City of Saints and Madmen Part 11

The Stork, sitting on Lake, jabbed his kidneys, then punched in the same spot-hard. Lake grunted with pain. The Raven bent Lake's left arm back behind him until it felt as if his bones would break.

He shrieked. Suddenly, they were both off of him. He flipped over on his back, adjusted his mask, and looked up-to find all three men staring down at him.

"What is your answer?" the Owl asked. "We must have your answer now."

Lake groaned and rolled over onto his side.

"Answer!"

What did a word mean? Did a single word really mean . . . anything? Could it exile whole worlds of action, of possibility?

"Yes," he said, and the word sounded like a death rattle in his throat.

"Good," said the Owl. "Now open the coffin."

They moved back so that he would have enough s.p.a.ce. He sat up on the couch, his leg throbbing. He grappled with the locks on the side of the coffin, determined to speed up the nightmare, that it might end all the more swiftly.

Finally, the latches came free. With a grunt, he opened the lid . . . and stared down at familiar, unmistakably patrician features. The famous shock of gray hair disheveled, the sharp cheekbones bruised violet, the intelligent blue eyes bulging with fear, the fine mouth, the sensual lips, obstructed by a red cloth gag that cut into the face and left a line of blood. Blood trickled from his hairline where he had banged his head against the coffi n lid. Strange symbols had been carved into his arms as if he were an offering to some cruel G.o.d.

Lake staggered backward, fell against the edge of the couch, unable to face this final, dislocating revelation-unable to comprehend that in deed the Greens were right: Voss Bender was alive. What game had he entered all unwitting?

For his part, Bender tried to get up as soon as he saw Lake, even bound as he was in coils of rope that must cruelly constrict his circulation, then thrashed about again when it became clear Lake would not help him.

The Raven stuck his head into Bender's field of vision and caw, caw, cawed like his namesake. The action sent Bender into a hysterical spasm of fear. The Raven dealt him a cracking blow across the face. Bender slumped back down into the coffin. His eyelids fluttered; the smell of urine came from the coffin. Lake couldn't tear his gaze away. This was Voss Bender, savior and destroyer of careers, politicians, theaters. Voss Bender, who had been dead for two days.

"Why? Why have you done this to him?" Lake said, though he had not meant to speak.

The Stork sneered, said, "He did it to himself. He brought everything on himself."

"He's no good," the Raven said.

"He is," the Owl added, "the very epitome of Evil."

Voss Bender moved a little. The eyes under the imperious gray eyebrows opened wide. Bender wasn't deaf or stupid-Lake had never thought him stupid-and the man followed their conversation with an intense if weary interest. Those eyes demanded that Lake save him. Lake looked away.

"The Raven here will give you his knife," the Owl said, "but do not think that just because you have a weapon you can escape." As if to prove this, the Owl produced a gun, one of those sleek, dangerous-looking models newly invented by the Kalif's scientists.

The Raven held out his knife.

Senses stretched and redefined, Lake glanced at Voss Bender, then at the knife. A thin line of light played over the metal and the grainy whorls of the hilt. He could read the words etched into the blade, the name of the knife's maker: Hoegbotton & Sons. That the knife should have a history, a pedigree, that he should know more about the knife than about the three men struck him as absurd, as horrible. As he stared at the blade, at the words engraved there, the full, terrible weight of the deed struck him. To take a life. To snuff out a life, and with it a vast network of love and admiration. To create a hole in the world. It was no small thing to take a life, no small thing at all. He saw his father smiling at him, palms opened up to reveal the shiny, sleek bodies of dead insects.

"For G.o.d's sake, don't make me kill him!"

The burst of laughter from the Owl, the Raven, the Stork, surprised him so much that he laughed with them. He shook with laughter, his jaw, his shoulders, relaxed in antic.i.p.ation of the revelation that it was all a joke . . . before he understood that their laughter was throaty, fey, cruel. Slowly, his laughter turned to sobs.

The Raven's hilarity subsided before that of the Owl and the Stork. He said to Lake, "He is already dead. The whole city knows he's dead. You cannot kill someone who is already dead."

Voss Bender began to moan, and redoubled his efforts to break free of his bonds. The three men ignored him.

"I won't do it. I won't do it." His words sounded weak, susceptible to influence. He knew that faced with his own extinction he would do anything to stay alive, even if it meant corrupting, perverting, destroying, everything that made him MartinLake. And yet his father's face still hovered in his head, and with that image everything his father had ever said about the sanct.i.ty of life.

The Owl said, with remorseless precision, "Then we will flay your face until it is only strips of flesh hanging from your head. We will lop off your fingers, your toes, as if they were carrots for the pot. You, sir, will become a b.l.o.o.d.y red riddle for some dog to solve in an alley somewhere. And Bender will still be dead."

Lake stared at the Owl and the Owl stared back, the owl mask betraying not a hint of weakness.

The eyes were cold wrinkled stones, implacable and ancient.

When the Raven offered Lake the knife, he took it. the lacquered wooden hilt had a satisfying weight to it, a smoothness that spoke of practiced ease in the arts of killing.

"A swift stroke across the throat and it will be done," the Raven said, while the Stork took a white length of cloth and tucked it over Bender's body, leaving exposed only his head and neck. How many times had he drawn his brush across a painted throat, the model before him fatally disinterested? He wished he had not taken so many anatomy cla.s.ses. He found himself counting and naming the muscles in Bender's neck, cataloging arteries and veins, bones and tendons.

The Raven and the Stork withdrew to beyond the coffin. The divide between them and Lake was enormous, the knife cold and heavy in his hand. Lake could see that tiny flakes of rust had infected the center of each engraved letter of Hoegbotton & Sons.

He looked down at Voss Bender. Bender's eyes bulged, bloodshot, watery. The man pleaded with Lake through his gag, words Lake could only half understand. "Don't . . . Don't . . . what have I . . . Help . . . " Lake admired Bender's strength and yet, as he stood over his intended victim, Lake found he enjoyed the power he wielded over the composer. To have such control. This was the man he had only the other day been cursing, the man who had so changed the city that his death had polarized it, splintered it.

Voss Bender began to thrash about and, as if the movement had bro ken a spell, Lake's sense of triumph turned to disgust, b.u.t.tressed by nausea. He let out a broken little laugh.

"I can't do it. I won't do it."

Lake tried to drop the knife, but the Raven's hand covered his and, turning into a fist, forced his own hand into a fist that guided the knife down into the coffin, making Lake stoop as it turned toward Bender's throat. The Stork held Bender's head straight, caressing the doomed man's temples with an odd gentleness. The Owl stood aloof, watching as an owl will the pa.s.sion play beneath its perch. Lake grunted, struggling against the Raven's inexorable downward pressure. Just when it seemed he must succ.u.mb, he went limp. The knife descended at a hopeless angle, aided by Bender's mighty flinch. The blade did only half the job-laying open a flap of skin to the left of the jugular. Blood welled up truculently.

As if the stroke had been a signal, the Raven and the Stork stood back, breathing heavily. Bender made a choking gurgle; he sounded as if he might suffocate in his own blood.

Lake rocked back and forth on his knees.

The Owl said to his companions, "You lost your heads. Do you want his blood on our hands?"

Lake stared at the knife and at Voss Bender's incompetently cut throat, and back at the knife.

Blood had obscured all but the "Hoeg" in "Hoegbotton." Blood had speckled his left hand. It looked nothing like paint: it was too bright. It itched where it had begun to dry.

He closed his eyes and felt the walls of the study rush away from him until he stood at the edge of an infinite darkness. From a great distance, the Owl said, "He will die now. But slowly. Very slowly. Weaker and weaker until, having suffered considerable pain, he will succ.u.mb some hours or days hence. And we will not lift a feather or finger to help him. We will just watch. Your choice remains the same-finish him and live; don't and die with him. It is a mercy killing now."

Lake looked up at the Owl. "Why me?"

"How do you know you are the first? How do you know you were chosen?"

"That is your answer?"

"That is the only answer I shall ever give you."

"What could he have done to you for you to be so merciless?"

The Owl looked to the Raven, the Raven to the Stork, and in the sud den quaver, the slight shiver, that pa.s.sed between them, Lake thought he knew the answer. He had seen the same look pa.s.s between artists in the cafes along Alb.u.muth Boulevard as they verbally dissected some new young genius.

Lake laughed bitterly. "You're afraid of him, aren't you? You're envi ous and you want his power, but most of all, you fear him. You're too afraid to kill him yourself."

The Owl said, "Make your choice."

"And the hilarious thing," Lake said. "The hilarious thing is, you see, that once he's dead, you'll have made him immortal." Was he weeping? His face was wet under the mask. Lake watched, in the silence, the blood seeping from the wound in Bender's throat. He watched Bender's hands trembling as if with palsy.

What did the genius composer see in those final moments? Lake wondered later. Did he see the knife, the arm that held it, descending, or did he see himself back in Morrow, by the river, walking through a green field and humming to himself? Did he see a lover's face contorted with pa.s.sion? Did he see a moment from before the creation of the fame that had devoured him? Perhaps he saw nothing, awash in the crescendo of his most powerful symphony, still thundering across his brain in a wave of blood.

As Lake bent over Voss Bender, he saw reflected in the man's eyes the black mask of the Raven, who had stepped nearer to watch the killing.

"Back away!" Lake hissed, stabbing out with the knife. The Raven jumped back.

Lake remembered how the man in his nightmare had cut his hand apart so methodically, so completely. He remembered his father's hands opening to reveal bright treasures, Shriek's response to his painting of his father's hands. Ah, but Shriek knew nothing. Even Raffe knew nothing. None of them knew as much as he knew now.

Then, cursing and weeping, his lips pulled back in a terrible snarl, he drew the blade across the throat, pushed down with his full weight, and watched as the life drained out of the world's most famous composer. He had never seen so much blood before, but worse still there was a moment, a single instant he would carry with him forever, when Bender's eyes met his and the dullness of death crept in, extinguishing the brightness, the spark, that had once been a life.

"Through His Eyes" has an att.i.tude toward perspective unique among Lake's works, for it is painted from the vantage point of the dead Voss Bender in an open coffin (an apocryphal event-Bender was cremated), looking up at the people who are looking down, while perspective gradually becomes meaningless, so that beyond the people looking down, we see the River Moth superimposed against the sky and mourners lining its banks. Of the people who stare down at Bender, one is Lake, one is a hooded insect catcher, and three are wearing masks-in fact, a reprisal of the owl, raven, and stork from "The Burning House." Four other figures stare as well, but they are faceless. The scenes in the background of this monstrously huge canvas exist in a world which has curved back on itself, and the details conspire to convince us that we see the sky, green fields, a city of wood, and the river banks simultaneously.

As Venturi writes, "The colors deepen the mystery: evening is about to fall and the river is growing dim; reds are intense or sullen, yellows and greens are deep-dyed; the sinister greenish sky is a cosmetic reflection of earthly death." The entirety of the painting is ringed by a thin line of red that bleeds about a quarter of an inch inward. This unique frame suggests a freshness out of keeping with the coffin, while the background scenes are thought to depict Lake's ideal of Bender's youth, when he roamed the natural world of field and river. Why did Lake choose to show Bender in a coffin? Why did he choose to use montage? Why the red line? Some experts suggest that we ignore the coffi n and focus on the red line and the swirl of images, but even then can offer no coherent explanation.

Even more daring, and certainly unique, "Aria for the Brittle Bones of Winter" creates an equivalence between sounds and colors: a musical scale based on the pictorial intensity of colors in which "color is taken to speak a mute language." The "hero" rides through a crumbling graveyard to a frozen lake. The sky is dark, but the reflection of the moon, which is also a reflection of Voss Bender's face, glides across the lake's surface. The reeds which line the lake's sh.o.r.e are composed of musical notes, so cleverly interwoven that their ident.i.ty as notes is not at first evident. Snow is falling, and the flakes are also musical notes-fading notes against the blue-black sky, almost as if Bender's aria is disintegrating even as it is being performed.

In this most ambitious of all his paintings, Lake uses subtle gradations of white, gray, and blue to mimic the progression of the aria itself-indeed, his brushstrokes, short or long, rough or smooth, duplicate the aria's movement as if we were reading a sheet of music.

All of this motion in the midst of apparent motionless-ness flows in the direction of the rider, who rides against the destiny of the aria as a counterpoint, a dissenting voice. The light of the moon shines upon the face of the rider, but, again, this is the light of the reflection so that the rider's features are illuminated from below, not above. The rider, haggard and sagging in the saddle, is unmistakably Lake. (Venturi describes the rider as "a rhythmic throb of inarticulate grief.") The rider's expression is abstract, fluid, especially in relation to the starkly realistic mode of the rest of the painting. Thus, he appears ambivalent, undecided, almost unfinished-and, certainly, at the time of the painting, and in relation to Voss Bender, Lake was unfinished.

If "Aria for the Brittle Bones of Winter" is not as popular as even the experimental "Through His Eyes," it may be because Lake has employed too personal an iconography, the painting meaningful only to him. Whereas in "Invitation" or "Burning House," the viewer feels empowered-welcomed-to share in the personal revelation, "Aria . . . " feels like a closed system, the artist's eye looking too far inward. Even the doubling of image and name, the weak pun implicit in the painting's lake and the painterLake, cannot help us to understand the underpinnings of such a work. As Venturi wrote, "WhileLake's canvases do not generally inflict a new language upon us, when they do, we have no guide to translate for us." The controversial art critic Bibble has gone so far as to write, in reference to "Aria," "[Lake's] paintings are so many tombstones, so many little deaths-on canvases too big for the wall in their barely suppressed violence."

Be this as it may, there are linked themes, linked resonances, between "Invitation," "Through His Eyes," and "Aria . . . "These are tenuous connections, even mysterious connections, but I cannot fail to make them.

Lake appears in all three paintings-and only these three paintings. Only in the second painting, "Through His Eyes," do the insect catcher and Bender appear together. The insect catcher does appear in "Invita tion" but not in "Aria . . . " (where, admittedly, he would be a bizarre and unwelcome intrusion). Bender appears in "Aria" and is implied in "Through His Eyes," but does not appear, implied or otherwise, in "Invitation." The question becomes: Does the insect catcher inhabit "Aria" unbeknownst to the casual observer-perhaps even in the frozen graveyard? And, more importantly, does the spirit of Voss Bender in some way haunt the canvas that is "Invitation to a Beheading"? -From Janice Shriek 's A Short Overview of The Art of Martin Lake and His Invitation to a Beheading, for the Hoegbotton Guide to Ambergris, 5th edition.

Afterwards, Lake stumbled out into the night. The fog had dissipated and the stars hung like pale wounds in the sky. He flung off his frog mask, retched in the gutter, and staggered to a brackish public fountain, where he washed his hands and arms to no avail: the blood would not come off. When he looked up from his frantic efforts, he found the mushroom dwellers had abandoned their battle with the pigs to watch him with wide, knowing eyes.

"Go away!" he screamed. "Don't look at me!"

Further on, headed at first without direction, then with the vague idea of reaching his apartment, he washed his hands in public restrooms. He sanded his hands with gravel. He gnawed at them. None of it helped: the stench of blood only grew thicker. He was being destroyed by something larger than himself that was still somehow trapped inside him.

He haunted the streets, alleys, and mews through the tail end of the bureaucratic district, and down a ways into the greenery of the valley, until a snarling whippet drove him back up and into the merchant districts. The shops were closed, the lanterns and lamps turned low. The streets, in the glimmering light, seemed slick, wet, but were dry as chalk. He saw no one except for once, when a group of Reds and Greens burst past him, fighting each other as they ran, their faces contorted in a righteous anger.

"It doesn't mean anything!" Lake shouted after them. "He's dead !"

But they ignored him and soon, like some chaotic beast battling itself, moved out of sight down the street.

Over everything, as he wept and burned, Lake saw the image of Voss Bender's face as the life left it: the eyes gazing heavenward as if seeking absolution, the body taking one last full breath, the hands suddenly clutching at the ropes that bound, the legs vibrating against the coffin floor . . . and then stillness. Ambergris, cruel, hard city, would not let him forget the deed, for on every street corner Voss Bender's face stared at him-on posters, on markers, on signs.

Eventually, his crippled leg tense with a gnawing ache, Lake fell down on the scarlet doorstep of a bawdy house. There he slept under the indifferent canopy of the night, beneath the horrible emptiness of the stars, for an hour or two-until the Madame, brandishing curses and a broom, drove him off.

As the sun's wan light infiltrated the city, exposing Red and Green alike, Lake found himself in a place he no longer understood, the streets crowded with faces he did not want to see, for surely they all stared at him: from the sidewalk sandwich vendors in their pointy orange hats and orange-striped ap.r.o.ns, to the bankers with their dark tortoise-sh.e.l.l portfolios, their maroon suits; from the white-faced, well-fed nannies of the rich to the bravura youths encrusted in crimson make up that had outgrown them.

With this awareness of others came once again an awareness of himself. He noticed the stubble on his cheek, the grit between his teeth, the sour smell of his dirty clothes. Looking around him at the secular traffic of the city, Lake discovered a great hunger in him for the Religious Quarter, all thoughts of a return to his apartment having long since left his head.

His steps began to have purpose and speed until, arrived at his destination, he walked among the devotees, the pilgrims, the priests-stared speechless at the endless permutations of devotional grottos, spires, domes, arches of the cathedrals of the myriad faiths, as if he had never seen them before. The Reds and Greens made no trouble here, and so refugees from the fury of their convictions flooded the streets.

The Church of the Seven Pointed Star had an actual confessional box for sinners. For a long time Lake stood outside the church's modest wooden doors (above which rose an equally modest dome), torn between the need to confess, the fear of reprisal should he confess, and the conviction that he should not be forgiven. Finally, he moved on, accompanied by the horrid, gnawing sensation in his stomach that would be his burden for years. There was no one he could tell. No one. Now the Religious Quarter too confounded him, for it provided no answers, no relief. He wandered it as aimlessly as he had the city proper the night before. He thirsted, he starved, his leg tremulous with fatigue.

At last, on the Religious Quarter's outskirts, where it kissed the feet of the Bureaucratic District, Lake walked through a glade of trees and was confronted by the enormous marble head of Voss Bender. The head had been ravaged by fire and overgrown by vines, and yet the lines of the mouth, the nose, stood out more heroically than ever, the righteous eyes staring at him. Under the weight of such a gaze, Lake could walk no further. He fell against the soft gra.s.s and lay there, motionless in the shadow of the marble head.

It was not until late in the afternoon that Raffe found him there and helped him home to his apartment.

She spoke words at him, but he did not understand them. She pleaded with him. She cried and hugged him. He found her concern so tragically funny that he could not stop laughing. But he refused to tell her anything and, after she had forced food and water on him, she left him to find Merrimount.

As soon as he was alone again, Lake tore apart his halffinished commissions. Their smug fatuousness infuriated him. He spared only the paintings of his father's hands and the oil painting he had started the day before. He found himself still entranced by the greens against which the head of the man from nightmare jutted threateningly. The painting seemed to contain the soul of the city in all its wretched depravity, for of course the man with the knife was himself, the smile a grimace. He could not let the painting go, just as he could not bring himself to finish it.

Sometimes what the painter chooses not to paint can be as important as what he does paint. Sometimes an absence can leave an echo all its own. Does Bender cry out to us by his absence? Many art critics have supposed that Lake must have met Bender during his first three years in Ambergris, but no evidence for this meeting exists; certainly, if he did meet with Bender, he failed to inform any of his friends or colleagues, which seems highly unlikely. Circ.u.mstantial evidence points to the stork-like shadow in "Invitation . . .", as Bender had a well-known pathological fear of birds, but since Lake also had a pathological fear of birds, I cannot agree. (Some also find it significant that it is Lake's apparent wish, upon his death, to be cremated in similar fashion to Bender, his ashes spread over the River Moth.) In the absence of more complete biographical information about Lake following this period, one must rely on such scanty information as exists in the history books. As is common knowledge, Bender's death was followed by a period of civil strife between the Reds and the Greens, culminating in a siege of the Voss Bender Memorial Post Office, which the Reds took by force only to be bloodily expelled by the Greens a short time later.

Could this, then, as some critics believe, be the message of "Invitation"? The screaming face of the man, the knife blade through the palm, which is wielded by Death, who has just claimed Voss Bender's life? Perhaps. But I believe in a more personal interpretation. Given what I know about Lake's relationship with his father, this personal meaning is all too clear. For in these three paintings, beginning with "Invitation," we see the repudiation of Lake by his natural father (the insect catcher) and Lake's em brace of Bender as his real, artistic father.

What, then, does "Invitation" tell us? It shows Lake's father metaphorically leaving his son. It shows his son, distraught, with a letter sent by his father-a letter which contains written confirmation of that repudiation. The "beheading" in "Invitation to a Beheading" is the dethroning of the king-his father . . . and yet, when a king is beheaded, a new king always takes his place.

Within days of this spiritual rejection, Voss Bender dies and for Lake the two events-the rejection by his father, the death of a great artist-are for ever linked, and the only recourse open to him is worship of the dead artist, a path made possible through his upbringing by a mystical, religious mother. Thus, "Through His Eyes" is about the death and life of Bender, and the metaphorical death of his real father. "Aria . . . " gives Bender a resurrected face, a resurrected life, as the force, the light, behind the success of the haggard rider, who is grief-stricken because he has buried his real father in the frozen graveyard-has allowed his natural father to be eclipsed by the myth, the potency, of his new father, the moon, the reflection of himself: Bender.

In the end, these paintings are about Lake's yearning for a father he never had. Bender makes a safe father because, being dead, he can never repudiate the son who has adopted him. If the paintings discussed become increasingly more inaccessible, it is because their meaning becomes ever more personal. -From Janice Shriek 's A Short Overview of The Art of Martin Lake and His Invitation to a Beheading, for the Hoegbotton Guide to Ambergris, 5th edition.

The days continued on at their normal pace, but Lake existed outside of their influence. Time could not touch him. He sat for long hours on his balcony, staring out at the clouds, at the sly swallows that cut the air like silver-blue scissors. The sun did not heat him. The breeze did not make him cold. He felt hollowed out inside, he told Raffe when she asked how he was doing. And yet, "felt" was the wrong word, because he couldn't feel anything. He was unreal. He had no soul-would never love again, never connect with anyone, he was sure, and because he did not experience these emotions, he did not miss their fulfillment. They were extraneous, unimportant. Much better that he simply be as if he were no better, no worse, than a dead twig, a clod of dirt, a lump of coal. (Raffe: "You don't mean that, Martin! You can't mean that . . . ") So he didn't paint. He didn't do much of anything, and he realized later that if not for the twinned love of Raffe and Merrimount, a love that he need not return, he might have died within a month. While they were helping him, he detested their help. He didn't deserve help. They must leave him alone. But they ignored his stares of hatred, his tantrums. Worst of all, they demanded no explanations. Raffe provided him with food and paid his rent. Merrimount shared his bed and comforted him when his nights, in stark and terrifying contrast to the dull, dead, uneventful days, were full of nightmares, detailed and hideous: the white of exposed throat, the sheen of sweat across the shadow of the chin, the lithe hairs that parted before the knife's path . . .

The week after Raffe had found him, Lake forced himself to attend Bender's funeral, Raffe and Merrimount insistent on attending with him even though he wanted to go alone.

The funeral was a splendid affair that traveled down to the docks via Alb.u.muth Boulevard , confetti raining all the way. The bulk of the procession formed a virtual advertis.e.m.e.nt for Hoegbotton & Sons, the import/export business that had, in recent years, grabbed the major share of Ambergris trade. Ostensibly held in honor of Bender's operas, the display centered around a springtime motif, and in addition to the twigs, stuffed birds, and oversized b.u.mblebees attached to the partic.i.p.ants like odd extra appendages, the music was being played by a ridiculous full orchestra pulled along on a platform drawn by draft horses.

This display was followed by the senior Hoegbotton, his eyes two shiny black tears in an immense pale face, waving from the back of a topless Manzikert and looking for all the world as if he were running for political office. Which he was: Hoegbotton, of all the city's inhabitants, stood the best chance of replacing Bender as unoffi cial ruler of the city . . .

In the back seat of Hoegbotton's Manzikert sat two rather reptilian-looking men, with slitted eyes and cruel, sensual mouths. Between them stood the urn with Bender's ashes: a pompous, gold-plated monstrosity. It was their number-three-and Hoegbotton's mannerisms that first roused Lake's suspicions, but suspicions they remained, for he had no proof. No tell-tale feathers ensnarled for a week to now slowly spin and drift down from the guilty parties to Lake's feet.

The rest of the ceremony was a blur for Lake. At the docks, commu nity leaders including Kinsky, Hoegbotton conspicuously absent, mouthed comforting plat.i.tudes to memorialize the man, then took the urn from its platform, pried open the lid, and cast the ashes of the world's greatest composer into the blue-brown waters of the Moth.

Voss Bender was dead.

Is my interpretation correct? I would like to think so, but one of the great challenges, the great allures, of a true work of art is that it either defies a.n.a.lysis or provides multiple theories for its existence. Further, I cannot fully explain the presence of the three birds, nor certain aspects of "Through His Eyes" with regard to the ring of red and the montage format.

Whatever the origin of and the statement made by "Invitation to a Be heading," it marked the beginning of Lake's ill.u.s.trious career. Before, he had been an obscure painter. After, he would be cla.s.sed among the greatest artists of the southern cities, his popularity as a painter soon to rival that of Bender as a composer. Lake would design wildly inventive sets for Bender operas and thus be responsible for an interpretive revival of those operas. He would be commissioned, albeit disastrously, to do commemorative work for Henry Hoegbotton, de facto ruler of Ambergris after Bender's death. His ill.u.s.trations for the Truffidians' famous Journal of Samuel Tonsure would be revered as minor miracles of the engraver's art. Exhibitions of his work would even grace the Court of Kalif himself, while nearly every year publishers would release a new book of his popular prints and drawings. In a hundred ways, he would rejuvenate Ambergris' cultural life and make it the wonder of the south. (In spite of which, he always seemed oddly annoyed, even stricken, by his success.) These facts are beyond doubt.

What, finally, was the mystery behind the letter held in the screaming man's hand, the mystery of "Invitation to a Beheading," we may never know. -From Janice Shriek's A Short Overview of The Art of Martin Lake and His Invitation to a Beheading, for the Hoegbotton Guide to Ambergris, 5th edition.

A year pa.s.sed, during which, as Raffe and many of his other friends re marked to Lake, he appeared to be doing penance for some esoteric crime. He spent long hours in the Religious Quarter, haunting back alleys and narrow streets, searching in the dirty, antique light for those scenes, and those scenes alone which best embodied his grief and the cruelty, the dispa.s.sionate pa.s.sion, of the city he had adopted as his home. He heard the whispers behind his back, the rumors that he had gone mad, that he was no longer a painter but a priest of an as yet unnamed religion, that he had partic.i.p.ated in some unspeakable mushroom dweller ritual, but he ignored such talk; or, rather, it did not register with him.

Six months after Bender's funeral, Lake visited 45 Archmont Lane , new cane trembling in his hand. He found it a burnt out husk, the only recognizable object amidst the ruins the bust of Trillian, blackened but intact. At first he picked it up, meaning to salvage it for his apartment, but as he wandered the wreckage for some sign of what had occurred there, the idea became distasteful, and he left the head in the rubble, its laconic eyes staring up at the formless sky. Nothing remained but the faint smell of carrion and smoke, rubbing against his nostrils. It might as well have been a dream.

Later that month, Lake asked Merrimount-lovely Merrimount, precious Merrimount-to move in with him permanently. He did not know he was going to ask Merri, but as the words left his lips they felt like the right words and Merri, tears in his eyes, said yes, smiling for the first time since before Lake's ordeal. They celebrated at a cafe, Raffe giving her guarded approval, Sonter and Kinsky bringing gifts and good cheer.

Things went better for Lake after that. Although the nightmares still affl icted him, he found that Merrimount's very presence helped him to forget, or at least disremember. He went by Shriek's gallery and took all of his paintings back, burning them in a barrel behind his apartment building. He began to frequent the Ruby Throated Calf again. His father even visited in late winter, a meeting which went better than expected, even after the guarded old man realized the nature of his son's relationship with Merrimount. He seemed genuinely touched when Lake presented him with the twin paintings of his own hands covered with insects, and with that approvalLake felt himself awakening even more. There were cracks in the ice. A light amid the shadows.

Yet Ambergris-city of versions and virgins both-did its best to remind him of the darkness. Everywhere, new tributes to Bender sprang up, for Bender's popularity had never been so high. It could be said with confidence that the man might never fade from memory. Under the vengeful eyes of Bender statues, posters, and memorial buildings, the Reds and Greens gradually lost their focus and exhausted themselves. Some merged with traditional political factions, but many died in a final confrontation at the Voss Bender Memorial Post Office. By spring, Ambergris seemed much as it had before Bender's death.