Nightshades

by Tanith Lee

  Presently all the lights sprang into golden life along the four tiers of steps. He could see now the chess piece marble horses snarling on the landings among the vines. A faceless man - truly, all Kristian's servants seemed faceless, or robots - came down to the oriental gate.

  'Madame Sovaz is expecting me,' Adam Quentin said.

  The lie, unpremeditated but obvious and essential, seemed to release him from heavy chains. The dehumanized servant stared for a moment out at him through the iron lattice, then activated the electric switch in the wall. The password presumably was correct. The gates slid open.

  Adam stepped through, waited for the servant to close the gates, then followed him up the hundred steps into the house.

  The scent of jasmine clung in the foyer, reminding him of the dinner party. After her entreaty to him he half expected some hint of upheaval or of fear to have manifested itself. Seeing nothing out of place, nervousness overtook him, some unease that he had imagined the swift, half inaudible torrent of her words, or misunderstood some flippancy.

  At this moment Kristian emerged to his left from between a pair of polished wood double doors. Rather than reinforcing, by his arctic faultlessness, the illusion of balance, his presence seemed to Adam Quentin to make entirely possible Sovaz' hysterical anguish.

  Kristian overawed him, as he overawed and intimidated most of those he met.

  'You have come to see my wife,' Kristian stated.

  'That's right. Do you think you can stop me?'

  'I see you are in melodramatic mood, Mr Quentin. Of course, I have no such intention. Why should you imagine that I have?'

  Kristian moved aside, graciously motioned Adam to step into the room behind him.

  'Like you told me, I'm here to see your wife,' Adam said.

  'But first I should like a moment of your time. If you would be so good.'

  Despite everything, Kristian's impeccable manners overpowered him.

  Adam Quentin's age sat, in that moment, so lightly on him that he felt almost unborn. He went past the older man, into the room. It was so obviously Kristian's, the Persian rugs, the escritoire with its onyx penholders, a case of silvery duelling pistols and other guns, an icon with a white unliving face. Adam seemed to discover himself suddenly standing in the midst of it all like a bedraggled beaten dog.

  Kristian had come in, closing the doors behind him.

  'Now, Mr Quentin. I believe you telephoned my wife earlier tonight.

  Am I correct?'

  'Why ask? I reckon you must know what goes on in this house.'

  'Yes, Mr Quentin, I do. Which is quite reasonable, do you not agree, since it is my house.' Kristian paused. 'I may assume, I think, that your conversation gave rise to some concern. Which is why you have come here so promptly.'

  Adam found his responses could only free themselves through a defensive angry boorishness, which in its turn further disabled him.

  'I only know she wanted to get out of this goddamned place.'

  'As you say, Sovaz may wish to spend a few days in other surroundings. Are you willing that she should also spend them with you?'

  Aware of being manipulated, Adam said nothing.

  'You are grudging of your time, Mr Quentin. If you answer my

  questions as I ask them, you would waste a good deal less of it.'

  'OK. Yes. I'm willing.'

  'Good. In that case, I recommend that you return tomorrow. I shall by then have made all the necessary arrangements.'

  'What the hell are you talking about? If she wants to leave, it's now-'

  'I doubt it. I believe you will be sleeping in a dosshouse in the slums.

  Did you intend to take my wife there?'

  'You surely know everything, don't you?'

  'I know enough, Mr Quentin. Let me suggest you do as I say. By tomorrow afternoon I can provide you with a car, accommodation, and money.'

  'I don't want your money.'

  'Probably not. But I am merely providing for my wife's comfort, which you, you recall, are unable to do.'

  'Perhaps she feels the same way I do.'

  'Yes. Perhaps at the moment she does. I suggest therefore that you tell her the money and car are a loan from Mikalides. Also the beach house you will be taking, about forty miles outside the city.'

  'All right. I'll go along with it for what it's worth.'

  'Splendid,' Kristian said, without inflexion.

  'And now I want to see her.'

  Kristian opened a box of Chinese jade and extracted a cigarette which he slowly lit, by this gesture finally demonstrating his power over the American, who stood intolerably still and silent, as if turned to stone, during the procedure.

  'Yes, Mr Quentin. As I assured you earlier, I shall not attempt to prevent you. But I would point out that my wife is at present in an unsettled state of mind. She is a highly strung woman, a victim of her temperament. It will be good for her to get away for a while.

  However, since you can as yet do nothing, does it occur to you that to return tomorrow, with every means at your disposal, would be better than simply to exacerbate her mood unnecessarily tonight?'

  Adam felt a wave of guilty release sweep over him. He would not after all have to see her until the following day. He cleared his throat.

  'Do you know something,' he said, 'you make me sick.'

  Kristian's cold face did not change. Only the cigarette smoke moved past his eyes as he exhaled.

  'Regretfully, Mr Quentin, I find your opinion of me entirely immaterial. And now, I would not dream of detaining you further.

  My chauffeur will see that the hired car reaches you, also the money I spoke of, and any essential documents.'

  Adam turned towards the door. 'Does it strike you she might not come back to you?'

  'No,' said Kristian, 'it does not.'

  'You didn't buy her,' Adam said, 'like the furniture.'

  'Oh, but that is exactly what I did,' Kristian said. 'And like my beautiful furniture, my beautiful wife fully understands and appreciates her position in my house, whatever notions she may entertain from time to time. She is playing with you, Mr Quentin.

  And the pure and doubtless estimable ideals of your youth and inexperience are blinding you to that salient, unalterable fact.'

  At midnight, lying awake among the ranks of restless, groaning or snoring men, his fellow occupants of the run-down dortoir, Adam felt this conversation turning like a great wheel in his head. He was indeed sick, sick to his stomach with a depressive dread. Like a fly caught in a web, struggling in the sticky substance over which it has no control, for which it can find no name, but which it vaguely ascertains means death.

  The spitting and farting and weeping prayers of the human creatures about him were all that stood between him and the day, and the woman.

  Kristian entered her room this time from the dressing room, and found her seated in a chair. She had, as usual, the unawakened look so familiar to her. Ashtrays were littered with dead cigarettes. He noticed with distaste that her hands, normally exquisitely manicured, were yellow with patches of nicotine.

  The interview with the American had also been distasteful, unpleasant. Never before had it been necessary to spend so much

  time on one of Sovaz' amusements. The telephone conversation had been reported to Kristian by his valet, a silent third party on the line.

  'Sovaz,' Kristian said, 'please get up. I want you to come downstairs with me.'

  It surprised him when she did at once as he said. She had looked immovable. As she rose, the silk robe slipped away from her left shoulder. Against the whiteness of her skin, through the darkness of her hair, he glimpsed the bloody fire about her throat. She drifted to the mirrors and stood, apparently aimlessly, before them. Then took up a slender phial of scent and began to dab it on her flesh.

  Kristian went out of the bedroom door into the gallery. Presently, she followed him. He saw that, despite her acquiescence,
she carried in her hand one of the grey press cuttings from her bed.

  Below, Kristian opened the doors of polished wood for her.

  She went inside and stood, much as the American had done, roughly at the centre of the room. In fact, what he had to say to her would have been said as well in the black chamber above, yet he felt a compulsion to speak to her away from the fumes of a room choked with her mental smoke as well as that of her cigarettes.

  The study, his room, seemed able to hold her at bay.

  Without asking her, he poured a little cognac into a glass and gave it to her. She lifted the glass and drank.

  'Sovaz, you can't possibly continue in this way. You are making yourself ill.'

  She said clearly, 'Oh, yes.'

  'I should like you to go away for a few days. Longer if you wish. I think it would do you good. The young American was here earlier. I believe he has some plans for you both.'

  'And do you have no plans for me?' she said.

  'I plan that you should regain your health and your self-control.'

  'Do you?' she said. She smiled at something her blind eyes were seeing. Then the smile slid back into her mouth like a snake. 'My father,' she said, 'never imagined he could die. He thought all the while he would get better.'

  Kristian turned away from her to light a cigarette, and noticed the

  stub of a previous cigarette.

  'The night he died,' Sovaz went on, 'there was a storm. He must have been calling to me, and I didn't hear him for the rain. When I went in, it was only by chance, because I had seen his lamp was still burning.

  He was working on a translation of Plato, but there was blood all over the page, the book, the top of his desk. I ran to him and he caught my hand. He looked terrified. But he only said very calmly, "I think I'm rather worse tonight. Will you go to the doctor's house and ask him to come?" I let go his hand and rushed out, but I heard his head fall down on to the papers before I reached the door.'

  'This is pointless, Sovaz.'

  'Yes,' she said, 'quite pointless. I shall, naturally, do whatever you say. When am I to leave?'

  'Tomorrow.'

  'And when do I come back?'

  'When you are ready.'

  'Suppose,' she said, 'that I never come back to you.'

  'I don't think that you will be so foolish.'

  'I am foolish enough to stay, why not to go? Why,' she said softly,

  'why didn't you let me go when I was able?'

  'If you are speaking of divorce -'

  'No. That would be very stupid of me, wouldn't it?' He glanced at her, but her eyes still seemed blind, yet a polarized blindness, appearing dark only to those who stood outside. She said: 'Kristian, I opened the door and there you were. Everything was in crates and boxes. I had to sell all his books, and I thought I would be jailed because there wasn't any money left… I thought I should have to steal food, and they would catch me… And I opened the door and there you were.'

  He said: 'I think you should go upstairs.'

  'Yes,' she said, 'of course.'

  She turned and went without another word. But he saw that she had left lying on the rug the grey press cutting.

  Kristian retrieved it. A cold feverishness had come over him; he found he was repelled even by an object she had been holding. He

  saw for a second the headline as he balled the cutting in his hand.

  Igniting the desk lighter, he set fire to the smudgy wad, and let it fall into an ashtray to burn. It was a dramatic gesture, a gesture alien to him.

  The paper flared with a cleansing flame. It reflected brightly in the case of pistols, as the rising sun had once reflected on the beautiful guns, and the birds had rained from the sky, and the deer crumpled with the grace of ballerinas between the tall stalks of the pines.

  FIVE

  The slender white sports car sprang eagerly southwards. Leaving the cement towers, the minarets and spires of the city behind, it rattled down the shore road, between landward banks in mourning with cypress groves, and the tumbling western edge, which in places dropped sheer to a glittering afternoon sea.

  The road, tortuous, caked red or white with powdered clay, owed its existence to various empires. The Persians, the Romans, the Americans had all had a hand in it. It was a polyglot, mongrel construction, an aggressive bastard of a road, and given to practical jokes (a dead cow lying around the bend feasted upon by clouds of flies, a flock of ragged sheep spilling across between broken fences from one field to another, an abandoned cart on its side).

  Old farms dotted the eastern heights. Goats galloped away, pretending that the car was still a unique anachronism on this ancient time-locked landscape - that, meanwhile, swarmed at certain periods of the year with cars and buses fleeing from the summer heat of the city, and which had burst consequently into little red gas stations like an eruption of acne.

  The slender vehicle was open, a golden young man driving it, a black and white woman at his side, partly concealed beneath a wide-brimmed black straw hat.

  The journey was not long. They did not speak.

  The robot chauffeur had handed to him relevant keys, receipts, a

  manilla packet. Sovaz had appeared on the steps, moving between the chess pieces like another chess piece, the Black Queen, in her inky frock and hat, a trailing of black and white chiffon about her neck.

  She looked altogether too dramatic, coming towards him, and he had a ghastly sort of Sunset Boulevard impression of her, an aging insane actress, dolled up to the nines. It was a shock to see, when the sun struck suddenly on the triangle the hat left free of shadow, how young she was.

  He said to her awkwardly, 'Do you have everything you need?'

  'Yes,' she said, 'thank you.'

  Two small suitcases, packed by her maid, lay already in the boot.

  He opened the door for her. She got in. Claustrophobia welled in his chest as he shut both of them together into the car, despite its state of rooflessness.

  He was near to hating her, for he hated himself. He could not even now comprehend how he had become entangled in this incredible act.

  Somehow the train had run away downhill before he could get out.

  Now, left clinging to its trembling superstructure, he could only stare about him at the fall in disbelief.

  He was to say Mikalides had lent him money and a villa so that they could be together. No doubt, other men had absorbed Kristian's money without reluctance and lied graciously when needful. Yet surely she must know? It was obvious she had only come with him because Kristian had so instructed her. That he, Adam, had only come to take her because Kristian had so instructed him. Of her earlier cry for help nothing seemed to remain. She was polite and soulless. The situation was laughable, pathetic and revolting.

  She sat beside him and said nothing. They were two strangers summoned to a hanging. There seemed to Adam no way out of it.

  The quality of the afternoon altered. Veils of heat obscured the sinking sun. They drove through a little town with the obligatory number of gasoline pumps, a cafe or two and tiny shadowed shops and alleys. The road ran up then down. In the hot grey dusk, bumping along a track between the dunes, they reached the white beach house so carefully indicated on the chauffeur's map.

  The breakers buzzed softly far out on the shore.

  The interior of the villa was neatly designed, the walls regardlessly whitewashed. It was an acceptable, almost elegant setting, though not imaginative. A pang of reluctant admiration went through Adam, for it was so very much what the Greek merchant would have arranged for him, as he had arranged the evening clothes to be worn to the dinner party.

  A freezer lurked in the stone-flagged kitchen, its gut stuffed with food. Green and gold idols of wine and spirits glinted in a wooden comb. A woman and her husband from the town came and went in the day, he had been told, to clean, and to prepare meals if necessary.

  Everything had been taken care of. Even a c
old supper had been set out for them beneath covers, which neither approached.

  Now the sound of the car had left them, as once before, their silence seemed to grow. The dull resonance of the sea, muffled by a sky of low cloud, did nothing to dispel it. Sovaz sat in a high-backed chair, motionless and unspeaking, still in her Swanson-Garboesque hat.

  His mind went back to a beach party three years before on Long Island, trying to warm itself at those red fires, now ashes, among the beer cans, now further wreckage polluting the Sound, and the tanned young bodies and thoughtless hopeful silly happy laughter, now stifled for ever by experience.

  He extracted a bottle of wine from its melting ice, and opened it.

  'Do you want a drink?'

  'Why not?'

  The words fastened in his brain like a code of conduct. 'Why not?

  Why not?'

  He handed her a glass of the wine, and drank his own rapidly. Very quickly it warmed him. He felt a surge of anger and dislike.

  'Well, here we are,' he said. He poured himself another glass and sat facing her. 'Why don't you take off your hat, Sovaz? There's no sun in here. I can't see you.'

  'Does it matter?' she said.

  'Sure it does.'

  She put up her hand and drew off the hat, then held it on her lap with the untouched wine.

  'Do you remember what you said to me,' he said flatly, 'when I called you at the house?'

  Her eyes flickered and dilated.

  'That was stupid,' she said. 'I don't know why I should have said such a thing.'

  'You said it because you meant it.'

  He felt something at her confusion, for he could see he was confusing her. Mixed together in him now were interchangeable desires to help or harm.

  'Sovaz,' he said, 'stop running away from it, whatever it is. If you tell me, maybe we can work something out.'

  'I was foolish to speak to you as I did. You can do nothing.'

  'OK,' he said, 'OK, Sovaz, if that's what you want.'

  He got to his feet again. He took up the half empty wine bottle and its companion from the table, and went straight out of the villa on to the beach.