Dan Vyleta - Smoke

“But look,” she adds, stroking the cigarette’s ashes onto her palm as soon as they have cooled. “There’s no trace of the tobacco. But the Soot remains.”

“Not all of it,” says Thomas, stepping up to her, taking hold of her hand and bringing it up to his eyes. “Look, all this Soot is light. The dark stuff is gone.”

Livia starts, compares the smudge on her fingertip with the base of the cigarette that remains unlit.

“You are right. What does it mean?”

“It means that only black sin can be activated,” Charlie whispers from the sidelines. “Temporarily. Partially. At great cost. The small sins,” he says, taken aback by his own anger, “are as dead as dust.”

Thomas and Livia are still holding hands when he storms out of the room.

ф

It proves hard to find a place in which to be alone. Charlie is too restless to sit still in some corner; too haunted by the thought of Julius to take to the streets of London at night. So he wanders the flat, its hallway and landing, back and forth past the boy-prisoner’s cell. His fingers brush the walls, the doors, the windowsills, collect specks of London’s Soot grown into the paint and plaster, some chalky grey and coarse, others fine as paint pigments, the soft greys of photography. Irritation, appetite, illicit joy; the sting of want. Everyday vice: the humdrum of life. Once infectious, now sour and dead. He wipes it off against his trouser leg and continues on his rounds; brushes the walls again, searching for something, the side of his leg soon shiny with grey.

It is during these restless rounds that he catches sight of the sewer map. Sebastian and Lady Naylor have spread it on the kitchen table, are poring over it. Or rather there are two maps, one marked “Ashton,” the other “Aschenstedt.” It is hard to tell from a distance, but the second seems a denser web: a replica of the first with added lines. Lady Naylor turns it over when Charlie draws close. He feigns disinterest and fetches the pitcher from the sideboard.

“One word to the authorities,” Lady Naylor calls after him, worried. “That’s all it would take. And nothing about the world changes.”

“How do you know I care?” Charlie replies. And: “You are like Renfrew then. He too wants change.”

“No, he only thinks he does. But all he can imagine is more of the same.”

ф

Half an hour later Charlie hears her arguing with Thomas. His friend has barged into the kitchen and is demanding answers.

“Talk straight. You swore it to me! On your husband’s life.”

His voice rises further when she does not give him what he wants.

Within an hour of their shouting, milady comes to find Charlie, sitting alone outside the child’s door, listening to the silence beyond.

“I cannot talk to that one,” she says softly, then surprises him by easing herself onto the floor next to him. Baroness Naylor, Dowager Countess of Essex, Marchioness of Thomond, her bottom in the dust. She looks dignified even here.

“He is always angry. Just like my Julius. I suppose that’s the problem. He reminds me of my son.”

Her words take Charlie back to Renfrew’s. Julius’s voice rising from below the floorboards. The schoolmaster’s scream.

“Your son has changed,” he says hoarsely, his head light, chest heavy with his heartbeat. “He’s lost in Smoke. He killed Dr. Renfrew.”

“Killed him?” Lady Naylor is silent for a moment, digesting this. “Poor Julius,” she says at last. “He has been imbibing quickened Soot. Not your ordinary cigarettes but something infinitely stronger. Something he stole from me while you were playing truant.” She smiles a hard little smile. “But it’s my own fault. I introduced him to it. To cigarettes and to sweets. In the summer when he turned fifteen. Wooing him. Like a knowing bride.”

Charlie looks at her, aghast. “But why?”

For the fraction of a second she leans her head against his shoulder. Like a sister. Pleading with him. Winning him over to her side.

“He looks just like his father. My first husband. A weak man. God, how I hated him!” She jerks upright, away from him. “Our fathers had arranged the betrothal. It was good politics; two old bloodlines conjoined. My husband left for the Indies within four months of the wedding and was dead of a fever six weeks after that. Julius’s grandfather took him away from me the day he was born. He raised him to be my enemy. But I needed him.”

“You needed his money!”

“The Spencers are very rich. And I have been running up debts. So I presented Julius with an investment opportunity.”

“You mean you lied to him.”

“Naturally. The Spencers are England’s most prominent family. They have no need for revolution. Still, it’s a fair bargain. If I fail, he will own every scrap of Naylor land.”

She stands up abruptly, then walks away from him, towards the room she has elected as her bedroom. Up until yesterday the Grendels slept in there. It holds the apartment’s only proper bed.

“I should have spoken to you earlier, Charlie. You have a generous soul. One might find forgiveness there. My own children have very little of that.” She stops at the door, looks back. “Perhaps it would be best if we understood one another. Do you want to know where Smoke comes from? How the body generates it?”

“Yes.”

“Then follow me.”

ф

She makes him close the door. Immediately the room feels too small, the big lumpy bed filling it wall to wall. She sits down on it, smoothing out her skirts in front of her, puts her hands onto a particular place on her right flank. Underneath the fabric of her dress, Charlie can make out the skeleton of her corset, shaping her waist.

“Do you know what organ resides here?” she asks.

He swallows. “The liver.”

“Indeed. A vile thing really, though it makes good enough eating. Do you know what they used to say about sour-faced old women who smoked all day long? ‘She’s got an evil liver.’ This was back when I was young, in Brittany, where we went for the summers. The children used to chant it as a taunt. Many years ago I told Baron Naylor about it — in passing, really, sharing a memory, nothing more. But my husband thought there was more to the phrase than superstition. Before the week was out he had purchased surgeon’s knives. And cadavers. He got to be quite an expert at excision.”

The words sink into Charlie and transport him back to Lady Naylor’s laboratory. A glass vitrine filled with large, lidded jars. Spongy tissue floating in thick liquid, its edges overgrown by something hard and black. Next thing he knows Lady Naylor has started unbuttoning her bodice, her hands working behind her back, wrestling with hooks. Charlie turns to the door.

“Stay, Mr. Cooper. I have no designs on your virtue. Unlike my daughter, perhaps. Here, give me your hand. You may close your eyes if you like.”

He returns to her, both staring and trying not to look. She has not taken off any clothes, but simply loosened them, creating a gap near her spine. Gently, she takes his hand in hers and guides it through this gap, slipping it underneath the corset then forward towards her front.

“Smoke is produced by a gland in the liver. From there it connects to our blood and lymphic system and, ultimately, to the sweat glands and lungs. Our whole bodies are calibrated for Smoke. Unless, that is, you are like that child next door. But even as we speak his body is starting to transform.”

Charlie can hardly listen. All his senses are in his hand. He feels the smooth warmth of silk, then her skin, hot to his touch. They follow the ridge of a rib, then down, towards her stomach. Then they stop, her fingers stroking his across a long, raised, puckered line, tough like gristle.