by Libba Bray
One day, as Andy was sponging down a particularly anonymous Huguenot, she came to him. She looked awkward, even a little bashful.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said. “You can give me a name. If you like.”
Andy turned away from 1574. “I thought you didn’t want a name.”
She blushed. “I don’t mind.”
“All right,” he said. “What about Janet?”
She wrinkled her nose.
“You don’t like Janet?”
“I don’t,” she agreed, “like Janet.”
“OK,” he said. “Mandy.”
“No.”
“Becky.”
“No.”
“Samantha. Sammy for short.”
“Tell you what,” she said. “You give it a think, and when you come up with something you like, you come and find me.”
“I’ll do that,” said Andy.
He resumed work on his Huguenot. The bloodstain on his dagger-gouged stomach shone a red it hadn’t shone in hundreds of years. Andy worked hard on it, he didn’t know for how long, but there was a joy to it, to uncover this man’s death like it was some long lost buried treasure, and make it stand out bold and lurid and smudge-free.
Next time she came she was wearing a ribbon. He didn’t know why, it looked odd wrapped around her shiny bald forehead. Why was the forehead so shiny? Had she done something to it? “I’ve been thinking,” she said.
“Oh yes?”
“What about Miriam?”
“Who’s Miriam?”
“Me. I could be Miriam.”
“You could be Miriam, yes.”
“Do you like Miriam?”
“Miriam’s fine.”
“Do you think Miriam suits me?”
“I think Miriam suits you right down to the ground,” said Andy, and she beamed at him.
“All right,” she said. “Miriam it is. If you like it. If that works well for you.”
“Hello, Miriam,” he said. “Nice to meet you.” And they laughed.
“I love you,” she said then.
“You do what, sorry?”
“I think it’s so sad, that no one ever loved you.”
“I don’t know that no one ever loved me...”
“And at first I thought this was just pity for you. Inside me, here. But then it grew. And I thought, that’s not pity at all, that’s love.” She scratched at her ribbon. It slipped down her face a bit. “I mean, I might have got it wrong, it might just be a deeper form of pity,” she said. “But, you know.”
“Yes.”
“Probably not.”
“No.”
“Probably love.”
“Yes.”
“I want you to know,” she said, “what it feels like to inspire love. You inspire love. In me.”
“Well,” he said. “Thank you. I mean that.”
“Do I inspire love in you?”
“I hadn’t really thought about it,” said Andy.
“Would you think about it now?”
“All right,” he said. “Yes. Go on, then. I think you do.”
“Oh good,” said Miriam.
She left him then. He got back to his dying Huguenot. The Huguenot seemed to be winking at him. Andy didn’t like that, and swabbed at the Huguenots’ eyes pointedly.
When Miriam returned the ribbon was gone, and Andy thought that was good, it really hadn’t looked right. But, if anything, the forehead was shinier still. And there was a new redness to the lips, he thought she must have spilled some paint on to them.
“If it is love. Not just pity on my part, confused politeness on yours. Would you like to make love?”
“We could,” Andy agreed.
He hadn’t taken off his clothes for years now. But they were removed easily enough, it was just a matter of tugging them away with a bit of no-nonsense force. Miriam’s clothes were another matter, they seemed to have been glued down, or worse—Andy wondered as they tried to peel them off whether some of the skin had grown over the clothes, or the clothes had evolved into skin, or vice versa—either way they weren’t budging. It took half an hour to get most of the layers off, but there were patches of blouse and stocking that they couldn’t prise away even with a chisel.
They stood there—he, naked, she, as naked as they could manage without applying some of the stronger solvents.
“You go first,” she said, and he thought he could take the responsibility of that—but then, as he came towards her, he stopped short, he couldn’t recall what on earth he was supposed to do. He looked at her, right at her egg face, and she was smiling bravely, but there were no clues offered in that smile, and he looked downwards, and it seemed to him that both of her breasts were like eggs too, perched side by side on top of a rounded belly that was also like an egg—her whole hairless body was like a whole stack of eggs inexpertly stitched together, God, he was looking at an entire omelette! And though she wasn’t beautiful, it was nevertheless naked flesh, and it was vaguely female in shape, and his prick twitched in memory of it, in some memory that it ought to be doing something.
“I do love you,” he said. “I love you too,” she replied. And they approached the other. And they reached out their hands. And their fingers danced gently on each other’s fingers. And he stroked his head against her chest. And she bit awkwardly at his nose. And they bounced their stomachs off each other—once, twice, three times!—boing!—and that third bounce was really pretty frenzied. Then they held each other. They both remembered that part.
The next time she came to visit him in his studio they had both completely forgotten they’d once tried sex. And perhaps that was a blessing. Andy was absorbed in an entirely new Huguenot corpse, and she seemed to have grown new clothes. But she remembered her name was Miriam now, and so did he; they clung on to that, together, at least.
1574:
In February the so-called Fifth War of Religion breaks out in France between the Catholics and the Huguenots; the Fourth War had only ended six months previously. War Number Four didn’t, as you might gather, end very conclusively. The Huguenots were given the freedom to worship—but only within three towns in the whole country, and only within their own homes, and marriages could be celebrated but only by aristocrats before an assembly limited to ten people outside their own family. King Charles IX dies shortly afterwards. He was the man responsible for the slaughter of thousands of Huguenots in the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. Reports say that he actually died sweating blood; he is said to have turned to his nurse in his last moments and said, “So much blood around me! Is this all the blood I have shed?”
And then
In May Selim II, sultan of the Ottoman Empire, dies. Named by his loving subjects as Selim the Drunkard, or Selim the Sot, he dies inebriated, clumsily slipping on the wet floor of his harem and falling into the bath. His corpse is kept in ice for twelve days to conceal the fact he’s dead and to safeguard the throne until his chosen heir, his son Murad, can reach Istanbul and take power. On arrival Murad is proclaimed the new sultan, and there is much rejoicing, and hope (as ever) for a new age of enlightenment; that night he has all five of his younger brothers strangled in a somewhat overemphatic attempt to dissuade them from challenging his new authority.
And then
In November the Spanish sailor Juan Fernandez discovers a hitherto unknown archipelago. Sailing between Peru and Valparaiso, and quite by chance deviating from his planned route, Fernandez stumbles across a series of islands, no more than seventy square miles in total area. Fernandez looks about him. There are bits of greenery on them. They’re a bit volcanic. They’re not much cop. He names them after himself, and you can only wonder whether that’s an act of grandeur or of self-effacing irony. For the next few centuries they serve as a hideout for pirates; then the tables are turned and they make for an especially unattractive new penal colony.
And then
Andy’s hair fell out. It had been a slow process at first. For weeks he’d had to keep pickin
g out stray strands from the solvent, he kept accidentally rubbing them into the picture—Juan Fernandez’ beard seemed to grow ever bushier, Charles IX died sweating not just blood but fur. And then, one day, it poured out all at once, in thick heavy clumps that rained down on his shoulders—and Andy was fascinated at the amount of it, it seemed he wasn’t just losing the hair he already had but all the potential hair he could ever have had, the follicles were squeezing the hair out in triple quick time, as if his skull had contained nothing but a whole big ball of the stuff just waiting to be set freed. The hairs would bristle out towards the light, thousands of little worms making for the surface, now covering his scalp and chin, now turning his head into a deep plush furry mat—and then, just as soon as the hairs seemed so full and thick and alive they’d die, they’d all die, they’d jump off his head like so many lemmings jumping off cliffs—and Andy couldn’t help feel a little hurt that all this hair had been born, had looked about, and had been so unimpressed by the shape and texture of the face that was to be their new home they’d chosen to commit mass suicide instead.
And then
The hair stopped falling, there was simply no hair left to fall. And then—Andy had to sweep it all up; it took him quite a while, there was an awful lot of it, and he resented the time he spent on doing that, this was work time, this was 1574 time. And then and then and then—he forgot he had ever had hair at all, he had no thoughts of hair, his head was an egg and it felt good and proper as an egg, 1574 was all he could think of now, 1574 was all there was, 1574 ran through him and over him and that’s what filled his skull now and all that was ever meant to, Huguenots, drunken sultans, the flora and fauna of the Juan Fernandez Islands, 1574 for life, 1574 forever.
And then:
And then sometimes she would visit him and he’d have forgotten who she was, and sometimes he would visit her and she’d have forgotten who he was. But most times they remembered, and the memory came on them like a welcome rush. And they might even celebrate; they’d put their work aside, they’d get into the clapped out old elevator, pull the grille doors to, and ascend to the main gallery itself. And they’d walk through the exhibits on display, they’d turn the lights down low so it was more intimate, low enough that they had to see the art properly they’d have to squint a bit, as if even for just a little while it wasn’t the most important thing in the room; they’d walk through the centuries together, but not be overwhelmed by the centuries, they’d walk at such a gentle pace too, they were in no rush, they had all the time in the world; they’d walk hand in hand. And Andy thought they must look such a funny pair, really. Almost identical, really, bald and white and plain—she just a little shorter than him, he a little more flat chested than her. They must have looked funny, yes, but who was there to see? (Who was there to tell?)
He didn’t like it when he forgot her. So he wrote down on a piece of paper a reminder, so that whenever he felt lost or confused he could look at it and find new purpose. “Miriam,” he wrote. “She’s your boss. Works with you here at the gallery. Very good with the varnish. Works too hard, takes herself too seriously, not much of a sense of humor, but you know how to make her smile, just give it time. Not pretty, she looks like she’s been newly laid from a hen’s backside, but that doesn’t matter, she’s your friend. She’s the only one that knows you, even when she doesn’t know herself.”
One day Miriam came to find Andy, and he remembered who she was clearly, he remembered her at a glance without the aid of memo. And he smiled and he got up and took her by the hand, and she said, “No, not today, Andy, this is business.” And she looked sad, and maybe a little frightened, and the bits of her face where she’d once had eyebrows seemed to bristle in spite of themselves.
She’d received a missive from the Curator. It had come in an envelope, bulging fat. She hadn’t yet opened it.
“I don’t see what’s to worry about necessarily,” said Andy. “Isn’t it good that he’s taking an interest?”
“This is only the third missive he’s ever sent me,” said Miriam. “The first one was to appoint me to this gallery, the second one was to appoint you to me. He doesn’t care what we get up to here.” She handed him the envelope. “This is bad. You read it.”
But it didn’t seem so bad, not at first. The Curator was very charming. He apologized profusely for giving Miriam and Andy so little attention. He’d been up to his eyes, there was so much to do, a whole universe of things under his thumb, and regretfully the arts just weren’t one of his main priorities. But he was going to change all that; he was quite certain that Miriam and Andy had been working so very hard, and he was proud of them, and grateful, and he’d be popping into the gallery any time now to inspect what they’d been up to. No need to worry about it, no need for this to be of any especial concern—no need for them to know either when his visit might be. Remember, it was all very informal; remember, he’d rather surprise them unawares; remember, remember—he had eyes and ears everywhere.
That he referred to them both as Miriam and Andy was a cause for some concern.
And he finished by adding a request. A very little request, attached as a P.S.
The Curator said there were two ways of looking at history. One, that it was all just random chance, there was no rhyme or reason to any of it. People lived, people died. Stuff happened in between. This seemed to the Curator rather a cynical interpretation of history, and not a little atheist, didn’t Miriam and Andy agree? The second was that there was a destiny to it all, an end resolution that had been determined from the beginning. The story of the world was like the story in a book, all the separate years just chapters building up to an inevitable climax—meaningless if read on their own, and rather unfulfilling too. The entire span of world history only made sense if it was considered within a context offered by that climax—and what a climax it’d been! 2038 really was the Curator’s absolute favorite, he had such great memories of it, really, he’d think back on it sometimes and just get lost in the daydream, it was great.
And that’s why the Curator wanted to see, in all the years preceding, some hint of the end year to come. He didn’t want them to interfere with the art they’d been conserving—no—but, if within that art they saw some little premonition of it, then that’d be good, wouldn’t it? Maybe they could emphasize his final triumph, they could pick out all the subtle suggestions throughout all time of his ineffable victory and highlight them somehow. The value of art, the Curator said, is that it reflects the world. What value then would any of these years have if they did not reflect their apotheosis? Their preservation would be worthless; no, worse, a lie; no, worse, treason itself. History had to have a pattern. And up to now Miriam and Andy had been working to conceal that pattern—with diligence, he knew, and hard labor, and love, he could see there’d been lots of love. All that had to stop, right now.
And if they couldn’t find any premonitions to highlight, maybe they could just draw some in themselves from scratch?
Miriam said softly, “It goes against everything I’ve ever done here.”
Andy said nothing for a long while. He took her hand. She let him. He squeezed it. She squeezed it back. “But,” he then said, and she stopped squeezing, “but if it’s what the Curator wants,” and her hand went limp, “and since he owns all this art, really...”, and she took her hand away altogether.
“It’s vandalism,” she said. “I can’t do it, and I don’t care if it’s treason to refuse. You... you, Aidan, whatever your name is... you do what you like.”
She left him.
He studied 1574. He looked at it all over. He knew it so well, but it was like seeing it with fresh eyes, now he was trying to find a part of it to sacrifice. He took out a pen. An ordinary modern biro, something that future conservationists could tell was wrong at a glance, something that wouldn’t stain the patina or bleed into the oils underneath. Andy wasn’t much of an artist, and so the demon he drew over the battle of Mookerheyde was little more than a stick figure. It lo
oked stupid hovering there so fake above the soldiers and the bloodshed. He didn’t even know what a demon looked like, he’d never seen one, he’d imagined that Hell would have been full of the things but they’d always kept to themselves—and so his drawing of a demon was really just the first thing that came to mind. He gave it a little pitchfork. And fangs. And a smiley face.
He wondered if this would be enough to satisfy the Curator, and thought he better not chance it. He drew a second demon over Juan Fernandez discovering his islands. The pitchfork was more pointy, the smile more of a leer.
He went to find Miriam. She was crying. He was crying too. And that’s why she forgave him.
“I don’t want you taken from me,” he said, and he held her. “Please.”
“I’m sorry. It’s a betrayal. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“Then I’ll do it. Let me do all the betraying. I’ll betray enough for both of us.”
And they would walk the gallery again, hand in hand through the centuries. But this time, as they reached the end of a picture, Miriam would stop, she’d turn away, she’d close her eyes. And Andy would get out his pen, sometimes just a biro, sometimes a sharpie if the year was robust enough to take it, and he’d draw in a demon or two. And Andy was surprised at how much easier it got, these acts of desecration; and his demons were bigger and more confident, sometimes they fitted in to the action superbly, sometimes (he thought secretly) they even improved it. He desecrated 1415, he desecrated 1963, he desecrated each and every one of the years representing the First World War. And it seemed to Andy that he was beginning to see the Curator’s point; he’d see there was something foreboding about these years, maybe there was something in the design of them all that forecast the apocalypse.
But she wouldn’t let him touch 1660. “It’s mine,” she said.
One night they reached the 1782 room. The Americans were in the throes of revolution, the French were chuntering on towards theirs. Andy thought 1782 had great potential, there were plenty of places where a demon or two would fit the bill. Miriam stood up close to the year. She reached out. She stroked it. When she pulled her hand away, Andy could see that her fingers had been brushing the image of a man in a top hat. His eyes were the more gorgeous blue, and around his mouth played the hint of a flirtatious smile.