by K. J. Bishop
THAT BOOK YOUR MAD ANCESTOR WROTE
K.J. BISHOP
CONTENTS
THE ART OF DYING
THE LOVE OF BEAUTY
WE THE ENCLOSED
MALDOROR ABROAD
ALSISO
THE MEMORIAL PAGE
LAST DRINK BIRD HEAD
BETWEEN THE COVERS
TWO DREAMS
THE HEART OF A MOUSE
SAVING THE GLEEFUL HORSE
MOTHER’S CURTAINS
BEACH RUBBLE
DOMESTIC INTERIOR
VISION SPLENDID
MADAME LENORA’S RINGS
SHE MIRRORS
WHEN THE LAMPS ARE LIT
THE CRONE MEETS HER SON (ON A BATTLEFIELD)
NOTES
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ALSO BY K.J. BISHOP
COPYRIGHT
THE ART OF DYING
Mona Skye, the duellist and poet of lately tragic fame, lay with her angular limbs folded atop brocade cushions in a corner of the smoking-room beneath the Amber Tree café. Fever made her long face beautiful; it reddened her lips and caused her grey eyes to sparkle and smoulder. The lean woman had gained a perversely tender grace as she wasted towards frailty. Even her pale hair seemed softer and brighter.
The disease turns her into that old cliché, the beautiful and beloved thing that can live only a short while… Vali Jardine swallowed down the sour taste of anger with a mouthful of drowsy smoke from the narghile, a brass extravaganza squatting like an artificial octopus on the floor between them.
Anger had been a close companion to Vali since the night of the summer Lantern Casting, when Mona had drunkenly sworn to let Death catch her, since he seemed to want her so much. She would face the grinning bastard, seduce him and make him take her. She had made this announcement to discomfited onlookers in the crowd gathered on the Volta’s bohemian west bank to watch the thousands of paper lights floating past the view of sleepless workshops and foundries across the river. The next morning she had rejected her medicines, throwing all her tonics and powders out onto the little courtyard below the apartment she and Vali shared.
‘She’s asleep,’ a man’s voice came softly out of the gloom on Mona’s other side. A black damask sleeve reached across the cushions and long fingers lifted the pipe from her hand to drape it around the narghile’s stem. Another pipe was raised to lips half-hidden in the shadow of curtainous black hair. The man, whose name was Gwynn, was a sometime adventurer from the snow-swept north of the world. He and Mona had once been comrades-in-arms and sweethearts down in the canyon country east of the Teleute Shelf. The love-affair had been uncomplicated and brief and their friendship had endured. Separate routes had brought them to Sheol, on the brink of the great plateau. Travellers no longer, now they both played the southern city’s games of easy money and fast death.
Gwynn drew on the pipe, and through a nebula of smoke regarded his old inamorata and the woman who was her lover now.
‘Vali, will you hear the advice of a friend?’
‘I’ll listen…’
‘Get her out of Sheol. Take her somewhere cleaner.’
‘Why? Clean air might be good for her lungs, but it won’t cure a death-wish. We might as well stay here where at least there’s some civilisation.’ Vali could hear how bitter she sounded.
‘I’m not talking about the air,’ Gwynn said. His greenish eyes were slitted. ‘This city is venomous. Some people it paralyses, others it injects with despair. It doesn’t like us. You should leave and take her with you.’
‘And go where?’
He exhaled a dense stream of smoke. ‘Anywhere else.’
‘Ha! I don’t see you packing your bags and moving out, Mr Sage Advice.’
Gwynn laughed dryly. ‘I tried once, but I got homesick.’ He made the pipe bubble once more, then pulled his gloves on and buttoned them, and raised himself off the cushions. ‘I’m tired,’ he said, ‘and so are you. I’m going to get us a cab.’
Vali watched the back of his damask tailcoat retreat into the slumbering recesses of the room, in which the lamp-lit smoke hung as though over a battlefield where sleep was the worst that could happen. Almost all of Mona’s friends had deserted her, fearing they would catch her illness, or else motivated by embarrassment. She wondered whether it was love, loyalty, or some other reason that kept Gwynn hovering near the flame.
And what about you? Why are you crisping your wings when she rejects you along with the rest of the world? She addressed her reflection in the narghile’s polished vase, as if the image in the maternal figure of the water-pipe had some power to explain her own soul to her. But the distorted little picture in the bulging metal showed her no oracle, only a woman of a certain tough genus, in a much-travelled coat of bottle-green suede, hair rolled in the long, tight dreadlocks worn by the military clans of Oran, her homeland in the Shelf’s western tropics. She had kept the style for aesthetic reasons, though technically she no longer had the right to wear it. It went with the old scars faintly marking her dark face.
Her own notions of justice had caused her to hang up her mask and withdraw from the milieu of the juridical theatres. She preferred to sell her skills on the street, where there was no affectation of fairness and right. It was an ethic of sorts, foreign to Sheol’s codes of living; but then, it was a common saying that everyone in Sheol was a foreigner.
And we blow here like leaves in a gale, and sometimes we find love. Mona had said that last autumn, a year ago now, in a briefly voguish bar on Arcade Bridge.
Love turns us all a little mad, Vali’s misshapen reflection seemed to say.
She felt torpid, but her mind was unquiet. The little indulgence in opium had not brought her serenity, much less euphoria, and she mocked herself for succumbing to the stuff’s promises. Then again, perhaps she should have indulged more. She found her boots and tugged them on, her fingers seeming to float as they dealt with the array of buckles and laces. If someone happens to want a piece of you now, Jardine, she thought, the management’ll be cleaning you off the carpet for a week.
Over the troubled sound of Mona’s breathing, Vali became aware of a scratching noise behind her, as of a mouse scuttling over slate. She looked around and saw a reedy, fair-haired teenager perched on the edge of a divan, writing hastily in a thick notebook. Vali would have taken him for one more desperate poet seeking inspiration in smoke dreams, if she had not caught him glancing furtively across at her with alert eyes. The damned press! Well, she would see what lies this one was writing.
She rose, advanced, and, glaring, snatched the notebook out of his hand. She skimmed the pages:
Society Report: Mona Skye, the renowned sabreur, sonneteer and despiser of the world, observed unconscious in a drug den on the notorious Sycamore Street strip: it seems the end is near for the self-destructing heroine…
At the Cutting Edge: Mona Skye’s worsening condition has cast a gloom over the demimonde and beyond. Conversations are not sparkling. The beautiful people preoccupy themselves with sedatives. Gallants and quaintrelles dress like undertakers. Expect the chic look this winter to be formal, functional and funereal…
Art Update: Is Mona Skye’s slow suicide art? Many think so. While predictably negative noise issues from conservative quarters, public opinion seems to be with the progressive critics who are claiming that death as performance is the ultimate art-form, an art against which there can be no appeal. Watching Mona Skye, one is exposed to an exquisite release of energies as her body, as though whispering secrets to a confidant, reveals new stages of its degenerative journey. Killer and victim are one, coexisting in a symbiosis of extended intimacy…
It was only the usual drivel,
merely aimed at a higher class of audience, but Vali felt the pressure of fury rising inside her like steam in a boiler. Her mind flung up an image of an autopsy conducted while pretentious types loafed around the slab drinking trendy wines and picking at hors d’oeuvres.
She willed herself to composure. Icily she said to the boy, ‘It is in bad taste to serve up a person’s suffering as entertainment for the chattering classes.’
He was wearing a suit that needed some cleaning and a leather coat that was at least two sizes too big. His fingers twitched nervously.
‘Ma’am,’ he said, ‘the last thing I want to do is offend. This city looks to your former profession for inspiration in everything, including matters of taste.’
Unfortunately, it was the truth. Vali wondered how, even in her present state, she had forgotten. Every day she saw children playing ‘Chop-Chop’ and ‘Kill ’Em All’ on the pavements. Duellists were fêted in popular culture. Their images were made into character dolls and reproduced on household items and souvenirs. Wildly fictionalised, lurid stories about their adventures and private lives were supplied to an eager public in cheap magazines with titles like Corinthian, Hearts and Blades and Tales from the Theatre of Woe. Sometimes she saw dolls with her own face in secondhand shops, going cheap. Merchandise featuring Mona’s image, on the other hand, was currently riding a wave of popularity. Now, it seemed, Mona’s lengthy embracing of death had attracted the attention of the bourgeoisie.
It is she who is guilty of bad taste; she’s making a shabby exhibition of herself, and I’m as guilty for accepting a part in it, Vali thought with a dreary sense of entrapment. She was grateful to the opium for numbing some of her embarrassment.
‘I have a duty to the people,’ the kid was explaining. ‘They must have information.’ He drew himself up and tilted his head to look Vali in the eye. ‘The freedom of the press is sacred, ma’am.’
She looked down at him. ‘Nothing is sacred,’ she said flatly. She handed back the notebook, in which he immediately resumed writing. She had the impression that he was recording the incident which had just occurred.
‘Can I quote that? Nothing is sacred?’
She was sorry she had allowed himself to get angry at a magazine hack, of all insignificant people.
‘Go ahead,’ she said wearily.
Gwynn returned then, emerging out of the smoke and shadows. ‘Our chariot awaits.’ His gaze taking in the pen-wielding youth, he raised an eyebrow at Vali.
‘Let’s go,’ she muttered.
Carrying Mona, Vali followed Gwynn up the stairs and out to the yard behind the café. The young scribe climbed behind them, introducing himself to their backs. His name was Siegfried and he worked for Verbal Nerve magazine. Perhaps they read it, or had seen it somewhere? He was honoured, in any case, to make their acquaintance.
He was ignored.
Vali welcomed the chilly kick of the autumn night outside. Mona coughed in her sleep. The vehicle was a hooded chaise harnessed to a wretched-looking nag whose ill condition was typical of Sheol’s cab horses. Vali and Gwynn were too busy seating Mona comfortably inside to notice Siegfried positioning himself to get aboard. When he squeezed himself in next to Vali, she found herself at a loss. Merely telling the kid to leave seemed a weak reaction to his bizarre rudeness, and if he refused to go, what could she do? To remove him by force would likely rebound in publicity of the least desirable kind. Killing him without preamble would be crass. She wondered if Gwynn would do anything, but he was still ignoring the boy, evidently regarding him as her guest and her problem. She resigned herself to accepting it as yet another strange and uncomfortable situation to be endured, and gathered up her dignity.
‘Magnolia Terrace, river end,’ she ordered the driver, a bent and leathery beldam wearing a battered tricorn and a voluminous cloak. The old woman cracked her whip and the horse lurched off at a trot, drawing them across the flagstones and out into the traffic and crowds that filled Sycamore Street from side to side even this late on a cold night.
It was unpleasantly congested under the canvas hood. Vali and Gwynn had twisted sideways to give Mona more room, Vali’s muscular frame still requiring a good third of the seat. The assorted firearms and blades the three carried made the cramping of bodies even more uncomfortable.
While they were arranged thus, Siegfried embarked upon a celebrity interview. Mona being still unconscious, he questioned the other two.
How many people had they each killed? Did they enjoy their work? Could they share any special memories? In their respective views, what was the duellist’s role in society? What did they do in their spare time? How were their homes decorated? What did they think of Mona’s dance with death? The youth fired questions and chased answers with relentless zeal, seeming oblivious to the peril he would be in should one or both of his captive subjects lose patience. Or, if he did understand, he was stimulated by the danger.
Vali responded with monosyllables or silence. With an air of endeavouring to keep the pest off her back, Gwynn met the boy’s quizzes with answers which, whether true or not, would make good copy. Vali suspected him of enjoying the attention, but her mood didn’t allow her to be amused. He was the one with a public to think of, in any case. It was only her closeness to Mona that made her a target of curiosity these days. Siegfried listened avidly, filling page after page with shorthand notes.
To Vali, their progress took on the confused, uncontrollable quality of a dream. She started to feel that she had slid into an alternative, stupidly surreal existence crammed with details that were irritating, strange and boring all at once. Battalions of late-night shoppers and party-goers surged under green and red silk lanterns strung on wires across the streets, hurrying as if on missions of great and secret importance. The hag cried out and thrashed the horse, which panted like a demon-beast in front of them, white breath steaming from its nostrils and bones moving like pistons under its skin. Mona’s lovely head lolled, saliva pooling at the corners of her mouth.
They passed an open yard where a religious lynch mob was holding an auto-da-fé. Hundreds of faces, cheering in rapt hysteria, were washed in orange light from the scaffold, where a human shape was visible at the centre of a blaze. A procession of hooded penitents moved across the road, each pair lashing the shoulders of the pair in front, forcing the through traffic to stop while they passed. The old woman and half a dozen other drivers screamed abuse at the lashers, who kept to their shuffling ritual pace.
The noise woke Mona. Her eyes opened wide and she grabbed Vali’s arm. ‘I’m dying!’ she gasped. ‘I saw it! I saw Death. I’ve been dreaming. Don’t take me to the house, Vali. Take me to the necropolis. I want to die there, where it’s quiet.’ She looked around deliriously. ‘Where am I? Vali, are you here too?’
Vali kissed Mona’s flushed cheek and stroked her hair, trying to soothe her. ‘Don’t fret,’ she murmured, ‘we’ll be home soon.’
Mona clutched her hand. ‘No!’ she rasped fiercely, ‘I’m dying!’ As if to make the point she started coughing wetly. ‘I want to die in peace,’ she whispered. ‘Out in the air, under the stars. Take me there, Vali. Please.’
‘All right,’ Vali said. ‘All right, sweetheart. Driver!’ she shouted. ‘Change of plan. Take us to the necropolis.’
‘Aye; it’s pretty this time of year,’ the beldam shouted back.
They clattered through the city, a nightmare journey with Mona falling into frequent bouts of coughing. In between these she lapsed into a semi-conscious state. Every now and then the celebrated duellist would look around glassily and ask, like a child, ‘Are we nearly there yet?’
‘Soon,’ Vali promised her over and over.
Siegfried wrote it all down.
At last they reached the dry canal, hardly more than a trench filled with vegetation and rubbish, and the ancient metal bridge that was the only approach to the city of the dead. The necropolis covered the hills on the other side with a dark panorama of monumental stonework for several
kilometres in both directions. Sheol was old, and needed extensive space to accommodate its many generations of dead. The city proper ended here. Beyond the great cemetery there was only a no-man’s land of weeds and twisted bushes before the drop over the Edge.
The road finished on the further side of the bridge. Vali gathered Mona in her arms and lifted her out of the seat while Gwynn paid the fare. Together, Vali and Gwynn tried to support Mona between them so that she could walk, but she sagged and stumbled so much that Vali picked her up and carried her again.
Gwynn spoke to Siegfried, who had climbed out with them. ‘It might be just as well for you to go back, all things considered.’
The boy turned up the collar of his coat against the cold, which was sharper than in the city centre, and tugged on a pair of woollen gloves. ‘Sir, I’m not afraid of a little death,’ he said intrepidly.
‘Those could be famous last words,’ said Vali, overhearing.
‘I’m not famous yet.’ Siegfried grinned, pleased at being included in the comradeship of these people. Vali and Gwynn exchanged looks.
‘They go where angels fear to tread,’ Gwynn said as the cab rattled back over the bridge.
Mona wanted to be taken to St Anna Vermicula’s tomb. From Vali’s memory, the saint was buried a good half-hour’s walk over the hills towards the barrens. She moved with a swift stride, her friend’s body a burden of long bones and heavy furs.
The necropolis was a city in more than name alone. Many of the greater tombs and monuments were as large as the houses of the living, while individual sarcophagi were stacked in tiered enclosures many levels high. Stone stairs provided access for those who wished to pay their respects, or who were simply sightseeing. A group of tourists walking some distance away were visible by their bobbing lanterns.
The silence of the place was a tangible presence in the air, as if it were not merely an absence of sound but a thing with its own substance. There were no trees in the huge graveyard, but soft, short-bladed grass grew on the paths, muffling footsteps. The night sky was marvellously clear, with a moon in its third quarter and a glut of stars that looked, Vali fancied, like ice-crystals gathering in readiness for winter – or candles burning in reproachful memory for all the drowned hours in a person’s life. But the latter seemed more like one of Mona’s thoughts.