"Maddox," she said.
Shit, I thought.
"Where are you going?"
(Isn't it strange, by the way, that we're never too old to feel like errant children? There I was, old by any human standards, frozen in my tracks and guilty as any infant caught with sticky fingers.)
"I was going back to my work," I said. Then added, "Mama," as a sop.
It may have mellowed her. "Is it going well?" she asked me, quite conversationally. I was sufficiently reassured to turn round and look at her, but she wasn't visible to me. There was just a busy darkness at the far end of the hallway where moments before there'd been a well-lit lobby. I was frankly grateful. I've never actually witnessed the form my mother takes in these legendary furies of hers, but I'm quite sure it's sufficient to drop a saint in his tracks.
"It's going okay," I replied. "I have days when-"
Cesaria broke in before I got any further. "Did Marietta go outside?" she said.
"I… yes… yes, I believe she did."
"Fetch her back."
"I'm sorry?"
"You're not deaf, Maddox. Go find your sister and bring her back inside."
"What happened?"
"Just fetch her."
(There's another second strangeness here, worth remarking on. Just as there's a guilty child lurking in everyone, there's also a rebellious self that prickles at the idea of being ordered about, and is not easily silenced. It was this voice that answered Cesaria back, foolish though it was to do so.)
"Why can't you go and fetch her yourself?" I heard myself saying.
I knew I was going to regret the words even as I spoke them. But it was already too late to recant: Cesaria's shadow self was in motion. She was moving-not quickly, but steadily, inevitably-down the hallway toward me. Though the ceiling is not especially high, there was something vast about her manifestation; she seemed like a thunderhead at that moment. And I diminished to a fraction of myself before her; I was a mote, a sliver-
She began to speak as she approached, but every word she uttered seemed about to collapse back into that terrible cacophony of hers; as though she was only keeping anarchy at bay with the greatest effort.
"You," she said "remind me" I knew what was coming "of your father."
I don't believe I said anything by way of reply. I was frankly too intimidated. Besides, if I'd tried to speak I doubt my tongue would have worked. I simply stood there as she roiled before me, and the animal din erupted out of her with fresh ferocity.
This time, however, there was a vision to go with the din, not uncovered by the cloud but seemingly sculpted from it. I had a mercifully short glimpse of it, though I'm certain that had Cesaria not wanted me to be her errand boy she might have given me more. That wasn't to her present purpose, however, so she showed me just enough to make me lose control of my bladder; perhaps three or four seconds' worth, if that. What did I see? It's no use telling you there are no words. Of course there are words; there are always words. The question is: can I wield them well enough to evoke the power of what I witnessed? That I doubt. But let me do my best.
I saw, I think, a woman erupting at every pore and orifice; spewing unfinished forms. Giving birth, I suppose you'd say, expelling not one, nor even ten, but a thousand creatures; ten thousand. And yet here's the problem with that description. It doesn't take account of the fact that at the same time she was becoming-how do I express this?-denser; like certain stars I've read about, which as they collapse upon themselves draw light and matter into them. So was she. How did my mind deal with the fact that she was doing two contrary things? Not well. In fact the vision did such violence to my system I fell down as though she'd struck me, and covered my head with my hands as though she might get the sight into me again through the top of my skull.
She chose to spare me. Just left me lying on the ground in my wet pants, sobbing. It took me a little time to recover my composure, but when I finally raised my head and chanced a look in her direction, I found that the thunder-head was no longer looming over me. She'd covered that furious face of hers and was waiting some little distance from me.
"I'm sorry…" were the first words out of my mouth.
"No," she said, her voice suddenly drained of either music or strength. "It was my fault. You're not a child to be ordered around. It was just that in that moment I saw your father so clearly."
"May… I… ask you a question?"
"Ask anything," she said, sighing.
"That face I just saw…"
"What about it?"
"Did Nicodemus ever see it?"
Despite her fatigue she was amused by this. There was a hint of a smile in her voice when she replied. "Are you asking me if I scared him off?" I nodded. "Then I'll tell you: that face, as you call it, is what he chiefly loved me for."
"Really?" I must have sounded astonished-as indeed I was-because she replied somewhat defensively:
"He had aspects that were just as terrible."
"Yes I know."
"Of course you know. You saw some of what he could do."
"But that wasn't all he was," I said.
"Just as what you saw a moment ago isn't all of me."
"But it's the truest part, isn't it?" I said. Under other circumstances I surely wouldn't have pressed her on this business so closely, but I knew the chances of my having the freedom to interrogate her like this again were nil. If I was to know who Cesaria Yaos was before the house of Barbarossa came crashing down, it was now or never.
"The truest part?" she said. "No. I don't think I have one face that's truer than any other. I used to be worshipped in dozens of temples, you know."
"I know."
"They're all heaps of rubble now. Nobody remembers how I was loved…" Her voice trailed off. She'd apparently lost her point. "What was I saying?"
"Nobody remembering."
"Before that."
"All the temples-"
"Oh yes. So many temples, with statues and embroideries, all depicting me. But not one of them resembled any other."
"How do you know?"
"Because I visited them," she said. "When your father and I had a spat we'd go our separate ways for a while.
He'd go find himself some poor woman to seduce, and I'd go touring my holy sites. It's comforting when you're feeling a little woebegone."
"Hard to imagine."
"What? Me, woebegone? Oh I can be self-pitying, just like anybody else."
"No. I meant it's hard to imagine how it must feel, going into a temple where you're being worshipped."
"Oh it can be wonderful. Wandering among your devotees."
"Were you ever tempted to tell them who you were?"
"I did it many, many times. I usually picked somebody who wasn't a particularly reliable witness. The very old. The very young. Somebody with a sanity problem, or a saint, which is often one and the same."
"Why do that? Why not show yourself to somebody literate, intelligent? Somebody who could spread your gospel?"
"Somebody like you?"
"If you like."
"Is that what your book's going to be: one last desperate attempt to put your father and me back up on our pedestals?" What did she want to hear from me? I wondered. And if I chose incorrectly, would I be subjected to her fury again? "Is that what you're up to, Maddox?"
I decided on the truth. "No," I said, "I'm simply telling the story as best I can."
"And this conversation? Will it be in your book?"
"I'll put it in if it seems relevant."
There was a silence. Finally, she said: "Well, I suppose it doesn't matter whether you do or you don't. Stories; temples. Who cares nowadays? You're going to have fewer readers than I have worshippers, Maddox."