Personal Darkness (31 page)

"Here is an image of Sekmet," Malach" said. The goddess stood on a shelf, dark as coal, her lion head inscribed with whiskers that made her seem playful. "Sekmet, Power of Battle. She killed without mercy and drank the blood. Only another god could hold her back."

"How did he do it?"

"He gave her something she thought was blood, but it made her drunk instead."

"Then what happened?"

"She became gentle and clever."

Ruth scrutinized Sekmet.

There were cartouches of gold, and one set with lapis lazuli. Malach indicated small statues, naming them indolently. Once he said, "And this is wrongly labeled." He did not say what the label should read.

There was a great goddess or queen by a door. He put his fingers to her lips.

Ruth frowned jealously.

In the Roman section they passed the busts of generals, golden cups, and jugs of opaque greenish glass.

"At Lupercal they looked for werewolves," Malach said. "If they found them, they sent them into the forest. See this head from Germany. It's grinning."

There was a room of open books under glass.

"If you look long enough," he said, "the pictures will move."

Ruth stared at the medieval patterns on the books. They moved. The fisher drew up a fish, a bird flew across a page.

"Why?"

"A trick of the eyes. This glove," he said, "belonged to a captain of mercenaries. Look at the embroidered key. The mark of some lord who wanted to own him."

It was dark when they came back. They traveled by bus, a form of transport Malach seemed to favor when they did not walk.

As they entered the basement flat, the two dogs barked resonantly.

Ruth embraced them.

Malach went into the living room, stood by the window. Ruth switched on the lamps. The dogs trotted to Malach. He touched them absently.

"Are the bars on the windows," Ruth said, "because of me?"

"No. To keep out burglars. This is London."

"The long window," she said.

"Bullet-proof," he said.

"Will we go out?" she asked. Often, now, they went to the restaurant for dinner.

"Wait," he said.

Ruth waited. Then she said, "What for?"

"You ask the wrong questions," he said. "You ask about stupid little things. You've been starved of answers."

"Yes."

"Ruth," he said. Then, after a pause, again, "Ruth."

"What is it?"

"I want," he said. He stopped. He put both hands on the glass. The silver rings on his left hand burned. They were like the rings from Egypt and ancient Italy and France in 1403.

Ruth felt afraid. It was an old fear, and she knew it.

"What?" she said.

Malach grunted. It was a strange sound, coming from him as if he had been punched. Nothing could hurt him or get at him. He was too quick, too old. But now, something did.

He took his left hand, and covered the left side of his face, slowly.

"What is it?" said Ruth.

Malach shouted. Without words.

He spun around. His body whipped backward. The hand over his face had formed a fist of burning rings.

Ruth became very small. She seemed to shrink.

Malach's agony filled up the room.

The dogs dropped on their bellies, whining.

"Eyes," Malach said.

Ruth had a child's face now. A face she had perhaps never had before.

"What?"

"Ice," he said. "
Ice
."

His right eye was open, staring as if blind. He came across the room, and past her, past the two dogs. He walked into the second bedroom, the spare sparse place where he slept. He kept his left fist pressed over his left eye.

"What is it?" Ruth said again.

"
Megrim
," he said. "
Crier en has
."

He slammed the door suddenly so the whole flat shook.

Inside there was a second crash, as if he had thrown himself against the wall.

Ruth crept slowly to the door. She listened. She heard him say loudly: "
In umbra erat aqua—in umbra erat aqua de petra… quasi sanguis ex Christo
—"

Ruth thought stilly by the door. Was this a migraine? Once at school she had heard of them.

Migraine. Half-head. A severe headache on one side of the skull. Perhaps due to an injury, a blow, or distortion in the vertebrae of the neck…

Ice. He had said that, ice.

The dogs were silent and almost as motionless as the furniture. Only Enki raised his nose and looked at Ruth, and when she moved, he wagged his tail, once, twice.

She walked into the kitchen and opened the ice-making section of the fridge. She put her hand on to the ice. The ice would not come away.

Ruth sobbed. Like the movement of the dog's tail. Once, twice.

She left her hand on the ice.

Her heart was racing. She was full of lights. She felt Malach's pain, a sharp instrument pressed through his skull, his eye.

Malach.

She squeezed her hand down on the ice.

It hurt terribly, a sort of burn. Like the rings—

"Don't," said Ruth.

She started to cry from the pain of the ice on her right hand. It gnawed at, ate at her.

She felt herself growing weightless and quiet inside the shell of anguish, his, hers.
Wait
, he had said.

Ruth waited. She waited fifteen minutes by the kitchen clock which worked.

By then she had completely turned to ice. The core of her, her groin, her breasts. Her stomach, heart.

Then she took her hand out of the fridge and walked from the kitchen and back across the living room.

She opened the door of Malach's sleeping place.

She seemed very tall, and to be floating in the air. She saw the chamber with its bare plastered walls, the bed, and Malach lying on it. He was rigidly immobile. He said, "
Quod natura relinquit imperfectum
—"

Ruth crossed the carpet, floating, and stood above him. Her plaits had somehow come undone, and black hair showered over her.

She took hold of his left hand and pulled it away from his face.

There was no mark on him. His face was only hard, clenched, a stone. He did not resist her. He said, "
U doet me pijn
."

Ruth put her right hand, frozen, against his left eye, forehead and temple.

Malach screamed. His whole body erupted into motion.

Ruth, too, cried out. She clamped her frozen hand against him. She forced her hand to remain on his face, which was like furnace heat.

The world seemed to crack.

Then she felt a hurt worse than before. The pain in him had come into her. Into her hand. She kindled. She was on fire.

Then it went out.

She felt bruised, perhaps smashed, but she sat on the bed. A band of flame still circled her right wrist. It was Malach's hand. He was looking at her.

His eyes were so pale they were nearly white;.

He said, "What did you do?"

"You said—ice."

He said, hoarsely, "You can heal as well as harm."

"No, it was the ice."

"Once in a hundred years," he said, "it comes like that."

"Is it better?" she said. "Are you all right?" She started to cry.

"It's gone. You took it. What did you do with it?" He lifted her hand and turned it over. Her palm and fingers were burned blue, and bleeding. "Your hand," he said, "your pianist's hand." He put both of his own hands over hers.

It hurt like fire again. Ruth did not mind it. "Don't leave me," she said.

"At the gates of the abyss," he said, "there you are. Ruth in her black hair." He kept her hand in his left hand, and reached up to her and pulled her slowly down.

She lay over him, her lips on his. He kissed her softly.

"You're a child," he said.

"I'm thirteen."

"Too young," he said. "If you were fifty. TOO young."

"No, I'm not young."

"No, you're not. But this is." He passed his hands, both of them, over her body and her hair.

Ruth began to kiss him. She kissed his mouth until his mouth tensed and changed and took hers. She put her arms around his neck, her live hand and her dead hand. Then she drew back. She lifted off her jumper like a wreath, and reaching behind her, clumsy from the burn of the ice, undid her brassiere.

Her white breasts were full yet high, firm, with budded points.

"Don't seduce me," he said.

"Please," she said.

The tears were on her face like splashed gems. Her eyes were wide and black and crazed with life.

Malach traced her breasts with his hands, then with his lips.

"Old men," he said, "and young girls."

"How old," she said, "how old are you?"

"I remember the pyramids."

Ruth sighed. She clasped his head, the mantle of white hair, holding him to her.

But he held her away. "I lied."

"No," Ruth said. "You told the truth."

He lowered her down, until she was beneath him. Then he stripped both of them, until they were equally naked.

His body was tawny and hers white. The hair at his groin was like the ice which had burned her. She stared at him, at the weapon of his sex. She turned her head not to see.

"No," he said. "Look at me."

He stroked her. She clung to him. The entry of his flesh into hers was harsh and savage.

"You're hurting me."

"Yes."

"I don't mind it. I want to die. I want to die for you."

He kissed her, moving inside her, the pain like a cathedral built up toward heaven, arches and pinnacles, bronze and air.

She turned her neck. "Drink my blood Please. I want you to."

"Hush," he said.

"I love you," she said, "don't leave me. I love you."

He cried out, as he had in pain. She looked and saw his eyes, and in the depths of them, as if in polished mirrors, the ages of the earth, truth or lies, fire and darkness.

NOBBI MOVED THROUGH THE SAGE AND gold door of Vittoria's and glanced about uneasily. It was a quarter to twelve, but the lunchtime drinkers had already assembled. He had seen plenty of them before, but they might not remember him. Mr. Glass's lads.

Luke was over by the walled pool, at the little secluded table under the yucca tree. He raised his hand. It was tanned and manicured with a plain silver wedding ring.

Nobbi, uncomfortable in his suit, went down the tessellated steps and through the wine bar toward him.

Vittoria's was in dark green, with black glass and spotlights. Tall ferns massed in tubs and stone goddesses rose from the shrubbery. The pool was walled in York stone, with boulders carved from Derbyshire, over which tumbled a small crystal fountain. Golden fish sprang through the water.

On Luke's table was a briefcase, and a green dish with tiny strips of liver. He had been feeding the Venus's flytrap in the urn.

Luke wore a silvery gray suit, a milk-blue shirt and a tie like a pale blush. He smiled a regular white smile of which three teeth were capped, but no one need ever know but Luke's expensive dentist.

"Hi, Nobbi. Good to see you. How are things?"

Luke spoke well. His north London slurs had beer ironed out, about the time the teeth were knocked out ol his mouth in Hammersmith.

"I'm okay. It's just the thing I spoke to Mr. Glass about."

"Right. Well, let's get a drink, shall we?" A girl came at once, maybe a mindreader. "What'll you have. Nobbi?"

"Any beer?" asked Nobbi, without much hope.

The girl mentioned some names that sounded like trouble spots in the news. Nobbi shook his head. He racked his brains, which were busy elsewhere. What was that wine Star gave him? That was all right. But no name would come.

"Just bring us," said Luke buoyantly, "some champagne. You know the one."

Champagne. Did that mean it was good news? Nobbi could tell, Luke had had a sniff of something, maybe in the back of the taxi, or the gents. He was bright and alert. One of Mr. Glass's star boys.

Someone like this, obviously unwed, and a bit younger, for Tracy. Yes, that would be okay. In the Corporation. Look after her. Make her happy. But not a user. Nobbi did not like the idea of Tray with a husband who snorted coke, even if only as an occasional stimulant.

"How's business?" asked Luke, as if he really cared.

"That's fine. Everything's fine. Apart from Tracy."

"Yes, sure. They're a worry, aren't they, girls. My kid's only three, but she already gives me sleepless nights."

"You see," said Nobbi, battling on, "she's gone off before, like I told Mr. Glass. But never so bloody long. Not a word off of her. Nothing."

"Pretty girl," said Luke, "your Tracy."

"Yes, she's lovely," said Nobbi. "That's the trouble. These bloody blokes take a fancy to her and then they drop her, and there she is, in some bother."

"You're a pessimist, Nobbi."

"No, I ain't, but I've seen what happened before. And even Marilyn, now she's started. It was Christmas. It really got her down. Tray never even sent a card. She's always been with us, Christmas."

"Well. Maybe this is something special, Nobbi."

"Is it?" Nobbi stared Luke out, and Luke lowered his gentlemanly eyes.

"Hold on, old man. Here's our wine."