The Tenth Gate
~ Part Two
From
the window, she could see the workaday landscape of farms. The August
heat baked and exhausted the scene: the tired green leaves had lost
all freshness, the river’s flow was languid and the birdsong
desultory. Even the buzz and click of insects seemed a wrenching
effort. Moisture oozed from the humid air onto the scorched and
yellowed fields of parched cereals. These bleak agricultural wastes
were no picture postcard scenery, but they held the consolation of
being her point of origin. She’d returned here after years of
city
life, to where she was born, where her mother had been born, and the
generations before them.
She had been clearing out the final
room, getting ready to unpack her boxes of books and be properly
settled after the move. Looking round at the scattered rugs, dead
fireplace and battered furniture, she knew it wouldn’t be
home,
properly, until the books that travelled with her were there on the
shelves, surrounding her like the old friends and confidants that
they were.
The end of the afternoon was sultry, humid, and
the sound of the first practicing church bells rang through the open
window from the darkening, storm ridden sky. She started to open the
boxes, and lift out the books, dusting and remembering as she went.
Some of them certainly bore the marks of time and use, broken spines
and sticky covers. She didn’t mind, she knew that to be old
without
memories was meaningless. She put her hand into the last corner, and
pulled out a book with something trapped inside the wine stained
cover. One of her oldest books, a witchcraft history. Inside, an
almost finished pack of Lucky Strikes. The smell of the crumbling
cigarettes made her sink into a seat at the table, still uncleaned,
still covered with dust: Her head swam. Dean Corso. You never get
over obsession, its sweetness, its sharpness, its dangers, she
realised. She was thinking back…and as her mind wandered,
she found
herself drawing a circle, then a pentagram, then some half remembered
symbols, in the dust of the table top. She was thinking aloud:
“Come back to me
Remember me
The library, dry, dust
and sunlight.
Come back to me
The street, sleeting, cold and
slippery.
Remember me
The bar, dark, warm and breathy
Come
back to me
The room, night, touch and closeness.
Remember me.
Come back to me.”
Sighing, she crushed the cigarette
packet into the centre of the pentagram, and turned to the window.
The first fat raindrops were falling; she looked out at the
blue-purple sky to see if the lightning would strike. The very air
tasted acrid with anticipation of the storm. As the sky crackled, a
sudden wind made the curtains stream inwards. There was a click of
the door closing. The sound of a softly spoken curse, of hands
fumbling in wet coat pockets, of the flare of a match, and a greedy
inhalation.
Had the old spell worked? Magic or coincidence?
She didn’t know, but he was back.
***********
This
wasn’t how it should have been, he thought. He’d
only known her
for a short while, but he couldn’t shake her memory from his
mind.
There had been a lot of quiet moments since last winter, when, alone
in his apartment, he’d imagined himself knocking on her door
as the
evening sun faded, quite unexpected, and her surprise and even
delight at seeing him. The sad and social dreams that fill the
evening of the lonely. In his dreams, she smiled and welcomed him,
asked him in, took his hand.
But reality, of course, was
different. She didn’t look surprised. That slight upturn at
the
corner of her mouth was almost knowing. He felt that she knew
he’d
be here. And standing dripping from a summer downpour in her new home
was hardly making the impression he had hoped for. She certainly
didn’t seem impressed. But she did seem, well, pleased with
herself. He wondered what she thought of him, standing there drenched
and unbidden. Did she think back to the hours they’d spent
together
after the chance meeting in the old library? He’d told her
and her
alone, about the fear he had felt as he’d walked though the
gate
into the burned –out castle. How he’d laid out the
nine pictures,
mouthed the Latin incantations and waited, muscles tensed, heart
pounding, for- for what? For something, he wasn’t sure what,
some
event, some presence. The girl who’d been his guide and
saviour had
led him there for a purpose, but yet again he’d failed
someone
close to him. No heaven opened its gates, no hell spat in the fire
and smoke drawn from the long dead language. The secrets of the
martyred author remained closed.
He’d kept the pictures.
They’d become his memento mori of the pain and bitterness
that
failure brings.
He’d always despised those he could trick.
He was, he knew, a man who did not trouble himself with pity for
others. He knew how to steal a treasured book from the easily
flattered, and how to sell the second rate as if it were a first
edition. His vulnerability had sickened him when he’d
realised
that, in the case of the nine pictures, the victim had been him.
He
drew the smoke deep into his lungs as if trying to crowd out the
memory, and held it there. As he exhaled, Ella turned towards him,
her yellow eyed cat winding itself about her feet. At least, he
realised, what he saw here was true. Somehow, he knew she could read
him. His desires, his hopelessness, his fears. The night he’d
spent
with her had been a brief surfacing. A taste of what a life could be
if he were to forgive, forget. But he knew that the hardest person to
forgive is yourself. The grains of self loathing that he carried
within him had accreted and calcified. She could see beneath the
shell, could touch and peel away the layers to reach the atrophied
soul within.
So he’d come back to find her. Her old house
was closed up, for sale. He’d panicked at first, then asked
around,
and found that she’d moved away, away to these bleak
flatlands
dragged from the sea centuries ago by man’s search for
profit. He
hoped she would be the same as she had been in the cold city as the
sleet swirled through the streets. He didn’t want her to
change,
because he knew that he hadn’t. But he worried. She was his
last
forlorn hope. Had she loved, slept with, other men since then? Did
she compare him to them? He hoped not. He didn’t think
he’d
compare well.
She smiled, more welcoming now, and moved
across the room, sweeping the dust from the table as she passed.
“I
wondered if I’d ever see you again, Dean.” To his
nervous ears,
her voice didn’t sound as soft as his imagined version.
“What’s
brought you back?”
Hard question, he thought. What indeed?
His life had sunk back into its usual desolate routine after their
last meeting. A grubby apartment, microwaved meals and tables for
one. He’d rejoined the thousands of lost and lonely in the
city.
Another face in the crowd, another single life swept along by the
tide.
He still carried the nine pictures with him, but his
days were a round of buying and selling, making money and losing
friends. He was devoted to making money that he didn’t want
to
spend, because he had no-one, himself included, to spend it on. Those
nine pictures had done nothing for him. He looked back on the episode
in the castle with shuddering embarrassment. Why had he ever thought
that a series of ancient etchings could conjure up a spirit, why had
be been so gullible? He kept them in his bag as a warning to himself.
Now he’d take everything at face value, no looking for what
wasn’t
there.
On reflection, he hoped that wasn’t just what he was
doing when he’d refused offers of work, closed up his
apartment,
and embarked on this ridiculous journey across the world to find her.
“Too long in the city, same as you. Is it ok that I
stay?”
He wondered if she still lived alone. A tentative question:
“Maybe
someone else is here with you?” He had to ask, but
didn’t want an
answer.
“No, no someone else. Not that mattered. Not since
you.”
He was pleased by her reply, but wondered how she’d
guessed at his thoughts. Her sly look intrigued and captivated him.
The time they’d spent together had let him know her body, but
not
her mind. He could remember how her hair curved and curled at the
nape of her neck, he could see in his mind the way her skin creased
under her breasts, the blemishes and scars that gave her body its
history, that improved on what to him was already perfection. But he
didn’t know how she thought. She had some sort of power over
his
mind, he knew that, but was that just what people called being in
love? If you really loved someone, couldn’t they make you do
anything? In theory, at least. But he wasn’t the type to
love. He
was too closed in, had been for too long.
“And, as a matter
of fact, I sort of expected you.” She smiled and looked
around the
room. “So what do you think? This was my
grandmother’s house, I
inherited it. A change from the old place, but full of the same
family history. She had quite a reputation in this village, some
people thought she could heal illnesses, some thought she could curse
your enemies. So the superstitious give this house a wide berth.
Unless they want a favour.”
The same hint of witchcraft had
drifted like smoke into their first meeting. He wanted to ask if she
took after her, but decided against it. He wouldn’t believe
in that
sort of thing again. He realised he had stopped dripping on the clean
wooden floor, but was starting to shiver.
“Tell me all
about her this evening. I’d like to hear about your family.
You
never told me much before.” He hoped that this could be the
key to
understanding how she felt, interpreting those looks. And he really
did want to know all there was to know about her. He’d
obsessed
about her so often that he’d made up a past to suit his own
fantasies, but he knew that he needed the shreds of herself she was
willing to give if he were to understand her. He knew so much about
her body, its curves and its folds in secret places, the strange and
delicate movements she made in her sleep. And he wanted to know about
her mind, how she thought, how she knew things about him, how she
knew how he felt before even he realised it.
One day, he
hoped. But right now, he hardly understood anything about her.
She
looked happier now. “Yes. Let me show you around. Get
yourself
cleaned up, then we’ll talk.” How perfect she
looked. Messy hair
and well worn jeans and shirt suited her. He vaguely wondered what
she was wearing beneath, a fleeting contemplation of the low cut and
lacy passing through his mind. Her relaxation moved through him like
a sigh. He stubbed out his cigarette, shouldered his bag, and
gratefully followed her upstairs.
Half an hour later, when he
had unpacked, smoked another cigarette, and had a drink, he lay,
dozing and jet-lagged, in the bath. The last few rays of the setting
sun lit the room, and birdsong floated in through the half open
window. No sound of traffic. He could be back in another age, he
realised. Church bells and the sound of leaves in the breeze. It was
as if New York no longer existed. He wondered what it would be like
to live in a place like this, a place where nothing ever happened,
where each generation followed the patterns of the last, and everyone
knew everyone else. What would it be like to sacrifice anonymity for
companionship? His thoughts rose and fell like the swallows he saw in
the darkening sky.
A sound brought him back to reality. The
door wasn’t locked, and Ella had come in without knocking,
glass of
wine in hand. He felt faintly embarrassed at this domestic
familiarity: he felt he didn’t deserve it. How did people act
when
they lived together? It was a topic that intrigued him, something he
had no experience of. Should he reach for a towel and cover himself?
The embarrassment of looking as if he were coyly grabbing his towel
was potentially worse than that of staying put. Anyway, he
hadn’t
time. He sunk deeper into the soapy water.
She came over to
the bath’s edge with the glass in her hand. She was already
hot
from the kitchen. Her skin began to moisten with the rising steam;
releasing her perfume and making her thin shirt cling damply to her
skin. He tried to concentrate his gaze on her face, but it was
difficult.
“You still prefer scotch, I suppose, but perhaps
this will do for now.”
How could such a simple sentence carry
so much promise? She leaned down, handing him the glass, looking at
him through long and curling lashes. Her eyes were fixed on his, and
he knew that he had passed the point beyond which he could no longer
answer or move. She leaned forward, letting him see her breasts
cupped in the lace he loved beneath her shirt. Her hand brushed his
face, her fingers tracing the line of his throat, and slid over his
smooth chest to, teasingly, touch the rippled surface of the water.
He wanted to respond, to touch her, or to say something, but
he was transfixed, powerless, enthralled. Time seemed to pause as he
looked through the steamy air into her strange catlike eyes. Was it
the warmth of the bath, or the jet lag, or was there a hypnotic
quality about them?
He drew a breath, and blinked himself
back to reality and he saw that she was smiling. “Thank
you” he
whispered.
Her voice was kind, but held a sly satisfaction.
“Don’t say thanks, it’s for me as well.
To celebrate your
return. I’ve missed you, and I’ve thought about
you, and the
story you told me about the devil who didn’t keep the date.
I’ve
thought of it a lot. So much, that through luck or some fate that
guides our lives that I know more than you can guess. So now I have
something to ask you. Do you still have the nine etchings?”
His
mind clicked back to reality. What had she discovered? When
he’d
told her the whole sad story last year she had shown no special
interest, had not asked to see the prints. Altruism was not a god he
believed in. There was something in this that she needed for herself.
But he had no idea what it could be. He raised a questioning eyebrow,
although in his heart he knew he would have given her anything she
asked.
Again, it seemed she knew what he thought.
“Yes,
of course I need to tell you why. I told you that this was my
grandmother’s house. Amongst her books was a letter. An old
letter,
from her grandmother, or even further back. It describes how she
gained something that seems to be perfect knowledge. To do it, she
had to use a series of pictures. She owned the first nine. The final,
tenth, picture was in a report of a trial, a trial from the days of
the witchfinders. The trial was of a woman from this village accused
of witchcraft. The first nine pictures are in your possession. And I
think I have found the book which holds the tenth. It’s in
the
Fitzwilliam Museum.”
Now he knew why she wanted him back.
Nothing, even his dreams of love, was as it seemed. But it
didn’t
matter. He realised he, too, wanted the new picture desperately. He
looked at her, still sitting on the edge of his bath, her wet shirt
still clinging to sticky breasts. This life was what he wanted.
In
a way, they each held each other’s missing piece.
“That’s
close by.” He murmured, keeping his voice flat to hide his
interest. “Let’s go tomorrow.”