Here
Swims a Most Majestic Vision
by Jason DeBoer
(Author’s note: This is an experiment
in which each and every word used in this story also
appears in William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”, barring
some modification of the original elision. The words
of the play have been restructured into a narrative
of an abusive marriage. In effect, the language of
Shakespeare has been fragmented and then recast, drawing
on certain themes of Nietzsche, Sade, and Bataille.
It is a work born from violence, both Shakespeare’s
and my own, as I first began the story by knifing
apart “The Tempest” in a Kathmandu hotel room. This
story first appeared in The Barcelona Review, Exquisite
Corpse, and several print journals worldwide.")
Caliban
was not the first to drown at home on the couch. He
never died, no matter how much he should have. He
only drowned. Slowly, instinctively. Here death did
not work very hard. At night he lay there brained
by his bottle of rye, solemn and patient like brown
water, in repose as the moon graced midnight freckled
with its own filth. The silence pleased Caliban. “Together,
my bottle and I,” he would whisper, alone, as if it
were the only goodness.
It was a rotten carcass of a marriage
and they both knew it. Still, there was some part
of it that Miranda resolved to hold close, to restore
and strengthen. It was a foolish wish. Madness. In
his deafness her project would die. “It is only a
falsehood that my remembrance summons,” her conscience
told her, but she did not understand. Often she thought
it was no rift between them, but a coil of closeness,
an irreparable discord in which the hurt was tended
between them as some fertile indulgence. As if each
were cruelly dedicated to the other...
She found a picture of them as a
young barefoot couple, when his crimes were only “mischiefs”.
A time of ignorant comfort, when he said he bedded
only her and they laughed with assurance that there
would be no ending to their love. “Hell is what
my trust was then, as if I demanded to be wrong.”
He had charmed her once, there had been gentleness,
before the wilt of ardour. When did this sorrow supplant
love? Their marriage was now an abysm and all her
service slavery, the words “I love you” but a spoken
vanity. The ensuing remorse made her ache. She suffered
useless, human pains...
Miranda knew a little peace each
day when Caliban was at work. She too found compassion
in his rye and by the sixth glass she was uplifted,
severed from the apparition of her life. As the fumes
killed her senses she would embrace the table, perfumed
with sloth. Lost. Forgetting for a while the sun’s
slow burn on the earth. Drunk. Some stray grief dancing
in her head. “I long for the night, when even my blame
sleeps.”
There were no
noises of children in their house. She chose to be
barren. “I want no son, no father, no man any more.”
Her lie to Caliban was that she came from a long line
of bad wombs. An “hereditary defect”. Caliban did
not want to be a parent either. Still, he would mock
her for the birth she could not, would not give.
All his credit was plunged into
whores. Thousands lost in bondage and liquor. When
he cheated in green and silver it disturbed Miranda
the most, as these were the colours of the distance
between them. She loved to molest a dollar, just as
he lived to stroke leather black as pitch, and if
she could not halt the drift of his love, she would
fight for his money. To prevent or manage its loss,
Miranda was inclined to a lingering vigilance, an
inquisition every time he returned home. Austerely,
with trials of cutting questions, she measured how
much money was washing away. She would feed him guilt
for dinner. It did no good. No amends came before
her. None.
The liquor made her stronger and
gave her confidence, at times she was insolent and
would roar at his waste, but in the end he had her
bawling. Then he was gone, out drinking with the rabble,
to whistle at women and worse. Miranda had a vision
of his unseen actions, clustering with the dregs of
his friends. “All the devils with glasses raised,
devouring any thing to try and fill their husks.”
The scene crept distinctly into her imagination. Caliban,
a drunkard without discretion. Mouth foaming to suck
the breasts of a whore...
Waking from a noise, her dream was
dismissed. She felt a swift dulling of hope. His approach
was always the same. An odious footfall. Caliban would
sway into the screen, fooling with his key, tripping
on the step. Miranda was fearful. He came into the
room near the bed, stooping for his bottle. He cursed
and expelled a belch, stripping off his garments,
and she thought fright would devour her. Danger swallowed
the complexion from her face. But then nothing. He
was asleep. It was a good night, slumber hushed the
enemy. “Even his snoring is poisonous. It has the
savour of ridiculous crimes.”
Next to them lived a minister and
his wife, both lightning white with the fear of god.
Shrieking burst from their house every night at six.
Caliban would turn off the news and stand observing
through the glass. The minister, humming to his abominable
heaven, beat the wife soundly yet preciously, as one
would wreck a jewel. Their library shed its rattling
din, lamps and holy books painted amply in blood and
faith. He would crack her skull and leave her in a
pile, then pray with a sanctimonious air... as if
to wipe out his sin. His deity would always remain
mute and without miracle.
Caliban would spy on them, drink
in hand, and learn. To him the spectacle was more
than a beating, it was something gallant and dreadful,
a strange prerogative of marriage. “Light is the paragon
of unworthiness, composed of an insubstantial god.
Only darkness bears the hush of lasting power. Only
darkness is without witness.” Caliban would then look
at Miranda through his empty glass. Her features melted
and exposed only the wound of her mouth, a red circle
fringed with teeth. She was a frail woman, a body,
a standing displeasure. Her mind and its prattle were
even uglier to him, and he told his bottle softly,
“Within her chatter dwell all her stale qualities,
but even when silent she is lying.”
His whores told him no lies. With
them there were never any dull accidents of discourse.
And no mouths could be as lush. His lust curled awake
when he thought of them, skins malignant and divine,
lying on their backs only for him. Deformed nymphs,
hollow and unsettled on the bed. “A twenty, my dear,
to buy your poor, wet blemish...” All the trash and
entrails that his cock had swum through. All those
hours of flesh and folly, which were his dearest perdition.
Shapes drenched in villanous sweat. Time bereft both
of speaking and the desolate lack of speech.
Caliban grew to cherish this blasphemy, this earthly
desire to violate angels. “Such evil can be wondrous...
Come, my rotten one, bare your blemish and feel the
disease in your veins... Abjure a prayer with me...
Let us strive to rend this globe from its trifling
heavens...” He had need of these savage revels, to
fuel the infirmity within him, to defy reason with
something much stronger, with the disgrace of the
infinite. Every monstrous union, all the lusty pinches
in the dark, every gorgeous face he marred with his
touch, every bashful virgin made to kneel and lick...
Each of these actions served to make a sovereign gesture
that went beyond the edge of language and removed
even the knowledge of death. His hope was that his
rage, at its zenith, would threaten the world and
its beginning, like flame held to straw. To invert
innocence and poison time with ecstasy, to incite
a mortal destiny yet repulse all thought of ends,
to hiss at death as its power abates... Yes, it was
the noblest celestial dare, to strike a blow against
death. The impossible was at stake. If he cursed and
struck it enough, would death itself perish? Caliban
thought of these things and the condition of his prick...
He came home from the office, lost
in grumblings till the bottle gave its kiss. He saw
Miranda moping near the wall. She stood in the curtains,
weeping from the scarcity of love. The wetting of
her eyes was her gift to him. A prize he could bear.
An overblown compensation for the charity of his torments.
Caliban often only came home to quarrel, to exercise
his baseness. The marriage was a perpetual wrangle.
His need to torment her demanded it. His grudge against
her had its own arms and head, its own life...
Caliban took a drink and hunted
for his fury. He came towards Miranda, strutting his
malice. “I’ll make a maze of your teeth...” The threats
far from idle. “My princess of darkness, let me crown
your precious skull. Come here...” With each loud
aspersion her nose curled deeper into her bosom. Caliban
saw her as harmless and blind, some damned worm incapable
of indignation. A lazy slave unfit to pour his drinks.
He felt the disdain that only marriage can produce.
Miranda was silent, infused with a cramp of dismay.
“Trembling yields its answer,” her misery spoke, and
she kneeled delicate before the blows.
With a bloody cheek, she was perfected.
Peerless in her indignity and subdued for their unwholesome
sex. He never made love to her, he infected her. She
sadly presented him her behind, crying through brave,
humble eyes. “His cock begins to swell... And then...
then the afflictions come...,” she thought before
the groans. His heaviness itself was terrible. Mounting
her despair, he plunged into it and thrust all their
enmity into her uneasy form, driving into its plain,
miserable obedience. When she was obedient she held
the most power over him. There was a tyrant in her
bush then, which Caliban resolved to murder. He abhorred
the manacle of her sex, the soft regions which had
once stolen his love, that had first made him worship,
then marry her. For years his prick had been in a
snare. The bachelor had been confined to the prison
of a wife. Now, those affections, that stale need
for a companion, did not plague him any longer. The
horrible time of loving was over. A ghastly memory.
His life was now a search for an abundance of pleasure,
a lust without limit... where consciences dissolve
into the senses, usurping even the spell of the temporal.
Blood, in unstanched drops, like
wine made from her dead virtue, gave tribute to him.
This virtue, unnatural as a funeral to Caliban, was
invisible till it was stained. They were painfully
bound together, her fear in constant nibbling at his
weakness. His hands imprisoned her waist, still shaking
with dread and something else... contentious waves
without precedent. From her escaped a sudden word,
“Monster!” Her body flamed treacherous. He seized
angry breasts. She had the momentary vigour of a traitor,
then it faded. As it did, amazement, fever transported
him. Passion made him frantic. Space itself grew wanton.
Wild. Incensed. Faster he bore down on her, sighing
at the strain of his discharge.
After, she lay alone, her back gilded
with his ooze. Her eyes mudded with tears, the dew
of mourning, as she brushed the blood from her saffron
hair. Miranda then felt her hate like roaring winds,
for Caliban, for herself. “Forgiveness, no... Never.
Never...”
Full of drinks and a new fortitude,
Miranda prepared to pierce the paunch of his cunning.
She plotted, a conspiracy of one, while he lay cradled
in the laps of whores sowing his evil. She would
not be cheated of her revenge. Her being grew
perfidious, a glut of pure treason...
The next night Caliban left the
house and, after a few hours, a fiend came home bearing
his laugh. Wicked, full of drunken harshness,
his suit stinking of sex, he drenched her in abuse.
A vile rain of words. But his stinging tongue could
not penetrate the warm fabric of her anger. Her very
heart was howling for its freedom. Caliban stopped
as he saw something mutinous in her stare. Miranda
the coward had become proud and strange.
“Shut up, Caliban, you bastard.”
She had the gallows in her voice, which he flung aside.
He vouched to tame her mighty desperation. “I’ll kill
you.” He landed a blow upon her frown. Miranda did
not run. She moved to scrape his eyes with her nails.
Tumbling together, they fell on to the couch, throats
hanging with fingers, and destroyed each other in
quiet nuptial assaults. She was the weaker, and her
arms soon fell in a droop. His bulk would not yield.
The motion of his shadow, dropping like a dead god,
had driven the breath from her. His teeth were bare
with delight, as if they were playing. Drunkenly,
with a faint laugh, vows issued from him. “I take
thee as my wife... to hate, dishonour, and disobey.
Yes, I do. I do. Marry me again, Miranda...” Caliban
did not release her neck and her eyelids felt a certain
drowsiness, like a shroud. The closeness of the grave.
She sucked the taste of bones. She would be
cheated of her revenge. Shaking, her hands hurried
to find a weapon, hid with tempered patience for this
occasion. There. Under the couch. Something sharp.
Swiftly, she brought up its silver point. Caliban
had no time to disarm her and could not deny her vengeance.
Miranda saw his smile vanish.
The knife fell deep into one of
his eyes, where the steel would remain. He stood upright
to pluck the metal from its wound, and for a second
his face held all the dignity and noble grace of unicorns.
She beheld the princely arch of his sinews. A surge
of muscles summoned up a royal plume of blood. His
pulse was rising up in convulsions. Caliban felt the
strangeness of one eyeball. He could not remove the
knife.
Bellowing, Caliban struck wildly
at Miranda, bending to mark her with the secret of
his new majesty. He lost his footing with a weak departing
sound, “Thus does sovereignty plummet... unwillingly.”
Reeling, he fell away. She eyed the ebbing of his
throes. His swim wearied, turned to drown. Miranda
felt a momentary envy. It took an instant to behold
her loss. Doubt heaved in her stomach and the relief
she felt was troubled. Oddly unrewarded. “The disturbed
tears of widows should be missing.” They were not.
Yet the rite was strangely calm. There was only the
harmless trembling of her nostrils.
