by Tanith Lee
“Why?” Valmé said. She was like a dumb thing given the ability to talk by accident.
“What you’ve thought of me – you were mistaken. I love you, Valmé. Always and only you. Let me come in.”
“No,” she said, but vaguely. “This is some joke.”
“Don’t make me offer my confession here, on the landing.”
“What confession?”
“Valmé,” he said, and laughed at her and guided her gently into the room, and closed the door to shut them inside. They were before the mirror. He noticed how they reflected in it, upon the misty gleam of the canal and the passing boats, the boatmen and their passengers visible, these irrelevancies superimposed backward upon the reality of the chamber and its two lovers.
There, innocently enough, he told her, he confessed what he had arranged, and why. The trap to take her. And if he did not confess that he had once possessed Yshtar, that was kindness, not cowardice. Valmé need never suffer that sting. He could now atone for it for the rest of their lives together.
“But you’re saying to me,” she eventually murmured, after he had repeated, in various forms, the truth of the bargain and the charade, over and over, conceivably twenty ways, “that you and she are nothing to each other?”
“I owe her my happiness, if she’s brought you to a revelation of need for me. I’ll be in debt to her forever. But nothing else. It was all for you. A wicked game, concocted in desperation. My darling, how I’ve hurt you. Can you forgive me?”
“Oh,” she said, “yes.”
He held her then before the mirror. He took joy in her thinness, her sad hair. He knew that he was their balm; an infallible healer, his touch could cure all.
When she pushed at him a little he let her go, and led her to a chair. She sat down and said, “This is a surprise to me,” as if nothing much had happened. Truly a shock, how terribly he had shocked her – he saw it like a physician.
“Allow me,” he said.
“Please,” she said, so muffled it was inaudible, he thought he read her lips, “I must be alone. I must – will you go now, Michael?”
He did not know for a moment what he should do. Then he saw, beneath the flimsy wrack of wires and tatters she had become, the vestige of her strength, which he had loved and respected, and which had so discommoded him, returning. And he was glad, for now he had brought it on, was its fount, and need be averse to it no longer. Alone – yes. She would want to enhance herself as best she could for him. She would need time for her recovery, for the lessening smart of happiness burning like a warm fire after snow.
“Then, I’ll leave you. Allow my man to put in some things I brought – a few savories, some good wine. I’ll come back at six.”
“Yes,” she said. “At six.”
He went down the stairs, only slightly put out. He had expected something else, but given the circumstances, anything had been likely. In seven hours he would be with her again. He was a villain. He deserved to be kept waiting.
If startled by an apparition, Yshtar did not show it. Valmé had gained access to the actress’s dressing room during the late-morning rehearsal. There they had placed a chair for her – the room itself was locked in the maid’s absence. Now she sat on the chair, a figment of darkness, and stared at Yshtar in a detached yet feverish way. “Did you suspect the porter is susceptible to bribery?” asked Valmé. “You’d better know he is.”
“But he would understand,” said Yshtar, “that you painted my portrait, and might therefore be permitted to seek me. How can I be of service, mademoiselle?”
Valmé rose. There in the corridor, at the ends of which other doors were now opening and shutting, young women darting to and fro, Valmé blurted, “He came to me with a lie. He assured me that you and he are no longer anything to each other. What do you say?”
“One moment,” said Yshtar mildly. She unlocked her door, and beckoned Valmé inside. A huge vase dominated the room, bursting with flowers. Amid the paraphernalia of drama there had begun to be the symbols of wealth.
“Michael Zwarian,” said Valmé.
“Yes,” said Yshtar. “Do please sit down again. I’ll tell you without delay. As he will doubtless have stressed, Monsieur Zwarian and I have only been allies. He was kind enough to extend to me some patronage. Our arrangement was of a business nature. In regard to you, mademoiselle, I’m afraid he was so determined to acquire you, he played the oldest trick. He made you jealous. And I was the accomplice, a piece of acting I performed for a good friend.”
“I don’t believe you,” said Valmé.
“Of course not. You love him, mademoiselle, and suppose all women must do the same. This is the common mistake of the lover. But I’m a businesswoman, mademoiselle. I daren’t let my heart rule my head. It was a naughty game. But if it’s brought you to your senses – then excellent! I apologize most sincerely for any pain or anger I had to cause you. But Monsieur Zwarian is charming, virtuous, and estimable. You’ve been very fortunate in winning the regard of such a man. One who would go to such lengths to have you.”
Valmé stood on the floor of the dressing room like a lost child.
“No,” she said, “it’s absurd.”
“I can,” said Yshtar, “offer you proof that I’ve no connection in the romantic way to monsieur.”
Valmé looked at her. Valmé’s eyelids fluttered convulsively as if she might faint or be overcome by nausea. She said thickly, “What proof?”
“Tomorrow afternoon I shall be in the company of Monsieur de Villendorf. You’ve heard of him, I expect, a great patron of the arts. He’s at his City house for the winter. He and I … I needn’t, I think, offer particulars.”
“So you’ve taken another lover.”
“No, mademoiselle. He and I have been intimate some while. And tomorrow there’s an excursion in the delightful boat he has had built, in the classical mode, and frivolously called Antigone. We’ll pass your very window, mademoiselle. You may see for yourself.”
Valmé said, “You never loved Michael Zwarian.”
“Never. And for him – though he was never so indecorous or unkind as to speak to me at length on your peerlessness, you alone are of interest to him.” Yshtar smiled. “You were liberal enough to call me beautiful. But there are many other qualities that inspire passion. He has his own beauty, and doesn’t need mine.”
Valmé cast at her a strange, long look. It was of a hatred so deep, so static – as to be unhuman. Yshtar did not seem to recognize it.
“Thank you,” said Valmé.
“If I’ve set your mind at rest, I’m truly pleased, mademoiselle. Some small token for the wonderful painting. Some slight recompense for any wrong I did you.”
On the stairs as she went down, passed by two girls of the theater sisterhood, Valmé was noticed. They grimaced and thought her an ill sign, some unlucky fortune teller or sick prostitute come as a last resort to beg money from a relative.
In the half-light they held hands, the lovers. They had drunk a glass or two of wine. It was he, as formerly, who had been vociferous. She sat passively. She had only told him one specific thing.
“But I must go with you.”
“No, no. That would fuss her. I’ll go alone.”
He had agreed reluctantly, seeing the sense in some of what she said, only nonsense in her refusal of his carriage, his servant to attend her on the journey. Her mother’s house in the hills was easy to reach. Her mother, so unwell, must have utter quiet, no novel thing to alarm, until she had recovered.
“But you’ll send for me if you’ve any need?”
She promised that she would.
It was with the news of her mother’s illness, her own necessary departure to nurse and tend her, that Valmé had put him off from the second scene of love he had determinedly planned. His restraint, his consideration now were – as always – faultless. He did not carp or agitate. He wanted only to help. He even mentioned cash, boldly, if it should be required. For herself Valmé would accep
t nothing, but on behalf of her mother, no foolish qualms must interfere. Valmé vowed that if matters came to it, she would also apply to him for funds.
And so the bed lay pristine as the windless canal under the moist hushed onset of evening. And so tomorrow and for an unstipulated number of days and nights, he could not be with her. Thus, through the falsehood of her mother’s malady, a kind of dreadful tempting of fate, she had kept him off, could continue to do so, for a while.
“But you’ll write to me, Valmé.” At first she might be too tired. He must bear with her. “Yes, how selfish I am. Then I’ll write to you, my darling.”
He had thanked God that he and she were reunited before this latest blow fell. He had been forestalled in mentioning marriage. She knew she had forestalled him. His eyes, his mouth, his manicured hands were brimmed by what he might have said and done.
She managed even to get rid of him before the stroke of ten sounded from the river churches.
Then, in the dark, she sat alone and drank the wine.
She was like the victim of a disaster, a hurricane or earthquake. She could not feel. All feeling had left her. She had been robbed of it.
For she believed in the plot they had laid, Zwarian and the actress. Their flamy flight had been a masque. Now she had been shown, the character of each made it plain. Yshtar had not enchanted him, he had not loved Yshtar. Tomorrow her proof would be on the canal, the curious boat, the party of perfect figures of which Michael was not one, disporting themselves in a crisp winter radiance.
All the agony was past. It need never have existed. Valmé was reprieved.
She stood under the scaffold like an orphan, knowing as only her kind could know, that the despairing moments of her ride toward death had been the climax of her experience, her triumph. For then she had lived. She had lived. Not cerebrally, not emphatically through the pen, the brush, the aching insensate stone and blind canvas. Not in her mind but in her body. She had been real. She had been one with all the generations of those, the billions, who had loved and suffered, that vast entity, that unison of exquisite, comprehending grief.
And none of it was left. No tumult of yearning, no unscalable mountain of desire. Zwarian loved Valmé, as usual. Everything was as it had been, in the days of unwoken boredom and unneed. He would marry her now. He would snatch her up – how could she refuse? And all her days would be dust.
Sunlight rained in the L-shaped room, finding every perch. It was the cold sun of winter that has no mass, a spirit. On the canal outside a few curious papers floated like swans, moving behind Valmé as she stared into the mirror.
She was waiting, stupidly, for the last act of her drama, for the passing of the silly boat named Antigone.
She could not have said why, or only that through this she beheld a completion, however pointless and nullified. As if, once it were done, she might retire from her stage, and cease to be.
On the bed, different from everything, lay the glass dagger.
She had taken it out of its box during the night. She had turned it in her hands. She had wanted something, some cipher for her predicament, but the dagger was not that. The sun described it as it had in the shop window, air cut sharp and bright and hard. The dagger was all she had. It resembled a memory – but of what?
Midday, and the glacial sun went over the skylight, and then the skylight faded somewhat, and the sun had slipped beyond the roof.
Valmé watched the mirror. She was there inside, and the canal, the farther bank, its buildings, bits of sky that hung between: The stage.
But Yshtar did not come, the boat did not appear, sailing out beneath the mirror’s proscenium arch.
And a wild and groundless hope stirred in Valmé – that she had been deceived. And miles down, the glory of her pain, which being life to her she had loved, that stirred. And faded. For it was all so trivial. Whatever happened or did not, the facts had been established.
And it seemed to her for a moment that there never had been any great love. They were all deceptions, of the self or another. It was only this, to live, day to day, and the forcing of illusions by eye or hand, the pretense to enormities of which no mortal thing was capable.
She turned from the mirror and went to look at them, the actual unmagical world, the truth of the water, the bank, and the sky.
On the balcony, she glanced about, bitter as a soldier whose city has surrendered. And saw, drifting toward her along the canal, all that humanity was liable to, the idiotic representation of the dream. It was the boat, modeled after some ancient dictum misunderstood and made suitable for present-day purposes only by technical jugglery. It had a type of Grecian style, a curving sickle of sail. Oars moved in the water, but they were little and out of proportion, not rowed by fairies but through some mechanical device.
At windows here and there on the farther bank people had affixed themselves, amused by the boat. The canal had just sufficient depth to bob it up.
The boat was a parody, and as such completely apt. It said everything.
As the craft wallowed nearer, Valmé made out the ten or so persons on the deck, the glitter of wine goblets, heard a chamber-music trio of musicians playing a song in spurious classical mode.
And Yshtar. The flash of white like the glass.
Seen from this slight distance drawing close, in the crowd of ordinariness and insipidity, Yshtar shone like a pearl.
Valmé remembered. The face she had portrayed. The being. Of all things, Yshtar was the reality of the dream. There she was now, encircled by the arm of a big man in furs, her de Villendorf. That was the proof she extended, but of course the proof was of another order. For Yshtar demonstrated what was possible.
So beautiful. No, Valmé had not forgotten. But she had lost her faith. Here was the miracle to open her eyes.
The actress’s furs were white for the man’s sable, he set her off as black plush had set off the gleaming crystal. The sun lit her hair into a cloud.
The artist saw and judged as only an artist could. If Yshtar’s beauty had loved Michael Zwarian, if it had determined to have and possess and keep him, whatever his plan, he could not have strayed. Not from the beauty of Yshtar. But Yshtar had let him go, not exerting herself. She was a sorceress with the power of demons and other dimensions in her grasp – but she did not bother with them. She might take up a wand of fire, instead she plied a purse.
Valmé slunk back into her cave.
The warmthless sun was bright; to any who passed, her room would be a hole of darkness, a cave indeed, with the balcony hung from it like a basket.
In the dark after the bright, the artist stood beside her ashy bed, and gazed back at the mirror on the wall.
She waited, and the confectionery boat slid into it prow first. In the mirror now she watched the dummies of the extras, the unimportant, self-important rich man, and then the beauty of the dream, the reality of the magical woman.
Yshtar was drawn slowly over the surface of the water and over the pane of the mirror. Her reflection floated behind Valmé, coming out from her side like the birth of the moon.
For moments only, the mirror would contain her. There, she slipped toward the further edge –
Valmé sprang, her hand to the bed, and up into the air. Something dazzled like a lightning. She saw what she did, and what occurred, for one split and splitting second – a shard of light, a point like clear ice entering a frozen lake – and then the tilted tear of the mirror shattered. It cracked into a hundred distortions, and triangles and orbs of glass flew off into the room.
Outside, beyond the window, there were shouts. The music ruptured and ended.
Valmé turned her head a fraction. She had an impression on the tail of her eye, as the boat drew itself from the window frame, of confusion and rushing, and she heard the high voices of women crying out. She did not go to see, although all along the opposite bank the watchers were craning forth, gesturing and squeaking. Valmé did not need to verify. The first glimpse had been enough. It had
turned to vitreous in her mind. That second when the propulsion of the glass dagger she had flung had pierced through the mirror, penetrating to the hilt the reflected left breast of the whiteness of Yshtar. And the ethereal face caught forever in a faint incredulity, stopped like the heart. And the ripple that spread from the dagger’s plummeting, the breast, the cessation, and smashed the mirror into bits.
Every one of the journals reported the death of the actress Yshtar. It was a sensation painted black. The sudden and inexplicable destruction of the young and beautiful: the sacrifice to the gods of a matchless thing.
Perhaps it was the extreme cold of the day that had killed her, and the drinking of the chilled wine, an unforeseen flaw in blood or brain – the word apoplexy could not be used in conjunction with such a woman.
“She was standing one moment on the deck of the boat, laughing with her friends and admirers, the next, without a premonition, she fell.”
“The actress made no sound,” reported the judicious Weathervane. “Her companions said she gave no evidence of feeling unwell. She looked, as ever, and as this bereft City has so often seen her, unrivaled in charm and whole-someness. The stage has lost in her perhaps a budding genius, all else aside, certainly one of its loveliest and best.”
A lesser journal, of slight circulation, reported that two or three of her fellows on the boat had noted, at the instant she was struck down, a muffled sound of breaking glass, which seemed to happen in midair.
There was not a mark upon her. Nothing had been spoiled.
Not one journal remarked upon the inevitable postmortem dissolution of the human body, the breaking of its flesh so unlike the shattering of glass or an image in a mirror. Not sudden, nor clean, not sparkling bright and of a cutting edge, having no noise but a dim murmur like the swamp, the blunt crack of a bone, the shifting down to dust.
* * *
Curio shops are wonderful things. Who would think they lead to graves? Of course they do, like everything else.
One night an astronomer was searching the skies, so high and far beyond Paradys as to bear no relation to the City, when he saw something, beheld something, out in space itself. Naturally, he had been looking for things, for planets, nebulae, after the machines of war had passed, for the machines of war had made the night sky full of other stuff, fire and flesh falling, and metal arrows of death unlike stars.
