“Right, then,” he says, turning towards the hall, “if you hurry you’ll still catch the 5:45 train.”
I say goodnight to Kelly at the reception desk. James opens the iron gate, then shuts it behind me. The metal clang vibrates in my chest. I walk down the windowless grey stone hallway. The air is cool, mildewy; I button up my jacket. The hum of the florescent lights and the dull click of my footsteps echo as I walk towards another gate at the end of the corridor. Finally, I pass under a high, ornately sculpted archway. It is the main exit through the eighteen-foot brick, razor-wired walls that surround Stowmoor Psychiatric Hospital. I remember Foster’s words, but I don’t look over my shoulder.
I turn the deadbolt of our basement flat.
The room is humid and smells like melted crayons. There are puddles of red wax on newspaper and a Portishead album streaming from the stereo.
“Hey there,” says Henry. He stands up from behind the sculpture he’s working on, a throne made entirely out of wax and steel wire. It’s a deep wine colour and almost as tall as me. “You walked all the way from the tube without an umbrella?”
“Forgot again.” I hang up my soggy coat by the door and make my way over to him. I step lightly on the newsprint, dodge red puddles.
“Over two weeks here, think you’d remember by now.” He puts down the stainless steel carving pick he’s holding and smoothes back the damp frizzies that have sprung from my ponytail. “This,” he says, making a sweeping movement with his arm, “couldn’t be avoided.” Newsprint covers the floor from wall to wall, even in the kitchen. He’s pushed our bed into the corner and covered it with a black tarp. The throne is in the centre of the room.
“The rest of my tools came from Halifax today, and I just had to get started. It’s for the Fantasy and Disaster festival next month.” He gestures towards the sculpture with a wax-covered palm, as if it’s something I could possibly miss. “I called today, but they told me I won’t get my studio at the college until Tuesday. I couldn’t wait. You like?”
I shuffle through the newsprint and displaced furniture and look at the throne from the front. It’s over five feet tall, with two thick, black metal wires protruding from the wax at the top of the chair back. The wires spiral downward and support a lacy web of red droplets. Wires curl out of the ends of the arms as well, covered in the same lace of wax. The rest of the chair is solid red, smooth and polished to a dull shine. The seat is slightly concave, and the front curves out and down into a red claw on each front foot. Henry has begun to sculpt a pair of eyes on the back of the throne; they’re emerging from the wax, heavy lids, smooth like rocks you find at the bottom of a riverbed. The whole thing is fluid and sanguine, some large, distorted piece of flesh.
I look up at him. “You did all of this today?”
“Well, I only have a few weeks. And the wax had already come. So?”
“Interesting,” I say.
“Interesting?” mimics Henry. “You don’t mind if I keep it here indefinitely?”
“Well, how indefinitely?” When Henry cleaned out his studio in Halifax, he left a sculpture (inspired by sheep bowels, he said) in my living room for three weeks.
“Maybe it can be a new chair for the kitchen. I can make another one for you—matching thrones, king and queen of our basement studio suite?” He lifts my ponytail and kisses the back of my neck.
“No, no, no, kidding,” he laughs. “It will be out of here next week, when I get my studio space. I’ll get one of the keener undergrads to come by and give me a hand with it.”
“Thanks,” I say, putting my arm around his waist.
“So, how was your day with the crazies?”
I hop over his tools and clumps of newspaper and make my way to the kitchen table.
“Just kidding, cherry blossom.” He smiles at me and starts to clean the wax off his hands. “I know how you love them.”
“It was good,” I say. “Very good.”
“Ah—finally met your favourite subject?”
“I can’t discuss specifics.” I try to sit on one of the kitchen chairs, but there’s a foot of iron wire and some rags on the seat. I stand and fidget. I’m dying to share that I had time alone with Foster today. “You know, confiden—”
“Yeah, yeah. Confidentiality.” He pulls off his wax-streaked T-shirt, tosses it into the hamper and leans his tall frame against the bathroom door. “What do you want to do for supper?”
“Did you want me to go pick something up?”
“I can run out. I’ve been in here all day; I wouldn’t mind. Sit down, get dry.”
Everything except the kitchen table is covered with plastic and newspaper, or heaped with piles of magazines and boxes. “Is it okay to take the tarp off the bed now?”
He grabs his keys off the hook. Tosses them in the air and catches them, a metallic jingle as his palm snaps shut. “Most definitely take the tarp off the bed.” He takes an umbrella from the rack at the door. “Curry okay?”
“For sure.”
“Oh—you got some mail. It’s on the table. Back in a minute.”
Beneath an empty coffee cup on the kitchen table are two envelopes. I set aside the cup, pick up the letters, pull the tarp off a corner of the bed and sit down. One is from Stowmoor, confirming direct deposit of my paycheque in the bank. The second has a return address in the city, probably an office. Not junk mail. The envelope is maroon, and my name and address are handwritten in a yellow-gold ink. Inside, I find a card.
Danica,
You are hard to keep track of. I asked your supervisor, Carl, in Halifax, for your address—you do not mind? You know I am in London now? So you must meet me. Friday, September 27, at Tiger Tiger, 20:00. I have something new. My hair is blonde now, but you will still recognize me.
Maria
I reread it five times. The Portishead album ends, then starts again from the beginning, synthesizers and string instruments calling from the speakers. By the time Henry comes back with the food, I’ve tucked the card into the bottom of my purse.
Chapter Three
On Friday night the tube is full of tourists with street maps; they’re headed for Mamma Mia!, Dirty Dancing, Oleanna. A group of schoolboys cluster in the middle of the car, their light blue dress shirts untucked and wrinkly. The train jerks to a stop, then roars on again, dirty underground air pushed into a wind. A tall teenage boy presses the length of his body against the pole I’m holding. There’s no place to sit down or shift to, so I shimmy my hand up the bar away from the crush of his blue-shirted stomach to the gap between his shoulder and his cheek. On the up side, standing means I won’t wrinkle my outfit. Taupe linen skirt and a navy halter, backless. Beige iridescent heels.
The train pulls into Leicester Square and I step into the human river that flows from the underground. A woman with a dark bob and a full-length leopard-print trench coat pokes my arm on the escalator. “What time is it?”
“Quarter to eight,” I tell her. She pushes past me.
“Show’s starting soon!” she calls out, stilettos clacking against the tile at the top.
Tiger Tiger is a short walk from Leicester Square. I’ll be early. The Soho streets are congested with theatregoers, grey and black jackets over dress shirts, designer shoes hitting the cobblestones.
I pass a pub and decide to pop in to use the bathroom, but instead I gravitate towards the warm oak of the bar. I risk wrinkling my skirt, sit on a stool and tell the bartender I’ll have a gin and tonic. I flip the beer mat over and over, take a big breath and consider staying here for the rest of the evening.
“It’s happy hour, love. Four quid. You here alone?” The bartender sets my drink down. He has shaggy brown hair and looks like Noel Gallagher.
“Meeting someone later.” I hand him a five-pound note. He smiles and says he’ll be back. I drink half the highball in two swallows, gin fizz buzzing my nose.
I walk into Tiger Tiger at ten past eight. Dance music plays, and even though the floor won’t be full until m
idnight I still have to pay a twelve-pound cover. It’s early, but the speakers are pumping out an M.I.A. song about BMWs and Ibiza, backed by heavy synthetic bass. I turn left into the lounge, past a waterfall fountain that cascades down the wall. A few couples are nestled in the little booths scattered at the edges of the room. Candles flicker on the tables. A group of five young women are seated at a table in the middle of the space. They are drinking Bellinis, their long acrylic nails clicking against the large, round glasses. Two men, thirtyish—I imagine they’re businessmen who just wrapped a huge merger in the city—are having Stellas and staring at the girls.
Maria isn’t in sight; has she stood me up? She’s done it before. But then I see three tables at the far end, raised on a dais. The area is dark except for one small lamp hung from the ceiling. Two of the tables are empty, but a figure with blonde hair occupies the one farthest to the right. She’s facing away from me, but then she drapes her arm over the back of her chair and turns around. Automatically, I stand a little straighter. Maria smiles, and even in the low light her chandelier earrings shine.
I walk over to her. “Danica! Jó estét.” Maria greets me with two cheek kisses and a long hug. I take a slow breath and smell her gardenia perfume before she releases me. I linger, then pull away slowly. She’s wearing a low-cut black silk dress, and her hair falls in light waves past her shoulders. “You look wonderful,” she says.
“And you,” I reply. Maria is ten years older than me but is easily one of the most beautiful people in the room.
“Sit.” She points to the black upholstered bench across the table from her chair. There is a martini waiting for me, three olives.
“I didn’t think I’d hear from you again.” I wait a beat. “You know, after you left in Budapest.”
“Ah, Budapest. Nonsense.” She flicks her wrist, dismisses everything with a swish of her hand. “I ordered for you,” she says, gesturing towards the drink. “Send it back if a martini is not still your favourite.” She crosses her legs and takes a sip of her red wine.
“So,” says Maria, “you are working at Stowmoor? Your old supervisor, Carl, he tells me this.”
“Yes. Started a few weeks ago.”
“Have you met Foster?”
Is she just fishing or does she know I have? I stifle a smile, think how badly she would like to know about my tête-à-tête with Foster last week. “Can’t discuss that. Confidential.”
“But it’s only me, Dani.” She blinks her doll eyes a couple of times, blue irises bright next to dark liner and thick black lashes.
In the past this display might have swayed me. I’m still taken with the effect, but I say, “I can’t discuss it, Maria.”
“Fine. But I assume, then, there is something you could say.”
“Your note said you had something?” I sip my drink.
“Yes, that. Carl told me you have moved in with an artist. Living in Shepherd’s Bush. Not as trendy as you would hope?”
“Well, it’s kind of exciting. There was a murder in the park by the tube station last week. And the grocery is close by.”
She tries to make me feel like a ghetto-dwelling undergrad eating ramen noodles from a Styrofoam cup. How did she get all this information from Carl? I consider leaving. Maria leans back, re-crosses her legs, then leans forward again. She lowers her chin slightly, tilts her head and smiles.
“I have them, Danica. Báthory’s diaries.”
“You don’t!” How could she possibly have them? We’d found nothing in Budapest. The diaries were only rumoured to exist; there was a reference or two in old history books, a note that sixty years ago someone read a report that someone claimed to have seen them. It was harder still to find any information on where the diaries might currently be. But we’d decided to search.
“I could not take them from the library. But for three days, they let me read them.” Maria smiles, reaches for her silver clamshell purse and pulls out some lip gloss.
“What library? In the archives? How did you find them?”
When I was in Budapest, Maria had said the logical place to start was with the National Archives. We climbed up Castle Hill in mid-July heat; the archives office was in one of the grey stone buildings amid the spires and staircases. Maria led me through a wooden double door, down a hallway to a little office where three ladies worked at old cherry desks. Rows and rows of card catalogues lined the walls of the room. Maria spoke with the ladies for a few minutes. Finally, she turned to me with a translation: we’d need an exact catalogue number for any box we wanted to retrieve.
“How can we know what box we want?” I asked. “Where are the records of what’s in each box? Can’t they do a database search on the computer or something?”
“Dani, here it is different. The records, they are not all on computers.”
I looked around the office again. There was an old microfiche reader in the corner and a mid-nineties-looking PC on one of the ladies’ desks. “Are you serious? Where are the records, then?”
Maria waved at one of the card catalogue stacks.
“The entire archival records for the whole country are in card catalogues?”
“They have started, with the digitization. But for now, only paper records are complete. The ladies, they have said we can order up all the boxes of the Báthory family, and then we can look. But the diaries, there is no guarantee they will be in the boxes. They say people, before us, have tried to look and found nothing.”
I began to understand why no one had officially discovered the diaries. Still, if we put in the work and went through absolutely everything, maybe we could find them. “Well, how many boxes are there? When can we go through them?”
“They said there are perhaps fifty. But Dani, things here, they take time. The boxes, it will take four months for them to arrive.”
“Four months? Where are they?” I asked.
“They are in the storage cellars, below the castle. The archives, they are very large. Here, things are more complicated than I think you are used to, Dani,” she told me.
In the dim light of Tiger Tiger, I wait as Maria finishes dabbing clear shiny gloss onto her lips, rearranges her purse and snaps the clamshell shut before she answers me. “They were not there, where I looked at first. It was a bit challenging. It was necessary to speak to several people.”
“Who? Where were the diaries?”
“The diaries were not in the archives of the Báthory records. I consulted with some historians at the universities, in Budapest, then Szeged. The story, it is too long for tonight.”
Of course it is. “But you saw the diaries? You read them?”
“I transcribed them, and translated them.”
“Into English?”
At this, Maria laughed. “Always impatient! Now they are for the most part in modern Hungarian. But I have started on English copies and I have brought my transcripts here.”
“How long will you be in town?”
Another laugh. “I am here for many months. On contract with the Museum of London. Did you not notice my address on the card?”
“Yes, but—”
“I am consulting on the Jacob exhibition. But they do not work me too hard yet. I am thinking of using my spare time to write the diaries in English. After that, I will go with the original plan. Publish a modern edition.”
She finishes her wine, sets the glass on the table and looks at me without a shade of guilt. The original plan was for us to search for the diaries together.
“So you’ve started translating them already? How far along are you?” I had fantasized about pulling the diaries out of a long-neglected pile of manuscripts. I’d pictured Maria and I passing Báthory’s words between us, the paper she had touched.
I had been fixated on the idea of finding the diaries. It had become a cherished distraction from the requirements of my program, the jumping through hoops, the ferocity of Carl’s insistence that I compete for every possible award. One day I made the mistake of mentioning
to Carl that I had an interest in finding the manuscript and maybe contributing to an edition of the diaries. “That’s a vanity project, Danica,” he had said. “Chasing after a myth. Where is the scholarly merit? How much time would this take away from your training?”
Maybe it was vanity that had motivated me. The belief that I was entitled to a more interesting reality than an academic life could provide. Even now I’m angry with Maria for continuing the project without me. But still, I’m compelled; if she has them, I want to see them.
“The translations? I really have not gotten anywhere yet.” Her mobile beeps from her purse. She pulls it out. “Ah, text from Edward.”
I’ve drained my martini. Maria slowly packs her purse, picks her coat off the hook on the wall. She wraps the grey fur over her dress and pulls a black belt taut around her small waist.
“You’re leaving?”
“This place,” she tilts her head and sniffs, “it is not where I wish to spend a Friday night.” I take a second look, notice the frayed rayon seat covers and several blobby stains on the floor. The businessmen have accumulated a half-dozen empty beer bottles with labels half peeled.
I stand too. “But will you show them to me?”
“You would not think I would keep them from you?” she says as she pulls her hair out of her collar and lets it fall around her face. A man around my age walks onto the dais. “Ah, Edward,” she says and kisses him. “Danica, here is Edward. He is an arts columnist at the Guardian.”
“And sometimes I write for the less illustrious Time Out London, too,” he says. Edward is handsome, what you would expect for Maria. He’s immaculately groomed, and his chocolate-brown dress shirt complements deep brown eyes and a tan. “A pleasure,” he says, holding out one hand to me while keeping the other around Maria’s waist. I shake his hand half-heartedly and hear Maria introduce me as “a friend and colleague.”
“Dani, I will be in touch,” she says as she and Edward float down from the dais and across Tiger Tiger’s lounge.
Quiver Page 2
