Virgil Jones lay peacefully on Florence Nightingale’s bed. On the bedside table stood a gleaming bronze pitcher of wine. Jocasta, Media, Kamala and Lee stood in a semicircle around the two people on the bed.
– Welcome home, Virgil, said Madame Jocasta.
– I propose a toast, said Virgil Jones, to the House of the Rising Son and its resident angels of mercy.
– And we shall drink to your renewed good spirits, said Jocasta.
Virgil drained his glass. Florence refilled it instantly.
– Shall I play, Madame Jocasta? she asked.
– Yes, please, said Virgil. Play and sing.
Florence picked up her lute and began to sing. Looking at her, Virgil remembered a verse from another poem:
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw
He watched the black-skinned Nightingale sing and forgot all other songs and poems.
She was an Abyssinian maid
And on her dulcimer she played
Singing of Mount A bora.
They lay in bed, Greek-named gravedigger and Greek-faced whore.
– At first, said Virgil, I was wounded by Flapping Eagle’s desertion. But now I really don’t care.
– You must stay, Virgil, said Jocasta. Stay with us and look after us. You’ve been wandering far too long, up and down this wretched mountain, and done quite enough. Nobody can carry the guilt for an entire island. It’s time you rested. Let your Flapping Eagle travel on if he must; you’ve taken him as far as you can.
– Or as far as I want to, said Virgil. At the moment his mind is full of settling down. Settling down! But who knows, perhaps that’s all there is to it, all there is to do, all there is to him. It’s just that I thought…
He fell silent.
– You thought he was the one to do what you can’t, said Jocasta. Virgil didn’t reply.
– Revenge isn’t a very worthy emotion, said Jocasta softly. You know as well as I do that nobody can touch Grimus now.
Virgil shrugged. -Probably, he said. Most probably not.
– What is it in Liv, asked Jocasta bitterly, that leaves such a cancer in people? You would never have hated Grimus if Liv hadn’t made you do so.
– Probably not, repeated Virgil.
– Liv, spat Jocasta. You’ll have to forget her, Virgil. Her, and Grimus, and Flapping Eagle. I can’t go to bed with your ghosts.
Virgil laughed.
– You’re a tolerant woman, Jocasta, he said. Give me some wine; there’s absolution in it. I’d love to stay.
– Jocasta?
She stirred in her sleep.
– Jocasta, listen.
Virgil was sitting bolt-upright in bed. He could see himself, blurrily, in the dark, reflected in the mirror on the far wall.
Jocasta raised herself on one elbow. -Whatever have you thought of now? she asked. For the last few nights, this had been a regular occurrence; Virgil would be brought abruptly awake by his dreams. -It takes longer to exorcise the unconscious, he had apologized.
– I’ve just remembered, he said. Night I came here. Do you recall… something happening? Something odd.
– Lord, she said, I forgot. The jolt.
– Yes. What the devil was it?
– It’s never happened before, she said.
Virgil stared out of the window at the dark bulk of Calf Mountain above them, clouds enveloping its summit.
– What the hell is that fool up to now? he said angrily.
– Perhaps he can’t control it, said Jocasta quietly.
– It was like… began Virgil, and stopped.
– Like a flash of death, finished Jocasta.
Neither of them slept again that night.
– On the way back here, said Virgil, I regained the gift, you know? And then I lost it again. Just once, I travelled.
– You shouldn’t have tried, said Jocasta. The rest of us are lucky; being immune, I mean.
– Like the king who took poison regularly to make sure it couldn’t kill him, Virgil said with heavy irony.
– Yes, said Jocasta seriously, exactly like that.
Virgil fell back on his pillow. -That’s one thing You’ll never understand, he said. There’s nothing like travelling. Nothing ever invented.
– Forget it, Virgil, said Madame Jocasta. Come here.
XXXVIII At the Cherkassovs’
IRINA CHERKASSOVA FLOATED down upon Elfrida, garnishing each of her cheeks with a kiss. -But my dear, she cried, how can you manage to be so good and also so lovely? It is unfair of you to monopolize all the virtues. It leaves the rest of us with nothing but the vices.
Elfrida blushed. -Such nonsense, Irina, she said. You must not overpraise me; Mr Eagle will soon see through that and think me vain.
– Mr Eagle, said Irina Cherkassova, extending a long hand. We have already heard so much about you. How lucky you are that Elfrida has befriended you. She is a saint.
– If appearances are anything to judge by, said Flapping Eagle, bending over the outstretched limb, I am doubly lucky this evening.
Irina Cherkassova laughed merrily, but her eyes, as they caught and held Flapping Eagle’s gaze, were examining, mysterious and grey, holding perhaps the flicker of a promise. To Elfrida she said:
– Two saints, my dear. Two saints together: what may we not accomplish? Her eyes continued to dizzy Flapping Eagle. They were eyes that knew their power. A tiny frown appeared between Elfrida Gribb’s eyebrows.
– Come in, come in then, exclaimed Irina and linking arms with Elfrida led them into the salon. Ignatius Gribb muttered to Flapping Eagle as they followed her:
– A word of advice, Mr Eagle. Be careful.
Irina and Elfrida, two pale, exquisite, china mannequins, sailed on ahead of them. Flapping Eagle pondered on the rapid shift of his circumstances since arriving in K, from the simmering violence of the Elbaroom to the equally simmering beauty of the world of these two women; and wondered if there was, after all, much intrinsic difference between the two worlds.
Count Aleksandr Cherkassov perspired a great deal for a handsome man. He kept a handkerchief tucked in each cuff; one was already sodden, the other was catching up fast. He dabbed often and feverishly at his forehead, that high dome that gave him the appearance of a sensuous genius, an illusion fostered by his curling shock of blond hair and his curling upper lip. But it was an illusion; Aleksandr Cherkassov was a weak, stultified, barren, empty-headed fool, and his beautiful wife was keenly aware of the fact. She held it constantly against him, as a taunt and a humiliation. He never found a riposte: there was none to find.
He stood by the unused fireplace as the quartet entered, in the immemorial pose of indolent aristocracy, lounging with one elbow against the wall. Beside him stood a low table bearing a decanter of wine and a silver cigarette-case. The cigarettes contained no tobacco; but Indian hemp grew on the plains of K in sufficient quantity to make tobacco unnecessary. Cherkassov spent most of his life with a surfeit of marijuana coursing through his bloodstream, accentuating his natural glazed expression. It opened no doors in his lazy mind, serving only to sink him more deeply into the series of anachronistic gestures that made up his life. Aleksandr Cherkassov had never really left his Russian estates.
He discharged his functions in K with an absolute minimum of effort; there was little enough crime in the community, so he rarely performed as a magistrate, and until Flapping Eagle’s arrival, it had been a long time since he had had a prime interest to approve. Mostly he slept, or smoked, or walked around his garden, or ate. Life held few excitements for him, few ambitions; he was the peacock, and was content to strut. He wouldn’t have minded dying in the normal way; it was Irina’s fear of age and need of companionship that led him to take up the offered immortality; and when the society they knew had begun to crumble, Calf Island, where time stood still, had seemed an enticing alternative. And Madame Jocasta’s whores compensated for the sleek antagonism and sexual antipathy his weakness frequently aroused in Irina.