“When I first saw you tonight, with the sun just down and the moon just risen, I was so angry and nervous. The stupid supper. Not since my father had I had to suffer in that way. When he died, the freedom gave me wings. And now, I should be trapped, as Jean wished to trap the poor fox, gnawing through my paws to get away. Seeing you, I hated you. You. One entire second, that I will never forget or forgive. I hated your freshness, your glow, your light-coloured hair, your face, eager to be liked, and nervous too, I am sure. Hated you. I punished myself later, when you were gone. I went upstairs and said to myself in the mirror, you hated her. And I slapped my own face, hard, and left a red mark that lasted two hours. I know, I was awake so long.”
Ernst made the meal “go”, talking all the while, a sort of lecture. He was studying many things, philosophical, medical, and had also an interest in fossils, many examples of which he would find, he said, in the local countryside, for it was rich in them. Hāna, of course, did not understand these interests. “She calls me to task, and says I march about all day, obsessed by stones. Stones, Madame Ysabelle. I ask you.”
Ysabelle looked at Hāna, and Hāna said, softly, with her slight accent, her slight always half-stumbling in the new language, “Oh, but I know they’re – wonderful, Ernst. I do. I only wish I could have seen them – when they were alive. The big animals like dragons, and the little insects.”
“She is a tyrant. She also insists archeology is tomb robbery,” said Ernst.
Ysabelle said, “Mademoiselle Hāna would prefer to travel in time.”
“Yes,” said Hāna, “to go back and see it as it was.”
“She reads that sort of nonsense,” he said.
Ysabelle said, “But monsieur, you know what we women are. Creatures of feeling, not intellect.”
“That takes a clever woman to say,” gallantly declared Ernst. He added, “Of course, I’ve heard of your father. I read a book of his. An excellent mind.”
“Thank you. He was much admired.”
“You must miss him.”
“Yes,” she said, “every day.”
And turning, as Ernst applied himself again to the duck, Ysabelle saw Hāna stare at her almost with a look of fear.
Later Ysabelle took Hāna to inspect the garden, to show her womanly things, domestic herbs, the husbandry of the grapevine, the moon above a certain tree.
Hāna said abruptly, “You take a risk, Madame.”
“Oh? In what way?”
“Making fun of him. He has a horrible temper.”
“Yes, I’m sure that he does.”
“He doesn’t see it now, what you’re doing—”
“I’ll be more careful.”
“Please. Because I’d hate there to be a rift.”
“Since you have no other female companions.”
“Of course I do,” said Hāna. “There are lots of woman here I like very well. He’s often away on his business, things to do with his money, and clever papers he’s written. Then I sit on the wall of the court with the servant girl, shelling peas, giggling. We takeoff our shoes.”
“I’m sure that is a risk, too.”
Hāna said nothing.
Then she said, “We’ve been to many places. I like this valley.” Though her delivery was still hesitant, it was now a fluent, unafraid hesitancy.
The moon stood in the top of the birch, which held it like a white mask upon feathers.
Hāna lifted her face. She was so pale, her white skin and lightly-tinted mouth. Her eyes were dark, although not so dark as Ysabelle’s. As Hāna tipped back her head, Ysabelle, who had drunk Ernst’s very strong wine, had a momentary irrational fear that the incredible weight of Hāna’s chignon would pull back and dislocate her slender neck. And throwing out one hand, she caught the back of Hāna’s head in her palm, as a woman does with a young child or baby.
Hāna said nothing, resting her head, so heavy, the massy cushion of silken hair, on Ysabelle’s hand.
They gazed up at the moon, at the mask which hid the moon, which might itself in reality be a thing of darkness, concealing itself for ever from the earth.
“I’ve never seen so much hair,” said Ysabelle presently.
“Yes, it makes my head ache sometimes. I wanted to cut some of it once. But Ernst told me that was unfeminine.”
“What nonsense. Your brother’s a fool. I’m sorry. Even so, you shouldn’t – no, you should never cut your hair. Your hair isn’t like any other hair. Your hair is – you.”
Hāna laughed.
Ysabelle in turn felt frightened. She said, “What nonsense I’m talking.” And took the girl back into the house, which Ernst was filling, as the father had done, with the headachy lustre of cigars.
They left at midnight, a city hour, not valued in the country.
Exhausted, Ysabelle went upstairs, and Mireio, hearing her pace about, nodded sagely, rightly believing her mistress was disturbed by new and awful terrors, tinglings, awakenings, amazements.
Ernst was delighted when Hāna began to spend time with Ysabelle at the white wooden house, among the cherries. She was always returned early enough to greet him, if he had been absent in the town. She made sure as ever that the servants saw to his comforts. When once or twice he slyly said to Hāna, “What do you talk about, you two women, all those hours? Daydreams, and those books of yours, I expect.” Hāna replied seriously, “Sometimes we talk about you.” “Me? What place can a humble male have in your games?” But he needed no answer and was gratified, not surprised, by Hāna’s lie. She had learned to be careful of him from an immature age, upbraiding him only in the proper, respectful, foolish, feminine way, desisting at once when chided. She was used to extolling his virtues, praising his achievements and being in awe of them. Even her perhaps-feigned loyalty she had learned to temper, for once, when a rival at his university had, he said, stolen a passage from his paper, and Hāna had asserted that the man should be whipped, Ernst had replied sharply that this might be so, but he did not expect her to say it. Hāna had been taught that men were not to be questioned, save by other men. For though some men were base, a woman could not grasp what drove them to it.
All this Hāna had relayed to Ysabelle, it was true. And so, in a way, they had spoken of Ernst.
“My mother died when I was four,” said Hāna, “but I had a kind nurse. I miss my mother still, do you know, I dream of her even now. She’d come in from some ball or dinner and her skirts would rustle, and she smelled of perfume and there was powder on her cheek, as on the wings of the butterflies that Ernst kills.”
“I killed my mother,” said Ysabelle. Hāna gazed, and Ysabelle added, “I mean, when I was born. Of course, as I grew, I had to take her place in many ways, for my father. For other consolations, he went to the town.”
Hāna lowered her eyes. They were a deep shadowy brown, like pools in the wood where animals stole to slake their thirst.
They walked about the countryside, the two women. They picked flowers and wild herbs, and later, mushrooms. They talked the sort of talk that Ernst would have predicted. Of memory and thought and feeling and incoherent longings. They sometimes laughed until their waists, held firm in the bones of dead whales, ached. They read books together aloud. Even, they shelled peas and chopped onions on the broad table, Mireio scolding them as if they were children. She would spoil it soon enough, saying, “Monsieur must come tomorrow or next day. This pork will just suit him.” She was ready always with her invitations to Ernst, was Mireio, and he eager to accept them. Ysabelk, he remarked to himself, has that woman very well primed. He did not mind a little connivance, though, aimed at himself. YsabeUe herself would not be too forward, and she would not anticipate, daughter of a free-thinking intellectual as she was, anything he did not want to give.
But too, she must be parched, surrounded by the local males, such swinish illiterates. How she must look forward to the sound of his step, his voice, after all that girlish twittering. And she had a lovely bosom, he had seen the white upp
er curves of it in her once-fashionable country evening gown, and her firm white arms. Her hair smelled of the rose-essence with which she rinsed it. And there was the smell of cherries always in the house now, somehow inciting. He would like to take a bite, there was no denying it.
“He’ll be gone – oh, two nights, three. He said, I might ask you to stay with me.”
“Did he.”
“Have I offended – I hoped – you see, when he’s not there, you’ve no idea, YsabeUe, our maid, Gittel, is so funny—”
“I prefer not to leave my house. But you’re welcome to stay with me. I’m afraid—” YsabeUe hesitated. She paled, which, in the candlelight, hardly showed, “We would have to share the bed. The other rooms aren’t properly cared for. But this bed is very large. It was my mother’s when my father – you understand. A large, ample couch. It’s strange. My servants are going away too. A visit I promised them. Gone for two nights. But we would manage, wouldn’t we?”
Hāna’s face. An angel announcing peace to all the world. “But I wouldn’t – annoy you?”
Now YsabeUe, stumbling with a familiar language, her own. “Annoy – I – enjoy your company so much.”
“I remember my mother,” Hāna said, “before she died. Late, she’d wake me. She used to give me sweets, and play with me, all sorts of silly games, how we laughed. And she’d hold me in her arms. She said, We are two little mice, my love. When the cat’s from home, the mice will dance.”
“Wine and opium. A dream of pearls. Hidden things. Clasp. Hinges. Unhinged. Open. The quiet shout, my cherry blossom. How we sat, that night. And you loosed your hair. My pearl, shut away, the hair in the locket – your little river – my river in the time of drought. The making of your sweet rain. My souvenir. A wedding train, it swept to the floor. Tread on my heart and break it. Your arms – flung up in abandon, your impatient body, waiting. You had fallen asleep, your face hidden in hair, your legs pale, ghostly in the candlelight. I drew nearer, and the candle with me, flickering, threw shadows dancing between your thighs. I grew jealous of light. I inhaled you there, breathed you in. Kissed you and kissed you again, bathed in the little rivers of you. The heat of the candle was stifling, agonising. We blew the flame away with our mouths. We embraced darkness, drank the night. Oh, Hāna. Hāna, Hāna.”
Hāna was at the door in the stillness of the hot evening. The nightingale was already singing, and the sun hung low, the sky a choked pastel blue, as in a faded painting.
On the terrace, Hāna paused.
“May I step over?”
Ysabelle laughed. She was unsettled, vivid and anxious. “Like the ghost? If I ask you in, will you haunt me?”
“No, I shall be circumspect.”
“Come in. Haunt my house.”
The rooms smelled of the absence of things. The absence of the servants, gone to their family of a hundred nieces and grandsons in the town. The absence of cooking. It was very hot, and the wooden parts of the building creaked. Ysabelle had lit a lamp in her sitting room, and another in the kitchen, and the strings of onions glowed like red metal. In a vase stood three white flowers. She poured from the bottle of wine. They drank. And Hāna came and kissed her, a fleeting little trustful kiss, at the corner of the mouth.
“Such fun,” said Hāna.
“Oh, my child,” said Ysabelle, and a well of sadness was filled.
“No. We’re sisters. My mother is your mother. And Ernst—”
“Ernst,” said Ysabelle, looking into her glass.
“Ernst never was born,” said Hāna. And her face was wicked, pitiless. “It was you. We two. You can be the clever one. And I’ll look after you.”
“I’m not clever.”
“Yes.”
The light was darkness. The sky a blue jewel in every narrow window. The nightingale sang a thousand and one songs, like Scheherazade, never repeating itself.
They made an omelette with fresh herbs and mushrooms, and ate two loaves of the coarse good bread. They opened another bottle, and made the coffee which had come from the town, seething it like soup, and adding cream and cognac.
They talked. Whatever do women talk of? Such non-sense. Of life and death, of the soul, of the worlds hidden behind the woods, the mountains, the sky, the ground. Of God, of- love.
“Did you never love anyone?” asked Hāna.
“No.”
“Your – father.”
“How could I love him? He simply always inexorably was, like the year, the day. An hour. An hour without end. Do you love your brother?”
“I – feel sorry for him.”
Ysabelle – laughed. A new laugh. Bitter? Stern?
“But he can do anything,” said Ysabelle.
“He – does not – see,” said Hāna. “He breaks the stone and the fossil is there. But he sees only this. Not what it was. Its life. And medicine – experiments – he has done things with small animals – and there is a horrible man he consorts with, a sort of doctor. And the butterflies on pins. Their patterns. But not – not what they are. He doesn’t see God.”
“Do you?”
“Oh yes,” said Hāna, simply, quiet, a truthful child.
“Then what does God seem to be?”
“Everything. All things.”
“A man. A king. A lord.”
“No,” said Hāna. She smiled. “Nothing like that.”
When they went up to bed, dousing the lamps, carrying the fat white candle, their bodies moved up the stairs as if all matter had been freshly invented. Night, for example. The stars between the shutters. The cry of the fox from far away. The far shapes of the mountains on the sark. The sark. The furniture. Clothes. Bodies. Skin.
“Will you take down your hair?”
“Yes. Then I’ll plait it. There’s such a lot. I’ll tie it up close so it won’t trouble you.”
Ysabelle said, “May I watch you?”
In the candlelight Hāna, a portrait, pale as alabaster, and gems of gold in her eyes. “Oh yes. I used to watch my mother.”
In the old story, the basket issues ropes of silver, and the silver flows on. Or the silver water leaps from the rock, and never stops.
Pins came out, and combs. The two ribbons were undone. Hāna, unwinding from her head the streams of the moon. On and on. Flowing. Never stopping.
The hair poured, and fell, and fell, and hung against the floor, just curling over there. A heavenly veil.
“Oh Hāna,” said Ysabelle. “Your hair.”
“Too much.”
“No. Don’t plait it – don’t. Haven’t you ever known?”
Under the sheath of hair, so simple to undress unseen. The train of an empress, when seated, spreading in folds. Standing again, veiled in the moon, she climbs into the wide bed. But lying back, the sea of moonlight parts.
“I’m so sleepy,” says Hāna. She yawns. She starts to speak, and sleeps.
Her upturned breast. What is it like? So soft, so kind, like a white bird, sleeping. And her hollow belly, and her thighs. And the mass of her silver hair, even in her groin, thick and rich and pale as fleece. The scent of her which is thyme and lilies – and – something which lives, and is warm.
Ysabelle stands. Locked. Her clasped hands under her chin. The voiceless weeping runs down her face as hot as blood.
But where the candle falls. Is it possible that you can steal a kiss, and not wake Beauty?
“Please – forgive me—”
“But it’s so lovely. Don’t stop—”
“I can’t—”
The nightingale sings. Hāna – sings.
“I never—”
“But you must have—”
“No. What is it? Oh – so wonderful—”
“You don’t hate me—”
“I love you. Is it possible – could it happen again?”
“Yes.”
“And for you?”
“Oh, yes, for me. Touch – there. Can you tell?”
“But – it’s like the fountain in the Bib
le, springing forth. I used to think that must be tears. But it’s this—”
“Hāna—”
“You’re so dark. Oh I love you. I can see you in the dark. Blow out the light.”
Blow out the light . . . Put out the light . . . I kiss’d thee erelkill’d thee.
He was pleased that evidently they had had a nice time together. He liked them to get on. He questioned his sister, trying to elicit some news of what had been said – of him. Hāna hinted a little, only that. Sly thing. He could picture it, these women, and Ysabelle sighing over him, and Hāna telling foolish stories admiringly, secretively, the way women did. His university glories, his boyish foibles, his favourite toy – they had that look now, of confidences exchanged.
It was afternoon, and Ysabelle and Hāna sat in the sitting room of Ernst’s house on the slope.
They were rather stiff and upright, as Ernst was. They drank a tisane, and looked at the view, for soon he would arrive home from his fossil hunt along the edge of the mountains.
The mountains loomed here. At the white house, on such a hot day, they were more a presence of burning light in the windows. Mireio had, as she always did in summer, moved two or three pictures in glass away from the reflection – some superstition that Ysabelle had never questioned, in all her thirty-two years.
But the mountains were oppressive, in this other spot. They turned the sun off in one direction, and cast a sort of shade.
Ysabelle said softly, “If I had you alone, heaven knows what I’d do to you.”
“How startled I should be.”
“I’d nibble at you like a lettuce.”
“If only you could.”
They saw him on the path, dwarfed by distance, tiny, big and towering, sunburnt, carrying some trophy.
They turned into two whale bones, corsetted tight, dead and hard and upright.
He entered. The door slammed, and the servant girl, Gittel, ran up, noise, fluster, and then he was in the room, enormous, and he must be welcomed and begged to tell his wishes, and send to heat the kettle, the coffee must be prepared. And look,
The Mammoth Book of Terror Page 34