Faces Under Water

  As he worked within her, the room and next the City fell apart. He heard the rumble of buildings fallen in canals and the insurge of the ocean.

  Her hands leapt and seized him. Then fell away, strengthless. He felt long spasms rushing in her loins, but her up-tilted face watched blindly, far away. From her throat came a sound. One sound. And beneath his chest her heart gurned, striving for air she could not take.

  As the crisis left her, he saw the opacity beneath the corundum of her gaze. He knew, she was unconscious in his arms as he had been in hers, but could not stay for her, went down in her, down to the ocean floor, where upturned faces lay with starry eyes, deep, deep below the water.

  THEY LAY HALF ENTWINED. The house creaked stilly. Far off a bell sounded for three, but he did not know which church had given it voice.

  “Is this dangerous for you?” he said. “If you faint at the peak—have I hurt you?”

  She caressed him, his check, neck, shoulder. Along all the line of him until he came erect again inside the silk snare of her hand. She shook her head and spread herself, abandoned, arching her back.

  Their race was swifter. They dropped together. He could not have stopped, he thought, to save the life of either of them.

  “Who told you about me?” he asked.

  She pointed at the table, where all but one candle had gone out. The pen was there. They forgot the pen.

  “Eurydiche,” he said.

  In the dark which came, he said it over and over. When morning bloomed, a silver haze at the narrow window, he saw her again. He lay face to face with her, staring at her, in and in at her. It seemed to him he himself did not blink any more, but when he said this to her, she hit him lightly with the back of her hand. She would nip him with her fingers, tickle him, tease him. She had almost every ordinary playful sexual skill.

  He kissed the wide lids of her eyes, described with his tongue her brows, nostrils, lips.

  His kisses were like stains of crushed lilac flowers along her groin, her breasts.

  Outside it rained.

  Daytime noises disturbed Venus. The canal filled and slopped on the pavement. Bells rang miles away. Someone brought food, and after she indicated this, pointing at his mouth and stomach, the door, gestures bizarre yet amusing, he went and brought it in. He ate, and she, taking up a little glass with a spout that reminded him of Shaachen’s alembics, poured the contents through her lips and back into her upturned throat. There was nothing ungraceful in the procedure. It pleased him. He too did it with the cooling dolche, and laughed at her, saying she was not mysterious. But then he told her she was a mermaid, and Venus, and Virgo, the goddess of the zodiac.

  She must have tasted the dolche from his mouth.

  He asked if she liked it. She nodded. He licked out the cup and gave her more. (He wondered if she had done these things with Cloudio del Nero. But she had been fond of del Nero. Furian she had wanted.)

  They slept through the afternoon when the window was peach.

  In the dusk, when the window was steel, she mounted him. He watched her, her breasts, the face of the moon, the eyes of the stars. She drew him to a pinnacle that made him cry aloud.

  Afterwards she lay on top of him, the face against his hair.

  Some deep melancholy of divine pleasure made him weep. She watched, and putting her finger to his tears, placed them just within her mouth.

  Later he lay over her and killed her again, and himself. For he felt himself near death with her. A wild febrile strength, born from the fever, now took all of him away, and it did not matter. He did not think beyond the room. Time, although it passed in colors at the window, had ceased. Life had drawn aside, as, for the dead, it does.

  WHEN HE WOKE IN THE MORNING she was gone, and he turned into the bed, breathing up her fragrance from the sheet.

  He found the next paper folded on a tray of food the girl bought and set outside the door.

  ‘My love, make yourself ready. Tonight we are to go away. Trust me with your safety.’

  She had spoken of trust before. Did he trust her?

  No. Not at all. Trust had no part in it. He would have to do what she said.

  He rolled out of the bed. When he was dressed, and had eaten, he went about her room. He took the sleeves and skirts of her dresses out of a closet and nuzzled them. He observed her mirror, which had reflected her. Beyond a few garments, some gems, combs, a book that lay on a table, the pen and paper, she had left little of herself. What could there be of her. He had found that. What she was. A kernel of pure, cool, rushing fire. Soon he went out to look for her, and met the old servant in the corridor. The man stood foursquare. Disapproval? Fear?

  “She’s gone out. You must wait, Signore.”

  “Will you send someone with a letter for me?”

  “If you wish, Signore.”

  He wrote to Shaachen rapidly at her table.

  ‘Blue-eyed Virgo I found. The one you know of. All is well. Who cares? Be wary yourself. I will write more when I can.’

  Then he added, ‘The Madonna, whose face is made of alabaster. Better speak some spell for me, or say some prayer. Amen.’

  IT WAS DUSK. They had not lit the lamps.

  As she came into the sala, he crossed the room, and took hold of her.

  She was mantled in black, and masked—the butterfly.

  “Take the mask off. Let me look at you.”

  She did as he said.

  He covered her mouth with kisses. He tried to ease her back. He would have possessed her against the marble wall.

  But Eurydiche gently pushed him away; she ‘said’

  No, and he let go of her.

  She put into his hand another paper. But he shook for a moment with desire, and would not read it. Then he carried it to the veiled, darkening window.

  ‘Flavio will come in with a cloak and mask. Put these on. Will you trust me as I asked?’

  “No,” he said.

  He looked at her and she was masked again. She made a little redundant graceful gesture.

  “You don’t believe I don’t trust you? But you might be taking me to my death.”

  She advanced slowly to him, and slipped her arms about his ribs. Turning her head, she laid it on his breast.

  Then, looking up with her whole face, as she must, she put her hand over his racketing heart.

  “It’s not fear,” he said. “Lust.”

  And she leaned against him once more, probably feeling the lust quite well in its lower station.

  Finally the door opened again and a young male servant entered. He too wore a black mantle and a plain black mask. The black cloak and eye-mask he carried he handed to Furian with a quick half bow. The sort of bow Furian had not received for years and did not want now. “Where are we going?”

  Flavio said nothing, only went out again. Eurydiche led Furian to the desk. She wrote quickly. Where you will be safe. I think no one else can assist you—and I was given word.

  “By whom?”

  She wrote Wait.

  “If I won’t.”

  Her hand flashed up, impotent and angry, and caught his arm. She squeezed his flesh harshly.

  “All right,” he said. “It’s all right. I’m at your mercy. Have I said that before? You can kill me any time. You’ve made a love-fool of me.”

  She shook her head rapidly. Another woman would have laughed, cursed him, perhaps shed tears. He took her hand and kissed the palm and closed her fingers on the kiss. He put on the half-mask and the cloak.

  The sala, when they left it, was lost in indigo darkness.

  6

  THERE WAS LITTLE LIGHT.

  As they descended the palace, he saw the servants had not bothered with any of the lamps.

  There were no sounds.

  Her man, Flavio, went first, then she. Furian came last. It seemed to him they moved stealthily. And yet, too, the gloom and shut doors of the house led him strangely to infer that no one, any more, was there.

  In a passageway b
elow the rooms, he sensed the water of the canal. They were certainly under the paving now.

  Presently there was a door which Flavio unlocked.

  A flight of steps ran down, wide, shallow and damp.

  A smoke rose from them, and there was the stink of bad water. A trickling susurrous came on all sides and beneath was blackness.

  By the stair a lamp hung on a hook. Flavio took it down and lit it. This seemed an accustomed procedure.

  The steps lit three by three as they descended, and Furian heard the canny rats of Venus skittering away below.

  They were in a long tunnel. Arches ribbed it over, and a bluish fungus grew on some of them, giving off a useless lightless glow. Not only under the canal, down into the lagoon, perhaps.

  They walked without a word.

  Sometimes Furian glimpsed rats as they fled away. They were albinos. There began to be other tunnels, narrower than the main channel, branching off. All were ignored. It was a secret thoroughfare, old sumps and sewers that had dried out, or places made purposely for just such clandestine travel. Though he had heard of such things, Furian had formerly avoided them.

  Then they turned at last into a broader stretch, and there were new lamps hanging up at intervals, infused with a thin, green, fluttering glare.

  This was a general walkway, for in a minute or so, two shadowy masked men came strolling up to them, and passed without a greeting on either side.

  Later another went by, this one with a rat-white (masked) dog at his heels.

  Other stairways now began to appear, and narrow tunnels that sloped straight up. Some were marked by signs. One of these tunnels Flavio chose. Its entry was marked by a distinctive emblem, a snarling sun of bronze with open eye-slots; a mask: the symbol of the Mask Makers Guild. Furian checked.

  She had brought him here?

  But she turned and beckoned him in her mute, eloquent way. And he—he was a love-fool. He would do what she wished.

  He followed her, and the servant, up the tunnel.

  A bold gleaming lantern hung from a lion-shaped hook. There was a stair, the stone kept clean and quite dry. Having climbed it, they reached a slit of door, only wide enough a woman slender as Eurydiche could go through without turning sideways on.

  Flavio knocked at the panels. A man’s voice came at once. “Whom does the night give up?”

  “Seekers of the risen sun.”

  “Name yourselves.”

  “Madonna Eurydiche, her slave, and one companion.”

  The phrases had an antique quality. The first had been apparently a password. Now there was the sound of bolts drawn, and the curtailed little door swung in.

  Flavio turned himself and went through, Eurydiche went after, and Furian, grimacing, after them.

  It was a tiny chamber, fitting the door. Two lamps lit it, and a man stood in a black apron, on his head the fearsome visage and wig of some ancient monstrosity. The mask was excellent in its way, fanged and tusked. The eyepieces had black glass in them.

  Furian anticipated more preamble, but the door’s guardian merely indicated a second door.

  “You’re expected, Madama.”

  The second door was of a normal size, and beyond was a stone passage, lighted at intervals by naked torches. The City knew, the palace of the Mask Guild was very old. Another flight of steps, these broad and white, took them to a double door.

  Without hindrance they went through.

  Beyond lay the Guild hall.

  Furian thought, Why be modest? Display is power.

  The ceiling looked high as a sky. It was painted as one, a green sky of tempest shown in panels, with boiling clouds. A sun set in fulvous glory to one corner. At the opposite corner a moon rose in a flock of stars. Every one a faceted glass that dazzled and winked.

  Pillars held up the sky-ceiling on capitals of silver acanthus leaves. The tops of the walls had a frieze of Roman marble, centaurs carrying off maidens. There was also a chandelier, fragile as some ornate gigantic jewelry, budding with thirty or fifty candles, everyone ablaze. Everything reflected in a floor like water.

  On the walls were a hundred or more masks. They resembled terrible unmarred faces, staring, with tongues out or pursed lips, with rays for hair and horns like the moon, the snouts of beasts, or the loud, dumb beauty of the damned.

  They journeyed through the hall, over the reflecting floor, (minuscule figures), and went through another door, along another corridor, to a tapestried wall that had no door at all.

  Flavio stepped aside. He settled into a small alcove, and sat down. He set his lamp on a table there, familiarly. Eurydiche turned to Furian. She touched his lips softly with her fingers: Be silent.

  Then she knocked three times and three times again on the wall.

  There was a sigh of sound, and the tapestry quivered. The wall had moved aside behind it. Imperiously now, it seemed to him, inimical and unknown the woman glided through without a glance. Furian walked after her.

  DEATH, FURIAN THOUGHT. A whole room of it.

  In the bright shine of candles on gilded stands, a background of dark green serpentine, and resting there in rows, the countless yellowed smiling skulls. Beneath a dark window, forty-seven skulls that were black, no longer smiling, their teeth all dropped out.

  My welcome?

  She did not seem at a loss. She stood before a big man’s shape, which was seated, almost idly, in a chair. But her hands had come out from her cloak. They darted over the air, describing various forms. And the man had also raised two hands, one with a black ring upon it, and did the same.

  They—were speaking together. It was almost instantly plain. A language that did not need tongues or lips.

  She must know him well, he her, for this to be between them.

  His hands were not young, nor old. Strong, spread, callused workman’s hands, with cuffs of silver lace, and a ring worthy of the Ducem.

  His face was masked oddly, a circular plate of deep blue glass, cut with two eyeholes and a gash for the mouth, having a hooked and bulbous nose. Beyond, his hair was strictly tied and streaked by heavy grey. The eyes were dark and veined, long-lidded, the containing skin creased and sallow. The eyes and hair and hands of a man in late middle age.

  Furian did nothing, standing attending on their unfathomable conversation.

  The conversation stopped. She turned her butterfly face towards him, seemed hesitating. Then she moved away. A curtain hung down and she went by it into some other room.

  The man spoke at once.

  “You are Eurydiche’s lover.”

  Furian was unnerved. The voice—there was something to it … did he know it?

  “If I am, what are you to her?”

  The man said, flatly, “Her father.”

  Furian replied, “That warns me to be wary.”

  “It should not. She’s told me everything. Besides, I expected nothing else.”

  Indeed, the voice was familiar. It stirred up the past, long avenues and vistas of gardens and fine chambers.

  “Then you’ll expect to abuse me,” said Furian, levelly.

  “Why should I expect that? You were always one who took what he wanted. Even when you wanted nothing, you took that.”

  “You know me? How interesting.”

  “And you know me,” said the man. He undid the fastenings of the mask. It came off in his large hand.

  It was a lined, audacious face. A gentleman’s face, an explorer’s face, for the tracks about the eyes had been formed by seas and sun and vigil.

  An instant scene formed fast about him. It was in Furian’s father’s house. The long table draped and laid for some dinner. The oranges in dolche, and the musicians playing a little divertion. Who?

  “You don’t remember me? I was of so little account.”

  It came.

  “Lepidus,” Furian said.

  His father’s agent and captain, the man who had traveled so many lands on his father’s business, even as far as Rus Parvus and the Southern Am
aria. The silk that passed through a ring—

  Lepidus. Now here, a maker of masks, the father of the woman whose face was a mask—

  “You seem to know it all,” said Furian, “but I’m in the dark.”

  “Surely not so much. You went hunting murderers.”

  “I only found a mask on a canal.”

  “You found my daughter. Do you still think she killed him, the composer of the song?”

  “No. It isn’t in her to kill.”

  “You think not? Ah, but you’re right. She can only kill with a look, my child, can’t she?”

  Furian said nothing.

  Lepidus got up. He went to a table and poured wine into two goblets of clear Venusian glass.

  “Choose which you want.”

  “You think I’ll suspect poison.

  “Won’t you?”

  “I’m defenseless here anyway.”

  “You trusted her to bring you here.” Furian shrugged.

  He took one of the glasses and drank it down. Lepidus refilled it. “You drink that way now.”

  “You know everything about me.”

  “I know something about you. That you left your father’s house on a whim. I was on my own little estate at the time, but I heard of it. Your father wrote to me. Now and then, I’ve come across you in the City. You didn’t look up from the gutter you were so determinedly in, to see me.”

  “My father asked you to watch me, then.”

  “Something like that. But later, you went your own way. It was Juseppi, your wanderlier of that night, who spoke of you in connection with del Nero’s mask.”

  “He was, I think, made to speak of me.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “And then I was to be killed. And then, I was not to be killed. I’ll assume that, since I’m not dead.”