Stars: The Anthology

by Janis Ian

  Sensing that she made them uncomfortable, Annimae stopped coming by to watch their progress. The house would never be finished anyway; and after a week or so her heart beat to the rhythm of the ceaseless hammers. It was a comforting sound. It meant that Daniel was safe, and all was right with the world.

  After her morning walks, she was summoned to luncheon with Mrs. Nightengale, which was like having an audience with a gloomy and severe queen. Mrs. Nightengale questioned her in great detail on Daniel’s continuing health, though she refrained from asking about the most intimate matters.

  "Daniel seems to be thriving with your companionship," was the closest she came to a compliment. "Though the good spirits are still concerned for him. You must not grow careless, Daughter-in-Law."

  "I do assure you, Mother Nightengale, his life is as precious to me as it must be to you," said Annimae. Mrs. Nightengale regarded her in a chilly kind of way, and then winced and shut her eyes.

  "Is it your headache again?" Annimae inquired in sympathy. "Perhaps it’s the sun, don’t you think? I am sure you would be much more comfortable if you wore dark spectacles too."

  "They are not for me," replied Mrs. Nightengale, getting stiffly to her feet. "I gaze into a far brighter light than mortal eyes can imagine, when I commune with the spirits. You’ll excuse me, now. I am wanted in the thirteenth room."

  So saying, she walked through a wall and vanished.

  Annimae went also to the mansion’s library each day, once she learned the various routes to get there. It was not really such a big room, relative to the rest of the house. It contained a Bible, and the collected works of Shakespeare, though neither one seemed to have been read much. There were several volumes of fairy-stories, for Mrs. Nightengale had used to sit in the corridor outside Daniel’s room and read to him, when he had been small. There were many, many other books, principally by one Andrew Jackson Davis, and both they and the books by Emanuel Swedenborg had pride of place, though there were others by a Countess Blavatsky.

  These all treated of the mystical world. Annimae made it a point to sit and read a chapter from one of them each day, in order that she might better understand her husband’s plight. She tried very hard to make sense of esoteric wisdom, but it bewildered her.

  All the books claimed a great universal truth, simple and pure, revealed by spirit messengers from Almighty God; yet its proponents contradicted one another, sometimes angrily, and not one seemed to be able to state convincingly what the truth was. Every time Annimae thought she was coming to a revelation, so that her heart beat faster and she turned the pages eagerly, the promised answers failed to materialize. The great mysteries remained impenetrable.

  So with a sigh she would leave the books, and find a way back through the black labyrinth at the house’s heart. The deeper the shadows grew, the lighter was her step dancing home to her beloved. And what great truth was there, after all, but that it was sweet delight to pull off all her clothes and leap into bed with Daniel Nightengale?

  And when they’d tumbled, when they’d had so much fun they were tired, Daniel would lie beside her and beg her to relate everything she’d seen that day. It was difficult to tell him of the glories of the garden, for he knew very little of colors. Black and purple, midnight blue and the shades of stars or windows were all he could summon to his mind. Red and pink to him were smells, or tastes.

  But she could tell him about the swallows that made their nests under the eaves of the carriage-house, queer daubed things like clay jars stuck up there, with the little sharp faces peering out; she could tell him about the squirrel that had tried to climb the monkey-puzzle tree. He wanted to know everything, was hungry for the least detail.

  Afterward they would rise in the dark, answerable to no sun or moon, and find their way together into the splendid bathroom, as magnificent in its appointments as any Roman chamber. The spirits had devised ingenious systems to heat the room with jets of warmed air, piped in from below, and to fill the marble tub with torrents of hot water from a spigot. There were silver vessels of scent for the water; there was scented oil too.

  When they had luxuriated together they returned to the central room, where Daniel played the guitar for her, as she sprawled in bed with him. And it seemed to Annimae this must be just the way princes and princesses had lived long ago, perhaps even in the days of the Bible: young flesh oiled and perfumed, a silken nest and endless easeful night in which to make sweet music.

  It never occurred to her to wonder what the future might hold. Daniel raged against his confinement, and she comforted him, as she felt it was her duty to do. Sometimes they discussed ways in which he might gain more freedom, in the years to come: perhaps a portable room, or even a leather and canvas suit like a deep-sea diver’s, with a sealed helmet fronted in smoked glass? Perhaps Daniel might walk in the sunlight. Perhaps he might go to Europe and see all the sights to be seen. Whatever he did, Annimae knew she would always be there beside him; for that was how true lovers behaved, in all the stories in the wide world.

  There was no fear in the dark for Annimae, now, ever. Only one thing still made her startle, when it woke her twice each night: the tolling of a vast deep-throated bell somewhere high in the house. Mrs. Nightengale had it struck at midnight, for that was the hour when the good spirits arrived. Mrs. Nightengale, having retired to the thirteenth room and donned one of thirteen ceremonial robes, would commune there with the spirits for two hours, receiving their advice and instruction. At Two o’clock the bell would toll again, the spirits depart.

  "And then she comes out with a great sheaf of blueprints for the carpenters, you know," said Bridget, sprinkling starch on one of Daniel’s shirts and passing it to her daughter, who ironed it briskly. "And whether it’s orders to tear out an old room or start a new one, they set to smartly, you may be sure."

  "Don’t they ever get tired of it?" asked Annimae, gazing about the handsomely-appointed washroom—so many modern conveniences!—in wonder. Bridget and Gardenia exchanged amused glances.

  "They’re paid in gold, Ma’am," Gardenia explained. "And at twice the wage they’d be earning from anybody else. You can bet they just go home at night and fall on their knees to pray old Mrs. Nightengale never finishes her house!"

  "Why is it called the thirteenth room?" Annimae asked.

  "To confuse the spirits, Ma’am," replied Gardenia. "It’s the seventeenth along that corridor, if you count."

  "Why does Mother Nightengale spend so much time there?"

  "It’s by way of being her house of mysteries, isn’t it?" said Bridget, sorting through the linen hamper. "Her command post, if you like, where she plans the battle against the wicked dead every night. There’s strange things goes on in there! Chanting all hours, and flashes of light, and sometimes screams to freeze the blood in you! She’s a brave lady, the mistress. All for our Danny’s sake, just to keep his dear heart beating."

  "I’m afraid he gets a little restless now and then," said Annimae uncomfortably. "He says that sometimes he doubts that there’s any spirits at all."

  The mother and daughter were silent a moment, going about their tasks.

  "Poor boy," said Bridget at last. "It’s to be expected, with him growing up the way he has. Seeing is believing, sure, and he’s never seen danger."

  "Do you believe in the spirits?" Annimae asked.

  "Oh, yes, Ma’am," said Gardenia quietly. "Without a doubt."

  So the brief bright days blinked past, like images on nickelodeon screens, and the long fevered nights passed in lazy ecstasy. The last of the summer fruit was garnered away in the vast cellars, with Bridget and her daughters carrying down tray after tray of glass jars full of preserves. The orchards were golden. When the leaves began to fall, Godfrey and Godwin raked great red and yellow heaps that were set to smolder in the twilight, like incense.

  There came an evening when Annimae was awakened at midnight, as she always was, by the summoning bell. Yet as its last reverberation died away, no customary calm
flowed back like black water; instead there came a drumming, ten times louder than the desultory beat of hammers, a thundering music, and faint voices raised in song.

  As she lay wondering why anyone would be drumming at this hour of the night, she felt Daniel sit up beside her.

  "Listen!" he said eagerly. "Don’t you hear? They’re dancing!"

  "Is that all it is?" said Annimae, a little cross. The sound frightened her for some reason.

  "It’s their holiday. We must go watch," said Daniel, and she felt him getting out of bed.

  "We mustn’t!" she cried. "It’s not safe for you, honey."

  "Oh, there’s a safe way," he said, sounding sly. She heard him open a cabinet and take something from a hanger. "I go watch them every year. This year will be the best of all, because you’re with me now. Don’t be afraid, my darling."

  She heard him walk around to her side of the bed. "Now, get up and come with me. I’ve put my shroud on, and I’ll walk behind you all the way; and no one will see us, where we’re going."

  So she slid from the bed and reached out, encountering a drape of gauze cloth. His hand came up through it and took hers reassuringly, tugged her impatiently to the secret panel. So quickly they left the room that she had no time to pull on even a stitch, and she blushed hot to find herself out in the corridor naked. Yet it was a hot night, and in any case much too dark to be seen.

  "Fifty paces straight ahead, Annimae, and then turn left," Daniel told her.

  "Left? But I’ve never gone that way," said Annimae.

  "It’s all right," Daniel said, so for love’s sake she followed his direction. She walked before him the whole way, though she kept tight hold of his hand through the shroud. Left and right and right again he directed her, through so many turns and up and down so many stairs she knew she’d never find her way back alone, even when they reached a place with windows where milky starlight glimmered through. The house was silent, the corridors all deserted. The drumming, however, grew louder, and the clapping and chanting more distinct.

  "This is the earliest thing I can remember," Annimae heard Daniel say. "I woke up in the dark and was scared, and I tried to get out. How I stumbled over everything, in my shroud! I must have found the catch in the panel by accident, because the next thing I knew, there was the corridor stretching out ahead of me. It seemed as bright as stars, then. I followed after the music, just as we’re doing now. And, look! This is the window I found."

  They had come around a corner and entered a narrow passage ending in a wall, wherein was set one little window in the shape of a keyhole. Daniel urged her toward it, pushing gently. She could see something bright flickering, reflecting from below along the beveled edges of the glass.

  "My true love, I do believe somebody’s lit a fire outside," said Annimae.

  "Yes! Don’t be afraid. Look out, and I’ll look over your shoulder," said Daniel.

  So Annimae bent and put her face to the glass, and peered down into a courtyard she had never before seen. There was indeed a fire, a bright bonfire in the center, with a column of smoke rising from it like a ghostly tree. Gathered all around it, swaying and writhing and tossing their heads, were all the servants. Godfrey and Godwin sat to one side, pounding out the beat of the dance on drums, and all their brothers and sisters kept time with their clapping hands, with their stamping feet. They were singing in a language Annimae had never heard, wild, joyful. Now and again someone would catch up an armful of autumn leaves and fling them on the blaze, and the column of smoke churned and seemed to grow solid for a moment.

  The beat was infectious, enchanting. It roused desires in Annimae, and for the first time she felt shame and confusion. This was neither in fairy tales nor in the Bible. It did not seem right to feel her body moving so, almost against her will. Daniel, pressing hot behind her, was moving too.

  "Oh, how I stared and stared," said Daniel. "And how I wanted to be down there with them! They never have to live in fear, as I do. They can dance in the light. How can I dance, in a shroud like this? Oh, Annimae, I want so badly to be free! Watch now, watch what happens."

  Annimae saw Gardenia filling her apron with leaves, to pitch a bushel of them on the fire. The flames dimmed momentarily, and when they roared up again she saw that two new dancers had joined the party.

  Who was that black man, bigger than all the rest, waving his carved walking-stick? How well he danced! The others fell back to the edges and he strutted, twirled, undulated around the fire. Now he was sinuous as a great snake, powerful as a river; now he was comic and suggestive. Annimae blushed to see him thrust his stick between his legs and rock his hips, and the stick rose up, and up, and he waved and waggled in it such a lewd way there were screams of laughter from the crowd. Even Daniel, behind her, chuckled.

  Shocked as she was by that, Annimae was astounded to see a white girl down there at the edge of the fire, joining the black man in his dance. Who could she be? What kind of hoydenish creature would pull her skirt up like that and leap over the fire itself? Her hair was as bright as the flame, her face was fierce, her deportment mad as though she had never, ever had elderly aunts to tell her what ladies mustn’t do. Oh! Now she had seized a bottle from one of the onlookers, and was drinking from it recklessly; now she spat, she sprayed liquor into the fire, and when the others all applauded she turned and sprayed them too.

  Then the black man had slipped his arm around her. He pulled her in and the pace of the dance quickened. Round and round they went, orbiting the fire and each other, and the drumming of their heels drove Annimae almost to guilty frenzy. Rough and tender and insistent, the music pulsed. As she stared, she felt Daniel’s hands move over her, and even through the shroud his touch drove her mad. She backed to him like a mare. He rose up like a stallion.

  "You’re my fire, Annimae," moaned Daniel. "You’re my music, you’re my dance. You’re my eyes in the sunlight and my fever in the dark. We will escape this house, some day, my soul!"

  It was all Annimae could do to cling to the windowsill, sobbing in pleasure and shame, and the drumbeats never slowed…

  Though they did cease, much later. Annimae and Daniel made their unsteady way back through the black labyrinth, and slept very late the next day.

  The next afternoon, Gardenia came to Annimae as she walked in the garden and said: "If you please, Ma’am, there’s two old ladies come to call on you."

  Annimae went at once inside, back through chambers she hadn’t entered in months, out to the front of the house. There in a front parlor alarmingly full of the cold light of day sat Great-Aunt Merrion and Aunt Pugh, inspecting the underside of a vase through a pair of lorgnettes.

  "Why, child, how pale you are!" cried Aunt Pugh, as Annimae kissed her cheek.

  "How you do peer out of those spectacles, child!" said Great-Aunt Merrion, giving her a good long stare through her lorgnette. "Far too much reading in sickrooms, I’ll wager. Wifely duty is all very well, but you must think of yourself now and then."

  Annimae apologized for being pale, explaining that she had a headache, and wore the glasses against brightness. She bid Gardenia bring coffee for three, and poured as gracefully as she could when it came, though she still spilled a little.

  The aunts graciously overlooked this and told her all the news from the almond ranch. Her father’s investments had suddenly prospered, it seemed; the mortgages were all paid off, the servants all hired on again. Her father had once more the means to dress as a gentleman, and had bought a fine stable of racehorses. Why, they themselves had come to visit Annimae in a grand new coach-and-four! And all the merchants in town were once again respectful, deferential, as they ought always to have been to ladies of gentle birth.

  But Great-Aunt Merrion and Aunt Pugh had heard certain loose talk in town, it seemed; and so they had known it was their duty to call on Annimae, and to inquire after her health and well-being.

  They asked all manner of questions about Annimae’s daily life, which Annimae fended off as best she mig
ht, for she knew it was dangerous to speak much of Daniel. Detecting this, the old ladies looked sidelong at each other and fell to a kind of indirect questioning that had never failed to produce results before.

  Annimae was tired, she was still a little shaken and, perhaps, frightened by the violent delight of the previous evening. Her aunts, when all was said and done, had known her all her life. Somehow she let slip certain details, and the aunts pressed her for explanations, and so—

  "Do you tell me you’ve never so much as seen your husband, child?" said Aunt Pugh, clutching at her heart.

  "Good God Almighty!" Great-Aunt Merrion shook with horror. "Miss Pugh, do you recollect what that Mrs. Delano said outside the milliner’s?"

  Aunt Pugh recollected, and promptly fainted dead away.

  Annimae, terrified, would have rung for a servant at once; but Great-Aunt Merrion shot out a lace-mittened fist and caught her hand.

  "Don’t you ring for one of them," she whispered. She got up and closed the parlor door; then produced a vial of smelling-salts from her handbag. Aunt Pugh came around remarkably quickly, and sat bolt upright.

  "Child, we must break your heart, but it is for your own sake," said Great-Aunt Merrion, leaning forward. "I fear you have been obscenely deceived."

  She proceeded to relate what a Mrs. Delano had told her, which was: that she had a cousin who had known Mrs. Nightengale in Louisiana right after the Waw, when all her cares were first besetting her. This cousin, who had an excellent memory, was pretty sure that Mrs. Nightengale’s baby had not merely been sick, it had in fact died. Moreover, there were stories that Mrs. Nightengale was much too familiar with her household staff, especially her coachman.

  "If you know what I mean," Great-Aunt Merrion added.

  Annimae protested tearfully, and gave her aunts many examples of Daniel’s liveliness. Aunt Pugh wept like a spigot, rocking to and fro and moaning about the shame of it all, until Great-Aunt Merrion told her to cease acting like a fool.