Steve Erickson - Our Ecstatic Days

In his dream, standing in the Square as the tanks roll toward him like great eggs, he hears the song as he heard it that morning. Hears it drift out from what he reasoned at the time must be, beneath the red sky, some unknown window.

else, the same but different, a passage without time, that might take a minute

For a moment in his dream he’sdistracted. As he did that morning, he searches for it, a melody he would hear again only once, years later.

A gust rises on the Square as mysterious as the song, as though to blow the song away, as though to blow him out of the way of the tanks: Is the gust, he wondered at the time, an ally meaning to rescue me, or a weapon of the State meaning to remove me? before he learned it was really an anarchist without conviction. He stands his ground. The tank tries to go around him, he moves to block it. The tank moves again, so does he. Was it only six minutes, as a newsmagazine reported? Of course it seemed much longer. There in the Square he’s ecstatic in his terror: Try to deny me now, he says to her, as I defy the world. As happened then, he hears the melody and in his dream is just beginning to remember its source, leaning into the large gun barrel of the tank before him, when there is out of the corner of his vision a blinding flash of something, and he raises his hand to shield his eyes. At some point in the dream he sees her appear at the far end of the Square that’s empty except for him and the tanks, a distant figure crossing the Square toward him.

He knows it isn’t his Kristin. Rather,as she grows in the distance it’s the Mistress; in his dream he vaguely knows she doesn’t belong here, that she’s out of time. She’s dressed as

or a hundred years depending on the one being born through it, from

always, in stockings and garters and heels and a small chain belt around her waist, but the attire is more an assertion of power than a suggestion of seduction. In one hand she carries the chain leash she keeps for him, in the other her black riding crop. She has shoulder-length sandy hair; she isn’t beautiful but commanding. She doesn’t offer her sensuality but marshals it. As she strides toward him across the Square, her eyes locked on him never averted, not alluring but imperious, a spreading pool of black water precedes her like an honor guard. As she grows closer, the pool spreads faster and wider, seeping across the Square until it’s a wet black mirror tinged with red, reflecting the sky above.

There’s a cracking sound. Is it the explosion of guns, or red thunder announcing a red rain? Not the marxist red of the State…. A seed in the uterus of history to be washed away in the flow of the womb’s rejection, he recognizes it rather as the dark rust-red of his Kristin’s blood on their thighs after they have made love during her period. There’s another round of explosions

and he wakes and

in the dark, as he lies on his cot, someone pounds on his door.

He sits up from the cot, holds his face in his hands. “Sir?” comes a voice from the other side of the door; Wang fumbles for the small lamp on a nearby desk. “Sir?” comes the voice again. When he turns on the light he sees the picture looming over him as always, it’s everywhere, on every wall up and down the front line; a flash of rage comes over him. I took that down, he thinks to himself. Someone put it back up. In my own quarters.

The men draw inspiration from it, one of his officers explained not long ago. Well I don’t draw inspiration from it, Wang had answered. They can paper the entire front with it if they want but he doesn’t understand why they have to hang it in his

somewhere that was a minute ago or a hundred years ago, a passage from my

own quarters. He sees quite enough of it everywhere he goes, every headquarters, every outpost, every barracks — raised over the battlefields like the towering banners the Party used to hoist of its leaders back in his home country so I don’t see why I have to look at it in my own quarters. Back in his home country they would have called this a “cult of personality.”

No wonder I dream every night.

The pounding on the door continues. “Come in,” Wang says.

The soldier comes in. “Sir,” he says.

“Why is that on my wall?” Wang says.

“Sir?”

“Why is that on my wall.” Wang points at the picture. “I took it down. Someone came into my quarters and put it back up after I took it down.”

The young guerrilla looks at the enlarged photo. “The men draw inspiration from it, sir.”

“My own quarters.”

“Yes, sir. The men—”

“Yes I’ve heard how the men are inspired by it but I’m not inspired by it. Why don’t you put up something that inspires me?”

The soldier, a kid, not much older than Wang in the photo, seems flummoxed. “Uh … what would that be, sir?”

He tried to get them to stop calling him “sir” since he’s not an officer and in fact has no ranking at all, but that only seemed to cause more chaos among the ranks. “What’s your name?”

“Parsons, sir.”

“Parsons, let me ask you something.”

“Sir.”

“How do you know it’s me?”

“Sir?”

“I said how do you know it’s me,” Wang points at the

own unique chaos maybe to my own unique god, and as I slip on down through

poster. “It’s almost thirty years old, this picture, blown up about a hundred times its original size … that man”—pointing at the lone figure before the tanks—“is a blur … he could be anybody. So how do you know it’s me?” This is perverse, Wang thinks. Such questions just undermine the resolve of Tribulation III … is it Tribulation III now, he asks himself, or still Tribulation II? “Never mind,” he says, his face in his hands again. “Please take it down.”

The young soldier takes down the picture. He rolls it up and puts it under his arm.

Wang still sits on the cot, exhausted by his restless sleep. “So what is it?”

“Sir?”

“What did you wake me for?”

“Sir. Major Tapshaw reminds you it’s a full moon tonight, sir.”

“Tell him to send up the flare.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Give me a few minutes.”

“Sir.” The soldier leaves and for a while Wang sits on his cot looking at the blank square of wall where the picture was a few minutes ago. Tribulation II or Tribulation III … how can I be confused about such a thing? He gets up and moves to the desk and wakes the computer and turns the desk lamp off again; now there’s only the light from the computer. He takes off all his clothes and for a moment stands naked before the computer before he sits, inputting his password and opening the mail. He addresses a new message, staring at it as he composes in his head.

the birth canal of the lake then I have three visions there before me in the

With his one good hand, hebegins to type.

To: MistressL@aquamail.com

From: FalseMartyr@4june89.net

my Mistress,

Your devoted possession requests the honor of subjecting himself to Your Cruel Pleasure on this night. Abjectly apologize for the short notice and duly expect to feel Your Exquisite Discipline for the impertinence, i await an answer, unworthy as ever of my humiliation, and remain Your

zen-toy

Wang looks over the message, considering the tone and double-checking the proper Upper/lower-case etiquette. He sends the message and waits to see if he receives an answer immediately, as sometimes he does, but after several minutes there’s still no response. He closes the program and dresses and pulls on his coat, and opens his door to the outer tunnel that leads above ground.