John Banville - Mefisto

— It’s true, Felix said, I may have exaggerated a little. But I didn’t say he said it, did I? I only said he wanted you, and that’s different.

He rose and walked to the window, and stood there with his back to the room, looking out into the winter twilight.

— People don’t recognize what it is they want, he said. They have to be shown. I have to … interpret.

He glanced at me merrily over his shoulder.

— Oh, yes, Pinocchio, he said. By jiminy, yes.

Adele suddenly laughed, one of her brief, high shrieks, and threw her cigarette into the grate and lit another. Then she put a hand to her forehead and bowed her head. Felix was smiling back at me still. Darkness advanced into the room.

I ONLY WENT TO the hospital now when I needed a new supply of pills. I avoided Dr Cranitch. Matron looked at me with her sad eyes, saying nothing. I gave all my attention to the notices on the walls in the dispensary while she filled up the little mauve phials for me. She put a fresh wad of cotton wool in each one, and wrote out new labels in her neat, schoolgirl’s hand. Miss Barr was asking after me, she said, Father Plomer too. She did not look up. Through the window behind her I could see down into the grounds. A wash of sunlight fell across the grass and was immediately extinguished. An old man on a crutch was hobbling up the drive. I picked up the pills. She watched my hands, and then she turned away.

At the gates a car pulled up and Felix stuck out his head and hailed me.

— What a lucky chance, he said. Hop in, we’re going to a party.

The car was a shuddering, ramshackle machine, coughing and farting in a cloud of blue exhaust smoke. The young man with the shakes was at the wheel. His girl sat behind him in the back seat, huddled against the window. It was starting to rain.

— Come on, Felix said to me, don’t be a spoilsport.

The young man’s name was Tony. When I got in he turned and winked at me.

— Hiya, pal, he said.

There were livid bags under his eyes.

We crossed the river. Gusts of wind were smacking the steel-blue water, and pedestrians on the bridge walked at an angle, their coat-tails whipping.

— There are these people, Felix was saying, we’re to meet them at the Goat …

Tony laughed, a high-pitched whinny.

— The Goat! he cried.

The girl shrank away from me, staring out the window beside her with a fist pressed to her mouth. She had a blank white face and frightened eyes and a tiny, pink-tipped nose. Her name was Liz. Big drops of rain swept against the windscreen.

— Fucking wipers, Tony said.

Then abruptly the rain stopped, and there was sun. We drove along by the canal. The poplars were still bare. Great bundles of cloud were sailing across a porcelain sky. Felix turned around in his seat to face me.

— Seeing the lady in white, were you? he said. Wangling bonbons out of her again? Let’s have a look.

He held the little bottle of Lamias aloft between a finger and thumb, squinting at it as if it were a rare vintage, and shook his head in laughing wonderment.

— Do you know what these things are worth? he said. Do you?

— They’re gold, pal, Tony said, nodding at me in the driving mirror. Pure gold.

He wanted to take one. Felix laughed.

— Anthony, is that wise?

— Fuck wise, said Tony.

Beside me Liz was rolling a cigarette in a little machine. Twice she had to stop and start all over again. Then she spilled a box of matches on the seat. For a moment it seemed she would cry. I tried to help her gather up the matches, but when I put out a hand towards her she flinched in fright and went suddenly still, averting her face from me, her little pink nose twitching.

We were heading towards the mountains.

Tony was bouncing in his seat, beating a tattoo with the flat of his hand on the steering wheel.

— Whoo! he said. That stuff!

He looked at me in the mirror again, his eyes wide and shining bright.

— Gold! he said, and the wheel wobbled.

— Calm yourself! cried Felix, laughing. We’ll all be killed.

We left the city behind, and climbed a long hill, the old car groaning, then crossed a bare brown plateau. Sunlight and shadow swept the far peaks. Sheep fled into the ditches at our approach. Tony was crooning quietly to himself.

— Ah, how good it is to get into the open, Felix said. The mountains, the mountains, I’ve always felt at home in the mountains.

We descended a winding road and stopped at a little oasis of wind-racked pines. There was an ancient pub with fly-blown windows, and an antique petrol pump in front of the door. Chickens scratched about on a patch of oil-stained gravel, among a dozen or more parked cars. I stepped out into the cold, sharp air. Water was running over stones somewhere close by. A flush of wind shook the pines, and all at once it was spring.

The pub was dim inside. A wireless muttered somewhere. Vague figures inhabited the gloom, they eyed us cautiously as we entered. A fat man in a dirty apron emerged from a door behind the bar, chewing. He wiped his mouth on his apron, and put his big hands on the counter and loomed at us with an expression of mingled servility and craft. Felix grandly smiled.

— Dan, my friend …

I was looking at the other customers, gathered there behind us like shades, watching us. They too had come here from the city. They had something about them I seemed to recognize. There were girls who looked like Liz, and ragged young men like Tony, but that was not it. I thought of my time in the hospital, the hours I had spent among the brotherhood of the maimed. That dulled, neuralgic air of waiting, suspended. That silence. They shuffled closer. Felix turned and surveyed them, smiling, one heel hooked on the foot-rail and his elbows planted on the bar.

— Look at them, he said in my ear. They know the doctor’s arrived.

Tony went off to the lavatory. Others followed, in ones and twos. He did not come back for a long time. The afternoon was ending, the setting sun glared redly in the window, then faded. Liz sat on a bar-stool, drinking glasses of stout. She smoked and coughed. I caught her watching me. This time she did not look away. She asked for one of my pills. When I took out the phial Felix put a hand hastily over mine, looking about us sharply.

— That’s gold, remember, he said with a smile, and this is Outlaw Gulch.

A sort of groggy gaiety began to spread. Two young men linked arms and danced a spidery jig. A girl laughed and laughed. Dan the barman stood behind his cash register and watched with a worried eye the traffic coming and going in the passageway out to the lav. Felix sighed happily and softly sang:

O God, how vain are all our frail delights …

Then Tony came back with his hands stuck in the pockets of his tight trousers, grinning and twitching.

— Surgery over? Felix said. Everybody cured?

— Except me, Tony said.

The twitching had spread from his jaw into his arms, now one of his legs began to shake. Liz was pawing at his sleeve.

— He gave me, she said, giggling, he gave me one of …

He flung her hand away.

— Get off me! he shrieked. Jesus.

He was sweating. He looked into Felix’s face imploringly, with a broken smile. Felix laughed and turned to me.

— The doctor is sick, I think, he said.

— Come on, Tony whispered, gritting his teeth. Come on, don’t …

Felix turned back to him blandly.

— But Anthony, tell me, who’ll drive us home, if you get well?

The two young men who had been dancing had fallen down now, and lay on their backs waving their arms and legs feebly in the air. One of them seemed to be weeping. Tony put a hand to his forehead. Liz was watching him with a sort of glazed curiosity.