Radiance, Page 23

  He leapt up, swung round one of the thick pillars of the bed, and slapped the wall. The room seemed to quiver with the force of his mood.

  “Something has to be real, you know. Something real has to anchor the magic. Death is the realest thing there is. Death holds the rest together. You’ll believe everything else if you believe in the death. Once someone exsanguinates in front of you, well, anything can happen. You’re on the edge of your seat. The tension, the tension just rears up. I’m aces at deaths. Always have been.” Varela struck the door with the flat of his palm and it cracked, sending up puffs of dust. “Do you know how I met Severin? I was part of her mother’s circus. Lumen Molnar, I mean, the last mother. I was the magician. Prestidigitation. Knife acts, girls cut in half, disappearances. I loved my work. I went to Saturn with Lumen, me and the whole troupe—even the monkeys. And, Christ, they loved us on Saturn. We lit up every halfpenny theatre in Enuma Elish—they didn’t even care what the act was, they were just so hungry for a show; so hungry. You know, a person will give up food for a good show. Push comes to shove, they’ll give up their last food. They’ll do it and they’ll think they got a good bargain. That hunger goes deeper and bitterer than the need for bread. And we came sailing in just dripping with gravy. They slurped us up. Licked their fingers dry and banged the table for more.” He dragged down one of the orange tapestries that covered the walls. It ripped easily, like crepe paper, and floated down to the floor. “Half the time you could see the rabbit in my trousers, but it never mattered. I’ve had more Saturnine girls than you’ve had cups of tea, boy, with more lined up round the block that I was too tired to see to. Elish would have given Severin the key to the city if they’d had one. Anything she wanted—any access, any transport, anything. Because she brought the circus, and it was better than gold. Boredom will murder you dead on the outer worlds.

  “I wasn’t anything until Saturn. A purveyor of cheap tricks. But I learned. I learned the lantern trade. A trick of the light, boy, just a trick of the light. Everything in creation is just a trick of the light—the only difference between heaven and hell is who’s running those lights, who’s got the switch, who knows the cues.” Varela turned and stomped on the hearth, the night table, the lovely little secretary on which I’d written my previous entries. They crumpled like drywall and ash, no more mahogany and metal and lacquer than my own flesh. “A couple of times Severin got up there with me, played my girl in the box. She looked up at me with trust as complete as a promise. You can’t even imagine. You think she’s yours because she let you play the urchin in some miserable B-plot scene, but she isn’t yours—you never even knew her; she’s just a face to you. I saw that face under my hands in a box like a coffin; I saw her understand totally that I would never hurt her, that I would always protect her. And I saw that face go under a diving bell with that same expression, not a twitch of the mouth or slant of the eye different. But what she trusted wasn’t me, wasn’t Erasmo, wasn’t Amandine or Mariana or any of us who had kept her whole on every planet we visited. No, she trusted…Venus. The Qadesh. Her own fucking specialness. And look what happened.”

  I had drawn myself up into a corner of the room near the curtained bathroom door that concealed Cythera. I could not see how to get out, past his rampage, to anywhere safer. I summoned up a whisper: “What happened? What did happen?”

  “Nothing! Nothing! She was nothing, and nothing happened. Nothing is happening. Nothing is all that ever happens. You look at this place and see a palace: elephants; griffins; a Ferris wheel; lights, lights, everywhere. You look at a masked girl screaming and think she’s dead. I tell you this is the island of the lotus-eaters, and it never occurs to you to stop eating the lotus.” Varela overturned a plate of infanta flowers, their petals already curling brown. “You see everything in such plain terms. You and her and nothing else. I’m an extra in your story. Well, you’re an extra in mine, boy. A punter picking cards out of the rigged deck I offer. The thing about a magic trick is that you have to play fair. You show the audience everything you’re going to do before you do it. You tell them to their faces that you’re going to lie to them. You show them the tools—see how they shine! You show them the girl—see how innocent and lovely she looks in her spangled costume! You show them the knives. You say: I am going to cut her in half and you are going to applaud. And then you keep your promise. If you’re any good, the shock is worse because they knew it was coming, but no one ever believes a man on a stage.”

  Varela turned and punched through the polished ebony wall—it crackled away beneath his fist like the sugared crust on a French custard.

  “Yet you believe her. Her! You look at her pretty little face on the screen emoting and stuttering and blushing and contemplating her rich girl’s life, and you think there wasn’t a script out of frame at her feet, rewritten to an inch of its life, every rewrite thatched in on coloured papers to keep it straight. Oh, are we on the red pages today, where Severin is a rebel and a champion of truth? Or blue, where she cries about her mothers for thirty minutes? Or green, where the lady who’s never wanted for a thing in her life whines about how much someone else has to pay for her to speak on camera? It was a rainbow by the end, every movie she ever made. And you think it’s real, that Venus was any different. That the heart of that girl wasn’t always an empty goddamned soundstage, and her soul wasn’t a hack-job screenplay with half the pages torn out and floating down the length of the solar system. What happened to her? The same thing that happens to any bad script: Too many people get their hands on it, trying to fix it, ’til it turns into nothing—nothing; not a trick, not a twist ending, just a girl bleeding out in a box. There’s no artistry to that. You can’t cram artistry into it, no matter how hard you try. She’s just a dead girl.”

  “That’s not an answer. Did you kill her? Tell me!”

  He calmed himself, assessing the wreckage of the room, the torn cardboard and shattered coloured lights and crepe tapestries. I knew he was right, that he was showing me his trick, but the infanta had so addled my senses that even amid the trash heap of the ochre bedroom, everything I saw was still limned with light, with richness, an afterimage of opulence, ghosts in the architecture.

  “Listen, boy—and look! Behold my beautiful assistant strapped to the wheel! Vulnerable, tender, entirely within my power! See how the light catches her jewelled bodice like a burst of starlight. We landed on Venus with no complications. Transport from the International Station to Adonis took two weeks. Before your very eyes, I shall drive five knives into her unblemished body! You see the knives are sharp; I do not deceive you—I’ve cut my own finger with their points: one, two, three, four, five!

  “We arrived on site and set up camp. We found you on the first day of scouting. I had my light meters and she had George, but she hadn’t intended to shoot anything that day. You were extremely anaemic and dehydrated. We fed you and washed you and Severin took charge of you like a pet. Now the wheel starts to spin! Her sequins dazzle! Her cries arouse! The first knife—ah, direct hit in the left shoulder! See how she bleeds!

  “The angels first appeared that night. Seraphim, you understand? Not frilly angels with blousy pink wings and haloes like wedding rings. These ones had wheels full of eyes and voices like the noise of the deep. We poor fools! We thought it was equipment, feedback. All that expensive sound shit nobody needs but Severin just insisted on. Mariana was the only one who could make those machines heel, but even she was new to it; she’d never gotten to work with anything that high-end before. We thought the whining, the thrumming, that horrible, horrible vibrating, was Mariana’s problem. Ignore it, ignore it, just go to sleep.” He covered his face with his hands for a moment, but snapped up again, his mask barely concealing the livid excitement in his quivering body. “Observe the flight path of the second knife: I’ve sunk it in the right shoulder, perfectly parallel to the first—what artistry! What skill!

  “But the angels came again in the morning. It wasn’t feedback. The voices of serap
him are the colour of need. When their words entered me, I felt a cancer in my heart, and, at the same time, the blossoming of my body into beauty. Thrumming. Voices. Quiet at first, like when you’re in a room full of people and everyone is talking constantly but you can’t make out the words, just an ocean of sound. A tide, sometimes louder, sometimes softer. The third knife, ladies and gentleman, a blow to the left hip! Oh, that one hurt her, you can tell! Blood running down the inside of her beautiful thigh. See it drip onto the stage.

  “On the fourth day, they woke us up in the middle of the night. 2:14 a.m., by my watch. Mariana singing. Singing, screaming. Screaming, singing. She was so beautiful; the look on her face when she heard the angels singing in her voice. How I loved her! It wouldn’t stop. No one could sleep. But I loved it. I ran through the ocean surf trying to get closer—if I could only get closer! If I could get closer, I could see their faces, their eyes and their wheels. You can hear it on some of the footage, whispering in the trees. That’s all an Edison mic can hear of God. They wanted us to leave, but Severin wouldn’t listen. I loved her, too, for that. Something she couldn’t explain was happening right in front of her. Something real. Something outside herself. I don’t have a drug in my cabinet to compete with that. But she and I were the only ones talking about it. And she was convinced, convinced it was all due to the callowhales somehow, because she couldn’t see the seraphim like I could. She couldn’t understand their songs, their songs like rainbows and arrows and dying. She would just stare out to sea at those fish, those big, stupid islands like desiccated brains floating in blood. She stared. Just stared. Like she had been paused. Ah-ha! The fourth knife, as true as the rest, into the right hip like butter, my friends! Go on, gasp! Clutch your pearls! See the rictus of pain on her face—as real as you and I! Doesn’t she wear her blood pretty—like jewellery, those trickles, like strands of rubies. Nothing finer!

  “We fought, the night before she and Erasmo went out on their own. Mariana was hurt by then, and I wanted to call White Peony Station for transport. I wanted to take care of my Mari. But, even more, I wanted them all to go, just go, so I could have the voices to myself. So I could finally listen, really hear them, in the quiet. None of them could shut up. They couldn’t open up to the sound. The voices were deafening, by then—you just couldn’t think, couldn’t move. Their verbs tasted like life. The seraphim were touching us, touching me. They talked all the time, like carnival barkers advertising the known universe. Severin and I fought often—we’d been lovers, on Saturn, and you’ll treat someone you’ve fucked far worse than someone you haven’t. She screeched at me: I have to know, I have to know. Take Mari and go if you want; I don’t need you. I hit her—she hit me back. It went like that with us, sometimes. But I pushed her. I pushed her and she fell.

  You could never understand. Leave me alone with the wheels and the eyes and the heavens and your pitiful questions. Just keep your eye on the fifth knife—piercing the heart, as true and sharp as love. Stop the wheel, if you please. Get her down, now—mind the sequins. A star of knives—perfect, if I do say so myself. Now, a wave of my hand, of my wand, of the curtain of light—and abracadabra! She’s perfectly well! Turn around and show the audience, honey; show them you don’t have a scratch. She’s fine. She’s fine. See? She’s fine.”

  Then the Mad King of Pluto bent his face to the ruined floor of his broken house and wept as though he would never again see the sun.

  “Calliope the Carefree Callowhale” PSA

  PROPERTY OF THE BBC LUNA, RKO, AND CAPRICORN STUDIOS

  FIRST AIRDATE: 28 FEBRUARY, 1930

  VOICE-OVER: VIOLET EL-HASHEM AND ALAIN MBENGUE

  [CALLIOPE THE CAREFREE CALLOWHALE dances onscreen. She is a joyful, animated character, all cheerful lines and unthreatening colours: a stylized whale, halfway between orca and beluga with a little happy humpback thrown in. Her palette is turquoise, azure, and navy blue, with big cerulean eyes framed by long lashes and purple eye shadow. The BBC shelled out heavily to Edison Corp. for the colour animation.

  CALLIOPE bounces on her clownish tail in a field of sunflowers and magenta begonias. A fountain of healthy, nourishing callowmilk spurts continually from her blowhole.]

  CALLIOPE

  HI, KIDS! I’m Calliope the Carefree Callowhale! I’m here to remind all you growing boys and girls to DRINK YOUR MILK!

  [MARVIN THE MONGOOSE (courtesy Capricorn Studios) marches in from the left-hand side of the frame. He wears a jaunty cap.]

  CALLIOPE

  Hello, Marvin! What have you been up to?

  MARVIN

  Nothing much, Callie! Only defeating the dastardly Crikey the Cobra with my lightning-quick fists! And I couldn’t have done it without a tall glass of callowmilk for breakfast! It’s got everything I need to keep me strong!

  CALLIOPE

  Righty-ho! Now, I’ve heard that some parents won’t let their kids have callowmilk. They think I’m full of toxins and mutated protein strands. That hurts my feelings! [Giant tears with rainbows reflecting in their surfaces fall from her eyes.] Those meanie mumsies say I make babies come out all funny-looking! But I’m a good whale. I just want everyone to be happy and healthy! [She continues to weep. The sunflowers and begonias wilt.]

  MARVIN

  But Calliope, if kids don’t drink their callowmilk, how will they ever have amazing adventures in space, like me?

  CALLIOPE

  That’s just it, Marvin! They’ll miss out on all the fun! I hate seeing children not having fun with their friends, don’t you?

  MARVIN

  Sure do!

  CALLIOPE

  That’s why I’m asking all of you to join my club, Calliope’s Kids! Just get your mum and dad to send the BBC a self-addressed stamped envelope and proof of a year’s worth of callowmilk purchases and, and I’ll send you a badge, colouring book, super-secret Venusian decoder ring, and this spiffy hat that will let everyone know that YOU’RE one of Calliope’s Kids, my very special friends! [The flowers spring back to life. Calliope does a somersault in the air and lands in a blue ocean. Marvin salutes her from a raft. He is wearing a pirate hat, an eye patch, and a Calliope’s Kids badge.]

  MARVIN

  And if your parents are fans of How Many Miles to Babylon?, just tell them to include a letter telling us their favourite character and we’ll throw in a neato plush callowhale and a signed photo of the cast!

  CALLIOPE

  Golly! I can’t think of a reason not to be my friend! And friends look after each other, right, Marvin?

  MARVIN

  Right! So let’s go get that wicked old Cobra King together!

  CALLIOPE

  You got it! [She somersaults over MARVIN’S raft, catching the sunlight in her fins. Cue theme music, freeze frame, and fade out.]

  PART THREE

  THE GREEN PAGES

  You have often

  Begun to tell me what I am, but stopp’d

  And left me to a bootless inquisition,

  Concluding ‘Stay: not yet.’

  —Miranda from The Tempest, William Shakespeare

  A director only makes one film in his life. Then he breaks it up and makes it again.

  —Jean Renoir

  The Radiant Car Thy Sparrows Drew

  (Oxblood Films, dir. Severin Unck)

  SC3 EXT. ADONIS, VILLAGE GREEN—DAY 13 TWILIGHT POST-PLANETFALL 23:24 [30 NOVEMBER, 1944]

  [EXT. Former site of the village of Adonis, on the shores of the Sea of Qadesh. Night. The Divers Memorial is a backlit monstrosity, bulbous and black. Wind buffets the sound and lighting equipment; lanterns swing wild, illuminating splatters of congealed white fluid drenching the site. In twenty-eight months no one has cleared the damage or removed the debris. Beams of illumination land on a series of objects, as briefly as a kiss, then leave them in darkness again: A door with an absurd number of locks—more than anyone could need—stove in. The crumpled, netted face of a diving bell. The mangled head of a carousel horse. A swath of white fabr
ic wadded up like scrap paper—a parachute, perhaps? Tarpaulin? Broken amphorae. Pieces of roof. Broken glass. The child’s slack, catatonic face. The faces of SANTIAGO ZHANG and HORACE ST. JOHN, struggling with cables and the boom mic, which dips into frame with the gusts of wind. MARIANA ALFRIC, her at-waist sound rig turning smoothly, though she has turned her back on the scene. She holds her hands over her face. Her nails are bitten raw. The mic records only wind, rendering SEVERIN’S beloved talking picture a silent film.

  SEVERIN is grabbing the child’s hand urgently. He begins to scream, soundlessly, held brutally still in his steps by ERASMO and MAXIMO VARELA, whose muscles bulge with what appears to be a colossal effort—keeping this single, tiny, bird-boned child from his circuit. The boy clutches his hand to his thin chest as though it is a precious possession. His only possession. The boy’s eyes are as wide as an electroshock patient’s, pupils blown, his whole body rigid, erect. He moves his head back and forth: no, no, no. It is hard to tell—the film is damaged, the light levels destroyed, patches of overexposure blossom over the footage like splashes of milk—but the boy is mouthing a word that looks like please. The storm eats up his voice, if he has one.

  SEVERIN’S jagged hair, and occasionally her chin, swing in and out of frame as she struggles with him. She turns over the boy’s hand, roughly, to show the camera what she has found there: tiny fronds growing from his skin, tendrils like ferns, seeking, wavering, wet with milk. The film jumps and shudders; the child’s hand vibrates, faster, faster. FILM DAMAGED FOOTAGE OVEREXPOSED SKIP AFFECTED AREA SKIPPING SKIPPING SKIPPING]

  Production Meeting,

  The Deep Blue Devil

  The Man in the Malachite Mask

  Doctor Callow’s Dream

  (Tranquillity Studios, 1960, dir. Percival Unck)