The Chemickal Marriage

expect to occur – he was chained to a table, or so he guessed from the iron bite across his chest and waist and around each limb. The coarse planks scratched his back and buttocks. He was naked and quite blind.
    A rasping attempt to speak echoed strangely, and he realized his head was encased in metal. He extended his tongue to sketch a rectangular opening, sealed tight. The inner edge was crusted … was it porridge? It seemed someone was keeping him alive.
    He arched his back, bracing himself for agony. The chains held tight … but where was the pain? The wound in his back ought to have killed him – how could it be so neatly healed?
    How much time had passed? How had he survived?
    He shifted his body against the wood. He retained his limbs, his extremities, but the area where the wound ought to have been was numb. He turned his head and the helmet bit around his neck.
    Chang started at a hand on his bare abdomen, a friendly pat. He pulled at the chains and demanded to be freed. The words crashed around his ears, but then the metal plate over his mouth slid open. A wet cloth was shoved inside and his nostrils flooded with the reek of ether.
    When he woke again he was lying on his face, neck awkwardly bent by the helmet, something sharp probing his back. He lay still, concealing his wakefulness, until a spike of pain shot the length of his spine, and he gasped aloud. The mouth box was opened, and again came the ether.
    He woke and slept in an incessant, arbitrary cycle, always aware of someone around him, intrusive hands, constant observation. How long had he been here? His existence made no sense. Had he not fouled himself? He could not remember. Or had he died after all – was he in hell?
    He blamed such thoughts on the chemical nightmares and strove to concentrate during each lucid period, to recall the world he’d lost … his rooms, the Slavic Baths, the Library and the opium den. The irony did not escape him. Had he finally found the oblivion he had courted for years?
    And Celeste? Chang reflected with chagrin on their last minutes in the wood. Like a fool she had kissed him, and like a greater fool he had responded. What had he been thinking – to take her there in the bracken? And then what? He could just imagine the awkward – no, that word was far too weak – the
unconscionable
afterwards: mortification, guilt, stupidity. He’d enough on his conscience. He hoped she had outrun the Contessa, found Svenson, made her escape. He ran his tongue across his lips, remembering the sudden softness of her mouth. And her
hunger
. As a man whose most common intimacies arose from negotiations in a brothel, Chang knew it was Celeste’s expression of
need
that had pierced his reason like a nail. But sense had returned. He tried to imagine the two of them strolling together in a street. Even had he desired it – and he was quite sure he did not, for the girl, however beddable, was also wholly absurd – to entertain the idea, in this world, was like planting corn in the snow.
    He woke, eyes screwed shut against a painful glare. The helmet had been removed. Chang squinted and saw it on the wall: hammered brass, with two glass eye plates – round, like the eyes of an insect, now painted black. The earpieces and mouth box had likewise been bolted tight. It was a helmet designed to protect the wearer during the smelting of indigo clay.
    He was a prisoner of the Comte d’Orkancz, whose rotted mind now lived in the body of Robert Vandaariff. Who else? The others were all dead. Chang had done his best to kill the Comte and failed. His skin went cold. Had he been kept alive only for revenge?
    A voice reached him from beyond the glare, soft, chuckling.
    ‘You have been so long away from any light as to be a
mole
.’
    Chang blinked and made out a padded chair. In it, business attire shielded by an oilcloth apron, sat Robert Vandaariff.
    ‘You are under my protection.’
    Vandaariff used a thin black cane to rise and advanced to the table. His steps were brittle and, as he entered the light, his face revealed new lines of age.
    ‘Reincarnation disagrees with you.’ Chang’s voice was raw. ‘You look like a fishwife’s dinner.’
    ‘And
you
have not seen a mirror.’
    ‘Now that I’m awake, might I have my clothes?’
    ‘Are you cold?’
    ‘I am naked.’
    ‘Are you ashamed?’ Vandaariff’s eyes drifted across Chang’s body. ‘A handsome man – barring the scars, of course. So
many
scars … knives