies, not unpleasant.

She tried the windows. Each gave easily, admitting light and air and the song of crickets and birds.

The distance to the ground was three stories. Too far to jump.

She knew at once that Nanice had had her restricted in some institution, but she was not aware exactly of what kind.

She considered dead Asra. Could Leocadia even be sure that she had seen such a thing? Was it some obscene jest, or the result of some tablet slipped into the poor champagne?

No. It must be real. What other excuse for her confinement here?

She thought of the dead Asra with a combination of revulsion and rage.

Leocadia was supposed to have killed Asra.

But what had happened, in fact? Who had done it?

Asra had been able to enter the house as she wished, since Leocadia had not blanked out her recognition on the door. But thereafter Asra must have let in whoever it was that attacked her. Was it some other lover, or only some maniac?

The police had obviously been fobbed, or bought off. There would have been enough money for that.

Perhaps because of the drug that had been given her, or other more insidious medicines administered in food or sleep, through the medium of light and sound, Leocadia did not at this point decipher that Asra had been specifically murdered in order to cast blame upon Leocadia.

Presently, an envelope of plastic paper came through a slit in the door. She impatiently opened it.

A small printed slip fell into her hand. Someone hoped she had spent a restful night and enjoyed her breakfast. The music panel beside her bed, which would bring her whatever music she selected, would also inform her of the time. At fourteen, some of her doctors would be coming to see her.

This friendly note was not signed.

Leocadia dialed the time on the panel. Thirteen – one o’clock.

In a closet off the bathroom she found some of her own clothes – a selection, but nothing dressy for the evening or dinner.

When she was dressed, had brushed her hair, and had used her makeup – located in a drawer of the dressing table near the window – Leocadia sat on the couch to wait.

Probably, they were punctual.

There were four of them.

They wore smart urbane suits, nothing clinical, and Dr. Van Orles sported a pastal cravat, Dr. Leibiche had a monocle. Dr. Duval wore his hair rather long, with a mustache. Dr. Saume, unfortunately for him, was as she remembered.

They were all ugly, squat men, not obese but having the look of partially inflated balloons. As they dressed in the fashionable pre-century style, just so they had kept old-fashioned unsightlinesses, of teeth in the case of Saume, warts and pimples in the case of Leibiche.

They sat in a semicircle on the three low chairs, with Dr. Duval draped on the other end of the couch.

Then, in a dreadfully personal, insolent gesture, Saume leaned forward and felt Leocadia’s pulse.

She allowed this, but when he leaned nearer with some sort of glass to stare into her eyes, she pushed him back.

“Now mademoiselle, we only want to see how you are.”

“Angry,” said Leocadia. “What else would you expect?”

Perhaps they had expected fright?

“Oh, but there’s nothing to be concerned at,” said Duval, his hair sliding and slipping about like spilled unguent. “Indeed, you
shouldn’t
concern yourself. You must try to be as quiet as you can.”

“I was drugged and abducted. Why should I be quiet?”

Saume cleared his throat. He announced, with the gentle gravity of a father who must be stern with a child for its own sake: “Mademoiselle, a fearful thing has been done. A murder has been committed.” And then, a phenomenon occurred, a hellish glare seemed to spring up around Saume, a sort of spotlight. A sign of impending ills.… “You must understand,” he
snarled, “only the intervention of your cousins has permitted your enclosure here, at the Residence. Otherwise it would have been the
jail
. Your sentence would have been severe. But under the circumstances, and with the proper evidence we have been able to gather on your critical state of mind, we are able to shelter you here. And here, of course, we may hope to cure you. One day, you may go free.”

Leocadia had conquered fear in childhood. But it is a fact with fear that it tends to return in other guises and must be fought off again and again. Eventually, through dint of effort, it may find some means to throw you down into the abyss.

She clenched her hands, but then undid them, seeing all the beady eyes, and the extra eye of the monocle, glinting on her.

They had told her they were doctors, and that she was “sheltered” in the Residence. She had dimly heard of it. A building that rose above Paradis, in the hills, safely out of the environs of the City. The lunatic asylum.

The glare still shone about them. Was it some trick of the sun, or some trick of theirs? Or a warning from her own mind?

She was in the Madhouse, but now it was not even a hospital, but a professed
House
.

She said, “So I killed Asra?”

“You will have blanked the act from your brain, mademoiselle,” said Leibiche. “This is common.”

“It may be a hopeful sign,” added Van Orles. “Indicating that you feel remorse for the deed.”

Leocadia, used to saying what she thought, stayed herself. “You said I killed Asra. How did I do it, when I was with so many people at the Surprise?”

The glare fastened on Van Orles and blazed.

“But it was before you left for the restaurant, Leocadia.”

“Oh, I see. How sensible.”

Leocadia beheld then all the counters of the game lying before her, but it would be a while longer before she set them into their true positions. Before she drew the obvious conclusion.

Hungry for all the spoils of Uncle Michelot’s death, Nanice and the cousins, perhaps even those two reckoned to have been made up, had had to prove Leocadia incapable of inheriting. And Asra – stupid, petty, pretty,
living
Asra – had died for their convenience, the stepping stone to topple Leocadia down. They had killed her, had her killed. Orange paint, and cold blood.

Confronted by the four doctors, Leocadia saw at last that she was sunk into deep water. The light glare faded.

She glanced at the easel, the waiting canvases, and said with a deadly compunction, “What am I supposed to do here?”

“Everything you wish, mademoiselle. Don’t imagine there are any harsh measures. The old techniques were often crude, but they are long gone.” Saume nodded.

“We shall,” said Duval kindly, “simply take care of you.”

“Talk to you,” added Van Orles, “observe your progress.”

“You’ve lived a life that has placed upon you,” said Leibiche, “terrible unconscious strains. Once these are eliminated, we shall make headway.” His monocle and all his warts and spots flashed like sequins in a smile.