Valerie was the first to see the gossamer white figure floating down the stairs—a woman beautiful yet terrifying. In lace, like a violated bride. Her eyes glowed in the pale, demented face.
Now the priest saw the woman approaching like a frantic ghost. The white lace clung to her slender legs.
Paul saw her. Then the others.
A vision of faded purity, the white figure moved ineluctably toward Richard.
Swiftly, Mark advanced to meet her.
As if assaulted by the piercing fragment of a broken memory, the woman in white turned her head away from the boy.
Now Richard moved ahead of Mark.
The boy stood beside him, quickly.
“Mother,” Mark said to the woman in white.
The glass dome revealed a silver-black sky.
“We’ve been waiting for you to join us, Lianne,” Richard said to his second wife.
Lianne seemed to attempt to recognize the faces before her, to locate them within the lucid patches of her ravished mind. “Have you already begun the games? One year— . . .” She wiped away the unformed words with a vague motion of rejection. “They said I— . . . Their words were— . . . They said I rushed into insanity!—and they were talking about me! . . . What is the game, Richard?”
What horrors has she been exposed to? Jeremy wondered.
Joja’s eyes followed Mark, who stared relentlessly at his mother, the spectral smile just barely forming on his face. Jealousy stirring; a violent sense of rivalry within Joja. Without reason, she told herself.
Thoughts swam turbulently in Valerie’s mind as she studied the woman in white.
Tarah faced Richard. “I accept all your corruption—but this!—to bring this insane creature here!”
“How dare you call me that!” Lianne turned on Tarah. “I’m blessed with— . . . With Richard!” she finished. “Every day was night, I remember the darkness, laughter trapped in it! Who are you?” she asked la Duquesa. “Death!” Lianne recoiled. “That death exists— . . .” She emitted a terrible scream, a howl— the scream that had rent the house earlier and had seemed to summon them together into this domed hall. “I want to live eternally!” She stretched her lithe body, as if to stretch her life. “I wouldn’t even hate hell—if we were alive there.”
Richard kissed her, gently, very long.
Her body relaxed.
When he released her slowly, she whirled around toward the others. “To exorcise evil you have to slaughter it!” Facing Mark directly—but not looking at him—she clasped her hands before her; and she raised them, as if clutching a deadly stake. “And the heart is the source of evil!” She plunged down with all her force: miming exorcism: the burying of a deadly stake into an astonished heart. Then she said: “The mamaloi and the papaloi always precede murder. Will you be the murderer or the murdered?” she asked the priest.
“No!” he rejected quickly.
Then she rushed at Valerie: “Is it you!”
Her eyes! Like my eyes! Valerie thought.
“Or you?” Lianne asked Paul sadly. Then she looked at Blue.
“No— . . . Already, it— . . .” Blue stammered. The ram’s head, he thought febrilely, the inverted star is incomplete without it!
“Is it you?” Lianne asked Bravo.
Bravo’s hand clasped Karen’s shoulder. Karen shook her head.
“You, Malissa!” Lianne accused.
Superb! Malissa thought.
Then Lianne stood before Albert, very long. Moving, she avoided the black ominous figure of la Duquesa. She frowned before Rev—then Tor. Savannah. Topaze. “Tarah! Where is your son!” She spun around.
“Away,” Tarah said tersely.
Already Lianne was addressing Richard. “Richard— . . . ?” But the intense question dissolved only for those moments. Abruptly she faced her son for the first time this day. “You, Mark? . . . Or I?”
Then she rushed howling into the other room, where the draped props waited on the stage like the black memories of an abandoned nightmare.
Part IV
21
Richard touched a button on a wall panel. Light flowed into the room, illuminating the stage. The props on the platform were like gravestones.
As if the light had carried them in on a current, the others followed Lianne and Richard into the hall.
“The play,’’ Tarah said aloud. She felt doom—but lightly, like a black feather.
Torsos aflame with perspiration, the mamaloi and the papaloi stretched braceleted arms as if to tear down the sky. Their rattles fell with one more deadly hiss to the floor.
“But the confessions haven’t ended,” Malissa protested. “Lianne! There’s still Lianne!” Exultant, heady with excitement, she would fence with Richard.
Her face white, her eyes shining as if trapped alive within a corpse, Lianne started: “I confess— . . .”
At her words, Mark mounted the stage quickly, looking down at her as if challenging her to continue. Richard faced his son abruptly, as if Lianne’s words had stirred mutual memories.
Like two powerful directors, Mark and Richard, Jeremy thought. Jaded bored people involved in jaded games—just that! he insisted again.
“Confess to what!” Malissa demanded of Lianne.
Lianne walked to the edge of the round stage. Her eyes, Mark’s—they grappled fiercely. “I confess . . . to the existence of Mark!” Then she laughed before her son.
Rage blackened Mark’s face. He took a step toward his mother. Richard stood swiftly next to Lianne. She turned her head abruptly from her son as if to free a vulturous memory; her laughter became a growl, dark, sensual, the laughter of rape.
Once again, the unformed smile flickered on Mark’s beautiful face.
Lianne retreated suddenly, within a hidden chamber of her mind.
Peremptorily, “What is the play, Richard?” Malissa questioned. She realized the confessions would indeed continue, flowing within the play. They must not be forced now.
“About a queen, a blind queen,” Richard announced rapidly, “and the man, the only one, who can restore her sight.”
“Fraught with possibilities!” Malissa admired, looking at her rings as if mysteriously they would determine her own role in the proceedings. “But there are only two roles.”
“There will be several versions of the same play,” Richard clarified.
“And what will the queen be like?” Malissa asked.
“Determined—to the point of murder,” Richard described. “And passive. Perhaps empty. Sullied. A fake. Frail. Hollow. Lucid. Strong. Evil.” He paused. “Pure.”
“But that’s what we’ll discover,” Mark interjected.
“The roles haven’t been written,” Richard said.
“And the youngman—the man who restores the sight of the sullied queen— . . . ?” Tarah could not control her words.
“Sullied?” Richard intercepted her word. “Have you chosen already, Tarah?” Then he answered: “He’ll be whatever the queen needs . . . to restore her sight. And he too may be blind—he’ll be choosing his own role.”
“He would have experience in everything black, man,” Blue heard himself say, “to be righteous purified.”
“No,” Tarah contradicted. “He’ll have a luminous purity. With no knowledge of corruption, to cleanse the woman.” Despite her words, a kaleidoscope of sensual images colored her mind.
“A violent prince,” Rev asserted.
“A powerful one. Here!” said Topaze, touching his groin. “Not a fake one armed with a knife!”
Joja thought: A new role. Finally the role never to be abandoned? Determined by Richard? Or Mark?
“And the ending?” Malissa’s hands demanded a spectacular answer.
“The ending of the play is an open question,” Richard said. He went on: “The players may wear masks.”
“A symbol of a flaw, the origin of their blindness,” said the priest, caught.
“Or perhaps no flaw exists,” said Richard
.
“Will he, the man . . . be freed—from his blindness, too?” Valerie heard herself ask.
“We’ll see,” Richard said.
“But if the players are masked, how will the choice be made?” Malissa eyed her rings like dormant weapons.
“Through intuition—and the magic of human contact,” Richard said wryly.
“Sexual contact,” Tarah said aloud.
“Perhaps,” said Richard.
The terrible mockery of purgation—after confession. A parody of absolution. Communion. The word flashed into Jeremy’s mind. Communion with what? Sullied by confession into purity! Words were assuming inverted meanings. Communion had become excommunion. . . . That they might agree to act within the strange play—at the same time that it seemed impossible, Jeremy watched the fascinated, anxious faces. And so again Richard was creating the disorienting momentum that had catapulted them into confessions. And there were the drugs, he reminded himself. That was important. The heavy scent of la malaspina hung over them like a cloud—which must be resisted, the priest knew. . . . He said suddenly to Richard: “You’ve pulled out what you call our confessions—which are nothing but shadows of our lives— . . .”
“Stark, clear shadows,” Mark interrupted.
“But what if we refuse the roles you assign?” the priest continued. His eyes sought Tarah’s, which responded. A pact. Allies! Then he felt Blue’s electric eyes pulling him away.
“You can reject any role—or alter it,” said Richard.
First our pasts, now our futures. The control of our jagged lives—and will we allow it? Karen wondered.
“What qualifies you as director of this play?” the priest asked Richard.
“A knowledge of evil, of course.”
It was Mark who had answered. Forming completely, the smile on his face belied the seriousness of his words.
“We’ll act willingly in his weird play!” Bravo addressed the priest—and knew: On that stage, before them all, she would possess Karen.
Already he had won over at least one powerful participant, Bravo. The erection of the powerful spell, Jeremy told himself; and he could almost view its intricate structure. Yes, Richard was expert at creating the binding ambience of hallucination. We’ve got to seize control! Jeremy thought.
“And you too will play.” Tarah’s words shaped their threat at Richard. Within his own play she would trap him.
As if to enter through the circle of the black dome they had left behind, the whirring helicopter ground directly over the house. Now the sound, moving away, became a descending murmur. There would be at least another guest on the island.
Cam! thought Blue. The Blue Woman?
Suddenly livid, Tarah looked beyond the windowed wall, into the island. Anticipation, fear convoluted into the other.
“Daniel!” Valerie thought aloud.
Paul felt a fury which waited to find its object. Their father? Here? But was he their father? Looking at Richard, Paul felt for a sudden moment as if he were staring at a mirrored reflection of himself—but not of what he was; rather, of what he might be.
Malissa’s words snatched the attention from the helicopter. “The first queen!” she demanded the play begin.
Richard faced her from the elevated platform.
Sitting lazily before the stage, Mark studied the two carefully.
“Savannah! Who will be your prince?” Richard’s voice questioned. He drew the dark shroud from the large square prop on the stage. With a heavy sigh, the drape fell, a crush of black on the floor; revealing:
A velvet throne. A throne which could be an altar. Three steps led to it. Beside it, two half-masks waited; blind, sealed eyes.
Savannah moved onto the platform, the center of the stage—as if she were mounting a scaffold from which she might yet be saved, and vindicated. “I’ll be the queen,” she said.
Another willing actor! Swiftly! Caught in the trap being shaped with perfect symmetry and cunning. The hypnotic trance claiming each like poison, Jeremy evaluated.
“The mask,” Malissa reminded quickly. She knew the scenes must move rapidly. It was an axiom of the games that momentum was important; any pause might allow the players to question their participation.
“I won’t need the mask,” Savannah rejected.
Richard agreed with a nod. “There are varieties of blindness.”
Savannah had understood this: She was being allowed a possible resurrection: Through her pulled “confession,” they had destroyed the elaborately wrought, sustaining structure of her fantastic life. Now she would be offered a means of restoring what had been crushed, and she might yet regain her shattered image through her choice. “I’ll be the queen because I feel empty.” Her voice was firm, indicating her resolve. “And I want to regain what was lost.”
“A purity you never had,” Bravo reminded her cruelly. “Pain, Savannah—not purity!”
“It sustained me, and so it was real while it existed,” Savannah said. “And maybe now I can make it exist again. If I can alter the act— . . . Pain into . . . fulfillment.”
“Perhaps in your choice of prince— . . .” Richard suggested.
Malissa realized excitedly that the play would have no predetermined shape. Like a new river, it would choose its own course. It would be whatever each wanted it to be, a mirror each might shape. But the mirror, too, might assert itself! An excellent entertainment! she approved Richard’s device.
“But who can accomplish that? Pain into fulfillment? Fulfillment into purity?” Savannah glanced from guest to guest.
Tor moved toward the throne, perhaps bidding for the role of prince, perhaps only for an identity, any identity.
Savannah’s eyes paused on him—but only to acknowledge a similar loss. How could emptiness fill a vacuum? Now her eyes, on Blue, recognized another loss. Now on Richard, they questioned, demanded. Would she choose him?
Malissa prepared for Richard’s reaction. Oh, he was forcing Savannah’s gaze away! Away from himself—as if he could not or would not provide the answers to her unformed questions: shifting it almost as if by physical force to— . . . MarkI No— . . . To Paul! And quickly away! Saving him? Shifting it unequivocally to:
The priest!
As if by the black command of Richard’s eyes, Savannah descended the steps before the throne. She stood before Jeremy. Slowly, she untied the gold sash about her waist: and she drew the pale-blue dress from her shoulders. It slid easily to her feet without a breath. She stood naked before the priest. In the diamond light, her glorious body seemed translucent, like a delicate, golden shell.
Blue: His hand: It opened quickly like a bursting star: A reminder. And now his look dropped to his ankle, to the uncompleted symbol of his violence: A warning.
Tarah: Her face: It turned abruptly toward the priest, as if he might betray her.
Valerie: Her hand, lightly, on her brother demanded that he look at her.
Malissa: Her fingers: They locked: The red rings an uneven row of red drops, like a necklace of blood, broken by the stark black pearl.
“Purify me, Father!” Savannah said to the priest. She held her hands to her breasts, as if in offering.
Blue: His mouth. His hand. He touched one with the other.
“Purify me!” Savannah’s touch melted on her body, her hands flowed smoothly along the honey torso, down, toward her thighs, holding her hands before her, open, toward the priest, as if to form an entrance for him: into that violated part of her which might yet be sealed by him: “Fill me with your purity!” she said, as if in a trance.
Tarah’s eyes burned on the priest: Don’t!
He turned away from Savannah’s naked body. “You’ve hypnotized this girl; with your terrible revelations of her life, you’ve made her so vulnerable she’s in your control!” Jeremy accused Richard, without looking at him this time.
“You’re afraid!” Malissa lacerated the priest. “You’re still running away!”
Turning to him, the prie
st seemed to appeal to Blue for contradiction.
But Blue’s impassivity acquiesced in Malissa’s judgment.
“The priest rejects— . . .” started Richard, and corrected himself: “The prince rejects the flawed queen in the play.”
Savannah retrieved her dress from the floor. She covered her nudity, veiling the violated body. Acknowledging her loss—forever—she moved toward the shell of Tor, who met her. Beautiful statues, they stood before each other. Trapped.
“But for whom, then, will you be the prince?” Richard asked Jeremy. “Not for Savannah, who chose you, wrongly then, as the instrument for her purification?”
“Why, she wanted to seize his precious purity!” Malissa parodied indignation. “And he wants only to save himself! But from what, Father Jeremy? Or should I say: For whom!”
Quickly Valerie moved toward the priest, as if they had begun to choose allies in the terrible war they called a game. She waited for Paul to join her, but he remained standing apart. Like sudden antagonists, the twins faced each other across the infinite distance of a few feet.
Allowing the question to remain like a sword poised over the priest, “The play,” Malissa said, “the play’s moving slowly. Who’ll be the next queen?”
“You!” Bravo attacked. “A sexless queen!”
“Or you—the queen-prince!” said Malissa. “Perhaps you’d choose la Duquesa as your prince!” she spewed.
“And you would choose Albert!” Bravo countered. She would assume a role in the play, yes; but the time must be right.
“Your grace— . . .” Richard addressed la Duquesa.
La Duquesa’s face glittered with tears like black sequins. “I’ll be the queen in search of— . . .” The words waited, still difficult to pronounce: In search of the Duke! Finally she was able to finish: “In search of my prince.” Once the words were formed, her voice gained authority. “I’ll prove that my memory can sustain the cruel assault. I’ll find no prince except the resurrected memory of my Duke. And that memory will sustain me, again.” In a stately pavan with an invisible partner, she ascended the throne. Framed by the black veils, she sat there, a shrouded ghost in black.