“Why, dear,” Dinah said, “that would be lovely.”
Book Three
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ADMISSION.
You are Here.
Enjoy.
They seem expectant still, though they have already walked within the Riddle, not this day but long before. They walked within the instant that is Death’s Riddle, and many moments later were reconstituted here, placed in the hollow liturgical court of this black garden. They roam no wilderness. There is no wilderness. It preceded them into the hands of man.
This is Eden turned hex backwards, where they have been resurrected into an air-conditioned hum. Belief in resurrection was the butt of pagan jest. The difficulties, the logistics of it … better to see dust as both more and less than dust and be finished with it. But here, in this place, the work was done hygienically and to scale, though the problem of the soul remains and is all the greater because their life had been their soul and was extinguished with them. Here the heavens are false, as is the very rock. The water is glittering real but slakes no thirst. From an egg (a debated touch) — a large hinged egg not centrally located — come the sounds of the morning when desired and the sounds of the evening when appropriate: the murmurs and cries, the preparation. Over everything, a dimness that does not quite touch them, but hovers instead like those angels who are unable to tell whether they move among the living or the dead.
31
Carter had started thinking of the girls as the Three Fates. He didn’t know why this image should have lingered in his mind, except that he was a classical sort of fellow. Contrary to the popular visualization, he had never seen those ladies as decrepit, tottering old crones but as irrational, merciless, impatient maidens. How did they all get along? They seemed so different. One spun, one measured, one cut. The only name of the three he could remember was Atropos, the Inflexible, which was definitely Alice. He thought of his dear Annabel as the spinner — good-hearted, a little unaware of what she was doing — and quiet Corvus as the measuring one. Alice was amusing; she’d be quite the zealot if she survived her adolescence. Corvus was tragic but allowed no gesture of condolence. She was utterly uncommunicative with him, though she did smile pleasantly if cornered. She lived in the protectorate of suffering.
He let all three of them have the run of the house, but they didn’t really seem to do anything, other than in his imagination, spin, allot, and snip. What were the names of the other two? He should look it up or ask Donald. Donald was such a student. While he was at it, he’d ask him the name of the Furies too, why not? They could look up the information together. He carved a light little image in his mind of Donald’s earnest blond head bending over a sourcebook … together … learning … their breaths lightly mingling.… Carter shook himself violently and surveyed his surroundings cautiously. No one there. The girls were in the kitchen, burning something; toast, it smelled like. The Furies, also, were three in number, though not so differentiated. The Dirae, the Terrible Ones, but they were well meaning in their way, weren’t they? They just wanted to set things right. They didn’t live on Earth, but they visited it a lot. Like Ginger. He was surprised she hadn’t shown up one night with a whip of scorpions. Then he’d know what he was dealing with! An old myth. Irrelevant. Ginger was … irrelevant.
No, she wasn’t, he thought. He yawned and looked moodily at his large bare feet. He had to get a good night’s sleep soon. Take a bath before retiring, Ginger advised. Don’t dry off, just climb dripping between the sheets. Your body, attempting to protect itself, will expend energy, making you sleepy. What she wanted, of course, was for him to contract pneumonia.
In late morning, it was one hundred fourteen degrees. What was he doing here? The heat made him long for a cool New England murky. His hair felt recently boiled. He had the groggys as well, most familiar-feeling groggys. Shouldn’t drop another touch, really, beginning today. In the kitchen he saw that the girls had cleaned him out of fresh fruits again, except for two pomegranates withering in a wire basket. What was the impulse behind buying these things? In thousands of households pomegranates crouched wizened on counters. Other fruits were all taken, even plums, but pomegranates were always left. There was something shady and unsatisfying and reproachful about them. They weren’t provocative like an orange, compassionate like an apple, weren’t straightforward like a pear. When he got his shoes on, he was going to toss them out in the desert for the little foxes. Then he saw a note: “Daddy, we made you a fruit shake. It’s in the fridge.” Carter was touched. It tasted delicious, too. He finished off the entire blenderful and regarded the pomegranates with more equanimity. Let them be what they were. What was the harm?
The girls were outside, lying under a couple of pool umbrellas. The Moirai — Daughters of Night provided with shears, the Destinies who spun the fatal thread. They didn’t seem to be conversing with one another. Young, their whole lives before them, or pretty much. Gracious, it looked hot out there! Sometimes he thought that if he could just get through this summer, everything would open up.
Carter emptied ice cubes into a bowl, added water, and immersed a fresh dish towel in it. He carried it into the living room and sat on the sofa, tipping back his head and laying the cold cloth across his eyes. Donald had suggested tapas sex.
He had.
“Tapas!” Carter had cried. He thought they were those small, warm, oily appetizers served in Spanish bars. At least that’s what they’d been in the days when he and Ginger were roaming around over there, watching those stupid bullfights, throwing the cushions in indignation, driving fast and gaily through the sharply edged Castilian landscape. He had wanted to go north to Montserrat, where Wagner’s genius had placed the Grail, but they had never made it, he couldn’t recall why. It hadn’t been Ginger’s fault, he was almost certain; they hadn’t quarreled so much in those days, hadn’t disagreed about every last thing, their innocent wishes had been more synchronized. Still, they had never made it to Montserrat, huge rock reared high in the clouds.
Back then, she had called him her stroke oar.
He pushed the cloth through the ice. “What!” he had cried. “Sex tapas?” Evidently — as Donald had quietly explained it — it was a union between two individuals wherein the sex organs are used, only not in a conventional manner. Sexual energy is controlled with intense concentration as it rises to a climax, the orgasm is experienced in the head, and the sexual fluid is reabsorbed back into the system, giving the individual extra energy. Physical desire is conquered in the same instant that it is fulfilled. It sounded quite refined the way Donald described it.
Carter stirred slightly against the cushions. He liked the idea of sex conquering physical desire — inappropriate physical desire, it might be argued — at the same time that it satisfied it. It sounded like a resourceful, streamlined process, not exactly fun but thoughtful and mature.
When Carter had politely inquired if Donald had ever attempted this unconventional sex before, the boy had softly expressed himself in the negative. Not that it mattered, of course, Carter said, but he guessed what he was asking was, if it went badly — well he supposed there was no way it could go badly but if it turned out more conventionally than they might have wished — would Donald be disappointed, would he think less of himself, less of Carter, less of both of them together for it? Because that would be … that would be unfortunate, because Carter was fond of Donald, very fond.