The Secret Book of Paradys (94 page)

He had looked straight at her, Johanos Martin, the actor. And, impossibly, she had met his gaze, although her ears roared and her heart choked her.

Everyone else was gone. It did not matter how or where.

He held out his hand, which was ringless, beautiful, and Hilde went to him at once. He drew her out of the door onto the terrace.

Night had fallen, very black, yet with a sort of silver glow along the tops of the trees, and far away a light was shining that might have been the moon reflected on a window – such detail, in this dream.

“You are mine,” Johanos Martin said to Hilde. “I promise I will be with you.”

And in that exquisite second, she woke. She woke.

She lay stunned, not knowing, or caring, where she was, out of situation and time. And her body was alive, glowing and spangled by feeling within and without.

She had not, since she had seen him, somehow – she had not dared to touch. But now her hands stole to her body. She laid them on her breasts. And in the dark, eyes shut, she thought of his hands lying on her in this way, firm and cruel, capturing her breasts like birds. And then she thought that she would be afraid, half fainting, and he would hold her up, easily, and crush her mouth with his, as in a book she had once seen, a book of her mother’s that perhaps she had not been meant to find, the drawing of a man kissing a woman fiercely in this way, holding her swooning and bent back as if he preyed on her.

Hilde trembled violently. Her stomach churned and sank and melted. Her fingers ran lightly down and touched her there, at last, in the secret place.

“I am yours,” she whispered to Johanos Martin, as he bent her back, supporting her, his mouth on hers. And shivers of fire ran upward through her body, familiar and yet unique. Her loins seemed to rock at the impact of deep, rare blows. And the door that had opened in her brain flew open in her womb, showering her with suns and comets, shaking her end to end. She cried out before she could prevent it.

Two minutes later her maid came in with a lamp.

“What is it, Mademoiselle Hilde? You do look hot.”

“A dream,” muttered Hilde. The first time she had had to practice true deception.

“There, there. Well I must get on if you’re better.”

“Quite better, thank you.”

The maid removed herself. Hilde wept. She did not know why. But she was racked again by tears silenced in the pillow that once, misunderstanding, she had kissed.

The magic art of the night sprang from him, then. He had sent it ahead of him. He too had always known. He and she.

Her innocence was gone, not her naïveté.

She scarcely slept again that night. The doll lay on the floor.

Madame Koster stood in her upstairs sitting room, turning about to regard her dress of ivory satin. From beyond her windows and their cumbersome drapes, the ripe westering light of the late summer evening flattered her with its glow.

A knock, and Little Hilde’s maid entered.

“What is the matter with her?”

“She’s been sick again, madame.”

“Really. Such a stupid child. Well, I can’t attend a sickroom now. She must be put to bed.”

“Monsieur gave orders that Mademoiselle Hilde be given a glass of white wine.”

“Did he indeed? How will that help? It will make her stomache worse.”

“No, madame. He said it was very cooling, for the stomache, and that her vomiting was all nerves, so the wine will do her good.”

“Nerves! What nerves? I am the one with nerves. She’s just a child.”

Along the passage in her room, Hilde sat pale as death on a sofa, staring at the glass of wine on the tray as if it were poison.

“Take a sip. It can’t hurt.”

The maid too was irritated. Madame took it out on her when the daughter did not turn out right.

“But I feel –” Hilde broke off, swallowing rapidly, like a cat before it pukes.

“Well, madame wants me downstairs, so I must go.”

Hilde was only relieved to be left alone.

This was the hour of her most awful trial. She had longed for and dreaded this festivity of her mother’s, not realizing her emotion would build to such a pitch that she would be made sick by it.

Suddenly she got up, and seizing the wineglass, she put it to her mouth. Like a despairing damsel in a play, she dashed the potion through her lips and swallowed all of it. Then she stood amazed.

Almost instantly her sickness swelled to an orchestral tumult – and perished. It was gone, leaving her light and slightly afloat. A pulse beat in her
temples. Hilde laughed. This too was part of the magic. Her dear wise papa had helped her to safety. She had been lifted above the demons and made whole. For him, the one who would soon be with her.

In her turn, freed now, Hilde moved about to regard herself, her clothes and her hair.

Her mother had aimed for a veneer of complete childishness, but the dressmaker had maliciously somehow done something to the frock, so that it was merely very simple, very fresh. And the effect of the loose, slightly coiling amber hair gave, rather than the impression of a little girl, the look of one of the mysterious beauties of current paintings, maidens from legend, standing in bowers, as knights rode by.

Hilde was happy at herself, guessing this, not understanding. Happy to be lovely, not realizing that she was.

He would recognize her. As she had recognized him.

Half an hour later, she descended to the salon.

The event had already begun, and Madame Koster was at its hub. She looked at Hilde askance a moment, as if not knowing who she was. Perhaps sensible: Does one ever know another, or who they are, let alone a “child?”

But monsieur had not yet come in. He was, in fact, rather at odds with the party. It meant he must dress up very stiffly and parade his grandeur to impress them all, and this was onerous on such a hot evening.

There were many people in the salon. They drank from glasses of champagne. And since the servant came also to Hilde – again, was it some sort of conspiracy? – and offered her the drink, Hilde took it wonderingly, and sipped.

Then the crowd parted, and she saw the window that led out to the garden. No one was there.
He
was not.

Hilde sighed, and a fearful intimation of darkness crossed her, like the shadow of a huge, transparent crow.

Would he not come? Why should he come? Never before had actors been invited to these show gatherings. Why had her mother done it?

Oh, but it was all part of the starry plan, of destiny. It must be.

Three women approached Hilde. They were ladies she had met before, acquaintances of her mother’s. Her heart slid down as if to hide itself.

“Why look, who’s this? Is it Little Hilde? A young lady at last.”

“What a becoming dress. How clever of your mother. And the hair’s an exact copy of
Ygraine Waiting for Uther
.”

“Do you have it brushed every night? One hundred strokes are essential.”

A wing lifted off the room. Everything shifted slightly, an earth tremor.

Hilde’s mother skated across the chamber. She met in the door the two tall
actors from the Goddess of Tragedy. They were unmistakable. And all at once the crowd broke into applause.

Hilde thought:
For him
.

Fanfares of trumpets and showers of petals.

She drank all the champagne in her glass, the magic potion that, rather than make her invisible, would allow her to be seen.

She watched Monsieur Martin enter the salon.

Her mother deferred to him even more than to Monsieur Roche, who, walking behind, looked down the slope of his long face. No, it was Monsieur Martin that Madame Koster drew into the very core of her house, and kept there, so the wine could be rushed to him and the guests flutter up like greedy moths.

How cold he looked. Cruel, but one would not call it cruel, not if one wished for his kindness. Cold and cruel and closed and
set
.

Seen in life away from the stage, his face was pale, and the eyes were not black but a glacial gray. Nor was he handsome, yet there was that in his face which magnetized, some affirmation.

He did glance about him, but saw no one. Then he spoke graciously, and even smiled a little at the ones who clustered around him. He drank the champagne, several glasses of it.

Hilde remained at the edge of the congregation, like the shell in a story, left behind by the ghost of a primordial sea at the foot of the Temple-Church.

He would see her now, or now. And she waited for this finding gaze, this instant of pure acknowledgment, stretched taut as the string of a lyre. But it did not come.

And gradually something gave way a little at the center of her physical and etheric frame. Only a tiny derangement. It should have warned her. But how should she know it?

Presently they went into the supper room. Madame Koster sat at one end of the dainty table, and the actors sat either side of her, Monsieur Martin to her right. Monsieur Koster, who had blustered in after all, too late to be properly noticed, thumped down at the table’s opposite end, and in the upheaval, no place had been allotted Hilde. So she sat among some of the men and women who knew her, in the bars of the trap of their patronage.

She could not eat a thing, but she sipped the wine. Some of the ladies noticed and disapproved. “That girl is taking too much. What is her mother thinking of?” “Of Johanos Martin,” whispered another lady behind her fan.

Hilde did not hear this. She watched the lord who had given his promise to her in a dream, but carefully. It was not subtlety or care that made her careful. Rather she sensed the fire of herself, so bright, so piercing. She dared not be obvious.

He never looked her way.

Never.

After the supper, Monsieur Roche, a little tipsy, agreed to give a speech from the play. This was second best, but of course Johanos Martin would not perform. He had modestly and arrogantly refused.

Monsieur Roche, though the worse for wine, was very good.

The night had dropped like velvet on the garden. The lamps were lit along the paths, and up against the two small statues Monsieur Koster had had imported.

The guests walked in the soft air.

Madame Koster was arm in arm with Monsieur Martin. However had she achieved it? He looked disdainful, faintly amused. She seemed to take this for his interest.

Monsieur Koster was arguing about business in the salon with three gentlemen from a famous bank.

Hilde walked out between the hedges.

It had taken all her nerve, all the six glasses of wine she had consumed.

Unlike Monsieur Roche, Hilde Koster was not drunk. She was a maenad, given over to the god, and balanced in his hand. But had she mistaken the wrong god for the real one? For the real god of the wine is the god of self-knowing, dark twin of Apollo, black sun of opening and rebirth. Dionysos offers often painful truth with the wine, but he does not actually
lie
. Hilde’s god, maybe, was all a lie, and that was what the look of affirmation was, a wonderful, successful sham. Like acting itself.

“Oh –” exclaimed Madame Koster. She was caught in the state known among mothers and daughters. Here was the fruit of her body, which she had loved, and perhaps still did love. Only not now a joy, but an interruption. Worse, a reminder.

And Johanos Martin looked from his height. And noticed Hilde.

She was very beautiful. Better than the poor little mutilated classical statues. Better by far than the women of the house. He did not want her, for he had already what he wanted. But still, he looked. At last, he saw.

“My daughter,” said madame. “My little girl. Hilde. This is the great actor Johanos Martin.”

Hilde gazed up, for a while half blinded by his eyes. Then she glanced down. She held out her hand because she had long ago been taught to do so. All sense had left her, it was automatic.

“Mademoiselle,” said Johanos Martin. And he bowed.

That was all.

“Come,” said Hilde’s mother, “your glass is empty, monsieur.” And she led him back toward the terrace by the window, where the servant had
appeared with long glinting goblets.

“I’m afraid, madame, I must take my leave,” said Monsieur Martin.

“But no – such a lovely night – this garden air is so good for you after –”

“Ah, madame, you must permit me to know what is good for me.”

Madame Koster was speechless. Unfortunately, she had got used to people who rarely said what they meant.

And so he slipped from her clutches like the sea.

The two women, one middle-aged and sour, one young and blighted, stood on the walk and watched the cold priest stride away, back to his church of Tragedy.

In her room, Hilde became hysterical.

Naturally, she had not meant to. It was a reaction to the wine, and to grief. (Was Ophelia only drunk?)

She wept in the way one screams.

The maid ran for tired, soured madame.

And madame came like a storm.

“What is the matter with you? Ridiculous noisy child! Be
quiet!
Here I am with a migraine and all this racket.”

Hilde tried to stay her tears, her shrieking sobs, for she was accustomed to obey.

But the grief was new. It ravaged her. She was torn. How, with her entrails ripped from her body, could she be calm and quiet?

“Well – what is it?”

“Oh, Mama –”

But Hilde did not say what it was. There is a knowledge beyond knowing. Besides, how to speak of the unspeakable? Persuaded to the throne of love, and pushed aside.

“Hurry – three drops of my mixture, quick. Give it her; for God’s sake.”

The drops were administered. On top of the wine they worked wonders. Hilde was violently sick again, and eventually, exhausted by these humiliations, tumbled into sleep.

Is death this? To wake in a vault and swim slowly upward, and there to meet the blows of memory?

O God – O God – But God had gone deaf.

In her virgin’s bed, Hilde wept. Softly now, as after the ecstasy in the dark. Must not be heard. No one must find her. For who would help?

Her maid chided her for not arising. Then for not touching the invalid breakfast.