fro beneath. ‘What the fuck is going on?’
TWELVE
Back in her flat on Pembroke Road, they sat on a long couch in front of the fire, close but not quite touching. Beneath high ceilings, shadows moved on Mondrians and van Doesburgs and Fontanas, line upon measured line, shadow upon shadow. In one corner, a painted sculpture by Dhruva Mistry, half man, half beast, kept careful watch. On the hi-fi, Klaus Nomi was singing an aria from Saint-Saens’ Samson and Delilah.
Only the fire seemed real. A fine odour of warm peat crept through the room. Red and yellow and gold flames cast bright reflections on brass and copper. Ruth had made mulled wine filled with heavy spices: cloves and cinnamon and aniseed, with orange and lemon peel. They sipped the wine and listened to the music, and Patrick thought how unnatural everything had become, how far removed from a world in which the bodies of pale children decayed in summer cottages, and priests, like Oedipus, were blinded on high altars.
‘It troubles me that God can allow such things,’ he said.
‘I thought you didn’t believe in God.’
He watched smoke spiral upwards, imagined it grey and nebulous on the darkening air outside.
‘I don’t,’ he replied. ‘But that’s just it, don’t you see? I can’t believe in a God who lets things like this go on. Oh, and things worse than this. Much, much worse. Any other god I could believe in, but not this one. To be omnipotent and hold back, to be capable and do nothing. Just watch. Watch and judge. I remember...’
She twisted a little towards him, her eyes fixed on his profile.
‘I remember,’ he continued, ‘something I once read. It was in a book of Islamic theology: “These to heaven, and I care not. These to hell, and I care not.” What sort of God is that? And the Christian God isn’t any better. He lets children die on the street in Calcutta just so people can say what a wonderful woman Mother Theresa is. At least Molech kept his depredations to a reasonable level.’
Who was Molech, Patrick? What did it mean, that verse they found on Clemente’s desk?’
‘Molech? He was a Canaanite god. Phoenician, if you prefer. He had a taste for children. Their parents used to take them up to his altar at a place called Topheth. That was where they did it - the burning, the sacrificial offering. To keep the crops from spoiling. To make their cattle fertile. For whatever reason - for whatever seemed important to them.’
She shuddered and looked aside.
‘They burned them?’
‘Yes. So the Old Testament says. Maybe it’s just biased, a load of propaganda about Canaanite atrocities - who knows? But I don’t remember anything about cutting hearts out.’
The fire in the hearth leaped and twisted, throwing a cloud of sparks high into the chimney. Ruth leaned against him, touching him for the first time since entering the apartment. He responded, putting his arm round her, drawing her to him.
‘My parents were enlightened,’ she said. ‘Or thought they were. Rich liberals with black friends, Jewish friends, intellectuals. No gay friends, of course: they weren’t that liberal. They had old money, so they could afford some eccentricities. They voted Democrat, donated to the AGCL, signed petitions to end the war in Vietnam. I was brought up to be nice to the maids and gardeners, and every Christmas I gave some of my toys to the local orphanage. They sent me to a succession of private schools, and Europe twice a year, and Vassar when I was old enough, because it had gone co-ed. And a year in Switzerland, to be “finished” as they put it.
‘The trouble is, where do you go from there? When I grew up, nobody was dropping out any longer. I was liberal all right, but I had my own trust fund. With a private income, you can afford to be liberal. Even with Ronald Reagan in the White House. Especially with Ronald Reagan in the White House.’
She put her head on his shoulder.
‘I got married, but that didn’t solve anything. I don’t suppose it ever does. Mr Ehlers was a nice guy, as nice guys go. But after you’ve fucked about seven hundred times in a row, and taken your fifteenth vacation in three years, and put this year’s finishing touches on top of last year’s finishing touches on the bidets in the guest bathrooms, even nice guys can pall a little.
‘So I dropped out. Since I couldn’t be a hippy any longer, I joined the Company. My parents were furious. But I wanted to prove something to them.’ She paused, biting her lip. ‘Funny, I’ve forgotten what it was.’ She pulled him to her, frightened, angry with her fear. ‘Tell me, Patrick, tell me what the fuck it was! It wasn’t this - so what was it?’
She was crying painfully now, her doubts grown inarticulate with rage. He kissed her eyes, tasting the bright, metallic tears. He knew the flavour well, it ran in his own veins, bitter, galling, cold as ice. His lips stumbled drunkenly down her cheeks, his hands fumbled across her breasts, clumsy, like a child’s. She pulled away briefly, then returned to him, her lips to his lips, her breath confused and harsh, mingling with his breath, with the heavy odour of wine and spices.
They had not made love since his return from the safe house. He had been distant, colder than usual, without response. Now, with a suddenness that dismayed him, the pent-up fears of his confinement focused on a raging physical need. To enter her would free him from everything. Like a prophet surprised in solitude by a sudden, tumultuous god, he cried out.
He closed his eyes and saw Natalya Pavlovna, the thin body, the piercing eyes. He thought of her naked beneath him, the small, flat breasts, the bruised nipples, the churning breath. She had come to him like a lover, seeking out his sins, and he had never touched her or been touched by her.
Twisting, he reached out a hand for Ruth, pulling her to the floor with him. Her eyes were closed, she could not bear to look at him or have him look at her, her heart was pounding, uncomfortable and fast. His fingers touched her, now light, now pressing urgently. Her breath came quickly, she wanted to cry out, to expel the awful thing that had lodged inside her: a dead child gutted and cast aside like an unwanted fish on a harbour wall.
He undressed her passionately, but as though in a dream: her top, her skirt, her underthings. Her skin felt hot and fevered to his desperate touch, he could not sense her presence in the room with him. Imperceptibly, they had begun to move to different rhythms. She made love to exorcize the ghost of a child she had never met, whose silent, ravaged heart had entered her dreams and wrought havoc there; he to find a dream that might make waking more bearable.
Her nakedness appalled him, her need to be touched, her vehemence in lovemaking. Her exorcism called for rage, his for forgetfulness. As she undressed him, he felt his sense of unreality deepen, as though the shedding of his clothes entailed in some fashion a loss of identity. His head felt light, almost detached from his body. And yet his thoughts were clear, almost unbearably so. He felt her hands, hot and restless, move across his back and chest.
What happened next was unpredicted and unrehearsed. It was rather as if he had been staring at one of those trick pictures, the sort psychologists use to test perception, in which a duck becomes a rabbit or a beautiful woman reveals herself as an old crone.
An almost imperceptible shift occurred between one breath and the next. He looked round to see that the fire had burnt low and the room was now bathed in candlelight. He could not even be sure it was the same room. There were heavy hangings on one wall where there had been none before. Outside, the sound of traffic had vanished. It was chillier than it had been a moment earlier.
He was still naked, still tumescent, still crouched above the form of a naked woman on the floor. But the woman was not Ruth. Her hair was jet black, tousled, in heavy braided folds across her face. She was small- breasted, with narrower hips and more abundant pubic hair. Even as he looked, she brushed back the hair from her face.
‘In ainm De, a Phddraig, lean ort! For God’s sake, Patrick, don’t stop now,’ she said.
He did not know how he knew, but the language was Irish, Leinster Irish of the eighteenth century. But that was impossible - she could not be speaking Irish. He knew her, knew her as well as he knew himself: it was Francesca. Only that was impossible too: Francesca was dead, she had been dead twenty years.
He stumbled back, slipping, then raised himself on one hand.
‘Cad ta ort, a Phddraig? Cad ta ort, a stor? Patrick, what’s wrong? What is it, darling?
Standing, he felt his head spin. The candles moved and the room lurched. He was falling, he could feel himself spinning through space, then the floor crashing against him and the breath pumped out of his body.
When he came round, Ruth was standing over him, a wet sponge in her hand, a look of deep concern on her
