by John Rechy
She ran into the empty hallway. The mirrors clutched at her image, thrusting it violently back into the panels of shadowy figures. She ran faster along the corridor. The sensation of fire increased—although the house was intact.
“Fire!” she screamed. Her voice shattered like glass as she rushed downstairs. “Fire!”
Suddenly she stood under the glass dome. Strange faces surrounded her. As powerfully as she had sensed fire earlier, she had the impression of blood on the staring faces!
Their lips were dripping with blood!
“Valerie, Valerie!”
The sensation of fire, the impression of blood—both withdrew at the sound of her brother’s voice.
“Valerie, did you have a nightmare?” Paul was asking her.
Suddenly her brother’s words freed her from the hideous hallucination of fire and blood. “Yes,” she said, looking at Richard’s guests. “Yes, I must have been dreaming awake.”
And they were all here now: as if finally released from their isolation: Karen, Joja, Tarah—yet Tarah stood apart: Her own planned assault on Richard must be an individual act, merely supported by the others. Tor searched the room, as if for something lost. In a transparent livid-blue dress, Savannah seemed encased in fragile crystal. Saved by the commanding scream from Malissa’s insistence that he wear a dress, Albert still hovered near la Duquesa. Rev glanced periodically at Malissa for a signal. Like passive duelists, the priest and Blue faced each other across the great hall. Valerie’s eyes on her brother were like embers reflecting the memory of the fire that had scorched her consciousness.
The mamaloi and the papaloi stood like guards flanking the landing of the sweeping stairs. They held wooden rattles: brilliant stones embedded within them like demented eyes.
Richard descended the steps. Mark followed. Now the boy wore black pants, a red open shirt.
Immediately, “The games, Richard!” came Malissa’s imperious voice. “If we don’t start quickly, we’ll become bored!” she warned obsessively. Her hands attempted to enclose all the others in a circle.
“Yes, let’s play your games, Richard!” Tarah confronted him. “But there may be surprises this season. Tell us: What tests have you devised?”
“I don’t test people, you know that, Tarah,” Richard said softly. “They test themselves. No one is here who didn’t want to come, no invitation was rejected.”
“The two men—you forced— . . .” Tarah accused.
“Perhaps tonight we can face that,” he said.
“The game, Richard! What will it be?” came Malissa’s impatient words.
“Confessions,” Richard announced.
Part III
12
A sudden wind swept through the open windows of the house as if unleashed by an abrupt command. Drapes swirled like lost souls caught in the punishment of judgment. Through the glass dome—as the guests shifted in the sudden wind, their clothes whorls of colors, lights melting like painted honey on the walls—from that height and through the dome that gazed down blackly at them like the eye of heaven, they appeared like frantic dancers performing on a marble grave, the black and white gleaming floor. The thrashing wind withdrew as quickly as it had attacked the great house.
“Confessions!” Malissa accepted. “Oh, superb!” In the changing light, the blue-smoked glasses were purple.
They aren’t serious, the priest told himself quickly. Merely jaded, bored people playing jaded, bored games.
Tarah’s look shattered on Richard. “Yes!—we’ll confess the greatest evil performed on us— . . .”
“Or the greatest evil we’ve performed,” said Blue.
“It may be the same,” Richard said slowly.
“And then judge it,” Tarah attempted to turn the proposed game quickly to an advantage.
“No judgment— . . .” Richard began.
Mark frowned.
“. . .—except our own,” Richard finished.
“We should let that occur as it may,” Malissa insisted.
Mark nodded.
Richard’s silence deferred.
“If not judge it, then avenge it!” Tarah’s words fell.
“How the hell do you propose making us play your weird game, man?” Bravo demanded.
Malissa’s smile on Richard ricocheted as a stare of hatred at Bravo.
“We may play willingly, Bravo,” Karen said, “in order finally to understand— . . .” (The light! Her hands on the woman’s throat.)
Jeremy looked at Richard standing on the stairs with his son, surveying his guests. So certain that they would all play in his orgy of confessions. “How can you force anyone to confess?” the priest echoed Bravo.
“La malaspina,” Tarah warned wryly. “The leaf which produces a sweet narcotic, the blacks say it releases inhibitions, induces confessions.”
Did she really believe that? Or was she merely attempting to strengthen their resistance, and therefore hers, against Richard?—their defiance? “Superstitions,” the priest rejected.
“No one will be forced,” Richard said firmly.
“No?” Tarah questioned. Then to the others: “And there are the drugs always available at Richard’s games,” she said bitterly. “Just ask the servants for whatever you want.”
Servants passing soundlessly among the guests wandered about the great-domed hall like souls in limbo.
“And even if you don’t ask— . . . The food, the drinks— . . .” Tarah chose deliberately not to define her warning. Paul’s reaction, she grabbed for it. If she could force him to leave with his sister! “But sometimes Richard doesn’t need anything like that,” she acknowledged. “Sometimes he merely challenges.” She said swiftly: “All he had to tell me was that in a room upstairs, in this house, two men waited to tear me sexually apart— . . .” She shot her words directly at Paul: an overt warning of outrage.
“You went,” Richard said.
The priest glanced at Mark, apprehensive of the boy’s reaction to the woman’s words. But the boy’s face was impassive, as if he had heard nothing to startle him.
“Confessions!” said Malissa. “We’ve begun the game!” She propelled it: “And within the confessions we’ll find— . . .” Deliberately she did not finish.
“The victimizer in our lives,” Tarah asserted. “And the roles may change suddenly,” she threatened.
“Indeed, indeed! Excellent!” Malissa approved the shaping game.
“The symbolic blood spilled— . . .” Karen said slowly.
Blue said: “Maybe we’ll find the shape of— . . . Uh—whatever—man, you know. Like what we’re into— . . . What’s going to happen, from what already happened— . . .”
“The victim or the victimizer in our lives,” Joja offered.
“Confess?” la Duquesa questioned. “To ecstasy and love? A perfect union? Confess love?” (‘‘Freddy! Come here, Freddy!” And the narrowing circle of legs. . . . “I’ll always love you, just you.” And: Shots!)
“And if there’s nothing to confess?” Valerie stood before Richard.
Mark anticipated his father’s answer.
Richard waited. His look was gentle on Valerie. “Then we’ll confess to purity,” he said finally.
Savannah laughed loudly. “Confess purity! What the hell do you mean? Innocence—yes; maybe that has much to confess. But purity— . . . Purity carries its own immunity.”
“Your virginity,” Bravo spat, “is bought by the highest bidder, like the expensive cunt of a whore! You call that purity?”
“Yes!” Savannah did not even wince. “Nobody’s had me, Bravo!” She stood before the woman dressed in striped pants and black blouse. “Your tongue’s like your whip, Bravo, lashing indiscriminately.”
“And always on target!” Bravo reminded her.
Out of a private revery induced by the spectacle of erupting hatred—the memory of a white dying hand jolting the words from him—Jeremy whispered aloud: “To forgive is the greatest. . . accomplishment.” He had
been about to say “love.”
“To forgive God?” Malissa spat. “We’ll redefine sin, then!”
“There’s no substitute for salvation,” the priest said firmly.
“Perhaps there is,” said Richard. “To go to the limit of human experience—an affirmation of life.”
Tarah’s laughter crashed. “You son of a bitch, you can even justify your evil that way.”
Suddenly Richard advanced toward his first wife. She waited defiantly for him. His strong arms embraced her.
Joja saw: Mark’s lips opened.
Richard’s mouth crushed Tarah’s lips. Then her body flung itself against his—her hands—fists—encircled his shoulders: The closeness of a lover, the closeness of an intimate executioner—which had it been? As if they had moved too quickly into what hinted of a penultimate climax, Richard withdrew. Tarah dropped her hands to her side.
Escape from Richard! From his son! But the next moment Joja’s mind screamed: Make me alive again! And she was not certain whether the exhortation had been directed at Richard or at Mark.
“This whole day—this proposed game of confessions—as you call it,” said the priest, “it’s a deliberate affront to God.”
“Have you found Him clearly enough to know?” Mark’s head was tilted in the clear, quizzical expression of a child.
“Which God?” Malissa had demanded simultaneously.
“I won’t be part of your games!” the priest said. He addressed the words to Malissa, but he faced Blue’s fathomless, darkening eyes.
“Because the weight of confessions is too heavy?” Richard asked him.
“And they might topple the Tower,” Malissa reminded them of the Tarot card Mark had suggested earlier for the priest.
(A night. A knock. “Urgent!” The car ripping the veil of rain. “We need you!” An infant dressed in gaudy yellow, pink, blue— . . .) Without realizing it until the stark-white fingers of la Duquesa rose to touch the mourning veil, the priest faced the queen. “No,” he answered Richard; insisting aloud: “Only because this is a mockery.”
“Is anything in life a mockery, Mark?” Richard addressed his son rapidly—as if, thought Jeremy, through swift movement he would trap them within the momentum of the game.
Mark shook his head: No. He asked the priest, “Will you flee, then, Father?”
“We’ll leave with him!” Valerie said to her brother.
Richard’s eyes studied her carefully.
“No, Valerie,” Paul said.
Richard turned away.
The priest looked at Mark. Flee. (’Let me go!” And: Fleeing! And: A corridor. Thighs hugged by black leather. Breasts leering like eyes. Laughter!. . . Fleeing!)
“Isn’t that your role, Father?” Malissa asked frostily. “To hear the worst?”
“Isn’t it?” Blue said.
A feeling of revulsion. Then again Jeremy remembered: The tarantulas floating in a black cloud across the desert highway. The hideous creatures so isolated in their dark evil. Facing Blue now as automatically as he had faced la Duquesa—and Blue was looking deeply into his own hand: a reminder of the still, amber moments in the grotto when their hands had shifted roles?—the priest knew that he would stay. Unequivocally now. To protest the outrages, yes—and to find, finally—to try to find—the shape of his world: accepting, on this island, an important challenge.
“The game is confessions! We’ll become bored unless we play quickly!” Malissa reminded.
“Who will begin?” Richard asked.
Valerie breathed deeply: A strong, sweet scent had seized the house, like incense, as if exhaled by the walls themselves. Merely the island’s lush, flowered evening odors, commingling, stirred earlier by the invading wind. . . .
Richard moved toward Karen. Bravo blocked his path, the whip before her, booted feet braced. “If you touch her, I’ll kill you,” she threatened him.
Richard passed her, ignoring the threat.
Now he approached Paul. Valerie moved closer to her brother, to protect or be protected. Richard passed Blue; he seemed trapped in a crystal world. Savannah, in hers. The priest—like a general ready to plunge into battle after painful indecision. Tor, a statue waiting for life. Rev, an executioner seeking the executed. Careful not to brush against her, Topaze moved quickly toward Malissa. La Duquesa touched her veil as if for protection.
Abruptly Richard addressed Malissa: “Perhaps you’d like to start, Malissa. What would you confess?”
The moment was wrong. And Richard must know it: This was, then, merely another reminder of the confrontation between them: It would be this season, she knew with excitement. But the first phases of the game, they would play those together, like other times: allies—until the perfect moment. Malissa raised the hand with the black ring, just raised it: Yes, Richard, you and I will play too. But not yet.
Bravo laughed a raw, derisive roar: “Confess what turned you into a bitch, Malissa! A sexless bitch! A sexless bitch in heat!”
Albert’s mouth opened automatically. Bravo saved the reaction.
‘‘You begin, Bravo!” Malissa chose her words like weapons in a duel to be fought later. “Tell us what it feels like to be so inadequate that you had a man prepare— . . .”
(The whip a noose about two necks!) Bravo cut the rest of Malissa’s sentence with a thrash of her whip.
“What could you find out about me in your game?” Savannah offered herself. Suddenly she felt inviolable. She would face them, willingly, in this test, a test she must pass, finally, for the total vindication of her life.
“Scrutiny might sully your precious purity,” tossed Bravo.
“Nothing sullies purity,” Savannah insisted. “It exists or it doesn’t—that’s all.”
“Important only to you,” sneered Bravo.
“No,” Richard contradicted. “Without it her beauty would be like all other beauty: and therefore nothing.”
Rev raped Savannah in his mind. The magnificent virgin slaughtered publicly. His body, hers. The violation of her purity would arm him with power.
“Purity. Inviolable by its very definition,” Richard said, as if presenting the premise for evidence to be weighed. “It exists or it doesn’t—is that what you said, Savannah?”
The others looked at the woman of the legendary beauty.
Savannah nodded. “Yes!”
“It’s too soon for Savannah,” Malissa whispered hurriedly to Richard. “We should save her for later.” Richard’s silence indicated agreement. “Tor!” Malissa offered the bodybuilder instead.
Muscles like carved ice, the muscleman flexed at Malissa’s bark, the only clear response he was capable of.
And Savannah knew: The attention would return to her—the examination was essential, to her, to them. But her challenge—her blunt assertion—had been formidable: She had armed herself with announced confidence, and that had been her intention: a thrust made in order to gain strategic strength, to achieve a favorable position, before the inevitable attack.
Tor. Obviously chosen as a mere exercise; a preparatory ceremony would ensue, Tarah evaluated the strategy of the shaping game. Certainly the enormous muscleman meant nothing to them. Presenting no challenge, he would provide them with a maneuver which would speak to the others by implication: a hint of their power, paving the way for other confessions.
“What can you confess?” Richard asked Tor. There was an ambiguous note in his voice. Something tinged with— . . .
Certainly not pity, Tarah rejected; he was incapable of that. It was amusement, she told herself; disguised, cruel amusement. And so he and Malissa were proceeding.
“Confess, Tor!” Malissa commanded in mock seriousness. But she spread her rubied hands like rigid stars before him. When they had captured his eyes, she closed them quickly, as if to clutch him within her fists. Only the forefinger choked by the black-pearled snake remained extended like a threat.
“Certainly there’s something never spoken, to be spoken now,” came Richa
rd’s soft voice. “A weight to be removed, finally,” it seemed to offer compensation.
The cruel imitation of compassion to coax others to his will, Karen thought: the expert erection of an arena within which to attack.
Now Malissa’s hands flashed open again.
In Tor’s mind, her rings became: Eyes!
Malissa made a swift sign before him—it could have been a parody of the sign of the cross, inverted. “Speak!” she commanded, and this time there was no mockery in her voice, only an unequivocal demand.
Straining flesh, Tor’s muscles seemed about to explode.
At Richard’s glance, which merely glided, the mamaloi and the papaloi sprang to sudden life. Instantly they flanked Tor. Then they shook the beaded rattles before him. A sweet scent stirred.
“Tor . . . Tor . . . Tor . . . Tor . . .” Malissa’s pronouncement of the name was rhythmic, like the evening ocean’s advancing tide. Her fingers flashed open, closed, open.
Tor’s face struggled for an expression. His muscles expanded, attempting to release emotions crushed within the overly developed, massive body. “Once— . . .” he said.
Yes, so quickly he was in their control, la Duquesa knew. But why? Did they indeed have black powers?
“Once,” Malissa echoed Tor. The word purled, like reverberating circles of water moving outward, fading, embracing their own ghosts. “Once— . . .”
Marginal players now, the others watched: A sacrificial confessor had been chosen. For now it was not them.
“Our bodies were painted gold!” Tor shouted suddenly, in abrupt wonderment at the recollection.
“You performed in an exhibition,” Malissa knew.
“A sex exhibition. Naked!” said Albert excitedly. He stood before the muscleman, like a comical ringmaster before a mighty lion.
Malissa allowed the pudgy man to advance: As long as it served her purpose, she would permit Albert this; and she would not herself have to draw out from Tor details which would disgust her: Though she loathed sex—as if it were a stalked enemy—she accepted its use as an instrument for the acquisition of control.
“Yeah, naked—painted gold,” Tor’s mesmerized voice said. “A guy hired us off the beach.”