Imajica

  “My dear, you’ll freeze to death. Get in the car. Please, please. Get in the car.”

  She did as he suggested, the rain running down her neck.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I . . . I wondered where you’d gone, that was all. Then . . . I don’t know . . . the place seemed familiar.”

  “It’s a place of no importance,” he said. “You’re shivering. Would you prefer we didn’t go to the opera?”

  “Would you mind?”

  “Not in the least. Pleasure shouldn’t be a trial. You’re wet and cold, and we can’t have you getting a chill. One sickly individual’s enough.”

  She didn’t question this last remark; there was too much else on her mind. She wanted to sob, though whether out of joy or sorrow she wasn’t sure. The dream she’d come to dismiss as fancy was founded in solid fact, and this solid fact beside her—Godolphin—was in turn touched by something momentous. She’d been persuaded by his practiced understatement: the way he talked of traveling to the Dominions as he would of boarding a train, and his expeditions in Yzordderrex as a form of tourism as yet unavailable to the great unwashed. But his reductionism was a screen—whether he was aware of the fact or not—a ploy to conceal the greater significance of his business. His ignorance, or arrogance, might well kill him, she began to suspect: which thought was the sorrow in her. And the joy? That she might save him, and he learn to love her out of gratitude.

  Back at the house they both changed out of their formal attire. When she emerged from her room on the top floor she found him on the stairs, waiting for her.

  “I wonder . . . perhaps we should talk?”

  They went downstairs into the tasteful clutter of the lounge. The rain beat against the window. He drew the curtains and poured them brandies to fortify them against the cold. Then he sat down opposite her.

  “We have a problem, you and I.”

  “We do?”

  “There’s so much we have to say to each other. At least . . . here am I presuming it’s reciprocal, but for myself, certainly . . . certainly I’ve got a good deal I want to say, and I’m damned if I know where to begin. I’m aware that I owe you explanations, about what you saw at the estate, about Dowd and the voiders, about what I did to Charlie. The list goes on. And I’ve tried, really I have, to find some way to make it all clear to you. But the truth is, I’m not sure of the truth myself. Memory plays such tricks”—she made a murmur of agreement—“especially when you’re dealing with places and people who seem to belong half in your dreams. Or in your nightmares.” He drained his glass and reached for the bottle he’d set on the table beside him.

  “I don’t like Dowd,” she said suddenly. “And I don’t trust him.”

  He looked up from refilling his glass. “That’s perceptive,” he said. “You want some more brandy?” She proffered her glass, and he poured her an ample measure. “I agree with you,” he said. “He’s a dangerous creature, for a number of reasons.”

  “Can’t you get rid of him?”

  “He knows too much, I’m afraid. He’d be more dangerous out of my employ than in it.”

  “Has he got something to do with these murders? Just today, I saw the news—”

  He waved her inquiry away. “You don’t need to know about any of that, my dear,” he said.

  “But if you’re at risk—”

  “I’m not. I’m not. At least be reassured about that.”

  “So you know all about it?”

  “Yes,” he said heavily. “I know a little something. And so does Dowd. In fact, he knows more about this whole situation than you and I put together.”

  She wondered about this. Did Dowd know about the prisoner behind the wall, for instance, or was that a secret she had entirely to herself? If so, perhaps she’d be wise to keep it that way. When so many players in this game had information she lacked, sharing anything—even with Oscar—might weaken her position; perhaps threaten her life. Some part of her nature not susceptible to the blandishments of luxury or the need for love was lodged behind that wall with the woman she’d woken. She would leave it there, safe in the darkness. The rest—anything else she knew—she’d share.

  “You’re not the only one who crosses over,” she said. “A friend of mine went.”

  “Really?” he said. “Who?”

  “His name’s Gentle. Actually, his real name’s Zacharias. John Furie Zacharias. Charlie knew him a little.”

  “Charlie. . . .” Oscar shook his head. “Poor Charlie.” Then he said, “Tell me about Gentle.”

  “It’s complicated,” she said. “When I left Charlie he got very vengeful. He hired somebody to kill me. . . .”

  She went on to tell Oscar about the murder attempt in New York and Gentle’s later intervention; then about the events of New Year’s Eve. As she related this she had the distinct impression that at least some of what she was telling him he already knew, a suspicion confirmed when she’d finished her description of Gentle’s removal from this Dominion.

  “The mystif took him?” he said. “My God, that’s a risk!”

  “What’s a mystif?” she asked.

  “A very rare creature indeed. One would be born into the Eurhetemec tribe once in a generation. They’re reputedly extraordinary lovers. As I understand it, they have no sexual identity, except as a function of their partner’s desire.”

  “That sounds like Gentle’s idea of paradise.”

  “As long as you know what you want,” Oscar said. “If you don’t I daresay it could get very confusing.”

  She laughed. “He knows what he wants, believe me.”

  “You speak from experience?”

  “Bitter experience.”

  “He may have bitten off more than he can chew, so to speak, keeping the company of a mystif. My friend in Yzordderrex—Peccable—had a mistress for a while who’d been a madam. She’d had a very plush establishment in Patashoqua, and she and I got on famously. She kept telling me I should become a white slaver and bring her girls from the Fifth, so she could start a new business in Yzordderrex. She reckoned we’d have made a fortune. We never did it, of course. But we both enjoyed talking about things venereal. It’s a pity that word’s so tainted, isn’t it? You say venereal, and people immediately think of disease, instead of Venus. . . .” He paused, seeming to have lost his way, then said, “Anyway, she told me once that she’d employed a mystif for a while in her bordello, and it caused her no end of problems. She’d almost had to close her place, because of the reputation she got. You’d think a creature like that wouldmake the ultimate whore, wouldn’t you? But apparently a lot of customers just didn’t want to see their desires made flesh.” He watched her as he spoke, a smile playing around his lips. “I can’t imagine why.”

  “Maybe they were afraid of what they were.”

  “You’d consider that foolish, I assume.”

  “Yes, of course. What you are, you are.”

  “That’s a hard philosophy to live up to.”

  “No harder than running away.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I’ve thought about running away quite a lot of late. Disappearing forever.”

  “Really?” she said, trying to stifle any show of agitation. “Why?”

  “Too many birds coming home to roost.”

  “But you’re staying?”

  “I vacillate. England’s so pleasant in the spring. And I’d miss the cricket in the summer months.”

  “They play cricket everywhere, don’t they?”

  “Not in Yzordderrex they don’t.”

  “You’d go there forever?”

  “Why not? Nobody would find me, because nobody would ever guess where I’d gone.”

  “I’d know.”

  “Then maybe I’d have to take you with me,” he said tentatively, almost as though he were making the proposal in all seriousness and was afraid of being refused. “Could you bear that thought?” he said. “Of leaving the Fifth, I mean.”

  “I could bear it.”

&
nbsp; He paused. Then: “I think it’s about time I showed you some of my treasures,” he said, rising from his chair. “Come on.”

  She’d known from oblique remarks of Dowd’s that the locked room on the second floor contained some kind of collection, but its nature, when he finally unlocked the door and ushered her in, astonished her.

  “All this was collected in the Dominions,” Oscar explained, “and brought back by hand.”

  He escorted her around the room, giving her a capsule summary of what some of the stranger objects were and bringing from hiding tiny items she might otherwise have overlooked. Into the former category, among others, went the Boston Bowl and Gaud Maybellome’s Encyclopedia of Heavenly Signs; into the latter a bracelet of beetles caught by the killing jar in their daisy chain coupling—fourteen generations, he explained, male entering female, and female in turn devouring the male in front, the circle joined by the youngest female and the oldest male, who, by dint of the latter’s suicidal acrobatics, were face to face.

  She had many questions, of course, and he was pleased to play the teacher. But there were several inquiries he had no answers to. Like the empire looters from whom he was descended, he’d assembled the collection with commitment, taste, and ignorance in equal measure. Yet when he spoke of the artifacts, even those whose function he had no clue to, there was a touching fervor in his tone, familiar as he was with the tiniest detail of the tiniest piece.

  “You gave some objects to Charlie, didn’t you?” she said.

  “Once in a while. Did you see them?”

  “Yes, indeed,” she said, the brandy tempting her tongue to confess the dream of the blue eye, her brain resisting it.

  “If things had been different,” Oscar said, “Charlie might have been the one wandering the Dominions. I owe him a glimpse.”

  “ ‘A piece of the miracle,’ “ she quoted.

  “That’s right. But I’m sure he felt ambivalent about them.”

  “That was Charlie.”

  “True, true. He was too English for his own good. He never had the courage of his feelings, except where you were concerned. And who could blame him?”

  She looked up from the trinket she was studying to find that she too was a subject of study, the look on his face unequivocal.

  “It’s a family problem,” he said. “When it comes to . . . matters of the heart.”

  This confession made, a look of discomfort crossed his face, and his hand went to his ribs. “I’ll leave you to look around if you like,” he said. “There’s nothing in here that’s really volatile.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Will you lock up after yourself?”

  “Of course.”

  She watched him go, unable to think of anything to detain him, but feeling forsaken once he’d gone. She heard him go to his bedroom, which was down the hall on the same floor, and close the door behind him. Then she turned her attention back to the treasures on the shelves. It wouldn’t stay there, however. She wanted to touch, and be touched by, something warmer than these relics. After a few moments of hesitation she left them in the dark, locking the door behind her. She would take the key back to him, she’d decided. If his words of admiration were not simply flattery—if he had bed on his mind—she’d know it soon enough. And if he rejected her, at least there’d be an end to this trial by doubt.

  She knocked on the bedroom door. There was no reply. There was light seeping from under the door, however, so she knocked again and then turned the handle and, saying his name softly, entered. The lamp beside the bed was burning, illuminating an ancestral portrait that hung over it. Through its gilded window a severe and sallow individual gazed down on the empty sheets. Hearing the sound of running water from the adjacent bathroom, Jude crossed the bedroom, taking in a dozen details of this, his most private chamber, as she did so: the plushness of the pillows and the linen; the spirit decanter and glass beside the bed; the cigarettes and ashtray on a small heap of well-thumbed paperbacks. Without declaring herself, she pushed the door open. Oscar was sitting on the edge of the bath in his undershorts, dabbing a washcloth to a partially healed wound in his side. Reddened water ran over the furry swell of his belly. Hearing her, he looked up. There was pain on his face.

  She didn’t attempt to offer an excuse for being there, nor did he request one. He simply said, “Charlie did it.”

  “You should see a doctor.”

  “I don’t trust doctors. Besides, it’s getting better.” He tossed the washcloth into the sink. “Do you make a habit of walking into bathrooms unannounced?” he said. “You could have walked in on something even less—”

  “Venereal?” she said.

  “Don’t mock me,” he replied. “I’m a crude seducer, I know. It comes from years of buying company.”

  “Would you be more comfortable buying me?” she said.

  “My God,” he replied, his look appalled. “What do you take me for?”

  “A lover,” she said plainly. “My lover?”

  “I wonder if you know what you’re saying?”

  “What I don’t know, I’ll learn,” she said. “I’ve been hiding from myself, Oscar. Putting everything out of my head so I wouldn’t feel anything. But I feel a lot. And I want you to know that.”

  “I know,” he said. “More than you can understand, I know. And it makes me afraid, Judith.”

  “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” she said, astonished that it was she who was mouthing these words of reassurance when he was the elder and presumably the stronger, the wiser. She reached out and put her palm flat against his massive chest. He bent forward to kiss her, his mouth closed until he met hers and found it open. One hand went around her back, the other to her breast, her murmur of pleasure smeared between their mouths. His touch moved down, over her stomach, past her groin, to hoist up her skirt and retrace its steps. His fingers found her sopping—she’d been wet since first stepping into the treasure room—and he slid his whole hand down into the hot pouch of her underwear, pressing the heel of his palm against the top of her sex while his long middle digit sought out her fundament, gently catching its flukes with his nail.

  “Bed,” she said.

  He didn’t let her go. They made an ungainly exit from the bathroom, with him guiding her backwards until she felt the edge of the bed behind her thighs. There she sat down, taking hold of the waistband of his blood-stained shorts and easing them down while she kissed his belly. Suddenly bashful, he reached to stop her, but she pulled them down until his penis appeared. It was a curiosity. Only a little engorged, it had been deprived of its foreskin, which made its outlandishly bulbous, carmine head look even more inflamed than the wound in its wielder’s side. The stem was very considerably thinner and paler, its length knotted with veins bearing blood to its crown. If it was this disproportion that embarrassed him he had no need, and to prove her pleasure she put her lips against the head. His objecting hand was no longer in evidence. She heard him make a little moan above, and looked up to see him staring down at her with something very like awe on his face. Sliding her fingers beneath testicles andstem, she raised the curiosity to her mouth and took it inside; then she dropped both hands to her blouse and began to unbutton. But he’d no sooner started to harden in her mouth than he murmured a denial, withdrew his member, and stepped back from her, pulling up his underwear.

  “Why are you doing this?” he said.

  “I’m enjoying it.”

  He was genuinely agitated, she saw, shaking his head, covering the bulge in his underwear in a new fit of bashfulness.

  “For whose sake?” he said. “You don’t have to, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “I wonder?” he said, genuine puzzlement in his voice.

  “I don’t want to use you.”

  “I wouldn’t let you.”

  “Maybe you wouldn’t know.”

  This remark inflamed her. A rage rose such as she’d not felt in a long while. She stood up.

  “I kn
ow what I want,” she said, “but I’m not about to beg for it.”

  “That’s not what I’m saying.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “That I want you, too.”

  “So do something about it,” she said.

  He seemed to find her fury freshly arousing and stepped towards her again, saying her name in a voice almost pained with feeling. “I’d like to undress you,” he said. “Would you mind?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t want you to do anything—”

  “Then I won’t.”

  “—except lie down.”

  She did so. He turned off the bathroom light, then came to the edge of the bed and looked down at her. His bulk was emphasized by the light from the lamp, which threw his shadow up to the ceiling. Quantity had never seemed an arousing quality hitherto, but in him she found it intensely attractive, evidence as it was of his excesses and his appetites. Here was a man who would not be contained by one world, one set of experiences, but who was kneeling now like a slave in front of her, his expression that of one obsessed.

  With consummate tenderness, he began to undress her. She’d known fetishists before—men to whom she was not an individual but a hook upon which some particular item was hung for worship. If there was any such particular in this man’s head, it was the body he now began to uncover, proceeding to do so in an order and manner that made some fevered sense to him. First he slipped off her underpants; then he finished unbuttoning her blouse, without removing it. Next he teased her breasts from her bra, so that they were available to his toying, but then didn’t play there but went to her shoes, removing them and setting them beside the bed before hoisting up her skirt so as to have a view of her sex. Here his eyes lingered, his fingers advancing up her thigh to the crease of her groin, then retreating. Not once did he look at her face. She looked at his, however, enjoying the zeal and veneration there. Finally he rewarded his own diligence with kisses. First on her lower legs, moving up towards herknees; then her stomach and her breasts, and finally returning to her thighs and up into the place he’d forbidden them both till now. She was ready for pleasure, and he supplied it, his huge hand caressing her breasts as he tongued her. She closed her eyes as he unfolded her, alive to every drop of moisture on her labia and legs. When he rose from this to finish undressing her—skirt first, then blouse and bra—her face was hot and her breath fast. He tossed the clothes onto the floor and stood up again, taking her knees and pushing them up and back, spreading her for his delectation, and holding her there, prettily exposed.