Mortal Love (28 page)

She put her arm around him, and he fell against her, ashamed and horrified but unable to stop sobbing. “Oh, God. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I didn't … didn't—”

“Hush, then.” She took his chin and gently pushed his face back. “Oh, God, look at you. Fucking hell.”

She touched the outer corner of his eye, raw with crying, glanced down at his chest and whistled as she moved his shirt to expose his neck. “Goddamn, Hayward was right. You're a bloody fool. Look what she did to you. Look what she did.”

She shook her head. “All right. Can you walk? It's a bit of a ways, but I don't know that I want to be putting you into a cab like this.”

“I'm okay.” It hurt to talk—the words scraped his throat as though he'd swallowed splintered wood—but just saying it made him feel a bit stronger. “Yes. Let's go.”

She lived on a block of Victorian terraces, four-story houses with neat front gardens and mown lawns, late-model Volvos and Citroëns parked in narrow driveways. Daniel was too exhausted to feel more than mild surprise at how posh her house was, with its well-tended rosebushes and flagged walk, wrought-iron lanterns and security cameras and the polished brass plate with her name on it.

“That's my office there.” She led him through a clipped hedge of boxwood to the door. “Like a fucking arsenal, all the cameras, I know. I used to get hassled a lot. Gay bashers, fucking National Front kids. Bothered my clients. Here we are.”

Inside, all was spacious and comforting. Big rooms washed with gold late-morning light, the walls a soothing lichen green, thick Kurdistan carpets, old pine harvest tables. Biber violin sonatas played in the background. The very calm made Daniel more anxious.

“This is your place?”

Juda smiled wryly. “I know, hard to believe, innit? Protective coloration.”

They went to the kitchen. Daniel slumped into a chair while Juda got water for tea. As the electric kettle heated, she set a plate before him, with a slab of soft white cheese, strawberries, a slice of brown bread studded with bits of hazelnut.

Daniel shook his head. “I can't.”

“You must eat something.”

“I'll be sick.”

“You'll be
very
sick if you don't get something inside you. Believe me, I know what I'm talking about. Here.”

She held out the haunch of bread. The smell of roasted hazelnuts made his stomach turn, and he shook his head. “I can't,” he whispered. “Please.” He knew he sounded ridiculous.

“Eat it.” Her tone wasn't pleading but a command.
“Now.”

She handed him the bread. He took a tiny bite, hardly enough to taste it, and immediately began to retch. Juda stood beside him, her hand on his neck. “Swallow it,” she said. “Come on.”

Somehow he did, forcing himself not to vomit it up again. Juda stroked his neck. “Another. Go.”

He ate perhaps half of it, each bite making him double over with nausea. “I can't,” he gasped, pushing the plate away. “For Christ's sake.”

Juda stared down at him. “It'd be better if you did,” she said, and removed the plate. But she seemed to be satisfied. “Now here's some tea—don't worry, it won't make you sick. The point of eating that was to make you feel better, not worse. Do you?”

“No.”

He didn't, though his sense of horror began to recede. Certainly it was difficult to retain here, surrounded by the calm strains of violin and theorbo and lute, the red-enameled Aga range and a late David Hockney print beside the outer door.

“Well, you'll just have to take my word for it, then,” said Juda. She put a steaming cup in front of him.

Daniel grimaced. “I just bet that's not Earl Grey.”

“You're right. It's comfrey and boneset. But it needs to steep a few minutes, so let me have a look at you and see what kind of damage has been done.”

He winced as she put her hands on his shoulders and helped him to his feet, then turned him to face her. He stared miserably into her pale eyes; when she pulled his shirt collar from his neck, he looked away. Very gingerly she touched his throat, and Daniel tried not to cry out. “Take your shirt off. I need to see the rest of you.”

He obeyed, too sick and exhausted to argue, let his coat and shirt fall to the floor. “Oh, Daniel.”

He turned. Within the mirror above the Aga stood a horrible piebald figure, white skin streaked with dull red. Dark bruises were scattered across his chest like lipsticked kisses. His waist looked as though it had been mauled.

“Jesus,” he said.

He stared at a smear of red above his rib cage. He wasn't bleeding: the crimson skin was smooth and slightly raised, as though he bore a brand that had healed years before. The perimeter of the wound was pearled with raised bumps like a rash. He turned to catch the light streaming through the broad windows, and saw that the scar formed the perfect image of a hand. He looked at Juda. “What the fuck is it?”

“Wait here.”

She left the room and returned a few minutes later with a flannel bathrobe. “Wear this. We'll have to burn that.” She looked at the shirt on the floor.

“What?” Daniel felt a spark of indignation.

“Well, clean it, then.”

Daniel put the robe on. Judah got a plastic bag, stuffed his shirt inside, then dropped the bag outside the back door. For a minute she remained there, and Daniel watched as she gazed out at the garden with its neat green wedge of lawn, stone statue of a smiling Kuan Yin, an English robin chirping in an apple tree. Everything seemed lovely and precise as a magazine ad—including Juda herself, in beautifully draped trousers, black silk jacket, stark white shirt. Only her blue-nailed hands seemed to belong to someone else.

And yet as he watched, Daniel felt as though blazing light suddenly infused the scene: Shadows crackled and sparked like lightning, then dissolved into the grass like water into parched ground. The robin on its branch was not a bird but part of the tree. The elegantly dressed woman in the doorway was not a woman at all but something else, something—

“See if you can keep that tea down.” Juda walked back into the kitchen, motioning for him to sit. “You should be able to now.”

“Right.” He drew a hand across his eyes and sat. The strange brilliance subsided, along with his nausea. Now he just felt unutterably weary and light-headed. “This is like the worst hangover I ever had,” he said, and sipped the tea. “Ugh.”

“I could give you some honey.”

“That
would
make me throw up.” He gulped down most of what was in the cup, pushed it away, and counted silently to ten. “All right, Dr. Trent. Tell me. What happened?”

She pulled a chair beside him, staring at his hands clenched on the table. Very tentatively she began to speak. “Well. First off, she doesn't mean to.”

“Doesn't
mean
to? Mean to what? What does she … how did she … she—”

He yanked at the flannel robe, exposing the livid scars on his chest.

“That!” he
cried. “Why—
why?
Where did she go? Where is she?
Where?”

“I don't know. She … does this. It's not her intent. She …”

Juda rubbed her forehead, her face strained. “How can I explain? She wants you—she wants people, she's drawn to them—”

“Who? You?” Daniel's voice rose wildly. “Did she do this to
you?”

“No. She can't harm me. But you, people like you. It's what she does to them. When she wants them. When she sleeps with them. If you go with her, if you let her—”

“What's wrong with her, then? Is she sick? Am
I
sick now? How does she … what the fuck kind of woman is she … ?”

“That's it.” Juda Trent lifted her head. Her eyes were wide, calm, not the least reassuring. “She's not a woman. She's not like you, Daniel. Not even like me,” and Juda gave a small, bitter laugh. “But she wants you, she's drawn to you—that's
her
sickness, if you can call it that.

“And she poisons you. She doesn't mean to—but when she's … when she's aroused, when she wants someone … she can't help it. She never remembers afterward. She never remembers from one time to the next. She thinks—when she's with you—she thinks she's with someone else. Someone like herself. That's why her touch burns you.”

“But … why?”

“Because you are nothing like her, Daniel. You're not who she wants.”

“How can you say that?” He couldn't even laugh. It was as though he were listening to someone speak a language he didn't comprehend, Arabic or Mandarin Chinese. “The first time—I mean the first day—the first time I kissed her. This didn't happen. …” He touched his lips.

“No. It wouldn't. It's later. When she … when she loses control of what she is.”

“Where is she now?”

“I don't know. She wanders off, then she comes back. Somehow I always find her.”

“And you? Does she do this to you? Does she? Does she burn
you
? Let me see.”

He tried to grab her wrist, but Juda pushed him away. “Don't! Daniel—stop! It's because I'm like her.”

“A woman? A—”

He stopped, ashamed, and held his head in his hands. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry. God, what's happening to me? I feel like I'm losing my mind.”

“You're not losing your mind. Not yet at least.” Juda sighed. “Can you tell me what happened last night?”

“No.” He wanted to run back into the street and find her; he wanted to punch someone. Instead he took a deep breath, trying to focus on something ordinary, something stolid and mundane.

But there was nothing mundane left in the world. He stared at his fingers splayed upon the table, saw the swirled grain of the wood beneath—a pale, fine-grained wood, ash, but how did he know that?—then furiously clenched his hand and looked away.

The mirror above the stove pulsed with motion. Red-and-blue creatures darted through the air in the garden outside. By the door a silver lozenge held the image of a boy fractured into a hundred parts, poised above a swimming pool. On the table flame-colored tongues unfurled from a gold-whorled globe; insects like emerald sparks flung themselves relentlessly against the windows, striving to gain entry. In another room unseen fingers plucked a lute.

“No,” he whispered.

Nothing was ordinary. He saw that now. Everything was fertile and alive, everything. The slate countertops held the coils of imprisoned ammonites; each drop of water that fell into the sink contained a universe. He loosened his belt and undid his trousers, gazed down to see bruises blossoming on his thighs and groin, crimson and lavender and purplish green. Beneath the taut skin of his right hand, rivers coursed. Caught around his wrist was a strand of long dark hair. When he turned toward the sunlit window, the strand of hair glowed copper and green. He brought his hand to his face and let his mouth envelop his wrist, felt flame surge through his mouth to burn his lips.

“Daniel. Stop.”

His withdrew his hand, gazed at a scarlet thread of blood welling around his wrist. The strand of hair was gone. He had swallowed it. As he stared at his wrist, an uncontrollable spasm shook him; he bent forward, groaning, and ejaculated against the folds of Juda's borrowed robe.

“Oh, Christ,” he moaned, and staggered from the kitchen.

Juda found him in the bathroom fifteen or twenty minutes later. He had showered, and shaved using a plastic woman's razor. The flannel robe he wadded up and stuffed into a hamper. When Juda knocked at the door, he said, “Right there,” his voice hoarse as from long disuse.

A moment later he emerged, bare-chested. Without a word she handed him a black linen shirt, and he put it on. The sleeves were too short for him; he rolled them up, leaving the shirt open at the throat, then turned to her and nodded.

“I'm all right now.” He felt as though he'd fallen from the top of a house, broken every bone in his body, then reassembled himself: shattered, but somehow alive. “I'd like you to tell me about Larkin.”

They went into the living room. Juda gestured for him to sit on the couch. The curtains had been drawn, suffusing the room with twilight. She curled into the corner of the couch, her hair agleam in the near darkness.

“Well, Daniel Rowlands. What do you want me to tell you?”

“The truth. Where is she from?”

“The truth?” She gave him a sideways grin. “You're on sabbatical, Daniel, are you sure the
truth
is what you really want?”

“I seem to have spent the last forty-eight hours making a royal asshole out of myself. I think you better tell me something.”

“‘Do you think the things people make fools of themselves about are any less real and true than the things they behave sensibly about?' The truth? She's not from here. She escaped into London from somewhere else. She is very dangerous, but she's most dangerous to those who seek her out.”

“Like me.”

Again that crooked smile. “You're a lucky one, Daniel. Those are just flesh wounds.”

She leaned forward to touch the crimson wristlet on his right arm. Pain flared through him; he flinched, and she drew away. “You should have seen some of the others. Not a pretty sight.”

“I bet.” He sucked his breath in, waited for the throbbing to subside. “Okay. New question. Can I ask why you became a Jungian analyst?”

“Because I was interested in how people like you react under extreme circumstances.”

People like me?
Daniel wondered, but only said, “You mean when they meet someone like Larkin?”

“Among other things. Such as when they confront a reality they have not been aware of before—say, their own mortality. ‘Terror management': how people have adapted to living their brief lives, knowing they will end. There are complex sexual issues. Issues of identity.”