“So briefly!” Karen reminded her, and herself.
“Yes—until he discovered whatever the hell he wanted to discover!” Tarah felt threatened by Joja’s assertion.
Blue was aware of the sweet scent wafting through the hall in recurrent waves. Outside, lush flowers breathed within the dark night. Suddenly, like velvet, a calmness contained his turbulence: Within it, the priest shone in luminous clarity. So young—almost too young to be a priest. Cam. Cam’s face constantly on his mind like something drowned in the memory of spilled blood, rising recurrently to its surface.
“A confession! We must have a confession quickly!” Malissa’s fingers ripped the silence to shreds.
Mark nodded at Joja. He bit his finger, lightly, between the rows of perfect teeth. He nodded again.
Vaguely Joja began to understand the abortive encounters with the boy throughout the day. She stood suddenly before Tarah.
The actress would be a witness now, Tarah knew. For whom?
Malissa’s purple-shaded gaze moved like a scythe from Richard to Mark to Joja.
“When I was a child, I placed a doll against my heart because that’s where I felt empty,” Joja said.
Tarah frowned. Joja was a witness in Richard’s support.
Mark had already said: “You felt empty then.”
And Joja understood unequivocally the meaning of the broken encounters with the boy. Emotional extortion. The harsh words flowed darkly into her mind. Her allegiance with his father, and therefore him—against Tarah—that was what Mark had been extracting, cunningly, throughout the day. In exchange for— . . . the sexual promise first issued when he stood naked outside her window. And Richard—had he allowed it all?
A doll. A womb. Jeremy wrenched away from memories: Lips, an orange heart. The enormous stomach about to open to give hideous birth. Bandages.
“You wanted a child, that’s all,” Tarah tried to dismiss Joja’s ambiguous but powerfully disturbing testimony.
Mark’s crystalline-marble eyes were on the actress, capturing hers. Slowly, he touched his neck.
“No,” Joja said. “I was empty before Richard. A body forming inside me would have drained life from me.” (The child smothered with a pillow. “Die! Die!”)
Still determined to turn the tide of this interrogation, “It was Richard who rendered you empty!” Tarah prematurely asserted the verdict she must prove.
Joja offered the words to Mark: “Richard resurrected me.”
“Only for moments!” Karen said.
“And then he turned you into a live corpse without him!” Tarah thrust. “When he was through—brutally!—like a vampire who’s drained all the blood!”
Valerie stared at Paul’s lips. As if a fist had pulled out the memory, she remembered: Her brother on the bed with her, his face— . . . She touched her neck. There was the wound. “Paul,” she whispered quickly, “when you were in the room before I came down— . . .” She deliberately suspended the words—a question or a statement.
“I haven’t been in your room, Valerie,” Paul said.
You’re lying! Why? Lodging in her mind, the unspoken words disoriented her: The giant hall waltzed slowly before her. It stretched on waves of colors, the unformed words floating sinuously within them, becoming the colors themselves: then only one:
Red!
She touched her neck again.
“Yes, and then I felt dead again,” Joja acknowledged. She turned her head violently from Mark, severing the control of his intense eyes, rejecting, for that moment at least, the terms of extortion.
Tarah breathed in momentary triumph. “And so it was Richard who made you aware of living within death!” she tried to force the necessary accusation from Joja.
Mark glanced at Richard, as if expecting him to speak. When he didn’t, “The word she used was resurrection,” the boy offered. His eyes, the beautiful sensual eyes; his lips, the promise of them; his body: The radiance of his supreme sexuality enveloped Joja. “The doll—your empty heart—long ago,” he insisted.
Tarah stood deliberately before the boy, blocking him from Joja’s sight. “She merely wanted a child!”
“No—I killed her!” Joja said. “I smothered her!”
“Confession!” Malissa accepted. “And is it addressed to God or Satan?” she demanded. One hand grasped for the night cut in a circle by the dome, the other for the spiraling black and white funnel of gleaming floor. “Which one?!”
“Maybe when you confess, that’s when you know,” Blue said aloud.
The beaded rattles trembled before Joja, pinpoints of colored, shattered fire assaulting her eyes.
“You killed the child— . . .” Malissa coaxed.
Joja heard words—her words: “It was during a play—the last play I was in— . . . The role of a woman who hides her child to conceal her age.” Suddenly she was transported to that tense stage. “But at the end of the play she resigns her youth to her daughter, an acceptance of life drained from her, of death in life.”
“How old was the child?” Malissa’s question came like the calculated interruption of a prosecutor.
“Twelve. No—fourteen,” Joja changed the age quickly.
“Mark’s age!” Malissa understood the quickly revised testimony. Against whom? She would determine that later.
The rattles continued to tremble, as if to force more words from the actress: “I played the role night after terrible night,” she said. “And it was all wrong! I was fading, emptier each night. So I changed the ending. I made up new words—whispers at first coming from my own—my real—soul, for once.” The emotional words—directed at Richard, and Mark, at Tarah—formed with the paradoxical calm of someone pronouncing rehearsed testimony, knowing on whose behalf, yet allowing the possibility of reinterpretation.
The rattles renewed their insistence. Joja continued: “The audience began to whisper, the whispers grew, became angry shouts: ‘Louder, louder!’—like a judgment on my muted, masked life. It was then: Instead of surrendering my life, this time to that despised daughter— . . . I smothered her for stealing my life! The curtain fell—and I was still holding the pillow over the gasping child.” And so her own cunning strategy had shaped: The words had allied her to Richard against Tarah, therefore also to Mark—yes; but she had at the same time issued a warning to Mark which Malissa had seized intuitively: The announced symbolic murder of a child his age. A possible rehearsal?
“You killed her?” Mark asked, smiling.
“I would have,” Joja answered coldly; “they pulled me away. I only killed the child she represented. So you see, Tarah,” she fulfilled her part of what she viewed now as an unspoken contract between herself and Mark; and was Richard also party to it? “So you see, no, I didn’t want a child.”
“Richard had already rendered you empty, you merely recognized it on that stage!” Tarah still struggled to enlist Joja.
“And then Richard’s invitation came,” Joja said.
“And you accepted,” said Richard.
“And I accepted,” said Joja with finality.
She had moved too rashly, too early, propelled by the first hint of the actress’s wavering toward Richard, Tarah evaluated her blocked attack. She would not withdraw, no; but she would not advance further for now. Not yet. She had announced the war—her demand that Richard would play in his own game of confessions.
Mark’s black smile. It received Joja’s allegiance. She had thwarted Tarah’s initial thrust.
Joja touched her face, her beautiful mask. Her purple eyes on Mark enforced her counter-threat of extortion: Her allegiance was not absolute. She would hold him to the day-long promise. She remembered: When she held him. Years ago.
Like a vulture in search of prey, Malissa circled the giant room. From person to person. There would be more—much more, and exciting—from Tarah. But for now the attention must shift. Otherwise, a premature climax might ruin the rest of the game. She would lead them to the next encounter.
She passed Savannah, a rejected mask of beauty. And Tor, another mask. Through! So easily, so expertly revealed. Would Joja join Savannah and Tor, now? No. She seemed strengthened by her confession—there would be more from her. Topaze—he would be easy; he was trying desperately to please her, and he might therefore be formidable against Rev. It amounted to this: How much more could the midget provide in the pursuit of others? She would extend his period of trial. Blue.
Blue.
Malissa’s purple stare. Her hands: Extended.
Blue’s eyes: On the vortex of black and white spiraling at his feet.
The priest: He moved toward Blue.
Malissa’s hands: They withdrew.
Blue’s ankle: The inverted pentagram.
Was Richard saving the blond youngman for the handsome priest to draw out in confession? Malissa savored the revelation. Paul and Valerie, then! Oh, something exquisitely special. Richard had given only the most vagrant of hints. . . . Question Bravo now? How to move? To move yet? Bravo was strong. The game had developed several clear leaders. But one must always watch for the silent observer studying the active players. She glanced at Mark.
Mark.
Richard’s brooding strange child.
Would Mark plunge overtly into the current of power? Indeed, had he already done so? Richard pitted against Mark! The sudden thought seized Malissa with its startling possibilities. There had been the boy’s look on Richard when Tarah challenged his father. She would study the boy carefully.
“Your grace!” Malissa chose finally.
Instantly the hollow eyes of the mamaloi and the papaloi riveted on la Duquesa.
The queen touched her black veil; it would be her shield from Malissa.
“Don’t look into her eyes!” Albert whispered urgently to the queen.
“We’ve heard so much of hatred,” Malissa said. “And we’ve agreed that we may confess to the . . . good . . . in our lives. We will, however, be allowed our own definitions! . . . Perhaps, then, your grace, you’ll allow us to hear something about— . . .” She could not pronounce the word now. In that context, it belonged to a foreign language she did not understand.
“Love?” la Duquesa finished for her. “Even the word frightens you, Malissa. Why? I’m not afraid of it. Love, love, love, love, love. See, it’s easy. I’ll gladly tell you about love.”
“Why should you want to hear anything of good, Malissa?” Karen asked.
“Because the darkness, which I adore, is brightest immediately after the dark blaze of light, which I abhor!” Malissa said.
“The moment I met the Duke, my life became a rhapsody,” la Duquesa told them.
“Don’t look directly at Malissa, your grace!” Albert insisted. “Her eyes, her hands—that black ring—they can force you to say things you don’t want to say.”
“I’m not afraid!” la Duquesa said. “Even death, ugly, black death—like that horrible black pearl on your finger, Malissa—even death came eventually to contain the beauty of our love, like the perfect frame about a perfect painting. Otherwise, the beauty might spill over.”
“Confess, then, to perfection,” came Richard’s voice.
“You pervert words with new meanings,” said the priest to Richard. (“Don’t let me die! I love you!” The pulled hand!) “You despise even the concept of love.” He did not look at the queen.
“Some might contend that it’s an unnatural condition,” said Richard, “that it invaded man’s pristine savagery like a disease.”
He was being taunted into a reaction to be examined; Jeremy allowed the dialogue to stand for now.
Topaze asked la Duquesa: “Where did the Duke have his kingdom?” His face was set in a serious expression. His hand floated idly over his groin.
“Oh, dukes don’t have kingdoms, dear,” la Duquesa said gently, “they have duchies. . . . But the Duke abandoned his lands, his holdings—all his aristocratic rights—when he married me.”
“You’re preparing to try to mock her love, aren’t you?” Suddenly Valerie defended the black-mourning figure.
“Merely to inquire into purity,” said Richard, as if presenting evidence of a recurrent crime.
“Like Savannah’s purity!” Bravo laughed with contempt.
Hearing her name, Savannah looked about the room as if in search of something irretrievably lost. Tor stared at her as if at a ghost. The shadowy servants looked at the two, for the first time, in abstract recognition.
“Savannah’s purity never existed,” Richard said firmly. “But does that mean— . . . ?” He stopped. His eyes sought Valerie, as if demanding that she supply the unfinished words.
16
Suddenly Valerie seemed frightened, so vulnerable, so pretty to la Duquesa. The queen felt a growing compassion toward her—moments earlier the girl had defended her. To thwart the annihilating attention that Richard’s look conveyed—and now Mark’s, then Malissa’s; and the black man and black woman advanced toward the girl—to thwart that, the voice behind the black veils said: “I’ll confess about my life before I met the Duke! That should satisfy your longing for the worst.” And she recited quickly a sad litany to her past: “Old houses among crouching sinister palm trees, the stink of weeds. Bodies sprawled nightly like mangled shadows; a crushed daisy chain. A funereal orgy. Women as receptacles—nothing else—for sailors, marines, thieves, the cruel vagrants. A sexual wake.” The queen issued words calculated to force their interest away from the girl. She had succeeded:
Richard’s eyes released Valerie. Malissa’s followed. But Mark’s did not yet relent.
Blue remembered: The procession of blood. “Susej!”
“Dark rooms, bodies, men and women,” la Duquesa continued her black litany.
“Only men,” Rev interrupted. “I know that scene. Dark pads, grass, pills, queens— . . .”
“Women,” insisted la Duquesa.
“Studs like me and queens like you,” Rev said emphatically. He looked at Malissa: Her eyes acquiesced; she was granting him a reprieve from his humiliation by Bravo. He moved toward the queen.
Topaze’s eyes narrowed on Rev like the sight of a gun. Rev was attempting to reassert himself within the charged field of shifting power, and Malissa was allowing it. Lewdly, the midget cupped his groin in his hand and thrust his hips toward la Duquesa, to steer the attention away from Rev.
Coolly la Duquesa avoided looking at the midget.
Rev pulled the attention from the midget: “Yeah, I know that scene,” he tossed at la Duquesa. “Diggit—I’d wake up in the morning in someone’s pad, and this painted man’s face would say, ‘Fuck me’; and of course I wouldn’t be interested. So if she’d lay some bread on me, I’d let her blow me while I slept—of course I didn’t need the bread; I was in the big time, man.” His voice gained authority. He would restore the image Bravo had bludgeoned. Then he would go after Topaze. And the dike, he would take her on tool “Queens tripped out over my tattoos,” he said toughly. “They’d redraw them with their tongues.”
Albert’s tongue protruded hungrily.
Desperate for attention, Topaze pointed: “Albert’s tongue, Miss Malissa!”
Allying himself doubly with Malissa, Rev deliberately tortured Albert: “Diggit, I even got a tattoo on my dick!” he announced.
“But you’ve mentioned the perfection of your love, your grace,” Richard reminded the queen.
“Love came when I met the Duke,” la Duquesa said.
“In spring?” sneered Rev.
“In spring,” said la Duquesa.
“And he died— . . . ?” Rev went on.
“In winter,” said the queen.
“Did you kill him?” Tarah shot unexpectedly, attempting to trace within another’s life the path from love to hate to murder.
“No!” la Duquesa said quickly. “Why should I destroy our perfect love?” Now she knelt as if before a grave. Her hands slowly mimed the placing of a wreath on the stone of death. She leaned forward to kiss it. Behind the
veil, tears glistened like black beads.
Rev studied the face behind it.
“I met the Duke— . . .” la Duquesa started.
“At one of those weird parties?” Rev asked. Recurrently glancing at Malissa for approval—given—Rev felt his power being restored, even if on probation; he would pass that test.
“Of course not,” said la Duquesa, turning away from Rev’s intense stare. “He wouldn’t have been caught dead among such trash! I met him . . . oh, in a shimmering mansion, with many, many floors—eight, to be exact. We went— . . . to the penthouse! In elevators! You could see the dazzling city!”
“Was it a glasshouse?” said Rev quickly.
“As a matter of fact, it was. Yes—it had so many windows! You could call it an elaborate glass house! With windows like diamonds!” la Duquesa said. “And in the glass house, the servants were— . . .”
“In uniform?” said Rev.
“Oh, yes, full uniform—of course.”
“Black?” Rev questioned.
“No—blue,” la Duquesa corrected.
“Oh, it was summer,” Rev understood.
“Late spring,” said la Duquesa. “And the other guests at the fabulous gathering—all selected quite carefully— . . .”
“Wanted?” Rev interjected.
“Yes—desired; sought after— . . .”
“An assorted group?” Rev asked.
“There were many titles,” la Duquesa explained. “We were announced— . . .”
“By the servants in black,” Rev finished.
“In blue,” la Duquesa corrected, “it was late spring. . . . They escorted us in by the hand. . . . And even among all those beautiful guests, even then, the Duke was dazzling beyond dreaming!” Still kneeling, she addressed an invisible grave.
“The Duke,” said Rev, moving in viciously, “did he have a tattoo which said, ‘Born to Lose’?”
La Duquesa frowned. “Why— . . . As a matter of— . . . How did you— . . . ?” Quickly: “Of course he did not have a tattoo!”