Love Is Strange (A Paranormal Romance)

by Bruce Sterling

“That story doesn’t scare me, you know,” shrugged Farfalla. “I’m from Italy. The Italian Mafia has been vanishing people for a thousand years.”

  “But, he doesn’t know that your story is that scary,” Hepsiba persisted. “The true darkness of your story will always be closed to this man. His silly little story can end right now, and you can go on with your dark, tremendous story, and he doesn’t have to be in it. It’s just your story. Yours alone.”

  “I understand why it would give me joy to kill him,” said Farfalla. “Because I am dark inside, and my passionate love for him has many elements of hatred, and there are times when his stubborn lack of sense truly makes me crazy, and the deep pangs I feel in my heart truly wound me, and I can feel myself truly bleeding over him, but, well, even the suffering is sweet. It is sweet to be in love, it is wonderful. I’m so mixed-up over this guy that I even enjoy my suffering. Sometimes, my urge to kill him even makes me laugh. In the black and dirty depths of my witch’s heart, maybe I will want to kill him, but I never will. Instead, I will love him with all my heart. I will always cherish and protect him, every day, as long as I live. Do you know why?”

  Hepsiba handed over a brimming teacup. “Why, my dear?”

  “Because the world is full of other people who want to destroy this guy. They hate him, and hate everything he stands for, and he doesn’t even know that. He’ll never know. He’s not the kind of man who can know such dark things. But, the thought that they would ever hurt him — when he belongs to me, when he is mine — that thought fills me with fury. Not the small anger that I feel at him sometimes, but a deadly, vengeful, serpentine rage. You want me to stay here in Sao Paulo with your Brazilian boy, but with this man at my side — my futurist Prince Consort — I will become Queen Cassandra.”

  And then, Farfalla stopped speaking. But, she did not stop thinking aloud: Royalty. Not the shrieky drop-out priestess with her hippie hairdo, but Cassandra as royalty. I will be the queen-mother of the coming century, and I am going to litter the earth with the foes of this man. They are going to perish from history in a way so tormented, twisted, sneaky and occult that they will never guess who pulled the trap beneath their gibbet. They will be expunged from history, erased from the narrative entirely, they will be so bewildered, lost and despairing that they will lose the will to live and embrace death like a lover. Not because of what I told them about the future, but because of things I didn’t tell them. Not because Cassandra cursed them aloud, but because I was so near and dear to them, because I was so quiet, kind and understanding. At their graves, with their tattered handful of scared, scarred mourners, I’ll be the only one who brings them flowers. ‘Always a class act, Queen Cassandra,’ that’s what they will say about me. ‘Those whom history forgot, high or low, rich or poor, they always had one final friend in her.’

  “What a very scary thing you are thinking, my dear.”

  “Nana, when it comes to Sao Paulo, I don’t amount to very much. But outside this place — well, I am a priestess. And outside this place, I rank. I am tomorrow.” Farfalla lifted her cup in a toast.

  Gavin’s phone rang.

  “Go ahead,” Hepsiba urged. “Drink that.”

  “Just one minute.” Farfalla stooped carefully and set the brimming teacup on the floor. “This must be Gavin’s dad.” She glanced at the screen of the ringing Blackberry. “Yes, Gavin knew this would happen. He predicted this. It’s his father calling.”

  “Don’t answer that.”

  “Are you kidding? This old fool is the torment of my boyfriend’s life. Everything in Gavin’s life is frozen because of his father. I’m going to have it out with this curse of his life, right now.”

  Farfalla put the phone to her ear. “Hello?” Then, she listened.

  “No,” she said firmly, “he is not available. He’s sleepwalking.” Pause. “No, that is not a problem. I know all about that. I can handle that.”

  Squeaking noises.

  “Yes, of course,” said Farfalla. “The electronic chips, the flight control systems, the autonomous military drones. The Brazilian defense market. I grew up here. I am Brazilian. I translate electronic documents into Portuguese. For a living.”

  More squeaking.

  “Stop that,” Farfalla broke in, “because I don’t care. I don’t care about your big so-called secret — I can tell you what happened. Pancho Pola brought in one of the open-source control chips from his lab in Ivrea. He took your Space Age military secret, and he made that secret obsolete in thirty minutes. You think that is such a great secret of yours? Nothing that he did is secret to me. I translated that document myself. Why didn’t you come to me? I know more about those stupid chips than he does. I have to translate all their boring technical stats, and all he does is fly up to Brussels and win his design awards. What a stupid, dirty thing this whole business is. My God, you men are impossible.”

  More scratchy noises.

  “Look, I’m sick and tired of your millions of dollars!” shouted Farfalla. “It’s all I hear out of you Tremaines! You know what you people need? You need someone in your family who doesn’t believe you’re all dead.”

  Faint squeaks.

  “Quit whining, old man! What have you lost here? You didn’t sell your precious secret plans to your supersonic jet-plane! What is your big American problem, you think Brazil will land on the Moon when you’re not looking? What is wrong with you Americans, these days? All you do is sit on the couch, play video games and eat cake!”

  More squeaks.

  “That’s right. I do have a lot to say for myself,” said Farfalla. “And if you give my boyfriend any more trouble about these stupid broken business deals of yours, I’m going to fly up there and tell the truth to you. In three languages. I’ve got a Green Card and frequent flyer miles, and I can be there by morning. That’s right. On your doorstep. In Capitol Hill, in Seattle. No, I know where your house is. I used to live two blocks away.”

  More static.

  “Really,” scoffed Farfalla.

  More silence.

  “Well, maybe. If you really mean that.”

  More silence.

  “Well, I’d have to talk to Gavin about it, but if he says okay, sure. Sure, why not? Goodbye.”

  Farfalla put the phone away.

  Hepsiba spoke up. “That was the grandfather of your unborn child.”

  “He’ll see the first child,” said Farfalla. “He’ll never live to see the third one. God, Nana, why do we know awful things like that? To be a prophetic witch is so dreadful.” She bent at the waist, picked up her cup of poison, and drained it.

  “His family loves you,” said Hepsiba, squinting. “I can see that they adore you, especially that sick old man... But what about the mother? I can’t see the mother. There’s like a large absence there. An abyss.”

  Gavin stirred and sat up. He lifted both his arms before him. His eyes were tightly shut.

  “Gavin is a sleepwalker,” Farfalla explained.

  “No, he isn’t,” said Hepsiba, pleased. “Look, he has an aura now! He has a nice normal aura, just like any other fine, young man.”

  Gavin faced Farfalla with his blind eyelids. “Funny thing, jetlag,” he quipped. “Well, that nap sure was refreshing. So, what’s with the big wedding party here? Our hosts have brought in quite a crowd.”

  “What crowd?” said Farfalla.

  “All those people with the white robes and the amulets,” said Gavin, with a discreet nod of his blind head. “Those Brazilian guys with no feet.”

  Farfalla stared. She could barely see them. Fading in from the nothingness of modernity. “Ghosts,” she said. “The ectoplasmic ghosts of the Brazilian dead.”

  “So, I’m seeing ghosts. The wedding guests are ghosts?”

  “Yes. Every rite at an Umbanda Terreiro is a séance.”

  Gavin shrugged, his eyes still closed. “Well, I’d better go mingle, then.”

  “Gavin, no. Sit down, I can take care of this. Lie down and sleep, Gavin.”r />
  “What, I’m supposed to neglect the guests at my own wedding? How rude! No way!” Gavin drifted into the temple’s darkest, most spidery corner.

  “Now, that I can see your boyfriend’s aura, I like him much better!” confided Hepsiba. “He is American — and there are dark streaks in his aura that make our Brazilian boys look innocent! I see a shadowy, giant, blind angel that wanders the earth. It is not love, but death. It deals death from a clear blue sky. It carries terror for the masters of terror.”

  “That’s not an angel of death. It’s only a metal machine.”

  “Well, in one sense, it is your robot boyfriend’s flying metal machine, but in a deeper sense, it is an angel of death. And so is he.”

  “Well, yes, he is, because his sister is, but on a deeper reality yet, he’s just my sweet boyfriend. He’s kind of a dope, actually.”

  “No, on a deeper reality, your boyfriend really is a demon. He comes from an empire that can burn the world to death in three ways. And he’ll do all he can to help.” Hepsiba’s face was swimming out of focus. She reached out and gripped Farfalla’s arm. “Don’t fall! Let me help you lie down.”

  Gavin ambled over, blind and smiling. “Madame, por favor me ajude com ela. Ela é jovem e forte, mas ela é teimoso. Ela tem paixão mais perversa que ela tem bom senso comum.”

  “Eu poderia ter dito isso,” said Hepsiba. “Eu a conheço desde quando ela era uma menina, coitada.”

  Gavin nodded soberly. “Eu sei que você se preocupou por ela, mas eu posso cuidar disso. Talvez eu não sou o melhor homem para ela, mas ninguém nunca vai fazer melhor.”

  Hepsiba cackled and slapped his shoulder. “Não me admira que ela gosta de você! Há algo de tão engraçado sobre você! Pelo menos eu sei que ela se divertirá!”22

  The Grand Houngan entered the temple. He carried a squirming mass of white fleece, cradled in his arms.

  “So,” said Gavin, opening his eyes. “It would appear that the master of ceremonies has brought us our sacrificial animal.”

  “Yes, he did,” said Hepsiba. “That is the holy lamb of sacrifice.” She paused. “Am I speaking English now?”

  “I’m sure that you can speak English, madame. You must have seen plenty of American television. Just like everybody else in the world.”

  “No,” said Hepsiba, thoughtfully. “Like a lot of other spiritual leaders, I’m very patriotic. I make a point of never speaking one word of English.”

  “Never mind, this too will surely pass,” Gavin predicted. “Can you tell me this other thing? How did your husband, the Great Houngan, manage to get a sheep when we’re living twenty stories in midair?”

  “He gets his sacred animals out of the sky,” said Hepsiba, shyly.

  “What, out of the sky? The sheep comes from above us, that’s what you’re telling me? They’re up their frolicking in the fields with the flying cherubs?”

  “To tell the truth, I never asked the Houngan about his livestock. That is a man thing. As his priestess, it’s not my business to ask him.”

  Gavin got a little closer to the innocent lamb of sacrifice. The lamb had perfect unsoiled fleece, and the red bee-stung lips of a woman, and the white-rimmed rolling intelligent eyes of a grown man.

  “Okay,” said Gavin, “this is just... otherness.”

  “It’s always been part of the ritual,” Hepsiba offered.

  “But this thing can’t even fit in a story,” Gavin complained. “There aren’t even human words for a... thing... like this thing. This thing is not even an it. There’s no way to explain it, or make it make any sense, to anybody, ever. And it’s alive!”

  The Houngan tucked the confiding body of the innocent lamb into the sheltering crook of his left arm.

  “Put out your hands,” said Hepsiba, with a gesture of prayer.

  There was a gleam of metal in the Great Houngan’s right hand, and then suddenly, shockingly, instantly, he had slashed the lamb’s throat. The priest had killed the innocent lamb, and bright, winey jets of its life-blood were heart-jumping out of its slashed neck, and all over Gavin’s hands, his wrists...

  And then onto Farfalla’s sleeping face. Gushing blood across her neck, her breast, her body.

  ***

  Birds sang, the field was green, and the sun was shining.

  “So,” Gavin croaked, “where are we?”

  “We left the what-there-is,” Farfalla told him, “and we are in the what’s-to-be.”

  “So let me look at you!” Gavin shouted. He removed thick glasses from his face. “Oh my God! You’re horrible.”

  “Am I?”

  “Yeah. You’re an old lady! You must be a hundred years old! Anyone who looked at you would know in ten seconds that you are a witch.”

  “You should look at yourself,” Farfalla said, with a thin, wrinkled smile.

  “I should look at myself?” Gavin shouted. “Why am I shouting? I can’t hear myself talk, that’s why I’m shouting! Why can’t I stand up? I’m all bent over! And I can’t see! I can’t see, I must be almost blind.”

  “Gavin, stop that ranting. It’s not use, there is no one here but me. We are sleepwalking together. We have walked to the very end of our lives. We’re very old now, Gavin. We have been together a long time, and we have become very old.”

  “So, this is our old age, then. We got married and lived happy ever after, and this is the very edge of our ever-after. This is as far as life goes.”

  “Yes, we’re both very old now. We got married, and we really, truly loved each other for as long as we could.”

  Gavin looked at his hands. “Hey, you’re right,” he remarked. “These are my grandfather’s hands, here on the ends of my arms. I can remember seeing these old hands, when I was a kid. I never knew I would have these hands on my own body. Man, this body of mine is a worn-out wreck! I can’t even stand up straight.”

  “You lost your hair,” Farfalla pointed out.

  Gavin ran his wrinkled hands over his naked scalp and the sagging flesh of his face. “You’re right about that, too! You’re always right when you predict these awful things. What a wild experience! This is so fantastic! I’m a wise old man. It’s like I’ve become an alien from another planet.” He paused. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings by insulting your looks. You make a very dignified old lady, Farfalla. You look extremely wise. You’re not young and pretty any more, but you are obviously someone of consequence. I bet the younger people are very respectful of a wicked old broad like you.”

  “I’m wise because I suffered,” said Farfalla, patting at her sparse white witchlocks of hair. “Yes, I had a woman’s full life, and I suffered, all because of you... Well, no! When I was a young girl, a foolish girl, a romantic girl, I thought I would suffer, all because of you... I even wanted to suffer because of my One true love, but in fact, I was just young and stupid. I was such an idiot, because you were not my doom at all. You were just my husband. I got used to you, my One true love. I liked you, you made me laugh. You were just fine, but my God in heaven, it was the children who made me suffer! Yes, them! Why does no one ever tell us women that? It was the children who tore my poor heart into pieces, who tormented my soul, who never gave me one night of rest... Madonna, I’m as old as the dirt now, and my dear children still make me suffer.”

  “Isaiah, Miriam, and Jeremiah,” said Gavin.

  “Yes, them, them! Why do they never call me, Jeremiah, Miriam, Isaiah? They live all over the stupid world, and they can’t call their mother?”

  “I’m just glad that our kids are human beings,” mused Gavin. “They have every right to wander this planet, like the rest of us... Why did I burden my kids with such heavy, portentous, hippie-kid names? The birth of a child really makes me sentimental.”

  “What if something happens to my children? I’ll always worry so!”

  “Look, Mama, knock that off! Our kids must be fifty years old by now.” Gavin swivelled his naked head from side to side, and placed a hand to his crooked, aching neck
. “Where are we? This seems like a nice place, from what I can see by peering at it, half-blind with my cataracts.”

  “This is my parents’ house,” Farfalla noted. “We are in their house, and looking at their little garden.”

  “We live in your parents’ house? That sure figures.”

  “A lot of things have changed here...”

  “That figures, too,” croaked Gavin. “A great place to grow old and die, sunny old Italy... I feel so happy and serene, here and now, at the final end of my story... I know it’s okay that we somehow ended up here... I am contented. I don’t know what the day is... or what the year is... I don’t know what is north, west, or south... And I don’t even care. Not one bit do I care! You know what? That makes me the supreme master of space and time. No wonder I feel so great! It’s because I’m senile. My senile dementia has made me the ascended master of the Cosmos.”

  “I still love you,” Farfalla murmured.

  “What?”

  “I asked my heart, and my heart tells me, that I still love you! We must have been together for sixty long years, and you’re old and awful, and the sight of you still makes me blissful! I’m so glad you’re here, sharing my life! Our marriage must have been a grand success!”

  “Sixty years of marriage, huh? Hey, I bet it’s our anniversary today! This day is always very special day for us, our day of magic. I bet people all over the world are sending us loving messages of support and respect and congratulations!”

  Farfalla hesitated. “How would we know that? Where is our email?”

  “Email, forget that, come on! It’s whatever email is, nowadays, in the middle of the 21st century. It’s probably augmented ubiquitous telepathy of some kind.”

  “Well, surely, the children would at least send me a message.”

  “How could they not, grandma? Let’s go inside and look around!”

  Gavin turned slowly, tottered into their modest shelter, then stopped and looked at the cottage’s crowded walls. “What is with all these plaques and medals?”

  “Oh,” said Farfalla, with a partial, indifferent, arthritic shrug, “those are yours.”

  “Wow, my awards and medals are all over this house. There’s a zillion of them! They’re like mice! There are so many that we can’t even fit ‘em in this building! Obviously I’m old and dirt-poor and mostly forgotten now, but seriously, look at the public’s tributes to my fabulousness!”