Imajica Part 77

The man glanced around. "That's the Gentile," he said.

"The Gentile?" he said. "Surely you mean Gentle Gentle."

He hadn't raised his voice in order to name the man, but the syllables must have carried on the tranquil air, because as they went from Clem's lips the speaker stopped talking and slowly turned towards the gate. With the fire burning at his back his features were hard to make out, but Clem knew he'd made no error. The man turned back to his fellow debaters and said something to them Clem didn't catch. Then he left their fire and walked down to the gate.

"Gentle?" his visitor said. "It's Clem."

The black stood aside, opening the gate to let the man he'd called the Gentile step out of the garden. There he stood and studied the stranger.

"Do I know you?" he said. There was no enmity in his voice, but there was no warmth either. "I do, don't I?"

"Yes, you do, my friend," Clem replied. "Yes, you do."

They walked together along the river, leaving the sleepers and the fire behind them. The many changes in Gentle soon became apparent. He was of course far from certain of who he was, but there were other changes which were, Clem sensed, profounder still. There was a plainness about his speech, and about the expression on his face, which was by turns disturbing and calming. Something of the Gentle he and Taylor had known had gone, perhaps forever. But something was on its way to being gained in its place, and Clem wanted to be there when it was: to be the angel guarding that tender self.

"Did you paint the pictures?" he asked.

"With my friend Monday," Gentle said. "We made them together."

"I never saw you paint anything like that before."

"They're places I've been," Gentle told him, "and people I've known. They start coming back to me when I've got the colors. But it's slow. There's so much filling my head-" he put his fingers to his brow, which bore a series of ill-healed lacerations "-confusing me. You call me Gentle, but I've got other names."

"John Zacharias?"

"That's one. Then there's a man in me called Joseph Bellamy, and another called Michael Morrison, and one called Almoth, and one called Fitzgerald, and one called Sartori. They all seem to be me, Clem. But that's not possible, is it? I asked Monday, and Carol, and Irish, and they said people have two names, sometimes three, but never ten."

"Maybe you've lived other lives, Gentle, and you're remembering them."

"If that's true, I don't want to remember. It hurts too much. I can't think straight. I want to be one man with one life. I want to know where I begin and where I end, instead of going on and on."

"Why's that so terrible?" Clem said, genuinely unable to see the horror in such expansion.

"Because I'm afraid there'll be no end to it," Gentle replied. He spoke steadily, like a metaphysician who'd reached a precipice and was calmly describing the abyss below for the benefit of those who couldn't-or wouldn't-be with him there. "I'm afraid I'm joined to everything else," he said. "And then I'm going to be lost. I want to be this man, or that man, but not every man. If I'm everyone I'm no one, and nothing."

He stopped his even stride and turned to Clem, putting his hands on Clem's shoulders.

"Who am I?" he said. "Just tell me. If you love me, tell me. Who am I?"

"You're my friend."

It wasn't an eloquent reply, but it was the only one Clem had. Gentle studied his companion's face for a minute or more, as if calculating the potency of this axiom against his dread. And slowly, as he scanned Clem's features, a smile plucked at the corners of his mouth, and tears began to glisten hi his eyes.

"You see me, don't you?" he said softly. "Of course I see you."

"I don't mean with your sight, I mean with your mind. I exist in your head."

"Gear as crystal," Clem said.

That was truer now than it had ever been. Gentle nodded, and his smile spread.

"Somebody else tried to teach me this," he said. "But I didn't understand." He paused, musing. Then he said, "It doesn't matter what I'm called. Names are nothing. I am what I am in you in you." His arms slipped around Clem, into an embrace. "I'm your friend."

He hugged Clem hard, then stood away, the tears clearing.

"Who was it who taught me that?" he wondered. "Judith, maybe?"

He shook his head. "I see her face over and over," he said. "But it wasn't her. It was somebody who went away."

"Was it Taylor?" Clem said. "Do you remember Taylor?"

"He knew me too?"

"He loved you."

"Where is he now?"

"That's a whole other story."

"Is it?" Gentle replied. "Or is it all one?"

They walked on along the river, exchanging questions and answers as they went. At Gentle's request Clem recounted Taylor's story, from life to deathbed, from deathbed to light, and Gentle in his turn offered what clues he had to the nature of the journey he'd returned from. Though he could remember very few of the details, he knew that unlike Taylor's it had not taken him into brightness. He'd lost many friends along the way-their names mingled with those of the lives he'd lived-and seen the deaths of many others. But he'd also witnessed the wonders he'd painted on the walls. Sunless skies that s.h.i.+mmered green and gold; a palace of mirrors, like Versailles; vast, mysterious deserts and ice cathedrals full of bells. Listening to these traveler's tales, the vistas of hitherto unknown worlds spreading in all directions, Clem felt his earlier ease with the notion of an unbounded self, going into some limitless adventure, falter. The very divisions he'd happily tried to persuade Gentle from at the outset of this report looked tempting now. But they were a trap, and he knew it. Their comfort would smother and hobble him eventually. He had to unburden himself of his old, stale ways of thinking if he was to travel alongside this man into places where dead souls were light and being was a function of thought.

"Why did you come back?" he asked Gentle after a time.

"I wish I knew," Gentle replied.

"We should find Judith. I think maybe she knows more about this than either of us."

"I don't want to leave these people, Clem. They took me in."

"I understand that," Clem said. "But Gentle, they can't help you now. They don't understand what's going on."

"Nor do we," Gentle reminded him. "But they listened when I told my story. They watched me paint, and they asked me questions, and when I told them the visions I'd had they didn't mock me." He stopped and pointed over the river towards the Houses of Parliament. "The law-givers'll be coming there soon," he said. "Would you trust what I just told you to them? If we said to them that the dead come back in sunlight and there are worlds where the sky's green and gold, what would they say?"

"They'd say we were crazy."

"Yes, And throw us into the gutter with Monday and Carol and Irish and all the rest."

"They're not in the gutter because they had visions, Gentle," Clem said. "They're there because they've been abused, or they've abused themselves."

"Which means they can't cover their despair the way the rest can. They've got no distractions from their pain. So they get drunk and crazy, and the next day they're even more lost than they were the day before. But I'd still rather trust them than all the bishops and the ministers. Maybe they're naked, but isn't that a holy state?"

"It's also a vulnerable one," Clem pointed out. "You can't drag them into this war."

"Who said there's going to be a war?"

"Judith," Clem replied. "But even if she hadn't, it's in the air."

"Does she know who the enemy's going to be?"

"No. But it'll be a hard battle, and if you care for these people you won't put them in the front line. They'll be there when the war's over."

Gentle pondered this for a time. Finally, he said, "So they'll be the peacemakers."

"Why not? They can spread the good news."

Gentle nodded. "I like that," he said. "And so will they."

"So shall we go and find Judith?"

"I think that'd be wise. But first, I have to say goodbye."

The day came with them as they retraced their steps along the bank, and by the time they reached the underpa.s.s the shadows were no longer black but gray-blue. Some of the beams had found their way through the concrete bridges and barricades and were edging towards the threshold of the garden.

"Where did you go?" Irish said, meeting his Gentile at the gate. "We thought you'd slipped away."

"I want you to meet a friend of mine," Gentle said. "This is Clem. Clem, this is Irish; this is Carol and Benedict. Where's Monday?"

"Asleep," said Benedict, the sometime guard.

"What's Clem short for?" Carol asked.

"Clement."

"I've seen you before," she said. "Didn't you used to bring round soup? You did, didn't you? I never forget faces."

Gentle led the way through the gate and into the garden. The fire was almost out, but there were enough embers to thaw chilled fingers. He squatted down beside the fire and poked at it with a stick to stir some flame, beckoning Clem to warm himself. But as Clem bent to do so he stopped.

"What is it?" Gentle said.

Clem's eyes went from the fire to the bundled forms still slumbering all around: twenty or more, still lost in dreams, though the light was creeping over them.

"Listen," he said.

One of the sleepers was laughing, so softly it was barely audible.

"Who is that?" Gentle said. The sound was contagious and brought a smile to his face.

"It's Taylor," Clem said.

"There's no one here called Taylor," Benedict said.

"Well, he's here," Clem replied.

Gentle stood up and scanned the sleepers. In the far corner of the garden Monday was lying flat on his back, with a blanket barely covering his paint-spattered clothes. A beam of morning light had found its straight, bright way between the concrete pillars and was settled on his chest, catching his chin and his pale lips. As if its gilding tickled, he laughed in his sleep.

"That's the boy who made the paintings with me," Gentle said.

"Monday," Clem remembered.

"That's right."

Clem picked his way through the dormitory to the youth's side. Gentle followed, but before he reached the sleeper the laughter faded. Monday's smile lingered, however, the sun catching the blond hairs on his upper lip. His eyes didn't open, but when he spoke it was as if he saw.

"Look at you, Gentle," he said. "The traveler returned. No, I'm impressed, really I am."

It wasn't quite Taylor's voice-the larynx shaping it was twenty years too young-but the cadences were his; so was the sly warmth.

"Clem told you I was hanging around, I presume."

"Of course," Clem said.

"Strange times, eh? I used to say I'd been born into the wrong age. But it looks as though I died into the right one. So much to gain. So much to lose."

"Where do I begin?" Gentle said.

"You're the Maestro, Gentle, not me."

"Maestro, am I?"

"He's still remembering, Tay," Clem explained.

"Well, he should be quick about it," Taylor said. "You've had your holiday, Gentle. Now you've got some healing to do. There's a h.e.l.l of a void waiting to take us all if you f.u.c.k up. And if it comes..." the smile went from Monday's face "...if it comes there won't be any more spirits in the light, because there won't be be any light. Where's your familiar, by the way?" any light. Where's your familiar, by the way?"

"Who?"

"The mystif."

Gentle's breath quickened.

"You lost it once, and I went looking for it. I found it too, mourning its children. Don't you remember?" ' "Who was this?" Clem asked.

"You never met it," Taylor said. "If you had, you'd remember."

"I don't think Gentle does," Clem said, looking at the Maestro's troubled face.

"Oh, the mystifs in there somewhere," Taylor said. "Once seen, never forgotten. Go on, Gentle. Name it for me. It's on the tip of your tongue."

Gentle's expression became pained.

"It's the love of your life, Gentle," Taylor said, coaxing Gentle on. "Name it. I dare you. Name it."

Gentle frowned and mouthed silence. But finally his throat gave up its hostage. "Pie..." he murmured.

Taylor smiled through Monday's face. "Yes...?"

"Pie'oh'pah."