On the Island of the Seven Cities

[Antylia]

MARIA / MARTIN
​

September 17th, 1951

Presidential Palace, AIRA: She was buffing her nails. The grating sound drove Martin crazy. She knew this, of course. And everything else about Martin.

“Do you have to do that right this instant, dear?”

She smiled coyly in the long pause. “Your slut doesn’t do this, Martin? Not in front of you. Oh no, Lordie Lord! She wouldn’t dare.” She exaggerated the inflection that black girls had.

Her husband was silent.

“I do. I dare, Martin.” The file kept grating against the collagen of her fingernails. Then she licked them, satisfied by their sharpness. She grazed them against her salmon-colored pants. They were expensive pants. She was a Benincasa before she was a Behaim, after all, so she wore designer pants. Most women didn’t wear pants in public, but Maria did. “You know, Martin, I have an idea.”

“As always.” He looked sullen.

“Do an interview. The coalition is falling apart after only one year. Do you know the things Stephen Ficks says behind your back?”

He was taking off his socks. Because he was inflexible, this looked ridiculous. “I’ve done interviews.”

“On television.” Grate. Lick. Scrape.

“I’ve done…” He struggled with a sock, hopping next to the bed like a cartoon character who had stubbed his toe. “…television interviews.”

“With a woman. In fact, with a black woman.”

Martin Belhaim put his foot down on the floor next to the bed, one sock half-on, hanging off his foot like a limp penis. “A black woman, Maria?”

Now his wife was talking fast. “You know Rachel, the singer? Rachel… Does anyone know her last name? I don’t. Is she a Benincasa? Maybe, some of them have our name. Anyway, she was at a little Benincasa gathering at Sanssouci. Beautiful creature, really. I think her great-great- something grandmother belonged to mine. We were talking about how wonderful her voice was, and how she was on the television, and I said she should interview you.”

He shook his head as she strode towards the bed.

“Some of them vote too, the black people, Martin. And she’s so popular with them. With everyone. And they're the majority.” She pushed him down.

The sharpness of her nails dug into his white shirt.

 

[Antylia]

TWO: "A Daughter Such as This"

MARIA / ERLEND

​

July 7, 1951

Casa Sanssouci, SANTA CECILIA: "You made me marry him!" Maria's shriek scattered the servants. She was all lividness and mascara tears. Her little green convertible was parked askew on the lawn, undoubtedly.

When Maria was seventeen, Erlend told her that a woman couldn't be consul. On that occasion, she broke a five-hundred year old crystal decanter that had belonged to Grazioso Benincasa himself. Her outbursts did not surprise him. Afeiza had called that morning to say Maria was talking about poisoning the consul, her husband. She sounded frightened.

"It is rare men these days are faithful."

"You were. Mother had that. And you deny me that!" Sobs shook her body.

Erlend considered the curls of smoke from his cigar, which calmed him. Impeccably dressed in a black sport coat on a white sofa, he was as composed as his daughter was not. This thought calmed him. The breeze from the sea calmed him. Santa Cecilia was quiet. The fires had died down a week before when Colonel Corioles threatened to burn the city himself, and the popular mayor too, if the riots did not stop. This calmed him, too.

"Ordnung muss sein, Maria. I am sorry for you." When he was a child, English had not been spoken at Sanssouci; his betrayed multiple accents. "But we are building Thaumazanj. This..." He held up his cigar. "...is the way of the past. Coffee is past. Do you know what the price of sugar is? We are too small, we are too poor, and we are too late to start building a manufacturing base. Thaumazanj is our tertiary sector."

All he can think of is tourism, Maria thought, and why not? Out the French doors and over the balcony of the great white house, the lights of Santa Cecilia turned the water aquamarine. The island of seven cities, Antylia, with her many languages and pleasures.

"I am talking about my husband! Not about whorehouses!" This stung him, she could tell. He was an old-fashioned man.

Erlend squeezed his temples between his thumb and fingers. Why had God given him a daughter such as this? Fortunately, an idea came to him. "Separate for a few weeks, if you must. But no word of this. I want nothing broadcast about the consul's marital problems..." He held up one finger. "About the Santa Cecilia disturbances." Two fingers. "Or about relocations." Three fingers. "Klar?"

Maria felt her tears, hot, and started looking for something to throw at her father.

"And Martin will make a new portfolio, Tourism. For you. Sell Thaumazanj to Aira."

Maria looked up and stopped crying.

 

[Antylia]

THREE: "Cousinage"

RACHEL / AFEIZA

​

September 17, 1951

Presidential Palace, AIRA: In a white shawl, Rachel blended in among the dark-skinned women at the laundry. "You don't have a drop of Benincasa in you, baby." That's what Maria Benincasa Benhaim told her at Sanssouci. "You must have come by our name another way." Those white teeth, that short red-checkered dress that flared from her waist, that long straight hair. The sylphlike first lady may have been Antylia's most famous socialite, but she was the rudest bitch Rachel had ever met.

The laundry was in a copse of trees next to the big white presidential palace, all verandas and great bay windows. But the clotheslines were in the sun.

Afeiza was hanging salmon-covered pants. A little boy, even lighter than her, even a little blond from the summer sun, sat by the laundry basket at her feet. Rachel's heart was still pumping fast as she pushed the slacks aside.

"Faye, does Maria know about us? I gotta know, girl. At Sanssouci..."

But Afeiza Dulmo was doubled-over, clutching her heart and breathing heavily. "Mama!" the little boy said. "Dat choo Dessie? Lawd you scared me girl! Whoo. What choo doin here girl?"

"Does Maria know about us? She scairta hell outta me."

Afeiza put her hands on her hips, which were big for a small thing but not as big as Rachel's. "Maria damn near beat me halfta death two months ago. Grabbin my hair. Slappin me. So choo ain'ta only one she scare!"

"Does Maria know..."

"About you an' Mista' Martin?" Afeiza was getting impatient. "Well she know about me an' Mista' Martin. She know I gwon finish wha' she start." She gave the little boy a mock scowl. "But I ain get a slappin fo' choo..."

Rachel sighed in relief, and Afeiza filled the silence. "Dis could be choo." She splayed her blouse and skirts with her palms, as if to show herself. "Till choo wen' an' met Robert."

It had been a long time ago, before they were married. Maria was away at the women's college. She didn't remember Martin very well. Small and lacking confidence. Soon interested in other women. Things hadn't changed, apparently. But she couldn't feel bad for Maria.

"White folks never done nothin for me, Faye. Nothin." She felt an old anger, a review of her first album that claimed her Benincasa cousinage won her a recording contract. No way. Cousinage only got you jobs like Afeiza got. And what kind of life was that? This saddened her. "But dey could. You not too ol for college. Dis country changin. I'm gwon ask Robert..."

"I ain gwonta no college, Dess. I got me numba two on da way." Afeiza rubbed the belly that had not yet begun to show. "She don' know about choo. It ain a bad life." She looked up at the big white palace. "It ain a bad life."

 

[Antylia]

FOUR: "Old Girlfriends"

ROBERT / STEPHEN

​

September 19, 1951

The Rex Club, AIRA: The nondescript ochre building was built in the old colonial style, with elaborate wrought iron balustrades decked with flowers. It looked, in other words, like most of the buildings on the wide avenue between the Senate House and the gold dome of St. Roderic's. The Regismen, as they were known, were all graduates of St. Roderic's College, the oldest and most prestigious faculty of the Marian University Nostradame. The Rex Club included as members roughly half of Antylia's twenty-eight senators, leaders in business and industry, academics, professionals, and clerics. Today, the Vice Consul, looking a bit out of place in a pressed green military uniform, was the center of attention. An academic by training, Major Ficks always had lunch at Rex on Mondays after teaching his once-a-week literature seminar at the Marian.

“Your old girlfriends are running Aira these days, Professor Canon.” The major waved off a group of businessmen to join the pipe-smoking philosophy professor in a wrinkled gray linen suit. He put down his book.

“Maria has always run Aira, Major Ficks.” It was the same image Robert Canon always remembered: Maria nude, the Sanssouci swimming pool iridescent.

“You’re not listening. Girlfriends, I said. The consul says Maria is making him go on Rodrigo Delray tonight after the Vulcans game. Big broadcast. But get this. Rodrigo is not doing the interview. Maria insisted You know who is…? Rachel Dessalines Benincasa.”

A guffaw of smoke escaped the professor. His tortoiseshell horn-rimmed glasses slid too far down his nose. “Does Bordello know her politics?”

Ficks looked over his shoulder, making sure nobody had heard the nasty nickname. Seeing nobody, he relaxed. “I doubt it. To Consul Behaim she is a pretty black face. A famous ajza. A chance to show the people Martin’s chummier side.”

“They used to fuck.”

The major shrugged. “So you share two conquests with him. I wouldn’t be surprised if Martin has slept with every mixita in Aira. If he thought as much about governing as he did about fucking…”

Robert leaned back, not listening to Stephen’s complaints. The grand coalition with the Republicans seemed to have produced only stress for the Colorado leader. Major Ficks did not seem to see the opportunity. “Martin is about to get fucked right back on TV. Rachel will ask him what Rodrigo couldn’t. The Santa Cecilia riots. The looting on St. Fergus Day. The Thaumazanj Group bulldozing the shanties. That whole carrot-and-stick business with the mayor in Benincasa’s pocket. How many people did Orz Corioles gun down, anyway?"

Ficks frowned, now looking throughtful. “He’s lost face with the Army’s black old-timers, that’s for sure. What is Martin thinking? What is Maria thinking?”

Robert couldn’t figure it out. Embarrass her husband? Anger her father? What was Maria trying to do? Unexpectedly, he had the sinking feeling that Rachel ought to tread very carefully.

 

[Antylia]

FIVE: "The Mother of a People"

MARIA / CAYCE / AFEIZA
​

August 16, 1951

Casa Sanssouci, SANTA CECILIA: Maria usually came home for the month of August. Martin paid no attention to her anyway. She wasn't sure who he would sleep with, since she took Afeiza with her, but she was past caring. Martin seemed a bit forlorn that his "approved" mistress was being taken. Maria had been cutting: "Twice the fun eleven months a year, Martin, and still not good enough for you." Afeiza, filling the doctor's sherry glass in her formal black uniform, seemed sulky about the arrangement. It was clear to both women that Afeiza was the scapegoat for Martin's last affair.

"Not all women are meant to have children," Dr. Cayce Mesmer was saying. Maria met the fleeting glance of her light-skinned maid, in whom her husband always finished. "You are more of a meta-physical mother. The mother of a people."

Maria ashed her cigarette with a single tap. "Who am I, Doctor? Have you rested sufficiently to tell me who I am?"

Cayce Mesmer smiled tightly, obligingly slid off his black shoes, and stretched lengthwise to lie on the white sofa. "Let us see what we can read of the Akhasic record, Mrs. Behaim." Maria had a sudden urge to tell Afeiza to get on top of him. But she wanted to hear. He was rubbing his temples. Maria folded her white gloves and pulled out her steno pad. Mesmer had already begun speaking erratically, slipping increasingly into a trance.

"Only when the gospel of the kingdom is preached to all nations... Only then will the end come. Is it so surprising...? The Risen Lord. Antylia, land of all nations, clothed in the sun. Is it so surprising? The Magdalene... I was your high priest in the pyramids of Himyar... The princess who became a slave... Amliea of Atlantis. The Black Orchid..."

Standing attentively in the corner, Afeiza remembered stories from her childhood. Had Mesmer heard them? But he was no teller of ancient Kongolese legends. He was a white doctor. And he was telling Maria that she was none other than Mary Magdalene reincarnate, and the black princess of legend who came across the Thaumantic Ocean to Antylia. Could there be a black soul in a white woman?

Afeiza had never considered that.

"Suffering cries out to God... Is it so surprising? The Black Holocaust... Antylia, land of all nations, clothed in the sun... It was thirty years before the Magdalene knew... Thirty years till Amliea knew... Is it so surprising to you who are thirty? You are the mother come to the great suffering... As it happened in Atlantis, so it happens here... The Queen of Heaven hath spoken to the Queen of the New Earth. The remnant of your seed... The remnant of your seed... The remnant of your seed..."

Dr. Mesmer shot up, eyes wide, looking directly at Maria. "Mother Maria, do you know the twelve to aid you against the Dragon?"

 

[Antylia]

SIX: "Our Entire Antylian Family"

MARIA / RACHEL / MARTIN
​

September 19, 1951

Casa Sanssouci, SANTA CECILIA: The room was dark. If someone were to come in, they would see only the television illuminating the face of Erlend Benincasa. But he had forbidden anyone to come in. Old newsreel footage played: Antylian flags on the convertible hood and in crowds, Maria with her big sunglasses and big smiles. When they cut to the studio, Martin looked older. But Maria was as vibrant as her newsreel avatar.

Sitting between them, Rachel Dessalines was sultry and magical. Her body shifted as she spoke, and “mm-hmmed” like she could taste the juiciness of her speech, “Mrs. Behaim has a special announcement, I believe. Mm-hmm, ma’am?”

Erlend frowned. What could that be? On screen his daughter was saying, “Mm-hmm, I do. Thank you, Rachel, honey.” Thank you, honey. Maria’s elegance seemed effortless, so the common touch did not seem forced. You were drawn to the way her white gloves moved from her black dress to pat Mama Dessie on the arm. Maria was beaming.

“I would like to announce that, this morning, I filed my candidacy for Santa Cecilia’s seat in the Senate, to join the class of 1951.”

Unbelievable. Martin was unsuccessfully trying to hide his shock. But Erlend thought most viewers would be watching Mama Dessie’s big white teeth. All her voluptuousness shared in a little dance of exuberance. “Antylia’s first lady senator? To think we might see the day. My goodness. Oh my goodness.” Maria sat looking gracious and, for once, humble. It struck Erlend at that moment that his daughter might have a political genius.

The exult tapering off, the charismatic black lady turned to a silent Martin. “Now, Consul Behaim, we haven’t forgotten about you.” His smile looked forced beside the feminine ecstasy. “Let's talk tourism development. Let's talk about the human cost in Santa Cecilia, that no white folks on ABC or the Tribune are talking about. Bulldozed shantytowns. Riots. Colonel Corioles ordering live rounds fired.”

Erlend stood up. Suddenly everything was out of control. Knocked loose, his rum snifter cracked on the floor. His face now flushed hot with blood. What is going on? On screen, Martin looked stupidly around the studio in silence, not meeting the eye of the camera. He seemed to be looking for someone to tell him what to do. And was muttering something like “inappropriate” and “rumors, stories.”

Martin Behaim stood up abruptly. Only his thigh to his shoulder was on the screen now. “Race is used to divide this republic. I don’t care to… This interview is over,” said his voice, trailing off as he walked out, his body first eclipsing then revealing two stunned women.

Maria, poised, shook her head in unmistakable disdain. She had no intention of following her husband. “Our future of this country must be discussed by our entire Antylian family, not just on Constantinople Street between the Rex Club and the Senate House.”

Livid, Erlend stood up quickly and switched off the television.

 

[Antylia]

SEVEN: "An Intimate Gathering of Friends"

ROBERT / ORZ / RACHEL / MARIA​

1032 Constantinople Street, AIRA: She went straight from the ABCTV studio to Professor Canon looking for a kind of security, only to find Orz Corioles in his apartment. Rachel almost ran out, just as Martin Behaim had run out of her interview. But Robert convinced her to stay, fixed her a hot buttered rum. This did not stop Rachel from intermittently crying. She was exhausted, overwhelmed, and afraid, quite the opposite of the vivacious star of the evening television broadcast. Why have I gotten myself into? The colonel was talking about Maria.

“She is a viper.” They paid no attention to the sound of the door opening. People were in the hallway outside. Maybe eight or ten.

“You have no appreciation for politics,” Robert was saying, “She is taking control of the Republican party. Or Erlend Benincasa is. With five senators they will be untouchable until 1955. You need to meet with Stephen. Work with the Colorados. Before it’s too late. Maria is giving this country to her father.”

“I am not.”

Stunned, both men stood up. Maria Benincasa Behaim walking into the room, trailed by a half dozen people. What was Rachel Dessalines doing there? Maria’s terse explanation left nothing about her intrusion answered. “I can’t go home tonight, obviously.”

She decided simply to act as if Robert had thrown a party and invited everyone. “Thank you, Robert, for throwing this intimate gathering of friends.” And she worked the room.

“Call Father Michael,” she told Robert. “If he’s not praying matins. Call Major Ficks. You want to unite the opposition? I alone can destroy my husband and my father. I am the opposition.” “You inspire me with your power, Mama Dessie,” she told Rachel. “Raw sexual power. You should see my doctor, Cayce Mesmer. He would say you epitomize the Oedipus Complex. The mother whose children want to love her carnally.” “You were so brave,” she told Rodrigo Delray. “This country needs a free press.” “I can’t stand to have Martin inside me,” she told Colonel Corioles, putting her white-gloved hand on his green army jacket, moving one white-gloved finger to stroke his cheek. “But I am a viper.” Her eyes flashed as she beckoned Afeiza over. “An unmarried man in Airan politics, Faye, dear. How brave of him, don't you think?”

It did not matter that nobody trusted her. She was captivating.