Unquenchable Fire

by Rachel Pollack

  When she came back to the living room she found Jackie tying the healer to the leg of the couch, with the healer whispering to her to pull the rope tighter or else his soul would run away when he forced it to go to work. Looking very uncomfortable Jackie yanked on the rope.

  Outside, silence settled on the crowd. Jennie looked up and down the block. The crowd was bigger than she’d thought, with people from other blocks joining the raccoons. It made sense, she told herself. It wasn’t every day people got accused of collaboration with Ferocious Ones and/or beings unknown.

  ‘Come on,’ Jennie said, ‘this way’s quicker.’ She marched across the lawn smiling at the thought of the cop getting snow in her wingtip shoes.

  Except for the cab and a couple of frosted panels in the rear door the van was windowless. No letters or insignias marred the high gloss paint job. None were necessary. Everyone recognized the dark purple with the gold stripe running around it. While she waited for the woman to unlock the back door Jennie recalled the competition a few years ago when the SDA vehicle contract had come up for renewal. Every night the news had shown top executives from the auto companies outdoing each other in penances and offerings. One of them—the head of General Motors, she thought—had fasted for five weeks, then stood naked outside his Detroit headquarters while his vice-presidents threw buckets of petroleum waste at him. Jennie couldn’t remember if he’d got the contract.

  ‘Enter of your own free will,’ the Special Branch woman said. She held the door open.

  ‘And if I don’t?’ Jennie asked as she climbed into the back. The cop didn’t answer. The inside of the van was light and warm, with fluorescent lamps set into the ceiling and a small heater at the front end, both powered by a generator nestled in the corner. The van was built high to prevent any need to stoop. Jennie stood on the yellow carpet and looked around. It really did look like a scanner’s office, everything miniaturized and crowded together. There was the same white table in the centre, the same rows of dials and needles and computer screens. It’s been years, Jennie realized. She hadn’t gone for a scan since the one required for applying to college. She’d been scared for years.

  The cop set some instruments, then turned towards Jennie. ‘According to Celestial Court decision Kambru vs. the United States, you do not have to submit to a scan at this time. If you refuse I have the power to formally charge you and bring you before a judge. And then he’ll order a scan. So you might as well do it.’

  Jennie shrugged. She bent down and unlaced her boots. When she’d taken off all her clothes she said, ‘What happens when the scan shows I’m clean?’

  ‘If the scan clears you it’ll weigh heavily in your favour.’

  ‘Despite all that powerful testimony?’

  The cop grinned, showing a dimple in her left cheek. ‘Please lie down,’ she said.

  Jennie lowered herself onto the contoured surface of the table, pleased to discover it warm, probably from coils under the surface. ‘I hope you don’t mind my lying on my back,’ she said.

  ‘Not at all. Umm, the scan won’t affect the baby, you know.’

  ‘Not even if it’s a monster?’

  The woman didn’t answer. From the sides of the table she pulled out retractable wires. Fixing the ends with some kind of sticky conductive material she attached them to Jennie’s forehead, throat, chest, solar plexus, wrists, thighs, and soles of her feet. Jennie’s breathing tightened. When the woman had placed all the wires she made a hand sign over her own forehead and muttered some quick incantation. Jennie knew the cop expected her to say something in return; call on the Benign Ones and the Founders to protect her and insure a good result. She said nothing.

  ‘Drink this,’ the woman said, and held a small paper cup to Jennie’s lips. Lifting her head slightly Jennie gulped down the chalky liquid. She made a face and tried to lick clean her lips with her tongue.

  The cop sat down on a round stool before one of the computer screens. ‘The first part you won’t feel anything,’ she said, as she flicked her fingers at the keys. She waited a moment, made a sound, then tapped the keys again. She looked over her shoulder at Jennie, but all she said was ‘Prelims look good.’

  Eyes closed, Jennie thought, Please don’t start singing again. I want to get through this by myself. Without any further warnings she felt the real thing coming on. It began with dizziness and an awful hint of something crawling over her. The blank wall behind her eyelids wheeled around, perpetually falling to the left. She fought against the impulse to open her eyes, knowing that would only make it worse.

  Calm returned. And then, like a slap, the memories came: Mike in his leather jacket looking like Mar Birdan, Sam leaning on the counter of his pizza parlour, the bleeding woman by the subway, the cookie vendor taking her hands in the rain, a Chinese restaurant filled with people eating their ancestors. There was more, images and tastes and sounds all jammed together, until she couldn’t distinguish them. At the end, one scene stood out in her mind, and that one Jennie hadn’t actually witnessed, but only heard described: a burning ferris wheel rolling down Seventh Avenue with a woman attached to the hub.

  The images passed, leaving Jennie nauseous on the table. Behind her she heard the rattle of a printer. When she turned her head to the side she saw the SDA cop looking at her with her mouth slightly open, and the sunglasses dangling in her hand. The woman grabbed the printout off the machine and stared at it, then up at Jennie. ‘You had an occurrence,’ she said.

  ‘That’s right.’ The nausea was subsiding, more a memory than a provocation.

  ‘Why didn’t you say so?’

  ‘You didn’t ask me.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘The ferris wheel.’

  ‘Oh. I think I read about that. In the bulletin.’

  ‘Can I get up?’

  The woman laughed. ‘Sure. Sorry.’ She plucked loose the wires, then helped Jennie sit up.

  Jennie grunted. ‘That’s worse than morning sickness,’ she said, and took her bra from the cop, who seemed determined to metamorphose into Jennie’s maid.

  ‘Listen,’ she told Jennie, ‘don’t worry about your neighbours.’

  ‘I wasn’t planning to. I’ve got enough work worrying about myself.’ She winced at the cop’s loud laughter.

  Back in the house everyone was turned to look at them. While Jennie hung her coat up the SDA woman squatted beside the healer, who was hitting his drum in a slow ponderous rhythm. She placed her hands against her cheeks and whispered something to him. He shook his head and kept drumming.

  Gloria got up and stood behind the Special Branch woman. ‘What’d it say?’ she asked. When the woman ignored her Gloria said louder. ‘What were the readings?’

  The woman turned her head. ‘Sit down,’ she ordered.

  ‘We just want to know.’

  ‘Sit down.’

  ‘I think we’ve got a right,’ Gloria said, but she returned to the couch, where Al put his arm around her.

  Once again the cop whispered to the healer, and this time the drumming stopped and he stared at her as if she belonged to some new species he’d never heard of. When she’d untied him he closed his eyes and leaned against her for her to stroke his hair and his back.

  ‘Why did you stop him?’ Gloria said when the cop stood up again, ‘What did the scan say?’

  ‘It says you better hope this woman doesn’t decide to sue you.’

  Slumped in the green chair Jennie watched them all look at each other, then back at the cop. Karen said, ‘What do you mean? Do you mean she’s okay?’

  ‘She’s more than okay. She’s a community resource.’

  Jennie thought, someone shut her up.

  Karen said, ‘Then why did she give away those things? Why wouldn’t she do the enactment? I don’t understand.’ When the investigator didn’t answer Karen turned to Jennie. ‘Why? Is there some reason we don’t know about?’

  Jennie squinted up at her. ‘Do you really think I’d tell you?’ she
said. She felt no pleasure, only a slight disgust, when Karen shrank back from her.

  Like a speaker filled with the message from her oracle Gloria announced, ‘She’s got to go to the touchstone.’ And like a Speaker she looked as surprised by this revelation as anyone else.

  The SDA woman said, ‘The scan cleared her of all charges. More than cleared her.’

  ‘I don’t care what the scan says. I mean—she’s—she’s poisoning our totems.’

  The cop smiled. ‘More charges? Do you know how close you are to a slander suit?’

  Al stood up. As if to announce his entry into the conversation he blew a puff of smoke at the ceiling. ‘Charges aren’t really the point here,’ he said, deepening his voice like a high school actor playing a judge. ‘Jennifer belongs to the hive. To our block. It’s up to us to decide whether or not she goes to the stone. That’s our right.’

  Karen said, ‘What’s the point, Al? What’s that got to do with anything?’

  Gloria said, ‘She doesn’t belong here. She doesn’t fit in. She hates us.’

  The cop looked at Jennie. ‘Do you hate these people?’ Jennie didn’t answer. To Gloria and Al the cop said, ‘Maybe it is a block decision. But you’re not the whole block. What makes you—’

  ‘We represent the block,’ Gloria said. ‘They chose us to represent them.’

  Jackie Schoenmaker said, ‘I don’t understand. What good will the touchstone do?’

  Gloria said, ‘The touchstone speaks for the whole hive. It can tell her to get out.’ Karen took off her raccoon hat and threw it at the door. Gloria turned on her. ‘Is that what you think of us? Maybe we should send you to the stone too.’

  ‘Maybe you should. This doesn’t solve anything. We shouldn’t be trying to get rid of her. We should try to bring her back.’

  Jennie said, ‘Will all of you shut up? God. You want me to go to the stone, Gloria? Great. Terrific. Anything to shut you all up.’ With a grunt she got to her feet.

  The cop said, ‘Are you sure you want to do this? You can force them to get a court order.’

  ‘Please,’ Jennie said, ‘I just want to get rid of them.’

  ‘You want me to chase them away?’ Jennie shook her head. ‘You’d probably win any case they could bring against you. You could even bring a countersuit. I’d be happy to testify for you.’

  ‘Thank you. But it’s not necessary. There’s nothing they can make me do that I don’t want to do. Believe me.’

  The cop smiled. ‘Yes. Yes, I believe you.’

  When Jennie stepped outside again, with the cop behind her and the raccoon delegation piling out after them, the crowd up and down the street began making noises and hand signs, calling things out, chanting prayers to the Devoted Ones who had exposed the menace. A few snowballs lobbed against the house. Jennie knew that they thought she was being taken away, that the healer couldn’t discharge her. The SDA woman flashed the light from her sunglasses up and down the street, and then shook Jennie’s hand in both of hers. A moment later she decided that that wasn’t good enough, and gave Jennie a hug followed by a kiss on both cheeks. While astonishment rolled through the spectators the cop shook Jennie’s hand once more before she took the healer’s arm and led him back towards the van.

  Unable to wait until the competition was safely away, Gloria stepped in front of the group to frame her hands around her mouth, the way people did in mystery plays when they announced the birth of the great stories. The pose reminded Jennie of something, but she couldn’t remember what. ‘We’re going to the touchstone,’ Gloria informed the community. ‘The touchstone will decide whether or not this woman belongs with us.’ Al patted her on the shoulder.

  That’s a lesson for all of us, Jennie thought. Lose a battle? No problem, just pretend it never took place. Afraid Gloria would jump into the lead she marched across the lawn to the road, where the line of onlookers broke apart for her to pass through. Soon they’d all regrouped to follow the posse as they made their way along Blessed Spirit Drive to turn right up Heavenpath Road.

  In the front Jennie walked with her hands in her pockets and her head tilted down to shield her eyes from the sun. The cold hurt her ears and she wished she’d brought her scarf.

  Karen came up beside her. ‘What happened with the scan?’

  ‘That’s none of your business.’

  ‘But she said you were all right.’

  ‘Surprise, huh?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Jennie. I’m really sorry.’

  ‘Leave me alone.’

  ‘It wasn’t supposed to—this isn’t what I wanted.’

  ‘Great. What did you want, Karen? To drive the evil one out of me?’

  ‘Yes. Yes.’ She was crying. ‘I don’t understand. I still don’t understand.’

  ‘Maybe I’m the evil one.’ Karen jumped away. ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Jennie said. ‘Go back to Gloria. Leave me alone.’

  As the parade climbed the hill to the sacred grove more and more people came out of their houses to fall in line. A few even brought along toy drums and processional trumpets, left over from the Skull Parades at the end of November. Jennie glanced over her shoulder at them all, then up at the grove. She remembered that time with Mike when they all rose into the air together, and even though it drove him away from her, even though the Agency might have arranged it as part of its campaign to get rid of her husband, she still smiled when she thought about it. For one moment, they were all together. For one moment, everything had worked the way it was supposed to work. The way the Revolution had promised.

  She glanced down at her belly. I know you’re needed, she thought. I know that. I’m not stupid. It’s just—I’ve got to make my own choices. Can you understand that?

  A part of THE TALE OF THE PLACE INSIDE

  The Blessed First Lady stepped onto the balcony. She stepped out from the President’s bedroom, onto the balcony above the funeral where the secretaries and generals pulled the coffin with gold chains attached to leather halters worn over their shoulders. She stood there watching while lines of girls and boys whipped the mourners who hauled the coffin past rows and rows of benches filled with citizens chosen for their loyalty by the secret police. She stood above these people and she knew that, like herself, they loved her husband and hated themselves for destroying him. She shouted at them the thing they most wanted to hear. ‘I am your Sacred President.’

  The mask amplified her voice until it pounded in their heads. ‘You are my people and I could not bear to leave you. I have come back from the dead and entered the body of my First Lady because I love you, and I could not bear to leave you.’

  She shouted, ‘Take that useless body. Take its pieces and throw it to the rats. This is my body now. In this body I will rule you and love you.’ The spectators nearly trampled the official mourners in their rush to pull apart the rigged up corpse. When they tore at the pasted skin they discovered nothing underneath but a hollow wooden frame. ‘Do you see?’ the new President called to them. ‘They tried to take my heart. They tried to shred it and cook it and eat it to give themselves the courage to betray me. But the birds rescued it. They lifted my heart from the hands of my enemies. And they brought it here.’ As she pounded on her chest the secretaries and generals and police chiefs ran from the cheers and shrieks of the mob.

  19

  The touchstone that year was a woman named Doris Baxter, from the Sparrow block at the far end of the hive. Jennie knew her very slightly and remembered her as one of those people who look perpetually exhausted, always shrinking back from some expected burden. But that was before the stone lottery had chosen her to leave the profane world. Now she wore a dress of soft green silk, with dark red pumps crossed by green and gold side panels. Grey tights concealed Doris’s legs, but her arms and the cleavage exposed by her dress glowed golden from a pair of sunlamps that stood in the back of the living room beside a narrow velvet couch. Above all this the child’s eyes and round cheeks of the mask looked as incongruous as a lump of
wood balanced on a champagne glass.

  She loved it, Jennie realised. She’d probably never got away from her husband before. On a round table with delicate bowed legs lay one of those blank books, the kind with thick pages and a cover decorated in gold swirls. When Doris turned aside for a moment Jennie opened the book to see lines of poetry in lavender ink.

  The room itself had changed. Gone were Jack Adlebury’s graceless tables and cabinets. Gone was the smell of sawdust and varnish. Instead, a thick perfume hung in the air above the couch and a single chair beside a round table. There were no dishes in the sink, but Jennie did notice a box from ‘La Maison du Vallée’, a delicatessen on Market Street which described its food as ‘nouvelle cuisine Américaine’.

  Doris shifted her weight from one foot to the other, embarrassed in her beautiful clothes. She said, ‘I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do with you.’

  ‘As I understand it, you’re supposed to say whether or not I belong here. Whether I’m a fit neighbour.’

  ‘Oh. All right.’

  Jennie looked at the mask. She could see nothing of the squirming souls that had rushed her the other time. She said, ‘I think you’re supposed to examine me. Touch me or something. Channel the hive through your fingers.’

  Doris looked at her hands, then wiped them on the sides of her dress. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Umm—please stand still.’ She took a couple of steps towards Jennie, then closed her eyes as she lifted her hands. For a moment the hands patted the air in front of her. She opened her eyes to take better aim.

  The fingers leaped back from Jennie’s skin like the magnets used to demonstrate spiritual repulsion in grade school meta-science classes. Doris stared down at her red hands, then up at Jennie. ‘You burned me,’ ‘You burned my hands.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Jennie said. ‘I didn’t know this would happen. Please believe me.’

  ‘Get out,’ the touchstone told her. ‘Get out of my house!’