John Banville - The Infinities

I heard the sound of tyres on the gravel. It was Adam, returning from the station. How smoky the evenings become, even in midsummer; it is like the smoke of memory, drifting from afar. He passed under the wisteria, into the hall, stopped, stood to listen. No sound of anyone. He was still puzzling over Roddy’s hasty departure, for which no explanation had been offered. The atmosphere in the car had been tense, and Roddy had smoked all the way, using the last of each cigarette to light the next one. He got on to the train with only seconds to spare, which was a relief for both of them. Climbing into the carriage he did not look back, but thrust his suitcase in ahead of him and sprang up on the step with one arm lifted behind him in a curiously abrupt gesture, whether of farewell or angry dismissal Adam could not tell. Nor when the train started and was going past did he even glance through the window from the seat where he had settled himself, but went on folding his jacket with a cross look, pouting his lower lip and frowning. Well, now he is gone, and there is an end of it. My biographer. He should change his name to Shakespeare.

In the kitchen Adam comes upon his wife on her hands and knees half-way under the sink. His step startles her and she rises up quickly and strikes the back of her head on the waste pipe, and swears. “My ring is gone,” she says, sitting back on her heels and setting her hands on the tops of her thighs. “I left it here, on the window-sill.” She turns up her glance to him. She has changed into a blouse and a blue skirt, and is barefoot. “The one you gave me,” she says. She makes a feline smile. “Will you hit me, if it’s gone?”

He prepares a drink for them both, gin in a jug with lime juice and a big douse of soda water. It is what they call their gimlet. She is still on the floor, rubbing the back of her head pensively where she banged it on the pipe. He brings the tray of ice cubes to the sink and stands beside her and hacks at the ice with the point of a kitchen knife, his fingers sticking to the metal of the tray. “It makes me shiver, the way it groans,” he says.

“What?”

“The ice — damn!”

She puts her hands to the edge of the sink and hauls herself to her feet. He shows her a bleeding thumb. “Serves you right,” she says, and takes his hand and squints at the cut.

“Can’t feel anything,” he says. “It’s numb, the ice numbed it.”

“Typical,” she murmurs, though neither of them quite knows what she means. He holds his wounded hand over the sink to let the blood drip there and puts his other arm around her waist and holds her close against him and kisses her. “Mmm,” she says, drawing back her face, “you smell of cigarettes.”

“It was Roddy, he smoked all the way to the station.”

She fingers a button on his shirt. “He has no smell at all — have you noticed that?”

“Roddy? He smells like a priest.”

“What do priests smell of?”

“Ashes. Wax and ashes.”

Out in the hall the big clock there makes a laboured whirring and after a weighty pause lets fall a single, ponderous chime.

“Why did he run off like that?” Helen asks.

Adam shrugs. He is still holding her with an arm around her waist, like a waltzer waiting for the music to begin. “He wasn’t well, he said,” he says. “Something about a stitch in his side. I didn’t believe him.”

She leans back on his arm, arching her spine and rolling the font of her hips against his. “He tried to kiss me,” she says, smiling. “In fact, he did.”

“Where?” He is smiling too.

“You mean, where did he kiss me, or where were we when he did?” He does not answer. “In that wood”—gesturing towards the door, the window—“by the well.”

“Did he say anything?”

“He made a sort of speech. Pure ham. It was very peculiar. I thought he—”

“What?”

Smilingly she shakes her head. “Nothing.”

“So that’s why he hurried off,” her husband says. “Did you slap his face?”

“Yes,” she says, and softly laughs, “as a matter of fact, I did. And then the rain started. He was very concerned for his shoes.”

“Poor Roddy.”

Now they both laugh, not quite cruelly, and he releases her and turns to the sink and scoops into the jug what ice cubes he managed to free before cutting himself — they are flecked with his blood — and she goes to the dresser and comes back with two tumblers, and he pours out their drinks, and they drink.

So you see, old Dad, she will not love you. We are too much for them; they prefer to settle for their own kind.

Petra sits by the window binding up her wounds. Although they sting and make her bite her lip she does not think of them as wounds but as the marks of passion, love scars, kisses. She is calm; a beautiful peace reigns in her heart. In the garden the blackbird hops on to a bough and pours out its song, and all the evening seems to stand back and listen dreamily. How pale the sky is at its edges, a barely blue, and higher up a swan-shaped cloud of purest white with a soiled edge sails sedately westwards. She has a sense of the air up there, the weightless enormity of it, thin and clear, arched over the world. She is proud of the skill with which she has learned to bandage herself. First she smears the cut with antiseptic cream to stem the blood, then puts on a patch of gauze and winds the linen bandage round and round. She makes a knot one-handed and pulls it tight with her teeth. Presently the first shy spot of crimson will appear as the blood seeps through the cloth, but soon it will stop spreading and as it dries will turn to a rich red-umber, like the paint in an old picture. She sees herself in a picture, she is its centre, its focus, a girl leaning at a window with everything attending her, the bird, the cloud, the hushed, still trees. The sting has turned to a steady throbbing now. She extends one arm along the window-sill and cradles the other in her lap. She has never got even a speck of blood on the kimono, in all the years; that is another thing to be proud of.

She hears her mother on the stairs, calling for her son, for Ivy Blount. She shuts her eyes and lays her forehead on her arm. Something is the matter, something has happened in the house. The heavy silk of the sleeve is cool and slightly rough, almost metallic, against her brow. Downstairs, Rex the dog begins to bark, loud, peremptory, with measured pauses. The telephone rings, and stops after two peals as someone snatches up the receiver. Two doors open, one is slammed shut again. More footfalls on the stairs, heavy this time. Her thoughts drift, calm as clouds.

My father is chafing to be gone. All is done with here, he says, but I think not, not quite, though it is true that to make a happy ending one must stop short of the end.

Petra lifts her heavy head; her eyelids too are heavy; she could sleep, now, but we shall not let her sleep. She rises, takes off the kimono, dresses, then folds the kimono and wraps it in its tissue paper and returns it to the drawer in the wardrobe. The razor is already in its place behind the chest of drawers. She stands a moment, looking carefully about the room. Everything has been put away, everything is in order. She loves herself, a little.

From the landing she looks down into the well of the hall. There are voices, but the speakers are not to be seen. She feels faint for a moment and seems to sway. What a weight her scarred arms are, and as if they were not hers, as if they were not arms at all but something else, thick lengths of liana, or the limbs of a tree. The throbbing of the razor cuts has abated but in the night it will return and keep her awake, and she will feel there is someone in bed with her, this throbbing other.

She sets off down the stairs. Before she reaches the bottom Helen appears. They stop, the girl on the stairs, the woman in the hall. It is not fair, Petra thinks, it is not fair.