Personal Darkness (16 page)

The lines of streets curved and twisted, ebbed and flowed.

Sometimes girls walked along them, some with black hair.

He watched from the windows of red buses, with eyes like river-washed stones.

At a quarter past six, The Cockerel had already filled with young men in sharp gray suits and creamy shoes. The three fruit machines flashed, reflecting on the lagers and the gin and tonics, diver's watches, gold signet rings.

The door opened and otherness walked through, slow and still.

"Here, Kev. Look at this."

They looked, laughing, nudging each other.

At home, the obedient lacquered mothers waited with low-burning oven dinners and speedy microwaves. The girlfriends were in their showers, preparing themselves for brown smooth hands loaded by watches and rings. Outside were the paper-cutout cars, glittering in the sun, the perfect hot English summer a ruined ozone layer had allowed.

And here was this, this misfit. Something from the night. Dusty black, pale unred tan, blizzard hair.

Kev's hair was very short, half an inch. In his right ear was the hole the earring had once made before he left off wearing it. He would tell people now he got the aperture in a fight.

Kevin watched the outcast come up to the bar.

"I don't think much of your one," said Den. "She's too tall." Den was pleased by his wit and his glasses shone.

"Shhh," said Kev, "I want to hear what it drinks. Malibu and orange? Bristol Cream?"

The outcast spoke softly to the barman.

"What did he say?"

"Beer, he drinks beer."

"Nah, he's going to wash his hair in it."

They waited, as the white-haired man waited. His back was turned to them, which intuitively they took for a sign of weakness.

"I wonder where he gets it styled," said Ray.

"He don't style it, just puts fertilizer on it, make it grow."

They laughed, and the white-haired man turned. He faced them, smiling. He had the beer now, which he raised.

"Proost."

"Oh, he ain't English."

"He don't know what we've been saying."

"Here, matey, where you from?"

"Bloody German."

"Nah, they look like pigs, Den."

"Yes, he looks more like a rat."

The slow riverine eyes went over them. The smile did not lessen.

Malach dipped one finger in his beer. They watched, fascinated.

Malach drew a circle around the rim of his glass. A faint silver note came from it, irritating to the ear as tinnitus.

"Do you think it's some sexual gesture?" Kev asked Ray.

"Maybe he fancies Den."

"Take off your glasses, Den, and give him a kish."

The note on the beer glass became suddenly shrill and unbearable. Across the bar a few heads turned.

Malach removed his finger from the glass. It went on singing. He lifted the beer to his lips.

And Kev's gin tumbler broke into fragments, showering on the floor. The gin and tonic splashed across his pink shirt. Kev yelled. He had gone white. Blood dripped on his diver's watch, which he had not noticed yet had stopped.

"Christ," said Den. "Oh Christ, my glasses—" He pulled them off and one of the lenses cracked in half and fell out onto the ground. He went down on his hands and knees on the lary carpet, stupidly trying to find the two bits.

Ray backed off. He put his drink on the table. "All right, mate," he called out at Malach. Then he turned and walked quickly into the street.

Malach shrugged.

The glass had stopped singing and he drained it.

A few people watched curiously, not understanding what had happened.

Kev said, "Very clever, smart-arse."

Malach leaned forward. He caught Kev's face in his long hand with the tarnished rings. Kev's whiteness went to green.

"
Tot ziens
," Malach said, and Kev wet himself.

Outside on the pavement Ray was not in sight. An old woman came past, stepping carefully over Malach's shadow.

The sun was a methyl orange star in the western sector of the sky. The storm had not broken.

GRADUALLY THE TERRACE WAS LOSING the sun. A cool breeze riffled through the garden trees, and Lou and Tray had goldenly sat up. Althene, beneath her sunshade, continued with her book.

Earlier in the afternoon, Althene had disturbed Lou, and particularly Tray, by hanging up on the sunny wall a gas mask in which grew a clump of yellow and red poppies.

"That's really gross," said Lou. Tray cowered in her chair, going "Ugh, ooh," as though cold slimy things crawled over her.

"Not at all," said Althene. She towered above them on her long legs, most of which a slit in her Mocha skirt revealed. "A symbol of peace. After the gas, bayonets and bombs, the battlefield is covered by flowers."

Later Lou said, "I saw a ring shaped like a gas mask."

During the afternoon Lou and Tray went on toasting themselves, turning to the sun like sunflowers and pulling their chairs about the terrace.

Althene, pale as a lily, read under her sunshade.

Rachaela watched from the shadow below, where the trees massed thickly.

The Scarabae had vanished. That was, the first

Scarabae. Only this specimen of the new Scarabae, Al-thene, remained, imperturbable.

In the morning, about four, the man Kei had gone to Covent Garden. He returned at seven in a car, with meat and vegetables. In the kitchen, a roll of knives and other culinary utensils lay above the sacred mangle. Cheta and Michael deferred to Kei in matters of cuisine. That was his function.

And Malach was the hunter. He was gone. A fiery tension left the house when he was not in it.

But Althene, if she was not Malach's, what was her role?

The book was an English novel. The sunshade was turquoise.

Now and then Althene would glance across the garden and Rachaela would pretend an interest in her own book. But she had lost the habit of reading, and having chosen the volume at random from the library in the London village, it did not hold her. It was only an excuse,

Once there had been a rumble of thunder, but it was a planet away.

Althene mesmerized Rachaela. Not her glamour, which was overwhelming, but some terrible quality of serenity and precision. It had awoken Rachaela to an uncomfortable interest. All these months with the family, indeed, had done so. She did not know now what she felt about Ruth. Perhaps, like the Scarabae—the former Scarabae—she wanted only to put Ruth from her mind and let others see to it. Would the apparition of Malach find Ruth? If so, in what capacity? Was Ruth the vampire and he the vampire hunter? Or was he the predator and Ruth the victim? An innocent white-skinned maiden— who killed.

She thought of Eric smashing in the face of the TV screen, the face of Ruth.

There were no answers, only interminable questions.

The breeze moved over the garden again, and Lou and Tray twittered like sparrows. They would go in in a minute, perhaps searching for Camillo, who also had disappeared.

They had seen Malach that morning.

Rachaela had noted them holding their breath as they stared at him from the dining room, where sometimes, about eleven o'clock, they drank orange juice or Fanta.

If Camillo was the film director, what was Malach in their scheme of things?

The two wolfhounds had been exercised on the common by Kei, and then they too had gone away, perhaps to the kitchen to consort with him.

Some kind of delivery had also come. Clothes, seemingly, for Althene. Perhaps this dark brown garment, clinging to the slim, flat-bellied form, the narrow buttocks, and high, quivering breasts.

Rachaela studied Althene and her body as she descended into the garden.

"How wise to sit beneath the tree," Althene said, standing over her. "Those two awful little girls with their cooked skin. In ten years they will be withered as raisins, but not so appetizing."

Rachaela said, "At least, you come out by day."

"Oh, yes. That is their age, Eric and Sasha and Miranda. To be afraid of sunlight."

"One of them was consumed by it."

"Really?" said Althene, dispassionate. "Who?"

"Miriam."

"You mean, she caught fire?"

Rachaela said coldly, "No, that's too dramatic, isn't it? I mean she couldn't stand the sun. She fell down and then she died."

"Or perhaps it was the shock of the house burning. And of the deaths of the others."

"Are you like them?" said Rachaela.

"Yes. No."

"And you like word games, too."

"All sorts of games," said Althene.

"I mean, do you claim to have lived hundreds of years? Do you drink blood? You, and Malach."

"That is," said Althene, "a personal question. Intrusive. Do you mean to offend? What's your purpose?"

"They evade questions. They wriggle around them."

"To the family, sometimes, the question of blood, being to do with lovemaking, is considered—impolite."

"But you're young and liberated. What are you? Thirty? That makes you anything from forty-five to ninety-five, I suppose."

Althene sat down on the grass in her Mocha skirt. The grass was dry and seemed to receive her with the promise not to taint or stain. She had that casualness they can afford, those to whom the world molds itself obligingly.

"Let's say," said Althene, "I'm a little older than you. Just a very little. As I am a little taller."

Rachaela felt herself blush, mildly, almost coolly.

She thought:
Another corruption. One more inch toward the Scarabae
.

She said: "And the blood, Althene?"

"No," Althene said. She smiled. Her teeth were white, well set, even. But Ruth's had been like that.

"And Malach?"

"Is it Malach who intrigues you?"

"Malach is hunting my daughter."

"Your daughter. They told me, you didn't want the child. She was imposed on you."

"Yes." Rachaela let her hands fall on the book.

"This must take its course," said Althene. She turned her head. Her face was flawless as the still of some film star of 1915. Translucent white, her skin seemed bloodless as that of a pale, young, wondrous child. Like… Ruth's. But Althene was not like Ruth. The coiling of her hair, her brilliant eyes with their azure outer rings recalling those of an Indian woman. Today her lips were coffee as her eyeshadow and her skirt.

"What am I expected to feel?" said Rachaela.

"I wonder," said Althene. And then, "Did you have a wicked stepmother who never let you have emotions?"

"I had a wicked, pathetic mother, ditto."

"Ah."

"My father was Ruth's father."

"I know," said Althene. Her deep hushed voice was restful as the fur of a cat.

"My mother was used and abandoned. With me. She tried to—regiment me. Whatever I liked was wrong. Of course, I didn't have a father. And then, thirty years after, I found Adamus, playing Prokofiev, looking no older than I did."

"Adamus was spent," said Althene.

"I've been made to feel," said Rachaela, "that I helped drive him down into the abyss. That I helped to make Ruth into a monster."

"And who made you feel this?"

"I," Rachaela said. "I have."

"The family thrives on guilt."

"Scarabae," said Rachaela.

"Scarabae."

Up on the terrace the two girls were picking up their toys of nail varnish and magazines, and going into the house.

"Poor little things," said Althene. "Like pretty little flies. They'll break like sugar."

Rachaela saw a wing of darkness on the garden. It was the westering sun, nothing more. But she said, "What the family touches is spoiled."

"Then the family must remain incestuous. It's safer."

"Don't," said Rachaela. "Don't try to push me toward Malach."

"Malach?" Althene laughed. Gold brushed her now, she was like a statue that had been given true life. "Malach is for Ruth. Are you sorry?"

"I know how they think.
Continuance
. I could still bear children. They might want to breed him to me."

"He does as he wishes," said Althene. "You'd better credit that."

Rachaela felt something relax inside her. It was a flame going out. Yet she was glad.

Malach was for Ruth.

But how? The razor or the kiss?

"It will be a wonderful dinner tonight," said Althene. "Kei is invincible."

"Pleasures of the flesh."

Like a rich nunnery—stomach for loins
.

Althene turned to her. How old
was
she? Old as history, perhaps, in a young white sheath.

But then how old am I?

"Little Rachaela," said Althene.

It was like a caress. Sweet, unthinking, meaning nothing.

In the hall Lou and Tray were huddled, standing each almost on one leg, like storks.

The two dogs, of which they were afraid, were in the hall, thumping with their scimitar tails.

Camillo was petting them.

Camillo said to Rachaela, "They're his. He always had dogs like this, I remember. These two are the descendants of dogs that ran across Ireland when men wore the Eye painted on their foreheads."

"But you hide from Malach," she said.