Lord of the Hollow Dark Read online

  So he had run on; it had been an unprofitable conversation. Disgusted, Marina had turned toward Mrs. Channing-Cheetah.

  The professor’s wife possessed a long dour face with little black eyes, rather like prunes, set deep into it. Conforming with reluctance, doubtless, to the formality of these dinners at the Lodging, she had worn an ankle-length dress; but it had been of a coarse blue material, shapeless and covering everything from neck to toes, patterned seemingly on those fatigue uniforms everybody wears in Red China.

  “Mrs. Channing-Cheetah,” Marina had said, “could you tell me, please, what you understand by the Master’s concept of the Timeless Moment?”

  “There can be no timelessness until the people have extirpated the ex-propriators and totally reorganized society into free communes,” Mrs. Channing-Cheetah had begun, shrilly and passionately. “Then all workers shall hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, breed in the evening, and criticize at dinner quite as they please, without affectations.”

  It had been impossible to interrupt Mrs. Channing-Cheetah. “When the revolution is totally triumphant,” she had continued, “time shall cease universally. No clocks, no watches shall be permitted in the free communes. Thereafter nothing shall change, anywhere; socialist medicine shall extend life indefinitely, for those who survive the revolution. The human condition, everywhere uniform, shall be beyond bourgeois Time. Town and countryside shall merge in one blur; socialist ingenuity shall make night and day indistinguishable; all surviving distinctions of sex shall be forbidden for the sake of freedom; similarly, such distinctions as ‘morning,’ ‘afternoon,’ and ‘evening’ shall be rendered meaningless...”

  “But I wanted to know...” Marina had tried to put in. Her attempt had been vain; Mrs. Channing-Cheetah had swept on, remorseless.

  “The Khmer Rouge have pointed the way for us,” she had exclaimed. “Smite and spare not, man, woman, and child, all oppressors! For time to cease, infinite blood must flow. ‘Time’ is a reactionary concept, the product of a decadent ideology. Listen: I learned in Paris... She had babbled on, her shrill invective expounding her gospel of hatred, not ceasing until Mr. Apollinax had risen for his evening lecture or sermon.

  The Master had spoken only briefly this night. His principal theme had been freedom of the will, as related to a state of timelessness—so far as Marina had been able to follow him. Those who freely and wholeheartedly choose to enter upon a timeless situation, Mr. Apollinax had reasoned—making no conditions, holding nothing back, discarding all prejudices and inhibitions—why, surely those faithful and hopeful shall participate eternally in their deliberately chosen moment of ecstasy, caught up endlessly in the rapture.

  Yet what of those others-the doubters, the fainthearted, the conscripted-who are present during the liturgy of the Timeless Moment, but have not willed utterly to submerge themselves in the ecstasy? May they not be swept away, nevertheless, by the concentrated collective emotion of the rite, their essences assimilated to the essences of the faithful, their personalities effaced, their bodies transported willy-nilly into the eternal act? In short, may not the doctrine of “compulsory consent” be applied rightly here, so that their very presence at the liturgy, without eager participation, might suffice to make them part and parcel of the particular Timeless Moment, their obstinate scruples notwithstanding? Might not a tiny child, say, as yet unreasoning, be caught up in the group’s rapture, so that the child too should be transported into eternity, to be forever an object of contemplation by the faithful?

  The Master put this as a question, as yet unresolved by his experiments. “On Ash Wednesday night,” Mr. Apollinax had concluded, “we shall test this hypothesis critically and forcefully. Guilt and innocence, commingled, may subsist forever as a perfect whole in one enormous rapture.”

  As the disciples had risen from the table, Marina had thought of approaching Mr. Apollinax, opportunely, and telling him everything she had learnt about the Archvicar and his people-despite their admonitions to keep their secret. Weren’t they, Judas-like, betraying the Master? But she had hesitated: they had been kind to her, after their fashion, and the Master hadn’t, not here at the Lodging.

  Also, the Master had told her to inform him if the Archvicar’s party talked of fleeing from the Lodging, and they hadn’t mentioned that possibility. It might be a sophistry, but this offered her some excuse for not blabbing. Still, the Archvicar’s set were like predatory animals...

  While she had hesitated, painfully trying to decide which betrayal was the lesser evil, Mr. Apollinax had passed out of the dining room. She could have run after him. Then, however, she had thought of the Master’s remarks, only a few minutes earlier, about whether a little child might be carried along in the rapture, unwitting. What was wrong with that? Hadn’t she implied as much herself, when she had asked the Master if she and baby Michael might be together in the Timeless Moment? Still, something in his tone, when he had spoken of this, and the smiles then of the disciples, faintly ironical... So the moment for informing Mr. Apollinax had slipped by, for good or ill. And she had gone upstairs to this bedroom, this frail sanctuary for her and Michael, her dilemma unconfronted.

  Now, sitting here in utter silence, the baby drifting back to sleep in her arms, Marina still tried in vain to resolve her conundrum. She might have to be quite selfish about it, for Michael’s sake, rather than embarking upon casuistry. Would Michael and she be safer with the Master, or with the Archvicar? She was coming to dread them both. Pondering almost hopelessly, she was about to return to bed, Michael in her arms, when a faint sound came to her ears, dissipating her sleepiness instantly. She looked, not moving, in the direction of the sound.

  The knob of the bedroom door was being turned, stealthily.

  Then came a creak from the chest that she had dragged against the door. Quiet pressure was being exerted against that door. Someone meant to get in, unannounced.

  Her first thought was of Mr. Silvero: a comical, dreadful vision of the suave nasty creature, hung about with camera and flashbulbs, artistically intent upon the film-capture of her nocturnal blushing charms. As she tried to think of how she might repulse Silvero with indignant contempt, the pressure upon the door was increased noticeably, for the chest began to yield, although the bed head against the chest kept the pressure from forcing the door open immediately.

  Now someone was speaking-softly, insinuatingly, bullyingly—on the other side of the door. It was not Silvero’s voice. She knew who it was: Sweeney!

  His words were slurred, and he panted audibly, pushing with all his might against the door, which had opened a crack. She did not know the meaning of some of his words, but other words she recognized, even though she had heard them only from street boys in London, foul words of lust and aggression. Had she been asleep, Sweeney might have taken her.

  She sprang up, barefoot and terror-shaken, clutching Michael. There was but one place to go: that stygian little stair beyond the chimneypiece. Two silent steps took her there to the stair door; forcing it open, she drew it to behind her. Her mind worked more clearly, in this extremity, than could have been hoped for: she remembered the bolt on the inner side of the stair door, and groped for it in the dark, shot it home. At that moment she heard chest and bed thrust backward, the bedroom door burst open, and a man stumbling about.

  “Where are you, honey?” Sweeney was saying, quite loudly. “You’re gonna get it now, Marina, honey!” He sounded insane.

  Up or down? Without knowing why, Marina chose to flee upward. She burst into a screen of cobwebs, and the baby gave a thin wail as she clutched him hard against her breast. She blundered in total darkness up the disused, narrow, twisting stair.

  The only light in Marina’s room came from a little lamp on the bedside table. Sweeney, ten feet tall at least, shot the beam of his pocket torch into the shadowy corners of the room. She must have slipped under the bed. He went down on hands and knees, aflame with desire and kalanzi. Hide and seek, peek-a-boo, kid! “I’ll huf
f, and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your house down!” He was laughing hard at the imminent prospect of dragging the little blonde prude, disheveled and near-naked, out from under the bed-she all tears and please for mercy, and then...

  But she wasn’t there, either!

  In hideous chagrin, Sweeney glared about the small neat room; rushed to the window; no, it was closed. Yet he had heard that baby cry. This small door to a closet beside the fireplace-that was where the tease had gone “Oh, I’ll huff, and I’ll puff...” He yanked hard at the little door; it didn’t give; she must have locked herself in. He’d fix that, and her, the kalanzi having tripled his strength and daring. He had brought a chisel from below stairs; he thrust it into the crack near the doorknob, pried ferociously...

  “Chi è là?” said a soft voice at his back.

  Sweeney spun round, and his torch revealed a woman’s shape just inside the doorway. What a shape! The Sicilian girl had come in, with nothing but a flimsy black gown on, and practically everything she had was on show in the beam of his torch. This one with the great mane of black hair would do; oh, she’d do, all right, all right, this Fresca.

  “Come on in, baby,” Sweeney roared, “and take what’s coming to you!” He made himself explicit, in this gloating moment before he should seize her. She seemed to understand, dago though she was, for by lamplight and torchlight he could see a deep flush of anger or excitement come over her olive skin.

  As if resigned, she glided farther into the room, her exquisite face expressionless. Then she pulled up her gown, her round thigh showing. Wow! This was so easy it was almost a disappointment: this luscious kid was going to give in without a fight. He must have her really scared. “Okay, baby, here we go!” Sweeney cried, reaching for her.

  Something long and sharp flashed in the girl’s hand. “Oh, no, don’t...” Sweeney gasped.

  Then she slashed him hard, backhanded, across his eyes.

  Screaming, he dropped his torch and clutched his face. The pain was intense, and blood was running all over his eyes and hands. “Oh, God,” Sweeney wailed, “I’m blind!”

  But the kalanzi was working in him still, and he did not fall to the floor. This bitch had put his eyes out, and he’d never see again, but he’d get her, he’d get her. Arms outspread, he groped across the room, sightless, the blood running fast from his eyes, to grab her wherever she was handy.

  Then something struck the side of Sweeney’s head with a splintering crack, and he fell, and knew nothing for a while.

  After some interval, long or short, Sweeney became conscious of a great weight upon his chest. Somebody was sitting astride him, wiping the blood out of his eyes.

  “Stop lamenting, you ass, or you’ll wake the dead, not to mention the house,” the Archvicar’s voice said. “You’re not blinded: the girl merely slashed you across the eyebrows, a trick I’ve taught her, and the blood clogged your eyes.”

  “Lemme at her!” Sweeney grunted, the last effects of the tiny dose of kalanzi still upon him. His head clearing a little, he tried to sit up. The Archvicar thrust him down, squeezing his throat cruelly to silence him.

  “Here, my Pomegranate,” he heard the Archvicar say in English, “let me have the knife.”

  “For God’s sake, don’t...” Sweeney implored.

  He felt his throat pricked by the girl’s long blade. “Will this keep you silent, Sweeney? Don’t move, don’t change; merely listen to me. Did you take me for some Creeping Jesus? I eat bigger boys than you for breakfast.” The Archvicar chuckled low, as if putting sharp points to men’s gullets were his principal avocation.

  “I am a fisher of men, Sweeney,” the Archvicar went on, blandly conversational in tone, “and I have used the right bait for you, I find. Needing allies, I am about to commence a thorough reformation of your character, poor clay though you are.”

  Sweeney gurgled piteously.

  “You have not chosen me,” the Archvicar told him, “but I have chosen you. I have turned potter, and mean to make a tolerable pot of you. In the end, how shall we find a shelf for this new pot? Would you be a soldier-pot? A monk-pot?

  Or first one, then the other? Your aggressions must be channeled, your longings directed, eros into agape. Why, I may even cure your cowardice, my Sweeney. Lie still now, or I will have Phlebas thump you; and listen well, for the life you save may be your very own.”

  She mustn’t let the baby’s head strike against the wall! There wasn’t the slightest glimmer of light to guide Marina. Light, give us light! She could guide herself after a fashion, nevertheless, by keeping her left shoulder against the curving way and ascending very slowly, not knowing what horrid thing she might bump into. Far below, Sweeney’s assaults upon the bolted door had ceased, so she needn’t dash up with the danger of falling. But was Sweeney pursuing her some other way? Would he be at the top of these stairs, gloating, ready? Or was he lying in wait in her bedroom still, expecting her to come back down trustfully, draw the bolt, come out, be grabbed...

  She was surprised that her prudent judgment continued to function. On balance, it seemed better to continue upward, hoping to find some chance protector in a room above. Already she seemed to have ascended a great way, but there had been no doors, and only one recessed walled-up doorway, detected by her groping hand. Could this be part of the tower she had heard mentioned, the Templars’ tower, the most ancient part of these ancient buildings? Surely she already must be above the level of the central block of the Lodging. Up, up she continued, Michael sighing now and again.

  She encountered with her hand another sort of narrow landing: a recessed doorway, again stopped up. Of course there must be a main stair to this tower, besides this privy stair of hers, and eventually she would find her way to it. What then? Could she hide from Sweeney until daylight, or until the drink or drugs he must have taken had worn off?

  Light at last, moonlight, but little of it! She came upon a lancet window, scarcely more than an arrow loop, open to the air. Through the aperture, she made out that monkey-puzzle tree, the pond, and the yew beyond it, dimly; this reassured her that an outside world still existed; she had begun to wonder if this were not another nightmare. Up, up, up.

  And then her head bumped hard against something-not stone, but wood. In the blackness, she must have mounted to the very top of the stair. Was there no way out? Was this the roof that her poor head had bumped? Shifting Michael to her left arm, she pushed upward with her right. Something yielded slightly. It must be a trap door, and she found that by climbing the remaining few steps and at the same time thrusting against the trap, she could force her way through. Should she?

  There was precious little choice. As silently as she might, she lifted the trap. It seemed to be encumbered by some-thing-yes, a rug. Awkward though the operation was, at last, without making much noise, she climbed through the hole. The trap door slipped out of her grasp and fell inward upon its hinge, to to the floor; but the rug mercifully muffled its fall.

  Now there was light, although again only the moon’s. She stood in a smallish room, apparently someone’s old study, with a large desk, bookcases, a high stool, a clavichord in one corner, small pictures in heavy frames on the walls. Light from overhead showed her these things, for a large skylight seemed to be the only natural illumination of this study. It was a fine small Persian carpet that she had displaced by thrusting up the trap door.

  To her left was an open doorway. No sound, no movement, and no trace of Sweeney. Could he be concealed somewhere else in this apparent suite of rooms, hands itching to fasten upon her when she turned a corner? Well, she couldn’t simply stand here: she must face down the terror. She walked through the open doorway into a room of similar size.

  This was a bedroom, and what appeared to be a small dressing room lay beyond it. A handsome armoire of mahogany gleamed in the moonlight—there were small regular windows here—and inlaid chests of drawers, and a table with empty decanters upon it, and a large bed, also inlaid at its head with some design. Eve
rything was dim. There were fine little paintings upon the walls here, too, and what seemed to be a framed sculptured inscription, a fragment. This caught her eye because the moonlight fell directly upon it. She could even read the short inscription: “Gude at neid.”

  Even in her present dismay, Marina had an eye for lovely household things; perhaps she was using that frail reed of taste to keep her sane through these trials. Look at the furniture, Marina: isn’t it nice? There’s a world outside, Marina, really there is, and all sorts of pretty things in it. Keep telling yourself that, Marina dear.

  Her glance strayed from the stone inscription to the headboard of the bed, and then downward. Her vision encountered something remarkable. A person lay in the bed!

  For a mad second she thought that it must be Sweeney, he playing the Wolf to her Little Red Riding Hood. “But what great eyes you have, grandmother... what great teeth you have, grandmother... what great....” A snatch from some American comic song came into her frantic mind: “Little Red Ridin’ Hood, you sure are lookin’ good. You’re everything a big bad wolf could want.”

  Yet, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph be thanked, it wasn’t Sweeney. The face there upon the silken pillow, with the embroidered counterpane drawn up to its white-bearded chin, was so ghastly pale that at first she hadn’t distinguished it from pillow and sheets. Also it was ghastly thin. It was an old, old man’s face, the eyelids withered, the gaunt nose high-bridged. It was a face of power. Some line of poetry from school ran round and round in Marina’s head: “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.” How merciful that those eyelids were shut!