Darkness, I

by Lee, Tanith

  If he was waiting no one would know, and perhaps Malach did not know. But logic might have forewarned him.

  Cain would come down to him. Cain would have to.

  And Cain did enter the prison vault, or whatever it was, that dungeon from a film circa 1958.

  Cain in black, appropriately, for Malach’s whiteness.

  Cain said, as others had, ‘Here I am.’

  And Malach? Malach did not speak.

  ‘She doesn’t want you, then,’ Cain said, ‘after all that. Not at all. A pity, that you bothered. Such a long journey.’ His voice, so musical, halting between every three or four words, conceivably savouring what was said, or only rehearsing it, since it was a fact. ‘What shall I do with you?’

  Malach still silent.

  Cain said, ‘Why not talk to me? We have talked, in the past.’

  ‘That was then,’ Malach said.

  ‘And when?’ asked Cain, nearly coyly.

  ‘Now and then. Here and there.’

  The language Cain had elected to use was Dutch, Malach’s adopted tongue. But he employed it casually, with other words, of French, Latin, even German inserted. Malach had responded exactly. Now Cain said, ‘U vergist zich.’

  ‘No error,’ said Malach. ‘Or wasn’t it you?’

  ‘You and I,’ Cain said, ‘Skheru— the damned. But I change. I alter. Malach remains the same.’

  ‘Constant,’ Malach said.

  He had not raised his head, and did not now, as Cain went closer to him. Cain spoke in an older tongue.

  ‘Do you recall Set and Hor, how the two gods toyed in Set’s garden, and Hor sprayed his semen on the salad, and Set ate the salad unknowing. And later the semen cried Here I am inside Set.’

  Malach, again, did not speak.

  Cain said, ‘You are my slave, here. You have put yourself under my hand. You know what I must do to you.’

  Malach’s face flashed up into the light. It was the visor of a starved wolf. His eyes were like the ice.

  ‘Your ideas of revenge are both crass and melodramatic.’

  ‘And I shall hurt you,’ Cain said, ‘my love.’

  As Cain moved now, Malach moved in the fetters of steel. He could not get very far. Someone, besides bandaging his torso after the lashes of the whip, had secured his ankles. In the chains, Malach fell, and Cain was on him like a tiger, feeling after him in the most certain and absolute manner, his hands hot as an oven.

  ‘She would have done this to you if she could,’ he said. His marvellous voice now was thick with lust, but it was the lust of power not sex. It had been the most ancient method, this, to subdue an enemy. The most demeaning, the most damnable. To make of him kat tahut, the cunt of a whore.

  Cain found the entry to Malach’s lower body, and drew up the skirt of his robe, holding Malach twisted with his other arm.

  Malach had stopped struggling. He said, in the purest, oldest Egyptian, ‘May Set fuck you.’

  Cain found the muscles of Malach’s body had shut against him, hard as rock. Cain forced with his hand, to thrust his blazing penis, charged with the semen of Horus, into Malach’s body. Cain forced, and could not. Malach had won.

  Cain let Malach go and stepped away.

  Cain was imperious, chill now, almost feminine in his disdain at defeat.

  It was Malach who hung, shaking and sweating, his mouth shaped into a noiseless screaming oblong, the torch lighting up his eyes to madness. Malach, intact, who had lost.

  ‘Well, then, I’ll do without the felicity,’ Cain said.

  Then Malach made a sound. It was low and hoarse, the note a dog gives when it is hurt, and feels the hurt for the first.

  Cain shrugged.

  They’ll offer you food. They’ll take you up and return you your sled and your team, and the clothing, and what else you need. Then you can go back.’

  Malach’s face gradually cleared. Voided itself.

  He stood still. Ludicrously shackled.

  ‘Do you have any message for her?’ Cain asked in Dutch. ‘She’ll listen, if I tell her to.’

  Malach lowered his head.

  The white hair dropped forward over his face.

  ‘I could take you now,’ Cain said. ‘But now there isn’t any reason to. Is there?’

  ‘No,’ Malach said.

  ‘Then we’ve finished with each other.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Go back,’ Cain said, ‘to your charming life. Find some other less interesting woman to fawn on you and keep you warm.’

  In the silence someone said, ‘Warm.’

  That was all.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  At the port she had been met by a large black car.

  The driver spoke English. He assured her that nearly everyone did.

  They went, as Rachaela requested, directly to the city by straight roads lapped with water-colour green. Lorries passed them, with floris written on the sides. The air was tinged by rain.

  Amsterdam, swarming with bicycles and trams, verged on full morning. They drove through and up into the cobbled quiet beside the canals. The city seemed to her familiar. All cities would, perhaps. It occurred to her she had seen them before, long ago. When she was someone else.

  Her mind was made up. She could feel it in her skull, programmed, like a computer.

  The buildings were like doll’s houses, and Sofie’s was a deep lavender pink. It looked friendly, kind. Not a Scarabae house.

  Rachaela walked up the steps and rang the bell.

  Then she waited.

  No one came.

  There had been a message at the port. It had told her Sofie was at home. It was not, however, from Sofie. Perhaps Sofie had gone out for groceries—no, there was a servant, Grete, who did that. For some social occasion then, something the family did not know about.

  Rachaela glanced up the pink-confectionary length of the house. Nothing. Not a movement. It was as if the architecture held its breath. She was there.

  Rachaela rang the bell again. With her other hand, she struck the door.

  Suddenly the door flew open.

  The woman was small, smaller than Rachaela. She reminded Rachaela of a small quaint bird. A striped dress of grey and dull red, a necklace like three matchboxes made of silver. Round aquamarine eyes. Sofie.

  The woman said, shrilly, ‘Wat is er aan de hand?’

  I’m sorry, I don’t speak Dutch,’ Rachaela answered.

  The woman backed away from her. She looked, did she, younger than Rachaela, and only about five feet tall, so that she seemed to decrease excessively, as if seen through the wrong end of a bottle.

  ‘What?’ she said in English. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘My name’s Rachaela. I’m the partner of Althene.’ Rachaela paused. She added, firmly, ‘Your son.’

  The door was still open wide.

  Rachaela walked forward into the black-carpeted hall. There was a peculiar statue thing, and Sofie was cowering against it. She squeaked—tweeted— ‘Don’t dare come in. How dare you come in? What do you want?’

  ‘I want to see Althene.’

  ‘There’s no—there’s no one here.’

  ‘I think you call her Johanon. Johanon, then.’

  ‘No. He left. He left weeks ago.’

  Rachaela did not believe Sofie. Sofie was insane. And Sofie, palpably, was also very scared.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Rachaela said, ‘I’ll have to see for myself. Please excuse me. Excuse my not believing you.’

  ‘You bitch,’ said Sofie, calmly now.

  ‘Oh, would you say so? But you hardly know me.’

  ‘Bitch! Bitch! You slut! Get out! Get out!’

  Calm all miraculously gone.

  Rachaela said, ‘I’m not leaving. Not until I’m certain Althene isn’t here. Where shall I start?’

  Then Sofie flighted at her on outspread grey and red wings.

  Rachaela did not plan what she did, but the programme in her brain must have done. Rachaela struck Sofie vi
olently, with the back of her ringed right hand, and Sofie did fly then, straight over, to fall under the statue with a moan.

  Sofie lay there crumpled. She cried, huge round tears, gushing out of her round eyes. ‘Scarabae,’ she said, ‘Scarabae.’

  Rachaela said, ‘I am Scarabae.’

  Then she crossed to the door adjacent to the hallway, and opened it.

  It was a sort of dusty study, done in glaring puce, with a kidney-shaped desk. Beyond was another room, in murky orange. Both were vacant.

  When Rachaela came out, Sofie still lay on the carpet. On her face was a thick rouged stripe that seemed to have migrated from her dress.

  Rachaela thought, Who am I now, Adamus or Malach? And this faintly amused her.

  ‘Are you going to take me there, or am I going to go all through your house?’

  ‘The attic,’ said Sofie.

  ‘The attic?’ Rachaela thought of mad Mrs Rochester, and she did laugh, out loud. Sofie buried her face in two thin hands.

  Rachaela ran up the humped, bumpy, twisting black stairs. An engine drove her, and blood fuelled her, pumping through her heart like a drum.

  She passed Sofie’s ugly rooms, with hideous paintings like road accidents on the walls. The house was icy, but Rachaela scarcely felt it, scalded with purpose.

  The last stair was bizarre, and she went more cautiously. At the door her own speed made her hesitate.

  She had not thought before. What had the mad mother done to this errant child?

  ‘Christ.’

  The door was not locked. It gave.

  An unspeakable lavatory stench pushed out.

  Rachaela caught her breath.

  Then, swimming at her on this tide of filth, she saw an image. Something lay on a bed, just there, where the ceiling sloped to windows which admitted a boned morning light. Something—

  She went forward. She stopped.

  There was a diseased man lying on the bed.

  He had long dirty hair, in which something had been squashed, some essence—God knew what—red, pink, unthinkable—and his face was a mass of hair and sores, open cuts that had tried to heal, pus, and, incredibly, cosmetics. Blusher and powder. Fragrances, gone fetid, mingled with the effluvia.

  It was cosmetics in the hair, too. They had been spilled... She could see.

  The body was a sodden mass.

  Every excrescence of physical need had gone on, and been permitted to go on. And all that into and over a nightdress of coral pink silk, trimmed with very expensive, rosy lace.

  The heart of the pink house. Pink horror.

  Rachaela stood there, and the coffee she had drunk at the café by the port, rushed back into her throat. She swallowed it a second time.

  Who was this?

  Was it alive?

  ‘Rachaela,’ the monster said. Somehow. Out of a mouth encrusted by mucus and sores and bright scarlet lip-gloss and thick coarse beard. ‘Or am I—still dreaming you.’

  ‘You’re not dreaming.’

  It was Althene.

  None of this mattered. The stink, the horror. Althene was there. Alive. Under the coverlet of the heavy leaves of darkness. Althene.

  ‘I’ll need to get some help,’ Rachaela said, ‘there’s a man downstairs—’

  The rustling jangle in the doorway made Rachaela turn.

  A weird sight.

  Silent-footed, Sofie had re-manifested, like the internal image of Psycho, her thin arm upraised, but on a silly, tiny little knife, and there was indeed a man behind her, but not the driver. He wore a beret and his long brown wooden face was strung in attention. He was twisting the knife away.

  It fell.

  Sofie screeched. Like an owl.

  The man thrust her, and she was gone. Magic.

  The man said in English, ‘Yes, you will need assistance, madame.’

  ‘She looked like a fourteen-year-old schoolgirl that someone has exposed himself to.’

  Rachaela said, ‘Yes. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be—sorry. I’m sorry. All—this.’

  Wrapped in blankets, Althene lay against her in the back of the car. The shower had been possible, but little else. At some point, by the expensive hotel the family had arranged, they would have to get out. But it would be dealt with. They would get through it. And then more assistance would arrive. It always arrived, for the family.

  ‘I think,’ Althene said, ‘she’s got me addicted—to something. I don’t—even know what. She’d leave me alone—months, is it? I tried to keep score, how long. But I didn’t. Useless. What a fool. She lost interest, you see.’

  ‘Yes, thank God.’

  ‘I won’t die, Rachaela. Whatever she did to me. I’m very strong.’

  ‘I know. I know you won’t die. I won’t let you.’

  ‘I didn’t—I didn’t find—’

  ‘We can think about that later.’

  ‘She was so frightened,’ Althene said, ‘what they’d do to her. Sofie. How she hates me.’

  Rachaela felt the car turning in against a white and yellow building, a daffodil above a canal. ‘We’re going to have to walk. About five yards. He—Roman—will help. Can you—’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Althene lay back, her full weight, which was too light.

  The car stopped.

  The man with the face like a clever fiddle got out. Two people were coming purposefully from the hotel as well.

  Rachaela did not want to let go, but she must. Just until they were inside.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  The summer had turned the city to a box of heat. The trees were green, but the waters had, in spots, a sour-vegetable smell. Red flowers flamed in windows. Car fumes condensed the skies.

  Within the hotel, the old rooms had kept some coolness.

  In the salon the sunlight sparkled on the polished chandelier and pristine ashtrays, made bright patches on sofas of white silk with a lemon stripe, the armchairs of a deep regal green. The floor was burnished wood. The beautiful woman, coming in, had crossed it with care in her high-heeled sandals.

  She looked frail, the woman, as if she had been ill. Her fair skin, immaculately made up in soft tawny shades, was a little stretched and dry. Her eyes, though fabulous, were not entirely clear.

  Althene wore a dress of creamy blue, clinging lightly to her body. Her thinness was only fashionable. Under her right shoulder was pinned a leaf of dull articulated gold. On her left hand was a large ring, a type of cow-snake, the golden horned head resting on the circle of its tail.

  She sat now, waiting.

  Beside her on the table was the gilded tray of Earl Grey tea, the little formal French cakes that she knew neither of them would touch.

  She leaned to the tray, and poured a cup of the tea. Impartially, she watched her hand shaking. It had been worse, two months before. And before that—much, much worse.

  When the door to the salon opened, she did not at once look up.

  He came over the room, and touched her shoulder very quietly. He had never treated her as other than a woman.

  She did look at him then.

  He had altered. She had known he must.

  Malach seemed now a man of fifty, fifty-five, gaunt rather than thin. A wolfs face, hungry and unappeased. And from the planes of it, which would still delight any artist, and perhaps rather more, the long white mane had been curbed, drawn back and strictly tied.

  His clothes were dark, nondescript, light for summer, nothing more.

  He had wanted, it seemed, to go unnoted.

  She offered him, therefore, a commonplace.

  ‘It’s hot.’

  ‘Yes. Where is she?’

  ‘Rachaela has gone to the street by the green iron bridge, as we call it, to buy jewellery. She’s developed a passion for odd rings. Look at this, my cow—Hathor at her most winning.’

  ‘It must be heavy.’

  ‘Yes. For three months I couldn’t wear it. I used to put it under my pillow, for luck.’

  ‘And now
you can.’

  ‘Now I can.’

  ‘You look,’ he said, ‘as beautiful as ever.’

  She said, ‘Thank you for your lie. You look old.’

  He smiled. ‘Don’t be unkind to me, lieveling. I’ve had enough of that.’

  Althene poured tea for him. He watched her. She had stopped her hand from shaking.

  ‘You think,’ he said, ‘I should expect nothing else. I have been harsh. Now, it comes back to me.’

  ‘That’s never worried you in the past.’

  ‘The past. That other country.’ They had spoken in English. She had begun it, used to Rachaela. Now he said, in Dutch, ‘I have to tell you only that I found her. Anna. Where you and I understood that she would be.’

  Althene sat back. She frowned. She said, ‘That place truly exists, then.’

  ‘It does. Of course it does. What else, for someone like him.’

  ‘And—he has her.’

  ‘And she has him.’

  ‘You must explain what you mean,’ she said.

  ‘No. I won’t do that. He’s made her his lover, wife, daughter. And she wants all he wants.’

  ‘Did you speak to her?’ Althene asked softly.

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘And she preferred—she wished—’

  ‘She wished to remain with him.’

  ‘He’s a sorcerer,’ she said. ‘He could put a spell on her.’

  ‘You forget,’ he said, ‘what she is.’

  ‘My child.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘She used you. You and Rachaela. No one’s child, except his.’ Malach picked up the china cup and looked at the tea inside it, and set it down. ‘Have another child.’

  ‘It’s so simple. It takes two.’

  ‘Find another woman—’ he stopped. He said, ‘To keep you warm.’

  ‘Rachaela is who I want.’

  ‘Then make do with Rachaela.’

  Althene said, ‘I won’t ask—’

  ‘No, don’t ask.’

  ‘But I do need to know—one thing. Is he—is he the way he was?’

  ‘How was he?’

  ‘His power,’ she said, ‘his difference. Is he older—younger—changed—’

  ‘He changes the way land-masses move,’ Malach said. ‘Imperceptible but finite. He looked very young. He feeds on everyone and everything. Nothing sickens him. No rules. No obstacles. And he must have wanted her always. We believed he’d forgotten. But none of us does that.’