ARC D’X

by Steve Erickson

  “At the archives,” he nodded, “about three weeks ago.”

  “Yes, of course,” she laughed. “I mean, did we ever meet before then?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Do you want to have children?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Because we were talking about children.”

  “Tedi wants to have children.”

  “Does that mean you want to have children?”

  “Uh.” He took another drink of water. “I promised.”

  “You promised?”

  “Tedi. My wife.”

  “That you would have children?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because she wants it?”

  “Yes.”

  She looked toward the front door. “You should be sure about what you want,” she said resolutely.

  “Maybe you’re never sure what you want,” he said. “When I got married I thought, No one’s ever sure until they do it. If you wait until you’re sure, you never do it.” He realized he had just made his marriage sound less like a capitulation and more like a grand gamble.

  “Are you sure now?”

  “No.”

  “But more sure than you were.”

  “No.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean— Well, it’s strange to be having this conversation.”

  “I should probably go.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “What for?”

  “I think I said the wrong thing.”

  “No. I came by to say I’m sorry about the other day.”

  “We’re both sorry a lot.”

  “Well, let’s agree not to be sorry anymore.”

  “All right,” she laughed.

  The altar alert came on.

  They were both startled by it. “Is it that late?” she said.

  “I forgot about it,” he said. “Most of the time I’m working in the archives and I just hear it in the distance.”

  “I guess all the priests don’t have to run into their little rooms like the rest of us,” she smiled.

  “No,” he agreed. She got up from the couch and walked over to the back wall and opened the altar-room door. “Your husband and child?” he said.

  “Who knows,” she said. She stood in the open doorway. “You can come in if you want.”

  He got up and went over to the room, and she closed the door behind them.

  In the dark he felt, with a lurch, what he thought was a spider’s web brushing his face. But it was a string, which Sally pulled to turn on the light overhead. This altar room was even smaller than most. On the floor against one wall was a mattress. There was a pillow. There was a little pink horse with a saddle and long green hair, and children’s books in the corner. There were a couple of other books that didn’t appear the sort Primacy approved; Sally retrieved them quickly as though to hide them from view, though there wasn’t anywhere to hide them. There was also a half-drunk bottle of wine, which she now regarded with mortification. She glanced at Etcher.

  “Let’s drink some wine,” he said.

  “Really?” she said. They sat on the mattress. She handed him the bottle. An altar was in the corner. It was a very unorthodox altar, like the jewelry Etcher had seen in the front room, filled with primitive icons and forbidden fetishes he didn’t recognize. In the center of the altar was a black wooden box with a rose carved on the top. Etcher had been studying the altar awhile when she said, “Probably not what the Church has in mind.”

  “It’s not your regulation altar,” Etcher admitted. He took a long drink from the bottle. It was the first drink he’d had in several weeks, and he found very satisfactory all the possibilities that washed into his mind with the wine. He realized he’d been sitting there staring at the altar for some time when he said, “We forgot to hide the jewelry.”

  “It’s just jewelry,” Sally said, somewhat defensively.

  For the first time in a long time, the tide of wine brought the possibilities into Etcher’s mind rather than taking them out. “I’m not the Church,” he said to her.

  “What?”

  He offered her the bottle and she took a drink. “I’m not a priest. I don’t care about the books,” he said, nodding at the books she had tried to hide. “I don’t care about the wine. I buy my own from a bootlegger.” He waved it all away. “Don’t care about the altar either,” he said, amazed at what the one drink had done to his head. “Do the cops come out to Redemption?”

  “Every once in a while you hear of someone put on report or taken in. No one seems to know if it’s an official Church zone or not.”

  “That’s because the Church doesn’t know if it’s an official Church zone. According to the Church everything’s theoretically an official Church zone.” Etcher took the bottle back from her. “They’re of two minds. The first is that it’s easier to keep things under control if they try to control the zone, and the second is that it’s easier to keep things under control if they leave the zone alone.” He looked at the door. “I gather your husband doesn’t take it too seriously.”

  “The only thing Gann takes seriously is Gann.”

  “Will he be back soon?” Etcher asked, still looking at the door.

  “I don’t know. He may have gone to the theater.”

  “Where’s the theater?”

  “In the Arboretum.”

  “He took your daughter to the Arboretum?” The slush of the wine in his head was settling just enough for him to take another drink. “Is that a good idea?”

  “It’s a good idea if Gann thinks it’s a good idea.” She said, “I don’t mind the searches. I don’t mind the seclusion from everything. Gann never comes in. Sometimes I bring Polly.” She smiled and held up the pink horse with the green hair.

  He said, “I like the box.”

  “What?”

  “The box.” He reached over toward the black wooden box in the altar, then drew back.

  “It’s all right,” she said, handing him the box, “you can look at it.” He held the box and opened it; it was empty. “I haven’t figured out what to put inside.”

  He ran his fingers over the rose carved on top. “It’s very beautiful,” he said. It was voluptuous in its blackness. At that moment he could smell her next to him; he adjusted his glasses. “Where did you get it?”

  “I don’t remember. I thought I had lost it, I thought I’d given it to someone. And then I came home one day and there it was.” She asked, “What’s it like up in the Ice?”

  “I haven’t been in a long time. I had to leave.”

  “Do you have family there?”

  “Yes.”

  “I guess you don’t want to talk about it,” she said.

  “Everything’s white except for the forests, which are dark and go on forever. Everyone’s white, with white skin and white hair, except me. I always had the feeling it was because my hair was black that I couldn’t see, that all the color of my vision rushed up into my hair, which was the flag of my blindness.” He added, “I was in love.”

  “I want to live in the Ice someday.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well.”

  “What?”

  “Just…” he shrugged. “Is that where Madison Hemings is?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Actually, I assume Madison Hemings is dead.”

  “Who was he?”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to find out.”

  “But how do you know there was a Madison Hemings?”

  “I inherited some money from him. The postman brought it, like the propaganda newsletter every month, or the tax bill. It’s all gone now.”

  “The money?”

  “It just came in the mail.”

  “But how do you live?”

  “With difficulty.”

  “Does your husband make any money?”

  “No.”

  “But someone must be supporting your daughter.”

&nbs
p; “I’ve been working on the jewelry. It’s hard when there’s Polly, she’s at that age where she wants attention all the time. She’s just beginning to figure out she isn’t a baby anymore, and she doesn’t like it. It’s easier being a baby. It’s easier being helpless.”

  “But her father.”

  “Her father loves her. I wouldn’t want to give you the impression he doesn’t. He wanted Polly the moment I told him she was inside me.”

  “You can’t make the money and take care of the house and your daughter all at the same time.”

  “It’s hard.”

  “It’s not right,” he said furiously, feeling the wine.

  “I’ve been thinking about trying to get a stall in the Market. Do you know how I do that?”

  “You have to apply to the Church for a license, like getting a unit.”

  “Would I have to go through the police?”

  “One way or another the application winds up going through the police.” He said, “Perhaps I could help you.”

  She said, “They think I killed a man.”

  He was less shocked than skeptical, having read the police file. “You’d be in jail if they thought that,” he said.

  “Maybe they aren’t sure,” she said.

  “They don’t have to be sure. They can put you in jail because they’re as sure as they are unsure, or as sure as they want to be. They can put you in jail because they like the idea. They don’t like the idea or you’d be in jail.”

  “I believe I did it.”

  “What?”

  “I believe I killed him.” She took a drink from the bottle of wine.

  “Why do you think so?” he finally asked, not sure what else to say.

  “I remember doing it. I’m sure I remember. I remember the knife. I know it was mine. I remember holding it in my sleep.”

  “You remember a knife?”

  “Yes.”

  “You remember killing him with a knife?”

  “Yes.”

  “But he wasn’t killed with a knife.”

  For a moment it didn’t register, then she turned to him. “What?”

  “He wasn’t killed with a knife.”

  “How do you know that?” she said.

  “I saw the police file. It’s how I found you. He wasn’t killed with a knife. He was knocked over the head.”

  She began to cry.

  “Hey.” She continued crying, shaking her head. “I’m sorry,” he said, a little baffled.

  She shook her head. “Why didn’t they tell me? Why did they let me go on thinking I’d done it? Didn’t they know how I felt?”

  “Sure they knew how you felt.”

  “They didn’t care.”

  He felt curiously spent, having divulged to her a secret he didn’t know he had. “This is the Church we’re talking about.”

  “It’s hateful.” She sat in betrayed silence.

  He said, “I stole a book.”

  “What?” she finally answered, preoccupied.

  “They keep it locked away in a vault they never open. It’s a history book. But it’s… another history.” On the mattress he slumped beside her. “The history of our secrets.” He was suddenly tired; he closed his eyes. “The history inside us. And I stole it.” He closed his eyes, waiting for her to say something, and when she didn’t he slowly let himself go to the wine’s languid calm. He was only half aware that the glasses fell from his face. He kept waiting for her to say something. He had told her about the book because he didn’t want to leave her alone with her crime. His body was tense but he let go of that as well; he knew he was collapsing against her and he tried to hold himself back. For a moment he opened his eyes and then he shut them again.

  He was only distantly aware that it had become dark around him. The light beyond the lids of his eyes went black, and he heard the clicking of the light above him in the altar room, the light attached to the string that he thought at first was a web brushing his face. In the rise and fall of her breath next to him he came to believe that, far away, he heard the sound of the sea against the cliff’s. He knew he’d fallen asleep when he didn’t hear the all-clear siren but rather remembered it from moments or hours before. “It’s the all-clear,” he murmured so long after it happened that even he was vaguely aware his murmuring made no sense. “Doesn’t matter,” he told himself, “not in Redemption. Cops don’t come to Redemption anyway.”

  “Redemption,” he finally heard her say in the dark, “is the Church name.”

  “Yes…”

  “Desire,” he heard her say in the dark, “is our name.”

  He nodded, though there was no way she could see that in the dark. “It’s dark,” he said.

  “Do you want me to turn the light back on?”

  “No.” He fumbled for his glasses.

  “They’re here.” He felt her hand him his glasses.

  “Don’t turn on the light.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Are they back?” He meant her husband and child. He couldn’t hear anything beyond the altar-room door.

  She knew whom he meant. “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t hear anything.”

  “We would probably hear Polly if they were back.”

  “Can you see anything?”

  “Not in the dark.”

  “Like me.”

  “Maybe someday we’ll go together to the Ice,” she said.

  “All right.”

  “I meant to say that before. But it didn’t seem right.”

  “It seems right.”

  “It didn’t seem right, considering everything.”

  “Considering everything, it seems right.”

  “You should be sure of what you want.”

  “I know.”

  “I mean, about having a child. It’s too big not to be sure.” He nodded. She couldn’t see him nodding in the dark. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “There’s something monstrous about my life.”

  “Of course not.”

  “The bigger my life is, the smaller I am in it.”

  “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  He dropped his glasses beside him and fumbled until he found her hand.

  “I’ve been owned by everyone,” she said, and in the dark he heard the resolution in her voice. “I’ve been owned by this one and that one, my whole life. And the biggest thing I ever did was to free myself. I did it with a knife. I cut myself loose. And now I find out I didn’t do it after all. Do you understand? I find out I didn’t do it. You’ve freed me today of the burden of having killed a man. But if I didn’t kill him, it means I’m still a slave. God damn everyone who’s ever owned me,” he heard her say. “The police and the priests, and Gann, and the one before him.”

  “The one before him?”

  “Why do I feel close to you? I feel close to you, heart to heart.”

  “I know.”

  “Redemption is their word,” she said.

  He pulled her to him in the dark, or perhaps she pulled him to her. It was better in the dark, that neither one of them would ever know who had first gone to the other. At first he couldn’t quite dispel from his mind the idea that she could see him in the dark even though he couldn’t see her, because he didn’t have his glasses and he couldn’t get over it, the idea that without his glasses he was either blind or invisible. But now that she pulled him to her he knew he wasn’t invisible.

  In the black altar room the air was thick with wine. He clutched her dress; its tones of earth and ash and blood, not unlike the color of her skin, ran between his fingers. The feeling of its cotton, not unlike the touch of her body, ran through his hands. His head pounded with wine and blood. For a moment he thought of the glasses, he worried they would he smashed underneath, and then the idea of it—his smashed glasses—went straight to his head like wine and blood. When he kissed her he emptied wine and blood and the freedom of smashed glasses into her mouth.

  The air was thick with possessi
on. The sound of the wine bottle against the wall was thick with defiance; and then the crash of the altar in the corner, though it sounded very far away, much farther away than the corner, though it sounded like the distant collapse of another altar in another country, was thick with submission. In the dark he felt her breasts fall from her dress. They fell so heavily it shocked him. He wanted to pull the string on the light above and assure himself it was she. But he knew that even with the light on there would be no assurance because he couldn’t have seen her anyway, his eyes spinning like wild blue suns in the sudden light, all their vision leaked into the black of his hair. He caught her beneath him. As he’d been stunned by the heavy fall of her breasts, he was now struck by the speed of her nakedness: possession was everywhere. It opened itself to him, bared its wrists.

  When he took her in the dark of the altar’s ruins they both knew it was more than she’d ever given and more than anyone had ever taken, and that neither was enough. She was touched that Etcher would make love to her so tenderly but she felt no choice except to insist on ferocity: possession was everywhere, and now she demanded it. She’d be restrained by him or, if he couldn’t restrain her, she’d devour him. In their struggle either her best nature, the part of her that spent her whole life coveting freedom, would triumph or her true nature, the part of her that spent her whole life choosing slavery, would abide; and in this moment in the dark she would accept either the triumph or the abiding, whichever it might be, as the truth of who she was, until once again her other nature stirred inside her and she wrestled with its relentless nagging. “You,” she said, because she couldn’t remember his name, “oh you,” she said, waiting for him to claim her. But he wouldn’t do that. The part of him that would enslave her was overwhelmed by the part of him that would free her, if it was up to him to free her, which of course it was not: it had always been up to her to free herself. So he felt her grip him inside, he felt her contractions swirl around his invasion of her; and he would have thought, in the dark, that his hair had gone white, the wine and blood and freedom of smashed glasses rushing to the only moment of him that was real, lashing the uterine passage to that place inside her where nothing is possessed and nothing possesses.

  The tears rolled down her face. He felt them in her hair. No light penetrated the black of the altar room, instead the black rushed from her. It poured from the middle of her, more blackness than she’d ever believed was hers, the truth of her rushing out even as the blackness of the altar room became wan with the tears that rolled down her face. It was only at that moment she realized her wrists were tangled in the string of the light above; and now at the moment she slipped from its bondage, in the jerk of her wrists, the room’s light flashed on and off long enough to leave a small rip in her memory through which she couldn’t bear to look, even as her lover saw everything. And there was that suspension again, not unlike the one they had felt when the all-clear siren had sounded. Everything was still, the dark was clear of wine and possession and choices; neither of them could be certain she had said she loved him or he had said he loved her, but all that mattered was that he was sure he had said it and heard it, and she was sure she had said it and heard it, and both were sure it was true. And in the dark there was no telling whether it was wine or tears or blood or the torrent of blackness that passed between them, but in the slick of their love they slipped into each other; and only much later did he hear a little voice on the other side of the altar-room door. “Mommy,” it said, and started to open the door, and then another voice, a man’s voice, said, “Don’t open that, Polly.”