Steve Erickson - Our Ecstatic Days

Then we’re quiet in front of the fire. What is it, I say, and she smiles thinly, It’s death, she says, “spreading through the baseboards and ceiling,” and I can’t really say what that last bit

me and my son was growing with it, still I somehow knew, and everywhere that

means but I guess I know anyway, and I suppose I’m not that surprised. But how? I ask, and she answers, It’s not always easy to say, sometimes it’s something unbearably sad you never recover from … sometimes when a woman dies, it’s an act of sacrifice.

One thing I know, though, she says after a few more moments. One thing I know — and she says it with more force than I’ve heard her say anything — I know I don’t want to die on this lake.

I go to bed not long after that and, lying in bed and struggling to fall asleep, is it a Lapse I have, like everyone else on the lake used to have all the time when the lake was sinking? Or a dream? Or a dislodged memory. That night of the Freek Recherche lunatique, did I drink that shot after all and now I’m having a ’sinthe flashback? Whatever, there I am back on that night I first swam to the Chateau and the Mistress, back on that night I first came up out of the lake, back under the water not so much floating up to the surface but expelled, by something below me, born, out of some other life, the placenta of a previous consciousness trailing behind me as I make my way to the surface. Bits and pieces of whoever I was before, falling away from my naked body, and then bits and pieces of distant recollection falling away as I swim upward, flashes of a remembrance washed away in the cold of the lake, a horrific flash of rubble and fire and confusion and terror and chaos and of having been hurled through the opening of the lake in a full-force gale of ash and obliteration. Control and its loss assert themselves as the parameters of my new psyche, right there in the water. And somehow I know now, returning to this moment in my Lapse or dream or memory or whatever it is, that this passage is different for everyone isn’t it, that it’s a passage without time, a passage that might have taken me a moment or a hundred years, from somewhere that was a

I went then I went as the bearer of chaos, with everything coming apart around

moment or a hundred years ago, and that whatever was on the other side of the hole at the bottom of the lake is different for each of us, that whatever it is this birth-passage brought me from was not necessarily where anyone else comes from, or where anyone else would go to if she were to try and go back, if it were even possible to go back. This particular passage through the opening of the lake, from wherever I came, it was my own, my unique journey from a unique place and moment, and more than that, from my own personal moment of unique chaos, whatever that was, for unique reasons having to do uniquely with me, beyond all control. And that’s all I understand about it other than that somewhere in my rise to the surface I have a vision of the Mistress or someone much like her, swimming right past me except going the other way.

I also have a vision of Kale I don’t understand: chaos’ son. Or perhaps it is that I’m chaos’ daughter. And it’s not till finally the Lapse finishes that I sleep, my sound sleep from which no one and nothing can stir me, the sleep of the dead….

These are the memoirs of Brontë Blu, dungeon-mistress of the Chateau X, white avenging angel of the Hollywood Hills, God’s little joke on the male gender.

The afternoon before, Kale watches the powerboat with Armand’s men heading for the Chateau. Sitting in his own boat under the eaves of the shoreline trees, he takes his oar in hand ready again to go to Her rescue; he waits because he doesn’t want to interject himself too soon and agitate the situation unnecessarily. When he sees Armand’s boat leave, he begins rowing hurriedly toward the grotto and gets there in time to see Her disappearing back into the Chateau through the door at the top of the steps; for a while there on the lake he waits, watches, to assure himself everything is all right before he starts back out to the Hamblin. Halfway to the Hamblin he turns to look back at the Chateau and

me, upheaval and confusion in my path, radios going haywire and subways

see if perhaps She has come out onto the terrace to wave to him, but She doesn’t appear and he realizes he doesn’t want to go to the Hamblin, that now it only reminds him of Her. So he turns west and makes his way along the shoreline. The boat drifts awhile and he finally beaches it about a mile from the Chateau, at yet another small cove where some of the trees are still black from a fire almost a quarter of a century before. The lake there seems blacker too. he gets out of the boat into the black water and pulls it up onto shore and ties it to one of the black trees.

kale lies on the ground and stares up through the black leaves at the gray afternoon sky and has a childhood memory of when it used to be blue, he doesn’t know that what he feels in his chest is the deflowering of a virgin heart, because until not so long ago it was as much the heart of an owl as a man. he doesn’t want to think about Her but he cannot, i cannot not think about Her. i lie awhile then get back in the boat and go back out to the place in the water where i can see the light where She lives, i wait for Her to come out and see me and wave to me and call, i would sleep next to Her and not touch Her but just watch Her while She sleeps if She said to, i would touch Her long gold hair only if She said, i cannot not think of Her gold hair. Why can i not not think of Her smile, i would be Her slave all the time, Her best true slave i who have led armadas of owls, i who have multiplied and divided tides and winds, i who Big Agua has never ruled. Slave to no one and nothing else, i try to remember out on the water in my boat what it was not to have known Her. i wish it could be that way again but i don’t wish it. i want to not remember Her but i don’t want it. i want to have never known Her but i don’t want it. i want to forget Her but i don’t, i would rather die about Her than live past Her. What does it mean that i feel this, i must be sick some way. Divide the times i think of Her by the gold strands of Her hair, multiply that by the light of Her mouth — but i can’t figure the

breaking down and glass buildings shattering and cherry blossoms from the

numbers of it. It’s math i don’t know. Why does it hurt me to have known Her. Why can i no longer hear the sound of my own heartbeat, or any heart on the water but Hers. If i was a girl would She want me then.

i cry for Her like a girl please, isn’t that enough.

Next day i wait again for Her sign, there is no sign. Next day and the next and next, and then one day i take the boat out to Her steps and Her door and knock, i wait in the boat for Her sign, there’s no sign, i go back and knock on the door again. She doesn’t come and i wait longer before i go inside.

i’ve never been inside in the day before, i think i should take off my clothes like night-time and so i go through the rooms without my clothes and think when i see Her i’ll get down at Her feet, through each door i think She’ll be there and i’ll get down at Her feet. But She isn’t there. She isn’t there and standing in the afternoon sunlight in the middle of the empty lair he realizes she’s gone. Realizes she’s gone not just for an hour, not just for a single sun or moon, not just for a single room but gone with who was here with her; clothes are gone as well, there’s that feeling of place when it’s been abandoned, and it’s the feeling of his existence because he’s been abandoned too.

Not for the first time.