by Clive Barker
“They’re not comparable.”
“Why not?” I drew a breath before replying. “See? You don’t have an answer.”
“Wait, wait, wait—” I protested.
“Anyway,” she went on, “I don’t see that it’s your business what I do with my head.”
“It becomes my business if I have to deal with your mother.”
Marietta rolled her eyes. “Oh Lord, I knew we’d get round to that eventually.”
“I think I deserve an explanation.”
“She found me going through some old clothes, that’s all,” Marietta replied.
“Old clothes?”
“Yes, … it was ridiculous. I mean, who cares after all this time?”
Despite her cavalier attitude she was plainly concealing something she felt guilty about. “Whose clothes were they?” I asked her.
“His,” she said with a little shrug.
“Galilee’s?”
“No … his.” Another shrug. “Father’s.”
“You found clothes that belonged to our father—”
“Who art in Heaven … yes.”
“And you were touching them?”
“Oh for God’s sake, Maddox, don’t you start. They were clothes. Old clothes. I don’t think he’d even worn them. You know what a peacock he was.”
“That’s not what I remember.”
“Well maybe he only did it for my benefit,” she said with a sly smirk. “I had the pleasure of sitting in his dressing room with him many times—”
“I’ve heard enough, thank you,” I told her. I didn’t like the direction the conversation was taking; nor the gleam in Marietta’s eye. But I was too late. The rebel in her was roused, and she wasn’t about to be quelled.
“You started this,” she said. “So you can damn well hear me out. It’s all true; every word of it.”
“I still-”
“Listen to me” she insisted. “You should know what he got up to when nobody else was looking. He was a priapic old bastard. Have you used that word yet by the way? Priapic?”
“No.”
“Well now you can, quoting me.”
“This isn’t going in the book.”
“Christ, you can be an old woman sometimes, Maddox. It’s part of the story.”
“It’s got nothing to do with what I’m writing.”
“The fact that the founding father of our family was so oversexed he used to parade around in front of his six-year-old daughter with a hard-on? Oh, I think that’s got everything to do with what you’re writing.” She grinned at me, and I swear any God-fearing individual would have said the Devil was in that face. The beautiful exuberance of her features; the naked pleasure she took in shocking me.
“Of course I was fascinated. You know the origin of the word fascinated? It’s Latin. Fascinare means to put under a spell. It was particularly attributed to serpents—”
“Why do you insist on doing this?”
“He had that power. No question. He waved his snake and I was … enchanted.” She smiled at the memory. “I couldn’t take my eyes off it. I would have followed it anywhere. Of course I wanted to touch it, but he told me no. When you’re a little older, he said, then I’ll show what it can do.”
She stopped talking; stared out the window at the passing sky. “I was ashamed of my curiosity, but I couldn’t help myself.”
“And did he?” I said.
She kept staring. “No, he never did. He wanted to—I could see it in his eyes sometimes—but he didn’t dare. You see I told Galilee all about it. That was my big mistake. I told him I’d seen Papa’s snake and it was wonderful. I swore him to secrecy of course but I’m damn sure he told Cesaria, and she probably gave Papa hell. She was always jealous of me.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“She was. She still is. She threw a fit when she found me in the dressing room. After all these years she didn’t want me near his belongings.” She finally pulled her gaze from the clouds and looked back at me. “I love women more than life itself,” she said. “I love everything about them. Their feel, their smell, the way they move when you stroke them … And I really can’t bear men. Not in that way. They’re so lumpen. But I’d have made an exception for Papa.”
“You’re grotesque, you know that?”
“Why?” I just made a pained face. “We don’t have to live by the same rules as everybody else,” she said. “Because we’re not like everybody else.”
“Maybe we’d all be a little happier if we were.”
“Happy? I’m ecstatic. I’m in love. And I really mean it this time. I’m in love. With a farm girl no less.”
“A farm girl.”
“I know it doesn’t sound very promising but she’s extraordinary, Maddox. Her name’s Alice Pennstrom, and I met her at a barn dance in Raleigh.”
“They have lesbian barn dances these days?”
“It wasn’t a dyke thing. It was men and women. You know me. I’ve always liked helping straight girls discover themselves. Anyway, Alice is wonderful. And I wanted to dress up in something special for our three-week anniversary.”
“That’s why you were looking through the clothes?”
“Yeah. I thought maybe I’d find something special. Something that would really get Alice going,” Marietta said. “Which I did, by the way. So anyway thank you for taking the heat from Cesaria. I’ll do the same for you one of these days.”
“I’m going to hold you to that,” I said.
“No problem,” Marietta said. “If I make a promise, I’m good for it.” She glanced at her watch. “Hey, I gotta go. I’m meeting Alice in half an hour. What I came in here for was a book of poems.”
“Poems?”
“Something I can recite to her. Something sexy and romantic, to get her in the mood.”
“You’re welcome to look around,” I said. “I presume, by the way, that all this means you think we’ve made peace?”
“Were we ever at war?” Marietta said, as though a little puzzled at my remark. “Where’s the poetry section?”
“There isn’t one. They’re scattered all over.”
“You need some organization in here.”
“Thank you, but it suits me just the way it is.”
“So point me to a poet.”
“You want a lesbian poet? There’s some Sappho up there, and a book of Marina Tsvetaeva.”
“Is any of that going to make Alice moist?”
“Lord, you can be crude sometimes.”
“Well is it or isn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” I snapped. “Anyway, I thought you’d already seduced this woman.”
“I have,” Marietta said, scanning the shelves. “And it was amazing sex. So amazing that I’ve decided to propose to her.”
“Is this a joke?”
“No. I want to marry my Alice. I want to set up house and adopt children. Dozens of children. But first I need a poem, to make her feel … you know what I mean … no, come to think of it, you probably don’t … I want her to be so in love with me it hurts.”
I pointed. “To your left—”
“What?”
“The little dark turquoise book. Try that.” Marietta took it down.
“It’s a book of poems by a nun.”
“A nun?” Marietta went to put the book back.
“Wait,” I said to her, “give it a chance. Here—” I went over to Marietta, and took the book—which she hadn’t yet opened—from her hand. “Let me find something for you, then you can leave me alone.” I flicked through the musty pages. It was years since I’d perused these lyrics, but I remembered one that had moved me.
“Who is she?” Marietta said.
“I told you: a nun. Her name was Mary-Elizabeth Bowen. She died in the forties, at the age of a hundred and one.”
“A virgin?”
“Is that relevant?”
“Well it is if I’m trying to find something sexy.”
“Try this,�
�� I said, and passed the book back to her. “Which one?”
“I was a very narrow creature …” Marietta read it aloud:
“I was a very narrow creature at my heart,
Until you came.
None got in and out of me with ease;
Yet when you spoke my name
I was unbounded, like the world—”
She looked up at me. “Oh I like this,” she said. “Are you sure she was a nun?”
“Just read it …”
“I was unbounded, like the world.
I never felt such fear as then, being so limitless,
When I’d known only walls and whisperings.
I fled you foolishly;
Looked in every quarter for a place to hide.
Went into a bud, it blossomed.
Went into a cloud, it rained.
Went into a man, who died,
And bore me out again,
Into your arms.”
“Oh my Lord,” she said.
“You like that?”
“Who did she write it for?”
“Christ, I assume. But you needn’t tell Alice that.”
From The History of the Devil
THE DEVIL WANDERS TO CENTER STAGE, CARRYING A CROCODILE EGG.
THE DEVIL: I’ve seen men and women in the throes of bubonic plague, lying beside each other on diseased blankets under a dirty lamp, suddenly overcome with passion for each other’s bodies, sores notwithstanding. I’ve seen them grind their last moments away, grunting out their lives, then collapsing onto each other, dead. When that’s the way most of you touch Heaven, if at all, how can you believe that I, who didn’t make you, am more malicious than the God who did?
ENTER JANE BECK. DURING THE OBLIQUE EXCHANGE THAT FOLLOWS. THE TWO FIGURES MOVE IN AND OUT OF MURKY PATCHES OF LIGHT. OFTEN THEY ARE BARELY VISIBLE.
THE DEVIL: You should go in: it’s getting bitter. Did you enjoy the fireworks?
JANE BECK: Very pretty.
THE DEVIL: I noticed you today, looking at me.
JANE BECK: Returning your look.
THE DEVIL: Ah.
JANE BECK: You have a certain glamour. Evil does.
THE DEVIL: I don’t feel evil.
JANE BECK: I don’t feel like a woman, never having been a man.
THE DEVIL: I was an angel: I remember goodness. But here, everything explodes.
JANE BECK: Explodes?
THE DEVIL: Swells up, becomes overripe, bursts. Bang.
JANE BECK: I’m quite stable.
THE DEVIL: No, that bag of meat you occupy is getting tight and tender, getting too thin to hold your life.
JANE BECK: What do you suggest?
THE DEVIL: Burn it up. Heat is health.
JANE BECK: It just makes me sweat.
THE DEVIL: Passion’s nothing to be ashamed of.
JANE BECK: (Confounded) Passion?
THE DEVIL: When we exchange looks.
JANE BECK: What are you telling me?
THE DEVIL: Have I been indelicate?
JANE BECK: (She thinks she understands) How could I be so slow? Growing tender —
THE DEVIL: It was unlooked for— JANE: BECK: I don’t have any words.
THE DEVIL: Say nothing at all.
JANE BECK: I feel, I know it’s absurd, honored —
THE DEVIL: Surely you’ve been in love.
JANE BECK: I’ve been in love?
THE DEVIL: Yes.
JANE BECK: Wait: you are telling me you’re in love with me?
THE DEVIL: No, I thought you —
JANE BECK: Me?
THE DEVIL: Why would I?
JANE BECK: Well, why would I?
THE DEVIL: There seems to be a misunderstanding.
JANE BECK: Bang.
THE DEVIL: Will you smoke some hash?
JANE BECK: No thank you.
THE DEVIL: Already high enough?
THEY EXIT IN SEPARATE DIRECTIONS.
From Imajica
They were weighed down by what they’d seen, and the return journey took longer than the outward. By the time they made the safety of their niche in the rocks, to welcoming grunts from the surviving doeki, the sky was losing its golden sheen and dusk was on its way. They debated whether to proceed in darkness and decided against it. Though the air was calm at present, they knew from past experience that conditions on these heights were unpredictable. If they attempted to move by night, and a storm descended from the peaks, they’d be twice blinded and in danger of losing their way. With the High Pass so close, and the journey easier, they hoped, once they were through it, the risk was not worth taking.
Having used up the supply of wood they’d collected below the snow line, they were obliged to fuel the fire with the dead doeki’s saddle and harness. It made for a smoky, pungent, and fitful blaze, but it was better than nothing. They cooked some of the fresh meat, Gentle observing as he chewed that he had less compunction about eating something he’d named than he thought, and brewed up a small serving of the herders’ piss liquor. As they drank, Gentle returned the conversation to the women in the ice.
“Why would a God as powerful as Hapexamendios slaughter defenseless women?”
“Whoever said they were defenseless?” Pie replied. “I think they were probably very powerful. Their oracles must have sensed what was coming, so they had their armies ready—”
“Armies of women?”
“Certainly, warriors in their tens of thousands. There are places to the north of the Lenten Way where the earth used to move every fifty years or so and uncover one of their war graves.”
“They were all slaughtered? The armies, the oracles—”
“Or driven so deep into hiding they forgot who they were after a few generations. Don’t look so surprised. It happens.”
“One God defeats how many Goddesses? Ten, twenty—”
“Innumerable.”
“How?”
“He was One, and simple. They were many, and diverse.”
“Singularity is strength—”
“At least in the short term. Who told you that?”
“I’m trying to remember. Somebody I didn’t like much: Klein, maybe.”
“Whoever said it, it’s true. Hapexamendios came into the Dominions with a seductive idea: that wherever you went, whatever misfortune attended you, you needed only one name on your lips, one prayer, one altar, and you’d be in His care. And He brought a species to maintain that order once He’d established it. Yours.”
“Those women back there looked human enough to me.”
“So do I,” Pie reminded him. “But I’m not.”
“No … you’re pretty diverse, aren’t you?”
“I was once …”
“So that puts you on the side of the Goddesses, doesn’t it?” Gentle whispered.
The mystif put its finger to his lips.
Gentle mouthed one word by way of response: “Heretic.”
It was very dark now, and they both settled to studying the fire. It was steadily diminishing as the last of Chester’s saddle was consumed.
“Maybe we should burn some fur,” Gentle suggested.
“No,” said Pie. “Let it dwindle. But keep looking.”
“At what?”
“Anything.”
“There’s only you to look at.”
“Then look at me.”
He did so. The privations of the last many days had seemingly taken little toll on the mystif. It had no facial hair to disfigure the symmetry of its features, nor had their spartan diet pinched its cheeks or hollowed its eyes. Studying its face was like returning to a favorite painting in a museum. There it was: a thing of calm and beauty. But, unlike the painting, the face before him, which presently seemed so solid, had the capacity for infinite change. It was months since the night when he’d first seen that phenomenon. But now, as the fire burned itself out and the shadows deepened around them, he realized the same sweet miracle was imminent. The flicker of dying flame made the
symmetry swim; the flesh before him seemed to lose its fixedness as he stared and stirred it.
“I want to watch,” he murmured.
“Then watch.”
“But the fire’s going out …”
“We don’t need light to see each other,” the mystif whispered. “Hold on to the sight.”
Gentle concentrated, studying the face before him. His eyes ached as he tried to hold on to it, but they were no competition for the swelling darkness.
“Stop looking,” Pie said, in a voice that seemed to rise from the decay of the embers. “Stop looking, and see.”
Gentle fought for the sense of this, but it was no more susceptible to analysis than the darkness in front of him. Two senses were failing him here—one physical, one linguistic—two ways to embrace the world slipping from him at the same moment. It was like a little death, and a panicseized him, like the fear he’d felt some midnights waking in his bed and body and knowing neither: his bones a cage, his blood a gruel, his dissolution the only certainty. At such times he’d turned on all the lights, for their comfort. But there were no lights here. Only bodies, growing colder as the fire died.
“Help me,” he said. The mystif didn’t speak. “Are you there, Pie? I’m afraid. Touch me, will you? Pie?”
The mystif didn’t move. Gentle started to reach out in the darkness, remembering as he did so the sight of Taylor lying on a pillow from which they’d both known he’d never rise again, asking for Gentle to hold his hand. With that memory, the panic became sorrow: for Taylor, for Clem, for every soul sealed from its loved ones by senses born to failure, himself included. He wanted what the child wanted: knowledge of another presence, proved in touch. But he knew it was no real solution. He might find the mystif in the darkness, but he could no more hold on to its flesh forever than he could hold the senses he’d already lost. Nerves decayed, and fingers slipped from fingers at the last.
Knowing this little solace was as hopeless as any other, he withdrew his hand and instead said, “I love you.”
Or did he simply think it? Perhaps it was thought, because it was the idea rather than the syllables that formed in front of him, the iridescence he remembered from Pie’s transforming self shimmering in a darkness that was not, he vaguely understood, the darkness of the starless night but his mind’s darkness; and this seeing not the business of eve and object but his exchange with a creature he loved, and who loved him back.
