The Damnation Game Part 49

Nothing is essential. The words he'd heard-and spoken-in Caliban Street at last made absolute sense. Here was the European, proving the bitter syllogism with his own flesh and bone.

When he'd finished his work in the hallway he returned to the main room and began his labors there, his initial revulsion at touching the flesh dwindling, until with time he was s.n.a.t.c.hing pieces from their perches on the wall and flinging them down to be ground out. When he'd done in the gaming room he went to scour the landing and stairs.Finally, when all was still, he returned to the suite and made a bonfire of the curtains from the dressing room, fueled by the table the old man had played cards on, and tindered by the cards themselves, and then went around the room kicking the larger pieces of flesh into the fire, where they spat and curled and were presently consumed. The smaller pieces he sc.r.a.ped up, the laugh still coming intermittently as he flung little rains of meat into the middle of the conflagration. The room rapidly filled with smoke and heat, neither having any escape route. His heart began to pound loudly in his ears; his arms shone with sweat. It was a long job, and he had to be meticulous, didn't he? He mustn't leave a living speck, not a fragment, for fear it live on, become mythical-grow perhaps-and find him.

When the fire died down he fed it the pillows, the records and the paperback books until there was nothing left to burn but himself. There were moments, as he gazed entranced into the flames, that the thought of stepping into the fire was not unattractive. But he resisted. It was only exhaustion tempting him. Instead he crouched in a corner, watching the play of flame-light on the wall. The patterns made him cry; or at least something did.When, some time before dawn, Carys came up the stairs to claim him from his reverie, he neither heard nor saw her. The fire had long since died down. Only the bones, shattered by Breer's dismembering, and blackened and cracked in the fire, were still recognizable. Shards of thighbone, of vertebrae; the saucer of the European's skull.

She crept in as if fearful of waking a sleeping child. Maybe he had been sleeping. There were feathery images in his head that could only have been dreams: life was not that terrible.

"I woke," she said. "I knew you'd be here."

He could barely see her through the grimy air; she was a chalk drawing on black paper: so vulnerable to smudging. The tears came again when he thought of that.

"We must go," she said, not wis.h.i.+ng to press him for explanations. Perhaps she would ask him in time, when the plaintive look had left his eyes; perhaps she would never ask. After several minutes of her coaxing him and pressing close to him, he slid up from his knee-hugging meditation and conceded to her care.

When they stepped out of the hotel the wind buffeted them, as antagonistic as ever. Marty looked up to see if the gusts had blown the stars off course, but they were steadfast. Everything was in its place, despite the insanity that had mauled their lives of late, and though she hurried him on, he dawdled, his head back, squinting at the stars. There were no revelations to be had there. Just pinp.r.i.c.ks of light in a plain heaven. But he saw for the first time how fine that was. That in a world too full of loss and rage they be remote: the minimum of glory. As she led him across the lightless ground, time and again he could not prevent his gaze from straying skyward.