The Diamond Waterfall (70 page)

And soon he would, for when he traveled to the Carpathians next week, they would all meet up. Sophie and Ana Xenescu—and Corina, who would stay in the villa that had belonged to her husband, Matei Draganesti.
“This very high cross up on the mountaintop,” Corina said, “that's a memorial for the Great War. It's made from the remains of bridges destroyed in the fighting.”

He looked up at the high peaks, the remnants of snow, the dark patches of green forest. He had been longing for the heights, mountain air, fresh in the June heat. Mariana had told him that in full summer Bucharest could be as hot as India:

“The pavements boil and melt, it's unbearable. Then we don't eat in the evening until twelve o'clock—often we sit and watch the sun come up. We can sleep away our afternoons.”

Here he was now, in Sinaia, with his beloved Bugatti. He couldn't imagine sleeping away afternoons. He was full of energy and excitement. Also Corina was being very sweet and easy. She had not teased him once.

Today they were visiting the monastery on a hill outside Sinaia. Bearded monks wearing tall hats. Because she was a woman, Corina was not allowed into parts of the building. They found a memorial to one Take Ionescu, who in 1881 had married an Englishwoman, Bessie Richards, and later had been a hero of the Great War. Corina translated some words of his in 1917: “I believe in our victory as I believe in the light of the sun.”

She said, “The war was a terrible time.” Her scent, with its exotic undertones, became confused with the remnants of incense, there in the small golden chapel.

“Can you
remember
the war?”

“But of course. I was a young girl. You forget I've been here a long time.” She shrugged her shoulders. “But it's all politics. I don't concern myself with that.”

On the hill coming down from the monastery, she stopped the Bugatti and said, “My brother is buried here.”

They went in together. It was a small cemetery. Most of the graves were in good repair, with fresh flowers in small silver vases. He saw everywhere the word
Eroul
Hero. She led him over to a grave where there was the photograph of a young man, mustachioed, with a center parting and a high white collar. “Lieutenant Xenescu, Mihail … 18.9.16.” And the place of death.
“In luptule de pe Vale Cerbului.”

“I remember when we had the news he'd been killed. My mother … My husband, you know, was in the same regiment. He was a major. He survived that battle, although I'm not sure it was good he did so. A man can have too many wounds.”

It was the most she had ever said about her husband. Coming out of the graveyard now, she shivered as if the air had grown cold. A cart was making its way up the hill. Two young children, feet dangling at the back, waved and called to Michael. She said, “Your grandmother—she'll have known Mihail.
They were all at Sinaia the summer she was there. They stayed at Teodor and Sophie's.”

“Yes,” he said, “my grandmother told me about the house. Only now there aren't any borzois.”

“A lot of people coming and going,” she said. “There was another Take, not the one there in the monastery. An anarchist. They used to drink at the Café Napoleon. My brother admired him a great deal. Too much. And Ion's brother, Valentin—Tino … oh, but he was
very
good-looking.” She laughed suddenly, lightly, “Better-looking than you—yes, better even than you, Mikki.”

It was the first time since his arrival in Sinaia that she had needled him, and it was over in a moment. As they got back into the Bugatti, she said:

“It's a nice thought in a way, where they've built the graveyard. There used to be dancing there. It was a special meeting place.”

He said, “You don't talk much about your husband.”

“Why should I? He wasn't very interesting.”

From the monastery, a single bell. The sound carried in the high air.

“We go to the Casino this evening,” she said, in her more brittle voice, “I hope you're going to be
daring.”

The next day when he drove Sophie over to Corina's villa so that she might sit with Ana for the afternoon, he meant to go straight back.

He saw at once that Corina was in an odd mood.
I am really getting to know her,
he thought suddenly, and then was terrified. He remarked casually:

“You know, I'm really getting to know the Bugatti. She's more than a beautiful body. She's beautiful all through. And when I get inside her … the six-bearing crankshaft, you see, it's turned from a solid billet …”He didn't know the words in French and had to paraphrase.

“Oh dear God,” she said, “you really are boring.” The hall where they stood was for sitting also; there was a fireplace for damp or chilly days. In a low voice, she said:

“Sophie's going to read to Maman. Maman can follow a story if it's a book she knows. When they're settled, Mikki, stay for a while. A drink …”

“I was going back.”

She said tartly, “If you want to go—then go!”

As she spoke, she opened the door on his left. He had a glimpse of white walls, a carpet. White and gold furniture, not very much of it, a radiogram, bookshelves.
But this is my dream!
A white piano near the window, and on it, a large photograph. He thought angrily,
That
wasn't there in the dream!

She said, “You're looking at Matei, my husband. Didn't you see a picture of him in the apartment in Bucharest?”

“No.” This man looked about sixty or seventy—anyway at least
fifty,
and much much too old for her. He felt a wave of nausea. It's disgusting, he thought, disgusting that someone like that should touch her.

“We'll have a drink now,” she said. “We'll get it ourselves and not ring for anybody. After that, why don't we dance?”

She was hunting through records. “I don't know,” she said, “not much of a selection here. I mean every year to bring chic ones with me from Bucharest. Some of these are from Matei's time. Look, Viennese waltzes recorded only one side.”

Her scent came toward him. “Put on something while I'm looking,” she said. Then as the music started: “I don't like this. It's gypsy music, we can't dance to that.”

He liked the rhythm. He thought it might have belonged to the dancing that had gone on where now the soldiers slept neatly in rows,
Eroul
above them.

She gave a little scream of delight. “Oh Mikki, look! Something in English!”

He went over. “No,” she said, “I can't understand. ‘Little Boy Blue.'”

“No,” he said, “‘Blues'.”

“Blue, blues, I shall play it at once. Who is this singing? June …”

“It comes from the twenties,” he said. “I've heard of her. Grandma told me. June Tripp was her real name. She became Lady Inverclyde.”

“Your grandmother, she was also a
milady,
wasn't she?”

“Yes,” he said. He paused. “My mother—she came from a farm.”

“Peasant blood, it's good. It's red and healthy. Why not?” she said, putting on the record. She put out her arms so that he would dance with her.

“It's nice, it's rather chic,” she said. “It must have been put there specially for us.”

They danced to it three times in all. Then they walked back to the gramophone, and he thought she leaned forward to pick up her drink.

She was stroking his cheek, his hair, his forehead. “I'm so lonely,” she said. “So lonely.”

He said awkwardly, “You've got lots of friends. In Bucharest anyway. And here too—”

“Oh, it's not that sort of lonely,” she said. “Mikki, Mikki, look at me, Mikki.”

He didn't want to.

“You mustn't be shy,” she said. “Are you frightened of me? Is that what it is now, you're frightened? Sit down. Let's sit down and finish our drinks.”

The chair she took him over to was like the chair in the dream. She sat on the arm of it. Her hand was stroking his neck and the back of his head. She ran her hands over his lips. He didn't protest. She buried her head in his neck. Then, sitting up again, laughing:

“Which woman is it, Mikki, which
she
is the more beautiful—me or the Bugatti?”

“Comparisons are odious,” he said, “that's what I was taught.”

She ran her hand suddenly along his thigh on the inside. When it came to rest he knew it was the dream. Perhaps, he thought, I have brought it about, willed it. But then it changed from the dream. Her hand didn't rest there. She put it about his arm, pulling him up. She said in a strange voice, lower than usual, urgent:

“Come with me, come, Mikki, please, please.” When he resisted a little, she said, “You know you want to, you know you do.”

Then: “Quietly,” she said, “we must go up quietly.”

The rest, everything else, it was so different from the dream. All he could recognize was the sharp delight which in the dream had brought him from sleep to waking. Now it lasted longer, and happened later.

When she said, “Let me teach you. I'll give you lessons,” he remembered suddenly about the dancing lessons and how he'd been angry. But these were lessons he could hope for again and again. They lay still; the sweat ran down his forehead. Then she sat up beside him in the bed. The sheet was silk. She pulled it around her. He said:

“What are you trying to hide?” He felt embarrassed to be speaking. She had turned away a little. He saw her bare shoulders above the silk slip. Her heavy-lidded eyes were closed. He said, “Are you all right? You're sure you're all right?” All he could remember was a violence he had wanted and he thought she had wanted. He told himself, Of course I always knew it wasn't blond hair.

Her hand lay on his belly. He could feel that he stirred again. I would, I would—he could think of nothing he wanted so much …

A small carriage clock chimed in the room. She gave a little cry. “We must go, at once. If Sophie should want—”

At the dressing table he watched as she put on more scent. It was a large flat-fronted bottle, Mitsouko of Guerlain. She said, “I like this song, this record I found, it was clever of me. We must play it again, Mikki—shall we?”

He couldn't keep his eyes off Corina, or his hands. That a few days ago he had thought lovingly only of handling the Bugatti. Now I go every day on long journeys.

“It's easy, Mikki,” she would say to him. “Now I've shown you, isn't it easy?”

Yes, with her it was. He felt secretive about it, and could not imagine ever mentioning it to Stingo. He remembered Ferguson Major at school, boasting of three nights with a French actress.
But that is not the same thing.

“My little boy blue,” Corina said to him.

“Blues,”
he explained again. “It's the blues, you know. Misery, upset…”

“Oh
I know,”
she said offhandedly, a little impatiently. “You're so sweet … and so
big.”

They lay in bed together, drinking wine. She was eating some small biscuits made of chocolate and walnuts.
Fursecuri.
Every now and then— often to stop him talking—she would pop one into his mouth.

“So
big.
It points up to the sky like a skyscraper.
Gratte ciel.
I never saw anything like it—and it is the first time, truly? I'm the first? That you should be so clever, all without any practice! I show you of course some little details. I teach you and then you will always be amazing. A master. You will be able soon to make any woman happy—”

“But I want only to make
you
happy—”

“Oh you do, you do.” Her voice seemed to him suddenly so humble.

The days stretched out. Grandma wrote that Willow was in plaster, after a fall from a horse. Silly kid.

Sometimes he wondered if anybody here had noticed anything. Then he realized one day that everyone knew exactly what was happening—and thought nothing of it. One half of him was shocked, deeply. He even heard Stefan refer to him as Corina's
amant.
He wondered if Elena would like him to confide in her. She said once, “You must always talk to me if something worries you.”

“No, no,” he said, “there's nothing.”

“I see you're happy,” she said now. “And that you make—friends.”

When he realized there were only three weeks left, it came to him as a shock. He had been living in a world without minutes, hours, days. He thought, In three weeks
it will all be over.

Corina said, “What am I going to do when you've gone, Mikki? Shall I have Little Boy Blues?” She understood now what it meant.

“We'll write to each other—”

“Oh, I don't write letters,” she said. “It's you I need—and
him.”
She looked down to where her hands encircled him lovingly. “Yes,” she said, “I shall have those little boy blues.”

That was the day he told her about the Diamond Waterfall. He didn't mention his family often, and had told her only that his father had been killed and his mother was dead. Now he told her a lot about himself, and about others in the family.

She said, “So this great house will be yours, one day. Do you become a
milord?”

“The ‘sir's' not hereditary. My grandfather got it for public services. Yes, I own The Towers at twenty-one. And of course, the Diamond Waterfall.”

She had been most interested in that. He had never given it much
thought before. Now she made him describe it—gasping in amazement at
so many diamonds.

“Ah,” she said, eyes open wide, “what must a woman do to wear this wonderful
parure?”

But that was easy. It came to him in a flash. The answer to everything. What could be more beautiful, he thought, than to be
always
with Corina? To see her naked—and then to cover her in diamonds. To see them trickle over her white skin, to take them off before … Best of all to have her beside him always. To be as happy as this forever. That was what the fever in his blood
meant
—that he should make her happy and never, never lonely again.