Marianne, the Madame, and the Momentary Gods

  ‘No,’ she said, intrigued despite herself. She did not want to be taken for someone else, but how could she mind being sought as herself? Certainly any woman would find this man’s attentions flattering. ‘No, Makr Avehl, there isn’t anyone else. But I’m not the woman you loved or thought you loved, and you have to accept that. I’m really not.’

  She said it. He was facing her as she said it, his eyes fixed on hers. Her voice was clear and cold. And yet, somewhere behind her eyes a shadow slipped along, like the shadow of a lonely inhabitant in a house tenanted by others, peering through a half-curtained window at a world she could not reach.

  He gasped. There, in that shadow, had been something he had recognized. Gallantry in the tilt of a head. Courage in the slope of a shoulder. He tried to contrive some way to maintain his contact with her and with that lonely, embattled shadow. He spoke, pleadingly.

  ‘In the normal way, I might simply try to become better acquainted with you, believing that you and she are not so unalike that I could not—’ he paused, struggling to find words she would not resent or think patronizing, ‘—could not show you something of myself you could consider… acceptable. I would take my time about it, as I tried to do before. But – but I erred before. Even though I knew my Marianne was in great danger, I didn’t warn her, didn’t guard her. She was shy of me, and I didn’t want to frighten her. Well, you are not shy, but even if you were, I would have to warn you. I believe you are still in danger from Madame Delubovoska.’

  ‘Me?’ She laughed, shaking her head, believing his sincerity though she totally disbelieved what he said. ‘Surely not!’

  ‘Yes. I believe you are in danger from her.’

  ‘You think Madame remembers what you say happened?’ She was intrigued by this thought. How many people in the world might remember that other Marianne? How many did it take to give a figment life?

  ‘I don’t know. Your parents don’t remember. They wouldn’t. My Marianne and you were virtually identical up until the time… the time your parents died in one life, lived in another. There was no dissonance, not for them. Probably only I and some of the other Kavi remember it at all. Because we knew that Marianne, and followed her to—to you.’

  ‘Kavi?’

  ‘Our people. Our class. In Alphenlicht. The rulers. The Magi.’

  ‘Our class.’

  ‘I include you, Marianne. Because of who your parents are.’

  ‘Oh, yes. I remember now. You are a Magus! I’d forgotten that. I visited Alphenlicht. It’s a pretty country. Like all the better parts of an older century. I have the feeling you should go back there and forget all the ghosts, Makr Avehl.’ She laughed, unconvincingly. ‘As I’m going to try to do. For the first eleven or twelve years of my life, I remember that every movement seemed to be foreordained. I don’t think I resented it then, but I’ve definitely resented it since. You are the last thing connected with that time. I suppose I’ve been subconsciously waiting to see whether you showed up before…’

  ‘Yes? Before what?’

  ‘I don’t know. Before being something completely of my own, I think.’

  ‘But not with me?’

  ‘That’s not an appropriate question.’ A part of her wanted to end the whole relationship, to say something final, but he was already too hurt to wound further without reason. ‘You’re a man I would love to know better under other circumstances, but I need to feel I have choices. I’ve not had many up until now.’

  ‘You wouldn’t consider staying close by me? Letting me protect you?’

  She gave him a critical glance, shaking her head. He knew better. ‘That’s no choice! It’s just more of the same. Having you beside me, directing me, is just like having that imaginary voice inside me, directing me! Listen to me! I’m talking as though all that time was real, even though I’ve known since I was fifteen it was all invention and fantasy.’

  ‘It wasn’t imaginary.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m not the kind of person to fall in love with phantasms.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again. For an instant she wanted to comfort him. She still had angry feelings about him, but they seemed less substantial when directed at a real person than when she had merely imagined him. ‘Perhaps sometime I’ll visit you. I’ve been in Alphenlicht and liked it. Perhaps sometimes you will visit me. But I can’t – won’t – make commitments. Not now!’

  He sighed again, searching her face. A little willful, that face. Willfulness was easy to understand, however. She had only been exercising her will in recent years. And behind that façade, something more complex. Hidden. Why hidden? Was that other presence hiding from him?

  Sad and lost as he was, he had to accept what she told him. He started to bid her good-bye, then stopped himself. ‘Oh, by the way. I have a gift for you. From my sister, Ellat. She was very fond of… of Marianne. I forgot to bring it with me today. If you don’t mind, I’ll drop it off before leaving for home.’

  She assented. He was going. Let him do whatever he needed to do to put this behind him. Let him return briefly on the following afternoon. So—her independence was postponed for a day. She could bear it. She watched him go with a sense of a milestone being passed.

  He returned, as he had promised. Before going inside to make his farewells to her parents, Makr Avhl introduced her to Aghrehond. Or, reintroduced her, according to Aghrehond.

  ‘Oh, pretty lady, what a consternation and unhappiness you have put upon us. He, the Prime Minister, is cast down, but I—I am shattered.’

  ‘Why shattered, Aghrehond?’

  ‘That you should have forgotten the perils we shared.’ He regarded her with sad brown eyes, his chins quivering and his large stomach swaying from side to side in an excess of grief, like a bell, silently tolling. ‘We had considered everything but this. That you would hate my master for the forms he had taken…’

  ‘I really don’t know what forms he may have taken, Aghrehond. You’ll have to accept that I honestly know nothing about it.’

  ‘Accept, of course. One accepts. One raises one’s fists to the heavens and cries woe, but one accepts. We had considered some putative hatred you might have felt, and had accepted that. We had considered that you might, in your re-growing, so to speak, have found someone else, younger and more charming than is Makr Avehl. We had considered—oh, I will not weary you with the catalogue of considerations. This single thing we had not considered. That you had forgotten. Oh, to be forgotten! Like a lost shoe, missing even its mate, in the corner of some vast closet of time!’

  Despite herself, she laughed. ‘It’s hard for me to believe I’ve met you before, Aghrehond. You would be very hard to forget.’

  ‘There! You see! It is as I told the Prime Minister. Him, you might forget. What is he after all but a very powerful, magical, charming and very handsome man. But I, Aghrehond, I am unique!’

  ‘Yes, but you see, that very fact proves my point. I didn’t remember, not even you. Therefore, Makr Avehl must accept the fact that I don’t remember him, either.’

  ‘Oh, he accepts, pretty lady. I accept. His sister, Ellat, who loved you like a daughter almost, she accepts. The Kavi of the Cave of Light shake their heads and write the whole thing down in their chronicles, adding to their lectionaries, and even they accept. So? What good is it, this acceptance? What are we to do with it?’

  She shook her head, confused. ‘Do with it?’

  ‘Well, yes. What are we to do with this acceptance? Go away and forget you? Stay here and annoy you? It is much of a problem, this acceptance. Believe me!’ He wiped his brow on which small beads of perspiration glittered, ringing his hands over his head and around his large ears, as though to assure himself head and ears were in their proper shape.

  ‘What form did he take?’ Marianne asked, suddenly curious. ’Makr Avehl, I mean.’

  ‘Whatever it was, you may be assured it was appropriate to the occasion.’

  ‘But what was it?’

  He shook his head. ‘My master says
I talk too much. This is true, by the way, my only failing. It comes from having a hyperactive imagination and, for that reason, must be tolerated. My imagination is often very helpful.’

  He wouldn’t say more than that. However, that conversation had done what Makr Avehl’s piteous looks had not. It had made Marianne curious about what had happened, and curiosity is a powerful stimulant. Even Marianne would have admitted that her curiosity about Makr Avehl as a sexual man had definitely been stirred.

  Just before he left, Makr Avehl fished in his pocket and brought forth a length of chain, heavy gold links from which a dangling crystal hung in a pendant of gold, sparkling even in the dim light.

  ‘Will you wear this, please?’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Call it a talisman. As I mentioned, a gift from my sister, Ellat.’

  ‘If it isn’t … isn’t meant as any kind of tie …’

  He laughed, a harsh, ugly sound. ‘An engagement present, perhaps? Like a ring? Hardly, Marianne. Ellat sent it because she is fond … was fond of you. The other you. You see, she remembers.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured. ‘I didn’t mean …’

  ‘Wear it to give pleasure to someone you do not remember. And because it’s a pretty thing.’ He patted her gently on one shoulder, almost an avuncular caress. She had no idea what that casual contact cost him in self control. He sighed. ‘And I will get myself off to keep from distressing you further. So it must be, I think, with victims of amnesia. They do not remember, and all their loved ones undoubtedly gather around insisting that they do. “Do you remember that time we …” they ask. “Remember old so-and-so, who …” And of course the poor victims do not remember …

  ‘Perhaps the relatives and friends believe the victim is only pretending not to remember, or that he would remember if he put his mind to it. I detect in myself a desire to shake you and demand that you do remember. Perhaps it is the same with the very old who forget everyone around them, mixing the generations, calling their grandchildren by the names of people long dead.’

  ‘But it doesn’t seem like that to me. I don’t have any missing parts in my life at all. I can account for every day, every hour!’ She stepped back from him, wearying of the argument. She wanted him to go.

  ‘Lucky Marianne. For me it now seems that my whole life is missing. May I write to you here?’

  ‘Temporarily. I’ll be leaving home shortly. I’m taking a job!’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘With the government. Out west.’

  ‘What is “out west,” in your lexicon?’

  ‘Well, it happens to be Colorado. The State of. A lot of the federal bureaus have offices there, the Department of Agriculture among them.’

  ‘It is very mountainous there, I believe. Like Alphenlicht.’

  ‘Mountainous, yes, but only down the middle. The east side is very flat.’

  ‘And what will you do there?’

  ‘I will be working for the Department of Agriculture as a consultant, a minor functionary. My specialty is livestock. I’m supposed to be able to teach people how to make money at raising stock of various kinds.’

  He laughed. ‘I’m sorry, Marianne. But it is so incongruous. I can see you among horses, yes, and dogs. But I balk at sheep and cows.’

  ‘And goats and pigs,’ she said firmly. ‘Also chickens, turkeys, and perhaps llamas and buffalo. There is a growing market for both llamas and buffalo. Perhaps I will send you a pair of young llamas to use as pack animals on your treks in the mountains of Alphenlicht.’

  ‘Perhaps you would bring them.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ She smiled. It was not a promise, but neither was it a rejection.

  ‘You will be living where?’

  ‘Denver, for now. Or one of the suburbs. I’ll take an apartment temporarily. I’ll look for an old house to remodel.

  I’ve got this thing for houses, preferably old ones.’ She stopped for a moment, aware of a memory tugging at her that she couldn’t quite place. She shrugged mentally and went on. ’I’ve always wanted to remodel one for myself.’

  Makr Avehl started to speak, then shut his mouth. She had already remodeled an old house in that other life, but she wouldn’t know that. He remembered the Italianate Victorian house just opposite the University campus, the rosy brick, the oak leaves unfurling like tiny hands outside the window. The place where his Marianne had lived. It was a ruin, now, gutted. Someone was tearing it down to build an apartment building on the site. He didn’t mention it.

  ‘Will you write and give me your address?’

  ‘If you like. When I have one.’

  ‘Farewell, pretty lady,’ said Aghrehond, irrepressibly. ‘Do not let us become strangers again.’

  She saw them go with strangely mixed feelings. Half was regret. Half was an ebullient joy, a jerk of release, like a spring let go. She was flung into anticipation. All the ties to her childhood dream life were gone. Now, once and for all, she could be herself.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ‘What I don’t understand,’ said Ellat, her forehead wrinkled in concentration, ‘is how you can remember everything and she remembers nothing!’

  Makr Avehl shook his head, took another sip of his morning coffee, and rose to walk to the window where he looked down across the fields that surrounded the Residence to the bordering woods of Alphenlicht and the road that joined that tiny country to the outer world. ‘I’ve tried to figure it out myself,’ he said. ‘Most simply, I am the same person. She is not. My Marianne was driven by powerful emotions. Rage. Fear. Both combined. She went out of the dream-world into another world, the world of her own past.’

  ‘According to Nalavi and many of the other Kavi, that would have caused an alternative world.’

  ‘Well, it didn’t. My Marianne went back in her own world, but she went as a disembodied intelligence. She didn’t change anything. She entered into her own young self and guided it on exactly the same path. She set some signs or symbols, but then she let everything go on just as it had, up until she was about twelve or thirteen. At that point, she changed her past.’

  ‘Which, according to Nalavi, would have created an alternative world,’ she said patiently again. ‘Because it changed our pasts as well.’

  ‘It may have done, but only temporarily. It didn’t actually change anything in Marianne’s world, except as it directly affected her and her immediate family. In other words, whatever Harvey Zahmani was in Marianne’s total world, it wasn’t particularly important – that is, important to her, but not to the world at large. We know that because whatever alternative world may have started when he was crippled gradually converged with the old time-line and by the time Marianne reached twenty-one or -two, there was only one time-line. If we were able to look into the future of that original time-line, we would probably find that Harvey Zahmani was killed or crippled in that one as well, although perhaps at a later time. The theory of convergence would indicate that as a likelihood. Knowing Madame, it wouldn’t have been much later.’

  ‘Theory of convergence,’ she mused. ‘You mean the tendency of time-lines to knit together again when they are not very far apart.’

  ‘Yes. I don’t understand the logic or mathematics of it, but seemingly there is no room for an infinite number of alternative universes. They split, then converge. At any given time, only so many different ones exist. Like a river finding a new channel in flood, but still staying in the same flood plain and returning to the same channel eventually. When two people remember a specific event having happened differently, it may well be the result of a brief split and reconvergence. The event may actually have happened two ways. When a person remembers something having happened before, it may have done, on a slightly out of sync line.’

  ‘Confusing,’ she mused with a smile. ‘And terrible for you, my dear.’

  He sighed. ‘We were anchored at both ends of this particular split, so to speak, so we remember the divergence. I was never there in the years she was growin
g up. I only came in at the end. Nothing in what she did interrupted my time-line at all. At most I would have this tiny loop, only a few days long.’

  ‘Wasn’t your Marianne anchored at both ends?’

  ‘If she’d chosen to go on, yes. But she didn’t.’ He pounded his fist on the window sill, almost shouting. ‘She went—went somewhere. She simply wiped herself out of young Marianne’s life after Harvey was dealt with. This left only one Marianne, which is partly why the time-line grew together again. I have a feeling the divergence was very brief and that only a few of us are able to remember it.’

  ‘My question,’ Ellat said, giving him a hard look, ‘is whether Tabiti Delubovoska remembers it. Does she remember trying to capture Marianne in that previous sequence?’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t know. I hope not. I hope all she remembers is going there for a brief visit when Marianne was twelve.’

  ‘And if she does remember? Then what?’

  What indeed? Vengeance? Or simply a carrying out of the original plan, whatever that was. However he rationalized it, he could not convince himself Marianne was out of danger.

  ‘You ought to go to the Cave of Light, Makr Avehl.’

  ‘I already have,’ he murmured. Though none of the Kavi attendant upon the Cave of Light had ventured to tell him what the symbols meant.

  ‘Well?’ she demanded. ‘What did it say?’

  ‘It showed me a woman washing clothes,’ he answered. ‘A pack of dogs. That would be the momentary gods, I’m sure of that. It showed me a palace; a dungeon. And a map.’

  ‘You consulted the lectionary?’

  ‘Would you like me to recite the possible symbolic meanings of a woman washing clothes? Guilt. Ritual cleanliness. Labor. Redemption. There are twenty-three meanings for that symbol alone, not counting sub-categories. Would you care to know how many there are for a map?’