‘They aren’t usually Heather,’ replied Milena.
‘I’ve stopped being a Snide,’ he said, looking down at the counterpane, beginning to pick at it. The smile had turned inwards. ‘I was going to tell her that.’
I don’t have the time or the energy for this, thought Milena. You must know what was between me and Rolfa, you must know what you tried to do to us and yet you want my help. My help. You’re not just a fool, you’re a shit. You’re a fool because you are a shit.
‘That’s why I needed Heather,’ he said, completing the thought for her. ‘Did… when she was with you… did she ever respond to you. Did… did she ever talk to you?’
Wearily, Milena shook her head. No, she just read. All she did was read. It was all she could do. She needed me to do anything else.
He stood up and went to the door. He turned and looked at her, searching her face, searching her mind. I was Heather, thought Milena. For him, I had Heather’s mind and face.
‘I’m glad you’re unhappy,’ he said.
But I’ll get over it. You won’t.
Reluctantly, pity stirred. Pity, that was Heather’s enemy. Milena showed him Heather’s face, its great freckled length, the pebble spectacles. She thought you were a fool, but I think she could have loved you. She needed someone to manage.
He started to put on his sinister hat, then thought better of it. ‘There’s a bit more to me than that,’ he told her.
‘Then go and find it,’ replied Milena. Like a shadow, he turned and was gone.
She tried to sleep and couldn’t. She picked up one of Rolfa’s books, brown and battered, and it fell open on the last page… at the top of the Forest, a little boy and his bear will always be playing.
She would have immediately thrown down the book, except that under each word, or rather, each syllable, there was a tiny, pencilled note of music on a tiny, pencilled stave.
Quickly, she flipped through the other pages. It had all been set to music, the entire book, re-written to be sung.
She had left Rolfa reading all day.
Milena picked up the next book in the stack. It was huge, bound in dirty grey cloth, anonymous and slumped sideways on its over-used binding. The first page was an engraving of Dante. Divina Commedia said words printed in red. Underneath, in pencil, Rolfa had written, ‘FOR AN AUDIENCE OF VIRUSES’.
All three books of the Comedy — Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso — had been bound together in one volume. Underneath all the words, all the way through, there were musical notes. The handwriting was small and neat and crabbed, as if trying to hide. Some of it was in pencil, some of it was in red ink. Some of it was written on pieces of paper stitched into the book with white thread. Some of it was written in gold. There was one note for each word, but in places there were messages: ‘trumpets here’ or ‘Virgil descant’. Milena turned back to the first page.
Then Dante meets the beast. The words were set to the music that Rolfa had sung in the dark the first night Milena had heard her, hidden in the Graveyard.
‘Rolfa!’ said Milena, and shook the book. To do this and keep it hidden! While Jacob and I copied out the rags of what we had heard. You didn’t say anything, I didn’t say anything. Did we ever tell each other a word of truth?
Milena read The Divine Comedy buoyed up by music. Her viruses translated the notes into imagined sounds. Her viruses sang.
Milena began to imagine it, a great abstract opera that would last for weeks if it were ever performed. She saw it staged in the sky, amid stars, with bars of colour and symbolic angels, beasts with human faces, a hell in honeycombs, tunnels of light opening into the heavens.
Suddenly Cilia stepped forward in the robes of Virgil. The part was written for a soprano, to contrast with Dante. For no reason, Lucy, old Lucy of the Palace of Amusement, was Beatrice. She wore the crown of heaven askew, and gave a sideways wink. A comedy after all. Milena closed her eyes and smiled. All right, Rolfa, all right. It is funny. The whole thing is funny — my not speaking, your not speaking, it’s funny. We could have sat down together, and planned what we were going to do with this. You could have orchestrated it, if you’d wanted to. I could have taken it complete and shown it complete and told them, take it or leave it, only leave her alone. Now I’ll have to put it on. I’ll have to get it performed. Thanks a lot. Milena looked at the size of the book, her finger wedged between the pages to keep her place. I’ll have to get this sung, somehow. Not all at one sitting, you understand my love, or the audience would the of starvation or old age. But over several months. But on what kind of stage? What kind of stage could hold this? You knew, damn it, Rolfa, you knew I’d have to do something about this!
Milena went on reading and seeing and hearing while her viruses made a tally. Sometimes she had to go back and re-read for them. This was unfamiliar music. The viruses followed the structure. Milena saw the themes dart and dive and interweave like swallows, fly off and come back, in and out of the silence.
You’ve done it. You’ve done it, Rolfa. It’s better than your bloody Wagner. It’s better put together, the songs are better and it’s even longer. This is Mozart, Rolfa, this is Bach. How could you do it? How could you do it to me? Milena began to feel the terrible weight that genius, like death, leaves behind for other people.
And you won’t be here, Rolfa. You won’t be able to hear it. You’ll be someone else. You’ll be like a ghost, Rolfa. I’ll see you walking through the Zoo, but you’ll be dead, undead. I’ll hear you sing, but it won’t really be you. All of this may have been a comedy, Rolfa, but it hurts, it hurts like slapstick full in the face. So it wasn’t a high comedy, my love. I would call it low.
It was sunset and there was a knock on the door. It was Jacob the Postperson, and he came in singing.
She had forgotten.
‘Happy birthday, Milena,’ Jacob said smiling shyly. ‘I bought you an ice cream.’
The ice cream was on a bamboo stick.
Milena gave a pale, grateful chuckle and reached out for it. Jacob jumped forward to pass it to her. ‘It is very good, Milena. It is very good that you eat. You have not eaten.’
The vanilla was meltingly delicious. Did Milena remember the taste of it from childhood? ‘I’m seventeen years old,’ she said. ‘An old lady.’
Milena felt weak to the point of nausea. Her Rhodopsin skin was itching for sunlight. As she ate, Milena realised something.
‘You take care of us, Jacob.’
‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘I carry your messages. I also know when you are ill or unhappy. I am the one who finds you when you the. That is my job.’
‘And you know all of us.’
He smiled. ‘When I dream,’ he said, ‘I dream all your messages, all scrambled up. But now, because of you and Rolfa, when I dream, I also hear the music’
Hunger pangs returned. ‘I need to get some sun,’ said Milena.
So Milena and Jacob walked down the steps of the Shell together. He had to boost her up, help her as if she were old. Her knees felt shivery and weak. This is silly, to do this to yourself, she thought. He took her outside onto the walkways facing the Thames. It was cool, with a strong breeze from the river. Milena’s face was turned towards the wind and towards the last of the sunset sky.