The Beast (12 page)

He looked at the painting. What needed to be done now? Not the mouth, this time. That was perfect. No. This time it was the eyes that needed to be adjusted. A shadow—slightly raised in the corner. Because now those eyes, gazing out into the dark, foggy night, were sorrowful. Were even tragic. And that wouldn't do. They must be raised just a fraction—not so much as to make them wistful, nor—even worse—ironical, but just enough to make them—nothing. Everything. Blind, all-seeing eyes …

He turned to the phone and whispered silently to it that he would do anything, anything his anonymous caller asked, if only he could paint a perfect face. He would welcome whatever torment his persecutor had to offer—if
only he could paint a face without expression. Oh, he thought—perhaps these calls were in fact the price he had to pay for perfection. Well, he would pay, he whispered to the phone. He would pay, whatever was necessary. For that one, perfect, expressionless face. For the face of life … He put his hand on the phone and murmured—out loud—‘Please ring.'

Because he wanted to pay the price.

The phone rang.

‘Hello?'

‘I'm waiting,' the voice whispered.

‘I'm sorry,' Andrew said, in the dark apartment. ‘But I got held up. I'm leaving right now. Please don't go away. I'm coming.'

The voice laughed. ‘Oh, I won't go away. But hurry, Andrew. It's very cold here.'

‘I'm coming,' Andrew said.

From the road he could just make out the lights of the villa where he should have been dining. They looked warm and inviting. Was the old woman sitting in there alone, he wondered, eating her dinner by herself? Possibly. And then he wondered—what would she say if he drove up now, and went into that big, glowing house; that relic of another age when telephones did not exist, and nor did refugee camps. Would she, if he told her all that had happened, invite him in and say ‘My God, how terrible, we must call the police
at once.'? Or would she simply stare at him in distaste, and make him well aware that she didn't want to hear this tale; this squalid and disturbing story that had no place amidst her gilded mirrors and her lovely rooms? The latter, probably. And she would be right, he thought. Because why was she there, the rich and noble patroness, and why was her house so grand and her gardens so well laid out, if not for squalor and disturbing tales; for greed, and suffering, and distress? The suffering of long ago, maybe, and the suffering of a time that had no telephones. But suffering, nevertheless. And if she were to admit that, even for a second—open her doors to horror, as it were—wouldn't all the fine proportions, the paintings on the wall, the furniture and glass, shiver somehow into dust; become ugly, and brutal, and vulgar? And again he told himself: probably. She had, while she wanted the beauty to last, to play the formal game; to follow, precisely as it was, the script as it was written. She had to.

Of course, he told himself as he sat there, gazing up at the lights, quite soon she would die; and whoever inherited the house would also inherit, perhaps, that other legacy; the awareness of what it had cost to build the place—and cost, even now, to maintain it? And they would get rid of it; abandon it as a monument to the guilty past. And they would be right, too. Or perhaps, again, they wouldn't. Neither be right, nor abandon it. He shrugged. He didn't know. For after all—if there were no one guilty in the world, who would buy his paintings? His paintings that stared down so enigmatically from the walls of that very villa there—and told, perhaps, the Countess all she could bear to know. Oh, it was all so confusing, and a dilemma he had discussed with himself many times before. But it was a dilemma he had never resolved, and until he did, he
must abandon any idea of going up to that villa and telling its old owner of—the unbearable.

So he turned the car off the road, and drove into the big gravelled car park beside the glass and empty
night-club
—moored in the fog like a vast and garish liner—and turned the engine off.

There were no other cars parked there.

He got out, and started to walk about, straining his eyes for some sign of life. It was impossible that there was no one here. It was impossible. No one could have such a sense of humour, as to make him drive out into the country for nothing. Someone must be here.

But the fog draped itself about him in pale and
glistening
threads of moisture—glistening because of a single street light, high above the car park—and there was not a sound in the winter night. He walked up and down, his feet crunching on the gravel, and made out a big red sign that said ‘Dancing.' He went back to the car and sat in it. He got out and called ‘Hello.'

His voice rang flat and dead through the thick white darkness, and no one answered him.

A car drove past down the main road, and he thought for a moment that it was going to stop. But then it drove on, and he was alone again. Lucky people, he whispered. In half an hour they would be in Mantova. In the bright city. In their homes, possibly. And he? Where would he be? Waiting here still? Waiting to meet his anonymous caller? Waiting, waiting, waiting …

He got back in his car again, and turned on the engine and the radio. There were Viennese waltzes playing.

He sat there and listened to them, and then he turned them off, and thought about his painting. And suddenly, in the foggy night, he knew exactly what he had to do to
make it perfect. He knew exactly where he had to put that shadow. And while he had felt confident in the past—and never more so than last week—now, strangely, he felt more than confident. He felt beyond confidence. He even felt that, in a way, he had already done it. Yes—sitting there in his car, ten kilometres away from his canvas, he had finished his painting. What he would do tomorrow would be no more than a post-script. It would even matter if he didn't actually do it. He
had
done it. He had finished. He had achieved perfection.

And just as he thought this he saw, through the dimness, something move. Something slipping down one side of the big glass building. At least, he was pretty sure he had seen something. It could, he supposed, have been the wind shifting the drapes of fog, and giving him the illusion of something—someone?—moving. But no—he was sure. He
had
seen something.

He got out of the car, and left the door open. He walked slowly towards where the movement had come from. He called again, ‘Hello.' But now he called it eagerly, willingly—not tentatively, as he had before. Because now he was happy. He had come out here and faced this—whatever it was—and had finished his painting out here. He wanted to thank his caller.

He walked down the path by the side of the night-club, squeezing between over-grown oleanders. He walked, and called again, ‘Hello.' And then he stopped. Stopped, and went rigid. For suddenly, all his happiness had left him. All his conviction that he had finished his painting. All his thoughts about what he would or wouldn't say to the caller. And all that remained with him was fear; stark, appalling, terrible fear. Fear—and the awareness that he was out here alone, in the country, in the fog, and that somewhere
near him—very near him now, he could feel it—there was a maniac. He wanted to run—to rush back to the car, leap in and drive back to town. To go straight to the police, or even drive up to the Countess and ignore her reaction, whatever it was. He wanted to run away from here, back to his existence as Andrew Smythe, Englishman. He wanted to run anywhere, just to get away. He didn't give a damn about his painting—what did it matter about perfect faces, for God's sake; he wasn't a mystic, he was just a
professional
painter, a creator and vendor of forms and colours. And he didn't give a damn about good manners, either. What the hell did manners matter. Manners?
Manners
!
He wanted to scream, out there in the foggy night. But he neither screamed, nor moved. Because he was frozen with fear, and because he had, he realized, left his car door open. And he was sure, if he ever got to it, that inside, waiting for him, he would find—find what? Oh, he didn't know. He couldn't think. But yes. He
did
know. He would find—the unbearable. The unbearable.

And then, so close to him he thought that the sound was coming from within him, he heard a noise. He turned. He
would
run.

But he didn't. For as he made a move something struck him hard—blindingly hard, blazingly hard—on the head, or in the heart. He wasn't quite sure where he had been struck. But he knew—there was absolutely no doubt—that the blow was mortal. And all he had time to do as he fell forward towards the wall of the empty night club, was see, reflected in the glass, a face. But not just an ordinary face. No. This was a special face, and quite unique. For pale, and round, and perfect, it had no expression at all …

He didn't, however, have time to see if it were his own, or someone else's face.

He wiped his forehead before he unlocked the door; the afternoon was so hot that even riding up five flights in the elevator had made him sweat.

He went in and took off his shirt and his shoes and lay down on his bed; he stared up at the ceiling, and at the red lampshade he had bought in Ceylon.

Ten more days; the woman doctor who had told him had been so matter-of-fact and cool about it that it was obvious she was telling the truth. He tried to remember her name. Doctor Roberts, or Robbins—something like that. He would have to find out so he could send her something, some small present by way of thanks for her kindness when it was all over.

He lay on his bed and sweated.

He would have the apartment air-conditioned first of all; he had suffered enough summers because of Edward’s absurd belief that cold air from a machine was unnatural. Edward believed in closed shutters and open windows, in shade and breezes.

Ten more days of sweating and suffering, and then it would be over.

He was glad, in a grim way, that there was a time limit. Before it had seemed that Edward would go on dying forever, getting thinner and thinner as the summer grew
hotter, being eaten alive as the temperature rose. Now there was a date; something, horribly, to be looked forward to. Ten days from now; the twenty-ninth of July.

It was even convenient. Giovanna was leaving for her holidays on the first of August; she had offered to postpone them, of course, but it wasn’t right that she should; she had children and a husband, and both she and her husband worked all year to have this one month by the sea. The holidays of the living shouldn’t be interrupted by the dying; especially by the painful dying of a sixty-year-old foreigner who was neither relation nor friend—though Giovanna was very fond of Edward; she had been with them for eight years now.

He lay on his bed and sweated, and the cat jumped up next to him and nuzzled against his leg with a small cry. He swore under his breath and pushed the animal away from him. She was going to come on heat; she must be, because she hated him and knew that he hated her, and only came near him when she was on heat. She would make these little cries for a day or two, and then would really start; screaming night and day, rolling on the floor, dragging herself around with her ass in the air. Oh God. Right now. Just this week. He couldn’t bear it.

Edward had found her as a tiny kitten, abandoned in the street; had brought her upstairs and nursed her. When he had shown her to Billy the tiny appealing thing had scratched and bitten him. It was, he said to Edward, hate at first sight. Edward adored her; adored her and named her Kate; but to Billy she was always ‘her’, ‘if’, ‘she’, ‘the cat’, ‘the vicious little monster.’

When she had first come on heat Billy had said ‘Let’s have her fixed,’ but Edward had pretended to be shocked; he had said it was unnatural. So sometimes she was kept
shut in the apartment for a week, and sometimes she was allowed to wander off over the terraces and roof-tops until she found a tom; and in due course kittens would be born, and Edward always found homes for them; cajoled,
persuaded
, begged, even bribed some of the hundreds of people he knew to have one of Kate’s kittens. Billy was sure that they all regretted it, later, but Edward didn’t care; he had found a home for them. Billy had told him ‘You’re just as selfish as I am. I’d drown them as soon as they’re born, but you get people to take them who don’t really want them and I’m sure half the time don’t even treat them right.’ Edward had smiled patiently and said ‘That’s their responsibility, and they’re answerable to themselves for any unkindness. I’m answerable to myself, and I feel it’s my duty to find a home for all of Kate’s kittens; it’s my duty to myself and to Kate, because I love her.’

Billy lay on his bed and thought of Edward saying that; Edward, tall and slim and tanned and distinguished; Edward always patient and smiling, and unwilling to do anything he considered unnatural.

The cat muzzled up to him again and again he pushed her away. She wasn’t going to be allowed out this time, however. The doors to the terrace were shut, and they were going to stay shut. It was bad enough with her screaming, but it would be worse if she were pregnant—and anyway, he didn’t want to think of her going out over the roof-tops, fucking, when Edward was dying. She was Edward’s cat; the least she could do was stay at home for ten days, and scream in mourning for the man who had loved her.

Ten more days. He would have air-conditioning installed, and would do something about the cat. He had always
hoped, when he was feeling evil, that Edward would die before the cat, just so he could settle his score with the monster. He hadn’t imagined, of course, that it would really happen; he hadn’t ever thought of Edward actually dying; actually leaving him. It had always seemed absurd to think that death would be so ill-mannered as to approach Edward; absurd and unnatural. Edward had hundreds of friends—he appeared to know every publisher, writer, artist, historian, curator, industrialist, actor, actress,
big-time
gangster and politician in the western world—and all of them, when they passed through Rome or Capri in the summer, came to stay for a day or two, or a week or two; the apartment was always full of guests. And Edward would somehow enchant them all, make them all seem pleasant and civilized and intelligent and amusing; that was his talent, and what he liked to do. The idea of someone coming into the house and being unpleasant, uncivilized, was inconceivable; yet Death had come. And though he was not one of Edward’s friends, and though he had come uninvited, he had come to stay, and could not be sent away.

Meanwhile, the friends had sent letters. They arrived every day; post-cards, notes, long letters, from all over the world. Wishing Edward luck, hoping that he would be better soon.

But he would not be better soon. In ten days’ time he would be dead, hideously dead. No longer slim but a skeleton; no longer tall but shrivelled into a dwarf; no longer tanned, but grey and yellow; no longer patient and smiling, but desperate and unconscious of anything but the pain, and the momentary relief from pain that drugs gave him.

And when he was dead more letters would arrive—but for Billy, this time. Letters expressing sorrow and grief
and sympathy. Letters would arrive, but very few people—Billy was sure. Everyone they knew would write to him, but only one or two would come and stay. They would come to Rome or Capri, and would probably call him, and have a meal with him; but they would stay in hotels, or with other friends. They liked him, of course, while Edward was still alive; liked him because he was attractive and pleasant; but liked him mainly because he was Edward’s friend. With Edward dead—well, there were many attractive and pleasant people in the world. He would not be special any more. One or two people would probably even be nasty to him; make wise-cracks about his not having had to wait too long for Edward’s money; snide little remarks about his being fortunate that he had inherited all that fortune while he was young and healthy and able to enjoy it.

He wondered, as he lay sweating on his bed, just how many of all those hundreds of people would prove to be friends of his in ten days’ time; and he guessed that the number would be not much greater than three or four. They would be the unexpected ones, probably; the ones who had seemed to ignore him—charmingly of course—or dismiss him, or treat him as a clever whore.

Maybe no one; maybe not one of those hundreds of people would become a friend of his; maybe in six months’ time he would know no one, or no one would know him. Maybe he would be completely alone, except for Giovanna and the cat. No. Not even the cat. Because he was going to do something about that vicious little monster.

He couldn’t, he supposed, blame people if they didn’t want to know him any more after Edward’s death; because sometimes he felt that he didn’t really exist, and he was sure that most of them felt the same about him.

He had been nineteen when he had met Edward; when he had picked Edward up in the Metropolitan Museum. He had gone there hoping to pick someone up, hoping to earn a few dollars. He had, in the event, earned several million dollars. Well, that was luck. But when Edward had picked him up he had a strong Brooklyn accent, no
education
, and possibly some talent as a painter. Now, thirteen years later, he had a curious Anglo-American accent that was an imitation of Edward’s, had a thorough education—knew four languages, had read every book in the world that Edward considered worth reading and some others besides, knew almost every piece of music that Edward considered worth listening to, had visited almost every country, opera house, museum, historical monument and stately home in the world—and had, probably, no talent any more as a painter; he hadn’t painted for thirteen years. That was what Edward had done for him; had taught him everything, had created something that was cultured and self-assured and, in the eyes of the world, complete; but he had created something that was an imitation of himself—and when he died the thing that he had created wouldn’t exist any more, though it would go on living, go on calling itself Billy, go on eating and sleeping and fucking, go on travelling and talking, go on with bags full of money and its head full of such things as the influence of Provençal poetry on Ezra Pound, the influence of Hegel on Chinese communism, and the merits of the various recordings of
Cosí
Fan
Tutte.

It would go on living, this thing called Billy; but it wouldn’t exist. Or if it did, only as reflected in the eyes of such people who had been friends of Edward, and became its friends, too.

He lay on his bed and sweated and wondered if, in ten
days’ time when Edward was dead, he would get in touch with his mother; and he wondered if his mother was still alive. He doubted it. His stupid devout Italian mother, cooking spaghetti in a slum in Brooklyn, talking to herself in an Italian that was incomprehensible to anyone who hadn’t been born within a fifteen-mile radius of her
paese
in Calabria, crossing herself and signing her name with a smudge because she couldn’t write, or read. His stupid devout mother who had believed that her youngest son was a good boy who would work hard and make a fortune, when she knew that he was a petty thief and a hustler who wanted either to become very rich overnight, or to become a painter—and this only because he believed that artists were freer than anyone else in the world, were not limited by a lack of education or social status, and were not despised by those who had become rich overnight. By the time he realized that what he believed was a lot of
sentimental
nonsense, he had met Edward. However, he still thought it was sad that artists couldn’t be as he had dreamed, when he was younger.

If he did get in touch with his mother, and showed her that he had made a fortune, she would forgive him for having disappeared one day without a word, and for not having gotten in touch with her for thirteen years. She would forgive him and be proud of him, and believe he had worked hard, whatever he told her to the contrary; and she would make him despise himself for not being poor and ignorant and a painter, free and unrecognized.

No. It was better that he forgot that he had a mother. It was ridiculous to think about the past. He had made a choice, and he had done well by his choice. If, in ten days’ time, he suddenly found that he had no friends, that he did not exist, then he would start a new life, make a new
existence for himself, and be thankful that he had learned of the pleasures of art and literature and music and travel, and had the means to enjoy them.

But as he lay on his bed and sweated he felt, though he knew it was stupid, resentful. Resentful of his first nineteen years of life, with his mother, and resentful of the other thirteen with Edward. He felt resentful, and very sorry for himself. He felt he had been corrupted; first by society, then by Edward. Misused, corrupted and destroyed. First he had had only a very limited possibility of living what he considered a life, and then he had
exchanged
that possibility for the security of culture, and death.

Once Edward had made him read Spengler; had given him
The
Decline
of
the
West
and said ‘See what you think of that.’ He had smiled after he had said it, which made Billy suspect that he himself didn’t think very much of it. Now, thinking back, he guessed that Edward had made him wade through the massive book—and he had skipped very little—with its elaborate analyses of the cycles of dead cultures and living civilizations, as a gesture of sly irony. Perhaps he had realized then, five years ago, that one day Billy would resent him, and believe, however mistakenly, that he had given up the doubtful, living civilization of the Brooklyn slums for the dead culture of Europe. And perhaps, with double irony, he had been trying to point out that Billy had, in fact, followed Spengler’s advice, which was to renounce art and become an engineer or a farmer—or a whore?

He lay on his bed and sweated and dismissed Edward’s intricate ironies and felt resentful. Edward had ten days to live, and so did he. But Edward could do nothing about it any more.
He
could. He would. Death wasn’t
his
guest. He would fight against it. Let all Edward’s friends vanish.
Let the whole world he had known for the last thirteen years vanish. He was going to live. If he lived, then he would mourn for Edward; for he had loved him, and loved him still.

He loved Edward because Edward was kind and gentle, and tolerant; and because Edward loved him. Edward was the only person in the world he loved, he told himself, and that was what he had to do if he was to survive after Edward’s death—if the monster was to survive its creator and have a life of its own; find something, or someone to love. Something apart from art and music and literature; someone apart from Fra Angelico and Mozart and Shakespeare, who were like Edward’s friends, and as likely to desert him as casually and pleasantly as they had taken to him, and taken him in. Someone apart from Edward. He must, he had to love.