(1993) Arc d'X

by Steve Erickson

  He said, “There’s been a shake-up, so to speak.” He pulled the doctor down to his knees. “God works for me now.” He thrust the doctor’s face into Sally’s, whose eyes were open and still. “Listen: she breathes.” The doctor listened, terror-stricken. “You can’t be expected to have known,” Etcher assured him. The doctor and Etcher watched Sally for a long time.

  She breathed.

  The rest of the night Etcher kept the doctor there by the scruff of his neck. He pressed him into mixing concoctions and formulae; but the doctor, at a loss as to what was wrong with Sally, couldn’t treat her. Finally, when Etcher lifted Sally from the bed in order to A R C D’X • 146

  change the sheets for what seemed the hundredth time, he turned around to find the door wide open; the doctor had made his escape.

  Not long after, the doctor returned with the police. The cop in charge was a small wiry man with red hair and a mass of bandages where his nose used to be. The sound of his words seemed to leak out of everywhere but his mouth, which now jagged sharply sky-ward; there was no way for Etcher to know he’d seen this cop before, in the lobby of the Church in the middle of the night. The police left the doctor with Sally and took Etcher crosstown, up to the rock.

  At the rock, Etcher was met by the priest who had left his key in the vault door months before. He didn’t say anything but took Etcher by a lift to a top floor of the Church, where Etcher had never been in the nine years he worked as a file clerk. The door of the lift opened on a long hallway, at the end of which were two open doors and, beyond them, a white room. The priest led Etcher to a small office off to the side of the hall, where another priest in a white robe was sitting at his desk waiting for him.

  Etcher had seen this priest before, at one time or another. He’d never spoken to him. The priest in the white robe looked up at Etcher from his desk and motioned for him to take a seat. The priest who brought him disappeared.

  The priest in the office was curt and officious. “You’re Etcher?”

  he said.

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve been working here for a while, haven’t you, Etcher?”

  “Yes.”

  The priest wasn’t looking at Etcher. He was making notes on something that had nothing at all to do with Etcher. “You’re very lucky to be able to work for the Church,” the priest said. Etcher, thinking this over, didn’t say anything. The priest looked up. “Do you want to keep your position as an employee of the Church?”

  “I’m not really sure,” Etcher said. “Actually, I’ve been giving this matter some thought.”

  This wasn’t the response the priest had expected. “You’re not sure?”

  “Well …”

  “There are reports, Etcher, that you’ve been acting rather STEVE E R I C K S O N • 147

  strange lately. There are complaints about your recent work habits and behavior.”

  “Complaints?”

  The priest stopped taking notes and put down his pen. “Do you find this amusing?”

  “I don’t think so. I mean, I haven’t thought about whether it’s amusing. In the larger scheme of things it might appear amusing.

  At some later point, I mean.”

  The priest studied him.

  “At some later point, it might—”

  “Be quiet.” The priest had thought this was going to be a routine disciplinary session. He resented having to give it extraordinary attention or energy. “I’m putting you on suspension,” he said. “I hadn’t intended to do this. I assumed we would straighten this out in short order. I hadn’t anticipated your attitude, your impertinence. In several weeks we’ll reassess the situation. Maybe then, after several weeks without pay, you’ll appreciate your position.

  Maybe you’ll take the matter more seriously.”

  “The problem is, I need the pay.”

  “Yes,” the priest answered coolly, “I understand that. It would have been constructive if you had understood that before we had this discussion. Perhaps next time you’ll be less cavalier. More prudent.”

  “You don’t seem to understand,” Etcher explained, “I can’t take a leave at this time. Not until I figure out what I’m going to do. I have a friend who’s very sick.”

  “You don’t seem to understand,” the priest retorted, incredulous. “I didn’t say this was a leave, I said it was suspension. It isn’t something that you have any say about whatsoever.”

  “Oh no. That’s not true. I have complete say.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “It’s not your fault. You couldn’t have known. But things have changed.”

  “Changed?”

  “I have the books.”

  The priest blinked. “The books?”

  “The old red ones. From the vault downstairs. The Unexpurgated Volumes of Unconscious History, such as they are.” Etcher said, “I have all of them.”

  A R C D’X • 148

  The priest went as white as his robe. He went whiter than the people of the Ice, he went whiter than Sally Hemings’ disease. His mouth finally curled into a desperate smile. “It’s preposterous.”

  “Well, it’s understandable you would think so,” Etcher admitted.

  “You’ve taken your life in your hands,” the priest croaked, “if you’ve so much as touched a single one of those books.”

  Etcher laughed. “Well, now that you put it that way, that’s it exactly. I’ve taken my life in my hands.” He laughed for several minutes. When he stopped laughing he added, “There’s been a shake-up.”

  The priest jumped from his chair and ran from the room.

  Etcher sat waiting nearly forty-five minutes. He became tired of sitting and waiting; he was worried about Sally. He had finally given up waiting and was walking out of the office toward the lift when the priest returned. He appeared to Etcher to be in something of a state. “Come with me,” he gasped.

  They walked down to the other end of the hall, through the open doors of the white room. Several other priests were sitting behind a crescent table, in front of which was an empty chair. The head of this group, sitting in the middle between the others, said, “Sit down, Etcher.”

  Etcher wasn’t sure he’d ever seen this particular priest. “I’ve been sitting for an hour,” he answered irritably. “I have a sick friend.”

  “Sit down,” the head priest said again, motioning to the empty chair. Etcher sat. After a moment the priest leaned forward, his hands folded on the table in front of him; the other priests leaned with him. “The books are gone,” he brought himself to say, after a moment.

  “That’s what I explained to the other one,” Etcher answered.

  “Did you take them?” the priest said. Something was funny in his voice.

  “We’ve gone over this,” Etcher told them, shifting in his chair to indicate the priest he had spoken to in the other office, who was now standing behind him in the doorway. “Didn’t we go over this?” he said. The priest in the doorway wrung his hands in response. “We went over this,” Etcher said to the head priest with impatience.

  STEVE E R I C K S O N • 149

  “Do you know what you’ve done?” the head priest said.

  “Yes. I’ve taken the books.”

  “Where are they?”

  “I have them.”

  “The police are on their way to your unit at this very moment, to find the books.”

  “Well, I certainly wouldn’t keep them there, would I?” Etcher said.

  “We’ll check the unit where you used to live with your wife,”

  the priest said. “We’ll check the Hurley woman’s residence as well.”

  “What’s the matter with you?” Etcher snapped. “The books aren’t in any of those places—you can turn them upside down for all I care. I would have expected,” Etcher said to the head priest,

  “that at least you had figured it out. I would have expected that at least you knew there’s been a change.”

  “You don’t know what thos
e books are.”

  “Of course I don’t know what they are. Who’s more dangerous, a man who knows he’s carrying a bomb or a man who doesn’t?

  The man who knows, and has to get rid of the bomb as soon as possible, because he realizes that any moment it’s going to go off?

  Or the man who doesn’t know and is walking around without a concern in the world, while the bomb ticks away in his suitcase?

  The chaos of the situation lies in his ignorance, because he doesn’t know enough about the situation to get the hell out before it’s too late, to give up his control of the situation before it’s too late.

  Look.” He took his glasses off and put them on the crescent table.

  He raised his fists above his head and brought them down, smashing the glasses.

  The priests sitting around the outer rim of the crescent table cried out, covering their faces with their arms. Their white robes sparkled with slivers of glass and blood. Etcher raised his hands to his face; in the blur of his vision he could make out only the smear of red on his fingers. He lifted his eyes to the white of the room, to the vibrating hum of the sea: it was the light he’d been running for, here in front of him. He could barely make out the priests; the white blur of them wasn’t nearly as impressive as the smear of red.

  Reaching across the table he wiped his hands on the head priest’s robes.

  A R C D’X • 150

  In the heat of their shock, which he felt on his brow, he heard the gasp of history. He heard history open its mouth and silently gape, no sound coming from it, only the silence that consumed everything around it. If there had been a sound it could have been a cry, it might have been a laugh, most likely it would have been the utterance in which a cry is indistinguishable from a laugh. In a city that lay outside of history, in a church that presumed itself unthreatened by the collision of time and memory that named its own truth, it was the joke of their arrogance that they presumed history might be locked away in a room without a single guard.

  They presumed their power was such that no one would ever turn a key and walk in and carry history out under his arm. What they now wouldn’t have given to have placed a guard by the door. What they now wouldn’t have given to have put on an extra padlock.

  What they now wouldn’t have given for a bell that rang in alarm, or a whistle that blew; and what they wouldn’t have given to have entertained a single thought that once told them, Perhaps our hold on history is not so secure or inviolable. Perhaps our confidence in God isn’t so justified. None of them said anything at this particular moment. Maybe they tried to say something and Etcher simply couldn’t, in the blur of his new freedom, see the contortions of their shock or insult.

  “I have to go,” he explained, turning to leave. It was almost an afterthought when, pausing in the doorway, he said, “I’ll be back when Sally’s better. When I think it’s the right time, I’ll return the books.” He walked down the hall, took the lift to the lobby, and left the Church and the rock behind him.

  He found her alone when he got home. The doctor was gone. As far as he could tell, no police had searched the premises. She was alone in her bed, just barely revived by her terror. The curtain of the window was cracked, the sun had shone in her eyes all afternoon; she hadn’t the strength to move where she lay, let alone get up and close the curtains. Now Sally, sensing a presence, barely raised her head from the pillow to see who else was in the room.

  Etcher knelt at her side. Her yellow eyes, circled in black, welled with tears. He had to lean very close to hear her, putting his ear to her lips, when she whispered her first words in days. She said,

  “I’m afraid.”

  “Don’t be afraid,” he answered.

  STEVE E R I C K S O N • 151

  She said something else. He leaned so close he was afraid she’d smother beneath him.

  “What?” he said.

  He could hardly hear her when she asked, “Am I going to die?”

  “No,” he told her.

  “Do you promise?”

  “Yes.”

  “Am I going to get better?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you promise?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t think so,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t think I’m going to get better.”

  “I promise.”

  “Are you sure?” she cried, the smallest of cries.

  “Yes.”

  He went to the window. Outside he could see the blur of Cecilia and Polly playing in the circle. Polly looked up just as Etcher was peering out the window. She ran to the door; Etcher opened it.

  The little girl stood in the doorway awhile and looked at the woman on the bed who was her mother. She was afraid to approach, and then Sally turned slightly, slightly raised her hand to her little girl, slightly called her little girl’s name. Polly ran to her side. Tears ran down Sally’s face. She thought she remembered something somewhere far in the past when she was a little girl herself, a dying mother in a house far away, beckoning her children to her. But she didn’t see how she could have a memory of anything like that, other than in a dream.

  When Polly had gone with Cecilia, Etcher drew the curtain closed. He went to the door and bolted it. He piled all the furniture in front of it—the dresser and table, the chairs, Polly’s toy chest.

  The night came. Etcher took off his clothes and got in bed next to Sally and put his arms around her.

  Come on then, he said to the door in the dark. Come on, he said in the dark, where he was freest of all, his phony vision left behind him in shards of glass, caught in the robes of phony priests. He no longer needed to see her to know who she was, the woman in his arms. He no longer needed to see her to know she was beautiful A R C D’X • 152

  or afraid. Come on, he said to whoever would come through this door, to priests and police, to her child or the father of her child.

  He said it to the city and to history, to memory and the future. He said it to God, he said it to Death. Come on, and try to take her.

  This continued the next night, and the next and the next. It continued through the fever, through the horrible chills and the flashing heat. It continued through the wet sheets that Etcher washed and hung to the obelisk in the center of the circle, along with Polly’s chartreuse and purple dogs. It continued through the sirens, morning and twilight. It continued for five nights, until finally someone knocked on the door. For some time the knocking continued and Etcher didn’t answer. He didn’t rise from the bed until, from the depths of her delirium, Sally cried out, “He’s here.”

  “Sally?” the voice outside the door said. It was Gann. Etcher rose from the bed. He looked outside into the dark through the curtains of the window. “Sally?” Gann said again.

  “She’s sick,” Etcher finally said in the window.

  After a moment Etcher heard Gann say, “What’s wrong with her?” Etcher couldn’t see anything in the dark. But Gann was closer, next to the window.

  “She’s been sick for a week.”

  “Where’s Polly?”

  “At the neighbor’s.”

  “What’s wrong with Sally?”

  “I told you. She’s been sick. She has a fever.”

  “Will she be all right?”

  “Go take care of your daughter,” Etcher said. He dropped the curtains into place and backed away from the window. He stood for a while listening to Gann’s footsteps walking away.

  On the sixth night, Etcher woke with a start.

  He heard the flapping of the wings before he heard her scream.

  He heard it inside her, trying to smash its way out, that wild ferocity of even the frailest creature when it’s trapped; and she screamed again. He held her. Her body didn’t merely convulse, it thrashed in upheaval, and when he put his face right up next to hers, right close to hers, he could see in the dark and in his blindness the horror in her eyes, the startled realization of something about to be delivered. And he hel
d her thighs and pulled her to him even as she fought him off with a new maniacal power; and in STEVE E R I C K S O N • 153

  the rush of the black spill of her womb he almost believed, though he couldn’t be sure, since the room was so black and the vision of his eyes was so black and the spill of her was so black, that there flew from out of her a white baby gull. He could hear it rise in the room. He could hear it flying around him shaking the afterbirth from its wings, insistent on its freedom until the room filled with the rip of the curtain and the crash of the window, and the funnel of the night air poured through. And Etcher leapt from the bed and began, bit by bit, pulling the furniture away from the door, the dresser, the table and chairs, Polly’s toy chest, until the way was clear and he flung the door open. He stepped out into the circle and dropped to his knees.

  He began searching the ground with his hands. He knew that if he should find there in the glass of the broken window a dead bloody bird, then he had lost Sally. He would have lost Sally and he would have lost the light and he would have lost everything.

  Only if the bird had made it, only if the bird had broken the bonds of its own wounds and taken flight by a sheer will for freedom, would Sally make it as well; and so he searched on his hands and knees for the rest of the night. On and on through the hours, inch by inch and foot by foot, on his hands and knees he searched the entire white circle.

  He never found the bird.

  He walked back into the unit at dawn. Stepping through the doorway rubble of his barricade, in the light of the broken window and the afterbirth of her fever, in the trail of her own thwarted death, he heard her say, “I love you, Etcher.” And then she went to sleep.

  She was sitting up in bed the next day. Three days later she rose from the bed for the first time since she’d fallen ill.

  Gann returned with Polly. Etcher returned to Church Central.

  It was only for a brief moment that it struck Etcher as odd, to be history’s file clerk. He barely took notice of the priests. Over the days and then the weeks, they circled him with the solicitous re-A R C D’X • 154

  spect that’s always accorded a wild sick animal right up to the opportune moment when it can be destroyed. Only after some time had passed did Etcher notice they brought him no forms or papers to file. Quickly his job turned into being some sort of custodian, a watchman on the lookout for anyone who trespassed into his light; for days and then weeks he sat among the archives doing nothing but staring out to the Central lobby. He was thinking about the limitations of his view when his presence was requested upstairs.