kagablog

‘The wild swan’s death-hymn took the soul
Of that waste place with joy
Hidden in sorrow: at first to the ear
The warble was low, and full and clear;
And floating about the under-sky,
Prevailing in weakness, the coronach stole
Sometimes afar, and sometimes anear;
But anon her awful jubilant voice,
With a music strange and manifold’
Alfed Lord Tennyson

II

Vivienne became vaguely enamoured of Yvette when she first saw her sketching the chocolate factory beside Ambarvalia’s botanical gardens. It was not a physical or emotional attraction, and if you suggested that to her, she would have simply laughed. Though she was drawn to the wave of Yvette’s dense, rust coloured hair and her pale complexion as a child is drawn to a doll they would wish theirs. Part of her attentions came from a vague, primordial sense of competition. And Vivienne liked to draw those whom she considered a threat close. This was because their power fascinated her. If a person seemed a threat, it was simply because they had acquired some aura she was not yet familiar with. Life was a book of spells to Vivienne, and this gave her a genuine love of existence and its inner workings. This love made her seem more alive than most in the eyes of others. She blazed with vitality, reflecting nature’s wonder’s in all she said and did. She felt she was born to be adored, and the world in some way reciprocated this. Hearts were rooms in an enormous, fabulous hotel, and Vivienne wanted to stay in each one. She gathered admirers in a natural and abundant way. Suitors became mesmerized by her reckless abandonement to the world of the senses, and to her faery power, which she wore like a cloak of enchanted spider’s webs. Girls were arrested by her easy command and the insoluble appreciation she had for herself. Her Lapis Lazuli of personal focus sheened out all other colours, drawing and spectralising hues unto itself, as by some magical osmosis. Painting interested her intensely and she applied herself to it’s conquest, but not it’s practices. She had a true admiration for those who had been able to weather the severe demands of thought and spiritual energy which the practice of painting required. Demands which she simply could not meet. Her attention was a fine work of blown glass, and could not be fitted through the wine-press of practical application. She was an obsessive dancer however, and fashionable in character and appearance. Her joi de vivre and modest dancing reputation had made her very noticeable in the cosy University town of Ambarvalia. She studied history and painting, attended church regularly and was a ranking member of several feminine-interest organisations. She was well aware of her techical failings as a painter, but drew an atmosphere of mystery around her work and ideas, hinting at much but offering little, creating an irresistible illusion of creativity where there was in fact nothing. She did not think herself at fault for this subterfuge. To her, painting was a decorative feature of character. A wonderful addition to the printer’s tray of the soul. She could not have Art’s sacrament, so she would wear it as an ornament. Yvette on the other hand was not crafted in this manner. She shared Vivienne’s drawing classes and attended the same Ballet school as well. Vivienne had heard tell that Yvette was a very competent dancer, a student who applied herself rigourously to her practice. She also possesed a flair for draughtsmanship and had quickly rose to prominence in the Arts faculty. Her paintings were balanced, studious and spoke of Continental experience. She was elegant in dress, possessed of a fine ballet-sculpted figure and beautiful in countenance. Her features had a sorrowful, vagueness somewhat reminscent of the charcoal works of Khnopff. Her face was mask-like, often devoid of expression and carried with it an appearance of porcelain. Some freckles floated like across her nose and shoulders, tiny motes trapped in this porcelain medium. Her eyes were a cat-like green, and seemed always to be roving, absorbing the universe around her in steady, unflinching currents. The fact that she was one or two years younger than Vivienne, added also to the discomforting interest she had cultivated in her. It would be malicious to say that she developed designs on bringing Yvette into her confidence, even though it was exactly what she was planning. She was genuinly interested in this pretty, young flame who had wandered in from afar. A flame who’s russet glow she would feed upon the sprigs of companionship, and whose light she would ultimately seek to reflect.

Vivienne had finished her dance class early and was taking some papers to the Bursar. She was not dressed yet and still wore her ballet togs beneath a hastily sashed coat. Her passage took her across the circular macadam drive and through a series of quads. She had not visited this part of the school in some time, and the retracement of her steps brought back images of her first dancing years, when she was a still a little girl. Vivienne had grown up in Ambarvalia, and the old ballet school had become a fixture in her life. The majority of her initial training had been undertaken in these brick halls. All those indelible hours of light and mirrors whose imprint she could never dissolve. She listened to the sharp voices of the instructors above distant pianos. It was a secret, sacred place for Vivienne, for it was here that she had undertaken one of the only true paths of her life, that inner voyage across the secret quadrants of the body. Her body was the seat of her power, and the school had come to it in childhood, opening up mysterious tracts and pathways contained within it. She quickly became mesmerized by the possibilities of her flesh and suffered at the yoke for it, straining her will beneath the towering racks of white light. She had gradually hammered herself across a tide of mirrors, deep in the primeaval forge of muscle and sinew, realigning her very structure and scape toward an avenue of power. She learned to flex her body like a wing, to drift upon the cascading sounds like a brilliant feather. And synchronised within the plumage of the other dancers, she would shoal with the synchronisation of limbs, unburdened of her power. It was a religion of perfection for her, echoed by reflections and made made almost unbearable by its monstrous cult of repetition. But it was perhaps the only place Vivienne had felt truly at home amongst people. For in truth, despite her array of lovers and friends, Vivienne was always at a distance. She pulled long strings, but did not touch, or let herself be touched. She had reserved her complete openess for the stage. And the stage had reciprocated in kind. Thoughts such as these occupied her mind as she walked toward the Bursar’s yellow office, in the Western Wing of the building. It was quite by chance that she glimpsed Yvette through a window. Yvette was in a long line of black-clad dancers. The figures flexed like flowers, and the line began to unfurl in duplications. Vivienne’s breath fogged the glass softly as she watched. They had met briefly, once or twice in class, exchanging friendly smiles, but Vivienne had not had the time to initiate anything. She found herself standing very still in the corridor, her energy focused in a leonine way upon the dancing figure. Her absorption had made her forget her vantage point,and their eyes met for a brief second. Yvette registered faint startlement at the realisation that she was being observed. Vivienne broke contact just as some girls appeared from a nearby class, gaggling together like pigeons in a park. She crossed the corridor and flitted down a nearby stairwell.

She saw Yvette in the parking lot half an hour later and smiled broadly in greeting. Yvette, who was wrapped in an enormous beige scarf and taken somewhat by surprise, smiled back and waved. When Vivienne enquired, Yvette explained that she had been waiting on the steps for the bus which would take her back into the village. Vivienne offered her a lift and she agreed, glad to escape the cold. Together they drove down the tree lined avenue, weaving into the green, oak-heavy woodland which partitioned the school from the rest of the world.
“Where do you live?” Vivienne asked, over the rush of freezing wind.
She drove an old cream coloured cabriolet whose top took manual cranking. She left it down most of the time and drove, wrapped in a thick white coat, sunglasses and gloves. Yvette peered up out of her scarf, arms folded tightly around herself, feeling the bite of the slipstream.
“I live near the gardens,” she replied, her voice obscured by wool. “My flat is a few streets from the chocolate factory.”
“Amazing,” Vivienne smiled. “My parent’s house is alongside the botanical gardens, we are practically neighbours!”
“You still live with them?” Yvette asked.
“I have plenty of space there, and it’s a nice old house.” she replied cheerily. “My father is out of the country most of the time, and my mother is more an item of furniture than anything else.”
Yvette smiled slightly. Vivienne suggested that they stop at a small cafe along the way for a hot chocolate and Yvette agreed, pleased at the prospect.

Yvette was trying to explain, but became constantly distracted by the sunset. It screamed at her across the forest like a thousand shattering stainglass windows.
“If you become four-dimensionally aware of an object,” she was saying. “Your perception would have to map this object atmospherically, as there would be no other phsyical point of reference available…”
“Okay,” Vivienne nodded, fluffing the cream off her cup of chocolate.
“The emotion of this atmospheric beat is far more potent than all that tedious second by second hand to eye rhetoric you know,” Yvette continued, chewing a lock of her hair, much to Vivienne’s distaste.
“It would be like a glimpse of all possible veiws of the object simultaneously,” Yvette continued. “A pocket just outside of time, a kind of four-dimensional photograph.”
Vivienne watched her as she stared out at the red death of sunset, warming her spidery hands against a cup of coffee. There was something unexpectedly feral about her appearance when veiwed in close proximity. Grime lurked beneath her untended, mishappen fingernails. Her lovely, red hair hadn’t seen a wash in weeks. She was fidgety and intense about things. Her clothing had small holes and rents which she had not bothered to attend to. Vivienne became suddenly aware of the fact that, despite her many attractive qualities, Yvette did not have many friends or speak to others very often. She was reminded unexpectedly of Cain.
“Do you practice this four dimensional technique when you are drawing?” Vivienne asked.
Yvette smiled self-consciously.
“No,” she answered. “I’m afraid I might get self-indulgent.”
She slurped at her coffee, extracting a cheap cigarette from a crumpled paper pack.
“It’s awfully easy to get self-indulgent with conceptual methodology,” Yvette mentioned, gazing out across the woods, her green eyes narrowed to hawkish slits.
“I want to stay in the world of form for awhile,” she mused, circling her unlit cigarette around her mouth. “Explore the secret language of matter before trying to leave my body.”
Vivienne chuckled at her intensity. Yvette glanced up warily.
“Sorry darling,” Vivienne smiled. “But it seems to me like you need a bit of a break from the fourth dimension.”
Yvette smiled sheepishly, lighting the cigarete.
“I think the thing is just that I can’t stand how people use conceptual art as a crutch,” Yvette exhaled. “I mean it’s just so dead easy to fake an inner vision that no-one else can see…These days, if you are a student of a respectable institution, you could vomit engine oil onto the side of a wall, write a flashy statement, wear a whatever’s in the mags and people will treat you like an artist.”
“Oh it’s not quite as easy as that,” Vivienne mused with half a smile.
“I suppose,” replied Yvette, breathing smoke over the surface of her black coffee.
“I read an interesting comment Picasso made to Giovanni Papini in 1952,” Vivienne said.
It was almost comical the way Yvette’s ears pricked up. Her entire head seemed to narrow when something caught her attention. Like a scruffy little fox, Vivienne thought to herself.
“He said ‘When I am alone with myself, I have not the courage to think of myself as an artist in the great and ancient sense of the term. Giotto, Titian, Rembrandt were great painters. I am only a public entertainer who has understood his times and exploited as best he could the imbecility, the vanity, the cupidity of his contemporaries.’”
Yvette blinked a few times, dragging on her cigarette.
“Must have been pussy-whipped when he let that one slip,” She muttered.
Vivienne spluttered some foam.
“No seriously!” Yvette grinned, as Vivienne chuckled into a napkin. “Picasso was an appreciator of the secret language of matter. He wasn’t speaking in a modern language, he was using an ancient one; the language of atmosphere. Those paintings of his are reminder’s that even in chaos there still exist the checkpoints of harmony, balance and aesthetics. Those three things chart atmosphere, they are the rudders we use to steer.”
Vivienne was listening intently, but with the half-smile of an affectionate cynic.
“Darling, All that still doesn’t explain his statement.”
Yvette drained her coffee and signalled for more.
“I just think it sounds like he just needed a bit of a break from the four dimensional,” she replied haughtily.

They met again, two days later, at a life drawing class. Yvette was already treating her like an old friend. She’d even brought Vivienne a cheap little chocolate from the tuckshop. She offered it to her with a meek little smile and Vivienne saw how lonely she actually was. She evidentally did not make friends easily and was grateful for any attention offered her. Yvette’s world was a shifting zone of abstraction and aesthetics, and she could only relate to those who could speak the dead languages of that realm. Vivienne ate the chocolate and they sat beside one another in the class. It was a large, antiquated space, and the domed ceiling emitted a wintery light into the frigid dustiness of the chamber. Some dried leaves skirled on the old tiles. A naked woman huddled on weathered velvet with goosebumps rashed along her thighs. The instructor kept bringing her tea, apologising guiltily for keeping her in the cold. Yvette darted sharp glances at Vivienne’s drawing, making her somewhat uncomfortable. She attempted a thick lined, simplistic style to conceal the inadequacies of her ability, watching her new Yvette’s hand out of the corner of her eye. Yvette drew in loose, long strokes which tightened into vortcies of concentrated attention when they met in places of detail. Her fine accuracy in detail was almost insectile. She would stick out her long tongue when she drew. She finished before everyone else and got the highest mark. Vivienne kept expecting her to make some sort of remark about her the half-hearted sketch it took her most of the class to complete, but Yvette did not seem to notice. They walked across the lawns afterward.
“So what are you doing tonight?” Vivienne asked. “It’s Friday.”
“I have nothing to do,” Yvette shrugged.
“Don’t you go out anywhere?” Vivienne smiled. “There are one or two decent places…Ace of Jacks even has a eight-piece swing band on Friday nights.”
“I suppose,”
“Super, come round to my house at six and I’ll take you somewhere.”
Yvette looked at her helplessly.
“But I have nothing to wear,” she protested.
Vivienne put a friendly arm around her and was surpised to feel how hollow-boned she was, despite the dancing muscle she must have tucked away.
“Don’t worry about all of that,” Vivienne smiled in an overly feline fashion.
She noticed a couple of admirers watching, as they walked together across the grass. Some of Yvette’s energy was already starting to soak into her, as warmth travels from a sun baked stone into a cold hand.

Yvette left her tiny flat as the sun was embering behind the trees of the park. The warm smell of melting chocolate wafted through the trees to her as she crossed quiet pavements. It infiltrated the briskness of the Autumn air, filling the gaps between the perpetually falling plane leaves. She smoked a cigarette on the way, marvelling at how the aroma’s mingled. Vivienne’s house was an enrmous colonial affair. The long garden was as neat as a freshly shaved jowl and attended to by sprinklers, which Yvette had to avoid. Pruned hedges marked the paving stone path up to a large oak door lit by brass lamps. She banged the knocker and was surprised to be greeted by her History of Arts lecturer, Mr Antonioni. Mr Antonioni seemed equally startled to see her and mumbled a quick hello, before retreating into the spotless dollshouse corridors. Yvette was left abandoned for several seconds before Vivienne appeared with a grin. She took her by the hand and whisked her up a large staircase.
“What’s he doing here?” Yvette hissed.
“Oh he’s fucking my mother,” Vivienne chuckled.
“What!” Yvette blurted. “What about your father?”
“Shh! They have no idea that I know…they pretend to be playing bridge, you know…”
Yvette did not, but let it slip past. The house was huge and pastel. She was bundled up another flight of steps and finally deposited into the airy, converted attic which served as Vivienne’s eagle’s nest. It was a long and woody space, lit by several, brass lampshades and draped fairy lights. Some Victorian furniture lay scattered about; one or two chairs, a calico sofa, a writing desk and a small boudoir. Mysterious cupboards brooded in half-shadow. Her bed was vast and white, like a defiled wedding cake. Vivienne planted her in a chair and disappeared into an adjoining bathroom. An angled skylight looked out over the park, letting in the haunting smell of chocolate.
“Your world is so beautiful,” Yvette whispered.
There came the muted sound of a bath being drawn.
“What’s that darling?” Vivienne sang from the bathroom.
“Nothing, can I smoke?”
“Of course.”
Yvette went to the skylight and lit a cigarette, peering out across the tops of the trees. Vivienne emerged naked, tocking across to the sound system in a pair of tiny, heeled slippers. Yvette saw the slightly warped reflection of Vivienne’s body in the window glass and was mildly startled. Vivienne seemed not to notice, humming lightly to herself. Over-driven synth bled melancholically into the room. It surged over the repetitive clockwork of an antiquated drum machine, creating an atmosphere of nostalgia. Vivienne smiled at Yvette’s discomfort, vanishing back into the bathroom. This little performance of hers was a well worn power ploy, designed to elicit submission from the unwary bystander. Her unexpected, unclothed beauty would evoke a primordial response, a shift of power and attention. Naked, she radiated power and subtly took control of her observers.
“Come in here,” she called to Yvette.
Yvette hesitated and then slouched into the large bathroom. Vivienne was in the water, frothing her arms lightly. A breeze stirred through the window, mingling pleasantly with the steam and the aroma of soapy water. Yvette sat on the toilet lid and crossed her legs.
“I’m a bit bewildered by you Vivienne,” she confessed. “It’s all a bit much for me.”
“Nonsense,” Vivienne crooned. “You just need a holiday from that little hole of yours, that’s all.”
Yvette suddenly noticed the large framed drawing of a Sphinx which hung on the wall of the bathroom. She rose quickly, inspecting it.
“Jesus Vivienne,” she muttered. “This is an original Nemorensis Cain.”
“Yes,” Vivienne replied in that strangely lilting voice which she only ever used when in the bath. “Poor baby’s a little besotted with me.”
“Do you mean that this supposed to be you!” Yvette exclaimed excitedly.
“Doesn’t it look like me?” Vivienne frowned over her soapy shoulder.
“No..I mean yes, it does, but no that’s not what I meant..” she realized she was babbling and sat clumsily down on the edge of the bath, beaming up at the large drawing.
“He’s one of my favourite’s you know,” Yvette said.
“Pity he’s such a strange little fool,” Vivienne splashed.
Yvette moved to the floor, where she could see both Vivienne’s face and the drawing.
“What do you mean by that?” she asked Vivienne.
“I mean he’s completely obsessed with me,” Vivienne answered.
Yvette stared at her for a long second before letting out a caustic laugh. The acidic tone of her mirth took Vivienne by complete surprise.
“Do you mean to say that Cain the well-known artist is in love, with you?” Yvette chortled.
Vivienne was flabbergasted that Yvette even knew who Cain was, let alone award him such acclaim and distinction. The fact that she held him in higher regard then she infuriated her wildly.
“Were you lovers?” Yvette asked, now curious, her eyes sparkling like little mirrors.
Vivienne found herself lying on reflex. It wasn’t that she thought about it, her pride simply reached in and made her speak before her mind had a chance to react.
“Yes of course,” she answered flatly.
Yvette seemed to melt. The reaction disturbed Vivienne entirely.
“You are a very lucky girl Vivienne,” she said. “He’s a passionate artist, and it’s an honour that he chose to depict you as the Sphinx, it’s a very special symbol in his ouevre.”
Vivienne was almost sneering at the presumption of this girl.
“He’s a complete perversity, a parasite, a vampire!” she spat.
Yvette blinked this all down.
“Well his art is very turbulent yes…”
“He’s a monster Yvette! I know him, you don’t!”
Yvette got up off the floor, staring in a cool, clear manner at Vivienne, as if seeing her for the first time. It was the clinical look she acquired when drawing something, a look whose intensity Vivienne could not rival.
“He is a unique talent Vivienne, and that has to be respected above personal foibles.”
Vivienne’s better judgement took over and she smiled, but inside she was furious.
“I do respect the talent, just not the person.”
“What’s the difference?” Yvette grunted coldly.
She turned back to the picture.
“What did he do to you that was so bad anyway?” she murmured, engrossed in the linework.
Vivienne stared into the waters. Cain had fallen pathetically in love with her, wasn’t that enough? His pleading letters and endless telephone exchanges were an eyesore on the neat printer’s tray of her life. And eyesore’s were an intolerable nuisance to Vivienne.
“I can’t really talk about it,” she muttered mysteriously.
Yvette took a drag of her momentarily forgotten cigarette and glanced back at Vivienne.
“Well, you shouldn’t hang this in the bathroom, even if it is framed so well,” she said matter-of-factly. “The moisture is going to ruin it, and it’s a lovely piece.”
She walked out of the bathroom, leaving Vivienne in a state of volcanic vexation.

Downtown Ambarvalia was a warren of dingy, facebrick passages and crumbling, shambolic structures. The night had grown bitterly cold and the air was as still as that of a curtained stage. Squat, colonial facades lurked in the tenebrous passagways, looming out of the shadows like ruined opera sets. The Kismet was sequestered within one of these unilluminated courtyards, at the end of a narrow arcade. The arcade served as book-seller’s market during the day, but in the hours of darkness it was chained and gloomy. A small Tudor-style inn stood across the darkened facade of the Kismet. In its heyday, the Kismet had been a small, independant theatre. It fell into disrepair, had to be shut down and was boarded up for over a decade. The velvet rotted and rats infested the lower regions. It became a haunt for students and reckless youths. They would break in through cellar windos and enact obscene underground poetry readings (and other less savoury activities) on the small stage. They gallavanted in wreckage of the booths and had allnight booze-ups in the destroyed gallery. It acquired a rather notorious reputation via word-of-mouth and became something of a destination amongst disenfranchised Ambarvalians. Someone eventually took it upon themselves to buy the property and attempt a restoration of sorts. The plaster was stripped and chandeliers resurrected like ghostly chrysanthemums. The new establishment embarked upon a dubious career as a burlesque house. It was a well attended, if somewhat shady venue which saw a steady stream of students and single men. Factory workers visited from the Industrial districts, to drink and watch the revues after their shifts. Yvette had heard of it of course and was surprised when Vivienne smiled her little smile and told her that it was where they were headed. They parked in the sullen thoroughfare’s some streets away from the Kismet. The black hood of the cabriolet had been cranked down, and they sat in the cloistered darkness of the car. Yvette wayched as Vivienne began to tie a large black velvet domino mask across her face.
“Allright Vivienne,” Yvette snapped. “Enough mystery and game-playing, what are we doing here?”
Vivienne gazed at her from the shadows, her face obscured completely by the slit-eyed mask.
“This is my secret world,” she smiled. “I dance here every second Friday.”
“You dance here? At the Kismet?”
“Yes,” Vivienne smacked. “I go on stage masked, so no-one knows that it’s me, except the boys that I tell of course, the boys that I want to know…others suspect of course, and come to see, but that merely heightens the tension.”
Vivienne was positively glowing with mischief. She had drawn on an enormous white wig, coiffed in the seventeenth century manner, and was whitening her face.
“Why are you showing me all this Vivienne?” Yvette asked cautiously.
Vivienne shrugged open her dark velvet cloak and began to powder the tops of her breasts.
“Because I like you,” she answered matter-of-factly. “I wondered if you might like a dancing slot here.”
Yvette burst into a sharp laugh.
“You’re utterly possesed Vivienne,” she declared.
“Yes!” Vivienne sniggered, cracking her door and sweeping out into the freezing air.
She took Yvette by the hand, her long, black cloak sweeping the mouths of grim passages, her step as light as a woodland animal. The hood of her cloak had swallowed her head into it’s shroud, and the whiteness of her throat and collarbone showed ocasionally beneath the dark mask. Despite her guardedness, Yvette was quite taken with the apparition Vivienne had suddenly become. Here, in the sullen, seedy corridors of brickwork and trailing heavy black robery, she was suddenly transformed into an Elfin Queen, a grinning Titiana whose gloved fingers she felt in hers, urging her deeper into darkness. Yvette let herself be swept in the wake of this phantom, beneath corroded arches and past tiny, shadow clotted squares. They travelled through a labyrinthine network of dingy passages, infested with tiny merchant’s shops, whose dirty windows displayed cheap trinkets, locksmith services and dreary tailor’s mannequins. Broken gutters soared overhead, silhoetted against a stygian Autumn sky. Yvette caught a hurried glimpse of the Kismet’s facade and the courtyard facing it. Three sallow-faced youths dressed in scarves and matching blazers were smoking cigarettes beneath a vintage streetlamp. They watched the girls pass, their heads synchronised, like lizards on a rock. Yvette was then yanked into a dingy side-alley, emerging into a tiny cul de sac. They stopped before a peeeling black door. Vivienne rapped on the wood a few times and a bolt was drawn. The door was opened by a thin figure in a coal coloured suit. A livid blue glow illuminated him from behind, blotting out the moonwashed perspective of the cobbled yard. He ushered them in without a word and Yvette saw that his skin was oil-dark, made almost pure black in the cobalt light. Large gold rings and lockets covered his left hand. He disappeared down a narrow passage and Yvette was dragged in the opposite direction. It was warm inside the constricted spaces, and the air smelled strongly of age, smoke and alcohol. It was a beery, grimy, woody smell familiar to decrepit pubs and bars. Distant music could be heard, along with the inebriated vocalisations of a small crowd. The pair brushed past three pasty women, smoking hashish in robes beneath a rusted EXIT sign. They greeted the girls in passing, blowing aromatic smoke into the red glare. One of them passed Vivienne a small hand-rolled cigarillo, which was lit almost immediately. Vivienne drew in a deep breath of the pungent smoke and then passed it to Yvette, who dragged on it without comment. They moved on down the corridor. Vivienne tossed opened a low door and they entered into a small, bright room. Yvette gazed around as the door clanged shut. The hashish was already blossoming behind her her eyes, and she had to sit down. The walls of the room were dank and rimed with fungal growth. It was also overtly warm, crowded by a dresser and some open wardrobes. An electric heater hummed in the corner. Some chairs lay entrenched, trapped in the swirling mess of strappy costumes, fabric and props. A large, square mirror framed with lightbulbs bathed the room in a solar glare. Vivienne shed her cloak in a heap, rummaging naked amongst the clothing. Yvette was not taken aback this time. Her surroundings and situation were so strange that it all seemed somehow perfectly natural. She withdrew a tiny moleskin book from an inner pocket and fumbled for a pen. She then tasted another biting draught of smoke, and began to draw, in a loose, lightheaded manner. Vivienne’s long body was powdered a bony white, and the lack of colour bled disorientingly into the pale, intricate wig she wore. The evoked image of a spectral creature was now vaguely disturbing. Her lips were a cupid bow of startling black, her eyes bird-like glitters behind the inhuman mask. The avian appearance was enhanced by the beakish elongation of the Venetian mask’s nasal area. Tiny china-white slippers clung to her long, prehensile dancer’s feet, and she stalked about the cramped room like a caged, alabaster cat, snatching at things. Yvette scribbled slowly while Vivienne slipped on a thin garter, dusting herself liberally with a crushed white cosmetic.
“I think..I recognise that wig,” Yvette mumbled, sticking her tongue out in concentration.
“It’s off one of the Bizet leads, from the costume department,” Vivienne laughed over a pale shoulder. “I lift a different item from ballet school every week and replace it on monday…help me with this glitter would you.”
Yvette shook her head in amusement, assisting clumsily in the application of some pearly residue. She sank back down, realising all of a sudden how affected she was by the powerful hashish tincture. She began reshaping the composition of her drawing with a flurry of thin lines. She became so involved that she did not realise that the sound she was now hearing was Vivienne’s voice. She looked up blearily to confront a dream-like creature from some spectral realm. Vivienne’s unearthly poise was so overwhelming, so alchemical, that it startled Yvette in a silent part of herself.
“I have to be onstage soon,” The apparition’s voice seemed to echo over the buzz of the lightbulbs.
“Be a darling and wait in the auditorium,” it smirked, helping her up.
Yvette arose on helium legs, dropping her moleskin a couple of times. She began to apologise for herself, but Vivienne hushed her with a warm finger. The proximity of Vivienne’s body was like being at the zoo, Yvette realised. It felt like watching large cats patrol, from as close to the bars as possible. Vivienne rattled off some confusing directions and then pushed Yvette put of the room. Yvette stumbled like a balloon in the half-light. She took a corner, completely in the dark as to where she was supposed to be going, and emerged in a stained stairwell. A bright pink light illuminated the wet walls. Yvette floated mindlessly down into this rosy glow, sensing the proximity of a crowd, somewhere in the world below. She discovered a large black door on a self-closing mechanism and opened it, plunging into a dense, crowded space. It was dark and sulphuric without. Bass-heavy music thumped through the ambiguous chambers at a deafening pitch. A long, antiquated bar glowed through the smoke, as coated men drifted past. Yvette became suddenly and acutely aware of her femininity and began to search desperately for an exit. She began to imagine eyes clinging like soft barnacles to her and crossed the room. A staircase arose out of the mugginess, describing a horseshoe gallery dotted with broken chandeliers. She grabbed at the balustrade without thinking, scrabbling up to a mezzanine level. Partially decayed decorative features spoke of the old theatre. Their ruin conjured up an atmosphere of fatal decadence. Faces floated behind sallow glass panes, yelping incoherently in the stink of spilled liquor and sweat. The cave-like aperture of a fire escape beckoned from a corner and she traversed it, bustling past warm, smoky bodies into blackness. A heavy velvet curtain parted and she found herself in a soft, empty corridor. The monstrous music was muted, creating a blood-like thumping in her head. A staircase wound up from the far end of the passage. She hunted up it like a lost creature, emerging into a raw-walled chamber. The chill of the night invaded this strange, cavernous space through holes which had been smashed into the left wall of the long, unlit room. These rents peeked down to the shadowy courtyard below. The wind skirled dry leaves into the uncarpeted area. They dusted around her ankles, irritating her balance with their constant movement. The far wall was awash with light and moving pictures. The ratchety whirr of a projector filtered from somewhere above her, gushing images like a burst tap. There was a gaping abyss in the ceiling, and the luminous blackness of the sky was discernable beyond. She stumbled further into the sudden chilliness of the room, revived somewhat by the air. A couple twisted to one side, jerking in silhoette, passing the holes in the wall. They crawled onto what appeared to be a rickety bench, and collapsed in on each other like fat spiders. The projected images fluttered and collapsed, rearranging the shadows around them in a somewhat queasy fashion. Yvette looked away, to the grainy film. A luminescent scene described some popular actress, hiding in an immense, ruined temple. The actresses eyes were large and haunted, as she gripped the edge of a stone pillar. The nape of her unnaturally long neck showed white in the stark lighting. A man in a trenchoat hunted for her with a drawn knife. The film was bright monochrome, and the succulence of the grey tones began to mesmerize Yvette. She thought that she reconized the actress, and felt she would have been able to identify her sooner, had not the image been obscured by a figure who stood in the beams. The face of the familiar actress coiled and slid over the thin, coated figure, almost melding with his form. He cast a spindly shadow which cut cleanly into the picture of her, very much like the gash in the ceiling of the room. His cigarette smoke also travelled in her glowing blurs, as moths daubed and collapsed in the lighstream, mixing their shadows with his. The face of the actress, whom she now recognized as Elusina Elsware, moved along his back like a disease. Faceless characters began to stab her repeatedly and she screamed silently, for there was no accompanying soundtrack. Yvette left the room on rubbery legs and threw up in the corridor. She went down the wrong flight of steps and found herself in the courtyard. She leant back into a pool of shadow, wiping her mouth, catching her breath. The vomit had purged her, crystallizing certain thoughts. Her doubt of Vivienne’s inentions returned with a full force, plunging her into little stammers of paranoia. She wasn’t even completely sure what she was doing out there, in that grimy little corner of nowhere, alone in the dark with a head full of smoke. She looked up into the night, seeking solace in the constancy of the sky. The battered, grand piano countours of the Kismet loomed behind her, stretching off into fathomless reaches. She disengaged herself from the peeling curves of the old theatre and entered into the courtyard. The three youths were still positioned beneath the streetlamp. They hunched in their blazers, as motionless as horses, puffing wordlessly on thin cigarettes. Spitcurls fell across their foreheads like question marks as they loitered in the dim radiance. She realized that they had been staring at her for some time now, observing her in silence. The realisation would have under any other circumstances made her feel shy, but here, on the strange stage of the gloomy courtyard, she felt another spirit overtake her. Perhaps it was the transferred essence of Vivienne, which caused her to smile almost flirtatiously at them. Her actions shocked her. What had been gnawing below had suddenly surfaced; the petulant fact that her womanhood had been belittled by Vivienne’s display of plumage and power. Her pride had rebelled, painting unexpected solicitations into her. The trio did not respond. She was about to speak when a slurry moan distracted her from above. She peered up at the inn, following the sound to the blue-ish square of a lit window. Soft creepers twined over the entire facade of the building, blanketing it in a webby network of tiny leaves and greenery. A weathervane creaked from the world above. She made out the garrulous outline of a long-limbed man, leaning on the sill of the lighted window. He moans again.
“Hello,” she chirps up at him, suddenly conscious of breaking a peculiar silence.
She became aware of having adopted the manner and voice of Vivienne. Mimicry was a thing which came naturally to her. In fact she often employed this mercurial talent in anecdotes, for humourous and satirical effect. But the effect under narcosis was suddenly uncontrollable, a mockery of itself, almost as if the spirit of Vivienne were channelling through her of it’s own volition. She was trying to claim energy back, but somehow falling deeper into a spell. A spell which continued to hold her attention, for Vivienne was a somehow fascinating influence, an opener of secret doors, a siren wet from the rocks of ancient power. It was almost impossible not to follow her once her will had been fixed. The three youths continued to stare grimly, taking little or no notice of the figure in the window.
“Why don’t you come down,” Yvette suggested to the man.
He gave a long drawn moan and slumped onto the sill.
“Yi ham lucked hin!” he declared in a braying whine.
Yvette rocked playfully on the balls of her feet.
“I beg your pardon?” she frowned.
“Lucked hin! Lucked hin!” he guffawed in a heavily accented voice.
“You’re locked in!” she chortled.
She put a finger to her lip in mock-thoughtfullness, a mannerism which was not entirely familiar to her.
“Why don’t you telephone down to the concierge and get him to let you out?” she called.
The man gave a howlish moan.
“Ah!” he declared. “He is late.”
Yvette started chuckling, lightly at first and then in inebriated spurts.
“I really don’t see how he could have locked himself into his own hotel room!” she whispered to the trio.
But the dour youths did not acknowledge her attempt at conversation. They continued to stare, with an atmosphere of unfathomable heaviness. Her smile faltered a little in the face of this oppressive lack of response. She glanced from the silhoette to the scarved boys as though trying to unravel something hidden.
“Yi ham lucked hin!” the voice mooned into the night.
Yvette approached the inn, inspecting the chiselled doors. She saw that the deadbolts had been drawn and that the ground floor interiors were lampless and deserted. The cool, soft heads of the creepers gave off a crisp aroma of chlorophyll and damp stone. She peered through a succession of latticed windows, discerning only dim outlines in the darkness beyond. Eventually she pushed away from the breath clouded glass. She was about to announce her findings to the boys when she slipped on the slick cobbles. She fell to her knees, scattering pens and moleskin. She broke into reflexive laughter, lifting wet palms from the grime, massaging her knees. She realized gradually, as her laughter faded, that no-one was coming to her aid. She hoisted herself up, drying her hands on her thighs, gathering her fallen things. She frowned at the dark figures who watched from the pale glow.
“That was extremely ungentlemanly of you, ” she snapped.
“We lost the regatta today,” one of them mentions unexpectedly.
Yvette looked up in surprise, brushing bits of rotted leaf from her sleeves.
“Oh,” she stammered. “I…I’m sorry.”
She regarded them in confusion while they slowly exhaled smoke into the cold luminescence.
“Who’s a pretty pussycat then?” another murmured quietly.
Yvette’s face went slack before hardening. She turned back to the window, now determined to release this man from his bondage.
“I tried to look in the lobby area, but I think…” she began, before being interrupted by yet another wailing lament.
“Yi ham lucked hin!” the voice crowed pathetically.
Slivers of silvered drool leak from the barely visible mouth of the man, catcing in the lamplight like cobwebs. Yvette was forced to take a few steps back to avoid being laced by them. The weathervane creaked again, uselessly. The absurdity of the scene and her failure to intergrate with it left her feeling weak and persecuted. She abandoned the courtyard, retreating swiftly back into the Kismet.

She found that a strange, electric silence was spreading within the establishment. The music had been shut down and a hush had invaded in its wake. The lighting had also changed, localizing around an ancient stage, drenching the rest of the space in an anticipatory darkness. To Yvette, it felt as though she had passed through a looking glass somewhere, penetrating into another realm. She wafted into this faery arena like a ghost, observing. Around her milled factory workers and teenage boys, student dregs and shifty men in coats. But none of them paid any attention to her, all their attentions were fixed on the distant stage. Yvette was able, for the first time to make out the details of the antiquated proscenium. Some footlights illuminated a drawn scarlet curtain. Faded tassels clung to it’s worn velvet, and burgundy wings closed around it like the fleshy folds of an exposed clam. The stage was raised to chest height and rotting plaster cherubs roosted beneath it’s grimy lip. A large, destroyed golden arch encapsulated the performance area. There were no seats in the audience pit and the large crowd milled slightly, like lost penguins. The galleries above were also haunted by these bird-like apparitions, who peered out of the dimnesses, entranced by a single spot which lit the curtain. The illuminated curtain gave off a sulphuric and hypnotic shimmer, like something underwater. Yvette heard the voices around her murmuring a repetitive phrase, which she eventually came to recognise as ‘The White Lady’. She drifted closer to the stage and noticed the thin,coated figure she had seen in the upstairs room, the one who had been smoking in the projected images. She realised with a faint surprise that it was Cain himself. Their conversation had conjured him from the ether and delivered him into her circle. She observed him closely in the dimness. She had seen his face in periodicals and papers, but never in the flesh. His pale blue eyes were shadowed with restlessness. His skin had the sallowness of candles and his fingers were like restless spiders. He wore an old-fashioned frock coat with knee-length boots. A poppy blazed at his lapel, twining into black locks. She came up close, sidling behind him till she was almost pressed against his back in the crowd. An air of anxiety breathed off him, tainting his proximities with a nervous tension. She was about to draw alongside to catch his profile when a rolling snare drum called for silence. All eyes switched to the stage. The snare snapped dead and the curtains swept back. In the spotlight stood the poised figure of a mythical creature. It was hard, even for Yvette, to name the captivating figure as Vivienne, so removed was her stance and appearance from reality. She stood naked in the beam, her gleaming arms drawn back like wings. The masked, bird-like face was tuned full force into the prismic light, thrusting her blinding white body into the glare. Her arched ribs and sculpted thighs vibrated with a barely perceptible stallion-like tension, while long feet held the stage on knife-ish pointes. Her obscured eyes and painted lips presnted a trinity of glowing black almonds, set in a slender oval of luminescene. Yvette would have expected bawdy calls or lusty choruses from such a dingy establishment, but rapturous silence weighed supreme. The grimy, liquored faces regarded this visitation with a palpable reverence, watching it as expectantly as children. Tape began to play through a sound system. Analog crackling blossomed into the charged air, announcing a vintage recording of some kind. Strings rose from the ghostly swell of scratchy noise, and Yvette recognised the piece as ‘Le Cygne’ by Camille Saint-Saëns. She realised that Vivienne was about to attempt ‘The Dying Swan’, that mysterious and legendary peice of choreography which Anna Pavlova had taken to her grave. The poignant dance which Maya Plisetskaya had immortalized on grainy monochrome recordings and on stages around the world. Vivienne’s long arms became lucid and weightless, coiling upward as her thighs fluttered in a slow constancy, as though adrift on rippling waters. Her control was superb, and Yvette realised that it was an effect which Vivienne had achieved through countless nights upon this filthy stage. Seeing the famous peice performed without a costume, gave it a primal urgency which was profoundly unsettling. The animistic undercurrent of the choreography arose like blood from a wound, leaking into the witnesses with a promise of scars. Here in the seedy underverse of canals and alleys, Vivienne had sumoned the spirit of a perpetually dying bird. And the naked majesty of her body was unspeakable in it’s possesion. Yvette glanced to one side and saw that Cain was weeping faintly. The dance continued, as if in a dream, the shining figure moving in suspension, sinking inexorably toward it’s death throes. Her spine became elongated, folding unnaturally back as she quivered a final time in her descent. The music faded out and the chamber was plunged into darkness. From the sickening pit of silence issued forth delirious applause, the glory of the obsessed and wounded, untrammelled by civility or any form of social decency. The house lights came back onto an empty stage and the bestial crowd was awakened completely from it’s hypnotic reverie. They reverted to animals, squalling and screaming inebriated delight at the closed curtains. Cain broke from the drunken horde, his hands to his face. He ran out into the courtyard and Yvette followed him blindly, without recourse to thought. She followed him down winding, moonlit passages, past tattered shop fronts and across cobbled tracts. He was running silently through the deserted streets and Yvette had to race to keep him in sight. They passed like spectral forms beneath the twisted trees which marked the edges of the alleyway warren. The more respectable quadrants of Ambarvalia were visible above the canal, a darkness jewelled with streetlamps. He entered into the passage which ran alongside the canal, disturbing the fine tentacles of mist which exuded off the surface of the waters. Some swans were moving in the shadows, like flaws on celluloid. Yvette watched from the bank as he stopped beneath a small and ancient bridge, pushing his head against the blackened stonework. She paused, leaning on a cypress, breathing raggedly. He was still now, seeming not to be moving. She approached cautiously along the paved walk. He did not notice until she was very near and started like an animal.
“Who are you!” he hissed.
“It’s allright,” she answered in a whisper. “I’m a friend of Vivienne’s.”
The sound of her name brought about a talismanic change in his demeanour. The wildness left him abruptly and he straightened out, emerging from the darkness. He scuffed glistening moisture from his face and extended his hand.
“I’m sorry,” he coughed. “I’m…I’m a little outside of myself.”
She shook his cold hand awkwardly and he cleared his throat. He rummaged in a pocket and then blew his nose quietly in a peice of tissue paper. They stared out across the black waters while he lit a cigarette.
“Would you like one?” he offered, proffering the pack.
She accepted with a word of mumbled thanks and they smoked for a moment, in silence.
“You haven’t told me your name,” he mumbled, his pale face still half-cast in the heavy shadow of the bridge.
“My name is Yvette,” she said quietly.
“You know who I am don’t you,” he asked gloomily. “I mean…she’s told you about me.”
“Yes,” Yvette answered.
He was sullen in the half-dark.
“I see,” he said after awhile.
It was clear that he had misunderstood her, thinking perhaps that Vivienne had mocked him and that she had joined her in scorn of his affections. A build-up of unknown feeling soared in Yvette, compounded by her long chase after him. And having no way to flow, the feeling re-directed itself, seeking release. She leaned clumsily forward, took his collar and kissed him. The action shocked him into querulous submission. His lips parted, melting like wax before the flame of her mouth. They were unbalanced against the rail, and the surge of his pent-up emotion added colour to the moment. She tasted tears. There was a delirious desire in his touch, but not for her. Confusion seemed to suddenly descend, paralysing their hands and mouths. They withdrew, leaning on the rails. She was breathing heavily. Her cigarette had fallen in the water and the sluggish current had already swept it beneath the bridge. He remembered that he still held his and took a shaky draw upon it. He offered it to her and she accepted, her fingers trembling slightly. He lit another and they stood for several moments while their breathing evened.
“Shall we walk back?” he suggested after awhile.
“I don’t think I can go back there,” she muttered.
He leaned on the iron railing which spanned the length of the canal, almost in relief Yvette thought.
“Neither can I,” he sighed with weariness.
They began to stroll along the canal, passing beneath a succession of decrepit, moonwashed bridges. The effects of the run had subdued the giddy surge of the hashish somewhat. It had subsided into a thin, hallucinatory sheen which still afforded visual phantoms and subtle dilations of time. She would watch each ornamental bridge as appeared in the distance, swelling in perspective as it wafted closer to swallow them in it’s pitchy shadows. And each gulf of shadow was almost like a physical substance to her, a medium, like a fluid which left no trace. Outer sounds would dissipate behind the damp stonework and the sharp silence and clarified clicking of the waters against the walls would solidify. This shadowy trench would last only a few moments before they emerged once more into the moonlight. Then the process would begin again, as though they were passing through a sucession of gates toward the cusp of another world. After awhile it began to feel as though they had been walking for ages. He had withdrawn into himself, a silent shadow, more a part of the aphotic world beneath the bridges than of the waking world without. She glanced at him from time to time as they strolled, and his face was as waxen as before. A thing formed of a passing flame and then left trapped in a cold, melted state. She noticed that a swan was following them along the waters. It remained in the distance, drifting silently in their wake, lingering in the shaded parts of the canal. She imagined that it watched them closely while they walked, as animals often do, observing their every movement and subtle interaction; a very palpable third party. The prescence of it disturbed Yvette vaguely, who felt the need to be unmoored. She was passing etheric gates toward another realm and needed no trailing spectre, who would doubtless follow her across the threshold.
“Do you see that a swan that is following us?” she whispered dreamily.
He did not turn his head, or even seem to register, though he answered promptly.
“It’s impossible to escape her,”
Yvette felt a heaviness, like an anchor dragging across the waters. Once more she was overwhelmed by the languid power of Vivienne and her magnificent reach. She looked over her shoulder, at all the crumbling districts which had passed. This kingdom seemed to somehow belong to Vivienne, a province of shadows and barely realised forms, over which she presided like some unreachable, ministering angel. And, as though in a dream, she began to recognise the buildings and street-corners. That which was previously so foriegn became suddenly familiar to her. She realised that they must have wandered far, and were within the vicinity of the botanical gardens.
“Come this way,” she murmured, taking his arm and leading him up a flight of stone steps. They crossed a quiet intersection and entered mazy, silent suburbs. Vast trees ghosted overhead as they walked. For a while she led him on her private routes through the streets, but then the lead slipped subtly and she found that she was following him. He walked without a word, down debris choked paths which linked the streets through tracts of undergrowth. Gusts of leaves from tree-lined avenues blanketed the pavements and tarmac, rattling underfoot. They soon found themselves across the road from the enormous house of Vivienne’s parents. All the lights in the street were extinguished save her high attic window, which burned with a soft light. Her cabriolet was also parked across the street, confirming her presence. He had stopped and was standing very still, as though trying to catch any sounds that might fall from above. The misery of the scene suddenly woke Yvette from her trance, and she took his arm once more.
“Come,” she commanded gently.
He resisted at first, but then allowed himself to be led back along the lanes, glancing behind occasionally, as though hoping to catch a glimpse of her at the window. For the first time that night, Yvette felt herself breaking free from Vivienne’s circle of enchantment. By placing her physically in the world, she had been able to retreat. She drew Cain to a place where she knew of a collapse in the botanical garden’s fence. The large, wooden pickets had fallen, creating a clandestine entrance into the park. Clear moonlight washed over skeins of ivy and illuminated the distant glintings of running water. They picked their way across the ruined barricade, stumbled though a trench and emerged into large, open park lawns painted silver in the lunar radiance. The moon was now visible above a faraway line of pines, cloyed in chocolatey web of cloud. Yvette breathed a heavy sigh of relief. She felt awake and alert in the park, safe within the bounds of her own private haunts. A skin of sleepwalking had broken, exposing her to the events of the night, as though they were scenes in a book.
“How long has Vivienne been dancing at the Kismet?” she asked.
He exhaled a long plume of cigarette smoke, which rivulated back across the grasses like a phantom loosed.
“She has been dancing in places like that since she was twelve,” he replied bleakly.
Yvette was shocked at the depth of Vivienne’s secret life. Her strength had to be admired, her willingness to study at the hard bench of experience.
“She is a very talented dancer…” she said.
Cain gave a bitter chuckle.
“That’s the irony about Vivenne,” he said. “She can’t recognise that she is talented, she only sees her body as a weapon.”
“But how can she not realise?”
“Vivienne only sees visual art and the like as talent,” Cain explained. “Perhaps if she was a prima ballerina in a well-known company she might eventually recognise her abilities, since recognition is so important to her.”
“I don’t see why she hasn’t been accepted by such a company,”
“She hasn’t approached one, so enfatuated is she with her idea of what an artist is supposed to be…She’s so obsessed with embodying this imagined ideal of artistic perfection that she is willing to fake ability, forsaking the true power nature has given her.”
“But she hasn’t forsaken her power at all…”
“No, she hasn’t,” he admitted. “But she is like a child with matches,”
“It’s all so ironic, considering how much time and energy she puts into dancing.”
“She doesn’t see it that way,” he replied curtly. “To her, she’s investing in power, people fall in love with her when she dances so she dances all the time. She canot see what she is doing, only the effect it causes. But she becomes better and better every day, for all the wrong reasons.”
“In a way, she is more of a true artist than most so-called artistic practitioners,” Yvette smirked. “There is no sense of class or pretension about what she does, the only rules being the one’s she has made for herself, the only measuring bar is the quality of her performance. It is art for the sake of art, a complete reversal of her daily life, which is pure pretense.”
“Yes…”
“I can see why you love her,” she whispered.
He was silent, gleaming pale in the wan light, brows knotted with shade.
“You want to save her don’t you, show her who she really is…”
He remained silent.
“It won’t work,” she continued. “Vivienne is completely lost within herself, she’s more in love with that figure on the stage than you are…She can’t let anything come between that, don’t you see?”
She reached over and took his unmoving fingers.
“Like you,” she said intensely. “Would you let anything come between that figure and yourself?”
He caught her eye and slowly withdrew his fingers, drifting down a stretch of leaf littered turf. She was perhaps being cruel, but the sensation felt right to her under the circumstances. Somebody must be the candle in all this mist, she thought. He stopped beside the edge of a stream. White flowers gleamed supernaturally from the water’s edge. She came up beside him and once again took his hand. This time he let her for some reason. They stood for long silent seconds in the ebb of silent waters and downpour of still, silver light. Then she began once more to kiss him, like a child eating something it has never tasted before. And he allowed her to, remaining closed all the while, like an old cabinet which has been stuffed to capacity with dusty, indecipherable items. Her eyes opened at one point and she saw the swans, a large cluster of them, sleeping with their heads folded beneath their wings. They cannot see me, she thought. They cannot see me.