The Wolf Gift (6 page)

“Who has a right to tell me I have no gift, no talent, no passion.…” he murmured. “Why do people say those things to you when you’re young? Doesn’t seem fair, does it?”

“No, darling, it’s not fair,” she said. “But the mystery is why you listen.”

Then all the old scolding voices went quiet in his head suddenly, and only then did he realize what a loud chorus they’d always been. Did he ever take a breath without hearing that chorus?
Sunshine Boy, Baby Boy, Little Boy, Little Brother, Little Reuben, what do you know about death, what do you know about suffering, what makes you think, why would you ever try, why, you’ve never focused on any one thing longer than
—. All those words just dried up. He saw his mother. He saw Celeste—saw her small animated face and large brown eyes. But he didn’t hear their voices anymore.

He leaned forward and kissed Marchent. She didn’t turn away. Her lips were tender, rather like a child’s lips, he imagined, though he had never actually kissed a child since he’d been a child himself. He kissed her again. This time, something stirred in her, and when he felt that stirring, the passion was sparked in him.

Suddenly, he felt her hand on his shoulder, squeezing his shoulder, and gently pushing him away.

She turned around and bowed her head like a person catching her breath.

She took his hand and led him towards a closed door.

He was certain this was the entrance to a bedroom and he had made up his mind. It didn’t matter what Celeste would think if she ever knew. He had no intention of passing up this opportunity.

She drew him into a darkened room, and turned on a low lamp.

Only slowly did he realize the place was a kind of gallery, as well as a bedroom. There were ancient stone figures standing on pedestals, thick shelves, and on the floor.

The bed itself was Elizabethan, an English relic almost certainly, a coffered chamber of sorts with carved wooden shutters that could be closed against the night’s cold.

The old coverlet of green velvet was musty, but he didn’t have a care about that in the world.

H
E WOKE UP
out of a sound sleep. There was a low light coming from an open bathroom. A thick white terry-cloth robe hung on the hanger on the hook on the door.

His leather bag was nearby on a chair and his pajamas had been laid out for him, along with his fresh shirt for tomorrow, still in its wrapper, and his other personal things. His trousers had been folded. And his discarded socks as well.

He’d left his leather bag in his unlocked car. And this meant she’d gone out there in the dark alone to get it for him, and this made him a little ashamed. But he was a little too happy and relaxed to feel too ashamed.

He was still lying on the velvet cover, but the pillows had been removed from their velvet shams, and the shoes he’d kicked off in his haste were standing neatly together by the chair.

For a long time, he lay there thinking about their lovemaking, and wondered that he had betrayed Celeste so easily. But in truth, it hadn’t been easy at all. It had been quick and impulsive but not easy, and the pleasure had been unexpectedly intense. He was not sorry. No, not by any means. He felt that it was something he’d remember forever, and it seemed infinitely more important than most things he’d ever done.

Would he tell Celeste? He wasn’t sure. He would certainly not spring it on her, and it would have to be very clear in his mind that she would want to know. That meant talk, talk with Celeste about a lot of things, hypotheticals and realities, and the worst reality of all, that with her, he felt relentlessly defensive and inadequate and this had pretty much worn him out. She’d been too surprised that people liked the articles he’d written for the
Observer
. And that had cut him.

He felt rejuvenated now, and a little elated and guilty, and a little sad. It never occurred to him for a minute that Marchent would invite him
into her bed again. In fact, he was certain she wouldn’t. And he winced when he thought of her patronizing him, maybe calling him a beautiful boy. Seems she had whispered something like that to him when they were in the thick of it, and it hadn’t mattered then. But it mattered now.

Ah, well, he was surprised by this turn of events, and it seemed mixed up with this house and with Felix Nideck and with the mystique of the whole family.

He got up and went into the bathroom. There was his shaving kit unzipped on the edge of the marble washbasin, and on a glass shelf beneath the mirror stood all the toiletries he might need, just as he might find them in a fine hotel. A curtained window faced west, and by day one could likely see the ocean or the cliffs, he wasn’t sure.

He showered, brushed his teeth, and then got into his pajamas. Slipping on the robe and his shoes, he quickly turned down the coverlet, and plumped the pillows.

For the first time this evening, he checked his phone and saw he had two messages from his mother, one from his father, two from his brother, Jim, and five messages from Celeste. Well, this wasn’t the time to answer them.

He slipped the phone into the pocket of his robe, and then took stock of the room.

Unbelievable treasures, helter-skelter, it seemed, and dusted as best they could be. Tablets. Yes, there were tablets there, tiny fragile baked-clay tablets that might crumble at his touch. He could see the tiny cuneiform writing. And there were figures in jade, and diorite, and alabaster, gods and goddesses he knew, and some he had never known, and inlaid boxes crammed with random bits of paper or fabric, and heaps of coins and what might have been jewelry, and then books. Lots of books, in all the mysterious Asian languages again, and in the languages of Europe too.

All Hawthorne’s novels were here, and some very recent novels that surprised him and thrilled him—James Joyce’s
Ulysses
, very thumbed and filled with little note tags, and copies of Hemingway and Eudora Welty and Zane Grey. There were books of old ghost stories, too, elegant British writers, M. R. James, Algernon Blackwood, and Sheridan LeFanu.

He didn’t dare to touch these books. Some were bulging with torn bits of paper, and the oldest paperbacks were falling apart. But it gave him the oddest feeling again of knowing and loving Felix, a twinge that
was like the fan sickness he’d felt as a kid when he’d fallen in love with Catherine Zeta Jones or Madonna and thought them the most gorgeous and desirable people in the world. It was that kind of simple yearning, to know Felix, to have Felix, to be in Felix’s world. But Felix was dead.

A wild fantasy bloomed in his mind. He’d marry Marchent. He’d live here with her. He’d bring the house to life again for her. They’d go through all of Felix’s papers together. Maybe Reuben would write a history of the house, and a history of Felix, one of those specialty books, which always include big expensive photographs, books that didn’t become best sellers but which were always respectable and valuable. God knows he had such books himself.

Now he was the one telling himself he was dreaming. And in truth, much as he loved Marchent, he didn’t want to be married yet to anybody. But the book, maybe he could do the book, and Marchent might cooperate in such a venture, even if she herself went off again to her house in South America. Maybe it would bind them together, deeply, as good friends and fine friends, and that would be something of great value to them both.

He went out of the room and walked about for a while, on the second floor.

He went down the north hallway on the back of the house.

Many doors stood open, and he found himself peering into several little libraries and galleries much like the one he’d just left. More ancient clay tablets. Ah, this took his breath away. More figurines, and even some parchment scrolls. He was fighting himself not to touch.

There were more of the beautifully appointed bedrooms off the east hallway, one with dazzling black-and-gold Oriental wallpaper, and another papered in stripes of red and gold.

Circling back eventually, he was again on the west side of the house. He stood for a moment on the threshold of what was obviously Marchent’s bedroom, one door above Felix’s bedroom, a haven of white lace curtains and bed trimming, noting her clothes in a heap at the foot of the bed. But Marchent was nowhere around.

He wanted to go up to the attic. There was a staircase at either end of the western hall. But he had no leave to go exploring up there, and so he didn’t. And he didn’t open closed doors, though he wanted to do that very much too.

He loved the house. He loved the twin candlelike sconces, the thick wooden crown moldings everywhere, and the dark wooden baseboards and heavy brass-handled doors.

Where was the lady of the house?

He went downstairs.

He heard her voice before he saw her. From the kitchen, he saw her in an adjacent office, amid fax machines or copy machines, computer monitors and mountains of clutter, talking on a landline phone in a low voice.

He didn’t want to eavesdrop, and in truth, he couldn’t really make out what she was saying. She wore a white negligee now, something very soft, with layers of lace and pearls, it seemed, and her smooth straight hair shimmered like satin in the light.

He felt a stab of desire that was painful, just looking at her hand as it held the receiver of the phone, and seeing the light on her forehead.

She turned, saw him, and smiled, gesturing for him to wait.

He turned and went away.

The old woman Felice was going through the big house and turning off the lights.

The dining room was already dark when he came back through it, and he saw that the fire had been scattered and was no more than embers. The rooms up front appeared to be in total darkness now. And he could see the old woman moving down the hall, reaching for the switches of the sconces one by one.

At last she passed him on her way back to the kitchen, and this room she plunged into total darkness as well. She went on out then, without a word to Marchent, who was still talking, and Reuben went on back up the stairs.

A small lamp burned on a table in the upstairs hallway. And there was light coming from Marchent’s open bedroom door.

He sat down at the top of the stairs, with his back to the wall. He figured he would wait for her and surely she would come up soon.

He knew suddenly he’d do everything in his power to get her to sleep the night with him, and he grew impatient wanting to hold her, kiss her, feel her in his arms. It had been powerfully exciting to sleep with her simply because she was new to him and so very different, yet soft and yielding and utterly self-confident and frankly much more passionate than he’d ever known Celeste to be. She didn’t seem like an older woman
in any particular way. He knew she was, of course, but her flesh had been firm and sweet, and she’d been a little less muscular than Celeste.

These struck him as crude thoughts; he didn’t like these thoughts. He thought of her voice and her eyes and he loved her. He figured Celeste would probably understand. Celeste after all had been unfaithful to him with her old boyfriend twice. She’d been very candid about both of these “disasters,” and they’d gotten past it. In fact, Celeste had suffered over them much more than Reuben had.

But he had it in his mind that she owed him one, and that a woman of Marchent’s age wouldn’t arouse her jealousy at all. Celeste was uncommonly pretty, effortlessly attractive. She’d let this go.

He went to sleep. It was a thin sleep in which he thought he was awake, but it was sleep. His body felt sublimely relaxed and he knew he was happier than he’d been in a very long time.

A
LOUD CRASH
. Glass breaking. He woke up. The lights were out. He couldn’t see anything. Then he heard Marchent scream.

He raced down the steps, hand sliding along the broad oak railing, finding his way.

One horrific scream after another drew him straight forward in the blackness, and gradually, by what light he didn’t know, he made out the kitchen door.

The beam of a flashlight blinded him, and before he could shield his eyes, someone had caught him by the throat and was pushing him backwards. His head cracked into wall. The guy was strangling him. The flashlight was rolling on the floor. In sheer rage, he rammed his knee into the attacker, while reaching with both hands for the man’s face. He caught a hank of hair in his left hand and rammed his fist into the man’s eye. The man yelled and gave up the grip on Reuben’s throat. But another figure was bearing down on him with another light. Reuben saw the flash of metal, and felt the sharp stab of the blade going into his stomach. He had never felt rage like he was feeling it now, but as the two men beat him and kicked at him, he felt the blood pumping out of his stomach. Again, he saw the flash of the knife raised. He struck out with all the force he could muster, thrusting his shoulder behind the blow, and threw one of his attackers backwards and away.

Again he felt the blade, this time slicing into his left arm.

A sudden torrent of sounds exploded in the shadowy hallway. It had to be the deep roaring growls of a fierce dog. His attackers were screaming, the animal was snapping, roaring, and Reuben himself had slid down in what was surely his own blood.

Once a long time ago, Reuben had seen a dogfight, and what he remembered was not the sight—because it happened too fast and too furiously for anyone to see anything—but the noise.

That’s how it was now. He couldn’t see the dog. He couldn’t see his attackers. He felt the weight of the beast on top of him, pinning him to the floor, and then the bellowing of the two men stopped.

With a savage snarl, the animal grabbed Reuben by his head, the teeth sinking into the side of his face. He felt himself being lifted as his arms flailed. The pain was worse than the wound in his stomach.

Then suddenly the powerful jaws let him go.

He fell back down on top of one of the attackers, and the only sound in the whole world suddenly was the animal’s panting breath.