The Death of Cassandra Quebec (3 page)

"An artist?" I was
surprised and delighted.

"Shhh! Not so
loud
– if it ever got back to my father... You see, he hates
women and artists. What do you think it's like being his
daughter?"

I made a small sound
of commiseration.

She looked up from our
hands. "That's what I wanted to see you about – my work. I've just
finished a piece. I... I was wondering,
would
you like to
see it?" She watched me with eyes so soft it seemed they could be
bruised by rejection.

I said that I'd like
nothing more, and she led me around the curve of the oasis, talking
earnestly by my side in relief at my acquiescence. She took me
through the lounge of her father's hanging dome and into her
bedroom.

"I must keep it in
here," she explained, hardly able to meet my gaze, "so that father
doesn't find out. There's no telling what he'd do."

She stood beside an
angular object covered by a silken sheet, and unveiled it so shyly
that she might have been uncovering her own nakedness. "What do you
think?
Honestly
?"

I approached it
slowly, aware of some choking emotion in my throat. It was a
sculpture in some kind of glowing, off-world wood; perhaps half
life-sized, it was of a naked woman seated on the ground, hugging
her shins.

Corrinda was watching
me. "It's you," she said in a small voice.

I touched the wood,
caressed it. I wanted to cry, and yet did not want Corrinda to see
me doing so – which was ridiculous. I wanted to cry because
Corrinda had produced in the carved representation of myself all my
loneliness, all my desire to want someone who wanted me.

The invitation was
obvious, but I was too scared to trust her. She was so young, I
told myself, while another voice asked what did age matter beside
the fact of her compassion.

I bit my lip in a bid
to stop the tears, turned to her. "And your father would put an end
to this?"

"He's ruled by his
hatred. Success makes him jealous."

"You should leave
him!"

"He wanted me with him
when he returned. He said that by returning here he could come to
terms with what happened – then I
will
leave."

"You must hate him," I
said.

Corrinda looked
away.

In the silence that
followed, I heard a sound from beyond the open door: the leathery
creak and swoop of wings. I recognised the shape that flapped
across the lounge and alighted on the back of the chesterfield.

I screamed.

Corrinda took my arm.
"It's okay, Eva. It's not the same one, and anyway it's quite
tame."

"But even so-!"

"I know. It's sick.
But, you see, my father is quite insane."

She reached out and
pushed the door shut. "We'll be alone for the rest of the night,"
she said.

~

For the next week, at
every available opportunity, Corrinda would leave her father's dome
and visit me, and we would make love on my bed beneath the arching
dome. I blessed each minute that Maltravers spent in the company of
the Nigerian, creating his work of art.

The day before the
twentieth anniversary of her mother's death, Corrinda sat
cross-legged beside me on the bed. I stared at her naked body, her
torso a sun-browned canvass on which a pattern of pale striations
had been inscribed. Some incisions were more recent than others,
and the tracery of mutilation was too symmetrical to be the result
of an accident. I wondered what had driven her to this masochism
that masqueraded as art.

I stared through the
dome at the clear blue sky. It was as if all week our love-making
had been a rehearsal for what we had just shared. I had gone as far
as I could, taken carnal knowledge towards an intimacy beyond which
only a verbal declaration of love remained. Perhaps my
circumspection, my refusal to match with words the physical
commitment I had shown, communicated itself to Corrinda.

She traced a scar on
her thigh, and said, "Do you love me, Eva?"

I made some tired
remark to the effect that we hardly knew each other, and that when
she was my age she would come to doubt if anything such as love
existed.

"I'm sorry – that's
cynical. I like you a lot, Corrinda. Perhaps in time..."

For so long I had
hero-worshipped Cassandra Quebec that, having her daughter, I could
not be sure if the girl I wanted to love was no more than an
illusion of my fantasies, a substitution for the love that was
impossible.

"I love you," she
whispered.

I kissed her
projecting knee. I wanted to tell her that she longed for a mother,
and as I was both the right age and an artist... I glanced across
the room at the statue, now installed in my bedroom, and convinced
myself that even this was her subconscious grieving for her
mother's absence, with myself as the transferred subject.

Ours was a union born
of tragedy, and I kept asking myself how such a union might
succeed.

I said: "Tomorrow we
could visit the Museum of Modern Art. We could experience your
parents' crystal."

Corrinda regarded me
with a shocked expression. "My father would never allow it."

"Why are you so
imprisoned by your father's wishes?" I asked harshly.

Corrinda just
shrugged, ignored the question. "I've read about the crystal, Eva.
I
want
to experience it, to understand what my father went
through. Then I might come to understand what makes him like he is.
I might even be able to sympathise with him, instead of hating
him."

"Then come with me
tomorrow."

She shook her head.
"He wouldn't like it."

In the silence that
followed I realised that it was because of her father that Corrinda
was so pathetically shy, her experience so circumscribed.

She changed the
subject. She leaned over me and stared into my eyes. She could see,
in my distant, shattered pupils, the tell-tale sign of
addiction.

"You've used
mem-erase!" she declared.

I told her that I had
used it often in my twenties.

She shrugged. "But
why? What did you need to erase?"

"Oh... I suspect
periods of unhappiness, old lovers... Of course, I can't
remember."

"But didn't you know
it was dangerous?"

I shrugged. "Not at
the time," I told her. Mem-erase was withdrawn from sale only when
it was discovered that memories could never be truly erased. They
were just blanked from the conscious, pushed into the subconscious,
and could resurface at any time as trauma, psychosis.

"Have you ever thought
of
replaying
those memories, reliving those affairs?"

"No, I haven't. I
always thought that if they were sufficiently terrible for me to
erase in the first place, then perhaps I shouldn't relive them.
Then again, perhaps I was mistaken. How can I claim to be an artist
if I can't face my past and make something of it?"

Corrinda smiled
timidly. "Would you erase
me
from your memory?" she
asked.

I pulled her to me.
"Of course not," I said, and I wondered how many times I had made
that promise in the past.

I touched the scars
that covered her body. "You still haven't told me, Corrinda."

"Please, Eva," she
said, and would say no more.

~

That evening, as the
sun sank beyond the dunes of the Sahara and a cool night breeze
tempered the heat of the day, the entire colony turned out to
witness the ceremonial unveiling of Maltravers' latest work of art.
There was a full moon shining, and above our heads the bulb of his
studio hung like a replica of the ivory satellite. There was no
sign of the great work, and I was not alone in wondering just what
form it might take. Corrinda had chosen not to join me; she said
that she
absolutely hated
her father's latest production,
but had refused to tell me why.

There was a patter of
applause as Maltravers appeared on the balcony, resplendent in
white suit and cravat, and gave a short speech. His latest
creation, he claimed, represented living evidence of his contention
that all art attempted to attain the symmetry of nature. I found
the monologue vain and pretentious, but I had to admit that it did
have the desired effect of creating a considerable air of
anticipation.

He came to the end of
his speech and gave a slight bow, the minimal courtesy suggesting a
certain contempt for his audience. The Nigerian joined him on the
balcony. She wore a vermilion gown, fastened at the throat and
gathered at the crotch to form a pair of voluminous pantaloons.

Maltravers kissed her
hand and, as we gazed up in expectation, he stepped behind the
woman and unfastened the choker at her neck. The gown whispered
down the black curves of her body to reveal her terrible
nakedness.

She struck a demure,
Junoesque pose and the crowd gasped.

Her flesh had been
sliced and flensed, the incisions opened, pulled back and pinned to
reveal the inner organs in their precise, geometrical arrangement;
the kidneys were displayed in positional harmony, the lungs
likewise. The muscle of her abdomen had been turned back to form an
elliptical orifice, through which could be seen the opalescent
coils of her intestines. Her arms and legs had also undergone the
depredations of Maltravers' scalpel: the ebony skin was scored and
folded in a baroque series of curlicues and scrolls, repeating the
motif of red on black.

But Maltravers'
ultimate abomination – or master-stroke, depending on one's point
of view – was the woman's heart. It perched between the orchids of
her segmented breasts and throbbed like some grotesque alien
polyp.

I recalled the scars
on Corrinda's body and almost retched.

Maltravers stepped
forward and took the woman's hand. She twirled. "The Symmetrical
Goddess," he announced.

The stunned silence
extended itself for several seconds, and then someone whooped and
clapped, and immediately the acclamation was taken up by the rest
of the crowd. Maltravers and his model disappeared into the dome.
Minutes later they strode out across the lawn, and there was a mad
scramble to be the first to congratulate the pair.

I took refuge on the
patio outside the bar and anaes-thetized myself with alcohol. I
alone seemed to understand that Maltravers' macabre violation of
the woman's body had its source not so much in his desire to create
new and outrageous art, but in some deep-seated psychological need
known only to himself.

It was not long before
my thoughts returned to Corrinda. I recalled her scarred body – her
diffidence, which amounted almost to shame, at my insensitive
questioning – and her refusal to attend the exhibition. I pushed
myself unsteadily to my feet. I wanted suddenly to find her, to
comfort her as best I could.

A party was raging in
Maltravers' dome. The guests filled the various levels with a buzz
of conversation, debate as to the man's genius and the occasional
burst of laughter. I pushed through the groups of drinkers and
searched for Corrinda, my desire to be with her increasing with
every passing minute. I felt a surge of panic take hold of me, as
if fearing that Corrinda, provoked by the extent of her father's
latest perversion, might take it into her head to do something
stupid. I wondered how much she hated Maltravers...

I found myself on a
small, railed gallery overlooking a sunken bunker of loungers,
which in turn overlooked the darkened desert. The mutilated
Nigerian stood on a coffee table in the hub of the bunker, striking
a series of extravagant posses. Light flashed off her exposed
internal organs. "He took my heart," she was saying drunkenly to a
posse of admirers, "and did with it that which no man has ever
done–"

I was overcome with
revulsion and hurried around the circular gallery. The only place I
had not yet looked for Corrinda was in her bedroom. I was about to
make my way there when, across the lounge, I saw a door swing open
and Maltravers stagger from his studio. His sudden appearance
silenced the gathered drinkers; he became the focus of attention
as, in evident distress, he pushed his way through the crowd. He
paused at the rail, breathing heavily, saw his model and hurried
down the steps into the bunker. He grabbed the woman by the arm,
dragged her from the pedestal and pushed her across to the outer
membrane of the dome. The circle of admirers hastily evacuated the
bunker; already, a crowd had gathered along the gallery rail
opposite me. I stood directly above Maltravers and the woman, and I
alone overheard what followed.

"Where is it?"
Maltravers sounded all the more menacing for the low pitch of his
question. He still gripped the woman's patterned arm, and she
grimaced at the pressure and raised a hand, palm outwards, as if to
protect herself from a blow.

"I have no idea what
you're talking about!"

I noticed that, for
all the violent intimacy of the assault, Maltravers could not bring
himself to regard the woman. Her organs were highlighted, the line
of liver and kidney duplicating the overhead fluorescents – but
Maltravers stared past her at the desert outside, as if ashamed of
his creation.

"You were the only
person in the studio when I opened the locker." He was shaking with
rage. "Where is it?"

Pinned inelegantly to
the wall of the dome, the woman nevertheless affected disdain.
"Where is
what
, exactly?"

Then he brought
himself to regard her. He hissed something too low for me to hear,
and the woman looked shocked. I could guess, from my knowledge of
his past, from his haunted eyes, the reason for his secrecy.

I pushed myself from
the rail and hurried through the dome to Corrinda's room. I opened
the door without knocking and slipped quickly inside.

She was curled on her
bed in the foetal position.