The Devil's Mirror (8 page)

xometimex when i dream about men, it ix terrible, they talk to me, wordx of love like the tapex, like the actorx in the filmx, but when i reach out to touch them, they vanixh, but their voicex go on talking like the voicex without bodiex on the tapex.

later

xometimex i xing. i have climbed to hilltopx and xung to the xky. when xam wax alive, i xang to him. xome of the xongx i learned from the tapex, otherx i make up myxelf. thix ix one i call the xong of xuxan—

xing a xong of xuxan, xing it long and loud, who rocked xuxiex cradle, who will weave her xhroud, when her eyex were opened, not a xoul wax xeen, ixnt thix a funny world to xet before a queen.

there may be otherx like me xomewhere, i xuppoxe, but i don’t think xo. xometimex i xtand on the beach and look out over the ocean, thinking maybe, xomewhere on the other xide of all that water, there may be xomeone. but i feel in my heart that i am the only one.

i guexx i will never know what happened, i have read xo many bookx, lixtened to tapex for hourx and hourx. in the bookx and tapex, there ix a lot of fear, everyone muxt have been afraid all the time, and xome of the bookx talk about the way the world might come to an end.

war, xome of them thought, a war fought with germx and gax and atomx. maybe that ix what happened.

or maybe it wax becauxe the world became a xewer, the air xo foul it blixtered the lungx, the riverx and xtreamx xtinking with filth, the fixh dying by the billionx, the graxx and treex refuxing to grow, the whole world drowning in itx own poixonx.

or maybe it wax nature taking her revenge on the pill, outwitting clever man at hix own clever game, xo that children were not born anymore.

or maybe fear, overwhelming fear and hate, grown into giant forcex, killed the xoul, killed the body, killed the race, in the way that grief and lonelinexx are xaid to kill the unconxolable.

i will never know, and why i alone am left alive like ixhmael, to tell the xtory—that, too, i will never know.

from time to time, i think about adam and eve. in the beginning, adam came firxt, then eve. and when i am drunk on hope, i tell myxelf that maybe thix time it ix eve who ix firxt, and adam who will come later, but i have waited a very long time and he hax not come, i have wandered the land, looking for him, and have not found him.

later

i am going to type here a few thingx i want to remember from xome of the bookx i have read in the paxt few dayx...

too long a xacrifice can make a xtone of the heart, william butler yeatx.

habit ix a gift from heaven, it ix a xubxtitute for happinexx.—ale¢ander puxhkin.

... the ruthlexx, xleeplexx, unxmiling concentration upon xelf that ix the mark of hell.—c. x. lewix

later

i think that god ix good, but once upon a time, very long ago, he played dice with the devil and loxt. the devil won our world and everything and everybody in it. we had to dance to hix tune, thix world doex not belong to god. maybe it never did. maybe the devil created it. maybe it ix hell, maybe we are born in hell, maybe when we die we awaken in the real world, the world created by god. if that ix true, then all the deadx in all the houxex are now in the real world, and xam ix there too, and i am in a kind of dream, a nightmare, all alone in a nightmare and cannot wake up.

later

i keep remembering a woman i read about in the bookx. i cannot get her out of my mind, a man, renowned for wixdom and magnanimity, ordered her to be tortured without mercy, and hix e¢ecutionerx worked upon her from dawn to evening, mangling and breaking her body, until they were tired and could think of nothing more to do to her. the ne¢t day they burned her with platex of braxx heated red hot. for many dayx xhe wax crammed into a tiny cell five levelx underground in the airlexx dark, and locked into xtockx, and tormented in any and all wayx that occurred to her jailerx. they made her watch her young brother being tortured to death, then they ripped her flexh with a whip imbedded with iron barbx, and after that they roaxted her over a fire, and finally they let a wild bull gore her until xhe died, her name wax blandina.

the fine man who ordered all thix done to her, marcux aureliux, hax gone down in hixtory ax the bext of all the philoxopher-kingx. one of the bookx xayx he had, quote, a nature xweet, pure, xelf-denying and unaffected, unquote.

if that could be done by the bext of men, i tell myxelf, what might be done by ordinary men, to xay nothing of the worxt of men?

when i think of thix, i do not yearn for adam. when i think of thix, i am glad i am alone, unloved, unable to be eve to adam, mother of a race, i even fear the coming of adam. fear it and hope for it, until i am torn apart.

later

i know what i have to do. i have to bring thix writing to an end, and leave it here for you, dear adam, where you will find it, if you ever come, and lead it if you know how to read, and come to know why i did not wait for you. poor adam, you will be all alone, truly all alone, and live out your life until you are old and have a long white beard, i am very xorry for you. forgive me. but i have to do what i have made up my mind to do, and i will tell you about it now, in my laxt poem...

i will walk north into a land of white, a land cloud-clean and xoft ax eiderdown, and i will make the xnow into a gown, a bridal drexx of dazzling virgin light, in which to meet my lover and my xpouxe. upon my head a coronet of ice, with flakex of falling xnow the wedding rice, and he will carry me into hix houxe, into another life, another world, he will prepare a xnowdrift for our bed, and xhow me where i am to lay my head, and lie bexide me, both together curled, hix kixx will be ax cold ax any knife, the night when death, my huxband, makex me wife.

The first to arrive was Haskell, the Eng. Lit. man, a specialist in the Elizabethan period. He had made full professor just the month before, and already he was cultivating the longish hair, the briar, the tweediness and the abstracted gaze he felt his role required. The briar kept going out. Obscenely sucking and smacking at it under a match flame, he said, ‘Hullo, Fairbank. Am I early?’

His host replied, ‘Right on time. The others are late. They’ll be along presently, I imagine.’ Taking Haskell’s coat, he added, ‘What are you drinking?’

‘Irish, please, with just a little water. No ice.’ Suck, slurp, smack, puff.

Professor Emeritus Marcus Fairbank, seventy and retired, was a widower and Haskell’s senior by a good thirty years. From that perspective, he could be tolerant of the younger man’s airs. ‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘I’ll mix your drink.’

Within moments, most of the others were on hand—Weiss, the composer-in-residence; Graner, the historian; and stone-deaf Temple, the painter. Pedagogues all, but none save Haskell bore the outward stamp of academe. Temple looked like a butcher, an impression which red-smeared fingers only enhanced. Weiss looked like an ageing matinée idol. Graner looked like a sourpuss, which, in fact, he was. All had been pallbearers the previous year at the funeral of Fairbank’s wife. ‘Anyone else expected?’ asked Temple, accepting a beer. ‘Just Mac,’ said Fairbank.

‘Bill McDermott?’ said Weiss. ‘I haven’t seen him in ages. He owes me five bucks. I’ll have Scotch, please.’

Father William McDermott entered a couple of minutes later, profusely apologising, demanding gin, and angrily pressing five singles into the outstretched palm of the gloating Weiss. ‘You were right, you buccaneer. Leoncavallo
did
compose a
La Bohème.
I looked it up. Here, take your tainted money. I’ll trip you up yet, though, mark my word!’ Turning to Fairbank, the priest said, ‘Now then, Marcus. What the dickens are we all doing here?’

‘You’re here to witness something,’ said Fairbank, ‘to be present at an historic occasion. Here’s your martini, Mac. If you will all step this way?...’

Clutching their drinks, Fairbanks guests followed their host in single file down a narrow flight of stairs to a cellar workroom.

Fairbank snapped on the lights. A semi-circle of simple wooden chairs had been grouped facing a large, sheet-shrouded object. Father Mac said, ‘What is that thing—a coffin?’

Weiss added, ‘Or a piano?’

Fairbank smiled at the composer. ‘You’re close. Sit down, all of you, please.’

As they did so, they took note of the wall behind the draped object: set into it with custom-crafted care was what looked like a forty-inch television screen.

Graner groaned, ‘You didn’t bring us here to watch TV? ‘That’s not a TV set,’ Fairbank assured him. ‘I do make use of the cathode principle, but there the resemblance ends.’

‘I’m a-quiver with suspense,’ said Haskell.

Fairbank took a position in front of the impassive screen. Habit urged him into a professorial stance and manner. ‘My dear friends,’ he said, ‘what you are about to see—’ (he turned towards the screen) ‘—is the culmination of ten years’ heartbreaking work...’

‘Sorry, Marcus,’ said Temple, ‘I didn’t catch that last. You turned your back.’

Fairbank faced Temple and spoke distinctly, so the deaf painter could read his lips. ‘I said: the culmination of ten years’ heartbreaking work. Heartbreaking not only because of time lost on false trails, beautiful theories shattered by inflexible facts, research halted time and again by lack of funds, failure after failure after failure—but also because my devoted Thelma, who shared the toil and travail of this project, the... the sacrifice, is not here to share the triumph.’

He faltered for a moment, brushed by emotion, then he grasped one corner of the sheet in front of him. You are the very first to see—’ He whipped off the sheet.

‘—The Fairbank Light-Organ!’

A curious instrument was revealed. At superficial glance, it looked like an ordinary concert organ, Italian Provincial in sherry walnut, available from any music dealer. Then one noticed certain modifications. Thick black cables writhing from its base. The pedals removed. One entire bank of keys replaced by a gleaming platoon of gauges and a complex of transistors. The lettering on the stops and switches revised: the harmonic drawbars, for example, now bore hand-painted numbers in the high hundreds, thousands, millions, billions; VIBRATO WIDE and VIBRATO FAST had become SLOW IMAGE and SPEED IMAGE; DEEP BASSOON was now LONGSHOT, and FLUTE was CLOSE-UP; HARP SUSTAIN was freeze image; thorny equations stood in the stead of the designations BANJO, CHIMES, MARIMBA, GUITAR, GLOCKENSPIEL; and the abbreviated, enigmatic ETERN. was clumsily pasted over what had been DIAPASON. Connected to all this, the dark eye in the wall—the television screen that was not a television screen.

‘Hell,’ Weiss growled. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve re-invented the colour organ! Patterns of coloured light flitting across a screen while music plays? Scriabin tried that over fifty years ago and it was a flop even then.’

Fairbank shook his head. ‘No, it’s nothing like that. Although the basic structure
is
no more than a second-hand electric organ. But that’s only because it proved to be the design most easily adapted to our purpose. A bench to sit on, plenty of room for a meter panel; also, the stops are conveniently placed and were converted quite simply. But this organ plays no music. It’s silent.’

Fairbank clicked a switch to the left of the keyboard. The basso hum of electrical power vibrated under their feet.

‘Not quite silent,’ said Graner.

‘Private generator,’ Fairbank explained.

Haskell began to ask, ‘But how could you af—’

‘Watch,’ said Fairbank. ‘Watch the screen.’

He pressed several organ stops, spun a dial, then played a silent ‘chord’ on three black keys.

Light pulsed on the screen—pure white at first, then flaming red, deep blue, golden yellow, finally an eddying of all colours. They rippled, erupted, converged.

‘Op art?’ muttered Temple.

The colours split, swirled, and suddenly formed a picture. It was a somewhat blurred image, in motion, of Fairbank and his five guests—drinks in hand—grouped around the organ. Fairbank adjusted a dial and the picture sharpened focus.

‘Closed circuit TV,’ snorted Graner, looking around for a hidden camera.

‘Wait,’ said Father Mac. ‘That’s us, all right, that’s this room—but not
now.
Look at the organ. It’s still covered by the sheet. That’s a picture of this room five minutes ago!’

On the screen, the figure of Fairbank, mouthing silent words, peeled the sheet away from the organ.

‘So what?’ said Graner. ‘Video-tape. A playback.’

‘No,’ Fairbank said. ‘I repeat: I did not invite you here to watch television—closed circuit, video-taped, or otherwise. Keep watching, please.’

He pressed another stop and carefully pulled out one of the drawbars an eighth of an inch.

The picture flickered and changed, showing a white Colonial door.

‘That’s the front door of this house,’ said Haskell.

Graner sighed. ‘I still don’t see—’

Fairbank flipped the LONGSHOT switch. The image of the door plunged into the distance, surrendering to a view of the entire house. It stood alone, surrounded only by empty lots.

Weiss said, ‘That’s six, seven years ago! Before this neighbourhood became built up!’

Nodding, Father Mac said, ‘Marcus had the first house on this block.’

‘Film,’ Graner said flatly. ‘Home movies.’

Fairbank smiled at this. ‘It was precisely because of your sceptical mind, Graner, that I invited you here. The others—Haskell, Weiss, Temple, Mac—are romantics. They will
want
to believe. They’re easy marks. I can convince them with no effort. But if I can convince even
you,
if I can smother the last scintilla of your doubt—then I will know that the light-organ is ready to show to the world.’

He settled himself at the organ bench and his hands moved deftly among the keys and stops. Abstract shapes swam on the screen.

‘Control is still a problem,’ he said. ‘About half the time I can get what I want on the screen—the rest of the time it’s chance, accident, pot luck. But I hope to remedy that, if I live long enough!’

Another picture was forming. ‘Ah,’ said Fairbank. ‘Yes.’

A crowd; some of its members soldiers in Union Blue; their attention given over to a figure small in the background—a tall bearded man in a stovepipe hat.