Waking the Moon

by Elizabeth Hand

  “I don’t think anyone knows where she is. She must have taken off into the woods. And unless she wants to end up with Magda Kurtz, she better stay there.”

  For a few minutes we sat in silence. Outside, the Shrine bells tolled five-thirty. It was already full dark. All around us, people would be getting ready for the start of another week. I took a deep breath, then asked the question I’d been waiting to ask.

  “What happened to Oliver?”

  “Oliver?” Baby Joe regarded me through slitted black eyes. “Oliver’s here.”

  “Here?” I looked around quickly, but Baby Joe went on, “Not here in my room—I mean he’s back here in D.C. They brought him to the ER in West Virginia last night, but I guess he was okay ‘cause they just looked him over and discharged him. He came back with Warnick this morning. Hasel heard them talking, they were supposed to take him to Providence for observation—”

  “Providence Hospital?”

  He nodded. “To the psychiatric wing.”

  “Don’t they have to get the family’s permission before they do that?”

  “Hija, Warnick is his family. All the Benandanti—they come first, they take care of their own—”

  “But Oliver’s not crazy.”

  “Normal people don’t try to cut their dicks off with a Swiss Army knife.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  He lit a cigarette and smoked pensively for a moment before saying, “You know, that’s what they used to do.”

  “Who? The Benandanti?”

  “No. Your goddess-worshipers. In Iran or someplace. Turkey, maybe. The priests would go into some kind of ecstatic frenzy and castrate themselves.” He gave a wheezing laugh. “We read about it in Warnick’s class. You can see how church attendance might drop off after a while.”

  “But—why would Oliver do that? I mean, how would he even know about it. He hasn’t been to Warnick’s class in two months.”

  Baby Joe shrugged. “It’s not like it’s a big secret. It’s history, man, anyone can read about it. Maybe he and Angie, you know—she’s playing Ishtar, he’s gonna be Adonis. Talagang sirang ulo.”

  I got to my feet. “I know, I know: crazy fucking bitch.” I ran my fingers through my hair. “God, I just wish I could have a decent meal and a bath and sleep for a week—”

  Baby Joe put a hand on my shoulder. “Stay here, Sweeney. Really—you can have the bed, I’ll crash on the floor—”

  “Oh, Baby Joe—thanks, really, thanks a lot. But I can’t. I think—I think I better go see Oliver. How far is Providence?”

  “Maybe five, ten minutes on the bus.”

  “Okay. Do me a favor, then. Will you call Annie and tell her where I am, and find out if she’s heard from Angelica? She’s got to come back, she can’t be out there running around the woods without her clothes—”

  Baby Joe grinned. “Nice for the trees, though, huh? Yeah, I’ll call Annie.”

  “Thanks.”

  He followed me to the door. “You too, you know. You’re a fucking crazy bitch too, but you’re not nuts.”

  He drew circles in the air beside his temple, then cocked his finger at me. “Be careful, hija. It’s the 84 bus, stops at North Cap and goes right to Providence. Five minutes.”

  He leaned against the door and watched me go. “Tell Oliver I hope he feels better.” With a soft, nervous giggle he turned away.

  Oliver’s room was on the second floor of the hospital. Down the hall a woman wailed in an eerie childish voice. A family composed of father, mother, little girl sat in a dreary waiting area, holding magazines in their laps and staring out the window at the parking lot. When I peered through the door of Room 1141 saw Oliver on the bed, reading The Ginger Man, a copy of the Washington Post Book World atop his pillow. There were bars on the window behind him but no shades or blinds, no curtain pulls or chains or cords. On one pale green wall an unadorned wooden cross hung above a wooden chair. Oliver was very pale. His right foot had been bandaged and was propped awkwardly before him on the bed, like a superfluous piece of luggage. The bandage and green hospital robe, coupled with his shaved head and blanched face, made him look like someone terribly, perhaps fatally, ill.

  Seeing him like that terrified me—how long had he looked like this, why hadn’t I noticed before?

  Because you were too fucked up yourself, I thought. Too fucked up, too selfish, too fucking stupid to stop him!

  Anger and self-loathing flooded me. How could I just have let him go like this? The drugs, of course it was the drugs: he’d been eating acid and mescaline and hashish and god knows what else, eating it like candy for months, maybe years. And this is what it came to—

  For one awful moment I thought of turning around and leaving, before he could look up to see me. But then I remembered how he had hugged me the night before, holding me so desperately I almost wept to think of it.

  Save me, Sweeney. Don’t fear me…

  “Oliver.” I forced a smile as I stepped into the room. “What’s shaking?”

  He glanced up. When he saw it was me he grinned and tossed his book onto the pillow. “Smelly O’Keefe! What took you so long?”

  I plucked at the sleeve of my shirt and made a face. “Stinky Cassidy, more like it. They let you read that stuff in here?”

  He pulled me onto the bed next to him. “Ow. Watch the gam.”

  I nodded sympathetically. “Looks pretty gross.”

  “Septic poisoning. How’d you get up here?”

  “Just walked.”

  “Did you sign in?”

  “Was I supposed to?”

  Right on cue a nurse popped his head through the door. “Somebody at the station said you have a visitor? Oh, hi there—did you sign in? No? Well, don’t get up, what’s your name, I’ll do it, I’ve got to give him meds anyway. Right back.”

  “That’s Joe,” explained Oliver. “He’s my keeper—”

  Before he could finish Joe was back. “All right, six o’clock, time for these.” He handed Oliver a paper cup of water and another little cup containing two tiny red pills. Oliver waved away the water, tapped the pills into his hand, and swallowed them.

  “Ugh. How can you do that, I could never do that.” Joe gave me a measured look, checking me out, I guess to determine if I had a hacksaw stuck down my jeans. “More friends,” he said after a moment. “This boy has more friends. Oh, and Oliver, another one of your brothers called, he said he’d try again tonight. Do you want dinner, sweetheart?”

  This to me. I shook my head. “No, thanks.”

  “All right, then. Visiting hours on this floor are officially over at seven, but I won’t do a bed check till eight.” He grinned, took the little plastic cup from Oliver’s hand, and left.

  When he was gone Oliver got up and crossed the room to the door. He moved slowly, like a gunfighter in an old Western, and I tried not to think about what the hospital robe must be hiding. He closed the door and stayed there for a long moment with his back to me. A moment later I heard him gagging.

  “Oliver! Are you okay—”

  He turned and nodded, eyes watering, and opened his hand. His palm was wet, streaked with crimson; but before I could cry out he shook his head.

  “Thorazine.” He automatically reached for a pocket; then remembered he was wearing a hospital robe. He turned to get a tissue from his nightstand. He wiped his hand and went into the bathroom and flushed the toilet, then walked over to the chair beneath the little wooden cross. “They gave it to me in the ER last night. I was under restraint so I couldn’t do anything about it. It made me hallucinate; I thought I was totally brain damaged. So now I cough them up.”

  He kicked absently at the chair, then turned and crossed to the narrow bed, motioning me to join him. “I guess I could save them for you.”

  “No thanks.” I smiled. “First time I’ve ever seen you turn down drugs.”

  His pale blue eyes were sharp and guileless as he gazed at me. “I’m not crazy, Sweeney.”

  “I kn
ow you’re not crazy. You don’t look crazy,” I lied. “But…”

  But normal people don’t try to cut off their dicks with a Swiss Army knife.

  “I don’t look crazy because I’m not crazy.”

  I said nothing. After a moment I raised my head to look at him: the dark stubble covering his skull, the crimson web where he’d cut himself with the razor; his cheeks and chin still smooth as a boy’s though I was certain he hadn’t shaved in days.

  It was like gazing at someone who had been consumed by fire, a lovely porcelain figurine left too long in the kiln; and now all that remained was this human ash, frail and white and cold. Except for his eyes, those madly burning blue eyes that still might without warning burst into flame.

  He covered my hand with his—so cold, surely he shouldn’t be this cold?

  “I’m not crazy, Sweeney. I’m just not what they wanted,” he said softly. “Angelica and my father, Warnick and all the rest of them—they all wanted different things, they all wanted something from me I can’t give. They wanted me to be strong, they wanted me to give them a champion. But I can’t, Sweeney. They don’t understand. I’m not like that.

  “I wanted to—”

  He stopped, stared at his hands with their bitten-down nails.

  “I wanted to mend things,” he said at last. He looked at me and sighed. “I know it sounds stupid, but I thought—all this bullshit about darkness, and light, and different powers for men and women—all this fighting, all this, this hatred the Benandanti and the rest of them have—I thought I could make it different, somehow. At least I thought I could escape it,” he added with a grim smile. “But I was wrong, Sweeney. I can’t. No one can. We’ll never understand each other, any of us. Not ever.”

  I nodded like I understood, although of course I didn’t. After a moment I asked, “But—if you’re not what the Benandanti want you to be, or Angelica—what are you?”

  He tipped his head and smiled.

  “I’m lovely,” he sang in his sweet quavering voice. “All I am is lovely…”

  I laughed even as my eyes filled with tears, and touched his poor ugly scalp. “Well, you’ll be lovely again, Oliver. It’ll grow back.”

  With sudden vehemence he shook his head. “No. Does the reed once cut return? Will the trees now barren turn again to greet the spring? What name did Achilles take among the women? Does the Eagle know what is in the pit?”

  His hand shot out to grab my wrist, tightening like a wire as he pulled me to him. “Why is a raven like a writing desk?”

  “O-Oliver,” I stammered. His face had twisted into a bitter mask, still smiling, but it was a contorted smile now, and his eyes were no longer laughing.

  “Sweeney? Surely you remember? It was the first thing we ever talked about. Why is a raven like a writing desk? Tell me the next line—”

  He gripped me so hard that pins and needles darted from my wrist into my arm. “Tell me!” he hissed.

  “I—I don’t—”

  “Say it!”

  “Your—your hair wants cutting.”

  “There!” He cried out triumphantly and let go of my hand. I rubbed it gingerly, and moved a fraction of an inch away from him. “See, Sweeney? You remembered.”

  With some effort he stood, moving slowly. He grabbed the hem of his robe and tossed it flamboyantly behind him, as though it were a flowing train. “I knew you would. Sweeney.”

  He stopped and stared at me. The front of his robe gaped open and I had a glimpse of white bandages beneath, although maybe it was just his underclothes. “I know about you,” he said very softly. Once more his voice was gentle. He was gazing at me with pity, but also with great tenderness. “You’re in this by mistake—”

  I shook my head desperately, but he went on. “It’s okay, Sweeney. Because even after I figured it all out, that you weren’t in on any of this—I mean, you’re not a Molyneux scholar, and obviously you’re not a Benandanti, and you’re not with Angelica, wherever the fuck she is—but, well, you’re still great, Sweeney. Anybody else would have run away screaming from all this, but you stayed, you were my friend and you stuck with me. And you’re great; you’re just so great to have done that. You know that, right?”

  I bowed my head, mumbling something about No, well, maybe…

  He knelt in front of me. It must have hurt, because he grimaced as he took my hands. He held them very tenderly, his fingertips barely grazing mine.

  “Sweeney.” His blue eyes were clear as water. “I’ll love you next time. I promise.”

  I bit my lip. Tears stung my eyes, and I shook my head furiously. “Why not this time? Why her and not me? I mean, I know you better, Oliver, I know you—”

  He smiled and leaned forward to kiss my cheek.

  “—and I love you. Even if I’m not one of them! I could be better, I could be good for you, I could help you out of this—”

  I gestured at the pale green walls, that humble little wooden cross, the crooked chair near the door.

  “Oh, my stars! Goodness had nothing to do with it, kiddo. Listen—”

  He dropped my hands and got to his feet again, pulling his robe tight. “This isn’t new for my family. It isn’t new to me, not really. The Benandanti waited a long time for me, but in the meantime they used my brothers for target practice. Firing off a few rounds of firecrackers while they’re waiting for the Bearna Beill. I saw what happened to Osgood and Vance and Waldo, just like you saw what happened to Magda Kurtz. These guys take no prisoners, Sweeney, especially now. They’ve been expecting me for a long time—but they’ve been expecting Angelica even longer. Waiting for Electra, or someone like her.”

  I laughed uneasily, but Oliver shook his head. “I mean it! You read all this stuff about the Second Coming, but no one really expects it to happen, maybe not even the Benandanti. Especially when you consider that when the Second Coming actually Comes, it’s not a He but a She, and she’s taking even fewer prisoners than they are.”

  He went on bitterly. “They had me all picked out, you know, they bred me for this. And I was supposed to just kind of go along with them, be the sacred cow, be this sort of lure for Her when She arrived. Like this crazy arranged marriage or something, like once She got hold of me She might just roll over for them and play dead.”

  His voice rose to a desperate pitch. “But I’m not going for it, Sweeney. Maybe Angelica doesn’t understand what’s going on, but I do. I’m not the right guy for the job. And if you’re not the right kind of person, if you’re not what they expect, if you don’t do exactly what they want, they throw you away, they use you up and throw you out and that’s it. And I’m not going to let them do it to me.”

  “Oliver, this really is crazy, it doesn’t make any sense—”

  He slashed at the air in a rage. “No! You saw what happened to Magda Kurtz; Angelica told me. You know what I’m taking about—”

  “But, Oliver—you can’t hurt yourself! I mean, you’re playing right into their hands—”

  “No, I’m not, I’m not, I’m not.” His voice cracked as he paced to the bathroom. His hands kept fluttering around his forehead, making quick nervous motions as though to keep phantom hair from falling into his eyes. At the bathroom door he stopped, and asked suddenly, “Have you seen Angelica?”

  “No. She’s gone. Nobody knows where she is.”

  He made an anguished face. “Ahh—she’s really gone, then, it’s too late anyway—” He stopped, ran a hand across his forehead. “Jesus.”

  “Do you—do you think she’ll be all right?”

  “All right? Angelica?” He laughed incredulously. “She’ll be fine! I mean, probably every guy she ever meets will end up like this—”

  He cocked his head, rolling his eyes with his tongue hanging out and gabbling Ngah ngah ngah—

  “Maybe we’ll all end up like that, but She’ll be fine. Blessed art Thou among women and all that shit. Listen, Sweeney, don’t you worry about her: Angelica is destined for Big Things.” His voice
dropped to a conspiratory whisper. “Very, very Big Things.”

  I decided to change the subject. “I got kicked out.”

  His eyebrows arched in amazement. “You did? My little Sweeney, expelled from the Divine all by herself? Congratulations!”

  “Jeez, Oliver, I’m not happy about it.”

  “You should be,” he said quickly. “Oh yes very yes, you should get out of here as fast as your little bunny legs can take you, before this thing starts to blow. Oh yes.”

  He fell silent, staring thoughtfully into the empty space between us. After a moment he took a few steps, until he stood in front of the wooden chair beneath the cross. He reached up and took the cross in one hand, lifted it carefully from the wall, and turned it over thoughtfully.

  He looked up at me and said, “There is nothing for me but misery.”

  I started to protest but he went on as though he hadn’t heard.

  “There is nothing for me but misery,

  What shape is there that I have not had?

  A woman now, I have been man, youth and boy;

  I was an athlete, a wrestler,

  There were crowds around my door, my fans slept on the doorstep.

  There were flowers all over the house

  When I left my bed at sunrise.

  Shall I be a waiting maid to the gods, the slave of Cybele?”

  He lifted the cross in front of him. Around its crossbar tiny green vines moved, twining up and over the dull wood, their leaves so pale at first they were nearly white, but then quickening to yellow and gold and finally a rich deep green. As I watched in horror the vines spread, crept along the spars of the cross and then twisted around Oliver’s fingers, writhing and creeping like elvers or tiny serpents. They covered his arm in a tracery of gold and green and brown, leaves springing out so quickly that his white flesh was completely buried beneath them and I could see a few places where his veins had burst, sea green and crimson and the pale lavender of a new bruise, and the vines fed there and swelled to the thickness of a finger, a wrist, a thigh; then burst into scarlet blossom.