Mimi's Ghost (36 page)

Now his ears were accustomed, he caught the sound of music in the lulls of the excavator. From upstairs. He recognised the appalling Sade. Or ‘come music' as his wife called it. The case was closed. Even the phone, under her Gustav Klimt poster, was off the hook. What more evidence could one need? Yet Morris's disgust and curiosity were so intense that he couldn't stop here, even though it was ludicrous, even though he was planless.

Softly, he climbed the spiral staircase. He hesitated, listening, treading softly on the step that creaked. Then as his head poked out above floor level between banister supports, the first thing he saw was his wife's brown eyes staring straight into his own.

In the centre of the room, under four skylights, and arranged so that it faced away from the stairs and toward the television, was a fashionable low red sofa. The black's naked shoulder-blades and woolly head rose massively, unshakeably, above the back. Bobbing fiercely beside that head, face toward Morris, features unpleasantly distorted as on her knees she rapidly approached the last station of the libido's
via crucis,
was Paola.

Immediately her eyes fastened on his, but with no indication of surprise, either at his presence or his redesigned face. Instead her greedy gaze seemed just to be begging him not to interrupt, at least until it was over. Morris stood transfixed, watching, together with Mimi he felt, this rape of his marriage. And while at one level he had never been more deeply shocked, at another and deeper level he felt profoundly satisfied, liberated. He need make the effort no more. The family was dead.

Sade crooned in that bitch-in-heat way she had. A bee buzzed about the open skylight. The riggish wench's face broke up in a howl of pleasure, as though torn from the very heart of life itself, followed by nothing more than a few bass grunts from the man.

Climbing to the top of the stairs, Morris said: ‘I trust you both enjoyed that.'

Paola was panting hard.

Kwame turned his head, lifting the slight woman to one side. ‘Boss,' he said. Then without lowering his head or in any way expressing shame, he explained: ‘We thought you is still at the hospital, boss. God, your face is bad.'

There was a short silence, in which Sade moaned about Frankie's first affair, while the excavator could be heard attacking the hill again. Kwame had twisted round, but his nakedness was hidden behind the sofa. Only the powerful chest was evident, muscles glistening. Morris hesitated. Perhaps because there was clearly no way of killing two people at once, one of whom was infinitely stronger than himself, he found himself icily calm. Though his gelid outrage, he sensed, was Mimi's too, and thus pregnant with purpose. Pregnant . . .

He said: ‘I wouldn't mind so much if she wasn't pregnant with my child.' My daughter, he should have said. Your reincarnation, Mimi!

Having got her breath back, Paola folded her arms on the back of the sofa, pert breasts peeping over slender forearms. She cocked her head to one side and her features settled in a sly smile. ‘Your poor face,' she said. Then she said: ‘Mo, instead of filling your head with these crazy ideas, why don't you just get your clothes off and join us?'

It was one-thirty. Back in the hospital, Dionisio would be collecting lunch trays, wondering where on earth his English patient had got to, where the next exchange of views on suburban London was coming from. And how could Morris ever know whether Fendtsteig or Marangoni would be able to demonstrate that he had left the hospital? And where he had gone. But clearly this was the end. Paola had touched bottom now.

‘Come on,' she said.

He stared at her.

She laughed. ‘Mo, I know it must seem bad, but in the end, why not? I've always wanted to suck and fuck at the same time. Come on. Mo, treat yourself. Enjoy it. Don't make life such a tragedy.'

Kwame said: ‘Yeah.'

Morris was seeing red. But at the same time and at another level, he continued to experience an extraordinary lucidity and calm, as if another were thinking for him. For it wasn't like the old days, in the hotel in Rimini, the villa in Sardinia, when he had been so desperately alone. In his mind's eye he saw her round calm face, with the holy crown,
La Vergine incoronata.

‘After all, we know all about you, Mo.' Paola's voice was wheedling now. ‘Kwame told me what happened. And we're not going to let you down. What more faithfulness could you ask for than that?'

Morris opened his mouth. But it was premature. Mimi still hadn't spoken.

Paola held out her arms. Kwame was smiling his healthy, strong-teethed smile.
‘Coragg'io,
Mo. Don't be shy now. Why should we limit ourselves to just one partner in the end? Otherwise life is just a bore! You know you've felt that yourself.'

‘Yeah,' Kwame repeated. ‘We not going to let you down, boss. We love you.' His black skin seemed perfectly appropriate on the red sofa. He appeared no more shocked or ill at ease than he had been when he found Morris battering Bobo to death on the office floor.

‘So you're not pregnant,' Morris faltered.

‘You poor sweet thing,' Paola said, arms still entended. ‘Let me kiss your poor face.'

‘She's lying,' Mimi said. Very loud and clear. ‘She is pregnant.'

Hearing the voice, so ringingly hers, Morris experienced a slight attack of vertigo. The room and his wife and the big black all slipped out of focus for a moment, blurred to grey light. (Was it Paola, already having the affair with Kwame, who had made the phone call? Was it?) By the time everything had recomposed itself he was suddenly decisive, and operating under orders now.

‘I'll go down and fix a few drinks,' he said. ‘Give you time to get your breath back and me to wind down. Then I'm going to make you pay for this,' he laughed unnaturally. ‘In pleasure.'

Paola's eyes were half closed in cheerfully sultry lust. ‘Anything, Mo,' she said. ‘Just get your cock up here.'

Excited, horrified, determined, elated, Morris hurried downstairs. It seemed that other hands mixed the drinks for him. Two tall glasses full of ice, three inches of gin, three of tonic. Haifa lemon in each. And where was the Lexotan? Was it still here? Her tranquilliser for when she felt under stress. She felt under stress! Because she was betraying him of course. Where? Got it. Behind the huge jar of KY she had brought back from England. Morris waited while thirty drops dripped painfully slowly from the nozzle.

‘Are you coming. Mo? Don't change your mind now.'

‘Couldn't find the lemons,' he shouted, and while one hand held the Lexotan over the second glass, he filled a third with nothing but cool tonic water. Then he wiped the tonic bottles and threw them away, wiped the handle of the fridge, the handle of the knife he'd used, and the glasses after he had set them on a tray.

Sade was serving up ‘Cherry Pie', voice oozing with moneyed lust, the saxophones sophisticatedly sleazy, those elements of black culture Europeans have distilled into aphrodisiac. Listening, Morris hesitated a moment on the stairs and closed his eyes. ‘Mirni,' he prayed, ‘give me the strength to go through with this filth.' And he added: ‘It will be for everybody's benefit in the end.' For quite suddenly, despite his nervousness, she had allowed him to see the sense of this, its necessity almost, and a clear path right through to the happy ending.

‘Mo,
che dolce
! You darling.' Paola was cross-legged on the carpet. Smoking. Her hair bubbled on thin shoulders. Her little stomach was flat and tight. From amidst the tawny fuzz so frankly displayed between gently rocking thighs, peeped a gash of blood pink. How could Morris have married such a whore? And how could he ever bring himself to turn his head and look at the nakedness of the street Negro who had just penetrated her, poured his filth and diseases into the womb where his baby daughter was growing.

Morris bent down, put the tray on the floor, picked up his drink and sat back on the sofa. Paola took hers, and to Morris's right Kwame reached down so that his long ebony arm came into vision, closing a huge hand round the glass. At which point Morris finally turned to look. And what he saw, to his surprise, was almost a vision: the huge torso tight with muscle under satin-dark skin, the lean waist, and between the powerful thighs, thick but slack, and tipped with red, his black man's long dark sex. Drinking, Kwame began to laugh. This is more fun than working, boss. We let the others work.'

Almost in a trance, Morris was reminded, as if seeing everything in negative, of that marble-white Apollo he had viewed and touched, caressed, with Forbes in the Uffizi. The only way to learn the
gratia placendi,'
the old man had said. And here there were no guardians to stop them. Only Mimi as a witness.

For Mimi's ghost had appeared now. She was standing behind Kwame in a shaft of sunlight boiling from the skylight above. Her long hair was loose and the gauze gown she wore transparent over high breasts, so much bigger and rounder than Paola's, with a golden crucifix hung between. Likewise a light chain was draped around her hips, gently sagging under the weight of another holy image that winked and shone over the wiry darkness beneath her belly.

. . .
Like a heap of wheat,
Morris remembered,
set about with
lilies.

He wanted to leap from the sofa and rush over to her. But the apparition had raised one finger to softly frowning lips. Then over the music and the drone of the excavator, he distinctly heard her whisper: ‘Enjoy, Morrees. Enjoy! But keep your heart and mind on me throughout, and you will stay pure.'

Then came the shock of an ice-cold hand cupped and pressing on his crotch. He looked down to find Paola laughing. ‘Isn't he beautiful? Our Negro!' Kwame joined in the laughter. ‘But remember you promised you would punish us,' Paola said. She was unbuckling his belt now.

‘I do anything you tell me, boss,' Kwame said. ‘Anything.'

Looking at his watch as it was taken off, Morris saw it was only five past two, and his rapidly calculating mind reassured him that the schedule wasn't even tight. As his wife's gin-cold lips came down on his underwear, Morris averted his gaze across Kwame's splendid stirring to where, standing immediately behind, Mimi's eyes were half closed now, staring boldly, intently, with complicity, one hand lightly caressing a breast. Her lips pouted in a kiss. With a sense of supreme sacrifice Morris reached across and grabbed the black man's sex.

Some fifty minutes later he was free. They were both asleep on the big bed in the guest-room, drugged, sated, exhausted. Mimi too had gone now, though her orders were very much on his mind as he moved quickly about the house, shirt in one hand to polish away fingerprints, matchbox in the other for the items he must collect (he had emptied the matches in his pocket): pubic hairs from sofa and bed; head hairs from the pillow; one nail-paring from the bin in the bathroom; one used condom, most carefully wrapped in toilet paper, and then so arranged in the matchbox as not to lose its precious burden. What about an earring? He went back into the bedroom where they lay together, she curled on one side and he curled about her, quite romantically, protectively, his dark skin against her soapy white, his thick lips in her hair. Morris lifted her curls to discover an earring, tiny diamond in the lobe. But she twitched when he touched it, suddenly and quite strongly. Kwame breathed more deeply. Morris backed off. With any luck he would find one in her handbag. Yes. On the floor. The big gold hoops. Just one. And a used tissue. And perhaps a couple of cigarette stubs too, now he came to think of it, from the ashtray, with her sex-red lipstick on the tips.

Then it occurred to him that before doing any more of this he should already have closed the windows and turned on the gas. God only knew how long it took to fill a house with gas. God only knew how long they would sleep. He found the pole for the skylights, banged them shut, then hurried downstairs, turned on all the rings, opened the oven door and turned that on too. Another five minutes, washing the three glasses, then rinsing two with a bit of gin and tonic while putting the third back in the cupboard. Good. Now the last fingerprints: as soon as he'd wiped those off he could get his shirt back on and fill his pockets with one or two last items of detritus: a piece of dead skin spotted on the bathroom floor, a damp pantie-liner. Until at last he was - was he? - yes, ready to leave, yes. Morris had just put his eye to the Judas hole these suspicious Italians could never live without, when the buzzer went.

Somebody was at the front gate, buzzing their buzzer. The sound was so brutally loud in the relative silence of the big flat that Morris felt he must be close to a heart attack. Not to mention the possibility it would wake the sleepers. And he'd been
so sure
Mimi had got this sorted out for him. So sure. How could she have let someone come to the door? He held his breath. In the space of thirty seconds he was absolutely sodden with cold sweat.

Morris waited, his mind shuffling through the possible visitors. A
marocchino?
A Jehovah's Witness? It was too late for the postman. But perhaps the local
vigile
had come to warn him he hadn't paid some council tax or other? The ridiculous business about right of way from garage to street. Had he paid it? Had he paid the TV licence? He thought not. But the smell of the gas was overpowering now. If they got inside the palazzo and came to the front door, they couldn't help but notice.

There it went again.
Buzz!
Incredibly loud. He'd never realised. Surely buzzers didn't need to be this loud. And it couldn't be a
marocchino
or Jehovah's Witness, otherwise he would have heard the muffled buzz of the doorbells in the other flats. Because people like that tried everybody. If only the buzzer could be taken off the hook, like the phone. But then there was the further problem that he would have to get out of the palazzo past whoever it was down at the gate. The gas was beginning to make him feel sick now. Of course if he'd simply been living there he could have gone out on the balcony and looked, something one could usually do without being seen. But not always. Not always.