Notorious

by Roberta Lowing

  I wake one day to find a book wrapped in tissue paper on my bed. The pages are tied together with ribbon threaded through holes punched along the edges of two thin cracked sheets of wood; the wood has been painted red, roughly. It is the book that Pietr always talked about showing me but never did. Pages were missing. He said he didn’t have the author’s name. He had only flicked through it himself, he said.

  I had been distracted, consumed by Devlin then. Now, I have time to study the black writing covering the yellowing pages. The writer is a Frenchman, a traveller, a writer. A poet. Heat runs through me; I forget my nausea.

  There are maps, drawings of a burnt landscape, fragments of poems, diary entries. It is exactly what one would imagine an old, well-travelled diary would look like. There is no signature, only vague references to a provincial home, a farmyard. But when I see the name Verlaine, I immediately think I know the author. I tell myself that is wishful thinking. But I don’t let the book out of my grasp. I sleep with it under my pillow.

  I am in the back sitting room, reading Pietr’s book. I have hidden it inside the cover of a bulky leather-bound edition of nineteenth-century love poems. Rosza sees the leather cover when she brings me my milk and gives it a disparaging look.

  I study the maps. All are of Africa. This is a time spent in Morocco, at an old monastery which seems once to have been a fortress called Abu N’af. My French is rusty. I am painfully translating the diary segments. The poet seems to be in discussion with a slave trader. A Polish aristocrat. My translation could be wrong yet I can’t bring myself to ask Pietr for a dictionary. I study the poet’s drawings of the landscape, the waves of the desert, the plain beneath the monastery running across to a squat hill. The relation of the hill to the plain reminds me of something. It takes me days of reading to realise how similar it looks to Santa Margherita.

  In the mornings, Pietr comes and sits with me. We don’t talk about the present much. We talk about Anna. He says, ‘She was a radiant little girl. But then all children are, before they inhale the rest of the world.’

  He says, ‘She was the best thing in my life.’

  He brings me books on art and architecture, the international newspapers; an Aboriginal painting has sold for a million dollars. There is a picture in the paper and he downloads another from the internet. The print-out’s tiny dot matrix can’t disguise the glowing colours, the light shifting and lapping within each stroke. Even the smallest strokes hold sunlight.

  ‘You’re homesick,’ says Pietr.

  I swallow a wave of nausea. I am always sicker in the mornings. I refuse to consider what that means. I refuse to count back to Venice, to Devlin putting me up against the wall, running his hands over my body.

  A bolt of warmth goes through me. But then the weight of absence comes back, like anti-blood, like poison. A tear, just one, runs out of my left eye and down my cheek. I think of Anna in the hospital. Pietr holds my hand and gives me a handkerchief.

  SATURDAY

  I am standing among the black trees below the back terrace of the glass house. The light from the candle in my unsteady hands turns the trees into crooked fingers. The early evening sky is purple, the low moon reflects off the strange new metal on my hand.

  The house gleams, lit from within, a mindless diamond. Pietr’s tower, usually dark at night, climbs into the sky like a glowing needle. Below is a vast black gulf; even the snow’s light is swallowed, sucked across the plain into the ruins of Santa Margherita.

  Childe Rolande to the dark tower came, I think to myself. I want the dark tower to come to me, I want to be swallowed. Night is a substance as water is a substance. Now that Devlin has gone, I want to drown in night.

  The thought of him reminds me. I put the candle down, wedging it carefully into the snow next to my bare feet. A red web of dripped wax coats my wrist.

  I move out from the well of shade. The moon’s warm rays play over my face, falling into the two small bands of metal on my left hand. I try not to think of them as miniature electronic bracelets.

  The night trees are glazed with stars, the night winds are talking to each other. I hold up my hands: a cold breeze travels over my fingers, under my nails. I can remake the wind, the stars, the trees, the water. I can build it.

  I am having a conversation with Devlin. He is there, all around me, a substance like night is a substance, water is a substance. Like black smoke.

  Let me tell you what I’ve been doing since you went away, I say to him. I’ve been reading poems about blighted love. Revenge, I say. Poison.

  If you want to say something, say it, he says. Don’t use poems to frill it up.

  Do you know, I say, that if you are poisoned by cyanide they find crystals in your heart?

  As usual, he looks at me as though I am mad.

  The house seems to be growing, it is swelling with light, yet I know it cannot penetrate the forest. Only moonlight can do that. Pain prickles my skin. I feel pressure on my throat. I swing around but there is no-one there.

  Water is the only substance that is renewed after use, I say to Devlin. Water falls and vanishes and rises again. Tears flow backwards. Venice will rise again.

  Trust you, says Devlin, to fall in love with a drowned city.

  Not fall in love with, I say. In love there.

  Ghosts slip through the shadows towards me – there is a smell of smoke, of burnt winds. Ghosts are growing out of the black lake below. I imagine them breaking through the crust of ice, destroying the ripples of light patterning the silver surface, crawling onto the black bank, wearily climbing through the snow, the dead leaves, passing beneath the down-turned branches. They go around the hut, they never look back. They don’t want to meet me but the wind will blow them here. It is inevitable.

  No coward soul is mine, I whisper to myself, furiously. But the pressure on my throat increases. Maybe poetry can’t save you, I think. Maybe all it does is make the awfulness slightly less awful. It can’t truly console – it never did.

  Pain prickles my skin again. Small dark shadows slip from branch to branch. I stretch out my arms. If I can become a shadow, if I can merge with the forest, I can erase myself. But nothing happens. The moonlight picks out the small black absences on my arms, the shackles on my finger.

  I try to remember that morning but all I see are fragments of paper burning, words curling into trembling purple, calligraphy in flames spelling out some message I can’t read. Writers and artists turned to ashes. Maybe I already knew what a terrible mistake I had made – out of anger, out of sickness. But for now, when I try to visualise the small church and the upstairs room with the buckled wooden floorboards and Pietr and the man in the black robe, all I see are books going up in flames.

  I let my parka fall to the ground, pull off the silk jacket. The moon edges my arm in silver.

  The candle goes out but the light from the glass house is bright enough to see by.

  A black shape glides through the trees – not a man, not a wolf – something fluid like the mist across a toxic lagoon. A shape-shifter. I want to run but I am stiffening. I am turning to marble in the moonlight, into salt; the first stage of returning to the sea.

  No coward soul is mine, I say to myself, thinking of Emily Brontë so bravely facing the death all around her. No trembler in the world’s storm-troubled sphere.

  The black shape surrounds me. The trees are engulfed by it as one of the unstoppable floods of the world is hurled at me: Noah’s flood, the flooding of the Three Gorges Dam, the tsunamis. All the floods to come. It is arcing over me. I feel droplets of water on my cheek. I throw my head back and lift my arms.

  Ice cracks and crunches. Pietr comes into the clearing, slipping on the snow despite his boots because he is walking fast. He picks up the silk jacket and parka, wraps them around me, kneels to put my shoes back on. I miss Devlin’s shouts of rage. I want Pietr to say, What the fuck are you doing? the way Devlin would.

  When Pietr holds me tight against him, I realise there is nothing
there for me. He is like my brother, my uncle. A friend. There’s no spark of insanity, nothing to make the giving up of self worthwhile.

  He pulls my parka hood over my head. ‘Winter was a bad time to cut your hair.’

  ‘It was the kind of thing me and Anna would do. In our punk stage.’

  His arms tighten around me. ‘I couldn’t bear it. Another Anna.’

  ‘I’m not using,’ I say. ‘I don’t know why I am like this.’

  ‘Tell me what you need. I’ll get it for you.’

  I shake my head. ‘I don’t want to feel. That’s what I need.’

  ‘I’ll get you Devlin.’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘He’s poison.’

  I gaze at the house swaying with light. ‘I’m dreading the party.’

  He says, ‘They need to see you are with us.’

  I nod, swallow the tightness in my throat, my stomach.

  Noise swells in the background: the sound of cars travelling up the hill, doors slamming. Stars swarm. I try to watch them over his shoulder. The stars collect above the house and shoot up in two thin beams criss-crossing the sky. The beams go up into the heavens, gradually fading in the outer dark.

  ‘Moonbeams,’ I say.

  ‘Lasers,’ says Pietr. ‘The guests are arriving.’

  I am walking between earth and heaven. I see an open book: not my diary, the other book, the book with the cracked boards for a cover, the fine pen and ink writing, the delicate drawings of the desert, the small poems. The maps.

  ‘In the end, there is always only the book, isn’t there?’ I say to Pietr as he helps me up the back steps. ‘My diary, the Frenchman’s book. All the books with maps inside. All the secret ways across the desert. But you knew that.’

  He guides me across the back terrace. ‘Yes.’

  Fountains of light fall from the top levels of the glass house, shadows slide across them, laughter twining into the air, prisms of memories caught in the bubbles of champagne. I look across to where I imagine the dark tower of Santa Margherita is, eyeless and broken in the darkness. Then I look up at the glass tower. For a moment I am in dark water looking up at the sun. I am far out to sea . . .

  Pietr is easing me across the threshold of the back sitting room. I put a hand against the doorway to steady myself.

  ‘You know, from the sea, that tower would look exactly like – ’

  ‘Like what, my dear?’ says Rosza, coming out of the light, bringing her own shadows with her.

  She is smoking her thin black cigarette and holding a glass. It takes me a moment to register that it is a martini glass. She drains the glass and hands it without looking to the waiter hovering with a tray behind her. The muscles around her mouth are pinched white beneath the powder.

  ‘I just found out,’ she says to Pietr. She puts out her hand for another drink. She drains it without taking her eyes off Pietr. ‘Stefano told me.’

  ‘Of course,’ says Pietr.

  ‘You should treat Stefano with more respect.’ She snaps her fingers at the waiter, who backs away.

  ‘Why?’ says Pietr. ‘Did he give her the junk? Or did you?’

  ‘Her choice,’ says Rosza. ‘She’s ofanculu weak. Like – ’

  ‘If you mention Anna,’ says Pietr, ‘I will leave this house immediately. And never see you again.’

  She gapes. ‘I don’t understand. How can you put her first?’

  ‘I’m not putting her first. I’m protecting her. From you.’

  I am confused. Pietr says to me, ‘I did what you suggested. Family research.’

  Rosza says, ‘She’s putting ideas into your head.’

  ‘You can’t touch her now.’

  ‘She’ll hurt the business,’ says Rosza. ‘You know there’s something between her and Mr Devlin.’

  Pietr says, ‘Devlin’s gone.’ As he guides me past her, the light hits the diamond on my finger and patterns Rosza’s face with silver. She blinks. ‘You mongrel bitch – ’

  ‘Careful,’ says Pietr. ‘Behind you.’

  Mitch says, ‘This is a happy family scene.’

  Pietr puts his arm around me. ‘Always.’

  Rosza says slowly, ‘Signor . . . ?’

  ‘From the Embassy.’ Mitch turns to me. I put my hands behind my back but I know from the twitch of his eyelids that he has seen the diamond.

  ‘Didn’t I tell you?’ he says softly. Then, to Pietr, ‘When is the happy event?’

  ‘We got married this morning.’

  Mitch is still. ‘Congratulations. I’ll make sure Devlin finds out as soon as possible.’

  ‘Where is Mr Devlin?’ says Rosza.

  Mitch dips his head sorrowfully. ‘He had to take personal time.’ He looks at me. ‘He won’t be back.’

  Couples, mostly smokers, go past us to the back terrace. I see emeralds and rubies winking in the light, the oiled dead hairs of fox furs on over-tanned shoulders.

  ‘The Iraqi Foreign Minister. And the Algerian Trade Secretary,’ says Mitch. ‘I’m impressed. That must facilitate trade routes.’ He says to me, ‘Your fiancé – oh, beg pardon – your husband is a very astute businessman.’

  Pietr nods at a portly man standing by the wall. ‘The Mayor seems lost.’ He says to Mitch, ‘I’m sure you would like to meet him.’

  ‘I have met him,’ says Mitch. ‘But I’ll join you. There’s a little matter of deportation I need to discuss.’ Pietr raises an eyebrow at me. I nod. He steers Rosza away.

  Mitch extends his hand. ‘Business before pleasure, I’m afraid.’

  I reluctantly put my hand in his. It is dry and hot. Before I realise what he is doing, he reaches around me, picks up my other hand and examines the rings. I pull away almost immediately but he has seen the gold wedding band next to the diamond. ‘Devlin will be pleased.’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  ‘Not very poetic.’ He steps back. ‘Well, clever you, buying insurance. Everyone knows your husband has a dirt file in the event of his death. And clever Pietr, eliminating a potential witness. They don’t believe drug-addicted wives in Italy.’

  ‘Fuck you. That’s repetition, parallelism. Poetry.’

  ‘I hope you’ll be happy,’ says Mitch, ‘knowing you ruined Devlin.’

  He turns but I am already leaving. I blunder through the sitting room into the hall. A blonde woman in a black dress is carrying a tray into the dining room where couples are eating supper at the candlelit tables. The woman stops. It is Julietta.

  ‘We need more champagne,’ she says. ‘Stefano says for you to get it. The door’s open.’ She gives me a little push. ‘Now.’

  As I go down the steps, the distances swell and disappear, the walls shimmer. I feel as though I am wading through strobed water; I put a hand against the wall to steady myself.

  This is the bit I have to get exactly right. This is the end of the truth. Or is it the beginning? I know my recollections of that night are bad. I was sick, too sick to know how sick I was. I thought I was heart-sick but it was much worse than that.

  I go down the last few steps, the concrete moving like sand beneath me. The door to the wine cellar is ajar. I am overcome with a terrible longing. I prop myself against the wall. There is a hole inside that needs to be filled. I try to remember some lines of poetry. But nothing comes to me.

  Faint smoke in the cellar. I touch my inner elbow, feel the small pinpricks in my flesh. The miniature wells descend into darkness; I feel the pulse of my thumb, like that other pulse at my waist. I imagine the glint on the needle-tip, the way the light catches rainbows in the tilted liquid inside the glass vial. I try to hurl away the image, the taste, the smell. I know if I use again I will be killing myself – myself and my other self.

  A thread of that now-familiar nausea curls through me. I lace my hands across my stomach.

  On the perimeter of the pool of light near the door something moves. But there is no sound except for my own breathing. Whatever is there is holding its breath. I dread to think it is Mitch.

/>   I begin edging along the wall to the door. Air whispers by me, another movement, the silhouette of a man. The door slams shut.

  I put my hands up and meet a body coming towards me, driving me against the hard concrete.

  ‘You’re not getting away that easily,’ says Devlin, and kisses me on the neck.

  For a moment, I revel in the luxury of the full length of his body pressed against mine. I put my arms around his neck, I cling to him, I try to push myself into him, under his skin. His hands slide slowly up and down the heavy satin of my dress. He is luxuriating too, I can tell by the way his hands grip my flesh through the slippery material.

  He says, ‘Your surface is water,’ his mouth at the base of my throat. He pulls me hard against him, kissing me so I can’t move. My anger ebbs away. Stupid woman. He is running his hands up and down my arms, running up and down to my wrist, up, down. Up. Any moment now, I think. His breath is ragged, he is kissing me so I can’t breathe. I don’t want to breathe, don’t want him to stop.

  He says, ‘I’ve been ravenous.’ He kisses me again and again, takes my hands in his, raising them to his mouth as he says, ‘I came to tell you – ’

  He feels the rings. His fingers go slack with shock. I push him away, slide from beneath him. Too late he grabs for me, his fingers slipping on my dress. I pull free, fumble for the switch on the wall.

  He stands blinking at the sudden fall of light.

  I back away, fast, so that the first of the wine racks is between us. They are shoulder height and heavy, the old wood knotted and black, but they will not be enough to stop him if this is the moment when he loses control.