by Tanith Lee
The journey home was relatively uneventful. At the traffic lights a boy with a rucksack leaned to her window. She thought in alarm that he was going to demand a lift, or else tell her in an American voice of how he had found Jesus in San Francisco, but, in fact, he only wanted
directions to Brown's the chemists. It seemed such a harmless request it filled her with incongruous delight. Purple and ocher cloud drift was bringing on the early dusk in spasms of rain. With a surge of immeasurable compassion she offered him, after all, the lift she had been terrified of giving. David would he furious with her, she knew.
It was a stupid thing to do, yet the boy looked so vulnerable in the rain, his long dark hair plastered to his skull. He was an ugly, shy, rather charming student, and she left him at the chemists after a ten-minute ride during which he thanked her seven times. It turned out his mother was Mrs Brown, and he had hitched all the way from Bristol.
After he had gone, she parked the car, and went to buy fresh cigarettes. Coming from the tobacconists, she saw the cemetery.
She had forgotten she would see the cemetery on her errand of mercy. It was foolish, she knew, to experience this 'morbid dread,' as Angela would no doubt put it. It was, nevertheless, a perfect picture of horror for her - the ranks of marble markers under the orange monochrome sky with rain falling on their plots and withered wreaths, and down through the newly turned soil to reach the wooden caskets underneath… She experienced a sudden swirling sickness, and ran through it to the car. Inside, the icy rain shut out, she found that she had absurdly begun to cry.
'Oh, don't be such an idiot,' she said aloud.
She turned on the car's heater, and started vigorously for home, nearly stalling. She was much later than she had meant to be.
There were no lights burning in the house, and she realized with regret that he would be late again. She coerced the unwilling car into the garage, and ran between the rustling pines. She clicked a switch in every room and resuscitated the television to reveal three children up to their eyes in some form of super sweet. Their strawberry-and-cream bedecked faces filled her with disgust. She had never liked children, and never wanted them. She paused, her hand on the door, a moment's abstracted thought catching at her mind - had she failed David in this? She could remember him saying to her as she sobbed against him: 'I only want you, you know that, and nothing else matters.'
That had been after the results of the tests. In a way she felt she had
wished herself into barrenness. She thought of Angela's two sons, strapping boisterous boys, who went canoeing with their father, and brought home baskets of mangled catch from a day's fishing, and spotted trains, and bolted their food to get back to incongruous and noisy activities in their bedroom.
'A man needs sons,' Angela had once said. 'It's a sort of proof, Pamela. Why don't you see a specialist? I can give you the address.'
But then Angela and James had not slept together in any sense for ten years, Pamela thought with sudden, spiteful triumph, and it had always been a doubtful joy to them. She remembered David's arms about her and that earthy magic they made between them, an attraction that had increased rather than diminished.
The phone rang.
It made her jump.
'Oh, damn.'
She picked it up, and heard, with the relevance of a conjuration, her sister's cool, well managed tones.
'Oh, hullo, Angela. I don't want to be a cow, but this really is rather a bad time - I was just about to start dinner -'
'Pamela, my dear,' Angela said, her voice peculiarly solemn, 'are you all right?'
'All right? Of course I am. What on earth -'
'Pamela, I want you to listen to me. Please, my dear. I wouldn't have rung, but Jane Thomson says she saw you in Cordells at lunch time.
She says, oh, my dear, she says she saw you waiting for someone.'
Angela sounded unspeakably distressed. 'Pamela, who were you waiting for?'
Pamela felt a surge of panic wash over her.
'I - oh, no one. Does it matter?'
'Darling, of course it does. Was it David you were waiting for, like the last time?'
Pamela held the phone away from her ear and looked at it. There was a bee trapped in the phone, buzzing away at her. She had always been terribly afraid of bees.
'I really have to go, Angela,' she shouted at the mouthpiece.
'Oh, Pamela, Pamela,' Angela said. She seemed to be crying. 'Darling, David can't come back to you. Not now.'
'Be quiet,' Pamela said.
The bee went on buzzing.
'Pamela, listen to me. David is dead. Dead, do you hear me? He died of peritonitis last July. For God's sake, Pamela -'
Pamela dropped the phone into its receiver and the buzzing stopped.
The dinner was spoiled before she realized how late he was going to be after all. He had told her the conference might run on, and not to wait up for him. She waited, however, until midnight. Upstairs, she took the book from his bedside table and replaced it with the Graham Greene - it would surprise him when he found it.
She hated to sleep without him, but she was very tired. And she would see him in the morning.
Outside, the pines clicked and whispered, but she did not listen.
The Janfia Tree
There are many marvellous legends of tree spirits. The darkness of my version has to do, I think, with the fearful danger of projection.
Life can be what you make it. Beware.
After eight years of what is termed 'bad luck', it becomes a way of life. One is no longer anything so dramatic as unhappy. One achieves a sort of state of what can only be described as de-happiness. One expects nothing, not even, actually, the worst. A certain relaxation follows, a certain equilibrium. Not flawless, of course. There are still moments of rage and misery. It is very hard to give up hope, that last evil let loose from Pandora's box of horrors. And it is always, in fact, after a bout of hope, springing without cause, perishing not necessarily at any fresh blow but merely from the absence of anything to sustain it, that there comes a revulsion of the senses. A wish, not exactly for death, but for the torturer at least to step out of the shadows, to reveal himself, and his plans. And to this end one issues invitations, generally very trivial ones, a door forgetfully
unlocked, a stop light driven through. Tempting fate, they call it.
'Well, you do look tired,' said Isabella, who had met me in her car, in the town, in the white dust that veiled and covered everything.
I agreed that perhaps I did look tired.
'I'm so sorry about -' said Isabella. She checked herself, thankfully, on my thanks. 'I expect you've had enough of all that. And this other thing. That's not for a while, is it?'
'Not until next month.'
'That gives you time to take a break at least.'
'Yes.'
It was a very minor medical matter to which she referred. Any one of millions would have been glad, I was sure, to exchange their intolerable suffering for something twice as bad. For me, it filled the quota quite adequately. I had not been sleeping very well. Isabella's offer of the villa had seemed, not like an escape, since that was impossible, yet like an island. But I wished she would talk about something else. Mind-reading, 'Look at the olives, aren't they splendid?' she said, as we hurtled up the road. I looked at the olives through the blinding sun and dust. 'And there it is, you see? Straight up there in the sky.'
The villa rose, as she said, in the hard sky above; on a crest of gilded rock curtained with cypress and pine. The building was alabaster in the sun, and, like alabaster, had a pinkish inner glow where the light exchanged itself with the shade. Below, the waves of the olives washed down to the road, shaking to silver as the breeze ruffled them.
It was all very beautiful, but one comes in time to regard mortal glamours rather as the Cathars regarded them, snares of the Devil to hide the blemishes beneath, to make us love a world which will defile and betray us.
The car sped up the road and arrived on a driveway in a flaming jungle of bougainvillaea and rhododendrons.
Isabella led me between the stalks of the veranda, into the villa, with all the pride of money and goodwill. She pointed out to me, on a long immediate tour, every excellence, and showed me the views, which were exceptional, from every window and balcony.
'Marta's away down the hill at the moment, but she'll be back quite
soon. She says she goes to visit her aunt, but I suspect it's a lover. But she's a dulcet girl. You can see how nicely she keeps everything here.
With the woman who cooks, that's just about all, except for the gardeners, but they won't be coming again for a week. So no one will bother you.'
'That does sound good.'
'Save myself of course,' she added. 'I shall keep an eye on you. And tomorrow, remember, we want you across for dinner. Down there, beyond those pines, we're just over that spectacular ridge. Less than half a mile. Indeed, if you want to you can send us morse signals after dark from the second bathroom window. Isn't that fun? So near, so far.'
'Isabella, you're really too kind to me.'
'Nonsense,' she said. 'Who else would be, you pessimistic old sausage.' And she took me into her arms, and to my horror I shed tears, but not many. Isabella, wiping her own eyes, said it had done me good. But she was quite wrong.
Marta arrived as we were having drinks at the east end of the veranda. She was a pretty, sunlit creature, who looked about fourteen and was probably eighteen or so. She greeted me politely, rising from the bath of her liaison. I felt nothing very special about her, or that.
Though I am often envious of the stamina, youth and health of others, I have never wanted to be any of them.
'Definitely, a lover,' said Isabella, when the girl was gone. 'My God, do you remember what it was like at her age? All those clandestine fumblings in grey city places.'
If that had been true for her, it had not been true of me, but I smiled.
'But here,' she said, 'in all this honey heat, these scents and flowers.
Heaven on earth - Arcadia. Well, at least I'm here with good old Alec. And he hands me quite a few surprises, he's quite the boy now and then.'
'I've been meaning to ask you,' I said, 'that flowering tree along there, what is it?'
I had not been meaning to ask, had only just noticed the particular tree. But I was afraid of flirtatious sexual revelations. I had been denied in love-desire too long, and celibate too long, to find such a
thing comfortable. But Isabella, full of intrigued interest in her own possessions, got up at once and went with me to inspect the tree.
It stood high in a white and terracotta urn, its stem and head in silhouette against a golden noon. There was a soft pervasive scent which, as I drew closer, I realized had lightly filled all the veranda like a bowl with water.
'Oh yes, the fragrance,' she said. 'It gets headier later in the day, and at night it's almost overpowering. Now what is it?' She fingered dark glossy leaves and found a tiny slender bloom, of a sombre white.
'This will open after sunset,' she said. 'Oh lord, what is the name?'
She stared at me and her face cleared, glad to give me another gift.
'Janfia,' she said. 'Now I can tell you all about it. Janfia - it's supposed to be from the French, Janvier.' It was a shame to discourage her.
'January. Why? Does it start to bloom then?'
'Well, perhaps it's supposed to, although it doesn't. No. It's something to do with January, though.'
'Janus, maybe,' I said, 'two-faced god of doorways. You always plant it by a doorway or an opening into a house? A guardian tree.' I had almost said, a tree for good luck.
'That might be it. But I don't think it's protective. No, now isn't there some story… I do hope I can recall it. It's like the legend of the myrtle - or is it the basil? You know the one, with a spirit living in the tree.'
'That's the myrtle. Venus, or a nymph, coming out for dalliance at night, hiding in the branches by day. The basil is a severed head. The basil grows from the mouth of the head and tells the young girl her brothers have murdered her lover, whose decapitum is in the pot.'
'Yum, yum,' said Isabella. 'Well, Alec will know about the Janfia. I'll get him to tell you when you come to dinner tomorrow.'
I smiled again. Alec and I made great efforts to get along with each other, for Isabella's sake. We both found it difficult. He did not like me, and I, reciprocating, had come to dislike him in turn. Now our only bond, aside from Isabella, was natural sympathy at the irritation each endured in the presence of the other.
As I said goodbye to Isabella, I was already wondering how I could get out of the dinner.
I spent the rest of the afternoon unpacking and organizing myself for my stay, swimming all the while in amber light, pausing frequently to gaze out across the pines, the sea of olive groves. A little orange church rose in the distance, and a sprawling farm with Roman roofs.
The town was already well lost in purple shadow. I began, from the sheer charm of it, to have moments of pleasure. I had dreaded their advent, but received them mutely. It was all right, it was all right to feel this mindless animal sweetness. It did not interfere with the other things, the darkness, the sword hanging by a thread. I had accepted that, that it was above me, then why trouble with it?
But I began to feel well, I began to feel all the chances were not gone.
I risked red wine and ate my supper greedily, enjoying being waited on.
During the night, not thinking to sleep in the strange bed, I slept a long while. When I woke once, there was an extraordinary floating presence in the bedroom. It was the perfume of the Janfia tree, entering the open shutters from the veranda below. It must stand directly beneath my window. Mine was the open way it had been placed to favour. How deep and strangely clear was the scent.
When I woke in the morning, the scent had gone, and my stomach was full of knots of pain and ghastly nausea. The long journey, the heat, the rich food, the wine. Nevertheless, it gave me my excuse to avoid the unwanted dinner with Isabella and Alec.
I called her about eleven o'clock. She commiserated. What could she say? I must rest and take care, and we would all meet further along the week.
In the afternoon, when I was beginning to feel better, she woke me from a long hot doze with two plastic containers of local yoghurt, which would apparently do wonders for me.
'I'll only stay a moment. God, you do look pale. Haven't you got something to take for it?'
'Yes. I've taken it.'
'Well. Try the yoghurt, too.'
'As soon as I can manage anything, I'll try the yoghurt.'
'By the way,' she said, 'I can tell you the story of the Janfia now.' She stood in the bedroom window, looking out and down at it. 'It's
extremely sinister. Are you up to it, I wonder?'
'Tell me, and see.'
Although I had not wanted the interruption, now it had arrived, I was oddly loth to let her go. I wished she would have stayed and had dinner with me herself, alone. Isabella had always tried to be kind to me. Then again, I was useless with people now. I could relate to no one, could not give them any quarter. I would be better off on my own.
'Well, it seems there was a poet, young and handsome, for whose verses princes would pay in gold.'
'Those were the days,' I said idly.
'Come, it was the fifteenth century. No sewers, no antibiotics, only superstition and gold could get you by.'
'You sound nostalgic, Isabella.'
'Shush now. He used to roam the countryside, the young poet, looking for inspiration, doubtless finding it with shepherdesses, or whatever they had here then. One dusk he smelled an exquisite fragrance, and, searching for its source, came on a bush of pale opening flowers. So enamoured was he of the perfume that he dug up the bush, took it home with him, and planted it in a pot on the balcony outside his room. Here it grew i
nto a tree, and here the poet, dreaming, would sit all afternoon, and when night fell, and the moon rose, he would carry his mattress on to the balcony, and go to sleep under the moon-shade of the tree's foliage.'
Isabella broke off. Already falling into the idiom, she said, 'Am I going to write this, or are you?'
'I'm too tired to write nowadays. And anyway, I can't sell anything.
You do it.'
'We'll see. After all the trouble I had with that cow of an editor over my last -'
'And meantime, finish the story, Isabella.'
Isabella beamed.
She told me, it began to be noticed that the poet was very wan, very thin, very listless. That he no longer wrote a line, and soon all he did was to sit all day and lie all night long by the tree. His companions
looked in vain for him in the taverns and his patrons looked in vain for his verse. Finally a very great prince, the lord of the town, went himself to the poet's room. Here, to his dismay, he found the poet stretched out under the tree. It was close to evening, the evening star stood in the sky and the young moon, shining in through the leaves of the Janfia tree upon the poet's white face which was now little better than a beautiful skull. He seemed near to death, which the prince's physicians, being called in, confirmed. 'How,' cried the prince, in grief, 'have you come to this condition?'
Then, though it was not likely to restore him, he begged the poet to allow them to take him to some more comfortable spot. The poet refused. 'Life is nothing to me now.' he said. And he asked the prince to leave him, for the night was approaching and he wished to be alone.
The prince was at once suspicious. He sent the whole company away, and only he returned with stealth, and hid himself in the poet's room, to see what went on.
Sure enough, at midnight, when the sky was black and the moon rode high, there came a gentle rustling in the leaves of the Janfia.
Presently there stepped forth into the moonlight a young man, darkhaired and pale of skin, clothed in garments that seemed woven of the foliage of the tree itself. And he, bending over the poet, kissed him, and the poet stretched up his arms. And what the prince then witnessed filled him with abysmal terror, for not only was it a demon he watched, but one which performed acts utterly proscribed by mother church. Eventually overcome, the prince lost consciousness.
