John Banville - The Infinities

Kiss me. Kiss me .

Oh. A sudden start. She opens her eyes — have they been closed? Did she fall asleep for a moment? She must have, for she has that feeling that she always has when she wakes up of stealthy things having been happening that she is not to know of. Not that anything has happened: she is still lying beside her silent father as before, here in the gloom of the sickroom. But something has changed — the rain has stopped, that is it. Such enormous silence, as if the two of them were lying deep at the bottom of a huge empty stone vault, stone, or metal, maybe, a huge rusty iron tank emptied of everything, even air. She lifts her arm from her father’s chest and turns on to her back and gazes upwards at the uncertain ceiling. She thinks of her father facing blindly into another world, breathing other, even darker air. Why are the gulls no longer crying? Where have they gone to? Kiss me.

In a little while she goes back to her room. Yes, the rain is over and the sky is clearing to a delicate, breakable blue. She stands by the window looking out on a rinsed and sparkling world. She can see rather than feel the chill that the rain has brought, for the air outside seems polished and shines thinly, and there is a new edge to everything, sharp as glass. Rex the dog is crossing the lawn; he stops, sniffs, lifts a leg, then after a moment of motionless gazing ambles on. The Salsol is parked on the gravel in front of the house, slewed at an angle. Duffy is walking along slowly by the box hedge, examining the hedge as if for damage; he has a furtive and a watchful mien. The limes along the drive are darker than everything else, as if night is gathered already among their foliage, waiting to be released into the air. These things seem to her set out just so, the countless pieces of a vast and mysteriously significant design. She looks downwards, inwards; how the light of evening pales her hands. Across the back of one of them there is a stippled scratch, like a chain of tiny rubies, where she caught herself on a briar. She did not really mean to spy on Helen and Roddy Wagstaff — how was she to know they would come to the wood? She had gone there, as she often does, to be alone and sit by the holy well and let her mind slow down and soothe itself. When she heard them approaching she hid among the woodbine and the ivy — why, since she did not even know who they would be? — like a child, she thinks, caught at something naughty. And indeed, like a child, she felt a secret, gloating thrill, crouched in her damp and odorous lair, crawled over by invisible mites, her nails digging into her palms and her face on fire. When the pair sat down on the bench before the well she was directly opposite Helen, who she thought would surely see her. As soon as they began to kiss she wriggled backwards through the undergrowth, not caring now if they heard her, but of course they did not: they were so busy, lost in each other. When the thunder crashed directly above her it almost sent her sprawling on her face, so loud it was, so near. And then she ran, stumbling.

She turns from the window. A sense of urgent anticipation is starting up inside her, familiar, guilty, hot. Has she locked the door? She makes sure that she has. From the door she goes to the wardrobe, opens it, kneels. There is a drawer, low down, at the back, hard to notice, an ideal hiding place, almost ideal. She draws it open cautiously, making not a sound, and slips her palms under what is inside and lifts it out and bears it to the bed and sets it down. Within its wrapping of thin tissue paper the green silk shines dimly, like a slab of jade half hidden under a dusting of snow. When she opens the paper she shivers as always at the terrible crackling noise it makes, like the noise of some precious, fragile thing being broken into pieces. She unfolds the kimono and lifts it by its wide, square sleeves. The seams release the faint perfume that she loves, soft and dry, like the scent of orange blossom or dried rose petals; she likes to think it is a lingering trace of the great lady for whom it was made, for it is an ancient piece, brought back from Japan by her father long ago. She undresses, and puts on the heavy garment over her nakedness; the silk lining is cold against her skin; it is always cold. She ties the broad belt of matt black silk and pauses a moment and bows her head, her eyes closed. The ritual has begun. With tiny, hampered steps she hurries to the door and makes sure yet again that it is locked. On her way back to the bed she touches in strict order with her fingertips these three things: the first stripe in the wallpaper to the right of the light switch, a framed photograph of her father on the mantelpiece above the closed-off fireplace, the back of a tortoise-shell hairbrush on the dressing-table.

From her pocket she brings out a ring made of heavy white metal — platinum, is it? — and set with a flat black stone in which an initial letter is carved. She slips it on to her wedding finger and admires it at arm’s length.

Where do they see each other, where do they meet? Have they a room somewhere, a love nest? She pictures it, off a mean, cobbled street, up a dirty stairway at the end of a corridor smelling of cats. Lino on the floor, and the sagging bed shoved into a corner, two straight chairs and a stained table with an empty wine bottle and two glasses in the bottoms of which the purple lees of last week’s wine have gone dry and turned to crystal. A meagre window with a yellow net curtain and a view of back yards and crooked dustbins. Two cigarettes smouldering in a tin ashtray, one smeared with lipstick. A cistern drips, a voice in the street calls out something. In the corner, in the shadows, his pale flanks moving, her stifled cries.

There is the sound of footsteps below the window, harshing on the gravel. She hides behind the curtain, then risks a quick glance down. Her brother and Roddy Wagstaff are walking towards the station-wagon. Roddy has his linen jacket draped over his shoulders. His hair, still damp, is combed flat across his high, narrow skull, and from this angle she can see that it is thinning on the crown — he will be bald before he is forty. He is carrying his suitcase. So he is not going to stay, after all. Why has he changed his mind — has something happened? Perhaps they saw her, he and Helen, when she was wriggling backwards through the brambles, and they are afraid she will tell what she saw. She supposes he hates her now, for Roddy would hate anyone he has reason to fear. Does he at least feel ashamed, embarrassed? It is true, he never promised her anything. Does he talk about her when he is with Helen — do they lie in bed smoking and laugh at her for being childish, stupid? Adam takes Roddy’s suitcase and puts it on the back seat of the Salsol, they get in, they drive away. Behind the passenger window Roddy is bending to light a cigarette; he does not look back at the house.

She could betray his secret, his and Helen’s. She could tell her brother what she saw at the holy well, before the thunder came. What would he do? Would he break Roddy’s neck, would he strangle Helen? No. He would be decent and stoical as always; he would bear his pain and forgive his wife, probably he would even forgive Roddy, too. She thinks of him as she saw him a moment ago, stumping over the gravel like a bow-legged sailor in those too-tight, ridiculous trousers he has been wearing all day, as if they were a penance, her big awkward blundering brother, and she knows that she will say nothing, will never let him know how he has been cheated.

She goes and takes the razor in its velvet case from behind the chest of drawers, where she keeps it hidden in the shallow gap there above the wainscot, and carries it to the window and sets it on the sill. The brushed black velvet seems to bend the light to itself from all directions and drink it in. She lifts the little brass catch. It pleases her how snugly the razor fits into its bed of scarlet satin. The ivory handle is cool and smooth, like cold cream made solid, and the round-headed blade is the colour of water. She takes the lovely thing and balances it lightly on her palm. There are raked shadows on the lawn, and birds, restless at the day’s lapsing, whistle plaintively in the trees. She shrugs back the kimono’s great loose sleeve. The underside of her arm is cica-triced all along its length, the crescents of healed skin brittle and shiny, like candle wax. She leans against the window-sill in a sort of anxious trance, all her flesh yearning for the kiss of the chill, steel blade. She draws in a breath, hissingly. When she cuts, the world suddenly has a centre, everything on the instant realigns itself and points to this edge, where the skin draws back its thin white lips and the first beads of blood make their shy début. She unties the belt and lets the kimono fall open and clasps her arm to her breast, and feels the ooze of blood against her skin; it is warm, and her own, and it comforts her. She waits a moment, then bares her other arm.