John Banville - Mefisto

— Yes, he said, time to get out.

We walked along the ramp. Below us, at the foot of the slope, a trickle of water slid between banks of smooth blue mud. Once I had seen a kingfisher there, a flash of opalescent silk, skimming the surface. Today the water reflected an iron sky.

— What about you, bird-boy? Felix said. Fancy coming with us? You could be with your Leda. We could go, oh, anywhere. Foreign parts. See things. Wild horses on the plain of Muscovy, camel trains in the Sahara. The jungle, nigger girls stamping around a fire stark naked. Or what about the far north? Eskimo women are slippery as eels, they’ll put their tongues anywhere.

He laughed.

— What do you say?

I said nothing. We went down the slope and along the track in the direction of the gate. I was thinking, I was thinking about — oh, nothing, I was thinking about nothing. Suddenly Felix laughed out loud and clapped me on the shoulder.

— Oh, Malvolio! he cried. Your face!

Mr Kasperl was eyeing us through the murky windscreen. Felix waved to him gaily.

— Get away from him, too, he said, his beck and call.

He took my arm.

— And you, he said, you should get away from him as well. Seriously, I mean it. He’s too … too negative. Me, now, I’m for positive things, rules, order, certainty. That’s how we’re alike, you and me. You don’t believe me? Well, you’ll see. The world is wide. I have plans.

We heard the explosion then, or felt it, rather, a sort of shiver under our feet. For a moment afterwards all was still.

— Oops! Felix said softly, and snickered.

A confused shouting arose. A puff of smoke climbed rapidly into the air above the pit-head, turning itself inside out. It looked oddly festive. Mr Kasperl was scrambling down from the lorry. Figures had begun to totter on rubber legs out of the mouth of the mine. We ran towards them. I wanted instead to run away, but I could not stop myself. How vivid the blood looked, on their blackened faces. They were making an odd, wailing sound. A man whose trousers had been blown off knelt in the mud, weeping, his hands clasped as if in prayer. Another stood and cursed, swinging his fists at anyone who came near him. I noticed he had lost an eye, there was just a purplish mess where it had been. Smoke was pouring out of the mine, and down in the depths someone was screaming steadily, in short bursts, like a baby, going ah! ah! ahh! Mr Kasperl stood stiffly atop a hillock of shale, in a statuesque attitude, fists clenched at his sides and head thrown back, looking at the scene about him with an expression less of shock, it seemed, than a sort of scepticism, as if it were all a show got up to fool him, and he had seen through it. He turned a suspicious eye on Felix, who lifted up his hands and stepped back with a laugh, shaking his head.

— Don’t look at me, boss, he said. I have an alibi.

Some sort of gas had exploded in one of the tunnels. Two men had been killed, a dozen were maimed. The story was in all the papers. They misspelled Mr Kasperl’s name. Felix was not mentioned, which provoked one of his rare bouts of rancour. For days he would speak to no one, but kept a sullen, injured silence.

SPRING CAME EARLY that year — no, I’m wrong, it came late. But when it came it was glorious. I recall the jonquils blowing on the lawn at Ashburn. All work at the mine had stopped. The roof supports rotted. People said the place was haunted, ghostly rumblings were heard underground, and sometimes at night a bluish radiance was seen flickering above the pit-head. Each morning at nine Uncle Ambrose arrived in his car and sat outside the house for an hour, and then drove slowly, sadly away again. Mr Kasperl kept indoors, creaking up and down the stairs and through the empty rooms. I would come across him in old corners, standing motionless, like a stalled automaton, glazed, absent. A sort of paralysis had settled on him. He would sit in his room with the black notebook open on his kness, staring blankly at the pages. He looked strange, not like the rest of us. He might have come from a country where no one else lived.

One morning early I arrived in the attic and found Felix crouched in the corridor outside Sophie’s room. He put a finger to his lips and pointed. Her door was ajar. She was still in bed, lying on her side, with a hand under her cheek and her eyes closed. A luminous white mist pressed in the circular window above her, lit by a pale sun. Her clothes were draped untidily on a chair beside the bed. Mr Kasperl stood a little way from her, as if sunk in thought, palping his fat lower lip with a finger and thumb. Outside, under the eaves, a pigeon sounded its soft, lewd note.

— Watch! Felix hissed gleefully, gripping my wrist. Watch now!

Mr Kasperl took a step forward to the side of the bed and paused, watching Sophie’s face. Then, laboriously, his boots groaning, he knelt down by the chair and gathered her clothes in his arms and buried his face in them, snorting softly. Felix let slip a little moan of laughter, and clapped a hand to his mouth. Mr Kasperl was oblivious, nosing deep in the bundle of silks, devouring their secret fragrances, his fat old shoulders trembling. Sophie had opened her eyes, and lay unmoving, watching him. Now she looked towards the door and saw us there, our faces pressed to the crack. She smiled.

— Oh, look at him, look! Felix whispered in ecstasy. Oh, the dirty old brute!

Felix too was lying low. There had been a row at Black’s, when relatives of one of the men who had died tried to attack him, and he had to escape out the back way. He was indignant. Why were they after him? It wasn’t his fault. Probably one of those dolts — maybe that very Paddy or Mick himself, or whatever he was called — had lit up a fag down there. But feelings were high in the town. My mother listened to the talk, and decided the time had come to act. I arrived home one evening to find her ironing her best dress, her white cotton gloves, banging the iron down on the board with angry strokes. Uncle Ambrose was there, flushed and frowning, staring at the floor and trying to control the jitters in his knees. My father cocked a wary eyebrow.

Next morning Uncle Ambrose called for them in his car. My mother was already waiting, sitting by the window in the parlour, with her handbag and her hat and her white gloves. It was a Sunday in May, I remember the sun in the window, the heavy reek of her face powder. My father, shaved and brushed, limped down the stairs, muttering. Uncle Ambrose wrung his hands unhappily. He cast a furtive glance at me, his adam’s apple working. We had both been seduced by Ashburn, after all. He seemed strapped into his tight suit. The three of them stood on the pavement in the sunshine for a moment, confused a little by the light, the gay breeze, the trees delicately coming into flower. Then Uncle Ambrose led the way to the car, and settled himself in the driving seat with his accustomed care. He held the steering wheel at arm’s length, as if he were afraid of it, and pumped the pedals and fiddled with the choke while the others got in. My father sat beside him, my mother took the back seat. She was saying something to me, but the window was shut, she could not work the winder, then the car shrieked as Uncle Ambrose trod on its underparts, and the last thing I saw, behind the reflected stage-set sliding on the glass, was her blurred face speaking without sound as she was borne away.

It was Aunt Philomena who came for me. At first I thought she was drunk. Her mouth was askew, and a strand of hair hung across her cheek. When I opened the door she was already speaking. Her voice was thick with what I took for manic laughter.

— I don’t know a thing! she warbled. They phoned me up, they wouldn’t tell me a thing!