“I can’t think with the baby crying.”
“You have to see the larger picture, the greater gain.”
“Where is Petyr? Petyr must be frantic after what’s happened to Jan van Abel.”
“The Talamasca will take care of him. We’re waiting for you to begin.”
Impossible. She stared at the little man with the truncated arms and legs and the tiny organs. Only the head was normal. That is a normal-sized head.
“One fourth of the size of the body, to be exact.”
Yes, the familiar proportion, she thought. Then the horror seized her as she stared down at it. But they were breaking the windows. The mob was streaming into the corridors of the University of Leiden, and Petyr was running towards her.
“No, Rowan. Don’t do it.”
She woke up with a start. Footsteps on the stairs.
She climbed out of the bed. “Michael?”
“I’m here, honey.”
Just a big shadow in the darkness, smelling of the winter cold, and then his warm trembling hands on her. Roughened and tender, and his face pressed against her.
“Oh, God, Michael, it’s been forever. Why did you leave me?”
“Rowan, honey … ”
“Why?” She was sobbing. “Don’t let me go, Michael, please. Don’t let me go.”
He cradled her in his arms.
“You shouldn’t have gone, Michael. You shouldn’t have.” She was crying and she knew he couldn’t even understand what she was saying, and that she shouldn’t say it, and finally she just covered him with kisses, savoring the saltiness and roughness of his skin, and the clumsy gentleness of his hands.
“Tell me what’s the matter, what’s really the matter?”
“That I love you. That when you’re not here, it’s … it’s like you aren’t real.”
She was half awake when he slipped away. She didn’t want that dream to come back. She’d been lying next to him, snuggled against his chest, spoon fashion, holding tight to his arm, and now as he got out of bed, she watched almost furtively as he pulled on his jeans, and brought the tight long-sleeved rugby shirt down over his head.
“Stay here,” she whispered.
“It’s the doorbell,” he said. “My little surprise. No, don’t get up. It’s nothing really, just something that I brought with me from San Francisco. Why don’t you go on and sleep?”
He bent to kiss her, and she tugged at his hair. She brought him down close to her with insistent fingers, until she could smell the warm skin of his forehead, and kiss him on that smoothness, the bone underneath like a hard stone. She didn’t know why that felt so good to her, his skin so moist and warm and real. She kissed him hard on the mouth.
Even before his lips left her, the dream returned.
I don’t want to see that manikin on the table. “What is it? It can’t be alive.”
Lemle was gowned and masked and gloved for the surgery. He peered at her from under his mossy eyebrows. “You’re not even sterile. Get scrubbed, I need you.” The lights were like two merciless eyes trained on the table.
That thing with its tiny organs and its big eyes.
Lemle held something in his tongs. And the little body split open in the steaming incubator beside the table was a fetus, slumbering on with its chest gaping. That was a heart in the tongs, wasn’t it? You monster, that you would do that. “We’re going to have to work fast while the tissue is at its optimum … ”
“It’s very hard for us to come through,” said the woman.
“But who are you?” she asked.
Rembrandt was sitting by the window, so tired in his old age, his nose rounded, his hair in wisps. He looked up at her sleepily when she asked him what he thought, and then he took her hand in his fingers, and he placed it on her own breast.
“I know that painting,” she said, “the young bride.”
She woke up. The clock had struck two. She had waited in her sleep, thinking there would be more chimes, perhaps ten in number, which meant she’d slept late; but two? That was so late.
She heard music from far away. A harpsichord was playing and a low voice was singing, a slow mournful carol, an old Celtic carol about a child laid in the manger. Smell of the Christmas tree, sweetly fragrant, and of the fire burning. Delicious in the warmth.
She was lying on her side, looking at the window, at the crust of frost forming on the panes. Very slowly a figure began to take shape-a man, with his back to the glass and his arms folded.
She narrowed her eyes, observing the process-the darkly tanned face coming into focus, billions of tiny cells forming it, and the deep glistening green eyes. The perfect replica of jeans and a shirt. Detailed like a Richard Avedon photograph in which every hair of the head is distinct and shining. He relaxed his arms and came toward her. She could hear and see the movement of his garments. As he bent over her, she saw the pores in his skin.
So we are jealous, are we? She touched his cheek, touched his forehead the way she had touched Michael, and felt a throb beneath it, like a body really there.
“Lie to him,” he said in a low voice, the lips barely moving. “If you love him, lie to him.”
She could almost feel breath against her face. Then she realized she was seeing through the face, seeing the window behind it.
“No, don’t let go,” she said. “Hold on.”
But the whole image convulsed; then it wavered like a paper cutout caught in a draft. She felt his panic in spasms of heat.
She reached out to take his wrist, but her hand closed on nothing. The hot draft swept over her and over the bed, and the draperies ballooned for a moment, and the frost rose and turned white on the panes.
“Kiss me,” she whispered, closing her eyes. Like wisps of hair across her face and her lips. “No. That’s not enough. Kiss me.” Only slowly did the density increase, and the touch become more palpable. He was tired from the materialization. Tired and slightly frightened. His cells and the other cells had almost undergone a molecular fusion. There must be a residue somewhere, or the minuscule bits of matter had been scattered so finely that they had penetrated the walls and the ceiling the same way he penetrated them. “Kiss me!” she demanded. She felt him struggling. And only now did he make invisible lips with which to do it, pushing an unseen tongue into her mouth.
Lie to him.
Yes, of course. I love you both, don’t I?
He didn’t hear her come down the steps. The draperies were all closed and the hallway was dark and hushed and warm. The fire was lighted in the front fireplace of the parlor. And the only other illumination came from the tree, which was now strung with countless tiny, twinkling lights.
She stood in the doorway watching him as he sat on the very top of the ladder, making some little adjustment, and whistling softly to himself with the recording of the old Irish Christmas song.
So mournful. It made her think of a deep, ancient wood in winter. And his whistling was such a small, easy, almost unconscious sound. She’d known that carol once. She had some dim memory of listening to it with Ellie, and it had made Ellie cry.
She leaned against the door frame, merely looking at the immense tree, all speckled with its tiny lights like stars, and breathing its deep woodsy perfume.
“Ah, there she is, my sleeping beauty,” he said. He gave her one of those utterly loving and protective smiles that made her feel like rushing into his arms. But she didn’t move. She watched as he came down off the ladder with quick easy movements, and approached her. “Feel better now, my princess?” he asked.
“Oh, it’s so very beautiful,” she said. “And that song is so sad.”
She put her arm around his waist and leaned her head on his shoulder as she looked up at the tree. “You’ve done a perfect job.”
“Ah, but now comes the fun part,” he said, giving her a peck on the cheek and drawing her into the room and towards the small table by the windows. A cardboard box stood open, and he gestured for her to look inside.