Too, Too Solid Flesh

by Nick O'Donohoe

  She smiled over her shoulder as she caught Horatio staring. Horatio told himself that it wasn’t an age for blushing, and he followed her through a grotto full of glowworms and blind cavefish, out a vine-covered entrance on the other side, into a small amphitheater, strikingly barren even after the rocks of the Galapagos Islands.

  The volcanic rocks reddened in the fading sunlight. Ahead lay a rocky landscape, with large boulders broken only by a single, gigantic statue with an exaggerated nose and long ears, almost featureless in its simplicity. Horatio recognized the scene-simula at once: Easter Island.

  Other people chatted inside. Billy waved across to Mary and called, “Would you like to sit with us?”

  She shrank back, shaking her head. She shrank further as an acid voice said, “If I might have even a little attention—” The sunset dimmed, the moon rose, and Eric stood before them. “Thank you so for your silence.”

  “It wasn’t easy,” David called and giggled to himself. He had been drinking, or using chemstim or a chip. Horatio recognized his giggle from the audience of Hamlet. Was everyone here also a theater-goer?

  Eric ignored him. “I would like to thank Madame Dernier for this lovely setting—”

  “You helped a great deal,” she said amiably.

  Eric stepped onto a large, flat rock. The elevation was real.

  “What sort of set will we choose?” He swung his hand across, stopping in front of the Easter Island statue.

  David said on cue, “Primitive.”

  “Arctic, desert, or tropical?”

  Billy said, more loudly than Horatio had heard him speak so far, “Doesn’t that depend on what ballet we’re doing?”

  Eric frowned. “First the set, then the ballet.” A herring gull dove past Eric’s head; he didn’t flinch.

  David said, “That’s right. Remember when we did the Everglades set and thought of doing Swan Lake?” He giggled. “Flamingo costumes. Marvelous. Always do sets first.”

  Billy’s ears turned red. He folded his arms and whispered defensively to Horatio, “He has something in mind.”

  Eric said, “What locale—tropical or northern?” He folded his arms, pulling his cape close against his body.

  Someone said automatically, “Cold—no, sorry: arctic.”

  “A cold, northern, primitive set. So be it.”

  “So be it,” they said in unison. Billy muttered it.

  The landscape melted and ran. A skyline appeared, rugged and treeless. It was a silhouette—then, suddenly, plains and rock outcroppings, with brown vegetation and tiny shoots of green. Thick beds of moss added patches of deep green in the area closest to the stream.

  The stream meandered through the center, cutting deeply. Large split hoofprints dotted the water’s edge.

  Eric said, “Any objects?” He stood stiff and erect, ignoring the water running at his feet.

  “A totem. No. A stone statue.”

  “A stone totem, then. But what sort?” Eric said sharply. “Male or female? Cruelty or fertility?”

  David giggled again. “Male cruel fertility.”

  Eric nodded. The others murmured, “So be it.”

  A figure rose out of the landscape, scattering earth and rock to either side. Bearded and gaunt, with empty circular eyes, he brandished a roughhewn spear, the butt end merging with the carving’s legs. His pitted body was splashed with flecks of vivid paints, most of which had flaked off. A rust-brown stain discolored his horizontal forearms.

  People applauded. Eric called out, “What else?”

  “Tribal robes.”

  “Fur or feathers?”

  “Both.”

  “Boots? Moccasins? Leather or fur?”

  “Leather, knee-high, fur inside”

  “Weapons?” He had to shout, as people called out suggestions or approval. “Swords or spears?”

  “Spears! Spears!”

  “So be it. So be it. So be it.”

  Two forked sticks, unpolished wood with the ends hewn rather than sawed, stood the height of a man. The bowed crosspiece between them was rubbed smooth at intervals.

  Spears leaned against it in the rubbed places, each pair of spears making a sloppy X. The flint heads were bound to the shafts with mistletoe instead of with thongs or sinew. Billy hissed again, fiercely, “He’s leading their answers every time. He has something in mind.”

  A wolf-skin wrapped itself around the nearest X of spears. The raven feathers bordering it fluttered in the predawn spring breeze. Badly tanned leather boots, tufts of fur showing at all the sinew-stitched seams, stood under the robe like legs. The breeze whipped the shaman’s robe briskly above them.

  A caribou skull, resting at the fork of the spears, stared forward dispassionately at them. It was the final necessary touch.

  Before Eric could say a word, Madame Dernier clapped her hands. “Perfect. Rite of Spring.”

  Hamlet’s audience had never produced so much applause. “Wonderful.” Eric beamed. “It coincides with something I was working on myself.” He paused for effect. “As you may know, the Nijinsky choreography for the original production still exists—”

  “But Nijinsky doesn’t,” David said petulantly.

  “Agreed. But rare films of him dancing and a great many photographs of him do.” Eric waited for a reaction.

  He got it from many quarters.

  “You made a simula?”

  “My God, he’s got Nijinsky!”

  “Can it be done?”

  Eric bowed. “Nijinsky was completed last night, from film, photography, drawings, even from eyewitness accounts of his dancing. I viewed him last night. He was magnificent.”

  Even Billy was caught up. “Nijinsky! Imagine seeing him dance his own Petrouchka. No wonder Eric had a chip—” He glanced at Horatio, blushing.

  Eric went on with heavy sincerity, “I wanted him to be a surprise present for Madame Dernier, who so loves Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, but—”

  Madame Dernier said, “What a wonderful surprise, Eric.” Her eyes filled; she brushed at them.

  “Well, then” Eric rubbed his hands. “The production has been augmented, as always, by effects not available to Diaghilev as producer, Stravinsky as composer, or Nijinsky as choreographer. Also, though Nijinsky did not dance at the first performance, his simula will.” He finished, “Shall we execute Rite of Spring?”

  Bess took Eric’s hand. They stood as if in a curtain call, bowing and leading the threefold chant: “So be it. So be it. So be it.”

  As the lights dimmed, Mary looked frightened. Billy, freed of his enthusiasms, rocked back and forth muttering.

  The stage went from darkness to gray, with a trace of pink on the right. Low-hanging clouds moved slowly and restlessly from the west.

  A few terns, headed north, made odd and lonely cries, and the honk of returning geese came through the clouds as well. In the middle distance, a massive herd of caribou moved into view, their hooves rumbling steadily.

  A man in a hide coat and breeches walked in, carrying a strange white stick. He sat at the edge of the stage and blew across the cut end; it was a bone flute. Another man, joining him, squatted and drew a gut string taut across a bow made from ribs.

  Horatio hoped they were caribou ribs.

  A bassoon played the opening notes of Stravinsky’s ballet: haunted, frightened notes far too high for a bass instrument. The bone-flautist fingered his instrument in time to the solo, and there was an odd, breathy quality behind the bassoon melody.

  Others entered, bearing skin drums, and ram’s horns, and more tautened bows, and hand-held rattles made of wood and bone. An old woman with hair to her waist slapped two flat sticks together. The instruments looked very old. Some of them had dark stains.

  The music launched into the alien, irregular pulses of Stravinsky’s first full orchestral passage; the tribe onstage played along. They never looked at each other or counted. This music was ingrained as only religious music can be. From time to time, in no rhythm
ic pattern, they threw back their heads and howled. The caribou hooves grew louder. With no tempo change, the energy level rose.

  The entire eastern sky was pink. Horatio glanced at the faces of those around him, made young and healthy by dawn. All of them were rapt. Mary still looked frightened.

  The musicians on stage were gleamed with sweat, even with a chill predawn breeze on them. They swirled and played, then suddenly prostrated themselves as the sun rose and a single shadow from a standing stone fell across the pitted stone god.

  The migratory birds overhead had changed into, or been replaced by, hawks, falcons, and eagles. An owl swooped down and sat blinking on the rocks.

  A wolf trotted quite close by, snapping at the mice who leaped and fled through the spring grass. Two rabbits chased each other, mating.

  Almost as Horatio discovered that the animals, too, were dancing, the rabbits came forward and executed a pas de deux, interrupted, in the thunder of Stravinsky’s music, by the close passage of the caribou.

  The Parade of Old Men began; ram’s horns played along with the French horns. Billy murmured, “Do you know what Debussy said of this piece? ‘Stravinsky has taken the civilized orchestra instruments and made them barbaric.”

  “Yes,” Horatio whispered. This performance pushed Stravinsky’s music to its barbaric limit.

  Only one old man came out: Nijinsky, dressed only in a thong headband and a leather loincloth.

  His body was still young in many ways, but his skin was weather-stained, and his ribs showed. His hair was silver. He hopped among the animals, who moved aside but did not leave.

  Nijinsky grinned toothlessly at them and raised his palms. Circles of scar tissue were embossed into each of them. He raised the circles to the rising sun and howled.

  The wolf howled back, and for a moment it seemed that the sun had also answered, dimming.

  Horatio glanced back at the X of poles and caught his breath. The skull had dropped forward, staring straight at him, though it probably seemed that way to everyone.

  Nijinsky grinned again and stamped toward the stream, walking in a squatting position and raising his legs, impossibly, over his own head as he moved. He never changed his stride as he crossed the stream. Perhaps the water was shallow, but it looked as though the tales of Nijinsky were true: he could float through the air.

  Horatio heard David moan as Nijinsky stamped splashlessly across the stream. Even in this technology, magic had not lost its power over the human mind.

  Nijinsky crouched before the robe and skull, then bowed three times. Afterward he squatted on tiptoe, nodding.

  The skull nodded back.

  Nijinsky straightened with a single motion, throwing his legs out and arms up into an X. He shouted inarticulately. Something shouted back.

  He brought his arms down. The robe dropped from the top of the X. The handlike spearheads protruded from the folds.

  Afterward Horatio couldn’t decide whether the boots had gone on toe or had always been tilted up. The feathers swayed with each shift of the boots, and the robe flapped enough in the wind to show that there was no one inside it.

  Nijinsky stepped back. The empty boots stepped forward, and the robe over them came with them.

  The robe hunched over, circling to the left while Nijinsky circled to his left. The skull shook vigorously from side to side. Nijinsky’s head did the same. The animals retreated from the new figure: the shaman.

  The boots floated up and down in time with Nijinsky’s bare, stamping feet. Each body-shake, each turn of a leg, each movement of a finger, brought the shaman still more to life. Still they circled, until suddenly they both spun to the audience and shouted a strange animal sound that echoed from the caribou skull. David screamed.

  Horatio watched half through his fingers, electrified by the music, frightened and drawn by the ceremony itself. The others panted, gripping their chairs and rocking in the odd rhythms of the music. This was a Free Zone.

  Horatio watched Nijinsky, enthralled: this man’s body told stories. He crouched beside the rabbits and was a frantic jack mating with an invisible doe; ran beside the caribou and tossed the antlers he didn’t have; nuzzled the she-wolf, and howled, and was lonely.

  The audience was sweating, and the smell of musk had overcome suppressants and artificial pheromones. With very little prodding, the entire audience would leap from their seats, dance, and sacrifice.

  Horatio realized that for the first time in many years, he was in the presence of human artistry. Much of it had been polished by Theater Access, but Eric had shaped this himself. It had his raw, violent personality inscribed over the music and the dance.

  Billy was right; Eric had something in mind. As art, at least, it was worth expressing.

  The Parade of Virgins began. Most of the audience leaned forward, even David. Billy, suddenly suspicious, kept still. Mary stayed back.

  The virgins were led out by men and women in beast masks—fox, wolf, bear—or by animals in human bodies. It was no longer easy to tell the two apart. There were male virgins in with the girls. From a sense of history, or from sheer perversity, Eric had tampered wildly with the ballet.

  The last girl came on. The virgins all covered their faces in their hands, which were daubed in bright colors: blue, red, yellow. The beast-people took off the virgins’ robes and the dance began.

  The virgins seemed like animals, too: a sacrificial herd, huddling as the wolves and the others swept through and turned them this way and that, thinning the herd. The virgins danced blindly, hands over eyes, but never bumped each other. One by one they were taken to the sides, their bodies daubed with paint that blended with the rocks.

  Finally all that remained were one boy and one girl, dancing back to back in tiny steps. The shaman and Nijinsky circled them. Suddenly Nijinsky grabbed the boy and with a howl flung him high into the air. The bear and the wolf caught him, and he was painted dark before he touched the ground.

  Nijinsky stepped forward and slowly, rhythmically, very tenderly wiped the girl’s hands clean with his silver hair. Her face was still lowered and half turned from the audience. She tottered uncertainly to the stone statue, the shaman now echoing her steps and not Nijinsky’s. His flint arms reached toward her like an embrace.

  Nijinsky placed her against the statue, then thrust his arms straight forward, palms flat, and clapped twice.

  The shaman stuck its arms forward, and the spears that formed its hands struck together twice, making sparks. The shaman opened its arms toward the virgin in an invitation to dance. She turned around.

  Mary whimpered and shrank into her seat. Horatio felt sick: the girl clinging to the statue had Mary’s face.

  Horatio didn’t see Billy get up, but suddenly there he was, his chubby body between the girl and the shaman, his own arms raised in a weak parody of the shaman’s. “Stop.”

  The figures froze. Eric snapped, “Override.” The girl cringed further. The shaman shambled closer.

  “Stop.”

  “Override.”

  “Stop.”

  Eric, standing very straight, looked down on Billy and said conversationally, “No one is really here, you fool.” He waved an arm through the shaman, then plunged the same arm deep into the girl’s chest. Mary cried out.

  Billy caught Eric’s arm. Eric shook it off. Billy didn’t seem to notice. “Change the girl’s face,” he said quietly. He was blushing, but he stood his ground.

  “You silly, crippled, fat thing,” Eric said amusedly. “She’s no more real than your synthetic boyfriend there is.”

  “He’s not my—,” Billy began, then gave up. “That doesn’t matter. We—” He looked at the others. “I won’t let you do this.”

  “We may as well stop now, Eric,” Madame Dernier called from the audience. Horatio couldn’t tell whether she was annoyed with Eric or with Billy—possibly with both.

  Billy said quickly, “So be it.”

  One by one the others joined. Eric’s lips barely moved
, his jaw taut. Eric and Billy faced each other in a bare room of screenjets, a cross between the stage and the labs. In the omnilight, people blinked and stumbled homeward. Madame Dernier pulled her restless livemink over her bare back, although it was summer, and gave Billy a reassuring if hasty kiss. Horatio, Billy, Eric, and Mary were left alone.

  Billy said, “You don’t need to go with him.” He put his hand out to Mary. After a while he let the hand drop.

  Mary scuttled out. Billy closed his eyes.

  As Eric strode past, he suddenly stopped. “Billy.” Billy opened his eyes. “Have you ever seen anyone who opposed me?” Billy shook his head.

  “It might do you some good,” Eric said heavily, “to wonder why.” He strode off.

  “Nice exit line,” Horatio observed acidly.

  Billy shook himself and looked around confusedly at the bare walls and floor. “It was an excellent exit line,” he said hoarsely. “I wish we knew whose.”

  * * * * *

  The clouds threatened rain. Billy stood pinching cuttings off the wandering Jew. He set the plant ends in a glass and said, “I looked ridiculous”

  Horatio said, “You looked all right. Do you love her?”

  “Good Lord, no.” Billy stared at Horatio.

  “Of course not. That would be foolish.”

  “I’ll get the tea now.” Billy came back carrying a tray with two teacups on it and not spilling a drop, despite his limp, Billy was quite graceful. “You sound bitter about love”

  Horatio looked around the spare apartment, thinking of Paulette’s many ‘one extravagances.’

  “I don’t mean to.”

  “I hope it’s nothing I’ve done.”

  “Never.” He patted Billy’s hand and tried to forget about Paulette. “You’re—” he struggled with the word, “—a friend.” He added, “Is that all you are to Mary?”

  Billy toyed with his cup and saucer, finally letting go of them altogether. “I don’t understand why Mary stays with Eric.” Billy looked uncomfortable. “Eric terrifies her.”

  Horatio closed his eyes, seeing Mary for a moment as the sacrifice in Eric’s simula ballet. “Maybe a friendship with Eric is a Free Zone.”

  Billy raised an eyebrow at Horatio. “Friendship is always a Free Zone.” He stared out the window, watching the clouds move rapidly across the southern sky. “With Eric, friendship is practically a threat.”