Monument Maker, page 44
I ventured to tell my young companion none of this. To him I maintained my new front of reprobate terror. I hollered and
I screamed and I forced unpronounceable words from my deformed mouth. This, in combination with my looks, and the tales of me feasting on the thin neck of sly Malodie, afforded us our own area in the stables as well as small favours from the more obsequious and superstitious prisoners. In this way I established the time and the leisure to continue my story relatively unmolested.
You mentioned the big reveal, the young man prompted me. Yes, I said, yes. In the weeks leading up to it I often walked on my own around the island, the island of the plague, following secret paths to elaborate grottoes with wooden steps leading up to clifftop views, or cutting my way through groves of fleshy flora that felt alive, to me, in a way that was more animal than plant, it’s hard to relate, the heads of the flowers seemed to pulse with life, the greens were the chthonic greens of the insides and of the beginnings of life, the foliage would press in on you as if possessed of independent life, as if it would bend to sample your bouquet as you passed.
I investigated the small harbour I had spied on the opposite shore and found a motley collection of small boats tied up there, bobbing silently in the tide, motorboats for a speedy escape, I told myself, and discovered a pair of large metal doors set into the face of the rocks that I surmised led to a tunnel that ran beneath the island and that connected to the sealed basement of the manor. I sat on a rock amongst the outbuildings, which were actually rusting metal shipping containers, and spent most of that afternoon, and the afternoons to come, smoking silently, staring at the sea, thinking thoughts, making predictions, though, of course, I cannot now know what those predictions might be because, as I have taken pains to explain to you, it is impossible to tell the future through a prophecy of the future, you can’t pile the futures on, is what I am trying to say, because that would simply result in confusion. But I can sketch for you my feelings at that moment, as they are contemporary with my story.
I felt a surge of power running through my body. The future was a source of almost sexual anticipation. I wanted to mount it and tame it and dominate it. The nicotine lit me up inside. I pictured the parting of the sea as the parting of the legs of a woman as the surrendering of the future. At this moment I had forgotten about the dead that plagued me, the dead that waited for me on the opposite shore, as if it is ever truly possible to live without the dead, walled in by all of the dead that have passed and all of the dead that are to come, but as I sat there the prospect of my new face had lightened life, if only for a season, and I pictured myself as a seducer, and the seal on the future no longer the bars of a prison cell but a huge smacker on the lips, as I puckered my own, again and again, as I brought my lips down, strong, on my own fingers, as I developed an appetite, once more, and I pictured future events as swooning before me, the man who was gifted a second chance, the man who disappeared and came back anew, the man who sidestepped fate, was it possible, was it truly possible, no, it was impossible, I was impossible, which is why I imagined all the time that was yet to come as trembling in fear and excitation at a new possibility, one that had never been reckoned with before.
I saw the future from two standpoints, then, from the stables in the jail and from the mournful harbour towards the east of the island, and in both I pictured the havoc I would cause. The new man, I told myself—for that is how, for a season, I saw myself—will appear as an aberration, as a disease, as a modern in a village in the rainforest. He will infect the future and cause it to chaos.
Even now, in my wartime confinement, I felt the force of the future, travelling back, and I ranted and I raved and I drooled and I fought and I pillaged and I stole. I attacked those near me in a fury, a fury that sent me to isolation and then returned in a greater fury still. I ran rackets, pitiful rackets, we were in jail during the war, after all, but rackets all the same, rackets that made enough noise to establish me as the ruler of an improvised fiefdom based around the terror of my appearance and the instability of my moods, a fiefdom based around the trade of tobacco and of rusting razor blades and of extra portions and of crumpled pin-ups and of carbolic soap and access too, access to the oracle, access to The Oddity that I was now and which I was yet to become and in the possibilities of which I took a new-found delight.
You mentioned the big reveal, the young man prompted me again. Yes, I said, yes. We returned to the theatre with its cluster of telescopes, its wall of lights and film projectors, its wood and brass and silver, its gleaming surfaces, its abandoned trolleys and its tools, its smell of ammonia, its white tiles, its unearthly glow, its position between the swimming pool, which we had never used and I had never seen lit up since the day we arrived, and the menagerie, which every night took its place in my dreams, and they wheeled me once again in front of the projectors and the lights and they sat me up straight, Mariella took my hand, and they started the film projector, they wanted to capture the moment, it was a historic moment, the apex, The Surgeon said, though of what he wasn’t clear, and then The Weasel appeared, this time not dressed as a monkey, it wasn’t necessary, apparently, and The Surgeon stood back and asked me if I was ready and I said yes, yes I was, but curiously I didn’t feel the sense of moment that I had anticipated, which of course, if you think about it, makes some kind of sad sense, that anticipation and the moment should be mutually exclusive, anticipation cannot live in the moment, it always looks ahead, and it’s true to say that I was already somewhere else, literally and in my mind, I wasn’t there, and I thought about the picture of Donald, the picture that my new face had been based on, and I recalled his eyes, the eyes of a high diver, and The Weasel handed me a mirror and began to unwind the bandages from my head, and first I saw the forehead, unremarkable, you might think, but no, you would be wrong because the thing that was remarkable about the forehead, when seen alone, without the accompaniment of the eye socket and the nose and the lips, was its remarkable lack of wrinkles, it was completely smooth, baby-smooth, I thought, there were no markings at all, no spots or freckles or blemishes, and I thought to myself, it’s a blank slate I’ve been given, and then the eyes, oh Lord the eyes, there they were, eyes that weren’t deep, necessarily, eyes that were shallow, perhaps, but eyes that projected, eyes that went out, eyes that were capable of penetrating the depths, the eyes of a high diver, with these eyes, I said to myself, I can see through walls, and then the nose, it wouldn’t have been my first choice, I’ll be honest, but it had to go with the eyes, small, a little bulbous at the end, and there, right at the tip, the first blemish, a single brown freckle, that was artistic, I thought to myself, if a little precocious, and the cheeks, well, they were worried cheeks, cheeks that had been worried hollow but without any of the actual worry, pre-worried cheeks, sunken, there to cast a shadow on the rest of the face, to balance the button nose and the eyes searching out, hollowed cheeks and the philtrum, oh yes, now that was created with me in mind, exaggerated, with sharp lines, one of the first things I’ll do is I’ll lick that, I said to myself, I’ll tongue my own philtrum, I thought, with delight, and then the lips, okay, I might have gone a little plumper but again, I could see the logic, plump lips with that nose and those eyes, well, it would have been too cute, thin lips are hard-boiled, I told myself, thin lips are a black-and-white movie, I said, and of course, if I looked to the left I could see my face, on the projector, in a real black-and-white movie, this is a monochrome face, I said to myself, true enough, and then the jawline, again, I would have exaggerated it a little bit but it’s testament to the artistry of The Surgeon that it’s not all cliché, I’ll give him that, besides, I thought, it’s nothing that some stubble won’t cure, and then of course it crossed my mind whether my face could even grow hair, could it sweat, even, could it bruise in a fight, how would my tears be, I was flooded with questions like that, but then I noticed the eyebrows, I had completely passed them by, they were thick and bushy, slightly curved, okay, there’s the proof, I said to myself, though of course they could be implants, which would mean they would never have to be trimmed, and then the chin, a little sharp compared to the jawline but it’s these kinds of combinations, these intricacies, that are the work of God, traditionally, and The Surgeon seemed well versed, I’ll give him that, but then I realised, with a start, that the face on the projector wasn’t moving at all, that it was completely still, and then, with a shock, I realised that it was Donald’s face on the projector that I had mistaken for my own, but then, with a greater start still, I realised that the face in the mirror was exactly that, that The Surgeon had remodelled Donald’s face perfectly on top of my own, that I was literally wearing another man’s face, and for a second, a split second, but nevertheless, I felt the briefest collision between anticipation and moment, the tiniest frisson as their paths crossed and I felt what I had never expected to feel, that truly I was wearing a mask, that I was undercover, that yes, I really was in a black-and-white movie, and when Mariella hugged me and started to cry she called me Donald, Donald, she said, and she wept and I held her and I said nothing, I’m not Donald, I thought to myself, but I said nothing, I held her as if I was, as if I was her old love come back to life in a black-and-white movie, and The Surgeon too wiped a tear from his eye and marvelled at what he had done and The Weasel too, he embraced The Surgeon, and I found out about my own tears because they rolled down my cheek as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Of course there was still some bruising around my face, some swelling here and there, and I still had my own hair, which didn’t prove to be a problem as it was as dark as Donald’s, as dark as a sparrow’s, Mariella said, and she insisted on combing it into his style, that same cold parting that he had in the photograph, and of course I assented, what would be the point of refusing a final detail at this stage, and The Surgeon advised me to take it easy, to indulge in rest and recuperation in order to let my face set, that was the word he used, set, but when a man is presenting a new face to the world he is inexhaustible, his appetite is insatiable, for food, for sex and for encounters, and so once more I spent the days circuiting the island, offering up my face to the curious flora, awed at my own reflection in the water as I swam in the mournful harbour on the other side of the island, my reflection, I repeated it softly to myself beneath my breath, my reflection, my reflection, and the salt water made it sting and contract, like a newborn held tight to its father, and of course there was the incredible sex, the death-defying sex, that’s what it was for both of us, in our own way, mine in that I no longer had the sense of being observed, of being covertly watched, that the third component I had been somehow aware of had been internalised and now we made love as three, which is the perfect number for sex, and for the sea, as it turns out, that’s something else I read in Donald’s library, which was really, to all intents and purposes, my own library now, that the sea has the number three for certain thinkers, certain initiates, which is what I now considered myself, an initiate of the supreme mysteries incarnate, and when Mariella and I made love we possessed the three, incarnated the three, and we bit and tore at each other in the process and then of course there were the meals, the endless meals on the patio, the meat that I held fast behind my lips and tore apart with renewed vigour, the wine that I never drooled, the cigarettes that I smoked between courses, I was drunk, many nights I was drunk, sodden drunk, and had to be carried up to my room, and I would insist that we visit the menagerie on the way, which as I have said was lit up with a light like undersea, and I saw my reflection in the glass of the animals, my reflection, I would repeat softly to myself, my reflection and my tears would come again on cue and I would feel a great sense of relief and I would be led up to my bed where I would laugh maniacally to myself on my back as Mariella undressed at the foot of the bed and the cycle would begin all over again with the three of us wrapped in each other’s arms, struggling to be inside each other, and in the morning the ocean and the great sky and the feel of salt around my face, setting the mask, sealing me in.
This is when the second thing happened, I told the boy. We were seated in our corner of the stables, given a wide berth by the rest of the inmates. Some crooked constellation was visible through the broken wood of the ceiling. What’s the second thing? the boy asked me. I inherited Donald Visconti’s memories, I told him.
It was after lunch on the island, on the kind of glorious afternoon when it was almost impossible to prise the sea and the sky from the horizon. I sat out on the patio, lit a cigarette and sent a long arc of spit through the air, one of my favourite things I liked to do with my new lips. The Surgeon laid a card folder on the table, looked to Mariella, then back at me. I bring great tidings, he said, and he winked and pushed the folder towards me. Inside was a sheaf of typed pages with Donald Visconti’s name on the top. What is this? I asked them both. It’s your story, The Surgeon said, if you want it. Mariella looked at me expectantly. I scanned the first sentence. “In the event of the success of our experiment,” it read, “I am providing these notes in order that you or that I or that the two of us should be better able to orient ourselves in our new role.” I closed the folder and took a long, silent draw on my cigarette. This whole thing was planned, wasn’t it? I said to Mariella. But by whom? The Surgeon interjected. By you, I replied, by her, I nodded. That was the word I used, her, in order to wound her. We helped facilitate it, that is true, The Surgeon responded. But like I said, it’s your story, if you want it. I picked up the folder, pushed my chair back from the table and walked away without a word.
What follows is what I read and reread and then read again, in awe, and in disbelief.
“I want to attempt to trace the genesis of this notion, this fascination that took me quite early on in life and that indeed paralleled the experience or dreams or a combination of the two more properly of a diverse group of people, people who were to all outward appearances geographically and culturally unconnected, in the early years of the 1930s, a period that I will hereafter refer to, for reasons that will soon become transparent, as the dying years of the 1930s.
“As a young man I shed many tears over the prospect of death, over the deaths of my mother and father and the children all around me. At night, as something in my heart was unlocked by the familiar sounds drifting up the stairs, the sound of the grill sliding into the cooker, the smell of toasted bread and scones, the low murmur of the wireless, the soft padding footsteps, the sound of distant conversation, all of this conspired to rouse me from the sanctuary of my bed and to appear in front of my bemused, long-suffering parents, from whom I would demand to know the true secret of death and whether, in my own precocious way, it was irrevocable, or that there was anything to be done. They would lift me up and assure me that death was something that should be no concern of mine, that surely its time would come, but that time was so far off as to cast not even the slightest shadow on the quiet comfort of my childhood. Our lives, or at least a section of them, would remain impregnable to the storms of time. This all changed rapidly and quite suddenly with the death of George, our tortoise, who passed frozen on the spot in the garden where the soft of his insides had been eaten away by a worm, and which inadvertently—or, more probably, in full knowledge—provided the perfect metaphor for what did away with my father, soon after, on a sudden Sunday afternoon, and my mother, too, who followed him to the grave not six months later, as well as for the wretched condition of myself thereafter, whose worm-eaten heart continued to put up a semblance of effort even as it was riddled with holes and sad tunnels and cast over with dark shadows that worked to frustrate all of its best efforts.
“My father was well known locally and served his time both in the military and in local government, and later in his life, though God knows the forties aren’t later in any man’s life, no matter the span, he became the kind of local dignitary who attends dinners at film festivals and whom old women accost in the street in order to have their photograph taken. According to local custom, a custom that goes back centuries, albeit with a big gap in the middle when no one paid it any heed whatsoever, a death mask was made of my father as he lay on his dying bed, a mask that was then displayed, alongside the supposed great and good, in the town hall, high on the wall in the tiled reception area so that it appeared to me, with the worm I had inherited in my heart, as if centuries of the once-living were forever attempting to break the bonds of the tomb.
“In my heart-rotten state, and especially after the death knell of our happy escape from time sounded with the subsequent death of my mother, God rest her soul, I became obsessed with the black arts, thanks to a local library that presented a great stock of diabolism, fortune telling, mesmerism, Tarot and demonology. I also became very interested in the classical arts, especially sculpture, and I am sure there are many amateur psychologists who deal in the workings of the life and death urges who could uncover a sublimated longing to rescue my father from the marble tomb that held him high in the tiled reception area of the town hall. However, as I have intimated, my subject matter was more classical, though assuredly of a necromantic bent, as I resurrected dark gods and uncovered fair nymphs from mute monoliths of stone.
