Chapter 5
Margaret’s Vow
Terror because her hair and mouth, once red, are pale gray. Her eyes, once green, are black as night. She sees the towels not as swaddling clothes now but as a seven-piece shroud.
The second death process is already under way, she thinks. She goes back to sobbing convulsively.
Maggie doesn’t understand that loss of color is perfectly normal in this space. No more than the four other Arrivals, she hasn’t noticed that everything in the vast bureaucratic room is black and white and gray as in an old-fashioned pre-Technicolor movie. Color (as they’ll soon see) is outside with that blue sky and those golden domes and gay striped awnings and, briefly, with what the Arrivals bring into the room. They quickly lose it. Already Helen’s resurrected mousy brown hair is a shade of mousy gray and Louis’ sky-blue Nordic eyes Latino black.
Color can’t survive here. Red turns to gray the way fire turns to ashes. Green turns black the way grass molders to compost. Blue too turns black, the way afternoon sky loses out to night. All these losses happen much faster here than outside.
Maggie, unaware of this phenomenon, sees herself condemned again to terrible things. Runny in a box beneath sunny earth. Or sentenced back to her terminal state. She imagines blindness and mental confusion in the wheelchair, her lovely body in ruin again.
She throws herself on her knees before the moth-eaten sub-prefectoral uniform. A torrent of pleas and vows pours from her gray lips. Spare her from the nickeled chair and the long box and she would be good, forever good, chaste and prayerful and saved.
Beyond this ragged figure of authority Maggie pours out her soul to the Supreme Authority, God Himself.
She vows an end to frivolity.
An end to drunkenness and gluttony.
Vows an end to lascivious nude dancing.
An end to dancing of any sort.
Vows an end to the poisoned delights of the flesh.
Vows absolute chastity until holy post-nuptial union with Jean Hussier in the event of Divine Forgiveness and transfer out there.
Or perhaps, better yet, union with no man ever again, her sole bridegroom Jesus Christ. She sees herself saved, taking the veil as Sister Margaret as she’d once imagined doing at the age of thirteen before the depravities of fourteen. Saved spiritually and physically, leading a cloistered life, cloistered but life anyhow. Her fiery hair (fiery again, for once the dying process reversed, it was sure to win back its natural hue) censored by scissors and the remnants condemned to solitary confinement beneath a nun’s cowl. Her depraved body concealed and knowing no itch other than the holy itch of rough-spun cloth.
Meditation.
Fasts.
Vigils.
Prayer.
Penitence. Penitence. Penitence.
Oh, unending Penitence for her sinful selfish life, for the men she’d inflicted suffering on. She thinks of Jean back in 1937 here in Paris, sees Jean’s chalky face that last time, hears his threat of suicide if she left him. Oh Jean. What happened to you? And now: Oh Louis. For she sees a bulging bit of Louis’ towel – no towel but a shroud like hers – projecting from the pillar. Louis, the most recent of her victims, whom she’d involved in unmerited punishment.
Sudden spiritual illumination transfigures Margaret’s lovely tear-stained features. Margaret (never again Maggie) understands the self-deception of her pleas, the hypocrisy of her longing to embrace humiliations and privations. Not out of genuine repentance, not out of love of God but out of abject terror at extinction, a clinging to life on any terms.
Now Margaret pleads for Louis with great eloquence, crying out in essence to Sub-Prefect Marchini: send me back to no-being but spare Louis from it, Louis, my partner in sin, but free from sin himself because unconscious of it. Whatever I touch or look upon I destroy.
Louis stares at the white-clad kneeling girl with the modestly compressed bosom and the strange gray hair. Her wet face is radiant with intense spirituality. Louis is completely confused. He can’t make the connection between the kneeling unclad shameless girl with the flaming red hair of a few minutes before and this one, kneeling too but in supplication. There’s a faint puzzling resemblance, though, between the two.
Now he understands that she’s begging for annihilation in his place. He finds that incomprehensible. Also intolerable.
Clutching his towel, Louis steps out from behind his pillar and proclaims her innocence.
Not this girl, the other girl, he exclaims.
Not true! Not true! she exclaims, thinking he’s referring to the thin sad-faced girl called Helen Something.
True! True! he exclaims.
Then he understands that she’s defending the other girl, the other girl who must be her sister. He understands that faint puzzling resemblance now. Louis is a deeply religious man when he thinks of religion. Like so many of his compatriots, his mind naturally operates in the Manichean mode of black and white. He has difficulty understanding how Virtue and Vice can be related and how Virtue can accept annihilation to save Vice.
Louis, who had heroically defied poorly aimed Spanish lead at San Juan Hill in July 1898, matches her selfless sacrifice. Heroically, he takes the thing upon himself.
He forced her to do what she did, he exclaims, meaning her sister, of course.
Not true, it was my fault! she exclaims.
No, mine! he persists.
The quarrel of goodness quickens. As at a spirited tennis-match, the functionaries’ heads pivot from right to left and from left to right with each retort and counter-retort of abnegation. Few of them understand English. But the intense emotion of the exchange between the handsome lad and the lovely girl, like a climactic duo in Italian opera, overcomes the language barrier. The chins of a few of the lower-echelon female functionaries tremble.
Sub-Prefect Marchini is deaf to the pathos. He finally emerges from reflection, determined to run the risk of encroaching on the prerogatives of his hierarchical superior. He turns to the stern-faced female functionary.
“Summon the Exit Squad at once!”
She seizes the largest of the whistles hanging from her squat neck, imports vast quantities of air in her lungs, puffing up and leaning back like a cobra ready to strike. Her eyes pop as she venomously injects all of the air into the whistle.
There’s no sound. A needle-sharp pain in their temples informs the Five that the summons is transpiring at an inhuman pitch as though alerting a beast sensitive to extreme frequencies. In the continuing silence the lower-echelon female functionaries huddle together defensively like veldt antelopes scenting approaching meat-eaters.
A door bursts open. Four black hulking booted helmeted figures trot into the room. They are encased in black leather. The only visible part of them are their grim mouths and massive chins beneath protective Plexiglas visors that resemble great panoramic insect eyes. Their gloved hands grip long supple black clubs.
“Dispose of the individuals clad in towels, all five of them!” commands Sub-Prefect Marchini, forgetting that he’d spared one of those five.
Three of the Exiters (also known as the Black Men) corral Louis and Seymour and Max.
“Oh what a pity,” whispers the fussily-dressed scented young functionary drawing close to Louis. “But there is no pain involved and guaranteed peace after, no second awakening, ever, ever.”
He approaches his hand to Louis’ bare heroic chest. A good inch away Louis feels the icy aura and pulls back.
“Hand down!” barks the severe-faced female functionary with the iron-gray bun. The Exiters turn their insect-eyed heads, like praying mantises, toward him.
Trying for an expression of impugned innocence, the young functionary holds up, as for inspection, his safely rubber-clad hands.
“Hand down! Distance!”
Pouting, the young functionary lowers his hands and steps back.
Three of the Exiters start marching the three men away to the void they should never have left. They offer no resi
stance. Max is glad to be leaving this crazy place. He thinks they’re taking him to a Las Vegas-bound Boeing. Helen accompanies him.
Creaking with totalitarian leather, the fourth Exiter marches toward Margaret who has totally broken down.
A door opens and closes with quiet authority. Sudden silence in the room. The functionaries, including the five Exiters and Sub-Prefect Marchini, stiffen to attention.
A murmur. Feet withdrawing. Feet approaching. A growing stench of rotting flowers. Margaret breathes through her mouth and opens her eyes. The sub-prefectoral scuffed shoes and moth-eaten trousers have made way to brilliant black English shoes and spotless white trousers with razor-sharp creases.
Raising her eyes she sees an impeccable white uniform covered with braid that would be golden if color existed in this dusty space, golden like the buttons, epaulettes and all those medals. A ceremonial sword in an engraved silver scabbard hangs smartly by his side.
Beneath the braided cap, an immensely long aristocratic face, a frighteningly chalky-white face. The whiteness can’t come from emotion, because his emaciated face is expressionless like a white death-mask cast a week after decease.
For long seconds Margaret is wordless, paralyzed with dread. Then she returns to imploration on behalf of her victim. One of her wild gestures of despair bursts a safety-pin and the uppermost towel starts slipping, barely retained by her nipples. She clutches it into half-way decency and blushes dark gray.
“Spare Louis Forster, sir. Oh sir, he’s innocent. Destroy me but not him. Destroy me body and soul,” she implores the frightening powerful presence.
“Cela serait vraiment bien dommage, mon enfant,” says PrEfet D’Aubier de Hautecloque (for yes, it is he) gazing down at her. His voice seems to come from a deep vault. The words emerge between the motionless lips of his death-mask and the stench of rotting flowers is overpowering.
Strangely, Margaret understands the remark perfectly although in her previous existence she’d been unreceptive to foreign tongues, linguistically speaking. In reply to her passionately expressed willingness to lose her renovated body, the dread presence had said: “That would indeed be a great pity, my child.”
The Prefect delicately tugs off his right-hand white glove. The Sub-Prefect stares intensely at that starved white hand that resembles an albino open-jawed prehistoric lizard. It moves toward the girl’s shoulder. Will he dare? Here? Before witnesses? Perhaps before the pitiless gaze of the omniscient omnipotent Most High Himself? The Sub-Prefect silently prays that the Prefect will dare.
But the white starved hand withdraws. The Prefect tugs back on the glove. The hungry lizard is muzzled. With his gloved hand the Prefect comforts her bare shoulder. Her shoulder flinches at the freezing contact that turns her heart to a block of ice.
Margaret backslides to Maggie as she tries to make up for the involuntary recoil. She smiles timidly up at the death-mask in a flutter of eyelashes. Then she stops doing that terrible inciting thing. Margaret again, she lowers her head in deep humility. Her heavy cascade of once fiery hair, now extinguished, falls forward, masking her face like a fundamentalist Moslem veil. Possibly she isn’t aware that the displaced hair has bared her downy neck vertebras, praised by countless lovers. Staring down at them, the Prefect asks in a cavernous boom that carries:
“Who ordered that this woman be exited without the habitual inquiry?”
“I did, Monsieur le Préfet,” says Sub-Prefect Marchini, still at rigid attention and staring into space past the Prefect’s left epaulette. “In her case and in three others.”
“I was unaware that you were vested with the authority to do so, Monsieur le Sous-Préfet.”
“Technically I am not, Monsieur le Préfet. But the anomalies, numerous and glaring, testified to obvious erroneous handling. [On your part, as everybody knows.] As you are doubtless aware, Monsieur le Préfet, administrative inquiries can take months or years. [Again, your entire responsibility, as everybody knows.] During that time, the Receiving Department is responsible for the detention of the investigated individuals, with no budgetary provision for their upkeep. [Whose fault?] I believed it to be in the best interest of all concerned, in view of the obvious anomalies, to take immediate action. Allow me, Monsieur le Préfet, to enumerate these anomalies. One: the complete nudity of the Five, partially rectified by the Receiving Department. The towels that now imperfectly clothe them are State property. Two: the absence of exit-date and sojourn-date conformity. The dates of exit range from 1927 to 2000, the dates of sojourn from 1899 to 1951. Three: the flagrant violation of the criterion of Goodness in the case of four of the five: criminal abortion activities, theft, desecration of a national shrine, tax evasion, indecent behavior in the Reception Department …”
“Precisely what sort of indecent behavior, Monsieur le Sous-Préfet?”
Sub-Prefect Marchini glances right and left. The women functionaries are within earshot. Much smaller than his superior (superior for the time being) the Sub-Prefect elevates himself to extreme tiptoe and whispers something long in the Prefect’s ear.
“Be more precise, Monsieur le Sous-Préfet.”
Once more, Sub-Prefect Marchini tiptoes to the level of the Prefect’s ear and whispers something long.
“Kindly eschew garbled Latinisms, laborious euphemisms and obscure circumlocutions, Monsieur le Sous-Préfet. Express yourself in plain French.”
The Sub-Prefect sees the trap but sees no way to avoid it. He whispers something very brief in the Prefect’s bloodless ear.
Prefect d’Aubier de Hautecloque looks coldly at Sub-Prefect Marchini.
“I am surprised at the use of such vulgar language here in the Préfecture de Police, Monsieur le Sous-Préfet.” His voice carries to the furthest corner of the room. Then he forgets Sub-Prefect Marchini altogether and gazes musingly down at Margaret.
Sub-Prefect Marchini’s gun-metal features acknowledge nothing of the public humiliation endured. He follows the Prefect’s gaze at the woman’s bare shoulder, the exquisite slope of it, and remembers the hushed-up scandal involving the Prefect and the platinum-blonde silent-film starlet in the August 1923 batch. Sub-Prefect Marchini is certain that the Prefect will again yield to temptation. Certain too that retribution will be devastating this time.
The cold dish, the cold dish, how delectable that cold dish, further seasoned by this latest humiliation, will soon be.
The Prefect removes his gaze from Margaret’s shoulder. He makes a tiny dismissive gesture in the direction of the Exiters. They stiffen with a creak of leather, salute and march out of the Reception Room. The Prefect orders the concerned functionaries to accompany the Arrivals to the Living Quarters.
The Arrivals stagger out of the Reception Room into a gigantic circular passageway that seems suspended in darkness. A drab alternation of doors and open corridors, hundreds of both, run about a black pit a mile in diameter and delimited by a shoulder-high iron fence bristling with needle-sharp spikes and barbs. Dim lights in the circular wall illuminate no more than the initial curve of what must culminate in a gigantic dome. To one side of the Reception Room is an ornate Greco-Roman peristyle. Six identical marble nudes uphold the Doric roof topped by a giant bronze eagle. A carpet leads to an impressive door. Any doubt as to the occupant of this dusty grandeur is dispelled when the Prefect marches stiffly towards that door. It opens obediently and closes behind him.
On the other side of the Reception Room is another ornate door, but much smaller and in sad disrepair. Fastened to the wall above it is another emblematic bird, originally an eagle but much smaller than the Prefectoral eagle and so battered that it resembles a crow.
The five Americans, maybe good, maybe not, stand there shivering. The stern-faced middle-echelon female functionary with iron-gray hair blows inaudibly on a smaller whistle. In a minute three policemen join the group. While they go on waiting for something or somebody else, Helen tries to soothe Max. She touches his arm. “Maybe you’re right, Max. Maybe they’l
l take you to the airport.”
But Max doesn’t believe that anymore. He pulls away from her hand. He knows the score now. And maybe this woman is in cahoots with his captors.
Sub-Prefect Marchini passes by jerkily, heading for the inferior door and bird.
“Monsieur,” Seymour Stein inquires timidly: “What will happen to us if we are not voided? Where will we go? And how long will we have to wait here?”
“You will be informed in due course,” says the Sub-Prefect without breaking his jerky stride. “Learn to arm yourself with patience in this place. As we all do.”