The days merged in a continuum of the real, the dreamt and the hallucinated. I experienced a series of intensely erotic fantasies that involved Justine, Juliette and myself, in all combinations and positions. The visions had been so exquisite, so physically pleasurable, so corporeal, that I sometimes doubted if they had only been dreams.
But that night, when London had grown quiet outside, I started to have a vision of a different kind. A nightmarish hallucination from which I could not wake up.
As I lay reclining on the sofa, I noticed the smell first. It was the smell of excrement. Strange splashes of black paint suddenly began to appear on the wallpaper. They started to move: scores of cockroaches were scuttling over the walls in uneven lines. I leapt to my feet, only to feel my naked heels sink slowly down into a soft liqueous coldness. I looked down to see that I was standing in a morass of creamy maggots. They were crawling over the flat weave of the Persian rug in a lurid viscous slime. My palace of aestheticism had been transformed into a fetid pit.
Only when I heard the tight whirring sound of insects’ wings start up did I look above me. Neon-orange moths were fluttering out of the eyes and open mouth of the portrait of Justine. On seeing this, I felt with the strong fake belief of a dream, that the real Justine had never existed. Justine was an impostor: she was just an empty shell of living insects. Justine, like her picture, wasn’t real at all, she was another fabrication, another picture of death.
The phone rang. It dragged me – still panic-stricken – back into the semblance of reality. The room fell still and the hallucinations and frightened thoughts vanished into the stagnant air. I picked up the receiver: my hand was shaking.
The woman’s voice on the other end spoke softly.
‘Hello?’ It was her voice.
‘Justine,’ I said.
‘No. Juliette.’ The room lurched to the side.
The sisters’ voices sounded identical. I realized that I could not tell them apart. Reality wavered, shifted and took a step back.
‘Juliette,’ I dully repeated. I could not keep the dead weight of disappointment out of my voice.
Juliette, however, was indifferent to this. She did not take it personally. I was only her means to an end. Instead she laughed and said like a taunting schoolgirl,
‘So you’ve tracked her down. That was quick work. But she hasn’t phoned you, as she said she would? Naughty girl. I told you she liked to play games.’
I quickly told her all the details of the conversation I had had with Justine. Juliette, after all, was supposed to be on my side.
‘So you think that I gave this zealot her address do you? You should be a bit cleverer than that. I may hate her, but she is also my twin sister. I would never do any thing to endanger her life. She is my other half.
I remembered the photographs I had found in Juliette’s bedroom and the knives painted on to the lovers’ naked bodies and wondered if she were speaking the truth.
‘Do you think that this man who is obsessed with her is really dangerous?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know. I do know that when someone is obsessed they can do dangerous things. They are capable of anything. I have read his letters and they are definitely obscene. Unrepeatable, in fact, and I don’t blush easily. All I can say is if Justine is approaching complete strangers in the London Library something serious is going on. But as far as we are concerned, it may be a blessing in disguise. It will give you a chance to get to know her.’ She paused and then added, ‘Don’t worry. She’ll phone. Probably just when you’ve given up hope.’
THIRTY-TWO
After speaking to Juliette on the phone my spirits rallied slightly. But in the bathroom I caught sight of myself in the mirror and a stranger stared back: an unshaven man with over-focused eyes. I quickly shaved, washed and put on a silk shirt and jeans. By now it was late evening and picking up a light novel I lay down on the sofa and began to read.
A while later I had the idea of phoning Waterstone’s for a copy of Death is a Woman. To my surprise, at that late hour, someone answered the phone.
‘If you like, Sir, you could come on down right now and collect it.’
I was loath to leave the flat in case Justine phoned, but decided as it was a short journey to take the risk. I took the phone off the hook in the hope that if she did ring, on hearing the engaged tone she might try again.
Waterstone’s on Kensington High Street was standing in utter darkness when the taxi dropped me off. But the anonymous face of the bookseller was waiting just inside the doors for me. I followed him into the black interior of the store. The walls were lined with books. He went over to the shelves and picked a book out and handed it over to me.
‘You’re lucky, Sir, this is our last copy.’
The cover of Death is a Woman was garish: the title was in embossed gold. A half-naked woman with a heavily made up face sat astride a chair in black stockings and gold stilettos. Her face looked uncannily like Justine’s. I opened the book up. All the pages were blank. Astonished, I looked up at the bookseller for an explanation, but without saying a word he turned and walked back towards the shelves. Reaching up, he started to pull down all the books, row after row, on to the floor. They were of all categories: the Classics, Romance, Mysteries. As they fell, the books opened up their covers, like birds taking flight, revealing that they too were full of blank pages. Their shiny pale pages, devoid of print, glimmered in the shadows of the shop as they lay on the floor. The bookseller turned to face me again, his face obscured in the darkness.
‘You won’t find the answers you’re looking for in books,’ he said to me.
Just at that moment I was woken up by the sound of the phone ringing. I had fallen asleep on the sofa. The novel I had been reading was perched precariously on my nose. I looked at my watch: it was two o’clock in the morning. I picked up the receiver, the book falling with a crash to the floor.
‘It’s Justine. Meet me tomorrow evening. At Nancy’s Steps. London Bridge.’ She hung up.
At six the following evening I was walking along the South Bank of the Thames. The cool breeze of the water took the edge off the dirty heat of the city. I wondered what kind of macabre joke Justine was playing by choosing Nancy’s Steps as our rendezvous. It was the place where Dickens murders Nancy in Oliver Twist. The steps were wide and the bottom step slipped imperceptibly into the reflecting water of the river.
Justine was sitting on the penultimate step, her naked feet dangling in the water. The water distorted her pale flesh, making her feet look deformed. The large brim of a white linen hat concealed her face, as if a giant butterfly had landed on her head. Her white pinafore dress was blowing lightly in the breeze.
I climbed down the steps toward her. She looked up and saw me but instead of acknowledging me, immediately turned round again. I heard her say quietly and coolly, just under her breath.
‘Sit down a few steps above me but act as if you don’t know me.’
I did as she said, and looked out on to the fast flowing river which seemed potent and imperturbable. I listened.
‘He’s watching me now. But from a distance. He mustn’t guess that we know each other. That would spoil everything. I am going to put my hat on the step beside me. Under it is a letter from him. I want you to read it.’
She did as she said, and I bent down as if to tie a shoelace, and slipped out the envelope from under the brim. The letter was written in clear rounded print, like a child’s. Even now, with the distance of time, I cannot bring myself to reproduce, the words, their meaning was so obscene. The content of the letter made it clear that he was intending to abduct her. The date that he was threatening to abduct her on was set at today.