Soul

by Tobsha Learner

  A flicker in the candlelight made him open his eyes again.

  There were no words, just the hunger of their embrace, the lilac scent of Lavinia’s hair and her tongue curling around his own.

  ‘We have no time,’ she murmured as they clutched at each other’s clothes. Catching her hands, now tracing a path from his lips to his groin, he lifted them and held them tightly in front of him.

  ‘I want you to come with me, Lavinia. My brother has sent me money. We can sail together to America; start a new life, the three of us. There, no one cares what your past is; there, everyone begins as equals.’

  She stopped trying to touch him. Aloysius saw how the past weeks had marked themselves across her face in years; her pupils dilated, her eyes dulled.

  ‘There might be a way,’ she whispered, more to herself than to him.

  Sensing some great jeopardy, Aloysius fought the impulse to cross himself.

  Sitting at his desk, the Colonel dipped his pen into the inkpot, then paused, wondering at the sense of destiny that had consumed him since the evening before. Was it the impending ceremony, the thought of reaching a state of mind that transcended the ordinary? Or was it something far more subtle? A hidden fear perhaps? This exhilaration of the nerves reminded him of the sensation of waiting upon a great battle, and it was not entirely an unpleasant phenomenon—at least it woke the spirit. And, at that conclusion, he began to write.

  Dearest boy,

  I hope you will read this when you are of an understanding age and will not judge me too harshly. I pray I shall still be on this earth when you have reached your adulthood and that we may enjoy the pleasures a father and son can, but please, if I am no longer with you, make your own judgements independent of your mother’s opinions. Know that whatever tribulations lie between your mother and I, I have always loved you.

  Yours in loving kindness,

  Your father

  Colonel James E. Huntington

  Lavinia had dressed in a mauve evening gown, the garment she had worn the morning after their wedding night. She stepped into the Colonel’s bedroom searching for a clothes brush. It was an innocent intrusion and she expected her husband to be at his dresser.

  Instead, the bedroom was empty, the hearth still glowing. A pile of folded letters sat on the polished rosewood desk, tied with a ribbon. Unable to contain her curiosity, Lavinia pulled one out and read the first two lines: Dearest boy, I cannot describe the desolation I feel when I am apart from you…

  Lavinia didn’t need to read any further; she assumed they were her husband’s correspondence with Hamish Campbell. Possessed by a furious impulse, she threw the pile into the fire, where they were quickly consumed.

  The Colonel knelt in front of the hearth, the firelight throwing gold and red stripes across his face. An oval mirror stood propped against the wall. His reflection stared back from the smoky glass: the jowled pallid face of a middleaged man, eyes tentative but intrigued.

  This is my other self, he thought, the wood hard under his knees, my spirit brother in a mystical world where right is left, where the laws of physics are distorted.

  The study had been transformed into a mysterious cavern. The servants had lighted several dozen candles, which now shone from every shelf and alcove. The masks hanging from the ceiling formed a critical audience of celestial beings; the candlelight transformed their spiralling tassels of coconut fibre into hangman’s nooses, their protruding wooden lips into screams. Painted wooden shields and spears around the walls seemed to dart between the curious shadows in the labyrinth of light created by the smouldering tapers.

  The Colonel pulled off the thin cotton smock, letting it fall to the ground. My nakedness will be a metaphor; all that defines me is now stripped away. I am Adam, the first man. The corpulent white male stared back at him defiantly. Was he this being? He touched the cold mirror in genuine wonder. How had he become so old, so heavy in his flesh? He recalled his younger self, beautiful even to himself.

  ‘The ochre.’ He reached out with a flourish, his movements already taking on a ceremonial gravity, his nudity giving him a vulnerable dignity.

  Lavinia handed him a basin full of the sticky reddish ground earth the Colonel had brought with him from the Amazon. He smeared it across his chest and shoulders in the ceremonial pattern the shaman had taught him, slowly touching his own skin as if he were exploring an unfamiliar body.

  There were questions he needed to ask, signs to look for, symbols of the unconscious, which, by the cold light of the next morning, he would draw upon to construct a useful logic. Do all men share the same gods? How does culture create perspective? He hoped to find evidence of his thesis that the dreams and fantasies of men were universal, that there was a shared language of myth.

  The goddess would help him: Jubbu-jang-sange, the Virgin Madonna, Mother Earth—however she was named was unimportant. She had helped him before; on the battlefields of the Crimea, in the opium dens of Indo-China, on the beaches of the Irish Sea. I have to surrender myself, he thought, and glanced at Lavinia. She will be my deliverer or my executioner.

  The last daub of ceremonial paint ran in a lurid yellow line from throat to abdomen, separating left from right, Heaven from Earth. Already, as the paint dried on his skin, he had begun the process of making magical his own image, an empowerment that would climax with the donning of the mask.

  Lavinia’s figure was a medley of purples and blues, the pale crescents of her breasts rising from her dress. The Colonel felt the desire to make her unquestioning again, as she was at the beginning of their courtship. He felt that he had begun to stiffen, her gaze exciting him. If Eros joins with Hecate, so be it, he thought. Ignoring his erection, he stretched out his left arm.

  ‘It is time.’

  Lavinia handed him the stone ceremonial goblet with various deities carved upon its surface. The dark spiciness of the Jurema mixture wafted through the room. Holding the goblet with both hands, the Colonel drank its contents completely then handed it back to her. He knew it would be some time before the potion took effect.

  Hoisting a pigskin cape painted with totemic symbols over his shoulders, he lifted one leg and one arm, mimicking the movements of a long-legged flightless bird, as he had seen the Bakairi do.

  Opening a notebook, Lavinia watched. James had instructed her to write down each step of the ritual and to note the physical symptoms of the drug. The task distanced her; it was an objectification that gave her courage.

  ‘And now?’ she asked.

  ‘Now we wait.’

  The Colonel closed his eyes. Lavinia slipped the snuffbox out of the purse hanging from her waist. In her hands it felt immeasurably heavy despite its small size. How much did a man’s life weigh? How much was her future worth, her freedom? Silently she placed the snuffbox in front of her husband.

  The Colonel took two large pinches, inhaling both deeply. His head jolted back as the powder shot up his nose like lava piercing rock. Giddy, he swayed a little. Already his hearing had sharpened to the point where he perceived the breath of the maid polishing the silver one flight below; the sound of his wife’s hair slipping across her silk dress metamorphosed into wind through a forest. He knew the next sense to be affected would be his vision.

  ‘This is happening faster than I expected,’ he said. ‘Make a note: at six o’clock aural distortion began.’ His voice boomed through his body like the growl of a foghorn and the scratching of Lavinia’s pen against paper was unbearable.

  ‘Hand me my mask,’ he commanded. He wondered if his words were audible, for to him they sounded like gibberish. His lips felt heavy as his jawbone tightened like a jailer’s screw. ‘And quickly,’ he slurred.

  His speech was thickening, Lavinia observed, as she lifted the mask to his face and secured it tightly, as he had instructed, with a cord that ran behind his head.

  Suddenly the Colonel’s gravitational axis shifted dramatically. Through the mask’s eye-slits he watched the ceiling extend, becoming the in
ky-black stretched membrane of a bat’s wing opening to the hot heavy sky of the Amazon.

  ‘I am back,’ he whispered. He looked to his other self, the naked white man whose head lolled under the weight of a carved wooden mask, and, with painful clarity, saw that he had become his spirit echo. A bluish mist streamed from the man’s head, filling the room.

  Convinced that he would die when the room filled completely, the Colonel clawed at the mask. ‘It’s happening too quickly,’ he screamed. Doubled over in agony, his body thrashed like a landed fish.

  The Colonel’s spirit self gazed down at this latest indignation. Why am I not frightened? he pondered. Then, sensing another presence, he turned. A creature he did not recognise sat rigidly in a chair.

  Another jolt of intense pain shot through the Colonel, pulling him back into his skin. The floor rippled and buckled beneath him like an angry sea, while the hanging masks transformed into all his childhood fears. His mother’s cloying features loomed from the shadows, her lips and nose extending like fingers. The face of his father’s corpse suddenly bolted across the floor like a skinned rat. A boy he had tortured at preparatory school leered at him from the mirror; and the dead Russian soldier gazed blindly at him, his clouded eyes as beautiful as a whore’s.

  Where was the sense of omnipotence he had experienced before? He felt no power; only terror.

  The doors to his cabinet flew open and his collection of skulls lunged at him, jaws snapping, each bite another agonising cramp.

  And who was this luminous figure that stood a hundred feet high above him? Tantalisingly she receded then reappeared. Struggling, he tried to remember who she was and why she was there. Was she his salvation? Gripped by a convulsion, his body thrashed against the wooden floor.

  To Lavinia, he looked less like a man than an animal. The ochre had smeared a rainbow on the parquet floor, and excrement coated his thighs and buttocks. He will die soon, she thought, and he will be with his goddess. She could not afford to acknowledge his agony; it was as if a deeper impulse had hijacked her. Just die, she prayed, finish it now, quickly. Death, the grotesque banality of matter, of all human frailty, finally transforming into the jerking end-pantomime she’d always suspected it to be.

  Clawing at the mask, the Colonel tried to stop himself from choking on his own vomit. As he stared out at the whirling world, the goddess of death, Calounger, appeared. Her eyes were fiery pits reflecting the end of all the men he’d seen die, the last of whom was himself.

  And then, as a massive seizure lifted him off the ground, the image of his lover appeared, reaching out from one of the goddess’s huge eyes that now filled his sight. Hamish’s long muscled arms picked him up off the ground and pulled him into a sweet embrace. Finally, the pain ceased.

  The stench of faeces and vomit was overpowering. James’s body lay twisted on the floor, his skin rapidly greying into the ashen complexion of the dead.

  Lavinia, breathing heavily, leaned against a wall. Shock rapidly distanced her, taking her back to the moment before she had entered the study, wiping her involvement from her memory in a feat of self-deception and self-preservation.

  I am not responsible for the man on the floor. I do not know him. These white arms that extend out so innocently from mauve satin sleeves, these hands stained with the rusty powder of death, are not mine.

  Trembling, she sank to the ground while the reconstruction of events flew about her like a flock of whirling ravens. When she was sure of her story, she pulled the servant’s bell.

  69

  Los Angeles, 2002

  GABRIEL STARED THROUGH THE LENS of the microscope at the sample Julia had given him. It indicated heightened activity for ANG–1, but there was something odd about the sample itself, something he couldn’t quite place.

  Remembering a reference in a file that might help him, he went into Julia’s office and started rummaging around in the filing cabinet set against the wall behind her desk. As he flicked through the files at the back of the cabinet his eye fell on a large envelope marked Defence Department: Strictly Confidential hidden in the Z section. He hesitated then convinced himself it was his moral duty to read the document. Carefully he pulled out the envelope in a manner he would be able to re-seal it without detection. The report inside was entitled: 3.10.2002. Afghanistan: Ambush involving Lt. L. Jones, Sgt Z. Nathan and civilian Professor J. Huntington.

  Sitting down, Gabriel began reading.

  Carla swung around from her laptop. ‘I don’t think you should go. Or at least consider meeting somewhere neutral, like a restaurant.’

  Klaus dropped a script down on the desk beside her.

  ‘What kind of message does that give Julia? She’s agreed to talk about the house sale, she’s congratulated us on the pregnancy—I really think she’s moved on.’

  ‘I’d still feel happier if you changed the location.’

  He kissed the top of her head. ‘Don’t worry, it’ll be okay.’

  Reassured, Carla reached up to meet his lips.

  Chopping the peppers and folding the saffron into the rice felt like a ritual. It was comforting, this precise series of gestures. It took Julia out of her body; an unequivocal dance, the choreography predetermined.

  After finishing the food preparations, she slipped candles into the candelabra. She wanted to create a sense of occasion; it seemed only fitting.

  Their best cutlery—old-fashioned German silver, sent from Belgium, solid, puritanical in its lack of ornamentation—lay on either side of Wedgwood bone-china plates. The white linen tablecloth had been another wedding gift; the crystal wine glasses she’d purchased to celebrate her appointment five years before.

  The whole table was a glossary of memory: a coda for their marriage. A perverse last supper, Julia observed, speculating about who the guests could be to make up the necessary thirteen: Carla, Naomi, Gabriel, her mother, her Belgian mother-in-law—all the spectators of their relationship, some participants, some not.

  A bottle of Margaux 1990 stood breathing on the sideboard. Julia glanced at her watch. Klaus would be punctual; he always was.

  She disconnected the doorbell, switched her cell phone off and pulled the phone connection from the wall, then stood in front of the hall mirror to check her appearance. She was wearing the dress she had bought for their last anniversary, a purple long-sleeved evening gown with a low back. She was thinner now and her ribs undulated up towards her collarbone, which curved out like a pale archery bow. She touched it; its skeletal nature brought her own mortality to mind. She would be the high priestess tonight. She would be Justice, impenetrable, powerful.

  She returned to the dining room and slid open the sideboard drawer. The gun lay on top of the cutlery. Picking it up, she checked the chamber; the four bullets lay nestled snugly against the steel, waiting. She looked at her watch; it was exactly eight o’clock. She then stood by the window poised; as she had predicted, he was on time.

  70

  London, 1861

  SAMUEL PUSHED HIS WAY THROUGH the crowded streets. Stunned citizens huddled on street corners, oblivious to the falling snow. Outside the palace gates, the crowd’s mourning clothes transformed them into a black moving mass. It was as if the whole country had dipped itself in ink to stand weeping in the white frost. Some cried openly, while others simply stared incredulously at the paperboys, sooty-faced messengers, holding up the ha’penny gazettes as they shouted the grim news.

  ‘Fourteenth of December, day to remember, the Prince Consort is dead!’

  ‘The Queen grieves!’

  It was the morning after Prince Albert had died suddenly of typhoid fever and Samuel had never seen the English surrender to such emotion. It was disorientating, and the whole city had taken on an apocalyptic atmosphere.

  Stoically, he forced a path through the motley bunch of spectators lingering on the steps of the Old Bailey. It was the fourth day of the trial; and it had taken him that long to find out where the proceedings were taking place. He had discover
ed the information only through persistent questioning of the new coachman at the bereaved Huntington household.

  ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ A policeman stopped him as he stepped into the warmth of the reception hall.

  ‘The trial of Mrs Lavinia Huntington and Aloysius O’Malley, sir. The public gallery is open now, is it not?’

  The peeler, who wore a mourning band around his arm, hesitated. The Negro servant seemed courteous enough, but he didn’t recognise the expensive livery the youth was wearing.

  ‘I’m here on my master’s business,’ Samuel lied, ‘the ambassador of the Confederate States of America, sir.’ He saluted for good measure. In truth, Samuel had told his owner an elaborate fiction about having to travel to the country to purchase some new horses—a trip that would take several days. It was a measure of the esteem in which the ambassador held the young slave that he had allowed him to go at all.

  Reluctantly, the policeman stepped aside.

  The court was still settling into position as Samuel found an empty seat in the balcony of the public gallery. He spied the two accused; separated, they sat in a row behind the lawyers, flanked by policemen. Aloysius’s face was thinner than ever; misery had emptied his eyes and his nose had become pinched.

  Lavinia Huntington looked slighter than Samuel remembered. Dressed in a plain prison dress, her hair scraped back in a simple bun, she looked scarcely older than a child. She was still beautiful Samuel noted, marvelling at the creature his friend had risked everything for; Aloysius’s dream of escape and more than that, of the two of them transcending the confines of both their existences had also launched Samuel’s aspirations. He had encouraged Aloysius and during the Irishman’s short employment with Lady Morgan the two men had spent evenings planning out the manner in which Aloysius could rescue Lavinia Huntington; fantasising how the coachman, once free of his station and with Lavinia as his wife, would flourish as independent tradesman in France or even Holland. Some dream, Samuel thought to himself bitterly. Nevertheless he promised himself that, upon his master’s return to America, he would escape his servitude and make his way to the North whatever the outcome of the war.