Grimus (20 page)

XLVHI

F
OUR GRAVES, VOID
sentinels at the forest’s edge, fresh-made holes in Valhalla, stood at the spot where Flapping Eagle and Virgil Jones had looked across the plain an emotional age ago. It was a still morning, the light mists swirling, the mountain remaining impenetrable behind discreet clouds. Virgil, wet with fatigue, his feet complaining, his tongue licking feverishly at his lips, his eyes peering, watched the approaching procession. His limbs gathered their forces; soon they would have to undo their work. Piles of earth, dark and slightly moist, stood in attendance by the tombs.

Femme fatale
. If the cap fits, wear it. One by one they fall around me; dead men around me, unborn life within. Poor, stupid count, lanced in his feeble head. I watched him die, leaving the house of death, so silent, so distant, passing without a word, into the garden, I behind, he ahead, looking ahead. A giggle from Alexei, idiot offspring laughing at bemused parent, a chess piece falling to the ground, and back, back to the house, to sit and stare. Poor hidebound anachronism that he was, finding comfort in the arms of whores, finding none in mine, and now, when I wished to, I could give him none. Staring and smoking, as if death would waft away on the fumes. There, in the past, pinching little Sophie Lermontov’s little rump, gallant he was at balls and in war, but the past was receding now, present horror ousting past pleasure, as he sat and stared and smoked. The triviality of it, to die for the death of a Gribb, his frail mind stabbed by the death of a Gribb. I watched him die, his eyes turned to some other world, his hands and lips as they moved in an unseen, unheard life, I watched it all: as he came to his feet, stiffly to his feet, erect and handsome, my idiot adonis, crumpling then before his ghostly executioners, no, no, no blindfold please, a cheroot before you shoot. The ghostly executioners—I did not see or hear them, the ghosts of his assassins, but it was them. I was not surprised to find him dead.

But Page, little worshipping Norbert, last of the serfs, who wanted only to serve us, so good with Alexei he was; small man that he was, good innocent Page, he would not die for a Gribb, yet for a Cherkassov to die so broke him. While the Cherkassov stood firm in the Way of K, all the Gribbs on earth could perish without harming him. But if the trunk of the tree should fall, there is little hope for the branches. He died when he knew, when he knew the Cherkassov had fallen, invaded by Grimus, there, I have said it, died as Alexei laughed and played.

Femme fatale
. It is my lot. I accept it. The grief, accepted. The pain, accepted. Let them fall around me. I shall not fall, I shall bear the burden. But not the blame. Let blame fall where it belongs, upon the living occupants of the house of death, upon her, mealy-mouthed whited sepulchre, and him, the murderous eagle. The Countess Irina shoulders no blame.

Anthony St Clair Peyrefitte Hunter was in the Elba-room when the news of Gribb’s death arrived. His first reaction had been a savage delight. —Now we’ll see, he said. Now perhaps we can stop lying.

One-Track Peckenpaw gave him an uninterested glance. So Gribb was dead. So what? Peckenpaw could do without Gribb. A man did what a man had to do to stay alive. A man believed what a man had to believe to survive. One Gribb wasn’t going to change that.

The uninterested glance turned to alarm as the Two-Time Kid clutched his head suddenly and fell against the bar. His expression was one of total disbelief.

Self-deception operates at different levels, and Hunter was certainly unaware of the extent to which he had come to depend on his posture. He had become the Two-Time Kid, and an elegant, cynical disenchantment with K was a part of that role. Beneath it, he was just as afraid, just as unwilling to admit the reality of Grimus and his Effect, as Gribb or Aleksandr Cherkassov. The Dimensions took him unawares and gripped him with their fever only because his self-deception ran even deeper than the rest; he had convinced himself that it did not exist, that his mind was not closed to the implications of Grimus. The storm the Inner Dimensions unleashed upon him, scalding his nerve-centres, burning out the synapses of a brain which could not accommodate the new realities invading it, proved otherwise.

Peckenpaw saw him fall forwards, saw his head strike the floor; and no amount of shouting and shaking did any good. Hunter’s end was the quickest of all.

One-Track Peckenpaw was beside himself, in the grip of some great emotion. He would not let Hunter be dead. He would not.

—Come on, little bastard, he cajoled. Come on, you little two-timer, it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay. He shook the body like a limp rag.

—It’s no use, said Flann O’Toole, with unnatural gentleness. Leave him, One-Track, it’s no use. He put a hand on the giant bear’s shoulder.

Peckenpaw rose, taking Hunter’s body into his arms.

—Someone’s to blame, he said to the room at large. Someone’s paying for this,
soon
.

He carried the body to the door, then spoke to the room again.

—I’m taking him home now. The Two-Time Kid. He died with his boots on.

There were no coffins. Ignatius Gribb, Norbert Page and the Two-Time Kid had been wrapped in rough woollen blankets from the stores. Count Aleksandr Cherkassov had been swaddled in a sheet embroidered with his coat-of-arms. Each body was carried in a simple hammock, strung between two poles, a pall-bearer at each corner. Most of K followed the Chief Mourners in a tearful crocodile. The chief mourners were Elfrida, accompanied by Flapping Eagle, Irina Cherkassova and One-Track Peckenpaw.

Count Aleksandr Cherkassov had become titular head of K by default. Even Flann Napoleon O’Toole preferred to limit his empire to the alcoholic environment of the Elbaroom. But titular head he was, and now that he was dead, his duties passed naturally and without question to his son.

Leading the procession, smiling with the happiness of a child learning a new game, was Count Alexei Aleksandrovich Cherkassov.

The funeral service was short and simple, eschewing any pretence at religiosity. The chief mourners said a few words, earth was scattered, and that was that. Alexei Cherkassov, a fool at the head of the blind, stood smiling silently in the light mist, an epitaph incarnate.

—My husband, said Elfrida Gribb, was a man more sinned against than sinning. He was the salt of the earth, the flower of his generation, the rock on which we stood. He was a good man and a loving husband.

It was appropriate that the author of the All-Purpose Quotable Philosophy should be commemorated by a string of clichés. Elfrida moved away from the head of the grave to grasp Flapping Eagle’s arms. Irina Cherkassova glared.

One-Track Peckenpaw loomed hugely over the grave of Two-Time Hunter, a tragic goliath mourning the loss of his david. He could not have formed words to express what he felt, but he had become aware that amid the gibes and insults the two of them had habitually hurled at each other had been an important bond, the mutual need of opposites.

He said: —The Two-Time Kid was one of the best.

Irina Cherkassova had two speeches to make. She stood in the stillness with her chin tilted up behind her veil, the very archetype of bereaved pride. She spoke briefly of the loyalty and selflessness of Norbert Page, and Alexei Cherkassov clapped his hands as she spoke his name. Then, moving to her husband’s grave, she said:

—It would be a slur upon my husband’s memory if his death were to break down what we have built. The Way of K is a good Way. Nothing will change.

Flapping Eagle, listening to the defiant sentences, heard in them an echo of Dolores O’Toole; but he also heard a clue, a reason for the continued survival of most of K, which he had feared would fall under the spell of the Dimensions to the last man. Those who had survived the shock were those (like Irina) for whom the Way of K had become, not just a means of defence, but an end in itself, a way of life which preserved them in the cocoon of the past and the minutiae of the present. That was what they
wanted
. Thus Irina had simply assimilated her losses into her tragic self-image, and Peckenpaw had made Hunter a part of his own, often-told legends. For these people, the Grimus Effect was resistible. They had built an alternative to it, from necessity, and the alternative had become an independent thing. The Effect could not invade them: they had sunk too deeply into themselves.

—Fill the graves, gravedigger, said Flann O’Toole, and the ceremony was over.

Three things happened before the gathering dispersed which showed that despite Irina’s funeral speech, K would not remain entirely unaltered. The first of these occurred when Elfrida went up to Irina and said:

—I’m so sorry.

Irina looked at her with the practised contempt of generations and said:

—I do not speak to whores.

Elfrida, already pale, turned white as the Countess walked away.

The second event, offsetting this sharp estrangement of old friends, was a reconciliation. P. S. Moonshy approached Irina haltingly, avoiding her eyes, playing with a coat-button.

—Countess, he said, if Count Alexei should lack a games companion, I … I would be willing to … when time permits …

—Thank you, Mr Moonshy, said Irina.

K was closing ranks instinctively, reaffirming its unity against its resurgent enemy.

The third thing that happened was this:

One-Track Peckenpaw and Flann O’Toole had been murmuring together. They now approached the departing Flapping Eagle and Elfrida Gribb.

Peckenpaw said: —I got something to say to you.

Flapping Eagle and Elfrida stopped.

—Seems to us, said Peckenpaw, this all began when you hit town. Folks are saying the two of you been screwing each other, too. We don’t care for that kind of thing in this town.

—What are you saying, Mr Peckenpaw? said Elfrida coolly. Please be explicit.

—What I’m saying,
Mrs Gribb
, said Peckenpaw, accentuating the title with heavy scorn, is it’s maybe time certain people got the hell out.

—You do understand, said Flann O’Toole.

—I love you, said Elfrida Gribb, because I’ve stopped being a child. I don’t need protection now. I need you. You made me see what I was clinging to in Ignatius: more a father than a lover. Whereas you, my love, will be a lover. I know it. We shall look after each other and make love. You’ve forced me to grow up and I’m glad. I don’t want to be good any more.

—Glad? said Flapping Eagle. Glad, when it killed the man who loved you?

—You love me, said Elfrida, attacking his clothes. Show me.

—It’s impossible, said Flapping Eagle. We’ve just buried him.

—I love you, now, said Elfrida. Now. This minute. This second.

—Not now, said Flapping Eagle.

She broke away from his embrace; and her love increased the burden of his guilt.

XLIX

F
LAPPING
E
AGLE
W
ENT
into K the next day, to collect food and a few other things from Moonshy’s stores. From the moment he entered the town, he knew that Peckenpaw had not been making empty threats. People stopped and stared as he passed, as though aghast at his temerity. The flavour of those old films seen in the fleapit at Phoenix filled the streets; K had become Peckenpaw-land, a small town of the Old West; and Flapping Eagle was, after all, a Red Indian. He half-expected a sheriff to emerge through swing-doors and gun him down then and there.

P. S. Moonshy was busy behind a counter, weighing things on scales. There was only one other customer in the room, but Moonshy ignored Flapping Eagle completely. When the woman left, Flapping Eagle said: —It’s my turn, I think.

—Think again, said P. S. Moonshy.

—Look, just give me the food and I’ll go, said Flapping Eagle, offering his list.

—No food, said P. S. Moonshy.

One-Track Peckenpaw was in the street when Flapping Eagle emerged empty-handed. —Wal, he said, if it ain’t the Indian. He placed himself between Flapping Eagle and his donkey.

Flapping Eagle resolved on a policy of polite firmness. —If You’ll excuse me, he said, I’d like to get back to Mrs Gribb and tell her we’re to be starved out of town.

—Sure, said Peckenpaw. Wouldn’t dream of standing in your way. He didn’t move. Flapping Eagle tried to get round him to the waiting donkey; but Peckenpaw shot out one huge, clawing hand and grabbed Flapping Eagle by the neck. It was useless to struggle, so Flapping Eagle went limp. Peckenpaw glared at him.

—Now don’t get me wrong, he said. I ain’t prejudiced. But if you’re still around tomorrow, I’ll be coming looking.

With his free hand, he delivered a devastating rabbit-punch. Flapping Eagle was sick on the cobbles. Peckenpaw threw him down into the mess and walked away.

Flapping Eagle crawled on to the donkey and made his way home.

—We’ve got to leave here, he said to Elfrida.

—Why? she asked. It’s my house now. Our house.

—Look, they won’t feed us if we stay and they’ll probably try and force us out anyway. You can’t resist a whole town.

—If you go, my love, she said, I shall of course accompany you. Her face was reposed and calm, her manner collected if Subservient.

—We’ll go, then, he said.

—Where will you take me? she asked.

Where, indeed. She had the strength of obsession to survive the journey down the mountain again—if she could survive the effect in K, she could certainly do so where it was less strong. But Elfrida Gribb had not been made for rough journeys; and Dolores O’Toole would scarcely welcome the “Spectre of Grimus” back into her home. Besides, it smacked of deserting the scene of the crime. His crime. They could not go back. There was no going back for him. And if he was to go on, up the mountain, into the unknown clouds, what would he do there? Even worse, what would
she
do there? He shook his head. He needed guidance.

Guidance. Virgil Jones sweating at the graveside. Flapping Eagle had thought Virgil had winked at him, once, during the ceremony. Was it possible he bore no grudge? Virgil, whom he had slighted so callously?

—We’ll have to go to Madame Jocasta’s, he said, thinking aloud. I can’t think of anywhere else.

—I scarcely think she will welcome
me
, said Elfrida.

—We’ll both have to, um, eat a quantity of crow, said Flapping Eagle. I didn’t go down too well with her either.

—She probably didn’t like your face, said Elfrida enigmatically.

—There’s nothing for it, said Flapping Eagle. I must talk to Virgil again. And I don’t think they’ll come for us there, somehow.

—The brothel, murmured Elfrida. Why not, why not.

He had on his old, worn, travelling clothes. Ignatius Gribb, tidy as Elfrida until his last rage, had even preserved his headscarf and feather. Smiling wryly, he put those on as well. If he was to be in a bad Western, he might as well wear the full uniform.

He had to see Irina Cherkassova, since he had to return the late Count’s clothes. She took them from him in the doorway, making no move to invite him in.

—Don’t think I didn’t see through you, she said. Even in his clothes.

—What do you mean? asked Flapping Eagle. You made me your friend.

—I told the Count, she said. I saw it in your face. The evil.

She shut the door, and he never saw her again.

Exactly on the seventh knock, the door was opened. Madame Jocasta looked at the pair of them in amazement. Elfrida returned her gaze calmly, twirling her parasol. She was dressed entirely in white lace.

—Is there something you want? asked Jocasta, discouragingly.

—Yes, said Flapping Eagle. This was no time to stand upon one’s pride. We seek sanctuary.

Jocasta smiled without humour. —No, she said and began to close the door.

—What do you want me to say? cried Flapping Eagle. That I’ve seen the error of my ways? I have. That I was an inhumanly selfish bastard? I was. That I treated Virgil badly, and with every reason for treating him well? It’s true. I accept all of it. Will you not accept a genuine admission of guilt? How do you think it feels to be even indirectly responsible for four deaths?

—Murderous, I expect, said Jocasta, unrelenting.

—If you don’t let us in, said Flapping Eagle, You’ll be responsible for two more. They won’t let us have any food.

—O hello, said a voice. Media was looking over Jocasta’s shoulder in open pleasure.

—Media, go and fetch Virgil, said Jocasta. It’s up to him.

Virgil Jones came downstairs looking delighted.

—My dear Flapping Eagle, he said. My dear Mrs Gribb. How very nice.

—Virgil, said Flapping Eagle. You may think I’m only saying this because I’m in trouble, because I made a choice that didn’t work out, but it’s not so. I was very wrong. My behaviour towards you was morally indefensible. I can only say I know it, and I am sorry.

Virgil listened to this speech solemnly, but his eyes were not serious.

—Rubbish, he cried gaily when Flapping Eagle had finished. We all have to make our mistakes. Welcome to the fold.

—You want me to let him in? asked Jocasta, dubiously.

—Of course, said Virgil. He’s a friend of mine.

—What about her? asked Jocasta. Saint Elfrida, wearing white on the day after her husband’s funeral. I haven’t heard any note of contrition from her.

Elfrida said: —I am no better than you, and no worse.

—Please, Virgil, said Flapping Eagle. She’s not herself.

—That’s an improvement, said Madame Jocasta, giving in. Well, come in then, you two wretches, don’t just stand there.

Media’s smile of welcome more than compensated for Jocasta’s reluctant tone.

The room faced the rising mountain, whose occluded peak glowered through its one window. It was not a beautiful room; it would probably have seemed entirely nondescript but for the carvings.

The carvings were hideous.

It was not that they were grotesque, for the grotesque, expertly depicted, becomes beautiful. It was not that their subjects were hideous; even ugly heads can be moving, given the right treatment. The carvings were simply and without any question extremely ugly, seemingly lacking any purpose or aesthetic drive except that of making the world seem vile and hateful. Even that was pitching it too high. The carver had possessed less skill than even Flapping Eagle, who was no artist.

The carvings stared down from the walls and made the room a darker place.

—Liv’s room, said Virgil Jones. Hasn’t been used since, you know, she left with, er, me. Liv’s carvings, I hope you don’t mind them, I brought them back when, er, I stayed here some time ago. Before I left K, you know. But never mind that. It’s a bed.

One bed. Elfrida Gribb lay down on it at once. A moment later she was sound asleep. No doubt her nerves, on which she had been living ever since Ignatius’ death, had finally rebelled and demanded a period of regeneration. Flapping Eagle felt frankly relieved.

Virgil left him alone, saying: —Gather your strength, that’s the thing. He moved over to the window, averting his eyes from the misshapen objects on the walls, and looked out at the mountain. A fly settled on his cheek; he brushed it away. It settled on his other cheek; he brushed it away again. The third time, he slapped at it, and it was crushed against his face. He wiped the corpse away.

Despite the ugliness of the carvings, despite the presence of Elfrida Gribb, despite the absence of any sense of direction, Flapping Eagle felt safe here. The brothel air was heavy with the scent of solace. But sanctuary was not for him, or at any rate not for long. If he had failed to achieve stasis—failed, that is, to ingrain himself into the Way of K—he would have to revert once more to kinesis. But that involved knowing what to do, not only with himself, but with Elfrida.

Flapping Eagle stared at the mountain. —You’re winning, he said aloud. He turned to the bed and flung himself down beside the sleeping Elfrida, to gaze emptily at the ceiling. Soon he, too, was asleep, tired and asleep.

Media came into the room to watch him dream. Looking at his face, the face that had changed her life, the firm-jawed face with the shadow of a beard and the closed, long-lashed eyes, she began to think heresy. Perhaps it had something to do with being in Liv’s room; Liv who had left the brothel and its safety for the sake of a man; (hard to imagine now that that man had been Virgil Jones) Liv who had placed herself and her desires above her duties, and seized her moment; but Media, watching the dreaming face, was forming this thought in her mind:

Where he goes, I go
.

It was the face that did it.

She spoke softly to the sleeping Eagle:

—What you need is a woman who can cope with you, she said.

Madame Jocasta was pacing the corridors of her realm again; but she was not enjoying it, not listening for the sounds behind the doors, for, at Virgil’s request, she had closed the House’s doors. Silence everywhere. In her own room, a moody, pensive Virgil; in her predecessor’s room, the hidden forms of two people who, she was afraid, would change her small world, too much, far too much. Already Virgil was lost within himself; already Media was afflicted with Flapping Eagle, despite her allotted specialty.

She stood silently outside the door of Liv’s room, which was fractionally ajar, and heard Media’s voice speak its one sentence. She retreated quietly, her worries redoubled.

But she had given them sanctuary, she thought; she would not, could not break that pledge.

At the head of the mob were Flann O’Toole and One-Track Peckenpaw. There were perhaps a dozen more, all regular customers of the Elbaroom. They carried sticks, stones and a length of rope.

—The House is closed, said Jocasta from the door.

—’Tis not your women we’re afther, said O’Toole in a thick voice, flowing with the fumes of potato-whisky. ’Tis that bastard Eagle.

—We got a harmless little lynching in mind, said Peckenpaw.

—I see, said Jocasta. You want a scapegoat.

—Jesus forbid, grinned Flann O’Toole. But the slightest consideration shows how all our troubles began with his coming. ’Tis entirely logical to speed his going, is it not, now?

—Flann O’Toole, said Madame Jocasta. You know what place this is. When anyone enters the House they leave the world behind. It is a place to escape to; no evil comes here. Flapping Eagle has sanctuary. If you take him by force, the House loses its meaning for you all. You will be hanging a part of your own town. Is that what you want?

The crowd shuffled morosely. Flann O’Toole stopped grinning.

—Now listen, Jocasta, he lurched. What in God’s name are you protecting him for? Now you know we wouldn’t do a thing like that, violating the sanctity o’ the House and all, but that Eagle, he’s no friend to you, or your Mr Jones.

—Go away, O’Toole, said Jocasta.

—Okay, said Peckenpaw. Okay, Jocasta. You win. But we’ll keep watch right here on your doorstep. And if he shows his pretty face outside, Virgil Jones’Ü have some more digging to do.

Bestowing a contemptuous look on him, Jocasta closed the door. The look made no impression on One-Track Peckenpaw.