The Architecture of Fear (20 page)

There was no open row until Clarissa and I went upstairs. One reason was that after doing the washing-up, Aline had come into the sitting room, without a word, to join us. I was not surprised that she had no wish to be alone; nor that she proved reluctant to play a game named Contango, of which Clarissa was very fond, and which went back to her days with Jack, even though Jack had always won, sometimes while glancing through business papers simultaneously, as I had observed for myself. Both Clarissa and Aline were wearing tartan trousers, though not the same tartan. I had always been told by Cuddy that there was no Leith tartan. I have never sought further to know whether or not that is true.

As soon as we were in bed, Clarissa lay on her front, impressing the pillow with moisture from her brow, and quietly set about me; ranging far beyond the possibilities and deficiencies of Pollaporra. Any man—any modern man—would have some idea of what was said. Do the details matter? I offered no argument. At Pollaporra, I spoke as little as I could. What can argument achieve anywhere? It might have been a moment for me to establish at least temporary dominance by one means or another but Pollaporra prevented, even if I am the man to do it at any time. I tried to remember Shulie, but of course the circumstances left her entirely unreal to me, together with everything else.

And, in the morning, things were no better. I do not know how much either of us had managed to sleep. For better or worse, we had fallen silent in the heat long ago. In the end, I heard the sea birds screaming and yelling at the dawn.

Clarissa put on a few garments while I lay silent on the bed and then told me that as there was nothing she could do in the house she was departing at once.

"I should leave Aline behind, but I need her."

"I quite understand," I said. "I advised you against coming in the first place. I shall go over to see Mason and try to arrange with him for a caretaker. It won't take more than a day or two."

"You'll first need to change the place completely. You are both weak and pigheaded."

"They sometimes see things differently in Scotland. I shall come down as soon as I can." I might have to hire a car to some station, because I did not think Mason owned one, or anyone else in his small community. That was a trifle; comparatively.

"No hurry. I shall use the time deciding what to do for the best." She was combing her mass of hair, lovely as Ceres's sheaf. The comb, given her by the Aga Khan, was made of ebony. The air smelled of hot salt.

I suppose I should have begged her pardon for Pollaporra and myself, and gone back to London with her, or to anywhere else. I did not really think of it. Pollaporra had to be settled, if at all possible. I might never be back there.

In a few moments, Clarissa and I were together in the hall, the one high room, and I saw Aline silently standing by the outer door, as if she had stood all night; and the door was slightly open. Aline was in different trousers, and so was Clarissa.

"I can't be bothered to pack up the food. You're welcome to all of it."

"Don't go without breakfast," I said. "The lumpy roads will make you sick."

"Breakfast would make me sick," said Clarissa.

Clarissa carried very few clothes about. All she had with her was in the aircraft holdall she clutched. I do not know about Aline. She must have had something. I cannot remember.

"I don't know when we'll meet again," said Clarissa.

"In two or three days," I said. "Four at the most." Since I had decided to remain, I had to seem calm.

"I may go and stay with Naomi. I want to think things out."

She was wearing the lightest of blouses, little more than a mist. She was exquisite beyond description. Suddenly, I noticed that tears were again streaming silently down Aline's face.

"Or I may go somewhere else," said Clarissa, and walked out, with her slight but distinctive wobble.

Instead of immediately following her, as she always did, Aline actually took two steps in my direction. She looked up at me, like a rococo cherub. Since I could not kiss Clarissa, I lightly kissed Aline's wet lips, and she kissed me.

***

I turned my back in order not to see the car actually depart, though nothing could prevent my hearing it. What had the row been really about? I could surmise and guess, but I did not know. I much doubted whether Clarissa knew. One could only be certain that she would explain herself, as it were to a third party, in a totally different way from me. We might just as well belong to different zoological species, as in the Ray Bradbury story. The row was probably a matter only of Clarissa being a woman and I a man. Most or all rows between the sexes have no more precise origin; and, indirectly, many other rows also.

I think I stood for some time with my back to the open door and my face to the picture of an old gillie in a tam, with dead animals almost to his knees. It had been given us by the Shepstones. It was named "Coronach" in Ruskinian letters, grimly misapplied. Ultimately, I turned and through the open door saw what Aline may have seen. The auld carlin was advancing across the drive with a view to entering.

Drive, I have to call it. It was a large area of discolored nothingness upon which cars stood, and before them horses, but little grew, despite the lack of weeding. Needless to say, the woman was not approaching straightforwardly. Previously, I had seen her only when she had been confined to the limits of a staircase, albeit a wide one, a landing, and, later, a lift. If now she had been coming straight at me, I might have had a split second to see her face. I realized that, quite clearly, upon the instant.

I bounded forward. I slammed the door. The big key was difficult to turn in the big lock, so I shot the four rusty bolts first. Absurdly, there was a "chain" also and, after I had coped with the stiff lock, I "put it on."

Then I tore round the house shooting other bolts, making sure that all other locks were secure, shutting every possible window and aperture, on that already very hot early morning.

***

It is amazing how much food Clarissa laid in. She was, or is, always open-handed. I am sure that I have made that clear. Nor of course does one need so much food—or at least want so much—in this intense heat. Nor as yet has the well run dry. Cuddy refused to show me the well, saying the key was lost. I have still not seen either thing.

There is little else to do but write this clear explanation of everything that has happened to me since the misfortune of birth. He that has fared better, and without deceiving himself, let him utter his jackass cry.

Not that I have surrendered. There lies the point. Pollaporra is not on the telephone, nor ever could be, pending the "withering away of the State"; but before long someone may take note that I am not there. The marines may descend from choppers yet. Clarissa may well have second thoughts. Women commonly do, when left to themselves. She loves Pollaporra and may well devise a means of wresting my life-interest away from me, and welcome. I don't know where Aline would enter into that hypothesis. Possibly I made a mistake in not writing to Mason that I was coming. But I doubt whether in such personal matters his time-scale is shorter than months.

Off and on, I see the woman at one window or another; though not peeking through, which, as will have been gathered, is far from her policy. At least twice, however, it has been at a window upstairs; on both occasions when I was about to undress for some reason, not necessarily slumber, of which I have little. At these times, her slimy-sleek head, always faceless, will tip-tap sharply against the thick glazing bars. The indelicacy, as Jack might put it (I wonder how Cuddy would put it?), set me upon a course of hard thinking.

So long as I keep myself barred up, she can achieve nothing. Mason seemed quite certain of that, and I accept it. But what does the woman aim to do to me? When she appeared to me before, my poor mother soon passed away. When she appeared to me a second time, my dear, dear Shulie vanished from my life. It is not to be taken for granted that either of these precise fates is intended for me. I am not even ill or infirm. There may be a certain room for maneuver, though I can foresee no details.

More often, I see the woman at corners of what used to be the lawn and garden, though never in my time. It lies at the back of the house, and far below lies the loch. Sometimes too, the creature perches on the ornaments and broken walls, like a sprite. Such levitations are said to be not uncommon in the remoter parts of Scotland. Once I thought I glimpsed her high up in a tree, like dirty rags in a gale. Not that so far there has been any gale, or even any wind. The total silent stillness is one of the worst things. If I die of heat and deoxygenation, it will be one solution.

Yes, it is a battle with strong and unknown forces that I have on my hands. "But what can ail all of them to bury the old carlin in the night time?" as Sir Walter ventures to inquire; in
The Antiquary,
if I remember rightly.

Jack Dann has edited some of the most important fantasy and science fiction anthologies of the last dozen years and is the author of a significant body of fiction, including the heart-wrenching time trap fantasy "Camps." There is an anguish in his work that is barely hinted at by the word
angst.
Yet his vision is clear and his sense of irony acute. Here is an unsettling story of life and death, of affirmation.

After Mr. Benjamin died, he came back to Charlie's room for a visit.

He was a tall man, taken down to the bone by cancer. His face had a grayish cast; and his thick white hair, of which he had been so obviously proud, had thinned. But he was still handsome even as he stood before Charlie's bed. He was sharp-featured, although his mouth was full, which softened the effect of his piercing, pale blue eyes; he wore silk pajamas and a turquoise robe, and was as poised and stiff as an ancient emperor.

"They closed all the doors again," Charlie said to Mr. Benjamin—they always closed the doors to the patients' rooms when they had to wheel a corpse through the hallway.

"I guess they did," Mr. Benjamin said, and he sat down in the cushioned chair beside Charlie's bed. He usually came for a visit before bedtime; it was part of his nightly ritual.

But here he was, and it was midafternoon.

Sunlight flooded through a tripartite window into the large high-ceilinged room, magnifying the swirling dust motes that filled the room like snow in a crystal Christmas-scene paperweight. The slate-grey ceiling above was barrel-vaulted, and although cracked and broken and discolored, the plaster was worked into intricate patterns of entwined tendrils. A marble fireplace was closed off with a sheet of metal, and there was an ancient mahogany grandfather clock ticking in the corner. The hospital had once been a manor, built in the 1800s by the wealthiest man in the state; its style was Irish Gothic, and every room contained the doric columns and scrolled foliage that were a trademark of the house.

"I wonder who died?" Charlie asked.

Mr. Benjamin smiled sadly and stretched his long legs out under Charlie's bed.

Charlie was fifteen and had had an erection before Mr. Benjamin came into the room, for he was thinking about the nurses, imagining how they would look undressed. Although Charlie's best friend had been laid, Charlie was still a virgin; but he looked older than he was and had even convinced his best friend that he, too, had popped the cork. He had been feeling a bit better these last few days. He had not even been able to think about sex before; there was only pain and drugs, and even with the drugs he could feel the pain. All the drugs did were let him investigate its shape; Charlie had discovered that pain had shape and color; it was like an animal that lived and moved inside him.

"How are you feeling today?" Mr. Benjamin asked.

"Pretty good," Charlie said, although the pain was returning and he was due for another shot. "How about you?"

Mr. Benjamin laughed. Then he asked, "Where's Rosie?" Rosie was Charlie's private nurse. Charlie's father was well-to-do and had insisted on round-the-clock private nurses for his son. But Charlie didn't want private nurses or a private room; in fact, he would have preferred a regular double room and a roommate, which would have been much less expensive; and if Charlie had another setback, his roommate would be able to call for a nurse for him. Charlie had been deathly ill: he had developed peritonitis from a simple appendectomy, and his stomach was still hugely distended. Drainage tubes were sunk deeply into his incisions, and they smelled putrid. He had lost over thirty pounds.

Charlie seemed to be slipping in and out of a dream; it was just the Demerol working through his system.

"Rosie's off today," he said after a long pause. He had been dreaming of whiteness, but he could hear clearly through the dream. He came fully awake and said, "I love her, but it's such a relief not to have her banging everything around and dropping things to make sure I don't fall asleep. The regular nurses have been in a lot, and I got two backrubs." He grinned at Mr. Benjamin. It was a game he played with Mr. Benjamin: who could win the most points in wooing the nurses. One night, when Charlie had been well enough to walk across the hall and visit Mr. Benjamin, he found him in bed with two nurses. Mr. Benjamin had a grin on his face, as if he had just won the game forevermore. The nurses, of course, were just playing along.

Mr. Benjamin leaned back in the chair. It was a bright, sunny day, and the light hurt Charlie's eyes when he stared out the window for too long. Perhaps it was an effect of the Demerol, but Mr. Benjamin just seemed... not quite defined, as if his long fingers and strong face were made out of the same dust motes that filled the air and the room.

"Is your wife coming over today?" Charlie asked. "It's Wednesday." Charlie was in on Mr. Benjamin's secret: two women came to visit him religiously—his mistress, a beautiful young woman with long red hair, on Tuesdays and Thursdays; and his wife, who wasn't beautiful, but who must have been once, and who was about the same age as Mr. Benjamin, every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday. His friends came to see him on Saturday, but not his women.