Last Stories and Other Stories (9780698135482)

by Vollmann, William T.

  There is a desert in your blonde-white hair

  With lions sleeping in the sun.

  Your eyes are wide and deadly pools

  That draw me under blue.

  Pretty bone-teeth glisten savagely

  Veiled by the currents of salt-red blood, your lips.

  You watch me always, hungry;

  Your smile is a tomb-sweet lure,

  and on and on, more gruesomely. He felt ashamed; he longed to destroy the book; it was horrible to him. But he had kept it so long, even if without looking at it.

  It made him sick.

  Now through the night-whipped trees I passed with silent tread, creeping through lakes of moldering leaves, filling myself with unspeakable etheric fires, whatever those might have been. The grave awaited me, just as it now truly did, when he went to visit the true Victoria, who was truly dead but not hungry for him and whose smile was no lure to anything horrid, or was it? The grave awaited me. The sweet-smelling soil about it was repulsively soft, and I tunneled through it with loathsome ease, no doubt because that summer he had been reading the stories of H. P. Lovecraft. Through the soil, a green-white hand, blotched and cold, came groping in search of me.

  Now he remembered that for years he had suffered from nightmares of this sort, nearly every night. He must have been very ill.— Why hadn’t he killed himself?— Women had saved him, one after the other.— Hadn’t he hoped that Victoria would do the same?— She could have said: I’m waiting for you, and here’s my hand; my hand’s alive, and my smile’s alive and I love you.— But who could have loved something like him? Eagerly I scraped the earth aside . . .

  Flushing, he closed up the hateful book again and reinterred it in the envelope. He could bear no more of it today.

  He chewed his pain pills. Then he lay down and waited for the syrupy narcosis to comfort him. He dreaded to meet Victoria’s eyes.

  He felt better. There was the envelope, lying on his father’s desk. He longed to put it away in the drawer. Rising, he picked it up—and the red book broke through the brittle yellow edge.— Shame, shame, as pitiless as sunlit revelations of grime in spiderwebs!

  40

  Coasting over the lunar surface at a very low altitude seemed to improve his spirits, so he now did that nearly every afternoon, especially when it was too hot and bright to visit the cemetery: browsing across the moon map as if he were peering through leaf-holes into the light, loving the white shinings on the black and silver moon, searching for a certain unknown thing in craters on the night side of the terminator, while weary old Earth arose as jewel-green as a new oak gall. Whatever else was written in that red book of poems might if he were sufficiently fortunate be equally valuable. Consider the eighteen-year-old patient of Jung’s who, having been preyed upon by her brother and a schoolmate, discovered that sorrow is a labyrinth of translucent glass, whose passageways gain in weariness and bewilderment by half-showing the adjacent ones, which may be their own turnings, and which continue even deeper into that green dimness of sea-glass; until she began to believe herself to live upon the moon, where all women and children had to be sequestered underground, in icy fissures in the grey moon-bone, in order to protect them from a certain vampire. Volunteering to kill this monster, she caused herself to be placed on a high tower in the middle of Lacus Mortis (45˚ N 27˚ E); and they gave her a knife before departing with protestations of admiring grief. Thus far in this tale, although it has been wisely called the last receiver, being the entity which communicates all rays and causes from the superiors to the inferiors, the moon seems no very pleasant place. But even before the dark predator came winging over the half-lit lunar canyons, she must have been lubricated by what prudes call curiosity; for she kept begging herself: Let me just find out what he looks like beneath his lush-feathered wings. Afterward I’ll stab him.— Muffling his face in his black shoulders, contracting into his own long spine, like a folding umbrella, the vampire now settled silently onto the parapet, close enough for her to touch his elbow had she wished to. With extreme caution and delicacy, like a fisherman setting up his lures, he reopened his wings. His features attracted her far more than she could have imagined. Drinking in the sight of his beautiful eyes, she hesitated a trifle too long, so that he seized her and bore her off, through the dark grooves and into a pretense of brightness: green and orange swales, the roar of water dulling down the piping screams of death. What happened between them next Jung never reports, but I think it fair to suppose that there was kissing, sucking and tickling involved, for she soon considered the moon so lovely a place that she struggled against being cured and was thereby condemned to dwell on earth. What if the skinny, shy seventeen-year-old boy who loved Victoria had been of the moon-woman’s type? In other words, what if he could have dug down through the cemetery loam and liked it? In his spirit he dreamed over his moon map. It also soothed him to sit at his father’s desk and gaze at Victoria’s letters, even without reading them; today he wasn’t well enough for that. From the middle of the heap he withdrew a new one and placed it in an old pouch that he had, in the expectation of carrying it with him around his neck for several weeks, his joy in it slowly swelling—not at all the desperate joy which had inflamed him like longing when he was seventeen and she calmly slipped another note into his hand in the high school corridor, then rushed off to her chemistry class, or when a new letter lay in a slim white envelope in his family’s mailbox, bearing a thirteen-cent Liberty Bell stamp or that butterfly or an American eagle gripping sheaves and arrows in its claws—and always her sweet name or initials greeted him on the return address, which she very occasionally typed but mostly wrote in her very slightly forward-slanting script: a new treasure to add to his hoard; ever so carefully he slit open the lefthand edge of the envelope. How his heart used to pound at seventeen! The pleasure he felt nowadays was a fiery, peaty spirit which had aged in an oak cask until its sting had grown capable of clothing itself with knowing discretion within sweet smoothness. Who could say which was better? Good boy, he drank whichever was available. Sometimes his loving pleasure in Victoria brought water to his tired old eyes.

  It was a hot and utterly silent day. Smiling, he took the envelope in his fingers as gently as he could and kissed it. Just as some Saxons used to place a coin in a corpse’s mouth, to keep it content with gnawing on that, so he clutched this letter of hers, and withheld other aspirations; but then the aspirations came anyway. Desire rose up gently within him, and he gave himself over, pulling the letter out of the envelope with much the same smoothness which had once informed his unhooking of women’s brassieres (although in Victoria’s case, his first, he had made several attempts, too flustered and ignorant to understand how the hooks went, until she finally undid them for him; and he kissed her delicious armpits). Now the letter lay undressed but still folded in his hands. He coaxed the folds apart. She loved him; she loved him; now she would say she loved him.

  I can’t really assure you that I didn’t undergo some “psychic rape.”

  As usual, he didn’t remember this at all.

  I can assure you that I am doing much better. The first four days afterward were confusing. No desire to eat or sleep; everything about me deteriorated. I am now, in fact, a slim size 7, a considerable difference as you probably are aware. I was not affected for life. For me, at this time, I am just happy enough to go on living. No more emotional roulette. This will hurt you, because a part of our relationship was and is caught up in this spinning wheel. This is not saying we don’t have a relationship, or that I’m negating what we previously established. Sometimes it seems that what we established isn’t valid anymore. Maybe it still is but it will take time to know. I won’t tell you what happened.

  He had no idea how worried about her and selfishly anxious for himself this communication would have made him at seventeen. Now he felt sorry for her, of course. And as to whether or not they had engaged in a “relationship,” how could
that even be a question? This seventeen-year-old girl might assert herself all she chose, rejecting and raging, alluring and denying, but this old man, almost too old now to be her father, would not stop loving her; nor could she desist from loving him, for she was dead.

  Of course she did right to leave me; all I cared about was keeping her; I couldn’t have understood her, or been a patient, trustworthy pivot for her flitterings.

  But I wonder how unhappy she was? I have been, I believe, very happy, although that may not have been apparent to others. (No, perhaps I have not been happy.)

  At least she had her children. Very possibly she felt happy in those middle years when we didn’t know each other.

  And what happened to her, to make her write that letter? Should I ask next time I go to the cemetery? She might tell me now, but it must be a bad memory for her—best to leave it buried in the ground.

  She did not love me. She did not love me.

  But one thing I’ve definitely learned in life is recognizing when I’m not wanted. Victoria still wanted me then, even if only to gratify herself by keeping me dangling.— No, that’s unfair; neither one of us knew ourselves, much less each other. And she wants me now—doesn’t she?

  Thus he overcame his disgust, grief and dread at his red book of poems, over and over again.

  Whenever night came and he dressed to go to the cemetery, shaving himself carefully for Victoria, he felt anxious, excited, half-tempted to stay home, with an undercurrent of cocky desire just as when he used to set out to find prostitutes—but he was old now; all these feelings were weakened down a significant portion of the way to extinction; he didn’t actually care so much; if he undressed again and lay down in bed it wouldn’t be the end of the world—and something scary might happen at the cemetery; somebody or something might hurt him—but the prospect of sweetness awaited him, and he was so lonely; he yearned for an adventure; and even if something bad happened, how much could he lose? And if he stayed home, what did that make him? Once upon a time he used to go downtown to seek out women in the streets; and before that he used to get dressed for this date or that date; usually the girl ruled him strange long before the end of the movie; within ten minutes he knew she wished to escape him; it was to avoid that misery that he had hired or inveigled promiscuous women, who like him would settle for the satisfaction of the moment; so perhaps the same impulse now drove him to haunt a ghost-woman in the cemetery, who again would probably not be so choosy as to reject him. Something dark blue like an oil slick over black water slowly flashed between gravestones, hunching its dark shoulders; perhaps it was a lunar vampire, or one of Victoria’s new friends (if she had any), or some animal. He decided not to mention it to her. He likewise declined to bring up the red notebook.

  Victoria was waiting, sunning herself beneath the moon. He rolled out the blue-and-yellow blanket she had wished for, and she smiled. Her fingers were as white as her teeth.

  He asked what it had been like for her on the first occasion when he called her out of her grave, and she hesitated, then said: I didn’t know what to say; I was so excited about talking to you . . .

  His heart began stupidly pounding; he grew nauseous. He said: Victoria, how do you feel about me now?

  She quietly replied: I need to love someone, and so I’ve fixed on you.

  Testily he cried out: Why didn’t you love me when we were seventeen? You were my first; you know that. I still don’t even know if I was yours; well, actually, of course that means I wasn’t. I was so faithful and loyal to you; I worshipped everything you did—

  Pityingly, the ghost stroked his hair. It felt like the slightest breeze; he could have been imagining it. She said: Well, I did love you sometimes.

  I’m sorry; please forgive me; I . . . And it’s just as you wrote me at the end: We would have left each other anyway.

  But I do admit, he continued, laughing a little even as he rubbed his eyes, that even though I know that, I don’t completely believe it. If you hadn’t left me—

  And if I hadn’t died.

  Yes.

  And if you weren’t going to die . . .

  They both burst out laughing.

  A moment later, he saw tears in her eyes. At once he took it upon himself to comfort her, soothing her, kissing the moonlight where her mouth should have been and promising to do whatever she might wish.

  41

  Later that night he was sitting beside Victoria on her grave when panting rapid footfalls came up the gravel walkway by the lake. Any instant, whoever it was would come into sight. Victoria vanished silently into the earth. Rising, he withdrew behind Mr. Arthur J. Bishop’s tomb, leaning on the arms of the cross. The sounds got louder. He felt dread. Presently a chalky-featured man appeared, glaring straight ahead, running and gasping with his arms straight out. The man did not appear to see him. He kept still. The man ran out of sight. For a time he could hear him. Then, just as he had returned to Victoria’s grave and was on the verge of trying to coax her out of the ground, he heard those evil, frantic footfalls coming back. This time, thanks to the configuration of the cemetery, he could see the man sooner and more clearly. His face was, in fact, horrible. As he approached, he seemed to scent something in the direction of Victoria’s grave, for he glared up toward the two of them, showing his teeth. As yet he was some distance away, and not until he reached the stairs in the hill would he become a definite threat; all the same, it seemed best to retreat over the crest and down, which he did. Now he was temporarily out of both sight and hearing of that ghoul, who might, however, come loping around the hill in some unexpected direction, and so, hating to show his back to the darkness but not daring not to, he ran (in his own estimation) nearly as well as a young man, his heart tolling in his breastbone, and finally reached the hole in the fence and the single wan streetlight. He unlocked his car, entered it, started it, turned on the headlights and saw through that hole in the fence the hateful greenish-white face staring at him. Surely it would not come out here. There was a sharp cramp in his chest. He locked all four doors. Then he backed the car a good long block, until the hole could not be seen. He longed to live; he knew that now. So he had better organize himself. His way lay past the hole. He shifted the car into drive, then pressed the gas pedal halfway down, speeding back alongside the cemetery fence—and in the middle of the street stood that emissary from MANSIONS ABOVE, waiting for him with its mouth open and its arms stretched wide. He knew that if he slowed down in order to return to reverse, he would be in the thing’s power. So he floored the gas, aimed right at the monster and ran it down. It panted and scrabbled even then; its long greenish hands broke off both windshield wipers, trying to pull itself up onto the hood. He kept driving, not knowing what else to do, whipping the steering wheel left and right until he had dislodged the thing. It was still squirming on the tarmac when he sped away, rounding three corners before he began to feel safe, slowing then to legal speed just before he passed the eternally shining sign, flickering with mosquitoes and midges, of Hal Murmuracki’s Chapel of Flowers.

  He got home, locked the door, and lay down gasping like his enemy, feeling nauseous in his belly and pained in his chest, with death’s vomit choked through him like gravel, from deep in his guts right up to his tonsils.

  He dreamed that the moon was a round bright pool in the sky which now rapidly increased in size until he fell into it, and he was swimming. Now he perceived that only part of it was bright. There he swam in mellow gold. But the instant he reached the shaded zone, the water or whatever it was became almost stingingly cold, and he seemed to see something like a low stone statue grinning at him.

  Awakening into another stifling, nauseous dawn, he opened his eyes and saw the pale blue sky, which was in itself sufficient reason to have lived. He might have slept four hours. His mind was clear. It pleased him to be nearly alone in this new day. Perhaps death might be as fine as this, if he could only guard himself ag
ainst the thing with the greenish-white face. He had not been afraid until now. Rising, he went out into the day.

  42

  Something was moving; something was watching him from behind his back yard hedge. It could have been a woman, or a man. Then he saw it no more. Why should it have been Victoria—and not something worse? Then he seemed to hear something creeping through the branches—well, actually, this is merely a metaphor for what he felt whenever he forced himself to withdraw another of her envelopes from the pile on his father’s desk. Where was that greenish-white entity which seemed so desperately to desire him? What if it came inside the house?

  After that, he began to dread reading her letters almost as much as he did returning to the cemetery at night knowing that that dead thing called Victoria awaited him; he had imagined that it was he who summoned her with the green liquid, but now he knew all too well that she whispered and murmured to him from under the ground and inside his desk until he grew helpless to employ the green liquid on anybody but her, or it, or whatever Victoria should rightfully be called. In truth there was probably no Victoria at all, but a nameless entity of unwholesome intentions.

  Discovering the thirteen-cent checkerspot butterfly stamp and the thirteen-cent flower-and-mountain Colorado stamp, he felt fondness again and kissed the envelope. But he hesitated to learn whatever the thing in the cemetery might be whispering to him. No, she wasn’t that, not then! Although this was a lengthy letter, she had denied herself the typewriter, in order to think before she said anything; this was sweet, not to mention reassuring. Your longer, rational letter and the shorter, emotional one are in my mind. Your emotional one was what I thought I needed until my mother brought me down hard. How could he imagine anything monstrous about his Victoria? I’m tired of struggling between my guilt (and desire to be realistic) and my urgent inclinations toward fantasy and the unusual. I’m tired of thinking about our relationship. It is clear to me that it will have to be limited to paper for quite awhile; I don’t even know about Christmas. If we survive all that I imagine we’ll have our garden and breakfast in bed. That leaves us absolutely nowhere. Except that I’m rather emotionally involved and in love.