Celebrant (39 page)

Pigeon girl (she says aloud) her hair streaming like a comet.

I’m sorry?
(deKlend bounces his shoulders to and fro against the bumpers in the wings of the chair as he turns toward her)

There was one of those girls hanging down from the rooftop looking in at us
—
she’s gone now.

Ah.

She had blonde hair (Nardac says wistfully) and it streamed like the tail of Wan Refuser in the light from the window.

Ah, your mind has taken a poetic turn this evening.
Is it wine that
...
?

It might be (she says, turning to look at him)
I might be inspired by some other feeling.

What is Wan Refuser?

Hm?
Oh, the comet!
Didn’t you see it?

I must have been travelling somewhere.

It would have been visible everywhere, I should think (Nardac says, looking into space)

She looks appetising, actually, like that (he thinks)
Perhaps I overestimated her age.

It’s only just left the sky (she says)

He gets up and fills a glass of water from the table by the window.
Outside, there is nothing to see but the shouting, transparent black.
Nardac comes up behind him, putting one hand on his back and pointing to the horizon with the other.

Where the sperm of the world, haunted by fires in the mountains, is found (she says, as if she were reciting)

She is in his shadow when he turns around.

Knosp Knoak is telling the beautiful young woman about his past life.

By ancient tradition, strictly upheld, every king of Aufidia Conack must build his own household and accumulate his own wealth.
As actually practiced, the tradition assumes that each king will rob his predecessors, quietly, to maintain appearances.
After his death, a king’s palace becomes his tomb, the king himself is mummified and continues to hold court in this condition.
The current king is supposed to consult his predecessors regularly and in person, but there are so many dead kings, and to approach even one for advice is such a waste of time, that he will simply pinwheel his scepter above his head in a sweep meant to take in all ambient kings before making a decision, call that a consultation, and leave it at that.

The king sits high at the center of an efficient, well-organized cobweb of officials
...
Officials are promoted along two lines, one of which is strictly linear and regularly gradated and the other of which is intermittent, occasional, and faster.
Occasional posts are assigned at will by officials in superior grades, and can sweep the assignee into position to re-enter the linear promotional order at a point two or three grades above the one from which he was taken.

One of these posts, King’s Companion, was, perhaps accidentally, assigned to me just out of school.
For a year I was to reside in a tomb-palace and attend the mummy of a dead king.
I would get him up in the morning, dress him, mock-feed him, mock-wash him, carry him into his throne room, and everywhere else, talk to him, entertain him, keep him abreast of current events by reading him the newspapers, undress him, put him to bed at night, and generally pantomime his life for him.

Greater Chandelier Palace had been engulfed by a teeming, dense fleece of low closely-crammed houses.
Gun to head he falls asleep a thousand years in empty palace.
Famine killed most of those people, and at the time I lived there, the district was still largely deserted.
The palace was half stripped of its ornaments, dark and small as palaces go, and quiet.
It was a peaceful place to live for a year, but I was a young man.
No one lived there but me, I was forbidden guests of my own, nor could I leave Quarviouk Tatanlasmaik Boma for any reason, although I was permitted out when he performed his state visits.
The dead kings were constantly “arranging” to visit each other, as this was one of the only ways any companion could manage to see anyone else.
Various persons came to the palaces during the day to bring in supplies and to keep the buildings and grounds in respectable condition, but these were so-called ‘menials,’ and many of the companions refused to socialize with them.

‘Under no circumstances are you to allude to his death,’ they said.
‘It may safely be assumed his majesty knows that he’s dead, but that doesn’t make it nice to remind him.’

His head was kept concealed in the hood of a white satin wrapper.
This is boring.

No, go on!
(the woman says, sniffing)

Inside the wrapper reflected a clean, clear white snow light on a seamed brown head like a wooden carving, thatched with straw.
I remember how it looked, especially when I would fill in crossword puzzles “at his direction.”

A bit before sunset, on balmy days, Quarviouk Boma liked to “go riding.”
This required me to prop him up on the back of his favorite horse, also mummified, with wheels bolted to the ends of its splayed, reinforced legs, and dragging him around the course at the end of a rope.
This rope I harnessed to a living horse which I, as a common man, was not permitted to ride.
To make the true standing of things less conspicuous I was required to drive the living horse from behind and to walk in such a way as to interfere, if only formally, with Quarviouk Boma’s “view” of the rope.

He “ate” costly representations of food;
I would fill his plate for him with a golden turkey leg, potatoes of white silk, astrakhan pods of jade peas.
The mezcal though had to be real, and was burned after the meal.

Nardac’s dress is lying on the floor.
She appears around one of the upright posts, her long, bare body is younger (he thinks)
Younger than he is
—
maybe that could be her spell.
The hairless head seems to rise on an almost unnaturally elongated, swanlike neck.
She lifts her arms, and he walks into her embrace.

She minces out from behind the oriental screen, over which her every garment is flung, and pauses there a moment for Knosp Knoak to see.
As he steps toward her, her anticipation grows so sharp she sniffs loudly with a sound like ripping paper, then holds her hand to her face, grinning foolishly with embarrassment.

Not there!
(she gasps)

Beside herself with excitement, Nardac turns in his arms, turns her back to him and slides her hands down the curve of her back.

Here!
(she says)

Not there!
(she gasps)

Beside herself with excitement, the beautiful woman, whose skin is the color of sand in the starlight, turns in Knosp Knoak’s arms, turns her back to him and slides her hands down the curve her back.

Here!
(she says)

So (she asks faintly) you’re going on the pilgrimage?

Hm?
(he is drifting off)

Where are you going again?

Votu.

But
...
(she lets air out through her nostrils, and sniffs again, abruptly) Do you even know why you’re going on this pilgrimage of yours, to the city you live in?

...I hate being confined.

That isn’t a
destination
though (she says, her voice very low in the dark)
—
that just means you are travelling, but a pilgrimage
...
it amounts to more than that.

...
I know, I know (he sounds half asleep)

He draws a deep breath.

...
s’perfection, perfections (he says groggily)
hm’perfect.

Imperfect?

Perfect (he says and falls asleep)

deKlend wakes with a gentle start.
It is still night, nothing has changed, but he feels as though he’s been sleeping a long while, and as if he could go on sleeping.
Phryne looks down at him, smiling, showing her glistening black teeth in an avid smile, leaning on her arms which rise like two white pillars past his eyes, her breasts brushing his chest.
She hasn’t been drinking, because she doesn’t drink, but she seems drunk, she settles her body on him greedily.

Phryne!
(he says, snaring his hand in her braids)
How beautiful you are!

He’s tickled her vanity and she chuckles.
More!
(she says)
More-more-more!

Is it Phryne?
It must be.
She just sniffed.
But wouldn’t someone disguised as Phryne make a point of sniffing?

She has a cup of drink she pours into his mouth.
He drinks it, the fumes spin in his head even before he swallows the drink.
She chuckles again.
It has a harsh sound.
That chuckling seems to grate along his nerves and it’s as if he hears something, like a door splintering far away, an enemy rushing directly for him.
deKlend fumbles at the bed beneath him and tries to turn but Phryne’s heavy body is weighing him down, she rubs herself on him and peppers his face and throat with passionate kisses.
In a moment that enemy will be here and it is his body lifting Phryne high in the air, a stone arch that keeps collapsing and re-erecting itself, she running her hands avidly up and down his stony rigidity like fondling a smooth ivory carving
—
the keystone slips loose and the arch collapses
—
the keystone is driven back into place and the arch erects
—
the chuckling he hears coming from somewhere among the two slabs of darkness that are progressively mashing his brains between them beats in his raw throat,

his aching, blind eyes stare like two full moons and his teeth are bared as though they were about to bristle out in two fans.

Phryne rises and falls, and when he’s gone clonic she’s so high off the bed her legs hang at full length to either side of him and draw her face abandonedly along the canopy.
As she comes down now she sneezes light and a huge dark shape is there in the flash glaring at her through a heavy veil.
They are together with all the various features of the setting and its props, the night the house and the party, in a circular depression that dips and veers on a seething canvas of other scenes and places.
Phryne feels herself growing taller, her body elongating and deKlend’s too, arching now high into the future so that she clings to him with arms and legs while avidly looking this way and that.
Her head is broiling with inexorably telescoping desire but there is a lucid point that can see without being able to articulate the meaning just how her spell came about, that making love with deKlend
—
how was she making love with deKlend
—
had the white figure she’d seen been her own reflection in a mirror?
She doesn’t remember
—
it doesn’t matter
—
she’d come to the party in disguise
—
she never shows anyone her true face
—
no one but deKlend
—
they are plunging together, like dolphins, she can see doorway and balcony beyond there to her left, and an alleyway on the right, with battered tables and unappealing food, heaps of books, a cold wind that plays over her skin
—