Page 38 of Katabasis
“What was that?” she hissed. “What was hedoing?”
“You’ve never sniffed a book before?”
“Not like that!”
“Well, it’s very nice,” said Peter. “Something about the binding. It’s like—glue, I don’t know. Wood shavings. I get it.”
Alice muttered, “I would simply have kept that to myself.”
Down the hall was more of the same: Shades upon Shades sitting freely in their cells, repeating singular, rote activities. Alice looked at every face as they wandered by, scanning for Professor Grimes’s scowl, but all she saw were blank, vaguely satisfied stares. It became hard to look at, after a while. All those uniform expressions of complacency. Some of the Shades seemed to be losing their outlines, their faces smudged and blurry at the edges. Some Shades seemed not to have eyes. Others had no definition to their mouths, ears, or hands—all senses extraneous to the drive, satisfaction at hand. They were caught in an endless compulsive loop with themselves, repeating a motion that apparently never gave full satisfaction, or was otherwise so delightful that they just kept doing it, again and again.
The whole place was suffused with an aura of decay. The hallway smelled of something foul and antiseptic both at once, like rubbing alcohol sprayed on rot, and the lights were too dim, crackling with fluorescent hum. Cracks and patches of mold littered the walls, lines of ants ran along the stains, and it was all so foul that Alice was agonized that these Shades could not simply stop, take a look around, and flee the place.Stop it, she wanted to shriek,put it down, get out—but half these Shades did not even have ears. If she screamed to them, would they hear?
She and Peter had both long lapsed into silence. It grew progressively more uncomfortable, looking voyeuristically into these addictions, trying to pretend they were completely unstimulated by anything they saw. Alice felt exposed and naked. She felt she was being tested, monitored to see if any of these enticements aroused similar interests in herself.Do you like feet? Do you like dolls? Do you like hard wooden objects?
What did Peter desire? Alice wondered. Probably nothing. Peter came into this world with a silver spoon in his mouth; Peter had never wanted for anything. But that was the wrong sense ofwant. Desire and need were very different, and she wished she knew what Peter craved, what made him weak in the knees, because then at least she would know that Peter had any vulnerabilities at all. Here, though, Peter’s expression never changed. He kept such a straight face; he only peered around with clinical, faintly condescending curiosity. Saint Peter could not be tempted.
The objects of lust kept growing to ridiculous proportions. They saw Shades fellating dogs, licking chalkboards, writhing upon beds of panties; Shades pouring wine in a stupor, Shades shuddering over furls of smoke. One Shade paced back and forth murmuringThank you, thank youas staticky machines played tapes of canned applause. It wasn’t remotely funny anymore—far from the sensational temptations of Bosch’s paintings, the sights in these cells were only sad and sickening. So much of thebodywas on display—breathy moans and slapping and licking and squelching; bodies pierced by needles, bodies choking on food, on wine; just bodies all around, not even full bodies really but reaching organs; working mouths and darting eyes and grasping hands, abandoned by reason, lost to appetite.
Why couldn’t they just walk away? Alice couldn’t understand it. She had never been able to understand this gross, physical desire. She was familiar with the basic pleasures, yes, but she had never felt such bodily longing that it overwhelmed her mind. It baffled her that in all the stories, heroes were constantly letting cities collapse so they could rub their bits on someone else. David lost his kingdom for Bathsheba, the Greeks gave it all up over Helen, and the great Dr. Faust, when he had Mephistopheles at his disposal, only wanted to use his newfound powers to seduce Gretchen. Sex was not a noble desire, it was such an embarrassing capitulation. There was a kind of genuine longing, Alice knew, but in her view it had so little to do with clumsy machinations of the body, with mashing teeth and sandpaper stubble, rough hands and foul breath. To her they seemed worlds apart, but she had never figured out how to sublimate it, this confused, burning want; this full-body desire she felt most acutely when she looked at—
“Gosh,” said Peter. “It just keeps going on.”
It was getting harder to keep walking, to keep peeking in; and harder to breathe; and the fluorescent hum and mold and damp were so much that finally Alice could not take it anymore.
“He’s not in here.” She halted. “Let’s go back out, let’s walk around.”
“I thought you wanted to check every court,” said Peter.
“Well, we’ve checked.”
“We’ve only been here an hour—”
“That’s enough to know. He’s not in here.”
“You said that about Pride, too.”
“Well, it’s true.” Alice sniffed. “He’s not here—he’sbetterthan this—”
“How do you know that?”
“Because it’s all so pathetic!” Her head felt oddly light. She couldn’t understand why her chest was constricting, why it felt so hard to breathe. “It’s base, disgusting—he won’t be here, whatever he’s done, it’s above that—”
“I don’t think so.” Peter’s voice was oddly cold then. “I think there’s every chance he’s here.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“You think so highly of him.”
“It’s not acompliment.” Alice folded her arms. “Lust is a sin of incontinence. It’s a weakness of will—I mean, just look around us—and whatever Grimes was, he was not weak of will.”
“Jesus.” There again, that cold tone. It baffled her; she had never seen him like this, and she couldn’t understand why he was so angry. “Sing his praises some more, why don’t you?”
“I’m just scared of wasting time,” she said. “That’s all I’m saying. We’ve seen enough, this isn’t like him, and I’m tired of walking through this stupid—”
Peter threw up a hand.Shut up, it said, the universal gesture—and Alice was about to voice her indignation when Peter pointed to a door down the hall. Faint, muffled noises came from within—shouting? Screaming? Peter cocked his head, eyebrows raised in a bizarrely suggestive manner. He lifted a finger to his lips and crept closer, motioning for Alice to follow.
“Don’t.” Alice felt an instinctive dread. “Please, Peter, don’t—”
