Sugar Rain (4 page)

She put down her brush and unscrewed one of the jars. Long before, her mother had gone home to Paradise. And the night before she left, she had put some makeup on her face, in a style that had occurred to her in a dream. She had not wanted to arrive in Paradise dressed out of fashion, to be laughed at by all her friends that had gone before. She was a vain woman. And the night before she died, she had put silver makeup on her cheeks, emphasizing the ridges of the bone. When Charity and Abu, her young daughter and her son, had come to say goodbye, they had run to her and put their arms around her neck, and she had pulled away, ever so slightly. Smiling, she had pulled away. She had not wanted them to spoil her makeup, but Charity had reached out to kiss her on the cheek, and had come away with silver pigment on her lips.

Now Charity opened a jar of the same color and mixed it experimentally on her palm. And then she stopped and turned her head, because the door behind her had opened partway, and it was as if a gust of hot wind had come in from the darkened antechamber, and she could feel the temperature of the air around her rise a little bit. At the same time she was conscious of a noise, a sound of roaring, labored breathing. Rubbing the ball of pigment into a puddle in the center of her palm, Charity touched almost unconsciously the tiny lion’s head tattooed below her index finger, the symbol of immunity from fear. She turned her head.

A young woman stood in the doorway, Charity’s own age, or perhaps a little younger. Her black hair was matted and tangled, and she wore a long ragged dress of yellow nylon. She had loosened the bodice from around her neck to give herself air. Her skin was flushed and dark.

They stared at each other for a moment, and then the girl dropped her eyes. She bowed her head and made the obligatory gestures of respect, pressing the knuckles of her right hand up against her forehead.

Princess Charity crossed her arms over her chest. She was wearing a robe of purple spidersilk, and she pulled it up around her shoulders. Some silver pigment had come off on the collar; irritated, she turned to clean her hands with cotton wool and cold cream, and then she pulled her collar down to clean the spot, rubbing gently at the spidery material. “Who are you?” she asked, not looking up. “How did you get in?”

“Please, ma’am, the door was open.” The girl’s voice was harsh and full of breath. “They’ve all run away. They nailed a notice to your door. Pink. Moral contamination.”

“And you’re not afraid?” asked Charity, smiling gently, rubbing at the spot. She looked up. The girl was pretty, she decided. Again she wiped her hands and smoothed the collar back from her shoulder, arranging a fold of material over the damp patch.

“No, ma’am. I’m not afraid. I’d come to see what they had done to you.”

Charity looked up at her. “Who are you?” she asked.

Rosa paused to wipe her lips with a corner of her shawl. Her other hand moved restlessly around her body, touching, scratching. “I do the laundry for this floor,” she said. “Used to. These four apartments.”

Charity Starbridge stood up. Again she crossed her arms over her breasts. “Yes,” the girl continued. “I turned you in. I did my duty as a citizen, and I hope they hang you for it. Look what they have done to me.”

“It serves you right,” said the princess softly. “It was no business of yours.”

Rosa wiped her face with her shawl. Sweat ran down from underneath her hair and along the insides of her arms. She stripped the shawl from around her shoulders, wadded it up into a ball and rubbed her neck with it, and then she threw it into a corner of the room. “Oh, God,” she moaned. “I’m burning.” She reached out to catch hold of one of the bedposts, and then she leaned against it.

Princess Charity stood looking at her for a moment. Then she bent to rummage in a small refrigerator beside her washstand, pouring bottled water into a glass. “Here,” she said, standing up and taking a few steps across the room. The girl reached out and took the glass and drank the water down. She held the glass against her head. “Oh, God,” she moaned. “I ran up all the way. I thought my heart would burst.”

Princess Charity gave her the bottle and took back the glass. Rosa drank. From the bedpost hung a linen towel; she pulled it down and poured water over it with shaking fingers, and then she held it up against her face. “Oh, God, I’m sorry,” she cried. “I never would have told them if I had known.”

“What’s done is done,” murmured the princess. Confronted with weakness, she felt strong. “Never mind,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. Only tell me, why did you do it? Was I so cruel a mistress?”

“Oh, ma’am, how could you be cruel? I worked here for a thousand days, and I never even saw you. But your husband, he was kind to me. He once gave me a dollar and a half.”

“Ah. So it was for his sake.”

“No. It was for my sake. Oh, ma’am, I hope they hang you. Don’t you understand? I washed your sheets a thousand times. It was my fate, and I was true to it. Was it too much to ask the same of you?”

The princess put the glass down on her washstand. She rubbed her hands together, her fingers stroking the marks of all her obligations: courage, kindness, modesty. She stroked the golden ball and chain tattooed on the lap of skin under her thumb, the mark of marital fidelity.

Rosa had collapsed against the bedpost, gasping, out of breath. The princess went to her and took the bottle and the towel, and with her own hands she wiped the sweat from the girl’s face. Rosa submitted and suffered Charity to lead her to the bed, where she sat down. “I feel so tired,” she said. “I ran up all those stairs.”

“Hush,” murmured the princess. “It’s the fever. You may lie here for a little while. But first tell me, what was the stain you found? On my bedsheet. A bloodstain, was it not?”

“Part of it. I know what it was. I’m not a child.”

“No, but a bloodstain. Didn’t that mean anything to you? I was married more than twenty months—two thousand four hundred and one days. My husband never touched me. Look at my hands. I have other obligations, too. Fertility—look—and love. I thought you might have understood. You might have pitied me.”

She had been fussing with the girl while she was speaking, stroking her down onto the bed, stroking her hair. But now Rosa started up. “Pity you?” she cried. “God in heaven, pity you? You must be insane. Even now, when they have filled my blood with poison and charted my soul’s flight to Chandra Sere. Pity you, is that why I came all this way? No, I wanted to see what they would do to you. I hoped they’d hang you. They’ve been hanging Starbridges, I hear. I’ve seen posters for your lover in the streets. But not you. No luck. I know already. They’re sending you back.”

“Yes,” said the princess. “They come tomorrow morning.” She spoke gently, softly, but the girl pulled away and buried her face in the pillow. “It’s not fair,” she sobbed.

Charity reached out to touch her hair. “Never mind,” she said. “Not many of us believe in Paradise anymore, or in hell either.”

The girl turned towards her, her lips pulled back. “You don’t even believe it! You work us like slaves—who gave you the right if God does not exist? Hypocrite! Don’t touch me.” Delirious, she made the sign of the unclean, pressing the heel of her hand against her nose. But she didn’t have the strength to pull away; she collapsed against the pillow. The silk turned yellow where her cheek touched it, seared by the heat of her skin.

Charity waited, and in a little while she reached over and wiped Rosa’s face again. “I think you think my life must be more pleasant than it is,” she said, touching the girl’s hair. She couldn’t keep her hands away. She was fascinated by the girl’s beauty. The two of them were similar in every part, only the girl was beautiful. I lost my beauty with my freedom, thought Charity. It is freedom that illuminates a face.

She was sitting next to Rosa on the bed, her back to the door. Someone staggered in; she jumped up and pulled her robe around her, and turned her face away. A man crouched in the doorway, leaning up against the frame. He held up his hand. “Don’t worry, ma’am. Don’t worry. I won’t bother you. I won’t even look.” He pointed to the bed. “It’s her, ma’am. It’s her I want.”

He was a renegade parson, his voice full of alcohol, his red robes torn, his face dry and spotted, his nose broken and red. His scalp showed in strips through his lank hair. “Don’t let me disturb you,” he said. “It’s her I’ve come for.”

At the sound of his voice, the girl sat up. She stared at him in horror for a moment and then sank back onto the pillows. “Don’t come near me,” she warned. “God damn you, can’t you let me go?”

The parson cringed against the doorframe, smiling nervously, picking at his lips. “I’ve come to fetch her,” he said. “I’ve come to take her home.”

The girl pointed at him from the bed. “Don’t come any closer,” she commanded. “Drunken pig! Eunuch! Can’t you let me alone?”

“Oh, Rosa, how can you say such things?” whined the parson. “After everything I’ve done for you. I followed you halfway across the city tonight, just to bring you home.”

“Don’t you understand?” cried the girl. “I’m dying. You’ve gotten all you’re going to get from me.”

“Rosa, how can you talk like that? After I’ve cared for you all these months. Fed you and kept you. Don’t you trust me yet? Look, I have medicine for you.” He stepped towards her into the room, holding out a little package of aluminum foil.

“Please, ma’am,” cried Rosa. “Don’t let him touch me. Don’t let him come any closer.”

Princess Charity stepped forward into the light. The parson turned to face her, bowing humbly. “Excuse me—I’m sorry. I don’t mean to disturb you. Raksha Starbridge is my name, formerly in holy orders. Eleven months ago I found this girl abandoned in the street and took her in. She’s been like a daughter to me.”

“Daughter?” cried Rosa. “Lecherous pig!”

“Don’t listen to her, ma’am. It’s the fever talking. The fever’s in her brain. If it weren’t for me, she would have starved to death.” He had opened up the foil package, and he rubbed some of the red powder it contained into his gums. And as he twisted the foil back up, he paused to wink heavily. “And would you believe it? When I met her, her palms were naked as a baby’s.”

He had the face of someone who drinks more than he eats, his eyes bloodshot, his cheeks covered with scars and broken blood vessels. On the bed behind him, Rosa had started to cry.

“Yes, ma’am,” continued the parson. “I can see she fooled you with all her spiritual talk. She’s got no right to talk like that. Her mother was an atheist. An antinomial whore. She didn’t even have a name until I gave her one. Rosamundi, like the flower. When I met her, she could hardly talk. Just a few words and bits of songs. She was singing in the streets for pennies. Now look at her—everything she is, I taught her. I taught her how to work. Every morning I drew those tattoos on fresh. Oil pencil. She used to beg me to make them permanent. But I’m not such a fool.”

He was a mendicant preacher, a Starbridge who had lost his destiny. Expelled from his congregation, he lived by his wits among the common people, saying mass for a dollar or a bottle of wine, healing the sick, telling fortunes. And among the common people he had found something to love. Now he turned and sat down on the bed. “Oh, Rosa,” he said. “Isn’t it better to tell the truth, now that it can’t hurt you anymore? There—don’t cry. You don’t really think I’d let them send my little girl to hell?”

She looked up at him, tears running down her face. But her cheeks were so hot, they evaporated before they were halfway down. She pulled her bodice down to show where the priest had marked her, the horned circle on her shoulder, the sign of Chandra Sere. “You’re too late,” she said. “I’m on my way. One or two hours, not more. I saw him cast the spell.”

Her voice was a dry creaking in her throat. She had stopped sweating, and her skin was assuming a dry, papery look; in some places it was even turning dark, like paper held over a flame. The parson, too, had started to cry. But in everything he did there was a mixture of sentiment and slyness, so that even as the tears rolled down his nose, he turned to the princess and winked. “I know,” he said. “Poor girl.” He reached out for Rosa’s hands, and this time she did not resist him; he took her hands and chafed them between his own. “I know,” he said. “But stranger things have happened. I’ve heard that there is someone bound for Paradise tonight. More than one, though truthfully, the conjunction of the planets is not ideal.” He turned and gave the princess a sharp look. “Maybe we could get someone to give up her place.”

“Gladly,” said the princess.

“I thought so,” muttered the parson. “God knows I’m in no hurry to go back.”

Rosa lay back slowly on the pillows. “Only Starbridges …” she croaked.

“And don’t I have the power to make you a Starbridge?” cried the parson, tears in his eyes. “Aren’t I still a priest of God? Look, I have brought my tools.” He turned her hands palm up on the bedsheet, and then he started fumbling underneath his robe, and from hidden pockets he drew out scalpels, needles, lotions, inks, books of numbers, astrological charts. He laid them all out on the surface of the bed. He took the towel the girl had used to cool her face, and squeezed out some liquid from a tube, and cleaned her hands with it until her palms were clean and white. “Come here,” he said over his shoulder. “I need you for a model.”

Charity moved close, knelt down, and put her own hands on the coverlet. All trace of palsy had vanished from the parson’s fingers; with his tongue in the corner of his mouth, he drew quickly and expertly. Flowers grew and spread along the hills and valleys of the young girl’s palms—castles, faces, lists of privileges. And when the time came for him to make the cuts, his work was easy, for the blood had receded from her hands, and the incisions were as dry as scratches on a piece of paper. All the while Rosa looked on, the breath rattling in her throat, her eyes wide with wonder, her expression changing gradually until there was something like happiness in it, something like contentment. The parson muttered incantations and made quick, deft gestures in the air. And when he moved the needle through the cuts, the colors seemed to spread out by themselves, mixing and making patterns, secondary colors, a whole world. It was perfect. And then he spread a sealer over it, and then, finally, he reached up to her shoulder. Under his needle, miraculously, the mark of Chandra Sere became less distinct, and out of it spread crowns and halos and the head of a dog, silver and golden, the mark of Paradise.