by John Rechy
Lucifer said to his sister, “It’s true?”
Cassandra nodded, “That’s His intention, yes. Fate is very near its course.” Her tactic would hold for only seconds more.
“But not there yet!” Lucifer grasped. He stood swiftly at the very foot of God’s throne, before this God he had once loved. “We flew into the darkness out of which You emerged. Beyond that, there’s a universe. I’ll trade Your Heaven for what we felt — freedom! — beyond Your narrow boundaries.”
God’s body tensed with power on His throne. His rainbow-colored scarf drifted from His shoulders to His sandaled feet. “I forbid you!”
Lucifer had extended the seconds of possibility! Cassandra welcomed that turn. God’s rage had diverted His attention further.
Lucifer stretched his arms up, wide, in front of God. Before he had completed his pantomime of flying, his hands clenched into fists, and he shouted:
“I defy You, God!”
There was a gasp in Heaven. Michael pointed his lance at Lucifer.
“My will be done!” God’s hand fell on His groin. “I declare War in Heaven!”
As bands of uncommitted angels rushed to join Lucifer and Cassandra, and others joined Michael — and all in Michael’s faction were suddenly armed — Cassandra closed her eyes. The gates were still not closed! The defiant angels could still escape. Had God been pushed to rashness?
She could not ponder that long. Before her, Lucifer and the rebellious angels confronted Michael and his army of sudden warriors. It was past them, the warriors, that the defiant angels must make their way to the edge of Heaven, from where they had first flown.
How was it possible that Heaven’s gates were still not even poised to close?
Cassandra heard Lucifer shout to the angels who stood with them the words she had just uttered to him:
“Storm Heaven now!”
XXIII
“MADAME, I CANNOT GO ON.” I was staring into the darkening sky, where that terrifying war had been fought so long ago, so present in my memories.
“I understand. But, Lady, I must know now or I won’t sleep. Were Cassandra’s perceptions wrong? — that God intended to lock Heaven?” Madame’s voice rang with indignation that there could exist such a possibility. “Surely she didn’t act rashly when she decided that the rebellious angels must storm Heaven then.”
“Cassandra was not wrong, Madame, and she moved when she felt she must.” That was all my sudden weariness could grant her. Further explication would come in detail, but not tonight.
The knowledge that Cassandra had not been wrong had satisfied Madame, for now. “I never doubted she was right.”
Dusky evening had darkened into purple the flowers on the vines of bougainvillea draping the veranda. In the diminished light, surrendered lavender blossoms from jacaranda trees transformed the lacy veil of petals on the ground into a tattered shroud. Only the new orchid lilies thrived in this decreasing light, their near-oppressive perfume as powerful as that of rancid gardenias abandoned after an aborted wedding. I noticed all this as Ermenegildo escorted me to the road. I’m certain that he would have accompanied me all the way to my château, except that I assured him, and Madame Bernice, that I would be safe — we were all remembering the carriage that had sped past us earlier. Along the road, I glanced back to see Ermenegildo, verifying my safety. Behind him, Madame strained on her veranda to follow me as far as her vision allowed in this ambiguous light. I took her caring gaze with me as a blessing.
As I walked along the road, I heard anxious palm fronds struggling in a rising wind. I drew my cowl higher on my shoulders. I cannot become accustomed to the fact that a warm afternoon, like today’s, may be invaded by as powerful a chill as tonight’s, and that a cool afternoon may be swept away by heated winds. I slowed my steps. Would the coach still be at my gates? Caught in the invasion of recollections about the War in Heaven — I realized only now — neither Madame nor I, nor Ermenegildo, who would have signaled, had heard it rumbling back. It might have done so stealthily, to disorient us.
The carriage was not there. My relief was only momentary. My lantern revealed a wrapped package left attached to the grillwork of my gate. Rising wind whirled leaves about it, containing it in a vortex.
My hands — acting beyond my fear — reached for the package and unwrapped it: “The True and Just Account of the Abominable Seduction into Holy Matrimony in the Grand Cathedral and of the Murder of the Most Royal Count by the Whore: The Final Installment.”
The Final Installment!
Those last words had been scrawled — not yet printed! — in bold black bleeding letters, as if intended in themselves to convey a sense of . . .
Still-forming menace.
Tired as I am — but aware that there is so much to go through and that time is narrowing — I shall share with you now in my quarters what Madame and I rehearsed today during our long, long tea . . .
There.
I’ve gone with you through all the matters we explored, up to Lucifer’s echoing of Cassandra’s exhortation to storm Heaven.
And it’s all blasphemous!
I should pretend I didn’t hear your accusation, even within the quietude of my chambers. But I shall answer you with all the force of my voice: I have been blasphemed against, blamed for all the world’s sorrows! I am now at last about to present my case.
I note your abrupt silence.
I know it’s only temporary. I anticipate that you — yes, you who thrust that accusation at me so loudly! — are merely waiting. When you spring, I shall be ready to answer you even more forcefully.
As forcefully as I shall answer the guaranteed libels in the “Final Installment,” which I abandoned on the marble table with the earlier entries. It shall remain there for now. I reach instead for the “Third Installment,” which I have not read entirely — except for its noxious ending “promise” that my eyes fall on. Madame says it’s important that we attend, in sequence, to the evolving assertions in the “Account,” since it’s presenting its evil case carefully.
Is that the installment that describes the Renegade Nun?
Yes! But I have no guarantee that she appears again.
Although the “Final Installment” continues to command my attention with its imperative first page — my eyes return to it and pull away — I shall resume reading from the “Third Installment,” as far as my endurance for vilification allows. I skip gladly the pages to which I’ve already exposed myself. I find the place where, an earlier night, my violated heart demanded that I stop, that I not even turn the page, and I read:
Exhausted but undaunted by this True Account that he is honor-bound to record, the Writer now divulges that, throughout this pilgrimage of righteous exposure, he has been carrying an added weight of outrage: knowledge of a most harrowing act in the Whore’s contaminated past, an act so heinous —
I turn the page, slowly.
— that the Whore falsified it to arouse the Noble Count’s compassion and to bind him closer to her with pity, adding that to all the other unholy coercions she and the Reverend Pimp exposed him to. Or (shall further exploration uncover?) did she withhold the monstrous act entirely from him, not daring to risk provoking a more deserving compassion that would incite him to recoil in horror from the said abhorrence, and from her? And. what was that abhorrence? This: the violent death of her children within her profane past.
They dare.
Being quick in considerations of morality, the Reader is surely pondering: Children fathered by whom? Did she know? Was it by the Reverend Pimp? How would such a man react to the blessing of Fatherhood? How indeed!
They dare. I shall not even pause, shall not even hold my breath. I shall persevere undaunted.
The Writer (stunned anew by the prospect of the atrocity involved) cannot bear to proceed into such a quagmire now, knowing that the cleansed of heart will understand his reticence and extend a benediction to him. Again he moves away from that information for now, to give the R
eader and himself time to prepare for what is to come.
Again, imputations, only imputations left to fester viciously. I push on, to the relative mercy of — perhaps! — lesser outrages.
Because it has been some pages since the Reader was last made aware, by this faithful True Account, of the repellent conduct of the Whore and her Reverend Pimp, the Writer has thought it wise to chronicle more steps in this saga of debauchery intended to bring the righteous Count to his knees — both in situations the Writer blushes to remember, as well as at the altar of the Grand Cathedral.
The dissolute pair — the Whore and the Reverend Pimp — continued to force the gentle Count to indulge in “games” which (the Reader surely knows by now) were repugnant to the Count, who potently resisted them. (The Writer reminds that he returns to and dwells at length upon the harrowing concupiscence involved, only because it prepares the stunned Reader for greater transgressions to follow.)
In one such outrage designed further to undermine the Count’s judicious morality and his loyalty to his class, the Whore and the Pimp set out to enact this scenario.
Shall I race ahead? No. It isn’t easy to surrender to this abhorrent document too soon; it must be done slowly, step by ugly step:
The Whore pretended she was a Great Lady involved in a secret assignation in a rural inn with her Philanderer-Lover. Here, the Writer shares the Reader’s indignant protestation: A woman of true nobility would never agree to an assignation in a rural inn. At this point in this journey to unmask depravity, the Reader does not have to be informed who would be inveigled into playing the sated Philanderer-Lover. The Noble Count.
In this charade, a Page would deliver a rose to the Lady-Whore’s quarters. The rose was accompanied by a note explaining that the Philanderer-Lover would be late “because of unavoidable consultations with the King.” “Take this rose,” the spurious note read, “in my stead until I join you.” The fraudulent note went on to suggest that the Lady-Whore employ the rose “imaginatively” to enhance the enticements and scents of her opulent body (that is how the writer of the note saw it).
The Lady-Whore was languishing in her bath (according to the script she and the Reverend Pimp had devised) when the hired Page, hearing no response to his gentle but not unmanly knocking, entered the Lady-Whore’s chamber, just as was intended.
The role of the Page was performed by a young, sweetly naive Lad from the country — told only that he was being hired to deliver a rose to “a lady.” The Lad’s unruly curls occasionally toppled to the edge of his enormous chocolaty eyes full of youthful dreams, eyes whose color was deepened by his fair skin, although, clearly, the sun had lingered on it with warm kisses. His uniform as Page was quite snug, and so revealed the sturdy firm buttocks that only good Christian labor can sculpt so round.
The Writer of this True Account dwells on the Lad-Page’s description only because what occurs subsequently will be rendered all the more nefarious if the Reader retains the fact of the Lad-Page’s youthfully delectable virginity and imagines the series of boyish blushes all this provoked.
Any doubt that the Pope is involved in the production of these pages evaporates.
Attempting to deliver the rose from the Philanderer-Lover in this repugnant charade, and still obtaining no response to his knocking, the Lad-Page wandered into the only source of sounds in the quarters, the Lady-Whore’s bath, just as had been intended. (How his face must have flushed as he looked away from the extravagant spectacle of the Lady-Whore naked in her bath, foamy bubbles playing hide-and-seek with her flesh, especially where they nestled between her breasts — and, most especially, between her thighs, since she had crooked one leg slightly over the other, just so, so that a tint of hair at her parting peeked, just so, out of the bubbly water, even more when she moved, causing the soapy bubbles to burst, and then re-form, just so, delighting in their warm nest, just exactly so.
Alix’s contribution.
Before the Lad-Page’s astonished chocolaty eyes, the Lady-Whore emerged brazenly out of her bath (how other than brazenly! the Reader rightly gasps), her skin smooth and glowing from the milk in which she had bathed. (Even the Chronicler of this True Account will not allow his imagination to abide what else it might have been that she bathed in.) Her hair was loose, not fully wet, so that it spiraled at the edges, falling onto her arrogant shoulders. As the Lad-Page turned away in horror, the Lady-Whore proceeded to rub her body lightly with an emollient, thus accentuating her lascivious sensuality and turning the nipples of her most insolent breasts into tiny pearls.
More of Alix’s deliriums infiltrate the pages.
Trapped in the bewilderment of this shocking moment, the Lad-Page bravely attempted to perform the only function for which he believed he had been hired: He held out the rose for the Lady-Whore to take. Instead of taking the rose, she took advantage of the Lad-Page’s position at the moment, in order to cause the rose to make contact with the place she had all along intended for this “accidental” touch, the often-violated parting between her lavish legs!
At that moment, the Count as sated Philanderer-Lover entered the room to see what the Reader knows was the Lad-Page’s hand trembling (and not, as the gross of mind would have it, tickling what the Lady-Whore had presented to him like a banquet — her furry triangle, just a puff).
The Philanderer-Lover concealed himself, in this vile scenario, to allow these salacious encounters to proceed. The Reader, of course, knows that the Count was actually reeling in horror from it all.
“Cut the stem from the rose with your teeth, Page!” the Lady-Whore ordered the Lad-Page.
He did what he must.
“Now moisten the petals of the rose with your tongue,” the Lady-Whore growled at the Lad-Page as the sated Philanderer-Lover watched, hungrily, although in actuality the Count had become frozen at a sight that his honorable mind could not yet grasp.
“Now place the rose, only with your mouth, between my luscious lips.” (She did not mean her mouth.)
“But I’m a virgin, your Ladyship, a lad newly arrived from the country,” the Lad-Page protested.
“So much the better,” the Lady-Whore’s lustful voice declaimed.
No amount of pleading could have saved the Lad from this outrage. The Reader can only imagine with what despair he placed the rose where he had been ordered to, so shamed that he attempted to hide his blushing face there for long moments.
“Remove your clothes at once!” the licentious Lady-Whore commanded.
The Lad-Page hesitated, but again he did what he must do. Who knew what menace lurked in these despoiled quarters? He peeled off his tight uniform — with some difficulty past his sturdy buttocks, especially the roundest part, mid-back.
(The good of mind can well imagine that while this depravity was proceeding, the Lad must have been uttering silent prayers, prayers rehearsed during lazy evenings in the country when, having tended to his Christian chores and inspired by the innocence of youthful angels romping in celestial orbs as depicted on church walls by the Masters, he had removed his clothes and lain on his stomach, pressing and rubbing, rubbing and pressing his young body against the grass, pressing and rubbing with a vigor possessed only by the young, all to accentuate his closeness to God’s bountiful nature.)
Ensnared by the Lady-Whore, the Lad-Page attempted to cover his parts that the Creator did not intend to be viewed by other than the goodly wife he deserved, and, then, viewed only in the modesty of night in a connubial bed — but certainly not by the Lady-Whore. The bunched shirt he pressed to himself, though ample, was not enough to conceal his parts entirely.
“Now with your member, and only your member, replace the rose between my legs,” the Lady-Whore, riding crests of lust, directed the Lad-Page.
The Count, trapped in this unscrupulous scenario, now attempted to save the Lad from this wretched initiation in the only way his sincere mind could grasp. “I’ll show you how it’s done, lad!” he shouted at the terrified Lad-Page (meaning he would s
how the youth the only way possible to salvage his vibrant virginity). Believing that both he and the Lady-Whore were now under assault from a crazed intruder, the Lad-Page bravely attempted to push the Philanderer-Lover away.
(The Writer pauses to gain his courage to continue.)
In the ensuing commotion, the Lad-Page and the Philanderer-Count grappled, rolling on the floor, both struggling in a confusion of noble intentions, a situation, however, that allowed the cunning Whore, practiced as she was, to seize ample advantage and thus guarantee yet another penetration of her by the Count — whose frantic, scandalized blood had rushed to every limb and organ of his body — while the confused Lad-Page courageously continued to attempt to thrust himself between the two (remember his glorious innocence, which must have rushed him back to the memory of past insouciant moments of pressing and rubbing, rubbing and pressing against nature’s bounty in the country).
Burning with indignation at usurped morality, the Writer here leaves to the imagination of the Reader what followed, while providing only necessary guidance: There was a melee of glistening flesh, sweating flesh — young flesh, woman’s flesh, man’s flesh — flesh, flesh, throbbing, thrusting, twisting, amid groans and explosions and — and — and —
Having dutifully conveyed what occurred, the Writer now sets down his pen and, wearied, rests before continuing in his travail of exposing even worse abominable corruptions.
I remember, with tears, the incident these pages have distorted. Yes, and you will note what unrelenting scrutiny the Count and I must have been constantly under by one or another of the writers of these pages — or their spies. How else to account for the fact that they possess the barest outline of the truth, which they distort? Here, they have twisted the cherished events of an evening when my beloved Count du Muir and I had taken quarters in an inn by the ocean.
