The Infinite Matrix | Michael Swanwick & Francisco Goya | The Sleep Of

Reason 35

10.31.02

the sleep of reason

by Michael Swanwick

with illustrations by

Francisco JosÉ de Goya y Lucientes

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Digital image © copyright

Davison Art Center,

Wesleyan University

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for any other use.

35. [Plate 65]

Witches' Orgies

What is so refreshing as an orgy? Once a year, on Walpurgisnacht, witches

gather far from town to couple with one of everything at once. Men,

women, nightmares, familiars, inanimate objects? A month's worth of sex

is crammed into a single night and a finite number of orifices.

Witches know how this offends the bourgeoisie, so they're always careful

to issue press releases and do interviews for the local newspapers during

the build-up to the great night. "Oh, yes," they chirp when asked about

this, that, or the other perversion, "I'll certainly be doing that. Many

times, in fact." The mundanes, as the witches call them, have fertile

imaginations, and will sometimes come up with something novel to try.

Though, having so little experience with sex, the bulk of their

inventions must be discarded as unlikely, uncomfortable, or laughable.

When Walpurgisnacht finally arrives, the witches crank up the boom-boxes

and light the bonfires. Then, after a rather perfunctory pledge of

obeisance to the Devil (think of that unenthusiastic mumble of prayers in

church on Sunday) and the ritual kissing of a goat's behind, they settle

down to a good, rowdy evening of fun.

The National Inquirer always sends reporters to spy on the revels, and

the witches always catch them, roast them on a spit, and serve them up

for refreshments. Their cameras are smashed, and the film thrown into the

flames.

It's important that there be no photos.

Come morning the witches will all be in their beds, aching in unfamiliar

places. Just getting up to pee will be an agony. "Fucking Beelzebub!"

they'll grumble to themselves. "Why did I ever think I could do that at

my age? A girl of twenty-three would pull a hamstring, trying." Then

they'll hobble out to the stoop to pick up the morning paper, and see

what kind of coverage they got.

Which is why there must never be any photos. Witches know what the public

expects of them, and they know what the human body can do. One day a

year, all the world's fantasies are fixed upon them. Once a year, every

clergyman on Earth stays up late, his imagination on fire, working on a

sermon condemning them for activities the Scarlet Woman of Babylon

herself couldn't live up to.

But then the witches settle gingerly down at the kitchen table with the

paper and a cup of tea, to read the scandalized accounts of what everyone

assumes they did. (Thinking, perhaps, "I should never have gotten into

that contest with Agatha; numbers aren't everything," or "They may be

large, but horses are rarely worth the trouble.") Informed speculation

posits a scene of debauchery that would have turned the Marquis de Sade's

hair white, in settings that Wagner could only have envied.

Then they smile, the witches do. "My public," they think, "where would I

be without them?"

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This is the 35th of 80 stories by Michael Swanwick written to accompany

Francisco Goya's Los Caprichos. For a listing of the most recently

available stories, go to The Sleep of Reason.

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