The thirteenth tale (6 page)

Miss Winter’s house lay between two slow rises in die darkness,
almost-hills that seemed to merge into each other and that revealed the
presence of a valley and a house only at the last turn of the drive. The sky by
now was blooming shades of purple, indigo and gunpowder, and the house beneath
it crouched long and low and very dark. The driver opened the car door for me,
and I stepped out to see that he had already unloaded my case and was ready to
pull away, leaving me alone in front of an unlit porch. Barred shutters blacked
out the windows and there was not a single sign of human habitation. Closed in
upon itself, the place seemed to shun visitors.

I rang the bell. Its clang was oddly muted in the damp air.
While I waited I watched the sky. Cold crept through the soles of my shoes, and
I rang the bell again. Still no one came to the door.

About to ring for a third time, I was caught by surprise when
with no sound at all the door was opened.

The woman in the doorway smiled professionally and apologized
for keeping me waiting. At first sight she seemed very ordinary. Her short,
neat hair was the same palish shade as her skin, and her eyes were neither blue
nor gray nor green. Yet it was less the absence of color than a lack of
expression that made her plain. With some warmth of emotion in them, her eyes
could, I suspected, have gleamed with life; and it seemed to me, as she matched
my scrutiny lance for glance, that she maintained her inexpressivity only by
deliberate effort.

‘Good evening,“ I said. ”I am Margaret Lea.“

‘The biographer. We’ve been expecting you.“

What is it that allows human beings to see through each other’s
pretendings? For I understood quite clearly in that moment that she was
anxious. Perhaps emotions have a smell or a taste; perhaps we transmit em
unknowingly by vibrations in the air. Whatever the means, I knew just as surely
that it was nothing about me in particular that alarmed her, it only the fact
that I had come and was a stranger.

She ushered me in and closed the door behind me. The key turned
the lock without a sound and there was not a squeak as the well-oiled bolts
were slid noiselessly into place.

Standing there in my coat in the hallway, I experienced for the
first time the most profound oddity of the place. Miss Winter’s house was
entirely silent.

The woman told me her name was Judith, and that she was the
housekeeper. She asked about my journey and mentioned the hours of meals and
the best times to get hot water. Her mouth opened and closed; as soon as her
words fell from her lips they were smothered by the blanket of silence that
descended and extinguished them. The same silence swallowed our footfalls, and
muffled the opening and closing of ors as she showed me, one after another, the
dining room, the drawing room, the music room.

There was no magic behind the silence—it was the
soft-furnishings it did it. Overstuffed sofas were piled with velvet cushions;
there :re upholstered footstools, chaise lounges and armchairs; tapestries hung
on the walls and were used as throws over upholstered furniture, every floor
was carpeted, every carpet overlaid with rugs. The damask it draped the windows
also baffled the walls. Just as blotting paper absorbs ink, so all this wool
and velvet absorbed sound, with one difference: Where blotting paper takes up
only excess ink, the fabric of the house seemed to suck in the very essence of
the words we spoke.

I followed the housekeeper. We turned left and right, and right
and left, went up and down stairs until I was thoroughly confused. I quickly
lost all sense of how the convoluted interior of the house corresponded with
its outer plainness. The house had been altered over time, I supposed, added to
here and there; probably we were in some wing or extension invisible from the
front. “You’ll get the hang of it,” the housekeeper mouthed, seeing my face,
and I understood her as if I were lip-reading. Finally we turned from a
half-landing and came to a halt. She unlocked a door that opened into a sitting
room. There were three more doors leading off it. “Bathroom,” she said, opening
one of the doors, “bedroom,” opening another, “and study.” The rooms were as
padded with cushions and curtains and hangings as the rest of the house.

‘Will you take your meals in the dining room, or here?“ she
asked, indicating the small table and a single chair by the window.

I did not know whether meals in the dining room meant eating
with my hostess, and unsure of my status in the house (was I a guest or an
employee?), I hesitated, wondering whether it was politer to accept or to
refuse. Divining the cause of my uncertainty, the housekeeper added, as though
having to overcome a habit of reticence, “Miss Winter always eats alone.”

‘Then if it’s all the same to you, I’ll eat here.“

‘I’ll bring you soup and sandwiches straightaway, shall I? You
must be hungry after the train. You’ve things to make your tea and coffee just
here.“ She opened a cupboard in the corner of the bedroom to reveal a kettle,
the other paraphernalia for drinks making and even a tiny fridge. ”It will save
you from running up and down to the kitchen,“ she added, and threw in an
abashed smile, by way of apology, I thought, for not wanting me in her kitchen.

She left me to my unpacking.

In the bedroom it was the work of a minute to unpack my few
clothes, my books and my toiletries. I pushed the tea and coffee things to one
side and replaced them with the packet of cocoa I had brought from home. Then I
had just enough time to test the high antique bed— was so lavishly covered with
cushions that there could be any number of peas under the mattress and I would
not know it—before the house-keeper returned with a tray. “Miss Winter invites
you to meet her in the library at eight o’clock.” She did her best to make it
sound like an invitation, but I under-stood, as I was no doubt meant to, that
it was a command.

MEETING MISS WINTER

Whether by luck or accident I cannot say, but I found my way to
the library a full twenty minutes earlier than I had been commanded to attend.
It was not a problem. What better place to kill time than a library? And for
me, what better way to get to know someone than through her choice and
treatment of books?

My first impression was of the room as a whole, and it struck me
by its marked difference from the rest of the house. The other rooms were thick
with the corpses of suffocated words; here in the library you could breathe.
Instead of being shrouded in fabric, it was a room made of wood. There were
floorboards underfoot, shutters at the tall windows and the walls were lined
with solid oak shelves.

It was a high room, much longer than it was wide. On one side
five arched windows reached from ceiling almost to floor; at their base window
seats had been installed. Facing them were five similarly shaped mirrors,
positioned to reflect the view outside, but tonight echoing the carved panels
of the shutters. The bookshelves extended from the walls into the rooms,
forming bays; in each recess an amber-shaded lamp was placed on a small table.
Apart from the fire at the far end of the room, this was the only lighting, and
it created soft, warm pools of illumination at the edge of which rows of books
melted into darkness.

Slowly I made my way down the center of the room, taking a look
to the bays on my right and left. After my first glances I found myself
nodding. It was a proper, well-maintained library. Categorized, alphabetized
and clean, it was just as I would have done it myself. All my favorites were
there, with a great number of rare and valuable volumes as well as more
ordinary, well-thumbed copies. Not only Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, The Woman
in White, but The Castle of Otranto, Lady Audley’s Secret, The Spectre Bride. I
was thrilled to come across a Jekyll and Mr. Hyde so rare that my father had
given up believing in its existence.

Marveling at the rich selection of volumes on Miss Winter’s
shelves, I browsed my way toward the fireplace at the far end of the room. In
the final bay on the right, one particular set of shelves stood it even from
some distance: Instead of displaying the mellow, preeminently brown stripes
that were the spines of the older books, this stack showed the silvery blues,
sage greens and pink-beiges of more :cent decades. They were the only modern
books in the room. Miss Winter’s own works. With her earliest titles at the top
of the stack and ;cent novels at the bottom, each work was represented in its
many different editions and even in different languages. I saw no Thirteen
Tales, the mistitled book I had read at the bookshop, but in its other guise as
Tales of Change and Desperation there were more than a dozen different
editions.

I selected a copy of Miss Winter’s most recent book. On page one
an elderly nun arrives at a small house in the backstreets of an unnamed town
that seems to be in Italy; she is shown into a room where a pompous young man,
whom we take to be English or American, greets her in some surprise. (I turned
the page. The first paragraphs had drawn me in, just as I had been drawn in
every time I had opened one of her books, and without meaning to, I began to
read in earnest.) The young man does not at first appreciate what the reader
already understands: that his visitor has come on a grave mission, one that
will alter is life in ways he cannot be expected to foresee. She begins her
explanation and bears it patiently (I turned the page; I had forgotten the
library, forgotten Miss Winter, forgotten myself) when he treats her with the
levity of indulged youth…

And then something penetrated through my reading and drew me out
of the book. A prickling sensation at the back of the neck.

Someone was watching me.

I know the back-of-the-neck experience is not an uncommon
phenomenon; it was, however, the first time it had happened to me. Like those
of a great many solitary people, my senses are acutely attuned to the presence
of others, and I am more used to being the invisible spy in a room than to
being spied upon. Now someone was watching me, and not only that, but whoever
it was had been watching me for some time. How long had that unmistakable
sensation been tickling me? I thought back over the past minutes, trying to
retrace the memory of the body behind my memory of the book. Was it since the
nun began to speak to the young man? Since she was shown into the house? Or
earlier? Without moving a muscle, head bent over the page as though I had
noticed nothing, I tried to remember.

Then I realized.

I had felt it even before I picked up the book.

Needing a moment to recover myself, I turned the page,
continuing the pretense of reading.

‘You can’t fool me.“

Imperious, declamatory, magisterial.

There was nothing to be done but turn and face her.

Vida Winter’s appearance was not calculated for concealment. She
was an ancient queen, sorceress or goddess. Her stiff figure rose regally out
of a profusion of fat purple and red cushions. Draped around her shoulders, the
folds of the turquoise-and-green cloth that cloaked her body did not soften the
rigidity of her frame. Her bright copper hair had been arranged into an
elaborate confection of twists, curls and coils. Her face, as intricately lined
as a map, was powdered white and finished with bold scarlet lipstick. In her
lap, her hands were a cluster of rubies, emeralds and white, bony knuckles;
only her nails, unvarnished, cut short, square like my own, struck an
incongruous note. What unnerved me more than all the rest were her sunglasses.
I lid not see her eyes but, as I remembered the inhuman green irises in the
poster, her dark lenses seemed to develop the force of a search-it; I had the
impression that from behind them she was looking through my skin and into my
very soul.

I drew a veil over myself, masked myself in neutrality, hid
behind appearance.

For an instant I think she was surprised that I was not
transparent,‘t she could not see straight through me, but she recovered
quickly, re quickly than I had.

‘Very well,“ she said tartly, and her smile was for herself more
than me. ”To business. Your letter gives me to understand that you have
reservations about the commission I am offering you.“

“Well, yes, that is—”

The voice ran on as if it had not registered the interruption.
“I could suggest increasing the monthly stipend and the final fee.”

I licked my lips, sought the right words. Before I could speak,
Miss Winter’s dark shades had bobbed up and down, taking in my flat brown bags,
my straight skirt and navy cardigan. She smiled a small, pitying smile and
overrode my intention to speak. “But pecuniary interest is clearly not in your
nature. How quaint.” Her tone was dry. “I have forgotten about people who don’t
care for money, but I never expected to meet one.” She leaned back against the
cushions. “Therefore I conclude that the difficulty concerns integrity. People
whose lives are not balanced by a healthy love of money suffer from an
appalling obsession with personal integrity.”

She waved a hand, dismissing my words before they were out of my
mouth. “You are afraid of undertaking an authorized biography in case your
independence is compromised. You suspect that I want to exert control over the
content of the finished book. You know that I have resisted biographers in the
past and are wondering what my agenda is in changing my mind now. Above
all”—that dark gaze of her sunglasses again—“you are afraid I mean to lie to
you.”