Imajica

There were other, more disgusting, signs of his absence in the bathroom, where clothes he"d left to dry before his departure had grown green fur, and in the refrigerator, the shelves of which were scattered with what looked like pupating zarzi, stinking of putrefaction. Before he could really begin to clean up he had to have some power in the house, and to get it would require some politicking. He"d had the gas, telephone, and electricity cut off in the past, when, in the lean times between forgeries and sugar mamas, he"d run out of funds. But he had the patter to get them turned back on again well honed, and that had to be the priority of the hour.

He dressed in the freshest of his clothes and went downstairs to present himself to the venerable but dotty Mrs. Erskine, who occupied the ground-floor flat. It was she who"d let him in the day before, remarking with her characteristic candor that he looked as though he"d been kicked half to death, to which he"d replied that he felt the same way. She didn"t question his absence, which was not surprising given that his occupation of the studio had always been sporadic, but she did ask him if he was going to be staying awhile this time. He said he thought so, and she replied that she was pleased at this, because during these summer days people always got crazy, and since Mr. Erskine"s death she was sometimes frightened.

She made tea while he availed himself of her telephone, calling around the services he"d lost. It turned out to be a frustrating business. He"d lost the knack of charming the women he spoke to into some action on his behalf. Instead of an exchange of flatteries he was served a chilly salad of officiousness and condescension. He had unpaid bills, he was told, and his supplies would not be reconnected until payment was forthcoming. He ate some toast Mrs. Erskine had made, drank several cups of tea, then went down into the bas.e.m.e.nt and left a note for the caretaker that he was now back in residence and could he please have his hot water turned on.

That done, he ascended to the studio again and bolted the door behind him. One conversation for the day was enough, he"d decided. He drew the blinds at the windows and lit two candles. They smoked as their dusty wicks first burned, but their light was kinder than the glare of the day, and by it he started to go through the snowdrift of mail that had gathered behind the door. There were bills in abundance, of course, printed in increasingly irate colors, plus the inevitable junk mail. There were very few personal letters, but among them were two that gave him pause. Both were from Vanessa, whose advice that he should slit his lying throat had found such a distressing echo in Athanasius" exhortation at the Erasure. Now she wrote that she missed him, and a day didn"t go by without her thinking of him. The second missive was even more direct. She wanted him back in her life. If he wanted to play around with other women she would learn to accommodate that. Would he not at least make contact with her? Life was too short to bear grudges, on either side.

He was buoyed up somewhat by her appeals, and even more so by a letter from Klein, scrawled in red ink on pink, paper. Chester"s faintly camp tones rose from the page as Gentle scanned it.

Dear b.a.s.t.a.r.d Boy, Klein had written. Whose heart are you breaking, and where? Scores of forlorn women are presently weeping on my lap, begging me to forgive you your trespa.s.ses and invite you back into the bosom of the family. Among them, the delectable Vanessa. For G.o.d"s sake come home and save me from seducing her. My groin is wet for you. Whose heart are you breaking, and where? Scores of forlorn women are presently weeping on my lap, begging me to forgive you your trespa.s.ses and invite you back into the bosom of the family. Among them, the delectable Vanessa. For G.o.d"s sake come home and save me from seducing her. My groin is wet for you.

So Vanessa had gone to Klein; desperation indeed. Though she"d met Chester only once that Gentle could recall, she"d subsequently professed to loathing him. Gentle kept all three letters, though he had no intention of acting upon their appeals. There was only one reunion he was eager for, and that was with the house in Clerkenwell. He couldn"t face the idea of venturing out in daylight, however. The streets would be too bright and too busy. He"d wait until dark, when he could move across the city as the invisible he aspired to be. He set a match to the rest of the letters and watched them burn. Then he went back to bed and slept through the afternoon in preparation for the business of the night.

He waited until the first stars appeared in a sky of elegiac blue before he raised the blinds. The street outside was quiet, but given that he lacked the cash for a cab he knew he"d have to brush shoulders with a lot of people before he reached Clerkenwell. On a fine evening like this, the Edgware Road would be busy, and there"d be crowds on the Underground. His best hope of reaching his destination unscrutinized was to dress as blandly as possible, and he took some time hunting through his depleted wardrobe for those clothes that would render him most invisible. Once dressed, he walked down to Marble Arch and boarded the Underground. It was only five stations to Chancery Lane, which would put him on the borders of Clerkenwell, but after two he had to get off, gasping and sweating like a claustrophobic. Cursing this new weakness in himself, he sat in the station for half an hour while more trains pa.s.sed through, unable to bring himself to board. What an irony! Here he was, a sometime wanderer in the wilds of the Imajica, incapable of traveling a couple of miles by tube without panicking. He waited until his shaking subsided and a less crowded train came along. Then he reboarded, sitting close to the door with his head in his hands until the journey was over.

By the time he emerged at Chancery Lane the sky had darkened, and he stood for several minutes on High Holborn, his head thrown back, soaking up the sky. Only when the tremors had left his legs did he head up Gray"s Inn Road towards the environs of Gamut Street. Almost all the property on the main thoroughfares had long since been turned to commercial use, but there was a network of streets and squares behind the barricade of darkened office buildings which, protected perhaps by the patronage of notoriety, had been left untouched by the developers. Many of these streets were narrow and mazy, their lamps unlit, their signs missing, as though blind eyes had been turned to them over the generations. But he didn"t need signs and lamps; his feet had trodden these ways countless times. Here was Shiverick Square, with its little park all overgrown, and Flaxen Street, and Almoth, and Sterne. And in their midst, coc.o.o.ned by anonymity, his destination.

He saw the corner of Gamut Street twenty yards ahead and slowed his pace to take pleasure in the moment of reunion. There were innumerable memories awaiting him there, the mystif among them. But not all would be so sweet, or so welcome. He would have to ingest them carefully, like a diner with a delicate stomach coming to a lavish table. Moderation was the way. As soon as he felt a surfeit, he"d retreat and return to the studio to digest what he"d learned, let it strengthen him. Only then would he return for a second helping. The process would take time, he knew, and time was of the essence. But so was his sanity. What use would he be as a Reconciler if he choked on the past?

With his heart thumping hard, he came to the corner and, turning it, finally laid his eyes upon the sacred street. Perhaps, during his years of forgetfulness, he"d wandered through these backwaters all unknowing and seen the sight before him now. But he doubted it. More likely, his eyes were seeing Gamut Street for the first time in two centuries. It had changed scarcely at all, preserved from the city planners and their hammer-wielding hordes by the feits whose makers were still rumored here. The trees planted along the pavement were weighed down with unkempt foliage, but their sap"s tang was sharp, the air protected from the fumes of Holborn and Gray"s Inn Road by the warren of thoroughfares between. Was it just his fancy, or was the tree outside number 28 particularly lush, fed perhaps by a seepage of magics from the step of the Maestro"s house?

He began towards them, tree and step, the memories already returning in force. He heard the children singing behind him, the song that had so tormented him when the Autarch had told him who he was. Sartori Sartori, he"d said, and this charmless ditty, sung by piping voices, had come in pursuit of the name. He"d loathed it then. Its melody was ba.n.a.l; its words were nonsense. But now he remembered how he"d first heard it, walking along this very pavement with the children in procession on the opposite sh.o.r.e, and how flattered he"d been that he was famous enough to have reached the lips of children who would never read or write or, most probably, reach the age of p.u.b.erty. All of London knew who he was, and he liked his fame. He was talked about at court, Roxborough said, and should soon expect an invitation. People who"d not so much as touched his sleeve were claiming intimate a.s.sociation.

But there were still those, thank G.o.d, who kept an exquisite distance, and one such soul had lived, he remembered, in the house opposite: a nymph called Allegra who liked to sit at her dressing table near the window with her bodice half-unlaced, knowing she had an admirer in the Maestro across the street. She"d had a little curly-haired dog, and sometimes in the evening he"d hear her piping voice summon the lucky hound onto her lap, where she"d let it snuggle. One afternoon, a few paces from where he stood now, he"d met the girl out walking with her mother and had made much of the dog, suffering its little tongue on his mouth for the smell of her s.e.x in its fur. What had become of that child? Had she died a virgin or grown old and fat, wondering about the man who"d been her most ardent admirer?

He glanced up at the window where Allegra had sat. No light burned in it now. The house, like almost all these buildings, was dark. Sighing, he turned his gaze towards number 28 and, crossing the street, went to the door. It was locked, of course, but one of the lower windows had been broken at some point and never repaired. He reached through the smashed pane and unlocked it, then slid the window up and himself inside. Slowly, he reminded himself; go slowly. Keep the flow under control.

It was dark, but he"d come prepared for that eventuality, with candle and matches. The flame guttered at first, and the room rocked at its indecision, but by degrees it strengthened, and he felt a sensation he"d not expected swelling like the light: pride. In its time, this, his house, had been a place of great souls and great ambition, where all commonplace debate had been banned. If you wanted to talk politics or t.i.ttle-tattle you went to the coffee house; if you wanted commerce, to the Exchange. Here, only miracles. Here, only the rising of the spirit. And, yes, love, if it was pertinent (which it was, so often); and sometimes bloodletting. But never the prosaic, never the trivial. Here the man who brought the strangest tale was the most welcome. Here every excess was celebrated if it brought visions, and every vision a.n.a.lyzed for the hints it held to the nature of the Everlasting.

He lifted the candle and, holding it high, began to walk through the house. The rooms-there were many-were badly dilapidated, the boards creaking under his feet, weakened by rot and worm, the walls mapping continents of damp. But the present didn"t insist upon him for long. By the time he reached the bottom of the stairs, memory was lighting candles everywhere, their luminescence spilling through the dining room door and from the rooms above. It was a generous light, clothing naked walls, putting lush carpets underfoot, and setting fine furniture on their pile. Though the debaters here might have aspired to pure spirit, they were not averse to comforting the flesh while still cursed with it. Who would have guessed, seeing the modest facade of the house from the street, that the interior would be so finely furnished and ornamented? And seeing these glories appear, he heard the voices of those who"d wallowed in that luxury. Laughter first; then vociferous argument from somebody at the top of the stairs. He couldn"t see the debaters yet-perhaps his mind, which he"d instructed in caution, was holding the flood back-but he could put names to both of them, sight unseen. One was Horace Tyrwhitt, the other Isaac Abelove. And the laughter? That was Joshua G.o.dolphin, of course. He had a laugh like the Devil"s laugh, full and throaty.

"Come on, then," Gentle said aloud to the memories. "I"m ready to see your faces."

And as he spoke, they came: Tyrwhitt on the stairs, overdressed and overpowdered, as ever, keeping his distance from Abelove in case the magpie his pursuer was nursing flew free.

"It"s bad luck," Tyrwhitt was protesting. "Birds in the house are bad luck!"

"Luck"s for fishermen and gamblers," Abelove replied.

"One of these days you"ll turn a phrase worth remembering," Tyrwhitt replied. "Just get the thing out before I wring its neck." He turned towards Gentle. "Tell him, Sartori."

Gentle was shocked to see the memory"s eyes fix so acutely upon him. "It does no harm," he found himself replying. "It"s one of G.o.d"s creatures."

At which point the bird rose flapping from Abelove"s grasp, emptying its bowels as it did so on the man"s wig and face, which brought a hoot of laughter from Tyrwhitt.

"Now don"t wipe it off," he told Abelove as the magpie fluttered away. "It"s good luck."

The sound of his laughter brought Joshua G.o.dolphin, imperious as ever, out of the dining room. "What"s the row?"

Abelove was already clattering after the bird, his calls merely alarming it more. It fluttered around the hallway in panic, cawing as it went.

"Open the d.a.m.ned door!" G.o.dolphin said. "Let the b.l.o.o.d.y thing out!"

"And spoil the sport?" Tyrwhitt said.

"If everyone would but calm their voices," Abelove said, "it would settle."

"Why did you bring it in?" Joshua wanted to know.

"It was sitting on the step," Abelove replied. "I thought it was injured."

"It looks quite well to me," G.o.dolphin said, and turned his face, ruddied with brandy, towards Gentle. "Maestro," he said, inclining his head a little. "I"m afraid we began dinner without you. Come in. Leave these bird brains to play."

Gentle was crossing to the dining room when there was a thud behind him, and he turned to see the bird dropping to the floor beneath one of the windows, where it had struck the gla.s.s. Abelove let out a little moan, and Tyrwhitt"s laughter ceased.

"There now!" he said. "You killed the thing!"

"Not me!" Abelove said.

"You want to resurrect it?" Joshua murmured to Gentle, his tone conspiratorial.

"With a broken neck and wings?" Gentle mourned. "That wouldn"t be very kind."

"But amusing," G.o.dolphin replied with mischief in his puffy eyes.

"I think not," Gentle said, and saw his distaste wipe the humor off Joshua"s face. He"s a little afraid of me, Gentle thought; the power in me makes him nervous.

Joshua headed into the dining room, and Gentle was about to step through the door after him when a young man-eighteen at most, with a plain, long face and chorister"s curls-came to his side.

"Maestro?" he said.

Unlike Joshua and the others, these features seemed more familiar to Gentle. Perhaps there was a certain modernity in the languid lidded gaze and the small, almost effeminate, mouth. He didn"t look that intelligent, in truth, but his words, when they came, were well turned, despite the boy"s nervousness. He barely dared look at Sartori, but with those lids downcast begged the Maestro"s indulgence.

"I wondered, sir, if you had perhaps considered the matter of which we spoke?"

Gentle was about to ask, What matter?, when his tongue replied, his intellect seizing the memory as the words spilled out. "I know how eager you are, Lucius."

Lucius Cobbitt was the boy"s name. At seventeen he already had the great works by heart, or at least their theses. Ambitious and apt at politics, he"d taken Tyrwhitt as a patron (for what services only his bed knew, but it was surely a hanging offense) and had secured himself a place in the house as a menial. But he wanted more than that, and scarcely an evening went by without his politely plying the Maestro with coy glances and pleas.

"I"m more than eager, sir," he said. "I"ve studied all the rituals. I"ve mapped the In Ovo, from what I"ve read in Flute"s Visions Visions. They"re just beginnings, I know, but I"ve also copied all the known glyphs, and I have them by heart."

He had a little skill as an artist, too: something else they shared, besides ambition and dubious morals.

"I can help you, Maestro," he was saying. "You"re going to need somebody beside you on the night."

"I commend you on your discipline, Lucius, but the Reconciliation"s a dangerous business. I can"t take the responsibility-"

"I"ll take that, sir."

"Besides, I have my a.s.sistant."

The boy"s face fell. "You do?" he said.

"Certainly. Pie"oh"pah."

"You"d trust your life to a familiar?"

"Why shouldn"t I?"

"Well, because... because it"s not even human."

"That"s why I trust it, Lucius," Gentle said. "I"m sorry to disappoint you-"

"Could I at least watch watch, sir? I"ll keep my distance, I swear, I swear. Everybody else is going to be there."

This was true enough. As the night of the Reconciliation approached, the size of the audience swelled. His patrons, who"d at first taken their oaths of secrecy very seriously, now sensed triumph and had become indiscreet. In hushed and often embarra.s.sed tones they"d admit to having invited a friend or a relation to witness the rites, and who was he, the performer, to forbid his paymasters their moment of reflected glory? Though he never gave them an easy time when they made these confessions, he didn"t much mind. Admiration charged the blood. And when the Reconciliation had been achieved, the more tongues there were to say they"d seen it done, and sanctify the doer, the better.

"I beg you, sir," Lucius was saying. "I"ll be in your debt forever."

Gentle nodded, ruffling the youth"s ginger hair. "You may watch," he said.

Tears started to the boy"s eyes, and he s.n.a.t.c.hed up Gentle"s hand, laying his lips to it. "I am the luckiest man in England," he said. "Thank you, sir, thank you."

Quieting the boy"s profusions, Gentle left him at the door and stepped through into the dining room. As he did so he wondered if all these events and conversations had actually dovetailed in this fashion, or whether his memory was collecting fragments from different nights and days, knitting them together so that they appeared seamless. If the latter was the case-and he guessed it was-then there were probably clues in these scenes to mysteries yet to be unveiled, and he should try to remember their every detail. But it was difficult. He was both Gentle and Sartori here, both witness and actor. It was hard to live the moments when he was also observing them, and harder still to dig for the seam of their significance when their surface gleamed so fetchingly, and when he was the brightest jewel that shone there. How they had idolized him! He"d been like a divinity among them, his every belch and fart attended to like a sermon, his cosmological p.r.o.nouncements-of which he was too fond-greeted with reverence and grat.i.tude, even by the mightiest.

Three of those mighty awaited him in the dining room, gathered at one end of a table, set for four but laden with sufficient food to sate the street for a week. Joshua was one of the trio, of course. Roxborough and his long-time foil Oliver McGann were the others, the latter well in his cups, the former, as ever, keeping his counsel, his ascetic features, dominated by the long hook of his nose, always half-masked by his hands. He despised his mouth, Gentle thought, because it betrayed his nature, which despite his incalculable wealth and his pretensions to metaphysics was peevish, penurious, and sullen.

"Religion"s for the faithful," McGann was loudly opining. "They say their prayers, their prayers aren"t answered, and their faith increases. Whereas magic-" He stopped, laying his inebriated gaze on the Maestro at the door. "Ah! The very man! The very man! Tell him, Sartori! Tell him what magic is."

Roxborough had made a pyramid of his fingers, the apex at the bridge of his nose. "Yes, Maestro," he said. "Do tell."

"My pleasure," Gentle replied, taking the gla.s.s of wine McGann poured for him and wetting his throat before he provided tonight"s profundities. "Magic is the first and last religion of the world," he said. "It has the power to make us whole. To open our eyes to the Dominions and return us to ourselves."

"That sounds very fine," Roxborough said flatly. "But what does it mean?"

"It"s obvious what it means," McGann protested.

"Not to me it isn"t."

"It means we"re born divided, Roxborough," the Maestro replied. "But we long for union."

"Oh, we do, do we?"

"I believe so."

"And why should we seek union with ourselves?" Roxborough said. "Tell me that. I would have thought we"re the only company we"re certain we have."

There was a riling smugness to the man"s tone, but the Maestro had heard these niceties before and had his answers well honed.

"Everything that isn"t us is also ourselves," he said. He came to the table and set down his gla.s.s, peering through the smoky candle flames at Roxborough"s black eyes. "We"re joined to everything that was, is, and will be," he said. "From one end of the Imajica to another. From the tiniest mote dancing over this flame to the G.o.dhead Itself."

He took breath, leaving room for a retort from Roxborough. But none came.

"We"ll not be subsumed at our deaths," he went on. "We"ll be increased: to the size of Creation."

"Yes..." McGann murmured, the word coming long and loud from between teeth clenched in a tigerish smile.

"Magic"s our means to that Revelation," the Maestro said, "while we"re still in our flesh."

"And is it your opinion that we are given given that Revelation?" Roxborough replied. "Or are we stealing it?" that Revelation?" Roxborough replied. "Or are we stealing it?"

"We were born to know as much as we can can know." know."

"We were born to suffer in our flesh," Roxborough said.

"You may suffer; I don"t."

The reply won a guffaw from McGann.

"The flesh isn"t punishment," the Maestro said, "it"s there for joy. But it also marks the place where we end and the rest of Creation begins. Or so we believe. It"s an illusion, of course."

"Good," said G.o.dolphin. "I like that."

"So are we about G.o.d"s business or not?" Roxborough wanted to know.

"Are you having second thoughts?"

"Third and fourth, more like," McGann said.

Roxborough gave the man at his side a sour glance. "Did we swear an oath not to doubt?" he said. "I don"t think so. Why should I be castigated because I ask a simple question?"

"I apologize," McGann said. "Tell the man, Maestro. We"re doing G.o.d"s work, aren"t we?"

"Does G.o.d want us to be more than we are?" Gentle said. "Of course. Does G.o.d want us to love, which is the desire to be joined and made whole? Of course. Does It want us in Its glory, forever and ever? Yes, It does."

"You always say It," McGann observed. "Why"s that?"

"Creation and its maker are one and the same. True or false?"

"True."

"And Creation"s as full of women as it is of men. True or false?"

"Oh, true, true."

"Indeed, I give thanks for the fact night and day," Gentle said, glancing at G.o.dolphin as he spoke. "Beside my bed and in it."

Joshua laughed his Devil"s laugh.