Sophie had the dreamy lips of a Sphinx. The first time that the dead lady kissed her, she barely managed not to scream. When we left the cemetery, she rushed to the bathtub to scrub herself; it took an hour before she called herself clean. Goldman reminded her that to get to the meat of death one does unpleasant things. She knew that, she said. Now I suspect that the only reason she declined to quit our society was her loyalty to me — although her smile always used to be sad in any case; and well before she first kissed me she had already begun collecting dead butterflies. As for my motivations, I should have asked Goldman, who remembered everything, and did not even express perplexity as to the effects of the foul medicine we so busily imbibed. He and I had first met at Mortensen’s famous speech, which asserted that we who live resign ourselves to death for no better reason than people were once resigned to slavery, operations without anesthetic, and any number of such evils. Mortensen, you see, was young once. He hated suffering of any sort. His blood circulated at a velocity sufficient for hope, or evil-fighting. Once the audience had departed the lecture hall — which process took less than two breaststrokes of my watch’s spider-arms since there were so few cultivated people in Boston, even including the county medical examiner and his staff — then we three ascended the steps to Mortensen at the podium, and the dusty purple stage curtain behind him became the opaquest entity ever when we clinked our water-glasses against his and toasted: To death! While he scarcely looked at Sophie, I knew that of all of us she had made the most delightful impression on him, not that it mattered to me. All I yearned for then was to accomplish something marvelous. Goldman was already proposing to fit us out with silver-plated pickaxes.
Although her sincerity attracted me, I barely knew Sophie in those days. She too must have grieved for some stale corpse. Soon enough I got fond of her and wished to save her from death; and had I resigned from the society there would have been no hope of that. For my own part, the more I banqueted, the less I cared about dying. Thus I seemed to be freeing myself from error.
Unfailingly strict, Mortensen quizzed her on the snake, the ibis, the eye. Although, indeed because she breathed the living’s natural resentment of the dead, she did not fail him. More than any of us, it seemed, she longed for our purpose to be achieved. So on the following night, when we strolled down to the domes among the cypress trees, all four of us ready if not exactly hungry for the Banquet of Death, she saw the snake before Mortensen did, and when the eye appeared (on the site of a Masonic burial), she chaffed him on not having spotted the ibis. By now the graves were already opening like the covers of drowned books in a tidal current, and that night we met the warlock, who could transform himself into a worm whenever he liked. From him we learned that the Black Depths, as his kind call this earth, extend down into bedrock, and through crooked channels to the Red Place. This news expanded Mortensen’s ambitions, not that I cared. (I mostly tried to avoid talking with anyone.) Mortensen, however, proposed to refrain from harrowing hell, since that might be construed as aggression, not to mention that it would destroy a previously unstudied system. Therefore we ought to form an alliance with its inhabitants, based on common interest. And so we wined and dined the warlock, famishing for knowledge and greatness.
By now I more definitely inclined against the miasma of vileness which ever overhung our banquets, like a wall of withered ivy. Perhaps you too would consider them dislikeable occasions. In the style of lovers and of alchemists, we sought to recombine opposites into some divine substance; so our repasts were invariably a mix of succulence and filth, our salad greens being jeweled with maggots, our bread baked from powdered bones, our savory meats basted with cadaveric fluid, while we drank fine old wine mulled with cinnamon and humerus-sticks, slurped up blood puddings topped with spun sugar, and (for our digestions’ sake) finished with prunes stewed in rancid ichor. Nibbling Mortensen’s earlobe, the warlock said he hadn’t eaten so well for a hundred years! He was glad to share with us both life and death; he quite admitted to liking our point of view. I wish you could have heard the sound his eyeballs made when he rolled them. The fact that he kept clear of Goldman, who was so superior in emergencies, stimulated my mistrust; for with his inventory of evil tricks he might prove yet more practical than our cleverest member. In short, what if he cultivated Mortensen in order to gull him? Valentinus implies that death extends up as well as down, so why did the warlock harp only on the Red Place? Forcing myself out of silence, I inquired what he knew about worlds above. The warlock replied with a truly unpleasant grin that he declined to traffick with Celestial Assassins. I most tactfully sank my canine teeth into my lower lip until dawn arrived, and the dead had clattered, sunk or oozed back into their graves, at which point I made known my concern that our research emphasis might be disproportionately negative. — First we must get to the heart of death and share it out, explained Mortensen. Think of rotten leaves in a drainpipe. Until they’re cleared nothing goes deeper. Then, when we’ve descended to solid rock, we’ll change course, and drink sky nectar! — Meanwhile our banquets wore on, and I had so far advanced as to gulp a bowlful of corpse-suet without even seasoning it with a sprig of the wild fennel that grew so rankly in the cemetery. Each night I saw new egg-white faces bending over their portions, slurping up marrow through artificial beaks fashioned of unicorn’s horn, while beneath the table dead cat-children prowled as wide-eyed as owls, opening their mouths in quest of food. On a gaunt horse whose bones kept falling off, a one-eyed man came riding. He reached into his chest, withdrew his heart and tossed it into our stewpot with a fuming splash. We toasted: To death! — Nor did the warlock’s blandishments raise my eyebrows anymore. That gentleman was nearly intact, although his face was moldy. He had even kept all his teeth. One night in late summer he invited us to tour the ocean floor, which even at this date lies mostly uninhabited by the dead, although certain drowned people have taken it upon themselves to represent the rest of us. He explained that the Mummy Lady on Sophie’s right would drown us in the stewpot, or else we could ask ghastly Mr. Mooncrow to gnaw our throats. — Well, actually, said Mortensen, we mean to stay alive, you see, forever if possible—
Oho! cried the warlock. Then we’ll be great friends. But see here: To live forever one must die.
I glanced at Sophie, who merely gazed around the company with charming openness, and presently returned the topic to the Upper Realm, where perfect truth is said to live. At this the warlock contradicted his own dig at Celestial Assassins by inviting her on a midnight promenade, commencing immediately. Destination: the Tree of Knowledge! That was how I first learned that the dead can be unfair. Frankly, I felt indignant; I thought I had gotten away from that. But I held my peace as usual, and so those two went their private way, while Mortensen shared tidbits with the Mummy Lady, whose little eyes were as lovely as gold coins. How far had we diminished death thus far? Goldman had already departed the table in order to measure the apparent speed of the moon between his thumb and forefinger. That left me friendless — for it had long since been clear that Mortensen and Goldman considered me a nothing. All I had ever offered them was Sophie.
By Mortensen’s command we now had to give up daylight altogether. On the final occasion, holding hands, Sophie and I walked our long street of dark cobbles, which were half silvered with New Year’s sunlight, and passed the old man squeezing oranges for juice in his hand-crank press, while the ladies smiled beneath the parasol of his wheeled stand, licking their painted lips. Once upon a time we too had been his customers. Even now Sophie declined to say what the warlock had showed her. — At least tell me if you ate anything, I said, but she answered: Don’t put me to the test. — Goldman and Mortensen were waiting at the cemetery gates. The former was calm, and the latter smiled with the same hopefulness as a child who expects something appetizing for dinner. Here came dusk. Reentering these shady, sky-roofed corridors whose domed, crossed, gabled porticoes and engraved stone-wreathed cells exhaled a half-imaginary odor of decomposition, we burgled a mausoleum and broke open four coffins whose contents would thicken tonight’s banquet. Here we promised to dwell until our knowledge could bring back the light. I admit that I would have hesitated, but Sophie swore her oath unflinchingly, and Goldman was so understatedly cavalier about everything that, reminding myself how grateful I had been on the night when Mortensen taught us to fix our meditations on the Dark Door, I too bound myself, at which a comforting dullness descended upon me.