Damon Knight - Orbit 19

They accused me of Sanguinetto’s murder, and in a rather weak imitation of the ingenuous public Pallio I informed them that Velasquo had been the last person seen with their late master. With trembling voice I quickly shifted their suspicions to Velasquo, feeling thankful that it made sense to play Pallio as a distracted man. I left the stage, and then had to watch while Velasquo surprised them and knifed them both in the back. He did it with a verve and accuracy that left me chilled; surely their improvised blocking couldn’t be so well-done: had he begun already? But in the darkness between scenes Ferrando and Ursini brushed by me, muttering and giggling together. I shook my head in hopes of clearing it, inhaled sharply, and moved back onstage.

Again the light was a deep crevasse-blue. Caropia was already there: we embraced. This was to be one of our last scenes together, I knew. Surely everyone knew. I moved to the apron and saw below me, in the front row, Ferrando, Ursini, Elazar, Carmen, Leontia, and Sanguinetto. It was the custom for actors whose work was done to join the audience, but it made me uncomfortable. Given the traditions of the genre it always seemed to me that they were still in the play as ghosts, who might speak at any time. I resisted the impulse to move to the other side of the apron.

My attention shifted back to Caropia. In her slim face the pebble-grey eyes were large, and filled with pain. I had so many disparate images of her to link . . . and yet, within the play and without, I knew nothing real about her. Our backstage silence augmented the Jacobean notion that the other sex was unknowable, a different species, an alien intelligence. Still, watching her bowed head, her slender arms moving nervously, I felt Pallio’s emotions as my own, and I wanted to break into the play and experience that incestuous closeness. I spoke, infusing my lines with all these illusory feelings, to the invisible actress inside her, the one who made them both a mystery. I spoke tenderly of our love, and lamented our situation: “We are so far in blood . . “ ‘Tis payment,” Caropia cried, and railed against the sequence of unchangeable events she found herself trapped in. Bitterly she blamed our incest: “Our sin of lust has webbed these plots around us, so I’ve dreamt—” I interrupted:

“Why shouldst thou not love best the one known best?

It is no crime, and were it, it has gain’d

Us more than lost...”

She spoke of the church and we argued religion. Finally I interrupted again:

“In this world all are quite alone,

All efforts grasp for union. Who’s succeeded

More than thou and I? We shar’d the womb,

The universe of childhood; lov’d

As lovers in the lust of youth—”

And Caropia, thinking no doubt of her pact with the Cardinal, replied:

“Thou know’st me well as one can know another.”

I smiled, a tremendous effort, and continued:

“Thus be calm—thy dreams are naught but visions

Of thine other self, beheld while in

The timeless void of sleep. We’ve fears enough

In this world.”

I turned from her and the tone of reassurance left me. I voiced my real concern:

“... I fear Velasquo’s

Found me out; his eyes shout ‘murderer’

With all the brutal energy of horror.

He greets me mornings, dines with me at noon,

And stalks the palace grounds at night,

As if he were a hungry wolf, and I

A man alone on the trackless waste—”

Velasquo entered, several lines too early. Unable to finish in his presence, I moved to the other side of the apron and returned his baleful glare. Below me Sanguinetto was smiling.

There was silence. It was the first time the three of us had been on stage by ourselves, and the triangle we formed was the focus of all the tension we had managed to create. Beneath our polite exchange (Velasquo was inquiring if Caropia would accompany him to the masque), were layers of meaning: the reality of the play, the reality of the players . . . Velasquo’s crafted jests probed at me with an intensity I alone could understand, although all that he did made perfect sense in the context of the play; indeed it must have appeared that he was doing a superb job. Only small stresses in his intonation revealed the danger, like swirls in a river, indicating swift undercurrents. I replied with a brittle hostility that had little acting in it, and we snapped at each other like the two poles of a Jacob’s ladder:

Pallio: “She goes with me, keep you away from her—”

Velasquo: “Would you be kicked?”

Pallio: ”Would you have your neck broke?”

The audience’s silence was a measure of their absorption. Despite my earlier revulsion, and the blank nausea of the jamais vu, I felt growing within me, insidiously, the pleasure of acting, the chill tingling one feels when a scene is going very well.

This pleasure in the scene’s success was soon overwhelmed by the fear which was making it succeed; Velasquo’s thinly veiled attack was strengthening. His pale eyes glared at me intently, looking for some involuntary movement or expression that would show me to be the one who had recognized him. I struggled to keep only Pallio’s wariness on my face, but it was a delicate distinction, one becoming more and more difficult to make. ... I exited to the sound of his high laughter.

Once off, I hurried around toward the dressing room. Caropia’s was the only voice emerging from the wall-speakers in the narrow corridor, and footsteps were padding behind me. I almost ran, remembering the early death in Hamlet. But it was only the Cardinal, completing errands of his own.

The dressing room was momentarily empty. I took my epée from my costume bag and once again locked myself in a lavatory stall. The steel of the blade gleamed as I pulled away the leather scabbard.

It was an old epée, once used in competitive electric fencing. I had polished the half-sphere bell, and removed the plug socket from inside it, to convert it to a theater sword. The wire running down a slot in the blade was still there, as was the tip, a small spring-loaded cylinder. The blade was stiff, and curved down slightly. At the bell it was triangular in cross-section, a short, wide-based triangle, with the base uppermost. It narrowed to a short cylindrical section at the end, which screwed into the tip.

I tried to unscrew the tip, certain that what I was doing was not real, that I was acting for myself. Surely the thing to do was to stop the play (I winced) and proclaim Velasquo’s identity to all. Or to slip away, out the back, and escape him entirely.

Yet naming him before all would not do—where was my proof? Even my own conviction was shaken by the question of evidence. There wasn’t any. The first real proof I would get would be a sudden hard lunge for my throat, with a sharp blade. . . .

The tip wouldn’t unscrew. I twisted until my fingers and hands were imprinted with red bars and semicircles, but it felt as if tip and blade were a solid piece. I clamped the tip between two molars and turned, but succeeded only in hurting my teeth. I needed pliers. I stared at the tip.

And if I were to escape, the Hieronomo would also. Surgery would change his face and voice, and he would return. I knew that in that case I would never be able to perform again without wondering if it were he again, playing opposite me . . .

I put the tip on the floor under my boot sole. Holding it flat against the floor, I pulled up on the blade. When I lifted my foot, the tip stuck out at right angles from the blade. I put it back on the floor, and carefully stepped on the new bend until it was straight again. I repeated the operation delicately; I knew, from years of fencing, how easily the blades would snap. Presently there appeared behind the tip a ripple, a weak spot that would break when struck hard enough. I slipped the scabbard back on, satisfied that the epée could be swiftly transformed into a weapon that would kill.