Marianne, the Madame, and the Momentary Gods by Sheri S. Tepper Page B
Authors: Sheri S. Tepper
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posters every few feet. Just past the snatch trees, a shallow lagoon was bordered with wide-mouthed maneaters, the ground littered with bones and the air thick with attractant scent. A weary-looking woman leaned pensively upon the protective wall, watching silently as the two oldest of her five screaming children teetered atop it. When they dropped safely to the ground beside her, she sighed, smiled apologetically at Marianne, and moved away toward the panther bushes where the barricades were in worse repair.
Beyond the homovores was a vegetable exhibition; beyond that a formal garden and reflecting pool; and beyond that an Oriental garden with a curved bridge over a chuckling stream and a miniature teahouse perched high upon a rock. People turned and moved curiously toward sounds of tragedy from the vicinity of the panther bushes. In moments Marianne was alone. The teahouse seemed to smile down at her from its perch. Without thought, she stepped across the bridge, climbed through the shrubbery and into the little structure, like a child into her own dollhouse. It was only six feet across. She lay down, stretched along one wall, hidden from any passerby. Immediately, she slept, curled like a cat, shivering, but oblivious to the outside world.
When she woke, it was almost dusk. She could not remember where she was. She should have been in her apartment. Tat,’ she said. ‘This room is ridiculously small for the rent I pay.’ The words left no echo. They were forgotten as she spoke them. When she struggled out of the tiny house and across the bridge once more, the gates around the Oriental garden were closed and locked, six feet of close chain link with barbed wire at the top, both fence and wire red with rust but quite sound, for all that. She cried soundlessly as she walked back to the bridge, returning there because it would give her a sense of familiarity, however spurious. She sat for a time on the teahouse steps, watching the shadows grow thick among the carefully trimmed evergreens, listening to the lilt of water under the curved bridges. There was a boar scarer in the pool, a length of bamboo that filled with water, became overbalanced to spill the water out, then tipped back to let its momentarily empty length fall with an echoing blow onto a river-rounded stone. She had not noticed the sound in the afternoon among the chatter of sightseers and the cries of children. Now it seemed a drumbeat, slightly too slow to anticipate, coming each time as a surprise, like a hostile blow or shout.
She wept angrily. What good did it do to have tomorrow’s map if one was locked up… though the gates would be unlocked fairly early in the morning. Perhaps. One couldn’t be sure of that. Tomorrow might be declared a holiday, and nothing would be unlocked.
‘Stop this,’ she told herself. ‘Don’t just sit here. Find a way out!’
She began to wander, aimlessly, down across the high-backed bridges, toward the back of the garden where a fence of bamboo stood behind low evergreens and flowering shrubs. There was an unlocked gate. Behind it, she found a shed with loose boards making up the back wall of the gardens. She slipped through into a trash-filled yard only half a block from an evening world of restaurants and theatres.
She was sitting in one of the restaurants, finishing a third cup of coffee when the shift came. It was a soundless vibration, as though the world had been made of gelatine and was shaken, very slightly, making the outlines of everything quiver in semi-liquid confusion. All around her, silence fell, people looked at one another from the corners of their eyes, waiting for any sign that someone in the room might be non-locus. ‘Welcome,’ blared the loudspeakers, ‘to the City of Bimbarnlegume.’ Waiters began brushing up the scattered fragments of yesterday’s maps; conversation resumed, people fished out their maps of today, plotting their way home or to whatever late evening diversion they had
Beyond the homovores was a vegetable exhibition; beyond that a formal garden and reflecting pool; and beyond that an Oriental garden with a curved bridge over a chuckling stream and a miniature teahouse perched high upon a rock. People turned and moved curiously toward sounds of tragedy from the vicinity of the panther bushes. In moments Marianne was alone. The teahouse seemed to smile down at her from its perch. Without thought, she stepped across the bridge, climbed through the shrubbery and into the little structure, like a child into her own dollhouse. It was only six feet across. She lay down, stretched along one wall, hidden from any passerby. Immediately, she slept, curled like a cat, shivering, but oblivious to the outside world.
When she woke, it was almost dusk. She could not remember where she was. She should have been in her apartment. Tat,’ she said. ‘This room is ridiculously small for the rent I pay.’ The words left no echo. They were forgotten as she spoke them. When she struggled out of the tiny house and across the bridge once more, the gates around the Oriental garden were closed and locked, six feet of close chain link with barbed wire at the top, both fence and wire red with rust but quite sound, for all that. She cried soundlessly as she walked back to the bridge, returning there because it would give her a sense of familiarity, however spurious. She sat for a time on the teahouse steps, watching the shadows grow thick among the carefully trimmed evergreens, listening to the lilt of water under the curved bridges. There was a boar scarer in the pool, a length of bamboo that filled with water, became overbalanced to spill the water out, then tipped back to let its momentarily empty length fall with an echoing blow onto a river-rounded stone. She had not noticed the sound in the afternoon among the chatter of sightseers and the cries of children. Now it seemed a drumbeat, slightly too slow to anticipate, coming each time as a surprise, like a hostile blow or shout.
She wept angrily. What good did it do to have tomorrow’s map if one was locked up… though the gates would be unlocked fairly early in the morning. Perhaps. One couldn’t be sure of that. Tomorrow might be declared a holiday, and nothing would be unlocked.
‘Stop this,’ she told herself. ‘Don’t just sit here. Find a way out!’
She began to wander, aimlessly, down across the high-backed bridges, toward the back of the garden where a fence of bamboo stood behind low evergreens and flowering shrubs. There was an unlocked gate. Behind it, she found a shed with loose boards making up the back wall of the gardens. She slipped through into a trash-filled yard only half a block from an evening world of restaurants and theatres.
She was sitting in one of the restaurants, finishing a third cup of coffee when the shift came. It was a soundless vibration, as though the world had been made of gelatine and was shaken, very slightly, making the outlines of everything quiver in semi-liquid confusion. All around her, silence fell, people looked at one another from the corners of their eyes, waiting for any sign that someone in the room might be non-locus. ‘Welcome,’ blared the loudspeakers, ‘to the City of Bimbarnlegume.’ Waiters began brushing up the scattered fragments of yesterday’s maps; conversation resumed, people fished out their maps of today, plotting their way home or to whatever late evening diversion they had
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