Imajica 02 - The Reconciliator

by Clive Barker

  A dreadlocked black squatted on the low wall beside the garden's gate and, spotting Clem, rose to guard the entrance. Clem didn't retreat. There was no threat visible in the man's posture, nor anything but calm in the garden beyond. The sleepers did so quietly, their dreams seemingly kind. And the debaters around the fire spoke in whispers. When they laughed, which they did now and then, it wasn't the hard, desperate noise he'd heard among these clans, but light.

  "Who are you, man?" the black asked him.

  "My name's Clem. I got lost."

  "You don't look like you been sleepin' rough, man."

  "I haven't."

  "So why you here?"

  "Like I said: I got lost."

  The man shrugged. "Waterloo Station's over in that direction," he said, pointing roughly back the way Clem had come. "But you got a long wait for the first train." He caught Clem's glance into the garden. "Sorry, man, you can't come in. If you got a bed, go to it."

  Clem didn't move, however. Something about one of the men at the fire, standing with his back to the gate, rooted him to the spot.

  "Who is that, who's talking now?" he asked the guard.

  The man glanced around. "That's the Gentile," he said.

  "The Gentile?" he said. "Surely you mean Gentle."

  He hadn't raised his voice in order to name the man, but the syllables must have carried on the tranquil air, because as they went from Clem's lips the speaker stopped talking and slowly turned towards the gate. With the fire burning at his back his features were hard to make out, but Clem knew he'd made no error. The man turned back to his fellow debaters and said something to them Clem didn't catch. Then he left their fire and walked down to the gate.

  "Gentle?" his visitor said. "It's Clem."

  The black stood aside, opening the gate to let the man he'd called the Gentile step out of the garden. There he stood and studied the stranger.

  "Do I know you?" he said. There was no enmity in his voice, but there was no warmth either. "I do, don't I?"

  "Yes, you do, my friend," Clem replied. "Yes, you do."

  They walked together along the river, leaving the sleepers and the fire behind them. The many changes in Gentle soon became apparent. He was of course far from certain of who he was, but there were other changes which were, Clem sensed, profounder still. There was a plainness about his speech, and about the expression on his face, which was by turns disturbing and calming. Something of the Gentle he and Taylor had known had gone, perhaps forever. But something was on its way to being gained in its place, and Clem wanted to be there when it was: to be the angel guarding that tender self.

  "Did you paint the pictures?" he asked.

  "With my friend Monday," Gentle said. "We made them together."

  "I never saw you paint anything like that before."

  "They're places I've been," Gentle told him, "and people I've known. They start coming back to me when I've got the colors. But it's slow. There's so much filling my head"— he put his fingers to his brow, which bore a series of ill-healed lacerations—"confusing me. You call me Gentle, but I've got other names."

  "John Zacharias?"

  "That's one. Then there's a man in me called Joseph Bellamy, and another called Michael Morrison, and one called Almoth, and one called Fitzgerald, and one called Sartori. They all seem to be me, Clem. But that's not possible, is it? I asked Monday, and Carol, and Irish, and they said people have two names, sometimes three, but never ten."

  "Maybe you've lived other lives, Gentle, and you're remembering them."

  "If that's true, I don't want to remember. It hurts too much. I can't think straight. I want to be one man with one life. I want to know where I begin and where I end, instead of going on and on."

  "Why's that so terrible?" Clem said, genuinely unable to see the horror in such expansion.

  "Because I'm afraid there'll be no end to it," Gentle replied. He spoke steadily, like a metaphysician who'd reached a precipice and was calmly describing the abyss below for the benefit of those who couldn't—or wouldn't— be with him there. "I'm afraid I'm joined "to everything else," he said. "And then I'm going to be lost. I want to be this man, or that man, but not every man. If I'm everyone I'm no one, and nothing."

  He stopped his even stride and turned to Clem, putting his hands on Clem's shoulders.

  "Who am I?" he said. "Just tell me. If you love me, tell me. Who am I?" "You're my friend."

  It wasn't an eloquent reply, but it was the only one Clem had. Gentle studied his companion's face for a minute or more, as if calculating the potency of this axiom against his dread. And slowly, as he scanned Clem's features, a smile plucked at the corners of his mouth, and tears began to glisten hi his eyes.

  "You see me, don't you?" he said softly. "Of course I see you."

  "I don't mean with your sight, I mean with your mind. I exist in your head."

  "Gear as crystal," Clem said.

  That was truer now than it had ever been. Gentle nodded, and his smile spread.

  "Somebody else tried to teach me this," he said. "But I didn't understand." He paused, musing. Then he said, "It doesn't matter what I'm called. Names are nothing. I am what I am in you." His arms slipped around Clem, into an embrace. "I'm your friend."

  He hugged Clem hard, then stood away, the tears clearing.

  "Who was it who taught me that?" he wondered. "Judith, maybe?"

  He shook his head. "I see her face over and over," he said. "But it wasn't her. It was somebody who went away." "Was it Taylor?" Clem said. "Do you remember Taylor?"

  "He knew me too?" "He loved you."

  "Where is he now?"

  "That's a whole other story."

  "Is it?" Gentle replied. "Or is it all one?"

  They walked on along the river, exchanging questions and answers as they went. At Gentle's request Clem recounted Taylor's story, from life to deathbed, from deathbed to light, and Gentle in his turn offered what clues he had to the nature of the journey he'd returned from. Though he could remember very few of the details, he knew that unlike Taylor's it had not taken him into brightness. He'd lost many friends along the way—their names mingled with those of the lives he'd lived—and seen the deaths of many others. But he'd also witnessed the wonders he'd painted on the walls. Sunless skies that shimmered green and gold; a palace of mirrors, like Versailles; vast, mysterious deserts and ice cathedrals full of bells. Listening to these traveler's tales, the vistas of hitherto unknown worlds spreading in all directions, Clem felt his earlier ease with the notion of an unbounded self, going into some limitless adventure, falter. The very divisions he'd happily tried to persuade Gentle from at the outset of this report looked tempting now. But they were a trap, and he knew it. Their comfort would smother and hobble him eventually. He had to unburden himself of his old, stale ways of thinking if he was to travel alongside this man into places where dead souls were light and being was a function of thought.

  "Why did you come back?" he asked Gentle after a time.

  "I wish I knew," Gentle replied.

  "We should find Judith. I think maybe she knows more about this than either of us."

  "I don't want to leave these people, Clem. They took me in."

  "I understand that," Clem said. "But Gentle, they can't help you now. They don't understand what's going on."

  "Nor do we," Gentle reminded him. "But they listened when I told my story. They watched me paint, and they asked me questions, and when I told them the visions I'd had they didn't mock me." He stopped and pointed over the river towards the Houses of Parliament. "The lawgivers'll be coming there soon," he said. "Would you trust what I just told you to them? If we said to them that the dead come back in sunlight and there are worlds where the sky's green and gold, what would they say?" "They'd say we were crazy."

  "Yes, And throw us into the gutter with Monday and Carol and Irish and all the rest."

  "They're not in the gutter because they had visions, Gentle," Clem said. "They're there because they've b
een abused, or they've abused themselves."

  "Which means they can't cover their despair the way the rest can. They've got no distractions from their pain. So they get drunk and crazy, and the next day they're even more lost than they were the day before. But I'd still rather trust them than all the bishops and the ministers. Maybe they're naked, but isn't that a holy state?"

  "It's also a vulnerable one," Clem pointed out. "You can't drag them into this war."

  "Who said there's going to be a war?" "Judith," Clem replied. "But even if she hadn't, it's in the air."

  "Does she know who the enemy's going to be?" "No. But it'll be a hard battle, and if you care for these people you won't put them in the front line. They'll be there when the war's over."

  Gentle pondered this for a time. Finally, he said, "So they'll be the peacemakers."

  "Why not? They can spread the good news."

  Gentle nodded. "I like that," he said. "And so will they."

  "So shall we go and find Judith?"

  "I think that'd be wise. But first, I have to say goodbye."

  The day came with them as they retraced their steps along the bank, and by the time they reached the underpass the shadows were no longer black but gray-blue. Some of the beams had found their way through the concrete bridges and barricades and were edging towards the threshold of the garden.

  "Where did you go?" Irish said, meeting his Gentile at the gate. "We thought you'd slipped away."

  "I want you to meet a friend of mine," Gentle said. "This is Clem. Clem, this is Irish; this is Carol and Benedict. Where's Monday?"

  "Asleep," said Benedict, the sometime guard.

  "What's Clem short for?" Carol asked.

  "Clement."

  "I've seen you before," she said. "Didn't you used to bring round soup? You did, didn't you? I never forget faces."

  Gentle led the way through the gate and into the garden. The fire was almost out, but there were enough embers to thaw chilled fingers. He squatted down beside the fire and poked at it with a stick to stir some flame, beckoning Clem to warm himself. But as Clem bent to do so he stopped.

  "What is it?" Gentle said.

  Clem's eyes went from the fire to the bundled forms still slumbering all around: twenty or more, still lost in dreams, though the light was creeping over them.

  "Listen," he said.

  One of the sleepers was laughing, so softly it was barely audible.

  "Who is that?" Gentle said. The sound was contagious and brought a smile to his face.

  "It's Taylor," Clem said.

  "There's no one here called Taylor," Benedict said.

  "Well, he's here," Clem replied.

  Gentle stood up and scanned the sleepers. In the far corner of the garden Monday was lying flat on his back, with a blanket barely covering his paint-spattered clothes. A beam of morning light had found its straight, bright way between the concrete pillars and was settled on his chest, catching his chin and his pale lips. As if its gilding tickled, he laughed in his sleep.

  "That's the boy who made the paintings with me," Gentle said.

  "Monday," Clem remembered.

  "That's right."

  Clem picked his way through the dormitory to the youth's side. Gentle followed, but before he reached the sleeper the laughter faded. Monday's smile lingered, however, the sun catching the blond hairs on his upper lip. His eyes didn't open, but when he spoke it was as if he saw.

  "Look at you, Gentle," he said. "The traveler returned. No, I'm impressed, really I am."

  It wasn't quite Taylor's voice—the larynx shaping it was twenty years too young—but the cadences were his; so was the sly warmth.

  "Clem told you I was hanging around, I presume."

  "Of course," Clem said.

  "Strange times, eh? I used to say I'd been born into the wrong age. But it looks as though I died into the right one. So much to gain. So much to lose."

  "Where do I begin?" Gentle said.

  "You're the Maestro, Gentle, not me."

  "Maestro, am I?"

  "He's still remembering, Tay," Clem explained.

  "Well, he should be quick about it," Taylor said. "You've had your holiday, Gentle. Now you've got some healing to do. There's a hell of a void waiting to take us all if you fuck up. And if it comes"—the smile went from Monday's face—"if it comes there won't be any more spirits in the light, because there won't be any light. Where's your familiar, by the way?"

  "Who?"

  "The mystif."

  Gentle's breath quickened.

  "You lost it once, and I went looking for it. I found it too, mourning its children. Don't you remember?" ' "Who was this?" Clem asked.

  "You never met it," Taylor said. "If you had, you'd remember."

  "I don't think Gentle does," Clem said, looking at the Maestro's troubled face.

  "Oh, the mystifs in there somewhere," Taylor said. "Once seen, never forgotten. Go on, Gentle. Name it for me. It's on the tip of your tongue."

  Gentle's expression became pained.

  "It's the love of your life, Gentle," Taylor said, coaxing Gentle on. "Name it. I dare you. Name it."

  Gentle frowned and mouthed silence. But finally his throat gave up its hostage. "Pie ..." he murmured.

  Taylor smiled through Monday's face. "Yes... ?"

  "Pie 'oh' pah."

  "What did I tell you? Once seen, never forgotten."

  Gentle said the name again and again, breathing it as though the syllables were an incantation. Then he turned to Clem.

  "That lesson I never learned," he said. "It came from Pie."

  "Where's the mystif now?" Taylor asked. "Do you have any idea?"

  Gentle went down on his haunches beside Tay's sleeping host. "Gone," he said, closing his hands around the sunlight.

  "Don't do that," Taylor said softly. "You only catch the dark that way." Gentle opened his hand again and let the light lie on his palm. "You say the mystifs gone?" Tay went on. "Where, for God's sake? How can you lose it twice?"

  "It went into the First Dominion," Gentle replied. "It died and went where I couldn't follow."

  "I'm sorry to hear that."

  "But I'll see it again, when I've done my work," Gentle said.

  "Finally, we get to it," Tay said.

  "I'm the Reconciler," Gentle said. "I've come to open the Dominions ..."

  "So you have, Maestro," Tay said.

  "... on Midsummer Night."

  "You're cutting it fine," Clem said. "That's tomorrow."

  "It can be done," Gentle said, standing up again. "I know who I am now. He can't hurt me any more."

  "Who can't?" Clem asked.

  "My enemy," Gentle replied, turning his face into the sunlight. "Myself."

  After only a few days in this city that enemy, the sometime Autarch Sartori, had begun yearning for the languid dawns and elegaic dusks of the Dominion he'd left. The day came altogether too quickly here and was snuffed out with, the same alacrity. That would have to change. Among his plans for the New Yzordderrex would be a palace made of mirrors, and of glass made possessive by feits, that would hold the glory of these inkling dawns and protract them, so that they met the glow of dusk coming in other directions. Then he might be happy here.

  There would be, he knew, little in the way of resistance to his taking of the Fifth, to judge by the ease with which the members of the Tabula Rasa had succumbed to him. All but one of them was now dead, cornered in their burrows like rabid vermin. Not one had detained him more than minutes; they had given up their lives quickly, with few sobs and still fewer prayers. He wasn't surprised. Their ancestors had been strong-willed men, but even the most pungent blood thinned over generations, and the children of their children of their children (and so on) were faithless cowards.

  The only surprise he'd had in this Dominion, and it was a sweet one, was the woman whose bed he was returning to: the peerless and eternal Judith. His first taste of her had been in Quaisoir's chambers when, mistaking her for the woman he
'd married, he'd made love to her on the bed of veils. Only later, as he'd prepared to quit Yzordderrex, had Rosengarten informed him of Quaisoir's maiming and gone on to report the presence of a doppelgSnger in the corridors of the palace. That report had been Rosengarten's last as a loyal commander. When, a few minutes later, he'd been ordered to join his Autarch on the journey to the Fifth, he'd unconditionally refused. The Second was his home, he said, and Yzordderrex his pride, and if he was to die then he wanted it to be in sight of the comet. Tempted as he was to punish the man for this dereliction of duty, Sartori had no desire to enter his new world with blood on his hands. He'd let the man go and departed for the Fifth, believing the woman he'd made love to on Quaisoir's bed was somewhere in the city behind him. But no sooner had he taken up the mask of his brother's life than he'd met her again, in Klein's garden of scentless flowers.

  He never ignored omens, good or bad. Judith's reappearance in his life was a sign that they belonged together, and it seemed that she, all unknowing, felt the same. Here was the woman for the love of whom this whole sorry catalogue of death and desolation had been started, and in her company he felt himself renewed, as though the sight of her reminded his cells of the self he'd been before his fall. He was being offered a second chance: an opportunity to start again with the creature he'd loved and make an empire that would erase all memory of his previous failure. He'd had proof of their compatibility when they'd made love. A more perfect welding of erotic impulses he could scarcely have imagined. After it, he'd gone out into the city about the business of murder with more vigor than ever.

  It would take time, of course, to persuade her that this was a marriage decreed by fate. She believed him to be his other and would be vengeful when he disabused her of this fiction. But he would bring her around in time. He had to. He had intimations, even in this blithe city, of intolerable things: whispers of oblivion that made the foulest Oviate he'd ever dredged up look alluring. She could save him from that, lick off his sweats and rock him to sleep. He had no fear that she'd reject him. He had a claim on her that would make her put aside all moral niceties: his child, planted in her two nights before.