The Carp Castle by MacDonald Harris

Author:MacDonald Harris [Harris, MacDonald]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: FIC000000; FIC019000; FIC014000
ISBN: 9781468306941
Goodreads: 16479529
Publisher: Overlook Press
Published: 2012-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

FIVE

In a dressing room of the Albert Hall in London Moira is preparing herself for her séance. The event is an important one; never before has she appeared in such a large hall before so large an audience. Tonight the many-colored threads of her past are to be twisted into a single point before they radiate out again into her unique and invisible destiny. With her in the dressing room are Aunt Madge Foxthorn, a Vestal to serve as her dresser, and Cereste Legrand, who is charged with the lighting, atmosphere, and special effects of the séance.

Cereste Legrand is well prepared for his task, since he spent many years as a circus impresario in Europe. The Albert Hall, in fact, has a certain resemblance to a circus tent. It has a large oblong domed roof, and its seats are laid out like those in a circus, arranged radially around the stage. The seats behind the stage are valued by music lovers, who can see the musicians from the rear and, almost, read their scores while they play. These seats are cordoned off with velvet ropes and will remain empty tonight, like all those that do not face directly toward the plinth where Moira will stand in her aureole of green light. No one will see her from the rear or the side. Under Cereste Legrand’s supervision the lamp that holds the five green letters has been hung with fine wires from the ceiling of the hall. It is a box of tin painted black, and the wires too are black, so that they are invisible in the dim lighting of the hall. Set into the front of the box are the five letters cut from the finest Chinese jade, so thin that light passes through them as it would through colored glass. When light passes through a jewel it acquires a special force, the power to bind souls in thrall. It was a friend of Moira, a friend who lives in this very city, who taught her this secret of the phenomenal world.

Moira takes off her street clothes and stands for a moment in her underwear. Cereste Legrand has seen her thus many times, and it affects him no more than a half-clothed Blessed Virgin in a painting would. She holds up her arms while the green gown embroidered with M’s is slipped over her head. The Vestal fastens around her the braided belt ending in a knot at her groin, and Aunt Madge: Foxthorn brushes her hair. In place of the headband of the Vestals she wears a simple diadem of gold set with emeralds, an ornament that came from a museum in Provence and once adorned the effigy of some saint in a medieval church. She lifts her feet, first one and then the other, while the Vestal fits onto them her slippers of gold lamé. It is not possible to sit down while wearing the embroidered gown; it is too stiff. Aunt Madge Foxthorn, putting her finger into a little pot of kohl, darkens the lids of her closed eyes.

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