Surrender to Mr. X (29 page)

Down below the great brown bear lumbers in. Actually he is surprisingly fast and light on his feet. He wears a dark yellow silk shirt and a red belt, good against the white background. My sisters seem to display almost no color at all, with their short wheaten hair, pale skins and eyes. Mikhail's chin is black and stubbly, the mouth coarse. He seems to fill more space than he should, to have an unreasonable intensity of being. He exudes charisma. You can see the balls and the penis as he moves, heavy and hairy. He has the energy that comes with power. Power translates into star quality on screen. He stares down at Alison for a while. His eyes move to Katharine. He prefers Katharine. He rips the dress off her, one long tear from neck to hem. Perhaps the dresses were not so badly chosen after all. Cheap material rips easily.

Both girls stare upward, helpless, give little moans of terror. They are acting: I know they are. They have the family blood in them. They will ask for copies of the film when this is over, along with their money. I am pretty sure Mikhail has no idea he's on film. I doubt that Alden and Ray will have the courage to release it—
though they might be tempted to simply transpose another head onto the oligarch's body. Even so—a wart, a birthmark, a tattoo? He might get to know, and nasty sudden deaths could happen. That would clean up the world a bit.

Or perhaps he just won't care: why should he? Truly powerful men do not care what others think. He might take it as a compliment; distribute the footage through his footballs clubs around the world. Look at me, the man who de-flowered two English virgins, me, the most powerful man in the world! Who is to say which way it will go?

Alison's turn to lose her dress. She squeals so he thrusts it in her mouth. The penis has risen now, pushing the yellow silk out in front of him. It seems enormous. The girls' eyes move to look: they do now seem a little alarmed, but they lie there; thoughts of Ovid and Catullus no doubt make them brave. I look, but keep my expression impassive. Waste of good film, up here. Down there it's different.

Now Mikhail lies between the twins. He has to separate them to do so. It's like dividing two chopsticks. They don't like that. But for this occasion they do have to acknowledge they are two people, not one. He mounts Katharine, and with one casual giant hand lifting her buttocks in the air, pushes his whole body forward to enter her. She cries out: I try not to wince. He withdraws and now it's Alison's turn. Another cry from her and then he's back to Katharine. He has
great energy and no subtlety. The deed is done. There is not much more to it. It was their purity he required: the exhalation of some virtue into the air for him to breathe in and be revitalized.

He elaborates a little by flopping the twins on their fronts and pulling them onto their knees and going in there, first this one, then that one, to make his mark. He leaves their mouths alone. Sissy stuff. The climax is as noisy and triumphant as ever I have heard: it is inside Katharine. They will fake a money shot. It's all over within ten minutes, but the technicians can easily sort that out, simply repeat frames.

The twins are deflowered at their own request. They will be able to pay for the next couple of years' tuition. Ovid will, or will not, spring to life for them. They are not impetuous: they are not likely to follow in their big sister's footsteps along the paths trodden by the Vocational Girl. I hope not. I can see that path runs far too near the banks of the canal, the edge of railway line, the fringe of the motorway, where just a push can be the end of you. There are too many truly nasty people about. Alden is one of them.

At least he never came in me, out of me, or indeed at all. There's an odd comfort in that. Someone presses a cloth over my nose and mouth from behind. I refuse to struggle or flail about, because I can still hear a camera whirring. Fuck 'em! I breathe deep and pass out. There were no brothers to come to the rescue. Why would there be?

I
AM STRETCHED OUT ON
the blue sofa. Ray is working at his easel. He moves calmly and efficiently. The hysterical paralysis is over, it seems. No doubt I and the twins have contributed in some way to this release of artistic energy. A kind of double-echo, fed-back voyeurism, unwanted on a sound track, but stimulating enough in real life.

I have a very bad headache, but I am alive. I had thought perhaps I was in a snuff movie. But I am a movie star: why would they want to get rid of the star? The girls who star, briefly, in snuff movies don't have my looks or graces. They're the ones nobody wants, the rejects of society and their own families. The deformed, the poor, the sulky and sullen. They get snuffed, tortured or mishandled to death for the sake of some good footage, a source of excitement to others. Do these girls get a look in, in Ray's portrait of the universe? Probably not. His is an up-market view, as much a rarified luxury as is Alden's
Thelemy
—
The Murmur of Eternity
, designed to appeal to those so satiated by extremes of technology they no longer listen out for the real music of the spheres: a baby, a bird, rain on the window.

This morning the eternal murmur, in its newest—perhaps final—version, is playing in my ears as I wake. It sounds slightly less dire: the pain in my head has subsided into the background and there's a kind of airy trill running through it; I reckon it has breathed in, modified, and is now breathing out, the twins' first act of love. Whatever it is has healed Ray's hand. I wish I was happy for him, but I am not.

So Alden reckons that with me the film stops before the death of the body. Thank you, Alden. For me humiliation is enough: death of the spirit. Show me my past, laugh at me, trample my ideals, make yourself some money. Oh, I am humiliated all right. You have seen to that. I am well and truly paid out for being Joan. If that was Max at the sound console last night, if Max moonlights as a film technician, why then Alden had played me for a fool from the beginning. And yes, that was the tennis player, that was young Hasan: famous and notorious cocks without faces: try to guess who?

The suites on the fourth floor of the Olivier are fitted out with cameras. Who's that fool of a girl, thinking she is doing good? None other than the Olivier's tame whore, Vanessa. Alden's victory over me is complete.

“Better now?” Ray, discovering that I am awake. His world has not come to an end, just mine. He's
excited, thrilled, and triumphant. He's working again! His normally tentative voice is strong and deep, as if a great surge of new testosterone now flooded through his bloodstream.

“Vanessa,” he says. “I've so nearly finished! A couple more strokes and I'm free of the whole thing! The magnetic forces stream from Betelgeuse to Sirius, the wild horses of human passion will be harnessed to the chariot of the Spiritual Sun.”

His hand is better, and his spirits, but his head has taken a turn for the worse. I was glad. They could lock him up too. After the police had finished with Alden.

“Ah, you lovely, lovely thing,” he said, “I read rebellion in your face. Look into my eyes.”

I close mine quickly but it's too late.

Snapshots. Ray is fucking me on the sofa. On and on, the long mean thing goes in and in, and on, as if each thwarted attempt in his past now had to be made up for. (Which comes first, I wonder, the painting or the sex: which begins it all, the body or the mind?') He pauses from time to time to congratulate me. “You're so wonderful, Vanessa, I can never get enough of you. Like the sea, always different.” And so forth; then it resumes.

I remember how Crowley's woman Leah died from exhaustion, from fucking a goat. Or was it the goat that died? They won't let Ray die, that's for sure: his one last thin black line must be put upon canvas, so the next Leap Through The Universe can be taken. He's
saving completion up, like the icing on a cake. On and on. They're all such silly little boys: if only they were not so dangerous.

Snapshot. I am in my room. I am being dressed and anointed. A wreath of flowers, tried for size. A long white muslin gown. I recognize my two attendants as the bride's mother and sister from the Black Mass scenario. They've abandoned the wreath and have my hair in rollers. The sister is heating the hair with a dryer. I wish she wouldn't do that: it is so bad for the hair. She burns my scalp. I tug my head away; she slaps me. I am amongst enemies. Don't react, don't react. The cameras are everywhere: in this room too. What have they watched, what have they seen? I get a little extra burn on purpose from the sister, but don't protest. What these women need is a good straightforward fuck: if they had proper normal sex lives they wouldn't be so malicious. Audrey's problem too, most likely: the sex is too fancy. Clive? How can you get a straight fuck from a man in pointed gold silk slippers and mauve pantaloons?

Snapshot. The mirror room, but not a mirror in sight. It's been draped with purple velvet hangings. They look old and dusty to me, fit to make you sneeze. The Lukas bed has been contracted to the size and shape of an altar, but lying north to south. There's a pentagram painted on the floor around it. Now how are they going to get that off? I've spent so many hours cleaning this floor.

I don't like the look of any of this. There are black candles everywhere, stuck into cheap wrought-iron stands, flaking rust. Alden has always saved on props. Should Satan think he deserves better, he will probably take his revenge. Good.

Guests mill around as at any cocktail party: some are naked, dressed in black latex, or wear witchy gowns with symbols on them. I recognize faces: cameramen, actors in the scenarios. Audrey, Clive. Ray, all in black, grinning. There's a tall blond, naked: it's Daisy, Lady O, her husband Toby, withered and old, also with no clothes, and shriveled little testicles, by her side. Dr. Wondle, Loki. Bernie, Naz. No Robert, thank God no Robert. If I ever get out of this I will warn him.

Is everyone in this? All, all Thelemites? The Southgate breakaway branch, the renegades too? I think that's Matilda Weiss, with her stiff botoxed face that still bears the lines of complaint. Can't be! Was that a setup too? The bride's mother leads me and puts my hand in Alden's.

Alden's torso is naked other than a goat's head medallion hanging round his neck and a blackish red cloth draped over his knees with an upside down cross badly embroidered on it. Where does one buy such things? I remember a lawsuit. A store in Minneapolis selling love potions: “The law is not made for experts but to protect the public, that vast multitude which includes the ignorant, the unthinking and the credulous, who, in making purchases, do not stop to analyze but too often
are governed by appearances and general impressions.” Aronberg et al. v. Federal Trade Commission, 132 F.2d 165. There's a voice in my head. It's the simpleton: Joan, “Stop it, stop it, Vanessa. Think! Help us!” Yes, I can see this is fairly drastic. You don't have to be a virgin to be a sacrifice. The dying gurgle of the Scarlet Whore of Babylon would fill a sound-track just as nicely.

Only Lam, behind Alden's chair, is dressed in white. Polo neck. It seems as indecent to think about his lower half as it does about Alden's. Just a seam at hip level, like a plastic doll.

Alden says to me, “Just one last note from you, Vanessa. One last chord for me.” As I thought. “But you were brilliant,” he adds. “So brilliant! I owe you a great deal.”

It is never nice to be spoken of in the past tense. The smell of incense is heavy. Background music turns in to foreground music.
Thelemy, Lust for Life
, the latest unheard, virgin version, renamed and re-mixed, bass-heavy and throbbing. He'll have to work some more on it before tomorrow's opening, or nobody's going to buy anything: they'll just want to go home. But the guests are singing along to it, chanting. It occurs to me they've practiced.

I see the picture from above. The wreathed girl being led to the altar. Who can she be? I remember now, she's the Hotel Olivier's tame whore Vanessa, the one who told herself and everyone she was “doing good.” That sex was a fine and lovely delight, a gift
from the Almighty, the Good God. I mount the steps. I lie upon the altar. A bright, bright spotlight shines down on me. Scissors cut my gown down the middle; the fabric is draped around me. It won't be enough to sop up the blood, or perhaps they mean to drink it? Probably. I am naked on the altar, except for white silk shoes with high heels, the throwaway kind people wear for suburban weddings. Yes, this time it is a snuff movie. It's my real death that is required: my sacrificial blood to feed the home computers of the world, to keep Google and the porn sites sated.

Alden raises the knife. He is not going to stab. He will slit my throat. The life expectancy of a porn star is not great at the best of times. “Shemhaforash,” he intones. “So God spoke when he created the world.”

The Scarlet Woman, the Whore of Babylon, butchered to make a Thelemite holiday! It will be necrophilia. The last resort. He will burst within me, finally, explode. Dead, I will not destroy him. I cannot laugh at him or even with him. I can never compare him with anyone else, and find him wanting. I will not be Vanessa, I will not be Joan, I will be nothing: he will come, the consummation devoutly to be wished.

The knife is poised, long handled, well-balanced, the easier for a man in a wheel-chair to wield. The knife's familiar. Normally it hangs from a magnet in the Crabtree kitchen. Alden has found his solution. He will complete his composition as my power moves into
him: he feels no guilt: my body—and soul-death will be immortalized in his music: I am the muse, he the artist. Alden will blaze through the firmament as Liber AL, the star foretold, as revealed to poor mad Crowley over three consecutive lunchtimes in April 1904 by Aiwass, minister of Hoor-paar-kraat, the Sun God, whose kinsfolk are Lords of the Earth. Through the whore's death Alden will be made physically whole. Riches and powers unknown until now will be his. The whore must have accumulated a great deal of other people's life force during her days in the Divan; that no doubt was what she was doing there, accumulating the stuff. It's just now she has to hand her takings over. Probably Aiwass is in this dismal room right now. Light glints off the blade.