Lucia's Masks (5 page)
I was most blessed that day that my first client was Mrs. Fancott, a gentle-spoken, cultured elderly woman who always treated me with a rare courtesy. When I had finished my cleaning in her apartment, she would offer me lemon-scented tea and speak to me about the young poet whose life mask had compelled my attention from the first time I saw it. The mask sat on its own shelf above the desk in her study. When I dusted and vacuumed in that room, I would always take some time to look at him.
I had never seen a face so beautiful or so calm. I was therefore amazed when Mrs. Fancott told me of the many misfortunes John Keats had suffered in his short life: the early and tragic loss of both his parents, and the painful wasting away of his beloved younger brother, struck down by the family curse of tuberculosis. In his devoted nursing of his brother, Keats caught the disease himself. During his last few years on earth, he had to battle not just the effects of his illness, but also a sometimes debilitating melancholy. Caustic critics reviled the sensuous language of his poetry and mocked him publicly for his lowly origins.
“I treasure not just his words, but the very example of his life,” Mrs. Fancott often told me. “In his wonderful letters to his friends, he never loses sight of the moral and healing powers of the imagination. He goes on teaching all of us that there is a value and purpose to our suffering; that the testing by misfortune, this World of Pain and Troubles, is how we transform our intelligence into a soul.”
That day I returned to the discipline of work, I wanted badly to look at the poet’s life mask. Though it was just a copy of the original made hundreds of years ago, it projected for me the actual soul of the man: vast, empathetic, yearning, and selfless.
I did not tell Mrs. Fancott what had happened. I had no wish to burden her with my trouble. But she intuited my loss, I believe, and was even more sensitive and generous in her conversation with me than usual. She then astounded me by promising to leave me the life mask in her will. And so it came to pass into my keeping and my care.
It has always disturbed me that my parents had no proper burial place where I could go to pay my respects. But I strove each day to keep them in strong remembrance by living out the values they taught me: forbearance, kindness, and an unfaltering belief in the redemptive powers of art. Because it was my mother’s voice I heard that morning rousing me from my despondency and back to discipline, I always felt it was she who sent me to Mrs. Fancott’s apartment — at a time I most needed to hear of the poet’s constancy and his unwavering faith in what the human imagination can achieve. Whatever trials I encountered on my journey north, I vowed I would hold fast to the idea of Keats’s exemplary courage — a courage I saw even in the way he bore the ordeal of the mask-making process itself. His friend, the artist Benjamin Haydon, had wanted a plaster copy of the poet’s face to help him paint a portrait. It always made me shudder to think of the wet slick of plaster gradually hardening over Keats’s face until it became rigid, sealing shut his lips and eyes. He was able to breathe only through two straws inserted in his nostrils. I would try to imagine the long hours he had endured this potentially lethal casing, and the panic would rise from my chest to my throat, like something squirming and desperate to find its way out into the open air.
A longing to breathe the fresh air of the forest spurred me on now, for no quarter of the City stank worse than this congested area where the sky-screens proliferated. Many of the watchers were so sluggish they lay all day in their own filth. I did not like to look down at their faces, with their gaping mouths and the slobber streaking their cheeks. The worst were the ones who masturbated openly, so aroused by the scenes they watched that they had lost all sense of shame. Just one last time, I told myself, only once more did I have to pick my way through this sea of pitiful addicts. I have always feared these slug-like people would pull me down; that I would sink into their vice as if it were a living slime.
I try to be charitable. There is a rumour that the sky-screens emit vapours which undo the capacity for clear thought and perhaps this accounts for the watchers’ lethargy and lewd behaviour. Nevertheless, the core of the City devoted to the sky-screens always seems to me a circle of hell whose squalor not even Dante could have imagined. I averted my eyes from a woman baring her right breast so that the man lying beside her could fondle it. As I faltered, I swayed a little under the weight of my pack. From somewhere amidst the sprawled bodies at my feet, a hand locked on my ankle. I lurched forward and found myself staring down into the gulf of a leering mouth. I had no choice but to strike the man hard upon the brow. He groaned and cursed me but loosened his grip. I sped away quickly — too quickly — for the blood rushed to my head and I had to stop a moment and close my eyes. When I opened them I was looking up, despite all my precautions, at the image on the screen above me. There I saw an act of sexual congress so violent I could not understand why it did not make the participants bleed. I went on, more wary than ever, and desperately wishing I could wash myself clean. I could not comprehend this compulsion for spying on lust’s most extreme rampage. What good could there be in glorifying a desire tempered by neither spirit nor affection?
I was familiar with the official EYE policy: that the screens provide free entertainment for the poor and all those who opt into the Chrysalis State. As with most of the EYE’s propaganda, I knew the truth of the matter was far more insidious. The non-stop pornography the sky-screens projected was designed to keep the viewers stupefied and powerless.
As I ran on I indulged in a little envy for the lot of the wealthy. With their armoured limousines, their gated and alarmed communities, their bodyguards and private armies, they alone can insulate themselves from the sickening daily spectacle of the sky-screen throngs, from the vicious children high on solvents, from the burnt and gnawed corpses in the alleyways, and the depredations of the semi-feral. But I reminded myself that the rich also pay a great price because, day and night, it is the images of the most celebrated and glamorous of these plutocrats that are projected on the City’s many sky-screens. They are in some sense public property, co-opted by the EYE to perform in ways that are tawdry, if not disgusting.
I had several miles yet to cover before I came to the City boundary and the long-defunct rail track that would lead me to the forest where my real journey north would begin. This was the only opening left in the Safety Perimeter. The EYE assumed that only the foolhardy would attempt this exit, given the dangers of the forest beyond, not least the roaming packs of feral dogs.
The main threat I now faced was a possible encounter with one of the sadistic street gangs who give themselves names like the Vigilantes for Beauty, and Perfection on Wheels.
I find all these young men and women horrific. They have faces and physiques like Michelangelo’s muscular angels. They flaunt their bodies in the skimpiest of clothing and wear necklaces hung with small, round mirrors. On their wheeled skates, they stream through the City in groups of up to twenty or thirty, often gazing at themselves in their little mirrors as they speed by. Their chief sport is baiting the infirm or anyone they find unattractive. They will surround a woman with a limp or a man with a bulbous nose, and then taunt and poke and prod their victim, until he or she breaks down. The sight of tears makes them laugh uproariously.
They are heartless and any time I saw them at their cruel business, I felt sick to my stomach. If they were not too many, I tried remonstrating with them. I have the advantage that I am taller than them all. Sometimes they listened to me and stopped tormenting their prey, probably because I had begun carrying two weapons. As well as the dagger strapped to my thigh, I had a machete in a leather case slung round my neck. It cost me a month’s wages, and I hoped never to have to use it. But I knew I looked strong and determined enough to wield both weapons at once, and appearance is everything to these vapid, self-obsessed young people.
If there were twenty or more of them, they simply jeered, and called me a garlic-stinking wop woman or worse. When they were that many, I hated the fact I was powerless to stop their sick sport. The Vigilantes for Beauty are the most revolting of them all. Every day I would hear yet another report of them setting one of their victims on fire or kicking a street child to death, while videoing the murder for their later viewing pleasure.
As I strode on I began to wonder if it had been a mistake to leave the machete behind. But with the excess weight in my pack I was concerned that the heavy weapon, which was in any case mostly for show, would slow me badly.
I turned a corner and my stomach lurched. Barring my way, his chin titled upward in the arrogant pose he habitually assumed, was the Vigilante leader with whom I have had several vitriolic confrontations. He was the one who incited the Chemical Head Children to their worst mischief, getting them dangerously high on solvents and encouraging them to swarm their human targets to extract teeth and clumps of hair. His eyes are the colour of emeralds and he has a lean, cruel beauty that makes me think of Lucifer.
“Wop woman!” he said. “How very pleasant to meet you again. And just when I have a real craving for the reek of charred garlic.” He kept his emerald eyes fixed on my face and his upper lip curled back over his perfect teeth. He assumed the loose-limbed, confident posture of one who is about to strike and knows he will not miss his target. I willed every muscle to be ready for him, whichever way he moved. How fluidly he slipped his hand into his back pocket to take out a lovely lacquered object in the shape of a canteen.
He twisted the cap off the ornate container to let loose the nauseating odour of gas. He was so preternaturally quick in his movements that he had a flaming fire-starter in his other hand before I had time to react.
Stupidly, I went on standing mesmerized, caught by the beam of triumph in his green eyes. Truly this was the power of Medusa. Under his malign gaze, my legs turned as heavy as my potter’s wheel. What chance did I have now confronted by the gas and the flame? Within seconds my body would become a living candle, fed by my flesh and its natural oils. While I writhed and screamed, he would coolly film my death agony.
It is over, I told myself. It ends here. The City’s evil has defeated me at last.
“No recourse now, Wop Woman,” he sneered. I saw what deep pleasure he was taking from the terror I knew was all too visible in my eyes. I understood that was why he was waiting, prolonging the actual moment when he set me afire. He revelled in seeing me helpless. I was now a piece of meat caught in his snare, to do with what he would. It was a pitiful way to depart this world. One of the EYE’s insect-cameras buzzed my cheekbone. I pictured a black-garbed official studying my final moments in his laboratory, noting the exact instant when my Survivalist’s spark was extinguished. For comfort I thought then of my mother’s face and as I did so, my fingers went automatically to the little bag of pepper in my hip pocket.
It was my only chance. He was still so fixed on my fear-filled face I was able to extract the bag and open it without his being aware.
Willing my hand steady and my aim true, I flung the pepper directly into his eyes. He fell upon his knees howling. I sped away, my determination to survive rejuvenated by my escape from this malevolent encounter. For some blocks I could still hear him wailing in pain. I wondered if I had irreparably damaged his vision. Perhaps his friends had already come to his aid. But then I wished to think of him no more.
At all costs I had to get out of this hellish place. Simply to make it beyond the City’s confines would be a great relief.
It was only when I reached the farthest reaches of the Safety Perimeter that I remembered we were on the cusp of the cruel season. I had not seen a fall of red rain since I was a child. It is an experience absolutely unsettling and unforgettable. Red rain pelts down so thickly it can coat your flesh in an instant. It is always caustic. As a young girl, I saw red rain victims who looked as if someone had set a blowtorch to their faces, hands and arms. If they are still alive, they must be hiding themselves away.
We have been two decades now without red rain. But should it come again, I realized I would have no protection, no stout, solid buildings in which to cower while the skies poured down their searing blood. If the burning rains did come, surely I could find a cave in which to shelter? Or I could dig a hole in the earth and cover myself over with rocks.
I found the opening with the old rail track and walked a full day before I came to the forest. I had heard that once you are inside the woods you are no longer under the EYE’s constant surveillance, which is a gift in itself. But there is still the threat of the wild dog packs, as well as the ever-present human predators — all the lost, mad ones who thrive on the blood of others. Then of course there are the Rat-Men, who do not confine their ravages to the City.
If you get through the forest alive, they say you emerge in a place of pure air, unsullied skies, deep, cool lakes, and purple mountains that give you reason to believe again in beneficent gods. I find this a most comforting idea even if it is untrue. The reality is I have no idea when I will get out of this thick fastness of trees. The branches above me are so entangled, they form a dense web. Although this has the advantage of shielding me from the sun, it makes for an oppressive atmosphere. The foliage at eye level is often black-edged and full of tiny holes. Sometimes I see barren trees whose shapes are so contorted they look like human figures in extreme attitudes of grief, prostrated and clawing at the earth. Others resemble the witches of my childhood nightmares, with hunched backs and long bony arms reaching out to seize me. You cannot escape us, they say. Or perhaps simply — you cannot escape.
But it serves no purpose to become down-hearted. I enjoy the ferns here, and the fact they still survive in this world renews my hope. I love their profusion and their intricate lacy forms. I like to kneel close to their spiny feathers, and sniff their peppery musk while the fronds brush my face.