The Wretch of the Sun, page 24
The hooded form simply pants, sagging up and down on her knees. Inside the hood her breath is mingling with the sweat on her face and she feels herself begin to stifle.
“I didn’t lead them there!” she whinnies.
“You didn’t?” The vocoder voice chimes like snow in a glass.
The hood wobbles erratically from side to side, “No! You know I wouldn’t! Penny—”
She breaks off, unable to find a bearable way to follow her affectionate nickname for her sister. The head sinks miserably.
“But you did lead them there.”
“They followed me,” the sack moans at the floor. She sags onto her knees and goes limp. She sobs. After a long time, the light swings away. Her aching cheeks start cooling through the fabric of the hood. She can hear the rustle of their clothing—someone reaching for her and then the hood is snatched from her head and she looks up into Trudy’s eyes. Other students stand around her in a ring. One holds the lamp. One holds the distorter. One holds a recorder. Trudy looks at her, face blank. Dr. Cottataris’s hands are loosed, and she lets them drop to the floor. The students leave, in silence. Dr. Cottataris lets her head fall, dripping into the hood lying there before her.
(.)
“What do you think it was?”
“Bugs,” S. says. “That’s all it could be.”
“But they already know we never use the phone.”
“Room bugs,” T. says raising and lowering his chin.
Now they know how much has been given away, how Dr. Cottataris was manipulated, and how she would exchange information with her unknown contacts on slips inserted into library books. It’s extremely difficult keeping up a routine that they now know exposes them to observation and danger, but better to know when you’re being watched than not. Like the sorcerer’s apprentice some call up more than they can handle by that name, love, and then he has himself to become the sorcerer, return and quell—”we were only playing . . . !”
The interrogation of Dr. Cottataris was recorded. Copies of this recording and the photographs of her meeting at the train station are made and circulated. The committees link up with other non-student groups. Numbers matter for all sorts of reasons, but most of all so they can become less vulnerable in their secrecy: the more secrets, the more vulnerable to infiltration and exposure. The secret is no secrets, the secret is velocity. Move too swiftly to be interfered with or so slowly you aren’t noticed until it’s too late. Or pneumatically, with the backing of reinforcements, so you cannot be compressed. Dr. Cottataris resigns and leaves town. The school is shrinking. U., sitting alone in his squat, lifts his eyes from Celada’s notes and watches absently a square of sunlight on the wall—the square starts spinning in place.
Trudy sits at her kitchen table, her chin in her hand, humming “mares eat oats.” She stops when she sees the house, right there on the other side of the table. At first it seems full size and sitting there, like a guest seated opposite, but now it’s tiny, no bigger than a salt shaker.
(Now take it easy—don’t grab it . . . they’re asleep, they’ve forgotten: now be a good teacher to them, teach them sorry to disappoint you the great lover peels out of his clothes his markings and his color and vaults with high caracols along the conference table kicking cameras splintering into faces colorless flame of a human naked body the only way to be showered in splendor microphones wilt on their booms a reporter’s wiry scalp snaps off entire and rolls along the floor like a helmet the conferees are flung back in a mass by a colossal wand of air while bodyguards and security officers and secret agents and army men billow toward the center like gorillas pawing out their guns and truncheons knives shockers acid sprays blackjacks microwavers sniper rifles sorry to disappoint you tranquilizer darts beanbag launchers and sonic disrupters and this embodiment of scandal in the nightmare of the noonday sun snaps his whip black as midnight and scatters them in crescents of searing pain he twirls round once forming a column and as they crash in toward him in a wild tide he soars over their heads in a trembling volute of air the softer it is the stronger it is—now down he comes among the panicking delegates momentarily divided from their gallant protectors by the heavy conference table their collective kicking has overturned the whip snares a leg here flipping the delegate high into the rafters she plummets to the ground her guards lunging away from beneath her she crashes into the steel chairs and on the stage they are all airborne or lying prone the whip snakes in everywhere it slashes it shatters the air is crackling with squeals of agony—a javelin of colorless nakedness breaks the ground in the midst of the guards and police and firemen and army men and navy men and body guards and pilots and detectives and agents and postmen and fire fighters and ambulance attendants and truant officers the scurrying flacks and familiars and assistants and go-betweens all the people stuck in the middle just at the moment when the hair-thin very terminator of his whip plucks the throng like a plectrum plucks the harp blasting apart pairs of eyes pop-pop-pop-pop—wails and pain and sorrow—in from the doors the windows the backstage come people wading into the confusion. They beat and loot the participants, destroying the symbols on the stage, the heaps of records leap up in flames.) If only, she says, feeling abject.
. . . Back to the swimming school, the interminable inexplicable unredeemable experiment. Capturing the isolaton, the particle that knots itself together when the relation between general and particular is at maximum tension. A knot of water, cinching into itself. The knot isn’t going to be spectacular; it’s made of nothing more celebrated than apparent, modest time. Gravity ensleeves body to body . . . sun and earth and moon all swinging unrequitedly around each other, longing and hanging, reading, aware as he reads that beyond the uplifted book’s edge squares of sunlight on white linoleum glide sideways by degrees with the rotation of the earth around the sun, even ghosts can see this, a sailing rootless feeling, consciousness of bottomless space all around, below the ground . . . deadly and enticing in a backless strapless dressless dress . . . this is how Celada burns Sanglade.
gargling of a distant helicopter whenever and only when he spoke, mocking interjection of a car horn, just a brief bleat of noise like a sudden feint, to trip him up—distract him as he gropes toward a realization: feel it all around him, fusion light on weeds, on the dusty lots, on cracked alleys and their trashes. Across the street the campanile strums its lips with one finger, a laborious, all-quarter-note affair—when did they start that old nuisance up again?
W. watches the sun squares—the sun never sets. The sun walks among them now. Celada, I’m right. Going back again, to the swimming school, and the house is there—not where it was, but right behind the swimming school, and towering over it.
ground, the hills, covered in black stubble, leafless trees, like black hose . . . the flat brown coastal islands, with their unnaturally straight troughs of water and the pale rust that lines the runnels, clouds matted against the ground almost indistinct from the snow . . . the frozen lakes like tea with poison milk . . . the scarlike lines like razor nicks in the forests . . . the odd band of light past the cloud shadow . . . russet land with frozen turquoise lakes all filmed with skeins of grey smokes—land west of that is corrugated, like terra cotta, purple and gray . . . lakes like cataracted eyes . . . past the Roseate Lamina, static electricity everywhere, covers sparking in the dark. Rank greenhouse or conservatory strongly smelling of acrid earth, at once musty and sour, with the saccharine odor of plants rotting to crackling brown syrup. Drift off . . . the house suddenly seems to be towering and it blazes with unreal intensity . . . an infinite shaft an attic as deep as the sky—and the next moment with a snap it’s all just as it seemed to be before—reputed to be haunted, especially by a lady—his desire coagulates into an impression, senses of the absent woman— You are not unique enough to vanish altogether. You endure in those common things. Tremble on the outskirts of being a character, all the spaces still relaxed and unlabelled just let them be, and listen, she’ll talk to you in the apertures, Medusa, saying—“It is like wine.”
Trudy wakes up.
There is a small cafeteria on the campus, that is, a cafe with a little steam table installed, of course, by William, and the teachers gather there and eat together, many of them, at a large circular table in the corner. Trudy sits with them, sits in the very corner at a full table, explaining about Dr. Cottataris. Her role in extracting the confession she does not mention.
“You know about the informers?”
“Of course,” says Dr. Isochronal, chewing ham and eggs. “Everyone does.”
“There are some students,” she says, because she doesn’t like to bring up the committees, “who are concerned that there will be reprisals.”
Trudy is scanning the faces, all turned toward her, many chewing, gradually swallowing. Mugs rise and fall, and now hold still.
“Yes,” Dr. Curtis says quietly. He is the professor who speaks like an old-fashioned television announcer.
“The faculty needs to take precautions. Also, Professor Houseman should have some kind of special protection—”
She breaks off as a rustle goes around the table.
“Oh, I don’t think they’ll bother her!”
“What do you mean?” Trudy asks.
Dr. Curtis snorts once, silently.
“You didn’t know? She’s a ghost.”
“Miss Houseman’s a ghost?”
He smiles at her.
Suddenly they all are smiling at her.
.)
Years ago, the school was dying. No one wanted to take responsibility for what seemed to be a doomed institution, and so the lot of school president fell to William Carlsroja, of all people. Shambling drunk, unshaven, hair hanging down over his oily brow, William was a disgrace. One arm over another professor’s shoulder, pawing at him with his free hand, weaving down the street on his way to give a garbled anatomy lecture to two wooden-faced students.
One day, William had to retrieve some medical books from Sanglade. They weren’t there, someone had them out, no someone had returned them, down goes a student into the basement to retrieve them from the to-shelve shelf and it takes a while. William begins to get interested in the house around him; it is beguiling that way, and so he doesn’t simply leave when he gets his books. At the time, the Houseman papers were still not fully catalogued and organized—here they are, in stacks. Here are photographs. Pick up one. Pick up another. Put one down, pick up anoth—pick that last one back up. The woman in the picture . . . her name on the reverse . . . Adonica Houseman. He dreams of her that night, standing in that room, where she had once stood. She was Houseman’s cousin, a young widow, who kept the house for him in his absence.
“Drinking’s my vice.”
Put out the bottle and she appears, sea and sun at her back beat steel sea, beast ocean, gray mineral sunlight smooth shiny heavily freckled face tapering jaw mouth sensual and severe
Miss Adonica continued to live in Sanglade for a time after Clare moved in. One evening, she received a wire informing her that her brother . . . “skating accident—fell through ice—seriously ill—maybe pneumonia—asking for you.” She made arrangements to go to him at once. Clare Houseman was away at the time. Miss Adonica went alone. Carrying only a small bag, her trunk to be packed for her and sent along, she goes to the train station, waits by herself on the platform in winter night, her breath steaming. Stars coruscate in a sky with no moon. The air is clear as glycerine and aches in the lungs and throat.
Soldiers are boarding a train. “The war, you know.” One of them slips on the ice near the platform edge; what good fortune for him he didn’t fall. He simply dropped his gun which, being loaded, went off. Embarrassed, he gathers it up and skips onto the train, grinning stupidly, heads jerk and turn, sway, crane . . . nothing wrong. An accident. The shot seems to vibrate forever in this endlessly empty air, dissolving into nothing. He will be sternly dressed down by his commander for failing to report a defective safety catch. But, in the gulf of shadow between two lights on the platform’s far end, Miss Adonica is lying in the dark, clutching her thigh, gasping in astonishment. Dazed, she keeps trying to rise. The dark hem of her dress seems to spread, then a little stream emerges from it. The bullet has blown open her femoral artery. Miss Adonica drags herself toward the lights, calling for help in a shrinking voice. The cold air seems to whisper through her head. She has mistaken the lights of the remote town for the lights of the station, and wastes her ebbing strength pulling herself in the wrong direction. She climbs onto a snow drift with the vague idea it is the threshold of the station house, wondering why no one helps her, and her trembling arms give way. The snow numbs one side of her face, and the air chills the other. She bleeds to death in the snow, and William sees her in the room, moving about easily, to and fro. Nothing happens, so to speak, in the dream; but she moves easily, to and fro, around the room, for a long time, and she is aware of him, watching her like a ghost. She doesn’t mind being watched. Or rather she doesn’t mind being watched by William.
William learns how she died, reads her surviving letters, revisits her picture, puts flowers on her grave. He dreams about her. She begins to make a mistake. She begins to make a very important mistake. She forgets something very important. William wakes in the morning with an elusive, nameless feeling, that frisks about him like a nest of cools flames. He drops his coffee cup on the floor and starts at the noise. Got coffee on his pants, had to change them—what’s wrong? Distracted just distracted but not by anything, just an absence of mind. And there’s excitement. About what? Approaching the school down Valle Viejo-Espejo down Valle Spiritu-Sancti he is washed over with nervous anticipation, and hurries. The floorboards in the reception area gleam like polished stone; the rug’s colors are new: they glow like embers. A secretary is actually sitting at the desk, which is, actually, cleared off and tidy, and she’s actually typing something.
The door to the main office is ajar, and in the narrow strip between door and jam he can see someone—someone is working at the desk in the main office. That is, the office of the head of the school, his office. He walks to the door, places his hand on the panels and pushes it open. She is writing with her fountain pen in a diagonal of light from the windows behind her, and now raising Miss Houseman’s head, she returns his gaze levelly, pen nib lifted a bit off the page. Miss Houseman in full color, shadowy against the light, returns his gaze calmly, a little sardonically. She screws the top back onto the pen and sets it down sideways on the blotter. Fingertips on the desk she stands. William’s right hand floats up into hers. Her grip is firm, his fingers press into the fine brawn of her hand. His posture straightens. He seems to gain height. Their hands part, hers indicating the shelves against the wall to his left—now clean and in order.
“I find these records aren’t entirely complete. Do you know where the more recent ones are, William?”
When she speaks his name he bristles out in gooseflesh.
“Yes, Miss Houseman,” he says feeling bliss.
“Bring them to me, will you? . . . In order?”
He bows a little, and turns on the spot.
“Close the door on the way out, William?”
“Yes, Miss Houseman.”
He closes the door gently. His renovation and the school’s kept pace with each other, and in no time both of them were in perfect working order.
( “ )
Death without peace, and snow freshens the cold, cruel money; calm school bus in the morning coffee and comics, then from there the modelsuburb is an alien landscape with trains on high trestles, streaming highways, space station buildings. The street sparkles through the curtain gap like a sapphire blazing with inflated and transparent gleams. Think of all there is to want to say, clogging the head up like a jammed typewriter, so not even one of them can be, like she is suddenly waist-deep in a flock of children zipping by so not one can be singled out—only here a tousled head, there a red and white smile. Failure to lie is the only way to offend the worldly. Proclaim, like a dead man, like a necromantic spirit. A watching by the corpse, there with it—watch by a dead body because it’s so intolerable otherwise, that watching, which stays there just by the body. Someone has to occupy the watching; the mourner is there for the illusion that the watching is his or hers. The affectless watching of the house, as it relentlessly drew outlines around every movement—a place of fear, but worse is that dismal feeling, a despair—fear of despair—the hopelessness at the base of the stairs in particular, looking up at all those steps, that absorbed light like a grave. But at other times the despair was different, as if the darkness became volatile with an alien light behind it, frighteningly new; it seemed at any moment liable to become, in a flash, thrill, intense excitement. But is it lifting up only to let drop into something, like a blinding procedure that lasts forever? Did the previous occupants of the house feel it, and if they did, didn’t they overcome it or get through it? It was as if despair had a secret, and smiled in defiance of anyone being able to guess it, which wouldn’t mean anything if it weren’t possible to guess it somehow.
Her breath dispels his stories, and he has left his room. Just walking back, a wave of fatigue pulls at Trudy and she has to sit down a moment on a park bench. A fly buzzes up and lands on the bench not far from her hand. Is it a living fly, the ghost of a fly, or is there no difference? Some children are playing ball nearby. There’s a big, loud girl among them who keeps changing the ‘rules’ of the game. Every play ends in a dispute about the so-called rules, and her voice rampages, trampling the others. She rules, that’s the rules. Is it a ball-game or a bickering-game? There is laughter sometimes, but is the residual fun that good? The game has a momentum of its own that drags them back into it, even she, the bigmouth, doesn’t think why. Trudy wonders how come one of the others doesn’t just go home, imagines her shrilling after him, and the departing one saying, transformed in her fantasy into a morally resplendent orphan from a melodrama, “If winning means so much to you—here, you win. But don’t think you’ve won the game, because there is no game here. Unless you consider it a game to argue with an intransigent bully. I, would not. So don’t think you have proven your superior skill in kick-ball, when you have merely shown the greater uhpresumption.” She rubs her face. You have to bree fee—to be free to come and go, into the rulation area roulette, or out again as you see fits. Through the revolving door. Just so you know what’s expected you know.
