Work Text:
COLOR ATLAS
" If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more. "
(Jane Austen, "Emma")
"
Simple, seldom and sad
Are we
When we take our path
To the purple sea -
With mad, sweet Expressions
Of Yore,
Strangely Beautiful,
Yea, and More
On the Night of all Nights
When the sky
Streams by
In rags, while the Dead Trees
Prance and Cry.
Sensitive, seldom, and sad
Sensitive, seldom, and sad
"
(Mervyn Peake, "Titus Groan")
Amaranthine, the flags Steerpike sees flying from under the window of his cell, where he is thrown after following Mr. Flay to escape from another prison, in the depths of the castle, where the light is only fire and unbearable heat, where the only smells are the flesh of animals and the vegetables simmered for the delicate palate of the sovereign, his wife, his daughter (oh Fuchsia).
He watches the flags for a long time, dreaming of pure air, of equality, of abolishing privileges, of higher, always higher, beyond the opening in the wall which allows him to cast a disillusioned glance on the world.
x
Incarnate, the wall which borders Fuchsia's apartments the first time he notices her, and which supports her small dull balcony, towards which climbing plants rise, the only spot of green in the middle of the buildings and of the enormous castle, where fragile flowers bud, all dressed in white.
On the surface of the arch of the balcony, thousands of dead branches, long, thin, like a nest waiting for a bird to deign to land on them. Steerpike looks at Fuchsia from afar, from the roof on which he is sitting, and while he is watching her no bad thoughts come to him, no worries assail him. Fuchsia, who came back from the baptism of her brother Titus, wears white. She melts into the walls as if she were one herself.
In fact, the idea is not so absurd: all the Groans are walls, stiff, static, petrified in their traditions and rituals.
Who are you? He asks, to the void, to the nothing, to the silence, to Fuchsia who is standing there.
She doesn't answer, because she cannot hear him, but it is just as well. Her face speaks for herself. It expresses, in each one of its slightly clumsy features, which could be pretty depending on the shape she gives them, all that she is in the secrecy of the different layers forming her personality, her entity.
x
Pink, the color of her skin as she raises her face to the sky, and closes her eyes, confident, unaware of the observation to which she is subject, all to her dreams and hopes, to this little brother who has just been born, this heir who disrupts everything, questions, disturbs.
It is said of him that his eyes are purple, and that no one can explain it, not even the wisest of Gormenghast. Steerpike would not be surprised to see them inventing pretexts and far-fetched justifications to better preserve their golden situations. In the corridors, the doctor laughs like crazy, and his hilarity increases with every question he is asked about the extraordinary eyes of the young earl.
Steerpike is amused by it, while finding the thing to have made more sense in Fuchsia's case.
Perched on the edge of the roof, he cannot distinguish the color of her eyes, but then imagines them clear, luminous, to better contrast with the dark curls of her long hair.
She is not beautiful.
She is beautiful.
He doesn't know, for he hardly has any female comparison to oppose her, and cannot decently associate her with Swelter and the other apprentices of the kitchens, emaciated, pale, fanatical and stupid. Fuchsia is another world, which he tries to reach with all his strength, in which he wishes to live and evolve, to build a more prestigious reputation.
On the other hand, he concludes from his reflections on the matter that he could look at her for quite some time, despite the cold, the night, the loneliness.
There is something to be caught here, a complex and marvelous je-ne-sais-quoi, an opportunity and a possible catastrophe, if poorly handled.
x
Scarlet, her dress on the day she enters her attic when Steerpike has broken in during the night, and has feasted on the pears she had left there, as provisions for her future excursions in this place which belongs only to her, that she shares with no one, where she becomes Fuchsia and no longer Her Ladyship Fuchsia Groan, eldest daughter of Lord Sepulcrave and Lady Gertrude, sister of Titus Groan, Lords and Earls of Gormenghast.
Within these walls, titles and conventions disappear, while her dreams, her imagination, her stories, her moods flourish.
She is dressed like the furniture in the room, like the carpets, where refined, sophisticated and incomprehensible patterns unfold.
For Steerpike, having never seen anything but the monotonous tiles of the kitchens, the discovery is such that he is intoxicated for a moment, as in a whirlwind of splendor and wealth.
x
Crimson, the gleam of her anger, as she scolds and castigates him for having so appropriated a place hitherto remained almost sanctified, having only herself for owner, and only her appeasement and her will for purpose.
Her voice rises and her features come alive in this intrusion she exposes, but Steerpike has already glimpsed what lies beyond, the boredom and isolation, the feeling of being misunderstood, the need to be something else, to live something else.
Fuchsia's books are burning fires, where all her ambitions shine. She demands greatness, passion, excitement.
Gormenghast is only a grave where her plans for a thrilling life, for adventure and excitement, are gradually buried.
In the attic, Fuchsia lets her colors, her exaltation, her disarray bloom.
Up close, her eyes are blue, sometimes green depending on the reflections of the daylight. Later, Steerpike, looking in a mirror, will notice they are the same color as his own. He will see a hidden symbolism, a sign aimed to be more than a coincidence, an eloquent similarity.
x
Purple is the warmth she then shows towards him, as soon as he disguises himself to please her, or thinks he is putting on a disguise, made in reality of fabrics of deep truths, almost unfathomable in the meanderings of the resentment he has fed on since he landed in the kitchens, between the Swelter's claws, a crawling aberration on two legs, whose roaring still resounds in Steerpike's ears.
This is a music he will never get rid of, for once you hear it, it gets inside you and doesn't let go, like snakes do.
Fuchsia also castigates him, at first, frightened and taken by surprise, but the fact is that they both are surprised by the other, irritated, annoyed, yet equally fascinated. Her voice carries far, however, quite differently than that of the monstrous chef of the castle kitchens.
It is an enveloping, exquisite echo, not threatening but rather a little vulnerable, like the shy song of a young bird.
x
Ruby, the two twins' lips, one more stupid than the other, to the point Steerpike would nearly cry if there was no opportunity for him to rise higher, towards the Groans, towards the throne, towards the sky, towards (Fuchsia).
Together, they barely muster the equivalent of a sparrow's intelligence, which is in passing a severe insult to these charming and discreet creatures, towards whom Fuchsia shows a childish, prodigiously carefree affection. While she whistles softly to call them, and laughs to see them pecking at the crumbs she throws them, thinking herself good and generous, Steerpike looks at her, then turns his head towards the sisters, towards Cora and Clarice, their mouths looking like jewels, the brilliance of which nevertheless pales when the daughter of the master of the place appears.
Fuchsia wears no make-up, no ornaments to adorn her face and add color. She hardly needs it.
The rubies are in her eyes, in her laughter, in the way she walks and behaves. Some people, no matter what the circumstances, radiate the shimmer of precious stones in spite of themselves.
Lord Groan's sisters are as bland as the simplest of pebbles.
And Fuchsia, (oh dear Fuchsia), could wear only one, a tiny one, that she would shine more than a whole room of gems and treasures.
On the balcony of the central courtyard, flanked by her royal mother, Nannie Slagg, dark as a raven, holding the little heir in her arms, and the insipid twins, she wears a crown with branches, while the Bright Carvings ceremony takes place at her feet.
Steerpike imagines her in a ruby-cut room, and sees her spinning, dancing, and laughing, brighter than anything around her, as he plots his schemes and manipulates her idiotic aunts.
Everything he removes from his path, the Groans, brings him closer to Fuchsia.
x
Poppy-red, the fabric of the cushion on which the white cat that Mr. Flay throws in his face is lying, in a burst of anger with rusty accents the burn of which Steerpike sharpens, as he once lit the fire in Lord Sepulcrave's beloved library.
The ashes fall into the twins' dumb little eyes, waiting for their power, not knowing they will never get it, too stupid as they are, swallowed up by their ambition as excessive as it is vain.
But the disappearance of the cherished piece has an unexpected effect, one Steerpike almost flatters himself with: it brings Fuchsia closer to her father, who until then had paid only outrageously non-existent attention to his eldest daughter, since she was only a girl, and therefore could not claim his glorious and awful heritage. For her father, whose mind is capsizing like a ship in a storm, and who thinks he is an owl, Fuchsia draws shelves of books in the ground, hugs him, whispers "dear papa, dear papa, don't be like that, I cannot bear to see you suffer that way".
He does not remember her, but mentions Titus.
Steerpike looks at them from a distance, listens, and a dense anger grows in him as he discerns the crack in Fuchsia's heart, the deep and incurable wound, the appearance of which she tries to hide from her father as he brings her into his embrace and presses her against his chest.
Lady Gertrude pays as little attention to her husband's madness as to her offspring. Lord Sepulcrave has the misfortune not to meow, nor to possess real wings, to interest the Countess sufficiently. Nevertheless, Steerpike sees, at times, a mist in her eyes, like a hesitation or an anxiety, something that makes her resemble her daughter, and gives to this implacable statue a little humanity.
With Mr. Flay out of the way, Steerpike moves from the service of Dr. Prunesquallor to that of Barquentine, recently promoted Master of Ritual.
In the ruins of the library, the remains of his predecessor, Sourdust, are rotting, mixed with the debris of the old books and the relics of the shelves.
Cemetery of knowledge, cemetery of man.
Once, Fuchsia stands in front of the room, motionless, frozen, and Steerpike, passing in the corridor at that moment, worries about this absolute inertia of her body, which reminds him for a moment of Earl Groan's.
x
Lilac, the patterns on the white dress she wears on the day he swims across the river to join them all, while they enjoy a picnic on the fragrant lawn of the castle.
The weather is quite gray then, and baby Titus, swaddled in a golden yellow outfit, is flailing around in Nannie Slagg's arms. Fuchsia seems preoccupied.
Steerpike glances at her, while busy with the construction of ceremonial platforms for Titus' upcoming institution as the seventy-seventh Earl of Gormenghast, and discovers her in the midst of a conversation with Dr. Prunesquallor, speaking visibly fast and low, leaning toward him as if to confide secrets.
She follows him with her eyes as he makes his way down the river, and he notices it not without an ounce of pride and satisfaction.
How strange it is, the way some people get under your skin, without you even being aware of it at first, and then sneak like a disease to everything you have of the most intimate and deepest, independently of your will.
Fuchsia is like that. Steerpike wants to see her as an instrument, but discovers he does not escape her colors, that he likes to be in front of her, to be seen by her, acknowledged, appreciated. She becomes at the same time an opportunity and a nuisance.
He tries to show himself, checks every time he can if she is looking at him: when she is, the day seems better, more lavish, but in the opposite situation, the clouds in the sky seem bigger and darker, without any explanation. Fuchsia wants an adventurer, a kind of valiant prince, eager to fulfill her every wish, her every whim. Steerpike never misses an occasion to show her he can play this role, and that he is much more than the kitchen boy she discovered in her attic, an intruder at the time, now a member of the Groans' close circle.
On the day of Titus' investiture, Fuchsia's crown is surmounted by an enormous ruby with formidable and merciless fires. On her black hair, it dazzles, hypnotizes, blazes like the flames that drove her father mad.
In the sky resounds the tender hooting of an owl, and the thought of Lord Sepulcrave makes its way among the guests, all of whom remember the death, devoured by the same creatures into which he thought he had been transformed.
x
Lavender, the clouds around Fuchsia's eyes years later, as Titus is a young boy of twelve and complies, not without reluctance, with the same traditions as his father and his ancestors before him.
They walk in the woods, alone, without the intrusive chaperone of old Slagg, among the very tall, majestic trees with emerald foliage. Fuchsia picks flowers and recites a nursery rhyme, almost mournful (nine for nothing, ten for less), in a dress made of cherry blossom colors, and sleeves of a delicate, shy white. Steerpike has taken the black of his new outfit to heart, and always carries the sword-walking stick with him.
The wood is free, Fuchsia tells him, but then he retorts, following her, that nothing is free, and his word becomes autonomous, escapes him, genuine and hungry, alive, voracious, just as it was the day he left the kitchens.
With Fuchsia, they stroll, and when she starts to run, he matches her pace, chases her without malice, with the gaiety of a playful friend, before joining her against the rough surface of a large ashen rock standing there, imposing and majestic. The rain comes, and Fuchsia's eyes widen as he talks to her about equality and injustice: they are a beautiful, bright blue, tender, towards which Steerpike feels no hostility, no desire for destruction, nothing but Fuchsia Fuchsia Fuchsia.
He is seized with the desire to promise her everything, no matter what, what she longs for, and to lay the softness of a kiss on her pretty rosy lips.
(oh Fuchsia)
She begins to whirl in the rain, happy, radiant, carefree.
She does not see the precipice.
Thus, when she falls, Steerpike feels the violent bite of a real, visceral anguish.
He cannot stop it. Its force overwhelms him, surprises him, closes around him like the jaws of an iron trap and crushes crushes crushes until annihilation. He forgets Gormenghast, the twins disintegrating in the room where he locked them up, making them believe in a deadly epidemic, the fire in the library, Barquentine, his appetite for power.
Later, he will think that Fuchsia has become like power in his eyes, that she has reached the same level of necessity and importance in his existence as the control of all things.
x
Carmine, her shawl the evening when she comes to mourn near the grave of Nannie Slagg, and when Steerpike comes to pass, in a falsely hazardous manner, the hands full of red roses to better honor the one whom he has just poisoned some time earlier.
She is enraged, miserable, alone, and hits him before throwing herself in his embrace.
I understand your anger, he tells her, because it's true, oh so true, and everything about Fuchsia seems terribly true and sincere, a part of his plan which doesn't fit well with the rest of the mechanism. Fuchsia's soul could be like his own, seems to be entwined with it in many ways.
She is the first to apologize to him, to regret her outburst and to seek his comfort on the basis of mutual understanding.
Then she escapes, runs away from him, rejects him, in the grip of contradictory emotions he reads on her tearful face.
He does not retain the extent of his own fury when she disappears, nor of his bitterness.
Fuchsia spends her time running away from him.
He knows he should have long ago abandoned this trail, that it appears to lead to a dead end (not that way), yet he can't seem to leave the path and focus on other, more promising directions. He watches her go and feels like a little boy, as if his heart has been plowed with nasty blows.
You are horrible, Fuchsia said, and Steerpike would like to reply "I am indeed, but I can be beautiful, if you let me be, if you allow me to".
He lacks time.
Already gone, Fuchsia, the carmine of her shawl, the singular tenderness of her cheek against his, the contact of her black hair curls under his fingers. Gone, all that, far, far away, towards the most inaccessible heights of Gormenghast and power, and in Steerpike ferments a rage as cold as the corpse of Nannie Slagg in the stone of her grave.
x
Burgundy, her sophisticated dress, which she wears on the day when fifteen-year-old Titus leaves the reclusive walls of the castle with his mother to venture out.
Fuchsia, then leaning over her balcony, is covered in gold sparkle, and on her slender, refined neck gleams a set of rubies.
Steerpike sends her a smile, to which she backs away and retires to her apartments, looking ulcerated.
Time has passed, has stretched out all its length on that day in the woods, on the night when Fuchsia let herself be surrounded by his arms.
Berquentine is old, wrinkled, like an unkempt parchment, and he loses his head as well as his poor presence.
Soon, Steerpike subjects him to the greedy flames of the inferno that once devoured Lord Sepulcrave's library, but this time, the fire is treacherous, and burns half of his face, in an unbearable agony which leaves him weak and delirious, too talkative in his feverish sleep, but which later earns him the position of Master of Rituals for his supposed attempt to save Berquentine when in fact he was trying to escape from the old man's grip who wanted to drag him into his pyre.
The kitchens now seem so low to him he cannot see them anymore, and Fuchsia joins him at night, on the top of the roofs, under the shining lights of the stars, almost always wearing burgundy that enhances the paleness of her complexion and the ebony of her hair.
She has grown in confidence, in power, in authority, just like Steerpike.
Their elevation is the same.
For her, he becomes the "knight of the clouds", and if sometimes traces of his cunning distill in their conversations, come to tint their interactions and infuse his words with a rhythm of manipulation, he nevertheless appreciates the slightly silly title, to play the hero for her, to be one in her eyes.
Around her long swan's neck, he sees the red stone given to her by Dr. Prunesquallor a decade earlier. I would offer you more beautiful ones, bigger ones, brighter ones, roars something in the depths of his entrails, a voice that has taken its ease, and that exists only in Fuchsia's presence.
He then thinks back to the room with walls made of ruby, to Fuchsia dancing between its blood reflections, pleased and free, all mighty, raw power. She is more queen than countess, more royal than her mother, unable to detach her attention from her cats and birds. Her clothing speaks for herself.
He kisses her hand, wants to cover with kisses her wrist, her arm, her cheeks, her forehead, the place of her neck where beats this sovereign blood, and is less and less afraid of this impulse he feels towards her, like a summer storm, violent and superb. The years have lessened his vigilance, and strengthened his anger towards others.
x
Vermilion, the room he ornaments and decorates for her alone, the secret he prepares for her, their secret, lined with sumptuous fabrics and barely illuminated, because he knows she likes vaporous, dimmed atmospheres. He is fully satisfied for his part, because the little light avoids making too apparent the new ugliness of his face, the abominable burns of which he cannot get rid, and which are the price to pay for his appetite of power.
Even in this private setting, Fuchsia always hesitates, is suspicious, keeps a distance between them that could enrage him, had he been less patient and less (infatuated).
On the other hand, she is interested in the little monkey he has found for her, a companion for her solitude, almost a simulacrum of a child, but refuses his poem (yet he has never written a poem, for anyone, has never had the desire to do so, and surprises himself by doing it for Fuchsia, an effort that seems almost too much in his enterprise of revenge and domination, but which comes to him with a disturbing naturalness).
I want to see you, she demands, and oh, bitter sweetness, for he would give her anything but that, except this risk of her being disgusted with him again, of her pushing him away once more, and persisting in her escape.
He already knows what her reaction will be, long before she expresses it.
He knows it because he knows her, knows what she likes and what she can't stand, what she wants and what she hates.
Fuchsia wants beauty, nobility: Steerpike has never possessed the latter, and the former is a distant memory, just held on by his mask.
He removes it and she becomes frightened, as he had foreseen, causing him an unknown torment, a squall of pain and distress. Open the door, she begs. Promise to come back to see me, he begs by way of answer.
He should not, the road is cut, seems more than ever a dead end, and then comes back this feeling of misunderstanding regarding his own conduct.
Why?
Why obsess about something that will never happen, never be, when there are other ways, other paths to take, easier, less painful?
Fuchsia leaves the room in a hurry.
Steerpike curses her whole family, but the sobs do not come any less to remind him how much Fuchsia is now the power in his mind, how inseparable these two images have become for him, and how much he can bear the rejection of others, but not that of Fuchsia, to whom he can talk, confess certain things, show himself as he is.
But there you are, you stupid fool, a squeaky voice whispers inside him, the one of cunning and calculation, the one who burned the books of the former Earl, poisoned Nannie Slagg, trapped the twins and set Berquentine on fire, she saw you, you showed your true colors, and she was disgusted by them.
He sobs with anger and pain, the little monkey motionless next to him, raising curious and quiet eyes to his ravaged face.
x
Red, her lips as he stands close to her, later, much later, when he has been discovered by Titus, the doctor and Mr. Flay near the remains of the twins, who starved to death in that cave where he had locked them up (the aristocracy! He had exclaimed, dancing around their corpses falling in dust, looking as dumb as they were once), and sought refuge where it had all begun, in that intimate attic where Fuchsia liked to come to exist, not to worry about anything else but herself.
The castle is flooded, devastated, in a state of chaos, but it is here that she takes refuge, young again and looking for the comfort of her old dreams.
He crawls to her feet, confesses everything to her, watches her features tighten with every word he says and the horrors he has committed.
You love me, he claims, he hopes, you love me because I'm the only one who can see you (and there, deep down, in a hollow of his heart, blooms another confession, softer, warmer, "and I love you because you are the only one who accepts to see me").
The lies mingle with the truth, subtly, beautifully, until he himself no longer knows the difference between what he says and what he really wants, if not Fuchsia, and power.
It doesn't matter anymore, does it? He understands when she mentions his ugliness.
Thus the flower definitely blossoms, and it is like the library catching fire again, but tender, cuddly flames, an explosion of sweetness and hope.
He wraps Fuchsia's cheek, presses his forehead against hers, his nose against hers, promises promises promises without being able to stop (I will make you my queen I will give you everything you need everything everything everything), and thinks each word he speaks with a ferocity tending to madness. He sees Fuchsia dressed in all shades of red, sitting on a throne of ruby, a glittering crown placed on her beautiful black hair, and at her side he stands, King of Gormenghast, holding Fuchsia's hand in his.
How beautiful the image is, how irresistible, how flamboyant.
He loves it so much he forgets himself, forgets the decorum: therefore, when he dares to pronounce Fuchsia's name (oh Fuchsia), as if she were his lover and not his lady, he feels her recoil brutally, as if suddenly awakened from an enchantment.
He loses her, hears her calling him "kitchen boy", roaring against him, opening in his chest a wound which causes him greater and more terrible pains than all those endured until now.
Before fleeing through the window, and swimming between the waters that climb up the walls of Gormenghast, he turns to her. Her face, in the pale light of the moon, lets him glimpse for just a moment the love she feels for him, and the deep turmoil it causes her.
He thinks of her, of her eyes, of her laughter, of her dress and the soft skin of her hand, shortly before dying at Titus' hands, and sinking into the troubled waters where, a few hours earlier, Fuchsia drowned, in a shirt as white as the feathers of a swan.
He thinks of the ruby walls, of the crown, of the power, of her spinning without a care in the world, as the blood gushes from his throat, of a deep, common red.
(oh Fuchsia)