Our Ecstatic Days

by Steve Erickson

  More and more everything strikes him as absurd. He wonders if this is because he’s fundamentally still a rationalist in a rational universe that renders the absurdities more salient, or because he’s changing into an absurdist. He thinks about his dream, his defiant stand for freedom before the eyes of the world and the way in which love is bondage, the way one happily trades freedom for it. He thinks about the woman who drowned herself and wonders what she did it to be free of, what she did it to be bound to. What bearing has it on the Crusade? one of the officers asked, not an unreasonable question if for sixteen years you’ve ignored how the lake has had a life of its own, how from the beginning the lake has manifested its own psyche, altering the surrounding psychotopography. There wouldn’t even be a Tribulation II or III if not for the lake because—although he can’t remember why—he’s quite certain that if not for the lake, there would never have been a Tribulation I or II. Well. It’s the business of soldiers, thinks Wang, to pay attention to trees rather than forests. Distracted by forests, they can’t be expected to tend to the trees.

  He both warns and reassures himself the woman who

  and obliteration, hurled through the opening of the lake by an Oblivion Wind,

  drowned couldn’t have been his Kristin. While she did have a son—by another man, it was the thing that had torn them apart, as well as all his unanswered letters after he finally came to L.A. for her—they said this woman had been in her mid-twenties, and his Kristin would have been well into her thirties at the time; and although he can’t quite place it, he vaguely remembers having himself seen a young woman in a brilliant red dress and flashing silver gondola sailing the lake. He’s troubled by the morass of emotions he feels at this moment: relief, sorrow, grief, guilt … is this the only way he’s to be free of her ghost? for, dead or not, she’s been a ghost to him all these years anyway, for the way she’s haunted him. Navigating from one dark zone of the lake to the next, never breaching the radius of moonlight that floats on the water, the boy at the other end of the boat rows so silently and invisibly it’s easy for Wang to feel as though he’s the sole passenger of a boat that sails itself. He pulls his coat up around his neck as the wind casts in his face a light spray, and as he makes his way toward the black silhouette of the hills under the full moon, he hears the lake’s strange melodies. Glancing over the side of the boat he can see just under the water the glowing snakes that slither alongside; sometimes he can almost make out lyrics, instrumentation, musical bridges, pop hooks. As the lake drains, Wang wonders if the music will diminish or grow stronger. He wonders at what point the lake will finally become an inexorable whirlpool.

  Of course he remembers the red sky, color of blood, as vividly as he dreams of it. Everyone who was in L.A. then remembers it, even a man who never looks up. For a moment he’s aware the boy has stopped rowing; in this place the lake is blacker than ever, the air around them so black not even the light of a full moon penetrates it. Not even the melody-snakes glow, assuming they still accompany the boat at all, not even the hills can be seen

  control and its loss asserting themselves as the parameters of her new psyche

  although now they’re close. At this moment Wang realizes they’re at the place of the lake right above the source; directly below, at this moment, the lake rushes back to wherever it came from.

  At the other end of the boat, the boy says, “Night-time.”

  “Uh, yes,” is all Wang can think to answer, “it’s night time, yes.” The boy has stopped rowing. In the dark they drift. Is he lost? wonders Wang in consternation. But this has happened before. Suddenly Wang hears what at first he thinks is the hooting of an owl, so close it’s as though the owl is in the boat with them—but Wang remembers this from before as well, and that it’s not an owl, it’s the boy. The boy hoots again and then somewhere overhead the boy is answered, the night hooting back; the boy responds and then the night responds in a chorus that trails across the sky, and the boy picks up the oars and begins to row, following the sound above. In a while, as though the darkness is a fog, it parts and the spires of the flooded Chateau X suddenly appear not more than thirty or forty feet away, and the boat is surrounded by a swarm of the illuminated snakes as though the lake’s on fire, a faint maelstrom of music and it shocks Wang, the largest swarm of them he’s ever seen.

  Something he’s never thought of before occurs to him now. His mind tries to hold onto it as the boy rows them to the usual docking point around the back of the Chateau, in the grotto formed by what was originally several of the Chateau’s suites, where the walls have been either deliberately knocked out or washed away by the lake. A lantern hangs over the outer archway and another shines in the distance off to the right, at the top of the stone steps that lead to a door at what was once the hotel’s top floor. To the left, at the end of a granite walkway around the edge of the grotto several feet above the water, is another door with a large rusted brass ring for a doorknob; below the walkway near this door is another mass of snakes as though a star has fallen there, lighting up

  just as they do for me, passing so close to me that the two of us almost brush

  the water from beneath. Again a moment of elusive comprehension shoots across Wang’s mind while, as always, the boy docks in the dark, at the bottom of the steps that once served as a hotel stairway. As always, sitting on the bottom step is a large basket with bread, fruit, cheese and an uncorked bottle of wine, all wrapped in a cloth.

  Wang climbs out of the boat and takes the basket and turns to the boy. “Why don’t you come inside,” he says, “you can wait in the entryway. I’m sure it would be all right,” although he isn’t sure at all. The boy doesn’t answer. “You’ll be dry and warm and you can eat and drink there.” But there’s no answer and so Wang places the basket for the young boatman in the boat. “It may be a couple of hours,” he says and then, “uh,” unable to stop himself, “do you know, uh … is it Tribulation II, or III?”

  “No,” the boy answers in the dark, if it’s an answer at all. At the top of the steps a door opens and light comes through and the boy ducks away, pushing the boat off from the makeshift landing; Wang can hear the lapping of the water from the boy’s oars in the dark. Wang turns up the steps. No one is in the open lit door; when he reaches the top of the steps, stepping through the door, no one is in the entryway. Off to the left of the entryway is another single door. He goes into the dressing room behind it and takes off his clothes. There’s a sink and mirror, and on the counter next to the sink a red studded collar. The dressing room serves as a transitional passage to the next chamber, and after Wang places the collar around his neck—always with some difficulty given his one useless hand—before he exits through the other door he closes his eyes and, as much as possible, pushes everything from his mind. He makes a point of never looking in the mirror, particularly after he’s put on the collar. He realizes he’s late tonight and can’t take too much time to clear his thoughts; before

  each other as though we might be sisters, I find myself thinking at this minute,

  going through the other door he hastily takes from the pocket of his coat, hanging on a hook, the disk of the evening’s broadcast along with five one-hundred dollar bills. He doesn’t notice that the toy monkey falls from the coat pocket to the small throw-rug at his feet.

  Now on the other side of this door he’s in the Mistress’ lair. Candles burn. There’s an end table by the wall where he knows to leave the disk and the money, there’s a step up into the training space where he knows to wait, kneeling attentive and naked except for the red collar, before the large hearth of the Lair where a fire burns. Several minutes pass before he hears the steps of her high heels, “zen-toy,” he finally hears her, “you’re late.”

  “i’m sorry, Mistress.”

  She circles where he kneels and strikes him once with the riding crop. Then she takes the chain leash in her hand and attaches one end to his collar locking it and the other to the chain belt that hangs around her wais
t just above her garters and stockings. She has a pair of fur-lined handcuffs, and after she’s pulled him to his feet and cuffed his hands, she turns and strides across the Lair pulling her behind him; for an hour or so he carries out her commands at the end of the leash. After a while she reclines on a leather divan before the hearth and has him massage the muscles of her calves and lower back, striking him with the riding crop when his fingers become impertinent or she feels he’s enjoying it too much. At some point she blindfolds him. When an hour has passed she uncuffs him and has him lie face down on the floor where—as always in these sessions—he believes he can hear singing in the walls of the Chateau an ancient city of women, actresses and singers and models and publicists and playmates and escorts and personal secretaries and drug connections and investment bankers and systems analysts and marketing vice-presidents and studio heads-of-productions and strippers from

  as though we might be lovers, as though we might be wives to each other,

  the Cathode Flower nightclub down the boulevard who stayed within these walls back when this was a famous hotel and left behind whispers and arguments and moans of rendezvous and seduction and merger. The Mistress repositions Wang’s hands behind him and cuffs him again and beats him with the riding crop in time to the sound of the lake lapping against the walls of the Chateau outside her window. Whose zen-toy are you? she asks between blows, and he answers, my Mistress’. What is the one and only reason you exist? she says and he says, To please and amuse my Mistress. After a while she pulls him to his knees by the fur-lined cuffs around his wrists and has him kneel before her on the divan. She pours over her thighs a sepia-colored liqueur and pulls him to her by his black Chinese hair; still blindfolded he licks the liquor from her thighs and when she feels he takes too much pleasure in this she beats him with the riding crop some more. When he’s drunk one thigh dry she moves his mouth to the other. Tasting her thighs and the liqueur, he’s transported. Drugged by the liquor and her thighs he falls into a trance, lost, floating above a black lake like a red cloud, a sepia rain on his tongue, and although he murmurs my Mistress, my Mistress in the groan of his climax, it’s the name of Kristin, the last woman before Lulu with whom—many years ago—he shared any sort of sensual moment, that fills his mind.

  Spent, he sleeps naked on her floor. She covers him with a blanket but doesn’t remove the collar or cuffs.

  as though mistress and slave, as though mother and daughter, and then

  Through the white groan of his climax, he’s tumbled into a memory as potent as a vision, more than a dream. In it he can feel the movement of a train he’s on, he can smell the grass from the passing Midwest farms outside his window as he smelled it once before, he can touch the flyer he holds in his hand just as he held it then. He’s back in his past; he looks around him, momentarily confounded as to how he’s returned here. It’s years ago again, on the train that took him from the New York of chaos, where God lay in ashes, to L.A., the last city of the modern imagination, where even God and chaos could be reimagined.

  In this vision on this train, it’s midnight, the final days of summer. In Wang’s mind his K hovers before him—labial jewel, riverine rapture—waiting for him in the dark distant west, in the unknown future, except back here now on this train where past and present coincide, he knows the future. He already knows he’ll get to L.A. and not find her, he already knows he’ll write all those letters she’ll coldly ignore. The train car rattles. He likes the horizontalism of the train, the way it proceeds between ground and sky belonging to neither, although in his vision he isn’t sure whether this is something he actually felt before, years ago when this first happened, or something he’s only aware of now. He looks at the flyer and remembers the strange wonder he felt the first time he looked at it on this same train in this same moment: HAVE YOU SEEN ME? it reads like thousands of them then; the face on the flyer is his. His name isn’t on it because no one knew his name: “I’m an Asian-American man last seen …” although actually he’s not American. He wonders who had the flyer for him made—someone who doesn’t know his name but remembered him, someone who isn’t also one of the missing, as are most of those with whom he had a passing acquaintance.

  There was another woman.

  all the commotion of visions stops as still as time has stopped here in this place

  In this memory-vision, as he considers the flyer he holds, awash in a guilt he’s held at bay for many years now, he thinks about her don’t think about her though he had met her only three times don’t think about her she was no more than eighteen years old maybe nineteen, tiny, spritelike with long straight gold hair that hung almost to her waist. He never knew her name. Somewhere behind him he’s sure there’s a flyer for her as well, and tries to convince himself she’s somewhere sitting staring at her flyer in the same strange, almost amused fascination with which, on this train, he stares at his. But he doesn’t really believe it.

  In China they would have found me by now. Even riding the train, some part of his brain can still hear the lake beyond the terrace of the Chateau X, just as he feels—from the Lair’s hearth near where he sleeps—the heat of the fire that lights up the train car bright red. And then he hears it, the song he first heard that morning in the Square almost three decades before and only once since, hears it and is astonished she’s singing it, his Mistress. It’s the Mistress’ voice and he wonders how she knows this song. He’s trying to make out the words but recognizes the melody immediately, and as he listens a rivulet of red runs down the aisle of the train that he knows is menstrual blood, and forms a pattern.

  In another chamber of her lair in the Chateau X that Wang has never seen, as he sleeps naked before the fire by the divan beneath the blanket with which she covered him, the dominatrix-oracle now studies the pattern on a parchment on the floor before her. As she tosses the soaked tampon into a nearby toilet and waits for the pattern to dry, she gazes for a moment at the pulsating full moon that the bathroom window so perfectly frames, then returns to the pattern and for a brief moment considers the thing that’s crossed her mind that she doesn’t want to consider, which is the recent ebb of her monthly flow: Your childbearing years are numbered rolls across her mind. Since

  and in the silvery bubble of the birth passage I feel myself caught up in the

  she’s had no thought of having another child, the pain of it might make no sense except that it has to do not with any child to come but the one to whom she said goodbye so long ago. The irrevocability of her body’s recent monthly messages is more profound than she wants to interpret. In order not to think about it, she puts the disk that zen-toy brought her on the chamber’s sound system. She already knows what she’ll hear. Spacemonkey sign of the time, she murmurs to herself and turns back to the pattern of drying blood on the parchment, and lowers the lights and waits until the glow of the melody-snake’s head rises from the black shadows of the floor.

  On the train he sees it too. As her monthly blood forms its pattern in the aisle of the train and begins to dry, there beneath the car’s dank light with midnight outside, the song he’s been listening to in his Mistress’ voice fades, desperate as he is to make it stay, and from the other end of the car he sees slither the luminous melody-snake along the lines of its lyric humans are running, lavender room, hovering liquid, move over moon into the menstrual red lattice; its tongue flickers. At this point in the climax’s vision, Wang wants to flee. At this point he would forsake both love and heroism. The snake is drawn further into the pattern and becomes stuck in the blood, melody coiling and uncoiling hovering liquid move over moon moveovermoon moveovermoonmoveovermoonmoveovermoon struggling until it dies in awful exhaustion, tongue protruding limply from the slit of its mouth, as spent as Wang who shivers with sweat.

  In his sleep he feels her tender hand on his brow. He feels a cool cloth across his face. A moment later he feels one of his wrists come free of the fur-lined handcuffs and his neck come free of the red-studded collar, and the blanket pulled
up around him. He feels her take his other hand that’s still cuffed; in his sleep he’s vaguely aware of her running her finger over the rounded piece of

  memory-stream of my own life and begin to drift in it, first returned to the

  plexiglas that, almost thirty years ago now, a surgeon in the Chinese underground inserted to try and save the hand, threading the blood vessels through it even as he was unable to preserve tendon and muscle. Now in his sleep he feels the Mistress gently run her own fingers up and down the forearm that is distinctly thinner in comparison to the forearm of the other, good hand.

  He opens his eyes.

  She kneels beside him. The train is gone. He looks around, remembers he’s lying on the floor of the Chateau X; she’s blown out some of the candles so the Lair is darker than before. She kneels beside him no longer in garters or stockings but a black silk robe with a pattern of jade-tinted vines that wrap themselves around her. She helps lift him from the floor to the divan; naked he pulls the blanket closer to him, shuddering. She raises a cup of water to his mouth, then a glass of hot brandy. “Are you OK?” she says.

  He nods. For a moment the two of them say nothing. She watches him but he can’t quite look at her, feeling exposed and vulnerable as he always does after these sessions, until finally he says, “This time was especially….”

  “I know,” she says. “You saw it, then?”

  “Yes.” He sits up, a bit revived, and she repeats the administration of water and brandy. Over on a low coffee table is the parchment she’s brought in from the other chamber, now dry, a dark brown-red map with the death streak of the melody-snake, the echo of it just barely audible; she brings it to him. They study the menstrual I-Ching together. “Do you know the song?” he asks.

  “New York punk-blues, apocalyptic subgenre,” she says, “late 1970s. ’79, ’78.”