V.

The second act was even noisier. Only toward the end were the attentions of the few serious onlookers taken entirely by La Jarretiere. As the orchestra, sweating and nervous, moved baton-driven into the last portion, Sacrifice of the Virgin, a powerful, slow-building seven-minute crescendo which seemed at its end to've explored the furthest possible reaches of dissonance, tonal color and (as Le Figaro's critic put it next morning) "orchestral barbarity," light seemed all at once to be reborn behind Mélanie's rainy eyes and she became again the Norman dervish Porcépic remembered. He moved closer to the stage, watching her with a kind of love. An apocryphal story relates that he vowed at that moment never to touch drugs again, never to attend another Black Mass.

Two of the male dancers, whom Itague had never left off calling Mongolized fairies, produced a long pole, pointed wickedly at one end. The music, near triple-forte, could be heard now above the roaring of the audience. Gendarmes had moved in at the rear entrances, and were trying ineffectually to restore order. Satin, next to Porcépic, one hand on the composer's shoulder, leaned forward, shaking. It was a tricky bit of choreography, Satin's own. He'd got the idea from reading an account of an Indian massacre in America. While two of the other Mongolians held her, struggling and head shaven, Su Feng was impaled at the crotch on the point of the pole and slowly raised by the entire male part of the company, while the females lamented below. Suddenly one of the automaton handmaidens seemed to run amok, tossing itself about the stage. Satin moaned, gritted his teeth. "Damn the German," he said, "it will distract." The conception depended on Su Feng continuing her dance while impaled, all movement restricted to one point in space, an elevated point, a focus, a climax.

The pole was now erect, the music four bars from the end. A terrible hush fell over the audience, gendarmes and combatants all turned as if magnetized to watch the stage. La Jarretiere's movements became more spastic, agonized: the expression on the normally dead face was one which would disturb for years the dreams of those in the front rows. Porcépic's music was now almost deafening: all tonal location had been lost, notes screamed out simultaneous and random like fragments of a bomb: winds, strings, brass and percussion were indistinguishable as blood ran down the pole, the impaled girl went limp, the last chord blasted out, filled the theater, echoed, hung, subsided. Someone cut all the stage lights, someone else ran to close the curtain.

It never opened. Mélanie was supposed to have worn a protective metal device, a species of chastity belt, into which the point of the pole fit. She had left it off. A physician in the audience had been summoned at once by Itague as soon as he saw the blood. Shirt torn, one eye blackened, the doctor knelt over the girl and pronounced her dead.

Of the woman, her lover, nothing further was seen. Some versions tell of her gone hysterical backstage, having to be detached forcibly from Mélanie's corpse; of her screaming vendetta at Satin and Itague for plotting to kill the girl. The coroner's verdict, charitably, was death by accident. Perhaps Mélanie, exhausted by love, excited as at any premiere, had forgotten. Adorned with so many combs, bracelets, sequins, she might have become confused in this fetish-world and neglected to add to herself the one inanimate object that would have saved her. Itague thought it was suicide, Satin refused to talk about it, Porcépic suspended judgment. But they lived with it for many years.

Rumor had it that a week or so later the lady V. ran off with one Sgherraccio, a mad Irredentist. At least they both disappeared from Paris at the same time; from Paris and, as far as anyone on the Butte could say, from the face of the earth.

Chapter Fifteen

Sahha

I

Sunday morning around nine the Rollicking Boys arrived at Rachel's after their night of burglary and lounging in the park. Neither had slept. On the wall was a sign:

I am heading for the Whitney. Kisch mein tokus, Profane.

"Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin," said Stencil.

"Ho, hum," said Profane, preparing to sack out on the floor. In came Paola with a babushka over her head and a brown paper bag which clinked in her arms.

"Eigenvalue got robbed last night," she said. "It made the front page of the Times." They all attacked the brown bag at once, coming up with the Times in sections and four quarts of beer.

"How about that," Profane said, scrutinizing the front page. "Police are expecting to make an arrest any time now. Daring early morning burglary."

"Paola," said Stencil, behind him. Profane flinched. Paola, holding the church key, turned to gaze past Profane's left ear at what glittered in Stencil's hand. She kept quiet, eyes motionless.

"Three are in it. Now."

At last she looked back at Profane: "You're coming to Malta, Ben?"

"No," but weak.