Celebrant Page 13

  He creeps forward, even though the pipe is warm, while the room ahead seems if anything to be colder and less welcoming. The pipe end protrudes high above the floor of a basement all hung with heavy black dropcloths.

  The floor is just too far to get down to, but there is a door to the left, with a cloudy, wire-reinforced glass window and a high threshold scuffed with snow. Unable to turn around, deKlend backs himself laboriously out of the pipe, waving his leg around in the air to make sure he doesn’t collide with someone passing by and in fact there is a rough jolt as his leg knocks against someone well muffled in a coat. He hears a long, ragged sniff, like the sound of tearing in half a sheet of paper, but there is no one when he finally extracts himself.

  Around the corner, down the alley, and there, almost invisible in the dark, a deep-sunk stairway. The door is locked. Peering through the cloudy glass pane, deKlend gets no better sense of the contents of the room; he can however see the pipe, and below it there is a board fixed to the wall with a few pegs in it, and keys hanging from a ball bearing chain on one of them. He hurries back up the stairs and down the length of the pipe. He has to lean a far distance out and bend at the waist, because the pipe end is well out from the wall, and even then he can’t quite reach the keys. Pulling himself back in, hands drooping from the end of the pipe, he stops to think. Then he abruptly backs out of the pipe and takes up the spiral shark from where it simply rests on top of the pipe. It is evidently a real stuffed shark, still a little flexible, like stiff rubber, and the skin is loose—it moves slightly on the flesh, like a glove. People are staring; well, let them, what matters now is figuring out how to carry the thing—bundled into his blanket in front. Again he crawls the length of the pipe, the shark falling out and being replaced, and, leaning out as before, extends his reach with the spiral shark and hooks the key chain with the tip of its stiff tail. Carefully he raises it to his hand and then pulls back, so as to avoid any danger of dropping it into the room.

  Retreating backward down the pipe, emerging again from it and bumping into someone who curses him without missing a step, deKlend sets the shark back where it was, and goes back to the door in the alley with a feeling of glory—

  This is what I’m supposed to be doing (he thinks) this is a test laid down just for me, the one, the only one perhaps, who would come like I did.

  None of the keys work, and, peering through the window in the door again, deKlend observes that there is another set of keys on a chain hanging from a peg on a second board affixed to the wall just below the other board. After making as sure as he can that there aren’t any additional boards, below or in the vicinity of those two, and perplexed because he is certain, strictly certain, that there was only one board when he’d first looked through the window in the door, deKlend returns to the mouth of the pipe.

  It is now late at night. The black streets are foamed with slush, and the din is still incredible, like an engine room. He ducks into the pipe, but re-emerges an instant later, takes the shark again from where he had replaced it atop the mouth of the pipe, situates it on his person as before, then goes back down the pipe, dropping the shark several times again on the way. To reach the lower board, when the keys on the first had been at the very limit of his reach, he will have to cling to the edge of the pipe with one hand and hang down like a monkey, but instead his hand slips and he flops straight down onto his back.

  After an uneventful hiatus he searches the floor by the wall, and then further out, realizes with alarm he can’t seem to find the keys, and concludes he is locked in.

  Inside the black dropcloths there is a section of landscape preserved in gold; gold leaf on real leaves, adhering to every serration and dimple, with moving care. There is fragrant black loam in heaps, and silver grass without a trace of tarnish, silver trunks and leaves of gold, golden ornaments on silver wires.

  He sits down on the floor to rest a moment, slouching and letting his painful neck droop so that his head is only just held up. He does not notice the naked, bald, crazily-grinning department store mannikin as it leans out from behind one of the trees. Its painted eyes seem to look at him.

  Remember... (it croons faintly, fading back into the dark)

  Remember what? (deKlend asks himself dully) A woman’s voice? No, that’s what one is usually expected to remember.

  —I am to remember this (he concludes) But is this so especially memorable? And how and with what is the comparison to be made? With my mind?

  Exploring a bit further, deKlend observes that the gleams from the precious metals and stones, their arrangement, have the arbitrariness of a melody, exactingly arranged, and that, although every element in the arrangement is static in its place, they create, as he moves among them, a continuous flow. After only a moment’s exposure, he is recognizing new things as they first appear. There is a repetition, to select one of the more salient, of an arch consisting in five regular, fixed scintillations that flicker up three times, the third time with a coruscating, starlike point in the center darting swift jets of clear color.

  There’s that hay smell (he thinks) I never know what makes it, a flower that smells like hay. That smell always takes me back to childhood.

  The trees give out. There is nothing left.

  No, the pattern continues, either in this crystalline darkness or in me, like an echo remaining after the... (deKlend can’t think of a good word)... articulation. The articulation persists, like an echo. And this is accentuated, far more accentuated, in darkness, where time becomes a tangible, occupying force. This dark is not simple, more than an impediment, not uniform or empty or unpatterned; and allyetwhilethesame it is still the same dark (deKlend thinks), self-same, copious, waiting, familiar and close.

  Wading into the dark, deKlend puts up his hands in front of him, without using any strength, to part the darkness, press it and feel his way through it. Turning around, he wonders at the perfection of even, luminous blackness that has absorbed him, although he still imagines himself as a visible being, unblended with the dark. He sees himself with his mind’s eye still with his few familiar colors, and not as a contour of dark in dark, as he now is.

  Listening, he can hear the sound of his own breathing, and the dull report of his footsteps that have nothing to impart to him, no click, no creak, no scrape of grit, no sighing rug, no grass whisper. There is a rush in his ears, his own pulse, the faint tinnitus whistle. He’s not alone. No. Far from it.

  Lively, flamelike darkness, like being in a furnace of darkness, that seems so clever and so impassive like the weather and that deceives and conceals without deceit, but it’s the sound that it shows, if only (he thinks) I could make it out.

  Suddenly it occurs to him that there might be hazards, infinite hazards, there, and he deliberately stops his drifting, thoughtless walk.

  So now he listens, his eyes ticking in their sockets like two shivering mice peeping out from their holes. There is a rushing like far off wind, but the air around him is completely still. In that sound, there’s what is almost the soft call of a mourning dove, like a cuck-koo. It spreads from its source, off to the left, and hangs hollowly in the air. Is it like a bird? The call propagates, spreading like a smoke ring, and there is a sound involved in it like the mute agitation of air from the pedal notes of a pipe organ. It has a seeking, errant intention, that makes it sound as if it comes from someone or goes to something... a low whistle. What is that sound?

  deKlend wanders. The streets are deserted. From time to time he hears it, always from a definite direction, but from any side.

  It’s possible (he thinks) these streets, which show no sign of decay but quite the opposite, are not deserted, but have never yet been inhabited.

  He freezes stock still. There’s a soft commotion on the pavement of feet but not of footfalls—scrapes and taps, thuds, whisks. Coming around a corner he catches a glimpse of a figure just bounding out of sight. But did he see it?

  From just ahead, the sound of leaping and frisking.

&
nbsp; Rushing after it, the dancer arches through the lamp light, arms and legs outspread, and disappears frolicking into the gloom.

  But what can it mean that he had no head?

  deKlend hastens after it and the being is suddenly there, not six feet from him. There is nothing in its white collar. After pausing only an instant the dancer spins gently toward him with arms like two parentheses. It stops directly before him. deKlend can hear the rustle of its garments. The figure straightens, hands up before its chest, and then prances to the center of the little courtyard. It seems as though the dark, fog-choked sky bellies down low there, like a tarpaulin sagging with rainwater, but now deKlend sees there is a black globe, a yard across, hanging in space like an egg being laid by the cloud. The figure rushes toward the egg and stands beneath it. The globe is its head.

  deKlend approaches uncertainly, but preventing any uncollectedness from showing.

  Looking at it, beginning to see in its surface the small dim peach-colored smudge that is the bent reflection of his own face, deKlend knows that a long-dead person is curled up inside the globe.

  The figure’s arms limp at its sides, it stands not slouching, not straight, not swaying, not quite still. The hands are plainly mechanical. There are polished black shoes on the feet, the trousers are creased, milk-white cuffs emerge from the sleeves of a black, cheesecloth-looking kameez thrown awkwardly over the underlying clothes. A pointed hood, far too small to cover that globe head, dangles down the back. There is white shirt and black tie, a jacket under the kameez. Cold seeps invisibly from its clothes.

  A messenger, like me (deKlend thinks)

  There is certainly a quiet lapping sound, like breakers, coming from the being.

  Making his salute, deKlend approaches meekly.

  Sir, (he says, and falters)

  Suddenly the figure is enshrouded in transparent vortices, noiselessly whirling.

  deKlend rallies, and the pitchers grow swiftly less conspicuous. He ventures his icebreaker.

  I wonder—would you have the time?

  The being before him stares into infinity. Constellations in all different colors float in its black globe, sparkling points of cool, clear light.

  Sir, if you please... the time? (deKlend asks, with his most understatedly engaging manner)

  As the mechanical hand opens and inserts itself into the kameez, reaching for the inner jacket pocket, the lapping sound grows more distinct. There must be a transistor radio, tuned between stations, in the jacket. The hand produces the lidless, chalk-white eye of a pocket watch and holds it out for deKlend’s inspection.

  He notes the time, and as well the word “Wednesday” that appears, slightly off center, in a little crescent window cut into the face.

  Spiffing watch, (he says coolly)

  and the arm that had been steady as a carving’s smoothly restores it to its place. Again the low whoosh of static emerges from the clothes.

  Down in the static the word “Votu” is pronounced clearly. A wave of fear suddenly stiffens his body leaving him instantly sick and cold; it’s as if the soul of the figure before him had spoken to him from another world through the radio.

  You imbecile (he thinks, struggling to control his face)—you imbecile!

  Weakness rinses down his legs. He kneels and opens his hands.

  Splendid angel (he begins) I implore...

  He breaks off as the figure steps forward, leaving its head hanging where it was, and, standing immediately over him, folds its arms in a gesture of imperious disdain.

  A burst of

  sadstspoafditpttdwhetioadiartcoicafwsimitcotyah598ad1201ifagoomawaeocavatwapodifnattetwdmziranoiwhturimvotuahstvatlwohwnwfangowbrhiamnemosemeopmmaotbhsutsgaitcohswathimluttmutptmutdaatdpwfthotnifeivotutwowsoafopltpiootcbsntshadalygwctgoatwshwmpwtooogasalwcittposhnwnhahseotsaobaaswlblapwaeosamlsptvaotehlatcyotgcfttptmohgtgkf

  erupts from the figure’s clothes.

  My vocation! (deKlend says rapturously)

  Tears spill from his eyes. Black Radio! He is paying no attention now to what it says, pressing his hands into his shawl.

  The night sky appears across the black globe. A constellation of six or seven pinlights that sparkle with purple fires strays from the blackness of the globe to the dark air surrounding it, and escapes. The being disappears upwards, a light falls on him from one side, a door frame filled with daylight, and deKlend walks through it on a spacious road of red clay dusted with fragrant cassia and framed to either side by enormous fields of white roses in bud, a small herd of wisents grazing, sharply pointed cobalt peaks tower into a clear and vibrant sky, in the distance, apparently emerging from the foothills, a colorful city overspread with huge white sails like plumes of steam. Small girls flit from branch to branch in the tree, and others frolic on all fours in the distant grass, perk up their long ears at him. Hastily rushing, impatient to discover the end of the narrow path, deKlend passes a roadside shrine, yawning and dark as a cave, a few monks, sun gleaming on their scalps, bustling around the side of the shrine as deKlend passes. And some raise their voices, perhaps at him—and if so in a not unfriendly tone—while another kind of sound altogether comes from the interior of the shrine, a hollow whooshing with a grating noise chewing around inside. But deKlend ignores these distractions and continues to follow the tiny track which seems to have been made for dolls or elves to follow, walking rapidly in tangling vines and thorny bracken jaggedly closing over his head, so that he must creep on all fours, searching like an anteater the black slush-caulked pavement that shines in the limpid dark with the reflected blazes of the sharp and orange streetlights. There is a clammy, lukewarm light on the horizon as the dawn is coming up.

  *

  The landscape here is littered with derelict buildings and work sites well apart. After some days search, deKlend stumbles across the old smithy and immediately begins setting it to rights.

  Sortieing into the scrub adjacent to the woods he startles a few animals, somewhere halfway between cows and deer, and soon finds himself in among the ferns or whatever they are. The sulking daylight comes from a sun that hangs low behind him, and throws its illumination forward in the gloom faintly silvering the leaves. He reaches out, bends a stem, and hears hammers tapping. The plant is unfamiliar to deKlend, but it seems to be the right one; taking out his knife, he squats down and cuts the branch free of the trunk at its base, just above the soil. Then he trims it, leaving only the long, whiplike green branch, with livid tufts where he’d cut off its twigs, and its furious spikes, each over an inch long, flexible, a little translucent, and hard, like fingernails. Pinching it between its thorns, deKlend carries it away.

  The shed is cadaverous grey planks. There was a door once, but that part of the shed, that section of the wall, which is half of one of the four, is neatly cut away and completely gone. A window, however, remains, with its glass intact, densely misted over with mineral rime so that the outside, as seen through it, is dimmed and etherealized.

  The furnace is a pumpkin with a door in it; once the ashes choking the hatch are cleared away, he thrusts his head through it and, with a little light, can see the scoring, like streaks of guano, on the inside, and the all the varieties of excrement left by intense fires—ash, cinders, defunct embers.

  The anvil is nothing more than a shapeless piece of metal, smelling strongly of iodine, that might at one time have been part of an anchor.

  deKlend lights a fire of trash, bits of dried wood, and, sparingly, lumps of coal he’d found in a few big bags behind the shed. As the heat increases, deKlend sets his green branch on the anvil; using a vise and some pliers he found in a heap in a corner, he carefully straightens a number of thin iron rods, until they are as straight as he can make them. He wraps the branch, thorns and all, in the rods, winding a length of wire around the bundle; then, he pounds out some wire flat to form tape, which he at first intends to wrap around the bundle as well, but then, thinking better of it, he undoes the bundle and, after restraightening some of the rods,
he weaves the tape in and out of them and around the branch, braiding them laboriously together. The results are no good. The fourth time he believes the bundle looks right, and, pausing to retrieve some more fresh wire, he rebinds it.

  The furnace glows, pops, squeals, and, wrapping himself up in an apron, gloves, goggles, a pair of thick waders, deKlend begins working the bellows. The flames devour their fuel greedily and flare up roaring. In no time the fire is white, the clear snowy tongues cascade out the little door in a ravening fringe—deKlend takes the bundle, which he has layered with rods until it is as round and bunched as a parasol, and thrusts it into the heat. He works the bellows. With tongs he withdraws the incandescent length of metal and sets it on the anvil, where it warbles and hisses in shock and anger.

  Looking at that shimmering white metal, a frenzy comes over him and he throws himself on the anvil, snatching hammers in each hand he flails away wildly; the bundle complains in a high cracked chiming voice. deKlend windmills at the anvil sparks spattering him from top to bottom pitting his apron—from time to time he drops the hammers with a loud clang and tongs the iron back into the flames that dash over him like surf. Heedlessly he bends into them too close, staring half-blinded into the secret world in the middle of the fire, weirdly still and quivering, a kind of red igloo in a white storm, and the shank tossing and turning feverishly on the coals, its glinting length showing depths of red and black throbbing up to white again as he pulls the iron back out and sets it on the anvil, a heavy palm of heat billow from it, whale away with both hammers and with the first or second stroke a little gob of hot iron is thrown off with the plume of sparks deKlend picks it up and reflexively pops it into his mouth—his eyes bulge, steam and smoke fume from his lips, his motion to take up his hammer with that hand stops as it begins and he flings himself on the ground with a strangled scream, steam from his throat, clawing at his chest. deKlend snaps on the ground like a fish out of water, jerks onto his hands and knees then lunges up to the anvil, vomits the iron bit back up again. It lands on the blade in a gout of steam and vanishes back into the iron.