Her silver mask was incised, like the carvings in the house corners, the globes that were the planet Venus. The mask reflected in the water. Two silver discs, separated, drawing nearer.
Jonquil said sternly, 'I must wake up.'
And she dived upward from the bed, and tore through layers of cloud or water and came out into the actual room, rolling on the inflatable couch.
'I'm not frightened,' stated Jonquil. 'Why should I be?'
She turned on her battery lamp and angled the light to fall across the painting of Johnina, which she had leaned against the wall.
'What are you trying to tell me now? In the morning I'm going to call them up about you. Don't you want to be famous?'
The painting had no resonance. It looked poorly in the harsh glare of the lamp, a stilted figure and crackpot scenery, the brushwork disordered. The canvas was so smooth.
'Go to sleep,' said Jonquil to Johnina, and shut off the light as if to be sensible with a tiresome child.
In the true dark, which had no moon, the silence of the house crept closer. Dispassionately, Jonquil visualized old Johanus padding about the floors in his broken soft shoes. He thought he had seen the surface of the planet Venus. He had painted the planet as an allegory that was a woman, just like the puns of Venus the goddess in marble over the door, and on the ceiling of the salon.
Jonquil began to see Johanus in his study, among the alchemical muddle, the primeval alchemical chaos from which all perfect creation evolved. But she regarded him offhandedly, the dust and grime and spillages, the blackened skulls and lembics growing moss.
Johanus wrote on parchment with a goose quill.
He wrote in Latin also, and although she had learned Latin in order to pursue her study, this was too idiosyncratic, too much of its era, for her to follow. Then the words began to sound, and she grasped them. Bored, Jonquil attended. She did not recall switching on this holostet, could not think why she had decided to play it.
'So, on the forty-third night, after an hour of watching, the cloud parted, and there was before me the face of the planet. I saw great seas, or one greater sea, with small masses of land, pitted like debased silver. And the mountains I saw. And all this in a yellow glow from the cloud'
Jonquil wondered why she did not stop the holostet. She was not interested in this. But she could not remember where the manual was.
'For seven nights I applied myself to my telescope, and on each night, the clouds of the planet sensuously parted, allowing me a view of her bareness.'
Jonquil thought she would have to leave the bed in order to switch off the manual. But the bed, with its tall draped posts, was warm and comfortable.
'On the eighth night it came to me. Even as I watched, I was watched in my turn. Some creature was there, some unseen intelligence, which, sensing my appraisal, reached out to seize me. I do not know how such a thing is possible. Where I see only a miniature of that world, it sees me exactly, where and what I am, every atom. At once I removed myself, left my perusal, and shut up the instrument. But I believe I was too late. Somehow it has come to me, here, in the world of men. It is with me, although I cannot hear it or behold it. It is the invisible air, it is the silence of the night. What shall I do?'
The holostet of Johanus was no longer operating. Jonquil lay in the four-poster bed in the room that led from the salon. The door was shut. Someone was in the room with her, beside the bed. Jonquil turned her head on the pillow, without hurry, to see.
A hand was stroking back her short hair; it was very pleasant; she was a cat that was being caressed. Jonquil smiled lazily. It was like the first day of the holidays, and her mother was standing by her bed, and they would talk. But no, not her mother. It was the wonderful-looking woman she had seen — where was that, now? Perhaps in the city, an eccentric who lived there, out walking in the turquoise of dusk or funeral orchid of dawning, when the star was on the lagoon. Very tall, a developed, lithe body, graceful, with the blue wrap tied loosely, and the amazing hair, so thick and blonde, falling over it, over her shoulders and the firm cupped line of the breasts, the flat belly, and into the mermaid V of the thighs.
'Hello,' said Jonquil. And the woman gave the faintest shake of her lion's head in its mane. Jonquil was not to speak. They did not need words. But the woman smiled, too. It was such a sensational smile. So effortless, stimulating and calming. The dark, dark eyes rested on Jonquil with a tenderness that was also cruel. Jonquil had seen this look in the eyes of others, and a frisson of eagerness went over her, and she was ashamed; it was too soon to expect — but the woman was leaning over her now, the marvel of face blurred and the mane of hair trickling over Jonquil's skin. The mouth kissed, gently and unhesitatingly. 'Oh, yes,' said Jonquil, without any words.
The woman, who was called Johnina, was lying on her. She was heavy, her weight crushed and pinned, and Jonquil was helpless. It was the most desired thing, to be helpless like this, unable even to lift her own hands, as if she had no strength at all. And Johnina's hands were on her breasts somehow, between their two adhering bodies, finding out Jonquil's shape with slow smooth spirallings. And softly, without anything crude or urgent, the sea-blue thigh of Johnina rubbed against Jonquil until she ached and melted. She shut her eyes and could think only of the sweet unhurried journey of her body, of the hands that guided and stroked, and the mermaid tail that bore her up, and the sound of the sea in her ears. Johnina kissed and kissed, and Jonquil Hare felt herself dissolving into Johnina, into her body, and she could not even cry out. And then Jonquil was spread-eagled out into a tidal orgasm, where with every wave some further part of her was washed away. And when there was nothing left, she woke up in the pitch-black void of the silence, with something hard and cold, clammy, but nearly weightless, lying on her, an oblong in a gilded frame, the painting which had dropped over on top of her and covered her from breast to ankle.
She flung it off and it clattered down. She clutched at her body, thinking to discover herself clotted with a sort of glue or slime, but there was nothing like that.
She was weak and dizzy and her heart drummed noisily, so she could not hear the silence any more.
'Let me speak to the house caretaker,' snapped Jonquil at the obtuse machine. Outside the booth, the ruin of the great square seemed to sway on the wind, which was violent, ruffling the lagoon in flounces, whirling small scraps of coloured substances that might have been paper, rags, or skin.
'The caretaker is not available. However, your request has been noted.'
