by Lee, Tanith
Although she then began to shake quite hard, Emily’s brain seemed now to be crystal clear, and cool as ice.
She read the letter down. It was angry and impassioned. It hungered and did not expect to be filled. It ended, ‘But I’ve lost you. Well, not quite. You’re here in my body, in my music.’ And then, two X’s or kisses, and the signature.
Emily dropped the letter coldly and looked at the next. This was longer. And the date – the date was now only a few days after she and Jaidis had met – the time when Jaidis had first gone away. The greeting was more empowered. The words cascaded; in places run together:
‘And I held you, your body inked in on the sheet, the flowers of your breasts and your vulva.’
Again, Emily paused. ‘Inked in.’ Tina was black then. Emily felt herself shrink and sere. She was colorless and scrawny. Opposites had not attracted. Like wished for like. How horrible she must seem, like a plant kept in the cellar and gone pallid, unsucculent.
And Jaidis had known Tina since childhood. Jaidis had given up, until, meeting her again—
‘Again and again I made you catch on fire from me. You blossomed against me like a river that ran uphill. Your opened mouth, like a fruit, so sweet, and the roar of your heart in my ear. I could hear your heart even as I lay against your thigh. I could feel your heart inside my tongue, like a drum. And your heart resounded even before you cried aloud, as if your body knew before you did. And it did.’
“I shouldn’t read anymore,” said Emily. “This is private.”
She thought, There was no lock on the cabinet. She had been meant to find it all. Ah yes. A fourth scenario. How easy it would be for Jaidis, when she telephoned. For then Emily would say, prim, anemic Emily, the wilted daffodil, “I know. Never come near me. I shall leave you. Good-bye.” Or not, Good-bye – which meant God be with you. No.
She threw the letter away, far across the small room, and as it went, she saw three kisses on the end of the page, and the name – or was it now only a word? – Jaidis. A word in a foreign language.
Emily stood up. She opened the door, leaving it open, and went to the kitchen and took a bottle of red wine, and opened that. She poured, not a wine glass, but one of the newly burnished Coke glasses, full. She drank as if very thirsty. And went back to the letters of her lover to another.
‘You are dark as the night,’ wrote Jaidis to her love. ‘I never found such darkness. I get lost in the cloud of it. I smother in your flesh and I die. I want to die with your hands on my body, stretched out and howling. But I want to take you with me, and that’s wrong. No, I want us to live. I want to make you come and build a cathedral out of your cries. I want to make a concerto of your cries. I want to curl up in your womb and you in mine. You’re my child, I’m yours. I never loved anyone before. I wasn’t alive. You frighten me, you’re like a pillar, so smooth, impossible. Let me scale you. Let me pull you down.’
I want to cry, Emily thought, but I can’t.
Nasty white scrawny tears.
How could she bear to touch me?
There were no longer dates, but the letters were many. They had met in the city, obviously, by day, when Emily worked in the heavenly bookshop, poor little idiot, earning the steady income that had made everything so much more monied and more safe.
But maybe Jaidis had tried to give Tina up. Yes, that must be so, because here, here:
‘I hurt so much. I want so much from you. And I can’t seize it. I daren’t even ask. I must make do with what I’ve got.’
Make do. She has made do – with me.
Emily felt a surge of rage. She screamed aloud. She tore the letter in her hands, across, across. And its wicked kisses, she broke them.
Tina had given Jaidis the letters back, evidently. And Jaidis had put them away. But neither had been able to bear it, that making do. At last Tina wrote to Jaidis – not a typed, orderly letter, but that sodden little scrap – how clever, how irresistibly vulnerable. Had fifty pounds gone to Tina as a result – or more likely another of those fires, this currency of the loins and heart. And so at last, the telephone. And Jaidis, with her face so weary, as perhaps she might one day look when she was very old, as now Emily would never see. “I’m going to have to go away for a while.”
She had left everything. Even she had left the golden guitar. Jaidis did not care. Love moves the sun and the other stars.
Emily got up. She had been impertinent enough to enter Bluebeard’s chamber, and found the secret, and now she would die.
Emily stared myopically. Her Coke glass was empty. She must get more wine. Her life was empty. Another letter had fluttered up in her hand. She glanced at it.
‘I will die of you. I could shake you. Like the magic tree, would you then let loose your fruits? I will have the curve of your stomach, the angle of your knee, the turn of your head, the chains of your hair, the soft gates of your mouths. But what else can I do with you? You strike me dumb. Damn you. No, I want only the best for you. I wish I could eat you, from the soles of your feet to the crown of your head. But I only want to sit at your feet and sing.’
Four kisses. There were four.
How curious, this affectionate token, the plaything of the casual pen. X’s for kisses, after such an outcry.
But now she was gone. She was with Tina. No more need for letters. Kisses to be implanted like burning spears.
Emily let go the letter, let go of Jaidis, and let go of her own self with them.
For a few days more, Emily marked time, as sometimes after a great shock it is necessary to do, even with rescue in sight.
Then she went one evening to the local surgery, at which she had registered all those months before.
She knew what to say, for modern novels were full of it. There was a lot of stress at work, and she simply could not sleep. She understood she could be given a few sleeping pills, perhaps enough for ten days, just to break the pattern of her insomnia. She did not want to resort to them really, but she did need to sleep, or she could not cope.
The doctor was sympathetic, demonstrably liking her general health, intelligence, and her resistance to the possible risk of addiction. He gave her twenty-eight tablets, told her to take them for two weeks now, and keep the rest for future use, if necessary. He warned her that these pills were strong, and she should drink absolutely no alcohol while taking them. Emily promised that she would not, thanked him and left. She was very relieved, because twenty-eight pills, together with a bottle of wine, seemed certain to do what she wished. She had been afraid she would have to top up the medication with antihistamines, or codeine, not sure of the result.
The dusk was early, and Emily went through it like a shadow, back to the flat. She had not said good-bye to the bookshop. Why should she think it had liked her? She checked carefully in the flat, as at the shop, that she had left everything pristine and in order, the slight washing-up dried and put away, a stack of clean towels in the cupboard. Her own belongings she had placed in two cardboard boxes from the grocers. There was no relative or friend who would want anything, need anything, but the items might bring pleasure somewhere. Emily had not bothered to make a will, but then she had no savings of any importance. She felt Jaidis any way would not want her money, it might seem callous or recriminating to leave it to her. The contents of Emily’s wallet, two twenty-pound notes and a ten, she left on the coffee table. The eight loose pound coins she would need, for the wine and her traveling expenses.
Of course, Jaidis would now have to come back to the flat, but that again might be an advantage. Jaidis might like to keep the flat for herself and Tina. She might in any case have had to ask Emily to vacate the premises, and that would have been awful for both of them.
When Emily had finished, she drew the curtains back to let in daylight tomorrow for the plants. Outside, the laurel, full of rain, seemed bright as a jewel with new spring growth. Jaidis would like the laurel and the bay trees. It was good to have left something lovely behind, in return for the lovely time
s. For the agony there could be no return. It was too vast. And she could not hurt Jaidis. Jaidis was immune to her.
Outside there was only a faint drizzle now, and all the lights of the world seemed rolling and flashing through and into it. It appeared a cheerful evening, everyone going home to their hearths or else rushing out to places of enjoyment. Emily looked about her sadly. She wished none of them any ill.
The off-license was full of choice wine, and she bought a bottle of dark red, which the man assured her, although she had not asked, was a real winner for £5.92. She put it in her bag, which also contained the sleeping pills, and the corkscrew she had bought yesterday. She had not wanted to take the corkscrew from the flat.
Emily caught a bus, a red wet bus all lit with lights, and let it carry her up through the neons and the dark and the rain, towards the common.
People were talking and laughing on the bus, shaking themselves like wet dogs. There seemed a general mood of optimism and camaraderie. Even the driver, taking her fare, smiled at her, and Emily had smiled back.
She thought how strange it was she felt no anger now, and very little pain. She did not feel desperate or tragic or even crucial. All that had passed. This must be because she knew she would not have to suffer. Although once, it suddenly occurred to her, as if she had not realized until then, I am going to kill myself tonight. And she experienced a sort of startlement, as if she had just looked down and seen that she was floating several inches in the air. Even so, even though it must be unreal, and curious, she knew it would happen. She did not want to change her mind. She never even thought to herself how much she had loved Jaidis, to be driven out to do this. She did not see herself anymore doing anything, really. She was no longer the heroine of her own story, who must be evaluated, psychoanalyzed. The heroine had ceased to exist.
When they reached the edge of the common, Emily got out, and the bus hissed away from her and its radiance was gone. She walked up into the woods.
She took the path she had always taken with Jaidis, from force of habit, and since, in the dark it was difficult to find a way, for the lights here were few and far between.
So she came, after about half an hour, to the spot where she had said before that she could be lost. She recognized it, even in the dark, and, perhaps, had recognized it formerly, its possibilities. There was a steep dip where the trees clung close, and so a chance that if she went down into this part, no one would find her, or if they did, not for some while. She did not want to be found at all. She did not want to upset anyone. It was not their fault.
She got into the dip easily, sliding a little on the mud and last year’s leaves, and so pushed through into the middle of the trees. Here she sat down.
She felt like a child now. But it was not the charmingly unconscious childishness others perceived; this was a feral child, lost in the forest. She had not left a trail of beans or rice to follow home.
Emily took out the bottle of winning wine and opened it with the corkscrew. She drank two mouthfuls, and all at once was apprehensive. She did not want the wine, and must consume the whole bottle. She should have brought water—
But then, she could not have been sure.
She would wait a minute. Wait for the first mouthfuls to relax her.
Above, through the rain-dropped boughs of the trees, she could see the drops of the stars. And on the branches too were visible other abrupt points, the spring buds finally breaking. Below, buses and cars rumbled. A plane threaded the night. She felt very calm. She drank another sip of wine – save plenty for the pills. Yes, it was better now. How nice the wine was after all. But she must get on. She had been here a long while, perhaps an hour. It seemed to have been an hour, or even more, time contracting, passing through another dimension, as sometimes it had done during the insomnia, the spaces between one and six a.m. lasting a month, or vanishing in a few minutes.
Emily put her hand into the bag and touched the sleeping pills in their neat flat box – and in that instant, heard someone coming up the path, up from the road so far below.
There was no need to worry about this. Emily must only stay still. The nocturnal traveler would go by.
But the footsteps, a woman’s it seemed, came striding, swift and harsh, over the debris of the path, right up to the dip. And then, as it might have done in a nightmare, a torch flashed down, straight into Emily’s eyes, into her body, like a knife.
“Emily!” shouted a hard and brutish and terrible voice. “Emily!” And Emily cowered, no longer feral, no longer calm, frightened to the brink of madness. She dropped the bottle in this state, and heard it splash away its vital, needful fluid, and a tiny noise escaped her.
Then the beast from above, with its eye of torch, came crashing down into the dip tearing through the boughs of trees, kicking at the shale, growling and snarling.
Emily jumped to her feet, but she could not run away, there was no room to do so. And now the beast, burning and roaring, took hold of her.
The torch was clamped between them, and by its glare, Emily saw upward now into the lion face of night, which had formed itself into this shape, and come to engulf her: Jaidis, Jaidis furnace hot and smelling of feverish skin and perfume and the smoky taint of trains.
“What are you doing here?” said Jaidis, almost in her normal voice, just a little hoarse, breathless.
“That’s my question,” said Emily, remotely. Of all unreality this was the most unreal. This could not be, and was not. Had she already taken the pills, and was she now hallucinating? Well, she could talk to the hallucination of Jaidis. It was nice, really, she had not thought they would meet again. Be grateful then, Emily. “You look tired,” said Emily, “Jaidis.”
Jaidis swung her a little, pushed her a little away, yet kept firm hold of her.
“What I’m doing here, is finding you,” said Jaidis. “I saw you as you came out of the flat. I was across the road. I called to you but you didn’t hear. So then I followed you. “
“I didn’t see you,” said Emily. She was sleepy, and wanted to lay her head against Jaidis’ breast. But obviously Jaidis was not really there.
“No, I don’t think you did. I stood outside the off-license,” said Jaidis, “and I waited for you to come out. Something was keeping me back, you see. You looked so bloody strange. I didn’t want to scare you. And then I meant to speak to you as you came out again, with that bottle of wine. I thought, somehow she knows I’ve come back, and the wine’s to celebrate. Yes, that’d be good. But your face.”
Emily smiled. She did not know why.
Jaidis said, “And when you came out, you looked straight through me. Do you know that? Straight through me, Emily, and you walked on, and then you caught a bus.”
“Yes, I did,” said Emily. She amended, “But I didn’t see you.”
“I know you didn’t. You bloody didn’t. Christ, Emily. It was like— No it was worse. It was much worse.”
Emily said, “I read your letters, you see.”
“What letters?”
“The letters you wrote to – Tina.”
“How could you read it,” said Jaidis, “there was only one, I sent that. You mean you read it before I sent it?”
“The letters in your cabinet,” said Emily softly. “I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t have. The letters that had kisses at the end.”
“Kisses...” said Jaidis.
There was a silence.
Emily said, “Were you on the bus?”
“The bus,” said Jaidis, “no, I just stood there. And then I got a taxi.”
“To follow the bus,” said Emily.
“The bus was gone. I knew you were coming here.”
“Yes,” said Emily.
Jaidis let her go. Jaidis said, “When I first met you, you didn’t see me. And you didn’t tonight.”
Emily said, “I want to sleep now. Thank you for being with me. I did love you.”
“You mean you loved me and now you don’t love me?”
“Oh yes
,” said Emily, “always. And I hope you’ll be happy with Tina.”
“For God’s sake,” said Jaidis, “I went to see Tina because her husband left her. I can’t go into details, it isn’t my secret. But she’s okay now. She’s with a man now, a man she likes. All right?”
“You loved her,” said Emily, “since childhood.”
“She wasn’t even a friend,” said Jaidis with a terribly cold scorn. “But I owed her a favor. A big favor. I’ve paid it back now.”
“But the letters were to Tina,” said Emily.
“Those letters,” said Jaidis. She drew in her breath. She put back her head, and Emily stared in wonder at the ebony column of her throat, pulsing with life. “No, not Tina.”
Emily laughed. Her legs gave way gently and she dropped through Jaidis’ aura and sat on the muddy earth. It was so interesting, this. It was so mild. And soon she would sleep, and then she would die, going out with this memory.
“Listen to me,” said Jaidis, now beside her, shaking her, Jaidis no longer burning with heat, but only warm, physically present, positive. “What have you done? Have you taken something?”
“Yes. Something nice.”
“What?”
“All the sleeping pills. I don’t remember, but I have, and the special wine.”
“The wine’s spilled,” said Jaidis. Her voice was like a sword. “Give me your bag.” And Emily let Jaidis take the bag, and out of it Jaidis presently produced the packet of sleeping pills, intact, unopened. “These? The seal isn’t broken.”
“It must be,” said Emily. She was not alarmed.
“Was there anything else?”
“No. They should be enough, shouldn’t they?”
“Maybe not. But you haven’t had them.”
“Oh,” said Emily. Her brain began to rinse itself like a plate under a tap. Everything was sluicing off, and here she was, wide awake, cold, sitting next to Jaidis under the trees. And Jaidis was real. “I’ve done everything all wrong,” said Emily.
“Get up,” said Jaidis. They rose. “We’ll go back to the flat,” said Jaidis.