Celebrant (34 page)

deKlend is the first man she’s ever danced for in her own likeness.
He has no idea what is at stake for her, nor can he.

She said to herself, no disguise when I dance for him
—
no disguise.
He has to want
me
.

Makeup doesn’t count!

He raps at the door of her dressing room, but no one answers.
He looks around the place fruitlessly and leaves, dejected;
until he sights her standing in a doorway across the street, half veiled in shadow.
Crossing over to her he wonders if she isn’t an optical illusion.

She steps down to him smiling.
There’s a sable hat, like a fluffy black wreath, on her head, and a coat with a fur collar.
They walk together.
Her bottom is large, and her dress so snug around her waist, so that she might almost be her own figurehead.

Their booth is in the darkest corner.
She seats herself in the very heart of the shadow and remains perfectly still, watching him.
To deKlend, Phryne’s clear, acid, silent film face is like a cold projection unwavering in space.

Though she does not budge, she seems beside herself with excitement.
Her gaze seems to gather it up and throw it in coils about his shoulders.

How long has it been since I last sat with a man without being in disguise (she thinks)?
It is bizarre.

She feels completely exposed, and also her own face becoming a disguise.

Her red mouth makes (to him) fascinating quick shapes, writhing over black pearls.
From time to time a flickering pink tongue parts them.

She leans forward, and the beam of light that lights her spills over her collarbone’s wings and down onto her (to him) impossibly white bosom.
Desire sinks into him like dread.

There is conversing going on around them in an exchange of voices, now scooping his up and setting it down again, now picking hers up.

No, they aren’t speaking.
Phryne’s face, alone in the dark like the flame from a lamp, recedes from him.
It lifts, a little unsteadily, then continues to recede, dwindling before him.
An air of tragedy sings all around his ears.

He leans forward, resting his weight on his hands, which sink into the vinyl cushions.
She climbed in reverse over the back of the seat.
Her face seems to bore a tunnel into the blackness and he climbs in after her, over the seat and into the corner, into the tunnel.
He has to crawl.
The floor is curved and segmented, the air and stone are warm with a fragrant draft that slithers over him, her face drawing nearer again.

Phryne is just up ahead, crouched facing in his direction, with her gloved hands spreading their fingers on the stone.
His face draws near to hers.
As it does, hers begins to recede again.
His chin passes over her bare toes which brush his cheeks.
He follows her face up her body to the top and she draws his weight down onto her.
Glancing a moment around he sees a wan light far away.

I recognize this place (he thinks)
Corridors of the sky.

He kisses her face
—

Not my mouth!
(she says)

Her mouth is irresistibly beautiful.
He kisses very near it, and around her face.

Not my lips!

He presses his lips to hers and she returns his kiss rapturously.

No more!
(she says with a hoarse laugh)
No more!

She claps her hands to either side of his head firmly and directs it down.

Kiss me here!

Phryne holds his head to her throat.
Now she is driving it down into her bosom.
She seems to want to crush herself against his face, especially his eyes.
She is slipping and sliding in his arms, not evasively, but making adjustments, and he can sense she is shedding her garments.
His hands discover more and more of her flesh, so firm it’s nearly stiff and he realizes her whole body is taught as a bowstring strung on her skeleton.
But she’s not frightened
—
she’s embracing him.
Her legs embrace him.
Her breath embraces him, milky and so sweet it almost tangs.

Don’t look down!
(she whispers)
Look at my face!

Her dreamy, imploring, demanding face.

Squeezing together in a bundle deKlend’s desire for her becomes a panic, like tingling smoke filling his lungs so that his breath comes in hitches.

He kisses her mouth hungrily.

Don’t!
(she murmurs)

Don’t kiss!

She returns his kisses with a kind of despair, enjoying each more.

Don’t ki-iss
...
–iiss
...
–iisss
...
–i-iss
...

Shivers grab her and make the bells on her ankles jingle on high.
When he bats her fur hat off and pulls her head back by the braids she sings out in delight.

He follows her closely, almost crowding her.
She stops in the spacious foyer of the rooming house and divests herself of hat and coat, and he does the same with his blankets, hanging them on pegs.
She is still wearing her silk dress.

When she lowers her arms from the pegs, she remains where she is, again without moving, and looking at him.

He is tilted up to her, as if the floor sloped.

She brushes his cheek with the back of her right hand.

I after all can’t know anything (he thinks)

Now she rests her hands on his shoulders, turning her head slightly.
For the first time he notices the fetching (to him) crease there where her jaw folds into her neck.

I am going to roll out the pale dough of her (he thinks)

Her perfume grows stronger and keeps changing;
she is singing to him from some remote spot, far from here.
Repeating her name more correctly each time as he siphons each of her flat braids through his teeth, undoing them.
Each one buzzing like an antenna.
The magnetism of their two bodies lifts.
She invites him to go wading, opening a spacious landscape.
Her arousal at being rubbed sending her into a tonic and deKlend vigorously kneads her body in his hands.
A soft, alert steamroller of sleep, paddling the air, rolling her shoulders, because it’s time to go, to wade.

They’re making love.
Strike up the orchestra.
They are masters.
This is it.
This is all.

In Votu:

A handsome young man, a brunette, in a white shirt and vest, suspenders, trousers and boots.
He has a dhole with him, a sizeable one, sporting a red bandana covered in white markings around its burly neck.

He holds out a hand gathered together, fingers down, and jingles coins in it, smiling at Gina.
Gina swings her head from side to side no.
The man goes on jingling.
Suddenly the dhole takes one jump forward and barks with a sound like gunshots at close quarters and Gina is so surprised she freezes long enough for the man to traverse the distance with incredible speed and seize her up under one arm like an umbrella.

Pigeon girl shouts from a roof and the shout begins to travel, an alarm rising from one rooftop to another.
They know the little signs that distinguish whrounims from people.

The whrounim is already through a gate and outside the city, Gina crushed under that arm.

A whrounim streaking across the green, carrying Gina with it.
A figure in pursuit, hair like a windswept torch.

She is too far away to hear them.
Behind her, some of the girls are calling and watching, others run back inside the city walls for help, crying that a pilgrim has abducted a little girl.

The whrounim is a handsome man;
Gina it carries against its body in the crook of its right arm.

The whrounim glances back at Burn and seems to float away on an elastic landscape.
Burn speeds up, bringing her knees nearly to her chest and the gap between them contracts, Gina’s frightened face, jostled cries.
Burn pours it on and springs forward with her baton upraised in both hands brings it down as the whrounim turns, its legs dancing but the baton nevertheless clouts him along the side of his neck and right shoulder
—
watching from afar pigeon girls see the two of them disappear in a spiral of dust.
They’re just in among a jumble of boulders sparsely fringed by trees.

Gina slips out of her wrapper and wriggles naked in between the rocks.
The whrounim scrabbles after her and Burn, who had landed and been precipitated forward for many long paces turns and comes at it again with her baton, striking it with the end in the back of its knee.
The whrounim’s knee buckles and straightens and it turns to confront Burn throwing out its hand in a slap she barely evades.
He slaps and flings blows at her and she can only just stay away.

Tussling is visible from where girls are.

Buurrrrrrrnnnn
...
(they murmur)

Rabbit girls come out to see what’s going on, led by Kunty, who’s gotten wind of Gina’s abduction.

Gina is trying to pelt the whrounim with rocks without hitting Burn.
A rock flies at the whrounim’s head and with only a momentary glance it bats the rock at Gina with a backhand that’s almost casual.
The rock has a sharp end and as it grazes Gina’s arm, it slashes her skin.
Gina yelps and clutches her arm, then tips back and looks into her crimson hand in distress.
Her cry grabs Burn’s attention, she sees the blood on Gina’s arm and turns to ice.
The motionless arm, the hand, the shapeless red stain on her butter-colored skin, the pain and dismay on the face, and as she looks Burn gets colder and colder.
Air wafts past her cheek and she turns to the whrounim, who looms over her with an upraised hand to strike her.
Her whole body becomes as hard as a statue, and, snatching at its left arm with her free hand she kicks it in the face.
The whrounim staggers back whirling its arms to keep from falling.

The whrounim’s dhole bursts in among the rocks and corners Gina, barking explosively.
She cowers, retreating against a huge boulder in alarm.

Kunty follows eyes and fingers and in two or three bites takes in what’s happening.
She launches herself toward the rocks, her rag dress flapping around her haunches like a banner in a stiff gale.

If anyone beats a whrounim it has to be
me!
(is the tenor of her thoughts)

The Whrounim, half crouched, is moving in trying to get hold of Burn, like a man trying to catch a chicken.
Gina is crying and curling up against the rock when a sudden shadow blots out light and sound.
A big dark shape seems to be moving through the air, and something else, brownish and throbbing, with it.
Now something dropping, she can feel the weird suspense of it as the weight drops in the air.
A depraved chuckling swings just over her head.