“Many of you—all with beautiful bodies,” Albert offered.
“Four studs, three chicks,” said Tor. “There was an audience.”
“Hundreds!” said Albert.
“About twenty,” said Tor. “Men, women—they just sat and watched.”
Richard retreated from the immediate arena. He watched the others from a distance, occasionally glancing at Mark.
As if instructing him, the thought occurred to Tarah.
. . And: Yes, clearly, Tor was no challenge; only a part of the spell to be woven like an iron web about the others. Richard and Malissa. They had merely set the confession into motion. Now it spun kinetically—and Albert was their unwitting surrogate interrogator.
“You were on a stage?” came Albert’s exacerbated voice.
“Yeah,” Tor said. “On a stage—the seven of us naked, our bodies painted gold: like we were . . . moving statues. The people sitting before us called requests.”
“And they resembled undertakers,” la Duquesa said abruptly from her own resounding memories.
“Like at a mass funeral,” Blue said from his.
“Yeah, like that,” Tor said.
“But then I met the Duke— . . .” la Duquesa’s voice broke.
“The requests, Tor!” Albert pled. Afraid Malissa would break that much of proximity, he dare not move closer. But the bodybuilder’s perspiring body enflamed him.
And Tor’s body expanded, as if words, thoughts, must rebel against resisting muscles in order to form. He blurted: “The people in the audience, they’d yell: ‘You, the blond one, fuck the dark-haired woman!’ ‘Fuck her, fuck him, suck him, hit her!’ Like we were gold puppets! Large, gold toy bodies!” (Eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes eyes eyes eyes eyes eyeseyeseyeseyeseyes. . . . Fists! Screams!)
Expertly, Malissa filtered the sound of Tor’s words—extracting the sound of anguish—from their sexual meanings. The preliminary entertainment was better than she had anticipated.
“The man who hired us—he squatted very close, watching,” Tor said.
“He had eyes like pits,” Blue said.
“A creep, a weirdo,” Tor said.
“The Duke despised those words,” la Duquesa protested. “He said nothing in life is weird—except cruelty: and the horror of unfulfilled love— . . .”
“And a man was taking movies,” Tor went on in a daze. “Like to pull our bodies into a tiny, black trap.”
Savannah saw: The flash of light, flooding, steady, hot—like white lights over an operating table which may soon stare at a bloody corpse. She knew: Her own interrogation must come swiftly, the test passed conclusively.
Valerie was not listening to the brutal recitation of words. But she saw their reflections in a vicissitude of expressions on Paul’s face. . . . The moments in the blue haze of her room earlier, they seemed covered over by fragile glass now; splinters of remembrance—at moments tinged with fear—progressively more tenuous, like a fading dream.
“And then— . . .” Albert coaxed Tor feverishly, rushing before Malissa might chop off his words.
“Then— . . . Then!’’ Tor shouted.
The tone of his voice! Malissa knew. The moment! The fatal self-knowledge! Instantly she was standing before Tor.
The rattles hissed a deadly whispered demand.
“And then— . . .” Tor repeated.
“What, damnit!” Bravo joined the interrogators.
“Confess!” Topaze insisted gleefully, flexing his biceps in a parody of Tor.
“Tell them whatever the hell they want to hear so they’ll fucking stop picking your head, man!” Blue shouted at the muscleman—but it was as if he were shouting to himself about other interrogators. (“He told us it was you!”—words battered his mind.)
“Say it, man!” Rev commanded. He knew: The confession would finish Tor in the entourage, and his own position would be strengthened.
“What, what, what, what!” Malissa pulled at Tor’s mind.
Again the rattles hissed their deadly warning: like the fatal spitting of an angered snake.
The sweet scent rushed Valerie. Did it accost Tor too? He seemed to inhale deeply. Did the scent emanate from the shaken rattles? The island’s flowers— . . .
13
“And then for the first time I saw myself,” Tor spoke.
Blue saw: His own distorted face of long ago, revealed in a leering mirror.
“Like I jumped out of myself,” Tor’s words were tortured. “And I saw: Just a body. And eyes staring at it.”
Blue remembered: Twenty-four accusing eyes. His life on exhibit.
Tor continued dazedly: “I was a painted body performing for blank eyes, and what they were watching was two of us fucking the same chick. I was entering her— . . .”
“From the back, the other from the front,” Tarah said suddenly. “And the woman howled with something that was neither pain nor pleasure but the surrender that precedes dying, and no one heard.”
“She was trying to prove she was still alive,” said Joja, understanding.
“But she merely emphasized her long, long death in life,” Tarah said.
“You didn’t have to go up those stairs,” Richard said to his first wife.
“You let me go!” she said.
“You went, Tarah.”
Jeremy accosted Richard: “How can you allow these horrors to be spoken before your own son, a child— . . .?”
Mark looked at the priest. At that moment, in the youthful face of the boy there was an ancient knowledge.
“Horrors?” Richard questioned the priest. “The capabilities of the body? So limited by its own orifices, the position of its limbs. Horrors? The limited entrances. What is all that? . . . Yet the infinite capabilities of the mind. Its dark caverns— . . .”
“Which you have explored so intimately!” Tarah fired at him.
“Of which I’ve seen so much,” Richard said.
Valerie saw in Paul’s eyes a glow like that in Mark’s.
And Mark’s eyes shone as if at some premature victory. He was saying to the priest: “Is it really me you want to protect from these words?”
Jeremy moved back, away from Mark.
“The woman felt rent apart, but not by the physical act,” Tarah pulled the attention swiftly from the priest; returning it to Tor—attempting to use his words as a weapon in her shaping war against Richard.
“She felt empty,” Joja said angrily. Her eyes sliced at Richard, Mark.
Joja’s vacillation. Tarah evaluated the actress as a potential ally. One moment Joja seemed to be outlining her own attack; another, drawn powerfully to Richard, to Mark. . . . She could join either camp.
“And then, Tor?” Albert questioned, but now the exacerbated voice was mildened by a note of pity.
“I saw myself,” Tor went on. “Like when suddenly you run into a mirror you didn’t know was there. Flesh. Just flesh. . . . Then I jumped off the pile of bodies. I rushed with my fists at the staring eyes. To close them! . . . There were screams. But then— . . . Then I just . . . returned . . . to the pile of gold-painted bodies. . . .”
Albert closed his eyes. Tightly.
The mamaloi and the papaloi shook the rattles ferociously before Tor. Then the hissing beads expired, dead.
“You were a piece of meat, that’s all,” Malissa hurled triumphantly. “And you finally realized it.” There would be no further use for Tor. She turned away in boredom.
Tor wiped his perspiring face. An expression had finally formed on it: an expression of years-long, never-understanding, never-faced torture, till now. For moments that performing statue of himself had been imbued with a terrible vision: the glimpse of his throttled soul: the snuffed spark of identity. Now his body set again rigidly in resignation. Like chilled wax.
The mamaloi and the papaloi retreated as if from a fresh grave.
And Tor flexed.
“This is cruelty!” Jeremy shot at Richard and Malissa. “There are thing
s which shouldn’t be examined!”
Richard seized this weapon: “Even in confession?”
“In the quiet of the confessional— . . .” Jeremy said haltingly.
“Life isn’t lived in silence, Father!” said Richard. “You can’t subdue the shouts of living to the whimpers of dying.”
“Confession leaves a vacuum, which can be filled only with absolution.” The priest determined that his words would not sound rehearsed. “If confession doesn’t lead to communion— . . . What have you offered this young-man?” He pointed to Tor, who stared blankly as if unaware he was being spoken about.
“The revelation of his emptiness!” Malissa spat. “Of his inflated weakness—like his inflated muscles. Only that!”
Tor was through, Topaze knew triumphantly.
“He wasn’t aware of it until you ripped him apart!” said Karen.
“Who now?” Malissa again propelled the game.
“The virgin whore,” Bravo chose Savannah. “She wants to be questioned.”
“The unapproachable Savannah, the unassailable Savannah,” Richard gave the signal, “whose beauty is matched by her purity—what could she possibly confess to?”
Savannah eyed them imperturbably. The test! And she would win! Must win! Finally!
The midget stared up at her with a sensual leer.
The mamaloi and the papaloi stood suddenly before Savannah, their rattles ready to hiss before a new, possible victim.
Savannah did not retreat, did not wince, did not lean back. With the command that grew from the knowledge of her superb beauty, and its power, she raised her hand imperiously, freezing the hissing of the vicious rattles.
“Tell us of the inviolability of purity—and the origin of such purity,” said Richard.
Purity, thought Tarah. A word he used often. In contempt. As if it affronted him.
(“There is your purity!”) Karen glanced quickly away from Savannah: A surrogate part of herself would be attacked.
Richard’s relentless pursuit, Joja thought. But of what?
“A purity more expensive than an experienced-whore’s cunt,” Bravo repeated her assault on Savannah.
Savannah laughed gloriously; her laughter was amber, like champagne. “Your words can’t touch me, Bravo,” she said. “Not the first time, not this time.” She would willingly allow the intense scrutiny. The style of her life, strengthened each day of her existence, inevitably it must be proved: all a rehearsal for now!
“Of course her words can’t touch you,” Richard said. “Because there’s no flaw in Savannah’s beauty.” He spoke with grave seriousness. “It’s that which has made her a legend.”
Was Richard, then, an ally? Savannah wondered. Or merely an enemy of Bravo. Did he want her to emerge triumphant? And she would!
“She exists only because there’s no flaw to her beauty,” Richard went on. “A perfect gem: Find the slightest flaw—and it’s destroyed. Totally.”
The priest said: “The greatest flaw could be invisible.”
Blue stared at the empty tattooed star.
“You mean the soul,” Richard said flatly.
“That isn’t for discussion at this moment,” said Malissa.
“It’s the subject of it all,” said Richard.
“Find the flaw!” Mark’s words were sudden.
(Black blood!) Through the sheer pale-blue material which adorned her body, Savannah touched her glorious breasts. Richard understood—yes, he was her ally, she thought.
“Is there a flaw, Savannah?” Richard asked her casually.
“No—because she needs no one!” Joja’s husky voice defended. Shifting again—first allied with Richard, then opposing him—she might extract a vicarious victory in Savannah’s unswerving stance. “Because she never needed another in order to be complete. That is her flawless purity. And she may teach us now.” Her eyes sought to include Karen, Tarah—but Mark captured her look, holding it firmly on him: on the clear, beautiful, dark-lashed eyes.
“I became the Duke, and he became me,” said la Duquesa; “yet we were ourselves.”
“How long did you live with him?” Rev asked her lazily.
Avoiding facing him, la Duquesa said: “As long with him as without him: an eternity.”
“Where?”
“Wherever he was—that was the universe.”
“Confessions!” Malissa exhorted.
“The flaw— . . .” Mark repeated. There was no discernible emotion in his voice.
“A flaw in Savannah would be fatal,” Richard said.
“Ask whatever you want!” said Savannah. She would answer all their questions. Years of her life had provided a rehearsal for these moments. Now!
But instead of questioning her, Richard touched a panel of buttons on the wall: smothering the lights in the giant hall. The chandeliers sighed softly into blackness. In the darkness, the dome which had revealed the night’s intensity relented, lightened. From its height the guests were anonymous black shadows.
“A mute confession,” Richard announced.
Now a white panel intruded on the blackness: a screen; and then a projector slid from the wall, responding to the touch of another button. Quickly there was a shaft of cold-white glaring light, a tunnel through the darkness.
Rubies gleaming like red eyes amid the black gouged eye of the pearl on her forefinger, Malissa thrust her hand insanely into the shaft of light: a giant silhouetted spider on the screen, asserting its power. “What are you going to show us, Richard?”
“A film which captures the origin of purity,” came Richard’s voice.
No! screamed Savannah’s heart. She had rehearsed for an interrogation which would not come. The question would not be allowed—only its answer. Already she saw, on the screen, the remembered, despised room:
In a mansion. A giant soft red bed like a dyed marshmallow. On either side of the canopied structure: bronze statues of a man, a woman: naked. And the parted red drapes revealed: a girl, shatteringly beautiful, young, in flimsy nightclothes. The body stretched languorously, the lacy material slid off. Embracing the gloriously naked flesh, the leering eye of the camera glided up her thighs, to the light brush of amber hair, delicate like a powderpuff. Then quickly: a closeup of the perfect, stunning face.
“It’s Savannah!” said Bravo.
“A mute confession indeed,” said Malissa.
Joja felt a sense of vicarious defeat.
Tarah’s body was flooded with rage. Yet her eyes stared fascinated at the screen. It was not her life recorded.
Flashing into the tunnel of light like a huge firefly, Topaze somersaulted before the screen. Suggestively he thrust his hips in a lewd sexual gyration, and his small hands grasped at the nude image on the screen.
The façade—the carefully erected, sustained mask of years—it remained intact on Savannah’s face as she confronted the image on the screen, trapped in silvery hues—the shade of purity, she thought. And her mind opened to the memory of that fatal day: the whirring of the camera, the sound itself capturing her body; the flood of lights drenching the room in icy white, like an operation room. The fatal day. The point from which she had cunningly reconstructed her life. Toward this moment, then?
Her long hair loose, the girl on the screen cupped her breasts softly. Now her hands caressed the tanned flesh: Between her legs, her fingers parted the opening, delicately, as if to expose a precious jewel.
The flickering on the screen was reflected in Paul’s eyes: Valerie looked there, to filter reality; but the reflected reality attacked as powerfully.
Now there was a man on the screen. Also naked.
Savannah’s face turned quickly away.
On the screen the man’s lips were pulling at the girl’s nipples. Now his mouth was on her stomach, hungrily.
Bravo hit the back of a chair with the butt of her whip, an ambiguous punctuation mark.
Immediately, Malissa turned from the screen. She knew what the film would reveal now.
The man’s tongue brushed the body, which was like light honey. Now his head burrowed into the brush of the girl’s pubic hair. The camera angled: The man’s tongue dug into the spread lips between her thighs. As if to connect the two orifices, the man kissed her on the mouth. His cock the arrow ready to pierce, his body arched like a bow. Then the hard swollen organ lunged into the girl. Suddenly her body jerked.
Savannah’s nails dug into her palms.
The camera shifted quickly to the rough grinding of the man’s buttocks—to avoid, but it had caught clearly, the racked reaction of the girl’s intense pain: the traumatized horror on her face.
(“Cut it!” Savannah heard the hated voice from the past. The whirring of the camera had stopped momentarily, again to avoid capturing the gory slaughter of her body.) Even now, Savannah reacted to the fierce, remembered pain. She stifled a moan—remembering: Her hand blocking the blood flowing from her ripped thighs, her head flailing against the pillow. Layers of pained remembrances had colored the red blood black, black in her mind.
Suddenly Savannah stood up, intercepting the shaft of white light, the outline of her body flung onto the steely screen, the flickering of the sexual movie projected on her own body now as if to claim it from the past. “I bled!” she shouted. Two other silhouettes joined her stark outline against the screen: the black man and the black woman. Enlarged by the light, their rattles were raised like axes. “He hurt me! He tore me up! I hated all sex!” The rattles hissed.
Mark saw: For one instant Malissa had brought her hand to her face. Then the look that hungered for violence returned.
“The torn hymen of the Tarot!” Malissa gloated savagely.
Bravo’s laughter growled: “A botched sex performance for a blue flick!”
Malissa announced triumphantly: “And so the unapproachable Savannah, who wore her ‘purity’ like a badge— . . . It never existed.”
“Pain, not purity—that kept you from becoming a common whore,” Bravo said vindictively. “But you did anyway—a whore with a unique gimmick!”
The lights came on, the screen rose, the camera disappeared. The chandeliers blazed.
“Savannah confesses before overwhelming evidence! Superb, Richard!” Malissa congratulated.