Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears
Ruby Slippers
Transcript/Interviewer’s Notes—
DG @ Beverly Hills Hotel, 4/16
THE HOUSE? DO WE HAVE TO START WITH THE house? All these interviews are the same. Oh, all right. You have to admit, it was quite an entrance. Not every girl becomes a star her first day in this town, right on touchdown. Lucky break, what can I say?
No—wait! I’m not saying it was good luck that my house landed on the old witch! It was an accident, pure and simple, just like the coroner said. [Ed’s note: The coroner’s verdict stated that, in the absence of a corpse, no ruling could be made as to the exact cause of death.]
My nerves were absolutely destroyed by it—ask anybody who was around. The way the siding on the house sliced her feet clean off— <Shudders dramatically.> Just thinking about it makes me feel faint.
But you have to understand, seeing the ruby slippers put it all straight out of my head. <Lays hand on interviewer’s knee.> You see, after my mother died and I went to live with my aunt—well she did take me in, I’ll give her that. And boy didn’t she get some mileage out of it later?
But it wasn’t all fresh air and rainbows, the way Auntie makes it sound. She used to make me work in the fields, all the time, and I had to wear these nasty wooden clogs. Clumsy, awful things, and they rubbed my feet absolutely raw. The rest of the time, I had to go barefoot, except when we all went to church. For Sunday school, Emma gave me some old black button-shoes from the attic. Way too big for me, and terribly out of style.
So these shoes—well just look at the way they sparkle. <Poses, displaying slippers.> Paste of course, but the stones really do look like rubies, don’t you think? And high-heeled pumps! Jiminy! What girl doesn’t yearn for her first pair? So when a lady who looks like a guardian angel appears out of the blue and tells me they’re mine—shucks, it didn’t take me two shakes to make up my mind.
So she gives the slippers this little tap-tap-tap on the soles with her stick and tells everybody that they’ll stay right on my feet, no matter how hard I dance—or something like that, I can’t remember exactly. Well, who could resist giving the crowd a little number, after an intro like that? And it went like magic. Almost like the shoes were dancing me, I promise you.
Well, shoot! You don’t have to tell me all that dancing around after the accident didn’t look good—not after the spin the press put on it. But if you’d been there—with Glenn making such a fuss over me, saying what a good deed I’d done by landing on Louella and how this was my big break—well, <fiddles with fringe on the divan> to tell the truth, the accident just didn’t seem to amount to much. And the old lady’s feet shriveled right up, you know. Once I had the shoes on, you couldn’t even see there’d been a little mishap.
I’ll admit it looked suspicious, me running off that way. Well, shoot, killing people is a hanging offense in Kansas. And I was just a starry-eyed kid, still dreaming on rainbows. So when Glenn said she could send me off to someone really powerful, who could do worlds for my career—it just seemed irresistible. She said Ozzie was omnipotent, and that he could make me a star like snapping his fingers. You know the sort of thing, fame and fortune and all that jazz. All I had to do was follow her guidance and I’d have it made. That Glenn, she’s pure hustle. Guess that’s what makes her such a hot agent.
“Getting into the studio system is like finding a road paved with gold.” That’s what she told me. “Just follow the path they lay out for you and you’ve got it made. And you’ll love Ozzie—he’s a real spiritual type for a producer—and he’ll solve all your problems. You won’t have to give this little house incident another thought.”
How was I to know when she said spiritual, she meant too spiritual? Straight off, Ozzie was after me to clean up my image. “Go back to that fresh-faced farm girl routine,” he says. Can you imagine? He thought I should lose the shoes—said that red ones made me look improper.
<Gazes wistfully at ruby slippers.>
At least Glenn took my side. She told him, with my looks and these shoes, I was a sure bet. <Shrugs helplessly.> What can I say? I was young and naive. I believed everything they told me, let the two of them give me the old tinsel town rush—straight into a studio contract set in cement.
No, there’s no truth to that at all. Where do you people come up with these rumors? I never stayed off the set to hold out on the studio. Do I look like the type who’d make trouble for a sweetheart like Ozzie? The man’s a perfect saint. We just got our signals crossed for a while, that’s all.
Except for his thing about the shoes. Heck, I couldn’t give them up, you can see that, can’t you? <Does a quick tap step, shoes glittering.> Besides, it was that red twinkle that drove Strawman mad for me.
<Smiles.> Oh, yes. It was special between Strawman and me, right from the very start. Legendary, magical—but I’m not the wordsmith. How would you put it? Yes, that’s perfect. Instant harmony. Tip and tap—that was us.
Why, thank you. I certainly think we made a great team, no matter what the studio says. It just seemed natural for us to throw in together, and from then on it was one long song and dance, really.
That’s right, we added to the act not long afterward. We’d come to terms with the studio by then, and the band was really their idea. They wanted to tone down the couple thing with me and Strawman—said he was bad for my reputation. But it all worked out great. We were lucky that the boys turned out to be such—what’s the word?—such simpatico partners. The four of us just clicked.
You’re absolutely right. <Winks.> We did have our share of good times. The poppy fields, the boys masquerading as soldiers—but I shouldn’t be talking about that. <Presses finger to lips and whispers conspiratorially.> The studio people will have a fit.
Those really were the best times, you know. When it was me and the boys.
<Sighs, then looks down, dabbing eyes with hankie.> Excuse me. I do get a little lonely sometimes. Everything was so green and new back then.
Guess it’s no secret we went a little overboard with the poppy dust. And then after Lionel got looped that last time—
But you know all this—the papers had a field day. I’ll never forget the way he looked that morning, the way he roared off into the forest on one of his little adventures …
<Voice cracks.> Eaten by bears, the centurion said. I was so broken up about it, I simply couldn’t face the funeral.
Yes, I did have a kind of breakdown then. Well, my goodness! The papers went nuts with it—all those trashy stories about a crime of passion. And the hatchet job they did on us—claiming that bears couldn’t have hacked him up that way and that Strawman was furious with us, all those insinuations that Lion and I had a thing going—
No, the studio did not hush it all up! And our deal says you don’t even ask, for crying out loud! <Dabs eyes again, bosom heaving.>
All you need to say is—hang on a sec—<Checks notes; speaks slowly and distinctly.> It was a very difficult time for all of us.
No, Strawman and I didn’t split because of Lion. It was a professional decision, that’s all. After Lion’s death, Strawman decided to get out of show business altogether. Said he just didn’t feel like dancing anymore.
So it was a natural time to break up the act, what with losing Lion and Strawman wanting to quit. Tinman? Why, he agreed entirely with the studio’s decision. About calling it quits, I mean. And as for me—<Smiles modestly.> Well, going solo has worked out very well.
No, of course the boys don’t resent my success. Strawman came to my last show and sent me a bouquet of red poppies beforehand. For old times’ sake, he said. And Tinman always says he’s very happy for me—he’s made quite a name for himself as a guitarist in professional circles.
What do you mean, I seem nervous? Everything’s fine.
<Smiles ruefully.> Well, maybe I am a little jittery, having the whole thing raked up again. After all, I wasn’t well at the time—Lion’s death hit me pretty hard. But I’m clean and sober now, went cold turkey six months ago and haven’t had a snort since. <Bats eyelashes.> You’ll vouch for that, won’t you, you sweet man? What a nice, sober old lady I am now?
<Brief silence.>
<DG settles back on divan and crosses legs. Ruby pumps sparkle hypnotically.> Yes, there was some talk about us doing a reunion show last year. But I—that is, we—decided it just wouldn’t work without Lion. Besides, hanging out with the old gang isn’t the same anymore. Strawman’s got no bounce, no rhythm. <Picks up dog.> And my sweet little To-totum’s got arthritis now, don’t you, poor baby?
Tinman? <Licks lips nervously and lowers voice.> That’s the real creeper, you know? The way that new artificial heart of his beat whenever he checked out the ruby slippers. Sounded like a steel drum convention, you could hear it for miles. Every time we got together to talk about doing the show. It was a real chiller.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to know you’ve still got it. The old twinkle-toes have still got their magic and all that. <Mischievous grin.> After all, I’m not getting any younger. But he really does give me a turn, sometimes, the way he’s always watching my feet, fingering that axe of his.
Look, it’s not like I’ve got any illusions here. I know I won’t be tapping the old ruby sparklers along this golden road forever. Like the studio rep’s always saying, red shoes’ll bring you to a bad end every time. <Edgy laugh.> Just ask old Eastie about that. And her little sister too, when you think about it.
<Seriously.> My turn’s sure to come.
But who cares, doll? The way I see it, anything beats going back to Kansas.
The Beast
WHEN HE SAW THE ROSE, HE KNEW THAT ONLY ONE woman in the world could wear it: his daughter. The image and the certainty were so immediate; total. He stood staring.
It was made of amber, rich yellow amber, and the unfolded petals were smooth, translucent, without any of the normal bubbles, or trapped debris. Near the center hung a drop of “dew”—a single warm and creamy pearl. The necklace was a golden briar. It was perfect. And he visualized Isobel, her massy sweep of white-blond hair swung loose from the icy line of its side part. Her pale skin, the mouth just touched with some pale color. The evening dress he had recently bought her in ivory silk. And the rose, on the briar, precisely under her throat.
“He has some fine things, doesn’t he? Have you seen the jade horse?”
“Yes, I did.” Always polite, and careful, he turned from his scrutiny and regarded the other man. They sipped from their glasses of some flawless champagne that came, not from France, but from the East.
“I’ve heard he collects anything exquisite. Will go to great lengths to get it. Even danger. Perhaps your own collection might interest him.”
“Oh, I’ve nothing to match any of this.” But he thought, I have one thing.
After the brief evening was finished, when they had regained their coats from the golden lobby and gone down the endless length of the glass tower, back into the snow-white city, he was still thinking about it. In fact, if he were honest, the thought had begun at the moment he met their host, the elusive and very private Vessavion, who had permitted them into his home, that mansion perched atop the tower of glass, for reasons of diplomacy. There had only been the six invitations, six men known for their business acumen, their wealth, their good manners. It had been meant to impress them, and because they were, all of them, extremely clever, it had done so.
He wondered, going over what he knew of five personal files in his mind, as his chauffeur drove him home, if any of them had a daughter. But even if they had, it could not be one like his. Like Isobel.
He had always given her the best. She was due only that. And Vessavion—Vessavion also was the very best there might be. Six and a half feet tall, probably about 180, 185 pounds—this was not from any file, there were no accessible files on Vessavion—blond as Isobel, maybe more blond, the hair drawn back and hanging in a thick galvanic tail to his waist. Grey eyes, large, serious. A quiet, definite, and musical voice, actor-trained no doubt. Handsome. Handsome in a way that was uncommon, and satisfying. One liked to look at him, watch his spare elegant movements. A calm smile revealing white teeth, a smile that had nothing to hide and apparently nothing to give, beyond a faultless courtesy amounting, it seemed, to kindness.
The car purred through a city made of snow. Lights like diamonds glittered on distant cliffs of cement. They came over the river into the gracious lowlands and entered the robot gates of his house. It was a good house. He had always been proud of it. The gardens were exotic. But Vessavion, in the middle of that multitude of rooms, Vessavion had a garden that was like a cathedral, open to sky almost it seemed of space, flashing with stars.
She was in the library, sitting by the fire, an open book on her knee. She might have been waiting. He looked at her. He thought, Yes.
“Was it wonderful?” she asked, cool and sweet. There was a lilt to her voice that was irresistible, like the slight tilt to her silvery eyes.
“Very. I hope you’ll see it. I left him a note. Something of mine that may interest him … The African Bible.”
“You’d give him that?”
“In exchange—for something else. Perhaps he’ll refuse. But he does collect rare and beautiful things.”
She was innocent of what he meant. She did not know. He had begun to keep secrets, her father. It had started five weeks before in the doctor’s office. Time enough for truth later. Truth was not always beautiful, or desired.
Vessavion’s answer came the next day. It was as if Vessavion were somehow linked into his plan, as if this had to be. He invited the owner of the African Bible to a small dinner. The visitor had a daughter, Vessavion had heard. She must come too.
Conceivably, Vessavion had even known of Isobel. The father knew there were files also on him. Had Vessavion perhaps seen some inadequate, breathtaking photograph?
The dinner was set three nights before Christmas. It was well omened, the city in a Saturnalia of lamps and fir trees, wreaths, and ribbons. He said to Isobel, “Will you wear the ivory silk for me?”
She smiled. “Of course.”
“And, no jewelry,” he said.
She raised her eyebrows. “Do you think he’ll hang me with jewels?”
“He may. He might.”
“I’m quite nervous,” she said. “I’ve heard about him. Is he really—is he handsome?”
“Tonight,” he said, “you’ll see for yourself.”
The elevator took them up the tower of glass, and at the top the doors opened into the golden lobby, with its French gilt mirrors and burnished floor. A servant came, like all Vessavion’s slaves, virtually invisible, and took away their outer garments. They walked into the vast pale room where the log fire was actually real, pine cones sputtering in it on apple wood. On the walls two or three beautiful paintings from other centuries, genuine, obscure, and priceless. Lamps of painted glass. Brocade chairs, their unburnt wood carved into pineapples. For the season, a small rounded tree had been placed, dark green, decked with dull sequins of gold, a golden woman on its top holding up a star of crimson mirror. And there were boughs of holly over the mantel of the fire, and tall, yellow-white candles burning. It was charming, childish, almost touching. But then, had it been done only to please Vessavion’s guests? Perhaps even to please a woman?
On a silver tray by the fire were three long slender goblets of some topaz wine. Vessavion came in. Immaculately greeted father and daughter. They drank together.
But the father had noted Vessavion’s face when he beheld Isobel. There was no subterfuge at all. Vessavion’s face changed, utterly, as if a mask had lifted from it. Underneath it was just the same face, handsome, strong, yet now alive. And it was young. The father thought, He’s only two or three years older than she is. I can see it, now. This delighted him very much.
Isobel had changed a little too. For the first time in a decade, she was blushing, softly, marvelously, like milk crystal filled by sunlight. Her eyes shone. No man who liked women could have resisted her.
They ate the delicious meal—fish from somewhere cold, perhaps Heaven, a soufflé made of clouds—the invisible servants attending to everything, wines floating down yellow-green, red, and clear as rain. There was a blue liqueur.
All the time, he listened to them talking, the girl and the young man, without hesitations. He felt, the father, the pleasure of a musician, whose music plays at his will alone.
He thought, I must relinquish that. Now they are each other’s. He was glad. He had not wanted to leave things in a muddle. It was not that he felt she could not manage without him, not because she was a woman. No. Women were vital, survivors, even ruthless if they had to be. It was only, he had not wanted to make her work at things like that. She was meant to soar, not brood among the cobwebs and dusts. And it would be all right. Yes, now it would.
It came time to reveal the African Bible. Vessavion took the huge black book and opened its clasps of platinum with his strong, graceful hands. He read, his lips moving silently. Evidently he understood the esoteric language into which the Bible had been translated. When he glanced up, he said, “I do want it. But how can it be priced?”
The father said, “I would like you to have it as a gift.”
Vessavion smiled. He looked at Isobel. His smile for her, already, was feral and possessive, eager and consumed—consuming. Isobel lowered her eyes. Vessavion said, “Then may I give your daughter something? I know what would suit her. Do you remember the amber rose?”
The father felt a pang of agony—it was jealousy, much, much worse than the clawing of the cancer that now, anyway, was kept dumb by drugs. But he was glad, too, of the jealousy. It confirmed he had been right.
They went among Vessavion’s collection. It was rumored he had other things, hidden away, but here there was enough to astound. The Han horse, white as ice, the Roumanian chess pieces carved from a mountain, the banner from a war of 1403, the great unfaceted sapphire polished like a ball made out of the summer sea. And more.
Vessavion took the rose from its cabinet, and fastened the briar about Isobel’s white neck, lifting away so gently her wave of blond hair. His hands were courteous, they did not linger, but his color too intensified faintly, for a moment. He was a young man.
They sat long into the night, over coffee and wine. Soft music played somewhere, and beyond the conservatory of enormous flowers, that garden, checkered by enormous stars.
Isobel and Vessavion talked on and on. If it was a melody they made, each knew it, where to come in, and where to wait. They might have known each other forever, and been parted for a week. So much to say. How they had missed each other.
Finally, deliberately, he murmured that now they must go away. He relished his cruelty, seeing their eyes clouded, and hearing their voices falling from each other like caressing hands.
Vessavion rose. He named a fabulous production, drama, opera, something for which it was impossible to get tickets. He, of course, had them. Would they accompany him? The father liked, too, this old-fashioned kindness to himself. He declined graciously. He said that Isobel must go. That was all that was needed.
They descended in the elevator, down into the snow world. She was very quiet and still. Self-conscious even. She avoided his eyes.
When they were in the car, she said, shyly, “Is it all right?”
“Yes. Wonderfully all right.”
“You’re pleased?”
“Can’t you tell?”
“You like him?” she said, hopeful as a child.
“Very much.”
“But he’s so mysterious. No one knows anything about him.”
“Perhaps that’s part of it.”
“Do come to the theater,” she said.
He said, laughing, “You’d kill me if I did.”
He thought afterward, it was a pity he had said that, although she, too, not knowing, had laughed in turn. It was a pity to accuse her, her, even in a joke, of something which was already happening by another means.
He believed she did not sleep that night. Across the court, he saw her light burning on, as he sat through the dark.
Isobel had only been in love in childhood. With characters in books, with the characters that actors portrayed on a screen or a stage. Later, she lost her taste for this sort of love. She was fastidious, and her standards had been permitted to be extremely, impossibly, high. She had, now and then, liked men. But the conquest which her beauty always allowed her to make sometimes brought out in them their worst—foolishness, bombast, even, occasionally, antagonism. Besides, she did not recognize them.
Seeing Vessavion, she recognized him at once. Not only his personal beauty, which was, if anything, greater than her own. Also his demeanor, and presently his manner, his mood, his mind. When they spoke, of trivial or important elements, they seemed to glide together along the same broad white road. Each found new things there, and sometimes the same things, or things of a fascinating difference which, once shared, were accessible to both.
However, to be realistic, she had fallen in love with him on sight. And in his eyes she presently saw the same had happened for him.
Beyond all this, there was his mystery, and even though, from the first evening of the dinner, he spoke to her of his life, of events in which he had participated, of childhood memories, his air of seclusion remained, sweet and acid at once, luring her on. Could she ever know him? Oh yes—and yet, to be possessed by a handsome stranger that she knew, that she could never know. He did not kiss her until their third meeting. By then she was weak with longing, confused, almost in pain. At the touch of his mouth, his tongue, the pressure of his body, safe tethers of steel gave way in her, she fell all the distance down into the heart of him, and lay there drowning.
She was a romantic who had dismissed her dreams, a young woman with a young woman’s libido, who had found no stimulus, until now. She trusted him completely. Yet he was a shadow. It was more wonderful than anything of any sort she had ever had in her life before.
After their eighth meeting, he took her into a vast bedroom that was like a dark blue cave, and here all night, all day, they made love over and over, sometimes drinking champagne, sometimes eating food that magically arrived without trace of human participation.
At first her orgasms were swift and tenuous, flickers, shudders, butterflies of feeling. But he taught her, with his hands and his mouth, lips and tongue, every inch of his honed and subtle body, the sword of his loins, his white hair, his skin, to writhe and to wait, to simmer and to flame, so that ocean-rushes of pleasure dashed her up and up into a steeple, a vortex, where she screamed, where she died, and he brought her slowly back to life, gentle then as the mother that she did not recall.
After they had lain on that great blue bed, the few single silver wires of their separate hair, torn out in frenzy, lay like traceries. Once there was a broken nail, white as a sickle moon. Or a spot of silken fluid. Or only the impress of their bodies, one thing.
It was a winter wedding. Her father was there, and the witnesses, that she did not know and never saw again. They ate a sumptuous meal in a towering restaurant above an ice blue sea that perhaps was not real; she did not know or care.
A few days later her father was gone. He vanished, leaving only a mild and friendly letter, which Vessavion read her as she wept. The house in the lowlands of the city was now hers, and once she went back to it, alone, Vessavion’s man waiting for her at the outer door. But the house, where she had always lived since she could remember, seemed unfamiliar. She saw to her father’s things, what was necessary. It occurred to her she did not weep enough. She tried to force out her tears by thinking of his goodness to her. He had been a dedicated yet not a passionate parent. He had made her too sure of herself. She found that this section of her life, her years with her father, was over, and she could fold it away, neatly, and now it did not matter.
Sometimes she and her husband were apart for an hour or so, or he might be absent for a portion of an evening or an afternoon. She assumed he must attend to his business interests, as her father had done. These separations were tantalizing, nearly enjoyable. Vessavion’s mansion had, besides, so many rooms. She was always finding new ones. It was like him. In the winter garden grew winter flowers that burned and seemed to smoke. Rivulets flowed and tiny bells chimed among the hair of vines. Sometimes, too, Vessavion took her away to other places on a private plane. They saw enormous mountains clad in green fur, marble columns, and waterfalls that thundered. But generally they returned quickly from everywhere, back into the blue cave. They made love almost without cease. They made love as if famished.
She said to him one night, in the dark, chained by his hair, locked to him still, “Was there anyone before me? There must have been.”
“Why do you want to know?” he said. “Surely you understand.”
“Then no,” she said, “I’m the first for you as you were the first for me.”
“Exactly,” he said. “How could there have been anyone? I was waiting for you.”
She said, “Will it ever end—this wanting—this electric tingling, this hunger?”
“If we grow very old,” he said, “perhaps.”
“Not till then?” she said. “I’m glad.”
They made love again and again. She was hoarse from her own crying. She said, “But won’t you ever leave me?”
“How can I leave you? You’re myself.”
She thought, Supposing the inconceivable took place—if I should leave him instead? She said, “If someone made me go away from you—”
He said, “I’d die. I’d stop like a clock.”
She recollected her father, whom she had left and who had disappeared. She believed Vessavion. She held him fast in her pale arms, wound him with her long pale legs and slender feet. Inside her body she held him. If they died, it must only be together.
In March the snow was still solid and thick upon the city. From Vessavion’s high windows, she could see across a polar landscape, all ice and glass, broken only here and there by roadways and obstinate steel turrets.
He returned in darkness, her husband, and as he walked into the tawny chamber that was their drawing room, she saw on his face, so white and calm from the snowscape he had been traveling through, a jewel of scarlet. It was on his cheek, like an ornament. She did not mention it at first, and then it trickled down like a tear.
“You’re bleeding.” She was concerned but went to him coolly; her frenzies were never for such things.
And he only smiled, and reaching up, wiped the scarlet tear away. “No.”
“But it was blood.”
“Was it? How strange.”
“Did something happen—out there on the street?”
“It must have done. I don’t know.”
Carefully she led him to a couch and sat down beside him, examining his face that still was not familiar, although recognized from the first.
“Where do you go in the city?”
“All sorts of places.”
“Please tell me,” she said.
“No,” he said, “it would bore you.”
Isobel leaned close to him and breathed him in. He was scented by the freezing dark he had come from. And by something else which she had sensed before, but only once or twice outside a certain situation. Animal, the aroma, spicy and intent, not truly human. It was rather like the smell of him in sex. It aroused her and she put her hand on his breast. But when he moved to kiss her she said, “Not that. You have a secret.” And she wondered if there could be another one, another woman or a man, someone he went to when he was not with her. But even as she thought this, she knew it was not credible, it was a lie. What then, the reason for this excitement?
“Tell me,” she said.
“I tell you everything.”
“Not this.”
However, he took her to him, and there on the couch he undressed her, unsheathing her body like a flower from silver wrapping. He drew her up onto the blade of his lust, and they danced slowly in the rosy firelight. She stared into his face, remote with pleasure, taut with the agony of holding back.
“Where do you go?” she moaned.
But her blood curdled in fire and her womb spasmed open, shut, open, shut, and arching backward she knew nothing was of any consequence but their life together.
When they were eating dinner, the goblets of blond wine at their fingertips, slivers of vegetable blossom and white meat lying on porcelain, then, he told her.
“I have an interest sometimes,” he said, “in people. I watch them a little. Would you believe, I follow them.”
“Why?” she said. She was puzzled. People did not really interest her, only he interested her. She had never found people equal to what she was. Only he was that.
He said, thoughtfully, “You see, you’re perfect, Isobel. You’re like—like the moon. You change, and yet you remain constant. Every line of you, angle of you, the turn of your head, the way you lift your eyes, your voice—all perfect. But most people have nothing of this. And then again,” he hesitated, “sometimes there are attractive people who, without any true beauty, are quite marvelous. But, it isn’t these that intrigue me. No. Now and then there is someone … very ugly, who has one beautiful feature. Their eyes perhaps, or their hair. Their teeth. Their fingers even—Do you understand? The discrepancy.”
Isobel realized that, all the while she had been with him, she had glowed. Glowed actually like the amber rose, the first thing he had given her. It was like a halo inside her skin. It warmed when she made love with him, soothed and turned darker when they were at rest, talking, or even apart. Yet now, now the glow seeped out of her, and for a moment she seemed to see it shining in the air. And then she was cold.
“You always trust me,” she said.
“Of course. Who else should I trust?”
“You shouldn’t always trust me.”
He paled at that, in the curious way of someone who is already pale. His eyes were somber, heavy. He said, “But why should it affect you, if I talk a little nonsense.”
“It isn’t nonsense. You meant what you said. That certain people, ugly people, intrigue you because they have one beautiful feature.”
“And what does that matter?” he said, lightly.
“It matters to you.”
“Isobel,” he said, “let’s talk of something else.”
She smiled and drank her wine, nodding. It was the first falseness she had ever offered him. And he took it from her, without question.
She searched all through March, searched the mansion atop the tower of glass. At the beginning of April the snow held on, an ice age, and she found it. The room. By then it hardly counted. She had been deceiving him all that while, betraying him. Pretending when they made love. Pretending when they talked. He had spoken of visiting some far-off country, and she had pretended to be pleased. It seemed he was fooled by all her pretense, although his eyes had now a shadow in them. After all, probably he wanted her to find the room. He had not quite been able to tell her everything, and the room would do it for him. And it did.
A few days after their marriage, he had shown her the room of his hidden collection, the things he possessed which, until then, he had shown to no one—not from vanity, but more as if to protect his visitors. What he had was so fine, it might wound. But Isobel, his wife, now possessed these treasures, too, it would be safe for her to see. And there were panels from Medieval France, a painting by Leonardo da Vinci not reckoned to exist—a Madonna with seawater skin and lilies in her hands. There were dolls made of emerald and gold, which moved. There were green pearls, and tapestries woven at the time of Christ, a dress of beads constructed for a child in ancient Rome, a shell that had formed in the shape of a castle, a statuette of an angel made from a single ruby. And—more. Much more.
She had liked it, his collection. She had played gently with a few of the items. She had worn the green pearls.
And in March, she searched out the other hidden room, and at length located it, behind a bookshelf which slid. There was a lock and Isobel broke this with an ordinary hammer she had asked one of the invisible servants to bring her. It was quite easy to break, the lock, it did not take much strength. Horribly, sadly, resignedly, she grasped all this was meant to be.
The room was quite small, and tastefully decorated, although not lavish like so many of the rooms of the mansion. There were no windows, only soft lighting, wisely placed, to point up the objects on display.
As with the other collections, everything was arranged exquisitely. Indeed, it was arranged tactfully. That, of course, was the whole substance of what he had done, what he had intended.
Isobel went about slowly, and thoroughly, an obedient child brought to a museum. She looked at everything. At the lustrous plait of red hair held in claws of gold. At the white teeth scattered, as the pearls had been, over a velvet cloth. At the two eyes gleaming in the crystal of protective fluid. At the small hand under its dome, one finger with a tarnished wedding ring. At the beautiful breasts, seeming to float like sweets. At the ears. The solitary foot. And—more.
When she had seen everything, Isobel went out. She closed the door, leaving the broken lock hanging, and drew back the bookshelf which slid. Then she went to her bathroom and bathed herself, and washed her hair and dried it. She dressed in her dressing room. She packed her bag with the things which were only hers. And on the pillow in her bedroom, which she had never used, she left the amber rose.
She met Vessavion in the tawny drawing room, as the grey wolf dusk filled up the sky, and turned the ice age of the city to iron.
Vessavion looked at her, and she said, “I have seen it.”
He bowed his head. He said, “What will you do?”
“I will leave you, obviously.”
“Let me explain.”
“What can you say?”
“Perfection,” he said, very low, stammering. “Until I saw you, I had never come across it in a human thing.”
“Even after you had me, you continued.”
“Yes.”
“Through the snow you hunted them and cut away what was beautiful, and their blood splashed you, and once you were careless, or uncaring, and I saw. But your money and your power protect you. No one will stop you.”
“I put what’s beautiful into its proper setting. I always have. It must be a mistake—when they have it.”
She said, “Good-bye.”
“If you leave me,” he said, “then—”
She closed the door, and presently she was descending the glass tower in the elevator, down into the iron snow.
There was a week after that like a hundred years. She spent it in her father’s house, safe behind the robot gates which would admit no one. She disconnected the telephones. When any mail fell through into the pillar at the gate, someone came and destroyed it.
She did things in that house she had not done for some while. She played the piano, and cooked cordon bleu meals she did not eat, and read books cover to cover, not knowing what they said.
In the evenings she drank wine, too much, but then that did not ever help and so she did not drink wine anymore.
Spring began to come through the overgrown gardens, and small birds appeared, making nests, singing, as if the world existed. There were sunsets and sunrises, too. Laughable.
When the week was over, as she dressed one morning, she saw she had grown thin, had lost perhaps eighteen pounds. And when she combed her hair, some fell in a rain.
She was driven across the city to the tower of glass, and went in, and rose up, and came out into the golden lobby, but it was not gold anymore, the floor opaque, the mirrors misted, shadow in the air.
Isobel entered the mansion of her husband, Vessavion. She walked slowly through long rooms, and L-shaped rooms, and octagonal rooms. The fires were out, there was no light. Cobwebs hung on things. Dust spread over all. The invisible servants had vanished.
She found him in the blue bedroom that was a cave, on the blue bed that they had steeped in flame.
He was naked, lying on his back upon his own hair. His flesh and his hair, like hers now, did not have any luminescence. His light had gone out. She went close and gazed into his face.
Vessavion was quite dead. Quite blank. Empty. Useless. Over.
There was nothing about him to show what he had been. He was thin and worn, and there was already a line of grey in his hair. His face had fallen in. It was old. And it was very ugly, unnaturally so, hideous in fact. Like the face of some nightmare, some beast.
She wished that she could have said something, anything, to alleviate the awareness she had of the attenuated awfulness of pain, like an unfinished sentence caught up on nails in the atmosphere.
But it was no use at all. Nothing more could be said or done. She had loved him, she had betrayed him, she had killed him as no other had the power to do. And here he lay to rot on the bed of love. And he had the face of a beast.
Masterpiece
IT WAS ON ONE OF MY LONG CONTEMPLATIVE WALKS that I met him. I had stopped to rest on a bench below a clump of young oaks. The view over the grasslands leading down to the river, some two miles distant, was soothing. It was a fine spring morning, clear, almost fragile, and the earth looked young and fresh again. If I had not been so troubled, the scenery would have been quite enchanting. As it was, it merely served as a balm for my oppressed spirit.
I saw the man from a long way off. He followed the winding path from the woods in the east, keeping just below the crest of the ridge. I remember thinking he looked strange, a little out of context. He was not dressed for walking: no boots, stick, or hiker’s clothes. Instead he wore a dark suit, with a starched white shirt and plain tie. His shoes were black and polished, and on his head was a dark homburg. Reaching the seat, he sat at the far end, and stared out over the same view for a while, before speaking.
“Young woman,” he said, turning to me, “you seem a little disturbed?”
I turned to regard his countenance, which was smooth-shaven and rather ordinary. It was one of those bland faces, the complexion pasty and the features unremarkable: a face which you might not remember if you were to meet him again, perhaps in the streets of some distant town. Apart from a slight bulge at the bridge of the nose, and the pale eyes, there was nothing to distinguish it from a million other plain faces.
I was not used to being addressed as “young woman” and I think my expression must have shown this, for he immediately corrected himself, saying, “Perhaps I should have called you Ms. Susan Quarry?”
“You know me? Who are you?”
He smiled. “Yes, I know you. You live in that village down by the river. My name is … Mr. Black. That will do for now.”
That will do for now. The guy was definitely strange and I began to get a little edgy, wondering if I could outrun him if he started anything funny. There was not a soul for miles around and when a man appears out of nowhere and begins a weird conversation the first thing you look for is an avenue of escape—just in case.
He turned to look at the view again.
“Beautiful, isn’t it? The river—you can’t see the water from here, can you? It’s as if the sails of those yachts are moving through the fields. An illusion, eh? The hulls are, of course, hidden by the river’s high green dikes.”
He turned again. “You’re worried about me, aren’t you?”
This observation did nothing to alleviate my feelings of alarm.
“Well,” he continued, “you should be, but not because you’re in any danger. I’m not going to attack you, or anything like that. I’ve come to make you a proposition.”
“Proposition?” I said, falteringly, and then bit my tongue. I had an idea what was coming. I was prepared to be humiliated, perhaps by an offer of money or something. But for the moment I might humor him, until I saw the chance to get away. I felt defenseless and close to tears, the panic welling up inside me. Why did I have to go through this, simply because I was woman and he was a man? I started to loathe him.
I was totally wrong.
“Let me tell you where you’re at,” said Mr. Black. “You’re at the bottom of the ladder. Your father is a successful businessman—a boor, but a rich one. He is what they call ‘a self-made man.’ And he never stops telling you that he started with just a few coins in his pocket and look where he is today. And you? You can’t even marry anyone worth having. Your estranged fiancé is a lowly plumber, going nowhere. Anyway, even he doesn’t want you anymore, now that he knows your daddy isn’t going to finance his idle inclinations.”
I interrupted here, a little angrily, “How do you know so much about my family?”
He ignored this question. “Your father is highly critical because you’ve done nothing with the expensive education he bought for you. You don’t want to go into business—that’s not really you, is it—so it’s got to be something academic or artistic. You failed your doctorate, you tried writing a novel, which didn’t work, you took up sculpting only to find you were all fingers and thumbs.”
I stood up. “What is this?” I said. “You want to sell me something? A book? On how to be successful and influence people?”
“Your latest venture,” he continued, unperturbed, “is painting—you think you might be an artist. You’ve bought the canvases, but your attempts so far have been, shall we say, less than wonderful? You’re now in a state of complete collapse and thinking of running away—to India, or Thailand.”
His final words astonished me. It was only in the last twenty-four hours that I had been considering the Far East as a means of escape from my father’s interminable attacks. I had begun to reason that if I could never impress him, I had to get away from him, out of reach of the telephone. I had certainly not spoken to anyone about my plans.
“You seem to be able to read my mind,” I said, sitting down again. “What are you? Did you come up here looking specifically for me?”
“I knew you were here,” he said, his pale eyes regarding my reaction. “I’ve come to help.”
He turned and gestured at the world below. “All this could be yours,” he said, laughingly.
“I don’t want all that,” I replied, “but I would like to sell some of my paintings—perhaps get a showing in a gallery.”
“That’s what I meant. You put these scenes on canvas. I could help with that.”
“Wait a minute. You mean you want to help me with the physical act of painting my pictures, not with selling them?”
“Both—that is, I’m not going to stand beside you, telling you what colors to use, showing you what brushstrokes to make—but I shall be helping, just the same. I guarantee that if you accept my offer, you will be selling paintings—good paintings—before the year is out. You will be on your way to becoming famous, your pictures commissioned, if that’s what you want.”
He paused, then added softly, “And eventually—a masterpiece.”
“And what do you want in return? Ten percent?”
He laughed again. “No, certainly not. I have no use for money. However”—he looked at me seriously now—”there is a price. There is always a price. The price for success, my way, is very high. Think of that which you possess and would not part with for the world—that is my price—for it is the world I’m offering you, and the world doesn’t come cheap.
“What you have to decide is, is the world worth your most precious possession? If you decide it is, then success is yours, simply by saying you agree to my terms. In return I will ensure that you get all you desire from your art—wealth, fame, and satisfaction. The critics will love you, and you will sell for huge amounts of money. What do you say?”
At first I began to feel a little disappointed, thinking the guy was probably crazy after all. Yet—yet there felt something indefinably sane about the whole situation. It was somehow not unknown. There was something happening here which had happened before, perhaps many, many times. I had to answer the question. Was I prepared to pay his price? The fact is, we all reach a point in our lives when we would pay anything, anything, to achieve our ambition, to realize the success we crave. I had reached that point. I was at the edge of reason, the black pit of failure yawning before me. Since I had nothing, not even hope, why, the price was cheap.
I said, “What do we do? Shake hands on it?”
“No need for that. Just give me your agreement now.”
I had absolutely nothing to lose. It was pleasant to suspend my disbelief for a few moments, to indulge in pretense and fantasy, and so I told him he had my agreement. He then stood up, wished me good-day, and left me still sitting on the bench. I watched him walk along the path and disappear over the eastern horizon. Once he was out of sight, my fears came crashing back, and I was embarrassed by the whole episode. I had probably been made to look a fool.
Later, I got up and walked back to the cottage, prepared to do some more work before the light fled.
Over the next few months, into the summer and autumn, and out into the beginning of winter, I worked assiduously. I suppose the pace and the energy at which I painted was due in some part to the meeting with the strange Mr. Black. He had, simply by power of suggestion, put some fire back into me. I’m not saying I was hasty with my brushes. I’m saying the lethargy had completely gone from my bones and I was full of youthful vigor: able to work quickly and surely. I began to try new color tones, new tints, new brushstrokes and layering, new knife-and-palette approaches. I experimented with fresh perspectives and shapes, changing styles sometimes overnight, until one day I realized I had found a technique which was not only exciting, it felt comfortable, suited to me. I began to feel that I was at last an artist of some worth.
I threw away all the paintings I had done before the autumn. I didn’t even paint over the canvases, though I would have saved money that way. I had this fear that sometime in the future someone might look under the top painting and see the worthless effort beneath.
During the winter I continued to work hard, seeing no one but tradesmen and, in the beginning, the odd visitor. I became impatient with the latter and was no great company anyway, being too distracted and eager to get back to my palette and brushes. Soon they stopped coming, all except Daddy. He was at least impressed a little by my dedication, even if he did not understand what I was doing.
“So much energy,” he said, “would have got you onto the board of a bank by now.”
“Yes, Daddy—if I wanted to be there.”
By New Year I was being left alone with my feverish single-mindedness, which some began to call an obsession. A good friend rang me and asked if I was ill and advised me to see “someone.” She meant a psychiatrist, of course, and I told her what she could do with her advice.
By the spring I had twenty-seven new pictures, of varying sizes. There was a good still life, six landscapes, thirteen abstracts, and some life paintings with a local model, the barmaid of the local pub, who didn’t mind taking her clothes off in front of another woman. After studying them for two weeks, poring over them in all lights, I threw away all but the abstracts. I then went up to London and sat outside an agent’s office for three days, before being admitted.
I never had much time for agents before, thinking them leeches with little taste, but David Rendan had been recommended by a close friend.
“These are quite good,” he murmured, holding one up to the light. “Not at all bad. Don’t think I’m patronizing you, because I’m not. I can’t praise them up and down the street, because they don’t deserve adulation, but I think you’ve got something—a distinctly different and interesting style—something I haven’t seen for a few years—not since …” and he named an artist who was currently the darling of the critics.
“I don’t think you’re patronizing,” I said. “I’m glad you think they’re worthy of attention.”
“I really like the dominant scarlets and blacks—you’ve got a particularly original way of layering the two, so that they merge. At least, I haven’t seen it before. They’re pretty harrowing in a strange sort of way. I mean, they’re abstracts of course, but they have a startling way of cutting through one’s emotional defenses like a saw, leaving one’s spirit wounded and bleeding … and raw.”