Lucia's Masks Read online

  “You do not know what I have imagined, or can imagine,” she responds. “You do not know what I have seen.

  “Repentire. I will not judge you.”

  He is moved by her generosity and by her resolute calm. He realizes how unlikely it is that he would ever again find such a listener, willing to hear him out in silence and not shrink away in disgust at his story.

  Yes, he thinks, I must tell her everything. But first he withdraws his hand from her loose clasp. He cannot speak while she still touches him. He cannot bear to feel her cringe once he describes the events of that bestial night.

  “I will not look at you,” she says. “Will that be a help to you?”

  He nods.

  She turns her face away so that once again, he sees her strong profile. Slowly, and with a methodical grace, she begins to unbraid her hair. He is grateful for her sensitivity, for this intimate gesture suggesting a protective domestic space. And whether or not this was her intention, he finds it soothing watching her hands unwind the heavy, glossy plait. He glimpses — however fleetingly — the possibility he might yet find peace within himself.

  “For the performance,” he begins, “they had draped the walls of the meeting place in dull black. There were no seats. We were told to stand near the wall. Once the performance was under way, we could move about or join in the action as instinct prompted.

  “As instinct prompted,” he repeats. He feels these words might choke him. Already, he can smell his own fear.

  He stops. He looks at the luxuriant mass of hair Lucia has unbound. He lets his eyes follow the glossy undulation, wave after wave, which she has freed from the confines of the plait. How silent the night is. This too, he tries to absorb.

  Repentire, he tells himself. He thinks of the millions of human beings before him who had indeed repented when they heard this word. He wonders if they then found consolation. He does not think he will. He does not believe he is deserving of consolation.

  But surely Lucia is right? He saw the pity and the censure in her eyes when she looked at his wounds. Mortifying his own flesh is a form of wickedness in itself. What use will he be to them if his wounds turn septic?

  “There were twelve of us made up the audience,” he continues. “I remember counting. I presumed the other four members in the group would be our performers. I was restless, excited. It was a long time since I had seen any theatre. My expectations were enormous. I anticipated what — ecstasy? A blinding insight that would regenerate my own creative source?

  “Whatever it was I expected, it was hell they delivered.

  “The room went black, as if all the light in the world had been sucked away. The idea came to me that we were inside the belly of a beast. There was a distant rumble. It seemed to come from my left, and then from under my feet.

  “This rumbling gradually got louder. How can I describe it? The sound was inhuman, harrowing, doom-laden. I imagined the earth tearing itself apart, somehow consuming itself, and groaning all the while. The room began to shake. This may have been only an illusion, created by the amplified sound. Yet it seemed real enough. I found it difficult to keep my feet. I was swaying badly. The room was still pitch-black so that I had absolutely no depth perception. I had no idea where any of the others were. If anyone had spoken or cried out, it would have been impossible to hear them through that infernal noise.

  “The rumbling became a roaring that was next to unbearable. The sound penetrated to the marrow of my bones. It filled my chest, my head, my mouth. My body trembled and I could not control it.

  “I remember thinking that this was Artaud’s cataclysm and what a cunning job they had made of it. I was trying hard to stay objective, and protect some kernel of rationality through this onslaught on my senses. Yet the greater part of my mind was colonized by a blind mounting panic. I had an urge — and this is no exaggeration — to cry out for my mother.

  “And just at that point when I thought I might weep or tear my hair out or go mad, the noise and the shaking ceased. The silence and the stillness felt like great healing draughts of spring water. They left us in that blessed state for a minute or two.

  “A dot of white light appeared, somewhere ahead of me. It grew gradually higher and wider until it assumed the shape of a classic spot-light beam. I focused greedily on this light, which restored both the dimensions of the room and my own place in it. I could just make out as well, the forms of the others who watched.

  “In the inverted funnel of the spotlight, a young girl materialized. She looked no more than twelve or thirteen. They had dressed her in a flowing, white garment. She had extremely long, fine hair, the colour of corn silk. She was slight and delicate. Her face reminded me of a miniature orchid I saw once in the Pleasure Zone.

  Here he has to stop again. He clenches his fists, and puts his forehead to the earth. He imagines clawing a hole for himself to escape the demand that he utter these vile-tasting words.

  “Repentire,” she counsels him.

  “I cannot.”

  “Repentire.”

  “Her eyes were closed,” he tries again, “and her arms slack. It was only afterwards I realized she must have been drugged. The light widened to reveal her ‘guardians,’ or so I supposed them to be. Four members of the Theatre of Cruelty — two men and two women — were on her either side. Their robes were black. They wore crowns made of feathers. I remember thinking these headdresses must be inspired by Artaud’s interest in the Tarahumara Indians of Mexico, whom he had visited. A negligible thought. And a thoroughly innocent thought, given what was to follow.

  “The four guardian figures had coated their lips in a red so dark it verged on black. They had filled in the area around their eyes with kohl so that from a distance, these smudges looked like empty sockets. Their garish makeup made the girl appear even more fragile and vulnerable by contrast. For a moment, their black-robed figures enveloped her so that only her face was visible. I thought of a petal floating on a boiling, sullen sea. Her face did seem to be floating. I supposed this was a trick of the light.

  “She was such a pale wisp of a girl. Yet she glowed. Surrounded by their oppressive darkness, by their crude, glowering faces, she seemed to be the repository of something sacred: like a promise that must never be broken.

  “I ought to have leapt forward at that point, and carried her away. But I did not know. I had no idea what they intended.”

  He can taste bile as well as blood in his mouth.

  Repentire.

  “The room was plunged once again into absolute darkness. A grating music began. It seemed to come from under my feet: sounds so discordant, I ground my teeth together.

  “Next came a penetrating whistle, whose shrillness made me want to weep. I was crouching, with my fingers thrust into my ears. I recall wondering why on earth they were inflicting this punishment on us, and what it had to do with Artaud.

  “The whistle ended as abruptly as it began, and there followed another of those blessed silences sweet as mother’s milk. It was the last time in my life I was ever to experience that sensation of relief, and unadulterated sweetness. I am not being self-pitying here. I am relating the facts. After that night, I was corrupt. I tasted corruption, and it set an infection raging in me which is my living damnation.

  “I must stop a moment,” he tells Lucia. His throat is parched. The horror of what he must speak next is a swollen grub in his mouth. He takes as deep a breath as he can manage, and resumes.

  “In the murk, a point of light appeared, so tiny that at first I thought I might be hallucinating. This light gradually expanded, in keeping with the swaying rhythm of what sounded like pan-pipes. When the light was as large as an ellipse, I saw what had been hidden from us in the dark — that they had laid the girl out on a sacrificial altar.

  “Her flowing drapery and her long hair cascaded over the edge of the marble slab. Her left arm hung slack. I presumed she was acting, and I marvelled at her stillness and at her almost ethereal beauty in her milk-whi
te robes. The scene was masterfully rendered. I understood — with my nerve endings, as much as with my intellect — that she was intended as a sacrifice for the gods.

  “The shimmering quality of the light, her own luminous pallor, the translucency of her garments, all these conjoined to make her appear numinous. In that crucible of light and dark, newly emerged from an earth-shattering assault of thunder and piercing sound, I was ready to see her as holy.

  “I wanted to give myself over totally to the in-dwelling power of the theatrical experience. I wanted its magic to transform me.

  “I began to feel any obdurate rationality in myself giving way. I sensed the approach of Artaud’s whirling vortex, the fount of creation and of freshness. I wanted to taste and partake of that young girl’s holiness. I do not mean in any lascivious sense. I wanted to partake of her sacredness symbolically. My supreme wish was that nothing, and no one, ever be allowed to harm her.

  “Even as this resolution formed in my mind, the four black figures ranged themselves behind the altar. My analytical faculty was at work again despite myself. I wondered why the simple dichotomy of light and dark still works in us to such great effect, and whether the director had consciously intended the row of black forms to resemble carrion crows. My thoughts flitted to the very idea of crows, and how they have stayed with us, even those of us who have never seen a live bird of any kind. I wondered where and why their image is lodged in me: how it is I can picture so clearly their glossy sleekness, their cross-wise step, their cocked-head clever aspect, their razor-sharp beaks pecking meticulously at dead flesh.

  “I saw a knife blade flash against black cloth, above the sleeping girl. Another flash and another and another, so that all four figures stood with daggers pointing downward at her body.

  “Foolishly, I thought that they were about to mime a ritual slaughter; that with a manipulation of light and shadow, a contrived convulsion of the walls, they would create an illusion to liberate the unconscious. It was Artaud, after all, who first coined the term ‘virtual reality.’ And so I stood there, intent and expectant, greedy for experience, believing that the act about to be staged was a ‘virtual’ act. This was artifice — of a much higher order than the pap played out in the virtual reality palaces — but artifice nonetheless.

  “This was what I believed at that moment.

  “All four, as if choreographed, plunged their daggers into the girl’s chest. I heard her moan. I saw her eye open and roll upward. A quickening fear and revulsion filled me. Through the sound of her pain, I grasped this was no illusion. Her blood began to spout, staining her white garment, pooling thickly on the floor.

  “I understood, far too late, that they were murdering a child for our entertainment; that their outrageous misreading of a dramatist’s theory had spawned a murder.

  “I lunged at them, in some vain effort to rescue the girl and get her to a doctor. Even then, it was probably already too late. She could not have survived those strikes.

  “I lunged. And they struck back. I recoiled at a heavy blow to my head. Then nothing — until I came to in a corner, swaying over a pool of wetness. Had they pissed on me after they knocked me out? Had I pissed myself? It hardly mattered when I saw the scene before me. I wished then that I had never emerged to consciousness, or that they had dragged me outside and beaten me to a pulp in the street. Anything would have been preferable to the abomination I witnessed.

  “They were tearing her corpse apart, limb by limb, joint by joint, using knives, hands, fingernails. They were all at it; not just the four actors in black. Fifteen members of the Theatre of Cruelty were joined in the frenzied sport of dismembering a young girl’s corpse.

  “And now I will tell you the worst, although perhaps you think there can be no worse. But there is . . . ” Here his voice breaks altogether. When he manages to speak again, he sounds hoarse. The shards of glass are once again embedded in his throat.

  “These are the hardest words I will speak to you. I did not turn away fast enough, and some contagion in this repellent sport began to infect me. I felt a sick urge rise in me, prompting me to join in, to feel what it was like to tear her soft warm flesh apart with my nails. It was like the curse of the Bacchae, when the mob is caught up in a bestial madness. This urge came from the most loathsome part of what I am. I wanted to succumb; to know what it was like to dip my fingers in her blood and dismember her flesh. I believe I almost did.

  “My hands began to shake. I was appalled at my own thoughts. I cursed myself. And I ran from that place, retching and trembling and half-insane with self-hatred.

  “I have done much wrong in my life. I have indulged myself. I have sometimes delighted in masochistic practice. I have abused the affection of many women who thought they loved me. I have been callous, callow, cowardly, and selfish.

  “But never had I felt myself mired in evil until that night. What else could I do but flee that abominable place? Only a god could have put that poor child back together, and breathed life into her again. And who among us now believes in beneficent gods and miracles of resurrection?

  “I began to run; to get as far away from that corner of hell as I could. I ran until I thought my lungs would explode. When at last I stopped, beside a stagnant pond in a ruined park, I vomited again and again into the reeking water. But I knew I could never empty myself of the contamination of that girl’s death and dismemberment. I felt deranged by my guilt, despite the fact I had no prior idea what they intended by their bestial theatre. I had absorbed their corruption by the mere fact of being in attendance and the sick stimulation of my execrable desires. Then — as now — I felt a maggot at work in every cell of my body.

  “For a time, I thought I might go mad, so intense was my self-loathing. The Theatre of Cruelty had infected my idea of humankind. I began to think of all humanity as an aberration. I considered suicide. What stopped me? — I like to think it was some residual hope. But most likely it was cowardice about what lay beyond.

  “I learned that the abyss of despair is no mere metaphor. I swayed on its edge. I urged myself to commit self-murder like a man. I sound self-pitying, I suppose, despairing for my own condition, obsessing about the impact of the girl’s gruesome murder on me, rather than thinking of her.

  “I can only assure you that I could not separate the two. I wanted her restored. I wanted her to be redeemed: to see her life force and beauty and wholeness given back to her. I wanted to be redeemed myself, purified of the slime and sewage in which I had willingly immersed myself. I wanted the very time in which we live to be redeemed.

  “Everything I wanted was impossible: a child’s fantasy. Yet the despair was real enough. I stopped eating. I dismissed my staff. I lay in my bed, curled in on myself, yearning to be taken back into my mother’s womb, or into the womb of the earth. I was atrophying. I could not rid myself of the image of the girl, as she had been, and as she was when torn apart by fiends. I loathed my brain and my opposable thumb and my upright gait: everything that supposedly made me human.

  “I think I might have died; simply willed my body to shut down. But salvation came to me in the form of a song. Or if not salvation, then at least an impetus to bear the burden of being human; to live out my natural span, but in a vastly different manner than I had to that point.

  “The song came to me first by way of its rhythm. I did not recognize what it was right away. The tune comforted and heartened me. I found myself rising from my bed, summoned by its resolute beat. It was as if the various notes composed a living being, urging me to get up and move, to be courageous. I washed my face for the first time in many days. I ate a little. I made coffee. And still the thump and the roll of the tune stayed with me, inspiriting me and buoying me up. I had no doubt this music had come to me as a gift.

  “Then I remembered who it was had sung this song. It was the woman who loved me and encouraged and supported me. And all the while, she was herself dying, wasting away. Despite the drugs, she sometimes suffered intolerable pain.
It was then she would sing this song; blast it out of her frail lungs, and stomp about the house like a child pretending to be a soldier.

  “The song was one she had learned in girlhood. ‘I am not a Christian,’ she told me. ‘But the truth in this song is eternal. It is about fearlessness. Fearlessness.’ She would repeat the word, hugging herself. In singing, in stomping about, she willed herself onward, with renewed fortitude, through the pain.

  “When I remembered this, I also remembered the words, and I too began to sing. Do you know them?” he asks Lucia. And he sings softly:

  Who would true valour see,

  Let him come hither,

  One here will constant be,

  Come wind, come weather.

  There’s no discouragement

  Shall make him once relent

  His first avowed intent,

  To be a pilgrim.

  Lucia shakes her head. “You sang this song when we were in the cave, I believe.”

  He nods.

  “To be a pilgrim,” he repeats. “I recognized that this was my salvation. I would take to the road. I would try, in some way, to make amends through a pilgrimage.

  “I had not planned on the self-mortification,” he adds. “This need to inflict pain on myself is prompted by the self-hatred. There is no more to tell.” He bowed his head, as if waiting for her judgement.

  “You did not murder the girl,” she says. “You had no way of knowing what they intended.”

  “I was complicit. I felt the urge, the loathsome, barbaric urge to dismember a dead child.”

  “But you did not,” she insists. “You resisted that evil. You are guilty of being duped, and of being present at the time an evil deed was committed. Probably every one of us these days is guilty of such things.”

  “When it came to the act itself, you controlled the monster within you. You must hold fast to that truth.”

  “Your strength brings us all great comfort,” he tells her. “Did you know that?”

  She surprises him by asking: “Will you hear my confession now?”