Personal Darkness (35 page)

"It's too easy," said Rachaela. "She's a murderess."

"The forgiveness of sin," said Althene. "What does it mean? That you are freed from evil. Though you have committed atrocious acts, you needn't continue to transgress. Change is possible. Is
allowed
."

"All right. I've seen you kill. You'd judge Ruth differently."

"I make no judgment."

"How dare you," said Rachaela, drawing away. "How
dare
you—these absolutes—these
doctrines
—she's a monster—"

"I remember," Althene said, "you told me that, when Ruth was a baby, she almost died."

"Yes, and I wanted her dead."

"Perhaps Ruth, also. Perhaps Ruth meant to die. But you made her live."

"A hospital did that. And bloody Emma."

"How terrible to be forced to go on along a road you know is wrong."

"Oh, stop it," Rachaela said. She put her head on her updrawn knees. "Just stop."

"Very well. But there's one further distressing item. At least, I hope it will distress you."

"When Malach takes Ruth away," Rachaela said, "you'll go too."

"Unfortunately, I must."

"Yes. How convenient."

"I'll be gone a month. Maybe a little more. Then I shall return."

"Do as you want," Rachaela said.

"I must arrange my own affairs," Althene said, "before I come back to you."

"You want me to stand at my window, looking out.
Wearily
. He cometh not, she said."

"How can you," said Althene, evidently amused, "compare me to Adamus?"

"I don't, I don't. But you will go, and you won't come back. And I would prefer honesty. How can you, anyway, want me. The way you are—it must be random. A woman making love to a woman. But the woman is a man. Anyone who consents—"

"You try my patience," said Althene. "Get up and go away. I'm tired of you."

"Exactly."

"I shall cross the symbolic sea, and leave you here, and that's that. Back to my hoards of consenting perverted women."

"Yes."

"Rachaela," Althene said, "I'll say this only one time. Perhaps never again. And so listen to me. I love you. Am
in
love with you. The family have had a hand in it, and perhaps it was meant to happen. It has happened. You don't love me, naturally. You're fascinated by what I am. And I can give you pleasure. You want me to leave you, perhaps. To set you at liberty."

"I don't know," Rachaela said. She stared downward through the bed into darkness.

"I'll be gone. You'll be without me. Then you
will
know. When I come back—"

"You won't come back."

"We shall see," said Althene. She stood up. Behind her the other woman of glass stood before the iris-hyacinth window. "They'll want you to be present when Ruth arrives."

"They may not like what I say and do."

"Why must you say or do anything?"

"Yes," Rachaela said, "why must I."

She walked to the door.

"Do you," said Althene, "consider yourself to be perverted, because you've had sex with me?"

"I suppose I must be. No. No, not at all."

"Good," said Althene. "I have at least that, then, to carry into the sky, while Malach's dogs are howling and piddling with surprise, and the sea is churning far below."

"But is it possible," said Rachaela, "for you to
love
?"

Althene gazed at her. Althene's eyes were soft. They hardened to adamant. "And who, after all, could love you?"

In her white bathroom with the viridian window, Rachaela bathed and washed her hair. She shaved her legs, and the hollows under her arms, as she did every third day. Save today it was like a ritual, the taking of the Host before battle.

She sat over the gas fire. Set in a wide hearth, it had cement logs and looked genuine, and it began to seem to her again she was in the other house, the house above the sea.

She shook her hair to dry it and the fire spat.

Later she dressed in a black wool dress, powdered her face and made up her eyes. She used the light amber blusher and lipstick Althene had given her. This was the mask, the visor of the battle helmet.

Don't be a fool. Just let them do what they want. They will anyway. All of them.

She visualized Ruth coming in, holding Malach's hand. Her hair was done in plaits and she wore a school uniform. Rachaela laughed aloud, bitterly.

So bitter, my love…

Outside the dove window came a vague noise of music. There was a camp of bikers on the common, down the slope. Camillo's companions, doubtless. She had opened the window once, and glimpsed a fire and tents.

The threads were being gathered up, the drawstring pulled tight.

Going away.

Soon she would be alone here again, with Eric and Sasha, and with Miranda. Miranda, who was growing young. If such a thing were credible. But it was. It was. Camillo, too—

"Damn them," she said.

She put on Anna's ring, the ruby heart. And then a silver snake with a tiny tourmaline in its head. Althene had given her that.

/
shall put it away when she goes. I won't look at it
.

This is how they gather their rings. Heirlooms. The gifts of lovers.

He never gave me a ring. Adamus. He gave me Ruth.

She slid a Prokofiev concerto into the CD player. It had black humor, the sounds of diamond rats running about in a giant clock.

She felt a little sick, thinking of Ruth arriving in her uniform, with Malach.

At the commencement of the early dusk, Rachaela heard a car, a taxi, a way down the road.

Her heart stopped. She stood up.

Twenty minutes later, when her heart was beating solidly all through her body, Cheta knocked on the door.

"They're here, Miss Rachaela. Will you come down?"

What if I say no?

She came out and went along the passage, and down the stairs.

There was no one in the hall, but the doors stood open and Michael was closing them. Kei was beside him, carrying two bags. The lamps had been lit.

In the drawing room, unlike the usual sound of the TV, a murmur of voices.

/
don't want to go in
.

Rachaela moved quickly across the hall and into the large white room.

It was full of warm light, and the colored windows were giving up their very last gleams.

Eric, Sasha, and Miranda stood in a line. They had donned dark clothes, as she herself intuitively had done.

She saw too Althene was not there. Nor Camillo.

Then they turned, and looked at her.

Malach, Ruth.

Malach wore white; somehow astonishing, this second whiteness against the white negative of the mane of hair. But the power of him was strong as darkness. It had not abated. Could it be something had increased it?

Last of all, Rachaela saw Ruth. Her daughter. Did not know her.

Ruth had grown taller. She had grown older. She was a woman, twenty, twenty-five.

She wore a long, narrow black skirt that ended four inches from her ankles, and black high-heeled boots embroidered with scarlet and silver. A black velvet coat swung from her shoulders arrogantly, and under it she wore a high-necked tunic of silvery gray watered silk, its collar beaded with drops like red wine and rain, and tied at the waist by a broad black velvet belt that made her waist into the width of a stalk. From under the high, triangular black velvet hat, her black river of hair poured out. She looked like a Russian princess from some novel.

Her face… was not the same.

It was as beautifully made up as Althene's would have been. Pale as porcelain with a hint of blusher on the cheeks, the eyelids dark but now like smoke not soot, the lips a light clear red, flame rather than blood.

Her eyes. Her eyes were alive.

She was not holding Malach's hand, only a small black bag. She was perfectly poised.

He's kissed her awake. Out of the coma. This isn't Ruth.

But it was.

The two dogs were standing beside her. Enki, the paler one, let out a thin low growl.

"Still," Malach said. Enki fell silent.

Ruth's slender gloves were wine red, like the beads, and the embroidery on her boots.

Red. The betrothal color. The marriage color.

Rachaela stared at her daughter.

Not mine.

His.

Malach's.

He has created her.

"Rachaela," Malach said quietly, "I hope you're well."

Idiocy. The Scarabae were always well. Well, or dead.

"Yes, thank you." She could not take her eyes from Ruth. "And I see—that Ruth is well, too."

A little half glance of the raven head toward Malach. Then Ruth said, "Good evening, Rachaela."

Not Mommy anymore. Of course. We are both women now.

"Your clothes are sumptuous," Rachaela said.

"Thank you."

But she had always had good taste. Frightening in-sights. And she had always appeared astonishing, dressed up.

There were no rings on her gloved hands. Perhaps, inside?

Eric said abruptly, "We should all sit."

So they sat down. Malach and Ruth on one sofa, Eric and Sasha on another. Miranda in a chair. Rachaela in a second chair. Enki and Oskar on the carpet.

Michael and Kei came in. They brought a tall silver teapot and cups of transparent white china, and some liqueur in a pear-shaped crystal bottle, little glasses, a plate of tiny cakes with marvelous icing, blue and pink and white and green.

All this came down on the tables, and then the alcohol and the tea and the cakes were offered.

Malach took the alcohol and the tea, nothing to eat. And Ruth… Ruth took tea. No food. She had been such a hungry child. No longer.

Ah, no.

Something in Rachaela ached. It was like a muscle stretched too far. Hurting in release.

Althene was not there. Obviously. Tact or callousness? And Camillo always avoided these family gatherings. Almost always. (Standing in armor that time long ago, as she ran away.)

Ruth had removed her left-hand glove, but not the right.

"Is that an affectation?" Rachaela said.

Ruth looked at her, politely.

"Oh, no. I injured my hand."

"That must be a nuisance," Rachaela said, "especially if you still like to play the piano."

"Malach wants me to practice some music for the left hand only. Until it improves."

Malach wants. Adam says.

"And you're going away with Malach."

Ruth smiled. It was a pretty, fleeting smile. It was a true smile.

/
never saw that. Yes I did. When Adam found, her after she had killed them. Then. She came alive and she was lovely. But she's lovely now. She's alive now
.

"Yes. We're going to Europe."

It was old-fashioned, excluding Britain from the Continent. But then. What else?

Eric said, "They will take care of Ruth."

His voice was hard, abrasive.

Rachaela thought how he had put his fist through the TV screen, striking at Ruth.

Rachaela said, "We're all being so wonderful to each other. Shouldn't we talk about the facts?"

"No," Sasha said. "The facts aren't important."

Eric said, "It is essential to dismiss such errors."

"Which errors?" said Rachaela. She swallowed. "How is it possible?"

Malach spoke. Rachaela had mislaid his voice in the half hour he had not talked to them. Dry and a little rough, its music in abeyance.

"Did you think I'd kill her?"

"Yes," Rachaela said.

"She's Scarabae," he said.

"You've given her attention," Rachaela said, "the thing I didn't give her. Or Adamus. Excuse me, Ruth, I'm speaking about you as if you weren't here. But then, are you here?"

Ruth did not look at her. She only drank daintily from her cup. The two dogs lay still.

"Malach has taught you how to behave, has he?"

"Yes," Malach said. And then, "No one here has a sword drawn but you. You are her mother."

"
Yes
," Rachaela said.

Malach's eyes came to hers. So cruel now. Pitiless, old, no quarter given. "She hurt you, did she, coming out? You can't forgive?"

Rachaela shivered. "What happens when you lose interest in her?"

Malach, without looking, put out his hand and touched Ruth's cheek. He laid his skin against hers, softly.

"I shall never lose interest. She is my soul."

The words burned in the room.

Fire, from some altar.

And Ruth turned to him. She looked at him speechlessly.

He has created her.

Is
that
the reason for love
?

"Oh, then," Rachaela said, "I suppose it's all right."

Miranda said suddenly, "I'm a little worried about Tracy. Shall I send Michael to fetch her down? She'd like these cakes so much."

"You have a replacement, you see," Rachaela said to Ruth, "a nice little pale, black-haired girl who acts as she should."

The door opened.

But it was not Tray. It was Camillo.

He came into the room with an odd mincing step.

"Late," he said. "There you are. Talking with my Cossacks on the hill."

He glanced at Malach, and then at Ruth. Camillo froze. It was as if he had come into the arctic cold, knowing how it would be, and as he turned to stone, he laughed.

"Mama," he said. "My father and my mother."

Ruth had moved a little. She drew back against Malach.

Yes, last time he gave her a mousetrap.

"Isn't she lovely," said Camillo. "Will she sing me asleep? Will she wrap me in the fur as we run away over the snow?"

"
Tais-toi
," Malach said.

"
Mais non
," Camillo said. "No, no I won't shut up. I like to say it. And I've brought a gift."

Camillo slipped forward to Ruth over the .carpeted ground, between the purity of the furniture. The dogs did not move. "
Pour vous, Maman
." He held out something long and thin.

It was a knitting needle. It was burned.

Bile whipped Rachaela's throat.

"From the heart of Anna. What you killed her with."

Malach got up. The dogs stirred.