Flapping Eagle said in a quiet voice: -How do you know?
– Ignatius, she said. Ignatius said… she disappeared… she must be dead. I’m sorry.
She fled from his worried stare, dropping her needlework.
– Come over this afternoon and play croquet, said Irina Cherkassova.
– I don’t know the game, replied Flapping Eagle.
– Then it will be instructive, she smiled. When you play a game you don’t understand, it teaches you a great deal about yourself. And your limitations.
– I’m sure Flapping Eagle knows his limitations. (Elfrida, sharply.)
Irina cocked an eyebrow. -It was only a joke, she said gaily.
– I’d love to play, said Flapping Eagle.
Elfrida said nothing.
Elfrida and Irina formed a large proportion of Flapping Eagle’s life during the next few days. Gribb’s studies and Cherkassov’s indolence had always thrown the two women upon each other’s resources; they seemed glad of his company, both of them rejuvenated by his presence. In a way, they were as much a sanctuary for him, a sanctuary from his thoughts and fears, as the House of the Rising Son was for Virgil. While in their company, he found it both possible and pleasant to play the ostrich.
The attractions of the flesh were, naturally, prominent in his thoughts. Flapping Eagle knew he was not unattractive. He also knew he was some distance from being irresistible. If he was in the enviable position of heading a triangle whose two other corners were occupied by these women, there must be other reasons. He guessed his novelty value had much to do with it. He was the Stranger, the unknown, a new life to explore.
In Irina’s case, her explicit desire for him was relatively easy to understand. She obviously despised her husband; Flapping Eagle was probably a way out of the trap for her, a way of expressing her scorn for Cherkassov and escaping the tiresome monogamy of her marriage. A simple, classic case of a bored, unhappy wife given a new stimulus.
Flapping Eagle’s private judgement of her was that she almost enjoyed her unhappiness, that the double grief of her motherhood and the emptiness of her marriage had become emotional crutches, platforms from which to elicit sympathy and admiration. If he were to become involved with her, he would have to bear the weight of her woes. She was a siren, too: and a siren is a devourer of men. But for all that she was a beautiful, desirable woman and she had intimated already that she, too, desired him.
He found this willingness a small drawback. The unattainable held for him a greater fascination, and Elfrida, with her frequently-voiced attachment to her canting gnome, Elfrida was a great deal closer to being unattainable. He was not even sure if she was attracted to him. Nothing had been said; he based his hopes solely on a few glances, a few brushes of skin against skin, a few hesitations when speaking of her love for Ignatius, a few sharpnesses in her voice when Irina flirted openly with him. He might be imagining all of it.
If he was not, another worrying area opened up. Perhaps she did not love Gribb as much as she had convinced herself she did. If so, why was her dedication to him so intense? Was her seemingly natural, all-consuming love simply another of the necessary exaggerations of the Way of K? And if she, too, desired him, why did she? As a rebellion against Ignatius, a parallel to Irina and Cherkassov? He shook his head. Perhaps he should give himself more credit.
Of course, Flapping Eagle did not know the real reason why his arrival had unsettled the two pale beauties so; and so his musings encompassed only a part of the truth.
The mysteries of Calf Island intruded only once during these days, but, when they did, they answered the question of whether or not Elfrida was drawn to Flapping Eagle. For the rest no Bird-Dog appeared, and the whine in Flapping Eagle’s ears seemed to have faded for the time being. It was as though the island were biding its time. In retrospect it seemed to Flapping Eagle that he had been given enough rope to hang himself and several others besides.
This was how the one intrusion occurred:
Ignatius Gribb was having his afternoon nap, and thus managed once again to sleep through an important event. Elfrida and Flapping Eagle were at the swing. More precisely, they sat on the grass under the ash from which it hung. They were drowsy with food and wine; but the second blink jolted them wide awake.
It hit them like an electric shock. No living being can be removed from existence and then returned to it without feeling the effects.
It passed; Elfrida looked at Flapping Eagle, a helpless child filled with fear. He took her into his arms and they hung on to each other tightly, proving to themselves it was all right, they were there, solid, alive.
It seemed only natural that they should kiss.
Inside, in his study, Ignatius Gribb snored on.
XLV Media
EARLIER, AT THE House of the Rising Son.
Media was saying: -Madame Jocasta, might you not have been too hard on Flapping Eagle? People do get confused. Good people can do bad things under stress.
Madame Jocasta said: -You don’t even know the man.
Media tossed her head. -I’m just giving him the benefit of the doubt. Virgil’s always encouraging people to doubt.
Jocasta said: -Flapping Eagle is not welcome here. And remember, Media, your own speciality excludes him from your bed.
– Yes, Madame, she said. And added, after a pause: I like women.
– Don’t be sad, said Media.
– No, my dear, said Virgil absently.
– I’m sorry I asked about him, she said, full of contrition.
– It’s not that, he said.
The Gorf had warned him: he was irrelevant, redundant; he would take no further part in the story of Calf Mountain. The Gorf had warned him; and since Flapping Eagle had chosen the Way of K, it looked as if the Gorf was right.
– People sometimes get depressed in retirement, he said to Media.
XLVI The Pale Sorceresses
NO-ONE TO GUIDE him; no sister to forage, no sham-man to expel, no livia to command, no deggle to direct, no virgil to instruct. He had to choose-which of them? Either of them? And then to gamble on their choice. And to know what he wanted.
The white witches weaving their spell, binding him in silken cords.
Perhaps any choice, even the wrong one, was better than these agonizing, fluctuating self-examinations and inner debates.
Without being conscious of it, Flapping Eagle was falling into the natural thought-patterns of his adopted town.
The pale sorceresses circled and smiled.
– I know I’m a guest in his house, he said. But it’s yours, too. I know he’s been kind and generous to me. But it was you who brought me here. I don’t expect you to love me; I’m not sure if I love you. But I want you. I know it would be easier, more comfortable if I didn’t. But I do.
There: it was done.
– I love my husband, said Elfrida Gribb in a voice seized with panic.
Night. Irina Cherkassova lay awake in her bed, thinking about the blink. A spider crawled unseen along the hangings over her head, the rude canopy of her inelegant four-poster. Bats hung from the eaves outside her closed window.
For her, it had been the first blink, and the first time is the worst. She bit her lip and tasted the salty blood. Tonight she needed companionship, even if it was only Aleksandr. But how to go to him, proud Irina, how crawl into his bedroom after this age of partitioned nights, how to ask his warmth and protection in the face of her history of icy hauteur. No: she could not. No. Yes. Yes. She could. She got out of bed and drew her dressing-gown around her.
There was no answer when she knocked at his door. Sleeping, obviously; he probably doesn’t even remember it happened, addlebrained fool. She opened the door.
At that moment, at the House of the Rising Son, Lee Kok Fook licked Aleksandr Cherkassov on the ear-lobe.