The Book of the Damned Read online

  We crossed the Terrace, and went up Clock-Tower Hill, where, thirty metres in the air, the gilded white face stares four ways at time.

  The house which the Baron von Aaron was renting was one of the stuccoed piles along the inner shoulder of the hill. A lamp hung over the wrought-iron gate, alight. The gate itself stood wide. We went through, up some steps to the porch, and rang the bell. The house was mildly pulsating with its occupancy, and in the dimming atmosphere, the windows of the second floor were quietly burning up.

  A domestic opened the door. Philippe handed him at once a card. That was all. The man, an absolute blank, moved back to allow us to come in, and next, having shut the door, solemnly walked ahead of us. We carried our gloves, and would have carried our hats too, had we been wearing any, straight up the curving stair and to the salon.

  The card was given over to another blank at the entrance, and borne away across the room. There was nothing unusual in the salon, but for the strange soft candlelight at odds with the softer deepening radiance of the sunset windows, an exciting, expectant light, that would, as ever, lead you fiercely on to nothing. The house itself all around seemed blind, and echoed. Though fresh flowers had peered from the vases by the stair, the building was not exactly alive. The salon, painted and upholstered in the way of such rich men's rent-ables, was a pastel, and already filled by smoke. There were groups of men, and a handful of women. Some of either gender I knew, others by sight. No one to be interested in; rather, to be avoided. The cadence of talk was low but ceaseless. Now and then a breaker burst, laughter or an exclamation. Somewhere someone was playing a guitar.

  "Be patient, wait," Philippe said to me.

  He began to move through the groves of men, the trailing willows of women, accepting as he went a quip, a cigar, muttering, "Oh God, is she here?" over some woman he was not pleased to see. White shoulders flashed and white pipes puffed up at a ceiling of plaster acanthus.

  Near the long windows was a piano, and leaning on it, the guitar-player himself, strumming away. An oil-lamp of dense crystal rested on a low glass table, and cast its bloom upward. It caught her hand as she took Philippe's card from the attendant, and her face as she bent her eyes on it to glance. Then, it caught her little, little smile, as she set the card down by the lamp, into a petal-fall of other similar cards.

  "Madame," said Philippe. He bowed over her and took her hand up again and pressed his lips to it. "I am so glad you allowed me to return."

  "It is my husband you must thank."

  "Then, I thank him, with all my heart. Madame, may I present my friend."

  "Of course," she said. Her lips stretched once more in the little, little smile.

  "The writer, Andre St Jean," said Philippe.

  "Of whom you won't have heard," I said.

  She raised her eyes and looked at me directly, for one entire and timeless second.

  "I am afraid that is true."

  "Don't be afraid, madame. If it is to frighten you, most of the City would have to share your terror."

  But her eyes were already gone. They seemed to gaze down into the lamp, so I might go on looking at them, but not into them. They were perfectly black, as Philippe had assured me. So black the charcoal shadow of the lashes, cast upward by the glow across the heavy lids, was ghostly in comparison, and the black brows also seemed pale. These brows were long, and unplucked, and the lashes long and very thick. In the bloodless face, the mouth was a pale ivory pink, the line of the lips' parting or joining accentuated by the lamp, as if carefully drawn with pencil… Black hyacinth hair, the kind that thickly and loosely curls; the sheerest shoulders, slender and boneless, above a dark dress. Not a jewel, except the marriage rings which I would diligently search out when her hands came up again.

  "You see, Madame von Aaron," I said, "I don't hanker for fame at all. But it is at moments like these I wish I had it. If I were known, then you might look at me with some attention. As it is, what in the world can I hope for?"

  I felt Philippe's whole body shoot into lines of overjoyed and spiteful satisfaction. She raised her face and gave me one more look, a cold look, of surprised indifference. She did now know what to do about me, or my arrogant sally, and so would do nothing at all.

  And I? Having bowed to her, I walked away to a table where the valets were pouring out white wine. As I drank it, I imagined her say to Philippe, "Really, my friend, might I ask you, in future, to spare me such acquaintances?"

  But she would not say that. He was no friend of hers.

  It was the truth, what I had said, so naturally I confronted her with it. The others would fawn and keep their place. She did not care for anything original, it seemed.

  I thought of the sort of women who liked me, some of them even aristocratic. But she was not of their type. She would be tall when she stood, almost my own height, perhaps equal to it. Neither did I care for her, she was so cold. Her hands, (beautiful probably, it had seemed so), would be cold as ice to touch. Splendid hair, and eyes. Otherwise, nothing much. She might give the illusion of great beauty but in fact was not beautiful. Though a voice like the music of the night.

  I remembered that ring, then, the gem of hot syrup in the pocket of Philippe's brocaded waistcoat, and slipped in two fingers to find it. At that moment someone else entered the salon, and there were loud, acclaiming calls.

  Who was this? Who could it be but the husband, the ostensible lord of her court. The groves were parting to let him by, the men were shaking his hand, or clapping his shoulder. He was tall himself, but stooped -and grey - his artificially-curled hair, his expensive coat. He paused to sample someone's tobacco, then shook his old head sadly. The foreign look was exotic in her, and not quite palpable, but he surely had it, in all of his massive face hanging forward off its skull. A cunning, just, ineloquent face.

  He passed me, not seeing me, of course, for who was I?, and went on to the window and the piano and the lamp. The guitar-player instantly rose to greet him, and Philippe, who had stayed at her side with four or five others, hung about there, looking glad and expectant, awaiting the man's notice. Stalest of all tricks; it was the husband he had come to see, the woman only a pleasurable diversion encountered on the path.

  Philippe now bowed, and shook the old banker's old hankering hand. Was I to be recalled and introduced again? It seemed not. I had disgraced myself. I stole a look at her. She was actually plain. Just the eyes, the hair, the grace. Yes, clever. Women with more made less of it than she. Now her hands rose to greet her husband too. Lovely hands, and there, the big silver rings, one with a pale jewel catching the lamp. When should I give her this one, the red ring with the Egyptian beetle cut in it? Was it hers, this drop of crimson blood? It was all hers. Everything.

  Now the old baron raised his hands and the metallic lace on his cuffs glinted. He addressed us. Poor old fool, buying that for himself ~ was she a virgin still? She looked untouched. But knowing, also.

  Cold all through, or passion somewhere? (Their wine was potent, a good clear wine like water, dazzling the lights). Her skin was fresh and pure as a young girl's, but she was not a girl. Somewhere in her eyes, a hundred years had looked back at me. No wonder she hid them so quickly from my discernment. I thought of lying on her, and what would her skin be like then, and all her textures? Of reaching through her, deep and deeper, and making her cry, if she ever did, her eyes sightless and her pale sculpted mouth wide on its gasp for life -

  But I did not want her. She repelled me. She was not for me.

  " - And I know you will all help me to persuade my modest wife. Now, Antonina, my dear. The piano, if you please!" He finished in mock severity, and, in mock docility, she rose and curtseyed to him, and glanced one glance across the whole now breathless silent room. Then she went to the piano, opened ready for her. Someone held the stool, seated her, another offered a sheaf of music. A slight shake of her head, so burdened with its mantle of hair. Then, her eyes unfixed, looking miles off, a hundred years away, and her hands stray
ing to the keys of the piano -

  The day had turned to dusk in the windows of the room. We might be anywhere, on a mountain that gazed out to other mountains, spires of granite and quartz in a sea of air -

  The first note drew me forward. I was glad, glad to have the excuse of the music. I went to her, moving forward, forward. They had all come, all pressed near, yet no one touched me, or impeded me. I reached the piano, and the vibration of the music purred against my side from her fingers. My glass was empty; it too seemed to reverberate. She could not see me now. I could look at, and all through her.

  The wine, or the music, had made me drunk, in a wild disembodied way. I wanted the sounds of it never to stop. I believe she did play for a long while, entire stanzas of melody and convolutions of development. It was sombre, the music, scattered by hard white arpeggios, and tumbling white streams of glissandi, and under these the ever-moving river of Death.

  When it finished, it had sucked all the strength from me. I leant on the piano and wanted it only to resume, or not to have ended. It was like deepest sleep, in which you dream of making love, always on the verge of ecstasy, to waken fumbling, exhausted and unable.

  She rose from the piano, the banker's wife, and the salon frantically applauded her. I clapped her, desultorily, the empty wine glass hindering the gesture. My head ran. I felt nausea. As if, all through the music, I had been having her, and was suddenly dragged away by my hair, and slung out on a cold street before sunrise.

  Only I remained by the piano. Everyone else had gone away. In a tiny oval of clarity, I seemed to make her out, standing near the fireplace, where a summer fire was being kindled, holding now a slim white dog, rather like a small greyhound.

  Philippe was beside me.

  "Well, I had never heard her play before. She's a virtuosa."

  I went to the wine table, and took another full sparkling glass, and poured its bright blood into my own.

  "What do you think?" said Philippe.

  "A cold bitch', I said. "Look how she's frost-bitten him."

  "Yes," he said, gloatingly. "Come to a crossroads with me. Let us spill something's blood and invoke the Devil. Make him send us cold her."

  "Give her the ring," I said. I managed to find it again and extract it. "That may tempt her to you. If you want her so much."

  He looked at the ring. He said, "Is that a scarab, that beetle?"

  "The symbol of renewing life," I said. I held it out to him, and abruptly he snatched it, and strode off. I watched as he encountered her. What could he say? The husband was not particularly close, but others were about her. I saw the ruby flame out, as he extended it. It reminded me of something - a spurt of blood in a duel.

  Yes, she looked at the ring, but did not take it. How was he explaining his action? There was too much noise in the room to hear. Then, she had turned to me. I stared back at her. I wished I had not drunk so much of the bright wine. She moved, and then she was in front of me, with Philippe, and the rest of her court at her hem.

  "Monsieur," she said, "am I to understand you are offering me this?" She laughed, the way women generally do, falsely. It had a special quality when she did it, most unpleasant. "That is surely rather improper?"

  "You're mistaken, Madame von Aaron," I said. "I am not a jeweller. My friend brought you the ring to show you. He seemed to think you would find it unusual. However, if you would care for it, I should be delighted."

  "He gave me to believe," she said, "you wished me to have the ring." Another slight laugh. "And before witnesses."

  "Is it not," I said, "already yours?"

  "Not at all. I never collect red jewels. I dislike them."

  "Then you had better give it back to me."

  Her eyes were never once meeting mine. She avoided my eyes. It was not reticence. There was always something more vital in the room that needed her attention. Yet every time her eyes glided by mine, my pulses jumped. She was less than an inch below my own height. To avoid me took dexterity. Now she looked at the ring.

  "Where did you obtain this stone, monsieur?"

  "Oh, nowhere of interest, madame."

  "I think it is very rare and exceedingly old, monsieur. Have you never had it valued?"

  "Perhaps," I said, "your husband could advise me?"

  "Oh," she said. "I don't think so. I am sorry."

  She held out the ring. I took it back. Her hand was like ice, and the ring was icy cold from her.

  "Grant me five minutes alone with you," I said quietly, "and I can tell you how I came by the ring."

  "Oh, really, monsieur." Arch now, truly horrible.

  "I won't tell you," I said, "when another can overhear."

  "Ridiculous," she said.

  "Or do you already know the story?"

  Then her eyes did meet mine. It was like some sort of shock of burning searing cold. Black mirrors, black water frozen to iron, trapped under the surface to freeze or drown.

  "I think," she said, "your sense of drama is running away with you, monsieur. Of course, did Philippe not say, you are a writer of some sort?"

  And turning, she went back to the fireplace and the dog and the husband.

  Left alone, I put down my glass and sought the door. I was on the staircase when Philippe came running after me.

  He said nothing, till the domestic had let us out into the street. Then he said, "That was her name, before she married."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "Antonina Scarabin. The scarab. Do you still say it isn't her ring? Someone stole it from her. She'll send you a letter privately, tonight. I'd bet on that. What mysteries. Promise to tell me every item!"

  My blood had leapt, sunk.

  "She didn't want the ring. I doubt if it was ever hers. And she has nothing to say to me or of me, I'm sure, but the very worst."

  "No red jewels, those were her words. No red flowers or fruit, either, in the house, did you see? No red wine. No red-haired men. No red."

  "Once a month she must betray herself," I said.

  Philippe laughed and sprang in the air, like a cat after a moth.

  We went down to the Cockatrice, then to the Surprise. We drank. While Philippe engaged himself with two of the girls, I held another in my arms, kissing and caressing her until she moaned and shivered and fainted into sleep.

  I dreamed of the great window again, perhaps more clearly. The long dark wall that had risen out of slumber two weeks before, and the dagger-thrust of casement wounding it. It was in the height of some tower, one sensed an abyss around, and almost primal open spaces, as in the cranium of the sky. The window was petalled by glass, red glass that shaded through maroon and blood and scarlet into crimson and into rose, and finally into the palest rose of all, nearly colourless, and through these panes I seemed to trace mountains far away, but I was never sure. And as the light went, so the colour went, and all form. And so, too, the dream.

  She did not write to me, and I did not suppose she would write. I could think of nothing but her. Snatches of the tidal wave of music would return and sweep me under, and in the same way the memory of her eyes and her shoulders, her hair, the sinuousness of her body as she moved across the salon. If I saw a white dog on the street, my heart turned over. I did not dream of her, but waked with the feeling she had been in the bed beside me, (that sagging bed with its torn and sallow sheets), her hair spread everywhere and her fingers and lips printed all over me, but I, the fool, not opening my eyes until she was gone. I thought of her, and across the single leaves of parchment, her description was set down again and again, always a little differently.

  In a few days I wrote her a letter, and disdaining the bureau of mail, gave it to a runner to deliver. What did the letter say? Not what the prose, the poetry had said, certainly. I had bludgeoned and possessed her body a hundred times, eaten her alive, licked up the juices of her flesh, gnawed her bones, and hanged myself in her hair. But, though she would guess, I could not commit the truth to paper.

  "Esteemed madame,"
said my letter, "Allow me, if you will be so good, a minute of your time in which to tender my apologies. I fear I was discourteous to you. I would be glad to make recompense, and ako to discuss with you that ring you saw. I am woefully ignorant on the subject of stones, and should value your advice. I remain your ·crvant, madame, with every respectful wish for your continued health and pleasure in life. A. St Jean."

  This, after I had bound her and time after time crucified her with my lust. Well.

  She returned no answer.

  In a few days more, I walked over to Philippe's house. He would tell me when again the salon was to be opened.

  He was lying on a sofa in the inner courtyard, under the plane tree, eating cherries from a china bowl. He looked wan, a wreck. What had he been doing that he had not attempted to force on me?

  "Oh, sit, sit," he said, "you wear me out, standing there."

  He began to talk about books, knowing quite well, from his sidelong grimaces, what I really wanted to discuss. I watched him eat the cherries and call out scruffy Hans to go and fetch some more for him from the market. Grumbling, Hans set off.

  "And what have you been writing, eh, my dearest Andre?"

  "Very little."

  "Not a single poem? I see you have taken to wearing that ring again."

  "And I see you have been sliced again by that senile fool of a barber," I retorted, for his neck linen, on the left side, was stained right through by a blotch of blood.

  "How wise you are," he said, "never to let any of them shave you, here. Just strop the razor and get out. And you are always so closely shaved, it's quite a miracle."

  "Be quiet. Tell me when she holds the salon again."

  "Oh, who?"

  "Your banker's bitch."

  "Not for some time, I should think," he said. He lowered his eyes, and allowed himself, faintly, to blush.

  In the hot afternoon, a surge of heat went through me like the most scalding cold.

  "Oh then," I said, "she truly is a fool."

  "Ah, Andre," said he, taking my hand, "such amazements - she - oh, she. Do you want me to tell you everything?"