She turned off the car and stepped outside. It was late afternoon; the sun was already dipping behind the buildings. She walked onto the long side lawn, towards the visitors’ entrance at the back of the house.
At first she thought the crowd of some dozen people included both men and women. When she came closer she recognised the women as men in oversized dresses padded into exaggerated female shapes. They weren’t transvestites or drag queens, she saw. They made no attempt to look like actual women. Some of them wore huge bras on the outside of their dresses, and on these they’d drawn faces in lipstick. Others had drawn mouths with sharp fangs over their groins. Jennie shuddered at the sight of those lipsticked teeth.
When she looked at the ordinary men she saw that they’d also disguised themselves—as men. Rubber or homemade codpieces, some in the shape of knives, others looking like rockets, dangled from their groins. Some wore football padding on their shoulders. Others had decorated their sweatshirts with animal hair. All of them, ‘men’ and ‘women’ both, carried plastic shopping bags, or sacks slung over their shoulders. And all of them wore translucent masks, the kind where your own skin colour shone through to give solidity to the film star or politician’s face painted on them. Jennie squinted at the masks, surprised. They were outlawed. After that scandal in Brooklyn where all those people found their personalities eaten away by the expressions on the masks. Outlawed or not, there they were.
And there the men were, talking, laughing, drinking beer through straws stuck through holes in the masks. Jennie couldn’t think of what they were doing there until one of them noticed her and pointed her out to the others. Immediately they all began to whistle and clap their hands. ‘A volunteer,’ someone said loudly. ‘You coming to volunteer?’ They laughed, and someone else called, ‘You want to help us with our enactment? You’ll love it.’ One of the pseudo-men threw something at her. A tomato, she saw, as it hit a tree behind her. Apparently that was going too far, for one of the pseudo-women shoved him, and another said, ‘Arse-hole. What are you going to throw when the real thing starts?’
‘Insulting the Lady,’ Jennie realised. They were getting ready for ‘Insulting the Lady.’ Fascinated as well as a little afraid, she edged closer. Jennie had studied accounts of the enactment in college, but she never had thought she would see it. Like the masks, ‘Insulting the Lady’ was illegal. But like the masks, there it was.
It didn’t occur to Jennie to turn back. She only wondered what they were doing here, why the Tellers didn’t chase them away. She wondered too what it meant that she’d shown up the same day as this most irregular of enactments. She knew it formed an omen, but which way, good or bad? After her misreading of the Revolution Mouse doll, she didn’t dare to try her own interpretation.
The wind cut through her coat, and Jennie wished she could go home. Drop the whole thing, let the Agency do what it wanted with her. Go home in front of the television. Let Karen do the goddamn banishment for her. She quoted out loud, ‘“The only way to do it is to do it.” 9th Proposition,’ and walked forward.
The men began whistling and clapping, some dancing in front of her or pushing their masked faces at her. A few of the cartoon-women bumped their padded hips at her, a couple of the ‘men’ waved their codpieces. Furious, Jennie walked faster. Did she know any of them? She couldn’t distinguish the faces under the masks, but she could well imagine Bill Jackman or Al Rich joining a secret men’s group.
When she reached the porch the noise stopped. Jennie glanced back at them, all clustered together, standing and watching. She raised her hands towards the bell, then made a fist and knocked on the door. The wood hurt her knuckles. A faceless Worker opened the door. Tall, mostly bald, with a large nose and thick shoulders, he wore grey denim overalls and short red boots. A black chain bound his wrist.
Jennie said, ‘I want to see the Tellers.’
He looked her up and down. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I want to see the Tellers.’
‘How did you get through the barrier?’
‘Barrier?’
‘The street’s closed off.’
Jennie looked back at Raymond Avenue, empty of traffic. She said, ‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, you’ll have to leave.’
‘No. Let me inside.’ She tried to slide past him. Automatically he stepped in front of her.
He said, ‘You’re lucky they didn’t get carried away and decide to start early. What are you doing here?’
‘I told you.’
‘There’s not supposed to be any women here. Can’t you see that? Don’t you know what’s going to happen?’
‘I don’t care about that. I’ve got to see them.’
‘We’d better get you out of here.’
‘Please let me in.’
‘Let you in? Are you crazy?’
‘I need help.’
‘Mark,’ came a man’s voice, ‘what’s going on here?’ Jennie leaned around the Worker. She knew that voice, the resonance and faint lilt, the way it lifted slightly at the end, like a glider caught by a breeze. Dennis Lily, Poughkeepsie’s most notable Teller. He wasn’t much, Jennie knew. Past his prime, everyone said. Voice sometimes dropped into a monotone, sometimes got a little shrill as he dashed through the Picture itself to get to the Inner Meaning. A moralist, people said. Nothing like the Living Masters in the Fifth Avenue Hall. But Jennie had gone to hear him. She’d sat on the hill and watched him dancing in his skin. And here she was, standing only a few feet away from him.
Still blocking Jennie, the Worker said, ‘It’s nothing, sir. Just some woman who got through the barrier.’
‘Let me see.’ The Worker stood aside and Jennie got a clear view of Dennis Lily-of-the-Valley. Instead of his recital skin he wore a warm-up jacket and faded pink jogging pants. He looked about to work out in a gym—except that he’d stained his face, his hands, wherever she could see, a deep red, and on his temples he’d glued two plastic horns, black, curving out and then forwards, like the horns of a bull. He’s going to lead them, Jennie realised. He’s getting ready for his role. That was why they’d gathered on the lawn, why no one had chased them away. They were waiting for Dennis Lily. And he belonged with them. He looked like them, just another middle aged businessman going out to get drunk and run through the streets attacking and humiliating any woman unlucky enough to get in their way. As the Teller came close to her Jennie could smell beer on his breath. She backed away.
‘Who are you?’ he said. ‘What do you want?’
‘I wanted help.’
‘What kind of help?’ Jennie said nothing. ‘What kind of help? Why did you come here instead of the Halls?’
‘I needed to see you.’ Why did she ever think they could do anything?
‘Do you need a special penance?’ He smirked as he looked her up and down. The horns bent forward, then up, like an actor taking a bow. ‘Do you want to make a special offering?’ Jennie saw the Worker, Mark, stare at the floor.
A woman came down the staircase behind Lily. ‘Dennis?’ she said, ‘Who are you talking to? Who’s there?’ She stood to the side of the doorway. Short, with curly red hair, a delicate face and pale hands that she wiped on an overlong dressing gown, Alice Windfall looked even frailer than she did when she would stand on the top of Recital Mount in her Denise Ravendaughter recital skin. Her voice wavered as she spoke, and Jennie remembered hearing that she used a hidden mike when she told the Pictures. The thought reminded her of the storyteller on Hudson Street, with her shrunken Tellers manipulating cardboard puppets. They can’t help, she thought. They’ve given it all up.
Lily said, ‘It’s nothing, Alice. Why don’t you go back to your rooms? You know the men mustn’t see you tonight.’
‘I don’t want to go back to my room. I want to know who this woman is. Anyway, they can’t see me from here.’
Lily said, ‘She says she needs our help. Our personal help.’
Windfall examined Jennie. She said, ‘What
do you want? What do you want us to do?’ In that short speech Jennie heard a faint trace of the True Voice, the living being that once commandeered the Founders’ vocal cords to crack open the world.
Her own voice came out in a whisper. ‘I wanted you to fight God.’
For a moment there was silence, and then Dennis Lily snickered, and Alice Windfall giggled. ‘We are God,’ Windfall said. ‘How can we fight ourselves?’
‘Or at least God’s voice,’ Lily added, and the two of them laughed.
Jennie turned around. She took a step to the end of the porch, then stopped. The men had come closer, silently waiting only a few yards from the house. She thought, I’ve got to get out of this. I’ve got to get through this. And then the singing began.
High and thin like the times before, like a line scratched through the twilight, it pierced through cloth and padding, through dangling weapons and balloon breasts, it cleaned the hearts of hate and envy. It penetrated the trees and the porch, while above Jennie the first stars of the evening pulsed brighter. The men grinned, then smiled, and some of them hugged or kissed each other, while others sat on the grass with their heads resting on their knees.
Jennie stood as straight as she could. This was my fight, she thought. Don’t rescue me. She clenched her fists and screwed up her face, and as soon as she did so her hands opened and her face fell loose, and it was all she could do to remember to tighten up again. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Let go of me.’ The music spun out of her womb into the air and rolled back to soak her body.
She looked behind her. Lily and Windfall were on the floor, hugging each other and laughing. Mark stood in the doorway, staring at Jennie with amazement and love. ‘Bastards,’ Jennie said. ‘Why won’t you help me?’ But she didn’t dare to waste her strength on them. She put her hands over her ears, only to find them so filled with music they acted like headphones. She pulled them away and hit them on the porch railing. The pain fell away from her into the air. She shouted, a sound like a siren, but her voice changed into accompaniment. She stopped just in time before she would have melted into the joy of singing.
She took a step, another, and another, she reached the lawn and forced herself to jerk forward, to stamp her feet against the urge to sit down, to sing, forget, give in. In the trees, the branches bent forward, filled with birds and squirrels. She wanted to wave her arms, chase them off, but she could feel her body sliding away from her. It became harder and harder to tense the muscles, harder to clench her fists, harder to keep walking, not to give in. She leaned against a tree, all the men turning to look at her. ‘No,’ she said, and shook her head. ‘No.’
And still shaking, still saying, ‘No,’ she laughed, and slid down against the tree, with all its bark and meat and sap sodden with song. And laughing and weeping, and still shaking her head, never giving in, never, Jennie could no longer hold on, but was swept away in a roller coaster of bliss.
Excerpt from THE LIVES OF THE FOUNDERS
The Founders created the Bright Beings. They created the Malignant Ones and they created the Benign Ones. The Beings do not know this, or pretend not to know it, but it is true. The Founders, focusing the limitless power of the Voice through Alessandro Clean Rain, created the Ferocious and the Devoted. It happened this way.
After the Revolution many people clung to their Old World belief that life ran like an electric current between poles of good and evil. These people formed themselves into camps called ‘saints’ and ‘sinners’, and they pestered all their neighbours with their endless preaching, their tedious temptations, their good and bad deeds. A delegation of people who had suffered from these moralists came to the Founders and begged help in banishing them. ‘Send them to their own country,’ the delegation pleaded. ‘Give them an island or a piece of Antarctica.’ But when Clean Rain (in beauty and truth lives his name forever) looked under the skin of the moralists he saw them clogged with a sludge preventing their hearts from pumping revelation through their bodies.
Clean Rain sang a single note in a frequency so high that of all living creatures only certain insects could hear it. But the sludge found it unbearable. The illusions lifted from the hearts of their victims and fled out their mouths. The redeemed spread themselves flat on the ground to give thanks to the Founders.
The illusions fled into the Living World. There they tricked the source of all creation into giving them life and form and even history. They called themselves the Bright Beings, the Malignant Ones and the Benign Ones. Many returned to muddy the Revolution with their private battle of good and evil. Others retreated through time into the Old World, helping or hindering the coming of the Revolution itself. In this way the Beings convinced themselves that even the Founders depended on their never-ending competition.
Some true historians have presented an alternative view. According to these accounts (the Founders’ Institute has accepted both versions as true) the people themselves refused to live in a world not shaped by the dance of good and evil. The delegation that came to Alessandro Clean Rain came not to abolish moralism but to establish it. The Founder took pity on them and himself reached into the Living World for spirits willing to join the opposing teams.
When first hired, the Devoted Ones, and the Ferocious Ones took up their tasks with great dedication. They harangued people constantly, attacking or saving them until their targets lost all track of what was happening. The Beings waited on street corners and bus stops, they appeared as faces in mirrors and soda bubbles. Each year they chose some unfortunate man or woman for their championship. One man, who later swore he had done nothing to antagonise either side, found his business ruined, his wife and children dead, his body a playground of disease and all his friends replaced by Malignant Ones who told him he was only getting what he deserved. Then the Benign Ones came to drive away the false friends, heal his body, arrange a loan for him to start a new business, set him up with a wife who promised him seven sons and three daughters, and finally appear to him in a whirlwind to assure him the whole exercise was of great value and would instruct future generations.
After several years of such scandals the Founders summoned the Beings and laid down the limits and rules under which they compete today. Despite these restrictions the Bright Beings still consider their battles the basic pattern of the world. When an adolescent receives a ‘summons to the Voice’, that is, an inner call to become a Teller, the Malignant Ones consider it their duty to block the soul from realizing its glory. They intercept the girl or boy, chop her or him into small pieces and bury each piece deep in the Earth or under the foundations of large buildings and public monuments. Then the Benign Ones come and dig up the fragments. They reconstruct the future Teller (often with slight errors, requiring corrective plastic surgery) and deliver her or him to the nearest Picture Hall or College of Tellers.
The Beings retreat to their camps, convinced they have performed a vital service. The Ferocious Ones, however, never notice that the chopped up pieces do not suffer but bring a blessing to wherever the enemy buries them. Nor do the Devoted Ones recognise the pain they cause by wrenching the scattered child loose from its union with its Mother. Still, the Benign Ones’ action does produce a benefit. The sudden withdrawal from the Earth gives the Tellers their most notable characteristic: their overwhelming desire to help their listeners.
WE REMEMBER THE FOUNDERS.
17
Jennie stood in front of the oven, feeling the heat leak out through the glass door. Outside the kitchen window the snow continued to parade past the small blur of light cast by the lamp over the door. Jennie glanced at the snow, then back at the oven. In her arms she held a large open book, its glossy pages pressed against her chest. How long would it take a book to burn? Did it make a difference that the oven was electric and not an open gas flame? And how long would it take to clean it up?
Wondering if she should tear the pages up first, maybe crumple them up in a casserole, Jennie lowered her arms to where she could see the faded picture: Miguel
Miracle of the Green Earth passing out cakes in green-striped wrappers. She shook her head, filled suddenly with the memory of her father’s finger pointing at the cake, and his voice telling her you could still buy the same cake today if you went to Vera Cruz. Had Jimmy known the stuff for sale was fake? Presumably. She shrugged and flipped the pages. Denise Ravendaughter glided above the San Francisco spotlights. And there stood Jonathan Mask Of Wisdom surrounded by blind children on the edge of the canyon. And there came the Army of the Saints, marching through the three day darkness to surround New Orleans and do nothing but breathe softly on the city until all the enemy destroyed their own weapons. And there—there stood the ferris wheel, with Li Ku Unquenchable Fire bound to its hub, shouting for days on end to chase away the Malignant Ones.
Jennie looked around the kitchen as if she’d find something there to save her from what she had to do. She walked over to the table, and sat down with the book in her lap and her legs stuck out in front of her. There was a purple stain on the page, just below the fiery feet. Jelly. Grape jelly, from when she was ten years old and reading the book one summer afternoon while eating, and looking out the window at some kids fighting on Hudson Street. Quite a few of the pages were stained—coffee, wine, here and there, blood offerings—and some were torn and taped. Jennie knew she could recite the circumstances of every mark. And then there were all those pages where she’d underlined passages, or even written notes or drawn pictures along the margins. She remembered her shock at seeing the clean pages in Betsy Rodriguez’s copy of The Lives. When Jennie was nine she’d written her own little story about Danielle Book of the People, above the text on—she closed her eyes a moment—page ninety two. She’d erased it immediately and then the next day asked her teacher if she’d committed some terrible crime. Ms. Cohen had told her the Founders expected us to write in the book. It was one of the things that would bind us to the Tellers. Maybe Betsy Rodriguez didn’t care about binding herself to the Tellers.
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