The Secret Book of Paradys (35 page)

(Nowhere else, in what is left of the diary, does Louis de Jenier make any reference to this information.)

The image into which Louis transformed himself that evening must be the same which is memorised by the photograph. Timonie’s image, but modified. He did not, for fairly obvious reasons, bare his torso. He was not a woman in any physical sense. Instead, the pleated linen is very nearly opaque, and folds about him, with cape-winged upper sleeves, the lower sleeves bandaged down to the elbows, where bracelets take over. The ornate collar feminises the shallow breast. The face is exact, might be anything,
is
desperately beautiful. The hair of the wig owes too much to our idiom, Egypt seen through the lens of a vogue, but it will do. The eye-paint cannot be faulted. The earring is probably real.

When he had finished, the house seemed to have become timeless, nearly dimensionless, and he went across to the window-room in the dark, half-thinking the doors might open on a desert, the river of Par Dis, the past, space itself splattered with cracked stars.

But the room was only itself. He sat on the floor quietly, near to one of the central windows. (He had taken the diary in with him, though he could not properly see to write, as the sloping and overlapped letters give evidence.)

After a while the violin, which he had hung from pegs by the study door, began to make a noise. He could not see if anything played it, or even if the strings vibrated. This time there were definite melodics, harmonies and
stopping, though all at variance with each other. Then, he heard the cittern, which he had
not
bought and which did not exist in the room save in his plan. After the cittern, there were a number of instruments. All had strings, and some bells. They seemed to be floating about in the air, passing and re-passing over his head, mischievously. The incense smell also came again, more strongly, the joss-stick
kuphi
lit at Timonie’s drunken parties. There was a kind of lulling, rock-a-bye quality to all this. And then, something went out of tune. The cloy became a stench, and the combing of the strings began to tear and rip. Then the coldness came. He had been braced for it, but even so it nearly stunned him. It was like falling through ice into some winter glacier. And no sooner had it seemed to cut to his marrow than the awful heat blasted after it.

The room no longer cradle-rocked, it was in quake. The doors, which he had closed, crashed open, then crashed shut again. A high singing buzz sounded from the window-frames. He expected the plaster on the walls to snap off in chunks, and bricks to fly out.

And then the throbbing and heavy lugging noises started, and next the screaming began. They were ghastly screams, not human, like those of an animal in a snare. Agony and primeval terror, mindless, hopeless.

His euphoria had spired into an all-consuming horror. But Louis could not move.

He sat and listened to Timonie’s murder, in the eyeless darkness. He vaguely thought, It’s this, then. The murder was the fixative. That’s usual. Do I somehow have to give her peace from it? And, trying to keep sane among the driving nails of the screaming, he thought of priests, and that some priest must come in to free her screaming soul –

And then the screaming itself ended, not dying out, not in a death-rattle or a groan, but as if the noise had been sliced off by a knife. All the sounds went together.

He thought, Get up, for God’s sake. Light the lamps.

And then the lamps were lit. Not from the gas, surely, for he never heard its unmistakable hiss, the
spat
of a match, the ignition. Instead the gas-bulbs were full of some other light, the dying corpse-glow gas-glim of the spell in the riverside dream. Timonie’s light, and by it – by it? No, nothing. She was not there, her mutilated body, the several bits of it. Yet on the floor, a pool of viscous liquid ran in a strange way, ran along and along the polished floor, gleaming black under glowing blue.

The black blood was running towards him. He got up. The forward motion ceased. There came a delicate movement at its edge, as if some tiny creature played there in the blood. Then, a gleaming mark appeared on the floor, and another; another and another. They circled away from the pool,
returned to and skirted it: paused, resumed. The shape, each time, made in wet black, was of two narrow naked feet.

He stood and watched them. He could not take his eyes off them, these perambulating footprints. The steps of Timonie’s dismembered feet. There was a stillness and a silence that enclosed the room. He realised, in these extreme moments, that he could hear nothing from the City. The sealed chamber had dropped through the basement of the universe.

It was searingly hot, even to breathe exhausted him, but he had begun to shift towards the doors. He was not convinced he would be able to open them, but before long he must lose consciousness. Then the footprints began to come towards him, to cut across his exit. Louis drew back to the wall.

Something struck the wall very suddenly, near to his face. Then again and again. He looked, and saw there some smeared, wet handprints.

“
Timonie
.”

He had decided he must speak aloud. Must try to reason with the reasonless unreasonable.

“Timonie, what do you want? Shall I take off the costume? Is it an affront? What do you want me to do?”

Then one of the invisible hands struck his face. It was freezing cold, wet with blood – he cried out in revulsion, and pulled the earring from his ear by its loop of silver wire, flinging it away across the room.

It was like throwing a pebble into water. The air of the room seemed to smash into fragments and whirl up at him.

He ran then, for the doors, directly through all of it. They would not move. He shook them, and pieces of wet stinging flesh slapped and clawed at him – he plunged away, and cast himself against the door of the study. To his amazement it gave. He had some notion of hurling something and smashing the skylight, and somehow climbing out on to the roof and so to the drainpipes. He had a distinct inspiration that he must get into the
air
, off the
earth
or anything that passed for it. Then he stumbled against the chair beside the desk, fell with it and broke its back, and finding himself down,
earthed
on the Persian rug, at once all the strength left him.

In that second, everything stopped.

He felt the house settle, as if dropping back a few inches from the sky. After that, there was nothing to be felt at all.

He wanted frantically to get up and escape the place, but had no energy. He lay on the floor and heard the Sacrifice ringing the four o’clock bell. And next some drunken boys or women singing, fifty streets away, the sound carrying on stillness like a leaf on the wind. And then he thought how cool it was, how warm, and that everything was over and he could sleep now, and so he slept there, lying face down on the carpet among the wood of the broken
chair, and clothed rather like the dead girl but for the spider-earring he had thrown away.

Louis entered Vlok’s hotel-suite the following afternoon. He was unshaven, his clothes thrown on, and Vlok, taking one look at him, exclaimed: “You’re ill! What’s the matter with you?”

“An acute attack of wanting to please you,” said Louis amiably, dropping into a chair. “I’m finished with that house. Let’s go north. Or wherever you like.”

The next thing he was conscious of was of being in bed as it seemed in Vlok’s room, but actually in an adjoining suite. A satisfied physician was asking him moustached questions to which he, the physician, already knew every answer, and so was sometimes helpful enough to prompt his patient.

“Nervous exhaustion.”

“Then there’s nothing –”

“Monsieur Vlok, the young man needs good food and rest. Get him out of the City as soon as you can. The coast, perhaps, or one of the pastoral areas.”

Louis let go of them both and slept again. The sleep was beauteous, dreamless or amnesiac of dreams. Deep, reviving deaths.

He had brought nothing away from the house but the clothes he put on his body when he took off it the gown and hair and breasts and physical soul of Timonie.

Later, Vlok was murmuring to him nonsensically, anxiously, “The new costume has been damaged. But Curt will get that seen to. You told me there was a photograph taken?”

“It’s been paid for.”

“But the name of the shop.”

“No.”

“Louis, why must you be difficult.”

“I’m ill.” Louis, the sick child, played his part suddenly to its full. “Don’t you want me to get better?”

“Louis.”

“Then let me rest, as the whiskery doctor told you.”

He had brought nothing away. But Curt, dispatched on Rudolf Vlok’s orders, had scurried about the house, packed clothes and personal items, and included in his itinerary the Garb-Egyptian dress, wig and jewellery he had found lying on the study floor. Curt also tidily reinstated the broken-backed chair, and next had dust-sheets brought in and laid reverently over all the few furnishings, including the elaborate desk. Off this he had first taken the diary, but it was locked, and rather ingeniously, and in his inquisitive efforts
to pry it open unobtrusively – which failed – Curt did not bother to clear any other matter from the desk. Also he forgot the two precious portraits by the mirror. Thus Anette and Lucine were left in residence, while the accoutrements of Timonie, even the violin, were borne away to Louis’ rooms at the hotel.

Louis had not asked for this. If he had had a minute or so more to himself before he fainted, he might have thought to tell Vlok to leave everything in the house untouched. Vlok might have obeyed. Or he might not. The violin, for instance, was worth a very great many livres (it could be sold when Louis’ craze for it wore off), and as for Louis’ personal accumulation of cuff-links, tie-pins, and so forth, these too were worth a few pennies. Louis constantly abandoned one set of toys for another, and Vlok always sent Curt to pick up after him.

Curt himself had not liked being in the house, especially alone. He would have seen no marks on the walls or floors, or heard anything unusual. He was not psychic or even sensitive in that way, but had a morbid dread of morbidity which occasionally put him right.

“First of all, not a single engagement.” Vlok was idyllic in his selfless devotion. “You see, someone has painted a watercolour for their brochure. A residence, yes? Comfort
and
finesse. Total quiet and nourishing food. A little Paradise. Cream and cheese and fresh eggs. Fruit straight off the trees and fish from the waters.”

“But the place is in the north. Away from this City?”

“Miles away. No smoke, no noise, no river damps, no neurasthenic fancies. You’ll be bored but you must stick to it. A week at least, the doctor says. And you can tell me there, about your new girl.”

“Never, I’m afraid.”

“Oh Louis, so temperamental.”

“Your placatory tone is always your least successful, Rudolf.”

“Now, Louis.”

“And why were there furniture-removers in the other room? Or did I dream that?”

“Furniture-removers? Of course not.”

“Someone bringing something in, dragging it across the floor. It sounded like a trunk.”

“That might have been Curt, fetching up your things.”

“Things.”

“Everything you so carelessly and thoughtlessly discarded at the rented house.”

A long silence. Noticeable pallor. Vlok grew nervous.

“What’s wrong? Do you want more of those drops?”

“I want to kill you,” said Louis, with a sweet, dazed smile. “Nevermind.” Then, after the Vlokian storm had calmed, “What exactly did he fetch? I seem to remember, you talked about the new costume. You’d seen it, then.”

“And it is being repaired after your maltreatment. Very interesting. I’m not sure this one will work. I’d have to see you, how you manage it. What will you make her do? Monologue? More of that throaty singing, I suppose, but they like it, don’t they, your worshippers.”

“What else, Rudolf, did Curt bring?”

“He forgot the photographs and won’t go back alone. He’s avidly been reading all the accounts of that girl’s murder. I just hope she has no relatives concentrated somewhere. We don’t want any lawsuits over this impersonation.”

“The violin?”

“What about it? Oh yes. Naturally I had him get them to pack that and bring it here. Have you any conception of how much you paid for it –?”

“And the jewellery.”

“All the jewellery. Including a battered silver earring on a loop of wire. I believe it’s an earring?”

“Where is that?”

“You want it? Well, it was on a table in the outer room. Drink your champagne. I’ll fetch it.”

Louis did not drink his invalid’s champagne. Vlok went into the sitting room of the suite, leaving the door ajar. In the stripe of the opening, as in an ultra-modern painting, Louis beheld the violin out of its case, leaning at a contrived angle, a plash of white muslin that had been part of Timonie’s gown and, nearly preposterously, the blonde wig poised on a wig-stand, a faceless wooden head, only waiting for its features to be filled in.

Vlok was a long time.

“You can’t find it,” Louis muttered.

Then Vlok returned. “Here. The chambermaid must have moved it. It looks old so I suppose it is, but isn’t it reckoned to be a fake, Curt said … Something set in there, once, I’d have said.”

Louis put out his hand and allowed the earring to be laid on the palm. It hardly mattered at last, contact.

“What’s wrong now? Louis?
Louis!
”

“Nothing at all. Everything is perfection.”

“No, I don’t care for the sound of you now. You’re up to something. You were warned, Louis. You must stay in bed for another day at the very least.”

“Yes, Rudolf.”

“And now, I’m going down to dine. Try to have a little more of what’s on the tray there.”

“So reminiscent,” said Louis, turning the silver disc, strengthlessly, uninterestedly, in his fingers, “of the farmer with the pet goose. Eat just a little more corn, my dear. Just a grain. We must get you fit and fine, for on Sunday I shall drive a pin through your brain and kill you for the feast.”