by Gemma Files
Apparently, the Kantorka and her attendants had allowed her to lie there in the heat and the dirt until their prayers were done, then dragged her back on a traverse made from shawls, far enough that the village’s men might bear her away. When Dr. R— first saw her, she was sunburnt and filthy, her hair and dress full of rye. In that moment I thanked God I had not been conscious at the same time, for I knew I would surely have performed murder on whoever had delivered her to me in such a fashion.
As it was, I went straight to my luggage and withdrew a small pistol I kept there, for defence during rough travel. I loaded it and went to seek out the Kantorka.
“What do you do in those fields?” I demanded. “Women’s business,” she had the gall to reply, so I showed my weapon, brandishing it in her face, and watched her supposedly blind eyes widen. “My wife may be dying, you old witch,” I told her, coldly, as Dr. R— shivered beside me (I having yet once more forced him to accompany me, to translate our discourse), “and I will have no compunctions over sending you along with her, if you continue to refuse me. What do you do in those fields, therefore, which left my darling as she is now?”
The girl who kept her fire looked pale, but the old woman merely smiled. “We salute the Lady,” she said at last. “We beg the favour of Her absence, that She may turn her gaze elsewhere. And we give Her offerings.” I nodded. “My wife’s painting,” I said, and she smiled again, more narrowly, so I could see the sharp tips of her teeth.
“That was what she brought, yes,” she said, with relish, “not knowing, as yet, what else she might have to give. But I do not think that was what the Lady accepted.”
The hell? I wondered, turning the page.
I paid a heavy price to extract my darling and I from Lusatia’s grasp both quickly and cleanly, the next section continued, leaving Dzéngast as far behind as possible. Dr. R— advised against such haste, for the Kantorka’s implications had caused him to examine Iris once more, confirming that she was indeed with child—perhaps as much as four months along, in fact—yet I could not by any means suffer us to stay, let alone allow our son to be born within those hellish precincts. So it was, with great effort and expenditure, that we reached the nearest port and chartered a ship home, racing nature itself to make sure we reached shore before Iris might be taken to bed. I can only thank Christ Almighty that we were within time, however, for her consequent suffering proved long, difficult, and (in the end) bloody.
Yet I do have a son now, Adelhart—an heir. His name is Hyatt. Likely the only child we will ever see, or so the doctors say. He is large and healthy, beautiful in all his parts as only befits one plucked from my darling’s lovely flesh, but there is something troubling in his very sweetness, his quietness, his lack of robust protest. Sometimes he seems more a doll or a pretty toy than a boy-child, accepting whatever we put before him with the same dignified equanimity. His eyes are dreamy, turned ever-inward, like hers when caught in the throes of creation; if nothing troubles him for long, it seems more and more likely that that is because he simply does not perceive most things in the same way we do, though he is hardly blind. Sometimes he stares at nothing and smiles, laughs, as though he hears singing, or is danced attendance upon by ghostly playmates.
Worst of all, however, is the knowledge that though my wife—my Iris—tries not to show me so, I know she is disappointed, or feels she has disappointed me. That she blames herself, somehow, for Hyatt’s condition—as though I would ever lay it at her feet, when there are so many other places for such a load of guilt to accrue! To myself, for example, for thinking I could solve her mysterious obsessions through some mere quest, that I could buy her lasting happiness. For sending her “home” in the first place, allowing that disgusting old woman to mar her mind further, exposing her to whatever horror they bow to between the furrows of that awful field, a place which surely deserves to be burnt to its roots and sown again with salt . . .
Well, enough of that. All will be as God wills it from now on, and always would have been. I accept that, fully and without regret, not least because I have no other choice.
My darling I will no longer over-trouble with marital attentions, I have decided, even after her recovery, seeing we have no reason or duty to keep trying. There are French methods after all, as you know; other possibilities, did she prove amenable. But she is an innocent girl still, for all her oddities, and in my own conscience, I cannot require of her anything she does not wish to offer freely—not loving her so dearly as I do, and always shall.
I am & remain yr own loving cousin, with a full heart & troubled mind,
In Christ Our Lord, amen,
Art. M. W.
Folding Mr. Whitcomb’s letter, I lay back, the general sound of jumping, yelling, and tinny harmonization from the next room having finally faded, at least enough to make studying the ceiling more restful than annoying. The box lay heavy in my lap as my eyes drifted closed. Outside, the streetlights were just starting to come on.
In the red dusk behind my lids, the weird synchronicity with which my own life was starting to line up with Mrs. Whitcomb’s was becoming undeniable. Headaches and insomnia, check; life-wrecking obsessions, check. Infinitely patient and supportive husband who’d do anything for her/me, check. Child with special needs, check. Seizure—sunstroke-related, supposedly—while investigating Lady Midday, check . . .
Mr. Whitcomb swum in front of my eyes, transposed from his wedding photo—celluloid collar askew, facial hair bristling, pistol in hand. He’d blamed himself, obviously, for how Hyatt ended up, just as there was virtually no doubt but that Mrs. Whitcomb had probably come to blame herself, too, over those first few months of recuperation, let alone later. The both of them stuck in painful orbit, barely able to acknowledge their own sick guilt to themselves let alone take comfort in each other—god, what a fucking tragedy.
As for the rest, though, all this gothic shit. Was that true? Could that possibly be true?
(No.)
He thought it was true, though. Why say it if not? Why write the letter at all?
Because guilt, I told myself, firmly, or general Victorian fucked-uptitude, whatever. Guy’d just decided to never have sex with his wife again, “for her own good,” and without even consulting her. No wonder their marriage fell apart.
Through the bedroom door, I heard my iPhone ring and Simon answer it, but I tuned out when he told the caller that I wasn’t available at the moment. I stayed there a few minutes more without moving, vaguely intending to get up and turn off the bedside lamp; my limbs pressed down, leaden, a mounting warm numbness spreading all over. Wondering if there was a point to walking anybody else through what I’d just read—Simon, Safie, Jan Mattheuis. Forget factual, was it even pertinent? Well, maybe as a further motivation, an explanation for the way she chose to sequester herself after Hyatt’s disappearance, channelling her pain into murals, then Spiritualism, then films—
Yeah, Kate-Mary des Esseintes and her meetings, plus that guy, “the boy.” Vasek Sidlo. I really needed to find out more about him.
With a tap on the bedroom door, Simon peered in, iPhone still against his face; he was wearing a flat expression that I’d long since learned meant, if not necessarily trouble, then something serious enough to require total attention. It was enough to snap me back and make me sit up.
“Lois?—okay, good. Yes, she’s awake,” he said into the phone, “and I think you should tell her what you just told me.” He came in, handed me the phone, and dropped into his chair, watching me intently. I put the phone to my ear, unnerved.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Lois? It’s Val Moraine calling—you remember, from the Vinegar House, up in Quarry Argent?” Val’s voice was oddly subdued, as if trying to keep from being overheard. “I didn’t mean to disturb you, just thought I should check and see how you are.”
“Oh, well, that’s, that’s really nice of you,” I said, a little
nonplussed. “Nothing to report, really; tests were all clear, I’m starting a drug regimen soon . . . Is that all you wanted to know?”
“No, I—” A pause, then a sharp huff and she went on more firmly, as if she’d finally made up her mind about something. “I’m at the museum, and there’s a gentleman here by the name of Wrob Barney talking to Bob Tierney right now about your project.”
For a moment, my mind still half on the Whitcombs and their tragedies, I couldn’t process this. “What?” I finally said. Simon nodded, mouth tight.
“He came by the museum a little while ago and started right in with Bob about Mrs. Whitcomb, the films, the documentary, that book you wanted to write. Well, Bob’ll give away his own grandmother to anyone interested enough in town history, so it never occurred to him to think twice, I imagine. But something just didn’t ring right to me about this fellow, and at last I thought, you know, maybe I should check with Ms. Cairns myself. Do you know him? Is this on the level?”
“Oh, yes, I know him, and no, this is absolutely fucking not on the level.” My jaw clenched hard enough to bring on a headache. But the anger itself felt liberating, so much like my old self that even that pain was welcome. “Actually, Val, can you do me a favour? Put Wrob on the phone with me, and tell him who it is before you do.”
Val paused. “Think that’s a good idea?” she asked, finally.
“Probably not, but I want to see what he does. Okay?”
“. . . All right.”
Simon, apparently realizing what was going on, straightened up. “Are you sure?” he said in a low voice. “Might be worth not letting him know we know.”
“Don’t care,” I replied, covering the phone’s mic. “If it turns out he hasn’t got the balls to talk to me directly then I’ll get hold of him some other way, but I’m sick of his crap. This is the last fucking straw.” I turned back to the phone and waited. The pause was just long enough I started to grind my teeth again with frustration; of course he wasn’t going to—
“Hey, Lois. How ya feelin’?” As casual as if we’d just bumped into each other in Starbucks, making half a laugh escape me, thin with disbelief. “Oh, better than I was, Wrob, but still pretty pissed off,” I said. “Seriously, what part of ‘You are not involved in this project’ do you not get, exactly? I mean, it’s one thing you got Chris Coulby to stake me out when I was in the hospital, now you can’t even do your own research?”
He didn’t even bother to deny it, which just made me angrier. “Oh, there’s nothing here that isn’t available to the public . . . and considering you’d never even have gotten started on this without what I gave you, this is really more like my research. Isn’t it?”
“What you gave me?”
“In our interview, yes.”
“Oh, uh huh. What you stole, you mean, and what I caught you stealing after Jan caught you first, which is why you don’t have a damn job anymore—”
“I wasn’t aware Mrs. Whitcomb belonged to anybody, actually,” he shot back, loftily, to which I just had to snort.
“Ex-fucking-actly. Jan know you’re up there?”
“No, but so what? Like you say, he already fired me; only gets to do that once. Besides which, you really think either of you learned anything I didn’t already know? Above and beyond what it feels like to have a stroke, I mean.”
“Seizure, and that’s debatable.”
“Same difference, and the question stands.”
I drew a calming breath. “Oh, I kinda think I did . . . but if you want to find out what, you can just go on and buy the book when it comes out, like everybody else. Now give Val back the phone.”
“Goodbye, Lois,” he said, and hung up on me.
I put the iPhone down, fighting the urge to throw it against the wall, and struck my knee with my hand instead. “Fucking pretentious, gay-ass turd-bucket!” I exclaimed.
Simon leaned back in his chair, folding his arms. “I’m beginning to agree with you,” he said flatly, which made me raise my eyebrows; I hadn’t heard him sound this angry in a long time. “Did he seriously get somebody to stake out St. Mike’s?”
I blew out, hard. “I don’t know. I mean—I can’t prove it. But why else would Chris have been there? Jesus.” I shook my head. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
Simon tilted his head. “We could try to get a restraining order, for a start—”
“No, we couldn’t. He’s nowhere near me, man; he doesn’t need to be. And he’s richer than either of us, so if we go to court, who do you think is gonna win?” I waved my hands, anger collapsing into exhaustion. “Too bad it’s not against the law to be an asshole.” Simon’s jaw tightened. I leaned forward and put my hands on his. “Look, I love that you’re pissed on my behalf, but I haven’t got the time or the energy, and it wouldn’t do any good, anyway. I just have to make sure he doesn’t get to fuck this up for me, long distance or otherwise; get it done, finished, in the can. Just . . . bear with me till that happens, okay? That’s all I need.”
Simon closed his eyes and sighed heavily, but his hands tightened on mine. “All right,” he said at last, then let me go and stood. “Tea?”
“Please.”
While Simon busied himself in the kitchen, I took a moment to text Jan at the NSA, telling him what’d just happened; didn’t mention Chris Coulby, or the fact that Wrob’d all but admitted he was a mole—that sort of shit should probably be said face to face, if at all. My pulse started to soften. But then, just as I hit send, the iPhone began to ring. I checked the number: Mom, it said.
“Big surprise,” I muttered to myself, hitting accept.
I’ve had a lot of opportunity to think about Wrob Barney and myself since then (don’t worry, you’ll understand why soon enough): the why/how of it all going bad between us, and so quickly. Because on the face of it, it seems like something simply chemical, straight oil and water, but in retrospect I’ve come to accept the truly sad fact that he and I were actually very similar people—too much so for comfort, let alone collaboration. I didn’t want to see it, but I’m sure I suspected it, which is why I cast him away so violently. If we’d been different, we probably could have worked together, and . . . well, not none of this would have happened, because I think a lot of it would’ve no matter what. But at least the circle of damage would have been smaller.
It’s just amazing how two people can misunderstand each other so wilfully, without “willing” it at all. Or maybe it isn’t.
Back when I was a reviewer, I often had to remind myself that film is 99 percent interpretation, subject to inherent narrative unreliability. It’s really hard to say “objectively, this is what [x] is ‘about.’” Critics ask each other all the time: “What movie did you watch?” the same way we constantly tell each other, “You kind of have to see it.” But can the movie you see ever be the movie I saw, given how perception is skewed the very moment in which we observe something?
Your perceptions are not reliable, and you will never escape unchanged.
Silver nitrate film, in particular, is the Schrödinger’s Cat of cinema—you can open the box once, maybe, take a look inside, but after that you kind of have to take it on faith it ever existed in the first place. But then, all film is illusion; it’s just an illusion that looks like the truth.
The problem with all numinous things is that you can’t just take somebody’s word about them, especially the ones you’re warned away from. You have to look at them, eventually, to know they’re really there. You look at them even though you know it’s not a good idea to. You can’t not.
In the end, you will always look at the thing you’re told not to just because it exists, if only to prove it exists.
What’s always funny, with me and Mom, is how the conversation can continue even when we’re not in the same room—how whenever I feel especially under pressure, I almost always start to hear my own internal
version of her arguing with what I think might be her internal version of me, as though I’m rehearsing our next argument in my head, playing through things I’d never have the guts to say to her in person. Except . . . maybe it’s less “guts” than simple forbearance, a wistful wish to seem more reasonable than I often think I’m capable of being, plus the insight to know exactly how crazy most of the shit I long to spew at her would sound, if blurted out loud: how bitter, how scary. How essentially unnatural.
When did you get so unkind? she asked me, once, after I was stupid enough to tell her how I really felt about something—and Jesus, what was it, now? Oh yeah, whether or not I got anything out of Christmas besides the dubious pleasure of watching her and my in-laws attempt to get Clark to interact with them, considering I haven’t outright enjoyed the holiday itself since I became an adult; all those expectations, that forced gaiety, the waste. She pointed out that it’s not really about me anymore, which I certainly agree with, but that doesn’t make it any easier. And the plain fact is, the whole thing gets Clark so high he wouldn’t notice whether or not I was even there, so long as she and his “friend Daddy” were.
Not true, she shot back, when I unwisely chose to voice that particular opinion, and you know it’s not; he loves you, for God’s sake. You’re his mother.
’Cause the one always leads to the other, huh? Except not really, I pointed out.
This wasn’t about any of that, though, for once. This was about me, supposedly.
“So,” she said. “You’re seeing this Safie girl tomorrow, right?”
“The Safie girl whose name is Safie? Yes.”
“And this is because . . .”
“Because we present on Friday, so we need to get our stuff in order. The footage we took in Quarry Argent.”
“Remember what Dr. Harrison said about flickering light, TV monitors—”
