(1993) Arc d'X

by Steve Erickson

  he might see her in the city’s voggy unlit streets, where the only sounds were the engines of cop cars and passing buses and the clanking of deserted trolleys. He thought he might hear her whisper in the Market where the vendors waited motionless and mute behind food stands and clothes racks that buyers selected from in silence. He thought the ragged peddlers who slept with their wagons in the back alleys and hobbled to him out of the sooty magenta dusk might sell him an answer from their pile of lamps and rags and dishes and candles, or trade one for something of value. Several hours a day for several weeks he wandered the city with the graffiti of the church peering at him from the city walls through the Vog and shouting in his head amidst his own voices of subversion and disarray. When he returned to the unit at night he told Tedi he’d been working late, in the manner of adulterers who lie about affairs. They fought about sex. He slept in the outer room and held in his dreams the woman who had come looking for Madison Hemings. He didn’t drink.

  He used the channels available to him, sending to police headquarters an official Primacy request for a file on Hemings. When it came back he was only mildly surprised to see that her name was Sally. The cop who brought the file said, “A lot of activity on this one lately.”

  Two days later in the white afternoon glare of her circle on the edge of the outlaw zone Redemption, Etcher stood in the shadow of the obelisk. He waited a long time before walking up to knock on the door. It opened before he reached it. The man in the doorway was several inches taller than Etcher, several years younger.

  He had long dark hair and wore a T-shirt. Clutching one of his hands was the little girl Etcher had seen in the archives several weeks before.

  “Excuse me,” Etcher said, “I—” and he stopped, not knowing what to say. All the way across town on the bus he’d tried to figure out what he was going to tell her; the sudden appearance of her husband only distracted him more. “I was wondering if I could speak to Mrs. Hurley,” he said.

  Hurley raised his thumb and pointed over his shoulder. “Come on, Polly,” he said to the little girl, and they walked across the circle beyond one of the other units. Sally came into the doorway where her husband had been. She wore a plain dress, the earth A R C D’X • 122

  and ash and blood tones of which, in the sun behind Etcher, weren’t unlike the color of her skin. Her hair was loose. She was even more startled now by the sight of Etcher than she’d been in the archives. Etcher took off his glasses, rendering her a blur.

  “Come in,” she said. Etcher stumbled into the unit and immediately ran into a table. “Are you all right?” she asked. He groped for a place to sit and she led him to a couch.

  “My name’s Etcher,” he finally said. “I work at Central. A few weeks ago you came to get some information.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “I didn’t mean to be rude,” he said. “But there was a priest in the lobby, and the archives aren’t open to the public. I didn’t want you to get in trouble.”

  She said, “How did you find me?”

  “Well, some things aren’t so difficult when you work for the Church.” He didn’t know what to tell her and he wasn’t sure why he was here. He didn’t know whether to tell her about the entry in the volume he’d taken from the archives. Thinking about this on the couch he put his glasses back on instinctively, which he always did when he was confused, when, for instance, he couldn’t hear what someone was saying. The unit around him was dark, the furniture worn. There was a table on which sat a drawer full of beads and trinkets and small silver chains, a pair of pliers and the finished results of some necklaces and earrings. Otherwise the room had been overrun by little stuffed bears and tigers and sto-rybooks and puzzles with missing pieces; there was a small wooden train that went over a small wooden bridge through a small wooden tunnel. The walls of the unit were barren except for pictures drawn with crayons and a crude poster curling at the corners that announced gann / arbo.

  Sally got up from the couch. “Gann always keeps it dark in here,” she said. She pulled open the window curtains and the light blasted her in retaliation; she put her hand in front of her eyes and stepped sideways into the obelisk’s shadow. She returned to the couch and sat down, the obelisk still casting its black denial across the top of her face. It nearly obscured how sad she appeared, sitting beside Etcher on the couch. She looked as though she would break if she learned one more secret, which was why he didn’t tell her about the entry in the book from the archives, or if she suffered STEVE E R I C K S O N • 123

  one more betrayal, which was why the news was on the tip of his tongue. He thought the most tragic thing about her was how her sorrow made her more beautiful. It seemed the worst trick of her beauty, that the chemistry of sorrow would make it so much more luminous. Her touching sweet smile was most lovely as the smile that obviously masked heartbreak; it was when her heartbreak was unmasked, as when the shadow of the obelisk dissipated into a gray twilight pool that poured from her face and flooded the unit, that her beauty somehow defied either the rules or definitions of the earth. Etcher could neither bear to look at her nor bear not to.

  “Well,” he said, “that was what I wanted to tell you.” They sat on the couch a moment in silence and he thought he should get up and leave. He pointed at the drawer of jewelry, the necklaces and earrings. “Did you make these?” he asked.

  “Yes.” She picked up one of the necklaces and held it against her brown neck.

  “It’s nice,” he said. At first he was being polite. But he reached over and touched the necklace; she placed it in his hand. He’d never seen a necklace like this. Strange charms and primitive symbols hung from its links. “Have the police ever searched you during an alert?” he asked, and realized how abrupt the question sounded.

  “I… don’t know,” she said. “It’s hard to be sure. When you’re in the altar room you never know if they’re here or not. No one knows if they even come out to this zone.”

  “This is the kind of thing they would confiscate. You should hide it,” he said.

  “Oh.”

  “Are you from here?” he said, and that sounded abrupt too.

  “No.” The certainty of her answer wavered in the air. “Are you?”

  “I come from a village far away to the north, up in the Ice.”

  She said, “I come from somewhere else too.”

  “Have you been in the city long?”

  “I— Awhile. As long as we’ve been married, anyway. A couple of years, anyway. We married when I became pregnant. Are you married?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have children?”

  A R C D’X • 124

  His mouth was dry. “Yes. May I have something to drink?”

  “OK.” She stood and got him a glass of water and brought it back. She sat down and said, after a moment, “How many?”

  “What?”

  “Children.”

  “None,” he shook his head.

  “Oh,” she said, “I thought you just said you had children.”

  “No, not at all.”

  “I thought you did.”

  “How old is your daughter?”

  “Two.”

  “Did you tell me that before?”

  “I said we got married when I became pregnant.”

  “What’s her name?” he asked, although he knew what her name was.

  “Polly.”

  He drank his water. “I hope I wasn’t interrupting anything. I can go.”

  “Gann was just taking Polly for a walk.”

  “I hope it’s not a problem, my coming here.”

  “No. I’m glad you came.” It immediately sounded to both of them like a strange thing to say. They were moved by it, and uncomfortable. “Have we ever met before?” she asked.

  “At the archives,” he nodded, “about three weeks ago.”

  “Yes, of course,” she laughed. “I mean, did we ever meet before then?”

  “I don’t think so.”

 
“Do you want to have children?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Because we were talking about children.”

  “Tedi wants to have children.”

  “Does that mean you want to have children?”

  “Uh.” He took another drink of water. “I promised.”

  “You promised?”

  “Tedi. My wife.”

  “That you would have children?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because she wants it?”

  “Yes.”

  STEVE E R I C K S O N

  125

  She looked toward the front door. “You should be sure about what you want,” she said resolutely.

  “Maybe you’re never sure what you want,” he said. “When I got married I thought, No one’s ever sure until they do it. If you wait until you’re sure, you never do it.” He realized he had just made his marriage sound less like a capitulation and more like a grand gamble.

  “Are you sure now?”

  “No.”

  “But more sure than you were.”

  “No.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean— Well, it’s strange to be having this conversation.”

  “I should probably go.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “What for?”

  “I think I said the wrong thing.”

  “No. I came by to say I’m sorry about the other day.”

  “We’re both sorry a lot.”

  “Well, let’s agree not to be sorry anymore.”

  “All right,” she laughed.

  The altar alert came on.

  They were both startled by it. “Is it that late?” she said.

  “I forgot about it,” he said. “Most of the time I’m working in the archives and I just hear it in the distance.”

  “I guess all the priests don’t have to run into their little rooms like the rest of us,” she smiled.

  “No,” he agreed. She got up from the couch and walked over to the back wall and opened the altar-room door. “Your husband and child?” he said.

  “Who knows,” she said. She stood in the open doorway. “You can come in if you want.”

  He got up and went over to the room, and she closed the door behind them.

  In the dark he felt, with a lurch, what he thought was a spider’s web brushing his face. But it was a string, which Sally pulled to turn on the light overhead. This altar room was even smaller than most. On the floor against one wall was a mattress. There was a pillow. There was a little pink horse with a saddle and long green A R C D’X • 126

  hair, and children’s books in the corner. There were a couple of other books that didn’t appear the sort Primacy approved; Sally retrieved them quickly as though to hide them from view, though there wasn’t anywhere to hide them. There was also a half-drunk bottle of wine, which she now regarded with mortification. She glanced at Etcher.

  “Let’s drink some wine,” he said.

  “Really?” she said. They sat on the mattress. She handed him the bottle. An altar was in the corner. It was a very unorthodox altar, like the jewelry Etcher had seen in the front room, filled with primitive icons and forbidden fetishes he didn’t recognize. In the center of the altar was a black wooden box with a rose carved on the top. Etcher had been studying the altar awhile when she said,

  “Probably not what the Church has in mind.”

  “It’s not your regulation altar,” Etcher admitted. He took a long drink from the bottle. It was the first drink he’d had in several weeks, and he found very satisfactory all the possibilities that washed into his mind with the wine. He realized he’d been sitting there staring at the altar for some time when he said, “We forgot to hide the jewelry.”

  “It’s just jewelry,” Sally said, somewhat defensively.

  For the first time in a long time, the tide of wine brought the possibilities into Etcher’s mind rather than taking them out. “I’m not the Church,” he said to her.

  “What?”

  He offered her the bottle and she took a drink. “I’m not a priest.

  I don’t care about the books,” he said, nodding at the books she had tried to hide. “I don’t care about the wine. I buy my own from a bootlegger.” He waved it all away. “Don’t care about the altar either,” he said, amazed at what the one drink had done to his head. “Do the cops come out to Redemption?”

  “Every once in a while you hear of someone put on report or taken in. No one seems to know if it’s an official Church zone or not.”

  “That’s because the Church doesn’t know if it’s an official Church zone. According to the Church everything’s theoretically an official Church zone.” Etcher took the bottle back from her.

  “They’re of two minds. The first is that it’s easier to keep things under control if they try to control the zone, and the second is that STEVE ERICKSON • 127

  it’s easier to keep things under control if they leave the zone alone.” He looked at the door. “I gather your husband doesn’t take it too seriously.”

  “The only thing Gann takes seriously is Gann.”

  “Will he be back soon?” Etcher asked, still looking at the door.

  “I don’t know. He may have gone to the theater.”

  “Where’s the theater?”

  “In the Arboretum.”

  “He took your daughter to the Arboretum?” The slush of the wine in his head was settling just enough for him to take another drink. “Is that a good idea?”

  “It’s a good idea if Gann thinks it’s a good idea.” She said, “I don’t mind the searches. I don’t mind the seclusion from everything. Gann never comes in. Sometimes I bring Polly.” She smiled and held up the pink horse with the green hair.

  He said, “I like the box.”

  “What?”

  “The box.” He reached over toward the black wooden box in the altar, then drew back.

  “It’s all right,” she said, handing him the box, “you can look at it.” He held the box and opened it; it was empty. “I haven’t figured out what to put inside.”

  He ran his fingers over the rose carved on top. “It’s very beautiful,” he said. It was voluptuous in its blackness. At that moment he could smell her next to him; he adjusted his glasses. “Where did you get it?”

  “I don’t remember. I thought I had lost it, I thought I’d given it to someone. And then I came home one day and there it was.” She asked, “What’s it like up in the Ice?”

  “I haven’t been in a long time. I had to leave.”

  “Do you have family there?”

  “Yes.”

  “I guess you don’t want to talk about it,” she said.

  “Everything’s white except for the forests, which are dark and go on forever. Everyone’s white, with white skin and white hair, except me. I always had the feeling it was because my hair was black that I couldn’t see, that all the color of my vision rushed up into my hair, which was the flag of my blindness.” He added, “I was in love.”

  A R C D’X • 128

  “I want to live in the Ice someday.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well.”

  “What?”

  “Just…” he shrugged. “Is that where Madison Hemings is?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Actually, I assume Madison Hemings is dead.”

  “Who was he?”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to find out.”

  “But how do you know there was a Madison Hemings?”

  “I inherited some money from him. The postman brought it, like the propaganda newsletter every month, or the tax bill. It’s all gone now.”

  “The money?”

  “It just came in the mail.”

  “But how do you live?”

  “With difficulty.”

  “Does your husband make any money?”

  “No.”

  “But someone must be supporting your daughter.”

 
“I’ve been working on the jewelry. It’s hard when there’s Polly, she’s at that age where she wants attention all the time. She’s just beginning to figure out she isn’t a baby anymore, and she doesn’t like it. It’s easier being a baby. It’s easier being helpless.”

  “But her father.”

  “Her father loves her. I wouldn’t want to give you the impression he doesn’t. He wanted Polly the moment I told him she was inside me.”

  “You can’t make the money and take care of the house and your daughter all at the same time.”

  “It’s hard.”

  “It’s not right,” he said furiously, feeling the wine.

  “I’ve been thinking about trying to get a stall in the Market. Do you know how I do that?”

  “You have to apply to the Church for a license, like getting a unit.”

  “Would I have to go through the police?”

  STEVE E R I C K S O N • 129

  “One way or another the application winds up going through the police.” He said, “Perhaps I could help you.”

  She said, “They think I killed a man.”

  He was less shocked than skeptical, having read the police file.

  “You’d be in jail if they thought that,” he said.

  “Maybe they aren’t sure,” she said.

  “They don’t have to be sure. They can put you in jail because they’re as sure as they are unsure, or as sure as they want to be.

  They can put you in jail because they like the idea. They don’t like the idea or you’d be in jail.”

  “I believe I did it.”

  “What?”

  “I believe I killed him.” She took a drink from the bottle of wine.

  “Why do you think so?” he finally asked, not sure what else to say.

  “I remember doing it. I’m sure I remember. I remember the knife. I know it was mine. I remember holding it in my sleep.”

  “You remember a knife?”

  “Yes.”

  “You remember killing him with a knife?”

  “Yes.”

  “But he wasn’t killed with a knife.”

  For a moment it didn’t register, then she turned to him. “What?”

  “He wasn’t killed with a knife.”

  “How do you know that?” she said.

  “I saw the police file. It’s how I found you. He wasn’t killed with a knife. He was knocked over the head.”