Soul

by Tobsha Learner

  The wife was brought to the hut on a stretcher made of woven palm leaves and wood. She seemed comatose, but other than that appeared completely healthy. It was, in fact, as if he had stolen her soul. At the appearance of his wife, the accused started to speak. From what I could glean from my translator, it was a confession. His words ran as follows: ‘We are locked together like warriors. I acted to save my own life.’

  Despite my pleas, they executed the man by a ritual spearing later that day. By the evening, his wife had begun to show signs of recovery.

  A maid entered the room and started clearing away the remains of a plate of marrons glacés and Turkish delight the men had been consuming. A nearby ottoman was dusted with icing sugar and spilled snuff. Lavinia picked up James’s silver snuffbox. It was half-empty, even though it must have contained a good ounce. She stared at it, the ghost of an image forming in the smoky atmosphere.

  The maid, an irrepressibly cheerful eighteen year old, who had been born into service and was already betrothed to one of the valets, dampened the embers in the fireplace.

  ‘Dolly, I must replace the master’s cognac,’ Lavinia announced. ‘I see he has finished it tonight.’ She spoke clearly, wanting the maid to remember her words.

  ‘Don’t concern yourself, madam. I can do that.’

  ‘No, I shall do it. My husband is particular about his cognac.’

  Lavinia found small things to busy herself with until the maid had left the room. Then she picked up the snuffbox again, turning it thoughtfully in her hand. Walking over to the desk, she emptied its contents onto a sheet of paper. Then she lifted the Mimosa hostilis root bark from the stand she had placed it on earlier for study, and using a laboratory knife, shaved off a quantity. She ground it to a fine brown powder using a pestle and mortar, then turned to James’s locked cabinet where she knew she would find a vial of peyote fluid.

  Staring down at the dampened rust-coloured powder, it seemed to her that she was looking back over the last three years of her life: the sands they had walked along when James first courted her; the oak of her husband’s locked bedroom door; the dried blood on her face after James had struck her; and, finally, the relentless sensation of suffocation and increasing fear. He has stolen my soul.

  The sentence reverberated over and over in her head as she meticulously tipped the ground mixture into the silver box, then added a layer of the Colonel’s own snuff. Closing the lid tightly, she shook the box vigorously. When she opened it again, the poison was undetectable.

  ‘Is it wise, James?’

  ‘Is what wise?’

  The two men lay in each other’s arms on the large divan the Colonel had purchased for the Westminster apartment Hamish now resided in. A velvet throw half covered them, and a fire sank low in the grate across the lavishly furnished drawing room. Its high ceiling, dating from the previous century, was covered with a plaster relief of gods and angels. Hamish sat up, his smooth white back facing the Colonel. He reached for a cigarette and placed the slim stick into an ivory holder, his fingers trembling from an excess of drink and opiate.

  ‘To have your wife assist at the ritual when I could so easily do it.’

  ‘I have made a promise. I cannot take everything away from the poor child. Also, remember, she could destroy us with one word.’

  Hamish knew James was right: the need for discretion was essential. But it disturbed him to know that the young wife had so much power—he did not think her rational. He ran his fingers lightly across his lover’s naked shoulders. The Colonel’s body, half reclining, was a series of undulating curves—chest, belly, thighs; the scale of him gave his corpulence a grandiose quality. He looked, Hamish decided lovingly, like a well-fed Zeus.

  ‘In that case, why not let her have her own paramour?’

  Closing his eyes, the Colonel sighed heavily.

  ‘I have found that I am still possessive. Whether this is a kind of love, I cannot say, but I still regard her as my wife. Other than that, I cannot—we cannot, that is to say, you and I—afford the scandal. Lavinia is still my wife, and the mother of my son.’

  ‘James, there is great anger in her. It would not be intelligent to rely upon her during such a risky venture.’

  ‘Then you do not truly understand me. It is this very danger that is so alluring.’

  66

  Los Angeles, 2002

  THE QUAKE SHOOK JULIA OUT of sleep, a subterranean rumble that threaded itself through her sleeping and rattled the bed. She sat up as the brass frame trembled in unison with every piece of glass, every door and hanging picture in the house.

  Her dream still lingered about her: she had been running in a labyrinth, a series of corridors whose earth-like walls sprang up like trees behind her as she ran. There had been a creature, a man, chasing her—she remembered the heavy thud of his feet, his bellowing breath that echoed down the long halls. Terrified, she had stumbled. Lying on the ground, she had looked back to find the huge eyes of a bull staring down at her, his man’s chest heaving as he stood over her—the Minotaur. It was then that the earthquake woke her.

  Julia waited to die. She wanted to die. There was a curious symmetry to this, she thought: here she was, childless, without husband, alone in a rattling house waiting to die; while on the other side of town, Carla, heavily pregnant, lay wrapped around Klaus, probably terrified she was about to lose everything. I have already lost, Julia concluded, strangely invincible in her indifference. The usual panic she felt during earthquakes—diving under the bed, or running to stand in a doorframe—seemed to have left her entirely.

  The shaking stopped. Julia reached across and opened the bedside cupboard drawer. The gun Tom Donohue had given her lay there, on top of some old letters; somehow, the sight of it was comforting.

  She was interrupted by the phone ringing. ‘Julia, are you okay?’ Gabriel, disembodied, sounded even younger.

  ‘I’m intact, although I think the fridge might have taken a walk.’

  She reached for the remote and switched on the TV at the foot of the bed. Immediately a news item came on about the earthquake: 7.5 on the Richter scale, the epicentre being somewhere out in the Mojave Desert, one casualty at a military base…The words raced like ticker tape across the bottom of the screen, while above a smiling nubile blonde, who looked too airbrushed to have an anus, advertised haemorrhoid cream.

  ‘I love you.’ Gabriel’s voice was drowsy, as if he were stoned or drunk.

  ‘No, you don’t. You’re in the grip of hormonally driven lust. It might feel like love, but trust me, it’s not. Besides, I don’t want you to be in love with me. I’m far too dangerous and irresponsible.’

  ‘You’re not dangerous.’

  ‘Take my word for it, I’m dangerous.’

  With the phone hooked under her chin, Julia surfed the channels: an embracing couple, a shot cowboy falling into a ravine, a space shuttle blasting its way through the azure of the outer atmosphere and into deep space. Is tragedy a perspective, a narrative, something we ourselves imposed on the most ordinary of events, she wondered—a stifling marriage, an impossible love affair?

  ‘I’ll ring you tomorrow,’ she said distracted by the television.

  ‘Julia, I’m worried about you. You seem really tense and yesterday—’

  ‘Gabriel, we’ve just had an earthquake, it’s four in the morning.’

  Julia hung up. Enveloping herself in a dressing gown, she walked out into the lounge room. Settling into the leather armchair, her feet tucked up under her, Julia let her gaze wander to the portrait of her great-grandmother. In the growing light of the dawn outside, Lavinia Huntington’s eyes seemed to stare back at her sympathetically. She looked so young; too young to be encumbered with a child and to be the mistress of the palatial estate just visible beyond the forest glen. Julia looked at the bow Lavinia held in her hand, in keeping with her persona as the goddess Diana. The fletch on the arrow protruding from the dead stag matched those on the arrows in the quiver slung over her shou
lder. Had Lavinia Huntington murdered her husband or not?

  Suddenly, Julia leapt up.

  At 6 a.m. Westwood village was deserted. A cleaning van, its huge circular bristles whirling against the empty kerb, crawled down the street. On the other side, an early morning worker opened the McDonald’s burger bar on the corner.

  When Julia arrived at the gates of the university, the night security guard, secure in his cubicle, appeared to be dozing. His head rested on an open copy of the National Enquirer, a cup of coffee cooled in a polystyrene cup beside him. Julia drove slowly past his booth into the parking lot, careful not to wake him.

  The campus was hauntingly empty. Early morning mist trailing across the lawns and into the quadrangle seemed to hold in its faint white tendrils the after-images of all the students who had ever studied there.

  Julia’s footsteps clattered across the paving. The silence all around and the unfamiliar isolation made her feel defenceless. Panicked, she broke into a run.

  Inside, the darkened laboratory was a familiar womb of chemical smells and electronic purrs. Julia switched on the lights. Immediately, the fluorescents splattered into life.

  Unlocking the door of her office, she went to her computer and called up her work from the day before: the gene activity results showing the genetic correlation between the final four subjects she’d narrowed down to. Was she staring at the descendant of the first murderer in the history of mankind? The first Homo sapiens who had smashed a rock against his brother’s skull? Did this gene function stretch back that far? And if so, why had it survived this long? Was there a need for it in the species—an evolutionary bloodletting?

  Julia gazed down at her hand, then pulled a sterile slide from a drawer. She punctured herself in the thumb and squeezed a drop of her blood onto the slide—a thick, darkish film. She marked the slide with a number rather than her name. She didn’t want Gabriel to know it was her DNA and gene activity profile he would be testing.

  On the way home, Julia stopped by a gun shop and bought some bullets for the gun Tom Donohue had given her. Next door was a florist. Deliberately emptying her mind of thought, she walked in and meticulously selected a large bunch of lilies, tuber roses and narcissi—flowers she knew to be Carla’s favourites. The note read simply: Carla, congratulations on the pregnancy. Julia. She stood by the counter, all conscious responsibility now pushed deep down below the instinct of her actions, flowing blindly like liquid glass—relentless, unstoppable. The florist’s voice breaking into her thoughts startled her as she asked if Julia wanted the bouquet sent by express delivery.

  Gabriel slept again after the quake, but somewhere in his dreaming landscape the sense that he should be up and working nagged him. A bleep from his laptop, telling him he had mail, woke him completely.

  He slipped off the bed and, naked, sat down and opened the reply from Matt Leman, which contained several more questions about the characteristics of the mutant gene function.

  67

  GRABBING GABRIEL’S HAIR, JULIA pressed her pelvis down hard, riding him vigorously, straddling him as he sat pinned to the kitchen chair. There was a violence to her lovemaking, a desperation in the way she had taken him with very little foreplay, her hand reaching for his penis as if she was determined to be the aggressor.

  It had been a week since they’d argued in Julia’s office and her intensity now frightened Gabriel, this frenetic seduction that bordered on a rape. What was she trying to do—obliterate all emotion in their lovemaking? Perhaps even obliterate herself?

  He struggled to see her face: her hair snaked across her forehead, her eyes were squeezed shut in concentration. Wrapping his arms around her, he held her tight, as if to squeeze all the fear and rage out of her. It was a futile gesture. Gabriel had never been so aware of the limitations of his experience. Her grief was overwhelming and elemental, like the earthquake, like the few deaths he had known: inevitable, non-negotiable and utterly daunting. He closed his eyes to block out her grimace. The chair, rocking under their weight, nudged a fruit bowl, which went crashing to the floor, spilling apples and oranges.

  Julia’s thighs clenched as she began to reach orgasm. Gabriel, now determined to throw himself into her excitement, clasped her buttocks, playing her. They both came shouting. A second later, the neighbour’s dog started howling.

  ‘This has got to be the last time.’ Her legs were still slung over him, her skirt pushed above her hips; her breasts hung freely over the top of her blouse.

  ‘You were fantastic,’ Gabriel lied. Penis shrivelling, pants down to his ankles, he stayed in the chair.

  ‘Did you hear what I just said?’

  Julia turned away as she adjusted her bra, feeling self-conscious about the age difference that showed in their bodies.

  ‘Look if it’s the love issue you’re worried about, you can relax. I’m over it. It’s not like I don’t find other girls attractive.’

  Face hidden, Julia winced at his use of the word ‘girls’.

  ‘Good, because after the project’s finished I don’t think we should see each other for a while.’

  Gabriel pulled his pants up, secretly disappointed Julia hadn’t reacted with jealousy.

  ‘But I’m happy to help you get into any postgraduate course you want. Then I might go away, to a place no one can find me,’ Julia added.

  Suspicious, he studied her as she straightened her clothes. She’d been acting strangely all morning—curiously cheerful in a way that was at odds with her usual acerbic wit. Her hands reached up to tie her hair back. The gesture, unselfconsciously innocent, was too seductive for Gabriel to resist. He stood and, caressing her face, swept the rest of her fringe behind an ear.

  ‘I could still give you a baby.’

  She pushed his hand away, irritated. ‘Gabriel, I can’t conceive any more.’

  She was surprised to see him blush.

  ‘No need to look so shocked. I just had some problems, after the miscarriage.’

  Reduced to silence, he pulled on his sweatshirt, wondering about the complexities of women and whether he would be negotiating them for the rest of his life.

  ‘Who cares, Julia. You have an incredible career and you’re on the crest of another huge achievement—anyone can have children.’

  From the tone in his voice, she instantly knew that he’d heard about Carla’s pregnancy.

  Smiling crookedly, she fumbled with his trouser belt, an excuse not to look him in the eye. Instinctively, Gabriel pulled her onto his knee and began rocking her, as a parent would comfort a small child. Julia was again struck by the absurdity of life: the youth comforting the middle-aged woman as if she were a child.

  ‘I’ve known for weeks about your ex having a baby, I just didn’t know how to tell you. I’m so sorry, Julia.’

  Through his skin Gabriel felt her tremble, even though she was smiling brightly. The contrast was disturbing.

  ‘You’re right, anyone can breed.’

  They were interrupted by the sound of the telephone. Julia climbed off Gabriel’s knee and answered it.

  ‘Julia?’ Klaus’s voice sent a seismic wave through her body.

  ‘What do you want?’ Julia kept her voice flat, emotionless.

  ‘I think we should meet—to discuss the possible sale of the house.’

  ‘I thought it was agreed I would buy you out when I had the money.’

  ‘The situation has changed now that Carla’s pregnant,’ he replied, somewhat defensive in tone.

  ‘So I hear. Congratulations.’

  ‘Thanks. And thanks for the flowers—she really appreciated them. This can’t be easy for you.’

  Gabriel watched Julia’s fingers twist the phone line.

  ‘Perhaps you should come over. We can do this in a civilised manner—over dinner maybe?’

  ‘Are you sure? That would be great.’

  Klaus sounded obscenely relieved, Julia noted, her heart thumping furiously against her ribs.

  ‘How about next Frida
y, at eight?’

  ‘Eight would be fine.’

  As Julia replaced the receiver, Gabriel saw her hands were shaking.

  68

  Mayfair, 1861

  ‘MADAM, THERE IS A SERVANT HERE, sent by the ambassador of the Confederate States,’ the footman said, waiting by the door of the parlour.

  Lavinia glanced at her custodian, who was in the window seat, knitting.

  ‘I shall have to receive him in the morning room. Do you mind, Aunt Madeleine? I believe this may be an invitation of some importance.’

  ‘You go on. I shall still be here when you get back.’

  Trying not to appear too hurried, Lavinia followed the footman to the morning room.

  Samuel stood in the middle of the room, awkwardly turning his cap. He dared not sit down, so walked over to an eighteenth-century statuette of a naked Venus atop a console; he thought her proportions ideal.

  Lavinia entered the room, followed by the footman. Samuel immediately stood to attention.

  ‘You may leave us,’ Lavinia told her servant.

  Bowing, the footman closed the door behind him. As soon as he’d gone, Lavinia went to Samuel and took his hands in her own.

  ‘Have you news? Pray God you have.’

  ‘Our friend is well and is close by.’

  ‘Tell me the address and I shall contrive a way of seeing him.’

  Samuel glanced at the window; upon seeing it was free of any onlookers, he leaned towards Lavinia.

  ‘My lady, he is waiting in your cellar this very minute,’ he whispered, smiling.

  The tallow candle sputtered and sent a faint curl of white smoke up to the ceiling. The cellar was dark and the strong musk of old wine saturated the air. To Aloysius, it seemed their lovemaking still hung in the shadows like a twisting phantom. Remembering, he closed his eyes. Never had he taken such risks; never had he thought himself capable of such ambition. Lavinia’s invitation to France had opened up a myriad of possibilities above and beyond being in service and he’d been possessed ever since.