Nightmare Carnival

As an understudy to the female lead who never seemed to miss a performance, Alexandra doggedly followed in the footsteps of Jacob’s career, scarcely getting his attention. So in love was Alexandra, she slipped something in the woman’s drink, making her too sick to perform, and Alexandra had her chance.

Her performance was full of passion and fire, but her voice disappointed the crowd, and the applause was tepid and polite. I glance over at her, and she looks crushed by that failure as if it were fresh — a moment she can never get past. Doesn’t seem fair. A defining moment, they call it. She goes on:

“Afterward, Jacob was terribly sweet to me and took me walking in a huge cemetery in the moonlight near the performance hall. He said if I wanted I could have the secret of his beautiful voice, but I told him all I wanted was him. He laughed and made love to me on one of the graves, though it obviously meant nothing to him. Just another fuck. Nothing could’ve been more heartbreaking.”

“Why are you telling me this story?”

“Because you need to hear it, because you need to know who the woman you think you’re in love with really is. What I’ve done.”

Who really needs to know that? Do I want her to know who I am? What chance would I have then? “Go on.” I reach another crossroads and turn north.

“He told me he would teach me a song — his most beautiful — the song you’ve heard me sing hundreds of times now, and he told me when I learned it, it would be mine, the most beautiful song in the world, and he could have what he wanted more than anything on earth — release — to die, to sing no more. He said to me, ‘If you really love me, you will rescue me from this life, and you will let me die.’

“In that moment, I knew I wanted, more than I had ever wanted him — a man who would never love me after all — to sing as beautifully as he. So he sang, taught it to me. He had swallowed poison, he told me. I could feel his dying like a vortex drawing me in, but the song flowed into me, through me, until I was nothing else. The beauty of it made me quiver like a bowed string. Time stopped on that grave, and I finished the song, kneeling naked over his strangling body, howling the perfect note to the full moon as he died.

“You can’t imagine what it’s like to sing like that!

“I soon learned he had tricked me, that only in the face of death could I sing the song so beautifully that time stops at the borderlands of life and death where the most intense beauty thrives. Don’t love me, Orlando. Please, please don’t love me. I devour lives for beauty, consume despair and hopelessness like a breath of fresh air.”

I don’t speak right away. Time is distance. The farther we drive, I tell myself, the more it’s just us two — the madwoman and the man who loves her. If we drive far enough perhaps we can leave the curse behind.

“Here’s the problem, Alexandra. You tell me not to love you, then show me that you care. This concern gives me hope.” I give her a sad but hopeful smile, and damn her, she smiles back.

“Are you always so stubborn?” she asks.

“Never. So tell me about death.”

“It’s not a joke.”

“Did I say it was? I’ve watched you die.”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“There must be something.”

“A dark abyss. Nothing.”

“Silent?”

“There’s the single dying note.”

“And when it ends?”

“I’ve never heard it end.”

“That’s something then, right?”

She looks down and then up. “We have to go back.”

“Back to Bartholomew’s? No way.”

“It’s not just another performance.”

“What is it then?”

She takes a deep breath in and out. She knows I’m not going to like this part. “Justice, I guess you could say.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The young man was early. There are more to come. Enough to fill the tent — and then some. Loved ones. Not a tent full of happy people, Orlando. Much, much worse — a tent full of unhappy ones who believe I stole their happiness with my song. Survivors of those who gave their lives to me.”

I’ve obviously never wanted to die badly enough to end my life, but I’ve lived so long in the neighborhood I understand the concept all too well. My failure to act has been nothing more than cowardice. It’s all a matter of timing, isn’t it? The readiness is all, though I suppose the survivors might disagree.

We round a curve, and I spot iron gates and a sign up ahead, a field of stones beyond. “Look what we have here. Seems you can find one of these almost anywhere.” I pull off the road into a cemetery and park the car. It’s not as big as the one she described in her tale about Jacob, but big enough and full of the dead. “Walk with me,” I say and get out, heading for an angel on the horizon, hoping she’ll follow.

She does.

“What are we doing here?” she asks.

“I want to tell you my story. Everybody’s got one, right?”

“Right.” Her tone softens. She knows what we’re doing here.

We reach the crest of the hill where the angel stands and take in her mountain valley view. I’m not sure I see much more than the stone eyes see at the moment. I look out. I see her fall. I hear her sing.