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'Nothing I hadn't already guessed,' she replied.
'You knew?'
'In a manner of speaking. I must have done, in my
heart of hearts. Remember our first conversation?'
time, am I right?'
'Oh yes,' he said, pleased by her understanding of the
situation between them. He took a step towards her, and
reached to touch her face.
'You are remarkable,' he said.
'Not really.'
'But to be so unmoved by it all. So cold.'
'What's to be afraid of?' she said. He stroked her
cheek. She almost expected his hood of skin to come
unbuttoned then, and the marbles that played in his
sockets to tumble out and smash. But he kept his
disguise intact, for appearance's sake.
'I want you,' he told her.
'Yes,' she said. Of course he did. It had been in his
every word from the beginning, but she hadn't had the
wit to comprehend it. Every love story was - at the last
- a story of death; this was what the poets insisted. Why
should it be any less true the other way about?
They could not go back to his house; the officers
would be there too, he told her, for they must know
of the romance between them. Nor, of course, could
they return to her flat. So they found a small hotel in
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the vicinity and took a room there. Even in the dingy
were insistent but not overpowering; his undressing of
her - except for the fumbling (a nice human touch, she
thought) - was a model of finesse and sweet solemnity.
She was surprised that he had not known about her
scar, only because she had become to believe this
intimacy had begun on the operating table, when twice
she had gone into his arms, and twice been denied
them by the surgeon's bullying. But perhaps, being
no sentimentalist, he had forgotten that first meeting.
Whatever the reason, he looked to be upset when he
slipped off her dress, and there was a trembling interval
when she thought he would reject her. But the moment
passed, and now he reached down to her abdomen and
ran his fingers along the scar.
'It's beautiful,' he said.
She was happy.
'I almost died under the anaesthetic,' she told him.
That would have been a waste,' he said, reaching up
her body and working at her breast. It seemed to arouse
him, for his voice was more guttural when next he spoke.
'What did they tell you?' he asked her, moving his hands
up the soft channel behind her clavicle, and stroking her
there. She had not been touched in months, except by
disinfected hands; his delicacy woke shivers in her. She
was so engrossed in pleasure that she failed to reply to
flicker closed entirely. His appearance failed to stir
any passion in her; indeed there was much about
his disguise (that absurd bow-tie, for one) which she
thought ridiculous. With her eyes closed, however, she
could forget such petty details; she could strip the hood
off and imagine him pure. When she thought of him that
way her mind pirouetted.
He took his hands from her; she opened her eyes.
He was fumbling with his belt. As he did so somebody
shouted in the street outside. His head jerked in the
direction of the window; his body tensed. She was
surprised at his sudden concern.
'It's all right,' she said.
He leaned forward and put his hand to her throat.
'Be quiet,' he instructed.
She looked up into his face. He had begun to sweat.
The exchanges in the street went on for a few minutes
longer; it was simply two late-night gamblers parting.
He realized his error now.
'I thought I heard -'
'What?'
'- I thought I heard them calling my name.'
'Who would do that?' she inquired fondly. 'Nobody
knows we're here.'
He looked away from the window. All purposefulness
her head. 'But I'm swift,' he said, 'and invisible.'
His hand strayed back down to her scar, and further.
'And always neat,' he added.
She sighed as he stroked her.
They admire me for that, I'm sure. Don't you think
they must admire me? For being so neat?'
She remembered the chaos of the crypt; its indignities,
its disorders.
'Not always ..." she said.
He stopped stroking her.
'Oh yes,' he said. 'Oh yes. I never spill blood. That's
a rule of mine. Never spill blood.'
She smiled at his boasts. She would tell him now -
though surely he already knew - about her visit to All
Saints, and the handiwork of his that she'd seen there.
'Sometimes you can't help blood being spilt,' she said,
'I don't hold it against you.'
At these words, he began to tremble.
'What did they tell you about me? What lies'?'
'Nothing,' she said, mystified by his response. 'What
could they know?'
'I'm a professional,' he said to her, his hand moving
back up to her face. She felt intentionality in him again.
A seriousness in his weight as he pressed closer upon
her.
unadulterated hues, as in a child's paint-box.
'I won't have them tell lies about me,' he said again.
'To say I spill blood.'
'They told me nothing,' she assured him. He had
given up his pillow entirely, and now moved to straddle
her. His hands were done with tender touches.
'Shall I show you how clean I am?' he said: 'How
easily I stop the drummer?'
Before she could reply, his hands closed around her
neck. She had no time even to gasp, let alone shout.
His thumbs were expert; they found her windpipe and
pressed. She heard the drummer quicken its rhythm
in her ears. 'It's quick; and clean,' he was telling her,
the colours still coming in predictable sequence. Red,
yellow, green; red, yellow, green.
There was an error here, she knew; a terrible
misunderstanding which she couldn't quite fathom.
She struggled to make some sense of it.
'I don't understand,' she tried to tell him, but her [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]