Mervale got stiffly to his feet, cast a scornful look down at Korrogly. ‘You’re a joke, you know that?’ he said. ‘A tiresome drudge without a life, with only the law for a bed partner.’ He tossed some coins onto the table. ‘Buy yourself a couple of drinks. Perhaps drunk you’ll be able to entertain yourself.’
Korrogly watched him move through the crowd, accepting the good wishes of the law clerks who closed around him. Now why, he thought, why did I bother doing that?
He waited until Mervale was out of sight before leaving, and then, instead of going directly home, he walked west along Biscaya Boulevard, heading nowhere in particular, moving aimlessly through the accumulating mist, his thoughts in a despondent muddle; the dank salt air seemed redolent of his own heaviness, of the damp dark moil inside his head. Only peripherally did he notice that he had entered the Almintra quarter, and it was not until he found himself standing in front of the gemcutter’s shop that he suspected he had tried to hide from himself the fact that he had intended to come this way. Or perhaps, he thought, I was moved to come here by some vast and ineluctable agency whose essence spoke to me from The Father of Stones. Though that thought had been formed in derision, it caused the hairs on the back of his neck to prickle, and he wondered, what if Lemos’ story is true, could I also be vulnerable to Griaule’s directives? The silence of the dead street unnerved him; the peaks of the rooftops looked like black simple mountains rising from plateaus of mist, and the few streetlamps left unbroken shone through the haze like evil phosphorescent flowers, and the shop windows were obsidian, reflective, hiding their secrets. It was still fairly early, but all the good artisans and shopkeepers were abed . . . all except the occupant of the apartment above Lemos’ shop. Her light still burned. He gazed up at it, thinking now that Mervale’s insulting and accurate depiction of his life might have motivated him to visit Mirielle, thereby to disprove it. He decided to leave, to return home, but remained standing in front of the shop, held in place, it seemed, by the glow of the lamp and the sodden crush of the surf from the darkness beyond. A dog began to bark nearby; from somewhere farther away came the call of voices singing, violins and horns, a melancholy tune that he felt was sounding the configuration of his own loneliness.
This is folly, he said to himself, she’ll probably kick you down the stairs, she was only playing with you the last time, and why the hell would you want it anyway . . . just to be away from your thoughts for awhile, no matter how temporary the cure?
That’s right, that’s exactly right.
‘Hell!’ he said to the dark, to the whole unlistening world. ‘Hell, why not?’
The woman who opened the door, though physically the same woman who had sprawled brazenly on the sofa during their first meeting, was in all other ways quite different. Distracted; twitchy; pale to the point of seeming bloodless, her black hair loose and in disarray; clad in a white robe of some heavy coarse cloth. The dissolute hardness had emptied from her face, and she seemed to have thrown off a handful of years, to be a troubled young girl. She stared for a second as if failing to recognize him and then said, ‘Oh . . . you.’
He was about to apologize for having come so late, to beat a retreat, put off by her manner; but before he could frame the words, she stepped back from the door and invited him in.
‘I’m glad you’re here,’ she said, following him into the living room, which had undergone a cleaning. ‘I haven’t been able to sleep.’
She dropped onto the sofa, fumbled about on the end table, picked up a cigar, then set it down; she looked up at him expectantly.
‘Well, have a seat.’
He did as instructed, taking his perch again on the easy chair. ‘I was hoping you wouldn’t mind answering a few more questions.’
‘Questions . . . you want . . . oh, all right. Questions.’ She gave a fey laugh and picked nervously at the fringe on the arm of the sofa. ‘Ask away.’
‘I’ve heard,’ he said, ‘that Mardo had in mind for you to take over the leadership of the temple in case of his death. Is that correct?’
She nodded, kept nodding, too forcefully for mere affirmation, as if trying to clear some painful entanglement from her head.
‘Yes, indeed,’ she said. ‘That’s what he had in mind.’
‘Were there papers drawn up to this effect?’
‘No . . . yes, maybe . . . I don’t know. He talked about doing it, but I never saw them.’ She rocked back and forth on the edge of the sofa, her hands plucking at ridges of its old embroidered pattern. ‘It doesn’t matter now.’
‘Why . . . why doesn’t it matter?’
‘There is no temple.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘There is no temple! Simple as that. No more adherents, no more ceremonies. Just empty buildings.’
‘What happened?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘But . . .’
She jumped to her feet, paced toward the back of the room; then she spun about to face him, brushing hair back from her cheek. ‘I don’t want to talk about it! I don’t want to talk at all . . . not about . . . not about anything important.’ She put a hand to her brow as if testing for a fever. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.
‘Oh, nothing,’ she said. ‘My life’s a shambles, my lover’s dead, and my father goes on trial for his murder tomorrow morning. Everything’s fine.’
‘I don’t know why your father’s plight should disturb you. I thought you hated him.’
‘He’s still my father. I have feelings that hate won’t dissolve. Reflex feelings, you understand. But they have their pull.’ She came back to the sofa and sat down; once again she began picking at the embroidered pattern. ‘Look, I can’t help you. I don’t know anything that can help you with the trial. Not a thing. If I did I think I’d tell you . . . that’s how I feel now, anyway. But there’s nothing, nothing at all.’
He sensed that the crack in her callous veneer ran deeper than she cared to admit, and, too, he thought that her anxiety might be due to the fact that she did know something helpful and was holding it back; but he decided not to push the matter.
‘Very well,’ he said. ‘What would you like to talk about?’
She glanced around the room, as if searching for something that would support a conversation.
He noticed that her eye lingered on the framed sketch of the woman and baby. ‘Is that your mother?’ he asked, pointing to it.
That appeared to unsettle her. ‘Yes,’ she murmured, looking quickly away from the sketch.
‘She’s very much like you. Her name was Patricia, wasn’t it?’
Mirielle nodded.
‘It’s a terrible thing,’ he said, ‘for a woman so lovely to be taken before her time. How did she drown?’
‘Don’t you know how to talk without interrogating people?’ she asked angrily.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, wondering at the vehemence of her reaction. ‘I just . . .’
‘My mother’s dead,’ she said. ‘Let that be enough for you.’
‘I was only making conversation. You choose the subject, all right?’
‘All right,’ she said after a moment. ‘Let’s talk about you.’
‘There’s not much to tell.’
‘There never is with people, but that’s all right. I won’t be bored, I promise.’
He began, reluctantly at first, to talk about his life, his childhood, the tiny farm in the hills above the city, with its banana grove, its corral and three cows – Rose, Alvina, and Esmeralda – and as he spoke, that old innocent life seemed to be resurrected, to be breathing just beyond the apartment walls. He told her how he used to sit on a hilltop and look down at the city and dream of owning one of the fine houses.