Imajica

There was no sign of Pie’oh’pah, either being carried from the blaze or standing amongst those few survivors who, like Gentle, had refused to be taken away to be tended. The smoke issuing from the fire’s steady defeat was thickening, and by the time he got back to the row of bodies on the pavement - the number of which had doubled - the whole scene was barely visible through the pall. He looked down at the shrouded forms. Was one of them Pie’oh’pah? As he approached the nearest of them a hand was laid on his shoulder, and he turned to face a policeman whose features were those of a boy soprano, smooth and troubled.

‘Aren’t you the one who brought out the kid?’ he said.

‘Yes. Is she all right?’

‘I’m sorry, mate. I’m afraid she’s dead. Was she your kid?’

He shook his head. ‘There was somebody else. A black guy with long curly hair. He had blood on his face. Has he come out of there?’

Formal language now: ‘I haven’t seen anybody of that description.’

Gentle looked back towards the bodies on the pavement.

‘It’s no use looking there,’ the policeman said. They’re all black now, whatever colour they started out.’

‘I have to look,’ Gentle said.

‘I’m telling you it’s no use. You wouldn’t recognize them. Why don’t you let me put you in an ambulance? You need seeing to.’

‘No. I have to keep looking,’ Gentle said, and was about to move off when the policeman took hold of his arm.

‘I think you’d be better away from the fence, sir,’ he said. ‘There’s some danger of explosions.’

‘But he could still be in there.’

‘If he is, sir, I think he’s gone. There’s not much chance of anybody else coming out alive. Let me take you to the police line. You can watch from there.’

Gentle shook off the man’s hold.

‘I’ll go,’ he said. ‘I don’t need an escort.’

It took an hour for the fire to be finally brought under control, by which time it had little left to consume. During that hour all Gentle could do was wait behind the cordon and watch, as the ambulances came and went, ferrying the last of the injured away, and then taking the bodies. As the boy soprano had predicted, there were no further victims brought out, dead or alive, though Gentle waited until all but a few late arrivals amongst the crowd had left, and the fire was almost completely doused. Only when the last of the firefighters emerged from the crematorium, and the hoses were turned off, did he give up hope. It was almost two in the morning. His limbs were burdened with exhaustion, but they were light beside the weight in his chest. To go heavy-hearted was no poet’s conceit: it felt as though the pump had turned to lead, and was bruising the plush meat of his innards.

As he wandered back to his car he heard the whistling again, the same tuneless sound floating on the dirty air. He stopped walking, and turned to all compass points looking for the source, but the whistler was already out of sight, and Gentle was too weary to give chase. Even if he had, he thought, even if he’d caught it by its lapels and threatened to break its burned bones, what purpose would that have served? Assuming it had been moved by his threat (and pain was probably meat and drink to a creature that whistled as it burned) he’d be no more able to comprehend its reply than interpret Chant’s letter: and for similar reasons. They were both escapees from the same unknown land, whose borders he’d grazed when he’d gone to New York; the same world that held the God Hapexamendios, and had given birth to Pie’oh’pah. Sooner or later he’d find a way to gain access to that state, and when he did all the mysteries would come clear: the whistler, the letter, the lover. He might even solve the mystery that he met most mornings in the shaving mirror; the face he thought he knew well enough until recently, but whose code he now realized he’d forgotten, and would not now remember without the help of undiscovered gods.

3

Back in the house in Primrose Hill, Godolphin sat up through the night and listened to the news bulletins reporting the tragedy. The number of dead rose every hour; two more victims had already perished in hospital. Theories were being advanced everywhere as to the cause of the fire, pundits using the event to comment on the lax safety standards applied to sites where itinerants camped, and demanding a full Parliamentary enquiry to prevent a repeat of such a conflagration.

The reports appalled him. Though he’d given Dowd leash enough to dispatch the mystif - and who knew what hidden agenda lay there? - the creature had abused the freedom he’d been granted. There would have to be punishment meted out for such abuse, though Godolphin was in no mood to plot that now. He’d bide his time; choose his moment. It would come. Meanwhile, Dowd’s violence seemed to him further evidence of a disturbing pattern. Things he’d thought immutable were changing. Power was slipping from the possession of those who’d traditionally held it, into the hands of underlings - fixers, familiars and functionaries - who were ill equipped to use it. Tonight’s disaster was symptomatic of that. But the disease had barely begun to take hold. Once it spread through the Dominions there’d be no stopping it. There had already been uprisings in Vanaeph and L’Himby, there were mutterings of rebellion in Yzordderrex; now there was to be a purge here in the Fifth Dominion, organized by the Tabula Rasa, a perfect background to Dowd’s vendetta, and its bloody consequences. Everywhere, signs of disintegration.

Paradoxically the most chilling of those signs was superficially an image of reconstruction: that of Dowd recreating his face so that if he were seen by any member of the Society he’d not be recognized. It was a process he’d undertaken with each generation, but this was the first time any Godolphin had witnessed said process. Now Oscar thought back on it he suspected Dowd had deliberately displayed his transformative powers, as further evidence of his new-found authority. It had worked. Seeing the face he’d grown so used to soften and shift at the will of its possessor was one of the most distressing spectacles Oscar had set eyes upon. The face Dowd had finally fixed was sans moustache and eyebrows, the head sleeker than his other, and younger: the face that of an ideal National Socialist. Dowd must also have caught that echo, because he later bleached his hair, and bought several new suits, all apricot, but of a much severer cut than those he’d worn in his earlier incarnation. He sensed the instabilities ahead as well as Oscar; he felt the rot in the body politic, and was readying himself for a New Austerity.

And what more perfect tool than fire, the book-burner’s joy, the soul-cleaner’s bliss? Oscar shuddered to contemplate the pleasure Dowd had taken from his night’s work, callously murdering innocent human families in pursuit of the mystif. He would return to the house, no doubt, with tears on his face, and say he regretted the hurt he’d done to the children. But it would be a performance, a sham. There was no true capacity for grief or regret in the creature, and Oscar knew it. Dowd was deceit incarnated, and from now on Oscar knew he had to be on his guard. The comfortable years were over. Hereafter he would sleep with his bedroom door locked.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

1

In her rage at his conspiracies Jude had contemplated several possible ways to revenge herself upon Estabrook, ranging from the bloodily intimate to the classically detached. But her nature never ceased to surprise her. All thoughts of garden shears and prosecutions dimmed in a short time, and she came to realize that the worst harm she could do him - given that the harm he’d intended to do her had been stopped in its tracks - was to ignore him. Why give him the satisfaction of her least interest in him? From now on he would be so far beneath her contempt as to be invisible. Having unburdened herself of her story to Taylor and Clem, she sought no further audience. From now on she wouldn’t sully her lips with his name, or let her thoughts dally with him for two consecutive seconds. At least that was the pact she made with herself. It proved difficult to keep. On Boxing Day she received the first of what were to be many calls from him, which she resolutely cut short the instant she recognized his voice. It wasn’t the authoritative Estabrook she’d been used to hearing, and it took her three exchanges before she realized who was on the other end of the line, at which point she put down the receiver and let it lie uncradled for the rest of the day. The following morning he called again, and this time, just in case he was in any doubt, she told him:

‘I don’t ever want to hear your Voice again,’ and once more cut him off.

When she’d done so she realized he’d been sobbing as he spoke, which gave her no little satisfaction, and the hope that he wouldn’t try again. A frail hope; he called twice that evening, leaving messages on her answering machine while she was out at a party flung by Chester Klein. There she heard news of Gentle, to whom she hadn’t spoken since their odd parting at the studio. Chester, who was much the worse for vodka, told her plainly he expected Gentle to have a full-blown nervous breakdown in a short time. He’d spoken to the Bastard Boy twice since Christmas, and he was increasingly incoherent.

‘What is it about all you men?’ she found herself saying. ‘You fall apart so easily.’

‘That’s because we’re the more tragic of the sexes,’ Chester returned. ‘God, woman, can’t you see how we suffer?’

‘Frankly, no.’

‘Well, we do. Take it from me. We do.’

‘Is there any particular reason, or is it just free-form suffering?’

‘We’re all sealed up,’ Klein said, ‘nothing can get in.’

‘So are women. What’s the -’

‘Women get fucked,’ Klein interrupted, pronouncing the word with a drunken ripeness. ‘Oh, you bitch about it, but you love it. Go on, admit it. You love it.’

‘So all men really want is to get fucked, is that it?’ Jude said. ‘Or are you just talking personally?’

This brought a ripple of laughter from those who’d given up their chit-chat to watch the fireworks.

‘Not literally,’ Klein spat back. ‘You’re not listening to me.’

‘I’m listening. You’re just not making any sense.’

‘Take the Church -’

‘Fuck the Church!’

‘No, listen!’ Klein said, teeth clenched. ‘I’m telling God’s honest fucking truth here. Why do you think men invented the Church, huh? Huh?’

His bombast had infuriated Jude to the point where she refused to reply. He went on, unperturbed, talking pedantically, as if to a slow student.

‘Men invented the Church so that they could bleed for Christ. So that they could be entered by the Holy Spirit. So that they could be saved from being sealed up.’ His lesson finished, he leaned back in his chair, raising his glass. ‘In vodka Veritas,’ he said.

‘In vodka shit,’ Jude replied.

‘Well, that’s just typical of you, isn’t it?’ Klein slurred. ‘As soon as you’re fucking beaten you start the insults.’

She turned from him, shaking her head dismissively. But he still had a barb in his armoury.

‘Is that how you drive the Bastard Boy crazy?’ he said.

She turned back on him, stung.

‘Keep him out of this,’ she snapped.

‘You want to see sealed up?’ Klein said. ‘There’s your example. He’s out of his head, you know that?’

‘Who cares?’ she said. ‘If he wants to have a nervous breakdown, he can have one.’

‘How very humanitarian of you.’

She stood up at this juncture, knowing that she was perilously close to losing her temper completely.

‘I know the Bastard Boy’s excuse,’ Klein went on. ‘He’s anaemic. He’s only got enough blood for his brain or his prick. If he gets a hard-on, he can’t remember his own name.’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ Jude said, swilling the ice around in her glass.

‘Is that your excuse, too?’ Klein went on. ‘Have you got something down there you haven’t been telling us about?’

‘If I had,’ she said, ‘you’d be the last to know.’

And so saying, she deposited her drink, ice and all, down the front of his open shirt.

She regretted it afterwards, of course, and she drove home trying to invent some way of making peace with him without apologizing. Unable to think of any she decided to let it lie. She’d had arguments with Klein before, drunk and sober. They were forgotten after a month; two at most.

She got in to find more messages from Estabrook awaiting her. He wasn’t sobbing any more. His voice was a colourless dirge, delivered from what was clearly genuine despair. The first call was filled with the same pleas she’d heard before. He told her he was losing his mind without her, and needed her with him. Wouldn’t she at least talk to him, let him explain himself? The second call was less coherent. He said she didn’t understand how many secrets he had; how he was smothered in secrets and it was killing him. Wouldn’t she come back to see him, he said, even if it was just to collect her clothes?

That was probably the only part of her exit-scene she would rewrite if she could play it over again. In her rage she’d left a goodly collection of personal items, jewellery and clothes, in Estabrook’s possession. Now she imagined him sobbing over them, sniffing them, God knows, even wearing them. But peeved as she was not to have taken them with her, she was not about to bargain for them now. There would come a time when she felt calm enough to go back and empty the cupboards and the drawers, but not quite yet.

There were no further calls after that night. With the New Year almost upon her, it was time to turn her attention to the challenge of earning a crust come January. She’d given up her job at Vandenburgh’s when Estabrook had proposed marriage, and she’d enjoyed his money freely while they were together, trusting - naively, no doubt - that if they ever broke up he’d deal with her in an honourable fashion. She hadn’t anticipated either the profound unease that had finally driven her from his side (the sense that she was almost owned, and that if she stayed with him a moment longer she’d never unshackle herself) nor the vehemence of his revenge. Again, there’d come a time when she felt able to deal with the mutual mud-slinging of a divorce, but, like the business with the clothes, she wasn’t ready for that turmoil yet, even though she could hope for some monies from such a seulement. In the meanwhile, she had to think about employment.

Then, on December thirtieth, she received a call from Estabrook’s lawyer, Lewis Leader, a man she’d met only once, but who was memorable for his loquaciousness. It was not in evidence on this occasion, however. He signalled what she assumed was his distaste for her desertion of his client with a manner that teetered on the rude. Did she know, he asked her, that Estabrook had been hospitalized? When she told him that she didn’t, he replied that though he was sure she didn’t give a damn he’d been charged with the duty of informing her. She asked him what had happened. He briskly explained that Estabrook had been found in the street in the early hours of the twenty-eighth, wearing only one item of clothing. He didn’t specify what.

‘Is he hurt?’ she asked.

‘Not physically,’ Leader replied. ‘But mentally he’s in a bad state. I thought you ought to know, even though I’m sure he wouldn’t want to see you.’

‘I’m sure you’re right,’ Jude said.

‘For what it’s worth,’ Leader said, ‘he deserved better than this.’

He signed off with that platitude, leaving Jude to ponder on why it was that the men she mated with turned out to be crazy. Just two days earlier she’d been predicting that Gentle would soon be in the throes of a nervous breakdown. Now it was Estabrook who was under sedation. Was it her presence in their lives that drove them to it, or was the lunacy in their blood? She contemplated calling Gentle at the studio, to see that he was all right, but decided against it. He had his painting to make love to, and she was damned if she was going to compete for his attention with a piece of canvas.

One useful possibility did spring from the news Leader had brought. With Estabrook in hospital, there was nothing to stop her visiting the house and picking up her belongings. It was an apt project for the last day of December. She’d gather the remnants of her life from the lair of her husband, and prepare to begin the New Year alone.

2

He hadn’t changed the lock, perhaps in the hope that she’d come back one night and slip into bed beside him. But as she entered the house she couldn’t shake the feeling of being a burglar. It was gloomy outside, and she switched on all the lights, but the rooms seemed to resist illumination, as though the smell of spoiled food, which was pungent, was thickening the air. She braved the kitchen in search of something to drink before she began her packing, and found plates of rotting food stacked on every surface, most of them barely picked at. She opened first a window and then the refrigerator, where there were further rancid goods. There was also ice and water. She put both into a clean glass, and set about her work.

There was as much disarray upstairs as down. Estabrook had apparently lived in squalor since her departure, the bed they’d shared a swamp of filthy sheets, the floor littered with soiled linen. There was no sign of any of her clothes amongst these heaps however, and when she went through to the adjacent dressing room she found them all hanging in place, untouched. Determined to be done with this distasteful business in as short a time as possible she found herself a set of suitcases, and proceeded to pack. It didn’t take long. With that labour performed she emptied her belongings from the drawers, and packed those. Her jewellery was in the safe downstairs, and it was there she went once she’d finished in the bedroom, leaving the cases by the front door to be picked up as she left. Though she knew where Estabrook kept the key to the safe, she’d never opened it herself. It was a ritual he’d demanded be rigorously observed that on a night when she was to wear one of the pieces he’d given her he’d first ask her which she favoured, then go and get it from the safe and put it around her neck, or wrist, or slip it through the lobe of her ear himself. With hindsight, a blatant piece of power-play. She wondered what kind of fugue state she’d been in when sharing his company, that she’d endured such idiocies for so long. Certainly the luxuries he’d bestowed upon her had been pleasurable, but why had she played his game so passively? It was grotesque.

The key to the safe was where she’d expected it to be, secreted at the back of the desk drawer in his study. The safe itself was behind an architectural drawing on the study wall, several elevations of a pseudo-classical folly the artist had simply marked as the Retreat. It was far more elaborately framed than its merit deserved, and she had some difficulty lifting it. But she eventually succeeded and got into the safe it had concealed.

There were two shelves, the lower crammed with papers, the upper with small parcels, amongst which she assumed she would find her belongings. She took everything out, and laid it all on the desk, curiosity overtaking the desire to have what was hers and be gone. Two of the packages clearly contained her jewellery, but the other three were far more intriguing, not least because they were wrapped in a fabric as fine as silk, and smelt not of the safe’s must, but of a sweet, almost sickly, spice. She opened the largest of them first. It contained a manuscript, made up of vellum pages sewn together with an elaborate stitch. It had no cover to speak of, but seemed to be an arbitrarily arrayed collection of sheets, their subject an anatomical treatise, or at least so she first assumed. On second glance she realized it was not a surgeon’s manual at all, but a pillow book, depicting love-making positions and techniques. Leafing through it she sincerely hoped the artist was locked up where he could not attempt to put these fantasies into practice. Human flesh was neither malleable nor protean enough to recreate what his brush and ink had set on the pages. There were couples intertwined like quarrelling squid; others who seemed to have been blessed (or cursed) with organs and orifices of such strangeness and in such profusion they were barely recognizable as human.

She flicked back and forth through the sheets, her interest returning her to the double page of illustration at the centre, which was laid out sequentially. The first picture showed a naked man and woman of perfectly normal appearance, the woman lying with her head on a pillow while the man knelt between her legs, applying his tongue to the underside of her foot. From that innocent beginning, a cannibalistic union ensued, the male beginning to devour the woman, starting with her legs, while his partner obliged him with the same act of devotion. Their antics defied both physics and physique, of course, but the artist had succeeded in rendering the act without grotesquerie, but rather in the manner of instructions for some extraordinary magical illusion. It was only when she closed the book, and found the images lingering in her head, that they distressed her, and to sluice them out she turned her distress into a righteous rage that Estabrook would not only purchase such bizarrities but hide them from her. Another reason to be well out of his company.

The rest of the packages contained a much more innocent item: what appeared to be a fragment of statuary the size of her fist. One facet had been crudely marked with what could have been a weeping eye, a lactating nipple or a bud seeping sap. The other facets revealed the structure of the block from which the image had been carved. It was predominantly a milky blue, but shot through with fine seams of black and red. She liked the feel of it in her hand, and only reluctantly put it down to pick up the third parcel. The contents of this were the prettiest find: half a dozen pea-sized beads, which had been obsessively carved. She’d seen oriental ivories worked with this level of care, but they’d always been behind museum glass. She took one of them to the window to study it more closely. The artist had carved the bead to give the impression that it was in fact a ball of gossamer thread, wound upon itself. Curious, and oddly inviting. As she turned it over in her fingers, and over, and over, she found her concentration narrowing, focusing on the exquisite interweaving of threads, almost as though there was an end to be found in the ball, and if she could only grasp it with her mind she might unravel it and discover some mystery inside. She had to force herself to look away, or she was certain the bead’s will would have overwhelmed her own, and she’d have ended up staring at its detail until she collapsed.

She returned to the desk and put the bead back amongst its fellows. Staring at it so intently had upset her equilibrium somewhat. She felt slightly dizzy, the litter she’d left on the desk slipping out of focus as she rifled through it. Her hands knew what she wanted, however, even if her conscious thought didn’t. One of them picked up the fragment of blue stone, while her other strayed back to the bead she’d relinquished. Two souvenirs: why not? A piece of stone and a bead. Who could blame her for dispossessing Estabrook of such minor items when he’d intended her so much harm? She pocketed them both without further hesitation, and set about wrapping up the book and the remaining beads and returning them to the safe. Then she picked up the cloth in which the fragment had been wrapped, pocketed that, took the jewellery, and returned to the front door, turning off the lights as she went. At the door she remembered she’d opened the kitchen window, and headed back to close it. She didn’t want the place burgled in her absence. There was only one thief who had right of trespass here, and that was her.