by Paul Park
The bishop jumped back into the shelter of the shrine and tried to scrape the rain out of her hair. The boy put his arms around her from behind, but she pulled free, and left the roof, and climbed a final flight of stairs up into the sanctum of the shrine, where the saint had lived. It was a barren, hive-shaped chamber, without windows or furniture, and the floor was covered with coarse sand. In the middle stood the sarcophagus of the saint, a heavy box of rotting stone. Once it had been intricately carved with scenes from distant countries, but in that room some secret force had sanded down their shapes to almost nothing, and some cancerous wind had gnawed at the stone features of the saint as he sat straddling his tomb, his arms outstretched, his hands eaten away. Sand dunes had blown around the statue’s legs. A single candle burned on the coffin lid.
The bishop sat down on the ground, and there she prepared the first meal of their journey, as if they had already traveled miles. She laid out everything that was too bulky to carry far: fruits, and spiced vegetables, and a bottle of wine. They sat and ate without a word, already sharing the peculiar silence of travelers, taking their meal as if sitting on the platform of a deserted station late at night. And when they had finished, they sat without speaking, and the bishop’s head nodded forward as if she were asleep. The boy sat staring at the candle flame, fingering his cat.
This animal was the first to sense the change. The candle flame, which had grown up straight and tall, seemed to tremble in a new current of air. The cat leapt out of the boy’s lap, and yawned and stretched its back. The bishop raised her head. At the limit of her hearing she perceived a small rushing sound, like wind in the back of a cave or a train passing through a distant tunnel. The cat seemed not to notice. She licked her paws. But the current which disturbed the candle flame had gotten stronger, and it made their shadows flicker on the walls, though they sat without moving. The candle blew out, and the dark shut around them like a mouth, but in time it was as if their eyes had grown accustomed to it, for above them they could see the silhouette of the stone sarcophagus against some lighter color in the vault. The wind stirred the sand around them and fanned their faces, and it was dry and cool, and smelled of foreign languages, and sagebrush, and the salt sea. Above their heads, the stars came out, and for them it was a sight out of the recesses of memory, for not since the first phases of spring had they seen stars in the night sky. More miraculous than that, the finger of a moon rose above some far hills, the first time in their lives, and it touched the forehead of the battered saint, and it shone on a broad sandy valley sloping down in front of them, and in the distance glowed the lights of some small town.
The boy looked up at the moon, and then he turned away. “There,” he said, pointing down the slope, where an animal was rooting in the dark.
The bishop reached out and put her fingers round his wrist. “Ssh,” she said. “How warm it is. It must be summertime.”
* * *
Mrs. Cassimer had locked the demon into the princess’s bedroom, but she couldn’t claim to feel much safer. She held conversations with herself to keep her spirits up and stopped her ears with cotton to block out the incessant music. From time to time she took small sips from a jug of whiskey, labeled “medicinal purposes only” in her neat hand. And to occupy herself, she cleaned the house from top to bottom, in preparation for its burning down. The fire had spread to the streets around the palaces, and even though their stone walls had withstood many springs, “You can’t be too careful,” she said to herself, sealing the spare washcloths in asbestos bags. “You can’t indeed,” she said, on her hands and knees scrubbing the floor. “Angkhdt created work to be the consolation of the poor. Otherwise they’d have nothing to do. You can’t blame the gentry for being so strange, bless their hearts. Not with the life they lead. Nothing but fancy clothes, and idleness, and horrible deaths on top of it. It’s no wonder they’re lugubrious. You can’t blame them for what goes on. No, but I don’t condone it, either,” she said severely, shaking her finger at the bedroom door. “Back from the dead! Who ever heard of such a thing? She ought to be ashamed. As for the other one, tattooless trash, even for a demon. Doesn’t belong in a decent home. I can’t imagine what the mistress sees in him, all that music from the pit of hell. Some might call it vulgar.”
There was more to do when the doctor came home. The elevator man had run away during the night, so when Thanakar came home in the morning, he carried Jenny Pentecost upstairs, wrapped in blankets. His knee was creaking like a metal hinge, and he could hardly bend it. “It’s like when you were a child,” said Mrs. Cassimer. “You would go out without your crutches, and you would play kickball with the others, and then you’d come home limping like a criminal, just so the mistress would see. Well, she’s past caring now. What’s in the bundle? Another nasty surprise, I’m sure. Beloved Angkhdt preserve us, it’s alive! Oh, sir, you’re doing it on purpose.”
“This is Jenny Pentecost,” said the doctor wearily. “She needs a bath.”
“And a change of clothes. What a getup! Where did you get this one, the circus? If I might be permitted to ask.”
“Please, Mrs. Cassimer, just do it. I’ve had a long night.”
“I suppose you have. Out all night, and then you stroll in with this . . . with this . . . I don’t know what to call her. If she was a little older, I’d know exactly. Little strumpet!”
“Please . . .”
“I suppose you’re the only one who’s had a long night. I’ve done the work of ten around here. Not that I get any thanks. I’d like a bath myself.”
The doctor tried to lower Jenny into an armchair, but she wouldn’t let go her hands from around his neck. “Don’t make me go with her,” she whispered. They were the first words that she had spoken.
Mrs. Cassimer was cleaning the cotton out of her ears, and she heard them. In an instant, her anger subsided into tears. “Oh, sir,” she sniffed. “You left me alone. You said you wouldn’t.”
“I was arrested.”
“Hmph. Easy to say. I’ve heard that one before.”
The doctor disengaged Jenny’s fingers from around his neck and sat down on the arm of the chair. “How’s my mother?” he asked.
“A lot better than she has any business being, if you want my opinion,” retorted the housekeeper. “And that music all night long, it’s enough to drive you crazy. You can hear it now.”
But she relented when Jenny was asleep, curled up on the sofa with her thumb in her mouth. “She’s just a child,” she said. The doctor took off her headdress and bandaged her feet, and together they sponged away some of her makeup and perfume, and found a flannel nightgown for her. Then the doctor tended to himself, injecting oil into his knee to soothe the joint. He wrapped it in a bandage of hot silk. “The elevator man has run away,” he remarked.
“Some people have no pride,” said Mrs. Cassimer.
“What will you do?”
She shrugged. “I took an oath to serve your family. I wish I hadn’t, but it’s too late now, as the parson said when he chopped his mother’s head off by mistake.”
“It will mean going away. I’m a fugitive.”
“Don’t give yourself airs. It’s a fine place for a fugitive, your own armchair.” She frowned. “Most people go away this time of year,” she said. “The whole place is burning down.”
* * *
Mrs. Cassimer had locked the bedroom door and sealed it with signs and incantations written in chalk. “You spelled it wrong,” said Thanakar. “That wouldn’t have stopped a cat.” He was sitting over a cooker in the bedroom, preparing a hypodermic full of heroin. His mother stretched out her hands for it.
“Thank you, Thanakar,” she whispered. “I was feeling so tired.”
She also had had a busy night. She had butchered the policeman’s corpse, draining off his blood into vases and flowerbowls, filling the washstand with his entrails. She had toasted strips of meat over the grate, at the end of a long skewer. Now she shot the needle and sat back on the floo
r next to the bed, her hands over her face.
The antinomial squatted in a corner, his flute to his lips. Though he still moved his fingers along the glass, he wasn’t blowing into it anymore, just breathing quietly, so that the music had subsided into light, papery noises. He seemed asleep.
“I’m leaving the city,” said Thanakar. “Will you come with me?”
“No,” answered the princess. Her eyes went through their slow rotation, the colors mixing and purifying in her colorless face. “I never liked crowds. I like them less than ever now.” She looked over at the prince, where he lay under his shroud. “I have someone to avenge,” she whispered. She had not asked Thanakar to try to wake his father, seeming to realize what a monster she’d become. “I’m tired all the time,” she complained. “It’s the change of diet.” She smiled mournfully and showed her stained teeth. “The passports are in the cabinet, and money too. There’s a letter of credit. You can draw your salary at any Starbridge bank—that is, if things haven’t changed too much.”
“Things have changed. Have you looked outside?”
She shook her head. “I can’t stand the daylight.”
“It’s raining.”
“I can’t stand it.” The curtains were all drawn. “When I was asleep,” she whispered, “I could remember things so clearly. It was like a memory of Paradise—I used to lie in the cold darkness, and I could see the world hang suspended above me out of reach. And it was full of parties, and champagne, and dances, and men in shining uniforms, and servants bowing to the floor, like when I was a girl. The bishop’s palace all lit up, and the platters piled high with winter fruit, and the dancers skimming over the floor like birds. Then we used to ride home through the snow, and my father used to take the horses from the coachman just to scare us, because he used to drive them so fast, so reckless, the sleigh skidding and rattling until Mama cried out. And Jess and I sitting nestled in our furs, laughing and crying, and yelling, ‘Hold on tight!’ It’s not like that anymore.”
“Not much.”
“When I was young, we lived outside the walls, but the house collapsed when the snow melted. Do you remember, Thanakar? I was married from that house, and your father rode the most enormous stallion. Everybody said he was so handsome, and I was so proud because I’d been in suspense for weeks: Was he tall? Was he too hairy? I’d seen a portrait, but they always lie. And then when I saw him I was so relieved, but a little shy, too, because I wondered what he must be thinking. I suppose I was a pretty girl, but nothing exceptional, only my complexion was very good, Mama used to say.” The princess ran her hand over her cheek. “I’ve broken every mirror in this room,” she whispered, looking around.
“Everything changes.”
“He was very kind. So very kind. Only I took so long to be pregnant, and the doctor said I could only have just one, the weather was so bad. That was the eighteenth phase of winter. I must have carried you a thousand days. And I was healthy. My grandmother had had forty-one, and even my mother had had ten. That’s why it was terrible when you . . .”
“Yes,” said Thanakar. “It must have been a shock.”
“And after that your father changed. Oh, he was always so polite. So formal. He never raised his hand against me. Only, I think he had met some other women somewhere. I can’t think where.”
“He was a cruel man.”
She turned on him. “Don’t say that! You have no right to say that. You of all people. Cripple!” She spat the word out, as if it had been a sharp piece of stone in her mouth, hurting her tongue the whole time she was talking, and she was happy to be rid of it. She paused and sat back. “It seemed natural to blame you for his change of heart,” she said softly, leaning back against the headboard. “What mother could do otherwise?”
“It was a long time ago,” said Thanakar.
“Yes,” she agreed, after a pause. One of the policeman’s shoulders lay near her. She examined lines of red under her fingernails. “It’s hard to imagine such things ever seemed important. Will you take the motorcar?”
“The boat, I think. The roads are jammed. I’ll head for Caladon,” he said. “Along the shore. They must need doctors there.”
Thanakar stood up. He took a vial of white powder from his breast pocket. “Let me show you how to fix it yourself,” he said. “And there’s food in the refrigerator,” he said doubtfully, looking at the remains of the policeman.
“It doesn’t matter. I’ll come with you for the first part. The passage underground. I know a way up to the temple. You understand. Vengeance sustains me. It will be my meat and drink. Your father and I were fooled out of our lives by lying priests. There is one who’ll wish he murdered us outright. Demiurge! Tonight I’ll touch your spleen.” She accompanied this peculiar threat with a peculiar cannibal gesture, gnawing at the tips of her bunched fingers.
As if woken by the name of vengeance, the antinomial raised his head and opened his eyes. They shone like pieces of blue ice. “Aspe,” he said. He breathed some notes into his flute, and then, unwinding the white scarf from around his neck, he wiped the instrument with it, caressing it gently, and breathing on it, and rubbing away the mark of fingerprints. From his belt he drew a wooden case. “He has arrived,” he said, and then he paused, frowning down at the instrument in his lap. “Biter Aspe,” he said, and then it was as if he had changed his mind, because he made a little sorrowful noise between his lips, and then he took the flute by its two ends and broke it in the middle like a stick, the glass splintering in his hands.
“Lunatics,” thought Thanakar, but it got worse. The man prepared himself for battle as if for a wedding. He stripped off his hospital clothes and stood naked in the middle of the floor, soaping his body and his hair while the princess eyed him thoughtfully. She commanded hot water to be brought for him in a basin. And Mrs. Cassimer fetched towels as far as the threshold, sobbing, hiding her face, holding her nose, and laid out a white shirt and some white trousers, which had been abandoned by the tallest servant. They fit. The antinomial was a small man for his race. Thanakar thought he must be half barbarian at least. His fantasy of vengeance had enslaved him. And there was something ceremonial in the way he dressed himself, the way he painted his lips, his eyelids, and his ears with blood from a bucket and drew a line of blood around his jaw. He poured hot water into a silver basin and shaved his head with the prince’s razor. And he painted tattoos on his empty palms, strange patterns of violence and good luck. Thanakar wondered where he had learned them.
The white scarf was his talisman. He used it to polish the blade of a hatchet, and then he knotted it around his neck. At noontime he put on his sunglasses, and stepped out onto the balcony, and stood staring towards the north gate, humming to himself. Thanakar went away to turn in his housekeys to the porter, and when he came back, the man was gone. “And thank God for that,” said Mrs. Cassimer, standing in the hallway. “Goodbye and amen.”
* * *
Far beneath the Starbridge palaces, a system of catacombs and canals spread out underneath the city. They were kept open even in springtime by ancient sluices and locks, and by a race of keepers still more ancient, still bound to their work by iron oaths long after so many servants had fled away. Even so, the tunnels and canals were rarely used. In winter, they were convenient when the streets were blocked with snow. Then families of Starbridges would keep great ceremonial barges and sleds with silver runners, and the long vaults were hung with chandeliers. Then too the crypts were always lit, for there was always a party down there somewhere, people gathering together for their return to Paradise, celebrating the end of their earthly duties. In winter, there were many funerals. By spring, whole wings of the palace stood empty; whole families had gone extinct. Perhaps a third of it was occupied, and underground, the chandeliers had long burned out. Yet still this race of boatmen kept to its work through flood and fire. And when the seasons changed, and the city grew up again, and the palaces whimpered with new life, returning princes and their progeny woul
d find the system still intact.
No child of mine, thought Thanakar, half bitter, half relieved. He stood in the dark on Starbridge Keys, far below the level of the street, watching the boatman pole his shallow craft towards them out of the tunnel’s mouth. Lanterns hung above the prow and stern, and threw troubled yellow circles on the black water. The light shone dubiously on the boatman’s back—he was a bent, gaunt figure, unchanged since Thanakar’s youth. His head protruded down below the level of his shoulders at the end of his long neck, and it swung slowly like a pendulum as he peered to the right and to the left.
Mrs. Cassimer was muttering and complaining. “Shut up, fool,” whispered the princess.
“I don’t care, ma’am. I’ll say it again. It’s a crime to leave him there. He wants to be put into the vault, like his father. He won’t thank you for just leaving him, when you see him again. He wants a funeral like his father.”
