Blood 20

by Tanith Lee

  He had not hurt himself. When he looked up, no-one was in the field that he could see.

  He got to his feet slowly. He trembled, and then the trembling, like the whispers, went away.

  The storm rumbled over the Island. It sounded tonight like dogs barking, then baying in the distance. Every so often, for no apparent reason, the flames of the candles flattened, as if a hand had been laid on them.

  There was a main dish of pork, stewed with spices. Someone had mentioned there were pigs on the Island, although the clerk had seen none, perhaps no longer wild, or introduc­ed and never wild.

  The black girl, who was called Nanetta, had put up her hair elaborately, and so had the white one, Vonderjan’s wife. Round her slim pillar of throat were five large green stars in a necklace like a golden cake-decoration.

  Vonderjan had told Jeanjacques that no jewellery was to be valued. But here at least was something that might have seen him straight for a while. Until his ship came in. But perhaps it never would again. Gregers Vonderjan had been lucky always, until the past couple of years.

  A gust of wind, which seemed to do nothing else out­side, abruptly blew wide the doors to the terrace.

  Vonderjan himself got up, went by his servants, and shut both doors. That was, started to shut them. Instead he was stood there now, gazing out across the Island.

  In the sky, the dogs bayed.

  His heavy bulky frame seemed vast enough to withstand any night. His magnificent mane of hair, without any evident grey, gleamed like gold in the candlelight. Vonderjan was so strong, so nonchalant.

  But he stood there a long while, as if something had attracted his attention.

  It was Nanetta who asked, ‘Monsieur – what is the matter?’

  Vonderjan half turned and looked at her, almost mock­ingly, his brows raised.

  ‘Matter? Nothing.’

  She has it too, Jeanjacques thought. He said, ‘The blacks were saying, something has come from the sea.’

  Then he glanced at Nanetta. For a moment he saw two rings of white stand clear around the pupil and iris of her eyes. But she looked down, and nothing else gave her away.

  Vonderjan shut the doors. He swaggered back to the table. (He did not look at his wife, nor she at him. They kept themselves intact, Jeanjacques thought, during proximity, only by such a method. The clerk wondered, if he were to find Antoinelle alone, and stand over her, murmuring Vonderjan’s name, over and over, whether she would fall back, unable to resist, and come, without further provocation and in front of him. And at the thought, the hard rod tapped again impatiently on his thigh.)

  ‘From the sea, you say. What?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir. But they were whispering it. Perhaps mademoiselle knows?’ He indicated Nanetta graciously, as if giving her a wanted opening.

  She was silent.

  ‘I don’t think,’ said Vonderjan, ‘that she does.’

  ‘No, monsieur,’ she said. She seemed cool. Her eyes were kept down.

  Oddly – Jeanjacques thought – it was Antoinelle who suddenly sprang up, pushing back her chair, so it scraped on the tiles.

  ‘It’s so hot,’ she said.

  And then she stood there, as if incapable of doing anything else, of refining any desire or solution from her own words.

  Vonderjan did not look at her, but he went slowly back and undid the doors. ‘Walk with me on the terrace, Anna.’

  And he extended his arm.

  The white woman glided across the salon as if on runners. She seemed weightless – blown. And the white snake of her little narrow hand crawled round his arm and out on to the sleeve, to rest there. Husband and wife stepped out into the rumbling night.

  Jeanjacques sat back and stared across the table at Nanetta.

  ‘They’re most devoted,’ he said. ‘One doesn’t often see it, after the first months. Especially where the ages are so different. What is he, thirty, thirty-two years her senior?’

  Nanetta raised her eyes and now gazed at him impene­trably, with the tiniest, most fleeting smile.

  He would get nothing out of her. She was a lady’s maid, and he a jumped-up clerk, but both of them had remained slaves. They were calcined, ruined, defensive, and armoured.

  Along the terrace he could see that Vonderjan and the woman were pressed close by the house, where a lush flowering vine only partly might hide them. Her skirts were already pushed askew, her head thrown sideways, mouth open and eyes shut. He was taking her against the wall, thrusting and heav­ing into her.

  Jeanjacques looked quickly away, and began to whistle, afraid of hearing her cries of climax.

  But now the black girl exclaimed, ‘Don’t whistle, don’t do that, monsieur!’

  ‘Why? Why not?’

  She only shook her head, but again her eyes – the black centres were silver-ringed. So Jeanjacques got up and walked out of the salon into Vonderjan’s library across the passage, where now the mundane papers concerning things to be sold lay on a table.

  But it has come, it has come through the sea, before star-rise and dawn, through the rifts and fans of the transparent water, sliding and swimming like a crab.

  It has crawled onto the sand, crouching low, like a beast, and perhaps mistaken for some animal.

  A moon (is it a different moon each night; who would know?) sinking, and Venus in the east.

  Crawling into the tangle of the trees, with the palms and parrot trees reflecting in the dulled mirror of its lid, its carapace. Dragging the hind limb like a tail, pulling itself by the front legs, like a wounded boar.

  Through the forest, with only the crystal of Venus to shatter through the heavy leaves of sweating bronze.

  Bleumaneer, La Vue Bleu, Blue Fashion, Blue View, see­ing through a blue eye to a black shape, which moves from shadow to shadow, place to place. But always nearer.

  Something is in the forest.

  Nothing dangerous. How can it hurt you?

  V

  Yse is buying food in the open air market at Bley. Lucius has seen her, and now stands watching her, not going over.

  She has filled her first bag with vegetables and fruit, and in the second she puts a fish and some cheese, olive oil and bread.

  Lucius crosses through the crowd, by the place where the black girl called Rosalba is cooking red snapper on her skillet, and the old poet paints his words in coloured sand.

  As Yse walks into a liquor store, Lucius follows.

  ‘You’re looking good, Yse.’

  She turns, gazing at him – not startled, more as if she doesn’t remember him. Then she does. ‘Thank you. I feel good today.’

  ‘And strong. But not this strong. Give me the veget­ables to carry, Yse.’

  ‘Okay. That’s kind.’

  ‘What have you done to your hair?’

  Yse thinks about this one. ‘Oh. Someone put in some extra hair for me. You know how they do, they hot-wax the strands onto your own.’

  ‘It looks fine.’

  She buys a box of wine bottles.

  ‘You’re having a party?’ Lucius says.

  ‘No, Lucius. I don’t throw parties. You know that.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘Just getting in my stores. I’m working. Then I needn’t go out again for a while, just stay put and write.’

  ‘You’ve lost some weight,’ Lucius says. ‘Looks like about 25 pounds.’

  Now she laughs. ‘No. I wish. But you know I do sometimes, when I work. Adrenaline.’

  He totes the wine and the vegetables, and they stroll over to the bar on the quay, to which fresh fish are being brought in from the Sound. (The bar is at the top of what was, once, the Aquatic Museum. There are still old cases of bullet-and-robber-proof glass, with fossils in them, little ancient dragons of the deeps, only three feet long, and coelacanths with needle teeth.)

  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 anymore. 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 35.

  ‘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 note-book.

  ‘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. And 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 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 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 that 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, recognising herself, if only for a moment.

  A red gauze cloud drifts from the mainland.

  Yse undoes her glass doors, and in the shadow, the
re that other shadow stands on its three legs. It might be anything but what it is, as might we all.

  VI: 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 window-pane.

  ‘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 Pilot.

  ‘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.