Eternity and Other Stories

by Lucius Shepard

  Once Causey showed me a yellowed photograph he had unearthed from the prison archives. It had been shot in the yard on a sunny day in May of 1917—the date was inscribed on the back of the photo in a crabbed script—and it depicted a group of a woman and five men, four convicts, one of them black, and the last, an elderly man with white, windblown hair and a craggy, seamed face, clad in a dark suit and tie. Causey identified the elderly man as McCandless Quires, the warden. “And these here,” he said, indicating the other four, “that’s the board.” He tapped each in turn. “Ashford, Czerny, LeGary, Holmes.”

  Judging by their faces, the men were all in their twenties. There was a rough similarity of feature between them and the old men who met each day in the yard, but the idea that they were one and the same seemed absurd.

  “That’s so, they’d all have to be more than a hundred,” I said. “They’re old, but not that old.”

  “Look at the shape of their heads,” Causey said. “Their expressions. They all got that spacey smile. Look at Czerny’s hands. See how big they are? It’s them, all right.”

  “You need to take a breath, man. This isn’t the fucking Magic Kingdom, this is prison we’re talking about.”

  “This is Diamond Bar,” he said sullenly. “And we don’t know what the hell that is.”

  I studied the photograph more closely, concentrating on the woman. She was lovely, delicate of feature, with flowing blonde hair. Noticing my attentiveness, Causey said, “I believe that there’s a plume. Quires didn’t have no daughter, no wife, and she got the look of plume.”

  “What look is that?”

  “Too perfect. Like she ain’t a man or a woman, but something else entirely.”

  The photograph aside, what Causey told me lent a plausible historical context to the implausible reality of Diamond Bar, but the key ingredient of the spell that had worked an enchantment upon the prison was missing, and when at last I went to visit Czerny, I had retrenched somewhat and was content to lean upon my assumption that we knew nothing of our circumstance and that everything we thought we knew might well have been put forward to distract us from the truth. Climbing the stairs, passing meter after meter of stone, ash-black and broken like the walls of a mineshaft, I felt on edge. Up on the third tier, the ceiling lights shed a glow that had the quality of strong moonlight; the bars and railings were flaked with rust. Four prisoners were lounging against the railing outside Czerny’s cell—the Latino who had spoken for him was not among them—and one, a long-limbed black man with processed hair, his sideburns and thin mustache giving his lean face a piratical look, separated from the rest and came toward me, frowning.

  “You supposed to come a week ago and you just coming now?” he said. “That ain’t how it goes, Penhaligon.”

  “He told me to come whenever I wanted.”

  “I don’t care what he said. It’s disrespectful.”

  “That kind of old school, isn’t it?”

  He looked perplexed.

  “It’s the kind of attitude you’d expect to find at Vacaville and San Q,” I said. “Not at a forward-thinking joint like Diamond Bar.”

  The black man was about to speak, but turned back to the cell as Czerny shuffled onto the tier. I had no inclination to mock the old man. Surrounded by young men attentive as tigers, he seemed the source of their strength and not their ward. Though I did not truly credit this notion, when he beckoned, the slightest of gestures, I went to his side without hesitation. His eyes grazed mine, then wandered toward the dim vault beyond the railing. After a second, he shuffled back into the cell, indicating by another almost imperceptible gesture that I should follow.

  A television set mounted on the wall was tuned to a dead channel, its speakers hissing, its screen filled with a patternless sleet of black, silver, and green. Czerny sat on his bunk, its sheets cream-colored and shiny like silk, and—since he did not invite me to sit—I took a position at the rear of the cell, resting a hand upon the wall. The surface of the wall was unusually smooth, and upon examining it I realized it was not granite but black marble worked with white veins that altogether formed a design of surpassing complexity.

  During my first conversation with Causey, he had suggested I purchase some pictures from the commissary to decorate my cell “until your wall comes in.” Though struck by this phrase, at the time my attention had been dominated by other concerns; but I had since discovered that once a cell was occupied; discolorations manifested on the wall facing the bunk, and these discolorations gradually produced intricate patterns reminiscent of the rock the Chinese call “picture stone,” natural mineral abstractions in which an imaginative viewer could discern all manner of landscapes. The wall in my cell had begun to develop discolorations, their patterns as yet sparse and poorly defined, but Causey’s wall, Berbick’s, and others were fully realized. It was said these idiosyncratic designs were illustrative of the occupant’s inner nature and, when reflected upon, acted to instruct the observer as to his flaws, his potentials, the character of his soul. None of them—at least none I had seen—compared to the elaborate grandeur of the one on Czerny’s wall. Gazing at it, I traveled the labyrinthine streets of a fantastic city lined by buildings with spindly, spiny turrets and octagonal doorways; I explored the pathways of a white forest whose creatures were crowned with antlers that themselves formed other, even more intricate landscapes; I coursed along a black river whose banks were sublime constructions of crystal and ice, peopled by nymphs and angels with wings that dwarfed their snowy bodies like the wings of arctic butterflies. I cannot say how long I stared—quite a while, I believe, because my mouth was dry when I looked away—but from the experience I derived an impression of a convoluted, intensely spiritual intellect that warred with Czerny’s drab, dysfunctional appearance. He was smiling daftly, eyes fixed on his hands, which were fidgeting in his lap, and I wondered if the audience was over, if I should leave. Then he spoke, muttering as he had out in the yard. This time I understood him perfectly, yet I am certain no intelligible word passed his lips.

  “Do you see?” he asked. “Do you understand where you are now?”

  I was so startled at having understood him, I could muster no reply.

  He raised a hand, trailed his fingers across the bars of the gate, the sort of gesture a salesman might make to display the hang of a fabric. Assuming that he wanted me to inspect the bars, I stepped around him and bent to look at one. A bit less than halfway along its length the color and finish of the metal changed from rough and dark to a rich yellow. The join where the two colors met was seamless, and the yellow metal had an unmistakable soft luster and smoothness: gold. It was as if a luxuriant infection were spreading along the bar, along—I realized—all the bars of Czerny’s cell.

  I am not sure why this unsettled me more profoundly than the rest of the bizarre occurrences I’d met with at Diamond Bar. Perhaps it resonated with some gloomy fairy tale that had frightened me as a child or inflamed some even deeper wound to my imagination, for I had a sudden appreciation of Czerny as a wizardly figure, a shabby derelict who had revealed himself of an instant to be a creature of pure principle and power. I backed out of the cell, fetched up against the railing, only peripherally mindful of Czerny’s attendants. The old man continued to smile, his gaze drifting here and there, centering briefly on my face, and in that broken muttering whose message I now comprehended as clearly as I might the orotund tones of a preacher ringing from a pulpit, he said, “You cannot retreat from the heart of the law, Penhaligon. You can let it illuminate you or you can fail it, but you cannot retreat. Bear this in mind.”

  • • •

  That night as I lay in my cell, immersed in the quiet of the cellblock like a live coal at the heart of a diamond, growing ever more anxious at the thought of Czerny in his cell of gold and marble, an old mad king whose madness could kill, for I believed now he was the genius of the place…that night I determined I would escape. Despite the caution implicit in Czerny’s final words, I knew I could ne
ver thrive there. I needed firm ground beneath my feet, not philosophy and magic or the illusion of magic. If I were to live bounded by walls and laws—as do we all—I wanted walls manned and topped with razor wire, written regulations, enemies I could see. Yet the apparent openness of the prison, its lack of visible security, did not fool me. Power did not exist without enforcement. I would have to ferret out the traps, learn their weaknesses, and in order to do that I needed to become part of the prison and pretend to embrace its ways.

  My first step in this direction was to find an occupation, a meaningful activity that would convince whoever was watching that I had turned my mind onto acceptable avenues; since my only skill was at art, I began drawing once again. But making sketches, I realized, would not generate a bona fide of my submersion in the life of Diamond Bar; thus I undertook the creation of a mural, using for a canvas the walls and ceiling of an empty storeroom in one of the sub-basements. I chose as a theme the journey that had led me to the prison, incorporating images of the river crossing, of Frank Ristelli, the gray van, and so forth. The overall effect was more crazy quilt than a series of unified images, although I was pleased with certain elements of the design; but for all the attention it received, it might have rivaled Piero della Francesca. Men stopped by at every hour to watch me paint, and the members of the board, along with their entourages, were frequent visitors. Czerny took particular interest in my depiction of Ristelli; he would stand in front of the image for periods up to half an hour, addressing it with his customary vacant nods. When I asked one of his attendants the reason for his interest, I was told that Ristelli was revered for a great personal sacrifice made on behalf of us all and—reflecting on the origins of our common home—he had been on the verge of being made a member of the board, but had forsworn the security and comfort of the prison and returned to the world in order to seek out men suitable for Diamond Bar.

  Placing Ristelli’s zoned piety in context with the psychological climate of the prison, it was not difficult to understand why they perceived him to be their John the Baptist; but in the greater context of the rational, the idea was ludicrous. More than ludicrous. Insane. Recalling how laughable Ristelli’s preachments had seemed back in Vacaville reinforced my belief that the population of Diamond Bar was being transformed by a person or persons unknown into a brain-dead congregation of delusionaries, and fearful of joining them, I intensified my focus on escape, exploring the sub-basements, the walls, the turrets, searching for potential threats. On one of these explorative journeys, as I passed through Czerny’s block, I noticed that the massive oak door leading to the new wing, heretofore always locked, was standing partway open and, curious, I stepped inside. The space in which I found myself was apparently an anteroom, one more appropriate to a modern cathedral than a jail—domed and columned, with scaffolding erected that permitted access to every inch of the roof and walls. The door on the far side of the room was locked, and there was little else to see, the walls and ceiling being white and unadorned. I was on the verge of leaving when I saw a sheet of paper taped to one of the columns. Written in pencil upon it was the following:

  This place is yours to paint, Penhaligon, if you wish.

  A key lay on the scaffolding beside the note—it fit the oak door. I locked the door, pocketed the key and went about my business, understanding this show of trust to signify the board’s recognition that I had accepted my lot and that by taking up their charge I might earn a further degree of trust and so learn something to my benefit. To succeed in this I would have to do something that would enlist their delusion, and I immediately set about working on a design that would illustrate the essence of the delusion, The Heart of the Law. Though I began with cynical intent, as the weeks went by and my cell walls were covered with sketches, I grew obsessed with the project. I wanted the mural to be beautiful and strong to satisfy the artistic portion of my nature, my ego, and not simply to satisfy the board—in truth, I presumed they would approve of anything I did that hewed to their evangel. The dome and walls of the anteroom, the graceful volume of space they described, inspired me to think analytically about painting, something I had not done before, and I challenged myself to transcend the limits of my vision, to conceive a design that was somehow larger than my soul. I came to dwell more and more on the motive theory of Diamond Bar, that the criminal was the fundamental citizen, the archetype in whose service the whole of society had been created, and in the process I came obliquely to embrace the idea, proving, I suppose, the thesis that high art is the creation of truth from the raw materials of a lie, and the artist who wishes to be adjudged “great” must ultimately, through the use of passion and its obsessive tools, believe the lie he is intent upon illuminating. To augment my analytic capacities, I read books that might shed light on the subject—works of philosophy for the most part—and was astonished to discover in the writings of Michel Foucault a theory mirroring the less articulate theory espoused by the prison population. I wondered if it might be true, if delusion were being employed in the interests of truth, and, this being the case, whether the secret masters of Diamond Bar were contemplating a general good and the experiment of which we were a part was one that sought to evolve a generation in harmony with the grand design underlying all human culture. The books were difficult for me, but I schooled myself to understand them and became adept at knotting logic into shapes that revealed new facets of possibility—new to me, at any rate. This caused me to lose myself in abstraction and consequently diminished the urgency of my intention to escape. Like everyone who lived at Diamond Bar, I seemed to have a talent in that regard.

  The design I settled upon owed more to Diego Rivera and Soviet poster art than to the muralists of the Renaissance. The walls would be thronged with figures, all reacting toward the center of the design, which was to occupy the dome and which I had not yet been able to conceptualize—I felt the image would naturally occur as a byproduct of my labors. It took three months of twelve-hour days to lay out the sketch on the walls, and I estimated that, if done properly, the painting would take a year to complete. Chances were I would be gone from Diamond Bar before then, and realizing this, when I began to paint, ensorcelled by my vision, driven by the idea of finishing in a shorter time, I worked fifteen and sixteen hours a day. Dangling in harness from the scaffolding, crouched over, forced into unnatural positions, I gained an appreciation for the physical afflictions that Michelangelo endured while painting the Sistine Chapel. Each night after work I tried to shake off the aches and pains by walking through the sub-basements of the prison, and it was during one of these walks that I encountered the plumes.

  In prison, sex is an all-consuming preoccupation, a topic endlessly discussed, and from my earliest days at Diamond Bar the plumes had been recommended as a palatable alternative to self-gratification. The new wing, it was said, would house both women and men, thus ending the single unnatural constraint of prison life, and many held that the plumes would eventually become those women, evolving—as were we all—into their ideal form. Even now, Causey said, the plumes were superior to the sex available in other prisons. “It’s not like fucking a guy,” he said. “It feels, y’know, okay.”

  “Is it like fucking a woman?” I asked.

  He hesitated and said, “Kinda.”

  “‘Kinda’ doesn’t do it for me.”

  “Only reason it’s different is because you’re thinking about it not being a woman.”

  “Yeah, well. I’ll pass. I don’t want to think when I’m fucking.”

  Causey continued urging me to give the plumes a try, because—I believed—he felt that if I surrendered to temptation, I would become a complicitor in perversion, and this would somehow lessen the guilt attaching to his sexual assault on me. That he felt guilty about what had transpired between us was not in question. As our relationship progressed, he came to speak openly about the event and sought to engage me in a dialogue concerning it. Therapy, I supposed. Part of his process of self-examination. At the time, I rej
ected his suggestions that I visit the plumes out of hand, but they may have had some effect on me, for in retrospect I see that my initial encounter with them, though it seemed accidental, was likely an accident I contrived. I was, you see, in a heightened state of sexuality. Immersed in my work, essentially in love with it, while painting I would often become aroused not by any particular stimulus—there were no visual or tactile cues—but by the concentrated effort, itself a form of desire maintained at peak intensity for hours on end. And so on the night I strayed into the section of the prison occupied by the plumes, I was, though tired, mentally and sexually alert. I was tempting myself, testing my limits, my standards, hoping they would fail me.