Sheri S. Tepper - Marianne, the Magus, and the Manticore

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2024-12-05 0 0 1.47MB 185 页 5.9玖币
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DURING THE NIGHT, Marianne was awakened by a steady drum-
ming of rain, a muffled tattoo as from a thousand drumsticks
on the flat porch roof, a splash and gurgle from the rainspout
at the corner of the house outside Mrs. Winesap's window,
bubbling its music in vain to ears which did not hear. "I hear,"
whispered Marianne, speaking to the night, the rain, the comer
of the living room she could see from her bed. When she lay
just so, the blanket drawn across her lips, the pillow crunched
into an exact shape, she could see the amber glow of a lamp
in the living room left on to light one corner of the reupholstered
couch, the sheen of the carefully carpentered shelves above it,
the responsive glow of the refinished table below, all in a kindly
shine and haze of belonging there. "Mine," said Marianne to
the room. The lamplight fell on the first corner of the apartment
to be fully finished, and she left the light on so that she could
see it if she woke, a reminder of what was possible, a promise
that all the rooms would be reclaimed from dust and dilapi-
dation. Soon the kitchen would be finished. Two more weeks
at the extra work she was doing for the library and she'd have
enough money for the bright Mexican tiles she had set her heart
upon.
"Mine," she said again, shutting her eyes firmly against the
seductive glow. She had spent all Cloud-haired mama's jewelry
on the house. The lower floor, more recently occupied and in
a better state of repair, was rented out to Mrs. Winesap and
Mr. Larken—whose relationship Marianne often speculated
upon, varyingly, as open windows admitted sounds of argument
or expostulation or as the walls transmitted the unmistakable
rhythm of bedsprings—and the shimmy part was occupied by
Marianne herself. "Not so slummy anymore," she hummed to
herself in the darkness. "Not so damn slummy."
If she had been asked, she could not have said why it had
been so important to have rooms of her own, rooms with softly
glowing floorboards, rooms with carefully stripped woodwork
painted a little darker than the walls, all in a mauvey, sunset
glow, cool and spacious as a view of distant mountains, where
there had been only cracked, stained plaster with bits of horse-
hair protruding from it to make her think for weary months
that she was trying to make a home in the corpse of some great,
defunct animal. At the time she had not known about old
plaster, old stairs, old walls, nothing about splintered wood-
work and senile plumbing—either balky or incontinent. Some-
thing in the old house had nagged at her. "Buy me, lady. You're
poor. I'm poor. Buy me, and let us live together."
Perhaps it had been the grace of the curved, beveled glass
lights above the front door and the upstairs windows. Perhaps
it had been the high ceilings, cracked though they were, and
the gentle slope of the banisters leading to the second floor.
Perhaps the dim, cavelike mystery of the third floor beneath
the flat roof. Perhaps even the arch of branches in the tangled
shrubbery which spoke of old, flowering things needing to be
rescued from formlessness and thistle. "Sleeping Beauty," she
had said more than once. "A hundred years asleep." Though
it hadn't been a hundred years. Ten or fifteen, perhaps, since
someone had put a new roof on it. Forty, perhaps, since anyone
had painted or repaired otherwise. Both times someone, anyone
had run out of money, or time, or interest, and had given up
to let it stand half vacant, occupied on the lower floor by a
succession of recluses who had let the vines cover the windows
and the shrubs grow into a thicket.
Perhaps it hadn't been anything unique in this particular
house except that it stood only a block from the campus. From
her windows she could look across the lawns of the university
to the avenue, across acres of orderly green setting off rose-
ash walls of Georgian brick, a place of quiet and haven among
the hard streets. "Damn Harvey," she hummed to herself, mov-
ing toward sleep. This was part of the daily litany: at least a
decade of "mine's" and five or six "damn Harvey's."
It shouldn't have been necessary to sell all Mama's jewelry.
Harvey could have advanced her some of her own inheritance—
even loaned it to her at interest. The past two years of niggling
economies, the endless hours using the heat gun to strip paint
until her ears rang with the howl of it and her hands turned
numb.... "Carpal tunnel syndrome," the doctor had said. "Quit
whatever your're doing with your hands and the swelling will
stop. With what your papa left you, sweetie, what's this passion
for doing your own carpentry?" Dr. Brown was an old friend—
well, an old acquaintance—who believed his white hair gave
him license to call her sweetie. Maybe he called all the people
he had once delivered as babies sweetie, no matter how old
they got, but the familiar, almost contemptuous way he said it
didn't tempt her to explain.
"Look," she could have said. "Papa Zahmani was pure, old-
country macho to the tips of his toes. He didn't leave his little
girl anything. He left it all in half-brother Harvey's hands until
little Marianne either gets married—in which case presumably
her sensible husband will take care of it for her—or gets to be
thirty years old. I guess he figured if Marianne wasn't safely
married by thirty, she never would be and it would be safe to
let such a hardened spinster handle her own affairs. Until men,
however, Harvey controls the lot—half-brother Harvey who
treats every dime of Marianne's money as though it were a
drop of his own blood."
Anyhow, why explain? It wouldn't change anything. The
truth was simply that she hadn't the money to pay anyone to
paint the walls or strip the woodwork or reupholster the fur-
niture scrounged from secondhand shops. "Junk shops," she
reminded herself. "Not so damn junky anymore...."
"You can live on what I allow you," Harvey had said, off-
handedly. "If you get a cheap room somewhere. There's no
earthly reason for you to go on to school. You are by no stretch
of the imagination a serious student, and if you're determined
to live the academic life—well, you'll have to work your way
through. If you're determined to get a graduate degree—which
will be useless to you—you'll spend most of your time on
campus anyhow. You don't need a nice place to live. A little
student squalor goes with the academic ambience."
Not that Harvey exposed himself to squalor of any kind.
His six-room Boston apartment took up half the upper floor of
a mellow old brownstone on Beacon Hill, and an endless skein
of nubile, saponaceous Melissas and Randis and Cheryls re-
placed one another at eager intervals as unpaid housekeepers,
cooks, and laundresses for Harvey S. Zahmani, professor of
Oriental languages and sometime ethnologist, who had had the
use of all his own inheritance and all of Marianne's since he
was twenty-six. Papa hadn't believed that women should take
up space in universities unless they "had to work," a fate ev-
idently worse than death and far, far worse than an unhappy
marriage. "I do have to work," Marianne had said to Harvey
more than once. "Do you really expect me to live on $500 a
month? Come on, Harvey, that's poverty level minus and you
know it."
"It's what Papa would have done." Bland, smiling, knowing
she knew he didn't give a damn what Papa would have done,
that he hadn't cared for Papa or Papa's opinions at all, giving
her that twinge deep down in her stomach that said "no fury
like a man scorned," and a kind of fear, too, that the man
scorned would try something worse to get even.
"Hell, Harvey," she whispered to herself. "I was only thir-
teen and you were twenty-six. I don't care if you were drunk.
You're my half-brother, for God's sake. What did you expect
me to do, just lie there and let you use me for one of your
Randis or Cheryls because I was convenient?" It had been a
frightening scene, interrupted by the housekeeper. Neither of
them had referred to it since, but Marianne remembered, and
she thought Harvey did, too. Why else this nagging enmity,
this procession of little annoyances?
"You give up this graduate degree business and do something
more in keeping with your position, and I'll see about increasing
your allowance...." He had sneered that polite, academic sneer,
which could only remotely be interpreted as a threat. Marianne
hadn't been able to figure out what would have been more in
keeping with her position. What position did a poverty-stricken
heiress have? Great expectations? She had on occasion thought
of raffling herself off on the basis of her Great Expectations.
Perhaps temporary matrimony? No. She was too stubborn. Sue?
It was possible, of course, but Marianne felt that going to the
law to gain control of her money would involve her in more
of a struggle with Harvey than she had the strength for. Nope.
If Papa had been a chauvinistic Neanderthal, Marianne would
play it out—all the way. But she would not do it in squalor,
not even student-style squalor. The jewelry had been given to
her when Cloud-haired mama had died. So far as anyone knew
it was still in the safe-deposit box. Marianne had never worn
it. Now it had gone for fifty percent of its value to pay for
three stories of dilapidated Italianate brick across the street from
the university, and Marianne spent every available hour with
tools or paintbrushes in her hands. The worst of it was done.
Even the scrappy little area out front had been sodded and
fringed with daffodils for spring, with pulmonaria and bergenia
to bloom later, and astilbe waiting in the wings for midsummer.
Harvey, if he ever came to Virginia to visit her, which he never
had, would find only what he could have expected—a decently
refurbished apartment in an elderly house. Not even Mrs. Wine-
sap or Mr. Larkin knew she owned the place. "Mine," she said
for the tenth time that day, sinking at last into sleep.
There had been a time, long before, when there had been
gardens lit by daffodils fringing acres of lawn. There had been
a time when there had been many rooms, large, airy rooms
with light falling into them through gauzy curtains in misty
colors of dusk and distance. Sometimes, on the verge of wak-
ing, Marianne thought of that long-ago place. There had been
a plump cook Marianne had called Tooky, even when she was
old enough to have learned to say "Mrs. Johnson." There had
been an old Japanese man and his two sons who worked in the
gardens. Marianne had trotted after them in the autumn, her
pockets bulging with tulip bulbs, a bulb in each hand, fascinated
by the round, solid promise of them, the polished wood feeling
of their skins, the lovely mystery of the little graves the gardener
dug—what was his name? Mr. Tanaka. And his sons. Not
Bob, not Dick. Robert and Richard. Robert digging the round
holes, Marianne pitching in the handfuls of powdery bone-
meal, Robert mixing it all into a soft bed, then taking the bulbs
from her one by one to set them in an array. Then, filling in
the hole, the hole so full of promise, knowing the promise
would be kept. And then, in the spring, the clumps of green
stalks, the buds opening into great goblets of bloom. Marianne
standing with Cloud-haired mama to peer into those blooms,
into the bottoms of those glorious vases where bees made bel-
ligerent little noises of ownership against the yellow bases of
the petals, a round sun glowing at the bottom of the flower to
echo the great sun burning above them.
Marianne didn't even remember it, and yet when she had
bought the garden supplies last fall, she had stood in the garden
shop with her hand deep in the carton of tulip bulbs, not seeing
them, unaware of her own silent presence there. When she had
paid for the plants there had been tears running down her
cheeks, and the sales clerk had stared at her in perplexity, for
her voice had been as calm and cheerful as it usually was while
the tears ran down her cheeks and dropped off her chin. Later,
she looked into the mirror and saw the runnels from eyes to
chin and could not think what might have caused them.
Cloud-haired mama had died when Marianne was thirteen.
That was when Harvey had... well. No point in thinking about
it. After that had been boarding schools, mostly. Papa Zahmani
had sold the big house with the gardens. Holidays had been
here, in this city, in the town house. Then, only a year later,
Papa Zahmani had died. The headmistress had told her in the
office at school and had helped her dress and pack and be ready
for the car. Two funerals in less than a year, and no reason
anyone could give for either one. No reason for Mama to have
died. No reason for Papa to have died. Dr. Brown acted baffled
and strained, with his mouth clamped shut. After that was more
school, and more school, and summer camps, and college, and
more college. There had not been any home to return to, and
the only career which occurred to her was the same one Harvey
had entered—ethnology. Which might be another reason for
his sniping at her. Harvey didn't like competition. As though
Marianne would be competition—though someday perhaps,
when she was decades older, if she became recognized in the
field, and... Well. She tried not to think about it. It was better
not to think about Cloud-haired mama, or Papa Zahmani, or
Harvey. It was easier to live if one were not angry, and it was
easier not to be angry if she did not think about those things.
She woke in the morning to a world washed clean. Outside
the window the white oak had dropped its burden of winter-
dried leaves into the wind, littering them across the spring lawns
which stretched away between swatches of crocus purple and
ruby walls, a syrup of emeralds, deep as an ocean under the
morning sun, glittering from every blade. Slate roofs glistened,
walls shone, teary windows blinked the sun into her face as
she leaned from the window to recite the roll call of the place.
Mossy walks, present. Daffodils, granite steps, white columns,
ivy slickly wet and tight as thatch, a distant blaze of early
rhododendrons. All bright and shiny-faced, pleased and yet dig-
nified, as such a place should be, her own slender windows
fronting on it so that she might soak it in, breathe it, count it
over like beads. Yew hedge, present. Tulip tree, present. The
multi-paned windows of the library across the way; the easy
fall of lawn down the slope to the side walk and street at the
comer.
The street. Marianne hastily glanced away, too late. A red
bus farted away from the curb in pig-stubborn defiance of
imminent collision. The shriek of crumpled metal came coin-
cident with the library chimes, and a flurry of Me Donalds
wrappers lifted from the gutter to skulk into the shrubbery.
"Damn," she murmured, starting her daily scorecard in the
endless battle between order and confusion. "Confusion, one;
order, nothing." By her own complex rules, she could not count
sameness for order points. There was nothing really new in the
order of the campus, the buildings, the gardens—no lawn
freshly mowed or tree newly planted. She made a face as she
turned back to the room, hands busy unbraiding the thick, black
plait which hung halfway down her back. The room, at least,
would not contribute to confusion. Except for the Box.
It sat half under the coffee table where she had left it, unable
to bear the thought of it lurking in the darkness of some closet
or completely under the table where she could not keep an eye
on it. Better to have it out where she could see it, know where
it was. "Damn Harvey," she said, starting the day's tally. If
she took the Box to (he basement storage room, he might decide
to come visit her. She believed, almost superstitiously, that the
act of taking the Box out of her apartment and putting it some-
where else, no matter how safe a place that might be, would
somehow stimulate a cosmic, reciprocal force. If his presence,
more than merely symbolized by the Box, were removed, some
galactic accountant might require him to be present in reality.
"Silly," she admonished herself, kicking the Box as she
passed it. "Silly!" Still, she left it where it was, decided to
ignore it, turned on the television set to drown out any thought
of it. Despite the bus crash, the morning was full of favorable
portents. No time to waste thinking of Professor Harvey S.
Zahmani.
"... Zahmani," the television echoed in its cheerful-pedan-
tic news voice. "M. A. Zahmani, Prime Minister of Alphen-
licht, guest lecturer at several American universities this spring,
prior to his scheduled appearance before the United Nations
this week..."
This brought her to crouch before the tube, seeing a face
altogether familiar. It was Harvey. No, it wasn't Harvey. It
looked like Harvey, but not around the mouth or eyes. The
expression was totally different. Except for that, they could be
Siamese twins. Except that Harvey was up in Boston and this
man was here at the university to lecture... on what? On Al-
phenlicht, of course. She had read something about the current
controversy over Alphenlicht and—what was that other tiny
country? Lubovosk. There was a Newsweek thingy on it, and
she burrowed under the table for the latest issue as the television
began a breathless account of basketball scores and piggy-
backed commercials in endless, morning babble.
"... Among the world's oldest principalities, the two tiny
nations of Alphenlicht and Lubovosk were joined until the
nineteenth century under a single, priestly house which traced
its origins back to the semi-mythical Magi. A minor territorial
skirmish in the mid-nineteenth century left the northern third
of the minuscule country under Russian control. Renamed 'Lu-
bovosk,' the separated third now asserts legal rights to the
priestly throne of Alphenlicht, a claim stoutly opposed by Prime
Minister of Alphenlicht, Makr Avehl Zahmani...."
There was a map showing two sausage-link-shaped terri-
tories carved out of the high mountains between Turkey and
Iraq and an inset picture of a dark, hawk-eyed woman identified
as the hereditary ruler of Lubovosk. Marianne examined the
woman with a good deal of interest. The face was very familiar.
It was not precisely her own, but there was something about
the expression which Marianne had seen in her mirror. The
woman might be a cousin, perhaps. "Good lord," Marianne
admonished the pictured face. "If you and Russia want it, why
doesn't Russia just invade it the way they did Afghanistan?"
Receiving no reply, she rose to get about the business of break-
fast. "Zahmani," she mused. She had never met anyone with
that name except Harvey and herself. In strange cities, she had
always looked in the phone book to see whether there might
be another Zahmani. Then, too, Alphenlicht was the storybook
land which had always been featured in Cloud-haired mama's
bedtime tales. Alphenlicht. Surprising, really. She had known
it was a real place, but she had never thought of it as real until
this moment. Alphenlicht. Zahmani. "This," she sang to herself
as she scrambled eggs, "would be interesting to know more
about."
When she left the apartment, her hair was knotted on her
neck, she was dressed in a soft sweater and tweedy skirt, and
the place was orderly behind her. She checked to see that she
had her key, the Box nudging her foot while she ignored it,
refused to see it. Instead, she shut her eyes, turned to face the
room, then popped her eyes open. She did this every morning
to convince herself that she had not dreamed the place, every
morning doubting for a moment that it would be there. Was
the paint still the dreamed-on color? Were the drapes still soft
around the windows, curtains moving just a little in the breeze?
No rain today, so she left the window open an inch to let the
spring in and find it there when she returned. "I love you,
room," she whispered to it before leaving it. "I will bring you
a pot of crocuses tonight." Purple ones. In a blue glazed pot.
She could see them in her head, as though they were already
on the window seat, surrounded by the cushions.
Back in the unremembered time, there had been a window
seat with cushions where Marianne had nested like a fledgling
bird. Cloud-haired mama had teased Harvey, sometimes, and
urged him to sit on the window seat with them and listen to
her stories. Marianne had been hiding in the cushions of the
摘要：

DURINGTHENIGHT,Mariannewasawakenedbyasteadydrum-mingofrain,amuffledtattooasfromathousanddrumsticksontheflatporchroof,asplashandgurglefromtherainspoutatthecornerofthehouseoutsideMrs.Winesap'swindow,bubblingitsmusicinvaintoearswhichdidnothear."Ihear,"whisperedMarianne,speakingtothenight,therain,thecom...

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