Celebrant

  It makes far more sense judiciously to make use of the sticklers. Adrian’s punctilio, he hopes, acts to dissipate the air of license that allows people to overlook the rules. If he goes through with it, then they will also have to go through with it. All the way through with it.

  He had slept badly, and his hair was still wet from the night before.

  Why? (he had asked himself then) He bathes before bed but why put himself through it? Feeling feverish and detestably weak he had nearly burst into tears as the hard points of the cold taps sank into his water-softened fingers. The feeling of even hot water on his skin was weird, and seemed to trickle over numb and ultrasensitive zones on his surface, so that he trembled. He brushed the cold tile with his skin and nearly cried out in despair, drowning in a torrent of overpowering sensations.

  Who am I? Am I going insane? Is this how it starts?

  No—I have a great destiny (he tells himself) Most of what you feel is understandable, is that the problem, no cause for any special concern. The water’s backing up a little. A dim altercation of soap and hands and blue tile, the chilling basin, his loveless body, and the light of the room. Feeling weak, old, wretched, tired, and disgusted. Days had passed in those rooms, and all the same he felt nakedly exposed and disembodied, unreal, with nothing to do, nothing to be.

  He can’t concentrate. He can’t sleep properly. He is haunted by a nebulous fear of failure, the idea of his own work is unintelligible to him in a special way, as if something crucial in each sentence were obscured from a point of view he can’t avoid taking. Is the moment passing now? How can it not be? Is the great destiny slipping away? But how does it make sense to miss your destiny?

  Paragraphs smoothly glide away from each other on magnetic waves of repulsion, grey and brown, shaped like cut stone slabs with bezeled edges, paragraphs of me. They don’t link up. No chain—so what is the chain? Chain is direction of current. Respect. Keep going. Look for landmarks in the ocean until siren voices hypnotize you and you spring reborn from the wreck of the Hesperus, the tragedy, the captain lashed to the wheel, Dracula emerging from below decks, the captain’s daughter washed ashore, frozen solid.

  Where is he? Somewhere in the black, out in the world. How I wish I were, had his perpetual errand.

  The people in the street?—their fate? I don’t care. My ministry is to the dead, citizens. You don’t just become a ghost, you know. You have to construct your future ghost, as I do via my griffonage, and then hurl yourself, at the right time, just so. Of course, it used to be done instinctively, but we of the lesser generations have lost this instinct, and so must rely in its stead on technique.

  And look at them... (Adrian thinks now, resuming his train of thought at the party)

  He actually does look around, as if his head were the swivelling lamp of a lighthouse and he were inside, gazing out through his own eyes. This way of looking seems to stretch him out loftily, the disdain brings him breathable air.

  ...what do they know of technique? Of discipline?

  Now he feels affectedness comes over him, not false, and not natural either. Gloating, quiet, very floating and deliberate in even his smallest movements, economical. A morbid serenity and knowingness, a crazy staring look that would crop up from time to time. Now he feels like himself again!

  A younger man, tall, blonde, rubbery-looking, is talking animatedly with someone. He bangs his cigarette end into a bronze ashtray adorned with a tiny naked woman bent demurely forward. Without a glance in the man’s direction, Adrian picks up the wobbling ashtray and sets it down toward the center of the table, in a more suitable place, with reproachful care.

  Here’s a group gathered to look at a painting, the painter himself is regaling them with it, his wife beside him. The painting is a portrait of an attractive young woman.

  Has he ever done your portrait, madame? (Adrian asks the painter’s wife)

  No, actually! (she says with a slight exaggeration of the eyes, the sort of inflation that happens at parties)

  Curious he should do one of her, and not of you... (Adrian says)

  He drifts away. The idea that he has just sown the seed of future disharmony, perhaps even an outright argument, he savors like a sweet. Just one seed, that’s all that was needed—that’s all a deft practitioner would need. He has a disagreeable, pursed, relishing expression on his lips.

  The shimmering light in the sockets makes fluttering rings around his eyes like two little cyclones. The figure seems to boil up from the darkness at the end of the hall, into which Adrian has just plunged.

  Come on weakling! (a voice chuckles)

  and slugs me in the gut—a blow I swear was real

  Eyes ablaze in the clear blackness of the alley like two windows opening onto a snowstorm. Pale, clear, pure light in the sockets maniacally white.

  Yes, we’ll send them all up, all lit on one rotting match!

  Like a sinister jellyfish made of old umbrellas, Adrian is floating, on an evil errand, through the empty stone arcades and trash-strewn lots. He reviews again, with an intense thrill of admiration, the stories he’d read of the terrifying ecstatics, who destroyed so totally that no part of their victims endured it, not even in memories.

  Waiting patiently in line to buy himself a pair of socks he replays in his mind the events of one of his rejected stories of vengeance from beyond the grave—

  The dead man’s widow, awakened in the night by the sound of a baby bawling in the nursery... she investigates... the darkened nursery... the heartbreaking cries... the crib... the strange infant... as she picks up the child two metal barrels slide from between its closed eyelids and discharge fatal bullets...

  Next night, the dead man’s brother, who had made certain preparations for him unaware that they were to abet his revenge on his wife, gazes from his window... a glimpse of something pale and faintly luminous there in the gallery opposite his study... he investigates... the bent figure glowing like a cloud... her great mane of dishevelled hair... drawing near he recognizes the dead woman... the locks of her hair whip around his neck... he sinks to the floor, his tongue sticking out, eyes bulging like ping-pong balls...

  The next night, the dead brother’s treacherous in-laws, an aristocratic family, are dining together... they are blamed somehow—I forget—by the dead brother for his death... loops of wire, so fine as to be invisible, drop from the chandelier... the motions of the family as they eat unwittingly mesh them in these wire loops, which then begin to close... slicing through arms and necks like a knife through butter... a head topples into the punch bowl—no, he’d cut that (ha ha so to speak), too obvious... the flower setting blazes scarlet with blood as the chandelier begins to sputter so brilliant and hot that it melts, dripping brass onto the roast...

  The next night, the head of a rival family... having observed the escalation of this supernatural vendetta he trembles in dread of his life and seals himself away... at his gate... up his walk... toward the threshold of his house it comes... a mannikin of pitted iron, black and rough like charcoal... it clashes against itself with each heavy step like a knight in armor, the commendatore—magnificent thing, Adrian thinks as he fumbles for his money, wonderful!—crash! crash! crash! the implacable tramp of death! slow—unhurried—inexorable—the mannikin’s huge, stony face... the eyes are open but blank, the same drab black color... the hinged mouth suddenly drops the chin down to the chest and stays there, as the word—death—falls leadenly and finally from it...

  Adrian draws close to the city factory. In the dim light of the stars he can see the transparent whir of the celestials on patrol.

  Students! (he calls through his teeth)

  At once his students flutter up about him. He points, and they move at once to divert the celestials. Adrian scampers through one of the many apertures in the walls and across the open space beyond into the factory itself. He puffs out yeasty breath as dry as a jet of spores. He searches, with exaggerated and unnecessary caution, until he finds a battery, like a huge
hollow fruit of heavy tin. (It has UPHAM & PUTNAM embossed on one side.) He shakes it, listening speculatively, but there’s no sound. The battery feels dead. Retreating behind some cabinets he wavers between a desire to find a way to charge the battery here in the factory, or to escape with his find, which he holds in both hands before his chest.

  He imagines hearing voices, footsteps, some harsh and nonchalantly loud noises made by people who have business being here, and thinks of his terror. Those would be real voices and footsteps, not imaginary ones, real people, the terrifying inner collapse as you are discovered where you don’t belong. Adrian decides to escape, and simply runs away, thinking he might hear something, some indistinct sound of curiosity or protest...

  Come on my enemy!

  The duke, or whatever he was, sealed up behind his walls and ponderous ebony doors—to no avail! The metronomic step of death will not be an instant delayed! Cower behind your walls, and by all means invest them with all your hopes!

  Charging the battery is no challenge. He has only to take it in a pair of tongs—no, tie a rope—no, best idea, use a net! and dip it into the heavy water that flows through the city in heavy marble pipes. This process takes so long that Adrian sleeps the night away in a corner, hidden by the pipe. When the egg is palpably vibrating, so that its hum can be felt through the webbing, Adrian sagaciously concludes it is ready. Now it is a matter of leaving Votu and, if he can’t manage to fulfill a long-cherished desire to bring about a tragedy, he can at least turn life into a cartoon. Unerringly he makes his way to

  deKlend:

  deKlend turns away to hammer the blade, and a skulking figure bustles up to the forge carrying an egg-shaped metal vessel the size of a human head. This figure surreptitiously attaches the vessel to a panel on the side of the forge. The vessel buzzes, snarling to itself like a hive of indignant bees. Once it is in place, the figure darts back into the shadows, rubbing its hands, then pauses at a safe distance, virtually dancing with glee and watching.

  Having noticed nothing, deKlend presently turns back to the forge, lays his sword on it, and as he brings the hammer down the forge explodes like the sun—ghosts of bachelorization energy make burring waterspouts and spinning bends of incandescent vines up through the factory and the machines and ducts and scaffolds and huge wheels stir and roll and gather together and fall apart again like fitful sleepers. deKlend tumbles head over heels over head over heels in the cold sunburst of the forge, the hammer rings out against the blade with a sound like cheering ice. A pure, keen note, that is heard in Votu, as if it came from the city factory. People on the streets of Votu clamp their hands over their ears.

  The next thing he knows deKlend is stumbling shellshocked through the debris, the factory a good distance in the background. Tiny lights, small bubbles, and dust-asterisks are popping around his blankly-staring eyes. His moustache is sizzled. The steaming remains of his sword blade spatter the front of his body like a metal apron. Ringing in the air, a pure, keen note, that is heard

  In Votu:

  Kunty stops in her tracks and claps her hands over her ears.

  Phryne hears it, too, as she sits re-wrapping her incest tapes around her forearms, preparing for her regular appointment with the disappointment elementals. The sound, so unusual for Votu, haunts her as she makes her way, in disguise, through the streets. People are talking animatedly—about the sound? They do seem to be gazing at the city factory. What was it that so startled her about it—not the volume, the shrillness, nor even the abruptness...

  Actually (she thinks) it wasn’t sudden. I felt it coming. I thought of Clumsy, and then I began to feel as though I were waiting to hear from him...

  The appointment won’t wait.

  Kunty fantasizes about the woman she saw, her arms demurely bound behind her back, in some private place. Kunty slices her dress open with the edge of her claws, gradually exposing the magnificent abundance of that body. A full-grown woman! Even better than Gina!

  —drenched from head to foot in nowhere’s tears—certainly she isn’t crying. Her hair hangs down in long fringes, her dress clasps her like a wet rag. Her face is bare, the transparent lips and eyelids, and the tight, skinny little line that has appeared on either side of the mouth, angling away from the nose, where the skin one day will fold and stay folded.

  There’s nothing to see outside but a dull glare.

  Now the vision shifts, and Kunty sees the woman standing, towering over her, and she looking up with yearning at the undersides of her breasts. A tenderer, more reverent emotion, wanting to caress and pet and get caught up in a symphony of little pleasures.

  The whole thing with deKlend is dreamlike (she thinks) Is there anything real there? And does he know me? Where is he? Is he really anybody? Are we just playing? Are we really together? Are we just playing? What do I want?

  I don’t know (the words chant themselves)

  Now the memory of that keen sound rises and she re-realizes it has never entirely left her. It brings with it now an impression of savage attention that conjures her appetite out of its trance.

  I want deKlend! (she thinks)

  It isn’t a thought that goes on and on, speaking for a lifetime, but it is the entirety of what she suddenly wants.

  He will come to me this time (she thinks)

  The city factory, Votu’s rooftops, are visible now through the window and the disappointment elementals have left without her noticing.

  Phryne cups her hands around her mouth and shouts out—

  Phryne notices a cylindrical whistle, covered in felty oxidation, lying on the sill, so she takes it up and polishes the mouthpiece and replaces the buzzer and cleans the fluff out of it puts it to her lips and blows a great blast interrupted by a sneeze but then immediately renewed, whistling out—

  Phryne takes up a little mallet, turns to the fantastically heavy and ornate platinum bell that hangs within arm’s reach and rings out—

  Phryne raises both her hands and, laying them on the petticoats of keys ringing the base of the bell she chimes out—

  deKlend:

  deKlend’s mind snaps inside out, hauled backward by something like a tug on a line, and that blasted, heavy feeling is instantly transformed into an equally excessive buoyancy. He doesn’t float up but backwards, trying to reach the ground with his feet he only succeeds in kicking out his heels and driving himself along faster in the opposite direction. Sailing over heaps of debris now. He’s got to flip his aching legs up and around to keep them from colliding with junk—now he’s rolling through the air—the factory closes around him again—

  pivoting backwards he falls into a crashing—

  This is interesting (he thinks)

  His body dances in space unhurt, breathless, confused, nothing to htink ub t a smack flutrt whoddf df ared df a ared crack—flashing framg etnm fments—the bewildering vertigo turning cartwheel on cartwheel on cartwheel on cartwheel on cartwheel on cartwheel on cartwheel on cartwheel in place as the rubbel th sut the rubble kncocks and bagns whacks thdus thuds—

  What can he see? His flailing ineffectual hands, his legs and body wheeling under him and from time to time even catching sight of his own face his own head—

  But no blood, nor pain either. Just the regular whuff! of having his wind knocked out and out and out again until he feels as though his diaphragm is being pounded up into his neck, blocking it and bottling all his blood up in his bulging head while his body is rebounding unharmed with the resilience of a cartoon character.

  Whuff!

  A galaxy explodes behind his eyes and something bursts from his mouth, feeling like a rag of tissue, maybe a long shred of lung but he can’t see it yet...

  Up flashes his body into view and the metal, the splattered remains of his sword, all gone. There before him it hangs, looking like a badly snaggled, oversized stainless steel hacksaw proboscis all criss-crossed with precise scorings or fractures.

  Still no good (he thinks angrily)

  He swats at
it with his hand, which for some reason obeys him now, and the blade bats apart in a long belt of smoke. Plummeting without falling or touching the ground, deKlend begins slapping his pockets and drawing out fistfuls of smoke, tossing them aside like wads of fluff. The smoke rail attracts them.

  Every time his rapid rotation brings it into view, he lunges at the smoke. Finally he gets it between his fingers gives it one quick jerk—instantly solid again, the blade comes away in his hand. Now it’s long and exactly straight, dull as a butter knife, dingy as lead, and with a tine for a handle at both ends, but complete as before. Holding on to it, deKlend feels a badly embattled relief.

  There is a curious object in the sky overhead. It takes him a moment or two to realize he’s seeing the sun without any of its light. That’s an ominous, seething globe of bellowing fumes, swinging its scarves around itself as it spins and multiplies. There’s a chain of suns spanning the sky in an arch from horizon to horizon. deKlend feels the heat beaming down from every part of the sky like a ghost would; it’s palpable, not remote, but disembodied, around him and not getting into him.