The Color of Evil - The Dark Descent V1 (1991)

by David G. Hartwell (Ed. )

  The lift, a Waywood-Otis installation capacious enough for

  twelve at a hoist, was descending. When it reached the ground

  floor, there emerged two apparently identical Negroes in clerical dress. Small, compact, and beautifully polished, they looked like marionettes. They smiled and bowed in unison

  to the new arrivals, then walked off in step, conversing enthusiastically in some African tongue.

  At the first-floor landing (Mrs. Iblis felt that it would have

  been quicker to have walked it), Mr. Stillman was at once

  shown into an enormous room which even through the

  door Mrs. Iblis could see contained at least two canopied

  beds. Mrs. Iblis was led away down a long passage, not too

  well proportioned, decorated in goose gray and lined with

  modem religious paintings, ascending on occasion as high in

  the scale as Vanessa Bell, and even Rouault. (Mrs. Iblis could

  not be sure, however, that they were not merely good reproductions.) From the opposite direction advanced an extremely good-looking woman of bold proportions; she was wearing a heavy black brassibre, black-and-white striped

  knickers, and huge furry slippers. She made no acknowledgment of Mrs. Iblis’s presence, still less of the luggage carrier’s, and in the end, having passed the lift, vanished round the comer beyond the Louise Room, as Mrs. Iblis was unable

  to resist turning to see.

  Sister Nuper’s room was beautifully light and filled with

  built-in cupboards. There was a large, double divan-bed with

  silk sheets. Above the bed was a ghastly and lurid cartoon of

  the Crucifixion by Edward Burra. Mrs. Iblis was unable to

  make up her mind whether the artist was in favor of religion

  or against it. A satinwood bookcase, which had been scraped

  and painted white like the other furniture, proved to contain

  mainly volumes of the more popular nursing and home medical journals (bound by Coner’s refugee craftsman). A French window and small balcony overlooked a garden of about an

  acre, from which rose a smell of intensive composting. A

  figure in a boiler suit could be seen at the dark work now.

  Mrs. Iblis peered into one of the built-in cupboards. It was

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  stuffed with evening dresses, depending from a thick

  chromium-plated rail and each in a transparent envelope made

  of plastic.

  Not caring to unpack without consulting Sister Nuper, Mrs.

  Iblis nonetheless changed into the other dress she had

  brought. Looking for an ashtray, she noticed the Sister’s bedside book: entitled Bowel Discipline, it was a lesser work by a well-known member of the Labor party. A realistic colored

  drawing on the jacket depicted the alimentary system surrounded by a luminous radiation.

  For some time after Mrs. Iblis had descended (by the stairs)

  into the melde below, no one took any notice of her. The

  Forum, about fifty strong, were surging and wheeling between the drawing room, the dining room, and the large hall.

  Most of them, of course, were shouting at the tops of their

  voices, or reasoning at the full stretch of their intellects; but

  some, Mrs. Iblis noticed, sat or even stood perfectly silent

  and ignored. She had read an article in the Evening News of

  the previous night upon the value in a bustling noisy life of

  regular periods of meditation, and gazed at these mute figures

  with interest and awe. Press photographers moved about the

  throng. In the end Mrs. Iblis’s eye lighted upon Ruth eating

  a strawberry ice cream. This being the only person present

  to whom she had ever spoken (there was no sign of Mr.

  Stillman), Mrs. Iblis advanced.

  “ Hullo. I ’m afraid I know no one else here but you. Can

  you tell me who some of these people are?”

  “ Don’t know. I ’m strictly orthodox.”

  “ How interesting! In what way?”

  “ Full Anglican. I accept the Thirty-Nine Articles. Unconditionally.” Ruth looked round for somewhere to deposit the ice cream glass.

  “ Well, so do I, I suppose.”

  “ What’s Article Thirty-three?”

  “ I can hardly recall the exact words.”

  “ Then you’re not an Anglican, are you?” Ruth was reduced to laying the receptacle in much jeopardy on the floor.

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  “ Can you recite Article Thirty-three?” This feeble rejoinder was die best Mrs. Iblis could muster. It was so long since one had been at school.

  “ That person which by open denunciation of the Church

  is righdy cut off from the unity of the Church and excommunicated ought to be taken of the whole multitude of the faithful as a Heathen and Publican until he be openly reconciled by penance and received into the Church by a Judge that hath authority there-unto.”

  “ Not a very Christian sentiment surely?” Mrs. Iblis inquired almost involuntarily.

  “ Why not?”

  “ More like the Church of Rome. Excommunication and

  penance, you know.”

  “ I do penance daily.” Ruth’s voice was dreamy, her eyes

  blank.

  “ You can hardly be as wicked as that!” But Mrs. Iblis’s

  mind recalled the alarming figure she had seen upstairs in

  the passage, and was instantly less sure.

  “ Not wicked. Sinful.”

  “ Is there any difference?”

  “ Sin is a sense of something larger than oneself.”

  “ Ah, now I understand you.” Mrs. Iblis began to glance

  about for some sign of tea, surely overdue. “ I think that is

  something we all feel.”

  But Ruth ignored her. “ To merge,” she cried in her soft,

  light voice. “ To break through the barrier and become One.

  For a single infinitely small person to meet the infinitely

  vast. The end of every pilgrimage must be orthodoxy.” Her

  eye lighted upon a fellow guest the other side of the room.

  “ You see that man to the left of the big ‘Annunciation’? ”

  “ The red-haired one in tweeds?”

  “ He’s a Lewisite. He’s misplaced, like m e.”

  “ I thought lewisite was a kind of explosive.”

  Ruth merely said in the most casual way, “ Have you read

  Arrival and Departure? ”

  “ N o.”

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  “ I ’m going to look for another ice.’

  Before she had disappeared, Mrs. Iblis had time to ask:

  “ Do you know what time we get tea?”

  Ruth replied: “ Any time you like. Ask at the buffet in the

  billiard room.’’ And she was gone before Mrs. Iblis had completed the horrifying realization that at Bunhill there were no regular meals.

  The better to face the situation, Mrs. Iblis opened her

  handbag and produced a compact. Peering into the little mirror, she failed to notice that two strange men now stood before her.

  “ Permit me to introduce my friend, Professor Dr. Borgia,

  principal of the Demokratischereligion Gesellschaft of Zurich.” The speaker was a rotund young man of highly educated accent and masterful demeanor.

  “ How do you do? I suppose you must be used to people

  asking whether you are really one of the Borgias?”

  “ But natiirlich I am one of the Borgias.” The professor

  had the strongest of Teutonic accents. He was a slight, worn,

  Semitic-looking figure, with large fanatical eyes. “ The Borgias were a great aristocratiscke famil
y of old Spain. My family.”

  The rotund young man said: “ I am sure you will both have

  much to say. Will you excuse me if I seek a word with Dr.

  Spade?” He was gone.

  Professor Borgia rolled his eyes. “ Have you found spiritual

  proficiency, gnddige Fraul You see I come straight from the

  point.”

  Mrs. Iblis considered carefully. “ Well, actually, not yet, I

  think.”

  “ Mine is the shortest way to truth.” His diction had much

  of the charm of the German classical actor, the aptitude for

  making the most commonplace words profound and stirring.

  “ I am in a sense a commercial traveler for G od.” This was

  uttered in a tone which recalled Manfred confronting the

  abyss. “ You have first to sign your name only.” He was

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  holding out a quite fat booklet closely printed in a way which

  reminded Mrs. Iblis of Dutch seed catalogues.

  “ Thank you very much. I shall look forward to reading

  it.”

  “ Reading alone will not avail. Words reach only the mind.

  It is the spirit, the Geist, we grope for, nicht w ahrl”

  “ I suppose so.” Mrs. Iblis was beginning to feel cowed

  and upset, unequal to life.

  “ Do you come much to Switzerland?” He pronounced the

  English name so elaborately that Mrs. Iblis had difficulty in

  following him.

  “ Only for the winter sports, I ’m afraid. And that not for

  some years now.”

  “Ach, so? But no matter. We are starting an Enfiedelei in

  London this very winter. There will be your rebirth.”

  At this point it dawned on Mrs. Iblis that quite possibly

  the rotund young man had merely intended to unload upon

  her a bigger than ordinary bore, a person recognized to be

  such even in this company.

  Excusing herself, she began firmly to look for the billiard

  room. The professor stood quite still, smiling after her retreating figure.

  En route she passed a particularly frenzied group, at the

  center of which a man was saying, “ Now can’t we reduce

  our differences to a few simple points which we could talk

  over?” This, though Mrs. Iblis did not know it, was her host.

  “ What is the use of words if the spirit is wrong?” screamed

  out a woman whose style of looks Mrs. Iblis considered obsolete, and who wore a complex, black tea gown. For people who set so little store by words, they seemed to Mrs. Iblis

  remarkably dependent on them.

  There were only ten or eleven people at the buffet, eating

  and drinking not being primary interests of the present gathering (unlike some at Bunhill). The billiard room also contained two tables, on one of which a couple of young waiters were playing half-hearted snooker. Above the dark brown

  mantelpiece was a huge vague-colored drawing of a Universal

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  City designed by Patrick Geddes. A new strip-lighting system

  had been installed; but something had gone wrong with it

  and instead of giving better than daylight, it emitted a depressing yellow red glare as dusk descended outside.

  As Mrs. Iblis stood drinking Indian tea and nibbling a

  maid of honor, a massive figure approached her, wearing

  enormous highly polished shoes.

  “ And what do you make of it all?’’ The accent was transatlantic.

  “ I ’m afraid I know very little about it. I ’m not really a

  member of the Forum.”

  “ Nor I, ma’am. I just dropped in to see that Coner’s on

  the right lines.”

  “ And is he?” There seemed nothing else to say.

  “ Well now, I ’m a Canadian. I ’m also a businessman and

  editor, like Coner. But that doesn’t mean I ’m impervious to

  spiritual values. Quite the contrary. The one thing the whole

  world needs, the one thing every man’s heart is sighing for—

  and every woman’s—is a big spiritual revival. And what I say

  is, it’s up to us servants of the public to get things rolling.”

  “ I always think the press could be such an influence for

  good,” said Mrs. Iblis, selecting an dclair. “ After all, it’s

  foolish not to take things as we find them.”

  “ Sure, sure. Those are wise words, ma’am. I swear to you

  that not a copy goes out of a single journal in my group

  without it contains both a passage from the good book and

  some words of cheer by one of a panel of leading ministers. ”

  “ That must be very nice for your readers.” Mrs. Iblis

  wished she had a larger handkerchief on which to deposit'

  some of the sticky chocolate now coating her fingers. Nonetheless, she took a second 6clair.

  “ You should see the thankful letters. Never less than sixty

  a day and often above the century. I tell you they make me a

  humble man. But I ’m not a narrow man either, and I tell you

  something more is needed.”

  “ Yes?” said Mrs. Iblis.

  “ After all, what are sects? What are denominations,

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  creeds, dogmas, rituals? Aren’t we all the same where it really matters—in our hearts? What are the little orthodoxies besides the great universal need, man’s eternal quest for

  something larger than his puny self? That’s what I ’m doing

  here this very afternoon. Watching Coner pull the old country’s socks up.” His somewhat inflexible features almost beamed upon Mrs. Iblis.

  “ You think all this will really lead to something useful?”

  She turned to the buffet. The waiter was at the other end, and

  Mrs. Iblis raised her voice: “ Could I have another cup of

  tea, please?”

  “ Sure, sure. There’s just nothing that can’t be had if you’ll

  give your soul for it.” Mrs. Iblis turned back to him with

  some surprise; but now he had seized the sleeve of a cadaverous, academic-looking young man with an enormous Wel-lingtonian nose. “ And you, sir. What do you think?”

  The young man merely snatched away his sleeve without

  a word or even a glance. He was like a preoccupied child. In

  ardent tones, he addressed his friend: “ You know, Neville,

  I ’ve found that much of the best modem thought, the really

  deep stuff, now comes from inside the Salvation Army.”

  “ I still remain faithful to the dear old Hibbert Journal.

  That and my Karma Research Group. Let’s have a cup of

  char, then I ’ll tell you about a new technique we’re working

  on to accelerate the ecstasy.” His voice had hushed almost

  to inaudibility. They glanced at one another, conscious of

  secrets shared.

  The Canadian was now conversing with an enormously fat

  woman in a cassock. About her neck, on the end of a brass

  chain, hung an object which Mrs. Iblis fancied was called an

  ankh. Or was it a crux ansatal

  At this point an exceedingly attractive woman entered the

  billiard room accompanied by a positive throng of unusually

  handsome young men. She wore a gray nurse’s uniform made

  of silk, like the nurse’s uniforms worn by film stars in the

  early silent days, and a high white collar. Mrs. Iblis had been

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  about to
leave the billiard room but, supposing that this might

  be Sister Nuper, remained for a moment.

  The posse advanced upon the buffet, laughing and calling

  loudly for refreshments, which seemed to be brought to them

  with more alacrity than had attended the service of the other

  guests. They stood in a group exchanging merry commonplaces, carefree, exuberant. They were totally unlike the rest of the Forum, but no one other than Mrs. Iblis and the waiter

  seemed to be taking any particular notice of them. To Mrs.

  Iblis, however, they seemed in the end even to be engaged

  in parodying the transactions around them.

  “ And what faith are you, my pretty maid?” cried out an

  Apollo-like young man.

  And Sister Nuper (if she it was) instantly replied in a cooing, but perfectly clear, voice: “ I worship St. Nicholas, sir,”

  she said.

  At this all the young men laughed very loudly. The group

  made Mrs. Iblis feel a wild girl again. But the billiard room

  was emptying and the waiter beginning to assemble supper

  dishes and bottles of beer. Mrs. Iblis felt she could not stay

  longer without becoming conspicuous, possibly a butt, not

  for any sort of unkindness (the group did not seem unkind),

  but simply for witty remarks calling for witty answers which

  she had never been able to provide, even long after the need.

  Before she left, she noticed through the line of long windows

  that the lurid light in the billiard room seemed to have its

  counterpart in a livid autumnal glare outside. Was it something to do with the equinox, she wondered.

  “ Shall I find you a chair?” The speaker was a shaggy,

  elderly, paternal figure.

  “ That would be very kind of you. Such tiring weather.”

  He guided her gently forward by the arm. They reached a

  small sofa. He seated himself beside her. This was not exactly what she wanted.

  “ Permit me to introduce myself. O ’Rorke: founder of the

  New Vision Movement, small for the present, it is true, but

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  a veritable seed of mustard, if I may quote from an anachronistic scripture.”

  ‘‘How do you do? My name is Iblis. Mrs. Iblis.”

  ‘‘Ah yes.” He seemed abstracted. “ I think I have convinced Mr. Coner. I think I have moved his heart to see that a new world demands a new faith and will not be put off.”