Bright Segment

by Theodore Sturgeon

  There is a time for wondering, wondering what someone will say, and this is it, and it is good. Good as anything could be now, where that is real or this is real, never both. For I lie under a weight and I cannot move it, and when it disappears I am no longer myself, and it is good to defeat someone, something, even an unimportant, unlovely girl; even when in the defeat there can be no victory for me, nor a lessening of the weight. So I wait, wondering in which of several possible ways she will acknowledge her defeat; and here it comes from the usual lips and the eyes behind the unusual lashes; here:

  “May I use your phone?”

  Because I said she doesn’t matter, I may not let this matter either; I step away from the phone and turn my back, and soft footsteps pass me and soft fingers take up the hard phone; there’s a chorus of clicks, composed in syncopes, seven measures long. And a ring, and a ring.

  What portals open to this lady’s ringing, this Brandt for the burning? What dilates to this dialing, this braw, bricht, moonlicht nictitation? My God, my God, here it comes again, the words like lyings in their layers, and I am he, and he is—either or, both, neither. Of these, “or” is king; I wear a coat d’or, that dry, exclusive little word. For we are desiccated to the preposition that all men are created sequels. The “or” is golden but my heart has been read, my mind has been lead; read, lead; just the color of Floradora orange-youth.

  “Hello,” says the telephone tinily because it can speak two syllables without moving its open mouth; “Giles,” says Miss Brandt, “just Giles,” and the telephone laughs and says, “Okay.”

  Soft footsteps on the wooden, or is it marble floor, and the ring has been answered with a shout of laughter; and soft-footed, swift, Atlantes strides to the casement and the curtains of cloud leave the court, the mist melts away from the meadow below, the great golden gate is agleam in the sun, and gone is the gloaming. “Rogero!” he cries (but am I not Giles, imprisoned in a dream, who says he is where a felon needs a friend? Aiee! Sharper than a serpent’s truth is an ungrateful Giles!) “Rogero, come and see thy destiny!” and in Atlantes’ laugh lies such a triumph, such a scorn, I can only come and see. I go to stand beside him.

  To either hand are buttresses of weather-hammered stele; before me the castellated wall like a cliff, like a sea becalmed and stood on edge, falls to the courtyard. Away and down and away rolls the magic meadow to its lower margin, mighty walls patrolled by poisoned gnomes. And when I see the gate I am myself again; Rogero, ‘prisoned knight, hungering for that craggy path beyond the gate.

  “Thy destiny, knight—you see it?”

  I look again; and there like a mole under a monument is a small brown person, dun and dowdy. In one hand is a crooked staff changed from its soil-sprung origins, and it is this which now again strikes the golden bell and sends its clang and hum to shake the shining air. “My destiny?”

  He laughs again; there is battle in such laughter. “Look again!” With thumb and finger he makes a circle, and thrusts the hand before my face, and through that circle I see the gate—but not from the mountaintop, but as if I stood but twenty paces away. And though his magic is despicable to me, I yet must look.

  Silently, for a long time I gaze. At last I say, “Of all you have told me of my destiny, magician, I see but one thing to bear you out, and that is, that yonder mudball is a maiden, for it is unthinkable that such a one could be anything else. As to the rest, it is not possible that fate should have stored for me anything so … unadorned.”

  “Ah, then thee need only swear fealty to me, and we will squash this beetle together.” The bell rings again. “If not, I must do it myself, and keep thee bound as thou art. But one or the other must be done, for that rude clanging is indeed the voice of thy fate, and that barefoot damsel has come as fate dictates, to challenge me and set thee free.”

  “She challenges you!”

  “Ay, lad, with nothing but that crooked staff and the homespun cassock beneath which she generously hides her uninteresting limbs. Oh, and a piddling faith in some unimportant system of gods.”

  “The staff is enchanted, then.”

  “No.”

  “She’s mad!”

  “She is.” He laughs. “So tell me, good fool: wouldst go to her and spend thy days with her, swordless, horseless, tending the plaguey brats of peasants and slaves? Or wouldst thou ride with me and turn her into a damp spot on the meadow, and after, own the earth?”

  “I’ll choose, wizard, but a choice of mine own devising. I’ll not go to her nor ride with you. I shall stay here and watch thy bravery and thine historic victory over that little brown she-monk, with her dried tree-branch arrayed against nothing but thy magic steed, thy mighty armaments, and thine army of gnomes. And when she is vanquished—”

  “Thee would see her vanquished?” he mocks. “Thy last chance to be free? Thy destiny contains no other savior.”

  “When she is vanquished, come back to me that I may spit in thy face and tell thee that of my three possible hells, I choose the one which can give thee no pleasure.”

  He shrugs and turns away from me. At the door he gives me his evil smile. “I knew that one day thee’d call me ‘thou,’ Rogero.”

  I snatch up a heavy censer and hurl it. With a crash it stops in mid-air before him and, broken, falls at his feet. His smile is a laugh now. “Be certain, wizard, that I use not the ‘thou’ of an intimate, but that of an animal,” I roar, and he laughs again; and surely one day, when I find a way, I shall kill this clever creature. I go to the casement.

  Far below, I can still see the gate and the shining wall. The gnomes file away and down out of sight; and there, one fragile hand on the golden bars, the other holding the staff, the girl clings peering. Her courage is too foolhardy to be admired and her strength too small to be considered at all; surely Atlantes need only laugh once (that thunder of evil) or raise his brows, to shrivel up this audacious sparrow.

  There on the brow of the flying buttress stands Atlantes, the wind whipping his figured mantle, the sun all startled by his jewels.

  He raises a hand and turns it, and the gate, so far below, so far away, stands open. Nothing as massive as those golden bars should move so swiftly and noiselessly; the tiny figure at the entrance nearly falls. The girl stands in emptiness, the gate looming about her, the rocky hill behind her, and high and massive over her, Atlantes’ castle crowned by the glittering magician himself. She is very small and very alone as she begins to mount the slope.

  Atlantes, laughing, claps his hands twice—

  And from a copse in the meadow comes a thunder of wings, and a glory. There with an eagle’s cruel head and the foreclaws of the mightiest of lions; with the splendid haunches of a stallion and golden hooves—there rises, there floats, there hurtles the hippogriff. His cry ripples the grass; it is a clarion, a roar, and a scream, and through it and through it is a thing which makes my heart melt as never a woman could do, and mine eyes are scalded with pity and fellowship. For he, even he, the hippogriff is enthralled; and with all his soul he hates his master!

  I am glad there is no one by, for I weep like a child. I am a knight, and I know my merits; yet everything splendid is behind me. My shackles may not be broken, and my very destiny is without beauty. Yet here before me is beauty crystallized, shaking the world with its piteous, powerful protest … crystallized? Nay, alive, alive as a man could never be. See the sun on his golden plumes, oh see his purple flanks … he is more than I can bear to look on, to think on … I shall have him, mount him!

  But if he sees me, knows my heart, I know not, for he sweeps past and hovers, and the top of the buttress takes him like a cupped palm. From the parapet Atlantes takes a curious shield, with its cover of soft bat skins cleverly pieced. He buckles it to the hippogriff’s harness, then with a hand on the parapet and a hand on the shield, he climbs to the great beast’s back; and oh! I am proud that the steed kneels not for him.

  Atlantes leans forward and speaks, and what his word is I may not hear, but
the animal’s sweet, strong pinions spread and flick the stone but once, and skyward they ride.

  In a great circle the hippogriff wheels, with Atlantes leaning from the saddle. His piercing eyes, and all his magic to aid him, must discover any invisible armament she might have; and she must have none, for I hear his distant laughter as he leans over his steed’s neck to speak another secret command. The wings go up together and hold like a great wedge, and down they drop just to the height of her head, and with a single thrust and the sound of soft thunder, their speed is checked and they are meadow-borne. Fifty paces away, the girl drops her staff and waits, weaponless.

  Tiny and evil, Atlantes’ mirth comes to me on the wind. He swings down from the beast’s broad back, unbuckles his shield, and with a deft twist casts off its cover.

  Now, he stands between me and the girl so that the shield faces away from me. Were it any other way, I should have seen nothing; this I knew when I saw the blaze of light which fanned out and down; when I saw birds swing and flutter and fall, and a stag turn away and blunder into a tree trunk. I had heard of this shield, but until now I had not seen it. In unspeakable ways, its gilded surface had been polished until it struck blind any who saw it. This, then, and the hippogriff, are what Atlantes brings to bear against one girl’s fragile madness. Ah, a mighty magician he, and confident.

  Beaten and dazzled, she stands frozen, waiting for—no, not mercy; she cannot expect that. Waiting then, for him.

  The work of the shield is done. He covers it and confidently he strides down the slope to her. If he speaks, I cannot hear; I doubt he does, for he knows I am watching, and he will want me to understand. He stoops to pick up the useless staff she has dropped, and thrusts it into her hand; he takes her by the shoulders and turns her about to face the gate; he steps back, then throws up his shaggy head and bellows with laughter. Such dismissal of the blind thing might have been predicted; instant death would have been, for him, too gentle a thing. And so he stands, laughing, impregnable even to such strength as mine, with the invisible wall his spells have built about him; cruel and victorious—ah, a mighty magician indeed!

  So, defeated, she moves toward the door … door? the gate of gold … but no, it is no longer a meadow, but a room where I keep my easel and my … and now I see them both, the room and the meadow, as if one were painted upon glass and through it I saw the other; and which? which the painting? Aiee! my brains are mixed and muddled again, I am one, the other, both, neither. I see a curtain of sky with mountains for its ragged hem … a dirty wall, with one small bright spatter of my blood where I struck it, and the dazed dun maiden raising her staff, which is a small blue book with gold letters on it. “But you’re blind!”

  Miss Brandt has a twisted smile. Her teeth are no better and no worse than the rest of her, and not to be compared with her lashes. “I’ve been told that before, but I don’t think I am. This is for you—here!” and she gives me the book.

  Before or behind my eyes there’s a flash, too bright; I think it’s a hippogriff. Up here in the salt mines I stand and shiver until the crazy thing passes; I open my eyes slowly and secretively so that I can snatch a reality and make it real. And Miss Brandt is here (or still here, I forget which) and the meadow and the hippogriff become a memory again (or maybe a dream).

  “Are you all right?” Her voice and her hand touch me together.

  “Stay away from me! I’m crazy, don’t you know that?” (Her lashes are up.) “You better get out of here. I’m liable to do practically anything. Look, you’re already getting a black eye.” I’m yelling again. “Aren’t you afraid? Damn you, be afraid!”

  “No.”

  It’s a very puzzling thing, the way she should be dressed like a monk, and be holding a crooked stick; but that was a small blue book—that’s right. I’m shaking my head, or is it a shudder; the girl and the wall and the door blur by me and my teeth are side-sliding, making a switch-frog sound. It can be halted by holding the heels of the hands on the halves of the head very hard … and slowly saliva is swallowed … libation, libration, liberation, and quiet at last. In that moment of stillness, when at last I am here altogether, I know that my … dream, the Rogero thing, whatever it is … takes no time at all. For she was at the phone when it began, that last time, and all those things happened to Rogero while she hung up and took two steps behind me … yes, and I heard the steps. So when I become Rogero again, no matter what happens here, how many hours it takes, I shall see Atlantes and the vanquished maid, down and away below, and she fumbling the dry rough stick, blind, defeated destiny of mine.

  So open your eyes to here and the easel and Miss Brandt who is not afraid. Hold out the hand with the book. “What’s this?”

  “Money.”

  It’s a checkbook, sky-green and very disciplined and trackless inside, and sturdy and blue outside. “Blank checks.”

  “Cartes blanches,” she smiles; and this is no place for smiling. So just wait, and the smile will go away. Ah. Unsmiling, she says, “It’s money; all you want. Just fill in a check and sign it.”

  “You’re crazy.” But she shakes her head gravely.

  So: “Why bring me money?”

  “You can do whatever you want now.”

  “I can’t paint. Do you think you can make me paint by giving me money?”

  When her tongue touches her lips, they are the same color. No one, no woman, should be like that. Such a mouth could taste nothing, take nothing. It says, “Not if you don’t want to. But you can do all the other things you want to do—all you have ever wanted to do.”

  What else have I ever wanted to do but paint? There must be something. Oh, there is, there is; I never had a chance to—to—and then my hand is crushing the book, the book of excellent quality which yields only slightly and, when my hand opens, is bland again. “It’s just paper.”

  “It’s money. Don’t you believe me? Come with me. Come to the bank. Write out a check and see.”

  “Money. How much money?”

  Again: “All you want.” She is so very certain.

  “What for?”

  “Whatever you like. Anything.”

  “I didn’t mean that.” Things are becoming real as real now. “When you take money or you give something; you always give something, a painting or a promise or—”

  Her head turns briefly, a little, right, left, right, her eyes steady on me, so sliding between the lashes. “Not this money.”

  “Why are you giving me money?” (You know, Giles, you’re frightened?) “What can I do for money mostly is pant. But not now. Not now.”

  “You don’t have to paint. Not unless you want to, and then not for me. Giles, maybe you can’t paint because you want to do other things. Well, do them. Do them all; finish them until they’re all done and there’s only one thing left. Maybe then you can work again.”

  “Then the money’s for painting!”

  Oh, she is so patient; oh, how I hate anyone as patient as that. “No. It’s just for you. Do whatever you want. I don’t want the money and I don’t ever want it back. It isn’t mine to begin with, so why should I care about it?”

  “But you’d care if I didn’t paint again.”

  The fringes fall, the lashes hide the ordinary eyes. “I care about that now. I’ll always care.” And now she has the door open. “Come to the bank. Come get your money. Then you’ll believe me.”

  “The bank, yes, and then what? Go with you, I suppose, and you’ll tell me what to buy and where to go and how to—”

  “It’s yours to do as you please. Now will you come? I’ll leave you at the bank if you like.”

  “I like.”

  But no, this doesn’t hurt her, and no, she is not angry; there’s only one thing that touches her, and that one thing reaches through the closed door as we walk in the corridor, stretches down the stairs and past the lintels and the newels and the curbs and cabs and garbage all the way down to the bank; and that one thing is my white, clean, blind square eye of canvas.


  I wonder if she knows; I wonder. Wondering under the polyglot columns corralling the bank (Doric they are, with Corinthian capitals, yes but the door is not Doric but arched and Byzantine, closed with a fanlight. I’d say from Virginia). “I wonder if you know.”

  “If I know what?” she says, still patient.

  “Why I can’t paint.”

  “Oh yes,” she says, “I know.”

  “Well I don’t, Miss Brandt. I really don’t.”

  “It’s because you don’t know why you can paint,” she says, and her eyes are no longer patient, but waiting. It is very different.

  And when I shake my head (because that is no answer) her eyes are patient again. “Come,” she says; and in we go from the portico, and wouldn’t you know the ceiling is red with ropes of gilded plaster draped in altogether Moorish squares.

  And here in a low wall made of glazed marble, and flat-topped with marbleized glass, is a little black gate that swings both ways. On the other side is a polished desk and a polished pate bearing polished glasses. “Mr. Saffron,” says Miss Brandt; “Mr. Saffron” says the chock-shaped sign on his desk, gold on black.

  Mr. Saffron’s glittering glasses tilt up; then straight and slowly he rises, like the Lady of the Lake. When he stands, his glasses lose some high lights, and I can see his eyes. They are blue and shiny—not polished, but wet; turned to Miss Brandt they are so round they go pale; turned to me they are slits gone all dark, with a little eave of pink flesh all the way across over both of them. And here is a man who is astonished by Miss Brandt and repelled by me; what a wonderful way he has of showing it, over and over again; round-pale, slit-dark, the whole time.

  “This is Giles.”