Radiance

by Catherynne M. Valente

  Little Doctor Callow did not fall asleep for a hundred years. He fell asleep for ten. But he did not sleep a person’s sleep. A person did not tuck him in and tell him: Close your eyes, my darling—don’t open them; don’t even peek. Say your prayers. Count sheep-which-are-not-really-sheep. Hush now. Soft now. He slept the sleep of a callowhale. And, in sleep, a callowhale may move, may quiver. The sleep of a callowhale is not like our languorous, thick, sprawling, deathlike primate slumber. It is not really sleep at all. It is a spiky, spinning sword tip pricking the surface of the world a hundred times in a hundred places (though it is really an infinite, intangible intaglio of prickings) but never cutting.

  It is not really sleep. It is not really milk. It is not really a whale.

  Place a strip of film in a projector. Run it forward. Stop. Run it backward. Stop. Run it forward again. Now take it out and put it back in horizontally. Diagonally. Folded in half. Folded three times. Four. Twelve. One thousand and four. Put it in front of the light. Run it forward. Stop. Run it backward.

  That is how a callowhale sleeps. It is like sleeping. It is also like jumping. It is a sleep like a panther.

  But always, always, a callowhale dreams.

  This is what Doctor Callow dreamed at his spinning wheel, in his glass coffin, in the roots of his tree:

  Whales travel in pods. So did Doctor Callow. The sea he travelled in was every colour. He felt no arms or legs, though he knew he had them. He felt no effort in swimming. He felt large. Doctor Callow dove and spun through the waves, and each wave was a country like his own beloved Land of Milk and Desire, but he did not stop, could not stop, to look at them.

  Beside him swam a whale, which was not really a whale but a dark, sullen child with raggedy hair and a sour expression. She wore a dress of poppies on her body that was a whale’s body but also a child’s body, like his own. She turned to him in the Sea of Every Colour and said:

  Better run, Your Majesty, or I’ll eat you all up.

  He swam harder after her. Harder and harder. She was so fast.

  Come find me in two years, she called back over her flippers that were not really flippers.

  But I’ve found you now, he answered her.

  And then she was sitting at the bottom of the Sea of Every Colour, her lacy dress spread out all around her, the orange flowers opening and closing like bloody kisses. The water carried her hair up, fanning it around her head like a black serpent-crown. She drew in the sand of the ocean floor with a stick. This is what she drew:

  She looked up at him.

  Are we going to live here forever? she asked.

  I think so.

  The little girl sighed. Bubbles flowed out of her mouth. I miss someone.

  I miss lots of someones, Doctor Callow said, into the sea.

  The girl nodded. Do you know what this place is?

  It’s where the callowhales live.

  Yes, the girl said, though he could not tell if she was happy about it.

  Chamomile?

  That’s not my name.

  What is your name?

  Severin.

  Severin?

  Yes?

  I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.

  Severin started. She gave him a strange, searching expression. Her voice sharpened, grew older. Why did you say that?

  I don’t know. It seemed like a good thing to say.

  You said it like you were quoting something. What’s Kansas? Is it a planet?

  Doctor Callow suddenly felt confused. He forgot how to swim in the Sea of Every Colour and dropped abruptly to the sand beside Severin. I think so? Maybe? It sounds nice.

  Maybe it’s one of the other places.

  What other places?

  Mr Bergamot lives everywhere.

  What are you talking about?

  She gestured to the callowhales overhead, as massive as suns, and circling, circling forever. Mr Bergamot loves teatime. At teatime he eats worlds. And egg salad.

  I’m lonely, whispered Doctor Callow.

  Don’t be. There’s a million million worlds to play with.

  I’m lonely, he whispered again, because he didn’t know what else to say.

  That’s okay, Severin Unck answered. She put her small hand on his. The colours of the Sea-which-wasn’t-really-a-Sea got so bright Severin and Doctor Callow had to shut their eyes, which were not really their eyes. Doctor Callow looked up through the waves-which-were-not-really-waves and saw a callowhale—thousands of callowhales—soaring through the surf. They looked back at him as one creature, their infinite faces-which-were-not-really-faces as radiant as the spasms of stars, as the first frame of a film that is perfect, that is impossible, that is complete.

  That’s okay, Severin said. I’m here. There’s no place like Home.

  PART FOUR

  THE GOLD PAGES

  Goddess, as soon as I saw you with my own eyes

  I knew your divinity—but you gave me no truth.

  Yet by aegis-wielding Zeus I beg thee—

  do not make me live on, impotent, among men.

  Have mercy on me, for well I know

  the man who lies with immortal goddesses

  is never left unharmed.

  —Homer, “Hymn to Aphrodite”

  A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you, the less you know.

  —Diane Arbus

  There lived an old woman

  Under a hill

  And if she’s not gone

  She lives there still

  —Mother Goose

  The Radiant Car Thy Sparrows Drew

  (Oxblood Films, dir. Severin Unck)

  SC4 EXT. ADONIS, VILLAGE GREEN—DAY 16 TWILIGHT POST PLANETFALL 08:49 [3 DECEMBER, 1944]

  [EXT. SEVERIN UNCK swims through the murky water, holding one of ERASMO ST. JOHN’S callow-lanterns out before her. ERASMO follows behind with her secondary camera, encased in a crystal canister. The film is badly stained and burned through several frames. She swims upward, dropping lead weights from her shimmering counter-pressure mesh as she rises. The grille of her diving bell gleams faintly in the shadows. Above her, slowly, the belly of a callowhale comes into view. It is impossibly massive, the size of a sky. SEVERIN strains towards it, extending her fingers to touch it, just once, as if to verify it for herself, that such a thing could be real.

  The audience will always and forever see it before SEVERIN does. A slit in the side of the great whale, like a door opening. As the documentarian stretches towards it, with an instinctual blocking that is nothing short of spectacular—the suddenly tiny figure of a young woman frozen forever in this pose of surprise, of yearning, in the centre of the shot—the eye of the callowhale, so huge as to encompass the whole screen, opens around her.]

  Production Meeting

  The Deep Blue Devil

  The Man in the Malachite Mask

  Doctor Callow’s Dream

  And If She’s Not Gone, She Lives There Still

  (Tranquillity Studios, 1961, dir. Percival Unck)

  Audio Recorded for Reference by Vincenza Mako

  PERCIVAL UNCK: I don’t know how to end it. All this time and I still don’t know. I can’t change Rin’s story. But I thought…I thought I could give him a better story. One where he had the means to search and find his fate, the way heroes do. One where he got saved. But answers are all that saves anyone, and I don’t have any. I set the place for the ending, turned down the bed, lit the candles, and the bitch stayed out in the cold to spite me.

  MAKO: But it wasn’t ever going to be a real ending. Remember? It was going to be better than the real world. That was the whole point. That was the gift we wanted to make for her. It was going to have weight. It was going to rhyme with the beginning in some ineffable way that real endings never do. We never set out to tell a true story, only a mostly true one. The ending we planned is elegant, if you follow the logic, and “elegant” is more important than “real.” That’s always been our motto, really.

>   UNCK: The fairy tale thing was never going to work. It’s beautiful, but it can only come at the story obliquely. It can only tell how it felt. It can’t say anything like: “Severin Unck died by electrocution.” It can’t say she didn’t. The language is all wrong. We have all the ambiguity we can eat already; we don’t need more. And anyway, it’s not a child’s story. Or an adult’s. It’s not Anchises or Severin or anyone else, but all of them together, stuck in a room with no idea how to get out.

  MAKO: There’s a thought. A locked-room mystery?

  UNCK: Huh. Maybe. We started him off as a detective. Maybe we can end it that way, too. Let him detect a little. But what room? We’d need a cell, a vault, perhaps a ship? We tried the grand estate already.

  MAKO: Don’t be so literal. Venus is the locked room.

  UNCK: Things do tend to come out when there’s nowhere to go.

  MAKO: Let the mystery stay, but take the angry noir brooder out. Give it a bit of the old Victorian dash. A lashing of lace and leather. A room full of suspects, a brilliant genius with a flair for the dramatic. And why stick to people who really lived? Give it the shine of magic, a surreal spit-and-polish. Not too much—everyone hates the avant-garde, deep down. But enough to go out with a bang.

  UNCK: But, Vince…I’ve got experience with this one. I know the song too well. It’s been sung at me at top volume. I don’t know if I can go through it again, even at the typewriter. That ghastly, desperate night, Mary staring at me like I’d become a hellhound before her eyes…

  MAKO: Let’s not talk about that right now. It’s long over.

  UNCK: I should have told Severin. Secrets seem so important until there’s no one left to spill them to. I would have told her eventually. I would have found the right time. I remember she asked me once about endings. I told her you could have a story that was nothing but beginnings, but I didn’t know if you could have one that was only endings. If she loved me, she’d have given me an ending I could use. If she’d loved me at all. [long pause] I was a terrible father.

  MAKO: You weren’t. Eccentric. Not terrible.

  UNCK: I abandoned her. It’s the one capital crime of fatherhood. Mothers can fail a thousand ways. A father’s only job is: do not abandon this child. And what did I do? I let her run wild and never called her back in for supper when the sun got low.

  MAKO: Percy…you don’t have to finish this. You can just stop. Severin wouldn’t be disappointed if you didn’t finish. She’d understand. She left her movie unfinished, too.

  UNCK: Oh, Vince, no. If I leave it like this…if I leave it, it looks just like her. A poor abandoned creature without an end. If I do that…she’ll think I didn’t love her. I can’t let her think that. I let her think many wicked things about me, but not that. This is how I loved her. She knows it, recognizes it. And I promise you, if she’s anywhere, she hates herself for leaving Radiant Car undone.

  MAKO: Mystery on the Pink Planet, then?

  UNCK: If you have a “Mystery” title, you’re promising answers. If you’re going to put your cards on the table, there’d better be something on them. Besides, that’s just dreadful on the face of it. “Pink Planet.” You’re fired, Vince. I mean it this time.

  MAKO: We have some answers. The rest…we guess. We lay down our best hand. Maybe it’s not a royal flush, but it’s enough to beat the house. And you never know. We could get it right. Stranger things have happened.

  UNCK: [whispers] If I say she’s dead, she will be.

  MAKO: Then don’t.

  UNCK: I want to go back and start it all over again. From the first shot. In the thunderstorm. With the silver basket. I’ll get it right this time. I can do it better. Just one more take.

  The Deep Blue Devil

  The Man in the Malachite Mask

  Doctor Callow’s Dream

  And If She’s Not Gone, She Lives There Still:

  The Case of the Disappearing Documentarian

  Begin with the widest shot possible and tighten it in: infinite lights in the infinite dark. Ten lights—shades of gold, blue, green, violet, red. One, one pink-orange lantern hanging in a wide, endless nothing without ceiling or floor. Every time it turns around, a year flies by. Closer. A city in the lantern, cordoned off by canals like velvet ropes. A single building in the city, almost a castle but not quite, thin and tall and ornamented with tangerine agate pillars, with gargoyles holding hearts in their hands and peonies in their mouths, with windows that face the sea. The doors close and lock discreetly; everyone necessary is already inside.

  Begin with the most impersonal perspective, then tighten the aperture: What do the gargoyles see when they look through the windows?

  Just before suppertime, in every room of the White Peony Waldorf, the telephones begin to ring. As the primrose and cornflower shadows of Venus whirl like leaves into gold, in every room of the White Peony Waldorf, hands pick up the polished brass receivers on the second ring. Lights come on like an advancing army of fireflies all over the Station, and in every room of the White Peony Waldorf, a lovely, lilting lady’s voice pours out of the telephone:

  “If you would be so good as to assemble in the Myrtle Lounge in a quarter of an hour, Mr St. John will present the evening’s entertainment. Refreshments will be provided.”

  Adjust the lens: What do the windows see when they look into the rooms?

  Dresses come out of closets; steam unwrinkles dinner jackets; shoes and hats are hurriedly located. Just as the supper bell rings, out of every room in the White Peony Waldorf, people emerge—hesitant, pensive, nerves and necklines sparkling. One by one they take their seats on the couches, armchairs, chaises, and barstools of the Myrtle Lounge, velvet on velvet on velvet; gowns and trousers crushing that ash-pale, fruiting moss into the thick upholstery. A gramophone plays some dainty old tune. Murmured conversations dapple the room, introductions are made—many of the guests have not met each other before tonight. Hands fiddle with cigars and cigarettes and atomizers—many of the guests have vices that prefer not to wait on the host. There is perfume, there is sweat, there is talc, there is fear—many of the guests wear all four.

  Adjust the lens again. Abandon the impersonal perspective and smash it underfoot like a wedding glass. What do the players see?

  Anchises St. John and Cythera Brass sweep into the lounge. The air bursts with a flurry of snapping photographs. She wears a sleek strapless number that rustles silver in the popping lights. Flashes of the palest pink feathers flutter in the hem; a slim triangle of dyed crocodile scales soars up to a daring rosette of amethyst and alarming croc teeth at the point of the gown’s plunging, bare back. He wears a raisin-dark smoking jacket over dove-grey trousers and a shirtfront so white you’d think angels ran textile mills. A deep rose cravat blossoms at his throat, with a tiny tiger’s eye pin to hold it in place, and his buttery-yellow leather gloves shine in the low light. Cythera beams, her posture soft as a shimmy in the dark. Anchises is a picture of health, ruddy, his dark hair glossed and thick, a beard coming in nicely, his eyes bright as the sun glinting on a magnifying glass.

  Anchises and Cythera hoist up platters of cocktails from the bar and serve them with smiles.

  “Good evening!” Anchises cries, his rich, full voice, a leading man’s voice, bouncing off the moss-drenched walls. “Good evening, and welcome to my little party. I’m so pleased you all could make it! I know some of you have had a long journey, but you have, at long last, come to the end! Welcome to the end! Make yourself at home! Relax, put up your feet, and have a well-deserved drink!”

  Zoom in again. Adjust the lens. Tighter. Tighter.

  What does Anchises St. John see?

  “A pink lady for you, Dad,” the great detective says, and, with a flourish, presents a flute to Erasmo St. John, the man who raised him, still strong and broad as a painting of Hercules, his bright black skin free of wrinkles, of the papery thinness of his last days on Mars; as he was on the seventeenth of November, 1944: twenty-eight years old, in love, well laid, and
well paid. “Real gin, all the way from London. And a gimlet with muddled mint and French lavender for you, Mum—now, now, I insist. It’s my party, I get to spoil you.” He places a crystal glass in the slim hand of Severin Unck, sitting cross-legged in a black silk evening gown, trimmed in raven feathers and slit up to her hip. Her aviator jacket drapes over her shoulders; she smokes a cigar. One dark, pencilled eyebrow arches up in amusement.

  Erasmo leans over to kiss her. She touches the tip of his nose with her finger. Her skin flickers, crackles where it touches his; she is black and white, a film in flesh. “Thanks, sweetheart,” she says. “You shouldn’t have.”

  Cythera plops down in a dashing fellow’s lap. He kisses her cheek. Thirty-seven and in his prime, with blistering black eyes and El Greco cheekbones, he looks just as he did the night before a certain silver basket landed on his doorstep. Two women share his couch. Cythera hands out the goods. “That’s an aviator for Unck Senior, a Bellini for the lovely Mary P, and an old-fashioned for Madame? You’ve got honest-to-Betsy Madrid lemons there, Percy; real Creek Nation peaches in your bubbly, Miss P; Hawaiian sugar and California orange peel in your extremely stiff drink, Maxine.”

  Mary Pellam laughs like a toffee fountain and nuzzles the ear of Madame Mortimer. They have the same short blond hair, fine as fairy floss, but Mortimer has come to do business in her best black travelling suit, while Mary, seventeen and sweet as a clementine, wears a gold scrap of flapper froth, lavender lipstick, and no shoes.

  Anchises does a quick shuffle over to a long couch mottled like a dairy cow with snowy moss. The tips of the moss have sprouted mauve spores. They smell of warm nutcake. “A piña colada with a juicy wedge of Queensland pineapple for my esteemed Mr Bergamot! A snakebite for Marvin the Mongoose—thank you so much for coming on such short notice—and a Brandy Alexander—served in a punchbowl, naturally—for Calliope the Carefree Callowhale!” A cartoon octopus in spats and a monocle wraps one hand-painted, bright green tentacle around the stem of his cocktail. A cheerful animated mongoose grabs his pint glass with both peppy, overcranked paws. Anchises sets the crystal punchbowl down on a side table so that a caricatured whale can dip her turquoise head into the booze. She sits like a lady: friendly, enormous, bright-eyed head up; long, non-threatening dolphin tail down. A steady spray of healthy milk gurgles up from her spout like flowers in a hat.