Mandragon

by R. M. Koster

  I’d had to hang around Alejo’s cadaver, give some bogus opinions as to what had killed him, utter a certain few bogus laments. By the time I got back upstairs, Angela was fully made-up and mourning, modeling expressions for her mask. I put my hand on her shoulder, she flicked it off.

  “I’m busy, darling, surely you can see that.”

  Then: “You shouldn’t be up here. I’m a stricken widow and must be alone with my grief.”

  Then: “You shouldn’t even be in the palace, or here in the capital. You might put in an appearance at the funeral, but after that you’d best go straight back to Otán.”

  “Otán?”

  I’d forgotten that I’d ever been there. All I knew was that I wanted to stay with Angela. She saw that in my face in her vanity mirror, and that love made me entirely harmless to her.

  “Don’t be a bore, please, darling. It was marvelous, now don’t be a bore and spoil it.”

  I hung there mooning over her. She sighed and swung her legs around, looked up at me.

  “All right. Since you oblige me to, I’ll spell it out:

  “I wanted something from you, I asked a favor. To get it I made you very, very happy. Dozens of times, over and over again. You gave me what I wanted. You were perfectly marvelous, and it was lovely. But it’s done now, and you’ve nothing more I want.

  “Now I’m very busy, and you can’t stay here.”

  She turned back to modeling expressions.

  I stood there for a moment, then slunk away. Parts beginning to shrivel back toward substandard. Feeling totally empty, the way I did when they first put me in here. The latter was partly the drain of murdering Alejo. Murder’s a very enervating business, even when done in the heat, as they say, of passion, to someone you despise (as with Don Lorenzo), and I’d murdered Alejo as a favor to Angela, in perfectly cold blood, without a drop of malice toward him. It was partly sudden loss of status, from master of the world to dismissed servant. I wasn’t at all prepared for it. I’d been expecting a hero’s and lover’s welcome. And curtain calls too, every artist expects them: applause for my elegant plan and faultless execution, the three of us expiring at once! But my emptiness was mainly lack of purpose. I’d forgotten my true mission. I’d put my gifts and powers at Angela’s service. Now, suddenly, she didn’t need or want them. I hadn’t any function on the planet, no use or worth.

  I moped about outside in the gathering crowd. Who no doubt assumed I was grieving for Alejo. When actually I was grieving for myself. I tossed my consciousness into the palace, caught Angela’s swearing-in act, watched her at prayer. I monitored a few minutes of her first cabinet meeting, enough to note that she was totally in charge. The ministers had evidently decided among themselves that they would run the country and she be a figurehead. That arrangement endured about twenty seconds from the time she sat down. Called the session to order and began serving carefully aimed questions to particular ministers. Judged their responses and stroked back firm decisions—exactly as if she’d been running the country for years. I passed up the rest of the meeting and whatever followed it and replayed our most extravagant copulations, the first and the last and a number of in-betweens. Thus engaged, I erred about the city in an ecstasy of worthlessness and self-pity such as I hadn’t known since I was a double-sexed miracle, since I lay in a revolving barber chair with my freakdom on show to a squabble of gawking rubes. My gifts were perfectly intact, but it never occurred to me I might use them to master Angela. I loved her and had put myself in her power and was far too happy suffering over her.

  I vagabonded through the city, which was as deeply in mourning as I was, though for better cause—everyone’s countenance at half-staff and the very buildings sweating praise for Alejo, as if he’d never been feared and despised in his life. This general grief nourished my private rapture. I’d murdered a great man for a faithless woman. How wonderfully sorry for myself and useless I felt!

  All night, all day. I passed up the cathedral and the cemetery, didn’t toss my consciousness to either spot, took no real heed where I was or where I was going, but at sunset found myself at the Guardia control point west of the capital, trudging the highway with a band of silent peasants who’d come in the night before to pay their respects. Or, rather, Angela’s all-points bulletin found me there. I was halted, questioned, then saluted—and presently installed on the front seat of a patrol truck, speeding toward the palace with two cyclists out front. Mandragon was back in favor.

  On my first night in the palace, as soon as I slept, Angela phoned a code word to Mount Vervex; a complex operation got under way. Scorpion set course for Tinieblan waters. A team of communication experts assembled in Miami. A jet plane full of equipment stood by. Between prayers with the archbishop and putting the cabinet ministers in their place, Angela cabled the good news—that Alejo Sancudo was dead, that she was in power, that Dred might come ashore in a few days. Scorpion was by then lying off Bastidas, at forty fathoms, just south of the shipping lanes. The jet took off. A guest at El Opulento Hotel asked to see the manager. But at midnight, after Scorpion had come up to communicating depth, Angela got an urgent signal from Mount Vervex: Dred was taken ill, was very far gone; further delay might be disastrous. So his havening was put forward as early as possible, to dawn on the morning after Alejo’s funeral (which was held, of course, the day after he died, for it’s traditional here in the tropics to get the departed underground straightaway). A ward was cordoned off at San Bruno Hospital, even as the top floor of El Opulento was being cleared. A cutter and a helicopter were put on alert. And the Guardia was ordered to find Mandragon. Angela respected my gift for healing, and was taking no chances lest Dred croak before paying off.

  “I’m sorry about yesterday evening, for what I said.”

  Of course! Of course!

  We were in the sitting room. Its aphrodisiac effect was melting my rancor. But not entirely, at least not all at once.

  “I was under tremendous pressure, darling, you understand. I didn’t really mean to send you away.”

  Of course not! You were filled with gratitude and admiration!

  I dipped into her mind, something love had restrained me from doing up to then. Not out of respect for her privacy: passionate love doesn’t understand that sort of thing. I’d been concentrating on my own sensations and didn’t care to be distracted by Angela’s thoughts. Which weren’t really on Mandragon now. Her mind was clotted with concern for Dred—for the money, that is, he represented to her and which he had to be in some sort of health to pay off.

  “I’ve had the whole Guardia out searching for you.”

  “I’ve something you want.”

  Tinkling cascade of laughter, she rose from her chair. Lynxed to me, licking her tongue across tiny sharp teeth. Reached down and fondled the badges of my new gender.

  “Oh, darling, you do, you certainly do! I just didn’t realize how much, or how badly. I was so foolish, you forgive me, don’t you?”

  And then: “We have to leave in a little, but I think there’s time.”

  So much for the joys of worthlessness and self-pity. So much for rancor at having been cast as a tool and a dupe. So much, in fact, for the power to read people’s thoughts. In less than a minute I was wanking away again.

  We didn’t leave, it turned out, till nearly midnight. After consummating Mandragon’s return to favor, Angela conferred with some Guardia officers, worked out final arrangements, relayed them to Vervex—who relayed them to Scorpion and sent confirmation back. During the which Mandragon took his merited ease, and communed with his own sensations, and concluded that while it was exquisitely pleasant to suffer over Angela, it was even more fun to enjoy her.

  We went by limousine. Angela didn’t care to fly at night. North-northeast to Córdoba, then east-northeast over the cordillera. Along the narrow highway to Bastidas, the same stretch of road where Mandragon was engendered, if that version of the birth is true. Our head beams carved the buggy gloom before us, pressed at t
he leathered backs of the lead cyclists, flowed round and were sponged up by buggy gloom. Behind came Colonel Lisandro Empulgueras and four Jeeps full of soldiers. The helicopter dragonflied above, its rotor-slap reduced to a dull thumping by thick upholstery and bulletproof glass.

  Angela’s military aide sat up front beside our driver, his kepi crinkled on the glass partition. From time to time he took the intercom to answer Angela’s requests for reports on our progress. She sat far over on the right, legs crossed, her left hand clasping her right elbow, her right fist pressed against her cheek. Or holding the intercom phone while she asked for reports on our progress. Or holding the radiophone while she spoke with Guardia headquarters, with the cutter cruising off Bastidas, with the doctor in the helicopter above. Twice she asked to be put through to Mount Vervex, and for Vervex to put her through to Dred. Mandragon could have spared her the trouble. Mandragon knew poor Dred was too weak to speak. Mandragon’s consciousness was on board Scorpion. I lounged on the rich fabric as though dozing, and flung my consciousness out through the gloom. Across the jungled ridges, over the marshes. Down through the tepid sea and the steel hull. Dred lay immobile on the slimy vinyl, no more substantial than a wraith. His pale-pink eyes were wide with horror.

  I could have spared Angela the trouble of trying to reach him, but I preferred to spare her the knowledge of his state.

  Predawn glaze, the wharf at Punta Amarga. Weather-ravaged planks, decaying timbers, stumpy pilings shambling out to sea.

  Cutter alongside, stern toward the beach—diesels throbbing, deck lifting and falling lightly, gunwales rasping on the creaky wood.

  The captain came down and touched his cap to Angela, helped her on board. But gave no order to cast off.

  “Why don’t we wait out there?” She gestured seaward. “It would save time.”

  “Perdoname, Señora Presidenta. I don’t want that submarine coming up under me.”

  Off to the right and back of us the helicopter knelt in the soft sand, coughing regularly, blinking red. Quite near the spot where Mandragon was engendered, if that version of the birth is true. Beyond, invisible against the darkling palms, a company of troops from the Bastidas barracks mounted guard along the fringes of the beach.

  Smells of salt water, of diesel oil, of tar—of Angela’s perfume. Moist breath of breeze, sea calm and phosphorescent. The horizon grows distinct, bulges with flames. Red dawn flows up about the paling stars.

  • • •

  The sun and Scorpion came up together.

  “Allí está!”

  Voices barked, screws churned, lines fell away. We swung off and stood out into the sunrise.

  The crimson sky, the wine-red placid sea. The sub’s thin sail and spreading planes scar a dark cross against the sun’s fiery globe.

  The open bridge, Angela beside the captain. Stares seaward, squinting, over lifted bows. Her yellow hair flows free. Her lower lip is pinced between her teeth. Her knuckles on the rail are livid.

  When we were fifty yards out, the cutter dropped her bows and glided broadside, lay wallowing in her own wash. Scorpion was dead in the water, like a reef from which the tide had ebbed. Her sail, her planes, her deck, and her humped hull were encrusted with barnacles, carbuncled with coral, bearded with sea anemones. Whose tendrils quivered in the breeze and swayed with the soft swells. There was no sign of human life aboard her.

  We swung a boat away—three seamen and the doctor from the chopper. It sputtered in, we circled. Forward of the sail a hatch swung open. A man emerged. In ragged, faded blues, with unkempt hair. Another followed. They stood on the crusted deck and blinked at us.

  Another man came up holding a line. The three stood at the hatch and hauled away. And presently drew up a basket stretcher. In which a human form was strapped.

  Angela gasped.

  A fourth man came up after the stretcher. Each grasping a corner in one hand they carried it forward to where the deck sloped away and waded out with it along the bull, ankle- then calf-deep, to the cutter’s boat and got Dred Mandeville aboard it. The boat bore him toward us. The doctor’s bent back covered him from our view.

  The four men on Scorpion returned to the hatch and entered it. The last stood with his head and trunk above deck, looked for a moment at us, then lifted the hatch cover and drew it closed. Scorpion began to settle. Her deck went awash, swells lapped about her sail. Nudging forward, her planes and masts went under. The turbulence of her screw ruffled the surface. Which calmed again. Submerged, she turned back out to sea, for her orders were to continue sailing. Nor did anyone on board complain. In a few minutes the four men who’d been above decks had forgotten all about the cutter, had forgotten the red-gold dawn and the strange green shore. They lay writhing in pleasure, with bliss and glory plugged into their brains.

  As the boat swung up, we got back under way. Angela stood beside the davit, her right hand over her mouth, her left hand clinging to the rail as the cutter raised her bows and then heeled over. Four seamen drew the stretcher from the boat and set it on the deck. The doctor scrambled down beside it. Dred Mandeville lay naked except for a pair of frayed undershorts. His white beard scragged down across his chest. His chalk-white skin was cankered with open sores. His limbs and trunk were wasted, His finger- and toe-nails curved away like talons. His gaunt frame looked seven feet long.

  Angela gaped down at him, her right hand over her mouth. Tiny beads of spray glistened in her hair. Her face was pale, and her grey eyes looked very ancient.

  Dred’s eyelids fluttered. His right arm, which the doctor had just unstrapped, flung up and flopped across his face.

  “The light! Please, someone, take away the light!”

  Then his whole body convulsed against the straps. His arm flailed up and flopped away. His throat gurgled. His pink eyes stared up past us at the sky, then rolled back in their sockets.

  The doctor crouched and put his stethoscope to Dred’s chest. He smashed Dred’s chest with his fist, pounded three or four times, listened again. He looked up at Angela.

  “Señora Presidenta, this man is dead.”

  Angela howled. She glared at the doctor, then at Dred’s corpse as if she were going to kick it. She looked beseechingly at Mandragon. Mandragon smiled.

  “He isn’t dead, only unconscious.”

  Dead as a stone, of course, and Angela knew it, but I didn’t want to confuse things with the doctor present. He began to protest, but I shook my finger at him. I bent and touched my fingertips to Dred’s forehead.

  “Listen again, but listen carefully. The engine noise, you know, and the vibration.”

  He crouched and listened, then looked up contritely. “I was wrong. Forgive me, señora. I was absolutely certain.”

  “Don’t concern yourself about it, Doctor. It was an understandable mistake. Concern yourself with your patient.”

  She stepped aft, past Dred and the doctor. I followed.

  Angela and Mandragon on the fantail. Shuddering deck, below the sea churns by. She stops and turns, leans back against the rail, forearms spread along it. Stares at him in gratitude and triumph.

  “You are magnificent!”

  Sea spray on her cheek, her hair blows back. To her left the fluttering Tinieblan pennant. Behind her the sun is rising above the frothed wake.

  “I need him talking, and if possible walking, as soon as possible. For a month, for at least two weeks. Can you do it?”

  Mandragon smiles.

  “Anything! You may have anything at all!”

  32

  “… your confession.”

  Moon-faced type about my age and color, in Guardia fatigues and shiny jump boots, captain’s bars and inch-high silver cross. Must have slipped in while I was on the cutter’s fantail. Stands in the sitting-room doorway with the turnkey and two guards behind him, eyes olive-ripe with compassion while the other three pairs are merely curious.

  I blink and shake my head.

  Could say I’ve been confessing and he’s interru
pting, but I don’t want to start a conversation. And confession isn’t it exactly. Recalling who I am, redeeming Mandragon, but it’s not the same. Don’t need him, for instance.

  “These men will wait outside.”

  I shake my head.

  Gives a little swing to his little satchel. Containing prayer book, Testament, and shawl. Unguent, crucifix, and holy water. Hosts. Props of his act, Mandragon didn’t use any. A Guardia chaplain, because with a condemned of Mandragon’s importance you don’t take chances. Hold Mandragon incommunicado. If there has to be a priest, get one who’s under military discipline. And yet his concern seems as sincere as the guards’ curiosity.

  “Are you sure?”

  I nod.

  “There’s very little time, less than an hour.”

  “I know, and I don’t want to waste it—Captain.” He’d have liked “Father” better, but he’s wearing the wrong togs. “Leave me alone.”

  Eyes brim up with hurt, he looks away. “I’m sorry I can’t be of help.”

  Something odd. Looks back at me, biting his lip, then turns, takes three quick steps, and kneels before me.

  “—?”

  “I … I saw you once. I mean … Aguascalientes,

  Blinks at me, inarticulate. No matter. I see his mind. That gift returning also. Thoughts all atangle, webbed, but I can picture them as from above. Reverence for me that compelled him forward, made him kneel down: there’s the main thread. Entwined with concepts out of his religion, and vivid recollections of that day. Was what he witnessed real or an illusion? I could say: both. Is kneeling here a blasphemy? there’s another strand. Who inspires this reverence, God or the devil? Could tell him Mandragon served both, but that wouldn’t relieve him. His mind functions by separating, works by either/or. Mandragon united opposites. Contraries were joined in me.

  The chaplain blinks unease. I tell him softly:

  “I was the instrument of power.”

  As if to mark my phrase, make it exclamation, the prison shudders. Floor and walls shake, the window rattles loudly. Guards flinch and groan, the chaplain stares wide-eyed. For about fifteen seconds, then it stops. Quite common here: earth tremors.