Our Ecstatic Days (34 page)

wrong lake, to the version of the lake I came from, and I almost turn back

the other. They wander among the strewn beds and loveseats in a rounded blue chamber beneath a light fixture that’s managed to survive all the water and years; another suite is circled by doors, a couple still with their original mirrors. “We looked through all those,” the director nods at them, “there are passages running to some of the other rooms and we went through those too.” Angie walks over to the wall. Running her fingers along its side, she
presses her ear to it, listening; the director peers around at the workers watching.

They go back out into the mezzanine that’s filled with sound. “All right,” Angie says, nodding at the box. All the workers watching back up against the surrounding walls. The director moves the rope that cordons off the table while Angie pulls from her case some gloves and two long-handled stainless steel forceps, one large and one smaller. Everything has so long led to this moment that now, for her own reasons, Angie realizes she’s afraid of it too, like the rest of them; she’s about to ask either the driver or project director to open the box but decides it’s something she should do herself, as though her hands aren’t shaking and her heart isn’t thundering in her chest. The workers circling the edge of the mezzanine shrink back even though there really isn’t anywhere else to back into; some flee the room. Although the music is much louder now and—as she reaches the large forceps into the box and picks up the glowing snake—grows louder still, it isn’t cacophonous exactly. It’s hardly a din. Some of the time it even exists at a level barely anyone can hear, spiraling into itself, devouring first its own tail and then the rest of itself, at the place where terror becomes beauty before it becomes terror again.

It writhes brilliantly at the end of the forceps. Then suddenly the

downward, but I go on up up and up rising like the bubble of him that rose in

snake’s body sizzles into nothing, and in its place is a vapor, leaving only the snake’s head in the forceps’ grip.

By now most of the excavation workers have fled the mezzanine, along with Angie’s driver. The project director is stricken, fixed to where he stands. Almost spellbound herself, gripped by an ecstasy she’s felt before but can’t identify, Angie tells herself she must
work quickly should the snakehead vanish too; with the smaller forceps she invades the snake’s mouth and then, when the tool proves useless, throws the forceps to the floor and sticks her fingers in the snake’s open mouth roughly pulling the helix from its throat. An answer? she wonders, the Question? holding it up before her, one moment a black bubble the next moment collapsed light, neither reducible nor mutable by chaos or god

and then in the blink of an eye it’s gone as well. Completely alone in the mezzanine now, the director having unfixed himself and run, Angie spins in her place before rushing into the first suite turning one ear then the other to the walls, then rushing into the next suite and then the third, listening to the walls of each. She runs back into the mezzanine and slides herself along the walls listening with one ear then the other until she stops, cocks her head, and then turns her gaze to the mezzanine’s far end, and a single small pantry door. She crosses the length of the mezzanine. Reaching the small closed door, she places her fingers to it, putting her ear to it and immediately pulling back. She presses her ear to it again and,

my dream that night I miscarried him, up up and up rising to break the surface

opening the door, can practically feel the oxygen leave the room; leaning into the small dark pantry, it seems like minutes before she can see in the black gorge beneath her, far inside the birth canal of the century; the small boy in the water, both unknown to her and more familiar than she can stand, flailing and grasping for someone’s hand, a mother’s that’s too far from him or, perhaps, a man’s with a glint of glass in it—except there is no man there.
The boy descends. Angie feels rise behind her the nullifying tide of a life never lived.

Then this is for lost fathers, she thinks. Then this is for lost fathers and lost mothers, and the Measure of the Real, the bond forged by lost fathers and their daughters, mothers and their sons, against which all else is dream. Knowing she has only moments in which to fulfill a life, she gazes over her shoulder just long enough to see hovering overhead the wave of the null, before she vanishes, along with everything around her, into the unremembered.

Divide the mist on the grass by the sway of the trees. Add the still of the water’s surface and multiply the result by forty vineyards of loam. Subtract the burning masts of seven boats while factoring in the cosine of smoke,   then add all the rooms of loss times thesuites   
2031
   of sorrow divided by half the somnambulist   highways outbound. Compute the barges of the wind multiplied by the total of fire-robots falling within the radius of rain, adding twenty-one

of the dream of the lake, as something that’s once more being born to the lake

spacemonkeys with a variable of black bridges cubed, subtracting the unmelted icicles of the moon plus the gaslights of night-time, then dividing the result by the whips of love minus the collars of devotion. Taking into account, of course, the square root of snakes times one boat of missing mothers for each year of his life, he’s calculated how and when to make his way to the Chateau
which, as darkness falls, he can now see from where he hides on the lakeshore.

He doesn’t ask why they’re after him. He has no idea why but he’s been living the life he lives too long to think that why matters; twelve, thirteen years ago it was soldiers then it was gangsters in the Hollywood Hills, now it’s soldiers again. He recognizes one of them, wonders whatever happened to the other, the one he would row back and forth to the Chateau in the dead of night many years ago. He knows they’re going to catch him, because sooner or later everyone gets caught by something. They’re closing in, all over the hills with their lights and dogs, they’re all over the lake in their boats, swarming everywhere; he tallies the inevitability of his capture; his aren’t the mathematics of freedom but time. An hour, a few minutes. Just long enough to talk to her.

He’s wondering why she came back, although maybe that’s just another why that doesn’t matter. After watching the Chateau dark and silent for more than a year he had finally given up, leaving the lake behind and heading for the sea; he was sleeping on the beach one night when he woke, his ears—which don’t hear very well anymore the sound of heartbeats—picking up one’s faint telegram. Making his way back from the coast past soldiers, moving in the shadowy perimeters of the mulholland highway inland, he tracked the approaching heartbeat from the mojave

that thinks it miscarried me, up up and up to reclaim my place in its womb, and

marshes growing closer, reaching the port at San Gabriel about the time he reached the sepulveda channel. He’s been hiding on shore for a day now, in the trees and watching the lights in the Chateau out on the water. He hears the barking of dogs grow nearer. Thus he’s figured his best moment of opportunity, and with aggregates of light and sound in his head he makes his move and slips into the lake. He swims to the Chateau grotto and, when he reaches its
stone steps, lingers for a while in the water to rest, at the place where years ago he used to find food and wine in a basket. Having caught his breath, he climbs out of the water and up the steps, turning out the old lantern that hangs at the top by the door. Either someone, he thinks, will have seen me, or will notice the light is out; in any case he doesn’t have long.

He opens the door and slides into the dark of the entryway. He waits for a moment then walks quietly in through the outer transitional chamber into what was once the ceremony room, then her sleeping quarters, then goes through another door and he’s in the Lair’s shadows.

Brontë sits on the divan before the hearth where a fire burns. He notices she’s cut her hair and that maybe it’s darkened just a bit, not quite as brilliant gold as it was. Not yet having seen him, she gets up and crosses the Lair holding something in her arms; then Kale realizes itvs a baby. He’s baffled for an instant, then nods to himself oh that’s why she left then. Guess some man changed her mind after all. In the kitchen on the other side of the Lair she heats some milk; he’s stood there almost a full five minutes before—crossing back the way she went, steadying the bottle in the baby’s mouth—she looks up, astounded for a moment before she decides she’s not, really. He looks at the baby’s brown hair and eyes. He thinks maybe the dogs outside have gotten louder.

far above me I see it, I see it as I dreamed it, and maybe the lake sees it too in

“You shouldn’t have come,” she finally blurts, “they’ll find you.” She shakes her head. “I’m not worth it.”

Over Bronte’s shoulder, through a door ajar, is a glimpse of someone lying in a darkened room. He says, “It isn’t you I’ve come to see.”

its own dream of me, that flicker of light in the dark, up up and up and

maybe the lake believes as I did that night that the flicker is the dream itself,

growing closer and larger, a small flash on the far horizon, up up and up and

Someone in the doorway. Who’s
there. Another slave come for his discipline? no I don’t do that anymore. Who is it then … Brontë? Do I hear lightning? we haven’t heard the lightning for a while now … are we back at the lake? yes in the Chateau, I’m Listen to these walls and tell me what they sing: I know what they sing. They sing goodbye. They sing goodbye to me. They sing goodbye to all of us and the bedlam of our ecstatic days. They’re in such a hurry, the voices in the walls … I’ve hung on, well, it’s been awhile now, I won’t pretend to know how long but it’s been awhile. Long enough to leave Zed and return … but I may hang on for a while longer, you watch. So keep your songs to yourself

maybe I’m the first dream the lake has ever had, as Kirk was the first dream I

until it’s time. I may have one or two memories left. I may have one or two things to remember … so keep your songs to yourself until then. I may yet have some particularly poignant recollection that’s particularly unbearable … like the way I used to see other children with their small open faces and couldn’t stand it … so there are more memories I’m certain. More to torment me before
I go….
If there’s a higher light
and I’m still waiting. I’m still waiting for it to shine on me. Who’s in the doorway, come here. Whoever you are, come closer to the candle so I can see. Don’t mind the singing walls. Come closer closer closer … who is it. Let me look at you, let me take a…. Well well, if it isn’t. Well well, what do you know. After all this time. Finally worked up the nerve did you. Come for your discipline, have you. Here you are. Come for your humiliation: oh we must think of something special for you. Come for something special I’m sure so we must think of something special, for the ultimate slave, the ultimate submissive. The ultimate humiliation. Something far grander than the banal sadisms. Something that could lay so low someone so high … let Me think. I’ll think of something. I never pissed on anyone in My illustrious career but I must say it’s hard to think of something more appropriate for the likes of you: I think I could work up some piss for the likes of you. I’ve never made anyone bleed other than Myself of course but I must say it seems fitting now. So much blood the rest of us have bled for you over the years, a little bleeding back on your part hardly seems unfair, hardly seems asking so much. Did I say you could look at Me? you don’t look at Me until I tell you to look at Me, do you understand? your discipline begins now, your training begins here, at My feet, you don’t regard Me until I tell you. you don’t stir until I say stir, you don’t exist until I say you exist, you don’t

ever had, and now of course as I rise up up and up to break the surface of the

do anything or say anything until I tell you. Nothing about you is yours anymore, everything about you is Mine. Everything you feel, if you feel anything, everything you think, or think you think. Get on your knees. Lick the stone of the floor. Let Me put around your neck this collar of thorns, around your neck, you remember thorns don’t you. you’re familiar with thorns, you in particular, you of anyone, you most of all. No one’s ever done thorns like
you, right? Don’t mind the blood. What’s a little blood. Don’t mind the flow from your neck now. What’s a little flow from the jugular. Here’s a leash for your collar, woven from the flesh of children, stained and soaked in lapsinthe, to remind you who you belong to. Tell Me, because I’ve never been straight on this: which is it that’s always best proved your existence? That you give children? or that you take them away? I think you and I made a bargain once but it’s occurred to Me lately I’ve never seen a bit of evidence you ever kept your end. I think I kept My end. Yes I believe so. I think I did. I think I did and then some. If it was our bargain that I would give up all the happiness of a mother in order to save My son from the chaos of the world, well then I have to say I think I kept My end. First you sent him to make Me so tender. Then you drove Me mad with it. So now lick the drops of your blood that fall on the stone beneath your knees, lick it, lick it. Lick it up. Lick lick lick. Suck it out of the pores of the stone. Did I say look up? Did I say to? There! that’s for looking up without permission. I’m the god here and you’re the woman this time, don’t think you aren’t. Don’t think the god-cock means anything within these walls, you’re the woman and w(W)e’re going to prove it soon enough don’t you worry, turd, sack of divine shit you. Here let’s see what you think of the point of My high-heel in your side, what do you think of that. How do you feel about that. Here’s another good kick for you, and another. Roll

water, I can see, I know that the silver flash above me is the gondola waiting,