The Deep Sea Diver's Syndrome

by Serge BRUSSOLO

  “Touch a hair on his head, and I’m out of here,” she said in a flat voice. “I won’t say it again. You know it’s not his fault. It’s because of his gift. I’ve explained this all to you before.”

  Dad seemed to lose his head then, and began shouting things that made no sense. He called Mama a witch, a psycho, and said she’d be better off going back to work at her circus of lunatics. Mama made no reply. She sat back down in the old armchair and lit her cigarette, shrouding herself in blue smoke as if to weave a fuliginous veil between herself and the rest of the world. Dad kept shouting by his lonesome for a good part of the night, then buckled his suitcases and left, shouting over his shoulder that he was happier at a hotel anyway, rather than in this stinking dump … and if it kept up, he’d never set foot back here again. David’s throat was so tight with fear he couldn’t even cry. When Dad’s car drove off, Mama pulled him onto her lap and mussed his hair.

  “It’s not your fault,” she said in that voice tarry with tobacco, which grew raspier with each passing year. “It’s a side effect of the gift. When God gives you a present, a power, a talent, the Devil also hands you a poisoned apple, so as not to be outdone. You have to deal with them both. Pay for your gift with a vice, a defect—that’s the rule. Some people become perverts, others murderers. No point complaining; our cross isn’t all that hard to bear. Stealing isn’t the worst thing. I know others who’ve had to give into much more disgusting weaknesses.”

  David didn’t understand much of what she was saying. What gift? He wasn’t bad at drawing (especially naked women), but it wasn’t enough to make a big deal about. He couldn’t sing, much less dance. He was in no way artistically inclined. So what, then?

  As if the failure of the last raid had upset the very order of the world, Mama got nabbed by fat old Morillard right during the annual clearance sales. David let out a whimper of fear when the cop’s hand pounced on his mother’s wrist in the costume jewelry department, and for a second, he thought he’d wet his pants like a baby.

  “Little lady,” chuckled the brilliantined, mustachioed man, “I think we have a lot to discuss. We go way back, don’t we? You’ve been playing me for a sap for quite a while. Now you’re coming with me to my office for a quick pat-down.”

  David followed as if in a dream. No one had spoken a word to him, and he’d never felt so small. He knew if he opened his mouth, he’d immediately burst out sobbing. Morillard ushered them down a dark, narrow hall.

  “Kid, you sit your butt down and don’t move!” he ordered, indicating a flaking cast-iron chair. Then he pushed Mama into the office and closed the door neatly behind him.

  “Now, about that pat-down,” he crowed, delighted. “First, empty your pockets. Then your sleeves!”

  The ringing in David’s ears blotted out what followed, but at one point the cop yelled: “I said your slip too!” Then there was a muddled noise, as if things were falling on the floor. Mama came out ten minutes later. Her face was smeared with lipstick and her hair disheveled. She took David by the hand and left the store standing tall, in no hurry, as if indifferent to the salesladies’ looks.

  “So, um,” David stammered once they were outside. The winter evening shrouded the street in darkness. “We’re not going to jail?”

  “No,” Mama murmured, “you can always cut a deal with a guy like that. You have to take your punishment without flinching. It’s because of the gift. They make us atone for it on credit. That’s how it is. It’ll be the same way with you. Every now and then, they’ll hand you a bill, and you’ll have to pay up, no balking.”

  When they were back at the house, Mama hurried to the shower and stayed under the water for a long time. When at last she emerged from the bathroom, wrapped in her old dressing gown, she downed three sleeping pills with a glass of rum and went to bed. David alone remained awake in the empty house, unable to sleep. Something had been broken, but he didn’t know what. Was it his fault Mama had gotten caught? Had the failure of his last raid derailed the delicate gears that had till now ensured them utter impunity? It was his fault; he’d let his guard down. Success had gone to his head. He’d underestimated old Merlin, and …

  That same night, he heard his mother let out a moan. Thinking she was sick, he peeked through the door to his parents’ room. It was something he’d never done before, but the image of the sleeping pills suddenly came back to mind. What if Mama had poisoned herself? What if—

  She lay on her back, eyes closed. From her open mouth rose a white, almost luminous plume of smoke that coiled in the air and formed a pudgy sphere like a ball of yarn up by the ceiling. At first he thought it was cigarette smoke, but it didn’t smell like tobacco. The air smelled strange, electric. He took a step toward the bed, his hands icy. Mama was fast asleep, and smoke kept leaking from her open mouth as if she were burning up inside. Timidly, David poked it with his index finger. The smoke had a weird, gummy consistency. Not only was it warm, but it was also stretchy, palpable. The ball by the ceiling was now big around as a balloon, and bumps were forming on its surface. It was like … a kind of sculpture. A ball of white dough, sculpting itself. It was … a head. A human head …

  The head of fat old Morillard. David ran out of the room, too terrified to even scream. The white head followed him, caught in the updraft of his flight. David didn’t know where to hide. Morillard’s head was hovering in the hallway, bobbing like a balloon on the whim of the breeze. The pale, moonlike face didn’t seem to be alive. Rather, it looked like a flying sculpture that an ever more tenuous string tied to Mama’s mouth.

  “She barfed that thing!” David thought as he curled up under the coffee table. “It’s just flying puke, is all!”

  He tried to reason with himself to contain his fear as the gruesome head fluttered this way and that, crashing into doors, bouncing back. This went on for a few minutes, then it burst with a curious pop, like a soap bubble, spraying David with a bizarre substance that reminded him of marshmallow.

  This time he needed an answer. The next day, he went to Mama and told her what had happened that night. The young woman seemed surprised by his ignorance. “But, sweetie,” she burst out laughing, “that’s the gift. I thought you knew. Hasn’t it ever happened to you before? We’re mediums! We materialize ectoplasms.”

  “Ecto-whats?”

  “Ectoplasms. Back in the day, people believed they were images of the dead. But they’re just models drawn from our dreams. Mental images that solidify in the air while we sleep. It’s as if dreams came out of people through their ears and turned into creatures of smoke.”

  David frowned, digesting this information. “So that was your job with Madame Zara?” he asked. “You summoned dead people?”

  “Oh, that’s just what Auntie Zara told people,” Mama giggled. “Before each séance, she’d give me a photo of the deceased, whomever the customer wanted to see. I’d concentrate on it, to memorize the facial features, then Zara would hypnotize me and put me to sleep, commanding me to dream about what I’d just seen. Then the face would come out of my mouth and start floating around the room. The customers were really happy, convinced they were actually dealing with ghosts. It was kind of a con job, sweetie. I couldn’t really summon the dead, I just sculpted their heads out of smoke. That’s how I met your father. He came every week so I could bring back one of his old mistresses who died in a car accident. For a long time, he really believed I was a witch. When I tried to set him straight, he was very disappointed.”

  David was puzzled. So that was the gift? Was he also going to start vomiting up faces that exploded like soap bubbles? That was stupid! Moronic! Pointless! Only good for a circus sideshow. And for this ability, so utterly devoid of interest, they were doomed to theft?

  “I was never very talented,” Mama went on to herself. “My ectoplasms never lasted very long. They burst too quickly, and sometimes they also lost their shape, became hideous. That caused a lot of trouble with the customers. I couldn’t maintain the consistency of th
e features long enough. The noses get huge, the ears like an elephant’s. Zara would bawl me out when I came to. She’d scream, ‘God Almighty, just think about what you’re doing!’ But it would all start all over again with the next séance.”

  Actually, Mama wasn’t really sure what the gift was good for. Until now, mediums had been used in the occult sector. A skilled shaper of ectoplasms working at a respectable practice could make a good living. Outside of that narrow professional niche, the job market was zilch.

  “But I don’t want to work for a witch!” protested David. “Not even for pretend. Puking up dead people is gross!”

  Mama shrugged. All she knew was David would have the gift, just as she herself had gotten it from her mother, and he’d just have to live with it. He alone could decide if it was worth trying to cash in on. David felt oddly swindled. In the space of a second he’d gone from being a wizard to a carnival mountebank—hardly a pleasant sensation. In the weeks that followed, this curious legacy came up a few more times in conversation, then Mama fell back into her usual silence. Papa hardly ever came home anymore; rumor had it he was on the other side of the country with “another family” where he felt more at home. This parallel household plunged David into confusion. He tried to imagine his father with another woman, another child. At first, in a fit of anger, he’d thought: “But we’re his real family.” Now he was no longer sure. It seemed to him that Papa’s absence, his brief and ever more infrequent visits, attenuated the reality of their bonds, turning him and Mama into understudies confined to the wings. The real family was “the other one,” those strangers who lived at the antipodes. David and Mama were but shadows … ectoplasms with transparent flesh.

  When he turned fourteen, David began vomiting up his first ghosts. It happened at night, without his knowing. In the morning he’d find the hodgepodges floating by the ceiling like balloons at a party. Unlike his mother, he gave birth to nonrepresentational but persistent amalgams that were a long time breaking up.

  “Poor darling boy,” Mama murmured, “those don’t look like anything. They’re like … popcorn. And here I was going to introduce you to Madame Zara.”

  His mother’s disappointment made David unhappy, but at the same time he was relieved he wouldn’t have to work for some occultist charlatan.

  “A medium who can’t shape a likeness,” Mama despaired. “If that doesn’t beat all.”

  With touching stubbornness, she tried to correct her son, giving him advice like a coach. She showed him photos, forcing him to memorize them, but David never produced anything resembling a “likeness,” just unidentifiable abstract forms.

  “You puke Picassos,” Mama sighed. “If you can find a customer with that kind of face, you’ll be in luck.” But David didn’t want to get mixed up in scamming the living. The idea of becoming a great thief was as attractive to him as the idea of being a con man was repulsive. Between the ages of seventeen and twenty he produced a great many ectoplasms, especially when he was in love or under sexual stress. Papa came back to live with them when he learned that Mama wasn’t doing so well. The doctors had found something in her lung, some nasty disease from smoking too much, but David knew they were wrong. It was an ectoplasm that had balled itself up inside Mama’s chest. When you started getting old, the damn gunk got thicker and thicker till it wouldn’t come out. It stuck to your bronchial tubes and hardened. Mama was dying because a stillborn ghost was clogging up her lungs. When Papa came back, he’d grown old, as if his “real” family, the one at the antipodes, had worn him out unreasonably.

  Between the ages of twenty and twenty-three, David went through a latency period and thought he’d lost his gift. He was relieved. For three years, he’d systematically avoided spending the night with a girl for fear a ghost would come out of his mouth while he was asleep, which didn’t exactly help his love life. Women complained that he ran off as soon as he’d shot his wad, and called him a prick. But what else could he do? For three years, he led a normal life. Then the phenomenon started up again, less frequent now but more elaborate. From then on, he produced strangely beautiful structures which, when he happened to leave a few lying around in a corner of the apartment, seemed to cast a spell over visitors and hold them in curious thrall.

  Once Mama was buried, Papa left again to find his real family, leaving behind no address, no telephone number, as if the antipodes enjoyed no modern means of communication. David let him go without lifting a finger.

  That was the year people started talking about the first therapeutic sculptures. The papers were full of articles boasting the merit of these healing statues. The fashion for these curious abstract assemblages, executed in a material hitherto unknown to visual artists, was all the rage in America. One glance at a magazine photo and David knew they were ectoplasms. Curiously tortured ectoplasms, like the ones he’d been producing since he was a teenager.

  [ 8 ]

  Bad News in Bliss Plaza

  David crossed the museum esplanade, listening to the echo of his steps under the archways. The sound always made him feel like he was being pursued by a legion of invisible men hiding behind the tall pillars. No matter how fast he turned around, he never managed to surprise these ghosts as they moved about (but how could he have, if they were invisible?). The feeling of being surrounded finally became oppressive, like a trap he couldn’t locate but knew was closing in all around. That morning, he’d felt an urge to go see Soler Mahus’s magnum opus again, the one on display in Bliss Plaza, in the open air. On the way back, he’d stop by and see Marianne in her tiny office in the medical section.

  He went down the long marble steps. The great dream took up the entire surface of the former reflecting pool, unfurling its shapes and curves like a strange aerodynamic transport waiting to take flight. A living machine, a celestial seashell, or even … a cloud, maybe, a cloud beached on the ground after long drifting on the jet streams. A captive cloud? Marooned like a whale come to die on the beach, its sonar on the blink.

  The sculpture burgeoned, taking up a good hundred square yards. Contemplating it, you wondered how one man alone could have given birth to an ectoplasm of such size without it costing him his life. But that was no doubt why Soler was old beyond his years, why little by little he’d come to look like a living mummy unable to so much as wiggle his pinky. His outsize dreams had sucked the marrow from his bones, withering his body, tanning his flesh into leather stiffer than jerky. His life essence was gone, consumed by dream. David knew that ectoplasms wore your body out. Each time he managed to bring something back from the depths of dream, he lost weight, as if the object expelled through his mouth corresponded to an actual portion of flesh. Each time he stepped on the scale after a dive, he was convinced he’d undergone a mysterious amputation. Something had been taken away from him, he didn’t know what; it was painless, and yet his anatomy was no longer complete. Each dream consumed an organ. Sometimes this idea took on obsessive proportions. For the ectoplasms were not made of smoke, as he’d initially believed; further veterinary studies had shown their texture to be composed of living cells suspended in a very loosely structured protoplasmic compound. Some popular science magazines had even compared ectoplasms to benign growths that developed literally outside the subject. This rather unappealing view of the process, which reduced dreams to the approximate level of mere warts, had not, however, cooled the public’s enthusiasm. David often thought of the emaciated Soler Mahus, looking like a recently unwrapped Egyptian mummy. The ectoplasms had eaten him alive. His children had carved themselves bodies from his very flesh, leaving him but bones, skin, and just enough organs to lead the life of a vegetable, reduced to a few basic functions. It was his flesh spread out there for all to see, on Bliss Plaza. His organs—sublimated, purified, rid of their ugly visceral materiality, but his organs all the same … David had no illusions. These days, an art gallery was nothing but a monstrous anatomical display. Below each work the following inscription might as well have been engraved: shaped from
the artist’s liver. But the public would probably not have appreciated this overly organic truth.

  He stopped at the foot of the steps. The prodigious size of the ectoplasm terrified him. He had but to close his eyes a brief second to see Soler, melting like a candle, consuming himself in a sizzle of hot wax to give birth to this monstrosity—so beautiful, and so poignant.

  The great dream was, in fact, a state commission. When people spoke of it, they called it “the sculpture that stopped the war,” for that was indeed what had happened. Time and again, journalists had told the story of how Soler had been flown in a helicopter to the front line between two warring nations on the verge of a bloodbath. In a single night, he’d shaped this dream whose benign radiance had put an end to the homicidal impulses of both sides, and order was restored. A truce was declared, treaties were signed, and finally peace had returned and everyone gave themselves a shake as if coming out of a nightmare, wondering with worry-tinged disbelief why it had almost come to mass murder.