For several minutes thereafter, Rosacher continued lying where he had fallen. The chill spread across his cheek, yet did not disturb him—on the contrary, the coolness was soothing, as though a salve had been applied. The bizarre manner of Amelita’s death, if death it had been, if she were not reincarnate as a cluster of flakes, left him in an uncertain mood, overcome by sorrow, but also wondering if this might not have been the best possible outcome for her—she had always been unhappy—and not merely unhappy, despondent, despairing—except for moments here and there, and though he ached for her, he experienced an undercurrent of relief that she had been released from whatever pain had been gnawing at her for all her days—but this did not alleviate his own pain. He wept while walking back to Martita’s and had to pause outside the door in order to compose himself. Once inside, seated at a table in the rear, he hated the dim, wavering lantern light, the smell of stale beer, the lively talk and laughter around him, all the dull brown normalcy of the place. He hung his head and tried to calm himself, but his thoughts flurried and he kept picturing Amelita as her living layers peeled away, her mouth open and eyes lidded, an expression that reminded him of how she had looked when they made love—yet it lacked vitality and was absent the sounds of passion, the gasps, the musical sighs, and thus seemed a mockery.
Martita dropped onto the bench opposite, bubbly as ever, and asked what brought him to her door—it had been months since he visited. “You’ll be wanting a mug of the brown, I suppose,” she said, and before he could answer, she put a hand to her mouth. “God! What happened to your face?”
“My face?” he said. “What’s wrong with it? Am I bleeding?”
She told him to wait, ran to the bar and brought back a small mirror that she kept beneath the counter. “You won’t believe this unless you see for yourself,” she said, holding it out to him.
In its clouded surface he saw his old face, his face as it had been before Ludie and Honeyman betrayed him, unmarked by any scarring, marred only by the lines of middle age. And he understood…or perhaps he didn’t understand, perhaps he only hoped he understood why the sting of that tiny creature pared from her life had felt so soothing. Moved by that flawed comprehension, then, he once again began to weep.
13
Amelita’s death inspired a period of self-reflection in Rosacher that neither illuminated nor provided surcease. Though his love for her may have been tainted, poisoned by his manipulative spirit, his grief seemed real enough. It was a black cancer gnawing at his heart, decaying his thoughts. He did not believe there would be an end to it, and he foresaw a future in which would be forced to dwell beneath a self-woven shroud, mired in a gloom that blotted out life’s exuberant particularity. He shut himself away in the apartment, lying in the bed he had shared with Amelita, the curtains drawn, wanting to deny even the possibility of light, praying that this darkness would somehow keep him connected to her darkness. He had no wish to work, no desire for food or drink, and when he smoked mab, it merely enriched and deepened his personal shadows. He punished himself for becoming angry with her the night she died, for a myriad lesser transgressions, and for being so preoccupied with her, for doting on her now more with greater intensity than he had when she was alive. He then came to hate himself for doubting the authenticity of his grief. He also hated himself for conflating his obsession with the dragon with everything from philosophical questions to practical considerations (would Griaule approve of this or that, etc.) and for having constructed a seemingly flimsy metaphysics about the beast that no amount of speculation or denial could dissolve. He supposed that if he were to look out and see that gargantuan foreleg rising above, he would hate the dragon as well, but he didn’t have the energy to crack the window and prove his thesis.
He passed long hours poring over Amelita’s sketchbooks, searching for clues to her character, and discovered a rendering of a gray winged creature with a woman’s body, with pale skin and small, high breasts and cascading black hair. She had drawn this same creature half-a-dozen times—the last drawing was very nearly a self-portrait and was inscribed with the words, “the aurelia phase.” A few lines of text followed, stating that the creature derived its nourishment from the crepuscular light of pre-dawn and dusk. Amelita’s usage of “aurelia” was unfamiliar to him—he learned that the word was not just a name, but was also used to denote a chrysalis. He had almost convinced himself that the creature was a hallucination, a byproduct of his fright, but the drawing overthrew that assumption and he was forced to struggle with the notion that Amelita had been transformed into a swarm of flakes and that she might pass from this stage into yet another, perhaps more repellent stage. This in turn caused him to wonder whether she had anticipated the transformation, or if Griaule had plucked the idea from her brain and made it into a reality. That thought, and a hundred attendant thoughts redolent of his obsession with the dragon, renewed his self-loathing and sank him to fresh depths of darkness and despair.
Breque visited him from time to time, staying but briefly, and eight months after Amelita’s death he brought with him a thick folder that he deposited on the floor beside him. He sat in a gilt chair next to the bed and appeared to study Rosacher, who lay beneath the peach-colored sheets, clad in a robe that had gone unwashed for weeks. Stubble dirtied Rosacher’s cheeks, his hair was matted, and the bed was littered with open wine bottles (some were only partly empty and as a result the sheets were mapped with purplish stains). Breque cleared his throat and, when Rosacher did not react, he said, “I see that nothing has changed with you. Would you like me to leave?”