by Paul Park
Her voice was a dry creaking in her throat. She had stopped sweating, and her skin was assuming a dry, papery look; in some places it was even turning dark, like paper held over a flame. The parson, too, had started to cry. But in everything he did there was a mixture of sentiment and slyness, so that even as the tears rolled down his nose, he turned to the princess and winked. “I know,” he said. “Poor girl.” He reached out for Rosa’s hands, and this time she did not resist him; he took her hands and chafed them between his own. “I know,” he said. “But stranger things have happened. I’ve heard that there is someone bound for Paradise tonight. More than one, though truthfully, the conjunction of the planets is not ideal.” He turned and gave the princess a sharp look. “Maybe we could get someone to give up her place.”
“Gladly,” said the princess.
“I thought so,” muttered the parson. “God knows I’m in no hurry to go back.”
Rosa lay back slowly on the pillows. “Only Starbridges . . .” she croaked.
“And don’t I have the power to make you a Starbridge?” cried the parson, tears in his eyes. “Aren’t I still a priest of God? Look, I have brought my tools.” He turned her hands palm up on the bedsheet, and then he started fumbling underneath his robe, and from hidden pockets he drew out scalpels, needles, lotions, inks, books of numbers, astrological charts. He laid them all out on the surface of the bed. He took the towel the girl had used to cool her face, and squeezed out some liquid from a tube, and cleaned her hands with it until her palms were clean and white. “Come here,” he said over his shoulder. “I need you for a model.”
Charity moved close, knelt down, and put her own hands on the coverlet. All trace of palsy had vanished from the parson’s fingers; with his tongue in the corner of his mouth, he drew quickly and expertly. Flowers grew and spread along the hills and valleys of the young girl’s palms—castles, faces, lists of privileges. And when the time came for him to make the cuts, his work was easy, for the blood had receded from her hands, and the incisions were as dry as scratches on a piece of paper. All the while Rosa looked on, the breath rattling in her throat, her eyes wide with wonder, her expression changing gradually until there was something like happiness in it, something like contentment. The parson muttered incantations and made quick, deft gestures in the air. And when he moved the needle through the cuts, the colors seemed to spread out by themselves, mixing and making patterns, secondary colors, a whole world. It was perfect. And then he spread a sealer over it, and then, finally, he reached up to her shoulder. Under his needle, miraculously, the mark of Chandra Sere became less distinct, and out of it spread crowns and halos and the head of a dog, silver and golden, the mark of Paradise.
The parson leaned back. His face was covered with sweat. Rosa had closed her eyes. With one hand he reached out to touch her forehead, while with the other he took her pulse. “What time is it?” he asked.
“Twenty past two,” answered the princess.
“Then it is time.” He consulted an astrological chart, a map of the solar system, and then something that looked like a railway timetable. “Dear child,” he said. “It’s time to go.” Again he touched her forehead. She opened her eyes and smiled, and brought her palms up to look at them. “Already?” she whispered. She looked down to her shoulder, and then she turned to rub her face against the parson’s hand. The pillowcase was singed where she had lain.
“You leave at two-thirty,” he said softly. “Look. This is the way.” He opened his hand to reveal a pill held between his fingers, a clear capsule with some liquid in it.
For an instant she looked doubtful. Then she turned to the princess, who smiled a little bit and nodded. Rosa smiled back and then, hesitantly, like a little girl, she opened her mouth and put out her tongue. The parson blessed her with his fingers and then laid the pill upon her tongue. She closed her mouth and settled back and closed her eyes. That was the end. At two-thirty precisely, her breathing stopped.
“I wasn’t to go before morning,” said the princess after a while. “Ten o’clock.”
“Shh,” whispered the parson. He looked up at the ceiling. Tears trembled on his chin. He sat still for a few minutes, and then he reached into his pocket and drew out a pint of wine.
* * *
By three-fifteen, Charity began to understand that she was free. She went to lie down on a sofa in another room, and when she returned, the parson had passed out on the floor. The girl was lying back in bed, her body cool, her face peaceful. Charity stood in the doorway watching her, fascinated by her beauty. After a few minutes she went to stand above her, and with the priest’s scalpel she reached down to cut the buttons off of Rosa’s bodice, and cut away the hooks that held it closed, and then she slit the yellow nylon down to the girl’s waist and peeled it back, exposing skin so beautiful and breasts so strong and perfect, it made her want to cry. If only she could be like that, lie there like that. She cut away the ragged skirt. Shifting the body to one side, she pulled the whole dress away, crushed it into a ball, threw it to the floor, and then she stood up to look at the girl as she lay naked, her skin clear and brown, the light from the bedside table catching at the soft hair that grew along her stomach, along the outside of her thigh.
Then, scarcely knowing why, Charity went to her washstand and gathered together a hairbrush and some pots of eyeshadow and rouge. She sat down on the bed, and with an expert hand she brushed the girl’s hair quiet and put a little paint onto her face—only a little, where death was already robbing the color from her cheek. She darkened the girl’s eyebrows and stroked some indigo into the corners of her eyes. She paused, her brush suspended above Rosa’s face, and then sat back and smiled. She was making the girl into a Starbridge, for the lower classes were not allowed to paint their faces or wear jewelry. But more than that—she unclasped from around her neck the silver necklace with the bloodstone pendant that her brother had given her on her wedding day. She paused, and then she drew the necklace around Rosa’s neck and arranged it so that the pendant fell between her breasts. In some ways the girl was very like her.
The princess laughed. She pulled the silver combs out of her own hair and shook it wildly about her head, and rubbed it into a mass of tangles. Then she stood up, and with the barest glance at the parson to see if he still slept, she shook her robe from her shoulders so that it fell around her feet. She stooped to pick up Rosa’s dress. It stank of sweat and fever and was slit so that it no longer closed in front, but it fit the princess as if it had been made for her in the palace dress shops. She took it off and sat down at her table to repair it.
With a silver needle and a silken thread, she sat mending the yellow dress, sewing up where it was torn, patching it with pieces cut from a golden scarf. After about half an hour she paused to roll a marijuana cigarette and smoke it thoughtfully. The parson had fallen away from her onto his side; she turned around and studied him, and studied the dead girl, trying to understand her feelings. “Rejoice at every death,” advised the Starbridge Catechism. Nevertheless, there was something eerie and disagreeable about death, Charity decided, even when it was swift and merciful. She sucked the smoke deep into her lungs, trying to relax. Her fingers were shaking. In spite of everything that had happened that night, it was hard not to feel optimistic. She was free. The girl lay on her bed, wearing her jewels, marked with her tattoos, looking so much like her. Not that it even mattered, thought the princess, for not more than a dozen people had seen her face since she was married, and of those most were dead or gone away.
She stubbed the roach of her cigarette out in a crystal ashtray, rubbing it reflectively over the image of Angkhdt the God of Matrimony incised into the bottom. The forces that had shaped her life so far had been so inexorable, the routine of it so deadening, that now, suddenly free, she felt giddy and off balance, as if she had suddenly stepped outside into the sunlight after months in a dark cell. Already she imagined she felt changes in herself. She got unsteadily to her feet.
And wh
en she was ready to go, barefoot, dressed in yellow rags, her shawl clutched tight around her shoulders, she knelt by the parson to wake him up. She had left a suicide note by her night table, a last farewell in complicated calligraphy. Farewell to whom? And yet it seemed appropriate. She was a different person; she had coated her palms with greasepaint and powder to obscure the marks of privilege. That was the last stage of her transformation; when it was complete she laughed aloud, and laughed to see the parson, shaken out of sleep, stare at her slack-mouthed. She could feel him cringe under her touch, could hear the whimper in his throat. He pulled away and lay back against the wall, swallowing heavily, breathing through his mouth. His wits were diluted with liquor. But in a moment he began to understand; he looked over her shoulder and saw the dead girl on the bed, dressed in a silken nightgown, her lips painted, her hair brushed and arranged. For a moment the fear in his eyes gave way to sadness, and then his face cracked open and he smiled, showing rotten stumps of teeth. “You won’t last a day out there,” he said when he could speak.
“We’ll see.”
“Your voice, your movements, everything is wrong.”
“I’ll learn. Listen: Eunuch. Drunken Eunuch. Pig. Drunken pig.” Experimentally, she sharpened her voice into the accent of the starving class. “When I want your advice, I’ll ask for it, drunk pig. Now get your things and let’s go.”
Part Two:
Executions
WHEN PRINCE ABU WAS A BOY, he enjoyed playing with dolls long after the age when most children tire of them. His father had died when he was young, one of the last casualties of the winter war. Shortly after, his mother had drifted into orbit near a planet of her own, a silent world of penance and religious ceremonial. He and his sister were raised by servants, by married aunts, by loud, bearded uncles home on leave. These would bring him legions of toy soldiers, Starbridge officers on horseback, beautifully painted, their banners streaming in the wind. But their faces were so fierce. Arranging them together, the young prince found it hard to imagine conversations of any subtlety taking place among them. On horseback with the wind so strong, the men would have to shout just to make themselves heard above the jingle of their bridles and the beating of the flags. It was hard to imagine anything but harsh cries of defiance. To be sure, the banners on their backs made some kind of dialogue, announcing in Starbridge pictographs each man’s name and obligations. “I am brave,” said one. “I am not so brave as you, but braver than he,” confided another. “I am scarcely brave at all, but I am fearfully intelligent,” confessed a third. “Nevertheless, I will die next Tuesday from a wound in the throat.”
For Prince Abu it was not enough. Instead he preferred the more fluid conversations that took place in the hallway of his sister’s dollhouse. There an elderly gentleman pointed towards the sideboard. “Do you see that envelope next to the bottle of pills? It contains six photographs and a letter for my friend. You must bring it to him quickly, for I will not leave this house again. Wait there for an answer. As for these pills, take them once an hour. These fits of weeping will pass.”
“Yes, sir,” answers the servant girl. But her white china face is so ambiguous. Surely she realizes that by the time she delivers the letter, it will have lost its meaning.
* * *
On the last night of his life the prince found that he could remember many of these conversations clearly. He stood in the middle of his cell in Wanhope Prison Hospital, whispering them to himself. These ones from his childhood had a strange, disjointed quality. What photographs? What pills?
Once, driving through the city in his motorcar, Prince Abu had told his cousin a whole story he had spun up out of nothing while they were waiting for the traffic. Their chauffeur had stopped the car behind a convoy of episcopal trucks. Up ahead, a man had been crushed beneath a cart, and the traffic had been halted all along the street while the police pried the man’s body from the mud. In an instant their car had been surrounded by a swarm of beggars. Thanakar had put his window up, but Abu had rummaged in his pockets and pulled out a big handful of change.
His cousin had sat back, smiling cynically, his eyes half-closed. And even Abu was not paying close attention; he was listening to the sound of his own voice against a background of murmured prayers, and beggars chanting the nine benefits of generosity. But in a moment the cadence was interrupted by a scream of rage and the sound of fists drumming on the roof. Prince Abu hastily rolled up his window. His handful of stone currency had contained a silver dollar; concentrating on his story, he had handed it out with the rest. A beggar’s fingers had closed on it and disappeared, but as soon as the man had realized what it was, he dropped it in the mud, shaking his fingers as if they had been burned. Gold and silver were the Starbridge metals, forbidden to the poor, and in an instant all the men were shouting, outraged, pressing their faces up against the glass.
“How can you be so careless?” Dr. Thanakar had cried, after the police had come and gone and sent them on their way. “How can you make fun of them? Next time they’ll roll the car. We’re that close to a revolution, and you have to play the fool.”
“I don’t think they would have hurt us,” Abu had replied. “I thought you’d welcome a revolution.”
“You can’t expect everyone to be like you. Not everyone can share your zest for self-destruction. This system is absurd, but at least we’re at the top. At least we’re better off than that.” Thanakar had motioned out the windscreen of the car to where a crew stood working on the road, leaning on their shovels, listening to the instructions of a young priest in scarlet robes.
Alone in his prison cell, Prince Abu remembered his friend’s words. A passion for self-destruction, he thought. He examined the binding of the book of poetry in his hand and cast it wearily onto the bed. On the table stood the remnants of his dinner: curried plums and ginger, and walnuts in a silver dish. Not trusting him with a knife and fork, the curates had given him a spoon. There was no glass or porcelain that he could break and use against himself. He had felt like a child with his spoon and metal cup.
Above him a window was set into the quilted wall. He pulled a chair out from the table and climbed onto it so that his face was level with the bars. But he hesitated for a minute before he looked out, leaning his head against the wall, rubbing his cheek against the yellow silk, examining the pattern up close. It was against Starbridge custom to wear corrective lenses. Abu, who was myopic, took pleasure in looking closely at things, for at a distance of a few inches his eyes could magnify small objects into images of great clarity. What from far away looked like specks upon the surface of the silken wall, up close he could see that they were insects, tiny black insects, clambering with difficulty over the uneven surface as if over the hairs of a man’s arm. The lamp from the table threw a soft, oblique light. Abu could see the shadows of the insects on the wall.
He reached across to the window and chafed his thumb along one of the silver bars. The guildmark of the silversmith was sunk deep into the metal, a centaur carrying a machine gun, and Abu chafed the ball of his thumb against the tiny figure. The silver had thickened slightly around the base of the bars, and the metal was soft there, soft enough to take his thumbprint. The bars were wearing thin up at the top as the metal softened and ran down. Abu wondered whether the prison guards had to reverse them in their frame from time to time, to keep them from draining away.
He gripped the bars and pulled himself up to the windowsill and looked out. His cell was on the third floor of the psychiatric ward, overlooking the courtyard. For an instant he saw everything clearly, and then the blurred mist of his myopia settled down over the courtyard. But even so, he knew the space was packed with people standing patiently in the rain, staring up at his window with a focused concentration that felt like heat on his bare cheeks. An arc light switched on down below and reached its blue beam up through the bars of his window to seize hold of his face; he stood balanced on his chair, blinded and blinking, while from the courtyard below him a sudden
noise rose up, a roaring from a thousand throats. He couldn’t understand what they were saying.
He stood at the window, blinded, his mouth open, and then he turned away. A guard had entered the room behind him, a hospital orderly in a white robe. He was making the gestures of respect. When he was finished, he stood erect, a young man with a dark, heavy face. “Congratulations,” he said. “They’re cheering for you.”
“I can’t understand what they’re saying.”
“They’re saying, ‘Save us! Save us!’ ”
Embarrassed, Abu smiled, and rubbed his lips with the back of his hand.
He had not washed in the week since he was taken, nor had he changed his clothes. He stood balanced on his chair, the back of his head against the window. To the orderly, only the outline of his big, soft body was visible, only the outline of his balding head. He stood leaning back against the bars, lit from behind by the arc light, a cloud of blue radiance shining around his head.
“I took one of your undershirts to rip up and sell as souvenirs,” said the orderly. “To pay for the postage and all that. I thought you wouldn’t mind.”
Prince Abu smiled. “No, I don’t care,” he said. “Did you get what I wanted?”
“Yes, sir.” The orderly slipped a quart of whiskey out of a paper bag. “I mailed the letter to your sister,” he said. “Charity Starbridge. The courier had run away, so I took it directly to the post office.” He sighed. “The mails are undependable these days.”
“Thank you.”
“My privilege, sir. You’re our most famous client now. There must be fifteen hundred people in the courtyard, and I hear they are already lining up along the streets you’ll pass tomorrow. The police are expecting twenty thousand just around the bonfire.”
“How gratifying.”
“I know what you mean, sir. But if you’re not doing it for the effect, why are you doing it? You could just stop it anytime you want. You could just walk out of here, just by raising up your hand. Not that it wouldn’t be a sort of anticlimax.”
