The Man Who Melted (13 page)

“You mean you don't
know
?”

“You're not afraid now, are you,” Roberta asked, but it was more a statement than a question.

“No,” he said, surprised that he wasn't. “I feel good here. Perhaps I won't have that episode, after all.” A thin, hot breeze brushed his face. He put his arm around Roberta and they leaned against each other.

“All episodes don't have to be bad, you know.”

“Yes, I've heard the party line.”

“And yours—they were very bad?”

Mantle didn't answer.

“Well,” Roberta said, “I have had bad and I have had good. Since the church, always good.”

“Like tonight?” Mantle asked. She stiffened, and he said, confessing, “I still can't remember what I saw when I was hooked in. Only that everything was black and silver…and an ocean, falling into it.” Anxiety began to rise, as if it had been lying dormant inside him and was now expanding again.

“That is not unusual,” Roberta said, but she looked worried. “You'll remember, it's just the shock of a new experience. Don't worry and don't fight it.”

Mantle looked back at the house, which looked more like a fortification erected by an impoverished noble. It was constructed in the style of Puget, who was considered to be the heir to the Roman stone-cutters. The great stones, each of a different size, fitted together perfectly. The roof was made of curved, graduated pantiles, and a correct fit demanded a craftsman with a great deal of manual intuition. Still, it resembled a great barrack, even with the obviously more recent addition of a colonnade; yet it was a dignified house and at least four hundred years old—as was attested not only by its style, but by the splotches of plastup used to mend the walls. An outside lawn lamp illuminated the front face of the house; the rest of the house lamp illuminated the front face of the house; the rest of the house seemed to merge into the shadowy, exotic growth around it.

“Do you think you're ready to go inside now?” Roberta asked.

Mantle nodded.

They entered the house, first into a stucco-walled anteroom which was bare and yellow-streaked, and then into a large, arched sitting room from which he could see a circular staircase to his left and other rooms ahead and to his right. He imagined room after room, an infinity of rooms, an infinite hotel for all the guests of heaven and hell. He stopped himself from thinking
that way, but the house did have a museum quality of decay about it, heightened by the rich wallpapers, crenations, period furniture, paintings, tapestries, bronzes, and porcelains. Some of this, he thought, had to be holos. A lovely Limoges enamel miniature caught his eye, as if the tiny plaque covered the entire wall leading into the sitting room. In the miniature, two costumed women were reading what was obviously a love note, while a young man eavesdropped; they were all caught in the translucent enamel, closed in the bronze frame.

But the house seemed alive, he thought. It was like the insides of a seashell, winding round and round from mystery to mystery, a living concretion.

As they approached the stairs, Mantle could smell the perfumed tallow of candles. A woman in her forties, hair pulled back, eyes direct, stepped out of a nearby room and left the paneled door ajar. She wore a simple, loose-fitting black dress; her appearance was severe, perhaps prim. She nodded to Roberta, smiled warmly at Mantle, and said, “Hello, I'm Faon. Welcome.”

Mantle thanked her for her hospitality, but could not help looking over her shoulder and into the room she had just left. Everything inside was suffused with yellow.

Faon turned to the room and asked, “Would you like to see our candle room?”

“Perhaps he should wait until tomorrow….” Roberta said.

“Yes, I would like to see it,” Mantle said, and Faon led him into the room. Roberta followed.

Candles were flickering and guttering everywhere: along the floor, set side by side to create the illusion of aisles; upon sideboards and desks and silver serving trays; in crystal baskets; in girandoles and sconces on the textured walls. The black parquet floor, which reflected the candles darkly, made the room feel large and cold. It was like looking down at a river from a bridge at night and seeing the city lights reflected.

Mantle felt as if he had just walked into the chapel of a wealthy but Campagnard-style sect. There were so many sects….

On the far side of the room, lifted high above the floor like a bier for a miniature Greek hero and surrounded by candles, was a small, open casket. Mantle walked over to it.

A little boy lay in the casket, brocade all around him, folds of red velour touching his calm face. He could not be more than eleven or twelve; his hair was white-blond and cut very short. He was dressed in a black, gauzy gown. Fascinated, Mantle stared into the casket.

This is familiar, he thought, excited. I have seen this boy before! Be careful. “Why do you do this?” he asked.

“It's custom,” Roberta answered. “This little one is passing across to the other side. Our custom is to have someone watch over the passage. We all take turns.”

“Something like in the Tibetan Book of the Dead,” Mantle said.

“Something like that,” Faon said, smiling.

“Is this your child?” he asked her.

“No, he was given to us after his mother and father were lost.”

“Given?”

“Have you heard the voices?” Faon asked.

“No,” Mantle said wearily.

“Last year during a ceremony,” Roberta said, “we were told where to find this child.”

“By whom?” Mantle asked.

“By the voices you can't seem to hear,” Faon said.

“Was he a Screamer?”

“I prefer the word Crier; and, yes he was. Stephen's parents were lost in the first Panic in Saint Raphael. They couldn't stand in both worlds, ours and that of the Crier. They simply lost their bodies before they died.”

“Stephen told us that he was going to follow his parents, which he did,” Roberta said, gesturing toward the casket.

“Didn't you try to help me…him?” Mantle asked Roberta.

Faon smiled, as she seemed to look right through him, excoriating him. Mantle blushed, but there was nothing to do but return her stare. “An interesting slip of the tongue,” she said, exchanging a glance with Roberta. “No, there was nothing we could do to
help
him. He knew what he wanted to do, what he had to do, and we promised him that we would guard his passage, as we say.” Mantle frowned. “You still don't understand. He knew what he was doing. He was not committing suicide, as you think. He had a place to
go. Just to die, without help, without others on the other side waiting to pull you up—that is suicide.”

“I know I've seen that little boy before,” Mantle said, blurting out the words. Roberta stepped closer to him, offering security.

Faon nodded, as if that were not out of the ordinary, and said, “Perhaps when you were in the dark spaces.”

“I saw him in the casket,” Mantle said, “when I plugged into the Crier at Dramont. And I glimpsed this house.” He remembered as he talked, his words the catalysts of memory. “But I'd never seen it before.”

Faon made a clucking sound and said, “You make much out of nothing. Of course you could dream the house. But what about your wife? Did you find
her
?”

“No,” Mantle said. “I can't remember.” And he couldn't.

Suddenly, Faon slapped him squarely in the face with her open hand. It stung and drew blood from his nose and mouth. But he saw Josiane's face, as if in her hand. It was as if Faon had struck him with Josiane herself.

Mantle swore and raised his hand as if to block another blow or to strike back, but it was only reflex. He was too surprised even to feel anger.

“Now do you remember?” she asked.

Mantle hesitated an instant, and before he could answer, she struck him again. This time he grabbed her arm roughly, and she—pulled off balance—was pulled against him, her face against his chest.

“Do you remember?” she asked, her voice only slightly muffled.

“Yes!” he said, his teeth clenched. When Faon struck him last, it was as if he were back in the tomb again, plugged into the dead man; and again he saw Josiane floating just below the surface of a dark sea, saw her staring unblinkingly at him, heard her voice calling him home. It was Josiane. It was. And home was New York. He resolved that he would return to the States. He would find her. She was there—he felt that—and she was alive.

Then Mantle began to shiver as if he had been thrown into icy water. Suddenly he knew he was going to have an episode. He could feel the pull of the dark spaces, the hollow places. It's going to happen again, he thought. Sonofabitch!

Faon pulled away from him and said, “You've had a rather rough time.”
She looked at him with a directness that seemed to be hers alone. “I'm sorry. But the transition crisis which you've been experiencing will bring you closer to reality, to true seeing….”

Mantle's hands felt clammy and he was drenched in cold sweat. Faon's voice was echoing in the room, or so it seemed to him. “Excuse me,” he said, “but I think I'd like to go outside.”

Roberta took his hand, as if to draw him out of the room.

“It's close,” Mantle said to her. “I can feel it on me. Just leave me alone and—”

“We'll go upstairs right now,” Roberta said. “I'll see it through with you, share it.”

Mantle tried to control his anxiety and said, “I'll be all right on my own hook.”

“You don't have to be embarrassed, not here, not with us,” Faon said. “We've all been through it. You're not a freak here. Go with Roberta; it will make it easier for you.”

“Come on,” Roberta said. “Quickly.”

Mantle followed Roberta up the stairs, along a rather narrow hallway lined with paintings of dusty woodland scenes—some of which certainly had to be facsimiles, for Mantle saw a painting of trees bending toward swampy water that looked like the work of Van Ruisdael, a melancholy artist of the mid-seventeenth century. Even the paintings alarmed him, not because of the incongruity of possession, but because they seemed to reflect the tones and textures of his own thoughts, those thoughts which were driving him over the edge.

Roberta led him up another flight of stairs and into a room that was virtually empty except for a simple bed, chairs, and the ever-present computer console. This was more a monk's cell than a guest room.

“Take off your clothes and try to relax,” Roberta said gently. “Do you want a narcodrine?” Mantle shook his head: he had had enough drugs. He sat down on the bed, which was hard, and suddenly felt removed from Roberta and everything in the room, as if skeins of invisible material were separating him from the real world of people and things. It was almost as if he were in two places at once. He shuddered to think about the other place.

Roberta bent over the computer console; then, as if she had just remembered, turned to Mantle and said, “There's a dry shower in the bathroom, there.” She pointed to the door on the far wall. “Why don't you slip in; I'll follow you.” Then she turned back to the computer and keyed in a program. Mantle jumped as the room dimmed slightly and became full of colored streamers and splotches, bits of shells, string, and wire mesh; and he remembered Josiane with the clarity of hallucination, remembered her bending over him in their old bedroom (she a child with budbreasts and a tight, unwrinkled face) and screwing him, watching him impassively as he stared at the holographic objects of Pollock's painting hanging in the air.

“How did you know about that?” Mantle asked. The tremors were beginning again, even now, with the familiar all around him as if he had captured the past.

“Not yet,” Roberta said. “I'll tell you after we shower. Not a word until I'm clean.” She stepped out of her clothes, leaving them in a bunch on the floor, and went into the bathroom. Mantle followed, and, indeed, felt better after showering, although he still didn't feel entirely clean. His hair was fluffy and his skin tingled.

“There's a marvelous shower down the hall,” Roberta said. “A real antique with I-don't-know-how-many water nozzles, which spray you from every direction. It's better than anything we've got now, I don't care what anybody says.”

They sat on the edge of the bed. “Well,” Mantle asked, “how did you know about the painting?”

“I thought it would calm you. Doesn't it?”

“It was just a shock at first,” he said, as if from across an abyss. “But how did you know to pick that—”

“I read over your records. Joan made an entry about it. So…Raymond?”

“Yes,” he answered, feeling calm and deadened, not caring about Joan or Pfeiffer or Roberta; and Josiane was only a perfect idea, a form for his thoughts, as dead as he. He now felt that time was subtly, but definitely, slowing down, unwinding; and when it stopped he would be left in the eternal black and silver spaces with the dead.

Fight it, you sonofabitch, he told himself.

“Why didn't Joan come with you?” Roberta asked, as if she could not see that Mantle was losing it, slowly sliding over the edge into himself.

“I wanted to do this alone.” Talk to her, keep her talking, touch her, help me, Josiane.

“But she would have wanted to be with you.” Mantle didn't reply. “Do you love her?” Roberta asked after a pause.

“Yes, I suppose I do,” Mantle said, answering the question as if by rote, his thoughts far away, glimpsing shadows of Josiane, feeling time running down. “But in a different way.” He was talking as if to himself now. “Without the passion and longing, without the sickness.”

“Sickness?”

Mantle shook his head and touched her hand, which was resting on her lap. He ran his fingers over her knuckles and through her pubic hair.

“Do you think passion is sick?” she asked.

“No. That's not what I meant.”

“But what you said. Do you consider your feelings for your sister as being
sick
?” She turned to face him, and he touched her shoulders, her arms, her face. He noticed that her nostrils were flared. He felt slightly repelled. She was so far away now, mile upon mile; and yet he could touch her as if his arms were a thousand kilometers long and he could stretch them across the void. And he could answer her questions now, perhaps even more objectively than before. He was burning from the inside with thoughts and memories that he could not give form. But the outside still retained its appearance.