The Mammoth Book of Terror (46 page)

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 upper 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.

“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?”

H
ā
na’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,” H
ā
na 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.”

On the terrace, H
ā
na 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 H
ā
na came and kissed her, a fleeting little trustful kiss, at the corner of the mouth.

“Such fun,” said H
ā
na.

“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 H
ā
na. 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 H
ā
na.

“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 H
ā
na. “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 H
ā
na, simply, quiet, a truthful child.

“Then what does God seem to be?”

“Everything. All things.”

“A man. A king. A lord.”

“No,” said H
ā
na. 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 H
ā
na, 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. H
ā
na, 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 H
ā
na,” 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 H
ā
na. 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. H
ā
na – 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 Bible, springing forth. I used to think that must be tears. But it’s this—”

“H
ā
na—”

“You’re so dark. Oh I love you. I can see you in the dark. Blow out the light.”

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. H
ā
na hinted a little, only that. Sly thing. He could picture it, these women, and Ysabelle sighing over him, and H
ā
na 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.

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,

here were the almond cakes bought especially, as he liked them, and some pâté that had been kept untouched and cool in the stone larder.

Would he sit? No. Was he tired? No. But surely, he must be tired a little, after so long an excursion? No. One saw how he watched, amused, the fuss. How strong and brave he was, to have walked
so long and still be walking about, and to have broken this rock which now he put down on the table there. How astonishing. How erudite he was, to have found it. To have known where.

He spread the broken halves and showed the fossil, the little images, turned to stones, curling and perfect, ammonites, molluscs, from a sea long gone, in this afternoon of drought.

“Look here.” They clustered for the lesson. So impressed by him, gasping. “Nobody has witnessed this before,” he said.

It was true. They could not argue with him.

Later, alone a moment, she cut the apple, showed it to H
ā
na. “Nobody,” said Ysabelle, “has witnessed this before.”

“But, it’s only an apple. Many people—”

“Not
this
apple. Nobody, save you and I, have witnessed the inside of
this
apple, before.”

“Oh Ysabelle. You’re too clever – I’m afraid—”

“Yes, yes, my darling. So am I.”

This is Ernst’s house. Against the shadow mountains.

In the evening, after the thick soup and the cheese and wine, his cigars, and looking at the brown mass settling on the sides of the heights. Darkness will come. Cannot be held back. Nobody has
witnessed this before, not
this
night.

“Oh, my good friend, yes, Le Rue. Of course, he has his life’s work at St Cailloux. A genius,” said Ernst, who had made the evening ‘go’, speaking, entertaining
them, and even, in the case of Ysabelle, perhaps able to teach her somewhat. She was promising, Ysabelle. She might write up his notes for the paper on ammonites of the region. A fine clear hand.
Her father was to be congratulated posthumously. “I’ve mentioned, he’s fascinated, Le Rue, by the surgical procedures of Ancient Egypt. But also of course by the most modern
inventions. The X-ray now, what a wonder.”

“Seeing inside,” H
ā
na said after, another moment alone, “Nothing is to be private.”

But Ernst said, “We can’t pretend to be delicate. We’re monkeys, not angels. Descended from the apes. Not even
you
are an angel, Ysabelle.” He raised his glass,
“So your appearance must be deceptive.”

“Ernst telling us,” Ysabelle, writing later, in her clear hand, “with such costive glee, of a machine which can see the very bones
inside
a body. Nothing is left secret.
And the fossils, asleep for centuries. What a pillager he is, raping his way over the foothills.”

Taken home, in the trap. Ernst had insisted. H
ā
na left behind. Ernst. The moon high. They have sacrificed a goat in the woods for rain. The blood has splashed the moon. There are marks on
it.

“Ysabelle.”

She sits silent, listening. At last she says, “Ernst – you flatter me. But – you frighten me, Ernst. I’ve never known a man so – powerful – so very
wise.
Even my father.”

“Ysabelle, don’t be afraid of me. What has my intellect to do with this? You inflame me, Ysabelle.”

“No, Ernst. I’m unworthy of you. I couldn’t bring myself-you’d be disappointed – how could I bear that? You would come to despise me. Oh, ten years ago, perhaps.
Not now.”

“Don’t suppose, Ysabelle, I’m done with you. I shan’t give up.”