This circumstance had its effect in making César appear more surly, indeed; but it didn’t have the same influence with him, as it did with Clara. She was looking uncomprehendingly from Lucie to Robert, her eyes falling more than once on the place where their hands were clasped. They held so very tightly to one another, their fingers had long turned white, and were even coloring themselves slowly purple in each other’s grip.
“What’s going on here?” she whispered to Lucie.
“Eh?” said Lucie, imitating her brother’s indifferent bark.
“What’s the matter with him?”
“With who?”
“With him.”
“My brother?”
“Who else?”
“Nothing’s the matter. What are you talking about?”
Clara rubbed at her tired eyes, feeling cross and confused. But she said no more.
The minutes passed by, and still Alejandra’s chair remained empty. If Clara had noticed, probably she would have gone to look for her; but she only stared off into the thickest part of the smoky cloud, and kept silent.
Robert laid his head down on the table, with Lucie’s hand still held fast in his own. Lucie hiccupped, and stared unwaveringly at the top of his head, where the black hair shone dazzlingly with carefully applied oil.
César didn’t say a word, but was still looking at Robert, with an expression colored more each moment with rage. Finally he reached across the table, his eyes wide and wild, and pulled the siblings’ hands apart. He was huffing and puffing most severely, with a furious crimson flush flown up into his cheeks.
“Hallo!” cried Robert, sitting up with a start. “What do you mean by that?”
“You are a low-down, rotten snake,” said César. “She is not a puppet, to push and pull, this way and that! Always cursing, always putting her down – and now you hold her hand, like you love her? Ah! Ah! You are a snake.”
“What business is it of yours?” Robert asked incredulously.
“It is my business! You do not love her – I do!”
The silence that fell was one of astonishment on all sides. Robert was mortified; Lucie was bewildered; and Clara was taken aback. But César looked at them all with a face set in stone.
“You – you take that back!” Robert shrieked.
“I will not!” César said firmly.
“Lucie,” said Robert, turning to his sister beseechingly, “make him take it back.”
“I – I don’t –”
And that was all Lucie could manage to say.
César turned towards her swiftly, as if he took her hesitation for encouragement. “Oh, Lucie,” he said, in a voice grown suddenly soft, “this is not the best place, not the best time to tell you – but I love you, I do! Believe me, I do!”
“César!” Clara cried, loudly enough to make her anxiety (and perhaps even a bit of her jealousy, if all parties concerned had not been so very inebriated) entirely evident.
“What?” asked César. “I say nothing wrong. Lucie, do I say anything wrong?”
“I – I don’t –”
And again, this was quite all she could accomplish. But her mystification and unease increased tenfold, and even transformed into a mild amount of anger, when César pulled her towards him suddenly, and kissed her, long and full on the lips.
She squirmed to get away, but he was too strong. In the end it required Robert’s leaping from his chair, and boxing César’s ears as surely two human ears were never boxed before, to free her from his grasp. When she was loosed, she flew away from him like a missile, to huddle near to Clara.
“César!” Clara hollered, drawing a shivering Lucie down onto her shoulder. “What are you thinking? What would Papá say?”
César, made already both incensed and abashed by Lucie’s rebuff, could only shake his head, and shrug his shoulders.
“Brute!” Robert cried, pointing at César accusingly, and dancing back and forth on his two feet, like a wild satyr devoid of his flute. “Criminal! Villain! Someone take him away!”
All attention, unsurprisingly, was drawn towards him at that moment. The patrons of the bar looked from his own face, pale as chalk but livid as thunder, to that of César, which had adopted such a frightened, hangdog expression, that even those who knew him began to wonder whether he had actually done something inappropriate.
But before anyone had time to approach him, or to inquire, he jumped to his feet, and stormed from the cantina. Lucie and Clara stared after him, till they lost sight of him through the window.
It was at this inopportune moment that Alejandra returned. She came to the table with shaking legs and a quivering lip, and peculiar shining streaks on her face that suggested she had been crying. She arrived just in time to see Robert, shouting and stamping in his rage, as he recounted to all who would listen a much worsened account of César’s behavior – which included, from the lips of an outraged brother, the passing of several very offensive words to his sister, and a vast amount more touching, groping and kissing than had in fact taken place. Lucie and Clara stared at him with open mouths; but Alejandra made the mistake of inquiring exactly what he was talking about. He looked up at her with fire in his eyes, and brought his hand down hard against the side of her face, striking her in his power all the way to the floor.
Clara leapt up, and ran to her sister. She took her face in her hands, and inspected the place where Robert’s hand had fallen, which seemed even already to be taking on a nasty bruise.
“You monster!” she cried, as she struggled to help Alejandra to her feet. “You disgusting, evil monster!”
Robert only stared back coolly, all his rage and lunacy gone. He even ventured so far as to offer a bold and conceited smirk.
Several of the larger and more powerful-looking men (none of the smaller ones would have dared to try for him) were rising from their tables, and making their way towards Robert with threatening looks. Three surrounded him, and took hold of him roughly. They went so far as to dash his head against the table, thus opening up a bloody gash on his forehead; but Lucie screamed in horror, and Clara cried for them to stop. To the first sound they paid no attention, but at Clara’s call they raised their captive back up to his feet.
“Suelta él,” said Clara. She was staggering under the weight of Alejandra, who was slumping heavily against her in a fit of dizziness. “Suelta él, Miguel. No lastimas él, Sebastián! Suelta él.”
The three men (Miguel and Sebastián, and the third unnamed) released Robert immediately, as per Clara’s request; and though they didn’t seem happy about her asking them not to hurt him any more, still they were glad that they had managed to do something to him. And they didn’t let go of the drunken and bleeding fellow, without many looks of scorn and disdain cast upon him. They then looked sympathetically to the drunken and bruised Alejandra, and offered to assist Clara in getting her home.
“Oh, sí,” she said, hesitating very little before assenting to their proposal, buckling as she was beneath her sister. “Ayúdame, por favor.”
Sebastián, the very burliest of the three, stepped forward, and took the slight form of Alejandra up in his arms.
“No!” contested Alejandra, in a voice scarcely audible. She reached out with one hand, and two crossed eyes, to Robert, calling his name as she was carried away. But the sound of her cries died off, as Sebastián lifted her out into the street, and the door banged shut behind him. Clara was a moment in the rear, for she was looking with a conflicted expression to Lucie, who (upon learning that she would be left alone with Robert) had spoken her name very earnestly. She didn’t know whether she should follow, if she wasn’t asked to do so. She waited to see if Clara would speak. But Clara only looked several times, between Lucie and the door. Finally she shook her head, and bounded away in her sister’s wake.
25
The Staircase Resolved
Surely – and ironically – there was never a more depressing environment on the face of the planet (save, perhaps
, Nazi Germany, apartheid South Africa, or a number of other countries and places at particularly troublesome periods of history) than room 12A of the “Luz del Sol” Motel, on this the night we have already recorded. Lucie had only just arrived there with her brother, after quitting El Vestido Negro. The episode of violence, and the fresh night air, had combined to make Robert quickly sober; and he had talked animatedly all the way to the motel, about the audacity of César Vicente, and the pathetic little bird that was his sister. Now Lucie lay silently on her bed, and Robert lay silently on his – each of them thinking, no doubt, about the respective pains in their hearts. Robert’s pain was for Alejandra; and he was particularly moved by it, on account of never having had much feeling in his heart at all. This burning discomfort was a great novelty for him.
Lucie’s pain, we know, was for Clara; and she was even more affected than her brother was, on account of her pain being caused by the genuine conundrum of love, rather than a simple and voracious appetite for physical hurt. Robert, indeed, was fairly reveling in what he considered a great conquest, while Lucie herself could have laid her head down on the pillow, and been fully content merely to die. It didn’t help matters much at all, that her own share of the liquor had not been so easily burned away by excitement and fresh air. She lay, scarcely moving, with a throbbing head and four heavy limbs. Therefore she was rather prejudiced to her own interests, and begrudged the necessity of answering, when Robert began to speak to her.
“That woman has it bad for me, doesn’t she, Lucie?” he asked, his voice tinged with nauseating triumph.
“Has what?” Lucie returned flatly.
Robert rolled onto his side, and propped himself up on an elbow – so that what with his mannerisms, coupled with the silly grin on his face, he looked much like an exuberant schoolgirl.
“She’s in love with me!” he declared. “Completely and utterly in love! I tell you, Lucie, that I have Alejandra Vicente wrapped right round my finger.”
To emphasize his wholehearted belief, he even held up an index finger, and bent it towards Lucie as if it were a puppet. “Wrapped right round!” he repeated, with a hearty burst of laughter.
But Lucie was far from amused. She kept her eyes on the ceiling, and heaved a great sigh. “Do you love her, Robert?” she asked.
Robert’s face fell. “What do you mean?”
“I asked you whether you love her.”
Again he laughed. “Of course I don’t!”
“Then what’s the point?”
“The point? What do you mean – what’s the point? It’s only every man’s dream, to have a willing and devoted slave! Now I have one, and I am very, very happy about it.”
Rather than express her disapproval concerning Robert’s shameful indecency, Lucie merely said, “Well, it’s not as if you’ll ever see her again, anyway. Do you honestly think her family will let her anywhere near you, after what you did tonight?”
“They don’t need to let her anywhere!” he exclaimed. “She’ll come to me all on her own, just like the good little dog that she is.”
“You’re wicked, Robert.”
He clapped his hands together, and his blue eyes shone like lasers. “I know!” he cried. “How very and wonderfully wicked I am!”
Lucie couldn’t help it, now. She looked at him, and said, “You should be ashamed of yourself.”
“Me? Me, ashamed? What about her? She fawns all over me – it’s disgusting! Half the time she would be slobbering in my lap, if I weren’t quick enough to snap her mouth shut.”
“Father would be ashamed of you,” Lucie said softly.
“What did you say?”
“I said that Father would be ashamed of you.”
“Ashamed of me? Well, isn’t that a gem! Ashamed of me! You’re only a veritable idiot, and a certified basket-case – but, yes, I can see why he would be ashamed of me.”
“You’re very cruel, Robert,” said Lucie, turning away from him with tear-filled eyes. “I don’t understand it.”
“I’m not very surprised, seeing as you seem never to understand anything at all. You’re an absolute dim-wit. Oh, how stupid you are! I don’t know how I can bear it, every minute of every day – after all these years! I’m astounded I haven’t shot myself, or been sent to the mad house! You’re insufferable, Lucie, really you are.”
“You know the world,” Lucie said softly, “and the world knows you. I could tell it nothing that would surprise it – unless, indeed, it redounded to your credit or honor, and then it would scout me for a liar.”
This was a quote that Lucie had had memorized for quite a long time (with only slight alterations from the original) – fitting as it was to Robert’s toxic temperament. Many times she had thought of it, whispering the words through her brain; but now she spoke them aloud, for the very first time, and was rather proud of herself.
“Thank you, Mr. Nickleby!” exclaimed Robert, with an enthusiastic round of clapping. “You’re such a whore, Lucie, really you are! A little whore like Sylvie.”
Lucie sprang out of bed, crossed the space that separated them in a single bound, and slapped her brother full across the face.
An angry red welt stood out on his pale cheek, and his eyes filled with lightning. “How dare you?” he cried.
Lucie fell back a step, but he reached up and took firm hold of her wrist, grinding the bone painfully between his strong fingers. Then he jerked her forward, and pushed her down, so that she fell to the dirty old carpet. She dared once to look up into his face, and saw that it was burning with a white fury, making all the more apparent the coarse dark stubble that had sprung up over his jaws. His eyes were like those of a terrible beast, their very danger lying in their unabated beauty, which rendered their prey more susceptible in desiring to trust them. His hair, always so neat, stuck up now in several different directions – two of those directions being fairly straight up, to both the right and the left, so that it appeared as if he were equipped with a pair of demon’s horns.
“You filthy little slut!” he shouted, aiming a kick at his sister. “You like to hit me now, do you? You want to do it again? Well – get up! Get up and hit me!”
He threw out another kick, and Lucie groaned.
“It’s not so nice, is it, when it’s you on the other end? Not so nice now that you’re sore?”
He reached down and took her by the shoulders; snatched her up into the air, and flung her towards the wall. She collided with a crack (a nasty sound whose origin she couldn’t immediately tell), and slid down once more to the floor. Her eyes slipped shut, and then open again. She felt a trickle down her chin, reached up and found a little stream of blood pouring from her nose.
Half-crazed, and caught for the moment within the bounds of his own frenzied ferocity, Robert sat down on the edge of his bed, and dropped his head into his hands. Even from her place across the room, Lucie could hear his labored breath.
She watched him carefully, closely. But he didn’t raise his head. Still, his silence only made stronger a firm little pulse within her brain – a little prick of pain that grew larger, and larger, as she lay panting on the floor. Attached to the sensation was a dim picture, very small at first, but increasing quickly in size and clarity. It was a feeling, an image, and a memory, all at the same time. It was the recollection of an event – a recollection whose strength had been greatly attenuated by the passing of the years, and the sedulous efforts of her brother to repress it.
This pulse – this pain – this image, was accompanied by a tiny light, which swept to and fro through the very darkest and dustiest spaces of her brain. In part it was caused by the cruel beating which had been inflicted upon her; but perhaps, too, it was the result of so many days spent away from Robert’s dominating influence. For, surely, a beating at his hand was not so very new to her. She had suffered them before. But it was the separation that had been placed between them – the little realization of independence that was naturally engendered by it – that rendered her
able to see so much more clearly. And maybe, too, it had something to do with the prodigious amount of alcohol she had consumed that night, acting in a way wholly the reverse of what its effects are preconceived to be. Maybe it acted as a sort of beacon, shining into the dark places even while it confused her – confusing her, quite possibly, simply on account of what unpleasant things it revealed.
Lucie could remember, now – even while she was not dreaming – a time when Robert’s brutality wasn’t restricted merely to herself. She could remember little Sylvie, she discovered, as more than just a faint and shadowy ghost. She could see her as she was, real flesh and bone, real warmth and heartbeat.
For all of Lucie’s adult life, there had seemed no particular cause for the sudden death of her beloved sister. Rather it was as if she had been inexplicably snatched away, completely and without warning. When Lucie thought of her, there was only the briefest moment of her bright and smiling face – and then simply darkness. Yet there was no reason for the darkness. It merely was.
But presently Lucie envisioned a staircase, a dark staircase very like the one she had often dreamt about. Only now, its shadows were slowly dissipating, slowly receding, till all was visible but that familiar pool of blackness at the bottom. But even this place was slowly lightening, slowly making itself clear to her eyes – and she could see the small, coiled body of her sister upon the floor. She looked with great dread towards the top of the stairs, where she saw a little Robert standing, with an absolute expression of triumph on his face, and nothing less than the devil shining in his eye.
Now, to finally recollect and comprehend such a thing – is there anyone who wouldn’t wish to be ignorant again, instantaneously and totally? Certainly this is how it was for Lucie. She looked at her brother, who still sat utterly oblivious of her, with a horror she had never felt before. She stared at the top of his head, as she had done at the cantina, wondering just as she did then what was taking place beneath the hair, the skin and the bone; and she shuddered, for it was doubtless a much more gruesome scene than any she had ever suspected.
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