The 1st Deadly Sin (27 page)

What was happening to me
—is
happening to me—is that I am feeling my
way—feeling:
that’s a good word—feeling in the sense of emotion rather than the tactile
sense—feeling
my way to a new perception of reality. Before that, before the sunglasses, I perceived and reasoned in a masculine, in-line way, vertical, just like AMROK II. And now…and now I am discovering and exploring a feminine, horizontal perception of reality.

And what that requires is to deny cold order—logical, intellectual order, that is—and perceive a deeper order, glimpsing it dimly now, somewhere, an order much deeper and broader because…The order I have known up to now has been narrow and restricted, tight and disciplined. But it cannot account for…for all.

This feminine, horizontal perception applies to breadth, explaining the apparent illogic and seeming madness of the universe—well, this perception does not deny science and logic but offers something more—an emotional consciousness of people and of life.

But is it only emotional? Or is it spiritual? At least it demands a need to accept chaos—a chaos outside the tight, disciplined logic of men and AMROK II, and seeks a deeper, more fundamental order and logic and significance within that chaos. It means a new way of life: the truth of lies and the reality of myths. It demands a whole new way to perceive a—

No, that’s not right. Perception implies a standing aside and observing. But this new world I am now in requires participation and sharing. I must strip myself naked and plunge—if I hope to know the final logic. If I have the courage…

Courage…When I told Celia of the power I felt when selecting my victim, and the love I had for him when he was selected—all that was true. But I didn’t mention the fear—fear so intense it was all I could do to control my bladder. But isn’t that part of it? I mean emotion—
feeling.
And from emotion to a spiritual exaltation, just as Celia is always speaking of ceremony and ritual and the beauty of evil. That is
her
final logic. But is it mine? We shall see. We shall see.

I must open myself, to everything. I grew in a tiled house of Lalique glass and rock collections. Now I must become warm and tender and accept everything in the universe, good and evil, the spread and the cramped. But not just accepting. Because then I’d be a victim. I must plunge to the heart of life and let its heat sear me. I must be moved.

To
experience
reality, not merely to perceive it: that is the way. And the final answer may be dreadful to divine. But if I can conquer fear, and kill, and feel, and learn, I will bring a meaning out of the chaos of my new world, give it a logic few have ever glimpsed before, and then I’ll know.

Is there God?

3

H
E PULLED THAT
brass plunger, standing at her teak door, grasping the bundle of long-stemmed roses, blood-colored, and feeling as idiotic and ineffectual as any wooer come to call upon his lady-love with posies, vague hope, a vapid smile. “Good-afternoon, Valenter.”

“Good-afternoon, thir. Do come in.”

He was inside, the door closed behind him, when the tall, pale houseman spoke in tones Daniel was certain were a burlesque, a spoof of sadness. That long face fell, the muddy eyes seemed about to leak, the voice was suited for a funeral chapel.

“Mither Blank, I am thorry to report Mith Montfort hath gone.”

“Gone? Gone where?”

“Called away unexthpectedly. She athked me to prethent her regreth.”

“Oh shit.”

“Yeth thir.”

“When will she be back? Today?”

“I do not know, thir. But I thuthpect it may be a few dayth.”

“Shit,” Blank repeated. He thrust the flowers at Valenter. “Put these in some water, will you? Maybe they’ll last long enough for her to see them.”

“Of courth, thir. Mather Tony ith in the thtudy and would like you to join him, thir.”

“What? Oh. All right.”

It was a Saturday noon. He had imagined a leisurely lunch, perhaps some shopping, a visit to the Mortons’ Erotica, which was always crowded and entertaining on a Saturday afternoon.

And then, perhaps, a movie, a dinner, and then…Well, anything. Things went best, he decided, when they weren’t too rigidly programmed.

The boy languished on the tufted couch—a beauty!

“Dan!” he cried, holding out a hand.

But Blank would not cross the room to touch that languid palm. He sat in the winged armchair and regarded the youth with what he believed was amused irony. The roses had cost twenty dollars.

“About Celia,” Tony said, looking down at his fingernails. “She wanted me to make her apologies.”

“Valenter already has.”

“Valenter? Oh pooh! Have a drink.”

And suddenly, Valenter was there, leaning forward slightly from the waist.

“No, thank you,” Blank said. “It’s a little early for me.”

“Oh come,” Tony said. “Vodka martini on the rocks with a twist of lemon. Right?”

Daniel considered a moment. “Right,” he smiled.

“What will your son have?” the waiter asked, and they both laughed.

“My son?” Blank said. He looked to Tony. “What will my son have?”

They were in a French restaurant, not bad and not good. They didn’t care.

Tony ordered oysters and frogs’ legs, a salad doused with a cheese dressing. Blank had a small steak and endives with oil and vinegar. They smiled at each other. Tony reached forward to touch his hand. “Thank you,” he said humbly.

Daniel had two glasses of a thick burgundy, and Tony had something called a “Shirley Temple.” The boy’s knee was against his. He didn’t object, wanting to follow this plot to its denouement.

“Do you drink coffee?” he asked. They flirted.

“How is school?” he asked, and Tony made a gesture, infinitely weary.

They were strolling then, hands brushing occasionally, up Madison Avenue, and stopped to smile at a display of men’s clothing in a boutique.

“Oh,” Tony said.

Daniel Blank glanced at him. The lad was in sunlight, brazen. He gleamed, a gorgeous being.

“Let’s look,” Blank said. They went inside.

“Ooh, thank you,” Tony said later, giving him a dazzling smile. “You spent so much money on me.”

“Didn’t I though?”

“Are you rich, Dan?”

“No, I’m not rich. But not hurting.”

“Do you think the pink pullover was right for me?”

“Oh yes. Your coloring.”

“I would have loved those fishnet briefs, but I knew even the small size would be too large for me. Celia buys all my underwear in a women’s lingerie shop.”

“Does she?”

They sat on a park bench unaccountably planted in the middle of a small meadow. Tony fingered the lobe of Dan’s left ear; they watched an old black man stolidly fly a kite. “Do you like me?” Tony asked.

Daniel Blank would not give himself time to fear, but twisted around and kissed the boy’s soft lips.

“Of course I like you.”

Tony held his hand and made quiet circles on the palm with a forefinger.

“You’ve changed, Dan.”

“Have I?”

“Oh yes. When you first started seeing Celia, you were so tight, so locked up inside yourself. Now I feel you’re breaking out. You smile more. Sometimes you laugh. You never did that before. You wouldn’t have kissed me three months ago, would you?”

“No, I wouldn’t have, Tony, perhaps we should get back. Valenter is probably—”

“Valenter,” Tony said in a tone of great disgust. “Pooh! Just because he—” Then he stopped.

But Valenter was nowhere about, and Tony used his own key to let them in. Daniel’s roses were arranged in a Chinese vase on the foyer table. And in addition to the roses’ sweet musk, he caught another odor: Celia’s perfume, a thin, smoky scent, Oriental. He thought it odd he had not smelled it in this hallway at noon.

And the scent was there in the upstairs room to which Tony led him by the hand, resolute and humming.

He had vowed not only to perceive but to experience, to strip himself bare and plunge to the hot heart of life. The killing of Frank Lombard had been a cataclysm that left him riven, just as an earthquake leaves the tight, solid earth split, stretched open to the blue sky.

Now, alone and naked with this beautiful, rosy lad, the emotions he sought came more quickly, easily, and fear of his own feelings was already turning to curiosity and hunger. He sought new corners of himself, great sweetness and great tenderness, a need to sacrifice and a want to love. Whatever his life had lacked to now, he resolved to find, supply, to fill himself up with things hot and scented, all the emotions and sentiments which might illume life and show its mystery and purpose.

The boy’s body was all warm fabric: velvet eyelids, silken buttocks, the insides of his thighs a sheeny satin. Slowly, with a deliberate thoughtfulness, Daniel Blank put mouth and tongue to those cloths, all with the fragrance of youth, sweet and moving. To use youth, to pleasure it and take pleasure from it, seemed to him now as important as murder, another act of conscious will to spread himself wide to sentient life.

The infant moved moaning beneath his caresses, and that incandescent flesh heated him and brought him erect. When he entered into Tony, penetrating his rectum, the boy cried out with pain and delight. Dimly, far off, Blank thought he heard a single tinkle of feminine laughter, and smelled again her scent clinging to the soiled mattress.

Later, when he held the lad in his arms and kissed his tears away—new wine, those tears—he thought it possible, probable even, that they were manipulating him, for what reason he could not imagine. But it was of no importance. Because whatever the reason, it must certainly be a selfish one.

Suddenly he
knew
; her slick words, her lectures on ritual, her love of ceremony and apotheosis of evil—all had the stench of egotism; there was no other explanation. She sought, somehow, to set herself apart. Apart and above. She wanted to conquer the world and, perhaps, had enlisted him in her mandarin scheme.

But, enlisted or not, she had unlocked him, and would find he was moving beyond her. Whatever her selfish motive, he would complete his own task: not to conquer life, but to become one with it, to hug it close, to feel it and love it and, finally, to know its beautiful enigma. Not as AMROK II might know it, but in his heart and gut and gonads, to become a secret sharer, one with the universe.

4

A
FTER WRENCHING HIS
ice ax from the skull of Frank Lombard, he had walked steadily homeward, looking neither to the right nor to the left, his mind resolutely thoughtless. He had nodded in a friendly fashion to the doorman on duty, then ascended to his apartment. Only after he was inside, the battery of chains and locks in place, did he lean against the wall, still coated, close his eyes, drew a deep breath.

But there was still work to be done. He put the ax aside for the moment. Then he stripped naked. He examined coat and suit for stains, of any kind. He could see none. But he placed coat and suit in a bundle for the drycleaner, and shirt, socks and underclothing in the laundry hamper.

Then he went into the bathroom and held the ice ax so that the head was under water in the toilet bowl. He flushed the toilet three times. Practically all the solid matter—caked blood and some grey stuff caught in the saw-tooth serrations on the bottom point of the pick—was washed away.

Then, still naked, he went into the kitchen and put a large pot of water on to boil. It was the pot he customarily used for spaghetti and stew. He waited patiently until the water boiled, still not reflecting on what he had done. He wanted to finish the job, then sit down, relax, and savor his reactions.

When the water came to a rolling boil he immersed the ice ax head and shaft up to the leather around the handle. The tempered steel boiled clean. He dunked it three times, swirling it about, then turned the flame off under the pot, and held the ax head under the cold water tap to cool it.

When he could handle it, he inspected the ax carefully. He even took a small paring knife and gently pried up the top edge of the blue leather-covered handle. He could see no stains that might have leaked beneath. The ax smelled of steel and leather. It shone.

He took the little can of sewing machine oil from his kitchen closet and, with his bare hands, rubbed oil into the exposed steel surfaces of the ax. He applied a lot of oil, rubbing strongly, then wiped off the excess with a paper towel. He started to discard the towel in his garbage can, then thought better of it and flushed it down the toilet. The ice ax was left with a thin film of oil. He hung it away in the hall closet with his rucksack and crampons.

Then he showered thoroughly under very hot water, using a small brush on hands and fingernails. After he dried, he used cologne and powder, then donned a short cotton kimono. It was patterned with light blue cranes stalking across a dark blue background. Then he poured himself a small brandy, went into the living room, sat on the couch before the mirrored wall, and laughed.

Now he allowed himself to remember, and it was a beloved dream. He saw himself walking down that oranged street toward his victim. He was smiling, coat rakishly open, left hand inside the slit pocket, right arm swinging free. Was he snapping the fingers of his right hand? He might have been.

The smile. The nod. The hot surge of furious blood when he whirled and struck. The sound. He remembered the sound. Then the victim’s incredible plunge forward that pulled the ice ax from his grasp, toppled him forward. Then, quickly pulling the ax free, search, wallet, and the steady walk homeward.

Well then…what did he feel? He felt, he decided, first of all an enormous sense of pride. That was basic. It was, after all, an extremely difficult and dangerous job of work, and he had brought it off. It was not too unlike a difficult and dangerous rock climb, a technical assignment that demanded skill, muscular strength and, of course, absolute resolve.

But what amazed him, what completely amazed him, was the
intimacy
! When he spoke to Celia about his love for the victim, he only hinted. For how could she understand? How could anyone understand that with one stroke of an ice ax he had
plundered
another human being, knowing him in one crushing blow, his loves, hates, fears, hopes—his
soul.