Nightshades Read online

  It was midnight.

  By three o'clock the house was void of its guests, and the tide coming in to shore.

  On the seaward perimeter of the gardens, a narrow oriental iron gate stood open in the high wall, and steps fell down the cliff to the shoreline.

  Sovaz was walking on the beach.

  The sound of the returning tide had strangely alarmed and aroused her.

  The moon had set hours before. The water was impenetrably black except where its breakers hit the rocks like the unravelling silver fringes of a great shawl. The shore became a bowl of silence. The city and the house ceased to exist.

  She walked eastwards, holding her evening shoes in one hand.

  The beach below the house was for several miles generally deserted, only police patrols going by at irregular intervals. She had never encountered them. She might have walked till dawn. She had done so before.

  But instead she made out a woman's long scarf trembling in short eddies along the water's edge towards her.

  Sovaz stopped still. The scarf, moving as if half alive in the night wind, was somehow threatening. She drew away as it slithered by.

  Then, looking up, she saw the outline of a woman and a man

  stretched together on the ground, curiously unified by the darkness both with each other and with the surrounding sand. She thought they were making love; their stillness undeceived her. Only the woman's long dress was fluttering with the same motions as the scarf.

  Precisely at this moment the man raised his head.

  His eyes were for an instant glazed and withdrawn, seeing nothing, but Sovaz knew him at once. The sense of recognition had nothing to do with his physical appearance, which she had scarcely registered.

  The starlight was very dim. It faded yet did not clarify the shadows.

  The pale elliptoid of the man's face, turned up to hers, so resembled a mask that at first the painted quality of the mouth did not surprise her. Then, she saw it was blood.

  As his eyes focused on her, she made an instinctive attempt to avert herself, uselessly, for immediately her image seemed to have been snapped into storage in the brain behind his eyes, as if she had touched the trip-wire of an automatic camera.

  Everything had taken place in silence, the great sea-silence on the shore. Even now, she felt no impulse to cry out.

  She began to take irrational paces backwards, towards the surf. The man watched her, making no move.

  Their recognition was now mutual and significant.

  The sea, reaching for her, laved her feet suddenly with cold. She ran.

  She did not, somehow, expect him to follow. He did not. But the shadow had fallen on her so that where she fled it fled with her, ubiquitous as the night.

  She reached the cliff steps and began to stumble up them.

  She had lost her shoes, the hem of her dress was torn and clinging cold. Finding the wrought iron gate, she clutched it, and, having got inside, thrust it shut, bolted it, and lay against the frame.

  What now? she kept thinking shapelessly. What must I do now?

  She forced herself to go through the garden, up the avenue of lemon trees towards the house.

  Finally she was on the terrace. She was trembling to such an extent she could not at once push open the unlocked windows. Her whole body ached, as if from fever.

  The ballroom was empty.

  One of the candelabra still sluggishly burned half way up the marble staircase.

  She began to climb the stairs, slowly. Great festoons of solidified wax poured from the candelabra. Something about the wax nauseated her. As she passed them the last lights smoked out.

  'Leah,' she called, or thought she did. Her voice made no impact on Kristian's house, and the black girl did not answer.

  She came into the gallery and paused with her hand against the wall.

  She felt intolerably ill and listless, as if in the grip of mal de mer.

  The doors of the library stood ajar.

  Sovaz went to the doors but did not go in.

  The aroma of Kristian's books was powdered thickly on the air.

  Everything was dark, except for the open windows where the balcony hung at the far end of the room. A lamp flickered there among the rustling vine.

  The woman with the winter hair was leaning at the rail, as Kristian caressed her. There was no urgency or apparent pleasure in his movements, or in hers. The connoisseur, a statuette of valuable jade in his fingers.

  Now, for the first time, the need to scream aloud overcame Sovaz.

  She could make no sound.

  She turned away from the library doors and moved quickly towards her own, feeling her way with her hands.

  Her room was empty, the bed opened, the lamps shining in their green and golden shades, her combs and brushes and cologne laid out for her, everything unchanged. Beyond the wall, in Kristian's dressing room, the accessories would lie in ranks, like well drilled soldiers. The first time he had been with a woman after their marriage, she had gone into his dressing room and smashed the mirrors and the bottles, torn open the drawers and chests and torn out the pages from the books lying by the window. The library had been locked, otherwise she would have gone there too. Yet he never spoke to her about what she had done. The valet had replaced the articles as if by magic.

  Now, she did not think to go near Kristian's rooms. She went into her bathroom, turned on the taps of the bath and tore off the lace dress and silk underclothes and left them lying under the roaring, steaming water.

  And, staring down at the swimming garments, she expected blood to run out of them.

  Presently she turned off the taps and went through again to lie on the bed. Reaching out, she touched the master switch and blackness flooded her eyes.

  She was floating, disembodied.

  She had felt this sensation before, seven years ago, when she had swallowed all the sleeping tablets in Kristian's bottle, this same unanchored lightness. Who would find her this time? This time, surely, no one.

  THREE

  Sovaz woke in the heat of late afternoon.

  Already the room was becoming real, her vision sharpening. Too late to sleep again. She leaned from the bed and pressed the bell. Would Leah come? Last night she had called Leah, and Leah had not answered - no, that was absurd. Of course Leah would come.

  The door opened. The black girl came through.

  'Leah, please open the windows and see to the blinds. Then run a bath.'

  At the inrush of air, perfumed faintly from the garden flowers below, the room seemed to hollow out. Sovaz sighed, lifting herself up in the bed. She could hear the black girl doing something to the bath, a sound of sodden garments dripping. Sovaz got to her feet and put on a wrap of Chinese silk, and seemed to activate, by doing so, a little gold and crystal clock which chimed thinly: four thirty. She crossed to the arrangement of mirrors.

  Her face surprised her. There were still traces of cosmetics on her lips and eyes. She leaned forward, and saw, between the black silk revers of her wrap, the scarlet drops of the rubies lying on her throat.

  Sovaz stood back. Her eyes widened.

  'Leah!' she screamed out. 'Leah! Leah!'

  The black girl came running.

  'What is it, madame?'

  'Leah!' Sovaz screamed. She threw back her head.

  'Madame - what's wrong? Have you hurt yourself? Madame -'

  The girl sprang at her and took Sovaz' shoulders in a practical, restraining grasp. Sovaz was trembling convulsively. She ripped at the jewels around her neck. Leah, moving to help her, undid the clasp efficiently and in seconds.

  'Get rid of them,' Sovaz said. She had stopped screaming and shut her eyes.

  'I'll put them in your box, madame -'

  'No. I told you to get rid of them. I don't want to see them again. Do what I say.'

  Leah's face was impassive. She slid the gems into her pocket. She would take them to Kristian.
/>   In the silence Sovaz heard the sea break on the shore. She sat down, and the horror went out of her abruptly, like a gush of blood. She did not open her eyes.

  'I'll bathe now,' she said, very evenly. 'I can manage, thank you, Leah.' She sensed the girl hesitating, distrusting her. 'I shall want orange juice, fresh figs, black coffee. In half an hour, say.' Her incongruous normalcy seemed to reassure Leah, or at any rate to bribe her. Sovaz heard her turn and go out.

  Sovaz rose, remembered to open her eyes, went into the bathroom.

  The drowned clothes had been removed, the bath was filling. Sovaz stood staring down into the water until it brimmed over and ran out upon the floor.

  At half past five Sovaz entered Kristian's library. This time he sat alone, reading, in the chair of Italian carved mahogany. 'Kristian,' she said.

  He did not look up.

  The limousine is waiting for you,' he said. 'Don't forget you are going to look at the Greek's pearl. I hope Mikalides has now provided his

  young friend with a better dinner jacket.'

  She had forgotten the pearl, that she was going to the theatre with the boy, Adam.

  'Kristian, last night a woman was murdered on the beach.'

  He did not immediately reply. His distaste at discussing such a topic hung thickly in the room as the odour of books. But he was not surprised. It was his habit to glance at the evening papers, a dutiful, contemptuous glance. If death was in them, he would have seen.

  Presently he said, 'So I believe.'

  She said slowly, 'A man cut her throat. No, it was worse than that. I think he was drinking her blood. There was blood on his mouth.'

  'Not a subject to deliberate on, do you think?'

  'I saw it,' she said.

  She checked at once. It was too unequivocal. She should not have put it in this way.

  After a moment, he did look up at her. His face was blank.

  'Saw what, Sovaz?'

  'I saw the dead woman on the sand, and the man lying on her. His mouth was covered in blood; I thought at first he was hurt. Then I saw her throat. I ran back to the house. He didn't follow me, though he was here earlier, before dinner. I came to tell you but you weren't alone.'

  His expression did not change. He said nothing.

  A thrill of pure horror went through her.

  'Kristian, what am I to do?'

  'Do?' He set aside the book. 'You will go down to the car, and Paul will drive you to Mikalides' office. When you have looked at the pearl you will meet the young American and go to the theatre.'

  Sovaz swallowed and said, 'You don't understand me. She was lying on the beach and the man on top of her. I thought they were making love - but the blood - I was walking, Kristian, do you see? And I found them -'

  This will stop, Sovaz. Do you expect me to believe this rubbish? You came here last night and I was with a woman. I am sorry you were

  distressed, but you are not a child. Now you have heard a news bulletin and made up a ludicrous fantasy. What do you suppose you will gain by it?'

  'But it's true,' she said, 'it's true.'

  'You forget,' he said, 'there have been other occasions on which you have lied to me.'

  She pressed her palm over her mouth.

  Kristian had turned away from her to open the balcony windows, as if her words had introduced too much carbon dioxide into the air.

  'You had better be going,' he said, 'otherwise you will be late.'

  She stood inside the doors of the library.

  She thought: Perhaps I heard some radio in the house, half awake, perhaps I fell asleep again. Perhaps I dreamed it. No, she thought, perhaps I invented it, and now believe it to be true. Her mind seemed full of shadows. She searched them. Yes, there was the long scarf blowing on the rim of the sea, and there was the woman on the sand, and the creature crouched over her. Now he looked up, and now - the plaster mask face, the bloody mouth, the optic discs, and yet -

  Remembering the landmarks of the man's face, she could not recapture his appearance.

  She had not known him by his looks, he was collective, symbolic. He had no face, after all.

  In the gallery she experienced again the urge to scream. She leant against the cool wall, and presently the spasm passed. She began to walk on.

  She had forgotten where she was going, but Kristian's chauffeur, Paul, was waiting for her, he would know.

  Outside the house, the mature sunlight fell over the garden walks, the parched stone of the hundred steps, the chess piece statues.

  The chauffeur handed her into the limousine.

  The quay at this hour was mostly deserted. A fisherman sat mending his net, the idle ships rocked indolently at their moorings. The ceiling of mazarine sky phased to lilac on the horizon like the smoke from

  the distant burning galleys of some antique war. The American, Quentin, leaned at the rail in his sun-bleached denims - the uniform of the youthful foreigner -watching a great black beetle creep along the deserted road from the north. He had been scribbling notes; now, diverted by the limousine, the paper hung dead in his hand.

  A block away the limousine went sliding down among a complex of side streets. Pushing the incomplete notation (the description of a woman) into his pocket, the American followed.

  The car had slowed to a disdainfully careful pace. Its windows were of a black-green vitreous, impenetrable. He had never seen Kristian's car, neither been told its make, yet he had known it at once. It was inevitable that the rich aristocrat should possess only such a car, of a gliding, subtle oiled quality…

  Now it had moved aside into the open space before the pearl merchant's offices. The engine stopped.

  Adam too stopped, watching the car. His guts tightened. A chauffeur appeared from the front of the limousine and opened the left hand door.

  The woman got out. Her hair was long and very dark, loose on her shoulders. She wore a white voile frock, no jewelry.

  The chauffeur stood back against the car. The woman began to walk towards the buildings. The little embryonic breeze of sunset fluttered her filmy dress and hair, making her look weightless, incorporeal.

  Adam started after her. He passed the chauffeur but the man's eyes did not follow him, the face betrayed neither interest nor boredom.

  'Madame Sovaz.'

  She halted at once and turned. At first she seemed to look straight through him, as if she were indeed a ghost, or he. Then her eyes apparently focused. Adam felt himself flush. She appeared bewildered, genuinely at a loss. She did not quite say: 'Who are you?'

  It was not pretence, or any kind of cruel playfulness. He was startled.

  He drew the two theatre tickets from his shirt pocket, as if to identify himself. Her eyes went down to them then up again to his face.

  'Last night,' he said, 'your husband asked me to take you to a play - I said a few things I wish I hadn't. Look, I just brought you the tickets.

  They came round by mistake, I guess.'

  'Adam,' she said.

  'I'd like to apologize to you,' he said. 'Would it do any good?'

  'Adam,' she said again.

  The breeze still moved her hair and dress. It blew across the space from the buildings to the giant lizard of the limousine, unchecked, except where it encountered their two bodies.

  Her face, though beautiful and beautifully made up, was grey, her large eyes leaden. Six months ago, sick with food poisoning in some nameless hospital, he had seen this same look of blind struggle in the eyes of amnesiacs or men dying of cancer. As then, he was consumed by sensations of helpless frightened horror. He could not see how he could go to her aid, and he was half afraid to touch her.

  'Something's wrong, Madame Sovaz?'

  She stirred. She smiled at him. She was attempting, listlessly, to reassure him.

  'Oh. Just the heat. I can't bear the heat.' Still with the smile nailed on her mouth, she turned away towards the limousine. 'I don't think I'll bother
with Thettalos' pearl. Kristian wants me to have it anyway.

  Paul,' she called. The chauffeur discarded his pose and came over.

  'Please go up for me and say I should like the pearl. My husband will see to it. Then take the car back to the house.'

  The chauffeur gave a little bow and went wordlessly off.

  'Do you drive, Adam? Of course, all Americans drive.'

  He was choked by the need to undermine this dialogue and come at the truth. He discovered himself saying, with atrocious banality, 'I haven't got a dinner jacket.'

  'It doesn't matter. It will take twenty minutes to get there, by the hill road,' she went on. 'Will that be all right? The performance begins as the sun goes down, doesn't it?'

  He said, 'You want me to come with you.'

  'Why not? Oh, yes. Of course you must come.' Her eyes flashed a desolate brightness. He felt a child in her presence, nine years of age, and she an old woman. He was presented with a frightful vision of Miss Havisham in Great Expectations screaming, her swirling white bridal dress alight, and he trying to beat out the flames, while the

  disturbed beetles and spiders ran away over the floor.

  Driving north-east through the outskirts of the city into the hills, they sat unspeaking, the American turning the wheel in his hands, she lying back on the dusty seat of the ramshackle little hired Ford, the voile dress spreading round both their feet and the gears of the car.

  The road ascending was crowded by olives growing on the slopes, a landscape now darkening as the sun sank. By contrast, the whole sky, even the east, was vivid with an exceptional bronzen red.

  The theatre was constructed in the old style, weathered by sun and rain and by the emotions of joy and tragedy conjured on the stage at its core, travelling up its tiers like thrills along a complex series of nerve endings. It appeared to be and felt of enormous actual age.

  Though in fact, built ten years before, time, as if recognizing a good copy, seemed to have consented to the deception. On the top terraces of cheaper seats men and women clustered like pigeons over bottles of wine, baskets of cheeses, figs and sausage, and children ran about like dogs. The spell of the play was not yet cast on them, the occult masked figures on the skene below, the voices of gods and doomed kings manifested by loudspeakers with terrifying intimacy even on the highest benches.