The Great Lover (43 page)

“
You see,” Dr. Thefarie looks up. “He dreamt it first, but without clearly understanding his dream, that
she
would become our god.”

*

The poetry of her memory has remade the world in her image. Her semiotry is everywhere, her icons, her light, her voice. In the wind, I can feel the softness of her breasts — through the world, the softness of her breath. Her locks ride in the cold sky; her fragrance rises from pools of rain; she is reflected in all golden things.

I sift through a heap of messages, most of them scrawled on receipts and other truant bits of paper, a few on letterhead, when sound draws me to the tunnel mouth, into the tunnel. I step down to the tunnel floor, and walk slowly, listening carefully. Silence. It is true night when all is still. In a dark spot, where no lights reach, I stop to listen more carefully. Silence. Still darkness.

Then a golden sound. “I am with you.”

*

The first time he saw her again, she was gliding into the tunnels. From somewhere she had acquired four attendants, all Immigrants whose flat tresses fall almost to the ground down their backs like rivers. They wear silk sheaths of many layers, with stiff sleeves and high collars, and their faces are completely covered with paint. This one has a red face/black eyes, this one blue/gold eyes, this one silver/green eyes, this one brown/grey eyes. Their garments match. They position themselves at the corners of an imaginary square around her.

She is dressed in a ghostly white gown that covers her completely, cuffs hanging far down over her hands like two big folds of soft vanilla ice cream. There’s a complicated headdress on top, mostly hidden behind a thick veil that hangs to her feet.

He shouts, he screams — he runs after her. She stops. She turns. Her face is hidden in a dark hollow behind the white veil. His body is becoming heavy. A palpable awe stops him.

“
I am with you.”

The voice sounds inside his head, and shakes his whole body like a massive throbbing. With a long whisper of silk the attendants move aside as the white figure comes toward him, and he watches it come, full of
terror
. A sleeve lifts. He closes his eyes, quaking. From the sleeve unfold her raw nerves, white tendrils, and they brush his face, tingling. He hears her sigh. A sound like a ghost escaping from a cave.

He wants her to take him in under her robe, and wrap him tightly in her shell of nerves.

She is nearly invisible in the distance, with her four attendants, vanishing into the gloom.

“
Can you see me?”

“
Yes. It’s wonderful!”

*

Pearl notices the Great Lover is staring fixedly at a tortoiseshell barrette, glowing in the sun on the windowsill.

“
That was hers?”

Nods.

“
She gave it to you?”

He shakes his head. “I found it.”

“
In the copse of trees, by the path?”

“
Yes.”

“
That was where it happened, wasn’t it?”

“
Yes.”

“
I’m sorry.”

“
Did John Brade tell you?”

“
Where it happened? Yes. Who else do I see?”

The Great Lover is in the hall when he stops, nearly doubles over so violently does the change come on him, and with effort he relaxes his face and closes his lips primly over tell-tale black teeth. His eyes swivel — he picks up a rusty pair of pruning shears from a heap of clutter by the wall and returns to Pearl’s room with them.

Keeping his head down and his lips close—

“
Oh I almost forgot — sharpen these for me will you?”

Pearl takes them curiously in his hands, glancing up at the Great Lover’s big back as he strides to the window stamping like a cossack.

“
You know, funny thing, I thought John Brade was with you when — that day in the park.”

Scraping as Pearl slides the rust from the shears with his fingers, pinches the edge back sharp again.

“
Oh, he was, but he’d left by then.”

“
He must have been pretty shaken up.”

“
Hmm. Well he saw it all happen, you know. He was right there, just frozen with fear, apparently... He feels just awful about it—”

“
Not as awful as he will feel.”

Pearl drops the shears looking up his hands clapped over his mouth, the window is open and he is alone.

Running himself, the Great Lover feels something flash by much faster and veer away toward the other side of the park at such velocity he can’t see what it was — that would be Pearl, running to warn John Brade. Cursing, the Great Lover bounds down into a culvert and kicks the corrugated pipe furiously, then paces up and down hands behind his back.

Presently a slopping sound, and a ruffling along the inside of the pipe. One of his gnomes appears in the mouth turning up his face all smiles.

“—
Hah?”

“
Where is John Brade?”

“
Train!”

“
Subway train?”

“
Subway!”

The Great Lover rushes into the nearest station and starts battering the mounted wall map with his fists and ramming it with his shoulder until the words “third person” are visible near the top.

“
John Brade — John Brade”

With a pop! a little hole opens in the map as though it had been shot from behind with an air gun, right on the downtown line.

John Brade on the downtown line switching to the express now it washes over him from behind like hot steam. The waves go on hitting him harder and harder as he turns to see; coming at him, down the tunnel, that face, hard set, blank and drawn taut with fury, streaking toward him.

Pearl Pearl why did he tell Pearl he had seen it happen—

You stood there and watched, the Great Lover is saying in his imagination.

I couldn’t help it!

You weren’t frozen you
hesitated
—

You—

You—

Pounding feet. Pounding feet.

His heart is pounding as he dashes up the stairs, runs across to the next platform where the express has already stopped. Mindlessly he shoves people aside and boards the train, starts making his way to the first car and through all the din of the station he can hear those footsteps pounding. The train is just standing there. The bell goes and the doors slide shut. They open again and John Brade throws a frantic look over his shoulder — they shut again, the train glides out of the station.

He’s up front now. The train is hurtling through the black. People are staring at him, he’s soaked with perspiration.

A crash behind him. Through the door he can see him, coming straight at him down the length of the third car, walking right through the upright poles sending them rebounding among the passengers in weirdly inaudible violence.

He’s at the door to the second car — he yanks it away so hard it jams, disappearing into its slot. He’s coming forward, down the length of the second car, ramming the poles aside without noticing, his eyes levelled on John Brade. The train is slowing — lights at the windows — stops — the doors roll open.

He’s at the door to this car. He wrenches it open without bothering with the latch in a spray of complaining lock parts the safety glass shatters as the door whips aside. But John Brade is already on the platform — the train has started moving again, taking the Great Lover away.

John Brade rushes for the exit he’s reeling with a cacophanous noise like an explosion rending the air all around him — he turns to his horror and sees the express half in and half out of the tunnel and now steadily inching backwards against spark-spraying wheels that scream against the rails. The first car appears and him with it protruding out a broken window pulling the train back with his hands — seeing John Brade he howls — scrambles through the window and John Brade is already pelting for the stairs.

The train groans forward and behind him pound those footsteps — he dashes up a flight of stairs and the banister rips free from the wall and nearly brains him — he runs like a frozen wind and garbage cans bits of benches a pay phone smash all around him hurtle past and batter tile from the walls. The voice isn’t calling for him any more.

Then, running down another platform, John Brade passes a red LED clock and something stirs in his mind. He knows the timetables by heart and he knows the trains are running on time just now. Off the platform he runs into the tunnels in the right direction almost sobbing now those feet drum the ground nearly upon him now he’d better be damned fast because the light is showing now nearly upon him he flings himself wildly over the tracks sprinting for the opposite wall like a crazy man. Only then does he stop and turn, to see the train blast by. When it has passed, there is no one on the other side of the tracks. It worked. It worked.

No time to rest, he gets to the next platform as quickly as he can and takes the next train. Sits exhausted by the door, staring dazedly at the floor, his hands squashed together in front of him... He doesn’t see the floor.

He sees him, standing in the tunnels where he managed to free himself from the train. It struck him and carried him along for several hundred yards, but he is standing. He is unhurt. Now he is coming. His forehead breaks one thin shell of smoke after another, staring, taut and drawn. His eyes are blank, dripping tears, speaking calm words that aren’t sentences that ring in his mind like screams — John Brade dead killed, killed.

Here’s the stop — he has only one plan left. Sick, his face splattered with sweat and tears, and barely able to walk, distraught, he enters the tunnels.

There’s a clear space here where cultists have set up makeshift shelters and a radio repeater. No one’s around. John Brade goes on searching — a light in one of the sheds, even some soft music. Dr. Thefarie is in there, stocking shelves with pill bottles.

John Brade shoots drunkenly through the door.

“
Help!” he squawks.

Dr. Thefarie has him by the arms. He thinks there’s something medically wrong.

“
You’ve got to protect me he’ll kill me—”

“
Kill you?”

“
The demon! He’ll kill me! He’s coming for me!”

“
Wh—?”

“
You have to protect me — promise me you’ll protect me!”

“
All right all right I promise — but what happ—”

“
He found out! He found—”

“
Found what out?”

“
I could have stopped Vera.”

“
Stopped her?” Dr. Thefarie’s voice grows quieter.

“
The day she died, I saw everything. I could have warned her but — I just froze, I just froze...”

A scrape — they both look up at once. Futsi is standing in the doorway, his eyes wide, staring at John Brade.

“
You—”

“
He has my protection,” Dr. Thefarie says, interposing himself. “I’ve promised—”

“
You just
froze?
Why did you freeze?!”

Futsi is stepping in eyes flaring and Dr. Thefarie steps forward.

“
No no,” he says, “Collect your—”

Futsi shoots forward throwing Dr. Thefarie to one side. John Brade, with a loud yelp, spins out of the way and out the door, running again.

“
You let her die?!”

Futsi doesn’t have his board, he’s running hard after John Brade. Deuteronôme has just come to the shed, snaps into the doorway with his hands in the jams. He lunges to the floor and takes Dr. Thefarie in his arms. The man’s face is slack, his eyes staring, blood streaming from his nose. Deuteronôme finds no pulse. He’s seen it before — a hard blow to the bridge of the nose, and bone fragments fly into the brain. There’s the blood on the edge of the cabinet, where he hit his face.

Deuteronôme rushes outside. Multiply is rolling along in his wake — waves over.

“
Futsi’s killed Dr. Thefarie, and he’s gone after Brade—”

“
Wha—?”

“
I don’t know, he’s gone mad, I don’t know.”

He points in the direction they took.

“
You must go close the station gate ahead, but stay on the far side, the street side, do you understand? Don’t get trapped inside the station — the Death is coming down the local tunnel.”