The Secret Book of Paradys (98 page)

Leocadia hit him quite hard on the hand and stood up. She moved away.

Van Orles looked happy. He presumably thought he was being teased, a preliminary.

“I mean,” said Leocadia, “something curious took place, didn’t it? The madhouse was suddenly closed down.”

“Oh, there is some story – a warder was killed, and someone disappeared. Perhaps the inmates attacked the staff for their brutish treatment. But one shouldn’t set too much store by tales.”

Leocadia held the bottle labeled
Penguin Gin
up to the window. For a moment a screaming and contorted face seemed to writhe inside it, but it was only the action of sunlight and the shadow of ivy on the wall.

“Is that all you know, or all you’ll say?” asked Leocadia.

Van Orles chuckled. He seemed to think Leocadia’s prurient intriguement was a form of foreplay. Gruesome details of the lunatics might arouse her.

“There was a rumor of a ghost. A great dark thing. Very tall, gliding through the corridors. And something about a bad winter. I can’t recall.”

“Then,” said Leocadia, “I think I’ll go out for a walk.”

“Now, now, not yet. I must perform a small check on your physical well-being.”

Leocadia turned from her worktable, the palette knife in her hand. The glare of light was around him like a halo, the warning phenomenon that had come before.

“But I am violent,” she said. “And I might not care for this small check.”

“Ah –” Van Orles stepped away. He was still smiling, the smile a daisy left behind by a retreating tide. “Now, Leocadia –”

“If you touch me,” said Leocadia, “if you come in here again alone, I will set on you.” She was tepid, easy. She had had to threaten others. Generally they accepted her terms. And so did Van Orles.

“You are being most unreasonable, Leocadia. Merely because I can’t satisfy your ghoulish curiosity about the lunatics.”

“But
I’m
a lunatic,” said Leocadia. “How can you trust yourself with me? What would the other doctors say if they knew?”

Leocadia walked to the door ahead of Van Orles and opened it. She went
into the corridor. Van Orles stood lost in the middle of the room. Leocadia threw the knife back there, so it whirled past his head. He yelped and ducked low, and his pipe fell on the floor.

“I shall have to report this,” said Van Orles.

“And also, of course, that you came to me by yourself, for how else did it happen?”

She did not want to leave him in her room, and sure enough, when she stood right back, he came hurrying out.

“You’ve turned nasty, Leocadia.”

He hastened away.

Probably, she had been ill-advised. She was not free now, and doubtless to make such an enemy was unwise.

Outside, it was hot, the sun going up to the zenith. In the summerhouse the old ones lay like spoilt seals. Thomas was not at his garden. No one was anywhere.

Leocadia looked across the grass and gravel, between the trees to the buildings.

Cries in the night – of course. The sheer misery and abjection of that place had been recorded in its stones. But she, had she now come to the hiatus, the point where she must, even physically, pass over into her new life? The low fence symbolized this.

She could kill herself. They must mean her to, leaving all the handy knives and glasses for her. But first, there was the landscape with the penguin to paint.

Leocadia walked along the fence, not crossing it.

Large chestnut trees arose, and under their canopy she came upon the spider man sitting, looking where she looked, toward the madhouse.

Seeing her, he jumped up.

“Wait,” snapped Leocadia.

He gave a wild cry. He ran, not like a spider now but a wounded hare. He rushed at the fence and sprawled across it and charged on toward the madhouse walls.

Leocadia got over the fence also, and holding up her long skirt, she ran after him grimly. Her legs were long and slim and strong; she was soon close.

“Stop,” she commanded, but he shrieked and bolted away.

He chased along the paved space under the windows.

Swearing, she caught him in both hands, letting her skirt go.

He hooted, went down, and crawled at her feet.

“I won’t,” he said. “I won’t.”

“You will,” she said. “Why are you afraid of me?”

“Weasel,” said the young man. He touched Leocadia’s sandaled foot, tore back his hand as if she burnt.

“I am not a weasel. I wish I were. Or are you supposed to be? You’re a spider.”

He glimpsed up at her face. He said, experimenting, “You look well today.”

“I am. Tell me something about that.” And she pointed at the madhouse.

“All gone,” said the young man. “They went in a night. All the doors were locked. A great wave.” He got up and bowed to Leocadia. “Your highness is so powerful. Do take care,” he said. Then he flung himself off again, racing back at the fence, away from the buildings.

Leocadia looked up at the rows of dead windows. They were now familiar. She thought she could hear a bell ringing somewhere, but perhaps this noise was only in her ear.

The crickets were silent, and the birds. The marigolds had scorched in the grass and the daisies withered.

Gone in a night. A great wave.

Shells left behind, but that was the other story.

What had gone on here?

Leocadia turned down an alley between the buildings. It was not the way she had come with Mademoiselle Varc. Yet the alley looked just the same, the deep shade, the walls and pipes.

And sure enough, the alley led into a courtyard. Here there was a stone block. It was featureless and gave no indication of its use. Three doorways (hell gates), as before.

Leocadia crossed the yard, which had no rubbish heap, climbed a short stair, pushed at the black door. It was shut, forever.

The madhouse of Paradis.

Something fluttered on the edge of her eye.

Leocadia turned and stared up. Above, in a window, stood a feminine form with bright marmalade hair.

Leocadia’s blood seemed to sink through her. A great wave … it hit her feet and vertigo made her drop her face into her hands. Then it was gone, and looking furiously up again, unsteady and sick, she beheld the window empty.

As she came back over the gravel, Leocadia saw Thomas the Warrior sitting under his Medusa, in the flower bed.

“Wait, mademoiselle.”

“Everyone talks to me now,” she said.

“You have been
there
.”

“There. Where?”

“What did you see?” asked Thomas. He was elderly and gnarled and his voice was cracked.

“What could I see? Some deserted buildings.”

“Once full,” said Thomas the Warrior.

“Gone in a night,” said Leocadia.

Did she imagine it? Was the tongue of the Medusa longer?

“You must understand. In your great-grandfather’s time. The doors were all shut. The inmates packed in for the night. But in the morning, all the lunatics had gone.”

He stopped. He looked like old men from her childhood. This annoyed her. She said, “Aren’t we all lunatics?”

“Oh, no, mademoiselle.
You
are only mad.”

“What’s the difference?”

“One day you’ll know. Or perhaps not.”

“Tell me anyway,” she said, “about the madhouse.”

“They vanished,” he said, “But not the warders. There were twenty of those. I can see them now – in my mind. All were found dead. Some were in corners and some pressed up against the ceiling like flies, stuck fast. Can you see it, too?”

“Dead,” she said.

“Yes, mademoiselle.”

“How?”

“They drowned. And they were drunk to a man. Drunk and drowned.”

“But meanwhile,” she said, “these may be lies. Why did you tell me?”

“You asked.”

“That’s no reason.”

“True. I told you so that you can see all the way around the great circle, of which you are now a part. My congratulations. Now you’re one of us.”

“No,” said Leocadia.

“Then,” said Thomas, “what are you?”

He rose and came to soldierly attention as she walked away.

The new canvases were gone. That must be the doing of Van Orles, his repayment.

The rest of her equipment – paints, brushes, knives, and rags – were still there. Even the easel. Even the brown bottle with the penguin.

Penguin Gin, it eases pain.

Nothing to paint on.

Her frustration was boiling and immense.

In one of her notebooks – on the surface of which it would be impossible to apply paint – she wrote down what the spider man had said to her, and the
words of Thomas. But not what she had seen in the window, the maiden with orange marmalade hair.

Penguin Gin, Penguin Gin, drink it up –

She poured vodka slowly.

The walls of the Residence seemed to be breathing. The gray screens of them must try to shift, and other barriers pass behind them, through them …

Beyond the window, in the sunset, the madhouse flamed.

Drunk and drowned.

She could hear the screaming, and it was night. And she knew, if she left the bed and walked to the door, it would be open. An oversight, an act of malice.

As she went across the cool floor, she was surprised that she heard the screaming still, and yet she thought,
It’s not me. I’m not mad. I hear only what is
.

She went into the corridor, belting her night robe as she walked, and got to the elevator. It worked soundlessly. Had someone fixed everything just so? Was Van Orles lying in wait? And if he was, would she kill him?

But the lift went down to the garden and no one was there.

The night was soft and fragrant, without lights except for a few vague glims high up about the Residence. And the stars, sharp as pins and claws, brighter than eyes. No moon. Leocadia could not remember seeing the moon for a long while. Had it gone away from her?

She went down the lawn, the grass crisp on her bare feet, going by the birdbath with the dregs of tea. The summerhouse was ghostly, the hothouse like a fiend, its vampire vine and smashed edges.

Across the grasses the ancient blocks were white now, as if after all a moon shone on them, or within. Yet the windows had stayed blind.

The fence was difficult – perhaps she had chosen a more awkward spot. It tore her robe.

Through the high grass, pleased, like a lion in the park. She got onto the paving and moved toward the alley she had taken last, and so reached the square with the stone block, and the girl phantom in the window.

Nothing now. Nevertheless, she located the particular pane, marked it out. Then she went up the steps, still warm from the summer day, and she thrust at the door.

Which opened.

Leocadia stole into the deserted halls of old madness.

She could see very clearly, a sort of night sight.

She could make out long passages, and rooms that led off them, and stairs ascending.

She did not mean to lose her way.

She chose a left-hand stair and moved up it. These steps were not warm at all. No, they were cold as marble. She shivered. And then she gazed upward.

High over the stair, high on the wall, a mark. A tide mark. Fluid had risen, and stood, and then drawn away. The wave. The wave that drowned. It had been here.

At the stairhead, she turned aside. She was going toward the place where, from the outside, she had seen the girl.

How cold, the building. How silent and –
stopped
. Like a clock that had used up all its time.

Everything was the same. Passages and doors opening into rooms. Bare, polished as bones.

And here was the one, the room that she had looked into from below.

Leocadia crossed the shining floor.

At the window, no one. And yet, the windowpane – She went near and examined it.

Upon the casement, like the play of winter frost, were two fine and narrow shapes, the prints of two hands. Formed in ice. A little moisture trickled from them, but only a very little.

If I’m dreaming, I can wake up now
.

But she could not.

The cries and screams had faded. There were only the handprints and the print of high tide on the walls, and the freezing stillness out of time.

She left the room quickly. She ran toward the stair and rushed down it. Fear had almost caught her up. Below too she ran, for the doorway, and dashed through it and down the steps.

Too cold.

Up the alley Leocadia flew. It was as if the madhouse might collapse on her, masonry unsafe –

She grazed her feet on the paving, and among the long grasses she fell once but jumped up and ran on.

As she managed the fence, she felt her heart beating pitilessly.

The gravel hurt. It was hot now, after the coldness. She entered the Residence and found the elevator, and it went up with her, up and up, and it took too long, but here was the corridor, so modern and pristine, without the marks of tides. She came to her room, and the door gave without fuss. She closed herself in. She stumbled to her bed, and as she lay down on it, she woke up.

Her eyes opened. She was stretched out full-length. She had been dreaming, then. But she was so cold, so chilled.

She pushed herself off the bed, and stepped over her night robe, which
was lying on the floor, with a tear in it. Her feet were sore, yet numb. She got to the door and tried it – fast shut. She had never been out.

Leocadia went into the alcove with the refrigerator. Shivering with cold, she wanted a drink, the revitalizing vodka.

She opened the refrigerator. A gust of delicious warmth poured out on her.

She saw the ice packed in, but like feathers from some glorious bed. She touched it. It was soothing, smooth, like the stone hot-water bottles that had come back into fashion. It gave off heat.

She took out and poured the vodka. Cold, as it was meant to be.

She stood by the refrigerator for warmth. It was wonderful, like a summer meadow.

She turned, to warm her back in its depths, and saw across the room a great shadow. Over two meters in height, like a black column with an aproned core of whiteness. Its elongate and fearful head was moving. Horizontal, elliptical. Daggered.