I could not sleep, floating, as I was, a foot above the bed. I thought that I had cast off my burden as easily as if it had been but a scrap of paper, and I felt as light as a feather, as thistledown; I felt as a leaf in the forest must feel when that weight of rain falls from it, and it springs up, up into the summer air. There were voices in my head, telling me all manner of strange things, that I could do anything now, go anywhere; that I was free. What a joke.
I got up, and wandered out into the sleeping city. There was a shower of rain, with great drops that fell straight down like nails, and then, when the rain stopped, the sun came up and tore the clouds to shreds. I had never seen anything so utterly new as that drenched dawn, drab and watery though it was. I sat on the balcony of an all-night café, alone among spring flowers that grew in boxes. The air was like polished glass, and the first sounds of the city’s day, coming up to me, had the far clear ring of bone about them. And I, I was the morning’s flaw. Something dark and soft, and somehow sticky, was pressing against my mind, growing ever more insistent as the city unfolded below me, and, wearily, warily, like one abroad on a road at night who looks at last over his shoulder at that frightening thing which slouches behind, I set free my mind. It was a long black road down which I gazed. I saw a hillside enfolded in an island’s darkness, and a smiling face speaking. There was a word. I had carried it for so long now, like a worm coiled beneath my flesh, gnawing at the bone; the extraction was agony. I stared at the balcony-rail before me. The dawn abruptly disappeared, and I was enveloped in darkness. A dog’s head rushed at me, with ravenous teeth, and blood in its throat, and I saw that word. I had recognized it for what it was, the moment I had heard it. Now, it was too late.
I sighed. The sunshine of the new day seemed to make me cold. I stood up, and left the café, hearing laughter rattle the morning air.
White pawn to black king one. Look at this.
The gates were open, and inside, on the drive, the great car sat and looked at me malevolently, its bonnet lifted like a jaw. A pigskin suitcase clung, incongruously, like a parasite, to the gleaming roof. There was no one in sight. I walked under the archway, and through the tunnel into the courtyard. The water had been switched off in the fountain. The gravel was wet with dew, and squeaked under my feet. I went through the french windows, and across that empty blue room. All these places, recently so familiar, were now, somehow, strange and alien to me. A matter of days had been enough to make me an intruder here. An early-morning smell, like old smoke, hung in the air, and there was silence everywhere. I wandered down corridors and halls, and stood outside doorways, holding my breath, listening. Once, by a window which afforded a crooked view of the garden, and a rear wheel of the car, I became convinced that I was being watched, and when I turned, suddenly, I saw, or imagined that I saw, a shadow slide away like grey water around a corner of the corridor.
I found evidence that a departure was planned. Two leather trunks (a shock of recognition when I saw them, unpleasant and unsettling, like meeting, heartily alive, a pair of acquaintances whom one had thought were dead) lay in the hall, bound, and labelled to London. There were bare spaces on the walls, where pictures and tapestries had been removed. In a bathroom, where I went to answer a sudden message from my innards, I noticed that the toothbrushes, those last links with a home, had been taken away. A dry sliver of soap and a broken tin of talcum powder were all that remained.
I climbed the stairs, watching another me, hand to banister, coming down to meet me, not without apprehension, through the ornate mirror. On the landing, I stopped and looked around me, wondering where I should go next. A door was flung open, and Julian came out, speaking, as he came, over his shoulder to someone inside the room. He closed the door and strode past me without a glance, went down three steps of the stairs, and halted. He stood motionless, with his head bowed; then, as though he had come to a decision, he patted the banister with his palm, and turned around slowly and looked at me.
‘My god,’ he said, ‘I thought you were an hallucination.’
‘I am.’
Now that was a strange thing to say. He chose to consider it a joke, and, laughing, came back up the stairs. We looked at each other. From that smile of Julian’s, something riotous must have been going on behind me. I said,
‘Where is it?’
‘What’s that?’
‘Nothing.’
His hands went into his pockets, and jingled the coins which they found there. He looked down at his plus-fours, and laughed.
‘Things are in such a mess,’ he said.
‘Are you leaving?’ I asked.
‘Eh? No no. We were, yes, but we changed our minds. Something came up. Are you here to say goodbye? Sorry to disappoint you.’
‘I’m not disappointed.’
‘No? Jolly good. A friend of yours was here last night. In the small hours of the morning, actually. Woke us all up.’
‘Who?’
‘That crippled chap, what’s his name?’
‘Andreas.’
‘That’s it. Strange man. He left in a hurry. Which reminds me, I must get along and unpack some of this stuff.’
And, before I could stop him, he hurried away down the stairs. I waited for a moment or two, trying to think, but my mind was filled with a horrible, wet, white fog. I regretted not having a gun. Something heavy was dropped somewhere in the house, and the floor quaked under my feet. I followed him.
In that room where the huge wall of glass looked down across the hill, I found him, whisking dust sheets from the furniture and stacking them, folded, in a corner. I stood in the doorway without speaking, and watched him. When he caught sight of me, he turned, in some surprise, and put his hands on his hips.
‘Come to help?’ he asked pleasantly.
‘No.’
He smiled.
‘Wise fellow. Tedious, this kind of thing.’
He pulled the sheet from the piano, folded it neatly, and laid it in the corner with its mates. He surveyed the room.
‘That’s better,’ he murmured.
This was absurd. I would not stand for this.
‘Listen,’ I said. ‘I want to talk to you.’
‘To me? O dear. I’m very busy just at the moment. Can’t it wait?’
‘No.’
‘All right then. What is it?’
I did not know where to begin, and, reviewing all that I wished to say, I was overwhelmed, and could not speak. He peered at me closely, and frowned.
‘Benjamin, I really think —’
‘Stop,’ I shouted, feeling my lips slap back into a snarl.
His eyebrows twitched, and he scratched his jaw.
‘Stop what?’
‘This, this ridiculous performance.’
‘Performance?’
‘And stop repeating what I say.’
‘Repeating?’
‘Christ.’
‘Benjamin, you seem upset. Has something happened?’
‘Oh no, no, nothing at all.’
‘Good. Well then …’
A sob escaped from my throat. It surprised me. Julian said,
‘I think you need a drink. Wait here, I’ll fix you one.’
He went quickly past me, and closed the door behind him. Did I hear a muffled snigger in the hall?
I sat on the couch and closed my eyes. Frightening things stirred in that darkness, so I opened them again, and looked to the light in the great window. To my surprise, I found tears on my face. I brushed them impatiently away, stood up, and prowled about the room. The piano lid was open. I put my fingers to the keys, but when I pressed them, nothing was produced but a kind of modulation of the silence. A dead withered brown flower, the colour of old blood, hung over the rim of a vase. I went to the glass wall and looked down into the garden. Julian, in a balloon-like boiler suit, was on his knees at the rear of the car, poking at its underbelly. He got to his feet, wiping his hands on a piece of rag, turned, looked up at me, and winked. I flung open the door, tripped over a suitcase which stood on the threshold, and went skidding along the hall on my chin, up, and galloped down the stairs, taking them two, four, five at a time, through the french windows, the courtyard, gravel flying, down the drive, to the car, Julian … was gone. I swore, and punched a fist into my palm, then turned, and saw, up in that window, Julian standing, smiling down at me. I went back into the house.