Our Lady of Darkness (10 page)

THE ROOM WAS
furnished sybaritically, and while not specifically Arabian, held much more ornamentation than depiction. The wallpaper was of a creamy hue, on which faint gold lines made a pattern of arabesques featuring mazes. Franz chose a larger hassock that was set against a wall and from which he had an easy view of the hall, the rear archway, and the windows, whose faintly glittering curtains transmitted yellowed sunlight and blurred, dully gilded pictures of the outdoors. Silver gleamed from two black shelves beside the hassock and Franz’s gaze was briefly held against his will (his fear) by a collection of small statuettes of modish young persons engaged with great hauteur in various sexual activities, chiefly perverse—the style between Art Deco and Pompeiian. Under any other circumstances he would have given them more than a passing scrutiny. They looked incredibly detailed and devilishly expensive. Byers, he knew, came of a wealthy family and produced a sizable volume of exquisite poetry and prose sketches every three or four years.

Now mat fortunate person set a thin, large white cup half-filled with steaming coffee and also a steaming silver pot upon a firm low stand by Franz that additionally held an obsidian ashtray. Then he settled himself in a convenient low chair, sipped the pale yellow wine he’d brought, and said, “You said you had some questions when you phoned. About that journal you attribute to Smith and of which you sent me a photocopy.”

Franz answered, his gaze still roving systematically. “That’s right. I do have some questions for you. But first I’ve got to tell you what happened to me just now.”

“Of course. By all means. I’m most eager to know.”

Franz tried to condense his narrative, but soon found he couldn’t do much of that without losing significance, and ended by giving a quite full and chronological account of the events of the past thirty hours. As a result, and with some help from the coffee, which he’d needed, and from his cigarettes, which he’d forgotten to smoke for nearly an hour, he began after a while to feel a considerable catharsis. His nerves settled down a great deal. He didn’t find himself changing his mind about what had happened or its vital importance, but having a human companion and sympathetic listener certainly did make a great difference emotionally.

For Byers paid close attention, helping him on by little nods and eye-narrowings and pursing of lips and voiced brief agreements and comments—at least they were mostly brief. True, those last weren’t so much practical as aesthetic—even a shade frivolous—but that didn’t bother Franz at all, at first, he was so intent on his story; while Byers, even when frivolous, seemed deeply impressed and far more than politely credulous about all Franz told him.

When Franz briefly mentioned the bureaucratic runaround he’d gotten, Byers caught the humor at once, putting in, “Dance of the clarks, how quaint!” And when he heard about Cal’s musical accomplishments, he observed, “Franz, you have a sure taste in girls. A harpsichordist! What could be more perfect? My current dear-friend-secretary-playfellow-cohousekeeper-cum-moon-goddess is North Chinese, supremely erudite, and works in precious metal—she did those deliciously vile silvers, cast by the lost-wax process of Cellini. She’d have served you your coffee except it’s one of our personal days, when we recreate ourselves apart. I call her Fa Lo Suee (the Daughter of Fu Manchu—it’s one of our semi-private jokes) because she gives the delightfully sinister impression of being able to take over the world if ever she chose. You’ll meet her if you stay this evening. Excuse me, please go on.” And when Franz mentioned the astrological graffiti on Corona Heights, he whistled softly and said, “How
very
appropriate!” with such emphasis that Franz asked him, “Why?” but he responded, “Nothing. I mean the sheer
range
of our tireless defacers. Next: a pyramid of beer cans on Shasta’s mystic top. This pear wine is delightful—you should taste it—a supreme creation of the San Martin winery on Santa Clara Valley’s sun-kissed slopes. Pray continue.”

But when Franz mentioned
Megapolisomancy
a third or fourth time and even quoted from it, he lifted a hand in interruption and went to a tall bookcase and unlocked it and took from behind the darkly clouded glass a thin book bound in black leather beautifully tooted with silver arabesques and handed it to Franz, who opened it.

It was a copy of de Castries’s gracelessly printed book, identical with his own copy, as far as he could tell, save for the binding. He looked up questioningly.

Byers explained, “Until mis afternoon I never dreamed you owned a copy, my dear Franz. You showed me only the violet-ink journal, you’ll recall, that evening in the Haight, and later sent me a photocopy of the written-on pages. You never mentioned buying another book along with it. And on that evening you were, well…rather tiddly.”

“In those days I was drunk all of the time,” Franz said flatly.

“I understand…poor Daisy…say no more. The point is this:
Megapolisomancy
happens to be not only a rare book, but also, literally, a very secret one. In his last years, de Castries had a change of mind about it and tried to hunt down every single copy and burn them all. And did! Almost. He was known to have behaved vindictively toward persons who refused to yield up their copies. He was, in fact, a very nasty and, I would say (except I abhor moral judgments) evil old man. At any rate, I saw no point at the time in telling you mat I possessed what I thought then to be the sole surviving copy of the book.”

Franz said, “Thank God! I was hoping you knew something about de Castries.”

Byers said, “I know quite a bit. But first, finish your story. You were on Corona Heights, today’s visit, and had just looked through your binoculars at the Transamerica Pyramid, which made you quote de Castries on ‘our modern pyramids…’”

“I will,” Franz said, and did it quite quickly, but it was the worst part; it brought vividly back to him his sight of the triangular pale brown muzzle and his flight down Corona Heights, and by the time he was done he was sweating and darting his glance about again.

Byers let out a sigh, then said with relish, “And so you came to me, pursued by paramentals to the very door!” And he turned in his chair to look somewhat dubiously at the blurry golden windows behind him.

“Donaldus!” Franz said angrily, “I’m telling you things that happened, not some damn weird tale I’ve made up for your entertainment. I know it all hangs on a figure I saw several times at a distance of two miles with seven-power binoculars, and so anyone’s free to talk about optical illusions and instrumental defects and the power of suggestion, but I know something about psychology and optics, and it was none of those! I went pretty deeply into the flying-saucer business, and I never once saw or heard of a single UFO that was really convincing—and I’ve seen haloed highlights on aircraft that were oval-shaped and glowed and pulsed exactly like the ones in half the saucer sightings. But I have no doubts of that sort about what I saw today and yesterday.”

But even as he was pouring that out and still uneasily checking the windows and doors and glooms himself, Franz realized that deep down inside he
was
beginning to doubt his memories of what he’d seen—perhaps the human mind was incapable of holding a fear like his for more than about an hour unless it were reinforced by repetition—but he was damned if he’d tell Donaldus so!

He finished icily, “Of course, it’s quite possible I’ve gone insane, temporarily or permanently,
and am ‘seeing things,’ but until I’m sure of that I’m not going to behave like a reckless idiot—or a hilarious one.”

Donaldus, who had been making protesting and imploring faces at him all the while, now said injuredly and placatingly, “My
dear
Franz, I never for a moment doubted your seriousness or had the faintest suspicion that you were psychotic. Why, I’ve been inclined to believe in paramental entities ever since I read de Castries’s book, and especially after hearing several circumstantial, very peculiar stories about him, and now your truly shocking eyewitness narrative has swept my last doubts away. But I’ve not seen one yet—-if I did, I’m sure I’d feel all the terror you do and more—but until then, and perhaps in any case, and despite the proper horror they evoke in us, they are most
fascinating
entities, don’t you agree? Now as for thinking your account a tale or story, my dear Franz, to be a good story is to me the highest test of the truth of anything. I make no distinction whatever between reality and fantasy, or the objective and the subjective. All life and all awareness are ultimately one, including intensest pain and death itself. Not all the play need please us, and ends are never comforting. Some things fit together harmoniously and beautifully and startlingly with thrilling discords—those are true—and some do not, and those are merely bad art. Don’t you see?”

Franz had no immediate comment. He certainly hadn’t given de Castries’s book the least credence by itself, but…He nodded thoughtfully, though hardly in answer to the question. He wished for the sharp minds of Gun and Saul…and Cal.

“And now to tell you
my
story,” Donaldus said, quite satisfied. “But first a touch of brandy—that seems called for. And you? Well, some hot coffee then, I’ll fetch it. And a few biscuits? Yes.”

Franz had begun to feel headachy and slightly nauseated. The plain arrowroot cookies, barely sweet, seemed to help. He poured himself coffee from the fresh pot, adding some of the cream and sugar his host had thoughtfully brought this time. It helped, too. He didn’t relax his watchfulness, but he began to feel more comfortable in it, as if the awareness of danger were becoming a way of life.

DONALDUS LIFTED A
a finger with a ring of silver filigree on it and said, “You have to keep in mind de Castries died when I (and you) were infants. Almost all my information comes from a couple of the not-so-close and hardly well-beloved friends of de Castries’s last declining years: George Ricker, who was a locksmith and played go with him, and Herman Klaas, who ran a secondhand bookstore on Turk Street and was a sort of romantic anarchist and for a while a Technocrat. And a bit from Clark Ashton Smith. Ah, that interests you, doesn’t it? It was only a bit—Clark didn’t like to talk about de Castries. I think it was because of de Castries and his theories that Clark stayed away from big cities, even San Francisco, and became the hermit of Auburn and Pacific Grove. And I’ve got some data from old letters and clippings, but not much. People didn’t like to write down things about de Castries, and they had reasons, and in the end the man himself made secrecy a way of life. Which is odd, considering that he began his chief career by writing and publishing a sensational book. Incidentally, I got my copy from Klaas when he died, and he may have found it among de Castries’s things after de Castries died—I was never sure.

“Also,” Donaldus continued, “I’ll probably tell the story—at least in spots—in a somewhat poetic style. Don’t let that put you off. It merely helps me organize my thoughts and select the significant items. I won’t be straying in the least from the strict truth as I’ve discovered it; though there may be traces of paramentals in my story, I suppose, and certainly one ghost. I think all modern cities, especially the crass, newly built, highly industrial ones, should have ghosts. They are a civilizing influence.”

DONALDUS TOOK A
generous sip of brandy, roiled it around on his tongue appreciatively, and settled back in his chair.

“In 1900, as the century turned, “he began dramatically, “Thibaut de Castries came to sunny, lusty San Francisco like a dark portent from realms of cold and coal smoke in the East that pulsed with Edison’s electricity and from which thrust Sullivan’s steel-framed skyscrapers. Madame Curie had just proclaimed radioactivity to the world, and Marconi radio spanning the seas. Madam Blavatsky had brought eerie theosophy from the Himalayas and passed on the occult torch to Annie Besant. The Scottish Astronomer-Royal Piazzi Smith had discovered the history of the world and its ominous future in the Grand Gallery of the Great Pyramid of Egypt. While in the law courts, Mary Baker Eddy and her chief female accolytes were hurling accusations of witchcraft and black magic at each other. Spencer preached science. Ingersoll thundered against superstition. Freud and Jung were plunging into the limitless dark of the subconscious. Wonders undreamed had been unveiled at the Universal Exhibition in Paris, for which the Eiffel tower had been built, and the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. New York was digging her subways. In South Africa the Boers were firing at the British Krupp’s field guns of unburstable steel. In far Cathay the Boxers raged, deeming themselves invulnerable to bullets by their magic. Count von Zeppelin was launching his first dirigible airship, while the Wright Brothers were readying for their first flight.

“De Castries brought with him only a large black Gladstone bag stuffed with copies of his ill-printed book that he could no more sell man Melville his
Moby Dick
, and a skull teeming with galvanic, darkly illuminating ideas, and (some insist) a large black panther on a leash of German silver links. And, according to still others, he was also accompanied or else pursued by a mysterious, tall, slender woman who always wore a black veil and loose dark dresses that were more like robes, and had a way of appearing and disappearing suddenly. In any case, de Castries was a wiry, tireless, rather small black eagle of a man, with piercing eyes and sardonic mouth, who wore his glamour like an opera cape.

“There were a dozen legends of his origins. Some said he improvised a new one each night, and some that they were all invented by others solely on the inspiration of his darkly magnetic appearance. The one mat Klaas and Ricker most favored was moderately spectacular: that as a boy of thirteen during the Franco-Prussian War he had escaped from besieged Paris by hydrogen balloon along with his mortally wounded father, who was an explorer of darkest Africa; his father’s beautiful and learned young Polish mistress; and a black panther (an earlier one) which his father had originally captured in the Congo and which they had just rescued from the zoological gardens, where the starving Parisians were slaughtering the wild animals for food. (Of course, another legend had it that at that time he was a boy aide-de-camp to Garibaldi in Sicily and his father the most darkly feared of the Carbonari.)

“Rapidly travelling southeast across the Mediterranean, the balloon encountered at midnight an electrical tempest which added to its velocity but also forced it down nearer and nearer to the white-fanged waves. Picture the scene as revealed by almost continuous lightning flashes in the frail and overweighted gondola. The panther crouched back into one side, snarling and spitting, lashing his tail, his claws dug deeply into the wickerwork with a strength that threatened to rend it. The faces of the dying father (an old hawk), the earnest and flashing-eyed boy (already a young eagle), and the proud, intellectual, fiercely loyal, brooding girl—all of them desperate and pale as death in the lightning’s bluish glare. While thunder resounded deafeningly, as if the black
atmosphere were being ripped, or great artillery pieces let off at their ears. Suddenly the rain tasted salt on their wet lips—spray from the hungry waves.

“The dying father grasped the right hands of the two others, joined them together, gripped them briefly with his own, gasped a few words (they were lost in the gale) and with a final convulsive burst of strength hurled himself overboard.

“The balloon leaped upward out of the storm and raced on southeast. The chilled, terrorized, but undaunted young people huddled together in each other’s arms. From across the gondola the black panther, subsiding, stared at them with enigmatic green eyes. While in the southeast, toward which they were speeding, the horned moon appeared above the clouds, like the witch-crown of the Queen of Night, setting her seal upon the scene.

“The balloon landing in the Egyptian desert near Cairo, young de Castries plunged at once into a study of the Great Pyramid, assisted by his father’s young Polish mistress (now his own), and by the fact that he was maternally descended from Champollion, decipherer of the Rosetta Stone. He made all Piazzi Smith’s discoveries (and a few more besides, which he kept secret) ten years in advance and laid the basis for his new science of super-cities (and also his Grand Cipher) before leaving Egypt to investigate mega-structures and cryptoglyphics (he called it) and paramentality throughout the world.

“You know, that link with Egypt fascinates me,” Byers said parenthetically as he poured himself more brandy. “It makes me think of Lovecraft’s Nyarlathotep, who came out of Egypt to deliver pseudoscientific lectures heralding the crumbling away of the world.”

Mention of Lovecraft reminded Franz of something. He interjected, “Say, didn’t Lovecraft have a revision client with a name like Thibaut de Castries?”

Byers’ eyes widened. “He did indeed. Adolphe De Castro.”

“That much alike! You don’t suppose…?”

“…that they were the same person?” Byers smiled. “The possibility has occurred to me, my dear Franz, and Acre is this additionally to be said for the idea: that Lovecraft variously referred to Adolphe De Castro as ‘an amiable charlatan’ and ‘an unctuous old hypocrite’ (he paid Lovecraft for rewriting them completely less than one-tenth of the price he got for his stories), but no”—he sighed, fading his smile—“no, De Castro was still alive pestering Lovecraft and visiting him in Providence after de Castries’s death.

“To resume about de Castries; we don’t know if his young Polish mistress accompanied him and possibly was the mysterious veiled lady who some said turned up at the same time he did in San Francisco. Ricker thought so. Klaas was inclined to doubt it. Ricker tended to romance about the Pole. He pictured her as a brilliant pianist (they’re apt to say that about most Poles, aren’t they? Chopin has much to answer for) who had totally suppressed that talent in order to put all her amazing command of languages and her profound secretarial skills—and all the solaces of her fierce young body—at the disposal and in the service of the still younger genius whom she adored even more devotedly than she had his adventurer father.”

“What was her name?” Franz asked.

“I could never learn,” Byers replied. “Either Klaas and Ricker had forgotten, or else—more likely—it was one of the points on which the old boy went secretive on them. Besides, there’s something so satisfying about just that one phrase ‘his father’s young Polish mistress’—what could be more exotic or alluring?—it makes one think of harpsichords and oceans of lace, champagne, and pistols! For, under her cool and learned mask, she seethed with temperament and with temper, too, as Ricker pictured her; so that she’d almost seem to fly apart or on the verge of it when in her rages, like an explosive rag doll. The fellahin feared her, thought she was
a witch. It was during those years in Egypt that she began to go veiled, Ricker said.

“At still other times she’d be incredibly seductive, the epitome of Continental femininity, initiating de Castries into the most voluptuous erotic practices and greatly deepening and broadening his grasp of culture and art.

“At all events, de Castries had acquired a lot of dark, satanic charm from somewhere by the time he arrived at the City by the Golden Gate. He was, I’d guess, quite a bit like the Satanist Anton La Vey (who kept a more-or-less tame lion for a while, did you know?), except that he had no desire for the usual sort of publicity. He was looking, rather, for an elite of scintillating, freewheeling folk with a zest for life at its wildest—and if they had a lot of money, that wouldn’t hurt a bit.

“And of course he found them! Promethean (and Dionysian) Jack London. George Sterling, fantasy poet and romantic idol, favorite of the wealthy Bohemian Club set. Their friend, the brilliant defense attorney Earl Rogers, who later defended Clarence Darrow and saved his career. Ambrose Bierce, a bitter, becaped old eagle of a man himself with his
Devil’s Dictionary
and matchlessly terse horror tales. The poetess Nora May French. That mountain lioness of a woman, Charmian London. Gertrude Atherton, somewhere close by. And those were only the more vital ones.

“And of course they fell upon de Castries with delight. He was just the sort of human curiosity they (and especially Jack London) loved. Mysterious cosmopolitan background, Munchausen anecdotes, weird and alarming scientific theories, a strong anti-industrial and (we’d say) antiestablishment bias, the apocalyptic touch, the note of doom, hints of dark powers—he had them all! For quite a while he was their darling, their favorite guru of the left-hand path, almost (and I imagine he thought this himself) their new god. They even bought copies of his new book and sat still (and drank) while he read from it. Prize egotists like Bierce put up with him, and London let him have stage center for a while—he could afford to. And they were all quite ready to go along (in theory) with his dream of a Utopia in which megapolitan buildings were forbidden (had been destroyed or somehow tamed) and paramentality put to benign use, with themselves the aristocratic elite and he the master spirit over all.

“Of course most of the ladies were quite taken with him romantically and several, I gather, eager to go to bed with him and not above taking the initiative in the matter—these were dramatic and liberated females for their day, remember—and yet there’s no evidence mat he had an affair with any one of them. The opposite, rather. Apparently, when things got to that point, he’d say something like, ‘My dear, there’s nothing I’d like better, truly, but I must tell you that I have a very savage and jealous mistress who if I so much as dallied with you, would cut my throat in bed or stab me in my bath (he
was
quite a bit like Marat, you know, Franz, and grew to be more so in his later years), besides dashing acid across your lovely cheeks and lips, my dear, or driving a hatpin into those bewitching eyes. She’s learned beyond measure in the weird, yet a tigress.’

“He’d really build this (imaginary?) creature up to them, I’m told, until sometimes it wasn’t clear whether it was a real woman, or a goddess, or some sort of metaphorical entity that he was talking about. ‘She is all merciless night animal,’ he would say, ‘yet with a wisdom mat goes back to Egypt and beyond—and which is invaluable to me. For she is my spy on buildings, you see, my intelligencer on metropolitan megastructures. She knows their secrets and their secret weaknesses, their ponderous rhythms and dark songs. And she herself is secret as their shadows. She is my Queen of Night, Our Lady of Darkness.’ “

As Byers dramatized those last words of de Castries, Franz flashed that Our Lady of
Darkness was one of De Quincy’s Ladies of Sorrow, the third and youngest sister, who always went veiled in black crape. Had de Castries known mat? And was his Queen of Night Mozart’s?—all-powerful save for the magic flute and Papageno’s bells? But Byers continued:

“For you see, Franz, there were these continuing reports, flouted by some, of de Castries being visited or pestered by a veiled lady who wore flowing dresses and either a turban or a wide and floppy-brimmed hat, yet was very swift in her movements. They’d be glimpsed together across a busy street or on the Embarcadero or in a park or at the other end of a crowded theater lobby, generally walking rapidly and gesticulating excitedly or angrily at each other; but when you caught up with him, she would be gone. Or if, as on a few claimed occasions, she were still there, he would never introduce her or speak to her or act in any way as if he knew her. Except he would seem irritable and—one or two said—frightened.”

“What was
her
name?” Franz pressed.

Byers quirked a smile. “As I just told you, my dear Franz, he’d never introduce her. At most he’d refer to her as ‘that woman’ or sometimes, oddly, ‘that headstrong and pestiferous girl.’ Perhaps, despite all his dark charms and tyrannies and S-M aura, he was afraid of women and she somehow stood for or embodied that fear.

“Reactions to this mysterious figure varied. The men tended to be indulgent, intrigued, and speculative, even wildly so—it was suggested at various times that she was Isadora Duncan, Eleanora Duse, and Sarah Bernhardt, though they would have been, respectively, about twenty, forty, and sixty at that time. But true glamour is ageless, they say; consider Marlene Dietrich or Arletty, or that doyenne of them all—Cleopatra. There was always the disguising black veil, you see, though sometimes it carried an array of black polka dots, like ranked beauty marks, ‘or as if she’d had the black smallpox,’ one lady is said to have said nastily.

“All the women, for that matter, uniformly loathed her.

“Of course, all this is probably somewhat distorted by my getting it mostly as filtered through Klaas and Ricker. Ricker, making a lot of the references to Egyptian wisdom and learnedness, thought the mystery lady was still the Polish mistress, gone mad through love, and he was somewhat critical of de Castries for his treatment of her.

“And of course all this left the way open for endless speculations about de Castries’s sex life. Some said he was a homosexual. Even in those days ‘the cool, gray city of love,’ as Sterling epitomized it, had its homophiles—‘cool, gay city?’ Others, that he was very kinky in an S-M way—bondage and discipline of the direst sort. (Quite a few chaps have accidentally strangled themselves that way, you know.) Almost in one bream it was said he was a pederast, a pervert, a fetishist, utterly asexual, or else mat only slim little girls could satisfy his Tiberian lusts—I’m sorry if I offend you, Franz, but truly all the lefthand paths and their typical guides or conductresses were mentioned.