Our Lady of Babylon

by John Rechy

  I was certain Madame Bernice had determined that I attach significance to this matter. She still peered through her opera glasses. “The new tenant stands before his mansion often,” she said. “I’ve never really had a clear view of him because he locates himself under the eaves of his balcony. I’m more familiar with his shadow than with him! Oh, he’s there now.”

  A wave of fear was stilled by the mere fact that I was with Madame. I felt protected. But I had remembered this: During my flight here from the Grand Cathedral, I had noted that one of the châteaus down the road — surely the “mansion” Madame referred to — was just then being occupied. Trunks were being carried in from a coach. The new tenant, a tall presence — I remembered him vividly now; no, I, too, had seen only his elongated shadow — had waited on the outside stairs. Madame put down her glasses. She announced peremptorily: “On to important matters we’ve kept pending and which I shall now explain entirely. Your essence —”

  I received the word with a frown. Hadn’t she heard me earlier? “I am not a mystic.”

  She continued as if I had not spoken. “Your essence has been roaming for centuries from the past into the present.”

  I was sure I would grasp all this eventually. Now I only listened — to her, yes, but to other voices, traces of whispers out of my dreams.

  “It is the essence of all those women you thought you were dreaming about that has moved into the beautiful body you now possess.” Madame sniffed at her tea, a special import sent to her by messenger weekly from the City. “In the Cathedral, when Irena shouted the word ‘whore’ —”

  “— the word swirled in terrified echoes within the Cathedral.” I was now certain of it.

  “Yes,” Madame accepted. “It was then that your essence was aroused to manifest itself into this time, this life. To bring you here, for us to meet.” She spoke those last words quietly, and then went on: “You are now both present body and timeless essence. That essence is on its journey of redemption, to redeem with the truth the unjust blame on all those women. You are involved in nothing less than correcting the undeserved judgments of history.”

  I was taken aback by the breadth of the matter. I did not know until I heard her answer that I had spoken my thoughts aloud, without accepting what she had said. “But why me?”

  Madame cocked her head. “Because it is you.” She fed some crumbs from her delectable tea cakes to Ermenegildo — she’s clearly extremely fond of him. He had demanded her attention by holding for the longest time imaginable an ostentatious display of feathers.

  I was catching up with Madame’s deductions now, but not accepting them, of course. “And that is why I know — yes, even this — yes! — I know about the War in Heaven, and about —”

  “That is enough.”

  The harsh words jarred me. I protested any possibility that they had been intended to contradict: “I am committed to the truth.”

  “Who knows that better than I?” Madame reminded me, and explained: “I stopped you only because we must begin immediately to plan for the announcement of these stunning revelations.”

  “Announcement?”

  Madame Bernice looked at me as if my question baffled her, as if she assumed that if a thought entered her mind, it had managed to enter that of her listener. “Yes, to those to whom you must tell your story and who will spread it until everybody knows it. We must rehearse!”

  “Rehearse!”

  “For interviews.”

  “Interviews!”

  As if realizing only now that her thoughts had not entered mine, Madame touched my hand briefly. “Lady, yours is not an ordinary story. It must be presented carefully.”

  “Nothing about me is ordinary.” Was a part of me still struggling to thwart the words that would define my long journey?

  Madame held up a finger for attention. An emerald embraced it. “It must be presented carefully” — she sighed, leaning over as if addressing Ermenegildo — “must be presented carefully and at last.”

  Surely he had not echoed her sigh? Had I?

  “Interviewers will be skeptical,” Madame moved on, “they’ll even attempt to deride your truths. There are several questions we ourselves must answer before we can proceed to present our cause. You must rehearse, rehearse, rehearse, rehearse.” She paused to allow me to catch up with her racing mind.

  I could not.

  She tried to make her voice sound casual, but that only drew even more attention to her astounding words: “There may well be forceful — and dangerous — attempts to thwart our interviews.” She had reached absently for her opera glasses. Her words resumed their previous authority: “In deference to your repeated assertion —”

  Was she going to indicate that she had heard my repeated interjection that I am not a mystic? Yes.

  “— I shall say only that from the moment I glimpsed you earlier sitting on my bench and weeping, and soon after when you told me — so touchingly, Lady — the details of what you believed were dreams, I knew the time had come.”

  “The time has come,” I uttered solemnly.

  Madame’s hand extended across the table toward mine. “I shall devote myself to ensure that you achieve your wondrous goal.”

  “My goal?”

  Her words came with a passion I had not detected earlier: “To redirect blame where it belongs” — she held her breath, and touched her heart — “and to purge the word . . .”

  She waited again for me to supply it.

  “Whore!”

  Never in the City — I suppose because of its hectic social pace and the increasing duties required of the genteel within a crumbling society — had I noticed, that I recall, that there are moments when time pauses, when a moment is exposed, yes, naked, as if to be seen from every single vantage in order for its full meaning to be understood. Such a moment occurred after Madame had, with what now seemed to me to have been a wounded sigh, uttered — no, after I had uttered — I was no longer sure who had finally spoken it — the word, “whore,” a moment that allowed such close scrutiny that I noticed that the leaves on a tree whose branches hovered over the veranda had changed color, become the slightest tint darker. An indiscernible breeze, contained in the same second, must have breathed on the leaves because their original hue returned immediately, just as Ermenegildo looked up, as if he, too, had noted the transformation.

  The moment passed. That is, it flowed into the remainder of the afternoon.

  “By redefining that word,” and now it was definitely Madame who was speaking, “we shall defuse it, so that whoever says ‘whore’ hereafter shall evoke — redeemed! — all unjustly blamed women from the beginning of time.”

  My eyes filled with tears.

  “Tears will add conviction.”

  I reared back from her startling insensitivity. “There is no need for forced tears. There have been too many real ones.”

  “Excellently stated!” Madame congratulated. “I was preparing you for the skepticism you will face.”

  I was relieved that I had misinterpreted her words, that I had not given my trust easily. Was I catching her excitement? The next thought was like an ambush, though I didn’t know by what exactly: “But, Madame, surely in the interviews that you suggest” — I had chosen the word carefully so she would not infer agreement — “I would be asked how Eve connects with Helen —”

  “The question of connections will come up,” she accepted easily. “That’s why rehearsals are essential. For now, let’s just observe that Eve is the first woman.” She popped another of the puffy stars into her mouth for punctuation.

  I had begun to catch her excitement. “And so Medea, too —” The dark memory demanded to be included.

  “Medea!”

  I would have interpreted the sudden wave of Madame’s hand as outraged rejection had I not noticed in relief that the gesture had slipped — though carefully — into a pushing away of a strand of her hair that was arguing with a breeze. She smiled, erasing — I had begun to read
her signals — any hint of dissent between us, at least for now. She sipped her tea. “I do believe I shall reorder this blend, it’s good.” Was she still trying to move me away from that deeply haunting, haunted life? She touched Ermenegildo’s comb, smoothed its crooked feather, which instantly recovered its curve. She leaned back, carefully positioning herself for greatest comfort in her chair. “Now, Lady, tell me how it all began, the creation of the world.”

  I remembered it exactly, and I said:

  IV

  DARKNESS EXPLODED, turned into itself, entered itself, and thrust itself out in a huge burst that rent the void and erupted once again, hurtling pulsing spurts of itself into orbit, spurts that arcked, turned liquid, almost solidified as they spun in space and time. That is how God created Himself.

  “Might you underplay the orgasmic imagery?” Madame Bernice suggested.

  She was a prude! “That is how it happened, exactly as Adam told it to me. I cannot convey a falsehood, and I will not indulge in euphemisms.” I decided to face the matter squarely: “Are you, Madame, a prude?”

  She pulled her head back. “Of course I am not a prude!” Her uplifted chin, and a dazzle of rings as her hand carved a protecting arc before her, doubly rejected my gentle but firm accusation. “I’m speaking only from the point of view of interviewers. You must keep in mind that people are very strange about God and sex.”

  It occurred to me that she was paying undue attention to her teacup. “I’m glad you’re not a prude,” I commended, “because my memories contain matters that cannot be camouflaged nor modified.”

  “If I were a prude, Lady,” she continued in a brittle tone, “and you were other than you are, I would have cautioned early in our talks when you were detailing what you thought were dreams — be truthful, but not vulgar —”

  “Vulgar!” I drenched the word in indignation.

  “You did not let me finish, Lady,” Madame said. “I clearly emphasized, ‘If you were other than you are.’ But you are no other than you are” — her words attempted to thaw a growing chill between us — “and what you are is the beautiful, elegant, tasteful woman I see before me, committed entirely to truth. Others — not, of course, you — might even resort to harsh words for the act of lovemaking, use crude words for private body parts —”

  “— which I will find occasion to employ when I relate the words of others,” I affirmed. I was thinking of the printed installment of the “Account” circulating scandal in the City. Eventually Madame must know all it contained.

  Madame extended fastidious concentration to her tea. “Understand this, Lady — I speak only in preparation for interviews. I myself am not affected by crudeness.”

  “Crudeness!” I added outrage to my indignation.

  “You didn’t let me finish.” She transferred her attention to the folds of her silk skirt; a vagrant strand had caught on one of her rings. “Let me explain. I know what’s coming, intimate stories that have never before been told correctly. I know your accounts will contain private details that no one else can know. Still, during interviews, we must guard against anything that tends to distract. People are often distracted when the subject of sex occurs. Now on to important matters —”

  “Sex is an important matter,” I reminded, “especially within my memories of blame.” My commitment to absolute truth had to be affirmed.

  “Excellently said; you must remember that verbatim when interviews begin.”

  We were both relieved to note that evening had begun to settle on the countryside. “Shall we continue tomorrow at tea?” Madame suggested.

  She and Ermenegildo accompanied me down the few steps of the veranda. At dusk, red blossoms on vines looked like blotches of blood. A chill was permeating the approaching evening. I covered myself with the purple cowl I carried with me for just such a possibility. We walked on the lawn. How quickly a bond had been asserted between us — among us; I suspected the peacock had become instantly fond of me.

  As I started to move away along the paths of the garden and toward the road, Madame said, “Knowing now that what you thought were dreams are memories, you must, tonight, Lady, invite more memories, willing yourself” — her words became soft, softer, blending with twilight — “back into the primal garden, the edge of Patmos. Remember . . .”

  I hardly heard the word, though I repeated it: “Remember.”

  I had no sooner stepped onto the road than it seemed that I had already begun to dream — to remember — thoughts, memories suffused now with new meaning. The mesmerized evening — dark dusk waiting — augmented that sense.

  To my astonishment, I realized that I had headed in the wrong direction and was now facing the château Madame Bernice had been peering at earlier through her opera glasses, the château of the new tenant, whom I had glimpsed on the day I fled the Grand Cathedral.

  Only sprinkles of candlelight dotted the windows of the château. It seemed deliberately darkened. I saw a shadow cross a window, then cross another in the same vast room, cross back again. It was he, the tall man, pacing restlessly. I hid behind the heavy foliage of oleanders that enclosed the property. I observed his movements. His pacing increased, slowed, stopped, resumed faster. Plotting what? If he was a spy, how quickly hostile presences in the City acted to have me watched.

  I turned away. I lit the candle in the lantern I had learned to carry, should my walks extend beyond twilight. I hurried back to my château. I did not fear the rustling nor the scraping I heard within the brush. I know those muffled sounds now, the sounds of the secretive existence of the pitiful derelicts longing for respite in the country.

  At my gate, I stopped. Something had been left there. I held my lantern up. A bouquet of flowers had been placed — shoved — against the grillwork, strange flowers, shaped somewhat like roses but of a dark, disturbing color, the color of long-dried blood. Their scent was heavy; they possessed a — what word? — a sated perfume. I flung them away.

  By the time I reached my chambers, I dismissed any significance to my discovery, not a bouquet at all but flowers gathered and discarded aimlessly, finding their accidental way against my gates.

  In my quarters, the evil “Account” that assaults my life with my beloved Count du Muir draws me to it, where I placed it on a marble table. I open it to where I left off earlier:

  On such a night — when the Count had taken a circuitous route to his mansion after having enjoyed a particularly exhilarating performance at the opera, an exhilaration which had aroused his desire to aid any unfortunate derelicts (not all derelicts are unfortunate) who might have unwittingly wandered into the depraved sector of the City — the Whore, coached by her Pimp, thrust herself into the night in the tom guise of a Lady (some deluded souls even claimed she played the role quite well; indeed? the Reader rightly questions) in order to intercept the Count’s coach while she screamed for his protection: “A man is pursuing me with a knife, your Lordship!”

  At the same time, she allowed her tattered dress to faint at her feet in the cold night and thus reveal her full nudity, which to anyone other than the Noble Count, responding only to her supposed need for shelter, might have seemed resplendent, since the favorable light, in conspiracy with the Whore and the Reverend Pimp’s intent, cast sinuous shadows that luridly accentuated the whiteness of her flesh, especially the velvety mound that her soft thighs seemed lasciviously to strain to kiss (she had trained them to do that) — all devised for full display (sordid display, the Reader justly clarifies). And who was the man in pursuit? — pretended pursuit. The Reverend Pimp, who else?

  Hastily, the Noble Count opened the door of his coach, not even waiting for the Coachman to perform his just duties, although he, too, had rushed in response to the spectacular display. (How other than “spectacular” to describe accurately such an unexpected sight? the Reader understands.) Ever vigilant to the preservation of morality, the Count was, with swiftness, attempting selflessly to shield others on the street from the assaulting sight of the Whore by
bringing her into the cover of his coach immediately. Claiming a fever from the chase, the Whore refused what the Noble Count instantly offered her — his opera cape.

  In his innocence (although, along with his Twin Brother, he was the most desirable man in the City, the Count was pure of heart — and body), the Noble Count mistook for sorrow the look in the Whore’s extravagantly lashed eyes, a look which was in reality one of satiety, lust, and wantonness.

  Once in his coach, the Whore pulled the Count to her. “Protect me, please, your Lordship.” She pretended to tremble, thus assuring that her nudity would gleam each time the coach passed lanterns along the avenues. It can only be imagined by the justifiably outraged Reader with what urgency the Count turned away from this vilely opulent offering of naked breasts and quivering thighs (they did not quiver with fear, as he assumed). “Please, your Lordship, hold me close, please!” the Whore pretended to plead.

  No matter how affronted by it, the Writer must endure this weighty task and proceed to document —

  Enough! I shall now, as I lie in bed, invite, just as Madame exhorted, fuller details of my true lives.

  In the morning — not at all tired today after having roamed continents and centuries — from Eden to Patmos, to the River Jordan and the Black Sea — I was eager to join Madame Bernice again at tea.

  As I neared her château, I noticed again, with a flush of warmth, an immediate sense of protection. Ermenegildo waited for me at the edge of Madame’s grounds. I followed him up the path, pausing only for a moment while he sniffed a spectacular carnation, mottled pink and peach.

  On the veranda, tea was set. The vase on the table displayed a gathering of exquisite violets. Madame was trying out another brew of tea, although she withheld the fact from me, studying my reaction to gauge my approval of her new choice as I sipped it. I did not tell her that yesterday’s tea was better. She seemed — I had seen a slight twitch at her nose when she tested its scent — to have reached the same conclusion. Today, she wore a small coronet, with one emerald. She is not ostentatious, but she loves to dress for tea.