Spin (6 page)

The front door
of the house was unlocked. Layla stood in the hall, uncertain of
where she should go or what she should do. At first she could see
nothing at all. She suspected the darkness had been artificially
intensified as a security measure, but as her eyes gradually
adjusted she realised it was simply the effect of the contrast
between the gloomy interior decor and the bright sunlight outside.
The floor was of polished red granite, the walls had been done out
in old-fashioned teak panelling. The effect was opulent but
depressing. She pushed open one door and then another, revealing
the interior of a cupboard stuffed with coats and a side room that
apart from an upright clavichord appeared to be empty. At the end
of the hallway a broad staircase led upwards through a black glass
ceiling that Layla realised was probably a two-way mirror. The
thought of ascending the staircase filled her with an anxiety she
could only put down to the intense and unexpected silence of the
place.

“
Mrs Crawe?” she said, hoping the sound of her own voice might
make her less jumpy. “Nashe?” She tiptoed to the end of the hall
then passed through a doorway into a long corridor with half a
dozen more doors opening off it. She thought it might be entirely
possible to get lost in the house. An image came to her of herself
coming out of the house a full ten years older than when she went
in. The thought was horrifying but also funny. She giggled
nervously to herself. The door closest to her seemed to be locked.
She tried each of the others in turn until she found one that
opened.

She came upon
Alcander Xenakis in a sun-filled room overlooking the garden. From
the way Nashe Crawe had spoken about him, Layla had expected him to
be younger, an eight-year-old child perhaps. In fact he was a
fully-grown man, a year or so younger than herself perhaps but no
more than that. He had the same skinny build as his mother though
he was taller by a good six inches.

He was lying
on a linen-covered daybed, naked except for a pair of white cotton
boxer shorts. He would have been good-looking, had it not been for
the scaly putrescent rash that covered his body. The rash had been
treated with some kind of restorative unguent, an oily preparation
that made the scabs and blotches gleam as if oozing with slime. The
room was filled with the awful sour-sweet stench of rotting meat,
though whether it came from the youth’s diseased skin or from the
ointment it was hard to tell. Layla noticed all the windows of the
room were closed; the sky pressed itself against the cedarwood
frames, hard and glistening as cellophane.

The youth sat
bolt upright. He drew in his breath, snatching at something near
his feet, a bedsheet stained with traces of the greenish unguent.
He threw the sheet around his shoulders and drew it close.

“
I’m sorry,” he said. “I know I should keep my clothes on but
I can’t stand the itching.” He smiled, clearly wanting to make a
joke of it, but the painful-looking lesions on his lips and in the
roughened, reddish skin around his mouth made the smile so horrible
Layla had to force herself not to look away. In spite of her
revulsion she admired his bravery. She had imagined someone
helpless and mollycoddled; within moments of meeting him Layla
could tell Alcander Xenakis was neither. Nor did it look as if he
was dying, exactly. It was more like he was doing battle with
something. The rash or pox or whatever it was that was attacking
his body had brought him low but it had not finished him, at least
not yet.

“
Would you like me to open a window?” she said. “It’s so
stuffy in here.” She hesitated. She wanted to ask what he was doing
shut up inside when fresh air would probably do his skin more good
than any amount of healing unguent. Was she supposed to acknowledge
his condition or pretend not to notice it? Nashe Crawe hadn’t
said.

“
I wouldn’t if I were you,” said the youth. “Not unless you
want a dose of my mother’s theory about spores.”

“
Spores?”

“
That’s them. Once they get a hold of you you’ve had it.” He
smiled his awful smile, widening his eyes in mock horror. Like her
thoughts about the house earlier it was terrible but also funny.
Layla began to laugh, then covered her mouth. It seemed wrong that
she should be laughing in a room like this. But then, she noticed,
this room was different from those parts of the house she had seen
so far. There was none of the granite, the heavy wood panelling.
Instead the tiled floor was softened by rush matting, the
whitewashed walls covered in maps, detailed hand-drawn charts of
what looked like the Eastern Mediterranean and the Aegean
islands.

“
I’m researching for a book,” the boy said, seeing her
looking. “A biography of the poet Panteleimon. I don’t suppose
it’ll be a masterpiece, but it’s a fine way of passing the
time.”

The antique
word ‘fine’ seemed to ring in Layla’s ears like a high clear bell.
She had heard of Panteleimon but only vaguely. She had a feeling
his poetry was difficult to understand.

“
I don’t know much about him,” she said. “Wasn’t he in exile
or something?”

“
Yes, he was. He was banished for indecency and spent the last
twenty years of his life on the island of Kos. That was where he
wrote his greatest works.”

“
What kind of indecency was he banished for?”

“
He was in love with his sister and honest enough to write
poems about it. Why? Are you interested in poetry?”

“
I don’t know anything about it.”

“
That doesn’t really answer the question.” He paused. “You’re
that soothsayer or whatever my mother keeps going on about. You’re
not remotely how I imagined you.”

“
What were you imagining, then? A gummy old crone in a
headscarf? In any case, I’m not what she’s looking for. I tried to
tell her that but she wouldn’t listen.”

“
You noticed.”

They both
smiled. This time his smile didn’t seem so terrible to her. It was
amazing, Layla thought, how quickly you became used to someone if
you liked them, no matter what they looked like.

“
What’s wrong with you really?” she asked.

He shrugged.
“Nobody seems to know. A fungal infection gone haywire? Hence my
mother’s obsession with spores, I suppose. It looks like childhood
eczema but it doesn’t respond to any of the usual treatments.
Anyway, the problem is it’s beginning to spread inwards. Eventually
it will attack my vital organs, according to the medics, and then
my spinal column. They reckon I have another two years before that
happens, three if I’m lucky.”

“
But that’s awful.”

“
I’ll be sorry not to finish the book.” He lay back against
the daybed’s padded headrest and closed his eyes. His eyelids were
blistered, the skin crusted with solidified mucus. Layla found she
could not look at him any longer. A deep ache had settled in her
gut. It was as if maggots were feeding on the lining of her
stomach, and she wondered if that was how it was for Alcander
Xenakis, not just when he was tired but all the time, the steady,
inexorable pain of being eaten alive.

She went
towards him, meaning to comfort him somehow or at least tell him he
must stay alive so he could continue writing his book, but before
she could say anything the door opened and Nashe Crawe appeared.
Layla was startled by the sight of her, not just because of the
suddenness of her appearance but because of the way she was
dressed. The trainers and jeans were gone. In their place was a
calf-length black dress of the kind the gambling widows wore. The
dress was clearly hand-tailored, clearly worth a fortune. Layla
realised she had been foolish in not realising that the baggy smock
and dirty trainers had been a front, a disguise she could put on
when she wanted to move about the city without being noticed.

Her eyes flew
to the youth on the couch.

“
Alcander.” Her voice was sharp with panic. “I told you to
keep your door locked until I got back.”

“
It’s OK, mum, really. Layla and I were just talking.” He
opened his eyes, blue slits in his ravaged face, and tried to
moisten his lips with the tip of his tongue. The tongue also looked
reddened, ulcerated. Layla wished Nashe Crawe would learn to rein
in her anxiety, at least when she was in the presence of her son.
She did not like to think how it must be for Alcander, burdened
every waking minute with the love of this woman when the burdens he
had to bear were already so great. The sound of his voice seemed to
relax Nashe Crawe, however. Her expression softened, her posture
became less tense.

“
It’s time for your sleep now anyway, sweetheart. I’m going to
steal Layla away, find out what you two have been gossiping
about.”

She turned
towards Layla, smiling tentatively. Layla understood that it was
only once she had reassured herself that her son was still alive
and in no worse a condition than when she had last seen him that
she was finally able to acknowledge the existence of another
person. “Would you like to see the garden?” Nashe Crawe said. “I’ll
tell the girls to fetch us some drinks.”

Layla supposed
that by girls she meant servants. She nodded her assent. She stared
at Alcander Xenakis, his blistered arms straight by his sides, the
stained sheet stretched over his prone body, and wondered if she
would ever see him again. The thought that she might not brought a
stab of regret, a sense of loss that seemed more deeply rooted than
anything she had felt for John Caribe.

“
Is there any of Panteleimon’s stuff online?” she said. “I’d
like to read some of his poems.”

“
You’ll find some of his early
Lyrics
, I expect.” The youth’s voice was now close to a
whisper and Layla realised their conversation had probably
exhausted him. She remembered the way she had judged his mother,
and felt bad. What did she know, about Alcander or about anything?
“The
Poems
of Exile
are harder, but
the
Lyrics
are good,
a good starting point anyway. I’d like to know what you think of
them. I really mean that.”

“
Then I’ll come back and tell you,” said Layla. “I mean that,
too.”

She turned
away then. She was aware that Nashe Crawe was looking at her, but
she avoided her gaze, not wishing to know how her conversation with
Alcander had been received. She passed from the room, back into the
dim corridor. Nashe Crawe said something to Alcander, too quietly
for Layla to hear, then followed her out. She closed the door
softly behind her.

“
He likes you,” she said. “That’s good.”

“
I like him, too,” Layla said. She was surprised by Nashe
Crawe’s acceptance of her son’s friendly interest in her, a virtual
stranger. She had expected signs of jealousy, possessiveness, and
again she felt guilty for misjudging the woman.

“
Let’s go outside,” said Nashe Crawe. “There are things I
should tell you.” She led the way along the darkened corridor to
where a door at the end gave access to the grounds. From Alcander’s
room the garden had looked extensive, but Layla now saw the view
offered to her from the window hadn’t shown her the half of it. The
gardens were vast; the formal arrangement of flowerbeds and dwarf
olives she had glimpsed from Alcander’s window presented merely a
small portion. Beyond the olives lay a grazing meadow, and beyond
that a scrubby hillside busy with wild flowers. The blue tongue of
the sea lapped at the horizon. There was no sign of the
neighbouring houses though, and Layla realised with a jolt that
what she was looking at was a hologram projection. She stared into
the middle distance, trying to work out where the real grounds
ended and the projection took over but found it impossible to
tell.

Sophisticated
projections of this type were invariably the property of
advertising corporations or major league international hotel chains
and were far beyond the means of private citizens. The gardens of
his villa were proof that Demitris Xenakis was not just rich, he
was untouchable. There was nothing he could not buy: the finest
surroundings, the most qualified doctors, meticulous
round-the-clock care. The idea that a man like that would come to
her for assistance was preposterous and in its own way
terrifying.

“
Well,” said Nashe Crawe. “Will you help him?” She stood
sharply erect, her arms folded across her chest. In her black dress
and gold sandals she resembled a tiny, thwarted queen. In contrast
with the evening before her pale gaze was interrogative rather than
pleading.

“
How can I?” said Layla. “I’m not a doctor.”

“
I don’t mean that, and you know it. I want you to weave a new
future for him. If it’s the lawmen you’re afraid of, then don’t be.
We’ll make sure you’re protected. You see how things are here. Name
your price and we’ll pay it. I don’t care about money. Money is not
a problem.”

“
I wish I could say yes. I wish I could actually do the things
you think I can. But it’s just not possible.”

Nashe Crawe
sighed. She let her arms fall to her sides. “It’s been five years
since I last saw my husband, do you know that?” she said suddenly.
“He says it’s because it’s not safe for him to come home at the
moment, but I know it’s because he’s ashamed to look at his son. He
blames himself for what is happening to Alcander. A Carthaginian
warlord put a curse on Alcander to get back at Demitris. Demitris
killed his son, you see. He shot him through the back with a
poisoned arrow. It took him three days to die and he was in agony.
Three months after it happened the first sores began to appear on
Alcander’s body.”