The Secret Book of Paradys (4 page)

Lastly I visited his library and took off his shelves a novel of my own, given him a year ago, the latest finished work I had written. He had never read it, I thought. No, here was a page turned down one quarter of the way in, that had a look of midnight yawning. I’d made him no dedication, I had only inscribed it
Andre St Jean
. (“If I die, it may be worth something, for if I die they will know I was a genius. They will be safe then to do it.”)

With that under my arm, and his fine garments all over me, I left the house. I had heard nothing further of Philippe, but I met Hans by the basement step. “Be careful,” I said, “how you take him those cherries.”

What would she be doing? The single Bell of Prayer was sounding from Our Lady of the Wounded Rose, the shadows lengthening under walls, trees and gate-pillars. At this hour, lying on a sofa as he had done, probably, but indoors, out of the sun. Reading, the little white hound on her lap. Too hot still to play the piano. And no one of any sophistication dined for three hours yet, if at all, since it had become the rage for suppers at midnight, or one or two in the morning.

I reached the von Aaron house, announced my arrival, was let in, and
waited. I had thought of assuming another name, but did she even remember the real one?

The domestic came back and said, “Excuse me, monsieur, but Madame is resting, and not to be disturbed.”

“Please tell Madame, without disturbing her more than is essential, that I shall remain here, in her hallway, until I have seen Madame.”

Off he went again, and back he came again, and conducted me into a downstairs side-parlour. “You may remain if you desire,” he said, “but Madame regrets she may have to keep you waiting a long while.”

“Tell Madame I will wait as long as is necessary. I imagine,” I added, “that eventually your employers will think of moving house, and will then discover me, a skeleton, still propped in one of the chairs. Pray ask Madame which, as I should hate to ruin a favourite by expiring in it.”

When he was gone, I poured myself a brandy from the decanter, then another, for I was misgiving and in a cold sweat. God knew,
he
might come down or in, and then I should have to talk to him, the cuckold whose horns apparently I wanted so badly to refurbish.

An hour passed. A small porcelain clock told me the news, chiming sweetly. Did she then remember me, if only as unwelcome? If so, this was a politic ploy, for if she left me to kick my heels a sufficient time, I must get bored, or only hungry, and skulk away. I looked about for something I could disfigure with a secret message, something she must discover with time. If I were able, any more, to write anything, I would have written of her, flayed her with her own self and my delirious fascination with it, and published. Sent her a copy. Let her read at length and in detail, what she had been to me, I the magician who drew every night her soul out of her body, remade it into flesh, and over and over possessed it.

I expected she would never appear, but after five more minutes, I turned, and found her in the doorway. It was an afternoon gown she wore, a robe for reclining, dark, as previously. Her face was expressionless and flat. Was this she? Was she only this, nothing else or more? Her eyes, after a second’s black burning, she lowered.

“Thank you,” I said, “for coming down.”

“I am afraid you have had to wait some while.”

“I’m afraid I have.”

“It is not the hour for visiting.”

Her eyes lifted, looked a mile beyond me. She searched the horizon for something, or someone. But she had come alive for me, by speaking, or only by existing. Yes, she was more, much more.

“You received my letter,” I said.

“Oh yes, indeed I did receive it.”

“But did not think to reply.” Nor did she think to now. I said, “Naturally, I’m no one you would have to reply to. But it would have soothed my remorse.”

“You really should not suffer remorse, monsieur, on such slight occasion.”

“I offended you. That was enough. So. Here I am again to offend you again, merely by my presence.”

“My husband,” she said, “is a banker not a jeweller. For myself, I know nothing about jewels, except in a very ordinary way.”

“You told me, Madame, the ruby was rare and old.”

“Which was all I could possibly know of it.”

“I added that, given five minutes alone with you, I would tell you how I had come by the stone. Here we are.”

“No,” she said, very quickly. “I’m not at all interested, Monsieur St Jean. Please excuse my frankness.”

I felt myself go very white.

Walking straight across the room to her, before she could drift away or disappear through the partly open door, I held out my book. It was precious to me, as were all the things I had written; even where I despised their inadequacy there was not one I would disown. Each tore its way from my entrails. Each had shortened my life, killed me with its own especial little death, regardless of any other thing I had ever done with or to myself.

“Please take this, Madame. I’m aware you can’t want it, a book by an unknown writer, doubly of no consequence to you. But nevertheless.”

“Why should you wish me to have this book?” Her eyes floated over its surface like black water.

“One day you might read it, Madame. In, say, a fit of aberration. And if you had forgotten me sufficiently, you might even enjoy a passage, a sentence, a phrase, here or there.”

“Oh my dear Monsieur St Jean. This constant spectacle with which you present us all, of your bleeding body, mutilated by a thousand wounds, pegged out for the vultures and our chariot-wheels always to be at you.”

I turned and threw the book, the precious book, onto the table by the decanter.

“I can say nothing to that,” I said.

“Indeed,” she said. “Do you think I want something that was hurled at me?”

“Give it then,” I said, “to your beloved Philippe. I must confess,” I said, “that I have rather marred his looks for you, if only temporarily. I hope that will not distress you too greatly.”

She stared at me, with all her eyes, then walked by me, crossing the room to one of its windows.

“Are you now resorting to blackmail, Monsieur St Jean?” she asked the street outside.

I was angry with a child’s anger, and could only choke it down, which left nothing to be said, for sure.

I thought, in a blinding, sickening horror, You will not escape me. You will not get away. The pin of the pen, if not the lance of lust, will go through you because of me. Redress – I must have something!

She said, “My husband, of course –”

“Of course knows everything you do, and condones it. Ask Philippe, he may tell you some of the things
I
have done. I’d never want to cast stones, Madame.”That uttered, somehow, I walked out, into a place of despair, into an endless down-pouring of hell, not knowing where I went.

All the cafés and the bars of my world would see me that night, and none would be any good to me.

As I stepped paralysed down the hill, someone came flying after me. I started round, and there was the man from the door, bowing, and trying to give me something – a book. Mine.

“Forgotten in my hurry to leave,” I yelled at him, “did she say so?
Wait
.”And drawing out my matches, I struck one, and wrenching the book from him, set fire to it. I burnt it, my book, so precious to me, there before the startled domestic, and a multitude of faces appearing like pale turnips in several windows of the thoroughfare, attracted by my scream of anguish.

It did not burn all through, but most of it was gone, when I gathered up the ashes and the brittled leather, and thrust them on the servant, who was still waiting there patiently, as required.

“Take her that,” I said. “Take her
that
.”

He did not argue with me. He clumped stolidly off up Clock-Tower Hill, with ashes in his arms for Antonina von Aaron.

“Antonina, I love you – I cannot say: as I have never loved another thing, for there are other things I have loved so well – the night, the sun, music, beauty itself,
life
itself. Yet all these things I have loved are now valueless to me. You have put out the light. Priestess of darkness, you.

“Antonina, even your name, even the misery you have afforded me, are worth more than anything I ever owned. I would give it all away in exchange for you, even those scraps of a blazing talent, all in fragments, that you would never recognise, but which are all I have and am, and for which, solely, if ever remembered, remembered I should be.

“What can I do? I would murder you, I would cherish you. I would torture you and take you by force, I would lie across your door and die for you. But you want nothing of mine, or of me. Who is he, you say, if you think to say anything: ah, a little second of annoyance. And to me you are everything that exists. The soul of my soul. Black light, by which I see.

“Oh, let me go down and find the waters of forgetful night, and drinking them underground, unremember you. All memory take, your face, your voice, your eyes, all of you, till nothing remain – but still I would be in agony, all of you forgotten, yet all of you unforgettable and with me still, my sin of omission – Lethe leaves me to grieve, though I no longer know why.”

This I wrote to her, and much, much besides. But did not trouble her with it.

A month, it seemed to be a month, went by. Days and darknesses. Nightingales sang in the parks, and one night fireworks burst over the city, it was the democratic decade of the Senate, Year Ten of Freedom, a celebration. All Paradys stood in its trees, on its roofs and balconies to watch. I watched. If my heart would burst like one of those gunpowder lights, into stars, falling. Ah, it was not to be.

During the days, I lay on the bed, I slept when I could. At night I roamed the avenues, the squares, the boulevards. I resisted the temptation to climb Clock-Tower Hill, or to scutter lizard-like to Philippe’s domicile and hammer on its doors and shutters.

I avoided the women in the places where I drank. Some came mewing to me. I gave them money to go away.

Alone, in my room near dawn, I once or twice tried to summon up a demon, or something dead, to instruct me. Numbed by wine and brandy, burning with spirits, I requested spirits of another kind to come to me. The candlestick, the gryphon ink-well moved, and papers flew about like birds. Heat filled the room, then clinging cold, but all these happenings ultimately failed and went away, leaving nothing behind them but a common mess. The climax of manifestation had not been achieved.

Why should it be so difficult to die, so impossible to live?

My landlady trudged to my door, and asked me if she should summon a doctor.

“Why, madame, are you ill?”

She explained that she was not, but that I would seem to be, I had been screaming in the night again with bad dreams.

“There is a window,” I said, “it drips blood, it runs with tears.”

I heard them say on the narrow stairs that I was in the process of going mad and should be evicted.

Russe, who had found me at the
Imago
, attended on me from a discreet distance as I spewed into a gutter. When I was done with that, or it with me, he lifted me off my knees, and took me to his own lodging. Here I was placed in a clean bed, between sheets that had the fragrance of new bread and lavender. His mistress kept house for him very nicely. I slept far into the new day
in this unaccustomed comfort. Then the two of them came to perch by me, while she fed me milk and fruit.

When he sent her away again, he said to me, “Why do this to yourself?”I lay in the marvel of the bed, watching the shadows of birds fan over the ceiling. There was a bird in a cage, too, very thrilled with itself and tweeting, not aware of something missed.

“We are each given a life,” I said, “do with it as we may or must.”

“There are other roads to the sewers and death,” he said, “more profitable and more gallant than this.”

“Take them, my dear Russe. You are so solemn. Take them.”

“Over some woman,” he said. “You bloody idiot. You’re behaving like some stupid girl yourself.”

I laughed, drearily, not without appreciation of his wit.

“This is not being kind, my friend,” I said. “Nurture me if you must, or put me out on to the street. But let me do what I am inclined to.”

His girl began to sing, charmingly, downstairs in the house. I had never wanted that, the nesting proximity of a shared life. Never. What then had I intended with her, my lady of shadows? Not to leave her with her husband, surely, enjoying her at random? No matter. No question could arise of it.

To make a little conversation with grim Russe, lurking in his ancestral forests, responsible for his fellow men, I said, “And where is my beloved erstwhile companion, Philippe?”

“My God,” said Russe. “You haven’t heard. Well, you have been hearing nothing, have you, but the sound of corks got out of bottles.”

“Heard what?” I thought, He has run off with her. That will be it. It seemed at a great distance. It did not matter.

“Philippe has vanished. Fifteen days now, and sixteen nights. Even the City police are alerted.”I said,

“Well, you won’t see him again.”

“What? Why do you say that?”

“He will be out of the City, over the borders, with her.”

“With whom? What do you know of this, Andre?”

“If he purloined her, how could he stay? The old banker might have wanted satisfaction after all. Old bankers are notoriously unpredictable.”

“If you are speaking,” said Russe stiffly, “of the von Aaron woman, she has nothing to do with this. She is in her house. She holds her salon twice a week now. Most fashionable. Everybody goes there.”

The bed seemed to slip away under me, a boat casting off to sea.

“He told me he was her lover.”

“Probably he lied to you. She is supposed to be virtuous. Oh come, Andre. Philippe – is
that
what began this –”

I wanted to get up, I was not certain why. I had some notion I should go over to Philippe’s house, and that he would be there. Then, since nothing else could then conceivably have happened, I might refind myself also. If I wished to. She no longer seemed a part of me. I had drunk Lethe, all the brandy-black glasses of it, and after all, did not recall her quite. Nearly faceless now, just the cowl of hair, the coals of the eyes – Her voice, murmuring something foul to me.