Iron Chamber of Memory

by John C. Wright

  “The image was too vivid. Henry turned his head away in disgust.

  She said sharply, “Don't look away! The truth does not go away just because you don’t look at it. Look! Look at me! Do you know what happened? Do you know how demeaning that was for me? Manfred saw me sneaking along in my nicest underthings, and he thought I was coming to lure him away from his books. It seems I have tried it before when he was studying, only to be turned down. But this time I was already all wound up. You see, your rough lovemaking had me more flustered and ready than I have ever been. It is not something Manfred could ever have done. You had already summoned the orchestra and the music was resounding all the way through my body!”

  “You are the one who ran out on me!” he said furiously.

  She bent down, a lovely scented shadow in the moonlight, and kissed him lightly on the lips. “And you are the one who ran out on me on the golf links. The caddy and the other players were all staring, laughing at me behind their hands. They knew what it meant.”

  “I don’t believe you. Manfred is not the kind of guy who believes in pre-marital sex. He and I were the only ones at school who thought it was better to wait, and decided to be book-crazy instead of girl-crazy like our fraternity mates. He has been sleeping with you?”

  “Sure,” she said. He could not see her expression in the darkness. “Everyone does it.”

  “Not everyone.”

  “Just because I cannot get you, does not mean I cannot get him. I care about you, and that hinders my technique.”

  “What kind of woman has a technique?”

  “All women have a technique. Why do you think we gossip and read trashy paperbacks? It is the talk of our trade. Like I said before, it is like dancing. It is not some evil manipulation of some poor victim if you know the steps and have natural rhythm and you find a man who also knows his steps and who is not afraid to lead! In a waltz, one partner leads, and the other follows. If the man does not—and Manfred has no sense of music when it comes to sex. He was born to be celibate!—I say if the man does not lead, then the woman must. The dance is less fun for her, but it is better than sitting in a corner of the ballroom with a cup of punch waiting in vain to be asked.” Her voice turned bitter. “One of the few good bits of advice my mother ever gave me was this: Better to be racy than lonely. But if you would lead, if you would do your part, I would never be lonely again, and a wife is supposed to be hot and bothered and shameless with her husband in ways that racy girls cannot even imagine. I would not have to make that Hobson’s choice, if only, if only–”

  “If only we were both true to ourselves, outside this one chamber.”

  That seemed to anger her. “We? We? You mean you.”

  “And what is that supposed to mean?”

  She was shaking now with cold fury. “You left me, abandoned and embarrassed with the other golfers watching…”

  “What other golfers? I did not notice anyone.”

  “You thought I was a trollop, merely because I am trying, trying, to find some way to save our love from the curse of this chamber! What else was I supposed to do? If I act coldly toward you outside, how will we ever meet and fall in love? But if I grope, dimly, blindly, not knowing, never knowing, that my own true love is walking away from me, within hands’ reach, it is too much to bear!”

  “I left because I found out I was in love with you, you little idiot!”

  She cried out with sheer joy and kissed him. “Then there is hope! Love is stronger!”

  He said, “No, not so. For Outside Me does not remember me and us, even so. And what else could he do but leave you?”

  “He could take me.”

  “And what about Manfred?”

  “How dare you!” Her voice was venom.

  “What did I say?” His voice was bewilderment.

  “You have seen him with me? Do you think we will be happy together for the rest of our lives? No; he does not even like the things I like, or want to do the things I want to do. Name something he and I have in common?”

  He could not.

  She went on in a softer, sadder voice: “Do you realize that, at any moment, in the Out Of Doors, you might be called away, back to America? Unless you simply by accident or impulse wander into this chamber of this house, you will not even remember you found the perfect soul mate for yourself! The same little impulses and quiet voices in our hearts that are finding excuses to bring us together in the Out Of Doors, if I marry him, will make me do things to make my marriage unhappy, and oh! For the rest of my life! The whisper in my heart will tell me to hate my husband!”

  He could feel her wiping tears on his chest.

  “I have made my decision, Henry. It is too late. Your half-measures are no good. Either you make love to me, here and now, or it is over. The next time we wander into this room together, you will only remember that you had your chance at happiness, and lost it.”

  He was glad she had not seen his tears of weakness earlier. His mind was cold and clear. He said, “I can’t live without you, but I cannot betray my friend, no, not even if my friend never find out. My heart will break if it is over between us, but, at least, the memory will not torment me. I do not want you to love a dishonest man. It is that simple.”

  She sighed and laid her head on his chest. “Then you are saying it is over?”

  He said, “No. I am saying I reject your ultimatum. We will not make love here and now, not until I marry you in a proper ceremony and make you mine. But you will not leave me nor betray me. I won’t allow it. I will bite you on the neck if you disobey me. I am not asking you, Laureline. I am telling you.”

  She sighed again. “Me and my big mouth. I should never have told you about the dance. Now that you are taking the lead, I suppose I cannot complain about you stepping on my feet. But there is still nothing to do. There are no clues, nothing to investigate. I suppose Manfred could hire a team of scientists, or the kinds of kooks who look for ghosts in empty houses, but what would the kooks actually point their kook instruments at? Where are the ghosts? You won’t know what to ask the kooks to look for. I don’t know if any human mind can figure out something this strange. Unless, of course, Manfred is behind it.”

  “He is not,” said Henry, but he wished he were more certain of his words.

  “But if it is him?” she implored. “If it is Manfred keeping us apart?”

  Henry gritted his teeth. “I shall certainly kill him.”

  Kissing her, he stood up, and pulled his memorandum book out of the pocket of his coat, which was thrown over a chair arm. “Do you have a light?”

  She said, “For a man who smokes like a chimney, you would think you would have a box of matches in every pocket of every garment!”

  “If I have to ask for a light, it reminds me not to smoke so much, and gives me an excuse to talk to strangers.” He put the book under the open window, and found the moonlight was bright enough to make out the letters on the most recent page.

  Get-well card for Mrs. Wolfhound.

  And

  Pick up crucifix at Brising Brothers.

  He muttered, “What in the world is this?” He remembered that the Brising Brothers were the jewelers on the Parish of St. Ouen on Island of Jersey. Short, funny little men with big whiskers. It was at their shop where he had bought the diamond pendant. He must have ordered an additional work from them.

  She stepped up next to him, pressing her warm body up against his side, and handed him her little tiny pencil from her notebook. “Push the button on the back. The lead lights up. It still writes just fine, but you can see what you are writing.”

  He stared at it. Henry realized that he could no longer tell what was supposed to be odd and what was supposed to be normal. He had never seen a mechanical pencil with luminous graphite built in. But did that mean it was inexplicable? Or just unusual?

  Laureline said, “You are gaping like a carp! It is from Japan. The pencil lead glows in the dark for a few minutes on the paper, and then fades to
black. Really clever, actually.”

  He wrote down: Investigate history of Rose Crystal Chamber. Who built it and why? Did any of Manfred’s relatives also study mesmerism? And, as promised, the pencil strokes glowed in the dark. Then, on impulse, his hand wrote: What if an inner Manfred lives too, tells him to slip me a clue? & where did the mermaid of Frome go to, after slaying her lover Lubberlu?

  But then she put her hands in his, and said, “Darling, I have a better idea. Simpler. Why not just stay in the chamber? Here is a couch, a lamp, a fireplace and a bottle of wine. It is an old mansion: I can bring in a chamber pot. I practically live here, now. All the moving, all the preparations for the wedding will bring me back again and again. You saw, you saw, that I can make myself just on impulse arise at night and come in. I will make a note that this should be used as a pantry or luncheon room, and to bring food. I will keep coming here on any excuse and our love will not die.”

  Henry nodded slowly. What if there were something like radiation, some influence, which existed in this chamber, which he could soak up? Could he acclimate himself to the chamber of memory? Grow up an immunity to amnesia like developing an immunity to poison? The wedding was soon. He had to try anything that might work.

  “Very well,” he said. And it was agreed.

  She wrote in her book with her magic pencil, kissed him lightly, took up the dark candle, and walked away in the dark. As he heard her heels click-clacking on the floorboards, that feeling of oddness came over him again. In the dark, blindly, he wrote in his own book.

  Find out why Laurel never takes off her shoes?

  8. Trapped Within the Inner World

  Sunday

  He woke to the wonderful sound of the bells ringing in the eight-sided bell tower in the South Wing. He saw Manfred and Laureline, the few servants and gardeners from the house, and a surprising number of folk from the village and the south part of the island streaming into the chapel. Since there was a church in the middle of the island at a more convenient spot, he assumed Manfred had invited them there for some reason, perhaps to make an announcement.

  An hour later the small throng streamed out, chatting, and entered the forest path to find their way downhill to the less strange parts of the island. Henry sat with his cheek on the windowsill, sighing, feeling like a boy playing hooky.

  The time walked by with leaden steps. He wished now he had brought his books and the rough draft of his dissertation paper. There was nothing to do, and only one or two thoughts to think about. Henry was not a man well equipped for idle solitude.

  There was one wine bottle left, which he nursed carefully. There was also water in the bottom of the bucket, which would last him a day or two at most.

  Once or twice he heard a servant, Mr. Nodenson the Butler, or the Cook’s daughter Brigit, walking through the pentagonal corridor that ran past the head of the stairs, and he called up from the foot. At other times, from the eastern windows, he saw workingmen moving crates through corridors of the gallery, and he waved or shouted.

  No one was able to hear him. He screamed bloody murder, whistled, and hollered. It was as if everyone in earshot were deaf.

  Once he leaned out too far, and forgot where he was or what had happened—hadn’t he just been touring the house with Laurel?—But when the top half of his body was inside the Rose Crystal Chamber again, he recalled.

  In the afternoon, he saw Laureline and Manfred walking in the tiny garden nestled between the gallery and the Square Tower and the Main Hall. He was showing her the stone quern. Their voices were clear, and Henry could hear each word. It was all love-talk, impish and saccharine, and it made him sick, because he knew that the false Laurel doing the talking was lying, playing a role, and the true Laureline buried inside her was drifting farther away. Whatever doubts Manfred had entertained seemed gone now.

  As Henry watched, Manfred sat on the stone quern and pulled the dark-haired beauty, pretending to protest, into his lap. He nuzzled and caressed her, fondling the gorgeous girl, Henry’s girl, who blushed prettily, pretended to be scandalized, and asked what the servants would say. When she jumped to her feet, Manfred gave her a playful swat on the rear, and the girl took her skirts in her hands and ran away at a fair clip, while Manfred after a moment of gawping in surprise, gave a jovial laugh and set off in pursuit. The pair circled the quern once or twice, and sped off past the barren gardens and the apple trees toward the north lawns. A crest of the hill soon hid them from sight.

  Apparently Manfred had been as easily habituated to follow Laureline’s wild tastes in the silly roughness of courtship as had Henry. It seemed terribly un-English; which was probably a great relief to Manfred. And why should he not be free with his lips and caresses? Why should he not put his hands where he liked? Had he not already violated his old fashioned oath of chastity? Manfred’s rebellion against the fashions of the modern world lasted until a busty Cornishwoman with long legs and kinky tastes mugged him in his study, it seemed.

  A black hatred came over Henry then like a mist in his eyes. He daydreamed about dropping some heavy chair or flower pot from this window onto Manfred’s head and breaking his neck. It would be the perfect crime. No one could see him, could they?

  Laureline, however, was true to her promise, and came to him after dark, dressed in her semitransparent nightgown and her high heels. She had forgotten to bring him a change of clothing or any food, or any way to wash up.

  “I wrote it in my book,” she said, “but I must have been too direct. I have to give myself a reason to bring things in here.”

  “You love the decorations, and think this should be your honeymoon suite. You do not want the cook or the butler around during the honeymoon, since you might be embarrassed if they heard the noise. You’re a bit of a screamer, you see.”

  “That's droll,” she said, raising an eyebrow. “In any event, embarrassment is for servants. I answer to no one, or soon shall.”

  “Fine. You are convinced he is embarrassed, and so you want to pack this room with food stuffs, so you can feed yourselves while the staff is on a holiday. And a chamber pot! And damn! Am I thirsty!”

  “Now you are swearing like Manfred. I wonder what his problem is, with that mouth of his.”

  They puzzled and fretted over the exact wording of her notes to herself, trying to find a way to make them indirect enough to escape the curse. She promised to go to the cellar and get him some bottles to drink, and, once again, to force herself to return, she slipped off her nightgown, and stood there before him wearing nothing but her stockings.

  The sight inflamed him; heat coursed through his veins as if his blood were flaming brandy. Her body was flawless in every line and curve. His mouth was suddenly dry, he forgot to breathe, and his heart was thunder in his chest. She pressed her body up to his for a lingering kiss, and then she was gone.

  He waited, holding the nightgown to his cheek, and savoring her perfume, but she did not return.

  Through the windows, he saw her, nude, rapping on the door to the master bedroom. Of course. Once she woke up to the amnesia of the outer world, what other explanation could there be for stealing naked through the mansion at night?

  The black hatred returned when he saw the door open. He closed the window and drew the drapes and took up a chair, and smashed it to bits, and threw it in the fireplace.

  That was the first day.

  Monday

  On Monday afternoon, he saw her once again in the small garden enclosed by the gallery and the Main Hall. She was dressed in a white blouse with a high, starched collar and long skirt, and a wide belt, as ever, cinched too tightly. She wore high-topped shoes, with a long skirt and straw hat, her hair tied back with a blue ribbon at the bottom of the bangs so that the whole mass was a lozenge rather than a pony tail. She looked like something out of a picture album from a century ago. Henry felt sickened and weak with hunger, thirst, and longing.

  She took up a seat on a stone bench directly below his window, her legs crossed, rea
ding a book. After a while, she took a bit of bread crust out of her skirt pocket, and tossed the crumbs to birds that gathered, while his mouth watered and his stomach growled.

  He screamed and cried and reached out with his hand, but she did not hear. He dropped rose petals on her head; she did not look up.

  That midnight she came again, dressed in a new nightgown, this one black and lacy. Her underwired bodice emphasized her cleavage dramatically. It could not have been comfortable enough to sleep in.

  And the nightgown was not enough to dissuade him from his anger at her when he discovered she had once again forgotten to bring him anything to eat or drink.

  “At least I keep remembering to come!” she said in protest. “I saw the note about the honeymoon, but that is after the wedding, and the food would go bad! I thought it was a reminder for two weeks from now. You cannot expect me to remember my true love is hiding in the house! Manfred and I believe you went away to catch up your paper once you realized how slack you’ve been about it.”

  “Actually, I could work on it now if I could think of a way to get you to go to Mr. Drake’s smoke shop and retrieve my books. It is maddening here. How do hermits do it? There is nothing to think about except for every drop of water I have ever seen.”

  “What happened to the potted roses?”

  “I’ve been chewing the flowers for moisture. Hold on! Write yourself a note saying you have to water the flowers!”

  She said, “This time, this time for sure, I can go get some wine bottles out of the cellar for you. I’ll take off my–”