Babel Tower (47 page)

So they all turned away from her, and giggled together, and the little thing took up her nightdress and crept away to a cot in a corner where she often lay curled like a desperate snail in its shell. And Jojo came after her and snatched at the garment, saying she had wanted to be naked, and naked she should be. So she crawled in under her blanket, and her teeth clattered together like knitting needles, and this noise annoyed Adolphus, who took hold of her jaw and clattered it up and down in good earnest, whilst the others laughed.

And during the night, Felicitas could be heard sobbing and wailing, although these sounds were partly stifled by her pillow and blanket. But Jojo and Adolphus and Capo could not, they declared, sleep in this racket, so they rose up, and took the child from the cot, and put her on her head in the broom cupboard and turned the key. See if you can howl arsy-versy, they told her through the door, but she did not answer, for she could not.

And in the morning the door was opened by her brother Florian when everyone had gone to breakfast, chattering and laughing together. And the child fell out of the cupboard, rigid as a board, and cold as a stone to touch. She was not dead, Florian found, putting his cheek to her grey lips, which breathed a little warmth on his own warm skin. So he wrapped her in a blanket, and nursed her, and lulled
her, and after a time she began to shiver, and the blood began to flow through her limbs, and she got to her feet. And she said, “B-b-b-b-b,” and “C-c-c-c,” but no other word. Nor did she ever again speak word, but crept silently about the Tower, always hugging the wall, for she would not stand freely, and would meet no one’s eye, and drooled from the corner of her mouth.

And Florian asked himself whether he should speak to any member of the community about what had happened to his little sister. He saw it would be best to say nothing, for his own sake, and did indeed keep silence for some little time. But one day, finding his mother weeping over her silent child, he could not help himself, and told how it had come about, all of it, only he would give no names. And the Lady Mavis wept bitterly when she heard him, and could not think what was best to do. It might be thought, she should have spoken of the matter openly in the Council of the community, and sought justice for her child. But she judged it best to make peace, for the children were children she had risked her life to save from the soldiers of the Revolution, and she believed they were only children, and had done more harm than they knew. So she asked Jojo and Adolphus and Capo to come to her room, and there she said that no good was done by accusations or retribution; it was part of her creed that no eye should be plucked or tooth extracted in rage or cold vindictiveness. We must love each other, however hard it is, said the Lady Mavis to the meekly downcast boys. Who replied that she was quite right, and also quite wrong to suppose they had harmed her child, who had over-reacted to her rôle as the New Year. Someone, they said, had tittle-tattled, and told lies, but, as she herself had said, forgiveness was of the essence of community living and loving, and they would forgive, naturally.

And the next day, at breakfast, Florian was not to be found. A search was instituted, after twelve hours or so, when it was deemed by the community to be urgent, but the Tower was vast, and the pits and wells and glory-holes and oubliettes so many, and the moat so deep and the ramparts so high that no sign was ever seen again of the foolhardy boy, neither hair, nor bone, nor drop of blood, nor sweet smile.

After the disappearance of Florian, and the unavailing search of the Tower, the Lady Mavis became silent and withdrawn, although she still continued to perform tasks in the community, to peel potatoes, to mend torn clothing, to cook the little cakes, the spiced pastries or mirlitons, which she made better than anyone. She asked to be excused
from her duties in the nurseries, and this withdrawal was felt to be graceful and natural, despite the general desire to do away with the feelings of partial maternity which gave rise to it.

But after some little time, the members of the community all received pretty little notes bidding them to a feast in the paved courtyard at the summit of the White Tower, or the Pierced Tower (it went by both names, which referred to the colour of its stone, and the ornamental aspect of its architecture, with many ogive and lanceolate windows). The pretty little notes referred to a
fête champêtre,
which was not so inapposite as it may sound, for the summit of the Tower, surrounded by crumbling battlements, had long been overgrown with tufted carpets of self-sown wild grasses, tenacious barren fig trees and gaudy ragwort, snapdragons and dandelions. And although there was a general opinion that my Lady Mavis’s
fêtes champêtres
were now a little tame, a little
passée,
there was also pity for her in the community, and most of them mounted the cracked stairs at the appointed time, jostling each other on the turns, laughing and greedy for the good fare they confidently expected.

It could be seen that the Lady Mavis had prepared her little feast with some care, building a small canopy of red and black silk against the decaying battlements, and setting out on a long damask-covered table beneath it tasty dishes, flagons of pink bubbling wine and garlands of holly, with leaves like needles and berries red as blood. And she herself wore a snow-white robe under a scarlet overdress, with a garland of the holly shining in her hair.

Now the people quickly perceived that with great ingenuity the feast had been laid out on the table in the form of a Man or possibly of a Woman, for the Lady Mavis, in her old-fashioned modesty, had wreathed the joining of the legs in further holly, beneath which sugared figs could be seen nestling, and the breasts were, as we shall see, ambiguous. Now this human feast seemed on first sight like a giant gingerbread man, such as the Witch offered to Hansel and Gretel to entice them into her cottage, a great form composed of smaller forms, custards and tartlets, marzipan sweetmeats and blancmanges, jellies and syllabubs, mincemeats and flummeries, fools and darioles, mirlitons and millefeuilles. Its head was crowned with a circlet of tarts, of cockscombs, and the flesh of its body was all veined and contoured and dimpling, made of peaches and cream here, and slices of quince there, blueberry veinings and blackcurrant flushes. The face was whipped cream and meringue with rosepetal pies for cheeks and
huge lips plump and red with apple cheeks and cranberry froth opening on an oval tart of baked larks’ tongues, surrounded by sugared almond teeth. The eyes had sloeberry tartlets for pupils, and greengage jelly for the iris, flecked with vanilla, and white syllabub slicked round that, fringed with lashes of burned spun sugar. The Sweet Human had long red shining nails, on its fingers and toes, made of pointed tartlets glazed with scarlet redcurrant jelly, from which dripped pendant tarts like gouts of blood, also glazed scarlet. The breasts of this confected Being were low circling mounds of pink marzipan sweetmeats, with a castle of chocolate truffles for nipples: they were the breasts of a young girl or nubile boy, sweet to touch, sweet to taste. The navel was a deep custard tart amongst the peaches and cream, with a spiral swirl of
crème pâtissière
inside it. The sweetmeat body was, so to speak, naked except for a necklace of round red tarts of currants in scarlet jelly, and a line of these ran also, like Pantaloon’s buttons, from chin to belly to crotch, and a further line also dissected this line at the waist, bonds or quarterings of glistening vermilion. “Like flies drowned in blood,” said Jojo to Adolphus, of these round tarts, licking his lips.

Between the breasts of the Human Cake was a large shield-shaped exterior heart, composed of a phalanx of tiny, blood-red, heart-shaped tarts. Into the triangle which pierced darkly down between the plump red shoulders of the plump red heart was pushed a dark, triangular slice of cake, like a blade, covered with what appeared to be soot.

The Lady Mavis watched and smiled as the happy horde dismembered and savoured the Baked Human. She remarked smilingly to Culvert that in the early days of their planning of their escape, the dark days of hiding, and mutual trust, and danger, they had imagined a society where sweet things were freely prepared for all comers, where everyone could eat cake, and spiced tartlets, who desired them. Culvert, who had a sweet tooth, bit into a mirliton and reminisced about how he planned to replace wars in the New Order with great contests of gastrosophy, with tournaments of pastry-cookery, with intense trials of skill in the construction of raised pies, or “melting moments” or “bouchées à la Reine” or frangipani, or succotash, or meringues glacées.

And when the limbs of the Cake-Man were scattered and despoiled, when the sweetness had been sucked from its navel and the chocolate nipples had melted succulently in various mouths, when
its face and its heart were tattered and disfigured with gaping holes, the Lady Mavis climbed on to the battlement steps, and stood dark against the sky, with the winter wind ruffling the silk canopy at her side, and lifting her somewhat dishevelled hair.

“I have a few words to say,” said this Lady, “if you will grant me a few precious moments, before you resume your nibblings and savourings and sippings, which I hope are satisfying as I meant them to be. And my few words consist of a question, and after that, if I have no answer, of a statement.”

“She is like the schoolmistress confronting the naughty boys,” said Jojo to Adolphus. “But we have no such silly authority here; here are no teachers and no pupils, but freedom.”

“My question,” said the Lady Mavis, “to which I fear I may have no answer, is Where is my son Florian? For I do not believe that no one knows what became of him. I believe there are those among you who could say, if they chose. And if he is alive, I wish to succour him, to release him, to embrace him, and if he is dead, to weep for him and to bury him decently. This is not much to ask.”

The Lady Roseace, flushed with pain, said, “You know well that we have searched everywhere, and for days. We could not have been more diligent if he were our own child—which indeed he was—for we are all part of each other. We have left no stone unturned; we have dragged the moat; we have combed the woods.”

“And opened every cupboard,” said Jojo, with an air of grave concern. “He was not shut in any cupboard in the castle: we made it our business to investigate every cupboard, every coal-hole, every storeroom.”

“He was a self-willed little boy,” said Adolphus. “He could have wandered into the pig-pen, or the abattoir, or fallen into a well, or been carried off by wolves. He did not listen to advice. I do not think you will see him again.”

“We must not lose hope,” said Culvert, without conviction.

“In the old days,” said Colonel Grim, “I would have known how to find out what had happened. But my old methods are not part of our new world.”

“And must never be again,” said the Lady Paeony, with scorn. “How many innocents have not confessed to unreal evils on your rack?”

“Just so,” said Colonel Grim. “We shall never, I believe, see the bottom of this matter.”

“That is the conclusion I too have come to,” said the Lady Mavis. “And now, I have a few other things to say.”

And she went to the table, and took up the triangular sooty segment of the sugar heart of the Human-Sweetmeat, which had been left untouched on the table. She bit into this, and climbed back to her station beside the battlements, tasting its black taste on her tongue, ingesting its shadowy substance.

“We are told by antiquaries,” said she, “that in ancient Babylon, in the chamber at the top of the ziggurat which was reserved for the activities of the God Baal, he came sometimes to sleep with the priestess, and sometimes to share a feast at a giant stone table, and sometimes, in difficult times, to demand a sacrifice. And there are many tales of what this sacrifice was—a red human heart, tastefully roasted, a whole human infant, the first-born, trussed and tossed into the flames of his altar fire. It is told that on his feast days a great cake was baked, and cut into small portions, one of which was blacked with the soot of the eternal Fire of his altar. The people took their cakes blindfold, and he who chose the black square was the Chosen One, devoted to the God. And for a time this Devoted One was fed and fattened, granted his desires of the flesh, sweet cakes and wine, sweet bedfellows and smoky opiates. And when his time came, he was led smiling to the fire, and the God was pleased, and did not wilfully torture or persecute the people for the following year, but let their corn and vines grow rich and their children spring up plump and healthy. We are told that the Krebs still build a Bale Fire and make their offerings, somewhere in the forest, a prisoner, a fool, a goat, a beloved son—the tales vary. And in the religion we have renounced, too, the god-man made himself bread and wine, drank the bitter cup and offered his body to dismemberment, to save the people from pain. He sacrificed himself to himself, as we were all taught.

“We are not gods, we are rational beings in pursuit of happiness. We have no gods, to judge or to comfort, to afflict us or to take away pain. All we are is ourselves, and we have discovered in ourselves in these latter days deep-rooted desires to hurt and to be hurt, ancient instincts of immolation and oblation. I have thought much, over these last weeks, about the desire to hurt. In the farmyard, the sight of blood on a wounded bird, a broken wing, a lame foot, arouses the fat fit hens, the young cockerels and the growing chicks to a frenzy of plucking and pecking. They will peck to death a beast which is injured;
they will strip its breast bare of plumage, and expose pimpled purple skin, and then blood, and then bone. This is usual, this is not unnatural in these witless feathered things.

“I do not think there is any god to whom I may sacrifice in order to demand the restoration of my son. I do not believe in vengeance—it is part of the old ways, which we have abjured. Whatever may have happened to my sweet son’s eyes and his growing teeth, I ask for no other mother’s son’s eye or tooth in recompense. All we can punish is ourselves, and the stripped, ridiculous hen, if she could, would hasten her end, if she were rational. If I harbour the idea that my death might propitiate the spirit of cruelty that is abroad amongst you, I know that idea for the sentimentality it is. I should like to think that I can take with me,” said she, climbing higher on the battlements, with the wind stronger in her hair and garments—“I should like to think that I can take with me the yeast of blood-lust and malice that is at work, that I could concentrate its energy in my body and extinguish it with my life. Because I go voluntarily,
no one else is guilty
of my death, I kill myself, and restore a kind of preliminary innocence. I mean the pain to stop with me, and the old innocence of flowers and sweetmeats to be restored for a time.”