kagablog

{an extract from the novel in progress - ‘The Heartstring Noodle Bar’}

I suddenly remembered that it was in fact Genevieve’s birthday today. A small sinking sensation came over me as I hastily shuffled through my correspondence box. She had sent me an invitation last week and I had shelved it along with a donation plea to aid some species of near extinct butterfly. So it was after much rummaging that I finally came across the rather grotesque invitation. The invitation was written painstakingly in blood, no doubt Genevieve’s own, and scrawled along the inside of a human femur. I was aware of the fact that she had recently acquired several dozen human skeletons from a now defunct medical museum in the seedy side of town. I admit, I had become curious as to how she would choose to express herself through the medium of bone. Admittedly, the idea of birthday invitations simply did not present itself to me. Perhaps I just did not the comprehend the ‘goddess-given artistic drives’, as Genevieve and her circle of Night Maries put it. I examined the femur for the time and address of the party. I was obligated to go and it just wouldn’t do to not make an effort. I thought that If I hurried I might be able to make it to the dregs of the celebration, hang around long enough to wish Genevieve, either personally or via one of her Night Maries. I began to scrabble mentally through the contents of the room for some manner of gift whilst scanning the blood scrawls for information. I finally registered that the party was in fact only scheduled to begin at four am and was located at some venue in an old and disused railway terminal somewhere on the outskirts of town. I looked at the clock and realised that if I hurried, I might make it on time after all. I telephoned a reliable taxi service and pulled on a partially crumpled, grey and salmon pink zoot suit. I discovered that the only gift which I could produce on such short notice, which was even vaguely appropriate, was a large penyata the same size and dimensions of a young boy. The head was a caricatured skull and the entire thing was crafted out of bone-white sugar candy mixed with flour. The mixture had by now become quite stale and had warped vaguely, probably due to a prolonged exposure to sea air. Ominous rattling sounded from within its depths, denoting secrets yet undivulged. I had been trying to get rid of it for weeks but even the seagulls wouldn’t go near it. Here at last was an opportunity to kill two birds with one very ugly piece of candy. I pulled on a white fedora, my best dancing shoes and a pair of spats. Hans, my cigarette-smoking iguana jiggled from his perch, slid across the desk and hopped nimbly onto my shoulder. I scooped up the candy penyata boy and Han’s cigarettes in one deft movement, turning off all the lights on my way out. Outside the wind threatened to take my hat. Hans tucked his triangular head into the folds of his neck fan like a budgie, and together we struggled up the long sandy drive .The dunes rolled away on either side in the pale moonlight, and we eventually emerged onto the side of the highway. Flocks of tumbleweed chased each other like gazelles across the receding strip of grey tarmac and the night smelled inexplicably of nougat. I did not have long to wait before I saw the faint glare of headlights intensifying across the lunar wastes. I was however surprised to see a small white milk truck emerging from the murk. It chugged up the highway like a little extracted tooth and stopped infront of me. The back of the small truck was open, in the manner of a golf-cart, and laden with many gleaming bottles of milk. The driver was a skinny young man in a cowprint uniform and a matching skullcap. There were no doors and the roof was stretched canvas. A frolicking little red cow had been painted along the bonnet. I noticed that driver wore enormous goggles to protect his eyes from the wind, for there were no doors in the milk truck’s cabin.

“Did you ring for a taxi sir?” he called to me over the wind.
“I did indeed,” I answered, approaching the flimsy vehicle.
“Well, climb in then sir!” he smiled professionally.
“But you seem to be in the process of delivering dairy products.” I protested.
“Yes, well unfortunately there’s been some trouble in the city and the taxi service has been experiencing difficulty in reaching some of it’s more distant customers.”
“I see,” I said in a perplexed fashion.
“They call us milk boys when there’s a problem in the early hours sir, you see, we know the roads us milk boys, oh yes we do. And we don’t have much to do on these long stretches between suburbs. Plain Jane wilderness from the milk factory to town sir, one or two farms but that’s it really. We’ve all had trouble since the new regime sir, and we all have to do our little bit. We all have to work together so to speak, to keep the engines running smoothly, so to speak. The taxi services, very modestly you understand, planned for every possible contingency. They, in their wisdom understood that a little extra business couldn’t hurt the milk trade, and well, they offered us milk boys the option of moonlighting for them sir, so to speak. Ironic that isn’t it sir, moonlighting!”
He laughed, turning his huge goggles moonward.
“Yes,” I agreed. “I suppose it is ironic.”
“I mean, you certainly wouldn’t see one of us milk boys ferrying around customers in the day now would you? All night working at the factory, making sure that the milk is just so, that the cows are happy and all of that, getting the milk to the general population in time for cornflakes..This little window between loading and pre-dawn, well its all the moonlighting time we have to offer! And you won’t find much else besides the moon at this time of night now will you sir?”
“No, of course not.”
“I mean the day! Come on sir! that’s for postmen and garbage trucks! And who would take electricity bills and rubbish over a nice, wholesome glass of milk?”

I realised that I was beginning to grow rather annoyed with the milkman’s rather smug attitude. Certainly, there was no way he could know that I myself had something of a pathological fear of cows and their ridiculous white secretions. As a child I used to cry at the sight of an ice cream. I was not precisely sure what it was that vexed me about the issue. Perhaps it was the knowledge that here was an entire industry based around the glandular secretions of a captive animal.

“Listen,” I said in a firm tone. “I have an important engagement and I’m in something of a hurry.”
The milkman once again smiled in a professional sort of way.
“Of course you are sir, step right in.”
He indicated the white passenger seat beside him and I clambered up into it. I placed the candy penyata boy between us, in the manner of an extra passenger. Within no time at all, we were both watching the highway drone past under the wash of the headlights. The pace was unbearably slow, but regular. Tumbleweed flickered past at odd intervals, overexposing in the harsh white glare, and then vanishing into the darkness. I turned my collar up against the maniacal draughts which flooded the cramped and door-less interior, pulling my hat down as far as it would go. The noise of the engine was deafening. I struggled to light a cigarette for Hans and then gave up after several attempts.

“Would you like the air-conditioner off sir?” the milkman shouted in a polite sort of way.
I stared into the enormous circular goggles, searching for any sign of a joke. Seeing none I simply shook my head with a feeling of despair. He nodded sprightly and then with a swift motion turned on the radio. I did not notice before but the milk truck had several large cone shaped loudspeakers attached to it’s roof, and it was through these that the radio blared. At first the sound was indistinguishable from the general noise of the wind and the engine. Then the milkman cranked up the volume to a piercing level and the blare of a badly recorded trumpet fanfare echoed across the pale and lonely dunes around us. I imagined what we must look like from the side of the road and cringed in embarrassment. A tiny pool of intrusive whiteness, in hideous contrast to the moonwashed beachscapes. A rudeness of light and sound, crawling slowly toward the urban anthills looming along the horizon. My irritation must have reached some sort of crescendo because I blurted out:
“And just what is it that makes you think the cows are happy!”

The milkman gave a jittery start and regarded me with a nerve racked expression. Within seconds, the air of positive professionalism had reasserted itself.
“Oh I know it sir,” he smiled. “And many regard me as something of a professional in these matters.”

Their was a faint undertone of dictatorial arrogance in the milkman’s otherwise cheery demeanour and I took it as a sign to let the matter lie. I returned to the difficult task of lighting a cigarette against the wind. I finally succeeded and watched as Hans fought for purchase in the buffeting gusts, his eyes slitted against the slipstream. He inhaled and I felt his claws poke around my shoulder in satisfaction. At that precise moment, the insane marching band din was cut short by a public announcement.

“Citizens of the New Republic!” boomed the voice of an authoritarian woman. “This is a civic address! As many of you already know, there was a fire-fighter’s strike in the Spanish quarter of our city earlier today. The fire-fighters had set several large advertisement billboards alight to protest the imminent inauguration of our beloved leader, General Alcazar. The military has been fighting all day to contain the blaze, but to no avail. The fire has already spread to the municipal library, and thousands of books are burning even as we speak!”

“Those vexatious fire-fighters,” the milkman grumbled. “Always making trouble.”
“Until your cat is stuck up a tree,” I muttered.
The announcement continued, booming out across the deserted beaches and over the empty highway like muted thunder.
“There have always been factions who say that the military are the ones who wanted to burn these books, but now it is plain to see who the real book burners are!”
“I myself had a library card,” the milkman added with outrage.

I simply ignored him. The woman’s voice conjured up images of head mistresses in gloomy boarding schools. I could almost picture the woman speaking as one of those commanding teacher archetypes with thick ankles and flat soled shoes. Her hair would be pulled into a cruel grey bun and she would be wearing a creaseless prison warder skirt. Blinding spectacles would be perched upon her bony nose as she peered down over the cowering population like some enormous bird of prey.

“We the military, want you the population to know that we will do our utmost to protect your books! We are here for you in your hour of need. That is why we must raise the penalty for striking to death! We cannot allow our advertising to be pillaged and our libraries to be burned. So feel safe in your beds tonight citizens, the iron eye of the army is watching! Thank you for your attention.”

The announcement abruptly ended and an old bossanova track fuzzed in, filling the night with lilting guitar melodies and the gentle code of marracas. We drove on for a while without saying anything to each other. I became engrossed in the strange intonations of a spiralling oboe as it crackled out into the darkness. I was about to ask the time when I noticed a faint glow up ahead. The light was emanating from somewhere in the fields, large patchwork fields which had just appeared to the left of the highway. And as the glow grew steadily stronger, I realised that we had entered a farming area. The truck trundled closer to the flickering source of illumination and I became aware of some sort of commotion up ahead.

“Now I wonder what that could be?” the milkman yelled thoughtfully.
The glow, which had by now had revealed itself to be a towering blaze, was coming from a large cornfield. An enormous man-shaped effigy had been erected in the centre of the field, and it stood with its arms akimbo, utterly consumed by fire. I realised that soldiers were blocking the road and a dizzy feeling of panic set in. I noticed a small crowd of people and some vehicles huddled together at the edge of the field. Their long wavering shadows danced across the road as the fire coiled and spat before them. I looked over to the milkman and saw that, although he was still smiling, a faint glisten of perspiration had begun to oil around his upper lip. A jeep had been parked in the centre of the highway and three soldiers in olive uniforms were waving for us to pull over. As the milkman slowed I began to recognise the field. I remembered it’s profile from a series of photographs in the small press. I then recalled that it was in this precise field that the first scarecrows, whose features mimicked several well known abductees, were discovered. An ominous feeling fell upon me as the soldiers approached in the headlights. They were wearing livid green helmets and carried automatic rifles around like cricket bats. Behind them was a large van which I took to be some form of news vehicle. An enormous satellite dish rotated slowly on its roof, beeping quietly below the clamour of voices and the whooshing roar of the fire. I glimpsed other figures, in different uniforms, lined against a fence in the manner of prisoners. Three or four other silhouettes were moving before the blaze, carrying equipment and trays of hot beverages. A skinny teenage girl with peroxided hair and white jeans was sitting under a portable spotlight, filing her bubblegum coloured nails. The truck came to a halt and the milkman turned off the engine. For some reason he forgot to turn off the radio, and the soothing oboe solo continued to klaxon out of the loudspeakers above our heads. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that his hands had begun to shake uncontrollably at the sight of the guns.

“So, ” said the first soldier, eyeing the skull-faced candy penyata boy with utter contempt. “You’ve come to burn another effigy of our beloved General Alcazar.”
“Get out of the golf cart you cowardly dogs!” yelled another, cocking his rifle.
The milkman began to stammer some form of explanation as we climbed cautiously out onto the cold tarmac. The third soldier had gone around the back and was tapping the frosty bottles with the handle of his bayonet.

“What’s this then?” he asked the milkman suspiciously.
“It’s full cream, pasteurised…” he squeaked. “Low fat is just underneath the..”
“Paint you say!” the third soldier shouted insanely.
“M…milk,” the milkman stuttered.
“Never heard of it,” the second soldier hissed suspiciously.
The milkman looked around helplessly, his enormous goggles finally rested on me and I was reminded of some sort of cartoon insect I had seen on television once.
“And what are you doing with that cockroach on your shoulder?” the first soldier asked me belligerently.
“Hans is an iguana,” I stated calmly.
Hans stared, unimpressed, at the trio of gun-toting maniacs, the cigarette hanging nonchalantly off his lower lip.
“Why is it so green!” the third soldier shouted, coming up behind me.
I was about to answer when the second soldier smashed a bottle of milk on the road. The milkman jumped at this, staring at the spread milk as though it were blood.
“There’s no use crying over spilled…” I could hear him whimper.
He was whispering the phrase over and over like some form of prayer.
The first soldier cut him short with a brutal slap.
“We’ll set the mood here!” he bellowed at the cowering milkman.
The second soldier had squatted down on his haunches and was drawing milk patterns along the tar with his index finger.
“They were going to use this paint to cover the walls of parliament with their subversive slogans,” he muttered indignantly.
I suddenly felt the cold steel eye of the third soldier’s rifle barrel against my ear.
“Right then you filthy rebel agitators,” the soldier gnashed from just behind my head. “March!”

They led us away from the milk truck and toward the fence of prisoners. As we approached, the heat grew steadily more intense. In the distance, across the field, vortices of livid sparks were spewing from the effigy’s head at an alarming rate. The monolithic columns of pungent smoke caught in the heavy coastal breezes and whipwhirled over our heads and out to sea. I looked down to see that the uniformed figures against the fence were in fact ragged fire fighters. Their faces and hands were sooty and occasionally bloodied. They looked completely exhausted and were drooped over the wire mesh in exhaggerated postures of fatigue. Behind the van I could see the busy figures of technicians, sorting coloured leads and boxes of hardware. The teenage girl in the spotlight glanced up at us as we passed and then returned to her nails. Everything was bathed in the surreal, shifting glow of the inferno. On the other side of the highway, shadows danced wildly across the dunes. A man with a clipboard and spectacles stood, calmly surveying the chaos. It was to him that we were unceremoniously led. He noticed our approach and turned to face us. I noticed that he was wearing a dark trenchcoat and a cap not dissimilar to Federico’s. A small sheet of paper had been pinned to his back and there was no sign that he was aware of it. The paper had the word ‘LIEUTENANT’ typed neatly onto its surface. It fluttered a little in the wind.

“What’s this then?” he asked the soldiers.
“Agitators sir,” the first soldier said. “We found them running a golf cart full of paint out to the city”
“Paint you say?” the lieutenant frowned.
“Yes sir,” growled the second soldier. “They were planning to deface all the statues in the park.”
“Well that’s rather serious,” the lieutenant said after a pause.

I realised that part of me was still listening to the strange cadence and intonation of the oboe soloist in the bossanova track. The music continued to blare off the milk truck at an abominable volume, diffusing strangely in the wind and heat. Somehow the oboe player was managing to obstinately ignore the restrictions of the western scale and was now introducing a faintly Arabic flavour into an otherwise conventional melody structure.

“I am but a simple milk boy sir…” the milkman began to protest to the coated figure of the lieutenant.
The first soldier rammed the butt of his rifle against the milkman’s face with a sickening crunch. I saw the milk man totter and then raise his head in a dazed fashion. A line of blood had left his nose and one of the enormous goggle lenses was now webbed by a series of hairline cracks. He smeared at his bloodied face with white latex gloves while the soldier scowled down at him. The lieutenant ,who didn’t seem a bad sort at all, became somewhat offended by this display of violence and went back to his calm surveillance of the scene. It was at this moment that the femur chose to drop from my sleeve. I felt all the eyes in our party snap to it at once. The lieutenant even leaped two or three paces back.

“What in the name of God is that?” he spluttered, recovering his composure somewhat.
“It’s a human thigh bone!” the second soldier screamed.
“And it’s covered in blood,” the first soldier grumbled.
All at once, I felt the three rifles raise and level themselves at my head.
“What are you doing with a thigh bone up your sleeve?” the lieutenant asked me coldly.
I cleared my throat, trying to maintain a sense of calm in an otherwise uncontrollable situation.
“Its a birthday invitation,” I explained calmly.

They all stared at me with something like incredulity. The lieutenant even blinked once or twice. I looked around, weighing my options. I noticed that some of the fire fighters were now looking in our direction and whispering amongst themselves. The technicians however, were still working in an ant-like state of industrious obliviousness. The peroxided teenager, in contrast to their insectile disinterest, was utterly engrossed in our exchange. She blew slow bubblegum bubbles, listening as the events developed, flicking her nails to dry them. A technician came out of the shadows, heading for her pool of light. He handed her a steaming beverage in a Styrofoam cup, which she sipped at carefully, avoiding any damage to her pristine make-up

“Do you mean to say that this is…Art?” the lieutenant asked with a sincerely disturbed expression.
“Well, I suppose…for want of a better word, yes.” I nodded half-heartedly, unsure of my ground.
A vast range of inexpressible emotions, some bordering on psychotic anguish, some close to a sort of religious fear, seemed to surface across the lieutenant’s spectacled face in the space of a moment.
“Shoot them,” the lieutenant said suddenly. “Shoot them all.”

The soldiers grabbed us and began shoving us forcefully in the direction of the fire fighters. We had gone about three paces when something in the milkman snapped. He turned and screamed up at the lieutenant.
“You people force our freedom from us and then you milk us dry! You take away our children and then take the food that was intended for them! You stuff your faces with our lives and then demand more! More! More! All you do is imprison us and then herd us in huge numbers to the slaughterhouses! And for what! For what! Abuse! Greed! Ignorance! You take our children and milk us mercilessly! You..”

At that point a howling siren echoed from somewhere just behind the van. The milkman stopped in confusion as the soldiers all snapped to attention. Even the lieutenant turned to face the sound, straightening his arm into a salute. The girl, I noticed, had jumped up suddenly, spilling her coffee onto the ground. She spat out her gum and had begun to feverishly adjust her hair. Tacky charm bracelets glinted at her thin wrists. I noticed for the first time that there was a white limousine parked amongst the nondescript vehicles. I wondered how I had failed to notice such an ostentatious sight amidst the other, more functional vehicles. I watched as a door opened slowly in its side. A shining jackboot emerged. The jackboot was followed by the considerable bulk of Federico’s father, General Alonzo Lazarr Alcazar. An invincible stillness seemed to radiate from his impeccable uniform and resonate in the eyes of all those present. Raging fire glinted off the hundreds of medals pinned to his enormous breast. Sunglasses obscured his eyes and he twirled a cigarillo in his white magician’s gloves. A riding crop was tucked neatly beneath his arm, a brace of six shooters glittering at his enormous paunch. I watched as a vaguely skeletal soldier exited the front passenger door to attend to the General. The pair began to stroll casually down towards us, the General’s medals clinking loudly with each step. The skeletal soldier followed closely behind, his head skulking to and fro, observing and recording all. They stopped when they had reached the girl. The General however seemed to ignore her completely. He stared out at the flaming image of himself with an air of galactic indifference. The skeletal soldier, on the other hand, engaged the attention of the girl, passing a sheet of paper to her and pointing out several details along its surface. They remained in conference for several moments, the girl nodding frequently and occasionally checking her make-up in a small compact. After a while, they appeared to reach some form of decision. The girl picked up a small green flag and waved it over her head for all to see. The technicians, upon the girl’s signal swarmed down on the space around her, spilling screwdrivers, headphones and doughnuts as they ran. They began setting up elaborate banks of sound equipment and dragging cables everywhere. A microphone was suspended before the girl. Within seconds a make-shift studio had been constructed. Two gaffers ran leads down to a small control desk and a sound man gave a thumbs up. The girl produced a red flag and the sound man counted her in. I was surprised to hear the distant oboe solo cut short. The girl raised her arms in the manner of a cheerleader and spoke into the enormous chrome microphone.

“Citizens of the New Republic!” she intoned in her schoolmistress voice.
I could hear her words echoing in from the milk truck’s loudspeakers. The broadcast carried with it a delay which clashed with her real voice. The effect was rather disorientating, as the words began to phase into each other, creating a sonic mush which was altogether unpleasant.

“This is a civic address!” she continued in her all-powerful voice. “We the military have recently discovered the whereabouts of many of the book-burning, fire fighter rebels. They have been engaged in further acts of vandalism, including the destruction of much of our city’s farmland. Crops have been ruined and religious effigies burned. We are pleased to announce that the criminals have been executed and burned along with their ultimately futile acts of resistance. Our beloved leader General Alcazar has decreed that a curfew be placed on the city, active immediately! All citizens are instructed to return to their homes and remain there until dawn. The curfew will last from Ten pm to Six am as of tomorrow and will remain in effect till the rest of these heinous criminals can be brought to justice. Thank you for your attention.”

The girl held her arms up, dropping them only when the sound man had raised his green flag. The technicians descended like vultures, stripping the equipment in seconds as the girl produced a glossy magazine. She sat chewing gum and flicking through the shiny pages, oblivious to the hardware which was being ferried around her. The soldiers remained frozen as the General and his aide walked slowly down toward us. The milkman had by now collapsed into a trembling, sobbing wreck and I could see a number of the fire fighters crossing themselves in preparation for death. The General approached us, and ignoring the soldiers, placed his arm around my shoulders. He led me slowly toward the fence.

“How are you////” he enquired in a rich and fluid baritone. “We have not seen you around the house in a many months.”
“I’ve been depressed,” I answered truthfully.
“Yes, yes, ” the General nodded slowly. “The artistic temperament, I know it well. I once entertained notions of a life spent in pursuit of the finer things.”
He took a thoughtful puff on his cigarillo and I smelled the pleasant aroma of roasting cherries above choking smoke and the stench of unwashed bodies. We drifted nearer to the towering, burning likeness of the General.

“I had always wanted that life for Federico you see. It was after all, why I had him sent to Paris to experience the Arts and the more etheric channels of the soul. Unfortunately Federico is a boy after his father’s heart.”

The General gave a small chuckle at this. Our stroll had taken us close to the fire fighters now and I could see the fear and hatred in their grimy faces.
“It pained me to watch Federico enlist in the army,” The General frowned. “For in truth, I had always wished for him to grow into someone more like yourself. Perhaps you do not know it, but I have always valued your friendship with my son. My wife and I have followed your successes with great pride over the years. Why only last week I had a guitarist spared from the interrogation rooms because his recordings put me in mind of your artistic achievements.”

I wasn’t quite sure how to respond to this praise, so I maintained a respectful silence.
“Ah! The vagaries of chance,” he said wistfully.
I nodded as we came to a halt, close to the fence. The heat was blistering this close to the burning effigy. I could feel my hair begin to singe. The General, however, seemed impervious to the onslaught and stared thoughtfully into the inferno. At some point, part of the effigy’s head detatched and crashed to the field below with a scream of igniting material. Sparks detonated violently over the corn and flayed about in the air like hellish fireflies. I could smell the unexpected perfume of the roasting corn and it began to make my mouth water. I realised that I hadn’t eaten anything for hours. I looked over to the fire fighters and saw that they were staring at the General with an unbearable tension.

“General Alcazar,” I said, turning to face him. “Would it be somehow possible to spare these fire fighters?”
“Ah ///,” the General said, slapping me on the back with a hand of iron. “I applaud your noble intentions and your sensitivity to your fellow man, but unfortunately these men will shortly have to face a firing squad.”
“I see,” I replied, thinking for a moment. “Would it then be possible to fire over their heads?”
The General slowly raised his cigarillo to his lips and inhaled deeply. He breathed out a slow cloud.
“Fire over their heads you say,” he said, evidently mulling the proposal over with great seriousness.
“Yes General, over their heads.”
“Poetry,” he grumbled with satisfaction. “Sheer poetry.”

He signalled for his aide, who had remained, loitering respectfully with the soldiers. The skeletal soldier ran up to us in long loping strides and bent as the General beckoned for his ear. Some vague mumblings passed between them before the aide returned to the soldiers. I watched, shielding my face from the heat as the soldiers lined the fire fighters up against the fence. The fire fighters responded sluggishly, as though already resigned to their fate. The aide then whispered instructions to the lieutenant. The lieutenant nodded curtly and yelled a command. The soldiers trotted in formation and stood smartly to attention some meters before the condemned men. The lieutenant then shouted another command and the soldiers raised their rifles. The command was repeated and the rifles were raised another fourty five degrees until they were trained, rather ironically, at the effigy’s disintegrating head. The fire-fighter’s were looking at each other in a frenzy of confusion. The lieutenant gave a sharp shout and the soldiers fired a salvo. The fire fighters all jumped as the volley passed over their heads, striking the effigy’s head and shredding it into an explosion of burning debris. The wind caught this flaming shrapnel and scattered it toward the hills in a rather spectacular, though unintentional pyrotechnic display.

“Sheer poetry,” the General repeated, gazing at the flying remnants.
He turned to me once more.
“You have done well here tonight ////,” he stated. “You have demonstrated, in very practical terms how Art can be beneficial to the common man.”
I blinked frantically, shielding my face against the raging heat.
“I know that you think my life to be a life devoid of such poetry,” he murmured, tossing his cigarillo into the field. “But I can assure you that this is not the case.”
I could feel Hans trying to crawl into my jacket to escape the scorching air.
“The artist offers his crumbs of poetry to the overwhelming mediocrity of the masses,” he said with great conviction. “Whereas the task of the dictator is to make poetry of that mediocrity itself.”

By now the heat was so oppressive that I found myself curling up into a little ball in the grass, pushing my head deep into the stalks to protect my raw skin. I eventually opened my eyes to see the General striding back to his limousine. I pulled myself away from the fence and staggered to the cooler shadows as the soldiers released the condemned men. I watched the fire fighters all run to the General and fall at his feet, weeping and offering their heartfelt thanks at his unexpected display of mercy. Already the aide was instructing the technicians to measure the prostrated fire fighters for olive uniforms. The peroxide girl was walking amongst their kneeling forms, smiling with glossy lips and distributing bright green helmets. A fresh stock of rifles was being unlatched. I walked down the hill, retrieved the femur and assisted the injured milkman back to his truck. He wordlessly accepted my help and we drove off down the highway.

I arrive it is darkening
follow thin roads past
she was whispering for me
ashening to grey
caught a glimpse between thumb and forefinger
she said it deep
kissed me on my lips
wrapped in a soft blue
throw the ladder in the hole
I click us into darkness
and we are perfect

sun ballooning lazily
gently wreathed in whore hair
ankle deep in thick black
a fever for a second

fever for a second then we become dark
fever for a second
then we become dark

I had a photographic glimpse
diffuse green light
smears it with her lipstick
a tiny dead click
a broken wing and everything that breathed
skin a soft dark cupboard moving on its knees
hazy gas lights
she had cobra eyes
black poison flag she screamed as she fell
rolling oceans fade to black
the bitter wind through the soft warm folds
softness seducing the sun cold
it slowed and settled
and I wouldn’t go near that house on the hill

realigning myself
by the time we rotated
fence was six
cutting a tarmac arm
the wind filled my head
glasses gleaming the reflection
saw straight through me
the flapping gets faster
meteor into the gutter
hover in the hardness
back to the moon
in a nervous line
a jagged phone ringing
saw me near the border
deep but hollow
uncovering an ancient
me on the floor
reptile eyes was looking
glinted off the steel of the window
the next day we walked into town
further up the road
swimsuits on the silver
filled my lungs and went limp
in a bright blue glass rose
eyes red rimmed
I could taste ozone
the sky a perfect road like quicksilver
the lights are off
I lie listening
the sound of wet meat born under a bad sign
escaping to the linen room
and the crypt beneath
drunk on the pure richness of this false paradise
in the library at night
in a hot wet hand
…whatever god you choose…
I will not be broken

a trace in the air
in the stillness of rooms
flowers from another season

days of soft mirrors
and the stone that rolls ever upward
flowers from another season

the urge to perfect
what cannot be created
the drowing collect
like rime in the pipes
the stone that rolls down
to be picked up again
flowers from another season

in the stillness of mirrors
is the flower infected
in the stillness of flowers
is the mirror destroyed

he’s watched alot
she burns blood red in the night
outside playing secret agent
put the key in the lock
then the haze swept away
like sinking ships and chocolate

the long patterns of blood rusted scars
from her lobe to her tight white drink
fakes tea while birds sing through the radio
there is no escape

what are you thinking
I think at her while she’s staring
in a rare moment when I held the camera
see-saw her standing jaw
hands outstretched behind her back to smile

hair aranges itself over one eye
then he comes in and he strangles her
cuts out her eyes for a small ebony box
she wasn’t a target anymore

standing for long seconds while the rain bulleted the glass
swimming memory sober in the fragrant rivers of grass
then talking analog in the dark
and laughing over lightning

the long patterns of blood rusted scars
from her lobe to her tight white drink
fakes tea while birds sing through the radio
there is no escape

she is pressed up black
there is no escape

into the night she sits next to me
put the key in the lock
then the haze swept away
hit the elevator then sink down sweat
I click like a cheap instamatic

rolling fields and the white church hurt
they had to be finished by the time we rotate
rolling fields and the white church hurt
she wasn’t a target anymore
she is pressed up black
she wasn’t a target anymore

a succulent universe
tasting of mirrors
like the steam on long windows in a season of rains
a traveller down
and jellied in time
put the mirror to the gland and this is him
fruit of spiders
paper bag bandaged
milk from asps in a skeleton cupped

we meet at the milk of the cup
pickling like reptiles
breaking like globes
and then the slow sink in

a universe in suspension
veiwed through dark glass
the thick breathing of a womb
up on the walls like paint
the river outside
children are falling

he picks the bones from the carcass night
bones too fine for ears
bobbets to build strange birds from words
things which fade when near

so space winks soft inside the cell
membrane mornings and memory wells
drench the anchor
douse the house in drowning dusk
all submerge in a gray light
breathing ancient reptiles
the organs fit like children in a cupboard
words are billboards on a headlit highway

this tea is for him
learning about birds
at night we will follow the river
and something large will come
open the head up like a night
a flicker of bone and then all is still
come eat the drowning man

the stairs are in fours in the houses of stairs
but the number will multiply when no-one is there
the rooms are all quartered and their dreams come in pairs
and the sea from the windows is as bright as white paint
it can be traced in diagonals
through doors and in chairs
but diagonals decline from the perspective of stairs
figures for faces will mannequin there
where the air is a vacuum and the birches are near
the birds are all of paper
of oriental design
they can be traced in diagonals and folded in lines
I will come here one day for tea when its time
when its cold and I’m told that I’ve drawn my last line
and the figures will fill out the sea like white ink
and the dreams will descend in two’s and in halves
while the stairs ribbon down and the steam moves in scarves
nothing will shatter
someone will laugh
then we’ll all shake-rattle down
like bones from a cup

drift into my room
smile sugaring a day of slavery
eyeballs so we could sink
across the ocean to devour
triangular face fallen
harpies stared hollow
they had tiny red numbers on them
milk explodes in dark rooms
there is a moment of noise bulging blue through
across the night thinned streets
a black curl on a red couch
riddled with secret passages
dissolved down narrow black spirals
salvation in a numb hand
little tentacles of red elongate
she does not move them away
my chemical angel turned
scampered up a wall
a light behind her soft hair
fur ghosting like an insect
the room was high and tight
shake fleuro in a dirty cage
the rythmic scrape of claws
the far end of the neon
a labyrinth of white corridors
crouched behind the city
under my dark nailhead
tourniquet tight
slaves crawl away
time sliced slowly down the sun interior
circling in the corners
flicking from side to side
years from everything with a red bed
troubled by parasites
eight legged into my head
she blended so perfectly
patrolled neurotically
the walls are soft and black
emitted a low hum
fabric like a brewing storm
pointless information
a dark and cobwebbed ante room somewhere
where monsters lived
and vanished into the night

‘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 form