by John Rechy
“Will that be enough for whatever you want to pay her for?”
“No,” said the woman. “That’s only a part of it.”
Their eyes released each other. Wordlessly, the man and the woman parted.
Karen faced Bravo.
Bravo’s whip flailed at her side like the tail of an impatient cat on the edge of anger. “You wanted to see the son of a bitch again, and you have!” There was a stark transformation in Karen, as if she had received a powerful transfusion. “Is it over, then?” Bravo barked.
“Of course,” Karen said softly.
“Would you leave now?” But before Karen could answer, Bravo said: “No! Now I have to confront the bastard.” She felt an almost delicious wrath toward Richard. With the butt of her whip, she erased from the table the petals from the delicate white flowers which had disintegrated earlier. Before she could have Karen, she must destroy whatever existed between her and Richard, every vestige.
A knock. “It’s Richard, I know!” Karen said eagerly.
Bravo faced Richard at the door. “I was just leaving,” she said. She would not confront him yet.
Richard’s eyes were on her until the door closed.
“Do you like her?” Karen asked.
“She’s beautiful,” Richard said. “I like beauty. And she’s one of us.”
“Am I?” she asked.
He did not answer. He kissed her shoulder, a kiss so light it could have been the brushing of a moth’s wings. She arched her neck. His lips moved along it. She felt a burning which eased into a feeling of remembered pleasure and longing.
Then he broke the contact, as if he had asserted all he needed for now. Instantly Karen’s body became cold. She looked at him in bewilderment.
“I think your companion is waiting outside,” he said.
He opened the door, and Bravo still stood there.
He walked past her. She entered Karen’s room. Now Richard paused outside of Joja’s door.
Inside: Flowers. Flowers streaked vermilion. Like blood. They were shaped like mouths about to close. Joja looked away from the hungry plant: Richard was in the room.
“You haven’t changed . . . in so many years,” she told him. Yet she had wanted to hurl accusations at him: Why didn’t you meet me last night at the airport? Why did you allow the blond youngman to sleep with me? Why did you send for me? Why did you wait so many years? But all the recriminations melted at the reality of his powerful presence.
“And you’re more beautiful,” he told her. He kissed her on the forehead, a kiss like dust. “Your play closed?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“I know all about it, Joja.”
“I had to kill her!” she said.
“Have you been with Mark?” He was touching her neck sensually.
She frowned at the question. “I . . . spoke to him,” she said. Her body was warm only where his hand touched her shoulder.
He kissed her on the scar he had made years ago. A kiss like ashes.
Slowly, in order not to break the contact, Joja moved back on the bed. She drew the flimsy dress from her shoulders. Her exposed breasts strained, full. His body pressed over her; she felt his hard, powerful muscles. “I . . . need . . . you . . . Richard,” she recognized her own voice. She yearned to be penetrated by him into her soul.
Suddenly she was aware—though reality rejected it—that in the slash of light which cut the semidarkness of the room from the hall, Mark stood in silhouette.
Then Richard was gone. Only Mark remained looking down at Joja’s body, as if it had been prepared for or surrendered to him by his father.
Valerie looked into her palm. She held the rose, crushed, that the priest had given her. The island was grotesque to her suddenly, despite its beauty; like the setting for a terrifying nightmare, in which figures will twist and knot.
This room, suffused in strange blue evening light: In it, the woman who stood suddenly before her—there had been a knock, and her voice had summoned her in—was like an apparition. But she recognized her quickly: Tarah.
“Leave now!” Tarah blurted her warning. “Take your brother with you!” If the girl asked why, what would she answer? Because you’re the same age as Gable? Because of the games? The play! Tell her about their mother? About Daniel and Richard? Sexual roulette!
“Paul says we can’t do that to Richard.” Valerie accepted the woman’s warning easily.
“Do what to Richard!” Tarah laughed bitterly. “No one does anything to Richard! No, not yet.”
“Will you stay?” the girl asked, as if for proof of imminent danger.
“I have to,” Tarah said. Through the window she saw:
The lone figure outside within the night’s enclosing blackness, a blackness which transformed the trees into sinister invaders.
A night almost palpable. Shadows hovered about the island like low dark clouds.
Blue stared up at the priest’s window.
Jeremy looked down.
Blue: He raised his hand just slightly.
He could have been about to touch his face.
The priest: He disappeared from the window.
Blue: He walked into the blue mist. The path was cool under his bare feet. As if all that had been required to release them was motion, memories swooped on him with the fury of vultures: A house bathed in gray mist, Cam, Mr Stuart, the Blue Woman, the kneeling disciples. He remembered how slowly blood comes at first—reluctantly—so that it seems that placing a hand on the wound will block its flow. Then it gushes. (Through the fingers: Perspiration stinging his eyes, the bloody hand raised to wipe it: his face a gory mask reflected in the crystal vase on a table. The candle waned. . . . “Susej! Prince Susej!” . . . “You’re not hard!” . . . Blood.)
He shook his head, to withstand the raid of memories. His life was suddenly a pantomime of pursuing shadows. He felt isolated: With all his secrets.
Again within the same statue-guarded grotto formed by hovering vines, Blue waited for Jeremy. Then he saw the shadow like a dark ghost advancing toward him. He stood up. He smiled almost shyly at the priest.
In the filtered, hidden amber lights turned on within the grotto, the cold eyeless statues, warmed, seemed alive; listening attentively.
Blue reached for Jeremy’s hand—as if to bring it again to his mouth. But halfway up, the motion stopped. For moments there was no movement. Now slowly the priest’s fingers tightened about Blue’s hand, which abandoned its grip, the two hands changing roles: Now the priest’s hand held the other’s, raising it slowly. Whatever the contact would have been, the priest released the other’s hand suddenly.
Blue smiled, as if in the unfinished gesture he had extracted a silent promise.
11
Joja had a vision of how she must appear to Mark: her face clouded with rage, eyes like knives. An objectless anger which anticipated its reason: anticipated, because Mark smiled down at her, the incredible smile which was the stamp of Richard’s. Joja acknowledged: She desired him as intensely as she desired Richard: As if by possessing the son she would possess the father.
Leaning over her, Mark placed one hand on each of her bare shoulders. She shuddered with sudden warmth, although his hands were cold, although she felt herself veering toward a dark whirling pool. His bare chest touched hers, the vague smile lingered on his face: Joja was swallowed by a wave of yearning: Still, there was the warning of blackness at the other side of desire. She felt his strong commanding thighs against her; and then: the growing desire between his legs—straining against his trunks—already as powerful as his father’s. And she felt renewed miraculously: Suddenly she was the child and Mark the initiator! In the mirror overhead, she saw her hands encircle his body.
And then he kissed her on the lips.
The insane wail of a woman rent the house as if sundered from her soul.
Mark stood up immediately. He listened raptly. His face was demonic and beautiful. Then he said quickly to Joja: “Later—we’ve jus
t been rehearsing for my father’s play.”
Joja saw his shadow at the open door. Again she was being left empty. A recurrent rehearsal. A rehearsal for what? Richard! Her mind a clash of memories, she reached frantically for the pillow on the bed, hugging it furiously: the new rejection flinging her against another memory of fear: “I had to kill you,” she whispered uncontrollably, as if the pillow were both child and the instrument of its murder, “or you would have killed me.”
Mark did not hear her. He stood in the hall, the door closed behind him. He waited for the scream to recur, to identify it unequivocally. His face glowed with anticipation.
Recurring, the wail hurled Savannah into a quagmire of memories. (A man’s face! Hatred! Blood! A voice: “Cut it!”)
“Pure!” she said aloud in her mirrored room. She embraced the word. Purity was an object with dimensions. It was shaped like a hard diamond: clear, unrelenting. Purity—not innocence. Innocence was blind to the world and therefore vulnerable to assault, whereas purity saw it all yet remained unblemished—a radiant part of the horror.
“Pure!” she repeated to her mirrored image.
“Why have you been following me?” Jeremy whispered the words, as if the statues might convey them to hidden ears. Indeed, the statues seemed to listen intently. The night pulled stark green shadows from the grotto.
“You followed me.” The smile on his lips belonging to another time, Blue looked into his hand.
To remind him that moments earlier their hands had touched? Or to search the outline of the inverted star? “You’ve been standing outside my window, you wanted me to follow,” Jeremy said.
“And you did, man.” Blue looked up suddenly. The smile fled.
Jeremy walked back to the house. Its dome blazed above the darkness, lit by the brilliant myriad lights inside.
Before the house, he looked up quickly into the window where earlier the painted face behind the black veil had stared down at him. Yes, it was there again. Looking at him?
La Duquesa moved away from the window, from the spectacle of dark night and shadows. She faced Malissa sitting on the tall chair like an empress.
Tonight, Malissa was thinking. Yes, this would be the fateful—fatal?—season. The confrontation between her and Richard! She felt surrounded by power.
At that moment Tor opened the door of a closet. Arranged in a row on a shelf, an array of masks leered at him. Lifeless faces from some past masquerade. He frowned. (Eyes on his naked oiled body. Eyes. Other oiled bodies. Eyes. Hoarse commanding voices: “Fuck her!” “Suck him!” “Fuck him!” “Hit her!” And then: His fists! And: Eyes!)
Topaze sat cross-legged on the floor beside Malissa, the plumed hat on his lap. He was in love with the plush life she made possible. Although he did not believe Albert’s mad hints of what became of them, the midget did know that the entourage changed seasonally. And so he was determined to align himself so inextricably with Malissa that he would become permanent. Like Albert. Albert? No! Malissa loathed the pudgy man. Yet there was something which bound the two. What was it? Topaze wished he knew; it would arm him with power. Impulsively, he placed his small head on Malissa’s lap, expecting to be stroked like a child.
Malissa recoiled with a gasp. “Don’t ever touch me!” she shouted.
Panic gripped Topaze.
Rev smiled triumphantly.
The unwelcome contact released a dam of fury in Malissa: a dam which shifted automatically to drown Albert. She stood, rubies screaming. “Albert!” she shouted. “You will wear a dress tonight!” It was a sudden substitute punishment for something evoked.
La Duquesa winced as if a dart had been flung at her. (She saw: A face: a pale, thin face, sandy hair. Freddy! She hadn’t thought of him in— . . . She heard the echo of a harsh voice: “Freddy, come here!”)
Albert stood erect.
“This dress I’m wearing, it was one of the Duke’s favorites,” la Duquesa said hastily—she indicated the elegant long-sleeved black dress—to shift the vicious attention from Albert, again. “When he was murdered, I had it dyed black. To match my heart.”
“Did he give you money?” Rev eyed the mourning queen.
“Everything I wanted,” she answered the strange question proudly. “Other women would have squandered fortunes to have him for a single night.”
“Albert! Didn’t you hear Miss Malissa say you would wear a dress tonight? Answer!” Topaze attempted to make up for his huge blunder. He searched Malissa’s face urgently, to see whether he had been forgiven.
“I don’t want to wear a dress.” Albert tried to make his voice firm.
“The Duke despised cruelty!” la Duquesa’s voice choked. (“Freddy, Freddy—look! Is this what you want?”)
“Why not go all the way, Albert?” Malissa’s fingers dug into the air, as if she were preparing his grave.
“Because I’m not a woman!” Albert found the vestige of lurking courage. “Because, Malissa, if you hadn’t— . . .”
Her hands defied him to continue.
Suddenly, again, there was the wail which had earlier gathered all sounds within the waiting mansion: It lunged into the shocked silence it produced; then it drowned in emptiness.
Before dying like a muted siren, it almost shattered the intense blue mood within which Valerie felt caught. Tarah was gone.
Leave. Escape. Valerie’s mind crystallized the mesmerizing words. Leave. Escape. Escape. She felt disoriented, as if she had fallen beneath the surface of a blue mirror. Escape. She made the barest motion to rise from her bed. But she felt a heaviness, as if the intense blueness had a physical weight. She closed her eyes. Escape. A strong perfume permeated the room. The odor of lush flowers. She swam on the surface of sleep, rocked by blue waves against a restless shore. Escape. The rush of waves carried the word away, erasing it like a mark on sand. Then again: Escape.
It was then that she saw the figure, an outline cut into the icy blue light.
“Paul,” she said.
“Yes, Valerie?”
“We have to leave this island,” she said. Her voice seemed to come without her opening her lips.
“Why?”
“It’s—. . .”
“Daniel might be here.”
She felt the pressure of his body on the bed. Again she tried to shed the heaviness in order to say that she felt they were becoming objects like the black props on the stage downstairs—that this was Richard’s play.
She saw her brother’s eyes very close to her face; she heard his voice, which was foreign, like another’s voice: “Why are you still clinging to that crushed rose?”
She opened her hand, releasing the petals. “Have you talked to Richard . . . alone?” She wasn’t certain she had asked the question until she heard his words in ambiguous answer:
“He’s an extraordinary man, Valerie.”
Tossing in the blue currents of the room, Valerie was aware that her brother was leaning over her. Yes, and his mouth opened—she saw his teeth. He’s going to kiss me, to reassure me, like always, even when we were children, she thought. She closed her eyes, shutting out the blue mist. She felt the touch of his lips on the side of her face; they moved down to her neck, so lightly that she was not sure of the contact until it had been severed. It had been like the wings of a frantic butterfly.
Suddenly Paul was gone. Only the strange blueness remained like a presence.
Had she fallen asleep? How long had Paul been gone? There was a definite lapse of time—the room was darker now: The sky was a black mirror. Her body ached as if she had been in a struggle. No, it wasn’t her body which ached. It was— . . .
Suddenly she grasped at her neck, her fingernails tearing at the flesh to rip away the place which burned there with a steady cold ferocity.
Karen’s cool exterior contradicted an inner bewilderment. And so Richard had led her to the point of resurrection—the fleeting contact earlier, that is how she thought of it—only to leave her in a state of suspension. Or had the
contact been a promise made? A further test— . . . Tests within which Richard sought—. . . What!
Bravo studied her. First there had been that surge of life at Richard’s presence; now a draining. . . . He would be a formidable opponent, Bravo acknowledged. He and Malissa. “What is between Richard and Malissa?” she asked Karen.
“A strange, close friendship,” Karen said. “For as long as I can remember. She comes here every season, with a new entourage of youngmen—and Albert.”
“Like two challengers, she and Richard,” Bravo said. And this thought formed: Pit one against the other and then move in! Her whip seemed ready to thrash.
“Bravo,” Karen said suddenly, “let’s leave!” She knew: I would have given myself to him again. I can still Escape! she thought.
“No,” Bravo said firmly. “Not yet. We’ll stay and play his goddamn games. Before the night is over, you’ll hate him as much as I do. I promise.” Then she was swept by the foreign tenderness toward this woman, a new experience in her savage life.
The wail again. It penetrated the island which now seemed to await it. A long insane wail which broke into racked sobbing.
This time it pulled the others from their rooms. There was the sound of opening doors, of motion, of rushing into the corridors. Tarah, Rev, Karen, Tor, Joja, Albert, la Duquesa—they faced each other along the intersecting halls like live representations of the golden panels. They moved downstairs, no longer so much in search of the origin of the hideous scream as much as if they were being called together by it.
Malissa—Topaze beside her—and Bravo, the two women waited until the others had descended the stairs into the great domed hall. Alone within the golden corridor, the two acknowledged a deadly—close—hostility: sealed by the glaring mirrors.
The wail recurred. Now it shattered the blue mood within Valerie’s room. She shed the heaviness quickly, and she stood up.
Fire!
She had the sudden impression of flames lapping furiously about her! A consuming roar! But she did not see flames, and the room was silent.