by Tanith Lee
“Too proud, eh? What have you got to be proud of, ugly little runt?”
When all the women were naked, hoses were turned on them. The water was icy cold but not extremely violent. Some fell down. Hilde dropped to her knees. Yet, since the water only occasionally covered her head, it did not completely recall the former horror. Almost, she missed the landmark of it.
When the sluicing was over, rough sheets were flung to the women, and those that could dried themselves. Two could not, and these Marie Tante saw to with harsh buffeting swipes.
They were given new tunics, and white sashes, bundled into them.
The warders mocked the women. “Just need a spot of powder.” “Some flowers for the hair.”
They were removed next to a narrow chamber, and awarded some of the breakfast gruel. One of the women spilled the fluid on her new robe, and Bettile cuffed her. “Dirty sow. Do you think you’ll get another washing? You’ll have to go as you are.”
“What will they do to us?” Hilde whispered.
Judit said, “Sometimes ladies and gentlemen pay to look at us.”
Hilde relapsed in apathy, but when they were presently taken out again, she stayed close to Judit.
The women were then put into a long room that faced onto the yard with the stone block, and here they were left some hours, with Bettile to watch them, but Bettile drank her gin, set out her cards, and fell asleep.
Two of the women sat down on the floor, where one wept until the snores of Bettile, perhaps taken for a reprimand and threat, silenced her. Judit and Hilde and the fifth woman went each to one of the three windows that looked onto the courtyard. There they stood in a row.
Outside it was a fine, still fall day, the misty sunshine soft as gauze. At the center of the court, about the stone, was a curious structure, in fact a makeshift stage Tiraud and some of the warders had put up. It was only a foot or so high, and composed of trestles, over which some sheeting had been draped.
On the far side of the court was something even more incongruous. An awning had been erected and armchairs put under it. And there was a table with a white cloth on which now began to be laid plates of food under napkins, dishes of fruit from the hothouse, coppery pomegranates, oranges and apricots, and black grapes. Into buckets went slabs of ice. Judit said, “That will be for the champagne. Someone has looked after them. Perhaps they’re princes,” and she spat abruptly on the floor.
“Ice from Penguin Land,” said Hilde, to please her.
“No,” said Judit, “the ice from there would never melt. The ice there is warm.”
And Hilde was humbled by her mistake. She put her hand on the warm glass of the window.
Her back had begun to ache from standing immobile so long. But the draw of the courtyard, a view it was possible to gaze at, kept her there. Besides, she waited nervously to see who had come. She had forgotten people – she and the inmates of the asylum were not people – and so in turn human things from the outer world had become like wild beasts. What would they do, or require? Would they sniff and paw, or rend? She dreaded that she would have to show herself to them, but not because of the state to which she had been reduced, only because they were so alien.
Now she said, to please Judit again, for Judit was real, “What is the name of the Penguin Land?”
“Maque will know,” said Judit. She added, “They’ll display Maque. He’s a model patient, controlled and articulate. And Citalbo, perhaps. Because he speaks poetry.”
There were sounds below. One of the black doors opened, and Desel came forth. He was taking on the role of guide that Dr. Volpe might have assumed, and Desel had dressed up in suit of clothes and a high collar. He looked fearsome and terrible, like some species of poisonous insect that has adopted the gaudy wings of something it has recently killed. The fifth woman at the window groaned, and going sadly away, sat down on the floor with the other two.
Out of the doorway after Desel came the beasts who were people, the beasts who had come to visit the zoo.
There were a couple of ladies in flowered dresses, with hats and parasols, and a group of men, two rather tall, each smartly dressed.
Hilde drew back from the window.
Hilde pointed.
Her fingertip touched the glass. Now it was cold.
And Bettile awoke.
“Oh, are the bastards here? I expect Desel will give you bitches autumn crocuses to hand to those fine, jumped-up ladies, to show how well we’ve trained you.”
Judit turned her shaven head on her white neck, like a snake, looking at Hilde, then turned back and looked down again into the yard.
Hilde moved even farther back, her arm still outstretched, as if frozen.
“What’s up?” said Bettile. She rose, taking as she did so a swig of gin.
“Johanos Martin,” said Hilde. Her face suffused with an appalling embarrassment.
“Oh, the great Martin,” said Bettile. “Fancy, you know the name. When were you at the theater?” She elbowed Hilde’s shrinking body aside and peered out. “Well, so that’s the bugger. The tallest one, I’ve heard he’s tall.”
The gray eyes of Johanos Martin passed smoothly over the windows, seeing nothing. He was accustomed to looking up, from a stage, blind to those who hung above.
Hilde ran into a corner and curled herself together. Bettile swung round and marched toward her.
“Get up, slut. Get up, I say.”
She pulled Hilde to her feet and Hilde screamed. She forgot who Bettile was, and fought with her, and Bettile felled Hilde with a single blow.
In the gilded day, ten lunatics were let out on the platform.
In the awning shade, drinking freely the wine their theater had sent them, picking at segments of chicken and orange, the actors watched. It made a change for them, someone else putting on a show. They did not completely like it, you could see. And they stared acutely to tell how much better they would be able to do it, to act the insane.
Desel did not have his stick now but a cheap florid cane he had bought in the City. With this he poked at the madmen, making them whine or snort or shy. Sometimes they did not respond at all. Some crawled, others walked in a curious apelike way. The more interesting specimens were directed to the front of the trestles.
The ladies made disapproving sounds over the one who drooled from his permanently grinning, tooth-barricaded mouth. His smile was a rictus that never went away, his lips dark and his teeth long and sallow. His eyes were thick with pain he no longer considered.
“The man who grins,” said Desel, as if he had invented all ten lunatics, carefully, in a laboratory. “He never speaks, and forces food between his fangs only when we make him. His grin goes on while he sleeps. What a happy sight to keep before you. Imagine this one in your sitting room.” He was a touch impertinent, Desel, for now he was dressed up as gentleman, and they were only actors.
After the grinning man, a man came who seemed to think he was a dog. He moved on all fours, panting, and now and then he licked his own hands.
And after this one came the one on a tether, led by Tiraud. When Tiraud jabbed the tethered man with his stick, the madman began to sing in a shrill voice songs that were just recognizable as old ballads of love.
Presently they drove forward the man who was surrounded by a swarm of invisible wasps, at which he beat wildly. Tiraud struck this man’s ankle, and the man fell upon it, biting and snapping at his own flesh, trying to pull something not there away from him.
Others were left standing in the backgound, where they drooped or padded about in small circles.
After these first men, some women were brought, shaven-headed and in matted gowns. The wardresses, notably Marie Tante, shouted at them, and the women moved about with a hobbled gait, like lost cows that do not understand but know the smiting of sticks.
Desel stepped into the middle of the stage. He commenced giving a lecture on the types and attributes of madness. He sensed the actors had become bored and saw that they grew restl
ess. He did not like them. Nobodies risen to fame by dint of luck, and whoring. Look at the actresses – strumpets. And the men, doubtless lax of morals, perhaps given to unnatural vices.
The tallest man, the one called Martin, looked at Desel with icy and expressionless eyes. These eyes flustered Desel. He wished for a moment Martin had been in his power.
But it was the other man, Roche, who called out, “Ah, come on, come on.”
Desel concluded his address hurriedly. Turning, he struck one of his charges so the man squeaked and leapt over the stage, making the trestles creak ominously.
The crowd of male and female lunatics was herded aside, and some, the most troublesome, were removed from the court. (A couple had soiled themselves from fear or need.)
Now the women came who were supposed attractive, and fairly docile. Desel had thought the ginger girl, Hilde, would be among them, but she was missing.
Bettile led the women forward.
“Curtsey to the gentlemen and ladies,” said Bettile, and swung her rod at the backs of legs. Two women curtsied, and one tumbled to her knees. Judit stood. “This one won’t,” said Bettile. “Tell the people why you won’t.”
Judit glanced at Bettile, then she gazed at Roche. Her dark eyes passed through him, and Judit murmured, audible and sorrowfully, “A queen does not obeise herself.”
Roche stood up and doffed his hat. He bowed.
His eyes were not at all full of mockery. He said, “I believe she is.”
But Judit only smiled forgivingly, and raised her eyes to the sky above the buildings.
Soon three or four more men were brought to be shown off. Among them was Maque.
“This man was a sailor,” said Tiraud. “It was the sea sent him crazy. Now he invents lands that don’t exist.”
“All lands exist,” said Maque.
“How true,” said Roche. “In the world and out of it.”
Roche was drunk perhaps. Most of the champagne bottles were empty. The actresses were flushed. Even Martin had a slight trace of color in his face.
“Tell the gentlemen about your travels, Maque,” said Tiraud.
Maque said, “My last voyage was to this place. Here they tore the metal rings out of my ears. I was locked in a room no bigger than a hutch, and later in an upright box. I could not move my hands. I was fed on rotted bread and stale water.”
“He attacked a warder,” Desel explained carefully.
Tiraud said grimly, “Speak of your sea trips, sailor.”
Maque closed one eye. “I forget.”
“The Swing for you,” whispered Tiraud in Maque’s mutilated ear.
Maque said, “I saw a land once, covered with snow. And on the trees grew bottles of gin.”
Tiraud hit Maque across the spine.
Maque did not turn. He stared away, as Judit had done.
All the champagne was gone; the actors had become instead the receptacles.
And the warders were full of spirits.
They brought Citalbo, the poet who had gone mad.
He stood on the stage, and spoke to Johanos Martin in a sonorous voice of leaden silver.
“Why,” said Roche, startled, “he’s saying your lines from the play – the Roman –”
“He speaks very well,” said Martin, and gazed up the short distance at Citalbo.
“Empires shall go down like suns,” Citalbo said. “And ships beach in the bays as locusts do, on the firm corn.”
He inclined his head, and waited courteously.
Johanos Martin laughed. He got up, and said, ringingly and perfectly, “So it was, and so it shall be always,” and paused like a coquette.
And Citalbo went on: “Until the earth is a dry husk and the sky falls, and in never any house –”
“A girl sits,” Martin said, “to braid her hair. Or a warrior stands –”
“To buckle on the brass of war. But then,” Citalbo said, “we shall be dust, and thus –”
“Who cares for those that do not think of us?” Martin finished.
Roche applauded. The other actors and actresses were caught up, and put their gloved and bead-garlanded paws together.
“Monsieur,” said Martin, for Citalbo had dared to speak his lines with great beauty and skill, “as I am, you are: an actor.”
“Then you, sir,” replied Citalbo, softly, carryingly, “must be as I am. Mad.”
Martin’s face closed. His eyes were steel. He drained his glass, and turned away as Maque and the others had not been able to.
“Let’s leave. We’ve seen enough.”
“Oh,” said one of the actresses, with whom once Martin had made unsatisfactory love, “his lordship is suddenly squeamish.”
“Not at all. I consider you. The sun can be harsh on the complexion at your age, Susine.”
Dismayed, Dr. Volpe had stepped about his room. His books gleamed and he read their titles, remembering I have this, and this. He examined eggs and ornaments (and this). Across the blocks of the asylum things went on, but he might pretend they did not. This was his apartment, his country retreat. The palm in the window, the autumn woods.
He went to the case where the new butterfly was displayed, and stopped – in revulsion, distress.
The pinned specimen, which had been like flame and night, was crumbling. Its wings were showering off in soot and embers. Its body had twisted as if tortured, into a corkscrew.
When they brought Hilde from the tiny box where they had locked her, the “coffin,” her head was shaven like a bronze ball. She was shut now into a straitjacket, a mad-shirt, her arms secured across her body. One of her shoes had been subtracted.
They put her in the straw. She could barely move.
The women came.
As animals softly nose at each other in the winter fields, just so they approached, not actually touching, but mute, reserved, at one. They knew her. She was themselves.
And then Judit was there, and sat by Hilde.
Judit spoke of the land of snow, where the lovely fruit grew and the dawn-and-sunset sun poured out its jasper radiance. Birds sang and far off the sea glistened, waters that were not cold and into which the wine streams cascaded.
Hilde listened.
When Judit ceased, she said, “Judit, I’m dying.”
“No, poor child. You must simply endure.”
“But I am. You see, my blood’s turned to water.”
Judit stroked Hilde’s face. “Why do you think so?”
“Because my time hasn’t come. Not for weeks.”
“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 t
hat 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.”