by Tanith Lee
The fires of Hell went out, and Heros sat alone there. No friend, no enemy, for whom to exhibit courage, no audience for whom to shine.
After a long time, a feeling of discomfort, spiritual malaise, drove him to his feet. He walked along the shelving greynesses, searching for something, unable to realize what. And as he did so he ceased to walk, began simply to progress.
Calm arrived suddenly. It was like letting drop a ton weight you had been holding on to for years; it was wonderful. And almost immediately on the lightening and the calm began a quickening of interest, a dramatic, pervasive excitement -
Lucien started up - and in that instant was aware he was no longer Lucien, was no longer even he - and that it did not matter. That it was, actually, a great relief.
Simultaneously all the greyness went away. The desert went.
Instead… Here one is presented with the problem of describing a rainbow to those blind from birth, when one is, additionally, oneself as blind. But there is that marvellous beast again, the analogy.
Analogously, then. The small bit of psychic fibre which had been, a few seconds or years ago, the young man Lucien, passionate revolutionary, first-class writer, fairly consistent hysteric, and post-guillotinee, was all at once catapulted out of its self-constructed prison of terrors and miseries, into a garden of sun and flowers and birdsong. No, not Heaven. But so glorious the garden was, and limitless, it would have put Heaven to shame. And over there were mountains to be climbed, and over there seas to be swum, and up there, a library of wisdom with wide-open doors. And most charming of all, drifting here and there in earnest discussion with each other, or merely quietly reposing together, or quite alone yet still together -
others, who were family and friends, thousands of them, the closest
and the best; old rivals to be tussled with, familiar loves to be embraced. And imbuing it all a spirit of gladsome and determined, ferocious curiosity. Of course, it was not like this. Not at all. Yet, it was. Suffice it to say that the soul which had last been Lucien dashed into it with the psychic equivalent to a howl of joy, and was welcomed. And here is one more analogy. Imagine you were rendered voluntarily amnesiac (absurd, but imagine it), and came to believe you were a small wooden post located in a cellar. And as the time went by, you saw the advantages of being a small wooden post, began, adaptable creature that you were, to like it, and so to dislike the idea of being anything else. And then the cellar door opened. And then the amnesia lifted.
Somewhere on the edges of the analogous garden, the soul that had been Lucien met the soul that had been peerless, assured Heros, entering in a bemused, nervous sort of way. And the two souls greeted each other and reassured each other that everything was all right, before dashing off to discover all the things they were now so eager to find out about.
While somewhere close by, close as the bark to the inside of a tree, yet totally distanced, D'Antoine 'turned' again in his 'sleep', muttered something, metaphorically, and nodded off into oblivion once more.
That oblivion of his was turning out rather easy. Had she known, Lucette might have envied it. But as it was, her own sleepless journey reminded her of the tasks of Psyche in the Greek myth, a story Lucien had once told her, at the Luxembourg Gardens, and which had retained for her ever after the shattering poignancy of that time. In this way, it sometimes seemed a malign fate, even a malign goddess, hindered her.
Sometimes, the perimeter of her vision conveyed the image of a flock of fierce golden sheep with terrible teeth, or else she seemed to be kneeling, sorting grains on the ground. Eventually, she toiled with a pitcher up a steep, featureless hill. The sky was misty now, no longer blue but a colourless almost-grey. She too had entered the region of limbo, though she did not know it. She did know she must fill the pitcher at the black stream of Lethe, which brought forgetfulness, which, in effect, took all awareness of self away. Only by filling the pitcher, fulfilling the task, could she ever hope to find Lucien.
Unlike the myth, there was no opposition at the stream. As she bent
towards the water, Lucette saw her reflection, just as she had seen it, living, in so many mirrors, even in a mirror that had also, once, reflected the face of Marie Antoinette. And in that moment, Lucette felt a pang of compassion for all lovely young discarded bodies, the white skin, the sunlit hair - for they were of no more use, nor hers to her, and now she understood as much.
Next time, she thought. But, next time, what? Then, letting fall the pitcher, and letting it vanish, too, she lifted a handful of the black water of forgetfulness, and with a last wistful thought of love, she drank it.
The incorporeal state did not seem quite right to the one who had been Lucette. She - it - was young, yet old enough that intimations reached through of one day when incorporeality would seem pleasant and informative, and another day, centuries in the future, when incorporeality would be yearned for. Meanwhile, these conditions were imperfect, yet they were not, after all, alien. Then, the young soul advanced or circled or perhaps did not move at all, and in doing so found the soul which had been Lucien.
Though neither was as they had been, no longer Lucien, no longer Lucette, no longer male or female, even so, the aura of love and kindness they had shared still bonded them, attracted them both to the other's vicinity. But there were many such bonds now open to each of them. They came together now, and would come together often, and touch in the way souls do touch, which is naturally the rainbow and the blind again. But since there was no loneliness and no rejection and no anguish where now they were, they did not need to cling together, a single unit of two, against a hostile environment. For this environment was benign, and it and they were one.
In this story, you see, the lovers do not join for ever to violin accompaniment on a cloud of mortal love. The lovers are no longer mortal, and there are no violins, no clouds. It is difficult not to experience annoyance or mournfulness, or even fear, that individual liaisons do not need to persist, in frantic intensity, there where the love is all-pervasive, calm and unconditional. We must try not to lament or to be irritated by them. Only note how happy they are, even if 'happy' is an analogous word.
While, somewhere close as a hand to a glove, D'Antoine 'turns' over and finally wakes, and is no longer D'Antoine. The lengthy sleep of nothingness has acted like a sponge, and wiped away physical identity. Though the emerging soul remembers it, of course, as all of them remember who they have been, plan who they will be (no unfinished business is ever left unfinished; there will be other work, other loves, other springs), it is now a garment held in the hands, not the substance of the self. The true self is quite free. It leaps forward into liberty with an analogous roar of delight and resolution.
The resonance of such roars is a commonplace of the astral. Just as the sound of tears, the cry of pain, and the falling crash of the guillotine are a commonplace, here.
Meow
I first wrote this story when I was about eighteen. In later years, actual experience led me to rewrite, awarding more Americanism, more light - and inevitably more darkness.
The denouement, however, and the last line, remain the same.
I was young, last year. I was twenty-six. That was the year I met Cathy.
I was writing a novel that year, too. Maybe you never read it.
Midnight and four AM, five or six nights a week, I used to do my magician act at the King of Cups, on Aster. It paid some bills, and it was fun, that act. Even more fun when you suddenly look out over the room, and there's a girl with hair like white wine, and the flexible fluid shape of a ballet dancer, looking back at you, hanging on every breath you take.
Later, around four thirty, when we were sitting in a corner together, I saw there was a little gold cat pendant in the hollow of her throat.
Later still, when we'd walked back, all across the murmuring frosty pre-dawn city, with the candy-wrapper leaves blowing and crackling underfoot, I brushed the cat aside so I could kiss her neck.
I might have thought the trouble could have been over money. You know the sort of thing - well-off girl meets male parasite. Somehow we worked it out, keeping our distance where we had to, not keeping it where we didn't. We were still finding the way, and she was shy enough, it was kind of nice to go slowly. But, she did own this graystone house, which her parents had left her when they went blazing off in a great big car and killed themselves. She'd been sixteen then. She'd just made it into adulthood before they ditched life and her. Somehow, I'd always resented them. They'd done a pretty good job of tying her up in their own hang-ups, before they split and gave her another one.
The house was still their house, too. It was jammed full of their trendy knick-knacks and put-ons, and their innovative furniture you couldn't sit on or eat off. And it was also full of five cats.
Cathy had acquired the cats, one by one, after her parents died. Or the cats had acquired her. After that, the house was also theirs. They personally engraved the woodwork, and put expert fringes on the drapes. And on anything else handy, like me. You're right. I had a slight phobia. Maybe something about the fanged snake effect of a cat's head, if you forget the ears. Cathy was always telling me how beautiful the cats were, and I was always trying to duck the issue.
And the cats. They knew, of course, about my unadmiration, I'd have sworn that right from the start. They'd leap out on me and biff me with their handfuls of nails. They'd jump on the couch behind my shoulders and bite. When Cathy and I made love, I'd shut the bedroom door, and the cats would crouch outside, ripping the rug. I'd never dared make it with her where they could see and get at me.
I'd spot their eyes in the early morning darkness when I brought her home, ten disembodied dots of creme de menthe neon spilled over the air. Demons would manifest like that. Ever seen a cat with a mouse or a bird? I used to have a dumb dove in my act, called Bernie, and one day Bernie got out on the sidewalk. He was such a klutz, he thought everyone was his damn friend, even the cat that came up and put its teeth through his back. No. I didn't like cats much.
One night it was Cathy's birthday, and we had to be in at the house.
Cathy was rather strange about her birthdays, as if the ghosts of Mom and Pop walked that night, and maybe they did. I'd tried to get her to come out, but she wouldn't, so we sat in the white-and-sepia sitting room, under the abstract that looked like three melting strawberries, and ate tuna fish and drank wine. I'd managed to get the cash and buy her the jade bracelet that had sat in a store window the past five weeks, crying to encircle her wrist. When I'd given it to her, she too cried for half a second. It was often harder to get closer to her when she was emotional than at any other time. By now the jade was warm as her own smooth skin, and the wine not much colder. The cats sat round us in a ring, except when Cathy went out to the kitchen; then they followed her with weird screechings. The cats always responded to activity in the kitchen in the same way, even to something so small as the dim, far-off clink of a plate. When the house was empty of humans, I could imagine every pan and pot holding its breath for fear of attracting attention.
Finally, Cathy stopped playing with her tuna, and gave it to the cats.
'Oh, look, Stil,' she said, gazing at them Madonna-like as they fell in the dish. 'Just look.'
'I'm looking.'
'No you're not,' she said. 'You're glaring.'
I lifted the guitar from the couch and started to play some music for us, and the cats sucked and chewed louder, to show me what they thought of it.
We sang Happy Birthday to the tune of an old Stones number, and some other stuff. Then we went up to the bedroom and I shut the door. She cried again, afterwards, but she held on to me as if afraid of being swept away out to sea. I was the first human thing she'd really come across since her parents left her. That night at the King had been going to be her experiment in failure. She thought she'd fail at communicating, at being gregarious, and she'd meant to fail, I guess.
That would give her the excuse for never trying again. But somehow she'd found me. I didn't really think about the responsibility on my side of all this. It was all too dreamy, too easy.
A couple of the cats noisily puked back the tuna on the Picasso rug outside.
'Why don't you,' I said, 'leave this godawful house. Let's take an apartment together.'
'You have an apartment.'
'I have a room. I mean space.'
'You can't afford it.'
'I might.'
'You want to live off me,' she said. The first time she ever said it.
'Oh look,' I said, 'if that's what you think.'
'I didn't mean it.'
'Sure you did. Just don't mean it again. Next year MGM'll be making a movie of my book.'
'It isn't even published yet.'
'So, it will be.'
'I'd better go and clean up after the cats,' she said.
'Why don't you train them to clean up after themselves?'
We lay awhile, and pictured the cats manipulating mop, pail and disinfectant. But somewhere in me, I was saying to them: If there are any parasites round here, I know just who. Make the most of it, you gigolos. Your days are numbered.
I really did have it all worked out. Cathy was going to sell the house and I was going to sell the book. We were going to take an apartment, and I was going to keep us in a style to which I was unaccustomed. Cats aren't so hot ten floors up in the air. And five of them, in those conditions, are just not on. Of course, I knew she wouldn't leave them without a roof, and I'd already become a used cat salesman. But suddenly it seemed everyone I knew had one cat, two cats or three. Except Genevieve, who had a singularly xenophobic dog. Everybody, even Genevieve, told me cats are bee-ootiful, and I should let Cathy educate me over my phobia.
Then someone got interested in the book. Things seemed to be
coming along, so I sat up from five in the morning until eleven the next night a few times, and finished the beast with heavy hatchet blows from the typer.
I got ready to broach the apartment idea again to Cathy. I began to dream crazy schemes. Like renting out Cathy's parents' house, and whoever took it on got the cats as a bonus, while we had the cats to visit us twice a week. Or buying the cats a ranch in Texas. Or slipping them cyanide in their Tiger-Cookies.
I was fantasizing because I basically understood Cathy wouldn't agree. And she didn't agree.
'No, Stil, I can't,' she said. 'Can't and won't. You're not making me leave my cats.'
'I need you,' I said, striking a pose like Errol Flynn. It wasn't only the pose that wasn't one hundred percent true. I was wondering how exactly I did analyze my feelings for her, the first time I'd had to do that, when, brittle and hard as dry cement, she said: 'You just need my money.'
'Oh Jesus.'
'You want to use me.'
'Yeah, yeah. Of course I do.'
I stood and wondered now if I was only demanding we live together because I wanted her to choose between me and the zoo. Did I really want to be with her that much, this white-faced maniac with green electric eyes?
'You bastard,' she whispered. 'Dad always told me I'd meet men like you.'
And she pulled off the jade bracelet and flung it at me, the way girls fling their engagement rings in old B movies. Like a dope, I neatly caught it. Then she turned and ran.
I stood and looked at the sidewalk where the colored lights of the King of Cups were going like a migraine attack. I now had the third wonder, wondering what I felt. But I felt too numb to feel anything.
Then I went into the club and perpetrated the worst goddam magician act I hope never to live through again.
Two weeks later Carthage Press bought my book, with an option on two more. I got a standing ovation at the King, got drunk, slept with a girl I can't remember. Three weeks later, Genevieve, who reads Tarot at the King, came over and stood looking at me as I was feeding the den
tal-floss-white rabbit I'd just accumulated to put in the act as a cliche.
'You know, Stil,' said Genevieve, gazing up at me from her clever, paintable, lookable-at face, and all of her five foot one inch, 'you are going all to hell.'
'I'd better pack a bag, then.'
'I mean it, Stil,' said Genevieve, helping me post the rabbit full of lettuce. 'The act is lousy.'
'Gee thanks, Genevieve,' I gushed.
'It's technically perfect, and it's getting better, and it's about dead as Julius Caesar.'
'Gosh, is he dead! How'd it happen, hit and run?'
'No, I'm not laughing,' said Genevieve, not laughing. 'I want to know where that girl is, the blond girl.' She waited a while, and when I didn't say anything, Genevieve said: 'Let's get this straight. I'm worried about her. She was on a knife-edge, and you were easing her off it. Now I guess she's back on the knife-edge. You're not usually so obtuse.'
'Not that it's any of your business, but we had nothing left to say to each other.'
To coin a phrase. That's why the act stinks. That's why the next novel will stink.'
'Genevieve, I honestly don't know if I want to see her again or I don't.'
'I know,' said Genevieve. She smiled, riffled the cards, and picked the Lovers straight out of the pack. 'Just,' said Genevieve, 'go knock on her door, and see what happens to you when she opens it.'
I went out, to the pay-phone in the Piper Building down the block. I didn't realize till I came to put in the dime I still had a leaf of lettuce in my hand.
I didn't think anyone would answer. Or maybe one of the cats would take the call, and spit. Then there was her voice.