“Do I have to tell you what happened, next? Sometime late in the night, Trudi dreamed she sat up in bed, looked at Lenard asleep beside her, and saw the splash of white traversing his face, from just above his right eyebrow down to the left corner of his mouth. In her dream, she wasn’t afraid as much as curious. With the index and middle fingers of her right hand, she touched the white streak where it crossed Lenard’s nose. It was like brushing her fingers against a spider web. She lowered her head onto her pillow, and was instantly asleep.”
“It wasn’t a dream, was it?”
The man shakes his head. “It was not. You can imagine the sight that greeted Trudi when she woke that morning. She ran screaming into the street, and who can blame her? Eventually, the police were called, and the emergency services, but it was all over. The best anyone could do for poor Lenard was opine that at least he hadn’t suffered, and how could they be sure? Initially, there was some suspicion of foul play. The idea was that Trudi had murdered Lenard by pouring acid on him while he slept. There were too many problems with the theory for it to hold up very long, not least of which was the coroner’s report. This showed that Lenard had died from something that had liquefied a portion of his face, skull, and brain, then drained the liquid, all without spilling a drop on the pillow. The closest analogue the M.E. could suggest was a spider melting its victim’s insides with its venom and slurping them out. But like Trudi’s veterinarian before him, he couldn’t name an arachnid capable of dissolving and consuming this amount of tissue. Eventually, the cause of death was settled on as a previously unknown strain of MRSA.
“Which was bullshit, but more acceptable than the explanation Trudi was giving.”
“Madame Painte.”
“To anyone who would listen, she repeated the story that had become overwhelmingly, hideously obvious to her. She refused to re-enter the house, and it wasn’t long until she was taken to the hospital, where she was given a bed in the psychiatric ward. No doubt, she was prescribed a sedative, at minimum. When all was said and done, she agreed to return home, but she insisted that the figure be removed from the living room, first. Her doctor decided it was easier to comply with this request than continue to go back and forth with her. Someone—it might have been the psychiatrist, herself—entered the house, located Madame Painte, and brought her to a local charity shop. She went so far as to follow Trudi’s instructions and stipulated that the figure must be sold with a warning to keep her outside.
“This was how I found her. The charity shop listed some of its merchandise online. I subscribe to a couple of groups that keep an eye out for unusual pieces. The instant Madame Painte popped up on my screen, I clicked the purchase button.”
“Weren’t you, I don’t know, nervous?”
“No—although that was because I didn’t know the full story behind her. Not that I do, now: let’s say I didn’t know Trudi and Lenard’s portion of it. I assumed the instruction to keep the figure outside had to do with the paint that had been used on her. I went so far as to e-mail the charity shop, but they weren’t much help. What I’ve told you I learned from Trudi, who sent me a long e-mail a few months after I set Madame Painte outside my front door. For weeks, Trudi had been plagued by a combination of guilt and anxiety at passing on the Madame without disclosing her history, until she decided the only thing for her to do was contact whoever had purchased the figure. The charity shop supplied my e-mail, and she wrote me the whole strange, sad story.”
“And you believed her?”
“I didn’t not believe her. Before I opened this place, I was a cop in Albany for twenty years, and as the saying goes, I’ve seen some things. Business was slow, which let me do a little digging online. Lenard’s death had made national news, briefly, and had sparked a series of articles about the dangers of drug-resistant super-bacteria. Based on the information included in the initial report, I was able to track down the veterinarian, who confirmed the details of Toro’s death. In the end, I decided there was nothing wrong with leaving Madame Painte where she was. She seems happy enough watching the front door, and I’ve noticed a decrease in the local rodent population.” The man smiles thinly.
“What do you think, I mean, what is she?”
“Aside from the focal point for a woman who suffered an excruciating loss? I don’t know. My father was a big fan of Kipling, Stevenson, and this sounds like the kind of story one of them would have written. White people encounter a cursed object in the mysterious East—which, my older daughter would say, is pretty racist (she’s working on her Ph.D. over at Amherst). I suppose it is. I wonder if there mightn’t have been something wrong with the figure early on, right after she emerged from the factory. Maybe something attached to her, or was attached to her, whatever the white mask is. Maybe a version of what happened to the Nileses took place in a pretty house beside a canal, and the decision was made to send her far away, to the other side of the earth, where she wouldn’t harm any more Dutch folks. Like dumping your supernatural toxic waste in a place whose inhabitants you don’t give a rat’s ass about.”
“Why not just smash her, then, solve the problem that way?”
“What if I let loose whatever’s in or on her?”
“Sounds like that’s happening already.”
“Only if she’s kept inside,” the man says. “Apparently, Priscilla, the colonel’s wife, had her in their garden for years without any problems. There are fewer mice, chipmunks, around, but I can tolerate that”
“You sound like her caretaker.”
“I suppose. That’s one way of looking at it.”
“Then why have her for sale?”
“Because it’s a big responsibility. One I’m not certain I completely believe in, but I feel better erring on the side of caution. I would be happy to pass the care of Madame Painte onto someone I could be satisfied would maintain it with due diligence.
“Now that you’ve heard the story, the question is, is that someone you?”
There is a moment, which is not that long but which will lengthen in your memory, when you think it might be. Not for any good or noble reason, but due to the cause that chased you out of your house this morning, sent you driving east on the thruway until you took the first exit for Albany and wound up here: your grandfather, ninety-two, who lives in the basement apartment under you and your spouse’s home. His brain clotted by dementia, but his body strong from a lifetime of construction work, he has been expelled from the last three nursing homes to which you’ve brought him. He can live on his own, he insists. Surrendering to necessity, you and your spouse have refurbished the basement to a reasonably safe space for him, from which he nonetheless flees once a week, usually to the next-door neighbors’, to whom he appeals for protection from the strangers he says have kidnapped and imprisoned him. This is not to mention the daily trials, the small acts of meanness, vindictiveness, the piss and shit left on the bathroom floor, the stale and rotten food hidden under the bed and in the cushions of his easy chair, the sudden insults and rages. He could live another ten years, his doctor has said, he could give up the ghost tomorrow. You didn’t sign up for this, you’ve said to yourself with increasing frequency, neither of you signed up for this.
Madame Painte might be the solution to your dilemma. Yes, the story is likely so much fantasy, but suppose it isn’t? Just suppose. Your grandfather wouldn’t have to know she was there. You could wait till he’s asleep, hide her in his bedroom closet. Didn’t the man say Lenard hadn’t felt any pain? Plus, how would—how could—such a thing be traced back to you?
The wave of horror that sweeps through you carries the, “No, it isn’t,” from your mouth before you realize you’ve said it.
“That’s all right,” the man says. “Feel free to keep browsing. I’m sure you’ll appreciate, I’d like to return the Madame to her proper place.”
“Sure,” you say, your face burning with shame.
For politeness’s sake, you spend a few minutes wandering the shop’s narrow a
isles while its proprietor carries the figure out to the front step. Once he’s behind the counter again, you depart the antique shop at something close to a run. The man nods to you as you pass him; in reply, you lift your left hand in a half-wave.
You can’t help yourself: as you hurry up the front walk, you cast a glance over your shoulder at Madame Painte. She smiles her closed-eye smile at you, as if she knows you’ll be back.
(For Fiona, and for Kaaron Warren)
CHIVALRY
Neil Gaiman
Mrs. Whitaker found the Holy Grail; it was under a fur coat.
Every Thursday afternoon Mrs. Whitaker walked down to the post office to collect her pension, even though her legs were no longer what they were, and on the way back home she would stop in at the Oxfam Shop and buy herself a little something.
The Oxfam Shop sold old clothes, knickknacks, oddments, bits and bobs, and large quantities of old paperbacks, all of them donations: secondhand flotsam, often the house clearances of the dead. All the profits went to charity.
The shop was staffed by volunteers. The volunteer on duty this afternoon was Marie, seventeen, slightly overweight, and dressed in a baggy mauve jumper that looked like she had bought it from the shop.
Marie sat by the till with a copy of Modern Woman magazine, filling out a “Reveal Your Hidden Personality” questionnaire. Every now and then, she’d flip to the back of the magazine and check the relative points assigned to an A), B), or C) answer before making up her mind how she’d respond to the question.
Mrs. Whitaker puttered around the shop.
They still hadn’t sold the stuffed cobra, she noted. It had been there for six months now, gathering dust, glass eyes gazing balefully at the clothes racks and the cabinet filled with chipped porcelain and chewed toys.
Mrs. Whitaker patted its head as she went past.
She picked out a couple of Mills & Boon novels from a bookshelf—Her Thundering Soul and Her Turbulent Heart, a shilling each—and gave careful consideration to the empty bottle of Mateus Rosé with a decorative lampshade on it before deciding she really didn’t have anywhere to put it.
She moved a rather threadbare fur coat, which smelled badly of mothballs. Underneath it was a walking stick and a water-stained copy of Romance and Legend of Chivalry by A. R. Hope Moncrieff, priced at five pence. Next to the book, on its side, was the Holy Grail. It had a little round paper sticker on the base, and written on it, in felt pen, was the price: 30p. Mrs. Whitaker picked up the dusty silver goblet and appraised it through her thick spectacles.
“This is nice,” she called to Marie.
Marie shrugged.
“It’d look nice on the mantelpiece.”
Marie shrugged again.
Mrs. Whitaker gave fifty pence to Marie, who gave her ten pence change and a brown paper bag to put the books and the Holy Grail in. Then she went next door to the butcher’s and bought herself a nice piece of liver. Then she went home.
The inside of the goblet was thickly coated with a brownish-red dust. Mrs. Whitaker washed it out with great care, then left it to soak for an hour in warm water with a dash of vinegar added.
Then she polished it with metal polish until it gleamed, and she put it on the mantelpiece in her parlor, where it sat between a small soulful china basset hound and a photograph of her late husband, Henry, on the beach at Frinton in 1953.
She had been right: It did look nice.
For dinner that evening she had the liver fried in breadcrumbs with onions. It was very nice.
The next morning was Friday; on alternate Fridays Mrs. Whitaker and Mrs. Greenberg would visit each other. Today it was Mrs. Greenberg’s turn to visit Mrs. Whitaker. They sat in the parlor and ate macaroons and drank tea. Mrs. Whitaker took one sugar in her tea, but Mrs. Greenberg took sweetener, which she always carried in her handbag in a small plastic container. “That’s nice,” said Mrs. Greenberg, pointing to the Grail. “What is it?”
“It’s the Holy Grail,” said Mrs. Whitaker. “It’s the cup that Jesus drunk out of at the Last Supper. Later, at the Crucifixion, it caught His precious blood when the centurion’s spear pierced His side.”
Mrs. Greenberg sniffed. She was small and Jewish and didn’t hold with unsanitary things. “I wouldn’t know about that,” she said, “but it’s very nice. Our Myron got one just like that when he won the swimming tournament, only it’s got his name on the side.”
“Is he still with that nice girl? The hairdresser?”
“Bernice? Oh yes. They’re thinking of getting engaged,” said Mrs. Greenberg.
“That’s nice,” said Mrs. Whitaker. She took another macaroon.
Mrs. Greenberg baked her own macaroons and brought them over every alternate Friday: small sweet light brown biscuits with almonds on top.
They talked about Myron and Bernice, and Mrs. Whitaker’s nephew Ronald (she had had no children), and about their friend Mrs. Perkins who was in hospital with her hip, poor dear.
At midday Mrs. Greenberg went home, and Mrs. Whitaker made herself cheese on toast for lunch, and after lunch Mrs. Whitaker took her pills; the white and the red and two little orange ones.
The doorbell rang.
Mrs. Whitaker answered the door. It was a young man with shoulder-length hair so fair it was almost white, wearing gleaming silver armor, with a white surcoat.
“Hello,” he said.
“Hello,” said Mrs. Whitaker.
“I’m on a quest,” he said.
“That’s nice,” said Mrs. Whitaker, noncommittally.
“Can I come in?” he asked.
Mrs. Whitaker shook her head. “I’m sorry, I don’t think so,” she said.
“I’m on a quest for the Holy Grail,” the young man said. “Is it here?”
“Have you got any identification?” Mrs. Whitaker asked. She knew that it was unwise to let unidentified strangers into your home when you were elderly and living on your own. Handbags get emptied, and worse than that.
The young man went back down the garden path. His horse, a huge gray charger, big as a shire-horse, its head high and its eyes intelligent, was tethered to Mrs. Whitaker’s garden gate. The knight fumbled in the saddlebag and returned with a scroll.
It was signed by Arthur, King of All Britons, and charged all persons of whatever rank or station to know that here was Galaad, Knight of the Table Round, and that he was on a Right High and Noble Quest. There was a drawing of the young man below that. It wasn’t a bad likeness.
Mrs. Whitaker nodded. She had been expecting a little card with a photograph on it, but this was far more impressive.
“I suppose you had better come in,” she said.
They went into her kitchen. She made Galaad a cup of tea, then she took him into the parlor.
Galaad saw the Grail on her mantelpiece, and dropped to one knee. He put down the teacup carefully on the russet carpet. A shaft of light came through the net curtains and painted his awed face with golden sunlight and turned his hair into a silver halo.
“It is truly the Sangrail,” he said, very quietly. He blinked his pale blue eyes three times, very fast, as if he were blinking back tears.
He lowered his head as if in silent prayer.
Galaad stood up again and turned to Mrs. Whitaker. “Gracious lady, keeper of the Holy of Holies, let me now depart this place with the Blessed Chalice, that my journeyings may be ended and my geas fulfilled.”
“Sorry?” said Mrs. Whitaker.
Galaad walked over to her and took her old hands in his. “My quest is over,” he told her. “The Sangrail is finally within my reach.”
Mrs. Whitaker pursed her lips. “Can you pick your teacup and saucer up, please?” she said.
Galaad picked up his teacup apologetically.
“No. I don’t think so,” said Mrs. Whitaker. “I rather like it there. It’s just right, between the dog and the photograph of my Henry.”
“Is it gold you need? Is that it? Lady, I can bring you gold . . . ”
/> “No,” said Mrs. Whitaker. “I don’t want any gold thank you. I’m simply not interested.”
She ushered Galaad to the front door. “Nice to meet you,” she said.
His horse was leaning its head over her garden fence, nibbling her gladioli. Several of the neighborhood children were standing on the pavement, watching it.
Galaad took some sugar lumps from the saddlebag and showed the braver of the children how to feed the horse, their hands held flat. The children giggled. One of the older girls stroked the horse’s nose.
Galaad swung himself up onto the horse in one fluid movement. Then the horse and the knight trotted off down Hawthorne Crescent.
Mrs. Whitaker watched them until they were out of sight, then sighed and went back inside.
The weekend was quiet.
On Saturday Mrs. Whitaker took the bus into Maresfield to visit her nephew Ronald, his wife Euphonia, and their daughters, Clarissa and Dillian. She took them a currant cake she had baked herself.
On Sunday morning Mrs. Whitaker went to church. Her local church was St. James the Less, which was a little more “Don’t think of this as a church, think of it as a place where like-minded friends hang out and are joyful” than Mrs. Whitaker felt entirely comfortable with, but she liked the vicar, the Reverend Bartholomew, when he wasn’t actually playing the guitar.
After the service, she thought about mentioning to him that she had the Holy Grail in her front parlor, but decided against it.
On Monday morning Mrs. Whitaker was working in the back garden. She had a small herb garden she was extremely proud of: dill, vervain, mint, rosemary, thyme, and a wild expanse of parsley. She was down on her knees, wearing thick green gardening gloves, weeding, and picking out slugs and putting them in a plastic bag.
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