“You did... right before you went off on me. Anyway, there was a lot of kinky stuff attaching to those cults. We might take the tack that Eros wasn’t a god, but a life form. A parasite with the power to enhance the human biological impulse. Or to increase suggestibility. People think about sex all the time, so increased sexual activity would be one of its main effects.”
“You’re crazy if you believe people would read a novel based on that premise.”
“Sex sells.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But if this parasite did to the world what it did to the Moravians, there wouldn’t be any world left.”
“Not necessarily. We have Perdomo’s testimony, dubious as it is, that some of them survived. Suppose the parasites were actually symbiotes and they were dying out because of advances in medicine or something in our diet that made us resistant. The only place they could survive were backwaters where those advances weren’t in play. Some became trapped in a cave in St. Gotthard and went dormant. When the Moravians tunneled into the cave and set them free, they were desperate for the sustenance we provide and they went too far. Once they’d replenished themselves, they sustained the remainder of the colony.”
“Wouldn’t the Moravians be immune?”
“We could cover that by saying they were only partly immunized against the parasite... the symbiotes. In the 1860s when the Moravians came to St. Gotthard, pasteurization was just becoming widespread. We can use something like that. We can say the Moravians had developed partial immunities that didn’t kill the symbiotes, but made them ill. They adapted. They mutated. When we happened along, they had a similar problem with our more complete immunities, and now they’re adapting to them. That would explain why they’ve been slow to affect us. It’s a pulpy idea, but we can ground it in our relationship and throw in historical detail to de-emphasize the pulp elements.”
“I doubt I could pull off a novel.”
“Remember the comments I made on your papers at Miami? ‘Cut back on the purple prose.’ With a novel, the purpler the better, at least in certain passages.”
We discussed it some more, refining the concept, tailoring it to fit the facts as we knew them, sometimes tailoring the facts, and then she said, “Mind if I sleep here? You can wake me in an hour or two and I’ll stand watch.”
“Yeah, all right.”
“You don’t sound sure.”
I saw in my mind’s eye the skeletons in the cavern, the desolate product of an inhuman passion. It did no good to think about it.
“Jon?”
“Go on, get some sleep.”
She snuggled deeper into the sleeping bag and turned on her side. Soon her breathing grew deep and regular. The rhythms of her breath lulled me and I sat up straight and attempted to focus on practical matters. What we would do if the helicopter failed to arrive? If Perdomo left it might be best to leave with him. Staying in St. Gotthard offered no security. Nubia stirred and murmured something. I remembered that she talked in her sleep and I pricked up my ears; but she said no more.
I must have dozed off, for I heard a voice repeating my name and sat up, confused and bleary-eyed. Nubia stared past my shoulder, her mouth open. Following the direction of her gaze, I saw three figures on the opposite side of the fire, two youngish women and a bald man who, judging by his unkempt gray beard, was in his fifties. Painted by the flickering light, they were naked and in poor physical condition, filthy and covered with insect bites, scarcely recognizable as human beings, more like mangy animals drawn to our fire. The women were slack-breasted and severely underweight; their hair was matted and the taller woman’s pubic hair overgrew portions of her thighs and belly. Their skins showed brick red yet, as Perdomo testified, their haggard faces were Caucasian. They carried no weapons, but I scrambled up, snagged a burning branch from the fire and swung it menacingly, sending a trail of sparks through the air.
“We mean you no harm,” said the taller of the women in Spanish.
I was not reassured. Remembering the rifle, I started to reach for it, but Nubia restrained me.
“You are of St. Gotthard?” she asked.
“No longer,” said the man. “We are of Kirikh’quru.”
“Kirikh’quru Krokundor?”
In ragged unison, the two women echoed Nubia, as if the words were part of a litany.
“Indeed.” The man smiled, revealing a mouth half-full of rotten teeth
“Why did you hide from us?” I asked.
The woman who had spoken previously said, “We had business to attend.” And her sister, who was wider-hipped, a dirty blonde, said, “We’ve been waiting for this moment.”
The man farted, continuing to smile.
Over their heads I thought I saw opaque shapes whirling against the moonstruck façade of the Castle—they were gone before I could be certain of them.
“Come back tomorrow when we’re less tired,” I said.
“No,” said Nubia. “Please, sit. I have so many questions.”
“Be patient,” said the man, and the blonde woman said, “First we must bear witness.”
“Bear witness to what?” Nubia asked.
“A miracle!”
The leering relish with which she said this alarmed me. I snatched up the rifle and trained it on them.
“Jon!” Nubia attempted to shove the barrel aside, but I fended her off.
“I don’t trust their fucking miracle,” I said, and thumbed back the safety.
I don’t remember falling. The next I knew, I was gazing up at the pitted ivory moon, feeling drugged and sluggish. A drum was beating close by and I realized it was my heart. There were other sounds, but I couldn’t unscramble them. An instant before I lost consciousness, I had the intimation of an androgynous, childlike face, similar to one Claudia had assembled on the floor of the Castle. I didn’t see it, not exactly, but seemed to know its lineaments like those of my own face.
When I regained my senses, the sun was high and I was naked, lying closer to the tents than where I had fallen. My vision rippled. With an effort, I propped myself on an elbow. Nubia, also unclothed, stood nearby, her arms folded, watching Macyory and Claudia fondling and licking the tall woman, squirming in the dirt between her legs like animals, and Perdomo... he was engaged with the blond woman while the bearded man was attempting to penetrate him from behind. Together they made a blithering, grunting stew of sound that disoriented me further. I couldn’t gather it all in. Unsteady, I leveraged myself into a sitting position and saw Taylor lying by the entrance to Nubia’s tent. I crawled over to him. He wasn’t breathing, his mouth was open, and a faint cloudiness showed in his eyes. There was no blood, no apparent wound, but I knew he was dead.
A sense of detachment gripped me, suppressing any emotional reaction I might have had. An ant emerged from the thatch of his hair. I watched with interest, tracking its progress across his forehead and cheek, wondering whether it would enter his mouth. Then a hand clutched my shoulder. The tall woman kneeled beside me, pressing her breasts against my arm. Her smell was gamey and overripe, her smile a horrid display of inflamed gums and discolored teeth tilted like gravestones in soft earth. Yet when she pressed my hand between her furred thighs, I wanted her... though wanted is too tame a word for the overpowering lust that caused me to push her down beside Taylor’s corpse and mount her.
When I make love to my wife nowadays, that memory will at times surface from the urgency of the act, and I will turn from her and lie with both hands clasped to my head, trying to squeeze it out as though it were an abscess. I have many memories of that day (I had sex with everyone at the campsite, with multiple partners) yet none so degrading as that one. The tall woman and I bucked and humped, bumping into Taylor’s corpse, rolling atop it, our hands brushing his skin, locking in his hair, as though engaged in a grotesque ménage a trois. She grimaced beneath me, grating noises issued from her throat, and her legs spasmed and stiffened, banging against my sides like shutters loose in a gale. I pinned her by the throat to sto
p her from smiling, yet the smile remained undimmed.
Zombie-fucking. That was how the hours passed. I was mindful of nothing but the flesh. Later that afternoon, I was sharing Macyory with Perdomo when I heard the beat of helicopter rotors. I knew what this signaled, but I continued battering away at Macyory until a soldier pulled me away. I tried to climb atop her again and he knocked me aside. Surrendering to exhaustion, I watched soldiers separating the bearded man, Claudia and the Moravian women. They shouted, shoving the Moravians to one side, and posted a guard over them. Others provided blankets. I didn’t notice the cold until a blanket was draped across my shoulders, and then I sat shivering and miserable. People said things to me that I couldn’t understand—it was as if they were speaking in ape or ocelot—and ordinary objects had no meaning. I could not have told you the function of a cooking pot or a comb. I crossed glances with Macyory and we both quickly looked away—I supposed she felt, as did I, traumatized, caught between shame and lust. Claudia, her head bowed, appeared to have dwindled under her blanket to the size of a child. Only Nubia seemed to have survived unscathed. She was talking with an officer who squatted beside her, displaying no hesitancy in manner, no sign of trauma; yet when she stood and walked with him, she was stiff-legged and faltered more than once, having to grasp his arm for support.
The soldiers cleared brush, enough for the helicopter (a Chinook identical to the one that had brought us) to land. Once our party was aboard, it lifted off and a second helicopter settled to the ground, discharging more soldiers. I saw them moving into the brush surrounding the campsite, and then we were too high, angling north away from St. Gotthard. Through the side window I had a final glimpse of the buildings rising above the forest, saw the great glass dome glinting orange with the late sun and the spires of the Castle afire in that glow, regaining a purity and nobility that was never truly theirs. And then they were gone. I leaned back and closed my eyes, receding into a dim, enervated state. When I opened them again I saw Nubia staring at me fixedly. I thought she was seeing through me, beyond me, to some interior place, but then she wetted her lips and seemed to focus and smiled. I at first took strength from that smile, but it stuck on her face, unwavering, reminding me of the Moravian woman’s smile, and I turned my face to the wall, finding in the dull green metal a solace she could not offer.
* * * *
What happened in St. Gotthard had so circumstantial a character or, to use Nubia’s word, allusive, it’s tempting to accept the explanation given by the Venezuelan government: an unknown environmental agent caused both the Moravians and our party to experience delirium. There is no way of testing this theory, however. The buildings in St. Gotthard were demolished by aerial bombardment, access to the valley is prohibited, and the Moravians have been relocated. In Latin America, “relocation” is sometimes a euphemism for a more sinister fate, and investigations by various human rights organizations (prodded into action by Taylor’s parents and the Inter-provincial Board of the Moravian Church) failed to disclose the site of their new village. Captain Abreu and Sergeant Perdomo have apparently been “relocated” as well, for nothing has been heard from them since. As for the rest of us, we were flown to Merida, interrogated, and returned to our places of residence. That we were not “relocated” is due, I understand, to the influence of Nubia’s family. The government’s decisive and, it would seem, brutal resolution of the incident is typical of governments everywhere in reaction to a perceived threat; yet I cannot grasp what threat they perceived. Perhaps they believed that they could utilize the “environmental agent” as a weapon, or perhaps... I don’t know. It may reflect their general policy toward all unfathomable things.
I tried to contact the others, seeking their interpretation of the events. Macyory and Claudia would not speak to me, and when I called Nubia’s parents at their home in Merida, where she was recuperating, she, too, refused; but her father got on the phone and told me that he was concerned by Nubia’s mental state, saying she acted cold and distracted much of the time. I told him not to worry, it would pass, and kept to myself the fact that I had similar moods.
I settled back into my routine at Portland State and, with the passage of time, managed more-or-less to put St. Gotthard from mind, though I continued to have moments when I felt aloof from the world, and experienced fugues that my girlfriend (soon to be my wife) described as being periods during which I “went away.” In spite of these passages, I enjoyed my work, I married, I began to thrive. Four years after my return, as I browsed the new releases in Powell’s Books, one of the book jackets jumped out at me. Superimposed on a black backdrop was a partially reconstructed face of white marble, the same androgynous, elfin face (or its duplicate) that Claudia had assembled on the floor of the Castle. The book was called The Shattered Faceand the author was Dr. Nubia Borregales. A card was taped to the shelf beneath the book, announcing that Dr. Borregales would be signing at Powell’s on Thursday following her lecture at Lincoln Hall.
I bought a copy and, skimming it in my office, was startled to discover that the basis of the book was our conversation about the novel we proposed to write. It followed our basic blueprint—a symbiotic life form (the kro’kundor) that stimulated human sexuality for its own ends had emerged from a cavern in St. Gotthard. Yet there were two salient differences. Nubia conceived of the symbiotes as being the living tools of a dominant entity, a powerful and perhaps immortal creature, an Eros-type figure, whom she called the Child and whom the Moravians had called Kirikh’quru. The kro’kundor acted as an interface that enabled Kirikh’quru to connect with humanity, serving as amplifiers of his will. The second difference was that the book was not a novel. It purported to be a record of Nubia’s interaction with the Child. She claimed that the Child had possessed her and now spoke through her. With typical exuberance, the jacket copy labeled her “a true prophet of the Third Millennium.” A temple devoted to her teachings on sexual health had been built in the Dominican Republic.
I had made a concerted effort to sever my ties with Nubia, to reject those shreds of our relationship that had survived the expedition, and I had been aware of none of this. Upon reflection, I realized her evolution from pop historian/archaeologist to New Age guru was a natural progression, the perfect culmination of her character arc. I searched for more details on the Internet and came across an article on New Age cults that mentioned Nubia and reported on disturbing rumors concerning her temple in the DR, rumors of disappearances and orgiastic rites that resulted in bloodshed. I discounted the article—misinformation is the chief currency of the Internet—yet I could not discount it entirely. Taylor’s death had been in no way allusive.
Thursday afternoon, I sat in the rear of the hall and watched Nubia’s performance. It was patently a performance. Dressed in dark brown slacks and a silk blouse; her face transformed by dramatic make-up into the semblance of a Hindu queen; she paced the stage like a rock star for over two hours, microphone in hand, delivering an impassioned plea for (so I understood it after deciphering her quasi-intellectual twaddle) more and better fucking, occasionally lapsing into a trance during which her body language became stiff and awkward, and she spoke in a raspy voice, disgorging messages from the Child. A bulky man trailed behind her, ready to catch her should she swoon, as sometimes happened after these possessions. The audience, composed in the main of suburban housewives, with a smattering of gays and college-age heterosexuals (and a group of hecklers who were quickly ushered out), laughed at Nubia’s jokes, kept a respectful silence when the Child held the floor, and burst into prolonged applause at the end. Nubia stood center-stage, arms upraised, eyes closed, as though she were absorbing a beatific energy.
I waited until the crowd around her thinned before making an approach and caught her as she was leaving through a side exit, shouldering aside her publicist, a young guy wearing a black shirt and slacks who sought to shield her from me by interposing his body. The mask of make-up couldn’t disguise signs of fatigue, but all in all she looked the same
as when she had visited me in my office. This time there was no embrace.
“I wondered if you’d come,” she said.
“Wouldn’t have missed it for the world.” I held the door for her and followed her out into the late afternoon sun. “It was more entertaining than Cirque du Soleil.”
A half-smile. “Is there some place close where we can get a drink?”
The publicist murmured something about the signing.
“We have almost two hours!” she snapped. “I’ll be there!”
I led her away from the remaining autograph seekers and we drove to the Virginia Cafe, a downtown bar with a woodsy ambiance not far from Powell’s and, at that hour, hosting a mere handful of customers. We sat in a booth near the front. A waitress with multiple piercings brought our drinks. Nubia tapped my ring finger and asked if I were truly married or if the ring was just to ward off co-eds.
“It takes more than that,” I said. “Some are quite determined. Resisting them requires moral rectitude.”
She laughed, a slight, ridiculing laugh.
“I resisted you in St. Gotthard,” I said. “That’s the gold standard of resistance.”
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