by John Rechy
I put down the glasses, and told Madame Bernice about the dark flowers I had found at my gate last night. My first interpretation had returned, that it was a bouquet left there deliberately. “Might he have left them there? A warning of his presence — like the shot?”
Madame said thoughtfully, “I’ve heard from one of my servants that he’s a man of bizarre activities.”
“Perhaps he’s a spy, employed by Irena and Alix. Or by the Pope. Or all three.”
“If their alliance holds,” Madame introduced the possibility of further conspiracy.
We both stared in the direction of the dark château. It seemed to darken earlier than any of the others. Of course, that was easily explained by the fact that it was built on a slight elevation, heavily treed.
“Don’t be concerned, Lady,” Madame assured me. “I shall see that nothing threatens our endeavors. Nor you. Count on me.”
I assumed she was referring at least in part to her mystic qualities. So I did not remark. I told myself she was right earlier, that the shot had come from one of the careless hunters drawn to the woods each season. The strange bouquet again became flowers randomly thrust against my gate by the wind, which I now remembered rising as I neared my château last night.
“Do you suppose, Lady, that this might be the time for you to tell me what His Holiness holds against you, and how you managed to get him to officiate at your nuptials in the Cathedral? After all, he is the Holy Father.”
From the way she paused in apparent awe before and after the title, I assumed she would not greet my story without protest. I considered toning it down, but I am committed to the truth. What I must tell her was simply this:
I had discovered — from a friend of the Count’s, a nun of the highest order and true morality — that as the Pope went about his palace — its floors polished to a mirror gloss — he would surround himself with choirboys in their smocks. He would also welcome throngs of visiting little girls in their ruffled dresses.
While seeming to be profusely blessing the little children over whom he leaned, he would delight at what his shiny floors reflected, underpants, or an occasional lack thereof, and if the latter, he would squeal with pleasure, a fact that made the mothers of the children vaunt his love of “little ones” and bring him more. To get a better look, he would “accidentally” drop his miter. That provided him with a bonus. A boy or girl — both at the same time would send him into shivers of joy — would bend to retrieve the holy staff and expose more than a mere reflection.
It was that which I must find words to tell Madame Bernice, an even more intimidating prospect now that she had bowed her head and was holding her hands, piously, one on the other, on her lap. I started — stuttered: “I had learned that the Pope — I mean, His Holiness — had certain predilections for —” I would gasp out the truth. I inhaled. “— certain predilections for — for —”
“— for the pink bottoms of little boys and girls!” Throwing her head back, Madame issued a sound I might have described as a guffaw except that she is much too refined for that. Still, it was very loud, and her abundant body shook with glee.
“You know?”
“And that he allows his miter to fall so they’ll bend to pick it up —” She slapped her thighs. Her laughter might have been a roar if produced by someone less genteel. “—and then, bottoms up!” She folded over, unable to contain her laughter, one guffaw producing another, and still another after a subdued pause.
I stared at her, astonished. “Madame?” Of course her breeding does allow her an occasional display of exuberance.
She forced a sober face — which held for only seconds before another burst of laughter erupted from her, and she shook and shook and shook until Ermenegildo pecked at her hand. With grand composure, she said, “Proceed please, Lady.”
Draped in subdued veils, I went to the Pope’s palace at the time of the day he walked among his subjects, eagerly wending his way toward those with children. He took me for a supplicant and held out his hand cursorily for me to kiss — an ugly fat hand cluttered with garish jewelry. I pretended to bend to kiss it while whispering, “I know about the polished floors.” He granted me an audience at the edge of the giant hall.
“What exactly do you know?” he hissed.
I told him.
“Lies.”
At that very moment a group of children appeared, including some young acolytes in their loose frocks, a few girls in their dainty smocks. Instinctively, the Pope dropped his miter. The adorable children bent to retrieve it. The Pope’s eyes strained to catch each glimpse allowed him.
When the garish interlude was over, I faced him.
“What do you want for your silence?” the Pontiff asked me.
“That you officiate at my nuptials, that you sanctify my marriage to the Count du Muir.” This would give to our controversial marriage — his sister and twin brother were already conspiring against me, spreading filthy lies — what others would see as an unassailable acceptance by the Holy Church.
He acquiesced. Should I have considered that he had done so too quickly? I was too elated to weigh that then, looking ahead to my life with the Count, long seasons in the country, a hint of the bliss I had already experienced with him in the château I would later occupy without him. Yes, and we would raise our children away from turbulence.
“I can readily see why he would proceed to officiate in your marriage, Lady, but why do you suspect he was involved in the murder in the Cathedral?”
“In the Cathedral, I saw him dodge before the bullet intended for me at the altar was fired,” I explained. “Alix and Irena have strong connections to the Church, and there’s great wealth they must believe I care about.” I touched my nuptial band; it was treasure enough, the diamond I wore like a tear on my finger. “Now, in the vile versions of our love and courtship that are being hastily printed in installments — and there’s already one —” I wanted to insinuate this slowly, knowing that eventually I would have to expose her to it.
“Oh, yes, I’ve heard.”
Madame’s words surprised me, only at first. Naturally she would know of the existence of the libelous “Account.” Even in the country, who could avoid knowledge of anything so outrageous? Surely one of her servants would have heard of it, whispered about it. “In it, they’re claiming I seduced him in devious ways —” I wanted to prepare her for its contents.
“We must deal with it all, since it’s bound to come up at interviews,” she accepted easily, “and it affirms our need to proceed as quickly as possible, without any compromise to the thoroughness of our presentation.” She used her most serious tone as she followed her own advice to proceed: “At interviews, we must never seem to be only substituting other conclusions. Motivation is what has most often been altered to entrench the blame we seek to correct. True motives reveal true culprits.”
The true culprits revealed! I tasted the delicious words silently.
“So, now, Lady, let’s return to Herod’s palace — and the dance of sev —”
I waited, readying a frown.
To erase the moment that had almost occurred, she poured herself more tea, but her cup was full and it spilled, a fact she would have ignored had Ermenegildo not brought her a towel with his beak. Through all that, Madame retained her dignity.
Restored last night with submerged details revealed, my memories returned easily to Herod’s palace:
Guards led the naked enchained Baptist to the despicable rulers. Herodias, my mother, and Herod, her husband, sat like decorated puppets on their throne, which was draped with heavy, opulent fabrics embedded with garish stones, a throne propped on golden predatory claws. The palace, all marble and garish-colored glass, rose out of the desert like a cheaply ostentatious diamond. It was beautiful only on clear nights when it inhaled the subtle shades of evening.
It was on such a night that I first learned of the raging preacher. A distant cursing voice had wakened me. I could not hear words, but heard, b
eyond his anger, a resonant voice that sang passionately. Clothed only in the humid moisture of that hot night, I looked out my window. I saw him, alone in the desert, his exposed body bathed in the glow of a blue moon. The tilt of his head indicated he was gazing above me. At what? At whom? I ran silently up the steps, to locate the object of his attention. Herodias leaned against a window. As she listened to the Baptist’s curses denouncing her and Herod for their depravity, their despotism toward their subjects, Herodias’s hands probed under her robe, arousing herself to the rhythm of the Saint’s curses, her hands rubbing between her thighs in frenzied movements. Groaning, her eyes scorched with lust, she pushed her fingers into —
“Lady —”
— herself; exploring herself in circles, sudden jabs, her robe now raised over her bared thighs, the perspiration of her desire glistening in the blue moonlight —
“Lady!”
“Madame?”
“We were exploring motivations.”
“I am.” My memories glided past her interruption.
Herodias demanded that Herod arrest the wandering preacher: “The Baptist must be silenced. He’s a madman, spawning a generation of messianic egalitarians who will bring us down unless he’s arrested — and brought to us.”
“If it amuses you,” Herod yawned.
I knew it was not her fury at his curses but her lust that Herodias longed to satisfy.
I had come to know my monstrous mother well during long lessons when she coached me in seductiveness, lessons performed only in pantomime so I would remain a virgin — a tool she would use. I knew her lust for the Baptist was aroused not only by his beauty but what defined it for her: his virginity. Deprived of his saintly purity, he would be just another of the discarded objects of her lust. I knew, too, that her unique desire for him was too powerful for her to want to part with it. She would seek to possess him and his purity, forever. How? There was only one way: by being the first — and only one — to have him. To assure that, she would have him slain after her seduction of him. But did she truly believe that she — beautiful though she was — could entice the holy man into breaking his powerful vows of chastity? And how would she coax Herod, a superstitious man, to allow the killing of a man purported to be a saint?
I, too, had fallen under the Baptist’s spell! I, too, longed for him. But I longed to save him, his life — and his passionate purity — to assure he would always remain what he was, and alive. I had to learn exactly how Herodias intended her deadly violation.
On the day the Baptist was to be captured, Herodias announced to me: “Today you will perform the dance I’ve taught you, the dance of seven veils — and be barefoot; wear only this on one toe.” She located a ruby ring on my tiny foot. Together, the veils slashed my body with colors. Certainly all this was part of her cunning.
For long, she had used me to tantalize Herod, who was impotent. She would assure that, at certain times, I would be within his sight, so that a brief breeze lured by the curve of my hips would whip about me, hugging my body. I — and Herodias — could hear Herod’s moans of frustrated passion, as he poked at his wasted groin. With a smile etched by evil, Herodias recorded each rancid glance. By increasing the enticement, she connived to control him.
Herodias located me carefully at the mouth of a corridor, where shadows would play on me as the Baptist was dragged past. When he saw me, he stopped, the clanging of his chains proclaiming his daring action, his awe at the sight of me. His intense eyes grazed my body — yes, with desire. I detected the assertive flush of it in his groin. He turned away, his eyes closing — tightly — a shield to temptation.
Herodias had captured the interlude she had arranged. She would use me to possess the Baptist, but how? I must discover that. My longing for him and my longing to save him became one.
His struggling body bright with sweat that was feverishly licked by tongues of fire from the torches in the palace, the Baptist stood before Herodias. Away from me, he could allow his eyes to open. They did, in challenge to his captors. Herodias’s purple lips received a lush grape that a naked boy fed her, one of several young men she recruited when she roamed the poorest sections of the kingdom. As she stared at John, her lips remained opened, her eyes hollowed by lust. She dismissed the boy beside her.
She said to Herod: “I propose a performance such as you’ve never imagined, a performance capable of arousing” — she held the promise, allowing it to resonate — “even you.” Her eyes gazed, hypnotized at the dormant power between the Baptist’s thighs.
“Lady —”
“Yes?”
I had of course noticed that during my recollection of the intrigue in the palace of Herod, Madame had begun to study the gems on her fingers. That often signaled that she would apply even closer scrutiny to a portion of my memories: “How do you account for the fact that in telling the truth about Salome, you’re turning Herodias into a blamed woman?”
“Because she was to blame, she and Herod.” I spoke with a firm voice. “I don’t speak for women justly blamed; I speak only for the unjustly blamed, not those who were to blame. Keep this in mind, Madame — and I shall emphasize it at interviews — it is unjustly blamed women who are remembered and excoriated, and called ‘whores.’” Despite my inclination toward restraint, I had allowed a wave of fervor into my declamation.
“Lady,” Madame said, “may I congratulate you?”
“Yes.” I continued: “Time was narrowing. I must discover how to save John within my dance of —”
“— seven veils,” Madame startled me by interjecting.
“Six.”
“Seven. You yourself just said it earlier, that there would be seven veils. I let that pass without comment at the time, simply accepting your correction. But now that you’ve gone back to —”
“There were six, Madame!
“Lady, everyone knows —”
“Madame! I shall not continue against such intransigence!” “Then go to” — she drank her tea, most daintily — “go to wherever you want your memories to travel next. Go ahead.”
“I shall travel to —” How was it possible I had not noticed the heavy gathering of clouds that now swept away the light, so that for disoriented moments I thought it was night? “I shall travel to the Black Sea,” I said.
“Where?”
“To the Black Sea. When I fled with Jason.”
“Medea?” Madame placed one palm flatly on the table. “You insist, then, that your memories include her?”
“I must tell the story of the killing of my children,” I said firmly.
Madame rearranged our teacups. She took a cake when there was already one on her plate. She dropped her napkin and replaced it by her side. She flattened her hand on the table again. She pulled so hard at one of her earrings — diamonds surrounding a ruby — that she winced but then pulled on the other. She burrowed her lowered head into her chest. She touched her necklace, studied its pendant, an opal, released it. She held her breath for moments, as if deliberating whether or not ever to release it. She opened her mouth.
What was coming?
Ermenegildo sat up, perplexed.
Madame coughed. She mumbled — sounds.
“What is disturbing you?”
She sat forward in her chair. “Just this,” she said. “We must make sure we end up in corrected history and not pursued by the Enquirer.”
VI
“THE WHAT?”
“The Enquirer.”
“Who, Madame, is the Enquirer?” A terrible Inquisitor, rounding up souls to face brutal interrogators, an Inquisition raging in the City to stifle the growing unrest among the violated, some of whom are now spilling into the country?
Biting on the by now desolate tea cake that she had finally allowed to remain on her plate, Madame Bernice said: “Forgive me, Lady. I forget you’re not attuned to certain matters you call mystic, and others call visions, but which I shall simply call terrifying hints of possibilities — Cassandra would re
adily understand this. Sometimes such matters insinuate themselves into my nightmares.”
I had always imagined her sleeping soundly. “You’re not making sense, Madame.” Ermenegildo shook his head in agreement. “First you were talking about an — the — Enquirer, and now you’re talking about nightmares.”
“The same thing,” Madame asserted, and went on: “In one such nightmare — last night? — I foresaw . . . I’m sorry the word has caused you to frown, Lady, but I can think of no other. I foresaw —” Madame’s shudder caused her to stop.
“— a terrifying Inquisitor pursuing me, because of conspiracies involving the murder in the Grand Cathedral?” I finished for her.
“Exactly — and then there’s that. . . other woman you insist on . . . that woman, that —”
“Medea.” I understood instantly.
“Surely you’ll admit, Lady, that she does produce a strong response in many — even an aversion?”
I was aware of a forlorn, soundless cry . . . I would say nothing that would entrench Madame’s assertion. “Perhaps what you . . . perceived” — I had chosen that word with care — “was the possibility that Irena or Alix or the Pope may have hired a spy, a professional Inquisitor?”
“Yes! Religious, political inquisitors are easily hired . . . I didn’t mean to alarm you with the full implications of such a pursuit. That’s why I floundered.”
It was the exalted title and the way she had pronounced it with such terror — the Enquirer — and in connection with my life as Medea — that had taken me aback. Now I understood: She had become unsettled by the prospect of too much controversy should news of our interviews leak out. She might even have introduced the matter as a ploy to keep in abeyance the life that disturbed her. I inhaled to add force to my assertion, but my words came out quietly: “I was Medea, I know her essence well, and I will tell that life.”
That occurred during our fourth meeting for tea. Yes, our fourth. The matter of an Inquisitor in pursuit of us, and Madame’s overt resistance to my life as Medea, had been introduced yesterday.
