by Tanith Lee
Chapter Eighteen
In the delicately cut-out line of slate and dove-coloured houses, one house was a dark warm pink. It shone, in the last of the bleak day, down into the canal, like a warm sun.
How misleading.
It was a cold house, for when she had had it internally modernized three decades before, Sofie had not wished for central heating. Electric fires lit her rooms, but other rooms, and the stairs, were glaciers.
Some charm had been left the house, inside. Some of the floors sloped, the ceilings, the stairs themselves were eccentric and tortuous, though carpeted in thick black pile. But the walls were painted red, mauve, there were large modern paintings like broken eggs and slashed arteries—she would never have admitted that, or to the use of extreme colour. The house was ‘up to date’—she used the English expression.
The young man left the car, and stood on the cobblestones as the vehicle drove off. Bare trees clawed after the vanished summer. Soon enough it would freeze. There would be skaters on the canals.
Amsterdam smelled of cold, car fumes, some vague whisper of the sea.
When he had gone up the blunt steps, he put down his bag, and rang the bell.
He waited, immobile. Sofie’s servant, Grete, would take a while to come. She was old and obstreperous. She gossiped to Sofie alone, and sometimes broke things. Sofie would laugh. She could always buy more.
Then there was audible a kind of heavy immanence, not Grete’s, and the door sprang open.
A man was there. He wore jeans, a checkered pullover, and a leather coat. Quite tall, thickly built, muscle losing tone. A mop-head of long-short yellowish hair. The face had features, but that was all, culminating in two small light eyes.
‘Hi. Who’re you?’
An American.
The visitor said, ‘Where is Sofie?’
‘Sofie? Uh, Sofie. Here she comes now.’
The other man looked past the bulk in the door, over the black carpeted hallway with its bronze statue of a twisted intestine. Sofie stood on the stair.
She said, ‘Johanon. Why have you come back?’
‘I will tell you later.’
She was surprised, but she knew who he was. No doubt, no faltering, though she had not seen him like this for a lifetime. More. Her son. Her son who had come to her last in women’s clothes, and with women’s cosmetics on his face. She had called him Johanon then, also. The name she had given him at the first. He had long ago ceased to tell her it was not a name he used. She had never never fallen, stooped into his filth to call him Althene.
‘Won’t you speak in front of Bus, then?’
‘No, Mother.’
‘You must. Bus is my companion.’
Johanon looked at Bus. Bus found some problem in meeting the cold black eyes, but he was armed, Bus, quite well. Sofie had just put the weapon in his hands.
‘Oh, so you’re the faggot, huh?’
‘Get out of my way.’
Bus involuntarily stepped back. Then he swaggered.
‘Sure, baby, sure. Don’t want ya to chip a nail.’
Sofie, composed, retained her height.
She was a small woman, with the body of a voluptuous dancer, large breasted, with dainty bony hands, a slim flexible throat. She appeared to be thirty, thirty-one. Her shoulder-length hair was expertly bleached and streaked. Her eyes, a pale green-blue, were rounded. An owl with a snake’s neck. She wore a plain modern navy dress and a piece of contemporary jewellery, a sort of collection of talons in silver, on her wrist.
‘Why is he still here?’ Johanon said, in Dutch.
She said, ‘Please talk English, Johanon. Bus doesn’t speak Dutch.’
‘Does he speak English then?’
Sofie made a face. Her round eyes became more round.
‘Bus is my friend,’ she said in English.
‘They wanted you,’ said Johanon, in English, ‘to choose another friend.’
‘Hey, hey,’ said Bus.
Sofie said, ‘Come into the salon.’
They went up, Sofie, Johanon, Bus. Bus whistled tunelessly and made little gestures, as if checking himself from pinching Johanon’s bottom.
The salon was on the first floor, a big room with two scarlet walls, one peach, and one black. An ‘up-to-date’ chandelier hung down, owl-taloned like the bracelet.
Bus threw himself on to a black leather couch with diamond-shaped neon-yellow cushions.
The electric fire was burning, a strange shape with a black-marble surround. There were spotlights picking out sculptures, a single hot-house lily in a vase like a drain.
‘Sit down,’ Sofie said. She sat beside Bus, and reached out and took his hand. He allowed this, chuckling.
Then Sofie screamed. She screamed for Grete.
‘Jesus, for a little gal, you’ve sure got a big voice.’
Johanon sat in a stainless-steel chair.
The room was not ‘up to date’. It was by now historical.
‘Well, Johanon, what do you want?’
‘To speak to you alone, Mother.’
‘I’ve said you can’t. I want Bus here.’
‘This isn’t about the family. At least, it has nothing to do with your relationship with this man.’
‘Hey, hey,’ said Bus.
Sofie said, ‘They’ve tried to poison me with lies. They must leave me alone.’
‘This family,’ said Bus. ‘It’s these old—uh—vampires, huh?’ He smiled. His teeth were good strong caps.
Johanon said nothing.
Grete came in. She glared at Johanon. Did she recognize him? Perhaps not.
‘Ja,’ said Grete.
‘Bring us tea.’
‘You got a beer?’ asked Bus.
‘And some cold beer for Bus.’
‘Ja,’ said Grete.
She peered at Johanon, and then her brows went up. She had fathomed it. If Sofie was an owl, Grete was a fat vulture. She turned and plodded out.
‘No, but tell me, Pussy,’ said Bus to Johanon, ‘about these Scarabae.’ He pronounced it wrongly, Scarabye.
Johanon sat still. He looked at Bus, but Bus would not be caught. His slimy eyes slid off.
‘I’ve told you the truth of it,’ Sofie said, ‘they’re hundreds of years old. They live on blood and unkindness. I have only half their corrupt genes. But I’m older than I look.’
‘You look just great, honey.’
‘Oh, but that’s a family trait. I’ve never assaulted you, Bus, have I?’
‘Wouldn’t let ya, baby.’
Sofie said insistently, ‘I’ve never tried, Bus.’
Johanon said, ‘Yes, Mother. I know you’ve told him all these interesting tales of the family. I know too about the ring you gave him which he pawned on the Amstelstraat. And how the family got it back. I know too he spreads your stories all over the junk areas of the city, where he goes for the porn and the girls, and in the cafés where he smokes dope with other Americans. You met by night. That is excusable, perhaps. The rest, not. But we’ve had this conversation before.’
‘I oughta tell you, ass-hole—’ said Bus.
‘You ought to tell me you are leaving.’
Bus got up. He flexed his softening body.
He came and stood over Johanon.
‘Wanta try me, sweet-cakes?’
Sofie said, ‘Bus, stay here with me.’
‘Sure, sure. I guess this feller ain’t gonna do nothing but yap.’
Bus swung off around the room. He paused by a steel cabinet. Inside were three priceless matted convolutions.
Johanon said in Dutch, ‘Sofie, I’m here to talk about my father.’
Sofie’s face became a colourless plate. Even her eyes seemed to lose their dye. She brought up her hands and held her neck. She cried out, ‘Bus—Bus—don’t leave me.’
And Bus looked round again, and at Johanon.
‘Hey, you just wanta make trouble. Well I have an idea.’ Bus smiled, ‘Why don’t you go blow out your ass.’
‘Get rid of him,’ Johanon said in Dutch.
Sofie got up, and ran out of the room. Her soft satin shoes made no sound on the carpet, she was only gone.
Bus shrugged.
He sidled back across the room, sat down on the leather sofa.
‘Kind of hysterical, your mom. That’s why she likes me. Needs me. Let’s keep this friendly. She looks good for her age. What is she, forty-six? Great surgery. We get on fine.’
Johanon stood up.
Bus licked his lips and rose also.
‘Hey.’
‘Do let’s keep it friendly,’ said Johanon, ‘since she would prefer it. There is the door.’
Bus leaned forward. He said very low, ‘Why don’t ya just go up and do your famous thing, like she told me. Put your dress on. Go on. I’d like to see ya. I bet you look real good as a dame. Let your hair down. A bit of lip rouge and mascara — fish-nets—
Johanon’s left hand took Bus back-handed across the centre of the face. Bus rolled and blood burst from his nose like thick raspberry juice.
‘Uh Jesus—uh Christ—’
‘Now get out. Keep away three days. I’ll be gone by then. What the two of you do after that is your affair.’
‘Uh, my loving nose—you broke it—’ Bus kneeled sobbing on the black carpet, into which the raspberry blood plopped invisibly.
Grete entered. She looked at Bus, then came around him and plumped the tray of silver octagonal tea service and iced beer, rattling, on a table.
Bus said, ‘I want a fucking doctor.’
Grete grinned. She stayed still. ‘Ja.’
Johanon said, ‘She will dislike it if I kill you, American. But I will kill you. Now I know her carpet won’t show the blood.’
Bus looked up around his running doughnut of a nose. He was scared.
Grete cackled. ‘Ja,’ she said.
Bus got up. He stumbled out. Unlike Sofie, they heard his crashing rumbling descent, and then the thud of the door, which shook through the old standing wood of the house frame.
He left the tray of tea and beer, and walked up through the cold pink house, up to the curled stem of corridor with her bedroom in it.
At the door, Johanon said her name.
‘No,’ she said, behind it.
Then I’ll wait in your salon.’
‘Go away. You frightened him away. I want my friend, my Bus.’
‘He isn’t yours, Mother. He belongs to several. He gives them your money and the jewels you had no right to part with.’
‘They were mine!’
‘To keep. To give among the Scarabae.’
‘Go to hell, you foul monster. You—thing—’
‘Sofie, I’d go away gladly. But there are questions I must ask.’
‘No, no.’
He descended the house again, and drank the tea in the salon. Grete stood in the corner, under the lily in the drain, like a dummy.
‘Will you get the attic room ready. The room she gives me.’
‘Ja.’
Grete did not move, and then she came across, and lifted up one of the two cans of beer that had been meant for Bus. Ice had turned to water. She raised the can and drank it down.
She clumped out.
There had not been so much Sofie could, or could see how to, do to the attic. The ceiling sloped to windows that gazed across the darkening canal. (Lamps, fireflies in the water, flickering on the slope above his head.)
Above Johanon’s head.
The room was white, and freezing. The bed had not been seen to. A mattress, one pillow without a case.
She had lost interest in this high place, and so she had put her son here.
He lay on the bed, in the bloom of the dark, and watched water-lamp-light ripple above.
His body had not entirely recovered from the blow that had burst his appendix and perforated a small part of his colon. It would do so. But still, he was not as strong as he would come to be.
He lay and looked up.
It was worse than that.
Althene—she—was his armour, his soul externalized, and put upon him like an iron flower.
That poor lily—Althene would have plucked it out, set it in some frosted green bottle. But he was not Althene, not now.
Sofie would grow calm.
She had been very savage. Usually after her savagery, she became soft, amenable sometimes.
Poor bloody bitch.
Tired, he closed his eyes and slept a little.
At about nine, Sofie scratched on the door.
‘Johanon—will you come down and eat with me? No, not Grete’s cooking. I’ve sent out. An Italian meal.’
He told her he would, and went into the bathroom that led from the attic bedchamber. There were no towels, no soap. He used what he had brought with him, brushed his teeth.
He let down his black hair, not looking, and bound it back again, off his face.
Always, in some form, with a parent the child becomes again a child, be he thirty or three-hundred years of age.
‘Courage,’ he said. One of Althene’s stances blossomed, and he put it aside. He would not think of her, or of Rachaela, or of Anna, at any depth. There was not the time.
Sofie was in the dining room.
It was a small area, windowless. It had been a great closet. Now it was done in magenta with a gargoyle of a glass table resting on a hunched column of brass.
The meal though was simple but aromatic; fresh rolls, spaghetti and sauces with basil and walnuts, spinach pancakes, amber cheeses, and a large decanter of red wine uncomfortably made like a pair of buttocks. Once in the tubular glasses this mattered less. It was a good wine, very drinkable.
Sofie wore an evening dress. She would. But she looked beautiful, perhaps, her hair brushed up, and the white gown off her shoulders, showing a few inches of bosom, which Althene, naturally, could never do.
But Sofie was not sparring with him.
No, she had attained her apologetic, rationally minded stage.
She toasted him in Latin, an old wish: ‘May a goddess sit at your side.’
He bowed. He said in Dutch, ‘Wear your garland, fair lady, roses and the vine.’
They ate in silence, save when she said how impossible Grete’s culinary efforts were, and spoke of a terrible day when Grete had burnt a piece of pork, and the house had filled with the stench, and even on the canal those in boats had looked up. He laughed.
When they had reached the cheeses and some fresh figs, she said, ‘Please try to understand about the American.’
‘I’ll attempt to.’
‘Yes, he’s deceived me. But—I’m lonely. And the family—’
‘You hate them. Or you distrust them.’
It was Rachaela. Half Scarabae, Sofie was this too. She had spent her extended life running to them and rushing away.
‘Well, they don’t always treat me well. This business. I was angry with you when you were here last. Bringing you to me, my own son, to make me change my ways. But I’ll get rid of him. Yes. I will.’
Then she looked at him through the ruby lorgnette of the wine, coquettishly. ‘But I admire you now. You’re a man, now. Has she done this, your lover?’
‘No, Mother. Something else.’
‘Well, it’s good, Johanon. Good.’
He did not say anything, and she did not press.
She only said again, after a while, ‘Bus bores me. I shall get rid of him.’
After the meal, Grete came in, her fat-ringed neck thrust forward, and cleared it all, and set down Jenever, brandy, tea, and little sweets in silver paper.
When she was gone, he said, ‘I don’t want to hurt you.’
‘Oh, don’t you?’ It was said without challenge, only wonderingly.
‘Sofie, I never would.’
‘No. I’m glad. Sometimes I’ve been afraid.’
‘Sofie, I need your help now. I must—I have to ask you to speak of him.’
‘Of whom?’ she asked, innocent
, a little girl.
The little girl who could make him back into a little boy, nine years old, shivering with anguish, struck by rods—no, he must not think of this.
Times change, as well as fly.
‘Sofie, I mean Cajanus. The man you told me fathered me.’
She dropped her eyes and gripped her hands about her square glass of brandy.
‘Please. No, no.’
‘My daughter was stolen. Anna. I told you about my daughter. And, from what I’ve learned—I believe now—he took her. But I know nothing of him. Where he is—some stories. We search for him and only high dark walls are there, I can’t find him. And I want him, Mother. Give him to me.’
She darted up a glance with a sparkle of her turquoise eyes.
She said, ‘You’d make me do it.’
‘I have to make you do it.’
‘Why?’
‘A clue, Mother. A way through the labyrinth.’
‘But—it was—hundreds—so many years ago—’
He reached across and took her small thirty-year-old hand.
‘It’s all I have. Don’t deny me.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Sofie, you are Scarabae.’
‘No. I reject them.’
‘You can’t, Sofie.’ He said softly, ‘Your beauty is Scarabae. Your youth. Tell me.’
She said, ‘Very well. But first I must go out for a moment.
I promise, I’ll come back.’
It was her immemorial way of excusing herself for some bodily function.
He nodded, and let her go.
He wondered if she would leap into her bedroom and lock the door. Only her bedroom had such a lock.
Somehow he did have faith she would come back. If only because he would not leave her alone until she had answered him. It was harsh. But it was needful. They were all on the rack.
He took one of the little sweets and opened the silver petals. Dark chocolate with a centre of kirsch and almonds. He put it down. There was nothing sweet in what must be done now.
She came back, Sofie, five minutes later. She bore in her hand two long red goblets of French fin de siècle design, and a little red crystal flask.
‘Look, you’ll like this better. It’s Armagnac, but I know you detest my glasses.’
She put the goblets and the flask down. She said, ‘I had to hide these from Bus. He’s a—what does he say?—a cretin, he knows nothing. But he asks people. Do you know a Turk almost bought the jasper seal-ring—before the family sent their agents to recover it? The Turk was very shocked. He had me delivered one hundred orchids. They died in a day. The house was too cold—’
