XIII
Ordier climbed clumsily down the last overhanging boulder, fell to the scree beneath, and skidded down in a cloud of dust and grit to the sandy floor of the valley.
He stood up, and the gaunt height of the folly loomed beside and above him.
He knew there was no one about, because as he had been climbing down the rocks he had had a perfect view to all sides. There were no guards visible along the ridge, no other Qataari anywhere. The breeze blew through the deserted rose-plantation, and far away, on the other side of the valley, the screens around the camp hung heavy and grey.
The encircling statues of the arena lay ahead of him, and Ordier walked slowly towards them, excited again and apprehensive. As he approached he could see the mound of petals and could smell the heady perfume from them. Here in the shadow of the folly the breeze had little effect, and barely stirred the surface of the mound. Now he was at ground level he saw that the petals had not been smoothed to a flat surface above the girl, but that they lay irregularly and deeply.
Ordier hesitated when he came to the nearest of the statues. It was, by chance, one of those to which the ropes had been tied, and he saw the rough-fibred rope stretching tautly across to the mound of petals, vanishing into it.
A reason for his hesitation was a sudden self-consciousness, a need for guidance. If he had interpreted the actions of the Qataari correctly he had been tacitly invited to relinquish his hiding-place, and to enter the ritual. But what was expected of him now?
Should he walk across to the girl in the petals and introduce himself? Should he stand before her as the man had done? Should he rape her? Should he untie her? He looked around again, helplessly, hoping for some clue as to what to do.
All these possibilities were open to him, and more, but he was aware again of the way his freedom was created by the actions of others. He was free to act as he wished, and yet whatever he did would have been pre-ordained by the mysterious, omniscient power of the Qataari.
He was free to go, but if he did it would have been determined that this would be his choice; he was free to throw aside the petals and ravish the girl, for that too had been predetermined.
So he stood uncertainly by the statue, breathing the dangerous sweetness of the roses, feeling again the rise of sexual desire. At last he stepped forward, but some residual trace of convention made him clear his throat nervously, signalling his presence. There was no reaction from the girl.
He followed the rope, and stood by the edge of the mound of petals where it became buried. He craned forward, trying to see the place where the gap for the girl’s eyes had been left, but the mound was irregular and he could not make it out. The fragrance of the petals lay heavy; his presence stirred it up like flocculent sediment shaken from the bottom of a bottle of liquid. He breathed it deeply, embracing the dullness of thought it induced, welcoming further surrender to the mysteries of the Qataari. It relaxed him and aroused him, made him sensitive to the sounds of the breeze, to the dry heat of the sun.
His clothes were feeling stiff and unnatural on him, so he took them off. He saw the pile of scarlet material where the girl’s torn toga had been tossed aside, and he threw his own clothes on top. When he turned back to the pile of petals, he crouched down and took hold of the rope; he pulled on it feeling the tautness, knowing that as he moved it the girl would feel it and know he was there.
He stepped forward, and the petals stirred around his ankles; the scent thickened, like the vaginal musk of desire.
But then he hesitated again, suddenly aware of an intrusive sensation, so distinct, so intense, that it was almost like pressure on his skin.
Somewhere, somebody hidden was watching him.
XIV
The realization was so profound that it penetrated the pleasant delirium induced by the rose-perfume, and Ordier stepped back again. He turned around, staring first at the wall of the folly behind him, then across at the plantation of roses.
It seemed to him that there was a movement somewhere in the bushes, and, distracted from the girl, Ordier walked slowly towards them. They seemed to be looming over him, so near were they. The bushes grew to an unnatural height; they were like small trees and nearly all were taller than him. Convinced that someone was standing concealed behind the plants, Ordier ran towards where he thought he had seen the movement, and plunged into the nearest row of bushes. At once he was halted; the thorns of the branches snagged and tore at his skin, bringing spots and streaks of blood to his chest and arms.
Here, in the plantation itself, the thick smell of the roses was so concentrated that it felt as if the air itself had been replaced by the sweetness of scent. He could not think or focus his mind. Was there anyone beyond, hiding in the roses, or had he imagined it? Ordier peered forward and to each side, but was unable to see.
In the distance, just visible across the top of the plantation, were the screens around the Qataari camp.
Ordier turned away. He stumbled back through the prickly branches of the roses, and returned to the arena.
The statues faced inwards, staring down at the girl buried beneath the petals.
A memory, surfacing sluggishly like waterlogged timber through the muddy pool of his mind: the statues, the statues. Earlier in the ritual…why were they there? He remembered, dimly, the men gathered around the girl, the cleaning and polishing of the statues. And later…?
As the girl walked into the centre of the arena, some of the men…climbed into the hollow statues!
The ritual had not changed. When he returned to the hidden cell that morning, the Qataari had been positioned exactly as he had last seen them. But he had forgotten the men inside the statues! Were they still there?
Ordier stood before the one nearest to him, and stared up at it.
It depicted a man of great physical strength and beauty, holding in one hand a scroll, and in the other a long spear with a phallus for a head. Although the figure was nude from the waist up, its legs were invisible because of a voluminous, loose-fitting garment, shaped brilliantly out of the metal of the statue. The face looked downwards, directly at him and beyond, to where the girl lay inside the petals.
The eyes…
There were no eyes. Just two holes, behind which it would be possible for human eyes to hide.
Ordier stared up, looking at the dark recesses behind the eye-holes, trying to see if anyone was there. The statue gazed back vacantly, implacably.
Ordier turned away towards the pile of rose-petals, knowing the girl still lay there a few paces away from him. But beyond the petals were other statues, staring down with the same sinister emptiness. Ordier fancied he saw a movement: behind the eyes of one, a head ducking down.
He stumbled across the arena, tripping on one of the ropes (the petals of the mound rustled and shifted; had he tugged at the girl’s arm?), and lurched up to the suspect statue. He felt his way around to the other side, groping for some kind of handle which would open the hinged back. His fingers closed on a knob shaped like a raised disk, and he pulled at it. The hinges squeaked, the back came open, and Ordier, who had fallen to his knees, looked inside.
The statue was empty.
He opened the others, all of them, all around the circle…but each one was empty. He kicked his naked foot against them, he hammered with his fists and slammed the metal doors, and all the statues rang with a hollow reverberation.
The girl was still there, bound and silent beneath the petals, listening to his noisy and increasingly desperate searches, and Ordier was growing steadily more aware of her mute, uncritical presence. She was waiting for him in the manner of her people, and she was prepared.
He returned to the mound in the centre of the arena, satisfied, as far as it was possible to be satisfied in this state of narcosis, that he had done all he could. There was no one about, no one watching. He was alone with the girl. But as he stood before her, breathing the sickly fragrance of the roses, he could still feel the pressure of eyes as distinctly as if it w
ere the touch of a hand on the back of his neck.
XV
A dim understanding was growing in him. He had always felt an unvoiced need to resist the fragrance of the flowers, dreading what it might do to him, but now Ordier saw that he had to succumb. He gulped in the air and the perfume it carried, holding it in his lungs and feeling his skin tingle, his senses dull. He was aware of the girl, of her presence and sexuality; the bruised eyes, the frail body, her innocence, his excitement. He kneeled down, reached forward with his hands, searched for her in the petals. The scent was suffocating.
He moved forward on his knees, wading through. The petals swirled about his sides and his elbows like a light, foamy liquid, scarlet-coloured, desire-perfumed. He came to one of the ropes beneath the petals, and followed it with his hand towards the centre. He was near the girl now, and he tugged on the rope repeatedly, feeling it yield, imagining it bringing a hand nearer to him, or spreading her legs marginally wider. He waded forward hurriedly, groping for her.
There was a deep indentation in the ground beneath him; Ordier, leaning forward to put his weight on one hand, fell instead, and pitched forward into the soft, warm depths of the mound. He shouted as he fell, and several of the petals entered his mouth. He reared up like a non-swimmer who falls in shallow water, showering flowers around him in a pink and scarlet spray, trying to spit the petals from his mouth.
He felt grit between his teeth, and he reached in with a finger and wiped it around. Several petals clung moistly to his hand. He raised it to look more closely at them, and Ordier saw a sudden glint of reflected light.
He sank down again on to his knees, and picked up one of the petals at random. He held it before his eyes, squinting at it. There was a tiny gleam of light here too: a glittering, shimmering fragment of metal and glass.
Ordier picked up a handful of the petals, felt and saw the same glistening presence on every one. He threw them up and let them fall, and as they flickered down, the sun reflected minutely from the scintillas embedded in the petals.
He closed his eyes. The scent of the petals was overpowering. He staggered forward on his knees, the petals rippling around his waist. Again he reached the depression in the ground beneath the petals, and he fell forward into the flowers, reaching out for the body of the girl. He was in an ecstasy of delirium and desire.
He floundered and beat his arms, threw up the petals, kicked and struggled against the suffocating weight of the flowers, seeking the girl.
But the four ropes met in the centre of the arena, and where the girl had been bound there was now a large and tightly drawn knot.
Exhausted, Ordier fell on his back in the petals, and let the sun play down on him. He could feel the hard lump of the knotted ropes between his shoulder-blades. The metal heads of the encircling statues loomed over him; the sky was brilliant and blue. He reached behind him to grasp the ropes above his head, and spread his legs along the others.
The wind was rising and petals were blowing, drifting across him, covering his limbs.
Behind the statues, dominating the arena, was the bulk of the folly. The sun’s light played full upon it, and the granite slabs were white and smoothly faced. In only one place was the perfection of the wall broken: in the centre and about halfway up was a narrow slit of darkness. Ordier stared up at it, seeing behind it two identical glimmers of reflected light. They were circular and cold, like the lenses of binoculars.
The petals blew across him, covering him, and soon only his eyes were still exposed.
Christopher Priest, An Infinite Summer
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