Faces Under Water Read online

  First published in the United States in 1998 by

  The Overlook Press, Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc.

  141 Wooster Street

  New York, NY 10012

  www.overlookpress.com

  Copyright © 1998 Tanith Lee

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be

  reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic

  or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information

  storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented without

  permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who

  wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written

  for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.

  ISBN 978-1-46830-630-9

  I love all waste

  And solitary places; where we taste

  The pleasure of believing what we see

  Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be:

  BYRON

  Contents

  Copyright

  Author’s Note

  PART ONE

  The Mask

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  PART TWO

  The Face

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  PART THREE

  The Skull

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  EPILOGUE

  The Heart

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  In this parallel Italy, some names are spelled phonetically. But an e at the end of a name is always sounded, (as ay to rhyme with day.)

  PART ONE

  The Mask

  1

  “I SPIT ON THE VIRGIN. She’s a whore.”

  The shadow of the bridge, ghostly in the pre-dawn, closed them over. And Furian thought quickly. How wonderful life is.

  Then the shadow lifted. They were out on the canal, and the wanderlier was crossing himself. “Forgive me, Beautiful Maria.”

  Furian thought, Am I so superstitious then. I must do it too? Tell myself a lie, like this man’s extreme piety. (For sometimes they only said, My wife’s faithless, or I long to be impotent.)

  But the Bridge of Liars, crossing or riding under which you must always lie for good luck, was gone.

  Only the canal now, leaden pearl under a half-born sky.

  “I don’t think you will find anyone, Signore.” said the wanderlier.

  “No. You’re right. It’s unusual.”

  “My cousin, Chomo, he found two yesterday by the water steps at Santa Lala. A girl and a man. Lovers, perhaps.

  “I should have hired you then.”

  “This was in broad morning, Signore. They were caught together by her hair. She had very long hair. Pale yellow. It was a shame.”

  Furian thought, Shaachen would have liked that. But he only said, “Never mind. We’ll go towards the Primo.

  You can get another fare there easily.”

  “Thank you, Signore. You’re always considerate.”

  Oh yes, thought Furian. Always, always.

  The canal turned, and they came out into wider water. On either side, the dim, dark houses rose, peeling like dying flowers. Iron balconies hung over their heads like the empty cages of enormous birds. A lamp burned, one solitary pink ember.

  The wanderlier sang mournfully some kind of sad song:

  “And so farewell; laugh when you think of me,

  “Who loved you better, better, better:

  “He will make you weep—”

  The voice of the wanderlier was muffled by the mask he wore, a cheap concoction of paste and board, the shape of a fish’s face.

  Furian was tired. He longed to sleep, and knew he would not do so, to attempt it would be foolish. Behind his own mask, that of a plain, grotesque white face with a long, pointing nose, he closed his eyes.

  The lamp shone on his lids as they passed beneath. And like the Bridge of Lies, was gone.

  It had been a fruitless night, from three o’clock searching the canals and pools of the island City for dead bodies to give to Doctor Shaachen. During the autumn carnival, there were often dead, usually murder victims, sometimes not even out in the water, let alone weighted down. Last year Furian had taken five in a night, one a young gallant who had been hanged from a lamp-standard, only his beautiful silver buckled shoes tiptoeing in the canal. The wanderlier yawned.

  “My wife will be frying little blue fish,” he said,

  “baking bread. But not,” he added, “for me.”

  Furian grunted.

  “Oh, Signore,” said the boatman, guiding his wanderer, dark and slick as a dagger between two bulging leaning house fronts, “my wife hates me. She’s in love with our son. He’s at the University, you understand.” Furian said, softly, “I’m sorry.”

  “No, I don’t mean,” said the boatman, as if Furian had asked or insisted, “that she’s incestuous. Only that her love is fresh for him. For me, burned out. And when I go home, she says to me, Look at you, Juseppi, you have the face of a fish.”

  Furian felt he must stir himself. “What does she wear for Carnival?”

  “A mask like a dove, with black-ringed eyes. And she wears a white gown. The tops of her breasts are still soft and white, with marbled blue veins. When I touch, she says, Go away, you fish.”

  “Change your mask,” said Furian.

  “Last year I was a bull. She told me then she was afraid of me. She made me sleep in my boat.”

  Furian laughed. He said, “Forgive me. Why don’t you take a mistress?”

  “Yes. I’ll do it. I’ll make an offering at the Primo. The first girl I see. Thank you, Signore.”

  There was a faintly lighted window above, either a late window or an early one. The lattice cast a reflection on the water like black lace.

  Just beyond, the waterway closed in again, a channel hardly wide enough even for the narrow wandering boat. But the sky was higher, a ceiling of whitish nacre, and something floated on the water like a blown blossom.

  “What’s that—look, Signore—a face in the canal.”

  Furian had got up, careful of the rhythm of the boat. Juseppi the wanderlier poked them forward with his oar, and firmed them in, piercing with the oar the sludge of mud and filth and history under the boat.

  The wanderer stood trembling-still.

  The water was black as ink here, rimmed with ripples like silver milk. The face floated, upturned, as Furian had seen many faces in this half light, at this season. Was it weed or black hair that wavered out behind? The dead eyes staring at the dawn, so far above, so useless to them.

  “In God’s name—” said Furian, surprising himself.

  He felt dizzy a moment, and the movement of his long hair, tied back at the nape of his neck, slipping forward over his shoulder—was like a serpent’s touch on his skin.

  “It’s a mask, Signore.”

  “So it is.”

  “But it’s been in a fight.”

  “Yes.”

  “Shall I search about—something may be down there.”

  Furian sat. “If it’s down that deep, he won’t want it.”

  For Shaachen did not care for the weighted ones, he liked them salad crisp, their lungs with only a little salty water in them.

  But the mask was strange. It seemed to have been ripped and bruised. Yes, bruised, as if made of flesh. Skeins of black hair eddied back from it, but they were torn and ragged. About
the eye-holes were scales of brassy sequins, but some had come off. One lay neatly on the water like a dull yellow tear.

  The mask had been only half-face, resembling a sculpture, some god or handsome classical figure, a perfect nose, and chiseled brows, painted black—for a moment it looked familiar.

  All across the right side was a slash, an old rusty color, as if the mask—had bled.

  There was something very odd, very sinister in its appearance. But it was the sleepless nights, wine and brandy, the rocking of the boat, which made it nauseous and terrible.

  Furian decided. “Use your hook. Bring it in.”

  “Signore—you want it?”

  “Yes. We found nothing else. Let him have that.”

  The wanderlier gripped his hook, and reached for the mask. As he secured it, the oar let go of the mud and they drifted on.

  Furian felt a spasm of distaste as the bruised white mask fluttered heavily off into the boat. It’s dead hair spread over his foot.

  The boatman crossed himself again.

  “He’s down below us.”

  “Perhaps. Or he went home with a bloody nose.”

  “Without the mask?”

  To be unmasked at Carnival was, by the law of misrule, illegal. At least, you would be hounded, fined, even if you were rich, or holy.

  “Well. Let’s row for the Primo.”

  The wanderlier turned his wanderer through the narrow way, between arches, where three blind lamps hung down and the dawn shone in them, like mother-of-pearl.

  Quickly they came out into a lagoon, the Laguna Fulvia.

  The water was a sheet of lilac ice, and from it ascended wan palaces that seemed already drowned. So still was everything a moment, the reflections of the walls of Venus, City of the Sea, appeared more solid and more real than her vaporous buildings floating in twilight above.

  Furian noted, as if he must, the huge white dome of the Primo Suvio, and beyond, the transparent veiled amber minarets of the Palace of Justice and the Temple of Art. But the sun was rising, yet one more gilded dome. Furian shut his eyes. Damn beauty. He would give it all to the ocean for three hours of sleep. Or no. He would die for it, the longest sleep of all.

  THERE WAS NO NEED to disguise the find inadequately as a carpet, or something in a chest. Furian went alone, by the route of the alleys, to Shaachen’s house.

  To the south, steps led into the water, and there was an imposing pole to moor a boat, topped by a green iron Neptune. On the alley front, the palace looked mean, its windows narrow, sides stained, and scrawled by occasional graffiti. The narrow door, almost always open by day, led into the lower rooms, where Doctor Shaachen’s free clinic was, as usual, full of destitutes and criminals. Drinking, smoking of pipes, and a card game were in progress. Elsewhere sat the desperate, jittery or slumped patrons. They would lurk here all day for the Doctor, ready to present their various ailments and diseases. Some he would cure, some, it was said, he killed. He was reckoned very clever, but would always say, (they said), Now, this medicine hasn’t yet been tested. It may make you well, or worse. May do nothing. May even harm you. Go home, take it, come back in seven days and tell me what’s happened to you. (And, they said, sometimes even the dead had done so.)

  Ignoring the patients, who mostly ignored him in turn, Furian climbed the stair, walked the corridor, and rapped on a black door.

  “Devil take you. Devil blast you, I say,” Shaachen cried. “What do you want?”

  “Nothing,” said Furian. “Good morning and farewell.”

  He waited, and the door was flung open.

  “Furian. Shit of stars. You have something? In that bag? A head? Come in.”

  Furian shrugged, and entered Doctor Shaachen’s study.

  The window faced to the south, across the canal, but it was filled by small squares of opaque, greenish glass. Against it stood a painterly array of bottles, liquid apricot, jade, and powdery mauve—an effect of pleasing color that was quite random. The fine orrery and astrolabe had been pushed aside, the old books jostled on shelves. Distillers’ glasses stood on the table, crowded by the ancient stuffed turtle with a shell of agate. Papers littered the floor. Spider webs massed from the ceiling. The room smelled of stagnant brews, brandy, the canal outside, and of Shaachen’s pet magpie, which was standing on the turtle’s back, eating some raw shreds of meat out of its dish.

  “So, Furian Furiano. Show me.”

  “It isn’t what you think.”

  “Not a head? A leg, then? A child—?”

  Shaachen experimented on fresh corpses. He found them handy. The City police did not hamper him, being well-bribed.

  Shaachen leaned forward. He had on, as was normal, his black wig of long curls, under which he was shaved bald. Indoors, he went unmasked, and his face, like the black magpie’s face, was that of a wicked old woman. Here and there in the alleys they said that he was truly two hundred years old, having sold his soul to Lucefero for knowledge. Probably he was sixty.

  “You’ll be disappointed,” said Furian.

  “That’s,” said Shaachen nastily, “what you say to all the girls.”

  Furian said, “It’s not flesh. I couldn’t find you any flesh to eat or feed to your bird. But I thought it might interest you.”

  “Give me,” said Shaachen. “On the table there.”

  Furian emptied the bag over the small space on the table. The mask fell out and lay there. Shaachen’s magpie flew up with a croak and blue flash from its black and white feathers.

  “A mask. At Carnival he brings me a mask!”

  Furian said, “If it’s of no concern to you, I’ll take it back—”

  “Wait, wait. Where did you find this?”

  “In the water. A street near Fulvia.”

  “Nothing else.”

  “Nothing I could see.”

  Shaachen peered at the mask through a magnifying glass. He touched it, but with a rod, a pair of tongs.

  “Something strange. Something peculiar. I look, and expect his eyes to look back at me out of the holes.

  And perhaps, the reflection of his assassin in them. And perhaps they will. No, I forgive you, Furian Furiano.

  Something, some thing. I’ll give you the price of a full-grown hand. How’s that?”

  “Very generous.”

  As Shaachen was unlocking his chest, he said, slyly, “In two nights, there’ll be a Revel of Diana. At the full moon.” Furian waited once more. “Do you want the work? Bring a companion with you. Only one should be needed. But a hefty fellow.”

  “I can arrange that.”

  “We won’t meet here, but by the Centurion’s Bridge.

  The Neptune side. Eleven, by the Primo clock.”

  There came a scratch at the door. Shaachen called in a more friendly voice. A well-dressed woman came in with a tray. She had the mask of a pigeon, and Furian thought of Juseppi the boatman, and his marble-breasted wife. Dull-brazen hair threaded with grey ran down this one’s back. Shaachen had cured her of a growth, (he had said, by painting his member with a certain remedy and having intercourse with her.) Now she brought him breakfast every day. There was a whole roast chicken, warm bread under a napkin, peaches. She set down the tray on the space from which Shaachen had, with the tongs, suddenly whipped away the mask.

  The chicken was aromatic. Furian felt a hollow pang of hunger.

  “Eat with me,” said Doctor Shaachen.

  “Thank you, no.”

  Furian picked up the coins. As he was leaving, the woman was slicing a peach into a cup of wine, and the smell of nectar filled the air. The magpie had come down again and Shaachen, calling it “Darling,” was feeding portions of chicken to its black beak.

  THE CITY OF THE SEA, commonly called Venus, although her name been had Venera, stood—or drifted, in the popular view—on her seven islands. She was aproned by the three great lagoons which held her, Fulvia, Aquila, Silvia, and all through her ran her canals, cutting her in delicate pieces. Seen high from the air, as the
sable gulls of the ocean saw her, she was like a broken mirror, reflecting sky. The broken, attributable mirror of course, of Venus.

  In the market beyond Shaachen’s palazzo, the early vegetables and fruit and fronded herbs were lying in sheets of color, that swam momentarily before Furian’s eyes. He could have bitten into everything, the melons, the curled basil, (green, succulent), the purple legumes, the bosoms of young women bending, creamy, to their baskets, where just a slip, a shiver, and the whole breast, a globe of heaven, might be, for half a second, revealed. The inside of his mouth was wet, and he was suddenly hard under his clothes.

  For this reason, he would wait. No breakfast. No woman.

  He looked instead at the masks of the poor, antiques passed down through generations, kept sacred with the little Virgin statue, the medallion of Neptune, mended, patched. Sometimes only a band of black cloth with two eyeholes cut out. The beggars who clustered at the market’s edge sported masks of straw or dead leaves. One had omitted the custom last year, and been hung up barefaced by the heels among the wrung-neck chickens. Six weeks the autumn Carnival lasted. They were one week into it. He had missed the first five days, lying down with fever in his rat’s nest. He must go to the rat’s nest now, tidy the mess. Then to the Signora’s, to copy her book for her.

  A box-litter passed along the market’s rim. Four men in ivory livery, holding up a doll in a wonderful mask. It was the shape they especially liked this year, that of an opened fan, narrow end at the chin, all silver lace tines, with the eyes marked in flares of blue sequins, the color that had been on the magpie’s back, an alien blue. The woman herself was made out of white sugar. She had a little dog on her lap, fashionably also masked. He looked after her, remembering he could have had a wife like that, a mistress.

  The clock was sounding seven from the Primo, several streets behind him. Round the spire the brass horses would be trotting, mechanically tossing their heads, one horse for each of the City’s islands.

  Furian wondered if Juseppi had made his offering at any of the Primo’s pagan shrines, and gone out and found a girl, pretty and willing, in answer to his prayer.