Marianne, the Madame, and the Momentary Gods (13 page)

‘Thank you,’ said Marianne.

‘You’re welcome,’ said the voice in her mind.

She looked into Gold’s eyes, seeing something there of comprehension. ‘You said that?’ she challenged.

‘Woof,’ Gold replied in a puppyish treble, licking her front paw. ‘Woof.’

The following morning, the Clean Machine was only a block from the palace. Marianne felt this was uncomfortably close. Too near the center of things. Early in the morning people started flowing toward the palace grounds; all day the crowds pushed to and fro, ripple-mobs of people ebbing and flowing. Her first customer of the day was a talkative old man with a cane. He had an ancient curve-topped trunk to be laundered.

‘Got to frettin’ me,’ he said, counting out the coins that the chart gave as the correct charge for luggage – one piece, footlocker or larger. ‘Don’t know what might be in there. All kinds of memories, most likely. Things I don’t want to rake up. Thought I’d launder it first.’ He peered curiously about him, inspecting every corner of the place, taking a tottery step or two to look into Marianne’s little office, committing it to memory. The eyes he turned on her were keen and youthful in the wrinkled face.

‘We’re very glad to take care of it for you,’ Marianne murmured, maneuvering her loading cart through the door to the curb where the bus driver had dropped the trunk. ’We’ll just put it here for the indigo washer as soon as this cycle’s complete.’

‘People in there?’ he asked as she reentered with the trunk. ’Seem to hear them yellin’ about somethin’.’

‘No,’ she answered absentmindedly. ‘As a matter of fact, that’s a mixed load. Two parrots from the pet store down the block and a set of encyclopedias. A mother brought the books in. Before she gives them to her children.’

‘Ah,’ he nodded wisely. ‘Stuff she doesn’t want the kiddy widdles to know, most likely. My ma was the same way. We knew all about it from the kids at school and watchin’ the farm animals, but she’d have it we was innocent as daisies. Well. Mamas are like that.’

‘Are they?’ Matianne asked. It was one of those bits of conversation that annoyed her, often keeping her awake at night. Were mamas like that? How did he know? And if he knew, why didn’t she?

‘Most of ’em,’ he confided, sitting down on one of the uncomfortable chairs and pulling a folded newspaper from his pocket. ‘Says here there’s going to be rain this summer.’

‘Is there?’

‘Yep. Says so here. Says the royal family’s goin’ on a tour. Foreign parts. The Queen and the Duke of Eyes.’

This was another thing that annoyed her. Foreign parts. Other places. Where? Why had she never thought of going? Why had she never met anyone who had gone? And who was the Duke of Eyes? His picture was not in any of the royal portraits she had hung in the office. Queen, King, the Jack of Japes, Lady Ten. No Duke at all.

The buzzer on the indigo washer went off with an ear-shattering shriek. Marianne shut it off hastily and opened the door. The two parrots emerged, damp and disheveled, to perch on the dryer door and complain to her. There seemed to be nothing left of the set of encyclopedias.

‘Thought that’d happen,’ the old man said, rising to help her get the trunk into the machine. ‘That’s the trouble with things in writin’. Sometimes you take one little word away and the whole thing falls apart. Ever notice that?’

Marianne thrust the trunk into the machine, set the dials, and turned purposefully toward the parrots. They, meantime, had flown up to one of the light fixtures and regarded her with disfavor from that lofty height.

‘Quite dry enough, thank you,’ one of them offered. ‘As is my friend.’

‘You’re dripping all over the floor,’ Marianne observed.

‘As would you,’ said the other parrot, regarding her warily, ’if you had been forcibly immersed in that monster. I want to say something but can’t remember what.’

‘That’s what the laundering was for,’ the first parrot reminded him. ‘Language.’

‘I’d forgotten,’ said the second. ‘Isn’t that astonishing. ’Well, though I seem to be unable to remember the proper words, whatever vile and insulting language best suits the occasion, Miss, consider it said.’ He began to preen himself with ostentatious fervor as Marianne and the old man watched, eyes wide.

‘Thought I’d walk over and see the palace,’ the old man observed, ‘while that washes.’

‘Feel free to do so,’ she remarked absently. ‘I’ll put it in the dryer for you.’ Silver had come into the room and appeared to be in silent conversation with the parrots, a colloquy of gesture, paw taps, wing shrugs, head twistings. As the old man left, the pet shop woman came to fetch her birds, a cage in either hand, and as she left a guardsman entered, his shiny little eyes peering into every corner of the room.

‘Name?’ he asked, flipping open a notebook.

‘The Clean Machine,’ she said, mouth open in astonishment. There had never been a guardsman in the laundry before.

‘No, lovey, your name.’

‘Marianne,’ she replied. ‘Just Marianne.’

‘Well, Just Marianne, this is a routine procedure. Each day we investigate all premises within three blocks of the palace. Lookin’ for anarchists and revolutionaries, so they tell us, not that we’ve ever found any. Found a nest of revisionists once, but nobody cared.’

‘What were they revising?’ she asked, truly curious.

‘Don’t know. Didn’t ask ’em. Now. This is a cleaning establishment, right? You the proprietor?’

‘No,’ she admitted. ‘I’m only the manager.’

‘Live on the premises?’

‘There’s an apartment upstairs.’

‘Married? Cohabiting? Children?’

‘No.’ She started to mention the dogs, but then was quite unaccountably silent.

‘Where were you yesterday?’

‘About six blocks away,’ she admitted. ‘I went to look at the palace after closing time.’

‘Quite a sight, isn’t it?’

No, she thought, even as her head nodded polite agreement. It wasn’t much of a sight, really. There hadn’t been that much to see. She didn’t say it. He wrote busily in his book for a moment, starting as the buzzer on the indigo machine went off.

‘What in hell!’

‘It’s just the machine,’ she explained. ‘Excuse me. I have to take the trunk out.’ But when she opened the machine, she could not take the trunk out. It had vanished, in that unaccountable way in which things intended for cleaning sometimes did vanish, as though they were held together by dirt, by a kind of ephemeral filth that could be dismissed by water and soap. Of course, things sometimes reappeared, as well. Reconstituted, one might say. She stared into the washer, waiting for the trunk to emerge. In its place were five velvet cushions, sodden and steaming, a gemmed crown on each, glittering like malignant octopus eyes from a water cave.

‘Aha,’ said the guardsman. ‘Got you.’

The cell in which they left her was not uncomfortable. There was a cot, a toilet, a basin, a glass for drinking water, even a screen so she could use the facilities without undue display to anyone peering in through the little grated window. The room was reasonably warm, and it was dry. On a table by the heavy door, barred with iron and studded with thick nails of gleaming bronze, the five crowns huddled like socialites in a drunk tank, making a fierce show of quality to cow whomever was responsible for the outrage.

Marianne was no longer looking at them. She had looked, for a time, trying to remember if she had indeed stolen any such thing, for this is what she was accused of. She had tried to explain to the guardsman that the crowns were not unlike the elephant harness or the double bed, having arrived in some similar and as unexplainable a fashion, but he had been unwilling to entertain any such possibility.

‘You were at the palace, you admit it,’ he said.

‘Only out by the fence. Along with hundreds of other people.’

‘But you were there. And five things disappeared, and now you have five things.’

What could she say to that? She did, indeed, have them. Even now she had them. ‘The broadcast didn’t say what things,’ she pleaded. ‘It didn’t say what things at all!’

He sneered, pointing. Could anyone doubt that crowns like these belonged in a palace? Could anyone doubt they had no business in the indigo washer at the Clean Machine?

Marianne sank onto the cot. She wondered if the old man had ever come back for his trunk. She wondered if crying would help. She wondered if screaming would help and decided it would not; the sound of screaming had echoed through the prison almost since she had entered it, sometimes softly and plaintively, sometimes with an excess of agony that made it quite unbearable to hear.

‘But I didn’t take them,’ she said again, aloud.

‘You’re not charged with taking them,’ said a voice. ‘You’re charged with receiving them.’

There was someone at the grated window, peering in at her. She could see one glassy eye. ‘I didn’t receive them,’ she said. ’The machine did. It does things like that.’

‘You’ll have a chance to explain that to the magistrates, tomorrow,’ said the voice. ‘I thought I’d warn you, in case you wanted to change your clothes and tidy up a bit.’

‘I only have these clothes,’ she shouted, suddenly angry. ’The ones I had on.’

‘Closet,’ said the voice. ‘There’s a closet.’

Of course there was a closet. It contained three pairs of overalls, a fireman’s helmet, and a ball gown at least five sizes too large. ‘I will appear before the magistrates as I am,’ she said aloud, attempting to sound dignified. ‘In my own clothes.’ She was wearing a simple shirtwaist dress, now somewhat rumpled, and a wool sweater, both in mud shades.

The grating across the window in the cell door slammed shut, as though in frustration.

The five puppies came out from beneath her cot and gathered around her feet.

‘This is ridiculous,’ she said. ‘How did I ever get into this mess? How did you get in here?’

The magistrates were informal in their treatment of those brought before them. There were seven chairs on the dais, and occasionally all seven of them were occupied, though usually only two or three of the magistrates were seated there at a time, often at least one of them asleep. The others wandered about the courtroom or left the room entirely and could occasionally be heard ordering someone around backstage, as it were. One magistrate played endless games of chess with himself. Another drew endless pictures of naked women without heads. Only the tall, dark woman at the left end of the row seemed to pay attention.

‘Window dressing,’ said the voice in Marianne’s mind. ’She’s the only real one. The others are merely window dressing.’ The dark woman peered at her out of fiery eyes, hot, eager eyes, belying her casual demeanor.

‘Just Marianne, charged with receiving stolen goods,’ the prosecutor intoned, tugging at the wig that seemed always about to slip off the back of his bald head. ‘Material of national importance, stolen from the palace.’

‘Trial by combat,’ the dark woman drawled in a bored though somehow elated voice. ‘Next case.’

‘You have until the holiday to obtain a champion,’ the voice said through the grate in the window. ‘I told you you should have cleaned yourself up. The Queen thought your disheveled state was disrespectful.’

‘The Queen?’

‘You should feel honored. She heard your case personally.’

‘Who did?’

‘The Queen.’

‘Not that I saw!’

‘Oh, you must have seen her. A dark woman, very slender. With fiery eyes.’

‘One of the magistrates was a dark woman.’

‘First magistrate of the realm, the Queen is.’

‘She didn’t hear my case! She didn’t hear anything but the charge! She didn’t even give me a chance to plead guilty or not guilty.’

‘Oh, she knew you were guilty. It’s just a case of deciding punishment, don’t you know.’

A tiny growl came from beneath the bunk. Marianne interpreted this as a warning and said nothing more about her innocence. ‘Where am I supposed to get a champion! I don’t know anyone.’

‘Then you’ll have to fight the Duke of Eyes yourself. Not, by the way, something I would choose to do on a holiday afternoon.’

‘I don’t even know who he is!’

‘The Queen’s champion, of course. Who else would he be?’ The grating slammed closed. This anonymous informant always slammed the grating to end conversation, as though the very act of conversing led to unbearable frustration or annoyance. Marianne reviewed what she had said – certainly nothing to offend. The behavior of the grating voice had no logic to it. It told her things she did not ask to hear and seemed to expect some response she could not give. She lay down on the cot, hearing the scrabble of puppy feet beneath it. They had found some way to enter and leave the cell – some way she could not find though she had searched for hours – but they always hid when anyone was at the door. ’I don’t know what’s happening,’ she whispered as a moist little tongue explored between her fingers. ‘I’m terrified, and I don’t know what’s happening.’

‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ Ellat said, picking up her teacup and pausing in the doorway as though wanting both to go and to stay. Behind her in the vaulted room, Makr Avehl frowned at her as he adjusted the sleeves of his ceremonial robe and sat down on the narrow bed.