Trumps of Doom (5 page)

“’They’re down there, too,” she said.
 
“And to both sides! There is nothing below but more stars.
 
And to the sides .
 
.
 
.”

“Yes.
 
Pretty things, aren’t they?”

We remained there for a long while, watching, before I could persuade her to come away and follow the tunnel farther..
 
It bore us out again to behold a ruined classical amphitheater beneath a late afternoon sky.
 
Ivy grew over broken benches and fractured pillars.
 
Here and there lay a shattered statue, as if cast down by earthquake.
 
Very picturesque.
 
I’d thought she’d like it, and I was right.
 
We took turns seating ourselves and speaking to each other.
 
The acoustics were excellent.

We walked away then, hand in hand, down myriad ways beneath skies of many colors, coming at last in sight of a quiet lake with a sun entering evening upon its farther shore.
 
There was a glittering mass of rock off to my right.
 
We walked out upon a small point cushioned with mosses and ferns.

I put my arms around her and we stood there for a long time, and the wind in the trees was lute song counterpointed by invisible birds.
 
Later still, I unbuttoned her blouse.
 
“Right here?” she said.

“I like it here.
 
Don’t you?”

“It’s beautiful.
 
Okay.
 
Wait a minute.”

So we lay down and love till the shadows covered us.
 
After a time she slept, as I desired.

I set a spell upon her to keep her asleep, for I was beginning to have second thoughts over the wisdom of making this journey.
 
Then I dressed both of us and picked her up to carry her back.
 
I took a shortcut.

On the beach from which we’ d started I put her down and stretched out beside her.
 
Soon I slept also.

We did not awaken till after the sun was up, when the sounds of bathers roused us.

She sat up and stared at me.

“Last night,” she said, “could not have been a dream.
 
But it couldn’t have been real either.
 
Could it?”

“I guess so,” I said.
 
She furrowed her brow.

“What did you just agree to?” she asked.

“Breakfast,” I said.
 
“Let’s go get some.
 
Come on.”

“Wait a minute.” She put a hand on my arm.
 
“Something unusual happened. What was it?”

“Why destroy the magic by talking about it? Let’s go eat.”

She questioned me a lot in the days that followed, but I was adamant in refusing to talk about it.
 
Stupid, the whole thing was stupid.
 
I should never have taken her on that walk.
 
It contributed to that final argument that set us permanently apart.

And now, driving, as I thought about it, I realized something more than my stupidity.
 
I realized that I had been in love with her, that I still loved her.
 
Had I not taken her on that walk, or had I acknowledged her later accusation that I was a sorcerer, she, would not have taken the route that she took, seeking power of her own-probably for self protection.
 
She would be alive.

I bit my lip and cried out.
 
I cut around the braking car in front of me and crashed a light.
 
If I had killed the thing I loved, I was certain that the opposite was not going to be true.

Grief and anger shrink my world, and I resent this.
 
They seem to paralyze my memory of happier times, of friends, places, things; options.
 
Squeezed by the grip of intense, unsettling emotion, I grow smaller in my single-mindedness.
 
I suppose it is partly because I have discarded a range of choices, impairing in some measure my freedom of will.
 
I don’t like this, but after a point I have small control over it.
 
It makes me feel that I have surrendered to a kind of determinism, which imitates me even more.
 
Then, vicious cycle, this feeds back into the emotion that drives me and intensifies it.
 
The simple way of ending this situation is the headlong rush to remove its object.
 
The difficult way is more philosophical, a drawing back, the reestablishment of control.
 
As usual, the difficult way is preferable.
 
A headlong rush may also result in a broken neck.

I parked in the first place that I saw, opened the window, lit my pipe.
 
I vowed not to depart until I had grown calm.
 
All of my life I have had a tendency to overreact to things.
 
It seems to run in my family.
 
But I did not want to be like the others.
 
They made a lot of trouble for themselves that way.
 
The full-scale, all-or-nothing reaction may be all right if you always win, but that way also lies high tragedy or at least opera if you happen to be up against something extraordinary.
 
And I did have indications that this was the case.
 
Therefore, I was a fool.
 
I told myself this till I believed it.

Then I listened to my caliper self as it agreed that I was indeed a fool-for not having seen my own feelings when I could have done something about them, for having displayed a power and denied its consequences, for not having at least guessed at the strange nature of my enemy in all these years, for my present simplification of the coming encounter.
 
It would not do to seize Victor Melman on sight and try to beat the truth out of him.
 
I resolved to proceed carefully, covering myself at all times.
 
Life is never simple, I told myself.
 
Sit still and gather, regroup.

Slowly, I felt the tension go out of me: Slowly, too, my world grew again, and I saw within it the possibility that S really knew me, knew me well, and may even have arranged events so that I would dispense with thinking and surrender to the moment.
 
No, I would not be like the others .
 
.
 
.

I sat there and thought for a long while before I started the engine again and drove on slowly.

It was a grimy brick building situated on a corner.
 
It was four stories in height, with occasional spray-painted obscenities on the alley side and on the wall facing the narrower street.
 
I discovered the graffiti, a few broken windows and the fire escape as I strolled slowly about the place, looking it over.
 
By then a light rain was just beginning to fall.
 
The lower two stories were occupied by the Brutus Storage Company, according to a sign beside the stairs in a small hallway I entered.
 
The place smelled of urine, and there was an empty Jack Daniels bottle lying on the dusty windowsill to my right.
 
Two mailboxes hung upon the flaking wall.
 
One said “Brutus Storage,” the other bore the legend “V M.” Both were empty.

I mounted the stair, expecting it to creak.
 
It did not.
 
There were four knobless doors letting upon the second floor hallway, all of them closed.
 
The outlines of what might be cartons were visible through several of the frosted panes in their upper sections.
 
There were no sounds from within.

I surprised a black cat dozing on the next stairway.
 
She arched her back, showed me her teeth, made a hissing noise, then turned and bounded up the stairs and out of sight.

The next landing also had four doors-three of them apparently nonfunctional, the fourth dark-stained and shellacked shiny.
 
It bore a small brass plate that read “Melman.” I knocked.

There was no answer.
 
I tried again several times, with the same result.
 
No sounds from within either.
 
It seemed likely that these were his living quarters and that the fourth floor, with the possibility of a skylight, held his studio.
 
So I turned away and took the final flight.

I reached the top and saw that one of the four doors there was slightly ajar.
 
I halted and listened for a moment.
 
From beyond it came faint sounds of movement.
 
I advanced and gave it a few knocks.
 
I heard a sudden intake of breath from somewhere inside.
 
I pushed on the door.

He stood about twenty feet away beneath a large skylight and he had turned to face me-a tall, broad-shouldered man with dark beard and eyes.
 
He held a brush in his left hand and a palette in his right.
 
He wore a paint-smeared apron over his Levi’s and had on a plaid sport shirt.
 
The easel at his back held the outlines of what could be a madonna and child.
 
There were a great many other canvases about, all of them facing the walls or covered.

“Hello,” I said.
 
“You are Victor Melman?”

He nodded, neither smiling nor frowning, placed his palette on a nearby table, his brush into a jar of solvent.
 
He picked up a damp-looking cloth then and wiped his hands with it.

“And yourself ?” he asked, tossing the cloth aside and facing me again.

“Merle Corey.
 
You knew Julia Barnes.”

“I don’t deny it,” he said.
 
“Your use of the past tense would seem to indicate-“

“She’s dead all right.
 
I want to talk to you about it.”

“All right,” he said, untying his apron.
 
“Let’s go downstairs then.
 
No place to sit up here.”

He hung the apron upon a nail near the door and stepped outside.
 
I followed him.
 
He turned back and locked the studio before proceeding down the stairs.
 
His movements were smooth, almost graceful.
 
I could hear the rain on the roof.

He used the same key to unlock the dark door on the third floor.
 
He drew the door open and stood aside, gesturing for me to enter.
 
I did, traversing a hallway that led past a kitchen, its counters covered with empty bottles, stacks of dishes, pizza cartons.
 
Bursting bags of trash leaned against cupboards; the floor looked sticky here and there and the place smelled like a spice factory next door to a slaughterhouse.

The living room, which I came to next, .was large, with a comfortable-looking pair of black sofas, facing each other across a battlefield of Oriental carpets and miscellaneous tables, each of which bore several overflowing ashtrays.
 
There was a beautiful concert-sized piano in the far corner, before a wall covered with heavy red drapery.
 
There were numerous low bookcases filled with occult materials, stacks of magazines beside them, atop them, and alongside a few easy chairs.
 
What could be the corner of a pentacle protruded slightly from beneath the largest rug.
 
The stale smells of incense and pot lingered in patches.
 
To my right, there was an archway leading to another room, a closed door to my left.
 
Paintings of a semireligious nature-which I took to be his work-were hung on several of the walls.
 
There was a Chagall-like quality to them.
 
Quite good.

“Have a seat.”

He gestured toward an easy chair and I took it.
 
“Care for a beer?”

“Thank you, no.”

He seated himself on the nearer sofa, clasped his hands, and stared at me.

“What happened?” he asked.

I stared back at him.

“Julia Barnes got interested in occult systems,” I said.
 
“She came to you to learn more about them.
 
She died this morning under very unusual circumstances.”

The left corner of his mouth twitched slightly.
 
He made no other movement.

“Yes, she was interested in such matters,” he said.
 
“She came to me for instruction and I provided it.”

“I want to know why she died.” He continued to stare.

“Her time was up,” he said.
 
“It happens to everybody, in the long run.”

“She was killed by an animal that should not exist here.
 
Do you know anything about it?”

“The universe is a stranger place than most of us can imagine.”

“Do you know or don’t you?”

“I know you,” he said, smiling for the first time.
 
“She spoke of you, of course.”

“What does that mean?”