When I walked into the library it was after eleven, and I was wearing my wedding dress and shoes. I told him what they were.
“It’s supposed to be unlucky, isn’t it,” I said, “for the groom to see the bride in her dress before the wedding. But there’s no luck to spoil, is there?”
He was sitting in one of the chairs by the fire, his long legs stretched out. He’d put on jeans and a sweater and boots for the excursion later. A leather jacket hung from the chair.
The coffee was still waiting, but it would be cold by now. Even so, he got up, poured me a cup, brought it to me. He managed — he always managed this — to hand it to me without touching me.
Then he moved away and stood by the hearth, gazing across at the high walls of books.
“Daisha,” he said, “I think I understand how uncomfortable and angry you are — ”
“Do you?”
“ — but can I ask that you listen. Without interrupting or storming out of the room — ”
“Oh, for God’s — ”
“Daisha.” He turned his eyes on me. From glass green, they too had become almost white. He was flaming mad, anyone could see, but unlike me, he’d controlled it. He used it, like a cracking whip spattering electricity across the room. And at the same time — the pain in his face. The closed-in pain and. was it only frustration, or despair? That was what held me, or I’d have walked out, as he said. I stood there stunned, and thought, He hurts as I do. Why? Who did this to him? God, he hates the idea of marrying me as much as I hate it. Or — he hates the way he — we — are being used.
“Okay,” I said. I sat down on a chair. I put the cold coffee on the floor. “Talk. I’ll listen.”
“Thank you,” he said.
A huge old clock ticked on the mantelpiece above the fire. Tock-tock-tock. Each note a second. Sixty now. That minute he’d asked from me before. Or the minute when Juno held me in the sunrise, shaking.
“Daisha. I’m well aware you don’t want to be here, let alone with me. I hoped you wouldn’t feel that way, but I’m not amazed you do. You had to leave your own house, where you had familiar people, love, stability” — I had said I’d keep quiet; I didn’t argue — “and move into this fucking monument to a castle, and be ready to become the partner of some guy you never saw except in a scrap of a movie. I’ll be honest. The moment I saw the photos of you, I was drawn to you. I stupidly thought, This is a beautiful, strong woman who I’d like to know. Maybe we can make something of this prearranged mess. I meant make something for ourselves, you and me. Kids were — are — the last thing on my mind. We’d have a long time, after all, to reach a decision on that. But you. I was. looking forward to meeting you. And I would have been there, to meet you. Only something happened. No. Not some compulsion I have to go out and tear animals apart and drink them in the forest. Daisha,” he said, “have you been to look at the waterfall?”
I stared. “Only from the car. ”
“There’s one of our human families there. I had to go and — ” He broke off. He said, “The people in this house have switched right off, like computers without any electric current. I grew up here. It was hell. Yeah, that place you wanted me to go to. Only not bright or fiery, just — dead. They’re dead here. Living dead. Undead, just what they say in the legends, in that bloody book Dracula. But I am not dead. And nor are you. Did it ever occur to you,” he said, “your name, Daisha — the way it sounds. Day — sha. Beautiful. Just as you are.”
He had already invited me to speak, so perhaps I could offer another comment. I said, “But you can’t stand the light.”
“No, I can’t. Which doesn’t mean I don’t crave the light. When I was two years old, they took me out — my dad led me by the hand. He was fine with an hour or so of sunlight. I was so excited — looking forward to it. I remember the first colors — ” He shut his eyes, opened them. “Then the sun came up. I never saw it after all. The first true light — I went blind. My skin. I don’t remember properly. Just darkness and agony and terror. Just one minute. My body couldn’t take even that. I was ill for ten months. Then I started to see again. After ten months. But I’ve seen daylight since, of course I have, on film, in photographs. I’ve read about it. And music — Ravel’s ‘Sunrise,’ from that ballet. Can you guess what it’s like to long for daylight, to be. in love with daylight. and you can never see it for real, never feel the warmth, smell the scents of it, or properly hear the sounds, except on a screen, off a CD — never? When I saw you, you’re like that, like real daylight. Do you know what I said to my father when I started to recover, after those ten months, those thirty seconds of dawn? Why, I said to him, why is light my enemy, why does it want to kill me? Why light?”
Zeev turned away. He said to the sunny bright hearth, “And you’re the daylight, too, Daisha. And you’ve become my enemy. Daisha,” he said, “I release you. We won’t marry. I’ll make it clear to all of them, Severin first, that any fault is all with me. There’ll be no bad thing they can level at you. So, you’re free. I regret so much the torment I’ve unwillingly, selfishly put you through. I’m sorry, Daisha. And now, God knows, it’s late and I have to go out. It’s not rudeness, I hope you’ll accept that now. Please trust me. Go upstairs and sleep well. Tomorrow you can go home.”
I sat like a block of concrete. Inside I felt shattered by what he had said. He pulled on his jacket and started toward the door, and only then I stood up. “Wait.”
“I can’t.” He didn’t look at me. “I’m sorry. Someone. needs me. Please believe me. It’s true.”
And I heard myself say, “Some human girl?”
That checked him. He looked at me, face a blank. “What?”
“The human family you seem to have to be with — by the fall? Is that it? You want a human woman, not me.”
Then he laughed. It was raw, and real, that laughter. He came back and caught my hands. “Daisha — my Day — you’re insane. All right. Come with me and see. We’ll have to race.”
But my hands tingled; my heart was in a race already.
I looked up into his face, he down into mine. The night hesitated, shifted. He let go my hands, and I flew out and up the stairs. Dragging off that dress, I tore the sleeve at the shoulder, but I left it lying with the shoes. Inside fifteen more minutes we were sprinting, side by side, along the track. There was no excuse for this, no rational reason. But I had seen him, seen, as if sunlight had streamed through the black lid of the night and shown him to me for the first time, light that was his enemy, and my mother’s, never mine.
The moon was low by then, and stroked the edges of the waterfall. It was like liquid aluminum, and its roar packed the air full as a sort of deafness. The human house was about a mile off, tucked in among the dense black columns of the pines.
A youngish, fair-haired woman opened the door. Her face lit up the instant she saw him, no one could miss that. “Oh, Zeev,” she said, “he’s so much better. Our doctor says he’s mending fantastically well. But come in.”
It was a pleasing room, low ceilinged, with a dancing fire. A smart black cat with a white vest and mittens sat upright in an armchair, giving the visitors a thoughtful frowning scrutiny.