The Secret Book of Paradys (73 page)

Everything fitted to the hypothesis. Everything combined with it to form a piece of evidence as ludicrous as it was horrifying.
A flea
.

Now, it too seemed dead. Or it was very sluggish; if not dead then dying from lack of food, the ruin of the host. He must be careful … or did it lack the will now to feed from another? Of those who had discovered and
subsequently handled the body of Julie d’Is none, so far as he understood, had fallen sick.

After he had stood over the cadaver fifteen or twenty minutes, Tritte made a decision. Fetching an instrument, Tritte separated a wafer of the white skin from the arm. The vessels came forth, like veins in marble itself. There was, naturally, no blood. The flea, secured pathetically to the surface of the skin, did not shift itself. It clung on in its death or near-death, like a desperate child to the dead arm of its mother.

A further ten minutes, and Tritte had arranged his valuable microscope, had set the inch of skin and the flea upon a slide.

In the core of night, alone, in pity and amazement, Tritte put his eye to the magical telescope of life, to see what death had been doing.

After he had looked a long while, the man drew back. He wiped his forehead and going to the cupboard, poured for himself a measure of brandy. Only then did he look again through the microscope.

The image was as before.

There was no alteration.

Death had come, and still the miniature thing clung to the skin. Its crying, too high for the human ear to hear, too loud for the human heart not to, had ended. Under the magnifying lens, it was a woman, the flea. Almost a human woman, beautiful and perfectly formed, with short luxuriantly curling hair, and deep dark eyes set fast in oblivion. The lips were parted, and there were the usual even teeth of the human female; the infinitesimal hands had no claws. There were flowerlike breasts. But the body stopped at the pelvis. There it became a tube, scaled like a scorpion, finished in a thin coiled whip, some sort of sting or sucker. It was so ugly, this finish, so unlike the rest. You saw at once how the creature had flung herself, daring space and danger, to cling onto her prey, striking like a wasp, turning then maybe to apply the perfect mouth to the wound, and springing off again, back to the safety of the sibling. For it was clearly to be seen also, a likeness to Julie. They were of an age, only one plain, and the other beautiful: sisters.

Monsieur Tritte put on his gloves. He spoke to the woman on the lens. “Forgive me.”

And then he crushed her, between his nails.

T
he sepulcher of ornate granite that stands on the hillside, overlooking the river, has the apt, odd name of Morcara’s Room. Those that know the name do not necessarily know the name’s reason. Behind a door of leaden metal the bones lie properly in a box; the lintel above the door has only the name:
Morcara Venka
, and two dates – which show that the occupant of the tomb died young, at the age of about twenty-five years. The date of the tomb itself, however, which is also to be found, cut into one of the mossy pillars, reveals that it came into being more than a century after the death of its tenant. Inquiries may reveal that Morcara Venka’s descendants erected the mausoleum and ordered her remains taken to it from another place. There may also be mention of some ill fortune, even a curse, that once had connection to this woman, so that even now a faint smolder rests, as you will sense, on the hill, some hint of smoke without which there is no fire. And it has been said that to enter the tomb, even on the most legitimate business, would be unwise.

The truth, perhaps more peculiar still, is as follows.

One evening a young man, who shall be called Rendart, was walking in the country above the City. It had been a hot close day, and the mellow air had now a tint of thunder. Rendart had grown tired of walking, of climbing over boulders and peering into defiles where tiny rivulets flashed and shone as in oil paintings, of the forest’s edges that, so invitingly redolent of becoming forever lost, would only lead him back onto some path that ended at a farm. There were no longer wolves in the woods, or Rendart might have been tempted to stay out all night. Instead he was now looking for some house where he might foist himself. His trick was, wherever possible, to avoid the convenient inn or hotel. This was not because he lacked funds (rather the reverse, his means were private and helpful) but because of a compulsion to view the interiors of the homes of other persons. To this end he had once regularly pretended to a wish to buy property, and agents and owners had conducted him over varieties of premises, singing the praises of much and revealing almost everything but the bad points. It was their reticence here which had discouraged him eventually from the practice, since bad points are frequently so interesting. That and, maybe, the annoyance of certain agents who finally doubted Rendart’s desire actually to purchase anything.

As the sky deepened and the shadow of weather bloomed along its perimeter, Rendart came on a wide, straight track, leading between poplars in the direction of a house – indeed, a mansion. The walls of the building were very tall, and the roofs that rose above them, dilapidated and picturesque.
Highest of all rose a round dark tower with a cap the color of the approaching storm.

Even as he gazed, a few spaced drops of rain plumped on the track, the poplars quivered, a darkness bubbled up in the east.

Rendart ran gleefully for the mansion.

Of course, he ruminated as the echoes rang away from a clanging bell upon the gate, it was possible they would turn him off, conceivable also that the fascinating house could be empty – then, might he not break in? Almost in disappointment he saw a shuffling movement in the rank bushes that crowded the gate. An elderly man emerged, dressed in the clothes and skin of earlier decades.

“Yes, monsieur?”

The heavens obligingly opened. Thunder pealed, a curtain of rain descended.

Rendart gasped his plight. Alone, friendless, and shelterless in the wild hills and the storm.

The servant (Rendart had classed him, and was presently proved correct) stared a while, as if listening to a foreigner speaking in an unknown tongue.

Then, through the rain, from the concealed house, came a querulous call. “What is it, Pierre?” Pierre began to answer, when out of the bushes scampered a precipitate woman in a pale dress and with an umbrella extended over her head. Seeing Rendart she beckoned frantically. “Let him in. Of course you must shelter with us, monsieur. This dreadful thunder – it may strike –” Rendart kindly did not allude to the tip of her umbrella, which might attract the very catastrophe she feared. Probably Jove would aim first at the dark tower above.

The gate was breached, and the trio hastened between the bushes, into a mad garden run to seed, where everything and every metamorphosis of a thing fought for existence under the charcoal sky.

Rendart was rushed to the house so fast he barely saw it. His hostess he had already noted, sadly, was neither young nor lovely, but she might be mysterious with luck.

It did not really seem she would be.

“Pierre, go at once and fetch some dry clothes of my brother’s. You can change in the smoking room, monsieur. Poor monsieur is soaked. Then you must come directly to the salon, we always have a fire – we feel the cold, Monsieur de Venne and I.”

Within half an hour, while the tempest still cascaded on the jungle outside (from which statues protruded here and there like leprous teeth), Rendart was seated in a hot and avid salon, while Monsieur and Mademoiselle de Venne regarded him. They had lapped up his advent so gladly, he half wondered if
they meant him some harm. More likely they were starved of visitors. Monsieur de Venne was indicated as being rather younger than mademoiselle, which apparently set him at about ninety.

“You’ll stay to dine with us, Monsieur Rendart?” said she. “What a pleasure, a young man of education. We so seldom – yet our nephew –”

“Our nephew never calls on us,” interrupted the brother testily. “Except to borrow our money. Money – does he think we have it? Where do we keep it? Would we live in this lachrymose pile if we had any?” And having recourse to the brandy tumbler at his elbow he added: “How frequently I’ve thought to myself, send that fellow to the
room
.”

“Cesar!” cried mademoiselle.

A silence thundered in the salon, to be broken in turn by the deaf clangor of the elements.

Mademoiselle was very white under her rouge. Rendart envied her, for the fire was overpowering. Getting up on the pretext of helping her to more tea (she fluttered; her brother stuck ferociously to his brandy), Rendart managed a quick half tour of the salon, which was neither boring nor intriguing. He longed for a chance to go through the mansion, the commencement of whose enormous carven stairway he had already glimpsed.

“Rooms are a problem,” said Rendart, idly. “There’s one in my house by the coast. Simply uninhabitable.”

“Yes, there you’ve got it.
Uninhabitable
,” snarled the pickled brother.

Mademoiselle thanked Rendart so profusely for the tea that it was an obvious signal she did not want
rooms
discussed.

Rendart ate the petit fours and bided his time, for it appeared there would be plenty. Already mademoiselle had mentally transferred him past the dining table to the white bedroom. She had given guest-conscious orders to the doddering Pierre, and a brisk stoat-faced maid of two hundred.

It was a very good dinner of five courses, two of which were cold, and Rendart was delighted to suspect things had been “laid on” for his sole benefit. Monsieur de Venne progressed from the brandy through three differing bottles of pleasing wine, two-thirds of which he drank personally, before returning to the brandy with all the snug comfort of an occasional rake returning to wife, pipe, and slippers. Mademoiselle fussed and flighted about with her hands and her conversation, and now and then let slip, as if unavoidably, a reference to the absent nephew. Monsieur said no more upon this matter, merely cleared his throat in a horrible way. As for
rooms
, the only room mentioned was the white bedroom Rendart was to occupy, and the bathroom along the passage from it. Rendart formulated a dream of tiptoeing about the mansion in the night in order to see it, as evidently he was not to get a guided
tour. It would not do, however, for if they apprehended him they would be sure to think him a robber after their few and rather chipped and rusty valuables. He could not bear to tell them they had nothing he fancied thieving.

Pierre and the maid served the dinner in the salon, and after it was cleared and Monsieur de Venne had re-ensconced himself with the brandy, everyone ran out of things to say. This did not deter mademoiselle, though, who merely whirled on in a repetition of all she had said before. From her catalogue Rendart had almost instantly learned that, on inheriting the house, her mama and papa had been hard put to it to manage, that soon the gardeners had left them (“And Mama declared anyway she had never known such terrible soil, everything that grew there was poisonous”), while the servants absconded with the heirlooms (“A great clock that Papa saw at auction two years later, the very same, and could not afford to repossess”). Meantime the young versions of monsieur and mademoiselle grew up, were deprived, stunted, jilted, wilted, done out of this and that expectation, to arrive at last in near penury and the latter years, amazed at both, unequal to them.

Rendart said, as he had more or less said before, “But this excellent house. It must be a consolation.”

“Upkeep,” snorted Monsieur de Venne. “We don’t use more than three or four of the apartments. To hear her talk about this white bedroom! Damp and cobwebs. You’ll think yourself lucky to get out with pneumonia. Then there are the rats –”

“Oh hush, Cesar!”

“Eating away at the foundations, nibble and gnaw, squeak and gibber. It’s the room. The room does it.”

“Yes,” interposed Rendart – mademoiselle had been protesting again – “rooms
are
a
problem
–”

“Want to know what it is, I daresay,” gargled Monsieur de Venne through his brandy glass.

“To know what is what?” inquired Rendart.

“Cesar, I must beg you. Think of poor Mama, think of poor, poor Grisvold.”

“Grisvold may be damned.” (“Cesar!”) “He got no more than justice. His own fault. There was the warning, did he heed? No.”

Silence fell again, and Rendart realized uneasily that the rain had ceased to fall as darkness fell in its place. The night was calm, and still.

“Grisvold was an innocent, poor sickly boy,” cried mademoiselle. She turned to Rendart and implored him, “Who could command a poor sickly simpleton, Run to the Devil – the
Devil
– and expect the poor creature to have the wit to abstain? It was
your
fault, Cesar, and you’ll carry the blame to your Maker.”

“Grisvold be damned,” said the brandy glass.

Mademoiselle turned to Rendart, mute with outrage.

“Something happened to Grisvold?” he asked.

Mademoiselle buried her cheeks in an inch of lace that was unable to cope with them.

“Confounded curiosity,” said Monsieur de Venne. A glow burned brightly in his eyes. He wanted and yearned to speak his confession. She also, in her way. They were a haunted pair.

Rendart gazed on them with pleasure. “Is there some strange story?”

“The tower,” whispered mademoiselle. “Did you notice it, to the west of the house?”

“I did,” said Rendart.

“
There
,” said mademoiselle.

“I’ll tell him,” said monsieur. He put down the brandy glass.

In the great stillness that was the night, a change had come upon the salon. The fire burned, and the candles, for the house did not seem to run to any modernity of lights. Either side the fire the two elderly people sat, like waxworks or mummies in their old quaint clothes and sewn faces and papier-mâché hands. Once they had been elastic and fresh, had played as children, wept as lovers, screamed and sung their rage and joy. Now they piped and rasped and stamped their feet, which might so easily be shattered were the carpet too hard. Rendart liked them very much, for the wonderfully weird evening they had almost given, and might now be proposing to give, him. He liked them with a capacity he had for liking strangers as he liked their houses. And now he longed to know the worst, as he had always wanted to see the unsafe stair and the blocked drains they tried to hide.