by R. M. Koster
The officer of the guard told me to come back in the morning. Good of him, I guess, to say that much to a barefoot peasant in a scruffy tunic. I tossed my consciousness up into the building and saw Alejo and Angela and some dozen or sixteen others seated on heavy, high-backed, intricately carved chairs at formal dinner in a brilliantly lighted hall. I thought of making a dramatic entrance—the glaring prophet and the startled guests—then put the thought aside. It pleased me more to wait like a humble suppliant. I liked the irony of that: the bringer of the end and the beginning cooling heels. Oh, I was very conscious importance, having all but forgotten that I was servant—so taken with myself that despite my choice to wear a fake humility I couldn’t resist giving the officer a small display, a chill in my voice that made his shoulders tremble.
“When the guests have gone, send in to Doña Angela. Tell her the person from Otán is here.”
“Sí, señor!”
I waited a long while. On the grass inside the park, about where the band will be setting up soon. It would have pleased me to wait all night. I was weary from my journey yet alert, full of anticipation yet in repose. I sat with my back to the palace to lessen any temptation to intrude. I cleaned my mind of word-thought and watched the seawall strollers, listened to the old men’s squabbly patter—until the last strollers drifted off and the old men folded up their game. Then I watched the moon rise and listened to the tide slap at the stones. At length the officer called me and said word had come for me to wait inside. A soldier took me into the patio, to a stone bench facing the goldfish pool. I sat, he stood nearby in silence. Then Angela’s military aide appeared and took me to her. It must have been midnight by then.
Angela received me in a small sitting room on the third floor of the palace, a room so feminine in decor she might have guessed just where I sat the gender seesaw and chosen surroundings that would advance my maleward swoop. Frail silk-upholstered chairs, récamier sofa; an inlaid writing table with an oval mirror; and, on the mantel, pert porcelain shepherdesses all ablush. In the filmy haze from three candelabra fixtures, each with three soft lamps, each lamp demurely shaded in beige gauze. I was the only remotely masculine thing around.
Angela wore her hair loose on her shoulders, and an ankle-length housedress, very rich and simple, open at the throat. She sat half-turned toward the door I was shown in through, her right arm against the chair back, her hands in her lap. The aide withdrew and shut the door behind me. Angela smiled. Truth plucked me from myself and flung me forward, for a fifteen-second peek at our love-making: coming attraction.
Staged on the sofa, posed conventionally, shot from middle distance at keyhole height. My double sprawled on Angela’s white breast, his hips astrive between her lifted thighs. She cupped his woolly crown and walnut bum, fluttered her eyelids at three-quarter closed, grinned serenely past his cheek.
By the time this preview faded, I was hers entirely. Angela knew. She rose and came to me. She took my hand and pressed it to her throat.
“You’ll kill Alejo for me, wont you, darling?”
Mandragon nodded. When Mandragon’s hand touched Angela’s cool flesh, he forgot his mission and his tribe, his election as powers instrument and vessel, the myths of his birth, and his destiny’s revelation. He agreed without hesitation to the fee she proposed. Then he performed dutifully and with vigor as she led him to and through the scene he’d just glimpsed.
Took to it like a natural in fact, as though I’d been born male and bred for stud. No fears, no trepidations. Howl of delight as her dress sloughed to the carpet that put her off her thoughts of exploitation, that turned her tender for a moment, and as I entered her with the pitiful equipment I had for such work then, my spirit entered her as well in a flow of power that she experienced as an incandescent flaring. It took her mind off my substandard parts. Not that I really reached her that first bout. That came later. But I enjoyed her avidly and touched her briefly, actually made her forget herself for a moment, something only money had ever accomplished before.
Too busy gorging to notice. Later on she confessed she’d felt my spirit flare in her that night, breathed it to me grammared in caresses, along with many other lovely things, on nights when darkness closed around us like a bulwark, when I was her consort, not merely her dupe and tool. But at the time I had no inkling. I was totally absorbed in my own sensations. It seemed that I was piercing the whole world, exercising my private will upon it. Soon enough, that is, she remembered what she was about, and grinning serenely jellied me in pleasure. When she squibbed me out, I locked like all the others: mouth open and tongue lolling, eyes glazed with bliss, face moron’d in contentment. Which lasted only moments; then I craved more.
Still, not a poor debut. I’d only lately reacquired gender—a new one at that, one I scarcely knew how to wear—yet I acquitted myself no worse than most of her lovers. I put myself in her power, abandoned myself. Took pleasure, I mean, and that’s a part of love. I gave Angela no joy and no glimpse of herself, but she wanted neither, and no one can say I was entirely selfish. I was keeping my part of the bargain, I was paying her fee. The moment I mounted her, President Alejandro Sancudo woke from his brittle, oldman’s sleep convulsing, and filled the stuffy maid’s room with strangled yelps. His bed had been transformed to a nest of scorpions. They gouged their fiery stings into his back.
Wait. Play it through with Angela’s reactions. I let her watch, I gave her that amusement. Best remember everything while I have time.
She pinched me out and slid from underneath me, slouched to the writing table and sat down there—wrongway-round, legs spread, arms on the chair back, making bored faces in the oval mirror, switching her little rodent tail left and right. When my idiot contentment faded, I called her to me. She smirked her smirk and laughed her tinkling laugh.
“When are you going to do my favor, darling?”
I was still Mandragon. I had forgotten everything that truly mattered, but my powers were intact about me. I was her captive, but I wasn’t tame. I choked her laugh with a frown. I smeared her smirk into a mask of terror. That’s when Angela learned she was onto something different. She’d reasoned as much when she chose me as her weapon, but when she laughed at me, she learned it in her flesh. Nearly wet the chair she straddled before love-longing melted me and I smiled.
I gestured toward the mirror: “See for yourself.” When she looked round, she saw Alejo’s room.
View from the window opposite the night-light, Alejo in his brittle, old-man’s sleep. Convulses, fills the room with strangled yelps. His bed has been transformed to a nest of scorpions.
Angela (leaning forward, peering in the glass): “Ay, sí! Qué bien! Qué bien!”
Alejo heaves himself to a sitting position. The pain subsides. He breathes, shakes off his nightmare, re-reclines. Whips of fire flail his back again. Flops over, and they lash his chest and midsection. Leaps up, and the pain dissolves.
Angela (without removing her gaze from the pictured scene): “It’s good. I like. But what exactly are you doing to him?”
Mandragon explains.
Alejo walks about, sits down again, leans gingerly. The instant his shoulders touch the headboard, burning needles. He jumps up and switches on the overhead light, peels his pajama top and examines himself minutely via the bureau glass and a hand mirror. Not a mark. His parchment-dry old skin shows no welts or redness. Bewildered frown.
“Oooh!” squeals Angela, like a five-year-old at a puppet show. “The old fool doesn’t know, he can’t imagine!”
She collapses forward against the chair back, giggling, and Mandragon experiences, for the first time in male gender, the essential happiness of love, which comes when one administers delight.
And how she enjoyed Alejo’s subsequent experiments! his gingerly attempts at lying down (intermezzoed with catchings of his breath and mirror-scannings, with strippings of the bedclothes, pressings of the mattress, searches for a concealed electric grid), each finale-ing in outlandish fis
h-flips, eel-writhings, roach-scrambles:
“Ay, sí! qué, sí! qué, sí! qué maravilla!”
Only a few were necessary to persuade him that lying down was out, that putting any weight on his chest or shoulders, on his midsection or back, produced agony.
And then (chuckling), as Alejo settled for the night, sitting on the bed with his shoulders hunched forward: “That’s it, don’t kill him too quickly. Punish him first for not keeping his promise.”
And then (still watching and still pleased, but remembering Dred Mandeville’s restless cruising): “Not too long, though. Not too long.”
And finally (rising and stepping backward, eyes still on the glass; then turning, smiling, slinking toward the sofa): “But not too quickly either. Take your time.”
I took three weeks. That was the limit, I calculated, to which I should postpone climax. Angela’s mirth at Alejo’s suffering was nicely balanced by her impatience to get Dred to port. Wise and considerate lover, I didn’t want her pleasure, to pall or cloy. I tuned myself to her. I made her happiness my guide and master. I drew it out. I modulated her excitement upward. And at the last moment, just before impatience outweighed delight, I gave her his death. A thoughtful and a loving act of love.
I can’t claim, though, that I planned all this beforehand. I was entirely unaware when I began. My awareness was absorbed in the delicious business of climbing between Angela’s raised thighs, and while a part of me was honest and unselfish enough to get down to less pleasant business one story above us, no word of that transaction got through to my twat-reeling, musk-woozy brain. Her fee was Alejo’s murder; I agreed without quibble—and paid (or at least began to) as I enpronged. Unconsciously, however, and I hadn’t the resources to pay in full. Not right then: my energy was ninety-nine hundredths invested elsewhere. Had it not been, I’d have dispatched him at first swipe—a certainty that made me shiver later, for it would have cost me many smiles, many low chuckles, many ecstatic squeals. Many displays, that is, of Angela’s delight, and many proofs that she noticed Mandragon. But when my idiot contentment faded, when she laughed at me and implied I couldn’t pay—as whores will do, I’ve been a whore myself—I was immediately aware that the powers in me were at work on him. And showed her their handiwork. And discovered she’d like it to go on awhile. Which required only a little concentration, and I would have done anything to please her.
So poor Alejo got what rest he could. And lucky Mandragon got another gallop on Angela. Preambled by some delicate caresses (and some admiring phrases when her sweet mouth wasn’t full); sequeled by a snooze on her soft breast. Then she woke me gently and showed me to a guest room, kissed me good night and wished me pleasant dreams—kept me folded, that is, in imbecile serenity so I’d be fresh the next day to get on with the business of murder.
At dawn, of course, Alejo summoned his doctor, and had himself examined top to toe. The man found nothing, but that didn’t mean Alejo was in health. Hardly. When asked to sit back while the medico checked blood pressure, he balked, then made a cautious essay, then bounded forward snarling. Knives of flame stabbed in his upper back. He was then persuaded to cancel his appointments—they included lunch with tyrant-purger Mandragon, an honored guest—and go to San Bruno Hospital for a full-scale probe. He made the trip perched on a limo jump seat, clutching the strap to keep from leaning back, and was received by no less august a practitioner than Dr. Alfonso Gusano de Sedas. Who peered and palped, took blood and urine samples, X-rayed abundantly and would have graphed heart and brain had Alejo been able to lie down or at least sit comfortably. All to no conclusion, so he convened a dozen of his fellows, the cream of Tinieblan medicine, and murmured with them earnestly for half an hour while poor Alejo got what rest he could, balanced on the edge of an examining table. Gusano emerged from this conclave with the opinion that the problem was psychosomatic.
“You’re not the first Tinieblan who’s called me crazy, Doctor. I’ve learned to ignore it.”
“Oh, no, Mr. President, nothing of the sort. It’s that we cannot find organic defect, and your symptoms are bizarre. You say you have pain only when you try to rest.”
“Haven’t you noticed? You spent all morning poking me, that didn’t hurt. But when I lie down or sit back
“Then I concur with my psychiatric colleague. Please let me call him.”
And the psychiatrist explained, in cascades of mumbo jumbo about imaginary parts of Alejo’s mind, that while no exact diagnosis could be made without extensive interviewing, it was clear that Alejo’s pain was mental in origin, and likely the result of an obsessive concern for the duties of his office. A part of his mind resented his body’s normal, human need for rest, and sent the pain to keep him on the job.
“What you need, Mr. President, is to relax.”
“Bravisimo! I knew that when I came in here. The question, doctorcito, is how. I can’t even sit decently.”
“I would first of all counsel you to relinquish your duties.”
“Are you proposing a treatment or attempting a coup d’état?”
“For a time only, Mr. President, until therapy removes the symptoms.”
“I haven’t enough time. The little time I have you’re wasting. Just do something about the pain.”
“For that, sir, there are drugs. That’s very simple.”
But it wasn’t. Not all the drugs in the ministry of health’s warehouse could give Alejo any sweet repose. Still, the doctors’ efforts weren’t entirely wasted. Angela enjoyed watching them.
They tried tranquilizers first, grading up in chemistry and dosage, but as they intensified, so did Mandragon. On the fourth night of Alejo’s martyrdom Dr. Gusano hypoed him enough Thorazine to stun an elephant, put him virtually in coma, yet as soon as his shoulders touched the bed, he bolted upright howling. And as they sought fruitlessly to administer relief, I administered delight to Angela. I put permanent coverage of Alejo’s torment on her little mother-of-pearl-backed mirror, and piped a sound track through its silver handle. That way she could follow while we were cuddling, in whatever part of the palace we chose to defile.
They switched to outright anesthetics next, pumped Alejo’s dorsum full of Carbocaine and sat him in a comfy reclining chair; I stuck the flaming pringles in his chest and kept them jabbing till he heaved himself up. They Pontocained him front and back; I grilled his shanks and armpits till he was standing. Xylocaine, Nupercaine, Nesacaine, Metycaine, tetracaine; ditto, with amusing variations: needles in his nostrils, thorns in his tongue. And when they generaled him unconscious with Surital, Mandragon was ready. Mandragon waited till the effects wore off, then sizzled him all over, even while he was standing, an hour’s agony for each hour he’d spent zonked. So where was the gain, Mr. President? What good were the doctors? Mandragon taught him he was better off without them. No pain so long as he didn’t lie down or sit back, and after a week he accepted these conditions, dismissed Gusano and the others, got what rest he could sitting hunched forward, canceled his social engagements, and attended his presidential duties sconced on a stool. Attended them diligently, in fact, though he was nearly convinced the psychiatrist was right. But when the fellow made a final plea, Alejo was adamant.
“Go home, doctorcito. I haven’t time for a vacation. I have a destiny to complete.”
I gave him a day after he’d accepted the conditions, and one more night of sitting abed hunched over. Then I sent the pain across his butt and thighbacks, and fixed him so he couldn’t sit at all.
And ministered to him also, beginning the same afternoon—so that he’d last, so that he wouldn’t be suspicious of Mandragon, so that Angela would have that irony to chuckle at. I asked an audience—supposedly to take my leave and thank him for his hospitality—and expressed concern about his health. He stood perfectly erect, as if he’d chosen, for formality, to receive me standing, but he was obviously very weary and admitted that he was afflicted with a strange disorder that virtually prevented him from resting and that no medi
cine could ease. At which healer Mandragon offered his services.
“Maybe I can help you. I have a gift.”
I went to him and touched the fingertips of my left hand to his forehead, dry and creased like an old document.
“Sit down.”
“I …”
“There will be no pain. Believe.”
He lowered himself very carefully into his swivel chair and very carefully leaned back.
“Ahhhh!” He smiled in gratitude and closed his eyes.
Without taking my fingertips from his forehead I walked round to the back of the chair. “Sleep.”
And Alejo dropped like a sack of feed into the first decent sleep he’d had since my arrival.
It was a mockery, of course, of my gift for healing. All I did was stop tormenting him. As soon as he was sleeping, I took my fingertips from his forehead and went out, went back upstairs and played a bout with Angela. I stayed with her two hours, then returned, took up my station at the back of his chair, fingers on his forehead, and brought him awake gently. He was both grateful and ashamed.
“You’ve been here all this while!”
“You would have paid if I removed my fingers.
He stood up quickly, drawing away from my touch. “Forgive me for imposing on you.
There followed assurances from saintly, kind Mandragon that no imposition had occurred, that one who had a gift was obliged to use it, that I was sorry to find my power so inadequate (unable, in this case, to cure completely, or even bring relief save by actual touch), but happy to help my president and host any way I could, to the limit of my poor capacities. Mandragon smiled a kind and saintly smile, and tossed his consciousness one flight upstairs, into the sitting room where Angela was watching, to savor her delighted whoops and squeals.