The Memory Palace

by Gill Alderman

  They, he thought, are now in bed together. Jealousy crept up and snapped at his heels; he wanted to run into the house, upstairs, to throw the usurper out.

  ‘She left you some food,’ said Alice.

  ‘I’d rather go to bed!’

  ‘OK – this is the way.’ They walked, still joined in their embrace, up the staircase which turned near the top to repeat the layout of the wide passage below. The moonlight, he saw delightedly, had returned to light the passage and to coat Alice with its glamour. A crowd of statues stood elbow to elbow before him.

  ‘My God!’

  ‘They belong to Georges. Dominic showed me. There are others in the dining room,’ the girl said innocently. ‘Each one is connected with a death.’

  ‘That’s sick.’

  ‘Every artefact is connected with death, isn’t it? Everything passed on when someone dies.’

  ‘The gypsies burn all the possessions when one of them dies, even the sleeping-waggon.’

  ‘The vardo, yes. There’s a figure of the god Horus downstairs. Dominic told me it belonged to a man called Paon – who was guillotined for serial murder. In Lyon. In 1884–’

  He touched the cold figure of a woodland nymph. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I looked at your book in Avallon, while you slept. Strange to find something of Paon’s here.’

  The whispered conversation, or the moonlight, was affecting him with a nervous agitation. He thought Alice relished her revelations too much, though her shoulder felt pleasantly warm under his hand.

  ‘Just coincidence,’ she said. ‘Come on.’

  Their room had bare, polished boards and a wide bed, its white linen inviting. There were no curtains.

  ‘I’ll close the shutters,’ he said.

  Alice caught his arm. ‘Leave them. I want to see you.’ She unbuttoned her shirt. ‘Look! Wouldn’t you prefer her?’

  The soft finger of the moonlight reached right across the room and touched the statue of a second nymph, surely the sister of the first. Instead of wild fruits and leaves, this one wore a garland of kingcups and water lilies. The white marble she was carved from had been so highly polished it seemed as though her skin was wet, and they both went up to her and laid exploring fingertips upon her, Guy upon her left breast and Alice upon her right thigh.

  ‘Magic!’ he whispered. ‘She is you.’

  ‘No, she isn’t me; not now. She’s a nivasha – like you put in your books.’

  ‘You know,’ he turned away from the statue to Alice. ‘I don’t think I have ever described one. I imagine them much more deadly, sinister attenuated creatures.’

  When he turned to look at the statue again it seemed dead and prosaic, a heavy piece of Victorian sentimentality standing guard over a cupboard door. In the moment of conversation with Alice he had glimpsed her moonlit body under her open shirt. He picked her up and laid her on the bed.

  ‘We are fortunate,’ he said. ‘Two nights of love under the moon. I want to see you in daylight too, at midday when the sun is hottest.’

  ‘In a hayfield – in an orchard in the shade of an old tree.’

  But moonlight, he thought, best becomes her. He knelt over her. ‘Wait,’ she said and sat up to unfasten the ribbon which concealed the blemish on her neck. The mark looked darker, almost livid. He touched it.

  ‘It doesn’t spoil you,’ he said.

  ‘No. How could it? It is a mark of courage.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Because I survived hanging. They imprisoned and tortured me, they tore off my nails one by one. They strung me up on the gibbet outside the town gates, but I did not die – not for another sixty years. I hung till evening and when they cut me down, I had not died.’ Her voice rose triumphantly.

  ‘You are Alice Naylor,’ he whispered.

  ‘I am Alice Naylor, Roszi, and Alice Tyler.’

  ‘Roszi?’

  ‘Ah, Roszi.’ She gave no further explanation, but held his fingers against the scar on her neck. He could feel slight ridges and troughs, the negative cast of the twisted hemp.

  ‘Your survival of the hanging has rewarded you, given you a kind of eternity?’ he said but, no doctor or mortician accustomed to horrors, he shivered involuntarily. In the old days, such reverential touching was reserved for ghastly relics, feet of dead saints, dirty bones, crucified hands – which still took place in some holy fanes like Mediterranean churches, temples of the Far East; and this, the guest bedroom of Helen Lacey’s house in Coeurville, the town where he had lost his senses to this odd schoolgirl. She moved his hand away from her neck and held it between her breasts.

  ‘You understand, Guy Parados,’ she said, ‘because you are yourself abnormal, a storyteller obsessed by his inventions – so much so that you write them down and get them made into books which obsess others. Yes, I am Alice and Roszi and Alice again.’

  ‘My Roszi?’

  ‘Go to the top of the class, Mister Author! – but the real nivasha, not the paper one!’ She laughed, almost maliciously. ‘She lives in me alongside the others – just as you are both Guy Kester Parados and Christopher Guy Young.’

  It was true, what she said. In a way, he was possessed of many identities and these were only two, the ordinary self he had been born with and to and his hard-won, writer’s persona.

  ‘Yes, I’ve almost forgotten my real name,’ he admitted.

  ‘Christopher Guy is a law-abiding Christian husband and father.’

  ‘Who is Guy Kester?’

  ‘The writer, the storyteller. My lover!’

  ‘Winter to cover your Spring!’

  ‘Autumn perhaps, but hard as frost!’

  ‘Warm me! Soften me!’

  Inside her – Arcadia? Paradise? – he moved slowly and deliberately. He was, as his son had intimated, a man learned in all the skills of life and loving. Alice accepted him now, whatever her first intentions had been, as he accepted her – whoever she was. One of his chief delights was to touch her softly, as if she were his precious, mortal soul, a living talisman which might easily break or melt in his hands.

  They rested and slept a little, lightly, lying close. He woke, kissed her and rolled her over so that she fitted him exactly, tucked between his thighs and his chin. He began to kiss her neck, lifting her long skein of hair aside to reveal the skin. The mark of the rope went all the way round, a weird necklace.

  ‘We might almost be married, newly wed,’ she said drowsily.

  ‘We are, for tonight at least.’

  ‘I feel goodness in you, but deeply buried. You could be one of the kristniki, a Twelver – one of the twelve sons of Stanko who fight the witch-host on St John’s Eve.’

  ‘Christopher probably is. Guy is quite a different other. Once he played the black dog, cold Master Robin to a coven of witches.’

  ‘Many years ago.’

  ‘I am here because of it. And Dominic.’ He opened his eyes. They focused lazily, adjusting to the twilit distance between Alice’s neck and the marble nymph. Her sylvan sister stood beside her now, frozen in an attitude of suspense. He blinked and closed his eyes again, too involved with Alice’s body to make sense of what he saw, if it had any sense in this illogical night. Women in childbirth took notice of neither bombs nor portents; he, held more securely than a child deep in Alice’s birth-canal, had no interest in the world beyond it. He abandoned himself to the sensation their conjoined movement produced.

  Lying still, exhausted; dead within her, he succumbed to the curiosity which awoke in his mind now that his body was satisfied. He opened his eyes wide. The second nymph, who still stood on tiptoe, surprised in her prurient, lustful eavesdropping, was Helen. The door behind her was open. He could make out the dark shapes of furniture in another room. Perhaps she wants to begin again, bring me another dozen lusty women to serve? he thought.

  Helen knelt beside the bed and laid a hand on each of them, himself and Alice.

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘I knew you were still an adept. Roszi – Ali
ce, you were always a sublime minx.’

  ‘It is better, far, far better,’ Alice murmured, ‘than my icy spring, or school, or imprisonment – oh far, far more than my golden torture.’

  Guy, listening to them, half believed he dreamed; but, no, this body-warmed sheet was real, this golden hair, this small, aroused breast.

  ‘Love is close to torture, is it not?’ Helen inquired.

  ‘Ah – yes!’ he said, and Alice echoed him, ‘Yes – ah! – yes.’

  To lie with them both, as once he thought he had, sometime, in the witches’ dreaming long ago: inwardly he rehearsed an invitation: Will you join us? – No – Helen, come a little closer – lie down on this side. As if she heard him, Helen drew back and stood by the statue of the nymph.

  ‘Look,’ she said. ‘But you must not touch!’ He studied her, marble-distant beyond Alice’s warmth and the smell of her pleasure, far away. The body was as perfect as the face. Dawn, which he suspected of trespass in the room, bringing parting, bringing day, made a goddess of her. Here was no slender woodland seducer; no maid of chill waters. She had heavy breasts, a small waist, swelling hips; all of these no older, no less alluring than they had been when she left him at the age of twenty-two. She had the dangerous look of Herodias, the cunning of Jezebel, the beckoning come-hither blatant sexuality of a Salome cast in metal, heated in the fire, poured into an unimpeachable mould.

  The pain of desire, which Alice had likened to torture, returned to torment him as he lay looking at her untouchable nakedness, feeling Alice’s pliant flesh and will against him.

  ‘Why deny me?’ he said. ‘Georges must enjoy you!’

  ‘Georges. Ah Georges, who slumbers soundly! He understands my predicament – I must go back to him. Sleep!’ Swiftly, she turned away and passed through the doorway. He heard her turn the key. The door was made impregnable and Georges slept with her behind it, behind the thin shield of its panels. Guy lay quiet, entirely limp and relaxed, every part still except his mind. Alice slept. He rehearsed the unquiet night, going over and over its many and intimate details until his imagination was sated. He remembered Alice’s uncalloused feet, her straight toes and her tender earlobes, her waist, her lips, her tongue, her navel: all these asleep beside him. He remembered the bracelet Helen used to wear about her left ankle, her painted toe-nails, the many rings which pierced her neat ears, how he could almost span her waist with his two hands and how her tongue met his; the jewel he had removed with his lips from the deep pit of her navel: all these asleep beside his successor, Georges Dinard.

  He remembered the serious young man he once had been and the insatiable rake who still woke in him; the Christian he was and the pagan, the husband and the philanderer. He remembered his books standing in a line at home, all with crimson covers and the distinctive lettering of the legend beneath each title: A Book in the Malthassa Series, by Guy Kester Parados – or Christopher Guy Young whose unremarkable name he had let drop as carelessly as a lost handkerchief. He signed everything now, books, contracts, cheques, with Parados’s name.

  The early birds were waking. Words from the first line of The Making of Koschei haunted him: ‘I began building the year the …’ He chased the troublesome ghosts from his mind – he was on holiday, enjoying such a vacation! He fell asleep as the sun came up and turned the cold white statue gold.

  Guy woke again because his left hand was aching. The struggle to come fully awake was aggravated by troublesome thoughts of typing and driving. Maybe Sandy’s Chinese balls! He grinned, half asleep. Of course, not Sandy. Alice. And it was Thursday, the third day in France. Alice was lying on his hand. He freed it. The ache continued and his right hand gave a sympathetic twinge.

  ‘Blast!’ he said. He would get up, walk for a while. Relax and forget it.

  The sun was well up. He leaned out of the window, the sill covering his nakedness. Georges Dinard’s car, he was glad to see, was a plain four-door Citroën. It sat like a lumpen ox beside his shiny predator. Vineyards crowded the village and their bright uniformity stretched into the distance, over hill and through valley, meeting whatever tracts of forest stretched out to meet them in a blur of dull and biting greens. When he turned from the window and saw Alice sleeping under the watchful eye of her tutelary nymph he felt at least twenty-five and, simultaneously, as old as a biblical patriarch. David, wasn’t it, who needed a virgin to warm him in his dotage? Alice slept, but maybe Helen was awake, about. He stretched and massaged his hands before collecting the scattered garments which, when they were assembled to clothe him, made up the image the world perceived as Guy Parados.

  In the kitchen a cooling pot of coffee was the only sign of life. Guy found a cup and drank some of it black. Outside, the garden was in shade and, suddenly needing the sunlight which had warmed him at the bedroom window, he went out and walked swiftly across the grass until the shadows were behind him. He opened the door which led into the orchard.

  The black vardo was closed up. He glanced at and avoided it, striking out for the far side of the orchard where, instead of the vines he expected, a small stand of hazels and other scrubby trees hid a plantation of conifers. An indeterminate but regular noise drew him: it sounded for all the world like a giant drumming deep in the heart of the wood. There was no hedge or other boundary and he walked amongst the trees until he found a ride where tall grasses and a few foxgloves struggled upwards in the dim light. The ground was dry and strewn with old pine needles and cones. He followed the ride and the sound until he came upon a clearing. Here stood a group of ruinous wooden buildings that looked as if they had been old before the wood was planted. Some letters were chalked upon the nearest. When he was close enough to see them properly he made out the single word ‘Arcadie’ and the memories and associations it woke confused him. Someone had written it there as a joke, he supposed.

  Ivy made the place picturesque and the early morning sun reached with long fingers into the clearing. The puzzling noise had resolved itself into a regular beat. He stood in the warmth and willed his seething mind blank for precious, restful moments. Relax! On holiday! Then he walked quickly to the barn and looked into it. A man was sawing wood at a small saw-bench powered by a compact little engine. The brassy shine of the engine and the smell of hot oil attracted him. He took a step forward and the man, who was turning to reach for a fresh branch, looked round and gave him Dominic’s insolent grin.

  The shock of recognition and of disparity which coursed through Guy’s body made him shout,

  ‘What on earth are you doing here?’

  ‘Calm down, Dad. This is my place. My saw mill.’

  ‘Saw mill?’ Guy noticed spreading continents of oil stains on his son’s hands and clothing as he repeated the words in bewilderment.

  ‘Mine, Dad. Wake up! Attention! Where I cut up wood. Some of the trees are big enough for sale now – but I mostly deal with the dead stuff. We burn it in the winter – you must’ve noticed the wood-burners in the house.’

  ‘Why have you written “Arcadia” on the wall?’

  ‘It’s always been called that. It’s on the old maps, too. Want a go? That looks a likely branch.’

  Guy was grateful for the boy’s invitation. It muted the dismay he felt at this young prodigy’s invasion of his life. He smiled at his son and picked up a sweet-smelling pine bough, heavier than it looked. They would work together at a task, for the first time – no matter that the land and probably the buildings belonged to the unseen, undefined Georges Dinard. He laid the branch across the saw bench.

  ‘Hold it steady!’ Dominic said. ‘The bench will bring it to the saw.’

  Guy hung on, pressing against the branch and feeling the stroke of the engine throbbing through metal and timber. The blade spun on its mount, its teeth reduced by the rotation to a blur. In a moment it would slice into the yellow heart-wood and send fine sawdust flying. He would breathe the pungent scent of the cut. He felt the blade hit and bite. Dominic was staring at him with eyes as dark as Helen’s, the f
ascinating eyes of the gypsy, swallowing him, drawing him into a fathomless pit. Struggling with his son for mastery, he forgot to watch the wood. It was only when he had wrested his gaze from Dominic’s that he saw the blood on the saw-bench and the divided branch and realized it was his own; that the spinning blade had cut as neatly through his wrists. He saw his son’s shocked face. He saw his two hands lying on the floor and then there was an interval of utter quiet and total darkness. Someone was lifting him, carrying him towards the light. He blinked and closed his eyelids against the brightness. It was night again. The forest surrounded him. A deer fled before him into the silence.

  Did Erchon also see the white hart, I wondered. It was a phantom deer, not one of the spotted kind I had seen near the last road. We journeyed separately again, the dwarf and I, not this time because of wayside adventures but because Erchon (so he claimed) had heard his mistress, Nemione, calling him.

  ‘In daylight?’ I had jestingly asked, ‘or in your dreams?’

  ‘In bold daylight, Master,’ he had answered. ‘I am only amazed that you cannot hear that lilting voice. It comes clearly to me through the trees.’

  Next day he left me, riding high on the withers of a stray woodsman’s horse which he had waylaid. I laughed at him.

  ‘I shall get there faster,’ I called after him. ‘That runaway will take you to some remote logger’s camp.’

  Erchon laughed at me: ‘Not it, Master!’ He clapped his heels against the neck of the horse which flung itself into a gallop and, so, they departed, the little man a flash of quicksilver, the horse shock-maned and wild.

  I was tired of the forest, utterly weary of the infinite close ranks of the trees. There is no end to the forest in Malthassa just as the country itself – if that is what it is – has no boundaries. These exist far away, rumour tells, but certainly no one has dared draw them (even with dotted lines) on the map, or seen them – And so, in a sense, I was glad of the deer’s company for the little while it ran ahead of me. They are dire straits when a man is glad of the companionship of a ghost.