Memoranda (14 page)

The description of this experiment suddenly made me a staunch supporter of Science. I lay there submissively and stared at the bronze effigy of Silencio, remembering Below's enthusiasm for the creature. It was no wonder that he be immortalized, so to speak, in the Master's memory palace. My memory went back to Doralice and the nights I had spent there on the porch of Harrow's Inn, drinking Rose Ear Sweet and listening to the primate play his miniature piano. Another strange island in another place and time. I was considering the fact that islands seemed to be an important symbol in the story of my own life when Anotine began to skate the tip of her nail down across my palm in a circular motion. The sensation both tickled and satisfied me, an exquisite torture far more agreeable than the metallic chair.

“Something is changing me, Cley. I can feel it inside,” she whispered. “I'm not sure if it is the death of the island or your arrival here, but it is as if I am rousing from some long waking sleep.”

“I felt it today, myself,” I said, “when I returned from my journey to the surface of the ocean.”

“Perhaps Below has sent you to distract me in my final days,” she said. “It's as if you have infected me with some disease.”

“Never,” I said.

“Yes,” she murmured. “It is bringing the present within reach. I know it. Your appearance is no mistake.”

I tried to speak, but she cut me off. “Shhh,” she said as her nail doubled back across my wrist. “Concentrate.”

The stone bench was as comfortable as a couch, and the scent of the white fruit, the splash of the fountain, the hum of bees among the flowers made me drowsy. It was growing late, and the dark was filtering into daylight. Her nails moved inexorably toward the present but never arrived, and somewhere, perhaps minutes or hours after the experiment was begun, my eyelids barely open, I saw Silencio move. Then I realized that I was dreaming.

The monkey leaped down with a graceful somersault from his spot in the center of the fountain. He danced around the walled garden and climbed up into the tree. Sitting on a branch directly above, he picked one of the white, fleshy fruits and bit into it. When he had finished, he stood and, holding his member in one hand, directed a stream of piss down upon us.

I woke suddenly to find Anotine, lying asleep across my chest. Her finger pointed to the middle of my forearm a good two inches from the point she had been working toward. It was dark, but I could see well enough to tell that the monkey was back on his perch in the fountain. Still, I was getting wet. At that moment, a streak of lightning walked the sky, quickly followed by an explosion of thunder, and the rain came even harder.

“Anotine,” I said, and shook her awake.

She sat up, surprised. “My goodness, it's raining,” she said. “It hardly ever rains.”

We were getting drenched. She got up and ran for the opening in the wall. I followed her, and she waited for me on the other side. We ran through the downpour, pursuing a meandering course across the terraced village. Her dress was soaked, and I could see her body beneath the transparent membrane. She sped on ahead of me, sure of every turn and step, and I tried to keep up. Although I knew I was now awake, the sight of her beauty ever receding before me, the flashes of lightning, and the cool rain made this seem more of a dream than the bronze Silencio dancing in the garden.

We arrived back at her darkened rooms just as the rain had begun to abate. Anotine lit the lamps and then lowered them. She stripped off her wet dress and flung it down the hall. I stood in the middle of the room and watched forlornly as she lay down on her bed. She curled up on her side and closed her eyes. When I believed she was asleep, I huddled myself down upon the brown rug.

A few minutes passed, and I listened to the water dripping off the eaves and down the innumerable steps of the village. Without opening her eyes, she said in a weary voice: “Take off those wet things and lie down here, Cley. I want to dream again tonight.”

I did as I was told, and by the time I rested my head on half of the pillow, she was lightly snoring. As I lay there on my side, watching her again, I thought about my vision of Silencio eating the white fruit and remembered that I had actually eaten a piece myself before my journey into Below's memory. At first, I wondered why it hadn't as yet worked any magic for either good or ill on me, but as I stared at the complex weave of Anotine's wet braid, it came to me that perhaps she was my miracle. No matter how many ways I tried to return in my thoughts to Misrix and Below and Wenau, all of these paths wound back upon themselves like the strands in the braid, leading me always to her. I reached out and placed my open palm upon her back.

That night I had no dreams, and when I woke in the morning to bright sunlight, I found a lit Hundred-To-One waiting for me in the ashtray on the table across the room.

14

The next day passed with a smooth perfection that only memories edited by time can achieve. I was free of doubt and fear, and Anotine and I spent every moment together from breakfast on. There was no talk of work. She procured a bottle of Rose Ear Sweet from the dark closet in the hall, and we set out for the edge of the island.

There, sitting on a small rise that gave a clear view of both sea and sky, we played at finding faces, animals, cities in the clouds while passing the bottle back and forth. My cigarettes appeared and she asked me for one. I told her those stories from Wenau that had nothing to do with Below. She was particularly interested in my role as a midwife and treated the idea of birth as some exotic concept, begging for me to recount in detail the looks and personalities of all of the children I had delivered.

“I'd like to go there with you,” she said.

“That would be grand,” I told her. “I have a house in the woods.”

“Can I witness one of these births?” she asked.

“You could be my assistant,” I promised.

She regaled me with stories of her associates, like the time Brisden, whose specialty was extemporaneous philosophy—a search for meaning through verbiage—had talked for two days straight and wound up his discourse at the exact place he had started. Or the time Nunnly and the doctor had gone fly-fishing off the edge of the island for a type of brightly colored bird whose migration path passed directly overhead once a year.

“They have been good companions,” she said. “I can't think of what I would have done without them here. But they are so enmeshed in their work most days that at times it gets lonely.”

“I'll be with you now,” I told her.

Then the Sweet made her conversation expansive, and she told me her theories of existence, the past and present and future, a mixture of mathematical and philosophical concepts that whirled time and God in a circular design outward from the center of the moment. Intellectually, I was confused, but the sound of her voice added to my intoxication, and I saw it all with great clarity, a multicolored, perfectly symmetrical blossom that spun like a pinwheel in the wind.

We shared a long silence before she spoke again. “I dreamt last night,” she said.

“Can you tell me?” I asked.

“Not now,” she said.

By the time the sun reached its apex, the bottle of Sweet was empty. We both slurred our speech slightly, and, if we weren't drunk, we were no more than a drink or two from it. I lay back on the grass and she lay next to me. The alcohol gave me the courage to turn and kiss her on the lips. She was surprised but did not resist. She returned my kiss and put her arms around me. I rolled onto my back and she moved above me. Her hair, which was not braided that day, hung down all around my face.

She stopped, pulled her head back, and stared into my eyes. “I think I feel the moment coming on, Cley. The present is near,” she said excitedly. She dipped down to put her lips on mine again, but the connection never came. A high-pitched animal squeal sounded, and we froze. Anotine sat up, resting back onto my hips, and as her hair came away from my face, I saw the Fetch hovering above us.

The green beams shot from its eyes and into Anotine's, but this optic union lasted only seconds before the head disengaged. From where I lay, I saw the Fetch weave in the air and then suddenly lose altitude, nearly smashing into the ground. At the last instant, it regained its weightlessness and flew off, uttering a horrific cry.

“What was it after?” I asked.

“Our touching of lips,” said Anotine. “It was hungry to know it.”

“Did we scare it?” I asked.

“No, the alcohol sickened it and made it lose control. I could sense, when we shared sight, that it was confused.” She leaned back and laughed triumphantly. Then she was off of me and running into the wood. “See if you can find me, Cley,” she called back. I heard her laughter trail off as she moved in among the trees.

As I walked the trails, peering down the rows of trunks and listening for the scuffling of leaves, I thought about Anotine's reaction to my kiss. She hadn't even known the term for it. It seemed that love and sex were much like cigarettes and food on the floating island—something that had not been woven into the basic design of the mnemonic world. I was responsible for infecting this dying island with my desires. There was much more to ponder along these lines, but just then I caught sight of the hem of her green dress flapping behind a far-off tree, and I began to run as silently as possible.

That night, back in her rooms, after having spent the evening lounging and kissing in the hidden garden beneath the tree of white fruit, we lay naked on the bed together. Our touching had increased to a fever pitch. I moved between Anotine's legs and made ready to enter her. She was whispering the word
Now,
again and again, for it was clear that she equated her arousal with the discovery of the present. I was on the verge of penetration, when I heard another voice, much lower than hers, say from behind me, “Cley, what are you doing?”

The sound of this intruder so startled me that, in one fluid movement, I leaped off the bed and spun around. There was Misrix, wings parted, barbed tail dancing behind him. His yellow eyes glared from behind those ridiculous spectacles as he leaned back and brought his left hand up with all his might. It was too unexpected and swift for me to defend against. The blow struck me on the side of the face and sent me tumbling to the floor. I heard Anotine scream, and, from where I lay, saw her, through a blurry haze, crawl frantically from the bed and run out into the night.

The next thing I knew, the demon was helping me to my feet.

“I'm sorry, Cley,” he said, “but I needed to prevent you from burrowing any deeper into this illusion.”

“Interesting choice of words,” I said, as I rubbed the side of my face. “You almost took my head off.”

“You're wasting time, Cley. I've been watching your progress, and I think you've lost sight of what you are here for.”

With his words, the thoughts of my neighbors at Wenau, which I had been successfully keeping at bay, flooded back to the forefront of my mind, and I knew instantly I was guilty as charged.

“These are not people, here,” he said. “You must remember that none of this really exists. You are risking the lives of so many for so much air.”

“You're right,” I told him. “I will redouble my efforts to find the antidote.”

“Look,” said Misrix, “even if you do feel something for this memory woman, she is going to perish along with the island if my father should succumb to the disease. Think of that.”

It was a fact I hadn't wanted to consider. I had been acting like a truant schoolboy, living, so to speak, for the moment. “You can trust me,” I said.

“There is another problem now,” he told me, shaking his head. “It was very difficult for me to get through here to you now. With the physical state my father is in, it creates a kind of interference in the process of connection between you and him and me. The worse he gets, the harder it will be to bring you out. If you stay, and we cannot find the antidote or if you take too long to find it, I may not be able to retrieve you. I believe you will perish with him.”

“I can't leave now,” I said.

From outside we could hear the shouts of Anotine and the others. She had roused them and brought the party to my rescue.

“They will attack me,” said the demon. “I've got to be off.” He moved closer to me and put his hands on either side of my head, resting them there for only a second. “Good luck, Cley,” he said. He bounded to the back of the room and perched up on the window opening.

As Nunnly and Doctor Hellman burst through the entrance, Misrix leaped into flight. Anotine came in then, followed by Brisden, who carried an empty liquor bottle by the neck. She put her arms around me, and I saw the doctor run past us with the wide-barreled gun he had used from the basket the day before to signal our desire to return to the island. Leaning his arm on the ledge of the window opening, he took aim.

“Don't shoot,” I said.

“Why the hell not?” asked Nunnly.

The doctor fired and a pop sounded. The smoke flew back in the window and filled the room. I ran through the mist to look over the doctor's shoulder just as a bright red puddle spread across the night sky. To my relief, I caught sight of Misrix's distant silhouette against the flare. He was climbing toward the moon with powerful wing thrusts.

“Did you hit the filthy dog?” asked Brisden, still breathing heavily.

“I doubt it,” said Hellman. “I'm just glad I didn't shoot myself. I'm not exactly a man of action, if you haven't noticed.”

Nunnly and Brisden laughed.

I thanked them for coming to my rescue. Brisden inspected the welt on the side of my face and whistled. The doctor offered to leave the gun for me, and I accepted in order to seem as worried as the rest of them were.

“There are only two shells left for it,” he said. “I reloaded it for you, and I have the other one back at my place.”