Nightspawn (20 page)

‘Get out,’ I roared.

He got out. I walked around the room, picking up bits of bread and paper, sighing, swearing. I opened the wardrobe, and threw the gun down among a pile of dirty laundry. I was alone. Erik
arrested, Andreas drunk, or, worse, gone insane. There was a smell of blood in the air. There was no one. Good god.

‘Charlie, wait, Charlie. Charlie. Char—’

I reached the front door, and pulled it open. The street was empty. Two of my fellow-sojourners in the rooming house opened their doors and shouted down abuse at me. I slammed the door, and set off on my quest.

I did not know where to begin searching for him, but that did not deter me, only it gave to my journey a scope, a formlessness, which pleased my formless, and by now, let us admit it, rapidly decaying mind. I revisited some of the places where Erik had brought me the night before, not in any real hope of finding the knight, but just for old time’s sake. I searched in bars and cafés, in workmen’s tavernas; I even found my way into a brothel in the Piraeus, where the fat madam (why are they always fat?) welcomed me with a wide smile and a flood of incoherent, though entertaining English. I declined to have her fit me in, as she so aptly put it, and told her that I was searching for someone. Her smile died abruptly, and she swept away to call her husband, a wiry little man with a bald burnished skull, who, in silence, and with an expression of distaste, flung me out on the pavement with professional grace. I caught the last train back to Monasteraki, and walked slowly homeward.

Charlie sat in the corridor outside my room. He opened his drowsy eyes at my approach, and scrambled to his feet, ready with another persuasive argument. I did not want to hear it.

‘Where the hell have you been?’ I asked. ‘I’ve searched for you for hours.’

He blinked, and closed his mouth, and said,

‘Eh?’

‘Oh stop goggling at me. Here.’

I took the little silver box from my pocket, and clicked it open. I lifted the … wait, this is too mundane. The occasion deserves something. How about a roll on the drums, a blast of
sennets and tuckets, and a few bars from the massed choir? Oh well. I lifted the piece of paper out of the box, marvelling yet again that such a small thing could cause so much agony and death, and gave it to him. It was so easy, I almost fainted.

‘Take it,’ I snarled.

Charlie hesitated, unwilling to believe that such luck as this could come his way without a bolt of lightning to strike off his hand. He took it at last, with his lip clamped in his teeth. His jowls trembled.

‘I won’t let you down,’ he muttered, an intensity of feeling causing his voice to shake.

‘I don’t give a curse what you do,’ I said. ‘Just take it, and go.’

He looked at the document, he looked at me. He looked at me, he looked at the document. He smiled. He smiled. He smiled. He smiled. He smiled. He …

I could not sleep, floating, as I was, a foot above the bed. I thought that I had cast off my burden as easily as if it had been but a scrap of paper, and I felt as light as a feather, as thistledown; I felt as a leaf in the forest must feel when that weight of rain falls from it, and it springs up, up into the summer air. There were voices in my head, telling me all manner of strange things, that I could do anything now, go anywhere; that I was free. What a joke.

I got up, and wandered out into the sleeping city. There was a shower of rain, with great drops that fell straight down like nails, and then, when the rain stopped, the sun came up and tore the clouds to shreds. I had never seen anything so utterly new as that drenched dawn, drab and watery though it was. I sat on the balcony of an all-night café, alone among spring flowers that grew in boxes. The air was like polished glass, and the first sounds of the city’s day, coming up to me, had the far clear ring of bone about them. And I, I was the morning’s flaw. Something dark and soft, and somehow sticky, was
pressing
against my mind, growing ever more insistent as the city
unfolded below me, and, wearily, warily, like one abroad on a road at night who looks at last over his shoulder at that frightening thing which slouches behind, I set free my mind. It was a long black road down which I gazed. I saw a hillside enfolded in an island’s darkness, and a smiling face speaking. There was a word. I had carried it for so long now, like a worm coiled beneath my flesh, gnawing at the bone; the extraction was agony. I stared at the balcony-rail before me. The dawn abruptly disappeared, and I was enveloped in darkness. A dog’s head rushed at me, with ravenous teeth, and blood in its throat, and I saw that word. I had recognized it for what it was, the moment I had heard it. Now, it was too late.

I sighed. The sunshine of the new day seemed to make me cold. I stood up, and left the café, hearing laughter rattle the morning air.

White pawn to black king one. Look at this.

The gates were open, and inside, on the drive, the great car sat and looked at me malevolently, its bonnet lifted like a jaw. A pigskin suitcase clung, incongruously, like a parasite, to the gleaming roof. There was no one in sight. I walked under the archway, and through the tunnel into the courtyard. The water had been switched off in the fountain. The gravel was wet with dew, and squeaked under my feet. I went through the french windows, and across that empty blue room. All these places, recently so familiar, were now, somehow, strange and alien to me. A matter of days had been enough to make me an intruder here. An early-morning smell, like old smoke, hung in the air, and there was silence everywhere. I wandered down corridors and halls, and stood outside doorways, holding my breath, listening. Once, by a window which afforded a crooked view of
the garden, and a rear wheel of the car, I became convinced that I was being watched, and when I turned, suddenly, I saw, or imagined that I saw, a shadow slide away like grey water around a corner of the corridor.

I found evidence that a departure was planned. Two leather trunks (a shock of recognition when I saw them, unpleasant and unsettling, like meeting, heartily alive, a pair of
acquaintances
whom one had thought were dead) lay in the hall, bound, and labelled to London. There were bare spaces on the walls, where pictures and tapestries had been removed. In a bathroom, where I went to answer a sudden message from my innards, I noticed that the toothbrushes, those last links with a home, had been taken away. A dry sliver of soap and a broken tin of talcum powder were all that remained.

I climbed the stairs, watching another me, hand to banister, coming down to meet me, not without apprehension, through the ornate mirror. On the landing, I stopped and looked around me, wondering where I should go next. A door was flung open, and Julian came out, speaking, as he came, over his shoulder to someone inside the room. He closed the door and strode past me without a glance, went down three steps of the stairs, and halted. He stood motionless, with his head bowed; then, as though he had come to a decision, he patted the banister with his palm, and turned around slowly and looked at me.

‘My god,’ he said, ‘I thought you were an hallucination.’

‘I am.’

Now that was a strange thing to say. He chose to consider it a joke, and, laughing, came back up the stairs. We looked at each other. From that smile of Julian’s, something riotous must have been going on behind me. I said,

‘Where is it?’

‘What’s that?’

‘Nothing.’

His hands went into his pockets, and jingled the coins which they found there. He looked down at his plus-fours, and laughed.

‘Things are in such a mess,’ he said.

‘Are you leaving?’ I asked.

‘Eh? No no. We were, yes, but we changed our minds. Something came up. Are you here to say goodbye? Sorry to disappoint you.’

‘I’m not disappointed.’

‘No? Jolly good. A friend of yours was here last night. In the small hours of the morning, actually. Woke us all up.’

‘Who?’

‘That crippled chap, what’s his name?’

‘Andreas.’

‘That’s it. Strange man. He left in a hurry. Which reminds me, I must get along and unpack some of this stuff.’

And, before I could stop him, he hurried away down the stairs. I waited for a moment or two, trying to think, but my mind was filled with a horrible, wet, white fog. I regretted not having a gun. Something heavy was dropped somewhere in the house, and the floor quaked under my feet. I followed him.

In that room where the huge wall of glass looked down across the hill, I found him, whisking dust sheets from the furniture and stacking them, folded, in a corner. I stood in the doorway without speaking, and watched him. When he caught sight of me, he turned, in some surprise, and put his hands on his hips.

‘Come to help?’ he asked pleasantly.

‘No.’

He smiled.

‘Wise fellow. Tedious, this kind of thing.’

He pulled the sheet from the piano, folded it neatly, and laid it in the corner with its mates. He surveyed the room.

‘That’s better,’ he murmured.

This was absurd. I would not stand for this.

‘Listen,’ I said. ‘I want to talk to you.’

‘To me? O dear. I’m very busy just at the moment. Can’t it wait?’

‘No.’

‘All right then. What is it?’

I did not know where to begin, and, reviewing all that I wished to say, I was overwhelmed, and could not speak. He peered at me closely, and frowned.

‘Benjamin, I really think —’

‘Stop,’ I shouted, feeling my lips slap back into a snarl.

His eyebrows twitched, and he scratched his jaw.

‘Stop what?’

‘This, this ridiculous performance.’

‘Performance?’

‘And stop repeating what I say.’

‘Repeating?’

‘Christ.’

‘Benjamin, you seem upset. Has something happened?’

‘Oh no, no, nothing at all.’

‘Good. Well then …’

A sob escaped from my throat. It surprised me. Julian said,

‘I think you need a drink. Wait here, I’ll fix you one.’

He went quickly past me, and closed the door behind him. Did I hear a muffled snigger in the hall?

I sat on the couch and closed my eyes. Frightening things stirred in that darkness, so I opened them again, and looked to the light in the great window. To my surprise, I found tears on my face. I brushed them impatiently away, stood up, and prowled about the room. The piano lid was open. I put my fingers to the keys, but when I pressed them, nothing was produced but a kind of modulation of the silence. A dead withered brown flower, the colour of old blood, hung over the rim of a vase. I went to the glass wall and looked down into the garden. Julian, in a balloon-like boiler suit, was on his knees at the rear of the car, poking at its underbelly. He got to his feet, wiping his hands on a piece of rag, turned, looked up at me, and winked. I flung open the door, tripped over a suitcase which stood on the threshold, and went skidding along the hall on my chin, up, and galloped down the stairs, taking them two, four, five at a time, through the french windows, the courtyard, gravel flying, down the drive, to the car, Julian … was gone. I swore, and punched a fist into my palm, then turned, and saw, up in that window, Julian standing, smiling down at me. I went back into the house.

He met me in the courtyard, stopping in false surprise when he saw me, and said,

‘Didn’t you want to talk to me?’

I did not answer, but stalked into the house and sat down on a chair in the dining-room with my arms folded. He strolled in after me, and leaned against the wall with his hands in his pockets, the stick dangling from his arm. He had that grin, with one eyebrow raised, thick lips curving up around his downward-curving nose, which always seemed to me to express best his particular brand of wicked, mischievous jocularity.

‘You like your jokes, don’t you?’ I snarled.

He lowered his head modestly.

‘Some of them,’ he muttered, shuffling his feet. ‘But
sometimes
I cheat, and then the joke turns sour.’

He went to the sideboard, and drew out, from behind it, a small easel and blackboard, and set them up on the floor before me. Next he produced a stick of chalk, blew on it, blew on his fingers, coughed, and, with a flourish, wrote upon the
blackboard
:

He turned to me, a fat finger resting on the lower curve of the S, and said,

‘Now. The successful joke, or practical joke, if you like

‘The successful practical joke is that one in which a certain personality or personalities, which are known intimately, are taken in a given situation or situations, and nudged into one cohesive, final situation, whereby laughter is produced. The nature of this laughter will be discussed presently. So; let
P
equal personality,
S
equal situation, and
L
equal laughter.’

The chalk squealed and scratched. Julian held his face close to the board, his tongue between his lips, his brow furrowed.

He turned to me suddenly.

‘Equals what? Well, come on, come on, what does it equal?
I’ve just told you.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘My god. Does it equal laughter?’

‘Yes.’

He stamped his foot.

‘It does not. You forget the unknown factor, which we shall call V. Hence:’

He laid down the chalk, brushed his hands, and stepped back to view the equation. Then he whirled about, glowering at me from under his eyebrows, and barked,

‘Do you understand?’

‘Yes.’

He nodded, shoved his hands into his pockets, and strolled to the window, where he stood and looked pensively across the garden. I blew my nose.

‘Now,’ he said. ‘Let us discuss it. It should be obvious, of course, that one doesn’t do all this work to produce a mere laugh; nothing so vulgar as that. It is a matter of vision, which is why I have called the unknown factor V; look there, look at it on the board. The product is, though I would hesitate to say this to an artist, the product is a matter of art. Laughter is not merely that ridiculous sound which a crowd makes when a comedian’s trousers fall off. Laughter is art. The perfect joke has the economy, the … the precision of a poem. It is ephemeral, in a sense, but so is great art, if one ignores the time factor.’