Mandragon

by R. M. Koster

  “I cannot ask you to spend all day and night with me.”

  “You may ask anything, anything at all.”

  The final compromise he struck between his physical well-being and his pride was that I would stay on at the palace and attend him, but that he would only call me at times of special need.

  “At any time at all, Señor Presidente. Day or night. I am at your service.”

  I was back upstairs by the time he tried (as I knew he would) to sit without my comfort.

  “Watch this,” I said to Angela, and, as he settled, I spangled him with pain from crown to toenails, so that he twitched all over, then went blue and rigid, then flew up out of the chair with a yelping wail.

  “Ay, sí! Qué maravilla”

  I was the pain and the relief. Mandragon was the solace and the torment. I played him delicately. I made him suffer, and I made him thank me.

  I hadn’t anything against him. I’d forgotten the birth myth in which he ill-used Mandragon’s mother. I couldn’t say he’d ever injured me. He was unfailingly polite, showed me every courtesy, extolled me to his ministers and aides, and would have honored my services to the republic with a medal had he thought I cared for that sort of recompense. He called me only when he was in extreme need, always apologized for imposing on me, never complained when I took my time arriving (though I did so often, to please Angela), and gave so little show of what he suffered that far from bearing him malice, I admired and felt sorry for him. But admiration didn’t hold me back. Pity didn’t make me reconsider. Love gave me the strength to rise above personal feelings. Killing him was what Angela was charging; torturing him brought Angela delight. She especially enjoyed the method he devised for resting after I fixed him so he couldn’t sit. He put two cushions on the floor and knelt on one of them, then laid his arms on the other and his head on his arms.

  “Qué bien! Perfecto! He looks like he’s praying!”

  Mandragon paid, and Angela delivered. He administered intellectual (or perhaps it was moral) delight; she basted him with somewhat grosser pleasures. In the sitting room, which as the site of our first embraces was sentimental Mandragon’s favorite trysting nook—on the sofa, for the nostalgia of it, or on a chair before the writing table, with Angela astraddle, rolling her hips, squinting past my head to admire Alejo’s discomfort in the mirror. On the narrow, swaybacked, gaily squeaking bed in the room assigned to me, and in other guest rooms till we’d left our spoor in them all. On the broad, firm, silk-rustly bed of her boudoir, in an artfully contrived T-cross conjunction where Angela lay supine and motionless with her knees raised and her calves on Mandragon’s right flank and thigh (admiring Alejo’s discomfort in her hand mirror), while Mandragon lay perpendicular on his left side and winkled his no-longer-quite-so-substandardness inside her.

  In the Salón Amarillo (this amusing review could make a condemned person jolly), with Angela’s shoulders pressed to the canary silk fleur-de-lis’d wall covering and Mandragon cramming against her, squeezing her pink silk bottom in his fists. On the polished hardwood floor of the state ballroom—Mandragon reclining, Angela perched finchlike on him facing his feet—while on the frescoed ceiling rosy-plump cherubs smiled down from cottony clouds. On the sturdy table in the state dining room, with Angela’s squab positioned at the edge of it and Mandragon standing to address it, crooking a slim leg in each brown elbow.

  In the Cabinet Room (jollier and jollier!), where they took turns, one sprawling in the presidential armchair, the other acrouch beneath the conference table to nip and nibble. In the presidential office while Alejo tried to siesta two floors above, and copycat Angela assumed his resting attitude, and Mandragon lifted her tail and mounted houndstyle. At midnight in the Salón Redondo, while a sextet of early presidents of the republic glowered at them from heat-warped canvases in burnished frames. At midmorning on the settee near the head of the stairway, while a women’s rights group Angela had just finished receiving were still chattering in the foyer one flight down. At midafternoon on the terrace outside her bedroom, where Mandragon lay face down in a hammock, his parts adangle through a surgered hole, and Angela squatted at his waist like a milkmaid, then went on all fours and nuzzled like a calf—where his moanings mingled with the cries of seabirds, and the sun stared down unblinking at them both.

  In whatever part of the palace we chose to defile, since my appetite for her was boundless, while when she was bored or otherwise reluctant, I had only to tune Alejo in on her little mirror and hit him with a decent twinge of pain. That always perked her up and made her feel grateful, or at least reminded her I was paying well.

  I don’t know if anyone saw us at it. I assume business continued more or less as usual—no social functions, but the usual bustling in and out of politicos, and the come-and-go of servants keeping the place clean—but I noticed only Angela. Angela was the world, and I its only denizen and master. I roamed in her sweet valleys, swam in the solitude of her calm and uncharted seas, and if a shocked chambermaid had squeaked at us, if an irate aide had shouted, and then come up and seized me by the throat, I doubt I’d have noticed; I certainly wouldn’t have cared.

  As for Alejo, he noticed only power’s obligations, and was preoccupied with handling his suffering so he could carry them out. Or he couldn’t notice me wanking the first lady because he couldn’t imagine Mandragon the comforter as Mandragon defiler. Or he noticed and simply didn’t care. Or he noticed and was grateful—taking note that I remained in the palace and eased his pain, that she had stopped nagging him about Dred Mandeville, and putting these favors down to love’s attractions and distractions. I spent no time inside his mind. I spent little in Angela’s. I concentrated on my own sensations and troweled away.

  All the while plummeting further into maleness, to the point where I received full badges of my gender. My penis grew till it was nearly normal size. The cleft below it closed and pursed and baggied. Hair sprouted at the corners of my mouth, so that by month’s end I had a passably fine moustache, of the limp and whispy-black, drooping-to-the-chin sort that late-show viewers might associate with Tartar conquerors and mixed-breed pirates and other merchants of disorder and sorrow. By then, of course, I’d killed Alejo and was engaged on a new project for Angela.

  After ten days or so she no longer much delighted in the kowtow he assumed while trying to rest, or in the similarly reverent pose he took while telephoning, kneeling by his desk with his forehead against it, or in the discomfort he endured keeping appointments, leaning forward with his thighs pressed to the edge of the conference table, with his palms braced on the top and his chin slung wearily onto his chest or (if obliged to make eye contact with his visitor) hoisted bulldoggishly. After a week sniggered much at his fury (shivered in his shoulders, glared in his eyes) when a minister or assemblyman missed the point, or answered irrelevantly, or lapsed into small talk, or otherwise prolonged the meeting unnecessarily—understandably fury, perfectly excusable (since Alejo now was always near exhaustion, and longed to rest, yet couldn’t very well kneel with subordinates present), but Angela enjoyed it, it made her snigger, though not much after ten days or so. Accordingly, Mandragon amplified. I twiddled the torment knob another notch. No more kneeling, no more leaning either, no more putting weight anywhere except on the soles of his feet. Or he got pin stabs in his eyeballs, wasp stings in his ears, hot wire-jabbings under his fingernails. I monkeyed in his cortex tripping synapses until he learned to stay on his feet.

  Except, of course, when Mandragon the good, Mandragon the selfless and saintly, was tending him. How he thanked me! All the old curtness gone now, all the haughtiness sanded down by pain. Praised and repraised me to the people round him, extolled me to his ministers, had me attend informal meetings, my hands on his forehead, so he could get through them sitting down—all of which later contributed to my acceptance as Angela’s prime minister. I gave him 1 part comfort to 10 parts pain, though for Angela’s amusement I let him use his hands for balance, and to take a little w
eight off his old feet. Aside from when he received my fake ministrations, Alejo got what rest he could swaying in an upstairs closet doorway, holding onto a chinning bar installed there in the early Sixties by one of President León Fuertes’ sons.

  “Estupendo! He looks like one of Lorenzo’s second-rate trapezists!”

  And, in his fatigue, he was liable to forget his lessons, and collapse onto a chair or bed or couch, onto the floor. Then there were poisoned-rat fits, wounded-lizard slithering, sprayed-bug twists and flailings of the limbs—and much delight, of course, for Angela—before he hauled himself onto his feet again. I did it all for her. I made her happiness my guide and master. I modulated her excitement upward. And when impatience was at the point of overtaking delight, I gave her his death.

  A few minutes before sunset, on an absolutely splendid afternoon.

  A breeze off the Humboldt Current had blown all day, so that even when it dropped the air was cool. The tide was full, a little past the flood, and lay against the seawall winypurple, carpet-flat, sleep-soft. Far out, beyond the bay, a curtain of rain cloud hung at altitude. Beneath it, exactly centered between its lower fringe and the horizon, the huge sun floated, casting its red rays across the water into the palace windows.

  In the Cabinet Room on the second floor, President Alejandro Sancudo stood speaking to his ministers, his trunk canted slightly forward, his knuckles resting on the conference table. One story up, in precisely the same attitude, the vice-president stood naked at the writing table in her sitting room, gazing into the mirror while Mandragon wanked away at her silk-smooth stern. A slackness in her shoulders revealed petulance. I thought to sting him with some pain and perk her up. Then it came to me I’d postponed climax long enough. I monkeyed quickly in Alejo’s brainstem, firing synapses, paralyzing his diaphragm and (as a backup) shutting the throat valve on his windpipe. President Sancudo began to strangle.

  “That’s it! That’s it! Don’t stop.”

  I’d given him a good siesta earlier, and he was relatively rested. He’d learned his lessons so well that even while choking he took care not to sit down. He merely bent a little farther forward and put more weight on his hands, precisely as Angela was doing one floor above. His parchment-yellow face began to purple. Her pale-gold throat and breasts began to flush. His eyes bulged, his lips fluttered, his tongue poked out. Her lips drew back, her tongue flicked, her eyes narrowed. Ministers scrambled from their seats and leaped to Alejo. An aide jumped up and dashed out of the room. Mandragon squeezed Angela’s haunches and quickened tempo.

  In the forty seconds before mind chaosed to garble, as his ministers swatted his shoulders and slapped his checks, then hauled and hoisted him up on the table and began rhythmic pressings on his lower back, Alejandro Sancudo remembered his gains and losses, his years in power and his years in exile, the mad cravings that had driven him, the fearful joy he took when he assuaged them, the peace that came when they at last burned out. He remembered his astrologer’s predictions, and a tempest-wracked midnight in Bastidas, and a beige-skinned girl—things I could make no sense of, since I’d forgotten all the myths of Mandragon’s birth. And in the last instant human thought remained to him, he knew that Mandragon was the torment as well as the solace, redeemer and destroyer, love and woe. Then his brain processes descended the catalog of animal forms, resembling those of a choked dog, a drowning rat, a strangled duck (just as mine will do in about an hour), and he went into a horizontal dance, flopping his head, wriggling his shoulders, kicking his legs.

  Meanwhile delicious warmth (which was also an orange-red light) began to swell in Angela’s calves. It mounted through her thighs. It tossed fat swelling bubbles up into her loins. She bent forward till her face was only a few inches from the mirror (whose Alejo-imaged surface her gaze never left) and went into a dance of her own, swiveling her hips and rocking her shoulders. And a crimson glow (which was also a hot lava) began to flow along my spine and press deliciously (but also painfully urgently) into my now-not-the-very-least-substandard parts, and I bucked ferociously at Angela’s sweet rump in a very old and yet still stylish dance and found it increasingly difficult to concentrate on Alejo, to continue monkeying in his throbbing brainstem so that his diaphragm stayed immobile and his windpipe shut. But I knew that my monkeying in his head (not my wanking at her tail) was what made Angela twist and twitch in pleasure, and love gave me the strength to carry on. That, then, was the situation—the three of us dancing toward climax, Angela and I more and more fiercely, Alejo more and more feebly—when there came a pounding on the sitting-room door and Alejo’s aide screamed for Doña Angela and Mandragon.

  “We’re coming!” I managed to squawk.

  Which got a strangled giggle from Angela.

  The pounding continued. Alejo’s legs went rigid, his arms shot straight out from his body, his head craned back. The warm light billowed into Angela’s loins. The lava began to force its way into mine. Then Alejo’s head dropped, and his arms drooped, and his legs untensed, and his jaws relaxed, and his bleeding tongue flopped free, and his eyes rolled back, and his throat gurgled, and the warmth burst through Angela’s body in brilliant globes, and the lava spurted from mine.

  Angela fell forward onto the table.

  I fell across her back.

  The sun fell into the Pacific.

  31

  And rises now, lifts out of the Caribbean to gild the eastern beaches of Tinieblas.

  All’s dark here still, roofs shrouded up in darkness, but off Bastidas the horizon’s flame-bulged. Red dawn billows toward the paling stars. I could go watch.

  As on the morning when we went to meet Dred Mandeville: could stand on the ruined wharf at Punta Amarga and see the sun reborn from the warm sea. Awash with fire, hymning might and order; gilding the waves, the sand, the jungled hills. I could perpetuate that ritual.

  But soon red rays will crest the cordillera. A phone will ring, a summons will go forth. Boots will clatter in the corridor. A key will turn, these rooms fill up with guards. Who’ll take me down and cuff me to the tow hitch.

  No time for recollections after that. Best get back to them.

  To Angela’s investiture for example, which was performed in the Salón Amarillo about twenty minutes after Alejo croaked. Chief Justice Gavilán handled the swearing. On hand were the cabinet, the archbishop, the commandants of the Guardia, Alejo’s middle-aged elder son Alfonso (my half-brother in that version of the birth), and a few representatives of the press. They stood in a ragged semicircle scowling grief and worry at the incoming president. Who played the scene to perfection, in the very dress she’ll put on in a few minutes. Minus the fan but plus a black mantilla, as elegant as she’ll be at Mandragon’s hanging.

  She’d managed some excellent dry sobs over Alejo’s body, drawing on the aftershocks of orgasm to give her head and trunk the proper shudders. She’d stared about bewildered and nodded distractedly when told she’d be sworn in as soon as the judge arrived. She’d let herself be led away upstairs by Alejo’s secretary, then had the devil’s time getting rid of the woman, who was in genuine hysterics of the affectionate, blubbering, poor-dear-how-you-must-be-suffering sort. Which left her very few minutes before going back onstage, but she used them to good effect. Got into mourning, put on just enough makeup, dabbed cologne near her eyes to teary them up authentically. Tried on expressions in her dressing-table mirror and carefully built up a composite mask: a base of nunnish spiritual serenity overlaid (successively) with heartbreak, with physical pain, with determination to bear her new obligations. Built it, put it on, wore it downstairs.

  There she stood with her shoulders a bit too straight, her chin a bit too high (like an acrobat poised on the nub of a teeterboard), to show the effort of will required (and so courageously achieved) to keep from weeping. Held pose and expression while Gavilán intoned and she repeated, while flashbulbs flared and popped. Thanked Gavilán softly, asked the ministers to remain in office, hoped they would serve her as loyally a
s they had her husband, and on the word “husband” broke down—magnificently, like a slow-motion film of a monument being demolished. Dropped her face, that is, and quivered her shoulders, drew her mantilla’s folds about her face, half-turned, and crumbled—onto the broad chest of Alfonso Sancudo, whom she’d corner-eye glimpsed moving toward her in concern.

  She mascaraed Sancudo’s lapel for a long thirty seconds. She let him pat her shuddering shoulder blades. She nuzzled his grey goatee with her laced crown. Then painstakingly, at great expense of will, to the amazement of all present, she put the smithered monument back together—not completely, to the point of having it stand a noble ruin. Hoisted her forehead from Sancudo’s shoulders. Drew back and clasped his hand in her gloved hands. Nodded her gratitude, flickered a valiant smile, squared her shoulders again, and turned back to the others.

  “Forgive me, gentlemen, we’ve much to do. But I …”

  “The cabinet will meet in half an hour. But not in the—! Will meet in my state office. Post officers to guard, to guard my husband. The diplomatic corps … Our consulates … Each of you knows his field of competence. Please carry on till I am more myself.

  “Monsignor, please attend me.

  “Alfonso, dear, please let me have your arm.”

  And leaning on Sancudo’s proffered forearm, followed by the purple-cassocked prelate, she made her halting way out of the room.

  Bravisima, Angela! If I dance half as well as you acted, Mandragon’s strangling will be a smash!

  Mandragon, by the way, didn’t watch in person. I was outside in the street with the gathering crowd, moping at the rear of the Alcaldía, about where they’re laying TV cables now. I had to toss my consciousness through the wall of the palace, or I’d have missed Angela’s performance. Angela had kissed Mandragon off.