The room appeared to have calmed Otille. She chatted away as if Jocundra were an old school friend, describin family evenings when her father and she would set all the toy animals in operation and send them bashing into one another. But Jocundra found this wholesale change in mood more alarming than her rage, and in addition, she was beginning to make eerie connection between the generations of Rigauds. Valcours with his anthropomorphic toys, Otille’s father’s animals, Otille’s pets and ‘friends.’ God only knew what Clothilde had collected. It was easy to see how one could think of the family as a single terrible creature stretching back through time, some genetic flaw or chemical magic binding the spirit to the blood.
‘I’m afraid I have a luncheon in New Orleans,’ Otille said, ushering Jocundra out. ‘Foundation business. But we can talk more another time.’ She locked the door behind them and headed down the hall. ‘If I see Donnell on my way to the car,’ she called back, ‘I’ll send him along.’
It was said with such unaffected sincerity that for the moment Jocundra did not doubt her.
‘An attic’s the afterlife of a house,’ said Otille, opening the door, ‘Or so my mother used to say.’
The air inside was sweetly scented and cool. She stepped aside to let him pass, and as he did, her hip brushed his hand, a silky pass like a cat fitting itself to your palm. She shut the door, and he heard the lock engage. The gable windows were shuttered, the room pitch dark, and when she walked off, he lost sight of her.
‘Turn on the light!’
‘Why don’t you find me like you did Dularde?’
‘You might fall.’
She gave a frosty little laugh. Boards creaked. ‘Damn it, Otille!’
‘Take off your glasses, and I’ll turn on the light.’
Christ! He folded the glasses and put them in his pocket. He imagined he could hear her breathing, but realized it was his own breath whining through clogged sinuses.
‘What the hell do you want to show me?’ he asked.
‘You’ll have to come to the window,’ she said softly.
A rattling to his left made him jump. Metal shutters lifted from the row of gables, strips of silver radiance widening to chutes of dust-hung moonlight spilling into a long, narrow room, so long its far reach was lost in shadow. It must, he thought, run the length of the rear wing. The rattling subsided, and seven windows ranged the darkness, portals opened onto a universe of frozen light. Bales, bundles, and sheet-draped mysteries lined the walls. And then Otille, who had slipped out of her clothing, stepped from the shadows and went to stand by the nearest window. Her reappearance had the quality of illusion, as if she were an image projected by the rays of moonlight. Her skin glowed palely, and the curls of black hair falling onto her shoulder, her pubic triangle, these seemed absent places in her flesh.
‘Don’t look so dumfounded,’ she said, beckoning.
From the window, Donnell saw white flickering lights beyond the conical hills. Welder’s arcs, Otille explained. The copper had arrived, and the night shift had begun at once. The peak of the gable cramped them together, and in the course of talking and pointing, her breast nudged his arm. He couldn’t help stealing glances at her, at the lapidary fineness of her muscles, the way the moonlight shaded her nipples to lavender, and whenever she looked at him, he felt that something was pouring out of her, that dampers had been withdrawn and her inner core exposed, irradiating him. Though he had steeled himself against her, his body reacted and his thoughts became confused. He wanted to turn and go back downstairs to Jocundra, but he also wanted to touch the curve of Otille’s belly and feel the bubble of heat it held. Her black eyes swam with lights, her sulky mouth was drawing him toward her, and he lost track of what she was saying, something about his having validated her beliefs.
‘Come along,’ she said, taking his hand. ‘I’ll show you my room. It used to be Clothilde’s, but I’ve had it repaneled and decorated after my own tastes.’
At midpoint of the attic three doors were set into the wall, the central one leading along a short passage to yet another door, and beyond this lay a cavernous room hung with shafts of moonlight. The ceiling was carved to resemble a weave of black branches, leaf sprays, dripping moss; and the light penetrated through the glassed-over interstices. Trunks bulged from the walls, their bark patterns rendered precisely; ebony saplings and bushes -perfect to the detailing of the veins on the leaves -sprouted from the floor, and at the center of the room was a carpeted depression strewn with pillows and having the effect of a still, sable eye at the heart of a whirlpool. A control console was mounted in its side, switches and an intercom, and after pulling him down to sit beside her, Otille flicked one of the switches. Colored filters slid across the rents in the carved canopy, and the beams of moonlight empurpled. Donnell lay back against the pillows, watching her rapt face as she unbuttoned his shirt, and when she bent down to kiss his chest, he shivered. It was as if a pale beast the shape of Otille had dipped her muzzle into him and fed.
Her hips rolled beneath him in practised shudders, her fingers traced the circuits of his nerves, yet her love-making was so adept, so athletic, passion reduced to ornate calisthenics, that the spell she had cast upon him was broken and his interest flagged. Still, like a good pet, he performed, pretending it was Jocundra touching him. And then, because he thought it would be appropriate to the mood, he took his first look at Otille’s gros bon ange.
If one of her clever movements had not renewed his passionate reflex, he would have thrown himself off her in revulsion. The pile of the carpet resolved into a myriad of silver pinpricks against which her head was silhouetted like a coalsack; but instantly sparks of jeweled light rushed up from the area of her hips, defining the lines of her breasts and ribs as they flowed, and fitting a bestial mask to her face. It was a thing in a constant state of dissolution composed of emerald, azure, gold and ruby glints that coalesced into patches of mineral brilliance, decayed, and melted into new encrusted forms. Black rips for eyes, fangs of gemmy light. It roared silently at him, its mouth twisting open and gnashing shut. Yet each time their hips ground together, the mask wavered, loosing stray sparks downward, as if his thrusts were inducing its animating stuff to join in. He thrust harder, and the entire structure of the mask dissipated for a split second, fiery wax running from a mold. He felt a desolate glee in knowing he could overwhelm this monstrosity, and he turned all his energies to dismantling the mask, battering at Otille, who moaned beneath him. Whenever he let up, the mask’s expression grew more feral, but at last it melted away, flowing back into her groin. Looking down to where their bellies merged, he saw an iridescent slick like a film of oil sliding between them.