F Paul Wilson - Novel 05

by Mirage (v2. 1)

  Sam knocks once.

  No response, so she knocks again.

  And the voice inside sings a greeting.

  "Si, entrare!"

  Sam goes in and finds Mareau in front of her makeup table, studying her image surrounded by a legion of lightbulbs. She doesn't even glance at Sam.

  "Oh. Samantha, puh-lease close the door. 1 feel a chill. So damn moist here."

  Sam turns and dutifully shuts the door. Mareau certainly felt worse chills growing up on a big ranch in Wyoming.

  "You've seen the set?" Sam says.

  "For Act Four? Yes, my dear, and the bed's too small." Still not looking at Sam. "But 1 told you that, didn't 1. Well, we'll see how it plays out."

  Sam nods. It's the bed that this Desdemona will die in, night after night. Diva Mareau wants a grander stage for her swan song.

  The director told me that the blocking is fine, that—"

  "He's an ass. A silly, stupid man. Couldn't stage a yard sale."

  Now, finally, Mareau stops and looks at Sam.

  "Have you been eating, sweetheart?"

  So strange for Sam to be so much in the spell of this woman. Mareau feels like a giant elemental force, whether singing... or not.

  Mareau stands. "I worry about you, you know."

  Sam nods. Mareau is a tall figure, with dark brown eyes and lustrous black hair that cascades to her shoulders. She's wearing the Act IV nightgown, a pale blue item, sere and iridescent. She takes a step to Sam.

  "An important day, eh, Samantha?"

  The first dress rehearsal was always the make-it-or-break-it point. After it's over, they will know whether all the confused elements of the opera—the sets, the singers, the orchestra, the blocking—have come together.

  Mareau moves closer.

  "You look like a frail bird, Samantha. Have you given absolutely everything to our production ... with nothing"— Mareau touches Sam's cheek. The singer's hand is warm, comforting. Practiced. She traces a finger over Sam's lips— "left for me?"

  Sam knows this is crazy. How she fell into this—relationship—is beyond even her. Is it the sheer force of Mareau's personality, her charisma, her power—or some stupid weakness? She doesn't know.

  The singer's other hand comes up to Sam's left cheek, holding her head, like a mother examining a schoolgirl's first makeup.

  You recoil.

  For a moment, you consider hitting the Exit button. Because what you think you will see will challenge even what you thought you knew about your sister. Was there nothing she wouldn't try, nothing she wouldn't experiment with?

  And yet Sam seems so quiet here, so subdued... a little girl.

  You brace yourself.

  Mareau leans forward and kisses Sam, a strong, passionate kiss.

  For a moment Sam stands there, letting herself be engulfed by this woman. Then her hands go up and encircle Mareau, touching the pale, silky blue material. And Sam is dizzy with the smell of the perfume, the taste of those full lips, the glare of the makeup lights hitting the mirror, filling the tiny dressing room with warm, yellow light.

  It's Mareau who breaks off the kiss. Too abruptly, as if all she wanted was a quick confirmation of Sam's devotion.

  "That was sweet. But J have a bit of bad news."

  Samantha nods. The schoolgirl, listening to—

  'Tonight. After the rehearsal, 1 won't be able to"—a hesitation—"meet you. Some old friends from the Met are here."

  "And after that?" Sam doesn't keep the disappointment from her voice.

  "Dearies, after that I'm going right to sleep. I won't have time"—she smiles—"for anything."

  Another brush of Sam's cheek, and it's over. Dismissed. Love given and withdrawn. The promise of other times, other embraces.

  The room feels as if it's spinning.

  A knock on the door. "Presto, Signora."

  "Presto, right—as if anything happens in this damn country 'presto. ' But let's see if I was right about the bed, eh?"

  Sam's mouth opens. She wants to say something. But the only thing there, at the tip of her tongue, is corny, stupid, embarrassing. Something like / love you.

  So she says nothing.

  Mareau turns away, and fires off a few high practice trills that are deafening in the small room.

  Then, slipping into a "New Yawker" accent, Mareau says, "Let's go let the Moor kill me, eh, kiddo?"

  And she leaves the dressing room.

  You feel the emotions washing over Sam: the confusion, the pain, and finally the emptiness.

  Is there more to this? There has to be. It must be important, but why?

  You follow Sam out to the backstage area, to Act IV of Otello.

  She stands in the wings. Her sketches and paintings have been brought to life.

  And this is no traditional Otello. The medieval Venetian castle and the king's bedroom have been rendered as if the action is taking place on a spaceship, with a silvery bed that glistens like a fiery jewel.

  A great wall mural in the back of the stage is all metallic silver and red. On the mural, the lion of Venice stands thirty feet tall, holding fistfuls of people in his gripping claws. This is a "political" Otello,

  The production will surely cause an incident, a cause celebre. Which is why they came to Sam to begin with.

  And damn, she's proud of herself.

  But now—for the first time—she's watching the costumed singers move through her Act IV stage design. The floor is red metallic girders, more appropriate to a power plant. A golden glow filters up from below. The glow will turn orange, then red, before—

  Sam looks back to Mareau, finishing her big solo. Desde-mona's "Ave Maria" ends. Now she waits, terrified of her husband, the insanely jealous Moor, Otello.

  Otello, a tenor in blackface, barges into the bedroom.

  He launches yet another accusation. "Where is the handkerchief I gave you?" he demands.

  Mareau looks genuinely frightened. She squirms on the silvery bed.

  It is too small.

  Perhaps we can-

  But Sam freezes. Otello is singing out his rage in Italian. Pointing at Desdemona, yelling, "You love another... You love... Cassio!"

  Sam's Italian is perfunctory at best. But she knows what happens. Otello tells Desdemona that Cassio is dead. And you—you, my wife, are lying on your deathbed.

  Sam grips one of the curtain flies, twisting the heavy brocade material. She feels dizzy.

  Mareau—Desdemona—looks scared. The drama is too powerful, too intense. The music swells, roaring along with Otello's rage.

  Desdemona begs for her life, for just this night, for an hour, for the moment, but Otello leaps onto the bed, encircles her throat, and begins to strangle her.

  And then—and then—Mareau looks over to Sam, her eyes bulbous, terrified.

  Sam releases the curtain. She takes a step out of the wings, and then another.

  The scene continues, Desdemona writhing, pleading.

  "No," Sam mutters. Another step.

  The light is changing from the metalwork below. Golden, to orange, to—

  Samantha is on the stage, but no one stops her. Perhaps she's checking something.

  The thundering power of the orchestra is overwhelming. Cymbals crash, the drums rumble.

  Then Desdemona is dead.

  "No!" Sam screams.

  She runs to the bed, pulling at Otello, yanking on the actor's costume. His blue eyes flash in the surrounding black makeup.

  Sam is shrieking, her own screams joining the orchestra, which only now starts to peter out, as if the conductor has lost his way.

  "You must... not... kill her!"

  She pushes Otello away, then cradles Mareau's head, not seeing the woman's open eyes, her shocked face.

  Not seeing anything because she's rocking and crying, whimpering over and over: "No... no... no."

  A tear falls to the metal girders below, glistening there. Before slipping even lower, to the fire below.

  And t
hen you're at the stage door. Locked out. You try the latch but you sense the theater has no more to show you.

  You feel so empty, so hopeless. You wonder: Is this what Sam felt then? Was this behind Sam's suicide attempt?

  Reluctantly you glide back to the front of ha Fenice, to the entrance. And there the gondola awaits.

  You hurry down the empty steps. The opera is over. You're supposed to leave.

  Presto, presto . . .

  And for the first time, you feel compassion for your sister. It was as if she had created a fantasy image so powerful that it brought her to her knees.

  But what was this all about? Her love for another woman? Then seeing her killed? Did it have to do with that self-inflicted fiery glow?

  You need to know so much more, but now the only thing you want is to get out of here.

  The gondola takes a meandering path, leading far away from here, you hope.

  Above the buildings you see the knife-point edge of the rising moon as it begins climbing the sky on the far side of the memoryscape. You barely notice the passing bridges and buildings. You want only to be away from this place, to sit alone and sort out these feelings, to disentangle Sam's emotions from your own, to rid yourself of Sam's strange love for that woman and this overwhelming sense of loss and desolation.

  But you can't leave the memoryscape. Not yet. You have to get out among the islands again and see what else awaits you among the drowned memories.

  And then you hear a familiar sound. The soft, rapid ratcheting of a fishing reel. You look up and see the little boy again. You realize this is a different bridge, but he's still reeling in his line. Who is this child, this street urchin with a fishing pole? And what does he mean to Sam? Suddenly there's a splash as his catch breaks the water.

  Finally! You lean over the edge to see what he's caught and recoil with revulsion when you realize it's a severed hand, hooked through the webbing of the thumb. It drips and wobbles as the child reels it higher and clutches the line to land it.

  What is it with this image? This is the third time you've seen it: once in the real world and now twice in the memoryscape. What's Sam trying to tell you—if she's trying to tell you anything at all?

  You watch silently, waiting for him to recognize his catch for what it is and toss it back. But his eyes light as he grabs the hand and places it on the railing. With a single swift motion he unhooks it from the line, raises it to his mouth, and bites into the fleshy heel of the palm.

  "No!" you shout, but he ignores you and continues to tear at the hand with his bright, sharp teeth.

  Sickened, you turn away. Now, more than ever, you want to leave this place, but that's the last bridge up ahead. No sign of the Cheshire possum. Soon the last turn is negotiated and you are once again sailing the open waterways. You search the horizon but find no signs of life. No glow of memory nodes clinging to the surface of this black, oily, sea.

  This world is all but dead.

  Is that all there is here—the Venice memory? There's got to be more to this vast, wet wasteland than a single node. But even if there are more nodes, this one has so drained you that you lack the will to go on.

  And why this particular memory? Has it anything to do with the fact that you were discussing it with Sam's psychiatrist shortly before entering the memoryscape? Are you bringing things with you? Are you in some way shaping the memoryscape? Programming it? Is whatever's left of Sam's subconscious somehow responding to what's in your mind as you enter?

  Or is it just coincidence?

  Too damn many questions.

  God, you wish this wasn't such an infant science. If only you knew more. If only you could—

  Suddenly the boat rocks as something scrapes against its keel. A rock? A reef? Are you entering shallow water?

  Another scrape. That wasn't rock. Too soft for rock. Almost ... leathery. The gondola had been steady but now it weaves on the water.

  Exit button or no Exit button, you don't want to fall in.

  And then a splash to port. You whirl. Something black and shiny has broken the surface. It glistens for an instant in the moonlight, and then it's gone, leaving only spreading ripples to mark its passing.

  You shiver. Guess you should be encouraged to know that these waters aren't completely dead. At least some sort of life exists here, but you can't help having a creepy feeling not knowing what kind of life is moving beneath you.

  But you make it back to the isle where your trip began with no further scrapes or splashes.

  You reenter the gallery and it's pretty much as you left it, except the flame-maned lion has returned to his gondola. And the painting on the easel has more detail in the trees, but little else has changed. Three steps ahead, two back.

  You feel depression seeping through you. Your own emotion or Sam's? Could be either. This certainly seems hopeless. The devastation seems worse on this level than above. How are you going to learn anything here when everything is drowned?

  "Shit," you say—simply to hear your own human voice.

  Before the feeling can overwhelm you, you click EXIT and get out.

  Seventeen

  People shouldn't compare memory to a videocamera, either. No way is a memory an objective recording of an event. Memory is an extension of perception, and stored as outcomes of perceptual analysis. It's colored by our feelings about the event, our emotional state, hell, probably even our blood Sugar level at the time.

  —Random notes: Julia Gordon

  1

  Julie removed the headset and glanced to where Eathan and Alma sat before the monitor.

  Eathan stood up and rubbed his hands on his thighs. "I'm very uncomfortable with this," he said. "Very. I really don't want to know this much about Sam's personal life. I never realized everything she went through. I..."

  Words railed him.

  Julie understood. She, too, was beginning to appreciate the depth of her sisters torment, but the fact remained that Sam was ultimately responsible for all the messes she created for herself. The question was, why did she create them? What were the demons that drove her into these situations?

  Demons... she thought of the Brueghel picture and its demon.

  Quickly Julie signed off with Dr. S., then noticed Alma, still sitting before the monitor, gazing at it as if mesmerized. Sensing Julie's scrutiny, she shook herself and looked up.

  "I... I'm speechless," she said. "This is the most phenomenal... the most revolutionary ..."

  Julie knew all that. She wanted Alma to tell her something she didn't know.

  "But did you learn anything?" she said.

  Alma nodded vigorously. "Oh, yes. Your sister was always so vague about certain details. Now I know exactly what happened. I mean, I—saw it."

  "Don't be too sure of that," Julie said. "I've learned never to

  accept what I see in there as objective truth. It's Sam's take on

  reality. It's colored by fears, dreams, fantasies__ "

  "I realize that," Alma said. "And that's my point. This may not be what actually happened, but it's how Sam remembers it, how she feels about it—and to a psychiatrist that's always more important than objective truth."

  Julie nodded, encouraged. No doubt about it, Alma was on the ball. But could she add anything?

  "What do you think? What about all that water? Post-holocaust on the first level, post-deluge on the second. Any significance to that?"

  Alma rubbed her chin. "Water is always mysterious. You never know what lurks beneath the surface."

  Well, thanks for that news flash, Julie thought. "What about my father as a vampire and the floating Jesus?"

  "Blood imagery, perhaps?'

  "And the severed hand?"

  "Now that was disturbing. Quite grotesque and completely out of place."

  "But it's not the first time I've seen it." She told Alma about the possum gnawing the hand on the first level and the father carving a hand for his family in the painting in Sam's apartment. "If I'd seen it only once, I
could ignore it. But it's a recurring theme. It has to be important."

  "Yes," Alma said slowly, leaning back and closing her eyes. "Obviously it's important. The hand is a potent image—the Hand of Fate, the Hand of Death ... we shake hands, touch each other—but in each instance in Sam's memories someone seems to be devouring the hand. I don't know—" She opened her eyes and straightened. "Biting the hand—biting the hand that feeds you!"

  Julie felt a chill. Alma was close, but Julie sensed she didn't have it all. She looked up and saw Eathan staring into space, a queasy look on his face. The cannibalistic scene had obviously rattled him.

  "I think you've almost got it," Julie said. "But what could it mean?"

  "I don't know," Alma said. "I'd like to view the videotapes of your other sessions before I attempt to answer that."

  "Fair enough. When will you have time?"

  "How about right now? I am absolutely entranced by the wonders of your equipment. I wouldn't sleep a wink tonight knowing I'd have to wait until tomorrow to see more."

  "Great. We'll take the tapes downstairs, plug them into the VCR in the family room, and leave you alone with your pa-1 tient."

  "I can't wait."

  2

  Eathan had already seen the first tape and didn't care to view it again. After her two exhausting excursions into the memoryscape already today, neither did Julie. They left Alma entranced before the oversized screen of the family room's projection TV and retired to the drawing room.

  As Eathan poured her another port, Julie said, "Isn't there anything left of my father's work besides his published papers?"

  "I'm afraid not. The fire razed the house to the foundation."

  "But didn't he have an office somewhere?"

  "Up until about a year before the fire, he worked for GEM Pharma as a psychopharmacologist. The company's big R and D thrust back in the late sixties was for a new antidepressant drug. Nathan's knowledge of brain chemistries made him a valuable man. But he was more interested in pure basic research. He went before the GEM board and proposed a number of avenues he wished to follow in addition to the antidepressants."