“A mermaid, you said.”
A mermaid.
She was very absolutely white, not dead white, but live white. Moon white. And her body had a sort of faint pale bluish freckling, like the moon does, only she wasn’t harsh, like the moon, but soft and limpid. And her skin melted into the blue-silver scales of her tail. It was a strong tail, and the fork of the fins was strong. Vigorous. Her hair was strong too, it reminded me of the brush of a fox or a weasel or ermine—but it was a pale green-blonde, and it waved and coiled, and moved on its own, or it was stirring in the breeze-currents of the water-air. And it was like currents and breezes itself, a silvery bristly silky fur-wind of hair. Her face though was still, as if it was carved like a beautiful mask, and her great still eyes were night black. She had a coronet. She was naked. She had a woman’s breasts, the nipples watercolour-rose like her mouth. But you couldn’t desire her. Well, I couldn’t. She was—like an angel, Anton.
You can’t desire an angel. I’ve heard the old church fathers said the mermaid was supposed to represent lust and fornication. But she wasn’t like that. She was holy.
The funniest thing is, I looked at her a while and then, as if I’d no need to linger, as if the marvellous was commonplace and easy, I just turned and went off for a stroll. And on the esplanade I met Jitka, and I said, “Did you see the mermaid?” and Jitka said, “Oh yes, I’ve seen her.” It was like being gone to heaven and you say, Have you seen God today, and they answer, But of course, He’s everywhere, here. Then we danced. I don’t know a thing about Jitka, but her father’s dead, I’d take a bet on that.
The rich man was a soldier, did I say? The old couple are in the hospital. I don’t know how they get out, but maybe everyone that doesn’t wake up just can’t wake up. And they get strong those Nights, they told me. It’s the cruise, they said, this bracing cruise on this liner that’s sailing to the East, India or China or somesuch. And there’s a little boy I see now and then. And a woman and her sister—
I do think some of them are beginning to cotton on it’s not a dream. But that doesn’t matter. Nor who we are, we precious few, we’re nothing, there and then. We’re simply The Awake.
* * *
—
Ercole had ceased to speak. They must have sat speechless, unmoving, Gregeris thought with slight dismay, for ten minutes or more.
“So you see a mermaid?” Gregeris asked now, businesslike.
“No. That was the last Night. I saw her that once. I haven’t Woken since. Which means there hasn’t been a Night. I don’t think there has. Because I think, once you start, you go on Waking.”
“You didn’t speak to the mermaid. Stroke her.”
“Come on, Anton. I wouldn’t have dared. Would you? It would have been a bloody cheek. I could have dropped dead even, if I touched her. Think of the shock it would be, like sticking your hand on the sun.”
“Take off thy shoes from thy feet, this ground is holy.”
“Yes, exactly that, Anton. You have it. By the way, you know, don’t you, why God says that, in the Bible? It’s to earth you, in the presence of galvanic might. Otherwise you’d go up in smoke.”
Gregeris rose.
“I must get on. I’ll be late for my appointment.” He put another of the cheerful notes on the table. “It was an interesting story. You told it well.”
The beggar grinned up at him. His face was fat now, bloated by beer and talk, by importance, power.
“But, where does the town go to at night?” he repeated. “More to the point, why does the town come back at dawn?”
“Yes, a puzzle. Perhaps enquire, the next time.”
Gregeris reached the awning’s edge. Instinctively, perhaps, he glanced across the square at the plinth of King Christen’s fallen statue. In his mind’s eye, transparent as a ghost, he visualized the mermaid, reclining in the opal moonlight, relaxed and thoughtful, her living hair and flexing tail.
It was only as he turned and began to walk quickly inland, that Ercole called after him. “Anton! It’s tonight.”
* * *
—
The Flat House had been stylish in the 1700s, he thought, about the time of the heyday of the clock. Now it was grimy, the elegant cornices chipped and cracked and thick with dirt, and a smell of stale cabbage soup on the stairs.
He rang the bell of her apartment, and Marthe came at once. She confronted him, a thin woman who had been slender and young twelve years ago, her fair hair now too blonde, and mouth dabbed with a fierce red which had got onto her front teeth.
“You’re so late. Why are you so late? Was the train delayed? I was worried. I have enough to worry about. I thought you weren’t coming, thought you’d decided to abandon us completely. I suppose that would be more convenient, wouldn’t it? I can’t think why you said you’d come. You could just send me another money order. Or not bother. Why bother? It’s only me, and him. What do we matter? I’ve been just pacing up and down. I kept looking out of the window. I got some ice earlier for the wine but it’s melted. I smoked 20 cigarettes. I can’t afford to do that. You know I can’t.”
“Good evening, Marthe,” he said, with conscious irony.
To Gregeris it sounded heavy-handed, unnecessarily arrogant and obtuse. But she crumpled at once. Her face became anxious, pitiable and disgusting. How had it been he had ever—? Even twelve years ago, when she was a girl and he a younger man and a fool.
“I’m sorry. Forgive me, Anton. It’s my nerves. You know how I get. It was good of you to come.”
“I’m sorry, too, to be so late. I met an old business acquaintance at the station, a coincidence, a nuisance, an old bore who insisted we have a drink. He kept me talking. And of course, I couldn’t make too much of it, of being here, or anything about you.”
“No, no, of course.”
She led him in. The apartment wasn’t so bad, better than her last—or could have been. Everywhere was mess and muddle. The fairground knickknacks, some clothes pushed under a sofa cushion. Stockings hung drying on a string before the open window, the ashtrays were as always. Twenty cigarettes? Surely a hundred at least. But there was the cheap white wine in its bucket of lukewarm water. And she had made her bed. She had said she gave the bedroom over to the boy.
“How is Kays?”
“Oh—you know. He’s all right. I sent him for some cigarettes. Oh, he wanted to go out anyway. He’ll be back in a minute. But—I know—you don’t like him much.”
“What nonsense, Marthe. Of course I like him. He’s only a child.”
Taking him by surprise, as she always did for some reason, when she flared up, she shrilled, “He’s your son, Anton.”
“I know it, Marthe. Why else am I here?”
And again, the shallow awful victory of her crumbling face.
Once he had sat down, on a threadbare seat, the glass of tepid vinegar in his hand, she perched on the arm of the sofa and they made small talk.
And why had he come here? The question was perfectly valid.
It would have been so much simpler to send her, as she said, a cheque. That too, of course, was draining, annoying. Keeping it quiet was sometimes quite difficult, too. He was generally amazed no one had ever found him out, or perhaps they had and didn’t care. His brief liaison with this woman had lasted all of two weeks. Two months later, when she reappeared, he had known at once. It was damnable. He had taken every precaution he could, to protect both of them from such an accident. He wondered if her pregnancy owed nothing to him at all, he was only a convenient dupe. The story-telling beggar, Ercole, had had him to rights, Gregeris thought, bourgeois politeness and the fear of a sordid little scandal. It was these which had made him set Marthe up in the first flat, made him pay her food bills and her medical expenses. And, once the child was born, had caused him to try to pay her off. But however much he awarded her, in the end, she must always come cr
eeping back to him, pleading penury. Finally he began to pay her a monthly sum. But even that hadn’t been the end of it. Every so often, she would send a frantic letter or telegram—and these, if ignored, had on two occasions persuaded Marthe to appear in person, once with the child (then a snivelling, snotty eight-year-old, clinging to her hand), in the doorway of Gregeris’s mother’s house, during her 60th birthday dinner.
That time Gregeris had considered having Marthe, and very likely the boy, murdered. Just as he had, for a split second, considered murdering her himself that day by the canal when she announced, “You’ve put me in the family way, Anton. Fixed me up, good and proper, and you’re the only one can set me right. Oh, not an abortion. I won’t have that. One of my friends died that way. No, I need you to look after me.”
And probably, thought Gregeris now, sipping the dying (really unborn) wine, only bourgeois politeness and the fear of a scene, that which had passed Marthe off to his mother as an “employee,” had also saved her neck.
“I’m sorry about the wine,” she fawned. “Of course, I could have asked you to bring some, but I didn’t like to”—now fawning, slipping seamlessly to accusation—“it would have been nicer than what I can afford, though, wouldn’t it? I can see you don’t like this one. It was better cold. If you’d come sooner.”
Poor bitch, he thought. Can’t I even spare her a few hours, some decent food and drink? She’s got nothing, no resources, she can barely even read. And I need only do this, what? Once or twice a year…once or twice in all those days and nights. He glanced at her. She had washed and was not too badly dressed, her bleached hair at least well brushed. Somehow she had even got rid of the lipstick on her teeth.
“When the boy comes back, why don’t I take you to dinner, Marthe?”
Oh God. She flushed, like a schoolgirl. Poor bitch, poor little bitch.
“Oh yes, Anton, that would be such fun…But I can’t leave Kays.”
“Well, bring Kays. He can eat dinner too, I suppose?”
“Oh no, no, I don’t think we should. He gets so restless. He’s so—awkward. He might embarrass you.” Gregeris raised his brows. Then he saw she wanted to be alone with him. Perhaps she had some dream of reunion, or even of lovemaking. She would be disappointed.
At this moment the door to the flat opened, and his son walked in.
My son. The only son, so far as he knew, that he had. Kays.
“Good evening, Kays. You seem well. How are you going on?”
“All right.”
Marthe looked uncomfortable, but she didn’t reprove or encourage the monosyllabic, mannerless little oaf. Come to think of it, her own social graces weren’t so marvellous.
As usual at a loss with children, “How is your school?” Gregeris asked stiffly.
“Don’t go.”
“Don’t you? You should. Learn what you can while you have the chance—” The wry platitudes stuck in Gregeris’s throat. It was futile to bother. The boy looked now less sullen than—what was it? Patient. Bored, by God.
What was that quaint adjective Gregeris had thought of for the sea? Sulk-blue, that was it. The boy’s eyes were sulk-grey. Nearly colourless. Pale uneven skin, he would get spotty later no doubt, and perhaps never lose it, greasy tangled hair and unclean clothes that probably smelled. The child would smell, that unwashed-dog odour of unbathed children, redolent of slums everywhere. Like the beggar…
Take this child to dinner? I don’t think I will. The mother was bad enough, but in some gloomy ill-lit café it would be tolerable. But not the weedy, pasty, morose brat.
My son. Kays. How can he be mine? He looks nothing like me. Not even anything like Marthe.
(For a moment, Gregeris imagined the boy’s life, the woman leaning on him, making him do her errands, one minute playing with his dirty hair—as now—then pushing him off—as now. Always surprising him by her sudden over-sentimental affections and abrupt irrational attacks—perhaps not always verbal, there was a yellowish bruise on his cheek. And the school was doubtless hopeless and the teachers stupid and perhaps also sadistic.)
This was the problem with coming to see her, them. This, this thinking about her, and about Kays. The town by the sea should have taken them far enough away from Gregeris. It had required three hours for him to get here.
“Well, Kays.” Gregeris stood over him.
The top of the child’s crown reached the man’s rib cage. The child’s head was bowed, and raised for nothing. “Here, would you like this?” Another cheerful note. Too much, far too much—someone would think the boy had stolen it. “Your mother and I are going out for some air. A glass of wine.”
And she chirruped, “Yes, Kays, I’ll take you over to Fat Anna’s.”
After all the boy’s head snapped up. In his clutch the lurid money blazed, and in his eyes something else took pallid fire.
“No.”
“Oh yes. You like Fat Anna’s.”
“Don’t want to.”
“Don’t be a baby, Kays. Fat Anna will give you pancakes.”
“No, she doesn’t. No, not now.”
Held aside in a globe of distaste, Gregeris watched the venomous serpent rise in Marthe and glare out from her eyes. “You’ll do as I say, d’you hear?” The voice lifted, thin and piercing as the doorbell. “Do as I say, or I’ll—” Checking now, not to reveal herself as hard or spiteful, unfeminine, unpleasant, before the benefactor—“Be a good boy,” tardy wheedling, and then her hand gripping on the thin arm, working in another, dark-then-fade-yellow bruise. “I don’t see your Uncle Anton, except now and then. He’s too busy—”
Kays was crying. Not very much, just a defeated dew of tears on the white cheeks. But he made no further protest, well lessoned in this school at least.
Later, in the restaurant, among the nearly clean tablecloths, the wax stains and smell of meat sauce, Marthe confessed, “Anna locks him in the small room, she has to, he runs away. But I have to have him protected, don’t I, when I’m not there—?”
Gregeris had helped escort the prisoner to the woman’s tenement cave in one of the nastier streets. Marthe was often out, often away, at night. Or, more likely, often had company in at night. (The boy shoved in the bedroom and warned not to leave it.) It had been a man’s shirt pushed under the sofa cushion. What a curious article to leave behind. Had Gregeris been meant to notice it?
* * *
—
He had intended to return that night to the city. But when he got free of Marthe it was almost ten, and Gregeris felt he was exhausted. The dinner, naturally, had been a mistake. They had parted, she with false sobs, and acrimony, Gregeris restrained, starchy, and feeling old.
What on earth had they said to each other? (Her excuse for demanding Gregeris’s presence had been some conceivably invented concern over Kays, that he slept poorly or something like that. But presently she said that he often ran away, even at night. And then again she said that she thought Kays was insane—but this was after the second bottle was opened.)
Otherwise, the conversation had been a dreary complaining recital of her burdensome life, leaving out, as he now thought, her casual encounters with other men, her possible prostitution. When at last he had been able to pay the bill and put her in a taxi-cab for the flathouse, her face was for an instant full of dangerous outrage. Yes, she had expected more. Was used to more.
After this, surely, he must keep away from her. During the meal, watching her scrawny throat swallowing, he had again wondered, with the fascination of the dreamer who could only ever fantasize, how much of a challenge it would be to his hands.
He found quite a good hotel, or his taxi found it for him, on the tree-massed upper slope of the hill. It nestled among the historic mansions, a mansion once itself, comfortable and accommodating for anyone who might afford it. Thank God for money and hypocrisy, and all those worthless things whi
ch provided the only safety in existence. He must never visit Marthe again. Or the awful boy, who surely could now only grow up to be a thug, or the occupant of some grave.
Gregeris took a hot bath and drank the tisane the hotel’s housekeeper had personally made for him. He climbed into the comfortable, creaking bed. Sleep came at once. Thank God too for such sleep, obedient as any servant.
* * *
—
Gregeris woke with a start. He heard a clock striking, a narrow wire of notes. Was it midnight? Why should that matter to him?
He sat up, wide awake, full of a sensation of anxiety, almost terror—and excitement. For a moment he could not bring himself to switch on the lamp. But when he did so, his watch on the bedside table showed only eleven. He had slept for less than a quarter of an hour, yet it had seemed an eternity. The confounded clock in the square had woken him. How had he heard it, so far up here, so far away sound had risen, he supposed.
In any case, it was the beggar, that scavenger Ercole, with his tales of midnight and the town and the sea, who had caused Gregeris’s frisson of nerves.
Gregeris drank some mineral water. Then he got up and walked over to the window, drawing back the curtains. The town lay below, there it was, stretching down away from the hill to the flat plain of the sea. There were fewer lights, all of them low and dim behind their blinds, only the street lamps burning white, greenish-white, as Ercole had said. The clock-tower, the square, were hidden behind other buildings.
When did the town, that part of the town beyond the hill, which went sailing, set off? Midnight, Gregeris deduced. That would be it. And so the motion would gradually wake those ones who did wake, by about a quarter past. After all, that hour, between midnight and one in the morning, was the rogue hour, the hour when time stopped and began again, namelessly, like a baby between its birth and its first birthday—not yet fully realized, or part of the concrete world.
The Big Book of Modern Fantasy Page 128
