Mandragon

by R. M. Koster

  I am walking in the forest. Trees thick around as pillars in a cathedral. Stand spaced apart, vaulting their branches high above me. Pale filtering of light stain the moss floor.

  The invisible cord unhitches from my waist. I stop by a low bush. A bird appears and perches within reach of my hand, a pale-blue bird the size of a crow or raven, with a white beak. I reach my hand out, and the bird vanishes.

  I look up and see flocks of red and yellow parrots. The forest nave is clustered with winged color, loud with fluttering and calls. Flocks of red and yellow parrots fly down toward me and disappear.

  I walk, tottering, back across the highway, toward the big tents and parked circus vehicles. The sky has darkened. The air is heavy with the expectation of rain. An odor of decay and pulped annatto seeds emanates from my body. I am mumbling unintelligible words. A sudden puff of breeze makes me sway and wobble. I fall as though dead and lie face down on the road.

  Time passes. Fat raindrops daub the back of my cotton shirt, splat on the gravel near me. I do not move.

  The shower has lifted. Light wreaths of steam rise from the damp gravel. Magda, made up and with a robe over her Rotunda costume, bends over me.

  I am in convulsion. I flip onto my side and crane my head back. Tendons stand out like bass-viol strings against the brown skin of my neck. Pink froth seeps bubbling from the corners of my mouth. My limbs twitch spasmodically. Magda lifts her face and screams.

  I lie on a mattress in the back of Rebozo’s van. Rebozo sits nearby on a low stool. He has smeared off his makeup but is still in costume, yellow ruff and polka-dot baggy overalls. An oil lamp hangs beside his head.

  My eyes are closed, my face is glazed with sweat. My thin chest rises and falls rapidly under the khaki blanket. Rebozo watches, bending now and then to sponge my face with a damp cloth.

  I sit up abruptly. I open my eyes and stare sightlessly toward the rear doors of the van. I smile and begin singing in an unknown language. I close my eyes abruptly and fall back.

  Rebozo draws the blanket up over my chest. Sits watching. Bends now and then to sponge my face with a damp cloth.

  I am thrashing in my sleep. Rebozo nods, wakes, blinks, then leans forward to take hold of my shoulders. I thrash against Rebozo’s hands. At length I fall still.

  My eyes open abruptly. I stare sightlessly up at the oil lantern. My face contorts in horror. I shout rapidly in an unknown language. My body arcs so that only my crown and heels touch the mattress. I wail piteously. I shriek twice, then collapse.

  My eyes roll up so that only the whites are visible. There is a gurgling in my throat, then my eyes close.

  I lie on a mattress in the back of Rebozo the clown’s van. My chest is motionless under the khaki blanket. My forehead is dry. My face is tinged blue-purple. Rebozo sits by me on a low stool, watching.

  What I remembered later on was flying. I flew above a stony plain that stretched, empty and featureless, left and right to the horizon. Ahead, in the far distance, mountains rose.

  The wind roared ceaselessly. It spread my mouth and pulled my eyes to slits. An unseen force conveyed me at great speed against the wind. Far below, my shadow, gigantically enlarged, raced ahead of me across the plain. The mountains rushed toward me.

  I stood in air before a perpendicular face of grey rock. A vertical fissure in it opened and shut rapidly. It opened two feet or so with a rending creak, then crashed shut dreadfully. I was terrified, but I had no choice: I must pass through or die. I hurled myself forward into the open fissure. I slipped through, and the rock crashed shut behind me.

  I was in a cavern filled with colored light. The walls, the roof, the floor were set with crystals. Orange and yellow, blue and green, violet and red. Crystalline light fell over me and rose about me, pulsating slowly.

  I was surrounded then by walking corpses, whose eyes were reversed in their sockets. They seized me and killed me. They severed my head, and dismembered my body. One held my head and pulled my eyelids open with his fingers so that I had to watch while corpses chopped my corpse with crystal knives. They sawed my hands and feet off, hacked through my knees and elbows. They cut my legs off at the groin, my arms at the shoulder. They ripped my trunk from crotch to throat and tore out my heart, my lungs, my viscera. They pulled my innards out and tossed them aside—liver, kidneys, yard upon yard of gut. They scraped my flesh and dumped my naked bones into a caldron, a crystal pot that bubbled with dark liquid. They carved a circular hole in my forehead, and scooped my brains, and flung them on the pile of offal. Then they scraped my face away and tossed my skull into the bubbling vat.

  My bones and skull floated round each other. Bobbing, sinking, rising. Cooking. And as they cooked, my bones gathered new flesh and grew together. The corpses raised me from the pot all in one piece.

  They stuffed my head and trunk with crystals. They closed my wounds and disappeared. I lay in the cavern, and the same light that pulsed from its walls and roof and floor was within me.

  Then I stood upon a high plateau, nothing above but an immense and brilliant sky. I felt stuffed with solidified light. A power which I did not know lived in me. I was the vessel and instrument of a knowledge that ordered the universe. Of a force whose lightest breath worked marvels. Of a truth for which the splendor of the sky was merely a mask. An unbearable duty had come on me without my leave, yet I felt lighthearted.

  A voice spoke to me. In a language I did not know yet understood, in a monotone that was expressionless yet full of authority. The voice explained everything: Why I had been chosen. What had been done to me. What I must do.

  When the voice finished, I went to the edge of the plateau.

  The stony plain was miles below me. An invisible bridge led from the lip of the plateau into the sky. I stepped out onto it. I climbed along it. I felt no fear.

  A vertical fissure opened in the sky, and I passed through it, into light.

  15

  Hard to believe now in the reality of my initiation, but nothing more real, nothing else real, though performed in dream. Out of myself, through the fissures between the worlds. Chosen by power as its vessel and instrument. Murdered and remade, poured full of light. A new person.

  Hard to believe, impossible to deny. I’d deny it if I could, flush this sense of loss. But I was chosen and made over, filled full.

  Abandoned now, teased with memories, visions. I journeyed backward just now, no doubt of that. Saw myself, Double-Sex, the freak. Crossing the highway, wandering in the forest. Thrashing in convulsion, lying inert. I smelled the odor of decay and crushed annatto seeds. I heard the unintelligible words. I witnessed.

  Teased to dull fury. I journeyed once at will, outward and backward. Realm of the shadows, realm of the sky, descending and soaring. A luminous fire always in my brain. It swelled at times to dazzling illuminations. Always a high plateau, and now and then raised suddenly to immense height. Now only a few pale flickerings, an occasional puny lift from the chasm’s bottom. Power slinking back only to tease me. Just enough to remind me of my loss.

  Ought to be grateful, I suppose, for any favor. As for these comfy rooms. Bulbous white imitation-leather chair. Teak table carved with gods to put my feet up on. But best go back inside, the cameras will miss me. Guard will burst in to make certain I’m in good health. Need me fresh for the morning. For howls of happy hatred and a steel noose.

  Another initiation? An end and a beginning. Murdered and remade, emptied and filled? Commonplace hopes of the condemned. Of course I’ll be remade—as part of a grub. Or as part of crows and maggots if they leave me dangling. But not as Mandragon. Just as well, but animal flesh is stupid and resentful. Can’t appreciate the rebirth in being eaten. Resents extinction and resists.

  Almost extinguished there in Ticamala. Lay ill three days and nights, inert or in delirium. All but died, and when I woke I’d reverted to babyhood. Incapable of coordinated movement, of making any sounds save wails and gurgles. My mind was a blank tablet on which the buzz of flies
, the play of light and shadow made indecipherable scrawlings. Rebozo cared for me, and tied me to the mattress when his act was on. And Ofideo, who figured fever had burned out my brain, waged a running fight with Don Lorenzo to keep me out of the Rotunda.

  “I’ll wait a month to see if it recuperates.” That was Don Lorenzo’s final position. “Counting from the first day that it missed. Then I’ll exhibit it in whatever state it is. That’s one freak I’ll not coddle, I bought it. It’s mine.”

  The circus played through Ticamala and crossed the border, played Otán and Angostura and Bastidas, went south for a matinée in Córdoba before its run in Ciudad Tinieblas. All the while I mewled and burbled. Then, a month to the day after I fell ill, I broke from my cocoon of infancy. It was as if I’d become deathly sick the better to gain health, stepped backward to leap into maturity. I didn’t know why I was tied down, but my mind was clear and calm. My heart beat firmly. My body felt refreshed and full of energy. And my anxieties were gone. I undid the rope, got up and dressed, and left the van.

  The circus was camped against the town in a large field that had been cleared for houses and cut into blocks but not yet built on. I didn’t know the place, but off to the left were the familiar tents, and the familiar racket of a match blared through loudspeakers. The main show was about to start, the Rotunda to close. The area where performers’ vehicles were parked was deserted, except for a roustabout who was changing a wheel on Aristo the wire-walker’s Andorra hardtop. I walked down and stood behind him.

  Monkeyform squatting by the raised front end. Greasy undershirt and sweat-stained neck, blue baseball cap worn backward catcher-style. He flipped the X-shaped lug wrench to his right, pulled the flat off and flopped it to his left, turned round for the spare.

  “Ah, ho! The Great Donged Twat in person! Stay out of my way, freak!”

  He lifted the spare and hefted it onto the hub.

  I stood behind him. Felt my mouth purse in a tight smile, felt my eyes glowing. I gazed down at the wrench, and after a moment it got up on point and did a pirouette. Took two little hops and pirouetted again. Circled and half-circled the car in linked leaping turns and sprang lightly up into the open trunk.

  The roustabout put the last lug on its pin and reached for his wrench. Patted the ground. Looked down, got up, and stared about.

  “Hey, no balls, you seen my wrench?”

  “It’s in the trunk.”

  “I tell you to put it there?”

  “I haven’t touched it.”

  Show of stained teeth. “Went by itself, uh?”

  I nodded.

  “Go get it, you little creep, don’t fuck with me!”

  I brought him the wrench, stepped back and watched as he spun it in his hands, then leaned his weight against it firming the lugs. Luminous fire in my brain, felt my eyes glowing. I looked down at the flat, and it ballooned with air, then flipped itself up on its tread and rolled away.

  The roustabout saw it and grabbed for it, missed and pursued. The wheel picked up speed, stayed a yard or so in front, zigzagged provocatively as he trotted then sprinted after it. It bounced uphill and circled Rebozo’s van with the ape behind it, then broke back toward the road. It widened its lead, began bounding. Three, five, ten feet in the air. Five, ten, twenty feet to a bound, till with a great leap it soared up and out and hung itself on the arm of a telephone pole. And my poor baboon was jumping up and down, rubbing his greasy hands against his cheeks.

  “Uhahhh! Uhahhh!”

  I stared up at the wheel. The fire in my brain receded. I felt the glow leave my eyes and a shy smile cross my face.

  I went back to Rebozo’s van and lay down inside it. I was trembling. I had willed nothing consciously, yet I had made the wrench and wheel perform. A power had been clowning through me.

  I was awed and very frightened, but I found I could put fear off to one side, so that it was present but didn’t bother me. This was a new ability for me and itself a little frightening, especially after such weird events. My trembling stopped, and I began remembering what had happened during my illness.

  Everything returned to me with great clarity. My magic flight across the stony plain, my passage through the rock into the cavern, my dismemberment and my reconstitution. The high plateau. The expressionless voice. My passage through the sky and into light. Everything but what the voice had said. I remembered its tone and its authority, and that it had explained everything, but I couldn’t recall the explanation.

  I decided not to try to understand. I was changed, that was enough. I was a formerly sick person who had been cured, who had succeeded in curing myself. I was a formerly terrified person who had been shown, who had discovered for myself, how to control fear. I was a formerly weak, formerly helpless person, in whom tremendous power now resided, who had made myself worthy of it. During my April illness I’d been made over, had made myself over, into someone new.

  16

  From that afternoon, until my transformation was acknowledged, the circus was afflicted with pranking miracles. That night we went down to the capital and occupied the fairgrounds, eight unpaved acres where the old racetrack had been, on Via Venezuela near El Opulento. Next morning the Grand Duke of Microland, already in costume, climbed into the van, smirked at me, then spoke to Rebozo:

  “The Chief Cheese says Prongo here goes to work today.”

  Scarcely were the words out when the midget rose as though snatched up by mighty hands, spun round and lay face down in the air, and then shot headlong out the door like a lump of flop off the end of a shovel. He bellied into the mud, slid forward and lay still an instant, then jumped up screaming abuse. At which his little sword flew from its sheath and jabbed him in the bottom, pricked him off, hopping and yelping, all the way to his trailer.

  Two hours later, when the Rotunda was filling up, Chancaca the geek began to moan and flail imaginary spiders from his thighs, attracting a large number of spectators to his platform. But when his barker had sold about twenty tickets, a silver flask popped from a gentleman’s jacket and made a wavering progress through the air into the cage. The barker lunged for it, but it dipped under his hands and butterflied around him through the bars. Chancaca drained it—whisky, brandy, rum, whatever it was.

  Didn’t take the spout from his lips till the thing was empty, and slumped happily in a corner, singing in a soft Andean language, the tamest wild man in captivity.

  The bunch near his platform began to hoot and howl for refunds, so Gili-Gili, seasoned trouper, stepped in to save the day. Shouted that he, the sultan of illusionists, would honor the tickets for his own show, which was worth ten Sumatran Terrors. To make his point he began pulling white rats from his fez and tossing them out over the center of the horseshoe, but the rats didn’t disappear. They thudded squeaking to the sawdust, plopped onto ducked heads and cowering shoulders. Gili’d never had more than one rat, and he’d never really tossed it, but now his fez was full of them, and his hand was working uncontrollably, plucking them up, chucking them out.

  People dashed this way and that, dodging the squeakers. Others stood—paralyzed with fright, and the seventh rat sailed toward one of these. Señorita Grushenka Látigo, it turned out—twenty-year-old sister of Captain Dmitri Látigo of the Tinieblan Civil Guard. The rat plummeted headfirst into the scoop neck of her dress and lodged between her plump and heaving unchies, hind feet fluttering, tail swishing back and forth like a runaway metronome across her screaming mouth.

  With that, Gili-Gili managed to grab his right hand with his left, clutched it so that it stopped plucking and chucking, but rat upon rat kept scrambling from his fez. Poised on the rim and took one look over his shoulder, then jumped, first to the platform then the ground, and scurried out among the panicked spectators. And when, in desperation, Gili-Gili hurled the fez back over the curtain, rats began swarming from his sleeves, streaming from both his sleeves and scampering out after their brethren.

  The Rotunda emptied in short order, though a number
of people were knocked off their feet and trampled. Only when the last of these had dragged himself out did the rat plague cease. Gili-Gili tottered about babbling insanely, jowls twitching and pudgy lips fleeked with white froth. The rest, performers and barkers, were scarcely calmer. Except for Chancaca of course. Except for Mohotty. Except for me.

  Yes, yes, what about Tasselsnatch? What about Quimdingus Weirdly, the two-way creep? Watched it all with peepers peeled and glowing. Part of it yet apart. Felt like a dynamo, some sort of transformer: energy surging in and pulsing out. Same as earlier, when smart-ass Harry Cox the midget got himself tossed out of the van and mudbathed, needled in the rump and terrified, though now it went on longer. Then it shut down, drained away, and I stood with my eyes half-closed and my head lifted, wrists crossed lightly over my chest. Exhausted but perfectly serene, so that my wretched, flimsycheap costume no doubt took on the dignity of what it symbolized: union of opposites.

  I was learning not to be surprised at the power in me, not to be flustered at its being there working through me, or by the amazing things it did. Like a girl sixteen or so who’d always been ugly, and then loveliness flowers in her all at once. She learns to bottle up her wonder when men stare at her. Never even noticed her before, and now her presence in a room turns the men coltish, sets them peacocking, spaniels them around her. Learns to accept this, and not to be shocked when young men fight over her, when other girls glare at her in hate. A power has come into her. Without her leave and out of her control. Awed by it, couldn’t be otherwise, but learns not to be startled by the miracles it works. Well, I was learning.

  And learning to enjoy it too, though I’ll admit that wasn’t much of a problem. My confession, required or simply permitted, would have freely admitted that learning to like it was easy, since I was learning to stopper my wonder and not be distracted, since I’d learned to put fear off to one side. To begin with, the events were amusing in and of themselves. A pompous midget sliding in the mud. A rat shower in a crowded tent. But the real fun was in the terror that comes over people when the world stops functioning the way it’s supposed to. Gili-Gili, for instance, a fat fraud with real magic on his hands, scared, quite literally, cut of his wits. By something in me, something from outside me but working through me. It wasn’t me that was warping reality, so I couldn’t be blamed for unpleasant side effects. But whatever was doing it had picked me as its instrument. That made me feel powerful. The feeling was good.