Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me (30 page)

But this time it landed gently on the warmer weave of a saffron rug. “It all seems quite familiar,” spoke Blacknesse, reflecting.

Gnossos exhaled carefully, the way he might have tested for residual paregoric fumes, but he said nothing.

“Her and not yourself,” continued the painter. “That much ought to be clear.”

“Sure thing, man.”

“Do you know what I’m talking about? The monkey. It wanted to kill her.”

“So why not? All the signs were there.” The hair stood on the back of his neck and he smoothed it down, at the same time catching sight of an evil specter creeping from under the ocher muff, which turned out to be Apricot, the cat.

“Yet I fail to understand precisely why.”

“You’ve got company.”

“No. I mean, why her and not yourself?”

“Well
some
body knows, man, only don’t look at me, I’ve got my own problems. Here, Apricot, nice pussy.”

“It came from a cave?”

“Yeah, a cave, a hole, some kind of opening, you know, full of smells.”

“It seems so familiar.”

Apricot sniffed his feet and crawled away. “And cut out that familiar crap, all right? You’re scaring the shit out of me.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to.”

“Goddamned demons aren’t bad enough, the cops have to shag after my ass, cat won’t come near me . . . ”

“But there
is
danger, Gnossos.”

“Right, boogiemen all over the place. Now tell me something I don’t already know.” He covered his toes with the shawl. “Here, Apricot, c’mon, baby.”

“I’d be afraid too, if it’s any consolation.”

“You wouldn’t either, man, you’d know what it was all about. And why kill her, anyway? Where’d this kill business come out of? She’s got squat to do with that kind of shit. Straight old government major, no schemes, no anything. Here, Apricot, goddammit.”

“It always implies death, this breed of vision. You’ve felt its presence before, you know the odor, certainly.”

“But then why not me, man? Why all Kristin out of the blue? She’s really not
into
any of that scene. And what the hell’s the matter with this cat anyway, doesn’t he dig old buddies?”

“If it were you, the experience might have been paralyzing.”

“It wasn’t exactly a picnic in the country.”

“But you feel better now?”

“Less threatened, but no better. Liable to crap my corduroys any minute.”

Blacknesse again grinning slightly. “I was thinking of your apartment. You wouldn’t want to go back there tonight?”

He reconsidered the stink of ammonia and decomposition. “Man, I’m not going
near
it.”

“That’s not precisely what I meant—”

“Bet your ass. Goddamned feenies scratching around, looking for veins to eat. Might get their wires crossed, fall on the wrong throat.”

“I only wondered if there may have been something additional, even causal, lying around.”

“In the pad? To make the whole thing happen?”

“Something, say catalytic.”

Gnossos thought a moment and without much comprehensive scrutiny answered: “Your painting, maybe.” The figure cutting off its head, holding the severed self with a hesitant hand.

“A picture of mine?”

“I don’t know, I just said it without thinking. It fell on top of me the night Pamela came by with that knife.”

Blacknesse eased forward on the cobraskin stool. He slid one leg out of the full lotus and sighed wearily, pinching the ridge of his nose, rubbing his eyes. For a moment he considered the ping-pong ball, then looked up. “Who knows? Perhaps. One way or the other, you’ll be safer here tonight. We’ll put you in Kim’s room.”

“It’s okay with Beth? I mean, she digs what’s happened?”

“I told her only what you said on the phone, no specific details. I’m afraid it might upset her.”

“Hey, man, shit, this is my hangup. I’ll stay with Heff or someone. I just thought you’d be able to straighten my head a little—”

“Don’t be foolish, Gnossos, you could be in danger. If there’s any chance of error, you’re better off here. I have good reasons.”

He wrapped the shawl around his shoulders again and shuddered.

“Take this candle. I’ll look for a match. And would you trust a suggestion?”

“Maybe.”

Blacknesse was loosening his mandarin collar as he crossed the room. “Should it come back, for any reason at all, don’t turn away.”

“Again, man? It comes again, it can have me.”

“No, please, that would gain nothing. You must try to defy it, stand up and make it go back into the cave.”

“Shit, man, it’s after
her
, remember?”

“Just in case.”

“No promises, I’m liable to fake it. You got a shotgun, old butcher knife you’re not using?”

Blacknesse frowned and lit the candle. “Beth has probably put out extra blankets. If you need anything else, I’ll be down here in the studio.”

“It’s late, man, don’t you ever sleep?”

“There’s a book of photographs I want to look through.”

“I just don’t want to go up alone, man, it’s dark.”

“Not that dark, Gnossos. I told you you’ll be safe here.”

Thanks a lot. Maybe call Rosenbloom, get a Sten gun. Little flame-thrower action, whoosh, monkey-cinders.

In the middle of the night he woke up talking. Over and over again, first in sleep and then in semiconsciousness, he had been saying “fuck you” out loud. Not that the monkey had returned, because it hadn’t, but why take chances. Stakes are terminal, play your hand, lose, and zap, no more stakes. (When it made its move it had seen them both. Across the ether regions in their dovetailing mind’s eye, it had chosen her. Yet should it change its plan, he was lost, and Calvin’s final suggestion boiled protectively through his dreams.) So he found himself on his back, again soaking from head to foot, trying maledictions for defiance. It was Kim’s room, and the candle flame flickered on her twelve-year-old things, ivory figures, ballet shoes. She lay next to the window, blond hair cushioning her cheek, body covered by an Indian robe. Waking, he knew why he was there. Her company had a fragrance of Innocence.

“Fuck you,” he said anyway, arms around his shoulders. He watched the shadows fluttering on the wall, then gathered enough nerve to glance beneath the bed.

But no monkey came. He lifted his fist free of the covers and shook it at the window to court his fear. “Come on, how about it?” Suppose it did, though. Yellow, rabid fangs, cross-eyes, leathery blue face, gnarled claws searching for his jugular. He sat up in bed and shook both fists together, the blanket twisted around his chill-damp legs, bare feet sticking out. “Come on, if you’re coming. I’m right in the old sack, come get me.”

As it dawned on him that the challenge was one-sided he became exhilarated. He jumped up on the cot, waving his arms. But the blanket tangled around his ankles and he lost balance, teetered, and fell over sideways on the floor. He thrashed his fists wildly as he went down, and screamed, “Fuuuuck yoouuu!!”

“Gnossos,” came the voice.

He jerked around, the blanket now over his head like a cowl, and remembered he was naked. He peeked through a fold and found Kim crouched on her bed, knees up, holding the Indian robe for protection. She was watching him in sleepy surprise. He had an appalling erection.

“Is that you, Gnossos?”

He covered himself quickly but not quickly enough. Her eyes had time to fix the object forever in her mind. “Go back to sleep, man, it’s only me.”

“Daddy said you’d come, I remember now. Were you dreaming? Why are you on the floor?”

“Shh, go to sleep, see you in the morning. You’re really having a nightmare, bad for your nerves. One, two, three, count sheep, four, five—” He got up and made for the door.

“Where are you going?”

“Seven, eight—little walk, moonlight exercise, gather mushrooms, it’s all right. Go to sleep now, all a bad dream, nine, ten . . . ” He picked up his paisley shawl and tied it around him like a Sramana’s loincloth, prancing into the hall on goat feet, a finger to his lips for silence, doing the antic hay.

Outside the moon was full. It gave him a feeling of partial possession as he leered at the stars with his imaginary horns. He wove his way through the somber Blacknesse swamp, flicking fingertips at the dangling masks, hissing at purple and vermilion stumps, muttering nonsense oaths and allegiances, spitting curses at whatever phantoms might be hovering over his spine like monster malarial mosquitoes.

At the stream he could go no further, and he sat down to tear up handfuls of grass and watch the water. Calvin had charmed the bees and the kingfishers here, had rolled his eyes and reiterated for Gnossos his surprisingly fundamental ethos.

What kind of ethos, man?

A simple kind.

So tell me.

You’ll listen?

I’ll try is all.

So I could dwell in alternative forms.

Forms, man?

Objects.

How?

I had to learn. If a bird flew past, a heron or a crane, I could take it within me, fly over rivers, dive for its food, suffer its delicate pain. If a stone waited in the desert, I could enter its fiber, take the heat of the sun, cool in the dawn, feel the wind etch my features, collapse into dust, mingle with the wind. If a cobra lay killed, I could enter his flesh, decay, have the skin shed from my pulp, be eaten by flies, turn back to the earth.

That’s pretty spooky, man.

In those same ways, my soul would be troubled. You relieve the mind of the burden of image, Gnossos. You put aside experience. Guilt or fear. Even hunger or love. Can you see that, perhaps?

Maybe, man, I don’t know. Keep talking.

You lose what you are, you go into other things. Flesh, marble, skin. Rope, hair, and bone. There’s the ethos.

I don’t understand.

Rebirth.

Ah.

It’s a simple one. It only takes the telling.

“No.”

“What?”

“It’s wrong.”

He turned his attention from the gurgle of the stream and found Beth standing behind him, barefoot, in a sari. Her body was clearly outlined against the night but her features were obscure and the wind blew her hair across her eyes.

“It’s wrong that you’re here. You’ll do yourself harm.”

“What are you doing, Beth? It’s the middle of the night. Did you hear me get up?” He was shaking from the cold and was suddenly uneasy that he’d been followed without his knowledge. She lifted a cautious finger for answer
and pointed in the direction of the house. There was a furious tension implicit in the gesture.

“Nothing,” she told him. “Not even the suspicion of a meaningful answer will he give you. Nothing, Gnossos.”

Gone mad. Raving under the moon. “Who? What time is it? What are you walking around for, anyway, dressed like that?”

She looked at his loincloth and laughed sarcastically. “So pathetically blind.”

“What blind?”

“About Calvin, you little fool. My Brahmin specter of a husband.”

The wind tossed the hair over her cheeks, her mouth, but she made no effort to arrange it. Her sari blew back and her legs gleamed quickly in the vague light. When it happened, Gnossos could not keep from looking. They were the color of talcum. “What specter?” he asked, to cover the glance. “What’s going on?”

“You’re opening a wound in your side.”

“Hey please, Beth, go away, all right? I’m trying to get into a little something.”

“Oh damn him,” she whispered cruelly, closing her eyes. “Just goddamn him, anyway.”

He rubbed the prickly flesh on his thighs. “What’s up, man, I’m just trying to hang around by the water here, figure things out.”

“You’ll kill yourself, that’s what.”

“What kill? Everybody’s talking kill all of a sudden. Listen, there’s a maniac monkey cruising around tonight, case you haven’t heard.”

She shook her hair back over a shoulder and dropped to her knees beside him; then suddenly, impulsively, with the same quick gesture Grün had used to grab his arm, she took his head between her hands and stared directly into his eyes. For a moment there was no sound but the wind and the murmur of the stream.

“Why are you here?” came the question. “I mean now, sitting on this bank, why? Tell me.”

Don’t lie. “I don’t know.”

“Yes you do.”

“To get into something, then.”

“What?”

Don’t lie. “Forms. Objects, creatures—”

“Stone,” she interrupted, mocking. “Herons and fish.”

He took her hands away gently, but with gnawing anger. “Hell, man, you asked me, right?”

“Calvin’s ethos.”

“Yeah. So what?”

Again she held him, moving her fingers instead of remaining so intensely still, pushing his hair back over his ears. “It drives you away, Gnossos. It forces you away from what you are.”

He was embarrassed but he let it go. “Look, Beth, really, man, it’s the middle—”

“Listen to me. You can’t stay wherever it takes you, you have to come back.”

“Leave me alone, will you?”

“You have to come back, are you even listening?”

He blushed furiously, “Yeah I’m listening.” Then, after a suitable silence, “Say it again.”

“Go into as many pebbles or artichokes as you choose, but you have to return to what you are. The torment is inside you to begin with.”

“
Tor
ment?”

“He’s sitting up all night looking through pictures of monkeys, did you know that, did he tell you?”

“Oh wow, man—”

“But goddammit, Gnossos, he’s simply not going to find yours because, if you’ll pardon the intrusion on your solidarity, you’ve made it yourself!”

“It’s after Kristin, hey, it ain’t after me. It’s her goddamned demon as much as mine.”

“You’ve made it yourself, Gnossos, you,” still holding him. “He’ll never find it in occult compilations.”

“What are you putting him down for, what the hell’s this all about? You’re supposed to be into the same things, he’s your goddamned husband!”

“I’m sick of him,” she hissed in a forced whisper. “I’m sick to death of him.” Her hand pulled his own into her sari, into the fold that had blown suddenly open in the wind. She pulled it over her belly, down under her navel, down where she had something to say.