Nightshades

by Tanith Lee

  understood, too, though never demonstrated in Kristian's time, that the power of life and death belonged also to his father. There were a couple of stories, one being that three months before Kristian's birth his father had hanged a persistent poacher, the other that once, years earlier, he had shot a stranger caught at midnight trespassing in the grounds.

  In this environment and from this soil Kristian grew, observing the feudal pyramid at its most explicit all about him, the workers beneath, the landowner above, and, elevated just beyond the rest, the images which represented God.

  For religion, like everything else, had its seasons and observances.

  Though it was quite clear to Kristian from the earliest that his father did not believe a godhead to exist, the symbol and the ritual - the motions of the censers, the candles and the exquisite singing - these were all-important. At forty, the milk-white faces of the icons still stirred in Kristian cool thrills of pleasure, and the light through coloured windows. It was too intimate a delight to be shared with any rude intrusive deity.

  Perhaps there had been a half vision in Kristian's subconscious of the milk-white face of Sovaz lit similarly by coloured windows, as he had once found her beneath the panes of the library. Nevertheless, he was inspired to marry her in the office of a registrar with a handful of acquaintances looking on, the only hymn the distant external wailing of a street musician's flute.

  That marriage. It had surprised everyone.

  When he brought her back to the house from the tenement attic her laughter had been stopped. Indeed, he did not see her laugh much after, except sometimes, now and again, across a room full of guests and smoke. He had her hair dyed to its original shade, her face wiped clean in readiness for expensive cosmetics. She was now extremely docile. Kristian discovered in himself a sudden quickening, almost of desire or lust. He had rescued her, barely in time, from the filth of the waterfront night, from the nights of disease, ugliness and ennui which would inevitably have followed. Had rescued himself, more important, from a foul memory, a stinking leper of a ghost in every angle of his house that she had occupied.

  Just over a year later, when all vestige, even all travesty of

  communication had flickered out, she told him.

  She had begun to paint by then, small exact paintings which he abhorred for their theatrically gesturing participants and their raw colours. Moths were fluttering like rain against Sovaz' lamp as he came out of doors to smoke his Turkish cigarette. Sovaz, looking up from her canvas, had said: 'Didn't it occur to you, Kristian, how lucky it was we never met the madam and her customer on the stairs, when you came for me that night?'

  He did not wish to speak of it. 'I don't recall the night in question.'

  'The night you found me on the waterfront, I told you the madam was bringing a man up to me. Do you remember now?'

  'There is no point in discussing this.'

  'I lied to you,' Sovaz said.

  He did not turn, but kept his eyes on the descent of the gardens and the black sea below.

  'Wasn't that foolish of me?' Sovaz murmured. 'I thought it would force your hand, make you aware of me in spite of yourself, if you imagined that I'd despaired enough to do that — but really, the moment you came into the room I guessed it would be useless. I should never have told you that lie. Are you disgusted at my deceit?

  Disgusted enough to divorce me?'

  'I suggest this conversation has come to an end,' he said. He finished his cigarette. 'You understood, I thought, that divorce is out of the question.'

  She said nothing, but, taking up her brush again, began to work upon her picture.

  Presently he went inside.

  Sovaz had remained at the mirrors, still fingering the rubies round her throat. It was extraordinary to Kristian that she should use on her canvases such garish hues, when she would only clothe herself in black or white, and baulked even at the coloured jewels in her box.

  He said: 'I'm going down. I suppose you will be following shortly.'

  'Yes. Of course.'

  'Very well,' he said. He went out.

  In the dressing room she could hear the valet busy among Kristian's things, setting them out, pure as brides, for his return.

  Beyond the blinded window came the eternal soft disintegrations of the sea.

  TWO

  Prescott, finishing his drink alone on the terrace, saw the young American come out of the open double windows leading from the ballroom, and take a swift surfacing deep breath of night air.

  Prescott automatically ran over him a quick, mercilessly thorough glance. The Greek pearl merchant's protege, some youthful itinerant New Yorker named Adam Quentin. Mikalides, it seemed, had at some time known (in whatever sense) the American's mother.

  Finding Quentin adrift on the unsafe currents of the city, he had taken him up, and now brought him here with an intention as transparent as when he praised his latest pearl.

  How old was the boy? About twenty, probably. What you expected perhaps of a young American male, lean, athletic, gold-coloured skin and sun-bleached hair and eyes, very white teeth, and too broad-shouldered to look particularly elegant or at ease in a dinner jacket.

  His clothes were correct but had a look to them that suggested to Prescott they might have been hired for the occasion. There was no cunning in the boy's face. He stood at the balustrade, clear-eyed and ingenuous, for either he was an opportunist like the Greek, or else naive.

  Prescott had already inadvertently memorized the face. He now found it turned to him.

  'Good evening,' Prescott said.

  The American smiled.

  'It's a beautiful night,' the young man said softly.

  Just then the Greek, pausing at the threshold of the room, called the boy back to him like a man whistling a dog.

  Prescott put aside the feeling of compunction that had come on him.

  No doubt he would be seeing something of Quentin in the future.

  The Englishman set down his glass and left the terrace for the garden.

  A few couples were strolling in the dark. Their different accents and the scents of their cigarettes and perfumes came drifting across the ambience of the lemon trees.

  It was indeed a beautiful night, but not an extraordinary night, for mostly nights were beautiful in this climate.

  A man and woman passed him, going towards the terrace, their arms lightly linked. Prescott paid little attention to them; the woman's soft voice, a snatch of French: Me veux aller a la plage…' Only the flash of the small diamonds in her ears recalled Sovaz to him, for Kristian's wife must by now be on the stairs.

  The marble staircase cascaded, shining, down into the old ballroom, between ranked candelabra. The space below was full, as it was always full on the occasions of Kristian's receptions and dinners, and men and women had also placed themselves at various junctures on the stairs, falling apparently unconsciously into the harmonious shapes the room seemed to expect of them.

  Long ago, Sovaz had wondered that he should invite so many people, permit even, though at the reception only, the uninvited companions of guests to invade his sanctum. Yet nothing could touch the house, the great jewel box lying open and all the jewels laid out. The enchanted visitors, like ghosts, went swiftly by, unable to dirty or profane with their insubstantial hands and voices, until only the house remained.

  Sovaz came along the wide gallery and set her foot on the topmost stair. It was ten minutes before nine, ten minutes before the dining room would be thrown open, the room in which at all times, other than these, Kristian dined alone. She had come late, yet she paused and looked straight down the dazzling vista of the staircase to the spot where Kristian was standing. Sovaz took little notice of the group about him, a swarthy Egyptian, a tall woman with hair the colour of ice, one or two others. Although no longer aware of Kristian as an object of love or desire, she had remained, nevertheless, acutely aware of him as a live presence. She knew that


  immediately he saw her he would approach her, take her arm and lead her among his guests. He would expect nothing of her save the gracious manners and mannerisms he had seen to it she practised.

  Envious and evaluating, the eyes of his guests would follow her wherever she went.

  She was noticed now. Heads were turning to look at her black and white figure and the scarlet glitter round her throat.

  Like blood, she thought again, suddenly, for no reason. Priceless life blood. I'm bleeding to death. And just then she caught a fragment of conversation, someone nearby speaking analytically of a murder in the city.

  She came down the stairs, and Kristian moved to take her arm. Once, six years ago, at the theatre, when his slightest touch still had the power to excite in her the most extreme of emotional and physical reactions, he had taken her arm, and she had undone the diamond brooch from her shoulder and, pretending to place her hand over his, had thrust the pin deep under his thumb nail. He started violently, his mouth whitened from the pain. She thought he would curse or strike her but he did nothing, said nothing, waiting even until their party was seated before staunching the surprising flow of blood with his handkerchief. When some acquaintance leaned across to inquire what had caused the wound, he said, 'I can't imagine.' Returning alone together to the house an hour before dawn, he said to her, 'You were careless this evening. Don't let it happen again.'

  The Egyptian had kissed her hand. They were passing on. Other lips on her skin, other faces and other names floating like the thickening light of the room across her eyes and mind. She was now so adept that she could react perfectly to them, and at the same moment stay within herself, looking out, through their transparent bodies.

  Afterwards she would remember neither what she had done nor what she had said to them.

  At the far end of the room the great windows which gave on to the terrace were wide. The moon was snowing on the sea.

  Suddenly a black shape appeared between the windows,

  extinguishing the moon like an eclipse. Sovaz glanced up. Kristian stood talking at her elbow to Mikalides, the man who controlled half the pearl fisheries based on the waterfront.

  'Madame Sovaz is welcome to call at my office on any evening she cares to name. I can show her the queen of our recent catch -a large pale green pearl with, nevertheless, a peerless orient.'

  The shadow still blotted out the moonlight. A man. A man too tall and too slight to be Prescott.

  'Why not pay Thettalos a visit, Sovaz? It would be a pity to miss something so rare, wouldn't it?'

  'Oh yes,' she said automatically. 'If you think so.'

  The shadow moved, turned a little. The brightness of the room passed like a summer lightning across his face, and was gone. She caught only an impression, like a plaster mask, no detail except a pair of eyes, very dark, like her own, looking directly, demandingly, at her.

  At once a burning electricity ran up her spine and spread across her shoulders. She did not know why. Then the path of the moon was clear again on the water, and the shadow had stepped aside into the night.

  She felt a violent prompting to run to the windows, go out, shouting into the darkness: 'What do you want?'

  But she found she was instead being given the hand of a very beautiful young man, with a gentle uncertain American voice.

  'Are you sure, Madame Sovaz,' Adam Quentin said to her, 'that there hasn't been some kind of a mistake?'

  'I don't think so,' she said.

  'But surely, Madame Sovaz, to seat me next to you. Do you think someone has the places mixed?'

  'Why should I think that?' she said.

  'There must be thirty people here more important than me. It looks like some kind of a mistake.'

  'Well, we shall have to make the best of it.'

  He smiled sideways at her, grateful, perhaps, for her tolerance. Sovaz marvelled absently at his wonderful teeth, so even and so white. She made conversation as a sleep-walker takes steps, but more proficiently.

  'I guess I'm nervous,' he confided to her. 'I quit my job in New York about a year ago. I've been travelling since then, living pretty rough.'

  She smiled. 'What an adventurous thing to do.'

  'No, not really. I wanted to write a book…'

  'Yes?'

  'But I never did get the ideas together -' Aware of the writer's compulsive urge to communicate his dream, which threatened to overwhelm him like an attack of coughing, he broke off and began to eat the consomme.

  'Forgive me, but you are so very young, aren't you?' Sovaz murmured, touched in a sentimental way by his youth, to which she had abruptly become sensitive.

  He flushed faintly. 'That sounds kind of strange, Madame Sovaz.'

  'Why should it?'

  'Well, you don't seem much older. You couldn't be.'

  'How chivalrous, Mr Quentin.'

  'Please call me Adam. I'm not trying to be chivalrous.'

  'Then how very charming of you.'

  He glanced at her, his eyes wide, bemused by the poised denying quality of her voice, the careful sophisticated utterances of a woman of forty.

  Servants slipped between them, removing their plates. The wine had gone to his head; he sensed something without understanding it, and dropped his eyes. The rubies round her neck cast a transparent fiery mesh across the curves of her breasts, which were pulsing very slightly to the beat of her heart. The surreal atmosphere of the dinner seemed every moment to grow stronger, like the scent of jasmine now pervading the whole house. He stared at the fresh course that was in front of him, and, like a swimmer way out of his depth and valiantly drowning, he began to eat.

  Poor boy, she thought mechanically.

  Thettalos Mikalides, seated lower at the long table, had stolen a look at them. The pearl merchant was also a pimp. But it did not matter.

  Her eyes moved along the length of the table. Few of the people in

  the ballroom for the reception had been invited for the dinner, the scalpel of Kristian's snobbery. For example, the shadow she had seen between the windows had not materialized into a dinner guest. Some stranger, he too had been exiled and was already gone. No doubt she had imagined the demand in his eyes.

  When the meal ended, people drifted in twos and threes from the table.

  The young man, who had grown silent and constrained - what had they said to each other all this while? - now stood up. She lifted her head and saw Kristian, the icy-haired woman still at his side.

  Sometimes Kristian showed an interest in other women, though never for very long.

  'I have arranged for you to visit Thettalos tomorrow, Sovaz. Have the pearl if you want it.' Kristian turned to Quentin. 'I wonder if you would do me a very great service. I am unable to take my wife to the theatre tomorrow evening.'

  Sovaz heard the boy stammer slightly, trying to be courteous and gallant, not knowing how to refuse.

  'Thank you,' Kristian said. 'I shouldn't like Sovaz to have to miss the play. I'll see the tickets are sent round.'

  Sovaz began to walk slowly through the room, into the ballroom, letting Quentin follow at his own pace.

  Reaching the terrace windows, she hesitated.

  The night was cool, smelling of darkness, yet below, the jagged glitter of the broken moon persisted on the water, and for no reason she stared about her at the empty space, before crossing it. She set her hands on the balustrade, and gazed away from the sea. To the south, a million lights lay like fallen stars across the city; sometimes the wind would bring a distant twang from the bars, or the mooing of car horns.

  The American emerged suddenly from the ballroom behind her and, as if unable to withstand the cliche, cleared his throat.

  'It's very kind of you,' she said, 'to agree at such short notice. I hope you had made no other plans.'

  'No,' he said. He came forward, searching her face, troubled. It was a look she had grown accustomed to. It filled her with boredom and

&nbs
p; obscure pity. 'If you'll excuse me, Madame Sovaz, I'd better leave now.'

  'So early? A shame. But I shall see you tomorrow evening, shan't I, Adam?'

  'I guess you will.'

  She held out her hand to him. He looked at her hand, then came to her and took hold of her fingers. He was a little drunk. She only said:

  'Yes, you're so tanned. I think I should burn dreadfully if I stayed in the sun so long.'

  'Is this some game?' he whispered, bending over her through the moonshade of the jasmine plants. She said nothing. 'You're so - and you act like you were some rich old woman - and your husband asking me to take - what the hell does he know about me?'

  'Quite enough, I imagine.'

  'Yeah. So I gather. I didn't believe this.'

  'Oh, didn't you?'

  His face was stiff and angry. Perhaps it was his good looks that somehow saved him from seeming absurd to her.

  'Please don't distress yourself,' she said. 'All you have to do is stand me up.'

  'And then what? Someone else?'

  He dropped her hand and his whole body tensed for some wild action.

  She smiled, and glanced away.

  'Perhaps, Adam, you should go now,' she said. 'Don't try to be generous to me. Don't think about it any more. I shan't expect to see you tomorrow.'

  She could hear the unspoken words hovering on his mouth, then a group came strolling on to the terrace from the golden room, talking, bringing with them the scent of Turkish tobacco and patchouli. The young man turned and immediately left her.

  She felt a dragging downsurge of disappointment. Possibly it was the certainty of success which so depressed her spirits.

  She let go of the balustrade, and began to walk along the terrace to

  the spot where steps led down between the oleanders. The group of men and women were murmuring and laughing together, discussing Strindberg. She understood that once she had descended into the dark, they would begin to discuss her with equal posturing vehemence.

  Yet what could there be of interest to say about her?

  The house, its sounds and lights, faded behind her. The garden closed her round. A melancholy night fragrance clung to every leaf and stem. Her mind emptied itself. She could hear the sea breathing on the beach below, and between each breath a resting soundlessness.