Curioso

3383 words

It was a face that even men found distracting — not feminine though, not pretty, but leonine, with muscular jaws, a wide mouth, broad nose, and deep, intense eyes, eyes that did not blink or glitter now that they stared straight through the ceiling of the chapel into the face of God. The young priest lay across the altar, a dark stain slowly spreading across the breast of his surplice, a dark puddle overflowing the edges of the altar, dripping on to the floor of Inca stone.

"Confess!" hissed the investigator.

"I know nothing about this death," Duul answered.

The investigator adopted a slightly kinder tone. "If you confess soon, it will go easier with you."

"I cannot confess to that about which I know nothing."

"You knew that he had been creeping into your wife's bedroom at night while you slept."

"Liar!"

"Her maidservant can be brought in to testify."

"I do not believe you. It is said that an old man with a beautiful young wife needs eyes in the back of his head. Believe me — I have eyes everywhere, my friend, and yet I knew nothing. Your insinuations are false!"

"You are a powerful man, Duul. Quite powerful enough to have a multiplicity of hands as well as eyes."

"Powerful enough — had I sufficient reason!"

"And there was not the ghost of a reason?"

"There was not — Oh — I grow too old and tired for this foolish game. If you say that you have proof of her infidelity then I will not argue with you. She is most beautiful — do you not think? — but her beauty is not ordinary, not — how would you put it? — not of the angelic kind; this priest may well have supplied her with that with which I have had but meagre supply these recent years. I am no fool. But neither is she. She knows that on my death she will become one of the wealthiest women in the land. Then she may have the attentions of all the handsome young priests she may desire. Until then she will treat me with whatever kindness a young woman may find in her heart for an old man and I will be thankful for it. So let us stop pretending that we do not live in the real world, you and I. If she has deceived me then she has done so with all the discretion that courtesy demands. I knew nothing of it. I did not kill the priest!"

"Let me blow away the clouds for you, Duul. This priest was a particular favourite of — one whose name must not be mentioned in connection with this matter."

"If you had proof that I was behind this death then you would not be demanding a confession — even if your orders had come directly from Heaven itself! Since you have no proof, you must release me."

"You still underestimate those that require a satisfactory outcome in this matter. I have promised them that it will be resolved. You continue to deny knowledge? Yes, I can see that you do. Very well, of this much you can be certain: one who knows the truth of this matter will never leave this cell."

With that, the investigator stalked out. The guards shut the door to the windowless cell behind him. A short while later a guard reopened the door. Another guard carried a bundle of candles, paper, a number of quills, and some ink to a rude table beside the bunk on which Duul lay with his hands over his face. A moment later something limp and heavy was tossed into the cell. Duul knew without removing his hands from his face that it was the lifeless body of the priest. The cell door slammed shut. Duul was faintly aware that the guards had escorted a number of servants into the corridor behind the door. He dimly registered the barked orders, the grunts and panting of men engaged in strenuous activity, and the sounds of heavy stone blocks being cemented into place.

"Tomas!" Duul suddenly shrieked.

"Yes, my dear Duul?" the investigator answered.

"I will confess to you one thing. Your walls cannot hold one who knows the truth."

"Are you prepared for today's dictation, Pedrolino?" said the old man of letters.

"Yes, Master," said Pedrolino.

"You know, when my ancestor said that the walls could not hold one who knew the truth, he was telling the investigator more than someone of his limited mentality was capable of grasping. The truth of which my ancestor spoke was something more profound than the simple matter that concerned the investigator."

"Should I be writing this down, Master?" said Pedrolino.

"Write this down:

"I am the last of my line. It is an ancient line that has long been prey to a number of hereditary weaknesses, the principal of which is a certain inadequacy of the senses. I am able to exist only because of the wealth accumulated by my ancestors. Even before my birth, the physical degeneration of my immediate forebears had proceeded to the point where they would not have been able to withstand even the slightest descent into poverty. Nevertheless the family fortune has dwindled since, for centuries, none has had that rare vitality of body or mind necessary for its renewal or even its preservation. In more recent times, the successive governments have aided us by making available a range of posts that have enabled us to continue living in a manner permitting our survival. Even with such assistance, however, I am (as I have indicated) the last of the Duuls. I have been the National Director of Libraries, the most important of which bears my family name, for eight years. The burdens of this position grow difficult for me to bear and I have found it necessary to delegate all but the receipt of funds to lesser souls. The extraordinary sensitivity of the heir to so uncommon an agglomeration of privilege and frailty is all that I can offer the world in exchange for the heavy toll my kind has exacted from it over the centuries.

"The decline of my senses has advanced to the stage where I have withdrawn to an inner universe whose very existence may be mistaken for the delusion of one whose uncommon erudition and eclecticism have only multiplied his native eccentricity. But among the dark corridors and carnival mirrors of that tortuous maze one may glimpse the silvery flickering of something that burns ever more brightly for the sensitivity which grows with increasing distance from the everyday world. It is to this peculiar, most extraordinary sensitivity that I attribute the discovery of that which I will now relate to you, the revelation of which is my purpose in delivering to the world this tale.

"It is necessary to understand that the lives of the Duuls have been very much as they would have wished them to be; if this were not so then my claims would ring hollow indeed. In my case, the seclusion of my ancestral home with its sublime architecture, art, and furnishings; the finest education; the satisfaction of whatever earthly desires I may have had — these elements have coalesced to form the most perfect chrysalis imaginable for the development of one such as I. The decline of the physical senses may seem a severe limitation to some, but to one such as myself, that which arrives through the senses grows ever more burdensome. The best musical performances are marred by clumsiness and imperfection. There is not a painting or a sculpture so resolved that I would not find it crude. The finest clothing and softest of furnishings do not provide comfort. Even the scent of violets appals me. Everything is chaos and disarray. It is always too hot or too cold, too light or too dark. Unbearable! But having departed from the senses, the soul begins to traverse a pathway of silver light that stretches up to the highest spiritual realms, to the abode of absolute truth itself. What still perfection! What sombre ecstasy! Even though I am, as everyone knows, unable to move unaided, there can be few who have lived who were as satisfied with their lives as am I.

"I am the result of many, many centuries of constant development — many, many lives. I have reached a point beyond which continued existence is unnecessary. But having reached the highest stage achievable in human form, before going on to the next stage, there is some obligation on me to contribute to the enlightenment of the less evolved beings that swarm amid their own filth and squalor, blinded by their own seeing, immured in a prison of their own making.

"Each journey must begin with a single step. The first step was taken by my ancestor Duul as he lay in that cell. There was no way out — the monastery had been built on ancient, pre-Columbian ruins; the walls of the dungeon were of giant, perfectly fitted stones and were thirteen feet thick at their narrowest point. The new wall, built on the other side of a locked, iron door, although not similarly massive, was quite adequate to the task of keeping any man from escaping. And yet we know that he escaped. The skeleton that was discovered walled up in the dungeon when this great house was built on the foundations of the old monastery was that of a robust young man, not that of my frail ancestor. Clearly, the fact that the rational mind is unable to perceive a way out of the cell does not mean that there was no way out of the cell."

Chink!

"But my ancestor was very like myself, albeit in a less developed form. The more subtle philosophers have long thought that the world of the senses is but a shadow of the realm of eternal ideas, the abode of absolute truth. Some may even have apprehended a measure of this truth. My ancestor took the next step. One who has escaped from the prison house of the senses does not merely glimpse truth, he dwells as an active agent in the realm of truth. He has entered at the threshold of the very engine-house of being, fused his soul with the mighty machinery of creation. To such a one, the supposedly immutable laws of nature are no more binding than the petty bylaws of a some nearby city."

Chink!

"If the poor, suffering hoard of common humanity were for just one instant to glimpse the truth then they would laugh the laugh of the immortals for it is a truly divine joke. But trapped as they are within the stone walls of their illusory reality, they do not even begin to suspect that their condition is of their own making."

Chink!

"Pedrolino — what are you doing?"

"Something that I think will not bother one such as you very much, Master."

"Elaborate, I beg you."

"Lacking heavy stone blocks and the means to move them alone, I am using humble bricks to block up the entrance to this room."

"Chink!"

"But you have left your notes behind. You will deny the world the words that may be a means to its salvation?"

"Those are blank sheets. I have my notes. Two more bricks and it will be done."

"But my message is unfinished!"

Chink!

"Then I will deny the world one more example of the demented prattle that it has been mistaking for literature all these years. In fact, I will tell you exactly what I will do — I will dispense with the claptrap, add a few twists and a clever denouement, and send it to your publisher. The critics will say your writing is much improved."

"Oh come now, Pedrolino, do you really think you will write the last line of this tale?"

Scrape... scrape... chunk!

"And that's all there was to it?" Isabel asked. "No screaming or pleading?"

"Not a bit; he seemed quite — unconcerned. Strange. The only thing that bothered him was that his story was unfinished. It's not as though he were a human being or anything though," said Pedrolino.

"Did you mean what you said about finishing his story?"

"Yes — and it would not be the first time. I have often made changes to his stories. At first I used to make little changes, then larger ones. I found it amusing. With only a tenth of his advantages I would have been a most successful author."

"Of course you would!"

"Don't mock me. When the patriarch of the ancient house of Duul who is also the National Director of Libraries writes, the world reads. I have actually gone so far as to submit entire pieces of my own. As long as the publisher thinks that they were written by him they are perfectly happy to accept them. In fact, I had better send a story or a poem from time to time otherwise they could become suspicious. He can eventually slow down; he is getting very old."

"Yes, very old. This will be a much more heavenly palazzo with a young man occupying the master bedroom." Isabel's black eyes glittered and her perfectly white teeth appeared.

Since no one but Isabel and Pedrolino ever dealt directly with Duul — his reclusiveness was legendary — concealing his disappearance would be a simple matter. Pedrolino would continue to manage his affairs as he had always done. Isabel would continue to run the household. Pedrolino would occasionally put on one of Duul's suits and red stocking cap, sit in Duul's wheelchair, and Isabel would wheel him slowly past the colonnade of arched windows that were visible from the courtyard. Little more would be needed to persuade the world that the great author was still in residence.

The next day Pedrolino decided to begin work on Duul's story. Only a few hours were required to tidy up what he had so far. He decided that it needed some sex involving Duul's young wife and the handsome priest — details courtesy of the previous night's celebration of new freedom. Pedrolino became so excited while writing this part that he had found it necessary to visit Isabel again.

"You know, he's probably still alive down there," Isabel said after the frenzied encounter. The sheer speed and ferocity of movement Pedrolino had needed to bring himself to orgasm for the dozenth time in as many hours had resulted in his penis missing its place, and, as Isabel had attempted to reinsert it, he had ejaculated copiously all over her vulva.

"If you call it being alive. When he is not dictating he goes into a kind of trance that is so close to death that I am quite sure he will pass from one state to the other with no pain or discomfort whatsoever."

"Mmmm… nice, I was getting a bit sore," said Isabel, massaging semen into her swollen vulva.

"How you and that thing ever managed to…"

"I have told you, I'm not going to discuss that," Isabel interrupted.

"…I mean, he is hardly capable of movement."

"You will have to use your imagination if your curiosity is so insatiable."

Pedrolino went back to his writing. Some outlining of Duul's web of power and its deadly effect was needed; some more sex to account for the priest's popularity in elevated ecclesiastical circles. But how should it end? Barring divine intervention, Pedrolino was unable to think of a satisfactory solution, and he was determined that the story should be resolved without resort to fantastical device. Pedrolino fully intended to leave something to be published after his death, a confession of how he had stolen everything that Duul had owned. The world would be ashamed to condemn him as a hack writer having accepted that his work was from the pen of one of its most highly respected avant-garde writers, but comparisons would be inevitable. He must write with this in mind.

Two days later he had added precisely nothing. There were certain historical facts that could not be altered. The investigator had kept a journal, much of which had survived. The single, robust skeleton found in the cell had not been Duul's. The cell had contained no hidden doorways or secret passages.

Not that Pedrolino would have taken it seriously, but he could not help wondering how Duul had intended to end the story. The thought that there already was, in some sense, an ending made it impossible for him to invent one; no matter how perfect a solution Pedrolino would contrive, it inevitably fell short of the unknown "correct" solution. Duul's last words came back to him with increasing regularity, taunting him without mercy: do you really think you will write the last line of this tale?

But had Duul finished the story? He was capable of moving a pen — little more. At first it seemed unlikely; why would he? But recalling the importance he had attached to his tale, it began to seem even more unlikely that he would have left it unfinished. There was no way around it. Pedrolino would have to break into the room to discover what Duul had written.

Armed with an array of implements, of which the pickaxe had proved the most effective, Pedrolino had broken a hole in the fresh brick wall.

When he entered the room there was a stub of candle flickering in the centre of a small table. Duul was seated motionless beside the table. The rest of the room was in deep shadow. Pedrolino snatched up the papers that were scattered on the table. One by one, he held each before the candle and examined both sides carefully. Growing agitated, he held each sheet up to the candle so that the light would shine through, refusing to believe that Duul had written nothing.

He started backwards, dazzled from the candle's flame, looking around in desperation for more paper. He tripped on something and hit the stone floor. Without getting up, he felt around in the gloom. His hand touched fabric. It was covering something soft and heavy. Amid the swarm of candle after-images he thought he saw two unblinking jewels of cold jelly set in a face that might have been handsome had it not been transformed by the holy terror that fills those who have recently glimpsed the face of God. He must be mistaken.

"Well?"

The voice came from nowhere. It had a strange accent.

"Has he confessed?"

The voice seemed to demand an answer.

"Has he written anything down?"

Pedrolino knew the answer to that — "No," he murmured, still confused.

"What are you doing in there, fool of a secretary?" The voice was growing impatient.

Pedrolino knew perfectly well what he was doing, but could not imagine how this information could be of benefit to anyone else.

"You are too slow! I will check for myself."

Someone clambered into the room. Pedrolino watched in disbelief as a pair of thigh boots crossed the stone floor.

"Get up off the floor, you imbecile. God, but the air is evil in here!"

The figure in the thigh boots strode over to Duul's body.

"Aha! Here it is," he said, snatching the sheet of paper from Duul's frozen grasp and holding it up to the candle.

"Not much here," he snorted after a moment, "but it is enough, a confession. Wait — what's this?" The investigator looked at his thumb for a moment. Suddenly, he placed the sheet of paper on the table and slammed his open right hand down onto it, holding it there for a moment while he glared at Pedrolino. Grabbing the candle with his left, he thrust the candle and his open right hand into Pedrolino's face so that he could clearly see the imprint made by the still-wet ink of the confession. "But whose confession is it! Stay exactly where you are, secretary," he snarled.

The investigator called his men and ordered them to remove the bodies of Duul and the priest, but Pedrolino was not paying attention. He might have heard the barked orders, the sounds of men working, the sounds of heavy blocks being cemented into place — might have, had he not been hypnotised by a cold, silvery sound, the sound of Duul's far-off, mocking laughter.

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