Scarlet in the Snow (12 page)

At the very end was another door, and discovering it too was unlocked, I opened the door. Behind was not a room, as I’d expected, but a narrow set of wooden stairs that twisted up to the third floor. I set off up the stairs; they creaked terribly, making me halt more than once, half-expecting Luel to come storming up after me. But I reached the top without challenge and found myself at the entrance to a corridor. And halfway down that, a door.

I took a deep breath. Half of me wanted to turn back, suddenly afraid of how I might find him. Luel had said he was ashamed of how he’d behaved that first day. What if he’d locked himself away because the darkness had returned and the beast-rage was strong within him again? But the other half of me scorned such fears. Come what may, I’d pledged my word. Ivan was now my friend. If I wanted to help him, I had to show him I wasn’t afraid. I had to make him understand he could trust me. So I walked to the door and rapped quietly. No answer. I tried the handle but it was locked. I could hear him behind the door. Or rather, I could hear his silence. It was as tangible as though he’d spoken.

‘Ivan,’ I said, in a voice that only just managed not to quaver. ‘Ivan, it’s me. It’s Natasha. Won’t you please let me in? I need to speak to you.’

I heard a quiet intake of breath.

‘Please. I don’t want to force you to come down or anything. I – I just need your opinion. I’ve written a story and I want to try it out on someone. And Luel isn’t interested.’ It wasn’t at all what I’d planned to say, but
the instant I said the words, I knew this was much better, because it would surprise him.

It did. ‘You need my opinion? About a story?’ he said blankly.

‘Yes. I need to read it to you. To tell me if it works.’

‘Now?’ he said faintly.

‘If I have to change it, I’d rather know now,’ I said. ‘Luel says I should wait, but I don’t have any patience.’

‘No, you don’t,’ he said, and I could hear a very slight smile in his voice, which made my heart lighten with relief.

‘So, are you going to open up,’ I said sharply, ‘or do you propose to make me tell you the story through the keyhole?’

‘I don’t think that’s necessary,’ he said, the smile now stronger in his voice. ‘Wait a moment.’ I heard his steps move away and then return moments later. There was a rattle of bolts and keys as he unlocked the door, and in the next instant, there he was, standing in the doorway.

I only just repressed a cry, for in that first glimpse I thought his face had been blotted out in a white blankness, like the pictures. Then I realised he was wearing a mask, a white silk mask, which covered his face but for his eyes. He was again dressed in the black velvet robe, pulled tightly around him so only a little of the dark-coloured shirt and trousers he wore underneath could be seen, and there were boots on his feet and thick gloves on his hands.

‘I’m sorry about this,’ he said, and pointed at the mask. ‘But my skin is . . . peeling . . . and I would spare you the sight.’

Through the slits in the mask, his eyes met mine. They were not yellow any more, or at least not fully yellow. Though there were still patches of that feral colour in his eyes, the deeper shade I’d seen in them yesterday had grown, so that now it was clearly discernible as green, a very human grey-green. It could be the real colour of Ivan’s eyes, I thought, with an odd little skip of the heart. And set so strangely in the white silk of the mask, without the brutal beast-like features around them, his eyes spoke to me more directly than at any time before.

I laid a hand very briefly on his velvet-clad arm. ‘If you prefer it, then of course.’

‘Thank you,’ he said, stepping away quickly, but not before I’d felt him tremble slightly. ‘Please, come in.’

The room he ushered me into wasn’t a bedroom but a kind of antechamber, bare of any furniture except for a chair. There were two doors leading off it, one ajar, the other closed. Ivan walked over to the half-open door and stood aside to let me in.

‘Oh!’ It was a beautiful but plain, restful sort of room, painted in shades of cream and the palest caramel, and filled with light. This came not from windows but from a large skylight in the ceiling. Almost directly under the skylight was a long wicker settee set with pale cushions, and facing it, a small low table on which reposed the music box I’d seen yesterday.

Ivan heard my exclamation and his eyes smiled. ‘Please, sit down.’

‘You too, then,’ I said, mock-severely when he showed no sign of doing so. ‘I can’t read a story to someone who’s looming over my shoulder like that. It puts me off.’

‘Very well,’ he said, and sat down at the furthest edge of the settee from me. I opened my notebook and said, ‘Now you must tell me honestly what you think; it’s no use telling me it’s good and leaving it at that. Mama’s always telling me that, and it’s hard for me to know if she really means it or she’s just saying it to me because I’m her daughter and in her eyes everything I do is good. And as for my sisters, they will never sit still long enough to listen properly. Not that I ask them very often.’

‘I can see indeed,’ said Ivan, and there was a laughing lilt to his voice that I’d never heard before. ‘I give you my word, Natasha. I’ll be an honest critic.’

‘Good.’ I cleared my throat. ‘
In a warm and pleasant country, where bright flowers bloom much of the year, and skies are blue as Our Lady’s robe, lived a young girl called Rosette
,’ I began. As I went on, I could feel his eyes fixed on me, but he made no sound nor gesture. After a moment, I stopped reading. ‘You don’t like it, do you? I can stop right now if –’

‘No, go on,’ he said in a voice that was quite without expression.

So I went on, but when I reached the part where the Master of Crows tells his nephew that he sent white roses to Rosette as an apology, I could hear my own voice quavering. I must be mad, I thought. What on earth had possessed me to read this story to him? It would have been far wiser to choose
The Three Sisters
, pretending that’s what I had written last night, for that would have no echoes for him; it would merely be a pleasant distraction. I sneaked a look at him and saw that his eyes weren’t fixed
on me any more. He was looking away and his hands were no longer shaking; they were knotted together, so tightly that the bones stood out sharply against the cloth of the gloves. And every rigid line of his body showed that he was desperately holding himself in check against some violent emotion.

But I did not stop. To stop would make things worse. So I stumbled on with my story, inwardly berating myself, not only for my foolhardiness but also for my insensitivity. I’d called myself his friend and yet here I was telling him a story that was hardly calculated to make him happy. I’d destroyed that fragile bubble of lightness that had existed between us in the moments before. He must think I was a tower of witless self-regard, first to use his own tragedy as inspiration for a stupid made-up story, and then to inflict it upon him, apparently out of mere vanity. Miserably, I trailed off to the ending, stuttering to a stop.

‘It was you,’ he said softly. So unexpected were the words that I thought the voice was in my head. I looked up, into the steadily greening eyes that were regarding me through the mask, with an expression that made my blood quicken. ‘You gave it to me. I should have known.’

‘I don’t . . . I don’t understand,’ I said weakly, lying.

He smiled. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said, his voice gentle.

I felt a little squirm in my belly. Why was I lying to him? That, I did not understand. I’d asked him to be honest with me, and here was I, lying. And he knew it. He knew it for sure. I could tell by the tone in his voice, and that made me feel even more uncomfortable. ‘I’m sorry if I –’ I began confusedly.

‘You asked me for my opinion of your story,’ he said, his voice now light, almost bantering.

‘Well, then, I’m waiting,’ I said, trying to make my voice sound as light as his.

‘It is made not of mere ink and paper but the blood of true feeling. And so it lives and breathes,’ he said quietly.

I was stunned. No-one had ever said anything remotely like that to me before. I felt tears pricking at the edges of my eyelids and fiercely blinked them away. ‘Oh, Ivan, thank you,’ I choked out. ‘I’m so glad you –’

‘But there is just one thing,’ he said, gently interrupting me. ‘I imagine an editor might say it is not quite finished.’

Again, his eyes met mine, and I only dragged my gaze away with an effort, murmuring, ‘You’re right. I will think about how I can do it.’ I hesitated. ‘Ivan, you speak as though you understand literature. Were you – are you – a writer?’

‘No,’ he said, ‘merely a reader.’ A pause. ‘I once told stories too, though not in words.’

My glance fell on the music box. ‘You were a musician?’

‘No, not a musician.’ I saw that he was shaking like a leaf. And suddenly, in a blinding insight, I knew. ‘Oh, you are a painter.’

‘Once. Not any more. Not ever again,’ he cried, and there was so much desolation in his voice that it struck me to the heart. Impulsively, I moved closer to him but he shrank away. ‘What is it that separates man from the beasts?’ he whispered, ‘if it is not creation, inspiration, art? Once I delighted so in it and I thought there was nothing more important in the world, and that was my undoing.
For now . . . These hands you see,’ he went on harshly, holding them up, ‘these hands are the clumsy misshapen hands of a beast who cannot paint, cannot create, can do nothing that is beautiful.’

‘No, no, no,’ I said, my heart aching, tears in my eyes. ‘That is not so, Ivan. What of the scarlet flower? It was you who cared for the bud, watered it, made it open. When I first saw it in the garden, against the snow, it seemed to me just like a painting, the most beautiful one I’d ever seen, because it was living. And it was I who killed it.’

He groaned. ‘You do not understand. This face,’ he said, pointing at his own face with loathing in his voice, ‘this is not even that of a beast, which can gaze in dumb love at beauty. This is the face of a monster. The rose bloomed when you came. It died when I gazed upon it. All I can do is destroy, blank out the beauty I long for.’ And as he spoke these last words, I could not repress a gasp of horror as I realised the truth. In my mind’s eye I saw those empty frames downstairs, and filled them with beautiful painted scenes, with colour and pattern and shape that then faded and disappeared, till nothing was left but the white emptiness. It was the worst injustice, the most cruel part of the spell.

He was an artist who couldn’t paint. But even the consolation of looking at paintings had been denied him. He couldn’t even gaze upon them without them disappearing. Were they his own lost pictures? Or ones Luel had acquired? I did not know and I would not ask. Truth was, I couldn’t. I had already pushed him far enough. I had not meant to, I had meant only to help, but this – this
did not help. To probe further would only make his pain greater.

But there was something I
could
do for him. Something I should have done before. I took a deep breath. ‘Ivan. I must say this. I did not tell the truth to you before.’

He stilled but did not speak or look at me.

I swallowed. ‘I knew what you meant about the white rose in my story.’ A pause. ‘I must also tell you I saw the shape of a crow on one of those blank canvases downstairs. And Luel said it was your nightmare.’ He gave a start, but before he could speak, I rushed on. ‘And I think even before that, I saw something in a dream, something that inspired me to write that story. I saw a lovely girl in a white dress, sitting in a sunny garden full of flowers. It was beautiful but also sad, because it felt like something bad had happened to her. That was
your
dream –
your
memory – wasn’t it?’

He stared at me but said nothing.

‘Please,’ I said. ‘If you care anything for me, if you are indeed my friend, you will tell me the answer.’

He put his head in his hands. ‘God forgive me,’ he whispered. ‘Yes, you are right.’

There was a lump in my throat. My hands shook. My stomach churned. But I managed to say, ‘Then, Ivan, listen. It proves that there is great hope, because you and I – we – are linked in no ordinary way.’

He looked up then, directly into my eyes, the yellow-flecked green of his eyes steady, almost cold. ‘You must go. At once.’ And before I could recover from my stunned surprise, he leaped to his feet and strode out of the room, calling Luel’s name.

Snatching up the discarded notebook, I ran after him. ‘What is it, Ivan?’ I cried. ‘What did I do wrong?’

He did not answer but went off down the stairs, without a backward glance. Baffled and distressed, I slowly followed, reaching the top of the first-floor stairs in time to see him and Luel with their heads together, talking. No, not talking – arguing.

Luel looked up and saw me, her face twisted. ‘I told you he wasn’t well,’ she hissed. ‘I told you to be patient!’

‘I’m sorry,’ I murmured, close to tears.

‘Stop it, Luel,’ said Ivan, so explosively that the white silk billowed away from his face, and from above, I caught a wincing glimpse of his skin, peeling and patched like a lizard’s discarded coat. ‘It is not her fault. Now, will you do what I ask you freely or will you stand against me?’