Radiance

by Catherynne M. Valente

  Maybe I don’t get to see the end of this show. Maybe I just live out the rest of my days between reels. Maybe Anchises will figure it out. Maybe not. Who knows, maybe death is the darkroom where you get to see it all like it was supposed to come out. Bright and crisp and clean. No shadows unless you want them. But it ended like it started, which I guess is how you know it’s an Unck story. Suckers for symmetry, those two. I left my sugar standing in the rain and she melted away.

  CYTHERA: Is that all?

  ERASMO: Probably not. I’ll ring if I think of anything new.

  CYTHERA: Oxblood will pay for resettlement anywhere you like, Erasmo. And you’ll always have a job with us if you decide to come home.

  ERASMO: I’m thinking Mars. Mount Penglai. I was born near there, you know. Didn’t mean to come into this life anywhere but the Moon. Still seems strange that I didn’t pull it off. Mum and Dad were working on Kangaroo Khan, and whoops—congratulations on your bouncing baby Martian.

  CYTHERA: Mount Penglai is lovely. The mangoes are amazing.

  ERASMO: You’ll let me take him, won’t you? [Cythera says nothing.] He’s worth nothing to you. He’s just a kid. He’s going to be bent into all kinds of unpleasant shapes by this. He needs a father. Or at least someone who can un-pretzel him from time to time. Trust me, you don’t want him. I do. Let me give him a childhood.

  CYTHERA: We’ll consider it. May I…may I ask? You wear a wedding ring, but on the wrong hand. Indulge my curiosity?

  ERASMO: She didn’t want to get married. Doesn’t mean I wasn’t her husband.

  CYTHERA: [pause] Can I get you a last coffee before you go?

  Christmas Card,

  mailed to C. Brass c/o Oxblood Films,

  Yemaya, December 1952

  To be included in the manuscript of Erasmo St. John’s memoir, The Sound of a Voice That Is Still, scheduled for publication Spring 1959 (Random House)

  Front:

  SNOW HO HO!

  HAPPY CHRISTMAS

  FROM MERRY MARS!

  Inside:

  Hiya, Cyth,

  Well, he’s gone to seek his fortune, and I’m drinking alone at Yuletide with no one else to write to.

  I don’t know if he ever loved me, and I don’t know what the thing in his hand means. It never gave him any pain that I could tell. I don’t know if it ever changed much; he started wearing gloves when we were living in New York (what a cock-up that was! Six months of yelling at each other in brownstones neither of us will be able to fish out of the back drawer again) and never took them off. Wouldn’t show me the hand any more than a boy shows himself naked to his father past a certain age.

  Not that I was his father. I wanted to be. I did. It would have been…well, there’s no point in dressing it up. It would have been like Rin and me had a kid together. That’s not fair, it’s not a fair thing to put on a traumatized little boy, but we all put something too heavy on our babies.

  It moved in his sleep. I remember that, in the days before the gloves. It moved in his sleep like it was underwater. Like it was drifting in a current, a tide that you couldn’t see. I touched it once. He was sick, really sick—he was sick a lot back then. Nowhere sat right with him ’til Mars. He reached out to me in his fever, and he did that seldom enough. I held him tight and took his hands and I could feel it, moving against my palm, like it was looking for something. Maybe purchase, maybe a way out, maybe it couldn’t breathe with my palm against it. But its little tendrils touched my skin and that is the only time I have heard Severin Unck’s voice since the Clamshell made moonfall. I never told him. How do you tell a kid that?

  Cristabel got her Russian citizenship six or seven years ago and came out to our little red planet. I bet you saw that coming, didn’t you? She can play the bassoon. I didn’t really think anyone played the bassoon anymore. It’s an instrument out of books and poems and grandads manning the watch on the prow of lonely, starlit ships. It sounds plaintive and kind in the desert dark.

  The plain fact is, after everything that happened in Adonis, I could never love anyone who wasn’t there.

  I might try to write a book. We’ll see. I’m not much of a writer. Anything more than a title card seems wasteful to me. I spent the best years of my life under the law of silent flicks: Show everything, because you can’t say much. But I think I might give it a go.

  It’s almost dark in Mount Penglai. The way my house sits, I can watch the kangaroos out on the red plains. Who knew those funny creatures would take to Mars so well?

  The Ingénue’s Handbook

  12 October 1947, Eleven in the Evening

  Pellam’s Parlour, Grasshopper City

  My darling Severin,

  You must know I always meant to tell you everything. You deserved to know. It was only that I couldn’t be certain, not absolutely certain, and without certainty, why rock the boat?

  Oh, what a dreadful thing to say! I sound like my grandmother, and she had a full set of dentures by forty-five. And it’s execrable wordplay as well. You always gave me a slap on the wrist for punning in your presence. But I know you liked it, you dissembler, you.

  I’ve settled on Miranda, of all places. It’s beautiful here, really. Nothing like my old movie. Thaddeus shot Europa-for-Miranda for the tax shelter and it still looks spectacular, but it’s nothing like the gentle blue hills and snowy roofs and bright red flowers no bigger than a prick of blood all over the place.

  I have a horse now! She’s not really a horse. Horses on Miranda are the exact colour of absinthe with white hair and rather lion-like paws. Mine’s called Clementine. I thought about naming her Severin, I really did, but it’s an even more unwieldy name for a horse than it was for a little girl, even if the horse does have green lion feet. I bought her from a Mirandese lady I wish you could meet. She comes round quite a bit to help me look after Clementine, and lately she’s been staying longer and longer. My Miranda affair. It’s funny, but she looks just like Larissa Clough in The Man Who Toppled Triton. Do you remember that one? Mortimer gets called to the back of beyond to investigate an assassination, or what have you. They’re all starting to run together.

  I miss you terribly. I’ve missed you on and off for half my life. A stepmother’s burden, I suppose. I do hope I wasn’t too wicked. Oh, Sevvy, my lass, there are nights out here when the sky is so full of moons you think they’ll come tumbling down over the grass and roll right through your door, and all I want in the world is to show you around my little house, make you a cup of tea, and ask you, My dearest of hearts, how have you been, really? And you would tell me about your next movie, and Erasmo, and how old-fashioned my silly watercolours are, and who paints their parlour chartreuse, anyway? I’d make you sandwiches just like the Savoy’s. You could toss Clementine a raw rump roast; she likes them especially.

  And then I remember, and it’s too dreadful for words.

  I always meant to tell you. I’m still not certain, but I’m…certain enough.

  Sevvy, your father didn’t shoot anyone. I thought he did; everyone thought he did, though no one would say it. Batty, horrid, bear-brained Freddy Edison shot my Thaddeus, and Percy kept him from spilling it all like a bucket of paint and ruining himself because…well, God knows why Percy ever loved Freddy the way he did. A more undeserving shit of a man was never born. Freddy did it because he thought his wife, Penny, was sleeping with Thad. It wasn’t even in the neighbourhood of true, of course. I knew that, but I couldn’t say how I knew, and I couldn’t understand why Percy was spitting lies whenever he spoke, so I…I ran away. I know I ought to have been braver. But I’ve come to think you only get so much bravery in one lifetime, and if you spend it too soon, you’re all out of fuck it all to hell by the time you really need it.

  I knew Thad never touched Penny. Thad never touched anyone of the lady persuasion. When I was twenty or twenty-one, I came to his house to get a few scripts. I came a little early or a little late, I can’t remember which, though I do remember how bright Thaddy’s forsythia
bloomed that year. It framed his door in pure gold. I walked right in because I am a rude and graceless creature and saw him kissing Laszlo Barque goodbye. They looked so lovely together, like summer in two people. We all froze like antelope who’ve smelled a hyena. I saw them decide to trust me, and they saw me promise to keep their secret, all without saying a word. We had a splendid afternoon playing gin rummy and complaining, my favourite hobbies.

  I never told a soul. Thaddeus knew about me, too, of course. One good confidence deserves another. But I was always a spritely little Naiad; I could flow from men to women and back and forth and it never seemed the least bit strange to me, just lucky. I can hide better than some. Even if I have to come all the way out to a cold black moon to do it. If you’ve married men twice, nobody asks what you think about when the night breeze comes sidling in. And none of us ever forgot how Algernon B-for-Bastard ruined Wadsy Shevchenko just for the fun of it. To sell his wretched little magazine. He’d have been thrilled to shit on Thaddeus’s grave so that no one ever spoke of his movies again without adding: Oh, didn’t you know? Irigaray was nothing but a nasty little fairy! And did you hear how he died? I say good riddance to his sort. They always come to a bad end. No. Not for my forsythia friend.

  Oh, I hate everything and everybody. Bother.

  But what troubles me is the why. Why did Percy lie?

  I think I have it figured out now. Maxine would be ashamed of me. She’d roll her one good eye and scold me. How could anything possibly take a soul this long to think through? So here it is, no more dawdling!

  Percy lied because he had a bigger lie in his back pocket. Darling, I believe with all my beat-up little heart that Penelope Edison is your mother.

  I found a photograph in Thaddeus’s hand, a photograph of a baby that looked terribly like you. I did know you quite well when you were small. So the question becomes: why would he have it?

  I think Penelope couldn’t hold it in any longer. She’d had about a hundred thousand gimlets that night, and she had to tell somebody. Thaddeus listened to all the girls he worked with. He could listen like a funny-nosed, redheaded god of making it all okay. Laszlo Barque loved that about him—I don’t think anyone listened to Laszlo much before Thaddeus. He was too pretty for people to pay attention to what he was saying. So I think Penny must have been showing him a picture, unburdening her soul, and Freddy saw them talking, pasted Thad and Penny together with a few other facts he’d collected over the years, lost his pencil-eraser of a mind, and bang. Those facts being: Freddy went to Saturn for the Worlds’ Fair in Enuma Elish. He didn’t come home for ten months or so. Time enough. Maybe she looked different when he came back. Maybe she felt different. Maybe she stopped wanting babies with him. I don’t know. But he must have suspected her long before that night on the Achelois.

  The thing is, Enuma Elish hosted the fair in 1914. And you were born in October that year.

  That’s all the evidence I have. I know it’s not much. Percy and Freddy grew up together. Not in the sense of whacking each other with toy fire trucks and eating sand side by side, but in the sense of two young men on the same rocket to the Moon, both of them viciously ambitious and twenty and starving for the world. Even when Freddy turned out rotten as an old banana, Percy still loved him. Whatever part of a person can turn love off is broken in Percy. Oh, I know you don’t think so. Seven wives, after all. But we all left him, not the other way round. Even you. And he still loves everyone he ever loved, I’m as sure of that as I am of the colour of my eyes. It’s only that a real live person can never shine like a movie you haven’t made yet. He must have loved Penelope like a bruise in the soul to betray his friend. And it would have killed him if Freddy ever found out. Possibly literally, considering.

  Before you ask, I’m certain Penny loved you. She just got stuck, baby girl, like a needle on a record, and she couldn’t get out of a story with no good end.

  For a long time I thought it showed an ugliness in Percy that he never told you. Of all people! But secrets hold a sway stronger than any scruples. You were so bound and determined to put every detail of your life into a microphone and through a camera lens. You insisted on talking when the rest of us were happy with the quiet. Truth, reality, bald honesty—that was you in a tall glass with ice.

  He would have told you someday. I’m sure he meant to. Just like I did. Maybe we all just should have used our grown-up voices a little more.

  That’s all I’ve got, Sevvy. I hope this letter finds you, somehow.

  Clementine wants her evening ride. The moons are all coming up like big pale party balloons. Don’t tell anyone I said so, but I love you and I will miss you till I die. Even if you weren’t my child, you are my daughter, and that’s worth a drink if it’s worth two.

  Come home, if you can.

  Mary

  —

  From a Letter Recovered from the

  Grave of Severin Unck

  How Many Miles to Babylon?:

  Episode 974

  Airdate: 2 September, 1952

  Announcer: Henry R. Choudhary

  Vespertine Hyperia: Violet El-Hashem (final episode)

  Tybault Gayan: Alain Mbengue

  The Invisible Hussar: Zachariah von Leipold

  Doctor Gruel: Benedict Sol

  Guest Star: Maud Locksley as Gloriana, the Panther Queen

  ANNOUNCER: Good Evening, Listeners, if it is indeed Evening where you are. Gather in, pour yourself a cup of something nice, and sit back for another instalment of the solar system’s favourite tale of adventure, romance, and intrigue on How Many Miles to Babylon? Celebrating our thirty-eighth year on the waves and in your hearts, Babylon is a joint production of the United/Universal All-Worlds Wireless Broadcom Network (New York, Shanghai, Tithonus) and BBC Radio, recorded at Atlas Studios, London.

  This evening’s programme is brought to you, as always, by Castalia Water Filtration, Wherever You Go, Have a Glass of Home Sweet Home. Additional promotional consideration provided by the Audumbla Company, Bringing Our Family of Quality Callowproducts to Your Table and Your Family to the Stars; Your Friends at Coca-Cola; the East Indian Trading Company; and Edison Teleradio Corp.

  Previously on How Many Miles to Babylon?: Our heroine, Vespertine Hyperia, finally wed her beloved Tybault in the Halls of Hyperion, formerly Doctor Gruel’s Sinister Seraglio. Her bridesmaids: two gentle callowhales. Her bouquet: the stars.

  VESPERTINE: Oh, Tybault, my long dreamed-of destiny, will I ever feel more joy than I do now in your arms, with all of Venus safe and at peace and our child sleeping soundly in my belly?

  TYBAULT: I know I shall not, faun of my fate.

  VESPERTINE: But our adventure is not over, is it? There is so much more to do and to dare! The Mountain of Memory, the Fortress of Forty Thousand Wishes, the Dragoon Lagoon! Together we will bring each of them to the welcoming arms of the Crown!

  TYBAULT: We will never cease, not even in death. This is our home for all time!

  VESPERTINE: Tonight, I shall fall asleep in your arms as I have longed to do for so many years. The night wind will come through our windows and whisper sweet promises of tomorrow. I shall sleep and I shall dream of the world we made when first our eyes met and our hands touched. Farewell, Sorrow! Vespertine is your maid no longer!

  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 Reappearing Raconteur

  Wide angle. Establishing shot. Slow zoom.

  The White Peony Waldorf glows like a candlelit cake. Supper waits under silver domes, ready, but not yet served. A basket of mints sits in the dumbwaiter, its contents all set to kiss every pillow with their neat green foils. The painted ceiling, like a strange chapel, depicts Venus interceding with the Trojans and the Greeks. Armies surround a patch of swamp. The goddess cradles Paris’s bruised body in one perfect arm and pleads for peace with the other. She bleeds
from a wound over her heart; her hair is soaked in blood. It is a famous painting, though no one presently enjoying the pleasures of the lobby looks up.

  Tracking shot over the labyrinthine rose-and-cobalt pattern of the rich carpet, past the gleaming grand piano, the vases full of varuna flowers and gardenias-which-are-not-really-gardenias. A rowdy group of out-of-towners are making quite the rumpus in the Myrtle Lounge. Such manners! Passersby can hear the uproar all the way out on the twilight-washed street.

  “Ate us?” shouts Arlo Covington, C.P.A. He thumps his fist on the helmet of his diving suit. Peitho and Erzulie Kephus cringe away from him; they remember the sudden thump of their own deaths, and they still cannot bear loud noises. “Ate us?”

  Calliope the Carefree Callowhale keeps her cool. Her animated lines crackle turquoise to black to ultramarine with suppressed indignation and embarrassment. “I beg your pardon. But what would you do if a roast chicken flew through your kitchen window, landed on your plate, and carved itself with your knife and fork? I daresay you’d fall to, sir.” She blushes her cartoon blush, two magenta circles on her cetacean cheeks. “You walked right into me, Mr Covington. What would you have me do?”

  Percival Unck strokes his daughter’s black hair. Her movie-tone skin flickers and skips. They have not stood together thus for so long. Severin presses her lips together. She can hardly look at the crew she lost. She knows the score, but has not yet been asked to put it on the board.

  “And what about me?” Horace St. John draws himself up, with great difficulty, on a jewelled cane. His broken, bow-tied legs wobble. “I couldn’t sleep. I committed the great sin of insomnia. The unforgivable transgression of taking a walk instead of having a piss inside my own tent.”