A Love Like Blood (34 page)

I drop to my knees in the hot dust, licking my lips.

Time passes.

A dog barks, just one this time, and I remember the dogs barking all night, all night every night.

I am tortured by a brief vision of Marian, silhouetted in the window at Caius. Then it’s gone.

There is nothing left now but the sun, and the blood inside me.

I look down at Verovkin, just once more. He has stopped moving.

What had he seen on my face, in that tunnel in Paris? Fear, yes. Curiosity. Yes, that too. And now I knew he was right. He’d seen something more; he’d seen desire. So I had hated Verovkin. Yes. But it was only now that I finally understood the real reason why, because it was now that I knew that what had brought me to the cellar in Yugoslavia, and now to a hilltop in Italy, was indeed a desire; but it was not, as I’d thought, a desire to destroy him.

In the cellar, that night, I made the connection to Sarah, and her blood, and her betrayal of me. Then, I only knew that the connection hurt me, and that Verovkin had brought it back. But there was something else I had not been able to place, something that had remained unknown to me, and it was this: Sarah’s affair did not
start
my fascination with blood. What happened with her merely poured fuel on a fire that was already burning, a fire for which I can see no original cause, other than that I may have been born with it inside me. And that fire is a desire. A desire; a love, like blood, that flows deep within us, guiding us, pushing us, controlling us, one from which we can never be free, because we can never be free of our own blood; except in death.

I have wondered, over the last few days, sitting on the hillside, I have wondered which of our emotions are actually real. When we fear, when we love, when we worry, when we hate; which of these are real, and which are merely performances that we put on for the benefit of those around us? Or for ourselves. Did I really love Marian? Did I really care so much for her that I threw my life away trying to avenge her? Did I really cry for Hunter, or were those tears simply meant to prove to the world, to myself, that I was kind, that I cared?

And when we claim to be repulsed by something, disgusted, horrified, is it possible that sometimes that object is what we secretly desire the most? That the powerful hostile reaction is a falsification of a deeply held yearning for that very thing?

So many things fall away from me now, flow away, and I have a sudden memory, a visual memory, of Marian stroking her fingertip through the rainwater on the tabletop. My memory becomes a fantasy, and as it does, the water on the red lacquer transforms into a different fluid, and so finally I realise that it is my own love for blood that has brought me this far.

I know I will go on. I will walk away from this place and do further things before I die. I have the money to do them, and more time than I could wish for.

I get up again and turn back to the girl.

‘
Are you going to help me?
’

I see the almost imperceptible; the artery pulsing in her neck.

‘No,’ I say. ‘There is no one to help you now.’

I step towards her.

Acknowledgements

I owe various people a debt of gratitude for help with this book. The brilliant Anne Leone deserves first billing since early conversations with her and the chance to read her doctorate inspired the early feel of the story. I’d also like to thank Clémentine Beauvais for her assistance with passages in French; Alice Sedgwick and Kevin Jackson for a discussion of Latin infinitives. Any errors remain my own. I’d like to thank my mother for agreeing not to read this book, and I’d like to thank my partner, Maureen, for doing the opposite, as well as believing, when I didn’t. The book is dedicated to her. Other people have also believed in this book, so I’d finally like to thank my agent, Kirsty McLachlan, and all the wonderful people at Mulholland for their support and enthusiasm, especially my editor, Ruth Tross.

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