She came into the room, swiftly and with purpose, like a wave racing to the shore. Rolf was kneeling over photographs spread on the floor of the diwan, but Gabriel’s eyes followed her as she came across the room, barefoot, silent, wearing the same blue kaftan with a silvery panel of embroidery down the front. She was about his age, he reckoned, but she didn’t look in his direction when she took an apple from the fruit bowl on the dining-table and bit into it.
“Rolf, introduce us, would you?” Gabriel hissed at Rolf who, with half-moon spectacles on the end of his nose and tilted forward over his pictures, reminded him of a mole in a children’s story. No sooner had he spoken than she had left the room.
“I’m sorry?” Rolf didn’t look up from his work.
Gabriel was stretched across the cushions, reading. “Who’s yer woman?”
“What woman?”
“The one who just came in.”
Rolf lifted his chin. “Someone came in?”
“She walked right past you,” Gabriel whispered.
“I didn’t see anyone.”
Gabriel looked at him deadpan. “That’s wearing a little thin.”
His brother-in-law went back to his photos. “This again? There is no woman, Gabriel, apart from your sister.”
“You sure about that?” Once again, he went through to the kitchen: empty. So he took the stairs four at a time and checked the two bedrooms on the second floor and the bathroom. Rolf was right. There was no woman, and yet there was. All the time. Even when Gabriel couldn’t see her, he was aware of her. Yet he could hear no footfall, no sound. Odd, how she made no noise.
In subsequent days, the swift passes by their unmentioned guest became unnerving and increasingly perplexing. She wandered about, coming in and out of rooms, but Gabriel’s were the only eyes that followed her if she moved, and noticed if she did not. That the others failed to acknowledge her was not a little disconcerting. In fact, they were remarkably adept at turning their heads a fraction too late to see her. He couldn’t fathom their reasoning. This was no time for practical jokes and Annie looked no more in the mood for games than Rolf did. So what then? Why the denials? It seemed too deliberately cruel to be some kind of retribution. Since Annie had derived no satisfaction from slapping him, perhaps this was her way of making him suffer—tantalizing him with visions, trying to make him crazy with sightings of an apple-eating beauty, like throwing poisoned cheese at a hapless mouse.
This, however, was not the way to hurt him. On the contrary, he was gaining strength, somehow, from the woman’s presence. Her un-present presence. Instead of feeling more adrift, less attuned to reality, he was beginning to feel connected, if not to the world or to his sister, at least to himself.
He felt bolstered, and for the first time in weeks he had something fresh to think about: a new preoccupation. It was a delightful conundrum to ponder during those wakeful nights, wondering about their motivation, where they had found her, what she would sound like if she spoke and feel like if he touched her. He thought about touching her, about calling her bluff, since she too was playing a role, teasing him with glimpses—there again, gone again, real and not-so-real. By arrangement or whimsy, she was messing with his head and that too was flirtation; a delectable flirtation. He wanted to respond; he wanted in. Annie and Rolf meant to humiliate him, perhaps, but their motivation was of less interest than the woman herself. She was in the house, and they were lying.
During another bad night, he went downstairs, treading quietly to avoid disturbing Rolf and Annie, but also hoping to disturb the secluded guest—to catch her out. He might steal upon her munching cornflakes in the kitchen, making up for all the meals she missed during the day when she was hiding in whichever cupboard they kept her. By the window in the small kitchen, he poured himself a glass of water and stood looking out into nothing. He didn’t hear her coming; he didn’t need to.
A flush of desire seeped through him. It had been too long. Nothing Sandra could do, tried to do, had brought back the comforting rush of heat. His impotence was simply another by-product. He could not allow himself any release. He had to live his brother’s life, depriving himself of the joys Max no longer knew and even striving on his behalf. Before he’d left Ireland, he had been playing himself ragged to perfect Bartók’s Second, which Max had been working on, as if he could somehow finish it for him. But for whom, he wondered vaguely, as he turned to the woman, had he intended to play it?
They made eye contact at last. Sitting on one of the high stools by the counter, legs crossed, one foot bouncing slightly, she looked at him steadily. The kaftan, slit to her thighs, fell over her knees. Her hand rested around a glass of water. This was no trick of his troubled mind—she was as real as he was. Absolutely solid. Her toenails showed the remains of brown nail polish. Gabriel was thinking fast. He needed to provoke a reaction, to shock her into revealing the game, but if he grilled her too harshly, she might take flight or raise her voice, causing a showdown that would bring Annie from her bed. He would then, at least, get some sort of explanation from this deceiving trio. Trouble was, he didn’t much want Annie to come.
There was an exchange, short and inconsequential: “You don’t say much,” he said.
No need to, she replied.
So she did, it turned out, have a voice, a language. In fact, a few languages, he discovered, when she came across to where he was leaning against the sink, and kissed him. It was so sudden that he was the one to pull away, but she
