Surrender to Mr. X (28 page)

Lam says, “No, Lam breathe well. Good air on Dog Star,” and sidles off smirking.

The long L word is for a very nasty, usually fatal, lung disease which affects fertile young women. The twins, as I do, like medical dictionaries. Their eidetic skills are probably twice mine. But I don't think they have Bipolar Two. Their troubles, if such they be, lie at the autistic end of the mental disturbance scale, which is uncommon for girls. But they have each other, and a great capacity for enjoyment.

They change in my room. The transformation is astonishing. They wear simple cream silk shifts over their thin, almost hipless bodies. For once I am able to see their legs, which are long and slim. They wear no bras and no panty line is visible. Their breasts make slight bumps. They might as well be wearing nothing, but the effect is graceful and innocent. They move as one. You'd think you were seeing double. By the time most identical twins are seventeen tiny changes in environment will have worked to make them at least distinguishable from each other, but not with these two. They're not so much individuals as one walking brain with two bodies.

I go and change for dinner. Joan's still tripping round in my head la-la-ing, which is the only way I can describe it. La-la-la, all's for the best in the best of all possible worlds. She's trying to make me wear a bright red satin thing but I don't want to upstage the twins. I go for pale pink, more big-sistery, and not too much make-up.

Proper formal dinner-time at Alden's table. I really
go for this. Forget the Divan; forget the scenarios, all that's another life, a kind of sideline. This is the real thing. White linen, silver cutlery, crystal glasses—Riedel, I was pretty sure. Primroses. Flown in from where? Geothermal greenhouses in Iceland—a special order. Mikhail the Oligarch, with Bernie at his side, has arrived in a limo long enough to block all traffic trying to get round South End Green. The chauffeur drops them off, doesn't even try to park. Two security men sit just inside our front door. They are armed with automatic weapons.

Alden sits at the head of the table: I sit at the foot, we are a married couple. When we have solved his sexual problems he will forget his need to make music out of experience, and we will settle down like other, normal people. Ray will go off and live somewhere more suitable for a famous artist, such as LA, and I'll use the studio as a nursery. Alden will have stem-cell treatment and we won't need to have Lam around. I feel warm inside, owned and appreciated. Alison and Katharine sit next to each other, Alison perched on the left of her chair, Katharine to the right of hers, so their hipless bodies touch. They are wearing their big owl glasses. Why can't they get contact lenses like anyone else? I am embarrassed for them. Don't they know anything of how to behave? They seem so untutored in the ways of the world. Ray sits next to them, using his left hand to guide his right. Lam, who stands behind Alden's chair, comes over to cut up his food. The girls
are concerned for him; they coo and murmur in their twinnish way, and put morsels of food into his mouth; he seems quite pleased by the attention.

Sitting opposite are Bernie and Mikhail. Mikhail takes up two places. He's like a much cruder, larger, glossier, heavier, more uncouth version of Bernie. Caterers flap around serving minimal portions of allegedly gourmet food. Mikhail refuses it, but nothing seems to upset me. I realize I am under will, and probably have been since I left for Paddington. Ray calls me Vanessa now, not Joan, and for this reason, I suspect, I am thus more vulnerable to the way of the Fourth, or is it now the Fifth Path, the Fifth Stage, the Fifth Sphere? Or just to the eyes, as Alden would have it, of a natural-born hypnotist. Alden the new Crowley, Ray the new Mesmer, with his powers of animal magnetism.

Mikhail pushes his plate away, untouched. I am not surprised. Alden chose the menu: goujons of rhubarb, lentil and squid? I just nod and smile and ask the staff to bring bread, cheese, sausage—apparently he always brings his own with him—and raw onions. He sits and eats using a knife to pierce the food and bring it to his lips, and he chews, carefully studies Alison and Katharine.

I wonder if this vision of the oligarch is Ray-induced, or some flashback from the rainforest drug, which is more powerful than it seems, so stereotypical is his behavior. “Gross oligarch with crude table manners”—like some Boyar in an Eisenstein film? But
a bit of chewed cheese splutters from his lips onto my cheek, and I can tell he is real: it's true. The twins don't seem to notice anything strange. I am sure it was never like this at home. I have to get them back home before something terrible happens. I try to stand. Ray pulls me back down and leans over to me and says, “Vanessa, they are the Chosen of the King. Let it be.”

“It's all right, Vanessa,” says Alison. “We're getting very well paid.”

“We know what we're doing,” says Katharine. “But it's sweet of you to worry.”

That's all right then. Ten thousand each, it seems. They know the value for what they can offer—a double virgin defloration. They must have sorted it out with Alden while I was wondering about their social graces. Perhaps we do have the same father after all.

I am handing them chocolates from the Harrods box. I am eating myself. We agree they're a little on the sweet side and must be fearfully calorific but we like them. Mikhail hoists his bulk to his feet, knocking over his chair and breaking a couple of the Riedel glasses—two champagne flutes and one claret—and cries out something in Russian which I assume to be “let's get to business!”

The sudden noise makes me start and wince: everything looks very clear and sharp. What has been going on? What is Alden is saying about “little owls”? He has taken the glasses from their noses. Their eyes
are wide and pale, short-sighted, startled and eager. Mikhail is stumbling round the room like one of those brown bears which break into houses in Alaska and toss all the contents about like rubbish. He is roaring just like a bear too, but I find that a bit hard to separate out from Alden's music. Lam herds the bear and the twins into the mirror room.

Snapshot. Alden is unlocking a door. We are upstairs. It is Bluebeard's door. I am honored! His music room at last—what I have so wanted to see.

Bluebeard—Gilles de Rais, Marshall of France, friend of Joan of Arc, and master of the black arts. In February 1904 Crowley delivered a lecture—known to posterity as “The Banned Lecture”—to the Oxford Poetry Society, claiming Gilles de Rais was a victim of a conspiracy of defamation: an example of how established theocracy always tries to destroy the free thinker. De Rais was a powerful force in French politics and military affairs until his views on sex brought him into disrepute. Scandal broke about his head and destroyed him. Ronald Knox banned the lecture, but Crowley published all the same. De Rais was said to have lured children to his castle in Brittany where he sexually abused and murdered them. His cellars were found to be piled high with broken bodies. He was hanged in 1440 and his body burned. Five hundred years later Crowley was to die, broken by scandal: rumors of sexual abuse, black magic, human sacrifice, to be believed or not believed according to your fancy. And
Crowley has his admirers clearly, since he is listed by the BBC among its Top One Hundred British Heroes, so selected by popular vote.

So is Lam an alien from Sirius the Dog Star, a magus from Tibet, or a person with glandular difficulties from Surbiton or Leigh-on-Sea—which would I prefer to believe?

Good wife, don't ask what it is your husband is doing tonight, don't seek to go where you're not asked—in case you find out more than suits you. Then you too must die. Bluebeard's wife is rescued by her brothers in the nick of time. I wondered, as we trooped into the music room, Alden, Lam, Ray, Bernie, myself—who I could trust to be my brothers?

Of course it was not just a music room. Oh Vanessa, Queen of Denial! How could you not know? What did you think those blazing lights were all about? All those mirrors for their crafty reflection shots? There was music equipment here of course there was, banks of it twinkling away, for synthesis and analysis, spectrograms and spectrographs, and graphs leaping up and down over computer screens. But its main function was as a digital film studio and a very sophisticated one: lights, cameras, editing equipment: discs stacked high. Few leads muddling everything up: the new Bluebeard technology. Why would it be otherwise? Two technicians are setting up. They are in white coats but they have their backs to us so I can't yet see their faces. Someone makes good quality film in here: as near to
life as can be. Viewing chairs are arranged around the square, and the square is the mirror above the Lukas bed. Only it's not of course mirror from up here; look down and you see clear glass.

Alden has been making high quality porno films. I am a film star. No wonder I'm not allowed out and about too much. And a seat in these hospitality chairs must bring in a pretty penny.

A film is being edited at the moment. Round the room are screens with extracts from my life in the bed, my life in the Divan, my life in the Scenario Suburbs. The quality is variable. The dungeon scene where I kick and flee is practically unusable because of the lighting but new technology is amazing and I daresay something can be rescued. The Bride in the Bath sequence where I drown is awesome in its
verité
. You get a real reaction from me. The monster cock slides into my helpless bum as my mouth spews up water. You don't get much of that on the net though the whole nation endlessly searches; sex 'n' violence in the same shot. Some of these set pieces would be allowed. Lots wouldn't. Something for everyone; every need catered for in a competitive market. In and out, in and out slide the monster cocks, close up, medium shot, long shot. Isn't that the tennis star's penis, in and out of my mouth? Young Hasan's face in extremis? Loki takes me pressed up against the corner of the cab: lots of other hands in shot to show there's company. They have cameras even there. Every one of my taxi
journeys, to the shops, to home, to the Divan and back, there on film for cutaways. Europa ravished by the Bull is charming. I see Daisy's body in the lesbian scene but not her face. We weren't in a flowery field in the sun, just on a carpet under lights. Mine is there, clear as clear. I look so happy. The bondage stills are beautiful. I make a great damsel in distress. And I'm not acting. I believe every minute of it. The joy, the peace after orgasm, the slave's trust and adoration, all there. And now the whipping, the pièce de resistance; I writhe and scream: I watch the red weals form, the gag dig in, the mouth bleed. They are all watching me watching myself. Alden is smiling.

The technicians turn to look at me too. I don't think it can be Max from the Olivier—how could it be? The long jaw, the lugubrious face? Even that a set up? Joan known for a fraud from the beginning? Is that Luigi from the Bound Beast and Bumpkin? Shaker of nutmeg? Can't be. I am in shock. I see what is not there, surely. I will wake soon. And Robert, what about Robert? The twins? What have I done? I turn to escape, save them, but I am caught and turned back.

“Enjoy, Vanessa, enjoy,” says Ray. “You're the girl who loves sex; it's your vocation.” But it's beyond that. They have their cameras on me even now, I realize that. Title: “Forced Witness.”

I am sat in a chair to see what is happening down below. My wrists are fastened. The lights go down up here: the many screens grow blank. Time for the next
film. Just the one light as they record my reactions, test my responses, one last bar for Alden's masterpiece, one last line for Ray's
Blue Box
.

The lights brighten on the scene below. Alden is directing from up here in the control room: producer, director, composer, art dealer, designer, star—the Renaissance man who can do it all, except fuck to closure. His talents are wondrous.

Katharine and Alison lie on the bed in their cream dresses, side by side, bodies touching, skinny-limbed, scarcely wider when laid together than my single body ever was. No cushions. The dresses, in this light, are not as good as I thought. The seams are badly sewn: it's cheap stuff. A pity. Alison's left wrist is fastened to the left bedpost and Katharine's right wrist to the other, but the ties are long. They have freedom to move—they can turn to each other, embrace, kiss and fondle, though this is not primarily an incest film. Incest has a great following. I so seldom got as much freedom of movement, I am almost envious.

They seem relaxed and unworried. This may not be so bad. I will not play into enemy hands; I will not give them the shots they want: I will not give them torment, horror and distress. They can have my delight, my fascination, the exhilaration of the Vocational Girl, the seeker after the pleasures of the flesh, what can never be contained in language or on film, or in dance, or song, or music, or painting, in porn, or any other means, though so many try so hard. What sex feels like, what
it is, when mind and body give up their separate ways and travel the same path. I lean forward to see better. I smile. That is all they will get from me.

For three minutes or so the twins just lie there, waiting, expectant. Title: “Deflowered Twins”? It has all the makings of a classic. Cut, says Alden.

The twins look up at the mirror and I am pretty sure they know they are on film. I am just an innocent compared to the rest of my family. I expect everyone knew about my father and Jude. I was the only one who never guessed.

Alden the director decides this is not the response he expects from me. He pinches my nipple and takes me by surprise so I yelp and wriggle but only for a moment. Too bad, another few frames to intercut. Unwilling Witness, stock footage, to be cannibalized in many films, Alden's own, or else sold on, some just within the law, some well past it, depending on the market served.

“Don't be too rough,” Bernie says. “She's Robert's sister.”

I am happy for Robert. All that is going to be all right. I have not done too terrible a thing. Bernie cares. A tear rolls down my cheek: it's a tear of simple happiness. Can you imagine the rarity? The lens moves close. Everyone's delighted. A genuine tear in high resolution can be used and reused all over the net, flung from one computer to another: Roussel's dream comes true. One bite, a trillion bytes. A trillion pixels multiply on blue boxes everywhere, sourced by that single human tear,
the organic and inorganic at last united. The infinite complexity of mirrored forms: what is this but chaos theory; science and the arts united. One tear rolls, the universe laps it up. Ray comes up close to me. I can feel his erection. Astonishing—Ray, the hapless lover! They so seldom try just being nice to each other, these people. He licks the tear off my cheek. That too is filmed.