The Book of the Mad, page 14
“Your time? Oh. The female cycle … Once, I too.” Judit frowned. “My womb’s burned out. Yours also? Be thankful. They shame us here, when we bleed.”
Hilde bowed her head. “Then this is good?”
“Oh, yes,” said Judit strongly. “Be glad, dear.”
NINE
Paradise
Love that moves the sun and the other stars.
Dante Alighieri
Months had passed, but Paradise had no seasons, as it had no sun, no moon.
They had killed with cords, but then came poisons. This often called for a particularly intimate attack – besides, they tried to find new types of bane. It taxed their ingenuity, and this time Felion and Smara put off the task. They did not poison anyone. They told each other, when they met, of their oppression at shirking the labor. Both had come close to it. Smara had even lured a man to her apartment, meaning to put some of the acid from the clockwork cat’s leaking panel into a glass of wine. But then she had not done it. The man had left resentfully; obviously he had expected something. “He may only have anticipated sex,” Felion told her.
They did not talk about the labyrinth, or the City beyond.
The mystery was like an ache that never went away.
Smara dreamed that she was moving through a pale warm building. An elderly woman in white was hurrying down a corridor, and when she passed Smara, the woman said, “Go away, Lucie. Go to your nurse.”
There was a long room that gave on a flagged patio, and here some men sat at ease, drinking tea. They did not seem to see Smara, who prowled about them, half wondering if she might drop poison in their cups. One man smoked a pipe and another toyed with an eye glass. They were elegant, and one very handsome, with longish silken hair. Smara took a fruit or vegetable from a bowl on a table. She threw it past them, out onto the lawn. There it rolled like an orange snowball, away and away, until it hit a low fence in the distance.
Smara did not tell Felion about this dream, in which there had been clarity, daylight, and no mist.
Felion did not dream about the other City, or its environs.
They walked the broad fogbound boulevards, that sometimes echoed at their voices or rang with unknown laughter.
One afternoon, they came, seemingly by chance, to the foot of the hundred steps.
They stood for some time, as if awaiting another person.
Then, in fits and starts, frequently stopping to stare away across the blank of Paradise (the cathedral tower was invisible today), they climbed the steps.
On the Bird Terrace they did not pause. Felion opened the door with the chant of numbers. They went into the house, through, and down.
In the basement a small machine had woken and was bustling about, moving little metal boxes, cogs, and bunches or wire from one place to another, apparently without logic.
As they walked along the track, it skittered after them, then veered away, twittering angrily.
“It believes we’re intruders,” he said.
“Are we?”
“Yes, but we were meant to be.”
Then the ice wall was ahead of them.
Felion picked up the torch he had left lying, and lit it.
“We can run through,” he said. “Keep hold of my hand or we may be separated again.”
“I’m not afraid,” she said. “And that seems wrong.”
“They’ve done something to the door of the artist’s house,” he said. “That may make it difficult to leave the premises. We must break through outside the house. You must will that, too.”
“I don’t know how.”
“Demand it then, aloud, of the labyrinth. How else did you get in and out before?”
“It seemed … easy,” she said.
“It is easy. Yes,” he added, “of course, it must all be wrong. The heat of the torch will finally spoil the ice – what then? We have to decide, Smara, where we want to be.”
In the labyrinth they did not run, but walked briskly, she striding and he slightly checking his pace, to stay in step with each other.
A glowing thing bloomed in the wall.
“Look!” she said.
He saw it too, presumably the same vision. A child watching a tiger in a cage. It was a horrible child, sneering at the incredible and flawless animal, which, if the bars had not been there, would have destroyed the child fastidiously and at once.
Then the image dispersed.
They had come suddenly into the oval heart of the labyrinth.
On the floor was a fruit, an orange fruit.
Felion let go of Smara’s hand, bent down, and picked the fruit up. But Smara was gazing at the bird-headed thing that had risen above out of the ice. If anything it was now more clear, more like the statues on her uncle’s terrace.
Felion tossed the orange fruit up at the ice statue. The fruit struck it a weightless blow and sailed on, and over into nothing, whence, surely, it had come.
“I’m not afraid of that now, either,” said Smara. “It’s only a shape.”
Felion took her by her hand again quickly.
“Let’s go on.”
A sound rose, the oceanic breathing roar of the labyrinth.
Smara moved reluctantly. “I thought it would crumble a little, when I said it didn’t frighten me.”
Beyond the heart, keeping to the left, they strode forward.
“Remember,” he said, “the outside of the woman’s house. The street there.”
“Are you still holding my hand?” she asked.
Felion hesitated, and as he did so, the torch flickered as if a wind rushed through the maze. And Smara slid away from him.
It was as though she were moved away on runners. She did not seem to notice. When he called out in alarm, she only nodded. “Outside the house,” she repeated.
And then she was furled aside into the ice wall.
Perhaps Felion had been pulled aside in this way as he followed his uncle, or the man who resembled his uncle, those months before when he had come back here alone.
Felion was appalled nevertheless. He tried to approach the wall, but it was solid, ungiving, and Smara had gone.
He had no choice, it seemed to him, but to proceed to the labyrinth’s extremity. Maybe, anyway, he would find her there.
When he reached the end of the tunnels, the torch was fluttering sickly. Ahead, in the opening, lay a cloudy void.
Felion spoke aloud to it, telling it harshly what he expected it to become, the street outside the artist’s house. But even when he walked right up to it, the exit from the labyrinth showed nothing but formless clouds, save far away, he seemed to glimpse a shape like a mountain.
“But it’s easy,” he said. He dropped the torch by the exit point, and plunged his hand and arm out into the cloudy aberration.
Perhaps the tiger’s cage was there, and his hand had gone in through the bars.
Felion drew his arm back. It was whole.
Then he shut his eyes, lowered his blond head, and jumped through the gap straight into the cloud.
Smara stood on the golden bank of a malt-dark river. She was not distressed. She had not been so before, when she had lost Felion and arrived in another world. Not to be distressed was possibly distressing.
And this was not the other City. Assuredly not.
The air had an exceptional brightness and lucidity. Distant mountains embraced the sky.
Below, on the honey strand, tigers and lions were feeding on something among the onyx boulders.
Above, a city did line the bank. High, white, pillared buildings, glistening with metal. Huge trees which might have been palms, but their fronds curved to the ground.
Around Smara was a garden, and everywhere in it girls in white were watering the flowers. Probably Smara had not been noticed for this reason, for in her hand was a bronze dipper filled by water. Smara went quietly up the slope of the turf and came out on a walk. On the horizon was a marble palace of extreme tallness. Nearby, a queen or empress was seated under a white sunshade. She was beautiful, more beautiful even than Smara’s mother. Around her throat was a rope made of twenty or so chains of enormous pearls. Her black hair fell from a starry coronet to her feet.
A man sat at her feet.
He was tanned almost to leather, and in his ears winked diamonds. He was telling the beautiful queen boldly about a voyage he had made in a timber ship. He showed her on a map that was stretched over the grass.
“But she ran aground, Majesty. We lost the strange fruit and the priceless glass vessels. I was there ten days, with my men, before the king of the land heard what had befallen us and sent his chariots to our assistance.”
“I have never known luck like yours,” said the queen. “Maque, you know you’re worth more to me than any cargo. But who,” she added, “is that girl, listening?”
“Your favorite handmaiden, surely.”
“No, she has hair like ginger spice. This one has hair like cream. Who are you, young girl?”
“Smara,” Smara said, and she bowed. But then the dipper spilled all over her skirt.
“She’s in search of some other country,” said the queen. “Be careful,” she added, “not all of them are good.”
“Madame,” said the sailor, who had been called Maque, “in a way, it’s true of us all – that we search for other countries. Of the mind, the heart, and the soul. And sometimes even we search for hell on earth.”
The queen smiled. She laid her hand on his arm. “Where are you going?” the queen asked Smara.
“To Felion, my brother.”
“Do you love him?” asked the queen.
“Yes.”
“Love can do anything,” said the queen.
Smara turned, and a cloud was there behind her. She dropped the dipper on the grass, and then –
And then it seemed she was her mother, falling, falling from the whirling tower, into the stony mist.
The sun was beginning to set, and for a while he forgot even his sister.
Felion was high up, above the City, the wonderful City that had not been corrupted by mist. He could see all of it. The scales of its million roofs, like plates of a crocodile’s back, its towers and domes, and far off the loops of its river, tiger’s-eye, catching the rays of the extraordinary sun.
But then he wanted her to see this, this fabulous City, beautiful beyond any dream or wish. Oh, he wanted Smara to be here with him. He wanted to live with her, here.
A flight of pigeons passed over the disk of the sun.
Tears streamed down Felion’s face, and dried. He had never before, not once, known such joy.
And then Smara came walking toward him, out of a brick wall just down the street, which was not the street outside the artist’s house. She looked about shyly, but when she saw him, her face lit with more than the glory of the sun.
He took her hand again, and not speaking they stood together on the height, and watched day move down below the curve of the earth.
Every architecture rose black against its shining. And then the disk was drawn away, and a wonderful softness closed the air, and a magical nocturne of dark, and stars burned up as if nowhere, not in a thousand worlds, had there ever been stars before, or eyes to see them.
“Smara – where did you go?”
“A garden. Not here.”
“And I came out miles from that house. Who cares? What does she matter, our mad uncle’s artist?”
Hand in hand, they walked the streets as the night filled them. Lamps lit on poles. A breeze blew, sweet with the smell of blossoms from a spring that maybe had not yet begun.
Higher up, they reached the cathedral. The great door was carved with saints and devils, and stood open. An owl flew over their heads.
They entered, and the church was like the stomach of a cliff, it went up for miles. Some service (they had heard or read of such things) must have taken place, for hundreds of candles had been left alight. In the aisle, paper flowers had been scattered.
Felion and Smara separated and went about the body of the cathedral, where no one else was.
Above the altar, a book lay spread on a stand, but when she approached it, Smara could not read the prayer.
Felion, however, found another book in an alcove over a granite tomb. And somehow he read this: “And the names of the three, who are jointly this demon, are OBLATIC, SAMOHT, and TOLEHCIM.” Which for some reason made him laugh. And after that the words blurred over and became nonsense, he could not make any phrases out of them.
He and she kneeled under the altar.
“What shall we pray for?” he whispered.
“What is ‘pray’?”
He could not answer. He said, “I love you. I always have. If we stay here, we can be lovers.”
She turned to him with a look of wonder and happiness. “Could we? Oh Felion, how I’d like that.”
They got to their feet and left the cathedral.
Outside, the night was as black as ink now, and the stars had paled before the street lamps, but the big white moon was up, horned, asking only a sky to find its way.
“Where shall we go?” she asked.
“We can go where we like,” he said.
So they walked the City.
Paradis has been many things, but seldom heaven on earth. No, Paradys is a venue of shadows, its own books tell us so. But not now, not for these hours. That is the madness of Paradys. It can be also holy, benign, bountiful, and tender.
Outside a café lit by lanterns, Felion and Smara are randomly but charmingly summoned to join in a bridal feast. Delicious food and drink are given them, gratis, food without stones in it or serpents – and wine, not hemlock.
Later they stray up into a park, and here there is a masquerade. Beings with the heads of beasts and birds, deities, and imps. Smara is given a mask of black feathers tipped with nacre, and Felion a sun mask ruffed with gold. They discover that though they cannot read as yet the writing of Paradis, they know its dances, as if taught in childhood.
All night they drink and dance, and later, under a panther black cedar tree, they kiss like the lovers they wish to become, timidly, sensually, carelessly, caressing each other’s hearts in surprise.
“We can stay here now,” he says.
But Smara is abruptly startled. Perhaps the nightingale singing in the tree has interrupted her thoughts.
“But – not yet.”
“Why not? What do we leave behind?”
“We must go back, one last time.”
“Why?” he says. “Why?”
“I don’t know. But don’t you feel we must?”
“Yes. I feel it.”
“How can we live there?” she says.
“This City takes care of us.”
“Tonight it has,” she says. “But will it, afterwards?”
They stare across the park, from whose grassy floor one or two absorbing graves rear up their slabs. (Those of whom Paradis has not taken care?)
“Our uncle,” Felion says, “trusted himself to this City. I think, in more than one time. He gave himself to it. Let it be cruel, and kind to him. As it wanted.”
Smara sat up. She shivered. “I want to go back.”
“To what?”
“We were born there.”
“All right. Yes. We must.”
They left their masks lying, the bird and the sun. There on the grass among the graves.
It was cold before the dawn, the stars were going out.
“Look,” he said, “down there, there’s the bitch’s street after all. Do you see?”
Smara frowned.
They did not, now, touch at all.
On the grass a cloud had formed, showing them, like a temptation, the way back into hell. But they knew hell. They had got used to hell. They went into the cloud.
The labyrinth was freezing and both of them ran through it.
It took a long time, it seemed like hours, to reach the oval heart. And there, panting and dismayed, they halted.
“Has it gone?”
“The ice bird? No, still there.”
“I don’t mind. It’s nothing.”
They stood on the glacial floor and he let the guttering torch droop.
“I know how we can be safe in the other City,” he said. “We’re the heirs of our uncle. And so is she, this artist. We must kill her, Smara. Then we’ll have her place.”
“Yes,” Smara said. It had seemed to her they would never kill again. But she had been in error. “We’ll poison her,” Smara said, deciding.
Through the labyrinth something roared, and sighed.
They went slowly now, Smara walking just behind Felion. Not careful, not afraid. They were exhausted. The banquet, after starvation, had been too much, for there are those who have died from something like that.
TEN
Paradis
What’s the use of worrying?
It never was worthwhile,
So, pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag,
And smile, smile, smile.
George Asaf
Brassy chrysanthemums were bursting from the flower bed. Black ivy had climbed the pedestal of the Medusa, but not reached, or had avoided, the neck and straining mouth, the protruding tongue of stone, and the petrified snakes.
Thomas the Warrior was tying up flowers to sticks.
Leocadia stood over him. Suddenly, intrusively, he reminded her of her infantile memory of her Uncle Michelot.
“On your feet,” she said briskly. “Soldier.”
And Thomas rose, and stood to a stooped, cramped attention, his chin raised, hands quivering.
“Madame.”
“I want a report, Thomas.”
“Yes, madame. The chemical attack is over. The losses were slight. The suits held up.”
Leocadia raised her brows. Chemical weapons were illegal. Where had they been used and what was he recalling? But it was not this past that mattered. Perhaps he was trying to sidetrack her.
“That’s good. Now tell me about the asylum.”
Thomas relaxed a little, and looked down at her.
“When I was very young,” said Thomas, “a child was eaten alive in the zoo, by a tiger. No one knew how the tiger escaped. Its bars, they said, seemed to melt. It was supposedly destroyed, but not in fact. Someone took it away, it lived in a private house. God knows what meat they fed it. Children, perhaps.”
