Faces Under Water Read online

  Shaachen snatched his bag, and threw out handfuls of powder. He made over the altar three or four passes. Squashed Ear watched respectfully, suppressing belches.

  “He’s a gifted and wise man.” Furian shrugged.

  Squashed Ear added, “I wouldn’t like to get on his shadow side.”

  “Nor would he like you to. Just keep an eye open for anyone trying to spoil things.”

  The Revelers were eddying down after them now.

  The Princess Messalina came first, with a man on either arm. She was laughing raucously, tossing her head. The ivory mask had made her playful. Which was the husband and which the lover? Neither of either? Others followed, and some men with torches,

  The orchestra did not come, only the tabor man with his narrow drum. He stood to one side, and began to tap a rapid little heartbeat.

  The sparkling crowd surged and swirled. It was smaller. Not all had followed.

  Prince Teobalto appeared, his silk covered by a long black robe, and his face, now, by a ram’s mask with gilded curling horns to augment his fleece. He was to be High Priest of the Revel.

  Furian felt a weary distaste. Once or twice, with Shaachen, he had watched such affairs before. At one, even, a lamb had been put to death, a ‘sacrifice’ which was unlawful, (Not for any ethical reason, the Butcher’s Guild opposed it.)

  The torches were planted in the ground in ready slots.

  Youths dressed as pagan altar boys lined up behind Teobalto. He raised his arms. The black sleeves swooped back and showed anachronistic lace.

  “O Diana, look kindly on your worshippers.”

  No one mocked his old-lady voice.

  Shaachen, tucked in by a tree, touched something in his bag.

  A shower of silvery lights sprayed upwards from the altar, formed the shape of a crescent moon, and went out.

  The crowd chirruped and lifted its cups of Venusian glass.

  A part-naked girl came out of the wood at the altar’s back. She was white and slender, with large, firm breasts. At her groin hung a fringe of scintillants, and she was wigged and masked in silver.

  She leapt lightly on the altar, gestured to the sky.

  She sang a verse.

  “Kneel and honor her, the goddess of the night.”

  Furian thought, Where is the blue whore? I don’t see her.

  More silver rain dazzled up. The naked girl now danced slowly, describing her body with her hands, and the Revelers swayed as if before a snake. Furian felt no desire. In the crowd he could not see the girl in alien blue. She must be above, her butterfly hinged up, eating and drinking with a greasy mouth. There were several who had no interest in this, preferred more private dalliance. Perhaps she was choosing for herself another victim. As they said, The canals are deep.

  The first girl lay flat on the altar, and a shining crescent rose out of her body and burst in streaks of pale fire.

  A hunting horn sounded deep in the wild park.

  Now, then, for the show-piece.

  Furian glanced about. Shaachen’s way seemed clear.

  Why in any case would Prince Teobalto work out a grudge on Shaachen, who was less than a gnat to him, and here of all places?

  Then the goddess Diana came racing from the wood.

  She must be an illusion, but how conjured God knew. Yes, Shaachen had genius as well as villainy. Maybe he was even in league with some supernatural power, as the alleys said.

  Diana was tall, perhaps seven or eight feet in height.

  Her hair poured back from a diamond fillet, and the lunar crescent was iridescently blazoned on her forehead. She wore a tunic and buskins, as in certain paintings. She was white as snow, as the moon, all but her diamonds, and her eyes which burned a feverish nocturnal yellow-green, like a cat’s. Behind her ran, or seemed to run, the white lions of the Equus The crowd scattered with exclamations.

  Diana bounded over the altar and the cowering mortal girl, blew right through the clearing, and her train of lions and dogs after her, and other animals out of myth, even an icy unicorn, whose glacial horn gleamed like a drawn sword.

  They were gone in a lightning through the Groves.

  The guests of Prince Teobalto righted themselves in clamor, laughing and blaspheming. The prince himself, the High Priest, straightened from a terrorized crouch.

  The tabor player, who had lost the beat, regained it.

  Was this all? No. Another apparition was walking out of the wood.

  A voice, better by far than Teobalto’s, (trained), announced, “The folly of life. The unreason of flesh.

  These have brought you here. Behold.”

  The apparition halted. It was a woman in a dress of black velvet traced by jewels. Was she actual? Perhaps not. An unearthly music quivered, pipes, harps, to the rhythm of the tabor—which perhaps was no longer being played.

  She wore, this creature, a fan mask, and all at once, drew it off. Beneath, another mask, this like a woman’s face, rouged and powdered, with spangled lids. She drew off the second mask. Now her face was stretched, pure skin, taut as that of a young girl, yet sallow, like parchment. The eyes smoldered black. And then she pulled off the mask of skin. Below was the skull.

  It was an ornate skull, set with a green jewel between the eyes. But the eyes were gone. Two hollows, like the black night hollow of the wood beyond the altar.

  White teeth grinned, lipless.

  The androgynous voice announced, “Ah, what matter the world’s sorrow. Smile, smile, Signorissimas, Signorissimos. I, a skull, tell you. Keep smiling. I do!” The figure winked out. It had looked solid, but was a phantom. Again, Furian pondered how it was done—a mirror in the wood, some image cast by lamps from another place…

  One of the ladies was fainting. But the Princess Messalina had pranced forward in her ivory mask.

  She vaulted on to the altar, and with two hands ripped apart the bodice of her costly gown. Two fallen breasts slid from the cage of corseting.

  Messalina laughed. She stamped her foot on the altar. There was something quite mad about her. Something—unholy.

  A thick-set man, masked and maned as a wolf, ran forward and seized her, dragged her down, screaming and laughing, and galloped her away into the wood from which the apparitions had emerged.

  Furian stepped back.

  Couples cantered past him. A naked, eagle-faced man hustled the naked girl from the side of the altar—and a wonder the princess had not trodden on her—his hands already busy on her flesh.

  The sight of a skull had seemed to make them appreciate the flesh a great deal—

  Teobalto, the ram, leaned on a tree, with one of his acolytes kneeling before him, the priestly black robe bundled up over his head.

  Squashed Ear spat. Furian said sharply, “Control yourself. Don’t be a fool.”

  Shaachen, like an over-dressed, demented gutter rat, sprang up to them. “They’ve ruined my show. I had more. We go now. Shake this dust off our heels.”

  The gilded horns of the ram scraped bark audibly. Already shrieks of orgasm spumed from among the trees.

  A woman with a nymph mask and green tresses, half unclothed, rushed against Furian.

  “Feel me! Touch me!”

  But he put her off, and went by.

  As they climbed up the slope, Shaachen scurrying ahead, cursing, muttering like a granny cheated of her treat, the form of the woman in the blue dress appeared.

  She stood solitary, unique, like a ghost. Tonight there were pearls in her hair. She clasped her hands lightly together at her so-narrow waist. He could have snapped her in half. The butterfly of her face showed only the most distant hint of eyes. Were they blue, or black? Or nothing, like the skull.

  Shaachen fussed past her, not seeming to see.

  Squashed Ear strode after. In a covet beyond, a small rosy boy, unclad like a cherub, had unleashed his own desire on a pie. He rent it like a savage beast a deer, the gravies splashing like blood.

  Furian said, “Who are you, Madama?”
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br />   Her masked face stirred a little, a blue-white flower on a stem. She said nothing.

  Furian said, bleakly, “Keep smiling, Madama.”

  And went on up the slope.

  “THE GOD WAS TO COME, the deus of Carnival. Lust.” Shaachen chattered as they climbed up the inner stair.

  The lower floor lay in lightless disarray after his latest clinic. “Then the planets of the City, Maxima Venus, Neptune for Pesci, and the moon for Cancro, and Vulcan for Scorpio. Ultimately, fireworks, without powder, naturally. But these drunken licentious sots, they can’t wait.

  They must have off their garments and rut.”

  “Perhaps they were afraid of your powers.”

  “Afraid? He demanded it all, that booby.”

  “Teobalto. He didn’t cause trouble.”

  “I expected to be set on. Certain things—showed I would be. And he, he’s joined the Alchemist’s Guild. He reckons to become a master, but even a rose petal in water, to make it move’s beyond him. He’s jealous.”

  Shaachen flung open his upper door.

  The study loomed, dim as a tunnel, until Shaachen struck tinder to the candles. There was the clatter of wings.

  “Ah, my darling. How are you? Did you miss me?”

  Shaachen, calmed at once by his familiar, stroked the magpie’s demoniac head. “Tell me what time is it?”

  The magpie, from its perch on his shoulder, split the black clippers of its beak and cawed twice.

  “Ah,” said Shaachen, “what minutes?”

  The magpie shook its head, ruffled the black and white wings. Under its dagger beak and wicked head, its feathered breast was soft as a baby’s first hair.

  “None then,” said Shaachen. He held up his hand.

  “Hark.”

  They paused, and after some thirteen seconds, heard the Primo strike the second hour of morning.

  The magpie was infallible in its trick of telling time.

  It would even demonstrate the minutes, hopping or pecking up to thirty, raising the left wing to indicate the lapse before, the right to show the minutes after, the hour.

  One more uncanny feat.

  The colored bottles and vials massed black on the window. The bird had knocked one over.

  Shaachen took the cover from a reeking dish of unpleasant scraps, and fed the magpie, which ripped and tore eagerly.

  “He’ll pay me. I’ll make him pay.”

  “Meanwhile I must convey your thanks to the boatman below.”

  “Oh, give him what you want from this.” Shaachen tossed a bag of silver into Furian’s hand.

  “You’re generous again.”

  “I’m rich. You know it. Why have you never robbed me, Furian Furiano?”

  “It would tire me, Doctor Shaachen. It’s less wearing to be good.”

  Shaachen chortled, in a better humor feeding disgusting entrails to his bird. “Did you make a meeting with your blue skinny?”

  He did not miss much.

  “No. She didn’t want me, as you warned.”

  “Courage. Perhaps she’ll change her mind. I locked it up.”

  “What, Doctor, did you lock up?”

  “That mask you brought. You see?” He pointed to a high cupboard, reachable only by steps, set like a jail among the squeeze of books.

  Furian said, “You lost interest in it.”

  “No. My interest grows. It’s a horrid, nasty thing, that mask. It carries a taint.”

  “A composer of a song wore it,” said Furian.

  “Songs!” said Shaachen. “It stinks of some awfulness.”

  “How?” asked Furian, despite himself. He had not wanted to think about the mask from the canal, the mask of Cloudio del Nero. But there was no chance in any case. His music sprouted everywhere, like a divine weed. “Imagine,” said Shaachen, “a gazelle with the head of an adder. Imagine an angel, with the wings of a moth, broken, falling. Imagine unseen scratching on a window.”

  “The mask.”

  “The mask knows an infamous secret. It holds the secret of the death. The filthy joke of some filthiest god.”

  GULLS WERE FIGHTING in the sky. The tide was lushly in, smelling of sea and offal, and water sipped at the brink of the pavement.

  Furian gave Squashed Ear his fee. Squashed Ear lingered “Those women. Those noble ladies. I heard they go with any one.” Roused up, evidently.

  Furian said, “Better get home and wake your wife.”

  “I’d rather wake Juseppi’s wife.”

  Furian said, “The best fortune, then,” and was turning to go, when he saw darkness-on-legs coming round from the wall of Shaachen’s palace.

  Below, the high canal, the pole with the Neptune and no boat tethered. One lamp, smashed, giving no light, and the moon down. It was Shaachen’s lofty window which lit the scene.

  “A difficulty,” said Furian, to Squashed Ear. “We’ll have to earn our money after all.”

  There were four of them, big fellows from the rubbish tips of the lagoons. He had a view of stained, welcoming teeth, an earring that glittered, and knives that glittered better. Then Shaachen’s candles went out one by one above, the window died, and there was no light at all.

  Thank you, Doctor.

  As they lurched nearer, Furian saw that three came dedicatedly for him, as if to a prescribed meeting.

  His belly was molten, but his hands were always steady at such a juncture. It was after he would shake. If he lived to do it.

  He said, “Gentlemen, come on. Can’t I buy you off?”

  One stood grinning like the keep-smiling skull, in front of him. Two nudged closer either side, more serious.

  Furian took a handful of the ink-stanching writer’s sand he brought out with him on such nights from his coat pocket. He slung it in the solemn left-hand face, at the eyeholes of the half mask. Simultaneously pulled the knife free of his belt, and rammed it in the middle one’s guts.

  To the left, hawking, scrabbling at eyes. The other, still grinning under a paste-board nose, bowed over, his teeth darkening further in the darkness, from blood. The third one was surprised. His own blade tore Furian’s best coat as Furian stamped—the gesture of the sex-avid principessa—on his foot. Then Furian had got the hand with the knife. He dislocated three fingers, and as the man romped glugging sideways, cut the fatal vein in his neck.

  He kicked sand-eyes in the chest, smashing the breast bone. It gave as easily as the rib of a cooked fowl.

  The other one, the fourth, was standing over Squashed Ear, who lay full-length. His head had been stoved in, and the proud hat, the feather, were wet and bruised like a fruit from the mess inside.

  “Fuck you,” said Furian. He leaned forward and sliced the fourth man’s mask and face wide open. But through his blood, dropping down, the fourth man flatly said, “We’ll see—”

  And out of the shadow again, like fresh pus from a bottomless wound, more of them were coming, five, six, seven, hissing and rumbling, and some light that did not exist snagging the quills of their knives.

  Furian turned. He jumped off the pavement, straight down into the stinking hell-black cold of the canal.

  Below, the water insistently closing, holding tight to mouth and nostrils and breath to shut it out.

  He surfaced ten lengths along the waterway, and two knives plopped in beside him like friendly fish.

  Then some stone they had plucked, unreasonably momentous, struck him a numb and deathly blow to the right side of his back.

  Furian sank now, gasping in the poison of the canal, swallowing the piss of the sea god’s night.

  Christ and Maria—A bodily surge tried to eject the muck at once. His nose and throat were full of liquid ordure going two ways.

  Choking, he came up, gagged, spat, went under a third time.

  He swam in a panic-bright trance of oblivious, nauseous confusion. He kept down as long as he could. Emerging finally he knocked against the stone of a house-side, and a little rat went neatly by him, happy in its eleme
nt.

  But the bullies someone had sent to crown the night were almost far enough away. Around a turn or two of the canal.

  Furian forced himself down once more and swam until consciousness was almost out.

  He came up by some ancient stair he did not recognize. No lamps, the rope-arteries of alleys. Fruit peel rotted on the water.

  Under the wall, he thrust off his mask, sneezed violently twice, then brought up the fluid of half the canal, garnished by Cupid’s apricots. Far above someone cursed him for a drunk. He crawled away down an alley, back full of black pain, retching and laughing, part strangled, wiping the slime from his eyes.

  4

  A FAT PRETTY DAUGHTER of the Amari family, who he had fancied once, and once been allowed to fondle—but no more than fondle, she was virtuous—observed him without comment. She had a pretty mask too, a pink flower with eyes.

  Then she said, as he turned for the door, “You shouldn’t bath in your clothes, Signore.”

  “You’ll have to show me how to do it properly one day, Fiamina.”

  She said, “Two men came, just after dawn.”

  “Two men—for me?”

  “Yes, Signore. They wanted your rooms. They had something for you, they said.”

  “Did you show them?”

  “Mumma did. All up the stairs.”

  “Are they up there now, Fiamina?”

  “No. They came out. They were sorry to miss you.” Nothing was out of place in either of the two rooms.

  On the table was a duplicate of his mask, a white face with a long, pointing nose. It had been skewered to the wood by a cheap stiletto.

  That was all.

  It was enough. He was the mask. They had noted him, and would complete the task.

  AS HE WAS ROWED TOWARDS the Primo, Furian could smell the carpentry smell of Signore Amari’s second coat. He had bought it from him soon after returning to the apartment. Amari had wanted Furian’s best clothes too, even though Furian had been roaming in them, wet and stinking, for nearly three hours. He had taken a long and rambling way home. Not that it was home any longer.

  The locked box that contained his books, the green glass and his mother’s mirror—all he cared about—he left with the caretaker under some coins. “Not for sale.” He left his rent too, sufficient for another month. By then something would have happened. He would be dead, or elsewhere, or all the trouble settled, whatever the bloody trouble was. For while Shaachen’s (perhaps imagined) feud with Prince Teobalto might account for a roughing up, the band by the canal had been merchants of death.