Lucius orders coffee and rum, but Yse only wants a mineral water. Is she dieting? He has never known her to do this. She has said dieting became useless after her forty-third year.
Her hair hangs long, to her waist, blonde, with whiter blonde and silver in it. He can't see any of the wax-ends of the extensions, or any grey either. Slimmer, her face, hands, and shoulders have fined right down. Her skin is excellent, luminous and pale. Her eyes are crystalline, and outlined by soft black pencil he has never seen her use before.
She says sharply, "For a man who likes men, you surely know how to look a woman over, Lucius."
"None better."
"Well, don't."
"I'm admiring you, Yse."
"Well, still don't. You're embarrassing me. I'm not used to it any more. If I ever was."
There is, he saw an hour ago—all across the market—a small white surgical dressing on the left side of her neck. Now she absently touches it, and pulls her finger away like her own mother would do. They say you can always tell a woman's age from her hands. Yse's hands look today like those of a woman of thirty-five.
"Something bite you, Yse?"
"An insect. It itches."
"I came by in the boat," he says, drinking his coffee, leaving the rum to stand in the glass. "I heard you playing that piano."
"You must have heard someone else somewhere. I can't play. I used to improvise, years ago. But then I had to sell my piano back then. This one… I haven't been able to get the damn lid up. I'm frightened to force it in case everything breaks."
"Do you want me to try?"
"Thanks—but maybe not. You know, I don't think the keys can be intact. How can they be? And there might be rats in it."
"Does it smell of rats?"
"Oddly, it smells of flowers. Jasmine, or something. Mostly at night, really. A wonderful smell. Perhaps something's growing inside it."
"In the dark."
"Night-blooming Passia," Yse says, as if quoting.
"And you write about that piano," says Lucius.
"Did I tell you? Good guess then. But it's not about a piano. Not really. About an Island."
"Where is this island?"
"Here." Yse sets her finger on a large notebook that she has already put on the table. (Often she will carry her work about with her, like a talisman. This isn't new.)
But Lucius examines the blank cover of the book as if scanning a map. "Where else?" he says.
Now Yse taps her forehead. (In my mind.) But somehow he has the impression she has also tapped her left ear, directly above the bite—as if the island was in there, too. Heard inside her ear. Or else, heard, felt—inside the bite.
"Let me read it," he says, not opening the notebook.
"You can't."
"Why not?"
"My awful handwriting. No one can, until I type it through the machine and there's a disc."
"You write so bad to hide it," he says.
"Probably."
"What's your story really about?"
"I told you. An Island. And a vampire."
"And it bit you in the neck."
Again, she laughs. "You're the one a vampire bit, Lucius. Or has it gone back to being a shark that bit you?"
"All kinds have bit me. I bite them, too."
She's finished her water. The exciting odour of cooking spiced fish drifts into the bar, and Lucius is hungry. But Yse is getting up.
"I'll carry your bag to the boat stop."
"Thanks, Lucius."
"I can bring them to your loft."
"No, that's fine."
"What did you say about a vampire," he asks her as they wait above the sparkling water for the water bus, "not what they are, what they do to you—what they make you feel?"
"I've known you over five years, Lucius—"
"Six and a half years."
"Six and a half then. I've never known you to be very interested in my books."
The breeze blows off the Sound, flattening Yse's shirt to her body. Her waist is about five inches smaller, her breasts formed, and her whole shape has changed from that of a small barrel to a curvy egg timer. Woman-shape. Young woman-shape.
He thinks, uneasily, will she begin to menstruate again, the hormones flowing back like the flood of the Sound tides through the towers and lofts of the island? Can he scent, through her cleanly showered, soap and shampoo smell, the hint of fresh blood?
"Not interested, Yse. Just being nosy."
"All right. The book is about, among others, a girl, who is called Antoinelle. She's empty, or been made empty, because what she wants is refused her—so she's like a soft, flaccid, open bag, and she wants and wants. And the soft wanting emptiness pulls him—the man—inside. She drains him of volition, and of his good luck. But he doesn't care. He also wants this. Went out looking for it. He explains that in the next section, I think…"
"So she's your vampire."
"No. But she makes a vampire possible. She's like a blueprint—like compost, for the plant to grow in. And the heat there, and the decline, that lovely word desuetude. And empty spaces that need to be continually filled. Nature abhors a vacuum. Darkness abhors it, too, and rushes in. Why else do you think it gets dark when the sun goes down?"
"Night," he says flatly.
"Of course not," she smiles, "nothing so ordinary. It's the black of outer space rushing to fill the empty gap the daylight filled. Why else do they call it space?"
She's clever. Playing with her words, with quotations and vocal things like that.
Lucius can see the tired old rusty boat chugging across the water.
(Yse starts to talk about the planet Vulcan, which was discovered once, twice, a hundred or a hundred and fifty years ago, and both times found to be a hoax.)
The bus boat is at the quay. Lucius helps Yse get her food and wine into the boat. He watches as it goes off around this drowned isle we have here, but she forgets to wave.
In fact, Yse has been distracted by another thought. She had found a seashell lying on her terrace yesterday. This will sometimes happen, if an especially high tide has flowed in.
She's thinking about the seashell, and the idea has come to her that, if she put it to her left ear, instead of hearing the sound of the sea (which is the rhythm of her own blood, moving), she might hear a piano playing.
Which is how she might put this into the story.
By the time the bus boat reaches West Ridge, sunset is approaching. When she has hauled the bags and wine to the doors of her loft, she stands a moment, looking. The snake-willow seems carved from vitreous. The alley of water is molten. But that's by now commonplace.
Even out here, before she opens her doors, she can catch the faint overture of perfume from the plant which may—must—be growing in the piano.
She dreamed last night she followed Per Laszd for miles, trudging till her feet ached, through endless lanes of shopping mall, on the mainland. He would not stop, or turn, and periodically he disappeared. For some hours, too, she saw him in conversation with a slender, dark-haired woman. When he vanished yet again, Yse approached her. "Is he your lover?"
"No," chuckled the incredulous woman. "Mine? No."
In the end Yse had gone on again, seen him ahead of her, and at last given up, turned her back, walked away briskly, not wanting him to know she had pursued him such a distance. Then only did she feel his hands thrill lightly on her shoulders—
At the shiver of memory, Yse shakes herself.
She's pleased to have lost weight, but not so surprised. She hasn't been eating much, and change is always feasible. The extensions cost a lot of money. Washing her hair is now a nuisance, and probably she will have them taken out before too long.
However, seeing her face in the mirror above the wash basin, she paused this morning, recognizing herself, if only for a moment.
A red gauze cloud drifts from the mainland.
Yse undoes her glass doors, and in the shadow, there that other shadow stands on its three l
egs. It might be anything but what it is, as might we all.
6. Her Piano
On the terrace below the gallery of orange trees, above the dry fountain, Gregers Vonderjan stood checking his gun.
Jeanjacques halted. He felt for a moment irrationally afraid—as opposed to the other fears he had felt here.
But the gun, plainly, was not for him.
It was just after six in the morning. Dawn had happened not long ago, the light was transparent as a windowpane.
"Another," said Vonderjan enigmatically. (Jeanjacques had noticed before, the powerful and self-absorbed were often obscure, thinking everyone must already know their business, which of course shook the world.)
"… Your horses."
"My horses. Only two now, and one on its last legs. Come with me if you like, if you're not squeamish."
I am, extremely, Jeanjacques thought, but he went with Vonderjan nevertheless, slavishly.
Vonderjan strode down steps, around corners, through a grove of trees. They reached the stables. It was vacant, no one about but for a single man, some groom.
Inside the stall, two horses were together, one lying down. The other, strangely uninvolved, stood aloof. This upright one was white as some strange pearly fish animal, its eyes almost blue, Jeanjacques thought, but perhaps that was a trick of the pure light The other horse, the prone one, half lifted its head, heavily.
Vonderjan went to this horse. The groom did not speak. Vonderjan kneeled down.
"Ah, poor soldier—" then he spoke in another tongue, his birth-language, probably. As he murmured, he stroked the streaked mane away from the horse's eyes, tenderly, like a father, caressed it till the weary eyes shut, then shot it, quickly through the skull. The legs kicked once, strengthlessly, a reflex. It had been almost gone already.
Jeanjacques went out and leaned on the mounting block. He expected he would vomit, but did not.
Vonderjan presently also came out, wiping his hands, like Pilate.
"Damn this thing, death," he said. The anger was wholesome, whole. For a moment a real man, a human being, stood solidly by Jeanjacques, and Jeanjacques wanted to turn and fling his arms about this creature, to keep it with him. But then it vanished, as before.
The strong handsome face was bland—or was it blind?
"None of us escape death."
That cliche once more, masking the horror—but what was the horror? And was the use of the cliche, only acceptance of the harsh world, precisely what Vonderjan must have set himself to learn?
"Come to the house. Have a brandy," said Vonderjan.
They went back, not the way they had come, but using another flight of stairs. Behind mem the groom was clearing the beautiful dead horse like debris or garbage. Jeanjacques refused to look over his shoulder.
Vonderjan's study had no light until great storm shutters were undone. It must face, like the terrace, towards the sea.
The brandy was hot.
"All my life," said Vonderjan, sitting down on his own writing table, suddenly unsolid, his eyes wide and unseeing, "I've had to deal with fucking death. You get sick of it Sick to death of it."
"Yes."
"I know you saw some things in France."
"I did."
"How do we live with it, eh? Oh, you're a young man. But when you get past forty, Christ, you feel it, breathing on the back of your neck. Every death you've seen. And I've seen plenty. My mother, and my wife. I mean, my first wife, Uteka. A beautiful woman, when I met her. Big, if you know what I mean. White skin and raven hair, red-gold eyes. A Viking woman."
Jeanjacques was mesmerized, despite everything. He had never heard Vonderjan expatiate like this, not even in imagination.
They drank more brandy.
Vonderjan said, "She died in my arms."
"I'm sorry—"
"Yes. I wish I could have shot her, like the horses, to stop her suffering. But it was in Copenhagen, one summer. Her people everywhere. One thing, she hated sex."
Jeanjacques was shocked despite himself.
"I found other women for that," said Vonderjan, as if, indifferently, to explain.
The bottle was nearly empty. Vonderjan opened a cupboard and took out another bottle, and a slab of dry, apparently stale bread on a plate. He ripped off pieces of the bread and ate them.
It was like a curious Communion, bread and wine, flesh, blood. (He offered none of the bread to Jeanjacques.)
"I wanted," Vonderjan said, perhaps two hours later, as they sat in the hard stuffed chairs, the light no longer windowpane pure, "a woman who'd take that, from me. Who'd want me pushed and poured into her, like the sea, like they say a mermaid wants that. A woman who'd take. I heard of one. I went straight to her. It was true."
"Don't all women—" Jeanjacques faltered, drunk and heart racing, "take—?"
"No. They give. Give, give, give. They give too bloody much."
Vonderjan was not drunk, and they had consumed two bottles of brandy, and Vonderjan most of it.
"But she's—she's taken—she's had your luck—" Jeanjacques blurted.
"Luck. I never wanted my luck."
"But you—"
"Wake up. I had it, but who else did? Not Uteka, my wife. Not my wretched mother. I hate cruelty," Vonderjan said quietly, "And we note, this world's very cruel. We should punish the world if we could. We should punish God if we could. Put Him on a cross? Yes. Be damned to this fucking God."
The clerk found he was on the ship, coming to the Island, but he knew he did not want to be on the Island. Yet, of course, it was now too late to turn back. Something followed through the water. It was black and shining. A shark, maybe.
When Jeanjacques came to, the day was nearly gone and evening was coming. His head banged and his heart galloped. The dead horse had possessed it He wandered out of the study (now empty but for himself) and heard the terrible sound of a woman, sick-moaning in her death throes: Uteka's ghost But then a sharp cry came; it was the other one, Vonderjan's second wife, dying in his arms.
As she put up her hair, Nanetta was dunking of whispers. She heard them in the room, echoes of all the other whispers in the house below.
Black—it's black—not black like a man is black… black as black is black…
Beyond the fringe of palms, the edge of the forest trees stirred, as if something quite large were prowling about there. Nothing else moved.
She drove a gold hairpin through her coiffure.
He was with her, along the corridor. It had sometimes happened he would walk up here, in the afternoons. Not for a year, however.
A bird began to shriek its strange stupid warning at the forest's edge, the notes of which sounded like "J'ai des lits! J'ai des tits!"
Nanetta had dreamed this afternoon, falling asleep in that chair near the window, that she was walking in the forest, barefoot, as she had done when a child. Through the trees behind her something crept, shadowing her. It was noiseless, and the forest also became utterly still with tension and fear. She had not dared look back, but sometimes, from the rim of her eye, she glimpsed a dark, pencil-straight shape, that might only have been the ebony trunk of a young tree.
Then, pushing through the leaves and ropes of a wild fig, she saw it, in front of her not at her back, and woke, flinging herself forward with a choking gasp, so that she almost fell out of the chair.
It was black, smooth. Perhaps, in the form of a man. Or was it a beast? Were there eyes? Or a mouth?
In the house, a voice whispered, "Something is in the forest."
A shutter banged without wind.
And outside, the bird screamed, I have beds! I have beds!
The salon: it was sunset and thin wine light was on the rich man's china, and the Venice glass, what was left of it.
Vonderjan considered the table, idly, smoking, for the meal had been served and consumed early. He had slept off his brandy in twenty minutes on Anna's bed, then woken and had her a third time, before they separated.
She had lai
n there on the sheet, her pale arms firm and damask with the soft nap of youth.
"I can't get up. I can't stand up."
"Don't get up. Stay where you are," he said. "They can bring you something on a tray."
"Bread," she said, "I want soft warm bread, and some soup. And a glass of wine."
"Stay there," he agreed again. "I'll soon be back."
"Come back quickly," she said. And she held out the slender, strong white arms, all the rest of her flung there and limp as a broken snake.
So he went back and slid his hand gently into her, teasing her, and she writhed on the point of his fingers, the way a doll would, should you put your hand up its skirt.
"Is that so nice? Are you sure you like it?"
"Don't stop."
Vonderjan had thought he meant only to tantalize, perhaps to fulfill, but in the end he unbuttoned himself, the buttons he had only just done up, and put himself into her again, finishing both of them with swift hard thrusts.
So, she had not been in to dine. And he sat here, ready for her again, quite ready. But he was used to that. He had, after all, stored all that, during his years with Uteka, who, so womanly in other ways, had loved to be held and petted like a child, and nothing more. Vonderjan had partly unavoidably felt that the disease, which invaded her body, had somehow been given entrance to it because of this omitting vacancy, which she had not been able to allow him to fill—as night rushed to engulf the sky once vacated by a sun.
This evening the clerk looked very sallow, and had not eaten much. (Vonderjan had forgotten the effect brandy could have.) The black woman was definitely frightened. There was a type of magic going on, some ancient fear-ritual that unknown forces had stirred up among the people on the Island. It did not interest Vonderjan very much, nothing much did, now.
He spoke to the clerk, congratulating him on the efficiency of his lists and his evaluation, and the arrangements that had been postulated, when next the ship came to the Island.
Jeanjacques rallied. He said, "The one thing I couldn't locate, sir, was a piano."
"Piano?" Puzzled, Vonderjan looked at him.
"I had understood you to say your wife—that she had a piano—"
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