Constant Fire

17. In which Miss Mavis Ming at last attains a State of Grace

Emmanuel Bloom swung himself from the ceiling, an awkward macaw. He no longer wore his paint and motley but was again dressed in his black velvet suit.

Mavis Ming saw that he had entered by means of a hatch. Doubtless the control cabin of the ship was above.

"My Goddess," said the Fireclown.

She still sat on the edge of the bed. Her voice was without emotion. "You traded me for the cup. That's what it was all about. What a fool I am!"

"No, not you. Doctor Volospion proposed the bargain and so enabled me to keep my word to him. He demanded the cup which I kept in my ship. I gave it to him." He strutted across the cabin and manipulated a dial. Red-gold light began to fill his living quarters. Now everything glowed and each piece of fabric, wood or metal seemed to have a life of its own.

Mavis Ming stood up and edged away from the bed. She drew her kimono about her, over her pendulous breasts, her fat stomach, her wide thighs.

"Listen," she began. She was breathing rapidly once more. "You can't really want me, Mr Bloom. I'm fat old Mavis. I'm ugly. I'm stupid. I'm selfish. I should be left on my own. I'm better off on my own. I know I'm always looking for company, but really it's just because I never realized…"

He raised a stiff right arm in a gesture of impatience. "What has any of that to do with my love for you? What does it matter if foolish Volospion thought he was killing two birds with one stone when he was actually freeing two eagles?"

"Look," she said, "if…"

"I am the Fireclown! I am Bloom, the Fireclown! I have lived the span of Man's existence. I have made Time and Space my toys. I have juggled with chronons and made the multiverse laugh. I have mocked Reality and Reality has shrivelled to be re-born. My eyes have stared unblinking into the hearts of stars, and I have stood at the very core of the Sun and feasted on freshly created photons. I am Bloom, Eternally Blooming Bloom. Bloom the Phoenix. Bloom, the Destroyer of Darkness. These eyes, these large bulging eyes of mine, do you think they cannot see into souls as easily as they see into suns? Can they not detect an aura of pain that disguises the true centre of a being as smoke hides fire? That is why I choose to make you wise, to enslave you so that you may know true freedom."

Miss Ming forced herself to speak. "This is kidnapping and kidnapping is kidnapping whatever you prefer to call it…"

He ignored her.

"Of all the beings on that wasteland planet, you were one of the few who still lived. Oh, you lived as a frightened rodent lives, your spirit perverted, your mind enshelled with cynicism, refusing for a moment to look upon Reality for fear that it would detect you and devour you, like a wakened lion. Yet when Reality occasionally impinged and could not be escaped, how did you respond?"

"Look," she said, "you've got no right…"

"Right? I have every right! I am Bloom! You are my Bride, my Consort, my Queen, my Goddess. There is no woman deserves the honour more!"

"Oh, Christ!" she said. "Please let me go. Please, I can't give you anything. I can't understand you. I can't love you." She began to cry. "I've never loved anyone! No-one but myself."

His voice was gentle. He took a few jerky steps closer to her. "You lie, Mavis Ming. You do not love yourself."

"Donny said I did. They all said I did, sooner or later."

"If you loved yourself," he told her, "you would love me."

Her voice shook. "That's good…"

To Mavis Ming's own ears her words were without resonance of any kind. The collection of platitudes with which she had always responded to experience; the borrowed ironies, the barren tropes with which, instinctively, she had encumbered herself in order to placate a world she had seen as essentially malevolent, all were at once revealed as the meaningless things they were, with the result that an appalling self-consciousness, worse than anything she had suffered in the past, swept over her and every phrase she had ever uttered seemed to ring in her ears for what it had been: A mewl of pain, a whimper of frustration, a cry for attention, a groan of hunger.

"Oh…"

She became incapable of speech. She could only stare at him, backing around the wall as he came, half-strutting, half-hopping, towards her, his head to one side, an appalling amusement in his unwinking, protuberant eyes, until her escape was blocked by a heavy wardrobe.

She was incapable of movement. She watched as he reached a twitching hand towards her face; the hand was firm and gentle as it touched her and its warmth made her realize how cold, how clammy, her own skin felt. She was close to collapse, only supported by the wall of the ship.

"The Earth is far behind us now," he said. "We shall never return. It does not deserve us." He pointed to the bed. "Go there. Remove your clothes."

She gasped at him, trying to make him understand that she could not walk. She did not care, now, what his intentions were, but she was too exhausted to obey him.

"Tired…" she said at last.

He shook his head. "No. You shall not escape by that route, madam." He spoke kindly. "Come."

The high-pitched ridiculous voice carried greater authority than any she had heard before. She began to walk towards the bed. She stood looking down at the sheets; the light made these, too, seem vibrant with life of their own. She felt his little clawlike hands pull the kimono from her shoulders, undo the tie, removing the garment entirely.

She felt him break the fastening on her bikini top so that her breasts hung even lower on her body. She felt no revulsion, nothing sexual at all, as his fingers pushed the bikini bottom over her hips and down her legs. And yet she was more aware of her nakedness than she had ever been, seeing the fatness, the pale flesh, without any emotion at all, remarking its poor condition as if it did not belong to her.

"Fat…" she murmured.

His voice was distant. "It is of no importance, this body. Besides, it shall not be fat for very long."

She began to anticipate his rape of her, wondering if, when he began, she would feel anything. He ordered her to lie face-down upon the bed. She obeyed. She heard him move away, then. Perhaps he was undressing. She turned to look, but he was still in his tattered velvet suit, taking something from a shelf. She saw that he held the whip in his hand, the one she had discovered earlier.

She tried to feel afraid, because she knew that she should feel fear, but fear would not come. She continued to look up at him, over her shoulder, as he returned. Still her body made no response. This was quite unlike her fantasies of flagellation. What happened now excited neither her imagination nor her body. She wished that she could feel something, even terror. Instead she was possessed by a calmness, a sense of inevitability, unlike anything she had known.

"Now," she heard him say, "I shall bring your blood into the light. And with it shall come the devils that inhabit it, to be withered as weeds in the sun. And when I have finished you will know Rebirth, Freedom, Dominion over the Multiverse, and more."

Was it a mark of her own insanity that she could detect no insanity in his words?

The whip fell upon her flesh. It struck her buttocks and the pain stole her breath. She did not scream, but she gasped.

It struck again, just below the first place, and she thought his flames lashed her. Her whole body jerked, trying to escape, but a firm hand held her down again, and again the whip fell.

She did not scream, but she groaned as she drew in her breath. The next stroke was upon her thighs, the next behind her knees, and his hands were cruel now as she struggled. He held her by the back of the neck; he gripped her by the shoulder, by the loose flesh of her waist, and each time he gripped her she knew fresh pain.

Mavis Ming believed at last that it was Emmanuel Bloom's intention to flay her alive, to tear every piece of skin from her body. He held her lips, her ears, her breasts, her vagina, the tender parts of her inner thighs, and every touch was fire.

She screamed, she blubbered for him to stop, she could not believe that he, any more than she, was any longer in control of what was happening. And yet the whip fell with a regularity which denied her even this consolation, until, at length, her whole body burned and she lay still, consumed.

Slowly the fire faded from this peak of intensity and it seemed to her that, again, her body and her mind were united; this unity was new.

Emmanuel Bloom said nothing. She heard him cross the chamber to replace the whip. She began to breathe with deep regularity, as if she slept. Her consciousness of her body induced an indefinable emotion in her. She moved her head to look at him and the movement was painful.

"I feel…" Her voice was soft.

He stood with his arms stiffly at his sides. His head was cocked, his expression was tender and expectant.

She could find no word.

"It is your pride," he said.

He reached to caress her face.

"I love you," he said.

"I love you." She began to weep.

He made her rise and look at her body in the oval mirror he revealed. It seemed that her skin was a lattice of long, red bruises; she could see where he had gripped her shoulders and her breasts. The pain was hard to tolerate without making at least a whisper of sound, but she controlled herself.

"Will you do this again?" It was almost a request.

He shook his little head.

She walked back to the bed. Her back, though lacerated, was straight. She had never walked in that way before, with dignity. She sat down. "Why did you do it?"

"In this manner? Perhaps because I lack patience. It is one of my characteristics. It was quick." He laughed. "Why do it to you, at all? Because I love you. Because I wished to reveal to you the woman that you are, the individual that you are. I had to destroy the shell."

"It won't fade, this feeling?"

"Only the scars will go. It is within you to retain the rest. Will you be my wife?"

She smiled. "Yes."

"Well, then, this has been a satisfactory expedition, after all. Better, really, than I expected. Oh, what leaping delights we shall share, what wonders I can show you! No woman could desire more than to be the consort of Bloom, the Good Soldier, the Champion Eternal, the Master of the Multiverse!"

"And my master, too."

"As you are my mistress, Mavis Ming." He fell with a peculiar, spastic jerk, on his knees beside her. "For Eternity. Will you stay? I can return you within an hour or two."

"I will stay," she said. "Yet you gave up so much for me. That cup. It was your honour?"

He looked shamefaced. "He asked for the cup I kept in my ship. I could not give him the Holy Grail, for it is not mine to give. I gave him something almost as dear to me, however. If Doctor Volospion ever deciphers the inscription on the cup he will discover that it was awarded, in 1980, to Leonard Bloom, by the Union of Master Bakers, for the best matzo bread of the Annual Bakery Show, Whitechapel, London. He was a very good baker, my father. I loved him. I had kept his cup in all my journeys back and forth through the time streams and it was the most valuable thing I possessed."

"So you do not have the Grail." She smiled. "It was all part of your plan — pretending to own it, pretending to be powerless — you tricked Doctor Volospion completely."

"And he tricked me. Both are satisfied, for it is unlikely he shall ever know the extent of my trickery and doubtless considers himself a fine fellow now! All are satisfied!"

"And now…?" she began.

"And now," he said, "I'll leave you. I must set my controls. You shall see all that is left of this universe and then, through the centre of the brightest star, into the greater vastness of the multiverse beyond! There we shall find others to inspire and if we find no life at all, upon our wanderings, it is within our power to create it, for I am the Fireclown. I am the Voice of the Sun! Aha! Look! It has come to you, too. This, my love, is Grace. This is our reward!"

The cabin was filled suddenly by brilliant golden light, apparently having as its source a beam which entered through the very shell of the spaceship, falling directly upon the ziggurat at the end of the bed.

A smell, like sweet spring flowers after the rain, filled the cabin, and then a crystal cup, brimming with scarlet liquid, appeared at the top of the ziggurat.

Scarlet rays spread from a hundred points in the crystal, almost blinding her, and, although Mavis Ming could hear nothing, she received an impression of sonorous, delicate music. She could not help herself as she lifted her aching body from the bed to the floor and knelt, staring into the goblet in awe.

From behind her the Fireclown chuckled and he knelt beside her, taking her hand.

"We are married now," he said, "before the Holy Grail. Married individually and together. And this is our Trust which shall be taken from us should we ever commit the sin of accidie. Here is proof of all my claims. Here is Hope. And should we ever cease to forget our purpose, should we ever fall into that sin of inertia, should we lose for more than a moment, our Faith in our high resolve, the Grail will leave us and shall vanish forever from the sight of Man, for I am Bloom, the Last Pure Knight, and you are the Pure Lady, chastized and chaste, who shall share these Mysteries with me."

She began: "It is too much. I am not capable…" But then she lifted her head and she smiled, staring into the very heart of the goblet. "Very well."

"Look," he said, as the vision began to fade, "your wounds have vanished."