Bedlam and Other Stories

by John Domini

  If I was cruel about keeping what I knew from Miplip, it was not so much because of him and me as because of our audience. What happened to Miplip during ecstasy was, from the point of view of our spectators, hilarious.

  It soon became obvious that our public intercourse was having an opposite effect from the one intended. When, at the close of each performance, Miplip and I broke apart and attacked our charges, pronging and clawing and whipping, they seemed to welcome us. They laughed—or grinned and shook, at least. They toyed with us, feinting and parrying my thrusts, trying to grab hold of my overseer’s whip. They picked up flakes of stone or handfuls of excrement and heaved them at us. Worst of all, they clasped each other and rolled around in vicious imitation of our intimacy. Miplip recognized what they were doing, but unlike me he did not understand.

  Yet my overseer did not, as I was certain he would, put an end to our shows. His reaction, in fact, was unlike anything I had seen in Miplip before.

  Concerning other matters besides our assignations, he became meaner and more superior than ever before. He strutted and floated around our domain in every kind of insulting disguise, railing at me, bragging of trips to earth and to Dis, drumming in his greater knowledge, greater status, greater gifts. At no time did he let slip an opportunity to tear at the skin of my feelings and expose—there!—one of my nerves. Perhaps my memory is not entirely accurate, for his infinite unkindnesses do tend to become confused, but I know that it was during this period that once in a while I looked upon our love-making as a form of revenge: well, it serves him right. More often, however, I got my revenge simply by keeping silent. Whenever I could summon up the strength, I fielded his insults without a word. I would not give him the satisfaction; I made no response. And Miplip, Miplip. This forebearance, when I could hold it, drove you to your wildest excesses. It was degrading. Even I was surprised, my overseer lost control of himself so utterly: falling into apoplectic riots of crack-voiced provocation, involuntarily changing shape, becoming several different creatures at once with several different parts of his body, and descending even to physical abuse. Miplip, what did you need, to put yourself through such abasement?

  Yet concerning our performances his behavior was just the opposite. Miplip became uncertain, tentative. He made four or five suggestions, more or less along the lines of dropping the show, or nine or ten suggestions, or nineteen or twenty-nine or maybe ninety, but all of them were no more than the merest suggestion. “Only mentioning it,” he was, in a voice devoid of belligerence, sounding halfhearted, half himself, half afraid. He sounded a bit like those demons with whom we had discussed the human passerby. I find I cannot fully reconstruct any of these conversations in which Miplip spoke of putting an end to the performances, and this lapse of memory is the natural result of the way in which he always handled the subject. Miplip talked of it as if he wanted me not to notice.

  So our trysts continued, if somewhat less regularly than before.

  Perhaps my overseer’s problem was essentially one of conscience. He wanted to do a good job, but he could no longer be sure what was torture and what was not. Certainly, our duty had never been so open to interpretation, so questionable, or so strangely involving. It was infuriating to admit not knowing where you stood. Myself…but I have already explained my feelings.

  During one show—during one climax—which Miplip had begun as a ferocious woman with soft fur covering her hands, one of the damned threw a stone at him. At her? At Miplip? What does it matter—the form was no longer human. The stone struck on the wing, hardly hurting Miplip, but shattering his mood once and for all. He knew that the woman with furry hands was not supposed to have his wings. He jerked upright in the air, in his natural ugliness, alert enough to realize what had happened and smart enough, of course he was smart enough, to understand in a moment that this could not have been the first time.

  I cannot describe, because I lack the ability, the look with which Miplip regarded first the audience, convulsed with laughter, and then myself, still straddling him. There was an awareness of betrayal in the look, I can say that much. And a great deal of pain, as well, a pain too large for me to comprehend, because I have never seen anything that large, consigned as I am to a single blankened Division here, above the City of Dis and below Limbo.

  This impossible look was quickly gone. Almost immediately his eyes resumed their customary irony. He may even have winked. What had he thought? Nothing. What had he felt? Nothing, nothing. Then he dropped away from me and began to give his usual vigorous lesson to those who had laughed.

  For a few long moments I watched him, making sure.

  Not that I was frightened of what Miplip might do to get back at me. What more could he possibly do to me? But I wanted to make sure…he was all right. That look he had given me—well, never mind the look, a look can be misjudged, but I knew Miplip better, and I had more tangible cause for worry than a mere look. I mean that my overseer now knew that I had successfully hid something from him and kept it hidden, and so, if one was inclined to put these things on a competitive basis, the day was mine. Miplip now knew that for once I had won.

  Can I be blamed, at all? How had I done wrong?

  He lay into our charges with a will. After a while he called up to me, perhaps not with all his usual vituperative gusto, but with most of it. How loudly could he shout, anyway, out of breath as he was? So I dropped down beside him; everywhere devils work in twos. What happened just now was only an incident, as much his fault as mine, and Miplip was not one to be bothered by incidents.

  While I was distracted—while my back was turned—he disappeared. I found his whip, but he was gone.

  With thoroughgoing care, I searched the corridors and enclaves of my Division. I examined the eyes and body of every demon that came through, and those of the Centaurs and hounds as well. I went so far as to embrace them, and whisper in their ears suggestive phrases Miplip would understand. This only served to increase my isolation. I bent my fork on freestanding rocks, hugged riven trees, kissed small dank pools, and caressed shafts of fire. Stumbling and uncaring, I made a blind descent to the monstrous City of Dis and, far exceeding my authority, interrogated the fallen angels guarding its gates. They punished my insubordination. Seeing the bored expressions on the harpies who administered the punishment, and noticing its ritual nature, I understood I was not the first to be disappointed and reprimanded.

  I thought: did the others who were punished continue to search? The punishment was hardly slight. Yet the devils who sometimes traveled through my Division were always alone, and though I had never before thought of them as seeking after something, that could well be their situation. Once a demon is chastised—perhaps not the first time, but after a few more times—the aches and festerings must eventually become less painful than the thought of abandoning the quest. Yet the idea of so many devils on so many private crusades raised the most horrifying prospect of all in my mind’s eye, that of a vast place devoid of pleasure, in which there are no overseers and subordinates, no giants and mites, no punishers and punished, but only an infinite calendar of torture and impenetrable silence, in which the ones who can fly are no more free than those who can only walk, and the pain inflicted on whoever happened to pass below was thriftily recycled for a second use higher up, and a two-hundred-million-and-second use, always the same pain, never growing smaller but only narrower and more extensive, until Hell had been dirtied from end to oblivion by that same original drop of blood, or tear, or both, which had been squeezed out at the first instant of the creation of pain. In an effort to break this nightmare cycle, I tried giving up my search for Miplip. Why torture myself pursuing him who had tortured me?

  I again took up my attempt to recapture the sound of a human voice. Having so much room to myself, so much time to myself, I was able to vary volume and experiment with echo effects as I pleased. Visiting devils heard me, and no doubt guessed what I was up to, but I felt incontrovertibly separated from them already. I did not care
what they heard or surmised. I only wished, from time to time, seeing one pause while flying overhead, seeing him look down at me inquisitively, I only wished that he would lend me a hand. But no one ever mingled his voice with mine. I went on alone. My duties I gave less attention, but after all, considering the doubts I had been suffering, a certain inattention to my duties was the least that could have been expected.

  Perhaps it was this laxness, then, or perhaps it was simply the strangeness of a devil trying to imitate human speech, but eventually I began to draw large and quietly attentive audiences from whatever group of damned souls happened to be in the area. Try as I might to chase them off, they always returned to listen some more. My fork caused only the briefest withdrawal, and my renderings of their earth’s beauties were now, without Miplip’s help, no more than vague glosses out of a confused jumble of memories.

  Sometimes, when approximating a human voice seemed like too great a task, I instead tried to recreate the special sound that my runaway overseer’s voice had once had, that time he made his odd speech about silliness.

  And then…though I fought against it with every weapon I had…once more I felt my insensible spirit rising, rising, though I shrieked out loud against it, tried to lose myself in orgies of torture, ripped apart those unfortunate charges of mine that got in my way, even dragged myself down to Dis and had myself punished again. It was all to no avail. I had got it into my mind, never to be driven out, that I could find Miplip. I reiterated as many of his injuries as I could recall, marking them off on the impartial face of a boulder, but though the stone was so covered with markings it crumbled to bits, it made no difference. I knew he had to be here, he had to be among my charges, and I would find him.

  With Heaven and Hell the way they are, he could not be anywhere else. My overseer is more clever than I, but not so clever as the devils around Dis, and they have less wits than the ones farther below.

  Therefore he had become one of the damned. The ploy was characteristically wise: there are more of them than anything else in Hell. How could I know, while working my way through a crush of preterites, if one of the bodies ahead of me quietly metamorphoses into a rivulet of vomit running between my feet, and then into another body behind me? Moreover, Miplip’s taking a place among our charges was characteristically proud, as well, for in human form my old overseer would find himself vulnerable to the fearsome geography—he would suffer the heat, the stink, the pestilential lichens—and therefore remaining untraceable would require a tremendous effort of will. One cry of pain at the wrong time and I would have him. I knew that the enormous discipline involved in keeping silent would appeal to my own, my old, lofty Miplip.

  So I began to inspect my charges, one by one. Never had I been so close to them. I touched their faces, gazed deep into their reflecting eyes, stroked them frankly, boldly spoke to them. They will be here forever, but they have not been here forever: that thought sustained me. I resolved that, on the untold day when I exhausted their number, I would start again.

  In the course of my searching, I discovered the man who had once, so long ago, passed through this inferno unharmed.

  He was among the Wrathful. Who can understand? Perhaps he had neglected to control his powers, and his poetry—for even in my present solitude I had heard the news that he was a poet—had not done the job it was given; instead of describing a pilgrim’s journey, in the middle of life’s road, down through the circles of torment in this world, back again through Purgatory, attaining at last to beatific Grace, his poetry perhaps had merely trumpeted himself and his petty angers. Having set out to demonstrate eternal values, he instead revealed himself. Or perhaps the Powers had planned it this way from the first, that would be like Them. No man may just visit; he must return to stay. Or maybe the poet with the formidable nose was actually Miplip, Miplip, still a demon, still torturing others with visions of alternatives, of there existing something else, something more. Miplip—more? More than we have? More than we see? But Miplip was gone, after all. It was unreasonable, very strange, that I should worry so much about him when he was gone.

  Whoever he was, this man conversed with me.

  We exchanged ideas by means of pantomime. Apparently he was very excited about being given the chance to try. He had jostled his way to the front of the line I was examining, and as his hands and arms flew about he grinned, whenever his mouth was not being called upon to aid expression. Each statement was made with a huge energy, a silent, ambidextrous outburst of human feeling that strove always for the most accurate effects, the thing closest to true speech. He succeeded in getting across a great deal, more than I would have thought possible. He said they had gotten accustomed to pain, just as Miplip had suspected. The reminders of earth were very depressing, he said, as we had hoped they would be, but after a while this sorrow, too, had faded, and the damned had come to look forward to our shows, as refreshing variations in the routine.

  He then said that their fondest wish at present was to begin, somehow, communicating with us, because they had developed a great fondness, a great sympathy, for their keepers. A devil’s existence is predicated on torture, he said. Since it is impossible to torture anyone forever, we were now condemned to what was originally intended for them: a life without hope.

  After that his thoughts moved beyond the range of mime. But I lingered there before him, enjoying his mute philosophy. Others in the area watched us, or else began again their aimless, milling search for something besides the routine. I had no more regard for them than I had for how time was passing, as I watched this man struggling to make his points. Nor did I care how that damned deluder Miplip might be using the time—always his greatest ally—to slip further away. The poet seemed to be saying that the problem of hope (hands clasped over heart, raised to forehead, then opened upwards and raised to roof) and the problem of speech (mouth opening and closing while left hand, palm up, moves from lower lip out towards listener and back) were one and the same, and that neither hope nor speech had very much to do, in the final analysis, with pain (face in a grimace, left hand in a fist and jabbing chest repeatedly, in the vicinity of the heart).

  This last sight seemed to penetrate me, actually enter and pass through, like that man or any other who had passed through Hell and been reborn, leaving in the wake of its emotion a vacuum that could no longer be filled by mere looking. I had to touch. Moved, startled beyond even the constant abjurations my conscience had made against physical contact since the disappearance of Miplip, I reached out and took hold of his fist as it once more struck his chest. With his free hand he covered mine. All at once there was speech, real speech, in a voice that had been consumed twice over, once by agony and once by the implacable need of forgiveness:

  “Don’t let go, please, please, don’t let go,” Miplip said. “Oh lover, please.”

  Special Instructions, Special Instructions

  It was an ordinary urban incident at first, the sort of thing you get accustomed to sooner or later, here or in any other city. One morning I was walking from my apartment to the bank, along the one-ways on the Charles River side of Massachusetts Avenue. It was spring then. I’d been up early, 6:15, hearing the radio report the day’s weather with what sounded like a smile in its voice, and that made a fine start. The alarm was set so early because Priss had set it, not the night before but the night before that, so we could get up in time to make love before we had to go to work. She wasn’t ordinary about love. Most people don’t like to have it early in the morning. But according to Priss, it was much better then than late at night, when, again according to her, you were tired, achey, cold, insensible, numb. I had the house to myself this particular morning, though; Priss wasn’t there. And actually that added to the pleasant flavor of events. Because while I never said no to Priss—I didn’t like to say no to Priss—it could be nerve-wracking and hard on the body to erupt out of sleep so abruptly, so incontrovertibly. I spent another hour-and-a-half in bed after the weather forecast. I ate breakfast on
the porch, in the sun. I decided then to walk to the bank rather than drive. So it was on a small street lined with trellises and flower boxes, just this side of the Square, that an old woman standing in the doorway of a wooden triple-decker called to me.

  “Have you seen my children?” she said, or at least that’s the way I heard it. “They’re right here most of the time and now they’re not. No, they’re not. They’re usually playing right here in front of me and I’m so frightened now. I haven’t seen them all day. I’m so frightened, so frightened now.”

  She was an old woman. She wore a decent gray wool dress with thin red lines in squares. Her face and hair and fingers were all finely kept, very clean. The house in whose doorway she stood wasn’t nearly as cheerless and dilapidated as some of these places. The paint was recent, the front step intact. But she had awfully thin arms and legs, where they showed, where the gray dress stopped. I guessed she felt the cold more than most. It was too warm out for wool otherwise. I asked how old her children were.

  “They aren’t my children. Oh. I didn’t mean to give you that impression. I apologize if that’s what you thought.”

  She spoke without smiling, her head planted on her neck and her entire thin body still. One hand was on the door jamb, the other on the inside knob of the open door. Only her eyes moved, constantly scanning the street, meeting mine on every fifth word, or possibly every sixth.

  “They are little children who play here right in front and over on the other side of the street. All day long they play. I’m an old woman and I live alone and I’m so frightened. I’m so frightened all the time.”

  I can’t say just when I began to get my idea. As I mentioned before, you get accustomed to this sort of thing. But you never get so accustomed you lose all sympathy, certainly not. In any event I spoke up. I concentrated on sounding formal, because of the strength in sounding formal. The woman needed a friendly touch but also she needed the boost of real muscle. I tried to catch those wandering eyes.