Faces Under Water

  But sunrise was coming by the time the wanderer’s oar went down. They tied up at a reeking, crumbling pile of tenements. The upper story craned over, and up into this they went.

  In the large communal room, men and women clothed in rags and remnants, sat amid an early breakfast of wheat porridge and bubbling rice kettles, turned to stare at the refinery of a woman smelling of perfume and masked like a butterfly. A huge eel lay on the table, its head off, still quaking. Children played shrieking with the writhing tail, pitiless in a pitiless world.

  For some reason it reminded him, true incongruity, of the Orichalci, in their city of tents. The ducal tribe known as The Enemy, who honored the beasts they killed and spoke a blessing and a prayer for them. In their wild ceremonies under enormous moons, naked but for their sacred masks and manes of feathers, they invoked a quarry and called it to dance soul to soul with them.

  They were taken up a stair, and put into separate chambers.

  For they were not to lodge together. It would not fit with the ‘proprieties’. A man guarded Furian’s door, and another probably hers. He realized, slow and stupid, cursing himself, they had become prisoners.

  When a skinny diver boy, in a rag mask, with huge chest and vivid eyes, (a necklet of blue pearls over his torn shirt), brought in a dish of polenta, Furian offered money. The child—he was not more than ten—laughed. He had a wonderful laugh, rich and full from large, sound lungs.

  “Barter here, Signore. A fish-head, or a treasure from the drowned palaces. That’s all we like.”

  “There’s money under Silvia,” said Furian indolently. (He had none, anyway, it had been left with his old clothes at her house.)

  “Antique coins, Signore. Duccas from three centuries ago. Capitas from the Ancient Romans. Those I’d take. But still not let you out. The Maskers are mighty. How would we dare go against them?”

  “You know then it’s the Mask Guild.”

  The boy flirted with his eyes, saying, unspeaking,

  You are the dupe, not I.

  When the boy had gone, and Furian had eaten some of the porridge, he went to the slit of window and peered down. Outside was the building’s back, an encrusted alley strung with shreds of washing.

  The window was like a keyhole, too narrow to provide an exit. The drop anyway was some twenty-five feet.

  He thought of Eurydiche. Was she mourning? Had her grief been for loss, or made more of terror, dislocation. Was she truly an innocent? How could she be. It was a fact, with her face she could never have misled him, by a false yet winning smile, an unreal expression of pain. But, conversely, she might hide it all.

  Carnival. The word itself—farewell to the flesh that was, a practice for the grave.

  He needed to speak to her, as best they could. He needed—to know …

  There was an old beggar man coming down the alley, stooped over, his head bound in a dirty turban. He used a stick and had a scruffy satchel on his shoulder. There was something untidy, black and white, attached to the strap.

  Furian could do nothing but wait. Maybe, if he asked to see her, it would be allowed. But no doubt, they would be observed.

  He was half turning for the door, to speak to Moon-Mask’s hireling outside, when he heard the beggar singing below. It was del Nero’s song, rendered very horribly. Furian was at least able to tip the leavings of porridge on the old devil’s head—

  The man leered up. He wore for a mask a strip of cloth. His face was nearly black, and covered over with blemishes and warts. One bright eye like faceted glass glittered up into Furian’s. The thing on his shoulder resolved itself. It had been preening, and was a magpie, smart as the most fashionable hat.

  Furian stayed dead still.

  The beggar reached into his satchel and brought out a little folded square of paper. He gave it to the bird, and pointed up. Furian heard the words, “There it is, darling.”

  The magpie shot straight up and landed in the narrow window. It was young and cream-smooth, and had the sheen on its feathers, unearthly blue. Its eye was sharper than the beggar’s, like a sliver of black steel. It dropped the paper in the room, and Furian saw the words there, written on the back, Ask him the time.

  Furian stared at the magpie. He said, “Tell me what time it is.”

  The bird cocked its shining head.

  It cawed throatily eight times, without hesitating. Furian had heard the bell faintly from Santa Lala, not long before, sound the same number.

  “What minutes?”

  The magpie thought, raised its right wing to show a lapse after the hour, and pecked ten times.

  Furian had the urge to touch the magpie, which had been dead, but was now alive in the flesh, doing its former trick. But as he stretched out his hand, the bird veered from the window and dived down again to the alley.

  Furian pressed his face through the window.

  “Shaachen?”

  The old beggar—Shaachen in extravagant disguise—gave a cackle. He limped away along the alley, the magpie on his head.

  Damn him to hell. Was this the hour for theater?

  Where in God’s name was he off to?

  Furian, with nothing else to do, picked up the folded paper. Opened it.

  ‘Furian Furiano, you were not so difficult to find. I had one watch the Guild, and so by night he followed you. You are in deep now. I have not forsaken you. It is a plot thick as the best fish stew. Take note. The Principessa Messalina died today.’

  Furian softly cursed. A glance showed him the rest of the paper was all about the magpie. He read, fretfully, how the bird had flown in at Shaachen’s street door and upstairs. How it resembled the dead magpie in all ways, and could do, outright, all the same tricks, particularly the trick of time-telling.

  The letter ended, piously, ‘Consider this creature, and this sign. Fear nothing. The world is an illusion, and we may pull off the veil. Find you I will. Keep this letter.’ Furian sat down heavily on the uncertain stool. He put the letter into his coat, and started soundlessly laughing. Of all the things Shaachen might have done, he had chosen this. A demonstration of the afterlife and the miraculous recurrence of things. Rescue had obviously been too paltry, too normal an act to attempt. Soon after, the door opened again. The Guild man in the bull mask walked in.

  “These quarters are uncomfortable, but you need only suffer them until tonight.”

  “Where is she?” said Furian.

  “The lady Eurydiche is safe.”

  “I should like to see the lady.”

  “She’s occupied. At prayer for her father. Better not to disturb her. The priest is with her now.”

  “Oh yes?”

  “Tonight we go over to the Isle. Lepidus will be buried in the Guild mausoleum.”

  “I see. And I?”

  “Go with us. You’re under the protection of the Signore Lunario.”

  Moon-Mask—probably the name was not his given one.

  “We have a chapel on the Isle,” said the bull-faced man, “There, the death of Lepidus will be examined.” Furian said, slowly, “You mean you’ll hold your own trial? Nothing so banal as the Ducem’s justice for the Guild.”

  “We exert certain rights upon our own.”

  “But I’m not your own.”

  “You were to be so.”

  “Am I suspected?” Furian said.

  “You may say everyone of us is suspected, Signore.

  You, with the rest, were in the Guild House.”

  “Why would I kill Lepidus, my protector?”

  “Who knows. Perhaps you know, Signore.”

  Furian held back his anger and the creeping coldness. “And she?”

  “She was his child, Signore. She accompanies us, appropriately, to honor the funeral.”

  When Bull-Mask had gone out again, Furian sat down once more, and cursed Shaachen more thoroughly. But Shaachen might have had, after all, difficulties. The Mask Guild, like all the guilds, was powerful indeed, and in any case, Furian could not leave the girl
alone among them. Despite what had just been said, she too had her motives for harming the manipulative and unkind father. To be despised did not make one generous, no matter what gifts of cash or security, even of common speech, were rendered in place of love. Besides, Lepidus was himself a murderer—and with a long reach. Even the Princess Messalina had not been safe in the Madhouse.

  Had Eurydiche known all that? How not? She was not simple, she was not blind or deaf.

  Tonight they would be taking her, whatever her guilt or blamelessness, will or aversion, ferrying her father’s corpse across Silvia, to the Isle of the Dead.

  AS THE LIGHTS OF THE CITY drew away, the bell was tolling from Santa Lala. Above, black gulls flew in silence, escorting the vessel.

  It was a charon, a funeral ship. From stem to stern, a craft of forty feet, heavy in the water, painted for darkness and trimmed with brass stars. At the stern and at the prow, their pallid arms outstretched with gilded wreathes, stood two wooden angels of death in black robes, heads bowed under curving, brooding wings. Aft, the cabin, with its silvered tassels and marble-tinged drapes, where the coffin lay under black velvet.

  There were three oarsmen, clad in the single black garment that dehumanized the body, and cloaked the head, leaving only the mask of a skull, its eyeholes blotted by somber glass.

  This, for Lepidus, an omen extra. It had come to Furian, as he paced out the day, that he had heard of it before, this cutting away of the face of a man, the scorching out of his brain with hot iron, to leave only bone. It was a practice of the Orichalci, their means of slaying a dear foe. He had learned of it, at his father’s house, and from the lips of Lepidus himself. That was not a dinner. Lepidus had been telling his traveler’s tales in the inner garden. Furian, fourteen then, had halted to listen. He had thought the mode of murder had been described so fully for his sole benefit—the man kept glancing at him, gauging whether or not Furian was distressed or thrilled. And Furian had walked away.

  But from the eventuality there had been no escape. Eurydiche sat distantly from him in the charon, by the cabin with the box. Moon-Mask Lunario stood beside her.

  They had brought her a black gown, a plain white mask. Her hair was garnished by silver powder and a string of opals.

  She had not made any move toward Furian. Nor had he spoken to her. Masked, dumb, they had seen each other. Nothing else was possible.

  The water of the lagoon seemed half solid, yet the oars moved in it without effort.

  Trickles of the dim lamps of Venus ran alongside, next slipped behind. In another country, a fishing boat stole from the lost shore.

  But ahead, the Island glared like a volcano on the water. Her crematoria were busy tonight. Although some miles in length, there was no room for all the City to lie there. Most must go into the fires, and accept a little bed, one foot square, for their ashes to rest in. Long, long ago, a special dispensation had come from Rome, promising that, on the Last Day, God would reassemble these fragments into wholeness, for what was God, but a great magician.

  The Mask Guild had other means, the powerful usually did. A mausoleum, a chapel. Rich men, they said, sleep long on San Fumo.

  The old-blood light began to make a path along the lagoon for the funeral barge to take.

  We are rowing towards hell.

  Furian tried to put the thought aside. For all I know my father may be there. In a cramped merchant’s tomb. buried upright. Buried, for all that. Or—Oh God—my mother—Caro—

  Thoughts wrung his mind. He pushed them off.

  He must think of her.

  It seemed, he thought, they were at the middle of the lagoon. Venus was a curve about the water, two loving arms, dull-braceleted by lights. The Island—hell—lay ahead. And beyond, the sea wall, and so the sea.

  It might—it might be feasible to get away. Some boat, the ocean. A galley, putting out for Candisi or the East, might take them aboard. His lush coat, her opals, payment. The galleys were wanton ships, rowed often by slaves, half lawless. He would need to bluff them in some way, but then, his life had been a bluff, until he came to her. To Eurydiche.

  And the song: Before you, darkness ruled me.

  He turned to her involuntarily. She sat like a doll.

  But Lunario Moon-Mask was picking over the deck towards him.

  “Are you at ease, Signore?”

  “No. But who would expect me to be?”

  “I regret, in a few seconds you will be less easy than now.”

  Furian felt two pairs of hands seize him. Unsensible, he had been gaping only at her. But after all, there were ten men on the boat, and none his friend. While bloody insane Shaachen—

  “Don’t resist. If you upset the boat, she will go into the water. She doesn’t swim. Did you know?”

  He let them manhandle him. He looked again towards her.

  The plain white mask was tilted to him. But that was all. No movement. No expostulation. Not even the glimpse of her uncanny blue eyes. She must have known. As they stood him up, his feet tied at the ankles, and supported him carefully, and the boat, a very little, rocked, he thought, A day and night of sexual pleasure. That was all she wanted. She had it. Now I’m meat for them. And he said aloud, “Farewell to the flesh.”

  The last stooping man stood up. (Into the water once again.)

  Lunario said, solicitously, “The weight he’s tied to your feet will take you to the bottom. You’ll see many interesting sights as you drown.”

  Furian said, “Choke on your own blood, fuck you, you thing.”

  As they hefted him high, he wanted to shout at her, but nothing could get up his throat but a taste of the mud to come.

  Then the night wheeled over. The sky unshawled, and the City was in the sky. He hit the fire-pathed wet before he was ready. There were no prayers to say. He took one huge breath of air as he went down. For beneath the lagoon he must attempt to cut the lead weight from his feet—but he had not even brought with him the little apple knife. Not trusting her, he had trusted her. Love-fool—love—

  Night and water and death closed over his head.

  2

  IT WAS SO COLD, THE WATER, so viscous and clinging. It was like despair. It probed him, his nose and ears, into his open eyes. He leaned to the weight to which his feet had been tied. As he fell, he took hold of it and wrestled with it. But the rope was strong and new, and the attachment was, as he had thought, a chunk of lead. Heavy as a hundred years it dragged him down, impervious to his struggles. His mask, dislodged, was gone. As his life soon would be.

  There was no reason to fight. More philosophical to give up, take in draughts of the water, and die as thoroughly and swiftly as he was able.

  But no. Lungs bursting now, he still tried to pick away the rope, to pull out his feet, shoes off in the water, kicking.

  His sight was darkening. He could see nothing, only the silvery bubbles that were the last of his air.

  And then the sea was alight, and out of the light, grey figures slid towards him.

  Were these great fish from the outer ocean—the mythical serpent of the canals—come to devour him fresh?

  In the panic of drowning, Furian now fought with everything, the rope, the weight, the salt water of the lagoon, the hands that came and took him, and grasped his ankles, and forced over his head one enormous bubble of the wasted air. At his neck was a pulling, a tension. He could not hold off any longer. His lungs rucked, spasmed, gasped, and the fluid rushed in.

  But he could breathe the fluid. It smelled bad and had a color, which was a sort of fusty brown. But he could breathe it—his head cleared a little. How—

  The hands let him go, he spun a brief way. His sight came back in green pulses. The light was green. He beheld a fantastic vision.

  Three rag-masked divers, one a boy, the boy with the pearls, hung in the water close to him. The boy was grinning a shark’s white teeth. They could hold their air, trained almost since birth to do so. The two men held up, in curious glass globes, oil torches that b
urned with a sea-green splutter. One of these globes—Furian touched it, disbelievingly—they had crushed down over his head. It had air in it, and kept it, the opening secured at his neck with a leather brace closed fast. The rope and lead had been cut from his feet.

  One of the men made a spear-like pointing gesture.

  They had saved his life. He was to follow them.

  He did exactly as they commanded.

  HE HAD DREAMED OF THIS, but not expected to see it awake: subaqueous Venus.

  They had dropped further into the cup of the lagoon. The torch-men swam ahead, the boy after. Furian behind them.

  Their lights lit first only the outer darkness of the water, formless, fathomless, secret. Fish came from it, and flared away, like crystals, like butterflies. Long curtains of weed trailed down, and through the weed they went, and things hung in the weed, God knew what, huge fish or octopus—they were amorphous specters, shining with their own soiled luminescence.

  There began to be a sort of general glow. It was the phosphorous of the sea.

  First he saw a tower appear, manifesting dim and beautiful as nothing seen on land. It had been a campanile, and in the filigree of its head he noted the tumbled bell, green as a bottle, chained with weed.

  After the tower, they moved between high walls. Furian looked down into a square, the buildings partly fallen, but there was a line of arches, luminous and gilded, and there a column with a white sphinx, a pale sister to the sphinx of the Setapassa.

  From ice-glassed windows, buckled lattices and balconies of black lace unrolled. The weed made banners, now turquoise blue, now glaucous green. A staircase shelved away, on every step some eccentric prize, a broken urn carved with goddesses, a pitcher of battered silver, a drowned boat, (a wanderer), with barnacles smothering her like lusterless gems.

  They sailed through the upper story of a gutted palazzo. Below, were marble floors, Furian saw skulls down there, not lilies, not faces or masks, skulls looking up with wide open eyes.

  The boy squirmed back and tugged at his arm, indicating upward.

  They rose, the men, the boy and he, up by the spire of a coraline church, past its leaning cross, the gargoyles with weed-bearded fangs—even the Devil had drowned here.