that First Street was refurbished, somebody would find that Victrola in the attic and give it to her. She didn’t know that the Victrola really wasn’t in the attic at all, but once again hidden with the pearls where no one-
The thought left Gifford. It went right out of her mind. She had just reached the top of the boardwalk and was looking down into her own house, into the warm rectangle of the living room, with its steady flickering fire, and the sprawling cream-colored leather couches on the caramel-colored tile floor.
There was someone in Gifford’s house. There was someone standing right by the couch where Gifford had napped all evening, standing right by the fire. Indeed, the man had his foot on the hearth, just the way Gifford liked to put hers, especially when her feet were bare, to feel the inevitable cold that lingered in the stone.
This man was not barefoot or in any form of casual attire. This man looked dapper to her in the firelight, very tall, and “imperially thin” like Richard Cory in the old Edwin Arlington Robinson poem.
She moved a little slowly along the boardwalk, and then stepped down out of the wind into the relative quiet and warmth of the rear yard. Through the glass doors, her house looked like a picture. Only this man was wrong. And the truly wrong part of him was not his dark tweed jacket, or wool sweater; it was his hair; his long, shining black hair.
It hung over his shoulders, rather Christlike she thought. Indeed as he turned and looked at her, it was a dime-store Christ that came to mind-one of those blinding color pictures of Jesus with eyes that open and close when you tilt it, full of lurid color and immediately accessible prettiness-Jesus of soft curls and soft garments, and a tender smile with no mystery and no pain. The man even had the mustache and neatly groomed beard of the familiar Christ. They made his face seem grand and saintly.
Yes, he looked like that, sort of-this man. Who the hell was this man? Some neighbor who had wandered in the front door to beg a twenty-five-amp fuse or a flashlight? Dressed in Harris tweed?
He stood in her living room, looking down at the fire, with the long flowing profile of Jesus, and gradually he turned and looked at her, as if he had heard her all along, moving through the windy dark, and knew that she had come into earshot and stood now silently questioning him with her hand on the steel frame of the door.
Full face. It was suddenly a bright redeeming beauty that impressed her; something that bore the weight of the extravagant hair and the precious clothes; and another element struck her, other than the seductiveness of his face. It was a fragrance, almost a perfume.
It wasn’t sweet, however, this perfume. It wasn’t flowers, and it wasn’t candy and it wasn’t spice. No. But it was so inviting. It made her want to take a deep breath. And she’d caught this scent somewhere else, only recently. Yes, known this same strange craving before. But could not now remember it. In fact, hadn’t she remarked on it then, the strange scent…Something to do with the medal of St. Michael. Ah, the medal. Make sure the medal is in your purse. But she was thinking foolishly. There was a strange person here!
She knew she ought to be wary of him. She ought to find out who he was and what he wanted immediately, perhaps before she stepped inside. But every time in her life that something like this had frightened her, she had always come through it, half embarrassed to have made such a fuss. Nothing really bad had ever happened directly to Gifford.
Probably was a neighbor, or someone whose car had stalled. Someone who saw the light of her fire, or even the sparks flying from the chimney along this lonely stretch of sleeping beach.
It didn’t greatly concern her, not half as much as it intrigued her, that this strange being should be standing there watching her in her own house, by her own fire. There was no menace in this man’s face or manner; indeed, he seemed to be experiencing the very same curiosity and warmth of interest towards her.
He watched her come into the room. She started to close the glass door behind her, but then thought better of it.
“Yes? What can I do for you?” she asked. Once again the Gulf had fallen back into a whisper near silence. Her back was to the edge of the world, and the edge of the world was quiet.
The fragrance was suddenly overpowering. It seemed to fill the entire room. It mingled with the burning oak logs in the fireplace, and the charred smell of the bricks, and with the cold fresh air.
“Come to me, Gifford,” he answered with a smooth astonishing simplicity. “Come into my arms.”
“I didn’t quite hear you,” she answered, the forced and uneasy smile flashing before she could stop it, the words falling from her lips as she drew closer and felt the heat of the fire. The fragrance was so delicious, made her want to do nothing suddenly but breathe. “Who are you?” She tried to make it sound polite. Casual. Normal. “Do we know each other, you and I?”
“Yes, Gifford. You know me. You know who I am,” he said. His voice was lyrical as if he were reciting something that rhymed, but it didn’t rhyme. He seemed to cherish the simple syllables he spoke. “You saw me when you were a little girl,” he said, making the last word very beautiful. “I know you did. I can’t really remember the moment now. You can remember for both of us. Gifford, think back, think back to the dusty porch, the overgrown garden.” He looked sad, thoughtful.
“I don’t know you,” she said, but her voice had no conviction.
He came closer to her. The bones of his face were gracefully sculptured but the skin, how fine and flawless was the skin. He was better than the dime-store Christ, certainly. Oh, more truly like the famous self-portrait of Durer.
“I’ve lost those recent centuries,” he said, “if ever I possessed them, struggling as I did then to see the simplest of solid things. But I claim older truths and memories now, before the time of my Mayfair beauties and their fragile nurture. And must rely as men do upon my chronicles-those words I wrote in haste, as the veil thickened, as the flesh tightened, robbing me of a ghost’s perspective which might have seen me triumph all the quicker and all the easier than I shall do.
“Gifford. I myself recorded the name Gifford. Gifford Mayfair-Gifford, the granddaughter of Julien. Gifford came to First Street. Gifford is one who saw Lasher, don’t I speak the truth?”
At the sound of the name, she stiffened. And the rest of his words, going on and on like a song, were barely intelligible to her.
“Yes, I paid the price of every mewling babe, but only to recover a more precious destiny, and for you a more precious and tragic love.”
He looked Christlike as he spoke, as Durer had in the painting, deliberately perhaps, nodding just a little for emphasis, fingers pressed together in a steeple for a fleeting moment and then released to appeal to the open air. The Christ who doesn’t know how to make change and has to ask one of the Twelve Apostles, but knows he is going to die on the cross.
Her mind was utterly blank, unable to proceed, to frame a response or a plan.
In a rush of rampant pulse and heat, she could not see anything distinct about him suddenly, only the beauty itself, like a reflection marring the view through a window. Her fear surged, paralyzing her, while at the same instant forcing from her another gesture. She raised her hand to her forehead; and in a dark obliterating flash, his hand came out and locked itself around her wrist. Hot, hurtful.
Her eyes closed. She was so very frightened that she was not really there for a moment. She was not really alive. She was disconnected and out of time and out of any place; then the fear subsided and rose again, whipping her once again into terror. She felt the tightness and the pressure of his fingers; she smelled the deep warm inviting fragrance. She said willfully, in terror and in rage:
“Let me go.”
“What did you mean to do, Gifford?” The voice was almost timid; mellow; lilting as before.
He stood now very close to her. He was nearly monstrously tall, a man of six and half feet perhaps. She couldn’t calculate; just the right side of monstrous perhaps, a being of slender parts, the bones of the forehead very prominent beneath the smooth skin.
“What did you mean to do?” he asked her. Childlike, not petulant, simply very innocent and young.
“Make the Sign of the Cross!” she said in a hoarse whisper. And she did it, convulsively, tearing loose from him, and beginning again, In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. The words were spoken inside her. Then she steadied herself, and looked him full in the face. “You’re not Lasher,” she said, the word almost dying on her lips. “You’re just a man. You’re a man standing here.”
“I am Lasher,” he said gently as if trying to protect her from the coarseness of his words. “I am Lasher and I
