Dark Angel

by Sally Beauman

  “Victoria—who put that mirror there? I thought I made it clear. I said: no mirrors.”

  The mirror, an eighteenth-century one, French, heavily carved and gilded, was fixed to the wall. Constance looked at it for some while. Next to her was a large and very valuable Chinese vase. Without another word she snatched up this vase and threw it straight at the mirror. Both smashed. Shards of glass flew in all directions. Someone—the client, I suppose—said:

  “What in hell is going on here?”

  Constance, having smashed both vase and mirror, began to pick up other objects. She hurled them about the room, a violent cascade of things: boxes, candlesticks, vases. Turning to an antique chair, she grabbed a shard of glass and began to rip its silk, then the muslin underlining, and finally the horsehair stuffing.

  She ripped the chair apart; she disemboweled it. The clients had left, of course, long before the chair was demolished. I knew they would never come back. This story—they were influential people—would be all over New York by evening.

  Constance was taken home to the apartment, to the full-time nurses. A new doctor was summoned. Two days passed; three. Finally, afraid, I confessed to Frank what had happened. I tried to explain the craziness of the scene. He heard me out, grim-faced, until I had finished. Then he took my arm.

  “Get your coat,” he said. “I want to show you something. Come with me, to the Institute.”

  “I want to show you your godmother,” he said, leading me into his laboratory. “One last time—I want to try to make you understand.

  “Look.” He forced me down into a chair. In front of me were two microscopes. “Look at these slides, and tell me what you see.”

  One last time: those words made me afraid. I could see the strength of emotion in his face, feel it when he touched me. That laboratory made me afraid, too, with its medical smells, its bluish influorescence. The floor tiles were white, each twelve inches square. Every object had its function; every slide, every test tube, its label. Precision instruments, all around us. I was afraid of laboratories, yes—those places where no inconsistencies except those of aberrant cells were permitted. There were no fine shadings here, and there could be no interpretation of facts: Either something was so, or it was not so. I could understand why Frank would say to me: Truth is simple.

  Reluctantly, I looked in turn down the two microscopes. Frank stood behind my chair. He said:

  “These are both blood samples, magnified many thousand times. The slide on the right contains a sample taken from a healthy body. The round shapes you can see are white cells; the ones like small sticks are a virus. You see how the white cells move? They are pursuing the virus, attacking it—disarming it, if you like. In a healthy body, there is this kind of war. It continues all the time. Whenever a virus, a germ, any source of infection enters the body, the body marshals the white cells to its defense.

  “Now, look in the left microscope. The sample in this case was taken from a person who is dying of leukemia. The cancer is advanced. What has happened, among other things, is that the body’s defense, its immune system, has broken down. More than that—it has defected. The white cells, which should be defending the body, are attacking it instead. The body is self-destructing.”

  He stopped. I straightened. He said, more gently:

  “Do you understand? I show you this because it is the only way I can explain. To me, that second slide is Constance.”

  “That’s a monstrous thing to say.”

  “I know. But it is what I believe. I am not as hard as you think—I can pity her, up to a point. I know there must be reasons why she is this way.” He stiffened. “I do not believe in the idea of pure evil. I think I do not. Nonetheless, I see her as evil—if not in herself, then in the effect she has on other people. I saw it in Montague Stern. The van Dynem twins. And I see it in us. At that point, I draw the line—and I do it now. I must do.” He hesitated, then continued: “I know you will not agree with this—but it is what I believe. You may blame my past, if you wish, but I think it is a mistake to imagine you can compromise with evil.”

  There was another silence. I could hear in his voice a plea, also pride, also the inflexibility of the idealist, an inflexibility deeply ingrained in his character. I thought: I suppose we had to come to this. It was inevitable. I measured those white tiles with my eyes: twelve inches, then another twelve inches.

  “May I say one more thing?” He leaned toward me. “In med school I worked with people who were dying, with people who wanted passionately to recover and to live. Young children. Men and women in their twenties or thirties—people who had families to support and protect. Fathers who wanted to survive, for the sake of a wife and a child. They were desperate to live. And I had to face them, knowing they would die. So you see, I do not react quite as you do when your godmother slits her wrists. She is not physically ill. She has every advantage. She has your love. She could have everything to live for. If she chooses to die—after a certain point—that is her decision. And it will be caused by the malignancy of her will.”

  “She is ill, Frank. What you say is not entirely true. Her mind is ill—”

  “Possibly,” he said shortly. “Sometimes I believe that. Sometimes I doubt it very much. There is some true weakness, and a great deal of pretense. I think she has now taken some grief—genuine grief—and developed it, nursed it into a major breakdown. She will continue to do that as long as it’s effective. We set a date for our marriage—she cuts her wrists. She throws vases and breaks mirrors. It is a little convenient, don’t you think, this great illness of hers? Its cycles are becoming quite predictable. I found it very strange this evening, when you described that dramatic collapse. It happened … two days ago? Yet when I had lunch with her today, she seemed in excellent health and spirits.”

  “You had lunch with Constance today?”

  “Yes. At her apartment. She invited me, and I went. She said she wanted to talk to me urgently. That was not the case. She wanted to give me this.”

  He held out to me a piece of paper. It was, I saw, a check, a check for a terrifying amount of money. It was made out to the Scripps-Foster Foundation. The ink was black, the strokes of the letters bold. I counted the zeroes.

  “It is a bribe, of course.” He gave a small shrug. “She suggested that the time had come for me to set you free. She explained we were unsuited, that I made you unhappy, that I interfered with your career, and that for a scientist, you would make an unsuitable wife. She suggested you would not like to live in a modest way, that it was something you had never had to do—and that it was selfish of me to expect you to do so. She said she knew my real priority was my work, and advised me, for my own well-being, to concentrate on that. This check was designed to help me do so. It will be honored when and if she sees results. You see—it is dated one month from now.”

  “She would … donate all this?”

  “So she said. She was perfectly lucid when she did so. However, now that you have seen it, I will tear it up. It is something I do not like to touch too much, this check, so you see, we will tear it up very small, into hundreds of pieces. There.”

  He scattered the fragments of the check upon the bench. Then he turned back to me.

  “Then—I am going to ask you one more thing.” He looked at me sadly. “Will you still marry me this week? Or will you want to postpone it again? I think you were about to suggest that, earlier this evening. I could see it in your face. No.” He made a gesture of the hand. “Don’t answer me, not yet. You should know, before you do answer—there is a condition attached.”

  “A condition?”

  “I will never—under any circumstances—see your godmother again. She took our letters. She wrote this check. She has behaved toward you in a way I will never forgive. Never. So—I draw a line. That is it.”

  “You will never see her again?” I stared at those floor tiles.

  “I will not see her. I will not have her in our house. If we have children—and I hop
e with all my heart—” He stopped himself. “I would like us to have children, and I would not wish them to meet her either. I would not feel safe, if they did.”

  “You’re banishing her,” I said slowly, still staring down at those tiles. I looked up. “You’re banishing her, Frank, just as my parents did. Do you realize that?”

  “Of course. When I was trying to decide … what to do … I thought of that. It made me feel sure I was right. I am doing this for you—as I suspect they did.”

  “And this condition”—I paused—“would it also apply to me? Am I not to be allowed to see her?”

  “You think I want to impose rules, restrictions?” He flushed. “You are unfair to me, I think. You must decide whether you will see her or not. I would ask … that you do not.”

  “Ask? Oh, I see. I do have some choice, then?” I stood. “That’s very good of you, Frank—to allow me free choice when it comes to seeing the woman I think of as my mother. The woman who brought me up—”

  “She is not your mother. The fact that you think of her as one—that is part of the problem.” He turned on me angrily and caught hold of my wrist. “She has behaved like a mother to you, has she? What kind of mother takes the letters two children write to each other? What kind of mother tries to buy a husband off? What else does she have to do to you before you find the courage to break from her? When you look at her, you’re blind—do you know that?”

  “You’re wrong. I am not blind.” I shook my wrist free. “And it’s not a question of courage. I won’t be … lectured like this—”

  “Lectured? This is a lecture?”

  “Brought in here, like a child, told to sit down like a child, made to look through a microscope. Told that you will marry me, but now there are conditions attached. Conditions—when it comes to marriage? I hate that. I despise that.”

  “Victoria, wait. You misunderstand. Listen—”

  “No. You listen. Constance is right in one respect. We are different. We don’t think alike—and we don’t feel alike. For you, it’s clear, precise, just like your work. Black and white. Right and wrong. It’s not like that for me. It doesn’t matter to me, you see, not in the final analysis, whether Constance is good or bad. Whichever she is—and she is both; she can be both—I love her. I can’t stop loving her because I disapprove of her—it doesn’t work like that. Morality doesn’t enter into it. No matter what she’s done, or been, I love her—unconditionally, the way a child loves a parent, or a parent a child. I can’t choose to stop because you tell me to do so. And I won’t marry someone who asks me to do that.”

  I stopped. Frank’s face had become white and set.

  “Ein dummes englische Mädchen,” I went on, more quietly. “Oh, Frank, can’t you see? You said that to me once, and there’s a part of you that still thinks of me in that way. It makes you impatient—I see it in your face. You think I’m being slow, stupid, that I won’t confront the obvious—but you’re wrong. I know I’m not clever in the way you are, but sometimes I understand things that you don’t. I’m not always blind. Sometimes, I do see things.”

  “And I do not? Is that what you mean?”

  “I mean you simplify. You try to make people conform to your beliefs. You fit them into categories: This one comes up to your ideals, or your principles, and that one fails.”

  “I love you,” he said, and I saw the shutters come down on his face. He turned away. “I love you—unconditionally. I thought you understood that.”

  “But you won’t change your mind? About Constance.”

  His back remained turned. There was a silence, of struggle and hesitation. Eventually he said:

  “No. I want our marriage to endure. I will not change my mind about that.”

  “You think Constance would endanger our marriage?”

  “I know, without a doubt, that she would.”

  There was one last silence. We both knew, I think, that we had reached an impasse. I looked at the particularly bleak cul-de-sac. If Frank had turned back to me then, or spoken or touched me, I know that I would have weakened and given in. I would have agreed to anything then, in order to stay with him. I am sure he knew that. For that reason, with a scrupulousness that was also a part of his character, he did not turn or touch or speak. It was my decision, and Frank, who counted ethics when he computed love, allowed me to make it as an adult should—on my own terms, in silence. Eventually I said:

  “Very well. That is that. I will go away. That would be best.”

  “Go away?” He turned then. I could not look at his face.

  “Go to France. Finish that commission. Concentrate on the European work for a while. I can do that.”

  “Work? I suppose there is always that.” He picked up one of the microscopes, then set it down in a hopeless way. “I suppose I can do that too. Work.” He paused. “I would give almost anything to prevent this—you do know that?”

  “Almost anything? Not your principles, Frank?”

  I regretted saying that the moment the words were out. He paled and turned away.

  “Well, my principles are rigid and inflexible—you have already told me that. I don’t want to argue. I don’t want to part from you with an argument—”

  “I’ll go then,” I said.

  I waited a few seconds more. I fiddled around with stupid but useful female accessories: gloves, a purse. Frank had turned away to the window. He did not look back. After a while, when silence had become distance, and that distance not traversable, I walked to the door.

  The last thing he said to me as I stepped out into the corridor was either a command or a plea. He said: “Don’t write. I’d rather not hope. Don’t write.”

  I went straight from the laboratory to Constance’s apartment. She was expecting me, I think. I could feel the electricity of that expectation crackling in the air.

  She had been eating dinner alone; when I came in, the maid was dismissed. Constance was beautifully and formally dressed, her face perfectly made-up. There was no sign of her illness. She ate, as was her custom, small things: a sliver of toast, a fragment of cheese, half a biscuit, a few purple grapes.

  It was the last meeting I was to have with her (I had already decided that) and it was brief. I sat there in that overcrowded, overburdened, lacquered room, a Chinese box of a room, while Constance chattered away: inconsequence, this and that. I scarcely heard a word she said. I thought of her, and of Frank. The two people I most loved in the world, both attempting in different ways, and for very different motives, to force me to make a choice. Either/or. In choosing neither, I felt no sense of achievement, no renewal of confidence. I felt numb, and I felt bleak.

  “Constance,” I said, when I could bear the chatter no longer, “why did you take our letters?”

  A little color rose in her cheeks. I might have expected denials and protestations, but I should have known—Constance was better than that; she was quicker than that.

  “You found one? I know you went through my things.” She paused. “I should like to say—I opened only one. The last one. I destroyed the others, unread.”

  “Constance, that doesn’t make it any better. It was a wicked thing to do. It was cruel.”

  “I know that.”

  “Then why did you do it?” I paused. “I’m leaving, Constance. I’m leaving you, and Frank. I will never come back here, and I won’t see you again. So before I go, I want to know: Why would you do such a thing as that?”

  “I’m not sure.” She seemed to consider the matter. “I have always found it difficult to account for my own actions. Other people always seem so very sure. They did it for this reason; they did it for that. I always feel there are a multitude of reasons—and they may change from day to day—”

  “Constance, I’ve heard all that before. Why did you do it?”

  “Well, I think I did it for you. Also for myself—I would not deny that. I was jealous, perhaps. But mainly for you. I was looking ahead—to the future, you see. You set such store by that f
riendship, and I said to myself: Oh, that is very sad. Poor Victoria. She will be let down by this great friend of hers. He will grow bored by this correspondence, or he will forget her, or he will die—she will be disillusioned in time, and disappointed, as women are always disappointed by men. I wanted to spare you that. You see …”

  She began to gesture, with those tiny glittering hands. There was a slight return of agitation.

  “You see—you had put all your trust in him. I could see that. And that is always a mistake. Never do that, Victoria. It’s like shutting yourself in a prison, throwing away the key. The more you care for someone, the more—in the end—they disappoint you. Men are better at knowing this than women. They spread their bets. Whereas we—all for love. It is our greatest failing.”

  “Constance, I was a child, writing to a friend, in wartime—”

  “Ah, but an unusual friend. A friend with unusual powers. A boy who could smell blood, and war, in a wood. Maybe it was that which made me take against him.”

  “Why should that be? You liked that story. You told me.”

  “My father died in that place.” She turned away her face. “I never liked that story.”

  I knew there was no point in pursuing it further. All I would get would be more ingenious explanations, explanations that would spiral away, advance, then double back. I stood up. Constance at once became alert.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I told you, Constance. I’m leaving.”

  “You can’t leave. We need to talk.”

  “No. You talk too much. You always did. I don’t want to listen anymore.”

  “You can’t go. I’m still ill. I’m not well yet.”

  “You’ll have to get well without my assistance, Constance. I’m sure you can. Oh, and you should know: Frank tore up that check.”

  “How high-minded of him! But then he is high-minded, and it does rather show. Was that why you decided not to marry him?”

  “No. I admire him, and I love him, Constance. It had nothing to do with that. I’ll go now.”

  She gave a sudden gesture of alarm; she rose to her feet. “You’re not really going? You will come back?”