No. No. Julia, you mustn’t cry out to her poor little corpse. Go, Kilby. Go away with that silent, silent, silent ocean of children Julia has not had.
Anselmo’s come back. Has he? He talks Spanish with Haverner. Spanish? Eyulatl, the language of the Those. It rises and falls in a high fever-whine. The screen, when did he set up the screen, it ripples, it foams, waves roar past the bows of Larry’s ship as he hounds the sunset.
Why Larry? A bum, not particularly young or handsome, why him? Why did you ever pretend he was somebody else? Use this immense clarity and insight that you are, while Its immortality lasts.
Think words. Think causes. Romanticism that you should have outgrown. A certain resemblance to Ken and, yes, Dad.
Dad’s no sailor, though. Nor does he really belong in a jerk-water college, in snitty academic infighting. No, Roger Fenn, your people who are mine found their land of sagebrush heights and infinite heavens almost a hundred years ago, and possessed it and were possessed by it. You should never have become a professor of English, who happened to marry a woman who would always be homesick for New England; you should have been a range rider, a bronco buster.
At least Uncle Joe has a ranch, where your daughter could spend her summers in a young girl’s love affair with horses.
They smell warm, horses. Their noses are velvet. Come off with your little girl, Dad, here where she is. She’ll make it that you did become a cowboy, in this place where she wasn’t ever begotten, and we’ll go off together on our horses.
Dawn at Espada Canyon! The depths brim with twilight blue, and then while we crouch over our fire, teeth clapping in a Fimbul wind off the mountains, crags and buttes come into shape down yonder, and color waxes in them, and at last, slowly, slowly light and shadow steal across the Gothicness of them, and I am day.
Larry wouldn’t settle down with us away from the sea. He’s obsessed. Hear the mermaids singing to him, but they have shark teeth.
Not that he’ll ever make it. Poor futile dreamer, he’ll continue drifting from job to job, woman to woman; he’ll drink harder, smoke more pot, maybe serve time on a bust for that; he’ll grow creepingly old and fat and puzzled about where his hopes went. See him bloat. See Kilby, puffed and rotting in her grave. No. Dad. No. Dad, where are you? Where’ve you taken our canyon? The sunbeam is black.
No. Shades drawn. Only shades drawn. Whirr-r-r-r-r-r-r-rrrrr, “Please watch the film,” says the god who makes flies of us for his sport, ah, movies, something to watch, something for the self to cling to.
It’s exactly a film. Cling to that. A film, not a transcendence, hastily put together out of what clips his agents could find out of those he thought would most terrify and torment us.
The shapes! They whirl! They rush devouring from the end of infinity! I am whirled; you fall flaming from heaven and sunder the world in your crashing; it lies in the shards of the world and its horse is a stallion that crushes it under his weight and tears its flesh with his teeth and rips it bloody with his battering hugeness and I must not scream. They’re stacked to heaven, the corpses of Buchenwald, hell groans beneath their weight, where’s Kilby, Kilby, Kilby, in whirling and roaring, flashes and thunders and God feasting on the souls of the newly dead, where are you, Kilby, what are you, Kill-ll Bee-ee?
Bad trip. Remember. Bad trip. You knew there’d be terror. Ride it out. Cling to Larry.
Nauseating copulations spout across the screen, or is this just a penis of the mind? Come, let me clutch thee.
Tell Larry I’m sorry, Larry. We had some lovely times; she never came with Malcolm, quite, the way she came with you. It was like Ken … except she understood from the outset, we were rivals, you and I, Larry.
We needn’t have been. I did mean to share with you. But after the callous way you used Gayle, that last night, you deserved casting off, like an outworn snakeskin.
Orestes hardly cold in his grave, too.
Ahhhh! There he lies dead! Is it in the film, or is it in me and therefore forever? You feel the wind whistle through your mouth; she feels the sweat start forth on her flesh. He glares, dead on the sand, and it that betrayed Larry the betrayer is altogether alone with him.
Steady. Endure. For half a million extra dollars, and coming home with Kilby’s life in my purse.
As for that Matthew Flagler thing—
But she did not deal fairly with Larry, and so he’s gone from it, and Dad and Ken and Malcolm; it’s by herself in the whirling and flickering hate.
What’s fair? Who else rates five hundred thousand dollars, that none but I will have wrung out of Ellis Nordberg’s body and brain?
Where is he, anyway? How’s he taking it, these war films, if that’s what he’s seeing too, where fire from the sky sticks to the living flesh that it burns off the fleeing bones, where bombs smash cities and machinery to chaos?
These scenes must be meant for him. Hang on, Julia. Find a hillside forest and silence. Ignore the voices that drone on and on, accusing me in a language I do not know. See, you can call up a hawk to fly overhead, and sunlight like molten gold upon his wings.
Don’t let Matthew Flagler come running in terror for his wretched existence. Don’t let the voices swell to a hymn about God’s vengeance.
Twenty-four hours. You can endure that, Julia, lass. You must. Only twenty-four quadrillion years.
So hold Larry to you. No, he’s gone. Malcolm, please, please come through this storm and ruin, to me. I’ve got to spend the rest of my life at your side. Help me now.
There is no help. There is Nothing.
Crouch on the infinitely thin skin stretched above Nothing and do not scream.
Anselmo raises the blinds. He carries a scythe. White birds toil past the window. “The feelm ees feeneesh’,” he says. Echoes of his voice roll off the canyon walls of eternity. Consummation est.
Haverner-God-Nothing takes her arm. “Come,” he says. His flesh is dust and cobwebs, whirled around and around the bones, which are not human bones; they are the hollow bones of birds, and the wind of Nothing that whirls the shadow-gray powder skirls in them. “Come.” O-oh, come, come, come, come, come….
Ellis Nordberg shambles on Anselmo’s support. What is his reality? You can at least walk through yours, Julia, erect, showing none of the horror, not even asking what time it is. For time is not. That is the secret of hell. It goes on.
We cross the lawn. The sun howls around us. Heaven opens. The God of her childhood (her parents made her go to Sunday school for cultural reasons, though they themselves never set foot in a church), Who is a huge man in a sky-blue business suit and storm-gray fedora, leans forth above beach and jungle and old, fat, futile Larry Rance whom she had made what he is, to demand of her, “What precise sum does the child that is born unto us require?”
“Shall a maker of murder have any share in it?” she yells without lips.
The shattered head of Orestes says, “You have your share.”
Matt runs through the woods, fighting brush and snake-like vines, screaming into endless hot silence, alone. From your winged station you see Anselmo on his track. He has a hard on. For you, when he has slaughtered Matt. Your blood still runs from the wound the stallion left.
Larry collapses into a dead man’s decay.
Byron leers through the stench. He’s very thin, an ascetic whom she did not succeed in seducing; yes, he wears a monk’s brown robe and carries a flagellant’s whip. O Byron, please don’t bring back the films!
Flash. Flash. Flash.
Its heartbeat is shaking it to pieces.
A rat will live in its skull.
Malcolm, you’re the lawyer, tell me, what should drowning I do?
Call off the game? Right this minute of eternity? but she can’t. At most, she can beg for help … after Nordberg does, because half a million dollars would be power in the hands of a man who buys murder and I owe you that much, Orestes, Matt, don’t I?
The gates of hell are opened unto me.
“Pass through
,” says the mummy. “Walk in my garden.”
We enter, and the cactus throbs in and out, in and out, needles flame-hot, death-cold, they will inject us again and again and again, we will never more be in the world. The tropical blooms make mouths at me.
It’s cactus, only cactus and flowers and such, Julia, that you loved when you were a girl on horseback, before you turned into a thing your big clean father cannot possibly have begotten. Cactus, cactus, cactus. Peyote, mescaline, chaos stabbed into me while the voices roar and the sky bums and Ellis screams.
I see him run. Matt, Orestes, and Anselmo pursue him.
“Congratulations, Mrs. Petrie,” Haverner sneers across the gulf. After a glance at his watch: “Almost precisely four hours. The peak effect, evidently, and more than he could take. How are you doing?”
“Go away,” I hear. His real face, if that is his real face, is coming back, measurelessly more ghastly than what was before. “Let me be.”
He sketches a bow. “As you will, Mrs. Petrie. I daresay you will do best to be at peace for a while, in pleasant surroundings, after the stimuli you have experienced. If you change your mind, or want or need anything the house can supply, do come there and ask for it.” A pause, no longer than the interval between the Crucifixion and the Nativity. “I must go observe Mr. Nordberg. He’s giving Anselmo quite a struggle, isn’t he? In a bad way, I fear. But then, according to those works I consulted, cacti are often a fear symbol in hallucinogenic states. Especially to him, who wouldn’t be used to them as you are.” He lurches off.
What strangeness did you have planned for me, Haverner? I don’t ask. I don’t want to know. I sag onto a bench and am alone.
The cactuses still pulsate, the sun keeps time in great waves of impossibly rich scarlet, gold, emerald, sapphire, ultraviolet, and baal, but the voices are fading to a mumble and, though the world is still hollow, one can look away from Nothing. She counts the drops of sweat that roll out of her, down her; she knows their exact iciness. But she does not shake. The shivering is all inside her muscles, where the sea wind makes them ring like harpstrings.
You have only to wait now, Julia. The madness is ebbing. When it’s quite gone, or nearly gone (because I fear there will always be a haunted place in my skull), you can decide how to spend your million.
Yours and Malcolm’s, you mean. No, by God, mine. What had he to do with gaining it?
Shall I, who have stared down Nothing, flinch from asking myself while this clarity lasts, whether or not I really want Malcolm hanging onto me until death do us rot?
It’s not as if you needed to be an alimony leech. Think. If only the numbers didn’t twist around in that jungle where a man runs forever alone! Grab a number by the tail. No, the head. You mustn’t let it bite you. The fangs are venomous.
Annual income on a million, and you are taken care of, dear elfin trusting presence whom I wish I could see before me. And plenty is left over. Taxes … No, arrangements can be made. Haverner will help me if I ask. He delights in legal fictions. What good is it to have made a pact with Satan if you don’t get some work out of him?
Well, let’s play safe and suppose I will have a reasonable net income, after expenses, for the rest of my life. What am I going to do with that life? Be the bland suburban appurtenance of a prominent attorney?
Oh, Matt, stop screaming. At least quiet it a bit, can’t you? You had no mercy on Orestes.
But if it weren’t for you, Matt, I’d be home already, in the same debt and despair as before. You cleared the way for me, Matt.
Sure, I’ve been ruthless. Survival. Not my own survival—
Though what will I do, given my money-like-sunshine (the sun is brazen and hammering on dead Matt where he runs from dead Orestes) freedom?
Travel? Yes, certainly. We’d do that in any event, Malcolm. (Malcolm, where are you?) My one summer, me nineteen years old and on a bicycle, youth-hosteling it along with Gloria and those chance-met boys and girls who’d join us for a few days, that lanky whimsical Norwegian, that unutterably charming Giacomo…. No, be damned, Larry’s right, we’ve not been given much life and to spend it in a single place is lunacy.
But a prominent attorney must keep himself available. At most, he can take a few careful weeks off per year.
It’s likewise lunacy to sit here and let dreadfulness roll through my head. When there’s so much beauty, so much joy.
Larry, come to me through the jungle. Hold me. Fuck me. If I’m hallucinating, which I am, make it be your South Seas, your Morgana white-winged before the wind, and you.
Why should you come, after what I did to you?
Call up what strength you have left, Julia. You fought for your little girl, and won. Now you must fight for yourself.
Sunset rises. Eternity draws to an end, losing itself once more in time. Occasionally the sights, the voices and the Nothing come back, but always fainter, always less often. I sit in the world and its peace, victorious.
“Well, let’s go eat, then,” I say, and wish I hadn’t laughed aloud. That’s too high and ragged.
Stars blossom as I cross the lawn. Fireflies answer them. It chirrs, it soughs, it murmurs everywhere around me, and it smells of life. Never have lighted windows glowed so deep an amber as welcome me.
But they block off the living world. When I have crossed the threshold, night is infinite in the glass.
Someone enters the hall before me. It is Anselmo Cain, followed by Haverner. On the arm of Anselmo leans Ellis Nordberg. He can barely shuffle along.
He doesn’t scream. If only he would! Anything’s better than that mummy mumble out of his bitten and bleeding mouth, that Nothing in his eyes. The dead men have taken him, and no one can shake them loose.
“Ah, good evening, Mrs. Petrie,” says Haverner brightly. “I trust you feel better than our poor friend here? He seems to have had a rather precarious hold on sanity, and to have suffered a complete psychotic break.”
That is my final damnation.
Am I too still back there in the dark, or do wings truly follow me?
Me, the avenging goddess who mainly wanted half a million more dollars all to herself.
What grabbed my running foot and threw me down the stairs? Blood drips from my chin. I crawl, hands and knees. The hall above, unlighted, is full of shadows.
Somehow I raise myself. The knob of his door feels like a bone.
He sprawls on bed in a foul gray fog of pipe smoke. A bottle of whisky stands by for his use. “Heard you won,” he says, not even deigning to hate. “Congratulations. What do you want?”
I fall again, before him. “Larry,” I cry, “help me!”
FAREWELLS
As folk came down for a late breakfast or sent after it, the servants announced that Mr. Haverner would meet them on the patio at noon, and when business had been settled his plane would fly them back to Ciudad Vizcaya.
Four sat beneath the hog plum tree to confront the Ramses head and skeleton body in the blanketed Morris chair. Their hands were interlocked, Larry’s and Julia’s, Gayle’s and Byron’s. Fruit glowed like lanterns in the darkling foliage, but no one ate thereof. The sun smote pitilessly on English lawn and flowerbeds, bleaching them; it was a hot day again, and growing worse. Odors were of tropical forest, and though the air never stirred, the noise of surf somehow came loud.
“Well.” Haverner hefted a notebook. He smiled. “We come to the end of a most intriguing half month.” (The moon stood homed and pale above the house.) “My felicitations to our winner, Mrs. Petrie. My condolences to the rest—who are, anyhow, richer in experience—and my thanks for providing a huge amount of unique psychological data.” He intercepted Byron. “Rest assured, nothing will be published. And I trust you yourselves will observe discretion in relating what happened during our experiment.”
“Think so?” It was Gayle who spoke, shrill with anger. “Do you imagine we won’t do whatever we can to bring you to justice?”
“Well, well.” Haverner was untouched
, save for amusement. “Has the recent stress converted you back to bourgeois values, Mrs. Thayer? Here is an offer: I will pay one thousand dollars for a letter from you, a year hence, stating your philosophy as of that time.”
Appalled, she turned toward Byron, whose free arm reached around to give her a brief caress.
“As for your somewhat melodramatic resolve,” Haverner went on, “I personally do not care what you do. This whole affair has taken place in the jurisdiction of the Republic of Santa Ana, whose authorities are satisfied with the report I have made to them. I simply advise you, for your own sakes, not to create a sensation that could ruin you.”
“I’m afraid he’s right, Gayle,” Larry said. Julia nodded. Byron leaned forward. “What about Ellis?”
“Mr. Nordberg is far from well,” Haverner answered. “What’re you going to do?”
“I think he had best remain here awhile, under the care of a physician whom I shall send for. I’ve already instructed my agents to notify his family and ask for their agreement to this. I expect to get it. Psychiatric treatment at home would be costly, and … his dossier indicates he is not overly precious to his wife or sons. Let us hope that treatment, rest, and recreation will restore him. However that goes, he’s a fascinating clinical study.”
They sat altogether still, those four.
“Well,” Haverner said after a minute, “since you’re obviously eager to return, I shan’t detain you much further. I do need to know how you wish your prize awarded you, Mrs. Petrie.”
“The money will be paid?” Byron asked in scorn. “Indeed. Indeed.” Wattles under the chin swayed as the knaggy head nodded. “I am, irrespective of your opinion, an honest man. You might also consider the fact that my failure to keep a promise like this would inevitably become general knowledge and thus discourage volunteers for what future experiments I may want to arrange.”
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