by Tanith Lee
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.
The glass dropped from Leocadia’s hand, and as it broke, she touched the light switch beside the alcove.
The lights roared on. She could not see. And then she did, and the room was empty. The night was warm and the refrigerator cold. Her feet were not sore.
But across the floor, she could still see it, the tear in her night robe the fence had made.
FIVE
Paradys
Georgie Porgie, Pudding and Pie,
Kissed the girls and made them cry.
Nursery Rhyme
“Very well, you may go. Anything to shake you out of this silly mood.”
So Madame Koster pronounced, hearing that Hilde was to go over to spend the afternoon with Angeline. Madame did not inquire into this. She was drawn and ill-tempered, had headaches. Normally she would have asked to see the invitation.
Hilde went in the Koster carriage.
Let off at Angeline’s house, she loitered until the carriage was gone. Then she found her way, with some difficulty, but with the glow of purpose on her, to the street of the large theater.
She had not thought any of her adventure through. Had not considered that one day, conversing, her mama might mention to Angeline’s mama the afternoon the two girls had been together. But then, what did that matter?
Hilde approached the theater diffidently but proudly. She had the pride of youngness, and its abashment, too.
There was an old doorkeeper by the actors’ entrance.
“What can I do for you, mademoiselle?”
“Monsieur Martin –” Even to pronounce his name was like a stab of fire to her.
“That’s right, mademoiselle. But there’s no performance. Not until later tonight.”
“I have a packet for Monsieur Martin.”
Hilde did not really grasp from where her invention had come. Some novel? But there it was. And, oddly, the doorkeeper responded. Not by asking after the packet (for example where was it?) but by looking at Hilde cunningly and crudely.
“Yes? Well, monsieur never said. Remiss of monsieur.”
“I must see him,” said Hilde, one minute a flame, and then the white of ice.
“Yes. Well. Monsieur does see a lady now and then. But usually,” — The doorkeeper rapped his coat.
Hilde did not know why. She, or her actor, should have tipped the old man, this overseer of indiscretions.
“I must –” repeated Hilde.
“Yes, yes. He’s there. Go in, then.” The overseer spat past Hilde’s pretty skirt. “I suppose he’ll settle. Later. Or not. But then, mustn’t speak ill of Monsieur. Oh, no. Up you go. Up all the stairs, then left at the top. Perhaps he’ll be waiting.”
Hilde did not comprehend any of it, not even that Monsieur
saw ladies. She did not know, of course, that Martin had come for some adjustment of costume, and that, liking his dressing room for its ambience – the cloister of the cathedral of art – he sometimes lounged about there, looking over his lines and exquisitely twisting them, pacing around and smoking. It was not often that a woman had come there to him, but once, or twice, they had.
Now Hilde climbed the horrible stone stairs, on which lay cigarette corpses, flakes of broken glass, dead flowers, clouded stains – all the evidence of vile prediction. But why should she guess?
As she rose a smell grew more dense. It was of the greasepaints the actors used and the creams whereby they got them off, also of dusty clothes that somehow stank of the history they faked. And there was alcohol and tobacco, and the incense of inner things. It was a church, in its way.
Half there, Hilde felt faint and leaned on the wall. But then she braced herself. She too was holy. Possibly it was some emanation of his that had made her into an acolyte. He had not meant it to.
She reached the top of the dark tower.
There had been other corridors, but here was one that was black even in daylight. Had she been older, some intimation of death might have held her back. But she had too recently come the other way. She did not identify.
Hilde walked softly into the corridor and so, as if in some dream, came to a line of doors.
She moved down them, lost. And in that second two men rolled from a corner wheeling a costume hamper between them. They stared at her, and so she said, “Monsieur Martin?” Her password.
One of the men grinned. He directed her. It was the helpfulness of the spider in the web: This way.
When she had gone, he turned to his mate. “That worm. He gets it all. Nice young bit like that.”
“Maybe his sister.”
“Oh, for sure.”
As Hilde went between the doors and so reached the proper one, the hamper descended to the enormous wings of the stage, where it was left. Here the hollow cutouts of scenery rested like vampirized dinosaurs, and ropes and pulleys, chains and spars were stranded, as if on the decks of a ship.
Cleaners had been sweeping the stage.
“Johan has a girl again,” said one of the descended men.
“Poor bitch. What do they see in the bugger?”
“Why, he’s an actor,” said one of the sweepers, striking a pose with his broom. “Glamour. That means magic.”
Storeys up, Hilde knocked on the door.
His beautiful voice (it was beautiful) spoke brusquely. “Yes? What?”
She could not speak, could not, for her life.
But soon, half angry at being disturbed in his meditations, he flung the door open.
So he noticed her again. And she him.
“Yes? What do you want?”
She gazed at him. Speech, strangely, came.
“To find you.”
“Oh, very well. What is it?”
But then, but then, he saw her once more.
He saw her now as a woman, though young as a new moon. He saw her as lovely – that is, attracting. He saw that she was there. Some vague remembrance arrived, too. She was an abject subject of his, a convert. Some well-off sempstress of the streets, probably, who had stitched her fine dress herself and put it on to impress him, for who else would seek him in this way?
And she was charming. Skin like lilies, hair like apricots. Eyes cast down. And trembling.
His art fired him also, Johanos. It aroused him, and he had been viewing his art, here in the cramped room with its piles of stale clothes, and cluttered screens, and a bottle of brandy, and cigarettes, and manuscript, and his spirit crammed in everywhere. The room that led to the high altar.
Not merely acolyte. Sacrifice.
Down on the stage a mile beneath, the cleaners were mock fighting, being the Roman and his Foe, with brooms. Blobs of dust and waves of sawdust were stirred, it was like the parting of a sea. And behind stood the movable walls of the scenes, a hundred countries, other worlds.
But Johanos Martin said to Hilde, “Yes, I understand. Come in.”
And as she entered his cell, the priest took her between his hands.
Hilde looked up at him. She could not see the error for the exactitude.
“Johanos –” she said.
“Oh, are we on familiar terms? Perhaps we are.”
He did not admit though, that, this being the case, he had forgotten. He bent his head and kissed her lightly and Hilde slid against him, becoming only soul, dissolving.
So then he kissed her more deeply, this offering. She was fragrant and delicious. Obviously, one must have more.
To Hilde it was the dream come true. It was the truth, reality.
Below on the stage one broomer stabbed the other. Handle jutting out beneath his armpit, this other howled. “Oh! I die! I die! What cities and what lands fall down with me.”
“Bastard,” said another, “I’ll take my bet he’s dying on her now.”
He had drawn her to the rickety little couch and there undone her bodice and slipped in his hands. She cried now with shame and pleasure. He had never had a girl so young, took her for seventeen, pulled up her skirt and touched between her melting thighs.
She did not know anything beyond his touch. She had given herself over to the service of the high altar. She was the sacrifice. He wanted her and by some extreme telepathy had extended his need to her innermost mind.
One of the broom men fell “dead.” The other straddled him, and then all looked up into the soaring flies.
They cursed Johanos Martin, whom they hated, for he was stingy and rude, imperious, mean, and frozen like old winter.
And just then he thrust into Hilde’s body, tearing her so she screamed with shock and hurt and some mad outrage that was not only of the flesh.
She tried to fight him off. He struck her white face, leaving a lurid mark that faded quickly, for he had not, gentleman that he was, struck very hard.
He finished in twenty seconds. A breach, a ramming motion, the explosion of a passion cold as heat.
“Silly girl,” he said, getting up, turning his back, adjusting his male dignity. “I’m sorry I was rough. But you shouldn’t entice and then be coy. We’ve done it before.” Even her virginity had gone for nothing. He thought her tight and awkward from inexperience and perversity.
Hilde, too, somehow got to her feet. She stood, drooping, almost bent right forward, like a snapped stem.
Up the stairs a cleaner boy was running. He was bringing Johanos Martin the Hated a gift from the street, but Hilde did not know.
“What have you done?” she said.
“Oh, come now.”
“Why have you done this to me –”
“Now, don’t be stupid. For God’s sake. You’ll be asking for money next.”
Hilde straighened wearily. She was in pain, as if she had given birth. She had. The birth of terror.
“Please, help me,” she said. For in this Ultima Thule of life, still she looked to him, her lover, to offer her hope and help.
But Johanos Martin was disgusted.
“For God’s sake, get out. How can I deal with this? Get out, you little whore, or I’ll send for the police.”
Hilde was numb, and now speechless again. She had entered the world of nightmare, which she would never leave. Or not until another nightmare woke her. Despair had occurred suddenly. As such things do.
She tidied her clothes reflexively, and went to the door, which he was now theatrically holding open for her. As she went forth, the door banged.
So she saw and smelled, outside in the corridor, the shovelful of horse’s dung collected for him from the street, and spread out carefully on the ground.
She was beyond fainting, as the starving man is beyond hunger. There were no escapes.
She stepped over the dung and slowly went down through the building.
She would never afterward remember doing so, only the reek of the feces of a grass-eating animal, f
ed on stuff that was not natural to it.
In a country that has no justice and logic, it is useless to behave normally. Hilde did try. In the nightmare world, she attempted to sleep, to get up, to eat, to dress herself and go about with her mother on the endless trivial errands of their house. But Hilde was passionate. It had been kept closed up in her the way a flower is closed in a bud. Once open it can only bloom and blow, and then the petals fall. The fall had come.
Hilde did not sleep. She wept all night and rent the sheets and bit the pillows from agony. Her maid saw what had happened to the linen and told madame, and madame shouted at Hilde. Was she a wild animal from the zoo?
Hilde did not, and perhaps could not, say what was wrong with her. Neither could she swallow food. She found it impossible to get up from her bed. If forced to do so, she sat in her robe before the mirror, unable to proceed further.
She stared at herself. Who was this?
She had hidden the doll in the wardrobe, that it might not see.
And God – Hilde called to Him but He had not regained His hearing.
The doctor was fetched instead. He said these foolish vapors afflicted young girls, and prescribed a tonic, rest, and exercise. Hilde drank the tonic, which tasted of hot iron. Her mother drove her out, accompanied by the bored and resentful maid, to walk in the parks of Paradys.
Hilde began to suffer from fits of searing rage. She flung a bottle of cologne across her room and it broke. Sometimes she would stand before her mirror and shriek at herself wordlessly.
Her father spoke sternly to Hilde. Hilde sat before him like a dead doll.
Hilde’s mother shouted at Hilde and slapped her hands with a narrow silver bookmark. Hilde started to wail and cry.
The truth was expelled from Hilde by the tiny irritant pain of the bookmark on her knuckles, one last straw.
“I can’t bear it – I can’t! I love him. There’s nothing else. He – he killed me.”
“What? Who? What are you talking about, you uncontrolled and wretched girl?”
“Johanos –” said Hilde. And at the name, the fissure was soldered shut again. It had let out everything that was necessary.
