A Darker Swan With Folded Wings

That night, lying on his back sprawled awake under a dusty comforter, his senses tell him he trips and falls face forward. An electric splash, the rush of air past his ears, his neck tense for impact, his insides fading, instantaneous.

When the concussion leaps away and the mattress recongeals beneath him his eyes have flown wide. They search out the scowling red mask hovering on the wall to his left: in the billows of dark its features are uncertain, shifting. It opens and rolls a sinister eye toward him. The lips form silent words. He must freeze this motion by clicking the lamp on and off.

He lies back again and tries to slow his lungs and heart. As he does so he feels what may be a long legged spider tickle quick across his face. He dares not open his eyes to know.

It is a place of well tended gardens. He walks carefully on the slick green carpet listening to rain bead upon the pale cowl heaped over his head. His steps release a thick perfume from the soil and bruised grass. The clustered black umbrellas of the group recede at an angle behind him. Their beetling dilettante voices are thin, obscured by the rattle and swish of his motion. His is warm in his coat.

There were birds yesterday, he thinks. Tiny delicate round sparrows had chattered, brown flecks dipping themselves busily in the fluted lower bowl of the fountain he is nearing. Darkened by the rain it has become a tall grey chalice overflowing onto its base.

J. appears behind the chalice, walking briskly beside a low stone wall. She has black curly hair, tied behind her head. Her long redlipped face bobs purposefully amid those trickling ringlets unhooded and loosened by haste, and for some reason he thinks of poor C. yesterday, sequestered with that anachronistic manual typewriter, ambershadowed clatter filling their shared rooms. Poor C., hazed by afternoon cocktails, trying to tap his way into other peoples dreams. All the fellow needed was a smouldering unfiltered cigarillo nestled among its dead brethren. He thinks then of his own shirtpocketed pack, but they cannot burn unshielded from this wet.

J. wears a rustling deepblue poncho whose rubber folds drape elegantly around her thin frame. When she had met him here before it had been a different place, her name had been D. His friend, D. Beside her had stood a reedy yellowhaired boy, her son, his son: puzzling because they are both darkly complected. He had embraced her in sorrow at his own terrible youthful anger, his lovemaking whose rites produced this neglected child, this result.

In the waking world J. is not D., he knows, but rather she is a more refined and graceful vision, a darker swan with folded wings. She slows and greets him with a cautious nod.

I knew you would come.

Is there something wrong? She searches the shadows beneath his hood. Should we

No. He clears his throat. I'm fine.

He takes her arm in his, galant. Together they descend a short wide flight of stairs onto the walk around the main garden. A hedge interposes between them and the upper terrace, and here she leans her head on his shoulder for a moment. In the centre of this lawn the rains vex the surface of a muddy pool. Around the rippling waters stand melancholic statues with broken limbs, staring empty eyed.

Its not the first time this has happened, she warns.

The ministers wife, he replies, reaching to stroke her hair. Whatever will they say?

Outside, a swollen purple sky threatens, but this is a room without a single window, a tiny blind corner of the Louvre that is becoming more and more crowded these days. The walls are darkly woodpanelled, the coffee black and pungent, the talk animated, the air tragic. Here one comes to see Mistress Josephines righthand breast, encased in a box of glass: the speckled yellow glory of Prousts parchment skull: the wrinkled ovaries of Madame Bovary: and, of course, Flauberts parrot. They say it will die, that it is already dead, but it steadfastly extends, expands its imitative existence. It is a lovely bird, beautiful plumage.

He hangs wearily in the centre of the floor and sips from a heavy cup, eyes following the curve of J.s neck. Certainly, it was she. There is motion to his left and so he turns: he is faced by three large wizened birds standing on a mantel, swathed in redorange plaid. They shift on gnarled feet and watch the proceedings through ragged holes in the cloth. As he looks the rightmost one tips over the woodcolumned hourglass it holds. Largegrained sand soughs down into the top, shrouding the glass with its vapour and residues.

Now J. selects a sweet meat from the silver tray before her, and holds it against her cheek to feel its downy yellow fur. She takes a pink mouthful but then screams and lets it all drop, for it has squirmed in her hand and bitten the tip of her index finger. There is silence. Two drops of red tap the floor before she covers the wound with a white napkin.

G. is watching as if suspicious. Piggish pale eyes bulge out at him above where G.s chin spills over the stiff grey and white collar.

I need to go back to my room, says J. plaintively.

She stands, and a path clears for her through the swarm of cigarette tips glowing in the shadows. She gropes her way out and disappears, creaking the stairs.

He is about to leave as well but halts: G.s hand tightens like metal on his bicep then relaxes.

Would you mind checking if shes okay? G. asks. I should go -- but all these people. An arm gesture: wine jiggles in G.s glass. The liquid is black in the ill lit room. The parrot squawks and flaps. Maybe you can walk her back. Dont try anything! Shes my wife, you know.

Well, Im not really, he begins, but G. has already blustered ahead in sublime trust and is jauntily laughing about it with an old lady.

How far out there has she gone? asks the aged creature, fingering her pearls.

Not far, really, not far, chortles G. Theres so much further she can go.

Bronze chimpanzees gleam in a slice of moonlight on the landing, above. J. is ahead of him, meandering across the plaza near a huge glassine pyramid whose angular skeleton is illuminated faintly from within, phosphorescent blue if a colour.

He takes a breath of cool air and breaks into a loping run. This night, neither will see tears: their eyes remain dry and attentive. Their shoes tick over the abiding stones of that storied city as if shod with emerald and lapis and onyx and spinel. The night is quiet and vernal. The streets glitter with diamond dust, or broken glass, and it is a beginning.

He sits in the swelter of the evening room hearing the couple next door and their lovemaking. C. has gone, nobody knows where. Against hope there is a knock at the door and J. arrives abustle. Immediately, she sits on the dirty carpet, head leaning against the divan, eyes closed in invitation. Curtains the colour of well aged meat suck heavily in, out the window behind her in the hot air. He attends her, stretching out and supporting himself on an elbow. She unfastens her robe and reveals her body to him.

He extends a tentative finger to her navel, an outie, and is shocked to observe the way it comes unfastened at his touch. The skin which flaps open. Intestines spill out sideways and begin to stain her robe with thin brown water.

Eyes closed she languidly begins to tell him of a gigantic fish she had caught in the Aegean, a long toothsome horror, green with red eyes and circles of teeth and rough triangular scales. He is alarmed, he can only think to push her intestines back inside, to stretch the skin back over, to perhaps tie the bellybutton back together with string. They smell of vinegar. Within those slippery turgid bluish tubes is hidden a round bag of opaque white liquid which he picks up: it is slimy with juices and wants to slip from his hands.

No, he must fetch a doctor. He ties her robe back together with difficulty, it is soaked, and rushes to the door. She has fallen asleep, looking bored.

Stepping into the hallway he breaks the spine of a small brown dog that has somehow gotten underfoot: it yelps once as if surprised, then its curly stub of a tail begins to wag furiously, faster and faster until it is dead. He does not know this, having raced down the hall, the smell of flowers coming through the windows clogging his breath.

He thinks, Im possible. Im possible.

The stairs doors are locked so he has to wait there for the elevator. But when the gates finally do open a blackveiled sheik steps forth from them and flashing a smiling sword at him and advancing turning it in wicked scintillant arabesques from which he cannot release his gaze despite the gentle sound of slicings no one ever hears.

The air darkens with swallows and thunder and lightning splits the sky above spindly mountains in the distance. In one of the myriad corridors, this womans dirtiest place, her mouth, for a quarter hour draws hungrily against him making his head writhe side to side. As the time approaches when her mouth will be reborn as an inverted bowl of pus he quivers, saying:

Take it.

O.

His gorge rises after she leaps up away hand to lips and is convulsed once, twice. The second time he thinks she will vomit on his belly but a wet sticky burp emerges instead. She twitters to hide embarrassment.

A spermburp, he names it.

His hard laugh fills the mirrored hall, and that is how they are found, the guilty parties at the centre of the echoes. Clothes immaculate, friends only, ostensibly laughing at a flawed lookingglass.

G. follows the main body, ruminant. She goes to him, rummages through G.s zippery nylon packsack and uncorks a bottle of water. She drinks, swishes slowly before taking G. aside and opening his mouth with her own, stirring him awake. Though secretly pleased, G. thrusts her away dismayed at the performance and rubs his cuff below his nose, beginning to sweat, wondering. He hears the creak of fingertips on leather.

Now that we found you lets git back to the tour, he says to her. G. notices her sidelong glance but it is at her own image in the polish.

This is a great hall, she tells G.

Theres water on the floor, someone says. I bet the roof must leak. Few. Mildewey in here. Mildewey.

G. grins and turns to the person. Proceeding outside to the mazes, they converse about the Sun King.

The group glides ghostly through delicately arched gothic caverns in the city of Witz, Wittenberg, along a suspended concrete footpath shallow but wide. Cool breath of stone surrounds them. Ahead and to the right the rosewindow of the cathedral glows orange, red, cobalt blue. Beneath it dark high doors stand forbidding at the entrance to the nave. To the left rises a tall glass multileveled box. On each floor within, the students sit between panels of carved wood, murmuring soundlessly over books.

I will continue to have dreams about it, he tells J. Im on a balcony and above me the roof falls. It becomes a ramp: down it a churning mass of shining black spiders tumble from the attic.

You dont understand, says J. bristling with anger. Im not how you think I am: Im not what you want me to be. And youre trying to be some thing youre not. I dont want to know your dreams. Her pupils shine her coldbladed intent.

They have lagged behind in order to speak like this. Obstinate, he pulls from his pocket a letter from C. on a leaf of heavy paper.

Why should I care what hes doing? she asks.

He reads a line from it:

Grime on the statues. The chainsaw buzz of mortar cycles. I mean motor cycles. A city decayed in its own shadows. I write this looking down upon an endless stream of stubby cars lurching through malefic narrow streets. Love to J. if that can be given. It really does break the heart. Out spills tainted pleasure.

It turns the stomach, she mutters. So poetic.

Hes still in Rome, he replies, ignoring her. He tries to place a smell but is prevented:

Did you write that? asks G. over his shoulder.

He becomes acutely conscious of the hush around them. They have caught up. An incorrectly mapped globe fretted with gold and silver spins with a sour whining creak in the corner under three thickly painted portraits. A cramped exhibition room.

(I didnt know you two were friends.)

He feels his face turn hot. G. sniffs.

It was a thing for the, J. begins, but this will not be necessary.

Well, keep trying, G. says, and claps him on the back. Itll get better. G. thinks him a hopeless introject, but harmless because Its kind of ah, brainy. I dont think we could put that in the bulletin. Maybe if you put in a little about those poor Catholics crawling into Saint Peters on their knees. Wasnt that somethin? Or the haunted horses. The uh statues, you know

Yeah.

He nods until G. goes away. Before she leaves him J. whispers fiercely:

What the hell were you trying to do there?

He has been hit. He could have been anyone, there in front of her. He staggers back and tilts onto the railing. He could be G., he could be He, he could be me, he could be J., he could be D., he could be C. If only he could be C.

The difficulty of solving the acrostic he has set in motion makes him laugh. The attendant muscular contractions shift his precarious weight on the railing. His idiot laughter.

He falls backwards, the weight of his skull spinning his body heels over head in a somersault that is prematurely interrupted when he reaches the ashwhite fitted stone squares of the courtyard. He had faced them momentarily: the washed out glare of the sun like diamonds in white paint, stolen fire lodged in thousands of tiny reflective chips of mica within pale cut rocks below.

His head cracks apart of the impact. His face yet retains a smile, but the laughter has been knocked out of him in unrecognisable shape. After a moment the top of his cranium splits: the crackle of an egg pulled apart: and rolls backward onto its crown. Should the rest of him have been attached this would have made a fine headstand. The hairy shell, or bowl, rocks side to side, buffeted. A thin red soup with grey lumps of meat slops out around it. A small quantity of this jiggles also within the bowl.

Death is to come later and more slowly. As he has landed face up he can see the crowd at the balcony above, whose digestions seem disturbed by this spectacle. He can see the flesh of their fingers flattening whitening tighterly grasping at the carved stone balcony railing.

He can see seven salmon streams of vomit stretching toward him like silk ribbons fluttering. Air resistance loosens their coherence and the shredded ribbons become a warm thick pink rain.

He can see someone pulling J. away by the arm. He has been hit. Is G. angry? She holds her hand. She gapes like a fish, arms akimbo.

He can see two fluted columns scarred and pitted by time, bleached by sunlight, impediments shorn away. Fissures weave bottom to top, outside to in. Alabaster fingers these are.

He can see they are pointing out at a blue, blueblue sky.

The skies are clear for moonlight tonight, but that waning body has not yet begun to rise. The stars shine as they shone -- another place, ages ago. Turrets, jagged with battlements, stand paralysed against the cold night distance, limned with harsh green effulgence from the city beneath. Sleep could diffuse this opulence of sight.

Flying ducks, or geese, hack somewhere in the air. The stars are shining as they shone before, and this woman, as he has been accustomed to call her, watches from the balcony railing. She is terrified: lest her soul, that delicate shape of spun glass that whirls, wails within her, unbalance and shatter against the redstriped muscle of her stomach wall. She hears the dark birds instructions to the wind: and all at once the large rooms are too cramped and close. Perhaps she will walk alone into a neighbours garden. It will be a fine night.

The moon will rise, will form a watery white hole in the sky. Its nightly arc, a graceful curved bow. It will repeat its pristine performance of the night before, in concert with multitudes of stars.