Chapter IV. Labyrinthine
IV
Labyrinthine
Light filtered through the stained glass windows, casting multiple colors on the hallway’s runner rug.
Quaint tried to open another parlor, but it was locked again, like much of the second story of Cabaré.
The repetitive failure reminded Ariadne of the yellow house of her dreams, a house with almost no corridors, only room after room after room, many of them identical, making her feel like she was entering the same place over and over again.
Augusto stopped in front of the imperial staircase after minutes of fruitless search.
“I think Dami?o’s hiding from you. Someone must have told him you were around, and he went back to his place with his tail between his legs.”
“Why is he hiding from Quaint, in particular?”
“Why indeed.” Quaint reclined his shoulder against the bronze statue of a woman holding a candelabrum. “Let’s say I have ruined one of his businesses in the past. And let’s also say that he’s afraid of being eaten.”
Augusto crossed his arms. “Maybe they’re upstairs.”
“You two stay here,” Quaint started to say, but Augusto interrupted him with an incredulous laugh.
“She won’t ever talk to you alone!”
“They are not to be trusted around a human,” stressed Quaint.
“What can dogs do, bark?” Augusto shook his head dismissively. “They won’t attack her, Quaint. Not here. Not if we’re around.”
“I’ll wait in the library.” Ariadne touched the enamel pin on her chest that was given to human attendees who frequented the second and third stories. “Isn’t this supposed to show I’m not food?”
“Yes, but…”
“Then go.”
After they headed upstairs, Ariadne walked aimlessly, following the long and antique runner rug.
Despite being emptier, the upper rooms felt suffocating; if the first story were an open mouth, the second would have been a clenching throat, and the third the lower esophagus, just above the cardia of the stomach.
The placid old lady she’d seen the day before was there, walking with her elderly gul, and the pair entered one of the parlors.
The woman made the sign of the cross, and Ariadne couldn’t help but notice that, today, she didn’t wear a lapel pin.
In any other building, the library would have been a comforting place, but in Cabaré, there was a certain eeriness to the beauty of the next room she entered.
The walls had been recently repainted, the ceiling had frescoes, the shelves were tall and organized, and there were oil paintings and bronze busts throughout the entire room.
Ariadne admired the pictures, and stopped in front of a large framed photograph of the members of Cabaré, dated 1963.
About twenty people stood in a large ballroom.
Some of them were guls she had already seen, like the German couple, or the little boy with tourmaline rings, a robust toddler at the time.
Genebra was right in the middle, recognizable by the straight waistline of her flapper dress, her lean physique, and her bobbed hair.
Augusto smiled by her side, and he had changed considerably: he was much thinner in the picture, his hair had been braided into neat cornrows, and he only had a shade of a beard, but his dark skin now had no more lines than it had in the sixties.
On the far left, she recognized Erik, who had to have been around forty by then.
His light hair was styled to the side, and he wore round tortoiseshell glasses and raised a glass of champagne in the air.
Quaint was by his side, wearing a mod suit, one of his arms resting on Erik’s shoulder, the other hand holding a cigar.
The two looked like they had just shared a particularly funny joke and were doing their best to suppress their laughter, and Ariadne found herself saddened by the thought.
She observed other guls she had never seen before, and her eyes stopped on a familiar figure on the other side.
A heavy man, muscular and bigger than all the others, with his hands stuck inside the pockets of his pinstripe pants.
The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up, revealing the profuse hair that covered his arms, and the dark stubble did not hide the thick fangs that forced his jaw outward.
Everything disappeared at the sight of him.
Ariadne could no longer remember where she was, which journals she had read, what all those books around her were, who Quaint was and what his face looked like.
Not even Erik existed anymore. In her mind, she was inside the yellow house, strapped, tied, locked; she was bound to the chair, to the bed, to the floor; she was there, and no one else existed but the man keeping her inside.
Here, she told herself, feeling like the floor was trembling under her feet. I’m here. Ariadne blinked several times, staggering toward the corridor in the hopes of feeling some fresh air, but the club felt bigger and emptier than before. The throat closed around her.
“Rafaela? Are you coming?”
Ariadne raised her head when she heard the name, the pool of gastric acid no longer drooling from the organ walls and floor, back to a regular club of plaster, cement, wood.
A gaunt man with chalk-white skin stood in front of her.
His features formed a mental sketch somewhere in her memory, in a place she thought forgotten, rearranging him until she could understand the picture: a pencil mustache under a pointy nose, an outmoded suit, a cane in one hand, a top hat in the other.
A strange-looking man who came sometimes, the afternoon’s historical telenovela playing in the background.
He looks like one of the characters, she would childishly think, looking at actors on the TV.
Huh was all Ariadne managed to say. Her fingers trembled, and there she was again: the very image of a broken doll, no arms, no legs, nothing left.
The alarms went off in her head. Part of her, beastly and inconsequential, wanted to grab the gul by the neck and squeeze, squeeze, and squeeze, like they had done to her.
Dami?o was also paralyzed. All traces of color had vanished from his already pale face, and his eyes, sunken and rat-brown, consumed her from head to toe.
They stayed far too long on her face, recreating her younger self, then wandered over her body, over the mature plumpness of her curves, making it very clear that she was a grown woman, not a child.
Finally, he stopped at the limbs that should no longer exist, and before she could say anything, he ran.
Dami?o fled toward the staircase, faster than she thought possible, and Ariadne ran after him.
What would she say, if she reached him? There was nothing to be said. Would she ask him to confirm the deluge of images inside her mind? Question if he was sorry, if he had ever regretted it, even for a day?
Ariadne faltered. Her legs no longer worked.
She leaned against the wall, watching Dami?o meet a young woman on the stairs and rush past her, pulling her by the arm.
No, she thought, then yes. Only the woman was not leaving with him, no matter how many times he called her—Rafaela, come now, Rafaela!
Don’t be like this!—she was marching toward Ariadne with a vicious look on her face.
Rafaela was tall and skinny, making her protruding belly even more visible under her tight turquoise dress.
Her loose curls enveloped the skin of her bare shoulders, of a similar tawny color to her hair, and her thin features twisted in a grimace.
To a human, she looked like she was around thirty, like Ariadne herself, but she couldn’t have been fewer than three centuries old.
Bitterly, Ariadne thought that a woman like her would have been the perfect companion for a man like Quaint, both beautiful and well-dressed, tailor-made for such a refined place.
Rafaela flashed a smile full of teeth when she stopped in front of her.
“The man you’re accosting is my husband,” she said, soft and melodious. Rafaela cornered her against one of the walls, towering over her. “What business do you have with him?”
“Your husband.” Ariadne processed the words. “Poor thing.”
“What did you say?”
“That I pity you,” Ariadne said, now louder. “That’s what I said.”
How easy it was, to shut down all the feelings that flooded her head, seeping even from the most locked corners.
Ariadne had done it before, opening an imaginary trunk and shoving the memories inside of it until her head was blank.
After closing it, she could not remember almost any detail of what she had hidden there, but, like a rotting corpse, its blood would sometimes leak, reminding her there was something deeply wrong inside.
Again, she pushed the images of the yellow house inside the trunk, and faced the other woman.
“You should avoid stress in your condition.” Ariadne offered a cruel smile, wondering if Rafaela knew what her husband did and who he befriended, or if she would care about any of it. “By your size alone, I’d say you’re almost reaching your third year, aren’t you?”
Rafaela’s fangs appeared under her maroon lipstick, and a guttural growl came from her throat.
“Who are you here with?”
“Quaint brought me. Heard your husband is not very fond of him.”
“Of course it had to be one of Quaint’s humans to ruin my day, like one wasn’t enough!” Rafaela huffed, and a curl flew off her face. “He told you, didn’t he?”
“Told me what?”
“Don’t play dumb now.” She clutched Ariadne’s face, the gul’s long acrylic nails sinking into her cheeks.
“Of course Quaint bragged about killing Minotauro. Do you think that means you’re better than me?
Stick to your man, and I’ll stick to mine.
Quaint might pretend he’s oh-so-good, but he’s still alive, isn’t he?
Alive, healthy, and eating like the rest of us. ”