Chapter Fifty
Pluck, after dinner, was masturbating in his room when a note was slipped under his door. Anxious as to its contents, he hurried along his exercise, finally ejaculating in a beeline straight into his eye, blinding himself, then rose and stumbled about in squealing agony, tripping and overturning the furniture. He tottered to the door, flung it open, grabbed Larry, who was passing by, dragged him into his room, and ordered: “For the love of God, lick the sperm off my eyeball and be quick about it!”
When Larry had been taken away to recover, Modeste had finished cleaning up the lad’s vomit and Pluck had ceased his harangue against the universe, he remembered the note, which he found still on the floor. He unfolded it and read thereupon the name, background and mannerisms of a certain character he was to play that evening.
The same ritual—that of the note and the allocation of a character, not of the ejaculation and aftermath—was described in each of the guests’ rooms. A little later, Poor Larry and a disgruntled-looking porter pulled a trolley along the corridors, stopping at each room. On the trolley was a huge chest of clothes; to each guest was distributed a prearranged costume and mask.
Then, at ten o’clock that night, everyone, as instructed, left their rooms—even those who had been ordered by Inspector Pluck to remain confined—and made their way through what had earlier that day been their accustomed hotel, but was tonight decorated with paper flowers, herbage and brooks, and was by other devices thoroughly transformed into the scene of an enchanted forest.
So, for example, a “surly woodsman, with a heart of gold”, in a heavy coat and a mask which looked like a mass of nests covering his—her?—face, strutted about the lobby, whilst a “faery queen with an insatiable passion for romance”, in shimmering dress, face cloaked with large butterfly wings, bore her—his?—wings through the lunchroom, in search of a cocktail.
And so we find, in the ballroom, under trestles of stars and a giant moon, a mythical menagerie of otherworldly creatures and folkloric characters. A lithe mermaid, face covered in shells, swept her tail through the undergrowth, more bosom exposed above her flowery chemise than would be permissible of humans, drawing the lecherous eyes of her fellow actors and actresses; in her own eyes could be read a medley of shame, frisson and disgust. Not far behind moped a faun, replete with hooves and bum-slapping tail, his scrawny, unsightly chest unclad, eyes of abasement and dearth of lust visible beneath a mask with a lubricous smile painted thereupon. The sexes of these creatures, at least, could be identified from certain corporal hallmarks; of many of the others, one could not be so sure. The princess, for instance, seemed to have the frontal carriage of a woman, but the rest of his or her boxy frame, and manner of carrying him- or her-self, rather like a stevedore porting a sack of exotic fruit, seemed to belie it. Or the top-hatted, bandana-faced magician, leaning on a cane, who appeared to be male, but, when he or she began to walk, rolled with a distinctly effeminate gait.
In the corners, half-hidden behind large artificial rocks and foliage, pairs of guests, never sure to whom they were speaking, commented mostly unfavourably on the physical features of their peers: that bare thigh over there, with its flesh packed upon it like something you’d find in a particularly insalubrious abattoir, spotted with age but all the more beguiling, because usually kept under wraps, for that; that yawning navel over there, like a gaping, unblinking eye, into which you were afraid to gaze too lingeringly, for fear of being somehow sucked in; that toothy snarl just there, confessing a fellow knowledge to your own hidden, disreputable cravings. There was, across the room, an unavoidable stench of the prurient, unleashed, perhaps, not only by the anonymity and compulsory characterisation, but by the overhanging air of the murder investigation, and the sense that it was finally approaching its, because it’s the proper word, climax.
“’Evening,” muttered, a little self-consciously, muffled through a tin mask, a hoplite to an ostrich.
“’Evening,” returned the ostrich—for that was the customary response to such a greeting, regardless of anachronistic dress or distinction in species.
A rubber-faced sailor, joining them, sipped his, or her, drink. “Pardon me, but do either of you two fellows, or ladies, or one or the other, for all I know—I meant to say, do you know who exactly wrote this damned scenario? Oh—if either of you is a lady, do pardon me my language, won’t you?”
“To answer your question, no, I don’t know,” returned the hoplite, in a decidedly androgynous voice, “but it rather seems the sort of thing that cretinous inspector would have come up with.”
“I imagine so,” shrugged the ostrich, shedding a feather from its rump in the process. “Although I overheard someone speaking to Voot—I assume it was Voot, from the way he wears his sideburns, but then again, they looked awfully fake, those sideburns—”
“What did Voot, or whoever it was who’d appropriated his sideburns, say?” asked the sailor.
“Oh, well, he claimed that Pluck had nothing to do with it, and was as much in the dark as to the outcome of the evening as the rest of us. He insisted that the cards and the roles and the costumes are the same every year, though allocated randomly.”
“Pluck might have tampered with them, though,” mused the sailor.
“Redistributed them, to humiliate those he disfavoured and reward those he fancied,” added the hoplite.
The sailor eyed the hoplite with amused eyes. “How do you know I’m not Pluck, for all that?”
“Well, you’re too tall, for one thing; and your voice is too deep.”
The sailor scrunched down, rendering his or her legs rubbery and, possibly, semi-artificial. The sailor responded, at a higher pitch: “Is that better?”
“Now you sound like a girl,” laughed the ostrich. “I don’t mean a lady—I mean a girl.”
“How about that?” The sailor, laughing, was trying to get Pluck’s voice about right, but was having a hard time of it.
“Well, are you?” asked the hoplite.
The sailor chuckled. “You know we’re sworn to secrecy. Who wants to invoke the wrath of Dionysus?”
The erotic edge to the proceedings was heightened by the curious addition, among many of the costumes, of certain weights, perfectly distributed to coincide with certain areas of the anatomy, resulting in pressure upon those areas whenever a step was taken, a sigh heaved or a torso twisted. A perspicacious observer, had one been present, might have remarked on the gradations of sensation to be discerned in their fellow masqueraders’ eyes: beginning with irritated discomfort, proceeding to disorientated stimulation, and culminating in suppressed arousal. This inflammation, when concurring with the sight of exposed flesh and eroticised personae, tended to establish a perceived attraction, as in one struck by Cupid’s arrow, to individuals they would never ordinarily view in any manner other than a civilised one.
A puffed-up sheep, presumably a member of the staff, ambled about dispensing copies of a script. The actors, after having been given a few minutes to peruse it, were herded out of the ballroom and into a room they hadn’t yet had the privilege of enjoying: it was a theatre, large enough to hold the same number of guests as they had beds for, with a shallow stage which had been done up like a desert island: what looked and, when people stooped down to take a few grains between their fingers, felt like sand, a couple of token, amateurishly constructed palm trees, and a large yellow sun painted on the backdrop.
A Chinese dragon at the piano played a short introductory passage, and the spectacle commenced.
The hoplite, realising it was he or she who was called to begin, hurried on-stage, tripping a little over his or her heels in the process. Picking him- or her-self up, he or she shook the script and proceeded to declaim: “Hail, fellow travellers through time, space, fiction and reality! I salute you, as I do the Muses, whom I here invoke to inspire us with their mystical talents for impersonation and self-revelation!” The hoplite puzzled over some stage direction, then moved off, replaced by a portly king, whose cheekbones looked rather feminine beneath his mask, and his queen, of whom the reverse could be said.
“My dear,” quoth the king, in a sexually ambiguous voice, “I fear our kingdom is overrun with degeneracy.”
“Why, whatever do you mean?” wondered the queen, in a likewise indeterminate tone.
“Well,” explained the king, “firstly, I have myself witnessed the spectacle of men cohabiting with other men.”
“By ‘cohabit’,” asked the queen, “do you mean, ‘living together’?”
“Nay,” quoth the king. “Rather, I intended the phrase euphemistically—I meant that they indulged in sexual relations.”
“By ‘sexual relations’,” wondered the queen, “do you mean, ‘sharing a kind word across the conjugal breakfast’?”
“No,” explained the king, “more precisely, I mean, ‘sodomy’.”
“By ‘sodomy’,” persisted the queen, “do you mean, ‘inserting the male member into a male rectum for purposes of mutual erotic gratification’?”
“That is precisely what I mean,” quoth the king, who then, in fidelity to stage direction, bowed.
“That is most peculiar,” agreed the queen, “for I, during the May festivities this very month, have witnessed the spectacle of women enjoying sensual pleasures with other women.”
“Do you mean,” cried the king, aghast, “inserting their members into rectums for, again, gratification?”
The queen tittered, and blew some air her way with a fan she was wont to carry with her for that purpose. “To what members to you refer, my liege? No, no indeed; but if you were to substitute the words ‘tongues’ and ‘fingers’ for ‘members’, and the word ‘vagina’ for ‘rectum’, then would you be nearer the truth.”
“‘Nearer’ the truth,” chuckled the king—that sly dog—“or, do you rather mean, ‘inside’ it?”
They shared a good laugh over that.
Suddenly, a full-grown pig—walking upright, at that—waddled into the room and exclaimed, “Your majesties! A murder has occurred in the kingdom!”
“What?! What did you say?! Did you say, ‘Sodomy has occurred in the kingdom’?!” asked the king.
“Not at all, my liege,” the pig bowed, with some difficulty, given the wear of the costume. “In fact, what I reported was a murder.”
The king—or rather, the actor playing the king—turned to his mate, affecting some bewilderment. “Did he just say ‘sodomy’ again?” he asked her.
She shrugged. “It sure sounded like it, but it’s always hard to tell, you know, with their barbarous peasants’ accents, just what they’re trying to say; if indeed they’ve got anything intelligible to say at all.”
The king cleared his throat. “Pardon me, my good man,” he said to the pig, who once again, impoverished of further dialogue at this point, thought fit to bow, “but I keep hearing the word ‘sodomy’ issue upon the foul smell of your breath. Is that truly what you meant to say, here in the throne room, in the presence of your queen and king?”
“Not I, your majesty,” quoth the pig, “I did not utter that word.”
“What word?” asked the queen. “Surely you can say the word you mean—whatever word it is you’re babbling about, after all.”
“Yes, go on: say the word!” commanded the king.
At this moment, as instructed, other members of the company strayed on-stage, chanting, “Say the word! Say the word! Say the word! Say the word!”
The pig raised a trotter in the air, establishing an instantaneous, hushed silence, and declared: “The word is ‘sodomy’.”
Cue indignant gasps.
“Apologise! Apologise at once!” ordered the queen. “Or your head will be off!”
The pig bowed, profoundly. “I apologise most humbly, your majesty.”
“A real apology!” she demanded. “A sincere one.”
The pig bowed still more deeply. “I assure your liege that I never intended to utter that word.”
“What word?” asked a winged creature.
“‘Sodomy’,” whispered the pig, head bowed.
“Apologise again!” demanded the queen. “Like you mean it!”
The pig prostrated itself completely, and snorted: “I beg your liege’s forgiveness.”
“Not like that! An apology! A real apology!”
The pig stood up and ran off. Noise could be heard beneath the stage. Then, from beneath their feet, they heard a voice: “I’m sorry, your majesty!”
Enter a unicorn.
“What’s that?!” asked the king.
“It’s a unicorn!” explained the assembled company in unison.
“I’m a unicorn,” the unicorn repeated, bowing.
“What do you want?” asked the king.
“Pardon?”
“What do you want?”
“Oh. I have reason to believe that a murder has been committed.”
“Did it just say ‘sodomy’?” the queen whispered to her consort.
“I’m not sure,” the king whispered back. Then, at a louder, more theatrically suitable, volume, he asked of their guest: “Did you just say ‘sodomy’, unicorn?”
“I did not,” stated the unicorn, almost as if it were a matter of fact. “I said ‘murder’.”
At this, the courtiers gasped. “Sodomy!” “He said it!” “Somebody’s committed sodomy!”, etc.
The unicorn stood, on four legs, patiently. It shook its mane. “No, no, and no again. I said, ‘murder’.”
“The punishment for sodomy is murder!” exclaimed the queen. “And the punishment for murder is sodomy. So which one is it, my one-horned pony friend—which one is it?!”
“Perhaps both,” admitted the unicorn, “but definitely murder.”
“Murder, or sodomy?”
“Murder.”
“Sodomy?”
“No. Murder.”
“Sodomy, or sodomy?”
“Neither.” The unicorn stood its ground. “Murder.”
“Sodomy?”
“No. Murder.”
“Sodomy?”
“Murder.”
“Sodomy?”
“Murder.”
“Murder?”
“Sodomy.”
“There! He said it!”
“Wait! Wait, no, I meant, ‘murder’!”
“But that’s not what you said! You said ‘sodomy’! I heard it, I heard it!” The queen turned to her husband. “Did you hear it, dearie?”
“I heard it, my love.”
She turned to the courtiers. “Did you hear it, everyone?”
“Aye!” they affirmed as one.
The unicorn held its head between its hooves. “I meant to say ‘murder’, all right? It was a murder. A murder. Doesn’t anybody care?! Don’t any of you care?!”
Just then—not earlier, nor later, but, like I said, just then—a walking sunflower, face brown and catacombed like an insect’s eye, a wreath of huge, wilting petals encircling it, body covered in a green sheath, swayed forward. “I believe you,” it said.
The unicorn looked up. “Who, me?”
“No, me,” said the sunflower. “I was the one speaking.”
“No, but, I meant, were you referring to me?”
“When?”
“Just now—when you spoke.”
The sunflower, insofar as any emotion could be visually discerned, appeared confused. “Do you mean, when I said ‘I was the one speaking’?”
“No-o: when you said, ‘I believe you’.”
The sunflower shook its head. “I never said that you believed me. I said that I believed you.”
“I understand,” persisted the unicorn, “I understand what you’re saying. So, then, you believe me?”
“Well, yes, if by ‘you’ you mean ‘me’, but not ‘you’, as in, you know, if you were saying ‘me’, but rather, if I was saying ‘me’, or rather ‘I’, if I was saying ‘I’, or rather, if I were saying ‘I’—”
“Yes, yes, that’s all very well, but, grammar and style aside, the crux of the matter, semantically, is that you, the sunflower, believe me, the unicorn?”
“Well, yes, but I think all this would be very much easier if we subtracted the pronouns from the equation.”
“All right, as you please. ‘The sunflower believes the unicorn’—does that satisfy you?”
“Does what satisfy. . .whom?”
“Was my sentence not clear enough for you?”
“It was, it was clear—in a vacuum of unparticularity.”
“Now whatever do you mean by that?”
“Are you referring to some ethereal, Platonic forms of sunflower and unicorn?”
“Why do you ask that?”
“Because I haven’t been convinced as to which sunflower and which unicorn you refer.”
“Well, this”—here the unicorn, in accordance with the stage directions, indicated itself with a hoof—“unicorn, and that”—here, as the reader can probably determine for him- or her-self, the unicorn pointed to the sunflower—“sunflower.”
The sunflower turned, awkwardly in the costume, behind itself, first to its left, then to its right, then once more to its left. “To whom are you pointing?” it asked.
The unicorn galloped over and placed a hoof, with the utmost gentleness, on one of the sunflower’s petals; at once, the sunflower, a leg somehow coming free, kicked the unicorn, hard, in the belly; the unicorn collapsed in a cry of pain.
“Ow!” That was the unicorn.
“Get your damned hands off me!” That was the sunflower.
“The script says ‘The sunflower gently shoves the unicorn away’!” the unicorn protested.
“It also says, ‘“Unicorn: The script says, ‘The sunflower gently shoves the unicorn away.’”’” returned the sunflower.
“It also says, ‘“Sunflower: It also says, ‘Unicorn: The script says, “The sunflower gently shoves the unicorn away.”’”’” the unicorn retorted.
“If ever I believed you,” muttered the sunflower, “I certainly don’t anymore.”
Suddenly, the guests discovered as they turned to the final page, the script ended, with the instructions: Improvisation follows, resolutely in character. Cue much sighing, groaning, tittering and amused muttering. Many wandered off the stage, trying to deduce identities and looking for a drink.
A large sphinx wandered through a corridor, stopping at some sounds through one of the doors. Curious, and with an impulse to satisfy that curiosity to which the sphinx would never in normal circumstances consider yielding, it opened the door and beheld, there amongst some boxes and brooms, a grunting daemon penetrating a grunting faerie. The sphinx couldn’t be sure, but I, as the narrator, can tell you with some authority: neither the daemon nor the faerie knew the other’s identity, nor the other’s gender, nor, for certain, the nature of the orifice being violated; well, the faerie knew, to be sure, but not the daemon, I mean.
On the other side of the hotel, an androgynous naiad, back bereft of attire, with prominent shoulder blades jutting out from a flesh whose lustre had long since faded, and was now etched with wrinkles which carved and uncarved with each step, trod with unshod foot down a different corridor. Her—we shall call her a ‘she’—face was invisible beneath a wig of waterfall hair pouring down every side. She entered a small lounge; she lit a lamp, and found that no one else was about. The room was cool, without a fire, and suffused with a heavy purple shadow.
The naiad walked, the padding of her feet audible in the silence, to a mirror. She stood before it. She started to remove her wig,