Shriek: An Afterword (13 page)

The first thing Sybel said to me was, “You need me. New Art will soon be dead. The newest art will be whatever Janice Shriek decides it is. But you still need me.” Which made me laugh.

But I did need him. Sybel had explored every crooked mews in Ambergris. A courier for Hoegbotton, he also knew everyone. A member of the Nimblytod Tribes, he had an affinity for tree climbing that no one could match, and a cut-bark scent that clung to him as if it was his birthright. His only pride revolved around his knowledge of the streets, and his well-tended, lightweight boots, which had been given to him by his tribe when he had left for the city. He couldn’t have been more than eighteen years old when I met him for the first time.

“I’m quick and good,” he said, but did not specify good at what. “I’m eyes and ears and feet, but I’m not cheap,” he told me, and then named a large monthly fee.

I suggested a smaller amount, but added, “And you can stay at my apartment whenever you like.” After all, I was rarely there, except to catch up on three or four hours of sleep.

So it was that I acquired a roommate I rarely saw. I know he welcomed the refuge, though: his tumultuous love life meant he was continually getting kicked out of some woman’s bed.

I soon found I had chosen well. From careful observation at Hoegbotton—when he was not out all night cavorting with painters and novelists, sculptors and art critics—Sybel had learned how to run a business, something I never did well. Over time, he became my gallery assistant—on and off, because he had a habit of disappearing for several days at a time. But I was hardly punctual myself, and I loved his energy, so I always forgave him, no matter what his transgressions. I used to imagine that every once in a while, Sybel got the urge to return to his native forests, that he would fling off his clothes and climb into the welter of trees near the River Moth, soon happily singing as he leapt from tree to tree. But I’m sure his absences had more to do with women. {Actually, Sybel’s absences had a myriad of causes, because he led a myriad of lives, some of which he did not tell you about. I cannot remember exactly when I entered into one of those lives, but I do remember many a morning when, having emerged from yet another dank hole in the ground, grimy with dirt and sweat, I would stand exhausted by the banks of the River Moth beside a particular tree chosen in advance, inhabited by a certain member of the Nimblytod Tribe.

{Sybel always smiled down at me from that tree. I don’t know if he liked the dawn or liked the tree or liked me, but it always made me smile back, no matter how grim the context of my emergence.

{Our meetings had a practical purpose, though. The Nimblytod were renowned for their natural cures, using roots, bark, and berries. Sybel made a considerable amount of money on the side selling various remedies. You had to go to him, though, and that meant appearing at a particular tree by the riverbank at a particular time.

{For me, he did two things—sold me a tincture of ground bark and leaves for fatigue and, if I thought it was warranted, snuck a rejuvenating powder into your tea, Janice, to balance the effects of your debauchery.

{“If she ever found out, she’d be furious,” Sybel told me once.

{“Better that than dead,” I said.

{“She’s much stronger than you think,” Sybel said. “She can go on this way for a long time. So can I.” He was looking at me with some measure of amusement—me in my fungal shroud, giving every appearance of being on my last legs. Who was I to lecture anyone about these things?

{I just stared back at him and said, “I want my tincture. Where’s my tincture, tree man?”

{He never left that damned tree during any of my meetings with him there. Not once. Just tossed my cure down to me.}

Sirin and Sybel were the only men I didn’t sleep with during that time—for, suddenly, I had dozens of lovers. I slept with more men than there were paintings on the walls of my gallery, my nights a blurred fantasy of probing tongues, stroking hands, and hard cocks. I slept, quite a few times under the stars, with Lawrence, with John, with James, with Robert, with Luke, with Michael, with George…and the list goes on without me, intertwined with the sound of drums and a line of dancers. About as interesting, in retrospect, as Sabon’s necklace. I’m sure Duncan rolled his eyes behind my back whenever I mentioned a new “boyfriend,” since the longevity of my boyfriends was akin to that of a mayfly. I can hardly remember their names. {Since I was actually paying attention during that period, I remember them. There was the painter James Mallock, whom you called “old hairy back” and the sculptor Peter Greelin—too clutchy, you said; and the theater owner Thomas Strangell, who had trouble getting it up on opening nights; and so many more—“an endless parade of erotic follies,” as you used to typify it. In an odd sense, it didn’t bother me, Janice. At least you were enjoying yourself. I don’t know if you ever realized this, but before that you rarely seemed to enjoy yourself.}

I became addicted to anonymous sex, sex without love, sex as an act. I loved the feel of a man’s chest against my breasts, the quickening of his breath while inside me, the utterly sublime slide of skin against skin. Each encounter faded from memory more quickly than the last, so that I only became more ravenous. Before, I had been starving; now, I felt as if I could never be satiated.

In other words, I began, under the steady, orgasmic pressure of fame, to become someone totally different than I had been. Can I blame me? It felt marvelous. It felt so good I thought I would die from ecstasy. I was successful for the first time ever. For the first time ever, it was me, not Duncan, who commanded respect. If our father had been alive, he wouldn’t have ignored me—he couldn’t possibly have ignored me. {He never ignored you, Janice. No one ignored you. You just couldn’t see them looking at you, for some reason.}

And still I consumed and consumed and consumed. I could not stop. Even in the midst of such carnality, a part of me remained distant, as if I were pulling the strings of my own puppet. I used to walk through a crowd of people, most of whom I knew intimately, and feel utterly alone. I had written that letter to Duncan about the golden threads and yet forgotten everything it meant.

Even Sybel had his doubts about my philosophy of life, despite how perfectly it fit in with the New Art ideal. We’d sit on the steps leading into the courtyard at Trillian Square, eating fruit that Sybel had plucked from some trees near the River Moth.

“How do you think everything is going?” Sybel would ask, a typical way for him to start a conversation if concerned about me.

I’d reply, “Great! Wonderful! Spectacular! Did you see that new painting? The one by Sarah Sharp? And it only cost us half of what it should have. If I can sell it, there are twenty more where that one came from. And after that there will be twenty more from somewhere else and then before you know it another gallery and after that, who knows. And that reminds me, did you see the mention in the
Broadsheet
? You need to make sure the theater owners see that—free advertising for us both. We have to maximize any leverage we get.”

And I couldn’t. Stop. Talking. And Sybel would eat his fruit and sometimes he’d put his hand on my shoulder and he’d feel that I was trembling and that I couldn’t control it, and that touch would become a firmer grip, as if he were steadying me. Righting me.

Despite this, I didn’t stop. I refused to stop—I wanted to eat, drink, and screw the world. Each new party, each new artist, each new day, started the process anew. With what glittering light shall we drape the new morning? Starved for so long, I now became the Princess of Yes. I. Simply. Could. Not. Say. No.

It is because I could not say no, ironically enough, that I became involved in so many projects for Sirin at Hoegbotton Publishing—and inadvertently provided the catalyst for the clandestine {and erratic} second career of Duncan, my by then thirty-six-year-old brother.

This new secret history he would carry with him was only one of many. He already brought with him the labyrinth beneath the city. He already brought with him a secret understanding of his own books—and a personal history increasingly intertwined with Ambergris’. For Duncan had discarded his public self; he had returned to the facelessness from which he had come. {What freedom there can be in this! Unfettered from all of the distractions, finally and forever. Yes, I would long for, pine for, legitimate publication many times—but then I felt that first rush of anonymity after the last book went out of print, and with it fled any obligation to anything other than tracking the mystery of the gray caps.}

To become…someone else. I was learning that lesson every day as
Janice Shriek
remade herself into a hundred different images reflected from store windows and mirrors and the approving or disapproving expressions on other people’s faces. No longer jailed by expectations—of himself or anyone else. No longer anything but himself.

And yet, even then, he was beginning a slow slog back toward the printed page, from a different angle—a forced march with no true destination, just a series of way stations. At first, it must have seemed more of a trap than an opportunity….

Duncan could publish nothing with Hoegbotton, at least directly. The last meeting with his editor had ended with a violent shouting match and an overturned desk. {For the record, I had nothing against either my editor or the desk—especially the desk. My reaction to the rejection of what would have been my sixth book for Hoegbotton was a delayed reaction to L. Gaudy’s calm diatribe several years earlier in the offices of Frankwrithe & Lewden. All my editor at Hoegbotton said was, “I’m very sorry, Duncan, but we cannot take your latest book.” Yet I found myself doing what I should have done to Gaudy—trying to beat his silly, know-nothing head against a desk. I’m lucky he didn’t have me detained by Hoegbotton’s thugs.}

But as I have written, Hoegbotton offered me more opportunities than I could possibly accept, and I did not turn them down. With the result that I had no choice but to enlist Duncan’s help. Duncan took to it easily enough. {What choice did I have?} He was even eager for it. In fact, I can now reveal that the entire series of seventy-five travel pamphlets Hoegbotton published, one for each of the Southern Islands, was written by Duncan, not me. He would take my feverish, indifferent research, fortify it with his less-frenzied studies, and try to mimic my prose style, codified in many an art catalog:

Blah blah mumble mumble and so forth and so on yawn yawn.

Duncan also wrote, under the pseudonym “Darren Nysland,” the three-hundred-page
Hoegbotton Study of Native Birds
{which included my lovely, poetic entry on the plumed thrush hen}, still in print and often referenced by serious ornithologists. {As well it should be. It came into existence with excruciating slowness over many months. I soon wished a pox upon the entire avian clan. I never want to see another bird, unless eggwise, sunny-side up on my breakfast plate, or simmering in some sort of mint sauce.}

When, much later, I could not complete an essay on Martin Lake for the
Hoegbotton Guide to Ambergris,
Duncan did an admirable job of presenting my {crackpot, or at least unsupportable} ideas in good, solid prose. {And doing what you would not—protecting the identity of Lake’s real lover. I wonder if you noticed. That and the peculiar “messages” I embedded in the text.} As if this was not confused enough, my work sometimes appeared under pen names, and thus when this work was actually written by Duncan, he appeared in print twice removed from his words.

I loved helping Duncan in this way. I loved that his style and my style became entangled so that we could not between us tell where a Janice sentence began and a Duncan sentence ended. For this meant I was very nearly his equal. {No comment.}

It was during this period that the Spore of the Gray Cap first became his favorite haunt. He had begun to put on a little weight, to grow a mustache and beard, which suited him. He even began to smoke a pipe. Thus outfitted, he would spend a few hours a day at the Spore, sitting in the {this very} back room, where he could keep a friendly eye on the bar’s regulars and yet not have to speak to them. The bartenders loved him. Duncan never made a fuss, tipped well when he could, and added a sense of authentic eccentricity that the Spore needed. {These were not the only or even the primary reasons I spent so much time here. At some point, Janice, you will have to abandon suspense for a fully dissected chronology, will you not? Or perhaps I can help. It just so happens that below the back room of the Spore lies the easiest portal to the gray caps’ underground kingdom.}

This deception continued for over three years, to the continued glorification of Janice Shriek, with rarely even the warmth of reflected light for poor Duncan. Hoegbotton did pay very well, and I dutifully gave Duncan sometimes as much as three-fourths of our earnings. {H&S could afford to pay well—not only were its trading activities booming, but it had managed to make inroads into the Southern jungles, and to consolidate control of almost all trade entering Ambergris. This was no benevolent organization, but perhaps being an anonymous thrall was better than the alternative.}