Anonyma Read online

  When asked about his infamously macabre photographic exhibition of 2009, entitled Anonyma, he grows more reserved. “That project was an offshoot of a greater idea that never really manifested as I wished it would have. What we made of it, I am still proud of.” The exhibit caused a great deal of controversy, spurring criticism from feminist groups. To this, Bezalel merely shakes his head. “There is a point at which one must separate the art and the artist. There is an intrinsic link, of course. But there is less of me in those images than there is of what I was trying to evoke. They misunderstand me” When asked about the process of creating the infamous images, he becomes brusk. “Let us move on.”

  Despite the intrigue that surrounds him, Bezalel is a lot more accessible than many would imagine. Most of his works capture the dark designs of what one would assume is a tormented mind. In sharp contrast, Bezalel appears content. Coreya enters the office, looking as though she has just stepped off of the runway. Her chestnut hair is tied in a top-knot, long billowing black fabric displaying her beautiful form in all its noir-pinup glory. She is a woman of duality, both regal and eccentric. This evening, she is bringing Bezalel his letters-- written correspondences he maintains with artists, writers, and thinkers around the globe. He smiles, taking the letters and kissing her hand.

  When asked if they plan to have children, Bezalel’s eyes flare with excitement. Wietciwicz is less enthusiastic, changing the subject. “Nicholas has far too much to work on at the moment, as do I. You know what they say… you can have it all, but not at the same time.”

  And the work Bezalel has ahead of him is plenty. He has revealed his latest project, an adaptation of Von Aurovitch’s obscure fantasy play, The Curse of Ariette, which will be performed in The Noctuary’s own underground theatre, Antangelus. “The play is dear to me,” Bezalel explains, his hand migrating to his chest. “I can’t say that any project has felt quite as important. I want to get it right.” He lets it slip that he intends to play the lead role. When asked if it is a vanity project, he laughs heartily. “Every project is a vanity project.”

  The Noctuary doesn’t seem to fit into that category upon first observation, but with a careful look into Bezalel’s literary tastes, one can begin to put together a theory which suggests that he is bringing the objects of fantasy worlds-- worlds of his own, and others-- into reality.

  “The Noctuary was a dream construction of my own, but there are elements of existing things in there. The idea of a black tower with a great golden theatre hidden in the underground floors… while I would love to claim that as my own innovation, I have to give credit to F. Krespel von Rehm, who wrote of such a place in the final chapters of The Almanac of Dust.” When asked if there are any works he still aspires to draw from, he thinks deeply for some time before answering.

  “As a fan of Von Aurovitch, I have naturally had a fascination with The Scaerulldythareaum for some time. However, I have only managed to come across a few of the excerpts he translated shortly before his death. To understand entire chapters… well, that would be beyond my wildest hopes. So much so, I dare not think of it. I do not wish to be depressed!” And depressed he is not, despite the celebration of all things morbid and macabre in his designs. “It is precisely that, a celebration of life amid darkness.”

  Critics have called Bezalel a sorcerer of design, a maverick, a savant, the “menace of magic”, the “Echo-man.” He rejects all titles, preferring to see himself as a passenger through the world, doing what he can to preserve the fantastical in a society overrun by what he perceives as frivolous banality. We asked him if he plans to return to photography. “I would like to, if the conditions are correct.”

  Upon request, Bezalel leads us to the next floor, which houses the entirety of the Anonyma exhibition. He is characteristically quiet, as one would see him at a gala or museum. Our producer points to the most infamous image of the nameless model-- unconscious, wrapped in gold wire, suspended over a green lagoon. Her face, as it is in all of the photographs, is obscured. We ask him about the impact of the series--if the controversy gave him pause about the level he is willing to take in the creative process. He reflects on Von Aurovitch again. “If you have seen the archived images of The Blue Lady, the portrait he painted of his wife, you may come to understand risk, and all that it entails in art.” Before we can ask him to clarify this confusing answer, Coreya appears in the doorway, noting that he has a meeting in twenty minutes. We are ushered out without further comment on the series.

  The observation most people make about Modern † Gothic is that it has led them to find a balance between cognitive richness and materialistic extravagance. Bezalel acknowledges how the traumas of his youth led him to a new and comprehensive philosophy that nurtured this concept. “The instability, the darkness was unpleasant, but the only constant in my life. In it I began to find comfort, familiarity. The inverse of the uncanny. I wanted other people to understand that they could make peace with their demons. Find solace in the unfamiliar. Work with the darkness.” Now a celebrity figure, Bezalel reflects often upon his years of struggle. “Success doesn’t cast a veil over the years I spent ostracized in this city. The absolute outcast. To reject those roots would be a full rejection of myself.”

  Pick up any magazine, and you can see the enormous impact that Bezalel has had on modern culture. The styles and tastes that once alienated individuals have now been embraced by the mainstream. While New York City is no Silver City, it has rather the transported energy of the Middle European avant-garde, a phantasmagoric shadow kingdom curated by the sorcerer of design, Nicholas Bezalel.

  II.

  I have the look of death again, underneath the icy hue—spectral light on a lifeless stage. Sorcery and dark wishes are never without a conjurer. They set their roots deep beneath the hardwood here. All the stage, a sinner’s nest—and I, the captured fly.

  I find myself in the passion of dying, more so than in previous days of early waking. I do not want to die, in the strictest sense. Though I am tempted by the dark pull. The passionate embrace of nothingness beyond the wall of twisted life and death. I can think of no better solution for myself in such a state. I fail because my body has withered to the point of atrophy, in a tragic misalignment of age and acuity that can only be attributed to the illnesses festering inside of me. I have been too honest. So honest, that even the mask of glamour cannot hide my deteriorating mind. It is a humiliation unlike any other, to feel yourself on the precipice of death and not be able to censor the cascade of disgrace. I walk in a rickety gambol as of late, and fail to stay awake in the acceptable hours. I wish I could see a glory beyond the horizon for me, but it takes only the form of a plunging of the self into the limitless deep. I have no name within me, though it grows and grows. I feel a phantom weight glide into my chest, as strongly as his heat.

  I am Anonyma. A ruin in this city, swept up by blackened rain. I cradle oblivion in my arms; am at war with clocks over lifetimes broken apart in silent stories. I am not without a kind of freedom—the freedom of suffering. But what is to be said of a woman who holds such depths of darkness within her? I am one of these, at best, and never without sight or sound to measure. Walking dead above the ground for years, after dismissal from the clouds, left sour. A bitter hall of whispers, thick with the milk of memories. I bury myself with a daily kiss to scepters and bones. You have found me – bound, and quite alone—warring with the world falling around me.

  ▼

  The girls are laughing and shitting, spitting and giggling. My head is on the stall door, cold with the beating of footsteps. Long black locks dangle in front of my face, escaping the cover of my hijab. I watch – a pendulum of strands sweeping in silence, mourning again—until the girls are gone from me, from here, from everywhere. The lights are dim and set a green cast over the fading tiles.

  The cold glaze ripples over the surface of the stage, casting twinkle-twinkles on the tatters of my skirt. The tiresome glow shoots up to the face of every dancer—but not my fa
ce. Even the aging beauties have a dignified grace made for acceptance. It shines through their idle attempts to hide their frailty, booking them entry even through the most labyrinthine of doors.

  The theatre is a glittering mass of unnatural decay. Upturned noses and the rolling of eyes suit most of the young dancers. They despise the age of it—the garish ornamental embellishments on every wall—particularly the scraping of paint from sculpted faces. Smirks and sneers and giggles. Smirks and sneers and giggles. Smirks and sneers and… social ritual. The ritual of battery by the batting of eyelashes. This is the war of women in the slipstreams of worth.

  Their lithe forms glide across the stage, one by one, exerting all efforts to impress the judges. I make my own crude attempt, so unlike my former self, in form.

  The three men watch from the seats, bored and scribbling haphazard remarks on their ledgers, rarely deviating from a delicate “yes” or harshly jotted “NO.”

  “All right, make a line in the center.”

  The dancers line up. The bodies are indistinguishable from one another, all having worn white by some strange act of fate. All, save for this body.

  Only men in heat pick this body.

  “Nour, Elena, Leah, Anahid, Roshni. Everyone else, thank you for your time.”

  Here comes an accident of anxiety. A chosen dancer standing to my left, with skin like buttermilk and bright blue eyes, turns-- extending no effort to conceal her contempt.

  “He didn’t call you, gimp bitch.”

  ▼

  The girls have gone from the bathroom. I can stand at the mirror now. In all the grotesque glory of an ogre, one hundred fold. I remove my hijab, imagine beetles in my hair and rot under my chin. The decay of my insides working their way out. A father’s full lips and a mother’s square jaw. Bug neck, deer limb, dark-haired devil. Is this the mark of womanhood? Seeing slime in the face of flowers? This thick mop of black curls, turned to stone? Will I ever hide this mess of broken dreams?

  Even in that deep melancholy, one need not feel eternally alone. I touch my tongue to the mirror, unsure of the weight of days bruising either shoulder to the eyes of unseen things. I want to be better—to soar, beyond the confines of this suffering, to a lighter place. Not of death. Death was an act. The act of returning to the endless ever-after. I saw it one day, in my reflection beneath the bridge. Cold waters mewed up like a frozen sculpture, scraping the border of this world and the next. Half-blind by cruelty, I stared at the water—the subtle shimmering, ringing bells heard only by a precious, calming aether. On quiet nights in bed, when the tears stain my cheeks and the ticking clock measures my earthly atrophy, I can feel it. A subtle pulse in the air from the land of other. A place of doors wide open -- welcoming, warm.

  ▼

  There is something to be said for the stillness of a woman in exile. The faint sway of yearning and yielding. The quiet mess—with feeling, without feeling. There may be some hidden value in the depths of depressive seclusion, but as of now, I do not know them. Can’t know them, perhaps. Not with the fright of memory. Burned into my mind, are the images of those days. There is clarity there, so unwelcome that I feel it burrowing into my bones. Some days I can barely bring myself to stand, let alone walk, and attend to all that must be attended to. I will certainly never belly dance, again.

  I once thought of myself as a great bird, crying over a tousled nest, mourning the sudden loss of the dream of life. Now I imagine myself a rat. A toad, even. Unwelcome in most places. Prodded in others. Always a novelty or abhorrence to those who walk without feeling. There are so many of those. Wind walkers, Walk-and-talkers, walk-and-whistlers, whiners.

  The air is black. What I breathe into my lungs barely quenches the need of those scared elements. My mind conjures an unknown world where fire has taken the place of air, and liquid lungs take in the embers, fueling the cruel organics of some living mass. I think of the elements not yet known—inconceivable to human senses. Too dumb to conceive of them in full, or negate them equally, there is a wishfulness there. That there are things that can be known without premise, without promise. Without the preconceptions of man and earth. I long for the leisure of broken worlds, lost underneath the wheel of the cosmic order.

  These are the sidewalks of phantom wanderers. Ugly mules with no other place to roam at night. I count myself among these ghosts. Cars fly – screeching vessels of light and noise—more jarring than they were in the early evening. Eyes on the ground. Hands hidden. Defeat, Defeat. My blanket of death-in-life.

  The railing is the first sign of the bridge. I can see the faint glint of it from here. Fast, though crooked, walking comes naturally when resolution tempts the eye. Here is the bridge again. I remember this somber resolve. If I close my eyes, the wind will whip up my hair and I will feel the weight of hands, teasing every strand. In this exodus of mine, this gripping of the cold rail, this feeling of terminal bliss, I am the monster married to the endless night.

  I know these waters. I’ve seen them before. Glared at them in the after-hours, wondering of the worlds thriving beneath the surface. I’ve closed my eyes and sent my soul out, gliding over the surface of all things, searching for a kind of rebirth. Nature afforded me no such luxury, but the fantasy has lived on days like this. So I return to the bridge again, in airs of torment calling me down down. Into the black water.

  Von Aurovitch had a sculpture named Black Water. The only piece of this I would come to hate.

  Where is that ring? That ringing? That constant ringing coming from? My eyes jerk open. I reach into my bag.

  Vava.

  My great-grandmother does not speak. She breathes heavily into the phone. We have the bond that only blood-bound women have. She has aged into the arms of nonsense. Tonight will not be my night of departure. She needs me to come home.

  III.

  I envision him as vividly as when he last stood before me, a wisp of black and blonde approaching from a farther wood. Nicholas Bezalel, the Jester King, the Mastermind of the Majestic. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a creature—and a creature he was. A Nordic-looking specimen with long legs like a spider. He towered over all of us, in body, in spirit, and in wealth. But something was unsavory about our Jester King, and all of us questioned the origin of this phantom.

  By chance, or perhaps eagerness, I come upon his image in the city. I see the sign, the marquee. I see that it is him. His face painted a ghoulish-hue ripped from the era of theatrical grandeur. A lion of lace and crystals, plumes of woven ivory fabric circling his head like a mane, adornments dripping down his jester-king attire, a staff of pure light in his hand. This is Nicholas Bezalel, not as I remembered him.

  A haunt of electricity tunnels through my senses, bringing back the vision of his face. My eyes shut, tightly squeezing, unable to take the flood of emotions, of pain, that accompanies the memory. I sway in the street, illuminated only by the milk-light of the half-crescent, thinking too much.

  The poster hangs proudly, moonstruck and ominous, on the outside of The Noctuary. Unable to conduct myself with grace, I stumble backwards, streams of cold air gliding past my nostrils, an enchanting freeze on the precipice of everything and nothing. I thought I had walked on a different street. I thought I would have avoided such a thing.

  What might one do, when they realize how many moments were stolen moments, placed in the hands of a monster? Am I in the place of regret, or ready to throw up my hands? If all could have been avoided, my mind begins. But it couldn’t have been. The little girls lost in a sea of becoming find their nets and crevices. There will be stings and stains, pain and powerlessness. One cannot shield the young from such plays of the soul. It takes its course with each of us. What might I know in truth, if I learn from hearing alone? If I do not live a life on this earth as painful, as erratic, and as real as those before me? Exits presented themselves in rags and riches. Means of escape in the prick of cold metal, or the depths of the river. I could have taken them. I could have. But I didn’t. And in that, t
here is everything—or nothing.

  The first time he hits me, I am freezing. Surreptitiously elsewhere—the cellar, the vegetable garden, the home of my great-grandmother, soaked with the scent of basil and pepper biscuits. His anger is unexplainable. I bristle and pivot on my heel, making a quiet maneuver for the open door. I almost make it before a sharp tug of my hair send me back onto the tile. Love is not this much of a mystery.

  He tells me that he needs me, and I remind myself of a root in long-winter. Still there, still waiting. A memory in mind of a cyclic bloom. This is nature, isn’t it?

  I collect silent spells and exist as myself in the darkness. He bursts into a line of ecstatic laughter, almost bringing back the original days. I am more vigilant, and less, all at once. I preserve consciousness in vain-glorious self-neglect, and recall the the tale of the abominable fish and the golden hook. My features return to their normal shape and I almost remember myself.

  It was a day like this. Gentle snow—dense, light—floating down from the aether, blanketing our shoulders and eyelashes. From the distance, Nicholas approached. His steps tired from the assured agonizing he’d subjected himself to after the failed ritual. His anger had given way to his pitiful, exhaustive depression. That one element we shared in earnest.

  The bridge, barely noticeable in the somber clearing, creaked under the weight of him as he approached. He said nothing.

  Only stared at me with unreserved detachment. I love this man who means to warp my soul to ash. Who lies and cheats. Who stole my life from me. My joys and my passions, forever tainted by the blackness of his saliva—the rot of his cold tongue. I love this man before me on a stage of blue, in snow—as I see him in a dream, without feeling. I remember him as he was.

  All around me I can see the nothing. I have met it, embraced it, allowed it within every orifice, pore, and hole. There is a loathing for the shape of me. I won’t look at it anymore. I want to feel his hands on my chest—on my throat. I want to die in his arms as I am. This is love they bottle in a broken world.