Mandragon

by R. M. Koster

  A natural. Born to it, or rather reborn. Doña Mandra ran her maiden heats like a thoroughbred. No careful breaking in, but she gave three jocks strong rides to the finish. Gave them and those who followed delight and wonder, and for herself took joy.

  Joy in my lover’s urgency, his need; or in his torpor if he needed urging. In taking and being taken: sea’s joy engulfing, earth’s joy being plowed. In being seized by power, swollen and stuffed, a power working through the man who tumored me, and also joy in conjuring that power—for I soon learned to summon and direct it—in using it to master men. Joy in submission, joy in tyranny, joy in giving ease and torment. Milking the violence from them, witching male arrogance to tameness, or remanning them when they’d been beaten tame. I had joy in all my lovers, though they were mostly animals of the worst sort, predators whose brains were circuited for cruelty and rapine, machines for broadcasting chaos and woe—and though El Olvido was designed to be joy-proof; not just the prison, that whole region of the earth.

  In Aníbal Cuervo, whose eyes were kilned glass-hard by years of pillaging and prison, who took my virginity as roughly as he’d raped peasant girls and planters’ daughters, but later cried his first tears since babyhood in my arms. In Vitruvio Víbora, thief, who squirmed and serpented his couplings out as long as possible, and in Euclides Chova, bank robber, who was on and in and out and off like a jaybird. In Canuto Caimán, a bandit from the swamplands on the Tinieblan border opposite Selva Trópica, who was put in our cell after months in solitary—a huge man, thighs like mahogany logs, hung like a buffalo, and during la rabia, the ten-plus years when only violence ruled in Costaguana, he strewed the mangrove flats with corpses, men whose necks he’d snapped with his bare hands. But he was a gentle lover, and his pleasure came in a soft tremor along his spine, like the vibrations in a strip of rail when an unseen train’s approaching.

  In Nepomuceno Aspid, our cellmate for six months, small and slight like me and about my color, with whorls of blueblack hair from throat to ankles. He’d been sent in chains to El Olvido for passing checks on banks that weren’t there, and stock in companies that hadn’t been founded; for selling imaginary emerald mines and oil wells, and tracts of ranchland that turned out to be under the Pacific; for peddling shares in a project to make shirt cloth out of spider webs and patents on impossible inventions—a car that ran on ordinary rainwater, an ointment (perfect for secret agents) that turned whoever rubbed it on invisible—and he went crazy on the way. Bright-eyed cackling madness. Nonstop chatter about his brilliant cons, his intrepid talkings-his-way-out-of-trouble, his infallible escape schemes. He boasted that he could sell his own mother a sack of scorpions, but now he was as deluded as his victims, self-swindled into believing he’d fly to Panama on bird wings made from bunk frames and mattress cloth, or brew revolt among the guards and free us all. Sometimes he got the notion we were free already; that he’d amassed a fortune and controlled a hundred corporations; that the prison was the Hotel Maravilla in Cricamaña, a big resort, and our cell the presidential suite; that Cuervo was his executive assistant and Caimán his bodyguard and Víbora his lawyer and Chova his accountant; that I was a famous movie actress; that the guards were bellhops and waiters; that the rock pits were a golf course and our sledges woods and irons—and then he’d stop yapping and ball his fist and raise it to his check, and in it was an invisible telephone on which he took calls from God. As first he refused to make love with me—too busy on escape plans or financial matters—but at length he let me seduce him and gave me an invisible diamond collar in gratitude. In a way I enjoyed him more than my other lovers because he was a man of imagination, and I wept when they put him in solitary and he hanged himself.

  In Tulio Lobo, whom I wept for too, standing with my breasts and palms and check pressed to the cell door, just as Confort stands this very minute, weeping for me. No fantasy, no mental trick, I’m down there, enough to feel the wood through Confort’s cheek, to hear Paloma whimpering, her head in Apple’s lap, to see Full Moons, her loveliness all grimed and tattered. Down there and here and back in El Olvido, brushing female fingers over Tulio Lobo’s chest. He had a great scar next to his left nipple where a bullet had exited, for they’d never have taken him if he hadn’t been shot, and he’d never have been shot except in the back. How he survived was a mystery—heart on the right side, I suppose—though Perfecto Buitre, who rode with him, claimed he had no heart, and we could ask people in the valleys where they raided if we wanted proof. Buitre was my lover too, and Procopio Grajo, who cooed like a pigeon when he made love, and Rigo Atahorma, and other bandits.

  These followed Sergeant Cipriano Lechuza, the chief guard, who appreciated my charms enough to take me off quarry work and give me the job of taking food round to the cells, pushing a dolly with a caldron of black beans, from which I dipped servings with a wooden ladle. Run of the prison then, lovers at whim. Atahualpa Lince, who’d studied in Germany and had a bright career ahead of him, except that he enjoyed strangling young men. He had blond hair and golden eyes and a strong tithe body—a great conquest, not just for his beauty but because he preferred making love to men, though now, of course, he lacked the privacy to strangle them while he was at it. Longino Tintorera, who’d pirated in the Caribbean as though three centuries had never happened and buccaneers still roamed, and his cellmate Amadeo Crótalo, a thief and knife fighter, and Crótalo’s prison wife, Ladi Topo. Topo was a sneak thief and pickpocket who’d gone to prison first when he was twelve and been bent female before male gender firmed in him. He flounced and fluttered like a debutante, languid and delicate, great violet eyes and arms like breadsticks, mouth in a pout and tongue aft lispy, and yet one afternoon I manned him, had him on me like a boar in rut. And there were others too, just like him, that I tipped briefly maleward.

  Sergeant Catulo Gimnoto was my lover, not that I’m proud of it now. Meanest of the guards, he’d been a criminal himself, an extortionist whose trick was burning people with a welding torch, and a prisoner there in El Olvido. During la rabia General Huevas, who was dictator in Costaguana then, though his rule was firm only in the cities, pardoned assassins and put them into uniform—just as the bandits who ravaged in the countryside enlisted the worst of the soldiers that they captured, for all that counted on both sides was spreading suffering, and those who were happy at it were the most adept. So Gimnoto tortured for the government instead of for his private account, and when the government fell, the police sanctuaried him at El Olvido as a guard. I don’t think he would have changed his state for a fortune, since it gave him freedom for the practice of his art and plenty of material, garbaged men he could torment at will. He was small, squat, misshapen, dwarfed in his loins to boot, but I had joy in him, the whorish joy in being close to brute power, for men cringed at the mention of him. Each night he sent for me I preened, strumpeted down the dark corridor, while on either side of me prisoners beat their fists against the doors and howled they’d kill me. And would have, but for the thrall I had them in. In sight of me they melted, pardoned me anything for a touch or merely a smile, in the same way men melt before Angela. I had who I pleased and took joy in making men jealous, just as, often, I took joy in soothing them.

  I drove Baco Escombro wild with jealousy. He was a pimp and prided himself on his appeal to females, so I made love with him once and after that refused him, meanwhile smearing affection on his cellmates. Abelardo Sierpe and Heraclito Raya and Virgilio Pitón, all murderers, but I pleasured them before Escombro’s eyes, the three at once sometimes, while he knocked his forehead on the wall. But other men I saved, found them tombed in despair and called them forth. I was whore-queen-goddess of El Olvido for three years, at peace with myself and with the power I served. Then came another turning.

  I grew weary of men. Gritty-dank sand crabs of weariness took to scuttling across my flesh when men caressed me. Wart-backed toads of weariness learned to materialize beneath my palms when I clasped the flanks of love-gorged straining men. A soft plump s
lug of weariness began to slither over me, trailing brown slime, whenever a man kissed my throat or body, and each time a man cased himself with me, he left a pus-white maggot-wriggle of weariness inside. Fat bottle-green flies of weariness buzzed in men’s voices. Caterpillars of weariness squirmed in their eyes. The joy I had in men was consumed by weariness, munched up like a crop by locusts, and when I lost joy in men, I lost the magic to delight and master them.

  Which didn’t mean they left me alone. As I grew weary, I became aloof, and for a time men respected this, the spell held for a time—or the illusion of it, since its true force was broken. And for a time the men I did make love with found delight—by a trick of memory or imagination. But the day came when a lover—Otilio Halcón, a bandit and smuggler from Rio Manso country—raised himself on his elbows and looked down at me and said I was no better than a papaya. The rural boys do that when they can’t get women, take an overripe papaya and hole it with a knife and make love to it. Better than nothing but not very ardent, and all it took was for someone to grasp the truth and voice it. Everyone realized it then, and the last breath of magic faded. But they didn’t leave me alone, oh, no, they used me. Joylessly, for want of anything better, but all the time. I was communal property, a slave on loan to any man in that prison. Not even a slave, a captive beast. Not even a beast, an instrument of physical convenience, and the pleasure men took using me was mainly in my weariness of them, my revulsion, and in the brutality with which they overcame it.

  See me splayed on the stone floor of a cell, a man standing with his foot on my throat, a man squatting on each of my spread ankles, a man flopped on top of me, drilling away. Or kneeling, with a man twist-gripping my ears to guide my head. Or bent over a bunk, with a man levering my arm to make me wiggle. Vermin swarmed over me, and I lay howling. And after a time brutality wasn’t even required, I let myself be used, but men used me violently for violence’s sake. My gender was crushed, my body returned to neuter. My humanity went too, and I descended to a vegetable condition, inert as a fouled papaya, though now and then I rose to the condition of a whipped mutt, sullen and cringing, but capable of sudden viciousness. And in that mood I bit a guard, bit him very horribly in fact, for which I was most generously rewarded: beaten almost dead and put in solitary.

  Planted under the prison. In a narrow hole with a steel lid clamped over me. Utterly dark. Silent too, although it pulsed with bugs. Buried, crypted in stone, coffin’d. But also wombed: each end is always also a beginning.

  Power began seeping back into me, As it’s doing now, no use denying that. As I remember who I am, I can feel it returning, stirring like a beast about to wake, budding like a tuber in spring soil. I forgot who I was, betrayed my mission, and power left me. For good, I thought, but it was only hibernating, waiting for the time of its renascence. And since I stopped remorsing and repining, as I research lost time and recall Mandragon, it quickens in me, just as it did before in El Olvido Prison. It chose me, possesses me till death, though it may leave me for a while or for a while lie dormant. But there’s no need this time for hope or fear. Angela will flick me from its grasp before it wakes fully.

  Last time, though, there was no one around to murder me. I’d have thought it a favor: buried already, after all, and I didn’t want to be exhumed to please the rapists. I sat at the bottom of my grave—knees crammed under my chin, for it was only a couple of feet wide down there—wondering how Nepo Aspid had managed to hang himself, Tore his clothing into strips, I figured finally, and made a rope. Noosed it round his neck and worked the free end through the grates in the lid. Chimney’d up so there’d be no slack and tied it, and all he had to do then was relax. Not really a tough problem, though maybe he got the solution by phone from God, I suppose I wasn’t so much wondering how as getting ready. Too dispirited for action, even suicide. And then, after I don’t know how long, while I was still getting ready, I began flitting up out of that pit, brief journeys like these I went on last night and earlier this morning, like the one just now (still half in progress) to Confort’s cell. Power was seeping back, stirring within me.

  I went with it, I let it sprout. Not that I’d ever had a purchase on it, but I didn’t deny it, didn’t pretend its workings were tricks of my mind. Question of what was more horrid, being power’s plaything or buried alive, and at that point I didn’t care what it did with me. Certainly didn’t mind being raised from that tomb, even when it made me witness Mohotty’s death. By fire. He’d left circusing and returned to Ceylon, was participating in Kataragama’s annual rite. I heard the drums, I saw the temple doors swing open. The worshipers streamed out, straight to the firepit. Some strolled serenely across it in their white sarongs. Others danced to the center and jigged gaily. But Mohotty hesitated as he stepped onto the coals, his face twisted in fear. He’d lost faith in his god, his god had left him. A few slow steps, then he shrieked horribly. His sarong took fire. Wrapped in a leaf of flame he whirled and fell.

  That journey was outward and backward. Mohotty had died a few months after Don Lorenzo. But quite soon after I’d viewed his cremation, he began to visit me. There was plenty of room. By then my hole had spread to a vast cavern, studded on its roof and walls and floor with crystalline light, and only when the lid was raised and my bread and water lowered to me did it shrink back to its original size. Sometimes the guard had to shout for my attention, for I was mostly in trance, and sometimes even shouting didn’t work, but I would find my rags damp from the water he’d poured down on me, and the bread he’d tossed down lying against my knee.

  Mohotty became my master, instructed me in the techniques of concentration. Oh, it was painful, but I didn’t resist, Mohotty told me resistance was foolish, power had chosen me and that was that. My choice was to accept it or die, to learn control or meet disaster. The easy way, hard as it was, was forward. Mohotty came sometimes as himself, sometimes as an old woman. Sometimes, later on, he came as a winged tiger and took me through the crack between the worlds, to mountains where only old people lived, and villages where we saw only youths and maidens. Sometimes these people were turned into tigers. He taught me how to sponge my mind of word-thought, how to focus the eye behind my forehead, how to tune myself to power’s network. His instruction went on for some years, two or three years. I’d lost track of time before they put me in solitary. Then Mohotty stopped visiting me, and I practiced by myself, or went alone through the crack between the worlds to visit him.

  Then it came to me that my period of training was over. The second movement of my life was over. There would be an interim, and then the purpose I was chosen for would unfold. I had learned everything Mohotty had to teach me. I had surrendered to the power that lived in me, and therefore could direct it. I knew my obligations to and for it. I had paid for denying them, and for delaying to acquire knowledge. I knew why I had gone to prison, and that I did not require prison any longer.

  As soon as these thoughts formed in my mind, there was an explosion without concussion, like the crack of a rifle. When the guards came and lifted the steel cover, they found my hole empty. And Nightandmist, waiting on line outside a movie theater on Third Avenue in New York City, saw Mandragon standing on the corner, and went up to me, and followed me through the warm night as I loped away.

  I, Mandragon, controlled the power that lived in me. The power that had chosen me ruled my life.

  23

  Mandragon emerged at year’s end, at the navel of the soon-to-fragment world. It looked like this:

  Twenty or so minutes past noon on a chilly yet clear Friday a figure of considerable bizarrity, even for New York City, mounted the steps of the Presbyterian church on the northwest corner of Fifth Avenue and Fifty-fourth Street—by custom the impromptu showcase for Juilliard flute students, apprentice mimes, and other street-performing mendicants. This person had piercing black eyes and skin the color and apparent texture of a highly polished walnut panel; was small and slight, and yet suggestive of an animal ferocity; carried two gourd
rattles and wore a ratfur cap and homemade rat-fur boots, a quilted parka embroidered with outlandish symbols, and army-issue field pants, from the seat of which rose a long, thin, wire-stiffened, rodentine brown tail. A girl in ski clothes—a honeyblond, blue-eyed, retroussé-nosed marshmallow—followed as far as the first step and parked there, facing the street, smiling vacantly, holding an empty peach tin. The person on the top step sniffed the air; stared about; smirked, showing an array of gleaming snappers; then, rattling slowly, uttering little squeaks, began to hop-dance back and forth along the church front. Mandragon was emerging.

  A client had coronaried the night before in the massage parlor where Todo Confort worked and everyone got busted. I viewed it all in the smogged skylight: the hazard flashers red on leering faces, the frost-breath’d intern and the stretchered stiff, the girls cop-hustled to meat-wagon places. I got on to Confort, telepathed her adrenal glands to quiet, calmed her terrored heart and soothed her mind. Then it came to me to go uptown and raise her bail.