Faces Under Water

  “I need to go back there, I think. I need to live there. Not the way I did. In their way.”

  “Whose way, my son?”

  Furian detailed the manner of real life. Poverty and lack, roughness and dis-grace.

  His father laughed. His father told him Furian would do better to ride over to the estate of his father’s friend. His father had heard a young lady there was pining for him.

  Furian rode instead out into his own Father’s estate.

  He watched the harvesters on the land. They were not, cared for by his God-fearing and generous family, so very wretched.

  He found a wood, and stood bellowing at his father.

  Trying to vocalize the truth. But his father would never listen, or earnestly listening, would not hear.

  Desperately, with a pang of horrible terror, Furian knew the abyss lay ready at his feet. And that he could only leap forward, into it.

  2

  Furian was dreaming. His father shouted at him. “Are you insane? What have I bred?”

  And Furian’s mother wept, her countenance a mirror of tears. Which he seemed to clutch also in his hand, the looking-glass that had reflected so often her face.

  The new lodging lay among the slums near Silvia. He had gone away, and left implications elsewhere that he might have run further. Then come back close to home, as home had been. Was all this necessary? There had been nothing sinister since the murder attempt. They had the mask, whoever they were. Might that be the end of it, if he kept low, showed them proper frightened respect?

  Shaachen had refused to move his ground. He let Furian supply five roughs, and chose a couple more from his clinic. These were to be Shaachen’s guard. He had mixed, from unspilled stores, medicine for Furian’s fever, then been busy burying the magpie in the iron casket, talking to it, calmly and lightly. It had shown it was spiritually alive, and so the burial was only for the sake of honor.

  Furian was not sure what he had seen was to be credited. But he had seen it.

  After swallowing Shaachen’s bitter brew, Furian felt worse, perhaps a sign of its curative value. Once he had laid his false trail, he got into the dirty, lousy room, lay on the pallet, and slept like death for three or four hours. His dreams woke him, and flashing lights across his vision that only dispersed when he opened his eyes and sat up.

  Mid-afternoon was in the slit of window. The heat was a hot syrup, and gladsome flies danced in the air. He went and shouted down the house. The girl brought him a ewer of water to wash in and some food he did not want, so ate. When he was ready, he called up the two fellows from the lower rooms. One had a silver earring and the mask of a pig. The other had only a whitish eye-mask. The pig was named appropriately Porco. The other one would not give even his nickname; invented one on the spot. “Call me Modest, Signore.”

  “I’m going out,” said Furian. “You’ll come.”

  “You’ve put on a nice coat, Signore,” commented Porco. He ambled forward and fingered the sleeve the Jewish tailor had set with such pains. Furian slapped Porco off. Porco apologized.

  “Three of these each,” said Furian, showing the money. “More, if there’s trouble.”

  “What if they kill you, these people?” asked the cautious, ugly Modest.

  “Then you can take what you want. But I’ll probably haunt you. It’s your work to see I survive.”

  Porco crossed himself and made the trident sign to Neptune. “Don’t joke about that, Signore. My brother’s uncle was haunted just that way.”

  Modest swore. “When you’re dead you’re dead.”

  Furian thought of the magpie. He said, “Better hope so.”

  They went out.

  Either Shaachen’s drug, or the illness, made it seem to Furian as though he walked through thick clouds of liquid. How fitting here, in Venus. Between the dirty stooping shacks and sick tenements, came sudden vistas of the Laguna Silvia, inky green, with pieces of distant buildings seeming afloat on her like tiered ships. A city resting on water.

  Whores squawked or cajoled them from balconies.

  This too had some relevance.

  The satchel, with other things Shaachen had supplied, from secret drawers and places behind the wall, seemed heavy as a boulder.

  They were rowed across, walked, walked.

  Modest grumbled. He did not like this sort of exercise. Porco tried to cheer him up, telling him it was good for him, and perhaps the Signore would stop and let them all have some refreshment at a tavern.

  Furian said he wanted them stony sober.

  “One little glass, Signore.”

  “No.”

  When they reached west into the City, they saw, or Furian did, across the stretch of the Laguna Fulvia.

  There, before the Primo Suvio, the masses had, more than six centuries ago, gathered to hear their priests exhort them to set out and rescue Christendom in Venus-built ships. The First Cry to the crusades. But now the white dome also floated, confectionery.

  Furian felt dizzy. He wanted a glass of wine as desperately as Porco.

  He was not sure of the way, coming in this fashion, along the alleys and narrow streets. He recognized a side canal all at once, as if a veil fell from his eyes.

  “Has anyone been interested in us?”

  “No one. I kept my eye out. One slut followed us a couple of streets, to see if we were worth pinching from. But decided she’d better not when Modest polished his knife.”

  A wanderer was idling by the steps of a ruinous old house. The house lamp hung almost in the water, reflecting like a silver pear.

  What time was it? The little clouds above the Primo had been daubed with honey.

  “We’ll take that boat. We come to a house with gates and a garden. You’ll stay by the gates, and I go in.”

  But do I? he thought. Who’s to say?

  The wanderlier eyed them distrustfully. Porco took up the place of two persons, but lean Modest less than the place of one.

  Furian sat further up. He had the familiar sensation of how easy it would be to drop back in the canal and let it conclude matters.

  Having described the house, Furian asked the wanderlier if he knew it.

  “No, Signore. Some palace.”

  THE SKY HAD THE QUALITY of the dense, almost brown, gilding inside the Primo dome. Sunset then, or nearly. The tethered boat bumped gently by the steps, and Porco and Modest had got out, and were standing against the ornate iron gates, polishing, both of them now, their knives.

  “Stop that. Stand over there.”

  Offended, they went along the pavement, and stood in the shade of a huge old acacia that towered above the wall.

  Furian jangled the bell on the gate. He waited, looking into the garden. Beer-colored shadows wove the trees together. There were wild roses, blue wisteria turning now away from flowers to a russet autumn mantle. A slender path ran through, and there was a statue at its turn, a Pan playing the syrinx.

  No one came. Furian rang the bell a second time.

  To his right, above, in the pastry architecture of the house, the tall window with its lattice, seen sidelong. The window was opaque white, the others stood in a row, these shuttered tight. He had not noticed them before.

  It was so dangerous to have come here he had not bothered. Of all the things he could have done, the chanciest, the least clever. They would not have expected it of him. Or had they?

  If no one came, was no one here? Was he prepared to climb up the gate? With Porco’s help he could get to the top. Could swing over and down in the garden.

  But no, someone was coming. Out from the side of the house as if from a flat wing of scenery in the theater.

  An old, grey-haired servant in a leather apron, with some keys.

  “What is it? What do you want?”

  Furian wore the good coat. He was clean and combed. He had on yet another mask, a plain black oval, the eyes cut out, and a chiseled nose, and lips that must be hinged up for food or drink.

  “Is your lady at hom
e?” said Furian.

  The man, who had a well-made mask in the form of a cat, said, “My lady? Who do you mean?”

  “The mistress of the house. Madama of the butterfly mask. I don’t want to name her. I wouldn’t presume.”

  “If she were here,” said the old man, “Why do you want her?”

  “I have some things with me,” said Furian clearly.

  “Things useful to her work. To enrich her beauty. To assist her in reading the fates of those she must deal with.”

  An ordinary harlot would be intrigued. Or uneasy. Furian added, because probably she was not an ordinary harlot, “I sang her a song last night. Perhaps she heard me. Go and tell her, and see what she says.”

  He slipped his hand through the bars of the gate, and held out the bright piece of money.

  The old man took it without a word, and then instantly, shaking his keys, unlocked the gate.

  “She said you’d come.”

  Furian thought distinctly, Into the cage. Conceivably she has someone waiting.

  He felt a galvanic rush of fear, and of readiness. The fever made him reckless, or his life. He said, “You don’t object if my men wait just there? I wouldn’t suggest they come in. Unless I have need of them, of course. They’re rather… boisterous.”

  The old man said nothing. Furian walked in at the gate which was locked behind him.

  The shadows were heavy in the garden now. They rippled against his eyes and he wondered what they concealed. Then the servant led him inside and through a tall dark doorway, into the house of the blue whore.

  AFTER ALL HE HAD SUNK in the lagoon, and through time also, for this was the water of Ve Nera, as it had been once, clear and cool.

  Her sala had walls and floor of blue marble, mottled and clouded with richer and more transparent blues. At the four corners, high up, was a carved woman’s head and throat, a light cobalt blue powdered by gilt. Each was subtly different, crowned with a diadem, her blue tresses caught with fruits and leaves. One had a silver crescent moon on her forehead, one a quartz star, one a sun of pale amber, and one the magic emblem of Venus herself, shaped in glimmering electrum.

  There was very little furniture. A sofa, a desk, a few chairs, but these were fine. Before the window hung a sheer curtain of white silk from a rail. And before this had had been placed a harpsichord. It was painted indigo, with a scattering of flowers in various ghostly, faded tones. The keys twinkled the distilled and sinking sunlight.

  She was not in the chamber, no one was, which gave him leisure to look at it. There would be no way out save the two slim doors, for the lattice of the window would resist flesh and bone.

  Looking at his reflection in the marble was like standing on water. Had Cloudio del Nero died in this luminous room?

  The second door, as he had expected, opened. A cat-masked girl stood aside, and the woman entered.

  Her dress had loose sleeves, a long loose train. It was a creamy flaxen color, a few shades whiter than her hair. The hairstyle, like the dress, looked artless. Some drawn up, most left lying shining on her breast, down her back along the train. It was marvelous hair, but streaked with sheeny darker strands that he took at first for some affectation. But they were not. She had begun to go grey, like her elderly servant.

  Somehow this disturbed him. He recalled her hands, noted them now. They were young. She was not more than twenty, if so old.

  Her mask today, like his, was plain. An alabaster face, lovely enough in a soulless, unliving way. It covered all her features, but, as she moved across the floor, he saw again her eyes.

  They were the most extraordinary, impossible, brilliant blue, breakingly blue, like some flower or gem.

  “So generous, Madama, to let me in—”

  But she held up her hand. She sat down at the desk, took up the pen, and wrote. He watched the white feather. Its motion was dreamlike. And when the servant girl glidingly brought him the paper to read, this too was like a peculiar dream.

  But even the magpie had been able to write, after death.

  The words said, I do not talk. Ask what you wish. I will answer as I may.

  Furian laughed. “You astonish me, Madama. How novel. I’d better make my questions as entertaining as you yourself. Is it a game?”

  She wrote. The girl went back, replaced the first paper, took the next paper, brought it.

  No game. You must be patient.

  He said, “You don’t need this assistant, surely. If I come closer, I can read over your shoulder.”

  Naturally she would refuse.

  No. She nodded to the girl, who went directly out.

  He went up to the desk, but then she again held up her hand. She placed the paper before him. It said, Stand there. He was to be before her, not at her back. Furian bowed.

  He said, carelessly, “In my satchel here, I have some wonderful things, cosmetics, unguents, some of them from the East. If you’d like to try any sample, in privacy, Madama—”

  She wrote.

  Upside down now he read the words, Is this why you sang beneath my window?

  Furian smiled behind his mask. “To gain your attention, of course. How lucky that I succeeded. And I thought you’d like the song.”

  She wrote. Why?

  “Why? Well, Madama. It was composed by a talented man. And, I thought, composed for you.”

  She raised her head. Through the white mask-face her eyes—her eyes. They stared into his unblinking, without one flicker. They were the color of the aquamarine glass in the Madonna window of the Primo. Or perhaps the forget-me-not pane above the shrine of Venus. They were like holes into the sky of some other world.

  He held her gaze. It was too easy. She was well trained, for there was no innocence in her look. She might have been blind… or some creature that could draw out your soul by its stare.

  He had the urge to glance away. Wanted to very much. But somehow could not now let go—

  She lowered her head. The alien lamps were bent on her paper. She wrote, The song was not for me.

  “Oh, lady. That’s not what I heard. All Venus says the song was for you. And the poor fellow died. Did you know?” She wrote. He reached across and caught her hand. She had been foolish enough to let herself be alone with him. Her skin was cold, satiny. He smelled a perfume, something warm and shadowy, like the sunset hour. “Won’t you talk to me instead, Madama. Tell me your name, maybe. The song doesn’t say what it is.” She took her hand out of his. She wrote, I do not speak. I indicate the song was not for me. not that it was not about me. The song was about me. My name is Eurydiche.

  “Do you care to know mine?” he said.

  She wrote, as he had anticipated, Furiano.

  “That isn’t truly my name, Madama,” he said. “Only what they call me.”

  She wrote, It is a perfect name. You are full of desperate fury.

  He flinched, as if she had struck him. And, as if she had, wanted to strike at her in turn. He said, quietly, “If names are to be suitable, then, Madama, is it death to look back at you?”

  She rose to her feet. The brow of her mask was level with the upper lip of his. She was slight as vapor, her waist looked small enough to fit between his clasped hands. Only her breasts were fuller, covered by a crossing of lace.

  Simple to dash her to bits. Or push her down and stab her through with the alternative weapon of sex. But he did not want her. This damnable iciness that was a warmth, the chill fish that must swim in her pale azure blood “Never provoke one who’s furious, lady.”

  She leaned down and wrote swiftly. You have the legend wrongly. The musician Orpheus went to fetch Eurydiche from the kingdom of the dead. but he looked back at her. which broke the laws of hell, and so he lost her, and she him. (He noticed her head moved as she wrote, attending the pen.)

  “I know I had the legend wrongly, Blueness. I thought it suited you better that way.”

  She looked up again one second at him. Her eyes flashed as they had that time in the darkness. Th
ey were phosphorescent, like the evil canals which had poisoned him. The eyes of a sorceress. But she was only a trull.

  Then she wrote again. We are not speaking, Signore Furian. Now, as you said, it is a game. Perhaps you will leave.

  “And someone is outside the door to help me along with a blade?”

  She wrote, No one like that is there. And your friends are ready by the gate.

  “Yes, it was wise of me to bring them, wasn’t it. And I might also have friends among the police.”

  He turned and walked across the floor and everything tilted, as if he did indeed walk on water. He felt her eyes attached to him still by a long aquamarine cord.

  He thought, Let go, you trollop. I’ve not done with you yet. This isn’t over. You send men down into nothingness. A Medusa whose glare turns them to rock, not a Eurydiche. But perhaps I have the Mirror of Venus to show you your own face and so kill you.

  He did not look round. He opened the sala door where he had come in, and no one was there but the old servant, to conduct him through the house, and out the gate, to Porco and Modest, fretting in the sunfall.

  3

  SAN FUMO WAS SMOKING like a chimney in hell.

  The crematory fires were underlit a rotten rose.

  Even as he looked down, a lamplit funeral rowed out across Silvia to the Island.

  It was showy, each black carven boat prowed by a black carven horse with nodding jet ostrich plumes. The ‘Charons’ dealt their poles. A drummer sounded for the oars-beat, as they did in the slave galleys. Women were weeping.

  Furian turned and walked back to his new lodging.

  On the stair, a boy handed him a letter.

  “From whom?”

  “An old chancer with a bald head.”

  The seal in the wax was a profile of the goddess Diana. It came from Doctor Dianus Shaachen.

  Furian read the note by candlelight, sitting on his rickety pallet.

  ‘Come just before midnight. I mean to try the Arts for an answer.’

  The Arts meant alchemy, black magic perhaps. Furian would be strengthless against any supernatural aggressor. No, it was, he thought, that Shaachen liked to show off.