Radiance

The King of Pluto entered the scene. He came leading a woman painted red. No—not painted red, but soaked in blood. She wore the Severin mask, but now that porcelain face was ravaged by arterial spray. Scarlet and black blood splattered over naked breasts, clotting in the hollow at the small of her back, pooled and half-dried in the valleys of her clavicle, turning her belly into a country of crimson. She was not Severin. She was not. That body, so blatant and unguarded, was not the body I dreamt of. Still, I looked away as though it were, as though it could be. The King passed her from dancer to dancer; she was tender with each of them, even—finally, finally—with the pale child. She hoisted him up, spun him in the air. He laughed, and she threw him to the ground. I lurched forward despite myself, stupidly. He is safe, of course he is safe. It is only an act, a little mummers’ nonsense to pass the time on this godforsaken world; only you needn’t be so rough with him—he’s only small; he is a good boy. The boy’s laughter opened a door into weeping.

The drums and pipes quickened, and so, too, the sounding sea: harder, urgent, arrhythmic. The silver man, erect as a knife, lifted bloody Severin into his arms and penetrated her, the blood running liquid down her limbs and mixing with the milk—how could there be so much blood? Where was it coming from? I thought my heart would stop. Cythera watched calmly, interested, never turning away for a moment. The music groaned, creaked, sped along its jerking, spasming path toward I knew not what; the silver man fixed his lenses on the wet, red body of his lover as though he could drink her in through those black mouths. She bounced in his arms, screaming now. The others bent in their dancing, hunched over, their arms brushing the ground, fingers contorted into hooks, claws, talons.

The Mad King of Pluto did not dance. He tore a green frond from his mask and cast it into the fire, where it became a great book, spitted on spikes, the flames licking at its spine like a beast roasting. He read from its flaming pages, and his voice echoed against the crash of invisible waves:

“Take her and spare us, take her and spare us, You who moved upon the face of the deep before the dark had any need of God. Take her and spare us. As long ago the daughter of Agamemnon was called upon to present herself to the ships moored at Aulis when the winds would not blow, so the daughter of Percival gave herself so that we might live. Agamemnon’s child came in beauty like the star of the morning. Take her and spare us. The lords of men told her she was to be wed to the greatest of them, and readily she prepared herself for a soft bed garlanded with flowers, to be thus brided. Take her and spare us. But the bed was not a bed, nor were the garlands flowers. Take her and spare us. The daughter of Agamemnon lay down upon a stone altar, bound with rough ropes, and there the priest slit her throat to appease the angry moon. Take her and spare us. And from her bleeding body the winds began to sing and fly so that every man’s ship found its destiny. Take her and spare us, take her and spare us. Send us home, and send her to hell.”

Prospero yanked Severin down from her silver mount by her hair. For a moment, a silken, elastic moment, he danced with her. A formal dance, a waltz, her face tipped up, straining to reach his. He touched her cheek, the cheek of her mask, the cheek beneath. And then he threw her savagely against the green-lit rocks, splashing through the blood and milk and mire. Before my eyes, the remaining dancers shuddered, howled, and transformed into four red tigers and a cub, maskless and striped: real tigers, starving tigers.

In the pit of drums and milk they bent their heads and ate her. I saw her bones snap, I saw the marrow within, I saw her rictus of anguish, I saw the King of Pluto drink her blood, and I saw that woman die with the face of Severin fixed to her skull.

But past the moment of her red death I remember nothing, for it was then that I lost consciousness.

25 February, 1962. I know not what hour.

I have seen her. I have seen her here on Pluto, in this damned city of Prospero’s, of Varela’s, alive, whole, laughing.