Hymn (31 page)

Lloyd lifted himself up on one elbow, and whispered back at her, ‘Back off, all right? Stand away from me. Let's talk about this next door.'

He climbed out of bed as carefully as he could, and then quietly opened the bedroom door and went through to the living-room, with Celia following close behind him. He could smell that hot metallic smell, and it frightened him. He closed the bedroom door so that Kathleen wouldn't be disturbed.

‘Guten Abend,' said a dry voice, as he switched on the overhead light. Otto was sitting in one of the bamboo armchairs, with his legs crossed, his face shadowed by his hat. ‘Ihr T-shirt ist sehr amüsant.'

‘How did you find us?' Lloyd asked him. ‘Why the hell can't you leave us alone?'

‘Some fellow called Slonimsky told us where you were,' Otto remarked, picking with his fingernails at the fraying raffia which held his chair together. ‘He was most co-operative.'

‘Waldo? Waldo told you where we were? I can't believe that!'

Otto shrugged. ‘It took a little persuasion. But—as I say—he was most co-operative.'

‘Jesus Christ, if you've hurt Waldo—I'll see you in hell!'

‘My dear Mr Denman, you will probably see me in hell in any event.'

‘Celia,' asked Lloyd. ‘Is Waldo okay?'

Celia nodded. ‘Waldo's fine, darling. Just fine.'

‘Are they all here?' Otto wanted to know. ‘Mrs Kerwin? Mengele's creature?'

‘A boy, too.'

Otto frowned. The overhead light made the criss-cross wrinkles on his cheeks look like soft beige quilting. ‘What boy is this, Mr Denman?'

‘He's kind of an orphan. I promised to take care of him.'

‘What a strange man you are, Mr Denman. Running away, stealing my car, threatening my life's work. And at the same time taking the trouble to care for some human mongrel. Well, I suppose it can't be helped. He'll have to come too.'

‘You're taking us back to Rancho Santa Fe?'

‘I have no choice, Mr Denman. The day after tomorrow we are holding the grand Transformation at Civic Theater. You cannot be allowed to jeopardize my greatest moment—the moment for which I have prepared for so many years.'

Lloyd said, ‘What time do you have?'

‘Three minutes after three,' Otto replied. ‘Why do you ask?'

‘It's just that—okay, we'll come back to Rancho Santa Fe. We don't really have any alternative, do we? It's either that or having ourselves burned alive.'

‘You're beginning to grasp the situation rather well,' Otto smiled.

‘Just let these people have a few hours' sleep,' pleaded Lloyd. ‘They've been under all kinds of stress. Why don't you have a drink? I'll make some coffee if you like. We'll leave promptly at eight o'clock, how's that? But don't get them up now, especially the kid.'

Otto thought about that, and then said, ‘Very well. I have no particular objection. I could use a little sleep myself. Perhaps you and your bride-to-be can use the time to become re-acquainted. After all, the future will soon be yours, nicht wahr?'

He reached down and unlaced his large black welted shoes. Then he propped both of his stockinged feet on to the coffee table. His socks were made of thin grey wool, covered with pills. They looked as if he had been handwashing them in hotel basins since the war. He interlaced his fingers, and closed his eyes.

Lloyd looked at Celia, in her black turban and her dark glasses and her black raincoat. ‘Is that it?' he asked her. ‘He's asleep?'

‘He'll sleep till seven now,' she told him. ‘He goes to sleep almost instantly, and he sleeps very deeply. No dreams. He says it's something to do with what happened to him during the war.'

‘Let's go through to the kitchen,' Lloyd suggested. Celia walked in front of him, but he made sure that he kept his distance. He couldn't bear the strange greyness of her skin.

‘Do you want a drink?' he asked her. ‘Can you drink?'

She took a glass from the drainer beside the sink and poured herself a glass of water. She swallowed a mouthful, and left her mouth open, watching him with what looked like a mocking expression. He heard the water boil sharply, inside her stomach. Steam rose out of her mouth and nose.

Lloyd's hand was shaking as he splashed out a large glassful of whisky. ‘I wish you'd told me what you were going to do,' he told her. ‘Maybe I could have coped with it better. Maybe I could have understood it.'

‘I'm sorry, Lloyd,' she said. ‘I truly am. But I was never the kind of woman who could give up without a fight. And when Otto promised me that I would live for ever . . . never sick, never growing old . . . well, I'd already begun to feel the effects of multiple sclerosis. I'd seen what happened to Jacqueline Du Pré. I didn't want the same thing to happen to me.'

‘And you think this is better, being a Salamander? You think this is really you?'

‘It's my soul, Lloyd. It's my spirit. I'm still Celia. I still love you. Inside of me, I'm just the same as I always was.'

Lloyd vigorously shook his head. ‘The Celia that I knew wasn't interested in immortality or master races or shrivelled old Germans who eat bugs.'

‘Lloyd—it's not like that! You should have heard Otto, the first time he talked to me! I was terrified of what was happening to me, and he gave me such hope! All of a sudden, I had a future; and not just one future, but a thousand futures, and a thousand futures that I could share with you!'

Lloyd swallowed whisky. ‘Celia—I'm not going to live for ever. I don't even want to live for ever. I want to get married and run a successful restaurant and have a couple of kids and grow old gracefully . . . that's what I want to do. I don't want to burn myself alive so that I turn into some kind of Nazi nightmare.'

‘You don't have to live for ever, if you don't want to,' said Celia. ‘But you can still have a child. On the night of the Transformation, when all the songs are sung and all the rituals have been recited, I'll be flesh again, like Helmwige. There's no reason why you and I can't live together just the way we always planned it.'

Lloyd let out a sarcastic grunt. ‘Oh, yes, for sure . . . with me growing steadily older and you staying young. With you capable of burning the living shit out of me every time I make you angry. I can see it now!'

‘Lloyd, darling . . . it wouldn't have to be like that at all.'

‘So what would it be like? And apart from anything else, what would our children be like? Half-immortal and half-mortal? And if so, which half?'

‘Ah . . . that's the whole point,' said Celia. ‘The true master race will eventually be made up of the children of people like me—people who have burned and Transformed–and their human lovers. Those children will have all the properties of immortality and humanity, combined. Don't you see, that's why Otto didn't want to let you go before the solstice . . . he wants us to have a child . . . I want us to have a child . . . one of the first of the new everlasting order. Ancient magic, modern flesh. The combination will be irresistible, Lloyd.'

‘Well, heil Hitler,' Lloyd told her.

‘Lloyd—you don't understand. A child of ours could be almost holy! A beautiful magical creature who could rule the whole world!'

‘Like the Hitler Youth were beautiful magical creatures who were going to rule the whole world? What the hell did Otto do to you, Celia?'

‘He showed me the future!' Celia retorted. ‘He showed me this rotten, diseased, crime-ridden, fear-ridden world for what it is, and he showed me the future!'

‘Oh, did he?' Lloyd countered. ‘Well, there's one thing he predicted wrong, and that was that you and I would ever have a child. Because if you think I'm going to touch you ever again, you're very mistaken, my lady. I wouldn't touch you again if you were the last woman left on the whole goddamned planet!'

Celia was quiet for a moment. She lowered her head, as if she were thinking, but she had no eyes to give her away.

‘I was hoping I could persuade you,' she said, at last, with a catch in her throat that made her sound much more like the Celia he had known before.

Lloyd said, ‘It's nothing personal, believe me. It's just that I don't happen to believe in master races. And I don't believe that people should live for ever, either. What value can your life possibly have, if you're never at risk of losing it?'

‘Maybe, when the Transformation's done, you'll think differently.'

‘I doubt it.'

‘You'll come, though, won't you?'

‘Do I have any choice?'

‘We're holding it at Civic Theater. One thousand and one specially invited guests. Music by the San Diego Opera Company.'

Lloyd frowned at her. ‘You have a thousand guests and music by the opera company? How the hell did you arrange that? The opera company's convinced that you're dead and gone.'

‘It wasn't difficult,' said Celia. ‘About six months ago, I asked Don Abrams, the production supervisor, to let me mount an evening of Wagernian-style opera—operas written by other composers as a tribute to Wagner. I played him some of the music from Junius, and of course he agreed. It's magnificent, one of Wagner's most dramatic operas ever—his masterpiece! And even more persuasive, I was even able to fix up a Gramma Fisher Foundation grant to fund it.

‘But of course the opera company is still completely unaware that they're going to be singing an actual lost opera by Wagner himself. The only people who will be aware of it will be Otto and Helmwige and all of us Salamanders, who will come on stage at the climax of the opera, when the company sings the Transformation chant.

‘At the climactic note of that chant, we will all be transformed into flesh; and the master race will at last be born. Think of it!'

‘And what will your thousand and one invited guests do then? Stand up and sing the Horst Wessel song?'

‘Lloyd, my darling,' Celia pleaded. ‘This isn't Nazi Germany in the 1930s. This is California, today. Otto knows that. He's not trying to recreate the Third Reich, nothing like that. He just wants to see the world put into the hands of people who have the strength and the ability to run it as it should be run. He wants to see an end to suffering and cruelty and drug-addiction and poverty.'

Lloyd poured himself another drink. ‘God almighty. If only Wagner had known what he was doing.'

‘But Wagner did know.'

Lloyd dragged over a barstool, and sat down. ‘Otto was sure that he didn't.'

Celia shook her head. ‘He didn't know at first. But he found out. When he was in Venice, he played the Fire Ritual from Junius to a young music student called Guido Castelnuovo who was helping him to write the libretto. Two days later Castelnuovo set fire to his own clothes and killed himself. Wagner assumed that Castelnuovo was dead, and of course he was very upset. But about a week later, the student reappeared at dawn in St Mark's Square, when Wagner was out walking. He was a Salamander, just like me. He begged Wagner to play the Transformation music for him, in order to turn him into immortal flesh.'

‘And did Wagner oblige?'

Celia said, ‘Of course—and it worked. But Wagner was so horrified by what had happened that he sought out a famous Jesuit priest called Father Xavier Montini, who was an expert on pagan rituals, and told him all about it. Father Montini told Wagner that the only way in which he could put Guido Castelnuovo to rest was to write a Hymn of Atonement.

‘This hymn had to include Wagner's own prayer for forgiveness, as well as the famous runic chant which the Pope had sent to St Augustine in Britain in 597 AD. St Augustine had needed it to destroy the immortal followers of a bloodthirsty pagan called Ethelfrid.

‘So that's what Wagner did—he wrote a Hymn of Atonement. Then he invited Guido Castelnuovo to his apartments in Venice, and played it to him. Nobody will ever know what happened that night, but at the end of it, one room was found fiercely burned, and Wagner was found dead of a heart-attack.'

‘How do you know all this?' Lloyd asked Celia, searchingly.

Celia gave a thin, grey-lipped smile. ‘It was all in Father Montini's diaries and notebooks, in the Boston University library, of all places. They were sent there with a whole heap of other nineteenth-century Jesuit literature in 1924.'

‘Nineteen twenty-four? So when Otto was searching for Junius during the war, he could never have found them?'

‘Of course not.'

Lloyd narrowed his eyes. ‘So Otto doesn't know about this Hymn of Atonement?'

‘Oh, he knows about it, all right,' said Celia, ‘but he doesn't realize I have it. It was all there, where Father Montini had hidden it, mixed in with all the rest of the opera. But Otto's musical advisers never got around to interpreting it. All they were interested in were the Fire Ritual and the Transformation Ritual. What did they care for a hymn?'

Celia glanced quickly toward the living-room door, but they both knew that Otto would still be deeply asleep, dreaming of nothing at all.

‘Why didn't you tell him about it?' asked Lloyd, and for one instant he thought he sensed a flash of the old Celia—the Celia he had once loved. Headstrong, clever and determined.

‘I didn't tell him because I knew what he would do. He would take it as a threat to the master race, and he would burn it. But I worship Wagner. To me, you know, it would be absolutely inexcusable to burn the only copy of a Wagner hymn, written in the master's own hand. That would be like burning the Mona Lisa.'

‘So you hid it at home in your piano?' said Lloyd. ‘And that's what you came looking for, the night you set fire to yourself?'

Celia said, ‘No . . . originally I came looking for my salamander talisman. I'd lost it, I didn't know where. Otto insisted that I had to have it for the Transformation ceremony. I thought I might have dropped the talisman inside the piano when I was hiding the manuscript there.'