Sugar Rain

by Paul Park

  He waited a few minutes and then went up another way. Leaving the torches and the ramp behind him, he turned aside into an ancient doorway and up an ancient, dusty stair. Even though it could not help him in the way it helped a seeing man, he took a torch down from its bracket. For comfort’s sake, he lit it with an effort of his mind, a small effort, but he was tired. And soon, as he climbed the stairs, the light settled into the rhythm of his breathing. When his lungs were full, it burned up bright. When he exhaled, it glimmered out. Breathing hard, he was wrapped in alternating cocoons of light and dark.

  At the seventh landing of the seventh stair he stopped to rest again. Soon he would rest for all eternity. If God existed, then on Friday he would be in Paradise, and God would cleanse his heart, and he would feel no fear or sadness anymore. If God did not exist, that, too, would be a kind of rest, mute blackness to the end of time. Either way it made no difference. He still had work to do.

  But even so he stood a while longer, letting alternating images of doubt and faith possess his mind, until his breathing settled down and the torch cast a more even light. He murmured a prayer to smooth his ragged heartbeat and then pressed on, past storehouses and armories and warrens of useless, empty rooms. Ten thousand monks had lived in Kindness and Repair when Chrism Demiurge first came to stay there, a young priest, newly gelded. Then he had come up this same way. Raised in splendor in his father’s house, he had been shocked and frightened by this humble stair, for even then his footsteps had been muffled in the dust, and it was cold, so cold, with the winter thick outside. And even though he had been born to glory, and his tattoos specified that he was to be a great commander of the faithful, still there had been no ceremony to greet his coming. He had been given a cell in a section of the temple that, even then, was ancient and disused. On the way his father had terrified him with stories of the catacombs, and told him stories of vast conclaves of heretics who worshiped alien gods down in the darkest crypts, among the stone sarcophagi. When he became a man, his first act had been to send soldiers down through every corner of the catacomb, but they found nothing. It had been winter then.

  In spring, of course, new heresies sprouted from a thousand seeds. Somewhere in this labyrinth there lurked a race of refugees and criminals, men and women who had run away from all the duties of their caste, who scavenged from the city and worshiped a strange god, an incarnation of the White-Faced Woman. On six successive nights Lord Chrism had seen her in a dream, a woman standing in a field of whitened bones. She had worn an onyx necklace, and her face was as white as wax. Each night he had woken up sweating, and once he had cried out. The dream had held the force of premonition.

  At the fifteenth turning of the fourteenth stair, Lord Chrism stopped and peered back down into the darkness. A narrow door led from behind the landing; Lord Chrism fumbled through and pushed it shut behind him. He bolted it. It was the border of the realm of light. In a high, empty hall he threw his torch away, for light was coming in through the high windows, a cool, soft light, mixing with the smell of dust and dreams, and books and rotting tapestries. Lord Chrism wrinkled up his nose. There was something else here too, a smell of gasoline and perfume, and a sound like gravel thrown against the window. The rain had started up again. High above him, one of the casements had split open and the sugar rain was pouring through, soaking the tapestries and biting at the cloth, so that underneath the windowsill the fabric hung in strips. The sugar phosphorescence had penetrated the room, so that to the priest’s blind eyes one whole wall was lit with silver fire.

  Muttering, he turned away. That vision of Paradise was not for him; he turned away and fumbled for a secret doorknob carved into the wall. A panel of the wall was carved into the likeness of the thirteenth bishop, a bibulous old man, and when Lord Chrism found his swollen wooden nose, the panel levered back to show another secret stair, which twisted up into a secret tower. Here were cells reserved for Chrism’s private enemies. His predecessor was still alive in one, an ancient paralytic, deaf and blind, still fed three times a day.

  Wide, straight flights of steps rose up around a square central well. There was a landing at each corner, and Lord Chrism stopped at the first one. He turned the key in the lock of a small door and pushed it open without entering. He stood back against the wall. “Come out,” he said. “Come out now.” But nothing happened. There was no sound, and for a moment Chrism was afraid the boy had died. Like all antinomials, the boy worshiped freedom as if it were a god, and for an instant Chrism was afraid that even a few days’ captivity had been too much, and no bad treatment either. But then he heard a deep, guttural breathing, even and untroubled, like an animal’s.

  The boy was sitting on his bed with his back against the wall. His huge hand moved delicately through the fur of the cat on his lap. It was the only movement he made, until he raised his head to stare out through the open door. He had been sitting in darkness, the shutters pulled closed over the window. The light from the open doorway cut diagonally across his face.

  Like Prince Abu’s, his cell was large and luxurious, reserved for prisoners of the highest rank. That had not made any difference to the boy. He had defecated next to his bed and urinated in several places along the wall, ignoring the chemical toilet built into the windowseat. His blankets had been pulled apart and rearranged into a kind of nest. The room itself had taken on a hot, sweaty odor. The boy’s enormous body was glistening with sweat. He was naked to the waist.

  “Come out,” repeated Chrism Demiurge. He peered inside, but his sight was too dim to distinguish the soft caress of the boy’s hand, the slow ripple in the darkness as he raised his head. The old priest was listening for some change in the boy’s breathing, to see if he was sleeping or awake. But then suddenly he caught a flash of blue, as the light from the doorway was thrown back at him, reflected in the boy’s alien, criminal blue eyes.

  Lord Chrism shuddered. He had not seen the boy since he had come upon him in the bishop’s chamber, and he had forgotten his blue eyes. Criminals in Paradise, atheists and cannibals on Earth—these antinomials, God had marked them so that they could never hide. He had marked them with their hairless skins, their gigantic bodies, their repulsive eyes. Reflexively, Lord Chrism made the sign of the unclean, dropping his chin into each armpit, muttering a little spiteful prayer.

  The boy had no way of understanding the language of the prayer. But he understood its rhythm and its tone. Like all his kind, he was sensitive to music, and he heard the venom in the old man’s voice. He turned his head so that he could savor it more carefully. And because he was sensitive to dancing, he watched each motion of the old priest’s hands, though he cared nothing for barbarian ritual, as a rule. Yet this one seemed to concern him closely, so with music the boy put a note of interrogation into the air, a few notes of the melody called “talk some more.”

  But when he heard it, the old priest staggered backwards and stuck his skinny fingers in his ears. And when he spoke, his voice contained nothing of its usual gentleness. “Silence!” he shouted. “No blasphemy! Do as I command.”

  These words meant nothing to the boy. He understood their pitch, their tone, even their definitions, but not their sense. It was a barbarian way of talking, a way of using language as a kind of power. That was all he knew. He had no way of appreciating the complexity of form, when a Starbridge and a prince of the church stooped to address a piece of human filth. And in fact he was not interested, because there was something else, too, some other music in the air. He turned his head to listen.

  The tower rose eleven stories around a central stairwell. On every floor the stair was lined with cells. And when the old priest made his exclamation, the sound drifted up through the stairwell, finding resonances in the ancient tower, awakening prisoners in their beds, disturbing them at their desks or at their meals. In a little while the whole building shook to the sound of their weak shouting, and their weak fists drumming on the doors. They recognized his voice. And some were banging on the pipes, so
that the sound made up a kind of music.

  The boy sat listening, trying to analyze its parts, to break it down into its voices, as if he were walking up the stair with his hand on the bannister, pausing at every door. There could be something vital to him, if he could separate it out. If he could disregard the muffled curses and the cries, and break apart the rhythm of the pounding, and travel up each step of that long stair, then perhaps he would hear something. He would hear it separate from the rest, a song that he had taught her with great difficulty, for she was ignorant of music.

  The cat jumped to the floor. It stretched, and arched its back. He stood up too, swiftly and unhurriedly. In the doorway the priest muttered a charm to calm the boy and sap his strength. But the antinomial knew nothing about magic. He pushed the old man aside, so that he fell back against the wall. The boy was free; he leaped across the threshold and leaped up the stairs.

  As he ran, he pulled his thumb along the rods of the bannister. It made a quick, even patter on the wood, mixing with his heartbeat and the slapping of his footsteps. He was humming part of a melody, a tune called “think of me.” And all the time he strained to hear another music blending with his own, badly sung and out of tune perhaps, but recognizable. He passed by doorway after doorway. He heard all the melodies of desperation in the frenzied banging and the strange, half-human cries; the music he was searching for was different from that.

  He stopped on an upper landing. There were six doors in a row, but one was different from the rest, grander and more solid. It was built of oak and studded with nails. The whole surface of it was covered with symbols drawn in chalk, charms to reinforce the hinges, for the bishop was a powerful sorceress. She could have broken any ordinary door. But this one was sealed with magic. It was set into a recess in the wall, and on each side the frame was carved into a likeness of the God of Chastity, her lips clamped shut, her wooden fingers locked over her sex. In one of her five hands she held a spindle, and with each of the other four she passed a strand of thread back to her sister on the other side.

  Between them, the doorway was sealed with a web of magic. But the boy cared nothing for barbarian superstition. He swept the edge of his palm down across it, and the web broke apart. The threads pulled back under his hand and writhed and tangled in the air, fringing the door as if with seething snakes. But the boy was ignorant of danger. He bent down to listen at the keyhole, and then he struck the door with all his strength.

  Coming up behind him, Lord Chrism heard the hollow booming. “Stupid, so stupid,” he muttered, laboring up the stair, leaning on the rail. But at the landing he stopped, and from the chain around his neck he produced a silver key.

  Already the boy’s hands were bloody, his knuckles mashed. His lips were pulled back along his gums, displaying long, carnivorous teeth. With a cry of rage, he smashed his naked shoulder against the studded door. But when he saw the priest, he turned around. The old man held the key out towards him at the end of its chain.

  Then for a moment everything fell silent. For a moment the protests of the other prisoners fell silent, and in the interval the old man heard another sound, hesitant, unclear, a woman’s voice, and even his barbarian ears could hear the music in it, though he couldn’t understand it. In front of the door the antinomial was grimacing in pain. He reached his hand out for the key. “Give it to me,” he said.

  In one moment all the boy’s violence had drained away. Lord Chrism disliked violence. Yet even more, he disliked sudden change. These antinomials were great, empty casks of flesh, yet they were dangerous and unpredictable. Lord Chrism muttered prayers against pollution. But then he shuffled forward, dangling the key, while with his other hand he made stiff, arthritic gestures in the air.

  He never thought the boy would understand the working of the lock. But the antinomial had grown up in Charn. Though he loved freedom, he had never known it, even in his mind. Locks and keys he knew; he had been in prison more than once. So he grabbed the key and held it up. Grimacing, he rubbed it between his fingers and fitted it carefully into the lock.

  The door swung open. At one time, the cell beyond had been the richest in the tower. In his strange, sad way, the priest had loved his bishop. Now, that love mixed with his blindness, and it took a moment for the old man to realize what had changed. For a moment, as he looked in through the door, he saw his memory of the way the room had been, imprinted on his ruined retinas. He saw the cushioned wallpaper, the chandelier, the carpets, and the giant bed where Angkhdt himself had once made love. But then the vision faded as his nostrils caught the smell of smoke. With a jolt of bitterness and pain, he realized she had wrecked the room.

  The wallpaper had been white, and decorated with a floral pattern. Lord Chrism had chosen it himself, a mixture of forget-me-nots and lilies of the valley. Now it was gray and scorched and soggy. She had lit the room on fire and then extinguished it with water. The furniture was battered into pieces, the bed turned on its side, the mattress ripped apart and oozing soggy cotton. The chandelier had fallen to the floor. And in the middle of the wreckage stood the bishop, straight as a candle flame, dressed in her immaculate white shirt.

  To the old man’s eyes she appeared as a luminous white glow on a background of dark gray. But then a stain spread across the image as the antinomial leaped forward and took her in his arms. Lord Chrism turned his head aside and spat. The boy was his peace offering, his gift, but already he regretted bringing him. It nauseated him to see the sacred couple willingly with the unclean, nauseated him and broke his heart. Almost he regretted having come.

  Before his eyes the candle flame burned free again. She had twisted from the boy’s embrace and turned towards him. “Well?” she asked. “What have you to say to me?”

  For the last time in his life the old man made the gestures of respect. He looked down at the floor. “It is my painful duty to inform you,” he mumbled, “of the results of this morning’s roll call. The vote was one hundred and seven to ninety-five with twenty-one abstentions—”

  The bishop interrupted him. “Don’t you think I guessed?” she cried. “My window overlooks the courtyard.”

  She pointed, but the old man did not raise his head. He could not have seen, even if he had wanted to, what she was pointing at, out the bars of her window, over the retaining wall, in the Courtyard of the Sun and Stars. “It is my scaffold,” said the bishop. “They have been building it all morning. When is it to be?”

  “Tomorrow night.”

  “I am surprised you won the vote. You must have lied to them.”

  “No, ma’am. Not entirely. Forgive me. But if I had told the truth, they would not have voted to convict. It was a question of . . . political expediency. And better for you, too, in the long run. When your great-great uncle was bishop of this city, he was tortured to death by the revolutionary tribunal, almost exactly one year ago.”

  The bishop stood in the center of the room. The antinomial had moved over to the window. Lord Chrism leaned against the doorpost, looking down. Otherwise, he would have missed the smear of golden orange on the dark wood as the huge cat slunk across the threshold. It picked its way over the ruined carpet to rub up against the boy’s legs.

  The bishop also looked down at the cat, so that her black hair obscured her face. A week’s imprisonment had not changed her, even in memory, her black eyes and heavy eyebrows, her petulant expression, her skin like edible sweet cream. Sadly, Lord Chrism recognized the reason he had come. He had wanted to see her one last time.

  “I had to lie,” he said. “If I had told the truth, it would not have been enough. Though it was enough for me. They did not see what I saw. If they had found you naked in your chamber with this . . . this . . . this . . . carnivore.”

  “And wasn’t that my right?” she cried, looking up with angry eyes. “I am bishop of Charn.”

  “It was your right, but it was not well done. In part, I blame myself. These atheists, I should have burned them all. And I ask myself, how did you find hi
m? Through what crack did he crawl?”

  “He climbed up to my tower window. He was starving and wet through. Do you blame me? I was brought up in this temple among men like you. Old men, blind. I thought he was the God Himself.”

  Standing at the window, the antinomial scowled and frowned. He tugged on one of the bars of the window as he looked back into the room. Outside, the weather had closed in, and it was raining.

  “I do not blame you,” said the priest. “I chose your education. I might have known the effects that so much holy scripture would have had on a young girl. Only I wish you had chosen something worthier. Some worthier object for your . . . love. It is unfortunate.”

  The cat was pacing back and forth under the window. The old man paused, and then continued. “It was his cat which gave me the idea,” he said. “I told the council I had found you coupled with a demon. The demon from the ninety-second psalm—you know, Palagon Bahu, in the shape of a cat. I showed them in a living image, and they trusted me. Now I am sorry, but to tell the truth, what else could I do? Believe me, child—dear child—you will hardly feel it. I’ll give you a drug, and you will hardly feel the fire. Or just a little bit—you will fall asleep, and you will wake in Paradise. Believe me, I have prayed for you. Every night of this past week, I have prepared a room for you. In the house of our beloved Lord.”

  “I think you are a monster,” she said.

  “Don’t call me that. I am being generous. This afternoon my nephew burns, my own sister’s son, and I have cursed him. Or rather, I’m not sure. I still have plans.” Lord Chrism smiled at his own cleverness, and yet it was a guilty smile. He felt a compulsion to shame himself by telling everything. Yet he was gleeful, too, and proud, because the bishop, after all, was just a little girl. She could not be expected to understand.

  “I came here to ask you for absolution,” he said. “But now I see it is a wasted trip. Nevertheless, please try to understand. I have prepared a miracle. I have made my nephew’s double. Surgically. Or rather, I have caused him to be made. I have made a man who looks just like him, from a distance. Understand: I want to make a miracle, to burn one and then use the other, as if God had saved him from the fire. Only I haven’t yet decided which to burn.”