Her hat tumblesoff, her arms are around his neck, her head and body arched backwards as if someone's pulling down on her hair. Her hair itself has come unpinned, uncoiled; he smoothes his hand down it, the pale tapering swath of it, and thinks of flame, the single shimmering flame of a white candle, turned upside down. But a flame can't burn downwards.
The room is on the third floor, the servants' quarters they must once have been. Once they're inside he puts on the chain. The room is small and close and dim, with one window, open a few inches, the blind pulled most of the way down, white net curtains looped to either side. The afternoon sun is hitting the blind, turning it golden. The air smells of dry rot, but also of soap: there's a tiny triangular sink in one corner, a foxed mirror hanging above it; crammed underneath it, the squareedged black box of his typewriter. His toothbrush in an enamelled tin cup; not a new toothbrush. It's too intimate. She turns her eyes away. There's a darkly varnished bureau scarred with cigarette burns and the marks from wet glasses, but most of the space is taken up by the bed. It's the brass kind, outmoded and maidenish and painted white except for the knobs. It will probably creak. Thinking of this, she flushes.
She can tell he's taken pains with the bed-changed the sheets or at least the pillowcase, smoothed out the faded Nile-green chenille spread. She almost wishes he hadn't, because seeing this causes her a pang of something like pity, as if a starving peasant has offered her his last piece of bread. Pity isn't what she wants to feel. She doesn't want to feel he is in any way vulnerable. Only she is allowed to be that. She sets her purse and gloves down on top of the bureau. She's conscious suddenly of this as a social situation. As a social situation it's absurd.
Sorry there's no butler, he says. Want a drink? Cheap scotch.
Yes please, she says. He keeps the bottle in the top bureau drawer; he takes it out, and two glasses, and pours. Say when.
When, please.
No ice, he says, but you can have water.
That's all right. She gulps the whisky, coughs a little, smiles at him, standing with her back against the bureau.
Short and hard and straight up, he says, the way you love it. He sits down on the bed with his drink. Here's to loving it. He raises his glass. He's not smiling back.
You're unusually mean today.
Self-defence, he says.
I don't loveit, I love you, she says. I do know the difference.
Up to a point, he says. Or so you think. It saves face.
Give me one good reason why I shouldn't just walk out of here.
He grins. Come over here then.
Although he knows she wants him to, he won't say he loves her. Perhaps it would leave him armourless, like an admission of guilt.
I'll take my stockings off first. They run as soon as you look at them.
Like you, he says. Leave them on. Come over here now.
The sun has moved across; there's just a wedge of light remaining, on the left side of the drawn blind. Outside, a streetcar rumbles past, bell clanging. Streetcars must have been going past all this time. Why then has the effect been silence? Silence and his breath, their breaths, labouring, withheld, trying not to make any noise. Or not too much noise. Why should pleasure sound so much like distress? Like someone wounded. He'd put his hand over her mouth.
The room is darker now, yet she sees more. The bedspread heaped onto the floor, the sheet twisted around and over them like a thick cloth vine; the single bulb, unshaded, the cream-coloured wallpaper with its blue violets, tiny and silly, stained beige where the roof must have leaked; the chain protecting the door. The chain protecting the door: it's flimsy enough. One good shove, one kick with a boot. If that were to happen, what would she do? She feels the walls thinning, turning to ice. They're fish in a bowl.
He lights two cigarettes, hands her one. They both sigh in. He runs his free hand down her, then again, taking her in through his fingers. He wonders how much time she has; he doesn't ask. Instead he takes hold of her wrist. She's wearing a small gold watch. He covers its face.
So, he says. Bedtime story?
Yes, please, she says.
Where were we?
You'd just cut out the tongues of those poor girls in their bridal veils.
Oh yes. And you protested. If you don't like this story I could tell you a different one, but I can't promise it would be any more civilised. It might be worse. It might be modern. Instead of a few dead Zycronians, we could have acres of stinking mud and hundreds of thousands of…
I'll keep this one, she says quickly. Anyway it's the one you want to tell me.
She stubs out her cigarette in the brown glass ashtray, then settles herself against him, ear to his chest. She likes to hear his voice this way, as if it begins not in his throat but in his body, like a hum or a growl, or like a voice speaking from deep underground. Like the blood moving through her own heart: a word, a word, a word.
Plaudits for Bennett
SPECIAL TO THE MAIL AND EMPIRE
In a speech to the Empire Club last evening, Mr. Richard E. Griffen, Toronto financier and outspoken President of Royal Classic Knitwear, had moderate praise for Prime Minister R. B. Bennett and brickbats for his critics.
Referring to Sunday's boisterous Maple Leaf Gardens rally in Toronto, when 15, 000 Communists staged a hysterical welcome for their leader Tim Buck, jailed for seditious conspiracy but paroled Saturday from Kingston's Portsmouth Penitentiary, Mr. Griffen expressed himself alarmed by the Government's "caving in to pressure" in the form of a petition signed by 200, 000 "deluded bleeding hearts." Mr. Bennett's policy of "the iron heel of ruthlessness" had been correct, he said, as imprisonment of those plotting to topple elected governments and confiscate private property was the only way to deal with subversion.
As for the tens of thousands of immigrants deported under Section 98, including those sent back to countries such as Germany and Italy where they face internment, these had advocated tyrannical rule and now would get a first-hand taste of it, Mr. Griffen stated.
Turning to the economy, he said that although unemployment remained high, with consequent unrest and Communists and their sympathisers continuing to profit from it, there were hopeful signs and he was confident that the Depression would be over by spring. Meanwhile the only sane policy was to stay the course and allow the system to correct itself. Any inclination towards the soft socialism of Mr. Roosevelt should be resisted, as such efforts could only further sicken the ailing economy. Although the plight of the unemployed was to be deplored, many were idle from inclination, and force should be used promptly and effectively against illegal strikers and outside agitators.
Mr. Griffen's remarks were roundly applauded.
The messenger
Now then. Let's say it's dark. The suns, all three of them, have set. A couple of moons have risen. In the foothills the wolves are abroad. The chosen girl is waiting her turn to be sacrificed. She's been fed her last, elaborate meal, she's been scented and anointed, songs have been sung in her praise, prayers have been offered. Now she's lying on a bed of red and gold brocade, shut up in the Temple 's innermost chamber, which smells of the mixture of petals and incense and crushed aromatic spices customarily strewn on the biers of the dead. The bed itself is called the Bed of One Night, because no girl ever spends two nights in it. Among the girls themselves, when they still have their tongues, it's called the Bed of Voiceless Tears.