The Secret Book of Paradys

by Tanith Lee

  He too killed desultorily, with the strangler’s noose. But he was not interested in the activity now.

  The idea of the labyrinth, and the city beyond, had come to obsess him.

  He thought about the parallel endlessly, visualizing for himself how it might look, its heights and depths, its river – for surely, like Paradise, it had one.

  His own room was in a hovel. He preferred this, he disliked possessions, for they seemed to gain a hold over him. To the clockwork cat, for example, he had had a loyalty, insisting on trying to make it work, to carry out its old antics of play and purring. But the cat was stubborn. It had “died.” Smara only used its leftovers for a distraction, it did not disturb her.

  In Felion’s room, which was in a ruined building near a quay once known as Angel, Felion kept a hammock to sleep in and a steel safe in which lay his weapons, a few fragmented books, and some clothes. Across the door, which was itself off its hinges, stretched an electrical device that kept out intruders. One day, probably, this too would break.

  Felion stayed in his room or walked by the river.

  Gigantic rats, quite beautiful, but savage, prowled the edges of the water. Sometimes Felion fed them with parts of bodies, but not often. He did not want the rats to become a responsibility.

  After two weeks, when Smara was still locked away, he returned to his uncle’s labyrinth.

  As he walked forward, he counted the turns of the ice wall. He was just inside the fifth turning when the first vision appeared.

  Felion stopped, staring.

  Like Smara, or as Smara had claimed it, it seemed to him he saw his uncle. But not in a garden. The old man was shambling through an alley, an alley of the elsewhere place, with no mist, and only a light on him that came down from the sky. Felion looked up, and so he saw it, the moon by night.

  It was the moon – round as the perfection of all circles, russet as parchment, bright – it was the moon, not his uncle, that pulled Felion into the vision.

  And the image did not burst or fade. It stayed whole about him.

  He was brave, blasé. He thought, I can get back, in and out as I want. I’m somewhere he told me not to go. So what?

  Felion followed his uncle along the alley in the moonlight and so up onto higher ground.

  It seemed to Felion his uncle was younger, but that might only be an effect of the amazing darkness. Felion heard his uncle’s feet on the cobbles and in slicks of mud. Heard his own footfalls.… But the uncle of Felion did not turn. He seemed, the uncle, immersed in some dream, now and then gazing up at the moon. Just as Felion did.

  Smara, you should have seen – you will see.

  There was a bar or drinking shop up the slope beyond the alley, and Felion’s uncle went in there. Felion stalled. Then he, too, made to go in. There was a sign hung over the door: A half-transparent figure hurried over a hill, under which was a rim of light; a ghost fleeing the dawn, as in Paradise, maybe, it would not have to? On a wall in the picture curled something with the black head of a bird. Felion did not understand this sign, nor the writing beneath. The letters of it were like those of Paradise, but not the language. His uncle had not warned him that in Paradis they would have to learn to speak a foreign tongue.

  Inside the bar, under the beams, Felion’s uncle sat drinking and writing on a tablet of paper.

  The clothing of the people here was not quite like the garments Felion had glimpsed from the artist’s house. It was, evidently, a different time.

  From another table, a gang of evil-looking humans raised their glasses to Felion’s uncle.

  “Here’s health to you, poet!”

  Felion withdrew, back into the street.

  In the alley a women was selling herself to a man. As Felion went by, she smiled at him, over her customer’s bowed skull. “Only wait a moment.”

  It came to him that after all he understood their speech, only their writing was incomprehensible.

  Felion reached the end of the alley, and walked back, as he meant to, into the labyrinth of ice.

  How easy. He must assure Smara again of how straightforward the adventure was.

  No other visions come.

  He reached the heart.

  He made himself look up, and there that bird thing was, still shaped out of the ice.

  Across the murky floor had been scattered some scraps of brown sugar, or glass.

  Felion turned around. He did not want to go on without his sister. He would have to bully her again. He wanted her to see the moon.

  He walked back out of the maze, and nothing happened. It was as if he had cheated or mocked it, and he expected trouble, but there was none.

  Below the hundred steps leading to his uncle’s house, Felion found a woman and, with a kind word, strangled her abruptly. He took her earrings of pearl for his sister and put them through the receptor of her door, impatiently, when still she would not let him in.

  A day after, they met by accident in the nave of the cathedral. No one else was there but for a corpse lying in a side chapel, unknown by sight to either of them.

  “Come back into the other city.”

  “I went there,” she said, “in a dream.”

  “That isn’t the same,” he said.

  Smara shook her head sternly. “How can we know? I saw her studio again, by night. I was outside and I opened the door. Someone was sleeping there, but I didn’t go in. I stayed outside. There was an elevator.… Downstairs there were lawns and tall trees. In a lighted window was a man peering out at me. I ran back again. There was,” she added, “a house of glass with a vine of fruit in it. But the vine was dead and the glass had broken.”

  “Was the glass brown?” he said.

  “I don’t think it was.”

  “Come with me,” he said.

  Smara said, “Not today. Not yet.”

  SEVEN

  Paradis

  The north wind doth blow,

  And we shall have snow.

  Nursery Rhyme

  Hot summer light: The room seemed arid, and larger than before, and Leocadia sat with her robe across her lap, examining the tear at its hem. She must have got out of the bed and wandered around the chamber, and caught the silk on something. On what? Some shred of broken glass the mechanical device had not cleared? (During the night the second broken glass had also been cleared up, the glass she had dropped when she saw a black pillar with a beaked dagger of head standing there across the room.)

  The panel that supplied music and told the time had also a small button to summon the attendant.

  Summoned, the girl in the dark uniform now knocked and entered. It was always the same girl. Or could it be that they simply employed a number of girls who closely resembled each other, sisters perhaps?

  “Yes, mademoiselle? Would you like a cooked breakfast? There are some excellent rolls, just made –”

  “No, I don’t want breakfast. I want to see one of the doctors.”

  “I understand, mademoiselle. Are you feeling worse?”

  “Worse. You mean, I’m always ill, so now I must be worse. I’m neither. Duval will do. Or Leibiche. Even Saume, probably. Not Van Orles.”

  The maid – one thought of her as a maid, rather than a jailor – smiled. “Very well, mademoiselle. I’ll take your message. But I can’t promise anything. The doctors are always very busy.”

  When she was gone, Leocadia went to her refrigerator. She opened it quickly. Chill air smoked out, winter in little.

  Last night the refrigerator had been warm and she had basked against it.

  Now she poured out vodka, and drew forth a long sliver of white cheese.

  If the temperature of the refrigerator had failed, the food would be spoiled, and it was not.

  Had she still been dreaming? The warmth, the apparition? No, for another of the glasses was missing, the one she had dropped in startlement.

  Leocadia glanced aside. Nothing was disturbed, no shards of glass on the floor. Her canvases, removed by Van Orles when
she was out, were still missing.

  He must be amused, gratified. All her painting materials left to her, and no means for their use. Of course, even such a fool would know what this would do to her.

  If one of the other doctors came, doubtless he would have been told Leocadia herself had demanded the subtraction of the canvases, or made some threat having to do with them. It would be unwise to accuse Van Orles of anything, let alone report his graceless lechery.

  How many, trapped here, had submitted, to him or to some other? And would she have to prostitute herself to get her canvases back? After all, anything could be taken away from her, a reason could always be found, since she was insane.

  All afternoon, no one had visited. Nor at five o’clock, the usual time.

  Leocadia went down into the garden.

  No one was there, either.

  The summerhouse and flower bed, empty. A pigeon flew away from the Medusa’s head at Leocadia’s approach.

  The lawns and walk were vacant, and across the grass, through the trees, the buildings of the madhouse were like old rocks in a desert.

  Penguin Gin, Leocadia thought, Penguin Gin. Drink it up, it will –

  Leocadia could not recall, out in the garden, where she had left the antique bottle with its square neck and top, its label of ice floes and bird.

  She felt almost afrighted, a kind of pang.

  Leocadia made herself move slowly back toward the Residence – someone might be watching.

  When she gained her room, the bottle was standing on her worktable. Had she put it there? Had it been there all the time?

  Leocadia picked up the bottle and examined it, an archaeologist with a flask of Egyptian pottery, some tiny god incised upon it.

  Drink it up, it will –

  Maddening, a rhyme that did not conclude.

  Maddening.

  Of course, possibly they watched her in her room, in the same way that unseen sounds and unheard lights threaded through it. But then again, if they had decided to keep clear of her – some campaign of theirs, or else some ploy of his – probably they would monitor her response but not interfere.

  She felt a consoling violence as she prepared the wall beyond the book alcove.

  The best of the light fell here, almost as good as the spot where the easel balanced.

  There would be difficulties, but they must be met in the nature of challenges rather than of barriers.

  The walls had always annoyed her. The pale gray surfaces without texture, against which she saw the motes in her eyes.

  To change the wall, smother it in shadows and densities, illusions and images, that was a fair return.

  And whatever else, unlike canvas and oiled paper, the plaster, the bricks and mortar, could not be taken away from her.

  She covered a large area, larger than any canvas she had ever attempted.

  Then, leaving it to dry, she took the gin bottle to the ivy window and studied it again.

  The next day, Leocadia walked around the asylum grounds and across to the old buildings.

  She patrolled their alleys and looked up at their windows. She paused in their courtyards, listening.

  She did not come on the great teetering rubbish tip – either it had vanished, or she had chosen the wrong entry.

  Leocadia saw and heard nothing.

  There was no one else about, as on the previous day, except that, coming back, she beheld Thomas the Warrior in his flower bed.

  She spoke to him.

  He took no notice.

  “The silence is broken,” said Leocadia. “You talked to me, at some length.”

  Thomas paid no attention.

  In the summerhouse, Mademoiselle Varc lay sleeping, and Leocadia did not try to wake her.

  Returned to her room, Leocadia drew across the white expanse of the prepared wall the guideline of a horizon. Here the snow would end against the silver of the glaciers. And here, below, a penguin would stand, comic and baroque, like one note of music played too loud. She began to sketch it in. It was tall.

  Van Orles had not thought to remove the finished canvases, although she might have painted over these. How had he known she would not? Was he clever after all?

  She stared at the ship that spilled fruit, and on the sand beside the shells the white thing lay, which now she recognized. It was a snowball.

  The hot light made the snow of the wall very rich and enticing. And in the same way the brown glass showing through the label of the bottle made that snowscape also alluring and warm. Warm as the refrigerator.

  White snow gentle as a young summer.

  Leocadia drank wine, and let fly a tuft of darkness on the drawn penguin’s daggered head.

  EIGHT

  Paradys

  But had I wist, before I kissed,

  That love had been sae ill to win,

  I had locked my heart in a case o’ gowd,

  And pinned it wi’ a siller pin.

  Ballard

  Every day about noon, Dr. Volpe toured his kindgom, the lunatic asylum. This gave him a feeling of uneasy and strange power, which he confirmed for himself as the sense of duty. He always hoped that nothing had gone wrong, that none of them had become violent or terribly ill. He liked them to be docile, sitting or wandering about in the straw of the large white rooms. Some nodded or rocked or swatted invisible insects, some sang quietly. These aberrations were normal and he found them almost soothing. The bad smell of confined bodies or those who had messed themselves he was accustomed to. Snuff taking had dulled his nose; he brought with him a scented handkerchief. Now and then there would be an upset. One would not eat, or had set on another, or banged his or her head against a wall. These inmates were restrained, and the sight of their tethers, and the mad-shirts confining their arms, calmed Dr. Volpe.

  Sometimes more drastic treatment was required, the Swing or the Waterfall. Doctor Volpe disliked these measures, as he disliked shutting his patients in the upright coffins that permitted only their faces to be seen. He preferred where possible to administer huge doses of opium. As the raving creature sank into oblivion, Dr. Volpe felt an iron clutch slacken on his own muscles.

  After his noon perambulation, he would return to his apartment in the adjacent block. Here, when the door was shut, he might, aside from the occasional interruption, have been in some luxurious flat of the City, a gentleman of leisure. There were his shelves of books, his piano, his plants, his various collections – of birds’ eggs, butterflies on pins, and so forth. He could potter about all day, and in the evening, the housekeeper brought him his dinner, after which he would drink a bottle of fine brandy.

  It was another concern of Dr. Volpe’s that some of his warders drank inferior liquor. Although it was, of course, reasonable to drink large amounts of a decent vintage. Amid his brandy Dr. Volpe played scherzos at his piano. His thoughts ranged. Finally he slept well, indeed late into each following day. But to drink all one could afford of a cheap and dreadful gin, which, it was said, was actually poisonous … He did not berate the warders. They were curious men and women, bound to their profession by ties Dr. Volpe did not always care to consider. One must not cross them, or one could not exact service. But nevertheless, he had once or twice glimpsed the terrible gin bottles, brown and queerly shaped, with a peculiar label.

  Dr. Volpe let out his inner excellence at his piano, and every six months it was carefully tuned.

  Playing, he knew a faint loss, for he could have been a great pianist. Misfortune and the pressure of his bourgeoise upbringing had led him where he was.

  In fact he did not play very well, fumbling and bluffing works he should not have attempted, firing off like explosions or farts cascades of horrible wrong notes. Besides, and worse, he lacked expression. There was no tenderness, let alone the delicate neurasthenia so often called for. At his most fiery he was at his most appalling. This he did not know.

  He was dreamily thinking of his music now as he passed along the galleries above the pens of white ro
oms.

  The women and men were to have been kept separate, but ultimately it was easier to enclose them together. They were scarcely human after all. One woman warder and two men kept watch today, or rather were playing cards at a table.

  Dr. Volpe moved over the room like a visiting meteor. All was well. A couple were tethered, the rest moved freely about, or sat in arrested attitudes on the ground. One of the females kissed her hand to the doctor up in the air. He had always liked her gesture, and saluted her gaily. He did not know who she was. Only the troublemakers became, temporarily, known to him.

  “Judit is frisky again,” said one of the doctor’s attendants.

  “Judit?”

  “The bitch who kissed her hand to you. Better be careful, monsieur doctor.”

  “Oh, now, now,” said Dr. Volpe.

  “There is the new female patient,” said the woman attendant somberly.

  “Ah. Yes.”

  “She’s in the cells.”

  The “cells” were the place to which newcomers or desperates were assigned. Until their especial malady had been glanced at, they were not herded out with the rest of the prisoners of the asylum.

  “Then, I must interview her. Is she lucid?”

  “Not very. She’s young. About fourteen.”

  “How tragic,” said Dr. Volpe, who was wishing that the cells were unoccupied. He had begun a Russian novel of vast import the night before and longed to get back to it. “What cause is known?”

  They shrugged.

  “She’s crazy. A girl of good family. Suddenly afflicted with melancholia and hysteria.” (The words he would approve of were stressed.) “Her parents were vague.”

  Dr. Volpe pursed his lips. This kind of mania particularly offended him. Perhaps the woman attendant knew it. Her face was like a wooden box with a nose, and twinkling eyes. She drank the perfidious gin, he knew.

  “Well, shall we go along now? I’ll see her.”

  They crossed the last of the gallery and were gone from the rooms. (None of the beings below now seemed aware of them.) They descended stairs and went through a door, and so across a yard where sometimes the mad people were pushed out for exercise. There was a stone block in the middle of the yard. It had been put there for a statue. The statue had been going to represent Madness, with snakes for hair, but in the end this had been thought too strong, and also a waste, for mostly only the mad would see it, and not understand its significance.