Faces Under Water

  Calypso was turning about on the floor. Maybe she thought she saw only what she had already been seeing. Some thing had taken hold of her mind; possibly she had truly seen these things before they were conjured.

  But Eurydiche stood like stone. Familiar, all this, to her?

  And Shaachen the alchemist sat in his rabbit mask, the unmagical dice put away now. Very likely he was only intrigued. For the magpie had shown him he would live beyond death.

  The Guardians merged into a laval fog. Behind each of the four chairs towered, for a moment the effigy of the mask, red wolf, great bear, a writhing shark, a flight of huge bats. Then they were gone.

  Furian looked straight up again. In the dome, the zodiac and the stars and planets were wheeling slowly. The chariots jolted, the archer took aim, from the pitcher poured a torrent of fireworks. And Virgo was courted by the unicorn.

  “Furian,” said Lepidus intimately, in his ear.

  But Lepidus sat on his seat of blackness some feet away, fondling himself with a deathly constraint. “Furian, come here. I’ll tell you the final secret, and what you must do.”

  On the floor, Shaachen turned his rabbit face to goggle at the wolf.

  Furian, subject, went along the terrace to Lepidus. “What’s the secret? Do you want me to toss you off?

  My apologies.”

  Lepidus laughed. His laugh was honey.

  “You can’t break the sorcery, little boy, with little jibes. The energy is too strong. We four keep all the Guild at bay. We four will presently rule the Guild. All Venus, why not—worlds and powers.”

  “I’m here. Tell me the secret.”

  “Don’t be impatient. Look at Calypso. Isn’t she a splendid dish?”

  “But you’ve sent her crazy, like Messalina.”

  “Not I, Furian. Not I. It’s the mask.”

  “I thought so. Like the others.”

  “Like the others. The prince who slew himself and the lady who hanged herself. Del Nero who drowned himself and lies under the canal, looking up through the water. And Messalina, whose heart just stopped in the Madhouse. And so on. Always, the mask. Shall I say how?”

  “By all means.”

  Furian’s mouth was dry. The brazier heat was like hell for sure. And in the upper air, the golden elementals coiled about each other, and the furnaces of the Orichalci shifted with eyes and paint. Who wanted wine? Wine was red and hot. Water. Water from a stagnant pool. The poison of the canal, where he had swum to her, and del Nero’s face had been turned up to him unseen, below.

  “Listen,” said Lepidus. “A mathematic. We learn intimately the facts of each victim. Their day and hour of birth, their totems and signs, their preferences and antipathies. Their deepest fears and joys. Their concealed perversities. Which planet rules them. How their inmost life is shaped. This is a minor exercise. Men love to talk of themselves, and where not, their underlings adore to betray them. There is magic too, a helpful knack. It’s possible to discover, now and then, that which even the victim does not know of himself with his waking mind. When all is known, we make the mask. It’s exquisite. It is the best of them, superficially. They must have it. They are complimented on all sides. But oh, the mask, where it touches them, on their skin, there. It has been made against everything they are. Against name and nature, condition and desire, heart and spirit. At the wrong phase of the moon, under the most unsuitable star. At an hour abhorrent to them, in the worst planetary conjunction our arts reveal. If they are up, we make down. If their tone is sweet we make bitter, and sweet for sour. A color they hate, present though never seen, a scent they loathe but will never smell—yet something of them smells and sees. Visualize a window set crooked in its frame. A wound that is unseen but never heals. It grinds, it grinds on them, and they never know how it is that it does. Evening for morning, day for night. And while it grinds, it stays a partner to what they are, inevitable, attached, like the shadow thrown on the wall. It binds them. Them must wear it, that mask, like no other. Even in love, even asleep. It looks so fair, Sometimes one of them will tear at it, but they can’t take it off, can’t, can’t. Sometimes they reach inside and rend their own skin—most of them, at the last, did this. The face or the mask or both, with scratches, cuts, bruises. It rubs, rubs, like grit in the shoe that makes a sore. But this makes sores on the soul. I gained the knowledge from the Orichalci. I went through steel and thorns, biting ants, and fire and blood to gain it. I gained it whole and entire. Their shamans use such things only in great extremity. A clever people, who can call out the psyche in their ceremonies. A cruel people. Cruel as God. Do you see?”

  “Yes.”

  “Before Carnival is over, those we select are eaten away as if a rat had been gnawing them. They kill themselves, or only die. For del Nero, that rival you love so well, it was his need of my daughter, or so he thought, that clawed and chewed him out. Only when he went under, when his lungs were full of green mud, did the mask fly up. And you found the mask, my dear. You found the mask that had killed him. And so came back to me like my little lost dog.”

  Furian stood by the black marble chair. He felt nothing. He had known, it seemed. The masks, what else. The masks were themselves the murderers.

  “But one other small magic was in it,” said Lepidus the wolf. “In a moment, I’ll say. First, I insist you look at Calypso. Lunario had her. But so did I. What a pot of dolche she is. But that wasn’t why we took her, not from affection, I regret. No one paid us to kill her. But she is to be killed, you see. This very night.”

  “Your explanations explain nothing. It only gets blacker.”

  “Yes, it does do that. You could have Calypso now. She’d be so willing. And luscious. And poor Eurydiche—so mortally jealous, watching you at work on another woman.”

  Furian felt Lepidus’ burning hand fasten on him through his clothes. Lepidus fondled Furian just as he fondled his own self.

  And Furian was hot as fire, cold as a grave, yet he twitched and filled to bursting, in the grip of his enemy. Lepidus said, “Eurydiche is the focus for it all. I made her mine. She became the Venus mirror. I shine the light of sorcery on her and she reflects it back, on them. For this reason she has always met each one. With some she has been more than courteous. In Messalina’s bed—she was there too. Did she like it, you ask again. Who knows. I told her she must.”

  “I don’t follow you,” said Furian. He did not bother to move away and Lepidus let him go.

  “But you do follow. You’re familiar with magic. What is Eurydiche but a symbol. And through the glass of her speechless void, through the abyss of all her screaming silence, this passes, and is magnified. Go down and take your pleasure with Calypso. Eurydiche will see. That will be enough, with you. The masks kill slowly, but this once, very fast. Take Calypso in the mask—it will finish her. Send her down to Juseppi in Avernus. He’ll like that. She’ll have to put him together as Isis did Osiris.”

  “You do it,” said Furian, “if it takes your fancy.”

  “But you were to be obedient. Obedient or dead yourself. And you’ve killed quite often and easily. I tested you twice, and saw you do it.”

  “Why? Why do you want me to—”

  “To assume my mantle. I’ve done enough. Even the masks have done enough. Calypso is to be the first, your test. You’ll kill those I choose, through Eurydiche and through your own appetite. Better than a father, a lover.”

  “The masks kill—but you say, not without her. You say that Eurydiche—that she kills them—“

  “She.” Lepidus stroked his penis. “I made her. I had her. She never knew how I used her after. My lust, all lust, caused such turmoil in her poor breast. And the turmoil must get out again—but how? She has no speech, can’t even blink. Such surging emotion will find an outlet. If not through the lips or eyes, then through the heart. Each sun of pain or fear, even the fear of an unwanted, demanding love, reflects into her glass. And is sent off from her so fiercely it can start a fire. Did she know it? No. How coul
d she? She met these persons and never even knew they died, living put away as she did. But then—ah, Furian. You appeared. With you, she’s different. With you, came love and healing, and her mirror turned to coolest, purest ice. So you see, there must be made more strife. Terror again, and agony. Out of such bliss, twisted, can emerge a scythe worthy of the Angel of Death itself. She’ll only need to see you put your hands on Calypso. And you’ll have your revenge, on my daughter, for all this quagmire into which, unwittingly, she dragged you; She knows now what she is and has been. I told her she was a murderess, that same night, yesterday, when I walked into the room and showed her that I still lived. and told her so did you. She knows how I’ve employed her, the lure and the weapon, both. Not only her use in their beds, their gravemaker. When you met her in that little room, did you find her more strange? Did you wonder why she had no paper and pen to write to you? You abhor her and you love her. Go down and straddle the red sow. And Eurydiche will weep and shriek behind her living mask. And Calypso’s peppery brain will explode. This, my Furian, your final initiation into my service. This, or your death. Choose.” Furian turned. He looked at Lepidus. The thick body was bloated with its feeding. On the stroked rod, a pearl of excitement had broken out. Furian breathed, and even at this intake of air, fragments of rotten, sizzling power sprang to protect the monster, round its chair. Furian put one finger to them, and was burnt.

  Furian lowered his eyes. “I’ve chosen. Kill me.” Lepidus rocked with some sudden turbulence. The mask only snarled.

  “Are you sure? Sure? It was my best wish, to hear you ask for death. Even better than ruling your life, wearing you away.”

  “Then get on with it.”

  And now Furian shut his eyes, and put out the fires, the figures, the black room, all the magic, the chaos. Something seized him. It was like the pressure of twenty nailed hands. He was swung up and up. Vertigo forced him to open his eyes once more. He hung in the boiling ceiling among worms of scalding gold. There was ice and flame together there, but he was stretched head downwards. He could not move. He heard the drum, and felt the horror of utter darkness, and of white light, of cessation and eternity. And waited for one ultimate blow.

  ALL THE GODS WERE TAKING exercise by lashing him with golden flails. His ankles were held in manacles of gold that were not real, yet were stronger than iron.

  He swung a little at each lash, but none of these were the final blow.

  His head was full of blood and in his ears the drums pounded.

  Below, perhaps only thirty feet from him, he saw the little figures. He did not worry about them. He wished to be dead.

  But Furian’s brain, his mind—not his soul—seemed loosened from his body. He moved away from the self hung there like a dead hare in the Butchers Quarter. He saw, without eyes, more clearly.

  Lepidus had got up from his black throne, though the other three beast-men sat as they were, to North and South and West. He was coming down the steps, his member standing out ahead of him. He went past Eurydiche, and, as if she could not help herself, she turned her head to watch.

  (He might have lied once more. There was no proof she had not known. She might revel in all of it, the foreplay and the death.)

  Lepidus walked slowly towards Calypso, weighed down by his indicating lust. He fancied, and would see to it himself. And Calypso, her head darting up and down and about like a bird’s, awaited him, her hands already alighted on her breasts and holding them up like ripe fruit for his attention.

  But Shaachen was busy at something too. He had gone scampering forward. He caught hold of Eurydiche. He turned her about, with one hand, to look at him. Furian heard Shaachen’s voice, “Come here, come here.” He was drawing her to the middle of the chamber. Shaachen pointed up. Up to Furian’s body hung from the dome. “Look. Who’s that? You see. Look at him. He’ll die like that. Handfast, unable to breathe. The blood to the brain bursts it.” (Furian thought, vaguely, Oh, only that then.)

  Eurydiche’s head was raised, tilted back on her white throat. The veil came undone and drifted to her feet. Her face, its eyes. Even now, hung here or separated from himself, he wanted to kiss that upturned, pliant, lifeless, singing mouth. Her eyes were so brilliant, as if with tears. But her tears were locked inside.

  Shaachen had got something out of his coat. He looked so exactly a rabbit, hopping about Eurydiche, scattering bits untidily on the obsidian floor. Where they landed, spread little puffs of luminescence.

  The funny scratchy rabbit voice was mumbling.

  These were the pieces of the ruined letter, the dried mush from his pocket. No one had bothered with them. But they must be magical still. Shaachen had formed a circle about them both, the girl and himself. He took her arms and said, “By almighty God, don’t move. You must stay still.” Her face went down and she looked at him. And in that instant the shark-masked man stood up and shouted in Lunario’s voice.

  The words were something arcane. A gust of power not light, not motion—streamed across the room and hit the paper circle. At once a snow-white, transparent globe swam up and covered Shaachen over and covered over Eurydiche.

  “Lepidus!” Lunario thundered.

  The other Guild men had also risen. (One, the bat faced man, had an erection too now, perhaps not from desire but startlement.)

  Lepidus’ wolf-face looked over its shoulder. He paused, his penis still nosing at Calypso’s scarlet skirt.

  “Why, Doctor. You’re inventive after all.”

  Shaachen did not answer. He called in a high childish voice, “Come now, darling!”

  Furian, out of his strangling body, and still in it, felt a sharp light smack to his cheek—a wing. He saw a black and white fluttering, sprung through one of the eyelets in the dome, now dive towards the floor.

  It was the magpie. It swooped to Shaachen’s shoulder, strutted there half a second, and jumped free. As its black feet touched the circle of damp paper, the magpie altered.

  Rising up, it rose. The occult bird of Virgo. It grew like a black tree dashed with white, up on the black legs like inky coral, up past Shaachen and the girl, up above them, until its black-hooked head stood the height of a tall man higher than they. It spread its wings of coal, and from its back shimmered the rich, the alien blue. The scissors of its beak opened. It cawed once, and the chamber groaned.

  The shark, the bat, the bear, stood by their seats. Lepidus stood with his hand upon the breast of Calypso. Shaachen took hold of Eurydiche, viciously now. He shook her a little.

  “Furian will die. Your father will make that happen.

  Do you want it?”

  She was only stone, and then the wind blew her back into a stem. The flower head tipped side to side. “No? No? Be sure.”

  Quickly now she shook her head. The diamond shrilled on her forehead. The coronet fell from her hair and spun away to the paper circle’s edge, with a lick of fire. “I can do as he does,” said Shaachen. “I can use you as my mirror. But I’ll kill your father instead.” She was motionless inside Shaachen’s hands. Shaachen said, skittish, “He spoke to me about my props. Don’t need them if I have you. But it will take all of me, and more of Eurydiche. It will kill you outright. But Furian will live. Do you hear me? He does. Furian hears every word. Lepidus or Furian. And if it’s Furian, then be positive, your death. What do you say?”

  Her head fell back. Furian saw again into her face.

  She was expressionless for a cruel God had made her so. And yet he read it all, the tempest within her, the racing tide.

  Furian’s body roared for her—“No!”

  But the head of Eurydiche was lowered, went up, then down. She had nodded.

  Lepidus let go of his victim, wolf’s head fully turning and out of its eyes his own, looking like two snakes. But Shaachen was gobbling, gabbling, and showers of light and flame shot up and up. The magpie fanned its giant wings.

  Furian struggled. He struggled to fall and break himself and all this.

  There was a noise
like shrieking. A thousand voices of the damned were in it. It split the drums of the ears. At the outer circle of the room, the brazen redness of the Orichalcian magic bubbled.

  Furian could not help but see. Tossing in the sorcerous chains, he must behold her, the woman he had loved, standing beyond Shaachen’s squeaky ranting, changing, changing into crystal. He could see through her now, as through the thinnest pane of glass.

  A sapphire ignition where her eyes had been flared downwards and up. And suddenly, out of her glassy nothingness there shot four bolts of the coldest and most unearthly blue. To three of the four Cardinal points they ran, to shark, to bat, to bear, straight as arrows. And to a fourth point where a red wolf balanced on the hind legs of a man, one dazzling ray hurled like a spear.

  The air sizzled and shattered. Its red periphery went almost to black.

  Furian felt himself turning in the height of the ceiling, then dropping, slow as a feather, through a welter of nauseous lightnings. He hit the floor softly, and curled on his belly.

  From here he saw that the mask of the shark had come alive, come alive and turned inward. Lunario was screaming, fighting with it. Blood fountained out from under the blue grey head, which with its ivory teeth, was tearing off his face.

  Three others screamed as he did. The bats were free, feeding voraciously upon the man who had fallen, ripping at his face and eyes. The white bear was twisting off the entire head, and next, through the pandemonium, the crack of a man’s neck bone was piercingly audible.

  Lepidus, on his knees, wrestled howling and retching with the mask of the red wolf which tore out his throat.

  “Stay where you are,” said Shaachen, miles away. “Don’t touch the circle. Be quiet.”

  “Eurydiche,” he said.