King Death Page 3

  Eddie fingered his crucifix.

  ‘These things do not concern me,’ he said. ‘Wealth and fame are baubles, and vulgar praise hurts worse than insults. My one and only care is Death herself and, like a doctor of medicine, I perform anywhere that she’s required, regardless of the circumstance.’

  ‘But that’s just the point,’ cried Seaton and, despite himself, his voice grew shrill and insistent. ‘By underselling yourself, don’t you see, you sell her short as well.’

  On the point of letting loose another pebble, Eddie stayed his hand. He looked down into his open palm, where only a few stones survived, and his brow was furrowed: ‘I don’t understand,’ he said.

  ‘She was not made for this, and neither were you.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Obscurity,’ said Seaton, puffing his cigar. ‘You were not created to be a nonentity, to pass your life in shadows, stuck for ever in the same shallow rut, a thousand dollars here, another thousand there, always on the move, from town to B-feature town, with their squalid little rooms and squalid little subjects, until at last you’re caught or grow too old or you simply disintegrate.’

  ‘I have no complaints.’

  ‘But what about Death? Skulking in this fashion, swathed in mediocrity, she has no chance to breathe. So long as you keep her buried in alleys and darkened doorways, where no one can see her clearly, all her beauties go for nothing and, whatever her potential, she’s doomed to remain an outlaw.’

  ‘Such is not my intention.’

  ‘Then why don’t you unleash her? Why not bring her out into the daylight and let the multitudes see her in action? Then everyone would have the chance to know and understand, not just mechanics and initiates but the whole wide world. And at last they might learn how to love her.’

  Far away across the water, the white bird reappeared and once more went swooping and swirling, flashing like a switchblade against the sun. Eddie cast another stone, which sank without trace, and Seaton threw away his cigar: ‘I have a dream,’ said the Englishman.

  ‘A dream?’

  ‘I see a day when you become a celluloid god, and Death is enthroned as your bride. For the first time in history, with you and me in partnership, she is released from bondage, shorn of all restrictions. Just as you have always dreamed, she is universally cherished and desired, and no more fear exists.’

  Eddie blew his nose.

  ‘I don’t pretend that it will be easy,’ Seaton said. ‘Prejudice, superstition and incomprehension always sink the deepest roots, and the habit of centuries is not overthrown at a whim. Without the slightest doubt, our road will be long and hard. Critics and politicians will abuse us, the law will hound us. But we shall not be deterred. No matter how we’re obstructed, our purpose will not waver.’

  For the second time, Eddie opened his palm and looked down at its contents. By now only two more pebbles remained, one flat and one round, so small and insignificant that they hardly seemed worth skimming. ‘I have a dream,’ said Seaton again, ‘and my dreams do not fail to come true.’

  ‘How can I be sure?’

  ‘You can’t,’ said the Englishman candidly. ‘In matters such as these, no certainty exists. Every move you make is clouded with doubt and risk, and you can only jump in the dark, hoping for the best. But if you don’t jump, you can’t expect to fly. And if you let your misgivings swamp you, if you turn your back on this dream and scuttle off to Peoria, Death will never be freed.’

  Eddie skimmed a pebble.

  The white bird hovered in the blue and, with the sweetest and most cherubic smile at his disposal, Seaton stepped up even closer behind the performer’s back, to place a soft hand on his elbow. ‘Come,’ said the Englishman. ‘If you care for her the way you claim, you have no choice. This is her great chance, her one true hope of redemption, and you’re the only one who can bring her through. If you let this vision perish, you will have stabbed her in the back and she will never forgive you.’

  Eddie watched his own reflection in the shallows, and the white bird dropped down upon the surface of the lake, where it sparkled once and was gone. ‘Come,’ said Seaton. ‘Your destiny calls.’

  Unclenching his fist, the performer released the last of the stones, which fell into a stagnant rock pool. Seaton extended his hand, Eddie shook it and they were partners. Then, turning their backs on the blue waters, they smiled into space with open mouths and vacant eyes, as if for a flash bulb, and they drove away to Hollywood.

  2

  One afternoon, shortly after his twenty-sixth birthday, Seaton was driving through the Hollywood Hills, heading nowhere in particular, when he passed a Spanish mansion behind a high electric fence and his eye was drawn to a gilded nameplate, which read Tierra de Ensueños: ‘Land of Dreams,’ said the Englishman, and he paid a quarter of a million dollars to live inside.

  Originally built for Avril Orchid, the siren of the silent screen, the mansion had thirty-one rooms and everything in them was heart-shaped. There were heart-shaped windows, heart-shaped beds, heart-shaped mirrors and chandeliers. Even the grand pianos, the sunken baths and tiger-skin rugs were heart-shaped and, at the centre of a labyrinth of twisted corridors, there was a heart-shaped perfumed garden.

  Here Seaton took his ease in a velveteen hammock, in the shade of a slumbrous fig tree, whose fruit hung down about his head in deep red crystals. He was surrounded by songbirds, alabaster cupids and a hundred different kinds of blossom. Moorish minarets soared far above him, wild animals ate crumbs from his hand. At his feet, a scented fountain played in a bowl full of silvery snowfish.

  Nobody knew where he had come from, what his origins were, exactly how he had begun. But he had arrived in Los Angeles when he was twenty-one, already rich, and proceeded to make himself still richer. He owned rock groups, produced motion pictures, invested in real estate. He had five cars, three bodyguards and twenty-seven TV sets, and he put up the largest, most dazzling neon sign on the whole of Sunset Strip.

  In due course he became twenty-five, and he began to grow stale. Deals no longer excited him; neither did anything else. So he grew his hair to his shoulders and lay motionless on Oriental cushions. He passed through a maze of analysts, clairvoyants and avatars, he was married and divorced and married again, and he was naughty in every way that he could think of. He yawned and played Russian roulette. At the end of everything, he was twenty-six.

  It was at this moment that he drove past Tierra de Ensueños. That same day, he dismissed his wives and lovers and friends, sold off his corporations, disposed of all his possessions and, when he was stripped to his bare essentials, by which he meant himself and his money, he stretched out in the hammock and sucked on a fig.

  Ever since the death of Avril Orchid, fifteen years before, the mansion had been deserted. The chandeliers were hung thick with cobwebs, the mirrors and ganymedes had lost their gilt, fungus sprouted from the walls, and the corridors were infested with vermin. The perfumed garden, where once there had been order, was now a teeming, sweating jungle, and Seaton was hemmed in by every form of flower, plant and creature that his imagination could create.

  Padding along the galleries in Turkish slippers, the Englishman scrawled his initials in the dust, a thousand times repeated. Nobody came to see him, he never went beyond the gates. For the next four years, alone in this mausoleum, he lost himself in his collection of Wisden, the Cricketers’ Almanack, and nothing else existed.

  On the morning of his thirtieth birthday, he drove off into the heights of the Sierra Magdalena and stood at the edge of a precipice, poised above a thousand feet of nothingness. Vultures circled overhead, wolves waited underneath and Seaton hovered on the brink, imagining. But he did not jump. Instead, he was seized by a most terrible hunger, against which he was defenceless. Far away in the valley, a church bell rang, and he turned aside in defeat.

  In the nearest roadhouse, he fed himself o
n charbroiled hamburgers and crinkle-cut French fries, tacos and enchiladas, hot pastrami on rye, lox and a double portion of Aztec Glory (strawberry, chocolate and pistachio ice, with whipped cream and Melba sauce, almond flakes, canned peaches and a maraschino cherry on top), and when he was quite satisfied, he drove home to Tierra de Ensueños, where he fell into a bottomless sleep.

  The gardens ran riot.

  There were catalpas and syringas and liquidambars, monkey trees and prickly pawpaws, Spanish clementians and scarlet kawligas, all flung together in madness, thronging and overspilling. Parakeets perched in the mimosa, mocking-birds scoffed from the depths of the tulip trees, silver foxes went whispering through the undergrowth. Above the sleeper’s head, perganzas of gold and crimson and azure blue formed an impenetrable canopy, and he lay perfectly still.

  At the end of three weeks, awaking from his dream, he sat up straight and rubbed his eyes. He brushed his teeth, cut his fingernails, put on a clean white suit and made another excursion beyond the electric gates, out into the streets of the city, where he chose a random selection of families, purchased all rights to them and carried them off in a fleet of yellow taxis.

  Back inside the mansion, he fed and clothed and warmed them, supplied them with every toy and diversion they desired, guaranteed their safety. He even redecorated their rooms, ripping out the velvets and heart-shaped mosaics and replacing them with formica, polyurethane, and grease-proof laminated Perspex. In return they had only to look at images.

  From morning to night, they watched TV, and the mansion was filled with screens. There were pictures on every wall, round every corner, behind every door. When Seaton lay down to rest in his hammock, the flickering images lit up the minarets like a radiance of stars.

  For a year, the Englishman was content to watch, observe the families’ reactions, learn. Then he felt that he knew them by heart, and he began to manufacture images of his own.

  Once again, he became successful and famous. In the next five seasons, he created a dozen different formulae and all of them topped the ratings. The garden was hung with gold awards, magazines blazoned him across their covers, journalists came queuing at his gates. But he did not let them in, for he had a horror of being photographed. Without his invisibility, like Samson shorn of his hair, he believed that he would lose his gifts, and it was his great ambition that, when he died, he should leave absolutely no record that he had ever existed.

  Night after night he lay in his garden and dreamed, until at last he began to feel restless. He itched, he ached. Though the screens continued to flicker and burn, their pictures did not reach him. So he climbed inside his Lamborghini and drove away across America, to refresh himself.

  He travelled across deserts and infinite plains, over snow-capped mountains, beside storm-whipped rivers. He lost himself in cities black as night, was stranded in the swamplands; slept in cheap motels, ate at corner drug-stores, watched lovers through peepholes; was beaten up and robbed, got drunk and was thrown in a cell. But through it all he remained entirely passive, as though none of this were happening to himself, not in reality, but rather to a stand-in, clothed in his flesh. Thus he drove and watched without feeling and finally, in Tupelo, when he looked down from his bedroom window, Eddie was standing in the doorway of the Chinese laundry.

  The partners came to the mansion together and sat down in the perfumed garden. Reptiles crawled at their feet, butterflies hung in clouds about their heads, the jungles were full of secret whisperings. ‘I call it home,’ said Seaton modestly. ‘But do you know something strange?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Apart from the families, who do not count, you are the first human being I have ever asked inside. In fact, you are the only one alive who can guess what these gardens are really like.’

  Eddie rested on a cold stone love-seat, eyes downcast, while birds perched on his shoulders and small furry animals scampered up his legs, as though he were an inanimate object. ‘I am honoured,’ he said.

  ‘Then let us begin.’ And they entered a maze of dark, dank corridors, where the dust was so thick that their footsteps left no echo. Seaton shone a flashlight, lighting them through the shadows, and Eddie’s lips were brushed by cold, wet tendrils, like seaweed.

  Periodically, the Englishman opened doors and they came into bright, strip-lit oases, where the families sat and watched. In Room 13, the McGhees witnessed a garrotting; in 22, the Pottersons studied rape; in 5, the Carters gazed blankly at tear gas on the News. Everywhere that the partners entered, the screens were filled with carnage, perversion and excess, and Eddie averted his eyes, for he could not tolerate pain or any form of cruelty.

  In due course, Seaton led him back into the sunlight and they arrived at a heart-shaped Chinese pagoda, lost in the depths of the wilderness, where they drank tea and ate chocolate biscuits.

  Eddie rested silent, brooding, and every time he looked up, he saw the families reflected on the screens, watching bloodshed. ‘This will be your audience,’ Seaton told him. ‘What do you think of them?’

  ‘They are in love with mayhem.’

  ‘Indeed they are; but you must not hold it against them. After all, they spend their whole lives as spectators. They exist through images, always at one remove, and can never experience for themselves. So naturally their taste runs to novelties, thrills, explosions. Anything that stirs their blood and makes them feel alive.’

  ‘A man feels sick,’ said Eddie.

  ‘Of course he does,’ said Seaton. ‘And that is why we are here. To show a better way. To demonstrate that vulgar slaughter and bestiality can never lead to true fulfilment; and that the dignity of Death makes for a finer, deeper spectacle than any atrocity.’

  They sat beside an ornamental fountain. Lemonade spurted from the mouths of nymphs and leaping dolphins, and Seaton trailed his fingers idly along the bronzed back of a triton: ‘Of course, before our mission can succeed, there is one great obstacle that we must overcome.’

  ‘Prejudice.’

  ‘Just so.’ And the Englishman heaved a sigh. ‘If I were simply to unleash you, without preamble or context, no one would understand. Mistaking your true nature, they would cast you as a common hoodlum. However much you might secretly excite and move them, they would refuse to let themselves accept you, and you would be destroyed before you’d even begun.’

  ‘Crucified,’ said Eddie.

  ‘Therefore, we must find an angle. We must devise a strategy, prepare our ground. Before the moment of final revelation, when Death is presented in all her glory, we must learn to use diplomacy, until our audience trusts us without question and will follow wherever we may lead.’

  From a branch above his head, the Englishman plucked a handful of fat black grapes and began to suck on them, spitting out the pips into the lemonade fountain. ‘Trust,’ he said. ‘That is the key to everything. The only path from private thrill to public acclamation.’

  Eddie made no comment, and once more they went wandering through the mansion. Immersed in silent meditations, they lost themselves in the labyrinth and, as they drifted, Seaton flashed his flashlight on portrait after portrait of Avril Orchid, nude and clothed, posing by the poolside and on a tiger-skin rug, cuddling a baby cheetah, radiant on her wedding days, pensive in intimate close-up. Trapped in a hall of mirrors, she waved and pouted, she blew soft kisses. Stardust glittered in her hair, and her image was repeated to infinity.

  In late afternoon, a blue teal flew down from the minarets and settled in the branches of Seaton’s favourite fig tree. Its plumage, mingling with the dying sunlight, turned the fruit from red to deepest purple, glowing like precious stones, and the Englishman hid in his hammock.

  Eddie rested in the shade of a mummified dwarf, with gilded eyes and sequins encrusted in its navel. Concealed behind his hat brim, he turned up his overcoat collar against the gathering dusk and, when he spoke, his voice was even softer a
nd more remote than usual, as though lost in private reverie. ‘I am reminded of a time when I was stranded in Miami Beach,’ he said. ‘My connection had run away with my fee and I was left without a dollar to my name, faced with destitution.’

  ‘How did you cope?’

  ‘I had no choice. For the first and last time in my career, I was forced to compromise and take a job outside the industry. Though it shamed me, I hired myself out as a bodyguard and went to work for a Cuban gambler.’

  ‘What was he like?’

  ‘He was paralysed by fear. The week before, he had received a threat against his life and now he could not move or control his limbs, he could hardly speak for shaking. All day long, he cowered in his wheelchair, smothered in shawls and blankets and patchwork quilts and, when he went to bed at night, he wept like a motherless child.’

  ‘What was the outcome?’

  ‘No assignment could have been easier. Late one evening, soon after I had joined him, I heard a scuffling outside the window and two young professionals came creeping through the shrubbery, guns in hand. Raising the blinds, I called their names and cancelled them, and they fell into a lily pond, where they sank. Then I collected my reward and got ready to move along.’

  ‘Where did you go?’

  ‘Nowhere,’ said Eddie. ‘The Cuban would not let me. Now that I had proved myself, it seemed that he could not rest or breathe freely unless I was close by his side. So he doubled and trebled my wages, showered me with gifts, filled my suitcase with the very finest equipment. And, like a fool, I submitted.’

  When darkness fell, the partners arrived at a deserted ballroom, at the top of a sweeping marble stairway, and Eddie sat in the centre of the dance floor, beneath a crystal chandelier, which tinkled faintly in the draught.

  Seaton prowled round him in circles, taking snapshots with a drugstore Polaroid. Frozen in reproduction, the performer was straight-backed and stiff, his suitcase on his knees, and he wore no expression at all.