Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe (10 page)

Never.

What about when it's raining and the brown bricks of these old places start to drip and darken? And the smoke-gray sky is the smoky mirror of your soul. You give a lightning blink at a row of condemned buildings, starkly outlining them. And do they blink back at you? Or does that happen only in another type of storm, when windows are slyly browed with city-soiled clumps of snow. Was it under such conditions that you first thought of all the cold and dark places in the universe, all the clammy basements and gloomy attics of creation? Bleak locales you'd rather not think about, but at the time couldn't keep from your mind. Another time you could have. No two times are the same. No two lives are alike. We're like aliens to one another. And when you're traveling through these streets with some stranger, you have to contend with how they see things, the way you now must deal with my
20
-
20
visions and I with your blasé near-sightedness. Are these the same gutted houses you saw last night, or even a second ago? Or are they like the fluxing clouds that swirl above the chimneys and trees, and then pass on?

The alchemical transmutations are infinite and continuous, working all the time like slaves in the Great Laboratory. Tell me you can't perceive their work, especially in this part of the city. Especially where the glamour and sanity of former days wears a new mask of rats and rot, where an old style is transformed by time into a parody of itself which no man could foresee, where greater and greater schisms are forever developing between past shapes and future shapelessness, and finally where the evolution toward ultimate diversity can be glimpsed as if in a magic mirror.

This is, of course, the
real
alchemy, as you've probably gathered, and not that other kind which theorized that everything was struggling toward an auric perfection. Lead into gold, lower matter into higher spirit. No, it's not like that. Just the opposite, in point of fact. Please don't put that hunk of gum in your mouth. Throw it out the window, now!

As I was saying, everything is just variation without a theme. Oh, perhaps there is some unchanging ideal, some sturdy absolute. Scientifically, I suppose, we should allow for that improbability. But to reach that ideal would mean a hopeless stroll along the path to hypothetically higher worlds. And on the way our ideas become feverish and confused. What begins as a solitary truth soon proliferates like malignant cells in the body of a dream, a body whose true outline remains unknown. Perhaps, then, we should be grateful to the whims of chemistry, the caprices of circumstance, and the enigmas of personal taste for giving us such an array of strictly local realities and desires.

No, I didn't always think this freaky, as you put it. But I can tell you almost precisely when I began to see the truth of things. I was a callow freshman in college, even callower than most, given my precocious progress. One day something seemed to change in my chemistry, as I like to think of it. It was quite horrible for a while. Eventually, though, I realized that the alteration was from a false chemistry to a true one. Yes, that's when I decided to pursue the subject as my career, my calling. But that's a story in itself, and here we are now at your apartment tower.

Please don't slam the car door the way you were about to. No need to draw attention to our presence. You're right, there's really no one around to be attentive anyway. The local street vermin seem to have withdrawn into their burrows. Oops, almost forgot my briefcase. Wouldn't want to leave it unattended in this neighborhood, isn't that right? You're smiling about my briefcase, aren't you, Maryrose? You think you know something again. Well, go ahead and think that if you like. Everybody likes to think he has inside information. That policeman, for example. You could see how pleased he was to instantly become a man of knowledge, even if it's only by way of inside information about some stock on the market. Everybody wants to know what's what,
scientia arcana
,
the real dope.

Maybe I do have some dope in my case. Then again, maybe it's just an empty prop, a leather vessel with a void inside. But you already know that I work for a dope company. You were thinking that, weren't you? Well, let's go up to your place and find out.

Cozy little lobby you have here. But I'm afraid the atmosphere is doing strange things to that pot of ferns over there. Of course I know they're artificial. Which only means that Nature, one of the Great Chemists, made them at one remove, that's all. Here, this elevator seems to be working, though a little noisily. After you, Lady R. The twenty-second floor if I remember right, and I always do. Uh, I believe there's to be no smoking in this elevator, if you don't mind. Thank you. And here we are. I'll bet your place is down this way. See, I
am
always right. Isn't that funny? Yes, I'm coming, I'm coming.

Well, your apartment has a very nice door. No, you're wrong. There's no such thing as “just like all the others.” Yours is quite different, can't you see that? And tonight your door is visibly different from any other time you've seen it. I'm not just being egoistical about my unique presence at your threshold this evening. Do you see what I mean? Well, I'm sorry if you feel I've been lecturing you all night. I was a pedagogue once, which I suppose is obvious. It's just that there are some important things I must impart to you, my little rosebud, before we're through. Okay? Now, let's go in and see what kind of view you have from up here.

Keep the ceiling light off please, so that I don't have to look at a double of this sleazy room reflected in your window. One of your dim lamps should give us all the light we need. There, that's fine. You do have a good view of the city from this height. I think it's perfect, not too far up. I live in a mere two-story house myself and being up here makes me dizzily realize what I'm missing. From this lofty keep I could nightly look out upon the city and its constant mutations. A different city every night. Yes, Rosie, I have to say you're right—sarcastic tone and all—the city is indeed also a vessel. And it's one that obediently takes the shape of very strange contents. The Great Chemists are working out unfathomable formulae down there. Look at those lights outlining the different venues and avenues below. Look at their lines and interconnections. They're like a skeleton of something . . . the skeleton of a dream, the hidden framework ready at any moment to shift its structure to support a new shape. The Great Chemists are always dreaming new things and risking that they may wake up while doing so. Should that ever happen you can be assured there will be hell to pay.

My imagination? No, I don't think it's
vivid
at all. On the contrary, it's not nearly potent enough. My poor imaginative faculties have always needed . . . extensions. That's why I'm here with you. You're smiling again, or rather you're
smirking
. Funny word, smirk. Rather like an extraterrestrial surname. Simon Smirk. How do you think that sounds?

Yes, maybe we are wasting too much time. But of course we'll have to endure just one more delay while I rummage around in my briefcase and remove what you've been waiting for. So you hope it's good dope, eh? Well, you'll have a chance to find out, since you seem so anxious to become a vessel yourself for my chemicals. No, stay seated just where you are please. There's no reason for you to glimpse every elixir I've got in here. The only thing I have that might interest you is secured in one squat little container screwed tightly closed with a black cap . . . and here it is!

Yes, it does look like a bottle of powdered light. That's very observant. What is it? I thought you would know by now. Here, hold out your hand and you can have a closer look. Just a little mound sprinkled in the middle of your sweaty palm, about one brainful to be precise. Doesn't it look like pulverized diamonds? It glitters, yes it does. I don't blame you for thinking it might be dangerous to snort, or whatever else you imagine you're supposed to do with it. But if you watch my magic dust very closely you'll see that you don't have to do anything at all.

See, it dissolved right into you. Disappeared completely, except for a few stray grains. But don't worry about them. Calm down, the burning will soon go away. There's no point in trying to rub the drug off your hand. It's in your system now. And it certainly won't help to get excited, nor are threats of any use to you. Please remain seated in that chair.

Can you feel any effects yet? I mean besides the fact that you're no longer able to move your arms or legs. That's just the beginning of this
nightly
entertainment. The opalescent substance you've just absorbed has now made possible a very interesting relationship between us, my red red rose. The drug has rendered you fantastically sensitive to the shaping influence of a certain form of energy, namely that which is being generated by me, or rather
through
me. To put it romantically, I'm now dreaming you. That's really the only way I can explain it that you might understand. Not dreaming
about
you, like some old love song. I'm
dreaming
you. Your arms and legs don't respond to your brain's commands because I'm dreaming of someone who is as still as a statue. I hope you can appreciate how remarkable this is.

Damn! I suppose that was your attempt to scream. You really are terrified, aren't you? Just to be safe, perhaps I'd better dream of someone who hasn't anything to scream with. There, that should do it. You do look strange, though, like that. But this is only just the beginning. These minor tricks are child's play and I'm sure don't impress you in any way whatever. Soon I'll show you that I can really make an impression, once I put my mind to it.

Is there something in your eyes? Yes, I can see there is. A question. Right now you would like to ask, if only you still had the means to do so, what's to become of old Rosie? It's only fair that you should know.

We are presently coming into perfect tune with each other, my dreams and my dream girl. You are about to become the flesh and blood kaleidoscope of my imagination. In the latter stages of this procedure anything might happen. Your form will know no limits of diversity as the Great Chemists themselves take over. Soon I will put my dreaming in the hands of a prodigious insurrection of entity, and I'm sure there will be some surprises for both of us. That's one thing which never changes.

Nevertheless, there is still a problem with this process. It's not really perfect, certainly not marketable, as we say in the pill business. And wouldn't that be boring if it were perfect? What I mean to say is that under the stress of such diverse metamorphoses, the original structure of the object somehow breaks down. The consequence of this is simple—you can never be as you once were. I'm very sorry. You'll have to remain in whatever curious incarnation you take on at the dream's end. Which should rattle the wits of whoever is unfortunate enough to find you. But don't worry, you will not live long after I leave here. And by then you will have experienced god-like powers of proteation which I myself cannot hope to know, no matter how intimately I may try.

And now I think we can proceed with what has been your destiny all along. Are you ready? I am entirely ready and by degrees am giving myself over to those forces which go their own way and take us with them. Can you feel us both being swept into a tempest of transfigurations? Can you feel the fevers of this chemist? The power of my dreaming, my dreaming, my dreaming, my . . .

Now Rose of madness—BLOOM!

II. DRINK TO ME ONLY WITH LABYRINTHINE EYES

Everyone at the party comments on them. They ask if I had them altered in some way, suggest that I've tucked some strange crystallized lenses under my eyelids. I tell them no, that I was born with these singular optic organs. They're not from some optometrist's bag of tricks, not the result of surgical mayhem. Of course they find this hard to believe, especially when I tell them I was also born with the full powers of a master hypnotist . . . and from there I rapidly evolved, advancing into a mesmeric wilderness untrod before or since by any others of my calling. No, I wouldn't say
business
or
profession
,
I would have to say
calling
. What else do you call it when you're destined from birth, marked by fate's stigmata? At this point they smile politely, saying that they really enjoyed the show and that I certainly am good at what I do. I tell them how grateful I am for the opportunity to perform for such fancy persons in such a fancy house. Unsure to what extent I'm just kidding them, they nervously twirl the stems of their champagne glasses, the beverage sparkling and the crystal twinkling under a chandelier's kaleidoscopic blaze. Despite all the beauty, power, and prestige socializing in this rather baroque room tonight, I think they know how basically ordinary they all are. They are very impressed by me and my assistant, who have been asked to mingle with the guests and amuse them in whatever way we can. One gentleman with a flushed face looks across the room at my partner in animal magnetism, guzzling his drink as he does so. “Would you like to meet her,” I ask. “You bet,” he replies. They all do. They all want to know you, my angel.

Earlier in the evening we presented our show to these lovely people. I instructed the host of the party to serve no alcohol before our performance, and to arrange the furniture of this overwrought room in a way that would allow everyone a perfect view of us on our little platform. He complied obediently, of course. He also conceded to my request for payment in advance. Such an agreeable man, giving in to the will of another so readily.

At the start of the show I am alone before a silent audience. All illumination is cancelled except a single spotlight which I have set up on the floor exactly two point two meters from the stage. The spotlight focuses on a pair of metronomes, their batons sweeping back and forth in perfect unison like windshield wipers in the rain: smoothly back and smoothly forth, back and forth, back and forth. And at the tip of each baton is a replica of each of my eyes swaying left and right in full view of everyone, while my voice speaks to them from a shadowy edge of the stage. First I give a brief lecture on hypnosis, its name and nature. After that I say: “Ladies and gentlemen: Please direct your attention to this glossy black cabinet. Within stands the most beautiful creature you have ever beheld. From heaven itself she has descended, a seraph of the highest order. And for your enjoyment she is already in the deepest trance. You
will
see her and be amazed.” There is a dramatic pause during which my eyes fix upon the congregation before me, keeping control of them. When I look back toward the cabinet the trick door opens, seemingly of its own will.

As if with one voice, the audience emits a quiet gasp, and for a second I panic. Then there is applause, reassuring me that everything is all right, that they like the figure exhibited before them. What they see is standing upright inside the cabinet, her slender arms held absolutely still at her sides. She is wearing a tiny sequined outfit, a vulgar costume whose rampant glitter somehow transcends the cliché, rejuvenating its shoddy soul. Her eyes are two bluish gems in an alabaster setting, and her gaze seems to be fixed on infinity. After the audience has had a good look, I say: “Now, my angel, you must fall.” At this signal she begins to totter within the box. Finally she teeters into a forward topple. At the last moment I reach down, collar her throat with one hand, and arrest her inflexible figure a few inches before it hits the stage. Not a lock of her golden hair is stirred out of place, and her bejeweled tiara holds tightly to her head. There is applause while I restore my long-limbed assistant to a vertical position.

Now begins the performance proper, which is an array of mesmeric stunts along with some magic. I place the somnambule's hypnotically stiffened body horizontally between two chairs and ask some behemoth from the audience to come up and sit on her. The man is only too glad to do this. Then I command the somnambule to become inhumanly limp so that I may stuff her into an impossibly small box. But she's only limber enough to fit halfway into the receptacle, I tell the audience. So I inform them that I must break her neck and other bones in order to push her whole body inside. All onlookers are on the edge of their seats, and I beg them to remain composed even though they may see some blood squeeze out the edges of the box as I close its lid. They love it when my assistant slowly rises up intact and unbloodied. (Nonetheless, like all crowds who attend events where there is, or seems to be, an element of hazard, they secretly wish to see something go wrong.) Next is the Human Voodoo Doll, wherein I stick long pins into her flesh and she doesn't wince or make a sound. We perform quite a few other routines in defiance of death and pain, afterward moving on to the memory tricks. In one of them I have everybody in the audience call out in quick succession his or her full name and birth date. Then I instruct my somnambule to repeat this information when requested at random to do so by individual audience members. She gets all the names right—and of course everyone is bowled over—but invariably the dates she gives are not in the past but in the future. Some of the days and years she mechanically speaks are relatively distant in time and some disturbingly near. I express astonishment at my somnambule's behavior, explaining to the audience that fortune-telling is not normally part of the show. I apologize for this woeful display of precognition and vow to make it up to them with a jaw-dropping finale so as to sidetrack their minds from any morbid introspection. A blare of heavenly horns would not be inappropriate at this point.

At my signal, my assistant moves to the precise center of the stage. Here she positions herself with legs outspread to form an upside-down V out of her lower body. Another signal and her arms elevate until they are stretched outward like two wings, both tensely straining to their limit. A final signal bids her nodding head to lift fully erect upon the muscle-knotted column of her neck, eyes glaring out at the audience. At the same time, the eyes out in the audience glare back at her with the same gaze. “Now,” I admonish them, “there must be total silence. This means no coughing, no sniffing, no yawning, and no clearing of throats.” An unreasonable directive, it would seem, but one with which they are compliant. They are silent as a grave full of buried confidences. “Ladies and gentlemen,” I continue, “you are about to see something that I need not tout with a verbose preamble. My assistant is now in the deepest possible trance and every particle of her being is extremely sensitive to my will. When instructed, she will begin an astounding metamorphosis that will reveal what some of you may have conceived but never dared hope to look upon. Nothing more need be said. My dear, you may commence your change of form, code name: Seraphim.”

There she stands—arms, legs, towering head—my five-pointed somnambule: a star. “Already you can see the glowing,” I tell the audience. “She begins to effloresce. She begins to incandesce. And now she approaches such radiance that she almost disappears into it—kindled to the very edge of worldly existence by a supernal blaze. But there is no pain, there is anything but eyesore.” No one in the audience is even squinting, of course, for the beams from her body—this labyrinth of light!—are dream beams without physical properties. “Keep watching,” I shout at them, pointing to my assistant, whose costume of foil sequins has turned to a gossamer veil floating about her form. “Can you see snow-white wings sprouting beyond the horizon of her shoulders? Has not her material casing lost all carnality and transmogrified into a celestial icon? Is she not the very essence of the ethereal—the angelic luminary beneath the human beast?”

But I cannot sustain the moment. The light fades in the eyes of the audience, growing dimmer by the second, and my assistant collapses back into an earthly incarnation. I am exhausted. What's worse, all our efforts seem to have been wasted, for the audience answers this spectacle with only perfunctory applause. I can hardly believe it, but the finale fell flat. They don't understand. They actually like all the mock-death and bogus-pain stuff better. These are what fascinate them. Bah. Double bah. Well, frolic while you can, you dullards. The show isn't over yet.

“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen,” I say when the lights go up and the meager applause dies entirely. “I hope my assistant and I have not induced you into somnolence this evening. You do look a little sleepy, as if you've been lulled into a trance yourselves. Which is not such a bad feeling, is it? Sinking deep into a downy darkness, resting your souls on pillows stuffed with soft shadows. But our host informs me that things will liven up very soon. Certainly you will awake when a little chime commands you to do so. Remember, it's wake-up time when you hear the chime,” I repeat. “And now I believe we can prosecute this evening's festivities.”

I help my assistant down from the platform and we mix with the rest of the partiers. Drinks are served and the noise level in the room increases by several decibels. The populace of the soirée begins to coagulate into groups here and there. I separate myself from a boisterous group surrounding my assistant and me, but nobody seems to notice. They are entranced by my sequined somnambule. She dazzles them—a sun at the center of a drab galaxy, her costume catching the light of that monstrous chandelier winking with a thousand eyes. Everyone seems to be trying to gain her regard. But she just smiles, so vacant and full of grace, not even sipping the drink someone has placed in her hand. They are transfixed like lady spiders during the mating ritual. After all, didn't I tell them that my lanky hypnotizee was the perfection of beauty?

But I too have my admirers. One dark-suited bore asks me if I can help him stop smoking. Another inquires about possible ways that hypnosis could serve as a tool for his advertising business, though nothing illegal of course. I hand them each a business card with a cloud-gray pearl finish on which is printed a non-existent phone number and a phony address in a real city. As for the name: Cosimo Fanzago. What else would one expect from a performing mesmerist extraordinaire? I have other cards with names like Gaudenzio Ferrari and Johnny Tiepolo printed on them. Nobody's caught on yet. But am I not as much an artist as they were?

And while I am being accosted by people who need cures or aids for their worldliness, I am watching you, dear somnambule. Watching you waltz about this magnificent room. It is not like the other rooms in this great house. Someone really let Fancy have its wild way in here. It harkens back to a time, centuries ago, when your somnambulating predecessors did their sleepwalking act for high society. You fit in so well with the company of this manor hall of riotous rococo. It's a delight to see you make your way about the irregular circumference of this room, where the wall undulates in gentle waves and troughs, its surface sinewed with a maze of chinoiserie. This capacious chamber's serpentine configuration makes it difficult to distinguish its recesses from its protrusions. Some of the guests shift their weight wallwards and find themselves leaning on air, stumbling sideways like comedians in an old movie. But you, my perfect sleepwalker, have no trouble. You lean at the right times and in the right places. And your eyes play beautifully to whatever camera focuses on you. Indeed, you take so many of your cues from others that one might suspect you of having no life of your own. Let's sincerely hope not!

Now I watch as a stuffed shirt in a dinner jacket invites you to be seated in a chair of blinding brocade, its flowery fabric done up in all the soft colors of a woman's cosmetics case and its dainty arms the texture of cartilage. Your high heels make subtle points in the carpet, puncturing its arabesque flights of imagination. Now I watch as our host draws you over to choose a libation from his well-stocked bar. He gestures with pride toward the many bottles on display, their shapes both
normale
and
baroque
. The baroquely shaped bottles are doing more interesting things with light and shadow than their normal brothers, and you point to one of these with a robotic finesse. He pours two drinks while you watch, and while you watch I am watching you watch. Guiding you to another part of the room, he shows you a shelf of delicate figurines, each one caught in a paralyzed stance. He places one of them in your hand, and you angle it every which way before your unfocused eyes, as if trying to restore some memory that would cause you to awaken. But you never will, not without my help.

Now he directs you to a part of the room where there is soft music and dancing. But there are no windows in this room, only tall smoky mirrors, and as you pass from one end to the other you are caught between foggy looking-glasses facing their twins, creating endless files of somnambules in a false infinity beyond the walls. Then you dance with our host, though while he is gazing straightforwardly at you, you are gazing abstractly at the ceiling. Oh, that ceiling! In epic contrast to the capricious volutions of the rest of the room—designs tendriled to tenebrosity—the surface above is a plane of powder blue without a hint of flourish. In its purity it suggests a bottomless pool or a sky wiped clean of clouds. You are dancing in eternity, my darling. And the dance is indeed a long one, for another wants to cut in on our gracious host and become your partner. Then another. And another. They all want to embrace you. They are all taken in by your dispassionate elegance, your postures and poses like frozen roses. I am only waiting until everyone has had physical contact with your physique so full of animal magnetism.