Scarlet Ribbons

Suzy McKee Charnas

Part IV

Turning to that finish, I saw that I needed to get us to the confrontation with the bullying occultist, Reese, that was postponed from the second chapter (see, there turned out to be a reason not to kill Reese off in Chapter Two — a use developed for him later on), and I wanted it to happen here, in New Mexico. Weyland couldn't go back to his old job back east anyway, not after the close of "Unicorn Tapestry." Floria, who had a friend at Cayslin, wouldn't have let this real and true vampire return there to teach, for one thing. For another, he himself could no longer pretend that he was happy there.

So I was free to bring him out west, to a new teaching position. And I already had not one setting but two: the Arizona landscape that had started me off on this tack, and the fusty levels of the book tower at Zimmerman Library at the University of New Mexico.

This latter place, with its modest carrels around the walls and ranks of bookshelves in the center, level upon level (well, it seems like a lot of levels, in a city where a building above two storeys is considered a high-rise), is now a book depository. No students or browsers are allowed in, only librarians. But at that time it was open to public use, and I had done a good bit of research in there for the Holdfast books (notably learning everything there was to know, for a non-chemist, about farming seaweed and making primitive plastics — and a ton of reading in ethnography, for my future Amazons). Full of quiet, gently drifting dust-motes, and secluded corners, it felt absolutely natural as a hunting ground for Professor Weyland.

I knew the creature much better than I had, but I still needed to get the reader into his head. Dr. Weyland had to become a point-of-view character without creating too much of a disjunction from the previous, strictly human, points of view. And I had a pretty good idea of how to do this.

The previous summer, I had seen (more than once, actually) a production of Puccini's opera Tosca at the Santa Fe Opera, and loved it. I still had this equation in mind: Weyland-the-construct + art (construction) = interesting energy. Opera is a very complex art indeed, and Grand Opera as a tradition is full of predatory relationships that might resonate, it seemed to me, in strong and fruitful ways in the heart of my ancient predator. Tosca, in particular, has an especially powerful representation of this in the pursuit of Tosca, the struggling and passionate heroine by the corrupt and lustful villain, Baron Scarpia.

I wanted Weyland to see that opera as I had seen it; after that, after measuring his greatly stretched and changed self against one of humanity's great artistic stretches, I could get back in the final chapter to Weyland at work, at the university, a wolf among lambs with a human wolf (Reese) closing fast on his heels, all seen through Weyland's own chilly eyes.

Meantime, I could mirror the complexity of an operatic production through a complexity of points of view covering Weyland's night out. At the opera, I could bring us into Weyland's mind by flash and by flicker, amid the welter of other minds caught up in the evening's production.

I drove up to the opera house (closed in winter for refurbishing while plans were made for the next season) and introduced myself to the production manager. He kindly showed me around the place from top to bottom so that I could give a realistic picture of a backstage scenario during a performance of Tosca. I took my camera, I measured distances (along that back deck, for example, over the drop that Weyland uses to cover up a murder), I pored over the stage manager's score which had everything marked on it — entrances and exits, light shifts, scene changes, choral sections, everything! I went home to listen to three different recordings of the opera and read their libretto-translations, fitting the actions of my story to the time-line of an evening of Tosca.

I don't think I've ever enjoyed writing a story so much. For one thing, I got to direct, as it were, my own production of one of my favorite operas, adding my own touches and turns as the piece played out in my mind. The puzzle aspect of my story — fitting all the pieces together — was an unfolding delight as little sub-stories began to emerge (the romance of Marwitz, the baritone, and his soprano; the story of the painter Elmo and the sharpening of his vision; the story of the young gallery staffer who is in charge of Weyland's comfort and well-being at the opera; glimpes into other lives to tantalize us).

Meanwhile the larger story slowly clarified: the sudden unleashing of Weyland's more primitive self by the primal emotions of the opera, carried first and foremost by the magnificent score. I knew him well enough, now, to look out of his eyes and record his cold, disdainful thoughts, his uncertainties, his fears and discomforts, and the violent rapture that the evening's experience provokes. Enough, even, to surprise the reader, who finds Weyland unexpectedly empathizing with the prey at first, with the one harried and tormented as, in past ages, he had sometimes been; until fear turned to rage and a lethal outburst resulted.

What a blast of energy! What a fierce and pitiless thrill, to be that hunter, that killer, that monster, secret and alien and deadly, just for a bit, here and there, among the everyday concerns of the busily human characters around him.

God damn, it was sweet!

Most writers don't talk about this a lot; at least, I haven't seen it remarked on much. I mean the pleasure, the joy of releasing and riding our basest passions, masked and leashed in the form of fictional characters, but full of the power of normally restrained aggressions and resentments and desires. There's an ecstacy we sometimes reach in that roaring furnace, the expression of the forbidden.

Did you think we do it just for the money, those pitiful scraps of stingily doled out reward that get passed to us through the grabby fingers our corporate paymasters? Did you think we do it for such tokens of recognition as may come our way — the flattering review, the plastic block with glittery rocks imbedded and the award inscription on the base, the mention or even analysis in a scholarly study ("wow, real intellectuals take me seriously!"), the admiration of the reader getting a beloved book signed, the awed question, "Oh, are you X the writer?"

Well, yeah; we do it for that. It's all very important, moreso because the monetary rewards for most of us are so paltry.

But the real reward, the heart and core of it, the source of the impulse to write at all, is the access it gives to our own lives unlived, actions unperformed, bitter and destructive feelings (or great, soaring, ecstatic feelings) locked away for the sake of public peace, social ease, and personal viability. As a writer, I get to free them on the page, unfettered to wreak their delicious havoc — in the worlds of imagination. The sensation is indescribable (I once heard Harlan Ellison try, speaking at a convention about the "blue fire" of the creative rush).

Before you, gentle reader, ever came upon Weyland's story and got to ride in his mind, I was there; I took the full flavor and refined it, intensified it for you, concentrated the taste, sharpened the focus. I stepped first into that virgin territory, inhaled the exhilaration of surprise and shock, opened my heart to the charge of energy that comes with transgression. I was there first, forever.

Well, it's power, isn't it? In my limited way, I can change the world and invite you to the party. Our world, that is ruled by corrupt politicians and ruthless profiteers and sucking parasites and brutish savages and wealthy fools, and all the rest of the great and good who "lead" us — I can change things a little bit, not by subtracting or even changing any of them, but by adding something: a story of virtue rewarded, of evil tamed, of truth triumphant — or of tragedy fleshed out to its true dimensions, not trivialized or distorted or ignored.

But mostly my reward is the thrill of being other than I am, and you being, for a little while, other than you are. We get to be Weyland, the sharp-eyed hunter, the creature of power and focus and simple, dignified need, incorruptible and untainted by the worst our species has to offer. And we get to be Floria, unsure but growing surer, fascinated, horrified, audacious. The others too, to a greater or lesser degree. We get to find their dimensions in ourselves. How much is that worth?

For real readers, for real writers, its value is incalculable.

All right, enough raving. I was telling you about writing chapter four, "A Musical Interlude".

It wasn't published as a story, on its own, until 1988, when it went into a collection of SF and fantasy by New Mexico authors, A Very Large Array. Recently, the opera house was overhauled and enlarged, at huge expense. Some of the physical details of my story no longer mirror the reality of the Santa Fe Opera any longer (e.g., the flea market installed on Indian land right alongside the original entrance isn't mentioned in "A Musical Interlude" because it wasn't there yet; nor the shift of the major entrance to another, longer road so that patrons won't have to look at the flea market grounds on their way to an elegant evening).

This is one of the dangers of writing reality into your fiction: reality changes fast these days. You risk being dated. You don't much care, though, because details are what make a story live for readers, modern or future, and if you want complete, up-to-date accuracy, current journalism is the place to look, not fiction.

The record on "A Musical Interude" is incomplete without mention of one additional fact. The summer after the book was published I took a copy up to the Santa Fe Opera to donate to their staff bookshelf, as thanks for all the help and the access that I had been so generously given.

I don't think many of the Opera folk read it, though, once word got around as to what happens in Chapter Four; theatre people are a superstitious bunch, and the situation is too weird.

During the summer after I wrote the story, a stage hand shifting scenery one night during a performance fell from the back deck and died on the concrete below.

I don't know what it means, if anything. But whenever I think of this weird coincidence, it gives me a little ripple of chill along my spine.