Amid a welter of spear-shaped leaves, Donnell saw the movements of low-slung bodies. But, he thought, the truly dangerous animal wore a suit of negative black and roamed the streets of Rumelya without challenge. A vandal, a coarse outlaw. Yet though he despised the man’s abuse of privilege, he was captivated by the drama of the scene. This maniacal warrior with the face of a beast howling his laughter, taunting the lie-abed burghers and fishermen; the rush of dark water; the auroral veils billowing over the deep forest; the slinking animals. It was like a nerve of existence laid bare, a glistening circuit with the impact of a one line poem. He filed the scene away, thinking he might compose the poem during his next period of meditation. Half in salute, honoring the vitality of what he had witnessed, half a warning, he sent a burst of his own fire to scorch the earth at the Yoalo’s feet. And then he lifted his hands to engage the fields and returned to Maravillosa.
The sky was graying, coming up dawn. One of the bushes near the veve was a blackened skeleton, wisps of smoke curling from the twig ends. He sat down cross-legged on, the ground. Within the fields, he thought, he was a far different person than the one who now doubted the validity of the experience. Not that he was capable of real doubt. The whole question was basically uninteresting.
‘Hey, monkey!’ The Baron waved from the hilltop.
The wind must have been bad. An avenue had been gouged through the undergrowth, and he could see a portion of the house between the hills. Gables, the top of his bedroom window. Jocundra would be asleep, her long legs drawn up, her hand trailing across his pillow.
‘Man,’ said the Baron, coming toward him. ‘You got to control this shit!’ He gestured at the battered foliage.
Donnell shrugged. ‘What can I do?’
The Baron sat down on the veve. ‘I don’t know, man,’ he said, sounding discouraged. ‘Maybe the best thing can happen is for it to all blow away.’ He spat. ‘You got another nosebleed, man.’
Donnell wiped his upper lip. Blood smeared and settled into the lines of his palm, seeming to form a character, one which had much in common with a tangle of epiphytic stalks and blooms blown beside the veve: fleshy leaves, violet florets. More circuitry ripped up from beneath the skin of the world. Every object, the old man had said, is but an interpretation of every other object. There is no sure knowledge, only endless process.
‘When you first come here, man,’ said the Baron, ‘I thought you was sleaze like Papa and them other uglies. But I got to admit you unusual.’ He coughed and spat again. ‘Things is gettin’ pretty loose up in the attic. You and me should have a talk sometime ‘bout what’s happenin’ ‘round here.’
‘Yeah,’ said Donnell, suddenly alert to his weariness, to the fact that he was back in the world. ‘Not now, though. I need some sleep.’
But a few days later Otille sent the Baron away on business, and by the time he returned things had gone beyond the talking stage.
Chapter 18
September 15 - September 19, 1987
Ordinarily they would have been asleep at three o’clock in the morning, but for some reason Jocundra’s adrenaline was flowing and she just tossed and turned.
‘Let’s get something to eat,’ she suggested, and since Donnell had also been having trouble sleeping, he was agreeable.
It was creepy poking around the house at night, though not seriously so: like sneaking into a funhouse after hours, when all the monsters have been tucked into their niches. These days it was rare to see anyone walking the corridors of Maravillosa. Clea and Downey had moved in together and were busy - said the Baron with a wink -‘lickin’ each other’s wounds, you unnerstan’?’ Simpkins, as always, kept aloof. Only two of the ‘friends’ remained, a chubby man and, of course, Captain Tomorrow, whom Jocundra had come to think of as a ragged blackbird perched on a volume of Poe stories, pronouncing contemporary ‘Nevermores.’ And Otille never ventured downstairs. Jocundra imagined her wandering through her ebony shrubs, quoting Ophelia’s speeches; and that set her to remembering how, during the early days of the project, Laura Petit had labeled certain of the patients ‘Opheliacs’ because of their tendency to babble and cry. Jocundra had had one such patient, a thirtyish man with fine, pale red hair, fleshy, an academic suicide. He had licked the maroon stripe of the wallpaper, and at the end, unable to speak coherently, he had tried to proposition her by making woeful faces and exaggerated gestures, reminding her of Quasimodo entreating Esmerelda. She had nearly quit the project after his death.
Moonlight laid jagged patterns of light and shadow over the downstairs corridors, casting images of windows and blinds splintered by the wind. They had considered walking outside, but it started to drizzle and so they stood on the porch instead. The rain had a clean, fragrant smell, and its gentleness, the steady drip from eaves, gave Jocundra the feeling of being a survivor, of emerging from a battered house to inspect the aftermath of a storm. As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she saw something gleaming out along the drive. A car. Long; some pale colour; maybe gray.
‘Company,’ she said, pointing it out to Donnell.
‘No doubt Otille has found solace in a lover’s arms,’ he said. ‘Or else they’re delivering a fresh supply of bats to the attic.’
‘I wonder who it is, though.’
‘Let’s go to the kitchen,’ he said. ‘I’m hungry.’
But on the way to the kitchen, they heard voices from Otille’s office.
‘I don’t want to get involved with her tonight,’ said Donnell, trying to steer her away.
‘I want to see who it is,’ she whispered. ‘Come on.’
They eased along the wall toward the office, avoiding the shards of window glass.
‘… does seem that the hybrid ameliorates the tendency to violence,’ said a man’s voice. ‘But after seeing him…’
‘It’s not his fault he’s the way he is,’ said Otille. ‘It’s probably mine.’
‘Be that as it may,’ said the man patiently. ‘We’re not ready for live tests. Look. If your family’s problems do result from a congenital factor in the DNA, and I’m not convinced they do…’
Jocundra recognized the voice, though she found it hard to believe that he would be here.
‘I’m so sick of being like this,’ said Otille.
Jocundra pushed Donnell away, shaping the man’s name with her lips, but he resisted.
‘Have you been taking your medication?’ asked the man.
‘It makes me queasy.’
‘Evenin’, folks,’ said Simpkins. He was standing behind Donnell, an apple in one hand, a kitchen knife in the other; he gestured toward the office with the knife.
Donnell hardly reacted to him. ‘Ezawa!’ he said, and brushed past Jocundra into the office. Simpkins urged her to follow.
Otille was standing against the wall, distraught, her hair in tangles, a black silk robe half open to her waist. Jocundra had not seen her since the night Donnell first used the veve, and she was startled by the changes in her. All the hollows of her face had deepened, and her eyes seemed larger, darker, gone black like old collapsed lights. Ezawa was behind the desk, his legs crossed, the image of control. He ran a hand through his shock of white hair and said to Otille, ‘This is unfortunate.’