Beauty

by Sheri S. Tepper

  I’m crying. Janice is calling me to breakfast. I’m not hungry. It’s Christmas, but beauty is dying. We’re gobbling up the world. I don’t ever want to be hungry again.

  June 1992

  Graduation. At first I didn’t think I’d go, but I did. Bill and Janice came, too. We all wore those silly hats and the rented gowns and paraded up to get a piece of paper which isn’t even really our diploma. We’ll get that later in the mail, after the office checks to see we don’t owe any money or library fines or anything. So, big deal, I thought, that’s over, so now what will I do? I got a phone call from Barry Gryme. He wanted to know if I was old enough yet, and I told him no, I am only seventeen, and I don’t go out with married men anyhow (Janice found out he was married), and he said he was divorced.

  July 1992

  I bought another one of Barry’s books, to see if I could read it all the way through. I got about a hundred pages into it and then I had to stop.

  I’ve seen people die. I saw the goldsmith Papa put in the dungeon, when he was almost dead. He had been my friend, and I saw him when they took him out, saw his bones showing through his skin, and the sores on him, and the places the rats had chewed him. I saw a thief whipped to death once. I’ve seen men hanged. It’s horrible, seeing that, but not as horrible as this book, because in this book, you’re supposed to like seeing it, like reading what happens to the people. You can tell the way it’s written you’re supposed to kind of lick it up, like something juicy.

  [We tried again. She was in such a downcast mood, we thought she might hear us, but she didn’t. I’m considering sending Puck through to her. She knows him, and possibly she could accept him without headlines resulting: CALIFORNIA GIRL SEES CREATURE FROM OUTER SPACE.

  Israfel says be patient just a little longer. I have just about had it with Israfel!]

  Christmas 1992

  A letter came for me, from Jaybee. I’d almost succeeded in forgetting Jaybee. The letter was gibberish, but frightening gibberish, and it was illustrated with photographs.

  At first I couldn’t tell what the photographs were. They looked like abstract art, fascinating compositions, dark, light, black, white, with ribbons of red. Then I saw that the dark was shadow, the light a woman’s breast, the ribbon of red … well, it was blood, wasn’t it? You could see the knife, the edge of it, making a design against the nipple. I began to make out what all of the photographs were, flesh, manacled flesh, cut flesh, an eye, half open, staring unbelievingly into the lens, lips which looked swollen with desire until you saw they were bitten half through.

  If you turned them upside down, they were fascinating abstracts. Only when you looked at them closely could you see what was really happening. They were mostly pictures of one woman. Sometimes pictures of several. Well, I knew about that kind of thing. I’d taken a psychology course at school. Knowing about it didn’t make it less sick, less hateful. I burned them. I didn’t know what else to do!

  The pictures somehow reminded me of Barry Gryme. Last month he called me to ask if now that I’d started college I was old enough to go out with him. I told him I didn’t think I’d ever be old enough, and he laughed. He said he needed to know what I meant, would I just have coffee or a beer with him, so I said yes, I’d have a beer with him between classes the next day.

  He showed up, which kind of surprised me. Seeing him sitting there, I tried to switch gears, tried not to be just a college girl, tried to be me, Beauty, someone who knew things he would never really know. He’s not bad-looking. He is a charming, funny man. He’s full of little jokes and amusing stories. Finally, he asked me what I’ve got against horror writers.

  I said there was real horror in the world. Disease and starvation and torture. I said we needed to feel revulsion for these things, needed to be galvanized into action against them and against all poverty and pain and injustice, but that his books merely made us accustomed to horror, as a recreation.

  He wasn’t listening. He was looking at my face, at my shape, smiling a little smile to himself, his head cocked. He was thinking about going to bed with me.

  I stopped talking. After a moment, he said, well, his books were popular; they made a lot of money, which bought a lot of nice things; people liked being scared to death, so why not?

  One of the teachers came by just then and greeted him by name. Barry got up to go speak with him about some seminar he was doing.

  I sat there, wondering why not. I knew there had to be a reason, but I couldn’t say what it was. Maybe it was that I knew the world was going to end fairly soon and he didn’t. All his horror was going to come true. Here people were, bustling around, speaking of the dangers, creating committees and movements to Save the Whales, Save the Forests, Save the Rain Forests, Save the Condor. How could these people become what I had seen? But they would.

  They would become habituated to horror. They would read it, see films of it. They would soak it up. It would deaden the sense of terror they needed to stay alive. They would catch a kind of leprosy of the spirit, an inability to feel. I mean, I’ve seen some of that already. They had a terror they call the Holocaust, and because people are so determined it mustn’t happen again, they keep banging on it and banging on it until people have stopped paying attention. The more you talk about it, the oftener you see it, the more it loses its power to shock, its power to disgust.

  And in the end, unable to feel terror, mankind will go, we will all go down, down, down to happyland.

  “Thank you very much for the drink,” I said to him, when he returned to the table. “I’m sorry I couldn’t explain better what I meant, but I don’t believe you know what horror is.”

  He got a teasing smile on his face and reached for my hand. I whipped it back, as I would have whipped it from the hand of Death himself. He looked in my face and whitened at what he saw there. I was surprised that he, writing what he does, seemed not to have seen real terror before.

  [Jaybee Veolante. Barrymore Gryme. Israfel reads and peers as I do and turns away, sickened. We have already sent Puck, telling him to stay out of sight. We tell ourselves not to panic, that these men may be merely men, not creatures of the Dark Lord, that they may be attracted to her for her physical beauty alone. Israfel has stopped telling me to be patient.]

  New Year’s,

  January 1, 1993

  Outside the window I hear singing in the street. A drunk, I think, on his way home from a twenty-four-hour celebration. I am not going to the window to see. I am afraid to go to the window. Instead, I sit here in the Wisdom Street house with Father Raymond’s book resting on the table, one bloody hand holding it in place while the other plies the pen and mops at my nose, trying to make it stop bleeding. I think it may be broken.

  I am writing to keep from screaming.

  Bill is dead. I don’t know exactly where Janice is; she said she was going to visit friends somewhere over the holiday and won’t be home until day after tomorrow.

  Bill has … had a gun somewhere. I went looking for it and came upon my cloak and boots and this book instead. It was too late for the gun anyhow.

  Short recess there to wash off some of the blood. This is all so stupid and terrible.

  Bill and I were having a quiet New Year’s Eve. Almost midnight, someone knocked on the door, and Bill went to open it. Jaybee came in, looked at me, and said, “I’ve come for you, sweetie.”

  I could tell he was drunk. Bill got in front of me and said, “Here, now, Jaybee. Let’s talk about this.” That’s all he had time to say.

  Jaybee reached out and snapped…. Just that. Bill’s body was there on the floor. Jaybee didn’t even change expression. Then Jaybee knocked me down and pulled off my clothes and hit me and raped me. He kept turning me over, coming at me from the front, then from the back, over and over. I fainted, finally. At least, I don’t remember anything for a while. Then he went away. He took Bill’s body with him, wrapped up in a blanket, like laundry. The last thing he said when he left was, “Thank me nicely for cle
aning up the place, sweetie. I’ll be back in the morning.”

  [Puck has to have arrived by now! Oh, why did we wait so long? He must he there. He must!]

  Sweet, kind Bill. Dear little man. Oh, he loved it here where he could dress in lace and silk and satin and velvet. He would put on a recording and dance, all dressed up in his heels and stockings and smooth, slick underwear. I gave him teddies for Christmas gifts. Teddies and lace panties and garter belts. He was so kind to me. When I cried because I was lonely, he told me stories to make me laugh. When I cried out at the future of the world, he told me nothing was certain, not even death, and I should never give up hope.

  He was the size of a child. He had delicate little wrists and ankles, a thin little neck, like a tiny woman. He was strong for his size, but he was tiny! Jaybee broke his neck with one blow of a great ham hand, broke it and laughed, and then kicked him where he lay.

  I don’t remember very well what I did right after Jaybee left. I hunted for the gun; I’ve said that. I found the book, and Mama’s box, and my cloak. The warrant on the usurer was there, and the emeralds. The box and the cloak almost pushed themselves into my hands, as though someone were actually handing them to me.

  Then anger came, out of nowhere, like a fever. I shook with it, burned with it, bathed in it, soaked it up, wanting nothing else. All I want to do is kill him!

  I came to myself crouched over the book here. Anger will have to wait. I’m too sick and weak to plan vengeance, let alone execute it. My nose is battered. There are great bruises on my face. I think one or two ribs are cracked. And the pain in my groin feels as though he pushed a knife up me. I’m bleeding two places down there, too.

  I have to get myself together. I have to calm down. To calm down I have to go home, really home. I need quiet to think in.

  Something made me start thinking of home, like someone whispering memories in my ear. Maybe it’s because I need to escape. Jaybee said he would come back, and I know he will. If stay here, he’ll find me. He’s inescapable.

  So I can’t stay here.

  LATER:

  The boots were in my hand. I couldn’t remember picking them up, but there they were. They hadn’t worked before, but now? Only it wasn’t before, was it? It was future, not past. Now? I didn’t know. I thought, maybe they will work. I put them on. I put on the cloak. I put the book in the pocket, and Mama’s box.

  I went to the window and pressed my eye to the slit in the curtain. There were some people out there, milling around, singing drunkenly. Jaybee was standing on the corner watching my windows, an expression of amusement on his face. I could read that face. He intended to do it again. As soon as the people moved away, he planned to come back in here.

  I fail to find Grumpkin. On the shelf of my closet were the boy clothes I had arrived in. They went in one pocket and Grumpkin in the other. He hung there, paws and head protruding, wondering what was happening, growling a little as he caught my mood. As we had arrived together, so we would depart together.

  I had just fastened the cloak when the knocking started: a soft, insistent, teasing knock on the door. I stood in a corner, paralyzed. He called me. “Beauty?” Softly, sweetly. “Beauty.”

  Sickness and terror rose in my throat and Grumpkin moaned in his throat, almost a snarl. “Shh,” I told him. “Be still Grumpkin, my cat.”

  “Beauty?” Jaybee called again. “Let me in or III break down the door.” He laughed, a liquid, bubbling laugh, like molten lava, molten lead, searing in its vile heat. “I’ll huff, and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your house down!”

  He would. I knew he would, but I couldn’t move. He would huff, he would puff, he would blow my house down. All my safety he would rip away. He liked to do that. I leaned down and touched the boots, but still waited, as though I had to see him do it. No. It was because I was so afraid the boots? wouldn’t work. Until I had tried and failed, I could hope. Once I had tried and failed, there would be no hope.

  He kicked in the panel of the door with a splintering crash. His hand came through the hole, releasing the latch. Then he was in, grinning, whispering, “Beauty? Beauty?”

  “Go!” a voice said in my ear.

  He didn’t see me! He went past me and didn’t see me! He went through the living room into my bedroom. I heard the closet door slam against the wall. He was calling, “Beauty, Beauty, Beauty,” as though he was calling a dog or cat. “Don’t make Jaybee mad,” he sang, like a spell, like an enchantment. But he didn’t find me so he became angry, angrier still as he searched everywhere.

  “Go!” said the voice again.

  I tiptoed toward the broken door. Behind me I heard crashing and breaking. Anything I might have treasured, he would wreck. I heard the shattering, the bellows of rampaging fury.

  I got out, onto the sidewalk, onto the lawn. Someone had heard the noise and called for help, for there were sirens at the end of the street.

  “Boots,” I whispered softly, praying I had not miscalculated, “take me home.”

  I took a step. A whirlwind bent down to take me, and I heard Jaybee running past me on the walk. The world spun and dizzied. I was standing on a street corner I recognized, not a block from the house. There was a newsstand beside me and the papers in it were dated August 13, 1981. Only ten years. I trembled. It was probable Jaybee could not find me here, but it was a long way from where I wanted to be. Grumpkin meowed in the pocket of my cloak. Someone coming along the street looked at me, then away, then back again, as though they saw me but not quite. Jaybee hadn’t seen me because of the dark, the shadows. In the daylight, he would have.

  “Go,” whispered the voice, gently.

  “Boots,” I whispered again, taking another step.

  I was on another street corner, in the midst of a huge crowd. Soldiers were marching in the street. People were screaming and throwing paper. “What year is it?” I asked a man from behind him, hoping he would not turn to answer. He gave me the answer over his shoulder.

  “Nineteen forty-five,” he cried. “Nineteen forty-five.”

  “Boots,” I sighed.

  The next stop was in the early years of the century, then the century before. Each time the boots surged more strongly upon my feet, and I knew that as I went back, the power grew stronger and stronger. There had been none of it in the twenty-first, and little enough in the twentieth. By the time I reached the sixteen hundreds it was strong enough to carry me the rest of the way home. When I said “Boots,” there was only wild wind and bent time and the shriek of ghosts sucking all the air away. I gasped. There was nothing to breathe. Everything was dark and bloody red inside my eyes, and then only dark.

  [And then only dark, thank God. We stood looking down at her, only now beginning to breathe again. “Is she all right?” asked Israfel, leaning down to put his hand on her breast. Can he feel what is there, inside? “She looks …she looks drawn very fine.”

  “We need to get her to Chinanga,” I told him. “To the place of safety we planned for her! Now she’ll go to find her mother, and all will be well If her mother is still there!”

  “Oh, Elladine’s still in Chinanga,” said Israfel. “So far as she’s concerned, no time has passed at all I wish Beauty didn’t look so tired.”

  “She’s been through hell,” I snapped at him. I leaned down and smoothed the hair back from her brow. Beauty. My beauty. Poor child.]

  15

  SAINT SERAPHIA’S DAY,

  YEAR OF OUR LORD 1350

  I wrote the last few pages when I woke up at the first light of dawn, on a weedy road looking up at the hedge of roses, now some sixty or eighty feet high. When I sat up, I felt dizzy and weak, but the feeling passed, so I pulled out the book and wrote of Jaybee’s wrecking the house and my escape while I could still remember everything. It gave me something to do and stopped my wanting to scream or run or do something else loud and foolish. I wrote until I was too tired to write anymore, then I lay back down for a while, the cloak tight around me, and did not wake aga
in until the sun was halfway up the sky, I dreamed someone came and told me I looked tired, smoothing the hair away from my forehead. Perhaps it was my mama.

  When I awoke the second time, I saw the cat’s-head outcropping of stone not far down the road. Beyond that pinnacle was the hill where we had gathered flowers when I was a child, where I had first met Bill and the others. To my left was the old well we called the shepherds’ well, where the flocks were watered on their way to market in East Sawley. Nothing looked the same, and yet everything looked familiar—oddly familiar, as though I had only remembered it wrongly. The pinnacle was too short, the hill too low. The trees were too huge, too vast. There were no trees like these, anywhere, anytime. I leaned against one of them, feeling the scratchy roughness of the bark. No. There had been trees like these, once. It was just that I hadn’t seen them for a very long time.

  I slipped off the boots and rose to my feet, putting one hand toward the hedge to help myself and withdrawing it with a howl of pain. The rose-wall was furred with thorns, small ones and large, an upholstery of needles. The four-petaled pink blooms were sweetly fragrant, though the scent was faint, more like a smell remembered than one present, like an old sachet, left long in a linen drawer, reminiscent. I turned to see an old horse grazing nearby, one eye watchfully on me. When I moved, he turned to stare at me, ears forward, not yet sufficiently surprised or frightened to move away.

  I played games in my head, saying words to myself to see if I knew what they meant. Retreat. Regroup. Realize. Resume. The horse whickered at me, coming forward with its neck stretched out, nostrils wide. I put an arm across his back and together we walked away from the hedge. When I looked back, I was unable to see the top. It seemed to arch away from me at the height, and the farther I walked, the taller the green mass stretched into the sky.

  Under the cat’s-head stone, I searched for my fortune. There were flowers growing between the stones, and a silver-leafed shrub grown well down among the rocks I had used to stop the hidey-hole. It was clear I had returned some little time after I had gone. The rocks had to be levered out with a dead branch, and they came unwillingly, bound about by roots. Inside the hollow was a scattering of coins and gems, but no sign of the leathern bag that had contained them. A mouse, I thought, finding signs about: a whole company of mice. I picked the coins and jewels up and put them into my sack, feeling here and there for the warrant I had left behind. Parchment, it had been. To a mouse as goodly a chewable as a leather bag! Then something rustled under my hand and I pulled the parchment out, dry and whole, not badly stained, nibbled only at the edges. Perhaps the small creatures had not liked the flavor of the ink.