Lucia's Masks (21 page)
“Who, Lola?”
“The one with the stone eye.” The old woman trembles and points to her right eye.
“Ouch! You’re hurting me, little chick.” Bird Girl removes her hand from Lola’s in alarm.
“It’s not him, is it? Tell me, little chick. Tell me.”
“No,” Bird Girl says. I must stay calm, she tells herself. “It’s some men who are doctors, who are warning us we have to leave. There is a poison in the air coming our way.”
Lola barely considers this remark before she begins shaking her head.
“Can’t go,” she declares.
“You have to, Lola. You’ll die if you stay. I can’t let you stay.”
“Can’t leave Charlie.”
“Who is Charlie, Lola?” Is the old lady in one of her wandering states, Bird Girl wonders. And if this is the case, the man with the stone eye might be just a coincidence, a nightmare figure that has clung to Lola’s waking consciousness.
Lola looks at Bird Girl as if she is being deliberately obtuse. “Charlie was my helpmeet. He was my lover once, little chick, but that was long ago. Haven’t I told you about Charlie?”
“But where is he, Lola? Why haven’t we seen him?”
Lola screws up her eyes. Her mouth twists round the words: “Dead . . . dead and buried. Behind the house. We had a garden there once, little chick, with green beans and hollyhocks. I buried him there. As best I could. Took my last strength from me.”
Lola sinks back into her pillow as if newly exhausted from the effort of burying Charlie.
Bird Girl was beginning to feel frantic. Surely this couldn’t all be happening at once — like a melodrama run amok, disaster piled on disaster, revelation on revelation.
Grimoire here. She shudders. And Charlie. And doctors masquerading as rats. Poison gas balls. I am spinning, she thinks. I must try to focus. I must speak with Lucia. She will help me make Lola see she must leave. But all the while, Bird Girl’s mind is wincing away from the question she knows she must ask.
“How did Charlie die, Lola?”
Tears begin to course down Lola’s face. “Tortured,” she says. “By the barbarian with the stone eye and the orange hair. Out in the barn. Tortured.
“Couldn’t save him. Couldn’t.”
Bird Girl embraces the old lady tenderly. She feels Lola’s tears wet her own cheeks and chin.
“He said he was looking for a little whore. Wouldn’t believe we hadn’t seen her.
“I hope he never found her,” Lola adds. “I hope he’s sitting in Hell right now, with a burning ember up his ass.
“We tried to keep him out of the house with the hay, little chick. It was Charlie’s idea. He noticed the brute’s one good eye streaming and how he was fighting for breath whenever he was near the old hay bales we kept outside. So we brought them right into the front room.
“After a couple of days, we thought he’d gone. So Charlie went out to check. I had to listen to his screams, little chick.
“Poor Charlie. Oh my poor, poor Charlie. But how could I help him? How, little chick?”
Lola rocks on the bed and begins plucking at the little hair she has.
“Oh, Lola, Lola. There was nothing you could do. Nothing. He was an evil, evil man.” Bird Girl strokes the old lady’s fingers in the soothing way that usually brings her comfort.
“Don’t think about it, Lola. Think about the day you wore your apricot sheath instead.”
“Apricot,” Lola repeats, smiling. She lies back like a good child, and closes her eyes.
Bird Girl speeds down the stairs just in time to hear the god-man deliver the same information he had given her. She observes her companions’ successive states of disbelief, wariness, and final capitulation as they all observe the evidence — the blood-orange gas ball which now looks to her denser, and far more deadly.
“And something else,” the doctor adds sternly, “it seems there is a new kind of red rain, which is not only more caustic but also highly flammable. Given the right conditions — and we are not entirely sure what these are, but certainly dry air and acid soil — the red rain will combust. In the worst cases, and this has already happened, the burning rain creates a gigantic fireball. These have the impact of an exploding meteor. They consume everything in their path, including human flesh and bone.
“If the red rain begins,” he continues, “take cover immediately. The area through which you will be travelling most fortunately has a network of caves. Keep watch for these openings in case you need to take shelter. Inside the rock, you will be protected.”
No one says a word. We are all too stunned to speak, thinks Bird Girl. Poison gas. Potential fireballs. How meagre are their chances for survival?
“Oh, we surely don’t have to leave our little haven?” Candace wails.
“If you stay, you’ll be a vegetable before nightfall,” one of the masked Rat-Men informs her. His voice is muffled under his snout, but Bird Girl is sure she detects a note of pleasure in his baleful utterance. She wonders why three of the doctors have kept their masks on. It occurs to her that the reason is vanity; that they might not be as striking as their leader.
Chandelier is examining the rat mask which the god-man has put on the kitchen table. “Like the old plague doctors,” he says. Chandelier speaks so rarely, Bird Girl always listens carefully when he does. This observation, however, is lost on her.
“That’s right, kid,” responds the doctor. “Except that the medieval plague doctors’ masks were made to look like birds, with protruding beaks. Who knows birds these days? But we all know rats.
“See?” he says, showing them all the inside of his mask. “The snout’s the right shape for a built-in gas mask. And so far, we’re safe from the EYE because the regime’s controllers don’t believe we exist. They think we’re nightmare figures; figments of the imagination; manifestations of people’s dread.”
He slips off his wide belt, and unrolls it. On the inner band are minuscule pockets, each containing tiny vials and packages of disposable syringes.
“We carry antidotes for specific plague and gas attacks,” he explains, buckling his saviour-belt back in place. “But we have nothing for this nerve gas coming your way, crude as it is.
“We do know that the gas originated at one of the EYE’s own plants. Whether it was released in error or deliberately, we are in the dark.”
He frowns. “The EYE has developed a particular interest in the profit-making potential of the so-called cleansing sciences as a new focus of their ‘innovative industries.’ My colleagues and I do what we can to help those unfortunate enough to get in the way of their inhumane experiments.
“It is little enough,” he adds quietly, as if admitting a complex truth to himself.
“You have fifty minutes,” he presses them. “Please make haste.”
“Due north?” asks the Outpacer.
“Due north,” the lovely doctor confirms.
Already Bird Girl is imagining Lola’s weight on her back, preparing herself for the burden she must carry. Surely she and Lucia can together persuade the old woman to co-operate? “Where is Lucia?” she asks.
“Here,” comes the answer. Bird Girl is surprised to see Lucia emerge from the cramped space between the sink and the pantry. Had she been crouching down? Was she ill?
The Rat-Man’s leader moves toward Lucia, who wards him off with a gesture that strikes Bird Girl as discourteous.
“You’ve warned us, and we thank you,” Lucia tells him. “Now save yourselves.”
The doctor nods curtly before donning his mask. Then he and his companions are gone.
“We must hurry,” the Outpacer urges them.
“What if they’re lying?” Candace whines. “What if they want the house for themselves?”
They all ignore her. And for once, she keeps silent.
Lucia begins filling their water containers from the pump. Harry makes himself ready by stretching one limb at a time, while Chandelier helps him to balance.
“How will we transport the old woman?” the Outpacer asks.
“I will carry her on my back,” Bird Girl says. The Outpacer nods, and Bird Girl is close enough to hear him sigh. They both know why he cannot offer to help; that if he carries her, Lola will try to unmask him and so undo his dignity and her own.
“I will spell you off,” says the generous Lucia.
Candace is already at the door, straw hat on her head. “You’re both fools,” she declares. “She will slow you terribly.”
Bird Girl promptly turns around, and sticks out her tongue at Candace, before running up the stairs with Lucia to get Lola ready. When she tells Lucia Lola’s story about Charlie and Grimoire, Lucia responds with a composure and strength on which Bird Girl feeds greedily.
“We will walk on together with courage,” Lucia says, “and watch out for each other.”
D
ESPITE THE DANGERS WE FACE
, I am so relieved to have left that squalid house. Relieved too, not to have to look out each day at the little wood where I did the most despicable thing I have ever done.
Did any of the others hear my cry, I wonder. The sound I made was born of a remorse that eats me to the bone. I ache to tell someone exactly what happened and so ease my burden in some small way. Bird Girl is too young to hear. Old Harry has cares enough of his own. As for the Outpacer, I cannot confess my sin to a person whose face is hidden from me.
If only Candace were more empathetic, or less judgmental, I might consider telling her. But Candace, alas, is Candace. I would probably fare better speaking to a tin can.
I will walk strongly. I will help Bird Girl carry Lola. I will think only of the haste we must make if we are to survive.
Chapter Ten
Candace Sees a Bird Fall
C
ANDACE IS IN A FURY.
H
ER
anger is like boiling fat. She can feel its searing-hot bubbles erupting under her skin, making her itch intolerably. She clomps rather than walks, the last in the line. She glowers at every back and bottom ahead of her in the procession.
Most especially, she glowers at ancient Lola’s buttocks, their bony protrusions all too obvious through the taut cloth of her thin calico skirt. The way Lola clings to Bird Girl’s back reminds Candace of some disgusting antediluvian spider. She shudders at the thought of this spider’s bite.
Lola is just a parasite feeding on Bird Girl’s innocent host. Surely it was obvious the old woman had more resources than she was choosing to reveal? How else had she survived before they stumbled upon the stone house? Candace had seen this kind of manipulation before. The old fastened on the young, feeding off their energy and life force. They had many cunning ways to keep firm hold on their youthful prey. Deliberately eliciting pity was a standard device — pity for their wobbling chins and slobber; for their palsied hands and buckling knees; for their failing faculties and apparently constant pain. Some of the old used tale-telling to keep the young in thrall: fantastic concoctions of times past when political monsters were slain before they could thrive and multiply, when the act of physical love was free and safe and transporting, and beauteous youth lay down together amidst flowers and wafting incense.
This was how the decrepit Lola had managed to sink her fangs into the gullible Bird Girl. Candace is sure of it. She has overheard enough of the woman’s filthy prattle to grasp the prurient subject matter. Sex and nakedness and shameless display. Sex and nakedness and reckless self-indulgence. No wonder Lola is such a dirty, shrivelled, incapacitated hag. One reaps what one sows.
There is a way to age with dignity and grace, Candace is certain. She has twined this conviction into the goal she had so painstakingly mind-woven before departing (she does not like to use the phrase “running away from”) the City. Her new community will nurture people of all ages. The elderly will be able to radiate their particular warmth and light. She will develop special workshops to draw out the best of their wisdom and experience. Every member, whatever their season of life, will benefit from the teachings of the aged.
She often pictures her resplendent community from above, as if she were an angelic presence floating over it. From this airy perspective, she sees its individual members quietly thriving, intent on the hour’s set task. She floats over her imagined fellowship at breakfast and at supper, and sees them all joined in contented communion. She surveys her own workshop, a wide, high, spotless room with windows on every side. Here, she will practise her discipline and perfect her gifts, gluing and sealing the fractures and rifts that are inevitable in any group’s interactions. She will map minds, absolve petty wrongs, and illuminate the correct, healthy channels for breathing, being, doing, forgiving, and creating. Her aerial view reveals her as the vibrant pulsing heart of a community she sustained by selfless love and sterling example. She treasures this metaphor which gives her much solace in the current bumpy passage of her life. I am, she tells herself repeatedly, a vibrant, beating heart. My potential to do good is unbounded.
She is beginning to understand that she has fallen in with a group who fails to appreciate all she has to offer. Of course, she is disappointed. More — she is hurt. From Lucia and the young Bird Girl, the two in the group she encountered first, she had expected much more. She had anticipated, if not full-bodied friendship, then at least respect and willing support of her efforts to help the group bond.
“Talk to me,” she had encouraged each and every one of them, with the exception of disgusting Old Harry. What was the old adage about not casting your pearls before swine? And swine Old Harry certainly was. “Talk to me,” she invited them. “Open the channels,” she prompted. “Let me be your very heart.” She willed this silent wish to enter their consciousness, and flower there.
Her beneficent overtures have met with youthful contempt (Bird Girl), indifference and irritation (Lucia), an apparently bemused toleration (the Outpacer), and absolute vacancy (the largely mute Chandelier).
Candace knows she had undermined herself badly by exposing her own vulnerability the morning Lucia discovered the stone house. She had offered them the binding tool of a group song. Old Harry had mocked her. The Outpacer had usurped her place. And then . . . what happened exactly? She had felt, rather than heard, a whisper creep up the back of her neck like a clammy worm. Or was it a look they seemed to transmit one to the other (although she could not actually see the Outpacer’s expression) so that five cold-eyed beings confronted her?