The Book of Revelation

by Rupert Thomson

  But no, he couldn’t do it.

  He couldn’t face that bright flash of agony as the flesh tore, and then the pain that would follow it, spreading outwards like a brilliant, unearthly colour until it enveloped him completely. And there was always a chance that he might seriously injure himself.

  Perhaps he was just a coward. . . .

  In any case, he had reached a point where he had begun to feel as if his fate was no more or less than he deserved. There was nothing random or accidental about what had happened to him. There was nothing unlucky about it. All those years of performing on stage—exhibiting himself. . . . What was dance if it was not exposure of the body? It was as though he had advertised himself. He pressed his forehead against the wall, but its coolness did not soothe him. He felt impotent and useless. He felt dull-witted too. Whether he deserved his fate or not, he still had no idea what that fate might be. His only vision of the future was a present that endured and did not alter. He stayed sitting by the wall in a kind of trance or dream-state. His whole mind seemed to be floating, as if there was no gravity inside his head.

  He remembered Astrid’s proposal. Almost despite himself, he found that it appealed to him. Even if the performance was a travesty, at least he would be dancing. And it would occupy him, give him a sense of purpose. He returned to the rubber mat. Lying down on his side, with one hand under his cheek and his knees drawn up towards his chest, he tried to think of a ballet that might be appropriate. He quickly rejected his own works as being unequal to the occasion. After all, this was his chance to comment on what had happened to him, and for that he would need a classic, he felt, something that everybody knew and loved, something that was virtually a cliché. He wanted irony, a sense of paradox.

  Sometime during the night he woke up knowing that his choice would be Swan Lake. He hadn’t danced classical ballet for at least ten years, but he had seen countless performances of Swan Lake while studying in London, and he knew it well enough. He was thinking particularly of Act Three, often referred to as “the black act.” During Act Two the Prince has met Odette, who has been turned into a white swan. She can only be freed by a man who loves nobody but her, and the Prince has sworn that he will be this man. In Act Three, however, he meets Odile. Odile bears a striking resemblance to Odette, the only difference being that she dresses in black. Assuming that they are one and the same person, the Prince falls for Odile and announces that he intends to marry her. In doing so, he betrays Odette, the woman he actually loves. What has been done cannot be undone, and the ballet ends tragically for both of them, with Odette condemned to remain a swan and the Prince drowning in the lake.

  He glanced down at the chain, ten feet of dimly glinting metal coiled on the floor beside him. His smile was thin-lipped, mirthless. He would have to improvise, of course. Many of the steps would be impossible, given the restrictions he would be working under. In fact, during the next twenty-four hours, he would have to choreograph the sequence all over again. But that, in itself, would be a challenge.

  What an unusual Swan Lake it was going to be—a version that had never been seen before, and would never be seen again.

  A special performance, one night only.

  Swan Lake In Chains.

  •

  The following morning, as he rehearsed, ideas came quickly to him. The strange thing was, Astrid was proved right. She had said the chain would be a test of his ingenuity, and that was exactly what it turned out to be. Obviously, there were certain jumps, such as the double tour en l’air, that he would be unable to attempt, but that, in itself, was a kind of provocation. It allowed him to alter one of the most famous set-pieces in classical ballet. Even Nureyev, who had re-choreographed Swan Lake for his performance with Fonteyn in 1966, even Nureyev would not have tampered with the four pirouettes that end the Prince’s solo in Act Three. Ironically, then, the chain gave him freedom. It not only prompted him to change the actual steps, it was also a metaphor around which he could construct his own personal vision of the ballet. It became a way of reinterpreting the story. The solo that the Prince dances after meeting Odile, the black swan, is supposed to communicate his euphoria at having found the love of his life, but if the Prince dances the solo as a man in chains, then his euphoria is undermined, and he begins to look deluded, almost laughable. The real beauty of this new Swan Lake, then, was its sub-text: he would be using the ballet both to expose and to ridicule the whole idea of the women’s love for him, which was not a tribute or a celebration, whatever they might say, but an entirely destructive force.

  It was Gertrude who brought him lunch that day. “So,” she said as she set the tray down beside him, “you have decided to dance for us.”

  He nodded. “I’m going to perform Swan Lake. Well, part of it, anyway.”

  “A wonderful choice. I think our audience will enjoy that very much.”

  “Of course, I’ve had to alter it a bit.” Smiling brightly, he held the chain up in the air between them.

  “Yes,” she said in a slightly puzzled voice. “Of course.”

  It was a conversation she was having trouble with, and she seemed relieved when, turning to more practical matters, he told her that if they wanted him to dance Swan Lake for them he would need to be able to listen to the music.

  During the afternoon Astrid appeared with a sound system and a CD of Swan Lake that had been recorded in the sixties, with von Karajan conducting the Vienna Philharmonic. Once she had connected the CD player and the speakers she stood back with her arms folded and stared at him. As usual, he seemed to arouse a mass of different feelings in her—hostility, wariness, triumph—and these mingled uneasily, making it difficult for him to bring her into any kind of focus. The way she would fall still in front of him sometimes reminded him of a humming-bird’s wings: it wasn’t stillness at all, in fact, but the illusion of stillness, created by rapid movement, agitation.

  In her opinion, she said, he should not have been provided with the equipment, and if he used it for anything other than listening to music, the consequences would be severe. He nodded, to signal that he had understood. Then, with hardly an alteration in her tone of voice, she told him how much they were looking forward to his performance the following evening, and how they were sure it was going to be a great success. He nodded again, wishing she would leave the room. She stared at him for a moment longer, then she turned away.

  As soon as she had closed the door behind her, he put on the CD. Turning the volume up almost as high as it would go, he sat down by the wall and waited.

  The music began.

  For days, if not for weeks, he had been held in virtual silence, with only the creaks of the building to listen to, or the rattle of the skylight, or the whisper of the women’s cloaks across the floor. Music had been denied to him; he had almost forgotten such a thing existed. The power of it, though. The power and the sweetness. Even though it was Swan Lake, a piece that had never had any great significance for him. He listened to the whole ballet, from beginning to end. He could not move. Usually, if music was playing, it had an immediate physical effect on him—he would walk around, he might even dance—but on that afternoon he remained in the same position for an hour and a half, with his legs stretched out in front of him and his back against the wall, and, once or twice, to his surprise, to his bewilderment, he reached up, touched his face and found that it was wet.

  •

  Standing in the brilliant white spotlight he couldn’t see them clearly. There seemed to be both men and women present, all of them in formal evening dress. He caught glimpses of their masks, one with eye-holes ringed in sparkling stones, another made entirely of green feathers, and he could also just make out the starched shirt-fronts of the men, white triangles that gleamed softly in the darkness. What struck him most, though, was the smell—a smell that consisted of new spring leaves, exhaust fumes, alcohol and rain, a smell that seemed both exciting and forbidden. They had brought the night air into the room with them; it clung to their c
lothes, their skin, their hair. . . . Who were they, he wondered, these thirty men and women? Were they part of some secret society, people united by their love of the perverse, which took them, on certain nights, to anonymous houses on the outskirts of the city? And did the women who had organised the entertainment belong to that same underworld, the damage that had once been done to them now finding expression in clandestine rituals, barbarity, a pursuit of the bizarre? He listened to the low buzz of a dozen whispered conversations. Where had they all come from? Who were they? There was only one thing he could say for sure. It was the strangest audience that he had ever had.

  He had already warmed up before they were ushered into the room, and he was eager to begin, but it took several minutes for the murmuring to die down. A few last coughs, a throat being cleared, one long and oddly pleasurable sigh—and then a crackle in the speakers behind him as the third act of Swan Lake began. . . . He had decided to approach the performance as he would approach any performance, with absolute dedication and commitment. If he was going to get through it he would have to lose himself completely in the dancing (perhaps, after all, he knew no other way). His nakedness, which the women had insisted on, would become a fundamental part of what he was doing. Like the chain, it had to be incorporated. He had to treat them both as elements without which the piece simply would not work.

  And he thought he succeeded pretty well. From the first moment of his entrance, the music starting quietly, poignantly, the notes ascending in a minor key, he used the chain as a stand-in for Odile. Whenever he was required to dance with her he danced with the chain instead, holding it, lifting it, parading it about. This had worked the day before, in rehearsal, and it worked even better now, especially in the slow waltz that formed part of the pas de deux. He liked the jingling of the chain across the floor. It sounded like somebody fingering loose change, like impatience, in other words, or nervousness, and it seemed to comment directly on the music, almost in the way percussion does, adding to the atmosphere of unease. Not until the Prince’s solo, which is long and technically demanding, did things become tricky. He had trimmed many of the jumps, but, even so, he had to take care that he did not trip and hurt himself. He had covered himself by injecting humour into the choreography. Once, for instance, when he should have been launching himself into a grand temps levé, a difficult jump at the best of times, the chain appeared to intervene, preventing him from even attempting it. If the solo forfeited some of its athleticism, it gained in both astringency, he felt, and pathos. The chain became a symbol of the Prince’s wayward sexuality: it was clear for everyone to see that, in pursuing Odile, he was being led by his most basic desires. At the same time, in hampering the Prince’s movements, the chain was trying to warn him, to enlighten him. Open your eyes. This isn’t love. When he had finished the solo he stood still, his chest heaving. He could feel his lack of fitness now, and he wondered if anyone had noticed. The music was continuing, though. He looked on as a phantom Odile danced her own solo—a raunchy, triumphant series of steps that celebrated the fact that she had succeeded in seducing him. It worked. I’ve got him. He’s mine. He turned his head this way and that, as if he was actually following her progress across the stage, as though he was admiring her, then he threw himself into the coda, which was like an array of circus tricks, pausing once again to watch Odile execute one of the most famous sequences in ballet—the thirty-two fouettés in a row. He danced right up to the moment when the Prince realises that he has been deceived, and that everything is over. Instead of running off stage, though, as Nureyev had done, he slowly pirouetted towards the back wall, allowing the chain to wind itself around him, so that, by the time the music built to its crescendo, he was standing by the iron staple at the back of the room, his entire body imprisoned, paralysed. He immersed himself so deeply in his performance that, when the act finally came to an end and he looked up, he expected to see the gilt balconies and red plush seating of a theatre, he expected to hear applause rush towards him out of the darkness like a wave, but there was only a bare room, with thirty people clapping, so he slowly freed himself and stood there, with the chain in his right hand, then he bowed once, ironically, and, turning his back on them, walked out of the spotlight, into the shadows. . . .

  •

  It was late. The sound system and the spotlights had been dismantled; the chairs had been stacked, and then removed. The room looked as it had always looked, brutal and unadorned, though he felt he could still smell the night air, that distillation of spring leaves and recent rain. For the last hour, Gertrude had been giving him a massage—some kind of reward for his efforts, he supposed—and, to his surprise, she was at least as good as Hendrik, the masseur who worked for the dance company. Her fingers were more powerful than they appeared to be, reaching down into his muscles, easing tension and spreading a feeling of luxurious well-being. He had almost drifted off to sleep when he heard her murmur something:

  “You will not be here tomorrow.”

  He did not know what to make of Gertrude’s announcement, coming as it did from somewhere far away, beyond the soothing mists and perfumes that enveloped him. Were they going to kill him? That could happen, couldn’t it, in situations such as these? His mind grappled sluggishly with the idea. . . . No, surely he must have misheard her. Or perhaps she was having trouble with her English, and what she was trying to say had come out wrong.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “What was that?”

  “You will not be here tomorrow. You will be free.”

  He looked round, wide awake now, his heart beating in his throat. “This is a joke. . . .”

  “No,” she said in that humourless way she sometimes had, “this is not a joke.” She picked up a towel, began to wipe her hands.

  “Why?” he said. “Why now?”

  She paused for a moment, seeming to stare into space. “It was a difficult decision, but it was necessary.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  She gathered up the massage oil and the towel, rose to her feet and started for the door. He called out after her, but she ignored him, pausing only to switch off the lights. It was the most peculiar feeling of frustration suddenly. He felt it was impossible, no, inconceivable, that he should simply be released, with no questions asked and none answered. He felt that the whole thing should be explained to him. They weren’t going to do that. They weren’t going to say another word.

  It was necessary.

  He lay back in the darkness, thinking. What if the women had decided that it would be dangerous to hold him for any longer? What if they felt they would be risking exposure? After all, they had already given a banquet, with several guests, and then there had been his performance in front of an invited audience. . . . How many people had seen him so far? Thirty? Forty? Surely it was only a matter of time before the secret got out. In the end, only two courses of action lay open to the women: either they had to dispose of him, or they had to let him go. They appeared to have chosen the less drastic option, which was a relief, of course, but still—

  You will be free.

  It was unthinkable, after all this time. It was absurd.

  It was almost frightening.

  •

  All that night he stayed awake, pacing at the end of his chain, unable to come to terms with what he had been told. Perhaps he could not afford to. The risk of disappointment was too great. But it had created a kind of havoc in his head, a chaos of possibilities. . . . Most likely it was some exquisite new torture the women had devised for him, a shift from the physical to the psychological. Yes, he could imagine that. And yet she had announced it with such evident regret. . . . He paced. He sat with his back against the wall. He paced again. At last he saw dawn appear in the skylight, a subtle easing of the darkness, a breath of pink across the glass. . . .

  Only moments later, it seemed, a woman brought him coffee and a plate of fruit. One glimpse of her hands, strong yet elegant, with nails that were filed square across the top, told him th
at it was Astrid. Identity no longer interested him, though. He was looking for a variation in the routine, a change of mood, some hint or sign that he was about to be released. He noticed nothing.

  Not long after breakfast the door was thrown open, and a cloaked and hooded woman burst into the room. The floorboards bounced as she ran clumsily towards him. She came to a standstill some distance away, as if she had forgotten something and was thinking of turning back. Though he could not see her legs he could imagine them—the feet pointing inwards, the knees touching: Maude.

  “I saw the performance,” she said in a quiet, breathless voice.

  “Did you enjoy it?”

  “Oh yes. Yes. Very much—”

  “Are you all right?” He tried to look into her eyes. “Did they punish you?”

  Her head turned in the direction of the door. “I must go.”

  Alone again, he lay there on the mat. Maude didn’t seem to know that he was being freed, but that didn’t prove anything. They probably wouldn’t have told her. Uncertainty had lodged in him like an ache. His eyes stung from lack of sleep.

  Then, sometime in the middle of the day, while he was dozing, the door opened again and all three women appeared. He sat up, rubbed his eyes. The sky had darkened since breakfast, and the light in the room was murky.

  Gertrude came towards him, holding the clothes he had been wearing on the day of his abduction. Everything had been washed and folded. Everything was clean. Working with Astrid, Gertrude chained his hands behind his back, then helped him to his feet. Maude stood off to the left, he noticed, with her head turned to one side. From beneath her cloak Gertrude produced a silver key, which she used to unlock the ring that they had fitted through his penis. When she had removed the ring she handed it to Astrid, who placed it in a small black box she had brought into the room with her. He looked down at the jagged hole in his foreskin, wondering if it would ever heal.