The Breath of Suspension (4 page)

Remember this, Thomas. Aya Ngomo never had a vision that she did not attribute to some physical cause. Of course, the Lord performs His miracles through the universe He Himself has created, and thus can use a congenitally defective nervous system to convey His visions, if that suits His purposes best.

“He told me that each person had a jewel—the thing that defines us, that makes us ourselves. Something had stolen mine from me.” She ran a hand down her twisted side. “That’s why I’m like this. I am incomplete.”

“A jewel. What sort of jewel?” I pictured a bauble rolled into a dusty corner and forgotten after the closing of some massy treasure chest filled to the brim with unset emeralds and pearl earrings.

“I won’t know that until I find it.”

“Then how will you look for it?”

“I—” She gazed back up at the sky. “However I can.”

“Well, good luck with it then.”

She was correct and I realized it, of course, as by now we all have. It may be that I was the first to see the truth of it. St. Aya Ngomo. Was it merely by accident that I had seen her torment by the farm boys as a stage on the way to sainthood?

“Doesn’t it amaze you that the Orthodox Empire travels through space?” Her question didn’t seem like a changing of the subject, but perhaps I was merely caught up in the physical vision of her metaphorical bauble. Jewels glinted at me from the sky.

I was spending a year of my young life at a Byzantine monastery while spacecraft rose from the Dakota plains not a thousand kilometers away. “I suppose it is odd.”

“Odd? It makes no sense at all. But then, why should anyone travel through space? It’s so much trouble. You haven’t traveled through space, have you, Vikram?” A smile tugged at her lips.

“No,” I said curtly.

“I’m sure you will. As might I. I’ve been reading about it. I suspect that we are not the first race to travel through the solar system.”

“What have you been reading?”

“Oh, this and that. Stuff from the First Space Age, before the wars. There are indications that we are not the first, that others went among the planets long before we were even thought of. The Ancient Ones, some people call them. No one knows who they were.”

“Did they take your jewel?”

“Perhaps they did. If so, will you help me look for it?”

And, not knowing what I was letting myself in for, I said, “Sure, Aya. But I’m sleepy now, and going to bed. Good night.”

One day the Patriarch of Milwaukee, Simon Kramer, visited his monastery. The entire community dragged itself down to the monastery’s dock, some distance from the ruined house and pier where I first met Laurena and Aya Ngomo. The Patriarch’s hydrofoil scudded across the lake like a sparkling water bug. Crumpled and shattered blue ice stretched out from the beach, it had been some labor breaking a passage through for a boat landing. The water beyond was gray and sullen, unhappy at remaining liquid while other water rested frozen.

Though I have since been to Constantinople and Moscow, I still remember the glory that emerged from the hydrofoil. The Patriarch and his entourage were dressed in scarlet-and-yellow robes embroidered with gold, vivid against the white and dried brown of the sleeping shore. Their crowns gleamed with jewels. Acolytes carried icons of the Virgin, the last—an unhappy, balding man-hauling a much-too-heavy gold reliquary containing the remains of St. Natalie of Choisy-le-Roi, martyred in 2094 by direct order of Governor-General Moreau as the Holy Apostolic Army of Russia advanced toward Paris. The sad man tripped over a beached and frozen carp, and looked even sadder.

The Patriarch held his audiences in the Library, a much-patched building that had once been a tourist restaurant. Among others he called to him his ward, Aya Ngomo. When Aya came to the Library she found me cleaning the bronze high reliefs that decorated its front. Brother Michael had detected a faint shadow of oxidation on the neck of one of the Roman soldiers uninterestedly witnessing the martyrdom of St. Lawrence in the third panel. I scrubbed behind the soldier’s ears like a diligent mother, cursing Michael’s name.

“Vikram,” Aya said. “I’m afraid of him. He’s huge. He’s covered with jewels and has a loud voice. He’s like an idol.”

I looked down at her from my stepladder. She was not wise and mocking, demonstrating some subtle superiority over me. For the first time I saw her as an unhappy young woman, bent and twisted by an indifferent fate, unsure of what was going to happen next. Her clothes were neat and pressed for the interview.

“He’s just a man, Aya.” I didn’t have to face him. “He wants to ask you a few dumb questions about your studies and send you on your way.”

“Of course. Still...” She looked at me appealingly with her large eyes, then smiled. She was trying to act coquettish, and it was grotesque.

“Go ahead.” I spoke in dismay. “Don’t keep him waiting.”

I returned to my memories of the night before. It had been a struggle as formalized as a Court dance, but Laurena had finally allowed me to touch her breasts. I had run my hands gently across her skin, taking her nipples between thumb and forefinger—“Novice Vikram Osten?” It was the balding sad man with the reliquary. He frowned up at me from the doorway, his droopy moustache like graffiti scrawled inexpertly across his face. His name was Donald Tergenius, and he was head of the Patriarch’s civil secretariat. “Meditating on the fate of St. Lawrence?”

I noticed that I was leaning my hand on the body of the saint as he was roasted on the griddle in front of the Emperor Decius. “Yes.” I removed my hand and straightened. “He is the patron saint of libraries.”

“Just so. The Patriarch wishes to speak to you.”

“Yes, yes.” I jumped down from my stepladder and babbled. The man intimidated me. “I have been studying the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and—”

He regarded me gloomily. In later years I would learn that Tergenius invariably expressed anger as melancholy. “Save that stuff for someone who’s interested in it—whoever that might be. The Patriarch has more important things to think about. As do I.” He drew back into the doorway.

Patriarch Simon Kramer’s face was almost invisible beneath his beard. He sat behind a desk, members of his secretariat shoving papers under his gaze as he spoke. “I have good report of you,” he rumbled. Tergenius stood solemnly by his shoulder.

“I’m glad.” I tried to imagine who it could have been. The Archimandrite of St. Thecla had never deigned to notice me, and as for my life-monk, Michael....

“I have already learned to rely on the perceptions of my ward, Aya Ngomo. Continue your studies and you will be a success.” With this formula he shuffled me off, tongue-tied, onto the grim Tergenius, who escorted me back out.

We lingered in the doorway, he looking intently at me. “In several months I am leaving the Patriarch’s service. I am becoming a provincial administrator in Utah.” Despite my earlier blithe talk of Constantinople and Moscow, I felt him to be talking about the farthest ends of the Earth, a miserable exile. “There is room for advancement, there on the edge of our Empire, particularly for those uncomfortable under the just rule of the Church.”

“I’m sure there is. But my family has risen high here in Michigan.”

“That they have. And you intend to climb on their shoulders. A fair ambition, if predictable. Still, if events do not turn out as intended....” A brief smile appeared on his face like a ritual gesture.

Without another word he turned and walked away, leaving me wondering at the reasons behind his implied offer. He saw something in me, and advancement was impossible without a patron. But Utah...

The sun was setting over the lake, its red light diffused through a layer of icy mist. I was searching for Aya but realized that I wouldn’t have far to look: I could see her bent figure down on the shore, black against the vivid blue of the snow. She twisted and shuffled, as if trying to dance.

“Aya, you’re cold.” She turned to look at me. “You should get back to the dormitory.”

My shoes were full of snow from my descent down the dunes. I could feel the cold wind off the lake tightening my cheeks. Aya’s once-neat clothes hung askew, as if she’d been running through the woods and rolling in the snow. Her face was flushed and her eyes were fever-bright. She didn’t seem to notice the cold. She was a woman in the grips of something far beyond her.

“I have made my decision, Vikram. Are you ready to go with me?”

“What? What did the Patriarch say to you?”

“Oh.” She made a face, a ladylike moue of disapproval, bizarre under the circumstances. “Some standard formulas. You know how these people talk.”

“So why—”

“I realized that he wanted to help me, but had no idea of how to do it. The burden is on me, if I’m to find what I’m looking for. And I will find it, my jewel. I will!”

“I’m sure.” I was cold and unhappy. Her husky voice seemed unsuitable to such absurdly melodramatic statements.

“And you’ll help me, won’t you, Vikram?” She took my arm, the first time she had ever touched me.

“What are you talking about?”

Her eyes shone as she looked at me. “I have seen what I have to do.”

She loved me. I suddenly understood. It made perfect sense. I was handsome, rich, clever. She was a poor crippled girl, completely alone, ward of a distant ecclesiastic. Her dismal fate drove her to love me through sheer self-defense, the way a drowning man loves air. So I didn’t take it as a judgment on my own worth. But I understood it.

“Doesn’t it occur to you that I too have jewels to seek?” I kept my voice hard.

She looked at me solemnly. “What are they, Vikram?”

I again pictured her jewel rolled into a dusty corner while the treasure chest gleamed I had spoken to Tcrgenius and the Patriarch, men of power. And there were men of power far beyond them, the rulers of this world.

“The jewels of the Earth. I will climb to the heights, above the Patriarch, above the Governor of Ontario. You are not the only one with dreams.”

She caught her breath. For an instant I thought she was going to cry. “Oh, you poor man.” She put her thin arms around me. “What a choice to make!”

“Don’t seek your jewel in me. You can’t! I don’t have it.” I jerked back. She lost her balance and fell into the snow. I reached down to help her, but she pushed my hands away and struggled to her feet herself.

“Aya, I—”

Her face was tight. She ran her hand across her chest, fingers shaking, to reassure herself that she was indeed still deformed. “I will always hope for something more from you, Vikram.” She turned and walked away.

“Good luck,” I called after her. “Keep trying. You will succeed. I believe in you.”

She tried to run. Her feet twisted under her. She wobbled. I looked after her and for a moment had a feeling of intolerable loss.

But I had another destiny for that evening. That was the night that Laurena Tarchik would finally succumb to me. I met her, as was our habit, by the cherubim.

“Oh, Vikram, it’s so cold.” Her face was flushed in the wind. She had made herself up elaborately. Several shades of color on her eyelids made her exotic. “What are we doing? You’re so mysterious.”

“It’s a gift,” I said. “A special gift.”

We walked side by side through the night. It had taken me a great deal of work to convince Laurena that I represented her escape. I was freedom. And she would give herself to me for the love of it.

I led her to an anonymous door, much patched, and threw it open with a dramatic gesture.

“Oh, Vikram!” She stepped into the room. “How did you do this?”

My parents had sent me gifts, particularly when I lay hurt in the Infirmary, and I had carefully hoarded them. The gifts had turned into bribes.

The old storeroom, used as an armory in the middle twenty-first century, had been transformed by my labors. The old gun racks were hung with aromatic pine branches. The cracked concrete floor was invisible beneath a quilted packing blanket. Heat came from a portable infrared heater. A bottle of a liquor called bourbon sat on an upended packing crate.

And there was the bed. The sheets and blankets had cost me the most. They were the Patriarch’s, sold by a member of his house staff. His crest was embroidered on each piece.

I kissed her deeply and removed her coat. We sat and drank the bourbon. I let the rich hot liquid seep over my tongue and burn its way down my throat as I admired her.

Her breasts were full. The curve of her thighs showed through her dress. She gulped the whiskey, breathing quickly, and watched me. I caught her eye and she giggled.

“Vikram, I want to get out of this place. Just get
out.
”

“You will, love, you will.” I moved closer. “You’ll see the stores in Boston and Atlanta. You’ll feel the warm breeze on your skin in Cuba.”

“Mmmm, will I?” She made a sound deep in her throat as I kissed her neck.

“Oh, Vikram, don’t... oh....”

She wasn’t just making love to me. She was making love to wealth, freedom, sunlight, warm water. I moved into her. I had her. I finally had her. And through her, I had Brother Michael. Her thighs smoothed up my hips.

The storeroom door slammed open. Cold air blew into the room. Outside were indistinct figures shouting in outrage. Laurena cowered back and grabbed desperately for the blankets.

“Michael!” she shrieked, as if her stout brother was rescuing her from a vile assault. “Michael!” She scuttled back across the bed, blood on her thighs.

“Shut up!” It was him, massive in the doorway. Tears streamed down his cheeks. He looked at me. “You viper.”

His huge hands grabbed my shoulders and pulled me from the room naked into the cold.

There is nothing else left of that night, save a confusion of voices and faces. The next morning, clad in a workman’s coverall, I was thrust through into the outer world as an unwillingly born infant.

When they came for me my family was mortified. Even Uncle Cosmas had managed his year without disgrace. I was the only one who had failed.

In all that night and day, though I looked for them, I did not see Aya Ngomo’s eyes anywhere.