“You know that’s not what I meant.”
She looked at him soberly. “You amaze me, Richard. You continually amaze me.”
He sought to make a joke of her comment. “That’s been my aim.”
“Well, you’ve succeeded. You’re a brothel keeper, a drug dealer, and you’re ruthless in your business practices. You’ve had people murdered. Yet you think of yourself as a good man. Most people are no different. We all engage in that sort of deceit, but we’re not as skilled at it as you. Your sins are so great, yet you hide the fact from yourself so thoroughly! It’s truly remarkable.”
Her words sliced into him and he said, “Damn it, ’lita! Must our pleasure always be held hostage to your morbid outlook on life.”
He made another try for the syringe and she pushed him away, this time with considerable force.
“You’re not a good man,” she said. “You don’t love me…except in the way most people love, and that isn’t really love, but a form of self-aggrandisement. I wish I had your talent for hiding from myself, for ignoring the realities—then I could love you the way you pretend to love me.”
“Then why are you with me? The money…is that it? The power. Do you find it exhilarating?”
“What I find exhilarating is that you’re so adept at deluding yourself, sometimes I’m able to believe the fairy tales you tell yourself.”
He wanted to reject her argument, her characterization of his feelings, but knew that to do so would only anger her further. Even if he submitted to her logic, she would be likely to mine a cause for disagreement from whatever he said.
She pulled back the sheet to expose a creamy thigh and pointed to it with the syringe. “This is where you would inject me?”
“Yes,” he said, encouraged—he thought she was relenting, deciding to relent, to allow them to go forward. “I’ll do it in the big muscle. It’ll sting, and there’ll be a sensation of cold, but that doesn’t last.”
“Apart from you,” she said, “has anyone else been injected with so much of the blood?”
“No, but I’ve adjusted the dose to compensate for your lighter weight. It should be perfectly safe.”
As he said those words, he realized how irresponsible it was not to do some further testing, and he reached again for the syringe; but she blocked him with her knee and jammed the needle home, thumbing down the plunger.
“Let’s see,” she said, and appeared on the verge of saying more, but the blood overpowered her and all that emerged from her throat was the shadow of a sound, the faintest of gasps.
He had thought she would react as had he and that as she recovered she would grow fuddled and amorous; instead she sat up in bed, more alert than he had seen her in months and, dismissing his expressions of concern with a blithe gesture, she strolled about the room, inspecting gilt picture frames, touching the surface of a mirror as though to validate that it was her reflection she saw, caressing the sublime curves of a divan that had been owned by a Byzantine prince, and eventually coming to stand at the center of the carpet, directly between the two hemispheres, posed with her head turned to the side, her high, small breasts and full hips lacquered with gleams, her left hand touching her left shoulder, strangely demure despite her nudity. Whether due to a physical transformation caused by the blood or a perceptual distortion on Rosacher’s part, her body appeared enveloped in a white radiance, and this aura, this glow, spread from her feet across the complex patterns of her imaginary world, a puddle of light making it look as if the bloom of her beauty was the production of a luminous essence that had been imprisoned until now within the threads of the carpet.
Rosacher waited for her to speak, scarcely breathing, half-convinced that when she gave tongue to her thoughts, it would be oracular in nature…but rather than speaking she sprang for the door, grabbed up a gray cloak from a chair and enfolded herself in it, and fled the apartment. Stunned, caught off guard, he hesitated before chasing after her and she disappeared down the stairs—he did not catch sight of her again until twenty-five minutes later when, after searching through the House, questioning the passers-by he encountered in the corridors, he reached the front entrance where she was pointed out to him by a group of young men loitering on the steps. Visible in the strong moonlight, she had ascended to a platform atop the scaffolding braced against Griaule’s side—it still bore tatters of black bunting from Meric Cattanay’s funeral six weeks earlier—and was scrambling toward the joint of the dragon’s shoulder, using vines to haul herself upward, moving with such agility and grace that he was hard put to believe this was the same woman who had been more-or-less bedridden for months. Ignoring the young men’s catcalls, he ran to the base of the scaffolding and clambered up it, but realized that he could not match her pace and slowed his ascent, using a measure of caution in securing his footing. By the time he had climbed to the platform, she had disappeared into the thickets atop Griaule’s back, yet he kept going, fueled by a sense of desperation, plowing through brush and tangles of vines. As he skirted the limits of Hangtown, the lights of Martita’s fractioned by leaves and branches, he wondered what she could have in mind. Was she driven by delirium? She hadn’t seemed delirious, but rather focused and serene…but she may have gone mad after fleeing their bedchamber. And what was that glow emanating from her body? She hadn’t looked to be glowing any longer, so perhaps it had been a flaw in his vision, some mental defect brought on by stress. Be that as it may, her reaction to the blood had been completely different from his, that much was certain, and he feared for her.
He checked the ledge beneath the wing and called out to the shadows deeper in. Nothing, no response. He proceeded farther along the dragon’s spine. If she were headed for the plain below, he might never find her. He shouted her name and listened to the winded silence that came back to him. The brush grew thicker and his step faltered when he moved past the point where the spine began to slope downward. Only the boldest of scalehunters ventured beyond this area—he remembered old Jarvis telling him that something big lived in the thickets above the haunch, some kind of animal, possibly a bear, that could tear you apart—remains of its victims had been found and there had been a handful of sightings, albeit fleeting and unreliable ones. Of course that had been years before and it might be that the animal had gone elsewhere or had died, but Rosacher had learned it was unwise to disregard such warnings, because more often than not the consequences of flouting them proved severe. The moon, silvery and almost full, was at its zenith and in its light he could make out palm crowns on the plain below, but not their trunks. A thin mist veiled the brilliance of the stars. Insects chirred and a nightjar cried. Rosacher felt as alone and frightened as he had on that long-ago night when he had drawn blood from Griaule’s tongue, yet he pressed forward into the thickets, made wary by every rustle, every shadowy twitch and tremble of leaf or twig.
Another quarter of an hour brought him to what was essentially a bald patch on the dragon’s back, an oval area some fifty or sixty feet across, and perhaps much larger than that (he couldn’t judge how far it stretched down the slope of Griaule’s side), scantily covered in dirt and weeds, but free of brush. He stepped out onto it and understood the reason for the lack of vegetation. Some idiot had cleared it away—within the past year, he guessed—and attempted to pry loose the enormous scales, shattering them into dozens of pieces that shifted under his weight. The danger associated with trespassing in places like this was that Griaule might mistake you for a scalehunter come to violate his body, and though Rosacher believed the dragon capable of distinguishing among humans and had evidence aplenty that Griaule recognized him for who he was, that belief was nothing he cared to rely on in this situation. Best, he decided, to go to Martita’s, have a glass of ale and think things over. Perhaps he could prevail upon the scalehunters there to assist him in the search. And then he spied Amelita. She stood facing away from him, her figure obscured by the gray cloak, so low on the dragon’s side, some twenty yards distant, that if she took an
other step or two forward, she would be unable to keep her footing.
“’lita!” he shouted.
The cloak flapped about her, appearing to register a stronger force of wind than the one blowing across the dragon’s back. An updraft, he thought. He shouted again and she turned toward him. At that distance he could not distinguish her features, but her skin had acquired the mousey coloration of the cloak. Tentatively, realizing something was wrong, he walked forward a half-dozen paces, paused, and then went a few paces more. Not only had her complexion gone gray, but a myriad fine lines now webbed her skin, as if she had grown ancient as she fled from him—yet on second glance she did not seem to have aged, but rather that her youthful image had been partitioned into irregular segments like those of a jigsaw puzzle. He spoke her name again, less a shout than a plaintive inquiry. The wind blew more fiercely about her—at least her hair (also gray) billowed and the cloak flapped with increased fury—but Rosacher felt no like increase where he stood and heard no keening or any other windy noise. Cold gripped the nape of his neck, as if it had been seized by a dead hand. He backed away, his heel catching on a loosened fragment, and he pitched onto his side, his temple smacking down hard. He must have blacked out, for when his eyes blinked open he discovered her standing over him. He thought initially that her facial muscles were in spasm, but her expression was neither agonized nor contorted—it was her customary stoic expression, reflecting no particular mood or attitude. And then he realized it wasn’t her muscles that were moving—it was the skin, and not just that of her face. Every square inch of skin was rippling the way bacon ripples in a frying pan. Each tiny segment of skin as defined by the cracks pulsed to a separate rhythm, as if they were blistering, about to release a vile fluid. A dribble of sound leaked from him, a whimper born of fear, fear for himself, for her, revulsion. He crawled away, trying to regain his feet…but fell again. Her lips parted, her eyelids drooped and she lifted an arm, a gesture that an opera singer might make in straining for a high note, and something fluttered up light as ash from the back of her hand, something winged—it fluttered in the air above her. Further gray scraps disengaged from her and joined it, accumulating into a cluster, then a cloud that bobbled and danced overhead. Each time a scrap lifted from her body, it left behind a patch of glistening flesh that rapidly darkened and began to pulse. She was dissolving, disintegrating…the process quickened, quickened again, and after two or three minutes more she became unrecognizable, diminished to a stump, a gray stalagmite from which winged things no larger than a flake emerged and arose, forming a whirling mass that encircled Rosacher, penning him in. Possessed by dread, he knew that once she had completely dissolved, these remnants would descend, fasten onto his face and kill him with their stings. But in the end only one of the creatures touched him. It hovered in front of his face for an instant and, his mind bright with terror, he had the impression that its wings were not attached to an insect body, but to a slender white female figure, perfect in every detail, a replica in miniature of his former lover—it brushed against his cheek, imparting a chill sensation, and flew up to merge with the fluttering gray cloud, which then passed toward the south, vanishing behind the bulge of Griaule’s spine.
For several minutes thereafter, Rosacher continued lying where he had fallen. The chill spread across his cheek, yet did not disturb him—on the contrary, the coolness was soothing, as though a salve had been applied. The bizarre manner of Amelita’s death, if death it had been, if she were not reincarnate as a cluster of flakes, left him in an uncertain mood, overcome by sorrow, but also wondering if this might not have been the best possible outcome for her—she had always been unhappy—and not merely unhappy, despondent, despairing—except for moments here and there, and though he ached for her, he experienced an undercurrent of relief that she had been released from whatever pain had been gnawing at her for all her days—but this did not alleviate his own pain. He wept while walking back to Martita’s and had to pause outside the door in order to compose himself. Once inside, seated at a table in the rear, he hated the dim, wavering lantern light, the smell of stale beer, the lively talk and laughter around him, all the dull brown normalcy of the place. He hung his head and tried to calm himself, but his thoughts flurried and he kept picturing Amelita as her living layers peeled away, her mouth open and eyes lidded, an expression that reminded him of how she had looked when they made love—yet it lacked vitality and was absent the sounds of passion, the gasps, the musical sighs, and thus seemed a mockery.
Martita dropped onto the bench opposite, bubbly as ever, and asked what brought him to her door—it had been months since he visited. “You’ll be wanting a mug of the brown, I suppose,” she said, and before he could answer, she put a hand to her mouth. “God! What happened to your face?”
“My face?” he said. “What’s wrong with it? Am I bleeding?”
She told him to wait, ran to the bar and brought back a small mirror that she kept beneath the counter. “You won’t believe this unless you see for yourself,” she said, holding it out to him.
In its clouded surface he saw his old face, his face as it had been before Ludie and Honeyman betrayed him, unmarked by any scarring, marred only by the lines of middle age. And he understood…or perhaps he didn’t understand, perhaps he only hoped he understood why the sting of that tiny creature pared from her life had felt so soothing. Moved by that flawed comprehension, then, he once again began to weep.
13
Amelita’s death inspired a period of self-reflection in Rosacher that neither illuminated nor provided surcease. Though his love for her may have been tainted, poisoned by his manipulative spirit, his grief seemed real enough. It was a black cancer gnawing at his heart, decaying his thoughts. He did not believe there would be an end to it, and he foresaw a future in which would be forced to dwell beneath a self-woven shroud, mired in a gloom that blotted out life’s exuberant particularity. He shut himself away in the apartment, lying in the bed he had shared with Amelita, the curtains drawn, wanting to deny even the possibility of light, praying that this darkness would somehow keep him connected to her darkness. He had no wish to work, no desire for food or drink, and when he smoked mab, it merely enriched and deepened his personal shadows. He punished himself for becoming angry with her the night she died, for a myriad lesser transgressions, and for being so preoccupied with her, for doting on her now more with greater intensity than he had when she was alive. He then came to hate himself for doubting the authenticity of his grief. He also hated himself for conflating his obsession with the dragon with everything from philosophical questions to practical considerations (would Griaule approve of this or that, etc.) and for having constructed a seemingly flimsy metaphysics about the beast that no amount of speculation or denial could dissolve. He supposed that if he were to look out and see that gargantuan foreleg rising above, he would hate the dragon as well, but he didn’t have the energy to crack the window and prove his thesis.
He passed long hours poring over Amelita’s sketchbooks, searching for clues to her character, and discovered a rendering of a gray winged creature with a woman’s body, with pale skin and small, high breasts and cascading black hair. She had drawn this same creature half-a-dozen times—the last drawing was very nearly a self-portrait and was inscribed with the words, “the aurelia phase.” A few lines of text followed, stating that the creature derived its nourishment from the crepuscular light of pre-dawn and dusk. Amelita’s usage of “aurelia” was unfamiliar to him—he learned that the word was not just a name, but was also used to denote a chrysalis. He had almost convinced himself that the creature was a hallucination, a byproduct of his fright, but the drawing overthrew that assumption and he was forced to struggle with the notion that Amelita had been transformed into a swarm of flakes and that she might pass from this stage into yet another, perhaps more repellent stage. This in turn caused him to wonder whether she had anticipated the transformation, or if Griaule had plucked the idea from her brain and made it i
nto a reality. That thought, and a hundred attendant thoughts redolent of his obsession with the dragon, renewed his self-loathing and sank him to fresh depths of darkness and despair.
Breque visited him from time to time, staying but briefly, and eight months after Amelita’s death he brought with him a thick folder that he deposited on the floor beside him. He sat in a gilt chair next to the bed and appeared to study Rosacher, who lay beneath the peach-colored sheets, clad in a robe that had gone unwashed for weeks. Stubble dirtied Rosacher’s cheeks, his hair was matted, and the bed was littered with open wine bottles (some were only partly empty and as a result the sheets were mapped with purplish stains). Breque cleared his throat and, when Rosacher did not react, he said, “I see that nothing has changed with you. Would you like me to leave?”
“Yes…unless you have pressing business,” Rosacher said. “I’ve been keeping up with the production of mab and the House more-or-less runs itself. If your visit has nothing to do with our enterprise, I’m not in the mood to chat.”
“From where I’m sitting, it looks as though you’re in the mood to fart and scratch your bedsores…but not much else.”
Rosacher said nothing.
“Very well,” Breque said. “I have a proposal for you. It may be pressing, but I’m not sure I’d call it ‘business’.” Breque wrinkled his nose. “It stinks in here.”
“Another reason for you to leave.” Rosacher rolled onto his side to face the wall. “Anyway, I like it—it’s my stink.”
“When’s the last time you allowed someone in to clean?”
“Goodbye,” said Rosacher.
After a prolonged silence Breque said, “We’ve known each other for many years, Richard. We aren’t always on the same side of an issue, but we’ve learned to practice the art of compromise with one another and I…”
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