by John Crowley
He brought her a beer, and then another, the homely brown bottles assorting ill with her spangled blackness, loosening her tongue and her spirit.
“I’ll tell you something,” he said, because she had asked about your work in her good-girl voice. “I’m not going to finish that book, Rose. I’m done with it.”
“Well in a way that’s good,” she said, and struck a match for the cigarette that she held between her fingers, deb style. “Because actually it was all sort of falsehoods, I mean.” She let smoke issue softly from her mouth. “Didn’t they pay you though? Would you have to give it back?”
“I’ll burn that bridge when I come to it.” He held out his hand to her. “Would you,” he said, “like to dance?”
The band Rosie had hired, the Orphics, were a local bunch that had had a couple of minor hits (“Don’t Turn Back,” “All the Birds and Beasts”); reversing the usual arrangement, the lead singer was a gorgeous and narcissistic male and the rest of the band female. They had been setting up on the stage of the Keep and tuning up for a long time, trying out a pile of strange instruments (electric lute, sackbut, hurdygurdy) and now swung into their signature tune:
Don’t Turn Back
There ain’t no city left to see
Don’t Turn Back
Just go on ahead, say Follow me
Follow where your shadow points and maybe so will he.
Maybe he burned his bridges down, yeah maybe so
Maybe he burned his boats, to go where you wanna go;
But maybe he’s not behind you, and baby if that’s so
You don’t want to know.
[Chorus: Don’t turn back, etc.]
The noise and the thunder of many feet shook the dust from the rafters of the Keep; the music spread out to the courtyards and belvederes and towers, and people joined the dance as though catching it like a medieval plague, and laughing passed it on. There wasn’t a breath of wind to stir the banners or ruffle the pennons of the towers, but the longer the dance went on the more the dancers felt themselves stirred, as though by one of those movie winds that ruffle the clothes and hair of characters to whom something large or romantic or life-changing is about to happen: less a wind though than a free-floating certainty not attached to any consciousness, a wild guess or suggestion seeming to pass from person to person by means of the Orphics or the dance or Rosie Rasmussen moving effectually backwards among them: a sense that the important things have been neglected or have not been noticed, or seen for what they are, which was an odd feeling for people to feel who were just then occupied with being who they were not.
Most of them would just drink and dance it away and not remember it tomorrow; but some of them would get the idea that there was something to be done, something to be looked for or looked out for, and when they woke they would climb into their attics to find perhaps nothing but the unfamiliar long view from the small high windows; or they would pull down their photo albums, lives led in the Faraways, and turn the pages with a sense that some people or events that ought to be there were missing, as though taken out to be saved or stored elsewhere, and others newly inserted in their places; just as old though, the same humpbacked cars and wedding parties on Mount Randa; veils blown in the wind, shy smiles of people now dead, a cigarette in their fingers. What was it I was to remember or foresee, what have I forgotten to recall, from where did I begin that led me here?
When Boney that summer had lain dying, Rosie had found herself sometimes thinking—except that thinking was too definite a word for it, it was something she only caught just as it exited from her head or heart, “gone as soon as it came” and not to be believed—but thinking, anyway, that her little county, which from an early time had been her family’s fiefdom practically, was like a town in a story where everyone lay fast asleep; or rather not fast but restlessly, unwillingly, sleepwalking and murmuring, while some evil power or gang of thieves moved among them unseen, lifting the jewels from their bodies or rifling the safes: to be under a spell, in fact, which it was up to her to break, if she could awaken herself. She hadn’t thought of this when she had decided to have this party, and didn’t think it as she spoke her brief welcome to all of them into the roaring, abashing mike that the lead singer of the Orphics handed to her; but she remembered it as she went among them, the ones Allan had introduced her to, and waved to them and smiled. And to some of them she came and spoke into their ears, shouting over the Orphics’ racket, but what she said was only Listen can I come see you? Can we talk sometime? There’s something I wanted to ask you about, can we set a time? I wonder if you can help me, it’s important for the area, can we talk? And they cupped their hands behind their ears and nodded and took her elbow to ask or hear more.
And she kept thinking as she went among them: if only Sam were here. If only. She had asked Mike, but as soon as he heard the word masked he’d refused, and she wouldn’t beg him. She stood momentarily alone in the busy courtyard. A group of young moms, some she knew, chased or fed their children, and Rosie remembered the solitude she had felt long ago looking at moms, not being one herself. She turned so that her masked and clothed self faced toward the kids, and walked backwards recklessly and blindly toward where she thought they were. She flapped up her hand (encased in a pink rubber household glove, right one on her left hand, the final touch) and waved, listening for their laughter, but instead a silence seemed to gather, and she turned her face to them again.
From out of their midst Sam came. They parted for her, children and grown-ups, though Sam didn’t notice them; she was asleep, maybe asleep, in an old white nightgown with a dreadful stain on it, her feet bare. And Rosie knew that Sam was lost to her: all that Rosie had done and would do was for her sake, and yet Sam in her suffering had never been hers at all, or was, now and forever, more than hers.
No it wasn’t Sam at all, how stupid. A child wholly different, with little angel wings on her back and ice-cream spill down her robe. She stared at Rosie’s backwards front and turned away unmoved.
Rosie, hearing nothing but her heartbeat, felt a touch on her shoulder.
“Beau!”
“Changing direction, Rosie?”
“Facing front, Beau.” She wanted to take him in her arms, safe, but her arms wouldn’t lift that high. “God where have you been?”
“Travelling. Thanks for inviting me.”
“Well hey. How come you didn’t dress up?”
“How come I didn’t?”
“The invitation said. Come as you aren’t.”
Beau, smiling, opened his arms like welcoming Jesus. “Ta daa,” he said.
“Oh you.”
“Where’s Sam?” Beau asked. “She’d like this.”
“Oh Christ,” Rosie said. “Beau. You haven’t heard.”
She had called him and called him, to tell him what had happened; she had wanted to tell him, to ask him what now, and yet had been afraid. As though—like that judge—he held some power of reproach or condemnation over her. Now seeing him she knew it wasn’t so, and with the guests passing around her and the boom and keening feedback of the band sounding in the smoky air she told him.
“Where is she now?” Beau asked.
“With Mike.”
“Where’s Mike?”
“He said he’s between places. I think he’s not living here anymore but he won’t admit it. He said he had to go out to Indiana for some reason.”
Beau had turned away, alarming Rosie by the deep thought in his face, as though he were trying to remember something or envision something.
“What. Beau, what.”
“I think you have to find out where they are,” he said. “And I don’t think you should let him take her out to Indiana.”
“He said only a little while.”
Beau was shaking his head. “Not just for her sake,” he said. “It’s for more than that.”
Rosie felt the breath leave her body, as though she’d fallen from a height and struck earth. She tried to inhale. “
He’s got her medicine,” she said. “He’s. He wouldn’t hurt her.”
“He loves her a lot,” Beau said. “He does. It ought to keep her safe. But the people she’s with. They believe, they really believe that no harm can come to them.”
Rosie thought of Mike: Do you think I’d let harm come to her?
“My lawyer says go easy,” she said. “He said these things take time. He’s trying to get her back. He is.”
Beau nodded, listening. Then he said: “I don’t think you should let him take her out there.” He put his hand on her shoulder, on Boney’s tweed. “I mean are you comfortable with that?”
“No. No.”
“No. I’m not either.” He was smiling again. “I mean you don’t go to Indiana unless you can’t get out of it. Right?”
“But how,” Rosie said.
“We’ll talk,” Beau said. “There’s help. We’ll do what we need to. Let me look and think.” He drew her to him. “You do too,” he said.
She watched him go, hearing her name called from elsewhere, duties to do.
Not just for her sake. She tried to see Sam again, that vision of Sam among the children, but couldn’t summon it, could see in her mind only the other child, a human child, paper wings on her back and tinsel in her hair.
Beau Brachman sat down beside Pierce, out of the way of the Orphics. “So how’s the world-changing coming?” he asked. His hand indicated the revels, the transformed people and magic beasts; he patted Pierce’s woolly head. “Have you been practicing?”
Pierce couldn’t imagine what Beau meant. He stared stupidly. Rose had been swept away by other, more tireless dancers, and his drink was empty.
“Changing the world. You remember we talked. Getting what you need or want. Practicing on dreams.”
Pierce remembered: the night of the big wind, the night—wasn’t it?—where this began. “Aha,” he said. “Yes. You said.”
“Yes.”
In his dreams he had faced them, but he had only fled, or frightened himself awake; or he was an eye and an ear only, not present, not acting; wishing and hoping only. Which was maybe why he was so helpless now. “You know,” he said, “I don’t know if you remember, that night. The night Rose flipped her car.”
“I remember,” Beau said.
“She was in trouble then, real trouble. I didn’t realize how much. I don’t mean with the law. She.” He hesitated, knowing what a dreadful secret he was on the point of revealing; before he could make up his mind to reveal it, he saw that Beau was regarding the floor solemnly; and he knew that Beau already knew, and had known all along.
“Well,” Pierce said. “Anyway. You know she’s a Christian now.”
“The Powerhouse,” Beau said.
“You know them?”
“Oh sure. Some of the people who’ve stayed at the place have gotten in with them. And some people have come to us from them too. To get away.” He smiled. “You know Rose stayed at the house once.”
“She did?”
“A long while ago. It was when she first came from the City. She was pretty confused by what happened to her there. So she stayed with us. A few weeks, I guess.”
“How did she, I mean how did you …”
Beau shrugged. “We met,” he said.
Pierce remembered the first time—the first moment, actually—that he himself had seen Beau: at Spofford’s Full Moon party, by this same Blackbury River a year and a half ago, not ten minutes before he saw Rose for the first time. I don’t belong here, he’d confessed to Beau, Beau with his satyr’s smile, playing on a panpipe to a sleepy child. I’m actually from somewhere else.
He took the mask from his head and put it beside him. Beau neither laughed nor ceased smiling. An awful hope arose in Pierce, that if he dared finally to ask he might be answered.
“Beau,” he said. “What is it? Why have I come into this darkness? What am I doing here? Why has the world turned into this kind of place?”
“What kind of place?”
Pierce lifted his hand and his eyes, to the night sky obscured by the fire’s smoke and the lights; and then to Beau. “I,” he said. “I feel like I’ve somehow uncovered an awful secret evil that pervades the world,” Pierce said. “I feel like it. I don’t think it. Don’t ask me why.”
“Maybe because you have.”
Pierce stared at him, trying to see past his smile, the mask Beau wore. “That night on the road,” Beau said. “When Rose flipped her car. She was running away from the powers.”
“Powers?”
“We all try to. The trouble was she ran from those powers right into the arms of other powers.”
“She says now her power’s from, you know. God.”
“All the powers are the same,” Beau said. “Each inside all the others. Pick one to help you and it will, but don’t think it can save you from the rest.”
“No no Beau, don’t say stuff like that.” He donned his head again. “The worst thing is how it seems to be my fault somehow.” He tried another little laugh. “I mean of course I know it’s not.”
“It’s not,” Beau said. “But that doesn’t mean you’re not supposed to fix it.”
Pierce only stared.
“Oh it’s not just you,” Beau said. “Its the same for everybody. For me too. For everybody. Well except for some guys.”
The music arose overpoweringly for a moment, amid whoops and cries of appreciation. Then Beau said, as though changing the subject: “I bet she’s doing well.”
“Ah, I.”
“You might have noticed—it’s pretty common—that she’s got a lot more beautiful lately.”
He lifted his gaze then, for Rose had come up behind Pierce, flushed and panting, and Pierce leapt up. He saw, behind her black mask, her liquid eyes pass over Beau without recognition—she being who she was not, and he therefore unknown to her; and Beau’s smile didn’t alter.
“Listen, Moffett,” she said. “Aren’t you supposed to be looking out for me?”
“Yes. I am.”
“Well I think I need a coffee. Pretty quick.”
Partly maybe because they are essentially fake, the towers and ramparts of the castle are unexpectedly complicated, stairs and doorways and arches multiplying. Pierce pressed through the crowd of phantasts on his errand, and got around somehow to the less finished service side of the place, or so he imagined. These doors led, he thought, either to the johns or back into the Keep where the food and dancing were; he chose one and opened it.
Yes he was seemingly now in the backstage area, and just as he perceived this, the Orphics ceased, taking a break, and a busy quiet followed, through which the ghosts of their chords flitted. Pierce tried to part the dusty and moth-eaten velvets, like an old mad courtesan’s gown; the head he wore made it hard to see.
“Teasers and tormentors,” said a soft voice near him.
Pierce saw that sitting on a bentwood chair in the dark of the wings was a partygoer, lost or drunk or both. “Come again?” he said.
“The names of stage curtains,” the person said. His voice a delicate and slightly affected whine. A generous drink in his hand. “Teasers are those. Tormentors are those. They keep the audience from peeking backstage. Destroying the illusion.”
“I was looking for coffee,” Pierce said. “I think it’s best to go back.”
“Oh no, no. Always best to go straight on.”
“Ha ha,” said Pierce. Masks always make us oracular. The one this fellow wore was a realistic human face, a pleasant tired older fellow with crinkly eyes and a shock of molded white rubber hair. Pierce supposed he ought to know the face, politician or movie star or.
“It’s a pretty little theater,” the mask said. “I always thought it could be used for something.”
“Sure.” Pierce raised his eyes to the darkness of the flies.
“Once I tried to produce Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus here. A huge flop. We got almost to dress rehearsals.”
“It’s a hard one,” Pie
rce said.
“Lucky,” the fellow said. “‘Faustus,’ I mean. It means lucky in Latin.”
“So it does.” He hadn’t thought of that. He supposed Marlowe had.
“I came to believe,” the man said, and crossed his legs, ready for a chat, “that Marlowe must have been an awful shit.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. I think of him as a totally amoral person who liked to arouse people, just because he knew he could. Get them to riot and go on rampages. His plays did, you know. Against Jews. Catholics. Whomever he could turn a crowd against.”
“Magicians.”
“Oh yes. Poor old Doctor Dee. And I don’t think for a minute he cared anything about the Devil or God’s justice. He was like a punk rock star today, with a swastika tattooed on his forehead, getting kids to go mad and commit suicide.” He lifted his drink to his mouth, and drank, or pretended to. “A genius, though. Unlike your rockers. There’s the difference.”
Who was that mask? Pierce knew he had seen the face it was modelled on, in some special context; the boyish snub nose, the hair that had once been sandy. “What happened?” he asked. “To your production?”
The man sighed hugely, and for a long moment looked around himself, the expression on his false face altering as the light took it differently. Then he said:
“Well I’ve failed. I failed. Yes I think that’s evident now.” He said this with what seemed great anguish. “The conception was just too huge, the parts too many. No matter how long it was let to go on, it got no closer to being done.”