Handsome Devil: Stories of Sin and Seduction

  “He commenced chanting—nonsense, syllables that made no words but which calmed him, drawing his unease and horror and venery into balance. Meanwhile, the uncanny battle raged on. The ekeksengek was stronger, the nurursengnur more crafty. At last, after a month’s worth of nights had passed, the Oily Man prevailed. He gaped open his mouth and consumed the Oily Woman entire. Uttering a great belch, triumphant ekeksengek turned toward the youth he desired.

  “After a month’s starvation, the young man was skeletal, dry, grey—no longer desirable. Horrifying. The Oily Man belched again, in dismay, and the Kandadal discovered and uttered the final syllable which made him Kandadal. He opened his eyes wide.

  “You are one, he said to the Oily Man, and bound—one, and free. Rising carefully to his feet, he offered a deep obeisance.

  “The ekeksengek’s mouth opened again, as if in surprise, but it was not surprise for his mouth continued to gape, wider and wider, though he clamped strong hands to his jaw to prevent it. It was not long before his lips split back over the crown of his skull. Like a serpent’s sloughing skin, the Oily Man’s flesh disgorged a different being, a person as bright and beautiful as the crescent moon, glistening with fragrant oils.

  “The Kandadal opened his hands. When he lifted them, the new being rose from the ruin of the ekeksengek’s flesh, floating into the air. You are bound, the Kandadal said. Go, until you are called and made use of. The new ekeksengek, which was not truly man nor woman until commanded but surely oily, vanished.

  “You are free, said the Kandadal. Rise. He closed and lowered his hands.

  “The heap of discarded bone and skin and raw organs and meat at his feet stirred. Over long, slow breaths it organized itself, until at last it rose to its feet, clumsy and uncertain, not quite ugly, not quite beautiful, entirely human. Who am I? it asked, touching its mouth in wonder at its own voice.

  “Yourself, said the Kandadal, and embraced the creature.”

  My pipe had gone out. I did not understand the ladyboy’s story. She turned away from the gardens below and beyond the verandah. She was no more than a dark shadow impressed against shadows less dark, but I was aware her hands had moved to the tucks and pleats of fabric at her waist. Undone, the sarong crumpled down her legs.

  I could not make out her nakedness: whether she was young man or young woman, one masquerading as the other, or both, or neither. “Go to your bed,” the ladyboy said. “Perhaps the ekeksengek will return.”

  He did not. I believe he did not. I slept heavily, deep into the afternoon, troubled by thoughts but not dreams. When I woke again, the smell of my raw self polluted with sweats and oils and emissions and fragrances revolted me. I took myself to the sunken baths. The basil tungs soap had not been stolen from its hiding place. I bathed, I bathed, I sluiced and rinsed my skin, and then I returned to my bungalow, where I found Mefao folding my rich Trebter garments and other belongings into the cedar chest. “You are summoned,” she said, “to attend the queen on the Jade Stool in Defre-ua-Bodo.”

  I was not granted time to speak to my sister—of course I did not see the ladyboy or her Kevveller commander before being ushered out of the subcontinental canton, onto a sampan that bore me down the canal to the anchorage. Here I was taken aboard a lateen-rigged Avengi coaster. Here Mefao bade me farewell.

  “I am sent unaccompanied?” I had not believed I could be made more bewildered. “Who will speak for me—to me?”

  Clambering back into the waiting sampan, Mefao offered no reply I heard. The queen’s eunuch smiled unpleasantly. I turned away, saying to myself, Perhaps I am being abducted, or perhaps he is incapable of smiling pleasantly. A smaller boat towed the coaster into the channel and the sails were raised.

  My chest and I were deposited in a cabin smaller than the one in which I crossed the oceans from Trebt but more comfortable. A sailor brought me sealed flasks of arrack. Before I drunkened myself, I rooted through the chest. Finding the ironwood casket readily enough, I carried it to the bench below the cabin’s open window. I turned the small key in the casket’s lock. The fresh tungs odor of basil rose as I opened the lid.

  They had taken my diptych—my portable chapel, my book of devotions—my memorial to lost, to never known, to impossible love.

  They. I could not comprehend who they could be, how they could be so cruel, so clever. How they could know. The brick of basil-oil soap sat atop the futile contract of affrèrement. Its seeping fats and oils discolored the paper, made it translucent. One bread, one salt. From the window swept in brackish salt as the estuary met the sea, but the new odor could not dismiss the basil. One meat, one wine. I wrenched the seal from an arrack flask, drank, swallowed, coughed. One purse, one life until death, alone.

  There was nothing for it but to drink, since I had been provided drink.

  Sitting at the open window, I drank and smoked my pipe and watched as the vessel sailed away from Folau. When we passed Ekada-fo, the quarantine isle, I noted the Sjolussene roundships at anchor, ashore the stone warehouse, the bungalows much like those of the canton, and wondered about the fate of the beautiful woman I had met at my sister’s banquet. Would her masters treat her as cruelly for not being chosen by the queen’s eunuch as unknown persons treated me? Maudlin, I smoked, I drank, I recalled my earlier thought and imagined I had not been selected for the queen’s delectation but the eunuch’s, I was abducted and the Sjolussene beauty even now travelled toward Defre.

  Past Ekada-fo, the boat embarked upon the sea, threading north and east along the cliffy, islanded coast. At some point I was brought food, some of which I ate. At night when the light of the crescent moon glimmered a path across the waters, the Oily Man came to me again.

  In my disconsolation, the ekeksengek’s consolation made me choose to live again. I cannot explain it—it was animal passion only, not love, not affection, not love. When I became aware he had left me, I kindled a small fire in the gimballed brass bowl mounted to the wall and burned the vain contract of affrèrement. The oils from the soap made it flare up fast. The gold ink of the vow sparked and popped like black powder.

  The Oily Man returned the next night. And the next.

  In daylight, I was treated absently but well. Being upon the sea did not sicken me. The door of my cabin possessed no lock—I was not prevented from venturing abovedecks where nobody spoke my language. The handsome, wiry sailors with their sarongs hitched up over their thighs laughed when I made to speak one garbled word or another of their tongue—laughed again when the sun’s heat encouraged me to kirtle my own sarong high like theirs. The eunuch kept to his cabin, if he was actually aboard. The food was rough and ready, highly spiced, satisfying. There was no end to the arrack.

  The fourth day of my voyage, perhaps the fifth, the warm winds became fitful, the sailors agitated. The captain (I believed he was captain) bellowed orders. Hastily, the sails were brought down and I saw a vast tumble of black and brown cloud looming out to sea.

  I could not aid the crew’s efforts, I could not speak or be spoken to, so I retreated to my cabin and dogged the wooden shutters closed, trapping the heady perfume of tuberose that rose from my bed, my skin. Waves whose fury I could scarcely imagine smashed against the bulkheads like mighty fists or mallets striking a brass gong. I made myself nearly stupefied with drink before the storm-troubled thrashing of the boat could make me ill. A great crash echoed over the roar of the winds and pounding seas, my bed threw me to the deck, a flood of cool salt water sluiced me down. I cried out as I was overwhelmed. I forgot.

  I believed the ekeksengek pulled me from the sea. He was strong and careful, glistening as if with oil. The salt of the ocean would have overpowered his fragrance.

  I slept—if it was sleep—woke, slept, woke, slept again. He held me in his arms, tender and kind.

  My throat was raw, salted, my lungs heavy and chilled. I must have knocked my head before the boat broke up around me, if that is what it did. My vision was perturbed, uncertain. In the few pleasant days that I per
ambulated about the deck nearly naked, my pale Trebter skin had burned and blistered, though I kept myself too drunk to know it. My gentle rescuer did not permit me to rise from his bed for how many days I could not count. He swabbed my ruined skin with oils and unguents, none of which smelled of tuberose. He trickled slippery decoctions of oil, honey, balms, and something like wine down my throat. He never spoke, but only held me close so that I could hear the voice of his beating heart.

  Then he lifted me up and supported me to a light-filled absence that must be an open doorway. Close at hand I could make no sense of anything I attempted to view, least of all my comforter, but through the door I discovered I could understand distant vistas.

  We stood high upon a clifftop. Far away across a deep blue-green strait scalloped with light reared another rough cliff, crowned with vividly leafed and blossomed forest. My companion turned me to one side, and I saw another high cliff across another strait. This, though, was an island thrust up from the sea, narrow but impossibly tall. Upon a ledge near the forested crest, I saw what seemed to be a small dwelling hacked out of stone and wood. About the sheer edges of the ledge were planted slender staves, and from their tops fluttered bouquets of ribbons in many colors, torn and tossed by unceasing winds.

  My hand was placed upon a warm wooden cylinder of just the girth to close my fingers about. When I peered up its great length, I made out the thrashing tangle of colored ribbons. Then my silent protector led me again within doors, tended my ills. After some days or weeks when, though I could not yet see clearly, I was much mended, he began to teach me again the ekeksengek’s lessons. By now I had understood he was merely a man like myself.

  We do not speak often. If he has a personal name, my companion, I have never learned it, nor has he ever inquired mine. I have learned a great deal else over these days and months and years, however.

  I know the Kandadal’s eleven precepts. That is, I know the words that represent them—well enough that I have translated them into the language of my youth and written them down. Nobody will ever read the manuscript but myself. I know the words. Their meanings I sometimes comprehend.

  I know the eleven colors of the Kandadal’s ribbons and which roots, barks, or flowers that grow on our island can make dyes of three of those colors. The others we acquire from generous men and women of the mainland. I know the technique of weaving the white ribbons we dye—planting and tending the vegetable-wool, carding the wool free of its seeds, spinning it into thread. We use a very narrow loom suitable only for ribbons, for the Kandadal understood no reason people should not be naked if they were not cold.

  I know how to gather foodstuffs in the forest, on the rocky shore and the ledges of the cliffs. I have learned to sail our small boat and gather fishes from the sea.

  I know the number of tall, spiring islands in our archipelago: one hundred seventy-three. I do not know whether the number is significant. Eighty-seven house persons like ourselves, nameless if not solitary.

  I know how to be silent. I know how to be still. I know how to be grateful. I know how to be alone, although I do not prefer it. Nor does my companion.

  I know many, not all—one day I will know all—of the recorded stories of the Kandadal’s life and career. In no chronicle or scripture nor my companion’s memory have I discovered the tale the ladyboy told me.

  I know how to forget the ekeksengek and all my youth and all my family. And Rosecq. At last I choose not to.

  I know. I know. I know. To be. To be. To be. To love.

  Dirty

  Stephen Pope

  I can still hear them. The wind isn’t blowing hard enough to make the corn really rustle, so I can still hear the sounds that they make, squealing and grunting.

  That morning I had tucked Victoria Lee into my purse, wrapping her in a white handkerchief to keep her from getting scratched, so she could keep me company. She’s a tall, smart woman who’s been abandoned in a huge, dark forest where the trees are so huge, they really do look like giant corn stalks. She’s not scared, though. She’s brave and she knows how to take care of herself.

  It’s all dirt back here, but that’s okay. I stay on my feet, crouching down, so I won’t get my knees dirty.

  A big, black beetle comes down the row, walking on a half-dozen legs that look like shiny black sticks. Victoria Lee walks up it, and the beetle clicks at her. She clicks her tongue right back at it, asking the way out of the dark forest. It’s not easy to understand beetle-clicking, but she learns that if she follows this row, she’ll find a cave. If she can sing a pretty enough song, the giant frog who lives inside the cave will come out and show her the way out of the forest.

  “Becky!”

  Before Victoria Lee sets off to find the cave, she takes a moment to really look at the forest, at all the giant trees in neat, straight rows, growing tall enough for you to look down through the clouds at the whole world, if you were brave enough to climb to the top.

  “Becky!”

  It’s a beautiful day. All Victoria Lee can hear is the wind.

  I ride in the back. Our car is an old one, with one big, wide seat up front and one in the back, and Mom asks me if I want to ride up in the front next to her. I remind her, again, that I’m twelve, and at my age it’s safer for me to ride in the middle of the back seat with my seat belt buckled.

  I’m glad they have the windows open. That way all I can smell is the dust and the corn as the air blows through the car. They stink, Mom and Ray both. They stink of dirt and of sweat, and of what they were doing while I was imagining with Victoria Lee. The inside of the car stinks too, but only of dirt and old, greasy food. They didn’t climb on top of each other in the car. They went behind the old barn, with a blanket that they keep in the trunk. That’s where they always go when we take this road and Ray suggests we stop and walk for a bit. I walk far enough away where I don’t have to hear them, and they make noises like pigs.

  I used to ride in the front seat, sitting next to Mom and talking to her. We would take our lunch into Union, and eat it in the park by the lake. Then we would go to the library or the museum and look at all the same old paintings and statues that we had seen a dozen times before. Anytime that any of the other girls in school say they did something with their mother, I listen to the way they say it. They never sound like they had the same kind of fun that Mom and I did. Then Ray came.

  He’s not my father. My father was someone Mom knew once, a long time ago. He told her that he loved her, and she believed him. I’ve never seen him. He probably left her so he could have sex with someone else.

  When we get back to the house, Ray carries everything in himself. He even holds the side door open for Mom and me. As I pass, I can smell her on him.

  Our house is like an old, giant castle, and Mom says that our family has owned it ever since it was built, after the Civil War. The bottom step at the front door is raised up so people could step out of carriages onto it, the rooms on the bottom floor all open up into each other, and it’s the only house, or anything else, for miles and miles along the highway. All the doors have little brass plates with numbers on them, and there’s a cupboard in the kitchen where you can blow into different tubes and then talk to almost any room in the house. It has three stories, an attic, and a cellar. There are thirty-five rooms, counting the attic but not the cellar, because it’s just a dark, dirty hole. It used to be a manor house, a long time ago, back when our family owned the land all along the road that became the highway. Now it’s a big, empty place with funny smells and old pictures.

  Mom and I used to live all by ourselves. She worked at a day-care center in Union and sometimes she would rent a room to people passing through. There was never more than one or two of them in the house at a time, though, because the highway isn’t used very much anymore and we’re so far away from town. We didn’t have much money for new clothes and other things, but we never went hungry and we always used to have fun making up our own stories and games, and playing dress-up with all the ol
d things that are all over the house. On school days, the bus would drop me off and I would make dinner on the old gas stove. When it was ready, I would set it on a tray in the living room so Mom could sit on the couch, take off her shoes, and enjoy it as soon as she got home. I always knew that she was driving up to the house by the way that the gravel crunched under the tires of the car, and could tell that it was her and not someone else by the squeaking of the loose boards in the porch. If she fell asleep watching TV on the couch, I would turn it off and put a blanket over her, then go get her alarm clock from her bedroom and put it on the little table by the couch so that she wouldn’t be late for work. Whenever we were bored, we would go up the last set of stairs and into the attic, which is as big as the whole top story. We could bring some iced tea and open all the windows that weren’t stuck to let air and light in, and explore all the old chests and boxes and wardrobes. Mom once said that she used to explore it with her mommy too, and that she still hasn’t looked in half of them. I got all of my really pretty dresses from up there, and I don’t care that they look different than dresses made today.

  Now Ray is here and there’s always banging and sawing going on somewhere in the house. Mom laughs so hard that it hurts my ears, and she and Ray go to bed early and wake up late. He just showed up one day, walking along the road with an old backpack on his shoulder and patches on the knees of his blue jeans. I remember seeing him walking up by the highway and wondering how far he had walked, because he wasn’t coming from Union but from the other way. When Mom noticed him, she said, “How strange.” He walked right up to the little gate by the road where our mailbox is, and he smiled when he saw we were looking at him. He said good afternoon, and he asked Mom if she had any rooms for rent. Mom laughed, the pretty way that she used to, and he laughed too, and asked what was funny. She wasn’t mean about it, but she pointed to the sign that was right next to him. Then he smiled the kind of smile that a dumb person uses to make himself look smart, and said that he couldn’t read. He said that he was a carpenter, and that he didn’t have much money, but that if he could stay for a couple of days then he could fix all the cracked boards in the porch. Mom said she couldn’t rent a room to someone who looked like a boy running away from home, and he called her a goober, saying he was on his way back home. He talked funny, and I think Mom thought he was pretending, but he’s been here six months now, and that’s really how he talks.