Our Lady of Babylon Read online

  Or shall I begin when I was Jezebel?

  Or when I was —

  There are so many lives I’ve lived, so many women I have been, turbulent lives within which — only now — I discover that undefined stirring that recurs in each.

  Or is it a demand? — a longing to return to the present, in order to redeem —

  What!

  It should begin now; in the present present, when I am in seclusion in my quarters in the country, within the château of my beloved husband, the handsome Count du Muir, murdered in the Grand Cathedral by his twin brother, Alix, in collusion with their sister, Irena, and perhaps — yes! — the Pope himself.

  Before I proceed, I shall assert this: The subject of my many lives will soon become entirely clear; I am committed to the truth; and I am not — repeat, am not — a mystic.

  I remain in the country for reasons first explained to me by Madame Bernice. She lives down the road, in the château nearest mine. She is, of course, a countess. The source of her enormous wealth is a plantation, located in another country. You shall meet Madame, as I have come to address her; and you shall meet her presently. Trust me. I keep my promises.

  How is all that I have claimed possible?

  It is.

  Can I prove it?

  Yes.

  I shall provide evidence, reveal details that only truth can yield, of the blossom that grew only in Eden — how else would I know of its existence? — and the exact place where I buried the ebony stone in Patmos. Yes, and I shall allow you to know the secret reason for the Trojan War.

  You shall learn the truth about the seventh veil in my dance before Herod, and of the crucial moment during which the life of John the Baptist would be saved or destroyed. With Jason, we shall ride waves of violence that will recede to expose lies. When we travel to Calvary, I shall describe the intersecting shafts of light within which Jesus died. I shall lead you through the battlefields of the War in Heaven during the eternal moments when the sun was stricken with death and there was darkness — except for one single star.

  But now —

  Now I shall enlighten you as to the present present, my travails as the threatened widow of the noble Count du Muir.

  I take you back to the Grand Cathedral.

  Embraced by glowing candles, I knelt with my beloved at the foot of the altar where we were to be wed. In hypocritical attitudes of reverence, Alix and Irena bowed their heads in the front pew; the brothers would have been identical, except that my beloved was dark and noble, his brother fair and evil. Several pews behind them sat a presence of elegance, the Contessa, the Count’s mother. Even to these nuptials, she had worn her black mantilla over a dark ivory comb, in perpetual mourning — I had heard gossip — for her lost love, a passionate gypsy from her country.

  The nuptials were being officiated by His Holiness himself — a first time — for reasons known only to me and him, and soon to you; I use that undeserved title, “Holiness,” only because it is the accepted form of address for the Pope, not because I think well of him.

  In the Cathedral, hymns of exaltation sung by a hundred choirboys hinted — only hinted — of the bliss the Count and I shared at the prospect of our union. More handsome than ever, just as I was even more beautiful than ever, for him, the Count reached for my hand to place on my finger the ring of our bond.

  Irena hissed at Alix: “Kill the whore now!”

  The word “whore” swirled in terrified echoes — and then in triumph — within the Cathedral. I learned only later, from Madame Bernice, why that occurred.

  In the Grand Cathedral, Alix stood, a dark object in his hand.

  Dropping the chalice, the Pope scurried away. Young acolytes flung themselves like sacrificial pigeons before the altar.

  The burst of Alix’s gun shattered into frightened screams. Over it all, I heard the Contessa’s plaintive protest: “No! Don’t murder love!”

  My beloved Count thrust me away, to allow his own body to intercept the fatal missile. It did, and he fell, his spilling blood forming a deadly rose about him. He breathed, “I do,” and raised his hand to slip onto my finger the ring I now wear, this amber-tinted diamond.

  As I held my dying love, I was swept by such despair that I did not see nor feel the smoking gun Irena had forced into my hand, did not even hear — though I retained it like a brand — her accusation hurled into the pandemonium in the Cathedral:

  “The whore murdered my brother! See! The whore is holding the gun!”

  In my arms, my beloved gasped his last words:

  “Save yourself! Flee —” His voice trailed off: “I made preparations —”

  I pressed my body against his more tightly, refusing.

  “It’s the only way I can live now, through you. Stay, and we both die. Flee, and we both live.” Those were his last words.

  “Redeem true love, my dear!” It was the Contessa, crying out to me as she stood proudly in her pew and echoed her son’s demand to live through me.

  To keep him forever alive — and as the Contessa blessed me with her black-teared rosary — I fled the Cathedral, the Pope’s words trailing after me:

  “Damn the wily whore!”

  II

  SUSPECTING TREACHERY, my beloved Count du Muir had prepared for his most loyal coachman to await us — now only me — outside the Grand Cathedral. A carriage pulled by fleet horses brought me here to the country, where my beloved and I had, in the spring of our meeting, made love and slept and woke only to make love again, but not as reported luridly in what purports to be a “True Account,” a despicable installment of which appeared immediately after the murder and is now in wide circulation in the City.

  I learned of the existence of the scurrilous “Account” one dusky afternoon — all days had turned dusky for me — when I wandered in sorrow about the vast rooms of this once-cherished château, rooms now haunted with memories of happiness turned to sorrow. I encountered one of the maids, a pert little thing with insolent breasts, attempting to hide what appeared to be a pamphlet — pretending to hide it and thus calling attention to it. I detected a faint smile as, on my demand, she surrendered it to me. I read its title: “The True and Just Account of the Abominable Seduction into Holy Matrimony in the Grand Cathedral and of the Murder of the Most Royal Count by the Whore: The First Installment.”

  My heart shattered again at the evil accusation. I did not send the maid away because I suspected collusion, and I must discover its shape, if so. She may be in contact with Alix and Irena . . . and the duplicitous Pope! Without his countenance, the murder would not have been possible in the Cathedral.

  Here in my quarters, I shall read again from the vilifying “First Installment” of the malicious “Account.” By facing its lies, unflinching, I shall defuse their intent to assault:

  In recording this True Account, the Writer begins by asserting that he has set down this Chronicle in all its foul spectacle, only in response to his duty to denounce immorality. However powerfully his natural modesty shall surely cause him to blush and hesitate, the Writer vows to evoke that duty, and thus be able to proceed to recount (in necessary detail) the most debased activities of the villainess Whore, who managed, through connivance and debauch, to seduce the righteous Count into holy nuptials (the Writer cannot here restrain a gasp) in the Grand Cathedral.

  Some boundlessly generous souls might insist that the Whore was beautiful — “quite ravishing,” in the words of one misguided being who had surely surrendered to her array of perversions. Such wayward souls swore her eyes were hypnotic in their splendor (if so, the astute Reader will rightfully infer, they were not hypnotizing anyone onto a Righteous Path), eyes outlined by dark eyelashes that added to the impression (some swore this was true) that they changed color, the palest shade of green or blue — or brown or even black. Others saw in her a vulgar flashiness that tended (for moments only) to bedazzle. Those who admired her, or fell under her spell (some attributed unholy powers to her, the Writer must note and,
doing so, sends a shielding blessing to the Reader) described her body as perfect, a waist whose smallness exaggerated the fullness of her momentous breasts, the sinuous flare of her hips, the flowing taper of her legs, a body, nonetheless, whose every orifice had been penetrated by uncountable numbers of men, including her Pimp.

  Among those who frequented a back street which at night became the site of basest orgies, her Pimp (often drugged and known by the sacrilegious title of “Reverend”) was notorious for being able to secure, at a price, anything depraved, a word that most aptly describes the Whore.

  As the “Reverend Pimp” offered the Whore to passersby, he would utter foul propositions mixed with Gospel to further excite those wayward souls with blasphemy and to coax the Whore into even more debauch. Even at this early point in his True Account, the Writer, must, wincing, pause again (as he will be forced to do throughout) in order to brace his courage to continue with the necessary task of exposing degradation. Thus girded, he renews his promise to fulfill the obligation that morality imposes so heavily upon him, and continues, as he must:

  Her breasts exposed, her lips spewing the vilest of words, her skirts raised over her thighs, her hungry fingers probing between her moist legs (by which some of the victims of her lustful allure were enticed so powerfully as to describe them as luscious), she would locate herself under a streetlamp. Whenever a lured customer approached, she would spread her juicy thighs (a designation the Writer employs only to emphasize the excess of her appetites) to hasten the act, and so to ready herself for yet another man brought to her by her Pimp.

  From the streets, and with the help of the crazed Reverend Pimp, the Whore worked her way (on her back) into the most vile of houses. Men were lured by her specialties, some of which will be described in all their perversity later, a sad, daunting task for the Writer, who is left to feel grateful that this True Account cannot be long enough to document them all.

  How could two such corrupted creatures succeed in trapping the Noble Count into an unholy union that would defile even the sacred vows of matrimony? This is how it occurred:

  Once the Whore and her partner in dishonor had chosen the object of their conspiracy, the Reverend Pimp scouted for the exact moment to lock the trap they had devised. By prolonged scrutiny, he discovered that the Noble Count attended the gala opening of each new opera. Afterwards, his Coachman was instructed to drive, out of the logical direct path to the Count’s mansion, through the most lurid part of the City. Now the Reader may well ask: Why would so noble a Count search out such a route? Only because that allowed him, in his beneficence, to give money to any worthy beggars (not all beggars are worthy) who might have stumbled unknowingly into the maze of those streets of corruption.

  On such a night —

  I cannot go on, not now. I’m overwhelmed anew by these lies. I lean for support against the window of my balcony and hope for a cooling breeze. I gain courage from the fact that from here I can see Madame’s château across my grounds, now dark, night.

  Let me take you back a few days to my first meeting with Madame Bernice.

  In the isolation of my exile, I began to be haunted by disturbing dreams so real that, when I woke, it was as if I had only then begun to dream. Attempting to find a modicum of peace, I decided to venture out into the green countryside, fields of trees and wild flowers sent into confused bloom by an early spring. On any other day I would have noticed with delight ubiquitous jacaranda trees. I would have paused to admire their graceful white limbs sprouting lavender buds about to open, about to become the blossoms whose petals, loosed by the softest breeze, weave a mantle of lavender lace on the ground. Today my sorrow allowed me to perceive only more sorrow. As I walked along, I saw now familiar desultory figures push themselves invisibly into hiding within the density of trees. Every day there are more of those impoverished sad wanderers fleeing the growing hardships of the City.

  Not even the sprawl of greenery surrounding me could dissipate the lingering effect of the disturbing dreams that had sent me out on this walk, an effect I can only describe as one of being haunted, though not by the memory of my beloved Count; he was too alive still in my mind.

  In my dour mood I did not realize that I had wandered onto the grounds of the neighboring château, and that I was sitting on a bench of elaborate grillwork. I did not realize that until I saw a spectacular peacock strolling by among beds of flowers whose various colors matched the pattern of his feathers.

  Yet the moment I saw him, I was not at all certain that his astounding presence had indeed caused my first awareness of where I sat. No, it was as if that awareness had been aroused moments earlier, when I had felt — and then looked back to detect — a presence standing behind me a short distance away on the incline of a velvety lawn. Squinting — yes, this had surely occurred before the glorious peacock strolled by — I discerned the vague figure of a woman, her outline rendered luminous by the sun so that she seemed to have just separated from the sky; and I felt a certainty — no, a suspicion — that from her vantage on her lawn, she had been not only watching me intently for some time but watching over me, this perfect stranger now hurrying toward me out of the blur of distance and into full clarity as she stood before me addressing me in a crisp voice:

  “Lady! Why are you, a woman who obviously has everything the world cherishes — extravagant beauty, abundant wealth, distinct culture, unique elegance — why are you crying, Lady?”

  Beside her the glorious peacock inclined his head as if pondering the very same question.

  Madame Bernice is a dark, ample woman, with a cascade of lush black hair, whose sheen creates a glorious corona that frames her handsome face. She may be fifty. Some might describe her colorful clothes and abundant jewelry as extravagant, but she is too tasteful for that description to be apt; she clearly has a knowledge of the choreography of colors.

  That afternoon — I learned all this soon after — she had been strolling with her peacock about the grounds of her château, which she endearingly calls her “mansion.” When she saw me sitting on her favorite bench, she paused at a distance — she told me this later, too — in order to infer, she said, my “spirit,” a word that gave me a wince, since I am not — I find the need to remind you — am not a mystic. Then she had hastened, as swiftly as her stolid form allowed, to where I sat.

  “Why are you weeping, Lady,” she asserted her question, “on a day when the sky is as clear and azure as that of—”

  “Eden.” As astonished as I was by the word I had spoken, I was even more surprised that Madame merely nodded. She sat next to me; it was, remember, her bench.

  The openness of her face, the tenderness hidden in her steady gaze, allowed me to answer: “I’m crying because I’ve lost my beloved, the Count du Muir.”

  “She lost her beloved.” Did she lean down to inform her peacock what I had just conveyed? Or was she repeating it to herself? The peacock lowered his head — sadly? — for a moment or two.

  How easily I accepted Madame Bernice’s presence, as easily as if I had been waiting for her on her bench, waiting to tell her all I did, about the violence at the altar of the Grand Cathedral, the foiled attempt on me by Irena and Alix — and their blaming me for the murder they committed upon their own brother, upon my beloved Count. “Enormous danger surrounds me. I’m at the center of turbulence among powerful factions that may include the Pope.” I could not yet bring myself to tell her about the salacious lies being printed in installments.

  Unsurprised by all I had narrated, Madame waited in acknowledgment of my enormous loss and grave danger. She added more moments to her respectful silence before she said, “Still, as sorrowful and grave as all that is, I suspect there’s more.”

  The troubled dreams! As I spoke, I tried to pretend I was not stunned by her knowledge of so private a matter: “I have been disturbed by a series of baffling dreams.”

  She closed her eyes, three fingers at her forehead. She wears a precious stone on every finger, a possib
le excess I’m willing to grant her, though I myself, since the death of my beloved Count, prefer the simplicity of one single amber-hued diamond, the ring of our enduring bond. During this interval of pondering whatever she was pondering, the peacock had located himself next to Madame and within a pool of warm sun. The light there added such brilliance to his feathers that I considered he might have chosen that advantageous site quite carefully.

  “Describe your dreams to me.” Madame can be peremptory.

  “I dream that I am Eve, naked with my Adam —” I spoke that aloud!

  In a firm tone, Madame asked: “Are you in or out of the first garden?”

  “In it at first. With my beloved.”

  “And then?” Madame prompted, as if nothing extraordinary had been said.

  “I dream that I’m a girl, happy away from Babylon with St. John the Divine. We’re on the Greek Isle of Patmos, where he has been exiled by the Emperor. We’re lying unclothed on my shawl. Then —”

  “Lady —”

  “Madame? We are unclothed.” I had begun to detect that she was greeting my vivid descriptions with a slight frown at certain points.

  “Hmmm . . . But you anticipated, Lady. I was going to point out that, although I would be the last to question your dreams —”

  I had the uncanny feeling that she was doing just that.

  “— at the time of St. John’s exile — I believe, correct me if I’m wrong — Babylon was no longer —”

  “— was long gone. But that is how St. John referred to Rome — ‘to connect all that was evil,’ he said.” My staunch certainty and exact words came — From where? I had not dreamt that. Yet I was so sure of it that I could have recited John’s further words: “Babylon — a name for all the transgressions of centuries . . .” I marveled at the knowledgeability contained in my dreams — and at Madame’s familiarity with times past.

  “And that became St. John’s Babylon!” Madame’s inflection added significance to my just-remembered words. “For reasons we must discover.” I had the impression that she had consulted her peacock — she had tilted her head toward his and he had tilted his toward hers . . . “And then, Lady?”