Authors: Tanith Lee
“A mermaid, you said.”
A mermaid.
She was very absolutely white, not
dead
white, but
live
white.
Moon
white. And her body had a sort of faint
pale bluish freckling, like the moon does, only she wasn’t harsh, like the
moon, but soft and limpid. And her skin melted into the blue-silver scales of
her tail. It was a strong tail, and the fork of the fins was strong. Vigorous.
Her hair was strong too, it reminded me of the brush of a fox or a weasel or
ermine—but it was a pale green-blonde, and it waved and coiled, and
moved
on its own, or it was stirring in the breeze-currents of the water-air. And it
was like currents and breezes itself, a silvery bristly silky fur-wind of hair.
Her face though was still, as if it was carved like a beautiful mask, and her
great still eyes were night black. She had a coronet. She was naked. She had a
woman’s breasts, the nipples water-colour rose like her mouth. But you couldn’t
desire her. Well, I couldn’t. She was—like an angel, Anton. You can’t desire an
angel. I’ve heard, the old church fathers said the mermaid was supposed to
represent lust and fornication. But she wasn’t like that. She was holy.
The funniest thing is, I looked at her a
while and then, as if I’d no need to linger, as if the marvellous was
commonplace and easy, I just turned and went off for a stroll. And on the esplanade
I met Jitka, and I said, “Did you see the mermaid?” and Jitka said, “Oh yes, I’ve
seen her.” It was like being gone to heaven and you say, Have you seen God
today, and they answer, But of course, He’s everywhere, here. Then we danced. I
don’t know a thing about Jitka, but her father’s dead, I’d take a bet on that.
The rich man was a soldier, did I say? The old couple are in the hospital. I
don’t know how they get out, but maybe everyone that doesn’t wake up just
can’t
wake up. And they get strong those Nights, they told me. It’s the cruise, they
said, this bracing cruise on this liner that’s sailing to the East, India or
China or somesuch. And there’s a little boy I see now and then. And a woman and
her sister—
I do think some of them are beginning to
cotton on it’s not a dream. But that doesn’t matter. Nor who we are, we precious
few, we’re nothing, there and then. We’re simply The
Awake
.
Ercole
had ceased to speak. They must have sat speechless, unmoving, Gregeris thought
with slight dismay, for ten minutes or more.
“So you see a mermaid?” Gregeris asked
now, businesslike.
“No. That was the last Night. I saw her
that once. I haven’t Woken since. Which means there hasn’t been a Night. I don’t
think there has. Because I think, once you start, you go on Waking.”
“You didn’t speak to the mermaid.
Stroke
her.”
“Come on, Anton. I wouldn’t have dared.
Would you? It would have been a bloody cheek. I could have dropped dead even,
if I touched her. Think of the shock it would be. Like sticking your hand on
the sun.”
“
Take off thy shoes from thy feet,
this ground is holy.
”
“Yes, exactly that, Anton. You have it.
By the way, you know, don’t you, why God says that, in the Bible? It’s to
earth
you, in the presence of galvanic might. Otherwise you’d go up in smoke.”
Gregeris rose. “I must get on. I’ll be
late for my appointment.” He put another of the cheerful notes on the table. “It
was an interesting story. You told it well.”
The beggar grinned up at him. His face
was fat now, bloated by beer and talk, by importance, power. “But where does
the town go to at night?” he repeated, “more to the point,
why
does the
town come
back
at dawn?”
“Yes, a puzzle. Perhaps inquire, the
next time.”
Gregeris reached the awning’s edge.
Instinctively, perhaps, he glanced across the square at the plinth of King
Christen’s fallen statue. In his mind’s eye, transparent as a ghost, he visualised
the mermaid, reclining in the opal moonlight, relaxed and thoughtful, her
living hair and flexing tail.
It was only as he turned and began to
walk quickly inland, that Ercole called after him. “Anton! It’s tonight!”
The
flat-house had been stylish in the 1700’s, he thought, about the time of the
heyday of the clock. Now it was grimy, the elegant cornices chipped and cracked
and thick with dirt, and a smell of stale cabbage soup on the stairs.
He rang the bell of her apartment, and
Marthe came at once. She confronted him, a thin woman who had been slender and
young twelve years ago, her fair hair now too blonde, and mouth dabbed with a
fierce red, which had got on to her front teeth.
“You’re so late. Why are you so late?
Was the train delayed? I was worried. I have enough to worry about. I thought
you weren’t coming, thought you’d decided to abandon us completely. I suppose
that would be more convenient, wouldn’t it? I can’t think why you said you’d
come. You could just send me another money order. Or not bother. Why bother? It’s
only me, and him. What do we matter? I’ve been just pacing up and down. I kept
looking out of the window. I got some ice earlier for the wine but it’s melted.
I smoked twenty cigarettes. I can’t afford to do that. You know I can’t.”
“Good evening, Marthe,” he said, with
conscious irony.
To Gregeris it sounded heavy-handed,
unnecessarily arrogant and obtuse. But she crumpled at once. Her face became
anxious, pitiable and disgusting. How had it been he had ever—? Even twelve
years ago, when she was a girl and he a younger man and a fool.
“I’m sorry. Forgive me, Anton. It’s my
nerves. You know how I get. It was good of you to come.”
“I’m sorry, too, to be so late. I met an
old business acquaintance at the station, a coincidence, a nuisance, an old
bore who insisted we have a drink. He kept me talking. And of course, I couldn’t
make too much of it, of being here, or anything about you.”
“No, no, of course.”
She led him in. The apartment wasn’t so
bad, better than her last—or could have been. Everywhere was mess and muddle.
The fair-ground knick-knacks, some clothes pushed under a sofa cushion.
Stockings hung drying on a string before the open window. The ashtrays were as
always. Twenty cigarettes? Surely a hundred at least. But there was the cheap
white wine in its bucket of lukewarm water. And she had made her bed. She had
said, she gave the bedroom over to the boy.
“How is Kays?”
“Oh—you know. He’s all right. I sent him
for some cigarettes. Oh, he wanted to go out anyway. He’ll be back in a minute.
But—I know—you don’t like him much.”
“What nonsense, Marthe. Of course I like
him. He’s only a child.”
Taking him by surprise, as she always
did for some reason, when she flared up, she shrilled, “He’s your
son
,
Anton.”
“I know it, Marthe. Why else am I here?”
And again, the shallow awful victory of
her crumbling face.
Once he had sat down, on a threadbare
seat, the glass of tepid vinegar in his hand, she perched on the arm of the
sofa, and they made small talk.
And why had he come here? The question
was perfectly valid. It would have been so much simpler to send her, as she
said, a cheque. That too, of course, was draining, annoying. Keeping it quiet
was sometimes quite difficult, too. He was generally amazed no one had ever
found him out, or perhaps they had and didn’t care. His brief liaison with this
woman had lasted all of two weeks. Two months later, when she reappeared, he
had known at once. It was damnable. He had taken every precaution he could, to
protect both of them from such an accident. He wondered if her pregnancy owed
nothing to him at all, he was only a convenient dupe. The story-telling beggar,
Ercole, had had him to rights, Gregeris thought, bourgeois politeness and the
fear of a sordid little scandal. It was these which had made him set Marthe up
in the first flat, made him pay her food bills and her medical expenses. And,
once the child was born, had caused him to try to pay her off. But however much
he awarded her, in the end, she must always come creeping back to him, pleading
penury. Finally he began to pay her a monthly sum. But even that hadn’t been
the end of it. Every so often, she would send a frantic letter or telegram—and these,
if ignored, had on two occasions persuaded Marthe to appear in person, once
with the child, (then a snivelling, snotty eight years old, clinging to her
hand), in the doorway of Gregeris’s mother’s house, during her sixtieth
birthday dinner.
That time Gregeris had considered having
Marthe, and very likely the boy, murdered. Just as he had, for a split second,
considered murdering her himself that day by the canal when she announced, “You’ve
put me in the family way, Anton. Fixed me up, good and proper, and you’re the
only one can set me right. Oh, not an abortion. I won’t have that. One of my
friends died that way. No, I need you to look after me.”
And probably, thought Gregeris now,
sipping the dying (really unborn) wine, only bourgeois politeness and the fear
of a scene, that which had passed Marthe off to his mother as an ‘employee’,
had also saved her neck.
“I’m sorry about the wine,” she fawned. “Of
course, I could have asked you to bring some, but I didn’t like to,” (now
fawning slipping seamlessly to accusation), “it would have been nicer than what
I
can afford, though, wouldn’t it? I can see you don’t like this one. It
was better, cold. If you’d come sooner.”
Poor bitch, he thought. Can’t I even
spare her a few hours, some decent food and drink? She’s got nothing, no resources,
she can barely even read. And I need only do this, what? Once or twice a
year... once or twice in all those days and nights. He glanced at her. She had
washed and was not too badly dressed, her bleached hair at least well brushed.
Somehow she had even got rid of the lipstick on her teeth.
“When the boy comes back, why don’t I
take you to dinner, Marthe?”
Oh God. She flushed, like a schoolgirl.
Poor bitch, poor little bitch.
“Oh yes, Anton, that would be such
fun... But I can’t leave Kays—”
“Well, bring Kays. He can eat dinner
too, I suppose?”
“Oh—no, no, I don’t think we should. He
gets so restless. He’s so—awkward. He might embarrass you—”
Gregeris raised his brows. Then he saw
she wanted to be alone with him. Perhaps she had some dream of reunion, or even
of love-making. She would be disappointed.
At this moment the door to the flat
opened, and his son walked in.
My son
. The only son, so far as he
knew, that he had. Kays.
“Good evening, Kays. You seem well. How
are you going on? “
“All right.”
Marthe looked uncomfortable, but she
didn’t reprove or encourage the monosyllabic, mannerless little oaf. Come to
think of it, her own social graces weren’t so marvellous.
As usual at a loss with children, “How
is your school?” Gregeris asked stiffly.
“Don’t go.”
“Don’t you? You should. Learn what you
can while you have the chance—” The wry platitudes stuck in Gregeris’s throat.
It was futile to bother. The boy looked now less sullen than—what was it?
Patient.
Bored
, by God.
What was that quaint adjective Gregeris
had thought of for the sea?
Sulk
-blue, that was it. The boy’s eyes were
sulk
-grey.
Nearly colourless. Pale uneven skin, he would get spotty later no doubt, and
perhaps never lose it, greasy tangled hair and unclean clothes that probably
smelled. The child would smell, that unwashed-dog odour of unbathed children,
redolent of slums everywhere. Like the beggar...
Take this child to dinner?
I don’t
think I will
. The mother was bad enough, but in some gloomy ill-lit café it
would be tolerable. But not the weedy, pasty, morose brat.
My son. Kays.
How can he be mine
?
He looks nothing like me. Not even anything like Marthe.
(For a moment, Gregeris imagined the boy’s
life, the woman leaning on him, making him do her errands, one minute playing
with his dirty hair—as now—then pushing him off—as
now
. Always
surprising him by her sudden over-sentimental affections and abrupt irrational
attacks—perhaps not always verbal, there was a yellowish bruise on his cheek.
And the school was doubtless hopeless and the teachers stupid and perhaps also
sadistic.)
This was the problem with coming to see
her, them.
This
, this thinking about her, and about Kays. The town by
the sea should have taken them far enough away from Gregeris. It had required
three hours for him to get here.
“Well, Kays.” Gregeris stood over him.
The top of the child’s crown reached the man’s ribcage. The child’s head was
bowed, and raised for nothing. “Here, would you like this? Another cheerful
note. Too much, far too much—someone would think the boy had stolen it. “Your
mother and I are going out for some air. A glass of wine.”
And she chirruped, “Yes, Kays, I’ll take
you over to Fat Anna’s.”
After all the boy’s head snapped up. In
his clutch the lurid money blazed, and in his eyes something else took pallid
fire. “
No
.”