– His eyes were open, said Elfrida. I had to close his eyes.
He held her shoulders in his hands. -Look at me, he said. She continued to hang her head. -Elfrida! he said sharply and it lifted slowly.
– One less secret, she said. I love you.
He was looking at Ignatius Gribb’s body. It wore, spotlessly, a silk shirt and cravat, a smoking-jacket, a rather incongruous pair of very aged cord trousers and carpet slippers. Its mouth was puckered and slightly open, like a fish.
– Death with dishonour, said Elfrida. He didn’t just lose his life.
– There are no wounds on the body, said Flapping Eagle. No marks.
– Not his body, she said dully. I killed him in the head. I had to close his eyes. After opening them.
She broke down; the glacial control slipped; the tears flowed. She clutched at Flapping Eagle. -I love you, she said. I love you, I love you, I love you.
– You told him, didn’t you? said Flapping Eagle, understanding.
– Yes, she said, in a tiny whisper. I killed him.
It was not hard to reconstruct what had happened. Elfrida, goaded by jealousy, had taken the plunge she had fought so unwillingly but so effectively for so long. But, being Elfrida, the plunge had to be as final, as irrevocable as her previous dedication to Ignatius. So she had refused to accompany Flapping Eagle on his walk and while he was safely out of the way had bearded her husband in his lair and told him she no longer loved him. In Virgil’s terms, she had transferred obsessions from Ignatius to Flapping Eagle. Who thought: guess whose fault that makes it.
It had transfixed Ignatius like a thunderbolt. Even away from Calf Island it might well have broken him. These two had survived by their mutual interdependence, shielding each other from the wounds and calumnies of the world, two vulnerable people lying back to back in a marriage bed, for safety. No doubt her love had been the entire foundation of his arrogant air of self-certainty. The love of a beautiful woman can easily provide such a support for a stunted man. He had drawn from her the strength and courage which enabled him to form and hold, not just his theories and opinions, but his entire personality. She was his peace of mind, his alienable crutch, his perfect match, and she had withdrawn. Men had done away with themselves for less.
But this was Calf Mountain; and in the field of the Grimus Effect, suicide had been unnecessary. Flapping Eagle could almost see the gutted brain within the coined head. Because Elfrida’s words had done more than upset Ignatius. They had broken through the unconscious, ingrained defence mechanism, the mental barrier he had built for almost every member of the community of K. Elfrida’s withdrawal had removed the cornerstone of the persona he had built; and in that instant, when everything which had seemed sure was suddenly flung into a state of flux, the fever of the Inner Dimensions had swarmed over him.
What must he have felt like, Flapping Eagle asked himself, at that second, as he felt that inner multiplicity seizing him, soft and unprepared and unable to control it as he was behind those broken defences? What must it have been like to be possessed and annihilated by the very force whose denial he had made his primary contribution to the town? Death with dishonour indeed.
And what of K itself, K which rested on Gribb’s theories, on his technique of Prime Interest and on his preoccupation with the here-and-now of life? Ignatius’ death had shown that there was a Something, an invisible force at work upon them, and it had destroyed its arch-opponent with terrifying swiftness. Could their minds remain shut in the face of his death? Flapping Eagle was certain that some at least would not be able to remain so.
Guilt descended upon him like a soft dark avalanche, breaking the pale magical spell Irina and Elfrida had woven. He flagellated himself more cruelly than O’Toole could ever have managed. He, who had fallen so willingly into the way of K, subscribing to the illusion of permanence, betraying his own experience for the sake of a home and a triangular love. He, who had despised the man who had shown him the true nature of the island and helped him to survive it. Was social acceptability and the companionship of two beautiful women worth the damage he had wrought? Patently not; and even that was lost. Flung out by Irina, faced with a changed Elfrida, he was probably also in danger of his life. He shrugged. He could not find it in him to value his life very highly, not now that his ability to bring disaster upon those around him had reached this new peak. Selfish, Jocasta had said. That was the understatement of all time.
– I’ll look after you, Elfrida was saying. I promise. I’ll look after you for ever. If you will look after me.
– Elfrida… he said helplessly, but his voice trailed off into silence; he could think of nothing to say.
– I love you, you see, she said. You don’t need anyone else. You don’t, do you?
Light came in to the room. Count Aleksandr Cherkassov stood in the doorway. There was a curl of distaste on his lips, overlaying the shock in his eyes.
– It’s not murder, said Flapping Eagle. She didn’t murder him. There was no violence.
– Was there not, said Cherkassov and left the house.
Elfrida Gribb clung to Flapping Eagle as if her life depended on it. Which, in a sense, it did.
He held her there, and they stood for a long time by the corpse of the Way of K.
XLVIII Funerals
FOUR GRAVES, VOID sentinels at the forest’s edge, fresh-made holes in Valhalla, stood at the spot where Flapping Eagle and Virgil Jones had looked across the plain an emotional age ago. It was a still morning, the light mists swirling, the mountain remaining impenetrable behind discreet clouds. Virgil, wet with fatigue, his feet complaining, his tongue licking feverishly at his lips, his eyes peering, watched the approaching procession. His limbs gathered their forces; soon they would have to undo their work. Piles of earth, dark and slightly moist, stood in attendance by the tombs.
Femme fatale. If the cap fits, wear it. One by one they fall around me; dead men around me, unborn life within. Poor, stupid count, lanced in his feeble head. I watched him die, leaving the house of death, so silent, so distant, passing without a word, into the garden, I behind, he ahead, looking ahead. A giggle from Alexei, idiot offspring laughing at bemused parent, a chess piece falling to the ground, and back, back to the house, to sit and stare. Poor hidebound anachronism that he was, finding comfort in the arms of whores, finding none in mine, and now, when I wished to, I could give him none. Staring and smoking, as if death would waft away on the fumes. There, in the past, pinching little Sophie Lermontov’s little rump, gallant he was at balls and in war, but the past was receding now, present horror ousting past pleasure, as he sat and stared and smoked. The triviality of it, to die for the death of a Gribb, his frail mind stabbed by the death of a Gribb. I watched him die, his eyes turned to some other world, his hands and lips as they moved in an unseen, unheard life, I watched it alclass="underline" as he came to his feet, stiffly to his feet, erect and handsome, my idiot adonis, crumpling then before his ghostly executioners, no, no, no blindfold please, a cheroot before you shoot. The ghostly executioners-I did not see or hear them, the ghosts of his assassins, but it was them. I was not surprised to find him dead.
But Page, little worshipping Norbert, last of the serfs, who wanted only to serve us, so good with Alexei he was; small man that he was, good innocent Page, he would not die for a Gribb, yet for a Cherkassov to die so broke him. While the Cherkassov stood firm in the Way of K, all the Gribbs on earth could perish without harming him. But if the trunk of the tree should fall, there is little hope for the branches. He died when he knew, when he knew the Cherkassov had fallen, invaded by Grimus, there, I have said it, died as Alexei laughed and played.