How can you know me? Why so frantic to know me? My fame makes you a goat.
19
Richard Fettle’s eyes crossed with fatigue and he put down the pen. Blinking, wiping his sockets with the back of his hand, standing up from the bed, muscles cramped vision bleared joints popping fingers knotting, he felt like a man surfacing from the depths of binge yet he also knew an enormous relief, a worthiness, for he had written and what he had written was good.
But he dared not confirm that by reading through the whole closecrabbed ten pages. Instead he made himself a cup of black coffee, thought of Goldsmith’s old allusions to coffee and cream, smiled as he drank the coffee as if he were somehow absorbing blood and flesh of the poet.
With words he had already done that. It felt good. He would soon wrap Goldsmith up in a tight little papule and squeeze him out, having embodied him through the ritual of writing.
He walked around the apartment smiling fatuously, muse shot. A man who had finally shat himself clean or at least seeing the end of the filth.
+ What it took to break the bonds. Abuse. What was the product. Words. What was the sensation. Ecstasy. Where would it all lead. Perhaps publication. Would it be good to publish.
+ Yes.
Goldsmith would serve him finally.
He stretched and yawned and checked his watch: 1550. He had not eaten since the visit by the Selector. Mumbling scratching shaking like a wet dog, Richard writhed into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator inhaled the cool air searched for packets of farm-fish spread and spears of once fresh vegetables in a bowl. He poured himself a glass of delact.
+ Goldsmith could not tolerate cream milk any diary but delact
+ Black marks on white eRace back to white
Richard paused. Scratched slowly. Twisted and cocked his head. Put the food on the counter. + What is it more important than food.
Returned to the bedroom and picked up a sheet of paper, found the offending passage and blanked it by passing stat end of pencil over the sheet idly blew away congealed pencil flecks, rewrote.
Added on. By 1650 he had fifteen henscratch pages.
Richard stood, face reflecting his body’s protest real agony now, tried exercises to limber uncramp and restore, thought of a hot shower warm sun melting butter muscles but no technique would work.
He stumbled into the living room. The apartment voice announced a visitor and he froze eyes wide. Tall shadow on front milky doorpane.
Richard peered through the tired plastic optics of the door’s peephole and saw a pd: the black transform woman Lieutenant Choy. He backed away hands flapping as if burned, indecision mixing with sudden cramps bending him over. + Jesus. I do not deserve this. When will it end.
He opened the brass doorplate below the peephole. Voice high but firmly controlled: “Hello?”
“R Fettle,” Mary Choy said. “Our apologies for bothering you. May I ask a few more questions?”
“I’ve told you what I know…”
“Yes, and you’re certainly not under any suspicion now. But I need some background information. Impressions.” She smiled that lovely unnatural smile white teeth small and fine behind full lips and smooth finely downed black skin. Her expression made him avert and gave his insides another knot. + She cannot be real none of this is real.
“May we talk inside?”
Richard backed away. “I’m not feeling very well,” he said. “I haven’t eaten all day.”
“I’m sorry. I’d come back later, but my time is very limited. The department wants answers right away. You might save me a trip to Hispaniola.”
Richard could not conceal interest. He ordered the door to unlock and opened it. “You think Emanuel, you think Goldsmith’s gone there?”
“It’s possible.”
He bit his lip, slumping slightly. It was difficult for Richard not to be open and friendly even with this Nemesis. Softly, bone weary, he said, “Come in. I’m glad I’m not a suspect. It’s been another rough today.”
+ Will not tell her about the Selector. She would not be around to protect me if word got out and the Selector returned. Do not desire even five seconds in a clamp.
“I apologize for how we treated you earlier. We were upset by what we found.”
Richard nodded. “It’s extraordinary,” he said. + Meant to say horrible, dreadful, but the shock is past. Man is the animal who accepts even when it understands.
“We still haven’t found Goldsmith. But we’re reasonably sure he’s the murderer. He wrote letters to Colonel Sir John Yardley. Did you know that?”
Richard nodded.
“How did you feel about that?” Mary Choy asked, genuinely curious. Behind the skin and beauty she seemed real enough and capable of sympathy. Richard squinted trying to see his daughter behind that face, trying to imagine Gina an adult. + Would Gina have decided on a transform? Ultimate criticism of parental heritage.
“I don’t know how I feel about anything now, much less about Emanuel,” Richard said, settling slow, cranelike on the old worn couch and waggling his fingers for her to take a chair. She pulled a chair away from the dining room table and sat on it feminine and precise without doubt or obvious anxiety.
+ Wonderful to be like that.
Mary inclined. + Light on face like phases of a black moon. That’s good. Write that down.
“Do you approve of Hispaniola?” she asked.
“Not of what they do. What they’re alleged to do. No.”
“But Goldsmith did.”
“He called Yardley a purifier. Some of us were embarrassed by it.”
“Had he visited Yardley in the last year or two?”
“You must know that.”
“We can’t be sure. He might have traveled under another name.”
“Not Emanuel. He was open. He didn’t care about surveillance.”
“Did he go to Hispaniola?”
“I don’t think so, no.”
“Did he talk about Hispaniola as a retreat, a haven?”
Richard grinned and shook his head. + Been writing about his thoughts. Writer’s empathy through recreation. Feel as if I am him or know him. “He thought the island itself was a disneyland. He appreciated that the people had enough to eat and were employed, but he didn’t enjoy the tourist spots and resorts, no.”
“But he went there once.”
“I think that’s when he…made up his mind.”
“So you don’t think he’d go back there?”
“I don’t know.” + But you do. He’d never go back.
“If he felt he was in danger, and Yardley would protect him?”
“I suppose he might. I really can’t say.”
“Have you thought about what happened? I realize it’s been traumatic…”
“I haven’t thought about much else. I never thought he’d do anything like this…If he did.” + Emanuel is the poet who kills. They know. They’ve frozen the apartment. You know.
“What would make him do such a thing? His career fading? Frustration at society?”
Richard laughed. “You’re in the shadows now, Lieutenant Choy. Frustration.” He chuckled that word.
“But he wasn’t in the shadows. He lived in East Comb One.”
“He spent much of his time down here with us. With Madame de Roche.”
“Until eight or nine months ago. Then he asked people to visit him. That was why you were visiting him, rather than meeting him at Madame de Roche’s?”
“Yes.”
“Why the change? Was he withdrawing?”