Wilde Stories 2014

by Editred by Steve Berman

  …was caught by Cianco’s free hand, of course: reeled in close under his right arm. “Two!” said the Summer King, grinning at His bounty. He hustled Himself and armfuls out through the door of flowers. In the high noon outside, the Summer King shouted: “Look what I got, y’all!” brandishing His right and left arms. The crowd roared approval.

  And well they should adore Him. The Summer King was man no longer but Someone greater. The folk clapped and stomped, hailing Him with joyful noise, the song palpable in its cadent thunder. He put forth radiance outshining the tropical sun at meridian. No one closer in the embrace of that glare, Gian squinted his eyes, a little shaken.

  Priestesses stood round enormous drums beating the invocation. White-clad and chanting, the congregation held all manner of flowers. Most had come with wreaths of bright wild flowers and pretty weeds. The poorest held branches broken from magnolia trees, or jacaranda. A few folk held singular blooms, a rare lily or strange orchid, for which they must have foraged the bush, or nurtured in home gardens, against this very day. All had come with their best. The stout daughters of the richest family propped up between them a huge folly of flowers, bear-shaped and sized. Father and a younger sibling lay at their feet shivering on pallets, given to drinks and brows wiped dry by two mothers.

  The people were crammed along the walls of the sacred compound, to clear a space before the door of flowers. In that dusty clearing awaited the throne. It was a huge stool of carven hardwood, shiny black from age and oiled care.

  “Atuandicy, Pablihno,” said the Summer King, when they’d reached the stool. He put the pretty boy standing at the stool’s left side. Gian moved toward the right, but oh no, he’d got it wrong again. Taking seat upon His throne, the Summer King dragged Gian down upon one thigh. Big and smaller man fit their seats just fine, one a full foot taller and half again as heavy as the other; the stool, immense.

  The drumbeat changed and folk quieted. “Who first?” called the Summer King. His voice, sonorous and rumbling just a moment ago, now eerily rang out as tenor, a bell tone.

  A girlchild, four years old, stepped into the dusty amphitheater from the encircling throngs. While approaching the throne, she cast back frightened looks to a woman, two men, and three older children who nodded, flapped their hands, and smiled encouragement of the girl’s every reluctant step forward. She was called “Patri,” for with that name the family urged her on. And they cried, “Go on, baby. Keep going.” In her hand, she bore the flowering bough of a flame-of-the-forest tree, with blossoms red as mango pits, orange as that fruit. And full of fish, the jowls of some pelican rising from a sea dive might bulge too, as immensely as did this child’s, goitered or scrofulous.

  “Put that there, little mama,” said the Summer King. The girl stooped to lay her flowering branch at La Pablo’s feet. “Now come here,” He said; the girl stepped just between the sprawled knees. He set a hand on her shoulder (the other palming the small of Gian’s back). To the crowd He said, “Bring down some power, y’all,” and the people began to sing; but quieted when He lifted His hand. “Oh, no, mamita. I need sure ’nough strength for this.” The Summer King shook His head sadly. “The flowers are good, but why didn’t you bring me some rum?”

  The child stared, mouth ajar, knowing His question was owed some answer but not knowing what. Her eyes shone, and lips trembled. From along the walls her mamas-and-papas, sisters and brother cried pardon for their family’s poverty.

  A cripple was leaning on his crutch at the edge of the crowd: to him, the Summer King called, “Can’t grow back that foot of yours, pa!”

  Calling back, “No?” the old man said, “How come? Summer King could do anything, I thought.”

  “Man, you been coming ever since that shark bit you. Every year the Summer King say the same damn thing: ain’t no growing back hands, feet, or nothing like that. What’s gone is gone. You been knowing it!”

  “Yeah, well.” The old man scratched his beard, rooting in the grizzled scruff. “Man can hope, cain’t he? But, Summer King, not nothing? Can’t maybe grow me half a foot? Then, see, I could come back next year and get—”

  “No,” said the Summer King. “It ain’t no half feet, either. So why don’t you just give that rum you holding to this little girl right here.”

  The freckled old man, redbone, whitened with rage. Selfish spleen contorted his face, but as he looked at the pickney, inflamed eggs bloating her underchin, his sneer fell away. “Yeah.” He made a sheepish face, ducking his chin. “You right, you right.” The old man held out his gourd.

  The child looked to the Summer King; He said, “Go ’head, little mama,” and she fetched the rum back to Him.

  The Summer King unstoppered and drank. His body always blazed with more than ordinary heat—such that after making love, after caresses, after the whispers, on sweltering nights Gian needed to roll to the farthest edge of the long pillow for relief and sleep. Now those inner flames surged, and the flesh where Gian sat warmed up hot; sweat beaded his brow and sluiced down his back. The Summer King tossed the emptied gourd aside, and cupped the child’s cheek in His hand. She cried out, thin and high. Her body seized and shook. The little girl crumpled into the dust when He let her go. “Patrízia,” shouted one of her papas, who ran from the crowd.

  The father knelt. His daughter woke and he lifted her in his arms. Laughing rapturously, he spun the child around, held aloft for the crowd to see—her chin and neck were sharply defined, the swelling gone.

  So they made petition, one after another, until the enthroned sat knee-deep in flowers. There came grievous wounds and mortal illnesses. A woman bared a breast purple and deeply ulcered, a man held his testicle, gigantic and misshapen, cradled heavily in both hands. Infection turned brown-skinned toes, a golden shank, one damaged cheek the dark twin of which was perfect, into smelly black and verdigris sponge, all nibbled at by gangrene. For them, no, the beating drums, the crowd raised to unison chant, the proffered flowers, and even rum for the Summer King weren’t enough. “Hold on,” the Summer King bade these petitioners: “For this, I need some love.” And Gian’s role in the proceedings came clear: he must give the Summer King his kiss. At night on the long pillow, with the shutters closed and portieres drawn, naked in the midst of love, Gian felt passion for this man so surpassing fondness or desire he’d felt before, what else but to admit he’d known nothing of love whatsoever, was learning now. And those lessons had their time and place…surely not here? Yet, here, the merest brush of his lips to His raised the same ecstasies in Gian as the most intimate acts, and if the sacred kiss should become wet, and the Summer King slip His tongue…

  It fell to lovely La Pablo to distract the sick and wounded. With the kindest fluency, his chatter did so whenever kisses ran long. Finally, the Summer King would free Gian to sit upright, then pass His hand over the crown of Gian’s head to draw off the blazing overspill of emotion, heady and hot and half-brokenhearted, stoked by their kisses. With the aid of “love” He could make even the worst-off well.

  By the dozens they were healed, only four or five turned away.

  To one of these the Summer King said, “No, grandfather. You belong to the Crow Sisters. I can’t give you but a little comfort. Want it?”

  The old man wept, and said, “Yes.”

  The Summer King whispered in the old man’s ear, and whatever He said smoothed a few hard lines of pain from the old man’s brow, and raised a wavering smile to his mouth. That petitioner went away content.

  All those others denied had had truck with witches: they’d entered into pacts from which they now sought escape. All of them made the same report, that the price of witchcraft proves too high…everything! Each in turn, the Summer King suffered to speak her piece, or cry his repentance, but always He shook His head at the end and said, “No.” Here was neither comfort nor aid, for man or woman who’d gone to witches.

  Third of those refused was a woman frail and aged, her scalp darkly gleaming beneath wisps of cotton. Oh,
she moved Gian! The hunched carriage of her shoulders, her haunted eyes, the hopeless slackness of her mouth, half-open and gasping: all was reminiscent of soldiers who’d come through the hottest action alive, yet afterward could find no good in life. Haltingly, the woman gave an account of the perfidy of witches that raised the hair on Gian’s arm. To hear how they’d tricked her turned his stomach—they’d taken so much for just a little luck in finances! Sent unsuccored back to the arms of her two wives, the woman let go such rough sobs Gian couldn’t bear them. He turned, and his own eyes full, said, “Won’t you?”

  In the dusty courtyard were hundreds, and none missed this petition. The drums fell off, all noise from the crowd, saving the wives who wept together. In that lull, only after he’d asked, did Gian recall that every favor comes at some cost.

  Sweeping Gian off His knee and embracing him close, the Summer King whispered in an ear: “To help her, say yes: before midnight, you’ll tell me what happened When the River Ran Red”—Gian’s stomach clenched painfully—”and the whole truth of your service to Marshal Jaqash, peer of the Kingdom, wasn’t he, who fell in the river. Of course he did! Cruel but no coward, Milord always led the corps from the front, didn’t he, and you there right beside him. The lesser soldiery said about you corpsmen: ‘Spilling blood gets ’em drunk.’ Yeah, you few up in the van they called Blood Drunkards. Heaven has plans for you, Gianni-mi, but you’re no good to yourself or the world all walled up in secrets.”

  Afraid of questions—afraid of his own answers, rather—Gian never spoke about the years of his conscription. It was a horrible shock, then, hearing unuttered confidences pour from another’s mouth. Bitterly he said, “You know everything already!”

  “No,” whispered the Summer King. “This is your own heart talking to you—your poor lover knows nothing.”

  It was Gian’s pleasure to be handled and grabbed by these hands; but sometimes his body must signal the contrary, for the grip always knew when to loosen, as now. Gian stood and met the gaze of the accurst woman, needing his eyes full of the sight of her suffering, if his mouth were to say yes. She stood between wives, gripping their hands, her eyes terrible with hope. Neither wife was older than Gian, yet the toll of tribulations had croned the woman who’d gone to witches.

  Gian said, “All right, pop.”

  The Summer King beckoned the woman back. He said, “Lean close,” and the words whispered into her ear dried up every tear, and straightened her back, and her hands clenched and opened as she listened. Her countenance was no longer woebegone, but became charged with fearful awe. After the whispers, much-shaken, the woman gave the promissory nod. The Summer King accepted her flowers and drank her rum and she stepped away, that Gian could give the kiss. Tasting only of the fruit juices Johnnys mixed into rum and called Jaúndi mar libre, there was no breath of spirits in the Summer King’s mouth.

  Gian had been waiting for this so long.

  Thirteen years old, and taught marksmanship by shooting bound felons full of arrows, the boy he’d been had thought, A long time from now when I get home to Sea-john, I won’t kill again or hurt anybody. I’ll have friends. I won’t be alone. Eighteen years old, and favorite of the Marshal himself, Gian had been the corpsman most envied of the vanguard, despite the hard use everyone saw, and the harder still none did: that Gian had dreamed, This won’t be for always. I’ll go home one day, and there’ll be some Johnny man, better and kind to me…. Later on, under hard black rain, the torrents made of iron and each drop some man’s death in the river, Gian had splashed on past the upreaching hands of drowners, the faces breaking the surface with a gasp only to go down again, and across the river on the far shore he’d caught sight of enemies who would die once he and this spear reached them—and they reached them, and they killed them, as many falling at his hand, quite possibly, as legend claimed. This is your work now, Gian had thought, strewing death about him, but only live and some day, home again, turn your hand to something better, and in Sea-john life will be good, and safe, and full of love—

  The kiss broke. Gian sat up dazed and the Summer King gathered up the heart’s hot surfeit in His hand. With it, he broke the witches’ curse upon the woman.

  Catastrophe, it’s said, can bleach a suffering head overnight. What Gian saw then was hair, sparse and white, turn instantly black and thick, blooming about the woman’s head heavy and dark as some thundercloud. Her brow smoothed, and the corners of her eyes. Her hands softened, and gaunt limbs grew plump and strong. Everyone in the temple courtyard knew the moment her baby, fallen quiet these last days, kicked with sudden life: the woman clapped both hands to her heavy belly, and joy beyond joy lit up her face. In the arms of her wives again, she cried still, but not as before. Gian wept too.

  Lastly there came a petitioner uncalled-for. This man smiled, wholesome of aspect, and handsome. In his hand he bore a lily rich in color as the deepest tissues of the body laid bare. When he set the flower down, its petals brushed Gian’s ankle, soft and downy, only a little cooler than living flesh. A hue and cry broke out among the congregation, for no few at the bembe knew this man. He was Sea-john’s greatest villain. How had he passed unseen in the courtyard until this moment? The drums quieted and none would sing for him. Sing? “Throw him out!” “Strike him down!” “You be careful there, Summer King. Watch him close, beware!” The fulminations of the people went on and on, until at last the Summer King said, “Be still, all you! I’ll hear him just the same as anybody.” Deep was the hush that fell then, and all hearkened to the hideous truths spoken before the throne.

  This man had once been the lover of a famed beauty who in the end had chosen to marry others. So the man had gone to witches for a vengeance. Before the next dark-of-the-moon, both husband and wife of his former lover had met with gruesome misadventure: the one scalded dead when a vat of boiling laundry overturned, the other caught out some night without talisman by the wild dog packs. Indeed, the famous beauty too was dead now: throttled and drowned, by this man, while bathing. Crimes enough, anyone would have thought, when the man owned up to these murders, then quieted. Yet indignant voices from the crowd picked up the tale, and called out further iniquities. The mamas-and-papas of the beauty: found mutilated and dead. An orphaned infant: snatched from aunty’s arms; dashed against a wall. And more, and worse.

  When the chorus had at last rendered a full accounting, the man hung his head. “Those things…” he said sorrowfully, “…happened. It’s true”; but all this evil owed to the whispering devil perched on his shoulder, the man said. The witches had put it there, and even now he felt hot breath blowing on his ear. Though no one else could glimpse it, and none but him hear, the fiend was always with him, suggesting fresh abominations. That lickle child, your knife: kill her, it might say, or, Sex that man there; choke him dead in the throes of love. Only to make amends for past evils did he now beg freedom from this demon, goading him always deeper into damnation. You were hard of heart not to suffer some doubt then, not to wonder whether this man could really author such grisly wrongs, seeing his soft brown eyes glitter so, full of tears.

  And yet to him, as to those others, the Summer King said, “No.”

  The man turned to Gian. “Ó Sãozinho, will you speak for me?”

  Uneasy, Gian shook his head slowly.

  The breathable ethers grew spiteful, pungent to the tongue and nose and eyes, as when chilies strike hot oil. La Pablo si beau screamed; for the man’s face convulsed with demoniacal rage. A hidden dagger drawn, a hand thrown back only to stab down—and the villain lunged. (Gian had in fact shifted weight from his perch already, and set his feet in readiness, watching this man hawkishly all along. Gentlier, he might have caught the murderer’s hand in its descent, crushed the fine wrist bones in his grip until the fingers sprang apart, loosing the blade, or else wrenched the man forward faster still and sent him hurtling past the throne to a stunning fall. More roughly, there were easy openings for a killing blow to the throat, or else for slitting it wide
, should he swipe out the knife from his own belt. But in the event, rough or gentle wasn’t Gian’s to choose.) Some dry leaf blows into a campfire well-stoked and drawing well. What follows? That leaf catches at once, swiftly is consumed, a shadow withering briefly in the fierce light, and thereafter little remains, not cinder and ash so much as smudges of char. Thus for that man bewitched: where he’d stood, a whorl of soot came floating down, a scorched funk already dispersing from the air. The mortal whole of him had burned, unto teeth, bone, and the knife.

  The Summer King lowered his shining hand, and it fell dark. Become Cianco the man again, he stood up with Gian, and celebrations began.

  The hymns and holy drumbeats turned worldly, the dancing fast and loose. Everyone feasted. Long after dark, beloved hands plucked Gian mid-dance from amidst a sweaty grind of women, and he clung to Cianco as the dizzy world spun still, he’d drunk so much. Overhead, his lover said to the wives: “Getting late, y’all. Me and baby need to head out.” After some hugs and kisses for Gian, they left.

  Cianco walked with purpose while Gian straggled after, a finger hooked in his lover’s belt. They came over the hill, seaside, where breezes freshened off the waters—this wasn’t the way to Cianco’s house. Nor were they heading down to the beach to sleep, as they did every so often.

  “Where we going?” asked Gian.

  “I want you to meet somebody” was the answer.

  Salty air stirred and Gian stopped. He closed his eyes and stood, swaying as wind cooled the rummy sweat slicking his skin. That thunder in the distance, rolling and rolling, was only the ocean downhill: with loud-mouth Johnnys all gone to bed, the sounds of breakers hitting the beach reached up into the hills. An arm encircled him. “Come on now.” A deep voice, warmly fond. “Come on, with your drunk ass.” Basso and arm chivvied him into motion and kept him moving. “Moon’s setting,” Cianco said.

  “Mmm,” said Gian, keeping his eyes closed; he trusted to the arm’s guidance. Gulls cried overhead.